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November 17, 2024 - No. 1676
``Know Your Enemy`` Part One
“Know Your Enemy” Part One
Broadcast #1676
November 17, 2024
Broadcast #1676
November 17, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1676 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, I’ve had a lot of thoughts go through my mind, and I’m just trusting the Lord with this. Of course, hopefully that’s not a new thing. You need to be trusting the Lord all the time. But I feel especially inadequate. And yet, isn’t that the foundation of everything? We are inadequate. We can’t live, we can’t serve, we can’t do anything unless he does it in and through us. So that’s my prayer this morning that the Lord will absolutely take over and just have his way.
I’d like to read a scripture that we often read. I just wanna focus in a particular way today. And that’s in Ephesians chapter six. Carl, I’m sorry, I guess I have your affliction this morning. But anyway, this is where Paul, after talking about so many aspects of truth and encouragement that the believers needed, he says in verse 10, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
And then he goes on to describe the armor. But my focus is on the fact that we have talked about a number of times, the reality of this world and what it’s about. And of course, we’ll get to how it affects us, because it’s not just information about the world. We need something will help us right where we’re at in our Christian walk.
But the fact is, there is an unseen kingdom. We see the kingdoms of the world, the presidents, the emperors, the kings, whatever they are, prime ministers and the various levels of government, the armies of the world. We see all those things visibly. We think of this capital city and that one and wars, and we think in a very physical way.
But there is an unseen kingdom that’s very real. And I feel like the Lord wants us to delve into this a little bit more than perhaps we have, and become a little more conscious of what it is that Paul is talking about when he says to take on the armor because we wrestle not and so forth. What does that mean?
Well, for the world, it means that this world is, as we have often pointed out, under the control of the enemy. There is an unseen kingdom that literally rules over the hearts of man. It blinds their minds, it causes them to be under his power, unaware of the Lord and his purposes and his kingdom.
But I wonder many times if this isn’t just a kind of a vague idea, okay, there’s a kingdom out there, and you know, we see its effects in this broad general sense, but I believe the Lord wants us to get back to where we are conscious of the fact that that breaks down into individual members of that kingdom. We call ‘em demons, we call ‘em evil spirits, devils, whatever you want to call them.
You know, we think about earthly governments, and we say Putin attacked, you know, was it Ukraine? Don’t get old! Putin attacked, well, Putin was sitting there probably in a bunker or a secure location in Moscow, and he didn’t have anything to do with it. He wasn’t the one out there pulling the triggers and throwing the bombs, dropping the bombs and all of that. He was, but yet we say he did it.
There are a lot of things where we read in the scripture about the devil, you know, resist the devil. Well, I think we have to realize if we’re honest that Lucifer, the person we know as the devil, does not literally come down and bother us as individual believers or individual people. Now he does interact with humanity, but that’s, when it’s talking about the devil, it’s talking about his kingdom. And there are hordes of literal spirit beings who serve his interests and who affect the lives of individual people.
You know, there was a time when the Lord was visiting the church here in an unusual way. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about that. It’s not what we’re about, but it was real. And we became very conscious of the activity of demon spirits and how they affected people. In some cases it was demon possession, but there were many others where, you know, you saw that there was, you could see the effect of something, but then you realize, hey, there’s a spirit behind it.
And I know it’s an uncomfortable subject in many ways. And usually when you bring up something like this, just says, Oh, don’t talk about that. It’s just people’s personalities. And you know, it’s just kind of … where does that wisdom come from? Yeah, we’ve got a kingdom of spirits that literally have a plan and a purpose to dominate human kind. They would love if they could to drive out God and all of his people from this earth. And Satan would have his hands completely on everything and everybody, that’s what he would like.
Thank God for the blood that was shed on that cross. Thank God that he was defeated. You know, the message that we preached and the one in the MCM, things the devil knows, he knows that his time is short and he knows he doesn’t have the power. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to have some understanding in this area, because spirits do affect people.
Now, I know one of the things that, as soon as you get into that, you get into questions about demon possession and oppression and all that kind of stuff. Frankly, I don’t care about trying to sort all that out. All I know is the devil will affect any person that he can to any degree he can. If it’s just a matter of whispering in their ear and shaping their thinking and encouraging their motivations in a wrong sense and it’s all from out here, well, that’s part of it.
But if it gets to the point where spirits gain such an access to a person that they come to live in that person, do you know that happens literally? Yeah, I mean, we know from scripture certainly that they literally can be taken over. And then you get cases where someone’s totally outta control.
And like when Jesus saw the man in the tombs there, he talked, but the person that talked back to him was not the man, was it? It was one of the many spirits that were living inside the man that had such control that he literally was able to exercise the man’s mind, his body, his tongue, everything about him. It was not the person, it was the spirit.
Do you know that’s real? You read the headlines every day, and it’s pretty obvious what’s happening in the world. And you think about Mary Magdalene, one of the characters, one of the ladies who went around and no doubt cooked food and helped take care of the disciples and Jesus when they traveled around. But what does it say about her? Out of her went seven devils.
What does that literally mean? If somebody had had seen her someplace, they would say, there is a woman and her name is Mary. And so Mary lives inside this human body that I see before me, but Mary wasn’t alone. Before Jesus came along, there were seven, anyway, seven other spirit personalities.
You know demons have names, they are real beings. And you know, we’ve had testimony recently and from time to time of incidents where people have been able to see demon spirits. They are real.
Now, I wanna very quickly point out that all of this is not to inspire fear. The demon spirits do not have the power to just come and, you know, like some kind of monster, gobble you up and take over. They’ve got to work behind the scenes. They have got to use strategy, which is one thing Paul talks about here. They have got to work almost like a guerilla force, if you will. They’ve gotta be behind the scenes, unrecognized.
I’ll tell you, this world is totally, is it not under the control of the devil? Do they not live under his dominion? Are they not blind? That’s the world that we live in. And people do not know where their ideas, where their motivations come from.
And you literally have spirits whose job it is to go around and study people. Do you know there are spirits that study you and me? Why, what’s going on, what’s that about? The devil is looking for any kind of a weakness, any kind of an opening that’s there.
And of course, we know that people are unique, aren’t they? None of us are, we’re not the same as as each other. And you have people that are more intellectual and you have others that are more emotional and all kinds of different variations of human personality. Well, the devil is gonna study each person, say, Now how can I, where’s the weakness here? How can I get to them? How can I begin to inject my influence into their minds and their hearts?
And you know, you can almost see, I don’t know how literal this is, but you can almost see spirits going around with a notebook, studying somebody. It’s as real as if they were doing that. This is not fantasy. There are people the Lord has allowed to know these things and then come and be able to tell us because the Lord pulled ‘em out of that.
This is real, but there are devils that literally will study you and say, you know, there’s a weakness here. Hey, you, spirit, you spirit of fear, come here. There’s a weakness, it’s in the family, and I want you to take this person and work on that. And I want you to just keep ministering that and get a degree of influence and control over their lives. I want you to weaken them.
And as you do, I want you to kind of pay attention and study them because other weaknesses are gonna show up. And then maybe we can bring in a spirit of something else and all these things. And we’re gonna get control.
See, I don’t care whether it’s the degree where you have to put somebody in asylum or whether it’s somebody that looks respectable. There are plenty of people who look respectable in our society and you don’t have any idea that they are under the control of Lucifer in their thinking, in their actions. It doesn’t have to be some crazy crime that makes it obvious. If the devil has got somebody to the point where they love this world in any aspect of it, whether it’s the lust of the flesh or the pride of life, or the things they can see, the lust of the eyes, he’s gonna take control.
Now you think about the man that came to Jesus, and he wanted to become part of the kingdom, but Jesus knew he had an idol. And so he said, Here’s what you do. You sell everything you have, you give it to the poor, and then you come take up your cross and follow me. Well, what happened? He walked away. Sadly, there was a weakness in his life.
Now, anybody looking on would think, There’s a respectable guy. He’s wealthy, he’s successful, God’s blessed him. Isn’t that awesome? Do you think that that was just an interaction between Jesus and a human being, or was there the influence of the enemy that had built up to the point where there was a strong hold in his life? Folks, that’s the world that we are dealing with.
And you remember how Paul spoke earlier in the book of Corinthians, and he talks about how we have been brought out, we have been delivered, I think is the word, I have to look it up, but delivered from the power or the dominion of darkness, and what brought into the kingdom of his dear son in whom we have redemption through his blood, I believe. Praise God!
I’ll tell you, those are the only alternatives by the way. If there’s somebody who has never come to Christ and put your faith in what he accomplished on the cross, surrendered your life and you’re serving him, you’re part of his kingdom, you are part of this kingdom of darkness that will ultimately be destroyed. Those are the only alternatives.
And so I just appeal to anybody who hears this, and that’s where you’re at. You need a Savior, you have no power. There are things that happen in your life that you don’t understand. He understands there’s things that are going on you don’t know, and you need a Savior to open your eyes and set you free from that power.
But I believe with all my heart that the Lord wants us to be just a little more aware of some of these things. The Lord has many times emphasized the secrets of Christian living, and he talks about faith and talks about the word and coming, you know, being filled with that and seeking, Lord, last week about coming to the Lord and listening, having a listening ear and seeking him. All of that is part of it. But you can do all of that and need this.
Think about the man that Jesus talked about on one occasion, where he talked about the man out of whom, you know, a spirit left, a spirit went away, and he went into what he called dry places. And what was he seeking? Seeking rest. Did he find it? No. There’s no way for a demon to find any kind of satisfaction anywhere else except through human beings.
And so what he did eventually was he went back to check out the house, the body of the man that he had lived in. Well, he found it empty. It’s a dangerous thing just to get devils out but not get Christ in. All right, so this man was still empty. So what did he do? He went and he got seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they went in there and lived. And the last state of the man was worse than at the beginning. So now instead of a man and one demon, he’s got a man and nine demons or eight demons, whatever it is. All those personalities living, inhabiting that same, you wonder where all these multiple personalities come from?
They’re real, you know, like was pointed out recently in a message we heard when the Lord talked to that man who’d come outta the tombs. What is your name? Well, there was only one spirit literally talking through that man, but it was obvious that he was not the only one there because, and when Jesus said, What is your name, singular, he said, Legion, for we are many. So he was speaking on behalf of all the other inhabitants.
Folks, this is the world you live in. We need to be aware of it, okay? And you can go on and on and on talking about the effects of spirits and all of that. But I’m more interested in how this affects us. And the Lord’s kind of gotten my attention with some of the scriptures that we read. And this is one of them obviously.
But the Lord will say something like, Resist the devil and he will flee from you, and so forth. He doesn’t say resist the bad thought. Doesn’t say resist your nature. Obviously, those things are involved, but the focus is not on all the things that we would like to focus on and just forget all that demon stuff that’s just scary.
By the way, the Lord is not talking about this to scare anybody. The fact that he has to sneak around to do his dirty work should tell us that we’re the ones in the position of power, that we have a choice, and especially if he has delivered us from that power and brought us into the kingdom of his son he loves, okay? So there is no reason for anyone to be afraid like there’s a monster, okay? So let’s just put that aside, but the Lord does want us to understand in a deeper way than we do.
And I just want to throw this all out here today and pray that God will bring us to a deeper level of freedom. Because I believe with all my heart that many of the needs, if not most of them, that people come for, and you know, there’s a problem in my life. There’s a bondage, there’s this, there’s that. Where’s that coming from? And it’s awful easy to say, well, that’s just my human nature. That’s just this, that’s just habit of thinking.
That’s just, and all those things are involved, but they are more symptoms of an influence, because the devil knows he cannot take us and steal us from Christ. If you’ve really been born and he lives in you, he can’t steal you and destroy you, thank God. But he can sure do a lot of bondage.
You know, I was at one point when I was thinking about all this, I was picturing a scene. Many of you have probably at some time in your life seen a movie version of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. And you remember the scene near the beginning where Marley’s ghost appears to Scrooge? What’s the scene? How is that depicted? He’s this ghostly figure, first of all, but he has chains all over him. Oh, these are the chains I forged in life.
Well, I mean, yeah, it’s kind of amusing in a way it’s portrayed, but isn’t there something real about that? The devil would like to put chains on every one of us to the extent that he can. And I fear that more of the time than we realize, there are chains, the things again about which we struggle.
We might need to go back a little deeper than we sometimes go. It’s not a better formula, it’s more than just information. There has to come a time when God’s power comes into play to set us free from something that is a power that’s come against us.
This is not just some fantasy, folks, do you believe this stuff is real? Do you believe there are literal spirits that study you and me, looking for opportunities? And I wonder how many times the opportunities are there because we’ve been born into a family, a context of some kind, and they have weaknesses, they have chains in their lives, and there’s an effect. They have an opportunity right there to affect children that come into that environment. And so they’re just programmed from youth with certain limitations, certain weaknesses, certain opportunities for the devil to hinder them.
Just because he can’t steal your soul and come in and all of that doesn’t mean he can’t attach chains. And God wants every one of us to come to that place where we recognize the chains that have bound us and where they come from.
You know, one thing comes to mind, and it certainly doesn’t affect, it affects a lot of people. So I’m not just thinking about any one place or person, but think about something like unforgiveness. The devil loves to promote a culture where, if somebody does something wrong to me, the way I look at it is, they’re in the wrong, I’m right. And the only way we’re gonna get over that is for them to humble themselves, come to me and admit that they were wrong, and ask for my forgiveness, and then I’ll consider it.
And you can have whole cultures in families and groups that come from that mistaken idea. Where does that come from? It certainly comes from Satan and his kingdom. There were literal spirits that went to work, maybe on grandpa and grandma and great-grandpa and grandma way back. And there’s a culture, there’s a spiritual culture that has been handed down, and people are born into it.
There’s a lot of the stuff that that afflicts our lives. We aren’t even aware of it. That’s the whole point. The devil hides what he’s doing, he’ll send a friend, so-called, into your life, and you don’t realize what’s really motivating. There’s something in control, there’s a degree of motivation there, and they’ll pretend to be your friend, but they’ll influence you. We can do this and it’ll be okay. You can think this way. You can think that way.
Look at our culture. It is devoted to totally programming people’s minds in ways that are absolutely anti-Christian, anti-Christ. And God wants us to be a lot more aware than we are.
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November 24, 2024 - No. 1677
“Know Your Enemy” Conclusion
Broadcast #1677
November 24, 2024
November 24, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1677 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: If the devil gets any kind of degree of influence over your heart and your life, he can only do that if he can get you to agree with him. Now, that may be ignorance, it may be just weakness, and he hides behind every kind of facade you can think of. But the reality is, if there is a hold in your life, at some point, you opened the door and gave him permission.
Now, here’s another illustration that came to my mind. We know something on the human level about criminal gangs, and let’s suppose that you’re living in an area ruled by criminal gangs. I mean, Mexico comes to mind, but it’s certainly not limited to them. There are some of them that rule in parts of cities too, but a criminal gang, obviously they rule by fear and force, don’t they?
But just suppose under some kind of a circumstance, somebody from one of those gangs comes to your property and needs a room. Anytime I’m in this area, I need a place, and you let them in. How do you think you’re gonna get them out? Not at all without a lot more force than they got.
That’s the way it is. If the devil ever gets any kind of a place of influence in your heart and your life, you will never ever get that out by your own power. I don’t care how many spiritual formulas you come up with, there is only one thing, and it’s the power that he’s talking about here.
We’re gonna have to have God’s mighty power, and we’re gonna have to come to be honest with the thing. We can’t say, Oh Lord, I got this terrible influence in my life, what’s going on? Why am I in bondage in this area? Oh God, break that hold. Well, you gave the devil permission to be in there in the first place. Think about the criminal gang. You opened the door. He claims that as his property, and he’s not going unless he is forced to leave. Not one of us has the power to force him to leave.
What God wants us to do in a deeper way is for him to open up our eyes to see why things are the way they are. To be able even to go back in time and say, Lord, show me where did this get started? Why is it this way? Lord, open my eyes to be honest.
If we have opened the door to a devil, don’t we need to be able at some point, as the Lord enables us and opens our eyes to be able to go back and say, There’s what happened. Maybe I was ignorant. Maybe I was just a kid. Maybe a lot of things. But the reality is, I’m the one who opened that door. Lord, cleanse me. Forgive me. I come honestly, laying my need before you.
But right now, I am yours Lord. I don’t belong to that devil. I repudiate everything about him. I’m not serving him. My body, my whole being belongs to you, Lord Jesus. I ask you to fill me. And because you are here, I declare that door shut. There’s an eviction notice that needs to be served in a lot of our lives because we have allowed the devil to come in and to gain holds.
Is this crazy? Anybody here need this? Yeah, I believe God wants to bring us to a greater level of victory and freedom, and there’s so many tactics that he uses. So anyway, this is one of the scriptures. Boy, I thought I was gonna be at some other scriptures a lot quicker. But anyway, he talks about the devil’s schemes.
Now look at another scripture we often refer to in 1 Peter 5. Verse six says, well, verse eight is where I’m going. Be alert, now, see, this is one right off the bat, he’s getting ready to talk about the devil and his effect on us. He’s not talking to unbelievers. Why would he talk to Christians if this didn’t matter to Christians? Be alert. Why should I care? The devil has no power over me, saved by the blood of Jesus. Well, yeah, would that it were so simple in a practical everyday sense.
Here’s what’s going on. Be alert and of sober mind. God wants us to see things the way they really are, to have an honesty about us. Your enemy the devil, And again, he’s not talking about Lucifer personally coming to every believer, but I’ll tell you, he’s an emissary of Lucifer. Even these little old spirits that come around and harass us, they are sent literally to do whatever damage they can to trick us, to seduces us, to get ahold of any weakness that we have.
And we got them. Let’s be honest, we’re not this wonderful free people that we say we are. We need a Savior. Thank God we have one. But this is part of the equation. You can do all the other stuff and get all the rest of it right? But we need to find out where we have literally fallen under Satan’s power and there are chains attached to us. The Lord wants to loose those chains.
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. That’s eat. See it upholds the same thing that we were talking about. The devil considers us food. It’s all he’s got. But I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I almost feel sorry, but I don’t, for a spirit that’s assigned to a Christian who gets all this. Man, they got a tough job. Well, let’s make it tougher. Let’s ask God to open our eyes so we can understand the kingdom of darkness and how it works.
As I say, the devil has been studying you all your life. There isn’t a person here who doesn’t have something in your personality, something in your experience. You’ve been through something, you learned, you were influenced by something that gives them an in, gives them a degree of a hold. And God wants to loosen those, every one of those things. But we’re gonna have to understand it.
I can think of so many things, and I’m sure you can as well, but Lord just guide this, I pray. But you think of, it could be any of us, but I’m thinking about young people right now, I guess, and how the devil wants to tempt you to play with sin. There are things you know aren’t really right. You can’t imagine doing them with Jesus. But it’ll be okay. It feels good. We can mess around with it a little bit. We won’t go too far, you know, I’ll just take a sip or a little bit of a drink and I understand I won’t be like those people over there, but I’ll just mess with.
You don’t toy with sin. What do you think’s going on there? You think there’s some innocent game going on? There are dark figures that are inspiring that. And when it comes to justifying it, well, I’m not going that far. I’m just, this is innocent. I’m just messing around and after all, it’s all taken care of. Jesus’ blood covers my sins, and I can always get forgiven if I go too far.
And oh God, how many times do we go through the same cycle of falling into a weakness and then saying, Oh God, help me. And the Lord’s had to take me back to, you know, where some of this is, and I’m sure there’s be more to come, but has had to take me back to where some of this stuff got started. Why am I like this? Why do I struggle in this area as much as I do? Well, there’s a reason I got programmed way back, maybe as a kid. There were ideas, there were desires. There was something that was stirred up that wasn’t right, it wasn’t good. And I kept playing with it.
And then I’d get in a weak place. The devil loves to take advantage of people when they get tired. Of course, he’ll make you tired in the first place, but what’s his game? Yeah, break us down. Get us to a point where we don’t have much resistance and maybe we start to feel a little bit sorry for ourselves.
Where does that wisdom come from? Yeah, and then we go eat the proverbial box of chocolates and we, you know, we begin to give in a little bit. Well, it’s okay. And, you know, you begin to see what’s going on though. There’s a process of just influence that’s coming and you know, it’s not God if you stand back and look. You know, there’s no way this is coming from God, but is it just random thoughts or do we recognize that there’s a reason the word of God says, Resist the devil. There is a real personality involved in these kinds of things.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil, he just didn’t say, Oh, that’s a bad thought. I think I’ll quote the word. Now, obviously in his case, it probably was the devil, it was. But Jesus addressed the spirit, not the sentiment, not the idea, He addressed the spirit.
How do we overcome the devil? Blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. That’s when God’s word becomes resident. We’re listening, we’re hearing that voice, that creative power that wants to change us on the inside. We’re hearing it and it’s changing us, but that becomes not just something we know in our heads, but something we confess with our hearts.
I am His. You can tell me all about what I’m not, but I am His child. I have been given a brand new heart and a new life. I’m a new creation in Jesus Christ. It isn’t dependent on who I am and what I am and what I’ve accomplished. I’m a sinner saved by grace, but devil, that’s my stand. I’m standing on what God has said and what God has promised, and that’s the end of it. You have no authority here. This is what God says, that’s where I’m standing.
And then you you don’t hang on to any part of your life, even if he kills you, because that’s all he can do. Give us a quick ticket to heaven. He cannot destroy or separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. And God has given us everything we need. But I believe with all my heart, God wants to take us to deeper levels.
And you think of pornography, it is rampant and super available in our society. Used to be it was the little magazines that had the covers on them and boys would get them and mess with them and snicker and all of that kind of stuff. But it’s everywhere now.
You think it’s innocent to mess with that. And I’m curious about this little thing. I’m curious about that. Where does that wisdom come from? Do you not see that there’s a person with a name talking to you. You know, we think of God speaking to us. Well, God is a spirit. You don’t see Him. But we know that He has the power to speak in our hearts and in our minds. Does not the devil or devils, demons, do not they have a certain amount of power to inject thoughts and wisdom and words?
Well, God’s words are spirit and life. They have life changing power. It’s not simply the ideas behind the words, it’s when He speaks, there’s life infused. But what happens if the devil is the one who does the talking? Are we not partaking of something that affects our spirit? Is it not like spiritual poison that begins to blind and begins to bind and begins to attach those chains? May God help us to talk to him about these things?
I didn’t have any particular sense of where we wanted to go in terms of the service beyond starting a conversation. I believe the Lord wants to come in greater power. We can go along and uphold our traditions and our ideas and our doctrines and our way of doing things. You can do that and just die eventually. We need the presence and the power of Christ, but we need him to come and in delivering power so that lives can literally be set free, chains can fall, prison doors can be open.
Is that not what Jesus came to do? Yeah, there may be those cases where you’ve got demon possession. Demons have to be driven from a person’s life and they’re brought to Christ. You’ve seen that in the past. But I’ll tell you, believers have problems with demons too. He can inject all kinds of bondage into your life and you wonder how in the world, what’s going on? I don’t understand, I try.
But you can try all you want; we need divine power. We need God to literally put his finger and give us understanding. I pray that there will be those who get this, many, who will join me in saying, God, You’re gonna have to help us in this area.
I’m not looking for a show, I’m not looking for anything other than you to be real and to set me and the people free in a deeper way so that we can not only be free ourselves, but we can be in a position to say, I know what it’s like to be in bondage. I know what it’s like for the power of God to set me free. And I know the One who set me free can set you free.
We can be instruments of God to help other people. Are there not people who need Him? Who need to be delivered? May God give us power. May God give us a heart in that direction. I’m talking to myself as much as I’m talking to anybody here. We need the Lord and we need him to come back in a greater power.
I’m not looking to recreate the visitation. That was something God did. But there’s a reality of the power of God that was meant to reside in His church. Does He not want to manifest gifts of the spirit? That’s not something to put on a show in glory. And that’s something that just gives God the opportunity to use people to help other people. That’s what it’s all about. He gives us supernatural power to be a blessing to one another. That’s all that’s about.
May God help us, bring us to a place of greater freedom. Do you believe he wants to do that? Do you believe He will if we ask him? And in the hard one, are you willing to say, God, take me back if necessary to that traumatic thing that happened to me that I’ve never gotten over. That something that happened where I, in weakness or in ignorance and whatever, I opened the door and I gave Satan a room and there he is and I can’t get him out. And I don’t know why. Why can’t I just make him go?
Well, we’re gonna have to have some repentance. We’re gonna have to have some honesty that says, Lord, I get why that happened. I agreed with him. I invited him in and he’s not going to leave willingly. There is no devil in this world that’s gonna leave willingly. There is only power that’s gonna make them go. And we’re gonna have to be 100% on the Lord’s side to have that kind of power.
But it’s there. It’s there. The cross that we sung about this morning, it’s real. The kingdom of God is real. The kingdom of Satan is real, but the kingdom of God is above all. And when He brought us out and raised us from the dead with Christ, He seated us with him in heavenly places.
Like we’ve said, the devil knows that; we are the ones who don’t know it. We don’t live like that. We live by what we see in what we feel. God, get me outta that. And when I’m having a battle, help me to realize it’s not just my feelings and wrestling with all that kind of stuff. There’s a devil talking to me.
I have every right to point him to the cross. I have every right to remind him of where I stand in the fact that I’m not here because I’m anything. He has no authority over me because Jesus Christ has paid the penalty at the cross. I stand in his power and in his name. Devil, you get outta here. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
And does not Paul, in Ephesians 4, when he’s giving the instructions, practical instructions about what it means to live out the new life, the new creation life. One of the things he says, Don’t give place to the devil or don’t give the devil any room. Doesn’t that tell you where our problems come from. We give him that room. He can’t just come in and take over. He has got to get our agreement in some area.
That’s why I need the Lord to change my thinking, to give me that sense of serving him and being more alert and aware. How can I be alert if I don’t even know what’s going on? How can I discern what’s going on if God doesn’t give me his wisdom? I need to see things through God’s eyes, including me and my needs.
And I’ll tell you, the more God gives us that freedom, the more we’re gonna become vessels that He can use. In this crazy hour, in this broken world, God has a people. He’s got a people right here that we need Him. We need him in deeper ways than we’ve known. But He’s there. He’s willing. The price has been paid. The king sits on a throne and he longs for us to come to him.
But we’re gonna have to understand some of this side of it too. Demons are real, you don’t have to sit there and be scared of spooks. You know, we’ve had demons come and try to scare people, scare children, had several testimonies of that.
Well, we need to realize that those devils have no power. That’s the only power they can do, is try to make us scared. They have no real power unless we give it to them. So let’s stop giving it to them. Let’s ask God to give us the spirit, to speak the truth and demand that they leave in the name of Jesus. Take their whatever hands off of us and off of our children.
And I’ll tell you where there are things that have been handed down through families. There are conditions, there are, what’s the word? Anyway, there are ways that people live and think that are literally handed down in families. Well, don’t we have the right to say, let that end with this generation. It doesn’t have to go on. Let this be the end of that. Devil, you’ve afflicted my forebears, all those have gone before me, but it stops here because God has shined the light on your activity. You have no right and I demand that you take your paws off of my life because my life belongs to him.
I tell you, we have somebody that we can turn to that is, well, you could go on and on, there’s so many aspects to this. But I just pray that God will give me a deeper understanding and a soberness of mind. Doesn’t He say, Be alert and a sober mind? It’s not a game. May God give us a sensitivity when we’re playing with sin, we’re playing with areas where the devil has got a hold on us because we’ve been weak and we think, Oh, that’s okay, that’s no big deal.
Well, that’s exactly what the devil wants us to think. But all he’s doing is digging in a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper and I tell you, if he gets to a certain point, he’s gonna say, Hey, there’s another area of weakness. Hey devil, come on, help me out here. And you’re gonna have more and more.
The devil never wants less. He always wants more. And if he can afflict God’s people and put us in bondage then we’re not much use to the kingdom of God, are we? We’re more in need than being able to help somebody else in need, but God has set us free.
May God give us the grace to lay hold of this, to realize that both kingdoms are real. We’re serving the one that is on top of everything, but we need to recognize how the other one operates and start taking back the ground that we’ve given him.
And we have every right to do that because of the blood of Jesus and the cross, thank God. So praise God, I’ll just leave that with you and let’s just pray and ask God to work and just show us. Amen!
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November 10, 2024 - No. 1675
“Come, Listen, Seek” Conclusion
“Come, Listen, Seek” Conclusion
Broadcast #1675
November 10, 2024
Broadcast #1675
November 10, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1675 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: You who are struggling and trying to find your way, why do you waste your effort and all the focus of your life on something that can never, ever scratch that itch that you’ve got on the inside? God has better for you and for me. And here’s His voice, crying out to a people most of whom had turned away and were walking away from His love and His mercy. But He knew that there were a people.
I believe there’s people today, we’re in an era, we’re in a time when darkness is overtaking the world, but God is reaching out. There’s a harvest. There’s a people that He is gathering in this hour. I want to be one of those people.
But if I’m gonna navigate this, it’s not just a matter of knowing what’s going on and knowing what’s right and wrong. I need life. I need to realize that I don’t just need information. Like I say, I need to literally eat something just like my body needs food that I chew up and I swallow. I need something that I can receive into my inner being that will nourish me, and change me, and help me. Anybody here?
Yeah, well, that’s what He offers and He offers it to people who are in such a state where they don’t even realize it. They’re watching the world and watching it unfold and struggling. Their nature is crawling, is driving them to try to satisfy that thing. And the Lord says, Come, I’ve got what you need. Stop trying to find it some other way. Come to me.
So, then He adds a dimension to that. Come is one thing. But it’s interesting what He says after that. And I think this actually captures the Hebrew pretty well. Listen, listen, because the word is there twice.
You remember the message we had several years ago on peace, peace. Well, this is listen, listen. The Lord just doesn’t say, listen. He says, Listen, listen. I wanna get your attention.
And you know the difference between listening and hearing, right? I could hear something, but to actually benefit from it, I need to listen to it and take it in, and agree with it, and so that it becomes a part of me.
I mean, you could go to the best buffet in the world if all you did was to go out and sniff it, and maybe even taste it, and admire it. That wouldn’t do you much good, would it? But God wants us to not only come to Him, but realize He’s got something He wants to give to us that will sustain us.
Now remember the word we have so often quoted where the Lord was trying to teach the people, Man doesn’t only live by bread. Yes, you’ve gotta have something to sustain your body. That’s not what… You need more than that, what do you need besides that? Every word that proceeds, present tense, out of the mouth of God. I’ve got to have something. I’ve gotta have God speak to me basically.
And it’s not some magical experience, but there is a way that God has of communicating with a willing heart. And listen means I got my ears. I’m stretching out my ears. It’s almost like you hear a whisper, somebody whisper, and you don’t quite get it. And you wanna lean forward, make sure you get it.
This is God saying, I’m looking for a people who are so desiring me, so aware of their need of me, that they’re literally putting forth a… They’re making a choice. They’re making a deliberate choice to say, God, I need to hear you. I need what you’re telling me, and I want what you’re telling me. I agree with it even before I know what it is.
Ooh, that takes a heap of grace, doesn’t it? Because we are so self-willed, so self-reliant and God wants us to come to that place where we realize you haven’t got what it takes. Not for my purposes, but I do. And I love you and I care about you, and I’m gonna tell you the truth even when it hurts. But I’m gonna tell you what will heal you.
You know, I’m talking about the needs that exist, the thirst, we’ve talked about this before. How many people are nursing wounds on the inside? How many people are struggling in certain areas? And then you come in with a smile and everything’s just wonderful and fine. But inside there are needs. There are things you haven’t been able to get over, things you’re struggling. Oh, how is this gonna work out? I’m dealing with this. What am I?
God wants to do something about that. He doesn’t get any pleasure out of seeing people struggle. He wants us to be able to bring every burden, cast all your care upon. Where? Upon Him. Why? Because He cares. That’s what you get out of these awesome passages in the Old Testament where the Lord is speaking through the prophet to people who are struggling. How do I…? What’s going on? I don’t get this.
Think of the promises to Abraham. Where are we at? What’s going on? And I said, Don’t worry, you come to me. I’ll give you what you need to sustain you. But also don’t worry because something amazing is coming. I’m still in charge.
So here it is. Listen, listen to me. Is listening to God in the sense that He’s talking about here, is that something you really want? Do you really want Him to talk to you? You know, I think every one of us has times in our lives when the Lord’s putting His finger on something and it’s hard for us to say, Yes, Lord, I’m willing.
But have you ever found yourself in a place where say, Lord, I’m struggling with my will, but I’m willing to be made willing? I need you to inject something, infuse something into my spirit that changes the way I see the situation whatever it is, that enables me to be willing. I want to do what you want, Lord, and I’m struggling right now.
That’s normal to have times like that. Don’t you be dismayed. God sees that. This whole passage is addressed to the one who’s thirsty. These are things that make us thirsty. There He is, reaching out. Listen, listen to me and eat what is good. I’ve got something for you that’ll sustain your spirit if you’ll just listen. Okay? Yes.
You will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me. Listen that you may live. So you got the whole package there. Come, listen, hear. Open your heart. Folks, there are so many times when what we need, yeah, we need to read this word, but I need God to take this word and breathe life into me, breathe life into that word ‘cause the word is meant to be an expression of life.
It’s not dead food that I need. I mean, you can cook something down to the point where it doesn’t really do you much good. But I need the food that still has life in it. Well, when He speaks it’s not just words, is it? He’s literally imparting divine life into our spirits. That’s what I need. Praise God!
Do you know He’s willing to do that right now? Do you know everyone who’s in this place of hunger and struggling can go to Him and say, Lord, I need to eat something. I’m hungry. I need you to feed me. I need you to help me, to give me something to drink. Lord, I’m looking to You.
You ever had those times when God would speak a word, a very simple word sometimes, and it would just minister peace and minister rest. It wasn’t just the thought, it was the life. Something touched your spirit. Something changed the way you were on the inside.
This is what we don’t see is probably more real than this what we do see, and that’s what God is after, is to change this because this outward person is gonna… This body is gonna be gone, but there’s a life on the inside, it’s gonna live on. Praise God!. That’s what He wants to sustain.
Think of the heart of God that was just reaching out with such plain language to the people. And then the promise, I will make an everlasting covenant with you. There’s an agreement, there’s a contract if you will, that God is making with His people. It’s not something where we have to earn our way in. He invites us to come.
He’s looking for the willing. He’s building a kingdom of the willing. My faithful love promised to David. He goes back to the man after God’s own heart, that God was so real to, David didn’t serve God because he thought of Him as a monarch somewhere giving rules. He came to know Him as a faithful shepherd. Someone that I can walk with, someone who goes with me, meets my needs on the inside. I love Him, I know Him. I want to be around Him. I wanna spend time with Him because that’s where I get my strength. That’s what enables me to live and to be a servant of God in this dark world. I can’t do it, but I need to spend time with Him. I need to go to Him. I need to listen to Him.
My faithful love promised to David. See, I have made him, David, a witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander of the people. Surely, you will summon nations, you know not in nations, you do not know will come running to you because of the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, for He has endowed you with splendor.
Anybody here feel like you’re endowed with splendor? We don’t see it right now, but if we could see what the Lord is doing in the hearts of those who have given their hearts to Him. One day, this is gonna be all gone. And the light of what He has done, He get every bit of the glory. Doesn’t say the saints will shine forth like the son in the kingdom of their Father?
Only God can turn this dark human spirit into something that is brilliant with light. It’s God’s life that can change a heart. It can meet you right where you’re at, that cares about you, that has done everything to take care of everything that would hinder you, if we just come and give ourselves to Him and believe Him, and trust Him. Praise God!
Seek the Lord while He may be found. You got three things I guess that kind of jumped out at me as I was thinking about this passage. The Lord says, Come, listen, and seek. Maybe that’s a title I don’t know. Come, listen, seek. But seek the Lord while He may be found.
Now I know in the context here, the Lord is talking is a warning. I will not always be available. There are things that are unfolding and people are making choices that in some cases reach a point where there is no going back. People have absolutely hardened their hearts to the point where they’re unable to hear me anymore. Okay?
We’re getting to that place for so many people of the world. The opportunity will not always be there, Seek the Lord while He may be found. So it’s a warning to somebody who doesn’t know the Lord. It’s a loving warning. It’s not a threat, but it’s a warning of reality.
But I also thought about it in this sense. Sometimes we’re looking for God’s voice and it just seems like He’s silent. And what do we do when we’re in those times and we’re in need and we’re reaching out to Him, and like David, we say, How long, oh Lord?
You know, part of faith, part of walking with Him is being able to say, God, I know that you are still true. I know that you are faithful. Isn’t that what He just said? My faithful love… And isn’t that how David reacted when He went through those times? He said, How long, oh Lord, I wish you’d come and answer my prayer, but I’m still gonna trust you. This is what God is building in His children.
And one of the warnings that He gives that we’ve often referred to and I probably have referred to it recently, I don’t remember specifically. But anyway, over in Chapter 50, you remember the scripture that we used to hear Brother Thomas minister on so long: Who is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of His servant?” Who is somebody who wants to serve the Lord? They have a listening heart, okay?
Let him, but you don’t have any light. You’re in a situation where you don’t know what to do next. You don’t know how to handle a situation. You feel a need. What do I do? You trust in the name of the Lord. You stay upon your God, you stay put and you say, Lord, until you give me light, I ain’t going anywhere. I’m looking to you because you are faithful.
But what that does to somebody who really doesn’t believe and is just trying to use God to have a better life here, what that does is put them in a position where they’re gonna say, Okay, I tried this and it’s not working. So what I’m gonna do, I’ve gotta figure this out. After all, God helps those who help themselves.
How many of you know that’s not in the Bible? But anyway, then they go ahead and so they say, I’ve gotta work it out. What happens when somebody in a spirit of self-will tries to work these things out is not gonna wind up good. You’re gonna lie down in sorrow. You kindle your own fire. I gotta make some light so I can see what to do. That’s what the world is doing folks. This world is gonna perish, seeking its own ends, and its own will. But God is raising up a people who will walk with Him.
We mentioned last week about the good shepherd. He not only makes… He is the door into a place where he cares for us and watches over us. He goes forth as David indicated, And He leads us into path beside still waters to the pastures that are good. This is the kind of Lord we call to serve. He’s a good shepherd. Praise God! Praise God!
So what a promise that’s implied in, Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near. So God is looking for a people who will come, who will listen, that is, agree with Him, who will seek Him, will always be fixed on serving the Lord and realizing what I need in my inner being is Him. It’s his life, and He imparts that to me through His word.
So, what does He go on and say? Well, he says, Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. That alone tells you that when he says, Come and eat without any cost, he’s not saying, I’m offering myself to you to fix up everything that’s wrong so you can live your life. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s calling on people to turn away from their own way and let God nourish us, so we can go His way, okay?
So obviously, it’s a call to leave the way the world is living, all right? And the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord. And what? He will have mercy on them, and to God, for He will freely pardon. I need mercy, don’t you? There’s no way I can come to God and say, God, I’ve done this. I’ve done that. I am this. I am that. I’m expecting favor from you. It doesn’t work. I need mercy. But that’s what He offers. Thank God! Thank God for mercy that which I could never deserve. All right?
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Praise God!
Does it make sense to try to live by your ideas and how you think things ought to be? See, the Lord is constantly saying, Look, I know what’s going on. I know what’s gonna happen. I know all about you. I know everything that needs to be known. My voice is the one you need. You need to be listening to me.
In the midst of this world, the world is gonna be screaming in your ear, telling you it’s this way or it’s that way. This is what you ought to do. And the Lord says, Just listen. Be quiet. Be quiet in my presence and just come, and listen, and I’ll give you something that’ll feed your soul and give you peace. Praise God!
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. Anybody want that this morning?
The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. What? Wouldn’t that be a sight. But you get the sense, you ever walked out in nature and the Lord’s been real to you and it just seems like there’s joy everywhere you look. I’ll tell it’s what’s going on in here that matters. But I’ll tell you, God can so fill us with His joy that it’ll be just like this poetic language He uses here. I’d love to see the trees clap their hands.
But anyway, Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers, the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown. Who gets the glory out of this? He does, but He shares that with us. He shares Himself with us. For an everlasting sign, that will endure forever. If you get any question about what everlasting means, He goes right on and says, That will endure forever. That’s what I want.
But what I sense is the Lord wanting that for everybody here. If you’re here and you don’t know the Lord, the Lord knows your need. I don’t care how deep it is, He can meet that need if you just hand your life over to Him and put your faith in what Jesus did on the cross. He will absolutely change you from the inside out. He can give you a new heart. He can heal what’s wrong. He can forgive the sins. Whatever they are, He can meet the need of the heart.
But for His people, I sense, I know from personal experience I need the Lord more than I have Him. I go along and I get hungry. I feel needs on the inside that just aren’t quite… I’m not quite there. Things aren’t quite right and the Lord wants me to reach up and go to Him.
I mean, you think of what the scripture we so often quote out of Philippians, Be anxious for nothing. That’s just one way the human spirit gets out of kilter. What are we supposed to do? Let our requests be made known unto God and the peace with thanksgiving. See, there’s some faith involved. Thank you, Lord, that this is the circumstance. Thank you that I need you, but thank you that you’re there and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, our Lord.
I sense that God knows the burdens of your heart. He knows things that nobody else knows, what you’re struggling with on the inside, and He wants you to come to Him. He has the power to speak a simple word to your spirit that will feed and meet that need.
We know about our needs in the body, but we’ve got needs here too. We got needs of the inside and God longs to share Himself with you and with me every single day. May God give us the grace to discern His heart and reach out to Him and do what He says, To come, to listen, to seek, to do whatever it takes to have Him. And that same Lord has promised to bring us all the way through. He is faithful.
The scripture that Doug read this morning, Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it. That’s the Lord we serve. That’s the One I want to listen to. That’s the only source of peace that will ever satisfy that thirst, that’s in the human spirit.
The more we get out of kilter, the hungrier, and thirstier we get on the inside, the more we come to the Lord, the more he can feed us, and give us that which we will sustain this inner man. We have so much need.
Well, just praise the Lord! There’s nothing new that we’ve said this morning, but somehow I sense this was the need this morning. Was that wrong? Anybody? Anybody need this? We need the Lord and He’s so loving and so faithful. Reach out to Him. Answer what He says here. He is faithful and He will do it. To Him will be the glory. Thank God!
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November 3, 2024 - No. 1674
“Come, Listen, Seek” Part One
Broadcast #1674
November 3, 2024
November 3, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1674 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, for those who are following the chronological Bible, this is the time of year we’re in the last part of Isaiah, some of the richest scripture in all the Bible, powerful prophecies the Lord spoke by His Spirit in a dark time. You know, well, Doug was talking about it being a dark time. Well, it was a dark time then.
You remember how God had raised up the kingdom, had fulfilled His promises. It enabled David to finish conquering all of the territory that had been promised all the way back in Abraham’s day. And then consolidated the kingdom, handed it off to Solomon. And for a one brief glorious period, Solomon was the greatest king probably that the world has ever known. Rich time of peace and prosperity, and a witness to the world of who God was.
And then things started going south, didn’t they? And after Solomon left the throne and passed off the scene, we have the split of the kingdom, rebellion of 10 tribes that said, We’re not gonna follow David’s house anymore. We’re going off and we’re gonna do our own thing.
And they never ever served God after that. It was entirely downhill and immediately built heathen gods, made heathen gods. And it just never again served God. And eventually, in fact, in Isaiah’s time, by Isaiah’s time, they were actually dispersed. The entire kingdom was literally broken up. Groups of people were scattered throughout the empire of Assyria. And others were brought in to replace them. So it was gone.
Judah was the southern kingdom, the two tribes that stuck together. And they had a mixed bag. They had some terrible kings, and they had some that were pretty good in varying degrees. And Isaiah lived during a time when the general trend was not good, but there were some good kings like Hezekiah. And so there was a prophecy, there was a spirit of prophecy that enabled him to speak God’s words in a time of great darkness.
You know, but Doug spoke about the darkness that’s in our world today, and there were a lot of things going on then that are pretty picturesque of what’s going on today, a picture. You actually had kings like Hezekiah that served the Lord, but you had others right bumped up against his reign that actually sacrificed their children to a heathen god.
Can you imagine a king, supposedly representing God in Jerusalem, taking his young baby, young child over to a cliff and offering that child, sacrificing that child to a heathen deity trying to gain favor with that false God? That’s what was going on. Can you imagine?
Sound kind of, sounds familiar though, doesn’t it? Sounds like our modern world. We’ve got a world that is listening to the darkness of this world. But one thing that God made makes plain everywhere, that He always preserved a remnant, didn’t he? A remnant is a few out of the whole that literally continued to serve God.
You remember how Isaiah begins? Unless the Lord had preserved a very small remnant, what would’ve been the consequence? You’d have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. What does that mean? What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? They reached a point where there was no going back, and there was nothing left but destruction. That’s where this world is headed. Do you understand that? Everybody here understand where we’re at in history. There is judgment coming, but God has a remnant.
And so the word that Isaiah spoke was twofold. Number one, he often talked about the conditions, and he pointed out how the people were going the wrong way. They had a form, but they didn’t have anything in their hearts. Their hearts were far from them. Many scriptures you recall from throughout Isaiah, and you see the condition of the true hearts of the people was not good.
But yet interspersed, especially from chapters 40 on, you see these powerful prophecies that were meant to encourage the remnant who were standing there trying to navigate the world that they were living in. How in the world can I continue to believe in God? Look what my neighbors are doing. They got idols in their house. Look what the king just did. Look at the destruction that’s happened to in this place and that. Look at all the things that are wrong. And here I am trying to be faithful.
And God was sending a word to accomplish several things. One of them was to encourage His people, saying, Yes, things are bad, but don’t worry. I’ve got a plan and things are gonna be awesome. And it’s not gonna be just about for you and to try to make Israel, the natural Israel something great. This kingdom is gonna go to the ends of the world. I’m gonna be with you.
And there’s one coming that is called of Me, and he’s going to lay down his life for the sins of the world. We’ve sung about that this morning. Praise God! I’m gonna take care of all this darkness you see. And I’m gonna bring forth a people who will be faithful to Me.
And their destiny is not just for earthly greatness. Their destiny is everlasting. Yes. There’ll be a new heavens and a new Earth. You got that prophecy there in Isaiah toward the end. I mean, all these things are there.
God was, and it’s like we’ve talked about many times, God’s word is creative. So when God spoke these words through Isaiah, he was literally setting something in motion. It’s like pushing a button. I’m gonna start something. You know, we know about starting a machine because there’s power engaged to do something. Well, this was doing something, it just wasn’t right then. But oh, something was launched, and it was gonna land exactly on God’s schedule. Praise God!
That applies to us too, doesn’t it? Yeah. We’re standing at a world that is absolutely making the choice to go the wrong way. They’re literally closing the ears, refusing to hear what God says, walking in the darkness, Doug was describing there from 1 Thessalonians. And God has called a people out of that to listen to Him.
And so, I don’t know, I can’t say I felt any icicles running up and down my spine concerning this morning, but you know, many times we’re not called to that kind of experience. You know, we’re not walking by the feelings that we get. We’re walking by faith.
And my mind was drawn back, and it just kept being drawn to Isaiah 55, a very familiar passage of scripture. And this was a word that I see having two main areas of application. Always, when God’s word comes, on the one hand, it’s to encourage God’s people and to tell them what is true and give them a true picture, a true knowledge and the life and the power that goes with that knowledge.
See, I don’t need just more and better information. I need some power. I need something that will power this machine, if you will, to literally do what Doug was talking about. ‘Cause it’s one thing for God to tell me what to do. It’s another thing for me to be able to do it. And I need God.
So on the one hand, this was a word of encouragement to God’s people. On the other hand, it was a call. See, think about the patience of God. Think about what we read and hear in the news every day the things that are going on in this crazy world. It’s insane. Why would God put up with such a thing? God is allowing men to make their choice.
But there are still those that He cares about. He cares about all of them. But there are those that He knows can still be reached, and that’s what His focus is on. And as long as there’s a heart that can be reached, God’s going to keep reaching.
And that’s what I want us to see. It’s not just the technicalities of what He says here, but it’s the heart that goes behind it. Here’s a God looking at this condition of the people, and there’s a king goes out and sacrifices his baby trying to get the favor of a heathen god. And God is still reaching out because there are people who will hear and listen. I wanna be one of those people. Praise God!
So anyway, he begins, “Come all who are thirsty, come to the waters and you who have no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?” Now, I should think it would be obvious that the Lord is not talking about literal food that sustains these bodies, but rather we can gain a picture of what He’s saying.
Obviously, we live in a bodily existence, and these bodies that we have need sustenance, don’t they? You go out and work every day, if you don’t eat, you don’t work. Of course if you don’t work, you don’t eat either. But there’s a balance. I need something. There are nutrients that my body needs without which I cannot function. I’ve got to have the vitamins and the minerals and the various things that keeps this old body going.
Now we know that this is described by Paul as a tent. Now some of you go camping. Last time I went camping, the conditions were so ridiculous, we went home before breakfast and haven’t been since. But anyway, be that as it may, it’s a lot of fun, but it’s a temporary place, isn’t it? We have these structures that give us a little bit of shelter while we’re out there, but they’re not meant to live in, on and on. And that’s the way our bodies are.
Well, we need that perspective, folks. Everything about this world is temporary. And you who are young and feeling your oats and you can do all this wonderful stuff, just wait. We were young once. And you get to where you realize, Hey, these bodies are wearing out. It isn’t gonna last. And we see people come to the end of the way. But yet while we’re here, we need sustenance, don’t we? So that’s what he’s playing off of. He’s giving us an illustration.
So when he is talking about being thirsty, he’s not talking about going into a faucet or wherever, to a source of water and drinking literal water. But there is another, see, we’re not just physical beings. We are spiritual beings happen to live in these bodies temporarily. And that unseen being needs stuff, it needs sustenance.
You know, Doug was talking about what the world is looking for, all that it seeks. We have a nature that we inherited from our first parents because they made a choice. They made a choice to say, I’m gonna do it my way. I’m gonna seek what I want. And ever since, the human race has been trying desperately to find satisfaction by following natural desires and seeking the things that this material world offers.
But here’s the Lord reaching out, saying, Are you thirsty? Somehow I was thinking of this, you know, I was saying, Lord, everybody knows this stuff. This is just, you know, we’ve heard all this so many times, but I felt like the Lord was saying, There are a lot of people, and they have needs on the inside. I mean, we know about physical needs and, you know, things of that sort where you go to the doctor and all of that. But I’m talking about the kind that people can’t see. And there’s something in inside that is struggling, that’s hungry, that’s thirsty.
Am I the only one? No. Folks, that’s just our nature. That’s the nature of living in this world. And the Lord is reaching out to a people saying, I know where you live. I know what’s going on around you in society. Are you thirsty? Is there something that your spirit needs that you’re not able to get by yourself and out of your environment?
I mean, you think about what the world is looking for and how it feels like it’s going to achieve what it wants. Oh God, the battles that are fought on the inside. Why can’t I get people to like me? What about this? What about what they have? You know, Oh, if I just won the lottery, oh. Everything would just fall into place. I’d be so happy, I’d be at such peace.
Do you think there’s any source of peace in this world? I don’t care what you have. God has put a God-sized hole in everybody’s heart. And there will be nothing that will satisfy that except Him. We were made for Him. As was the old quote, Our souls are restless until they find their rest in you.
And you know, the world will teach us its ways, and we will be affected whether we realize it or not. We can get sidetracked, we can get so absorbed in, I need this, I want that. You know, what about this situation? Oh, if I could change my situation, then I’d be happy.
How long would that last? If we are trying to gain and to satisfy the longings, the urgings, whatever it is by the things of this world, it ain’t gonna work. There’s something else that we need.
And that’s what the Lord is trying to get them to see. You are thirsty, you need something. Something is just not quite right on the inside. And you think, If I do this, if I can fix that, then everything will be okay. No, it won’t. It won’t.
Now obviously this is a word to people who don’t know the Lord and just trying to find their place in the world. Why am I here? Who am I? What’s this world about? What is the pathway to meaning and happiness? And the Lord’s saying, Come, I’ve got everything you need. You weren’t made just to live your life here and die and that’s the end of it. I’ve got a purpose that goes way beyond that. I have everything you need.
And just like our bodies, if my body didn’t have what it needed to function, I mean, I have enough challenge getting outta bed in the morning sometimes, but if I didn’t eat, I wouldn’t be getting outta bed. If I didn’t take in the nutrients and the things that sustain this….
Well, what is it that sustains the inside? That’s the question. Because, I’ll tell you, I don’t care how much money you make. If you made all the money in the world, do you think, do you actually think you would be happy and you would find peace and joy?
You know, you think of one of the greatest conquerors in all of history, Alexander the Great. As a young man, he left Greece and he took a company of soldiers and all kinds of people, and he went from place to place and he conquered the known world, spread Greek culture everywhere. That guy was still in his 30s when he ran outta places to conquer.
What did he do? Oh, great. I finally accomplished my purpose. Everything is great. He wept. He cried. Why did he do that? Because there were no more worlds to conquer. His whole meaning had been this striving to fulfill this earthly desire. In other words, there was a thirst that even all that he did was not able to satisfy.
And does this only affect the lost? This affects God’s people. There are a lot of things that happen on the inside, there are desires, there’s needs, there’s things that we just, and there we are struggling and thirsty and wondering how in the world can I handle this, how can I handle that? And the Lord has one word, and it’s, come.
Think of what Jesus said, Come to me all who are weary, in that case, all who are weary and burdened. There’s this sense. And come implies that the Lord is saying, I’m here and you’re there. You’re in a place where I don’t care what you do, you will never deal successfully with that thirst that’s happening on the inside.
You are in a place that, I’ve allowed you to be in this place. I’ve allowed you to feel the need. And you’re trying in your own wisdom, your own effort to try to fix it. And it ain’t gonna happen. I’ve got a different plan. And I feel like the Lord wants us to experience this more than we do because this is not theory.
You know, like Ben was saying this morning, we can talk about the theory of how salvation works and what God’s done for us, but He wants us to literally have that. I need something to feed my spirit. Do you? Amen. I need something that can literally inject nourishment into that inside part that nobody else sees.
And here He calls on us, for example, to do the things that Doug was talking about this morning. How do I do that? That’s not in me to do that. I wasn’t born with the ability to be that person. But it’s not just some, Okay, boom, I’ve got it. Is there any way that somebody here can just eat one magical meal and then on the strength of that, go the rest of your life and just do great things? Be a wonderful athlete, be a great, you know, weightlifter or whatever? That’s all you need, is that one great meal? No, we gotta have regular, we gotta eat on a pretty regular basis, don’t we? There’s a cycle.
It’s kind of like that with the Lord, isn’t it? So this calm is not just a one-time thing, and then, Hey, we got it, we got it. This is something where the Lord is saying every time that there’s a need, that’s something going on the inside. And you’re feeling, Oh God, I need something. Lord, I’m thirsty. Help me through this circumstance that facing. God, I need you.
And what does He say? He says, Come. You’re over there trying to wrestle with the issues of your life. Come. Come, I have what you need. Come to the waters. And you who have no money, now this is one of the best parts. You who have no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Praise God!
The Lord’s not even saying, Hey, come work for it. Come earn it. I wonder how many of God’s children wrestle with this part of it. Okay, I’m in need. I even messed up. I’m in this place of thirst and hunger. My spirit needs something, but I just can’t go right now. I’ve gotta sort of earn my way back into His favor, and then maybe He’ll help me.
I’ll tell you, aren’t you glad we serve a God who knows where we’re at? Knows our need, knows what we’ve got to have to nourish this inner person that He’s put in here. And He doesn’t say, Come earn it. The price has been paid. Amen. The price for every need that exists in my heart and in my life was paid when they laid those stripes on my Savior. Every lie that I’ve ever told, everything I’ve ever, every thought I’ve ever had that’s been wrong and against Him, there was a stripe that was laid on my Savior because of that.
And He invites me to come. He says, Look at what I did on the cross. I’m not asking you to come and fix yourself so I’ll accept you. I’m asking you to come and let me feed your soul. I have what you need. You could try to feed yourself off of the things this world offers. It will never, ever take care of the need, will it?
And I’m so thankful it’s without money and without cost. And then He says to them, Why do you spend your money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Obviously, again, He is not talking about physical food. He’s talking about the striving of the human spirit for meaning and for something that will quiet this restlessness.
Doesn’t He say, The wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt, there’s no peace, sayeth my God, to the wicked? Of course you say, Well, that’s not me. I’m not wicked. I’ll tell you what, we have this idea in a human society that we know who wicked people are. They do really outwardly bad things.
If we could see ourselves the way the Lord allowed Isaiah to see himself, being caught up in seeing the purity and the power of the Lord, all of a sudden, we’d realize, I’m no different. Have you ever told a lie? You ever taken anything that wasn’t yours? You ever had an angry thought, a lustful thought? And you can go on and on down the list of things that rule over this world. You ever had any of those things? Where did they come from? If you were judged by those things, by that standard, would you be innocent or guilty? I need a Savior.
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October 27, 2024 - No. 1673
“Things the Devil Knows” Conclusion
Broadcast #1673
October 27, 2024
October 27, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1673 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: God doesn’t want us to be afraid of the devil, but we need to know who we are and we need to be His people, don’t we? We need to move in Him. But I believe God with all my heart, God wants to bring us to a place where we know these things that the devil knows, we know who we are, and we’re able to be instruments of Christ in this world. Praise God! All right?
So the devil knows who we are. It’s Christ in us, the hope of glory. We are born from above, sealed by His Spirit, a brand new creation. Now that’s sealed by the Spirit. There’s some… See, any one of these subjects could be a subject of a message, couldn’t it? But the seal of God’s Spirit. What does that mean?
There’s something about when somebody really comes to Christ and hands their life over and He comes in and takes possession, He puts a seal. That’s an illustration of saying, That’s mine. That one’s mine.
Do you think the devil is ignorant of that? He knows! If you’re His, the devil knows it. He’s gonna deal with you differently than he would somebody in the world. But the devil knows those that are His. You know the devil seals people too. You see that on both sides of this war that’s going on, the devil is sealing people with lies and with deception. The whole world is deceived and Satan is the author of that deception.
But I’ll tell you, when God calls somebody out, there is a birth that happens. There is a brand new life that is born that the devil cannot kill. We need to realize who we are in Him. God wants us to wake up and be aware. The devil knows that. Praise God!
Here’s something that just hit me as I was thinking about all this. The devil is scared to death of us. And it doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time, but the devil is scared because he knows it’s not just us. If Christ lives in you, that’s the One he’s afraid of. He’s afraid we’ll discover who we are and start saying, Lord, just like we sang, use me.
This is not a prescription for a pep rally to get out and go change the world in that sense. But this is to bring us to a place where we know who we are in Christ and we know we can do whatever He gives us to do because it’s not us doing it, it’s Him in us. Praise God! That’s what the devil is afraid of. Praise the Lord!
What about the scripture where John was talking in 1 John 4 about deceivers that had come in, but they didn’t recognize that Christ was there. They were just coming in with their deception. And the comment that John makes is, Greater is He that is in us than he that’s in the world. The devil is very, very aware. When Christ resides in a heart, that’s the one he is terrified of. Praise the Lord!
I don’t know as I thought about this, I just felt a greater sense of confidence and rest. I have no confidence in me. Nobody here has any grounds to have confidence in yourself. But we have all the ground in the world to have confidence in Him! Praise the Lord!
And it’s not just that greater is He that’s in us. What about what Paul says in Ephesians 2 about how we who were under the dominion of Satan? I don’t care if you were born in the church and grew up here, until Christ comes in and takes the throne of your heart, you’re living under his power. But when Christ comes in, He takes over. He lifts us up out of the graveyard of sin, gives us a life that the devil cannot kill. But we don’t stop there. He raises us up to seat us with Him in heavenly places in Christ. There is a place of authority that we have.
The devil loves to make us feel like we’re down in the mire, down in the depths and, Oh, God, way up there someplace…. Is that the picture that’s painted? We’re up here with Christ. When it comes to the devil, we’re looking down. We’re looking down. I wanna see it that way. I want this to become so real to me because I’m just like you. I have those times too. We all do when we feel that way. But God wants us to understand these are things the devil is well aware of. He has no illusion about who we are and what our destiny is. Praise God!
And he knows our power to overcome, doesn’t he? Praise the Lord! What about? Well, of course, Revelation 12, the scripture we quote so often. See, that’s the picture of how Christ came into the world. He tried his best to destroy Christ, but he lost, and there was a great war that took place in Heaven and he was cast down.
Jesus said before He went to the cross that that’s what was gonna happen. The devil’s gonna be cast down, cast out. And what happened as a result of that? A message began to be proclaimed, The victory has been won. And those who overcame the devil didn’t do it because they got excited and geared up. They did it because the blood was shed. The only ground the devil has over me is my sins that would separate me from God, but God took care of that at the cross.
Why do you think the devil is so scared of the cross? He knows that the only power he has over us is to get us to… Is to cause us to feel the guilt and the weight of our sins. But they were all placed upon a Savior. Praise God! And he didn’t just bear ‘em, He took them into the grave and left them there. Praise the Lord!
And I’ll tell you, it didn’t stop with just the fact of the blood, but the fact that they had this testimony. Praise God! I’m standing on what God says. I’m gonna be like Jesus. When the devil comes and tells me all about all the stuff that’s wrong with me, I’m gonna tell him what’s wrong with him. I’m gonna stand there and confess what God has done for me. I’m gonna lift up my eyes and get them off of what I think I am and all that I’m not, and place them where they need to be! On Jesus and what He has accomplished. I’m gonna confess that and stand on it. Praise the Lord!
You know, those of you who were there Saturday night, heard Brother Ezra talk about standing your ground. I wish I’d thought about this at the time, but you read the passage in Ephesians 12, or Ephesians 6, I mean, about the armor, yeah, and how we fight and resist. We had a message on that recently. But one of the things that Paul mentions, one of the expressions that he mentions in the translation I use most of the time, is, Stand your ground! That you might be able to stand your ground. Very phrase that Ezra used over and over again.
God wants us to realize that He has given us ground. We didn’t earn it! Jesus, because of what Jesus did, we have a place to stand that belongs to us. It’s ours! We have a right to stand upon that. Now, you know, the illustration he used had to do with Israelites. And God had given them a physical, you know, physical land to possess. And they had every right to say, This is mine. You can’t come in here and take it from me.
But I wonder how many of us really understand that when we’re under assault by the devil, we’re not trying to take ground as though I just haven’t got it yet. God wants us to realize He has given us ground and we stand on that ground. We claim that it is ours and it becomes ours in practice.
I don’t wanna fight from futility of trying to be something I’m not. I wanna become what I am. Think about that. Are we trying to become something we’re not? Or are we growing up to become something that we are because we were born from above? His life is in us. The blood was shed, the cross happened, the empty tomb happened. We have a life that cannot be killed. Praise God!
It’s the finished work of Christ. We have every right to stand upon that. Not because we think we deserve it or we always live up. We come back to that every time and say, This is the reason, Devil. I have a right to stand against you.
Do you think the devil is ignorant of this? The devil believes it better than we do most of the time. He is well aware of what Christ did for us. He knows that he has no defense except trying to assault us in some fashion through lies, through our weaknesses to get our mind, our eyes off of where they need to be. If he can do that, he can make us ineffective.
But I wanna rise up from that and realize that what Jesus did for me at the cross is mine and I have every right to stand on it and claim it. And I’m often in need of it just like you are. But that’s the place that I need to run to every single time. Praise God! Praise God!
So stand our ground! The devil knows our destiny. He knows all of the promises that we so often quote. I didn’t even write down too many of them, but the ones that we quote all the time, Philippians 1:6, praise God about how the work that He has begun. What about it? He’s going to complete it. How long? Till the day of Jesus Christ.
There’s a day coming. God’s not gonna quit. God help us not to throw up our hands as though we’re defeated and we just can’t, you can’t make it. He is the basis upon which I stand. The devil is well aware of that promise. He has no illusions about it being true or not. He absolutely understands that there is a life in us. Like I say, he cannot kill.
What about Romans 8, the passage we read so often? Even the stuff that the Lord allows him to do, God turns it into good. It must be frustrating. Now, I’m not a bit sorry for him. I don’t sympathize at all. But how frustrating is it that when the devil is allowed to do something, that somehow is that human beings regard as negative, he persecutes or he oppresses or whatever, and God says, All things work together for good to those who love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose. And the devil can’t stop that.
And he goes all the way to the point, all the way to the fact that, we’ve been glorified in God’s mind and God’s purpose. We’ve already been glorified. Do you think the devil doesn’t know that scripture? Do you think he thinks it’s, Well, that’s not true. The devil knows.
And what about nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Praise God! Every one of these things is something that the devil knows and understands.
What about Paul’s confession? I know whom I have believed that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day. See, God had planted the confidence about his own destiny in Paul’s heart, and he knew it didn’t rest with him. He knew it rested on the faithfulness of God. He said, I handed my… Every issue of my life. I handed it over to Him. I’ve committed me, I’ve committed all the sins, the terrible sins that I committed when I was young, in unbelief, I gave it all to Him. And I know He’s faithful and I know He’s gonna keep it all the way to the end. Praise God!
I just wanna come back to that thought. In all of this, the devil knows every one of these things and the Lord wants us to know them in a deeper way than we have. May He help us. May He help me. I know He is. I don’t think this is gonna take a lot longer, but anyway. I mean, like I say, there’s so many ways, so many places, so many scriptures you could throw into this. But just think of any of the ones that have been meaningful to you.
And I want you to understand, the devil knows about it. He is well aware. What he doesn’t want is for us to get it. He wants us to use the EBM Version of the Bible. It’s not the King James, the NIV or all. EBM. That’s Everybody But Me. Where we could sit there and say, Yeah, that’s a great truth. But as for me, doesn’t quite apply to me.
Oh, God wants us to take His Word. What did Jesus die for? Just so that we could live in as paupers? He wants us to live with a sense of confidence. Now that’s not talking about human bravado and cockiness and thinking we’re something we can just go out and, you know, push spiritual buttons and accomplish things. No! But when he tells us something to do, we can do it because we are His! He wants us to grow up in Him and be who we truly are. The devil is scared to death that that’s gonna happen in God’s people. Praise the Lord!
Well, there’s something else the devil knows, right? He knows his time is short. Now it’s interesting that that was originally written in the first century. But if you just follow the Bible chronology, there was a good 4,000 years before that. And Satan knew when Jesus ascended to that throne and began to declare His message, he said, Woo! Time’s running out.
I don’t think he knew. He also knew that he had been frustrated and has been for most of this time since the Gospel began to be proclaimed. He has been frustrated in his efforts to unite the world under his leadership. Now, he’s able to do a lot of stuff. But in terms of gathering the nations completely under his rule and literally driving out the influence of Christ from the Earth, he hasn’t been able to do that. He has been bound and limited in what he was able to do.
And of course we know that the end of the age is that period of time, described as a little season, when that release happens. And we’ve talked about it many times. It’s happening right before us. We see every day the effort of Satan, the successful effort in so many cases, of the devil to plant his ideas.
Our whole generation is glued to their phones, getting information. What kind of information is it? Boy, the devil has unprecedented powers and avenues for getting information into people’s heads. He can promote his culture, his ideas, his lies in every possible form, if we’re not discerning and awake. And God help us to realize what’s going on. The devil knows he has a short time! He’s come down in great wrath and the people of the world have no idea what’s going on. Thank God, His people do. That God has a people.
You know, I’ve made this point in a couple of settings recently. I believe with all my heart it’s easy for us to focus on, Oh, things are so bad, it’s so dark. Circle the wagons, folks! I believe with all my heart, this is the time that God is gonna have the greatest ingathering of His people. There is a harvest that’s happening in many places in the world right now.
And I don’t wanna seek, I don’t wanna put God in my box, and say, It’s gotta happen this way or that way. I wanna say, God knows how to reach His. God is going to reach everyone. And, yes, there is a terrible harvest of evil that’s happening in the world, but there’s a harvest of good too, and God is calling His people.
I tell you, we’re gonna have a unnumbered company, innumerable company from every tribe and every nation before it’s over. God is faithful and I wanna be part of that. I don’t wanna sit there and say, Well, nothing we can do. It’s all over. It ain’t over till Jesus comes.
And I don’t know what’s gonna happen between now and then. I know it’s gonna get a lot darker and we’re gonna see trials and tribulations of all kinds. But I’ll tell you, God has promised to be with us to the end of the age and He that’s in us is greater! The devil cannot destroy that which God has birthed into His Kingdom. And He’s looking for people that realize who we are!
The devil has no right to you, has no right to me. We have a right to realize we’re here and he’s down here trying to do whatever he can do. But he has lost the war. But right now, he is doing everything he can do to deceive the lost and unify the world under his power.
But he’s also trying to make every effort to make believers ineffective, to blind believers to the reality, on a personal level, of the things we’ve been talking about today. He knows they’re true! He’s scared to death we’ll find out about it, and actually live it.
But I’ll tell you, you see where we’re at, you see what we need. We need to wake up and look to Jesus. When you struggle against something, where do you look? I mean, I know where we’re supposed to look, but I mean, where do we look? Most of the time we’re looking at the circumstance, the feelings, the sense of failure, the sense of weakness.
Whatever it is. God wants His people every moment of every day to lift our eyes and say, I have a source. I need to stay plugged in. I don’t have to suck the juice out of the vine, it’s gonna flow. All I have to do is look to Him and believe His promises and His life will sustain me because what He’s done in here cannot be killed. Praise God!
When I feel weakness, it’s because from the devil’s attempt is attempting to put me in a place where I’m just, Oh, well, I can’t do anything. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. You think the devil is unaware of that? The devil believes every one of these things. He knows them to be true. God wants us to have better faith than the devil. I need to learn to believe things the devil knows to be true. But I need to learn how to believe them personally for me, according to my needs and where I’m at.
And I’ll tell you as God works that in us, we’re going to be instruments of His purpose in this hour. I don’t know what that is. It’s not to start a program and get a committee together to come up with a five-year plan. It’s to look to God and say, Lord, here we are. Use me, Jesus. And I’m just gonna look to you and wait upon you and take it as it comes. I’m gonna do what Jesus taught us, what He said He was gonna bring us to is the place of rest. Learn from me, He said. And you’ll find rest for your souls.
So I don’t know. I just… This has really covered a lot of ground in a way, but I hope it’s painted a simple picture. We need to realize the devil knows a whole lot more than we maybe give him credit for. He is terrified that God’s people will understand the truth of the Gospel and walk in it and lay hold of it and be people that God can use in an hour like this.
I pray that God will wake me up and all of us to realize who we are instead of thinking of ourselves as this poor, weak, useless, whatever, however the devil wants to characterize it. Say, Devil, in myself, I’m all those things. But there’s One in me who’s greater than you. There’s an eternal purpose being lived out and worked out. I have every right to yield myself to Him and to be a part of that.
Maybe He hasn’t called me to go out and do great things, as people who imagine those things. But I can be a light right where I’m at. Christ can live in me. I can be victorious. I can grow in my faith. And yes, there’s room for growth. I don’t get it right all the time, but I’ve got a place to go.
Oh, the devil is terrified of the cross and the blood that was shed there. But we can go there with joy and thankfulness knowing that there is a ground that God has established where we can be as clean as if we had never sinned in the first place. We just have to have a heart that agrees with Him and comes to Him and says, Father, I need to be cleansed. Help me. Help me to grow. Help me to learn from this.
You think He’s gonna be faithful? The devil knows it. He knows there’s gonna be a day when it’ll be over for him. He’s gonna take down everybody he can take down. He is angry that his plans and all that he has imagined is gonna come to an end. He knows it’s true.
How would you feel if you were in his place? You’d be out there doing everything you could do to stop it. But I serve One who cannot, who’s never lost a battle. And it’s not just a matter of the battle. He’s won the war. He has won the war! And I wanna be one that walks in that.
So just think about all these things the devil knows and say, Do I know them? Do I really walk in this? Do I get all this? Does it make a difference in my daily life? And I believe the Lord’s gonna help us in a special way going forward. Don’t you?
I don’t know what it’s gonna look like. God doesn’t live in my box. I just wanna say, Lord, teach us, show us. Lead us. I wanna be free to say, Lord, whatever you have, help us to be alive and awake and to be able to hear your voice and believe it when you speak and trust you for the power to do whatever you tell us to do. That’s kinda all there is to it, isn’t it? Praise God! Isn’t the Lord good? Praise the Lord!
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October 20, 2024 - No. 1672
“Things the Devil Knows” Part One
Broadcast #1672
October 20, 2024
October 20, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1672 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I had a rather unusual thought come to me this week and I want to probably cover a lot of scriptures, which is why I actually have some notes here, because you know how it goes. But anyway, I believe the Lord wants us to have, obviously, a greater confidence in Him and enable us to move forward in this broken world that we are called to live in. And how many know that He’s faithful? Absolutely.
So I wanna talk to you about an unusual subject because I saw something from the devil’s point of view that I believe actually shines a light on things that we know but don’t always walk in as if we believe ‘em. But the title I guess would be, Things the Devil Knows, Things the Devil Knows. He knows a lot, doesn’t he?
But I’ll tell you, you know, beginning, you ought ask the question, who is the devil? And again, I’m gonna cover a lot of scriptures and things that we know, but I believe it’s good to set the context. We know that the devil is a created being, right? Colossians tells us that everything and everyone, all the powers, everything in heaven and earth was created by Who? Well, God, yes, but how? But through Jesus, it was created by Him, through Him, and for Him. So God had in mind a creation and a kingdom, and He gave it to His Son to rule over. And so this being that we know as Satan was one of the highest created spirit servants who was created to serve as part of this creation, given great power and great authority.
And of course we know that he rebelled, didn’t he? And he decided that he wanted to have a kingdom of his own. He was filled with pride, with self-will. And so he left the place that God had given him, that Christ had set him up in, and he fell.
Jesus mentioned to His followers in Luke Chapter 10, I’m just gonna refer to these scriptures. You make a note if you want. But in Luke Chapter 10, Jesus refers to the fact that he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. He knew all about the devil, knew who he was and what he was about. He said, I was there. I saw him fall from heaven like lightning.
And you know, one of the scriptures that is often referred to is in Isaiah Chapter 14. I’ll go ahead and just read a little of that. And this is a prophecy that God spoke, words that I doubt Isaiah himself fully understood, but he spoke them and they were words from God that were very prophetic in nature.
And the subject of the general prophecy was the kingdom of Babylon, which hadn’t even ascended to its greatness. But God was saying things about it. But in talking about he went beyond the kingdom and he looked at the power that was behind it. There’s an inspiration. How many of you know that whatever we see in this world politically, there’s another kingdom that’s behind it? It’s real. There are real beings.
And in this case, it says, starting in verse 12, How have you fallen from heaven? Morningstar. And that’s where the King James uses the word Lucifer. That’s where it comes from. Morningstar, son of the dawn, you have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid below the nations. You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit in throne on the Mount of assembly and the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon,’ — wherever that was. Obviously a place of ascendancy and power. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high.
So Satan was filled with pride, with ambition, with what was selfish ambition, obviously. And so he rebelled, believing he who he could actually establish himself as a god. And of course, we know he didn’t do it alone, did he?
And I think most of us have lived with a belief that they all fell at once. I’m not so sure about that. I’ve kind of come to a conviction that there was a time element during which angels joined his rebellion. Notice in Revelation 12 where it talks about the dragon and it tells you who the dragon is, right? This great dragon. And it says his tail dragged one third of the stars of heaven with him.
Now, where’s the tail in relation to a beast? It’s the behind side, isn’t it? So in other words, he fell, rebelled against God. But over a period of time, there were others that he dragged into his rebellion. And I have all ideas that the ones that became the gods that the nations, the heathen nations worship, were once angels that then joined his rebellion over time. It was over a period of time that they became part of his kingdom. And his purpose was to set himself up as the ruler over this world. He has a kingdom that reigns here, okay? So that’s where he’s at.
And we know that when he tempted Jesus, he offered him the kingdoms of the world. He ruled. And many references we’ve used in the past tells you that there is a kingdom. Paul, remember he said, We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this world. So there is literally a kingdom we can’t see, but it’s very, very real, okay?
So now let’s get down to what he knows. And there’s so many things, I finally figured I had to write ‘em down. But anyway, the devil knows that God judges sin. He just didn’t go away and say, Okay, devil, you can have the world, it’s all yours. God has immediately, immediately began to intervene, began to reach out. And the devil knows that God judges the wicked.
There came a time when Satan had amassed most of humanity under his dominion, deceived them into absolutely closing their minds to truth. And only Noah, and then ultimately his family with him continued to serve the Lord, okay? And Satan had to sit there and watch God destroy his world by a flood. And everyone left behind, as I’ve said many times, did what? They perished, they died in that flood.
And of course, he was there and enjoying all the sins of Sodom and trying and really having a big time driving them to do all the things that we’re seeing in our world today. But there came a day when God said, It’s enough. And fire and brimstone fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah. God knows that, I mean, the devil knows that God judges sin. He just doesn’t sit on the sidelines and forget about it all.
But another thing, the devil knows that God has a plan. It had to be obvious to him in some sense that God, like I said, God did not sit on the sidelines and watch the world unfold and watch Satan build his kingdom. God was constantly intervening, calling Abraham, revealing Himself to this one, revealing Himself to another one, raising up a nation, acting to overthrow kingdoms and to allow others to arise. No matter what the devil did, God was involved.
And we see, every now and then we see an example of the conflict that was that was going on there, the warfare that was going on. You see that glimpse in Daniel of two angels, one of God’s angels and one of the devil’s having a warfare and having a battle. There’s a lot goes on in this world that you can’t see with a natural eye, but it’s real.
But anyway, you see God not only having a plan but beginning to raise, He raised up a nation. And even though the nation as a whole rejected God and fell under deception and rebellion, there was a remnant that God had all the way through the Old Testament. And among that remnant, there were prophets who spoke out and gave the word of God. And embedded in their words was the plan that God was instituting. Like we’ve said many times, it was like guided missiles going out and literally setting the stage for the kingdom that you and I have been called to be a part of. Praise God!
The devil knew something was up, but he didn’t understand it. You know, that ought to be a warning to those who think that they can, with the human mind, understand the Old Testament and what it was really about. God hid his plans not just from the prophets themselves and the scriptures makes it plain, they didn’t understand, but He hid His plans from the devil himself.
So this is one thing the devil didn’t know, because if he had known it, we’re told in First Corinthians Chapter 2, he would never have crucified the Lord of Glory, if he had understood what the plan was. So that’s one thing he didn’t know, but he knew God was unfolding something and he was doing everything in his power to get in the way of that and to hang on to what he considered his, okay?
Another thing is he knows who Jesus is. Obviously, when Jesus was sent to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, the devil didn’t say, I wonder who this is? He knew exactly who it was. And even though he said, If you be the son of God, he knew who He was. There was no question. He was in flesh, but the devil knew who He really was.
And so that’s why he offered Him the kingdoms of the world. All you got to do is worship me, join my rebellion. And Jesus said, No, worship God, only Him, only Him are you gonna serve. So the devil knows who Jesus is.
And of course the fact that he attempted to kill Jesus when He was a young child. You remember that? You remember how he found out that there was this person Who would come to be king and found out it was gonna happen at Bethlehem? What did he do? Herod, this is the heathen king, sends a bunch of soldiers down there to kill everybody under two years old. So the Lord had warned Jesus’ earthly parents to remove Him, to take Him and get out of there and go to Egypt for a while. The Lord was intervening.
But here’s the devil, I know something’s up. I don’t know what it is, but the Son of God is here in flesh. I gotta get rid of this guy. And so he actually engineered that. You know that’s in Revelation Chapter 12 too, pictured in symbolic form, the devil was poised to kill that child ‘cause that child had a destiny to rule over the nations, okay? So he knows who Jesus is.
He knows scripture, doesn’t he? How many of you run into that one? The devil knows the word better than you and I do. He knows what it says. He knows how to twist it too. He knows how to cause it to seem to say something that it doesn’t really. Carl shared with me a letter recently to answer, and a lady was, I believe, confused by something that was true, but maybe was said in a way that made it easy for the devil to jump in with his interpretation and put her in real bondage.
You know the Lord can take things, for example, the devil can take things I say where the Lord instructs us to do a thing and the devil comes along and makes it a law, I mean a law in the sense that I’ve got to do that or I’m not gonna be accepted.
Boy, I’ll tell you, I’m so glad, for the message the Lord gave me so many years ago about commands and promises? Every command the Lord gives us is a promise to help us do it, because it’s not about our ability to do anything. It’s all about Him. To Him alone be the glory.
The devil knows scripture, isn’t that what he did with Jesus? As soon as Jesus quoted the word, Man shall not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, the devil comes, jumps right in and says, Hey, jump off the temple because the word says He’ll command His angels and they’ll lift up your, whatever it is, they’ll lift up your feet lest you dash your foot against the stone, they’ll protect you.
Was that the purpose of that scripture? You know, we can have all kinds of questions and hear all kinds of scriptures. We need the Author. We need to have a heart that says, Lord, I want to believe and rest in your word, but I need to understand it the way You want me to. I praise God for his faithfulness.
And I would say that to anybody. If I say something somewhere along the line, you don’t understand it, talk to the Lord about it. Rest, don’t worry about it. Like Brother Thomas used to say, Put it on the shelf and say, ‘Lord, you can explain what I need to know, when I need to know it.’ I’ll tell you, God is faithful. He wants us to rest. Praise the Lord!
Let’s not let the devil twist the word of God to hinder us. Look what he’s done throughout history. A lot of his deception, yes, it’s against the world of people who just don’t serve God at all, but there’s a lot of people that are religious, but their religion is the Word twisted and to bring people into all kinds of bondage where they think they’re serving God and they’re not. I’ll tell you, we need the Lord, don’t we? But He is faithful to all of His.
So he knows scripture, but another thing he knows, he knows his destiny. And I thought about how when he left heaven, when he fell like lightning from heaven, do you think there was any illusion in his mind that, well, I can try this, but if it doesn’t work out, I can always go back? It was a one-way ticket out of there. He knew that he had set himself against the Most High, and it became more and more obvious as he went along that he had a destiny that wasn’t good, and he has been struggling against that ever since. He knows his destiny.
You remember the spirits that spoke out to Jesus in fear and they said, Have you come to torment us before the time? Before the appointed hour, there’s a time they know that’s coming. They know that there is a time when all they can have in the way of expectation is fire and judgment and darkness. And it’s coming and he knows it. Praise God!
And I’ll tell you, the scriptures, like there’s one in Jude that talks about the angels that fell, and they are being reserved in chains of darkness for the coming of the judgment of that day. And talks about how Jesus mentioned in one place about fire that follows judgment and it’s been reserved, or it’s been designed, or set up for the devil and his angels. So he knows his destiny. He’s not ignorant of what’s coming.
What would you do if you knew you had no hope and that was your destiny? I think you’d fight and fight and fuss, and that’s what he’s doing. You see it everywhere. But I’ll tell you something else that he knows without any question, because once the cross that, he didn’t understand what the cross was about. He thought he was winning. Once all of that happened, when Jesus went to the cross and when he came out of that tomb, and not only that, when He ascended to a throne far above everybody, the devil knew he had lost and lost forever. Do we know that? Praise God!
Don’t you be afraid of the devil. He lost the battle on that day. You know, the scripture in Colossians Chapter 2, read it, how he was paraded. Not only did Jesus nail the law to the cross, our sins and all of that, open a way for us to become new creatures, he paraded the devil in defeat. That’s a paraphrase of some of the language that’s there.
Do you know what that was a reference to? You know, back in the ancient world when they had battles, one kingdom against another, they didn’t have the internet. How many people here have never lived in a world where we didn’t have the internet? I’ll tell you what, you think this world is so connected, information is so instant, and here they were. They didn’t have reporters, they didn’t have telephones, they didn’t have any means of communication. So how did they know what the outcome of a battle was?
I’ll tell you one of the best ways they knew was when the opposing king and the opposing generals in the opposing army were literally chained up, stripped down and set up like they were servants and slaves, and then paraded down the main street of the capitol in front of everybody. You want the evidence that we just won that battle? There they are, there’s the king, he’s dressed like a slave and he’s in chains.
That’s the imagery the Lord has given to us. Do we understand that? Do we understand the degree to which the devil was absolutely defeated at the cross once and for all? Praise God! The devil knows that. The devil is very, very well aware of what happened because of the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension. He knows the power of the cross and of the blood.
I know some of you have been around a while. Remember that there was an occasion when Brother Thomas was dealing with a demon possessed person, and for some reason he felt led to press the particular devil about what it was they were most afraid of, best I remember the incident. And boy, that devil fought and fought and resisted and just wouldn’t.
And Brother Thomas just continued to press because the Lord was with him. It wasn’t just Brother Thomas, and began to press that devil. And finally, the devil had to admit the thing he feared the most was the cross and the blood that was spilled there. There is nothing they fear more than the cross and the blood that was spilled there. They know it was their final defeat. Praise God!
Do we know that? Do we understand the power of what God has given to us in the cross? The devil knows it. There’s no question. He’s not sitting there, I wonder? No, he knows in the depth of his soul exactly what’s going on. He knows that Christ rules. He is well aware that Christ sits in a place where he can never go. There’s no challenge, no way that he can mount a challenge to Christ and say, I’m coming for your throne. You better be afraid. He can’t even get near that place.
He sits on a throne and the decree of God is that he is there reigning, how long? ‘Till every enemy is where? Under his feet. And when he does that, what’s gonna happen? He’s gonna hand the kingdom, said, The work is done. My job is done. Here, Father, is Your kingdom. And God, the One He referred to as His Father, will be all in all and Jesus will walk among us as our brother in a brand new creation. Praise God!
The devil is well aware that this is what’s unfolding and there’s nothing he can do. He can’t get to that throne. It’s real. Jesus said before He ascended, He said, All, not some, but all authority in heaven and in earth, has what? Been given to me. See, that’s the foundation for going and making disciples and so forth. And lo, I’ll be with you to the end of the age. The devil knows that a whole lot better than we do sometimes. He knows exactly what that’s about, ‘till all enemies are under His feet.
You know, Ephesians 1 talks about the power of the resurrection and how He’s ascended to a place, not just above, but far above all principalities and powers. That’s the place that, oh, I’ll tell you, the devil is scared to death we’ll understand these things and actually live like they’re true, but the devil knows these truths better than a lot of God’s people.
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October 13, 2024 - No. 1671
“Called to be Overcomers” Conclusion
Broadcast #1671
October 13, 2024
October 13, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1671 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: What a dangerous prayer it is when we say, Lord, I want higher ground. Lord, I want you to use me. Lord, I want you to make a difference in the Kingdom through my life, I want… I think you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
Some of you prayed that, and you said, Oh, Lord, I didn’t know it meant this. But the thing is, if God doesn’t deal with this old nature, our lives, what John calls our lives in Revelation 12, that we’re loving so much and we’re still attached to more than we know. If God doesn’t break those connections, how effective are we gonna be?
I mean, Paul recognized that it’s kind of like an athlete. Now, the earthly athletes, they’re going for a prize. You know, they’re disciplining their body and they’re doing all these things because they want a prize. Well, I want a prize too, but it’s not that, okay? I wanna go for the ones the Lord offers. He’s called me to seek after something that’s eternal. But how can I do that if there isn’t some self-discipline?
And so he actually, in the Greek, it says, I beat my body, or I keep it under, in one translation, or basically, I’m in charge, my body isn’t. I keep that under. I recognize that there’s impulses that come from my flesh, that if I just let ‘em go, if I somehow say, Well, that’s okay, it’s all taken care of. And the Lord’s wanting to deliver, and the Lord’s wanting to actually break that hold and break that tie.
Paul says, I beat my body and I make it my slave, I think in this translation. I bring it under subjection. I make it my slave. Is your body and its impulses your slave to serve God? Are you in charge or is it in charge? And the Lord’s gonna bring us into circumstances that kind of help us to see.
And in every instance is the Lord’s purpose to defeat us and to cause, make us feel discouraged? I think you know that’s not the case. But I just pray that God will help us in these areas. Because many times overcoming does mean, I need to be free from that. It’s a weight that I need to lay aside, as Hebrews 12 says. It’s something that has attached, that’s so attached to me that I can’t run freely. I can’t do what, I can’t be what the Lord wants me to be because that’s holding onto me. And I need the Lord to cut that chain. So overcoming in that context means to get rid of that thing and to be able to say, I have the victory.
Now, does that mean that in every case you’re gonna have this grand experience and suddenly it’s gonna be gone? No, more often than not, it’s going to be a step by step, day by day looking to God and winning the victory. I’ve heard I don’t know how many testimonies of somebody that’s been brought out of a terrible lifestyle. And there were aspects of that that kept trying to intrude. And over time, sometimes over years, the Lord gave more and more victory and there was less and less of a hold.
I believe God wants to get us to the point where we’re looking ahead and we’re looking up every time. We know we’ve got a place to go. Thank God! Amen. If we’re struggling and there’s something that’s still got a hold, and we mess up, thank God for the blood. Thank God for the cross. If we have a sin, if we sin, we have a place we can go. But there’s a heart in that instance that, in that situation, that is an agreement with God. It says, God, I don’t want to do this. Help me.
But you know how the Lord helps us? Does He help us by just taking the thing away and we’d never feel the temptation again? No, He wants to build something in us that can withstand that. Does that mean He’s gonna, we’re gonna have to dig down deep and find the resources to do that? Or does He say, No, you’re gonna have to come to me. It’s gonna be My grace. I’ll give you what you need, but you’re gonna have to let go of your attachment to that thing. You’re gonna have to recognize it for what it is.
You know, there’s so many things that connected with this. One of the things I wrestle with is that sometimes I’ll preach on a subject and it just covers the whole gamut. And I’m always asking, Lord, what’s the focus here?
Well, I think the focus really has to come down to where you and I are at individually. We are in a certain place in our journey. And the Lord is going to let adversity in some fashion come against you, and He’s called us to overcome, to be overcomers, okay? And I just gave an instance of something where overcoming means, That’s not part of my life anymore because God has given me the victory.
It could be drugs, it could be alcohol, it could be pornography, it could a lot of things, but God wants us to have a freedom from that. And so, I guess where I was about to go with that is this: When the Lord was encouraging the churches, it wasn’t just to him that overcomes, but it says, Let him that has ears to hear.
Do you have ears to hear? Is there something in you that says, Regardless of what my circumstances are, I know that I need to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches? It’s not enough just to know the Bible. I’ve got to hear His voice because I’m in a particular place in my journey. And just as the Lord’s message to these churches was specific to their particular need, God has words that are specific to your need and to mine, if we’re tuned in and ready to listen.
Now, it’s all often easy, when we hear that, to say, Oh, I know what that’s about. That means, when I’m in a battle, God’s gonna give me a promise. Well, thank God that’s part of it. Because God’s gonna remind me of His promises of grace, and strength, and help, and so forth. That’s part of it.
But do you know there’s another part? Do you know we need a deeper understanding of why the problem exists in the first place? Do you think God maybe needs to give us a little bit more of an insight into what’s going on, what the real situation is down here? A lot of us deal with the oppression of the enemy, this recurring issue that I have, or I feel sorry for myself, or I feel, you know, whatever, whatever it is, and we get focused on that.
But the problem is, why. God needs to, we need to have a heart that allows the Lord to reach down into the depths of our being and show us those kinds of things and to have an honest heart about it. ‘Cause I need that, don’t you? And so the Lord is wanting an honesty that looks to Him and says, Oh, God, give me more understanding. Give me more wisdom in this thing.
Think about David and how many times that he would come to the Lord. And there was an honesty about him, wasn’t there? How many times does he begin a psalm, and the psalm is, Oh, God, where are you? Oh God, I’m in a bad place. I’m struggling. This is going on. There was an honest heart. I don’t see any place where the Lord rebuked him for that.
Wouldn’t that be a good place to start? I guess what I started to say a minute ago is, a lot of times when we are experiencing some of these things, our tendency is to kind of, I’m okay. Everything’s fine, hope you are. And we’re just, you know, we just paste on a smile and pretend, when God wants to get down to the issues that are really operating in our lives and give us a degree of freedom that we haven’t had.
And that’s why I appreciated what Scott said the other night, because there was an openness about it. And it’s not that we have to get up here and everybody confess all these things necessarily, but we need to quit pretending. We can come to the Lord and say, Lord, this is what I’m feeling. This is what I’m going through, and I need help.
And depending on the situation, you know, like I say, if it’s a besetting sin, we need the Lord to go down in there and find out why, what happened, what’s going on that we need to bring out, and just bring it out and say, Lord, this is the way it is, and I need You to give me victory in this area.
So yes, it’s the voice of God to give me the promises, but sometimes it’s the voice of God to tell me the truth about myself. Wouldn’t it be good to listen to that? Can we not trust somebody, who loves us as much as He’s demonstrated, to know that He has our best interest at heart? Oh, how pride keeps us prisoners when the Lord wants to give us a degree of freedom.
And of course, the other thing that… Well, like I say, it isn’t always making the thing go away. Sometimes it’s simply strength to stand, okay? Isn’t that how it was in many….? Well, in Paul’s case, the Lord didn’t take that spirit away, didn’t chase him away. But rather, You need this at this particular time. There’s a spiritual need in your life that I want to deal with. You have a tendency to get proud, and I’m gonna put you in a place where you just don’t have the ability to be proud. You recognize your weakness. But don’t worry, I’ll give you the strength. So for him, overcoming was standing and continuing to believe God and continuing to trust God, okay?
You know, I thought of a scripture, there’s so many scriptures, but I just thought of one that somebody may well have thought of, but it’s in 1 John chapter 5, where John says, Everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
Now, where do we get faith from? Yeah, He’s very willing to share that with us and to give us what we need. But faith is not simply, I believe this, and I believe that, a mental thing, this is, God’s gonna give me something that I can do, some way that I can express that faith.
Now, if I’m in a place where, let’s say I’m depressed. The enemy is just oppressing my mind with all, This is wrong, that’s wrong, and somebody did this to me, you know, and, I feel bad, and on and on. We all experience those things from time to time, but if I’m sitting there… I can’t even remember what I was starting to say. But anyway, praise God.
There has to be a place where we’re just not focused on that. Isn’t that the natural human tendency? If I’m in a battle, my whole focus is the battle. Oh, poor me, I’m in a battle. Why me? Why me? Well, we know why, because the Lord wants us to be overcomers. But if I’m focused on the battle, how is that helping me? There has to come a point where, yes, I need to be honest about the battle. That’s wonderful. That’s exactly right. I need to be honest about what’s going on, but then I need to be able to turn to Him and find the strength that I need to meet that situation.
See, faith doesn’t just look at that and say, Huh, poor me. Faith has to say, God has brought this to my, to here, brought me to this place, and His purpose for me is to do something in me that isn’t gonna happen any other way. And I need to rise up, and I need to exercise the faith, the strength that He gives me, to look beyond that and to see enough about what it’s about.
What I’m supposed to do here is be thankful, for example, to praise Him, to look to Him, to have an expectation towards Him. Praise God! If I’m anxious, if I’m just overwhelmed with anxiety about all the things that might happen, oh, God, yeah, we know we can pray, that’s absolutely part of it, but think about scriptures that talk about casting our care upon Him, for He cares.
But there’s a scripture in Psalm 55: Cast your cares upon God, and He will sustain you, uphold you. Different translations. Anybody here need to be sustained? Yeah. So if somebody’s doing that, what are they focused on? Are they focused on the problems? Oh my God, no. Okay, I got it. Here it is, Lord. I’m looking to You to give me the strength to continue trusting in You, believing in You, knowing that it’s gonna be okay, that I have all the strength that I need because it comes from You and You love me.
You know, it’s kind of almost become a joke, I guess, but, you know, the message I preached about getting your “buts” in the right place enters into it here, because there’s a pattern again that you see in David where he is being honest in bringing his troubles to the Lord. The enemy has got him in a bad place, and he knows it. And he’s just… And some of it’s because he recognizes there’s things in him where he needs help, but over and over, but over and over, that word, “but,” comes into it, and you find his attention shifting and saying, But I trust You, but I praise You, but I thank You. There’s this turning of our attention to the Lord.
Undoubtedly, there’s people here today, that you’re in a place where you’re here, you’re singing, and you’re smiling, and I believe you believe it, but yet, you’re being oppressed right now. You’re in that place where you’re feeling it. And God wants me and every one of us to be able to get our but in the right place when it comes to this, these things.
There’s a place for recognizing needs. They need to be left on the other side of but. Because whatever follows but is what’s really in charge. And if we ever find ourselves saying, like the one psalmist did, Surely God is good to Israel, but as for me, then we are in a bad place. You see, God wants us to get to that place where we can absolutely get our buts in the right place and put, leave all of these things on the other side of it, but turn our attention to Him and to His faithfulness and His promises.
To God be the glory. God wants to be present, not just in convention time, but all the time. Amen. God wants us to enjoy His presence, but we cannot focus on the problem and on the battle to the point where we get our eyes off of Him and the victory that He’s already won at the cross.
That doesn’t always mean the problem’s gonna go away, it means we have strength to bear it. Like he says in 1 Corinthians 10:13, is it? There’s strength to bear it, to bear up under it. I don’t have to rely on my own weakness and my own strength ‘cause that’s gonna lead me in a bad place. Thank God. Amen.
Well, I thought of one other scripture that probably needs to be put in here, and it’s in Joshua chapter 1, because the Israelites were facing some real challenges. I mean, you think about looking at a land, and there were some walled cities and big armies. And among those armies, there were some giants mixed in. And they were facing some things that, from a human standpoint, were pretty scary.
I don’t know how many of you have seen that wonderful video of Asher acting out this verse. If you haven’t, that’s precious. Praise the Lord. But anyway, verse 9: Have not I commanded You, ‘Be strong and courageous’? So that’s what we’re supposed to be. Where do I get that from? See, that’s a way of, that’s my mental approach. That’s how I see a situation. I don’t look at the walls, and the giants, and the armies and say, Oh my God, I’m in trouble. I look at that, and I stand there, and I say, Yes, but God’s with me. Okay?
Be strong and and courageous. Now, here’s the other side, what you don’t want to be: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be discouraged. Anybody, I won’t ask you for a show of hands, but if anybody’s discouraged this morning because of what you’re feeling and what you’re going through right now, God doesn’t want that for His children. If He has put you in a place where there is an oppression going on in your life, whatever form it takes, whatever the issue is, because we’re all different, in one sense we’re all different, God wants His people to lift up their eyes, to look to Him to find the strength that we need to be able to be courageous and to face something, to do the same thing that David did when he recognized the battle is the Lord’s.
And there he was in a humanly impossible situation, facing a giant, and God gave him the victory. Praise God! Praise God! Amen. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. Why? For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. That’s what the Lord is looking for from His people.
Do you see, there’s two things that you go back to the letters to the churches. God wants me to have a hearing ear. I don’t need a religion to be handed down to me that I’m just supposed to observe. He wants me to have a relationship with God, Who’s doing specific things in my life, dealing with needs, shaping me for His purposes. I need to be hearing what He’s saying right now to me. I’m glad for what He said, but I need the, I don’t live by bread only. I live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And He’s gonna help me to understand what’s going on in my life.
Do you believe God wants you to understand, at least in whatever measure is right for His purpose? He wants you to have an understanding in me, so that we can respond in the way He’s told us to respond. So praise God!
But then what He’s looking for, regardless of what the situation is, whether it’s overcoming or repenting from a sin, or whether it’s standing in persecution, or whether it’s just holding onto what you have until I come to, don’t you dare turn from that ‘cause I’m gonna be with you. Whatever the particular issue is in our lives, God wants one thing from us is to overcome, to be victorious. And He will give us what we need to simply stand fast and believe Him. The faith that He gives us will give us the victory. That just means continually.
Now, what is my faith in? My faith is in my terrible circumstances. I’m so, things are so bad. Oh my God, my faith is in all. No, our faith is not in the storm or the problem. Our faith needs to be lifted to Him and say, God, you have got me here for a reason, and I love You, and I trust You. And I know that whatever I need to be an overcomer in this circumstance, You will give me. Whether it’s to make the thing go away or whether it’s to stand fast in spite of the thing, God wants to get us ready, not just for a convention, but for everything. Amen. So that we can stand fast and be united.
And you know, when you’re focused upon you, you’re not exactly focused on anybody else. One thing that would be good to remember is when we find ourselves in a place of oppression, we’re just conscious of it. Oh my God, the devil’s just pressing in on me. You’re not the only one. It’s like I said the other night, I was so conscious of that. Every person, every honest person there could have said the same thing.
When I experience that, you are experiencing it, and I need to get my eyes off of myself and do some praying for you. Yes. Guess what, if I’m really, from my heart, praying for you, there’s life coming from God into me and out of me to you. That’s kind of a good thing for me too, isn’t it? ‘Cause I’m getting washed with some of that same water of life that God wants to pour.
So I believe the Lord wants to encourage His people today. What He’s looking for is to be an overcomer. I don’t know what the particular issue is. You have every right to go to the Lord and ask wisdom. Yes. Yes, amen. Let Him look wherever He needs to look in your heart. Don’t cling to anything from your own life, because if you hang onto that, the devil’s always got a place he can grab a hold of and bring you down. And God has absolutely delivered us through the cross, but He sure wants our participation, doesn’t He? He is faithful.
So God is, we’re called to be overcomers. I guess that’s probably as good a title as any, A Call to Be Overcomers. Hadn’t really thought too much about a title, but… There’s nothing new that I have said this morning, but somehow I felt like this was needed right now. I think the Lord knew that. Amen.
Because no matter what we know up here, it’s what we are experiencing in our actual, practical, everyday lives that really matters. What good is what we know in our heads if it doesn’t make a difference in our lives? But I’ll tell you, God is faithful. Amen.
We’re okay. We just need to start where we’re at and look to Him. Don’t need to beat ourselves up about where we’re not, just, this is where I’m at. And, Lord, You’ve brought me here, and You’re gonna take me on, and You’ll love me enough to talk to me, to help me to understand, to help me to reach up and find the help that we need. So to God be the glory.
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October 6, 2024 - No. 1670
“Called to be Overcomers” Part One
Broadcast #1670
October 6, 2024
October 6, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1670 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I guess funny how it is, how the Lord expects me to walk in what I preach. But anyway, you know, most of the times when I come in here, I’m saying, Lord, is this really you? And you’re just gonna have to take over. So that’s certainly where I’m at at.
But you know, I always have to go back to what Paul went through and I’m certainly no Paul, but the principles apply. That Paul reached a time when he was weak and being oppressed of the enemy. And yet the Lord told him the answer wasn’t getting rid of the enemy. The answer was leaning on my strength ‘cause my grace is enough, I will give you enough. I mean, that was quoted this morning. And so that’s my hope. And I think there needs to be every one of our hope.
We just need to realize the way things are. But the reality is this is the way it is. And God wants us to help, wants us to understand some basic things that we’ve talked about so many times. That’s another thing I fight when I come in here, Lord, we’ve talked about this all the time it doesn’t make any sense to just regurgitate. But we don’t need regurgitation. We need the Lord to speak what’s relevant to the need right now. And somehow I feel like this is, and the word that came to me was overcoming.
And how many of you know that that’s what the Christian life is about, is about overcoming? And I thought, I don’t want to get into the details so much of this, but you know, in Revelation 2 and 3 we have letters from Jesus to churches. And each church was in a particular situation, the need was a little bit different. And yet there was some common themes, weren’t there?
You know, he went to the church, brought to the church in Ephesus,. And boy, they had it all down, didn’t they? I mean, they were believing all the right stuff. They were doing all the right stuff, but there was a problem, wasn’t there? And the Lord pointed out, You lost your first love. And you see what the Lord was focusing on, how the enemy had actually fooled the people into thinking that if I just keep doing the right things and I’m not wavering in my beliefs, I’m still doing everything I’m supposed to do, that everything is good.
And how easily does a relationship become religion when that happens? And so there’s a danger that the Lord wanted to specifically point out in that church and say, you know, You got a need here. I want this to be a personal one-on-one relationship with me. So that what you do is not done out of a heart of duty or habit, but there is a genuine love that’s going back and forth between us.
And also I wanna shed that love through you. And if you’re leaving your first love, you know, my biggest commandment to you is what? Love one another. Well, how do we do that? We’re gonna have to have love that doesn’t originate in us. It’s gonna have to come from the Lord himself. It’s gonna have to be able to flow into our hearts. And then our focus is gonna have to be on others so that it can flow out to others.
So you see where the Lord was putting his finger on a particular need and there was a particular word that they needed. They just didn’t need, you know, well, okay, now we’re on page such and such of our theology book. And let’s not forget how we do church. God was always very specific. And so of course he comes to the end and whoever has ears let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.
And then there’s promises to the one who is, in this translation victorious, but the original word obviously is the same. The one who overcomes, the one who’s victorious. And then there are promises that God gives. This is the focus. And of course, you know, very quickly just running through what these churches went through.
The second one actually was doing everything right. There wasn’t any focus on, Hey, you’re messed up here. You’re coming short here. Rather, they were in a place of persecution. And so God gave them words of encouragement. I know how you stood your ground. And guess what? There’s more coming. God’s gonna kill some of you. And the Lord was giving them a word of encouragement, but then a promise. You know, hear what I’m saying. And to him that overcomes, there’s a great promise and a great hope.
Alright, and of course the next one, you had some people there they had experienced some persecution and then some of them had the goods. But boy, there were some problems there, weren’t there. You had some people that had all kinds of false motives and false doctrines. Without going into the details, it was leading people astray. It was trying to inject into the gospel a compromise with the flesh and with human ambition.
Whatever it was, I’ll tell you, if we’re not careful, the devil will soften the gospel, will misdirect it, will inject his ideas into it, and it really won’t be the Lord. And all of a sudden, instead of serving him, we’re serving us. And so he was warning them and warning them to repent. There was a real sin here, there was a real need in the church. And the church wasn’t facing it and dealing with it. Okay?
And then he says, you know, Repent, there’s a call to repent. And then, however has ears to hear, and to the one who’s victorious, you had that same element in every one of these letters. There’s something to overcome here. Okay?
And then the next one, the church of Thyatira had kind of a similar thing. You had a woman who had somehow styled herself as a prophetess. Where do you suppose she got her inspiration from? And she was again, injecting something into the gospel, but there probably was a supernatural element. Oh my God, this lady’s, it’s not just her. There’s something supernatural about it. It must be God.
Well, we need to seek the one who is the head of the church and we need to have ears that are willing to hear his voice. ‘Cause his voice, there was no compromise in the voice. I’ve called on to repent. She hasn’t. I’m gonna put her in a bed of suffering. I’m gonna deal with this. My judgment is coming. And there’s some of you that haven’t gone along, you hang on, you hold what you got. But there was a real need of overcoming in that particular context.
And of course then you had one, that there was a church that had a reputation for being alive, but they were dead. I wonder how much of Christian religion that applies to? God help us. So there was a need there. There was a need to wake up, strengthen what remains. Now, the only way the Lord could have said that was if there were some of his people there and there were. And so God was calling upon them to wake up.
You suppose that might just be appropriate. Everything about the spirit of this world is going to put us to sleep if we let it. And listen to the promise of God. Let’s see, remember… Alright, actually, it’s a warning, but there’s a promise built into it. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
But what’s the promise that’s kind of baked into that? If you do wake up and you’re in tune with me, my coming is not gonna surprise you. Isn’t that what Paul said? But that day will not surprise you like a thief. That doesn’t mean we’re gonna know the day and the hour, but I’ll tell you God’s people that are in tune with him, isn’t that a theme you get throughout this? You better be in tune and listening. I want you to have ears that are constantly tuned to heaven so that I can talk to you about what’s needed right here and right now. ‘cause there are things that I have allowed in your path that need to be overcome, okay?
So anyway, so there’s a word of encouragement and warning all baked into one. And so he is encouraging those who haven’t gotten in that condition, alright? I’ve got promises for you. Just listen. The one is victorious. And then there are promises about that.
The Church of Philadelphia, they were doing good. Basically, they were the church of brotherly love. That’s what the word Philadelphia means. And he says, You have little strength. So this wasn’t even a people who were just, Hey, your guys are strong. This was, You have little strength, but yet there was a word of encouragement, wasn’t there?
Do you ever feel that way? Boy, I just don’t have what it takes. Lord, I’m just so weak. Every one of us, if we’re honest, we feel that way because it’s the truth. And yet, here’s the Lord, giving them a word of encouragement. But what they have done with the strength that God has given them, they have stood fast. They have faced persecution, they face slander, they face whatever the enemy has thrown against them.
And the promise is, You endure patiently. I’m gonna keep you from the hour of trial. I’m gonna be with you to the end. Remember that was said this morning? I’m gonna be there. There’s a lot of things gonna happen, but don’t worry, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Okay? The one who’s victorious, I’ll make a pillar in the temple of my God, and so forth. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.
Then of course the Laodicean church who had gotten to the point where they were doing everything right, outwardly, they had it all, but they were in a prosperous situation. Do you see the wisdom of God in putting us in situations where we feel our need? What happens when the Lord allows the sun to shine and the bank accounts to be full and everything, business is great? How does that help spiritual progress? It doesn’t, do it? It it causes us to go to sleep.
And so the Lord is warning them. You are going through a form. You are more in tune with what your natural being wants in this world. Really that’s what’s in control of your life. You’re still going through all doing all the right things, but your heart’s not really warm toward me. You’re in danger of just falling away completely from being even my people from my church.
Now we’re not talking about people that really know the Lord, you know, losing their salvation. I’ll tell you there’s something that happens when someone’s born of God, but still you’ve got a lot of people that can gravitate to a church and to a religion and it becomes religion.
But anyway, think of the common elements in this. In every situation there was a word about overcoming. Everyone. Some of them had sins, some of them had pressure. In this case it was prosperity they had to overcome. Everyone had something that they needed victory over. They needed to overcome.
What does that tell you about and remind you about the Kingdom of God and living in this world? There will always be something to overcome. We will always have adversity. And this is where we, again, you know, how often do we talk about this? But that’s one of the things that God wants us to realize.
And yet you see the situation in every case was different. And somehow that just resonated with me because, you know, say what Scott was talking about. There certainly were probably others that experienced some of the same things, but the reality is every individual Christian is different in that regard. We are very unique. We’re different from one another. And yet every one of us in this sense has to deal with something, okay?
So what are we dealing with? Think of the scripture that we so often use in Revelation 12:11, I believe it is, when it talks about the devil who was defeated. Thank God for that defeat, that great defeat. But he’s still here working, isn’t he? We’re here and he’s in the world and he’s working against us.
And so how does that victory happen? It happens because of the blood of the lamb. Thank God that we do have a place that there was a significance to the blood that was shed there. And if we have gotten grounded in our thinking, that my standing before God is not based upon me, it’s based upon that. And I’m standing there, I’m believing it. I’m actively believing it. I’m not acting as if it isn’t really true for me. I’m constantly looking to that.
Now that doesn’t mean I’m looking to that and trying to live my own life and figuring that’s gonna take care of it all, you understand? That’s not victory. That’s not what he died for. But anyway, the blood gives me a place to stand.
And then the word of the testimony that we’ve talked about so many times, that’s when the truth of God enters into our heart and mind in such a way that it displaces the lies of Satan. Satan will always tell you something. He does me. There’s always gonna be something that he’s gonna put in there. And God wants the truth of his word, the promises of his word to become such conviction that we can do the same thing Jesus said. It is written, all right?
But the third part is really where I’m going with this. And they love not their lives so much as to shrink from death. Now, this is something we’ve certainly said many times. My enemy, my biggest enemy is not the devil. If I did not still have in this earthly body a nature that hates God and wants its own way, Satan would have no power over me.
You know, when Christ comes, let’s suppose Satan is round after that for some reason. But when Christ comes, we’ll be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. This old body will be done away with, we’ll have one that is only filled with his life. Do you think Satan would have any opening to get into that? No. It’s while we’re here living in this.
So the issue is not Satan, it’s what’s in here. Do we hang on to what’s part of our old life? And that’s what the Lord’s seeking to deal with in every circumstance that comes our way, every test, the only reason Satan has any access to bring us into a place where we’re defeated, we’re sidetracked, whatever it is, whatever the effect is that makes us less than effective, it all comes from in here.
And of course, I’ll remind you of what we’ve talked about so many times, what Jesus said in his testimony, when he came to the cross, The prince of this world is coming. He knew it. God was allowing him to do his thing. And of course he deceived himself and, you know, wrecked his own chances. Thank God for the victory that God had purposed.
But the point Jesus was making is the prince of this world is coming, but he has no hold on me. That’s the key. I have been tested. Was he not a tested stone? He came down here and experienced the same flesh that you and I have to deal with. But God gave him the strength and the knowledge and the wisdom to learn how to say no and to recognize what was going on.
Satan is trying to appeal to me, to put this first, to seek what my flesh wants. It could be pride, it could be physical lust, it could be a gazillion things that all come from this nature. But Satan did not have any hold on him. He had looked everywhere, put Jesus under a microscope.
And did that mean by the way that he didn’t still have something to overcome? Obviously he had the cross and he had to go to the Lord. And he had to go to his Father and get strength, strength beyond anything you and I will ever need. Thank God that he went there. Thank God that even in that test. See that garden experience happened after Jesus had said that. And yet there he was under a tremendous assault of the enemy and having to say, Father, not my will, but yours be done. There was still a sense of having to stand and having to overcome. Praise God! And thank God he overcame. Praise the Lord!
In fact, isn’t that what Jesus said, In the world, you will have trouble, but cheer up. I have overcome the world. When did he say that, by the way? That was before the cross, wasn’t it? He hadn’t even gone to the cross yet. Boy, I’ll tell you, there’s a faith, there’s a confidence in the purpose of God.
Can we put ourselves in God’s hands and know how it’s gonna turn out? Isn’t that the message of the gospel? It’s not here, you know, I’ll get you started. There’s the road, go for it. And we’ll see how you turn out. This is, I’m putting myself in the hands of an eternal God who has already planned everything from the beginning to the end. So whatever I’m feeling right now, I need to be able to look beyond that, don’t I?
Everything that God allows in our lives, whether it has to do with the preconvention time and all the pressures that come and all the distractions that come, whatever it is, we have a God who’s able to look down into the depths of every life. He knows what we need, loves us enough to do something about it. And in every case, the way to deal with it, God puts something in our pathway. He allows the enemy to push on that thing.
Are there recurring issues in your life? Are you somebody that’s struggled with fear all your life? Many people that would apply to. I won’t look for shaking heads on that one, but am I, you know, we all have a certain amount of that.
But the other, you know, I mentioned too, what about the besetting sins? Are there things that the enemy has just programmed into your nature just enough that you keep doing, you keep falling into that. It could be anger, but it could be a fleshly thing. It could be all kinds of things. And the enemy just knows how to push the buttons, how to arrange the circumstances.
And you get in a place where you feel oppressed and somehow there’s a weakness just to give into that. And, Oh my God, I did it again. God help me, and He does. But, you know, why would God literally allow the devil to keep pushing that button? Is it because he wants us to fail or does He want us to learn how to overcome?
See, in many instances, overcoming means I need to get rid of that. God needs to lift me to a place of victory. So that’s not part of my life, that doesn’t rule over me. That’s the issue. If what rules over me basically is coming from my old nature, I need some deliverance. And God’s going to keep letting the enemy in recurring ways keep pushing that and trying to work on that. And God’s aim is that I learn to overcome and there are great promises. And God wants to bring us to a better place.
What a dangerous prayer it is when we say, Lord, I want higher ground. Lord, I want you to use me, Lord, I want you to make a difference in the kingdom through my life. I think you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Some of you prayed that and you said, Oh Lord, I didn’t know it meant this. But the thing is, if God doesn’t deal with this old nature, our lives, what John calls our lives in Revelation 12, that we’re loving so much, we’re still attached to more than we know. If God doesn’t break those connections, how effective are we gonna be?
I mean, Paul recognized that it’s kind of like an athlete. Now, the earthly athletes, they’re going for a prize. You know, they’re disciplining their body and they’re doing all these things because they want a prize. Well, I want a prize too, but it’s not that kind. I wanna go for the ones the Lord offers. He’s called me to seek after something that’s eternal, but how can I do that if there isn’t some self-discipline?
And so he actually, in the Greek, it says, I beat my body or I keep it under in one translation, or I basically, I’m in charge, my body isn’t. I keep that under. I recognize that there’s impulses that come from my flesh that if I just let them go, if I somehow say, Well, that’s okay, it’s all taken care of. And the Lord’s wanting to deliver, and the Lord’s wanting to actually break that hold and break that tie.
But Paul says, I beat my body and I make it my slave. I think in this translation. I bring it under subjection, I make it my slave. Is your body and its impulses your slave to serve God. Are you in charge or is it in charge?
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September 29 - No. 1669
September 22, 2024 - No. 1668
“The Whole Armor” Conclusion
Broadcast #1668
September 22, 2024
September 22, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1668 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: God wants us to learn about His provision, but to exercise it. What good does it do to know the doctrine of all of this, and then to walk around and we’re dirty? We make choices and we just hide them and we pretend and we go along and we don’t bring them to the cross. Oh, what an awesome provision that there is. But God wants every one of his children, not just to know about the provision of the cross and the blood that was shed, but to take hold of that and to be clean in his eyes. That’s the awesome thing. We can be as clean as if we had never sinned.
But there’s a part that we have to play in that. We can’t just sort of, Oh, well, it’s all taken care of. That means me coming with an honest heart, and repenting and agreeing with him about it. Not excusing it. Not just saying, Well, have they done better? Nothing, but like what David did in Psalm 51, I’m the only one Lord. This is all on me. You’re completely right, I’m completely wrong. But Lord I come to you for forgiveness. Praise God!
So the truth is we can stand before the devil as righteous as Jesus is. But there is a part we play. That’s why Paul is bringing this. It’s is not simply to remind us of a doctrine. This is a reality where I need to take something. I need to walk in this. You get that? Okay.
All right, now where we are. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Obviously, if you’re a soldier, you better have some good footwear on. What good is it if you’ve got all the rest, and you can’t find your footing because, well, you don’t have the right footwear?
Well, what he likens the footwear to here is peace. Now, what I’m seeing in this, whatever else it means, it certainly has to do with my relationship with God. You remember how Paul deals in Romans 4 with how we get to be righteous? He talks about Abraham and how Abraham believed God, and he was declared to be righteous.
And then he begins chapter five. Therefore since we’ve been, I forget the exact words, anyway, Since we’ve been made righteous, let us have peace with God, or, we have peace with God. But if I’m going to stand against the devil, and he’s coming against me in some fashion, what good is it if I have some disagreement with God? It got quiet. But think about that. God wants there to be a full-fledged state of peace between you and God.
Now, we had that message a while back about, are you mad at God? That’s just one example. But there are all kinds of ways in which we can not be quite okay. We don’t like how He’s doing stuff. We don’t agree with this or agree with that. We wonder about this, wonder about that. And just, our will is somehow engaged other than just in surrender and agreement and yieldedness to Him.
But He said that you put on the whole armor. What if I ignore this? I’m not gonna have a very good standing, am I? Because the whole point is, that no matter what the devil does, I have the power because of what God gives me, not because I have it. But I have the power to stand and be the one standing at the end of the battle.
But if my feet aren’t properly fitted with what He’s given me, that’s gonna be tough, isn’t it? So you see, all the songs we sang this morning about surrender. I surrender most of it. I surrender all. May God give us that kind of a heart where there’s nothing between me and Him. I have no issues with Him and how He does things. I recognize that in all of this, His character, His heart towards me is love that I can’t even begin to comprehend.
And the devil’s gonna attack that sense in every way he can think of. He’ll throw in every kind of suggestion that begins to question, Did God really say? What’s His motive here? What’s going on? Why did He do that? Why is it this way and not that way?
I want to have a heart that just says, Lord, I’m surrendered. You know what You’re doing and I know You love me, and I know You’re gonna help me to stand. I’m not gonna fuss about how, you know, Who You are and how You do stuff. Boy, I’m gonna have good footing under me, aren’t I or am I not? Praise the Lord!
Okay, belt of truth, breastplate, the feet, and take up the shield of faith. Now, that’s interesting. The shield of faith is not something you just put on and it’s there. This is something I gotta have, but I gotta do something with it. I can’t just lay it down and say, Huh, I don’t know. I got questions about this.
David almost, you know, was kind of on the verge of that, wasn’t he in that Psalm? Why are you against me? What’s going on? I don’t understand. But in every case throughout that Psalm, is it 42, I think? Somewhere around in there. He wound up picking up the shield, didn’t he? That’s what God is looking for.
And the devil’s attack in every instance is going to use the fact that we live in a sense world, we have so much that is able to look at conditions, to have feelings. All these things that are contrary to faith, contrary to trusting God, and knowing that He’s on the throne. What do we do with it?
Well, what do the folks in Hebrews 11 do? They looked at all of that and said, I don’t care what that says, I don’t care what that looks like, what it feels like. God is on His throne and I’m trusting in Him. That’s what God is looking for.
If we do everything else from the standpoint of the armor, but we don’t do this, what are we doing? Oh, poor me. Instead of saying, Devil, I may feel bad. Things may look totally contrary. But I’ll tell you, I serve a God Who’s on the throne. He is allowing it to appear to be a certain way. But I know my God, and I don’t care what you do and what you say. I have the right and the authority and the equipment to deal with you, right, in this particular issue. You can’t get through to me this way. Praise God!
By the way, where do we get faith? Oh, that has to come from Him too. So I’ll tell you when we’re even struggling there, do we not have the right to go to God and say, God help me? Well, didn’t the man in one occasion when Jesus was talking, was healing people, casting out devils, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, Jesus didn’t have a problem with that. That was where he was at. That’s all God wants is from right where we’re at to reach out to him and to begin to do what we know to do, trust Him.
And I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who will give us the victory because it’s His power, it’s His will, its His purpose in growing us up and making us strong. We aren’t born as warriors. We have to learn that in the field of battle, just like David and others did. But was God faithful to David? Yes He was. Even when he fell into that sin, God brought him out of it, and he had a lot of consequences from that. But God even brought him through every one of those.
You go down and you read the last words of David, which is about where we’re at in some of our Bible reading, some of us. And you’ll see how his declarations of Who God is and His faithfulness. And you realize the experiences that went into that when it looked like there was no hope. Everything was gone, every reason to have any natural hope was gone. And yet God was faithful, and he learned it’s not just the shield that blocks the spear or the sword or the arrow or whatever. It’s the shield where I’m still believing in you Lord.
God’s going to lift you up and give you the strength to do that when you don’t have it. And every one of us is in that place. That’s, of course, why we need prayers. He talks about down below. Because we can get in a weak place. But notice that this is not something that just happens automatically. God is telling you and He’s telling me, Take it up. Don’t just sit there, and let the devil shoot arrows at you and entertain them. You don’t have do that. God wants to grow faith and make it stronger because we live by faith and not by sight. Praise God!
All right. Take up the helmet of salvation. Obviously, there’s a lot more you could go into in all of these, but the helmet of salvation. And two particular applications of that occurred to me. One of them is this. I need to understand, this has to do with my mind, right? I don’t ever, ever, ever need to get to the place where I forget my place in the scheme of things. I am not somebody who’s cool and who’s got it under control. When I get up in the morning, I need a Savior.
Now, I needed a Savior to enter into life, and to become God’s child. But salvation is a lifelong process where we are always in need of God and His grace and His mercy and His help. We don’t ever get beyond that in this life. Always, God is going to, and He’ll have ways of reminding us, but I need a Savior.
Lord, that’s the position that I want to take. I want to understand that. It needs to shape the way I look at everything. God, you’ve allowed all kinds of things to happen. Maybe I’m in a battle that I didn’t even plan. Maybe, yes. But I’ll tell you, Lord, in all of this, I understand you didn’t put me here to see me fall. You didn’t put here because you were mad at me. You put me here because you love me.
But I understand right now I need a Savior. You didn’t put me here because I couldn’t, you thought I could handle it. You put me here because you wanted me to learn something more about trusting in you. So that’s part of it. But how many times does Paul in other places especially deal with our thinking and our minds and what goes on there?
Suppose you get all the rest of the armor, okay? But there are ways that the devil can drop thoughts in our minds and pull on our nature that aren’t quite in harmony with what God has called us to. Do you suppose he gets a little bit of an advantage out of that? What good is the rest of it if our thinking is messed up?
And here’s where it can get to be a problem. We can get to a place in our walk with the Lord where we understand, you know, I’m not supposed to do this or do that. That’s sin, that’s wrong, that’s whatever. But I wonder how many times we do those things here. We think about them, we entertain thoughts that are very much out of harmony with the Lord. And I will not ask for a show of hands. Mine would have to go up twice.
But think about it from God’s point of view. For example, Jesus said, If you hate somebody in your heart, you are a murderer. You may have never acted upon that, but there was something going on in here. If a man looks at a woman to lust after her in his heart, he’s an adulterer. See, God views a lot of our thinking, a lot of our fantasies, a lot of the things that we entertain, He views them the same as if we’d gone and done it. That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?
But God wants us to learn how to discipline our minds. Now, if we come short, we know where to go. We know what to do with it. But are there needs here? Is this a need for anybody? Yeah. Is this an area where the devil has schemes? He pulls on our nature. We know I shouldn’t do that, but I can think about it and that’s okay. Is it? The Lord sees it as the same as doing it. Doing it.
And I just pray that God will help every one of us to learn how to discipline our thinking. You know what? Whatever things are good and honest and all the things that Paul describes in Philippians 4. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love. And the King James says a sound mind. But other translations say self-control. You get the sense of what the original was about.
It means, I get to be in control of what goes on in here. And if it starts to go in the wrong direction, I have every right to step in and say, Wait a minute, Lord, I need your help here. But I’m not going down that rabbit trail. Sin shall not have dominion over me. I am not under the law, but under grace. Your grace is enough to help me not to think about that and allow that to settle in my mind and stay there.
But what if it does? How equipped are we at that time to really stand up against the devil? He’s kind of gotten in, hasn’t he? He’s planted some of his lies in there. A lot to think about, isn’t it? But see, we have a part in that. God just doesn’t automatically take over our minds and make us think lovely thoughts all the time. We’ve got to step up and learn and take hold of what He’s given to us. We have everything we need. The question is what do we do with it?
And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Now, I notice in that expression and in the expressions about prayer to follow that it’s the sword of the Spirit. There’s got to be more in the words that come out of our mouths, especially in times of battle like this, than just the right words.
Now, I’ve used this expression or this illustration many times we read in the word about how the Lord said in the beginning, Let there be light. Well, I can read those words. I can say them, I can look them up in the Bible. I believe that’s the word of God. But I don’t care how many times I say, Let there be light, there ain’t gonna be no light. The purpose of God speaking is to accomplish something.
Do you think when Jesus resisted the devil and he quoted the word to the devil, do you think that was just proof text? I believe this and you can’t get to me that way. There was life. Jesus said, The words that I speak to you are spirit and life. God wants to bring his people to a place where what comes out of our lives, our mouths more and more actually are expressions of the Spirit of God.
God wants to bring us to a place where it’s not only that we know what the word says, but we can absolutely speak it forth in the face of the devil. And I’ll tell you, it becomes a sword when the Spirit gets behind it. We overcome him by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. Now, this is where God gets involved because He lives on the inside, but now we’re walking with Him to the point where He can help us to understand what’s not just look up a proof text. But this is God’s word in this situation.
I know many of you have testified to that. When you’ve been in a situation and God has brought a thought and a word and you’ve been able to rest in that, and speak it out with life and its power. God wants to bring every one of his children to a place where what comes out of us is Him and not us.
And I’ll tell you, you talk about the devil being afraid. The devil didn’t want this this morning I can tell you. He fought, and there’s no virtue in me, I can tell you that. All you do is follow me around enough and look on the inside and see all the stuff that God sees. You’d know that there’s nothing special about me. Boy, is everything special about Him and everyone who has Him living in you, you’ve got Him. Greater is he that’s in you than he that’s in the world.
But God wants us to take hold of these things and to walk with Him in such a way that we can be in touch with Him, and He can drop a word in our hearts. I mean, it is almost like being a prophet in a sense. We’ve put these labels and try to picture these grandiose things. But I’ll tell you, every one of us has the power to speak words that have life. We speak them to one another if we’re willing, if we’re willing to learn. God can put expressions of His Spirit.
But here we’re trying to stand against the devil. When Jesus gave the answers that he did to the devil, I’ll tell you, there was a sword that went out. That wasn’t just some, I’m combating your idea with mine. Mine’s better. This was power on power. The devil exerted real spiritual force in what he said. And Jesus came right back with the sword of the Spirit. And the devil had no answer.
And he has no answer against any one of his children that puts their trust in him. This is the place that God is longing to bring us. But do you not see why Paul said, Take up the whole armor? Is there any part of this that we can afford to say, Oh, well, that’s just extra. That doesn’t really matter. Every part of this matters.
And I’ll tell you, there’s a Lord who longs to share this with us. He sees every battle, he allows every battle that comes. But in every case, he wants to turn you, weak, whatever your track record is, whoever you are, he wants to turn you into a warrior. Not because you are anything in yourself, because he, the great warrior of all warriors, lives on the inside. He wants his children to be overcomers.
Is there anything he has not given us? Has he failed to give us anything that we actually need? So where’s the issue then? You see why Paul says, Put it on, take it. Take it up. Understand why this matters. Get ahold of this. And it’s not just your theology. This is a matter of getting up in the morning and facing real-life situations and knowing what to do and how to handle them. God will teach us step by step by step if we are willing to learn, if we’re willing to have that heart that David did.
Well, you see where he took up the shield of faith, don’t you? And, again, he brings in, we mentioned this in the past. I remember a service a while back where he mentioned about praying in the spirit and how much we need to be talking to the Lord, not just as a form. This is an actual, like David was reaching out. This is longing. This is saying, Oh God, I need you. Or even more, it’s Oh God, my brother, my sister needs you. Praise God!
You know, Leon, their family needs you and others. Lord, we need you. Help them, give them strength right now. Has God not put within us the power to actually express the very life and Spirit of God that can make a difference? That’s what God wants us to know. This is part of the armor. God wants us to call upon Him, not only for ourselves, but for one another.
And God is building of an army. We call it the body of Christ, but it’s an army too, because we’re gonna have to stand in the evil day of all evil days. But everything that we need, God has given to us. But we need to lay hold of it with every kind of prayer and request and being alert. Always keep on praying for the Lord’s people.
And he says, I often think of this in terms of ministry. Pray also for me that whenever I speak, words may be given me. You don’t need my words. You don’t need me to dig into a book and come up with a theology lecture. I don’t care how scriptural it is. We need to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and He will respond if that’s what we’re crying out for.
God, we need to hear your voice. We need to hear what You’re saying at this hour right now, today for the needs that we have. We do not need to practice a religion, no matter how correct it may be. We need You to be right here to be our active leader. Don’t ever get away from that. We do, we’ll die. But Jesus is Lord and he is on the throne, and he has given us everything we need to stand up.
Let’s put on the whole armor. Let’s honor him. Let’s do what he said. Let’s play our part in all of this that we might grow up and stand there one day in glory, and I’ll tell you if there’s any crown he puts on your head, you know what you’re gonna do with it, don’t you? Throw it down at his feet and say, You’re the one who’s worthy. I’m only here because of what you did. To your name be glory. Praise God! Let’s put on the whole armor. Praise the Lord!
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September 15, 2024 - No. 1667
“The Whole Armor” Part One
Broadcast #1667
September 15, 2024
September 15, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1667 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Somehow my mind has returned, as it often seems to do, to familiar scripture, but I hope we’re aware as we go along serving the Lord that just because something is familiar doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Because the Christian life is not just a matter of having correct information and doctrine, and this is how you do stuff and all that kind of stuff. It hasn’t been brought down to that kind of a level, but there is a need for this relationship and there is a need for us to as I’ve, the Lord has just brought to my mind over and over again lately, how much we need to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
If all we’re doing is upholding our traditions, we’re dead or dying. We need the living Savior to dwell among us, and He’s the only one who has what we need. We need life imparted. And I just pray that God will quicken. Lord, if this is You, then You just go ahead and take over.
But anyway, Ephesians Chapter 6 seemed like it’s an appropriate scripture, particularly in light of the psalm that we just read. And I will go ahead and read the passage involved and then just ask the Lord to kind of focus where He wants to focus. There are so many things in this passage, you could have a whole message on a word here and a word there.
But anyway, verse 10, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
“Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the evil day comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything to stand. Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
“In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.”
Paul was in prison at this time and had been for years, and yet here he is still engaged, not sitting there feeling sorry for himself, but encouraging God’s people. I pray that God will give us that kind of a heart toward one another, that our lives are not just our own, that God leads us in the way that He leads us for His purposes, that we belong to one another. We’re meant to be channels of God’s life to one another. May God help us to do that, because left to ourselves, it’s impossible, but all things are possible with Him.
Anyway, so what’s Paul’s focus? Why is he dealing with this particular subject? Obviously, you could jump right in and say, well, this is what he says to do, but why does he say to do all that? Well, it’s obviously that God wants to call attention to the reality of the world we live in.
We are inclined to see what we see with the eyes, what we detect with our senses. We react to politicians and the, the crazy things that they say and other people in public life. We just think, oh my God, if they just straighten them out, everything will be fine. But there is a kingdom that we don’t ever need to get up in the morning and forget that there is a real, unseen kingdom that is absolutely in control of this world system.
Now, that does not mean that the Lord does not have a control that is over that, that rules and overrules according to His purposes. But apart from that, there is a government that is real.
Now, back in David’s time, you saw that more plainly in the heathen gods. They were the fallen angels that had set themselves up over the peoples that they had been given to watch over. And there they were being worshiped as gods and ruling and giving their authority to Satan.
But you remember when Jesus was being tempted by the devil and how the devil took Him up to a place where he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, said, All this will I give you if you bow down and worship me. Well, Jesus did not contest his statement that he ruled over the kingdoms of the world, did He? He knew that was the case. So obviously that’s something we need to reckon with.
We are basically in completely over our heads if we are running in our own strength and our own wisdom and our own resources, we don’t have a chance in this world. The devil’s smarter than we are and he’s not simply talking about clever use of information and lies. It is that, but there is real power that he exerts.
And I’ll tell you, a lot of us feel it, don’t we, at times? The Lord allows us to feel the oppression of the enemy. And that’s what David was talking about. He was in a dark place, wasn’t he? He was in a battle and we see how he was contending with that. Well, that’s what God has called us to.
And folks, we don’t need to wonder, why in the world is this happening? This doesn’t make sense. Oh God, where are You? We feel that way like David did, but the reality is this is the world that we have been called to live in, and there’s a reason God’s doing this and we’re gonna understand it better by and by, aren’t we? As the song says. Thank God!
So, this is the context. Paul wanted to remind them. I don’t care what people do to you, that’s not what you need to focus on. We can get ourselves all bent outta shape over what people do to us. My God, do we not see what’s behind that? Jesus had people do all kinds of things to Him, and yet He didn’t lash out and get all outta shape, bent outta shape over it. He recognized there’s an enemy here. He’s got a hold in that life. That’s my enemy. That’s the one I need to stand against. I need to have compassion. This person is a victim. They’re in prison.
Not only are they in prison, but God has given me the authority to reach into Satan’s prison and to rescue souls. The very person we may think is the worst of the worst may be somebody that God has His eye on. He cares about it and He wants us to have that kind of a heart toward people. May God give us the grace to do that. Oh God, we are so unlike Him, and it’s what he’s working on to make us like Him.
But anyway, so here’s the point, and I’ll remind you of what Jesus said. He’s talked about the confession of the revelation of who He was. He says, On this rock, the rock of the revelation of who Jesus Christ. That’s something that somebody can know in their heart without someone just explaining it and trying to convince them logically. There is a knowledge that we can come to possess of who Jesus is. Upon this rock, I will build my church.
I remember many times being at overseas pastors’ conferences and pointing out that Jesus never told any of us to build Him a church. And even if He leaves a group of people in our ministry charge, if you wanna say that, it’s not our church, it’s His. And our job is to hear Him and do what He says and trust Him for life to come. Because if all we do is preserve the form and the doctrines and the practices, we have nothing left but religion. God help us to be in touch with the one who alone is the source of life and power. So anyway, that’s the context.
But he also refers to something else, it’s not simply the reality of the government that we’re against, but the fact that he has schemes, he’s got all kinds of tricks. You know, if you were a military commander and you were given the task of overcoming and fighting against a certain military force, you wouldn’t just say, okay, oh, you know, to arms, run out there and let’s get ‘em. You’d be studying their setup. You’d be looking for every kinda weakness you could come up with. Where’s their weak point?
Do you know the devil has spent his entire, well, in general, but the devil has assigned spirits to study us? I’m not saying that to make you scared, but this is something we need to reckon on. Every one of us has weaknesses. Every one of us has vulnerable points where we need a savior. We need to learn from Him and learn His ways. He’s given us everything we need. That’s of course what He brings out here.
But Satan has all kinds of tricks and we need to learn to be sensitive and seek the Lord. We need to have the hunger that David was talking about, where we’re reaching out and really, do you feel your need of the Lord today or are you just muddling along and doing your own thing and figuring you got everything under control? You don’t. One of Satan’s schemes is to put you to sleep, and me, cause us to feel like, hey, we’re okay. Everything’s fine. And you’re walking right into a trap and all of a sudden Satan’s gonna close it on you and he’s gaining a hold and you don’t even know it. Oh God, help us to be awake.
You know, at one point he talks down about prayer. He talks about being alert. Doesn’t Peter say the same thing? Be alert, because your adversary the devil walks around as a roaring lion. Why does he do that? What’s he after? Seeking whom he may devour. Do you know, he’s talking to Christians there. I don’t want the devil to eat me for lunch and mess with what God’s purpose is for my life. Oh God, help every one of us. We need Him. The more I learn about myself, the more I realize I need a savior. Oh God, make that real to our hearts.
Okay, so in that context, we’ve got a kingdom that’s in control of this world. And we know from scripture he speaks of the evil day. When the evil day comes, not if, it’s the point we’ve made many times. Obviously there have been evil days that have come through the ages. You know, Jesus said when He went to the cross, this is your hour when evil reign, when darkness reigns. There was a time when God stepped back and allowed Satan to do his worst, what he thought was his worst, but God used it, didn’t He?
And God’s gonna use what’s happening in the end of the age. There is an evil day. When Christ comes, darkness will be at its zenith. A lot of folks don’t get that. And it doesn’t mean God’s gonna forget His people, far from it. God’s gonna bring every one of us all the way through regardless of whether we go by the upper taker or the undertaker. God’s not gonna lose one of His. He’s gonna rescue every single one. Nothing that the devil can do can prevail against His plan and His will.
But God wants us to learn our place in this scheme. So we’re not just sitting back, going through the motions, playing church, believing the right stuff and doing the right stuff, and figuring, hey, everything’s okay. He’s got it all taken care of. I can just live my life. God wants us engaged and awake and aware. So what does that involve?
Well, obviously, it begins with we’re gonna have to get some help that’s more than us. Finally, be strong in the Lord. I’m so glad he has that phrase, in the Lord, and in His mighty power. Is that what he says in this translation? And in His mighty power. Yeah.
Anybody here need power? You got all you need in yourself? You got it handled? I don’t. You know, my mind went back to what he says in Chapter 1 that we’ve referred to so many times, where Paul wanted the believers to understand the incomparable power of God. But there’s an awesome phrase that he puts in there. It’s not just so we can say, oh wow, but that awesome power is for us, for us.
Every one of you who knows the Lord, who’s put your faith in Him, who’s given Him your life, you need to be able to wake up in the morning and say, God, I believe in Your power. It’s greater than all the other power in the universe. And not only that, it’s for me. Here, today, Your power is for me. You are for me, not against me. Even when You have to work in me, even when You have to discipline me, it’s for me. It’s motivated by the heart of love that I’ve come to know and believe in. Your power is mine.
Oh God, is there anybody that can say to the Lord, You can’t do what You’re planning to do? I got the power to stop you. My armies are here. You’re just gonna have to give in. No. My God, I’ll tell you, there’s a devil who can do all kinds of stuff.
I was thinking about the occasion, and this is always a good illustration of the day when Jesus said, “Let us go to the other side,” and got in a boat. And that’s a pretty good illustration of God’s promises to us. He didn’t say, Let’s start out and hope for the best. He said, We’re going to the other side.
Do you know, when he calls you to His kingdom, that’s the message to your heart. We need to be able to look up and say, thank you, Lord. I know things don’t look good, but I’m going to the other side because You said so. Praise God. Praise God!
But something happened when they got out in the water, didn’t it? There’s a terrible storm that threatened to sink the boat, waves were crashing, the disciples were scared to death. Where do you suppose that storm came from? Yeah. Was that just happenstance? The devil knew that He was going over there. Probably didn’t know exactly what. He said, Boy, I gotta do something. He’s got something in mind. He said we’re going to the other side. I better do something. You know the devil has power? In this case, he had power over weather.
I have heard more than one story of somebody who had a tornado or some kind of windstorm bearing down on them and rebuking it. Now, is that a formula? No, but there are instances where God has demonstrated that there is power that Satan exercises even in natural things. He has all kinds of power, doesn’t he? But we serve One who all He had to do was speak and there were stars. That’s plenty of power.
And does not the word say greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world? By the way, where is He? In you. That’s kind of important, isn’t it? It’s not just out there being worshiped in some religious sense. This is, He needs to reside in a yielded, believing heart. Anything short of that, man, you are living in a world ruled over by darkness and that darkness is absolutely taking over the hearts and minds of everyone who doesn’t know the Lord. That’s the world we are living in. So this is the context in which Paul is saying what he’s saying.
“Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” Then he says put on something. He doesn’t just say put on the armor, but there’s another word that kind of jumped out at me, the full armor. How would it be if you put on most of it? There’s a reason why we need it all.
And I hope maybe as we go through, we’ll see just a little glimpse of that. The Lord’s gonna have to open this up. Like I say, there’s so much in here and I don’t want to get bogged down any place, but the full armor of God. That expression is in two different places. Put on the full armor of God.
But he doesn’t say this is just sort of automatic. You’ve come to me, so don’t worry. You got the armor on. He wants us to absolutely participate in this. We just don’t wake up in the morning and say, okay, Lord, You got this. I’m just gonna go about my day and do my thing. There’s a sense which God wants us to actively seek Him, hunger for Him, reach out for Him when we feel our need, and He has a way of making us, putting us in places where we feel our need.
That’s a good thing. If we could just see the heart of love that’s behind that, we wouldn’t be complaining. Of course, we do, but I’ll tell you, the Lord knows what He’s doing, doesn’t He? Like was said last week, we don’t need to tell the potter how to do His job. He is so faithful and so merciful.
But put on, there’s something plainly stated, not just implied. That is plainly stated that I’ve got a part in this. This isn’t gonna happen without my doing something, okay? Praise God!
So then he comes in and talks about the kingdom and all of that. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, he says it again. Verse 13, So that when the evil day comes, you may be able. So what’s at stake here is my ability to stand. We’re called to stand in a dark hour, are we not? Well, how am I gonna do that? Where am I gonna get that kind of ability to do anything like that? I’m not smarter than the devil. He knows all of my weaknesses and I got plenty of them. I need a savior. Oh God, I need Him, don’t I?
But God wants you and me to know today that He’s for us, that power is for us, and that He has given us everything that’s necessary so that we are actually able to do the same things that Jesus did in the sense that, I mean, the devil came at Him in so many ways and yet there was always a defense.
Here’s Jesus walking in flesh, feeling the same things that you and I feel, the devil probing, trying to find a weakness. And yet somehow because the Father lived in Him and He relied on His Father and the power of the Spirit, He relied on that and God gave Him the ability to stand, to recognize the enemy, to recognize His lies, to know what to do.
God wants every one of His children to be equipped like that. Now, as I said so many times, this is not a matter of you coming down here and your getting a magic experience where suddenly you’re elevated to this warrior status where nothing ever touches you. This is a matter of starting where we’re at with what we got and what we don’t have, and just looking to God and saying, Oh, God, teach me Your ways, like David prayed so many times.
Look at all he went through to learn God’s ways, but his heart was reaching out, panting when he felt the need for God, reaching out like that. Thank God for all that He has given to us, but He has got all that we need and we need to reckon on that. He wants you today to know that wherever you come short, which is plenty, whatever need you possess, God knows about it, but He has made every provision for you, not just oh yeah, for them and for them, but I’m different.
Oh God, help every one of us to wake up to realize that’s part of the devil’s, that’s one of the devil’s schemes, to make you think you’re different and you’re the redheaded stepchild or the proverbial redheaded stepchild that just doesn’t quite fit in. Everybody that God calls fits into His plans. You have a place, you have a place of honor, you have a place of love, a place of mercy. You have every right to do what Paul says here. Praise God!
All right, stand firm then. How do we do that? With the belt of truth buckled around your waist. Now, I don’t know a whole lot about this, but I understand that the typical garb in the day was kind of a robe. It would’ve been good in a warm climate to have something loose. But how do you go into a battle with a robe that’s flashing around here and there and swirling around and getting in your way? There needs to be something that holds it in place that enables me to not have to worry about what I’m wearing. I can focus on the battle.
But what is it that God is focusing on? It’s truth. Now, how easy is it for us to reduce to a bunch of ideas and propositions and things like that? There’s something greater than that. God wants us to know Him Who is the truth? Truth is more than a bunch of correct theology. Truth is a person.
What did He say? I am the way, the truth, and the life. Do you know there’s no truth outside of Jesus? God wants His people to be so convinced in their hearts and minds that He is the truth, that we’re willing to walk in the light that He shows us, and that means, first of all, He’s gonna be showing us ourselves. That’s not something we’d naturally wanna see, is it? But I want him to show me.
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September 8, 2024 - No. 1666
True Worship” Conclusion
Broadcast #1666
September 8, 2024
September 8, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1666 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, we’ve got some time here. I’m not gonna be in a hurry, but let’s just see. I mean, it’s hard not to start with something like Psalm 100. You talked about the perfect example of a worship passage, very short Psalm written by David, and he says, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.”
Most of the time I don’t feel like shouting. I don’t know that I have the voice to do it, but that’s a pretty positive expression, isn’t it? There’s a number of things he tells us to do in that shout to the Lord. I mean, you know, if you see something great and you’re rooting for a team, let’s say, and something great happens, wow, how easy it is for us to shout and have that excitement.
What the Lord wants us to do is for Him to come to the place where what He has done for us, what He is doing for us, His character, His being is so wow that we’re so focused on that that it just comes forth as a wow. Why in the world are we more excited about a home run than we are about the Lord?
And it’s not something where we gotta come out with, you know, some outward expression, but isn’t that the condition of our heart? God wants to bring us to that place where we can not only just, Yeah, Lord, I know you’re here, but I’m sure bummed about how things are. Lord, I worship you. Lord, I am so glad for who you are and what you promised me that I’m ready to shout about it, Lord. I don’t want to take this lightly.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with sad, I mean, gladness, worship the Lord with gladness. Sometimes we can go through what we say is worship, but there’s not much gladness behind it. But I’ll tell you, if the channel is open, can He not make Himself known as Who He is, and how He feels about us, and what He’s done for us? Shouldn’t that be real? Yes.
How many times do we, through our own unbelief and just focused on ourselves and our circumstances, get in the way of that. That becomes more real to us than the reality of what He’s done and who He is. I’m afraid that’s the way it is with me far too much. I’m conscious of it just reading some of this and thinking about it.
The Lord’s reminded me, you know, why do you stay where you’re at all the time? Why do you feel the way you feel? Or at least you give into it? Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know what I’ve done? Don’t you know where you’re headed? You’re in my hands. Your life is in my hands. Yes, I’m taking you away. That requires a lot of faith. That requires that we’re gonna have to walk by faith and not by sight. But that doesn’t change the facts.
We go by earthly facts in a world that will pass away. And all these things are temporary, and we treat them as facts, and we react accordingly when the facts that we need to react to are what He has promised, and what He’s done, and the fact that He’s here. He’s never gone anywhere, never will.
So shout, worship, come before Him with joyful songs. Praise God! I thank the Lord for His presence today. I believe there’s some joyful songs that went up. But, you know, that isn’t just for when we come here and go through that particular part of a service. That’s meant to define our life. Oh, praise God!
Do people see us as depressed people just hanging on or as people who have a reason to rejoice? Boy, if you got that in this world, you’re gonna stand out like a light, by the way. Didn’t somebody talk about that recently?
Then he says this, the next thing we do after shouting, and worshiping, and coming, he says, Know that the Lord is God. There’s some knowledge that goes way beyond textbook knowledge, secondhand knowledge, because I say it, and you say, Well, Phil said it, so it must be so. No. God needs to say it and He needs to say it to your heart. And He will if you want Him to.
Are you willing to let Him have His way in your heart and your life? Or are you just want what you want, and then you want to get what you can out of Him? I’ll tell you He is, if we ever see Him for who He is, He’s worth everything. He is worth our lives, our destinies, everything. Nothing in this world is worth clinging to over Him. Praise God!
Know that the Lord is God. Man, does that come into play with our daily news? I don’t care what area of human society you look at today, everything in this world is a house of cards. Only God is allowing it not to collapse right now. And if it does, when it does, God’s gonna be with His people. He is still God. Whatever He allows the devil to do, and He is allowing him to do a lot, He will never leave His people, nor will His promise fail anymore than it did with Jesus. The devil thought he’d won, didn’t he? He thought he had won.
This very song that was just sung. Praise God! You know, by the way, you remember the testimony of the gal who wrote that? She literally, on one evening, was planning to go home and commit suicide. She was so down, her life was so worthless, she was so depressed, she had the stuff to do it. And a friend, I don’t remember all the details, but a friend convinced her to go to a revival service of some kind and just said, Okay, why not?
And she went, and the Lord got a hold of her heart that night. And I think that was one of the occasions where the testimony was where the Lord was saying, Well, if you’re gonna throw away your life, how about giving it to me? And she did. And you see the truth of the song. You got somebody who has a testimony. Those are not just words she learned in Sunday school.
Thank God for Sunday school and all of that. But this is not just secondhand religious information that she was putting into that song. This was something where she met the Savior, and she realized, My life is not defined by my earthly circumstances. And all of that is defined by His love and what He did for me at the cross. What I thought was worthless is worth everything because He has set the value of my life by shedding His blood so that I could live with Him forever and be free from all of this. Thank God!
Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His. Well, that’s a good thing to know, isn’t it? He has made us, and we are His. We are His people. The sheep of His pasture. Praise God!
Now, David knew something about that, didn’t he? God had put in him a sense of what it meant to be a shepherd. Of course he wrote, The Lord is my shepherd. But there he was with a sense of responsibility, and care, and protection, and now he sees, Ah, I’m a sheep. I’ve got a shepherd. I belong to Him, and He cares for me. You know, I cared for the sheep, but I mean, how much more does He care? I could be that wandering sheep that gets in the wrong place. He doesn’t stop caring about me. And you see how Jesus developed that same thought with a sheep that wandered away and got in the briars. Thank God, all right?
We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. But now it gets beyond acknowledging His greatness. Now there’s another dimension that needs to come into it where he says, Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. So now we’re actually able to not just sit here as it were, and acknowledge facts. Now we can actually go someplace.
I mean, I realize it’s something that happens not physically, but it’s real. Is this real or not? Yes. Are these just words, or is there a place in the spirit that we can actually walk through and leave the place where we’re at and go to another place? Anybody in a bad place today? God’s got a better place for me, for all of us. But how do we enter that? How do we actually come into a place?
I mean, imagine going into this palace and you come and there’s these massive gates, and you know that there’s something amazing on the inside, but here I am, I’m on the outside, and I need to get in there. How do I do that? And he tells you. Enter His gates with thanksgiving.
You know, the Lord wants us to come to a place where we are so in tune with Him that we can thank Him for everything? Boy, that takes some doing, doesn’t it? We got a lot to overcome because there’s a lot of stuff we’re not too, we don’t wanna be too much thankful for, but always for everything. Says in everything in one passage and for everything in another one in Paul’s writings.
To be able to thank Him and to recognize, God, you’re not allowing anything in my life because you hate me. You are allowing it because you love me, and you see a need, and you’re wanting to help me. And so I’m gonna take a different position. Here I am. I need some relief in my spirit. I need to come to a better place. I’m just not feeling right about stuff and about even you. I’ve got questions.
And what is the Lord’s prescription for that? We come into His presence, we worship Him, we acknowledge Him, and all of that’s good. But now I need to come and say, Lord, I thank you. I thank you for this thing that I’m having to face right now. I say, Thank you, Lord, because I know now it’s touching me personally in a very real way. There’s something that I don’t really naturally feel very thankful about, but I’m gonna translate my knowledge of Who You are into something that’s personal.
And guess what? There are gates that just open and God can take us to a better place where we’re not sitting there under that shadow and under that struggle that we so often go through. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise, give thanks to Him and praise His name.
And, of course, there’s a good reason for that, and he says this, For the Lord is good, and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. I mean, you wanna stop and change the atmosphere in your life? Go and just read this and meditate on it, but not just read it like it’s some, you know, formula. This is meant to define our relationship with our Creator. He wants us to experience that. Because I’ll tell you the, we’re never gonna experience this God of love unless we get some of this.
You know, the devil will say, Oh, He’s just an egomaniac. He just wants people to fawn over Him. His nature is love, but what is love really about? I mean, what is the nature of love? Who is love focused on? It’s focused on somebody else. If I have what God calls love, it’s not about me. It’s not self-love, it’s love. It’s the power to do good for somebody else. That’s His heart.
And, oh, how we close our gates. We crawl into our little, have our little pity parties, or we’re so distracted with what we want or earthly affairs, and we just, here He is longing to share all of His goodness with us, and our hearts are kind of blocked off.
Oh, my God, clear out all the cobwebs and clear out all the, open up the channels so that we can begin to experience that. And we experience it by returning it to Him. And I’ll tell you, when He fills us up, then it begins to flow over. That’s what He’s looking for.
May God help us to understand something more about what real worship is so that it’s not just a thing we do. I mean, I’m glad for the young people doing that. It’s exactly what is a great thing. And you can have a time where you do focus on that, but I mean, shouldn’t it define our lives? Is this something where we say, we come to a worship service, and we go through that, and we go and say, Okay, done that, been there. That needs to define how I see God and how I see myself every day.
And the devil will constantly attack and try to undermine that. And I’ll tell you, that’s where you get into those circumstances, like David wrote about. Where are you, Lord? How long? But I will. There’s a choice that David learned how to make when he was in those circumstances.
And you see that over and over in his Psalms. Some of them are just like this one, just nothing but praise God’s good, Praise God! Hallelujah. Other times it’s, oh, Lord, I was in a bad, bad place. I mean, you think about some of the Psalms that we sing in our music.
How about Psalm 34? I mean, we sing about that all the time. I will extol the Lord at all times. That second word is kind of important, isn’t it? What is it again? I will. Choice. Yeah, it’s a choice. Exactly. This is something where we have to make a choice. God’s not gonna just dump this on us. We’re gonna have circumstances where we’re gonna have to make a choice to do what He’s talking about here.
I will extol, I’m gonna praise Him. His praise will occasionally be on my lip. Wait a minute, will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice. So now it’s getting beyond me, isn’t it? The fact is, you and I have a lot of influence on the people around us. There’s an atmosphere we exude. That’s kinda scary, isn’t it? When you think about some of what we exude. Kind of stinky, and I’m talking about in the spirit.
God help us to have something about us that just says, Whoa, what is it about them? I sense life. I see the Creator, but He’s here. He’s walking around next to me. They don’t see things like I do. We live in a scary world, and they’re not scared. How is that possible?
Glorify the Lord with me. See, now he’s reaching out to others. God’s been so good to me, but I want you to join me. I wanna make this not just between me and Him, but a testimony of, I wanna tell you about how great this God is. Join me in this. Let us exalt His name together.
And now, where does all this come from? I sought the Lord, and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears. So David was in a place where he had a lot of fear. I mean, that’s the reality. We can experience fear. The question is, do we embrace that, and hang onto it, and say, Well, this is my lot in life. I probably deserve this. On and on and on, whatever it is that causes us to remain in a prison house.
But here’s David, who was in a fearful place, obviously one of these times when he was running for his life, but he looked to the Lord. You remember that time when they, right before Saul’s death, when they were living among the Philistines? You remember the story about how they, the Philistines, wouldn’t let him go into battle, and they went home and they found everybody gone? The Amalekites had come in and run off with everything, including their wives, their possessions, and the men were ready to stone him?
What did David do? He encouraged himself in the Lord. He didn’t say, Come on, guys, we can handle this. He said, God, I’m looking to you. You have allowed all of this, and I love you, and I am trusting you. Lord, just tell us what to do.
Isn’t that a good thing to be doing? Seek God and do what He says. Where have we heard that before? Those of you who remember Brother Thomas, we heard it a lot, didn’t we? What a simple solution to life. I sought the Lord. And that was a testimony. I was in a bad place, but I sought the Lord, and He answered me. He delivered me from all my fears.
Now, the testimony: those who look to Him are radiant. There’s brightness. Their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. Praise God!
We had some wonderful testimonies this morning, and I thought about this verse. Almost spoke up, but this was a perfect example. Some of the examples we heard in the men’s meeting this morning were testimonies like this. I was in a really difficult place, a challenging place, but this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him. Saved him out of all of his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps round those who fear Him, and He delivers them. You know, if you know the Lord today, there are angels that stand by you? I have to confess, there’s times I’m ashamed, and I stop and realize, You know, the angel was here and he saw that. I’ll tell you, they put up with a lot. But, you know, the angels know. The angels know, and they worship the Lord. They worship Him.
You get just a little bit of a deeper view of what worship is really about. Yes, it gets expressed the way we do it in song, and it should. And I confess, so oftentimes I’m playing the piano, it’s awfully easy to get lost in the music side of it. Well, that’s part of it. God created musical skill and all of that. But the one thing that matters is that I’m literally lifting my heart to Him and recognizing Him. I’m conscious of His love, and I want to connect with it, and I want to return that love to Him, and I want the atmosphere that surrounds me when I’m doing that to be something that other people see you.
I don’t want ‘em to see me and say, Wow. I want them to see me and say wow to God. Wow, what a Savior. I wanna know Him too. And I wanna partake of Him.
And you know, as we each, we’re gonna go through seasons of need. Every one of us is going to go through seasons in our lives where we need one another. That came out again in the men’s meeting this morning. And God has ordained that in those times, He’s gonna have people in the body of Christ that He can touch, that He can draw their heart to Him, and they can lift up prayers, they can praise Him, they can be in that relationship where they’re here and you’re in a place where it’s low, and they can pour out the life of God and strengthen you. And then there’s gonna come a time when it’ll be the reverse, and they’ll be in a position to share God’s life with you.
May God help us to cultivate not just an activity, not just pouring out praise to Him as though He’s an egomaniac, but just entering into it, opening the channels. Because if that’s not what we’re doing, what’s going on in here? Where are the channels at?
If you’re trying to get something out of this world to fill the channels as they were in your heart, good luck with that. It’s getting crazier and crazier. But our hearts were made. We were created in His image. If He is a God of love, self-sacrificial love, and He made us in His image and He’s restoring that image. Isn’t that what He’s seeking to produce right here and right now?
And sometimes that takes a lot of sacrifice. It takes a lot of faith to be able to say thank you when we don’t feel like it and to trust Him when we don’t see Him. But I’ll tell you, there’s something that is eternal that has worked.
May God give me and give all of us the grace to worship Him in spirit and in truth. That’s what Jesus said was gonna happen. God is Spirit, they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. I don’t want to go through the form. I want to have something that’s real that’s going on. So we just start where we’re at and say, Lord, help me to worship. Amen. Give me the heart to do it.
Scripture Carl quoted this morning, and we refer to it so often, He works in me to will and to do. So even when I don’t want to sometimes, even when I want to but I can’t. In every instance, I need to be able to turn to the Lord because it’s through Him that I’m able to do it.
And while we’re doing it, isn’t it amazing to think He’s here? He’s here, helping us together to worship the Father. What an amazing thing. May God give us that sense, that consciousness of Who He is and how worthy He is, and learn how to live a life that’s full of worship and praise and not just going through a form. May we understand, may we do that, but may we understand what we’re doing and really do it in the spirit, and the Lord help us. Praise God!
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September 1, 2024 - No. 1665
“True Worship” Part One
Broadcast #1665
September 1, 2024
September 1, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1665 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, praise the Lord! As I was thinking about today and wondering what the Lord might have, I believe I’m correct that the young people are gonna have an event this afternoon. Is that correct? And it’s focused on worship and praise? Is that right? Praise God!
Well, the more I thought about that, the more I said, you know, that’s a subject that we need to talk about and explore, ‘cause I think it’s awfully easy for us, or it would be awfully easy for us just to say, “Oh, I know all about that.” And we think in terms of singing songs together and saying the right words and clapping and raising our hands and all of that. But as I thought about it, and as I looked up scriptures, I mean, it’s a big subject and I certainly don’t intend to try to cover everything, but there’s a lot to it that I believe God wants to make more real to us.
And one of the things that for some reason, I decided at some point I wanted to look up the dictionary definition of worship. I mean, that’s not exactly coming out of the Bible, but Merriam-Webster’s not too bad some of the time. But anyway, I was interested in the definition. It said worship is the act of declaring to God His worth, affirming Who He is and what He has done, and responding to Him in praise, adoration, thanksgiving, and awe.
That’s a pretty good definition. You know, not everything you Google comes out like that, but that was one that did. What an amazing simple definition that is of recognizing Who God is and how great He is.
You know, we’re pretty good as human beings at our own form of worship. Paul talked about the condition of the human race as worshiping the creation, not the Creator. And that’s the truth. It seems like the idea of worshiping and being amazed and giving praise and awe, expressing awe is somehow baked into our nature. And yet we are so self-centered that it tends to revolve around us and earthly things, things that please us, things that amaze us.
But I mean, you think about people going to ball games and, hooray, they hit the winning home run, or they shot the winning basket, or whatever, or a concert. Wow, wasn’t that amazing? Oh, didn’t that thrill me? And we are so good at just expressing that kind of thing.
And yet, how that misses what I believe God created us for. And that is recognizing Who He is. You know, the Word tells us the heavens declare the glory of God. And here is man willfully blind to the reality of his Creator. I mean, you talk about things we ought to be saying, wow, about. That’s where the wow needs to come in. I mean, we have not only the greatness of what He’s done, but the heart that He has for us and for His people. Lord, it should just absolutely set us free all the time. And yet, we don’t live in that like we should.
And as I thought about it and as I was looking up scripture, I just frankly was convicted how little we really understand worship and engage in it. It can become just an activity. But you know, you see it develop in the scriptures. There was this sense of, you know, when God would make himself known to somebody, there was in them a sense that, My God, this is the God of creation and He’s actually talking to me and He’s making Himself known to me. And there was a sense of willing submission and recognition of who He was. And you know, it grew out of that.
And yet the heathen had their own kinds of worship, didn’t they? I mean, every part of the heathen culture throughout history really has been one of worshiping idols in one form or another. People have their idols today, but I mean, literally they were worshiping what they believed to be gods. Of course, so much of it was self-centered, wasn’t it? I’m gonna have an act of praise and submission and even sacrifice, and I’m expecting to get something out of this. It’s focused on us.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who reveals Himself, and He began to reveal Himself to Abraham and to others going forward. And you see that there was a sense of offerings of sacrifice and praise. And some of the brothers this morning mentioned incense being offered in the tabernacle and how there was this constant something going up to God that was an expression from the people. And yet, how much of that was really from the heart? How much of it was just a form?
And so you see them going through centuries of ups and downs spiritually. They would kind of come back and acknowledge the Lord, and God would show His mercy. Think of how little we deserve anything from this God. And yet there’s constantly this heart that reaches out to us in our broken state and is willing to forgive and willing to cleanse and willing to restore. And God would come and fight their battles, and then they’d go for a while. Next thing you know, they’d be right back to their idolatry and running away from God.
And then of course, you see, finally God raises up a man who He describes as a man after His own heart. Somehow, an unlikely seventh son of a family, all he did pretty much growing up was take care of his father’s sheep. He was the last one anybody expected in his family to amount to anything. Brothers looked down on him and despised him in a sense at one point, but there was something about him that God was able to make Himself known.
No doubt as he was out there with the sheep, he looked around and he saw the greatness of God. And there was something in him that responded to that. Isn’t that what God is looking for? It’s wonderful that He shows us His mercy and grace, but He’s looking for a response from us. And so David had that in his heart that he would learn to sing, and he was a musician. And so there was that quality about him.
And you remember how Saul invited, got a bad way, and there were spirits that were bothering him and just driving him crazy. And somebody suggested, You know, you need to get a musician in here who can play, I guess the right kind of music, whatever it was, it would soothe them. And they found, somebody said, Oh, I know a guy. And they brought David. And so David would come into the presence of the king and strum his harp and sing, and the king would be relieved from all the presence.
You know devils don’t like praise? They hate it. You wanna get rid of devils, praise the Lord. I’ll tell you, they won’t stay around that because there’s something coming out of us that’s just not what we usually put out. Am I the only one? I don’t think so. But anyway, so David was the one that God had called.
And yet, of course, you know what happened with him. He wound up on the run because Saul hated him and wanted to kill him, recognized that he was the guy. And so he goes out and he’s on the run literally for years, looking to God. And how many of the Psalms grow out of that?
You know, brother Ron was mentioning that this morning. We tend to stay in the same area of our Bible reading year after year, following the same reading plan. But you see David getting in all kinds of crazy, life-threatening situations. And yet there was something in him that constantly looked to God and reached out and worshiped Him and knew that in spite of the circumstance, there’s a God I can look to and He’s faithful and He’s with me. And it doesn’t matter what men do and what all these other earthly circumstances, I can put them in His hands and know that He’ll handle it. And I worship Him and I praise Him. And there was something in him that brought that response.
What did life’s trials bring to you? Ooh, that’s kind of painful, isn’t it? And here’s David. You know, one of my favorite Psalms, Ron referred to this this morning, was that Psalm 13, How long, O Lord? There he was in a situation that didn’t resolve real quickly. And he prayed and he looked and he couldn’t feel God. He couldn’t see any evidence that God cared. And there was this reaching out to God.
And yet there’s an awesome “but” in that chapter, that short chapter, where he acknowledges the Lord’s faithfulness and said, I know I can trust You and I’m looking to You and I’m gonna keep on praising You. Wow. You talk about a man after God’s own heart. I wonder how much we are after God’s own heart.
And I’ll tell you this. So David, anyway, was finally brought to the throne after years of battle. And even after Saul died, it was another seven years before he became the king over all the nation. And then they still had battles. His whole life was one of just struggle and strife and warfare and having to look to God. And yet in the midst of that, he established a system of worship. The center of their spiritual life in Jerusalem was a tent that he established where they finally brought the ark, what I’m thinking of. Anyway, they brought it and established it there and had the priests ministering there.
But he had choirs, he had orchestras, he had all the music that they could come up with. And he wrote hymn after hymn and psalm after psalm of praise, raised up men like Asaph who wrote some of the psalms. And there was a system of worship that was constantly going up to God. He recognized, we’re His people. He’s worthy of our worship. If we’re experiencing any good thing in this world, it’s because of His heart, not because we deserve it. And there was something about him that understood how it really was.
I wonder how many times do we, God help us. I don’t wanna come and go through a form. And how easy is it to do that? And of course, that’s what happened. You had so many, the majority of Israelites over the centuries were unbelievers at heart. And there were times when, out of self-interest perhaps, or out of habit, they would continue to go through the form. And then they’d get to the point where, well, that’s not working. Let’s go talk to the Baals and offer sacrifice, and we’ll get what we want. Just unbelief and a form.
And do you remember some of the scriptures that Jesus referred to? I guess I had one marked and I don’t have it marked now. That’s all right. But He quotes one Isaiah. How many times did we go to Isaiah? I’ll tell you, the Lord spoke a lot through him, didn’t He? I think the one I’m thinking of is in Chapter 29. And the Lord so often not only was looking to the future but talking about the condition of the people.
And Jesus quotes this in His day. In verse 13, the Lord says, These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. You know, there’s a lot that’s called worship that isn’t. It’s just something that people learn by tradition. And I believe that God wants us to learn how to worship from our hearts.
You know, one thing, the devil will jump in and try to say, Well boy, He must have some kind of ego. But how easy it is for us to project human nature onto God. He is so utterly unlike us, it’s unfathomable. Yes, there is praise that He is worthy of. And I’ll tell you, if we had one glimpse of His glory, it would blow us away.
We would be down on our faces in worship and adoration to say such a being as that could even care about somebody like me and be patient with me and all the things that are lacking and all the things that need to happen in my life. How could somebody not just throw me out and be that pure and that great? How could somebody who could breathe out galaxies of stars that they still can’t fully explore actually care about me?
Well, isn’t that what David said? What is man, when I consider your heavens, what is man that you think about him? The son of man, you care for Him. Oh, I’ll tell you, we have Somebody that’s worthy of our praise more than we could ever begin to imagine.
But anyway, another scripture that I thought about, and this one I did actually have marked, and that’s in Amos 5. And this tells you what the Lord thought about their sacrifices on the one hand, but also their music. Because apparently at this point in their history, they were still doing what David had set up. Now, it had been handed down from one generation to another and they were still coming together and singing the songs, and they probably sounded good, okay? But what did the Lord think about it?
In verse 23, he says, “Away with the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the music of your harps.” You know, be quiet. Shut up. This noise is just a bunch of noise to me. That’s not what I’m looking for. I don’t care about, I mean, I created musical beauty and all of that, but if that’s all you got, I don’t care about it. It’s just noise to me because I want something that comes from the heart.
Oh my God, help us to get to that place where we have something that’s coming from our hearts actively. We’re not just mouthing words and going through a form. The Lord is looking for something, but here’s what He was looking for: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” In other words, the real worship that God is looking for is something that comes from a life that is actually lived in a way that is in harmony with Him. Otherwise, what good is it?
You know, people have all kinds of, I mean, there are all kinds of human things that are behind it. One of them, as we have mentioned, is just tradition. Well, that’s what we do. That’s how you conduct a service. You come together and you sing, and we call it worship. And we sing songs that somebody wrote a century or a long time ago or maybe recently, and they have wonderful words and we mouth the words. And I’m sure He’s happy with that.
But how many times do those words get spoken from a life that’s just not lived in harmony with Him at all, or not that much? And there He is looking down and seeing past all the noise and seeing the heart.
And you know, a lot of the greatest music in history has been religious music, church music, some of those beautiful things. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with beautiful music and playing skillfully. David even wrote about that, playing skillfully to the Lord. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if that’s all it is and people come together and say, Wow, that was so moving, that was so, and yet, if there’s no real worship from the heart, no real connection, it’s just noise, isn’t it? And God help us.
And you know, I’ve mentioned in the past being in churches that emphasize a lot about being able to feel God, and somehow He has to express Himself in ways that we could see and touch, and maybe miracles and feelings, certainly. And so their idea of coming into a service, and I mean their idea is that if God is really present, we ought to be able to see it and feel it.
And so one of the things we need to do when we come together is really have a rousing song service and then we can get our emotions all jacked up and that’s God in our presence. But you can do that and God be a million miles away because it’s just working up human emotion. I just pray that God will teach us the difference so that we’re not out trying to convince God to do something for us. All right, I’ll play my part, I’ll do this, but I’m expecting blessings, or I’m expecting something.
Oh God, help us to really enter into the relationship because that’s a key word, isn’t it? God is looking for a relationship with the people. And I see that this desire for us to be able to express our love, and our appreciation, and our amazement, and all the positive emotions, not as some kind of ego trip that He’s on, but as opening channels of a relationship.
Because isn’t that how He sees us? I don’t mean praise in all that sense, but I mean there’s a heart that is constantly reaching out and longing to show His greatness to us. And not only that, to bring us to a place where someone could look at us and say, Wow. And we would know, Man, I didn’t do that, He did. And there would still be that heart that would reach up and say, Lord, I just wanna reach up to You. I wanna give You all the praise and the glory, Lord.
I’ll tell you what, doesn’t that open the channel? If we are really and truly focused on the Lord, and really by faith, recognizing His goodness, even when it doesn’t feel like it, are we not opening? I mean, what are we thinking about? What’s in control of our being at that particular point? Does it matter that we have open channels with God?
Because if that’s not the case, what is the case? What are we focused on? We’re focused on ourselves, how I’m feeling, how sorry I am for myself, and all the human emotions, and my troubles, and what I want in the world. Everything, my attention is all on that, my whole being is just misdirected, when here’s a God who made me, Who loves me more than I could ever imagine. And all He wants is for me to open my heart so that He can pour Himself in and I can be like Him.
Obviously I’m returning that love to Him. There’s an open channel there where I’m not getting in the way with what I feel and what I want, and all my unbelief. But not only does He wanna do that, He wants to pour in Himself in such a way that that’s what comes out to other people. And then it’s like we’ve said so many times, then they’re not seeing me. They’re seeing Him.
So, this thing we call worship is not just an activity that’s part of a service. It’s meant to be a way of relating to Him all the time. And I just, I pray, because I mean, how much of the time do we go around feeling sorry for ourselves or focused on our earthly troubles or earthly circumstances instead of just, Lord, I’m walking with You. Lord, I know you love me. I know You’re in charge. I know that I don’t have to feel it to know that You care about me, You’re with me. Oh, praise God1 Praise the Lord!
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August 25, 2024 - No. 1664
“Witness of the Spirit” Conclusion
Broadcast #1664
August 25, 2024
August 25, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1664 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Those who are led by the Spirit of God are what? Children of God. Now it’s not just this influence in my life, this extra strength that I don’t have. Now, I’m actually His child. That’s incredible. That’s the relationship He wants. Those who are led by the Spirit of God.
God wants to be so real in our lives that we take our direction from Him. We don’t say, What is it that I want out of life and how can I get it, and focus our energies on that? But, Lord, I’m in your hands. Show me what you want.
Does not… Hebrews 12, as we said so many times, talk about running with perseverance what? The race marked out for us. I want the race that He’s marked out. I don’t know that. He doesn’t give me a panoramic view that this is how it’s all gonna work out. I’ve got to walk with Him day by day trusting Him, even when He takes me in places that I’d rather not go, like the valley of the shadow of death. But He’s with me, isn’t he? And He has a reason. Those are things that will be unfolded.
But anyway, those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. Thank God. What an amazing thing that He wants that kind of a relationship with us. The Spirit Who you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Oh, how the devil loves to introduce fear into the equation. He must be so disappointed in me. I just can’t be …. Oh God, help us, set us free from that.
You who have children, are your children perfect? Giggle. Giggle. Yeah. But are they still your children? You still love them. Yes. You think you’re better than God? We’ve got a heavenly Father Who knows exactly where we’re at. He knows what we can and can’t do and just how to bring us along. But He’s not our slave master. He’s not demanding something we can’t do. He stands there ready to help us, to draw near to us, not in a Spirit of condemnation and fear, but one of love and mercy and help. We’ve got a throne, as we said so many times, where we can go and find the mercy and the grace to help us when in our time of need. You see how these scriptures just fit together?
So anyway, the Spirit you received does not make you slave so that you live in fear again, rather the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, or it’s the Spirit of adoption, I think in the original.
Basically, now we’re taking a longer look. Remember, we come short of the glory of God. We’re saved. Now we have a hope of the glory of God. Now He’s beginning to talk about how we get there and what that is.
How many of you know what adoption is in this context? Well, yeah, adoption in our word, in our culture, is when you take a child, say, that doesn’t have parents, and you bring them in and they legally become your children.
That’s not what this is. This is the final product of a child born into a family, raised to learn its values, going through the whole process of maturing, and learning, and growing, and they reach a point of adulthood. They are completely ready to stand on their own and bring honor to their father and mother who had brought them up. And now they’re ready for the purpose of their entire existence.
There was a ceremony in their culture. Let’s say an important man had a child and they raised them. Do you think he would take a 2-year-old and say, Here’s my business, go run it? But no, there would come a time when he could present that son to the society of his day and say, This is my son. They are ready to take their place in society. And when they act, you treat that as if it’s me acting, I give them full authority to represent me, to handle my affairs. They are ready to take their place.
How many of you believe God has a purpose in our existence? There’s a place He wants to take us. I’m not able to fill that place right now, are you? If God turned over what He has made me to the responsibility He designed me to have, if He turned it over to me now, would I handle it correctly?
You better believe I wouldn’t. I’d mess it up. There’s things I wouldn’t know, I wouldn’t know how to do. I’d do it wrong. God is training and teaching us as His children getting us ready for a day when He’s gonna present us in full glory and say, This is my son. This is my daughter. They’re ready to reign. They’re ready to completely fulfill my purpose. And that’s what God’s Spirit living in us is all about.
Now, how does this fit in? I mean, think about how all this fits in with what Jesus said to Nicodemus, for example. What was the point that Jesus made about the Kingdom of God? Yeah, you gotta be born again. There is a literal birth that has to happen. Doesn’t that fit this? Where He becomes our Father? We have to be born.
And as I’m preaching this, I’m talking about this teaching, whatever you call it, I’m aware that there’s probably gonna be people, perhaps in here, perhaps who will hear it elsewhere, and none of this is real. It’s like this world is real. The desires I feel are real. All these things. I see my friends doing this and doing that and making plans, and this Kingdom of God, I can’t see it. I can’t see this God you’re talking about. It’s just not real. Pie in the sky by and by. You want me to give up my life for that.
But do you know it’s impossible to see the Kingdom of God unless you’re born again? We’re gonna have to have that divine encounter with God. Apart from that, our eyes will remain blind. I’ll tell you, if there’s anybody here who’s in that place, and this doesn’t make sense to you, what I’m talking about this morning, it’s not real, I’ll ask you the question, Do you want it to be? I would call upon you to seek God with all of your heart, to open your eyes because that’s the only way they’ll be open. I can’t explain it well enough to open people’s eyes. Only God can do that.
You think about Paul writing and talking about the blindness that is caused by the devil ruling over this planet. How he’s blinded minds so they’re unable to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But then he says of himself and Timothy, evidently, you notice the “we” all the way through that passage? It’s Paul and Timothy, who’s writing. So, it’s like he’s saying for Timothy and me, God shined his light in our heart.
The same God who said, Let there be light back there, now has shined and said, Let there be light in my heart. And He’s shown us the reality of His kingdom. And He’s called us to become a part of it, to give up our lives, hand them over to Him, and now, all of a sudden, something that I cannot see or touch, it’s real.
Do you want this to be real? I don’t want anybody just to blindly do anything. It has to be because God, by His Spirit, opens up the ear, the heart. And you’ll never see it without being willing to humble yourself and hand your life over to Him. But if you do, you’ll become His child. Praise God! This will become real. All right?
And it says, And by Him, now he’s talking about the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit that leads to sonship, he says, And by Him we cry Abba, Father. That was a very intimate word. I don’t want to trivialize it, but it’s like He’s papa, He’s daddy. Can you imagine? You think of the greatness of this God who’s behind it all, Who fills everything, is pure and holy, and yet we can look to Him and think of Him as our Father in that sense. That’s how He wants us to see Him.
Now, that’s not to bring Him down to our level and treat him with a casualness, but that’s a sense that I want, to have a real personal relationship with you. I care about you. I care about every detail. I know every hair on your head. I know every thought that’s ever passed through your mind and your life. I love you. I’ve got plans for you. But I want you to know me, not as just some awesome monarch somewhere that you can’t see or touch. I want you to know me as Father, as Dad, as Someone that you can go to at your darkest hour and know that I’m there and I care. Praise God!
Now, I’ll get to where I think in my mind the focus has been on this, because one of the issues that the devil will focus on, he hates this truth. He’s opposed me thinking about it. Probably opposed some people from coming. He hates this. And he wants to do everything he can to undermine our confidence and our knowledge.
But I’ll tell you, God wants this to be real to the point that we have a solid foundation down here wherever, inside, (chuckles) that’s real, that is strong enough to stand no matter what kind of flood comes from this world and the condition that it’s in. God wants a solid foundation, not just out here, but in here. Okay?
So how do we know? How do we know that we’re part of this? You know, the devil’s gonna say, Well, you could go and do everything perfectly, sincerely, and yet get to that day and He say, I never knew you. Do you think that’s what the Lord is trying to convey by that? No. Those people are people that have resisted His voice on the inside and said, found ways to say, no. But there is a way that there is something that God wants to do for every one of us.
Verse 16, The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit, that we are God’s children. You know, the devil has often tried to make me afraid to say that. You imagine why? Because he wants to say, Oh, you’re just gonna make people, make good Christians doubt. You’re gonna make them live in a state of uncertainty.
I believe with all my heart, God wants us to have a state of certainty and not to be afraid to lift up this truth. Because when God has children that He births, He is more than willing to testify to that and say, You’re mine.
Human nature hates to get quiet and just face reality. Didn’t the prophet say, The wicked are like the troubled sea. It cannot rest, Waters cast up mire and dirt. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God to the wicked. There’s a restlessness in the human heart. But God wants us to be able to get to the point where we can be completely at rest and know that we know, that we know, get past evaluating, Am I His by our performance? but rather we can know that we’re His and just put our hope and our trust in Him every single day.
Do you believe God wants you to know that? Yes. Do you? I mean, do you know that right now? Is that witness there? God wants it.
And I guess it’s hard for me to preach this without going back to my own experience. I’ve talked about it many times. God will take us through this in different ways. Now, this is how He did with me. Because I was among the people that at that particular time, that emphasized certain experiences that we were supposed to have, and there are genuine experiences. But anyway, that was the emphasis.
And you’re supposed to seek God and you’re supposed to get this real experience, and it’s supposed to be manifest in certain ways. And I came to a point where I looked around and other people seemed to be being blessed and I wasn’t. And I was mad. And I didn’t like it. What’s wrong with me? Why do you treat me this… You know, whatever, however it was put.
And so I quit. For about three days, I just did not put forth any effort. I didn’t pray. I didn’t praise God. I didn’t say I reject you or anything of that sort. I didn’t turn to sin. I didn’t go rob a bank. But I just simply quit. Put forth zero effort. And nobody outside knew what was going on. It wasn’t like somebody came with some magic formula, some word or something like that. It was just me and the Lord.
And yet during that time, there was this still small voice and I did my best to ignore it. I was upset. But there was a still small voice on the inside that basically communicated the truth. You’re mine. And I knew my spirit was agreeing with that. I knew that, Lord, no matter what, I’m yours.
And there was two witnesses there, me and the Lord. And the most quiet moment when I wasn’t trying to pretend anything, there was nothing else going on that could have fed into that, it was just nothing but me and the Lord and dead air, if you will. And yet somehow there was a conviction. Didn’t come from out here. It was in here. There was a witness.
I don’t know how that would happen for somebody else. And I’m sure there are others here who could testify to something along that line, where the Lord really bore witness down deep in your heart, You’re mine, and your spirit said, Yes, I’m yours. And the issue was settled. It was completely settled.
And many times that comes in times of difficulty because God is gonna take us through a lot of different things in this process of getting us to that place. He’s taken us, this adoption ceremony, if you will. He’s gotta teach us a lot. And many times He’s gonna take you on tour of what’s wrong with you and me. But you know, in the midst of that, what a difference it makes if we can come to that place and just be totally quiet.
I would challenge anybody here who’s got a question. You need to seek God from the depths of your heart until that becomes real. It’s not a feeling. I had no sensations, nothing that I could point to that was natural. It was just a reality down in here where I knew that He was real. I knew that I belonged to him. That I had already set out on a road, there was nothing to do but say, All right, Lord, I surrender.
And of course, the question was, Why aren’t you giving me experiences like everybody else, making me feel good? That happened to be the issue. And so, I finally was brought to a place where I said, Okay, very patiently, three days at least. And I went through this and finally I said, All right, Lord, I surrender. I will serve you if I never have a feeling.
Now, as I say, that happened to be the issue. It could be something else with you. But my prayer, and I believe it’s God’s heart, God wants to be real to you to where you can be completely at rest, not trying to feel good and scratch this itch or that one, but you can be just completely at peace with Him.
Now, think about how scripture describes our relationship with God. What did Jesus promise if we would come to him? Rest. See, that’s not… I got an itch, I gotta scratch. I gotta do something to feel okay. I can be at complete rest and peace.
Think about how that’s described in Hebrews. Is it Chapter 4? Where God wants us to enter into what? His rest. See, God’s not worried about whether He can pull this off. It’s done. It’s done as if it happened already. But He wants us to stop trying and come to a place where we just surrender and we find a place of rest in Him.
Now, once we have that, we’ve got a ground to be able to stand and face the things that life throws at us by God’s design. All right? But I gotta have a foundation. I gotta have something to stand on. God wants to bring every one of us to where we can be totally quiet. Nobody else knows what’s going on. It’s just you and the Lord. And deep down in here, there’s a conviction, Yes, you’re mine. I put my seal on you as what Paul put it in Ephesians 1. I put a seal on you. You’re mine. The devil can’t have you.
I wanna know that. And I want my spirit to join with Him in that witness and say, Yes, I have surrendered. I have nothing to bring to the equation but myself. I’m a lost, hopeless sinner apart from you. But I believe, and I have put my hope in you.
I want everyone who comes to this place, everyone who hears that to come to that place of rest before God, where you’re not just coming and going through the motions and doing the right stuff. I want you to have that witness in your heart. Because anything short of that isn’t gonna end well. God wants to make Himself real.
Oh my God! And if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and coheirs with Christ. There’s an inheritance that’s coming. God has something that He is preparing for His family beginning with His son, but we are heirs right together with Him. Oh, what a heavenly Father we have. How worthy is He, and how worthy is the Savior through whom all of this has come about? Praise God!
What a salvation. Heirs of God, coheirs with Christ. If indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share His glory, now we’re back on the path of glory. It means we’re gonna have to put up with stuff. God is not gonna have sons that just muddle through. He’s gonna have sons that absolutely will face obstacles, face adversity, and continue on because they have Him living on the inside.
And we’re His, we’re not our own anymore. And we’re not seeking our own will. We’ve handed that off to Him. What’s in charge in your life? Have you ever been born of His spirit? Is this important? Does this matter? Are the things that Jesus said that make it absolute, this clear picture of most of humanity going in the wrong direction and God calling out those who will humble themselves and put their trust in Him?
I’m with Him. Are you? And I just pray that if that witness is not clear to you, that you’ll seek Him until it is. And don’t go looking for feelings. Don’t go measuring your performance. Don’t do anything except, Lord, I want to be yours. I wanna know that I’m yours. And I believe with all my heart, God will bear witness to His children. Isn’t that what He says? This is His promise.
And I’m calling Him on it because I got brothers and sisters here, and I want every one of you to know where you stand and to be able to stand on solid ground and go forward with confidence, not in yourself, but you know where your help comes from. You know you’ve been born of His spirit, and you’re headed for glory. And there’s no devil in hell that can stand in the face of that.
What a salvation that God has given to us. And there’s so much more that He unfolds here. But praise God, that’s enough for today, I think. I think the focus is the witness of the Spirit. Every one of God’s children needs that. You don’t need to say, Oh, I follow what Phil says. You need to follow what He says. It needs to be real personally to you regardless of me and my limitations, and whatever, it needs to be between you and Him.
And there’s nobody who wants it more than He does. He knows you. He loves you. Jesus died when you were still his enemy. Praise God! What a Savior we have. To Him be all the glory. Praise God!
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August 18, 2024 - No. 1663
“Witness of the Spirit” Part One
Broadcast #1663
August 18, 2024
August 18, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1663 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, praise God, I feel like I have a desire to go forward with what we’ve been dealing with in Romans, whereas Paul is unfolding the gospel and the truth of it. And I sense that in a particular way this morning, that it’s not that the Lord simply wants to establish the doctrine, the correct theology. There’s so much more than that.
Yes, we need truth, we need the way it really is. But if that’s all we have, we have nothing because the gospel is meant to bring us into a relationship with God that is life transforming, that is destiny transforming, and not simply to correctly practice our religion. We don’t need that. We need the presence of the Lord. And we need a reality in our lives every day.
We surely need it, we see the way the world is going, man we better have something in here if we’re gonna stand. And yet when we do, we have all we need, don’t we in the Lord?
And so just very briefly, the salvation deals with a problem that every human being has, namely that we’ve failed in the past and we’ve sinned, but also we have a nature that won’t let us please God. There’s no way we can measure up to the purpose that God created us. He created us for glory and we can’t possibly fulfill that.
And so salvation deals with the first part by Jesus going to the cross as our representative and us being so united with him, that it’s as though we died. We have literally come into a full-fledged heart level agreement about our need and why he had to go to the cross and that it was my sin that put him there. And I am turning from that.
And so you have a world of people that are going in this direction and he says, no, that direction leads to wrath and death and destruction. I need you to turn around. I’ve got a purpose that I created you for. And I’m the only one that has the power to fulfill that. You need to hand your life over to me and I’ll deal with your sins. I’ve already dealt with them at the cross, but now I wanna lead you forward.
And so the second part of salvation, after dealing with the guilt, brings us into a relationship with him. And so answers the question after we’ve come into this relationship, our sins are gone. We’re as clean as if we had never sinned as amazingly as that sounds. The question then becomes now what?
And so we see that God has declared that He will bring us to that place that we cannot find in ourselves, namely the glory of God. And so we’re born into a process of salvation that leads to that end. I guess we’re going in this direction, aren’t we? But anyway, it leads to that end. And God is the One who means to take us there.
So now what we need to do is to understand how that works in a practical sense so that we can live for Him. ‘Cause it’s not just a matter of, as we said so many times, of getting our sins forgiven and having a ticket to heaven. God wants to change us and get us ready for something. And so that’s what he deals with.
Last week we dealt with Romans 7. Everybody’s favorite passage about it sounds like we’re hopeless here. But the truth is, we are in ourselves. And we dealt last week with five laws. The first four of them are dealt with in Romans 7 just very briefly. We have God’s law that tells us what’s right in his eyes. Okay? So we have no excuse. We know that this is right and this is wrong and so forth.
And even where God can take somebody and say, yes, I agree with that and that’s what I want to do. The problem becomes because there is a law that operates in our bodies, in this flesh, it animates us it gives us life. There’s a law that operates there. And it’s a law that is absolutely in harmony completely, absolutely a slave to another law and that’s the law of sin. And it makes it impossible no matter how good our intentions are to serve God.
And Paul basically, I believe God just took Paul on a tour of his own nature because he was brought up to believe you could serve God that way. And he found out, no, there’s a reason why we need a full-fledged salvation. There’s a reason why Christ came and did what he did. And so, but in the process, Paul was given a clear understanding so that there is no question in our minds, apart from what God did for us through Christ, we are in a hopeless, helpless state. I need him this morning. I need what he has provided through the gospel.
And so if all somebody has is those four laws, it’s a pretty tough thing. And that does, I wanna just pause and say this again because that does come into play with some forms of Christian teaching supposedly that leave out the second part as to how we live this life. And basically the life is presented as, here is a list of what constitutes a holy life. And remember, you don’t see God without holiness. So you gotta live this. But yet it doesn’t offer people the way to do that. It basically leaves it up to people in their own strength, live up to it. And so there’s a constant sense of failure and hopelessness there or else there’s self-deception. I’m holy because on the outside I’m looking good and I’m doing it right.
But God has something so much better. He wants to deliver His people from that kind of a bondage, that kind of a hopeless life. Thank God he doesn’t leave us there. And that’s where God revealed to Paul, that there is another law.
Now remember a law here is not just a law that you pass. This is a principle by which things operate. We have gravity, we have planetary, all is a planetary motion. We have just the way things work in nature. Well, this is the way things work in the spiritual realm. There are laws and principles that are absolutely in control.
And we need a law that is stronger than the one that binds people in this world. And that’s the law of the spirit of life. God gives us a new life and a new strength and a principle that enables us to live for God. And so that sets us free. And what it does is empower us to live up to the… and give expression to the genuine righteousness that is expressed in the law.
Now, if all God does is tell me what to do and what not to do, I’m hopeless. But if He gives me the power on the inside to be the kind of person he wants me to be, then I can actually live that out. I have the power where I can start to say, no, to this old nature and realize it’s not my master anymore. Praise God! Alright?
And that’s what he deals with in verse four, Paul is gonna continue to unlock God’s purpose and how it works here and chapter eight is certainly one of the richest in the Bible, alright?
So he describes something else, and I forget how far we got last week. We may have touched on this, but in verse five, he said, Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires. But those who live in accordance with the spirit have their minds set on what the spirit desires. Paul is gonna begin to paint a picture of two kinds of people.
Do you know there are only two kinds of people in the world? There are people who have entered into salvation and have what he’s talking about here or else they’re living in accordance in agreement with under the dominion of this law that operates in human flesh. I don’t care if it’s religious or if someone’s out there what we call a wicked life. The real condition is the same.
But you see that now Paul brings in another factor. He brings in the mind because we are not just creatures who operate on, you know, on automatic. We think; God created us with intelligence, with minds. And he says the people of the world who just simply follow whatever this flesh demands and whatever it wants. It’s pretty tough if you say, no I don’t with that, I don’t want that.
No our minds come in harmony with that. And we find ourselves agreeing with that. We find ourselves excusing that, explaining it. And every kind of mental trick the devil can place in there. We absolutely come to a place where all we can think of is, how do I gratify the desires that arise in my being?
Now some of it’s just bodily desires. We all know about that. But it’s not just the lust of the flesh, it’s the lust of the eyes. It’s the pride of life that John talks about. It’s, what can I have for myself? What kind of status can I gain? How can I be somebody that matters? And all these desires that come from that old nature.
Man, if we let them be in charge, where does that lead? That leads to death, doesn’t it? That’s not what God created us for. To live selfishly and just try to gratify whatever arises in our…. But I’ll tell you anybody that lives like that, that’s where their mind is at. Good thing to think about. Where’s my mind? What are the things that I believe? What are the things that I value? May God help us.
You begin to see where Paul’s going in chapter 12? Talks about presenting ourselves and what happens? Don’t be conformed, don’t be like the world. Don’t think like them, act like them, adopt the same values, but rather allow yourself – now we’re letting God do something. ‘Cause it’s not something we can do, but we can certainly submit to Him into doing thereof. Let Him change us. Transform us, okay? Into the image of his son and so forth. So that we can learn, we can actually experientially learn what His will is really about.
And it is a pathway, ‘cause God is not creating, I mean it’s His work. But we are not “storm troopers.” For those of you who are familiar with Star Wars, we were not created as clones. He just doesn’t program us to be His children. He wants sons and daughters who think like Him, who want Him, who choose Him.
I mean, what kind of a child would you want that just, you know, kind of goes through the motions, but never really has it on the inside. My God! Do you want children that are just robots? Do this, do, no you want children who grow up to have real values and learn how to become adults. That’s where God’s going with this. Okay?
But here’s the reality of it. You’ve got these two kinds of people. You’ve got people of the world that are totally consumed with what this flesh wants. God wants to change that. So now we want what He wants.
Now that’s not an instantaneous thing, but it is that process where we learn how to say, yes. Like we sang this morning. I’ll say yes. Are you saying, yes, this morning? Am I? Praise God we need to understand the difference that Paul is describing here.
Now the mind governed by the flesh is what? It’s death, isn’t it? Paul doesn’t wanna leave any doubt about what the deal is here. The mind governed by the flesh is death, separation from God leading to a bad end. But by contrast, the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
I’m so glad that that’s where God wants to bring us to, is not a place of, God, I hate this life. It’s of life and peace. It’s being set free from the very things that just make people so unhappy and trying, striving to please whatever rises in themselves, alright? The mind governed by the spirit is life and peace.
Now let’s go beyond that. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God. Now do you remember what Paul talked in chapter five about when we were His enemies? Folks, if you are living by the culture of this world, if that’s where you get your values from, if that’s what’s important to you is what you can get out of this life and this world and it’s your life and, by God, you’re gonna live it. And you have right to your opinions about stuff. By God, where are you at?
I’ll tell you what, your mind is absolutely hostile to God. Because when God comes and puts his finger on something and says, this is what I think about it, this is the truth, what’s the natural reaction? Don’t you dare tell me what to do. You got your opinion and I got mine. That’s what this culture teaches.
But is there such a thing as truth? Well, truth has a name. His name is Jesus. He came to reveal the purpose, the will, the nature, everything about God. He is the perfect expression of the unseen God. And he came down and lived among us. What an amazing thing. Praise God!
But here you’ve got a condition. It’s where the human being is hostile to God, absolutely governed by this. If you’re governed by this, there’s no way you’re gonna agree with God about anything. Now people can be religious, but that’s not really agreement, is it, alright? The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law. So that’s a fact. Nor can it do so. So it’s not just the fact that it doesn’t it can’t, it’s impossible, alright? Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
It’s interesting use of the word realm. That word is not specifically in the Greek, but the idea is. You think of a realm as back in the day when you had kings who ruled over countries, okay? A king who ruled over country had authority over that country and so that was his realm. That was the part, that was the place where he ruled and his word was law.
Folks if we live in this country, so called, where what our flesh wants rules, that’s a bad place. There’s no way we can please God, we don’t want to, we can’t, and all it does is lead to death. Folks, that’s pretty bad place to live.
And you know, I thought about this. Maybe this is a good place as any. I mentioned last week and I’ve mentioned it many times before, the condition of religion that somehow bypasses the cross and how it really affects me. It’s not a place for me to die. But I’ll tell you, Paul is giving a very clear difference between the people of the world and the people of God. He’s really setting it out. He’s going into the depths of it right here.
But so much of what is called the gospel does not do that. Where Jesus made some very strong statements. He that wants to save his life will do what? Lose it. But the one who gives his life will keep it for life eternal. There’s no compromise there is there? It’s one of the other. And over and over you see that.
And you know, so much of religion wants to see how big a crowd they can get. Jesus wasn’t interested in numbers, you notice that? There were times he had huge crowds, but he knew exactly how to put things so that they said, this is a hard saying who can hear it? And they went and left him and stopped following him.
Jesus wasn’t interested in the crowds. He was interested in those who because of the Father’s work in their heart, had the capacity to listen to him and to agree with him, even when they didn’t understand it, they knew who he was and they were gonna be committed to following him.
Folks, that’s what God’s looking for today. And if you think that just because people, you know, say, I believe in Jesus and I’m going to church is enough, how about looking back at what Jesus said. I think we’ve probably quoted this last week, I’m trying to remember. But anyway, what Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23. When he is talking about many, not a few, many will say in that day, Lord, Lord.
‘Cause he says, it’s not those who call me Lord, who just say, Lord, it’s those who do the will of my Father. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, and they’ll enumerate all the things they’ve done religiously that have given them confidence that they’re okay. And Jesus is gonna say, I will say to you, I never knew you.
Now notice he didn’t say, I knew you and then you messed up, and I kicked you out. I never knew you. What’s he really talking about there? There’s a relationship where a person has never ever surrendered their heart. They conformed their outward being to a certain religious standard, but they never in their hearts said, I surrender. I’m exactly what you say I am, I have the need you described. Lord, I need a savior and I need you to come and take the rule of my life and take me from this path to that one. I turn my back, I hand it over to you. I’m no longer my own. They’ve never done that.
He says, depart from me that work iniquity, and iniquity in the original is “lawless.” That’s somebody who when you really get down to the issues of the heart, nobody tells me what to do, it’s my life. But do you see how that conflicts with what Jesus said? Those who are his are brought to a place where it isn’t my life anymore. I lay it down because I realize that what I have, I cannot keep, it’s corrupted, it’s headed for destruction. I need a life that’s gonna last. That’s the only one I get from you, okay?
So, now he’s gonna get into something else because up to this point it’s almost sounded like, you know, the law of the Spirit comes into play, okay? It’s almost like the Spirit is out here giving this strength, this influence. But do you know it has to get beyond that?
I’m so glad when God can overshadow me. You remember how Jesus talked about the coming of the Spirit to the disciples, alright? He said, the Spirit dwells with you, but shall be in you. You see the difference? I’m so glad when God can overshadow me with His presence from out here and give me strength and help, but I need more than that. I need Him in here. And that’s the hope of the gospel. And that’s what he’s gonna get into, alright?
So those who dwell in the realm of the flesh cannot please God you however, describing to the people to whom he’s writing, you however are not in the realm of the flesh, but are in the realm of the Spirit. Then he puts in a very conditional word, doesn’t he, okay? You are in the realm of the spirit. That is the realm, the country if you will, where the Spirit rules.
But under what conditions does that happen? Is that something just outside? It says, If indeed the Spirit of God lives where? In you. So now we’ve gotta have something that goes right to our hearts. We’ve gotta have God living in us, or else we’re just being religious.
And I sense God wanting to establish this in a deeper way here today. Because the most horrible thing would be for someone to be a part of this church, to grow up in it and never get this and fool themselves and be among those who say, Lord, Lord, I went to the Bible Tabernacle, I was on this committee, I did this, I did that. What do you mean I’m not?
Do you think the Lord is looking to shut people out and to put them in that category? Of course He’s not! He deals with hearts. I’ll tell you, there’s gonna be some sad faces on that day. When the Lord not only says, I never knew you, but He’s gonna take them back on a trip if you will, through their experience. And they’re gonna come to those times. They’re gonna go back and relive those times when God was speaking to their hearts. And somehow they found a way to sidestep that and say, oh, I can fit this into my life. They can do anything in the world except totally, here’s my life, Lord I surrender.
I just pray that God will bring a people to Himself in reality. I believe I’ve got a lot of brothers and sisters here. I thank God for every one of you. None of this is to make people fearful and doubtful and all of that. But is this serious? This is eternal. God wants to have a people who are solidly in Him and you have His Spirit not just out here influencing you, but living.
And I said last week, what an amazing gospel it is, that God could take somebody like us with everything that’s wrong and fit us, make us so clean that a holy God can actually take up residence and be at home. That’s incredible. That’s incredible. But that’s what the gospel is about. What an amazing God we have who wants that more than anything. So if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
Now here’s the clincher ‘cause he says, If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. That’s some pretty plain language. That covers the people that He’s talking about on that judgment day. They’ve got religion, they’ve got a profession, they’ve got a lot of religious activity, but they never had the Spirit of Christ.
Now it’s interesting, he says, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ. God is a Spirit. He shares His life with us through Christ. So you can call it, you can say, the Spirit of Christ or the Spirit of God, you’re talking about the same Spirit. You’re talking about God sharing His life with the people and it’s like a river that flows through his Son. And now He is able to share God’s life with the people.
But it’s not just anybody. It’s people who are willing to be cleansed, willing to come under His authority and to be changed completely from the inside out.
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August 11, 2024 - No. 1662
“Five Laws” Conclusion
Broadcast #1662
August 11, 2024
August 11, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1662 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: How many of you think that God shows us our hearts again to discourage us, to make us feel hopeless, worthless? You’re just under my condemnation. You just keep trying. But I know you’re such a terrible person. Just, you know, my God, that’s miserable. That’s not what God wants. But God has to take us down. God has to take us through the cross.
I said earlier, there’s so many versions of the so-called gospel that miss the cross. You just come and believe in Jesus. Thank God for wiping out my mistakes and giving me a ticket to heaven. And they’re never willing to come to the cross and say, that’s the reason why I need a savior. He died because of my condition. I have got to fully embrace. I’ve got to fully identify myself with the one who died there, that I deserve that. This is really my need and I embrace Him.
I am one with Him in laying down my life, in rejecting renouncing this world, its values, the life that He gave me, and what it’s about. I am willing to lay that down. If someone puts a gun to my head today, praise God that sets me free. But I absolutely am embracing Christ, I’m embracing the cross, because there’s no way to get to the empty tomb without the cross.
People try to sidestep that and they jump right into the tomb and say, oh, praise God, I’m a Christian. I wanna see the whole gospel come alive in me and in you. And I believe, isn’t that what God wants? Does He wanna leave us in the condition that we found us? Or does He wanna bring us into a place of the victory we were singing about this morning? I believe with all my heart, that’s what He longs to do.
But I don’t wanna sidestep any of this. And God would not let Paul have a real genuine understanding of the gospel without Paul himself having to go through this place where he came to the end of himself and he realized, oh, now I get it. Now, I understand why I need a savior. Now, I can go out there and I can stand side by side with people and realize we are all in the same boat. We need the same savior. We have zero hope in ourselves. Praise God!
That’s the message. You see what God was doing for Paul and Paul was sharing it with us because we have the same need. May God not let anybody here fool themselves and bypass any of this because there’s no way to get to the good stuff, all right?
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. So it’s a statement of inability, isn’t it? For I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Now, I got to comment on this. I have heard this used almost to paint a picture of what the Christian life is like. And the point being made was, we’re not perfect here. Well, guess what? Of course not. The whole point of the gospel is to bring us to a place of forgiveness, then give us life and set before us a hope of the glory of God. But now we got this time period between being born of His Spirit, and growing up, and being presented before God as one of his children, grown up, clothed with glory. So what’s that about?
And of course, you do have some people out there, there are some religious groups that actually teach that you can have an experience that will make you sinless. It’ll still set you apart. You don’t sin anymore. So a lot of times this is thrown out there as a rebuttal to that idea.
Well, of course, we still need Him. John the apostle, late in his life said, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us, but thank God, he goes right straight to the cross, That we can confess our sins and be forgiven, be cleansed from all unrighteousness. See, we go right back to the cross when we do come short.
So, there’s God, this was not for the purpose of painting a picture of the Christian life. Now it is, if all you’re gonna do is you and your own strength trying to obey the law, yeah, this is a pretty good picture. That’s one way people try to serve God.
How many of you remember several years ago we heard a message that some of us had heard live by Carter Conlon. And he was talking about his own ministry in the past. Now he had actually, you know, in his particular group, a successful evangelist is somebody who goes into a church and typically preaches against some sin and is so forceful that he gets people to come down and repent of that sin.
And over time he discovered that this was just a fruitless thing kind of thing. ‘Cause he’d go back to the same church a year later and the same people were down here repenting and promising to do better, so something’s wrong. And the wrong thing is if we just present what’s right, and what’s wrong and just dump it on you, and demand that you live up to that, that’s not the gospel.
Praise God! I don’t have the ability to do that either. I can repent and promise God I’ll do all kinds of stuff. That’s not the gospel. God gave us a new way to live, a new way to power and to produce what is right in His eyes. That’s what He wants us to learn, how to come into possession of in a practical way. But Paul still had to go through this, didn’t he? Okay?
Now, if I do, and he comes back to this, Now, if I do, what I do not want to do it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So at least at this point, he was in a point where he agreed with the law of God, but still found out he was powerless to do anything about it. Anybody, you know what that’s about? You wanna do what’s right and you find out you can’t. Yeah. Alright, well, Paul wants to get us to the answer and the Lord does.
But here’s where I believe the Lord helped me with a little bit of insight back then because I basically made the point in that class that this is not about whether he was saved or lost. This is a matter of understanding human nature. And there are four laws that Paul enumerates here that are in effect, four laws. What are they?
One of them is the law of God, where God tells me what’s right and wrong. One law is the law of my mind, which in this instance Paul is saying, the law of my mind is, yes, I agree with you God, and I want to do what you want me to do. Okay? So those are two of the laws.
But what’s the deal here? But verse 23, I see another law at work in me. You could call it the law of the flesh. That’s the third law. And it’s waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. So you have four laws, the law of God, the law of my mind, it wants to do what’s right, it has the best intentions, but there’s a law in this flesh that is absolutely married to the law of sin that reigns in this world, makes it impossible for the person with the best of intentions to actually serve God. If that’s all you’ve got is your human ability, you will fail every single time.
I thank God that He’s taken us beyond living under God’s law. I need to know my, but you know, we have to understand this. You may not know, get the theology of it, but I’m praying that if there’s somebody here who doesn’t really get this about yourself, God’s never taken you down in this deep dive into what’s really wrong, that He’ll do it, and He’ll do it because He loves you from the depth of His being and He wants you to know.
And doesn’t this, you think, oh, this is such a downer, talking about sin and talking about the helpless human condition. But there’s another side to this. Doesn’t this elevate the cross? Doesn’t this exalt the mercy of God Who knows all about you? He knows things you don’t want to even face. He knows the things we don’t even want to begin to face about ourselves. And He loves us.
And with sacrificial love, He has opened a door of hope. Now, that door leads right through the cross. We don’t bypass that. We embrace everything that’s wrong with us, but we go all the way through that and we see that’s not the end because the tomb was not the end for our savior. He came forth with a life that cannot die. That’s what God wants to share with us.
But oh, does this not lift up the power and the grace of God into a place where we just need to bow down and say, wow, do we not need to be down in order to see what’s up? But God doesn’t do any of that to leave us there. He does it so that we will come with a full understanding of why we need a savior.
I don’t want anybody who comes to this church to ever say they didn’t know. There was a superficial gospel preached to where they just “accepted Jesus” and went on their merry way, lived their lives, and just tried to be a good person, and expected to go to heaven someday. The world is full of people like that.
Now, God knows His, there’s people in all kinds of places. I’m not doing away with that for one moment, but I’ll tell you the devil hates what we’re talking about this morning. It’s not just that we need to unpack all the theology involved in this, that God wants us to have a true picture of our need because only then can we come and truly find the life that he has given to us. Alright?
So, four laws. You have the law of God, you have the law of my mind, it wants to do right, but you got this law in my flesh that says uh uh, I’m in league with the law of sin and you can’t do it. And in that light, God had to bring Paul to that place.
Do you think Paul actually felt this or was he just writing a story? Paul had to come … have you ever been to this place? Yeah. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
And, of course, that’s where he’s going with this. That’s why you can’t say, oh, was this a picture of Paul’s life as a Christian? No, this was a picture of God taking him through a dark place where he saw his need so that he could have a better understanding of the gospel that he was proclaiming so that others could learn how to be free.
‘Thanks be to God,’ he says, ‘who delivers me through Jesus Christ, our Lord.’ So he goes right from, Oh, what a wretched man I am, into the answer. And that’s what God wants for every one of us.
So, the conclusion of the four laws that we talked about, So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. And that’s when you come to chapter eight, and there’s a whole lot in here. I don’t know how far the Lord wants to take it today, but you’ve gotta at least take it past chapter seven, don’t we?
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is a living, spiritual relationship, a heart-to-heart agreement with God, where I am totally aligned with him against my sin, against this world, against my life here, to the point that I’m willing to lay it down if that’s what it takes.
Who are those who overcome? How do they do that? The blood of the Lamb, that takes care of the sin problem. And as a word of my testimony, I’m willing to confess what God has said, what God has done. The truth about myself, the truth about what Jesus did.
Well, what’s the other one? That’s where the cross comes in. They love not their lives so much as to shrink from death. Folks, God is bringing us, bringing his children to a place where our life is not about this world, and what we do here, and what we achieve, and don’t achieve. Our life is pointed to something else. The promise that God is going to bring us to a place where we will reign with Him forever and ever and be totally set free from every taint of this world. Do you have that hope of glory in you? Praise God!
And that’s not just a “hope so,” that’s that expectation based upon the promise of God, thank God. All right?
So, there’s no condemnation because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit…. Now, you’ve got a fifth law, don’t you? You know, I’ve illustrated this in the past. This is not just some law that somebody passed. This is just the way it is. This is a law that governs the way things work.
And all of us are familiar with the law of gravity. But now suppose a law suddenly came to our attention from God that says, thou shalt fly. And I’m not talking about getting some mechanical device. I’m talking about thou shalt fly or be judged. Okay?
So what do I do? Do I go down and do I build up my muscles, first of all, so that I can carry my weight. And then do I bend over, assuming I can still touch my feet, grab hold of my shoes, and pick up with all of my might. Does that work? Why? ‘Cause I’m subject to another law. I need a different source of power if that’s going to happen. I have no power to pick myself up off the ground and fly.
And we are in exactly the same situation when it comes to salvation. I need His power. I need another law that’s actually stronger than the law of gravity in this case, The law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death for what the law was powerless to do…. Now, why was it powerless? Because it was weakened by the flesh. This was in charge, didn’t matter what God said, this was in charge.
… God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in the flesh. Why? In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
See, now you’re getting back into some of the things He talked about in chapter six, where I have the power to say, no, now because I died with Him and I have the power to say, yes, because I was resurrected with Him.
But it’s that life that makes it possible for me to actually live. I can please God. I can do things that are right in His eyes. I can be the kind of person He wants me to be. How can I do that? Because He has come to live, praise God. Think about the miraculous power of a gospel that can take somebody like you and me, particularly, when we see ourselves the way Paul did. Have you ever seen that?
Does that not magnify a message that has the power to so cleanse somebody like me that a holy God … think of Isaiah’s vision just for one example, the holiness and the purity that he saw that. Somebody like that could come and find a home in me. Wow! Do we have something to rejoice in this morning? Praise God for the power of the gospel that has the power to come in.
And when He comes in, He brings His power with Him. He brings His faith with Him. He brings so many things that we need to learn how to lay hold of. That’s what Paul said. I haven’t arrived Paul said, we’ve said many times, but I am reaching, I’m pressing, I’m moving. There’s opposition. The devil doesn’t want this, but part of God’s plan is that I have to push against opposition to lay hold of something that Christ went to the cross so that I could possess. Praise God! That’s what God brings us to.
So, chapter, don’t ever reach chapter seven and say, that’s normal Christian life. I mean, I’ve seen that in the minds of some, well, that’s as good as it gets. Do you think God told us, unlock that truth so that we would say, well, there’s no real point in trying, is there? Do you think that’s what God was trying to communicate with that? No.
Well, there is if you’re gonna try it in your own strength, but that’s not meant to paint a picture of how life, what our life is supposed to look like, because then the devil takes that a step further. Well, in Christ you have liberty and suddenly liberty becomes a way for the flesh to have its way. Maybe we don’t go rob banks, but there’s all kinds of ways in which we indulge the flesh. And after all, God knows I’m not perfect and He loves me anyway. And there’s a whole lot of reasoning that goes on in people’s minds.
God didn’t save us to live for the flesh and to let it rule, He saved us so that we could learn to lay hold of a life that gives us the power to live a life pleasing to God. That’s what it’s about. And this is meant to work in our lives today, and tomorrow, and the next day.
This is not theology, folks, this is Christian life. This is the cross and the resurrection, and God wants you and me to be able to make so personal that we can read Paul’s words and see ourselves in there. Do you do that? Can you see yourself in this? I believe many can.
All I can do for everyone here is to just tell you the truth. Apart from Christ, this is your condition. The best you could possibly hope for is to say, yeah, I agree with you, but I’m powerless to do it. But God absolutely has made a way where you and I can serve God. The righteousness that was described in the law happens. It doesn’t happen because I do it myself. It happens because there’s another one living in me and by his strength I do it.
How did Jesus do what He did? We’ve made this point many times, ah, by myself, He said, I can do nothing, but it’s the Father living in me doing His work. How did He present Himself without spot? Hebrews says it’s, By the eternal Spirit He presented Himself without spot to God. That was divine power that enabled a human being to live a sinless life. And it’s that same power that, even though we’re not gonna get it right all the time, we could still, as I say, it’s not perfection, but it sure is direction.
If your heart is still married to your flesh and what it wants, you got a problem. We got some repenting to do. We gotta come to God and say, that’s not what life is about. It’s not about pleasing my flesh and seeking what the world offers. It’s about serving you.
Now, God can take us through, and give us things, and use us, and all of that, but it’s not about that. That never needs to possess our hearts. We need to be set free from that. And God has the power. He’s given us a Savior who is well able to save completely those who come to God by Him. Why? Because He ever lives.
And I just asked God to do whatever is right in His eyes, according to His purpose, the plan that He had before the foundation of the world to send His light into every single heart who hears this, put His finger on the need and then lift up the Savior and the provision. He’s never gonna leave you down in that hopeless place. He’s always gonna show you the need, but then lift up the Savior.
Praise God for a Savior who’s able to take us all the way home. Praise God! We have every reason to shout the victory today, not because we look inside but because we look up. That’s where our eyes need to be. And I’ll tell you the same one that took Paul through Romans 7 into Romans 8, is the One Who’s here this morning and wants us to get this maybe deeper than we’ve ever gotten it before.
I don’t think I’ve said anything I haven’t said before but don’t we need this? Don’t we need fresh reminders? I do. And God is so merciful and faithful. I just praise Him this morning for His strength ‘cause I sure didn’t have it. I barely felt like getting here this morning, but God is faithful. And I believe He’s born witness to His Word.
I like I say, I’ve struggled. Is this really you? Is this really you? And I have to keep coming back to, the devil hates this. The devil does not want the gospel unpacked so we get it because he knows it is his defeat. You remember the devil that Brother Thomas was dealing with at one time and was forced to tell what he was really most afraid of, and it was the blood of Christ and the cross. They know it spells their defeat.
Boy, we don’t have to let the devil win. Jesus won the victory at the cross, and He calls everyone that’s willing to turn from their own sin and hand their life over to Him. He promises a life you could never lose. Praise God! Praise God!
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August 4, 2024 - No. 1661
“Five Laws” Part One
Broadcast #1661
August 4, 2024
August 4, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1661 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, praise the Lord! You think the Lord’s trying to encourage us in our songs this morning? Anybody need encouragement? Absolutely, we are in a war and the devil is not happy. And I just confess, I have struggled with what I’ve had on my heart this morning and last week, which was with a bit of an interruption. But anyway, I believe the reason that for the struggle is the devil doesn’t like it.
If There’s one thing that he hates, it’s the truth of the gospel and what took place on the cross, what took place in the empty tomb. And he knows, he is terrified that people will understand the gospel.
And, as those of you who have been here recently know, we’ve been kind of going through Romans, the first part of Romans where Paul is unlocking the gospel that God had revealed to him, and that he had been commissioned to preach among the Gentiles. And I believe in all my heart, that’s a message that the devil has done everything in His power to compromise.
There are so many ways that people can somehow become Christians without really getting the depth of what the gospel is about. And so just very briefly in the way of introduction, Paul unlocks the fact that the whole human race is under the wrath of God and they’re under the wrath of God because that what they do know, they rebel against, they refuse to listen to it. They refuse to recognize God’s mercy and his patience that would lead them to repent. Instead, they choose to cling to their sin. Therefore, judgment hangs over this world.
And, of course, he had to deal with the fact that the Jews thought they were righteous because they had Moses’ law and they kept it up to a point in a fashion. And Paul has to come down to the point where he realizes, and he expresses that it doesn’t make any difference whether you know the law or you don’t. You’re still a sinner.
And he quotes a whole lot of scripture about that, where you have to come to a realization that sin reigns, that sin is a terrible power and that the people of the world live under a power called sin. And it’s not just a bunch of mistakes. It is a tremendous power that grips this planet that we need to understand if we’re gonna understand salvation, okay? And so that was what he was unlocking.
And he deals with the fact briefly that the law was given not to help the situation, but to reveal it. The law can’t help us. I mean, how many of you use a mirror to comb your hair, to wash your face? We understand the mirror is meant to be a reflection. We can go along with a lot of ideas about what we actually look like. Our hair could be a mess, our face could be all streaked with dirt. But a mirror shows us the truth about ourselves. And the first thing God has to do is to show us the truth about ourselves. And that was the purpose of the law in the first place. It was never given as a path so we could help ourselves to become righteous in God’s eyes.
And so he unlocks the simple truth that God has another way, that it’s what Jesus did in our place. He absolutely stepped in and took the guilt that was mine. He got what I deserved. And Paul was, I mean you’ll see as we go along, how real this was to Paul. This was not just some doctrine. He just didn’t look up a bunch of scriptures and say, Oh yeah, we’re all sinners. It had to become very personal, didn’t it?
But it was and so he unlocks the fact that the truth is revealed even in the Old Testament, that people are absolutely made righteous in God’s eyes, not by anything they do or any virtue that they present to God, but simply because God has made a provision and the person believes it and believes it in the face of everything that would rise up against it.
And I sense from the way the service has gone, that the devil has risen up quite a bit, hasn’t he? To tell you it can’t be so, it’s not for you. It’s 1,001 lies like Brother Ron was talking about. Well, he has done the same with me, but I thank God that he’s defeated.
And even as Abraham faced the facts that seemed to militate against the promise of God, seemed to make it impossible, he still believed God anyway. And folks, that’s what God is calling upon his people today to do.
I’ll guarantee for everyone who really knows the Lord and has been seeking him and seeking to walk with him, you have encountered things this week that seem impossible and seem to just fight it and say, This cannot be. Well, that’s the devil’s job. God is bringing forth a people who will stand in the face of that. But we are not gonna stand because of any virtue or any ability in us. We’re gonna stand because we steadfastly believe in what God did for us on the cross through Jesus Christ, his Son, thank God. And so Abraham was declared a righteous man.
And then you begin to get into chapter five where he unlocks, he gives a hint that, okay, now we made the point, I’ll back up. We made the point that there are two problems that we have. One is what we have done, that’s the guilt. But the other is that our utter inability to live up to the glory of God, God created us to be glorious beings in fellowship with him ruling over a perfect creation, that got thoroughly messed up in the garden when Adam made the wrong choice. And he has passed that choice and the conflict, the results of that onto every single one of us. And so God is dealing, God dealt with the guilt of our sins by punishing Christ in our place, okay?
But now he begins to unlock the fact that brings us into a relationship with God, where instead of living under His wrath, we live under His grace. And what is grace? It’s God’s power at work saving sinners. It’s an active thing. It’s God literally intervening in the life of a helpless sinner to give me power I just don’t have. Anybody need that? Yeah. That’s the only way we stand, it’s by grace, okay? And our confidence in that needs to be in that and not in the things that we see and feel.
And, of course, he talks about the fact that we are sinners because we were born into a family, but we’re righteous because we’re born into a different family. And we receive not just a certificate of membership in the family, but we receive the life that was in Jesus. It’s not just about the cross, it’s about the empty tomb and the life that brought him forth. That’s the life that he shares with everyone who comes to him, by the way of the cross.
Praise God, praise God, I have no way to get to that. That’s something that I was gonna say at some point this morning. And I think this would be as good a place as any. Our world today is full of deception of every kind. One of those deceptions is, or one kind of deception is, the devil will invent every way that he can think of to present a version of so-called Christianity and Christian faith that bypasses the cross.
Oh we got a Jesus who loves us so much, all we had to do is believe in him, or we just believe in him in this mental sense and accept, Okay, I accept him, quote unquote. And he died for my sin, so I get to go to heaven. It misses the cross, it misses the reason why he died. It misses the depth of our need. Oh, may God help us to face the facts of why he had to die.
Praise God and of course, remember chapter six gets into the wonderful other fact that we need to realize. When we are guilty, when we do something, when we fall short, what do we do? Where do we go for forgiveness? And on what ground do we go to Him? By the blood of Christ, well, where did that happen? That was on the cross, wasn’t it? We look to the cross and say, just, Yes Lord, I need help. I need forgiveness, I don’t deserve it. There’s no way I could make up for this.
The devil will trick people into thinking, I gotta make up for being a sinner. No you don’t, Jesus already paid the price. That’s what we’ve been singing this morning, praise God! What he did was a full and complete sacrifice for my sins. I look there with faith that God has already punished that sin. And if I’m willing to agree with him about it and not soft pedal it and say, Oh I’m sorry I made a boo boo, but realize where that came from and how much I need Him, there’s a forgiveness we can be as clean as if it had never ever happened. Praise God, what a salvation, what an amazing thing.
But now in chapter six, he comes to a different point where it’s not just about after the fact, okay, I’ve messed up, where do I go? He says we need to go to the cross before we do that, why? Because it wasn’t just that he died in my place, it’s that I died in him. I died, I was there. That’s a hard thing for us to wrap our minds around, but God did something. In fact, he took the whole human race into that grave with him, judged for the sin that rules this planet.
So, I died with him, what does that mean? That means I’ve been set free from my old master. Now, I may not understand that. I may have to learn how to not agree with that old master because he’ll come along and give me all kinds of orders. But I have the power and the right, the right to say, no, and to learn how to recognize that I’ve not only died there, but I was raised to a new life. I have a new master.
And so chapter six is not just about saying, no, to what’s wrong, it’s saying, yes, to what’s right and saying, I have the power to actually live a life that is pleasing to God, not because of any power I possess, but because of what he did for me. I was there and so I get to live out something that is history.
[Audience] Yes.It’s wonderful that I can think about, Oh, I’m gonna get in all kinds of situations and his grace will be there to help me. Well, the problem is we get into situations. We don’t feel His grace, we don’t feel like it. It doesn’t look like it. The devil’s telling us 1,001 contrary things. But God wants us to unpack these different aspects of the gospel, to see the cross in the light that God revealed it to his servant, Paul.
There’s a reason God is unpacking this in this kind of detail. He wants us to understand what He did for us so that we can benefit, we can walk in that truth. Praise God, praise God! Anybody need to learn more about this? I mean, I know that in a way, a lot of this is repetitious, but I need this. I don’t just need it in general. I need it this morning because I feel my need. I feel my weakness, I feel the enemy just fighting this. He has done everything in his power to discourage me from even talking about some of these things. But he is a liar, praise God!
All right, and then we come to chapter seven and it’s awfully easy when you read this to say, What in the world is that? That’s a discouraging chapter. Why do I have to wade through all that stuff? That’s just a real downer. I mean, here I am trying to get encouraged and all that does is tear me down and make me feel bad.
But do you believe there’s a reason why the Lord put this in here? Do you think it has a place? Do you think there’s a need for it? Well, one thing that he does make a point in the first part of this chapter and it looks to the cross about something else because when we are just simply part of the world and does not God’s law reign over us? Are we not responsible to what God says is right and wrong? Yeah, we’re under that law. In fact, that’s what the cross is about. It’s the condemnation that results from our not obeying that law. That’s why we’re put to death.
But what Paul makes the point is this, we didn’t just die to sin, we died to the law itself. Do you know the law has been taken off the table? That sounds an awful lot like you could see the devil taking that in the wrong direction? But that’s not the point, God has taken us out from under an old master, one that we could never live up to but it’s God.
And he uses a simple illustration, in God’s design now, marriage is ‘til death do us part. And so he talks about the situation where a woman is bound by that law to her husband as long as he lives, but if he dies, then she’s free to marry somebody else. Well, we have died to the law, why? So that we could just be free and do as we please? No, so that we could be married to another. God wants us to be married in this sense spiritually to His Son, so that that life that’s in him gets reproduced in us. And we’ve been set free from the power of the law to do that, praise God!
So now he gets into some things, some of it, I’m not gonna try to unpack every bit of it, even if I thought I could.
(audience laughs)
So anyway, verse, what is it? Four of chapter seven. So my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ. Why? That you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead. Now why is that, what’s the purpose of that? Why is that significant? In order that we might bear fruit for God.
Anybody here has power to bear fruit for God apart from this? See that’s the whole point of the gospel. The gospel has got to paint a true, honest picture of our need before it’s ever really worth anything, before it’s ever really the gospel, okay? And I see in this passage, God took Paul through some deep waters to get him to that point.
But anyway, it says, For when we were in the realm of the flesh, that was the dominating principle in our lives, in other words, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us. Now what’s he talking about there? You remember how he talked about earlier that the law actually comes along and makes it worse? Why? Because what does human nature do when law is imposed on it, it says, Uh uh. There’s automatically this resistance, this rebellion.
And so one of the things that God did was to impose the law so that our problem would become more obvious. It’s more than just a mirror that I can look in. It actually provokes the very thing that’s wrong with me, okay? That’s what he’s saying there.
They were at work in us so that the result of that was we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we were prisoners, weren’t we? By dying to what once bound us, we have become released. We have been released from the law, why? So that we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. So there are two ways to serve God that Paul’s gonna deal with here. Now, this is a, well, let me go ahead.
For what shall we say then? What’s the conclusion of this? Does that make the law sinful? If sin is made worse, it rises up because the law is imposed. Does that make the law sinful? No, that’s not the point at all. Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law, for I would not have known what coveting was, really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’?
What’s coveting by the way? You want something that belongs to somebody else, you’re jealous, there’s a selfish possession, spirit of possession there, okay? So he says, I wouldn’t have even known that was wrong until God had told me it was.
All right, But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment…. There’s a principle in us that actually takes advantage of God’s law when it’s imposed, it rises up and takes a deeper hold and deeper control. That’s the problem, folks, and you know what? Well, I’ll get to it in a minute, but praise God!
All right, Sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment produced in me every kind of coveting, for apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I’m not gonna try to unpack that. People have tried to explain it. The Bible doesn’t explain it beyond that. But one thing it does mean is there’s a sense of responsibility that comes with light and with truth, with the knowledge of what’s right and wrong. Once we know that we’re responsible, okay? I’ll leave the rest in God’s hands as to how that’s applied, okay?
I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me. And it was though, Oh God, I got this wonderful way I can be righteous. And sin just took over and said, Uh uh, no way, all right?
Deceived me and through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did that which is good then become death to me? By no means, nevertheless, now, here’s a key, In order that sin might be recognized as sin. It used what is good to bring about my death so that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful.
Do you see where God’s going with this? He talks about in chapter two about the goodness and the patience of God that would lead men to repentance. But how can we be led to true repentance if we don’t know what we need to repent it of?
[Audience] That’s right.God has got to show us the absolute unvarnished truth about ourselves, okay? So Paul goes on, all right, We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual sold as a slave to sin. Now this is the passage that’s confusing because you read it and you say, My God, is this what Paul’s life was like? That doesn’t make any sense. Here’s Paul the Apostle, and he’s painting a gloomy picture of struggle and strife and total failure.
You know I believe with all my heart that God has to take us through deep personal experiences many times to reveal truth to us. We can hear things in scripture, but unless we go through them, it doesn’t really become personal. You could read for example, all of the scriptures that Paul quotes from the Old Testament. There’s none righteous, no not one, and on and on and on. All those scriptures that are absolutely true. But oh my God, don’t we need to be able to see the true condition of our own heart?
We all come to the gospel with different preconditions and preconceptions is the word I want. And some of them are religious, some of them are just natural, the way the world thinks, the way we see ourselves, the way we’ve been taught to see ourselves. And that gets in the way of truth.
Think about Paul’s background, what was Paul’s background? Yeah, he was a Pharisee, he was known as Saul in those days. Now, what was the deal with the Pharisees? They were a religious sect among the Jews that had built a religion out of the law of Moses. Now they made some very convenient interpretations of that, but nonetheless, they had compiled for themselves a religion of do’s and don’ts of religious practices. And in their minds, As long as I do that, God will accept me and count me as one of the righteous.
You remember what Jesus said on several occasions, He talked from the first place, He talked about there their being like cups. They’re beautiful and washed on the outside, but you don’t dare look inside ‘cause it is full of all kinds of corruption. So that’s what your religion is like.
But he also talked about the day when a Pharisee and a tax collector, tax collectors were despised as crooked collaborators with Rome, sinners, looked down upon by the religious. And so this Pharisee gets in there and prays, I thank you Lord that I’m not like other men. I do this, I do that, I do the other. I’m especially glad I’m not like him.
Oh my God, but do you see something in that? Do you see someone who has any idea what’s in here? What does the Lord say in the Old Testament, Man looks, where? On the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. And so here was a man who had no clue what the true condition of his heart was and he was just presenting himself as you know, Here I am, I’ve done all this. Therefore, you regard me as righteous, you accept me. I’m so proud, and used it to look down.
Folks, we have no way, if we know the true condition of our heart apart from Christ, there is not a person on this planet we have the right to look down upon, not one.
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July 28, 2024 - No. 1660
“Salvation II” Conclusion
Broadcast #1660
July 28, 2024
July 28, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1660 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: God is going to take us, take a people out of this dark world and take us all the way to a place where we will stand there robed in the glory of God. And we will be so bright that people here, it’d burn their eyes out to look at us. Do you really believe that God has that purpose for you? Has He ever made that real? I pray that He will because if we can get the reality of that, I don’t mean just some emotional thing, but I mean, if we can get the reality of that where we can believe Him, we can stand in these times, and know that He is right here in the now.
We now stand, why? Because of his grace is right here now. We know what He did, we know where we’re going, but He’s also here. And that’s what I need. I need Him this moment. I need Him right now. We’re doing what I’m doing. I can’t do this, but I am looking to him for his power and his grace.
Thank God, so we glory in our sufferings. Why would we do something crazy like that? Oh, it says, Because, there’s a cause, there’s a reason we know that suffering produces, or pressure produces perseverance. Now, if I am going in a certain direction and I encounter resistance of some kind, but I keep going, do you see how that works on that quality in me, that ability to keep going, that’s what perseverance is, patience.
That’s willing to say, I am not gonna give up just because there’s a pressure here. Just because it gets hard, I’m not gonna give up. I see that it’s worth everything to know Him. His purpose is worth everything. Not only that, I know He’s with me to help me in the process. So I am willing to cooperate with Him in the outworking of part two salvation. Okay? He’s brought me to this place. I have a relationship with Him. Now, He’s calling me to walk through something because there’s something He’s accomplishing in me. Praise God!
You know, this is a good place to perhaps drop in I thought I started to say a while ago. There’s a life that’s been born in the heart of everyone that’s been born of Him. See, that’s what… We gotta come to a place where we’re in full agreement with Him. We’ve turned from our sin and handed our life over, but we’ve also invited Him to come in and live. Yes. And in part, a new heart and a new life. Yes. And He’s done that.
How does Peter describe that? What have we been born of? He compares the new birth to an incorruptible seed. Now, what’s a corruptible seed? It’s part of this world, is this death. I mean, it just doesn’t last. Life that is born into this world is subject to what? Death. It can’t last. Everything about this world is corrupt.
And of course we know again is destiny, but there is a life that is born into the heart of every person that is born of His Spirit. It’s an incorruptible life. You can’t kill it. (chuckles) Thank God! That’s what gives me the hope that He’s put something in me. But He wants that to grow up and become more like Him. He wants me to learn how to live that out and not my old nature.
And the only way that’s gonna happen is he’s gonna have to put me in situations that show me my old nature trying to resist and trying to get in the way. But He wants me to come to a place where my default reaction is to go to Him and say, Lord, you’re showing me what I need. You’re showing me what’s wrong, what’s lacking here, but you’ve promised me to take me through. Lord, help me right now to stand, to rely upon your ability to get through this and to triumph and to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. That’s perseverance.
Do you see where we’ve got every resource we need? That’s what the Lord wants you and me to get today. Because we will absolutely, if we don’t really get this, man, life is a struggle. Trying to quote, “serve God,” is a struggle. I mean it’s a fight regardless. But if we’re fighting without this knowledge, my God, what a terrible battle it is. Thank God that we can actually come to a place where we see that, you see what God is doing.
We talked about putting ourselves in the potter’s hand. What’s that about? Is that not surrendering our will and our plans and saying, Lord, you’ve got a purpose for me. That’s what I want. And so I am trusting You to work out Your purpose, to shape me according to what Your plan is for me. And I know in the process You’re going to want me to exercise the Spirit that you have put in me. You’re gonna give me the ability to do that. So everything comes from you.
But do you see how it has to involve us? He is wanting… Again, what did Abraham do when God told him to do something or when He promised him something? He believed. Do you see where that same pattern, there was something that was totally impossible, but God had promised. Abraham persistently believed God and it came to pass.
Is that not what He’s called us to do? Everything that he’s talking about, this pathway to glory is totally impossible, but God’s promised and God has supplied everything that we need. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us walking in faith, looking to Him, dealing with issues as they arise in our lives and they will arise.
But all we can get to a point where he said, Oh, what next? Oh, poor me. I need a box of chocolates, or whatever. God wants us to get to the point where we just say, Praise God, I understand what’s going on and I know what God’s doing and I know where it’s going to lead. This is awesome where God has given me the chance to experience Him.
Isn’t that what this is about? It’s wonderful to know about God, but how are we going to experience Him unless we do it on the field of battle in situations where we need Him and we can’t handle it, which is like all the time. We just don’t know that. But God’s helping us, isn’t He? And so you’ve got this pattern worked out of perseverance and character. And character brings hope.
So, there’s this building of our… There’s this growing up of a life that He’s planted in here, but He wants us to cooperate in the growth process. And yet He supplied everything we need.
You go back to chapter two sometime and you look at the judgment, when God is gonna judge everybody and they fall into two categories. You got those that are stubborn and clinging to their sin, but you’ve got others who through perseverance, seek after glory and so forth, and He’s gonna give them eternal life. So, you’ve got people that agree with sin and people who persevere. That’s two categories. Which are you in?
We need the Lord, don’t we? Yes. But, oh, how faithful He is. This is salvation, part two. Getting rid of our sins and the guilt is awesome, but I need something that goes way beyond that. I need something to help me live out what He wants and to be the kind of person He wants. I can’t do that, but He gives me what I need. Okay?
None of this is new, but I just pray that God will make it new because I know that everyone, everyone that knows Him especially, you’re in a place right now where you need Him. You’re in a place where things are difficult. In fact, you may be in a situation, it looks totally impossible. Ain’t no way I can handle this. Lord, I can’t deal with this. God help me. I see this need in me or I see this situation, God, you’ve dropped me in a place that’s totally impossible.
Yeah, He did. Why would He do that? Because He wants to make Himself real to you. He wants to get me and every one of us to the point where we are gonna trust Him and believe Him in the battle and draw from Him the strength to do what is right in His eyes and know that we don’t have to give in. It doesn’t have to defeat us. Yes, there’s a terrible power that’s gonna do everything in its power to hold us back and fight against this. But there is a greater power. Thank God. Thank God!
Boy, I haven’t even gotten through the first few verses here, have I? Character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out. See, that’s the other thing. It’s not just, Okay, I’m for you. This is love motivating everything. God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit has been given to us.
Thank God! “You see it just the right time when we were still powerless. Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love….”
It’s wonderful thing. It’s one thing for God to say, I love you. But how do we know that? We look at the cross, we look at what He did for undeserving, helpless, hopeless sinners. He demonstrated it. I pray that God will help us to learn how to put our love, put the love He puts in us into action. But, “He demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Thank God! Okay?
“Since we now have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him.” Now he’s going into destiny? “For if while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life?”
Now, do you see salvation’s part one and two? It’s pretty plain there, isn’t it? We’re reconciled through his death. You know, I have oftentimes mentioned this, I’ve done this overseas in seminars and I’ll point out to somebody. You know that we’re not saved by Christ’s death. They look at me. We are reconciled by his death. The thing that separates us from a holy God was done away by the blood of Jesus Christ.
But the salvation he’s talking about here is now is the answer to, now what? Because if all God did was to wipe away my guilt, erase my rap sheet, that doesn’t help me. I’m still the same person who created that rap sheet. I need a salvation from me.(chuckles) I need something to happen to the guy who created all those sins. That’s what salvation is about.
How does such a thing happen? Obviously, you can’t just give me rules to go by. I need something more powerful than that sin that would hold me captive. I need the power of divine life born in my heart and in my life. That’s what saves me. And so all of salvation is learning how to cooperate with his life that is living in me. Praise God!
I don’t know how far to take this. But anyway, I think I will just summarize a lot of the rest of this pretty quickly. He goes into the fact of how we became sinners. How did you become a sinner? We were born that way. We were born that way. Okay. In other words, our first father, Adam, deliberately rebelled and sinned against God and it corrupted the very life that he had in him. And that is what has been passed.
So you talk about the past determining destiny. That’s a pretty good example. He brought forth a race of people who live under the wrath of God. And it’s not just that they sort of automatically do it. It’s they agree with it. If you point it out, they agree with it and they rebel against the light that would point it out.
But God has started another family. He sent His Son to that cross. I mean one act of sin brought sin upon the whole race and death as a result of it. But one act of obedience dealt with all of the sins of the world and brought forth a brand new life and a brand new family. And what God shares with us is not just the forgiveness from the cross and the blood and all the wonderful things that stands for, but it’s the life that came out of that too. There is a brand new family that has been born and that’s what determines our destiny. Thank God!
You know, we’ve used the example before of the corn of wheat, the grain of wheat. And you could ask, if I hold this, what am I holding? I’m holding, you know, you could say it’s one seed, but what happens when part of that dies, that needs to die and part of it lives? It grows up, doesn’t it? There’s life in there that has the power to sprout out and to create more and to create more and to create more.
And just like Adam’s life got proliferated through the whole human race, there’s a life in Jesus Christ that absolutely is shared with everyone who bows the knee and surrenders their heart and their life to him. There’s a life born in here that cannot die. And you want a foundation for Christian living. What is my hope of glory, by the way, in Colossians? What hope does somebody like me have to wind up in a place of glory one day and stand there and shine like the sun? What’s my hope? Christ. Christ in me. Nothing less, nothing short. I have got to have Him in me.
And what God is doing for every single one of us right now, this is where this is relevant. God will put you and me in situations and you’re probably in one right now or in several where the only resource, if we’re gonna really stand and go forward with Him, we’re gonna have to look to Him. We’re gonna have to be honest about needs that He exposes in us. Bring them to Him, lay them in His feet, believe in Him. Trust in Him for the grace and the strength to do what He said and what He wants us to do.
And we’re gonna grow and we’re gonna become more like Him. We’re gonna experience this God. He is not interested in having a bunch of theology students and learning all about it with our heads. He wants you to know Him. He wants you to know how much He loves you. He wants you to be so connected to His plans, His eternal plans for you, that you are able to see past everything that this world has to offer. Praise God!
There’s one scripture that I wanted to touch on just very briefly ‘cause it’s toward the end of the passage. And he talks about in verse 17, I think it is, “For if by the trespass, the sin of the one man,” that’s Adam, right? So, if by his sin, “death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness” do what? “Reign” where? “In life.” How? “Through that one man, Jesus Christ.”
That’s what salvation is all about. Do you see, again, salvation is part one and two? He does away with the trespasses. But there is a grace that enables us to navigate this life and to be victorious. Not because we’re something, not because we have feelings even, but simply the ability to put one foot in front of another and rejoice in Him and praise Him and thank Him, offer the sacrifice of praise that we sing about and say, Lord, I know that there are parts of me that are dying, but I know there’s a part you put in here that’s gonna live forever.
That’s what this life is about. It’s not about what I can accomplish here. Everything is about what You’re accomplishing in me that will last forever. And I want to walk in the experience of real salvation. I thank You that You did away with my rap sheet, but now I want to become the person you intended for me to be in the beginning. I wanna see not just the cross in the end of my sins, but I wanna see the resurrection.
Didn’t Paul say I wanna know him? The power of his resurrection, conform to his death, all those things. And he made that the goal of his life. Somehow Paul saw the connection between what God did in history and the destiny and the fact that there’s not a thing that can stop that. That’s what He’s called us to step into.
But we need to be participants in that. And how do we do that? Everything we need has been given by Him. I’ll tell you to Him, be the glory. Part of me says, Who am I to preach this? You need it as bad as the people do, and I agree, I do. There are things in me right now that I need, but I know I’m not alone. God doesn’t choose perfect people to do what I’m doing. It’s a good thing ‘cause we don’t have any. But I’ll tell you what, God wants us to know, wants us to take this word to heart and realize you have what you need.
Do you understand what your life is about? Do you understand the basis of that has already happened, history has happened. The destiny is not something that we just sorta hope somehow. This is something that God will work out in us when all He wants us to do is just to believe Him and to persist in believing Him. And he’s gonna give you the strength even to do that.
That’s why he says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good purpose.” And you see how grace is not just this vague thing, it’s God’s power at work, saving sinners. Well, that’s me. I need Him. I need Him this morning, but He’s faithful. He’s gonna take us through.
I don’t care what it is in your life right now, where you see something that’s wrong in you or some situation you can’t handle. You have every right to bring it to Him. If you’re His, if you surrendered your life in Him, you stand by grace. That means He looks upon you, not with disgust and contempt because you’re in a weak place. He looks upon you with mercy and with favor and with love and says, I’m here to help. Believe Me, trust Me. Look to Me, bring this to Me. Experience My salvation in a fresh way. Right here, right now.
Salvation is a very progressive thing. Didn’t Paul talk about the message being foolishness to those who are perishing? That’s right. But to us who are being saved. So, there, he talks about the process to us who are being saved. It is what? The power of God.
You see that theme everywhere in the scriptures? Salvation parts one and two. We’re in the middle of part two. If you know Him, if you don’t know Him, oh my God, you need Him. Yes. If you don’t know Him, you’re under the wrath of God. You will look at the cross if you wanna know what your destiny is.
But that destiny can change because of Jesus. And I’ll tell you, when He calls your name, you say, Here am I, Lord. I surrender. I hand my life. This life I can’t keep anyway. I hand it over to you. Change me. Give me the new heart, the new life. Let the old one perish. I’m done with it, Lord. I just want you and I know that, and I’m gonna live from this point on looking forward to where this is headed. And I know it’s headed. I know where it’s headed. It’s headed to glory. It’s not because I can engineer any of that. It’s because of what you’ve done. Praise God! Praise the Lord!
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July 21, 2024 - No. 1659
“Salvation II” Part One
Broadcast #1659
July 21, 2024
July 21, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1659 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, you know, my thoughts have, as we indicated last week, gone to the book of Romans. And last week, we talked about salvation part one, which was kind of a, I don’t know what Alan will do with that title, but we’ll see. But anyway, salvation is more than most people think of.
Most people, as I say, think of simply the forgiveness of sins and thereby, we get to go to heaven. But there is so much more to it. And that’s absolutely part one, because if my sins are not gone, then I’m in trouble.
But anyway, Paul, as we, just to give a brief review, Paul wrote to the Roman believers. He hadn’t been there yet, he had hoped to go and wanted to. He just had this burden, no doubt he was in prison at the time, had this burden to write to them. And one of the things that the Lord laid on his heart, and I’m glad he did, was to lay out the gospel that he preached in very clear terms, just reasoning it out, going through all the aspects of it, in such a wonderful, clear way.
And he writes to those that are called to belong to Jesus Christ, called to be his holy people. So it’s not a ticket to live as we please, is it? It’s calling us out of something into something else.
And so, you know, we talked about how he spoke of man’s condition in general as being in rebellion. He knows something about God, knows enough about God to be responsible. And yet he takes what he knows about God, and literally there’s something in him that rebels against and resists it, wants to go his own way. And the result of that is the wrath of God rests upon this planet.
You know, we’ve talked many times about how something was set in motion at the cross that is absolutely gonna happen. God set a plan in motion, there’s nothing anybody can do to change that, not the devil, not any person, it’s going to happen. And, you know, oftentimes, and I think we rightly emphasize that that has to do with what He did regarding us. That we were there, we participated, and there was something set in motion that absolutely determines our destiny and carries us through until that. And that’s absolutely true.
But I wonder how many times you’ve thought about it from this standpoint, when God judged Jesus, it was not just for my sin, it was for the sin of the world. We have said this before in the past, but he died as a representative of this corrupted creation. When God poured out his wrath upon his Son, he was pouring it out upon his creation. And we are living in the interim between that, that historical event that absolutely determines the destiny of this world, and the fulfillment of it.
You wanna know what the destiny of this world is, and everything it stands for? I don’t care, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything in this world is literally, you wanna know what its destiny is, you look at the cross. And you know that it lives, it exists under the wrath of God.
And, of course, Paul, you know, went on to describe the condition because a lot of Jews, the situation, because a lot of Jews regarded themselves as different from everybody else. The gentile world was in darkness, they had the prophets, they had the law, we’re good. And Paul made the point over and over again that that’s not what it’s based on. It doesn’t matter, God has fixed it to where everybody is under not just sin, but the power of sin.
And that’s why he said at the beginning, the gospel that he preached was the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. It’s not just religious doctrine, not just some formulaic thing that we think about and we just sort of believe it. I need power, how many of you need power? Yeah, I need something that is way beyond me. I need God to do something for me that’s impossible for me to do. And that’s the gospel that he preached.
And you know, we went over, we’ve alluded to the fact that God is absolutely a just God, He has to punish sin. You can’t ignore sin if you have a law that says the sinner must die, that law has gotta be fulfilled or He’s not being just, it was fulfilled. But His Son stepped in, willingly as our representative. And like they did in the Old Testament, those who come to Him, we put our hands on the head of the sacrifice and say, basically, that’s me.
You know, we sang the song this morning, I should have been crucified. He got what I deserved. But oh, he’s willingly stepped in to fulfill the Father’s plan, to open a door of hope for a hopeless people. Thank God this morning that we have all the ground that we need. It’s not just a hope so that, oh, I hope God fulfills what He’s… Oh, man, you wanna see what’s destiny is about, you can look at history. History determines our destiny, folks, if we can believe it. God wants us to come to understand that in a deeper way, and understand how that works out.
So anyway, of course, Paul dealt also with the question of how we enter into this. How do we come to a place where our sins are gone? Do we somehow work for it? And, of course, he spends chapter four talking about Abraham and how he came into a relationship where God said, You are righteous in my eyes.
Now, is there anybody here who can do something and cause God to say that about you? No, there was something that God instituted right there that absolutely sets the pattern and tells us what He is looking for. All we have to do is look at Abraham, and we see a man who heard God speak to him, who believed not simply the words, but the person behind the words, to the point that whenever God spoke, he believed what He said.
When God told him to do something, he did it. When every circumstance that could possibly rise up to say no, it can’t happen, he believed it anyway. There was a persistence in saying, I don’t care, God has spoken. I don’t care what rises up to say it’s impossible, I know it’s gonna be true because God said it. That’s exactly what he’s looking for from me.
How many of you run into impossibilities in your own life, and the devil just jumps all over you and say, look, you know, I know it’s a great thing, but not you. Oh my God, God wants to bring us to a place of such confidence that we can move ahead and enjoy what He has given.
And, you know, we talked last week also about the fact that coming into faith is not just some superficial thing. Abraham had to face some facts about himself. The impossibility of him fulfilling the role of being the father of many nations. His wife’s womb was dead. She was what, 90 years old when the son was born? And he was 100 years old, that was history. There was no human way that that could be fulfilled. And yet, he believed God and it was.
Folks, you and I have to come to terms with the reality of what we are. It says in the scripture, he faced the fact that his body was dead and his wife’s womb was dead and all that. And folks, when we come to faith, we have to face the facts. God has to show us the truth about ourselves, to the point where we realize that we are sinners, we are guilty, we are deserving of death, that we have no power to save ourselves, and we need a savior.
And oh boy, when we surrender to that truth and say, okay, I’m done, I surrender, I’m in your hands. You’re the potter, I’m the clay. How many songs did we sing this morning that just expressed all of these simple truths? My life is in your hands, and you’re gonna have to take care of something I have no power to deal with.
And thank God, thank God the guilt of my sins was taken away simply, not because I earned it, not because I could possibly deserve it, but because I put my faith in what God said He did at that cross. And it’s not something I’m waiting for him to somehow work out. I look back and there it is, it’s the cross. He knew about me and all of the depth of my need that I’m still discovering. I’m still finding out why He had to save me, and why it’s impossible for me to do anything about it. But at every point, I look back and I realize there’s a God who knew about me, who did something for me long before I discovered America.
And here I am in such need, and He doesn’t look to me and say, okay, here’s what’s wrong with you, fix it. He says, look to me, look at the cross. Look at what I did. I did something there that absolutely, you can bank your eternal destiny on, on what I did for you at the cross. That’s what we’re called to, folks. Thank God!
When God can bring us to the point of faith and surrender and repentance, all these things that we know about, God, I mean, then we’re in a position where, you know, salvation part one is taken care of, because God has taken care of the guilt of our sins, the things that separated us from a holy God. And now we have the freedom to have a relationship with a holy God. That’s incredible!
Think again of the picture that God painted so many times of Isaiah seeing the glory of God, the purity of God, and realizing in a moment of time, the truth about himself. And yet he found a God that did something about that, didn’t he? There was a coal that was taken off of the altar and it touched the very thing that he was conscious of. Oh, everything I say is wrong because I’m wrong. And the Lord touched his lips with a sacrificial coal of a sacrificial altar and took care of that.
My God, I need that same God. We need that same God. But thank God, He’s available. That’s what the good news is about. That’s what caused Paul to get up in the morning, caused Paul to write all of these things in spite of languishing in prison. That wasn’t what his life was about, he saw that was beyond all of this. And that’s what God wants us to see.
And so salvation part two is, I mean, chapters 5 through 8 in particular delve into that. And I have wrestled with, how in the world do you deal with all of this? Because there’s so much, so many aspects of truth that are all important. And Paul is step by step going through this. And I think I’m just gonna start and I don’t know how far we’ll get, but I’m not gonna worry about it. Lord, that’s up to you. You take my thoughts and guide them, because I don’t know what to do with it.
But the question really you have to raise when, all right, now the relationship is there, the barrier is gone. Sins are gone, I’m forgiven, now what? Because it’s pretty obvious that we can come into that relationship with God, and yet here we are still living in this broken world. What’s that about? What’s God’s purpose? How do we navigate that? What does salvation mean, in terms of our having to live here? Does God give us, as some people actually think, does God give us a license to sin by just blotting out our sins, or is He calling us to be his holy people?
Well, I don’t have any power to do that. You remember what the problem was, when He said all have sinned? That’s one, so we all have a rap sheet that’s enough to enough to send us to the judgment and wrath. We all have the rap sheet, we have sin, but it goes on and says, we fall short, we continue to fall short. There’s nothing we can do but fall short.
And all you have to do is see a glimpse of glory, as different ones did in the scriptures. And we know, whoa, I’m not like that. And yet, here we are. And does God have a plan for dealing with that? And if so, what is his plan?
Okay, so chapter 5, let’s just kind of look at some of these things. And I don’t know how long we’ll hang on particular scriptures, but I’m just gonna start. Therefore, all right, in view of salvation part one, and the fact that it’s based upon coming to a place of confidence and faith in him, surrender, facing facts, all of that.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,” thank God for the past tense there, thank God. If you’ve come to that place of surrendering your life and putting all of your hope in what He did at the cross, there is something that is in place right now. I have a clean, erased rap sheet. What an amazing, amazing thing. How could such a thing be? We have been justified, declared righteous. There is nothing that God can charge me with, because it’s all been paid for and taken care of. His wrath has already been poured out upon my sin, thank God. We’ve been justified through faith, again, that’s the ticket to get into this place. We have peace with God, all right?
There is a relationship where you look down in the passage and you find out we were his enemies. Well, now we’ve come into a state of peace. There is a surrender. We’ve changed sides, folks. If you’re still a part of this world system and this is where your heart is, you haven’t entered in. God calls us to a separation from the heart, the purpose of this world. We live here, but we’re not of this world, we’re of citizens of a heavenly kingdom. And that’s what our eyes need to be focused upon, it and His purposes.
And God has made every provision. You know, we just sang the song this morning that says He’ll give you everything. He’s not talking about Cadillacs and mansions. He’s talking about everything we need for the fulfillment of His purpose that He has declared. He set the ball rolling at the cross and the resurrection, but boy, it’s got everything you and I need. Anybody need anything this morning? That’s what the Lord wants us to get, because we all need him this morning, starting with me. Thank God, the peace with God, that’s the foundation. Now I’m in a relationship with Him, now what?
All right, and, of course, it’s through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now it says, “Through whom we have,” once again the past tense, “We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” Now, I’m quite sure, I haven’t looked this up, but I’m quite sure that have gained access is that wonderful Greek perfect tense. It looks to something that has happened in the past, but it’s not just an event that’s come and gone. This is something that has happened in the past, but there is an ongoing result.
See, everyone here has at some point in the past, walked through the doors of the church. Is that right? You have come. Well, I’m also saying not only you came through the doors, but you’re still here. That’s the perfect tense, you’ve got both senses, all captured in that one Greek tense. We have gained access, that means we have it. Thank God, access by faith again, into something, into this grace in which we now stand.
I’ve had that phrase come to my mind time and time again, but I just pray that God will help us to see something. You know, all the world is under the wrath of God. That’s how God sees people who are in rebellion against him. But now, He’s talking about a different place. He’s talking about a place that he calls grace.
Imagine if you were in a place of danger and you knew that judgment was gonna fall and there was no way to escape it. And then all of a sudden, you found out that there was a place and it was a place of safety, it was a place where that threat was gone. And now, how do I get in there? How in the world can I leave this terrible place that I find myself? How can I get into that place of safety?
And, of course, it’s through Jesus Christ and what he’s done and our confidence in him. He has opened a door into a place that has a wall around it. It walls off all human virtue, all human effort, anything except the grace of God. He is the door through which we enter. Thank God for the Son of God, for what he was willing to do so that we could enter into a place. We could leave the place where wrath of God reigns, and we could step into a place where grace reigns.
And I feel like my definition of grace has evolved. You know, that traditional “unmerited favor” is a little bit, you know, it doesn’t really go into the depth of it. And when we’re talking about having been under the power of sin, I need something that’s got some power to it, got more power than sin does. And so, grace is God’s power at work, saving sinners. How’s that for a definition? God’s power at work, saving sinners.
And you could add unworthy sinners if you want, but I mean, that’s what I need. I need God at work if anything’s gonna change. He can’t just say, okay, here’s the plan, you do it, and leave it to my resources. It ain’t gonna happen. I need absolutely the intervention of God at every point.
And that’s what He wants, that’s what He’s teaching us, ‘cause we don’t live that way naturally. We run in our own wisdom and our own strength. We blindly live out our lives so much of the time, and we don’t realize what His purpose is, we’re blind to it. And when we face something, we don’t remember we’re in a place of grace.
And grace has so many aspects. It’s not just the strength that He exerts, that He gives us and all of that. It’s His favor. It is His favor, okay? It means instead of regarding me as his enemy, deserving of His wrath and just awaiting that day when that’s gonna happen, now he sees me as His child. He loves me, He’s for me.
How many of you can get up in the morning, and you know in your heart and you believe actively in your heart, God loves me, He’s for me? He knows everything that’s wrong with me, and He loves me anyway. And everything He wants me to do, He’s ready, He’s there with His arms outstretched saying, I’m here. I’m here not to punish you, not to be mad at you, I’m here to help you. I know you need things that you don’t have in yourself, I get that, that’s why it’s called salvation. But I have brought you into a place now, where this is how I see you.
Folk, do we see ourselves that way? Do we really? I mean, we can get this doctrinally to where we could assert the right thing. We could say what we believe, but emotionally, how many times do we get in places where it doesn’t feel like that and we’re not so sure? What did Abraham do in those times, when it was impossible, when all hope was seemingly gone? Did that nullify what God had promised?
See, that’s what God wants you and me to get today. You’re going to find, if you’re not right in that place now, or you haven’t been, you will be. If you’re his child, you’re gonna run into situations where everything about you is gonna cry out and say, this is impossible, there is no hope, I can’t do this, all hope is gone. And the Lord wants us to get as we never have before.
We’re gonna need it in this hour, folks. We’re gonna need a confidence that sees beyond earth’s circumstances, sees beyond our feelings, every circumstance that rises up, every temptation. See, all those things are things that Paul is gonna unfold in these chapters is, how does this work? What now? How do we navigate this life in terms of salvation? What’s God’s plan for this life? Why in the world are we still here? And that’s what the gospel unfolds, but oh, what a place it starts.
These first few verses really are kind of a summary, kind of a broad picture, and then he begins to unfold it as he goes along. But we’ve gained access by faith into this grace in which we do what? Now stand. There’s a couple of wonderful words there.
How about the now one? How many times does it feel like, oh God, I’m falling, I can’t handle this, this is too bad, this is too difficult? And yet he says, now. God is always a God of the now. He does not look to us to depend upon how we feel, because we will feel like Abraham did. There’s no hope, I don’t see any way naturally.
I don’t either, and I’ll tell you, there’s not a day goes by that it doesn’t get more apparent to me. There is nothing I can look to here, not one thing. No goodness, no strength, no virtue, no nothing. But I’ve got a place to look, folks. He doesn’t tell me to look in here, he tells me to look to the Son of God who gave himself for me. Praise God, he set something in motion that involves me. How amazing is that?
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July 14, 2024 - No. 1658
“Salvation I” Conclusion
Broadcast #1658
July 14, 2024
July 14, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1658 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: How can God be both merciful and just at the same time? And look at a human judge, someone’s committed a terrible crime and they come before him and they know what the law says. Now if that man says, Well, yeah, but Judge, I’ve done a lot of good things, you need to weigh it all and I’m asking you to be merciful, to let me off. If he’s merciful, then he’s not just, if he’s just, he’s blocked from being merciful.
And yet we have a gospel, a good news that allows God to be fully just and yet to show mercy, why? Because the wrath that should have fallen upon me fell upon a willing substitute, a representative who represented all that was wrong with me and God’s wrath was pointed out, was poured out, justice was served and that leaves God free to show mercy to people that will repent of their sins.
Do you think under this condition, paint that picture for me or in your mind, is there any way that we can maintain an attachment to sin? This is all about delivering us from sin. Praise God, that’s what repentance is meant to be a hundred percent folks, and I just pray that God will help us to have that kind of a heart towards Him to realize what it cost Him, realize what it is, realize it’s in every one of us and we need deliverance, realize that he’s done that.
Oh, what He asks of us is not that we work for it, is that we believe in what He did, and that’s what he unlocks in chapter four. ‘Cause he asked the question, because we know that Abraham was a righteous man, right, in God’s eyes. So how did he become righteous? Did he work for it? No, he believed God. Now we need to unpack that a little bit, but he believed God.
And he uses the illustration for, some of you, many of you perhaps here, work on a job. When payday comes, do you say, Thank you for your gift? No, you worked for it, there’s a quid pro quo, whatever you wanna call it, where you provide work and he provides, or they provide pay.
That’s not the way it is with God, God does not owe you or me anything. He does it because His heart is one of love and mercy and reaching out and He has made a provision. But you think about what He did with Abraham, He made some amazing promises to Abraham. And He said, I want you to leave your country and your family and go to a land that I’ll show you, but I’m gonna take you and I’m gonna make you a great nation. And from you many nations will arise. And through your seed, all nations of the world will be blessed.
Who’s that seed, by the way? It was Christ, wasn’t it? Paul tells us that specifically. And the Word says, And Abraham believed the promise. Wait a minute, it says, “Abraham believed God.” There was something that was born in his heart where he had such a confidence, he had an unshakeable confidence in the truthfulness of the One who spoke that promise.
And what did faith mean in Abraham’s life? Was it just, Okay, I believe you? There was an obedience, and there was an obedience that went way beyond just sitting in a comfortable place and seeing it all unfold and, Okay, I’m believing you, everything’s great. Everything in the world rose up to say it can’t be so. And yet there was a persistence.
You go back to check Channel 2, Channel 2, chapter 2. (congregation laughs) Don’t mind me, Channel 2. Anyway, back to chapter two and you’ll see what God’s judgment is about, that people who persist in their sins, they’re gonna be judged, they’re not gonna like how it turns out, I can tell you that.
But what does it say about the righteous who inherit eternal life? There is a persistence in seeking after what is good. Salvation is not just about getting a ticket to heaven, it’s about a life that God enables.
You know, I’ve defined grace many times, but I’m just trying to put it in clearer words. Grace is God’s power at work to save sinners. It’s not just a kindly attitude, it’s not just overlooking things, it is the power of God for the salvation of sinners. I need power. If God didn’t seek after me, I would never seek after Him. So what do I need? I need God’s grace. I need Him to come and begin to speak to me and influence me and show me and reveal the truth about my heart.
And then either I say, Oh, no, and go my way, like the world does in general, or I say, Yes, Lord. But if He didn’t do that, I’d never go looking for Him. That’s grace, grace is God at work. But suppose He brings me to a place where, Okay, I agree completely about my need, I recognize my condition and my need before you. So now what? And that’s when he begins to unlock what Jesus did and His promise of eternal, of forgiveness and eternal life, a brand new heart, a brand new life, and He calls upon me to repent of my sins.
Well, where in human nature am I gonna find that? Yeah, I’m not gonna find it in here, God’s power gives me the power to repent. When He’s present and talking to me, I have the power to say, yes. I don’t get that from in here, I get it from Him.
But now He calls on me to focus my attention and to think about the need that I have. I live under this terrible power, I know I can’t break it, it is not just that I’ve sinned, but I live under that power. Oh God, there’s gotta be some answer that comes from outside of me. Says, Yeah, there is, Jesus, Jesus is your answer, ‘cause I didn’t just put him on the cross, I brought Him out of a tomb. And there was a power, there was a life that lived in Him, it was my life. And I have empowered Him to share my very life with everyone who will repent of their sins and put their faith in Him.
See, faith is again, what was it in Abraham’s case? There’s a whole lot of obedience, wasn’t there? It was walking out what God said that he was to do and believing in the face of all kinds of things, he goes into that in this passage. But all of that is a fruit of God’s power and God’s, I need his power, I need power beyond what I have.
Well, he goes on and talks about the blessedness of how God can actually impute righteousness. He can consider me righteous in His eyes even though I’ve done all this thing, I’m guilty, I’m a sinner, but yet, because I put my trust in what He did for me back then. I don’t base it on me, I don’t base it on any good thing in me, but I just base it on the provision of His love, He declares me righteous. Praise God!
How did I get that? I didn’t work for it, I believed in what He did for me. He revealed it to my heart and I embraced it and it becomes the defining characteristic of my life. I’m with him, I don’t stand with those who looked up at the cross and mocked, I stand with him on that cross. I embrace my own death to this life that is so polluted with sin. But I do it because I have a hope based upon the promise of God that there’s a new life that I can have in the inside.
I just pray for anybody that hears this, whether here or someplace else, that if God is speaking to you, you need to listen and you need to realize why He’s speaking because He loves you.
But then he quotes in the Old Testament about this blessedness in verse 7. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sins the Lord will never count against them. And you know, we’ve heard a lot about that in the past and it’s absolutely a glorious truth because the cross was absolutely God’s answer for sin, and it was a once-for-all deal, means, He’s died for sins that haven’t even happened yet.
But here’s the trick the enemy has pulled, no doubt here, but also in other places, and the reasoning goes a little bit like this, Well, I can’t be perfect, there’s no perfection. Well, that’s true enough. As long as we’re in this world, we’re gonna find that we come short of the glory of God in something, we’re gonna be learning about our weaknesses, we’re gonna be having to face the fact that I can’t do this, God’s gonna have ways of showing us, but He does it so that we’ll learn to rely on Him.
But thank God, there’s always a place to go, but the reasoning is, Okay, so I’m not perfect, God knows that, He loves me and it’s all taken care of anyway, so I have liberty. And so next thing you know, you’re using your liberty to kind of play with sin. Is that why God saves people? Does He save people in their sins or from them? There’s so much reasoning out there that just makes it possible for us to live careless. We don’t take sin seriously.
My God, you read Leviticus, that’s where I’ve been reading lately and it’s some sobering stuff. You should be holy for I am holy. And there’s all this, some of it was ritual, but all of it was designed to teach them, but there is a dramatic difference between God’s holiness and the condition of this world and anything outside of that and you don’t mix the two. Man, if somebody goes into the holy place, they’re gonna be dead, this is not something to play with.
God did not come to save people in their sins, but from them. Thank God He does know I have a need, thank God for His mercy and His patience, and the fact that there is a work that takes me all the way to the end and brings me to a certain hope, but my God, if I have truly repented of my sins, am I gonna be just playing with it and excusing it and just being careless? Or am I gonna come to a place and say, Oh, well, that’s just the way I am. See, there’s more to it, isn’t there? And I just pray that God will help us.
But anyway, now we’ve often used Abraham’s faith and the fact that he had to deal with a lot of opposition and applied it to life’s circumstances, I’m thankful that it does. You know, I have faced many difficult things, but nothing’s impossible with God and I’m gonna trust Him anyway, well, thank God that’s true enough. But think about the context in which he’s placing this. This is a righteous, this is a faith that causes a man to be righteous in God’s eyes, okay?
So he’s facing all kinds of obstacles to the fulfillment of God’s promise. Anybody here facing obstacles? You’re experiencing salvation in a measure, but you’re running into obstacles? It is a fight of faith, isn’t it? All right, so he makes the point that this isn’t just Gentiles or Jews, it’s both, okay?
Let’s go down, I wanna just get to one thing here because time’s running out here, But therefore, the promise comes by faith. Verse 16:4, why? It comes by faith so that it may be by grace. Again, it’s God’s power at work to save sinners, And may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring, not only those who are of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham, and so forth.
And he comes down, the promise was, I have made you a father of many nations. That’s interesting how God said that, I have made you. He put that in the past tense, didn’t He? He says, I’ve already done it. He’s already saved us, folks. Do you see the parallel there? God’s declared that He’s already saved us, it’s already been done in Christ, and yet, here we are in terms of seeing that played out, seeing what He’s already done, literally lived out. Every one of us is in a place where we need that grace, we need that salvation, we need that power, don’t we? Thank God, okay?
All right, “He is our Father in the sight of the God in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things into being that were not.” Is that not a picture of salvation from sin? God is calling out something that we’re still experiencing and God has said, I’ve already done it. I’ve already taken care of all of this and I want you to walk in the reality of that.
The impossibility, how many of you sometimes feel, This is just impossible? Yeah, I just can’t be that. Well, guess what? That’s why it’s called salvation. You’re right, I can’t be what He wants me to be in my own power, that’s what salvation is about. That’s why it says, We have sinned and we fall short. Anybody here following a little short of the glory of God? Yeah, that’s why I need grace, I need something that just doesn’t wipe my slate clean and then turn me loose. I need a power that carries me through life and teaches me and changes me.
That’s what he begins to unfold in this, that’s the other part of salvation. We’ve talked about this morning of salvation, part one. But think about the power, think about the faith that he had, think about what Jesus said when he was talking about how hard it is for rich people and what are the disciples ask on that question, Who then can be saved? What was Jesus’ answer? That’s right, With men, it is impossible, but not with God. There’s nothing impossible with Him.
And God deliberately brought Abraham to a place where it says, His body was as good as dead, and his wife’s womb was definitely dead, it was impossible. Folks, is there anyone here who has the power to save themselves? No. So it’s impossible, isn’t it? So if we’re gonna look at natural conditions, we’re gonna have to say salvation is not possible, we might as well turn the lights out and go home, live our lives.
But yet we have the promise and the provision of God who said He’s already done it, and He calls us to put our faith in that, in the face of everything we feel and experience. Time and time again, Abraham was called on to believe God even when it made no natural sense at all. How many of you know what I’m talking about? God, I know your salvation is real. Right now, it doesn’t feel like it, it doesn’t look like it, I’m still having battles, sometimes they’re the same battles, God, is this impossible?
And what’s the Lord’s word to us? With God, all things are possible. God’s gonna continue to work in all of us that call upon Him that repent and put our faith in Him. But you talk about being able to enter into this. That’s what we’re talking about, salvation part one, even to believe that we can be righteous in God’s eyes and look at the impossibilities that He faced.
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as has had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be,’ without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead.” Folks, when we come to Christ, we’re gonna have to be fully aware, we need to be fully aware of our need, not making excuses, not soft pedaling it, not comparing ourselves with other people, but a full facing of the facts of our need before holy God.
But then in the face of that reality, we’re gonna have to be willing to listen to God’s voice and see what He has done about it, and surrender ourselves to what He has accomplished through His Son on that cross.
Do you see what Abraham did? He refused to believe in the power of, in this case, his inability to produce a son, he didn’t believe in that anymore, He believed the promise of God. We’re gonna have to come to Him and just believe in His promise that He is able to literally take somebody like me and He show me what I am and I’m not gonna argue with Him, I’m not gonna make any excuse, I’m gonna face the facts, but I’m gonna put my faith in His power and believe that He can take somebody like me and make me His child and bring me all the way through to be able to live with a holy God and be a part of something eternal.
What an amazing gospel! And this is just part one. What an amazing thing. You know, I know it’s become quite a tradition, I guess in many places, and I’m not gonna criticize anybody who’d do that, but giving invitations, I want the Lord to do something that doesn’t depend upon me trying to make it happen. I want God to convict anybody who needs this. I mean, it should encourage all of us to see the reality of what God’s doing, to face what we are and to face Him and to see the amazing love that has made it possible for us to know him and to be counted as righteous in His eyes, and then the promise to take us all the way home.
But if there’s somebody here that’s never really come to that, will you face the facts, but then He’s shown you and He’s called you. Isn’t it interesting how in the beginning, chapter 1 he talks about those in Rome who were loved by God and called. Starts with love, doesn’t it? You know, it’s hard for us when we see what’s wrong with us, to realize, to think about a God who, What must he think about me? Oh God, we project so many human ideas upon Him.
But oh, to be able to see past all of that and to see His love and to humble ourselves before that, to be willing to recognize, to face the facts, and yet embrace His hope and His promise and surrender and become His property where He is the one, He is Lord, and He is Savior.
And if there’s somebody that God is speaking to, I just pray that God will give you the grace, not only to face the facts, but to repent and to turn from that and to say, God, I have no power to save myself, but I’m putting my hope into a hundred percent of what You did through Jesus Christ, and I’m willing to confess that.
Maybe there’s somebody that needs to come and talk to somebody, if the Lord ever wants me to do the other, I’m gonna ask him to gimme the faith. But I want God to do something that I don’t have any part in engineering. I want him to reach out by His Word and save the ones He’s gonna save. And I believe He’s gonna do it, don’t you? Amen.
Isn’t that what He said? It’s His word, I don’t remember Paul ever gave invitations, and yet God opened people’s hearts in many places. So I just put this in the Lord’s hands today, salvation part one, I guess, and I don’t know what the Lord has planned, whether He wants to continue with this at some point, but I’m just gonna look to God, but I just pray.
Let’s just have a word of prayer. Lord, I believe you’ve been here in spite of the vessel. Lord, I need your salvation as much as anybody, and I thank You that in spite of what we are, Lord, the hopeless condition in which we find ourselves, You have given us hope, hope beyond imagining because You’re motivated by the love and it reaches out with such mercy and such patience. You extend the divine strength, the divine power that meets every aspect of our need and has the power to take us all the way and you’re willing to do it.
Lord, encourage all those who know you to stand fast and to look to you and to believe you. But if there’s someone who doesn’t know you, oh God, call them into your kingdom, God bring them through into your kingdom, I pray in Jesus’ name. We just put all this in your hands and thank you in Jesus’ name, amen.
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July 7, 2024 - No. 1657
“Salvation I” Part One
Broadcast #1657
July 7, 2024
July 7, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1657 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, it seems like there is a pattern when it comes to ministry and that’s the weaker I feel, (chuckles) the more I need to trust the Lord. And I feel my weakness. I know, the last couple of weeks I’ve had scriptures come to my mind and thoughts come to my mind. And the more I try to think about it and organize it, the harder it gets. And the more murky it gets sometimes. But I know the Lord is in charge.
And I know there’s a secret when it comes to everything in the Christian life is that when we try in our own strength to do anything, it’s not really any good anyway, is it? We need Him and He has to show us our need of Him because we don’t naturally gravitate to that kind of thinking.
But anyway, you know, my mind went back to the book of Romans, and there’s so much there. And my mind wanted to just, you know, cover it almost the first part of it. And it just seemed like it’s way too much. I don’t know, I’m just gonna start at the beginning of Romans and we’ll see how far we get and see what the Lord has. And who knows where it may go from here in the future, but we’ll just trust the Lord step by step.
But anyway, Rome was, of course, the leading city of its day. That whole section of the world was ruled by Rome, and somehow there had been a ministry of the gospel to people in Rome. And there had been a group of Christians that had been brought together. There were those who served the Lord in Rome. And their fame went out. People heard about it.
Paul had never been there. And here was this apostle called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. And his heart had longed to go there and to meet with them, and to encourage them and to be encouraged by them. And so finally, he wrote, decided to write a letter. And what an amazing letter it is because he unfolds the gospel in very great detail.
And you know, in one sense, these are things we’ve heard many times, but I feel a need in my own heart to hear it in a deeper way. And I believe the Lord has things for us that He wants to impart in a deeper way. We don’t realize our need. We don’t really have the sense that we ought to have the depth of our need.
I mean, you can grow up in church and think, Oh, I’m okay, are you? I need the Lord. And the farther I go knowing Him and experiencing life and experiencing His dealings with my own life, the more I know I need Him. And that’s a good thing because it’s the truth. And I praise Him for His faithfulness.
You know, the scripture was that we so often quote was referred to in a while ago, on how the Lord’s begun a good work and He’s gonna finish it. Well, you know, sometimes we just focus on the beginning and just kind of rock along and don’t realize what He’s gotta do with us to get us to accomplish in us what He wants to in His life.
But anyway, Paul begins, and I’m not gonna try to read all of this. And I want to ask God to help me not to run down every rabbit trail ‘cause there’s so many, you could take every paragraph in Romans and preach a message on it. I mean, you could do that. It’s that deep.
But anyway, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel He promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy scriptures.”
Now, what does the word gospel mean? Good news. Does that not imply that there’s some bad news out there and there’s a need? Yeah, there’s a situation that exists on planet Earth. And in the midst of that, God comes on the scene, lays hold of a man, a very unlikely man at that and commissions him to go and spread a message that is good news. Okay? So that’s kind of the setting of all of this.
And then he goes through and he talks about how the prophets prophesied all this. And he accomplished it through Jesus Christ who became declared, who did what He did, went to the cross. But then God set a declaration, if you will. There’s many meanings to that word that’s translated there. But God basically said, This is my Son and I’m gonna prove it to you. I’m gonna raise Him from the dead. This is not just some religious philosopher that’s coming along, starting a religion. This is my Son. He’s here to accomplish something that is eternal, that is that matters. It’s the one piece of good news that exists in this broken world is the good news that comes because of what Jesus Christ did.
In verse five, Through Him, through Jesus Christ, we received grace and apostleship. Okay? Apostle is a sent one. This is a messenger who’s out on a mission and an apostleship to do what? To call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. So faith is not just a mental thing, is it? Not just the practice of religion. It’s meant to percolate into every area of our lives.
God has come. I mean, you’ll see it unfold as He goes along. But this is something that is meant to affect every aspect of life. The gospel is just not about getting our sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. Is it something we’ve said many times? But anyway, it says, “For His names sake, the obedience that comes from faith for His namesake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”
Interesting phraseology there. Who do you belong to? You know, a lot of people by nature belong to themselves, don’t they? My life, I’m gonna do as I please, I have desires that arise in me. I’m gonna follow them. I don’t mind if Jesus wants to wipe the slate clean and give me a ticket to heaven, but it’s my life. Oh, no. The call of the gospel is to belong to Him. To no longer be our own, but to be His. All right?
But listen to this, “To all in Rome who are loved by God.” Isn’t that an awesome thing? It’s not just, I’m gonna dominate you because I’m bigger and stronger than you are. And I wanna make you do what I think is right. This is a God whose motivation is love. He looks at a broken world, sees everything that is wrong, everything that is wrong, things we don’t know about ourselves, He sees them. And yet the motivation for all of His action toward us is not disgust, contempt, looking down His nose, condemning. It’s not any of those things. It’s love that reaches out.
I’m so thankful. The further I go with the Lord, the more I know. That’s my only hope is that there’s a God who loves me enough to reach out to somebody like me. Oh, my God, I just thought of an old hymn that was written many years ago, and I believe I had the privilege of meeting the hymn writer before he died. When I was a little boy came to our house. I remember playing the piano for him with my little beginning years.
But a famous Hymn Writer, Robert Harkness, wrote a hymn called, Why Should He Love Me So? Some of the older ones may know that. Why should He love me so? Love sent my savior to Calvary’s cross. Why should He love me so? And over and over again, it lifts up what He did and how incredible, why in the world when I look at who I am and what I am, why should He love me?
But that’s the miracle of the gospel. That should be the motivation for what we sang about this morning. It is. He doesn’t seek this unwilling, miserable life of being religious. Oh, my God. It’s a love relationship that He seeks. Thank, God, when He opens our hearts of that.
But, “to all who are in Rome who are loved by God and called to be His holy people, grace and peace to you from God, our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” And then He goes on and talks about the fact that He wants to come, He prays for them. There’s this longing in His heart to be there and as He says, “To be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”
And I want you to know I tried many times, but up to now the Lord hasn’t allowed me. So boy, we need the Lord’s time in everything, don’t we? Our lives are governed by Him and He knows how to do the right thing at the right time. We’re the ones who try to second guess and struggle and all of that. Oh, what a blessed place it is just to come to that place of rest. Lord, my life is yours. You take over, you show me, you lead me. Praise God!
But then He comes down to this, to what it’s all about is the gospel. And I believe the Lord wants to shine a fresh light in all of our minds on what that gospel is about. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” That’s an interesting phrase there. And I believe that the Lord wants to unpack that just a little bit as we go along.
Why does He say, “the power of God”? Think about that word. Why doesn’t God just give us information? Rules to live by? A better religion to practice? I don’t need just instructions. The Law of Moses is enough to tell me that. All I can see is what’s wrong with me. But what, what I need, if I’m ever going to be delivered from what I am, I need power. So just keep that in the back of your mind.
This gospel is not just about God informing us of things and getting us to believe and practice certain things. I need power. If I’m gonna be delivered from the condition in which He finds me. I’m gonna need something way beyond anything I’ve got. It’s got to be divine power. Okay? All right?
And it’s “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” And I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on why He makes that distinction. But obviously God, in the unfolding of His purpose, He worked first with the descendants of Abraham. Why? Because He has a special separate program for them? No, it was a vehicle through which He brought forth the prophets, the law, the revelation of His love and His truth. And then it was through them, He brought the Savior. That was the focal point. That was the whole purpose of the children of Israel.
But it’s first to the Jew because God was bringing forth what He had promised and letting them first know. But then it was always, even in the prophets, you see, where this message is gonna go to the ends of the earth. And I’m gonna call people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation.
So anyway, A righteous in the gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is” from faith, “by faith, from first to last, just as it written, but just shall live by faith.”
And then the passage that people in modern culture just absolutely adore, we gotta find out if, if there’s good news, it means there’s some bad news out there, right? So we need something good to come from God. We need a message from God that’s to counter that. But it’s not just a message, it’s power.
There is a power that is operating in this planet that only the power of God can conquer. Anybody aware of that, not just out there, but in here? Yeah, I need something way beyond what I got. I need divine power.
But now Paul is going to unlock the problem here. And he begins with the condition of the heathen world in general. But it doesn’t include just what he called the heathen world. It was the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people. And here’s the amazing thing, “who suppressed the truth by their wickedness.” And He goes on and says, “since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them, for since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse.”
Okay? So the heart of the problem is that every human being, obviously of any age at all, you know what I mean? Human beings, we have some kind of knowledge. Now here obviously, there’s a great responsibility because the gospel, I believe, has been preached. But what about in the heathen world?
And Paul says, Every one of them can look at the stars, they can look at nature, they can hear the voice. He’ll talk later about the voice of the conscience. God has given all men a witness, and He declares that all men are without excuse. Because by nature they rebel against that. They absolutely are aware of it, but they make a deliberate choice to say, No, I will please myself, I will follow my own earthly desires.
And then of course, He unlocks that in all kinds of ways. And do we not see the ancient heathen world being replicated in America today? All of the things that you read about going through the end of this passage, some of them are sexual deviancy, but it’s a whole lot more than that. It’s everything that is afflicting our society that is boiling outta people’s spirits every day. There’s not a day goes by, but what? There’s some kind of a shooting someplace. There’s some kind of a terrible crime. And we don’t even hear about it all. Where’s that coming from? It’s coming from people who are operating under a power. Okay? But the thing is God says, You are under power, but you are responsible. There is a responsibility in you, you are aware. And yet you make a deliberate choice to reject that. Okay?
But then He goes into this point, we are well aware that people like to compare themselves one with another, right? Now, why do we do that? We would like to feel like we have grounds to think better of ourselves than other people. Yes, the world is full of wicked people. I am so glad I’m not like one of them. And we’ll sit there and say, Yeah, man, that’s terrible. God’s doing right by judging those people.
And so the beginning of chapter two, Paul says, Oh yeah? You who condemn others, what about you? Okay? “You therefore have no excuse you who pass judgment on someone else. For at whatever point you judge another you, you are condemning yourself. ‘cause you who pass judgment do the same things.”
Oh, my God. We judge by outward behavior and things that we can see. But boy, if you were to go back and see where that comes from, is there anyone here who can look at the worst sinner on this planet and say, I’m better than you? It flows from the same fountain. I can’t.
If there’s somebody who hears this. I mean, sometimes these services wind up being viewed in prisons. I don’t know if that’s still the case or not, but I’m gonna say to somebody who’s listening to this, I don’t care what you’ve done, I’m no better than you are. But the good news of Jesus Christ is there’s an answer to sin’s power over you. And that is the power of God. If you want it bad enough and you call upon God, He will save and rescue you from all of this.
[Congregation] Amen.And give you a hope beyond all this judgment He’s talking about. Because that’s what He’s coming to. Not only is that the world’s condition, but there is judgment that is coming. God has absolutely appointed a day in which everybody will be brought to answer for how they’ve lived their life. It says, now we know in 2:2, “That God’s judgment against those who do such thing is based on truth.”
You think God knows it all? (chuckles) Absolutely. There’s not a secret that men keep, that will not be exposed on that day. There is justice coming, there’s judgment coming. All right?
“So when you a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment or do you show contempt?” This is an amazing statement because it goes to God’s heart. It says, “Do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance.”
You know, when you look at the world and you realize how wicked and awful it is in so many ways, if you really ever see it that it’s true character, it would be easy to ask if God is righteous and pure, and this is so terrible, why does He put up with it? Why doesn’t He do something about it? And the answer is here, because God’s heart is reaching out to everyone who can be reached. Every heart that has the capacity to listen. God’s heart is to reach everyone.
And again, we look at these things that we see in the world and we get angry and disgusted, and here’s God reaching out. Yes, there’s an anger against what’s wrong, but there’s a heart that says, I have the power to save you. I have the only answer that can pick you up out of this gutter, out from under the power of sin. I’ve got the answer. And I’m gonna do everything in my power to reach your heart, because that’s my heart toward you. What an amazing God! Amazing!
Things like love and kindness and patience and all of these things can be brought into this context of what’s wrong with us and what’s wrong with the world. But that’s the way it is. And so basically He unfolds the thing about judgment and all of that.
But then He gets down to a natural question because the world of that day was very much divided into the world of the Jews and the world of the Gentiles. The world of the Jews, they had a tradition, God had spoken among them, as we said, they had the Law of Moses, they built a religion out of it, but still they had a witness from God. And so naturally, a Jew brought up in that tradition would look out at the world and absolutely look down His nose at them and think that he has a better standing before God.
And so Paul has to deal with that, and he deals with it straightforward. And he says, It has nothing to do with what you are outwardly. That’s not what God considers you. You do the same things. You have no right to look down your nose at anybody. You are exactly like them on the inside. And so that’s kind of what he’s unfolding here. All right?
So then he asked the question at the beginning of chapter three, “So what advantage is there in being a Jew?” Well, he says, Yes, there is one, because God entrusted His words to you. You had an opportunity that a lot of other people didn’t have it. That just all they had was nature. But what good is that if you don’t do something with it? What good is having God’s word and then just turning against it and resisting it? All right?
Well, I’ll just make a passing reference. Paul deals with a crazy argument that some people would have… here it is, our sinfulness by contrast makes God look good. So why would He judge us if all we’re doing is making Him look good? But boy, what a dumb human argument that is. We’re projecting our nature onto Him and supposing it’s an ego contest where God’s basically, His motivation is to look good.
No, His motivation is to reach out with a heart of love that sees need and does something about it. It’s focused not on Him and His and all. It’s not all about Him. It’s all about those that He can love and change. And here’s the other thing, what are we being saved from? What’s salvation about? We’re being saved from sin. There’s no place for a heart that still is attached to sin. That’s what God is delivering us from.
So any kind of argument that tends to cloud that issue is, you know where that comes from, don’t you? It comes from the voice of the enemy. And there are other places where that comes into play, but I don’t know how far, as I say, we’ll get with all of this today, but I just pray that God will… There’s some things that I want Him to bring out with clarity. I believe He will. Don’t you?
Close
June 30, 2024 - No. 1656
“A New Heart” One Part
Broadcast #1656
June 30, 2024
June 30, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1656 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I confess, I was waiting for Brother Steve to come up, and he’s sitting there saying, oh no! He shared a wonderful thought with me before the service and I thought that he was going to feel free to get up, but maybe this isn’t the time. I don’t know. But, I just, I’ll share the germ of a thought.
I don’t know how long this is gonna go. It may just…it may be just something short. But Steve was mentioning something about the heart and how critical it is that we be turned to the Lord. It’s a very simple thought.
You know what the Lord is looking for from each of us is a lot simpler than we often make it. You don’t have to be a theologian to be a Christian. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar. You don’t have to have a long doctrinal statement and just get every little thing in exactly the right place. God is looking for a certain kind of people.
And you can be one of those people if you’re very small, very weak, don’t have any strength, don’t have any human resources. In fact, you’re better off if you don’t. If you have human resources that the world values, the chances are about 100 percent that if the Lord brings you to Himself, He’s gonna have to do something about that, because, we can’t come into the Kingdom of God and function based upon what we are naturally. We just haven’t got it. And, the sooner we realize that, the better off we are, the freer we are.
What a burden it is to carry the idea with us that I have to come up with something. I have to be strong. I have to measure up. I have to do this and not do that. I have to know this, and oh my God, I didn’t know that! Lord have mercy! You’ll wear yourself out!
And the Lord is looking for the simplest of things from every single one of us and it’s simply our hearts. And I thought of, as Brother Steve was sharing what he shared…I won’t go to the scripture that he particularly used, but it reminded me of something that happened be in my Bible reading today, and it had to do with the life of Asa.
And Asa was one of the early kings of the Southern Kingdom. You remember how Solomon went off track and because of that, the Lord allowed the kingdom to split? The northern tribes went off and did their thing and never did serve God after that. A remnant, interestingly enough, a remnant of the people in the north that actually wanted to serve God migrated south, became part of the Southern Kingdom.
And, where they had serious ups and downs, they had some kings that did serve the Lord. And Asa, at least for a while, was one of them. And early in his…ministry…his kingdom, he faced a tremendous challenge from…I think it was the Cushite army…I didn’t look up any of this, so I’m kind of getting back into what I read this morning. But basically, he faced an incredible army.
It sounds a lot like Jehoshaphat. You know, we talk about that particular incident in the scriptures. This was sort of like that…an overwhelming force that came against him. And Asa, in 2 Chronicles 14, verse 11, “…called to the Lord his God and said, Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty.” (NIV). That’s an interesting thought. I mean, you think in terms of a great battle, but every one of us fights battles. If you’re a kingdom…if you are one of His children, if you’re part of the Kingdom, you’re in a battle!
( congregational response )
If you’re His, you have battles. This thing we call the Christian life is not a cakewalk, as we say, it is warfare. And the warfare is not against flesh and blood. It’s not even against, entirely, against our own nature, although it certainly is, we absolutely war against the powers, and they’re very real, that rule this planet.
Do you see them getting loosed and more and more in control of people? Every single day the headlines tell us that. But anyway, the thought out of this particular scripture, at this point, is a very simple one. Do you feel powerless tonight?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! I think we can all put up two hands, if we’re honest. If you’re thinking about things that God seemingly requires of us, we are powerless. So, God is not looking for power from you, or me. That’s a freeing thing, if we can realize it. He’s not looking for any kind of, like I say, human resource from you. So, if you’re weak, that’s not against you, that’s actually for you.
“Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.” Whoa! That’s a strong prayer, isn’t it?
( congregational amens ).
That’s a good one. We can come in the spirit of that in a lot of situations…as we gather as a church and we sense the devil trying to come against us in some fashion, trying to divide, trying to bring down.
You know, Sunday we made a point of praying one for another and resisting the devil, because we are in these battles. But you know as we do that, we need to realize that we’re not just sort of throwing words into the wind. We are talking about a very real God who has won, through His Son, a very real victory that He wants us to experience in a very practical way!
But oh, does He respond to a heart that says, oh Lord, You are our God, we rely upon You! I mean, it’s more than just a doctrine. This has got to be something that proceeds from your heart, not just from your lips. These are not magic words.
But if this represents your heart, then that is everything, folks! You are in a position above the greatest theologians on the planet, the most religious people, the strongest, the wisest. God didn’t call that kind, did He? He called the weak and the mighty…I don’t guess the mighty. He called the weak…don’t mind me, just don’t get old.
( laughter ).
He called the weak to show up the strong. You remember the scripture anyway, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And, how God chooses the weak things of the world, things that are despised, to bring to…things that are.
( congregational response ).
That’s right. To bring to nothing things that are. Because everything we have is what we have in Christ, and that absolutely levels the playing field. We may be different in our function, in our calling, but everyone who is part of the Kingdom of God stands on the same ground! It’s the ground of what God did through His Son, and if we rely upon that, we are in a position of strength, in this hour, regardless of what happens in the world around us. Folks, that’s what God is looking for and I pray that that describes you tonight.
( congregational amens ).
Because if it is, boy you are in a favored place. So anyway, you go on and you read how God struck down the enemy and they had a tremendous victory. And down in the next chapter, “The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” That’s real simple stuff, folks!
( congregational response ).
We’re living in a world of people with divided hearts, at best. At best! How many people in the world want God, in some fashion? I mean, many are just turning altogether. But I mean, even those who are religious and want God, in some fashion, many of them—most of them, I would say, are hanging on, in some way, to their own life, their own will, their hearts are attached to things in this world, and the devil has a wide-opened position—he’s in a wide-opened position to absolutely bring them…bring people down, bring people into total captivity.
Folks, I want to be in that safe place. There is a place of safety. There is a place where I don’t care how small, how weak you are and what happens to you in this world…they could kill us, and we’d be the winner for it!
( congregational amens )
Because, we serve One who’s already defeated death! Death is not our enemy anymore!
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, sin and carelessness and a divided heart, that’s the greatest enemy that anyone of us could have. We need a heart that says, God, I am Yours come hell or high water, sink or swim, I’m Yours, Lord! Just take my heart and mold it. Give me that new heart that You promised, that’s really…that is the heart, literally, of the New Covenant.
Oh, what a better Covenant that is than a bunch of laws that we can’t keep anyway. But a new heart and a new spirit that God supernaturally puts in us? Man, that is everything! And you’ve got everything that there is if you have that! And you lift up your…you lift up your heart to God…if you’re feeling your weakness tonight, you lift it up and get your eyes off of that, onto the One who gives you strength.
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, one of the things I’ve had to learn, in a new way, I think, in a deeper way. It’s something that I’ve known for years, theoretically…that’s our problem, we know a lot of things, but to learn them? One of the things I’ve learned is what Paul learned in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, that, “…when I am weak, then I am strong.”
It’s one thing to say, I’m weak, but I guess it’s okay. I know, God, what you said. I don’t like it much but…you know, think of how Paul reacted to that. He came to the place where he gloried—gloried in his weakness! You want to find something to boast about? That’s not human nature, is it? But folks, I am so glad tonight to tell you that I am weak and helpless in myself!
( congregational amens ).
But I’m gonna tell you, I’ve got a mighty Savior! I’m not trusting in what I am. I don’t care what your need is tonight. God will meet your need and He will draw near to you if your heart gets undivided, if you’ll just give it to Him. What are the issues that the devil would use to pull on your heart and say, no, you need to be attached to this? You need to be attached to this. You need to worry about this or worry about that. Give it to God!
( congregational amens ).
What did he say in 1 Peter chapter 5, was it? “Humble yourselves…under the mighty hand of God…” (KJV). And He will lift you up at the proper time. I’m paraphrasing a little bit. But then he also says…I can’t even remember what he says now.
( laughing ).
( laughter ).
Yeah, the next thing is, “Casting all your care…” Casting how many of your cares?
( congregational response ).
“…All your care upon him…” Cast them upon Him! Praise God! Just, here it is, Lord, I’m not gonna carry that anymore. That’s up to You. You handle that.
We aren’t very good at doing that. We’re very good at affirming that idea, but doing it is another story. But oh, God wants us to be free! Are you free tonight? We can occupy a place of freedom.
And, as I say, I think the Lord has helped me, in a measure, this year. I’ve experienced a lot of weakness, and yet, I feel more peace than I’ve had in a long time. Just to say, Lord, it’s okay. I get it. I see what this is doing. I see what it’s about. And I’m thankful to You for it. Lord, I’d like to feel differently. I’d like things to go differently, but, the thing that matters most is my heart and Your plan and what Your purpose is. It’s not so that I can be something. It’s so You can be something in and through me. That’s the only thing that matters.
Oh, God wants to take our lives and make something out of them, but He needs our hearts, doesn’t He? Praise God! Praise God! Well, you know Asa went along pretty good for a while. He responded to what the Lord had said and anyway…I haven’t read all of this…I guess I went through it this morning, in a different translation. But anyway, toward the end of his life things changed. You know, I want to finish well, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
We have a tendency to kind of let down, and kind of go off a little bit when we get older. God wants us to be stronger in our spirits as we get older, even when our flesh gets weaker. Do you know we can if we’re willing to humble ourselves under His hand and say, God, I want Your program? I want Your plan for my life, whatever it is. Whatever it is, Lord, do what You have to do in my life to make me what You want me to…that’s the only thing that matters! I don’t care what your heart is attached to in this world, it will burn up!
( congregational amens ).
It’s so simple, but we don’t see it that way! God wants to open our eyes to where we can say, nothing here really matters! Yes, I have responsibilities. I’ll take care of them, but that’s not where my heart is. Didn’t Jesus say, where your heart is…or, “…where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” I got it backwards. Praise God! I think Jesus knew what He was talking about, didn’t He?
( congregational response ).
So anyway, we come down toward the end of Asa’s reign, and all of a sudden, he has a problem with the Northern Kingdom. They come attack him, and things aren’t looking so good. So, what does he do? Does he run back to the Lord and say, oh Lord, this is your battle? No, he didn’t do that, did he? He made his own plan.
He got a bunch of the treasures that belonged to the kingdom and shipped them off to a heathen king and said, hey king, we need some help here. Here’s a bunch of gold and silver. Will you please change sides and help us against this enemy? And he said, yup, I’ll do it. And so, he came and absolutely he attacked the enemy, the Northern Kingdom, and the battle went the way it was supposed to.
Verse 7, “At that time Hanani…” (NIV). This is in chapter 16. I don’t think I said that. “At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him: Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.
Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand.” Real complicated stuff here, isn’t it? “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”
( congregational amens ).
What a simple principle! I’ll tell you, if people understood the real heart of what God was saying, through the prophet right here, wouldn’t everything kind of fall into place? The answer is, yes. Praise God!
Is your heart divided? You know, we’ve mentioned, several times recently, we’ve called attention to that scripture in James, where James asked, does any of you lack wisdom? Well, what was the principle that was enunciated there? Yeah, you better…if you’re…basically, to paraphrase, if you want God’s wisdom and you’re asking it, even if you ask Him, you better ask with an undivided heart.
Because…I’ve said this…I’ve put it this way several times, who are we to think that we can get God to lay His cards on the table? Here is my plan. Can I get You to agree to it? Who are we…
( congregational response ).
…To have a plan, is right, but to question the Almighty God? And it’s not just that He’s so great and grand, but that He’s a loving God. He’s revealed the kind of a God He is, that all…that His heart is for us, to bring us to the greatest place that anybody could ever reach, and here we are, needing wisdom, and we’re basically saying, I’m not 100 percent sure I want His plan. I’m asking for wisdom here, but I’ve got my ideas, too.
God, I want Your plan, period! And I want it in such a sense, my heart is so pure about this, I agree to it before I even know what it is. That’s faith. That’s trust. Do you trust Him that much?
I’ll tell you, if we will open our hearts as He begins to deal with us, He will begin to give us the ability to do that. You know, the heart is something that needs to be molded, and we need to learn how to walk in truth and in victory. But I’ll tell you, God…I mean, you and I…the heart we’re born with is wicked, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
There’s nothing good about it. And if you think differently, God has to open your eyes. You don’t see yourself as God sees you. I’m so thankful He loves us anyway, aren’t you?
( congregational amens ).
But oh, my God! We need to come with our heart and say, God, I don’t even see my…I don’t understand my own heart. I don’t trust it. Didn’t Solomon say, “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.” (KJV). Whoso trusteth…you know, you listen to Hallmark…follow your heart.
Well, I like some of their movies, but I see past a lot of their theology, if you want to call it that. Praise God! I need to follow His heart. He’s got the heart that knows everything, loves beyond my ability to imagine, and is He not worthy? We sang the song. Is He not worthy of our trust? Is He not worthy of just handing our hearts over to Him, and giving Him a blank check to do what He needs to do in our lives?
Wouldn’t that be a good thing, right now, just to be able to say, Lord, here’s my life, here’s my heart? Take it. I give You a blank check. Do whatever it takes to make me what You have designed me to be so that I can be that with You forever! One day you and I will walk with our Savior, in a brand-new creation! He will be forever our elder brother and together we will worship God…
( congregational amens ).
…From whose heart all of this came! But oh God, May He lift our vision from all this nonsense that’s going on in this world, and all the things that would appeal to us, on the natural level, and say, God, I want my heart undivided! Give it to me! Work it in me! Do whatever You need to do! Praise God!
I wasn’t even planning on getting up tonight, so maybe that’s all that’s necessary right now, and maybe there are others who will weigh in. But, what a simple thing, isn’t it?
Sometimes I think the devil tells us we just need that other secret little revelation. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m missing out because there’s some secret, wonderful, new revelation that God’s gonna give, and then we’ll be able to…He just needs our heart! Praise God! You can chase revelation all you want to. If God says something real, that’s one thing. But I don’t need to chase secret knowledge. I just need Him! He has everything I need! He is everything I need! Whatever I lack, He is!
No one else has ever lived the Christian life. Jesus has! His plan is to live it in me, but I’ve got to give Him my heart for that to happen. And I believe He’s gonna be faithful to every one. There are people here that have needs. You’ve come here with needs. I have.
We’ve got Somebody Who’s right here, and His eyes are ranging across this congregation, not just around the world. What does He see when He looks at your heart? Good question to ask, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just say, Lord, You see even what’s wrong with my heart, but, even with what’s wrong I just give it to You, Lord. Fix it! Fix my heart! Do what You’ve got to do! I do what I know to do. I just give it to You.
That’s all we can do. Can’t we just give up and trust in Him? What else is there to salvation when you really break it down? Isn’t it just handing over our lives to Him and trusting Him to do what we can never do?
( congregational amens ).
Does that not put us, as I say, all in exactly the same place? It doesn’t matter, whether in the eyes of men you’re big, or little, or strong, or weak, or pretty, or ugly, or whatever. None of those things matter. God doesn’t look at any of that. He looks at one thing, looks at your heart. What does He see?
And I think I’ll just leave it at that, and just trust God to convict and encourage and do whatever He needs to do based on individual lives and hearts, because He knows what He’s doing! To Him be the glory!
( congregational response ).
Praise God!
Close
June 23, 2024 - No. 1655
“The Pathway to Power” Conclusion
Broadcast #1655
June 23, 2024
June 23, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1655 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: How many times have we said and how often do I need it to say to remind ourselves that the cross is not just about the forgiveness of things that I have done. He didn’t just put him to death to pay the penalty. Yes, that’s part of it. But he put me to death. The problem is not the sin, it’s the sinner. I need deliverance, not just from the guilt of the thing stuff I’ve done I need deliverance from this guy.
[Audience Member] Yes. Amen.That’s the meaning of the cross, folks, to embrace salvation. That’s at the heart of it. You see why Paul had to emphasize this in such a deep way. Said, I don’t wanna know anything among you except this. I’ve got a lot of areas of truth that I want to tell you about, but everything comes from this. This is the hub.
You think of the old fashioned wheel with the spokes. You got a lot of things that come out from that. Christian service, family life, body life, all those wonderful truths but every one of them grows out of the hub. You try to do anything and forget about the hub, who we are, who He is, what He’s done in history and it gets messed up because we get in the way.
Everything Paul talked about went right back to this. How much I need him, how much I have the right to go to him and say, Lord, I thank you for what you’ve done to cleanse me, but I thank you for putting me to death. Think of something that I’ve….
I guess I’ve I pointed out a passage in the past and it’s one of those things that what I see so much need in me, it’s like I’m afraid to say it. But Romans 6, what was Paul’s, what was Paul’s prescription for Christian living? When we still live in bodies that have a nature, the life that animates these bodies still has a nature that hates God and wants to do its own thing, what do we do about that?
Well let’s go back to this. We sin, what do we do about that? What do we go back to every time as a foundation for getting forgiven for sin? The cross. We go right back to the cross. So that’s part of the meaning of the cross, but there’s something so much deeper because again, I need deliverance, not just from the sin, but from the sinner.
And so Paul says, Don’t you know that when you were baptized, you died with him? I had to paraphrase. You actually died. There was something that happened there in history. God’s allowing something to work out that actually happened.
Wait a minute, Lord, do you mean, I’m still in the middle of this, and you say you already did it? Well, I just messed up and I need forgiveness. You mean you already took care of that. And I need to go back and I need to believe it and I need to reckon on it. I need to… I’ll say, treat it as true rather than act like it’s true for Ron’s benefit.
We need to treat it as something that is real, that we can lay hold of right now and say, Devil, I do not have to listen to you. And it’s not because I’m strong, it’s not because I deserve anything it’s because I’m reckoning on what He did.
That’s what salvation is about. It’s not about what I’ve gotta do to somehow make God like me and accept me. It’s what He has done. That’s the emphasis. The word of God is all about what God has done for us and everything that stands in the way of His living in us and empowering us to be channels of His life in all the ways that have been talked about. We are the one that’s in the way, what do we do about it?
Can we not take it to Him and say, God, I thank you for what You’ve done. I believe it. Devil, I do not have to listen to you. Not because I’m strong, but because He’s already put me to death. God has taken away Satan’s fuel if we can believe it and understand it.
You know, I thought about a picture I have in my mind, and I don’t know how much of this is old stories that I’ve read and maybe probably saw it in an old TV movie, but it had to do with people who lived in the prairie back in, you know, days of the old West. And obviously one of the terrible threats to life on the prairie was, you get a dry season and then a fire and a wind. What do you do about that?
And one of the ways they learned to deal with that was to create a backfire. Now what does that mean? That means they could see this thing coming, but somehow they would go out between themselves, between the house and the fire and set little controlled fire, so they’d burn up all of the fuel so that by the time the fire got there, there was nothing left to burn. And the fire would split and go around the house. Seemed like I had this picture in my mind.
Again, I don’t know how much of it’s what I read and how much of it’s what I saw. But anyway, do you see the connection? God has obviously, has already done something about my need. He knew I was gonna be in need. He understood, I’m saving somebody who doesn’t deserve it and can’t do what I want them to do in themselves.
They don’t know that. I’m gonna have to bring them through circumstances that reveal their own need to themselves. And when I do, what I want them to do is to turn and look and realize, just like I can look to the cross for forgiveness, I can look to the cross and see that he has already burned up Satan’s fuel. The thing that Satan would try to pull on me, I have every right to look to that and say, that is a fact, that is something God did. I didn’t do that. I don’t deserve it. But it’s still a fact and it’s history.
And I have as much right to look to that in a personal sense, practical sense right here, right now, I have as much right to look to that for victory over this thing that wants to rise up in me as I have a right to look for forgiveness when I mess up. Praise God!
God is going to, God is gonna put his finger on things that are in the way of His, the working of His power. Don’t be discouraged. Go back to the root of what Paul saw that he needed to emphasize. God inspired him.
And I won’t go through the passage, but God spoke about how out of tune this was with the world. Some people look for signs, some people look for wisdom. They had all these philosophers that tried to explain it all, Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, whoever. They were the ones who were smart guys who were gonna figure out what life was all about.
And he said, Not one of these could figure this out. They had no idea what I was up to. Eye has not seen ears, not heard. See, it’s God who has to reveal these things.
[Audience Member] Amen. Amen.And oh, there’s a heart that will humble itself before God. God can plant in you the knowledge of what the cross is about. But all the knowledge of that is not just a doctrine that we affirm, it’s not just something where we say, Okay, now I get the cross. Now let’s go on to other stuff. The cross is always going to be at the root of every single aspect of our service to God.
And it’s the one thing that gets us past all that’s wrong with us, all that’s lacking, it’s the pathway to power. Because when we die, then He can live. For I have been crucified, how? With Christ. In other words, that’s really what happened. It wasn’t just him dying there. I died there too. I have been crucified with Christ. That’s history.
That perfect tense in that Greek verb right there has to do with both something that happened in the past, but it’s an ongoing result. I have been crucified with Christ and I’m still dead. That’s what it’s about.
I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live but is no longer I but Christ that lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
There is no way to get to life except through death. And that’s what we shrink from. That’s what the devil will do everything in his power to bog us down with. But I pray that God will give us a fresh appreciation for what He’s already done. Folks, this is history. This is not something that yet to happen. And we hope it’ll happen, hope it’ll turn out all right. This is something God has already done.
In fact, His Word says He did it from the foundation of the world. Do you think that God can set something in motion and Satan stand in the way somehow? He didn’t even have a clue. He walked into God’s trap and crucified Jesus, opened the very door of hope that gives us a reason to have hope this morning.
Where’s my hope that I can be a good religious person? No, Jesus died and the blood was shed. And when I mess up, I have the right to go to him and look up at that cross and just honor him and praise him and see the blood that flows from his wounds and realize he did that as my representative. And I have the right through that blood to stand there as if I had never sinned.
But then he wasn’t just crucified, he was buried, wasn’t he? And God wants us to understand in a deeper way we were buried with him. Are we willing? Do we know that what we need to let go of? Talking about things that stand in our way. Every one of us has more self in operation than we would dare to realize. And the Lord doesn’t tell us this to condemn us. That’s why He saved us. He knows all about it. But what He wants us to know is that He’s taken care of it. He has already gone to the cross as and in Him you and I have died.
Like I said, everybody’s died. The question is, who’s gonna live? Everybody’s died. You wanna know the destiny of this world, you look at the cross. You wanna know how God values the thing, the accomplishments of the human race in rebellion against God, you wanna know what He thinks of that? Look at the cross. You want to know what God thinks of the very best of humanity as people value it. God says, It’s gonna perish just like Jesus, my Son, did on that cross.
That’s the destiny of this planet. Folks, I don’t wanna live for this. And that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be, you know, mean, angry, condemning. God wants us to have the same spirit of Jesus, to see people in need and to have his love and his mercy. I can speak the truth and stand for the truth without being hateful.
See if I’m saying, oh yes, that’s wrong, that’s wrong. And boy, I’m gonna get you over it. I’m gonna tell you all about it. Where’s that coming from? Self. (chuckles) That’s just the old human nature wanting to kick in and help God out. Folks, we can’t help him out. He needs to deliver us.
And He is delivering us. I mean, even talking about something like this this morning is not our heavenly Father looking down and saying, What’s the matter with you? Straighten up and fly. It’s God saying, I know what’s wrong with you and I love you. And when you look at the cross, I want you to see what it really stands for in terms of, yes, you have a deep need, but I also want you to see that it’s the measure of my love and the mercy that I wanna show you here right now.
And when you face the things this afternoon, tomorrow, the next day that wanna rise up in you, what are we reckoning on? Oh, there it is again. That’s just me. You got so many people out there that their way of dealing with human nature is just to emphasize the love of God. The love of Jesus. Oh, He’s so loving. He just accepts everybody.
Folks, I need a savior. Amen. I need a deliverer. But thank God I’ve got one. God sent his Son who willingly went to that cross in my place. When He died, He took me with Him. And the more I sense things wanting to rise up and get in the way of him doing something and using me and believe me, I deal with him, and not always very well. But I know it’s… I’m on the way. I’m like Paul. I hope I press toward the mark. I haven’t arrived.
Lord knows we haven’t either. But He also knows that we need to learn more about the power of His resurrection. But how do you get to that? Fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His what? To his death. To his death. That’s me coming to a place where I’m embracing his death as mine. And I realize I don’t have to listen to, I don’t have to obey this old nature. Satan can knock on my door and I can say, Sorry, nobody home. That fuel’s already been burned up. It was burned up at the cross. I don’t have to listen to you anymore. I have the power to serve God not because I’m able, but because He is in me.
And we learn gradually day by day, issue by issue how to be more and more His. You think about Paul in the scripture, the passage we’ve used so many times in 2 Corinthians 4 where he talks about how death has to work in him so life could work in others. See, that was an ongoing thing. This isn’t Paul saying, I had this grand and glorious experience back there and it’s all gone and I’m just free to serve the Lord now. No, there was a constant having to make choices and having to believe in the power of what happened at the cross.
Do you see how that’s the… Why he said, that’s the only thing I’m preaching? This is it. I have one message. If you understand this, everything else will fall into place. I just pray that God will help us and our desire to be better channels and our desire to have more of his life and power in us to realize: Number one, this is where the need is. Number two, God’s already dealt with that need and we have every right to come to him in faith and treat that as the history that it is, as the accomplished fact that it is. Did Jesus say it is finished?
[Audience Member] Yes he did.Yes he did. What can you add to something that’s finished other than our embracing it as our experience? See, as somebody, a sinner that comes to Christ, has to come to a place, a point in history where we look, we’re able to look back and we see what he did for me, but now it needs to become mine. God wants to make the death of His Son ours in a deeper way.
And you know, part of me would like, like so many, to preach this as an experience and we could have experiences. There may be times when there are great leaps forward, if you will, but Paul mostly presents this as a day by day kind of I’m pressing forward toward the mark. I know what He’s called me to and I know what He did for me. And on that foundation and that foundation alone, I’m gonna press forward because I am expecting.
Now what is he saying by that? I’ve just gotta try. It’s futile. I can’t possibly do it, but I got to try. No, there was this sense that I know what he did and I know that if I press, he’s going to empower me to do and to agree with him, and I’m gonna make actual progress.
Wouldn’t that be nice if we made actual progress in our lives and things that used to hold us back and used to have power over us, suddenly they begin to lose their power. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be a step in the direction of having more of His power in place of ours?
You see why Paul preached nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified because everything, everything flows from that. And I pray that today every one of us will be able to take hold of what He did in a personal way and say, Lord, I don’t have to live in guilt. I can be honest and bring that to the cross and know that you’ve taken care of it.
I don’t have to live under the power of something that has held me because I’ve already died. Satan, you don’t have any right to me because Jesus’ blood was shed. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and they did not shrink, love their lives so much just to shrink from death.
O, how opposite this is to human wisdom and human nature. The idea that in order to live, I gotta die. But O, how freeing it is. And the Lord doesn’t want us to wallow in the process of that, but to see beyond it and be able to rejoice and be able to say, God, I know what You’re doing. I know I can, right in the middle of this, I can have your joy, I can have Your peace. I can have Your victory and You can begin to use me in a better way, in a deeper way. I can experience Your life flowing through me to somebody else.
Thank God it isn’t an all or nothing kind of thing. I believe God is unclogging channels right now. I believe He’s going to do it.
[Congregation] Yes.And He’s gonna do it not because we try harder or we learn more theology, but because we see what He’s already done, and we begin to reckon on that and treat it as the truth.
[Congregation] Yes.And we understand, we enter into something that’s already been finished. Praise God!
I’m so thankful this morning for His mercy and His goodness. And I guarantee you, I’m in as much or more need of this as anybody here, but I also know where my help comes from. It’s not in me. It’s in Jesus who is lifted up on that cross. I died with him and I have every right to come outta that tomb with him and to begin to live for him.
So Lord, I just put that in your hands and pray that you will do what is needed, because I know that we need more power, we need more life. Open our eyes to see what this is about, to understand in a deeper way what you did for us at the cross. Lord, so we can literally ask you and thank you and embrace and take hold, lay hold of what you’ve given to us and make it actually a practical thing in our lives.
We just need you Lord. And we’re trusting in you to help us right today where we’re at, just to take the next step forward and believe in you and trust you in the journey to know that you’ve laid out our journey for us and you’re with us all the way, and you’re for us all the way. Nothing can hinder, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ. Thank you for that finished work. Help us to believe in it, understand it more than we do. We’ll thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen!
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June 16, 2024 - No. 1654
“The Pathway to Power” Part One
Broadcast #1654
June 16, 2024
June 16, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1654 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: A big part of me is wanting to sit there and listen. So if somebody has something, speak up if the Lord’s really put something on your heart. I’ve had some thoughts as well, and on the surface they don’t sound like they quite fit, but I believe they do. I believe with all my heart that God longs to fill us, longs to share Himself with us and work in and through us. The question is, how do we get from here to there?
And somehow my mind went to something that probably doesn’t sound like it fits at all, but I guess a good place to start is in 1 Corinthians Chapter 2, where Paul, before launching into a letter in which he had to deal with a lot of real practical things, had to lay some foundation, had to lay a groundwork. And I believe it’s the same groundwork that the Lord wants to lay in us in a deeper way, certainly in me.
And Paul talks about what his emphasis was when he went to the people. I mean, he didn’t say, Hey, I want to just lay my hands on you and you’re gonna be filled with power. There’s a pathway to that. The pathway to power might be a title. I hadn’t really thought about until the other brother spoke.
But here’s Paul wanting to bring the message and the hope of the gospel to a people. What is it that he emphasizes over and over again? In fact, he says it’s the only thing he emphasizes. Yeah. And so he comes in the beginning of the chapter, I’ll go back to where he got into this.
It says, “And so it was with me, brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom.” So it didn’t come depending on human ability. This wasn’t a matter of learning the right words to say and coming up with, you know, using human eloquence to try to drive them home to people’s minds and hearts. There’s something that has to go way beyond that.
In fact, that gets in the way. You know, I think that’s the biggest thing that I believe the Lord wants us to know that what is it that’s standing in the way of God’s power at work in us? We are. So how do you deal with that? How do we get us out of the way? And this is what Paul was dealing with.
And it goes not just to salvation in the sense that we think of it, just entering into the kingdom of God, but the whole journey between here and there has everything to do with what he’s talking about. There has to be a foundation. There has to be something that literally, well, it’s like the helmet of salvation. It’s the way we think.
My God, you know, Doug was talking about the ideas that are brought in the world today. This world has been taken over by doctrines that come straight outta the heart of Lucifer. They’re designed to block us, to hinder us, to help us see the world through his eyes and not through God’s eyes. But there’s one thing that God wanted to emphasize to these Corinthian believers, and I believe to us, and it’s what Paul’s about to get into.
So, “I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” That’s the whole message. It’s not, come down and we’ll lay hands on you and you’ll get it. There’s got to be this bedrock conviction about the true meaning of what happened at the cross, what it’s all about.
I believe God wants to, as it were, to fit us with a new set of glasses. Satan would provide them. The mention was made of the whole education system, but it’s the whole culture. This culture wants to fit us with glasses that will help to define our world, what it means, what our place is in it, who we are, how we are supposed to conduct our lives, what’s meaning and purpose. All of those things are all defined in natural terms that leave God out of it completely.
And here’s Paul laying a brand new foundation and says, Listen, this needs to be the foundation of everything that I will ever tell you. If you don’t get this, you’re gonna miss everything else. Now, think about Paul, who had come out of a religious background that emphasized what you’re supposed to do and not do. And there was a purpose in that, was there not? The purpose was to let us know that we got a problem. It wasn’t to solve the problem, it was to let us know that we’ve got one.
And so, Paul, what a revelation this was when he saw not only who Jesus was, but what He had done and what it meant. It changed everything in his life. It opened up a pathway to life that did not exist. You can’t keep the law of Moses and have life and have power. There’s gotta be something that goes way beyond that, because again, I’m the one that’s in the way. It’s not God’s problem in the sense that He’s not willing. He is more than willing to share Himself with us, but I’m the one that’s in the way. And He’s got to do something about that.
Well, what did He do? The cross is the center of everything. It absolutely has defined history. It has defined the destiny of every human being on this planet. When Jesus came, He said, “Now is the judgment of this world,” okay? This was absolutely the world on trial and God rendering His judgment, His valuation of the world. He wants us to see what He has done and what He has accomplished at the cross.
So first of all, we need to absolutely have the ability, because if God gives it to us to see what the cross meant, to see, that God was literally rendering judgment on our planet, on everybody, everything that is done, every value that is held here, yes, there are things that maybe in a distant way reflect his character, but this world has been so corrupted that it is beyond saving. God didn’t come here to transform this world into His kingdom. God came to destroy everything.
And what he did on the cross, Jesus died, as we’ve often said in the past, As a representative of this creation. I know that we use the words where, you know, if I be lifted up, I’ll draw all men into me. There’s a deeper meaning to that. He drew up. In the very beginning, all the creation was in Him and He had but to speak it out, we said that recently, but there came a day when this creation needed to be dealt with because it had been absolutely corrupted.
And so He came down and all of that was in effect drawn into Him. He became the very representative, the representative, the embodiment of this creation. And when God poured out judgment upon Him on the cross, something He willingly embraced for us, thank God, when God poured out that judgment, that was God’s judgment against you and me in our natural state. God didn’t look at you and me and say, Well, there’s somebody, there they got some good in them. God’s valuation of every single human being, except Jesus, that’s ever been born, all that society has stood for, all of the ambitions of man, everything.
You know, we are the ones who tend to say, well, this is good and this is bad. We need to see that in the light of the cross. God’s not going through and picking out and sorting out the human race and saying, I’m gonna take this over here, ‘cause this is good. Folks, it is all corrupt. Everything that even looks good is still corrupted. The motivation, the spirit behind it is still absolutely corrupted by sin and we need deliverance. We need deliverance here.
Again, what’s the hold up? What’s holding back God from moving in our midst? It’s us. Oh God, help us. God, help me to see the true meaning of the cross.
You know, I think of young people, we often speak of them, and those of us who are older, obviously, if you got any memory at all, you remember what it’s like. There was a time when we had to make choices in our lives. We had to begin to think about direction and not just go through the, okay, now I’m supposed to do this, now I’m supposed to do that, now I’m growing up, I gotta make some choices.
Do you think maybe, just maybe God wants every young person to have this truth about the cross and what it means so embedded in your minds that you see everything in its light, you see the vanity of this world, you see the vanity of those who think the world is about personal pleasure and what can I do to make myself happy? Happy has nothing to do with anything except circumstances that make me feel good. And oh, how temporary all that foolishness is. God wants us to have something so much deeper than passing circumstances that make us feel good in the moment.
And how many traps does Satan lay for people who pursue happiness in that sense, in a selfish way? Oh God, help us to see when we make the choices that define our lives, who we’re gonna marry, who we’re gonna be with, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna seek? Are we gonna seek after possessions and status in the eyes of others, and pride, and all the things that people seek after so readily, or are we gonna say, Lord, my life in this world, the life that I would possess and live by my choices is defined by that cross?
You already told me what you think about that. That’s not just simply a little interesting religious fact of history. That is something that absolutely, the cross looms over everything about this world. It was a final decision on the part of God. Everything that has happened since has been nothing but the unfolding of what God has already set in motion. There’s not a thing anybody can do to change God’s mind or God’s purpose.
In fact, doesn’t Paul talk about the mentality of how he sees the world and how he sees people? You go over to 1 Corinthians Chapter 5, and you will see where he doesn’t see people just as you would see them naturally. He understood that when Christ died, He died for how many? All. Well, what’s the implication of Him dying for all? Therefore, He says, what? All are dead. All are dead.
Now, some are made alive, but the pathway to life is to embrace what God did as being the right choice for me. He put me to death because I needed to be put to death. Oh, how we are the ones who value people differently. We’ll see somebody in the gutter and somebody who’s doing great charitable things and we’ll try to make this difference between them, but God sees everyone the same.
There’s not one of us here who can look in the mirror and say God has shown me favor because I am something and I am different, I am better than. Oh, the cross, the message of the cross puts us all on exactly the same level of one who needs a savior, one who could never possibly earn our way. I need Him this morning. I need Him. I needed Him to even come to know Him.
Folks, when we come to know Him, isn’t it about dying? Isn’t that what baptism means. When someone confessed Christ and they were openly to profess Him, what did that involve? It involved baptism. What does that mean? That represents my death and resurrection. It means that I am totally identified with what the cross stands for. I embrace its meaning. I embrace my own guilt, my own need. And I am willing in the light of that to lay down this life, to let it go, to understand what God did there. He’s killed me and I deserved to die.
Oh, thank God it doesn’t end there. That’s a doorway into life, into the very purpose of God. Thank God for His mercy. Thank God for everything that He has done. Thank God that there is a hope. But, oh God, when I get up in the morning, I need to remember what the cross is about. Did not Jesus say, If you are gonna follow me, do what? Take up your cross.
See, we’re talking about power this morning, but here’s Jesus saying, You wanna follow me? What does it take? There has to be an instrument of death that we take up every day. That must have sounded strange. I mean, think about when He said this. This was a long time before He went to the cross. And even when He went there, He had told them about it and they still didn’t get it. They forgot what He said. And here He is long before that, or sometime before that, saying, Take up your cross.
Well, they knew what a cross was. It was a Roman method of execution. It was designed to be humiliating and utterly painful. And here He says, Take up your cross and follow me. What was He saying? Did not Jesus deny all that would have come from the life He got from Adam. He allowed Himself to be born in Adam’s family, but He never ever gave expression to that life. And there He was, the sinless son of God. There was an instrument of death that He carried every single day, where He said no, no to self, no to whatever wants to come from Adam’s nature. Yes to God.
Folks, there’s so many people in religion that want power without death, without dying. It doesn’t happen. God wants us to have such a sense of what He did there that it can become the defining helmet. It’s the way we see ourselves. It’s the way we see one another. It’s the way we see the world.
So we don’t get carried away with what’s happening. We’re not dismayed by the news, as bad as it is, and as crazy as some of it is, because we know that God already decided how this is gonna turn out. All we have to do is look at the cross. It’s history, it has happened. God did that. There’s not a thing Satan can do to undo what God has set in motion. His power is absolutely gonna make it happen. The devil knows it and he’s angry. That’s why things are happening.
But oh, we’re seeing the world reject the message of the cross. More and more people are saying, No, I’m going to live my life. I’m gonna live for the values that I see in this world, what I can get out of it. That’s gonna define my thinking in my life. And what happens when people persist in thinking like that and acting like that and making those choices? Sooner or later, these are things we’ve said many times, God takes His hand off.
That’s what’s happening. We’re gonna wind up with people who have embraced the hope of the cross on the one hand, and people who have rejected it, and their destiny is absolutely set by that. Praise God!
Lord, guide this ‘cause I want to get to where this ties in with what’s been said, but think about what He says leading up to those words in 1 Corinthians. I’ll go through this a little bit quickly, but I want to just focus for a moment. In verse 18 of Chapter 1, The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, all right?
So here we have people that just, they shut their minds to the gospel, it doesn’t make any sense to them. But here’s others that have an openness of heart. Somehow God has worked in their heart and they’ve embraced, they’ve recognized, yes, I am in need, I am a sinner. What God did there was just, it was right. I needed somebody to die for my sins. I could not possibly deserve any of His favor.
And what does he say? The message of the cross is the power of God. The message of the cross to us who are being saved. That also reminds us that this is a process. Anybody here needs some saving today? Yeah, there are things that come up in our lives, things we become aware of that perhaps we were not as aware of. And here we are saying, God, I need more power. Lord, I wanna be a better channel.
And what the Lord does to get us to that place, most of the time, is to focus on things that are getting in the way, okay? There’s a channel there, but you got a bunch of rocks in there. And so the Lord wants to refocus our attention on the need.
But I wonder how many times we get bogged down right at this point, Lord, I want more of You. And He shows us the problem and then we get stuck. Does that sound familiar? What do I do about it? How do I deal with this awful self that just wants to get in the way? Every time I wanna do something, there it is, trying to jump in and take credit, or jump in and do it its way and just absolutely get in the way.
You know what I believe that God wants us to do to get past that, at least in part? First of all, to be honest, not to hide, not to duck. ‘cause it’s not like God’s showing us a need, saying, Fix it, and then I’ll come around. We’ve talked about that many times. I can’t fix it. That’s why I need a savior. I’m helpless. How could I possibly change myself? What’s the answer to all of that?
Oh, do you see why Paul had to go back to the cross every time? Because what he was saying was, I know you can’t take care of it. I did. Are you gonna surrender to what I did and embrace it and believe in it in a practical everyday sense? Ooh, way too simple. Couldn’t be that simple.
But do you see where I believe the enemy gets in and he turns need into futility, into condemnation, into a “try harder” kind of thing, or give up kind of thing? When God wants us to go, to take every need to the cross and to understand what God is saying is, You have a need, but I took care of it. I’ve already put you to death there.
Yes, I put away the guilt of your sins. Thank God when we do come short, and we all do, where do we go? What do we do about it? How do we get free from that?
[Audience Member] Confess it?Yeah, confess it. Agree with God about it, but on what ground? Because, okay, I’ve confessed it. I’ll try harder, Lord. No, we’re gonna have to go right back to what You did, Lord. You’ve already taken care of that, but I am embracing what You did for me back then. I embrace it. I believe in it in a practical sense that what You did back then can make a difference in my heart right now.
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June 9, 2024 - No. 1653
“The Missing Link” Conclusion
Broadcast #1653
June 9, 2024
June 9, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1653 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I just pray that God will help me to understand how critical prayer is to the purposes of God. You know, I thought about simple illustrations. One of them would be if you’re out in the yard and you’ve got a tool or something, a power tool, and it’s the kind that you had to plug in. Have you ever been out in the yard, the other end of the yard, and you get ready to do something and you pull the trigger and nothing happens? Yeah, if you’ve ever been out with a power tool, you’ve had that happen.
So what do you do? Well, you follow the cord back, and maybe this is an extension, then you check that connection, then you check to where it’s plugged in. It’s a very simple illustration. But if I’m gonna do something with a tool, it’s great to be willing to do it, and to wanna do it, and to pick it up and walk out there and try to say, I’m clipping bushes or whatever I’m doing. That’s great, but what good is it if I’m not connected to any power? Nothing’s gonna happen.
See the problem, there’s no lack of power back at the house, unless it’s December 7th, or 6th, or whatever it was [reference to a recent power outage]. There’s no lack of power at the house. And here I am with a tool, willing to use it, what’s the problem? There’s a connection that’s broken.
Do we understand that there are times when God wants to do something, wants us to do something, and the absolute missing link is prayer, where we get connected to God in such a way that what happens is not I, but it’s Christ living in me, the words that I speak and so forth? So that’s one illustration.
Another one that I have used in the past, I remember preaching on prayer many, many years ago now, and I think it was called God’s Firemen. And in that illustration, you have this picture of a fire, there’s a need, okay? And there’s a fireman who goes, and what does he do? He’s got a hose, and the idea is to spray down the fire with water that’s supposed to cool it down and make the fire go out, okay?
So you’ve got a fireman who’s willing to do it, you’ve got a hydrant that’s nearby, that’s full of water, but what good would it do if he goes out there and says, I know what to do, and he just waves the hose around, but it’s never gets connected to the source of water?
That’s the missing link, I believe, in so much that we do, that God would teach us how to move in the Spirit, how to be connected to what He wants, how to have His power at work in things. Knowing His will. Yeah, knowing His will, but then stepping out and doing it.
I mean, there’s so many illustrations, I guess, in the scriptures, but I just pray that God will somehow get this thought across to me. I feel my weakness, but you know, God’s promised, hasn’t He? That His strength has made perfect in weakness. If this is what it takes, if my feeling weak is what it takes to minister something to you, then praise God!
Isn’t that how Jesus looked at the cross? I mean, He prayed like I would pray, Oh God, I need more strength. But Jesus prayed, Oh God, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me so I don’t have to go through this. Nevertheless, what’s the bottom line? Not my will, but Yours be done. The focus of His life was not the affairs of this life, it was seeking God and doing what His purpose was and fulfilling His place in that purpose.
Do you know that every member of the body of Christ has a place? Do you know that every single member of the body of Christ is meant to be a vessel through which God absolutely works, and speaks, and accomplishes something? You know, so much of our prayers, I think it’s sincere and I think God is merciful, and we rightly ask if we have needs, like Paul, when he had that thorn in the flesh, God didn’t rebuke him for asking, but there had to come a time when God revealed the purpose of that, and when God did, Paul stopped asking to get rid of it. He said, Praise God, I get it now.
I wonder if we’re willing to do that. There’s nothing wrong with praying and asking God about earthly needs. But even in that, I see Paul not thinking about just earthly welfare. What was the reason why Paul prayed that in the first place? Did he not see that harassment by a spirit as something that is hindering my work? God has called me to work for Him and this is getting in the way, and oh God, get rid of it. So even in that, his motive was right.
But here we are, heirs of the eternal covenant. We are heirs of that which will take us beyond this world into the kingdom of God. And we are not just creatures. When God wanted to do something among the animal kingdom, He didn’t consult the head rabbit or the head of any in a particular group of animals and say, Here’s my purpose, you know, I’ve got a purpose in you fulfilling this. He just did it.
But folks we’re not like that, we’re not just animals, we’re not just pieces on the chess board, as we’ve said many times, we are meant to be His sons and daughters. We are meant to have a relationship with Him that is like His Son. When God wanted to do something through His Son, there was a relationship, He was plugged in, He was connected. He became a channel of God’s life and purpose. That was the whole reason for His existence.
Folks, is that not the reason why we’re here? Are we simply here to live an earthly life and focus all of our attention on its needs? Or are we here to say, God, I’m here for a reason, I’m here for a purpose. Lord, if it was just a matter of getting me out of here into heaven, you would just take me on as soon as I say, yes, to Jesus. But no, I’m here. It’s a time for me to learn your ways, to become like you. But in the meantime, I’m here where you want me to live like Jesus, in a sense.
Didn’t Jesus say, As the Father has sent me, so send I you? Well, how did the Father send Him? Again, the Father anointed Him, called Him, gave Him the ability to do what fulfilled God’s purpose, His part in that.
But every member of the body of Christ, if we are connected to Him, if He lives on the inside, our purpose is not just to have a sweet life here, and every time we have a little problem, we go to God, and you know, we go to the divine “vending machine” and try to pray a formula prayer: Oh God, fix it. Oh God, get us beyond that. He cares about needs, absolutely. But why are we asking?
You know, my mind, as soon as I read that passage about Isaac, my mind went to James. What is it, James 4? A scripture we’ve used many times. When it talks about, okay, anyway, beginning of the chapter, he talks about what was causing difficulties and trouble among the people. But he says, You do not have because you do not ask God. Okay? I wonder how many things that are part of the covenant of God that God has said belong to us, belong to me, and there’s something that I don’t have, I’m not experiencing. He says it in His word, Jesus provided it, He’s provided everything that we need, hasn’t He? Yeah. But I don’t have it. Why? Why don’t I have it?
Do you see where there’s a disconnect right here? Are there not things that just as Isaac went to God, no doubt with this in his mind, here I am 20 years in, I’ve married this beautiful woman and we have no son. And you have promised that through our seed all the nations of the world are gonna be blessed. And there came a time when he said, Oh God, please fulfill your word, please give us a child. And God listened and He did it.
I wonder how many times God is waiting for us and we’re waiting on Him, or we’re somehow expecting this, He’s gonna work in us till that day, all I have to do is sit back, go about my life, and He’s gonna somehow do it. I wonder how many things God has literally given to us in Christ that He wants us to come and say, Oh God, you have brought me face to face with a need in my life, and I have every right to go to you and ask that you would help me in this area?
I wonder how many things that we face and needs that we just sort of blow off or we just say, oh, that’s me, or whatever, and God wants to do something special for us? There are things that God longs to do in your life and mine, but we don’t even care enough to ask Him. It’s not important enough to us or we don’t understand.
Do you see where there’s this missing connection? I just pray that God will somehow show us what this is about. I don’t know how to say this in such a way, but God, you’re gonna have to get this across to me. Start with me, Lord, I need this.
There are things, there are needs that I come up against in my life. Do I not have the right to go to God, just like Jacob did, and say, I will not let you go until you help me? I need help, Lord, You promised, this Your word. I’m not going to You about something that I don’t have a right to. It’s not like I’m asking for a million dollars and a mansion, and some earthly blessing. I’m asking, God, that You promised that I’m gonna be like You, and I see these things in me that aren’t, oh God, help me, give me grace to grow. Help me to experience more of what you have given to me, what Jesus died to give me.
Do these things belong to us or don’t they? Do you suppose many times this is what the problem is? We don’t have because we don’t ask. And of course, we can do a lot of asking, that’s just basically so that we can feed natural desires, and that’s no good. But God is looking for the hearts of people who will say, God, I get it. You’ve called me outta the world. You’ve changed my entire focus, the focus of my heart and my life, and I wanna be on board with that.
But not only do I wanna be on board, I wanna be an active participant. There are things that you long to accomplish that are part of the fulfillment of this purpose that are on me in a sense. You want me to literally step into the gap and exercise myself in calling upon your name for the fulfillment of that. And that’s the missing connection, okay?
You know, one scripture that, well, let me just refer to this one. You can read in 1 John 5. This is the promise that we have of Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. Okay, so we know that God has a will, God has a purpose. And if we ask anything according to that purpose, He’ll hear us, He’ll listen. So if I ask for a million dollars and a mansion, that’s probably not gonna be part of His plan. But if I ask Him to help me to find and fulfill my place in the body of Christ, and to have His mind and to know what He wants me to do, and to have faith to do it, do I have the right to ask that? Yes. Does every person here who belongs to Jesus Christ have the right to ask that? Yes. Is it His will? Yes. Yes.
So then what does He say? And if we know that that’s according to His will, We know we have it. We know that we have it. That’s right. Thank you, at least somebody’s looking up the scripture. We know that we have what we desired. If we’re asking according to His will, and we know that.
God, help us to have that sense. Lord, you do actually have a plan for my life. I’m not just somebody who sits on a pew and I’m unimportant. You matter. You and I, everyone have a place to fulfill. When God created the world, His Son filled that place all by Himself. That’s all it took. Let there be light, let there be this, let there be that, and God’s power flowed.
But there is power that God wants to release among us, through us to one another, into our individual lives, there’s things He wants to do that He has planned to do. And part of that plan is to get us to be able to go to God with faith, and with determination, and with focus, and literally bombard heaven and say, Lord, this is what You promised, and I’m not letting You go until You do this. Until You help me, until You help my brothers and sisters. Does this make any sense? Yes. Is this needed? Yes. Praise God!
Praise God, I thought of a scripture that we use so many times, and I wanna focus on one part of it that we sometimes make mention of. But I wanna look at Ephesians 6 and the armor of God. You know, we talk about the armor itself, the helmet, and the shield, and all of those things. As important as they are, it goes on down in verse 18, it doesn’t stop with that.
And actually, I think the translators of this particular translation wanted to make a paragraph out of this. So they turned praying in the spirit into an active verb instead of a participle. You know what a participle is? It continues a thought. And I think other translations will say praying in the spirit. So in other words, we fight, but there’s something that’s going on while we’re doing all of this. We’re not just doing all the right stuff, there is a source of power that’s coming in. We’re plugged in, in other words.
It’s one thing to stand there and have all these pieces of armor and fight and lift the word up, but we have to have this. If we’re not plugged in, we’re like that tool that’s out there in the other end of the yard. Nothing happens. God wants to power our lives with His spirit, okay? And so it says, And praying, I wanna translate that a little closer, “And praying in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”
Now the Lord just focused my attention on that in the Spirit. Because praying, again, is not just some kind of formula. It’s not like something where you can say, alright, how do you do this? Okay, here are the things you’re supposed to say, and if you just say this, it’s like a divine vending machine. If I do it just right and push the right button, then out will pop the blessing. There is a connection.
Did Jesus do that, do you think? Yes. Were His prayers focused on self? No. They were entirely focused on the reason why He was here. And He found out what the Father wanted Him to do. He was aligned with that purpose and He stepped out in faith, and God’s power flowed through Him to accomplish what His purpose was.
That’s what God has called us to every, single one of us. Now there isn’t a single one of us that has the same role that He does, but we all have one. We all have a place. But praying in the Spirit, that word in is a preposition that is meant to convey something. And it is kind of vague, it’s almost like that’s a place, what does that mean? But the word in the Greek also can convey the idea of agency, that is, how does it happen?
So we’re not just praying in the Spirit, we’re praying by the Spirit. In other words, I need God’s Spirit to power my prayer. Does that make sense? If I’m just doing it and it’s me, my thoughts, my efforts, my energy, and that’s all there is to it, am I really praying or am I just going through a form?
How many of us feel like we need to ask God to teach us about this? Yeah, Lord, teach me, not just how to say the right words, but what is this thing called prayer about? Because if it’s just me doing it, but even it’s like everything in the kingdom of God, I’m meant to be a vessel, a channel through which God flows.
But this is a pretty important one. What He’s saying is even prayer itself is something where I need God to anoint me to guide what I pray and to empower what I pray, so the words can actually go forth and do something. And again, you have the difference between a fireman who just stands there waving a hose and one who’s actually connected to the hydrant, and there’s really something coming out.
I want something coming out when I pray, don’t you? Are we just supposed to go through a form and somehow, you know, it’s easy to say, well, what difference does it make? But God has absolutely ordered His kingdom, so it makes a difference when we pray. And God wants there to be divine power, just as when the words came out of Jesus’ mouth, Let there be light. When He said, Rise and be healed, or whatever He said, and there was power that came out.
God wants power to come out of us. He can teach us those things to where we can be so in tune with Him and such a vessel that we can literally pray and see something happen. We could pray and power would happen, and something would happen on the other side of the world. There’s no distance, there’s no limitation in God.
But I wonder how times there’s something that God wants to do and He can’t find anybody to make that connection. Because there’s a way that God does stuff. It’s not just He’s out there somehow magically doing everything, He wants us participating, being involved.
I thought of an old hymn, I don’t think I could quote it, I looked it up a while ago, but hadn’t thought about this in decades, but, “Channels Only.” And somebody had the sense that what God has called us to be is channels. That it’s not about living for self, it’s about laying down our lives and giving them to Him. For what purpose? So that we can be a channel, we can literally be connected to Him, but not just so that we are bathed in blessing, but so that through us others can be touched and helped.
That’s God’s call upon every member of the body of Christ, every member of His kingdom. I just call upon myself, but all of us, to pray and say, God, teach us what this is about. Help us to join, to be connected to You, to be so in tune with You that we’re just not living earthly lives and trying to get You to fix our problems. We wanna see beyond that. If I have a brother and sister in need of strength and spirit, you’ve given me the power to speak words that are not just wishes that we throw out into the universe and hope God’s listening.
I’ll tell you, when we have to wrestle in prayers, not because God is unwilling, is because God wants us to exercise faith. God wants us to exercise determination, and wants us to call upon Him with all of our hearts and look to Him for His answers.
But anyway, I just pray that God will somehow burn this into my heart as I need it, probably worse than anybody here. It’s so easy just to say, oh, prayer we know all about that. Do we? Do we know much of anything about it? Do we realize that you and I, if we’re hooked up with God and He is empowering us, He’s guiding what we pray, but He’s empowering what we speak, do we not realize that those words have power, that they can literally go out, and change circumstances, destinies, they could empower someone who has a ministry, they’re just as important as the minister, that every person of the body of Christ can contribute to the health of the whole and the purpose of our reaching out and being alive, every purpose that has to do with God’s kingdom?
Every person here has the power to be connected to God and has a place that God has called you to. And He wants you and me to be His channels. Channels only, what a privilege that is. May God help us, and I believe He is, don’t you? I believe He loves us with an everlasting love. And I don’t want anything to not happen because I was just too busy messing around, assuming He’s gonna take care of it all. He wants me involved. Praise God!
Missing Link, I don’t know if that’s a good title or not. ‘cause that’s the general connotation of that, but that isn’t that bad, is it? The missing link is a people who are willing to call upon God and to do it by the power of His Spirit. We have creative power that God wants to give us. It’s not just us wishing things, it’s God carrying out His work in the earth and He wants you and me to be part of it. Praise God!
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June 2, 2024 - No. 1652
“The Missing Link” Part One
Broadcast #1652
June 2, 2024
June 2, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1652 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, I finished reading Job in my regular reading and I’m back in Abraham’s life and the other things that follow in Genesis. And I read something the other day that kinda jumped out at me in an unusual way. It’s a simple little thought. It’s in Genesis 25 as a place to start. But it kinda triggered a line of thinking that I feel like is certainly nothing new in one sense and yet I feel like the Lord wants to shine a light on it for all of us.
And this is the occasion of Isaac is now coming to the center of the picture. Abraham was still alive but he was an old man and the story shifts to Isaac. You remember how the Lord called Abraham, or Abram as he was known then, out of a heathen background and sent him by faith to the land of Palestine, made all kinds of wonderful promises to him.
The greatest was that in his seed all nations of the world of the earth would be blessed and put him through all kinds of tests of his faith and his faith was continually in God’s promises even to the point, as we’ve mentioned recently, when the Lord asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac, his only son, the very one that He’d promised, on an altar, he actually got to the point where his son was tied up and on the altar and he was reaching for the knife. And the Lord stopped him right there. You ever been in a place where the Lord’s kind of tested you and then said, All right, I see that you’re willing? I appreciate the Lord’s demonstration of what real faith is in Abraham.
And so we come into Isaac’s life and we see that certainly he was there on that occasion, wasn’t he? And he knew all about the promises that had been made to Abraham and the hope and the heritage that was going to come through his line. And you remember how Abraham sent his servant to get Abraham, get to Isaac a wife and how the Lord led him in such a distinct way. What an example of honoring the Lord and desiring his will and at the same time trusting him to work it out. And you see that play out in that instance where Rebecca comes into the picture.
So now we come to the point where Isaac in verse 20, Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebecca, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. Then it says this, Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer and his wife Rebecca became pregnant.
And you go on in the story there and you find out that Isaac was now 60 years old. So what’s happened is here he is heir to the promises that God had made to Abraham and he marries a wife and the promise is, In your seed all nations of the world will be blessed. And now 20 years go by and his wife doesn’t have a child. And what happens is not just, Okay, God promised this, I don’t have to worry about it. It was he prayed. He literally went to God about the promise and God answered his prayer.
Now somehow that you could look at this and say, Well, God has a purpose, He’s purposed from all eternity, He’s gonna work it out, don’t have to worry about it, what’s for breakfast? You know, and just kind of go on about our way. But yet there’s a reason why God recorded this. Somehow there was a missing link in the unfolding of God’s purpose in which God was wanting Isaac to exercise himself in faith and literally go to God on behalf of what God had already revealed that He was going to do and then God answered the prayer. In other words, the going forth of this or the growing of this line, the extension of that line that came out of Abraham’s loins wasn’t gonna happen without a certain action on the part of Isaac.
And I believe there’s a lesson there that the Lord wanted to bring to my attention. We can rejoice all we want to in the purposes of God that we hear unfolding but there is a place where prayer is the critical missing link, if you will. We, that God is looking for our participation. There’s a, that’s a word we have used in the past. I remember many years ago preaching a sermon called Participating in the Purpose of God, but this is, this was critical.
Why would God make special reference to this in the account if this wasn’t the case? And why would there be 20 years with nothing happening in spite of the fact that God had a purpose and was carrying it out and had promised to carry it out but nothing was happening? He was looking for something that came out of Isaac’s heart that said, God, I need you to fulfill your purpose and I’m calling upon your name. And the Lord heard, the Lord responded to his prayer and she had children in this case.
We know we’re not gonna particularly focus on the Jacob and Esau and all of that but the point is so central that here, I believe it’s a lesson for us that God wants us to participate in his purpose and there is something that will not happen unless we enjoy, unless we join in. Does that make sense? God is looking for things, there’s things He wants to do that He’s promised to do but in order for them to happen, He needs our, He desires our participation. He’s worked that into his plan but yet there are things that won’t happen until we pray, until we call upon God.
And you can go on and see other instances. We know how in spite of all the natural characteristics of Jacob and how his personality and how that came out, there was something in Jacob that valued the birthright that somehow attached value to being Abraham’s heir and God saw that in him and said, Okay, there’s something, I’m gonna work with this guy. Aren’t you glad that God calls us in our imperfection, knows what to do to change us so that we can become more in tune with His character and His purpose?
And so we see that in Jacob and in spite of how he got where he got by sort of cheating his brother out of the inheritance, you also see the lack of caring about the inheritance in Esau. He was willing to sell his birthright for a bowl of soup because he was hungry. And so God saw on the one hand, even despite the method used, he saw a heart that wanted that, that saw the value in that.
And so God began to work in him and arranged for him to travel back to the home country to Laban’s household. And on the way, you remember how he prayed, how he met God, as a matter of fact. He laid down at Bethel in chapter 28. I don’t wanna go through a lot of that, but anyway, he has this dream and this is where he sees the stairway between earth and heaven and angels ascending and descending and then there above it stood the Lord.
And he said in verse 13, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are living. Your descendants will, or lying I guess is the word in this translation. “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Wow. How would you like to have the Lord speak that to you in a particular instance? That was some powerful words. What a promise that God has. So here he is for sure, the heir to Abraham’s promise and you remember how he went there and he labored 14 years for the two wives that the Lord gave him. Children began to be born. He labored another six years and wound up with flocks and herds and servants and the Lord just made him rich and then finally told him it’s time to go back. Go back and I’ll be with you.
But you remember what happened and this is a chapter we focused on before and I’ll just refer to it in passing. But chapter 32, he gets back and finds out that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men and he remembers how it was when he left. He left because Esau was threatening to kill him and so now all of a sudden, he’s got two things that are in opposition, seeming opposition. On the one hand, he’s got the promise of God and the instruction, go back and I’ll be with you. On the other hand, Esau’s coming with 400 men.
One of the things that I believe God wants us to realize in a deeper way is that God on the one hand has a purpose that involves our lives, involves our assembly, involves His people in the earth but there will always be challenges to that. Satan will always be allowed to challenge and to make it seem like it’s not gonna happen. I’m coming against this thing and it’s not gonna happen and we react far too often with a natural reaction like Jacob all of a sudden did. Whoa.
And he refers back and said, Lord, you promised me. And there he’s still trying to work it out and trying to separate everybody and send gifts ahead to his brother but you remember how it all came down. He’d done everything he knew. He’d reminded God of his promise and now toward the end of the chapter or on in the chapter, verse 22, verse 24, okay? He’d sent everybody over the stream.
So Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him till daybreak and it’s very obvious that this was not just an ordinary man. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, Let me go for it is daybreak. But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
You ever been in a situation where, I mean, sometimes we have situations come and we just pray and the Lord just, boom, there’s the answer and other times we’ve gotta do some fighting. What do you suppose that is? Do you think the Lord, do you think that’s an accident? Do you think maybe the Lord has a purpose in allowing situations to arise where we feel so challenged that our need drives us to a spirit, if you wanna call it that, of desperation?
Do you see how God is molding us? We talk about being in His hands and being molded, made like He wants us to be. He’s got a job on His hands. All I have to do is look in the mirror and know that. He’s got a job on His hands changing me into what He wants me to be.
And sometimes it comes to a place where I know what He wants, but all the circumstances seem so desperate, so against that, and all I can do is just cry out and just say, oh God, if this situation is gonna be rectified, you’re gonna have to do it. And I am not quitting in this fight. I am not giving up. Do you see how something is being formed in me when I do that?
It’s not like, okay, God, Your will’s gonna happen, I don’t have to worry about it, so I just cruise along through life and You’re gonna work everything out. I think it’s sometimes awfully easy to fall into that trap. I’m so glad we quote so many times, and rightly so, the scripture where the Lord says that He’s going to finish what He started. That’s a paraphrase of it. Whatever the work that He started in you, He will perform until the day of Jesus Christ.
And isn’t it easy just to say, oh, great. You know, then I don’t have to worry about it. Everything’s in His hands and I’m just gonna go through my life, go through my day. What’s for lunch, by the way? Or do you suppose that we have a participation in the outworking of all of that that He’s doing? And that’s the thing that just, the Lord got my attention with that. It’s like there’s things that He wants to do that’s not gonna happen unless we participate.
How many of you remember, I’m not gonna go and read it all, but you could read Daniel 9, the beginning of it particularly, where Daniel the prophet, remember he was over in, he was carried as a young man into Babylon, served the king there and then the Medes and the Persians came in and ended the Babylonian empire and they had their own empire. And there he is still over there.
And there came a point where somehow he came into possession of the prophecy that God had given through Jeremiah. And the prophecy basically said there’s 70 years that God has determined concerning Jerusalem. Yes, it was destroyed. Yes, it was punished for its many decades or many centuries of sin. There was a judgment that was poured out, but it’s 70 years.
And so all of a sudden he’s saying, I see that God has already declared His purpose through His prophet Jeremiah. Now, couldn’t Daniel have just said, oh, great, 70 years is about up. I don’t, we don’t have to worry about that. We know how this is gonna turn out. What did he do? He went to some serious fasting and prayer.
You suppose there’s a reason for that? Or was he just going through a spiritual exercise? Was there a connection between Daniel reading that, knowing God’s purpose and then going to God in prayer about it? Was that an accident? Was that without purpose? I don’t think so. Because God records that in great detail.
He repents on behalf of the nation and the people. He declares God’s justice in punishing Jerusalem and the judgment that He poured out. But then He reminds God of His promises and said, oh God, I’m just entreating you on behalf of Jerusalem. Lord, restore, Lord. And the Lord did, didn’t He?
I wonder how many things the Lord wants to accomplish here. And He’s looking for us to absolutely sign on to His purposes, to be so in tune with Him that we can understand what He wants and then exercise a faith to see that happen. I believe with all my heart, there are things that God wants to do.
You know, I thought about another couple of examples that we see in the Scripture. We know the prophecies of the Old Testament were so clear that there was a Savior coming. There was a Redeemer coming. And there was a remnant of people. When the time came, who were looking for this, who were actively engaged in praying and looking to God about it?
One of them was a man named Simeon. And remember when Jesus was born and they went into the temple? And there he was and he came and he, I think he took him in his arms and gave a word of thanks and prophecy. Said, Now you can let my servant depart in peace because God has said you’re not gonna die until you see Him. But he was there every day looking to God, praying and asking God for the fulfillment of His word. And then you have Anna, the same thing. She spent all of her time in the temple praying.
Well, if God is sovereign and He’s gonna, and He’s already said what He’s gonna do and He’s gonna do it, what’s the connection? Why do we have to pray? Something to think about, isn’t it? What’s the difference? What difference does that make?
And I thought about, let’s see, trusting the Lord to kinda order the steps of my thoughts here. But there’s a way that God accomplishes His purpose. Going back to the very beginning, when He was creating, how did He create? Well, yeah, but who spoke? It was His Son, wasn’t it? God had a purpose in His heart that He’d set in motion. But in order for that to happen, there was somebody through whom He spoke.
And Jesus, in a sense, became, or the one who later became Jesus, became a channel through which the very life and the creative power of God flowed. I could stand here all day and say, Let there be light, and there wouldn’t be any light. I don’t have power in myself to create anything. But somebody who is connected to God has power to move in the will and the purpose of God and to speak things, and boy, it’s divine power that goes forth, and it happens, and the creation happened.
When Jesus was on Earth, how many times have we used this in different contexts, but was He not a channel of God? How did He do what He did? The Father was in Him, doing His work. And so there was a union between Himself, between Jesus and His Father, that was such that, number one, He knew what the Father wanted Him to do, and number two, He depended on Him to do it. He was obedient to do it, but when He did it, there was divine power that went through Him that healed the sick or spoke words that had life in them, whatever it was, it wasn’t Him anymore doing it, it was the Father in Him doing His work.
Is there a picture of the kingdom of God and how God does things that maybe we need to understand in a deeper way? I feel like I do. You know, we can do all the right things, we can say all the right things, but unless there’s power in it, unless there’s divine power, what good is it? Okay? In other words, I could stand here and say, I’m just trusting God’s in this this morning, is He? I mean, is this something we need? Yeah.
But I could stand here and say all of the right things because I learned ‘em in school, I studied ‘em, and I read ‘em out of the Bible, and the words are true, and I could gear up all my natural ability and say it, and nothing would be accomplished for the kingdom of God. All I’m doing is communicating ideas, person to person.
But if I’m doing something because God called me to do it, and because God is enabling me to do it, and I’m consciously yielding myself to Him, then there’s life that flows. It’s more than words. Jesus said the words that I speak to you are spirit and life.
I believe that’s something that God longs to do for every single member of the body of Christ, is that what we live and what comes out of us is not just us trying to be Christians and trying to act like we’re supposed to do it, executing formulas for Christian living and all that kind of stuff. We need to be living supernatural lives.
There are things God longs to accomplish, and He wants us to be participants in that in a deeper way. And prayer is very central to that. I feel like I know so little about it. I know things in theory, but there’s so much more that I believe that God wants to teach me about prayer. Anybody here that needs to know more about it? I mean, what do you think about when you think about prayer? Well, I need something, so I’m gonna ask Him. Do you think maybe there’s a little more to it than that?
When Jesus was carrying out His ministry, one of the central things was He spent a lot of time alone with the Father in prayer. Now, why would He need to do that? What’s the connection? Why would He need to go out and pray like that? Yeah, well, to know the Father’s will, to have that, to establish the connection, because if the Father’s gonna do it in Him, He needed to know what to do, but there needed to be this conscious, I’m willing to do Your will, I’m here for that reason. I’m not here to do my own will.
There’s this constant overcoming of the limitations of living in these bodies that don’t wanna go along with Him. Those are things that need to be overcome, but here I am called to live a supernatural life, to have God living in me in such a way that when people encounter me, they’re encountering Him. Man, there’s a lot that’s gotta happen in my life if that’s gonna happen to any degree, and prayer is so central to that. I just pray that God will help me to understand how critical prayer is to the purposes of God.
You know, I thought about simple illustrations. One of them would be if you’re out in the yard and you’ve got a piece of, a tool or something, a power tool, and it’s the kind that you had to plug in. You ever been out in the yard, the other end of the yard, and you get ready to do something, and you pull the button, trigger, and nothing happens? Yeah, if you’ve ever been out with a power tool, you’ve had that happen.
So what do you do? Well, you follow the cord back, and maybe this is an extension, then you check that connection, then you check to where it’s plugged in. It’s a very simple illustration, but if I’m gonna do something with a tool, it’s great to be willing to do it, to wanna do it, to pick it up and walk out there and try to say I’m clipping bushes or whatever I’m doing, that’s great, but what good is it if I’m not connected to any power? Nothing’s gonna happen.
See, the problem, there’s no lack of power back at the house unless it’s December 7th or 6th or whatever it was [reference to a power outage]. There’s no lack of power at the house, and here I am with a tool willing to use it, what’s the problem? There’s a connection that’s broken. Do you think that, do we understand that there are times when God wants to do something, wants us to do something, and the absolute missing link is prayer, where we get connected to God in such a way that what happens is not us, it’s not I, but it’s Christ living in me?
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May 26, 2024 - No. 1651
“Are You Mad at God?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1651
May 26, 2024
May 26, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1651 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I’ll guarantee there’s people here that have said, Lord, take me to a deeper place. I wanna know You better. I want more power in my life. I wanna be more effective in what I do, in how I serve You. And the Lord, in order to do that, He has to turn the devil loose on us and put us in actual battles because it’s when we fight with His weapons….
I mean, guys, does this sound familiar? Everything I’m saying was said this morning, and so well by so many, wow, I’m just blessed by the Lord’s presence and how clearly He’s saying these things to us. But if we will stand in those times and use what He’s given us and not listen to that other voice that wants to explain it to us and not go by our own unlimited understanding the stuff we think we know and not allow our emotions to be colored and turned into, turned essentially against the Lord, which is what happens, if our emotions are not on board and we’re just letting them run, what are we saying about Him?
And I’m not saying that to condemn, I’m saying that because I believe the Lord wants us to, He understands all this that we go through. He understands the battles, but He wants us as His children to grow and to learn and to become more what He wants us.
So anyway, the devil comes back and the Lord calls attention again. And the devil says, yeah, he’ll give up everything as long as you don’t touch him. Said, all right, he’s in your hands, but spare his life. And now then we come to the point where he’s got sores from his head to his feet and his wife is a big help. Curse God and die, get it over with. So, everything’s against him.
I mean, I don’t think there’s anybody here who could say, boy, Job, you just didn’t know any better, poor Job. Boy, have any of us have been in that position, I don’t think, I don’t believe I would’ve done half as well as Job did. What an example God has given to us. But anyway, obviously he got down in a very, very, very low place.
And he had three supposed friends who were gonna explain it all to him. And they gathered around him. And even then they waited for seven days ‘cause he was in such a state. And then finally Job speaks and the essence of what he says is, I wish I had never been born. Talk about the ultimate pity party. He goes on and on and on and on and on. What a horrible day that was. It should be wiped off the calendar. If only I had died at birth, would’ve been so much better. So Job was obviously in a very low state emotionally, anybody ever been there?
[Congregation: Yes, sir.]Yeah, we all get there at times. And so there he was and he was going on and on and his friends start finally speaking up and saying, well, just take your case to God. Go to Him. If right, He’ll help you. Well, the thing is, what did they have to go on? They didn’t have the Bible. They didn’t have the unfolding revelation. They didn’t even have the Old Testament, let alone the New Testament. And so only the only knowledge they had was what had been passed down from Noah.
And of course he probably, he could still have been alive at this point, but he had been very old. But there was a certain amount of knowledge of God and Who He was that caused Job to know that we need to be righteous because He’s an all-powerful God and He’s just, He punishes wickedness. He rewards righteousness. And we need to serve Him and honor Him and live our lives in the light of what we know about Him.
And so there they are trying to navigate all this. And you know what, the most natural thing in all of this is to ask why. And I want to understand it. Now, I don’t care if you’re the most emotional person on the planet. They’re still a part of you that wants to be able to say, I can explain this. I can understand the why.
Oh my God, how easy it is for us to fall into that trap and just insist that we’ve got to figure it out. And just how hard is it for us to just to lay our case before God and say, God, I’m in your hands. I know that You are good.
Do you think God wants us to be in that place where we can just surrender and trust Him? This was a tough place. What an example the Lord has recorded for us of this man and how he was standing up to it and fighting and just, he knew he hadn’t done anything. I mean, he said, in fact, he said at one point, it’s a little bit revealing. The thing I greatly feared has come upon me.
But what does that tell you about the motivation behind what he was doing? He had a knowledge of God. He knew about God and he knew He was all powerful, that He judge his sin. And so there was a, you know, I’ve gotta be careful. I’ve gotta walk on eggs in my life. My children just had a party. I’m gonna offer sacrifices. ‘Cause maybe one of them cursed God in their hearts. I’ve gotta take care of that. There was a fearfulness to it. There was an honest desire to serve God, but it was still tinged with this fear. This, I’ve gotta somehow keep from getting, me here, falling under His judgment.
You think that’s how God wants us to serve Him? Just, I mean, there’s a right kind of fear. It’s a deep respect. But to live under this constant, oh my God, I gotta be perfect or He’s gonna get me if I’m not, if anything bad is happening to me that just tells me He’s angry with me and on and on and on. These terrible accusations against God will settle in our minds and color what we do and how we think and how we think about ourselves. Bad stuff has happened. I must be bad. Oh, was that the problem here?
No, Job was the most righteous man in the world and God was revealing himself to him. I’m not gonna go through the whole book, but the basic story unfolds where he’s constantly trying to say, I didn’t do anything. And he said, you must have, or else this wouldn’t have happened to you. And they’re going back and forth trying to account for all this stuff with what they thought they knew and how it affected them and what their experience was.
God, we don’t know half the stuff we think we know. Wouldn’t it be good just to trust Him? Isn’t that what God is looking for from every single one of us? We just don’t know. And He does, but oh, how easily we let the devil accuse God of just, you know, He’s blessed them. He’s not blessing me. There’s something wrong. Maybe He has it in for me. Maybe this, maybe that. And we’re just, we’re questioning God’s love. Does he really love me, does he really care? Is he really good? Is he just?
And you know what, that kind of came into the play over time. Now Job at one point did have an answer to all these people that have this simplistic view that God blesses good people and punishes bad people. And he said, it’s not like that. Look at all the evil people that don’t care about God at all. And yet they’re having a wonderful life.
Well, what’s the conclusion that the devil’s likely to put in your mind when you think that thought? It’s not worth serving the Lord then, what’s the point? Oh, I’ll tell you, my God. We need divine light and divine help. And we need His word in times like that. There was a time when the Israelites got in that condition, generation or two had gone by after they were restored from Babylon. And the Lord put his finger on their problem and said, they were talking about, why are we doing all this? What good is this doing us to serve God?
How about Psalm 73 and Asaph? He started looking at all the people who were doing wonderfully in the world. Everything was going great for them. And why am I doing this? And of course, the Lord in that case revealed to him that, hey, this is not the end of the story, but here’s Job going through all of this and struggling. But there was one thing that God wanted to touch in Job’s life. The one thing that ultimately he would not let go, even if it came to the point where I’m not a hundred percent sure that He’s just.
What an amazing accusation. God just isn’t just, he doesn’t do right. I can’t really trust him. But there was a point where the justice of God and his own rightness, I’m sinless, I have not done anything wrong. I’ve served God with all my heart. There’s nothing wrong. I’m gonna hold onto my righteousness.
And when the Lord finally spoke to him at the end, He goes through the creation, were you there when I did this? Were you there when I do that? Do you know how this works? Do you, and on and on and on. And suddenly, oops, here I am. I’ve been speaking all these words outta stuff I thought I knew and here’s God talking to me and I don’t know anything. I’m just gonna shut my mouth and listen.
But the one thing the Lord point put his finger on, would you uphold your own righteousness at the expense of my justice? Many times we’re trusting in something in ourselves that’s not really what God wants us to trust in. I wonder how many of us are trusting in our own goodness despite what we sing and say, and when something happens, it’s just proof that I’m bad. I’m this, I’m that. God’s got it in for me.
Instead of saying God’s shaping my life to fulfill his wonderful loving purpose for me. And I don’t care how He has to do it, to show me, needs in me, to show me where my true trust is so I can let it go and put it where it belongs. I don’t care what it is. God, my life is in your hands. We sing the song, but is it? What happens if He says do this or do that or do the other, this is My path for you. Have we really laid everything on the altar?
But here was Job’s, here was the real root of what Job was trusting in was his own righteousness. That’s what it came down to. To the point where it almost caused him to question God’s justice. But you know, the wonderful thing was when God put his finger on that, he said, I abhor myself, I repent in dust and ashes.
That’s an awesome thing, you know what, that’s what God’s looking for. We are going to discover if we’re gonna serve him, we’re gonna discover things about us that aren’t good, that aren’t right. And we’re gonna look and say, my God, I had no idea that was in there. I had no idea that my real motivation was just governed by that. I said I was yours Lord, but I had a condition there. It was, I’ll serve you as long as, I’ll serve you if, just like some of these examples we had here this morning.
But God has got to put His finger one way or another. And it’s usually gonna be by experiences that we would prefer not to go through. We’re gonna discover that these things are there. What God is looking for when that happens is a heart that says, yes Lord, I see it. I acknowledge it. I lay it at Your feet. I surrender in this area.
And I’ll tell you if wherever there’s a willing heart, God will give the strength to do exactly that because I don’t have it, anybody here have it? This thing all the time, that God has to put His finger in me and I have to say, God, I can’t even respond to that. I don’t have the power in me to do it. You’re gonna have to give me what I need.
But hasn’t He promised that? Hasn’t He said He’s given us through His great and precious promises, all things that pertain to life and godliness. There are things in every one of us that He loves us enough to take us through whatever it takes, in order to set us free, to bring us to a better place.
I think with all my heart, the Lord wants everybody to know here that if you are going through a period of oppression, some several testified to that this morning in the men’s meeting, I’m sure they’re not the only ones, guarantee they’re not the only ones. But if you’re in a place where the devil is just bombarding your mind with thoughts, with anxiety, with fear, with questions about God and what He wants. And oh my God, I don’t know what to do in the 1000 and one things that we get, we all get in those places.
Could that have happened if God hadn’t allowed it? We sing, nothing can happen outside of God’s will — except this. Somehow there are things that we exempt from that song or we disconnect from that song. But God wants us to realize that if He has allowed that to happen, to work on your mind, so that you have to contend with that, you have to somehow deal with those questions and those accusations that are coming from the voice of the enemy. Those are darts.
There’s a whole lot said about the armor this morning and how we have a shield, we don’t have to believe it just ‘cause it comes into our heads. But God is wanting to make His promises and His Word and His character and every bit of that so real, that we will be able to stand there and say, I don’t have to listen to you, devil. That’s your voice and not His. This is what the word says. Take that sword out and stick it in him.
And he knows he has no answer for someone who will absolutely agree with God, but you know we’re gonna have to agree with God, not just against the devil, but against things in us. There are things that need to die. There are things we don’t know about.
And of course we’ve often mentioned, and it was mentioned again in the meeting this morning about how the Lord brought Paul to a place where his heart, as far as he knew his heart was to serve God, do whatever the Lord put in his pathway. Oh God, I want to be used of you. I’ve given myself to you. And Paul didn’t know there was a problem.
What was the problem? Pride. He had been allowed to see and experience so many things. And human nature, it’s awfully easy for human nature to grab hold of something that kind of makes it feel like, yeah, I’m a good guy. I’m this, I’m that. It’s because of me. And Paul, the Lord saw the danger and the devil was getting ready to try to use this. And the Lord just put him in a position where he had a need and he cried out and it didn’t happen. The answer didn’t come right away.
How many of you have been through that? And your mind’s trying to explain that, why is God silent? Why doesn’t He answer me? I’m asking, oh God, why aren’t you answering? What did I do? Tell me what I did. That’s where kind of Job was for a long time. The Lord did answer him, didn’t he?
You know, the Lord knows when and how to speak to us and what to say. I pray that as we go along, we will finally get it through our thick skulls, that God knows what He’s doing, he knows how to do it, knows when to do it, that He loves us. That there’s a purpose that He’s fulfilling, that no devil in hell can stop.
We sung so many songs this morning about our foundation and the hope that we have in him. And it’s real. I pray if that’s not real in your heart, you’ll open your heart and say, oh God, oh God, I know one scripture that was quoted today, it was the one in Jeremiah about, I know the plans that I have, plans to not harm you anyway, give you a hope in the future.
But that same passage also says, talks about seeking the Lord. You’ll seek Him and find Him if you do what? Search for Him with all your heart. There’s a God who will hear a willing heart and He’ll give you what you need. You don’t have to deserve it. Thank God.
I’ll tell you, Job was brought to a place where he realized the blessing of God was not something that he had earned, or he had to be living this fearful. Oh my God does this, God, I can see all the effects, but he’s just out there and I’m afraid he’s gonna crush me if I don’t live up to everything. And he finally came to a place where he realized there’s a God Who cares and Who loves me and is willing to come near.
He wants us to know Him better. Anybody here needs to know Him better? See, this is the pathway we just would prefer it to happen some other way. We want to have to be able to come down here and kneel at the altar and have apostle tremendous lay his hands on you and put it in you and take it out, whenever it doesn’t need to be there. It’s all gonna come in an experience.
I wonder if maybe that’s what the Lord was trying to do for me all those years ago. I was trying to get an experience, ‘cause that’s the way people said it’s supposed to happen. Well, there are experiences with God, but nothing in the way of an experience with God that touches your emotions can take the place of God dealing with us in life. There are things that we can only learn on the field of battle that you can’t get at an altar.
We need him in the darkest moment for us to just stand our ground and look to God and understand that His goodness is absolute. We can trust him in the darkest moment that His Word is still justice. As true as when our emotions are up. Emotions are all over the place and our understanding is so desperately limited.
And you know, if you’ve been, if you’ve known the Lord a while and you know a lot about scriptures, awful easy to just kind of coast a little bit. But I believe with all my heart, God is preparing His people to stand in this dark hour. And we’re gonna need to know our God and the people that know their God will be strong and do exploits. We’ll be able to stand, I believe in all my heart, in the midst of things that people are testifying about, seasons of darkness, seasons of questions, seasons of anxiety and fear, where those things are trying to crowd into our minds and our hearts. God is at work.
The devil is the one who is scared to death that God is actually gonna do something in us and through us. And we need to look beyond everything that we’re experiencing in the moment and say, God is taking me to a better place. And I see past all of this. I see His hand at work and I’m in His hands. Devil, you can’t cause me to question God’s faithfulness, His justice, His goodness, His love, all of those things. He is exactly the same yesterday, today and forever. He is exactly Who I need to be living my life for and trusting with all of my heart.
And I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who will give you a word in due season as we look to Him and wait upon Him. Sometimes we can go through periods of time where the devil is just bombarding our minds and then one little word will come. Oh, I love this line to that old hymn. When the battle is all over at the end, one little word will fell him. And many times it’s that one little word that God could drop in our minds that absolutely will cut off what the devil is saying. And we’ll believe that what God says and have the power not to believe what the devil says. And the devil has no answer.
Thank God for what he’s given to us in Christ! Don’t ever learn to listen to what your mind thinks when you’re trying to figure out stuff, your natural understanding. Say, God, I don’t understand, but I’m looking to You for to increase my understanding, to increase my faith, to take me through this. Help me to see the lessons that You taught Job of standing fast and look and repenting when I put My hand and finger on something.
And it came out pretty good for Job, didn’t he? He had twice as much when he was all done. God, there were earthly blessings involved in Him. But I’ll tell you, whatever God has for us, I want what He has. And I don’t wanna sink in a pool of self-pity. Am I the only one? Whoever does that. I don’t wanna sit there and, I don’t like this circumstance. I don’t like having to put up with this.
Someone recounted to me the other day, something Billy Graham said, said, I’m ready to die. I just wasn’t ready for old age. But the Lord knows what He’s doing and my life is in His hands and I’m trusting in Him. And that’s all He seeks for from any one of us. However, He has to accomplish that. Whatever He has to do to make us what He wants us to be is worth everything. It’s worth everything.
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May 19, 2024 - No. 1650
“Are You Mad at God?” Part One
Broadcast #1650
May 19, 2024
May 19, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1650 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, you know, I’ve said this before, but we’ve come out of a men’s meeting and it’s just like everything that I’ve been thinking about is expressed, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a men’s meeting where that was more true. That was amazing. Just about everything that’s been on my heart was just so eloquently expressed. I wish we could just play a tape. But, anyway, it seemed like the Lord has another plan.
And I’m glad he used his weakness because that’s all I got folks. But, you know, that’s all any of us have, and I appreciate his faithfulness to us. And so I’m just gonna ask him to arrange my thoughts this morning and try to express some of what I believe he has on his heart.
You know, recently Sue and I were cleaning up an area, which we’ve got many of, that need arranging and need going through, the other day. And part of it was my cleaning up some old books. Some of them were college texts and various things that I said, Okay, I’m done with that now. It’s only been, you know, a long, well, I won’t say how many years. Well, I will, it’s 55 years.
And so, anyway, but there are a handful caught my eye and I hung onto them. And one of them was a little book that I had forgotten about by David Wilkerson. And I think many of you know who he was. God sent him as a skinny preacher that everybody thought was crazy to go into the streets of New York and Brooklyn, in particular, and begin to reach out to the gangs, and just did it by faith, felt like the Lord had sent him. And the Lord began to use him to reach out. Nikki Cruz, a tremendous servant of God, was saved out of the most wretched background you could imagine.
And, anyway, during that period of time, he relates something that happened to him, and it illustrates the danger that I’m talking about. I can remember, I think I can relate essentially what he did. But he was invited to go in to minister with a particular pastor in his church. And as he got there, I won’t describe all the details, but there was a tremendous tragedy unfolding in which the child of this minister had suddenly been killed. I’ll go ahead and say it. He was actually run over by the preacher’s car by accident. Can you imagine something so horrible and so horrific?
And as Brother Dave went through that experience and through the funeral that followed, there was a little bit of a cloud that kind of got in his mind and in his heart. And he began to, you know, that weighed on him. And, you know, you would obviously think about why, what is going on?
And in the middle of it, there was a little thought came in. He must have done something, and God’s punishing him. Or, you know, there’s something really wrong here, and this is why this happened. Anybody ever done that? Yeah, this affects every single one of us because we are so prone to interpret life based on what we think and what we want is what it comes down to.
And so there was a little bit of a cloud that came into David’s life and in his ministry. And there was a short period of time there where he just didn’t have it, just like he was kind of on his own and things were kind of kind of dead. And he went home and one of his reactions was when he’d gotten home, he said, God, I’ll go into the greatest ghettos in the world. I’ll reach into the gangs, but don’t dare touch my family.
How many of you think it’s a good idea to have conditions, to say, I’ll serve you if. Yeah, and so the Lord was working on him. And he came to a point where he was just on his face crying out to God and he said, “The heavens were brass.”
And all of a sudden a voice began to speak in his mind and began to say, The reason this is happening is because of you. It’s all about pride. You going into Brooklyn, you going to do all this kinda stuff, it’s just pride. You’re looking for a name for yourself and God’s got it in for you, and just an accusing voice.
And, of course, he’s searching his heart, what’s going on? And then all of a sudden there was another voice that spoke and it said, Try the spirits, whether they be of God. And all of a sudden he stopped and realized, Hey, that wasn’t God, that was the devil.
How many even know when we get in these places and the devil starts talking, it’s awful easy to listen. It’s awful easy to get absorbed in us and where we’re at and how we feel and how we evaluate what in the world’s going on. And all of a sudden the devil gets right in the middle of it, and he begins to interpret for us what’s happening.
You know, isn’t that what happened when Brother David was with that minister and observing this thing and the voice came in his head, He did something and God’s punishing him because this is just an evidence. Was that voice God’s or not?
And we gotta be careful, you know, we are very prone to observe situations that we’re not necessarily a part of and make judgments. And every one of us is a product more than we realize of our earthly makeup, the culture we’ve been around, the associations we’ve been around, the ideas we have absorbed, the things we have come to believe are true.
And the the problem is with some of that, the devil’s the one who’s injected his belief system in there. And we’ve embraced things about ourselves that came from the devil and not from God.
And God is going to take us through things. He has got to take us through things, or we’ll never grow. If life is just smooth and easy by an earthly standard, how are we ever going to be changed? How are we ever gonna be made ready for something that is beyond this? If we are defined in our thinking and our actions by the ideas and the values of this world, we’re not worth much to the kingdom of God. And I need to be changed, don’t you? And, you know, I just pray that God will help us to realize that God knows what He’s doing.
And so, you know, when David went through that experience, he reached that point where he’d heard the two voices and it suddenly dawned on him, that was the devil’s accusation there. And he came back to the Lord and he said, God, even if I have sinned, I have an advocate with the Father. And suddenly he’s going by the word and he’s recognizing, yeah, I could very well be in the wrong in some things, but, Lord, I come to you and I’m coming not on basis of me and who I am and what I’ve done. I’m coming on the basis of the advocate you provided for me. He is there, and there was a breakthrough in his spirit. All of a sudden there was a freedom.
But do you know, we can easily get in places where we’re not free. And we’re embedded in circumstances and situations and the emotions that go with that. And all of a sudden that’s kind of what’s in charge. And I believe with all my heart the Lord was emphasizing that in the men’s meeting for sure. Wow, I wish I could just replay that. But what a simple truth it is, but how profoundly important it is that we realize that.
How many of you have prayed, Oh God, do in me what’s needed. Use me according to your plan. I want your plan for my life and not mine? But do we really know what we’re asking many times? Because here’s the Lord who knows where we’re at, knows our needs far more than we are, and knows where He’s taking us and what it takes to get there. And we come kicking and screaming all the way sometimes.
You know, there was mention of one-year-olds and two-year-olds and how they react to life and how you have to constantly be on them and keep up with them. And I’m not sure where we’re that far beyond that, many of us, spiritually. And the Lord wants us to grow and He wants us to learn how to just surrender to Him and let go and let Him have his way. I certainly feel my need of that.
And he has ways of just reminding me that, hey, you thought you had this handled, or you thought you were at a certain place, and you’re asking me for more, but when I try to take you there, when I take you through circumstances and feelings that you don’t like, and I’m answering your prayer, then you fuss about it, and you get discouraged and you get self-pity and you eat a box of chocolates, or whatever. No, I don’t quite do that, not quite. But you understand what I’m saying.
Everybody here knows what I’m talking about because that’s called life. I am so thankful that we have a merciful God. But how easy is it for us to get in the position that David found, and this is Dave Wilkerson, found himself for that little span of time where he was actually, there was a little bit of a question in his mind about God’s goodness, God’s faithfulness. I don’t understand. Why would He allow something like this? This doesn’t make any sense.
Oh, how the devil has sought from the beginning to do that with the human race. I mean, you think about, again, how many times have we talked about the original temptation? God’s motivation, his character was called into question by the devil. He’s not really good. He doesn’t really have your best interests at heart. He’s trying to hold you down and keep you from your destiny. And here’s something He’s telling you not to do, but if you do it, it’s gonna be good for you.
And so they embraced the devil’s wisdom. But what were they saying by that? See, they had embraced not just the action, but the belief that came with it. This assessment of God is, I can’t quite trust Him. He doesn’t really have my best interest at heart. This is just a game to Him, or whatever form that takes. But all of a sudden there’s this little barrier and this little cloud, and how many of you think God wants us to walk with that kind of a cloud over our spirits? Of course, He doesn’t. But, oh, how easily we find ourselves questioning him.
And the title, I don’t think I’ve told you this, but the title of the little book that David Wilkerson wrote was, “I’m Not Mad at God.” Well, the truth of the matter is, there’s not a person here who hasn’t been mad at God at some point in their life because of something that happened and He allowed it. Why would a good God allow something like that?
Oh, how we need to see our limited understanding to see His greatness and His purpose. Oh, God, help us, everyone. When we go through things and feelings come and the voice of the enemy comes to try to raise a question about God, we better realize this. There’s an issue down here that God’s got His eye on.
It’s not a condemning thing, but He’s trying to shine a light in an area of our hearts where we need it. And instead of accusing Him or agreeing with the enemy’s assessment of the situation and feeling sorry for ourselves, we need to say, Oh, God, I’m waiting on you and I’m trusting You. I know You’re in charge. I know You’re good. And I know if there’s something I need to know, You can shine the light on it, but, Lord, help me.
And, you know, there are issues. Well, it’s true of every issue. I mean, even coming to faith in the first place, we need His help to do that, don’t we? It is by grace we’re saved. That means God’s help. God has to come down, and we have to come under the influence of God’s Spirit, His power, His revelation to our hearts of our need. We’ve got to come to that place, and then surrender to it and agree with Him and receive that into our hearts. And when He comes, everything changes down in here.
Of course, that’s not the end of it, is it? Was Dave Wilkerson, you know, a lost sinner when that happened? No, he was somebody that God had mightily used, and yet there were needs, and there were issues, there were things that God knew he needed to lay on the altar and say, God, I have no conditions.
You know, another book that I won’t go into all the details that I ran into, and I don’t recall ever reading this. Somehow it came into my possession and got stuck with a bunch of other old stuff. But it was a testimony of a woman that was written and published just after World War II. The events took place around 1930, ‘32, somewhere in there. But it was a young girl who grew up under very difficult circumstances, went to church some, drifted from that, but still had something, there was still a conviction in her about serving the Lord.
But she also went through some terrible debilitating health issues, one after another. And their family was so destitute that even in spite of the health issues, she had to get out in the cotton fields. I mean, it was a tough time. This was obviously during the Depression at this point.
And there came a point where somewhere along the line, again, I’m trying to remember this exact sequence of events, but there was a time when God was dealing with her about really coming back to serve Him and being willing to do whatever He wanted with her life. And she said, Yes, all right? Then she went into a period of, I think it was like six days when she was just out of it, convulsing, everything you could think of was wrong physically. And the doctors were just, Well, just prepare her, she’s getting ready to go.
And her mother was a praying woman. Mother was praying desperately, Oh God, I fasted, I prayed, heal my daughter, on and on. And they finally gave her a sedative that was supposed to basically, you know, hasten the process, make her comfortable. And for about five hours she was dying in the early morning hours.
And then there was a point at which she left her body. It’s something that happens, I mean, we know of cases where that’s happened. But she left her body for a period of time. It wasn’t long, it was like 45 minutes, I think. But somewhere in there, not only did she have a vision of heaven, which was real, but she also met the Lord.
And the Lord challenged this prayer that she had prayed and essentially in her heart and her mind was, I’ll be willing to serve you this way or that way, but don’t send me out to a jungle somewhere. You know, I’m not gonna go there or do this or that. Yeah, I’ll serve you Lord. And the Lord brought her to a place of surrender where there was no condition, I’m yours, you tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.
And there was a complete and total healing of her. And she came back, but there was something else going on while this was happening. Her mother was in another room praying, she had just died, been declared dead. And her mother was still in another room praying, Oh God, this is the prayer, I fasted, I prayed, Lord, you are still able to bring back my daughter, heal her.
And the Lord dealt with her and said, You want me to bring her back to you. But are you willing to let her go and give her to me to do whatever? Ooh, see, how the Lord can bring us to difficult places where our wills are challenged where we don’t even realize the things that are holding us back, that we’re not free as we think we are. And we need him to do something that’s really unusual in our lives.
And so here the Lord was working on both ends of the line. And He brought her back, and I won’t go into the details, but anyway, he gave her a very powerful supernatural anointing to heal, to preach, to ultimately to do all kinds of things and have a tremendous testimony of someone who had seen the Lord, who had seen the gates of heaven, who had a power and a faith to pray for the sick. I mean, that was a purpose that God had for her at that time. And it was a powerful witness wherever she went.
God has a purpose for our lives, most of it is not gonna be spectacular like that. But God has a way that He wants to deal with us. He’s gonna have to deal with things in our hearts and in our lives. Are we willing? It’s easy to sit here and say, Yeah, I’m willing, but are we willing with the things that He has to do to get us there? It’s gotten real quiet. See, this is real truth, isn’t it? Does anybody here need this? Yeah, I certainly do. But, oh, we have an awesome faithful God.
Then there was Job. And you remember how he was a man who was described as blameless and upright, feared God, shunned evil. He had, you know, was it seven sons, three daughters, and it enumerates all of his possessions. Just a great man, mightily blessed, and had so many things. There he was doing what he knew to do. He was walking in the light he had, which is a good thing, and God recognized that.
And, of course, you have the account of how Satan comes in among the Lord’s hosts and accuses Job. Actually, the Lord’s the one that pointed Job out. I wonder how many times the Lord is behind things. How about all the time? One way or another, God’s behind stuff, okay?
The devil had a lot of experience with humanity and he knew that people basically were motivated by self-interest. And he said, Sure, of course, you’re gonna serve You. You’re blessing him. As though that was the motivation. If I’ll just act like I’m righteous, I’ll do the right things on the outside, I’ll do all this stuff, then that’s gonna give me a wonderful life here.
Well, isn’t that pretty earthly thinking? Oh, God, help us. That’s one of the things wrong with the prosperity gospel. It’s focused on the wrong things. I’m glad when God can bless in earthly ways, but that’s not what it’s about. God, I need to be ready for there. I don’t need to just say, Oh, I had a wonderful life. We need a purposeful life, one that God has designed to accomplish his purposes, not only in us, but through us.
So anyway, he gets accused by Satan, Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him? Now, isn’t that an awesome truth? Do you realize if you are the Lord’s, there is a hedge of divine protection around you, and the devil cannot do anything to you or to me without God’s permission? Doesn’t that tell you something that God is? That everything is purposeful? How many times have we heard the simple truth that everything God does is by design, is according to a plan, is to fulfill a purpose.
And it’s motivated, ultimately, by the divine love of God and His mercy toward us, undeserving. Thank God! Oh, how easy it is to lose sight of that. Okay, so anyway, the Lord gives the devil permission. And, of course, you remember Peter, the Lord warned Peter. The devil has asked to tempt you, but I have prayed for you.
Boy, isn’t that a good thing to think about? If the Lord allows the devil to oppress and tempt you, don’t ever forget that there is one in heaven who is praying for you, asking the Father to give you what you need to stand up under that and to come through it and to be stronger because you went through it. Don’t ever be dismayed by that.
But anyway, so the Lord says, Okay, everything he has is in your hand, just don’t touch him. And so we know how one after another, these catastrophes that come along or his stuff is robbed or destroyed, or his kids are all killed. I mean, you talk about something touching your family. Oh my God, everything he had was wiped out.
So what did he do? God, what’s right? No, he bowed down and he said, The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Close
May 12, 2024 - No. 1649
“Ears to Hear” Conclusion
Broadcast #1649
May 12, 2024
May 12, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1649 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: You know, one of the ideas you will run into in many places: people will recognize the condition of Christendom and how, you know, how divided, and how much error there is, and all the bad stuff, bad things you can say about it. They say, But don’t worry. Great things are coming. Revival is coming. The church is gonna wind up triumphant. We’re gonna take over the world. We’re gonna change everything. We’re gonna fix this world and change it into the kingdom of God.
I don’t find that in my Bible. Yeah, I mean, that’s their concept of a triumphant church. We’re not gonna go out with our tail between our legs as though God just tried to convince everybody and failed to do it, and so gonna take a handful and leave. No, there is a triumph that is not defined the way we tend to define it.
You know, another doctrine that we used to be exposed to many, many years ago now is that manifested son doctrine, that God has a special company of people, and they’re gonna pass over into immortality, and they’re gonna go out like Jesus did, only better, I guess. They’re gonna empty hospitals and graveyards. They’re gonna just change the world. Take it over. Anything short of that, we’re a bunch of losers.
Do you think God’s gonna go out a loser? Do you think Noah was a loser because there were only eight of them? Was that a defeat or do we need to understand victory in a different way? Was he triumphant? Yes, he was for his own salvation and the salvation of his family.
You know, God has a family today, doesn’t He? And I’ll tell you, it got down to such simple, simple terms that all God was looking for from Noah was to hear His voice receive the appropriate instructions for what was going on, to do it, and then God did His part. And God rescued them, even though everybody else thought they were crazy, undoubtedly. Got to the point where they ignored them to the point where when it happened, What’s going on? I don’t get this. I don’t even know what’s going on.
The blindness of the world. Folks, we are going to reach that place where God’s people will be few relative to the world’s population. They are now, but I mean, we’re gonna see it. We’re gonna find out God’s gonna create circumstances that will make manifest whose heart really has eyes and ears and who’s really embraced His hope from the heart.
It’s obvious that Noah did because nothing stopped him. He didn’t allow the unbelief of the world and what were the conditions to change his course whatsoever. And you know, I’ll drop this in. Do you imagine the devil probably talked to him a bit? Did the Lord constantly whisper in his ear, Don’t worry. I’ve told you what to do.
You know. You know, the devil’s a chatter box. Anybody ever noticed that? If he starts working, he’ll chatter something over, and over, and over, and over again hoping it’ll make a difference. God only has to speak. And if we will listen to what He says, it will make all the difference.
I’ve told you about this in the past, but it came back to my mind, and it was John, the testimony of I believe John Bunyan, my memory serves. I don’t know how well it serves all the time, but anyway. John Bunyan had a difficult, challenging time coming to faith. I could see God’s wisdom in allowing him to go through that because him having experienced that, enabled him to help us and to help others. You know, we have to go through things to be able to help people.
So here he was trying to come to faith and just listening to God and just wanting God, And yet the devil was just beating him up about all that was wrong with him and trying to do everything he could think of to take away his hope. And he would go days just fighting off that voice that would just ring in his ears. And then somewhere along the line, God would speak sometimes three, or four, or five words, and it was God, and he knew it. And those words would drop into his heart, and it would just blast away that darkness. And he would latch onto it.
And then he would go through another season. And this went on and on until there came a time when he just understood, and he let go, and he let God do the saving. But I mean, what a pattern that is. God doesn’t have to chatter in our ear. What we need to do is hear His voice and then stand on what He has said. That’s what faith does.
And can you not see that in Noah and his generation? There was something in him that just was fixed. He knew who God was. He knew that the only course that he could live was to do what God said, and simply he just did it, and God allowed him to share that with his family.
But, you know, there were other family members that didn’t partake of this. Now, you could say they were too old. I don’t know. But I’ve often wondered why his father and grandfather were not part of this at all. You would think they would at least be encouraging him, and saying, Yeah, you’re doing the right thing. They’re out of the picture.
Folks, we’re gonna have family members and loved ones that we’re gonna have to just put in God’s hands. You know, peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. Well, there’s peace on Earth to men of goodwill. Men who humble themselves to God. But Jesus said, I didn’t come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword. And a sword sometimes divides families. Don’t worry, God’s gonna save everyone of His, and we need to pray for people. But at the same time, don’t base your hope or your anything on anything except you serving God, and trusting Him, and knowing that he’s gonna save His.
I wonder what, you know, where Lamech was in this, his father. I believe if you calculate it out, he died a couple of years or so before the flood. Methuselah, his grandfather, died the year of the flood. So I mean, they were there basically for the whole time that Noah and his family were building the ark and preparing. It doesn’t say a thing about them. They weren’t involved. I wonder why? It seemed like they just got swallowed up by the world too. But his family listened.
And you know, we see the simplicity of them doing what God said, but I see a people that simply, God told them what to do, and they did it, but they did it together. You imagine they probably had a few words every now and then, a few conflicts, but they were human. But the bottom line was they had to work together to carry out God’s instructions, and it was everything that they needed for their complete deliverance.
And I believe with all my heart that God has a plan. He knows exactly what season is coming. He knows whether the power is gonna be on or off. Knows everything. He knows how to bring us through. I think some of this shaking up is maybe Him trying to speak to somebody. God has so many different ways of speaking. But oh, I just wanna be one that hears, and I wanna be among a people that hear.
I don’t know who all is gonna stand on that day. We’re certainly not gonna stand on our own strength. The ones who stand will be the ones who submit and say, yes, to Jesus. And they’ve put all of their hope in what God has promised. And even when the world is saying no, and we almost feel like we’re a little crazy bunch of people on the sidelines out of fellowship with a whole rest of the world, God’s gonna give us His strength and His peace, and He’s not gonna have to chatter in our ears all the time for us to have the faith to stand.
And I’ll tell you, that’s what triumph is. God is not gonna show what He has done in His people until that day when we stand in glory. You know, I’ve used this illustration in the past, but you think about an artist, it could be a painter, it could be a sculptor, but most of the time you will have an artist who wants to hide whatever they’re doing until it’s time to unveil it, okay? They don’t unveil it until it’s finished. They don’t want anybody to see it until it’s done.
Well, do you see a parallel going on here? Do you see how the Lord is doing a work that’s hidden in the heart? Jesus said the kingdom of God is not something outward. The kingdom of God is something that’s inward. And right now it’s hidden in our flesh, but there’s something going on in there.
You remember how Paul talked about how the outward man was perishing? What else was going on? The inward man was being renewed day by day, and so what did he focus his attention on? Oh, the outward man. No, it was all about what was going on on the inside. And he saw that God was using even the stuff on the outside to change the inside because that was the part that was gonna live.
God’s concerned about the tent as long as we need it. Remember what the tent is? Yeah, I’m glad because my tent’s getting a little frayed here and there, but God is gonna take care of our tent to the extent that we need it, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about the one who lives in that tent because one day, one day the veil will be pulled back. It’s not like God’s gonna suddenly, we’re gonna burst on the scene, and take over the world, and change it. God’s gonna take us out of this world. Judge it. Fire will fall and burn up everything left behind. That’s what the word clearly teaches when Jesus comes.
But He is going to take us, and when He does, what happens to these bodies? What happens t,o what happens to our bodies for those that are still here? What does He say? They’re changed. How long does that take? A moment. In a quick twinkling of an eye. There’s going to be a moment in time when everything that is of this Earth will absolutely dissolve and be gone, and we will have brand new bodies.
And Jesus said in one of His parables that after the separation takes place, then the, His people would shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Basically what the Lord is gonna be doing is unveiling what He’s been doing and showing everybody that said, No, this is what I’ve been doing. This is what it’s been all about, and there’s nothing left for the others.
I’ll tell you this, it’s a serious time. So it’s a time of warning. It’s a time when people need to make up their mind, either I’m gonna serve God 100% or I’m not. And you think about people that God speaks to like the rich young ruler, what was his problem? He was trying to serve God in money. Jesus said, You can’t do that. His god was his wealth, and that was more important to him than eternal life.
Folks, there is nothing, zero, nada, whatever, there’s nothing more important than knowing Him and having eternal life. Praise God that all the promises that He has for His people, what He has to bring us through the power, the promises that we have. We’re gonna go through times when the devil’s gonna be screaming in our ear, but how do we overcome him? The blood of the lamb. We can always point back to that. But the other thing is the word of our testimony.
What did Jesus do when the devil spoke to Him? Yeah, He spoke back, and He said, This is what I’m going by. Do you think He necessarily had a feeling when He did that or did He just by faith say, This is my conviction. God has put this word in my heart. It’s the conviction that I live by. I don’t care what you say, devil. I don’t care if I feel it or don’t feel it. It’s true. God spoke this into my heart. It’s living in there and I will stand upon that, period, come hell or high water.
The testimony, the word of our testimony, yeah, testimony is something that comes out to here. It’s the conviction that is spoken. And that’s pretty central to salvation, isn’t it? It’s got to be a conviction of the heart. And then there’s a confession that’s made into salvation even.
But oh, I’ll tell you what, and they love not their lives so much as to shrink from death. There’s nothing that we cling to here that we just won’t refuse to let go of. And I’ll tell you, I believe God is gonna be with His people, but I wanna have a heart. I wanna have a heart that listens. The deepest conviction, the deepest need of my heart, is for my need of God to speak.
You know, for some people it’s just correct theology. If I can just get all my doctrines all lined up exactly so that I’m good. And there are so many people in seminaries or cemeteries, whichever they are, who think that’s where it’s at. Jesus said to one group of people, You study the word, but you think that in that you study the scriptures. In them, you think you have eternal life, but you won’t come to me that you might have life. The scriptures talk about me and you won’t come to me. See, there was a perfect example of people that didn’t know what the Old Testament even was about. It was all meant to point to Christ and the real kingdom.
But I’ll tell you, God is looking for a people right now whose hearts are toward Him. And like I say, sometimes we go through times when we’re, you know, the feelings aren’t there. I remember David in one place says, Remember, oh Lord, the word upon which you’ve caused my spirit to hope. I’m quoting it, roughly. But you remember that? How many times he goes to the word? And there were times when he didn’t feel it, but he kept on looking to the word, looking to God’s promise.
God is gonna have a people who walk together. The family built the ark together, didn’t they? There was a sense of community. There was a sense of common purpose. God has told us what to do and we’re gonna do it. I don’t know specifically what God is gonna do here. He hasn’t laid out a plan and said, Here’s the five-year plan. Just follow it. He has put us in a place where every day we’re just gonna have to say, Lord, lead us.
Has He not promised to be in the midst of those that He brings together? That’s His promise, and I’m believing it. There are many times I don’t feel it, but I know He’s faithful to keep His word. Praise God! He is faithful to keep His promise.
And I wanna be one of those that simply says, God, show us today what to do and give us the faith to do it. Because faith is not just saying, Yes, I believe it, Lord. Noah could have said, Yeah, I believe all that, and gone about his life, but God gave him specific instructions. Do you believe God can give us instructions according to what we need in any given instance? I wanna stay tuned.
I’ve said this in the past, I want a hearing ear. I want a heart that is so committed to listening to Him and following Him that He can tell us what to do. Oh, tradition will not help us. Churchianity will not help us. Form will not help us. We need Jesus in the midst. How many times we pointed out the problem with the Laodicean church. There wasn’t anything he could really negatively say about them other than they were lukewarm, but the problem was Jesus was not running the program.
They weren’t just coming in with this sense, Lord, we don’t know what to do, but we do know that you do, and we’re looking to you, and we’re trusting in you. We’re praising you. And when the devil says otherwise, I don’t care what he says, I know what you said. I don’t care if I feel it right now. I know that you’re real, and I’m trusting in you. And I’ll tell you, God brought that family through, did He not? Did not God do His part?
[Congregation member] Yes, he did.That same God is with us today. Jesus said it was gonna be like it was in that day. So don’t get dismayed when you read the news and you see where people are going. You see the crazy stuff they believe. The stuff they stand for and absolutely convinced. Did not God warn us through the apostle that there was gonna come a time when because people would not receive the truth, what happened? God sent strong delusion. A powerful delusion. What’s a delusion? A delusion is a conviction about something that just doesn’t happen to be true. We’ve got a world full of people that are more and more falling under that delusion.
And of course in the process we can pray, God, bring, fulfill, your word. You’ve said You’re not gonna lose any. And I pray that You will bring to the faith in Jesus Christ and the fellowship with God’s people everyone that You know has a heart toward You.
Oh, I’ll tell you, if you have the least bit of a heart toward Him, you nurture that, you look to Him, you seek Him. He will not turn you away. He is faithful to everyone that calls upon Him. God’s not looking for an excuse to get rid of people. If He were, He’d have gotten rid of me a long time ago. And every one of you too because we’re just human, aren’t we? That’s why we need a savior. But oh, He is a savior that able to save to the uttermost those that come to God. Those that call upon God and come to Him by Christ.
I just praise Him this morning. I don’t know. Like I say, I had two senses out of this division that you can see there, and the sense that we have eyes and ears in our heart. That number one, we need to understand the world. Number two, there may be that person who hasn’t quite come through yet. You don’t understand some of this. God wants you to. You have every right to call upon God from your heart and ask Him, and we can pray that anybody who’s in that position, God will give them an understanding that they can come to true faith, and rest in Jesus Christ, and know that they’re His. Praise God!
God’s bringing people in. The door’s not quite shut, but it’s getting there. We’re seeing where we’re headed. But for all of us, God wants His people to be encouraged and to realize where we’re at, to walk together, to seek His face, to do what He says when He says something to do.
And God is gonna bring us safely through. That’s what triumph is. Triumph is standing fast in the darkness. Jesus said those who endure to the end will be saved. That’s what God is looking for. And I’ll tell you, there’s something happening. When we have to stand in that kind of environment, and trust God, and let God fight our battles, and work in our hearts, and change us, that’s victory. That’s triumph. That’s what God is after, is changing and building a family that’s gonna live with Him forever.
So in one sense, I don’t think there’s anything new here, but I pray that whichever category you’re in, if you’re one of God’s people, let God encourage you. Don’t live by your feelings. We all do. We all fight those battles. Live by what God has made real in your heart and believe it in the darkest moment of your life, and God will give you the strength to stand, and something will happen to you. And who knows, God may be putting you through that because the day will come when you’re gonna be the one that He can use to help somebody else who’s in the same boat. Praise God!
Doesn’t God know what He’s doing? He’s pretty smart, isn’t He? He knows exactly how to bring His people through. But I wanna be that kind of a triumphant church that simply stands in the hour of darkness. Was it defeat when the devil was allowed to kill the Lord? Was that defeat? It looked like it. He said, This is your hour when darkness reigns, and He surrendered to that, but yet God used it to bring eternal salvation to us.
There’s another hour coming when darkness reigns, but the same God will bring His people through. There’s not one thing that can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. I don’t care what it is. Well, we’re gonna have to lean on those scriptures, not just the scriptures that we can read, but the ones that God has spoken to our hearts at one time or another. We’re gonna have to go back to that and say, It is written. God made this real. God spoke this to my heart.
So I pray that God’s people will be encouraged, and enlightened, and have a sense of, we need to be walking together. We need to be allowing God to change us to the point where we are absolutely aligned with Him and with one another. And God’s gonna bring his people through, isn’t He? So to Him be the glory. Praise God!
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May 5, 2024 - No. 1648
“Ears to Hear” Part One
Broadcast #1648
May 5, 2024
May 5, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1648 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
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.
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April 28, 2024 - No. 1647
“Gold in the Fire” Conclusion
Broadcast #1647
April 28, 2024
April 28, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1647 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You can’t fix Adam! You and I were born with Adam’s life, and you can’t fix it! It’s so corrupted, there’s only one thing you do, is kill it. But what He offers us is another life.
Have you ever experienced that? That needs to be the cry of your heart, that you come to a place where you know you have been born again of His Spirit. He has imparted the very life of God to you, shared it with you. You don’t deserve it. I don’t either, but He’s given me a brand-new life. Praise God!
Every life that’s part of this world will perish but this is a life you cannot kill! You go on, later on in this chapter, the end of the chapter and the beginning of the next one, it talks about how it’s immortal, it’s God’s own immortal life! What an amazing thing to possess! What is there in this world that you could possess that’s greater? Nothing! Nothing!
And that gives us what He’s talking about. He looks back to see what’s He done for us. He’s given us this new birth, but to what purpose? A living hope! That means I can come here this morning and it doesn’t matter what’s going on right now, in the middle of my life and what it looks like, what it feels like, I have a hope that goes beyond that!
( congregational amens ).
It isn’t dependent upon my perfect performance! It’s dependent upon a God who cannot lie! You read Hebrews 6 again, and you’ll read about a God who speaks, a God who cannot lie, who can look us in the eye and say, I have planted in your heart a hope.
And it’s not a just wish. We think of hope as a wish. This is an expectation of something that is as solid, that’s more solid than anything you see. It’s more real. I’ll tell you, we got to have something supernatural in here to have that kind of conviction. You can’t just psych people into this. I don’t want to psych anybody into anything. I want you to have an encounter with the living God…
( congregational amens ).
…where He will impart to you His own conviction, His own life on the inside, where you know that you know that you know that He’s real! And He will do it!
I know many of you know what I’m talking about. But if you don’t, oh my God! Cry out! It’s, “…a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (NIV).
What a glorious song we sang this morning about the power of what God did at the resurrection. How many times have we talked about all hell would have kept Him in there! And even His followers were completely disheartened. It’s all over, I don’t understand what’s going on. And a Roman guard standing there with a sealed tomb. And all hell, the unseen world, ganged up on him, having a party, saying, we have won! And in the face of that, God said, no…time to come out. And death itself could not hold him!
( congregational amens ).
In the natural course of events, every one of us is gonna wind up in a tomb. But this is a life that we saw come forth in Jesus Christ that you cannot kill! It’s real! Praise God!
That’s the…I mean, you can go back in history and look at that even from an intellectual standpoint and people have tried to do that, trying to disprove the Christian faith and wind up coming to faith because they couldn’t! God has given us so many witnesses. If there’s any honesty in a human heart, you’re gonna wind up with a conviction that Jesus Christ is real, that God’s word is real, that truth is real, that this world is gonna pass away and we need to be connected to Him.
( congregational amens ).
“…A living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead….” That authenticated everything that he had said, everything that God had promised. And the result of that is, “…an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” Remember how Jesus again, talked about the treasures of this world and how they’ll pass away? But here’s a treasure that you cannot pass away. Let me ask you this, does Jesus deserve an inheritance in that kingdom?
( congregational response ).
You think? Yes. But we’re fellow-heirs. See, that’s God’s purpose. It’s not just for Him as an individual, He shares that with everyone who puts their trust in Him! He has the power to make us fully fit for that! That’s what life becomes all about, is getting us, taking us from what we were, transforming us on the inside, making us ready to inherit that for all eternity!
( congregational response ).
If you’re His, you have an inheritance, that no demon in Hell can possibly do anything about. Praise God!
( congregational amens ).
“…It can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. Do you think the Devil can go up there and do anything about that?
( congregational response ).
He can talk…he can try to talk you out of it, discourage you, but that doesn’t change what’s true up there. God has done something no devil can stop. Praise God!
All right? Now again, who’s he talking about? “…For you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power….” Again, faith is not just some vague thing that I work up or come up with somehow. This is a supernatural thing that God produces in the heart, but it also releases God’s power into my life. And there is a protection, there is a shield.
In fact, doesn’t Paul talk about the shield of faith? Yeah, there’s something that stands between me and the efforts of the devil to take me down! And it’s not because I have anything, it’s because of God’s power! I don’t have any power, do you? I can’t stand up to any of this. But my hope and my confidence are not in anything that I am or that I’m capable of doing, it’s in Him! And He is faithful! That’s what Peter is conveying here. What an amazing picture. Praise God!
We, “…are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” So, you see, Peter on the one hand talking about where we’ve come from and how we got here. God reached out in mercy to awaken us to our need, to bring us to a place where He could beget in us His life. And he points to the future and says, look what I’ve got for you. There’s nothing that could ever touch that!
All right, now you come back to the middle. That’s what this is about, because we need to understand both ends. Folks, if you’re trying to be a Christian in your own strength, you need to go back to the starting line. You need God to do something supernatural in your life. And I’m not talking about some spooky experience. I’m talking about a reality. You’ll know. You’ll know when God has done something down in here. There will be a witness of His Spirit and yours. But, praise God! In this, “…in all this you greatly rejoice…” And there’s the word though…
( laughing ).
…That follows that. Though. In other words, this is awesome. But there’s something you have to deal with that kind of gets in the way here that’s coming against that. Though. All right? Where was that…oh, there we go.
“…Though now for a little while…” Thank God, it’s only a little while. Like Paul said, you know…all this that I’m going through, it’s just for a little short time but what’s coming is forever. You can’t compare the two. How do you compare, eternity with a little bit that we go through? Of course, it doesn’t feel like that sometimes, does it?
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” So obviously, with a God that has prepared all of this, has planned all of this, this has got to be part of His plan, right?
Do you think this is just sort of happening? Is this happenstance? Is the devil kind of coming in here and saying, I get to mess up God’s plan, I get to fight against it? God has absolutely placed us in an arena for a purpose. And everything He is doing in us is absolutely central to where we’re headed.
But, it’s not only that, it’s central to us living here and being effective as Christians. I sense the Lord’s burden to get us ready. I mean, the stuff…the kind of stuff that we heard about with Brother Kumar is not just for folks some place off in another part of the world. We don’t know what God may call upon us to face here. With the spirit that is over-running our society and transforming our culture into an anti-Christ culture, don’t you sit here and think the American way of life is just gonna go on and on and on and on. We’re gonna to need something that’s real down here.
( congregational amens ).
And folks, if you’re trusting in Him and you’ve given your life and your heart to Him and your eye is single to Him as a source of truth, you’ve got what you need. And regardless of what we may experience in the flesh, what He’s given us is real and it will hold. Okay?
But then he goes into something that’s interesting. This is kind of what drew me to this passage in the first place. “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
God is gonna do something here to demonstrate how real He is and how great His power is, that there’s nothing here that can separate us from the love of God. Read Romans 8 again. Nothing can separate us. All the things the devil can throw at us, nothing is stronger than this.
Interesting that he compares our faith with gold. And you think of earthly substances…and gold would have to be near the top of the list of those that are pretty indestructible. I don’t care how hot the fire is, gold ain’t gonna suffer. Gold is gonna stand there. In fact, gold is gonna get purer, the hotter it gets its gonna get purer, isn’t it? You kind of see a little bit of an analogy going on here?
And yet, there is a fire coming. Peter talks about it, particularly, in the second letter. There is a fire coming that is so hot, gold itself will not stand up to it. Folks, you want to live for something in this world? Seriously? If even gold won’t stand up to it, what else will? That’s God’s Word, isn’t it? That’s sobering.
But yet, there’s enough of an analogy that we can understand something of what God is seeking to do in our daily lives. There are things, there are imperfections, there are areas of need. You know, we’ve talked about it so many different ways, how God needs to transform our mind and all of that.
But folks, there are so many things that we have…that have become a part of our life, part of our thinking, part of how we live and react, that just doesn’t come from God. And just like the impurities that you put gold in the fire in order to burn them out, we need things that will burn them out.
We don’t just sit in a seminar and God says, here’s what you need to do, here’s how you do it…good, I’ve got that. It doesn’t work that way anymore than if you bring gold in there and say, look, gold, get rid of that junk that’s in there so you can be pure. There’s a process that makes it pure.
And this is one we prefer not to have. But the reality is, if God is going to purify that amazing faith that He has put in here, it’s going to have to go through stuff. And it’s gonna have to stand up to something that’s very, very real. And that something is gonna have the power to burn up the stuff that God wants to get rid of in you and me. Anybody here got any of that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I mean, you think about how we sing on Sunday about all the wonderful things that we have in the Lord and then we go out and the simple circumstances of life, produce all kinds of reactions that don’t come from faith. We get angry. We get discouraged. We get…you go on, and you name all the things that we’re prone to. We react to so many things in life…discouraged, weary, hopeless.
I’ll tell you, we’re gonna go through life, God is going to deliberately bring us to places where we’re gonna need to stand in faith. The Word of God is full of those examples. Abraham didn’t become the Father of Faith by simply going to a seminar and learning about it. He had to stand up under real-world issues.
And I’ll tell you, there are places we get in this world, where God will be silent… seemingly. And a thousand voices will be screaming in our heads saying, it isn’t so, you’ve done something, you’re bad, God doesn’t…maybe God doesn’t even exist, this is all a fantasy! You’re gonna hear those voices. Everyone here has heard those voices.
And I’ll tell you, at that time, that’s when we need to ask God to keep our eyes single and say, God, I need Your help! God, give me the strength to stand and simply believe You even when it doesn’t seem like it, I don’t feel it, nothing! I have nothing to go on that’s natural. But I know what You put in my heart! I know who You are.
See, Abraham just didn’t believe…we’ve said this many times. He just didn’t believe what God said, he believed God!
( congregational amens ).
It was a character issue. I know the character of the One who has talked to me, and whatever He tells me is right! And then what an amazing demonstration of that faith came when God told him to sacrifice his own son. And he got to the point where the knife was raised and he would have done it. Phew! And he didn’t have the Bible!
We’ve got a God who will lead us in so many ways. You know, Brother Steve was telling me last night about going through some stuff and how the Lord brought him. God leads us along. You know, there are times when God leads us beside the still waters and in wonderful meadows. And there are other times He leads us in dark valleys, the valley of the shadow of death.
But what does David say based on his heart experience? He said, no matter where I’ve been You’ve been with me. You’re walking right beside me. I didn’t even feel that You were there. There were times in his Psalms that said, oh God, where are You? I reach out, I can’t find You. What’s going on? I don’t understand. But somehow, there was something God had placed in the heart.
Is that in your heart? It needs to be. God wants to give it to you. He wants to give you that anchor in your soul.
Think of Jesus, at His weakest point and the Devil comes and says, “…If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” What did He say? “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (KJV).
Now he didn’t say that when he had just finished a nice meal and was feeling good. He’d just finished fasting for 40 days, and he was hungry and he was needy and he was at his weakest point. But somehow, his eye was so single, that conviction of his heart was so real that he was able to say, these natural things are not what I live for. This isn’t what I go by.
You know, God can take care of those needs while we’re here, but there’s something that’s more important. I need to live by what comes out of His mouth.
( congregational amens ).
And I’ve got to say this again. This has to get beyond words on a page. I thank God for every word that’s on these pages. And we can search them, and we can read them. But it’s got to get beyond my intellectually…taking hold of what it says here and trying to cobble myself a religion. I need a living relationship with a very real God who talks to me!
( congregational amens ).
And so do you. Because I don’t live by just the natural resources, I live by what He says. And I’m not talking about some spooky experience, I’m talking about the fact, that many of you could testify to, you were in a dark place and suddenly, finally, God spoke. It wasn’t a long speech, but just a quick word. It could be three, four or five words. But suddenly peace took hold. And you knew that God was real and that His Word was more powerful than anything you were experiencing at the time. Folks, that’s the kind of a God that we need.
( congregational amens ).
That’s the kind of a relationship we need. God wants a people that will walk with Him because we’re headed into difficult territory! Just living in this world is difficult enough. But we need a God with whom we walk.
We need the same thing Noah needed when he walked with God and God showed him what to do and protected him and brought him through in spite of the condition of a world that was headed for judgment. We’re in that same situation today.
And the God who was with Noah, the God who was with Abraham is with us. And we need to be with Him. We need to be saying, every day, when those voices scream in your head, and wanting you to give up and wanting you to go this way and believe this and believe that, we just need to cry out and say, oh God, I believe You, help my unbelief.
( congregational amens ).
And sometimes it’s gonna take standing. Sometimes it’s gonna take just standing in faith because you know what He has said to you in the past. But I’ll tell you, we have a God who knows how to speak in the present when there is a need. You and I need Him! In whatever situation you find yourself in, that would cause you to do something other than rest and trust and believe in this God who has called you out of darkness into light, and has set before you a hope that cannot be countermanded, we’re gonna need to have a heart that looks to God, consistently.
We stand by faith, we look to Him, we know where our help comes from! And whether it comes on our timetable or in the way we think, we’re gonna say, God, I know who You are. I need Your strength. I can’t do this on my own, but Lord, I receive this.
Do you know the effect of that is the same as putting gold in fire? Do you know there are things in our lives that lose their power over us when we stand in faith when the fire is burning? God is literally setting us free. That’s what he’s talking about.
We read the end of this passage, “…Even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” You see the process there? See, Peter’s talked about the beginning, he’s talked about where we’re going, but now we’re in the middle, we are receiving something.
God wants to impart something to me that I don’t have! There is no other way but for me to have to stand in times of difficulty, and praise Him anyway, and just look to Him. But I’ll tell you, what’s gonna get me through is the same thing that got Jesus through. I don’t live by earthly provision, whatever it is. I need to hear from heaven.
You could tell me all this stuff, but I have one source of truth, and it comes ultimately from God. And I’m gonna listen, and I’m gonna trust Him to speak to me exactly what I need, when I need it, and that is gonna be the anchor for my soul. I’m convinced of who He is and that He is truthful and faithful. And no matter what you say, Devil, I’m gonna stand, and I’m gonna put my trust in Him and He’s gonna bring me through.
God is gonna take His people through. But He wants us to understand what’s going on right now. So that every single day, instead of…we’re allowing God to deal with us. We’re allowing God to bring circumstances to allow us to go through valleys and difficult places, and they will bring up the conflict between ideas that come from the other source, and His truth.
And what we need to do is to cry out to Him and say, God, I believe You and I’m gonna stand fast, and I am looking to You for Your strength. Give me the wisdom I need, speak, if it’s just a word or two, whatever I need to give me the confidence to stand in this time.
And I’ll tell you, God’s gonna to burn that stuff up that’s held you captive, and me. God’s got a plan for that. It ain’t gonna…it’s not gonna be here. You know, there’s gonna come a day when nothing that afflicts you right now that’s ungodly, it won’t be here. But God wants to do something about a lot of it right now. And He knows how to do it and He’s faithful to do it. Praise God!
So, I want to be…I want to have my eyes single. I want to have a heart that says, Lord, I know that I’m in need. I know how I got here. I know You called me even though I don’t deserve it. I know what You’ve set before me, but also know that You’re with me right now, and I need to hear Your voice. I just want to hear from You, Lord, because You are the only source of truth that I trust. Whatever this world tells me is gonna lead me to destruction, but I need You.
And I’ll tell you, there is a God who is faithful to His promises. He is faithful to you. It doesn’t depend upon your strength or wisdom or any natural quality that you have. You can be the smallest child who puts their trust in Him, and you are stronger than the greatest giant in the kingdom of darkness, because it’s not you, it’s Him in you. Praise God! Do we have something to rejoice in this morning?
( congregational amens ).
We also have things to be sober about and to realize where we’re at, and what God has laid before us and how we get from point A to point B. But I’m so thankful He’s going with us.
( congregational amens ).
He’ll never leave us nor forsake us. And He is faithful. To Him be the glory. Praise God!
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April 21, 2024 - No. 1646
“Gold in the Fire” Part One
Broadcast #1646
April 21, 2024
April 21, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1646 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, it seems like the Lord arranges every time I’m supposed to be up here for me to feel especially weak, and it seems like that’s kind of the way it is…the way it’s supposed to be, if we read the Word, because we’re not supposed to be running in our own strength, and I certainly don’t feel like I have any.
But I’ve had a lot of thoughts, and again I’m trying to, I’m asking the Lord to help me to bring them to a focus that He wants, to express His heart. And as is so often the case, I don’t know how much I’m going to say this morning that is truly new. But it’s not what’s new that we need, it’s what’s real, and what’s relevant to where we’re at.
And, I guess, as good a place as any to start is in the beginning of 1st Peter. And, you think about the man that God used, think about where he was when the Lord found him as a self-confident fisherman.
Some of you have seen the…that series of movies that have been made about the life of Jesus and the…and so forth. And, Peter is quite a rascal. I don’t suppose…I don’t think they’re off in picturing him that way. He was self-willed rascal.
And you think about what the Lord had to do to him and how the Lord was faithful to him, in spite of all of his human weakness, all that was wrong with him, and the catastrophic failure that he went through. And yet, God blessed him, brought him through, made him a pillar in the church, and a blessing to us yet here today because of his writings.
You know, if God can do that for Peter, He can do that for any of us. And we need to lift up our eyes and see who it is we’re serving and what this is about, and have a confidence. I mean, for people who knew what Peter had gone through, and to see him in the role that he’s occupying, encouraging and instructing others, with a confidence and with an anointing, what an encouragement that needs to be to all of us. And it’s what it certainly would have been to them.
So let me just read a little. I think I’m gonna go ahead and go against my instincts here and just read and then I’ll go back. It’s hard for me not to stop and comment every other word, but anyway.
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (NIV).
Wow, there’s a powerful, powerful picture of where we’re at in Christ, what He’s done for us, and how we got there, and where we’re going. And, of course, Peter’s focus in the middle of it is, okay, we see the past, we see the future, what about now? So that’s kind of where he’s coming from.
Now, just to set it a little bit in context. You know, different people have different places in the Kingdom of God. And Peter’s place was to minister to those who were Jews by birth. And so, when he talks about the exiles, he’s talking about people who were Israelites but lived in foreign countries.
How many of you remember that on the Day of Pentecost, there were people who had gathered in Jerusalem from many other countries? And they had been so assimilated in those countries that they actually spoke their language and so, the miracle of them speaking in all of these languages was very apparent.
But these weren’t Gentiles, these were Jews. And so, Peter’s ministry was to reach out to those who had been born as Jews and knew the Law, but needed to realize what God had done for them and how He had fulfilled everything that was foretold in the Old Testament, and now was coming to pass.
And all that had been hidden that the prophets themselves, he says later in this chapter or the next chapter…he said they hadn’t even understood it. But here, now, it’s being unlocked. In fact, he says it right after the passage I read. The Spirit that was in them didn’t realize, didn’t understand, they didn’t fully understand what they were prophesying. But now it was time for it to be unlocked, and revealed to everybody. And so, that was the hope that he was going forth to proclaim. All right?
So, who is Peter addressing? Who is he writing this to? He’s writing this to those, “…who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God.” And of course, I won’t say a lot about this. There’s a whole lot of debate in Christian circles about the relationship between God’s sovereign election, on the one hand, and man’s will and responsibility to respond on the other.
Well, the truth is in the middle. There is not a person alive in the history of this world who has the power, or even the inclination to come to God and surrender unless God works with the heart. We are dependent upon Him to come and speak to us and convict us of what is true, and of our need of Him.
But God does not simply come and overpower somebody and say, I pick you and I don’t pick you, and you don’t really have any choice in the matter. We have a responsibility to respond. And God knows, God knows ahead of time those who will. And so, He works in harmony with what He knows.
But I’ll tell you, we have a responsibility. And yet, isn’t it an awesome thing to have the security of God’s overshadowing choosing? Thank God! I want to be one of those chosen. Praise God! I don’t begin to deserve it, but He has chosen.
And I just praise Him, because that’s my security. It certainly is in nothing I can find in here. It’s in His heart and His purpose. Folks, if you are His and you know you’re His, wow, you have something to shout about this morning.
( congregational response ).
I don’t care what’s going on in your life, what you’re experiencing…even if you were experiencing all the things Brother Kumar is experiencing, we have reason to lift up our eyes and to rejoice because of what God has done.
But it’s interesting how he characterizes this. The foreknowledge of God, but it’s, “…through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.” What is he talking about? This is how it happens, in other words. God has to go to work on the heart. What does sanctify mean?
( congregational response ).
It’s to set apart. Because you have a human race that is marching like lemmings toward a cliff, toward certain destruction. There is no future for this world. I don’t care what you try to do, what mankind tries to do. He can go conquer the stars if he wants to, if he thinks he can. Nothing is going to alter the future of this first creation, which we were born into.
Folks, we need God to rescue us completely, and it is because of the influence of His Spirit that begins to set one apart who responds to the voice. You remember how Jesus said, “All those the Father give me will come to me.” But in the same passage, He talks about those who have heard His voice. There has been an influence of God and those who have heard and responded to that, they’re the ones that have been literally set apart from the destination of everyone else in this world. Praise God!
Oh God, just continue that work. I don’t even know what I need. But I serve One who knows what I need and loves me in spite of everything that is wrong with me, and that’s a bunch. Praise God! That’s true of you, too, though. Praise God! The sanctifying work of the Spirit! God is going to continue to set people apart.
And I want to challenge people. Has God ever set you apart? Has God truly become so real to you, have you heard His voice? Has He become so real to you that that seals your destiny and you have turned from a different path, the path in which the world walks? But now you’re walking His path and you’re looking to Him and you’re trusting in…you see past all of this world and all that it seems to offer. I’ll tell you, if that doesn’t happen, that’s beyond serious—that is beyond serious. This is real, folks. But only the…only hearing His voice can do that. Praise God! Praise God!
And of course, the result of this is not just a mental acknowledgement of certain ideas, there is an obedience that comes with this. Do you remember when God spoke to Abraham, what was it that set him apart? He believed God, but he didn’t sit there and say, yeah, I believe You. He packed up and obeyed.
Folks, we need to have a heart that we allow God to mold so that we become…so that our values change. Everything about us changes. That’s when God sets somebody apart and they become His and not their own.
You know, there’s a…I just, it seems like I come into this…almost a sense of conflict, in a sense. Lord, who is this focused on, because I’m aware that there are saints who are in need of encouragement and instruction. But there are always people among us who need what we’re talking about and don’t know what I’m talking about. They don’t have a clue. I just pray that God will speak. But I also pray that when He does you will listen!
( congregational response ).
And realize who it is that’s talking to you, because…well, I’m jumping ahead in a sense. But one of the words that’s gonna come up in this passage is faith. And if you listen to a lot of people’s ideas, particularly unbelievers, who are looking on and they’re seeing all this…people talking about faith. To them, faith is just a blind belief, and ideas that just make us feel better about life. We’re trying to cope with life, and it’s scary. And so, we just latch onto some ideas that somebody found in a book, and we just blindly make up our ideas…I’m gonna believe that. That doesn’t even come close to what real faith is.
( congregational response ).
That doesn’t even come close. I’ll tell you, faith is a supernatural gift of God, that happens in the heart of a believer who listens to the Word of God and embraces it from the heart. God literally imparts a life force into you that gives you a conviction that will hold!
( congregational amens ).
Folks, we need that conviction in this hour like we have never needed it before. Folks, if you don’t have that, you cry out to God, because there’s a God who said, who promised that if we would seek Him with all of our hearts, we’d find Him. He is not looking for any to perish. There’s a heart that reaches out to anyone that will listen and humble themselves and reach back. God wants to impart to you a gift called faith. And it is a supernatural ability to trust God and to surrender your life into His hands and to know that there’s something beyond this world. Praise God! Praise the Lord!
I’ve had so many thoughts come and so many scriptures…praise God! Lord, You organize this, because I haven’t got it organized, but that’s all right. He knows what He wants to say. But always, I have this sense that I’m talking to two classes of people. I’m talking to people that’ve not come to this yet.
How many times have we seen, over the decades that I’ve been a part of this church…we’ve all seen? Young people grow up in the church, and to all intents and purposes, they’re just flowing with us and believing what we believe, and yet they grow up to a certain point, and they choose to go the way of the world.
Folks, we’re gonna have to listen. We’re gonna have to hear the voice of God. There are only two sources of wisdom. And we live in a world that is ruled over by the powers of darkness. There is a kingdom here whose absolute aim and purpose is to destroy…to steal, kill and destroy everything that God has set out to do. And they use every trick in the book, to make the wisdom and the appeal of this world seem to be the reality that we live in, that we need to live for!
And we need a God who can break through that darkness and show us the truth. There are only two sources of wisdom. And you’re either gonna get it from God or you’re gonna get it from the world. And we live in a world…how many times have we said this? But it needs to be constantly emphasized. We live in a world where darkness and deception are flooding this world like never before.
( congregational response ).
Folks, we need to be so grounded in what God says, that we are able to recognize what’s going on and where the wisdom is coming from. You can’t just listen to your worldly friends. You’ll have worldly friends that say, I’m a Christian. And they’ll give you wisdom that comes straight out of the mouth of Lucifer sometimes. Folks, we need to be grounded.
And as we’re going forward, we’re gonna need something that’s real, because we’re going to…we are on a trial here. I guess that’s what’s going on. The Lord is gonna make manifest those that are His and those that aren’t. And I’ll tell you, you don’t have to be strong or smart or a whole lot of things to stand in this. We just need God.
( congregational amens ).
It’s all based upon Him. But I’ll tell you, if we are going to be self-willed, if we’re gonna just listen to this and listen to that and not really focus on Him, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt. It’s interesting…I’ll just refer to these, to some of these scriptures that we read about in the words of Jesus. He warned at one point, about those who would seek earthy wealth. And He says, it’s all gonna burn up. You need to seek for heavenly wealth. You need to seek for that which will not pass away. “…Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
But it’s interesting what He goes right on to say about the singleness of your eyes, or the health of your eyes, depending on the translation. Folks, what we are looking at, what we are considering to be the source of our truth, quote-unquote. Everybody has their own today. But there is only one source of genuine truth, and His name is Jesus, and He was sent to give us the knowledge of God’s will, God’s purpose, and to open up a way where we can participate in that.
But oh, I’ll tell you, you can’t come here and listen and say, yeah, yeah, and then go out and listen and follow your own heart and follow your own ideas and the wisdom that’s coming in from the news media and the education. And today’s education, so much of it is corrupted. You go to most colleges today and you’re gonna be brainwashed with a philosophy that hates God.
You’re gonna have to…if you go, you’re gonna have to have something on the inside that will hold you. You’re gonna have to have an anchor for your soul. And you’re gonna have some battles if you try to go into some of those places. They don’t want you there, some of them. I know it’s not a hundred percent bad everywhere. But I’ll tell you what, the world is being overrun with doctrines and ideas and things to live for that have entirely to do with this world.
And everything that they talk about will pass away! Or else, Jesus is a liar! He didn’t mess around when He talked about it. But oh, how He talked about the need for our eye to be single! Is your eye single? Not just when you come in here, but when you deal with the day-by-day issues of your life, is your eye single?
That is, I know where, I know who I need to be listening to. I know where my wisdom, my true wisdom comes from. I know where truth comes from. And whether I feel it, or whatever is going on in my heart and my life, I am committed to Him.
You know, we used the Scripture recently about seeking wisdom, but not having a divided heart, not having a heart that’s uncertain which way it wants to go, like we want God to lay His cards on the table and then we’ll decide. This is an absolute commitment. God, I know…I know enough about You to know that I can trust You absolutely.
( congregational amens ).
Nothing short of that is faith. Nothing short of that will get you through this world. That’s world, that’s the situation we find ourselves in. And God has arranged it because, you see what we read about, the incredible…incredible picture of what God has done and where we’re going with that! It’s just amazing, it’s beyond belief, that He could take people like me, and you, and give us anything to hope for. Thank God! Thank God!
Thank You for the sprinkling of the blood that means that the sins that I committed that separated me from a holy God, He took care of it! I could do nothing about it, but He did! Oh, what a heart! I can trust somebody like that.
You know, I remember my dad witnessing to somebody way, way back. I guess this was before he even met my mother. And, his comment to somebody who was kind of an unbeliever said, you know, I can trust somebody who died for me. Simple statement. But it’s exactly the truth. Somebody who’s willing to do what He did for me, how can I not trust Him completely? How can I not put my faith in Him?
And I’ll come back to this. I want to drop this in again, because just hearing about this and saying, oh yeah, they believe it, it must be so. I don’t want anybody here to ever have second-hand faith! God doesn’t want you to have second-hand faith! Doesn’t want you to do anything on the strength of what I say or what anybody else says. God wants to be real to you personally and He will if your heart is open to Him and you’re reaching out to Him.
You will have a source of knowledge that the world cannot give you, no university can give it to you. There is a wisdom that God can impart to the human heart that is stronger and more lasting than everything this world can offer you.
And even though, many times, it leads to difficult circumstances, like we saw Brother Kumar’s experiencing right now, even though, it leads to death itself in this world, it’s worth everything to know Him! Because this is not the end! This is gonna have an end, but this is not the end for those who put their trust in Christ. This is only the means to an end. Thank God!
“Praise be to the God and Father…” in verse 3, “…of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy….” That’s the only ground I can stand upon today. I cannot begin to come and say, God, I’m a good guy, You ought to receive me.
Are you willing to come on the ground of mercy? Or, do you have so much pride that you’re just not willing to come down and realize you need Him as much as the worst murderer, sinner, dictator? You need Him as much as Hitler did. So do I. There’s nothing that we can offer to Him. It is on the ground of mercy.
Are you willing to come that way? Because that’s the only ground we can come on. God, I couldn’t possibly deserve it, but You have offered me mercy and I am willing to come on that ground. I renounce any claim to goodness. I just come because You have offered me mercy. To Your name be glory and praise!
( congregational response ).
But He’s given us a new birth! Folks, how many times have we said, you can’t fix this? You can’t fix Adam! You and I were born with Adam’s life, and you can’t fix it! It’s so corrupted, there’s only one thing you do, is kill it. But what He offers us is another life.
Have you ever experienced that? That needs to be the cry of your heart, that you come to a place where you know you have been born again of His Spirit. He has imparted the very life of God to you, shared it with you. You don’t deserve it. I don’t either, but He’s given me a brand-new life. Praise God!
Close
April 14, 2024 - No. 1645
“What is Your Life About?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1645
April 14, 2024
April 14, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1645 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Paul, as I said, was here for one purpose. After he met Christ, there was only one thing that he lived for. Lord, what do You want me to do? I do not belong to myself anymore. I belong to You.
And I’m gonna ask you the question—ask a question again. Do you really think that this is only for Paul? Or, does that not apply to every member of the Body of Christ?
We’re not all apostles, obviously! We’re not all anything. We have all the variety of gifts and abilities that God has distributed, but these principles apply to everyone.
Didn’t Paul write, I think in one of the Corinthian letters? “…Ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (KJV).
What are you seeking? What’s your life about? What’s the driving vision and burden that you have for your life? Where do you see yourself going and for what reason? These are serious questions, aren’t they?
( congregational amens ).
They’re ones we need to ask ourselves. On one level, this is a question that has eternal ramifications for someone who has never really, really surrendered to Christ. But there are ramifications for every single believer.
Why do we do what we do? You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. And we need to understand. You know, I mentioned…I’m sure I mentioned it here, but where I grew up, we often had messages that were geared to the young people to get them to come to the place where they’re willing to surrender their lives.
It’s not just a matter of coming to a place of salvation, but…because the truth is, how can you have one without the other? But still, the emphasis was basically, you’re standing at the crossroads of life. Where is your life going? What’s it gonna be about? Are you going to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, to do His will, or are you just gonna keep doing yours?
And of course, many times, the emphasis was on, are you willing to be a missionary if God calls you to be that? Or, are you willing to be a minister? There was all of that in there. But the basic principle, the basic center of all of that was, are you willing to do God’s will?
I’ll ask you that today. Is that the governing principle of your life? God, it’s not my life! What do You want me to do? What do You want me to be? How do You want me to live? Change me at the heart level! Impart to me the very ability to do what You’ve called me to be!
Is there anything else that can be called real Christianity? And the answer is no. We’ve got a lot of churchianity in this country. Thank God He has a people in spite of it, that He knows that are His. But my God, don’t we need Him? Don’t we need to have a purpose in our lives that goes beyond living a comfortable okay life, not getting into trouble, not doing a whole lot of bad stuff? Young people, what’s your purpose? Where are you going? What do you want in life? You have to face that.
( congregational amens ).
Have you ever met Jesus? Has He ever taken possession of your heart? Because it’s not a matter of just you trying to conform to what I say. God, help you. It could never be that. I’m in need of the same salvation you are.
But on the off chance that Jesus is actually inspiring some of this, these are His words, not mine. And they’re not spoken to try to be a tyrant in your life. They’re not spoken out of any ill motive, but out of pure love because of what He has…what Jesus died to share with every one of us.
Now, the outworking of that is the polar opposite of human nature. It could not be more opposite than what God has called every single Christian to. It’s not about you. It’s not about me, in the sense that we usually think of it. It’s not about what I can have, what I can do, how I can be seen in the eyes of others, how well I can think of myself, none of that. God, deliver every single one of us from that kind of self-centered thinking.
Here was Paul, knowing that in order to do the will of God, he had to be willing to go out and suffer the things that he suffered. He had to be willing to be hated everywhere he went. There were going to be people that were inspired by the devil to absolutely oppose him, to have him beaten, to have him thrown in prison, to have…have him stoned one time, left for dead. On and on and on, there was constant pressure.
Boy, we don’t like that. We think something is wrong. How many of you have been tempted to think that something is wrong? Here, I’ve been asking God for more, and instead, all hell breaks loose. And I’ve had nothing but trouble.
Yeah, I see a lot of people who said, yeah, I get it. I’d have to raise my hand, too. It’s awful easy. See, that’s human thinking. What we ought to be saying is, thank God. If we’re stirring up the devil, if he’s upset, he has a reason to be upset. That’s a cause for rejoicing for saying God is hearing, and He’s answering my prayer, and the devil is scared, “…because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
And the devil knows that! He doesn’t want me to know it! He doesn’t want a people who are in touch with Him, doing His will, knowing that if we’re gonna go through the doors He opens, we’re gonna meet with warfare.
There are all kinds of things going on where the devil has…and the devil will pull on every opening that he has in any life. He does it, “…to steal and kill and destroy.” (NIV).
You remember when Jesus was about to go the cross, He said the devil, “…is coming. He has no hold over me.” Why? Because every part of His being was surrendered to the will of God. There was no way that He could get to…to Him, to Jesus. I wish we could say that about us, but that’s what the Lord’s working on.
You know, the things that the devil has marshalled against us, or he marshals against us when we’re going through some of these times of reaching out for more. Sometimes it’s just temptation. Are there weaknesses that the devil’s just had an extra…put an extra bit of emphasis on the last little bit? Would you admit it?
( congregational response ).
There are weaknesses that the devil still probes and still works on. And all of a sudden you wonder why he’s putting a little more effort into that? Yeah, he’s scared. But God lets us experience battles so that we can experience victory.
There’s an old chorus that I remember hearing many, many years ago. And…’how can we be overcomers unless we overcome?’ Somehow, we want to be shadow boxers, learn the theory, and man, I’m an overcomer.
But, to be an overcomer means there are real battles to be fought. There is a real enemy that we need to stand up against and overcome! And the Lord is putting us through the paces. We’re gonna see him pulling…because he has a hold on a certain life, you’re gonna see the devil rise up in varying ways. We’re gonna need the Lord. We’re gonna need to pray. We’re gonna need to look to God for strength and for discernment.
But God is gonna use the battles that He puts us through to make us into the very thing that He wants us to experience. And we are going to see, as I said, people are either going to listen to the devil and walk away, because of his deception, or we’re gonna wake up and be part of the Kingdom of God and part of…and someone that God can actually use.
Now, Paul was somebody that God could use. His life was laid down. It’s not mine anymore, it’s Yours, Lord! He talks about a great door being opened! To whom does God open doors…the kind of door he’s talking about here? There is an opportunity for advancement of the Kingdom of God, and here it is, Paul.
So, what did Paul do with that? Of course, he went through it, didn’t he? He absolutely responded to God! And he went through that door knowing that there would be opposition, knowing that he was walking into a battle! But he said, this is the whole reason I exist. This is the meaning of my life. It’s not mine.
You remember the Scripture in Revelation in one of the letters to the Philadelphia Church, about how the Lord said, I open, and no man can shut. I shut and no man can open. You know, we talked recently about how this entire existence is a process of God working out a sovereign purpose. He has His times. He has His ways. He has what He wants to accomplish, when He wants to accomplish it, through whom He wants to accomplish it, and He is the one opens doors and closes them.
Sometimes, there are seasons for waiting! Sometimes, there are seasons for going through a door! Folks, it’s not our plans, it’s not our ability. It’s not anything but simply saying, God, show us what to do. Give us the power to do it.
( congregational amens ).
And give us the conviction to go through knowing we are going into battle! Lord, help us. We can’t do anything without You. But the only thing that will matter on that day is what I’m talking about now! You can amass everything in the world, and it will all be burned up and worthless! But the simplest saint who says here’s my life, use it, and God literally touches other people’s lives through that life, that will have eternal value.
What’s your life about? Do you know that God has a purpose for your life and yours and yours and mine? It’s to say, Lord, I don’t even know what to do. I don’t want to live for just an earthly purpose. Lord, I just give myself to You, and I don’t have any ambition in this. I don’t have any…it’s not a matter of me seeking a place or trying to be this or trying to be that. It’s just, Lord, whatever, I’m Yours.
And then, having Him work and change and deliver us from that drive of self-seeking. And we’re gonna have to go through stuff that will cause us to have to die, to let go, to face things that we don’t want to face about ourselves, all the things that we’ve talked about so many times.
But God is going to mold a people that will be able to do, along the same lines as what Paul did, not necessarily being an apostle and doing those kinds of things, but we are called to be members one of another. Every single one of us has something that is from heaven for the rest.
As I thought about this, I thought again about the point that I made a little bit ago, of how easy it is to think of deeper life as just a private, personal thing. Again, think back to what we’ve referred to Philippians 3 where Paul was talking about one thing I do, and oh, my goal in life is to be this high eagle Christian.
But why? What purpose is there in that? Is it just so I can be a Christ-like person? Is it just about me and my spiritual advancement and achievement? Is that what this is really about?
But how easily do we think of it in those terms. Why did Jesus come? For Himself, to be a great somebody? He came to be a servant. He endured everything He endured, not for what He could achieve, not for what He could be, but for what He could give us.
Can you think of anything anymore contrary to human nature? See, you could actually appeal to some people and say, oh, just come and be this super Christian. But you start throwing in the second half of that, “…and there are many who oppose…,” and you realize it’s not just a smooth, easy way.
Okay, Lord, I don’t really like it much, but I guess if that’s what it takes. “…All things work together for good…” you know, to those who love God. I’ll put up with it so I can be what You want me to be. If that’s all there is, that stops way short of God’s purpose for your life and for mine!
Again, why did Jesus do what He did? Why did He put up with this? Why did He suffer and die and put up with everything He had to put up with to do what He did? Why did He do it? Was it for Him or for us?
Oh, you know, I can do a lot, I can go through a lot if it benefits me. That’s the amazing thing when you think about Paul. You think about some of the things that he said. I guess I’m just referring to them, but you want to go back…you want to back up in Philippians. I’ll go ahead and look at a couple of those things.
You cannot read Philippians 3 and that all Paul sought to do and to be without it being in the context of what he said in chapter 1! Now this case, where was Paul when he wrote this? Now, you’re afraid to say, aren’t you?
( laughter ).
He was in prison. Now, he was in prison in Rome writing to the Philippian believers. And some of them were tempted to be timid about their faith, because look what it gets you. Paul is cautioning them don’t you dare give into that, because I’m not here living for me. This is not about what happens to me.
Let’s see, verse 20. “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (NIV).
Now, again, you could read that and say, Paul had this vision of what he could become. It’s about me and my relationship, and I’m going to have this glorious love fest with God, and that’s what it’s about.
Is that what it was about? You go on a little bit, and he says, “If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me.” Oh boy, more work! “…This will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but…,”
Ha! There’s a good but, isn’t it? You see what’s in control there? This is what I would like. How many of you would just love to have this be over? You know, you go through times, and you say, God, what a burden life is here, and what You have for me is so much better. You can just come and end it right now if You want to. Take me on. You can see that yearning in Paul, the realization of what lay ahead.
“But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” Why did Paul do what he did? Why did he put up with all the stuff that he put up with? Because Paul wasn’t living for himself. Paul was living for the people to whom he was sent. It wasn’t about Paul. It was about allowing the Spirit of God, the life, the power of God to flow through Paul so that others could be helped and lifted up.
Is that revolutionary? Is that why we’re living? Yeah, we’ve got a ways to go, if we’re gonna grow up in the Lord. I believe there’s a measure of that. Thank, God. But I believe that our thinking…if we’re gonna start thinking about deeper life and higher ground and all of that, we need to see what that higher ground involves. If it’s not about me laying down my life so that life can flow to others, it’s not higher ground.
( congregational amens ).
It’s not the ground that He has set forth for us. I thought of an old hymn. I can’t remember whether…whether we’ve ever sung this here or not, but I know I sung it growing up. Anybody know the hymn, “Channels Only”? I guess we haven’t sung it then.
( laughing ).
But anyway, this is a pretty good expression of God’s purpose. “How I praise Thee, precious Savior, that Thy love laid hold of me; Thou hast saved and cleansed and filled me that I might Thy channel be. Channels only, blessed Master, but with all Thy wondrous pow’r flowing through us, Thou canst use us every day and every hour.” That’s the chorus.
“Just a channel full of blessing, to the thirsty hearts around; to tell out Thy full salvation, all Thy loving message sound. Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me, a clean vessel in Thy hand; With no pow’r but as Thou givest graciously with each command.” Wow! Powerful words that capture it.
“Witnessing Thy pow’r to save me, setting free from self and sin; Thou who bought me to possess me, in Thy fullness, Lord, come in. Jesus, fill now with Thy Spirit hearts that full surrender know; that the streams of living water from our inner man may flow. Channels only, blessed Master, but with all Thy wondrous pow’r flowing through us, Thou canst use us every day and every hour.”
Why did Paul do what he did? Do we kind of see it a little deeper? Is that what we want? I believe God is calling. And I tell you, when He opens a door and we go through it, don’t expect to be unopposed. Don’t be afraid. Ask God for the courage. Think about the Israelites and all they had to face and what the Lord told them. Be courageous. Don’t give up. Don’t be afraid. Oh, by the way, be courageous.
( laughing ).
He knows what we’re made of. But folks, if you’re looking for a trouble-free way to the Kingdom of God, you’re in the wrong kingdom. The devil is going to oppose. It is a warfare, but it is one where the war has already been won at the cross.
( congregational amens ).
Thank God, and greater is He that’s in us than he that’s in the world. If we will put our trust in Him, and lay down our lives for Him, He will work, and He will accomplish His purpose, but we’ll also be part of it. That’s where He’s going with all of this. May God continue His work in us to take us to whatever deeper ground and higher ground that He wants. Praise God!
Close
April 7, 2024 - No. 1644
“What is Your Life About?” Part One
Broadcast #1644
April 7, 2024
April 7, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1644 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Every week it seems like I go through, in a sense, the same thing. We have a service and it seems like the Lord blesses and it’s connected to what’s been going on and what we’ve had before. And then I come to this next week, okay, now Lord, and I just feel empty and nothing’s going on and then I’ll have a thought and before…and as it develops, I suddenly say, hey, you know, this actually is a kind of a continuation.
And I feel like this may be one of those occasions as well. I believe the Lord wants to take us deeper, don’t you? We’ve said that so many times. And, we’ve certainly…I believe many of us have prayed, and prayed from our hearts, Lord work in me, change me, mold me and make me into what You’d have me to be.
That’s a dangerous prayer, because the Lord will answer it, but He won’t answer it in ways that we always expect. We think that’s gonna be peaches and cream, and we’ll sing a song about, “There is a place in God where rest is complete,” and we’ll sort of imagine that in an earthly sense where all conflict is gone. We’re just…oh, this is wonderful! And, how many of you know it’s not that way?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! It isn’t at all. And I had a scripture come to me the other day and I just kind of meditated on it ever since. And it comes from 1st Corinthians chapter 16. Paul was writing to the Corinthians, as we’ve said many times, and he had a lot of problems with a young church that had come out of heathen darkness, the people had. And they didn’t know how to be Christians. They didn’t know what it was all about. And so, he had to do a lot of teaching and explaining, dealing with issues.
And, you know, that’s kind of the way it is. There are always going to be issues, aren’t there? But anyway, he was writing to them. And, how many of you know where he was writing from? Where was Paul when he was writing this letter?
( congregational response ).
No. No, he wasn’t in prison. Well, it actually says here. In chapter 16, verse 5, I’ll go ahead and read a little bit. “After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you—for I will be going through Macedonia. Perhaps I will stay with you for a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.” (NIV).
And, you look in the bigger context, you see that he’s actually got in mind going to Jerusalem because he wants to take an offering, because the saints there are really in a desperate situation with poverty, and oppression by the religious leaders there.
But anyway, here he says, “But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.” Now, I’ve had so many thoughts. Only the Lord can bring this together in what He wants to emphasize.
Part of it is a great deal of what Steve said. But how many of you, in the process of saying Lord, take me deeper, have discovered that it stirs the devil up a bit? Instead of pressing forward and suddenly finding yourself in a pleasant meadow somewhere, spiritually speaking, you find yourself at war and you find the devil getting upset.
You know, if we’re not upsetting the devil, what are we doing? We’re living in enemy territory. The Kingdom of God exists with opposition, and if we’re not experiencing it, something is lacking. And it’s not that we go out and try to make trouble, in a carnal sense. But I mean, just simply pursuing what God wants is gonna stir up trouble.
So anyway…I’m jumping ahead in a way here because I wanted to emphasize different parts of this. But there’s one word that interests me there. Just at the moment I’ll comment on it. He says, a door, “…a great door for effective work has opened to me, ‘and’ there are many who oppose me.”
Now, if it were you and me, I think we would be inclined to say, ‘but’ there are. And as we talked about this before where, there’s a great difference between ‘and’ and ‘but.’ ‘But’ is kind of like the controlling factor in a situation. I’m doing good, ‘but.’ Or, I’m doing all this, ‘but’…as though all this opposition is now in charge.
But Paul is recognizing that they go hand in hand. If I’m doing anything, if I’m actually making progress in the Kingdom of God, instead of just marking time and sitting in place, there will be opposition and I recognize that and I just embrace it. It’s part of the deal. I accept it.
And I believe, with all my heart, as God moves here, as He brings us into a deeper experience of Him, we are going to have battles with the devil in many, many forms. And we might as well just get our minds geared up that that’s the way the Kingdom operates in the world. Okay?
Now, one of the areas that I wanted to go back and talk about, was that the fellow who wrote this…now we all know that Paul was not always Paul. He was, at one time, Saul, the Jew, and he describes his own…I mean, we see, in several places, his own background described as a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I mean a leader, an up-and-comer, who had given everything in his life to a certain course of action that he believed was the right one for him.
He was right with God, right with man, zealous for the religion of his fathers. He was an intellectual. He was a lot of things. But he was a rising star in the Jews religion of that day. And something changed.
Folks, how many of you know something has to change? Regardless…Steve was talking about this a lot this morning. You can grow up in this church and have nothing. You can grow up in this church and wind up in the Lake of Fire. Because it isn’t just a matter of the outward and the religion you embrace, the ideas you embrace, the behavior and all of that stuff. We need the Lord!
And there came a day when God’s purpose began to prevail in the life of this man named Saul. He had gotten letters of introduction from the leaders in Jerusalem because he’d heard that there were Christians in Damascus! The very idea! I’ve got to do something! So, he said, give me letters. I’ll go take care of business here.
And so, he was on his way to Damascus with a group of soldiers, I suppose. Anyway, they were people who were gonna help him in the process. And something happened. Has something ever happened in your life? It doesn’t have to be dramatic like this. I mean, Paul was suddenly surrounded by a great light and heard a voice that said to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” (NLT).
I mean, talk about a shock! “…Who are you, Lord? …I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” (NIV). Whoa, what a truth that unveils! Whatever the devil does to you, he’s actually doing it to Jesus. And you know, we need to see the connectedness of the Kingdom of God.
But here was a man that needed something…needed a direction in his life! His life was going the wrong direction. And so, Jesus interrupted his life and there was a revelation that penetrated, not just the mind, not just the intellect! Paul, I want to correct…or Saul, I want to correct your ideas. This was one that went to the heart!
Has Jesus ever penetrated to your heart? Or, have you just gone along? You see the need that was there. Would he ever have been the person he became if something had not happened at the level of his heart? This was a man that was brought into a relationship with Jesus Christ, where Jesus was not simply “a savior I believe in.” And, good, I’m going to heaven one day. This was somebody who came to be in charge!
And he came to a place where he understood that his life was not his own to live as he saw fit. It belonged to Jesus Christ, for His purposes, and His purposes alone. Now, is that just for somebody like Paul, as he became known? Or, is that a truth that applies to every single person, who would actually have a living relationship with Jesus Christ, and have an eternal hope? That’s how serious it is.
And this is only part of what I’ve thought about, but I just cannot get away from this aspect of truth. This man who wrote this, was somebody who had a basketful of stuff…we read about it in Philippians 3, of all the things that he…that in his life he valued and gloried in, as though this is what makes me somebody that matters. My life matters. This is what I want to live for.
You know, a lot of people just live for whatever pleases them. This guy went way beyond all of that. And yet, he was on the road to fire, and didn’t know it.
Folks, we need the Lord. And we need more than just following along with the religion of your parents, or what you hear the preacher say or any of those things. It has got to come down to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ that transforms your heart, because if you don’t have His life in you, you don’t have anything. If He’s not Lord of all, He’s not Lord at all.
( congregational amens ).
And contrary to what you will hear in some places, if He’s not Lord, He’s not Savior! We are seeing a great division in our world. We’ve said…this is something that’s not new. We’ve said this, many times. But it is a radical one! When mankind stands before a Holy God, there will only be two categories. You will either be robed in white, because of what He has done, alone. Or, you will stand there, having lived your life, on your terms, doing what you want, and you will lose it! It’s that simple.
And we have a culture today that is absolutely inspired by Satan. It is attacking every value, every idea, everything that has to do with Bible truth, with Jesus. We’re gonna see it chipped away, and we’re seeing it step, by step, by step. We’re seeing the rebellion absolutely unfold, and oh God, do we need to see past it and have God open eyes!
And I’ve heard, many times, burdens expressed by different ones for young people. Folks, those burdens aren’t just I don’t want him to get away from me. I want him to be identified with me. These burdens are coming from the hearts of people who know what they’re talking about. They have been there. They’ve been where you’re at, if you’re a young person.
This isn’t just for young people, but it sure affects them, because many of them are on the precipice of life, the staging area, whatever you want to say. There are roads that stretch out ahead of them. And oh, my God, how easy it is to have our plans, and to somehow imagine that I can live out my plan and it’ll be okay, and Jesus is good with that, as long as I don’t get too far out. You know, I don’t start robbing banks, and dealing drugs, and something that’s obviously evil.
Do you know what the essence of sin is? It’s not a list of ‘sins.’ Those are symptoms. The essence of sin is self on the throne! There’s nothing else! If you have self on the throne, you will have some of these evil acts come out. But they flow from the heart of someone who says, it’s my life, I will do as I please!
And there are plenty of people who live outwardly, exemplary lives, but self is on the throne! And there comes a place where God says, all right, I’m gonna let you have what you want. I pray that God will implant a godly fear in the hearts of everyone who hears this! Everyone, period! That you’ll see just how important this is.
What would have happened to Paul, to Saul, the Jew, had Jesus not intervened? What would have happened if somehow he had said, no? My God! This man had absolutely flipped 180. And Jesus absolutely revealed Himself and sent Ananias to him to pray after he’d gotten to Damascus, when he was blind.
And, here was a man who was afraid to go until the Lord explained, hey, this is somebody I’ve chosen. You’re gonna pray for him that he’ll receive his sight, that he’ll be saved, he’ll receive the Spirit. And I’m gonna tell him how many things he’s gonna be suffering for Me. Whoa, what a wonderful life!
But you know, you read through what Paul shared with us about what it means to really be a member of the Kingdom of God—a part of the Kingdom of God, and you’ll see a man that has a different view than a whole lot of folks.
You know, a lot of folks, they think of a deeper life, they think of going deeper with God, and it’s like it’s this magical place where I come into this peaceful, wonderful existence. And, you know, there’s an aspect of it where we have this deeper, personal relationship with God. Yes, there is a deeper peace. All of those things are there. And then you read about Paul and all that he went through, and how does that fit together?
You know, so many people have taken the one side…some of these sides of it. Some of it is the outward. Let’s back off and say that. We’ve said it many times about the prosperity gospel. If I’m…what God really wants from me is to prosper me in this world and if I will just believe in Him enough, I’ll have plenty of money, I’ll have perfect health, and I’ll be successful in everything I do, and that’s the sign that I am in favor with God.
Well boy, Paul must have really been on the outs with God because he sure didn’t experience much of that. That wasn’t the course of his life at all! The purpose for which he lived was something completely different.
What’s your purpose? When you’re looking ahead to your life or, right now…like I said, this isn’t just young people, this is everybody. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What’s your purpose? Or, are these truths only for the special ones?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. But here is Paul…and you remember in that passage in Philippians 3 that we’ve referred to so many times. If you read that, you could almost zone in on what he says. I want to know Him. This is one thing that I do. I want to, “…know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” (KJV).
And, “I press toward the mark for the prize….” You could almost conceive of that in a very private, personal sense. How many of you know there’s a difference between private and personal? Private is just about me. It’s like me going into a cave and having this glorious lovefest with Jesus, and that’s what my life is about. Find a monastery somewhere and just have this glorious, personal sense of something with God.
I’ll tell you, you could almost get that from those verses unless you see them in their context. Is that what Paul…is that why Paul did what he did? You know it isn’t. What was the reason that Paul did what he did? Was it just so that I could be a very special Christian? I could be a successful Christian. I could feel better about myself. Other people could look at me and say, wow, there is a model Christian! Isn’t that wonderful?
We are so geared to being self-centered, self-seeking. How easy it is to bring that into our spiritual lives and think that this relationship with God is about me and how I feel and how effective that I am at just being the kind of person You want me to be.
Lord, just guide my thoughts here. I feel a burden I can’t even express. But I believe God has a deeper—much deeper sense of what He wants to accomplish in us, and we see it in Paul. Paul, as I said, was here for one purpose. After he met Christ, there was only one thing that he lived for. Lord, what do You want me to do? I do not belong to myself anymore. I belong to You.
And I’m gonna ask you the question—ask a question again. Do you really think that this is only for Paul? Or, does that not apply to every member of the Body of Christ? We’re not all apostles, obviously! We’re not all anything. We have all the variety of gifts and abilities that God has distributed, but these principles apply to everyone.
Didn’t Paul write, I think in one of the Corinthian letters? “…Ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” What are you seeking? What’s your life about? What’s the driving vision and burden that you have for your life? Where do you see yourself going and for what reason? These are serious questions, aren’t they?
( congregational amens ).
They’re ones we need to ask ourselves. On one level, this is a question that has eternal ramifications for someone who has never really, really surrendered to Christ. But there are ramifications for every single believer. Why do we do what we do? You can do the right thing for the wrong reason.
And we need to understand. You know, I mentioned…I’m sure I mentioned it here, but where I grew up we often had messages that were geared to the young people to get them to come to the place where they’re willing to surrender their lives. It’s not just a matter of coming to a place of salvation, but…because the truth is, how can you have one without the other? But still, the emphasis was basically, you’re standing at the crossroads of life. Where is your life going? What’s it gonna be about? Are you going to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, to do His will, or are you just gonna keep doing yours?
And of course, many times, the emphasis was on, are you willing to be a missionary if God calls you to be that? Or, are you willing to be a minister? There was all of that in there. But the basic principle, the basic center of all of that was, are you willing to do God’s will?
I’ll ask you that today. Is that the governing principle of your life? God, it’s not my life! What do You want me to do? What do You want me to be? How do You want me to live? Change me at the heart level! Impart to me the very ability to do what You’ve called me to be!
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March 31, 2024 - No. 1643
“Which Thief are You?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1643
March 31, 2024
March 31, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1643 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: This is the dividing line of history. This is the defining moment in history which everybody’s destiny is determined by where they stand in relation to that. And I’ll tell you, His resurrection, as I say, was a victory over death. Here was the greatest enemy, the consequence of my sin is that I die—I’m destined to die! I cannot live with God. I cannot bring this sin that infects me into His kingdom! It has no place! “…Flesh and blood,,,” the scripture says, “…cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” (KJV). Man, something radical has to change!
But Jesus came forth, and He came forth as the Victor, the Conqueror of death itself! As I said, He convinced all of His doubting followers! Do you remember that first Easter morning? There were different encounters with different individual people, but the body of disciples were still, huh, what’s going on? I don’t get this. You know, people said this, I’m confused. I don’t know what’s going on.
And then, Jesus meets, joins up with a couple of disciples not part of the apostles but just two other followers, and they’re headed out to the village of Emmaus. How many of you remember that simple story? They’re walking along, taking about all the stuff that’s happened, and Jesus kind of joins them and says, “What you talking about?”
They said, “Are you a stranger around here? You don’t know what’s been going on? We saw this…we followed this guy, we thought He was the Messiah, we thought He was the One, and they killed Him! And it’s been three days! And then some people have been coming up with these crazy stories! They’ve seen Him! We don’t know what’s going on.”
“O fools, and slow of heart to believe…,” He said. And as they walked, He began to open up the Old Testament scriptures. Boy, would I have loved to — wouldn’t you have loved to listen in on that and have Him take the Old Testament scriptures and open them up? Do you know when they preached the Gospel in the New Testament, they preached it from the Old Testament? The New Testament wasn’t written yet! That’s where we go.
But I’ll tell you, the Gospel is there from Genesis right on through, what is it, Malachi? Anyway, right through the end of the Old Testament. And here’s Jesus taking them right through, showing them exactly what had to happen and why He had to die.
They still didn’t know who He was. So, they come to the house there, and so, He says, “Have a nice day.” And they realized, “Hey, wait a minute. Stay with us. It’s late in the day, we’ve got a house here. Come on in. Let’s eat something together.” So, they sit down to eat, and He breaks the bread and thanks God for it. And all of a sudden, they realize who it is. And instantly, He vanishes from their sight.
You want to know something about this life, this other life? It pays no attention to laws of physics. It’s not bound by all the things that bind us. This is something different. So, man, they’re excited. They go running back in. I don’t know if they ran. It’s several miles, but anyway, they hurried back into Jerusalem. They knocked on the door, because the disciples were in a locked room, and they let them in.
They said, “We’ve seen the Lord,” and locked the door again. All of a sudden, Jesus is in there. And you know, in the state that they were in, oh my God! We’re seeing a ghost! He said, “Don’t be afraid. A ghost doesn’t have flesh and blood like you see me have. He holds out His hands, and they touch Him. They…my God, He’s real! He’s got a body! We see Him just exactly — I mean, He’s right here!
And just to really settle the issue, Jesus said, You got anything to eat?” They gave Him a piece of fish, and He sat there and ate it in front of them. And they’re trying to take this in. And over the next few weeks, Jesus turns a bunch of scared, hiding people into people who are ready to just embrace the power that He was about to send, and stand up to that whole generation with a conviction that nothing could shake!
Every single apostle was martyred for their faith, went to their grave convinced and standing for the simple truth that Jesus was raised from the dead, except John. They tried to kill him, and it didn’t work! The Lord preserved him so he could write the book of Revelation, experience that revelation for us.
And do you know what we’ve read this morning several things that Jesus said prior to the cross. There were many other things, of course, through the Gospels. But I want to make this simple point. Everything Jesus said was completely authenticated by the fact that He rose from the dead. People may hear this and be angry with me, but Muhamad is dead. Confucius is dead. Buddha is dead. Plato is dead. All these people that had these great ideas about what the world is about and how we should live and all those things, but Jesus Christ is alive!
( congregational amens ).
He lives today, and He can be known today! We may not see Him with our natural eyes, but He is alive, and He is real, and every word that He told us is the truth!
( congregational response ).
When He says the one who loves his life will lose it, you can bet your last penny, let alone your dollar, you can bet your last penny that it’s the truth. And I’ll say again, He’s not telling anybody that because He’s condemning, angry, trying to put you under His thumb and make you miserable. It’s because He sees the condition that you’re blind to.
And He longs to reach down and pull you out and lift you up to a place where you’ll say, “Oh my God, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. How glad I am I gave You my heart and my life.” Praise God! He authenticated everything that He said.
Here’s something that’s sounds like it’s gonna come out of left field, but, when Jesus died, He wasn’t the only one that died that day, was He? There were two thieves, one on His right and one on His left. And the crowd was down there mocking! “You claim to be the Son of God! If You’re the Son of God, come down from that cross! Who do you think You are?” Just mocking Him.
When they started all of this, both thieves were in agreement with that. And one of them particularly said, “If you’re the Son of God, save Yourself and save us!” You see where His interest was, preserving his life? That was the most important thing to him! I’m about to die here. Fix me up. Save my life. That’s the prime value that I hold.
Somewhere along the line, one of the thieves began to find his spirit touched. The only explanation is that God touched his heart. Nobody has the power to come out of this kind of darkness. If you have any inclination at all towards God, God did that! God’s reaching out to you. You wouldn’t care!
Somehow, that thief began to see things in a different light when he heard Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” He listened, and he watched, and he saw His reaction to everything. And finally, he rebuked the other thief and said, “We’re dying because we broke the law. We deserve what we’re getting.” Then, he turned to Jesus and said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
And one of the points that’s really come strongly to me was the divide that happened that day. Everybody connected with that event that day was on one side or the other. There is no middle ground. How many of you know that?
( congregational response ).
There’s no middle ground. You are either 100 percent identified with Christ on the cross, including you dying, laying down your life, following Him, or you are part of those who will perish! There simply is no middle ground.
And I’ll tell you, any message that short-circuits that is a deception! I want to stand there that day and say I told people the truth! Where did I hear — a while back about a church that had — when people came, they were invited to say this little prayer. Sorry for all my mistakes. Thank You for salvation and something — that was the essence of it. And they consider them Christians! My God!
Do you have any idea what it takes for God to confront a life, and say, “You need Me! Without Me, you will perish!” And then to come and to realize that it’s not a voice of condemnation, but it’s a voice of love that entreats, that calls, that draws, that offers something at the cost of the Son of God laying down His life.
My God, what’s it gonna be like on that day? Do you think there’s gonna be some middle ground between those who are in glory and those who are marched off? That divide exists now. We don’t always know. That divide is in this room this morning. It’s wherever people may hear this. And all I can pray is that God will do what it takes.
You know, one sort of quirky way I thought about putting this is, there were two thieves there: which thief are you? You’re as guilty as either of them. Are you gonna stand with the mockers, or are you gonna stand with those who surrender? And they willingly lay down their lives because there’s a hope of something beyond all of that, that is as sure as the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ?
I’ll tell you what…when they went out and preached the Good News which is what the Gospel means, when the apostles went forth into that world and preached the Good News, man, it was not some easy-believism. It cost people their lives to follow Jesus. People were persecuted, thrown into prison. Some of them were killed.
That’s still happening today. In fact, there have been more — I believe there were more Christians killed in the 20th century than in all of Christian history combined before that. And the trend is going up. I heard one figure, and I don’t know how reliable, but it’s just an indicator. There’s something like 100,000 Christians that die every year from some form of violence. You see the world we’re going into? We need the Lord.
( congregational amens ).
We need Someone who will carry us through. Whether we live or whether we die, we’re gonna be with the Lord. Now, I’ll tell you, one way or another, your life is gonna end here. We can live it for Him and enjoy what He has for us forever, or we can perish with a dying world.
But their message was an uncompromising one! It was repent! Your attitude needs to be totally reversed about sin! Whatever is wrong, displeasing to God, you can’t say, “Oh, I’m gonna toy with this, I’m gonna hang on to this, I love this! I’ll give up this if You’ll let me have that!”
No! There is a repentance where your heart, your attitude, you see the evil that it is and you say, “God, by Your grace, I turn my heart away from that. I want to — I need to be delivered from this! I need to be forgiven for all the things that I feel guilty for!” And I’ll tell you, you will feel guilty when God confronts you. Don’t run from that!
( congregational response ).
Take that to the cross, because the answer is not to cover it over! You can try to cover it over with alcohol or whatever you want! You’ll never escape the guilt! There is one answer for the guilt that comes when we realize what we really are, and that is to bring it to the cross! And I’ll tell you, when the blood cleanses us from that sin, even the sense of guilt is gone!
( congregational response ).
Thank God! That’s real salvation. Only God’s power can do that! Thank God! It wasn’t just, repent of your sins, it’s to lay down your life. My life doesn’t belong to me anymore. Just as surely as Jesus made a one-way trip to the grave on the cross, when we come to Him, that’s the journey we make. Our life, our heart, every part of us is presented to Him.
Yes, I understand, like Michael was talking about, there’s an outworking of that. We have to learn. We have to grow in all those things. But I’ll tell you, there is a time when we are literally laid down. We’re repenting of our sins, but we’re giving up our life, as well, and saying, “God, it is Your life. You do what You will with it, while I’m here. But You remake me into someone who can live with You forever.”
And I’ll tell you — and you believe the Good News. You believe the promise that God will take your life and give you His gift of eternal life. There is repentance, there is a laying down of life, a surrender, and there is faith.
Where do you think the ability for that comes from? It doesn’t come from me. It comes from God! When God is speaking, when God is dealing, that’s the time when we have the power to do what He commands us to do. And I’ll tell you, we become responsible to do that.
But then, what did they do? When they preached the Gospel, how did that work out? I mean, what was the expression of that? I’m trying to get to something. They were baptized!
Do you understand the connection between baptism and everything we’re talking about this morning? That’s what baptism means! It means I am laying down my life! I am going down under the water! I’m surrendering! This is not just a religious ordinance that I’m practicing! I am — this is what’s in my heart, to lay down my life and to give it to You, but I am doing it in the expectation that when I come up, I will come up with a new life!
I’ll tell you, there is a God — when somebody lays down their life in faith, there’s a response to the Gospel, there is a God who will seal you with His Spirit!
( congregational amens ).
You will be a different person on the inside! Yes, you will have to grow! Yes, we will have many battles! Yes, we will go through many valleys and mountains! But I tell you, there’s a change.
When Jesus was baptized, what happened? The Spirit came on Him and He said, this is My Son. There was an identification of God. This is My Son. I’ll tell you, when somebody really is responding to the Gospel in faith and they’re baptized, God says this is My son. This is My child. He will give you the response to that exercise of faith. This is the Gospel. This is the way they preached it. Is this right or wrong?
( congregational response ).
This is right. I want people to think about this. I’m not gonna try to make something happen. I don’t think they did in the New Testament. I don’t see a place where they gave altar calls and you know, a lot of the things — God can use all those kinds of things. But I’ll tell you, I want God to take His Word and so convict the heart, that people will just cry out to Him until He does what is necessary.
And they will respond and say, “I need to surrender. I need to be baptized.” I want God to do it. I don’t want to try to add my efforts to make something happen. But that’s God’s part. My part is to repent, to lay down my life and believe the Good News and express it in that manner. And God’s part is to give His Spirit. That was the way it happened.
And I’ll just ask a simple question. Which life is yours, earthly or heavenly? Everybody here has some kind of life. We all have the earthly life in our bodies, but you understand what I’m saying. Do you have the heavenly life? Do you have what Jesus is talking about in this passage?
This is what God’s heart is! He longs to share His life, but He’s not gonna share it with sin, with somebody who means to go on like they are and cling to their earthly life, and intends to go on in a life of self will!
That’s what religion — that’s the track that Satan leads people off into a religion. Oh, I’m okay because I’m religious! And their heart’s unchanged. That’s what Jesus said about the Pharisees. Outwardly, you appear righteous, but inwardly, you’re just a bunch of graves with dead men’s bones in them. I don’t want to be that. I want to be real from the inside out. Only God can do that.
Folks, we need God to come in miraculous power. And I’m not talking about signs and wonders, particularly. I’m just talking about — we need God to come and change hearts and lives and do something that is unmistakably His work, because He’s the only One that can do it!
Just coming here and participating in the church isn’t gonna do it! You need to meet — you need to have a personal encounter with the God who raised His Son from the dead. Have you been born again, or are you just religious?
Everyone before the cross, as I said earlier, was in one camp or the other. Everyone! Everyone made a choice that day. I reject Him. He’s a phony. He’s a fraud. He deserves to die. And then some said, I’m with Him—I’m with Him.
Are you with Him? Praise God! There is no middle ground! And look at the last part of what Jesus said. “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.” (NIV).
We’re living in a world that is falling under what Paul called strong delusion. Strong delusion means you are absolutely certain you are right, and you are totally deceived. When Christ comes, it will be a shock to this world, because they were so sure. That’s the power of darkness from which we need to be delivered.
( congregational amens ).
When God comes, and He begins to convict the heart of the need, that’s the time. There’s light right there shining in your life. But now, there’s a choice that has to be made. What will that choice be? Will I reach out?
I’ll tell you, if this concerns you at all, I pray that there are people who will go and cry out and say, “God, help me. I don’t even get all of this, but I need You. I know that I need You. I feel the sense of my need of You! But oh, God, open my eyes. Help me. Strengthen me. Give me faith. Give me whatever I need.”
There’s a God who will hear that prayer! That’s what He longs to hear! Oh, He’s not a God of anger and wrath. That’s not what He wants. There will be plenty of that for people that say, no, I will not have this — we will not have this Man to rule over us, as Jesus said some people would say.
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who loves you with an amazing love that we can’t even fathom. There’s a Creator who came down and walked among us, sinless, took every bit of your shame and mine, willingly embraced the wrath of God that was justly due for everything you and I have ever done.
Oh, I embrace that. I am what You say I am, Lord. I need You. But I bow, and I put my faith in Your — in what Jesus did and in Your power to change that and to give me a different life. Lord, without that, I will perish.
I pray that everyone here will just rejoice in what God’s done for you, if you know Him. But God has begun this good work. He’s not gonna stop. You put your faith in Him no matter where you’re at in your journey. The same God who has begun that has planted something in you. Do you know the life He gave you can’t die? If He saved you by His Spirit, that life cannot die! We just need to put our faith in Him.
But I’ll tell you, if you’ve never known Him, I just pray that God will just turn you every way but loose until you are sure, because if you’re not sure about this, what else is worth anything? This is the question upon which our destiny hangs. This is why Jesus died. This is why He rose again, to demonstrate God’s power to save, to destroy sin and death that would otherwise rule over us. It’s the only way of escape. Put your faith in Him. Seek Him with all your heart. Praise God!
Close
March 24, 2024 - No. 1642
“Which Thief are You?” Part One
Broadcast #1642
March 24, 2024
March 24, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1642 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, Praise God! The Devil’s certainly been fighting me this morning so I hope that’s a good sign, because the Lord has done so much for us and that’s what so many are celebrating today was the victory of the resurrection.
And you know, there’s so much to talk about and I always come to this and say, oh, Lord, what do we talk about this time? And that’s just human reasoning and all that stuff and I just don’t want to, I don’t want to fall into that trap. But I just — I’m gonna give out the thoughts that the Lord’s given me and just trust Him with it.
Because without the resurrection, I mean, without what goes before the resurrection, the resurrection is just a nice history lesson. And, I thank God for the cross and for what it means to us. And we’ve sung so much about that this morning.
And, there’s one passage that’s always kind of intrigued me. It’s just a little bit different, and that’s in John chapter 12. Jesus is speaking, of course, before going to the cross and I believe He gives us some insights into what it’s really about. I mean, we know some of the basic things. We hear them all the time, but there are some truths in here that I pray everybody will get.
And I don’t know, my burden, I guess, as much as anything is for people that don’t really understand all this, that don’t get it. And I’m certainly not an evangelist. But I just trust that God will breathe life into His truth so that this won’t just be a, okay, this is Easter, we’re supposed to talk about the resurrection and go on with our lives. This is something that has Eternal significance. And so, let’s just read the words of Jesus beginning in verse 23.
“Jesus replied…” to something that’d been said, “…the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (NIV). Boy, isn’t that a good way for us to react to life?
“Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.
“The crowd spoke up, We have heard from the Law that the Christ will remain forever, so how can you say, The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? Then Jesus told them, You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light. When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.”
I’ll tell you, we need divine intervention in our lives! The condition of the general population certainly reveals a whole lot, doesn’t it? They were just blind to what was going on. And, I’m just gonna try to bring some thoughts out of this and other scriptures and, like I say, I’m just trusting the Lord this morning. I feel extra weak, which is probably a good thing. But Lord, You take over this and just have Your way and speak Your truth.
You know, one of the things that really jumped out at me, as I was reading this the other day, was where Jesus began. It said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Now think about the context in which He said this. He’s about to go to the cross and He’s saying, I’m gonna be glorified. Do you think maybe, just maybe, He had a pretty good confidence in the Father’s plan? Yeah! Wouldn’t it be good if we could see beyond today and beyond what’s going on and realize that God has an immutable plan, that He is carrying something out that no devil in hell can stop?
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! He’s not saying, oh, I’m gonna be crucified, it’s gonna be terrible. He said, I’m gonna be glorified. He was seeing right past all of this. Wasn’t it — didn’t the scriptures say it was, “for the joy set before him,” that He was able to see that and the cross was just a stepping stone to get to that? It was necessary, but it was only a stepping stone to something that was real.
You know, when Gospel truth comes to someone who has never seen it and never really bowed to it, it sounds an awful lot like a threat. It’s a threat to human nature! It’s a threat to my own will and my own wanting to do what I want to do.
But I’ll tell you another thing, a thought that came to me very distinctly in thinking about all of this was: everything Jesus said was truthful, but the spirit behind it was one of love, a desire to reach out. If He had just never intervened, men would just die, live and die like lost animals. I mean, it would be no more significant than that. But I’ll tell you, God intervened in history, because of our condition and our need. Thank God!
( congregational amens ).
And I’ll tell you, bowing to that is the ultimate freedom, not the ultimate prison. Natural man says, “You’re gonna take away all my joy. You’re gonna constrict me and make me live a religious life. It’s gonna be terrible.” And God says, “I want to set you free.”
How many can say you’ve been on both sides of that, maybe, where you’ve suddenly seen and God’s opened your eyes and when you finally bowed, you said, “Why did I wait so long?” You remember Brother Thomas’ testimony, so many years ago.
But anyway, some of the things that He said…He said this is verse 31, “Now is the time for judgment on this world…,” talking about the significance of the cross. We always think about it in, well, He died for my sins. Yes He did! But I’ll tell you, there was something deeper going on there. God was judging the world! I mean, I understand that the outpouring, I mean, the outworking of that is something that is yet to come in our future, when this world will have its end. But I’ll tell you, you want to know why I can have confidence that that’s true? Because God’s already done it!
( congregational amens ).
God has already judged the world. Now when we talk about the world, what are you talking about? You just talking about the rocks and the trees? You know, we know better than that. But there is a system. There is a government, if you will, that is over this world that is ruled by wicked spirits. They are behind the scenes of everything that exists in this world.
And I realize there are things that are held up as, oh, this is noble. Man’s got so much nobility buried in him. If we could just get rid of the bad stuff, we could rise and conquer the stars. I’ll tell you, there is a world, a system—a spiritual system that is in rebellion against its Creator. And I don’t care what happens, God has already judged that and said, that will not continue! Jesus said, the world will pass away, “…but my words will never pass away.” And I’ll tell you, if you see any hope in this world, you are seeing something that I can’t see. There is no hope!
And I thank God that the end is coming, but I’ll tell you, I see something else. I see the mercy of God! Why has it not happened already? How in the world can God put up with what’s going on in this world? A lot of people wonder about that. How can God — you know, if God can do anything, why doesn’t He just stop all this? I’ll tell you, there’s one reason. Because God is, “…not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (KJV).
And I’ll tell you, as long as there is any hope for an individual, God is gonna be reaching out. God is gonna be confronting people saying, I love you. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can give Me your heart and give Me your life and surrender. I’ve got different plans for you.
And I’ll tell you, the principles of this world are sin and rebellion. They are slavery. It’s not just that I follow my natural desires. That would be a basic principle of this world, that life is about just, I have desires and I’m gonna follow them. I’m gonna try to satisfy them. It’s not just that I do that, it’s that they become my master! I become a slave! I cannot stop from being that kind of a person who lives in this kind of a world.
I’ll tell you, this world is a prison house! Well, didn’t we just sing about that? Yeah! “I was in sin’s prison.” And there is an inescapable dominion of spirits of darkness that only the cross and the resurrection can overcome! There is not a man, woman, boy or girl that’s ever been born that can overcome or escape any of this!
How many of you remember, oh, some of the old movies? Ben Hur was one of them I remember. You remember the rowing scene, some of you who have seen that? When the Roman galleys, when they would go to war, what was it that powered their ships?
( congregational response ).
It was slaves who were down in the bow, down in the belly of the ship. And they were, many times, chained in place. All that they could look forward to in life was to row as hard as they could and die, sooner or later. If the ship went down, they went down with it.
And I’ll tell you, that is a picture of life in this world. You have been given a rowing — a place to row and you are chained to that and you’re gonna row, thinking you’re getting somewhere.
I’ll tell you, this is a world that God has judged. The ultimate fate of what is coming upon this world was foreshadowed on the cross. God drew everything — He became the representative of the entire human race! God created a perfect world, and Adam and Eve chose to rebel. I’ll put it this way. Eve was deceived into rebelling. Adam made a choice. She had already made the wrong choice and he made a deliberate choice to follow her instead of God.
I’ll tell you, that’s a terrible thing to do! And because of that, all that’s part of this world, this creation, has been corrupted by that rebellion. There is no solution except for God to exterminate it from His universe! None of this is gonna survive! Thank God!
If you want to know, you want to get a picture of the blindness that sin causes? How about the Lord using the Devil to carry out His plan, and allowing the Devil to think, I’m winning! I’ve been able to crucify the Son of God! Now we can rule! Now the Creator Himself is gone and we can rule!
The scripture says, if the princes of this world — they didn’t understand this — if any of them had understood it — this is 1st Corinthians 2, if you want to look it up. If they had understood this, “…they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (NIV). You want to know how deceptive sin and darkness is? The Devil thought he was winning and he was engineering his own defeat. Boy, I’ll tell you what, I want to be on God’s side, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
That’s a darkness I want to escape! But you know the main thing we think about with the cross, thank God, is deliverance from the guilt of sin! You know, I need — I mean, it’s so obvious, all of the sins that I have committed in my life, what am I gonna do about them?
What are we talking about? “The acts of the sinful nature….” Look at Galatians 5, 19-21. I’m gonna read it but you can look it up when you want to. “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”
So this is not a exhaustive list, is it? It can go on and on, but all of it is built around gratifying natural desires and impulses, in a very selfish way. I’ll tell you what, every one of us has sins that separate us from God, apart from Christ. And here’s the kicker! Let me ask you this question. Is God just?
( congregational response ).
I mean, how do you find justice? If there is a law, and a judge says, “Well, I know what the law says but I’m gonna change — I’m gonna do something different this time. I feel sorry for you. I’m not gonna apply the law.” Is he just? No! So, how in the world can God be just and we have any hope whatsoever? Is there anybody here hasn’t sinned? No, of course not! So, how in the world can God remain just and we get off? “The soul who sins…”
( congregational response ).
He’ll die! That’s the law! That’s the law! There’s no escape from that principle! God has to punish sin! And it’s not just the — these acts that we talk about. There’s something deeper than that.
I want you to imagine a scene right now. You’re standing before the bar of God’s justice. God’s sitting there in judgment of you. And you are aware that you can’t hide anything. And I want you to think back to the most shameful things. I’m assuming you’ve got a conscience. I want you to think back to the most shameful things that you have ever done in your life, things that maybe nobody else knows about it, but you do. And if they were ever brought out into the open, you would just be filled with — you’d want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you, as the expression goes.
But now, let’s go beyond that. Maybe you’re not somebody who’s done a lot of these things. You haven’t robbed any banks. You haven’t actually committed adultery with somebody. But what did Jesus say about that? He said the one who’s looked at a woman with lust in his heart, has already committed adultery.
How many of us would want, not just our deeds to be brought before the bar of God’s justice, but all of our thoughts and our intentions, our attitudes? Every time you’ve rebelled against your parents and been angry, or been angry with somebody, or gossiped in a malicious way or, anything you can think of. Or you just let your mind dwell in the wrong places. You went to the wrong places on your computer. I’ll tell you what, we’ve got a lot to deal with.
But now you’re standing there and the Lord reads off this long list of charges. How do you plead? Everybody here would have to say the same thing. “I’m guilty. I deserve to die. Your law declares that I deserve to die.”
But now there’s a different scene that comes along. And now your Creator, who has come down to this earth to become a part of His own creation, to come down in flesh and live His life among men, just like you did…. But there’s one difference in Him. He has never been guilty of the first thing. His life has been one of perfect harmony with His heavenly Father. He’s perfect.
But now, instead of you standing before that bar of God’s justice, He stands there. And God reads that same list of everything that you have ever done that’s been wrong, every shameful act, every shameful thought, all of these things that cause you such deep conviction and shame. They’re all read. But now they’re read against Him, who has done nothing! And God says, how do You plead? He says, I plead guilty. And the sentence is passed, and it’s a sentence of death.
I’ll tell you, that’s a sobering thing. But until we come face to face with that truth in a personal way, what we’re talking about this morning is nothing but a history lesson, something we can say, “Yay Jesus,” and go on about our lives.
But I’ll tell you, the reality of what happened there has to become deeply personal. It’s not just that He died for everybody, in this vague, general sense, but that I stand before the bar of God’s justice as a guilty sinner and that He steps into my place. He embraces my guilt and willingly goes to the cross.
And so, in that way God’s justice is perfectly satisfied. There have been sins committed, there has been One who has embraced the guilt of all of that and He has received that ultimate punishment. All of God’s wrath against all the sins that have ever been committed were poured out on Jesus Christ and He willingly did it!
I’ll tell you, what does that mean to you? Does that mean anything? I’ll tell you what, that’s some sober stuff to think about, isn’t it? Thank God! Thank God! We have a God who is just and yet able to forgive. Thank God for Jesus. Thank God for the cross. Thank Him for the blood.
Has that ever become real to you? I’ll tell you, if it ever becomes more than just a Sunday School lesson to you, it’ll change your life. It’ll change your destiny, ‘cause that’s what this is all about! You’re part of a system that’s gonna perish. I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what men do. I don’t care whether they try to go to the stars. This world is gonna perish! God has already judged it, but He’s already judged your sins and mine. I’ll tell you what, that’s something to think about, isn’t it?
Now one thing that Jesus said that bears some comment, He said back here in verse…is it 25? “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (NIV).
You know, there are three times, I guess, the word “life” is used but most people would not know that there are different words in the Greek. When Jesus talks about your life and my life, He’s using the word soul. He’s using the word for the created life that came in the beginning. God imparted a life, a created life to Adam and Eve. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of, literally, lives, because it’s reproducible. But he had a created life that God gave him and that is what has been hopelessly corrupted!
But what are the words of Jesus? Here are people who are faced with a choice. Am I going to serve Jesus? Am I gonna embrace what He did for me or am I gonna cling to this life that I possess? This is what matters to me. What I want, that’s what matters. The words of Jesus cannot be countermanded! He said, “The man who loves his life will lose it….” There’s no wiggle room in this.
But the other kind of life, when He mentions eternal life, that’s a different word! That is that word, “zoe.” That is God’s life. How many of you know there are different kinds of life? This is a subject — I probably — it keeps coming back to me from time to time and it may be — one of these days it’ll be time to address it, as a doctrinal issue, is this question of what happens? Is the soul immortal?
I don’t happen to believe that it is. I’ll tease you with that much. My Bible says only God is immortal. I’ll tell you, there are gonna be a lot of people, on the Day of Judgment, whose eyes will be opened, finally! They will have no choice. They will see what God has purposed! They will see the righteous standing there, not because they did something, but because they surrendered to what God could do! And they’re standing there in glory and power and freedom and life that will go on forever!
And there they are, guilty in their sins being marched off to a place of destruction! Crying, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, begging for another opportunity when there will be no remedy on that day. But these are the words of Jesus. The one who loves his life — they were clinging to it.
And I’ll tell you, the most — the scariest part of that is when people embrace religion, in some fashion, but they never really let go of their life. Jesus talks about that in Matthew chapter 7, because He says there are two gates and there are two ways. He talks about the false prophets who essentially let people believe—they lead people to believe that they can come in and somehow, in some sense, acknowledge Jesus, even call Him Lord, they use the words the Lord Jesus, but as Jesus says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?”
And it’s in that context that He talks about people who arrive on that day and say, Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, didn’t we do great works? Lord, we were working for You all our lives. We went to church. We never missed Sunday School, all the things that you’re supposed to be doing as evidence that I’m a follower of Jesus. What was the problem? They never let go of their life!
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March 17, 2024 - No. 1641
“Speak Life” Conclusion
Broadcast #1641
March 17, 2024
March 17, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1641 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: The home is the microcosm, if you will, of the Kingdom of God. Is it not? And of the church. And God’s order there, is so critical to everything. You know, it’s wonderful to come here and hear from the Lord, and have a general kind of, okay, we’re okay with each other, we get along, we’re glad to see each other.
But the workings of the Kingdom of God come right down to the home. God has invested different members of that household with different authority, and the ability to contribute the life of God into the life of the home. As I say, it’s not her place to be his head. But think of the power she has to help him be all that God wants him to be. Praise God!
Now, let’s bring this into balance. We’ve talked about this many times. If you leave it there, you almost get the impression that guys, we’re in charge! We get to do as we please! We’re the boss! Nobody can tell us what to do! We can seek what pleases us! Do you think that’s what’s involved here?
No, not at all. That’s not God’s design. “Husbands, love your wives…” (NIV). And boy, that goes beyond just some sort of sentimental feeling. This is not just romance here. This is a self-sacrificial giving of one’s self for the welfare of another. Okay?
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…” So, what did that look like? “…And gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the…” Ah! We’ve got the word coming back into this, don’t we?
How does He work in us? He invests His words into our hearts and they begin to change us because we embrace them and they change the way we think and the way we look. You know, we present ourselves as a living sacrifice, and we allow ourselves to be changed by the renewing of our minds. That all comes into this. Do you see God’s handiwork and how He’s designed things?
Husbands, He’s given us a tremendous responsibility. I wish I could say I have lived up to it…not even close. God has given us an authority in the household. The question is, what do we do with it? How do we use it?
How did Christ use the authority the Father gave Him with respect to us? Aren’t you glad He did it for us? Aren’t you glad He was willing to sacrifice everything for our welfare? That’s what love is meant to look like. I need God. I have no power to do that.
But do you see the power that a husband’s tongue has? Does he use it to criticize and belittle? Does he use it to press down and try to get his way? Is it selfish? Do you see the damage that kind of a thing can do? I’ll tell you what, we need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational amens ).
We need the Lord to be able to live up to any of this. But there is an order. There is a place God has designed for husbands, for wives, and of course, it breaks down into kids. We’ll get into that in a minute.
But He has set…He’s working to cleanse us, “…by the washing with water through the word, and to present…” Now there’s a purpose. There’s a design in the end. “…To present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” That’s the work that’s ongoing right now. That’s what God is doing in our lives, taking us toward that goal.
And it’s gonna come to pass, isn’t it? Because of His mercy and His love! And you know, He doesn’t look at us in all of our imperfections, like we look at one another. And all of a sudden, our tongue comes out in a pretty negative, pretty harsh way. I’m so glad that God is…He knows how to speak the truth. But He speaks it in love.
We never…if we’re really listening to Him, we never come to the place where we feel rejected, we feel, just set at naught, I don’t care about you. Always, there’s this wanting to help, wanting to lift us up, wanting to deliver us, wanting us to experience more of His love and His mercy. I’m so glad for the character of His voice. What an awesome voice to hear.
How terrible it would be if He were like us. And how impatient we are with each other, and with ourselves sometimes. But we need to see past all of that and understand the power of God’s Word. God invests us with the authority to speak words. Those words have power. If you’re a member of the Body of Christ, you have a measure of authority.
Now, I’ll say this, for some of you may be aware of this, there are people out there who have taken this off into never-never land, this principle. Oh my God! We’re meant to be in charge here. God has given us authority to rule over creation.
I have met people who ran in circles where they believe that they were part of a prophetic community. Oh my God! We don’t deal with the petty little things, we’re up here above the nations. We’re commanding things to happen and things not to happen. And, oh what God…we just, this is where…the place we’re supposed to operate.
Folks, that’s fantasy land. How many of you, some of you may remember something that Brother Jim Cymbala said in a message one time, he was talking about this. And he talked about, I suppose some prophetic group, I don’t know what, exactly, the details were. But he supposedly…they supposedly convened some kind of a conference in San Francisco. And, the purpose of the conference was to take authority over the devil and drive him out of San Francisco…something along that line.
Good luck with that! You know, there are things God hasn’t given us authority to do? We have authority to do what He says here! But I don’t have authority to go out and start commanding the nations! But God has given you, and me, the authority and the power to do what He has called us to do!
( congregational response ).
If He does call somebody here to be an apostle, He will give you what it takes. But if He doesn’t, don’t try to do it on your own. And that…for every aspect of divine order in the Body of Christ, God will give you power.
But I’ll tell you, one of the key ways that that power is expressed is through the tongue, and through words. God has given us the same power that Jesus had when He created the world. You and I have the power to speak life…to speak in such a way that it’s God’s spirit that’s going and affecting people around us. If we’re gonna touch people in this generation, we’re gonna need God to do it through us. We don’t have any power to do that. Okay?
So, he goes on and says, “In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” You get this right, man, you’ve got an awesome place where Christ rules.
( congregational amens ).
The potential of life coming from this order of things is just beyond what we…beyond the norm. But now he gets down to, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Children, God hasn’t put you in a place to tell your parents what to do, and to straighten them out, even when they’re imperfect. God is more concerned with your heart wanting to have a submissive spirit than He is about the issue you’re so worried about.
Hey, we’ve all been there. All of us old folks, we were young once, too. We felt the same way, that sometimes you do. And how…and what about the relationships among all of us, but especially young people. I think every one of you know, words have consequences. You have the power to tear down, to set at naught, to marginalize, to shove aside, to hurt, deeply, with your tongue.
Or you have the ability to encourage. Isn’t that what the Word teaches us to do? We need to use our tongues to encourage one another, and to build one another up. Yes, we can speak the truth, but it’s in love.
How do people speak, how do people feel around you and the way you use your tongue? When you’re feeling rough, do you just sort of let it all lash out? There’s a lot in this, isn’t there? But when you mix this principle of how we use our tongues with the realities of divine order and authority and how that’s carried out, it becomes a big deal. All right?
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother—which is the first commandment with a promise—so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”
But here’s one that’s pretty important. “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” This applies to mothers, as well. But fathers, if God has made you the mayor of your house, the head of it, yes, there is authority, there’s power, but the question is, what do we do with it? How do we use it?
What happens for example, when a father…and some of you have been on the receiving end of this probably, when a father says to a child something like, you’re a failure, you’ll never amount to anything. What’s the effect of something like that? That’s devastating! That comes straight from the heart of Lucifer! He may be venting his own feelings, but boy, there’s a…his tongue has become an instrument of satanic life.
What do you think happens when Dad does that in some fashion? Do you think that the kid just blows it off? You’ve got something that gets planted down here that becomes ‘truth’ to that child, far too easily. And you wind up with a kid growing up, and they’ll try, and they’ll try, and they’ll try, but the underlying ‘truth’ that controls how they think about themselves is that ‘I’m no good, I’ll never amount to anything.’ And it sabotages their entire life.
Do you see how the devil destroys lives with the tongue? Sometimes, it may be just a passing, a passing word. As though, well, words are just…that’s just a word. Words have power! And the devil will take things that we say, that we don’t even intend the way we…the way he thinks. We may not even consciously intend them to be something, and the Devil will take that and destroy somebody’s life with it, or cripple them.
You know, we recognize if a child were, for example, were to break a leg and it not heal properly, and they went around the rest of their life like this, we’d recognize the crippleness of it—it’s physical. But what about physiological crippling? What about spiritual crippling? I pray that if that’s something that’s come into your life that you will let God heal it.
( congregational amens ).
Because Satan has sown a lie in you. If you are His—if you are Christ’s, you are His child! You’re God’s child! You have an eternal destiny! Jesus paid the same price for you as He did for anybody!
( congregational amens ).
And you matter to Him!
( congregational amens ).
And I just pray God will take that truth from here, and so…and will just replace lies that have been buried in people’s hearts. But, oh God, the responsibility we have as parents to use the authority and the power that God has given us in a way that will build up.
I’m not talking about flattery and happy talk, on a carnal level. You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about speaking the words of God. If our hearts are open to what the Lord is saying to us, and the changes He is making in us, we’re gonna have something we can speak. We’re gonna be able to reflect that, it’s gonna come out in our own speech and the way we treat our children, and the way God treats us.
Oh, we need to have that same mercy. God has given you and everybody in a home a place and when it operates the way God intends, God’s spirit is there and peace reigns. But oh, when tongues get attached to human nature, you’ve got a fight, you’ve got a mess, you’ve got broken lives, you got all kinds of heartache and damage done to people.
May God give us grace to humble ourselves and say, oh God. Wouldn’t it be nice if we said with David, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my Redeemer.” (KJV). It’s what we think about and what we say, what’s really gotten ahold of our hearts.
Didn’t Jesus say that it’s out of the heart, “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Folks, if you’ve got those kinds of words coming out, and it’s kind of a characteristic of your life, there’s something down here that you need to get healed. If anger is boiling out of you, it’s because it’s in here. Don’t say, it’s their fault! We’ve said it many times, nobody can make you angry, being angry is a choice that we make. But it does become a habit. And we need God to break them.
( congregational amens ).
Just put this together in your mind and meditate on it. It’s a simple thought, in a way, but there is an order in God’s Kingdom. God has pulled us with raw, spiritual energy, power, that’s greater than everything the devil has. And He has brought us out, and He has made us a part of a kingdom.
I just thought of a scripture that we use all the time. Listen to the scripture we use all the time, in Revelation chapter 12. It talks about the victory of the Cross. Verse 10, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.” (NIV).
You see those words, power, kingdom, authority? We have all of heaven standing behind us, if we will hook up with Him, and be an expression of Him. God will be with us. And how does that come out? “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” Folks, this does get down to the individual standing against the devil. But you and I have been given a power against the devil because of what happened at the cross.
( congregational amens ).
The power and authority and the Kingdom of Christ has come! He’s called us into that! He has invested us with the ability, but the responsibility, to exercise the word that He gives to us in a way that builds people up, and sets people free! And the more we do that, the more we’re gonna have something that will help one another and build one another up, and have Godly homes!
But also, something to share with a broken world, because all they’ve got is power, the power of darkness, because lies…their entire lives have been built on lies. It could be that they were one of those that Dad said, you’re no good, and they’re living with that crushed spirit. Or they could have been one that said, you’re born for greatness, go for it! Either way it leads to death if it’s just this world.
But God has called us to something much higher. May His character and His spirit infuse our, what comes out of our tongues, greater and greater. I realize we are very imperfect at this, and we’ll still probably say silly things. I probably will today. But may God give us the power to recognize what’s going on, and the power to speak life.
You, if you are God’s child, you’re one of the only ones on this planet, who has the power to actually speak life. I’m not talking about just being positive with somebody, I’m talking about speaking divine life because we’re hooked up with the fountain, we’re hooked up with the source. That’s what this is about. May God give us grace to use the power that He has given to us in a way that accomplishes His will and His purpose in the earth. To Him be glory!
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March 10, 2024 - No. 1640
“Speak Life” Part One
Broadcast #1640
March 10, 2024
March 10, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1640 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I’ve had some thoughts going around in my mind the last…oh, two or three days especially. And, some of it is going to be things we’ve…many of it’s gonna be things we’ve heard before, but I saw a connection that I don’t know that I had really emphasized before. And so, I’m want to go ahead and start with the verse, perhaps this is the center of it, in Proverbs chapter 18, verse 21. And, it’s not, as I say, a new thought, but I felt like the Lord, you know, opened my eyes to something that I hope will help us this morning, because I need help, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
I need it as much as you do. I just happen to be the one the Lord has put up in this particular place. That doesn’t mean I don’t have needs, but the Lord is faithful. But anyway, these are the words of Solomon in the Proverbs.
And he says this, “The tongue has the power of life and death…” (NIV). Certainly, that’s not a new thought, is it? “The tongue has the power of life and death.” I don’t know if we realize the power of our tongue, and how central it is to virtually everything in our lives on this earth and God’s purposes for us. How many of you know we were created in the image of God? When God does something, how does He do it? I mean, when creation happened, how did He do that?
( congregational response ).
He spoke. There was power in the Word that He spoke, wasn’t there…enough to accomplish something? And I wonder if we realize just how powerfully creative human speech is, and the implications of that in so many different ways? But, it not only has the power of life, it has the power of death. I think we realize that by looking at the world.
You know, I was thinking…as I was thinking of this, my mind went back to the simple fact, I believe on a natural level, there are a lot of people in this world that actually understand this in a measure, but on a totally natural level, disconnected from God, that people have power to say things and make them come to pass.
You know, a little over a century ago, the human race went through a period of great optimism. You know, where a new century in 1900 is turning over and we’re seeing scientific advances and we’re just gonna go forward into a glorious future for mankind. And, what a…what a crazy introduction to one of the worst centuries that the world has ever seen, in terms of violence. But up until you got into some of that, there was this optimism. And there was an idea that began to be very popular. How many of you have ever read the book, or seen one of the movie adaptations of “The Secret Garden.”
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. It’s a very sweet story on one level. But if you actually read the original, do you know what the real theme of that is? That human speech is powerful, almost magical, that if we will simply engage that natural power that we all have, we could change our own future. We can change our…you know, our fortunes.
We can undo bad things and make good things come to pass. We have creative power through the mind, and so the characters were actually engaged in, not only in confessing positive things, but chanting them, as though, if we just chant the right things, then magical things will happen. That was actually the theme of the book.
It’s been soft-pedalled in many of the movie adaptations, thankfully, so you can kind of enjoy it on that level. But that’s not a new idea, and out of that you see that reflected in a lot of the motivational speakers…will talk about, think and grow rich. Or confess what you’re…confess the way you want to go, and you can confess yourself right into earthly success.
But you know, as I thought about that, Solomon wrote, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” And we tend to think of that as being just positive and negative. You know, some people are just negative all the time. They say bad stuff and so, they drag everybody down around them. And that’s true. And, but what we need to be is positive and just build everybody up and say positive things, and encouraging things.
And up to a point, on a natural level, that’s true. But just suppose that somebody was to listen to one of these motivational speakers and just really engage every part of their being, their mind, their emotions, their words, and they confess themselves into such wealth and power that they own the whole world! Then what? What did Jesus say about that? What will it profit, if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?
So, think about…let’s go back to the tongue part of that. What did the tongue actually produce? Did it produce life or did it produce death? See, this world is founded upon ideas, lies that have flown…thrown…whatever, they come from…flown, I guess is the word, sort of. They have flowed, from the mind, and the will or the heart of Lucifer, who felt like he could pursue his own best interest independently of God. And so, he has built an entire world system, a world order upon lies.
Those lies have been…I mean, central to the propagation of those lies has been the human tongue. And it gets obvious when Satan tears people down with other people’s tongues. That becomes rather obvious. But what we don’t always see is the philosophies, the ideas that are promoted that are supposedly high and wonderful and glorious and lead to a wonderful future. They are equally dangerous, because they are a lie from the enemy.
And you know, where it comes to God’s people, where we’re concerned…we’re not concerned about welfare in this world primarily. God is concerned about taking care…He’ll take care of His own, and He’ll accomplish His purposes even where there are difficulties to go through. But God’s purposes are not bound up in what happens in this world. We know this world is gonna pass away, and often we don’t live as if that’s really true.
We need to be…we need to realize every moment of every day that we are citizens of another world. We are here and we have responsibilities and activities and all of that, but that’s not where our heart ever needs to be. And so, what God is concerned about, and what He put this in the Book about has to do with more than simply having a positive attitude, and an upbeat and sunny personality. We’d like that, we enjoy it on the natural level, but boy, that doesn’t really lead to eternal life, does it?
Think of what Jesus said that we’ve quoted so many times in John chapter 6, and I’ve got so many different translations in my mind, I’ll give you the essence of it. But He said, “The Spirit gives life.” The only source of real life is God’s Spirit. Everything else may look like life and may feel good for a time, but it is infected with death and it leads to death.
There is no life to be found, and that’s what He says in the second part of that verse. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh…” profits nothing. In other words, anything that originates in human nature, that’s what the flesh really stands for there, it’s human nature…everything that originates in human nature leads to death. It does not profit. It cannot help God out. It cannot contribute to God.
That’s why religious effort is worthless. If it’s not actually infused with the life of God, if we are not living extensions, as it were, expressions of the Spirit of God in what we do and what we say, what are we? Are we accomplishing anything? You see how much we need the Lord? We need the Lord!
But Jesus didn’t stop there. He made the contrast, the Spirit gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words. “…the words that I speak unto you…are spirit, and they are life.” (KJV). Let it sink in. Jesus didn’t come to do His own will, did He? God didn’t give Him a general idea of what He wanted Him to accomplish, and say, go figure it out and do it.
He knew that the only way…I mean, He lived in flesh, same as we do, but He knew the only way He could accomplish anything that was eternal, was to stay in contact with God, and to have the Spirit of God resting upon Him and inspiring what He did and what He said, so that it really wasn’t just Him saying it. The words, He said later on, that I speak to you, or the words that I do, the things that I do, it’s the Father who lives in Me who is doing His work.
And so, that is what God is seeking to bring about in our lives. And every one of us, we are on a journey at best. We have a lot of things come out of our mouths that don’t really accomplish anything or that accomplish something bad. And I just feel like the Lord wants to shine a light on this, because it is so central.
The human tongue is so central to everything that we do, all of our relationships. I mean, if we just put a muzzle on and walked around, it would be kind of a dull world. We’d be having to communicate some way, with sign language or something. But God has given us this tool by which we can communicate, but do you realize the power that is released for good or ill by these tongues?
Every one of us has a place that God has designed for you and for me and He wants to get us to the place where we can exercise ourselves in a godly way, and where this ties in with where we started is, the tongue is pretty central, isn’t it? It’s very involved in every aspect of our human life.
And if God has put you in a place, you have a powerful member of your body, and your spirit, and that will either tear down or it will minister life, it has the potential to minister life. Just meditate on some of that. Think about, what place has God put you in? What are our responsibilities?
I’ll read some familiar scriptures, just as a backdrop here. But James chapter 3 is certainly one of them. These are general principles here. But I want to tie this in with this other business of the Kingdom and the order of the Kingdom, because this is an important thing, that I…I just sense God wanting us to get this in a deeper way.
But anyway, beginning in…the beginning of chapter 3 of James. “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” (NIV). So, you guys just stay back…
( laughing ).
…No. If God’s called you to be a teacher, you be one. But don’t be ambitious to try to be something that God hasn’t called you to do, all right?
“We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.” But there’s nobody like that, is there? “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.
“Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”
That’s a pretty good description of the world. You know, whether you’re positive or negative, or successful or beat down, it’s all part of the same thing if it comes from the heart and the mind of Lucifer. Oh, how God longs to inject His Spirit into every equation of our lives—every part of our lives. That’s what this is about.
“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.” And then he goes on and talks about the wisdom from above and so on. He goes into a…he enlarges in a different direction there.
I want to turn back to Hebrews…I’m sorry, Ephesians chapter 4. There is…this theme is kind of repeated in a number of ways, but I see it leading into something that I believe is central and connecting divine order on the one hand, with the human tongue on the other. That’s kind of the equation that the Lord helped me to see. All right?
So, Paul has talked about the Gospel and what He’s brought us to…the Body of Christ, and how we’re all gonna grow up together, because everybody contributes what God gives. So, I tell you…verse 17, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.” Where did their thinking come from? The tongue of the devil, one way or another, it got there. That’s where it originated.
“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
“That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Remember, how does God create? He speaks, doesn’t He? How does God create new life in a human heart? He speaks, doesn’t He? Remember the words of Jesus. They’re not…they’re Spirit and they’re life, they’re not just words and ideas. God has to speak to a human heart in such a way that it gets all the way down in here. And like a seed, that soil has to say, yes, I embrace that. That’s what I need.
I’ll tell you, when we do that, God brings forth a brand-new creation. If anyone is in Christ, what? He’s a new creation—a brand-new creation. There is a new creation that’s happening right now, that’s already part of what will live forever. When God get finished creating a new life in us, turning us completely into products of the new creation, the other is done away with, He’s gonna…then it’s gonna be new heavens and a new earth when He gets us finished. That’s what’s happening right now. It’s happening within the context of a broken world, but I’ll tell you, God is speaking life to human hearts. I want to listen, don’t you?
“Therefore each of you must…” Now he gets down to the individual believer. “…Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” So now, you’re getting into the tongue, aren’t you?
“In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” Everybody here has done that one time or another. May God give us grace to realize what’s happening when we get angry. And we, every one of us, do. We just need the Lord’s grace to back off and say, God, if there’s a problem, let it not be in my heart. Let me let go. Praise God! Praise God! There’s freedom, if we’re willing.
All right, “Do not give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.”
Now, listen to what he says. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs….” According to their needs, not your needs.
We’re pretty good at using our tongues to try to advance our cause. Isn’t it something? Did Jesus do that? Did He go around trying to win people to Himself in a selfish, prideful way? Everything He did was the Father reaching out with a heart of love for the welfare of the listener. Boy, how unlike Him we are by nature.
But you see where God is going with all of this, what He desires out of us? He has given us a powerful tool, in these tongues, and He longs to see us be able to use them in a way that they become instruments of accomplishing His purpose. I can’t do that without Him—I can’t do that without a surrendered heart, without Him actually empowering what I say. But this is what He’s talking about.
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Then he talks about living in love, and there’s so much here, I don’t want to try to read all of it necessarily. But I want to get down to verse 15, and let’s go past that, because I want to get to something here.
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another….”
Now all of a sudden, you’ve got your tongue involved again. See, there is a…there’s something God…there’s Someone…God Himself wants to live within us in a way so that we have the power to say things that actually change people’s lives for the better. You see the power you have? God has given you…this isn’t just a power to stand up here and speak, this is a power that is meant to operate person to person in everyday life. Think about that.
“Be filled with the Spirit…” And that’s that Greek continuous sense. That’s a way of life, in other words. I need to have Him in me. “…Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
How good are we at that? Giving thanks to God for everything? There it is. It’s there, right in black and white. But you know, if we understand the heart of God and the purposes of God, we can say, Lord, thank You. I may not like this in the natural. I don’t feel good. I don’t understand it even, but I know You love me. I know your purpose is going to prevail.
I know, as we heard this morning, that you’re gonna continue to work in me until the day of Jesus Christ, and it’s gonna come out just exactly right. So, I’m just gonna be…I’m gonna be thankful for the process even when I don’t understand. That’s called faith. That’s believing God more than believing how you feel and what you want in the natural. Thank God!
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March 3, 2024 - No. 1639
All Music
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February 25, 2024 - No. 1638
“Ready for a Dark Hour” Conclusion
Broadcast #1638
February 25, 2024
February 25, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1638 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: There are things happening in our lives right now that we would prefer that they not happen. They bring things to light that we would rather deny, not face. And here’s God’s heart looking down at us saying, I have called, I have chosen these people. They’re mine. I’ve called them to live in earth’s darkest hour. And I have things that I want to accomplish.
There are people that grow up in here that need to see more from us. They need to see more of Jesus and a little less of us, and we don’t even know it. We’re clueless so much of the time. And God has to allow circumstances in our lives to bring us to a place where it’s Him living in us and not us.
Oh, how many times do we have things come up and we feel, and we find human nature kicking in by default? And what’s our reaction to it? Resistance. Resistance, denial. I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna pretend this isn’t there. I’m gonna push it down and hope nobody notices. And God wants to break the chains. He wants to set us free.
He is allowing things that show us our need, so we can come to Him and say, Thank You. Thank You Lord, for loving me enough to show me the truth about myself. The thing that I’m afraid to face. The thing that I’m afraid to admit. It’s gotten quiet. It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it?
Are there circumstances in your life right now that you’re having to face and all of it, and you don’t feel able to face? Do you think maybe, just maybe the Lord is deliberately allowing us to be in those things where we don’t have control and we aren’t enough, we don’t have the answers to what we need?
I see God’s mercy to do that, because are we able? Does anybody here have what it takes based upon the life of Adam in you to stand in this hour and accomplish anything for the kingdom of God? Not one of us has it. We are everyone in the same position. We need one thing from God, and that’s what He offers in Jesus Christ, and that’s mercy.
Look what He goes on to say about all these people that He’s called. He said, “It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus.” It’s because of God. If He’s called you, it’s because God started the ball rolling. Can we not bow before Him and worship Him and say, God, touch my heart. Do whatever it takes so that I can be Yours and not mine. Lord, help me!
“It’s because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God. That is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption,” everything. It’s just one of those many Scriptures that talks about everything that we need is there. It’s in Him.
It’s been mentioned this morning about holiness and defining some of the things that that means, but oh, what a process it is. Holiness essentially is being separated from what we were to God. Cleaned up to where we’re useful to Him. How can we carry on with dirt, spiritual dirt in our lives and then put on a smile and sing the songs and clap and raise our hands and just go on. And can God use that? God wants to express His life and power in us.
He doesn’t do it because we are good, we are capable, we’re strong, we’re any of those things. He is looking for a people who can just stretch forth their hands and say, Oh God, do whatever it takes in me to break the strongholds, to change my default setting, so that when I boot up in the morning, it’s You living in me and not just me. Okay, what am I gonna do today? And just going on in our own strength and for our own purposes. God help us. God help us to understand things that are happening.
And you know, one of the things, one of the thoughts that came to me is this. I have no doubt that in each of our lives there are things that will rise up under just the right circumstances. And it’s, you know, I preached a message one time, “That Thing,” and it’s just, had such a depth of hold, that the only thing we seem to know to do with it is to push it down. Try harder, deny it, pretend it’s not there, instead of bringing it out into the light.
It’s like, God in heaven can’t even fix this one. Now, we would never, we know not to say that, but isn’t that what we are really saying by our actions all too often? God in heaven can’t even fix this one. I don’t deserve it. I don’t, you know, 1,001 lies the enemy is quick to inject.
And here’s God looking to shine a light on a need, not so that we will be discouraged, not so that we will throw up our hands and give up, but so that we will bring that to Him, so that He can set us free and cut those chains. Bring them into the light and say, It is what it is. I just surrender into Your hands, Lord, do what You have to do to fix me and to change my heart. Oh my God.
Is this something that you think I’m exempt from? Oh my God. See, that’s the point. See, if God is gonna use a people, it will be people that know what it’s like, that have got real things in their hearts. I don’t care what your background is.
You know, the thought I had was, It’s so easy. The devil loves to, when something rises up and you sense a need and a bondage maybe in your life, or a characteristic of your personality, and it just keeps getting in the way, it keeps, and God tries to shine the light on it. And how easy is it for the devil to say, Well, what about them? I’m jealous, if I had, they have it so easy. If they’d been through the things that I have in my life. Then on and on, and you know, you fill in the blanks.
I’ll tell you, I don’t care what your background is, what your life, earthly life has been about, these issues are about every single one of us. And as we said so many times, everyone is unique. We each have our own call and our own place. And God has allowed the things that have happened in our lives to shape us for the ends to which He has called us.
But oh, that God help us to learn how to get out of His way, when He shines the light, not to draw back, but to recognize, this holiness, this ability to be God’s vessel in this hour comes entirely from divine work. It’s of God that we’re in Christ, but He’s the one that’s made to us all that we need. I need Him.
And there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t realize I need Him more than I thought I did. I thought I had gotten this far. And oh my God, there’s this thing, it rises up and it wants to take control. And this is, I just, I react this way, I think this way, I plan this way, I do this way, whatever it is, it just covers the gamut of human nature. May God give us a practical victory. And what do we do? You know, when these things happen, that’s a critical thing.
So anyway, Paul talks about this, and he’s talking to the believers. And then he says, “Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Now, I’ve got this underlined, I had not ever really underlined this next statement before or the beginning of verse two. “And so it was with me, brothers.”
Do you catch that? This isn’t just about the ones to whom Paul was writing. This is Paul saying, Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I’ve got the same need. God didn’t call me because I was special. He called me to take a part, to take away all the things that made me special to people and to get me down to the point where it could be Him and me. Not through my strength, not through any goodness of, of my own. He’s brought me to a place where I could be usable to you.
And I don’t care who you are, how low, how high, as far as earthly measurements are concerned. Paul is basically saying, We occupy the same place. We have the same need, to let go and let God have His way, and be willing to let Him touch the things in our lives that get in his way, that are part, as I say, of our default setting.
Okay, “Brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness, with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” Why? “So that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”
Not everybody’s called to preach, to teach, but every believer is called to live out the life of Christ. Wouldn’t it be something, if your words, you could literally speak words. I don’t mean, Yea, I say unto you, I mean just ordinary words, and they’d be God speaking through you to somebody, without you even trying.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if God could bring us to that place where we could speak life to people? It’s not just, Be encouraged, you know, on a human level, but I’m talking about that we could be in such tune with God that we could speak words in a matter-of-fact tone, and they make an eternal difference.
But you know, the Lord, in order for that to happen, God’s gotta do some pruning, doesn’t He? He has got to get rid of things that hinder. And I’ll just mention in passing the Scriptures that we use so many times, because it has to do with Paul and how God dealt with Paul. And how he begins in 2 Thessalonians talking about what God had allowed him to go through, where he despaired of life, remember? It was so difficult, so tremendous, so tremendous.
Anyway, what he was going through, that he thought he was going to die. He was willing to do it, but I mean, he really thought it was over. But then he reveals something that we need to get. Number one, he didn’t just look at this as, you know, like, God’s judgment against me, or the devil’s winning or anything. He said, There’s a purpose in this. God’s allowed this. You understand?
The thinking that you see manifested in this. God’s allowed this. He’s allowed it for a reason. If He wants me to die, praise God, that’s even better. But, if I’m still to live here, He is teaching me something in this circumstance that I need to get. What was the lesson? Not to rely on my own strength, but on His.
Now, do you see what the Lord was saying there? Paul, I’ve called you and you don’t even understand the degree to which you are still relying on your own natural ability here. And I have got to get your attention. I can’t just pull you into a classroom and explain it to you. See, we hear this a lot, but this is not the kind of thing you can just learn and hear and then you got it. This is the kind of thing where God is going to have to take us through life experiences that reveal what’s lacking in us, what’s needful in us, but also that reveals His loving purpose in it, so that we can see beyond the thing.
We don’t have to sink into a pool of self-pity, or anger, or all the human emotions. We can say, God, thank You. You saw something in me that I wasn’t aware of. I love You. I thank You for it.
And isn’t that what we pointed out so many times in chapter 12, when there was a danger of pride and the Lord allowed something, allowed an attack of the enemy. And Paul went to the Lord about it, but I see in his spirit a desire to do God’s work. That was the heart of it. God, You’ve called me, I want to please You. I want to do what’s right. And in that context, God revealed the purpose for which He had done it. That it wasn’t just some random thing, God saw a need.
Is there any need in your life that God might consider? It doesn’t have to do with people that just get up here. It has to do with every single believer. Is there anything that God knows about in your life and He’s allowing something to happen right now? What does He want? Wouldn’t that be a good example to say, Oh God, help me, help me to understand what I need to know? Paul was essentially asking for wisdom and God gave it to him. God, at the proper time, God gave him an understanding.
Now, here’s where human nature kicks in. You know, we love to, if something bad happens, something we prefer not happen, Well, praise the Lord. And of course the words are okay, but the spirit behind it is anything but.
But what was Paul’s reaction? Did he say, Okay, I get it, Lord, I don’t like it, but I’ll go along with You on this one. There was a rejoicing. Do you see what God had imparted to him was this desire to serve God, this desire. He’d worked in him over a long period of time to take away all the religion that he depended upon. He came to regard it as scripture says in Philippians 3, As garbage, so that he could win Christ. Wanted to be like Him, wanted to be used of Him. God put that in his heart.
God worked that in his heart. He had to go through hell and high water to get there, but God brought him through. But it wasn’t just a, Okay, I’ll go along with You on this Lord, there was a rejoicing. Can we push through the circumstances that God allows in our lives, seek to understand His reasons and His purposes, be willing to see the faults and needs that we have, that He wants to change, set us free from?
Can we do that and lay it on the line and say, God, the one thing that controls everything is I want to do what’s right. I wanna please You. I wanna be useful to You. I want You to be able to live in me. And Lord, in the light of that, I’m just gonna say, ‘Wow, this is awesome!’ God is so merciful. God is so faithful to show me my need, praise God!
Because doing His will, it doesn’t depend on my strength anyway, so He set me free. All He wants me to be able to do is to yield myself to Him and have that partnership like Jesus did, so it’s actually Him in me. And I’m opening my mouth, I’m stretching forth my hands, whatever is appropriate. But it’s not just me, God’s power is there.
Do you want, do we want God’s power in our life or do we just want the form? Do we want just enough to get into heaven? That’s a real question. Been asked this morning. Is that really readiness? Is that somebody who really has handed their life over to the Lord, or they just want a ticket to heaven?
God has called every one of us. May God bring us to that place where we can do what Paul said, I glory in my weakness. I boast about it. Praise God, I’m weak. Think about the effect on people to whom he preached. They felt weak. They were aware of needs in their lives, and here’s one who stands up before them. He doesn’t say, I made it, and you can too. Come up here, we’re all, this high place that I live in.
It wasn’t that. It was, I’m one with you, and God has gone out of His way to remind me that I have nothing. I can do nothing in my own strength, and I’m so glad. I just pour out thanksgiving from my heart. God has shown me the past, so I can fulfill the vision and the thing that I value most is serving You, being useful to You and helping other people to come to that place.
Again, it was posed this morning. Do we want just enough, or do we want to actually be able to be used to help somebody else? This is what’s involved. It’s not just for the handful of leaders, visible people. This is for every believer.
You think maybe Dorcas who lived in, was it Joppa, someplace? Anyway, the one that Peter went to visit, and he was there and she had died and she had had such an impact on that community just by being kind and taking care of people’s needs and just giving in a Christlike spirit, being a vessel that the Lord lived in. And the whole village gathered around when she died, weeping. She had had an impact on their lives.
And the Lord sent Peter in there to raise her from the dead. And the testimony, the power of that testimony was such that everybody in that area just came to the Lord. There was a tremendous move of God’s Spirit.
I don’t know what God has planned. Is it gonna be the ones and twos? Is it gonna be something big and visible? I don’t know. But I want to be part of what He is part of. And if that’s gonna happen, He’s gonna have to be able to shine the light where it needs to be shined and I can’t duck it and deny it.
And not only that, I need to be so geared into what God wants that I can say, Thank You, Lord. This was in Your, this was in the way and I didn’t even know it. Thank you for shining the light. Thank You. Even if it was difficult to go through, it’s what I needed, Lord and I love you.
Because what is it? What is this life worth? Is there anything in this world, your life here that’s worth more than walking with Him and having Him live in you? That’s what it’s gonna be like for all of eternity is the Lord living in us, and we’ll be free from all of these things that happen down here. Thank God, those of us who are older, certainly looking forward to that.
But I praise God today. Do we value weakness? Do we value our inabilities? God wants to bring us to that place where human ability is not the question, not the issue. It’s, am I available to Him and is my default setting getting in the way? Does He have the right to shine the light and to put me in circumstances that show me that?
And then when He does, what am I doing about it? How am I responding? Am I willing to lay down my will and not just to grudgingly say, yes, but to say joyfully, Yes Lord, this is what matters to me. This is what I value above all things. And here, You’ve helped me in this. This has been a help so that, because I want Your power to go out and touch people. And if I’m getting in the way, that’s getting in the way of Your power and it’s not working.
God set His people free. Give us a heart that says, Lord, do whatever it takes. I’m Yours and You’ve called me to live in this hour. Help me. And then be glad when He does, because the way He does it a lot of times isn’t pleasant to our flesh. It never is. Death has to work in us, so life can work in others. Isn’t that what Paul said?
But I’ll tell you, it depends. Are you focused on the death and what you gotta give up? Or are you focused on the results and the life? See, when we learn from Jesus, what do we learn? Learn from me, My yoke is easy, My burden is light. And you will find rest for your souls.
So much of our striving is all about preserving self and taking care of it and trying to find our way instead of just letting go and letting Him have His way. To God be the glory. Praise God!
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February 18, 2024 - No. 1637
“Ready for a Dark Hour” Part One
Broadcast #1637
February 18, 2024
February 18, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1637 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! I was waiting for somebody else. This is good. I appreciate this so much. And I hardly to know where to, what to say in addition to all that’s been said. What a critical time we live in. And I just pray that God will just come and lift us out of our own weaknesses, our own inabilities, to the extent that we’re just going through the motions.
And like’s been said, getting just enough to get by and living our lives and, and not being engaged. I pray that God will lift us out of that. Don’t you believe that’s what He wants? I know the thoughts that I’ve had, it’s like, Lord, are you sure? I’ve said these things over and over and over and over again, but how many of you believe that we need to hear things many times? That growing up in Christ is not a classroom deal where we just hear it and believe it with our heads, but God is putting us in places where we need to walk in what we have heard.
And that means certainly if you’re one of these that’s really not ready, God help you to wake up to realize this is not just religious doctrine trying to get people to join a particular religious group. This is the God in heaven who sent the Son of whom we sang this morning to open heaven’s door for you. Are you really, do you really want to cling to this life? Is it worth so much to throw it all away and to spit in his face and say, I don’t care what you did, it’s my life I’m gonna do as I please. Oh my God, oh my God!
But I think the thoughts that I’ve had have to do with the Lord’s people and us being what we need to be because we can’t just preach to people who don’t know the Lord and then we’re kind of muddling through. You know what I’m talking about? God help us.
I don’t know how many of you saw “The Chosen” in the theater this weekend? I know a number of you did. I’m sorry the rest of you didn’t. I realize there was a lot of advertising in it, but we sat there a while. But it was worth seeing. And there were some powerful scenes.
And what it really depicted, the humanity of, and what this whole series has is you’ve seen the people and not just the little, the storyline, but you’ve seen the humanity of the people that God called. They were very ordinary.
You know, if you’re gonna build a human organization, you don’t do it like Jesus did. You go and you find the most gifted people and you sort through them and you find out who’s good with money, who’s good with this, who’s good with that. Let’s get the best speakers. Let’s get the best organizers. Let’s get a committee and a five year plan.
And you know, humanity has its own ways of doing things, but that is all based upon the idea that we have the ability to do what needs to be done. Folks, we don’t have what it takes outside of Christ. I don’t care who you are.
And you look at the ragtag bunch of folks that the Lord gathered: fishermen, a tax collector, a revolutionary and several others. I mean, you talk about the wrong people from the world’s point of view. And yet God called them. Do you believe God has called us? See, the whole point of that series is chosen. God chose certain people. And he worked in and through them, but boy, it takes a lot of work on his part to get his work done.
But folks, we need to realize that the things that we’ve said, I don’t think they’re as real to us as they need to be. We’re not in a warfare of just human society. This is not a matter of politics and fixing the world and fixing life here. This is a warfare not against people. It’s not flesh and blood. There is a power. There is a satanic kingdom that rules over the hearts of men in this world and has blinded their minds to the things that we were singing about this morning.
And if we are going to be the ones that God has chosen as he did in that day, he chose them to live in a dark and difficult time, but to serve him and to be used of him, to absolutely establish the kingdom, to carry the message, to demonstrate God’s power, whatever was appropriate for the hour in which they lived.
Has not God called us to live in this hour? Yes. Amen. Are we simply meant to go through our daily routine and wait for Jesus to come? Or does He want to have a people in whom and through whom He can live?
And folks, we don’t have any idea. We do not have any idea what that takes. I mean, we can be like Peter. We figure we got it made. We know what we stand for and we’re good. Don’t need to pray. I already know I love him. I’d die for him. Only he didn’t have what it took, what was needed, did he?
And I sense that this is what God is doing because we can affirm these things. We can hear them. We can say, yes, I agree with that without having a clue about our own selves and our own need. We think, I know how to do church, I know how to live. I know how to be the kind of person that you, I even know the gospel. I can share it with somebody. But if it’s just you and me doing it in the energy of flesh, it absolutely will accomplish zero.
And Lord have mercy, God order my thoughts this morning. How many times, I’m gonna use scriptures we’ve heard over and over and over again, but I believe God wants us to hear them fresh. I need it. I sense my need.
But you know what, Jesus gave the parable of the vine and the branches the last night he was before his crucifixion. And he gave this parable about how the Father is the husbandman, I’m the vine, you’re the branches. And the object of all of that was fruit, wasn’t it?
And there were some who bore no fruit. And I don’t wanna stop, I don’t wanna focus on that so much. But I mean, there are people who have an outward attachment to Jesus, but there’s no evidence of life coming from him into them. And there’s no result in their life. So, what happens to them? They’re broken off and thrown into the fire. Is that sober? We better have something on the inside. We’re gonna have to be born of His Spirit. We’re gonna have to have His life in us.
But the point of the life is to do what? It’s to produce fruit. There are results that are meant to happen when God lives by His Spirit in us. There are things that are supposed to be produced. How many of us can produce the things that God wants to produce in this hour without him? Well, he said “Without me, you can do nothing.”
But there is one part of that where Jesus said, “Those who bear fruit,” what does he do? He prunes. How many of you got things in your life that don’t really, that get in his way? We’re doing this and we’re doing that. And it’s not really part of what he wants. I mean, Jesse mentioned it. I mean, we can have all kinds of chains around us. We can have all kinds of things in our lives that just get in the way.
And I believe with all my heart, that God is instituting things in our lives today that are designed to bring us to an awareness of those needs. And so the question is, what do we do when that happens? Do we understand? Do we agree with him? Do we say, thank you Lord, for showing me my need?
I had a number of scriptures and I’m not gonna, I don’t think it’s necessary to go through a lot. But I know Paul certainly is an example. And in 1st Corinthians in the first chapter, Paul is talking about how out of touch and outta step and out of harmony with the world’s ways the gospel is.
In the first place the message is foolishness to everybody that is blinded by the devil. They can’t understand it. It takes divine revelation to the heart for anybody to get it. And we need that. And I’ll tell you, if it’s a question in your mind, you cry out, you seek God, God will open your heart and your understanding. But if you don’t, if you close your heart and say, no, I’m good. I’m just, I don’t get it. So I don’t care. You’ll go on and perish. But anyway, the world’s wisdom cannot figure it out.
And then Paul says this, and I was thinking in terms of the call of the apostles. “Brothers and sisters,” verse 26, “think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one can boast in his presence.”
Praise God! You know, that opens the door for all of us. We don’t have to present him with our qualifications. ‘Cause I have none. Praise God! Thank God everything that I need is what He gives to me. And I need to have a willingness to receive it and to let the other go.
You know, I was, I think it was meant to be a lesson, but also a little bit of amusement in it. When Jesus was in the film, was getting ready to send the disciples or send the apostles out. He chose them, by the way, and talked about that. But now he’s gonna commission them, impart power to them to go out and heal. And he sent them out two by two.
Well, now the scripture doesn’t tell us how he paired them off, does it? But the folks that put this together came up with, what I think is probably a very good idea to portray it. He had, one of the pairs was Matthew, the former tax collector, and Simon the zealot.
Now, you know what a zealot was? They were the revolutionaries. They were the guerilla forces that were fighting against Rome. Now you remember the guerilla armies that were faced in Vietnam and others, these little militia groups that want to go out and fight against the order. Well, that was him. He fought against Rome. And now here’s Matthew whose career was colluding with Rome and collecting taxes for them. So now Jesus puts them together and said, I want you two to go out together.
Folks, if we’re gonna serve the Lord, we’re gonna have to let our past go and receive one another and simply let Christ wipe the past clean, let it go and receive one another where we’re at and simply go forward. What a simple lesson that that portrayed!
Oh how many things we’re clinging to in our ideas, and our earthly ways. God, if God’s gonna use us, He’s gonna have to cleanse us from a lot of stuff that we cling to, our own ideas and our own ways.
You know, we have this statement that if you’re part of the, well, we’re all part of the digital age, but we all have these digital devices, whether they’re a computer, tablets, phones, and we have the saying, a “default setting.” You know what that is? Every one of these devices, if you start it, it’s been turned off, now you start it, there are a whole lot of things that are already set by default. You don’t have to see, now how do I do this? How do I fix the screen? How do I fix the sound? You know, it’s all there. What’s gonna show on my screen? All of those decisions have been made.
Folks, I don’t know how well we realize that our default setting gets in God’s way. Do you think there are things we don’t even realize when we get up in the morning that are our ways of doing things, our ways of thinking, our ways of acting, planning, reacting that don’t come from the Lord? I wonder how many things God has to put us through, circumstances, and those circumstances are designed not to defeat us. Not because he’s mad at us, not for any other reason than to help us to recognize our default settings that need to be recalibrated. We need a new default so that we can be useful to him.
Here was Jesus giving the perfect example of somebody who was perfectly in harmony with his Father. He wasn’t a robot, but there was a conscious, willing cooperation with his Father. And his Father provided the power and it was a perfect partnership. That’s what God wants from us. But oh, do we get in his way?
And we see obviously what the devil wanted to accomplish with Peter. How many, these are examples we’ve used over and over, but God help us to see them a deeper way. The devil wanted to take Peter down and make him just go back to fishing. Be done with it. I’ve messed up. I’ve closed the door.
What was the Lord’s aim in this when he warned Peter that he was about to, he was gonna betray him. He said, but, but. Thank God for that but. “But I have prayed for you that your faith fail not.” That’s step one. But then what? After you, yeah, after you’ve been, you come through all this and you’ve been converted or changed, strengthen your brothers.
There are things happening in our lives right now that we would prefer that they not happen. They bring things to light that we would rather deny, not face. And here’s God’s heart looking down at us saying, “I have called, I have chosen these people. They’re mine. I’ve called them to live in Earth’s darkest hour and I have things that I want to accomplish.”
There are people that, that grow up in here that need to see more from us. They need to see more of Jesus and a little less of us. And we don’t even know it. We’re clueless so much of the time. And God has to allow circumstances in our lives to bring us to a place where it’s Him living in us and not us.
Oh, how many times do we have things come up and we feel and we find human nature kicking in by default? And what’s our reaction to it? Resistance. Resistance, denial. I’m just gonna pretend this isn’t there. I’m gonna push it down and hope nobody notices.
God wants to break the chains. He wants to set us free. He is allowing things that show us our needs so we can come to Him and say, thank you. Thank you, Lord, for loving me enough to show me the truth about myself.
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February 11, 2024 - No. 1636
“Examine Yourself” Conclusion
Broadcast #1636
February 11, 2024
February 11, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1636 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: What Jesus, what Paul said at the end of 2 Corinthians 13 is kinda what came to me. And I’m just gonna read it and I don’t know how the Lord’s gonna develop it, but, but Paul is concerned. I mean, he’s gone through all the truth about how God used him, what God did to verify the message and how he preached it with all that he had. And yet, all these deceiving voices would come in and all these issues.
And it raised a question in his mind. And so in verse five, he says, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you unless of course you fail to test?” Examine yourselves. So there is a responsibility on the part of an individual to say, am I really a Christian?
How easy is it to come along and come in and sort of try to be a Christian? There’s something, there’s some effort, and yet, you never quite get in. Jesus speaks of passing from death to life. It’s like going through a door. And you literally, at one moment, you are in the realm of death headed for destruction. But then there is a work of God and there is an agreement, a surrender to that work of God. And suddenly, you’re stepping over here and you have passed from death to life.
But every person is responsible for themselves before God. There will be no secondhand Christians in the kingdom. You can’t say, My parents knew the Lord and I went along with them. I’m good. Every individual is going to have to have that divine encounter with Jesus Christ where they pass from death to life. There’s no way around it.
Now you think about the example that Jesus gave, the Parable of a Sower. And how simple that picture is, but how profound, where you see, on the one hand, a sower going out to scatter seed. And of course, he scatters some on, on hard paths where people have walked and naturally, it doesn’t grow. But then there are three other kinds, three other places where he sows seed.
One of them is on rocky soil where there’s a little bit of soil on the surface, but down underneath, it’s hard. And then he goes to another place and he sows it. But along with the stuff that sprouts up, there’s thorns that come up and you don’t get any kinda crop. And it’s only on the fourth kind, the good soil where there’s a crop that’s produced.
And Jesus explains it. There are people who hear the message of the gospel and they respond quickly. Oh wow, that’s great. But what happens is Jesus said, when trouble comes, when you start having to pay the price, you start realizing what really is in involved. Paul said, to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’
How is Satan gonna be overcome? By the blood of the lamb, the word of our testimony and what? Love not their lives so much as to shrink from death. Oh, I didn’t know about that. You see what’s going on with hard places down under there where the roots can’t go out and get any moisture? You got places down in people’s hearts and wills that will not yield.
What they’re doing is serving self. And what’s going on when they hear this message of eternal life, praise God, that’s wonderful. And what they’re thinking about is, I’ve got a chance to live forever. It’s self, saying, My prospects are not limited to what I can get out this world. I believe this message and I’ll be a little bit religious and I’ll be a good person and I’ll get to go to heaven and self will get to gratify itself forever and ever. And it’s complete blindness and hardness of heart.
I’ll tell you, there’s gonna have to be a surrender. I mean, we’ve said these things many times, but I sense the Lord wanting to challenge people. Have you ever surrendered? I’m glad for everyone that comes. I’m glad for everyone that hears. But here’s Paul writing to a Christian Church and saying, Examine yourselves. Is that wrong to say that?
What a tragedy would it would be for someone to come here and go along and say, I’m trying, I’m trying to live a better life. I’m trying to do this. I’m trying to do that. But have you ever… Have you ever really entered in? Has Christ become your Lord?
So many examples in scripture, but one of them of course is so-called rich young ruler. Here was a man who was much blessed in the world and yet, there was something about him that wanted to please God. And he had obeyed God as much as he knew. And so he comes to Jesus and said, What do I lack? I’ve heard you talk about this eternal life. What do I lack to have that?
And of course Jesus told him about the commandments. He said, I’ve observed all those from the time I was a boy. What else, what do I lack? It was only one thing. Sell what you have, give it to the poor. Come take up your cross and follow me. So what was the problem? That was his God.
Folks, for those who hear the message of Christ that demands that we surrender our lives to him and they’ll go along up to a point, what’s really happening is there is an area that is your real God. There is an area where you are going to do your own will. And what you’re saying is, I know that Jesus died because of this, but I’m gonna clinging to this. This is more important than Jesus.
Folks, if there is anything in your life that’s more important than serving Jesus, than you are lost and you need him. And it’s not just, I don’t believe the Lord is giving out this to scare people in a negative, in the wrong sense. He’s not giving it out to cause somebody who’s a believer, who’s struggling to suddenly say, Oh my God, mayby, I’m not really.
I’ll tell you, if there is something in you that wants to serve God and you’re struggling, God’s put that want in you, and you look to him, yes, we are works in progress. Yes, we need the Lord. Yes, salvation is an ongoing thing, but there is a difference between somebody who has surrendered their life into God’s hands and His Spirit has come to reside on the inside and someone who is trying to be a Christian.
There’s no such thing as trying to be a Christian. The only way you and I can become followers of God is to let him do a supernatural work in our hearts.
And we all know the scripture that talks about Nicodemus. He was an important man, a ruler among the Jews. In fact, he helped bury Jesus. So I believe the Lord touched him, don’t you? After Jesus had died on the cross, he was one of the ones that helped bury him. But he came to Jesus, snuck in at night and Jesus said, Unless you are born again, you can’t see. You can’t enter the kingdom of God. You can’t see the kingdom of God. He made two different statements.
And of course, he had no idea what Jesus was talking about. Can a man enter his mother’s womb again and be born? It’s not the number of births in that sense. Folks, every one of us was born with a life that animates these physical beings. We are living beings who happen to live in these bodies. We already have been born.
But the reality is flesh and blood, what we were born in Adam can never be a part of that kingdom. Following Jesus is not a matter of coming in and conforming your life to a religious culture, embracing beliefs, all of those things. It’s absolutely a birth that comes from above where we present ourselves and we are His and we surrender all of our needs, all of our sins, all of our inabilities, every issue of our lives, and say, My life no longer belongs to me. I hand it over to you for you to do in me the only thing that will enable me to be a part of that one day. You’re going to have to plant your Spirit, your life in my heart. It’s gonna have to be there.
And I’ll tell you, that’s the key. If God has done that to you, there’s gonna be something in you that even when things, even when you’re struggling, even when you’re going through a period of time, there’s something there that won’t let you just keep on going forever. There’s something in you that will respond when God shines his light.
Doesn’t the Word go on and talk about how, those who do evil do what? In John 3. What does somebody whose heart is still attached to this world and to their life and their earthly desires, they love light, right? No, they hate the light. They won’t come to it. But those who are the Lord’s, even though we have needs, we’re gonna see things we don’t like. But yet, there’s something in us. What is that? God has put something. It’s not just information in the mind, not just human willpower. It’s God has planted His divine life in the heart. And there is something that holds those who have given their hearts to him.
Have you? Has that transaction ever taken place? Folks, we need the Lord. I don’t even know how to preach this except to put it out there and say, if there is anything in you that wants the Lord, but you’re not sure… Well, in the first place, if there is something, if there’s a genuine desire in you for the Lord, you need to take heart. ‘Cause you wouldn’t have that if God hadn’t put it there. And that’s an awfully good indication that God loves you and wants you to come to Him.
I’ll tell you people who hardened their hearts, I remember Brother Thomas talking about a man that he talked to one time and tried to witness to him and the man told him about an incident in his youth where he had just run up on some philosophy that was atheistic, whatever it was. And something had happened. He had embraced that. And he had embraced it in such a way that from that moment on, he had no desire, whatever. You could talk to him, there was nothing in here that reached out, nothing that wanted the Lord.
Folks, if there’s something in anybody here who is unsure, who doesn’t know how to answer Paul’s question, if there is something in you, God is calling your name and our destiny rests upon our response when God reaches out.
Is this the truth? Your destiny rests upon that response. God’s not gonna just pick you up and plunk you in the kingdom. He wants a heart that reaches out and says, God, I need you. I acknowledge my sin. I acknowledge my need. I don’t come because I’m trying hard. I don’t come because of this or because of that. I come as a broken lost sinner who has no power to help himself or herself. I come as somebody who is unworthy. I need one thing and that one thing is mercy. But I’ve heard the good news that you come, that Jesus, Jesus won it all.
He won it all, didn’t he? He did everything that was necessary for me to become Your child and live with You forever. And so I hand my life over to You.
So see, it’s one thing for us to wrestle and for us to look to God for power to overcome areas of our lives. But where’s your heart? Which side is your heart on? Are you one that comes to the light that says, Oh God, I want you to show me?
You know, you read the whole book of 1 John, I’m not gonna go through it, obviously. I think we’ve said just about enough of what we need to say. But the whole book of 1 John was written so people could know that they knew, they could know that they were the Lord’s.
And one of the first things he talks about is coming into the light, walking in the light, those who don’t walk in the light, those who are trying to skirt around and trying to protect self in some secret way and hanging onto their own goodness and their own efforts and never really letting go. They’re never willing to come to the light and say, God, show me the truth.
And I’ll tell you, if you’ve got a heart that wants the truth, that’s a pretty good sign. If you’ve got a heart that has a heart level loving connection with others who have been born of his Spirit, that’s a pretty good indicator too, isn’t it?
And you go through and you will see all these things, but you see, you come into chapter three, I believe it is, and you’ll find out there’s somebody who just continues to live a life that’s indistinguishable from the world. They claim to be Christians that come in here and yet they’ll go out and they’ll go, they’ll run with the same people, they will do the same things, they will go to the same places and their life just continues to serve their flesh, their self. And all you see is somebody that’s part of the world.
Uh uh. That person doesn’t know the Lord. And my prayer today, and I don’t believe it’s my prayer. I say I fought some of this. But I believe it’s the prayer of Jesus himself, even if he doesn’t come today or doesn’t come in the next little bit and we live on our lives and we die, this question is still a 100% relevant. There is no purpose in this world existing except for you to surrender your life and be made into a new creature, be born of his Spirit and changed so that we become like him.
Understand that’s a process. But if you fall short of that, you have missed everything. What’s it worth to have Jesus? Everything. If there is one thing in your life for that one man, it was his riches. You remember what Peter said, Who then can be saved? And what, what was Jesus answer? With man, it’s impossible, but with God, all things are possible.
And if what’s holding you back is looking at your own inability in your own life, Jesus didn’t come for righteous people, he came for sinners. You qualify. If you are in need, God has the power through Christ to save you from the uttermost. Don’t you look in the mirror and say, That’s a reason for me to hold back. I just can’t really believe he could save somebody like me. Look at what I’ve done. Look at what I am. You are the one who came to save.
Oh, praise God! There’s something, there’s a joy that fills his heart to be able to reach down to the lowest of the low and pull him out. If he can save Saul, the Jew, he can save you.
But I just pray today that God will touch somebody’s heart and His promise, there are promises in the word about seeking Him. Folks, if there is something that He has put in your heart, that’s a feeling of need, a desire, whatever it is, that’s Him drawing you, Him working in you to bring you to that place. You have every right to seek Him from your heart, to help you, to bring you through, to do whatever it’s needed, whatever’s needed, You will seek me and find me when? When you search for me with all your heart, God has promised to meet a seeking heart.
If this question is not one you can answer, then I would say before God, you seek Him from your heart until He brings you to that place. Think of the one who wrote these words and his testimony was, I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him against that day. That’s the kind of confidence that God wants. It’s not a confidence in me. I’m a good person and I’m good enough and I’ve earned my way. It’s, I have let go and he has saved me, and to him be all of the glory.
That’s what he wants for every person who hears his word. Don’t you dare stop short. If you can’t answer the question that Paul asked, I would call on you in the name of Jesus, he would call upon you, seek him with the depths of your heart until God bears witness. What does the word say? The Spirit bears witness with our hearts, with our spirits that we are children of God.
That’s not feeling of euphoria. But I’ll tell you, there’s something that’s down here that’s real. When we have peace with God, when the war is over and we stop fighting for self, we lay down our arms and we give Him our lives and He comes in and he sits on the throne that’s in your life and in your heart. There’s something that happens. There’s a peace that comes in that’s real.
And there’s a witness in our own hearts that we have let go and we belong to Him. And there’s a witness on His part when He gives us His Spirit, that’s the witness that we are His. And his promise is He will never leave you, never forsake you, never stop working. All the things that you see that are wrong, He is well able. He is able to save completely those who come to God by him. Why? Because he ever lives to pray for you.
We have an awesome Savior, but I’ve got to come back to this thing. You have the right. Examine yourselves whether you were in the faith. If that raises a fear and a concern in your heart, I would call upon you to seek Him with all of your heart today. There is nothing more important. I believe there’s somebody, I don’t know, this is in God’s hands.
But if you have never entered in, if you’ve never crossed that divide, if you’ve never been born of His Spirit, you need to cry out to Him until He answers. He will give you the faith you need. He’ll give you the ability to repent. You’re gonna have to respond. You have a part to play, and if it’s not in your heart to do it, and you’re holding back on something that’s the real God of your life, you’re gonna have to come to a place where you’re willing to let that, let all of it go and put your hope in Him. And I’ll tell you, when you do, He will make you His child.
I just pray for anyone who hears this and doesn’t have a good answer to Paul’s question, that God will just do whatever it takes to bring you to that place where you let go and let God have your life. There’s so many things that people value and they seek in this world. Could anything possibly be more important? It’s appointed to men, once to die. And after this, the judgment.
I wonder how many people are gonna be standing there looking back and realizing there was a time when God spoke and they held back. They were trying to hold onto this. It was something that held them back. That’s the devil’s business, manufacture a reason for you to not step forward. But I’m gonna listen to my Savior. I’m gonna put my hope and trust in one who loved me enough to die for me unworthy though I am. It’s worth everything to be born again.
And I just pray that God will just take this word. You have the right to call upon Him, and the moment you call upon Him in heart, faith with God’s power helping you, I’m not talking about some big experience necessarily, but there’s gonna be a transaction that happens between you and God.
Being born is an event, isn’t it? Passing from death to life is an event. We need to make sure that we have made that transaction. We have crossed that divide, and I just pray that anyone who hears this and is struggling to answer that, as I say, you call upon God until He answers, until He gives you peace of the witness in your heart that you belong to Him. You’re in God’s hands. Praise God!
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February 4, 2024 - No. 1635
“Examine Yourself” Part One
Broadcast #1635
February 4, 2024
February 4, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1635 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: This is one of those times when I feel my need of the Lord in a very special way. I’ve had a lot of thoughts and I’m just trying to trust the Lord to organize them and I’ve also had the enemy oppose in a very powerful way, in a lot of ways. I’m glad he was defeated at the cross, aren’t you?
[Congregation] Amen.Thank God. And I don’t know exactly. I’m gonna go ahead and start and just kind of lead into where I want to head. But you know, at the deacon and elders meeting the other night, we were speaking for a little bit about the condition of the world. And we see the fulfillment of where we know the Lord has shown us, things are headed, that the enemy is loosed and being allowed to appeal to everybody that has an open heart to him. And that’s most of the world. They’re drinking in his lies. And we see it on every hand.
And one of the manifestations of that is what we see in what is called the Christian church. And there’s so much in the world, and this is not about us or in any of that sort of thing, it’s just in a general sense. I don’t think the apostles, if they were suddenly to arrive on earth today, would even recognize most of what is called Christianity. There is such a spirit of deception in it, and it reflects all of Satan’s efforts to hinder and to block and to keep people from the reality of what God did through Jesus Christ.
And I believe that God has promised, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail.” So we know that the promises of God are true. And yet, in the midst of that, we know that we need to proclaim God’s Word without compromise, without worrying about pleasing people. We need to be willing to stand up.
That’s what’s happening in churches. You’ve got churches everywhere. Sometimes there are people who have a sense of knowing what the Lord wants, but they’re afraid. Pastors are afraid to preach because they’re gonna lose their people, they’re gonna lose their budget, they’re gonna lose their salary. The system just is geared to pleasing people and wanting to build a crowd and build numbers.
And God help us, to have no other aim except to say, Jesus, You do Your work and use this poor, weak, unworthy vessel and these poor weak, unworthy vessels. Just come and dwell in our midst and call Your people together. Share the Word of God, build it into people’s hearts and lives. And then when the harvest is fully ripe, then come and reap. And that’s what’s happening. And I wanna be a part of that.
I was thinking back to the beginning of what God did. God made Himself known in an incredible way through the ministry of Jesus, didn’t He? Three, three and a half years, whatever it was. And there was a tremendous, powerful revelation of God and His presence. And yet the interesting thing is that how many people were there that recognized the miracles, gloried in them, followed Jesus for a time, who wound up not following Him, walking away in unbelief. It’s a picture of the real condition, the real need, in the hearts of men, that people could see all of that and walk away.
I’ll tell you, Satan has a strong hold in people’s hearts and it takes supernatural power to break that. And it takes a willingness on the part of those who hear the Word of God to receive it, not as some little sweet message that makes my life here better, gives me a hope of heaven someday. But for all that it is, an uncompromising call to leave the world, to lay down our lives and to give them to Him.
And people over and over wouldn’t hear that. They would follow Him because He fed the 5000, they saw the tremendous miracles that He performed. And wow, we need this guy. He can fix our problems. Let’s make him a king. You read in, what is it, John 6, you have that account? And then others who were following Him because they saw the signs and wonders and oh, what can we do so that we can work the works of God? All kinds of motivations that came, not from a heart that truly wanted God on His terms, but one that wanted to somehow use God and use His power to enhance self. That was what was really going on there.
And so when Jesus put the terms of the gospel in ways that were hard to understand, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, by which He meant believing on Him, a heart level faith in what He did and what His body meant when He sacrificed it on the cross, that was what was behind it. But He put it in terms that would cause natural people, who were looking to gratify natural desires, it caused them to reject that and to say, this is a hard saying, who can hear it? And they left Him and walked no more with Him.
And of course, He turned to the disciples, He wasn’t anxious about it. He said, will you also go away? I’ve heard it said that there were only 12 left. Well, that’s not true. We know from Acts that there were more than that. But still that was His focus, was the 12 that He talked with. And Peter said, “No, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” There was something that was real in the heart. We need it.
[Congregant] Yes.Folks, this is an hour, if you don’t have the real deal, you don’t have what you need.
[Congregant] Yes.I mean, it’s always been that way.
[Congregant] Yes, yes.But that’s the condition right now in the world. We see the world, I mean, if you don’t have the real deal in your heart, this world, the spirit that’s in this world will overtake you. It’s that simple. We need the real thing. Thank God He’s more than willing to give it. He’s more than willing to become that reality to us.
So we see the victory that was won. We see how the devil thought he’d won by crucifying the Lord and then absolutely engineered his own ultimate defeat. And oh, the forces of hell that screamed in terror when He rose from the dead as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Praise God! The ruler over death and hell itself and the grave and sin, all of that had lost its power because of what He did.
And He came forth with a mandate from the Father to spread that good news to all the kingdoms of the world, to all of the world and to gather up people for His name. And of course we know that this confirmation, if you will, of the covenant that God had promised through His Son, the new covenant, the everlasting covenant, the only one that’s in force, in spite of what some people think. This is what’s all about.
But God absolutely continued to confirm the covenant. If you will look, you will see that there was a period, probably again, three and a half years, I’m estimating, in which God powerfully confirmed the covenant, starting on the day of Pentecost, as Peter stood up in the temple and proclaimed the Word of God with such authority and power that the number grew to 3000 people in a day.
You talk about Jesus coming, you think Peter had the power to do that? No, no man has the power to do anything in the kingdom of God. We absolutely have no power. It’s either Jesus in us or we’re just playing church. And I pray that God will, in spite of all that’s wrong and all that’s lacking in us, will absolutely work to proclaim words that have the power to change destinies. ‘Cause if we don’t have that again, what do we do have?
And so Peter, with an uncompromising voice, said, “Repent, be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus for the remission of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost.” And so that life, the purpose of the gospel is not to simply impart better ways of living. It’s to impart a new life. And there were people who drank that in, who were born into a kingdom that can never pass away.
And it didn’t stop there, did it? They continued to meet together, to fellowship together, they met one another’s needs in a practical sense and God’s presence was just powerfully among them.
And you remember how Peter preached again in the temple courtyards after the man was healed. And again, there was such power that the number continued to grow. And they threatened Him. They knew they couldn’t say, they couldn’t really speak against Him because there was a miracle that everybody knew about, but don’t you dare talk about this man. Don’t you dare preach about Jesus anymore.
And what was their response? To go back and say, oh my God, we better change our tactics here. We better tuck it in here. No, they went back and said, oh God, you’ve purposed all of this. Give us courage. Give us boldness, stretch forth Your hand. I mean, it was a call for God to go into action. It was not a defensive posture they took; it was an offensive. We’re here for the kingdom of God and that’s all that matters. And we’re gonna strike out and we’re gonna defy Satan’s efforts to intimidate us, God, but we need You. We don’t have what it takes. This is not a committee deal. This is a deal where either You’re gonna come and help us or we’re not gonna have what we need.
And God came, didn’t He? The Lord came in power and they were filled with the Holy Spirit again. That wasn’t a one-time thing, was it? That’s something we need all the time, may God help us. But anyway, you saw this tremendous power and nothing could stop it and the church continued to grow as the Lord added.
Well, now you know, last couple of services in particular, we’ve sort of looked at some of these things from the devil’s point of view. What do you think he was doing? I mean, obviously, the demons were looking on and wringing their hands, we gotta do something. But there came a day when the Lord said, all right, the demonstration has happened, now let the Word go forth. And you began to see things like persecution.
But one thing was really notable, right at the beginning, because up to this point, there was not a single person that the devil had been able to plant among the people of God. He hadn’t been able to deceive any of them. There was perfect unity. Praise God! Boy, it’s awesome when that happens, isn’t it?
But then there came a time when all of a sudden, Satan was able to get to a couple, man and a woman. And they were helping one another by giving property, selling property, bringing the proceeds for the needs of the people. And the problem was not that they sold property and only gave part of it. The problem was that they lied about it, isn’t it? The devil put it in their hearts to lie and to put self ahead of what they had professed to do before God. They were lying to God and presenting themselves as one of us.
And what happened? God struck them dead. That’s how powerful God’s presence was. How would you like it to be that today, if we would come in here and be a hypocrite? You remember how Brother Thomas used to talk about a boy in Sunday school and the teacher asked, why isn’t it like that today? And he finally spoke up and said, because there wouldn’t be anybody left. Well, I pray that God will give us a heart that’s not like that.
But you see what the enemy was beginning to do. From his point of view, he said, I’ve got to get in there. I have got to do something to compromise the message, something to get hold of people’s lives ‘cause I remember how Jesus said when He went to the cross, the devil’s coming, but he doesn’t have any hold on me. But see, I’ve been working on a whole lot of people and I got strong holds. And so the way I can get in there and compromise all of this, I can begin to put people in there.
Now, I can’t keep everybody from being interested, but oh, when they are, I can get ‘em in there and I can plant people in there that really have never given their hearts to the Lord. I can begin to put people in there and then I can use them and they will compromise the testimony of the church. People will look on and say, well, if that’s what it means to be a Christian, I don’t want it.
And oh, I’ll tell you something else we can do. We can raise up ministries, we can raise up, we can look for gifted speakers, charismatic leaders who can step up and preach what they call the gospel, only it’s not gonna be the actual message. ‘Cause we’ll do the anointing and we’ll make it seem like this is wonderful, we are honoring Jesus in all that we’re doing.
And so you see, as the New Testament unfolds, it’s not all sweetness and light. It’s not all, in the sense that it’s not all, here’s how everything’s going so great. And here’s how you grow and we’re all this sunshine, you see the efforts of the enemy to compromise the gospel in so many ways. He didn’t just oppose it through persecution, he opposed it through infiltration and compromise.
And so, so much in the New Testament is written by apostles who had gone out and preached the Word and had gathered people together. But it quickly became evident. The question was raised. How many of them are really believers? How many? What do you think would be the answer to that if you looked at the American church, particularly. It wouldn’t be good, would it? Now God’s got His people, they aren’t saved because of religious systems, they’re saved, I think, in spite. But God has reached a people.
This is not about us and who we are and who we think we are, this is about Jesus. If we’ve got anything it’s Him. There’s no glory to us at all. God is so merciful to call people like us, isn’t he? Wow! If we’re honest and we look in the mirror and we think about all this and what God has done for us, we have nothing we can do except bow down and worship Him. He alone deserves the glory.
But what you see, is an outflow of what Jesus warned about when Jesus talked about the coming age and what the world was gonna be like and what the church was gonna be like in the world. He didn’t just picture what we saw right after the day of Pentecost, did He? He pictured a world where there would be all kinds of things happen.
He warned about deception, didn’t He? He warned that there would be false prophets and false Christs. He warned that there would be deception signs, lying signs and wonders, things that would be so powerful that they would deceive the very elect if it were possible.
Now, what do you think about anybody that stops short of that? Man, it’s what we see happening. It’s swallowing up our world. And I believe with all my heart that God wants to get His people ready. But I believe there’s also this sense that if you don’t know the Lord, if there’s anybody here that, or that hears this and that’s not a certainty that you know the Lord, where do you think that leaves you?
Think about Jesus and some of the things that He said. You remember how in Matthew 7 He talks about the two gates and the two ways? He says, “Don’t enter the wide gate.” The wide gate is one, number one, it leads to destruction. And even though there are plenty of people who walk on that particular way, it doesn’t lead to a good place. It’s a wide gate. It’s where you can take all kinds of things in with you.
And when you see a lot of other people going a certain way, spiritually speaking, religiously speaking, it’s awfully good or easy to say, well, I’m just like them. I’m in agreement with them. Everything’s gonna be all right.
And you see Jesus also talk about a narrow gate and a narrow way. In other words, it’s not something that’s just easy to go into. You gotta lay everything down to get through that gate, nothing else will fit, but us, just laying down our lives and saying, I’m willing to walk with You. This is not a popular way. The devil’s gonna create a popular version of so-called Christianity and seduce and deceive multitudes of people. Not going to, he has.
But you go into the end of that passage and you talk about what Jesus, the truth that Jesus brought out, said, why do you call me Lord? I better go over and read that. Let’s go over to Matthew 7. So many scriptures come to my mind, and I’m just, I don’t know how in the world to get to all of the different things. But I don’t wanna say one word that the Lord isn’t in either.
Matthew 7. Because He comes down after talking about the wide gate and the narrow gate, and then the false prophets. But down in verse 21, He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Now, you would think if somebody walked with, took on a church life, a religious life, they started to call Jesus Lord. They say, I believe in Him. I’ve prayed the magic prayer. That would be good, wouldn’t it? But, oh, what a compromised gospel has been put out there that never touches the need of the heart.
And so Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” There has got to be a fruit of a divine work in the heart. ‘Cause you and I can’t do His will in our own strength, can we? That’s the whole point of salvation. So we’re talking about today how God needs to work in us and we need to let Him. We’re the branches and He’s the vine. He’s got the life. The only thing that can produce fruit is Him in us.
So here we are. Here are people who think they’re doing right, who think they can do all these things. “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and in Your name drive out demons and in Your name perform many miracles’.” Wow. I don’t know whether they did or just thought they did. But you’ve got all kinds of people who spend their lives in churches, they will make a profession of being followers of Jesus and not only in the view of others, but in their own minds, they are believers expecting to go to heaven when they die.
And here’s Jesus saying, “No”. Just let that settle in. Is that what it takes? “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me you evil doers.’” What an amazing thing for Jesus to say.
Oh, how we invest so much in appearance. But you see, God doesn’t look on the outward appearance, that’s what man does. God looks at the heart. And He’s looking for a people that He can call into that narrow way. Oh my God, what a horrible thing it is to imagine that somebody could say, I’m a Christian, I go to such and such a church. I went forward, I accepted Jesus, you know, the usual formula. And yet nothing really changed, nothing down here, it’s all an outward profession.
And somehow, because of the deception of Satan, they are able to live out their lives, die, expect to go to heaven and find out only then that they’re not. What a tragedy. Jesus was asked on one occasion, are there few that be saved? Only a few people gonna be saved? Said, “Enter into the narrow gate. Many will try and not be able.”
Think about that. People who actually want to come to the Lord. There’s some part of them that wants to come, and yet they’re not really able to come God’s way. This is a serious matter.
And think about probably the worst, the most thought-provoking, heartrending example of all that we’ve used many times over the years. And it comes from the title of the ministry, the “Midnight Cry.” When Jesus used the custom, I think we mentioned this recently, but Jesus used the custom of these friends of the bridegroom, the maidens. Anyway, there were women that were literally to go out and meet the bridegroom, conduct him into the beginning of the whole ceremony.
And it was something that happened at night and so they needed light. And Jesus said five of them were wise and five were foolish. Well, what was the difference? They all had lamps. Everyone was there for the right purpose. Everyone even had a lamp. From the outside, everything looked valid, looked genuine. But when the time came, the foolish ones, they hadn’t taken any oil and there they were, unable to fulfill the purpose. They had everything on the outside, but they didn’t have what it took for that light to shine.
My God, what an amazing, and of course the worst thing about that was, it was too late at that point. That’s the sobering thing about this truth. You’ve got so many people that the devil has somehow been able to deceive in one way or another through false doctrine, you name it, or something in their lives that hasn’t ever been surrendered. The devil has been able to keep people in such darkness and such deception that they only find out when it’s too late.
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January 28, 2024 - No. 1634
“Solid Footing” Conclusion
Broadcast #1634
January 28, 2024
January 28, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1634 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: God has to shine the light on all kinds of things in us that just aren’t like Him. And you know, we need to be more than okay with that. We need to say, yes Lord, I know that I’m not like you in so many ways, and I’m not gonna cower in fear about that or think that that just, oh, that spoils the whole deal. I’m not bad. I’m not good. Guess what? That’s why we need a Savior.
But, oh, how patient, how patient He is. You know, the old song where He took six days to create the creation and, but God’s still working on me. Oh, how patient He must be. (laughs) God’s still working on me. It takes a lot more than six days to work on us, but oh, we’re the center of way, of His purpose is to bring forth a family that’s like Him.
You know, Paul prayed something that we’ve alluded to before. When he was writing to the Ephesians, he wanted three things for them. He wanted knowledge, he wanted understanding, and he wanted wisdom. Well, folks, we’re pretty ignorant when it comes to the things of God. And we would like to just come to God and think, oh, praise God, He’s accepted me, and He lives in me, and life is gonna be beautiful.
That’s not what the Bible says. That’s not what Jesus said. In the world, you will have trouble, but be it, but cheer up, take heart. I’ve overcome the world. So part of the knowledge is the knowledge of what God has to do, to do what He, to carry out this thing we call salvation. How can He just leave us in the condition we are and allow self to rule and call it salvation? Does He not have to show us things? Don’t we need to, the, don’t we need the knowledge of that fact?
That this is what salvation involves. We have, when we come to Him, we are handing our lives over to Him and saying, God, fix me, change me. Do whatever it takes so that I can be with you one day. Well, we need to live with that knowledge. That needs to be part of our thinking where we, that’s our worldview. That’s how we understand life.
And of course, understanding, so the knowledge is the “what.” The understanding gets into the question of “why.” Do you know why you need all this? Do we understand that? Do we get it? That there’s so much that’s not of Him, that’s not like Him, that He has to do something about it.
You know, if we know this, and if we understand the why, it’s a whole lot easier to come to the wisdom part. Because then we know, then we can say, okay, God, how do I handle this? You told me what you’re doing. You helped me to understand and to measure why, but now I need help, Lord. How do I actually deal with this in practice?
And then the Lord begins to teach us. Every time you come to a place where your nature wants to rise up and do its thing, you need to learn to bring it to Me. You need to come to Me from the depths of your heart and look to Me and believe actively that I will give you the strength.
Because every time our nature rises up, it presents us with a choice, doesn’t it? Will I simply cooperate with my old nature and find a way to justify that? Or will I say, God, I need your help. And then choose to access that help and choose to believe that He means it when He says He’s gonna help us?
That’s where we stop short. We think, oh, I’ve got to deserve His help. Get real. I need His help, because I’m helpless, and I don’t, I don’t deserve it. I’m broken. You know, like we said this morning, but oh, there He is to help me in my time of need. But oh, if I’m gonna have a relationship that, with God, that could be defined as peace, do I not need to be completely on board and have knowledge, wisdom, understanding, of what’s going on and be on board with it like Jesus was? Yeah.
I mean, here was Jesus. He didn’t have anything wrong with Him. And yet there He was. His whole being had been surrendered to the will and the purpose of the Father. He did it based on the love that we’ve, was read about this morning. That was the motivating factor.
And here we are called to be, to come into that relationship that’s full of peace. Folks, I don’t want to be at war with God. But how many of us find ourselves in that place, when we’re just complaining? I don’t like this, I don’t like that. Why does it have to be this way? Why do I, you know, why this, why that? And so many ways that the enemy can get into our minds and begin to mess with us.
And again, he knows how to push our buttons, doesn’t he? But if Satan is able to push our buttons, doesn’t that prove we got ‘em? We need to say, Lord, help me to understand how this is working, what’s going on here, and help me to meet that thing with truth and surrender whatever the issue is into your hands and agree with you. Let’s keep the peace here. Let me not get in a place where I’m really complaining against God.
That’s a weak place to be able to stand up to the devil, isn’t it? And how the Lord wants to share that same peace, incredibly, that incredibly resided in Him when He was facing the cross. Wow. God help us. But He is, and He loves us, and He wants to help us. That’s His whole heart, the love that was read about this morning. This is, this defines His relationship with us, and we need to believe it. We need to, we need to act like it’s really true, because it is. Praise God!
So anyway, that was the sense that I was getting out of this peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And the fact that it leads into the process by which God actively changes us, and we need His help, but we need to be absolutely in agreement with Him if we’re gonna have a solid standing and to be able to stand against the devil when he comes.
Otherwise, we’re gonna wind up joining the devil and fighting against God. How’s that work out? You know, we can get ourselves in a dark place, but may God give us that sense, when we wake up and we don’t feel good or something bad has happened, some, there’s some challenge that’s come to our lives, to be able to sit there and say, Lord, I’m in your hands. I’m trusting you, not just when the sun is shining, but when the wind is blowing and the storm is raging.
You know, there’s a line in a song that’s sung, I have peace in the raging storm. And we sing that in a, like it’s this wonderful, out there thing. And then how, what happens when we get in our storm though?
And the Lord has to send storms, doesn’t he? The only way that our old nature loses its power is when we get in a situation where it wants its way, but we know enough and God gives us the strength and the faith to call upon Him and to find the strength in Him to say, no. What happens? God’s life and nature gain a stronger hold in our lives and the other loses.
We’re talking about dying to something. It is not that the thing dies. It’s that we die to it. And it’s, and we stop listening to it, because now we recognize what’s going on, and we know that I don’t need to be, I don’t need to be ashamed, in one sense, I don’t need to be shocked and surprised at how terrible I, you know, all the terrible things I discover in myself. I don’t need to wallow in all that junk. I just need to say, Thank you Lord. Thank you for the light. Thank you for loving me enough to put me in a situation where I see the truth, but I can bring it to you and know that you love me just as much as on when I feel good on a good day.
Your love hasn’t changed a bit. In fact, this is an expression of your love. In a way, it’s a much more practical expression than just, oh, do I feel good today? Isn’t the Lord good? I thank God there’s times like that. But I wanna be in a position where I can thank Him. I can, my heart doesn’t get, the peace just doesn’t go away, because things don’t suit me in my flesh. I wanna be able to say, Lord, I love you. I thank you, I trust you.
You will keep in perfect peace, the one whose mind, whose heart, whichever it is, is steadfast, doesn’t change with the changing circumstances. Why? Because they trust. Do we really trust the Lord? We say we do. But when it comes to the practical everyday stuff that God has to do to change us, are we really trusting Him?
And I certainly, I’m conscious when I say that, more and more, that the Lord never tells us things like this to make us feel bad or condemn us, but to help us to understand and grow. Anybody here need to grow? Yes. Yeah. We all do. And the Lord is so merciful and faithful.
So, God’s gonna send battles. But boy, has He have given us a place to stand. Lord, I am 100% in harmony with You. And that’s, that gives me a solid place to stand.
Well, there’s so much more that you can say, but obviously, one thing that’s obvious is that this peace is not just simply a vertical quiet in the, in a cave kind of thing, is it? No. It’s just like, the love of God is meaningless if we don’t love one another. Okay? Well, the peace of God is the same way. If we’re gonna have, really have the peace of God, we’re gonna have to have a unity among ourselves where it’s not just a, hi, how are you doing? And (groans) you know? Under the surface, there’s this something going on.
And boy, does the devil, you think about, if you were the devil working, what would you do? How would you attack God’s people? Okay, now I got this thing with me and the Lord. We’re getting there. I’m learning. I’m learning to say, yes, quicker. There’s more of a peace there. Ooh, I gotta do something.
This is the devil talking. But I know some things about that person, and I know how to get things going with somebody else. I know how to provoke the feelings and bring up things that have happened and bring up things that are just different. And I don’t like this about that person. You know, that’s called human nature.
But if God can’t give us victory in that area, I mean, are we really standing on peace? If it’s just this quiet little peace when we’re alone, but we’re this constant strife when it comes to other people, is that really the peace that Christ came? Do you think that’s how He went around? Did you hear what Peter said about me? Look at that, I just don’t approve of the way they did that. I mean, in that kind of a spirit, you know what I’m talking about.
There was a time to speak truth in God’s Spirit, but that’s not what we’re talking about, is it? You know, I mean, you know the difference, if you’re at all honest. But I’ll tell you, God wants to bring His people to a place where there is a unity and there is a oneness that He blesses.
I’ll tell you, the devil is scared to death that God’s people will actually come to that kind of a place. He knows that the presence of God is powerful when people are at peace with one another and with God. Is that not what we need? I need it. Amen. And I pray that God will open our eyes and our hearts and give us the grace that we need to recognize issues that God wants to set us free from.
You know, we had a brother many years ago, I can’t remember his name now, somebody I’m sure can tell me. This goes back 50 years or more. And he would come mostly to our conventions, but every once in a while, he’d show up. Well, he had a saying that stuck. And if I can remember how he said it exactly, it says, “You are wrong, if you’re right, if your spirit is wrong.”
And you understand what he’s saying? We can be in a contention, if you will, about something that happened or your opinion, your feelings about something. You can have a debate, if you will, where you are convinced that you are in the right. You see it the way it’s supposed to be. The other person is just wrong.
Well, let’s suppose for a minute that, technically, you’re right. Okay? But if your spirit is wrong about it, you’re wrong. God is not so interested in technicalities of rightness as we determine it down here. God is looking for a spirit that is right. May God give us that kind of a heart, where we recognize, if there’s something in me against somebody and I tend to see them, I tend to react in a nonpeaceful way, non-loving way, is there not a need?
Do I dare to say, well, it’s their fault, if they would straighten up and change, everything would be good, because I’m right. Do you not see the problem with that? If my spirit isn’t right, then I’m not right. You remember this, the passage in Romans that we’ve used so many times about how we present ourselves as that living sacrifice, that corporate sacrifice, and then God begins the process of changing us by changing the way we think, leads straight into the body of Christ.
But then it goes into a lot of other issues. One of them is this. If it’s possible, to the extent it depends upon you, live at peace with everyone. Whoa, now you’re stepping on toes. I got that neighbor and, man, I don’t like him a little bit. Does that justify having an angry spirit toward them? Don’t we need to pray for people? Jesus said, Pray for your enemies. And there’s times we can stand up and speak the truth, but God help us to have a right spirit.
Yes. If the devil can move us off of that place where there is a reservoir of peace here, then we’re in a weak place. We’re in a vulnerable place. And God longs to take us to deeper ground, higher ground, I guess is the word. We have been called to a relationship that could be defined as the peace of Christ, where things that would divide us have been brought to the cross, where we stop blaming other people for things that we don’t like and start looking on the inside, where if there are things that we would like to change and would prefer they were different because of some personal feeling about it, we’re willing to say, Lord, they’re yours and I love them. I receive ‘em. They have to receive me too, and I’m imperfect.
Of course, we don’t stop and think about that half the time, do we? But may God help us to have that peace rule. Now, I know that this has been pointed out in the past, but that expression, let the peace of God rule, this is ruling like an umpire, ruling, like a, you know, the, I can’t even think what it is. What is it in basketball? Anyway, the referee. Yeah. Okay?
You know, they don’t, they, it’s not supposed to just go out there and slug it out and do whatever they please. There are rules, and you got a referee that can blow the whistle and raise his hand and stop the game and deal with a foul. You know, God has given us something in our hearts, if we’re His, that if we will learn to listen to it, we’ll get a pretty good idea of where things are at.
Now, yes, I know that our peace can be attacked and all of that. That’s another scripture that we’ve heard so many times. I’ll probably just refer to it, but that’s all right. But God help us to come to a place where we’re willing to look inside. And instead of looking out here and blaming and reacting and allowing the devil to push our buttons, we’ll say, Wait a minute. What’s this saying in here? This is what I need to go. Is the referee calling a foul here?
Now, of course we’d say, yeah, he’s calling it on them. (congregation laughing) No. If we don’t have peace in here, then there’s something that’s gone, going on in us that’s other than what the Lord wants. And He wants us to bring that to Him and change us so that we are the way we’re supposed to be.
We will never have unity by trying to straighten each other out in that kind of a sense. But the more we learn to humble ourselves before Him and look to Him, we’re gonna have a place to stand when the devil comes. We’re gonna be able to raise that shield. We’re gonna be able to do what we need to do and fight with that sword ‘cause we’ll have a conviction.
Then what comes out of our mouth will be the word of God as it was with Jesus, because that truth is in here, and the righteousness is here, and the peace is here. Now, we can stand and say, Devil, I’m standing. I believe God, and I’m standing on His word.’ And it’s written, by the way, praise God.
I guess the scripture that I, half of you have probably thought about by now is where Paul says, don’t be anxious, don’t be fearful. Isn’t that how the Lord, how the devil, rather, pushes buttons? I mean, think about it. If you were the devil, what would you do when you go to attack a Christian? You know things that bother them. You know things that they’re afraid about. So you’re gonna constantly throw thoughts in their minds about this and that and the other thing, try to get ‘em so absorbed in that they just, they’re just swallowed up by it.
They’re paralyzed spiritually, where the Lord tells us to stop, to bring them to Him in a way where we cast that upon Him. And what happens? The peace of God, which passes all understanding, exceeds it. It goes beyond what you can even, what you can even understand to figure out. It goes beyond that. What does it do? It keeps your hearts and your minds in Christ. Praise God!
I need that, don’t you? I need my heart. I need my mind, but I’m gonna have to be willing to go to Him in those times when I sense this, the attack of the enemy on my peace. Man, this is a pretty good indicator, isn’t it? What’s going on in here? God wants, do you think God wants His people to be, (groans) in a constant state of unrest and fear, anxiety, unbelief? God wants us to have that same rest, that peace that Jesus said.
Why did He say, I give you “my peace”? Do you think He was anxious and upset and worried about how things were gonna turn out? He knew. He knew, if I just trust my Father and do His thing exactly the way He wants it, He will help me to do it, and it, the result is gonna be worth everything.
But that’s true for us too, right here. God wants us to be so much His people, so much like Him, that He can begin to come in His presence in a deeper way. We can be what He wants us to be. We can stand in this hour, because we are standing against powers and principalities, but we have One in us that has already won the victory. He reigns over sin and death, and He is bringing us in to share in that victory.
He has not only raised us from the dead with Him, He’s seated us on a throne. Did you remember that? Ephesians 2. We don’t occupy a place of, oh, poor me. Oh, look at me. We have a place where we can come to Him and be cleansed and sit there on a throne and say, devil, I don’t have to listen to you. God has filled my heart with a peace, and I embrace that.
I refuse to allow you to divide me from people, to put something in my heart that’s gonna bring me down and create division. I refuse to do anything that’s gonna cause me to complain about what God does and what He’s, how He does things in my life. I know I trust Him. I trust Him with my eternal soul, I’m looking, well, it’s eternal now that He’s given us life. Nothing eternal about it otherwise, but anyway, praise God!
I’ll tell you, isn’t God good? Don’t we need this peace? Yes. Don’t we need to have our feet shod with that preparation, the readiness. This translation says, the readiness. Are we ready? Do we listen when the peace says, whoops, something’s going wrong here? Do we come to say, and say, The Lord, help me to understand right now what’s going on and help me to take the stand I need to take, and I know you’re gonna help me because you love me.
If Jesus went to the cross for us, is God gonna withhold anything else that we need? No. Of course He’s not. That’s what the scripture says. So we have every reason this morning to rejoice and just praise God for His goodness!
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January 21, 2024 - No. 1633
“Solid Footing” Part One
Broadcast #1633
January 21, 2024
January 21, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1633 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, I’m just gonna trust the Lord in weakness this morning, but I wanted to – and I believe this will certainly tie in with what’s been said and what’s been sung.
But you know, last week we kind of took a devil’s eye view of the Christian life and the warfare. In other words, how does the devil work on us and what, if he’s doing his job, what are his tricks and what do we need to be watching out for and be aware of, ‘cause part of knowing how to serve the Lord is realizing what the devil’s up to and how to be alert and aware and what to do to counter it.
And of course, we focused as a starting point on Paul’s words about the armor of God and how we need it all so that we could stand up to his strategies. And I think we realize, if you’ve known the Lord at all, the devil has been studying you and me all our lives and learning how to work on us, learning what our weaknesses are and how to use them against us to accomplish his purpose.
And we often use the expression about somebody “pushing your buttons.” Well, the devil, I believe, is the one who probably has installed those buttons. Having studied us and knowing, again, our weaknesses he’s learned how to provoke the reaction that he’s looking for in us.
And I believe in all my heart, the Lord wants us to be aware and learn how to stand up. I mean, he tells us to stand, doesn’t he? Tells us to be awake and alert. Well, it would be good if we understood the things that we need to know to be able to do that.
And when I first began to think about this, my mind went to two of the aspects of the armor. Obviously, truth is critical. We’ve gotta know what’s true. And this is a world that we live in that doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth. But anyway, we’ve talked about that before. If there’s no absolute truth, then the statement, there is no absolute truth, can’t be true. So it’s kind of a self-defeating idea, isn’t it? There is absolutely truth. And that truth has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ who declared, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me. So, the beginning point is knowing what is true.
And then we talked last week about righteousness, how that comes about, but also maintaining it, so that our relationship is free and right between us and God. And Satan is, as we are told in Revelation 12, the accuser of the brethren. That’s basically what he’s got to work with. He doesn’t have truth, but he knows how to lie. He knows how to accuse us.
And the very fact that we are still walking in these bodies of flesh and have weaknesses that God is working on, it was referred to, brother Doug was talking about that, he shows us things that are needful, but the very fact that we have those weaknesses and that we still are learning and “works in progress,” give him an opportunity, if we’ll listen, for him to accuse and for that accusation to turn into a place of weakness and vulnerability, where suddenly we’re not able to really, we’re not so sure of where we stand and what’s going on.
And the Lord wants us to come to that place where we know how we stand. We understand, number one, that we stand 100% because of what Jesus did and nothing to do with what we did. We have to abandon all hope and trust in ourselves if we’re ever gonna know what salvation is about, because we are the ones that we need to be rescued from. I don’t need to be rescued from other people and from mistakes and wipe out my mistakes and all is good. No, I need to be rescued from what I am, not just what I’ve done.
And that’s what salvation is about. It is a miracle. And it’s a miracle that I need, and you and I need it every single day. And then, of course, we talked about walking, learning to walk out that righteousness, and the fact that we’re gonna be learning all the way we go of how many things in us that don’t really, aren’t really an expression of his righteousness, but an expression of our own nature.
And rather than being discouraged or rather than the Lord shining the light on those things to discourage us, we need to understand that He’s shining the light to help us, so that we can immediately turn to Him and find the cleansing and forgiveness and the freedom. So the righteousness doesn’t have to be interrupted, if you will, by what we are and the mistakes that we make and the shortcomings that we find in ourselves.
Oh, I just pray that God will help me to get this, because we are so prone to see, to have the devil focus our attention on ourselves. And that seems to be the focus of our lives. Am I measuring up? Am I what I’m supposed to be…? And it goes on and on and on, when yes, we need to see ourselves. Yes, we need an honest heart that’s not afraid to look in the mirror, as it were, and see our need. But God never means to use the mirror to condemn. It’s always to deliver. It’s always to turn our attention from self to Christ and the cross and the blood that absolutely avails, so that we do not have to be separated.
We have this defense against all of Satan’s lies. And yes, we need to raise the shield of faith. We need to use the Word, all of those things. But we’ve got to have that basic protection. Because if I’m going into battle with the devil on my own merit, good luck with that. And I’ll tell you, people are living based upon what they are. They are in delusion. Satan’s lies have taken root in the mind and in the heart, and people are in strong delusion today if they don’t know Jesus Christ.
And I just pray that God will become so real to us that we will begin to… I mean, where the world is going this way, we will definitely go this way and stand together and learn how to stand in a world that hates God and is going the wrong way as fast as they can. So anyway, that’s kind of where we focused a little bit last week. And I’m just trusting the Lord to bring out what He wants.
But you know as I started to say, when I first began to think about the elements of the armor that the devil specifically attacks, one of them was righteousness, but the other one was peace. That’s pretty important, because we know that there is no way peace can happen on earth. Very simple. If everybody on earth is motivated by self-will, you automatically got a war going. You lock two people in a room, and sooner or later you’re gonna have a war. Because I want what I want and they want what they want.
And self will just makes this impossible to have ever have any kind of real peace on earth. People can have something that feels good for a little bit, but sooner or later the truth is gonna come out. And we know the prophet Isaiah, I believe, in more than one place that there is no peace to the wicked. That’s just simply a condition that the world is in.
But here we are called to have a peace, to experience a peace. It’s not just some theoretical theological truth, but it is something that you and I need to learn, need to be brought to a place where we experience that, and he likens peace to the footwear that we need to be in battle.
And, of course, you know the imagery that he was using, battle in those days was pretty much a one-on-one thing where people were hand-to-hand combat. And what kind of fighter would you be if your feet were not steady, you were standing in an uncertain place, or you had footwork that was kind of giving away and you didn’t have solid footwork, basically?
How many of you have solid footwork every day and the devil could never throw you off balance? Now I can’t lift my hand either. But you see, the Lord wants to bring us to a place where we learn more and more what His peace is about. Thank God.
There’s so many scriptures we’ve used in the past. I know a scripture that I used several years ago now, actually we had three different messages out of it. That’s rare. But the one in Isaiah 26 comes to mind. And it’s this one: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast. Why? Because they trust in you. God seeks to bring every one of us, not just to a salvation experience. We need that one. We need to have something that’s real, that needs to come a point where we have passed from death to life and we’re on the inside of the door, not the outside.
But having done that, God, as I say, wants to bring us to a place where peace is the characteristic of our heart. We’re not constantly upset and wondering, boy, the devil has all kinds of things he can do in a heart that’s just not at peace. And the first thing we’re gonna have to have is a peace in our relationship with God.
Think about the condition when He calls us to Himself. Are we not enemies? Folks, if we’re just born into this world following our nature, we are by definition enemies of God. We are absolutely opposed to His rule, His rightful rule, His purposes and creating us in the first place. And we need to be brought to a place of humility and surrender where we absolutely change sides from the world to Him. And there’s a peace that comes, and we recognize, now we’re on His side and we’re in harmony with Him. And our lives are meant to be brought into perfect harmony with His purpose.
And so you see, this perfect peace that God desires that every one of us have. I mentioned the original it’s peace-peace. And they, they express that as perfect peace. You’ll keep in peace-peace, those whose minds are steadfast. Does not steadfastness come up over and over again in our relationship with God and the need that we have to be able to stand against the devil?
We’re gonna have to have a mind that isn’t uncertain, And today I feel good, the next day I don’t feel good and I’m uncertain, I don’t know what’s going on. We need to have minds that are so fixed on the truth of God and the nature of our relationship with Him, that the devil just can’t get in there. We can stand, he can attack us, but we have the ability to stand, and does not Paul encourage us to, having done all to do what? – Stand. – Well, what am I standing on? I’m gonna have to be standing on a relationship with God that’s defined by peace. Peace is central to His nature.
Oh, I’ll tell you, do you think there’s gonna be any conflict in the new heavens of the new earth? You think people are gonna be fussing, I want this and I want that? None of that. That’s all gonna be gone. Every bit of that. We need to be delivered for it from it more here. Do you really think that God wants, it’s okay with God for us just to be fussing and fighting and upset all about this and about that all the time and just have something other than peace dwell in our hearts? Is that really what he wants for us? There’s no rest in that, is there?
You know, I think about what Jesus said, Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you, not as the world gives and so forth. I forget the rest of that, but it’s in John 14. Not as the world gives, but… But anyway. Don’t let your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid, is the rest of that.
But here is Jesus, and now, do you remember when this was spoken? Do you remember when he said that? It was the night he was arrested. It was early sometime in the evening when he was talking to his disciples. Later on that very night, in the early morning hours he was arrested, and all the events began to unfold. By the end of the day, he was in a tomb.
So, here’s Jesus saying, My peace I give you. How many of us would be peaceful, knowing what’s coming? It’s not just like this came out of the blue. He had been telling his disciples what he was there for, what was coming. And there he is saying, My peace I give you. Whoa. We have our ideas about what peace really is, and to a human being, peace is me feeling good and getting what I want, experiencing pleasing things, soft breezes and tropical, you know, whatever, all the imagery we conjure up where basically we’re pleased with ourselves and our surroundings, everything is going great.
But here’s Jesus facing the cross. What was it that gave him peace at a time like that? He was not there to do his thing. He wasn’t there to seek for some personal, selfish end for himself. He was there to lay down his life for everyone who’s sitting here this morning and everyone who hears this. He knew what the Father’s plan was. And he was so in harmony with that. It’s not like he could reluctantly say, I don’t like this, but I go along with it. It was, This is why I came. I’m here willingly.
And so there’s no war going on between me and him. I’m a hundred percent on board with everything that He says, everything that He has planned for me. But it’s not… That’s great. I’m so thankful for the peace that I can have in the middle of something that is horrendous from a human point of view. But I want you to have this, I want you to come into this kind of a relationship with God and His purpose, where it’s okay. However God plans it, however it works out, it’s more than okay. It’s what I want more than my own way.
Now, did that mean it was just easy? There was no war? There was a major war that happened right after that, when Jesus got in the garden and he prayed for three hours and the prayer was so intense, that there were, he sweat drops of blood. You know, it sounds like… Doesn’t it sound for a minute, like how is peace compatible with war? You’re talking about warfare and then now you’re talking about peace. How does that go together?
But the fact is, I have got to be in a place of peace with respect to God, His heart, His purpose. If I am going to take a stand against the forces of darkness and have any chance of prevailing and standing, I have got to know where I stand, and I’ve got to stand there. I’ve gotta agree with it. And that’s what Jesus was doing. He was looking for divine strength there. He came in knowing God’s purpose, but knowing he did not possess the strength in himself to do it. That’s what he was crying out for.
And yes, he said, Father, if there’s any other way? but that wasn’t a disagreement, that was just an honest question. But he said, nevertheless, Not my will, but yours be done. What happened at the end? What was the result of that at the end of that prayer? Angels came and did what? Strengthened him.
Folks, you and I need strength, don’t we? We need to have a position of peace with God and completely on board with His purposes. But there are times of battle when the devil will pour everything on in your heart and your mind and make you afraid about this and afraid about that, and What about this?, and This is terrible and He’s against you, and Look what you did and 1,001 lies and 1,001 darts that will come at us.
But God wants us to be in a position where we can stand fast in that and say, God, you know what my life’s purpose is. You know what it takes. And so I just surrender into Your will. We are going to have peace. Gonna be no conflict between You and me, and what I want and what You want. I am absolutely in Your hands.
But I also know that in order to do this, I got to have strength that I don’t have. And that’s what Doug was talking about. We don’t have what it takes, but we have a God who has promised us that by His, look at 2nd Peter, the beginning of it, by His divine power, He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That’d be a message sometime, everything we need. What an awesome expression that is.
So what do you and I need today? I need it all. And every time there’s a battle, every time there’s an attack of the enemy and I’ve called to stand, it’s a reminder that I have got to go to the throne of grace, I have got to have the strength that I need. But God is more than willing to give it to me. He doesn’t say, You messed up. You’re gonna have to do this on your own. He’s right there.
How many times have we pointed out the throne of grace? The first thing we get there is not grace. What is it? It’s mercy, isn’t it? We can go there freely to find mercy. That’s what I need. But then it goes to grace, that divine help that alone can carry me through the battle. Praise God! Praise God!
There’s so many scriptures I thought of, and I don’t want to get bogged down in one of ‘em, although, you know, sometimes that’s the Lord’s will. I mean, we had three messages on that one little passage. But I did think of a scripture that I think I can just mostly refer to. But anyway, if you wanna look it up as in Romans 5 that we’re very familiar with, ‘cause Paul is unlocking the gospel.
And what it’s really about, it’s not about obeying laws, it’s about God. Every human being being in the same condition. Not only have we sinned, but we fall short. This is an ongoing…. We have sinned and we fall short. So we need something that, we need a divine miracle again, like we’ve said. And so what we do, we, we are brought to a place where our hope, our trust is invested 100% in what Jesus did and what God has promised. And like Abraham, God says it, I believe it. That settles it. And I am putting myself in his hands and I’m trusting his promise.
And so Paul begins chapter five, Therefore, since we have been justified, that is made right in God’s eyes, we have been justified now through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
Boy, there’s a lot in that, isn’t there? How do we stand? By our own strength? No, we stand because God’s grace gives us. We have access, God has given us an access to divine power to be able to live for Him. That’s what he’s saying. I don’t have the power. Do you? But He gives it to us by mercy.
And His grace is certainly undeserved. That’s part of the meaning. But one thing that brought this back to my mind is the fact that some of the manuscripts, some of the ancient copies of this have a slightly altered version of the verb there. It doesn’t just say, we have peace. That’s true enough. That’s a simple statement of fact. We have peace.
But it says, let us have peace. Now you’ve moved it from simply a theological truth that we can look back and say, Yeah, that happened and now I’m now this is this case. But now God wants us to have this ongoing sense of peace with Him. Now think about what he’s talks about. Immediately he goes into the fact that God has to put us in a school where tribulation works patience and so on. All those wonderful scriptures that we all know and love.
But we know that in order for God to produce in us what He wants, we’re gonna have to come through a way that is challenging. Now, one of the other things that, I’ll just drop this in, one of the other things that Jesus said on that same occasion, right before he was crucified, he said, I’ve told you these things, so that in me you might have peace. In the world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.
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January 14, 2024 - No. 1632
“Satan’s Schemes” Conclusion
Broadcast #1632
January 14, 2024
January 14, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1632 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Scripture says, one follows his heart is a fool because the heart, man’s heart, is evil. The one we’re born with is evil. That’s why we need a new one. And God’s plan is to deal with all of these issues and to give us a full and complete salvation. Thank God!
It’s salvation too. It’s not a self-help program. It’s something where I have to give myself completely to Him and trust in His power to save me because I have none.
Oh, we’ve gotta have this sense that there is truth that we need to recognize. This is how it is, this is what God says and that trumps everything else. I don’t care how Satan packages it, makes it appealing, ‘cause folks, if there’s some part of your nature that has a hold on you, whether it’s a bodily lust or whether it’s pride or whether it’s trying to obtain something or gain a position in the eyes of others, Satan will pull on that and he will give you a rationale that will make it seem okay.
You know what a rationale is? You’ve already decided something, but now you gotta come up with a reason so it makes it seem okay, instead of it being rooted 100% in the truth. And God calls us to walk in the light, to walk in the truth. So that becomes the central thing right there. We’ve got to recognize there is such a thing as absolute truth and we need the Lord to reveal it to us and to give us a heart that surrenders to that truth. Even when, especially when it shows our own need. Praise God
But the second thing I think is where my mind went to more than any other, when I was thinking about all this. The belt of truth buckled around your waist, but with the breast breastplate of righteousness in place.
Now, what is righteousness about? Think about what that means. It means being right with God. It means God regarding us as right with Him. Sin has absolutely built an impenetrable barrier between us and God, impenetrable to us. All you have to do is go back to the, to what the Lord showed Isaiah, who all of his experience was down here and he thought of some people as good and some people as evil and all of that.
And then all of a sudden the Lord captures him up and he sees the Lord, high, lifted up, utter purity. In one moment He knew the truth about, not just about the Lord, but about himself, didn’t he? Oh my God, if we’re gonna walk in truth, we’re gonna have to see that as a starting point.
But here is the situation God is dealing with. He is determined and has purposed and will successfully call a people out of this and make them fit to live in a place like that. Do you need the Lord? Oh my. That’s the only hope that I have. You can come here and be faithful and sing all the songs all your life and miss out completely on this. We need the Lord to do a saving work and to give us an understanding of righteousness.
So, what’s the Lord’s plan in this? We find out, and Satan certainly is better, knows this better than a whole lot of professing Christians, that when Jesus died, he paid it all. Once for all he died for those that God is calling into His kingdom. When he laid down his life, he went there in my place. That gives God the freedom to have punished my sin in him.
And when I come to Him with an open repentant heart, He has the power, the right to blot out all of my guilt, to remove the barrier that separates me from Him. I think the devil knows far better than we do, that salvation and God’s purpose is all about a relationship, an open, pure, free relationship between us and a holy God.
Okay, well if you’re the devil, what are you gonna be doing? You gotta undermine that somehow, don’t you? And so plan A is to undermine that idea, to so focus on being the accuser of the brothers that you focus the person’s attention on their need. And somehow it just can’t quite be applicable to me. Oh, this is wonderful for brother and sister so-and-so, but poor old me. Look at me, I’m such a, I’m so bad that I could never….
And somehow he undermines the confidence, the ability to let go and let God have his way in this, to understand that God meant what he said, that we have that right and that privilege of calling upon Him. Now, we don’t call upon Him saying, I’ll try harder. We are coming to get a righteousness that we did not earn, could never deserve.
But it means putting our lives 100% in His hands, saying, God, you are gonna have to fix what’s wrong with me. And what’s wrong with me needs not just fixing, it needs replacing. I need a new heart and a new life. And I just give myself, I humble myself in your hands. We talked about that, you know, humbling ourselves in the mighty hand of God. This is involved in that.
But oh, the devil is gonna do everything in his mind, in his power to come to an individual and blind them to the reality of this truth, at least as it applies to them. And you know, one of the best ways, one of the best tools he has, you know, I can just see the devil saying, you know, we knew how to handle it when God came to Moses and then tried to pass all that knowledge and that revelation on to God’s people. Look how we fixed that.
Yes, I know there was a whole lot of idolatry along the way, but there were still people that were so married to that law that we knew we had to do something. God wanted a relationship. And so the way we’ve got to fix that is we’ve got to turn that into a self-righteous effort. We’ve got to corrupt the message so that people don’t understand how the relationship is meant to happen.
And you call it legalism. And you’ve got a lot of churches who have devolved into a system where I have got to measure up, here’s what God expects of me. And I am constantly falling short and repenting and then trying harder and trying, you know, falling short and repenting and that’s my life. But I gotta do it because that’s what He expects. Yeah, I think you’re the only one.
But do you see the work of Satan in that? Do you see how he is corrupting the message? There’s no question what God wants and what holiness really is about. That’s not the issue, but the how do you get there is the issue.
And so here’s Satan saying, I have got to undermine the gospel. I’ve got to attack this person. In some cases, you have a person who has never really come to faith, but some people have really come to faith. God has a remnant of people who actually know Him, but they’ve fallen under the influence of people who sound good because they’re talking about the holiness of God and all these things but they don’t really have the gospel. They don’t understand God’s plan and how it works.
And so here’s the devil, undermining. My God, do we need a revelation of the finished work of Christ? Do we realize that if there is a genuine heart repentance and faith in His saving power, that we can stand before Him as if we had never sinned? It takes a divine work in the heart to come to that place where we can be His and know that we’re His, know that we’re accepted in the Beloved. He who knew no sin became, was made sin for us. Why? So that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
Now, one interesting thing about that, that we might become, that’s again, that is that Greek present tense. So it’s in one sense we have a standing before God that is secure but yet become the righteousness of God tells you that there is a process that follows that, okay?
And the devil has all kinds of ways of trying to get somebody who has maybe come to that place. Yes, I believe in the finished work of Christ. I believe that when Jesus died, he took the law with him. We’re not under the law anymore. Praise God, we’re under grace.
Oh my God, the devil says, what am I gonna do now? They believe in the finished work of Christ. I’ve gotta come up with something. I know what. I will use the, “it’s all taken care of” doctrine. Anybody ever heard that one? Because now I can work on a person who has weaknesses. They can look in the word and say, nowhere does it say I’m gonna be perfect, but it’s all taken care of. All of my sin has been put on him. Therefore, God understands. I can just, I mean, I’ll stay outta something that’s gross. I won’t go out and murder people or rob banks, but you know, God understands that what I’m made of and He’s already taken care of it.
So pretty soon, without meaning to, the devil can take somebody whose particular weaknesses he has nurtured and somehow create a justification where it’s okay. God help us. Is that what Jesus died for? You know, we have been set free, but why? Have we been set free so that we can now be free to give vent to our nature? Oh, but it’s a small private little thing. It is not hurting anybody. I mean, nobody knows where I go on the internet and the stuff that I look at and the things I think about, that’s just all being, it’s private.
And the devil’s sitting there feeding, feeding all these things that he’s cultivated in us, the weaknesses that we all have, every one of us. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. But he’s sitting there, I’ve got to keep feeding this. And right now they’ve got this idea. They understand that Jesus paid it all, but now I’ve got to somehow keep my hold on them. Alright, let’s come up with a rationale that makes that seem fine.
And this is the one where it’s all been taken care of at the cross. So I can just, I’ll do the best I can. I’ll say I’m sorry when I’m done, but basically I’m allowing something to go on in my life. That’s what it boils down to. So you got one person who’s living for, supposedly for the Lord, but yet they’re allowing things.
And, I’ll tell you, when does the devil come to you most readily? When does he succeed with you most readily? When you’re sitting here in the congregation and the Lord is present? Or is it when you’re off by yourself? You might even be in the wrong place or around the wrong people. Or you’re tired, man, you’re worn out.
There’ve been a lot of battles in history where somebody, some one particular army just came in and won a great victory. What did they do afterwards? They went and had a party. And how many times have they wound up being the ones defeated because they weren’t watching. They were giving vent to their night, to their nature, and letting down their guard because they had just come off a great high victory.
How many times, how many people, I won’t ask you for a raise of hands, I wonder how many of us have come through a time when it’s been a time of battle or a time of victory, a time of, you know, being around the Lord and things, you know, going His way. And then you ever had the devil come to you right then and kind of steer you back into ways of thinking and doing that aren’t good? Yeah, I certainly have.
You think the Lord wants us to become more aware of those things and experience more of His victory? Do you think the righteousness that He’s talking about is just this legal standing that I have before God? Or does He actually want to produce real righteousness? And if so, how?
You know, you still got this legalism, like I said, where someone can come to the place where, yes, I know I’m the Lord’s, but oh God, I gotta live up to it. And all of a sudden it becomes saved by grace and kept by works. How’s that work out for you?
You know, you read again, you read Romans seven, you discover how Paul learned the hard way, it doesn’t work if I try to serve God. I don’t care how zealous I am to keep God’s law. It ain’t happening because I got something in here that just won’t let me. Oh God, who’s gonna set me free? Who’s gonna deliver me from this body of death?
And that’s when he realized that’s not God’s plan. It was never God’s plan just to save us, wipe out our sin debt, and give us a ticket to heaven and then say, go for it and just try to live for me, ‘cause it’s all taken care of, don’t worry.
But here’s Paul saying, it matters that I serve God, but I can’t seem to do it. How is this supposed to work? And then he realizes the righteousness of the law, the righteousness of the law, the purpose that was intended for in the first place is fulfilled in me. Ah, how does that happen? “Who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
Wouldn’t it be a good prayer to say, Lord, please shine the light, shine the light. Show me where the devil is getting an advantage over me. Show me how to recognize him and what to do and how to defeat him. That’s a pretty good description of the Christian life, folks. Walking in the light. But walking in the light, that’s terrible because that’s gonna show all the bad stuff in me and then I’m gonna feel bad. That sound like the way the devil would have us react to that?
So he recognizes that truth. He says, I got to do something. I gotta undermine that somehow so that people are just afraid to walk in that light because I need light that’s gonna show my need. I need to have an honest heart that says, Lord, I know I need you. You know everything that’s lacking in me. That’s why you saved me. You gave me the certificate, if you will, of righteousness, but now you’re working to actually make it happen.
And I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even know what’s wrong with me, let alone have the power to do anything about it. But I know You do. And I don’t want anything to come between us in this process. I want to just walk with You, be willing for You to shine the light wherever it needs to be shined, rest in that knowledge and that truth, not be anxious.
Oh my God, I should have, you know. You see how the devil’s going to, comes in so many different ways to undermine all of this. When God wants that person just to walk with Him, and then we discover something that’s wrong. Now what? “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.”
Now is that just sort of an automatic thing? There’s actually a part that we play. And that’s where he goes into at the end of that passage. “If we confess”…. Again, what does confessing mean? Is it just admitting? It’s an agreement with God.
You see here, somebody’s walking in the light wanting to experience His righteousness, knowing that they don’t have any power, not afraid to face the truth. Oh, the devil’s getting scared when he sees all this begin to happen. He’s terrified because he knows what’s real. We’re the ones who misunderstand and listen to his little suggestions that kind of undermines this in one way or another.
But we’re walking in that, we’re wanting Him to show us our needs and then to help us with them. And that’s going to involve us coming short. That’s what a need is, if I’m less than He wants me to be, is that not a sin? Is that not something that’s wrong? Does that not need help?
So, what do I do? I go right back to the cross. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Oh, but I messed up. I have got to get it straight before I can face Him again. Where does that thought come from? You see how the devil just, he’s gonna be sitting, he’s gonna be parked out there desperately trying to undermine every little thing that happens in our lives. And all God wants is this free open relationship.
We first of all, trust him with our soul. We depend on the cleansing power of what happened at the cross, we stand on that foundation, we’ve got righteousness right here. It’s not just what happened then, but it’s what He’s doing in me right now. And yes, there are things that are gonna come up that we haven’t got there to the future yet, but that’s in His hands. I don’t have to worry about that. I just walk with Him right now, let Him deal with what He’s dealing with right now and grow and be honest with Him.
And when there’s something that’s wrong, I bring it. I don’t wait. I bring it right to Him right then. And the fellowship never has to be broken. Can’t you just hear the devil screaming when a child of God wakes up and realizes such simple truth and begins to walk in it?
But I’ll tell you what, I pray that God will, God will help us with these things, help me. And not to feel condemned because I’m not down the road somewhere. And not to worry about the past or be out with this person or that person, just to say, Lord, here I am, I’m in Your hands. You know what I need, and I know I’m confident in Your love because You called me knowing what I am.
I don’t have to produce righteousness. What I need to do is learn how to submit to Yours and trust You to give me the strength and the knowledge and the wisdom to be able to recognize the enemy when he starts talking to me, when he starts maneuvering me to go down that street and I’m not ready. When he puts me in with these people, and I start listening to their way of thinking and their way of doing stuff, to help me to recognize what’s going on, recognize the voice of the enemy. See beyond the outward circumstances and see a sneaky enemy that isn’t always going to mount an outward offensive. He’s gonna try to sneak in that back door every weak place that we have.
But we can walk with Him with confidence because of the cross, because of His promise to walk with us to the end of the road, because His promise that we can walk in the light in a place of fellowship acceptance with Him. But He counts us as a righteousness, as Jesus himself. Praise God!
Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all learned these things to the point where they became the operating principle of our lives? Anybody here need Him this morning? Well, He’s available and He longs to walk with every one of us and teach us how to recognize the tricks of the enemy and to be able to stand against them and say, wait a minute. I understand what righteousness means. I’ve got this. You can’t get to me, devil. You can accuse me all you want, but I have an answer for every accusation. I know I need a Savior, but I got one. Praise God!
And I’m looking forward to standing with beside Him one day, not because I deserve it, not because of anything I’ve ever done, but because I just put myself in His hands and let Him save me. And I walked with Him and He was faithful. Praise God!
May God help us to recognize Satan’s devices, schemes, and learn how to stand against them. Learn how to recognize them as the biggest thing, I think, and understand how he works so that we can more effectively stand our ground. And the Lord’s gonna help us, isn’t he? Praise God!
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January 7, 2024 - No. 1631
“Satan’s Schemes” Part One
Broadcast #1631
January 7, 2024
January 7, 2024
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1631 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: You know, I’ve had some thoughts come to me, and I’m just gonna trust the Lord with them this morning. My mind went to a, basically, a phrase that came out of something that Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers in 2 Corinthians, and I’m just gonna use it as a kind of a kickoff point.
It’s evident from the context that the church there had had to deal with something in a particular person that was very serious, morally, whatever it was. They had to really, you know, deal with it very plainly. And I don’t know what form of discipline they, whether they dis-fellowshipped the guy or whatever it was, but whatever had happened in between 1 and 2 Corinthians, the person had repented.
And so Paul was concerned that, you know, we need to know how to move forward here. We can’t just sit there and let this situation hang. You can’t just sit there and look at this brother like a second-class brother, and, you know. There was a certain amount of fallout and the sense of, where do we go from here? And so, this is in, he encourages them to encourage the brother, to receive him, to love him, to forgive him. And Paul says, I’m right there with you, I forgive him. Let’s put this in the past and move forward.
Isn’t that a good thing? The devil really loves to cause us to cling to the past and just stay there. And, you know, you feel discouraged because of what you were, or what something had happened or something that somebody did to you. And you know, God help us, we need to leave the past in the past, learn how to lay it at the cross and start every morning fresh and new with the Lord. Wouldn’t that be a good idea? Yeah, God wants to set us free.
Of course, we know the devil has other plans. And so, in the context of this, Paul says, I have, in verse, where is this someplace in verse 11-ish, somewhere near there, I have forgiven in the name of Christ, and the sight of Christ, for your sake, in order, now for what purpose? Why is this important? “In order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.”
And you know, I’ve thought about this because, you know, we’ve had a lot of emphasis at times recently about being awake and alert and all of that, and because the devil is a roaring lion, we know the scripture pictures him in one place as a dragon who deceives the whole world, and sometimes it’s easy to think of him in this sense of an open onslaught of some kind. There’s an attack that’s coming from out here, and it’s just, you know, it’s a forward attack. But I think God wants us to realize in a deeper way and learn a little bit more about the enemy.
You know, when you’re going to war, now we got a lot of military folks. I’m not one of ‘em, but, you know, if you are at war, and you’re going to war with an enemy, don’t you think it’s a good idea that you learn something about the enemy? Yeah, you don’t just charge off and grab your weapons and go to war, you wanna study as much as you can, learn as much as you can about them. What’s their motivation? How do they operate? What are their weaknesses? What are their strengths? How can we use this information to our advantage so we can accomplish what we want to in the war?
And you know, I was thinking about this in the context of dealing with the devil and all of his influences in our lives. It’s wonderful to have this idea, I need to be alert for the devil, But if we don’t know how he operates, if we don’t understand his tactics, and what makes him tick, you know, there’s gonna be times that he sneaks up. and he’ll pull something, and we’re not even aware what’s going on behind the scenes.
We need to realize, again, like we’ve said so many times, that we’re not living in just the world that we detect with our senses. There is a spiritual kingdom around us that is devoted to undermining everything that God says and everything that He does. And we are in a war against him every single day on a personal level, on a level of an assembly.
And there are things that he wants to do. And Paul was concerned here that the devil could continue to stir the feelings up that came from this circumstance, and keep on trying to divide the people, and just basically interfere with the presence of Christ.
You know, Burton read the other night from Psalm 133 about the blessedness of people who dwell together in unity. Well, do you see how in this instance, the devil would’ve used things that had happened to create, to continue to create a sense of division in the people?
And so that was the issue here, but the thing that drew me to it was the fact that Satan is not just, doesn’t mount just frontal assaults. But he has a lot of tricky behind-the-scenes ways of working on us, and I believe God wants to shine the light in our lives in deeper ways, don’t you believe that? Don’t you believe that God wants us to understand?
I mean, suppose you are defending your house. And you got the whole family geared up to watch that front door. Nobody’s getting in here. But what happens if the back door’s unlocked? And I think in more ways than we realize, we’ve got back doors in our lives that God wants us to be more aware of, and just, you know, be more alert and more knowledgeable as Christians.
You know, as I thought about this, I don’t know, Lord, have to help me with this ‘cause I thought about looking at all a lot of this from the devil’s point of view. Some of you may have read, a few of you may have read, what was it, the book by C.S. Lewis, “Screwtape Letters.” Few, I’ve heard one yell, and see a couple of heads nodding. And you remember what it was? It was kind of a fictional story, but it was meant to shine light on human nature and our vulnerabilities, the openness that exists in human lives because of sin, because of our separation from God.
And the premise of the book, I won’t spend a lot of time, but the premise of the book was a demon, or a devil who was experienced was writing an exchange of letters with a junior devil, who was trying to learn his trade as how to attempt and undermine human beings. And so they’re going back and forth, and it’s the discussion of human nature. And says, Here’s something you need to know about human nature, here’s how you get to ‘em.
Don’t you realize? Don’t we realize that there we have an enemy who has studied us? Their assignment, their nature drives them to do everything they can to learn everything they can about us and our vulnerabilities. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if we kind of knew more about them so that we could be more ready? Certainly not a point of fearfulness, but rather of our ability to be alert and of sober mind.
Because sober mind doesn’t just blow off everything and think, I can just skate along, I’m smart enough, I’m good enough. My God, do we need Him? As soon as you start down that road, you’ve already walked onto the devil’s territory, without realizing it. And I think God wants to teach us, and grow us up in this area so that we can overcome. ‘Cause here, Paul was saying, We’re not ignorant. We’re not unaware of Satan’s schemes.
You have that same expression over in Ephesians 6, where the schemes of Satan are referred to, Paul talks about the warfare, and so forth, is where that scripture so many times. But it says, “Finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power put on the full armor of God.” Why? “So that you can take your stand.” It doesn’t say against the devil’s frontal assault, it would include that, but rather his “schemes.”
God wants us to be so alert and walking with Him in such a way that when the Satan tries to slip up on us, we can know it, detect it, and learn how to take our stand and overcome. Anybody here need this? Yeah, I sure do.
Now, just think about this from the devil’s point of view. You know, let’s take a spirit who’s been around all this time through human history. And there was a time when he could look around and say, Well, you know, we’ve got a whole world. I know my existence is, you know, there’s a judgment coming, but that’s way down the line. My existence now is trying to, trying to gratify my nature and my desires through human, flesh and blood human beings.
And I see the world as just a great big smorgasbord, a great big cafeteria. You got people out here that don’t have a clue. All they’re doing, their whole world is what they can see and taste and touch, they got earthly desires. Man, I’ve got 1,000,001 ways that I can get hold of them and use them and make my home in them in many cases. And so let’s just go to town. Let’s just analyze each person and find out what makes them tick, what’s important to them, and all we have to do is tempt them. They’re blind, they’re separated from God, let’s go to it.
And that’s pretty much the way the world was, wasn’t it? And it looked like from their point of view, man, we got this world, you know, conquered. We serve somebody who has deceived the whole world, and this whole world is his kingdom. He rules over it. Of course, I know that pesky old God, He interferes every now and then. And we don’t like that much. And we know there’s something coming, we just don’t know what it is, but right now, we’re enjoying ourselves.
And boy, you know, when I get through with this one person that I’m living in and I get all my desires satisfied, and I use them up, guess what? They die and they go on, but I get to move to the next generation. And I probably got somebody in their family that’s learned their ways, is like them, you know, has learned how to see the world through their eyes. I’ve already conditioned them, and I can just simply step out of them and move into their life and take them over, and it just goes from generation to generation. Man, life is good. Obviously, you know, I’m talking from the devil’s point of view here.
(laughs)
And then. Oh, I remember that day, though, when I was, some of my friends and I were hanging out in a region called Galilee, and we were having a blast just living our lives, and living through people, and making them do all kinds of stupid stuff, foolish stuff, sorry about that. And there they were, and so, and here we were just minding our own business, all of a sudden somebody comes and we recognize him.
Oh my God, I know who that is, that’s Jesus, the son of God! Have you come to torment us? Leave us alone. Go away, Jesus, we know who you are. And of course, Jesus would come along and drive them right out, and all of a sudden they’d have to go find someplace else, somebody else to mess with. But you know, basically still, the great amount of the population was still in a position where the devil just had open season. All he had to do was appeal to human nature, in some fashion, find the weakness, and just move in and gratify his evil nature through human flesh.
That’s what this world is about. Folks, that’s what this present age is about. My God, we need to be alert and awake and aware, as we never have. Well then, of course, Jesus, they began to mount all kinds of opposition against Jesus. We gotta stir up these religious leaders. We already got them in our pocket. They don’t know it. They think they’re serving God, but we know better. We’ve actually taken all of the things that God showed them, and we’ve brought it down to a nice comfortable religion where people feel good about themselves, they feel righteous in God’s eyes because of what they do, and they look down on other people, man, we got them in our back pocket. So, we need to get rid of this Jesus. We need to do whatever he’s got planned. We gotta get rid of him.
And so of course they did, without realizing that that was God’s plan. (laughs) And so they had the big party. Man, we gotta party, because we just put him in a grave. We insulted him, we abused him, we ridiculed him, and there we have the victory, man, it was our day, and we were rejoicing, until three days later. All of a sudden he bursts forth from that grave, and there’s not a devil in hell that could keep him in there. Oh, my God. What’s happened?
And all of a sudden they realized. His plan is the one. This is the plan he’s carried out. This is why He came. Now He’s in a position to do something, to reach out to men who are helpless and lost, have no hope in this world. People that were just totally vulnerable to our rule and reign. And here we are, and here’s this Jesus. And not only has he come forth from the grave, he’s ascended to a throne. And then we’ve got all these people that are left behind, and all they’re doing is waiting, and we gotta come up with a plan, we gotta do something.
And then, the power of God’s Spirit comes down upon the people on the day of Pentecost. And they’re standing there in the temple, I’ll debate that with you if you want sometime. But they’re standing there in the temple. And all of a sudden the power of God shakes the place. And His power, His Spirit rests upon these ordinary people, fishermen, some of ‘em. Tax collector. And there they are.
And suddenly the one who was the biggest failure steps up. Something’s changed. What’s going on? We had this guy licked, we had him beat. We would put him on the sidelines. He thought he was done. And now here he is, the very one who’s standing up with power and declaring that Jesus says, Lord, the salvation has come.
You’ve stood, you’ve taken your place. People are listening. You’ve taken your place against God. You killed his anointed. There, and His plan is, is something that’s, and you’re on the opposite side. His plan is in motion. You’re His enemies. Oh my God, what do we do?
And so you know the story of how God, God spoke through Peter. “Repent, be baptized every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus for the remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And on that day, 3000 people escaped Satan’s clutches and his kingdom. Praise God!
And the devils are sitting there, Oh my God, we gotta do something! And then day by day goes on, and people are coming to the Lord, and they have that occasion when Peter heals the cripple at the temple and has a tremendous opportunity to preach the word. We’re gonna do something, let’s arrest him. Threaten him. And they do.
And the people call on God and they say, look, finally, we know that what’s unfolding is your plan. Give us courage to stand against this. The enemy is mounting. You see, the devil’s just reacting. We’ve got to oppose this by every means possible. And so God pours out his Spirit and there’s, for a while there’s nothing much they can do.
But you know, you see the demon’s just doing everything in their power, and God begins to allow them to persecute, to oppose openly. And so people have to stand up. And there were some that, like Stephen and James the Apostle who were killed. And others were scattered. And all the things that happened. We all know the story.
But do you see the hand of Satan? Of course, obviously at this point, he is doing everything in his power to oppose, this is a frontal assault, we’ve got to attack these people, get them to give all this up. We gotta defeat them. And it didn’t work, did it? Because God gave His people the courage to die if necessary.
That’s how real, that’s how real this has to be. That’s how real the kingdom of God has to be, that our lives in this world cease to be worth hanging onto if it means giving Him up. And so God had a people.
And you can see how the devils would get together and say, Man, we gotta do something. We’ll keep up the pressure. Because that affects some people. They’ll give up. I mean, we see that there are people who kind of come on, and they like some of the ideas, they like the idea of forgiveness of sins and going to heaven one day, but they haven’t really, really given their hearts to it. And they’re just trying to take on this stuff that makes them feel better. But they’ve never really, really received His Spirit, never had that changed heart on the inside. We can get rid of some of them if we’ll just put the pressure on.
I mean, you remember Jesus words about those that were with the seed that landed on the shallow soil. When persecution arose, they were outta there. But time went along. And still, there was a reality in hearts of people. Can you see what the devil would be trying to do? We’ve got to somehow undermine the message itself. We’ve gotta introduce false doctrine.
You remember our master was tempting Jesus, and Jesus came back at him with the word, didn’t he? Satan tempted him with, you know, you’re hungry, make bread if you’re the son of God. And he said, it’s written, man shall not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
And the devil says, aha, this is somebody who knows the word and goes by the word. I better use the word if I’m gonna get to him. And so he used the word. But he twisted it, didn’t he?
And so the devil, one of the devil’s main tactics early on in the church in the New Testament was to begin to introduce false doctrine. He would take something that was true, but he’d take it out of its context and away from its original purpose, and suddenly it would be something that would divide people. that would bring people into a place of ignorance and a place of vulnerability to their power.
My God! God wants us to have such a grasp of His word in balance, so that we can stand, and we can recognize every trick of the enemy. I’ll guarantee there’s people right here, right now, that Satan has more influence and more hold in our lives than he should. And God wants to set his people free, starting with me. I need to be set free from his lies, from his tricks, things that he plants in my mind and my heart, because he’s studied me all my life. He knows my weaknesses. He knows how to get to me. And I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God Who is faithful to His people.
And let’s just, I thought about using Ephesians 6. We’ve obviously gone through this from many points of view, but this is from the devil’s point of view now, remember? So we’re talking about the devil’s schemes. So our struggle, of course, he says, as we’ve often pointed out, is “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Okay?
So your problem is not people. If you got a problem with somebody, you better recognize there’s something behind that. That’s the real issue. The devil will come at you and at me in every possible angle, using every possible tactic, based upon our weaknesses. I don’t know. You could obviously spend a lot of time and many messages exploring this kind of subject about how the devil works, basically what it’s about. But I feel like I want to get to one particular area that’s very important. Alright?
“Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the evil day,” not if, but “when the evil day or day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand. Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist.”
Has there ever been a time in the history of humanity when truth has been under attack? Here we are. There’s no such thing as truth to a lot of our culture. More and more of our culture does not see absolute truth as anything to be concerned about. There’s no such thing. I got my truth. You got your truth. We got what appeals to us and what seems right to us, and it’s all good. And don’t you dare suggest otherwise, otherwise, you are the bad guy. And I am tolerant of everybody who agrees with me. That’s the spirit behind so much of what you see out there. I’m very tolerant. And if you don’t agree with me, you’re intolerant.
Well, (laughs) we need to realize, and God’s people and young people growing up today, because you’re exposed to all this culture. You’re exposed to things that are far worse than we grew up with. And you got people that, you know, and Satan will plant people in your path and in your life who will try to plant in you a relativism where there is no absolute truth. You need to follow your heart.
Well, scripture says, one follows his heart is a fool. Because the heart, man’s heart is evil. The one we’re born with is evil. That’s why we need a new one. And God’s plan is to deal with all of these issues, and to give us a full and complete salvation. Thank God!
It’s salvation too, it’s not a self-help program. It’s something where I have to give myself completely to Him and trust in His power to save me because I have none.
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December 31, 2023 - No. 1630
All Music
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December 24, 2023 - No. 1629
“True Humility” Conclusion
Broadcast #1629
December 24, 2023
December 24, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1629 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: He didn’t go around and hobnob with all the important people. And just sort of, you know, push all these unimportant people aside. The very people that he sought out were the least likely for any other human being to have any association with.
What about the woman at the well? Boy, if there’s hope for the woman at the well, there’s hope for anybody. How many times has that been pointed out? Here was a woman who, in the first place, she was a Samaritan, so the Jews didn’t have anything to do with them. They would despise them, look down on them. Half breeds, little bit of Jewish tradition to them, but a little bit of heathenism. Just a different people, they’re not part of us. They’re not one of us, we’re God’s people and they’re not.
So Jesus goes over there. But not only that, this woman was immoral to the point where her own society shunned her, had nothing to do with her. And in that culture, the very fact that she was a woman by herself would put her in a place where no respectable man would want to even be associated with her, to talk to her. But Jesus, led by the Father, what was happening came straight from the heart of God who saw a woman that He loved and cared about.
You wanna know what humility is about? That’s it. Jesus humbled Himself to talk to that woman, to bring her to a place where she acknowledged her need. But He didn’t take that need and rub her nose in it. He came down with a message, not of condemnation but of hope, of mercy, of love, to the point where when she was done with that she ran to her people and told ‘em all about it. And He stayed there for three days with the people. You talk about humility, that’s a pretty good example of it, isn’t it?
And what about the woman taken in the act of adultery? And all those religious people ready to stone her? Didn’t pay any attention to the man involved, which they should have, if they were gonna really follow the law. But there she was utterly caught in sin, despised, every reason in the world to shun such a person. Why should I, somebody of my importance, associate myself with that?
But He did, didn’t He? He said, woman, where are your accusers? After He’d finished writing on the ground and they all left. He had said, let him that is without sin cast the first stone. Talk about divine mercy and wisdom. And He looked up and nobody was gone. Said, where are your accusers? Has no one accused you? No, no one Lord. Said, neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.
Do you want to know what true humility is about? It’s that spirit of mercy that reaches down to that which is the, considered the dregs of humanity, the worst of the worst, and yet to have such a heart of compassion that you’re more concerned at that moment with them than you.
We’re not exactly like that, are we? And yet, this is exactly what Paul was talking about, wasn’t it? This is what the exhortation that God was giving through Paul had everything to do with what I’m talking about. The Creator of the universe was now standing in Palestine meeting with ordinary people, going after them.
And what about taking a special trip, through a storm no less, across the Sea of Galilee, because there was a maniac over there that nobody could do anything with and he lived at the tombs, didn’t wear any clothes. Nobody could bind him, nobody could do anything with him. But God in His mercy came down and focused His divine attention upon that man that nobody else thought anything of, except, just get rid of that guy. What could we do with him? How do we deal with this? And yet, God in His love and mercy reached down to that man and drove those spirits out and set him free.
Over and over and over again we see that same heart that reaches out in what is true humility. You know, you could go through the whole gospels and you see how He reached for lepers, the 10 lepers that He told to go. And while they went, they were cleansed and one returned. What did it say about him? Who was the one who returned, what was he? He was a Samaritan, wasn’t he? Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah, so there was an extra emphasis on it. This is the probably the least likely guy that you would pay any attention to. And he’s the one who came back and said, thank you. Praise God!
What does that begin to tell you about God’s heart and what our heart needs to be? What is the message of Christ coming down? I started to say that God’s, that the humility there was in Christ was toward God, which is right toward his Father but it was for us, that was the focus, that was the purpose. I’m humbling myself before Him, but I am doing it for you. Everything I’m doing is not to advance me and make me something. It’s so that I can help you. My entire life, the purpose of my existence at this point is what I can do for you and not for me.
That’s the heart of divine nature. You know, we describe it as love and that’s one word. But love in action, humility’s a pretty good word, isn’t it? It’s when I value somebody else more than I value myself. And you talk about somebody who, like I say, by every earthly measure, this is somebody who, why would somebody that important, why would the figure who sat in that temple that Isaiah witnessed, why would somebody like that pay any attention to us?
But He did and that’s the hope and that’s the message. That’s why we can rejoice, not just in His birth, but the whole reason that He came. ‘cause it says, and being found, in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death.
Now again, we tend to think, oh I’m humbling myself to God and His purpose. No, He humbled Himself so that He can help us. That’s why He humbled himself. ‘cause I know what’s gonna come from this. I will gladly lay down my life. It’s worth the cost that I have to pay because of what I can do for people who otherwise have no hope. Praise God! – Amen. – Praise God. – Amen. – Praise God!
He humbled Himself, how? By becoming 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 acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.”
There’s so many scriptures that I thought about in connection with this. And I don’t want to try to go everywhere preaching the gospel, but I want to get the thoughts across that the Lord I believe laid upon my heart. And I can’t find it here. Yeah, one of ‘em is in Hebrews chapter two. Because we see God’s purpose we see a lot about how he carries it out, okay?
See God’s purpose was not just to have a son it was to have a family. It was to involve not just His son Jesus, but to involve an entire company, entire family. So He says in verse 10 of chapter 2 of Hebrews, well, let’s go back to 9, what do we see? “We see Jesus who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor.” Why? “Because He suffered death so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.”
How did He do what He did, by the way? – [Member] By the grace of God. – By the grace of God, yeah. He needed a lot of divine strength there, like we do. In “bringing many sons and daughters to glory.” There’s the purpose. Does that involve anybody here this morning? Praise God! Has God heart toward you to bring you to a place of glory one day where we stand there shining like the sun, not because of anything in us, but because of His purpose, because of His mercy, because of His grace. – [Member] Praise God. – Praise God!
But what did it take to make that happen? “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God for whom and through whom everything exists should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered.” Think about that. When the purpose of God to build a family and here’s the son of God who’s already created the universe, already been this amazing figure that angels would fly around and just be overwhelmed with His amazing power and glory. But yet, according to this scripture, He wasn’t still perfect, He wasn’t still complete. It was something lacking.
Does that sound crazy? That’s what it says. He was made perfect or complete through what He suffered. It was something that God was doing in Him. Does it sound like you and I need the same thing, maybe? – [Member] Amen. – Amen. – Does this make some sense out of what we read in the scriptures where we are being conformed to the image of His son? – [Member] Amen. – That He might be the firstborn among many brethren or brothers and sisters.
You see what God is doing in us? He’s working in us, the same thing, He already did that in His son, His own son had to come that way. Had to learn obedience by the things He suffered it says in another place in Hebrews. There were things that He learned by being here, going through, standing for God and standing for truth in the face of a broken world. – [Member] Amen. – Living in a body that didn’t wanna do it, didn’t wanna cooperate.
He came this way and He did it, not so that He could be somebody, but so that you and I could. That’s why He came into this world. You talk about the ultimate example of humility. There it is, wow.
Now here’s something else that’s amazing. All right, both the One who makes people holy, That’s Him, that’s Jesus. Both the One who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. Okay, so what’s the consequence of that? “So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”
Give me a break. But that’s what it says! You think about you in your worst moment. All that’s lacking in us, all that God still has to work out and has to help us with. And there’s Jesus saying, that’s my brother, that’s my sister. At our worst moment, I mean, when we’re ashamed. When we are ashamed.
And it’s good that we can be ashamed when we need to be. We don’t need to live there, we have a place we can go and have that be dealt with. But in that moment He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. He knows what we’re going through. He knows how to save us completely. He knows to pray for us when we need it.
Does that sound like somebody who’s so important or self-absorbed and it’s “all about me?” When it comes to Him, it’s all about us. It is 100% about us. That is what He’s doing. God gave Him the job of building the church, of bringing it to glory, bringing many sons and daughters to glory. And that is what? 24/7 that is His absolute focus, the focus of His existence.
My God, is that just a little bit different than how life works down here? Every once in a while you might, I mean you’ll see somebody that’s important. maybe a politician. And they’ll come down and hobnob with the poor folks. And I’m afraid far too many times all they’re after is the vote and the photo op, it’s not real. I’ll leave to open the possibility that there’s some sincerity here and there. But, I mean, what a contrast there is.
Oh God, help me to be more like that. God, I have no chance. How can I even think like that? I wasn’t wired that way. But that’s where Jesus comes in. When God birthed this first creation He did it through His son. When Jesus went to the cross He became the embodiment of that corrupted creation and God poured out His judgment upon His son. There was a sentence that was passed upon this creation. You’re gonna live for this world? You’re living for something that God’s already sentenced to destruction.
But when Jesus came forth from the tomb a new creation was born. – [Member] Amen. – All He had to do is keep speaking. And that’s what He does. He speaks His word into human hearts today and all down through the ages, He has spoken His word. Just like He said, let there be light. He said, let there be, that’s what Paul said, isn’t it? The same one who said, let there be light spoke to my heart, gave the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And he said, if anyone is in Christ, he’s what? – [Member] A new creation. – A new creation. There’s a new creation happening under our noses. Of course, if you’re the Lord’s it is under your nose, I guess. All right, no foolishness or not too much anyway!
But oh, what an amazing thing that God is doing. And one day, on God’s schedule, we’re gonna see all of this be burned up. And all that’s gonna be left is the brand new creation. And the life of that creation is God’s life. That’s what He’s sharing with you and with me. If your heart is willing, He will birth you and you will, it’s not just Jesus that’ll be His child, His son, every one of us can call Him Father.
Everyone who opens their heart and says, yes, I’ve turned from my own way. I put my faith in your power to save me. Jesus is my Lord, I confess Him. I’ll tell you, there’s something that happens in a heart that’s willing to do that, God will absolutely come in and they will be a birth that happens. And you will absolutely have, He’s not just this God out there somewhere but he becomes Father, He’s my father.
And then He goes to work, doesn’t He? You know, one of my favorite scriptures, I guess, in Philippians follows this. Here’s Paul telling us what God desires. He wants us to have a humility that causes us to value others above ourselves. Then he uses Jesus as the ultimate example.
Then he follows this with therefore, meaning look in view of what I have just said, therefore, verse 12 of chapter two, “My dear friends as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
So Paul doesn’t just tell him what to do. He tells him how to do it. Say, we come to God, He works. He does something supernatural in here. So now what, what am I supposed to do with that? I’m supposed to put that into action. I’m supposed to learn how to take what He has given me and put it into action so that now I can begin to fulfill His purpose for me.
I think the thing that struck me the most about this simple truth though of true humility and the fact that Jesus is the ultimate example and as the perfect expression of God, the Father in it, that humility comes from the throne. But it’s this, I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what little you think of yourself. I don’t care the depth of your need. Jesus, the very one that we’ve been talking about, who spoke the world’s into existence, cares about you today, He came down. That’s the reason He was born. That’s the reason He did what He did because He cares about you.
And it’s got to come down to something very, very personal. It’s wonderful to sing about what Jesus did in this general thing, but it has to come down to this, Jesus came to this Earth because of you. Because of you and you and me. The depth of my need, my situation was utterly hopeless. But He didn’t just throw up His hands and say, who cares about them? They’re nobody anyway.
It’s true in one way, we are nothing. But in the heart and the valuation and the mind of God, we are of inestimable value. Because He made us and He made us to love Him to live with Him, to possess eternal life. Don’t ever say I’m worthless, I’m nobody. Don’t ever look in the mirror and become negative and focus upon yourself and all your lack. Focus on the one who came, who was willing to be born out of the womb of a virgin, to live a humble life, to reach out to the lowest of the low in his day, and then to go to a cross.
And He did every bit of that with you in mind and your need. Praise God, praise God! Praise God, talk about somebody who’s worthy of our worship, worthy of our lives, to give them to Him and to give Him all the glory and the praise. And then for Him to say, I’m not ashamed of them. I died to save them, and I’m gonna bring them through. They just put their lives in my hands, I can handle it.
Oh God, help us to become more like Him, to understand what that means because that has everything to do with our relationships with one another. If we are the center of our own little universe, that’s a pretty sad package. But the Lord wants us to have His heart, to where we are so concerned with walking together and caring about people. And if somebody comes in who’s the worst of the worst, we can reach out in love and mercy just like He does. Because we’re all the same.
I mean, you think about what we are. Think about what we are in this little world, and then think about that amazing, amazing Son of God that reigns in glory. Oh, and that He would absolutely say that the hairs of your head are numbered. And when you go, you comb and some of them come out, He keeps track of that too. Wow, it just boggles the mind. But I just worship Him this morning. – [Members] Amen.
I want to trust Him, I wanna believe Him. I want to see my own life and my own value, not in a prideful way, because if I’m gonna try to create value out of myself in some human way, that’s just fantasy. That’s vain deceit. I’m fooling myself. But if I can see myself through the cross and through what it cost Him to bring me into union with the Father, to share His life, to call me brother, oh my God, what an amazing, amazing thing that is!
How worthy He is of all of our praise and all of our whatever, whatever we got. But that also makes me somebody, not pridefully, but it makes me of value to Him because of what He paid, the price He paid. Oh, praise God!
I just pray that God will give everyone here the grace to understand what He’s been trying to convey this morning in spite of me, but just the amazing awesomeness of what humility really is about. That here is ultimately the God of all gods. The very one who dwells in light, that’s unapproachable, immortal, invisible, no one’s ever seen Him, and yet this is His heart toward you this morning.
And He wants you to know that. And He wants you in spite of who you are and where you’re at and what you’ve done and whatever other circumstances might come into your mind that the devil would love to plant there, He wants you to come to him through his son and through what He’s done, hand your life over to Him with joy, with gratitude, and then say, God, go to work. Work in me and then help me to work that out and just to grow up. Just like your son had to learn by being here. We use our time here to learn and to grow into what we will become. To God be the glory, to God be the glory. This is what true humility is about. To Him alone be the glory, praise God!
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December 17, 2023 - No. 1628
“True Humility” Part One
Broadcast #1628
December 17, 2023
December 17, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1628 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, praise God! Good to see everybody this morning. And obviously this is a time of year when much of the world is conscious, at least in some measure with Christmas and with the birth of Christ. Obviously, Santa Claus gets a lot of licks in there too, but I’m thankful for that truth of what God has done for us.
And I’ve had some thoughts and I’m just praying the Lord will take my weakness, which I’ve got bookoos of, and help me to share a thought this morning that really gripped my mind and my heart. And I believe there’s something in it, not just as a doctrinal thing, but as something that really should make a difference in our lives.
There’s a word that we are familiar with and we see repeated in the scriptures many times, and it’s an exhortation to humility. And that doesn’t sound like it at first, it has anything to do with Christmas, but I believe it does more than we realize.
You know, when we think of humility or being humble, in the first place, oftentimes we are thinking in terms of somebody who is more important than we are, somebody who perhaps has a position of authority and we need to, you know, somehow humble ourselves and submit our wills a little bit and not just fight against that.
And that’s certainly an aspect of it that is absolutely true, and it has its place. God wants us to not have this assertive, self-willed human spirit that comes from human nature. Every one of us have our own desires, our own self-will that just longs for expression. And obviously if we are in a position where we’re under somebody, there is that part of us that fights against that and wants to.
But there’s an aspect of humility that I think God wants to emphasize to me and to all of us this morning. And one good way to introduce it would be to turn to Philippians, chapter two. And let’s just begin there with a familiar scripture. But there is an expression in there that is really, I think, crucial to our understanding of what God desires out of us.
Anyway, Paul is exhorting the believers there, and he says, “Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.”
Yeah, think about that. Have you ever thought about humility in that sense? It’s not just, I’m supposed to be humble unto this person and I’m, you know…. A lot of times there can be self-will in that and self-interest. If you’re around somebody important and you know in your own self-interest you need to kind of kowtow to them and a lot of times it’s an act. But boy, there’s no act involved here. This is something that God is looking to build into the character of his people.
And there’s a reason for that. It’s because it comes from His own nature. And that’s what’s the amazing thing that just really gripped me as I thought about this. Here he’s telling us, first of all, this is a virtue that I want to see from you.
One way that people react is self-will and self-seeking and looking for a way to advance myself. Selfish ambition, vain conceit, what’s that? You got ideas about your own importance, but they’re just fantasy. It’s a vain, it doesn’t make any sense.
Now you think about Isaiah, when he met the Lord, I know he had ideas probably naturally that he was somebody in God’s order of things and then he saw the Lord and that kind of changed his perspective just a little bit. And I’ll tell you, all we would have to do is get one glimpse of God’s glory and all of our self importance would vanish in a puff of smoke. And we’d see ourselves as we truly are. Thank God, the amazing thing is that He sees value in us and loves us in spite of all of that.
But anyway, so here’s Paul. And under the inspiration of God’s Spirit, calling on them to have a humility. And what does that humility result in? How does it cause us to think and therefore act in accordance with that thinking? Value others, rather, value others above yourselves. Now, there he is not just talking about submitting to somebody up here, but he’s talking about a horizontal thing that can have all kinds of ramifications in life.
You know, one of them you see in some of the epistles where one of the writers will say, you know, suppose somebody comes in, they’re dressed in fancy clothes, and if somebody else comes in and they’re obviously down, you know, down in a bad place and they’re poor and they’re nobody, no importance in the world, you know, would you say to the fancy guy or the guy dressed up in fancy clothes, “Here, sit in this honored place,” and the other guy, “Yeah, you sit over there on the floor?”
See, there’s something wrong with that. We’re not valuing others. We’re not seeing people as God sees them. And so here we are in a place where it’s not just what I do with respect to authority over me, but it’s what I do even with respect to people that the world would see as beneath me. And yet God calls on me to have a humble spirit and to value them above ourselves. That’s amazing, isn’t it?
Okay. So how does Paul want to illustrate this? Is he just gonna go out in society and give these kind of earthly examples? How does he do it? He says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” Now he’s using Jesus as an example of humility, of what genuine, what real humility is about. Here’s Jesus Christ as the prime example of humility.
And bear in mind that Jesus Christ was a perfect expression of the Father. So we’re talking about humility, not just as a human virtue that we need to recognize was above us, but rather it is God’s own heart. You wanna know Who the most humble being in the universe is? It’s God himself. That sound crazy? Am I way off here this morning? There’s a depth to this that I believe God wants us to see in a special measure this morning.
Now again, think about, of course, he says, “Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” You know, the world or many people at least are celebrating the birth of Jesus. And many times we’re just looking at the human aspect of that and we’re rejoicing and here he is, he’s walked among us and people got to know him and all that.
But let’s talk about who this is that actually came. I mean, who is this? Who was it? April, the other night mentioned in prayer meeting, she was drawing attention to the fact that in the garden, there was, you know, Adam and Eve and the Lord came down and walked with them. But who was that? Whenever we see a divine figure in scripture, who is it that we’re talking about? Who are we talking about? Yeah, we’re talking about Jesus the son.
How do you know that, by the way? That’s it. Because no one, that God himself is a spirit. He is immortal, He is invisible. No one has ever seen Him. No one ever can see Him. So how do we know anything about him? Because Jesus Christ is the express image of the invisible God. So if we’ve seen him — Jesus said, Who’s ever seen me has seen the Father. He is the one who perfectly represents the Father.
And so when God set out to create this present creation, how did He do it? He did it through His son, didn’t hHe? So who was it? When we had the words recorded, “Let there be light,” who said that? Yeah, the son of God uttered those words. And you know, you go to the fourth day of creation and you see, I believe that’s the day they had the sun and the moon and described them and all that. And He created the stars also. And look at what the scientists are discovering about the immensity of the universe, the number of stars.
Just think for a minute who this was that was walking around with a couple of naked people who didn’t realize they were naked at the time. I mean, you talk about humility, you talk about valuing somebody that, by every human measure of this corrupt world, that makes no sense at all. Why would somebody that incredible be walking with them and showing an interest in them?
And then he gives Adam the charge to name the animals. And he goes by and whatever Adam called ‘em, that’s what they were. There he is completely involved in them and their welfare and their future and all of that. And he gave them instruction, which they sadly didn’t follow.
So what happened when they sinned? Immediately their eyes were open, they were ashamed, yes. But when God came calling, when the Lord came calling, and again, who’s this? When Jesus came calling in the garden and said, Where are you? They weren’t looking for him. They were trying to hide out of shame. Did that stop him from being interested in them? It didn’t, did it?
You think of the heart of God that was expressed in this being who could spit out stars and galaxies, this incredible being who’s walking down there and walking in the garden and saying, “Adam, where are you?” And then he just doesn’t wipe ‘em out. I’m disgusted with you, this is all over. This was a mistake. Why should somebody as important as I am be interested in you? None of that, was there? He made perfect and complete provision for them to be able to go forward. Yes, there were consequences. We’re still suffering them today, but there was a heart that was still reaching out. My God!
And you see other manifestations of the son of God as people encountered him, of course. Was it Moses who encountered him in a burning bush? He didn’t see a figure then, but there he was. And coming right down, Moses, take off your shoes. You’re standing on holy ground. He wanted him to know, wanted him to respect his person. But yet there he was coming down.
Why did he come? Because he had heard the cry of slaves and he remembered his promise. What an amazing, I mean, and the people, the way they turned out, he knew all about that. And yet there he was reaching out, coming down, a person of such immense glory and power coming down to rescue and to pay attention to people like us. That’s incredible! You talk about what real humility’s about, that’s the picture of it, isn’t it?
And other times when he met with Moses, but the one I referred to a while ago was the one that’s so striking, and that was in Isaiah six when the Lord, when God caught Isaiah up into a high place and he saw the Lord high and lifted up. Again, who was he seeing? This was Jesus. This was the son of God. He wasn’t named Jesus yet, that came later. But this was the son of God. This was the same one who’d been the creator, who’d walked with Adam in the garden, Adam and Eve, walked and talked with Moses, and now there he was.
And all of a sudden, the prophet got a whole different perspective on everything. And his first reaction was, Oh God, I have no hope here. No way can I fit in with this scene. I’m undone. Oh God, help me. But what was the Lord’s attitude in this? Remember, it was the Lord that brought him there. Did he bring him there to wring him out and tell him to straighten up and fly right? Or did he bring him there to show him mercy, to give him a commission?
And yes, there was a need. Absolutely there was a need. But the Lord focused on the need. There was a coal that was applied to his lips and said, I’ve cleansed you. What a heart! What a heart that we have of this one that we’re talking about being born, his heart toward us. Why was somebody that’s way up there, the top of the heap? I mean, God made him the ruler over all of creation and there he is. Why would he pay attention to somebody like me?
You wanna know what real humility is? That’s somebody who’s putting my interests, unworthy, utterly unworthy that I am and yours even above his own. He’s making those his whole interest, his whole focus. And so there he is, and we see the anointing upon the prophets and all that God had unfolded.
And then you see this one, as Paul said, although he was in the form of God, I think what the original words say, though he was in the form of God, yet he didn’t hang on to that. He came down and was willing to be born. Now you think about that. You think about the power of God coming upon a young woman and a single little cell that you’d had to take a microscope to see. And there’s the one who said, “Let there be light,” who created the stars. And he came down and at that moment, he was a single cell in a woman’s womb. Why would he do that? Why would somebody so important, so great come down?
You wanna know what humility is? He came down because that was the only answer. That was the only answer for my need and yours. He came down in such mercy and such grace. And the cell split and then it split again, it split again. And this little fetus grew and there he was, the creator of the universe, living in a mother’s womb, came out as a little baby, had to be taken care of, just like some of you have to take care and like we’ve all been taken care of, and all the usual stuff that goes with that.
And there he was and he grew. And, you know, one place that says specifically, he humbled himself to his parents or he submitted to his parents. Was subject to them, I think is the language. That’s a pretty good lesson, isn’t it? It’s what humility’s about. You know, when we humble ourselves to things that God puts us in the middle of, who are we really humbling ourselves to? Yeah, we’re humbling ourselves to Him.
And He’s seeking through that to reproduce His nature in us because we’re not humble. Oh, we got so much pride that wants to rise up and be somebody and be something. But oh, what freedom there is in just being what God made us. You know, embracing humility is not saying, I’m worthless. It’s just saying God has a better way for me to live and to relate to others than it all being about me. Oh God, set us free from that.
And so we see him living a normal life by all accounts. You know, you have the one incident where he was talking with the scholars in the temple and they were amazed and all of that. But I mean, other than that, until he was 30 years old, he was just living an ordinary life, building furniture, whatever the carpenter did in that time. And there he was just, you know, one of the guys going to the synagogue every week and, you know, obviously an unusual man in other respects, but there wasn’t any power about him. He just was a man among men.
Why would somebody that important? That’s the thing. Don’t ever forget who this is and how he made himself known in the Old Testament. Remember who this is that’s coming down and walking and living the life that you and I live, knowing what it’s like to live in this world. Oh my God!
And then, you know, finally comes the time. And you know, we would, by human measurement, expect somebody that important to come down with a chariot, with thunder, with power, with glory, and say, I’m the Lord. I’m the ruler of the universe. You need to bow down to me and straighten up. He would’ve come with some great fanfare.
Didn’t do that, did he? He just came, submitted himself to John who had a ministry ahead of him. I mean, just stepping right into the role that the Father had designed for him. And so, yes, he was submitted. I mean, the part of the humility that he had was, I’m here to do his will, not mine. So there’s a form of genuine humility, isn’t there?
But how did that humility express itself? He didn’t go around and hobnob with all the important people and just sort of, you know, push all these unimportant people aside. The very people that he sought out were the least likely for any other human being to have any association with.
What about the woman at the well? Boy, if there’s hope for the woman at the well, there’s hope for anybody. How many times has that been pointed out? Here was a woman who, in the first place, she was a Samaritan, so the Jews didn’t have anything to do with them. They would despise them, look down on them. Half breeds. Little bit of Jewish tradition to them, but a little bit of heathenism. There’s just a different people. They’re not part of us. They’re not one of us. We’re God’s people, they’re not.
So Jesus goes over there, but not only that, this woman was immoral to the point where her own society shunned her, had nothing to do with her. And in that culture, the very fact that she was a woman by herself would put her in a place where no respectable man would want to even be associated with her, to talk to her. But Jesus, led by the Father, what was happening came straight from the heart of God who saw a woman that he loved and cared about.
You wanna know what humility is about? That’s it. Jesus humbled himself to talk to that woman, to bring her to a place where she acknowledged her need, but he didn’t take that need and rub her nose in it. He came down with a message, not of condemnation, but of hope, of mercy, of love, to the point where when she was done with that, she ran to her people and told ‘em all about it. And he stayed there for three days with the people. You talk about humility, that’s a pretty good example of it, isn’t it?
And what about the woman taken in the act of adultery and all those religious people ready to stone her? Didn’t pay attention to the man involved, which they should have if they were gonna really follow the law. But there she was utterly caught in sin, despised, every reason in the world to shun such a person. Why should I, somebody of my importance, associate myself with that?
But he did, didn’t he? He said, Woman, where are your accusers? After he’d finished writing on the ground and they all left, he had said, “Let him who’s without sin cast the first stone.” Talk about divine mercy and wisdom. And he looked up and nobody was gone. Says, Where are your accusers? Has no one accused you? No, no one, Lord. Said, Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.
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December 10, 2023 - No. 1627
“Growing in Faith” Conclusion
Broadcast #1627
December 10, 2023
December 10, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1627 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Faith without works is dead, being alone. What good is it to say that I believe but it never is translated into action? God just doesn’t want us to come in here on Sunday morning and sing nice songs and, and declare our faith. He does want that, but this has to be translated into what we do this afternoon and tonight and tomorrow and the next day and in the battles that God places before us because he will place them.
He is going to bring us… If He’s gonna have a people that are able to stand in this hour, we’re gonna have to learn on the field of battle how to stand, aren’t we? We’re gonna have to have a faith that is ready to stand in this battle and that battle and the other one and stand on behalf of one another too.
You know, part of what we read in First Peter Five has to do with resisting or being alert for the devil and so forth. He wants to go around and eat people basically, whom resist, firm in the faith, steadfast in the faith, depending on the translation.
There has to come a place where we not only recognize what’s going on, but we are standing and we’re saying, No, devil, I don’t believe you. I believe God. I am trusting my life into His hands. His purpose is the one that is going to prevail in this circumstance. If the Lord allows you to kill me, praise God, I know where I’m going because Jesus has already taken hold of my life. He’s given me a life that you can’t kill.
All the forces of hell tried to keep Him in that grave and not one of them could prevail. He came forth and the devils ran, screaming. They stopped their three-day party and they went screaming into the night. My God, it’s all over. Our greatest… What looked to be our greatest final victory turns out to be our absolute defeat.
Thank God for what happened at the cross in the resurrection. The battle was won. Satan was paraded in defeat. But God wants everyone here to know that the same power that brought Jesus out from the dead is the power that He operates in our lives through. It’s the one that He offers to us so that we can share in what He has given to us.
I don’t have it in myself. God has lots of ways to show me that, to remind me of that. Does He not with you as well? Do we not come regularly to a place where we suddenly see what’s lacking in us? I’m so glad God is faithful. I’m so glad He wants to take me to a better place where faith is stronger.
What a wonderful thing it was for Jesus, the example, to go through his day looking to his Father, walking with Him, seeking His wisdom, always letting his Father know, I’m here to do Your will, not mine. I don’t know what to do, Lord, father. Show me what to do. And acting on that and believing that the God Who gave him that wisdom and that direction was gonna make it happen. And it didn’t matter what the devil threw at him, he was gonna go and just do it and be at rest in peace.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of a rest and a confidence in our heart? I need that. And as I say, God is gonna give us circumstances that will absolutely bring that to pass in our hearts. There’s so many things that could be said and I’m just, again, I’m just looking to the Lord as to where the focus needs to be.
But obviously, faith is… First of all, it has to be there. If somebody, if you have opened your heart and Christ has come in, you’ve got faith. The problem is that we don’t live by that faith to the degree that we need to. And God, like I say, is going to bring us into circumstances where we’re gonna have a choice.
You know, we had a message, oh, I forget how many, just a few years ago now, called Facts Versus Faith. You remember that? And how many times God will bring you to a situation and it has brought his people to situations where the facts are clear. If you go by every earthly indication, there is no possible answer for that situation. But then God says something different. Now, which are we going to go by? The facts or the faith?
Abraham was brought to that place, wasn’t he? He was brought to a place where there was no possible answer, no possible way on a human level that God’s promise could be fulfilled. His wife was 90 years old, long past the age of childbearing. Abraham himself was what? 99, something like that? And there they were. And yet God said, I’m gonna come in a year. You’re gonna have a son. That’s the one that I’m looking for. What did he do? Which did he go by? Every, every earthly consideration, the facts of the matter dictated this cannot happen. But God said. Do you not know? Do we not know that God can do anything? God’s not limited. I’ll tell you, whatever He declares outta his mouth, it’s gonna happen.
You know, I had this picture of the Lord at the beginning saying, Let there be light. Whoops, that didn’t work. Let me see if I… (laughing) Maybe I didn’t hold my mouth right. Let there be light. No. Do you think that’s how it is with God? He is all powerful. When He says something, it happens. I wanna be one of those that says, Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for your promises.
If we’re sensitive to him… I’m not talking about trying to use God to make my earthly life better. I’m talking about that place of humility where I’m in His hands and I want His plan, I want His will. I’m committed to that. When I ask for wisdom, I’m committed to that wisdom before I know what it is. I mean, how can we say we have faith in Him if we’re waiting on Him to, as we say, lay His cards on the table, and then we decide. We’re just saying, I’m my own God. Let’s negotiate.
There ain’t no negotiating. I’ll tell you, if we really trust in Him and put our faith in Him, everything is laid on the line and we say, God, just tell me what to do. And by faith, I’m gonna step out. I’m not gonna just sit here and say I believe. I’m not gonna stew in my mind with all the fear and all the anxiety and all the trying, the earthly figuring. I’m just gonna say, God, You do what You’re gonna do. You are on the throne and I am trusting in You.
I thought of this in one sense, so many scriptures and examples that God has given us in the word that bear on this. Obviously one of them is David and Goliath. We’ve heard the account so many times. But here was David brought to a place where God was going to bring him out and make him, you know, begin to move him toward the throne and make him a public figure. Everybody would know.
And there he was coming to the battle and there was this nine-foot-nine-inch champion challenging the Israelites to man-to-man combat and that’s gonna determine the course of the war. Now that’s a pretty tall order for someone just to march in there unprepared. And so that’s how the army was. They were just scared to death every time he came out.
David got there and said, What’s the problem? This isn’t an earthly battle. David, in the first place, he saw beyond just the earthly, didn’t he? He realized these were the heathen gods inspiring these people, but we serve the living God. We serve the One Who’s on the throne. This is not an earthly battle here. This is His battle.
Now, how in the world could David say such a thing? It was faith, obviously, but do you not see how God prepared him for that hour? God just didn’t suddenly throw him in the deep end of the pool and say, Now let’s do something heroic here. God knows where we’re at. God knows where you’re at. He’s not upset with us. He knows that we’re in that place.
Jesus commented on their faith and the need for more faith through his disciples. But it wasn’t in a tone of disgust. Do you think it was? God, what’s the matter with you? I don’t think it was that way at all. Rather, it was just pointing out the need and reminding them, God has put us in a situation in this storm in that one instance where we’re gonna have to trust what God said rather than what we are seeing and experiencing in the natural realm.
But you remember how the Lord brought David to that place and got him ready? Yeah. I remember one time, you know, lions and tigers and bear… There’s no tiger in this one, this story. But David’s job was keeping the sheep and there was a faithfulness in it, but David just didn’t sit out there and twiddle his thumbs and keep the sheep. There was a relationship going on. He was looking to God and he was learning how to worship God. He was getting to know God using that time that he had to learn how to be a good shepherd, a faithful shepherd.
And the Lord said, You know, I want to use him down here. I’ve got a job. I’ve got a time when I want to really demonstrate Who I am, not just to the Philistines, not to the rest of Israel, but to the nations. They’re going to hear about this one. And I want to use him in a very special way, but he’s not ready.
And so the Lord sent a bear and now David has got some facts to deal with. That bear’s bigger than I am and he’s hungry. What am I gonna do? And the Lord gave him the faith to deal with the bear. So, he had “bear faith” at that point. He had what he needed to meet that particular need because there was a willingness to look to God and to keep doing what he knew he was supposed to do. Realizing, I can’t do this on my own strength, but God’s with me. God’s given me this job so I’m going to do what I know is right and I’m trusting God to give me the strength to do it. He doesn’t go into that kind of detail but can you not see that that’s what’s going on? And so there he was and he dealt with the bear.
And the Lord said, Praise God, that’s good. And He said, But I still need to give him another lesson. And that’s when he sent the lion out and the same thing happened. He literally took that lion by the beard. Anybody here ready to do that? (audience muttering)
Yeah, we can read about it and say, isn’t that great? But you know, there are situations God is gonna put you and me in where that’s about what has to happen. God give us the faith and the strength to be able to rise up and say, This is not the earthly battle. This is God’s battle. This is not just circumstances and people coming at me. The Lord has allowed the devil to come. There’s an inspiration behind what’s going on here and it is an attack when the devil is trying to take me down and work in me and discourage me and sidetrack me cause me to try to rely on myself. What are we gonna do?
Well, David learned in the battle in the field of real circumstance. He had faith, but he took action based upon that faith and God backed him up. And so when Goliath came, he was ready. There’s probably some Goliaths coming, aren’t there? Don’t you think? Do you wanna be one of those people? Do you have the strength in yourself? I certainly don’t. I don’t know what’s coming but I know that right now, today, God is going to put you and me in places where we are going to have to take a stand and believe Him in the face of whatever circumstances are dictating and seeming to say. May God help us.
Of course, everybody here knows the account of Jehoshaphat. Here was a king over Israel and right before that chapter, chapter 20… I don’t think I’m gonna turn there necessarily, but chapter 20 of second Chronicles, is right before that, you see him doing all kinds of good, honorable things in Israel trying to set this right and that right and tell the people that they’re rendering judgment. In conflicts, be sure you judge rightly and all those things. He’s trying to be a righteous king.
And then what happens? You have an incredibly large army that he suddenly says, They’re coming. And I am so blessed that when that happens, I don’t see him calling a war council. That would have been the natural reaction to that. Let’s get our generals together. Let’s have a strategy meeting. Let’s figure out how we can deal with this. He didn’t do that. He called a fast. Let’s get together and pray and simply lay this before God. We did not ask for this circumstance. We didn’t do anything to provoke it. We’re just here minding our own business and this happened.
Many of you know what I’m talking about. You ever go along in your life and you’re minding your own business and suddenly something happens that just comes at you and you have to deal with it? Yeah, that’s life. That’s called life. And it happens and God allows it. And God was the One Who’s allowed that army to come.
But oh, what an example that is of a king who stands there and prays and he acknowledges God’s goodness, God’s greatness, what God has done, what God has promised, and said, Lord, we don’t know what to do. And God gave them an answer.
And the answer was an amazing one when you think about it from a military point of view. You’re not gonna even have to fight in this battle. And so you remember how they did. They sent the choir out ahead.
You know, one of the things that I thought about and I know I’ve made this point many times before. One thing I think we need to be careful of is looking into scripture and deriving formulas for getting things done, because this is the way it happened in this instance. How many of you know that every instance is different? It’s unique.
You can’t go and say, Well, this is what I did, these are the words I spoke, these are the actions I took, therefore this is what I’m supposed to do and this is gonna be the result. God is never going to put His purpose and His plan in our hands through formulas. He is never going to relieve us of being able or needing to look to him and say, God, this is a unique situation. You have sent it. I know it doesn’t matter. Thank you for everything you’ve ever done but I need to know what to do here and now.
You know, I made the semi-humorous point about the different ways that Jesus healed people’s eyes. He opened the eyes of the blind. There were occasions when He spoke to them. There were occasions when He reached out His hand and just touched their eyes and their eyes were opened. And then there was the time when He stooped down and gathered up some dirt, spit on it, made mud and put it on the man’s eyes and said, Go to such and such a pool and wash. And he did and he was healed.
Now, which one is the right way to do it? You know, I’ve made the point in the past. You’ve got a basis for three denominations there. The “speak the word only,” the “put your hand out and touch,” and the “mud in your eye” bunch. (audience laughing) Folks, there is nothing that’s going to relieve us of being in the position where all we can do is stretch forth our hands and say, Lord, this situation allowed by you is unique. You haven’t given me a formula. I need wisdom for this.
And over and over again, you see that in Jesus’ ministry, this sense of I’m walking with my Father, I am looking to Him. I don’t know what to do necessarily. I mean, this is Jesus basically, needing his Father to lead Him. That was the position that he took coming into this world. He didn’t know it all as a human being. He needed his Father the same way we do. And there He was looking to His Father every step that He took. And there were those He was trying to teach. Where’s your faith?
Well, God showed them that here’s a situation. I wanna bring you to the place where you can handle this, but right now you’re not. And I want you to understand, you come into this situation looking at it and looking at it a certain way, an earthly way. And you’ve already decided this can’t happen or this can’t be, or this is something to be afraid of, or we gotta come up with a plan.
And Jesus has just relaxed and saying, Lord, I’ve cast my burden. Father, I’ve cast my burden upon you. You’ve already told me what to do and we’re gonna do it and trust you. Doesn’t matter what the devil throws in our path. You know, you could go on and on I guess, and I’m just trusting that this is what the Lord wants to say this morning, but it certainly is to me.
But I sense… I sense the heart of the Lord saying that, You’ve got a little faith. I brought you a certain amount of distance in Me. You’ve grown in Me and I’ve got a people that have opened their hearts to Me and they’re alive and they’re Mine. They’re My children and I love you. And I want you to grow in Me. I want you to get to the place where you are far more ready to trust in Me instead of what you see and what you feel.
God doesn’t put us in situations and say, I’m standing back. You figure it out. He puts us in situations where faith is going to have to trust Him. Faith is gonna have to trust Him when He waits and, and is silent, when He speaks, whatever the circumstance is that’s right in his plan for your life and mine. Remember, He’s the one writing my story and yours. He is gonna bring us safely through. And the awesome thing is that, like Paul said, nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus and everything serves a purpose to prepare us for life in this world and in eternity with Him.
So, I just want to trust Him this morning. Again, I don’t wanna be one of those that just is stuck in a place where, Where is your faith? Well, I believe in you or I believe in this book. I go to church, I believe in you. When God is gonna put us in real-life situations where faith is gonna have to take some kind of an action. It might be an action of just praying and looking, waiting, when your natural reaction is to do something and God says, No, this is not the time to do, this is the time to wait. Or we’re afraid and we don’t wanna do something and the Lord says, This is the time to do this, and we’re gonna have to step out and do it.
God can lead his people. Do you believe that? – Yes. – Does that apply to you or just to everybody else around you? See, this is the life that God has called us to and I don’t want to be one that’s just stuck in this mode of, where is your faith? and oh, ye of little faith. I wanna be one that says, God, increase my faith, and realize that what He’s given us, realize His promises are true and He’s real and He’s with us and He’s gonna be with us to the end.
So, I don’t think we’ve said anything that you haven’t heard, you know, many, many times before, but I dunno, I was gonna say, maybe this isn’t relevant to everybody else, but it sure is to me. And if it isn’t right now, if you’re not in that place and things are comfortable, just wait. God is not here to give us a comfortable life where everything just is easy and pleasing to our flesh. God is gonna put us in places where everything in our flesh, in our circumstances, is pushing us in a certain direction and we’re gonna have to say, No, God, I’m Yours. I am willing to do Your will, come what may. I’m trusting in You and I’m gonna stand on that. Come what may. And I believe that God is gonna help us, don’t you?
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December 3, 2023 - No. 1626
“Growing in Faith” Part One
Broadcast #1626
December 3, 2023
December 3, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1626 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, I had some thoughts earlier in the week as my Bible reading these days is in the New Testament, in the Gospels in particular. And I found it interesting on Wednesday night some of the comments that were made about faith, ‘cause they were just about exactly what I’d been thinking about.
And I just sort of listened, but, you know, several occasions, Jesus was going around with His disciples, His followers. These were people who obviously believed in Him. They believed in him enough to leave everything behind and, and follow Him, didn’t they? And they were learning from Him, but there were several particular situations when they would get in an unexpected, to them, situation and they would react very differently from Jesus. And Jesus would look at him and say, Where is your faith? Or you know, something, you know, Ye of little faith. In several particular instances He said that.
And you know, as I was reading that, I’m so glad that Jesus didn’t say, Ye of no faith, but it reminded me of the simple fact that God wants us to grow in our faith, that we don’t necessarily, just because we have faith up to a certain point, God wants us to grow in that and to get to the point where we can believe him in a variety of situations that we haven’t maybe faced before.
I don’t have to remind you of something we pointed out so often of where the world is headed. And we see a world that is drinking in the lies that are flowing outta the mouth of the dragon, Satan. And it’s because they don’t want to let their lives go and surrender and believe and put their faith in Jesus Christ, and so when He takes His hand off, there’s nothing to stop the devil from coming in and totally deceiving people. So, they think they’re in charge, they think they’re doing what they’re supposed to do and they’re actually heading for destruction.
And as that we see society and our culture being more and more taken over by that, we’re gonna need the Lord more than we’ve been used to. And I guarantee you that I’m not the only one facing difficulties and situations that we didn’t plan on, that we need the Lord, and we need to have a faith that goes beyond, well, I believe this and I believe that, and so we come to church and assert those beliefs. But if faith doesn’t make a difference in our lives, what difference, what good is it to say, I believe this?
You know, I’ve used the illustration in the past in different contexts of somebody who finds themself on an island that is headed for destruction and they understand it and they believe it. And there’s one bridge that leads off of that island to a place of safety. Now, what good is it to stand there and point to that bridge and say, I believe in that bridge, and just keep standing there and not actually cross the bridge?
You know, James wrote quite a bit on the subject of faith without works is dead. Now, we’re not saved by our works, but we’re not saved by just a mental assent to certain ideas, are we? God saves people who not only put their faith in Him, but who step out and actually execute that faith in our lives. And I believe, again, I’m not the only one where God is calling us to believe Him in situations that are uncomfortable that we didn’t ask for.
But I’ll tell you, we serve a God Who literally brings us the way that He does so that we can grow in our faith. And I want to, I need that. God has to put me in the deep end of the pool sometimes and say, Now what are you gonna do? And I realize I have no answer. I have no strength. I can’t rely upon me.
But think about what God has called us to. Has he called us to a life of, you know, well, I’ve given you natural abilities, I’ve given you a mind to figure things out, I’ve given you this, I’ve given you that, so go live your life and just be a good person? There’s more to it than that. We are living in a world that is absolutely devoted to self and lives in rebellion against God. And God has called us to a supernatural kingdom. And I don’t have what it takes to live in that.
And the easiest thing in the world is simply for us to go through our daily lives and figure, I can handle this, I can handle that, and just think of things in a natural sense. Folks, we don’t just live in a visible natural world, do we? And we need to remember that. We need to realize that we live in a, we don’t wrestle, as we said so often, against flesh and blood.
Now, was Paul just saying that as a doctrinal issue, or was he saying that as a real practical issue? Obviously, he was, he meant for us to have this as part of our worldview where we realize the world that I live in is not simply composed of what I see and circumstances that I have learned how to handle this and how to handle that, and I’m good, and I just, thank you, Lord, for all Your blessings.
My God, how easy is it in a place like America, what America has been to just go to sleep and live in a realm of natural of ability and habit. And if God hasn’t shaken up your world, He will if you’re His. I need my world shaken up. I need Him to take me further than I have been. I need Him to do what Jesus was doing with His disciples. He was allowing them to be in situations where suddenly, their natural resources weren’t getting it. They didn’t have what they needed, did they?
You know, one of those was the time when he said, Let’s go to the other side. You compare the different accounts of that and you can really put the story together. Jesus had finished committing, committing, not the word, performing miracles. You don’t commit miracles. But anyway, He had just finished teaching the crowds. They had seen miracles, obviously, there was a faith in them to follow Him, wasn’t there?
And He had said, We’re going to the other side. He didn’t say, Now we’re gonna go out in the middle of the lake and have a storm and drown. And so, don’t we need, when the Lord says something, to go by what He says? Yeah, and the Lord will put us in situations where that’s the conflict that we see, is what God says is one thing and what the circumstances are is another.
And so there they were and He had said, Let’s go to the other side. So, they get out in the middle and a storm comes up. Now, was that storm just an accident? Do you not know that the devil has power to create weather? Didn’t He do that in Job’s case? Yeah, there was a whirlwind. When the Lord turned the devil loose to try Job, one of the things that happened was a whirlwind came up. There were literal forces of nature that he is able to stir up.
I remember, I have heard over my lifetime more than one account of something of nature coming up that seems to attack some of God’s people in some way. And I’ve heard of more than one instance where someone actually literally commanded that storm to stop or that rain to stop or something, and it did.
Now, I don’t think that means every time it rains, we can go out and say, Stop it. You know, it’s not something just for human, God doesn’t give us faith just to use for our benefit and apart from His will. But I’ll tell you, there are circumstances where we need to be able to recognize the source of what’s happening and look to the Lord and be able to see beyond, not just to see beyond the circumstances, see the devil, but to see beyond the devil and see the Lord and to realize that He has allowed something to happen for a reason and it’s for our good, and it’s to teach us and to bring us.
I guarantee the disciples who came through this circumstance had a deeper view of Him and a deeper view of faith than they did before they went through it, didn’t they? Suppose they just had a calm, nice trip across and everything had been great, but see, the devil knew where Jesus was headed. He had a sense that something’s going on here, I better stop it. And he did what he could, he raised that storm and Jesus was just asleep. You know the story and you know how the disciples were scared to death and woke Him up. So, Oh, ye of little faith, why are you afraid?
I wonder if the Lord would say that to us this morning about this or about that and the circumstances you’re worried about and you’re concerned about, and where our reaction is to be afraid and to focus all of our attention not on the Lord and His purposes and trusting Him and looking to Him for the wisdom that we need, but rather, oh God, what if this happens? What about that? What about that? You know, a thousand and one little big things in our minds that the devil would use through circumstances, but I pray that God will bring us to everything that is of His choosing to help us to learn how to grow in faith.
And of course there are other instances, but you get the picture here. Jesus was pointing out the fact that, yeah, you’ve got faith, but right now it’s not much. And God was gonna bring them to a place where these same men who didn’t have faith later on in their lives laid down their lives for the faith, didn’t they?
I believe God is going to bring His people to a place where we can stand in an hour like this and we will not just look at circumstances and be dismayed by them or think, I can fix that if I just do this and I do that, but instead look to the Lord and say, Lord, You have allowed this storm and I am trusting in You, and I know that Your purpose is the one that’s gonna prevail. Lord, if it’s for me to lay down my life with a testimony of praise to You on my lips, then my life is Yours, because I know what lies beyond. I know that this is not the end. This is just a way station we’re passing through.
Oh, I’ll tell you, only God can give that ability. I’m just trusting the Lord to guide the thoughts here this morning, because once again, I don’t have this sermonized, but I’m hoping you’re glad that it isn’t, because we don’t need, again, we never need my sermon, we always need His message. And I think it’s probably profitable to look for a moment at faith itself and just review the things that we know.
What is faith really? You know, you look at Hebrews 11:1 and you get God’s simple definition of what faith is. And I like this particular translation here. “Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” It’s something that absolutely is on the inside of a person that gives them a supernatural ability to know things that cannot be known by the natural man.
You remember what Paul said? The natural man does not know the things of God, does he? The smartest man cannot figure out God’s plan, cannot reason it all out. It has to be God revealing something to the heart and imparting to you and to me an ability to know things that cannot be known apart from Him, to know that they’re real.
You know, a lot of people think faith is just something that I just make up my mind. I’m just gonna believe it. Oh boy, I’m gonna believe it. And it’s just like a blind assertion of faith and something that just makes me feel better, gives meaning to life, or something on that, but it’s entirely on a natural level.
My God, I was not born with faith. Was anybody here was born into Adam’s family with faith? I wasn’t either, but I’ll tell you, faith is the gift of God, isn’t it? And we read that, “By grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” I’ll tell you, God has a way of imparting to a heart a power to believe in Him. And the exercise of that faith is the most critical thing in the world.
We sang the song, It’s worth everything to be born again. Folks, this world is full of people who simply don’t know what I’m talking about this morning. Their entire world is focused on their flesh and pleasing themselves in this world and trying to save the planet and the thousand and one things that we’ve talked about so many times. But God has called a people, and is calling a people out of this present world, and He does it by revealing His word to the heart. And every time He finds a willing heart, there’s something that happens.
Folks, there is a point in time when God wants people to come to a place where they let go and let God have their lives. I mean, didn’t Jesus say to Nicodemus, Unless you’re born again, you can’t see the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is not a bunch of buildings or an earthly organization. It’s a reality. It is as real as the kingdom of darkness is real, but it’s far above that. Praise God!
There is a real kingdom right now that we can look past everything that’s happening in this world and know that God is on His throne. Jesus has authority over everything that happens on this planet and we have been called to His kingdom for such a time as this. May God help us.
But if there’s someone who’s listening to this and you’re not sure, I just pray, I just pray that God will make this real, but when He does, that you’ll open your heart and you realize what He has given you through Jesus Christ. You realize what He did to take someone who is absolutely helpless to do anything for themselves, helpless to come back into a relationship with God, and the very one who spoke the stars into existence came down and gave His life so that you and I could be free.
All of the guilt, you know, before somebody’s gonna come to the new birth, they gotta know they need it. And that’s the starting point for God to convict a heart of their sinfulness, their unworthiness of the kingdom of God. I can’t possibly attain to that. I’m not worthy of it. I have no way to lay hold of that. I have no way to get rid of the guilt that has separated me from a holy God.
But Jesus came down and assumed your guilt. He says though, he said to His Father, Charge me. I will go to the cross that they deserve. I, the creator of the universe, will go to a wooden cross in the humiliation and pain and bear your sins. And I will be placed in a grave. It signifies the end of a life, but I’m not gonna stay in that grave. Praise God!
There’s a life beyond what this world knows about. There’s a life, the very life of God that He longs to share with people who will open their hearts to Him. He has the power to change a heart and change a life. He has the power, not just to wipe away the guilt of sins, but to give you a new heart and a new life. Praise God!
Oh, the key to it all is in the response of the sinner. Do we, clinging to our sins, and duck and dodge, and try to bargain with God? Or we just say, Lord, I surrender. Come into my heart, my Lord, my life. I lay it all at Your feet and give myself to You. That’s salvation, because when He comes in, that’s the only power you and I will ever have.
And then of course we learn to live. And you know the Scripture says that the just shall live by what? By faith. This principle of trusting God with our lives and looking to Him has to become the guiding principle of our lives.
But I think I started to say, started to point out a while ago that faith, according to James, is not just something where we say we believe this and that’s good enough. Faith has to take action, and God is going to put us, every one of us in situations where the circumstances will dictate this and suggest that this is the case and that’s it, and you gotta deal with it. And God will be over here saying, No, I am God and I’m in charge, And you need to look to me. I have the wisdom, I have the strength, I have all that you need. And the question is, which are we gonna go by? Are we going to sit there and listen?
You know, we sing the song, listen to the devil. We sing the song about, what is it? Victory? We will cry victory when the circumstances say, no. I wonder how many are in places right now where the circumstances are just telling you one thing and this is how it’s gonna be, and it’s bad and so, and on and on and on. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who is going to put you in that circumstance, not to discourage but to absolutely cause us to come to a place where we learn to look away, we learn to look to Him. We learn to cast that burden.
We talked about some of those things last week. The humble place that we need to take, but it also involves an action, doesn’t it? Faith without works is dead, being alone. What good is it to say that I believe, but it never is translated into action? God just doesn’t want us to come in here on Sunday morning and sing nice songs and declare our faith. He does want that, but this has to be translated into what we do this afternoon and tonight and tomorrow and the next day in the battles that God places before us, because He will place them. He is going to bring us, if He’s gonna have a people that are able to stand in this hour, we’re gonna have to learn on the field of battle how to stand, aren’t we? We’re gonna have to have a faith that is ready to stand in this battle and that battle, and the other one, and stand on behalf of one another too.
You know, part of what we read in 1 Peter 5 has to do with resisting, or being alert for the devil and so forth. He wants to go around and eat people, basically, whom resist firm in the faith, steadfast in the faith, depending on the translation. There has to come a place where we not only recognize what’s going on, but we are standing and we’re saying, No, devil, I don’t believe you. I believe God. I am trusting my life into His hands. His purpose is the one that is going to prevail in this circumstance. If the Lord allows you to kill me, praise God, I know where I’m going, because Jesus has already taken hold of my life. He’s given me a life that you can’t kill.
All the forces of hell tried to keep Him in that grave and not one of them could prevail. He came forth and the devils ran, screaming. They stopped their three-day party and they went screaming into the night. My God, it’s all over. What looked to be our greatest final victory turns out to be our absolute defeat.
Thank God for what happened at the cross and the resurrection. The battle was won. Satan was paraded in defeat, but God wants everyone here to know that the same power that brought Jesus out from the dead is the power that He operates in our lives through, it’s the one that He offers to us so that we can share in what He has given to us.
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November 26, 2023 - No. 1625
“The Key to Christian Living” Conclusion
Broadcast #1625
November 26, 2023
November 26, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1625 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: We, as I say, have so little idea of the depth of what God is, what the Lord is up against to change people like us. We’re born into a world and what we learn absolutely bakes in a self -willed, proud spirit. And it operates in us without us thinking about it or even being aware of it.
Oh, isn’t it amazing the mercy that God has shown? I appreciate so much things that were said Wednesday night about mercy because that’s the only way we could possibly gain any favor with God. It’s His choice to show mercy to people who are helpless prisoners of a spirit that would bring us to an end. And here He is doing what He has done. Praise God!
So anyway, there is that admonition or instruction to the younger ones, but then he takes it out to involve everybody because the next statement says, “all of you,” all of you, all of us do what? “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” Now that’s another thing here, this quality we call humility is not meant to be some private little thing where we go into a cave and, Lord, I’m just gonna humble myself before you. Isn’t this wonderful?
It certainly could be that, in your private relationship, but do you know how the humility that God seeks to bring out in us really comes out? It’s when we rub shoulders with one another because does not pride, if we’ll listen to it, human nature, doesn’t it drive us to seek for self and to constantly be bumping into somebody else’s self-seeking? And all it produces is just conflict.
I’ll tell you, if this quality the Lord is seeking in us doesn’t play out here, is it real? That’s a simple question. If I’m not humble in a genuine sense, and I can’t do this without the Lord, can I? (laughs) It’s not in me to do that. But if I’m having this conflict, this sense of resentment or any of these kinds of things between me and somebody else, am I really being humble?
You know, Paul instructed the people, after talking about all the glorious things and the resources that we have that are so limitless, says, In light of this, be completely humble and gentle. Bear one with one another, put up with one another in love, because we’re one body. And that’s Ephesians, chapter four, the beginning of it.
So, this is what the Lord is looking for, but this quality of humility doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has everything to do with our relationships in the world. Am I sitting here trying to seek for my, am I trying to look good in your eyes? Ah, I’m stepping on a few toes now, and start, starting with mine. But I’ll tell you what, if God were to show us everything about ourselves, (exhales) it would blow our little ship right out of the water. We need Him. We need to understand some of these simple things about what He’s looking for.
I’m so glad he’s patient. I’m glad he knows what He’s doing. But anyway, “all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another,” that’s the key. This is not just, be humble when you come to me in prayer. We need to do that. We need to have a sense, not of trying to act humble and feel an emotion we call humility, but just, well, these are the facts. I come to you because I can’t do anything in myself. Without you, I can do nothing.
And I’m not gonna sit here and lose sleep over that fact. It’s a fact. Deal with it, move on. That’s one of the things that I see about the Lord that is so much where He has to focus on our need, but He never means for us to wallow in that. We have to recognize it, we have to be honest about it, but then He immediately wants us to turn to Him and realize that we don’t have to stay in that little pit of despair about what we are and aren’t.
If we do, is that not pride? Or can we just simply come to the place where we acknowledge the facts and recognize them as they are, and say, Truth Lord, but I’m so thankful that you love me anyway, and that You’ve made provision for me anyway. You’re not basing anything on what I’m not, and all of those things. Lord, I want to take that place willingly, knowingly, and even though I don’t know things right now, I realize You’re gonna bring me down a pathway that will show me things, (chuckles) things I’d rather not face, but Lord, You’re gonna do it because You love me.
Of course, I’m getting ahead a little bit here, but. And here’s the thing, God opposes the proud, but gives favor to the humble. You ever find the Lord kind of getting in your way sometime? You want to go this way and and it just doesn’t, you know, it’s just striving? We get in these places where we just strive.
You remember what Paul said in one of his recounting of his testimony where he recounts, well, the Lord revealed himself to him. In one of those he mentions where the Lord said. it’s hard for you to kick against the pricks or the goads. In other words, what he is saying is the Lord was really trying to maneuver his life into the path that God had chosen for him, and Saul didn’t want to go. The Lord said, Go this way, and he said, Uh, uh, I’m going this way.
And so, you know, he kept getting these things that would happen to try to get him to go the way the Lord wanted him to. And the Lord said, it’s hard, but I wonder how much we do that. Do we fight and fuss against the Lord many times, more than we might like to admit? The Lord wants to take us a way that’s smooth, smooth in the right sense. I don’t mean it’s easy, but I mean there’s a peace on the inside.
Didn’t Jesus say, My yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you’ll find rest for your souls. And Jesus was a perfect example of someone who was so lost in doing his Father’s will that do you think he went around anxious about this and worried about that, and what should I do, and I got my five-year plan and it’s not working out.
God, we need to get rid of our five year plans and our one day plans, and just say, Lord, You have called me to put my trust in You 100% and let You guide my steps.
You know, that’s what he’s getting into here. Jesus is the ultimate example. If Jesus came down and lived as a servant, and then humbled himself to the death of the cross, are we gonna get away with these little prideful things, prideful self-seekings that govern our lives? Or do you think maybe he wants us to follow his example more than we do and learn from it?
Oh, there’s so much strife and so much fear and anxiety and so many things going on in all of our lives that the Lord’s looking down and say, Boy, if they only knew what I had for ‘em, they wouldn’t have to live like that. I want to share my peace, my joy, my purpose with them, but they’re so full of their own ideas and their own self-will, I can’t get to ‘em, I guess I’m gonna have to work on it some more.
And here we are, and He’s still working on me, I can guarantee you. But I’m so thankful for Him. Then the key right here, this is the key to everything. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time.” Now, you know, the carnal man would say, Okay I’ve got to take a low place, I’ve got to act humble, and then there’s gonna time be a time when God’s gonna lift me up and say, ‘And show them all of my wonderfulness.’
What he’s talking about, the lifting up in due time is the glory that’s coming. And it won’t be our glory, it’ll be His, but He’s be sharing it with us and we’ll be filled with it and filled with a sense of purpose that will go on forever and ever. That’s the season that we’re looking for, every one of us. That’s why God wants to take us, but oh, do we fight along the way. God wants to take that fight out of us and bring us to a place where we humble ourselves.
And humble, again, is not an emotion. I mean, I guess there are times you could feel that, but this is not primarily trying to work up an emotion. This is an action. This isn’t acting or pretending to be humble. This is living out your life in a way that demonstrates the same kind of humility that Jesus did, where we’re not seeking our own way. We’re not seeking our own purpose. We’re not living for self, but we’re able to be a light to others. We’re set free.
There’s so many chains that hold you and me to this world. And every one of them comes because our something and our nature is attached here. We want our comfort, our plans, our way, our desires to be fulfilled, whatever it may be. It’s my life, I’m gonna do it as I please. Oh God, help us to realize that He’s called us to hand over our lives to Him and to let him direct them.
Didn’t David say, “All of my days were written in your book before one of them came to be”? Wouldn’t it be nice to be in that place where we realize that’s our relate, that defines our life. God’s writing my story and I want to be so in harmony with it that I’m not constantly pulling this way, and pulling that way, and complaining, and all those kinds of things. There’s a genuine humbleness because I just want Your will Lord.
And so much of, you know, what we’ve said recently is the things the Lord has to do to us and allow to happen in our lives, to get our attention, to show us. Look, your nature was drawing you to this thing. It was attached in a way that you didn’t realize, even. You thought you were doing fine, but you were just living out your life and you were so caught up in the ways of the world around you, and here I am, I wanna transform your thinking. I don’t want you to be conformed to this world. I want you to be transformed. I want you to see yourself differently.
And I’m not showing you your nothingness to make you feel worthless. Because you’re not dirt in my sight, you’re not worthless in my sight. You’re worth the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. Oh, if we could ever get that through our minds and realize the value that God puts on your life, and your destiny and mine. My God, we bow down and worship him and say, Yes Lord, I worship you. You’re my Lord and I gladly humble myself.
But again, humbling is not some emotion we work up. It’s how we deal with life. Because you know, down below he talks about the sufferings that are common to our brothers throughout the world being part of this. What is he really talking about, sufferings? Doesn’t that mean that there’s something happening in my life, something I’m experiencing that my nature doesn’t like. And I want out of it, I want to do something about it to make it go away. And yet, the Lord will allow these things in my life, absolutely under His control, but He will allow them to show me the fact that I am attached in a certain way, that I need to let go.
The solution is not to follow my nature and try to satisfy it that way, or to get rid of the thing, or whatever it is that men would try to do. It’s just to come to God and say, Lord, show me the truth about myself that you are seeking to make real. Help me to acknowledge that and not to sit here and say, ‘Oh, boo hoo hoo, I should be better.’ No, you shouldn’t. Get over yourself. The Lord’s just showing us the facts.
And we can acknowledge the facts and then just throw ourselves on Him and say, Okay Lord, thank you for showing me that need. Thank you for showing me where I was attached here. And it was a bondage to me. And now I can let it go and it won’t hold me anymore.
God wants to cut these ties that we have, every one of us. Folks, if there is unrest on the inside, if there’s strife, if there’s fear, if there’s anxiety, all of these things that are so normal to people living in this world, you know, what about me, what about this, what about that? Where is that coming from? Is that coming from the Lord? Is that his Spirit in us feeling all those things, and no, all that’s doing is revealing that there’s stuff in here that He wants to set us free from.
And what does He want us, therefore, to do? Oh, Peter talks about that, doesn’t he? He says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Thank God that when I discover these things about me that my pride would not wanna face, I can just come and I can say, Lord, this thing has had a hold on me and You’re helping me to see it. Oh God, help me where I’ve done wrong, I just bring it to the cross.
But Lord, this thing that I was so worried about, it was just in control of my life more than I realized. And you’re calling on me to let go, and to experience your peace, to cast that upon you. I don’t have to carry that. I don’t have to live like that.
That’s a major deal, isn’t it? I mean, how many of you live in perfect peace? Not one of us. You think maybe we need to be asking the Lord to help us to learn this basic truth of just saying, Lord here is my life. I am not gonna try to figure it all out. I’m looking to you to guide me. I don’t have any five-year plan.
Now, if the Lord gives somebody a vision and they’re seeking God about that, that’s one thing, but even there, you don’t get a committee and say, Oh God, God’s given me a vision, let’s figure out how to do it. We just need to look to Him day by day and look and trust Him that He will order our steps. He’s the one that’s got to write the story of my life.
And the sooner I learn that and stop trying to figure it out and fight my way through, if I’m doing that, it’s one thing, if I’m resisting the Devil now and he’s coming at me and I know that’s the Devil, and I have every right to stand on the word of God, that’s one thing, but if it’s me being upset and anxious and at war with somebody and just carrying all this strife on the inside, where’s that coming from again? That’s coming from me.
That’s something the Lord wants me to let go and bring to him and hand it over and say, Lord, you’d never meant for me to carry this, and I bring it to you, and when I bring it to You, I can be confident that You’re not sitting there saying, Well what took you so long? I’m so disgusted with you. You just don’t get it, do you? No, He knows, He cares. He’s just been waiting and longing for that day when we’ll just come to Him and find that place of rest and peace.
Don’t ever forget the fundamental thing that’s going on here is a God who’s called you out of this world to learn and be changed, and the goal that He is going to accomplish, as we let Him do it, is to make us glorious beings who can share His love for eternity. I mean, just, isn’t that amazing? It’s so simple. But oh how we stumble over it.
You know, I thought of a scripture that I hadn’t thought of in a while, I guess, but it’s one that the Lord brought to my attention when I was young, I think, and it’s in Psalm 32. It kind of fits this ‘cause David is, apparently has had a problem in his life and he’s thankful that he’s got a place to go when he realizes he’s messed up. He said, I acknowledge, verse five, and “I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity,” didn’t cover it up didn’t pretend, said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave me the guilt of my sin.”
Praise God! Don’t ever carry that. “Therefore, let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found. Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.”
And this is a couple of verses here. This should define our life. We’re not trying to figure out what to do in pursuing our goals. We’re saying, Lord, I need you to show me what to do. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Do not be like the horse or the mule.” This is the one that keeps coming to me from time to time. “Don’t be like the horse and the mule which have no understanding, but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.”
I wonder how many of us are like the horse and the mule! God’s gotta do something really spectacular to get our attention about things that we, you know, we would come a lot easier if we just would listen and seek the Lord and say, Lord, I know you love me. You’ve called me to hand my life over to You. You’ve told me to cast every care upon You, to trust You.
See, that’s the thing. If we’re trusting Him and He’s got to make these changes and those changes can sometimes involve suffering in this world, we’re gonna have to see everything in the light of that. Because if we are kicking against something that we’re experiencing and we’re upset about it, who are we upset with? (congregation response) – Ah, instead of humbling ourselves, we’re upset with Him. We’re kind of mad at him.
And we’re like that horse that says, I don’t wanna go this way. This is the way I want to go. There’s some good grass over here that appeals to me and that’s the way I want to go. And uh, uh, and the Lord has a different plan. Do you want your plan or do you want the Lord’s? I want His. To him be the glory! Praise God!
I don’t know, if the Lord was standing here, what would He be saying to you? Would He not be telling you how much He loves you? I love you. I gave my life for you. I gave you the ultimate example of what it means to humble yourself under His mighty hand. I didn’t come to seek my own will. I came to lay down my life and I did it for you. And I’ve called you to come and to learn from me because I’m humble and gentle in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.
I have plans for you that you cannot imagine. I know everything about you. I know things that need to be changed that you don’t know about. You go along with an ignorance that’s fashioned by this world and in harmony with this old nature.
And my job is to change that and to bring you into that place of rest and trust so that I can direct your steps. I can take you ways that you didn’t even know you were gonna go. But I’ll be with you in ‘em. I’ll never leave you, I’ll never forsake you. And one day we’re gonna stand before the throne of Heaven and you will share in my glory.
SYou know, I believe there will come a time, if you wanna call it time, we won’t even remember this. All the things that you think are such colossal things in your life, the hurts from years past, all the things that have weighed you and me down, we won’t even remember them. Those who put their trust in Him and He finishes this job He’s talking about, we won’t even remember the things that have gone on in this world. We will be set free completely to be all that God designed us from eternity to be.
And we’ll bow down to our elder brother because he is the one who has made it possible. 100% of the power and the virtue has come because of his faithfulness and his example in doing what he’s encouraging us to do. to humble ourselves to His plan, to let Him direct our steps, draw upon Him for the strength to do it. And I’ll tell you there’s a goal that’s worth everything to serve Him. To him be the glory forever and ever. Praise God!
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November 19, 2023 - No. 1624
“The Key to Christian Living” Part One
Broadcast #1624
November 19, 2023
November 19, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1624 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, it seems like every time we have a men’s meeting, it seems like without fail, so many of the thoughts that I had connection with the service came forth in various ways. And I feel like the Lord is speaking many of the same things to us. The thoughts that I’ve had are very connected to the most recent services, and it almost seems like a lot of it is repetitious. And yet, I think the Lord wants us to see it over and over again, number one, but also to see things from different points of view.
And I feel like the thoughts I’ve had this morning are really the key to Christian living, the key to Christian living. I mean, that’s a pretentious title, in a way, to say, there is the key. But yet, I believe with all my heart that there’s a simplicity that the Lord wants us to discover, don’t you? We’re the ones who complicate it. We just imagine so many things.
But Brother Alan takes the services here, and then the Lord helps him to pick the ones that are gonna wind up on the broadcast. And I recently got the list for November. And the first service, the first two weeks are going to be from a service preached just about a year ago, now, on You, God, and the Devil, I think is the title, or close to that, anyway. And I just got, now, I worked on the transcription so that it can be on the website on the appropriate day, and just brought back to me the wonderful truths that are in 1 Peter 5. And I felt like the Lord quickened some very simple things from that once again.
And we do see that there is quite a portrayal of God and His role in everything. We see the devil and what he’s about. But the focus, of course, in that context is of God defining what He’s looking for from us in order to accomplish the thing that He has set out to accomplish.
And in several places, there are references in this chapter to where He’s headed with all of this. And that is something He calls glory. Now, we see glimpses of this simple fact that God is a glorious being. There is a brightness about Him and about His kingdom that human eyes couldn’t stand. Jesus spoke of a time when the kingdom would be reaped, the harvest would be reaped, and says, “Then the saints of God will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
So, here the Lord is taking people like us with all this lacking in us, all the things that are wrong with us, no matter where we’ve come from. We may have come from the gutter. But yet, God absolutely has the power to transform anyone who will put their lives in His hand into someone who can stand there on that day with the same glory that Isaiah observed in chapter six where the Lord caught him up to that high place. He saw the Lord sitting on a throne and there was a glory that just overpowered him.
And how many other times has that happened in the scriptures? The mountaintop where Jesus went up and he was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, and all of a sudden, they saw a glowing figure that just overpowered them, and Moses and Elijah talking with him.
I mean, the reality of what lies beyond our vision in this world is something God wants us to know. We live in a blind, sin-cursed world that has no clue what everything is about. And yet, you see the themes that the Lord allows Peter to weave into this that I believe are so key to what God is looking for from us and what He expects to accomplish.
But again, he mentions, he’s talking in the beginning of the chapter to the elders, but he mentions that he is also one who will share in the glory to be revealed. That’s what’s coming. And I think we’ve made this point before that there is coming a day when all this will drop away. We will see as we are seen, we will know as we’re known. And those who know him will shine, again, like the sun. And there will be a glowing company of people who have been transformed by what God has done through the cross that we’ve singing about this morning.
Thank God it will, and we will know when we get there that it has been all Him and that our place is simply to put our lives in His hands and trust Him. It really comes down to that. And of course, he comes down to the, late in the passage, and he comes back to that same theme. “The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a while will himself restore you, make you strong, firm, and steadfast. To him be the power forever and ever.”
Once again, we see a God Who has a purpose. He is calling out a people from this broken world and His purpose is to take us even as we are and change us into beings who will absolutely be at home in such a place and be able to live with Him and share that glory forever and ever, a life of, of meaning and purpose.
And of course, we see that, we obviously see the reference there to sufferings as part of it, so we know that there is something that He is doing. There’s a reason that we’re here, as we’ve said many times, that He doesn’t just simply save us and take us right on to glory. But rather, we are here for a reason and for a season to accomplish something in us and for Him to live in and through us.
These are things that are easy to say and they sound repetitious, but how many of you feel like you’ve really got a handle, a full handle on this and you know all about it and you’re just there? And I’m not seeing any hands because we are very much in the middle of a process that we understand far less than we would like to think and like to claim.
And so, the Lord is wanting, and yet, the Lord is not wanting us to know that so that we will be discouraged, but rather, that we will have our minds and hearts focused. This is a worldview issue. This is how we see the world around us, its purpose, and our place in it.
Because this world is blind. We’ve said that many times. It has been blinded through sin and the power of the kingdom of darkness, these angels that fell and rebelled against God. There is a real kingdom at work, and we see it, as we said many times, unfolding before us, the depth of the hold that is upon the human race.
And so, when Peter talks about the devil, what does he say? He says, “Be alert and sober of mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion.” What is he doing? “Looking for someone to devour.”
Now, we’ve had a couple of messages in the past about “devil’s food.” The reality is, the devils, the angels that fell, and we call them demons or devils now, their entire existence has been reduced to one simple thing. They have this evil nature that just craves expression. But how do they get that expression? They’re gonna have to get it through people. They need the flesh of a human being who’s living in this world in order to get their jollies, to get their satisfaction.
You remember how Jesus talked about an unclean spirit going out of a man? What happens? Goes through dry places seeking rest and finding none. There’s nothing out there. If a demon cannot be bothering and working and even living in and through a human being, it is miserable. Its entire existence, you think about a hopeless drug addict who just cannot live without the drug. Well, that’s the condition that demons are in and that’s why they are preying upon human flesh. And of course, Peter’s warning believers that we need to be on the guard because he will work through you.
But I mean, you wanna know the character of a devil? You think about some of the terrible crimes that we read about, and you realize where the inspiration comes from. What’s going on is there’s a spirit on the inside, or spirits, that live and inhabit that human being. And they will drive, say, a human being to commit a horrible, brutal murder without any conscience. What’s going on, there? Is that just the man? No, you’ve got demonic power that is sitting there enjoying that, loving it, feeding on it. That’s the character of the devil in this world and that’s what’s happening in the world.
You have that picture in Revelation of the man of the, I’m trying to picture the exact thing, but he’s a warrior on a white horse, and he’s called the Word of God. And he leads an army out into the world and many people are slain. What does that warrior do when that happens? Remember that passage late in Revelation? He calls to the fowls of the air, Come and feed. That’s what’s happening right now. There are people who are rejecting the Word of God, they’re rejecting what they know. And all that’s left is to be devil’s food.
There are really only two alternatives. We’re either gonna participate in what God is, is revealing to us, the simplicity of it in this chapter, or people are gonna be devil’s food and perish. Those are the only two gates there are. That’s the only two ways there are. And so, we’re called to this.
And one of the key thoughts, the key word in the middle of it is humility. And I believe the Lord wants us to understand that in a greater measure than perhaps we do. We know that humility is a virtue that we’re called to have, and trying to navigate that and understand it, we tend to think of it in human terms.
I mean, one way that humility so-called works in this world is you have somebody who’s in a position of power and influence, right? And then, somebody else comes along and they need something and they want something. Again, everybody’s out for themselves in this world. And so, what do they do? In order to get what they want, they will kowtow, they will come down and just act real humble, like they’re acknowledging this person who’s in this great power, great place of influence, and they’ll call that “being humble.”
There’s not a bit of humility in it. The reality is, what the humility that God calls us to, it’s not even an emotion. I think it’s, I’ve met people and I guess I’ve done it myself. We’ve all done it at one time or another if we’ve known the Lord or any length of time, we’ll get some little glimpse of what we really are, and it’ll make us so focused on what we’re not that we’re in a puddle of self-pity and, What’s the matter with me, and, Oh, poor me, and, I just can’t get it right, and on and on and on. We call that humility.
I mean, get real. If you wanna know why you’re such a failure at living the Christian life, read Romans 7. How can we live the Christian life in the strength of what we were born with in Adam? It can’t happen.
And so, I felt like the Lord just dropped a simple thought into my mind that what we’re dealing with here is not, it’s not this emotion we gotta come up with. Oh, I’ve gotta be humble. I’ve gotta act a certain way, and I can’t. I tell you, you can do all that and it’ll actually be an expression of pride. I’m humble, and of course, we have the, the expression, I’m humble and proud of it. But seriously, if we’re so focused on us and what we are and what we aren’t, that’s pride.
Folks, my existence, my value as a human being has nothing to do with what I am or am not in this world. It has nothing to do with how other people see me and evaluate me. And the more we and our thinking are geared to that and bound by that, the more we are in prison. And that prison is founded upon pride, me trying to be something.
And that’s the very thing that God sent his Son into the world to save us from. And oh, how we fight Him! Oh, how we don’t get that. And I just, I pray that God will somehow make this alive in us that we can get what He’s really talking about here. He’s not looking for people to act humble. He’s not looking for people to do a lot of work and do a lot of this and do a lot of that and it just, somehow, we are generating this sense, Okay, I’m humble now, everything’s okay.
The reality is, what God wants us to face is not an emotion or something where He’s accusing us of not measuring up. It’s just simple fact. I mean, get real. If you’re not a helpless sinner in yourself, you don’t need a savior. And if you do, it’s just a fact that we have to live with and acknowledge. We don’t have to spend our time thinking, Oh, I should be better, I should be this, I should, no, I am what I am. I need Jesus instead of me. He is everything I am not.
And so, it’s not like I have to come up with this, Oh, I’m so humble and I gotta, oops, my, my emotions aren’t quite right now. I gotta get humble, here. It’s just recognizing, this is what I am, and I don’t even need to spend time worrying about it. I’m just, and when the Lord shows me something, I mean, He does it for all the right reasons. Absolutely, His heart is for us. And so, now you see the definition of this played out, though.
Peter begins with addressing the elders. Now, in New Testament order, I think you could easily go through the scriptures and demonstrate this. Church order has grown into this monstrosity of different levels and different places, different things. But elders, pastors, shepherds, bishops, they were all the same thing in the New Testament.
When Paul preached the gospel on that, especially in the first missionary journey, it becomes very evident. He went, they preached the gospel, they gathered a group of saints, and encouraged them to, to meet together and to look to the Lord.
And then, he traveled back there, it was a matter of weeks or months later at most. And what does it say he did? He ordained elders. Now, what was he looking for? He was looking for people that God laid his hand on, maybe just a little bit more mature. But whatever it was, it wasn’t human qualification. It was a divine gift. And the function of that gift was simply to be a watchman, someone who would care for others, someone who would focus their attention on being a big brother to the family and looking out for all of the other ones.
And so, it wasn’t this big ecclesiastical thing that we talk about today. It was just a very simple thing. You had people whose gift and calling was to watch out for the sheep. And the very fact that it’s that sense of being a shepherd that the Lord is talking about.
I find it interesting, a fact I pointed out many times, that when Peter addresses them, he does not say, Now, listen, I was the first and greatest apostle, and I want you to get that so you’ll pay attention to what I’m telling you, now. Don’t forget, I was the one who spoke on the day of Pentecost! No, you don’t get that sense at all from him. “To the elders among you, I appeal,” doesn’t say, I command. I appeal as, what? “A fellow elder.” See, this is just somebody who was among them. He didn’t lift himself up and talk down to them.
He said: Brothers, here we are. I just wanna share some things with you, but I’m not lifting myself up to any special place. There’s only one that deserves that place. His name is Jesus. And so, I’m gonna appeal to you as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed.
Right off, you get a sense that this whole picture is not just individualism. This is not just “me and Jesus,” is it, okay? So, now he encourages the shepherds, and he says, “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care.” Now, interesting that he uses the analogy, because we don’t think of sheep as very smart animals, do we? Step one, if we’re gonna talk about being humble and humility being simply dealing with facts, I’ve gotta absolutely accept the fact that when it comes to things that really matter, eternal matters, I’m just a sheep.
I don’t know. I mean, I don’t care what intelligence people have in this world or what their accomplishments are in this world. When it comes to eternal matters, I’m as dumb as they come. I need a shepherd. I need somebody who can lead me and teach me. I’m not in a position to explain things to the shepherd. I need watch care, okay?
Now, you’ve got some under-shepherds, though, who are helping the sheep. But let’s remember in this, part of this is getting what it means to be humble. It’s simply accepting the facts of the matter. And they’re not wallowing in that and saying, Oh, I wish it were different, but rather, (sighs) That’s the way it is, and because of that, I don’t have to worry. I can just put my life in His hands.
Now, the character of the shepherd. In the context of humility, what does a being a shepherd look like? “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them not because you must, but because you are willing.” Right there, you got the possibility that someone could just see this as an unwanted duty. Oh, bother. Why don’t they leave me alone? I’ve got my own stuff to worry about, and there they are again. No, there’s this sense that this is what defines my life, is fulfilling his purpose for me and walking in that. There’s a willingness there, okay?
“As God wants you to be, not pursuing dishonest gain.” Of course, we see a lot of that in religion where it’s more about the prestige someone can get or the money they can get out of it. God help us, we’re not doing this with any other motive than simply serving God. Money, no money, that’s not part of it.
When Jesus sent out the disciples, he said, Don’t even take money in your pocket. Don’t take anything extra. Just go. And the Lord, the implication was the Lord will take care of those kinds of things. Just focus on what your job is, all right? “Not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve, eager to serve.”
And very important, “Not lording it over those entrusted to you.” Just because someone is given a position where they’re watching over and others are meant to recognize that, that’s not a position of demanding, of lording it over and commanding people and trying to lift yourself up and subjugate people under your hand.
It has nothing to do with that, does it? God help us, everyone to have that kind of a spirit in every relationship that we have. If God’s put you in a place where you’re over somebody else, you’re not a little dictator. Don’t act like Hitler. Don’t act like some boss, some mob boss. We need to have the same spirit that was in Jesus, don’t we? Okay?
“Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, or appears, You will receive the crown of glory,” there’s that word again, “that will never fade away.”
I mean, here we have the possibility existing of somebody called to be an elder and their main focus is, what I can get out of this life, my plans, what I want. And here’s the Lord calling and saying, Wait a minute. This world is passing away.
Someone mentioned the scripture about not serving two masters. I mean, almost every scripture that was shared this morning bears on what I’m talking about. It was wonderful. But I’ll tell you, God has called us out of this world to be like Him, and you’re talking about the chief shepherd. He’s a pretty good example, isn’t he?
Wow! You think of somebody who learned how to be a servant. You think of what he said about being the Good Shepherd and his sheep hearing his voice. He called them, they listened to him, and he chooses them, he saves them, and no one can take them out of his hand. No one can pluck them out of his hand and no one can pluck them out of the Father’s hand because the Father’s hand is around the whole deal. No one’s able to pluck them out of His hand. I didn’t quote that very well, but that’s the substance of what he said.
But think of the amazing spirit and heart. I mean, you’re talking about the creator of the universe, here, who came down here. Didn’t pass himself off and say, Hey, look, didn’t trade on who he was. I mean, he heals somebody and says: Don’t tell anybody. I’m not here to make a splash. I’m not here to make a name for myself in that carnal sense, that earthly sense. I just have a mission. I’m here because I’m part of a plan that started in the heart of God.
Well, isn’t that what God’s called you and me to? Does he actually have a plan or is this just happening randomly? No, there is a heart of God that is working out something that is amazing.
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November 12, 2023 - No. 1623
“Tested Stones” Conclusion
Broadcast #1623
November 12, 2023
November 12, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1623 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Do you know that there’s a hedge about every child of God? Do you know there’s not a demon in hell or on earth that can do anything to breach that unless God literally allows them to do it? And do you think maybe, just maybe, there’s a purpose, a loving, wise, purpose behind God doing something like that?
Well, wouldn’t it be good if we could, in the middle of that, say, Lord, I understand. I mean, you see, Paul understands this and expresses it. Time and time again, he will refer to something that happened and he referred in 2 Corinthians 1 that we’ve referred to many times where he was in a circumstance that was so desperate that he thought it was all over. He had given up. He did not expect to survive what was going on.
But the thing is, he didn’t just say, But God delivered me, praise God. God wanted him to see something, not just to say, Wow, isn’t God great? He delivered me. But to see something, to learn something that would help him to be a stronger, better stone.
You remember what the lesson was? It had to do with learning not to depend on ourselves, but upon God. There are so many things about ourselves we simply do not understand, and it doesn’t matter how many times the Lord explains it, the truth is, we don’t get it until we go through something where we find out. Now, the Lord brought job through it.
You remember the other example that we use so many times of Peter. Do you think when Peter was serving the Lord and putting all that zeal and energy into it, do you think he was sincere? Yeah, he was sincere. He had every intention, at one point, of laying down his life if necessary. But you see a lot of natural reaction, natural thinking and God understood all that.
You remember when Jesus first started telling him that I’m gonna be crucified, then I’m gonna be raised into the dead, and Peter rebuked him. I mean like, seriously, Peter, don’t you remember who you’re talking to here? And Peter said, No, it’ll never happen. We’ll never let something like that happen, oh, no. Peter just had natural thinking.
Do you think maybe some of us have just a little bit of that? Do you think our natural instinct might just be to do things in our own strength and with our own wisdom and our own sense of how things should work? Yeah. Do you think maybe we just have a few lessons, if we’re gonna be effective members of the body of Christ, actually having him in us, direct us, empower us to do the right thing? Oh, we get in his way, don’t we? And God knows enough about us to put us in circumstances where we have to learn that the hard way many times.
And so of course we all remember what happened with Peter (chuckles) and how the Lord told him. In fact, it wasn’t just Peter he addressed. It was all of them. You’re all gonna fall away. You’re all gonna be be scared tonight and run away. And he told Peter, when Peter said, No! I’ll never do that. I’ll lay down my life for you. And the Lord said, Peter, (chuckles) before the rooster crows twice, you’re gonna deny three times that you even know me. And of course Peter said, No way.
Now, was he sincere? Did he wanna do the right thing? Yeah, but there was some things Peter didn’t understand. He didn’t know what it takes to serve God. You can’t do it in your own strength. We might as well, we’re gonna have to learn that lesson. Some of us are harder to learn that than others, but learn it. God’s gonna put us in a place where we come to that place where we learn and we’re willing, ready to say, Lord, I get it. You said I couldn’t do anything without you. You’re right, I thought I could.
And so, Peter was put in that place. But aren’t you glad that what Jesus said? He said, I prayed for you that your faith fail not. We’ve always got somebody who prays for us, who knows. When he removes the hedge and gives Satan permission, which is what he said, Satan’s asked for permission to sift you. So obviously the Lord gave him the permission.
Why would he do that? Because it was something Peter desperately needed to learn. His zeal, all of that natural stuff that made him a kind of a ringleader among the disciples, that wasn’t gonna get it. That’s not what makes him an effective member of the Kingdom of God. He had to come to a place where he learned he could not depend upon any of that, any human quality. And the only way that Peter was gonna learn it was to fall flat on his face.
Jesus even said later on, Watch, pray. Why? So that you won’t enter into temptation. He went to sleep. I got this. But you notice another thing that the Lord said. When you’re changed, when you’re converted, when you get through this and God does what, He accomplishes in you what He set out to do, strengthen your brothers.
Do you get the sense of why we’re made living stones, why we’re made members of the body of Christ? Is it just so we can puff up our chest and say, Look at me, I’m somebody. No, it’s so that we will have the power to serve one another. It all plays into that.
So, here’s Peter. God pulls the veil, or the hedge, as it were, back and says, Devil, he’s yours up to a point. Obviously, the Lord knows how much to let him do. But God allowed Peter to fall flat on his face for a loving purpose. And when he was done, Peter learned some things, didn’t he? You read the book of Peter, books of Peter there, and you will see the sense of humbleness and the sense of, I mean, he’s the one who didn’t come to the elders and say, Hey, I’m an apostle, you gotta listen to me.
He said, I’m an elder like you. You don’t lift yourself up above the people and rule over them. You don’t seek yourself, all that self-seeking stuff. And by the way, while you’re at it, be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary, the devil’s walking around looking for people to eat for lunch. How could he say that? He’d been there, done that, had the T-shirt. God allowed him to go through something so that he could learn something about himself he could not have learned in any seminar any other way.
He couldn’t read a book and get this. He had to go through something that was heartrending and it broke something in him and then the Lord reached out. Tell my disciples, and Peter, I’m going ahead of you to, well, wherever they’re going, Galilee, I guess it was. And the Lord spoke to him specifically up there and said, Peter when you were young, I know what you’re like. When you were young, you went where you wanted to go. You dressed yourself, went where you wanted to go. When you’re old, (chuckles) you’ll stretch forth your hand, you’ll let someone else dress you and they’ll carry you where you don’t wanna go.
There are things that God will put us in where we’re situations, circumstances, ways He wants to use us that are not the ways we would naturally choose, but do we want to serve Him? That’s what Jesus did. That’s the reason we can be here this morning is because Jesus went through all of these kinds of things. He faced the devil. When the Lord took the hedge away, he faced him and he made the right choices to listen to the voice of his Father, not to listen to the reasonings of the devil, the appeal of his own nature, the circumstance. Anything that he could see or touch, one thing dominated. This is what God has said. This is what I’m gonna go by. God’s gonna bring every one of his children to that place where what God says trumps everything.
And the problem with me, the problem with you, is we think we’ve got it. We think we’ve arrived at a certain level sometimes. And Lord has to remind us and say, Wait a minute. Don’t you be thinking too much of yourself here. You’re not anybody just because of who you are and what you can bring to the table here. You’re who you are and it’s incredibly important, incredibly wonderful, but because of what I have made you, because you’ve handed your life over to me and I have changed you and I’m refitting you for my Kingdom, you’re a stone, but you’re not quite ready to go in the building yet like you think. I got some work to do.
Anybody here got some, Lord’s got some work to do? Yeah, well, I only got two hands, but I’m gonna raise ‘em both. But do you know God is faithful? And I don’t care what you’ve been through this week, maybe rejoicing in what the Lord said last Sunday, but I don’t care what you’ve been through this week, don’t you be dismayed, don’t you be discouraged. Don’t you say, Oh, well, I knew it was too good to be true, or it’s wonderful, but it’s not for me. I’m just, I’m too bad, I’m too this, I’m too that. God is the One Who will take you into those places to teach you not to trust in yourself, but to trust in Him.
You think about the scripture we’ve used so many times about Paul and how God used him in such powerful ways and I have all ideas that at this point, he’d come through a lot, hadn’t he? Now, I’ll back up here in a minute, or back up for a minute and remind you of what he went through in Romans 7 because Paul had been trained that the way to serve God was through the law. Well, now I know who Jesus is, so now I’m gonna give it everything I got.
Well, the Lord allowed him to do that, didn’t he? Why? He needed to learn that that’s not how it works. That’s not how the Kingdom works. Paul discovered that there was a problem down here. There was a principle in his life that wouldn’t let him keep the law. He just turned him into a failure every time he turned around. I know what I oughta do and I don’t do it. I know what I’m not supposed to do and I wind up doing it. What’s going on here?
Oh, there’s somebody down, there’s a principle down here that’s not gonna let me. What do I do about that? Who’s gonna rescue me? That’s why Paul could teach with such power and authority the things that he did, he went through it. You ever been through that where you suddenly were brought face to face with a reality that it’s not in you, it’s not in your power to serve God, and you’re just gonna have to let go and give Him, and trust in Him to come in on the inside, give you a new heart and new life? And then realize that as we learn to believe in Him, trust in Him, yield to that, we’re gonna find that there’s power at work in our lives that’s not us.
But, you know, you can go along with that lesson and then God can begin to use you and all of a sudden you’re experiencing good things and you see the Lord at work in your life. It’s awfully easy to lose the sense of that and suddenly begin to think, Ah, I’ve really made some progress here. I’m getting to be in a good place. God’s using me. And of course, the unspoken truth is, am I not wonderful?
And you remember what Paul went through that we’ve referred to so many times where he got to a place where God’s purpose for Paul had to do, involved a lot of revelation. I mean, he saw some incredible things. He was caught up to the third heaven. I don’t know what all he saw. He doesn’t go into the details, but he experienced some incredible things. The power that was demonstrated through his life, his preaching, the revelations, the power of those revelations of truth and of the Kingdom of God, purposes of God. How does a human being cope with that and not get proud?
Well, Paul, at one point, did not really understand that to the degree that God wanted him to. And so, Paul had a genuine desire to serve God, but didn’t realize what was at work here and so God said, well, I understand. Okay, open the hedge a little bit. Let a demon get in there and bother him for a while. And all of a sudden, here’s Paul struggling to do things and he’s having to cope with whatever this is. It doesn’t really tell you the details except that there was a demon behind it. And it was a trial, it was a problem he had to push through to do anything.
And he sought the Lord about it. He asked him, and over and over again, that tells me he didn’t understand. Doesn’t it you? Have you ever been there? God, I don’t understand, help me. And here’s Paul crying out for a period of time and he comes to the place where he understands ‘cause he didn’t understand going into this, oh, there’s a danger of getting proud here and God needs to do something.
When he was in the middle of this oppression by that spirit, he didn’t understand that, that came afterwards. That was God explaining, Now I want you to understand, Paul, you are in great danger of being proud and trusting in your own strength as though that was the key to your success. And then Paul, the light went on finally and he understood.
And so his reaction was exactly the opposite of what any natural human being would have. It was to absolutely say, Thank you, Lord. I’ve wanted to serve you and now I understand why You’re doing what You’re doing because it’s what people need is not my strength, it’s Yours. But if You’re gonna have Your strength flowing through me, I got to get out of the way and I was in danger of really getting in Your way, Lord.
And so You had to allow me to experience that so that I could just come to a place of surrender and say, ‘Lord, I understand how the Kingdom works now.’ And so I’m gonna say, when I feel this kind of weakness, I’m gonna say, Thank you, Lord. Thank you for reminding me. I’m still here in flesh. I’m still in a realm where the devil tries to talk to me and use my weaknesses against me.
But I’m in a place right now where I need for Your strength to teach me. I need Your wisdom to teach me. I need Your strength to flow through me, Lord. I need to understand that my success in the Kingdom of God is not gonna be based upon some self-effort, something that comes from me, it’s gonna be me getting out of the way, glory be, thankful for my weakness, saying, ‘Lord, I’m so glad that I’m weak. I’m glad for you’re reminding me that I’m weak.’
How many of you are glad when you go through some of these places because of what you discover? See, the devil loves to focus our attention on our shortcomings. What’s wrong with us? What’s lacking in us? When the Lord wants us to come to a place where we understand, first of all, He knew all about that. The problem is we weren’t quite there in terms of recognizing it, agreeing with Him about it, coming to a place of surrender where we can realize there’s an answer to every bit of that.
We don’t have to wallow under that defeat. It’s not sent to defeat us, it’s sent to set us free from its power. Because the more we’re clinging to anything that originates in us, the more we are in bondage to it. It gets obvious if you’re talking about something like alcohol or drugs. There’s a need of something that people medicate that with and we see that’s brought them in, there’s a desire that originates here that brings somebody, makes a slave of somebody, but the truth is, every single manifestation of human nature is exactly the same. It just comes out in different ways.
But we are made slaves if we are under the dominion of anything that originates, that was born in us naturally, and Jesus Christ came to set us free and He’s gonna do what it takes. Can you pray that? Lord do whatever it takes to set me free, even when it means I’m gonna have to fall in the mud.
Now, don’t go falling in the mud deliberately, but you know what I mean! If God has to put us in a place where suddenly He pulls that hedge back and demons come and they’re pulling on stuff and we say, I thought I had that licked. I thought that was all over. What’s going on here? I don’t understand. We need to be able to lift up our eyes and say, Lord, thank you. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for your mercy.
You know, Paul, you can read this sometime, I’m not gonna go over and read it all, but over in 1 Corinthians, the end of chapter nine, he talks about what it took for him to serve the Lord and how he had to keep his body under dominion. He had to rule over it. He meant not by human strength, but by the Lord because there were things here that had the power to hinder his ministry.
And then he goes into the beginning of chapter 10 and that’s when he talks about the warnings about don’t be like the Israelites in the wilderness. And all of that leads straight into the scripture we quote so many times. There’s no temptation, that’s the word there, that seized you. That’s not something you went out and looked for, it just happened. You were doing fine, all of a sudden, something happens and it’s there and you feel the pull of your own nature.
Nothing like that happens, but those things that are common to man. Don’t you ever fall into the trap of thinking that you’re being singled out and you’re different from everybody else. You’re exactly like everybody else. We all got the same human nature, it just comes out in different ways. But nothing has seized you, nothing has challenged that and tried to pull on your nature to bring you down but that which is common to man, but God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted or tested beyond what you can bear, but, another but, will with the temptation also make a way of escape so that you can bear it.
I mean, I don’t think we’ve used any scriptures we haven’t used many times today, but somehow I sense that when the Lord is encouraging us to seek our place in the body, to realize that He’s called us to move with supernatural ability. I’m not talking about signs and wonders, necessarily, but I’m just talking about divine ability to be members of the body of Christ to help one another. It could be just a word of encouragement, it could be prayer, it could be so many things that all matter. God has called us to that, but we are the ones that get in the way and God’s gonna do what it takes to help us and we need to realize what it takes for us to become that.
What did it take for Jesus to become able to do all that He did? He had to go through real temptation and real testing, didn’t he? He had to suffer things and learn how to obey the God in the face of something, not just in theory, but to actually go through it. Well, as a result, he became a tested stone.
I believe God wants you and me to become tested stones and He’s going to do what it takes to get us to the point where we are willing to let go and realize how the Kingdom works. It doesn’t work with your abilities and how wonderful you are. It works with people who just come to a place where they’re honest.
It’s a good thing when we discover bad things in us, to realize, to be honest about ‘em, say, That’s there, that’s what it is, whether it’s lust or pride or whatever it might be, to be willing to say, Lord, truth, Lord, truth. But Jesus died for that. I can come to you and be as clean as if I had never sinned. There’s a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins and sinners plunge beneath that blood, that flood, lose all their guilty stains.
Thank God there’s an answer to all of this. But the answer that God is looking for from you and me today is, don’t be discouraged when these things happen. Don’t be discouraged when suddenly you’re in a place of weakness and temptation and the devil’s talking to you, things that are coming up you thought were done, even. Just look up, realize why it’s happening.
Realize that there’s help and there’s strength that we don’t need to be afraid, we don’t need to be condemned, we don’t need to be anything except moving forward and looking to God and trusting Him and going by what He says, believing His promises in the face of that because if we’re gonna be anything in this hour other than just huddling in a cave somewhere, if we’re gonna be anything, we’re gonna go through adversity, we’re gonna face the enemy, and we’re gonna learn to rely on God and his promises and his provision and He’s gonna take a people through and he’s gonna use a people in this hour and he’s gonna get the glory.
We’re gonna stand there. If He gives you a crown, you’re gonna get there and say, Whoa, that crown belongs to him. He’s the only reason that I’m here. So, thank God for His faithfulness. So, let’s each of us be a tested stone and let God do whatever it takes to make us ready to be served, to be able to function in His Kingdom, to serve one another and to bring glory to Him alone. He’s the only one who’s worthy. To Him be glory forever and ever. Praise God. Praise the Lord!
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November 5, 2023 - No. 1622
“Tested Stones” Part One
Broadcast #1622
November 5, 2023
November 5, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1622 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I’ve had some thoughts this week and I believe they’re related to things the Lord has said lately. And I’m sure I’ll say a lot of things that will be repeated in a sense, but again, I sense a certain emphasis in my spirit this week.
Last week we spent a lot of time talking about God’s kingdom, God’s purpose, the purpose He can see before the foundation of the world. And He has included every one of His own in that purpose. He has a particular place and a purpose for your life and for mine. We’re not just numbers on a list. We absolutely have a particular place, a plan for our lives that God is working out.
And, you know, as I thought back to that principle, and as this week unfolded, some of you will remember Joel on Wednesday evening asking us how our battles had gone. How many of you had battles since last week? Yeah.
Well, I thought of a scripture. As you know, certainly the enemy worked on me as he does on everyone, but I thought of a scripture that goes back to the ultimate example of the fulfilling of God’s purpose in a particular human life and that obviously is Jesus. He came to be the linchpin, the center of God’s heart and God’s purpose, the one that we honor here today, the one without whom we have no reason to be here today.
His name alone is the one that needs to be lifted up. Not us, not ours, or anything but him, and we praise him, but I thought of a scripture that had to do with his purpose being fulfilled on earth. And, actually, one of them that came to me was in Isaiah 28. And it was a prophecy of what God was going to do. And it was in the context of a people who were going the wrong way and headed for destruction and didn’t know it, but God had a plan that was going to be fulfilled in a people.
And so, he says in verse 16, “So this is what the Sovereign Lord says. See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation. The one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic, never have a cause to fear.” And the part that jumped out to me was this, a tested stone.
You know, we tend to think of the Son of God coming like it was no big deal, it was no problem. He could just do whatever. The devil didn’t have a chance. And I think that God’s grace was made manifest in his heart and his life, but he was absolutely not just a stone, but a tested stone.
Now, what do you think the implications for us would be based upon that simple principle? Do you think God’s just going to dump his power and his blessing on an individual life and not actually test us and prepare us and work in us? Yeah, absolutely. And so, I feel like we need to see that, but I’ll just look at some familiar scriptures that we know about.
Obviously, well, let’s just look at Ephesian, I’m sorry, Hebrews, And just skim through some scriptures here that have to do with who Jesus is because the writer of Hebrews is showing the superiority of what God is doing in this era, and on into eternity through his Son as compared to living under the law of Moses, but He’s lifting up Jesus in respect to God’s purpose for you and for me that has to do with eternity.
He put everything under — chapter two — He put everything under the feet of Adam, didn’t he? That was His intention in the beginning to have a creation ruled over by creatures who had been created in his image and would rule with His Spirit, okay? And we know what happened with that, but here we don’t see that fulfilled, but what we do see is Jesus in verse nine who was made lower than the angels for a little while now crowned with glory and honor.
Why? Because he suffered death so that, this is a particular interesting phrase, it doesn’t [just] say he suffered death so that he might taste death for everyone, but it drops into the phrase in there, doesn’t it? So that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Did I give you a clue as to how he did what he did? There was divine power from his Father that rested upon him that made it possible for him to do what he did. Is there a little bit of a lesson in that for you and for me? Yeah. Do we need him? Absolutely, we are nothing without him.
And Jesus came right down and did all that. It said, “in bringing many sons and daughters to glory it was fitting,” it was the right thing that is, “that God for whom and through whom everything exists should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”
If there’s somebody here this morning is feeling bad about yourself, and your performance and who you are, and the devil’s really beating you up, do you know that Jesus is not ashamed to call you his brother or sister? Get your eyes off of all these other issues and get them back on him because he wants you to know that he loves you and he’s not ashamed of you if you have truly from your heart put your trust in him, his saving power.
I know there are many ups and downs, many hills and valleys, many twists and turns on the way that we’re here, that we go through, but Jesus Christ is the one by whom we will one day stand there, righteous, holy, pure, all that God has purposed that we should be. To him be the glory, praise God! And he’s not ashamed.
And, of course, it goes on to talk about, verse 14: “Since the children,” that’s us, “have flesh and blood he too shared in their humanity,” okay, so why was that? “so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
And, of course, it goes on to talk about it’s not angels he helps but Abraham’s descendants. “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. And that he might make atonement for the sins of the people because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Anybody been tempted around here? Yeah. That’s kind of how this week got started for me. And I had to stop and think, what’s going on here? I don’t understand. And yet if we are going to be what God has designed us to be do you think that’s gonna happen without us going through stuff and being tempted and tested?
You know, the word that’s often used about tempting, being tempted, has really two meanings that you run into in the New Testament. One of them is temptation, as in someone’s tempting you to do the wrong thing, trying to induce you to do the wrong thing. The other one is tested in the sense of putting someone to the test, not so that you hope they will do the wrong thing, but so that they will stand up under it. And so, God tests, the devil tempts. We know that temptation to do what is wrong does not come from God, but God allows the testing part because we are going to have a tested people.
Folks, the entire planet is under a test from God. Did you know that? Every single human being is under a test from God to see what they will do and what they will do with God, what they will do with truth, what they will do with Christ. And, folks, there are two destinies being established. Absolutely. God is bringing the things down toward the end of the line.
But Jesus himself went through everything. That’s why with the scripture that we refer to so many times in chapter four where we have a place to go when we’re in that place. How many of you were there and you went to him for help? Or did you just wallow? Or you wallowed for a while and then you said, wait a minute, I know what I’m supposed to do here. Well, you know, we’re all in the same boat and I think Lord wants to encourage us, don’t you?
But anyway, the scripture we use so much, therefore, in verse 14 of chapter four: “Therefore, since we have a high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.” Now do you see what’s going on there? It’s one thing to profess something and say, oh, I believe that. It’s another thing when the test comes to hold firmly to that, not to give up on that, not to say, whoops, that sounded good, but it’s not working out.
What we have and who we’re going to be has to work out in the arena of real life. And God wants us to be, and to understand that, of course, and to be encouraged when it happens. How many of you had a test this week, and boy, it just encouraged you. It doesn’t tend to cause us to feel that does it? But, you know, if we could see things from God’s point of view, it would make a difference, wouldn’t it? Okay?
“So let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.” Why? “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize” — it says in this translation, or sympathize — “with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin.”
How did he do that? By the grace of God. God gave him the strength and the power. That’s where I need power. And when God puts me in that place that’s what he wants me to find out. He wants to remind me that I can’t do this, I need Him, but He’s more than willing to help me. Praise God!
All right? “Yet he did not sin.” So as a result of that, he says, “let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy,” mercy first, means we don’t deserve it for sure and “find grace.” That’s the strength that I need to help us in our time of need. We use that so many times, and it’s so important to understand.
It’s interesting how he goes on here because he’s illustrating this principle of having somebody who represents us before God who experiences what we do, understands it. And he looks back to the Old Testament. He says, every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
“Now he is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray,” Why? “since he himself is subject to weakness.” See, the priest wasn’t somebody who was “way up here. And what’s the matter with you? You’re back here again to offer another sacrifice. Straighten up, fly right.” He had to do it for himself. He understood weakness. Okay?
This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins. Thank God that wasn’t true of Jesus, but as well as for the sins of the people and so on. No one takes this honor to himself, but anyway, down to verse seven, the scripture that we have often read. “During the days of Jesus life on earth he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverent submission.”
Man, that’s what I wanna do, and just say, Lord, I know who you are and I bow, I’m yours. I submit to your plan and your will. I want you, oh God. “Son, though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered. And once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” That’s amazing when you stop and think about, what do you mean he wasn’t perfect?
Of course, the word, perfect, means complete. It means God had a purpose for his life, but part of that purpose was to come down here and experience our weaknesses, but learn how to actually handle them in real life. He couldn’t just say, oh yeah, that’s no problem, no problem. It was a problem. He had real battles.
And for God to make him complete, to be able to fulfill the purpose that God sent him to earth to fulfill, he had to go through that. He wasn’t everything God designed him to be until he had actually faced real issues in life and overcome them by God’s strength. Then he was able, not just to talk about all this in theory, but to say, I’ve been there. I know my Heavenly Father is faithful. I know that He will give you the strength to stand in this.
But I also know that this is relevant to what we’ve been talking about because if God has called you and me and He has, to a place in His kingdom, do not these principles apply to us as well? You know, Peter talks about, he refers to that very scripture, the cornerstone, how he’s the cornerstone. Let’s go ahead and turn over there.
And that’s in 1 Peter, chapter two, I believe. And this is where he’s encouraging the people like newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word, but then in verse four, he says, “As you come to him the living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him,” — Now it’s not just about him, is it? — “you also,” — Now he’s talking to us. You also, what? — “Like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
And then he quotes the very scripture we just read in Isaiah 28. He’s the cornerstone, but that means every one of us is a stone too. Do you think that God’s going to cause him to be a tested stone and we’re not? You know the answer to that. You just don’t like it, but the reality is God is going to take every stone, every one. That’s just one illustration.
God is gonna take everyone that He has called according to His purpose. And He will, as He said in Romans 8:28, work all things together for good to the fulfilling of that purpose. And that those things have to happen in our lives. We have got to be tested, and we have got to be able to say, I have been there and experienced that, and, therefore, I can be what God has called me to be.
Of course, you remember how Jesus was anointed in such a dramatic fashion. When he was baptized a dove settled upon his head and there was a voice from heaven. This is my Son, whom I’m well pleased, but what was the first order of business, at least very early? What was the first order of business for him? Go out and save the world? No, he went into the wilderness.
Now, why did he do that? The Spirit told him to go into the wilderness. And not only that, he didn’t eat anything for 40 days. Obviously, he drank water, but I mean he didn’t eat any food for 40 days. And what was the purpose for which he was sent out there? Just to have a nice time alone with the Lord and pray? No, it was to be tempted, to be tempted by the devil. God deliberately put him in a place. He said, all right, devil, do your best.
Why would He do that? Why would the Lord do such a thing? We know the Lord doesn’t tempt people, but He certainly allows the devil to do it, doesn’t He? But was that not a big part of that tested stone that He’s talking about? Yeah. No one could say, you don’t know what I’m going through because you’re just the Son of God. You can do anything. He said, no, I came here in weakness, in need.
And not only that, the Lord took me out into the wilderness and it was Satan himself that came. It wasn’t just one of his little minions. This was Satan himself coming and questioning if you’re the Son of God, you’re hungry. This doesn’t make any sense. If you’re the Son of God, come on, command these stones to be made bread, make some food here.
And he answered him with the Word of God. Man shall not live by bread only, just earthly provision, whatever it is. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds, present tense, out of the mouth of God. See, God had told him to do what he was doing. He was obeying God and standing up and putting God first over his flesh. He didn’t suffer God. I mean, he didn’t lose out by doing that.
God took him to a place of great weakness. You think you could go 40 days and then feel strong? Yeah, I can do this. God allowed him to get to that place of weakness, and yet to find the grace to say, devil, you have your wisdom, you have your direction as to what you think I ought to do, but here’s what God says, and that’s what I’m going by.
Anybody been with that kind of a choice sometime this week? You were feeling bad, you were feeling oppressed, you were feeling tempted, and you had to start making choices, but the devil just doesn’t tempt you. He’ll explain it. He’ll tell you all about why you’re where you’re at. God’s forgotten you. God doesn’t care about you.
I’ll tell you one thing that comes up, and all of us at one time or another, all of a sudden the temptation you’ll be in a weak place. All of a sudden the temptation will land. You say, wait a minute. I thought that was all behind me. Anybody been there? Now it’s kind of quiet. I thought that was behind me. I was victorious over that. And now all of a sudden, there it is again. What’s going on? I don’t understand. Why would God put me in this place?
Why indeed? Do you think there’s a godly wise purpose in God doing that? Do you think He’s just not in control? Do you think what the devil’s telling you about that is the truth — or is God testing stones? Is this part of God taking us to that place?
Or do we suddenly come into this grand truth about, oh, this is what we’re supposed to be. All I need is this or that, and I will just fly like an eagle flying over everything, or do we like Jesus many times, have to go into dark and difficult places where the Lord pulls His hand back and says, devil, do what you’re gonna do. This is my child, but they’re gonna have to learn. If they’re gonna be all that I have designed them to be they’re gonna have to learn to stand in a broken world.
You know, we know from scripture everyone who’s ever served God and accomplished anything in this world has had to do it in the face of adversity. And we think of adversity many times as, you know, just difficult circumstances. I’m sick or I’ve suffered loss, or something of that nature, but what is the ultimate source of that adversity? What are we wrestling against? Circumstances, natural difficulties in the world?
No, we are wrestling not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities. There is a government over this world that you cannot see with natural eyes, but it’s real. There is a world system over which Satan rules and he rules because mankind handed him the reins. God put all of this under Adam’s control and he promptly handed it over to the devil.
And the devil has ruled over humanity by appealing to his natural instincts to serve himself, to live a selfish, rebellious life against God. This is what God is calling us out of. And, folks, if we’re gonna be His people in this kind of a world, we’re gonna have to swim against the current, against the tide as it were.
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October 30, 2023 - No. 1621
All Music
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October 22, 2023 - No. 1620
“God’s Plan for Our Lives” Conclusion
Broadcast #1620
October 22, 2023
October 22, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1620 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: If He knows how many hairs are on your head and He plans the destiny of nations, do you not think He has a plan for our lives? Think about that. You know, how many times have we referred to Hebrews 12 where we’re told to run with patience, or endurance, what? The race marked out for us.
Do you know God has already written your story. He’s written the history of your life in advance because He knows the choices you and I will make, some of ‘em won’t be the great greatest will they, but God wants us to get so in tune with Him that we are living out the story He’s planned for us.
You know, I’m sure I’ve said something along this line before, but Sue and I both grew up in a church movement, I guess, denomination, that was very missionary oriented. And so, it was very common for… I mean the pattern was for missionaries to go over and serve whatever term was appropriate for their field, maybe four or five years, and then they’d come home for a year of furlough. Well, part of that was to get rest; part of it was to go around and promote the missionary effort.
But I remember over and over and over again during my growing up years being in missionary rallies of one kind or another, and the emphasis being made at the end of God calling young people to lay down their lives, to serve Him and basically saying, it’s not my life, I’m gonna do your will, Lord and just surrender in that area. Well, that’s very appropriate, wasn’t it? I think a lot of times it came across as, this is for people who wanna be missionaries, who are willing to be missionaries, or preachers, or some kind of fulltime service.
Folks, do you really think that that’s all it’s talking about? Every single person that He ever calls God has His plan for your life and it’s one that we need to just realize, my life is not mine. If I’m Christ’s, He’s called me to step into His story, a story that He’s already written. I know how it’s coming out, but He wants me to live out. It isn’t just about getting saved and then being there, this is about what happens in between. We’re here for a reason and God wants every one of us to live our lives seeking out stepping into His story.
You suppose we’d have more rest, and sense of purpose if we did that? I mean, there’s so much about us that just fights that and struggles, and we live according to natural wisdom far more. Oh, I just pray that I think God wants every one of His children to realize all of the issues of life matter to Him.
Now, I’ll tell this one little thing, I can’t remember if I ever had before or not, but I will risk it. (chuckles) You know, we were in college when Sue and I were in college, we were going together, but also, we were planning. I mean, the sense was, I’m here to be prepared for missionary service, okay, and so that was the whole idea.
And God knows the issues of every heart. There’s no formula here, but God knows the issues of your life. He knows what matters to you, He knows issues that we need to come to a place of surrender about, okay. And it’s different from you, for you and you, but every part of every one of us has things in our lives and in our thinking that matter to us to the point where God has to put His finger on that thing and do something about it and bring us to a point where we’ll lay that on the altar. Not just this general thing, but that thing, I surrender.
Well, like I say, I will risk this, but apparently in Sue’s mind she certainly is not different from most of you either. The question of marriage was an issue, and there was a wrestling, and there was a place where God brought her to where, I don’t know all the details, but the way I remember it was that if I called you to not be married and to go and be a missionary, would you be willing?
And not all the things that we surrender necessarily are taken away from us. We don’t know that one way or another, but if they surrendered God knows, God has the plan, not me. And so that was a point of wrestling. And the Lord brought her to that place where she said, yes, Lord. If that’s what it comes to, I surrender.
How many of you have issues in your life right now where the Lord wants to bring you to that place? You’re not really free until that’s laid down if the Lord puts His hand on it. So, this isn’t just her, this is everybody.
But the interesting thing was I didn’t know anything about this. I was over in the men’s dorm, and I had this incredible sense of freedom come over me that thinking about marriage, and it was marriage to her. I’ll guarantee I got the better deal out of that! (congregation laughing) No question about that. But I was sit… Just out of the blue I was sitting there thinking about it, having this sense of freedom and peace come over me. Like this is God’s plan.
And I was thinking about, now where can we live? And I know about the apartments you can rent from the school, the married couple’s apartments. And it was just churning in my mind, I had this sense of freedom. Well, what I didn’t know was this was absolutely happening at the same time as what was happening with her. You see the Lord at work in our lives if we’ll just listen to Him and learn from Him and learn to learn to live His life and not the one that we’ve planned.
Folks, this world is built on following natural desires. We certainly read that in Ephesians two, didn’t we? Everybody is born with all kinds of desires and ideas. And if we’re gonna be His, if we’re gonna live out this amazing purpose that we see from the before the creation on into the coming ages. The part that matters to us today is, are we participating in that purpose? Do our lives belong to Him?
Because if He has our lives then we can begin to fulfill His purposes. We can be the members of the body of Christ, we can be a blessing and a strength one to another, not because of who we are, or anything but because we are allowing Him to live in and through us.
And it’s hard to talk about this without focusing on the Lord Jesus as the ultimate example. Do you think that His life was just a case of the Father sending Him down here, giving Him a general idea of what He wanted to accomplish and a whole bunch of beliefs and saying, go do it, go figure it out. Everything about the earthly life of Jesus had been planned from all eternity. So many of the things came out of the mouths of prophets long before He ever came.
Oh wait, didn’t Paul say we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do? You see that applied to Jesus. Everything Jesus accomplished, everything He did was something that God had already planned in detail.
So, what was Jesus’ part in this? It was to seek the Father. He said, I didn’t come, Lord, Father, you gave me a body, I came to do your will, not mine. I’m not here to do my will, but the will of Him that sent me. And to finish His work. There was literally a yieldedness to, to fulfill every purpose of God, even with the one that took Him to the cross, that made him a slave and a servant. All of that was planned in advance in every detail. So, his life was not one of trying to figure it out, looking at circumstances and getting upset about ‘em.
And nobody here would ever do that! But all the things that we do when we rely on our own understanding, our own wisdom, what we see, what we feel, what we believe, all these things get in the way of the things God wants to do in and through us. And He wants us to grow up as His children and learn how to do what Jesus said. What did he say? “Take my yoke. Learn from me for I am humble and gentle in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Now, why could He rest? Why did He rest? I mean, He rested knowing that things weren’t gonna be always pleasant, but He understood, I am part of a purpose that was begotten in the mind and the heart and the will of God before the foundation of the world. And this is my place in that. And so, my job is simply to look to Him every day, and show me, to show me what He wants me to do and then to do it.
And when I see things that are distressing, I can certainly talk to Him about it, but I’m not to sit here and be (mimics anger), everything’s all gone to hell in a hand basket. God, I don’t know what’s going on. Where are you? He’s right there. And He’s the one who’s able to take us through all the ups and downs and hurts, and everything that happens in this life and help us to live a life of purpose, of value. You are valuable to Him, you matter.
Do you think He has designed this grand scheme, and He’s already determined what’s gonna happen in every nation? Do you think the One who sees the sparrow fall doesn’t have a plan for our lives? Do you really think He doesn’t have one? That His plan is to call missionaries to lay down their lives and everybody else is just supposed to go marry whom they will, choose whatever career they want, live where they want, come and go as they please?
Every one of us needs to just lay down our will and say, Lord, I am yours. Show me the issues of my life, and the things that cause me anxiety and fear, help me just to lay them at your feet and say, Lord, you’ve got this. You are my God; Jesus is my savior. My hope is in you, it’s never in me. I may not understand, but I know that in all things you are working not for my evil, but for my good. Not for my hurt, but for my good. And it’s because You have called me according to Your purpose.
Is His purpose worth living for? Is there anything worth living for in this world, but His purpose? No, absolutely not. And I pray that God will bring us to a place where we are so confident of who we are in Him, not because of us. We’re confident of His purpose, the certainty of it, who we are. Our identity comes not from what people say, and do to us and circumstances of life, it comes from who He says I am. I’m His beloved child. He loves me. He’s called me according to His purpose.
It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t choose the important people of the world, to accomplish His purposes, He chooses the things that are not to bring to nothing things that are. Isn’t that what Paul said in 1 Corinthians one? We don’t have to be something in the eyes of people, we can be just as long as we’re His and we can know that we’re loved. We can have a rest that transcends what people say, and how they act and how they treat us ‘cause we know we have a rest.
You think Jesus went around upset, and anxious at all the things that happened around Him? How dare they say that? Don’t they know who I am? I’m tired of that, if you say one more thing…. See, we understand that’s not how He was, but doesn’t He want us to learn from that and say, we don’t have to be that way either. We can live our lives with a sense of holy expectation, but yet with a sense of patience, knowing that the things God wants to accomplish in us do take time.
And many times the things that stop us from being able to enter into things in Him are the issues of our lives that He has to stop and deal with. And so even if He gives us a vision and a sense, oh I want you to be all members of the body of Christ, that’s who you are. I want you to have the gifts, We don’t have to be anxious about that. We just start where we’re at and say, Lord, I’m in your hands. Let me just take one day at a time and look to You and just walk through this day with You. And if there’s something I need to know, I’m trusting You to show me. I can’t figure this out and I don’t have to, it’s not my job. Not my job to….
And of course a lot of us have a real problem being fixits. We see something we perceive to be a need, something wrong or something may even be good, we wanna see something happen. We wanna see somebody change and so we’re gonna jump in there and “help God out.” How did that work for Peter? That was his nature, wasn’t it? But we’re all like that. And that’s why Jesus said to him at the end there, when you were young you dressed yourself, and you went where you wanted to go. But when you’re old, you’ll stretch forth your hands, another’s gonna dress you and carry you where you don’t want to go.
That’s where I want to be. That’s the death by which we glorify Him. We’re dying to what we would be naturally in this world, but we’re embracing a life that will never end. You know, the world will look at you and tell you you’re a fool. I often think back to Jim Elliot, gifted young man, come through university training, everybody expected him to be really somebody in the world. He had what it took. And God called him to be a missionary to savage people in an out-of-the-way jungle in South America.
And his friends thought he was a fool. And so, he wrote in his journal, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Oh, do we need God’s perspective on life? On the decisions young people are making right now, this isn’t just for you, but it is for you. You’re at the cusp of your life, God has a purpose in who you are, where you’re going, who you marry, what you do.
He’s already designed a life for you that is meaningful. It may not be what you think of it naturally as something you want, but I’ll guarantee when we get to the other end, we’re gonna say, thank you, Lord. Thank you for delivering from me, thank you for delivering from my purposes. I thought this would make me happy, and I got there and it didn’t and all I did was make a mess.
God wants us to learn from Him and say, Lord help me to live the life You have designed for me right now today to realize that I can live that life and not this other one that I’ve been trying to live. I don’t have to be afraid, don’t have to be anxious about all these things. Yeah, I can feel that, but I can take it to you immediately, can’t I? I can have that peace that passes all understanding.
God wants His people to have more rest. Do you have rest today about the issues of your life? Are you at rest or is there something that’s just, I gotta fix this, I gotta change that? Oh, I’m worried about this, I’m worried about that. God wants us to cast all our cares upon Him, why? Why should we do that? Who’s He? He doesn’t care.
Yes, He cares. Yes, He cares. He cares about you right now this morning, every single one of you He loves us with a love we cannot imagine. He has plans for us that we cannot imagine. But those plans aren’t just something way out there, they’re right here. They’re this afternoon, they’re tomorrow morning, they’re this week.
What God has, the purpose for my life and everybody’s individual. You can’t make patterns out of this and formulas out of it. It’s a matter of learning to walk with Him, but to believe Him. Do you really believe this is true of you right now here today? Do you see how important chapter one is? If we don’t see ourselves there, my God that is the place to start. You better cry out to God and say, Lord, help me, open my eyes. I can’t figure this out, but You’re gonna have to show me. You’re gonna have to reveal yourself to me.
And I’ll tell you, He will. If there’s anything in your heart, and if there’s anything in your heart that wants that, you better remember that didn’t come from you that came from Him, that was grace. That’s grace at work to even give us the inclination to want God, to be interested in Him at all. Oh, how merciful and faithful God is. But I’ll tell you God has a specific plan for your life marked out.
You look through the scriptures and you see Moses, and David and Jeremiah the prophet, you know I chose you from the womb to be a prophet of the nations. You say what? I dunno what God’s purpose is. It isn’t necessarily some grand thing in the eyes of men, but if it’s your place, nobody else in the history of this planet can fill it. I wanna fill the place that He’s called me to be.
If it’s to be the doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, isn’t that what David said? I’d rather be that than anything. Dwell in the tents of wickedness. There’s nothing in this world that is worth anything, but this is the thing God wants you to understand. The God who has planned everything in the beginning has also planned a life out for you. All the details of your life, He’s already planned and worked them out.
All he wants you to do is to let go and find that place of peace and surrender where you’re looking to him to step by step make you into who He wants you to be and lead you safely to that day when He can say, this is what I’ve been doing, here they are grown up, they’re ready. He’s the only one that can do that.
To Him who’s able to do more than we could ask, or imagine according to His power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church throughout all the ages, praise God, praise God!
So that’s the thing, where are you with respect to this simple truth? Do you realize who you are in Him? Do you realize that He has a specific plan for your life? Is that the one you want? Are you willing to look to Him and say, God, I need you to show me. Show me today and help me to be patient with it. Help me to be at rest. Help me just to look to you and I tell you God is gonna bring all of His children through and finish what He started. Thank the Lord!
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October 15, 2023 - No. 1619
“God’s Plan for Our Lives” Part One
Broadcast #1619
October 15, 2023
October 15, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1619 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, as often is the case, I’ve had a lot of thoughts and I’m just asking the Lord to direct and organize ‘cause they’re usually a whole lot more than you could think about getting out in one message. But anyway, I think I’m gonna go to Ephesians, chapter one. You could take almost any verse in here and make a message out of it. I’m gonna just try to move through it because I want to get to something.
But anyway, beginning of verse three, after the greeting, he says this: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Okay, what about him? “Who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
So, he starts right off with the fact that everything we need is already there. It’s been given to us. He has blessed us. And it’s a past tense thing. He’s not waiting for me to meet a certain standard and then, okay, I’ll give you something. This has been given to us. Thank God!
Do we realize that in a practical sense? You know, it’s one thing to realize the theology of this and the truthfulness of the theology, but for me to be able to take it out on Monday morning and walk in it, that’s what I need. Yeah, praise God!
For he chose us, “for he chose us in Him,” when? When we measured up? “Before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” My God, what an amazing statement that is for God to even know about us, let alone say, “That one’s mine.”
Now, this is a God who is able to look into the future. He knows the future from the past. Everything is history to Him. It’s as real as if it’s already happened. We’re the ones who are living out that history. But with God, He is able to see down the stream of time. He knows the choice of every human being. He knows how to weave it all together so that we have responsibility and yet God has sovereignly purposed to see a plan happen.
And that’s what he’s trying to get across, that the foundation is not that I chose Him and oh God, I better hang on, I better do everything right. Yes, God wants us to live a certain way, but the foundation is not commandments and depending upon some virtue in me and some strength in me. I don’t have it, folks.
And I discover that, and I suspect many of you do too as well, I discover that more and more the further I go. The Lord has ways of showing us our need and He allows us to sometimes fall in the mud, not because He’s mad at us but because He loves us enough to say, You thought you were doing so good in your own strength and I need to show you the truth here. Need to remind you who I am. I need to remind you that I’m the one who’s your foundation for everything. I didn’t save you because I saw good in you. I saved you because of my loving purpose. Praise God! Thank God!
We are so prideful. We want it somehow to depend on us but thank God it doesn’t. And the more we go along, the more thankful I am that it doesn’t because I see what’s lacking in me. But anyway, so that’s His predestination, that we should be holy and blameless. Wow. Can’t even say, Well, you’re guilty of this. You’re guilty of that. God’s gonna take all of that away. Has taken it all away. “In love,” — now we got the motivation behind all this — “In love he predestined,” He decided our destiny ahead of time. For what? “For adoption to sonship.”
And that, you know, I have to drop this in every time because we use the word adoption differently than they did. We think of an orphan being adopted officially into a family and becoming part of that family. But this adoption has to do with grownup sonship where a man would grow up in a household, and of course he’s a child, he has to learn, he has to grow, but there comes a time when that son is presented to society saying, This is my son. I give him full authority to act as an adult in my name. I stand behind him. He is….
Isn’t that where God’s going with this? When God gets through with this, he is going to absolutely present us to all creation, and to a brand new creation. These are my sons and daughters. I grant them full authority to exercise the dominion that was part of my purpose in the beginning over a brand new, beautiful creation. Every one of them has a place and they are fully authorized to act in my name.
Can you imagine being brought to a place where that’ll happen and we won’t mess it up because He’s changed us from the inside out? We are brand new. Praise God! What a purpose this is! Wow!
Okay. So, the adoption of sonship through Jesus Christ, again, the means by which that happens. Now what’s this in accordance with? In agreement with what? His pleasure and will. We didn’t think this up. This was His plan. Before the foundation of the world, before He created anything. Before He said, Let there be light. He said, I see Carl, I see Kenny, I see Mildred, I see all these ahead of time, I know all about them. I know every hair that will ever grow on their heads. And they’re mine. I love them. I have an eternal purpose for them and I’m gonna make it happen.
Man, I wanna be part of that, don’t you? I wanna be part of something that’s real because this world is full of fear and uncertainty. But thank God. All right. In accordance with his pleasure and will. It’s what He wanted and what He decided and He’s able to make happen.
“To the praise of his glorious grace.” Now, grace again is more than just an attitude. It’s a power that literally is at work. His glorious grace, which He has grudgingly given. Wait a minute, “Freely given us in the one he loves. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”
We have it. My God, do we live in that? Every one of us is going to all the time run into things where we just aren’t all that He wants us to be. And we struggle with it. But how many times do we do like a song that brother Jim down in Florida used to sing about, you know, blowing another day instead of coming to him right then and saying and believing his promise and his provision? We don’t have to wallow in defeat. We don’t have to earn our way back into his favor. We just need to come with an honest heart, a repentant heart, and say, Lord, cleanse me, help me. Help me to move forward.
But Lord, I thank you for the power of the blood of Jesus that we just sang about this morning. Thank you for that power that gives me a basis to have hope this morning. Thank God I don’t have to wallow in all that I am not. I can glory in all that you are. Wow, that’s worth everything, isn’t it? You wanna live for something else?
All right, “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance,” in agreement with the riches of God’s grace that he grudgingly pour, wait a minute, he lavished on us. Wow, it’s like there’s no end to what He’s able to do in the face of our need. Thank God”
All right, With all wisdom and understanding. He’s got it all, He knows everything, He understands everything. “He made known to us the mystery of his will.” Now, that word mystery is often used, particularly in the New Testament, and what it basically means is something that is true but man cannot discover it on his own. I don’t care who you are, whether you’re Plato or Aristotle or whoever, nobody’s gonna figure this one out.
Eye has not seen, neither ear heard, neither has it entered the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love him. We apply that to heaven and that’s true enough. But God has revealed them to us by his Spirit. So, he’s not talking just about that, he’s talking about what we’re talking about this morning. These are things the natural man cannot figure out or understand.
That’s why so many people will take this Bible and try to understand it with their intellect. And you’re gonna make a mess and go in all kinds of directions. We need God to open up the reality of what this book is about. Praise God! All right. Thank God, I believe he’s doing that, don’t you?
All right. So, the mystery of his will, wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will, what he planned, not what men planned, “according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” Praise God!
There’s gonna come a day on God’s calendar, it’s already set and there’s not a thing the devil can do about it, when everything is going to be complete. We will be gathered to him, our very bodies will be changed. And that’s identified in Romans with this adoption. When he’s gonna say, This is what I have been doing. This is what this entire age has been about. It’s gathering and preparing a family to live with me and to share my glory forever and ever. Praise God! Man, is that something to get involved in and to say, Lord, that’s what my life is about? It sure is. Okay?
All right, so you’ve got this fulfillment to bring into unity, all right? In him, in Christ, we were also chosen, having been predestined, our destiny established ahead of time, what? According to or based on the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.
Boy, you got a lot of important words there. You’ve got His will, His power, all of that. But the purpose, the sense of this is what it’s about. But I’m not just sitting there and saying, I got this purpose but I don’t know how to do it. He’s got a plan. His plan involves us being here this morning together. It’s something He’s thought about and seen. Do you know that God has already seen this service? He knows exactly what’s gonna happen and He knows who’s here. He knows what your need is. What a great and awesome, amazing God we serve!
But to think about how Paul is able to talk about this as something has been done, it’s already happened, and yet here we are experiencing the outworking of something that is so real, so certain, that it is as certain as if it has happened. Wow, that’s amazing. Just aren’t they saying something to meditate on?
Folks, go to this passage. You remember the movie, “Overcomer,” how critical this passage was to that movie and to that young lady finding out who she really was. Do you ever get to the place where you think, I’m nobody, I don’t matter. Oh, poor me. I just can’t get it right, and all the things that the devil will plant in our minds to make us think we’re nobody.
You’re not nobody to Him. Do you know what? You want to know how much value you have to Him? Look at the cross. Look at the price that was paid. Look at the love that was shown. That wasn’t just shown to this vague multitude of people; that was shown to you. Praise God!
Praise God, I’m gonna get encouraged here in a minute. What words, chosen, predestined, plan, purpose, will, all those things in one verse. What a powerful verse. So, to what end, where’s he going with this? “In order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.” So, He did all this to set something in motion. He’s wanting to produce something in and through us, okay? So, you see the laying of a foundation, that all has to do with God and His plan and purposes, but now He wants us to step into that. And because of that, we can be something that we are definitely not as natural human beings. It lifts us out of that realm and says, Wait a minute, I’ve got a whole different life planned for you. Okay?
Now you come back, you step back into time, and he says, “And you also were included.” You wanna be included today? You wanna be included in what he’s talking about? “You were included when you heard the message of truth, the gospel or the good news of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession to the praise of his glory.”
Wow. I mean, you could take every word in that almost and just focus on it. And I just want to, I see the wisdom of God in laying such a foundation for us. Folks, if we can’t stand on that, there’s no point in telling people how to live, ‘cause I can’t do it. I don’t, it’s not in me to do any of that.
But boy, can God reveal to me this incredible plan and purpose that’s going to happen? And then say, Are you gonna live your life in a temporary world for your own lusts and purposes? Is that gonna be your choice? I’ll tell you what your destiny is. You’re gonna perish.
But when I show you what I have done and I call you to put your trust in me, that is a point of surrender. That is when my life no longer becomes mine. It becomes his. And then what He does, when He cleanses, when the work begins in my own heart through the gospel and I surrender to that, then He comes in and lives by His Spirit and gives me a new heart and a new life.
And then what is my life’s purpose after that? Is it just to do my own thing or stick the ticket to heaven in my back pocket and just live my life like other people? You see where God, where Paul and where the Lord’s going with all of this. And you see where Paul, I mean, he has such a trouble expressing himself. He can’t find a period for most of these statements! They just go on and on and on and on because there’s so much to it.
And he’s just caught with the reality of this and then the deep desire in his heart to convey this to the people. My God, do you have any idea who you are and what, what you have? Because if we don’t really get that, everything else kind of is a struggle, isn’t it? Anybody here been struggling? Yeah. In a lot of ways, we all do. But oh, even in that, God shows us his mercy because he wants us to let go and let God have his way.
You know, I was thinking so much, Wednesday, I think, Wednesday morning, I had some wonderful thoughts that had to do with just relaxing my life in His hands and letting go. And then lo and behold, it seemed like over and over and over again, that theme came up in the gathering on Wednesday evening, and I just sat there and listened and said, Boy, this is just exactly what I’ve been thinking about.
But isn’t that what the Lord wants for us? To enter into his purpose, to live for the very reason we were created, to understand that? And you see where Paul is going? That’s what he’s longing to convey.
“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you.” Thank God. “Remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation.” Why? “So that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. The riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”
You realize if you’re one of His people, that’s what He’s glorying in. God’s excited. We’re the ones who get all bogged down. But God’s just anticipating, there’s something in His heart of love that thinks about you and says, I just can’t wait. I know what I’m doing. I know where this is going. Oh, I just want them to understand so they can live a happier, more victorious life, take the struggle out of it. My God, help us. He is, isn’t he?
All right, and “his incomparably great power.” No way to compare his power. Don’t care what the devil does, God’s got the final word. But his incomparably great power is not just so we can say, wow. It’s for us. Do you need God to do something in your heart? I do. I need him to do a whole lot of stuff. Can He handle it? You think He’s got enough? Yeah, incomparably great power for us who believe.
“That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” Remember, Jesus said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore. See, you see the gathering of the proclamation of the kingdom, of the good news of what God had done through Christ, and the gathering of a family. All authority is behind it in heaven and earth. He sits there, he reigns. It’s not like he’s sitting in a chair somewhere but it’s a symbolic picture of absolute authority.
You know, God allows many things in our lives, but every one of them we know has a reason and has a purpose behind it. It’s to set us free from the old and to bring in the new, to bring us to a place where we are more ready to trust Him, to believe His promises, and to grow up in Him. Everything is already orchestrated to the end that He has absolutely declared. Thank God!
So, it’s “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.” These people had come out of heathen darkness and they were people who invoked the names of Zeus and Apollo and all these heathen gods. Well, you forget about them. There’s one name. His name is Jesus. He has all authority in heaven and earth. That’s the only name that matters.
“And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Now this ties in with, you know, something we said last week. We think of Christ only in the sense of Him the head. But when God sees Christ, He doesn’t just see the head, He sees the body that’s joined to Him, that’s connected with Him.
And isn’t that what this says? We’re “the rest of him,” we’re the fullness of him. I don’t feel like that a lot of times, do you? But this is what God has said. This is what God is able to make happen if we will learn how to rest in Him and trust in Him. Oh, how we struggle when He wants us to understand, okay? These are scriptures we’ve read many times, but I think it’s a good thing to see them afresh.
“As for you,” now he goes back to where we were, “you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” Is that the world we live in? It sure is.
But now Paul includes himself when he says, “All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But” — praise God, one of the most glorious buts in scripture — “because of his great love.” That’s the motivation. It’s not pity, it’s not anything else but love, and it’s great love and it’s for us. It’s for you this morning. I don’t care how you feel and how you see yourself. This is God talking to you, saying I love you. I’ve given you what you need. Step out into that. Believe it.
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October 8, 2023 - No. 1618
“Pursue, Fight, and Take Hold” Conclusion
Broadcast #1618
October 8, 2023
October 8, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1618 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: How many of us could say that going through every day, that all of our feelings, our thoughts, our actions, our reactions to things that happen, things that people say, things that people do, oh, it flows right straight out of the heart of God. We never say a cross word. Never have an evil, a bad thought. Never get angry. Never. You suppose we might need just a little bit more than we got? You think the Lord has more for us than where we’re at right now?
Well, here’s Timothy obviously well on into his ministry, and what is it that Paul’s encouraging him to do, to seek? Pursue righteousness. Now, it’s interesting that word pursue. I looked a couple of these up just to see what the original word was. I don’t even remember. I couldn’t tell you what it is literally. But it’s an interesting word in this respect. It’s used in two very different senses.
One of the uses is persecute. When Paul was Saul, the Jew, going around trying to arrest Christians and get ahold of them, there was a pursuit there, but it was a persecution, and literally it meant to pursue somebody to… This is what my life is about. This is a conviction that motivates me to action.
But now here is Paul using the same word to say there’s something else you need to be pursuing. It needs to have that same conviction that drives us to action, is what he’s saying. Pursue this. It’s the same word, I believe, that he uses in Philippians 3, the scripture we use so many times. I press forward. This is what I’m after. I pursue this one thing, I press.
And again, you have this sense that there’s opposition. But God give us the grace to constantly, instead of just settling, instead of saying, Where I’m at is okay, to recognize that God is at work to change us and He’s changing us so He can use us.
How can we be what God has called us to be in this hour if we just sleepwalk through it, and we accept where we’re at right now, and we don’t mind getting angry. We don’t mind getting upset. We don’t mind blowing off steam and thinking about this and all engrossed in that and just somehow disconnected from Him, when God is wanting us to say, Wait a minute, I need him. This is not what he has for me.
We’re told in in Galatians, Don’t walk in the flesh, and he gives us a whole list of characteristics that come out of this old nature. But rather — and many of these things that he’s telling Timothy to seek right here, come right straight off of that list — love, joy, peace, self-control, all of these things, these qualities that only come from Him. Folks, I need that, don’t you, this morning?
And I had this sense as I was reading this the other day that God is well aware of our need. Aren’t you glad He’s patient with us? Oh, thank God. Does He have reason to be? He does with me. You’re supposed to say, yes! God is so patient.
But here’s God looking down on me and saying, Yeah, he thinks he’s doing good. He’s not robbing any banks. He’s not doing any gross thing. And he’s mostly has a good spirit about things. But I see a need. I see areas where fleshly reactions, old nature thoughts and motivations keep cropping up. I gotta do something.
Well, guess how he works. He’s gonna put you in a situation where that comes to the front. How many times have you been in a situation where maybe you have a tendency to blow off steam in certain circumstances? Well, guess what? Don’t be surprised if God keeps putting you in that circumstance. And God does it. And yes, an enemy may be involved in that, but God does it.
Why would he do something like that? You think maybe He wants us to react like Timothy was called to react? Say, Wait a minute, this isn’t the Lord. I got a need here. And God has used this circumstance to make me aware of a need maybe I didn’t even really think about it, I wasn’t that aware of it. But God wants to do something in me. After all, He wants me to become like Jesus.
How many of you’re there? Yeah, we got a ways to go. We got things that God has for…. Does God have everything for us? Oh, we love to sing about it and then assert it, but when it comes to literally living in the reality of what He has given to us, that’s where the rubber meets the road, as we say. And God has a way of putting us in circumstances where we’re gonna sink or swim.
We’re gonna just give in to something and kind of be where we’ve stayed, the bondage is just gonna go right on, and we’re just gonna, Help me, give into self-pity and resentment and blaming somebody else, all the human reactions that we all have at one time or another, instead of saying, Oh God, you have allowed me to see this need in me, but I know you have an answer. I know there’s a throne where I can go. I know I didn’t earn the right to go there and you promised me that you would receive me with mercy.
Well, that’s what I need, Lord. I’m in a place where I need mercy. I can’t come and say, I deserve to come here. But Lord, you promised the mercy, but you promised the grace. I need the river of life to flow into me. I need divine strength that I do not possess or I’m just gonna keep on being what I’m being.
How many of us have settled? How many of us have just settled for where we’re at, really? In more ways than I want to admit. How many of you think that’s what the Lord wants? How many of you think that’s what Paul wanted for Timothy? Okay, Timothy, you’ve made it, you’re successful now, you can go around and preach to people and encourage them and just go with the flow.
Folks, the Christian life in one sense is a flow, but it’s a flow against opposition. And in fact, it’s swimming against the tide. ‘Cause this tide here is gonna fight you every step of the way. The only way we can do it is divine life and divine strength. I need to lay hold of the eternal life.
And that’s the picture you get here. Paul says to pursue and he gives a list of all these wonderful virtues that you and I lack naturally but we need so much. Pursue that. That’s what your life needs to be about. Remember when I was pursuing Christians ‘cause I thought I was serving God and arresting them, having them killed?
But now I’m pursuing something else, I’m pressing forward, I see that there is something that I do not have and I’m gonna have to go against opposition in order to get that because I need it. It’s not enough just to say it’s there. Hallelujah, it’s there. I need it. I need it. So, pursue that and then fight.
Again, there’s that sense of opposition, pursue and fight. But then he says, Take hold. How much of what Christ died for is something that we possess? that we have literally said, That’s mine? How many of you think that God wants us to seek him about things and literally expect him to answer, and expect him to give the grace? Can we not go to him on the basis of his promises and say, Lord, you said.
I think of times in the scriptures, again, look these up, but it seems like in… I know Jehoshaphat. When they were faced with that terrible army that was coming against him, when they went to God, one of the things they said was, Lord, you said. Lord, you promised, and this is why we’re coming to you. You see what’s coming against us, but you promised. Well, God gave them a victory without even having to fight, in that instance.
And you think about after the day, well, shortly after the day of Pentecost, when the young church was, when Peter and John were arrested and beaten, and then they prayed. Boy, they didn’t go on the defensive, did they? They said, Lord, you’ve allowed everything. Everything that’s happened has happened according to your will.
They were going right back to the promises of the Old Testament of what God said He was gonna do. Lord, you are in charge, we’re looking to you. But it’s not enough that just we sit here and, oh God, don’t let them hurt us. They said, Lord, stretch forth your hand. Stretch forth your hand. And God came down and gave them power that they didn’t have before.
Lord, help us, help me. I confess my weakness and my need this morning. Anybody else? [Congregants] Yes, amen. I believe that there’s a God who will hear and answer prayer if we’ll look to Him and pray and say, God, we need you.
We’re living in an age that will absolutely put Christians to sleep. Isn’t that what Paul warned about in 1 Thessalonians? He’s talking about the coming of the Lord and what it means for us. The catching away and what it means for the world the outpouring of wrath. But it talks about us not going to sleep. We don’t sleep like they do. We need to be alive and awake and saying, Lord, again, you’ve got us here now for a reason, but we need you.
We don’t need to just fight a defensive battle. We don’t need to just go to sleep and say, We’ve got it, we’ve got it. We need to be saying, God, there’s always something. That’s what Paul said, isn’t it, in Philippians? I haven’t arrived. There’s always something more that I need to lay hold of.
And God was constantly putting battles in his way so that he could say, God, I need this. I see the need right here. I feel this enemy that wants to oppress me and you’ve allowed him to oppress me. And here I am, I wanna serve you. Oh God, I’m calling upon your name. 2 Corinthians, 10 is it? 12? Somewhere in there, that testimony that he gave of how God showed him something, God put him in a place where all he could do was cry out to God.
And there was a case where he had to do some waiting, wasn’t it? That’s what Billy said. He didn’t get his answer the first time he prayed. He prayed three different seasons, I would say, and really called out to God. And finally the Lord opened his eyes and said, “My strength has made perfect in weakness.”
And he was in utter agreement. Thank you, Lord, that I’m weak. Thank you that I’m needy. How many of you can really be glad about that? I mean, we can say that, but how many of you are just glad that you can’t do anything without the Lord? But it’s the truth. [Congregant] Amen.
But yet what we can do with him? I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Whatever the Lord puts in front of you and me, He wants us to fight through whatever would oppose us taking hold of what He has given us. Does that make sense?
God’s gonna put you in the middle of battles that you didn’t ask for, but he’s not doing it to discourage you. He’s not doing it to see you be defeated. He wants us to respond on the basis of this word. That’s what the wilderness was about, to teach people that man didn’t live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of His mouth. God has a way of lifting these words off of the pages of this book and applying them to our lives in critical areas in times of need.
How many of you know that? How many have experienced that? God knows how to speak if we have ears to listen. God give us those ears but help us to understand what the Christian life is about. There’s going to be a fighting and it’s not just offensive fighting.
God is gonna set things before us. Now if some of them are virtues that we lack and we need, then we’re gonna have to go to God and say, God, I can’t handle this situation. I get mad every time this happens. And I need You to come in and fill me and give me the kind of patience and love and forgiveness and whatever’s needed, I need You to be in me what I need.
Sometimes it’s going to be doing something because God has not called us just to live for ourselves, but to be channels of His life to one another. We are so full of trying to survive spiritually, we can’t even do that half the time. May God give us the grace to learn how to take everything to Him and say, God, I need you today. I need you every hour. I need you, Father, as much as your Son needed you to do what He did.
And of the Son it says he learned obedience. How did He learn that? By the things that He suffered. And as a result of that, He became the author of eternal salvation. Praise God for what He was willing to do for you and for me.
But this is the life to which we’ve been called. It’s one where we’re going to have to fight and take ground from the enemy, the devil does not want to give up. Our flesh doesn’t want to give it up. The power of sin to rule over us is a real power. And if we just float along and go with the flow, it’s gonna continue to have a stronghold in our lives more than we wanna admit.
But here is God calling us and saying, I’ve given you everything, but you’re gonna have to fight for it. You’re gonna have to come to times when everything is opposed to you possessing what I have given you. And you’re gonna have to stand up to that and say, I believe in Him more than I believe in the strength of this sin. I believe in His provision. I believe in His power. I believe in the cross. I believe in what happened there. And I’m gonna stand there and put my trust and my hope in what God has said and what He has provided for me, it’s mine and I will have it.
There’s a holy boldness that God wants for his people, not based upon a selfish spirit, but upon saying, I will not give in to this sin nature that wants to have had dominion over me. Jesus has made provision at the cross that I can have Him and have life more abundantly. And I’m gonna take this circumstance right now that I’m facing, this issue.
Maybe nobody even knows about it, but it’s the way I feel about something, the response that I have. I need grace. I need to be changed. I need a measure of that life of God to come in right here and give me the strength that I do not possess to take dominion over this thing and say, I will not be how you want me to be, devil, I am His. I’m gonna glorify God in this body and in this spirit, which are his. Praise God!
I don’t know, this is kind of meandered around this morning and I just trust the Lord with it. But how many of you need him? How many of you need more? Does this make any sense this morning?
[Congregants] Yes. Amen.God has everything you need. Wherever you are at, wherever I’m at, He’s got it. Is there anything that’s lacking? Is His power not enough? So, where’s the problem? Where’s the lack? Are we really taking hold? See, that’s what Paul said, I press forward. And he talked about pressing to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.
Is Christ taking hold of you? Yeah, He had something in mind, didn’t He? In doing that, He said, I’ve taken hold of you, now there’s something out there I want you to take hold. This is how your life is gonna grow. This is how you’re gonna become like me. You’re gonna have to put forth some effort here. You’re gonna have to exercise some real faith in me, not in you and your weakness. Your faith in my power to deliver is gonna have to become greater than your faith in all that’s wrong and all that’s lacking.
And then, if we’re asleep, God wake us up. God help us to realize the hour in which we live. And I confess my need. I believe I’m not the only one. Maybe that’s why the Lord has let me wander around this and think about it and wish somebody else would get up and preach, to be truthful with you. But how many of you think this is what we need?
How many of you think he’s telling us this to make us feel bad and condemn us and hold us down? No, it’s because He has paid an incredible price to open up a stream where He can share His life with us. That life is the only thing that can empower us to be any different than anybody else in this world.
But it doesn’t all come in at once. I need to drink that in just like the people of the world are drinking in the spirit that’s in the world, or that we eat food to sustain our flesh. I need His Spirit, I need to spend time with him, I need to believe him, I need to exercise His word, I need to worship. All the things that the scripture tells us to do. Ask, seek, and knock, all those things, coming to Him.
But coming with an expectant heart instead of saying, Oh, well, forgive me, I messed up again. God wants to take us beyond messing up again and give us the strength to be victorious. And the more He’s able to work in us, the more He’s going to be able to work through us. And He’ll be able to give us things to do, and it will be Him doing it through us and not us.
You don’t need me, you need Him. And we don’t need each other in a natural sense, we need the Christ that lives in one another. And He is absolutely working to bring us to that place. But there’s no way around this. We’re gonna have to set ourselves to seek after something. That seeking after, that motivation, that basic thing that motivates us as to what we do and why we do it, is gonna drive us to have to fight through a lot of opposition.
But we’re fighting to only hold of something. This is not a matter of having to fight the bank teller to get your money. That part doesn’t work like that. But there is opposition that will try to keep you from going into the bank. And God wants us to say, Wait a minute, I believe him more than I believe all of this opposition. It is mine and I will have it.
And you think of somebody like Caleb who had that kind of a spirit, that when the time came, he says, Give me my mountain. And he went into a particularly difficult area as an 85-year-old man and chased the giants out because God was with him. He didn’t do this presumptuously, he did it because God had promised. And he went in based upon that promise, actively trusting in God. God gave him the victory and later on, he had stuff that he could share with other people.
Do you see the picture of what God is wanting for us right now. If we’re asleep, help us to wake up, Lord. If we’re just yielding to something that has been there all of our lives, God help us to do something about it, to say, Lord, you didn’t save me just to leave me like I am. You saved me so that you could fill me and change me.
And yours is the only resource, Lord. Give me the strength to fight when I don’t even feel like fighting, I’m too tired. Lord, you’re gonna have to strengthen me so I can even do this.
I mentioned it sounding exhausting. Well, it is if we’re thinking, I’ve got to somehow do it in my own strength. But Lord, we can come to you and say, You told us those who wait on you will do, what? Renew their strength. And all the things that flow from that.
Well, I’ll just put this out there and let the Lord do what do with it what He will. But I just pray that God will burn these truths, that the motivation in life is to obtain the virtues, the things that come from His life living in us and expressing itself through us. We realize there’s a battle to do that. We’re gonna have to fight actively. And if we don’t, if we coast instead of climbing, we’re gonna be sliding back and not even realize it many times.
And we’re gonna realize that what God has laid up for us does in fact belong to us. Oh the devil will give you 1,001 reasons why, Oh, this just isn’t for you. This is for the special ones. You’re just too bad. Look at your track record.
Praise God, every one of us has got a bad track record, if you want to go by that. Every one of us has needs. That’s why Jesus went to the cross. That’s why He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him, freely — freely — give us all things? I need some of those all things today, don’t you?
But I believe God is faithful and God is encouraging us to whatever the issue is in your life, whatever battle He puts you in right now, you have every right to go to God about it. Say, Lord, here’s the situation. I feel this way. I can’t handle this. My nature wants to drive me in this direction. I need more of You right now, Lord. Pour your life into me so that I can be the person You want me to be. There’s no other way, Lord.
And God’s gonna put the battles there, not because He wants to bring us to defeat, because He wants to share His victory with us. Praise God! To God be the glory!
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October 1, 2023 - No. 1617
“Pursue, Fight, and Take Hold” Part One
Broadcast #1617
October 1, 2023
October 1, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1617 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I had a scripture come to me earlier in the week and I just kind of, it has come back a few times and I’ve thought about it and it seems like every time I tried to focus on it, it just kind of the Lord didn’t let me sit there and get it organized. But anyway, I’m just gonna go ahead and start and trust the Lord to make something outta this.
But anyway, Paul was writing to Timothy late in his ministry. Timothy was a young man who had been saved and raised up under Paul’s ministry. And God had specifically given him a gift. And it was by prophetic laying on of hands he was given a gift and he was often the one that was sent by Paul to go help somebody where Paul couldn’t get there.
And so, but now Paul is getting later in his ministry, later in his life, and he is thinking about the future too. And so that plays into this. And so, Paul is wanting to give him instruction that will keep him on course. Because the truth of the matter is a lot of what what Reed said is stuff that I would have to echo. It’s awful easy for us to get in a rut, get in a form, think everything’s… Just all we have to do is just keep doing what we’re doing. Everything’s cool. And that’s not the way it is in God.
And that’s the quickest way to slide backwards. Because the truth is, if we’re not going forward we’re not just sitting still, we’re sliding backwards in many ways. And I believe the Lord has so much more for us and that’s what He’s concerned about here. And so, the verse that came to me is one we’re all familiar with. In fact, I doubt I’m gonna say anything you haven’t heard many times but I suspect that we need it.
Anyway, in 1 Timothy 6, Paul is beginning to wind up his letter of instruction to Timothy. And in verse 12, he says this: “Fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” All right, so obviously this young man when he was young he came to the Lord and everybody witnessed this. But now there’s an instruction to him.
Now, the first place it sounds a little kind of crazy because don’t we get eternal life when we come to the Lord? I mean, the answer is yes, if we’re born again, if we’re truly born again of His Spirit, not just a religious profession, not something just as purely religious or self-effort. But if this is a time when God brings us to that point and He imparts His Spirit to us, we have eternal life. Amen. And there is a life that cannot perish.
But here he’s saying, lay hold. That sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Now also, is eternal life a gift or not? Yeah, it’s a gift. Well, how do you fit that together with having to fight for it?
You know, I believe God wants to give us a deeper picture of what it means to serve Him. And Timothy needed to have a reminder. Evidently the Lord wanted to remind Timothy but because this was recorded for us; it was recorded for me this morning. How about you? Yes.
In the first place, I think we know if we’re honest that the Christian life is a fight. Amen. God has absolutely put us in a place where if we’re gonna serve Him in a world that hates Him the spirit of this world is against Him, things we’ve said many times, but it’s worse than that. That every part of my natural being, my body, this body I gotta live with, until He….
Praise God for what happened to Jackie today, she’s free. How many of you wish you could take her place in a way, but yet God has got us here? And so, part of His order is that we learn to lay hold of what He has given to us and we learn to not just receive it, and then, okay, I just stick a ticket to heaven in my back pocket and go on about my life. But there are things that God wants us to be able to take hold of.
And I thought about so many ways and this is gonna come across certainly as unorganized, and that’s all right. But you think about the picture we have of somebody who has inherited a tremendous amount of money. I’m just gonna say a million dollars. That’s not so much anymore, but anyway, let’s suppose someone inherits a million dollars, but suppose it’s locked away in the bank somewhere and they sit there and they rejoice in their riches and how wonderful it is, but they live homeless.
You know, there’s people like that in this crazy world. But I wonder if we’re honest how much we’re like that. How many times does the Lord emphasize that He has given us everything. He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? But I wonder how many of those all things we actually walk in and experience in a practical sense.
And the reality is we can fall into exactly what Reed was talking about where we just get complacent, we get involved in whatever earthly activities we have. The truth of the matter is we are far more in harmony and in contact, I should say, with the world than we realize. And it affects us more than we realize.
And here’s the Lord looking down and knowing all of this, what’s a God to do when He sees us in the condition that we’re in? He’s got to do something if He’s gonna fulfill His plan. He longs to share all of these, the riches of glory with us. But here we are without realizing it many times we’re just bopping along, leaning on human wisdom, human energy, more in harmony with what the world says and how we feel. It’s an endless list.
You know what Billy just shared is absolutely part of it. Because there are times when in the wisdom of God He wants us to wait on Him. Well, there’s a fight involved in that because we don’t wanna wait, we don’t wanna have to persist in believing God in the face of the absence of a seeming answer to a situation.
The devil is gonna sit there and plop all kinds of junk in our heads about it and we’re going to lean upon our own experience, which may include all kinds of things that aren’t from God. We’re gonna feel our weaknesses. We’re gonna feel bad physically. There’s a 1,000,001 things that absolutely get in our way when we’re trying to serve God. And if we’re gonna make any progress we’re gonna have to fight.
Now, we’re very familiar with the scripture that Paul gives us about our warfare not being with flesh and blood and so forth. And he lists all the articles of armor. The sword of the spirit, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate and so forth, all of those elements of armor.
How many of you notice that most of that is defensive? Yeah, see, in other words, He’s saying, I got you, I got all the protection you’re gonna need so just…. But the Christian life is not meant to be one of hunkering down and being like a turtle, danger is coming, or run to our cave or anything like that. We are meant to live real practical lives in which we need what He has.
And so Paul is encouraging Timothy to lay hold of things and there certainly are two very different extremes. Many of them probably, but one of them certainly is the one where I’m saved, I got the ticket in my back pocket and then life is life and we’re just gonna live it and then go to heaven one day. Surely, we know the Lord has more for us than that. He means for us to grow up in our faith and to lay hold of a lot of things.
But of course, you got folks on the other end that think it’s all about miracles. It’s all about some grand thing. And God wants to give us a cushy life. Well, somewhere in the middle there, God has awesome things for us. He wants His body to grow up. He wants us to be filled with His Spirit. He wants us to have heavenly abilities that we use in harmony with Him and in harmony with the body of Christ. All of those things are real, but how do we get there?
And the truth of the matter is most of us are so hanging on for a dear life much of the time, just trying to get through and deal with our own little issues. And half the time we’re not even dealing with them. We’re just sort of, well, that’s just the way it is. It’s all taken care of.
God’s merciful. I’m glad for all of those truths, aren’t you? But how many of you think the Lord just wants us to sort of give in, go along, sing the songs, do what we’re supposed to do, go through the motions? or how many of you think that God wants us to actually possess the things?
You remember there’s a King James translation of one of the Old Testament prophets. It spoke of a time when God’s people would possess their possessions. And again, doesn’t that sound like a contradiction in terms? It’s my possession, how could I not possess it? But the reality is we don’t possess — well, a small fraction of what God has given to us, what He has promised us.
And here is Paul feeling the need to tell Timothy, you need to fight, you’ve got a fight on your hands. And it’s not just defensive. I don’t want you to be a turtle. There are things that God wants to do in you, yes, but through you and He wants to you to learn how to lay hold of that without which you cannot do those things.
Did not Jesus say in the parable of the… Praise God, help me… the vine of the branches, John 15? Like I said, this is not organized. John 15, and He spoke of the relationship of how dependent we are that the only way we can produce fruit is literally to be connected to Him, right? In other words, what I need to produce fruit doesn’t come from me. It’s not there. Without me, He says, you can do what? Nothing. Nothing! Man, we need to get ahold of that and realize that.
But at the same time we don’t need to be discouraged by that and say, Oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do then. Because God wants us to be plugged in in such a way that the life of God literally flows in. I need life that I don’t have. It’s out there, praise God!
Just like my physical body: what would happen if I just stopped eating and drinking? See this nourishment that I need to sustain this. Well, I’ll tell you there’s another kinda life though that we got from Adam. And it exists in these bodies and very, very, closely tied to it. But there is a spiritual side to that. And boy, that gets nourished too, doesn’t it?
We’re living in a world that is running as rapidly as it can away from God. I thank God that He has a people. I believe there is a harvest at the end of the age. Part of it is to get some ready for the fire and part of it is to bring others into the kingdom. And I certainly wanna be in harmony with whatever it is He wants to do.
And boy, every natural part of me just wants to stick out my tongue and say, I’m tired. And everybody gets that way. Everybody deals with weariness. Everybody deals with discouragement. Everybody deals with opposition. But here’s Paul saying, I don’t want you to sit here and go into a defensive posture. I want you to absolutely lay hold of something because God has called you to something. God has given you a job.
Has not God given everybody that is a member of the body of Christ a place? Yes. Doesn’t He wanna do stuff not just in you, but through you? How do we do that? First of all is believing that that’s the way it is and seeking Him and looking to Him. But there is a fighting to get that to happen. We’re gonna have to come against the opposition of this. We’re gonna have to come against the opposition of the devil.
And I started to talk about how the life of Adam gets nourished by the spirit of the world. Didn’t Paul say that, We’re to present our bodies, that living sacrifice and allow ourselves to be transformed. How? By the renewing of our mind. All these things, the scriptures we’ve heard so many times, they all play together. But the picture that’s painted here is not just a something where it’s this little quiet thing where we just spend time with the Lord and everything’s great and grand. There is a fight to it.
Think about the conquest of the land of Canaan. I believe Reed mentioned the wilderness and many times we feel like that’s where we’re at. And maybe we are, maybe we need to be to learn His ways and learn how to trust Him. But there comes a time when God says, I have given you the land. Oh, okay Lord, we’ll just move in.
But it didn’t work that way, did it? Everything that God had given them was something for which they had to fight. And even in their fighting, they didn’t do it their own way. They had to seek God and look to God and God gave them victory, told them how to fight, where to fight, and went with them in the battle.
That’s what I need. I mean, what good does it do for God to say, This is what I want you to do. Great. How am I gonna do that? It’s not in me to do any of the things that God has called me to do or be. I have got to go to him. Amen.
You know, one thought I had was about all this was, It sounds exhausting. I’ve just gotta fight. (groans) But you know, the first thing that I need from the Lord when it comes to fighting, I need His strength to fight. You know what we’ve said so many times about commands and promises, everything the Lord tells us to do is really a promise to help us do it if only we’re willing. That’s something to remember, isn’t it? Everything God commands us to do is really a promise to help us do it if only we’re willing.
You know, the first thing many times is just to come and just look to the Lord and draw near to Him and praise Him and thank Him often in the face of opposition from within and from without. Think of what Paul went through to accomplish what God had given Him. And it wasn’t just the stuff out there he had to deal with. Paul had to deal with the same stuff in here that you and I do, this constant warfare, and yet this is what God has called us to do. Somehow this is God’s plan for growing up and developing the character of this new life that He’s given to us.
Boy, that life is like a stream from heaven. It’s pictured in so many ways in the scriptures, the river of life is a picture of God’s life. How many of you need more of that? Yes. Yeah, I do too. I need His life. I need more of Him in me because then I can begin to think like He thinks, I can begin to act and react like He reacts and acts and He can tell me to do stuff and I’m not running ahead like Peter and figuring I can do it on my own. I know I need him and I’m looking to Him. There’s this hand in glove relationship where there’s this like Ricky has talked about in the past, this conversation, this sense of walking with Him.
Jesus is the perfect example. He didn’t do anything based on human wisdom or human energy. He just simply depended on His Father and His Father gave Him everything He needed and it was God’s life manifest in Him. If we’re going to be anything to each other, if we’re gonna be anything to the world and to people that God wants to reach it’s not gonna be us selling people on our religion. God help us. I don’t want a religion that needs to be sold. I want Jesus. Amen. I want Jesus to be living in here in such a way that that’s what they see. Amen. We need him, don’t we? Praise God!
You know I mentioned how so many of the things that people are seeking God in some circles, are seeking God for are really the kind of the same things that the world is after. The prosperity gospel is, is an example of that where, this is what God has for you if you’ll just only believe Him. Well, I thank God that He can bless and He can minister, He can do all kinds of things in the natural realm.
But listen, but back up a verse and in 1 Timothy 6, and let’s find out what Timothy was told to go after. And this comes in the context of people who thought that serving God meant they were gonna get a lot of money. They thought gain was godliness. And he said, Paul said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” praise God! We can trust God in those areas.
But here’s one of those buts: it begins in the context of that, of people who their focus in life is on what they can get here. But you man of God flee from all of this, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Praise God! That’s character stuff, isn’t it?
Think about how we live and react. Think about how many times something happens and you say something, something comes out of your spirit. Is it Jesus? See now it’s quiet. How many of us could say that going through every day that all of our feelings, our thoughts, our actions, our reactions to things that happen, things that people say, things that people do, oh, it flows right straight out of the heart of God. We never say a cross word. Never have a bad thought. Never get angry.
You suppose we might need just a little bit more than we got? You think the Lord has more for us than where we’re at right now? Well, here’s Timothy obviously well on into his ministry and what is it that Paul’s encouraging him to do? To seek, pursue righteousness?
Now it’s interesting that word pursue. I looked a couple of these up just to see what the original word was. I don’t even remember. I couldn’t tell you what it is literally but it’s an interesting word in this respect. It’s used in two very different senses. One of the uses is persecute. When Paul was Saul, the Jew, going around trying to arrest Christians and get ahold of them there was a pursuit there, but it was a persecution and literally it meant to pursue somebody to, this is what my life is about. This is a conviction that motivates me to action.
But now here is Paul using the same word to say There’s something else you need to be pursuing. It needs to have that same conviction that drives us to action, is what he’s saying. Pursue this. It’s the same word I believe that he uses in Philippians 3, the scripture we use so many times. I press forward, this is what I’m after. I pursue this one thing, I press.
And again, you have this sense that there’s opposition that God give us the grace to constantly instead of just settling, instead of saying, Where I’m at is okay, to recognize that God is at work to change us and He’s changing us so He can use us.
How can we be what God has called us to be in this hour if we just sleep walk through it and we accept where we’re at right now and we don’t mind getting angry, we don’t mind getting upset. We don’t mind blowing off steam and thinking about this and all engrossed in that and just somehow disconnected from Him when God is wanting us to say Wait a minute, I need him? Yes.
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September 24, 2023 - No. 1616
“We Lack Nothing” Conclusion
Broadcast #1616
September 24, 2023
September 24, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1616 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I thank God that I, I thank God that I can just believe it when I need it, in that presence tense, and I lack nothing. Wouldn’t that be a good conviction to live with? Have you ever been in a place where you just, you didn’t have what you needed, and God just messed up and forgot all about you? Sometimes he can allow it to feel that way, but we have everything we need if we will look to him from the depths of our heart.
Folks, I’m trusting that everybody here has this relationship with God, and just needs to grow in it. I need to grow, I guarantee you, had to do some growing this morning. You think it’s easy to stand up here and do this? We need the Lord, folks, every single one of us needs the Lord. But oh, what an awesome truth it is that the Lord is right now my personal shepherd. He’s watching over me. And because of that, I lack nothing.
I don’t know what a title would be, “We Have Everything We Need,” that would be a long version of it. Or, “We Lack Nothing.” But I praise God, I pray that God will make this real, so that while we can sit here, and maybe there’s nothing immediate happening right now, that we can go through this week and realize everything that happens that we face, that we feel is a difficult thing, when that now happens, and that’s what’s happening in that now, we can say, “Hey, I got what I need, Lord.”
The Scripture we’ve often used again about the fight of faith, here’s Paul knowing what it takes to serve God in this broken world. And he says to Timothy, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” What does that entail? What follows that expression? Somebody remember the Scripture? “Lay hold, lay hold,” there’s something that I have put there for you. It’s there, you’ve got what you need. You’ve got all the money in the bank you could ever need in this kingdom, the spiritual bank. You know what, understand what I’m talking about. There are untold riches that Paul has talked about, everything that God, he knows we’ll ever need is there, and it belongs to his children. Praise God!
So, okay, he goes through and he talks a little bit about what this entails. And the first part we can all say, “Oh yeah, that sounds great. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He refreshes my soul. Oh, bring it on, Lord, that sounds idyllic. Oh, sounds like a vacation.” (laughing)
Well, I thank God that that’s true, and there are times when that’s exactly how it is. God just refreshes us and quiets us. We’re not striving, we’re not in the middle of a battle, but we can, (sighing) “Oh. I just need, I just need something. I need you to refresh me, Lord. I need you to help me. And you know what I need, you know exactly what I need.” I thank God that that’s his heart to give us all of that.
But you know, the Lord knows that if that’s all he does, we’re gonna get awful spoiled. And there’s a lot of stuff that he wants to fix in us and change in us. He can’t change when everything is just idyllic, (chuckling) and wonderful.
But here he says, “He guides me along the right paths.” How many of you want to be guided? How many of you believe there is a path that God has, as we’ve said before, laid out before you? Do you believe God has made a plan for your life? Do you want that plan? Are you willing to seek him about that plan?
That’s pretty basic to the Lord being my Shepherd. I can’t really honestly understand him as my Shepherd, and say, “Okay, Lord, see you later. I’ve got, I wanna do this, I wanna do that.” I’ve gotta be willing to let him lead. And I’ve gotta be willing to let him know that I need him.
Again, I think we’ve recently used the verse where he said, “Your ears will hear a voice behind you, a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’” How many of you believe the Shepherd wants to lead you? I believe he does, I believe he can lead us in ways that are right.
Another thing that was said this morning was how many times, how many situations present us with challenges, and choices, I guess is the word.? And my choice could easily be if I follow my old nature, I’m gonna go this way. Well, is that the right path? Is it the right path for me to react according to my old nature, and say, “This is the way I’m gonna go, and this is how I’m gonna react to this situation.”
No, God is gonna put us in a place where he’s gonna say, “This is the right path.” It could involve forgiveness, that was emphasized in our meeting this morning. It could involve a lot of things where we’re willing to humble ourselves, and say, “All right, Lord, you are the Shepherd, you know. I’m gonna humble myself unto your hand. You’re the one who not only leads me, but you’re gonna provide what I need, ‘cause I need you, Lord, I don’t have what it takes.”
But you see where David is coming from, and this guiding principle of his life, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even, now here’s this part, “even though I walk through the darkest valley, the valley of the shadow of death.” Literally, obviously, life is not all about pleasant pastures, and cool streams, is it? There are times when his path — now put that together with the fact that he leads me.
And yet here David finds himself in the darkest valley. What do you draw from that? What conclusion do you draw from that? The Lord led him there. The Lord had a purpose in taking David into a very dark, difficult place, many times, of course. God had a reason, God brought him to that. But what did he learn from that? And how did he react to that? How did he react to the prospect of it?
Obviously, he’s talking about that, even though that happens. David had such a conviction that he was able to say, “I will fear no evil.” Now, does that mean David never experienced fear? Of course not, we all do. But there comes a point where fear is a choice. You understand what I’m saying? I don’t care what it is, it could be a thousand other things that come from this old nature. But it comes to a point where that becomes a choice.
David says, “I recognize I could be in that situation.” He could lead me into that situation, how am I gonna handle that? And here’s how I’m gonna handle it, I will, I’m gonna make a choice.
Now how could he make that choice? Was this just bravado? Was this strong character, and all these natural qualities? No, this goes right back to, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I have all, I lack nothing.” Do you see where that bedrock conviction allows people to go through those times and say, “I will fear no evil,” because we know what the Devil’s gonna try to do. “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and self-control.” Every single one of us fights that battle. But wouldn’t it be good to be able to say, “I will.”
Now, how could he make that kind of a choice, like, “Yeah, I will?” How could he make that choice without understanding that God was going to give him what he needed in order to be able to make that choice? Do you see the dependence that is implied in everything that he’s writing here? “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” Based upon that, I will not fear. I will fear no evil, why? Again, “For you are with me.” Praise God!
I’ll tell you what, do you need the Lord with you in those times? I do. Has he promised? Does he want us to learn how to lean upon him, and to hold that bedrock conviction, and act accordingly during those times?
You know, sadly, from our point of view, how do we have to learn that? How do we learn such things? Ah, experience. And like I said this morning, it would be so nice if we could learn all this in seminars, and just have it all down. But there’s only one way that I can learn about God’s faithfulness in difficult times, is to go through difficult times and trust him and experience his faithfulness!
We had a message a while back about, “From Test to Testimony.” How do you get a testimony? Say, “I’ve been there, God took me through a dark valley. He didn’t allow me to see any hope, that the Devil was just filling my head with all kinds of nonsense, all kinds of stuff. But somehow there was a measure of faith that he had put in here, that he enabled me to pull on, and to lean on, and to begin to express.
And I called out to him and I looked to him, and I remembered that he is my Savior, he is my Shepherd. And I looked to him and I called on him, and he was, he gave me the strength. He didn’t just make it all go away. but I had found out that I wasn’t alone, that right in that dark time, he was right there. He never let go of my hand. He walked with me through it.”
And, of course, you all know that picture, was it a vision or something that somebody had when they saw their life, and they saw the two sets of footprints in the sand. And then it came a time in that person’s life when everything looked bad, everything looked difficult. And there was only one set of footprints. And he said, “Lord, I don’t understand. That was the time I needed you most, what’s going on? Why, why was I alone?” And he says, “You weren’t alone. There’s only one set of footprints because I was carrying you.”
You think about the heart of this Shepherd. I mean, you got all kinds of shepherds, would-be shepherds in this world, but you think about this Shepherd. We already talked about Jesus saying he was a good Shepherd. He gave his life for the sheep. But the prophecy in Isaiah, I’m not gonna look it up, and I probably won’t remember it all perfectly, but, “He shall feed his flock,” how? Like a shepherd.
He’s gonna carry the lambs in his arms. Do you feel weak and small and unimportant? You might be a child, and you’re wondering how in the world does he care about me? If he needs to do it, he’s gonna carry you in his arms. He’s gonna gently lead those that are young.
You sense the heart of what God wants to communicate to his people. He wants everyone here to know how he thinks about you, and how much he cares about you, and how much he wants to bury this conviction in your heart today, so that you’ll always know, regardless of what happens, he’s there, he’s in the middle of it with you.
There’s a reason he led you that way, and he did it so he could show his power and his glory in your heart and your life. And you are never without something that you need, because he will always give you what you need in the circumstance. Praise God!
This is not real deep theology, but I mean, this is life, folks. Do you see why David was a man after God’s own heart, and how much the Lord was able to express himself through David? You see it in his other Psalms, but what a picture of a worldview, if you will, if you wanna put it that way. This is the way David saw life.
“Even though I walked through the darkest valley, I will, I will,” that’s a choice, “I will fear no evil.” That doesn’t mean he didn’t fear, or feel fear. Everybody does that. The question is not whether we feel fear. The question is what do we do about it? I will not yield to that. I will still claim that God is faithful, that he is with me, his Word is still true. I’m gonna rely on him.
And not only that, I’m gonna rely on him for the ability to rely on him! I mean, think about that. I have everything I need, but it all comes from him, every bit of it. Are you willing to take that place, and realize how dependent you are on him? The more I go, the more I say, “Yes, Lord. You’ve shown me so many ways in my life how desperately I need you. The times I thought I was smart enough, or I was strong enough, or I was this, I was that, and you had to show me that I wasn’t. But in that, you showed me how faithful you are. You showed me that I’m never without the hope of all that you have promised.”
Can you sense in David’s words that he’s saying these same things? “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Now obviously, in order for that to be true, you gotta have some enemies around that are threatening you. So again, God is taking David into a place that from every earthly point of view looks like a bad place to be. It looks like a place of danger. And yet God was giving him a provision for that situation.
Does that sound like something we need? To be able to see the Lord, not just in this theoretical way, but I mean to see him right in that particular moment, say, “Lord, I need some food here, and you’ve promised to lay that table before me.” Again, that’s that situation where you’re in darkness, but there’s light that’s coming through, and God is feeding your soul with something that’s true. Folks, I wanna be one of those that just believes his Word, in the face of whatever comes.
“You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.” But here is the conviction about this. He’s talking, first of all, about all the circumstances of life. Some of them are pleasant, some of them are not. But God’s always with me. I always have what I need. So where are we going with all this?
All right, surely, that’s an awesome word to begin that verse 6 with, isn’t it? “Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, all the days of my life,” every single one of them, every single one of them, even when you can’t see it or feel it, “your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell….” Boy, that’s a pretty strong, clear statement.
But do you see the basis on which he could make that? There was a relationship with a God who had made himself known, and basically said, “I want a relationship with you, but this is how it’s gonna be. You’re just a sheep, you don’t know. You can’t really provide for yourself. You don’t know what your purpose is here, and I do. And you need me to guide your steps and tell you where to go to give you what you need. And that’s what I want.
“And I’m doing it, not because I wanna be somebody, some big shot, and it’s all about ego. This is because my nature is to love you and to care about you. You could be the smallest and weakest sheep, but I care. And not only that, I’m not gonna lose you.”
You think the Lord’s gonna forget about one of his? You think we’re gonna be lost in the shuffle? A God who can track every hair on my head, and the ones that have fallen out, knows about every one of them, he can handle it. He can keep up with me. I need him to keep up with me, I need him every hour. Praise God!
“Surely,” now he’s looking forward to the things that will happen in the rest of his life, and based on everything that he said so far, and his conviction about about the Lord being his Shepherd, and lacking nothing, “Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” And it doesn’t end there, does it? “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Praise God!
Is that the conviction that is resident in your heart and your life today, wherever you’re at in your life? I pray that God will just burn that deep in my heart, and yours as well. This is what he wants. And if you haven’t come to that, you have every right to reach out to him. “He that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently or earnestly seek him.” I’ll tell you, God will never turn away an honest -seeking heart. You have every right to come to him, and lay your cards on the table and say, “Lord, I need you. I can’t run my own life, I just need you. I need this relationship.”
He wants it more than you do. Do you understand that? I thank God that he’s so merciful, because we’re just like the sheep, sometimes we wander in our own way, we get into briers, we do all kinds of stupid stuff.
But anyway, I’m so thankful, and there’s nothing revolutionary here, but I just felt like the Lord wanted to remind us of something that’s pretty important, don’t you think? Talk about living in a scary world, an unpredictable one, but I’m not alone. The One who made this world is my Shepherd, and he has foreseen everything that I could ever possibly need. And he’s made it available, and he made it available through the death of his Son. (sighing) I can trust somebody like that.
Does that define your life? I hope it does. But right now you have every reason to have a heart of joy, and thankfulness, and expectation, and that light, I can put the future in his hands. That’s his job, to work that out, to mark my path out and take me through it, because I know when the, like I say, when we get on the train, we’ll have the ticket.
But he also wants me to be able to leave that past, and live in the is, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” There’s something that’s very present. It’s also a very positive statement though, the is. That’s the other thing, it’s not just a time thing. This is a positive statement, “The Lord is,” this is positive, this is real. This is not just some fantasy that I’ve come up with. The Lord really is, right now, he is my Shepherd. He is the one to whom I look, and I lack nothing.
What do you lack this morning? And maybe we need to look up, maybe this needs to be a little more real so that we’re able to say, “Lord, you know what I need right now, and I’m looking to you in confidence because I know I don’t deserve anything.” I don’t, I can’t come and say, “Lord, I deserve this.” We’re gonna have to come on the ground of what Jesus did, but we can go to that throne and find mercy.
Anybody here need mercy? Yeah, but we can find that there, can’t we? You go right past all the courts of the world. I don’t care what it is, every human institution, we go right past that to the throne that rules the universe, and find mercy and grace, to do what? Help us, when? In our time of need. Thank God!
You think he’s gonna run outta strength? You read the last part of Isaiah 40, he’s got all the strength that he needs, and he’s more than willing to share it. I’m just so thankful to have a Shepherd this morning, aren’t you? I’m just to be able to, I’m so thankful to be able to leave the past in his hands, and leave the future in his hands, and just say, “Thank you, Lord. You are what I need right now, and I have everything that I need, and I’m trusting in you.” To your name be glory!
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September 17, 2023 - No. 1615
“We Lack Nothing” Part One
Broadcast #1615
September 17, 2023
September 17, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1615 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: Well, praise the Lord! I’ve had several scriptures, you know, go through my mind at various times this week. And I guess as a preliminary thought, we are well aware, I think, that we live in a scary, uncertain world. And people react to it in all kinds of different ways.
The Lord has allowed us to live where we live and when we live. We’ve talked about that many times. But I’ll tell you, what we understand and what we believe, the convictions that hold our hearts together have everything to do with how we navigate all of this. And my mind went to, you know, from several scriptures, but one it settled on was one that we know very well, and I feel like it’s a good time to take a fresh look at “Psalm 23.”
And David was a young man who grew up in a difficult time. You talk about a crazy world, you know, there’s a certain amount of order even in our crazy world. But at the time he lived in, all you had was, I mean, every little kingdom, every little city was almost like a criminal gang. They lived to conquer one another, to fight one another.
Even mentions in one place in the scriptures that, you know, in the spring when kings go to war. It’s like that’s what you do this time of year. Everybody goes to war and sees who can whip the other one, and who can win the battle, and who can take all the spoils, and bring home slaves. And it was a rough time.
You think about battles that we had today and how people react to them. And yet, they had battles back in those days when the casualties numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Literally. I mean, it was a crazy time. This is the era, this is the time in which David grew up.
And, you know, we better have something on the inside if we’re gonna stand in this world. Amen? We better have a heart level conviction.
[Congregation] Yes.That defines how we see ourselves. It defines how we see the world, where our hope lies. Because, you know, we got people that put their trust in their riches. They put their trust in the power they can achieve, they put their trust in their own ability. But we find a young man named David who didn’t do any of those things, did he? It wasn’t about how smart, how good he was and how righteous even he was or any of those things. It had nothing to do with any of that. But it had to do with one simple thing. And it’s the first five words.
I remember we emphasized that one time and I wanna go beyond that, but he begins the psalm with a very simple statement of fact, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Boy if you get that down in your heart and you know what it means, and it’s real, man, in one sense, it doesn’t matter what else happens. Anybody here need that? Yes.
Cause I don’t care who you are, there’s things that are fearful in this world, and we need to have us an anchor. Like, what the writer of the Hebrews, we’ve often referred to that. The passage where he talks about the hope that we have, and that is a confident expectation based upon God’s revelation about things that haven’t happened yet. A hope, an expectation.
That hope is what? What does he describe that? What does he liken that hope to in that passage of? Anchor. It’s an anchor, isn’t it? Yes. A ship needs an anchor in certain circumstances where the storm is raging. You better have something that can hold onto something that doesn’t move. And boy, I need something. How about you? Yes. The further we go, we better have an anchor.
Well, David had one, and, of course, we know that it’s interesting that he grew up as a shepherd. He was the youngest of a number of sons. And he got the job that probably nobody else wanted of being out there with his father’s sheep. And of course, that was long hours. But what it did for him was to reveal something, God used that.
You know God can use everything in our lives to teach us if we’ll listen, if we’ll be tuned in? There’s not a thing that happens in your life or mine that is not a teachable moment. You know, the expression. Everything is a teachable moment if we’re willing to be taught. I need to be taught. The further along that I go, the more I need that.
But the Lord is my shepherd. He knew what that meant. He knew the relationship between a shepherd and sheep. And yet, here he sees himself, not as a shepherd, the strong one who’s doing the job, but as one who needs a shepherd, one who needs somebody to watch over him. And so all of this that the Lord was teaching him through his relationship with literal sheep and having to provide for them, having to protect them, it became something where the Lord revealed to David, this is the relationship that I desire with you, okay?
Now, you know, we’ve emphasized the individual words, the Lord, there’s only one. You know, David lived in a time when every nation, as we’ve said many times, had its gods. And I wonder personally if a lot of that conflict and that warfare was really a conflict between the gods that were inspiring them. You know, I’m the best, and so I’m gonna mount an offensive, we’re gonna beat you this time. I don’t know, but whatever it was, they had their gods.
But David knew there was only one. Yes. I don’t just have one God who’s among many. I have the Lord, there is none other. Thank God, we can look to him and realize if we’re serving him, we serve the one who is on a throne. There is none other. Praise God! Is He the anchor of your soul this moment? Of course, I’m jumping ahead of myself there, but the Lord, and you have this sense, a Lordship of Somebody Who is in charge.
You know, we’re living in an era where God has unfolded a lot of His purposes that David didn’t know, but was able to sort of look forward to as God gave him a certain amount of vision and expectation. But we live with one who holds, as we’ve said recently, the keys of death and hell. He sits on a throne. All authority has been given into his hand.
Folks, that’s the one that I wanna serve. That’s the one that I want to recognize. And I don’t wanna just recognize it in this impersonal sense, like, okay, you know, I agree that he’s the Lord. It has to come down to something more personal and more present, doesn’t it? So, he doesn’t just say the Lord, he says, the Lord. What’s the next word? Is.
You know, there’s several ways to look at that. But one of them is, is what Carl just said, the present tense. We are really bad to live in the past or live in the future. We’re living afraid of what might be. We’re living with a baggage of things that have happened and we haven’t really let go of them. And yet here is David saying, “The Lord is my shepherd.” There is that present tense.
How many of you know that we’ve only got the present? That’s all you’ve got. That’s all I’ve got. There’s not one of us can go back and fix the past and redo it. We haven’t got a time machine, we can’t do that. Nor can we reach into the future and, I’m gonna fix that and everything’s gonna be okay. We can’t do any of that. We occupy a very, very dependent position.
But here is the awesome thing is that he is my shepherd right now. There is never a moment, not the single moment in the life of one who serves the Lord from their heart where he is not present. You remember “Psalm 46,” we’ve used so many times? He is an ever present help in time of trouble. And that word there is “relentlessly,” there’s a sense of urgency on his part that I’m there. I don’t care what it looks like, what it feels like, I’m there.
And you and I, does that make a difference if we can learn to reckon on his presence and know what that he meant, what he said? I will never leave you, never will I forsake you. Boy, we know that there are many times when it doesn’t feel that way, doesn’t look that way. But is that not the anchor that I need? I mean, if I’m doubting this, if I’m doubting what he’s saying right there, that leaves me in a very vulnerable place. I’m gonna start listening to the wrong voice. I’m gonna start feeling sorry for myself.
Of course, I know I’m not the only one that ever experiences that emotion. And a whole lot of others that are very, very natural to all of us. But I’ll tell you, in my darkest, weakest moment and yours, he is, he is, he’s right there. He is absolutely holding my hand.
You think of the sheep that David had to deal with. And I’m sure they were all kinds, some of ‘em were prone to wander. But nonetheless, there was that sense that David felt, the sense of responsibility. He knew what that meant. He knew that he was there, responsible for those sheep. And those sheep may have had their attention everywhere in the world, but David was still watching.
You know, I got somebody like that. You know you do. The one who spoke the universe in existence. Let that sink in. The one who said, let there be light, and there was light. The one who has planned everything from the beginning. You read the prophecies in Isaiah, you will see that over and over again, where the Lord through the prophet will sort of mock these gods.
All right, you tell me what’s gonna happen. You explain it to me. He says, I’m the one who’s planned everything from the foundation of the world. I foresee everything. I know everything. That’s the one in whose hand I wanna be. I’m not in the hands of this world. Whatever happens, whatever he allows to happen, he is, he is.
And yet it doesn’t stop there. The Lord is what? What’s the next word? My shepherd. What does that tell us? It’s got to be personal. This is not just a theological principle. Oh yeah, the Lord is good. He is overall and all these vague things. There has to be that sense that the one who created the universe is intimately connected to me. He knows where I’m at. He knows everything about me, and he loves me anyway. He’s my shepherd. I could look to him. I have every right to look to him. Praise God! Praise God!
Where are you at today? What’s going on? What’s the enemy putting in your head? He’s trying all kinds of things with me. Anybody here in that same boat? Yeah, he is gonna constantly try to fill our minds with his lies when God wants us to have this bedrock conviction in here.
And we talked about faith being the victory. This is the basis of faith. I’ve gotta have a relationship with God. And if I do, I have what I need. I’m jumping ahead here. But the Lord is my shepherd. He’s just not somebody else’s shepherd. Oh yeah, I see them down there. They’re special, but I’m, oh, poor me, poor me all. I’m just so bad or I’m so weak, he doesn’t care about me. Look what just happened.
David could have said that a lot of times, didn’t he? Couldn’t he? I mean, you remember right toward the end of his running from Saul, and he was over in having to hide out with the Philistines, and they wouldn’t even let him go to battle. And he went back and everything was gone, and his own people wanted to stone him. But what did he do? He encouraged himself.
Now, where would you find encouragement in a situation like that? You’re not gonna find it anywhere down here. But he encouraged himself in the Lord. And he went to God, he got the wisdom and direction that he needed, and God steered him right out of that. And instead of it turning out to be a defeat, it became a glorious victory.
I’ll tell you if we will learn how to acknowledge the Lord in every circumstance, the Lord is, present tense, my shepherd, and David knew what that meant.
Now, I think we’ve said many times, and we’re aware of the fact that sheep are not very smart animals. And here’s where I think a lot of people fall down. They can get religious. But thinking of myself as a weak, ignorant, some often foolish sheep needing a shepherd to watch over me because I’m not smart enough to watch over myself, and I can’t provide for myself, that runs absolutely contrary to man’s spirit of pride and self-reliance.
But here was David who was able to watch and deal over years with these sheep. He knew what it meant to be a sheep and need a shepherd. And here he is instead of, look at me and how strong I am, and how smart I am, he’s saying, I’m nothing but a sheep. And not only that, I’m not resenting that. I am thankful because the one that I serve is the Lord of all the universe. And I’m willing to take my place of-utter dependence upon him. That’s humbling, but it’s a blessing.
My God! Here we are talking about the scary world, but I’m not alone. Amen? The one who made this world, the one who is using it for the unfolding of his purpose. He’s in charge and he’s my shepherd. He’s not just a shepherd, he’s mine. I am looking to him this moment. I’m trusting in his word, trusting in his promise. He’s my shepherd.
But think about what he’s conveying here. You think David had to talk the Lord into this? Lord, I know you got more important things to do than pay attention to little old me. But would you please be my shepherd? This is the heart of God that’s revealed here. This is God’s heart toward you this morning and me. I long to lead you. I long to be with you in this crazy broken world. I don’t want you to run around being afraid or being angry, or being whatever it is that comes out of your nature. I love you, I care about you. You know what it means to have a shepherd, have a a true heart towards the sheep. But here I am, I wanna be your shepherd.
Think about Jesus, the great shepherd. I am the good shepherd. Praise God! I didn’t even look up John 10, but you can read what he says there. I’m the good shepherd. I give my life for the sheep. I know my sheep and I’m known of mine, and I give them eternal life. No one can pluck them out of my hand. The Father who sent me is greater than I and no man can pluck them out of his hand. That’s the heart, that’s the spirit behind it, is someone who is so great that he can rule the universe and yet he cares, and knows how many hairs you got on your head right now. And he cares about the things that you’re experiencing right now. Not only he cares, he’s using them for his purposes. Praise God! The Lord is my shepherd.
Now, in this particular translation, it says, “I lack nothing.” That’s pretty simple, straightforward language. How many of you feel like, oh, if only I had this, if I had that, I just don’t have enough courage. I don’t have enough this or that. I don’t either. You know, I don’t have what it takes to live in this world and do anything. And people who think they do are living in illusion.
[Congregation]Yeah. ‘Cause what’s they gonna profit when they gain the whole world and lose their soul? Folks, God has put us in a dependent position not because he’s mad at us, but because he loves us and longs to share his nature, his love with every one of his sheep. You think about the one who’s willing to not just be kind to us, but to give his life for us? That’s a shepherd I can trust. That’s a shepherd I can look to with every issue of my life.
But again, the thing David realized, if the Lord is my shepherd, I know what it’s like to take care of sheep. I watch out for them every day. I know they need to eat certain things. I know they need fresh water. I know that I’ve got to search that out and lead them and take them to the place where they have exactly what they need. And I know if a predator comes and wants to eat them, I know what to do about that too. I care about every detail that affects them. I don’t want them to go around thinking, oh, my God I don’t have something I need.
Is there a little bit of a lesson in that? How many of you go through life and think, oh, I don’t have what I need? The reality is if we are in Christ, if we are in Christ and we’ve given our lives to him, and we’re trusting in him, we have everything we need, everything we need.
Now that doesn’t mean we always lay hold of it. But do you think, honestly, that there is anything that you and I need to stand there in white one day, having stood up to everything the devil is allowed to throw at us? Do you think there’s a single one that’s gonna get there and, I can’t even remember the thought I started with, but do you think we’re gonna get there and find out we didn’t have something we needed or God doesn’t really care? God hasn’t planned this thing out?
Are we ever gonna have a time when God has to have an emergency meeting in heaven, because something has happened that he didn’t figure was gonna happen? He wasn’t prepared for it. Is there some need that’s gonna come up in your heart and your life that he did not anticipate and provide for completely? Is there?
Boy, do we act like that though, don’t we? Wouldn’t it be good to have this confession of David as the anchor of our souls, have it so embedded in our thinking? This is our worldview. This is how we see everything. This is like a pair of glasses. We see everything about the world and about ourselves through this lens. I’ve got somebody, the Lord of the universe. He cares about me. He wants a relationship with somebody like me. And not only does he want a relationship, but this relationship involves him giving me everything I need.
Close
September 10, 2023 - No. 1614
“Faith That Overcomes” Conclusion
Broadcast #1614
September 10, 2023
September 10, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1614 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: You know, God will put us in situations where we don’t know how it’s coming out. And we’re gonna have to make the right choice anyway. So many examples are given in here, but one of them is the three Hebrew children. How many times have we pointed this one out? God arranged the circumstance. Do you think this was an accident?
In the first place they were, they had been carried off as captives from Israel into a heathen land to serve a heathen emperor. And the heathen emperor, being the heathen that he was, had all kinds of idols and gods. And so, he built this great image, and everybody was supposed to bow down. God allowed him to do all of that, like God is allowing the devil to do what he’s doing.
And there he had some children of Abraham, descendants of Abraham. You know who the real descendants of Abraham are? They’re not the children of the flesh, they’re the children of Abraham’s faith, they’re the descendants of his faith. And these three men were descendants of his faith.
And so there they were. Here are your two options. Door number one, bow to this idol. Swear allegiance to it. Door number two, burn. How would you like to be faced with that choice? You think some of us might actually reach a point like that? We’re gonna need the Lord, aren’t we? We’re gonna need something we don’t have in ourselves. You think He’s gonna be enough? Praise God! Okay?
And when they made that choice to say, I will not bow, we will not bow, they didn’t know the outcome that we know about. So, we can read that and say, Yeah, I know how that came out. That’s great. They didn’t know that.
And we’re gonna be in situations where we do not know how it’s going to turn out, and God’s gonna say, You have a choice. The devil is going to be allowed to do whatever he’s gonna be allowed to do. And we’re gonna have to make a choice and say, I am not gonna go your way. I don’t care. I’m gonna serve my God. And that was the choice they made.
And God gave them, in that instance God’s purpose, Satan’s purpose was to exalt this heathen emperor to destroy all faith and anybody else to suppress it, bring them all under his control. God had a greater purpose to give such a powerful demonstration of Who He was that the word of the message of that went to the ends of that great empire.
We got a God Who can do what He wants. And I’ll tell you, whatever purpose He has in this, in the end of this age, is gonna be fulfilled. And sometimes it may be something great and miraculous. And in this case it was. They threw them in there.
We know the story, and how there was a fourth man in that fire. Praise God! You know that fourth man is with us in whatever fire He calls us to walk in. That fourth man is our Lord Jesus who said, I will never leave you. Never will I forsake you. Praise God!
Well, He didn’t forsake them then did He? And they came outta that fire. Couldn’t even smell it. And you read throughout this whole passage there’s so many things that we could read we’ve heard so many times.
But just for, just for today I think let’s go down to verse 32. ‘Cause he’s talked about Abraham, he’s talked about Moses, and he’s, you know, talked about Rahab. I mean, talk about Rahab. Maybe there’s somebody here that just feels like you know, this isn’t me he’s talking about. Who am I, you know, who am I, that God cares about somebody like me? I’m weak, I’m nothing. How can I face the end of the age? Well yeah, the truth is every one of us is in that category.
But you look at a woman like Rahab, who was a prostitute in a heathen city. But there was a conviction God had implanted on her heart as to where her true loyalty needed to be. And she hid the spies when they sent them into Jericho. And God not only brought her out and saved her, she was actually way down, she was an ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ, as far as the flesh is concerned. God can take the most unlikely, weakest person and make them a part of His kingdom that matters.
(congregation chattering)
There’s no excuse. I don’t care who you are and how weak you are and how bad your past is. Whatever you think stands against you, Jesus Christ conquered it all. For those who are willing to humble themselves and put their trust in Him and give Him their hearts, He is more than enough. Praise God! Okay?
And what more shall I say? Verse 32 of Hebrews 11, I do not have time to tell you about Gideon, Barak, Sampson, Jephthae, about David, and Samuel, and the prophets. He lists all these characters that we know. And so many of these won great military victories. Oh, it was powerful what the Lord did. They conquered through faith, conquered kingdoms.
Isn’t that interesting? Through faith. In other words, they didn’t muster any kind of human resource to do what they did. In every case, God told them to do something, or gave them a confidence. This is what you need to do, and I’ll be with you. And they did it and God was with them. It’s real complicated! I’m glad the Lord made it simple. I need Him to be simple with me, praise God! Okay?
“Who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength.” Anybody need that this morning? Yeah.
“And who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back there dead, raised to life again.” Over and over again.
Now, here’s one thing that, I felt like the Lord wanted to emphasize about this today. We have our own idea as to what constitutes victory and overcoming, do we not? Is it not easy for us to think in terms of God turning around a situation and bringing forth some great earthly result. as a fruit of our faith? That is, if I have real faith, then such and such is gonna happen. This is gonna be the result. Is that necessarily true? Is that what overcoming is about? Let’s see.
There were others. All right, let’s see what the others, where they fit into this. “There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released, so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning. They were sawed in two, they were killed by the sword.”
Did they overcome? See, we need to understand what overcoming is about. Now you think about the reference to sawing asunder, or sawing in two. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I think Jewish history outside of the Bible records that this referred to Isaiah. You think of this amazing prophet, 66 chapters worth of amazing prophecies, things that are still unfolding in our day. The powerful creative words that came through that man’s lips that have set things in motion that we’re part of today, and they reach right on into eternity.
And this amazing, powerful man of God, that stood for God through the reign of four kings. And then when Hezekiah passed off the scene, Manasseh came on board, the most wicked king in all the history of Judah, the Southern kingdom. He was the one, it was under his reign that the die was cast.
Anybody think that the die isn’t pretty well cast with them for America? Anything we see right now is gonna be delayed at best. That’s the reality folks. If you just got your head in the sand, this is the time to get it out and say, Lord, we are gonna need You. We need You, Lord. We need You to help us. We need You to strengthen us. We need You to correct our thinking. Praise God!
But anyway, think of this man. And I can just sort of imagine, this is not in the Bible, but I can imagine Manasseh being well aware of this prophet, that I’ll make you a deal. You tell me what I wanna hear, and you can live. If you don’t… And so what happened? He made a choice to trust God and to believe Him, to stand in faith. And his reward for his life was to be stretched out, tied down, and sawed in half. Sometimes that’s what overcoming is about.
How do they overcome him in Revelation 12? The blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony. That’s where the conviction comes out your mouth. The thing that’s really in your heart comes out. I will not bend, I will not serve your God. I’m gonna serve my God.
“And they loved not their lives so much as to shrink from death.” You know, we rightly talk about that as though, I mean the context of living a life where we’re willing to die to our old nature and live out the new nature of Christ, and that’s certainly true. But how many people throughout history, how many people right today, literally today, will be killed because they are Christians in this world? Is that defeat?
Jesus said, Don’t be afraid of those who can kill the body. When they’ve done that, that’s all they can do. And He says, I’ll tell you who you should fear. The one who can not only kill the body, but kill the soul. Folks, that’s where we’re at.
I pray if there’s somebody who hears this, and you’re not really sure what’s going on here, you need to reach out to God. You can’t work up faith. You’re gonna have to say, God, you’re gonna have to help me. Look at verse, I mean, just for now, let’s flip back to verse 6, well known verse, “Without faith it is impossible to please God. Because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”
Folks, God doesn’t despise an uncertain heart if it’s an honest uncertainty. You have every right to go to God from the depths of your soul and say, God, I don’t know, but show me. But when you do that, you better have, the conviction of your heart better be, whatever You show me, I’m gonna say, yes, and agree to, because of Who you are. I am not expecting You to lay your cards on the table, we’ve said before, and then let me decide.
You are God, and I just need you to show me what’s truth, because this world is filled with deception of every kind. If I listen to the voices of my worldly friends, might be somebody that sits down the road from you that doesn’t really know the Lord, but you’re listening to their wisdom. Folks, we need to go to the source of all wisdom.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth. If it doesn’t come from the heart of Jesus, revealed to human beings who are willing to listen and agree and obey, then it is a lie from the pit of hell designed to destroy. It’s that clear cut. That’s the waters into which we are sailing.
And I’ll tell you, God’s gonna be with His people. When God inspired this account, and He talks about all these people, He included them just as much as in the heroes of faith as those who did great things that everybody could see.
But I’ll tell you, the ultimate victory is to lay down one’s life, because I’m gonna serve Him. I don’t care what it costs. It’s worth everything to be born again, to serve Him. Is it?
(congregation)
Is He worthy of our lives? He who laid down his life so that we could have life. There are times, many times throughout history and right now in other parts of the world, where people are being asked to lay down their lives.
Did Stephen lose? Was he a loser when they stoned him to death? Now, God used him to give a great testimony when he did, but I mean I’m sure there were people who died in utter obscurity.
You know, I’m so glad that when God arranges such circumstances, let’s suppose that He’s put you and me in a circumstance like that, and to all intents and purposes, it looked like we’re shut away somewhere, suffering maybe, facing death. And they march us out, and they take our life one way or another. And it’s like nobody knows about it. It was just obscure, just something that happened. Well, Satan must have won that one. Did he?
[Congregation] No.Did he? No, I think you know the answer. Satan cannot win. There’s nothing he can do to separate the one we’re talking about from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
(congregation chattering)
The end of my story has been written. That’s part of the conviction, that’s part of the faith. I didn’t come up with that. I didn’t reason that out. God put it here. I can stand and believe Him and know that regardless of how my story plays out, whether I’m to be part of some great demonstration of His power, or whether I am to die in utter obscurity, I’m a winner if I put my faith in Him, and I’d die in faith.
That’s what being a winner is. Where I recognize that my life here has no more no value in terms of eternity. And if His purpose is that I lay it down and to walk away and say, I believe you enough to lay down my life, I don’t care if they say, if they say, Curse God, and you can live, or you’re gonna die. Reject Jesus or you’re gonna die, which will you choose?
We’re gonna need divine strength. You think He’s gonna give it to us? You think that same faith is going to be able to say, Lord, I need your help right now. Do you think He’s gonna despise that? I’ll tell you, He is going to be right there with every single one. If His purpose for you and me is to do something great, He’ll give us the faith to do that. If His purpose for us is to lay down our lives in obscurity, He will be right there walking through that gate with us. Whether I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you’re with me, praise God!
I’m so thankful my story has already been written. Is that the conviction of your heart? But do you kinda see where we’re headed, and what it is that’s gonna carry us through? My strength won’t get it. And I don’t need to be so distracted by what the world stands for that I forget what’s really going on. My loyalty needs to be the same.
You remember the story behind that song, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”? That village in, I think it was northern India, but it was in India anyway, long ago, where the village decided to crack down on a believer and his family. And they demanded that he deny Jesus, and one by one they killed his children and then his wife in front of him.
Is Jesus worth it? If something like that were the course that He set us on, is He worth it? Will He give the strength and the grace to stand? You know, I think many times we read a passage like this and we think of the heroes in terms of, again, what they’ve done, that everybody can see the great miracles.
But I wonder if the greatest honors will be given to those at the end of this passage who endured the hatred of this world, who suffered the loss of their reputation their possessions, their life, their comfort, whatever it may be, and they were willing to stand there and say, I believe. I don’t care what it is, I believe in Jesus. My hope is in Him. I’m not living for this world anyway. You take my life if you want, but I have one you can’t touch.
The same Lord who came out of that tomb, victorious over Satan, over death, over hell, He’s got the keys. There’s no grave that can hold me. My hope is not in this world. Folks, you see where the — you got two worlds going on here, two kingdoms. I want my heart to be so in tune, so loyal to the kingdom that will stand, that whatever He sets up for me, for my course and for my place in this particular hour in history, He will give me the grace and the strength to stand and say, I will not deny my Lord.
He is worthy. He is who He says He is. He’s gonna do what He says He’s gonna do. My hope is not built on anything less but Jesus’ blood and righteousness. He who called me, He who gave me His righteousness is also in Romans 8:30 is it? He has glorified me. In God’s mind, it’s as good as if it has already happened. That’s the conviction of my heart. It will carry me through whatever the Lord allows the devil to do, and God is gonna get the ultimate glory.
And I believe with all my heart, some of these obscure people they don’t even name in this part of the passage are gonna be lifted up. This is what it meant. These people honored me with their lives. And while you didn’t hear about them on earth, I’m letting you know right now. Here they are. These people were willing to stand for me when nobody else around them was standing.
And we’re gonna be the ones standing there, not because of anything we’ve ever done, but because of Jesus. And we’re gonna be honoring Him and casting any crowns down before Him. If we’re one that has died, and He’s given us a crown because we were willing to lay down our lives, we’re gonna say, Here it is, Lord. I’m only here because you laid your life down for me. You’re the one who deserves the praise. To Him be the glory. Praise God!
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September 3, 2023 - No. 1613
“Faith That Overcomes” Part One
Broadcast #1613
September 3, 2023
September 3, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1613 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
Phil: I dunno, I’ve had some thoughts and I’m just trusting the Lord to focus the way He wants to focus and to just to make something, make some sense out of it. ‘Cause you know, my mind tends to go in so many different directions. I can think of scriptures and then boom! I got so many others that come to my mind. And you don’t need my sermon. You need something that the Lord wants to say and wants to emphasize.
And my mind just went to the world that we live in. And God has, as we’ve said many times, called us to live in a certain time and place. We’re here not by accident, we’re here because God has caused us to live right now, and He means for us to serve Him in the context of this present world. And He has revealed to us — I don’t think we need some special revelation if you know Him, to see the condition of the world and where it’s headed.
We know that Satan at the end of the age has been loosed to seek out his ends. And that’s to gain complete control over this world, to drive the influence of God out of it. We know that the world is not our friend. And so here we are. And what is the Lord looking for from us? What do we have in the way of resources, you know, was emphasized with both of the brothers, all that we have in him, the provision that we have in him is more than enough. But I believe God wants to focus my mind and all of ours on what’s going on and how, you know, what are our resources? What is he looking for from us?
And I thought of a scripture just as a kickoff point in 1 John, chapter 5. 1 John, chapter 5. And John is talking about the, you know, who are the real believers? Who are the ones who really are his children? And he’s having to deal with the fact that some are not but there are those who are really his.
And he says, Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. I think you know that the way that’s used, he’s not talking about some mental belief in an idea. Rather, this is a heart conviction, that Jesus is who he says he is. He is the Son of God, he’s the Christ. He’s the chosen one.
And everyone who loves the Father, loves his child as well. There’s the love that we’re meant to have towards each other. This is how we know that we love the children of God by loving God and carrying out his commands.
Now you got people out there that think that means, you know, keeping commandments in the sense of the Old Testament. But basically, it means doing what He says, going by His Word. Not by our own ideas and will and all of that but it’s going by believing his Word enough to walk in it. That’s what he’s talking about, okay?
In fact, this is love for God to keep his commands. How can we say that we love God and just, we don’t do what He says? That doesn’t make sense, does it? And His commands are not burdensome.
Now here’s the verse that I was focused on: “For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” Now there are two words that would bear some definition in that scripture. The world. You know, we think of the physical world, we think of the political systems, the economy of the world and all these, you know, all the issues that arise from our living here.
But I think we know, if you’ve been around at all and you know the Lord and you’ve known Him any length of time, you know there’s more to the world than just simply what we see and detect with our senses. There is a spiritual order of things. There is a kingdom that is far more than what we see.
We see governments interacting, we see war, we see trouble, we see all kinds of things. But what we don’t see with these natural eyes is the intelligence, the design that is behind this, and is Satan with the talons, if you will, of the dragon himself digging in deeper and deeper and trying to mold and lead the world. This whole system, it’s a system. It’s a system of government, it’s a system of ideas. It’s a system of just satanic control.
Paul tells us that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. You know, we can get all upset about people and systems and things like that, but I’ll tell you that’s not our enemy. Of course, our enemy is here [pointing to chest] but in terms of out here, our enemy, we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood but against powers, principalities. See those are unseen governments. Rulers of the darkness of this world, a spiritual wickedness, or the wicked spirits in high places. They’re very real.
And I’ll tell you, the people of this world have no idea what they’re part of. They are enmeshed in a system that has such control over them. In fact, find later in this passage it talks about the world and the fact that Satan has every, the whole world, I think in the end of verse 19, the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
Paul speaks to the fact that he speaks of the people of the world, he says, In whom the God of this world, has done what? “Blinded the minds of those who believe not.” We know from other scriptures, he’s not talking about just ignorance. He’s talking about people who know some facet of truth. God has revealed himself in some measure to them. And they refuse that message and choose instead to believe what they want to believe, what the world is telling them, what their earth worldly friends are telling them. Wherever that information is coming from or it’s just thoughts coming into their heads, they’re believing that and rejecting what God would say.
And so there is a blindness that descends upon the heart and that blindness prevents them from seeing the things that we were singing about this morning. Those are not just religious ideas. I’ll tell you, God is real. Jesus is real. What he did is real. Jesus sits on a throne. We worship one who holds the keys of death and hell in his hands. He is the victor. And he wants us to be overcomers in him, for there is a world to overcome. And so that’s what he’s talking about when he’s talking about the world.
Now, of course, earlier in the book, he defines what the world stands for when he says, Don’t love the world. Okay, what does that mean? What is he talking about? What aren’t we supposed to love? All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh. There are desires that arise in our bodies, that if we just give in to them, then that will become our master. That will be what we live for.
And you see people all around that are doing that. The lust of the flesh. The lust of the eyes, what can I possess? I want more. I want more. You know, this, if only. Or you know, you looking across, I just need, I need that. If I only had that. And God does want a spirit of contentment. Praise God!
So, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The original temptation was for man to be his own god. Is that not the ultimate pride? And talk about delusion. How somebody like me, any human being could imagine that I am a god and I have every right to tell God to go take a hike and reject anything He would say in any — nobody tells me what to do. But that is the spirit that is overrunning our world.
And it takes so many forms. You know, the apostles in their letters warn about deception. It’s not just out there. It’s not just heathendom and, you know, serving things. It gets into religion, and it gets into what purports to be Christianity. And so, you have many who have a form of godliness, but what? There’s no power. In other words, they have the words and the ideas that somehow relate to all this but God’s not there. And if God’s not there, what do you have? How am I going to be anything other than the lost helpless human being under the dominion of sin unless God’s power comes to play in my heart and my life? I have no power to be anything different.
Boy, I’ll tell you, the deception that we have today. And so many have learned how to bend the ideas of scripture. I was born that way, so God loves me and accepts me as I am. Well, I was born that way too and I need a savior. Amen. I was born in sin, everyone here was. I need a miracle that only God can perform.
And He does it, not because I deserve it, but because Jesus took my sins to that cross. And he took me with him into that grave. And when he came forth, there was a new me that came forth with him. Amen. Praise God! That’s what I need, I need Jesus. I need the reality.
And folks, I’ll tell you, the closer we get to the end, the more we are gonna see the difference between those who really serve him and those who don’t, those who have something less than what we’re talking about. So, here’s the world that we need to overcome.
But what is it that overcomes the world? It’s even our faith, isn’t it? Now, we know we have plenty of stuff in the, plenty of scriptures. But I thought about that in the context of Hebrews, chapter 11, something that we probably need to take a fresh look at. Because that’s when the apostle, whoever wrote this, whoever is the human author of this, God is the author. But he lifts up what faith is all about. Praise God, all right?
So, it’s now, “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” So, faith deals with two different things, doesn’t it? The first is a confidence about something that isn’t here now but it’s in the future. Is that right? If God has given me a promise of something that He will do and I have confidence enough to rest my soul upon that, see that’s what, that’s part of what faith is about.
Now, how many of you were born with faith? Yeah, not one of us. Where does faith come from? Comes from the Word of God, doesn’t it? It comes from God invading our space, revealing Himself, not just to our heads, debating with us ideas and all that kind of stuff, and trying to get us to be more religious. Has nothing to do with that. It is the revelation of God that comes all the way past this, right down into here. It reveals who God is. It reveals who His Son is.
But it reveals who we are. And that’s where we, that’s where people get off, jump off the train. They don’t wanna face their own need before him. But oh, if we could, wherever there is a humble receptive heart that will open itself to the work of God in the heart, there is a quality, there’s something that comes from God’s own nature.
You know if I wasn’t born with faith, and I wasn’t, it just does not — see, it doesn’t exist in Adam’s nature, does it? But faith is a fruit of, is one of the fruits of. See, if I’m gonna have faith, I’m gonna have to have Him living in me. That’s gonna set me apart from everybody else.
Not that I’m anything. But do you see where being born of God comes into this? I literally have to have a birth where His life is begotten, is born on the inside of me and I have a different life than I was born into this world with.
But one of the qualities that arises from that is this quality called faith. And so, God, first of all, He imparts to me a conviction. That conviction can look forward, it can look out right now and say, I see what the world is saying. I see what it stands for, but I know the truth. ‘Cause I know what God says. And I don’t care what the world says, what it looks like, what it feels like. What God says is true, that’s what I’m gonna go by. That’s it. End of story.
You know, you talk about hope is the aspect of faith that looks to the future. You remember Hebrew 6; look it up sometime. You see what we have to base that hope upon. It’s not something we work up. Some people try to work up a feeling of faith and they got, they’re looking for faith in their faith. My faith is not focused on how I feel or how things look or anything that has to do with this world. It’s in the promise of God.
And He gives us two things there that we can rest our hope upon. What are they? One of them is a promise of a purpose that He describes as “unchanging.” In other words, here is what I have planned to do from the foundation of the world. Nobody is gonna change my mind. There is no circumstance that’s gonna arise that cause me to say, “Uh, uh, that didn’t work out. Let’s try plan B.” There is no plan B. God has a purpose that He has declared.
So, how do we know? You know, that in itself should be strong enough. But he says, you know, like people down here, they swear by somebody who’s greater, I swear by God that thus and so, and is supposed to lend some credence to what they’re saying. Well, there aren’t anybody greater for God to swear but so hHe swore by Himself.
So that’s the other thing. We have a God whose character is such that He cannot tell a lie. So, number one, you’ve got a promise of an unchanging purpose given by a God who is incapable of lying. That’s pretty strong basis for standing, isn’t it?
Folks, we’re gonna need what I’m talking about this morning, what I believe the Lord wants us to focus on this morning in order to stand in this hour. Because like I say, like Jesus said, the world hates us. It may not always seem like it right now.
And we live, as we’ve said so many times, in a very unusual place and time in history. We have a freedom that is amazing, but do you think it’s always going to be this way? No, it isn’t. And we’re gonna need something more than human strength. We’re gonna face all kinds of situations. What is it that will enable us to stand and overcome in those circumstances?
And what — basically you’ve got a system of thinking and living that governs this world. And Satan has been allowed to plant the lie that he describes as, well, praise God, what is it? In 2 Thessalonians 2, “strong delusion” is one of the translations. There is a strong delusion that is taking hold of people’s minds.
You remember how Jesus described and how the Word describes what happened in Noah’s day? What happened? There reached a point when God looked down and, with the exception of Noah, every imagination of every heart was what? Only evil continually. They had reached a point where there was zero capacity for God. They were simply living for whatever their flesh wanted. There was violence. There was all kinds of stuff, all kinds of wickedness in the world. And the Lord, it was time to judge.
That’s what’s gonna happen at the end of this age. We’re living in a temporary world that is absolutely …. Do you believe the Word of God? That this world that we see, we’re part of it, every bit of it is going to be destroyed? Every person who has never surrendered to Jesus Christ, as we described this morning is gonna die and face judgment. That’s the world we’re living in, folks.
You know, you go to Hebrews 11 again and you don’t get very far in before you run into Noah, don’t you? And how does it describe Noah’s conviction? I mean here he was standing against a world, no doubt ridiculed for all that he was doing. But the one thing he did was walk with God and believe what God said. But the belief was not just a mental thing, it caused him to obey what God told him to do.
Now listen to what it says, By his faith, this is in the middle of verse 7, By his faith. Now, what was his, what did his faith, what was the conviction of his faith and what was the consequence of this? “By his faith, he condemned the world.” Now it doesn’t mean having a hateful spirit. But folks, God is going to have to give us such a conviction that we not only see what the world stands for and what it’s about but we’re willing to say, “That’s not me. I don’t agree with that. I’m serving him. Come hell or high water, I’m serving him.”
What is it that overcomes the world? Even our faith. God is wanting to implant. Talk about having all the resources that we need. That’s the biggie. Because if that’s what overcomes the world, then man, I need that. I need Him to grow it, to implant it in me in the first place and to grow it.
You think, there’s a reason why we go through things right now, do you think God may be preparing us to stand? But look at what it involved. It involves, one thing it involves in every instance is a choice. God is going to allow a circumstance to arise where, in one sense, I have a choice. Am I going to believe God? A God I can’t see, a God that I can’t touch, I can’t see something immaterial in this world to back up this belief, but there’s a conviction that He’s planted here.
And I’m gonna, am I gonna believe that or am I gonna believe what my flesh wants? What the world tells me is so, what I see, what I can touch? Where is my faith gonna be? I’ll tell you, this is what’s gonna separate people who are God’s people, headed for an eternity with Him in the kingdom that He is building, the purpose He is fulfilling, and those who are outside and headed for destruction. It’s that simple, okay?
So, Noah made that choice. Abraham, of course, we talked about so many times, I’m gonna have to hustle through here but of course I don’t have to be bound by the clock but I don’t wanna abuse my liberty either.
Abraham had a whole lot of choices to make in his life, didn’t he? He heard the voice in some fashion. God made himself known to Abraham. And it wasn’t just that he believed God and said, That’s great. I’m gonna have nations come from me. I’m just gonna go on about my business. No, the vision and the Word that God gave him was such that he had to obey. He had to put that into action.
Folks, God is going to give us things in our lives where we’re gonna have to be willing to take action based upon the conviction that God has put in our hearts. We’re gonna have to do some standing. In his case, it was leaving family. It was a separation. It was leaving everything that he had known, going by faith in an unseen God, to a place he’d never been before.
And all the things that he went through, throughout his life, the faith that God was building in him and how he was willing to stand even when it became impossible for him to have a child or his wife certainly to have one, 90 year old lady. No possible human way that such a thing could be fulfilled. And he stood and he said, No, God said.
And then when God said, Sacrifice him. The son, the very son that I promised you, sacrifice him. And his obedience went all the way to the point where he had the knife raised. Now the writer to the Hebrews says that, you know, explains this that, well, he believed that even if he killed him, God could raise him from the dead. Well, that’s certainly true. You know, God will put us in situations where we don’t know how it’s coming out. And we’re gonna have to make the right choice anyway.
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August 27, 2023 - No. 1612
“A Renewed Mind” Conclusion
Broadcast #1612
August 27, 2023
August 27, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1612 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Phil: Folks, there’s nothing that would hinder. Whatever God’s purpose is for us as individuals, as a church, is not that we seek anything other than, God show us what to do. But we can’t ever succumb to the thinking, well, I can’t because I’m weak, I’m nobody. I don’t have this, I don’t have that. I haven’t been to school.
There’s only one thing. Are we His? Are we willing to be His? Are we willing to take what He says and give it to Him? Give what is that in our hand.
Remember Brother Thomas preached a message, a few of you maybe have been around long enough to remember it. It was, a God-given vision and using what you have. It was that principle of just simply God’s… Here’s something that God wants to do and it comes down to this. What is in your hand?
Well, just give it to me and let’s see what I’m gonna do with it. And God took that and he stood before the Red Sea and stretched out that stick. Now, how am I…? You think from a human standpoint, how am I gonna get this accomplished? How are we gonna get all these, the 3 million people across a body of water with an army behind us?
Folks, we don’t need earthly resources. I don’t know how many religious groups out there that basically operate by the principles of earthly corporations. They got marketing departments, they got five-year plans, they got, you know, the earthly organization, earthly ability. You gotta go to school and you gotta get this and you gotta get that. Folks, we need the Lord and He’s all we need and He’s enough.
And again, this applies to every single person that He calls within the sphere of your life. God’s not limited by our earthly limitations. And those are the things that govern us so much. And so, you see the Lord doing all these mighty things through Saul or through Moses. Sorry about that! And many other….
Well, one of the times you remember they were marching out in the wilderness and the Amalekites saw an opportunity. They were basically a criminal tribe. Most of them were, I guess. And they would raid one another and kill ‘em and take their stuff. And that was kinda the way life was in those days. And so, now, they’re suddenly at war.
Well, how did they fight that war? Yes, there were people who took up swords, but what was the key that they needed for the Lord to do what He was gonna do? What was the key to that victory? Moses sat on a hill with that staff that he had given to the Lord back in the wilderness. And he lifted it up. And every time he lifted it up, the Israelites were prevailing in the battle. And, of course, you remember how his arm got tired. And so, he wound up having to have Aaron and Hur help him hold up his staff.
But here’s a… Whatever God gives you, there is a victory that can be won over every devil on this planet if we will just give our God what we have and let Him work. And we sang songs about that this morning. We don’t have to be intimidated by this world and the way we see things going.
We have a God who resides in us, but He wants us to be His people, to think the way He wants to train us to think, and then just to use what we have to do what He calls us to do in this time and this place, and His kingdom will be built, His purpose will be accomplished. The world may not see it as any great thing, but I’ll tell you, it will matter in eternity.
But you see pictures of this throughout the scriptures. I thought of other scriptures where you remember Elijah was used to call for a famine in the land. And the Lord fed him miraculously by some ravens who brought him food every day. And then, the brook dried up where he was sitting. He said, I’ve called a woman from the nation of Sidon, which was a heathen nation, not too terribly far away. But He said, Go there. I’ve directed her to feed you.
Well, he goes there and he finds this widow out… I think this was the story where she was out picking up sticks. And he asks, “Would you give me a little bit of water and a little bit of bread?” And she says, “I am gathering sticks. All I have is enough for a one cake of, a little bit of flour, a little bit of oil. My son and I are going to bake that, eat it, and then were gonna die.”
Well, now, that was heavenly thinking, wasn’t it? But you know how often we look at natural resources, natural conditions, and that governs our thinking more than we realize. But somehow, the Lord gave her faith and gave him the word to tell her, says, Go, do what you’re doing, but make me a cake first, because this is what the God of Israel says. ‘The flour’s not gonna fail. The oil will not fail until God sends rain.’”
And instead of listening to earthly thinking, in effect, she gave that to God. She gave her limited resources that were just about… I mean she was, I’m gonna die. There’s nothing to look forward to. But she gave what she had to the Lord, did what the prophet said, and exactly what the Lord said took place.
Do you think we’re limited to these earthly things that we think are limitations in our lives? Or can He bring us to a place where we can discern His will and His mind? Move in faith with what we have, who we are?
Did God make a mistake when He made you? We often think so. We think like that, don’t we? Who am I? I can’t do anything. I’m nothing. I don’t have anything. God couldn’t use somebody like me. Yes, He can if we will let Him change us. And we will be willing to just trust in Him to do the changes that are necessary in us and we’ll come to the place where we are so getting more and more in tune with Him we can discern things He wants us to do.
And I’m talking about great things. I’m talking about little things, people we interact with, words to say, somebody to call, somebody to encourage. It can get down to things like that, just things to do that never get any public attention and yet they matter.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve had thoughts come to me many times. The Lord talks about the fact that we’re gonna do the things that He did. We see in the early church the miraculous was just commonplace. Was that just for another age? Now, I know that God doesn’t want a people to suddenly glory in signs and wonders and just have all this miraculous power and oh, more….
It should be just like breathing. God gives gifts of healing, doesn’t He? There are all kinds of gifts that He… Discerning spirits. Do we need that? Do we need somebody who can know what kind of a spirit is behind something that is said and done? Yeah, we need those gifts. Can’t we ask God to fulfill His promise to make those gifts manifest, but to teach us what to do with them and how to handle ‘em in a way that we don’t get carried away with earthly thinking? And see where we need a renewed mind?
Wouldn’t it be neat if you could just have a situation where someone has a need and there’s somebody who has a faith to pray for that and it could just be healed? I mean, I hear about things like that from time to time in our midst. God wants to do those kinds of things. He’s real and He doesn’t just need the special ones to do that. He could do that through you if that’s what His plan is.
On the other hand, we don’t have to compare ourselves with one another. That’s heavenly thinking, isn’t it? No, God didn’t make you like somebody else. He made you you, and He loves you and He designed you to be you, and that’s okay. But what He’s looking for is a transformed you and me, so that He can do exactly what He wants to do in your life and in mine. Praise God! Praise God!
There’s so much, so many examples of this. Of course, you know how David went into the battle. And we see the kinds of things that had happened. I’m in the wrong, I’m looking for a scripture here while I’m trying to talk and… I can’t think and talk at the sa… Whatever it is! All right, well get there.
But anyway, David, what did he have to use to go into a battle? Saul said, If you’re gonna go into this battle, you need some armor. Where does that thinking come from? That’s the world, isn’t it? But David knew that he had something that he had already experienced God’s favor in that he was familiar with.
But he also understood something that we needed to understand: And that’s, the battle is the Lords. Whatever things God puts before us that are His plan and will, He already knows about it. And it’s not your battle, ultimately it’s His. So, all we have to do is use what we have, trust in Him, and then step forward in faith.
David didn’t say, all right, God, there’s the giant Gideon [Goliath!], it’s your battle. David took what he had, used what he had, didn’t he? But he started out in faith. And boy, I tell you, God, God took over.
Look what Gideon went into the battle with. I realize they probably had swords strapped on, but that they didn’t go in with swords drawn. They went in like exactly God told them to do. They had clay pots with torches in them and a plan that made no sense at all from a military standpoint. But they obeyed what God did, what God said, and God got the victory, because it was His battle ultimately not theirs.
We’ve heard these principles many times, but how many of us just hear them and say, yeah, yeah. And don’t really ever relate it to us. Do you not think that you matter, that you are part of this, that God has an eternal reason why you are here? There are things that He wants to do in your mind and in your life that matter in eternity.
The answer is, yes! Does this apply to you? Does it apply to me? Yes, it does. God wants us to grow and wants us to learn. There are plenty of other examples in scripture of the Lord just using what people had.
You had Elisha, came along after Elijah, and you had this wife of one of the prophets. There were these companies of prophets that worked with him. And the wife of one of them was in a bad place. They had a debtor that was about to get ‘em and the husband had died. I guess that was the point. And now, the creditor is coming to take my two boys as slaves.
And Elisha’s answer was, Tell me, what do you have in your house? You see the theme there? What do you have? She didn’t have to go and come up with great resources. It just let’s just take what you have and do what God says with it and God will take care of the problem.
And so, he says, All right. She has a little bit of oil. Go out and borrow every vessel, every pot, everything that you can get ahold of from all of your neighbors and bring them in and then start pouring the oil. And the oil just kept pouring and kept pouring and kept pouring.
Do you see how God can take something that we have that we don’t think anything of or we didn’t think is good enough or enough? God can take it and multiply it and cause it to meet the need. It’s not a complicated thing. We’re the ones who complicate it.
And so, remember how it happened at the end of it. She ran out of vessels finally. And so, the oil stopped. Sell what you have, live off the rest. Everything’s good. And over and over, you see examples like that.
There was a time when a bunch of the prophets were getting together and one of them had a little bit of food. And Elisha says, Set it before them. Said, This isn’t enough. How am I gonna do that? How can I feed all these people with this little bit? And you see a perfect example of the same thing we saw in Jesus later on. He says, Go ahead and serve it and you’ll have some left over. And that’s exactly what happened. They fed everybody. They had a whole bunch left over. And you see the same principle in Jesus.
But all how slow we are to learn. You remember how in Jesus’ ministry, He fed the 5,000. That was the famous one. And there they were, give them something to eat. We don’t have anything. Says, What do you have? Well, this boy has, was it five loaves and two fish? But what are they? But what are they among so many?
What kind of thinking is that? Do we need to learn how to see that God is not limited by earthly limitations? There’s one thing that governs everything. What is Your will? What is Your plan? And Jesus said, Set it before them. Divide ‘em up in group of 50s, I believe in that instance. Set it before ‘em. And they fed everybody. And they had what? 12 baskets left over?
And later on, they come into a similar situation. I think there were 4,000 on that occasion. And Jesus wants to send them away, or not Jesus, but the disciples, send them away, so they can buy food. And He says, You give them to eat. How can we do that? They’d just been through, I mean, just… I don’t know what the timeframe was, but they had watched Jesus multiply the loaves and the fishes and here they are in the same situation, And we can’t do it.
God deliver us from earthly thinking, bring us to a place where we can discern, we can think enough like Him that we can begin to discern His will and His mind. And then, He can give us maybe little things in our own mind. Not prideful things, but little things that matter. And He can take what we have with all of our seeming limitations and do something that is eternal with it. You see the principle over and over again. God pictures it in natural ways in scripture.
But my prayer is that all of us will get the principles involved in this, starting with me. God help us to stop looking at our limitations. Who are we? We don’t matter. I can’t do this. I don’t have that. I’m not smart. I’m not like them. I’m not… Or you go to the other extreme. Look at me. I have an opportunity to do something important. God deliver us from everything except coming to a simple place of doing what He says, trusting Him to do it, using what we have.
And we have a God who’s gonna fight battles that we have no idea. There is no limit, there’s nothing He can’t do. Look at the things He did over and over in scripture. Do you think those days are gone? Do you think that God is still alive with us today here now at the end of the age? We’re gonna have all kinds of things rise up against us. We’re gonna have battles that need to be fought. But boy, I’ll tell you, we got an army. We got an army behind us.
One of the other things I… One of the other stories I remembered was the occasion of Elisha. And I think it was one of the, whoever the foreign king was, the Aramaic army was coming trying to come after the King of Israel. And Elijah kept saying, Don’t go there, because that’s where they’re at.
And so, the Arameans says, All right, who’s the traitor? Who’s giving him information? Said, Nobody is. Elisha’s telling, the prophet is telling the king of Israel what you are saying in your secret chamber. And so, All right, let’s go get him. So, they find out where he is at and they surround the town with the armies.
They wake up in the morning and Elisha’s servant, how does he react? Heavenly thinking? Renewed mind? No. Oh my god, what are we gonna do? Look. They said, Lord, open his eyes. What did he see? Chariots, horses, and chariots of fire. The armies of Israel. There’s more with us than with them.
Folks, that’s true now. There’s a world we don’t see. There’s a world we don’t see that’s real. It may be true that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and all of that. But that’s not the only army on the field.
When God sent Israel against Jericho, you remember? How he revealed himself to Joshua? And all of a sudden, Joshua sees this figure, knows that there’s something special or supernatural about him and said, Are you for them or for us? Neither. Wait, what? I’m here as commander of the Lords host. I didn’t come to help you, but you have a part in what I’m doing.
And so, as they obeyed God, God took care of the wall, didn’t He? That great wall that they were trusting in, that was no barrier to God. All they had to do was simply do what God says and trust Him, use what they had: their trumpets. And God sent the heavenly host.
Do you believe that host is with us today? Do we have to see that to know that He’s real? The thing is, we have got way too much earthly thinking. And God is seeking to produce if were willing, if we’ll present ourselves and understand what’s going on. He wants to give us a renewed mind.
And the more we have a renewed mind, the more were gonna be able to know what His will is. And then, as we know that, we can step into what our place is, not seeking something pridefully, not trying to make a show, not with anything of this human reaction this human motivation, but just saying, Lord, I’m yours. Youve given me the privilege of being alive right now in this place. You’ve designed it for me. You designed me for the place and the place for me. You’ve given me exactly what I need. All I have to do is give it back to You and do Your will and Youre gonna accomplish that, which is eternal.
Not complicated, is it? Not easy. Everything in us naturally, everything in this world, fights against such a simple thing. But that’s what God is looking for right now. And if we as a company of people do that to the degree we do it, we’re gonna see more and more of what He describes.
Well, back over in Romans 12. We’re gonna see Him. Give us the power to serve one another and to love one another, to love our enemies as He goes on and talks about. All those things that simply cannot come from earthly thinking, earthly ability, they’re gonna come, because He’s put a new life within us. And we’re gonna learn how to live out that life.
Anybody here got some growing to do in this area? But can we not ask God to fulfill this in our assembly, but also in us as individuals. I’ll just say, oh, do it, Lord. There’s somebody over there You can use and I’ll just go along for the ride. No, God’s got a place for you. God, you have come… you, individually, have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.
That’s not a cause for pride, that’s a cause for, Lord, show me your will. Bring me into a knowledge of it. Change my thinking, change everything. Whatever has to change in me, Lord, change it. I’m willing. I need You and I want You and I’m trusting in You.
And tell you, Gods gonna fulfill His purpose. Didn’t He tell us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” where? “On earth as it is in heaven”? That’s why we’re here. Because God’s got things that He’s doing here to prepare us for there.
And we’re not here just to mark time and muddle through our lives. We’re here to learn from Him and to do His will. And we’re gonna see Him do things that others would regard as, wow, that’s amazing. No, that’s just normal Christian life. That’s just, God can do anything.
So, He just performed a great miracle. Well, praise God! Lets go on. We don’t have to stop and glory in it and make a big deal. We can praise God and all of that, but we don’t have to bring human thinking into all of this. May God deliver us from that. He is, but are we willing?
Let’s seek God and trust Him to do what He’s planned, what He’s promised to do. He is an awesome God and we have an awesome Savior. To Him be the glory. It’s His kingdom and it’s reigning. He is bringing this to a conclusion. But we are born for this time and this place and you matter. And He cares about you and He wants to use you and me. Praise God!
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August 20, 2023 - No. 1611
“A Renewed Mind” Part One
Broadcast #1611
August 20, 2023
August 20, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1611 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Phil: Well, I’ve had some thoughts this morning, and this week, that I’m gonna use a very, very familiar scripture as a starting point. And that is Romans Chapter 12. But there’s, there’s so much in that that many times you can kind of use that as a launching pad but then you can focus on a certain aspect of it. And that’s kind of where I’m headed today.
But as we know so well, this Romans 12 is the beginning of what God wants us to understand is our response to basically what He’s done. Because Chapters 1 through 11 are all about the gospel and the amazing, the amazing thing that God has done for us through the death of Jesus Christ. Thank God, He’s put away the guilt of our sins. But it didn’t stop at the grave, did it? He came forth from the grave and He has the power now to share that new life with us. So, it’s not just forgiveness it’s a new life and a new heart, thank God.
And so, the question of course arises, what therefore? What is God looking for from us? And I believe many times we overcomplicate what the Lord is looking for. And it gets down to some pretty simple things. And Paul leads into this with the first couple of verses. And I’ll go ahead and read a little beyond that too.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.
“For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you ought but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members and these members do not all have the same function. So in Christ, we though many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.
“We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.”
Now, that’s not an exhaustive list but you get a picture there of where God is going with the gospel. And we know the fact that He doesn’t take us to heaven as soon as we say, yes. He has a reason for our being here.
And some of what I have a sense that the Lord wants to share, has to do with something we’ve mentioned a number of times. How many of you believe we’re here in the kingdom for such a time as this? How many of you believe it’s an accident that you and I are living where we’re at right now and we’re here in in this particular time and place? You think God has a purpose? Do you think he’s absolutely carrying out something or is he standing back to see what’s happening?
I believe with all my heart, God is absolutely here. He’s acting. He has a plan. He has a purpose. But that purpose involves not just a handful of special ones, that are doing things that are public. God has a purpose that involves every single member of the body of Christ. And so, what he’s addressing here is every single one.
And as we sort of summarized briefly in a service recently there are two basic things that God is looking for here. Number one is that we present ourselves. Now, I could emphasize the fact that we are individually presenting ourselves to become a corporate. That’s absolutely true. But the reality is that there has to be a definite transaction in the heart of every member of the body of Christ where we become no longer our own but we’re bought with a price, we belong to Him. Our bodies are not our own to do with as we please they are His to use while we’re in the world.
And there is a presentation, it is a living sacrifice. That means there’s some death involved but the death is so that we can live. There is a part of us that we were born with that has to functionally die. That is, it no longer rules us. It no longer controls us, and only God can teach us and help us to walk in that.
But that’s what God’s plan is, that we would learn to live out the new life that He has given to us and that there is therefore something that is dying and something that is living. That’s why he calls it a living sacrifice.
Just like Paul in the scripture we’ve used so many times he talks about how death worked in him so that life could work in others. Well, that principle applies to every single member of the body of Christ. We don’t just sit back and say, Well, that’s for certain ones that they have this special public role and therefore … but I’m just here. I’m just living my life. I’m biding my time. I’m doing little stuff here and there. Every member of the body of Christ is born for a time and a place and a purpose.
– [Congregant] Amen.
And how many times have we used Esther as an example? Now, obviously most of the Bible examples we have are of very public things that happened in history and certainly this qualifies. But by every measure, Esther was just a Jewish girl who happened to live in a heathen empire at a certain time in history.
Now in the Lord’s providence. He made her very beautiful, made her very appealing, but He had a plan in all of that. Esther wasn’t looking for anything, but when the time came for the king to attract, to pick is the word I want, to pick a new wife. I won’t go into all the details, you know the story. But he came to a place where he needed a queen and ultimately she became his queen.
And then you remember how there was this plot against the Jews by a wicked man who got the king to sign an edict that there was gonna be a slaughter of Jews on a certain day, because they’re enemies of your empire. And how her, Esther’s, was it uncle? Anyway, her relative came in, and told her about it and basically said, Who knows of what you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this. I mean, God had somebody in a critical spot at a critical time to do something that could not be done any other way.
And she tried to talk her way out of it. Who am I? I can’t do anything. But finally she made a commitment that said, I’m gonna do it, and if I perish, I perish.
Boy, think about what that means. Isn’t that a pretty good picture of the Christian life? Could we not every one of us wind up in a situation like that where our life is on the line? The truth is, it is anyway. It’s just that most of the time it’s a living sacrifice where we’re continuing to live out something, but God could call some, some of us here to literally lay down our lives for Him. Is He worth it?
[Congregant] Amen.Amen, absolutely. You know, he talks about in Romans 12 we’re to offer our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, which is separate to Him. It belongs to Him and not to us and not to anybody else, but it says, This is pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.
What does worship have to do with? Has to do with worth. In other words, you’re acknowledging someone’s value, someone’s worth. Is He worth it? Is it worth it to serve Jesus? Is it worth it to lay down our lives if that’s what he’s called us to? Absolutely. But that’s the call to every single believer. Every single one in the body of Christ. We are called to lay down our lives for Him and simply present them to Him. Lord, I am yours, I am not my own.
To verses three and beyond, there is a whole, to verses three and beyond, there are a whole lot of changes that have to happen, right? It talks about not conforming to this present world in the original. That is a passive word.
And I don’t think I have to convince everybody or anybody, that we are under an avalanche. It’s like standing under a waterfall of the potential influence of this world. It comes from everywhere, and it will absolutely invade our thinking, if we let it. It will cause us to look at ourselves a certain way. It will cause us to feel, who are we, what is our purpose? It has answers to all of those things that are absolutely opposed to God.
We are living in a world that is under a sentence of destruction and we’re simply playing out. We’re part of the outworking of God’s plan to bring us to that time. Praise God, I wanna be part of that, don’t you? I wanna live and walk in harmony with that.
Well, if I’m gonna do that He’s got to do some major overhaul up here. I don’t think we realize the degree to which we think like the world. And the first thing we do, in fact, that’s what we do, we present and then we let God work because the “being transformed” is also a passive word which means we’re not going out and trying to figure it all out, we’re letting God change us.
He will absolutely institute circumstances in our lives that will cause us to see everything from God’s point of view and not from ours, if we’ll cooperate, if we’ll respond God is gonna change your thinking and mine about who we are, what we are, what our place what our purpose is.
I mean, how can you walk? How can any people walk in what he describes here where we belong to each other? We don’t do stuff because we have ability. We do stuff with ability that God gives us. You see the difference? God doesn’t call the qualified he qualifies the called, as you’ve heard that expression.
And so here you’ve got a people that know that they belong to one another, know their role, their purpose in life is to have God’s Spirit, not just in them, but flowing through them to strengthen and bless others and to do that within the context of their place and their unique calling.
And we said many times, there has never been anybody in the history of this world exactly like you. Now I think sometimes we would say, Thank God, but the reality is God made you and He made me particularly for a time, and a place and a purpose. And the gospel is what His plan is to get us to a place where we can even enter that.
But God help us to give ourselves to Him to acknowledge that every day, to reaffirm that as we go along, not to lose sight of whose we are and what our real purpose is, but also to say, God, I need to be changed.
It’s not okay that I just acknowledge certain doctrines and ideas and religious practices. I need to have my whole thinking changed. I need you to do something that I can’t do for myself. I don’t know what to think. This world is telling me, trying to fill my head with ideas and God is not just a matter of reading words in a book. I need the author of that book to come —
[Congregation] Yes.Phil: — and reveal His word in such a way that it becomes the way I see everything, the way I see myself. And I’ll tell you, God’s got a job.
But I’ll tell you what the thing we need to do besides reaffirming that we belong to Him is every day to say, God, I know in order to really fulfill what you have described in this passage that we read, you gotta have you got some work to do. I’m not there yet.
I’m like Paul, I’ve grasped a little bit and I thank God I can forget the mistakes of the past. I can leave that behind and just put it under the blood. But Lord, there’s more, there’s more. And I need you to change me because I have a part to play. We try to define what these parts are and we tend to think in terms of public things, like the ones who stand up here and have some public role.
But that isn’t what is described here, is it? Do you know how important it is to radiate Christ right where you are? We have the expression, “Bloom where you’re planted.” God’s got you in a certain role in life but He wants to live in you in that place and through that role so that when people are around you what they sense is not you being upset about this, all the natural human reactions we have to life, but to sense Christ.
I mean, do people wanna be around you? Do believers wanna be around you because they feel stronger after they’ve been in your presence? We got something we can ask God about —
[Congregation] Yes.Phil: — and be conscious of. He can make those changes, I can’t do that. Isn’t that an awesome thing that all I have to do is give myself and let Him make the changes? He provides everything else if I’m just willing. But my brain has got to be reprogrammed. I just don’t think the way He wants me to think.
And of course, one of the obvious things He deals with right at the beginning, He says, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” Oh, the very heart of human nature is pride.
[Congregation] Amen.And for us to think, Oh, I can be an instrument of God. Ah, isn’t that great? And I see somebody else, Oh man, I wanna be like them or I wanna be better than they are, I wanna. It becomes a contest. Is that heavenly thinking?
[Congregant] No.Do we need a renewed mind? Yes. That might be a good title, if they wanna write one: A renewed mind, what does that look like?
On the first place, it’s not about us. It’s not about who I am and what I do and how people think of me as a result of that. Some of the greatest, I mean, I’ve told you about this lady before but Sophie, the washer woman, now she’s rather famous because she was recognized, but there was this poor immigrant woman living in New York City, in borderline poverty. Well, you’d call it poverty. I mean, it was hand-to-mouth. She washed clothes for people and got a little bit of money and she could just barely make her way.
But that wasn’t what her life was about. Her life was about Jesus and sharing Jesus. And it was such an impact she had on so many people right where she was planted. Now, the Lord never put her in a pulpit. She never wrote books or sang songs. She never did anything that the world would regard as important. But I want to tell you on Judgment day, God’s gonna lift her up and say, This is what I was looking for. I just wanted somebody that allowed me to do what I wanted to do in them so that I could act through them to share my life within the world.
There are places that you are that nobody else is. God’s put you in a certain place just like he put Esther. Now that’s a pretty big stage for her. But the principle applies to every single person. Your life is unique, where you’re at is unique. Your role in your family and in your loved ones, whatever it is, in your work. And some of us are beyond that, but anyway, God is faithful to put us where He wants us. But don’t you want to just say, Lord, open my eyes, help me.
Now, notice what he says back in verse two. Do not conform to the pattern or be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed. How? By the renewing of your mind. I need Him to so change my way of thinking.
All right, now what’s the result of that? What happens if I allow Him to change the way I think. All right, then you will be able. There’s an ability that I need if I’m gonna be who He wants me to be, fulfill the place He has designed for me, uniquely for me. I’m gonna have to know what He wants. I’m gonna have to know some things. I’m gonna have to have an ability here that I don’t naturally have.
Now, what is that ability about? Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is. You think that matters? Yes. Has God called us given us a book and said, Go build me a kingdom? Everything that He has designed He has not only a place for us, but He has a plan, He has a will. He’s already foreseen things that we don’t know anything about.
Esther didn’t have any idea what was gonna happen but God knew it, and God gave her the courage to do what she needed to do when she needed to do it. Is anybody here that you just all the time you know exactly what God’s will is? I can’t raise my hand either. You think maybe we got some growing to do here? You think there’s some ability that we need to gain to where we can walk close enough with the Lord when we can have a sense of what He wants to do and be willing to set aside what we want, what we think? Say God, just like Jesus. I’m not here to do my own will. I’m here to do His?
And He went to the cross, Not my will, but yours be done. That’s what He’s seeking to reproduce in every one of us while we live in this world. I’ll tell you, that’s a blessed place. Human nature thinks, Oh my God I’m gonna be a slave, paints such a terrible picture of it, but Jesus says, Come to me and you’ll find rest. Praise the Lord!
So anyway, here He is putting us in a position where we need a renewed mind if we’re gonna do what He’s talking about here. I didn’t start with Romans 12 but this is just kind of a jumping off point. I began to think about how God used people throughout history.
In the first place, what’s being described here is not based again upon human ability, is it. God is qualifying those He calls God is using those who are weak. He has called, not the mighty, not many of the mighty not many of the noble and all of that but He’s chosen the weak and the foolish things. So, if you’re foolish today — let’s not be foolish in the wrong sense! I don’t care what the world thinks. Folks, if we’re His, that needs to govern everything and the way we see everything, praise God!
But you know, there’s so many examples in scripture that illustrates some simple points about a renewed mind. Moses is a story that we have referred to many times. And here was a man the scriptures described as mighty in word and deed. He grew up in Pharaoh’s household, no doubt did accomplish great things, was regarded as a high born person in the kingdom.
And God had a purpose for Moses’ life to use him ultimately as the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. Now, did God allow him to develop all of those human abilities so that he can say, All right, now you’re ready. See, the thing is, if we’re gonna give ourselves to the Lord He’s gonna have to set us free from a lot of things including self-reliance, self-confidence in the wrong sense. We’re gonna have to come to a place where we, like Paul said, When I’m weak, I’m strong.
Moses didn’t understand any of this, and so he wound up being chased out of the kingdom, fleeing for his life, living on the backside of the desert as a shepherd for 40 years. And to all intents and purposes, that was his lot. He’s 80 years old. He’s still in good health evidently but he is going along and just every day he’s out tending the sheep.
And, of course, you remember what happened, the burning bush. Finally, all of this sense of, I’m important, I can do stuff, is gone. And the Lord finally approaches him and he goes through a whole lot of telling him what He wanted him to do. And Moses is objecting at every point.
But where do the objections to things like that come from? If the Lord says, I want you to do something. Where where does all that come from? What kind of thinking? Ah, that’s worldly thinking. That’s thinking that says, “I’m not,” and “I can’t,” and “I don’t have,” all those kinds of things you’re gonna see unfold in different lives.
And at one point They’re not gonna believe me. What am I gonna do? What does the Lord say? What is that in your hand?
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August 13, 2023 - No. 1610
“From Test to Testimony” Conclusion
Broadcast #1610
August 13, 2023
August 13, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1610 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: God wants to equip us, folks, but we need something in order to get to a testimony we have to go by way of a test, don’t we? Everything that God wants us to be able to speak with our mouths is gonna make a difference to somebody has to come from something. It’s not just that we take proof texts and that’s all there is to it. We’ve gotta have lived it and experienced it. So what is involved in that?
Listen to how Paul puts it. This takes some faith, doesn’t it? Here not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings. How many of you’ve got to that point? We kinda have some growing up to do, don’t we? But what what’s really behind all of this is someone who is not just saying, Oh, I love to suffer, this is awesome. He’s looking past all of this, just like Jesus did on the cross.
He was able to do what he did, why? For the joy, not of the experience but the joy that was set before Him. You see, it’s starting out with a hope that’s based on a promise of a God that you have had a personal experience with and faith has been planted in the heart and it’s there and it’s real. Now in the strength of that, we have the ability to go into something that is difficult, but we can see beyond it.
We’re always focused on the fact that this leads somewhere. This is not meaningless. God’s not gone to sleep. He hasn’t thrown me to the wolves. I’m here, and yes, it’s difficult but what is the essence of suffering? It’s anything, anything that challenges human nature. It could be pain, obviously, but every single thing that is a challenge to human nature.
Do you think God’s gonna put you in a place where you’re gonna be tested? Of course He is. He did to His Son. Was there no purpose in His going into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil? Yeah, He was tempted in all points just as we are yet without sin. In order for Him to be able to do the work that he’d been called to do, he had to go through some stuff and he had to be tested.
And that’s exactly it, the path that God is gonna set before us. And when these things happen we don’t need to see them as, Oh, my God, things are bad. They need to get back to being good. There are seasons when God does give us those good times. But the seasons when we’re having challenges, when our nature is crying out against what’s happening, is that good or is that bad? It’s good, isn’t it, if we could see through God’s eyes.
And so now we’ve left the castle, we’re having to go out into the real Christian journey and Paul had come to the point where he saw past all of this and could actually say, I glory in this because I know that God is doing this, not because he’s upset with me. He’s doing this because He loves me enough to deliver me from the power of this thing that has more of a hold on me than I realize.
He’s having to strike a lick here and a lick there and a stroke here and a stroke there to begin to touch these things that I need to be set free from. And the only way it’s gonna happen is he’s gonna have to let stuff happen that brings me into that contest between, am I going to trust God and serve Him, or am I gonna just give into this? And this?
What is that called for then? Do we just throw our hands up? You know, that’s what some did when Jesus talked about the parable of the soil, different types of soil. There was one type that was very quick to receive the message. Oh, the idea of forgiveness of sins and the hope of heaven. That’s awesome. But what happened? There was a hardness down in the heart that had never been broken up. No roots went down when the seed was planted in that soil. And so, when persecution and hardship and difficulty came along, Didn’t sign up for this.
Folks, if you signed up for the kingdom of God you signed up for the whole deal. It means laying down our lives, whatever form that takes, in order to possess a life that we could never lose. Thank God, thank God! So, Paul wanted to transmit to His readers here in Rome how he saw the things that he’d been through.
Now we’re talking about “from test to testimony.” Do you think Paul’s words carry just a little bit of weight? Yeah, just a little bit, just a bit. Why? He’d been there. God used Him as a demonstration of what it means to serve the Lord. Not only that, but somebody who could come through that and be better because of it and be able to stand there and say, God is faithful.
I was in this bad place, in this bad place, and He was with me all the way. I have come through stronger. He has made me better and stronger to serve Him. And I’m telling you, not just something I read in the book somewhere. I’m telling you something, I’ve been there. I’ve experienced this.
That’s what God is seeking from every one of us. He wants to bring us to a deeper experience. So, when we tell somebody something we’re not just saying, “Oh, the Bible says…”. We’re saying, “Let me tell you what God’s done for me. Let me tell you what it’s like to serve Him. He’s awesome.”
Okay, so we glory in our sufferings. Now, there’s a reason we do that because we know that suffering produces perseverance. See, the thing is, if we don’t give in, if we’re trusting God and looking to Him actively for the strength of, see, we’re in a place of grace, remember. The help is there, if we’re willing, the help is there. And so, He calls upon us in the face of this to look for divine strength. Not to try to find it in ourselves but to learn how to look to Him.
And what happens? There’s a quality called perseverance that gets stronger, just like muscles. I mean, if you want to be a world-class weightlifter you don’t spend your time in the, you know, in the fast food place. You don’t spend your time at the beach just lounging around. If your muscles are going to be worth anything they’re going to have to encounter some serious persistent resistance.
Well, the Lord knows what it takes for us to have spiritual muscles and He knows exactly how to design things. But you remember what He said, He won’t put on us more than we can bear, is how we put it in our language, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape so that we may be able to bear it, not escape it necessarily, but to bear it. That means I have divine strength.
I’ve got a problem. He may have sent the devil, allowed Him to do something, but who allowed him? You think the devil has freedom to come and do as he pleases. We serve a God who’s in charge. If He has sent a devil to me to harass me and to give me a problem, I have every right to look to God and say, Lord, you have given me this, but you are also with me. And I am trusting you for the strength to stand fast and to believe you and to praise you in the midst of this storm, whatever it is, I’m gonna stand.
And boy, there’s some spiritual muscles that are beginning to get stronger. There’s some experience that we’re beginning to acquire as everything, I mean, it’s worth everything, okay? Suffering produces perseverance.
Well, now perseverance produces something as well, doesn’t it? It produces what He calls character. I think another translation says experience. How many of you need some experience in the Lord? How many are well ready to sign up for the process that gets you that experience? See, we’d like to avoid all of that and think something’s wrong when difficult things happen, when adversity happens.
But here’s God sending us the one thing that can enable us to grow up in Him. If some form of adversity but in everything He means for us to turn to Him, to stand fast and look to Him. And in doing that there’s some character that’s being formed.
There’s people are gonna look at us and say, Yeah, I know what they’re like. I’ve watched them be in a difficult place, but they didn’t cave, they didn’t give up. This is somebody you can, kind of, you can count on them. They’ve got some, they’ve shown me what it’s like to be in a place of action.
How many of you’d like to, you know, we got some people who have been in the military and I never had that privilege. I thank, I respect everyone who has been. But how many of you think we could successfully fight a war by recruiting a bunch of young men and taking ‘em into a classroom and then handing them all the stuff they need to go out and say, All right, go fight?
You know, I think I’ve the testimony of some that recently went in, they used the word, Hell, as to their immediate experience of what military life was like and the training that went into it. Do you think there’s a reason for that? Do you think we are equipped in the spiritual life without going through bootcamp, spiritual bootcamp, without having to face any real enemies? And I’m the victor. I’m the victor.
Have you ever faced anybody? Well, no, but I’m a victor! God is gonna put you and me in exactly what we need in order to become the people that He wants us to be. Thank God for His love and His wisdom and His mercy because we would not go that way.
And, as I say, we are so prone to just imagining that, Oh, this is what spiritual life and spiritual victory is about, it’s wonderful feelings. It’s joy, it’s freedom, it’s all these glorious things. And sometimes we’re singing through tears and we’re standing and we’re looking to God and we’re waiting.
Sometimes we can be in the place where David was when he said, How long, oh, Lord? And yet there was an expression of faith even in the midst of praying, Oh, God, where are you? How long is this gonna go on? But the Lord knew, didn’t he? Praise God! But God is trying to produce some characters.
Now I know some of you are characters, but in this case He’s talking about something different, isn’t He? He’s talking about the kind of a person you and I are. How do we become that? How does He take somebody who’s just come to the Lord and come to faith and they’re baby Christians? How does He produce somebody in them that you could characterize as faithful? They’re somebody that’s been there and fought real battles and they know what it takes and they know how to encourage other people.
How does God produce that? How does He get you and me to a place where we could talk to somebody else and say, I don’t just know the theory of the gospel. I serve a God who has worked in me and made himself known to me and He has brought me through all kinds of things. And I want to tell you what God’s like. I want to give you not just a theory but a testimony.
But you don’t get to testimony without the test, okay? Character, hope and hope does not put us to shame. You know, I was thinking about this as I read this. It starts out with hope and then it gets to hope again. What’s that all about? I thought we already had hope. Do you suppose hope needs to be made stronger? Do you suppose it needs to be confirmed by real-life experience that’s what’s going on?
I’ll tell you, you come through something and you’re able to look back and you say, God allowed something that was difficult but I stood fast and I trusted in Him and He was faithful and He brought me through. What does that do to hope? All it does is confirm the hope that God planted in there in the first place. And it gets stronger and it gets stronger and you see what we have to give to somebody else. It’s not religion and theory, it’s real-life experience. May God raise up a generation of people who know Him.
[Congregation] Yes.Who have a foundation planted in their hearts and their lives. God is not looking for apologists, but that means people who just defend the faith intellectually. He’s looking for people who know from real-life experience, don’t have to be super-intelligent, don’t have to be important in the eyes of the world but you know God personally and you’ve been through something and you can tell them, I’ve been there. I’ve been where you’re at and God was faithful. That’s worth immeasurably more than theory.
But God is raising up a people in this hour they’re gonna shine like lights. But this is the road that it takes. This was the road that it took Christian to get from that castle, beautiful, whatever it was, all the way to the celestial city. He went through a lot of battles. He went through some nice places. He went through the Valley of the Shadow of Death too, didn’t he?
And it was hell. I mean, there were demons screaming at him. It was a dark and dangerous place, narrow path. But he stayed the course and he came out the other side and the sun was shining. I thank God He knows when to let the sun shine and when to let the storm hit. But he’s always with us, always holding our hand and making us stronger.
And hope does not put us to shame. Again, we got a God who cannot lie, He’s promised because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit has been given to us. Praise God!
I mean, you could go on in this whole passage and see, as Paul unfolds the mysteries of the Gospel, it’s amazing and clear, I thank God, but I thought about the examples and one of them certainly is David, examples we’ve used many times. But what was it that enabled David to write the Psalms? Did he go to Bible college? I mean, I’m not against that if that’s what, you know, the Lord can get in it and get beyond just reading books and having theory.
David went through hell, he went through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but he also knew that the Lord brought him out on the other side and he could, it wasn’t like, I know God’s gonna be with me. I know this is gonna be terrible but I know he’s gonna be with me. He could look back and say, Yeah, that was rough but God was with me and here I am on the other side of that thing.
That’s what makes the Psalms so powerful. They are the voice of experience and God wants to give us just what we need to fill our place in the kingdom where we can look somebody in the eye and say, This is not theory, folks, let me tell you, Mike, let me tell you what the Lord’s done for me. Let me tell you what He’s meant in my life. Let me tell you about the places I’ve been and the things I’ve experienced and what He did for me. It’s real, you can trust Him.
Just a few verses of Psalm 40. for example. “I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire.” Now for him to be lifted out, he had to be in. God allowed him to be in a place that he described as a slimy pit, mud and mire. But what was the end result of that? His feet were on a rock.
How did that happen? “He set my feet on a rock and gave me” — I didn’t earn this — “He gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him. Blessed is the one who trusts the Lord.”
Can you sense the testimony of somebody who’s been in that dark place and seen God at work? Praise God, praise God! That’s what God is trying to produce in us. He is producing it, let’s put it that way. But do you see how this follows the Lord giving us some secrets about the Christian life and now all of a sudden, okay, now what? How do we get there?
How do we come to a place where we know this is true? Because, because, we’ve experienced it, you’ve got to go through something that’s gonna be adverse because everything about your nature and mine, the one we got from Adam, is gonna fight this and it’s gonna fight it in ways that are gonna surprise you. You’re gonna come to places in your life where you say, I didn’t know that was there. I didn’t know I felt I was like this, but God is so merciful and faithful. He knew it all along.
He has loved you all along even though He knew all of that stuff. My God, what a God we serve! And what an amazing thing it is that, what’s His motivation in all of this? It’s love, isn’t it? I’ll tell you, I could surrender and serve One Who loves me like this.
Well, one of the other scriptures I was gonna read a little bit of was, guess what, Psalm 34, surprise, surprise, just a little bit of this. “I will extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice.” Now is that a testimony? There’s an ability to exhort somebody else. Where does that come from?
“Glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt His name together.” But here’s where it comes from. “I sought the Lord and He answered me. He delivered me from all my fears.” See, he had some real fears.
“Those who look to Him are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him. He saved him out of all his troubles.” Do you see where test turns into testimony? We stand fast, we look to the Lord in those times and faith grows strong, and suddenly we can look somebody in the eye and say, I know this God, this is real. You can put your trust in Him. I’ve been there.
“The angel of the Lord encamps round those who fear Him and He delivers them, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him. Fear the Lord you His holy people. For those who fear Him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”
That’s where that line of that song comes. He gives you everything. He’s not talking about earthly pleasures and riches. He’s talking about what Peter was talking about. Everything we need for life and godliness is there for us to earn if we’ll only try hard enough? No, He gives it to us. What He wants is for us to come into possession of that.
How do we do that? We’re gonna have to come into it in the field of battle. Fight the good fight of the fight, lay hold of eternal life. There are things that we have the privilege of making our own, making them personal. And it simply means walking with God, surrendering to the things that He brings our way and giving Him praise and standing firm in them and knowing that God’s going to impart something to us we didn’t have when we went into that.
And we’re gonna come out the other side and say. I know this God, you can trust Him. He is my God and I’m gonna stand fast. And my hope, I had hope before I started this, but it’s gotten stronger. The habit, the character, the way I look at life, the way I look at myself, it’s gotten more firm than it was just simply knowing about this. Though I knew about it, I heard sermons about how the Christian life works but now I’ve been through stuff that was very personal.
A lot of people didn’t even know what was going on. But I knew about it. God was touching things in my heart and bringing a deliverance to me that I couldn’t have any other way. And now here I am on the other side of that, yes, I fought Him. Yes, there were things in me that resisted, that struggled but He gave me the victory because of He’s given me everything that I need for life and godliness.
And I, like the Israelites, I’ve come into possession of this city and that city because the battle was His and He’d already given me the land. He just needed me to have the faith to stand, to move forward and know that He was gonna fight this battle with me ‘cause it wasn’t my battle, it was His.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got an awesome God, don’t we? So, do you see where the Lord is taking every one of us from test to testimony? And God is going to have a people, like I say, in this hour, who have a real living testimony, who know God in a personal way, have been through things and know that He’s faithful. What else is gonna be able to help somebody who’s in need? We’re gonna convert him to our religion. We need Jesus to come. We need God to reveal something to the heart.
But I’ll tell you, God’s gonna use people in the process who can speak a word of real testimony that comes out of real experience with God. God is faithful. He has given us everything but He wants us to come into possession of more than we have, and He’s doing it. To Him be the glory, praise God!
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August 6, 2023 - No. 1609
“From Test to Testimony” Part One
Broadcast #1609
August 6, 2023
August 6, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1609 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise God! It seems like the more we go the more we discover, number one, our weakness, number two, His supply. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We shouldn’t be dismayed by that. We need to be just thankful and looking to Him and knowing that He’s on the throne.
My mind keeps coming back to a passage that we’ve talked about many times and used many times, and that’s in Romans 5. And it seems like there are truths that we need to hear a lot. I don’t know that I’ll say anything particularly new today, but I feel like it’s something we need.
And even the songs that were sung and were requested, kind of reflects, I think, where a lot of us are at. And the Lord wants to encourage His people, and just help us to walk in trust and faith.
Paul begins this passage basically, with a summary of what he’s talked to up to this point, in which he has unfolded the facts of the gospel. He defined everybody’s need as being the same, without regard to whether they were Jews trying to follow the law or Gentiles that hadn’t heard. We all have the same need.
And if you go on in this chapter, you discover why. We were born into a family of sinners. That’s why we sin. We’re not sinners in God’s eyes because we commit sins. We commit sins because we’re sinners. So, God’s got a major job to rescue us from that condition.
But the starting point for that is that we have a record of sins that separate us from a holy God. We can’t have a relationship with Him and have all that guilt hanging around us. And you know, I keep having something come back to my mind, I guess, different aspects of it, and that is Pilgrim’s Progress. Many of you are familiar with the work by John Bunyan, which, while he was in prison for his faith, in England. He was in prison there, and God gave him this amazing picture of the gospel and of the Christian life.
And it begins with a man whose name is Christian, but he lives in a bad place, the City of Destruction. But he has this huge bundle on his back, a tremendous burden he’s carrying around, and he’s the only one that seems to be aware of it. Everybody else is just living their life, and he has the knowledge of this burden.
Where do you think that came from? You know, nobody comes to the Lord, until they know they have a need. And how do they know that? God has to intervene in the matters of the heart, till we realize, we’ve got a need. And not only that, it’s a need we don’t know what to do with. I mean, you see him getting sidetracked in despair. He’s sidetracked in legalism, where somebody says you keep the law, and all it does is make it worse and leads into a bad place. But ultimately, he came to a place where he entered through a gate, didn’t he?
And he went along, and the Lord began to teach him some things. But anyway, you know, we have to have a divine encounter. There has to be something more than hand-me-down religion folks. That’s my prayer, and I trust it’s the prayer of many, for our younger generations, our following generations. You have, if all you have is our way of doing church, you have nothing. You need an encounter with the Author of life Himself that’s personal, that goes right down to the depths of your being. You can conform all you want, but if it doesn’t touch this, you’re no better than the Pharisees were in Jesus’ day.
But this is what he’s laying out. And he says, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith….” Now, justified means to be, it has to do with a legal standing. How in a world can a hopeless, helpless sinner come to a place of being righteous in the eyes of a perfectly pure and holy God? That’s the miracle. That’s the miracle of the gospel, folks, anything short of that and you have nothing.
There’s so much that purports to be the gospel in our world today, that’s little more than just a form, an easy believism, where you just say the say the magic words, and suddenly everything’s okay. Folks, there has got to be a life altering encounter with the living God that convicts us in our hearts.
But then it doesn’t stop with conviction. Thank God, it then lifts our vision to God’s answer, for an answer we could never engineer, we could never come up with. Praise God! That’s what Paul’s been lifting up.
Like I said, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, the need is exactly the same. And God made a promise to Abraham that he was a righteous man, when he had done nothing except believe God. Folks, it comes down to that simplicity of a heart faith, that’s a belief in God, where our confidence, our life trust, the thing that we hope in, the thing that gives us meaning in our lives, it defines who we are and where we’re going. It’s a conviction in the heart.
And as we said many times, you can’t come up with this, you weren’t born with it. You can’t work it up. It’s a matter of simply opening our hearts when He speaks. Oh, how plain the Scripture is that when He speaks, we need to listen. Oh, we need to listen, because God is absolutely, I mean, who are we to sit there and say, God, I don’t care about You. I don’t wanna listen, I want my own way. That’s the condition the world is in. So much of it just refuse to hear His voice.
But I thank God that I’m in a company of people, I believe so many of you have heard His voice, and you’ve answered the call and said, “yes,” thank God. You know, it says, We’re justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So, we who were, as he later describes in this passage, enemies of God, have suddenly come into a state of peace, and relationship. We have literally changed sides. It’s as radical as it gets.
I know I’m repeating many things, but I believe there’s a need, there’s a reason. I don’t know where all this will go. Folks, there has got to be a radical change from being a part of the kingdom of this world and living our own lives, and surrendering and handing over our lives to Jesus Christ.
Praise God! You know, my mind went back to that song, The Mercy Tree. How many of you remember the testimony of the young lady who was just living a life? I don’t remember all the details, but she was at a point where she was ready to take her life. Her life had had so little meaning. It was just so empty. And somehow the Lord engineered her hearing the gospel, and the message penetrated the depths of her heart. She heard, not just the voice of the preacher, but she heard the voice of the Savior.
Oh my, have you ever heard His voice? That’s the most important thing that could possibly happen to a human being, is to hear the voice of the Son of God. Isn’t that what Jesus said? The hour has come, now is, those who hear the voice of the Son of God will live. They that hear will live.
And again, I’m probably confusing this with different testimonies I’ve heard, but basically, the word that came to her, was she was ready to go home and take her life. She’d already made the plans. And the Lord said, If you’re gonna throw it away, how about giving it to Me? And she did. And you see the results, someone who’s just filled with the joy and the reality of the mercy tree that has opened a way into the holiest place. Thank God! Thank God!
I pray that everyone here has had that encounter with Jesus Christ. The very thing that transformed Paul’s life, from Saul the Jew, was not somebody explaining the gospel to him. It was so much deeper than that. He had a divine encounter with the God of this book. I mean, this book is wonderful, but it’s not those who read the book, it’s those who hear the voice of the Son of God.
And there was that personal encounter that passed every bit of his defenses and went to his heart. And his own testimony was that the same God who spoke and light happened, He created light, He created the worlds. That same God spoke in my heart to give the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The words are not exactly right, but you can look it up in 2 Corinthians 4.
What an awesome testimony, the essence of coming to faith in Him. Praise God! That’s the foundation of everything, isn’t it? ‘Cause there’s no living the Christian life, if you’re not a Christian. You haven’t really become, you haven’t entered into what He’s talking about here.
Anyway, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the only way. Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. So basically, here we were, lost sinners with no strength, no ability to erase our guilt, no ability to live for God even if we could have erased our guilt. There we are in that helpless state. And now we’ve come into a place that is described as grace.
And it’s almost like you could picture a wall or a room or a door. I know, when Bunyan wrote his tale, Christian entered into a gate and he came to a place where he needed to learn some things. You remember the house of the interpreter? And he was shown some spiritual truths that were pictured for him.
And one of those truths showed a castle. And it was obvious the castle was a desirable place to be, because there were enemies everywhere. But in there, there was a sense of somebody was in charge, there was victory. But in between where they were standing and the castle, there were a whole lot of dark figures with swords.
Anybody have an easy time coming to the Lord, or you run into some opposition? Yeah, I’ll tell you, the folks who enter the kingdom of God, you’re going to enter it through much tribulation. There’s going to be some opposition to you coming to the Lord, because your nature’s gonna cry out and demons will stand in your way, and they’ll pull on everything that they can think of to keep you.
And in the particular illustration that Christian was shown, he saw a man who went and signed it, signed up. He said, I want to go in there. And he picked up his sword and he began to fight. And it was a fight. He slashed this one and slashed that one, and he forced his way on through it. He went, and there he was, he went through the door.
You know, salvation may not be as dramatic as it was in the case of Paul, but there is a point in time when we pass from death to life. I’m trusting everybody here has passed from death to life. But if you haven’t, do you want to? Do you want to know Him? He longs to know you. But I’ll tell you there, every hungry heart, everyone that’ll cry out to Him, He will hear and answer your prayer.
If you’re wanting, we’ve said this in different ways many times now, if you’re wanting God to lay His cards on the table and say, this is what it means, and you know, do you go along with My plan? That’s not the picture. This is absolute surrender to the God who made you and the Savior who bought you with the price of His blood. Is that worth something? That’s worth everything, everything. Praise God!
So anyway, and I was picturing this place, into this grace. So here, you’ve got a place where this principle called grace reigns, if you will. I’m not here trying to make something happen in my own strength, but there is divine help. That’s one simple way to describe what grace is. It’s God at work injecting His life and His energy and His influence, all of those things together upon me, where I’ve stepped into something, where even though I don’t have what it takes.
Anybody here does? I don’t. Here we come into a place where we do not have what it takes, but all that we need is supplied. Praise God! Praise God! You think of what Peter wrote at the beginning of 2 Peter. I can’t remember the exact words. I’m gonna try to give you the essence of it. But he spoke of those exceeding great and precious promises, that by them we have access. I better look it up, ‘cause I’m not.
Oh, basically, the thought that He gives us, everything is provided, everything we need for life and godliness, that was the part that I was trying to get to. Do you know that though we have nothing to offer Him but ourselves, He has given us, how much? Everything we need for life and godliness has been given to us. Those are the promises that God longs for us to enter into.
That’s part of this place that we go through. We pass through a door, and now we’re in this place called grace. You know that little grammar lesson, we’ve had one before, but this, we’ve gained access into this grace. That’s that perfect tense in Greek. And the Greek perfect tense is really like the same in English, but essentially, it combines something that has happened in the past, there’s an event that’s happened in the past, but we’re still enjoying the fruit of that.
Now, basically, I could say, I see that you have come to church today. I see that you have come in through the door. Well, what am I saying? I’m saying, sometime prior to right now, you walked through that front door. But I’m not simply talking about a historical event. I’m talking about the fact that as a result of that you’re still here. So, it combines all of those things.
I’ll tell you, when we’ve come through that door, we are in a place where we have everything we need in Jesus Christ, and God wants us to know that, wants me to know that. But He wants all of us to know that and to be reminded of it every single day. Praise God! Praise God!
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access. So that means we’re still here, by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Ooh, that’s a good word, isn’t it? Praise God! We’re able not just to, okay, I’m here, I’m worthless, but I’m here. No, we can stand. Just like Paul said it when he’s talked about the weapons of our warfare and all of that, having done all, having used what God has given to us, we stand. Praise God!
All right. So, now what? And we boast. Now, this is not a boasting, prideful kind of thing, but this is a confidence. This is something where I can stand, and I can say with absolute certainty something. Devil, I don’t care what you say, this is true and I’m standing on it. This is my boast, this is my confession, if you will. It’s another good word for it. Okay?
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. And hope as we’ve said so many times, is not this wishful thinking kind of thing. This is an expectation that has to do with something, we haven’t got it yet, it’s in the future. But what is it that makes that future certain? It’s yes, it’s a certainty of God’s promise.
You read Hebrews 6 and you talk about, you see the anchor that holds the soul. What is it? Because God who cannot lie has promised. There’s something that hasn’t happened yet, but we know that it’s coming. So, we’re stepped into a place, and we’ve come into a place that we don’t deserve. We stand before a holy God as if we had never sinned.
It’s not just, oh, I mean, it’s not just this theoretical thing. This is a losing of that burden, because that was the picture. After Christian, you know, left the house of the interpreter and went a little ways further, he came to a little hill, didn’t he? What was on that hill? It was a cross, wasn’t it? And as he knelt there and he looked up at that cross, what happened to his burden? It fell off his shoulders and rolled off into a swamp. And he went along, and he wasn’t carrying the burden anymore.
I’ll tell you, that’s a pretty good picture of somebody who has genuinely transferred all of their faith into Jesus Christ and believed in what He did, that He bore our sins in His body on that tree. He didn’t go there for His own, He went because of mine. And I put all of my confidence in what God has promised that He’s done for me.
And I’ll tell you, that’s the glorious thing. Not just the, some sort of theoretical knowledge of the legalities of it, but the actual burden of my sin is gone. The sense of all that has separated me and kept me in a state of feeling like I’m worthless. It’s gone, I’m a child of the King. Praise God! Praise the Lord for the gospel and the hope of the gospel. That’s what Paul is lifting up here. That’s what makes him able to stand there, and I’m boasting, not because I’m anything, but because of God’s promise, the hope that He has set before me. Praise God!
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. All that lies beyond is just described as glory, which is a brightness beyond anything we can imagine. That’s just one way to describe what’s coming. Okay? But how many of you think that, how many of you know what the road is that takes to get there? Okay, that’s where Paul is going to begin to lead, go forward into the road that has been set before us.
Well, we sang a lot of songs about that this morning, one way or another. Praise God, the Lord’s trying to get my attention and say, Yeah, this is really what I want you to talk about, so. He knows my own weaknesses, but I thank, I praise God for His faithfulness. But here’s the thing, you know, we’ve just given a couple of examples.
You know, a couple weeks ago we talked about the truth of the fact that God is light and we’re called to walk in that light. And one of the results of that is it’s going to show up things in us. Some things that we were not really willing to call sin, but we need to come to a place where there’s an honesty. And if it doesn’t stand up to the light and it’s not like Him, it’s sin.
But then, He doesn’t leave us there, does He? He calls upon us to come and agree with God about it, hand it over, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses. It’s not just for mercy and forgiveness, it’s for cleansing, so that we can go along with Him, continue to walk in the light with a holy God and have no sense of guilt or worthlessness, because He has given us everything that we need. He’s cleansed us from that.
And how much the Lord wants us to come to that place where we’re not offering Him the cup of our lives and it’s dirty, they’re dirty. But rather, there’s that, you know, there’s a cleanness that He has cleansed and we’re offering Him something that’s clean and honest before Him. Well, that was one truth.
And then, last week we talked about God’s work in us and what He wants us to produce in us. But then the fact that, in order to make us like His Son who didn’t live for Himself, but sacrificially gave Himself or others, He’d got a lot of work on His hands. And that work isn’t just to make it possible for us to do it, it’s to work on our will, so we’re willing. Because everything that comes from Adam in our lives, resists this process. And so, He’s got to first work on our wills until they are broken down and become willing.
But then we become willing, now you get the other issue. Am I able? And, of course, then He supplies that, doesn’t He? Thank God! But you know, where I kind of got into this, is this. One of the things obviously, that we need in the Christian life is knowledge, isn’t it? And so, I believe many times the Lord is just giving us knowledge.
Isn’t that what Paul prayed? Over and over again, I pray that God will help you to grow in knowledge and wisdom and understanding. I mean, if we’re just ignorant of what God wants and how it happens and what the Christian life is about, obviously, that’s not gonna work very well. But just knowing about it is not enough. God wants a people who have this by experience, I believe.
Well, He puts it this way, when God’s worked in us and we’ve walked out our salvation, what happens? We become lights. We shine like the stars in the darkness. Now, do you suppose that is a light of somebody who’s learned? All of the proof texts can explain how it all works. You see, see the problem. We’ve gotta get from that knowledge to something that is, you know, that has some power, has some light to it. And let’s see if I can come up with what I thought about calling this, from test to testimony. God wants a people who have a testimony about all of these things.
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July 30, 2023 - No. 1608
All Music
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July 23, 2023 - No. 1607
“Valley of Decision” Conclusion
Broadcast #1607
July 23, 2023
July 23, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1607 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: There are choices being made today that have eternal ramifications. How many know what happens when people persist in pushing the Lord aside, rationalizing their way around this thing that really has…really is the idol that my heart worships? That’s really the thing that’s most important to me that I just won’t give up. I can’t lay that down. You cling to that long enough, when the Lord comes calling, what happens? What happens? There comes a day when the Lord takes His hands off!
How many of you think that you can come to the Lord when He stops helping you? We’re saved by grace. Grace is the divine help that I need to believe and repent. That’s central to it, because I can’t do that. I don’t even have the motivation, the strength. I don’t have anything that it takes to do that. I need God’s influence upon my heart and His strength to do it!
Now, He doesn’t force me to do it. But He makes it possible for me to respond. And if I don’t respond, and I resist that, as Hebrews says, and do, “…despite unto the Spirit of grace” (KJV), despise it, resist it, there comes a day when the Lord says, you’ve made your choice.
The world is in that place. Not only is it in that place, how many of you know that the majority of the world has made its choice? The Devil is…his objective, in this hour, is to unite the world against God. That’s something he has not been able to do, because God absolutely put a limit on him. Through the cross there was a victory that was won. He has not been able to unite the nations of the world and absolutely drive the influence of God out of this world. He’s not been able to do it.
But there comes a period, at the end, where the Lord says, all right. I’ve spoken with the world, I’ve sent out the Gospel, I’ve reached out to the hearts of people. Now…now you’re all gonna come into a valley and make your choice. And I’m gonna let the devil loose to do what he…to follow his dream, and, of course, we know how that turns out. Just when it looks like he has won the ultimate victory, the Lord comes on the scene. Fire reigns down. There is no victory that this devil can win.
But I’ll tell you, we need…I just pray for, I pray for everybody that hears this. Think about some of the examples that we have in scripture. I looked up three references this morning. I’m not gonna look them up. I can just tell you, but Paul had an associate whose name was Demas. How many of you remember Demas? Two different letters, Paul is giving his greetings from people who are with him. Luke was one of them in both cases, and Demas was one of his fellow workers, fellow worker of the apostle Paul.
But there was something down in Demas’ heart that was the true idol, if you will, the true god over what he wanted to do. And so there came a time when Paul had to sadly say, Demas has forsaken me. Why did he do that? He, “…loved this present world.” There was a long time he was an associate of Paul, went through so many things with him, labored with him on the outside, but inside, there was a heart that had never surrendered!
Praise God! I’m want to…I’m hoping that this will get across in two ways, that this will get across the seriousness and the absoluteness of the Gospel on the one hand, but it will also not discourage or make fearful a saint who has a tender conscience and looks at their own weakness and says, oh God, I must be one of those that’s lost!
God wants you to know that He has everything you need. Jesus Christ has given us, is all that we need! Thank God! We’re none of us saved based on our own ability, our own strength. It’s all Him! But it has to be given to Him, doesn’t it? You can’t have something that you hold on to in your heart.
Think of Judas. Up until the Last Supper, the disciples had no idea, the rest of them. They were all sent out to cast out devils, to heal the sick, to preach the coming Kingdom, and there was Judas right among them. But there was one problem. He loved money. Very similar to the rich young ruler, isn’t it? He was there when the rich young ruler was…you know, did what he did.
I’ll tell you, you can get your conscience so seared in a certain area, if you’re not careful. If we ever stop listening to God’s voice in certain areas of our lives, we get to where we can’t hear it anymore. But that man loved money to the point where he was willing, ultimately, to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. My God, what a…I mean, he realized what he’d done. He killed himself, but you think about the seriousness of this.
You contrast that with a woman who was from Moab, one of the enemies of Israel, heathen worshipers, and you remember the story of how Naomi, and her husband, and their sons went over to Moab during, I guess it was a famine of some kind, some kind of problem. And, the men married Moabite women. And the famine ended, and all three of the men died! So Naomi goes back…gets ready to go back to her native country, and the girls love her, want to go with her.
And so she says, please go back, you have no hope coming with me. I don’t have a husband. If I had one, and I had sons, would you wait for them to grow? Go on back. Orpah went back, didn’t she? And it wasn’t that she didn’t love her, but there was something, in the natural level, that absolutely was more important to her than anything.
But what happened with Ruth? Entreat me not to leave you, nor to follow after you. “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.” (NIV). Does that sound like 100 percent identification? Is that what the Lord’s looking for from every single one of us, folks?
This is the valley of decision. There are only two exits out of this valley. One of them is the path of self will where we’re gonna cling to something that comes from our own nature, regardless of what it is. It could be just the desires of the flesh. It could be a religious desire to look good and win people’s approval.
It could be like the Pharisees. Did they think they were in good shape with God? Oh, they were confident in their own righteousness, but they had so closed their minds, their hearts, to what God was saying, His Son stood there in their midst, and they were absolutely blind, and Jesus wept knowing what was coming.
I wonder how Jesus feels right now, when He looks down at our country. Do you not know that judgment hangs over this nation, not just this nation, but the world?
( congregational response ).
To whom much is given, much is required. That’s exactly right. You know, some of the examples in scripture…one of them is one that should be close to our hearts, because it comes from the parable of the midnight cry. You had a situation where it was midnight. It was dark. You had a group of people. Every one of them was a professing follower, a believer in Jesus, because they were all gathered together waiting for the coming of the bridegroom. This was not people off doing their earthly thing. These were people who looked like followers of Jesus, followers of God, and there they were waiting.
And when the time came, half of them found out they did not have what they needed. They had made a profession. They had gone along outwardly, but the heart had never been surrendered! That’s what it comes down to. God had never come to live on the inside, and to take over the throne of the heart.
That’s what we see, and we’ve seen over the years. We’ve seen young people grow up, and all of a sudden, there’s a pull in this direction, there’s a pull in that direction. And sometimes you’ll see them…they’ll go there, and they say well, I can do that again. You’ve got your ideas. I’ve got mine. It’s been so many different ways, but I believe there’s a heart.
The same Jesus we were talking about this morning, His heart deeply longs for everyone who hears these words, to take seriously the valley of decision, because God has a day on His calendar, and it’s not gonna last forever.
And the people who make the wrong choice to follow their own earthly, natural desires, whatever the form…it could be one of these sexual perversions. It could just be self-will. It could be a particular mate, a particular career, a particular thing you want to do, possessions, pride. You name it.
Anything that comes out of human nature that takes the place, that is the central dominating principle of your life where Jesus would say, you lay that down and come and take up your cross and follow Me, and you go away sadly.
But what happens is so many people, as I say, rationalize that desire and feel like, it’s okay, Lord. I can still…I believe in You. I’ll serve You. If I make all that money, think of all the good I can do. Or…I can win this person to the Lord that I’m so interested in. I mean, it just runs the gamut, doesn’t it?
You think back about people that have been here. Do we need to reckon on this day or not? Do you think the Lord has a burden about this? “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.” I have no idea what the dates are.
You saw this process play out in the life of Jesus. As I said, He foretold what was going to happen, because they didn’t know the hour of their visitation. They didn’t recognize it. And yet, God waited for decades, and there were thousands among the Jews who did respond. Praise God! They were the true children of Abraham.
They responded to the Gospel right in midst, right under the noses of all these religious leaders, and how did they respond? They persecuted, they killed! They did everything in the world to stamp it out! And there was an absolute divide among the people where people either chose to follow Christ 100 percent, or they absolutely chose to oppose Him 100 percent.
And there came a day when the Lord removed His people from Jerusalem. In this case, He warned them, and they left Jerusalem and they were in a safe place, and the Roman armies came around them, and judgment fell. You know, Paul told about the condition of the people. He said, wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.
It’s awfully easy to get kind of caught up in listening to the world, and almost being in tune with it, almost sympathizing with it. I don’t want a hateful spirit. I don’t want an angry spirit, but I want a truthful spirit, that’s able to tell people the truth in love, and say, Jesus Christ is Lord.
The only reason you were created in the first place was to love and to serve Him and to be part of a Kingdom. Every part of your natural being has been corrupted by a principle called sin. There is only one remedy, and that is that Jesus bore the guilt of your sins that you have committed when He went to that cross, and when He went down into that tomb, He took you with Him if you are really a part of Him, if you really identify with Him, you are laying your life down as surely as He did.
And only on that ground is a holy God able to come and take up residence in us and begin to live His life in us. Or as we sang this morning, it’s Christ in us, isn’t it? That’s the only hope I have this morning. The further I go, the more I realize that I am utterly, utterly unable to live for Him. I have nothing in me to which I can look and say, there’s the strength that I need. There’s the resolve. There is this, there is that. There’s no goodness, there’s no nothing in here but Jesus that I can look to. Is He not enough?
( congregational response ).
Oh, thank God! But this is an hour when people are making choices. And I just want to say, all I can do is put this out there. If there’s something disturbing you this morning, you need to pray. You need to call on God from the depths of your soul and ask Him to give you an honest heart, because if you are in love, or you are married, as it were, to whatever it is your natural being desires to the point where you’re gonna find a way to rationalize that, you’re gonna wind up married to that, and totally unready, totally shocked when Jesus Christ returns, and the fire begins to fall. That’s what’s coming, folks. That is how serious this is.
You know, Paul, when he talks about a living sacrifice, he says, “…be not conformed to this world: but be…transformed…” (KJV). That’s what God has called us to. And I’ll tell you, if you listen to the voices of the world, you listen to these…particularly, these companies that are behind the message that is being trumpeted in our land today, you listen to that, you listen to your friends and the logic that they have to justify what it is that they want to do, if you listen that and let it affect you, is that a good thing?
You see the warning? You see where that leads, where God has literally…this is a time on God’s calendar when men have been called into this place where they’re being told to…all right, make your choice. This is it. You’re either going to bow down to My Son and worship Me and let Me have your life and let me make you fit for My Kingdom, or you’re gonna cling to your nature, and you’re gonna perish with this world. That’s what…that’s the choice that’s being made.
And I’ll tell you, the people who, in one sense, need this the most, they’re not gonna be able to hear it. So many ears are already shut. They can’t hear, just as they didn’t…if they couldn’t hear the Son of God when He spoke on earth, how are they gonna hear Him now? But there are people who can hear this, and I pray for everyone that has ears to hear in any sense. Listen. Call upon the Lord when He is near. When is the day of salvation?
( congregational response ).
Today is the day of salvation. “…Now is the accepted time.” I’ll tell you, when He speaks, and you find a way to deflect that or say, not now, or, I’ll bargain with You, Lord. If I can do this, then, I’ll serve You. Basically, that’s no.
Do you know, do you absolutely know that if you do that, if the Lord will ever come back? That’s a sober thing. I thank God He’s merciful. I thank God He knows, and one thing I see that God is going to reach out, and He’s going to save the last one that will surrender. He hasn’t forgotten anybody. His mercy reaches out and reaches out and reaches out.
He does say, “My spirit shall not always strive with man.” But boy, there’s a striving beyond anything that you and I would do. If we could see, with His eyes, everything that’s going on, man, I think we’d be ready to just pour out fire and brimstone right now. But God is so merciful to reach out.
But there will come a day when it will be everybody, you know, “…he that is holy, let him be holy still.” “He that is righteous, let him be righteous still.” Let him that’s wicked, be wicked still. Every choice has been made. When that happens, there’s nothing left but for God to send His Son to gather His people out of this world. And everyone that’s left behind is going to perish, and then there’s nothing but judgment that follows that.
“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.” (NIV). If you are in a valley of decision today, I pray, and believers, pray…if you’ve come through that and given your heart to Jesus irrevocably, you’ve laid it down, there’s no taking it back, pray for those who are in that valley of decision that God will, absolutely, press home the claims of the Gospel, that there will be an honesty of heart about issues that would stand between any person and surrender!
It doesn’t have to be just riches. It could be anything that flows out of this nature. My God, we need Him. Don’t be one of those like the foolish virgins that gets there, and you think, oh, I’ve been in the Bible Tabernacle all my life. I’m good. If you’ve got no oil, you’ve got no life. Jesus has not taken residence in the heart. He’s not possessed the heart.
There’ll be issues, there’ll be battles, but He will take you through every one that you face. He’ll walk with you through life. He will give you so much more than you think you’re giving up. You won’t even be able to imagine it. It’s worth everything to be born again.
( congregational response ).
But if you’re in that valley of decision today, my prayer and our prayer needs to be, oh God, press those claims until they are met with real faith and surrender. And I’ll tell you, there’ll be something to shout about today.
There are two exits out of that valley. One of them is to destruction. The other one is to life that never ends. Thank God that we have a hope in Jesus, because we don’t have one in ourselves. But oh, it means handing Him over the ownership, the throne, any way you want to put it, of our hearts, and letting Him lead us step by step, and He will.
But I pray for God’s people that they will live with the realization of where we’re at, understand the time of history, what’s going on in the world. There’s no point in just getting angry about everything that’s going on. It’s gonna be worse than this before it’s over.
You might as well just say, Lord Jesus, give us courage. Give us strength. Give us wisdom. Help us to shine. Help people to see Jesus in us, not anger. Help people that have a capacity to see light, to see it in us. And help us to be of one heart and one mind and not allow the devil to come in in any form, and hinder the presence of Christ. We need Him like we’ve never needed Him before. Has He not promised never to leave us or forsake us?
Praise God for the hope that He has given to us! But I can’t just walk away from the sense of this valley of decision. Anybody who hears this, anybody who’s here who is in that, I pray with all that I have that God will just convict your heart to the point where you will come down and just give it to Him, whatever the issue is.
What is it that’s holding you back? What is it that would hold you back? See if there’s something that holds you back from doing this, that’s your god. That’s your god. And some day, if you hang on to that, you’re gonna stand before Jesus Christ, and He will say, do you remember when I talked to you? I offered you life, and you were more interested in that boyfriend, that girlfriend, that whatever it was, and you chose that over Me. Do you want to be in that place? I pray that God will bring the conviction of His Spirit where it’s needed this morning. I praise Him for His goodness. Praise the Lord!
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July 16, 2023 - No. 1606
“Valley of Decision” Part One
Broadcast #1606
July 16, 2023
July 16, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1606 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I’m just gonna launch out in faith today. I’ve had thoughts and in a way they’re not directly related, and yet, everything is related to Christ and who He is and what He’s done, because His name is above every name. Problem is we’ve got a world that doesn’t recognize that.
And, earlier this week, I had a very strong impression to go back and read something that I wrote, oh, it must be 45 years ago, or so, and it has to do with…praise God…has to do with, “The Valley of Decision.” And, actually I felt a freedom to go back and kind of just tweak it a little bit, update it and revise it, and I think we’ll probably publish it, at some point.
But that particular expression comes from the 3rd chapter of Joel. And, there are some tremendous prophecies that some of them, of course, had their application to Israel in its day, but there were a lot of prophecies, a lot of things that he prophesied that had to do with our day.
You remember how Peter, on the day of Pentecost, when he was explaining what was going on, he referred to Joel and how the Lord, in the last days, was going to pour out His Spirit. And you can find that prophecy in chapter 2. And, it actually puts that in a time frame where the day of the Lord is still future to that, but it’s coming. So, there’s an era, as it were, that was launched by the outpouring of God’s Spirit and that was going to end with the expression, the Day of the Lord.
How many of you know, when the Bible uses that expression, what’s it talking about? I mean, what kind of a day is that? It’s a day of judgment. It’s a day of reckoning. And you see them throughout history, in various levels, various scales, where a nation would come to a point where, all right, now it’s time to deal with this nation. It’s become so wicked, it’s beyond hope. And now we’re gonna go…now it’s time for judgment, that’s all that’s left.
In a sense, the day of the Lord, in Noah’s day, was what? The day the flood came, wasn’t it? And, for Sodom and Gomorrah, it was the day that the Lord got Lot out of there, with his two daughters. But there is a…and, of course, in Israel’s day, in the time of Jesus, we see a day of the Lord, there was a day of reckoning for Israel, wasn’t there?
There was an outpouring of God’s Spirit. There was a time frame when God dealt with the nation, and there was a great separation that took place, where God, absolutely, called people into a time of reckoning: either you’re going to bow down to My Son and worship Him and become part of My Kingdom, or you’re gonna perish. That was exactly what was going on. And so, we see the judgment of God that fell upon the nation that Jesus had specifically predicted.
And so…people are looking for all kinds of things to happen. What was it that Peter was looking for, in chapter 3 of the 2nd book of Peter? Anybody awake yet? I’m not sure I am either. But, Peter was looking for the Day of the Lord. He was looking and expecting the day when…we know the other aspect of it is that God is gonna gather His own, just as He did…just as He got Lot out of Sodom. But there’s gonna come a day when fire will fall and consume everything. There’s a day of reckoning.
We talked last week about God’s calendar, and how, on an individual level, God’s got your name on a calendar page and He absolutely works in your life, according to His time frame. Thank God that we’re in His hands and not in ours! We would make a mess! How many of you know that when we ever try to take things in our own hands and work them out, that’s all that happens?
It’s a big mess! But oh, we’ve got somebody into whose hands we can commit our lives and who’s promised to save us, promised to work unto the end! Thank God! Everything that we sang about Jesus, lifting up that name, a name to which we can look!
But we’re living in a world that’s absolutely been called to what Joel is talking about. And, let’s see…I’m not gonna read the whole passage but there are a few verses, in the middle of chapter 3, that I believe, absolutely, are relevant to us. And, well, let’s just begin in 12, “Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat…” (NIV). That’s a time of reckoning, of judgment. “…For there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side.”
So, this is not just limited to a particular outpouring of judgment within history. This is the grand picture. This is the end of the age. This is what Jesus was talking about. “Heaven and earth…” He said, “…will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” And so, this world is absolutely careening in the direction of destruction. It doesn’t know it. But this is God’s Word to the world, in this time. All right?
“Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.” You get the language there, the imagery of a harvest? Two harvests, as a matter of fact, that are growing up and maturing and there comes a time when it’s harvest time. Now it’s time to do something about it, the entire purpose has been fulfilled.
“Come, trample the grapes….” You know, you go into the Book of Revelation and you see the same imagery and you see there’s a symbol of God’s judgment. There comes a…God allows man to go so far. There’s a freedom for man to make choices for which he is responsible in eternity. But there’s also a time when, okay, now it’s time for judgment. You have made your choice. And that’s what’s going on here.
“Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow—so great is their wickedness!” And here is the verse that prompted that particular article. “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.” And then it talks about the judgment that’s coming and how, how complete it is!
And I believe with all my heart, that…I don’t know, there’s something in my spirit that felt like the Lord wanted to emphasize this, because, as I say, this world…if you’re not paying attention, you need to. We live in a world that is making choices every single day. And God has reached out, throughout the entire church age, but He continues to reach out, in so many different ways, to people, to call them to bow down before His Son, who sits on a throne, right now, and is awaiting the calendar—the day on God’s calendar, when the Father says, go home! It’s over!
And we see, again, the pattern throughout history of nations, and times, and peoples, when God has had to intervene, because they’ve gone so far, there’s no other way to go. There’s no reclaiming anybody out of that particular group that’s made its choice. And, we are seeing the world absolutely make its choices, today.
Boy, you need to recognize what’s going on in this world. You need to recognize the voices and the ideas that would cause you to just rationalize. You know what a rationale is? A rationale is when you’ve already decided you want to do something, but now you’ve got to be able to justify it, and explain it, and work it out so it’s okay. It’s not like you look at the Word of God and say, what’s right? and that’s my standard, and I’m gonna go by what God says and what He has planned for my welfare. But here’s something I want to do and so I’ve got to work out a way in my own mind where it’s okay.
Where does the wisdom like that come from? It comes from the devil himself, who is absolutely seeking to take over hearts and lives. And I’ll tell you, there is a ‘no compromise’ thing when it comes to the Gospel. I mean, I’m saying many of these things that we’ve said so many times before. But in a relativistic world, we need to understand that there are some absolutes in God.
It’s not just about rules to live by. This is a matter of whose life is it? Is it my life, to follow my own desires and to do what I please with it, or is it His life and every issue has to be laid at the foot of the cross? Lord, I don’t have the right to choose my mate. If I have desires, if I have things that pull me, I need to lay them down and say, Lord, I feel this, but it’s not my will, but Yours be done. Lord, I know You have the plan for my life and that’s the one I want. I belong to You. I do not belong to myself.
I mean, Jesus was the ultimate example of somebody who did not love His life unto the death. He showed what it costs to be a part of God’s Kingdom, and it meant laying down His life. Thank God He did! How could any of us be here if He had not done that for us? Thank God for the cross!
But did He not say there’s a cross for us? There is a cross for every single one of us. And you think about some of the followers, or would-be followers. How many times has the rich, young ruler been brought up? Now, here was a man who genuinely, it appears, wanted to be part of the Kingdom of God. He had lived a very moral life. It wasn’t like he was looking for something bad to do…a very moral life.
And it even says, in one of the Gospels, Jesus loved him. So, that wasn’t an issue. What was the issue? Jesus knew something about this man, and he said, you sell what you have, and give it to the poor and come follow…take up your cross and follow me. So, now there’s a choice to be made. Am I gonna do what I want to do, what my natural being is attached to, or am I gonna be willing to lay that down and follow Jesus?
Now, riches are not a sin. But the love of them is! If that comes before Jesus, then that’s your god. You talk about idolatry, in the Old Testament, where they literally worshipped images? I’ll tell you, people idolize everything under the sun today that stands in the place of Jesus Christ! And so, this man went away, sadly. He made a choice that affected his eternal soul.
How many people are making those kinds of choices, every single day, around us? We see a society that is being torn apart from the foundation up. Homes are in disarray. People are suffering all kinds of emotional trauma, every kind of temptation you can think of. All the entertainment world is pulling at them. If you dare to say anything that’s different than they’re saying, you are absolutely to be crushed and rejected.
Folks, God is calling us out of that kind of a world to live for Him in this time. And as that scripture we read in Joel, “Multitudes, multitudes….” This is not just, like I said, it’s not just one little time in history, but this is the broad, mass of humanity. God has said, I’m bringing you into this special valley. We’re gonna find out. You’re gonna have to make up your mind. This world is not simply gonna go on, and on, and on. There is a day of salvation. There is a time when I will hear you and when I will reach out to you.
Thank God that He’s patient, isn’t He? You ever wondered why in the world God just puts up with this? You read the stuff every single day that goes on and it’s incredible what…the things that are happening every single day in our world that just reveals what’s going on—reveals the things the Lord showed us, so many years ago, about the devil being loose as never before. Well, he is, and we’re seeing the fruit of it, in lives.
( congregational amens ).
But you know, the most dangerous thing, possibly, probably, is when people do rationalize and they feel like they can come up with a way to do what their flesh wants them to do and still serve Jesus! I thank God that we do have a remnant of brothers and sisters that are scattered throughout this land and throughout the world, probably a whole lot more than we can imagine, if you got them all in one place.
But how many of you think that everybody that’s going to church and singing, “Amazing Grace” this morning, really knows what we’re talking about? How many of them are doing what the rich, young ruler wanted to do, and…I’ll bring my money. Look at all the good we can do. I can serve Jesus and use all this, and it’s gonna be so good. But the problem is that’s where his heart was.
And, how many people come into that place of choice and a decision and it’s not everything laid on the altar? Did not…does not the Word of God say that we’re, “…bought with a price…”? (KJV). We’re to, “…glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are…” What?
( congregational response ).
They’re God’s, aren’t they? If you ever come to Him, You won’t belong to yourself. What’s the alternative? I’m gonna bring ‘part of me’ into the Kingdom of God, okay? Does that make sense? If I am infected with this disease, if you will, called sin, how in the world can I bring part of me into the Kingdom of God and expect God to accept that and take me on to heaven with that? Man, He is going to have to find a way, one way or another, to put that to death.
And I thank God this isn’t a call to measure up to a legalistic standard. This is a call just to hand over our lives. You know, I thought of one scripture we’ve used so many times, and just one aspect of it. But are we not told, in light of everything that God has done for us, through Christ, the promises, the provision, everything is so amazing, what is the result of that? “Therefore…” I’m trying to remember the rest…exactly how it starts from there. But the thought is that we are to, “…present your bodies a living sacrifice….”
See, there may come a time when it’ll be a sacrifice and our bodies will fall over dead because we’ve been killed for the faith, for the Gospel. You know, sometimes I almost envy people that go that way, if you go suddenly, and they kill you. Man, that is a one-way ticket out of this place! You don’t have to get up and look at the news in the morning. You don’t have to see what’s going on and feel the pull of this world and feel the weight of what’s going on in this place. That’s victory, folks!
But God has called us to be a living sacrifice. That is, there is a principle of death that is applied to us. There’s a principle of dying, of laying down our lives every single day, and yet, it’s a living sacrifice in which we give ourselves to Him. There’s that part of us that lives, that part of us that is put to death, over time. Thank God!
I just pray the Lord will help me with this. I hope this is the Lord. I hope…yeah. Sometimes I know there’s a part of me that wants to look for response, but there’s a sober—there’s a sober thought here, folks. We are in this time, the valley of decision. And there are people, right in our midst, and people who will hear this, who are in a valley.
And I pray that there are some that can hear this, and recognize where they’re at. This is not a light thing. This is not where you can go along and go to church and live your life. It’s either His life, or it’s yours. There is no middle ground. It’s 100 percent.
How many times throughout history has the Lord challenged His people? When Joshua passed off the scene, “Who is on the LORD’S side?” I think that might have been Moses that said that, but, “…choose you this day…” is what Joshua said. “…Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” And they had to make a choice, didn’t they?
And for a time, they actually walked in that. But what happened? A generation passed off the scene. They intermarried with all the heathen people around, worshipped idols and went right straight to rebelling against God.
Folks, there are choices being made today that have eternal ramifications. How many know what happens when people persist in pushing the Lord aside, rationalizing their way around this thing that really has…really is the idol that my heart worships? That’s really the thing that’s most important to me that I just won’t give up. I can’t lay that down. You cling to that long enough, when the Lord comes calling, what happens? What happens? There comes a day when the Lord takes His hands off!
How many of you think that you can come to the Lord when He stops helping you? We’re saved by grace. Grace is the divine help that I need to believe and repent. That’s central to it, because I can’t do that. I don’t even have the motivation, the strength. I don’t have anything that it takes to do that. I need God’s influence upon my heart and His strength to do it!
Now, He doesn’t force me to do it. But He makes it possible for me to respond. And if I don’t respond, and I resist that, as Hebrews says, and do, “…despite unto the Spirit of grace,” despise it, resist it, there comes a day when the Lord says, you’ve made your choice.
The world is in that place. Not only is it in that place, how many of you know that the majority of the world has made its choice? The Devil is…his objective, in this hour, is to unite the world against God. That’s something he has not been able to do, because God absolutely put a limit on him. Through the cross there was a victory that was won. He has not been able to unite the nations of the world and absolutely drive the influence of God out of this world. He’s not been able to do it.
But there comes a period, at the end, where the Lord says, all right. I’ve spoken with the world, I’ve sent out the Gospel, I’ve reached out to the hearts of people. Now…now you’re all gonna come into a valley and make your choice. And I’m gonna let the devil loose to do what he…to follow his dream, and, of course, we know how that turns out. Just when it looks like he has won the ultimate victory, the Lord comes on the scene. Fire reigns down. There is no victory that this devil can win.
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July 9, 2023 - No. 1605
“God’s Calendar” Conclusion
Broadcast #1605
July 9, 2023
July 9, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1605 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Anybody ever gotten to a point where you…all of a sudden there’s a season where you just can’t seem to feel the Lord’s presence at all? And all of a sudden, there’s some temptation that just comes and just won’t give up. Now it’s getting quiet. And you say, wait a minute. I thought I was over this! And here it is, again, I’m having to fight that battle.
Well, who in the world sent the devil to do that? Do we not think that God is in control? Is there not a need? I’m talking about me! I’m talking about all of us. There are things that happen in our lives that we do not understand at the time and we would not choose for that to happen. But God knows what He’s doing! I need Him to come and to do things in me that I cannot do for myself.
You know, you think about young people growing up, and we who are, at least, relatively grown up, we kind of have an idea what it takes to be an adult in this world. But you know, a young person, what do they want to do? Most of them…what do they want to do? They want to play. You know, I’ve got all these abilities, and I love to do this and I love to do that. None of that crazy algebra. History, who cares about history, that’s over.
And over and over again, you’ve got this, I don’t want to do that, that doesn’t make any sense. Why should I have to learn this? Why should I have to learn that? None of you’ve ever thought that, right? We were all there once too. But you know, we’re adults, we kind of have an idea what it takes. That yeah, you’ve got to develop your mind. You’ve got to develop your ability to think. You’ve got to develop a sense of responsibility, of being able to handle things, and be faithful at them, and how you interact with other people.
You know, growing up is not without purpose. Yes, thank God, there are times to play! I’m glad there are. And there are times just to rest and enjoy ourselves, but there are other times when it’s hard work. And we need to be willing to do both. But don’t you see that there’s a parallel in our spiritual lives that God is trying to grow us up. He knows what we need. And I’ll tell you, I want to be on board with whatever season the Lord has me in, don’t you? And I don’t want to be dismayed by it.
You know, there was a time, obviously, when Israel was being prepared to go into the land. It wasn’t time. He didn’t say, all right, you know what your destiny is, go for it. Every single step was very carefully orchestrated according to God’s calendar. Moses had to pass off the scene. Joshua had to be encouraged over and over and over and over again, don’t be afraid, don’t be dismayed. Don’t…you know, I’m with you. Don’t worry about it. You know, stick close, trust Me. I won’t leave you.
And over and over again, he gets this reassurance, because now the season is changing. He’s gonna get the people ready. They’re gonna go across. And even then, there was a reestablishing of the covenant, wasn’t there? And even then, he wasn’t ready! How many of you remember what happened after that? He walks out and he sees a man with his sword drawn. And so, he goes up to the man and says, are you for us or for our enemies? Remember what the answer was? Neither. Wait, what?
( laughing ).
Who are you then? What’s your place in this whole thing going on? This is an earthly battle. We’re gonna be going up against these walled cities. It says, “…but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.” (KJV). I’m here. There’s another army. All you think about is your army, but there’s another army involved.
How many of you realize that in the battles you fight in your life, there’s another army involved? Do you think that army is better than the one you’re up against? Doesn’t the scripture say, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers…the rulers of the darkness of this world.”
Thank God, we don’t go up against them all alone! But we realize, we’ve come to realize as the Lord teaches us that we are never alone in any season of our lives. I don’t care if you go through a time when everything seems dark, and you can’t seem to contact God. There are conflicts on the outside. You’re struggling on the inside. You’re full of doubt. You’re fighting it off. You know you shouldn’t feel that way but you do anyway. Every one of us, every child of God goes through seasons like that.
Now, is that just an accident? Or do you think God puts us in those places so that we can learn some things. You know, I read the last two or three chapters of Joshua in my reading today. And, it made an interesting comment about the people who listened to Joshua’s last remarks and agreed, yes, we’re gonna serve the Lord. And what happened? They did serve the Lord until that generation died out and then things went sideways.
But, one thing it said about those who served the Lord, they were the ones who had seen what God had done. I’ll say something else again, that I’ve said many times. God wants to take our theology and burn it into our lives as personal experience. And if you want to know why God’s doing what He’s doing in your life, right now, that’s what it is.
He wants us to not just come to church and know what we’re supposed to say and do. He wants it to be burned into our hearts as experience where we can say, well, like the expression we have, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Now, I don’t want to say that in a silly way. But you know what I’m talking about. God wants children who are experienced enough to be able to stand up in this dark hour and be a light for Him, and be a functioning member of the Body of Christ.
( congregational response ).
We are going to have seasons, folks. We’re gonna have times when things are not gonna be to our liking. And you see it over and over again, in the writings of David. Things that we’ve…how many Psalms does he have that are full of praise, and God’s with me, and oh, what a wonderful victory we just experienced!
And yet you have others, you know, like the one we’ve used so many times in Psalms 13, “How long, Lord?” (NIV). How long am I gonna keep praying and nothing happening, nothing’s changing, Lord. Are You listening? Are You there? These are honest emotions that David felt at that particular time. And God had him in that season. It was on God’s calendar for him to be experiencing that.
And yet, in the midst of that, we see him, ‘but I trust in Him.’ That’s what God’s looking for…is for faith to rise up and say, I will not yield to what the devil is trying to accomplish in this time of testing, this particular season. I’m gonna stand and trust God regardless of whether the sun is shining or it’s raining, or it’s stormy, or it’s nice.
I thought of Psalm 31, there’s…there’s a lot here, I’m not gonna try to read it all. But, David is writing, it says, “In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge….”
So David’s obviously not sitting there, you know, sipping iced tea, is he, in a comfortable place? He’s in a bad place. He’s in a place where…God, if You don’t come and help me, I’m a goner here. I need You, Lord. And I’m putting my hope in You, but I need you right now.
“Turn your ear to me…” Well, “Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Keep me free from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit….” Anybody recognize those words? They were uttered by our Savior on the cross. I wonder if maybe He was the inspiration behind David writing this in the first place. And then, He took His own words and spoke them out as an expression of faith right there on the cross for you and me.
“…Deliver me, Lord, my faithful God.” And he goes on and talks about, you know, how against he is, all these other people and all that they’re doing. Verse 9, “Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.” How many of you know that’s part of living a life serving God? Somehow, we imagine that, yeah, we got to come through some of this, but there is a place where we just…
( exhaling ).
…From here on it’s just gonna be smooth sailing and comfortable living. There are always going to be seasons when God is going to allow things to happen in our lives, to intrude, because maybe it’s time for the fire again. He’s been shaping and working on us. Now it’s time to go back into the fire. And when that time is over, He’s gonna pull us back out, and then maybe there are gonna be some of those times when we get to be in the pleasant pastures and the still waters. We’re gonna experience some of that too. Isn’t the Lord good to us? Praise God!
So anyway, he goes on and talks more about the situation he’s in, the conspiracies. And then he puts a ‘but’ in there. Thank God. “But I trust in you, Lord; I say, You are my God. My times are in your hands.” Isn’t that a good place for us to be?
When we think about things that happen in our lives, the seasons that we go through, don’t ever forget, God has got you on His calendar. He has scheduled every part of your life in such a way that you’re gonna arrive exactly the way He has designed you in the beginning, for that purpose. He is gonna continue to work until the day of Jesus of Christ, which by the way, is on His calendar. Praise God!
Oh, I’ll tell you, every…I know there are many of us here that say, oh God, hurry up. This is a miserable world to live in and it’s getting worse by the day. I’ll tell you, God still is reaching people. I find myself saying, oh God, let them bomb us to hell and then just…you know, we’ll be…not to hell, but I mean, bomb us.
( laughter ).
And put it…just end it all, then we won’t have to live here anymore. And then I have to say, Lord, I’m sorry, I know You’ve got people that You’re still trying to reach. Your heart is bigger than that. I know that You’re gonna…I know that You’re reaching the souls that You’re gonna reach, and I pray for them.
Not only that, even though it’s not comfortable, I want to be an instrument in that regard. I want to realize I’m not here for no reason. I’m not here as part of this world. And even when You design seasons and times for me that I wouldn’t choose, when you allow the enemy to attack, for example, You do it because You love me. You do it because there’s a reason. And even more important, You’re right there, every moment. And not only that, remember the lessons we’ve used so many times in the past. Whose battle really is it?
( congregational response ).
It’s the Lord’s battle. It’s not just like we’re disconnected and He’s there shouting encouragement to us. We are so connected that for the Devil to attack us, he is attacking the Lord. If God allows Goliath to step up in your path, does He not want you to remember the lesson of David? And remember, hey, this is not my battle, this is the Lord’s battle.
Now, He’s called me to have a part in it, and to cooperate, and to believe in Him. But, when I step forth, and I take a stand in the Lord, the Lord’s here! This is His battle. He is fighting a battle for every single member of the Body of Christ, every single one that He has called into His kingdom. He is absolutely…there’s an army that’s been sent from Heaven to bring every one of His home.
You know, it talks about how the fact when Jesus comes, angels are gonna come and take us by the hand. Those angels are here right now! If our eyes were opened, we could see them right here. There are angels here right now. You know, the Lord has…there have been a few occasions in the past where the Lord has allowed someone to open…to see that, and to know we’ve been worshiping the Lord and they see angels all around us worshipping, and their eyes have been open to that. But that’s real, whether we see it or not.
God wants a people who will absolutely say, God, I thank You I’m on Your calendar. I thank You that You’ve got my life all planned out. I just want to be…Lord, whatever You put in my path today, help me to know that You’re with me.
You know, there are so many things…I mean, there’s nothing new I’m really saying this morning. But, I just feel like the Lord wanted in emphasize this for some particular reason, because maybe you’re in a season that you don’t understand, and you don’t like. I think there are not much “maybes” to that. I think there are a lot of us that would rather things be different in our lives. But we need to learn to trust God.
You know, I thought about how James exhorts us, in one place, in Chapter 5. It says, is anybody afflicted? What are you supposed to do if you’re afflicted?
( congregational response ).
Pray. Right. Anyone afflicted? Let them pray. So, then we have a place to go. We have a source of help that God wants to absolutely put something in our path that causes us to have to stop and say, wait a minute, I need help. I can’t handle this…oh God! Just like David was doing here.
“Is any merry?” (KJV). That tells me there are times when we have a joy, that we can just…we can enjoy the Lord, and feel good, and feel His presence. What are we supposed to do? Sing psalms or praise God!
“Is any sick among you?” Then he gives the instruction. But it says, pray for one another. You know, I believe many times we have brothers and sisters here who are…on God’s calendar, they’re going through a time of real difficulty and strife. And yet, somebody over here is in a time of peace. What are we supposed to do? Are we disconnected? Many times, there are people who are in such a dire place that they can’t even hardly pray for themselves. Anybody here ever been like that?
( congregational response ).
Things were so tough…you couldn’t, it’s almost like you couldn’t pray. Do you think there wasn’t any prayer going up? You see, God has others who can step into that gap and pray. And then when you’re going through your season, there are gonna be others that God will raise up to pray. And everybody…everybody works together.
Now, you think about how connected we are. If your foot has something that goes really seriously wrong with it, do you look down and say, what’s the matter with you, get straight here? You know, like we’re separate somehow. No! My whole body rallies to that. It cares about it, sends nutrients to it. Obviously, you cater to it a little bit.
But I’ll tell you, God has put the body together in such a way, that no matter what the seasons of life, that we could help one another, we could look to God, and we could see God accomplishing the things, the purposes for which He has put us on His calendar. Are you on His calendar right now? I’m so thankful I am. I’m so thankful He’s already written the story of my life. Thank God! Praise the Lord!
You know, I thought about we sang that song, “Standing on the Promises.” That’s a good thing to do, isn’t it? You know, I told you about what my Dad used to say sometimes. He would ask the question, are you standing on the promises or are you sitting on the premises?
( laughter ).
You can see where I got my silly sense of humor. But there’s a truth in that, isn’t there? God didn’t call you to come here and just sit as a spectator. He called every one of us to be participants in the Kingdom of God. And God has put you on His calendar because He loves you, and has a purpose for your life. And He wants you to come to Him and recognize that.
Do you see, even in David’s distress there, how he recognized…but I’m trusting in You, Lord. I’m looking…my times are in Your hand! Think about Job, who said, when He has tried me…the Lord, “…knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” (NIV).
I’ll tell you, we’ve got somebody who knows what He’s doing. When He puts us on His calendar, He’s accomplishing something eternal. And I want to surrender to Him. I want to be, you know, like Peter says, humble myself under the mighty hand of God, that He would lift me up at the proper time. You see, the times and seasons part there? There are seasons where all I need to do is just humble myself under His hand, because there’s going to come a time on His calendar when, all right, that season has accomplished its purpose, now we can do this, now we can do that.
I don’t know what purposes God has for our individual lives, but we need to live with this knowledge. We need to consciously say, God, I am on Your calendar and show me where I’m at. You know, Sister Merilea sent me something that she had written recently, and she made reference to a vision that I guess I had forgotten about, that was given many, many years ago.
And best I recall the details, it was a picture of a very dark mountain and there were people who were climbing it. And right where they were at, there was light. And that light shone just a little ways up the path that they were on. And guess what? They walked in that light and when they got to the end of the light…see, the light didn’t show the whole path, did it? God knows what He’s doing.
But when they came to the end of where the light stopped, what did they do? What are you supposed to do when that happens? Work it out! Hurry up! Make something happen! No! You stop, and you wait, and you pray. And when God extends the light, okay, now I can see, now I can put my foot forward.
I’ll tell you, God is gonna take us through times and seasons of His wise and loving choosing. And we can rest in His arms and look to Him. Yes, there will be times of distress, that’s part of it. There’s so much in me that needs killing, that needs the hold that it normally would have upon me loosened to where I stop listening to my old nature and I start trusting in Him, and looking to Him. He knows how to make that happen. I want Him to make that happen.
And I want to find that place where I am walking in His light, I’m looking to Him, I’m waiting for the proper time to move forward. Sometimes, that’s the issue. I want to move, I’m anxious to do something. You know, some people are more that way than others. But oh, there has to come a time when I am so trusting in God, willing to be shaped by His purposes and His loving hand, and I just want to say, God, I want to live my earthly life according to Your schedule.
Help me to be so in touch and in tune with You that that happens, because if we’re pulling and pushing…you know, a lot of our distress comes from our own efforts and our own fussing about stuff, instead of saying, Lord, I trust You. I want to rest in Your purpose. It doesn’t mean some things won’t be hard. But we know that He’s promised to be with us, to the end of the age, and I’m so thankful.
And oh, there is coming a time, it’s not just the calendar of our individual lives, there is coming a day when everything here will be over, not just for us individually, but for everyone. May God carry us through, but give us that kind of heart that says, Lord, I’m yours. Now I guess I’m saying the same things over again. But, Lord, help me to live according to Your calendar, and to know that You’re in charge. Praise God! Praise God!
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July 2, 2023 - No. 1604
“God’s Calendar” Part One
Broadcast #1604
July 2, 2023
July 2, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1604 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t know…once again, I’ve had some random thoughts and I’m just gonna have to ask the Lord to pull together, and they’re very much in sequence with things that we’ve been talking about. But I believe it relates a whole lot to what we’ve been singing about this morning, and the day that’s coming and wanting the Lord, and, you know, anticipating His coming.
You know, most of us who have phones, many of us who have phones, particularly, have what we call a calendar. And if you don’t, maybe you’ve got one on the wall at home where you can put down things that are gonna happen on a certain day. And, some people are more addicted to that than others. I’m not, at all. I have just about enough to remember that I don’t have to worry about keeping my calendar app open. I think I’ve got one somewhere.
But how many of you realize, how many of you know that God has a calendar? And He absolutely is in charge. I mean, we know the account of how the Lord used Daniel and then revealed Himself to Nebuchadnezzar, the great emperor of his day. And by the time God was through making Himself known to Nebuchadnezzar, he said, the Lord rules, “…in the army of heaven…none can stay his hand, or say…” what are You doing? (KJV).
And over and over, you look in the Prophets, particularly Isaiah. Over and over he’s exposing the sin of Israelites who were actually using, worshiping idols! The insanity of it, and yet there he was saying, you’re worshiping these things that people carve, and then they take a trunk of a tree, divide it into three parts. They use part to warm themselves, part of it to cook their supper, part of it to carve an idol and then they bow down and worship it, expect it to somehow help them.
And He says, one of the things that He continually says is that, can your idols tell what’s coming? I mean, I’ve known from the beginning. I’ve planned. I’m gonna say this and it’s gonna happen. And, I’m in charge, folks. I have got a schedule.
And I’ll tell you, we need to see the big picture, but I believe God wants to begin to focus us down into the more personal picture. But I know when Paul was preaching in Athens…you know, many times he would go out first of all and he would talk to Jews. He would go to synagogues if he were going to a certain town, that would be where he’d start. Let the Jews know that the promise of the prophets had come and give them an opportunity with the Gospel.
But now he’s in Athens and there is no synagogue. And he goes to the place where people congregate, and the reason they congregate is to debate philosophical ideas. I mean, that’s the whole reason some of them got up in the morning was to go and have a great debate.
And so he takes the opportunity, notices that there is one idol, one statue that’s dedicated to the Unknown God. They figure they’re gonna cover all their bases. And so Paul seizes on the opportunity and says, I’m gonna tell you about Him. And in Acts chapter 17, he says in verse 24, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” (NIV). It’s kind of comprehensive, isn’t it?
“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, We are his offspring.”
So here’s a picture of a God who absolutely…number one, He’s sovereign. He is the one who raises up nations and puts them down. Folks, we cannot look at our country, this isn’t about our country, particularly, but…and say, well, we’re here, God has established us. Yeah, God can do the other end of it, too. God has a calendar.
And I’ll tell you, we’ve sung about it, “Oh, Lord, come.” Do you believe God has a date already marked out. Now He hasn’t told us. Hadn’t even told His Son. Think about that. Didn’t He say that nobody knows, not even the Son? But there’s gonna come a day when God says, all right, today is the day! This is my calendar. This is a secret calendar that God has. He absolutely knows the end from the beginning.
It’s an amazing thing that…how many of you realize history’s already been written? That’s just…that just boggles our mind. History has already been written. We know how it comes out. I’ll tell you, you sign on with Jesus and just surrender your life into His hands and His purpose, we can be a part of something that will not end when this world ends.
You know, we’re rapidly coming to the conclusion of an age, and we’re seeing things unfold. How many of you remember a verse we’ve noted a few times in Daniel? The Lord revealed tremendous things to Daniel, didn’t explain them all, because Daniel himself wondered, what about this, what about that? He said, close up the words, close up the book, it’s gonna be revealed at the proper time.
But there was one occasion when the Lord sent, I believe it was Gabriel, to him and he said, I’m gonna show you some things that are written in the Book of Truth! And what he began to open to him was a detailed history, before it happened, of what was gonna happen to the Persian empire. The Greeks were gonna come in.
Then a great king, whom we know as Alexander, was gonna conquer the world and then four of his generals were gonna split up his empire and then be at war with each other. And he goes in great detail about things that were gonna unfold that hadn’t happened yet. But he’s reading them from a book!
I’ll tell you, we’ve got an amazing God, who knows the end from the beginning. How many times have we talked about the fact that He has, “…chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” (KJV). He was able to look forward in time and to see you and to see me.
And what is happening in our world today is not surprising to God. God has the calendar! He had the calendar the day Russia invaded the Ukraine. He had the calendar for every…He has the calendar for every detail.
And we are seeing the unfolding, or the maturing, if you will, of two different harvests. There is a harvest of those who have heard His voice and said, no, we’re gonna walk in our own ways. We don’t want to hear from You anymore. We’re going our own way, and God is allowing that to unfold.
I mean, you think about…now, somebody could say, well if God’s already scheduled everything and He knows what’s gonna happen, why are so many terrible things happening? What kind of God is He? I’ll tell you, He’s a God who looks for responsibility in us. There is a judgment coming and God is not gonna pre-dispose every one of us to do whatever…we’re not just robots. There is gonna be a foundation for judgment one day. People are going to be judged based upon what they did and how they responded.
We know from the Word of God that God, “…is not slack…” as Peter says, “…concerning His promise.” He’s not saying, oh I forgot, I’ve got to get this going. It was on My calendar back here and I forgot about it. Every detail of God’s calendar is absolutely unfolding as He has foreseen. And I’ll tell you, there’s a harvest of evil that is maturing.
There’s a harvest of righteousness that’s maturing too. That’s what God is doing in us. He’s preparing us for that day and whatever He means to accomplish between now and that day, He is absolutely unfolding. God has every one of our lives in His perfect control. Now…praise God, there’s so much to this and I just pray that God will, like I say, guide my heart and my mind to expound upon it. But, I’ll tell you, there’s…there is coming a day though when God’s gonna say, it’s enough.
I guess I started to quote from Peter, saying, why is He waiting? Why is He putting up with all this? And He’s not…the Scripture says He’s “…not willing that any should perish.” What’s God’s focus in this world? Is He just raising up a bunch of people so He can kill them? The purpose is to raise up a family with whom He can share eternal life and God is not willing that one of them should perish!
He knows from the foundation of the world every one who will humble their hearts and give them to His Son, to save, to rescue out of a broken world that’s headed for destruction. And so, God is not going to finish the job and go to that day on His calendar until everything has been fulfilled.
And boy, there’s going to come a time…you know, I thought about naming this “Times and Seasons.” I don’t know, “God’s Calendar” would be another good title. We’ll see. But there is coming a fulness of time, there’s coming a time when every purpose under heaven is going to absolutely come together, and it will be right.
And we won’t be able to say, oh, You forgot this, God. If You’ll go back and look on Your calendar, You missed that. He’s not missing anything. There will come a day when absolutely everything will unfold exactly as He has predicted.
And, you know, we could look at this and say, well that’s the big picture. That’s just…you know, we know on a grand scale that God has already written history. We know how it’s coming out. We know how it was in Noah’s day, for example. You know, chapter 6 of Noah, of Genesis, rather, in the story of Noah, begins with the fact that God was distressed by the fact that the whole world, other than Noah, had reached a point where every imagination of the heart was, what?
“…Only evil continually.” Now you think, okay it’s time for judgment. Guess what? He waited 120 years, didn’t He? God was still unfolding purposes. Boy, that generation had no excuse when the time for judgment came. And I don’t believe this one will either. It’ll be interesting to see how God unfolds it, because He hasn’t told me, other than a general picture. When He’s coming, folks, it’s over. But thank God for all that He’s done.
But I started to say that we can see that it’s on a grand scale, we can see this as far as the big events, the raising up of nations, the putting down of nations, the end of the age. But how many of you know that applies to us as individuals? Do you know that you’re on God’s calendar? Have you ever thought about that? God has a schedule of salvation and every purpose that He means to fulfill in our lives.
You know, what was said this morning…what if His purpose involves you doing something out of your comfort zone and using gifts God has given you to bless the Body of Christ? We’re not talking about something public necessarily, but I just thought I’d throw that in, because that was mentioned so clearly this morning.
But think about what David wrote in Psalm 139. He was talking about the greatness of God and how He even saw David’s unformed parts. He saw the material that would go into David’s body, when it was still just dust and dirt out in the world! He saw, somehow, how all those elements were gonna migrate together, wind up in his mother, and he was gonna wind up in her womb as part of his physical makeup. And he said, You saw all that. I’ll tell you what, what an amazing God.
But the thing that brought me to that passage was this. All of the days of my life were written for me…I’m not quoting it exactly. But every day, every day of my life was already written “…in your book before one of them came to be.” (NIV). Wow! I’ll tell you, I want to just trust my life into His hands. Don’t you? Is that a good place to be right now? I want to be in harmony with His calendar.
But here’s David…you know, we think about a biography of somebody. Now, from our point of view, we exist in time, and you can’t write somebody’s biography until they’re dead, if you’re gonna include their whole life. And here’s God saying, you’re living…here’s your life, you’re a baby, but I’ve already written your biography. I know exactly every choice you’re ever gonna make. I know what I’m gonna do in your life and I know how it’s coming out.
How else could God say something like He said through Paul? “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate…whom he did predestinate…he also called: and whom he called…he also justified: and whom he justified…he also glorified.” (KJV). Anybody here glorified today? No, there’s gonna be a shining, amazing…you know, when God’s through with us, people here would not be able to look at us. We’d be way too bright. Only God can do that.
But, oh…I’ll tell you, He’s got a calendar date circled in red, He knows exactly the course of every individual life. And part of what drew me to this was the fact that God has times and seasons that unfold in our lives, and we’ve noted some of this in the life of Jesus. Jesus came at exactly the right moment in history. God brought everything together. He revealed Himself to Mary. He had already revealed Himself to Elizabeth, in terms of John the Baptist coming. And so, here’s Jesus coming in fulfillment of prophecy, and we see the events of His life unfold.
You know, I’ve used this illustration before. The prophets didn’t understand what they were prophesying, but they, no doubt, out of their comfort zone, by the way, were willing to yield themselves to words that originated in heaven that had creative power in them. And those words were like guided missiles. And their job was not to figure out all the details, their job was to launch them! They spoke a creative word that was just as real as when Jesus, the Son of God, uttered the words, “Let there be light, and there was light.” (NIV).
There was an immediate response to that word, but these words were designed to go out into history to land at a particular place. And I’ll tell you, every word uttered by the prophets hit the target exactly, the very day and the hour and the moment on God’s schedule, they landed. And so you watch Jesus going through a season of life, like we said, where He’s just living a seemingly normal life and then the time comes.
How many times do you read in the New Testament how He came in the fulness of time, exactly on God’s calendar, according to God’s calendar and God’s schedule, there He was revealed to Israel. And all the things that the prophets had prophesied began to fall into place. Every missile landed. Every one came to pass just exactly as the Father had planned.
He doesn’t have to look at His calendar, He knows it. It’s so built into His being, He knows everything all at once. How in the world? We just can’t even conceive of such a thing. But we can trust Him, can’t we? When He makes Himself known to us, not as some big Boss in the sky who just wants to make us miserable, but as Somebody who wants to share His love with every one of us. I want to be part of that.
But part of what drew me to this in the first place was thinking about the things that we go through in our lives. How many of you know that the Christian life is not just some, well…you’re supposed to do this and do this, and not do that, and so forth, and you come to a place and, okay, now we’re living ‘the Christian life.’ And it just kind of settles into a certain sameness.
Anybody ever found it to be that way? No, there are times, there are seasons in God’s plan in our lives. There are times when we…when it’s tough. There are times when it’s difficult, there’s pain, there are all kinds of things that happen in our lives, and there are other times that are just happy times.
Now, I’m trying to find a scripture here that we all know. But listen to the wisdom that God gave Solomon in chapter 3. “There is a time for everything.” Think about that in terms of our personal lives. There’s a time for everything. Your time for this may not be somebody else’s. God has your name on His calendar and He knows what you need and where you need to be at right now. Does that make sense?
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away…” Need to do a lot of throwing away, some of us.
( laughter ).
“…A time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak…” You know, some of us don’t have a problem being silent and some of us can’t shut up.
( laughter ).
But anyway, there’s a time for all these purposes, isn’t there? “…A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” I mean, we see that pattern in our lives. We aren’t up 24 hours a day, most of us, none of us. We know there’s a time we’ve got to sleep, there’s a time we’ve got to eat, there’s a time we’ve got to work, time for play.
And you know, do you think God has a purpose for every life here? Do you think we’re just digits in His plan, or are we individual sons and daughters, who have been brought to the kingdom for a time such as this? We have a reason for being alive right now. And God is at work in every one of our lives.
You know, one illustration that I’ve thought of and I am certainly no craftsman, but I know there are certain kinds of crafts that happen in stages. And there are stages of pounding and shaping, and there are times when that thing goes into the fire, aren’t there? And in some crafts you pull the thing out of the fire and you work on it some more and then you put it back in the fire. Anybody feel like you’ve been on that yo-yo? But you know, God…does God know what He’s doing? Does He know how to shape us, how to prepare us? Does He know exactly what He’s doing every single day?
Close
June 25, 2023 - No. 1603
“What Do We Do?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1603
June 25, 2023
June 25, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1603 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: It’s interesting the number of times in scripture, and I don’t want to make an exact equivalency out of every one of them, but where God’s people actually went to God in prayer and talked with Him about judgment that was pending…and in some cases, postponed it.
Now, Abraham is an example of somebody who went to God on behalf of Sodom and, of course, the situation had gone beyond that point. But did not God say, yes, if I find as many as ten, I won’t destroy it? So, He’s listening and responding to the intervention of…to somebody who’s reaching out and saying, oh God! And you see this throughout history.
You see Moses…you remember the time when things got so bad, I think it was in the wilderness, was one of those many incidents, when the Lord said, stand aside, let me destroy them. I’ll make a greater nation out of you and Moses said, no! What about Your great name?
You can argue the theology of that. I believe God was testing him, but the heart of Moses was an expression of God’s heart. It was, Lord, I know we don’t deserve it, but God show mercy! Lord, for the sake of Your great name, forgive, pardon. Lord, if it’s necessary, I’ll give my life so they can be spared. Wow! What an expression of God’s heart came through a man.
And how many other times do we see it? We see…I mean, do you remember how after Solomon, who kind of drifted away from all that he’d had as a young man, started giving into idolatry, actually established heathen places of worship for some of his wives, who led him astray? And then God tore the kingdom apart. The northern kingdom of ten tribes established their own government, and from day one, they worshiped idols instead of the living God. They never did ever come back to God.
He sent them Elijah, Elisha, all kinds of situations. Foreign governments came in. You name it. God reached out to them for generations. He judged their sin in so many different ways, and they still hardened their hearts and refused to hear. Finally, He said, it’s done, sent the Assyrians in and dispersed them everywhere.
The southern kingdom was there in Jerusalem. But you look at the southern kingdom and it’s a checkered history. Over and over again, there were wicked kings. And even when there were good kings who actually, to one degree or another, they reached out and said, Lord, we want to serve You. We recognize You are our God. Oh God, help us!
God honored those who reached out, but the people out in the villages and out in the towns, they were still…idolatry was still in the heart. All it took was for that leader to pass off the scene and somebody else come in and boom, they were right back in all their wicked practices, sacrificing children, all the things that they did.
But it’s interesting how the history unfolded. I’m not gonna try to…I couldn’t even go through it. I’m not gonna try to go through all of that, but you remember how Hezekiah was a faithful servant, somebody who really reached out to God and established righteousness, did away with a lot of the idolatry, and they began to celebrate the feasts, they began to observe the law. He did everything he knew to do. And he reached the end of his life, and God gave him an extra period of time.
Yet, out of the heritage of that, his son Manasseh, came to the throne, or the next ruler of any significance was Manasseh. He ruled for 55 years. And the Lord said of him, through the prophets, that he had done worse, committed worse sins than the Amorites that he had driven out so Israel could have the land.
How many of you remember back when the Lord was talking to Abraham and talking about what was coming? One of the things He said…He talked about the Amorites. It was a particular group of people that lived in that area. And He said, “…the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” (KJV).
It’s like there’s a cup, and it represents the wickedness of a nation, and every time a nation acts wickedly, something more goes in that cup. And God was withholding judgment even from a wicked nation called the Amorites, because it hadn’t reached a certain point.
Do you see the hand, do you see the mercy of God that’s not anxious to judge, but wants to wait and wants to give people an opportunity? But here was a nation that was the nation of Israel, Judah at this time, became more wicked than the Amorites that they had displaced. And it reached a point where judgment was inevitable. They reached the point that, I believe, America has reached, where it’s not a matter of if, but when.
And the reality is, even Manasseh humbled himself toward the end of his life. How many of you know that? God allowed him to be so humiliated in battle that he humbled himself and began to actually undue some of his stuff, and acknowledge the Lord and all of that. But do you know that didn’t stop it? His son came along, ruled for about two years, and did exactly the same stuff that he did, got assassinated by some of his officials.
And then, Josiah came along. How many of you remember Josiah? What an amazing interlude in that period of history. So, here was a man, a young man. He was about the age of some of you or younger. And he had already been king a number of years. And the scripture says he began to seek the Lord, and it came into his heart to restore the temple and to clean it up and to get rid of all the bad stuff, all, everything that had to do with idolatry.
He even went back into the northern kingdom, and there were altars that had been dedicated to idols, and he burned bones of their prophets on those idols, desecrated them, did everything he knew to undo all this evil that had been done. They had a celebration of the Passover and all that went with it that was unlike any that had ever gone before.
This was a man with all his heart sought God. Do you think that stopped judgment? No, but it sure did postpone it. God gave them a space. Whatever was coming, it’s not gonna come while My servant, Josiah, is there. We’re gonna hold off on this.
It’s coming, and there were three or four more kings, and it began to unfold as Nebuchadnezzar came three different times to tear down the nation. Finally, he said I’m done with you. We’re gonna tear it all down. All of that was prophesied in the prophets. But you had godly people who intervened.
One of the scriptures that came to my mind was in Ezekiel. Ezekiel was carried away from Jerusalem with the first group. You remember how Daniel and his friends were carried to Babylon? There’s a whole bunch of people that were literally carried off into exile, and they settled in communities in Babylon. Well, Ezekiel was one of them.
And God began to give him all kinds of visions and revelations, and it was very obvious that he was somebody that God was speaking through. Even then, the people weren’t listening to him. But one thing that he said…I think you can look this up. I’m not even opening the scripture so far. I’m sorry, I’m just talking, and just referring to scriptures, but I believe it’s in chapter 22 at the end of Ezekiel.
He talks about the conditions over there in Jerusalem, and how bad they are, and how much evil they’re doing. And it says, the Lord looked and wondered, there’s nobody to stand in the gap. He looked for somebody to stand in the gap and make up the hedge, plug the wall, different translations. But do you see what is happening, what God is looking for?
There’s another scripture in Isaiah. This is much earlier in their history…the same thought in chapter 59. All the terrible things that are going on, and nobody was standing up and wanting to do what was right. God is always looking for people that will stand up and do what is right.
And I tell you, we have a power to intervene, to make a difference in this country. We are not victims. We are here for a reason. How many of you think you’re an accident, that living now is just happenstance? Oh, this is just where I happen to live, and you know, God knows about me and all that. God is a God who plans. You and I are here because of a divine appointment.
You know, one of the scriptures that I said, another one that came to me, as I’ve thought about all of this, meditated on it over the last several days especially, how about the story of Esther? The Devil had a tremendous plot, in this case, that he had hatched against Israelites, who were still, at this point, they were scattered through the empire that followed Babylon. The Medes and the Persians had this empire, and a lot of the Jews were still settled among them.
But this wicked man named Haman got it into his heart, not just to punish the guy who had disrespected him, but to exterminate the whole bunch. Where do you think that came from? That came from Satan. That came from the heart of Satan, who hated anybody that represented God to any degree.
And the people got wind of all this. They began crying out, but you remember what happened, don’t you? The Lord had placed Esther as queen. Do you think that was an accident? That was no accident. God had His hand…the king did not even have a clue what her background was, probably didn’t care. She was the one that caught his eye and just captured his fancy. And God was behind every single bit of it, raised her up, prepared her in every way.
And so, you remember the story of how her uncle, Mordecai…I’m trying to remember. Don’t get old! But you remember how Mordecai, her uncle, was mourning, and she’s trying to find out, why is he doing this, why is he acting like this? She sent out one of the servants to find out, and finds out the whole story.
And he sends back word and says, go to king and plead for us. And she says, you can’t do it. It doesn’t work that way. Anybody that walks into the king uninvited, it’s automatically death unless he extends the scepter. I am as good as dead if I go in there. I’m not messing with that.
But do you remember what message that he sent back? Who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? “For Such a Time as This,” is not a bad title. For such a time as this, you and I have come here, just like Esther did. And she got to the point where she said, if I perish, I perish. Let’s pray. I’m gonna go into the king, and I’m gonna plead our cause.
Do we not have the right to call upon God on behalf of the nation, on behalf of its people, on behalf of the purposes of God, for us, but not only for us but for others that He would still reach? God’s not through. I don’t believe we’ve gotten down to that point where we’re gonna hear that trumpet this afternoon. We’re here for a time and for a purpose, to reach out to God and to cry out.
One of the things that’s interesting is in the life of Daniel. You go back and read the beginning of chapter nine, and you find out where Daniel reads the prophesy of Jeremiah, which was just a generation or so earlier, that says the captivity is gonna last 70 years, so, what does he do? He sets aside a time of fasting and prayer and goes to God.
And he starts confessing the sins of Israel, and he doesn’t say, those bad people did all this bad stuff! He says, we have sinned. If you’re an American, America has sinned. We can go to God and say, God, we’ve sinned.
And Daniel’s appeal to God was not, oh God, we deserve another chance. It’s, oh God, the only basis upon which I’m coming to You is because you’re a God of mercy. I’m not appealing to You on any merit of ours. I’m appealing to You because of Your mercy, Lord. Please show mercy. God, fulfill Your Word.
I know there’s a lot of people out there that, and I confess I have reacted with mixed emotions when people have pulled out 2nd Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves…and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (NIV).
And I think what I’ve reacted to is the notion that, for many people, it’s, oh God, if God’s people will just cry out, everything will get back to normal, and we’ll live a prosperous, happy, comfortable life. That’s not the heart and the purpose of God. Sometimes, we get that as a bonus. We have for many years.
The other thing is the equivalency some people make with Israel. Well, we’re not Israel. We’re America, but we have a responsibility to the heritage that we have been given. God has allowed us to have a lot of divine principle baked into our culture, that is being canceled and rebuked and shut down, right and left in our nation today.
But I’ll tell you, we have every right to go to the highest court in the universe, and to make it a matter of genuine prayer, that God will forgive the sin and will show mercy to this nation, will give us some time, not more time to sleep, but time to be about His business, that He will reach people, that He will reach right into the halls of some of the very people who are our worst enemies, spiritually right now…that He will reach in there and pull some of them out of the fire.
Did not Jesus say, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail…” (KJV). Satan will put up gates and try to trap his people inside his kingdom. Jesus has the power to reach past that. There are people that He wants to reach, but just as Satan uses people to accomplish his purposes, so does God.
And I believe this a time when God’s people need to wake up and cry out to Him and say, oh God, this nation has, indeed, rebelled against You and is deserving of judgment. God, we appeal to You for mercy! Forgive, help us, raise up voices among Your people. It’s not about the Constitution. It’s not about all this other stuff. It’s about the Kingdom of God!
( congregational amens ).
You notice the prayer that we referred to so recently, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” But what about…you know, it gets down to our needs, as individuals, doesn’t it? But, before that, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” That’s what needs to be the heart of God’s people, at whatever level it happens, whatever…I mean, we are among the people of this planet like leaven. We have the power to influence, to slow down things, to create opportunities for the people that God will reach.
May God give us the faith and give us the burden to cry out. What a song we sang about our land, heal our land. This land is in horrible, spiritual shape, but God has a remnant. Even though much of this, much of what purports to be Christian religion is false, there is that which is true. God has His people.
And I believe there’s a burden that’s being shared among many right now, that we are at a tipping point. If God’s people just sit back and let things happen, it ain’t gonna be good. We have an opportunity to band together in the spirit and cry out to God and say, oh God, intervene…God, may Your purposes in this hour be fulfilled. May every one that is Yours come.
Work in our hearts, help us to see what this world is about. It’s a temporary place in which God is calling and gathering a people. Yes, there are people right and left who are making choices. They are coming to that final crossroads and they’re saying no to God, and they’re going down this road. It leads to judgment.
I don’t know how many of you remember it, but there was a…we’re not quite to this point yet, but we will get there. There was a vision given, very plain, just about 50 or 51 years ago in our church, and it showed America and its judgment. And it showed the entire nation on fire. I don’t know exactly what and when and all of that, but I do know that’s what’s gonna happen when the whole world comes to an end. Thank God, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, God will get His people out, and then judgment will fall. That’s where this world is headed.
But in the meantime, are we here for such a time as this? Has God ordained that you and I live right now? Has He given us nothing to do but circle the wagons and wait for Jesus to come? Or can we actually intervene? Satan has witches that are trying to intervene. We have the power of the Son of God who lives in us. We have power to make a difference if we will.
I just pray that God will help me. I mean, of all people, I’m probably the last one to get up and say some of these things. I’ve seen them, but like I say, my own tendency is just to, oh well, there’s nothing we can do. But there is something we can do. We can live for God. We can live out the purposes for which God has placed us in this time, in this place, in this hour. And ask Him for the grace to be faithful until He comes, because that day is drawing ever nearer.
The things that God has shown us are unfolding. We are seeing Satan loosed. He’s being loosed because people are making choices to reject God. But God has a people, and we’re here to rise up and resist what is happening in the Spirit and fight.
Don’t you know there are angels of God who are at work? But, do you know that we have a part in their effectiveness? When we pray, angels receive strength to fight the battles. We’re gonna learn a whole lot of things when we get to the other side, but God has given people enough of a glimpse to know those things happen. That’s reality. We literally have a part to play.
May God give us that grace, and may His name be honored. Praise God! I didn’t even open this, but we referred to a lot of scripture. But I believe with all my heart, God has brought us to the kingdom for such a time as this. And may He give us the grace to live with an awareness of it, and to cry out to Him to intervene in what we’re seeing taking place in our country and in our world, not just that we might return to a comfortable life but that His purposes will be fulfilled, that everyone will come who’s gonna come. Praise God!
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June 18, 2023 - No. 1602
“What Do We Do?” Part One
Broadcast #1602
June 18, 2023
June 18, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1602 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve had so many thoughts and they’re certainly not organized. All I can do is say, Lord, You’re gonna have to get out what You want. But my thoughts have run to…I guess, in a sense it’s a follow-up to the service that we had a few weeks ago about, “What is Happening?”
And, of course, that became the subject of the article in the MCM this time. And, I think the focus of that was on the fact that what is happening is not simply events in the human realm, but rather there is a satanic design behind it. And that’s certainly true, isn’t it? We see the hand of Lucifer doing everything in his power to bring about his dream of ruling over this planet and driving God’s influence out of it.
And, for God’s purposes…thank God He reigns in spite of whatever we see…for God’s purposes He is allowing these things to happen. And He’s allowing them for a reason. And, of course, we talked about that fact that this is satanic, and so then, how do we react to that?
But I guess my thoughts this morning go beyond that to what do we do? Because, I confess, when I see things unfold as they are and I’m at an age and a place where I feel my infirmities, I feel weak and tired a lot of the time…I think tired is my middle name, but thank God He’s got the energy I need. But, an easy reaction is, oh well, throw up our hands. You know, things are unfolding as they are. All we can do is hunker down and wait for Jesus to come.
But I believe that God has put us here for a reason. We’re living when we are and there’s a purpose in it. And it’s not just to sit here and do nothing. And, of course, you’ve got people out there that say, well yeah, we need to take to the streets. We need to get on social media. We need to pack guns. We need to do all kinds of stuff. And, I don’t believe those are the answers. But I believe God does have a place for His people in an hour like this.
Now, you might ask, how do we get to a place like this? What happens to bring it about? And the fact is, if you look through history you will see that nations have arisen and fallen throughout history. They have been…in the ancient world there was one empire after another and we even see, through the prophets, that God’s hand was in raising them up!
Nebuchadnezzar had the power that he had over the known world of his day because God gave it to him for a divine purpose. Part of that was judgment upon other nations. But then of course there came the time when their own wickedness caught up with them and God raised up yet another empire to tear them down. And we saw Daniel literally reading the handwriting on the wall. That wasn’t just an expression, that was quite literal. And it was that very night the Medes and Persians came in.
Well, they lasted for a while and then the Greeks came in. And then they split apart into four different empires that fought against each other until Rome finally took over. And you know, Rome had its day and you see this throughout history that God has allowed nations to rise up, within His purposes, but then He has judged them for their wickedness.
And nobody exemplifies that more than Israel itself. Israel has a unique place in history. And God raised them up to bring forth the prophets, to reveal Himself, not just to them but through them to the nations, and we see Him doing that. You read the Old Testament prophets and the history and you will see that it wasn’t just to Israel that the prophets were sent. They were sent to other nations as well and other nations recognized, hey, if a prophet of Israel says something, you better listen.
And so, we see Jonah traveling way out into modern Iraq, to Nineveh and the people immediately just take warning and they listened and they humbled themselves and God changed history, didn’t He?
And so…but we see this pattern come forth in Israel is where I started, where they had access to the Word of God like no other nation. And how many of you know that the scripture says to whom, “…much is given, of him shall be much required…”? (KJV). And so, Israel had a responsibility that went way beyond the other nations around them. Yes, God judged them. But He judged them based upon their reaction to the light that they had.
But Israel had prophets sent to them generation after generation after generation. And yet, the word of the prophet was, I spoke to you, I did all of this, but you chose what is evil. You chose to do what you did.
And, you remember last week we talked about the key to the Christian life is choices, that we have a God who has placed us in a place where we can make choices, if we will, but we reap the consequences of those choices. Those who yield to the flesh, what are they gonna get out of it? Corruption. Those who yield to the Spirit, there’ll be the fruit of life in us. And so, a lot of what defines our individual lives is built upon the choices that we make.
And it’s what we think about. That’s one thing I never really mentioned last week. What do you allow to happen in your mind that nobody else knows about? Do you realize we have a choice what we think about? That’s why Paul says, whatsoever things are good and honest and good report and all of that. There are choices that you and I make, but there are choices that human beings make.
There are choices that nations make, and God judges people based upon their response to His light, whatever it is, whether it’s a little or a lot. And God judges a nation for their choice to either accept or reject that.
And I believe with all my heart what we are seeing in this country is a fruit of America’s choices. How many of you believe that this is a nation under God’s judgment? We saw a shot across the bow, if you will, is what people have called it, 9/11. There was an act of judgment where God took His hand back and allowed us to be attacked in a way we had never before been attacked.
And, you know, we need to stop and realize where we’re at in history. If you go back to our beginnings, if you were to research it…and it’s out there for anybody to read that wants to…there is a Godly heritage in spite of all that has been wrong and all that is wrong in our nation.
There is a Godly heritage of people in the beginnings of this country, going back to the Colonial days, going back especially to the founding of the nation, of the government, of a recognition of God. A recognition that we live under His laws, under His reign, that if we respect Him and live with that acknowledgment that His blessings will be upon us and He will be with us. But if we ever depart from that, it won’t be so good.
I mean, George Washington was explicit in his inaugural address about that principle. You don’t have to go back to George Washington. Go back to Reagan. He made the statement something like this. If we ever cease to become a nation under God, then we will become a nation gone under. Simple, but truth.
And you go back…I mean, literally there are people who have documented the things that have been stood for, in our founding. You go back to the Constitution and its formation. It took a lot of people a lot of time to come up with our Constitution. And when they got done, someone was asked what they had come up with and it was a Republic, if you can keep it, was one of the statements.
But there was another one of the Founding Fathers who said this style of government, this Constitution that we’ve come up with will only work among a religious people. And, of course, he didn’t mean religious like I sometimes use it, but rather a people who respect God.
How many of you realize that during the Constitutional Congress, when they called people together to devise the Constitution, they were wrestling with different issues? In the first place, many of the delegates were ministers. They were a fruit of the first great awakening when God mightily visited this nation, back in the middle of the 1700s. God was…there was an influence baked into our culture, into our thinking, of recognizing that we live and operate under a God who is supreme.
How many of you know, and here’s a simple fact, how many of you are aware that there came times when they were devising our Constitution that they would come up against a sticky issue? How are we gonna handle this? What are we gonna devise to meet this particular need? They would literally call a halt, call a time, perhaps a day or whatever, of prayer and fasting to seek wisdom from God.
Can you imagine that happening in Congress today? You see where we’ve fallen? See what’s happened to this country? That’s our heritage. And for probably the first hundred years of our heritage, if you went to law school or you went to some kind of law training, the entire theory of law was this. There is a God who is supreme. He has laws that govern human affairs, as to what is right and what is wrong. Any law that we devise, anything that we stand for, has to first recognize that. That is over all, and under that we get down to the details, and so we make laws that respect those laws.
And somewhere toward the end of the 1800s that theory began to change, and all of a sudden, we become humanistic and, no, we’re gonna do things our way. We don’t have to recognize that stuff anymore and it just…they began to move away from that. And we have been moving away ever since.
And of course, we talked about…we talked about what happened in the 60s and the rebellion that occurred in the 60s. Well, the reality is the society we live in today the children and grandchildren of the 60s are our college professors, our newscasters, our entertainers and many of our politicians, and you go on from there.
People have gone into industry and business, and they’re still children of the 60s, people who no longer recognize that we are a nation under God. We have a major party that refuses to say those words. So, do you think that these facts have anything to do, perhaps, with where we’re at?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah, they have everything to do with it And you look back at the sins of ancient Israel that caused them to find the place…to find themselves in the place that they found themselves, facing judgment, one of them was idolatry! What do the scriptures say in the New Testament? How is idolatry defined? I mean, what is idolatry?
What would it be in our society? We don’t literally bow down to blocks of wood and stone and images. Most people don’t. You still see that in India. I’ve observed it but…what do the scriptures say? It says, “…covetousness, which is idolatry.” The materialism, the worship of money and stuff and all that comes with it, the power and the pride and all of that, we have been given over to that.
We have taken God’s blessings and worshipped the blessing and despised the Blesser. And we have imagined it is because of our goodness and our worthiness that we have what we have and we are what we are. God has allowed America to become the greatest nation, arguably, in the history of the planet. There’s never been one like it.
But we’ve got to this place because of God’s blessing, and for no other reason. We cannot look in the mirror, like Nebuchadnezzar did and say, look at this great country that I have built for my name and my glory. The spirit of Babylon…let’s build us a tower and us a city that’s gonna reach into heaven. God help us!
But we’re guilty of one of the great sins that plagued ancient Israel that God pointed out to them. But what about the area of sex and gender? My God, have we not rebelled against God and against the order that He established in the world? And it’s not just that people do certain things, but they glory in it. They have enshrined it in law.
Talk about no longer recognizing the supremacy of God’s laws? They have enshrined it in law and they are teaching it in many public schools, right down to the kindergarten level. You do what you want. It’s all about what kind of inclinations arise in you. It’s all good. And don’t dare say anything against it!
That’s where we’re at. You think God just is gonna sit back and say, oh yeah, I’m gonna bless you? God bless America. Folks, we have a nation that God has warned, that has rejected and renounced the God we supposedly recognize as supreme. The question is not if judgment comes, but when, and how?
And I believe with all my heart the things we’re seeing unfold this year are part of that…9/11 was. God knows what’s coming. And none of this is to minister fear. But I’ll tell you, we are seeing the repeating of patterns.
One of the things I’ve reacted to over the years are so many people making the equivalency between us and Israel. Well, we’re not Israel, but they’re not us, either. Israel had its place in the economy of God in that time, but we have had a place. We have had a sphere of influence on this planet. God has used America to spread His fame when we did what we were supposed to do.
I’ll tell you, how many people have read some of the effects of World War II? Some of the things the Lord did through that era. God used the United States to take down Japan, which was a stronghold of Satan. And because of that, and their defeat, and their disillusionment with their system, the Gospel found an entryway in there.
I’ve told you before about…as a young man…a boy, I guess, meeting the man who led the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. He was the commander. He was in the lead plane. Come on! Let’s attack them at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That man later came to Christ, and became an evangelist. And I’ve still, somewhere…I’ve got a little New Testament with his signature in it, Mitsuo Fuchida.
And there are so many other tales that have come out of how God used people from this country to reach out, to break down walls. God knows how to take the events and the choices, the nations of this world, and to mold it all together to reach His, because God has a purpose! Satan does have a purpose, but God has a purpose, doesn’t He? The words of Jesus, “All that the Father giveth me…
( congregational response ).
…Shall come to me.” Thank God! That’s a positive statement. There’s not anyone gonna be lost. I remember seeing, years ago, on a TV network, they’re raising money and their pitch was, if you don’t give to us, millions of people will go to hell because you didn’t give.
Seriously? I’m all for supporting something that is getting the Gospel out, but my God is faithful! My God is not going to lose somebody because of me! If I mess up, He’ll have somebody else to step in, but God will save every one of His! That’s His purpose.
His purpose is not to bless nations in material ways and make that the center of anything. But God has a purpose to reach His people and they will be reached, and when Jesus comes, His Kingdom will be complete! Every seat at His table will be full!
And I’ll tell you, we’re gonna look back and say, Lord, how did you take that mess and make this out of it? What a great God you are! But the question comes again, what do we do about it?
It’s interesting the number of times in scripture, and I don’t want to make an exact equivalency out of every one of them, but where God’s people actually went to God in prayer and talked with Him about judgment that was pending…and in some cases, postponed it.
Now, Abraham is an example of somebody who went to God on behalf of Sodom and, of course, the situation had gone beyond that point. But did not God say, yes, if I find as many as ten, I won’t destroy it? So, He’s listening and responding to the intervention of…to somebody who’s reaching out and saying, oh God!
And you see this throughout history. You see Moses…you remember the time when things got so bad, I think it was in the wilderness, was one of those many incidents, when the Lord said, stand aside, let me destroy them. I’ll make a greater nation out of you and Moses said, no! What about Your great name?
You can argue the theology of that. I believe God was testing him, but the heart of Moses was an expression of God’s heart. It was, Lord, I know we don’t deserve it, but God show mercy!
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June 11, 2023 - No. 1601
“What is Happening?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1601
June 11, 2023
June 11, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1601 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I had made a lot of notes and I just was back and forth in my mind…I’m gonna go ahead and pull out just part of it, because you could go on and on talking about it. But, I don’t want to do that, I don’t think it’s necessary.
But if you want to know what’s happening, men are being turned over to darkness and Satan is working out his final plan to rule the world. And God’s going to allow him to seemingly accomplish that before it’s over. And we need to find our place in all of that.
( congregational amens ).
And recognize what’s happening. So, what do you do? Well, in the first place, don’t be afraid! Nothing that is coming is meant to cause the child of God to live in fear!
( congregational amens ).
There’s no place for that! His promises are too great! He said, I’ll be with you until the end of the age! Even though there will be times it will be difficult, there will be valleys of the shadow of death…there are martyrdoms that are happening in many places of the world. God has promised to be with His people ‘til the end and I believe it!
This would be a good place…I didn’t put this in my note, but this would be a good place to say, to remind us of this thing that we call ‘normalcy bias.’ Most everybody here has lived within the postwar period. There are a few people that were young and could remember a little bit before that. But since the end of World War II, we have had, with some interruptions along the way, some crises here and there, we have had a way of life evolve in this country that is unprecedented.
Generally speaking, there has been prosperity, there has been freedom, there has been opportunity. The stores are always full, right? Whatever we need we can always just pop in the car and get whatever we need — until you need toilet paper and there’s a virus hitting! We need to get over that mentality that this, the way we have seen, the way we have learned how to live, is normal and it’s just gonna go on. Yeah, we’ll get through this little bump in the road and it’ll go right back to normal. Well, I hope in some respects that it does. But, don’t you count on that.
I’m going to throw in one thing that I have wrestled with saying something about all along, and it has to do with some practical wisdom. And I’ll relate it to this, do you remember a few years ago, we had that course called “Financial Peace.” And the essence of that was to train people to handle their money sensibly, responsibly.
And the author of that particular series laid out a bunch of practical baby steps to get people to a place where number one, they were out of debt, number two, they had three to six months’ worth of living costs in an emergency fund. Those were two main things, there were other particulars, but those were the main things. If you’re living hand to mouth…and I realize there are all kinds of circumstances, but I mean, if that’s a choice to live that way, that’s not very smart.
But I’ll tell you, there are other things. There are things that we need to operate our households that everybody knows we need, from food to personal care items, to you name it. Does it make any sense to have one on your shelf…to be using one, say, oh, it’s about to run out, run to the store and get another one. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have two or three, to build up at least a reserve?
Didn’t our parents used to live that way? We used to have pantries. We used to have…I mean, I realize a lot of people still do. We used to have a reserve. We used to have a sense that things will not always be…I need to be self-sufficient. I mean, you don’t have to be a doomsday prepper. That’s going to the other extreme and I…bless people that do that, that’s all right.
But, you don’t have to be stupid, and just assume that everything’s always gonna be like it is and we can always go and just run to the store any time we need something. We need to have a little bit of practical, common sense in some of these things. All right, enough said about that, because I’m not gonna get into, well, we need a bug out location. You know, there are a whole lot of things that God can lead us about some of the practical things. We’ll never get to the point where we’re beyond needing to trust God.
( congregational amens ).
But trusting God doesn’t mean taking no personal responsibility. I mean, should I trust God…does trusting God mean that He’s going to pick me up out of bed in the morning, dress me, sit me at the table, and then…then He’s gonna put food in my mouth. Or, do I have a little bit of personal responsibility there?
You see, I don’t have to live in fear, I don’t have to build my life around, oh, I need this, I’ve got to have that. Jesus spoke about that, and we don’t live in that kind of anxious state. But to say, I have no personal responsibility to take, to work, and to take care of myself. That’s an extreme, that’s not right. So, we need to be wise in those things.
Jesus talked about some of the terrible things that were coming. What did He say, when you see all these things, do what? Hide and put your head between your legs and…no, lift up your heads, your redemption is getting close. And that’s what we need to be doing. Man, we don’t need to be looking around and being distressed. We need to say, God, You’re on the throne.
( congregational amens ).
You’re letting things play out. There are things going on…we need to lift up our heads. We’ve spoken many times about that prophecy in Daniel, where he told about a time when a heathen emperor was gonna come in and defile the temple and take over and it was just gonna be a bad time. But he dropped this in there. He said, “…but the people who do know their God shall be strong…” and take action. (KJV).
Now when do you suppose those people got to know their God? You see, this has to do with preparedness in every area. The folks that didn’t have toilet paper, when the problem hit, it was too late. You think about things ahead of time. The people that knew their God, they already had an experience with God. They already had a history with Him. They knew to trust Him in all kinds of circumstances. God had prepared them. And so, when the crisis hit, they weren’t paralyzed by it. They didn’t stop and say, oh I got to get serious…they were already serious.
I believe God wants to work in His people right now, so that He can have a people who can stand in this hour. And so, you have expressions like, wake up, be alert, don’t be drunk like the world. Be ready…it has that sense of being ready. You know, so many people talk about being ready, as though I’m ready to vanish into thin air. We need to be ready to stand in an hour…
( congregational amens ).
…That’s coming. You know, Paul, in Philippians, chapter 3, we have the place where he’s talking about pressing forward and what his life was all about. But down toward the end of that chapter, he talks about people who are living for this world, their focus was on satisfying the needs, their earthly needs, this was… their whole attention was down here, and he said, but you’re citizens of heaven, live as citizens of heaven. There’s something coming, there’s a victory, there is a glory that’s coming to your life. That’s what you should be focused on. That’s what you should be living for, not just gratifying earthly desires. Live as citizens of heaven.
Obviously, pray! You know, Paul’s words, in Ephesians 6…they remind us we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. See, our warfare is not against points of view and political movements and all that kind of stuff. Our warfare is against the devil, against his kingdom.
And we need to see past people. Wouldn’t it be something if we could see somebody who is hateful and has an opinion with which we disagree, and we don’t hate back. We could actually pray and love them. I believe that there is, that we need the Lord more than we ever have. And we need to be looking to Him.
We need to have a heart that says, God, we need you to lead us! We are not here to be the custodians of a hand-me-down religion! We are here to walk with a living Head, a living Savior, who has promised to lead us in paths that we have not walked in before! We’re not here to simply carry on the traditions handed to us by Brother Thomas. But to do what he said, to seek God and do what He says.
( congregational amens ).
Because this isn’t that day, this is this day. And we need Him. And if time goes on, and my generation has to go off the scene and hand everything over, the next generation is going to need to do the same thing.
( congregational amens ).
You’re gonna need Him! And He’s gonna be faithful. But we need to pray. I shared something along this line with the men the other day because I know I’ve heard a lot of people say, oh, don’t watch the news. Well, I can understand it. If you’re just glued to the news and letting it have a negative effect on your, letting it ruin your whole day because it’s so stupid, then, yeah, you might want to not do that.
But, I read something interesting recently, and it was a little booklet on prayer by Brother Andrew, “God’s Smuggler.” And, it was written in conjunction with Al Jansen, who apparently works with him, at Open Doors. And I don’t know which one wrote this…it might have been Al. But the point he made was, that he deliberately watched the news.
But when he did it, he did it in order to pray, in order to intervene in things he read about, in order to pray concerning the powers that were at work, the people that were involved, the people that were affected. There were opportunities to pray out of all of that…to actually make a difference.
Do we believe prayer is just throwing up wishes into the air? Or does prayer actually change things? Can we have an effect upon what’s happening in our world?
(congregational response ).
Yes, in prayer. Because we’re invoking the real power, the name that’s above every name, the One who rules in heaven and on earth. Praise God!
Boy, Nebuchadnezzar found that out, didn’t he? The Lord had a way of letting His fame spread through the whole world in that day, by allowing Nebuchadnezzar to experience all that he went through until he came and said, there is only One that rules “…in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” And he made sure everybody heard that. Do you see how God has always gotten His witness out? Yes!
What about…there’s a verse, I’m not gonna to turn to all of these, but if you want to write them down and look later. Philippians 2, we have the passage about how we’re supposed to walk in unity and treat one another as more important than ourselves, be like Jesus who left heaven to do what He did for us and now He’s exalted. And he goes on to talk about the fact that we need to live out the salvation that we have for it is God who works in us.
You have that wonderful balance between our responsibility to live something out, but the fact that the power comes from Him, not us…not a matter of legalism and trying to do something in your own strength.
But what is the result of that? The result of it is that we live as shining lights in a dark world. You get somebody that has God living in and through them, and you’re gonna have a tremendous contrast with the darkness that’s happening in this world, that’s taking over people’s lives, because God is still doing His work, too.
I don’t want to just paint this as a terrible, oh my God, the darkness is taking over, what’s gonna happen? God is doing His thing too! And we have the opportunity, not to just go hide in a cave and say, tell me when it’s over. We have an opportunity to be a participant in what God is doing, whatever that is in this hour. He’s the only one who knows. As I say, I don’t know His time table, but He does.
And if we will agree to walk with Him, that’s all Noah did. Noah walked with God. When something needed to be done, God told him and he did it. Real complicated. But God help us, to be just that simple in our faith, and really trust Him. But God wants us to let our light shine.
And what we talked about the other night…I appreciate the spirit that was here, on Wednesday night. I appreciate the…everybody has their thoughts and feelings, but the central theme came back to this, we need to be united. We need to guard the unity of the spirit. One of the things that we see more than…perhaps, the greatest expression of what Satan is trying to accomplish in the world today is the division that he has created.
( congregational amens ).
I mean, I saw one poll the other day where something like fifty percent of the people think civil war is a very real possibility in this country. You have militant groups on one side that want to overthrow everything. You’ve got so-called patriot groups on the other side that are ready to take up arms and say, you ain’t gonna do that, we’re going to defend the Constitution. You think it’s impossible that there’s not gonna be some real chaos coming? We need the Lord!
( congregational response ).
We don’t need to be afraid, but we need to be alert and aware and walking together in unity and not let the fights from this world percolate into us and put us one against another. We need to love one another and say, God, give us the discernment, give us the wisdom to see past what’s going on, understand it. We see men being turned over to darkness. We see Satan coming down, what he feels, is the home stretch, to establish his kingdom over the world.
One way or another, I’ll say it again, he’s got to bring this country down and change it from what it has ever been. So, if you’re sitting here and expecting life to go on, American life to go, not forever. I don’t know.
You know, a few years ago we thought it was headed south a whole lot quicker. And the Lord put the brakes on just a little bit. But now you have a huge backlog of power and anger, and it’s all focused on just tearing everything down. One way or another, it’s coming down.
But God’s going up, too. God’s purpose is going up. Guard unity, walk in the light. God is gonna give us what we need. One of the things that we saw years ago was not simply that darkness was gonna get worse and worse, but light was gonna get more and more. God is going to have light for those who want it.
( congregational response ).
There will always be a word from heaven that will strengthen and encourage the hearts of those who want that word.
(congregational amens ).
Do we? Are we content to just practice our religion or do we need to hear from Heaven? We need Him! But there are two things going on. Yes, the darkness is growing greater but so is the light!
( congregational amens ).
God is finishing His purpose. There are two harvests that are maturing, there was a harvest of evil, and there are reapers that are gonna go forth, and they’re gonna cast all of that, and they’re gonna harvest that and then cast it into the fire.
But there’s another harvest that’s going on. God is going to use the things that are coming on the earth at the end of time to finish the work that He has promised in His people. He has promised to finish the work until the day of Jesus Christ.
Whether we’re here, whatever our personal place is in that, God is going to present us together on that day when He unveils what He has been doing to the devil and all the world, it’s gonna be an amazing picture of God’s grace.
Can you imagine when we don’t have to deal with these bodies anymore, with this nature that wants its way. When we’re set free to live out the life that He has birthed in us. That’s why we need to be born again, folks. Flesh and blood cannot inherit what God has purposed.
( congregational amens ).
You need to have a brand-new life born in you of God’s Spirit. When you have that, God will bring that to fruition. It will grow up in Him to be something amazing. We will leave this behind. But if your heart is here, if this is what you want, you’re gonna perish with this world.
But I’ll tell you, our eyes need to be on the fact that God has promised. What God has told us is absolutely going to happen. There is going to be a harvest time when He will send forth His angels and they will gather His harvest into His barn. In Matthew, chapter 11, is it, somewhere along in there…13 maybe, the one about the parables.
He talks about the fact that there is going to be a time when the harvest is gathered in, then the saints, “…will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” (NIV). He’s the only One that can do that. Ain’t nothing that shining about me. I need a Savior, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
But I’ve got one. I’ve got one who’s already won the victory! And He’s going to allow the devil, as we’ve said so many times, He is going to allow the devil to seemingly achieve his objective. And at just the right time, He’s gonna intervene and say, that’s enough. It’s over. He’s gonna show up in the air. Angels are gonna come forth and gather His elect, and everybody’s gonna see it. And wrath will be poured out upon this world. There won’t be any joy in heaven over that except that it’s over, except evil has been put down and it’s forever behind us.
So, I don’t know. I just trust God to help us with all of this. But do you understand what’s happening? When you turn on the news, and you see the stuff that’s going on, I hope we can see it through His eyes. Recognize the condition of people who say the insane things that they do…and then mainstream media just laps it up and doesn’t want to listen to anything else. It’s insane.
But it’s a fruit of a people who have said, no, to God, until God finally said, all right, I’m taking my hands off, you have made your choice. Do you realize that happens?
Now, I want to be careful in saying that, because the devil loves to take that truth and oppress people with it. There will be some sensitive saint who feels their own need and sees their own shortcomings, and they’ll hear about God turning people over to darkness and say, maybe that’s my problem.
And the devil will say, you’re not really saved. If you were, this would be the case and that would be the case. Folks, if you have got a heart that cares, if you care about knowing the Lord and being His, trust me, you wouldn’t care if God wasn’t working.
( congregational amens ).
Don’t you listen to the lies of the enemy! The people that turn their back on God and walk away, they’re happy in it, they’re comfortable, they’ve been set free in their own deluded minds. They’ve been set free from all that restraint, about all that God stuff. And they’re as blind as bats and headed for catastrophe.
But I’ll tell you, we’re headed for glory because of the One who went to the cross in our place. To Him be the glory for all eternity! Oh, praise God! Even so, come Lord Jesus!
But I’ll tell you, we’re gonna see a lot more. I’ll agree with the statement, we ain’t seen nothing yet. There are gonna be a lot of things that are gonna happen in this world. And we just need to wake up and be ready, practically, spiritually, loving one another, looking to God, and God is going to bring His people through.
And not only that, we can be instruments of the things that He is doing. I’ll tell you, this Gospel of the Kingdom is gonna be preached in all the world and then the end will come. There’s still some preaching going on. There are still people that the Lord is calling. I’d like to be an instrument, to be a part of what God’s doing in that…in reaching them. May God help us. I believe He is, don’t you?
So, we need to walk with a sense of what’s going on. We don’t need to be looking at it from this political point of view, that political point of view, and what we want to happen. We don’t need to get involved so much in the world’s battles. But say, what is God doing in this? What’s really behind all of what’s happening and what is my place in it? And God is gonna be with us. And He is gonna get the glory.
Praise God, I don’t know of anything else that needs to be added to this necessarily. But, I just praise God for His faithfulness. I praise Him that He hasn’t left us without a witness. I praise Him that He hasn’t just left us in the darkness to wonder what’s going on, and to be afraid! But He’s given us every reason to lift up our heads and say, God, You’re on the throne and we’re Yours, and we’re trusting You! Praise God!
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June 4, 2023 - No. 1600
“What is Happening?” Part One
Broadcast #1600
June 4, 2023
June 4, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1600 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’m just gonna start sharing some of the thoughts that I’ve had and if it doesn’t…if the Lord isn’t in it, hopefully I’ll have the discernment. If I don’t, please speak up. We want to hear from the Lord this morning. If somebody else really feels like they have something, now would be a good time…so, praise God!
All right. I guess many people’s thoughts these days have gone to a simple subject, what is happening? It’s obvious that this year has been a year of turmoil and trouble on many fronts, and I believe the Lord wants us to have an understanding, not just of doctrine as a theoretical, somewhere-out-here, bunch of ideas, but as something that is a real picture of what God is doing and where we’re at in history.
And it’s obvious that there is, you know, a lot of things have been upset. Our concept of normal has disappeared. And, we’re having to just look to the Lord, walk by faith. That’s a good thing, because God is faithful, isn’t He? But we’re at a time in history that I believe God wants us to understand.
You know, years ago, when Sue and I first came and some of us, some of you were here, and some others came in around the same general time period, we saw…we went through a period when God was revealing things in a very spectacular way.
And, I thank God that we never went to seed on the supernatural side of it, because always the witness of the Spirit and the witness of scripture took precedence. But I believe God took things that we find in the pages of scripture and brought them to life and said, hey, it’s happening now.
And so, it was common when I first…when we first came to hear messages that were geared to what’s happening and what is the end of the age going to look like? And I don’t think we need to get away from that. I don’t think we need to just talk only about that, but I believe we have to have a sense as we go along.
I think a lot of us, in those days, felt like, well, we’re right…it’s just gonna happen, like five years at the most. Then the Lord’s gonna come and it’s all gonna be over. Well, guess what? The Lord doesn’t work on our timetable, but He works on His and His is certain. And it’s just as certain as the things that He showed us.
But one of the things…there are two threads that I see coming together. One of them is simply the condition of people. We see a pattern throughout history, of God reaching out to men and men responding one of two ways, and usually it’s the great majority that respond in a negative way, and it’s a small minority, a remnant, that says, yes Lord, I surrender. And throughout history we have seen that.
You know, from the very beginning we see God’s heart. When Adam and Eve fell for the temptation, they deliberately made a choice to join and to listen to Satan’s wisdom, and to rebel against what God had told them. They felt a separation from God.
What did God do about it? The Lord was seeking after them. He went after them and began to make provision, didn’t He? And, we know, of course, that the Lord knew all about this, knew it was gonna happen and planned for it.
But you come down a few centuries later, and you find the condition of the world in Noah’s day. These are things we’ve talked about many times. I want to just pull threads together today. The thoughts, every imagination of men’s hearts was, what? Only, “…only evil continually.” (KJV). It wasn’t like, well, I’m kind of leaning this way, but there’s still a capacity…they reached a point where there was no more capacity for people to hear God’s voice.
Do you realize that happens? That people can get in a condition where they can no longer hear God’s voice. They make a choice. And so, we see the world of that day being judged, and we see a remnant being preserved perfectly through the flood. Thank God!
But yet, coming out of that, immediately the Lord was foreshadowing what was gonna happen. I know what’s in man, I know what he’s made of, I know this is gonna…he’s gonna turn away. I won’t destroy the world by a flood again, but I know what’s coming.
And so, we see this pattern throughout history of God dealing, like with the nation of Israel and yet they rebelled. He sent prophets and He waited and He held off judgment and they still rebelled and kept going the wrong direction. Finally, judgment fell.
We see the nation of Israel being utterly destroyed by the Romans after Jesus warned…and yet His heart was expressed in the words of Jesus. O Jerusalem! You wouldn’t listen to the prophets! “How often would I have gathered…as a hen gathereth her chickens…and ye would not!” You wouldn’t listen! You wouldn’t heed what I said. And so, judgment is coming. You’re gonna be abandoned to judgment.
You know, we see the principle of what happens expressed in Romans chapter 1, a scripture we’ve read many times, as to why God’s wrath comes. I mean, we know He’s a God of love, and yet, we know He’s a God of wrath. You can’t have it…you can’t just ignore that side of it. It’s a reality. This world is headed for catastrophe! It is headed for a judgment! It is headed for the wrath of God being poured out upon man!
Why? Is it because this is the way God just wants it to be and He’s just getting a kick out of this? Oh, no. Verse 18…familiar scriptures. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who…” (NIV). Do what? “…Who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” It’s not an absence of truth. It is, I don’t want to hear that. I reject that. I make a choice here between the truth that I know and what I want to do. There’s a spirit of rebellion.
So he goes on and says, “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile…” worthless, useless, “…and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
“Therefore…” You see the choices being made. See what they’re doing is not ignorance, it’s rebelling against what they know, saying we’re gonna do it our way. “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity…” and so forth, “…for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.” And it goes on to elaborate what the result is, and you see a world dominated by selfish people in rebellion against God and all it does is create chaos everywhere.
( congregational amens ).
And one of the things that we’re observing…I mean, how many of you have listened to some item on the news where someone has expressed a thought, a belief, and you’ve said, what planet are they on? That’s insanity! How in the world is it possible for a human being to actually believe such nonsense? Well, this is the reason.
We are seeing…and I believe…I was gonna say the final generation. I don’t know the timetable, but we are careening through the last hour of earth’s history in my judgment and I believe God has revealed this to us. We are in that last period. The countdown to judgment is on.
Well, what should we be expecting? If that’s the case, what is going to be the condition of mankind in this period of time, but a rebellion against God, a choice to say, no, to the God of heaven, and yes, to me and what I want. That’s what is dominating people’s hearts and conditions. You want to understand what’s behind all of the turmoil that we see? That’s a major thread, is it not? That’s what’s going on.
But obviously, that’s only part of it, isn’t it? Because we’re not talking about men who simply live in a vacuum and it’s either me or God. There is a kingdom of darkness that rules over the affairs of this world. It began when Lucifer, a servant of God with great abilities, chose to rebel against God. He said…his ambition became, I will be like the Most High. I’m not content just to do what He says, I’m gonna step over here, I’m gonna be my own god, thank you very much.
And he succeeded…I don’t know if it all happened at once or over a period of time, but he succeeded in leading one-third of the angels in rebellion with him. And we see throughout the pages of scripture, glimpses of the reality of the simple fact that there is kingdom which you and I cannot see with natural eyes, that rules in the affairs of men.
Now, thank God, that He’s over that, that His purpose is the one that will prevail! But when you’re talking about the world system, you are talking about a literal kingdom that provides the inspiration behind world affairs. So, we’re not just dealing with people, we’re dealing with a satanic agenda. From the beginning, his aim, is like I say, to be like the Most High, to absolutely rule, unchecked, unchallenged upon this globe.
And he’s tried it over and over again, and we see this constant battle going on behind the scenes where the devil is allowed to do all kinds of things to raise up great nations. Then we see God putting them down, God sending judgment, God intervening here and there. One kingdom will rise up and be filled up with great power and trample over nations, and God said, all right, it’s time. We’re gonna raise up somebody else and your day is over. There’s always this intervention.
You know, you get the glimpse in Daniel that we’ve referred to a number of times over the years, of how Daniel was praying and God sent an angel to Daniel. But, there was a three-week delay between the time he began to pray and that angel came with the answer that he was looking for.
Now what was the cause of that? Why was there a three-week delay? Because he was…there was a Prince of Persia with whom he had to do battle. In fact, he had to have help come down so that he could do battle with this prince.
Now, do you think that was a human being? No, no, no. That was the real power behind the empire. This was a literally…there was a government of Lucifer and there was a kingdom called Persia, and through that kingdom you saw the inspiration come down to the people who were involved.
So, let me just go back to some of the things the Lord revealed to us, and I’m just praying the Lord will help me not to try to cover too much ground. But, one of the things the Lord revealed to us, in those days, concerning the loosing of Satan…remember that? And it was specific, that this was the last loosing of Satan before the end of all things.
Now you’ve got a lot of people that will look at Revelation 20 and they will see a future, earthly kingdom, a political, military kingdom ruled by Jesus from Jerusalem lasting a literal thousand years. Well, they don’t understand the book of Revelation is put in language that is meant to be symbolic, but it’s symbolic of things that are very real. Saying it’s symbolic doesn’t mean it’s just vague. It’s real! There is a kingdom, there is a binding, there is a loosing of Satan. But we have seen that. It is history to us.
I’ve said this before, just to be…I don’t know, humorous, maybe. Poor humor, but nonetheless, you show me a beast with seven heads and ten horns, crawling up on a beach somewhere, ready to take over the world, and I will show you a future political kingdom lasting exactly a thousand years.
There is a reign, there is a binding of Satan that took place at the cross. Jesus gained the victory over Satan! He paraded him in defeat, as we read in Colossians chapter 2. There was a victory parade when…when you see the Gospel, you see demons absolutely bound, Jesus said that He would build His church, “…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (KJV).
The gates of hell represent the gates of his kingdom where he keeps people prisoner! This is not a neutral world. If you are ever saved, you will be rescued from a very real power. You have no power to escape that apart from Christ and the Gospel!
( congregational amens ).
When you come to Christ you are rescued from the power of darkness and translated, “…into the kingdom of his dear Son.” There are gates that he would place between you and that victory, but God has the power to breach those gates and rescue every one that He has foreseen. Every one of His elect will be rescued, and brought out. In order to do that, He had to win a victory.
Do you think the devil would have been able, if he rules over this world, to simply stand by…or that he would have just put up with the Gospel going out to the ends of the world? Obviously, he’s been allowed to oppose it. But he has not been able to stop it! The Gospel has gone where God has purposed it!
Yes, it has gone in the face of persecution, it’s gone in the face of resistance. But Satan, if he had his way, would stamp it out, end it forever, unite the world under his dominion and that would be the end of it.
But Jesus said to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” (NIV). And that’s what has happened. Thank God! I’ll tell you, when this binding in Revelation 20:7 took place. It had to do with one thing. It was to keep him from deceiving the nations any more until the thousand years were ended.
The thousand years is just a symbolic period. God doesn’t put stuff in the scriptures so we can calculate dates. People have done that to their shame over and over and over again. I don’t know when this is happening. I haven’t got a copy of God’s schedule, but He does. He doesn’t tell us to figure it out. He tells us to trust Him and be ready.
But anyway, there was a specific thing he was not allowed to do which was to unite the world under his dominion. So what happens when the thousand years are over? “When the thousand years are over…” verse 7, “…Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to gather them for battle.”
And so forth, and it goes on and talks about the fact that they gather and they come against the camp of the saints. You’ve got this imagery of, probably not a lot of people left at that point. I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole lot of people wind up going to heaven by the upper-taker…I mean, by the undertaker…the upper-taker, too. You understand.
A lot of people are gonna die for their faith in years to come. A lot of people are doing it right now. But I’ll tell you, God’s gonna get us every one there. The end is certain. Praise God for His promises!
But here you’ve got a picture of Satan somehow being allowed to bring the world to a place where he’s got them united against God. And he’s just about to snuff out the last little bit of the influence of saints, even their presence in the world! We’ve got it! We’ve got the victory in our hands. We’re just…ready to pounce…we’re poised and ready to pounce. Praise God! Anyway, then what happens? “But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” Praise God!
God knows exactly when to do what. You know, another scripture that the Lord used many times, and has over the years, in 2nd Thessalonians 2. And I believe we are seeing this play out. Paul is writing and he’s writing concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him. So this is about the coming of the Lord. He’s not talking about God’s gonna make you vanish into thin air and then trouble’s gonna start. This is the point at which He comes, is what he’s gonna be talking about.
Then he immediately says…well, he says first of all…apparently somebody had been writing to him…writing to them and saying, this is what Paul is teaching. You need to listen to this. He says, wait a minute, that’s not from me. I didn’t send that. “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”
There’s more to this than some singular individual. This is what we’re seeing unfold before us. I believe with all my heart, the rebellion it was talking about certainly fit what the Lord was showing us in the late 1960s. There was a spirit of rebellion against anybody that…against the existing order, against anybody over 30, don’t trust them. Tear down the system. Replace it with…you know, love and peace and joy and drugs and sex, I guess. But whatever it was, we want to do what we want to do. We’re tearing everything down.
And I’ll tell you, you had some of the same things going on then that you do now…militia marching in the streets. I mean, that was happening in neighborhoods near us. I don’t know what it was like here. But it was a terrible spirit of rebellion.
Do you think that just kind of went away? Or do you think it has been percolating in different ways through our society ever since? Those of you who lived in the 50s, let’s say, especially, and you can remember them…I don’t mean if you were two years old. But I mean, you remember the 50’s? Does the American of today even begin to resemble? No resemblance whatsoever! And it’s because the people involved had begun to make choices to not listen to the voice of God. There is a rebellion against God. That’s what you see unfolding here.
So there is a man of lawlessness being revealed. “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” You’ve got all kinds of stuff where…they’re gonna build a new temple in Jerusalem. God’s temple is not built with human hands! God designed human beings to be His temple.
We were made to be a house for God to live in! Your body, if you’re a believer, your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. You don’t belong to yourself, you belong to Him. We were made for a Holy God to live in us, to empower us to be all that He made us as individuals to be.
We’re not clones. Every one of us has our own individual personality and abilities and all those things, but the energy needs to come from God. That’s what we were made for. But here you have a rebellion going on, in which men say, we’re not going along with You! We are going to be our own gods!
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May 28, 2023 - No. 1599
“Whose Life is It?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1599
May 28, 2023
May 28, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1599 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Somehow, as I read about these foolish virgins, I just can’t get away from the simple thought, they didn’t get that. Somehow, they thought they could be Christians, getting ready for the coming of the Lord, and all it was…see, they had their religion externalized. It’s stuff I do and stuff I believe and stuff I profess to believe. But…human nature is so relentless at wanting its own way, it will deceive you into thinking that I can do Christianity my way. Now, I’m not your judge. But is this truth?
( congregational amens ).
And, why would God speak words? Why would He want words like this to be spoken? Because His love reaches out. How many times did He reach out to Israel and say, why do you want to die? Listen and live.
I’ll tell you, if anybody who is lost in the judgement, you’re gonna get to that point over the body and blood of Jesus Christ. That body that was broken for you, in bearing your sins, you’re gonna do it by spitting on that. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. That’s what it is. I’ll tell you, there has to come a time when we surrender.
You know, we’re talking about baptism lately, and I believe, maybe this plays into this. There has to come a time when we reckon…it’s just you and Him. How many of you remember that movie “The Encounter”? Yeah. That carried that theme. There were several lives that Jesus needed to have a personal encounter, and the issue in every life was different.
One man rejected it, in the end, and he perished. But others had to come to the realization…one of them was a woman who thought she was a fine Christian, but she’d never surrendered her heart. She didn’t belong to the Lord. She was trying to take from this and take from this and cobbled herself together a religion that made her feel okay, probably looked okay to most people looking on! But God was looking down here, and He said, you’re still running your life. It belongs to you. You have never given it to me.
I mean, think about it. In the condition we are, what if God took people who had unchanged hearts and deposited them in a new creation? How long do you think it would be pure and good? I mean, get real! We need a 100 percent miraculous transformation that only He can do. And the only possible answer to that is to say, Lord, I surrender my life.
Baptism is a symbol of death, where we are literally laying down our lives. It’s not mine anymore. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. I’m burying that one. Lord, give me the new one.
I get that the process of becoming conformed to that is a process and that we’re very imperfect. Don’t let the Devil use that against you and say, well, I’m as good as they are. In the first place, you might be pointing at somebody who’s in the same condition you are! But even if you’re pointing at someone who genuinely knows the Lord but is flawed and God’s still working on them, there’s an eternal difference between somebody who’s had a brand-new heart put in here, and someone who hasn’t and who’s acting the part.
And I’ll tell you, there are young people that grow up, and we’ve watched some of them. They make their choice. They go. Thank God that sometimes God will take them out there in the briars and bushes and then, bring them back. Thank God! But, oh God, how much grief, regret could be spared. I pray that young people will listen to what Ricky said the other night.
But it’s not just young people. Do you believe Jesus was telling the truth in this parable? Is He picturing people who are just out in the world somewhere? No, He is picturing people who are still, at this late, dark hour…they’re saying, I’m here. Here’s my lamp, or my lantern, whatever it is, that represents my testimony. I am a follower of Jesus. I am here waiting. I am ready to do my duty right here as part of this custom.
But they weren’t ready, were they? What was lacking? They didn’t have the oil. They didn’t have the thing that would give light and reality to that testimony, that really enabled it to be real.
As I say, I don’t want to try to make something about every little detail, but you get what He’s getting at here. The tragedy, is not just the people of the world, the worst tragedy, in a way, is people who are professing at that hour to be followers of Jesus, and they get to the end and He says, I don’t know you.
It’s a time we need to look inside. And I’m very conscience as I do this that one of the things the Devil does is to focus people’s attention on themselves. And sometimes, he will take, oftentimes, he will take somebody and just beat them over the head, you’re not one of them, you’re not one of them, you’re not one of them.
The chances are, if that’s the case…the chances are he knows you are, and doesn’t want you to have any confidence in Him. He wants you to measure yourself by your performance, by the things you see wrong in yourself that are in need, and say, well, you couldn’t be a Christian because…this is not aimed at you.
We need to examine ourselves, but when I’m talking about examining ourselves, I’m talking about the heart. What does your heart really want? Are you trying to have Jesus and your life too? If you’re in a state of imperfection, which we all are, but you have given your heart to Jesus, you start looking at Him more than you’re looking in here, and you say, Lord…I see a need, but I know You’re the answer, and I refuse to be deterred from looking to You, because You are not only the author of my faith, You’re the finisher too. And You will finish what You started. My hope is no longer in myself. It’s in You. You have everything! You are everything I need!
But the foolish didn’t get that. They’re still thinking that they’re okay somehow, and they didn’t find out until it was too late. You know, throughout all of this passage, where the disciples asked Jesus about His coming and all of that, the one theme that comes out over and over again is, be ready!
There is never a suggestion that you could live your life and then, recognize things are getting to a point where I need to get ready, so now, I’m gonna get ready. It doesn’t work that way. What you’re really saying, if that’s the way you’re looking at it, is I’m in charge. I’m gonna do what I want to do in my own self-interest, and when things get bad, my self-interest is in self-preservation, therefore I’m gonna jump over in Jesus’ camp, and it’ll be okay.
Good luck with that. Do you see what’s really going on, who’s really on the throne of your heart? You see, there’s only one time that we have…I say one time…the key to coming to Him is listening while He speaks. Hear Him while He speaks. Several scriptures, that the exact wording doesn’t come to my mind…but one of them is, that we’ve heard so many times is in Hebrews 3, where the writer is so concerned with people who have heard about Jesus, but his burden is that they have stopped short.
Is that not the condition of these virgins? They’ve heard about Him. There’s a certain amount of attachment, but they’ve stopped short. Well, his example of that was the people in the wilderness. God did some amazing things to get them out of Egypt, to deliver them. You know, when they went out, they didn’t have a lot of choice, did they? God had plagued the Egyptians to the point where they said, get out of here, for heaven’s sake, we’re gonna die. And so, they went.
They got as far as the Red Sea, and they saw this impassable water, and they started complaining. And God brought them through that. Then, of course, they rejoiced. Oh, praise God. If you’d looked at them right then, you would have said wow, what an awesome group of believers!
Three days later…you know, one thing after another. What God was doing, was demonstrating the true condition of their heart. They did not understand. They did not really believe in Him. All they were doing was acting according to present-tense self-interest. I’m in charge! And every time there was an opportunity to turn in unbelief, that’s the direction that they went.
I’ll tell you, God is going to allow conditions to be such in your life, that it will prove whether your heart has ever been turned over to Him.
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, if it ever is, you’ll wonder why you waited. Do you remember Brother Thomas’ testimony along that line? God had spoken to him so many times in his life, and he just kept right on going, and went from bad to worse, went through so many things. Then, when he finally just surrendered…why did I wait so long? It wasn’t the surrender to a tyrant who wanted to abuse him. It was the surrender to the source of all love.
Yes, we have hard times in this world, but there is an underlying peace. There’s an underlying assurance. There’s an underlying love that carries us through the darkest of times, because He walks with us to carry us through. Oh, it’s worth everything to be born again. It’s worth everything to give your heart and your life to Jesus.
I thought about another passage that we’ve used, we’ve heard many times over in Matthew 7, because this is an example of the same thing we’re talking about here. It starts out with a wonderful promise about prayer, ask and seek and knock and all of that.
But then down in verse 13, you get into another subject where Jesus says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (NIV).
Then He goes on, and He talks about religious teachers. It’s obvious there’s a connection between the teachers and what they’re teaching, and how people are approaching the idea of being a Christian and serving God. You have churches today that are filled with people who have never been confronted in their heart level by Jesus Christ! And yet, there they are singing the hymns, going through the rituals, whatever their particular church is about.
Oh, thank God, there’s a remnant. He knows them that are His. He won’t lose them. But there’s a wide gate out there. And what that wide gate essentially boils down to is, you can have Jesus and your life, too. Let’s bring it down to the common denominator. I don’t care which form it is. You can have Jesus and a hope of heaven, and you can do it your way.
Well, lets see how that works out. You come down to verse 21 and you see what the real issue was. “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
See the difference between somebody who calls Him Lord and says and does, outwardly, the right things, but He’s not really in charge. There’s never been a real surrender. And so they have found a way, religiously, to feel good about themselves, and believe somehow, I’m okay, and yet, they’re still doing their thing.
If you are truly His, if you are truly one of those who is ready for that day, you’re not your own. You don’t own yourself. I don’t own myself. I’ve got a merciful, patient God who works with my heart. I wish I did everything always right. I don’t. He’s still working on me, but He is working on me. And there’s something down here that the bottom line is, yes, Lord, yes, Lord. I’ll tell you, that’s something He puts in there.
But if you’re always, no, it’s my life. No, I’m gonna do it my way, I’ll tell you, you’ve got a bad road ahead. But the scary thing is, when people can get to this place that He describes…well, in Matthew 7, I better finish that, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom oh heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
So, here’s what Jesus said looking forward. “Many…” not a few, but, “…many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?”
I mean, that’s beyond what people could generally say here. I mean, you see the level of deception that’s going on here, where someone could literally feel like, Lord, I’ve taught Sunday School all my life. I’ve done this…what do You mean I’m not one of Yours?
Well, the problem was they were saying the right thing, maybe even doing many…commendable things! But the heart has never been surrendered. Every time the voice of God would come, they would find a way to…yeah, but I can do it this way. Oh no, I can do it this way. I’m okay.
I’m not your judge. I can’t see your heart, but all I can do is put it out there, and let God take His Word and apply it where it needs to apply. That’s God’s job. He’s pretty good at it. Praise God!
“All that the Father gives Me will come….” Do you know who they are? The Word says in John 6, that everyone will be taught of God. Everyone who hears His Word and listens, everyone who listens to His Word…you get the idea of what He’s talking about there? It’s not just okay, I heard it. This is, I’m listening. I’m taking it in. I’m allowing it to change me. I am submitting to Your Word, to Your truth.
Everyone who hears it with that kind of a heart, they’re the ones that come. So you see, there’s perfect balance between God reaching out and man having to reach back and say, yes, Lord. There has to be that response.
But somehow, you’ve got a class of people here who came in thinking all they had to do was be religious. So they said all these things. Lord, we did all this. “Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
The Greek word is ‘lawless.’ It means I’m not under anybody. I’m not subject to anybody, but me. There is nothing out here that can tell me what to do. That’s human nature. And boy, does that rise up in young people. But it rises up in all of us.
You know, I remember being at the age when I knew everything. And I didn’t need older people to tell me any stuff, anything anymore. I had it all figured it out. I don’t know that I ever quite got to that point, but you know the feelings that you have at a certain age. We all were that way, if you’re older.
But oh, God, we don’t know. We’re in a world that is under the deception of a wicked kingdom that is determined to use, abuse and destroy. And God’s heart is to reach out and to tell people the truth. Unless you repent, you’ll perish. Unless Jesus really is Lord, many people are gonna come to that day and discover, I never knew you.
He did not say, I knew you, and then you messed up and I stopped knowing you, I turned away from you. I never did. Jesus said, “I know My sheep. My sheep know Me.” And I know them. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” I’ll tell you, there’s so much hope and rest.
It’s not based, thankfully, upon my ability or any goodness in me. There is none. In fact, that’s the problem. We still want to assert that there is something worthwhile and good that we can bring into the Kingdom of God. We can help God out and serve Him.
And the reality is, the only way we can come is as a broken sinner, looking to Jesus and realizing my only hope is that He took my place. He got what I deserved. What put Him on that cross was my willful rejection of His voice, my asserting of my life, my will. That’s what put Him on that cross.
And I’ll tell you, if you’re gonna come to Him, there’s gonna have to be that time when you just say…we’ve said this expression so many times. I’m all in. I am 100 percent with Jesus. I come, not as someone who can present some righteousness to Him and think He’s gonna accept me, I come as a broken sinner on the ground that He has established. He will accept me. He will love me. He will give me a hope and a future and all the glorious promises that are in here, if I’ll just surrender.
But you see what that means. It’s not your life anymore. How many of you who have really come to that place would go back and say, no, I messed up. It should have been my life. I want to do my thing. I lost out.
We heard some wonderful testimonies this week of people who understood. They came to Him, and they know what it means. And you know how I feel about trying to make people do something publicly. I’m not totally…I don’t have any rule, but I know that you can bring people to an emotional state. It’s too easy to do that. And then, people feel like they’ve got to do something or they’ve got to conform to something if somebody else does it. This has got to come down to you and Him!
And folks, we need to pray that God will take His Word, and bring somebody so relentlessly, certainly to a place of confrontation. It’s a loving confrontation. It’s not a tyrant trying to ruin your life. It’s Someone who desperately wants to reconcile you to Himself…to rescue you from certain destruction.
But there’s a cost, and you need to count it. Which do you want? This is what it comes down to. Is it my life or His life? That choice, regardless of whether you just go out and do your thing in an open sense, or whether you sit here and profess something that you don’t have in your heart…that’s the choice. That is what the Gospel comes down to. If I come to Him and I truly repent of my…it’s not just of the stuff I did. I’m sorry I did it.
This is, I am repenting of my sinfulness, my nature, everything about me, Lord. I need a new heart. I need a new life. I need to be cleansed and forgiven! But I need You to come in and make me somebody different, and lead me down a different path. Lord, I surrender. I leave one life in the grave, and I take up another one by faith. I’m trusting in Your promise, Lord. That’s what it comes down to.
What is your choice? In terms of how this applies, who it applies to, that’s God’s business. I’m so thankful He’s faithful. I’m so thankful that He will…He’s able to work. He’s able to do more than we can imagine. But I just pray, this morning, that whoever this is for, that you’ll hear it.
There has to come a time when you surrender your heart to Him and you become His for time and eternity, by His power and His mercy alone. Oh, you’ll never regret it if you ever come down that road and you ever go through that door. Don’t stop short of that. You will regret it, bitterly, at a time when there will be no way to go back. The Lord wants to put out His Word today to stop that while there’s a chance.
These virgins were not ready. When the time came, there was no opportunity. Jesus didn’t say, wait and then get ready. He said ‘be’ ready. Are you? Praise God!
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May 21, 2023 - No. 1598
“Whose Life is It?” Part One
Broadcast #1598
May 21, 2023
May 21, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1598 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t know, lately I’ve been thinking about…you know, a word for God’s people to help us in our battles. But I don’t know, I keep coming back to something that I feel like is necessary. And I want to go back to a passage in Matthew 25, that really, from which the name of the ministry that we are a part of was taken.
And I feel like there’s a need for the Lord’s Word to be spoken plainly, because it’s one thing to come and participate and sing the songs and do all of that, but I’ll tell you, that’s not enough. There’s something else the Lord must accomplish, and that is highlighted in this particular passage. And I’m just, for right now, going to read it.
And this was…in the context, Jesus was talking about His coming, the end of the age, some of the things that were gonna happen, and He gave little snippets of, this is a picture of it, this is a picture of it, and so forth, different aspects of that coming, and this is one of them.
It says, “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.” (NIV). Now, just to stop and say, this was Jesus taking from a custom of the time. When people had weddings, there were certain rituals they went through.
I remember being overseas and observing some of these and they’re quite different from ours. I remember one time, in India, in a hotel, waking up to what sounded like gunfire. It turned out to be firecrackers. And part of the tradition there was that the bridegroom would arrive on a…this was a Saturday morning. And he would arrive with a wedding party and they would shoot off firecrackers as he arrived. Well, I’m glad that’s what it was!
But, in this case, there was a custom where some young maidens would gather and would escort the groom to the wedding feast. And so that’s what He’s…He’s taking off on that. He’s gonna draw a certain lesson from…from that custom, okay?
But in this case, of the ten, “Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
“At midnight the cry rang out: Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him! Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out. No, they replied, there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.”
( coughing ).
Excuse me. We’re getting there. Thank the Lord. All right? “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. Sir! Sir! They said, Open the door for us! But he replied, I tell you the truth, I don’t know you. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”
And so, there are many, very sobering things that the Lord communicated to His disciples about the time of His coming. And, I want to avoid trying to make something out of every little thing. I think we can go to an extreme in some of that and I undoubtedly have in the past. But there are some very clear lessons.
One of them is the sense of being ready, that, when the Lord…the events that will overtake the end of the age, and especially the coming of Christ, will be a total shock to this world! It will be, as Jesus said in one place, when people least expect it. And we know that the condition of the world is not going to be a good one.
He pictures that in many places, where the days of Noah, for example, are given as an example. And you know, we know what that period was like when God said that the imaginations, what people were thinking, what they believed to be true, what they lived for, every bit of it was darkness. It was against God. Their imagination was, in His words, ‘evil.’
And it wasn’t just occasional mess-ups, this was, “…evil continually.” (KJV). This was a direction. This was a deliberate choice that had been made by people to reject what they knew about God, and to simply live for their own earthly desires, and as far as they were concerned, that’s what life was about. That’s all there was. And so, if they even heard Noah and his warning, they obviously dismissed it. And, you don’t even get the sense that there was any interest, any movement going on. So, I think that alone is a picture of the end of the age.
And we talk about darkness being…that being a time of darkness. It certainly is. You know, in the New Testament Paul warns of a time when, “…because they refused to love the truth…” (NIV). See, that’s the reasoning. That’s what’s behind this. This isn’t God saying, oh, I’m done with you. This is men making a choice, saying I will embrace what I want to embrace. I reject You. There’s a deliberate choice being made. I want that to get very clear today. There is a choice.
But what is God’s response? Finally, it is to take His hands off. Now, how many people can be saved if God’s not involved?
( congregational response ).
Zero! See, we are dependent upon His influence, His strength, His grace, His working with the heart. When we say no to that, there’s nothing left. That’s a condition we’re watching unfold in the world. I mean, how many of you, who are in my generation, could have imagined the world and the climate…the moral climate in which we live today? It was absolutely unthinkable!
I mean, we were worried about things like chewing gum in school. I mean…I’m exaggerating a little, but that was the truth! That was one of the big deals! You got sent to the principal’s office if you did something like that. And you know, there were obviously more than that to that age but…the idea that it’s not only that there is evil, but that it is being celebrated. And woe to anybody that says different! We are in a different moral climate and it is the result of men rejecting what they know about God and saying I will do what I want!
( congregational amens ).
And so, this is part of the picture that He paints and He says it’s gonna be like the days of Noah. And so, I guess the burden that I have and the concern is for people here! Because we’re going to see and we are seeing, as time unfolds, we are seeing people make choices.
( congregational response ).
And on the one hand, I don’t want to stress over it, as if somebody makes a choice then it’s my fault. If that were the case, Jesus was a total failure. How many thousands and thousands and thousands of people followed Him, celebrating His miracles, who utterly rejected what He said, and went on as they were? But see, Jesus wasn’t stressed out about it, was He? He knew that everyone that the Father had given Him was going to come.
Now, you can go to the…I don’t know…this is not organized, and I’m sure it will sound that way. But, I don’t want to paint the picture that God just arbitrarily picks people. There’s a reason. There is something going on. There is an interaction between a human heart and God, where, yes, we’re dependent on Him, but He is, “…not willing that any should perish…” (KJV). He wants everybody to come. There is a reaching out of God’s heart to a human heart. It’s not about external stuff. It’s about the heart.
And I’ll tell you, when the heart says no, there comes a time when God steps back and says, I will leave you to your delusion. It is a fixed belief that just absolutely has such control over a person, they’re absolutely sure they’re right, and they’re wrong. Did not Solomon, with his gift of divine wisdom, say that “There is a way….” It seems right.
I mean, you know, if you talk to somebody and you can’t convince them. They’re sure that they are right! And yet, looking on, you know…my God, you are in delusion! You have no clue what’s going on. You’re headed down a path to a cliff…surely, it must sadden God’s heart. I know it does…to see the course of people.
You know, it says about the rich, young ruler who turned and walked away. Jesus explained that he was gonna have to give away his riches. Now that was not a blanket kind of thing, but for him it was. For him it was the issue of his life, his heart, his will, everything about him was wrapped up in his possessions. And the idea that in order to have eternal life he had to give that up, well, I’ll choose this. What a foolish choice!
But it’s the choice everyone makes, in one form or another, if they say no to Him. Here’s a God who has fashioned us for an incredible purpose: that we should know Him, who is the source of life, who is the source of love, who is the source of everything that is possibly good in the universe…and He longs to share all of that, to leave us with our uniqueness, our individuality. He doesn’t squelch that and make robots out of us. But He…but when His life is joined to our uniqueness, it makes something that is incredible! That’s where He’s going!
But that’s what the human race, in its fallen, deluded condition, is saying, no, to. And I started to talk about the fact that I believe God’s burden is about people that are here. We see, from time to time, people will just walk away…and what’s going on? It’s, I want to live my life. It’s my life!
You know, that’s the issue. Whose life is it? You know, you can do all kinds of things and you can dress up the issue any way you want to…but when it comes right down to it, it’s a question of ownership. And the human race is so natured, that it will take the life that it finds itself in possession of, and say, well, this is my life. I feel all kinds of desires arising within me so my purpose is to simply gratify those, to follow my heart, to do as I please. And that becomes the guiding principle of their lives.
But many times people will come in and be exposed. They might grow up in it. They might just come in, and they are exposed to the truth, that you were not created to be your own god. It doesn’t work that way. There’s a bad end, and we see the fruit of people seeking to be their own god in the condition of the world and the wickedness that’s here.
And God’s voice, I believe, is still going out, yearning, to reach out to people who are making choices and don’t understand…lest they…I mean, there’s no one that’s gonna be able to say, on that day, God, you just picked me to go to hell. I didn’t have a chance. And He’s gonna point back, do you remember, do you remember, do you remember, when I spoke to you and you made excuse and you sidestepped it and you found a way to do what you wanted to do?
But one of the ways that people respond to the Gospel, if you will, is to be exposed to it and to walk away and say, it’s my life, I will not stay where that voice is being proclaimed. I will go out. I will do my thing. Oh my, they have no idea! “…When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them…and they shall not escape.”
That’s how serious this is. This is not about religion. It’s not about the Bible Tabernacle or Midnight Cry Ministries, or all these things. You know, we have our ideas and our external…we externalize stuff. Did not God say to Samuel, men look on the outward appearance, don’t they?
See, we go by what we see on the outside. But God looks at the heart. We probably…I’m sure we have people here that are pretty flawed. God’s still got a lot of work to do on you. He does on me, for sure. But you know, if your heart’s given to the Lord, He’s gonna take care of all that.
( congregational amens ).
But you might have somebody else, and if you look at them, you say, oh, aren’t they a wonderful Christian? But they’ve learned to act the part. They’ve constructed this external persona, if you will, and it’s kind of like a mask they put on. Now, if they suddenly were to take a trip to Las Vegas you might see something different, if nobody else was around. But you know what I’m talking about. What we’re about here is not a matter of conformity to a religion. It’s got to go way beyond that.
You know, as I was thinking about all this, I guess my focus came back to the virgins because they…I don’t know how long this is gonna go, but I’m just gonna look to the Lord. But here you have people who by all profession, all appearance, in a time of great darkness, were nonetheless all together. As far as anybody could tell, they were all waiting for the bridegroom. Anybody looking on could not have told the difference.
And that is a scary thought. It’s not just those “bad people,” those foolish people out there who reject the Gospel and go live for their lusts. There are people sitting in church pews, who profess to know the Lord, who profess to be walking with Him, ready for His coming, expecting to be received, only to find out at the end, they really weren’t ready.
And how easy is it, for what we do here, to never get beyond the external? Now, I’m partly thinking about young people growing up. And I understand that there has got to come a time—there’s got to come a time when it becomes personal.
I understand that when you’re young, for the most part, you’re gonna be going along with, you’re gonna be adopting what your parents tell you…if they’re a part of all this. You’re gonna be, in a sense, performing a part, and that’s all right, until God gets to that point. But there’s got to be a point, where you make a choice. Is it my life or is it His? Because there is no middle ground.
And the problem, I believe, with these people right here, these foolish virgins, they thought there was a middle ground. They didn’t understand. And I’ll tell you, it’s got to be something more than just, yay, Jesus, aren’t You wonderful, and all that. Yes, He is. Thank God! But do you know why? Do you know what it’s about, on a personal level?
You know, you can go along and you can sing the songs and hear about Jesus and all of that, without it ever really dawning on you what it means to be lost. Have you ever had the sense, in the depths of your heart, not just externals, but in your heart, oh, my God, I’m lost? If something doesn’t change, I’m gonna be lost.
That has to happen. It doesn’t have to be any particular kind of experience. It could be very quiet. It could be very demonstrative, very dramatic. The outside is not what matters. God is only looking for one thing. He’s looking for someone who comes face to face with the fact that you’re not ready. It’s still your life. You might be acting the part of a Christian and even professing to believe all of this, but your heart’s never been surrendered. He has never really come in.
You know, part of my reading, I guess, in the last couple of days, had me in Isaiah 53. What an amazing prophecy God gave through His servant, Isaiah, looking forward to the time of Christ. It was that prophecy, you remember, the Ethiopian eunuch was traveling back from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, and God sent Phillip on a special mission just to talk to that man. He was reading the scriptures, did not understand it. Do you know we need God to explain it to us? You can’t just unravel the scriptures with your mind. How many of you know that?
( congregational amens ).
God’s got to reveal it and take those words and impress them down here, not just here. They’ve got to become real. And he’s reading about this man, who’s suffering and what he’s suffered about, and his question was, is he talking about himself or somebody else? Who’s he talking about?
And so, there was the wide-open opportunity for Phillip to begin to explain. He’s talking about Jesus. He’s talking about something that just happened. Do you know why He died? I mean, it talks about a man who was despised, rejected by men. He suffered a horrible indignity…a death full of indignity. Humiliation, I guess, is the word I was looking for. Couldn’t have been anything worse, from a human standpoint that was inflicted upon Him.
And what was the reaction of the natural people around Him, as to why this was happening? Did they understand it? No! They thought He was getting what He deserved. This is a bad guy. God is making sure that He’s taken care of.
But do you know why He died? He died because of you. He died because of me.
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May 14, 2023 - No. 1597
“Dealing With Depression” Conclusion
Broadcast #1597
May 14, 2023
May 14, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1597 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: There are so many facets to this. I mean, you could go on and on and on, and I don’t want to go on and on and on. But I want the Lord to make this real to us, so that we can see…some of the characteristics of this. The self-centeredness is the first thing. But notice when he comes to this place where, all of a sudden, it seems like everything is crashing down. All he can see is the negative and he begins to focus on that.
Of course, fear is right there at the top of the list, isn’t it? I’ll tell you, fear is a real thing. It’s a real tool of the enemy. Paul talks about the spirit of fear. He was warning his young protégé, Timothy, about this problem, knowing, from his own experience, that he was going to be experiencing things that would make him afraid.
And he says, God has, “…not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and…” self-control. (KJV). I love that song they used in VBS last year. “Fear Is a Liar.” You know, most of the time, the things we’re afraid of never happen, anyway. But even if there’s something that’s real, that would cause us to fear…you know, we’re right back to what we talked about a few weeks ago when it’s facts versus faith, or faith versus facts.
I’ll tell you, there’s one thing that triumphs over all of the world’s facts, and that’s God’s purpose, God’s faith, trust in Him and all of that. God is greater than anything that could happen to you and me, because what happens is, the Devil will cause us to be focused on us and our needs…and our interests and all of that, and then cause us to feel like, I’m afraid, something bad is gonna happen, this and that is going to be happening. It could be whatever it is.
And that becomes the controlling, dictating influence in our lives. And all of a sudden, God and His purposes and God and His power have no bearing on the situation. And we are just controlled by that, and we react and we act.
That’s what he did—that’s what he did. God deliver us from allowing ourselves to be controlled by fear. It doesn’t mean you’ll never feel fear. If you’re telling me you never feel fear, you’re a liar. You’re the liar! But I’ll tell you, fear and the things that happen in this world do not dictate our well-being. They do not dictate who we are. They do not dictate what God has purposed.
If someone marches in here and machine-guns every one of us down, I’ll tell you, if you know the Lord, man, that is a one-way trip out of here! Now, that doesn’t mean we say, well, bring it on! You know, we want God’s purpose in God’s time. But I’ll tell you, we cannot lose.
“For to me…” Paul said, “…to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (NIV). How can you lose in that equation?
But oh, I’ll tell you, life has a way of suddenly descending on us and we get down into this self-absorbed mode, and suddenly we’re paralyzed.
Well, you know, when you feel that way and you’re wallowing in self-pity and fear and all of that, don’t you just love to run to parties and have a…no, what we want to do, by nature, is to go hide, to be alone. We don’t want to be with people.
Do you see a design in that, an evil design? Here God has designed us, by nature, for relationship, first of all, with Him, but with one another. And there are times in every one of our lives when we are in a weak, vulnerable place. God allows us to go, “…through the valley of the shadow of death…” sometimes. (KJV). We go through a river, though we are not drowned, we go through a fire, though we are not burned, but still, it has an emotional, it can have an emotional impact upon us.
I’ll tell you, if the Devil has brought you into a place where you are just consumed with negative thoughts, you need fellowship. You don’t need to walk around and pretend everything’s okay and then go hide in your closet again. You need to reach out.
We need to have a compassion one for another and not a critical spirit. We need to have a heart that says I’ve been there! I know what you’re feeling. Let’s stand together in this. God is on His throne. Nothing is out of His control. You need help.
But what did Elijah do? Servant, you stay here. I’m gonna go have a pity party in the desert, tell God how bad it is and just take my life. He went off by himself. God, do we need…we need to wake up and realize the Devil’s design in this. Love one another, reach out to one another. Be honest. If you’ve got a need, tell us. There’s no shame in honesty. We need to be able to stand one for another in this kind of a world. We need one another. We need the Lord!
God has designed us that way. That’s why the scriptures say, they tell us, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together…and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” What’s the purpose of that? So we can go through a form? No, it’s so that we can encourage one another, so that we can draw strength from one another and from Him.
So, there he goes. He’s out there, but he’s just sort of wallowing in his own self-pity. Do you see just a bit of pride in some of this, though? I’ve done all this. I don’t get this. I didn’t do anything to deserve what’s happened. I’ve been zealous. I’ve done…oh, God! If we have done anything, He’s the Doer. If you did it, it’s probably worthless, if that’s all it is. But Jesus, if He comes and He uses us, praise God, it’s Him, and His purposes do not fail.
Here he is looking at the circumstances and looking at the results. My God! If Jesus had looked at the results of His ministry, in terms of how many good, dedicated, true followers He had, man, He’d have given up and said, I’m going back to heaven. This ain’t working. But He had a revelation to know that, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never…” cast out. (NIV).
What a difference the perspective of truth makes! I’ll tell you, we need to lay down our pride and anything that we have that gets in the way. There are so many aspects…praise God! I’m gonna jump ahead. I don’t have this lined out, which is probably a good thing, in this case. But I’ll tell you, we just need the Lord, don’t we?
I’m trying to think what other thoughts that I especially wanted to emphasize. Well, I’ll tell you one of them. It came to me very plainly. It’s simply this. When we are busy wallowing, if you want to put it that way, when we are busy just focusing in such…the kind of thoughts that bring us into a depressed state, are we not simply meditating upon lies?
Think about what we’re doing. Would you be liable to sit there and say, oh no, they really did that to me, or this really happened, or this is the case…I’m sick, I’m dying, I’ve got this problem, I’ve got that problem, my bank account is empty. Those are facts! Don’t tell me they’re lies!
I’ll tell you what the lie is. The lie is not the fact itself. The lie is the Devil’s interpretation of that. That’s where the lie comes in. When we see a circumstance and the Devil tells us, that wouldn’t have happened if God really liked you. Or, if God was on His throne, why did He let this happen? You see the problem?
We sang a song, just a little bit ago, about desiring that the Lord would help us to see everything through His eyes, see our whole lives through His eyes. You see that? Do you think Jesus just went through a little bit? Yeah, but He saw it in terms of the purpose of God that went far beyond this world. He saw everything that happened to Him in those…in that light.
My God, did He have stuff that He could have been depressed about if He’d been of a mind to do it. If He’d listened to the voice of the enemy…You’re wasting Your time Jesus! They’re not listening to You. They have ulterior motives. Listen to these religious people. They’ve studied the Bible all their lives and they don’t get You at all. You’re wasting Your time with these people.
Of course, the Devil’s never told you any negative stuff about you, right? And here’s the problem, sometimes, in dealing with this. It’s far too easy to deal with it on a level that’s kind of superficial, way up here, when many times the need is way down here. If we come in, and we ‘do’ come to the Lord, with a history, we have learned from our experience in this life.
And not all of what we’ve learned is good. Some people have come out of terrible situations in homes. They’ve experienced abuse. They’ve experienced rejection. They’ve experienced a thousand and one things, that have totally colored their lives. They’ve been hurt badly by somebody and that wound is still way down here.
God, we need a Gospel that can get down into the depths of our beings and heal the brokenhearted. Can Jesus do that? Yes! But I’ll tell you, there are people who are carrying those kinds of burdens and you don’t just…you just don’t paint over it with a proof text. What’s the matter with you? Here’s what the Bible says. What’s the matter with you?
It doesn’t happen that easily. We need God to minister that truth in such a way that it gets down to where the need is and displaces the lie so that we can stand in truth, and that becomes the governing influence in our lives. It’s what God said and not what the devil said.
( congregational amens ).
God, help us to have compassion on one another and realize where we’re coming from, and the fact that this is a process. It’s wonderful to uphold truth, but there comes a time we’re gonna have to say, oh God, I need that truth moved from here [head] to here [heart]. You’re the only One who knows how to do that.
A lot of times, God’s gonna have to take us through difficult circumstances, so that we are willing to bring out this. Oh, how do we deal with pain? If there’s pain down in here, how do you deal with it, typically? Cover it up, deny it, pretend it isn’t there, put on a happy face.
Does that solve your problem? No, it doesn’t. It just makes it worse. And you wonder why we struggle. God wants us to come to Him as we are, with all that’s wrong, and say, Lord, You see, You see this wound. Lord, I bring it out into the light. I need You to help me to see it through Your eyes. You can help me to have compassion on the one who caused the wound, to see past what happened and not think of it so much in self-centered terms. You can heal that, Lord.
How much of this thing that we call depression is just beginning to wallow back into pain? And you wonder why you see people try to medicate their pain, with alcohol and with drugs and with something, anything to feel…to not feel that, to escape it, just for a little bit.
And then the Devil’s there pulling the strings and he’s saying, yeah, but your real solution is, you just need to leave this. Your pain is just too great. You’re worthless. You’re this, you’re that. Whatever it is that takes us down into that realm.
But what are we doing if we are just sitting there thinking about all that? Are we not just meditating on lies? What’s the fruit of meditating on lies, if it doesn’t just reinforce all that the devil has planted in there? You’re just like pouring fertilizer and water on the devil’s plantings.
You think maybe we just need to come to the Lord and meditate on His truth, and just seek Him and say, God, You’re the only One that can deal with this? Come in and replace it.
So, here’s this guy, and we talked about his pride, we talked…and I’m sure he felt some of these things. I mean, some of this goes beyond exactly what he expresses here. But you know, one of the things that I’m sure he felt was failure. Lord, I failed here. I did all these things. I did it for You, and I failed.
Anybody here ever have that kind of a feeling? No matter how hard I try, I’m just always coming short. I’m always failing. Oh, God! Oh, poor me! Oh…down into the depths you sink. God wants to bring us up out of that pity party junk.
First place, he didn’t fail. He did exactly what the Lord wanted him to. But suppose we do. Did He not provide for all of our needs, at the Cross? Is there any failure for which Christ has not died? If that’s really the case, can we not say, oh, Lord, I come to You?
But part of the problem here was that he had gotten so zoned in on the current state of things and the condition, running back to Sinai, trying to find an answer. And when the Lord finally spoke to him, I’m not gonna get into all the details of that. You remember the wind and the fire and the earthquake and all of that stuff? I’m sure that’s probably what he was looking for, in one sense. But somehow, he recognized when the Lord spoke in a gentle whisper.
Little lesson in that…don’t go looking for God to do the same thing…to do things the same way every time. I don’t care if you go back and say, this is how He did it so that’s how He’s gonna do it. No, this is a different circumstance, and He just came with a gentle whisper.
I’m so glad the Lord didn’t come and say, what’s the matter with you? He did ask him. He said, what are you doing here? And he goes through his spiel again. All this stuff I’ve done, and it’s worthless and I’m the only one left. Now they’re trying to kill me.
And so, the Lord gives him instructions, doesn’t He? That’s one of the answers, to all of this, is that God, get us out of this self-absorption! In the first place, My plan has not failed. The situation is not hopeless as you are sitting here emotionally thinking it is. I’ve wasted my time. The situation is hopeless. There’s nothing left to live for.
Baloney! God is still on His throne! We know that this world is gonna go down, and most of it is gonna go into the fire when it’s over, but God is gonna save every one of His and He’s gonna bring every one of His back, all the way to glory, at the end! You know, the writer to the Hebrews talks about the hope that He’s planted within us as being, “…an anchor for the soul…” I need an anchor, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
Why would a ship need an anchor if everything is calm and peaceful and wonderful? It wouldn’t, would it? But I’ll tell you, in spite of the winds that blow in your life and in mine, if you’ve got a hope that goes beyond what you can do, and the circumstances in which you find yourself, then you’ve got something that’s gonna hold when those times come.
You know, one of the things that, I’m sure plays into this and I know that it plays into depression, in a general sense, is this: it’s false expectations! This is what I expected to happen. This is what the Christian life is supposed to be like, and it’s not. And I feel bad and I don’t have this joy that we’re supposed to have. I don’t feel the emotions that I’m supposed…oh, this was supposed to be wonderful and I’m going through a dark time.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.” Are you gonna argue with Him? Now, thankfully, He said, don’t be afraid, I’ve overcome the world. Don’t be dismayed…I forget the exact words. “I have overcome the world.”
Folks, if you’re looking for a smooth path, you’re looking in the wrong place. It’s not in the world, for sure. But if you’re gonna align yourself…allow yourself to be aligned with Jesus Christ, you’re gonna have some dark times. You’re gonna have some challenging times. You’re gonna have times when the Devil will do everything in his power to plant and water that lie, that’s down in here, that’s causing you to be brought down into that low place.
I’ll tell you, we need the truth of God in that hour. We need to exercise ourselves and lift up our hearts and look to Him.
But you know, here’s the other thing that really has come to me over and over again, in different ways, lately. And I said it last week. You could talk about a subject like this, very easily, and list all the ways that fear, that depression comes, all the things that cause it, all of its symptoms. And then you could say, all right now, here’s how you deal with that, and list off all the things that we’re supposed to do to counter that. And every one of them might be true. But that leaves out one extraordinarily, important, critical ingredient. How do I do that?
You know, a psychiatrist could tell you that. Of course, he’ll give you a drug, too. But, a psychiatrist could say, well, here are some steps you could take. Do this and do that and put on a happy face and act different and it’ll all go away. This isn’t about just coming into an equilibrium of emotions and all of that. There’s something deeper God wants to do.
And what He is seeking to do is not simply to rearrange our lives so that they are happy and profitable and spiritual and all that. It’s to live His life in us. There is a ‘putting to death’ of self that His life might come forth in us.
And what I said last week applies so much. Boy, do I need it. Everything God asks of us, everything He instructs us to do, He provides the resources to do it! So, everything we’re talking about this morning that is a needed antidote to falling into this state called depression is something for which we not only do what we know to do, we give Him thanks, we praise Him…we talk about the Word and we meditate on it, but we’re gonna have to always do that with this sense, God, I can’t do this in myself. You do it in me. But this is a real issue, is it not?
( congregational amens ).
But I’ll tell you, we have a real God, who has real answers to your need, wherever you’re at. There’s no way to cover all the stuff you could cover. But I’ll tell you, your answer is in Jesus. Your answer is in the truth of God’s Word being ministered deep in your heart. Your answer is in the fellowship of God’s people. Your answer is turning your eyes away from yourself and to God and to others.
And I’ll tell you, God can help us to live in victory over these things that will assault us, if we let them. We don’t have to live that way. God has the answer! And I’ll tell you, to Him be glory in the church throughout all ages! To Him be glory!
Oh God, what would it be like if we had to live in this world and we didn’t have a hope? We might as well go out and do this. There’s no hope here. More and more people are realizing that and they’re taking their lives. But I’ll tell you, God has got us here for this time and for a purpose. Let’s fulfill that purpose and glorify Him. Praise God!
Close
May 7, 2023 - No. 1596
“Dealing With Depression” Part One
Broadcast #1596
May 7, 2023
May 7, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1596 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I think a lot of times I’m conscious that…messages that I preach paint big picture, teaching kind of things, but you know, we need…and we need that. But we also need messages that get down into the nitty-gritty of life, of real life. And I feel like this is probably one of those. And I’d like to begin with 1st Corinthians, I’m sorry, 1st Kings…a little bit of difference…1st Kings, chapter 17, and I’ll just begin there.
And, this begins the account of one of the most famous Old Testament prophets, and his name was Elijah. He just suddenly appears on the pages of scripture without any real background. We don’t know anything about him other than, Elijah says this, and starts doing that, and all of a sudden, there he is. So, the Lord doesn’t give us a whole lot of background as to where he came from and what he was about as a human being. But boy, does he burst on the scene.
And, you remember what the scene was, that after the kingdom had split, the kingdom of Israel had split into the Northern Kingdom of ten tribes that were called Israel, and the southern two tribes that were called Judah, the Northern Kingdom never did serve God, did they? It was just…they immediately plunged into a condition of wickedness, sinfulness, everything you could think of that was wrong, idolatry…they set up heathen gods, and one king would outdo the next one.
And the king who had taken over this time was the worst of them. His name was Ahab. And he had married a lovely lady from a nearby tribe, nearby nation, called Jezebel, who was a hundred percent devoted to wickedness and idolatry, and you name it, she was guilty of it. And so, this was the condition of the land and of the nation. And so, it was into this context that God sent a man.
You know, I wonder…when you think about the nation and where we’re at in our world, and where we’re headed…do you think God’s gonna have a people in that time that are gonna stand up for Him, and have something to say?
But there are some lessons in his experience that I believe we need to pay attention to. And just to…not to spend a lot of time on it, but, all of a sudden, this man, this prophet called Elijah goes to Ahab and announces that there will be no rain until I say so.
Whoa! You talk about the power of God over everything and how He commits that power into the lips, through the lips of a man. And so, of course, Elijah didn’t hang around to see what was going on. The Lord told him immediately, go hide yourself. So, he leaves Israel proper and goes across the Jordan and he hides in a ravine. So, this is a real secret hideout. Nobody can find him there.
And, of course, he’s gonna need a little sustenance, so the Lord sends ravens twice a day. Can you imagine living like that? We have a great God, don’t we? So, here’s a man who obviously has natural needs and God’s mindful of that. That’s something we need to remember. And, all of a sudden, there he is, he’s hiding for his life, essentially, and every day ravens come and they give him all that he needs. He’s got a brook there to drink from. And so, that goes on for a period of time, and then, the brook dries up, of course, in a drought.
So then, the Lord says, I’ve got somebody that…I’ve commanded a widow to feed you. Well, the widow, I’m not sure…didn’t know anything about this at the time, but the Lord had it all arranged. And so, he goes over to the kingdom of Sidon, which was over by the seashore, over against the Mediterranean. And I believe, if I’m not mistaken, Jezebel was from there. Talk about the Lord doing something that was kind of ironic!
So there he goes, and he meets this woman and she is picking up sticks to cook her last meal so she and her son can die because of the drought. And the prophet says, all right, go and make me something first. That’s when she tells him the situation. And he says, no, you go and do that and here’s what the Lord says. The meal will not waste. You’ll not run out of what you need until the day that the rain comes.
She says, okay. So, she listened and…anyway he begins to…he begins to live in the home there and the Lord puts her through a trial, but as He often does with those that He is reaching out to, the trial was meant to lead to a blessing. How many of you have been down that road? The Lord put you through something you would not choose, but when you come through it, you realize you’ve learned something about God and you are strengthened in your spirit.
And so, here is the Lord allowing her son to die, to get sick and die. And so, she’s wondering about this God that he supposedly serves and what in the world does He have against me that He’s allowed this? “Did you come to remind me…” she says, “…of my sin and kill my son?” (NIV).
So, he takes the son up to his room, and he entreats the Lord, three different times he lays his body over this little boy and pleads with God to…Lord, give him his life back. And the Lord hears his prayer and answers it. And so, here’s man of God who’s commanding the weather and who raises the dead…I mean, this is a mighty prophet, isn’t it?
And so, he comes to the end of that particular episode and she says, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.” You know, the Lord has a way of making Himself known, doesn’t He? If we’ll listen—if we’ll listen, God will make Himself known.
So anyway, the time comes for him to go back…and I think this was like a period of three years all of this took place. It’s time for him to go back and show himself to Ahab and to make a long story short, he comes and Ahab goes out to meet him, and his greeting to this prophet is, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?”
He said, “I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied. But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.” We’re in the middle of chapter 18, if you’re trying to follow. So anyway…so now, there’s a challenge that’s issued. God is going to make Himself known and make the people responsible for their choices as to who they’re gonna serve.
So, he says, you go and you gather together all of the prophets of Baal, all of these heathen…bring them together. We’re gonna have a little contest here. And it was 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. So, there were 850, all totaled. And they all were gathered to Mount Carmel. And now, Elijah stands there, and…you know, we have this picture of this mighty prophet. And so, this mighty prophet stands and says, how long are you gonna halt between two opinions, is the way the King James puts it. “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” (NIV).
The people stood there and said…what are they gonna say? Nothing. He said, all right, let’s have a contest here. We’re gonna build two altars. And, let’s get a couple of bulls and we’re gonna prepare our altars. You call upon your god, I’ll call upon mine, and the god who answers by fire, he’s the one who’s really God. They say, okay, that sounds good to us. That’s not the words they used, but those are…anyway, that’s the idea.
“Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire.” So, they go ahead and do all of that. Now, they start crying and dancing around the altar and calling on their god. Oh god, come and answer our cry, and doing this heathen dance. This goes on for a long time. And finally, at noon, Elijah decides to mock them a little bit.
( laughing ).
He says, “Shout louder…Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
( laughing ).
“So they shouted louder and slashed themselves….” And they’re going through all this, all the shenanigans that they did in their heathen religion, and they’re going on and on and on. “…No response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” Praise God!
“Then Elijah said to all the people, Come here….” And so, he prepares an altar. He picks 12 stones to represent the original 12 tribes. He really does it the right way…prepares the bull. He says, I’m not done. Let’s get you four barrels of water and pour it all over the altar. Let’s make sure that we’re not gonna have any funny business here. Let’s really…let’s make a real contest out of this.
He said, all right, fill it up again. And they do it a second time. Okay, fill them up again. So, 12 barrels of water are dumped over the altar. I mean, water is running off, and pooling around the edges. He’d built a little trench…running over all of that.
So now then, he calls on God. And he says, “O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Mighty prophet, right? Praise God!
So, what happens? “…The fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.” I mean, there’s nothing! There’s no way anybody could say that he pulled off a trick there.
So anyway, then the people fell on their faces and said, the Lord is God, the Lord is God! So anyway, now…and of course, they executed all these false prophets. And so, now…what a mighty victory! I mean, how would you like to be on the winning side of that one? Wouldn’t that be exhilarating to stand there and see God do something mighty…wow! You’re just rejoicing in all that.
But He’s not done! Now, it’s time for rain. And so, he tells the king to go back and eat and drink, it’s about to rain. So, he goes up on the top of the mountain and bows his head between his legs and prays. Seven different times, he sent his servant out to look to the west toward the sea. Finally, he said there’s a cloud about the size of a man’s hand rising. He says, run, Ahab, you better run! It’s fixing to rain.
And not only did he go through all of that, it says, the Lord strengthened him. The power of God came on him and ran ahead of the chariot all the way back to the palace. I mean, you think about a man who has experienced the incredible things that he did, seen the power of God, tasted it, had God just bless him mightily, and mightily reach out through him!
Then, what? Chapter 19, “Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.” Ha! Sweet lady. “So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”
Well, now wouldn’t you expect that a mighty prophet of God would stand there and say, oh yeah? We’ll see about that. I serve the God who is God of all of your gods. Ain’t nothing like that gonna happen. But that’s not what he did, is it? That’s not what he did.
“Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah…,” which, by the way, was many, many miles. This was not like…and of course, he couldn’t just pick up a car and run over to the next county, drive over to the next county. This is on foot. This is dozens of miles away. It was a pretty good trip.
So, he’s traveling, he’s running in fear. And he gets to a certain place and, “…he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, Lord, he said. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors. Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.”
The message that I heard had to do with depression. And this scripture, as well as any in the Bible, reminds us that depression is, not only a part of this world, it afflicts God’s people. And it’s something that I believe God desires that we confront and be honest about our needs in this area, because we live in a time, as we’ve heard so many times, when the Devil’s power is increasing.
And we are not exempt, we…all of us here still live in these bodies. We still have that nature in these bodies. Thank God, if you’ve got Christ, “…greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (KJV). But the reality is, that if we are not careful, we are subject to exactly what happened to him.
And what happens is, well, I’m not supposed to be that way…so, I’m gonna do like the commercial on TV. I’m go around with a happy mask on. And I’m gonna pretend that everything is okay because…oh, I’m in Canaan land! Everything is wonderful! I’m supposed to feel good all the time. I’m supposed to be happy, happy, happy.
And the reality is, many times that’s not the way it is. And we need to be honest about it. I mean, the scripture doesn’t hide this. This is a mighty prophet of God, the guy you’d want to be just like…and there he is praying, oh God, I’ve had enough. God, take my life. It’s over. There’s no purpose in my living.
You know, one interesting thing that was quoted on that message…I’ll just refer to this one thing, because it was a statistic. And I didn’t realize, so I looked it up and checked it out and it’s right. And, he was referring back to the Vietnam war and those who fought there. We have brothers here who fought in that war.
And the statistic was this, that there are more Vietnam soldiers who died by suicide than were killed in the actual war! That’s a terrible…well, I’m leading into the fact that suicide has become a growing problem in our society. And it’s interesting that the Viet Nam war happened about the time the Lord was revealing to us the last loosing of Satan!
What do we expect? This world is a lie! It is built on lies! Everything about it motivates human beings to build their lives on lies, to try to seek happiness apart from a relationship with their God.
And I’ll tell you, the Devil enjoys destroying, stealing, killing, lying, destroying. And it’s not just Vietnam soldiers. It’s children! These issues of people reaching a point where life is so worthless that all they want to do is leave it! The fear of dying becomes weaker than the pain of living! Oh God, do we need Him!
( congregational response ).
And you think this doesn’t affect Christians? Sure, it does. Those of you who have been around, you know how the Devil attacks. Some of you remember Sister Thomas, and how she went through a deep, deep period of just black depression. Brother Thomas had to fight for over a period of months as I recall, just ministering truth, trying to bring her out of that state.
She’s not the only one. Brother Thomas battled depression. So, you look at me and say, well, preacher, what about you? You live up on the mountain, right? Are you kidding? I battle it just like everybody else does, and don’t always do it as well as I should! Of course, I’m the only one here, right? Everybody else here is just living on the mountaintop every day!
You know, the Lord has given us a mountain we can live on, but I’ll tell you, it doesn’t happen automatically. And we have been so programmed, more than we realize, with lies, and they bring us down to a place of weakness.
And you go on here. Here he is coming to that point where, all I want to do is die, Lord! My life is worthless! Nothing that I’ve accomplished has changed anything! Oh, God, I’ve come to the end.
Well, you know, we can come to the end, but God doesn’t. Thank God! How many of you’ve been in a place where you were about ready to hang it up and the Lord intervened? Well, the Lord intervenes here. So he’s asleep. All of a sudden, he’s awakened and it’s an angel that’s awakened him. He said, here’s a meal. He looked around. By his head there was a cake of bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water.
So the Lord sent down an angel who knew how to cook. He ate and drank and then lay down again and now he wakes up again, and the angel comes back and does the same thing. “…The journey is too much for you.”
Evidently…the scripture does not explain all of this. But somehow, I feel like, from where he went, there was something in his mind…God, if I’m gonna find any meaning in all of this, I’ve got to get back to where it started. And so, he takes off from wherever he’s at now in the desert, he takes off south for Mount Sinai.
Now the Israelites wandered 40 years in the wilderness, it took him 40 days. It was no small journey. And, there were a whole lot of altitude changes. Now, I’m a guy who doesn’t like altitude changes, especially when they’re up. And there he is in places where some of it was below sea level. Now he’s heading south through a desert, and then when he gets to the end of his journey after 40 days, he’s got to climb a mountain! Do you imagine he’s probably pretty tired?
You know, that’s one of the things that can get us in a bad place. We are not supermen and superwomen. You know, I thought of a…I think of a scripture from time to time. It’s in the Psalms somewhere. You can look it up if you want to know where it’s at. But I remember the King James Version of it, I think. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late…for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”
There’s simple, practical wisdom in that, isn’t there? How many of you have been…have just pushed it, pushed it and pushed it, and you’ve gone way overboard and you wind up getting so tired and all of a sudden, life just kind of descends on you and you get in a bad place and you can’t…you just emotionally can’t.
You see, we’re emotional creatures. And, too much of the time the emotions have too much of an influence over us and we begin to descend into this place that Elijah was. But somehow, there he is going back to Horeb, which was another name for Mount Sinai, going up into a cave and he spends the night.
( panting ).
I’ve made it, maybe I’ll get my answers here. “And the word of the Lord came to him: What are you doing here, Elijah?” (NIV). I don’t know what the tone was, but…I don’t know that it was condemning so much as trying to raise a question. What are you doing here?
He said, “I have been very zealous…” 19:10. “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
No depression there, right? After saying, I’ve had enough, kill me. You know I mentioned something on a recent Wednesday night that bears on this, and I was talking about vulnerability to temptation, and one of the factors that really makes us vulnerable. And it’s a very simple thing. It’s being self-centered…I forget the word now even that I even used…but, it’s self-absorbed, where I become so wrapped up in what’s happening to me, what has happened to me, all of the things that affect me and my feelings, that becomes my world, that becomes my universe.
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April 30, 2023 - No. 1595
All Music
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April 23, 2023 - No. 1594
“Take My Yoke” Conclusion
Broadcast #1594
April 23, 2023
April 23, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1594 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: There are times when He leads us by the still waters. There are times when He restores our soul and gives us strength. Thank God, it’s not all mountains and struggles and all of that, but there are times that are! And that’s when He wants us to be able to know where our help is, just as Jesus knew where His help was. We’ve said many times, did He not say, I can, by Myself, do…
( congregational response ).
Nothing. Nothing! Anybody here feel like you can do stuff that matters? I mean eternal stuff? No. We need Him. Jesus understood that, and so He lived out the example.
You know, I was thinking about this seeming contradiction between a life fighting the good fight of the faith, and running with perseverance, and taking all these hardships as discipline and all of that, and then Jesus saying, come to Me, learn from Me, you’ll find rest unto your souls. Wait a minute. Which is it? Warfare or rest?
And the truth is there’s no contradiction at all, because Jesus faced all the battles, but He didn’t look at the enemy. He didn’t let anything deter Him from the purpose that God had for Him. At the darkest hour, it was, “…not my will, but yours be done.” (NIV).
You know, I think I made the comment to somebody yesterday. We were talking about that very scripture. My will is what I’m being saved from. It’s following my will that has gotten me a record of sins that I need erased. There’s no answer for that but the blood of the Christ, but I’m still, if He erases all of my guilt, I’m still somebody who doesn’t have what it takes. I need the help that can only come from Him. And He’s the only One that can help me to choose God’s will over mine, and He’s willing to give me the strength to do it.
And what God is wanting to say is, yes, there is a race to be run. There are things to overcome. There are choices to be made. There are young people. You’re looking at your life. What is it about? Is it just what you can get out of this life, or are you willing to just lay your life on the altar and say, God, I’ll go and do whatever You want me to do, and I’ll do it faithfully.
If You want me to be a carpenter, I’m gonna be a good one. I’m gonna be honest. Nothing wrong with that. But I’m willing to lay down my life. It does not belong to me. If your life belongs to you, you will lose it. But if your life belongs to Him, oh, think about what Paul said. I’m persuaded, “…persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed…” (KJV). I’ve given it to Him! I’ve given my life to Him! “I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”
( congregational response ).
There’s coming a day, folks, when everything we have given to Him, when faith will become sight, and we’ll see. And there’s a faithful Lord who can bring us through all of the battles of this world. Every battle that you and I will ever have to face, we can still have the same sense that Jesus was conveying when He said, “…learn from me…and you find rest for your souls.” (NIV). There’s no other source for rest except being in harmony with the will of God.
You know, He uses the word take my ‘yoke.’ And of course, a yoke, to a human being, conveys something pretty negative. We know what it is when you yoke up an animal. The animal would love to just skip around and have fun, but a yoke places a restriction upon it. They become a servant. And they serve the purpose of the farmer, I guess. I’m not a farmer, so I haven’t seen much of this, but…anyway, you get the imagery that He’s conveying there.
Take My yoke. There will be a purpose. We have to take a restriction, a sense that I do not belong to myself, I am His servant. But yet, God wants us to see that not as a negative, I don’t get to do what I want and that’s bad, kind of thing, but that’s the very purpose for which I was called!
He’s calling me out of a world of bondage and sin and death. He’s called me to an eternal purpose, and the only way that can happen is if I’m willing to let Him have my life and become a servant to Him, a willing servant. And if I’m willing to say no to self and yes to Him, I’m gonna have a peace.
You know, the scripture that we often quote, Paul unlocks the Gospel in Romans. And he comes to the end of chapter 4, is it, I believe. And he has laid out the fact that righteousness, before God, comes about, not because we obey the law, and we’re good people and all of that, but because we put our faith in what He did. There’s, absolutely, a full and a sure foundation that God has laid, and just like Abraham was declared righteous, not because he did stuff but because he believed God, that becomes the foundation.
And the beginning of chapter 5 talks about, “Therefore…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (NIV). I’m forgetting part of the verse, but anyway, do you remember that part about having peace? There’s an interesting alternate translation of that. There’s a sense in that, that it’s not just some automatic thing. Yes, there is a state of peace when we surrender, but He wants us to have peace. In other words, let us have peace. Let us so live that, in our relationship with God, we actually enjoy the peace for which Jesus died.
And I think many of us, that’s where we miss out, because He goes into the fact that we have to put up with a whole lot, and we learn, and we grow. I forget the exact language, but you remember the passage about how one thing leads to another and winds up with a position of solid hope before God, when we’re willing to put up with the stuff that God has to use to teach us His ways. We actually learn.
And if we’re willing to just take Jesus’ view of everything and say, I’m here for a reason, I’m not here to live an earthly life and enjoy earthly benefits and just cater to my nature. I’m here to serve You, and whatever You call me to go through, You will be with me in it.
Not only that, whatever You call me to go through has the…is performing a necessary function. It is literally putting to death something that would, otherwise, keep me from being effective. So you see that even Jesus living 30 years of mostly obscurity was not without a reason, was it? God was preparing Him even then. It wasn’t just, okay, bide your time. Be patient. Just do your stuff. Live your life from day to day.
No. Every day, there were choices that He was having to make. Somebody said something mean. How do I react to it? Yeah, I mean, it’s just that simple. All the things…somebody wants me to cheat in business. No. I’m here to honor God. I’m here to do things right. My brothers and my sisters are mean to me. Well, praise God. Lord, give me the grace to love them. And He was learning, and He was growing. And then He received the power of God’s Spirit without measure to be able to do what He did. And then He wasn’t ready. What happened after that?
( congregational response ).
He was sent by the Spirit into the wilderness. Why? To be tempted by the devil. See, He still had to face down all that this world offers, all that His flesh desired. He had to say, no, I’m gonna do God’s will, and God’s gonna help me, God’s gonna strengthen me. And oh, when He died that way, God brought Him through, didn’t He? And He came back in the power of the Spirit. There was Somebody God could use.
I’ll tell you, if God just took us in our spiritually immature state and suddenly dumped a bucket of power on us, yeah, uh-oh is right. We would do all kinds of self-centered things. Look at me. Look what I deserved. Oh, God. We’re not here for that. We’re here to be channels of God’s life and God’s purpose to serve somebody else.
All the purpose of God is fulfilled, and guess what? When we’re in fellowship and harmony with others, God’s gonna anoint them to meet our needs. It’s just like the body. It’s all there to serve the whole. Every part of our body plays its specific role.
You know, I was thinking about these scriptures we pointed out in the life of Paul so many times. You look at 2nd Corinthians, I believe it is chapter 4? And that’s where he describes God’s amazing grace to him, that whereas the world has been darkened and lied to, and is blind because of Satan’s influence, God shined His light, and He shined it where it needed to be, not just in my mind, but in my heart. And He gave me the knowledge of His Son, basically, and what He’d done.
And so, that became the treasure that he sought. Oh, that was the thing that he valued above everything else in this world. I know Christ! And all the rest of this stuff is worthless. What else is there to live for except Him and this eternal purpose to which He’s called me? I’m here for a reason! I’m not just here to mark time and see what I can get for myself! I’m here to serve Him.
And then he began to serve the Lord. And, of course, there were years, actually, that it took before you really see him out in ministry. So again, there were the silent years. You suppose they were without purpose?
Are you in some silent years right now, and you’re wondering what this is all about? Just be faithful. Just look to God. Nothing that you and I go through, or that we experience, not just here in the service, but I mean tomorrow, the next day, the next day, nothing is without divine purpose.
If we can live our…live our lives with our eyes on Him, recognizing who we are in Him. We’re His children, folks. If you know Him, you’re His child. He’s a loving heavenly Father who’s trying to train us, stubborn and ignorant as we are. He’s doing what it takes to bring us to that place.
But what…the truth that Paul unlocks in that passage is what it took to be the person that God had called him to be, and it was one difficulty after another. You know I’m…I’m gonna look it up. I can’t recall all these things. Praise God! Very familiar scripture, though, we’ve heard it many times, but you see the context in which we’re dealing with this.
You think about a yoke. You think about what God has called us to do, and how He wants us to absolutely submit ourselves into His hands. But then he says, verse 7, “We have this treasure in jars of clay….” Why? Why would God put the treasure of His Spirit in bodies like this? He calls it the body of death. It’s a body that’s gonna die. God’s gonna do away with it one way or another. But why would He put that in here? It doesn’t make sense to our natural way of thinking, but why does He do that?
He says, “…to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” What in the world is that about? Why would God do stuff like that? Why would He allow those kinds of hard places?
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” Remember how Jesus said…He called upon His people, long before He went to the physical cross, take my cross…take up your cross–take up your cross, and do what? Follow Me. The cross is an instrument of death. There’s stuff in every one of us that has got to die if we’re gonna be of any value to the Kingdom of God.
And so, here’s Paul going out in ministry, but listen to what he says about that, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus….” So, dying…living in this body and giving it to Him and laying it all down is not just something Jesus did. He calls every one of us to do the same thing in one fashion or another, to say we’re either gonna live for ourselves, or we’re gonna live for Him. Okay?
So that, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus…” Why? “…So that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake…” Why? “…So that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life…in you.”
That’s kind of opposite of human nature, isn’t it? How many people go around killing other people so that they can have what they want? I mean, that’s a pretty good extreme picture of what human nature is like. And here we are called to lay down an earthly life, we know we can’t keep, but we’ve got an eternal one in here that reflects God’s nature! It isn’t just reflected, it is God’s nature!
And that nature is to be a servant. It’s to give. It’s to love. It’s all those things, to share His life, divine life, with other human beings. What does it take to do that? Ah, do you think maybe God has to do some things in our lives to make that possible? He did in Paul’s, and that’s what Paul was expressing here. I know why this is happening. God’s got to put things to death in me in order for me to be able to help you.
So, how did Paul feel about that? See, you get back to what we talked about last week. How did he feel about that? Verse 16, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Do you, sometimes, feel like you’re wasting away? I think that some of us that are getting old feel that way sometimes. But I’ll tell you, whatever it takes, may God give us the grace to be His people, to take His yoke upon us, to be willing to learn from Him, to do it with understanding and with joy, because God has brought us, as I say, to the Kingdom for such a time as this.
What’s the purpose? Why are we here? We know why Jesus was here. Why are we here now? Are we here just to muddle through and huddle in a cave and wait it out and say, Jesus is coming soon. Praise God, we’re just gonna hide? Or are we here to be a channel of divine life in a world that is going the opposite direction as fast as it can go?
We know the future of this world. It’s gonna be destroyed. I’ll tell you, there’s no future in it, but oh, there’s a future here. “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
Now, where does that come from? Ah, how in the world do I get renewed on the inside? What happens when something bad happens? I mean, when you’re going through a hard place, do we eat the box of chocolates, or do we go to God, and say, Lord, give me the grace to do what’s right, to keep a good spirit. Show me how to be the kind of person that You want me to be in this circumstance, because I don’t have it in me. I don’t even know what to do, let alone have the power to do it.
But oh God, just like Your Son had to cry out with strong crying and tears, and was heard, by the way, because of the heart that He expressed in doing that, God heard Him and gave Him what He needed. I mean, even going to the cross, what happened at the end of the prayer there? Do you remember what happened? Angels came and strengthened Him! Do you know there are angels that are sent to serve the heirs of salvation?
I wonder how many times angels have been used to help us. You know, God, from time to time, has opened the eyes of different people, right here, to see angels. They’re real. I’ll tell you what, God is faithful. But here is Paul talking about how, although all this was happening, he was being renewed, and now he shows us, again, his view of it. This is the same view that Jesus had.
“Our light and momentary troubles…” have no meaning, and we’ve just got to go through it. Wait a minute. It says they, “…are achieving for us….” They’re doing something. They’re not an accident. They’re not without reason. They’re not without purpose. If I’m gonna effectively serve God, God’s got to strike blows of death to those parts of me that would get in the way! And I’ve got plenty of them! But so do you. We need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational response ).
Is He not faithful? They are, “…achieving for us…” What? “…An eternal glory…” Temporary and eternal, wow. “…That far outweighs them all.” It’ll be worth everything.
( congregational amens ).
“So…” What? “…We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.” We don’t look at the storm! We look at the source of our help, and we say, God, there’s a reason for this, and You know it, and You love me. You’re doing this to set me free from something that would keep me from serving You.
And so, I just stretch forth my hands and say, Lord, I’m willing to die. Just help me. You’ve put this yoke on me, and I’m glad for it. I don’t want to be let loose to run in the pastures of this world and lose my life. I want to be Yours, because You’re taking me to a place that is certain and sure. I have signed on for something that is eternal, and it depends upon You. You’re the One who calls the end, who calls, “…things which be not as though they were.” (KJV).
Only God can do that, but He’s already done it. Folks, in God’s eyes, everything is done. We get to just believe in that, rest in that, cooperate with that. And you know what? Didn’t Jesus say you’ll find, what? Rest for you souls. That’s the only place I know where there’s any rest. As we rest in God’s heart and in His loving purpose and realize He knows what He’s doing, and He’s a merciful and loving heavenly Father.
And Jesus is a wonderful elder Bother who sits on that throne dispensing all the help that we need. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Folks, if that’s not real to you, cry out to God.
I mean, you can’t see the Kingdom of God without being born again. There’s gonna have to be a real reckoning as to what your life is about, where you’re brought to, just like Paul was, like Saul as who he was at the time. God had to confront him and show him the reality of what he was and where he headed, and show him the reality of what God had done for him through Christ, call upon him to put his faith in what Jesus did and surrender!
And he did. And he was never sorry. From that day forward, it was one purpose for Paul’s life. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” This is a no-lose proposition, as long as we follow God’s plan. If we’re here to go through the hard places, we’ve got the grace to do it. We don’t have to bellyache and complain and miss out…misunderstand what God’s doing. We can cooperate with it and find rest in it for our souls.
But oh, we know how the story ends. It’s not just a story. It’s an eternal purpose, and everyone who’s His, you’ve got a place in His Kingdom. You’ve got a place now. I’ll come back to this. We are not here without a purpose, and God has called us to live in this particular time in history, just as much He did His own Son, when He came in the fullness of time. It’s not that we’re something great in ourselves, but it doesn’t matter. If we’re His, we have a reason for being here.
And He cares as much about you as He does His Son. His Son is the pattern Son. What He did in Him, in His earthly life, He’s doing for us now. And He’s getting us all ready to stand there and to walk together with our God eternally, with Jesus as our elder Brother. Praise God! Praise God! I want to be a part of this, and I want to be on board so that I can actually enjoy the rest that He has promised. You will find rest for your souls. Thank God for the yoke. Thank God that He doesn’t just let me go my way. Praise God!
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April 16, 2023 - No. 1593
“Take My Yoke” Part One
Broadcast #1593
April 16, 2023
April 16, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1593 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I confess, I got up this morning absolutely convinced I didn’t have anything. And, just quietly, thoughts that I had had just kept kind of trying to come in. And, I know one thing the Lord is trying to work on me about is not getting a thought and then building a sermon around it. That is, me as a…I have enough Bible knowledge to be able to say, yeah, I can say this and here’s how to organize it and all of that.
And, I’m not saying there aren’t times when the Lord wants to organize something, as a matter of teaching, but I feel like He’s more interested in sharing His heart, in spite of our weakness, and I’ve got gobs of that. But He is so faithful, as we’ve sung this morning. And many of the thoughts have just confirmed these little subtle thoughts that keep bubbling up here and there.
And you know, last week we spoke from Hebrews chapter 12, and it was all about the path the Lord’s laid out for us, and He calls upon us to have a spirit to run with endurance. It does say to keep our eyes on Jesus, for sure. But yet, it’s pictured with words like, endure hardness, words like discipline.
And a lot of the emphasis that I felt, at the time, had to do with our emotional response to all of that. How do we deal with it? Do we consciously resent and resist, and fuss and complain and all of those kinds of human reactions that we have when we don’t get our way?
And, you know, I feel like the Lord wants to balance that picture out, because while it’s absolutely true, and has been emphasized this morning already, we could almost look at that from a human point of view as a pretty negative thing, that God has called us to a life of misery and warfare and trouble and it’s all bad, and just hang on. It’s gonna be over some day, but just hang on for now. There’s no…almost like there’s no joy in it.
And really, it’s the opposite. It’s absolutely the opposite, because if you want to have a life of struggle, and unrest, and trouble, very easy, just follow your own heart. Follow your earthly inclinations. Just live for the values of this world and just struggle and strive and try to get what you can out of it. You will have nothing but unrest and struggle and strife. And, isn’t that the very thing that the Lord came to save us from?
And, you know, I kept thinking, and actually it was in my mind last week, and I never did quite get to all of it, but we don’t have any better example of what it means to live a godly life, in a broken world, than our Savior.
And, we know that so many scriptures that I can just basically refer to, I don’t even have to turn to most of them, but we know that it was the Father’s plan to send Him on a rescue mission because we had no hope apart from Him. There’s not a thing we could do to make ourselves right with God, fit for His kingdom. We need a miracle. We need God to come and do for us what we cannot do. And, that’s why He came.
And the very One that was…I believe He was, indeed there, in the fiery furnace, because we read in the scriptures that no one’s ever seen God. He’s an invisible Spirit who inhabits eternity. But, the One who has brought Him into focus, who is the exact representation of His being is our Lord Jesus. It’s the Father’s Son.
And so, the Father’s plan, from the foundation of the world, was to send Him into this broken world to live, as I say, not just to live a godly life, but for a purpose. There are so many truths relative to this, and as I say, I haven’t organized it so it will probably sound that way, but that’s okay.
But, one of the things that I believe is really relevant to us is the fact that His life was not simply a demonstration of a godly life in a broken world. There was an eternal purpose in His being here. There was something God intended to fulfill through His life and through the things that He did.
And, my mind has gone, in passing, to the life of Esther. And I’m not gonna go there, but you know the story about how the Jews were scattered through the Persian kingdom. And there was a plot against the Jews, but in the providence of God, a young Jewish woman…I guess the king didn’t realize who she was. But anyway, this young, beautiful, Jewish woman became the queen.
And so, when her uncle found out about this terrible plot, he went to her. Well, first of all, he was in mourning and she was trying to figure out what’s going on. Somebody check out with him why is he acting that way? And it all came out. But the key thought was simply this, who knows but what you are, “…come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (KJV).
Do you believe God does things haphazardly? Does He just generally…does He just put His people in a broken world just to kind of muddle through and it’s…no! We’re here for a reason. God had…just as God sent His Son into the world, in the fullness of time, that is exactly on God’s schedule, so He has called us to live, in this particular hour, in the world history.
And we have a reason for being here. You are not a clone. You are not a Storm Trooper. You know, to use Star Wars. What is it? Star Wars? Or…anyway, use that picture. But we are individual, we’ve said this so many times, we’re individual creations of an all-knowing God, who has known us from the foundation of the world, and has ordained that you and I live right now. And He has a reason for us being here.
And so, life is not about living out our lives as citizens of this world, for our own selfish purposes. It’s to seek out and find God’s purpose for our lives. There is no other path to meaning, no other purpose for our existence, except that. And you know, we know what Jesus said about those who would love their lives in this world. What’s the outcome of that?
( congregational response ).
They lose them! Yeah, there’s nothing but death and destruction ahead for those who simply live out their earthly lives to satisfy themselves. But oh, what God has set before us never ends. Thank God! Oh, what…and I’ll tell you, there’s a cost—there’s a cost.
And, as I say, the purpose was lived out, amazingly, in Jesus. And so, it’s interesting, if you start reading the record of His life, we have, basically, 30 years of His life where there’s almost nothing said. I mean, you have the events about His birth and how the Lord, supernaturally, bore witness. He connected what was happening, and this child and His purpose, with the words of the prophets, said this is the fulfillment. Here He is! He’s the One that I’ve sent into the world. So, there was that witness. And certainly His parents took it to heart and knew about it, especially His mother.
And then you have the record, I believe, personally, it was a year or two later when the wise men actually came. And they came and found the young child, not the baby, but the young child, and worshipped Him. And the Lord sent them home another way so Herod couldn’t find out about it.
And he decided the only way he could get rid of this threat was to kill all the babies, in that particular…or all the children under two years. That’s a clue, isn’t it? All the children, under two years of age, he was going to slaughter them to make sure he got the one he wanted.
And what happened? The Lord got the family out of there, sent them to Egypt for a while, until Herod was dead. And then sent them home and they went back to Nazareth. So, then you have silent years.
The next time you have a record of Jesus, He’s 12 years old. And they’re going down to the Temple to worship and you have this account where He spends His time…He goes in to the Temple and when His parents leave, He’s still there. You remember how that happened? And there He is sitting and discussing the Old Testament with the scholars and the scribes and the Pharisees and all that. And they’re amazed at His understanding. He’s asking questions. He’s answering questions. And His parents come back and He said don’t you know, “…that I must be about my Father’s business?” But what happened after that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, He went home and was…obedient! That’s a negative word, isn’t it? But no, He was obedient, wasn’t He? And so, you don’t hear anything else about Him until He’s 30 years old! Ever wonder what went on? I mean, I know there are all kinds of myths and fairytales about magical things He supposedly did. But no! The reality was, He was just living an ordinary life. In fact, the only thing it says was He, “… grew in wisdom and stature…” and knowledge, “…favor with God and man.” (NIV). Things like that. So basically, He was living out a godly life but yet, it was not God’s time to reveal Him, was it?
Ever wonder about God’s timing with your life? Does it ever seem like you’re just living out an ordinary existence and there’s no real purpose to it? And, okay, when something spiritual comes along, I’ll get spiritual. But no, Jesus simply lived as an ordinary human being, and yet, there was…the favor with God and man tells me something about His character, not to mention the fact that it mentions He never sinned. That helps a lot.
But, here’s Jesus, just walking through life, gets up in the morning, eats breakfast, I guess, whatever their particular custom was, goes through the duties of the day. He had brothers and sisters. You imagine what that was like? I mean, His brothers didn’t believe in Him, even when He went around performing miracles! How do you think they were before that? I mean, here’s Jesus having to go through all the things young people go through. I imagine His brothers were mean to Him sometimes. And here He is, acting and reacting in a godly way.
Do you know how that Jesus was able to present Himself as a sinless offering before a Holy God? There’s a little word…I pointed it out before in Hebrews. It says by, “…the eternal Spirit…” by, “…the eternal Spirit offered himself…” as a holy sacrifice, sinless sacrifice…I forget the exact wording. But anyway, the idea is He had a resource that most people didn’t look to. He looked to God!
Even during those silent years, where all He did was build furniture, or whatever carpenters did in that day. Just going to work, doing His job, being a faithful person, somebody that people knew they could depend upon. And just…you want somebody who’s honest, He’ll do right by you? Go see Jesus. He’ll take care of you. That was His life.
Folks, there’s no such thing as ordinary. You think about Jesus, again, going back to His childhood. What was the thing that the Lord emphasized? He went back to His parents and was subject to them. He was obedient. It’s a pretty good lesson.
Do you see what the Lord was doing? Not only demonstrating a godly life, but building His character. He grew in knowledge and wisdom. Does that suggest anything? He wasn’t…I mean, there are people that say all kinds of crazy things. But, when He was a baby on His mother’s breast, do you think He knew everything?
No! He was in a world that was a whole different context in which He had ever…than He had ever known! All He had known was perfect harmony with His Father, in a place where there was no rebellion, no sin. He was absolutely one with His Father’s heart and purpose. Now He’s down here, living in a human body, and that human body doesn’t want to cooperate. Anybody know what I’m talking about?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! Well, the scripture says…in fact, Jesus said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Now, it’s strong if you look at it in a different sense. But, it’s weak when it comes to being able to serve God. There’s no way we can serve God in the energy of flesh, as we’ve said so many times. But, here’s Jesus having to learn that, in a practical sense.
And so, the Father was bringing Him through different circumstances, being a child, having to live with brothers and sisters who probably were just about…just like yours. They fussed and they made fun of one another and they did mean things. And you know, He had to learn how to react to that in a godly way.
And it’s not a matter of being super spiritual. It’s a matter of just having a godly character to say, I don’t have to let that get into my spirit. I don’t have to participate in your sin, is what it boils down to. And so, here’s Jesus learning—learning in life.
Do you suppose that has some relevance to us today? Does your life just seem like…seem ordinary? I mean, I know that there are great missionaries who’ve gone to the ends of the earth and done all these wonderful things, but I’m not like that. I’m just…I just get up in the morning, go to work, clean the house, whatever, go to school. Do you think that’s unimportant to who you are? It’s not! Every single thing the Lord brings us through has a reason. It’s part of making you who God has designed you to be.
And so, He wants us to live a life where we have this sense that we’re not here just to participate in this world. Yes, we interact with it. And yes, God can put people in positions of great authority. Look what He did with Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for that matter. They were high officials in the kingdom. God can put His people there. But they weren’t living for Babylon. They were living to serve God!
And Jesus was not living just to be the best furniture maker ever. He was doing what He did as a participant in human society, and interacting with people, no doubt learning many things, learning how to act and react. You know, there’s a scripture that we’ve referred to many times in the past, where, in Hebrews 5, you can read it sometime, where Jesus, learned, what?
( congregational response ).
“…Learned obedience…” That sounds strange! The Son of God had to learn how to obey? But you know, when you think about it, obedience is when we submit our wills to someone else, and instead of doing, following our own desires and inclinations, we subject them to someone else, because we understand that there’s a reason, there’s a purpose, that’s our place, that’s what’s right in God’s eyes to do and it forms our character.
And guess what? It does! It strengthens us. We had so many songs this morning about how God’s changing us, working in us. All right Lord, I hear You! I was trying to get out of it this morning. But anyway, I’m thankful He’s so faithful.
But here we are…here’s Jesus having to learn how to obey. What does that mean? Well, it means that He encountered so many situations, not just when He was ministering, when we see the detailed account of His ministry, after the baptism of John, but all these years He was learning how to obey God in the face of things that He was facing every single day.
And a lot of it was just, all right Lord, I’m here. I know I’m here for a reason. Let’s get on with it. You know, His nature…I wonder if He ever had that feeling that He had to obey God and He had to trust God and just lay that aside, and go against it, and say, Lord, I’m resting in Your purpose. I’m resting in Your time. Wouldn’t that be a good thing if we could learn to do that?
You know, that doesn’t sound like a life of drudgery, to me. Sounds like the Lord is wanting to bring us to a place of greater peace and rest. Oh, by the way, what about that scripture where Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you…” what?
( congregational response ).
“…Rest.” But then it goes beyond that, because we need to know how it is that He gives us rest. He gives it to us through the things that we deal with, but we learn to handle His way. You know, we talked last week about how we tend to react. We have a tendency where we could easily react in a negative way to something God allows, and we start blaming somebody who may have been the instrument of what God was trying to do in our lives, that hard thing He wanted us to overcome. And we react to that, emotionally.
Did Jesus do that? “He was despised and rejected by mankind.” He had to elude the authorities, at times, because it wasn’t God’s time. He had to come to the place where He was willing to submit Himself to all the abuse—the horrific abuse that He suffered. And He did it because that was the Father’s plan for Him, and because He did not value His earthly life above the will and the purpose of God.
We’re gonna need to learn how to trust Him, how to let go, how not to fuss and fight. Oh, my! We all do it. But may God help us to learn, just watching the life of our Savior, and how He was able to come to the cross and say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
And you know, He spoke about the fact that He was gonna be lifted up. He was going to the cross. He looked up, in the hearing of His disciples, and said, what am I gonna say about this? “Father, save me from this….” That’s what we’d like.
But there are times when God’s purpose is that we go through hard places. Yes, there is hardness. Yes, there are times in life when God is gonna have us in very hard places. Some of them will not just be short term. Some of them will go on for years! But I’ll tell you, there is something that is happening. There is a life that is being put to death. There is something else that’s coming forth.
But His prayer, His statement was, “…shall I say? Father, save me from this….” He said, no! This is why I came into the world. This is the reason I’m here. It’s not to preserve My life and to make something out of it in this world, it’s to lay it down. Because it’s worthless to You apart from just allowing…it’s a place where you could live and express Yourself, but apart from that, there’s nothing…there’s no answer for it but to put it to death. And so, this is the death that You’ve caused me to die—You called Me to die and so I’m willing to do it.
Does that mean it was easy? Does it mean the battles that Jesus fought were easy? You know the scripture where it talks about how He learned obedience, the scripture before that speaks about His coming to the Father, “…with strong crying and tears…” (KJV). There were protracted battles that He had to fight, because the strength of this nature is such that we need divine help.
You’re not strong enough to beat it, and I’m not either! I can’t just say, I’m gonna do this and I’m good. Just tell me what to do, God. I’m good. No, you’re not! That’s what Paul thought, in Romans 7. God, I love You! I want to serve You! Just tell me what…tell me Your laws and I’ll follow them.
And he discovered that there was something in him. There was a law in here that said, no. I don’t care what you…how hard you try, you’re gonna find yourself doing things that you said you wouldn’t. And you’re gonna find yourself not doing things you declared that you would! Peter found that out, didn’t he? Anybody here find that out? Yeah, we just don’t have what it takes.
But anyway, here’s Jesus. What was His answer to this? Was it just self-pity? Was it anything other than just turning His eyes to the one source? Remember, we said it was by the eternal Spirit. Ah! So He knew where to go, and He understood the only way I can get through this thing, the only way I can face this situation, I’m gonna have to go to my Father in prayer.
And it’s not gonna be a little quickie, push-button, proof-text kind of thing. I’m gonna have to cry out from the depths of my being. Oh, God! If You don’t help Me, I don’t have any help! And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who hears and answers the cry of a heart like that, that says, God, I want to serve You! I just don’t have what it takes!
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April 9, 2023 - No. 1592
“Rather Be Healed” Conclusion
Broadcast #1592
April 9, 2023
April 9, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1592 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, I feel the need to just let go and trust God more than I ever have. How about you? Does He know what He’s doing? Does He know how to design things?
But how many times, I wonder, when we begin to kind of wander a little bit in some fashion in our lives, does the Lord speak to us quietly? And we hear that voice behind us, “…This is the way, walk ye in it.” (KJV). What happens if we don’t listen to that? Do you think the Lord says, oh well, just let him go. No, sometimes the Lord has to come and speak a little louder. Sometimes He has to allow something to happen to kind of get our attention. And you see a little bit of a progression that’s often necessary in our lives. Some of us, He needs to whop upside the head to get our attention.
( laughter ).
You know, David was inspired to write, “Do not be like the horse or the mule…” (NIV), because you can’t just explain what you’re gonna do, you’ve got to use physical control methods to get them to do what you want them to do. God doesn’t want…He wants us to be sons and daughters. He wants us to understand these things, not just simply respond to things that happen to us and, you know, yield to that. Yes, but He wants us in the process to grow up with our understanding so that when we stand there with Him that day, we will get it! We will know, as the scripture says, as we are known. And oh, we’ll be able to stand there.
I’ll tell you, you know, one word that is misunderstood, and I don’t know that it’s always bad the way it’s used. But, one of the words that is used of God’s people is that we are adopted, is the adoption of sons. And I think a lot of folks think of that as we think of it, I adopted somebody who needed parents and now we’re making them part of our family. That’s not what the original word meant. This was literally a ceremony that was performed when an adult son had reached a point where the father could hand him his seal and say, this man is my…represents my name. I’ve given him my name, I’ve given him the authority to act in my name. This is a grown son and I present him to the world. He’s ready to do business. That’s where this is headed, folks. Where God is bringing us to that point. Just another illustration of what I said earlier about God’s intent here.
But here’s the thing. Are these disconnected thoughts? We’ve talked about enduring in a race. Now we’re talking about discipline. Are they disconnected? See, that’s what we need to understand. That when God allows something, when He ordains some difficulty with which we must deal, it is His hand to train us, to teach us. We are folks in school. How do we deal with that? How do we respond, is the question?
And so, here’s the verse, in verse 7, that connects these two. It says, “Endure hardship as discipline….” Do you see the connection? You’ve got the hardship implied very plainly, in verse 1, about how we’re supposed to run with endurance. Then he talks about discipline. Now He connects the two, and says, the hardship I talked about back there is actually child training. I’m the One who sent it! Okay?
So if you get mad about it, who are you mad at? Ah, see it’s not just endurance, it’s got to be a deeper, a deeper reality that we enter into when we see what’s happening in our lives and how we react to it. Not just, I’m gonna get through it, I don’t have to like it. But okay, I’ll do it, I just won’t have to like it. But God wants to bring us to a deeper place where we can have the joy that Jesus had, and how He was able to move forward.
“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children.” And that’s where He goes and he uses the illustration of earthly discipline. And I hope that there was some discipline somewhere in your life that you actually do respect now when you look back. I realize there’s some awfully broken situations. But here’s where it comes down to, “How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!”
And it says, “They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
Now, we have another ‘therefore.’ See, the passage started with a ‘therefore’ that looked back to the foundation that had been laid and the example of all those who had by faith persevered in life and now were standing in glory encouraging us, ‘therefore.’ But now we’re getting a deeper look at what the hardships of life are really about, that there is a God who has ordained them to train us.
Now, look back sometime at Deuteronomy, chapter 8, and you will see that same thought, the very passage where he says, he caused you to hunger, and he fed you, and it goes right down to the end of that paragraph in the translation here, and it says, but God is treating you like a son, as his father disciplines his son so the Lord is disciplining you.
There’s an interesting passage in Deuteronomy. In fact, I read it in my reading this morning, in which the Lord uses that same imagery of a father discipling his son, and He actually, it appears, that He’s including not just the things that happened to them, but the things that He did to Egypt, all the signs and wonders, all the victories that were won against them, the destruction of the army that happened there, and the cloud and the pillar and all of those things, and the judgment that fell upon some who rebelled, and all of those things were part of their training.
Oh, I pray that God will help us to see that everything that He allows in our life is part of our training. So obviously, endurance is a big part of that, where we are willing to keep on going, and say, God, You’re gonna help me to keep on going, but I’m gonna keep on going. That’s the what.
But, is that enough? Is it enough to just keep going? Again, we’re familiar with the idea that, okay, I’ll do it, but I don’t have to like it. But here you come down to another, “Therefore…” and it says, “…strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.”
Now, is he talking about, literally? There’s something that’s happening in our spirits. In other words, things can happen that weaken us, if we allow it to weaken us. We can be wounded. We can be…we can have maladies that go far beyond these bodies, these temporary bodies. You can have somebody that looks like Charles Atlas, for any of you that remember who he was, or anybody that just looks great physically. But you could have a spirit, that if you could see it, was just full of wounds, bruises, sores with pus running out of them—all kinds of wounds.
What about those? Do you believe that God wants His children to go around with a wounded spirit like that? I’m so thankful that we have somebody who’s not just concerned with healing bodies. You know, Jesus raised bodies from the dead, but they died, eventually. But that was temporary. I want to be part of something, I want to understand, with my understanding I want to cooperate with something that never ends.
But I don’t want to go through this life wounded. How effective can I be if I’m wounded on the inside and I just go along and those wounds just hang on? And so, what the writer here is saying, is that there is a part that I need to play. I can go along and I can outwardly do the right thing, and just keep going, and look to God and all of that, and still carry wounds and weakness, and lameness on the inside.
You know, we’re familiar with a wound that punctures our skin somewhere, and there’s a process of healing. But what happens if you just keep picking it, and picking it, and picking it, and picking it—picking the scab is what we say. What happens?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, it takes longer to heal and it’s liable to get a whole lot worse. I wonder how many of us have wounds, deep on the inside, that are like that? You know, my mind was brought to this scripture because of the King James translation of this verse 13. And, the end of it says, “…but let it rather be healed.” (KJV). Well, I mean, the thought is the same, but those words are clear in this respect, I can’t heal it. I don’t have the power to fix what’s going on inside, but I can sure get in the way of the process that would heal it.
See, the word ‘healed’ there is passive. It means I need to allow something to happen. If you’ve got a sore and you keep picking at it, you’re not letting it be healed, are you? Do you suppose we ever do that on the inside? There are things that happen in our spirits, and instead of letting those things be healed, we’re hanging onto them.
That’s a lot to think about, isn’t it? I mean, obviously, it could be things that happen to us, I mean, an obvious example is that if somebody does something that is distressing or where there’s a problem, and there’s a person involved, and it’s a real trial to us. It’s not just that we keep going, but how do we react to that on the inside? Do we sit there and harbor resentment, hate, all of those kinds of reactions in the spirit?
Do you think that when Jesus was despised and rejected of men that He just went around with a seething mass of, boy, I’m gonna get them one of these days? See, there was a freedom on the inside. Whatever darts, if you will, the devil threw at Him, He knew better than to allow those things to infect His spirit and make Him sick on the inside, carrying around a load of hatred and resentment and bitterness and unforgiveness, and all these things.
Do you wonder why Paul deals with that many times? He’ll exhort Christians to get rid of sins of the flesh. You know, sexual lust that’s out of bounds. All these other kinds of things. Don’t do those kinds of things. Stop robbing people, he even says in one place. Don’t steal anymore. I’ll tell you, Christians come out of a lot of backgrounds, don’t they?
But then he almost always goes into these sins of the spirit, that we’re pretty good at hiding. We’re pretty good at nurturing grudges. I wonder how much of our endurance and putting one foot in front of another is done grudgingly? Again, I’ll do it, but I don’t have to be happy about it. And instead of seeing the hand of a loving, heavenly Father who allows things to happen for our ultimate good, we are seeing the instruments and focusing our displeasure on the inside. I’ll smile, but on the inside that’s not what’s there. I’m covering up a wound that’s in here.
How much of that goes on? I mean, you think of kids growing up and how they treat each other, how they react to that. My God! God is the only one that can give grace to see past that. But think how Jesus did, despised, rejected of men. All they did to Him at the weakest moment, just before He died on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (NIV). Man, that takes divine grace!
( congregational amens ).
But here’s the problem. What if God does something in your life and allows it because He sees a need in your heart and in your life, and instead of just doing the right thing, you’ve got this wound that you allow in your heart, and He wants to come and heal it, and we say, that’s my wound, I’m gonna nurture it, I’m gonna wallow!
Let it be healed! How many of God’s people are lame when it comes to running the race that God has marked out for us, because of what’s happening inside? We can’t let it go. We can’t have freedom. When God sends something, He never sends it so that you can wallow in self-pity.
But I mean, weakness is something we don’t like, but as we’ve pointed out so many times, Paul learned to see it in a different light. But that goes for everything that could possibly happen to us. It’s not just what we do, in the sense of putting one foot in front of another, it’s how we do it, and how we see it. Do you see the difficulties and the challenges of life, the thing that your flesh doesn’t like and would rather avoid, do you see them as a Heavenly Father who loves you, knows what He’s doing, and wants your ultimate good?
Oh, His heart is longing for the day when He can say, this is my son in whom I’m well pleased, this is my daughter in whom I’m well pleased. They put their lives in my hands and they went through a lot of stuff, but I gave them everything they needed to be able to handle it. And they surrendered, they saw past the passing problems of this world, and they saw my hand of love in their hearts. They surrendered to my discipline, and I changed them. I gave them real, rich grace deep in their hearts and I brought them through.
So, it’s not just endurance in the sense of putting one foot in front of another, it’s, how we do it. Do we do it without grudging? Do we do it with joy, with understanding? And when there is a genuine wound, are we willing to bring it to Him to heal it?
There are a lot of things that happen in this life that we just don’t have the power to fix! I can’t stop feeling some things unless God helps me! And, you know, the answer is not to cover it up. It’s not to try to drink it away or drug it away, which is the only answer the world has for a lot of people. You know, I’m so glad this doesn’t just apply to us. God is able to heal the broken hearted!
( congregational amens ).
He’s the only One that can heal the wounds that life delivers! When He calls people by the Gospel, it is a God who’s capable of healing, not just the body but the inner man, to set us free from all of that stuff. But oh, how many times, if we’re honest with ourselves, do we cling to our wounds and pick our scabs, and embrace them as just, well, that’s just part of me? When the Lord is longing to pour in the balm of His mercy and His love and heal us so that we can be free.
Think of the scripture we’ve used so many times, in Philippians, about Paul, talking about forgetting what is past, forgetting those things that are behind. Aren’t these some of the things we need to forget? When life wounds you, what do you do?
Now, I want to say, that the healing we need, down in here, in the inner person, is not a push-button thing necessarily. There are wounds that are very real. And just like wounds, sometimes take time. A very strong wound in our flesh takes time to heal. And we can cooperate with that process or we can get in the way of it and say, that’s mine and I’m mad at whoever caused this and I’m gonna cling to that and feel sorry for myself and so forth, all the range of stuff, you know all about it, you’re human.
But there are genuine wounds that the Lord allows, when a loved one dies. He’s so willing to come and heal. But that’s not just something where you can just push a button and pretend. There is a genuine healing that has to take place. But can we continue to look to the Lord and say, Lord, Your grace is enough. Just give me grace for today. Help me to understand what’s happening and to cooperate with it, because that’s what this is about.
Do we understand what this life is about for His children? God has called a people to live in a broken world. One of the scriptures that is prophetic of God’s Son has to do with the fact that He loved righteousness and hated iniquity. So, we’re called to live in a world that has both good and evil. If we’re gonna grow up to be His children, we’re going to have to know what those are and choose what is good! And there’s a God who loves us and will help us do that.
But, we’re gonna have to live in the presence of what is evil, what hurts, what does all kinds of things. And another thing God is doing is putting to death this and our dependence upon it. Oh, how married we are to our earthly sense of wellbeing, everything that feeds into that. And how the Lord longs to set us free from being chained to this flesh and what it wants.
And oh, how easily do we fight against Him, and fuss and fume, and…why am I going through this, and they’re doing great, and a thousand and one things the devil feeds into our punkin heads when stuff happens.
But oh, how this passage that the writer gives us needs to guide us. It’s not just the writer, it’s the God behind the writer. You have a path, God’s marked it out for you, it’s unique. We’ve said that many times. And yes, He wants a sense of endurance. And yes, He will give you the faith to stand. But oh, it’s got to go beyond that to see the heart of a loving Father, Who knows what you need, Who’s bringing you to that place where He can say, this is My child. I present them as finished products, if you will.
Are we not, “…his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works…”? (KJV). Yeah. But there’s gonna come a day, the day of Jesus Christ. See, He’s promised to work until that day. But there is coming a day when we will stand there, every child of God throughout all the ages, will stand there, robed in white, whatever the imagery will be. We will stand there as finished products of His grace.
I want to get what He’s doing now! I want to understand it better so that when things happen, I can cooperate. I can not harbor the feelings, and harbor the inner things that we’re so good at hiding. God, I want my spirit to be free. I don’t want to go around with these negative feelings and thoughts and fears and anxieties and unforgiveness and bitterness and all those things. I want my spirit to be full of just His peace.
He wants me to be free to love people. But if I’m nurturing these kinds of things, how can I… that’s just being lame! It’s just the same thing as a runner having a lame leg. And the writer says here, “…let it rather be healed.” Let God have it. Let God fix what’s going on the inside. Yeah, we want our bodies healed but this is what we need most, to be healed. Let it be healed.
Let’s ask God to teach us His ways and help us to be the kind of people He wants us to be. He is a loving Heavenly Father, beyond our imagining. And He cares about every single one of His children and He knows what we need. We can trust Him with everything. And oh, how much better it would be…how sad it must make Him feel when He allows something for our good and we cling to it with this negative kind of thing and allow it to put us on the sidelines of the race, when God wants us to be free. And Jesus has paid it all! Praise God! To Him be the glory!
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April 2, 2023 - No. 1591
“Rather Be Healed” Part One
Broadcast #1591
April 2, 2023
April 2, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1591 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, my mind and my heart has gone to, as often is the case, to a very familiar passage, but with a desire to go deeper. There’s something in it that I sense my own need of in a deeper way, but I don’t think I’m the only one, as is pretty much always the case.
But let’s start with Hebrews chapter 12. The first part of it, we tend to almost cherry-pick, and it’s a wonderful thought in its own right, but there is something that is so much deeper in this passage that I’m trusting the Lord will bring out and help us with.
And of course, this is the passage that looks back to chapter 11 and all the heroes of faith and how they endured so many things, and God brought them to a place where, you know, they’re not simply figures of history. It’s not just, these are people who lived way back and you ought to be inspired by them. But these are living brothers and sisters who have been called to the other side. They are standing there in glory. And so, their testimony is simply not words and ink on a page, their testimony is a living testimony, as if you could almost hear them shouting from heaven, hey, it’s worth everything! Be encouraged, stand fast.
And so, all that is tied up in the first word of chapter 12, and that is the word, “Therefore….” In view of this, in that light. “…Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
“And have you…forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.
“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!
“They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” (NIV).
There’s a depth to this that I think we miss. And I’m just trusting that the Lord will help us today to paint a picture that draws in all of the elements of this, because, like I say, it’s so easy for us just to focus on the fact that the world is indeed full of trouble. We know that we face adversity…if the Lord allows it.
And we’ve talked many times about how the Lord is the one who marks our path out for us, He’s the one who plans it. And so, we’re supposed to stand up under it. It’s gonna make us strong, and we emphasize all of those—rightly emphasize all of those aspects of it.
But, I see, I believe in a deeper sense, the reality that God has designed something that is, designed a life, an experience in earthly life, and His design is to bring us to a place of glory, to bring us to a place where He can stand there and say, this is My child, this is My son, this is my daughter. They have grown up. They are all that I intended them to be and now I present them proudly as My children.
So God is seeking to bring every single one of His people to that place. Do you believe that? Do you believe He means you when He talks like that? This is His design for you. Now, we sing a song, from time to time, that I think we perhaps need to take a step back and say, do we really believe this? And the song is, “Nothing Can Happen Outside of God’s Will.” And so, we’re to, “Trust in His love, be patient, hold still…” and so forth. It’s a wonderful song, and boy does it capture what I believe the Lord wants us to get.
But, I want us to think about the reality that life is not just a world full of vague trouble, but rather, we have a heavenly Father who has designed that trouble specifically to accomplish something in us that cannot be accomplished any other way. Think about that. It has everything to do with how we handle it, if we understand that. Because it’s more than just endurance, like, oh God, here we go again. It’s not that kind of endurance.
And, he mentions healing at the end, and I appreciate some of the things that have been said. One of the comments Brother Carl made, that it’s not just the outside, it’s what goes on in the inside. What God is describing here is not a physical race as we think of it. We don’t get up in the morning and go out and say, okay, where’s the path, now let’s just…you know, let’s take off and start running today. He’s talking about something that’s happening in our inner person. There is a journey that our inner man is making.
These bodies…I mean, healing with respect to the body is something we’re all concerned about because we live in them and we feel the pain, and whatever’s going on, and God cares about that. But the reality is, Paul describes his own body as, what? What is it, in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5? I’ll focus your attention to some of you who know the passage. Paul calls these bodies, or describes these bodies as tents.
Now, few of you, if any…I don’t think any of you live in tents. They’re a pretty good description of something that is temporary. You go camping, and perhaps if you’re not rich…like me, you live in a tent. And, you know, it’s meant to be temporary. And so, healing the body is almost like patching a tent. You know it’s not gonna…that’s not what lasts.
But what God is working on is something that lasts. It’s eternal. Paul says, right before that passage, at the end of chapter 4, that it’s the things that we see that are temporary. What we do not see is eternal and that’s what God is most concerned about. And so, God has designed a course, if you will, and it’s described…it’s likened to a race because you’re going from one place to another. And so, a race is a very apt way to put it.
But it’s not a physical race, is it? It’s something where our inner person is going from one place to another, and trying, and seeking to gain ground. And, we need that. Boy, do we need that. And so, he’s dealing with a different kind of malady here, a different kind of healing. But it’s interesting to me that…how he unlocks this subject.
Of course, he points us, as soon as he talks about the difficulty, the challenge and the need for endurance and perseverance, he immediately points our eyes, not at our own resources, but at Jesus, doesn’t He? A point we’ve made many times. The source of faith is not within us, it’s from Him. And so, we get this picture, that with every time God ordains, let’s remember that, every time God ordains something that is distressing to us, something that we have to take a stand against and overcome in some fashion, He stands right there to give the help that we need. It’s always a package deal! He never sends trouble without the help we need to be able to endure the trouble.
Now, think about the passage we have cited so many times in Deuteronomy, chapter 8, where Moses, and the Lord through Moses wanted the people to remember the way that they had come through the wilderness. But listen to the language again of what the Lord said, where Moses spoke about the Lord who, He caused you to hunger. Does that sound like a trial? Yeah, it sounds like some adversity in their pathway through the wilderness.
But how did that come about? Whose fault, if you want to call it a fault, was that? ‘He’ caused you to hunger! He caused you to hunger! Get that through…we need to have through our crazy heads here, because I think it has a lot to do with how we react to life. ‘He’ caused you to hunger, but it doesn’t stop there. And, He also fed you with manna that your fathers didn’t know anything about. So here’s a God that causes us to hunger, but He feeds us in a way that man doesn’t know anything about. There is a supernatural resource that God wants us to realize is ours, in Him! Praise God!
So, here’s the race. It’s marked out. Here’s God ordaining challenges and trouble and all the things that we don’t naturally like, He ordains every one of them for us, but He gives us the resource in Jesus. Of course, Jesus, is also an example, isn’t He? And so, we’re pointed to His earthly life and the fact that His own eyes were not simply on the trouble, rather they were on the destination.
And, we know from the record of His life that He didn’t do this in His own strength, He was just as dependent upon the Father as we are. But He perfectly depended upon His Father, and His Father gave Him strength. He said, “By myself I can do nothing.” But see, with His Father, He could do everything He did.
And do you not see that just as a path is marked out for us, was there not a path marked out for Him? Yeah. He said, I didn’t come to do My own will, but, “…the will of him who sent me.” It was literally a road that the Father wanted Him to follow, and He followed it.
And He spent His time saying, praying, Father, what do You want Me to do today? Lord, lead Me. And, Lord, I’m facing a really difficult place in that path! Lord, I need Your strength, I need Your help! Father, if there’s any way this cup can pass from me, please…nevertheless, bottom line, not My will but Yours be done.
And what happened? The Lord gave Him strength, didn’t He? He was able to do the most incredible thing that’s ever happened in the history of this world, to go to a cross that makes it possible for us to gather here this morning and have hope. Praise God! But what an example we have of one to whom we can look. Not only, as an example, as a resource, okay?
“Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners…” going back to verse 3, “…So that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” So again, this is not a physical thing so much as it’s what happens in here. I am persuaded that most of our problems do not come from physical maladies, they come from what happens that people can’t see on the inside.
And I sense the Lord wanting to help us, wanting us to focus our hearts and minds on this reality, not so that we can say, oh my God, I should’ve done this, I should’ve done…it’s so we can bring it to Him, because He is always One Who, not only causes us to hunger but also feeds us.
And I wonder how many times He’s causing us to hunger and we’re not eating what He wants to feed us, we’re not getting that part of it. And it’s…and we’re not gaining the ground He wants us to gain. “In your struggle against sin….”
You know, I thought about this. I mean, you could certainly see this as, you know, trying to keep us from sinning, as we typically think of that. But sin is not just, as we’ve said many times, not just breaking rules. Sin is anything that is different from God’s design about how things are supposed to work!
( congregational response ).
Just as the physical universe has laws and rules by which it works…you have gravity, you have orbits, you have all kinds of things, principles by which matter holds together, and the scientists are still trying to dig into all of that. There is an order in the Spirit. And you introduce anything that is contrary to that order, particularly anything that focuses upon self and what self wants, and you have introduced what we can call sin! It misses the mark of what God has designed for our eternal welfare.
So, we’re not just struggling against robbing banks and killing people. There’s a lot more to it, there’s a lot deeper…there are so many…there are deep things that God longs to bring us to, to share His own life and nature, to reproduce that in us!
You know, what was quoted a while ago about the Holy Spirit helping us in prayer, moves right into the reality that, “…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (KJV). And His purpose being to conform us to the image of His Son, to make us like Him! Okay?
Do you think that’s just physical? We’re all gonna look like Jesus? No! There is a character transformation that I need, and I believe we all need. We were born into this world, children of Adam, focused upon self, living in a blind little world, that just walks its own way and seeks its own glory and its own satisfaction, somehow. And God has called us, and He created us for higher things.
( congregational response ).
So that’s what he’s talking about here. “…Your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son?” (NIV). Then he’s gonna talk about discipline.
Now to a lot of folks, that doesn’t sound like encouragement, does it? Of course, we have our earthly idea of what constitutes discipline. But I’ll tell you, we’re not talking about just earthly discipline, we’re talking about a heavenly Father. And so in that light it says, “My son….” And the ‘son’ obviously is not a gender thing here, this is my daughter, as well. “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
And so, that comes with the territory. You surrender your heart and life to Jesus Christ, discipline follows. Now, if you think about discipline as, you broke a rule and I’m mad at you and I’m gonna whack you, I mean, that’s kind of a negative thing. But that comes from the brokenness of this world.
I’ll tell you, divine discipline is motivated 100 percent by love, the love of One Who knows what He’s doing, knows what the consequences are of, if we go the wrong way and if we follow the inclination that He’s correcting, and He knows, and He has an awesome end in mind for us and He’s faithful to bring us to that. That’s what it’s about.
I’m so thankful that…you know, and this lesson’s right here for earthly discipline. My God, I know it’s a broken world and I know there’s a lot of folks here, probably no doubt, that have experienced the wrong kind. You broke a rule and somebody got mad at you for it. You annoyed your parents, because they were busy doing something and you did something that interfered with that and so, whack! Or something. And it was done in the wrong spirit.
But oh, how God wants us, as parents, to mirror His character in this. I’m so thankful. My parents weren’t perfect, any more than yours were. But I’m thankful for one thing. They were faithful to discipline me. And as it will say in a few verses, that’s not always pleasant.
And I can think of plenty of times when it wasn’t. I remember a time or two when I was a teenager and I was going through those years and boy, I got mad. I went in and I was gonna show them. I jumped on my bed…and one of the slats collapsed.
( laughter ).
So, I’m laying there like this, feeling foolish, thank the Lord. But you know, one thing that, even when I was, when I had to be spanked, I don’t ever remember it being in anger. That’s quite a testimony for parents. And I often remember that at the end of it, it would end with a talk, I’m doing this because I love you. I can’t let you get away with this. I know where it leads. Those weren’t the exact words, but that was the heart of it.
So, I want to encourage parents. You need to ask God to help you in this area. What is the motive here of God, in this passage? What’s He revealing? His motive is love, His goal is the eternal welfare of His children, and we occupy the place of a child before a Father. I think that was one of the things we mentioned last week. He is the one who knows! We don’t!
And you think about a small child. If you leave them to themselves, what will they do? They will just live in the moment, do what’s fun, what feels like fun, what appeals to them at the moment. They see a pretty poisonous snake, they’ll go play with it. I mean…obviously, we have reached a point, I hope, where we can look and say, you know, there’s a little bit of training that needs to happen here. If you let them go that way, their lives are gonna be a mess, they’re gonna be useless in the world, they’re not gonna be able to take care of themselves. Their lives will be a wreck. And so, I’ve got to help them through this.
Don’t you think our heavenly Father needs to do that with us? My God, we’re not even just talking about growing up in the world, we’re talking about getting ready for another world that we don’t even, we can’t even see with physical eyes. Like Paul said, I’m living for what I can’t see. It’s real enough that I know it’s real because God has planted that reality in my heart, but I can’t see it yet. But oh, I’m living for it.
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March 26, 2023 - No. 1590
“Our Refuge, Right Now” Conclusion
Broadcast #1590
March 26, 2023
March 26, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1590 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: If you think that God being our refuge means being protected from every earthly, bad circumstance, always got a place where we can go and nothing bad will ever happen, you missed the point.
The reality is we are in a spiritual warfare. The devil has all kinds of plans to take you and me down, to hinder us, to do whatever he can to overcome us, to overcome our testimony, and folks, we need a protection…protection…from everything that the devil has planned to do. Don’t you need a refuge from that? I do.
You know, I guess this is a good time to talk about a lady who was famous in the last century, and that was Corrie ten Boom. We’ve mentioned her in a number of contexts before. But here was an ordinary unmarried 50-something lady and her sister who worked as watchmakers with their father who was a master craftsman watchmaker in the Netherlands.
And, if you had gone to her at that time and said, the day will come when you will be world famous. You will travel from nation to nation, speaking to Christian groups, she would have looked at you like you were nuts.
Anyway, you remember the story how the Nazis came in, and they began to systematically round up Jews. And the Lord put it on her heart and the heart of an underground movement to begin to protect them and hide them. Her story has been called, “The Hiding Place.”
And of course, it’s easy to suppose that the hiding place refers to the secret room that they built in their house, where they could hide Jews when they came. And, of course, in one sense, I guess that was. But literally, they had…Jews would be snuck in under all kinds of guises, and there was an alarm system, and if there was any danger, they knew instantly to head to a certain place. There was a particular hole in the wall, and they would step behind that, and it was just invisible to somebody coming and searching. And so, that was the hiding place in a sense.
But you remember what happened. Eventually, they got sold out. Somehow, they got found out. And all of them were arrested. And they immediately found themselves in terrible situations. I don’t remember all of the story, and I’m not going to try to go through all of it, but for weeks, at least, they found themselves in isolation cells.
There’s Corrie, this middle-aged woman, suddenly, she’s in a very uncomfortable cell, and her only physical companions were mice, as I recall, either mice or rats, but I think it was mice. And somehow, the Lord had miraculously allowed them to sneak a copy of the Scriptures in there. So, I guess she had that, and she would pray. She would fellowship with the Lord, but I mean, there she was in prison. Now, did that mean the Lord wasn’t her refuge?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, the Lord was still her refuge. And so, time went along, and they came to a point where they came before the authorities, and she and her sister hadn’t seen each other in a long time. They found out their father had died in the meantime. And in process of time, they were sentenced, along with a group of women who the Nazis didn’t like, and had run afoul of their government after they had invaded the Netherlands. And so, they were sent off to this brutal prison camp.
And, you remember…I guess, those of you who have seen the movie, you saw the character portraying Betsy, the other sister. She commented to her sister, “we are in hell,” and just talking about the condition, just looking around at the brutality with which people…the heartlessness with which people were treated. I mean, it didn’t matter whether the prisoners lived or died. They were just so much garbage. You just see the heart of the devil in all of that. And there they were, thrust into the middle of that circumstance.
And, in the account, it’s very evident that somehow Betsy, the other sister, had had an unusual relationship with the Lord. And somehow, in the midst of that, there was a peace that she had, and an ability to see that, God, You haven’t gone. You haven’t left us. You’re here.
Corrie was a…struggled with that a bit. And I’ve told you more than once, I think, about the time where the barracks in which they had been placed, with too many people in them, women from all over the area, all kinds of backgrounds, sitting in these desperate, hungry, over-worked conditions. People dying every day.
But on top of that, there were fleas in their barracks. And of course, Corrie, being Corrie, thought it was terrible. I mean, you know, it’s bad enough we’re here, but fleas! Seriously! I mean, what’s going on? But Betsy was paying attention to what was going on and said, you know what, thank God for the fleas! Because of the fleas, the guards won’t come in here. And so, we can have all the meetings we want to! We can share the Gospel with people. We can sing. We can pray, and they won’t bother us. Thank God for the fleas.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had that kind of a perspective on life? Praise God! And of course, time went along, and Betsy began to get weaker and weaker, and there came a point where she said…that she felt like the Lord had shown her that they were going to be released by year’s end. This must have been early December, somewhere along in there. I’ll have to go read the story again. Anyway, I don’t remember all the details.
But somehow…and of course, Corrie didn’t know what was gonna happen, and she had…her sister had a vision of a place where they were gonna be able to help people, or people were gonna get help, spiritually, after the war. We’re gonna be released before the end of the year.
Well, what happened was Betsy got sicker and sicker and went into whatever medical facility they had, which was pretty poor, and she died. Remember that? And yet, even in her death, there was a nurse who knew about their faith, and went out and got Corrie and brought her in and said, look. And there was her sister, not looking like death, but with this glorious smiling peaceful face lying there, just supernatural. And that lady, that nurse, came to the Lord as a result of that. But there she was…a testimony.
Now, did the Lord fail her? Was she released? Oh, yeah. Was she, in spite of the conditions in which she had to endure, was the Lord her protection all of that time? Did He bring her through? Did He accomplish things that were eternal? Yeah!
We need to have God’s idea of what a refuge is. The devil had all kinds of plans for these ladies in bringing them in there, but God has His plans, and they were in a place of complete divine protection from anything that wasn’t part of God’s plan.
Folks, that’s…I think we need a conviction along this line, because we have been so spoiled in America. We have no idea what it means to serve the Lord. You remember the scripture we’ve quoted so many times about overcoming, “…by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” (NIV). But what’s the last part?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, “…they did not love their lives so much as to shrink back from death.” So, even death itself doesn’t violate what this verse is about. Praise God! You think about what happened.
So…and then, out of the blue, the only case like this that Corrie ever knew anything about, there was a clerk who made a silly error, and marked her for release! And all of a sudden, she’s called to the office and given her papers, and they take her to the gate and open the door, and send her out and close the door behind her.
And she’s like, what happened? She had been so traumatized by the experience, the first time she sat down at a dinner, someplace, she didn’t even know how to use the utensils. It had just been that traumatizing. But the Lord brought her through, and she looked back.
Now, to her, what was the hiding place? Think about that. Was it the place where they kept and preserved the lives of many Jews? Or was it the fact that no matter where they had been, they had been in the Lord’s hiding place? The devil had tried so many things, but he was unable to carry out his purpose and his will, because they were trusting in Him.
And the Lord took that lady, with no particular background, not even a whole lot of faith…she struggled through all of this. But oh, how easy it is to relate to somebody like that who’s been to hell and back, who’s able to go around the world and say, “No matter how deep things get, God is deeper still.”
And God used her. She called herself a tramp for the Lord. God just uses ordinary people, doesn’t He? But what was the secret to this? She was in the hiding place. Are you?
Folks, if we are in God’s hiding place, in one sense, it doesn’t matter what, in any sense, it doesn’t matter happens, because God will take whatever happens and use it in a way that will accomplish His purpose. And I’ll tell you, we will be better for it, and everyone we can influence will be better for it. May God give us His view of what a refuge is.
I mean, would you say that when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den that the Lord was off somewhere and just didn’t quite…you know, was not quite hands-on with this thing? Or was he in God’s refuge? It didn’t matter whether he was in a lion’s den or up in his room praying. He, absolutely, was in a place of divine protection and safety.
You can go through the whole…all the scriptures. When Stephen was taken out and stoned for his faith, did that mean the refuge had been breached? Or was he right in the center of God’s heart and God’s will, able to give a testimony? Lord, don’t lay this sin to their charge.
And Saul, who was there agreeing with what was happening at the time, no doubt, remembered that later. I know he did. I know Luke, who traveled with Paul for so many years, included that in his account of what had happened. He mentions it, the young man, named Saul, was there, taking care of the coats of those who were stoning Stephen.
You can go through church history, you can go through the Bible, and you can see all kinds of things that God has allowed His people to go through, and brought them through with victory. And in every case, we need to be able to see with God’s eyes and say, that refuge is a place in the Spirit. It’s a relationship with a God who is in charge, who knows what He’s doing. Nothing the devil can ever do can possibly interfere with God’s plans. I am in the only place of safety.
Do you know where the place of safety was when Nebuchadnezzar wanted to throw…wanted to burn the people who wouldn’t bow to his idol?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah, the place of safety was in the fire! That was God’s refuge! Lord, I’m trusting in You! If I die, I die! If I live, I live! I’m just gonna…I’m going with this. Fear is not part of the equation here. I know who’s in charge! You know, I can say, with Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Once we have given our lives to Him, there is a refuge that is built around God’s people.
Don’t you see it, many times, in the scriptures of how the devil even had to get permission to test Job and to test Peter? Oh, my God, help us. I just feel my need of this, because there is so much fear that we deal with. There’s not a person here who doesn’t. Every one of us has to wrestle with anxiety, fear, feeling inadequate. You name it. Whatever it is, we see trouble, and we see inability, and worry, and what’s gonna happen, instead of seeing, yeah, there’s gonna be trouble, but God, God is at the head of this sentence. It doesn’t matter what comes after that, because God trumps everything!
If there is unrest in our hearts, and there is, it happens. If there are circumstances, whether they’re outward or inward, and there is an unrest in our hearts about it, we need this—we need this. If there is unrest, we’re kind of facing something in our own strength and with our own wisdom and all of that.
I need Him. I need to be able to be still and know that He is God. I need to exercise the knowledge, the things that I know to be true, but they need to be true right now, or what good are they doing me? God’s not gonna grade us on our theology when we get to heaven. It’s not about theological knowledge. It’s about change. It’s about being transformed into His image, and that only happens in life. God will order our steps, and I don’t know where they’re gonna lead. But I believe God’s preparing His people to stand in an hour of darkness.
But oh, do I need this. Don’t you? I need to see God first over every other circumstances. I need to be able to see and say what it says here, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
You wonder why the devil is upset? He knows his time is short. He’s just expressing his evil nature, just lashing out in every way. I mean, every day, the news gets crazier and crazier. The crimes that are committed, the conflict in the world, the devil’s doing everything he can to tear down human society to try to consolidate his power over the human race.
And I don’t know what all God’s going to allow, but I do know this. This verse, this Psalm is still true. I don’t care what happens, God is still the first. God is still the subject of the sentence that overrides it all. And so, that’s where I want to keep my eyes. Don’t you?
Wouldn’t that be a good place to keep our eyes and realize, hey, wait a minute, He hasn’t gone somewhere. Just because circumstances aren’t the way I like them, doesn’t mean He’s gone somewhere. He is present, and He is present with a vengeance. He is not going anywhere, and no devil in hell can make Him go anywhere, but He’s right there with me.
And when I have a need, I don’t have to, hey, God, where are you? I can just say, Lord, I know You’re here. I don’t have what it takes for this, but You do. And I’m just putting my faith right, in this moment, I’m putting my faith in You, and I’m gonna stand, and I’m gonna experience Your presence and Your strength.
That doesn’t mean you’re gonna have some phenomenal experience. But I’ll tell you, we’re gonna find out that we can cope with things that we can’t in human strength. And we’re gonna grow, and we’re gonna have a testimony, and we’re gonna be a light, and God’s gonna get the glory, and we’re gonna become like Him.
I mean, wasn’t that what Paul said? He wanted to become like Jesus in his death. Good for you, Paul. I want to be comfortable. No, God’s called us all to the same thing, hasn’t He? But over all of this, “God is our refuge and strength; an ever-present help in trouble.” To God be the glory! Praise God!
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March 19, 2023 - No. 1589
“Our Refuge, Right Now” Part One
Broadcast #1589
March 19, 2023
March 19, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1589 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I felt like this would be a good time to revisit a wonderful Psalm of David, and it’s Psalm 46. Praise God! The Lord has brought this to my mind the other day in a particular context, but I felt like He wanted to shed some light on it, and to encourage us in an hour where we…anybody here need encouragement today? Yeah, well, Praise God, so do I. Praise the Lord!
I’m just gonna go ahead and read it first of all. “God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
“Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” (NIV).
Praise God! What an awesome passage of scripture. And how appropriate is it, all the time, but especially in this hour, because we certainly are in a world full of fear and uncertainty, and the devil wants to take advantage of that. He’s the one that the Lord is allowing to be behind all of the things that are…the upheavals in the world.
You know, this is an hour when Satan has been loosed, and we see the effects of it everywhere. And Satan would love to use all of that to hinder us, to bring us down, to limit us. And I believe God wants to teach us, in it, through it, to make us what He wants us to be. And I just praise the Lord!
And you know, the occasion, if you will, the condition that would give rise to a psalm like this is a single word that appears in verse 1, isn’t it? It’s ‘trouble.’ And we know that the Lord has not promised us a world without trouble. In fact, it’s the very opposite. He’s promised us that, “In this world you will have trouble.”
And, trouble is a lot of things. We tend to think of trouble as some exterior circumstance that causes us…you know, that interrupts our convenience, our comfort. But trouble can be a lot of things, can’t it? It’s anything that disturbs our inward peace, our rest in God, anything at all. It could come from within, it could come from without.
There are people who have no outward reason, if you will, to be troubled. They’ve got plenty of money in the bank, good jobs, good positions, and yet, they’re troubled. And they’re troubled because of what’s going on in here. So, trouble comes in all kinds of forms, doesn’t it?
And, the Lord wants us to realize, to reckon, that if there’s…whatever trouble there is, as was said earlier this morning during the song service, He’s allowed it, hasn’t He? We have no reason to complain to God, but God has a way. He is building a family.
You know, I’ve said this before from the pulpit. I said it to Sue, again. God has allowed the human race to come to know good and evil, but His plan is to build a family who knows good and evil and chooses good. And God is going to…God is rescuing a people, but in the midst of it, He is calling us in a world of trouble.
And folks, we’re living here, that’s what we can expect. We must through much trouble, difficulty, tribulation…different words, “…enter into the kingdom of God.” (KJV). And so, we need to reckon on that.
And, any kind of theology, any kind of expectation, any kind of idea that the Christian life is meant to dispense with trouble and just plow through it, steer through it, and have this glorious set of circumstances where everything is fine, everything is to our liking, that’s a fantasy. It simply is not that way.
And so, the preface, or the context for this particular Psalm is the reality that every one of us knows about, that this is a world of trouble and we have no reason to expect anything else. The question is, how does that fit in? What do we do about it? How do we handle that? And so, the rest of that is all about how we see it…so much of how we view…so much is how we view things is the problem…so much of the problem is how we view things. Let me get my words in order here. So much of what I say and the trouble I’m having to say is that I have to use words.
( laughter ).
But anyway, our problem is how we see it. And, if you and I are living in an earthly realm, we are reacting to what we think, what we see, what we can touch and all the earthly reality of what’s going on around us, it’s gonna be a rough ride! Folks, if that’s what we’re going by, if that’s what controls our every day…where we’re at spiritually, mentally, emotionally, if that’s what’s in control, boy, the devil has got a…he has a field day! He’s got access to us that he has no right to.
You know, what does…we’ve said this before. What does Satan have to work with? He’s already been defeated at the cross.
( congregational response ).
Yeah! Lies! That’s all he can do is tell us things that, in the light of God’s Word, are simply not true! Our problem is, we listen. We believe what he says. You know, it’s like, well, yeah, in a general, vague sense that’s not true. But, for me it is and I’m here and this is where I’m at, and where’s God, in all of this?
And yet, the reality is what David is expressing here. And he’s expressing this, not just as theory he learned in class, but this is learned in the school of hard knocks. He had a graduate, PhD, whatever you want to call it, a graduate degree in the school of hard knocks getting ready for the throne, didn’t he?
Do you suppose God might be getting us ready for things? Should we react to that and think it shouldn’t be this way? Something’s wrong, where is God? You know, I was sitting here Wednesday night, in the service, and not too unusually, feeling fatigued, and just not feeling great.
And of course, there are certain thought patterns you tend to fall into that the devil begins to drop in there, and there are habits of thinking. And some of those were trying to take root and trying to intrude on the service. And I suddenly had a thought. My mind went to verse 1 of this passage, and I suddenly realized that God is here, right now. It’s not like He’s off somewhere and I’m in trouble and I’ve got to get Him to come to me. He’s here!
( congregational amens ).
And everything He said is true, regardless of where I’m at and how I feel about it. And I have every reason to simply step into what He has given to me, because He’s not somewhere else. And all these things that seem to—seem, in the moment, in my flesh, to be true, they are not true in the light of what God has promised and what God has said is mine! I have every reason to step into that.
And you know, the Lord helped me, in just almost a moment, just to say, wait a minute, devil. The Lord is here. I died with Him. Everything that He says about me is true and I am…in this moment, I am resting in that.
That’s the problem. You know, we are creatures who were placed within the realm of something called ‘time.’ And time is a succession of events, if you will. It moves. Tempus fugit. We had the expression. Time flies. And, I remember somebody, jokingly, some scientist talking about…saying that time was invented to keep everything from happening at once.
Well, we think of time as, there’s the past, there’s a present, and a future, but what do we have to work with? The present! That’s all we’ve got! The past, according to Paul, we get to leave in the Lord’s hands. We don’t have to carry it with us. The future is not here. We may have expectations, we may have desires, and there’s nothing wrong with bringing them before the Lord, but that’s not here yet. I don’t have to deal with stuff that isn’t here.
And our problem is we are so distracted by the past and by our worry about the future, that we’re sitting here in a state of defeat, a lot of the time, right now! And I guess, if I put a silly title on this…maybe it’s not so silly, but, “Right Now” is the kind of understanding of God that you and I need. We need a ‘right now’ God! But we just need ‘right now!’
And that was the thought that came to me Wednesday night, as I was sitting there. Wait a minute! You believe all this stuff, but look at you right now. What’s going on? Well, that’s all I had to work with is ‘right now.’ So, okay Lord, is this true for me right now, or is it just theory?
That’s a lot to think about, isn’t it? How much of what we say we believe is really just theory? I mean, we may genuinely believe it. But do we walk, in a practical sense, with a lot of defeat? Ah…now, again, it’s gotten quiet, hasn’t it?
We need the Lord to help us with this simple thought. God wants to give us…wants to communicate with us that He’s here! There’s a sense, in this verse, of a present-tense God.
Well, first of all, we need to see everything that happens, everything we experience in this world, with God at the center. I mean, the first word of this is not, oh my God, all this stuff is happening! What are we gonna do about it? It’s God! There is a rock of hope and certainty placed at the beginning of David’s words! Basically, it’s I don’t care what happens, God needs to be considered to be the center of the equation!
You cannot approach life with trouble, plus me, equals defeat. That’s a bad equation! But God, plus trouble, equals victory! Equals a way out, a way through! And so, the beginning of all of this thought has got to be centered in God. If we cannot see everything in this world in the light of a God, who from all eternity has purposed that which He has purposed, and is able to do what He said He’s gonna do, if we can’t see the world that way, we are gonna have a tough time getting through it.
Oh, my God, I’d hate to be in the shoes of the people of this world right now. All the fear that’s going through…people’s, “…hearts failing them for fear….” Jesus said that would happen. Because their hope is here, and they’re desperately trying to come up with solutions and answers.
And the devil is playing…we’ve said these things many times, but the devil is playing everybody’s idea against everybody else’s until there’s just nothing but conflict, and hate, and anger. You’re not doing it my way so you’re the devil, you’re a Nazi, you’re something.
And, God help us! God help us to be able to step back and say, wait a minute. This doesn’t begin with the world and its terrible situation. It begins with God! My whole viewpoint of everything begins with the reality that there is a God who reigns! My life is not in my hands! I have given it into His hands!
Have you? That’s an awfully safe place, isn’t it? Praise God! To be absolutely in His hands. To know that the One in whom we put our trust has everything under His control. And yeah, He allows trouble—He allows trouble, doesn’t He?
But the second word of that Psalm is the one that got my attention, the other night. It’s not just God, but it’s ‘God is!’ You notice how much of the scripture is present tense? Do you think, maybe, we might need more of a reckoning on the present tense reality of what God has done and is doing?
( congregational response ).
It’s…yeah! I Am! It’s wonderful to think about, oh, the wonderful things God has done. The wonderful things He’s promised and somehow, some way, He’s gonna get me there. When God wants us to reckon on the reality of everything He is and has done, right this moment, right now, here, sitting this morning, but right when we step out and we go back into our lives and into the circumstances and into the things the devil has tended to feed and cultivate in our minds and our thinking.
Oh, do we need a present tense…we need a ‘right now’ God! Help us, Lord, to recognize the present tense! God is! I thank God that He will be! I thank God that He has been! But He is! This is what we need to take from all of this.
It’s so simple, but it’s profound! It’s not something we…I mean, it’s something we acknowledge, but something we don’t live out. I don’t. I’ve got a lot of needs in this area. Folks, if there is any unrest, any fear, any anxiety in your heart and your spirit, do you see the need? Is there any reason for that?
And I don’t say that in a condemning way. That’s just the reality of what we deal with. That’s what trouble’s about. It doesn’t matter whether the issue is something out here, or something that’s just happening in here that nobody knows about. It’s trouble and it brings unrest. It brings fear. It brings uncertainty. It brings so many other…unbelief, it brings so many things.
Do you think that’s what God…that Christ died so that we could live like that? Or does God long for us to enter into the reality that God Is? And that we have a resource…we don’t have to listen. We don’t have to just simply submit to every little fear that comes along. We don’t have to live in that!
But you know, learning how to exercise that, learning how to cultivate that consciousness, I get that it’s a process. But God help us to realize that. May He just so burn this into our minds so that it comes back to us when we need it! And the more we step into it, the more God’s gonna give us the peace that He has purchased for us, and promised us! But ‘God is.’
And there are two particular things that He mentions here. “God is our refuge and strength.” Now, refuge…you think of that as in connection with danger. You think of a refuge as a place that is safe. It’s a place that we can go and hide and be safe.
A lot of us were…came of age. Some of you are older than I am and I guess you came of age a little earlier but, basically, when I came of age, the big issue in the news all the time was the threat of nuclear war. And, here we had…it was out of Russia, but it was the Soviet Union then, led by Russia.
And there was this constant talk, back and forth, and fear. And so what were people being encouraged to do about that? Yeah, get under your desk, if you were in school, but I mean, seriously? You know, suppose a warning came over, the news. There’s a missile coming. What were we supposed to have in place in order to deal with that?
( congregational response ).
A fallout shelter. Now, some of us didn’t have the money and so we had ‘shell-out falter.’
( laughter ).
Never mind. I’m sorry about that.
( laughter ).
But seriously, the idea was you had some sort of a bunker, some sort of a place that had lots of earth between you and the radiation, and you could get there until the radiation settled out of the air and then you could come out. It’d save you. If you weren’t in the direct line of fire of a bomb, you could at least survive the radiation.
Well, you know…I mean, but how many of you remember when it was like that? When that was stuff that people talked about and did? And of course today, in the Midwest, you have storm shelters, don’t you? And there’s good reason for that, because there are tornadoes that come through and the only way to survive, many times, is just to get down in a bunker in the ground and just wait till it comes through and hope it doesn’t blow the house away.
But I’ll tell you, in this context, God is the refuge. And you know, I think we tend to…it’s easy to misunderstand that, because we have such an earth-centered point of view. We think in terms of physical safety. In other words, that nothing really bad should ever happen to us. We should always be protected and we should always escape from trouble.
But is that really how it is? Tell that to our brothers and sisters in the majority of the world today, who are suffering severe persecution. Do you suppose that kind of thing might be in our future? Does that do anything…does that do any violence to what David said? That, “God is our refuge…”? Depends on what we’re being protected from. If you think that God being our refuge means being protected from every earthly, bad circumstance, always got a place where we can go and nothing bad will ever happen, you missed the point.
Close
March 12, 2023 - No. 1588
“While You Have the Light” Conclusion
Broadcast #1588
March 12, 2023
March 12, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1588 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: God, help us to be willing to take Jesus’ words seriously. And notice, He doesn’t say it’s a good idea to walk in the light. He says, while you have the light. See, God just doesn’t simply open the door and say, anytime you feel like it. There is a time element involved.
When God speaks, that’s when we have the opportunity to say, yes. And if there’s somebody who absolutely has God’s voice pressing in their hearts, and they find a way to sidestep it, and say, no, it’s not that way, I’m okay, or a thousand and one ways that we have of sidestepping the light and basically saying, no. The more we do that, the harder we get.
And there does come a time when God stops, and says, all right, I’m taking my hands off, you have chosen. Do you see the seriousness of Jesus’ words here? There were people who were listening to this who wound up on the wrong side of this.
And you see Jesus’ heart, He’s saying I came as a light so people who are in darkness wouldn’t have to stay there. Jesus didn’t come with any, boy, I’m looking forward to judging this crazy place. No! There was a heart that reached out. I mean, how in the world could you get any other sense, than you’d get from what Jesus said when He was dying on the cross? Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. Oh my God, what a heart!
But there was a generation that had had the light of the prophets. They are the ones on the whole planet that had had light. They had turned it into a religion that was run by devils, perverted it. But still, there was light! God had reached out to that nation, and the Lord said, all right, we’re on a schedule here. This is not gonna go on forever.
We have reached a point in the history of this nation, when this present generation has embraced the evil heritage of everyone that has gone before and said, no. They’ve embraced that heritage and so the judgment that was due for all of that is gonna land on this generation! Isn’t that what He said? I’m gonna charge this generation with every sin going all the way back because you have embraced that heritage, instead of listening to me. Folks, that’s where this nation is headed, but that is where the world is headed.
( congregational amens ).
And there is only a limited amount of time for people to listen to the Word, to listen to God! It’s not me. I’m not looking for people to follow and blindly follow anything I say. I’m looking for, I just want the Lord…I want the Lord to get in it.
( congregational amens ).
I want Him to speak. He has power! See, light is not, as we said it earlier, it’s life, but it’s power.
( congregational amens ).
It takes power to break through the power of darkness. Darkness is not just ignorance, it is satanic power that holds us in a grip of lies, and lies that appeal to our fallen nature, and that’s all we got to work with. Folks, that’s a prison. It takes the power of God to reach in and break that.
What do you think it took for Saul, the Jew, the Pharisee? God, who said, let there be light, shined in my heart to give light of the knowledge of the glory of Jesus Christ. That’s an imperfect quote there, but that’s the essence of it in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 4, in the early part. God had to shine down to the depths of his heart, and so stop him that he was willing to surrender and say, oh my God, I surrender!
There is no other response to a…to the God of love and mercy who would reach out with light and shine it in a dark place. I don’t want anyone who has ever heard me, certainly I’m nothing particular, but I don’t want anyone who has ever heard me to say, you didn’t tell me. I’m gonna tell you, this is life and death. There are eternal consequences. It’s not a matter of you embracing a church tradition and a church culture. The only thing that’s gonna carry people forward with any eternal hope, is you having a personal encounter with God…
( congregational amens ).
…Allowing Him to shine His light in the darkest recesses of your heart, to challenge the ideas that have actually come out of Satan’s mouth, but you find them appealing and they’re down in here somewhere. You know what I’m talking about?
( congregational response ).
And I’ll tell you, if you listen to that and sooner or later, you’re gonna say, no. You think of the children of Israel and of all they saw. I mean, I’ve just been recently reading in the Bible reading, of all they went through and what they saw in Egypt, what they saw as they left Egypt, the miracle that enabled them to dance on the far shore of the Red Sea, seeing God’s incredible deliverance, totally supernatural!
I mean, how would you like to walk out…flee from an army with walls of water on both sides and go through a sea on dry land? And then you watch that sea close over the army that’s coming after you. I mean, they had…was there any excuse? God reached out in incredible ways, and then to go to Mount Sinai and see the amazing sight that was there, and how quickly—how quickly, what was in their heart came out when the conditions were a certain way.
Folks, there’s one thing about walking in the light. Walking in the light is an act of faith, isn’t it? God has never promised that He was going to show us the whole path, has He? Does He let you see your whole life and how it’s gonna play out? No. But I’ve got light for today, don’t I? Has He promised the light that we need? Absolutely!
You know, one of the scriptures that came to me first, several weeks ago, was the one we’ve heard so many times, and there are several translations of it, but the essence of it is, “The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” (NIV). That’s pretty close to the modern translation.
But basically, here’s a world, think of the contrast, a world that’s heading towards midnight and judgment! It’s a time of incredible darkness! And yet for God’s people, the day is dawning! What an amazing contrast of light and darkness. We are coming into the end of the age and light is increasing for those who want light!
Walk in the light, “…while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” There’s a real birth, there’s a real relationship that God seeks with everyone who would follow Him! Are you following Him? Are you one of His children?
Oh, I’ll tell you, if you are, man, where we’re headed is awesome! We’re gonna need the Lord’s grace to get there. But I’ll tell you, the spirit of the world wants to see…say, God, show me my whole path, and then I’ll decide. Doesn’t work that way. God wants to produce in us the same faith that Abraham had when God told him to leave and didn’t tell him where he was going. Just leave, and I’ll lead you. Did He? Was the Lord faithful?
( congregational response ).
Absolutely! Sometimes the path that we follow is a winding, difficult one, it’s a challenging one! But I’ll tell you, even like David said, even though you’re in, “…the valley of the shadow of death…” (KJV). Does he leave us?
( congregational response ).
No, He’s a good shepherd, isn’t He? I want to serve Him while this world is plunging into its darkness. My God! But walk while you have the light, because there’s gonna come a time when there will be no light in this world, apart from that which exists in the hearts of His children.
You know, there’s a different way of illustrating this problem, this issue, that we’ve often heard in Hebrews, is it 3? Anyway, where there’s an appeal, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” (NIV). Don’t resist. Don’t say, oh I’ve got my ideas. Don’t harden your hearts. Beware, “…lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.” (KJV).
Folks, it’s so easy just to think in terms of, well, that’s just church, that’s just religion, it’s just their ideas, it’s nice for them but that isn’t what really, you know, gets me up in the morning. Folks, it has got to get beyond church culture! It’s got to become personal! It’s got to become something where you have a living relationship with God, where you allow Him to shine His light in the very depths of your being, step-by-step!
You know, we talked last week about Christ is all, the knowledge, the wisdom, the understanding, and the power! It all comes from Him and it’s all available! That’s the content of the light that we need!
Folks, you and I, like I said, we’re sailing into difficult waters. As Christians, we’re gonna be hated. There may well be people here who will lay down their lives physically for the Lord. Was Paul just mouthing nice sounding phrases when he said, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain?”
If your focus in on your life in this world, you don’t get it. God can take care of His children in this world according to the path He’s chosen for us. But folks, our life is not here! The vanity of this world, of living a temporary life in a temporary world and treating that as though it’s the permanent thing. Oh God, help everyone who hears this to realize what God is saying. There’s not going to be light much longer!
Now there will be for those who are children of the light. But for anybody who does not hear and, “…walk in the light, as He is in the light…” as John says in his letter, there is gonna come darkness. And you will think you’re on the right path and everything’s going great. Oh my God! My God!
Like I said, there are so many things I could say. My mind has gone in so many directions, as I’ve thought about this over the last weeks. But it comes down to such simple things, doesn’t it? Walk while you have the light, you’re not gonna have it forever.
And what happens if you don’t? And what does walk mean? Obviously, it means you’re responding to it in a positive way, you’re agreeing with it, you’re surrendering to it. But it is an experiential thing, isn’t it? What good is it if I agree with something that’s said but I don’t…it doesn’t actually govern my life? I’m not really walking in that. What good is that? It means nothing. God’s not stupid. God knows the depths of the heart and that’s what He’s looking for. Oh, I’ll tell you what, if we… praise the Lord, I forgot I’m not supposed to say stupid.
( laughter ).
I got corrected the other week. But that’s all right. I appreciate it, I accept it. But the Lord is so merciful and faithful to us, isn’t He? That He has even come, and offering life and…but my God, does it make any sense at all to drink in what the world is offering? This world especially. But that’s what people are doing everywhere.
And there are churches filled with people. God has His people, I’m well aware of that. But there are churches this morning, filled with people who have embraced a form of the gospel but have never surrendered to the light of God. It’s never become real or personal. Think about the thousands and thousands who followed Jesus at different points in His ministry. But just think about what it was that motivated them. Yeah, they wanted to see the miracles. They wanted to experience miracles of healing. They loved to be fed miraculously. They loved all the miraculous stuff. But what did all that have to do, from their point of view?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. It’s about this world, isn’t it? You are fixing my worldly problems. Praise God, I’ll serve You! Well, that’s the prosperity gospel! We’ve still got it today. What God is all about is making you prosperous and healthy, and just fixing every earthly issue and making life wonderful, giving you earthly success.
My God! Tell that to the apostles. Every one of them, except John, was killed for their faith! The only reason John wasn’t was because God miraculously protected him. I forget, were they trying to boil him in oil, whatever it was, it was certainly gonna be fatal. And the Lord preserved him, because He wanted him to experience what he gave out in the Book of Revelation. They finally got tired of him and sent him off to the Isle of Patmos there to get him out of the way. And that’s where he had the vision that the Lord has preserved for us. Praise God!
That’s the one, by the way, who wrote what we just read this morning. But you tell them about the prosperity gospel, you tell Paul about the prosperity gospel and see what he had to say about it. All the things that he went through, shipwrecked, stoning, imprisonment, persecution of every kind, being hated. And yet, God gave him something that was so real, the light of God was so real in his heart, that trumped everything!
Folks, that’s what it’s going to take. But with Him, we have what it takes. I’ll tell you, if He’s with us, and He’s in us, we will have light on our pathway as long as we are in this world. Those who serve Him, “…will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (NIV). The scripture tells us. Thank God! Thank God.
There are so many things I could say, I don’t know whether I need to carry this forward. But, I want to tell you, if…I’m gonna say this one thing. Sometimes young people will grow up and they will hear ideas put forth out in the world, and there will be legitimate questions that come up in their minds, and they will really wonder about this and about that. You know, is this really real, how do I know?
And I want to tell you, God’s not offended by someone who honestly doesn’t know, and wants to know. If that’s where you’re at today, you have every right to go to God and say, I don’t know if you’re real or not. I don’t know if this is so or not, but I want to know.
Now, if you want to know just to satisfy your intellectual curiosity, forget it! But if you want to know what the truth is, and you’re willing to go to God and say, God, I don’t know but I want to know, and I want to know for the purpose of walking in that truth, don’t you think God’s gonna respond to that? That’s what He’s looking for!
( congregational amens ).
But if you have honest questions at this point in your life, don’t feel bad. The fact that you’re even raising questions, and thinking about it, that can be an awesome thing, that can be a good thing. Maybe God’s talking to you. Just consider that.
Because I do not want anybody here to have second-hand faith. You don’t need to believe because your parents do, or because I do. You need to have a personal encounter with what we’re talking about, with the author of life Himself. He has the power, not just to give you information and tradition to walk in, but to absolutely penetrate your heart with His power, and with His life, and His light, and change you from the inside out where you will see…all of a sudden, you will see the true condition of this world. You’ll see where it’s headed. You’ll know what’s going on and you will also know that you have a different destiny than the world.
And I’ll tell you, you will have a path to walk where you may not see beyond the next step. But God wants you to know that every time you need light on your path, He is faithful, and He will give it to you exactly what you need.
I mean, there may come a time when God will tell us, hey, get out of here…you know, do whatever. But I tell you, what’s coming on the world is not gonna be someplace where you can leave Jerusalem and be safe. The time is gonna come when the whole world will be under judgment.
I don’t know if America is gonna be under some kind of judgment before that or not. I don’t know God’s schedule or whatever. But I’ll tell you, we cannot thumb our nose at God, say, God, get out of here, we’re not gonna agree with You at all. We’re gonna cancel everybody that does agree with You.
It’s not gonna turn out well. It didn’t turn out well for Sodom and Gomorrah, did it? But I’ll you what, God is going to allow this world, gonna allow the darkness to reach a climax, when every heart will have chosen.
Isn’t that the way it was in both Sodom and Gomorrah and also under Noah and the flood? Every single person had made their choice! I am either with Him or I’m part of the world, go away and leave me alone, God, I’m gonna do my own thing. That’s where God is going to bring this world. And we’re getting closer and closer every single day. I’m so thankful that God hasn’t left us! He’s here. He’s with us. Everyone who reaches out to Him, He reaches back.
( congregational response ).
There’s nothing that pleases His heart more than to share Himself and the light that is His life with us. But oh, it’s a sober thing to realize what’s going on, to realize how much we need Him. Don’t you dare be among those who would stop short!
That’s what the whole book of Hebrews is about. Those that constantly have something down in here that holds them, that pulls them in the wrong direction. Don’t you be one of those. Jesus went to the cross so you didn’t have to. He came into the world so you didn’t have to perish, that you might have everlasting life.
And I’ll tell you, if God is speaking to you, we don’t have to have an altar call, you can cry out to Him right where you’re at, whether here, or at home, or wherever God speaks. I’ll tell you, there’s only one time you can respond and that’s when He calls! Because we need ability that He gives us in order to respond! If He’s not reaching out, you don’t have the power to reach! You wouldn’t want to anyway.
But I’ll tell you, when He calls, “…call…upon him while he is near.” (KJV). I’ll tell you, God is so merciful and so faithful. But I don’t know what…I don’t know why this is on my heart like it is this morning. But, while we have the light, we need to walk in it.
( congregational response ).
We need to realize, praise God! God is faithful, isn’t He?
( congregational amens ).
So, let’s just look to Him, pray one for another. But if this is…for most of us, I believe it’s a word of great encouragement and focus. But where there is a word of warning, I warn you in Jesus’ name. Those weren’t my words, Jesus said, walk while…you won’t have the light forever. “Walk while you have the light…so that you may become children of light.” (NIV). Because otherwise, darkness will come upon you and you won’t know. That day is gonna overtake you, and everybody else in the world that’s still in that darkness. Thank God for the Light of the World! Praise God!
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March 5, 2023 - No. 1587
“While You Have the Light” Part One
Broadcast #1587
March 5, 2023
March 5, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1587 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately, over the last several weeks really, in a certain area of truth, but I think I want to focus today on a passage in John, chapter 12, if I may. And, this is a passage that occurs in the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, that is, prior to His resurrection.
Thank God, He came forth and lived, and still lives. But, prior to the crucifixion, this was during the last week, and, we see where Lazarus has been raised. He’s had that dinner with Lazarus and Mary and Martha, when Mary poured the expensive perfume and wiped His feet with her hair. And you have the, what they call the triumphal procession…anyway, where He came into Jerusalem and everybody was shouting hosanna to the King!
And then, we come into a passage where during the festival there were some folks, apparently, call them Greeks, but I think they were evidently Jews who happened to live in Greece, and they wanted to see Jesus. And it doesn’t actually say whether they…whether He actually met with them or not, but it goes immediately into a passage that I’m just gonna go ahead and read.
It’s very familiar to us in verse 23. “Jesus replied, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly…” (NIV). Now, isn’t it interesting that the hour has come for Him to glorified…He hasn’t been to the cross yet. Do you sense, in what Jesus said, that there’s a sense of destiny there, that there’s no question about what’s gonna happen?
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had that kind of confidence in God, where we could go along without this sense of anxiety about anything because we know the end of the story, we know how it’s coming out? We know that, yes, we need God’s grace, we need God’s help to get through as He did. He prayed earnestly in the garden, sweat…the sweat came out like drops of blood. I mean, there was an intensity in His seeking God for the help to get there. But the outcome was not in doubt. Thank God!
So anyway, “…The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” You could go off and preach a message on that, couldn’t you? Jesus gave up His earthly life, but as a fruit of that, many seeds…who’s He talking about? He’s talking about us, isn’t He? He’s talking about the ability to produce life in so many others. But what does He call us?
( congregational response ).
Sons and daughters, yes, but in this passage it’s seeds. Do you see how the pattern is meant to be repeated, where we lay down our lives and we also bring forth fruit? There’s a divine pattern here where earthly life has no value apart from dying and allowing the other life, the eternal life to come forth. I mean, you could really preach a message on just that, couldn’t you?
Anyone, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it…” Pretty plain, isn’t it? “…While anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Oh, wouldn’t that be good if whatever we face in this world, we could have our focus on where it needs to be? Not, oh my God, look what I’m going through, look where I’m at, what’s going on? Instead of saying, Lord, glorify Your name, whatever it takes to get there, Lord. If it takes laying down my life, which it may very well, the kind of world we live in, we could easily get there. But anyway, even if it means that, Lord…the focus is on, Lord, glorify Your name. You’re the One who deserves glory. And boy, I’ll tell you, is He gonna honor those who do that? Yes.
“Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Then again, there’s a message that we’ve preached many times along that particular theme there. What was accomplished, what happened at the cross…there was the dividing point of all history. This world was defeated and what has happened since has simply been the outworking of what happened on the cross. Not a thing the devil can do to change it. His power was gone forever in terms of the ultimate victory that he seeks. It’s gone! Jesus won the victory, forever and for all time! Thank God! The question is, who’s gonna be part of that? All right?
“He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. The crowd spoke up, We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” So they’re reacting out of religious tradition, aren’t’ they? Does it sound like they see and understand? No. Of course, we know even the disciples didn’t understand a whole lot at this point.
But anyway, “Then Jesus told them….” This is the area of focus that I trust the Lord will help me to bring out. I hope He’ll bring it out. “Then Jesus told them, You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light…” And that would be a good title, “While You Have the Light.” “…Before darkness overtakes you.
“Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light. When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them. Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.
“This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them. Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.”
Remember who it was that Isaiah saw in the vision? Yeah, it was the Son of God before He came as a man. “Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God. Then Jesus cried out, Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me.” I wonder if Thomas was listening?
( laughter ).
A couple of chapters later, he says, Lord, show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied. And He says the same thing. Whoever, “…has seen me has seen the Father.” But here it is before he ever got to that point. Anyway, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.”
Folks, there are so many ways, so many aspects to this truth that I’ve sort of wondered, as I’ve gone along these last few weeks, how in the world, where do you go with this, you could preach so many different aspects of it. But the reality is, history is replete with examples of what happens, that demonstrates the impermanence of this world.
We know what happened when Satan tempted our first parents and they embraced that temptation, that lie, that they could pursue their own desires and become like gods. And what happened? Was it light or darkness? It was darkness that began to, that possessed the human heart and the human race was plunged into darkness, in which it remains till this day.
But God saw and knew all about what was going to happen and he continually invaded, inserted Himself into human history in such a way that people did not have an excuse. And time and time again, you see the Lord speaking and making Himself known to a people, and what happens? There is a process that happens, where darkness gets darker, and…but there are a few people who continue to do what? They walk in the light. They believe in it. They are wholeheartedly a part of it.
You know, Hebrews talks about Noah in his day, and how, by believing in God, by doing what God said to preserve him and his family, he was condemning the world! See, there’s no middle ground here. There absolutely is no middle ground. And I believe God wants to emphasize this in a fresh way today. There is no middle ground. We are either 100 percent on God’s side or the darkness will take over and you will perish, and you will lose your life forever. That’s what’s at stake when Jesus was uttering these words.
And so, we see that pattern work out in Noah’s day as the whole generation hardened their hearts to Noah’s message, even though God warned them, warned them, warned them over decades and all the time of history. They had the testimony of people like…well, Noah, certainly. Noah walked with God. Enoch was the other one who walked with God in a very special way.
But men followed earthly desires into darkness. And what happens when you walk in your own earthly desires? Here…yeah, you’ll, “…lie down in sorrow.” (KJV). That’s exactly right. But happens when God is speaking? And He is shining light on the truth, and it’s not just abstract truth here. This is, He’s shining a light in our hearts to see, so that we can see the truth about ourselves and the truth about the world we live in. And what happens when people resist that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, their hearts get hard to the point where you can’t hear! I mean, it almost sounds in one point, when he quotes that passage from Isaiah like, God just decides I’m through with you, forget it, I’m gonna blind your hearts.
But how does God actually blind a heart? How is it that a heart gets blind in the face of light? By rejecting it. It’s when…and so, God can actually speak in such a way that it will produce that result, not because that’s what God wants, but because there is a condition in the heart that resists what God wants to say.
And so, you see that generation come to a point of judgment when God rescues a few and the rest of them, do what? They perish. Jesus said, that’s the picture of what’s gonna happen when He comes. We are coming down closer and closer to that day.
And so, you see that pattern repeated throughout history, but this was the pattern in Jesus’ day. The nation of Israel was coming to an end. Okay? They were coming to a time of absolute judgment. Jesus warned them. He told His disciples, the time is coming when…you see this great temple here? The time is coming, there will not be one stone left upon another.
He said, woe to this generation! They’ve hardened their hearts! How often, He said on one occasion when He wept! He wasn’t happy about it. He wept over Jerusalem and said, how often would I have gathered you, “…as a hen gathers her chicks…” (NIV). But, what? “…You were not willing.”
So, you see the fault is obviously with the people and what their condition is. And that’s why Jesus was saying, “Walk while you have the light.” There’s light here right now! I have come into the world as a light. I came so that you wouldn’t have to be in darkness.
There is this sense of coming to the end of an era, and we know how that played out. The church in Jerusalem was under severe persecution during its entire time there. And, you remember how James, Jesus’ earthly half-brother, became the leader of the church in Jerusalem?
How many of you remember when he got converted? See, he wasn’t a follower. When Jesus went to the cross, he wasn’t a follower. He became a follower, and his brother Jude, who also wrote a book in the New Testament, became followers of Jesus after He was raised from the dead.
Jesus made himself known to His brothers, and boy, they bought into it a hundred percent. They became His followers. James became the leader of the Jerusalem church. But they were under severe persecution, shut out of society, cancelled, to use a modern term. We don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say. Take those outmoded, wrong ideas and get out of here. Isn’t that where we’re getting? Yeah.
And so anyway, they came down to a point where the Jews said, hey, I know what we need to do. We need to get James and put him up on a high place in the temple where everybody can see him, and he’s gonna renounce Christ, and tell the people, it was all fakery, it was all wrong.
And so, he gets up there and does exactly the opposite. He stands there and gives a ringing testimony of Christ. Well that doesn’t last very long. They throw him down, from wherever it was, onto the pavement, and clubbed him to death.
I’ll tell you, that’s the spirit of this world. They can act real friendly, but you bring it all out into the open…do you think Jesus said, for no reason, you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. These are the waters into which we are sailing. And Jesus is saying, walk while you have the light. There was a time, there was an opportunity for a generation to hear.
Of course, we know, it wasn’t very long after James…we know this from history outside the Bible. But anyway, it wasn’t very long after James was murdered, where God had to warn the people in Israel who were serving Him, it’s time to get out. And they all left Jerusalem, and it was right after that when the Romans surrounded it, and you had the terrible destruction of judgment that Jesus had warned about.
And they were so relentless in trying to get all the gold out of the temple that they did tear it apart, brick…you know, stone by stone…don’t want to miss any of that gold. The devil was…I’ll tell you, there is a judgment that falls. Life just does not go on and on and on.
And it’s awfully easy for us in America, especially since World War II, to imagine that it will. One way or another, we’ll get back to normal. Well, history progresses. Nations rise and fall. What do you think the trajectory of our nation is today?
( congregational response ).
We’re falling. Spiritually, this nation has rejected God, as a nation. And we’re gonna be called upon to stand, and to walk, in God’s light, or we’re gonna choose to be part of the world. People growing up in this era, you are exposed to an avalanche, a flood of deception like no generation that has ever gone before. Your friends have all kinds of ideas that may sound good and feel even right and appealing.
But Jesus said, walk in the light while you have the light! What is light? It’s truth, but it’s more than…yeah, it’s living. John, at the beginning of his Gospel said, in Him was life, speaking of Jesus. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (KJV). I’ll tell you, the only thing that’s gonna give a contrast between the condition of this world and what God wants is divine life.
See, truth is more than simply correct ideas. You have plenty of churches that are full of many ideas that are correct, and how many of them have actual life? God, help us never, ever to fall in the trap of saying, we’ve got our traditions and that’s good enough.
We are not here to indoctrinate one generation after another with our ideas and our traditions, even if they come out of the Bible! There is no substitute for the life of God, for the light of God’s Spirit to come and to penetrate the heart of a person, to show them the truth of their need and the truth of the world, the truth of Christ, and the awesome thing that God has done for us!
( congregational response ).
Oh, where we are helpless in the face of Satanic control and delusion in this world, He answers every single issue! The guilt of our sins, the power of Satan, and the power of our flesh…all of it, He dealt with at the cross, if we’ll listen to Him and allow that light to shine in here, and be willing to walk in it.
Do you see what the…you see where Jesus is going with this? There’s got to be an expression of God, by the Spirit, that absolutely penetrates the heart. You’ve got to have that for starters.
But oh God, how easy it is for someone to hear all of that, to along with it, but also to kind of drink in from the world and…this idea and that idea, and feel like…you know, the spirit of the world says…kind of has it up to the individual, doesn’t it? You know, you’ve got your truth and I’ve got mine. Mine’s as good as yours.
I’ve got to find my own way, follow my own heart, whatever feels right to me and whatever strokes my…floats my boat, whatever expression you want. But whatever makes sense to me to chart the course of my life, that’s what I’m gonna believe, and that’s the path I’m gonna walk.
Folks, God has laid out a path for us that is one of light, and…I’ll tell you, clarity. Every need has been anticipated by a loving heavenly Father. And He asks us to walk that path with Him, because walking in the light is not just listening to it, it’s not just assenting to it with our minds! It has to come to a place where our hearts are given to that and we are willing to walk!
Walking means going from one place to another. I’ll tell you, a lot of people are in church doing this…yeah, I believe, yeah, I believe, and they’re just walking in place. They’re putting forth an effort that isn’t going anywhere. That’s a silly way to put it, but it gets the point across.
Folks, God doesn’t give us His Word as suggestions. God, help us to be willing to take Jesus’ words seriously. And notice, He doesn’t say it’s a good idea to walk in the light. He says, while you have the light.
See, God just doesn’t simply open the door and say, anytime you feel like it. There is a time element involved. When God speaks, that’s when we have the opportunity to say, yes. And if there’s somebody who absolutely has God’s voice pressing in their hearts and they find a way to sidestep it, and say, no, it’s not that way, I’m okay, or a thousand and one ways that we have of sidestepping the light and basically saying, no. The more we do that, the harder we get. And there does come a time when God stops.
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February 26, 2023 - No. 1586
“The Evil Day” Conclusion
Broadcast #1586
February 26, 2023
February 26, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1586 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Think about how the Lord allows Satan to, literally, have some influence and be able to exert his influence upon people and situations. You see where the world is going, right? You see where the Lord’s gonna take His hands off, in the sense that He’s allowing Satan to pursue his dream?
You see what happened in Noah’s day? The Lord worked with men, but there came a time when He took His hands off and allowed Satan to, basically, rule humanity and bring them to a place where there was no more capacity in most people for God. Did God take care of His own? He sure did, and He’s gonna do it right to the end of the age.
And you see even though Lot was not exactly an exemplary follower of God, was he? He wasn’t exactly your super spiritual guy, but in his heart, he had enough of a knowledge of God to stand against what was wrong and to say I’m not going along with that.
And so, the Lord came to Sodom, and saw that the condition was such that people had made so many moral choices to embrace evil, they had lost the capacity to choose Him. And so, God brought Lot out of Sodom and destroyed it.
And in a sense, both Lot and Noah had to stand, didn’t they? They had to make a moral choice, a spiritual choice to say, I’m gonna serve God. I don’t care what the rest of the world does, I’m with Him.
Folks, that is what God is building in every single one of us, every single battle that comes. Oh, I’ll tell you, God has so many awesome things that He wants to do for us if we will only learn to make the little choices, and to see, not just, oh, the evil day as some big event, but to see the little events that happen in your life, some of which nobody else knows about but you and God…to see them as God allowing Satan to tempt, to test, to pressure.
Whatever form it takes, he’s gonna pull on your nature, gonna appeal to your nature in some fashion, and attack you, and God wants to build a people who know how to stand in the middle of that. Man, I need it, but you see where God’s going with this.
I’ll get to some of the rest of it in a minute, but…Jehoshaphat was a king who sought to serve God, at least in a great measure, was the king over Judah, the Southern Kingdom after the kingdom split. He was a Godly king, and yet, one day, all of a sudden, he gets word that there is an army, and if I…the best I remember, it was something like a million strong, that’s marching our way, and they mean to do business. They mean to take us down and tear us apart and, basically, dismantle us.
He didn’t go looking for that. There’s nothing he could say, well, I did this, and God’s…you know, he recognized this is just something that has come against God Himself and His promises to us. And so, the devil’s aim, in every bit of this, was to take him down, to conquer the nation that God had blessed, pick on their weaknesses, do whatever He could to take them down!
And so, they went to the Lord, and they lifted Him up. They lifted up His promises. They worshiped Him. They said, oh, God, we didn’t go looking for this. We think about what You’ve promised us, and now, our eyes are upon You. We don’t know what to do.
You ever been in that place? That’s a good place to be, because we don’t always know what to do. In fact, most of the time, we don’t, really. That’s a lot of what the Lord is looking for when we get in situations, because there’s no cookie cutter answer. You don’t go to a book of theology and say in this circumstance, aha, there’s the answer. There’s the formula.
God has a purpose and a way to work out every situation. Jesus never healed people the same way twice. Well, maybe some of them, but you know what I’m saying. He healed people all kinds of different ways, different circumstances.
But here, God answered the prayer and said you’re not even gonna have to fight in this battle. Whatever other battles that Israel had to fight, and there were huge…there was a huge carnage. There were, sometimes, hundreds of thousands of soldiers that died in some of the wars of that era. He said, this one, you’re not even gonna have to fight.
You talk about the choir. They sent the choir out ahead of the army. I wonder how…I hope the choir had plenty of faith. You know, you think about the literal situation. There’s a million-man army out there, and the soldiers are behind us, and we’re gonna get in between here. We’re gonna march out and sing.
Well, of course, it worked pretty good at Jericho, didn’t it? But anyway, they marched out and they sang praises to God, and God just absolutely turned everyone against each other. You remember how it all turned out. And where the Lord…where the devil meant to take them down, the Lord gave them so much plunder out of it, it took three days to gather what the…what they had left behind. So, here’s the devil looking to do some damage, and God turns it into a rich blessing.
Folks, if we will learn to trust God in every circumstance and every battle, no matter how hard it is at the time, we’re gonna discover God bringing us into a better place. Not just getting back to…
( exhaling ).
…Okay, but a better place. God longs for us to have more, to be more…to get more experience under our belt, to be stronger in Him. How can we be ready for ‘the’ evil day if we can’t even handle our little evil days? See, we’re in the lion and bear stage here, I think, most of us.
But I’ll tell you…and some of us are in the Peter stage. We’re still trying to unlearn what we think of ourselves and learn to really see ourselves through God’s eyes, but it’s not God’s eyes of condemnation. Look at you, you weakling. It’s God’s eyes saying, I know what sin has done. I know your need, and I’m not basing anything I’m doing for you on anything other than that I love you, and I have a plan if you’d just give yourself to me and humble yourself in My hands.
I have the power to bring you out. I’m not looking down on you because you’re weak. I love you, and the weakness in you causes my heart to want to reach down and lift you up, and bring you into a better place if you’d just let Me. I want to let Him, don’t you? Oh God, help every single one of us.
Like I say, you can go through the scriptures, and Jesus Himself…the evil day certainly hit Him…the evil day of all days, but yet, look what God has brought out of it. When He made the choice to go to that cross and say, I will honor Him. I will lay down my life if that’s what it takes to fulfill His purpose.
Isn’t that what He called us to do, to lay down our lives? Maybe not literally. I don’t think anybody here is likely to be nailed to a literal cross, but who knows? But I’ll tell you, whatever God calls us to do and to come through, God is gonna bring us through it. Praise God! Those are some of the thoughts that I had.
Anyway, let’s just go ahead and read that passage very quickly, because it’s very familiar to us in Ephesians chapter 6. “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” (NIV). Whose mighty power?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. “Put on the full armor of God…” not just part of it, “…so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” So, it isn’t just power on power that the devil employs. A lot of times, he comes in under the guise of something else. He’s gonna find any opening that he can possibly find into your life or mine.
Do we have weaknesses he can exploit? Yeah, and the Lord’s gonna allow him to come at us through those weak places so that we can learn that we have them, and we will learn to bring them to Him, to the cross and trust God, and learn how to fight that particular battle.
And boy, as we do, we’re gonna grow. We’re gonna have experience. Like Paul says, all these things give us perseverance, don’t they? Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope. And nobody’s gonna come to the end and say, what a fool I was to hope in God! Look what it got me. Man, we’re gonna be so blown away with what God has given us, because we have fixed our hope in Him, in spite of everything that has come along.
But I’ll tell you, the devil has schemes against you. He knows your weaknesses. He’s been around you, followed you your whole life. That’s not to make us afraid. But it is to make us aware. It’s to make us…what did Peter say? I’m trying to remember the language that he used. Be on your guard. Be aware. Be alert. Okay?
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood….” How many times do we react to something in life, and we’re reacting against the people involved? God, help us to see past that. Folks, the devil has control of so much in this world, and even in the Body of Christ, people have weaknesses. And there are gonna be things that you and I are gonna have to be patient with one another about.
But here’s the deal, and this is something we’ve said so many times. I don’t care what, even if the Devil uses somebody to do something that is hurtful to you in some fashion. That is never, ever, ever, ever an excuse for you to have a bad spirit. In fact, the Lord might have allowed that to expose that need in you so you’ll learn how to surrender it to Him.
What does the scripture say? If there’s somebody who’s overtaken in a fault, what do we do? You who are spiritual…now, he’s not talking about some high-blown picture that we would paint, but somebody that’s walking with the Lord and has their spirit right. Okay? You go to them with a spirit of condemnation and contempt…no, with a spirit of meekness, and then, what does it say? Consider yourself lest you also be tempted.
Oh, God just wants to change us into His likeness! Are we willing? See, yeah, that’s the kind of circumstance that will really find out whether we’re gonna follow our old nature or His. Yeah, examine yourself. Let’s ask God to help us in those kinds of battles. But remember, “…our struggle is not against flesh and blood…” We need to see past that.
“…But against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Anybody here naturally able to handle that?
( congregational response ).
You ready to go after them? There’s a lot of power. The power of evil, the power of sin is very real! And the nature with which you and I were born, that still lives in this flesh, is very much a part of that! It’s in harmony with that! I need a Savior, folks.
( congregational amens ).
I need something supernatural if I’m gonna have any help. You can’t give me rules to follow. You’re gonna have to give me a Savior.
( congregational amens ).
You’re gonna have to give me a new heart and a new life that gives me power. You notice, he begins this section here with the power of God, His mighty power. Then, he comes down to Satan’s mighty power. Which one do you want? I want His mighty power.
( congregational response ).
Thank God! And that’s the thing, we can be strong…we can be stronger than the devil, not because we are anything, but because we’re relying on Him. David found that out, didn’t he and the whole army? Two armies found out…that God plus a little boy or a young man with a sling and a stone is better than a giant, because God is with him!
I want God to be with me. I want to experience His strength in situations like I felt this…what I felt earlier in the week. I want to experience His strength in that in a deeper way. How do I get there without having to go through it? How do we ever acquire the label ‘overcomers’ if we’ve never overcome anything? God is gonna send battles your way and mine.
But oh, what He’s given us to fight. It says, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground….” That’s all God’s looking for. Use the armor and stand. He’s not looking for you to fix the situation, not looking for you to save America, as we said recently, not looking for you to straighten out the person that caused your problem. God wants to straighten you out! And if we will be the kind of person God wants us to be, that’s gonna do more for somebody else, if it can happen, than anything else.
But oh, how hard a lesson that is to learn. It is so contrary to everything with which we were born. So, if God keeps putting you in conflict with somebody, you need to understand what’s going on. It’s not because He hates you, not because He’s mad at you and punishing you. He wants you to learn something.
And I’ll tell you, the more we learn, the more He’s gonna be able to put Himself on display, because it’ll be Him coming out of us and not us fighting our own battles. Oh, I’ll tell you, we have a God who knows what He’s doing, doesn’t He? Wouldn’t it be good if we’d just seek Him and do what He says and learn to do things His way? That’s not an easy thing, is it? Okay?
All right? “…May be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Do you believe there’s gonna be a people in this age, even right down to the end, who will be able to stand? How are they gonna do that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, in the Lord’s mighty power and with His armor. It ain’t gonna be because they got better theology. It’s gonna be because they’ve got Christ, and He is active in their hearts and lives, and they’re doing things His way. “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth….” These are things we’re familiar with. I just want to go through it real quickly.
But the belt of truth…the devil is going to come at you with every lie that you are naturally inclined to believe. It might be a lie about yourself. I’m bad. I’ll never amount to anything, or you name it. Every one of you that serves the Lord, you know what I’m talking about. There’s gonna be some lie that is gonna put the focus on you as the reason why this is happening. God doesn’t care about you. You’re bad. You’re getting what you deserve.
Did Jehoshaphat get what he deserved? He didn’t do anything except live and serve God, and the Lord allowed a great battle to come against him. Did Job go after what happened to him? Was God punishing him? See, all the things that the devil tried to get him to do, and even through his friends who didn’t have a clue what was really going on. The devil is gonna come with every reasoning that he can.
Folks, we need truth. We need a knowledge of what is really true, and that’s gonna come from Jesus who is ‘the’ truth, “…the way, the truth, and the life.” (KJV). Man, if it didn’t come out of the heart of Jesus, don’t you bank your heart on it. Don’t you bank your life on it. Don’t you go by it. We’re gonna need to know what is true and stick with it when it doesn’t look like it, when it doesn’t feel like it. I need the truth! It’s the truth that’s gonna set me free and nothing else. Okay?
“…The breastplate of righteousness…your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” (NIV). As Paul said, that when we come to Him by faith in what Jesus did, there is a…we come to a state of peace with God! Don’t ever let the devil assault that position! He will try to drive a wedge between you and God in your mind. He’ll accuse Him! God’s responsible for this!
God doesn’t send it; He does allow it. He allows it for a loving purpose, but God is not punishing. He’s not sending something on you to destroy you, to hurt you. I am at peace with Him. I have a place to stand that is sure, and it’s not based on, again, on anything I did.
“…The shield of faith….” See it’s wonderful to know what’s true. It’s another thing to, sort of, entertain and allow things to hit, and say, wait a minute, Devil. There’s an active part that I take in repelling your lies, repelling every attack that you would make upon my mind. I believe God!
And it’s like the faith of Abraham, where I have to…sometimes I have to go against everything that I feel, everything that I see. But I know that God is true. It’s taking that belt of truth and lifting it up against whatever the devil would throw. I actively believe God, and I don’t need to see it or feel it to know that it’s true, but I’m gonna stand anyway.
Folks, the devil understands that. Do we? May God help us, every single one. Yeah, I needed that this week. Did you? Yeah. All right?
“…The helmet of salvation…” Isn’t that the next one? The helmet of salvation. I guess you can emphasize a lot of things, but one thing that shows to me, is that my entire way of looking at life, at myself, at God, at the world, needs to be shaped by the concept of salvation…that I am, in myself, a hopeless, helpless sinner. I deserve nothing. My only hope of escaping this world and having any relationship with God, is that He’s gonna have to do it! I need a Savoir!
I can’t be like Peter and say, no, Jesus, I’ll never do that! Peter was sincere when he said that, but he didn’t know. He didn’t have the power to do that. I need a Savior. I need somebody who can come in and rescue me from what I do not have the power to do.
Folks, that’s a way…that’s an entire way of thinking about everything. Does that govern your thoughts? Do you know every moment of every day you need a Savior, not just in some broad general sense, but I mean, every day, I need a measure of salvation ministered to me every single day.
And I need it when I’m in those circumstances, when I’m in the battle, when the evil day comes, especially I need it. We can sit here, maybe, and rejoice in the Lord and feel good. But I’ll tell you, we need this when the evil day comes, and you can’t see anything but darkness, and you can’t feel anything but darkness. Is this still real? See, if we’re gonna be able to stand in this hour, these are things we need to know, and the Lord’s gonna be faithful to teach us. Thank God!
“…And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” How many times have we talked about that? The one thing the Devil fears is a Christian who not only believes the Word of God and forms such a conviction in their hearts, that they stand, and they quote it, and they say this is what I’m going by, Devil. You can say what you want, but I know what God says.
And I’ll tell you something about that. I was thinking about this, even this morning. You know, we talk about how preaching needs to have the anointing upon it. It needs to be not just the words of a human being. There needs to be life in it. God’s life needs to literally flow in the same sense that it did when He said, let there be light. It may not be as powerful now, but there needs to be…in other words there needs to be God’s life in it.
I’ll tell you, when a Christian stands in a time of darkness, in a day of evil, and the devil is throwing everything he can at that person, and we stand, and we say, it is written, we’re not just quoting proof text! I’ll tell you, God gets in that! There is life! Every single Christian can speak the Word of God and God be in it!
You think the devil feels that? He doesn’t care about your theology, he cares about your Christ. He can’t stand that, and that’s one way the Word needs to become flesh, because it became flesh perfectly in Him, didn’t it? But God wants the Word to become flesh in us, and that’s part of the process of this happening.
God’s got us in school, folks. And part of that school is that we’re gonna have things, we’re gonna have evil days. You will have them. It’s part of your training as a child of God. God knows about it. He permits it. He uses it for a purpose, but don’t ever forget that everything you and I need to experience victory in those situations, He gives us! He gives us, and He doesn’t give it because we deserve it. He doesn’t give it to us because we’ve measured up and kept the rules. He gives it to us because He loves us, and we need it.
What are we doing with it? Are we learning how to use that, or are we just fighting in our own strength and fighting our own battles? I’ll tell you, God is on the throne. He is for His own. He has given us everything we could possibly need to stand. We just need to pick it up and use it and learn, and He will be with us all the way to the end. Praise God!
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February 19, 2023 - No. 1585
“The Evil Day” Part One
Broadcast #1585
February 19, 2023
February 19, 2023
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.
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February 12, 2023 - No. 1584
“Lamb Upon the Throne” Conclusion
Broadcast #1584
February 12, 2023
February 12, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1584 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Think about the character. I believe some of Isaiah 40 was read the other night, if I’m not mistaken. But what a powerful portrayal of the greatness of this King and this throne and this Kingdom. It’s not just the fact that He’s all powerful and He can do anything He wants, but what’s the character of the one who sits there?
We’re called to submit to His authority, to give ourselves to Him, to surrender. But are we surrendering to a tyrant? Are we surrendering to somebody who has some selfish agenda and simply wants to make pets out of us? No! That’s the thing that God wants His people to know! That’s what makes rebellion against this thing so terrible! My God!
“…Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for…” (NIV). Oh, praise God! “…That she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” Speaking of some of the judgments that had to come. “A voice of one calling: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up….”
Do you feel low this morning? I’ll tell you, I don’t care how low any human being feels at any given time, there will be times when we will, but I’ll tell you, God’s gonna lift, God’s gonna lift up everyone. He’s not gonna leave anybody like that. Thank God!
“…Every mountain and hill made low….” Be careful you don’t get high and mighty in your mind. And “…rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
And then he talks about the, the shortness of life, the fragility of human life. It’s just like grass, it withers so quickly. The wind blows and it’s gone. This is the life into which we’re born. We tend to think this is all…we act like this is all there is, this is the thing that matters. It is so temporary!
( congregational amens ).
Oh God, lift our eyes! Open our eyes to see where we’re at. You know, this has been a funeral-filled weekend, hasn’t it? It’s just a fresh reminder of how short life is. But oh, the hope to which He’s called us! I’ll tell you, there’s a Lamb upon a throne right now.
And His heart toward His people is expressed in this passage…in verse 8, “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” Then he talks about the good news, shout it out! Verse 10, “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him….”
And oh, when you think, in earthly terms we think of somebody to be afraid of. Oh my God, He’s gonna tell me what to do and gonna take away my liberty, and I’m not gonna be…no. What is this ruler like? “…He rules with His mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd.”
Talk about Psalm 23 that we sung this morning. Oh, what a heart! Jesus called Himself the good shepherd, didn’t He? He knows His sheep. His sheep know Him. He gives them eternal life. No one can take them out of His hand. The Father who gave those sheep to Him is greater than the Son and nobody can take them out of His hand. Praise God! Do we so have something to be…to rejoice? I don’t care what happens in this world!
( congregational response ).
I mean, there’s all kinds of trouble that can happen. Think about what Paul, and others in the New Testament went through. They suffered, in so many ways, and yet they had such a sense, the people that served God in that time had such a sense of the one who sat on a throne, that He was in charge, that nothing could happen outside of His will, that Paul and Silas were able at midnight to sing psalms and praises to God in spite of having been beaten, and their feet locked in stocks, in a prison.
Oh God, do we see past the things that happen in this world? Do we see that there is One on a throne, who knows what we’re doing, who loves us. Praise God! Praise God! “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” What a…I mean for all the greatness and the magnificence of the power that He has, yet the character, the heart of the one who wields that power is somebody I want to serve.
( congregational response).
Praise God! He’s worthy to be served!
( congregational response ).
And then you have the scriptures that were read the other night about how great He is. “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?” I guess that would be this way [holding up hand], wouldn’t it? Whatever.
“Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighted the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord, or instruct the Lord as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge, or showed him the path of understanding?” You’ve got a sovereign, eternal God that is over all, folks!
( congregational amens ).
And He wants every one of His people to get that in a deeper way today, starting with me. Praise God! I’ll tell you, you want some rest in a miserable, unrestful world? That’s where it comes from. It comes from never, ever forgetting that reality. Okay? “Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales.”
( blowing ).
It’s all gone. All the nations and all the things they’re doing right now. You know, China supposedly got a missile that can come over here and beat our defenses if they want to use it. Russia’s developing the same thing.
( moaning ).
Suppose they do? Suppose the world blows up right now. Praise God!
( laughing ).
( congregational amens ).
Who wants to live in this place anymore? But I’ll tell you, as long as we’re here, we serve One who is on the throne!
( congregational amens ).
There’s a Lamb who rules. And oh, He’s earned that place, hasn’t He? “…He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.” And so forth. It goes on and describes, let’s see, verse 17. I don’t want to just read it all but, “Before Him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing. With whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you liken him?”
And then, of course, he goes into the idolatry and the ridiculousness of fashioning some thing, having a craftsman fashion an image and then say, there, you’re my god. But we do that in other ways. People do that today! They’re fashioning their bank accounts, and that becomes their god! And all you have to do is have the power go out, and somebody hack the computers and your wealth is gone! Folks, we need the Lord, don’t we? That’s not where my security is, that’s not my god.
“Do you not know?” Verse 21. “Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.”
You know, we think of a tent here as some little thing that we’re big enough to handle, sort of. If I do it, I don’t know. But anyway, it’s something that people…designed for people to be able to spread out and use in a useful way. But here He is spreading out the heavens. Whew! You gonna serve some earthly power? Forget it.
“He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away…To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
And so, he’s talking about the complaining of Jacob and Israel. Verse 28, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary…” We sure do, don’t we? “…And his understanding no one can fathom.”
But how does he use this great power of his? It’s wonderful to think about how amazing his overall power is, but what does that mean for us? Just, do we just sit back and say, wow! We certainly can do that. But I’ll tell you, this is what He wants us to get from all of this power. How does He use this? It might be a lesson for how we use whatever power He gives us.
( congregational response ).
Yeah. He’s wanting to make us like Him, and we’re not by nature. I want to be more like Him, don’t you? “He gives strength to the weary…” Are you weary this morning? “…And increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
That’s what the throne, to which God calls us to bow, is about. It’s not just about earthly welfare either. It’s about a welfare of blessing, a dream…dream is not the word, a vision, a plan, that goes way beyond anything of this world. How many times have we pointed out, that Jesus said, this world, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
And so, onto the scene came the One of whom the prophets prophesied and there he was, and John proclaimed him and said, behold, “…the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Oh, I see the love and the mercy of God, who recognizes our condition, our need.
You know, we need to recognize it. He knows. He knows every secret of the heart, doesn’t He? Is there anything that is part of your life, or ever has been a part of your life, that He doesn’t know about? Is there any secret thought or motive that He doesn’t know completely about? Is that not a measure of the mercy and the love of God that He could know all that, and still love us?
( congregational response ).
And then this One that Isaiah saw on the throne, high and lifted up with a purity that is just beyond anything that you could ever find in this world. And yet, He was willing to humble himself, and become a man, and be subject, not only just to living here in this world, but to being despised, rejected, killed on a cross, and to do that for you, and for me. Does He deserve to be on a throne?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! And the power that brought Him out of that, we’ve read so many times in Ephesians 1, if you want to read it again. That power is greater than every power that there could possibly be in this world. And He didn’t do that…obviously, He was already on a throne. He didn’t need to do that to obtain to a place of honor and of power! But what He obtained was a power that enables him to share God with us!
( congregational amens ).
To reach down to the lowest of the low, the ones who don’t deserve Him and know they don’t deserve Him! To reach down to the depths of your heart and to cleanse every detail of your past, to give you a hope, and a future. He reigns right now over everything that would ever oppose you and me.
Is there anything the devil can do to undermine, to undo this, to separate us? Can we be separated from the love of God? No! Romans 8—Romans 8 is so plain, isn’t it? Praise God! Nothing! If it comes…when it comes, to persecution, does any of that have the power to separate us? In our darkest hour, when we’re in the valley of the shadow of death, will He abandon us? Oh, praise God! I’ll tell you, this Lamb upon the throne, do you know one day we’re gonna stand around that throne, and worship Him, and bow before Him?
( congregational response ).
And our eyes…we’ll see, as Isaiah saw, His greatness and His power. And we’ll stand there and just be overwhelmed with His goodness and His mercy. But oh, how He wants to make that more real to us now, because I need the strength that comes from Him, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
I need that! Oh, how the devil would assault our mind and yet ,God in His wisdom has allowed us to experience all the things that we have to go through in this life because they actually help to shape us into what He wants us to be. I’d sure rather He just touch me and fill me and take me on to glory, that would be great…I’d be just as happy as a clam. If clams are happy, I guess.
( laughter ).
I don’t know that they have such emotions, but nonetheless, you know the expression. But does God know what He’s doing?
( congregational response ).
Does He know how to prepare His sons and His daughters for the inheritance that we have? I want to trust Him.
( congregational response ).
I don’t want to ever doubt His love for me. All I have to do is get my eyes off of me and my problems and all my shortcomings, which are plenty, and lift my eyes and see the cross, where He died. He died because of that. He didn’t die to say, all right, look what I did, now you measure up and I’ll accept you. I could never win His approval that way, neither could you. But He came to give me a hope and a future. Oh, is He worthy of being served?
( congregational amens ).
See, He didn’t just come as Savior, He came as King, and Lord. And He needs to have the reign. In fact if…you know, there are a whole lot of people that claim the benefits of citizenship in heaven without becoming citizens, without bowing down to the King. Folks, bow to Him from your heart.
( congregational amens ).
Put your hope and your trust in Him. It is a one-way ticket out of here that means laying down our lives and saying, Lord, my life does not belong to me anymore. I give you this life I cannot keep anyway. But I do it based upon the promise that You will cleanse me from all of my guilt so that one day when we all stand before Him, that’ll be a day of rejoicing!
( congregational response ).
Because the battle will be over! We’ll be clothed with all that He has given to us. We will be presented to all creation as His full-grown sons and daughters. Folks, there is a throne, and it’s real. And I’ll tell you, every man, woman, boy and child is…boy and girl, is called upon to bow before that throne when they hear the word and the message of God and what Christ has done to make it possible for your sins to be forgiven.
We sang a song…one of the hymns this morning, was inviting sinners to come home. Folks, if you’ve never bowed the knee, you’re a sinner. All you have to hope for is to stand before Him one day and give an account. And you’re not gonna like how that turns out.
But oh, there is a message of hope right now. That throne is what gives me hope this morning. It gives me confidence to stand there and put my faith in Him. It gives me confidence to trust Him with the circumstances of life, some of which I may not like. But I know He loves me! And I know He’s with me! And I know He will never leave me. He will never forsake me.
And I know that I am part of a process, it’s like being in a river. It flowed out of God’s heart through the mouths of His prophets and that river is carrying His people inexorably towards a destination that God predetermined before the world began. What a picture! And I just want to be in that river. I just want to trust Him and to live with hope this morning.
And when I feel my need, and it’s often, I want to know that I can go freely, because the price has been paid. I don’t have to earn my way here. I don’t have to be afraid that He won’t hold the scepter up, like Esther was. He sits there…that’s the reason He’s on the throne, is so that He can give us the help that we need! Anybody here need help today?
( congregational response ).
That’s why the throne is there! You have a right to go! You can go to the ‘untied,’ I mean the United Nations, they won’t help you any! I think the ‘untied nations’ is probably more like it. But there is a throne that goes beyond the highest human authority! And you and I serve the One who sits on that throne.
Folks, when Jesus died, He absolutely defeated the devil. It was finished, and the devil knew it! You know, many times when a monarch went out to fight another king, and of course, the people heard about the battle and worried, how is this gonna turn out?
But if they, if your king won the war, what often happened was he would bring the other king and his generals and some of his important people as captives! And there would be a victory parade and all of them would be stripped down and put in chains and marched down the street, before the people, and said, there is your enemy. Do you know Jesus has done that? Read Colossians chapter 2. It’s not just that He’s forgiven my sins but He’s defeated my enemy!
( congregational amens ).
Why are we afraid of Him? Why are we afraid of our own weaknesses? Why are we afraid of anything? But Jesus has paid it all!
( congregational amens ).
He reigns on the throne! And one day we will see Him as Isaiah did. But we’ll be standing there together with the redeemed of all ages, including Isaiah, including Jeremiah and Elijah and Moses, and David, and all these…and so many others, Paul and Peter. We’ll stand there right by their side and say, glory to the Lamb, the Lamb upon the throne. I’m here because of what He did! And I gladly, joyfully serve Him! Let’s joyfully serve Him here!
( congregational response ).
Let’s lay hold of the hope that He has given to us. Let’s never let that leave our consciousness. But just say, Lord, I’m yours, lead me, help me, change me, do whatever You need to do. Just get me ready for that day. That’s what it’s about. And He will…He has begun that good work.
He, “…will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (KJV).
We’re serving One who has the power to say we’re already glorified! Wow! I’m just gonna cooperate with the process and rejoice in Him and worship Him! He is worthy! Is the Lamb on the throne?
( congregational response).
Is He on the throne of your heart and your life? To Him be the glory! Praise God!
Close
February 5, 2023 - No. 1583
“Lamb Upon the Throne” Part One
Broadcast #1583
February 5, 2023
February 5, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1583 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! Praise the Lord! I’m rejoicing in the Lord with you today, and also feeling my weakness in a more than usual way, and a little bit overwhelmed with thoughts that I’ve had. I’m just trusting God to bring out what He wants, because it’s like more than you could think about getting into.
But it’s very interesting…if I had picked a title for the thoughts that I’ve had this morning, it would’ve been “The Lamb Upon the Throne.” And lo and behold we sang that. We haven’t sung it in forever. But did you know I’ve had this…I’ve had thoughts about the throne going through my head, since Wednesday night in particular. I think there were some mentions that somehow triggered that in my mind, and it’s just been there percolating and thinking and going through scriptures, and wow, what an amazing subject it is.
And you know, in the natural, people and groups of people throughout history have developed various forms of government and one of the most common ones is a monarchy of some kind. Now today, a monarchy is largely ceremonial. You know, they celebrate the queen, but she has no real power.
But, throughout history, a throne became a symbol of a people and their government, and generally speaking, one of the characteristics of monarchy is absolute power in the hands of a man, or in some cases a woman if she was a queen. But there was an absoluteness to the power, and it wasn’t…and you mention the throne because the throne is something that outlasts a particular king, doesn’t it, in the earthly sense? But kings had absolute power to do whatever they wanted, and it was something that was recognized as, well this is how our government works.
And so, if you happened to displease the king, and he didn’t like you, he had every right to say, take him out and execute him, or her. And that’s the extent…that’s what absolute monarchy is all about.
You think about Herod, this is one example. And how his wife had a plot to get rid of John the Baptist and she sent her daughter out there to dance in a, no doubt, a seductive way, that pleased him and his drunken guests, and so, he rashly promised her, I’ll give you whatever you want up to half the kingdom, something like that.
And, so she went and asked her mother, what should I ask? She said, ask for the head of John the Baptist. And, he…the question was not did he have the power, but did he have the will? But because of the fact that he had made this promise in front of so many people, he said, yep, go do it and, boom. That was all it took for the execution of John to happen.
And throughout history you see this principle, in fact, in some cases, the edicts of the king were binding on the king. Do you remember that? How about…in Persia, that was part of their culture, that if the king ever made an edict, and sealed it with his royal seal, even the king himself couldn’t go back on his word.
You talk about absolute power…and you remember how that played out in a couple of instances when the king did something that caused Daniel to be on the wrong side of the law, and Daniel had to be thrown into the lion’s den, but the Lord had a way of intervening in that, didn’t He? Praise God! That alone tells you something about the Lamb who sits on the throne. Praise God!
And then, when Esther…that’s a pretty good picture of how people viewed a throne as something to be…you know, take very seriously, and be very sober about. When her people were in danger, and there was another case where he had signed an edict and it was in force. There was nothing…nothing he could do to say, oops, I made a mistake, let’s do away with that.
And her uncle said, go in, and talk to the king, plead for our people. She said, I can’t do it. If I go in there and he doesn’t raise the scepter, I’m dead. Whoa! You talk about a place to be frightened and take seriously. And so, finally she gained courage, prayed, fasted, and gained courage and went in there and he raised the scepter, didn’t he?
But you get a picture of the absoluteness of earthly power. And so, we get an idea of what a throne is all about, but the reality is, we know that there is a throne that reigns over everything. It is a fact, and I believe somehow the Lord is wanting to emphasize that this morning in a way that will encourage us and cause us to lift our eyes from the earthly issues of life, the kingdoms, the troubles, the issues that are just grabbing at us from the news every day.
We talked last week about the kingdoms of the world, and how there is a kingdom that’s over all, and it’s not an earthly kingdom at all. In fact, it never will be in spite of a lot of doctrine out there. It is absolutely a kingdom that is…that cannot be seen unless you’re born into it. It’s very, very real, and it’s the one that’s gonna last.
But, you think of scriptures that we know and are familiar with, just a few of them in David’s writings, the Psalms. He certainly knew a lot about the Lord, didn’t he? He was a man after God’s own heart, but he understood who was on the throne. He had all power in Israel, but he knew that he was yet a subject of a much higher power.
And so, like Psalm 103, is one example in verse 19. After talking about how the wonders of how God deals with us, with such patience and such love and such mercy, then he says, “The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all. Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion.” (NIV). Praise God!
What about Psalm 99? Just the beginnings of it…beginning in verse 1, “The Lord reigns, let the nations tremble; he sits enthroned between the cherubim….” And, I’ll just drop this in. Whenever you see that word, like cherubim, in Hebrew, if you want to make a plural, you add an ‘im’ to the end of it. You don’t say cherubs, you’d say cherubim. So that’s what that means. In other words, there’s more than one. All right? Little grammar lesson there.
“…He sits enthroned between the cherubim, let the earth shake. Great is the Lord in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations. Let them praise your great and awesome name—he is holy.” Does He reign, or doesn’t He? Praise God! That’s a wonderful thing to remind ourselves of.
Psalm 93 is another familiar example. “The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength; indeed, the world is established, firm and secure. Your throne was established long ago; you are from all eternity.” Praise God! I don’t care what the world looks like, what your life and your circumstances look like, there is a God who reigns!
( congregational response ).
There is a throne that goes back before the world was ever established. It’s there, it’s real. The devil knows about it. But I’ll tell you, we need to know about it. Praise God! What an awesome thing it is.
And I’ll tell you, when you see the purposes of God being played out in the world, you have to realize that God’s…the reality of God’s throne is not just some, oh yeah, He reigns and so do we. He reigns! And His purposes in this temporary world have everything to do whether people are willing to bow to that throne or whether they continue in the rebellion led by Lucifer.
And it’s not…it’s not a…God is not a salesman, as He is actually almost sometimes pictured. He comes to appeal to men. Look, you’re on a bad track. I’ve got a better plan. Come and believe in Me and be religious and I’ll…you know, I’ll help you through life and I’ll give you heaven, too, as though, He’s just selling us on a better plan.
It is bow or burn, folks. His Word, His command is an ultimatum. You talk about an ultimate ruler, you talk about somebody that has the power of life and death, not just in this world, but with respect to eternity, folks, I want to bow. Thank God! Thank God for a throne.
But you know, I’ve thought of so many scriptures that I can’t even…trying to make sense of how to deal with this. But you know, His…His Word goes out into the world and it is a challenge! I’ll say this much about the wicked. It is a challenge to this world. It is a challenge to anybody who would seek to live their life in this world according to their terms.
Look at Psalm 2. Here is God’s challenge to the nations of the world. And I realize probably, very probably, David was thinking of his own rule, his own kingdom and how God had established him on his throne, but there was something prophetic in this. This was something that looked way beyond David to David’s Son, who was yet to come. Praise God!
“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” Do you realize that everything the devil is doing in the world, regardless of what it is, it’s in vain? Nothing he does will every undermine the thing that God has planned, not just in a broad sense, but where you and you and you, and where I am concerned. Praise God!
“The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.” Do you see any of that happening today? Yeah. We’re not gonna go by Your rules anymore. We’re gonna follow our own desires and we’re gonna do whatever we think is right.
You know, just go to whatever. That’s what the world is telling God. That’s what America has been telling God for a long time. I’m not gonna get back into what we did last week, but this ties in doesn’t it? And so, they go on and they say, “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles. The One enthroned…” There’s the throne. “…The One enthroned in heaven laughs.” Do you think the Lord is worried?
( laughing ).
He laughs. “The Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain. I will proclaim the Lord’s decree: He said to me, You are my son; today I have become your father. Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will break them with a rod of iron; you will dash them to pieces like pottery. Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling.”
I’ll tell you, there is a kind of fear that’s right. There is a reverential fear and a respect. But I’m so glad God didn’t give us a spirit of fear in the bad sense, aren’t you? Thank God. But I’ll tell you, the challenge to the world, “Kiss his son…” This was an act of surrender, of submission is what he’s talking about here. “…Or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
And you know, you could follow this theme through the scriptures and see the place of the world in respect to, and the rebellion against heaven and how that’s gonna end. Folks, it’s gonna end before a throne, isn’t it? And it’s not gonna end well for the wicked. They are gonna be destroyed.
You know, I thought about…I’m gonna drop this in. There’s a scripture in Revelation chapter 6, and a lot of imagery in here and a lot of…you know, the images stand for real things but they’re nonetheless images. But there’s gonna come a time when the world is gonna realize, too late, that they’ve been on the wrong side. They’ve been rebels against ‘The’ authority that is from eternity to eternity.
Verse 15, “Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”
That’s an amazing phrase, ‘the wrath of the Lamb.’ You know, you think of the Lamb, you don’t think of wrath, do you? You don’t put those two together. But I’ll tell you, you cannot have true goodness without hating what is evil and what destroys. And I’ll tell you, there are people who want to cherry-pick this Bible, and talk about the Lamb as though He’s just this warm fuzzy, ‘I’ll go along with anything, because I love you so much’ kind of being.
But I’ll tell you, there’s gonna be a day when that same Lamb is gonna be filled with wrath and it will be poured out upon those who have said, no, to His love and His mercy. Amazing, isn’t it? Praise God! Well, I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the…on how the wicked are gonna fare under this throne, but let’s go back to Isaiah 6 and just look at some familiar scriptures that talk about…give you a picture.
You know, something we’ve pointed out before that Isaiah was a prophet raised up at a time that was so common in Israel’s history when they were falling away from God, involved in idolatry, in rebellion, in injustice in their society. They just weren’t really respecting God at all.
And so, he was sent with a message of warning, and chapter 5 is filled with a message where he says, woe to those who do this! Woe to those who do that! Woe to those who do this and that! And over and over again there’s a warning of judgment.
You know, you can do that, you can have God’s message and feel like, I’m one of the good guys. I’m pointing my finger out, pointing my finger at those ‘bad people down there.’ Now, if they’ll just straighten up and be like me. Well, the Lord had an answer for that, didn’t He? And it’s an answer we need to reckon with. Praise God!
I want to be in the right place with respect to this One who sits on the throne. And so, Isaiah 6 now, you come to a different picture. And it says, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory. At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”
You know, I don’t care…if we only have words, there’s no way to convey a scene like that, is there? I mean, there’s a part of me that says, oh God, I want to see that, I want to…I want to get ahold of the reality of who You are and how amazing and how powerful You are.
Do you know, if we’re gonna really be right with God, we’re gonna have to see as He is? And do you know what happens when we do? We see ourselves, don’t we? And that’s exactly what happened.
Isaiah said, “Woe to me!” He didn’t have his eyes on anybody else. There was nobody else…Lord, now I see how great You are, now I see how bad those people…no! I’ll tell you, if we really see, with our hearts…I pray for anybody that hasn’t seen in some measure the Lord, because if you ever do, you will know why you need Him. There won’t be any illusions that you are a good guy or a good gal. There’s no such thing in the human race.
“Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” I’ll tell you, the first step towards any kind of relationship with God is to see Him for who He is and then see ourselves for who we are. Then you’ve got something you can build on.
If you just try to see this in some sort of half-hearted religious way, and embrace that…and that’s what so many do. Oh God, I want to see Him as He is. I want Him as a reality. I want to see the Lord upon the throne, here, reigning! I want to be part of a people that are willingly, gladly subjected to Him, who have no illusions about their own worthiness or goodness, but they come because He invites us. He has made a way! By the way, who is this that Isaiah saw?
( congregational response ).
Well, the Lord, but who specifically? This was Jesus! This was the one who later came to earth…was Jesus. How do you know that? If I asked you to prove that, how do you know that? A little Bible lesson here. What does the Lord say, through John, about God? It says, “No man hath seen God at any time.” (KJV).
Now why is that? Because God is a spirit, dwells in eternity. He fills everything. He is alone supreme. But He has chosen to make Himself fully known, perfectly expressed in His Son, just as divine as He is, the perfect expression of the invisible God, as Paul says. And there He is. You want to know what God is like? You look at Jesus.
So, what Isaiah was seeing…you talk about…I mean, this is the one that he prophesied. God used him mightily to prophesy of the one who was coming and what He was gonna do. And here Isaiah was meeting Him! What an amazing thing!
And realizing his complete unworthiness. So, what happens? “Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
And what an amazing…when you think about this in the context of history and how things have unfolded in God’s plan. Does a coal on an altar…I mean, does something that’s…you literally pick up a coal off an altar, does that have power to forgive sins? Did the Old Testament sacrifices have the power to forgive sins? No! The scripture says specifically, they don’t. So how in the world…where did this forgiveness come from?
It came from the death of the very one before whom he stood, that hadn’t even happened yet. You think about the throne that’s behind all of this. You think of a throne that’s not bound by time, by circumstance, by anything, that has absolute power and authority. And here is forgiveness being given freely to a man.
And from history’s point of view, from our point of view, it hadn’t happened yet! Do you see how Paul could talk about a God who can call, and set apart, and talk about how we’ve been glorified? Wow! That’s the throne I want to serve. Praise God!
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January 29, 2023 - No. 1582
All Music
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January 22, 2023 - No. 1581
“A Desperate Prayer” Conclusion
Broadcast #1581
January 22, 2023
January 22, 2023
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?
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January 15, 2023 - No. 1580
“A Desperate Prayer” Part One
Broadcast #1580
January 15, 2023
January 15, 2023
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!
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January 8, 2023 - No. 1579
“Leave Your Cage” Conclusion
Broadcast #1579
January 8, 2023
January 8, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1579 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Everything about human nature, from the time that Adam and Eve sinned, has involved a fear, in here, that this is all I have, this is all I know. I cannot lose this or I have lost everything.
What was the first reaction of Adam and Eve after they had sinned and Jesus, it was…the One we now know as Jesus, was the One who came walking in the garden, to come down and fellowship with them and share the glory of what had been created, what did he do? What was his reaction to that? It was fear. It was hiding. It was a sense of, I’m afraid. I can’t handle this.
What is…ever since, the human race, the most inborn instinct that we have is to cling to our life in some form. And it’s not just laying it down in what we call death. It’s laying it down in every aspect as we live. We just don’t want to let go of self. And fear is the tool that the Devil uses.
There are a gazillion…I mean, you could write an encyclopedia, I suppose, about all of the lies the Devil tells us. But I’ll tell you, fear is…fear is part of the human equation, isn’t it? We are afraid to let go. And I guarantee, if you’ve walked with the Lord any length of time, there are things where you have learned to say, yes Lord, I surrender. And the result of that is what? It’s peace, isn’t it?
But do we not sing songs like, “The Secret Place”? “There’s a place in my heart, where even I don’t go….” And we don’t want to even let the Lord in there. We’re just afraid. We’re ashamed, we’re…or it’s something that’s so deeply rooted in us, we just can’t let it go or we can’t really believe God would love us. What are the…I mean, the lies just go on and on and on. This is Satan’s attack against every one of us.
And, one of the biggest ones…I mean, it could be so many things, but one of the biggest things is a performance-based thinking. I mean, we’ve certainly talked about this enough…where I cannot conceive of a relationship with God that is not somehow based upon my performance! And since my performance is not very perfect, where does that leave me, most of the time? That leaves me in a place of shrinking back, hiding. I can’t really go to Him now. I’ll clean up and then I’ll come see you later, Lord, when I’ve gotten things right.
I mean, you can couch this in so many different ways, but it’s the same basic thing, where we cannot really…we get so bogged down in all of this that’s going on and all that we feel and the sense of unworthiness that we forget all about the greatness of the One that we are serving and what He has done. We forget what Paul said in Romans 8, that “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us…all things.” (KJV).
And somehow, we are stuck in the Old Testament, trying to win our place in heaven. And so many times, we get stuck in these places where there are areas in our heart we’re afraid to let go. But when we’re afraid to let them go, does that not keep us down in Satan’s little jail cell? And if we’re down in that realm, does he not have an access to us that he wouldn’t if we got out of there?
And so, what you wind up with is a vicious cycle, of staying in a weak place. Because of our weakness, we fall into whatever the weakness is, and then we can’t go to Him…because of the weakness. And round and round and round it goes. And there’s always this sense of distance between us and the Lord, and we’re afraid. We don’t realize the hold of this earthly mentality, this earthly nature. How readily does it cling to our prison cell and call that home.
I mean, you see it in so many places, the fear that absolutely bound people. The Israelites were so afraid when they saw the giants and heard about the giants, I guess. What did they want to do? They wanted to go back to Egypt! Now they spent a long time down there, years and years and years, toiling in slavery, crying out, oh, God, deliver us, and when He did, and when they saw what it meant, even though it was obvious that God would be with them, if they only had their eyes opened, they were ready to go back.
And I’ll tell you, God is going to put us in situations where it’s gonna look scary. The devil is gonna focus our attention on how fearful this is, what the prospect is of reaching out and knowing You better. God, I can’t afford to get too close to You. I’m too…I’m too something. I’m too dirty. I’m too unworthy. I’m too…oh, poor me. You wouldn’t want to be around me.
You see how the devil works? That’s all he’s got! The One who’s on our side is the One who formed those stars, who came down, calls us brothers! See why this needs to be in context? He goes on to talk about how He, “…has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. (NIV). He can understand. He calls us to a throne, over in chapter 4, of grace and mercy.
And yet, here we are, oh God, I’m afraid. And we’re listening to the voice of the enemy. Why was it that David could face Goliath as a young man, all by himself, and the rest of the army was shrinking in terror? Just fear, unbelief?
There are so many sides to this, I don’t even know where to go with it. But I just…I just pray that God will somehow get this across. I’ve thought of so many things and they just vanished out of my mind. That’s perfectly all right. I’m not afraid of that. God is so faithful to help His people.
But God wants us to lift our eyes out and realize what is really going on. The devil is talking you and me into staying where we’re at, rather than reaching out. Oh, I can’t…this, that or the other. We’ve got a thousand and one reasons for staying where we’re at, and all we’re doing is clinging to self, whether it’s pride, whether it’s unbelief, whatever it is, whatever the particular flavor of that lie is. And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants to reach out.
( congregational amens ).
And He’s not saying, you down there, what’s the matter with you? Get with it! What is it that drives out fear? Is it a tongue lashing? It’s, “…perfect love casteth out fear.” (KJV).
( congregational amens ).
And you go to 1st John and the context of that. What he’s talking about is a legalistic relationship with God, where my performance is what determines my confidence toward God. And if I don’t measure up, I’m afraid, and I don’t want to get too close to Him, because I know how He’s bound to feel about me because of this. I can’t get close to Him now.
Anybody here who ever gets in that place, that would admit it? But there He is, knowing exactly where we’re at and what we’re made of, calling us to come, not because we deserve it, because we need Him! It’s love that reaches down to the lowest of the low, and says, I have the power. I made the stars! You don’t think I can help you?
You don’t think I care? I showed you that on the Cross! I went to the Cross in your place, and you’re afraid I won’t like you now? I knew what you were all about. I knew everything that was wrong with you.
And yet, we struggle, don’t we? I’ll tell you the answer I believe with all my heart, really is hinted at more in this passage…than it is in other places, with where He goes at the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next chapter, because you had that transitional word ‘therefore.’ He’s laid out a whole lot of truth. Here’s what God has done. Here’s who we’re dealing with. Here’s where we’re at. Here’s the reason we’re in trouble, and it’s because we’re afraid and we’re gonna cling to what we know, instead of letting that go. We better look at Jesus.
It says, “Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling…” (NIV). What are we supposed to do? “…Fix your thoughts on Jesus—fix your thoughts on Jesus…” I’ll tell you, the more we look at Him, the more we’re gonna see the immensity of who He is, and His power and His love, more than anything.
What did Paul pray in Ephesians chapter 3? He says, I want you to get it. I want you to understand the immensity of His love, the height, the depth and all of that. I want you to explore that, because when we do that it sets us free from that fear of letting go and of trusting Him.
Oh God, I can’t let that go. I can’t even bring that into the light, let alone let it go. I can’t admit that, even to myself. I can’t…you see where we’re stuck in our little cage. I started to talk about how…where we stay becomes our comfort zone. That was something that Shelly shared the other night, or Michelle…sorry.
( laughing ).
Your adult name! I remember her when she was Shelly. But what a blessed testimony that was the other night of how God will take us to places that are not in our comfort zone. But the very fact that we have a comfort zone tells us exactly what he’s talking about here. My comfort zone is, I’m afraid of anything else. Don’t ask me to get outside of this. I’m comfortable here. It’s not great but it’s what I know and I’m okay. I’ll get through. I’ll muddle through.
And the Lord’s saying, I’ve got better for you. You’re in a cage, but the door’s open, for crying out loud! I mean, how many times have you seen, or heard about situations where perhaps an animal was kept in a cage? And there they are, and week after week, and month after month, and year after year, all they can do is pace back and forth, and that’s all they know, and they get fed and all of that. Then one day, the door is open. Well, what does the animal do? Generally, he’s just gonna keep on doing what he’s been doing.
But Jesus has opened the door and invited us to step out and here we are listening to the voice that makes us afraid to do anything different, to come to Him as we are, and know that He will receive us. When I say as we are, I don’t mean clinging to my sins and wanting to continue in them. I mean, oh God, I need help! I need You, Lord! I need You to come and change me and do for me what I cannot do!
Sometimes God has to let us really get in the mud before we’ll really come to that, and realize it’s that serious. We just need Him! But I’ll tell you…everything about salvation, it’s so awesome, on the one hand, but we fight it all the way! Don’t we? Do we not fight God all the way home?
( congregational response ).
There is that in us that resists, that fights, that holds back…that defaults to unbelief, sometimes stubbornness, a lot of stuff! God is so…He’s the only One that knows how to get past all that. He must laugh sometimes. But I’ll tell you what, I believe He’s grieved sometimes. But I believe He laughs, because He knows what it’s gonna take.
But folks, we don’t understand the half of what He’s delivering us from. You know, Jesus came and lived an earthly life and here we are, our nature is to fear death, but He took up His cross long before he went to the Cross. He lived for the will of His Father. He did not live to gratify human desires and all those kinds of things. He lived for God and then He willingly laid down His life, the very opposite of our nature.
How did that work out for Him? Did He not show us the very pathway to glory? It does not come from preserving self, staying in the cage of fear. It comes from reaching out and worshipping God and letting Him have His way. And I’ll tell you, there is a God who will not only open the door of our cage, but will walk in there and say, I know how you feel but let’s get out of here. You don’t have to listen to that voice anymore!
( congregational amens ).
I did not give you, “…the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and…” self-control. (KJV). I’ve given you everything that you need. Get out of your cage. Understand what’s happening and why you’re where you’re at, and why things are such a struggle. It’s because you’re hanging onto yourself and you’re doing it because you’re afraid.
How many movies do you see on TV where you get into situations…why are you acting that way? And then somebody finally opens up…because I’m scared. And that’s almost the last thing you would have expected them, judging by how they were acting.
We do so many things to cover up what’s really…what the real problem is. We’re afraid. We don’t want to let go. But I’ll tell you, God has shown us the way in His Son. He has opened the door where we can let go, because there’s nothing that stands between us and a Holy God. Jesus has removed that barrier forever!
We have the right to come to Him, to say, Devil I don’t have to listen to you anymore! That voice that causes me to feel afraid, I do not have to listen to that anymore! He didn’t give me that kind of a spirit, and I refuse to listen to you. Father, I trust You! Lord, I trust You with my heart and my life. Do what’s necessary.
Look at David in Psalm, was it 139? He goes on and on and on, talking about how God knows everything about him. Now, to most people, that’s a scary thing. I mean, we’re just so stupid, that we’ll go along and there’ll be something that nobody knows about, and we’ll just kind of keep it hid, almost like God doesn’t even know about this one. I mean, duh!
But here’s David coming to a place where he realizes God does know everything! He knows it before I know it! And He thinks about me. His thoughts are like the grains of sand. So, what is his reaction to that? Is it oh, my God, I am terrified, because I know I’m not perfect? Oh, God, help…no! He says, oh, this is awesome! It’s wonderful! Lord, since You know everything, search my heart. Lord, if there’s anything in there that isn’t right, help me. Bring it to my attention.
Do you sense the trust? Do you know, the closer we get to Him…the way the devil would paint it is, the closer we get to Him the scarier it is, because we can’t possibly measure up to that. We’re not spiritual. This is only for the super saints. But the reality is, the closer we get to Him, the more we understand about His love, His mercy, the provision of Christ. It’s exactly the opposite of the way the devil tells every single one of us every single day. God is inviting us to leave our cage.
How about that for a title? “Leave Your Cage.” But the cage is simply this, we are afraid to die and that simply means, I am afraid to let go of this, of me. This is all I’ve got. It’s what I know. I’ve developed a coping mechanism with the world.
The world will not teach you trust, will it? It won’t take long before you’re gonna realize, hey, if anybody is gonna pay attention…if anybody really cares about me, it’s me, ultimately. And so, I’ve got to fight to carve out a little space for me in this world, where I can cope and I can handle it, and it satisfies my needs up to a certain point. At least I’ve got a place, a little castle, and I’ve built a moat around it and I won’t let anybody get but so close. That’s human nature.
And the Lord says, let it go. Let me in. Let me have it. And I’ll bring you out into a large place. You don’t have to live that way anymore. Come out of your cage. The One who made the stars stands beside you with His arm around and says, come on, let’s get out of here! I’ve got a better place and we’re going there. And I have the power to take you, and I love you. To Him be the glory! Praise God!
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January 1, 2023 - No. 1578
“Leave Your Cage” Part One
Broadcast #1578
January 1, 2023
January 1, 2023
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1578 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I came into, yesterday morning, still didn’t really have much of a clue as to what this was about today. But, I don’t know, I had just a germ of a thought, and just tried to ask the Lord to kind of set it in its context. I’m gonna go ahead and read, and skim my way through the first couple chapters of Hebrews, certainly a very familiar scripture. But, mainly because it’s the context for the thought.
It’s always good, I believe, to have a knowledge of scripture, itself, but we need to see, I believe with all my heart, the thought that the Lord has stressed to me this morning, because I need it as much as you do. But we need to see it in its context. We need to really get the big picture.
That’s what we’ve been singing about this morning. The big picture is not about us and how we feel and how we’re doing. The big picture is the greatness of our God, and who He is and what He’s done, because if we lean on that, we’ve got everything we need. Praise God!
So the Book of Hebrews was written to Jews. They had known, of course, the traditions of the Jews and their religion that they inherited from Moses. It was one of following laws and trying to attain righteousness before God through that means.
And, that was not what God had in mind. God always had planned a New Covenant that was not gonna be like the old one. This was a covenant in which the sins would be put away and everyone would know Him in a personal way. It was a divine provision that came through Jesus Christ.
And, for one reason or another…you know, we have a hard time leaving what we know…leaving stuff behind. Every one of us comes to the Lord with a context of our lives and what we have settled into, and sort of, this is my place, this is who I am, this is who I’m about. It’s hard to leave all of that. And that really is an underlying thought in where I’m going with this.
But this was the problem with the Jews. They were having a hard time letting go of the old and really understanding what God was doing, and the greatness of it. And so, the way the writer begins the book, he begins by comparing Jesus Christ with angels in the beginning, and then he compares Him with Moses…and you know, there’s a comparison going on so we can see the superiority of what God is doing now.
It makes it easier to say, yeah, this is what God’s about. Leave the other behind. This was always intended to point to that. So, the first part He is comparing the Son of God with angels, and so he says…and the reason he’s doing that, by the way, is that angels were very central to the ministration of the Law in the Old Testament. In fact, he says in one place, it was ministered by angels, and how much greater, then, is what we have now, because that was ministered by Christ who is greater than the angels. So you get the logic where he’s going with this?
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (NIV).
Boy, that’s a good thought that we all need to wrap our brains around, if we can even begin to do it. How easily do we sink into our littleness and forget who our Savior is? You know, it’s wonderful to think of Him and to remember Him as the One who walked the shores of Galilee and had such a compassion for sinners. And we see His heart…we see the heart of God, really, in Him and through Him, of course He was one with that. But we see that in Him.
But to realize Who this really is! You go back before there was a world…He is the One who spoke the Words. He is the One who created everything. I don’t know if you remember several years ago, we used a…we must have portrayed it, or literally projected it. But I did a comparison of star sizes to show just the greatness of the universe.
And, we came to a point where there was one star that they know about that is so immense that if you put it, if you centered it where our sun is, which is 93,000,000 miles from us, we would be way inside of that star! The surface of that star would be out somewhere near Jupiter.
I mean, you talk about the immensity of the universe and the amazing things that were executed by Jesus, the one we know as Jesus. He was the One who built that star, and all the innumerable stars beyond that. And you know, our sun is a very ordinary little star, on the grand scheme of things, and yet more than a million earths, if that were just a hollow globe…more than a million earths would fit inside that.
I mean, you can go on and on and on describing the greatness of the universe and the fact that nobody’s ever really discovered the end of it. And it’s not just the number of stars, it’s the number of galaxies of stars, every one of which probably has a hundred million or more stars in them. I mean, this is the One who literally fashioned that. He built that star that was so great and put it in its orbit and set it in motion.
This is Somebody…this is not some small being like we tend to think of Him. We humanize Him and bring Him way down, almost, and hope He can get us through. But, I’ll tell you, this is Somebody who, from the foundation…before the foundation of the world, was there with the Father. He is the Creator. So, you know, we need to set our issues in the light of who He is.
And, it’s not only that…and of course, you want to know what God is like, again, we’ve said this many times, you look at Jesus. God, in His essence, is a Spirit who fills all the universe. You could never see Him. He’s just too great. He’s in another realm. But He focused all of His goodness, all of His being in the Person of His Son so you could find out exactly what the Father is like. You just look at Him. He is the exact representation of the being of the Father. Okay? So, there’s an absolute oneness.
But it goes beyond that, doesn’t it? He sustains everything! You want to know why the stars stay in their orbits? Because He says so. That’s what He says. He sustains, “…all things by his powerful word.” You think His Word is powerful enough to help us today? Praise God, I want to be listening to this. I face the same issues that you do. But I’ll tell you, we’ve got Somebody who is on our side, who is absolutely undergirding everything that we are about here this morning.
Without this Person, we are helpless! This is not religion here. This is a person. His name is Jesus. He represents the heart of the Father in carrying out the purpose that He conceived before the world was. Okay?
So now, he begins to talk about His superiority to angels, because God never said to an angel, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.” And he goes on and talks about that…does that comparison over and over again. He’s greater than any of the angels.
And then verse 8, “But about the Son he says, Your throne, O God….” You know about the deity of Christ…there it is. “But about the Son he says, Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever…” Now, this world won’t, but He will. “…And righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.”
And then, he goes on about the creation. He says, “In the beginning, O Lord, you…” This is Jesus he’s talking about, remember. “…You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” But now, listen to what he says. “They will perish, but you remain.”
It’s not just, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” He won’t. There’s an eternality about Him. There’s a temporiness, even about the material creation that we are a part of. It fell into corruption because of man. That’s what God is rescuing. But look at how he describes this, the poetic way. He says, “They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed.”
I mean, you know, doing away with this universe and coming up with another one is like God changing His clothes. Roll it up. Okay, I’m done with this. It’s worn out. Let’s put on something better. But what He’s gonna put on will last forever.
“But you remain the same…” That means, He’s the same, here. Jesus Christ is, what? “…The same yesterday and today and forever.” And of course, the command of the Lord, the blessing of the Lord…he says, “To which of the angels did God ever say, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?” Okay? So you get the idea pretty plainly that Jesus is way superior to the angels.
Okay, so that is where he goes here with this. He says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” That was the danger he saw. “For if the message spoken by angels was binding…” He’s talking about the Law. If that was binding, “…and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” This is destiny stuff, here. This is what everything is about.
“This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” So God didn’t spare anything to give testimony to what He was doing. The testimony was His Son, the resurrection of His Son, the witness of those who saw all this, and then on top of that, the supernatural intervention by their being able to do miracles and all kinds of signs and wonders that came along.
And God saying, yeah, listen, this is My Word, this is My Covenant. Signs and wonders were never meant to be the center. You don’t worship a sign. The sign is pointing to something. And the sign was pointing to the message that God wanted men to get. That’s His heart, okay?
And, of course, then he talks about how God’s purpose is not to take the world that is to come and give it over to the angels. That’s not theirs to run. God’s purpose from eternity, has to do with man. “What is man that you are mindful of him…” Now, he’s quoting from the Psalms. “…The son of man that you care for him?”
David is just kind of looking around and saying, my God, it almost doesn’t make sense to me. Who are we that You should care about us like this? “You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.”
That’s a key word. Put everything under his feet. I mean, that was God’s idea in the beginning. That was His plan, that He would create this amazing creation, all the creatures that there were, and all the stuff in this world, and we would be absolutely in charge of that. There wouldn’t be a single thing that would not be under our dominion — until we decided we were gonna do it our way. Then everything went to “hell in a handbasket.” But anyway, and He, “…put everything under his feet.”
Now, listen to what he says. “In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him.” I see…God is trying to make an emphasis upon this. This is our…this is the destiny, this is the purpose for which mankind was created in the beginning. We were created to be His sons and His daughters, to rule over a creation and not mess it up.
All right, “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.” Obviously…pretty much…it’s a pretty scary world, isn’t it? And boy, I’ll tell you, mankind worships this world, don’t they, some of them? Oh, I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing to be a steward of the world and to have respect for the creation. But I’ll tell you, when you start worshiping that, when you start serving this, as though, oh my God, we’ve got to preserve this, God’s already marked a day when He is gonna burn it up!
This is not what it’s about. There is something to come that we won’t have any problem trying to keep. It will be perfect. We will be able to rule over it and enjoy it. And there won’t be any death, there won’t be any pain, there won’t be any suffering, there won’t be any of this stuff. That’s where God is going with everything.
So, rather than seeing everything subject to man right now, what do we see? “…We see Jesus….” Now, what about Him? “…Who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
You want to know how He did it? God was there. It was God who was in Christ, “…reconciling the world to himself….” But think of the One who fashioned that immense star and all the galaxies, who put them in their orbits, designed all of this, willing to come down and live in human flesh like we have…to Him be the glory—to Him be the glory.
Boy, we won’t humble ourselves over the littlest thing, and look what He did. And He didn’t do it for people that were worthy. He did it for people who were in rebellion and darkness and every possible thing wrong. Do you see His heart? His very name, Jesus, means, God saves. It comes straight from the heart of our heavenly Father who is loyal to His original purpose.
So He comes down, and He doesn’t come down and wear a crown, at least not the kind that we would expect. He wore one of thorns…represented the very curse that was upon this creation. Made lower than the angels, so that He could taste death for everyone.
You know, isn’t that our greatest enemy? The Word calls it the last enemy. It’s gonna be destroyed one day. There won’t be any more death. But this is man’s greatest enemy, what we fear the most. That’s where we’re going. But anyway, He came down to face, and to taste our greatest enemy.
So here’s what he follows up with that. He says, “In bringing many sons to glory….” Oh my God! To take somebody like us, and so work in us that one day we could stand there radiant as the sun…I mean, so bright that a natural person could not even look…would have to get out one of those filters you look at when you see an eclipse or something. They won’t even…they’ll be able to not even look at us—they won’t be able to look at us.
Do you think we’re gonna stand there and say, look what I did? We’re gonna say, oh my God, how great Thou art, how great Thou art. Lord, to take somebody like us and do that. What an amazing God You are! “…Bringing many sons to glory….” I’m so glad, “He didn’t bring us this far to leave us.” You know, we sing that song. He is able to bring us every step of the way, all the way to glory.
“…It was fitting….” This was the right thing for God to do. “…It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect…” or complete, “…through suffering.”
It’s amazing that, as great as He was, as amazing as He was before the foundation of the world, doing all that creative stuff, this glorious, all-powerful being who could do all of those things, He still wasn’t all that He needed to be to help us. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t complete, until He was willing to taste death, and to gather upon Himself all that was wrong with us, all of our guilt, and stand there in our place.
And, it wasn’t just what He did at the cross, it was all of His life living out a life, where He was willing to live in a body like we have, and yet trust God and lean upon His strength and live a perfect life…never sinned.
What an…but doing it in the context…doesn’t it say, was it chapter 5, “…he learned obedience….” There was something He didn’t know without coming down here. It’s one thing to sit up there and say, well, I know what it is to obey God, sure! There wasn’t anything in Him that didn’t want to.
But to come down here, and to partake of the flesh that we all have, that doesn’t want to obey God, and have to learn how to say, I’m gonna do it anyway. “…Not my will, but yours be done.” That’s what it took for Him to be complete, completely able and ready to be the kind of Savior we need.
Isn’t that an interesting word that he uses there? The ‘author’…where else do you see that word? How about in chapter 12? “…The author and finisher of our faith…” (KJV). It happens to be the same word in Greek. You want to know where everything originates that will carry us through? It originates in Him. But He so willingly, lovingly shares all that He has, all the He is, so that He can bring us, not just to this point and say, well, now it’s up to you, but all the way through until we stand there before Him.
You see the greatness of what the author here, and the Lord through the author, is sharing with these people. Do you want to stay down here and walk in that religion that just leaves you helpless and hopeless to ever measure up? Do you want to try to be righteous by keeping laws?
Look at what Jesus…look what you’re walking away from. This is what it’s all about! This is what the entire purpose of this creation is about! It’s God gathering a family and this is the way that He’s doing it. He’s gonna bring us out of a state of sin and death and rebellion, and absolutely change us into His sons…I mean, there’s a birth that happens there. All right?
“Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.” (NIV). So now, it’s not just simply a relationship with a Savior and a bunch of people, this is a family thing. Now, what’s he conveying by that? What’s the relationship with the Son to the Father? I mean, it’s a dumb question. Obviously, he’s born. He literally shares his life. There is a family relationship.
But that is the relationship God desires for every single one of us, as inconceivable as that sounds, that we too, should be born of His Spirit and be able…have that capacity in us to grow up to be His children, just like His Son. I know…it’s just…I don’t get it, I’m here in the middle here and it doesn’t feel it, doesn’t look like it.
See, that’s where we’re at, that’s what we need to overcome. But do you see how important it is to get the big picture, before you start diving into the issues of life? Oh, we need to see that He calls us brothers and sisters! And He’s not ashamed! That’s what it says. “So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.”
There are so many times…if I go by how I feel and how I perform…Lord, how in the world? You’ve got to be ashamed to call me a brother. How in the world could you not despise me right now? But it says, He’s not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters…of course, that word takes in both.
And of course, he quotes some Old Testament scriptures in support of that. “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises. And again, I will put my trust in him.”
Isn’t that interesting? Instead of being up here looking down, He’s down here saying, I’m trusting Him, too. God calls you to trust Him. That’s My place, too. I’m trusting My Father, and His purpose, to carry out everything that’s in His heart to do. But I’m not up here looking my nose down at you. I am down here with My arm around your shoulder, to lead you there. That’s a different picture, isn’t it? But isn’t that what He’s trying to convey? Why would he talk about us being a family, and Him being our brother, if it wasn’t meant to convey that.
But do you see what it takes to be part of this? You’ve got to be born of His Spirit. This is what the writer was concerned about, that these people would still stay in the realm of religion. Which religion am I gonna practice? Am I gonna add Jesus to this, or am I gonna…where am I gonna land here, with my religious practice, because by that, I expect God to accept me?
That’s not what it’s about. We’ve got to come the end of everything where we just say, Lord, there is only one hope that I have…that You will impart to me brand new life that I wasn’t born with. I need to be born again.
Close
December 25, 2022 - No. 1577
“Divine Nature in a Broken World?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1577
December 25, 2022
December 25, 2022
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!
Close
December 18, 2022 - No. 1576
“Divine Nature in a Broken World?” Part One
Broadcast #1576
December 18, 2022
December 18, 2022
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.
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December 11, 2022 - No. 1575
“A Call to Go Deeper” Conclusion
Broadcast #1575
December 11, 2022
December 11, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1575 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I thought about something that I’m gonna…I guess I’ll do it right now. I don’t how long this is gonna go, but we’ll just see. But here are some scriptures that I’ll guarantee every thoughtful Christian has read and said, boy, that sounds amazing. That’s way off in never-never land. I could never be a part of that. Or how does that work? I’m just gonna read the scriptures, and you can look them up later if you want.
John 15 actually is part of that passage. It says, “If you remain in me…” verse 7. “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (NIV). Anybody ever sat there and wondered? I mean, that was really the question the other night. How does that work? How…I don’t get this. I mean, I know it’s in the Word. I’m supposed to believe it.
We sing songs based on some of these. But do you think God actually wants to bring us closer and closer to a place where this actually works? Was He just spouting words that sounded good, or are they meant to actually have a practical effect in our lives? Yeah, I believe they’re meant to be practical.
John 14:12-14, “Very truly I’ll tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Anybody ever read that, and your basic reaction is, yeah, right? That certainly doesn’t apply to me. I won’t ask you again for a raising your hand!
“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Aha! John 16:23-24, “In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I’ll tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”
“Truly I’ll tell you…,” Matthew 21:21-22, “Truly I’ll tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree…,” which He cursed, and it died, “…but also you can say to this mountain, Go, throw yourself in the sea, and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
Then a parallel passage in Mark 11, “Have faith in God, Jesus answered. Truly I’ll tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, Go, throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I’ll tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that you Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” That’s important, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
There’s no way to do any of this other and not have a forgiving spirit. All right…other words of Jesus. Matthew 18, “Again, truly I’ll tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am in with them.” And the Greek says they ‘are gathered,’ as I’ve have pointed out in the past.
1st John 5:14-15, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
Everybody ready to throw up your hands and say, this is beyond me? This is nice. This is nice theory, nice theology and all that. We can affirm that Jesus said this, but it doesn’t have any practical bearing on our lives. How many of you think that the Lord has more for us?
( congregational response ).
But, you know, there’s a problem with how we approach things like this, especially in western society. We are very logical, or we think we are. But we’ve got to understand something. We’ve got to bring it down to a formula.
And you know, when you’re growing up as a human being, we learn about the world in which we live. We learn how things work. We learn what to do if we want to produce a certain result. And you know, we’re all about understanding something and feeling like we can do it, and there’s a sense of control. And one of the problems that has recurred and is widely true in our day, is people trying to find a formula for getting spiritual stuff to happen.
And you know, it’s almost implicit in the question that was asked, because that’s one way that people look at this. Okay, what’s the secret? I know what the scripture says, but how does it work? I don’t quite understand where does…how do I get faith…and how do I know what to ask for, all these logical questions that rise up.
And many people have, absolutely, turned to this, and I think God has been merciful in many cases…but have tried to find the formula for spiritual stuff, and it’s not a formula. Did Jesus go by formulas? See, isn’t He the perfect example? How many times have we talked about how He did what He did, that He didn’t do by His own energy?
Again, it was the Father in Him. We’ve quoted that scripture. But how did He know what to do? How did He know what to do? The Father showed Him. Yeah. There was a…there was such a connection, a living connection between Jesus and His Father, that He knew what to do in every given situation.
How in the world did He manage to go into, how did He go into the pool at Bethesda, for example? How did He know to go in there in the first place? The Father showed Him. And when He got there, and saw all those people, what did He do? How many did He heal? One man. How did He know to do that?
See, there was a purpose, and yet, He’d go to another village, some place up in Galilee, and heal everybody. Or He’d go to Bethsaida, was the village, wasn’t it? Late in His ministry, after He’d been so badly rejected, disbelieved in that town, and a blind man is brought to Him, and He leads Him out of the town. He prays for him, and the first prayer is not enough. He prays for him a second time, and finally, his eyes are opened.
Boy, do see the effect of unbelief in all that going on there? And then He says, don’t go back in there, and don’t tell anybody who’s going in there. Folks, we’re getting pretty darn close to that place in our world today. God is still reaching a remnant of people. There are people that He’s reaching. Thank God for every one. But I’ll tell you, the unbelief, the rebellious, willful unbelief in our world is getting to that point.
Maybe that’s a reason why we’re not seeing more signs and wonders here, because that’s not the essence of it. Boy, to some people, that’s all it’s about. I mean, you think about how people have tried to bring the things of God down into the realm of the natural, things that we can think about, reason, we can see, we can touch.
And so, you’ve got people that are all about the supernatural. They’ll look at this and say oh, yeah, that’s what we’ve got to…if we can’t see something that’s really supernatural, if we can’t feel something, if there isn’t an excitement, then, God’s not here. Is that true?
No, it’s not. Folks, the presence of God is so much deeper than that. I guess it’s a different purpose, but I’m gonna go ahead and tell you something I’ve told you many times, but it illustrates what I’m talking about, because I went through a period…I guess I was in my graduate school, a year after college.
And I was around a lot of these people that emphasize feelings and experiences, and of course, I wanted that. And somehow, there came to a weekend when…you know, it seemed like everybody around me was just doing great. They were happy and exhilarated, and I was not. And so, frankly, I just got mad at God.
And I just went into a spiritual pout. Emotionally, I just stopped, stopped trying, stopped caring. And, I’ve told this story many times, but…several days, I think it was like, maybe, on a Wednesday after that. This didn’t go on a long time. I went through the motions. I just kind of…but, inside I was dead. I just didn’t put forth any effort. There was nothing coming from me.
But down deep, I knew. Where did that come from? See, I…there was no human energy going into this at all, but God had put something down in here that was a conviction, that I knew better. I knew He was real. And I knew I could not equate Him with feelings and experiences.
And I finally…I just prayed a simple prayer. Lord, if I never have a feeling, I’m gonna serve You. And I did not have any feelings to go with that. I didn’t feel any different in some respects. I felt a peace, perhaps, I guess would be fair to say. I knew things were okay, but I didn’t have any feelings to rise up and say, yeah, that was right! See!
Oh, how we look for signs. We want to know that…we want to be able to see something or touch something or feel something to know God is real. So much religion is about that, where the presence of God and the anointing is equated with preaching that is just, basically, somebody worked up into a frenzy and pouring out words, and that’s supposed to be the evidence that God is in it.
Well, I mean, God can be in a lot of things on occasion, but I mean, for people to equate that with God’s presence and God’s anointing, that’s just a form. Folks, there’s a danger. We are so constituted, that form so quickly becomes what we go by. We’re not immune to getting to the point where we do the right stuff in our behavior, but it’s not as connected to the vine as we might like to think it is.
God doesn’t want a form. God doesn’t want something that just…that we know what to do, and we know how to behave, because it’s so easy to come in here and think that everything is right.
The Pharisee’s were convinced they were right. They obeyed the law meticulously, zealously! And yet, they didn’t have what they needed. But even as believers, do we settle for just doing the right stuff? I thank God for the measure of life that God has blessed us with. I believe He’s with us, and I believe He’s helped us.
But oh, how many times in history have you had a move of God start out with great life and power? Then, you go back in a generation or three, and what’s left? They handed down the form.
See, folks, we are so geared to what we see and what we do and the formula side of it, that it’s so easy for us to think, oh, if I’m doing the right thing, God will show up. God is looking for a heart relationship with Him. And I’ll tell you, if He gets that, He can train us and teach us, and bring us into the reality of what He’s talking about here.
How many of you would like to be in a place where you could be so close to Him that a situation would arise, and you would know how to pray? Yeah, that would be a wonderful thing, wouldn’t it? I believe many of you have experienced that kind thing. I’m not talking about something that’s just totally foreign. God has, many times, helped us in prayer.
Aren’t we promised that? We don’t know how to pray, but the Holy Spirit will help us, “…with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (KJV). Yeah. God offers so much to us that we just simply try to bring what He gives us down into the human realm where we know what to do, we know how to do it, and we think that’s what He wants.
But the thing is, you can do that and miss the inward connection that He’s really looking for. God is going to have a people in the darkest hour of earth’s history, who walk with Him, who learn that being…that abiding in the vine is not something that just happens when we turn on the spiritual switch.
It’s gotten real quiet. It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it? But how does the Lord feel about us in all of this? Is He mad with us? No. There’s such a heart of love that reaches out. Like we sang the song, “Just as I Am.”
So, what do we do with this? Do we just give up in defeat, throw up our hands and say I guess this isn’t for me? I’m just so bad. You know, what are you looking at when you think that way? You’re looking at yourself. If you look at yourself, you’re not gonna be very encouraged, not if you’re honest. I never am.
But I’ll tell you, the Lord wants us to fix our eyes on Him, and if we do, we will see a heart of love and mercy, that longs for us to know Him in a deeper way, that has the power to bring us to a place where we can be so in harmony with Him when we pray, that we can more and more know how to pray.
We can pray, and it will be not just us uttering words and Santa Clause requests of God, but there’ll be…it’ll be something that God wants to accomplish, and He means to do it by using us to pray and to speak the words.
When the Father created everything, how did He do it? He gave the job to His Son, and the Words were spoken by the Son. They had power to do what needed to be done. God wants to speak words through us. God wants to speak powerful, creative words through us.
That doesn’t mean we chase signs and wonders. That means we just come into harmony with Him, whether there are feelings that are high or low or whatever the circumstances are. We just simply yield ourselves to Him and say, oh God, just live through me, and I don’t have to be anxious. Oh my God, am I doing it right? Where am I supposed go now? What am I supposed to do next?
Lord, have mercy. I remember some poor guy that I knew in college, and I guess, today, they would say he has PTSD. He’d come out of the Korean war at that time. That’s how long ago this was. And oh, he was determined to be led of God!
But I mean, the guy was so obsessed with being led of the Spirit. He had to be led of the Spirit to go to lunch. He had to be led of the Spirit to go to the bathroom, just about. I mean, it was such an extreme. The enemy had just brought him into this anxious, extreme.
You know, I believe we can rest. The Lord wants us to have a spirit of rest. Our heart is, Lord, I’m Yours, I’m yielded, I’m open, I’m listening, I’m not obsessing, I’m not being anxious about it. I believe if You want me to know something, You can help me to know it. I can have that conviction that’s deep in my spirit that has nothing to do with feelings, because I’m not always gonna feel like…you know, exhilarated.
But yet, You can do something that is eternal whether I have a feeling or not, because it’s not about any of that. It’s not about being a scholar. It’s not about being a sign and wonder producer. And yet, God can do all of those things. But it’s just a people that know Him, that walk with Him, and know that that’s what He wants.
Do you really believe the Lord wants to walk with every single one of you, that He loves you, that He starts by accepting you where you’re at, but He says I’ve got more for you? You have the right to walk with Me and to look to Me, and I will teach you, just like that little child is nowhere near ready to get on the football field.
Just like that, but I will start where you’re at, and I will teach you, and I’m gonna bring you to a place where some of these things are real, and we know them, not because we’ve learned a formula, not because we’ve worked up something we call faith or worked up and emotion, but because there’s a deep conviction in our hearts that we know Him.
Paul didn’t say that I may know more about Him, did he? He said, “…that I may know Him…” Yeah! “…And the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” And it had to do with experiencing resurrection life.
But he also said…I’m not gonna open it up, but you remember what he talked about…that I’m not there yet, basically. I’m forgetting what’s behind. I’m reaching for what’s before. “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God….” Paul hadn’t entered into all of this, and yet, look at all the amazing things God did though him. And yet, here’s Paul reaching out and saying, there’s more.
You think God wants us to be just satisfied and say, well thank God, we’ve got a good place to go, and we sing good songs, and we’ve got people who love the Lord. That’s wonderful. But God wants a relationship with every single one of you, and with me, where divine life can flow in whatever way He has designed you to express it, and eternal results will happen.
Folks, I believe He can teach us to pray. Let’s just start where we’re at, not worry about it, not be anxious about it. Say, Lord, You know where I’m at. I’m just gonna talk to You, Lord, and I’m gonna bring my concerns.
But you know, even in that…I can’t remember what I said the other night. I think I may have mentioned the Lord’s Prayer where you’ve got to start with oh, “…Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (NIV). See, the very foundation of the relationship is not what I want in my earthly life. It’s all about what Your eternal purpose, Your kingdom, and my place in it while I’m in this world.
I’ll tell you, we come on that basis, and we relate to Him as we are called to do, I’ll tell you, there’s no limit to what God can do. We hear about miracles and amazing things happening in other parts of the world. If God purposed to do it, and it were needful here, He can do anything. We’ve seen Him, over the years, do miraculous healings that weren’t even talked about, instant ones.
I’ve seen it myself. I won’t go into some of it, but I know these things are real. But I also know that God wants to establish a relationship. He will never give you a formula for living the Christian life other than abide in the vine. Praise God. Praise God!
It’s something to think about, isn’t it? I’ll just ask you all to pray with me, and just ask the Lord to teach us these things, to teach us to live for Him and to live in a living relationship with Him that just doesn’t get switched off when we walk out of here, but rather, we’re conscious.
You come up short, praise God. Lord, help me. Thank God for the blood. We sang about it this morning. Thank God that we always have a place to go, that we can always come to Him and know that He understands.
At the same time, He’s my help. My God, we can’t just cut ourselves off because we haven’t measured up in our own eyes. Again, what are we looking at? We’ve got to get beyond the point where we’re just obsessed with how I’m doing and how I’m feeling and just say, Lord, You know all about that. You love me. You loved me before the foundation of the world. You knew my name. You planned for me.
Help me to let go of all this junk and just say, Lord, help me to find Your plan, and live in it, and know that You’re gonna do what You’re gonna do. And I’ll tell you, the whole body of Christ is gonna benefit. That measure of light that You’ve given to me is gonna be for the benefit of everybody else, and theirs is gonna be for the benefit of me, as well.
This is simple, and yet, it’s profound truth. Folks, do you want a form, or do you want Christ? I want Him, don’t you? I believe He wants us, too. That’s the most wonderful thing. Praise God!
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December 4, 2022 - No. 1574
“A Call to Go Deeper” Part One
Broadcast #1574
December 4, 2022
December 4, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1574 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! Good to see everybody this morning. I appreciate the Lord’s mercy and His presence today, and I’m just trusting Him. It seems like, many times, He’ll bring me to a place where I feel my weakness in an extra special way, and I certainly do this morning, but that’s good. Paul gloried in his weakness. He said, thank God I’m weak! We…that’s kind of contrary to the way we tend to think, but the reality is it has to be the Lord’s strength, doesn’t it?
I’ve had a lot of thoughts and I’ve tried to organize them and that hasn’t really worked so, I’m not gonna worry about it. But you know, there was an interesting question posed on Wednesday night. I don’t remember the exact words, but it had to do with prayer and faith, and essentially the underlying question is, how does that work? How do have faith? How do we pray? How do we know what to pray for? Do we say, God if it’s your will, or do we say, yes, Lord, do it? There are so many things that I doubt any of us really knows about prayer like the Lord wants us to.
And you know, the more I’ve thought about it, the reality is, the underlying issue has to do with everything in the Christian life. It isn’t just prayer. The reality is the Christian life is meant to be entirely a supernatural life. You think of the things that the Lord has, basically, told us to do as Christians. I mean, we’re full of instructions…they’re full of instructions, in the New Testament.
I mean, you can go through and see things like…familiar scriptures like Romans 12, where we’re told to, “…present your bodies a living sacrifice…” (KJV). And, I’m just gonna refer to some of these scriptures. I don’t know that I’m gonna spend a lot of time in each one. But, he talks about the reality of how we, as individuals, are to present our bodies, but yet it’s to be a corporate sacrifice.
Totally contrary to human nature, we are to become one people, our lives are to be given to Him to work in, to change us so that we can be the kind of people He wants us to be. And, he talks about the various gifts and abilities and how focused they are on everybody else. And that’s human nature, isn’t it!? That we’re meant to put others first, others ahead of ourselves and, basically, the purpose of our lives becomes not about me, not about what pleases me, not about just satisfying my natural desires, but becoming a means by which other people can be blessed and helped.
That is…I mean, how contrary to human nature is that? Anybody here that…naturally you’ve got the ability to do that? No! We have no ability. In fact, if something originates in me, or in you, it has no power to do anything that will last beyond this world. At best, it will not last beyond this world.
You know, I guess I probably jumped ahead a little bit. But, I’m gonna go to the scripture that came to me as, the more I thought about what we talked about Wednesday night, the more my mind went to a scripture that we’re familiar with. And I don’t think we even need to turn there, necessarily, but it’s John 15, where Jesus is introducing to the disciples what their life is gonna be about.
It’s not about, here are My instructions, go do it. It’s an organic life. It is a life which we literally get from God and it is expressed through us. And so, He uses the vine and the branches as a picture of this.
And He says, just as a vine without the branches cannot bear fruit, “… no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine…” He said, “…ye are the branches….” The Father is the One who does the planting. In other words, there’s a source of supernatural life in Him, that if we are connected to it, we can bear fruit that will actually last beyond this world.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Praise God! How many of you want to actually have something happen as a result of your life and God working in and through you that lasts beyond this world into eternity? That’s what we’re called to, folks! This isn’t religion. We’re called to something that is supernatural and I believe…I sense, in my own spirit, God wanting to get us into a deeper place in Him, where we actually learn how to be vessels in His hands so that we can do something.
And of course, the scripture, I guess, that brought my mind to that passage in John 15 was, “…apart from me you can do nothing.” (NIV). That’s a sobering thing. But you think about the issue that was brought up the other night about prayer. And think about it in this context. Apart from Me, you can’t pray.
Yeah! Think about that. I mean, we can mouth words. We can do all kinds of things and call it prayer. The Pharisees did that. But if we’re gonna do what God is talking about when He says to pray, it’s got to have something more behind it than just human thoughts and wisdom and desires and energy and all of that. It’s got to have God behind it!
( congregational amens ).
But the reality, as I began to say, is everything in the Christian life is that way! There’s not one of us who can be what God wants us to be unless it is supernatural. And that’s what I believe God seeks to teach us.
And again, I’ll go back to this. It mentions…in Romans 12, it mentions all the different gifts and abilities that God gives, and they vary. But now it comes down to verse 9 and you begin to get the character that God seeks from us. It says, “Love must be sincere.”
Oh, we’re good at, you know, putting on a front, but God wants something that, absolutely, is genuine, that comes from the heart. If we’re going to represent Him, if we’re going to be an expression of Him, not an imitation, but if we are literally going to be an expression of His love in the world, man, it’s got to come from Him!
( congregational amens ).
It’s got to have a supernatural source. But yet, here is what God tells us to do. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” As God defines those things, by the way. Okay? “Be devoted to one another in love.” Oh, how we…how many human corruptions do we have of that? How much pretense is there? God wants to eliminate that. And, I’m so thankful…I mean, this is a theme that seems to come up all the time, but I see God wanting to teach us, in a deeper way, than perhaps we’ve gotten.
( congregational response ).
Yeah. This has got to come from the heart! It’s got to be a divine work of the Spirit of God, in the heart. We cannot manufacture this. This Word is full of scripture and full of instructions that we have no power, under heaven, to carry out, unless we come to a place where God does it in us. All right?
“Honor one another….” Oh, here’s a good one! “Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” Oh, we go up and down and all over the place, don’t we?
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” So, there’s where prayer comes into it. You see, it’s all part of the same package. You can’t just say, oh, prayer is a separate subject over here. Prayer is an integral part of every aspect of the Christian life, in this world, that God seeks to give us. And oh, I’m confident God wants to take us to a deeper place than we have known. Okay? All right?
“Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Oh, it gets really into some deep territory here. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” I won’t ask how many people have sort of imagined in your mind a situation where you’re done really, really wrong and, man, there’s something that rises up in you and you want to just pronounce a curse on somebody. Okay, I won’t make you raise your hands.
( laughter ).
But I mean, that’s human nature. That is what naturally comes out of our lives. Folks, when we are…you take a person that’s genuinely saved, they’ve got a new heart down in here. That does not automatically eliminate the possibility of our living too much in the old nature.
See, that’s what the Christian life is about is learning to live by the new nature and not the old, and it does not happen automatically. It’s something God works in us and we have to grow in it. And, oh, far too often we are operating in the energy of the flesh. All right?
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” Again, what’s the focus? It’s not selfish, is it? It’s with somebody else. “Live in harmony with one another.” Okay, if they’ll get along with me and do what I think they ought to do, we’ll be just fine, thank you. Is that what it’s talking about?
No, you see there’s got to be a quality in here that’s willing to put up with each other in our imperfections, willing to love, willing to seek for peace. That’s the object, is to have peace. I don’t know if it’s in this passage or another one.
Well, yeah, it says, “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” That’s the scripture I was thinking of.
“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
How many of you think God wants to bring us to a place where these are the characteristics of our lives? Yeah. Anybody here got room to grow?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah, we do. And you know, he does get into gifts of the Spirit. You can read passages that go into that. I’ll go back and read some of this. I guess that was the question in my mind…how much to get into all of this. But, Paul writes, back in verse 3, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” Where does faith come from?
( congregational response ).
Aah! So, if we’re gonna have what he calls faith, in the scriptures, we’re gonna have to get it from Him. Now, that takes a lot of the burden off of me to try to manufacture faith. How many of you have ever tried to do that? See, that’s where some of these questions arise. What is faith? How am I supposed to feel when I have it? Where do I get it? Do I work it up? Do I just decide…you know, all these natural questions.
We are absolutely wanting to bring these things down into the human realm and into the realm of human ability and think of it in terms of behavior, and activity and what we do. But oh, if God could help us to see what He’s so ready to help us with! Praise God! All right?
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
Do you know you don’t belong to yourself; you belong to everybody else? Do you know our purpose as individuals is not just to live for us and have this wonderful, private relationship with God and that’s good enough? My purpose is to become a vessel through which God can help you.
But your purpose is also to have…to be a vessel, that in whatever way God has equipped you, you are meant to be a vessel that transmits divine life to others in the Body of Christ. There’s no human being that can manufacture that, folks. We need the Lord! You see how this goes beyond just prayer? You see that God wants us to live a supernatural life. All right?
“We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith….” And you know, you have to say this because religious culture out there…prophesying is not saying, “yea, I say unto you, thus sayeth,” you know, it’s not this showboat kind of thing. I mean, God could speak like that, I guess, if He wanted to, but that’s not the point.
Prophesying is simply giving out words that come from God! They could be for instruction, for teaching, for exhortation, for all these things. It’s simply speech that doesn’t originate with a human being, but is inspired by God and actually transmits His life.
Isn’t that what Jesus said? And wasn’t that the difference between His words and everybody else’s? They could expound scripture, at least they thought they were doing it. But Jesus spoke words that His Father told Him to speak.
You see the relationship there. He wasn’t coming up with this. It wasn’t like the Father gave Him a plan and said, here’s what You’re supposed to do, go do it. There was a hand-in-glove relationship with His Father. It was organic. It was life, and so, He literally was being a vessel through which the Father was actually doing the works.
He said, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” (KJV). That was the way that Jesus did what He did. Do you think it’s meant to be different for us?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Anybody here got something they need to learn? Yeah. Anybody got room to grow? Yeah. “Prophesying…if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement.” (NIV).
You know, encouragement could be done on a human level, but again…I’ll say again, this is not something…we’re not talking about just something that happens in the human family, where you say, hang in there, you’ll get it.
You know, we can do that on a totally carnal level. It just originates in human energy and it has no power to do anything beyond this world. But I’ll tell you, when God comes with a word in season to somebody in need, that has the power to penetrate the heart, to energize the spirit and to actually produce fruit that will last forever.
Isn’t that what Jesus was talking about in John 15? I’ve called you, I’ve ordained you, He said, “…that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” (KJV). Folks, I want more of that—I want more of that.
You know, it’s tiring trying to “do religion” in human energy. Man, that’s exhausting. And it’s fruitless. We need God! We need Him as we’ve never needed Him before.
“…If it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” (NIV). And then he goes into the part that we’ve already read. God means to put us together in an organic, living relationship to give us power. Individually, we’re different. We can’t all be the same, but everybody is necessary to the health and the welfare of the whole.
God has called you, as much as He’s called anybody who ever stands up here that’s actually called of God. He has called you to be a part of the Body of Christ, and you matter! And He wants you to come into a place of greater freedom and effectiveness.
Close
November 27, 2022 - No. 1573
“Ready for Midnight” Conclusion
Broadcast #1573
November 27, 2022
November 27, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1573 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: The Gospel has gone out. Thank God, to some degree it’s still going out! But the Gospel has gone out as a witness to all nations, but we are seeing a separation take place. We are seeing God call people out, but we are seeing people on a…that are exposed to that truth rejecting it and saying we are going to chart our own future. We have our own plans. We embrace that. And, from God’s point of view it is darkness—it is gross darkness!
And the fact that it’s midnight, I think, is significant. You know, the Jewish day, technically, began at six o’clock in the evening, went to six o’clock the next day, so the night portion of it was from six to six, isn’t it? Midnight is exactly in the middle of that. I don’t think that’s an accident. I think God is saying this is an appointed time in the middle of the darkness of night. And what He’s saying is, all that has been unfolding all these years, it’s coming to a climax, when the only option, the only thing left is judgment!
One of the other things that’s really significant about this is it says the bridegroom was a long time in coming. I think it’s something the Lord wants us to be aware of. I know some of you, who were here when the Lord visited us so powerfully so many years ago, remember how it was and how intense the presence of God was. How…I mean, things that were being revealed were just amazing, but the presence of God and the manifest presence of God was just powerful.
And oh, it was like, oh, He’s coming, certainly, within five years. We’re right at the gate. It’s just about over. All God was doing was showing us what was coming without giving us a time frame. What happens when the time just sort of seems to drag on and you don’t see the fulfillment of what we’ve been talking about? How many people did we have who came on the excitement of what was happening, who didn’t stick around when it just kind of went on?
See, God is wanting a faith that looks past every circumstance. And He has told us specifically that it’s gonna seem like He’s delaying. Is He? No. He knows exactly the time. And I’ll quickly read a scripture that we know over in 1st Peter…2nd Peter, rather, chapter 3, because this deals with this specifically. And it reveals something about why God would even allow a delay to happen. I’ll just look…verse 3 is a good place to pick up.
“Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.” (NIV). That tells you what’s behind the scoffing. Okay? “They will say, Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. but they deliberately forget…” It’s a choice. “…That long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and earth was formed out of water and by water.
“By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgement and destruction of the ungodly.” Do you believe that?
It’s nice…we like to believe the sweet things that just give us help and comfort and all of that, and thank God for every one of them. But this is truth, too. This is reality. This is the world that you live in. This is the world our young people are growing up in. You better understand it. I mean, your destiny depends on understanding this and walking in the light of it.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise….” You get that? “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with…” Who? “…Patient with you….”
I believe, on the one hand, He’s certainly giving people all the opportunity that they could ever…I mean, no one can go there and say You didn’t give me a chance. There’s…I’ll tell you, God’s judgement is gonna be just. But I’ll tell you, the patience is with us. I’m so glad He’s patient with me. Aren’t you?
( congregational amens ).
Oh, thank God. He is gonna continue to prepare everyone that has been born of His Spirit who will look to Him, and drink in of what He gives us, because I don’t have what it takes to stand in this kind of darkness, but He does.
( congregational amens ).
He is faithful. He is not slow! Okay? “Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God is not in a hurry to pour out His judgement. Jesus wept again over Jerusalem. That’s His heart! But there does come a time, when it absolutely reaches a climax, and there’s nothing left to do.
If you have a world full of people, who have made their choice, who have no capacity for God, and this is a temporary world, what’s the point of going on? There is no point. And this world, like I say, is destined for something that he’s gonna be talking about here.
“But the day of the Lord…” This is the day. This is midnight. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.” That is unexpected. “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.”
I mean, what are you living for? What matters? Thank God. I don’t…you know, in the natural, I don’t look forward to the trouble and the difficulty that may well come. But I find myself saying, Lord Jesus, come. Lord, whatever it takes, let that day come. Reach everyone that has…that can possibly hear the message. Reach them, Lord! Help us to do our part and be part of that, but Lord, oh, God, wind this thing up. You get older, you realize there’s nothing to live for here. You might as well say just Lord, come.
Praise God! I hope the young people can get this. I was one of the younger people when all this was happening, and we’ve got some of them here this day…to this day, that are still with us that got it. Some of them have gone on already to be with the Lord. But oh, every generation, this needs to become reality in your heart and in your life. This is the world in which you have been born. This is what it’s about. If you miss this, you miss everything. This is what it’s about.
“That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”
I’ll tell you, there is a time frame. We are watching two harvests come to fruition. The harvest of wickedness of people who’ve chosen their own way, and the harvest of righteousness of those who have given and surrendered their lives, lock, stock and barrel, no conditions, into His hand, looking to Him for the salvation they cannot engineer in themselves. That’s it.
And I’ll tell you, God is going to make manifest whether that is really in the heart or not. And that’s one of the things that makes this passage concerning. I don’t believe that anybody who’s really and truly been born and sealed of God’s Spirit is gonna be lost. But the reality is, there are people who sit in churches who will profess every one of these things, because the foolish virgins were also there with the wise. They were there to look for the bridegroom. They were expecting him. They had the knowledge to go with all of that. They had the intentions that went with that. What they didn’t have was the oil.
Oil gives light. Of Jesus, it was said, “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (KJV). Folks, he’s talking about the oil of God’s Spirit. He’s talking about the reality of a born-again heart. And I’ll tell you, even when there is a darkness that causes people to come to a place where they’re asleep, in a sense, I’ll tell you, if you don’t have this, you don’t have anything to wake up to, because there is a time when it is too late.
That’s the message of this. When God closes the door, it’s closed. When God closed the door of the ark, it was closed. I’ll tell you, you think about the people that rejected and killed Jesus, the condition of…the condition of people who thought they were serving God by killing the Son of God. Do you see what darkness is like?
Folks, that’s the spirit that is engulfing our world. When God withdraws His Spirit from influencing people, what happens? He withdraws it because they say no, repeatedly. What happens to people’s hearts? Do they just…are they just an empty vessel? No. I’ll tell you, devils rush in, and you see the manifestation, in one form or another, of satanic power, satanic deception, satanic wickedness, satanic hatred of God, hatred of you and me!
But oh, thank God, He’s gonna bring us to the end of the age. He’s never gonna leave us. But folks, the fact that they could be in a state of darkness, and actually slumber and sleep tells me that…it reminds me of what Jesus said. “…In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” It’s when you don’t expect Him! Conditions had become such that they weren’t even thinking, oh, this means the Lord is about to come! They were just kind of looking at the conditions.
But I’ll tell you, if we have something on the inside, if we are doing what Ricky was talking about and listening and growing and learning and becoming one, and just aligned with Him completely, whatever the conditions are when voice comes, there’s gonna be something there that’s capable of responding, capable of fulfilling the place that God has opened for us.
I don’t claim to be able to explain every little detail. I don’t think I need to, but do you get the heart of the message there? The reality is a warning to people that sit in church pews, and affirm all of the right things and do all the right things, and even sit there believing they are ready for the bridegroom to come! But they have never, ever faced the need of their own heart and never surrendered to Jesus Christ. He has never come in and sealed them by His Spirit. What a horrible thing.
So many others will have already fallen off to the wayside, but here is a time when, at ‘the’ critical moment, when the Lord says, it’s time, they’re not ready. That’s a pretty sober warning, and I pray that anybody here, anybody that hears this, will cry out to God and say, oh, God, search my heart. Lord, I need You. I want to be a part of Your kingdom, and I have no power.
God, show me the corruption of my own heart and my own need, and then, show me the Savior and what He has done for me by bearing every sin upon His own back, shedding His blood so that I can be completely free from sin. The way was opened to see You and to become part of Your kingdom, Lord. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t be one of those that comes to that day, and it’s all over.
You know, there’s a scripture toward the end of Revelation that says, “He which is filthy, let him be filthy still.” I don’t remember all of it. There were about four different things. He that is unrighteous. “He that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”
There’s a point in time when your condition is fixed, when choices have been made, and the Lord says, okay, that’s it. Your destiny has been determined by what you have chosen. Oh God, reach out to people that are in need, because there’s still a day of grace. There’s still an opportunity. We see the Word going out. We see that there are people coming.
But we also see the condition of the world and the way darkness is unfolding and spreading. It’s very, very real. We see the politics of things, and all these political battles and cultural battles that are going on, but do you see what’s really happening?
There are two kingdoms. God and His kingdom are reaching out. That’s more real than what we see and touch. That’s what will last. God’s kingdom is reaching out and convicting hearts and drawing them into His kingdom. But there is another kingdom. Boy, its day is short. Thank God! But he knows it’s short, and he’s angry about it.
So, I just…I’ll do the same thing as Ricky does. I just put this in the Lord’s hands. He is able to save those who call upon Him from the heart. Don’t find yourself, don’t fool yourself into thinking you can sort of adhere to Christ in some fashion without ever surrendering your heart and your life and being born of His Spirit. Don’t fool yourself. If you do, the darkness will overtake you. If you walk in the light while there is light, God will give you light, and you’ll have what you need.
( congregational amens ).
And of course, he comes to the end of this and says, be ready, because you don’t know! So that’s a warning to those who do believe! It’s exactly what Brother Ricky was saying. We need to be taking in and realizing things aren’t always gonna be as they are. We need what He’s giving us, and He is preparing us to stand in an hour, the greatest hour of darkness the world has ever known.
But I’ll tell you, the light will be enough. Don’t worry. That day will come when He sends His angels. Again, what a picture that would be. Can you imagine Him showing up in the air, and all of a sudden, angels being dispatched everywhere, and flying down and taking hold of somebody’s hand and leading them up into the air?
Folks, when that’s done, when the last one is removed from the earth, what purpose is there in going on? There’s nothing but fire, and then judgement to follow. You know, our paper is the Midnight Cry Messenger, Midnight Cry Ministries. That’s where this came from. I was just thinking as I came into this service. I can’t remember the last time I preached on this passage. But it’s real, and this generation needs to get it. These are the words of Jesus. They aren’t mine.
And if they are not a warning of what’s coming, and what we need, but also an encouragement, I don’t know what they are. So, if there’s somebody here, and you’re just, you’re here, and you’re kind of going along, but it’s never gotten down into here, be warned. There will come a time, if that does not change, when you will not be able to change. Now is the day of salvation. Now. It’s when He speaks that we need to hear. So, I just pray that God will touch the hearts of everyone to whom He’s speaking today. May God bless you.
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November 20, 2022 - No. 1572
“Ready for Midnight” Part One
Broadcast #1572
November 20, 2022
November 20, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1572 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I was just thinking recently, that it’s been a long time since we’ve really talked a lot about the end of the age and the things that the Lord has shown us. We’ve made reference to it. And you sort of feel like, well, everybody knows that. But you know, generations come and go, and, you know, these are truths that we need to have fresh in our minds, especially as we see things unfolding.
( congregational response ).
There’s no question we see the things that God showed us, so many years ago, unfolding. He didn’t…He revealed to us the loosing of Satan, but He also revealed that we were at the eleventh hour of earth’s history and showed us what was going to happen in that last hour and how it was gonna turn out.
And here we are, in the middle of that, watching it unfold, and we need to be aware. We need to live and walk in the light of what God is showing us. And, amen to what Ricky has said. In a way, I’d love to have that at the end of this, but we’ll see what the Lord has.
But anyway, he has already read this passage in the King James. I’m not gonna reread it. But anyway, what Jesus has been talking about is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Now, I think most of you realize that among the Israelites, among the Jews, their concept of a kingdom was a very earthly one. In fact, that’s what you get with natural people. They’re thinking in terms of this world. The world is planning on how is the human race gonna go forward?
Well, Israel had prophets that were sent to them. They rejected them, but yet, there was a message that promised a kingdom, a Messiah who would establish a kingdom, and it would rule over the world. And what God was doing was concealing His purpose from the devil until it was time.
And it was a kingdom that was very real. But it’s not a political kingdom. It’s not…Jesus said, the kingdom of God doesn’t come with your careful observation. It’s not something where you’re gonna be able to see, there it is, or, there it is. Or there’s the headquarters. This is the organization. It’s none of those things, none of those earthly things. It’s a kingdom that is more real than any kingdom that exists, because this world is going to pass away.
Everything about this world, as we’ve said so many times, is totally temporary. And how often do we live as though this is what it’s about and it’s not? But anyway, Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. And you know that when John came, and then in the ministry of Jesus, they proclaimed the Kingdom.
And it absolutely came forth on the Day of Pentecost. The Kingdom was Jesus Christ reaching out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. How many of you know that the lost sheep was not all of Israel? He looked some of them in the eye and said, “…you are not my sheep.” (NIV). But He also said, “…other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring…and there shall be…” (KJV). How many folds?
( congregational response ).
One fold, one shepherd. God had in mind a kingdom that was very real, that was established in the hearts of people who were born of His Spirit, of the very life of heaven, and they would come, first from the remnant of Israel, that were really His sheep and not the others. Judgment was coming upon them. But God was establishing a kingdom and it burst onto the scene on the Day of Pentecost, with great power. And it began to reach out among the remnant of Israel.
Then it began to reach out among the Gentiles. And Jesus said, that the kingdom, “…this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” So, there is a process. God has allowed this world to exist with all of its corruption and all of its sin, but in the midst of this, His purpose has always been to call out a people, to bring them to a place of genuine heart repentance and faith in His saving power, so that we might receive a life that has nothing to do with anything you can get in this world, nothing you can get by any of your own efforts, but a supernatural life that is born into the heart.
That’s exactly what Ricky was just talking about. Folks, if people don’t have this, they don’t have anything!
( congregational amens ).
You don’t have anything! And that’s a lot of what this passage is about. But anyway, He talks about the…He pictures the kingdom in some places as a…like a crop. You plant it, and it grows up, and there comes a time of harvest. It is a limited deal where when the purpose of God is finished, that’s the rest of His purpose for this world. There’s no more reason for it to go on. That’s why Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (NIV). Boy, I want His Word, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
I need His Word! I need it this morning! I need it every morning! We need Him! Thank God for His promises, for the hope that we have in Him!
But anyway, that’s what He’s talking about. But now in this context, Matthew 24 and 25, He’s talking about the kingdom, not just as it’s gonna be spread…He does mention that, but He’s talking about the end of the age.
And He pictures a time when, contrary to popular doctrine, Jesus is going to come, not in some secret rapture. He’s going to come openly, with a loud trumpet and angels will be sent forth to gather his people out.
Folks, what do you think happens when that’s over? There’s nothing left! He tells you what’s gonna happen to those left behind with Noah. That’s in chapter 24. You look in 17, He brings Sodom into it.
But He prepared…made a preparation to rescue His people. Every single one of them were rescued, in Noah’s day, and made safe and removed from the scene, and then judgment fell.
And what happened to those who were left behind? Every single one of them died. That’s where this world is headed. That’s how serious this is. It’s not about churchianity. It’s not about fixing the world. His kingdom is not of this world.
And folks, that’s one of the things that…we need to see this. We need to see that God’s purpose is not to fix the world. It’s not to fix America, much as I’d love to see things happen in a different way. That ain’t…that ain’t what’s gonna happen. We need to see past all of the issues of this world and say, what is it really about?
I’d be glad if…my hope is not in a political party, it’s not in a political leader. I may have my preferences as to how I would like things, from a practical standpoint to go on, but that’s not whereon my hope lies.
As a matter of fact, if we understand the scriptures, we know it’s not going to go…God’s not going to save America. God’s not gonna save the world. There will never be that kind of peace on earth. He’s never coming down and imposing His government on a lost world that has rejected Him. That’s not going to happen. There’s only one thing that’s gonna happen. And that’s when He comes. He will rescue His own and destroy the rest.
( congregational amens ).
It’s so plain in the scriptures. I’ll tell you what happens is, people will develop their own rules for understanding the Bible, believing they can understand it through study. Then they’ll look at the Old Testament and say, aha, it says this, it says that, and then they’ll build a whole system of ideas on that, and then they’ll go to the New Testament and try to fit it all in. That’s what they’re doing.
Folks, I want to look at the revelation of Christ unfolding in the New Testament, when the…when the thing that was a mystery now begins to be unlocked. Then you can look back and see what the prophets were really talking about. Yeah, they were talking about Israel, but who is Israel? Who is a Jew?
You know, I wrote an article on that way, way back. Folks, God doesn’t see Israelites, He doesn’t see Jews the way man does. “Though…the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.” (KJV). “…He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly…but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly.” And so forth.
There are so many…the truth is so plain, and I believe God wants to re-establish, or wants to refresh our minds about some of these things. The one thing I don’t want to do, I don’t want to get to the point where we stand up here and just simply regurgitate our doctrine so that we can make sure we’re all right theologically. That’s not what we need.
We need God’s heart. We need God’s message, because this is relevant to what we’re doing right now. It’s not just about believing the right stuff about what’s gonna happen down there. This has relevance today, and the things that Ricky was talking about, that’s at the heart of it. Because that’s why the Lord wants these things to become real, not so we can be theologically correct, but so that we can have a relationship to Him and walk with Him and have what we need to be ready for all of that!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! So, He’s not just talking about the Kingdom of Heaven, but He’s talking about the kingdom at that time. And as He unfolds this, we’re seeing some things that are coming.
Deception is certainly one of them. Ricky referred to that. There’s a powerful deception and it’s one that God allows. We’ve talked about this from 2nd Thessalonians 2, how God allows there to be a spirit of deception in the world that is so total that mankind is just totally blocked from having any further capacity for God, or truth.
You watch it…are you not seeing this happen? And it’s gonna get worse, and it’s going to unfold and we’re just watching it. I don’t know what the timeframe is. But I know…I know what God has shown us and I believe it’s happening and we need to walk in the light of it and live in the light of it. So, that’s one thing is deception.
You’re gonna see persecution, in a greater and greater way. I don’t know exactly how all this is gonna play out. But we just need to be ready to say, Lord, I’m gonna serve You and trust You with whatever comes. You’re gonna give me the grace with whatever You call me to walk through, but I am Yours, unconditionally! I’m not Yours as long as life goes my way and I can ask You for what I want and get what I want and just make my own life in this world. I am Yours come hell or high water!
What did it cost Jesus to follow in His Father’s will? That’s what it costs you and me! To lay down our lives and give them to Him unconditionally, but with the promise that as we do that from the heart, that He will, indeed, share His very life with us. There will be a spiritual resurrection to a life that can never die.
( congregational amens ).
Folks, that is what the issue is and that, boy, as we come down to the end of the age, it’s going to become more and more apparent who’s on what side. “…Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” Or grow cold, “…the love of most will grow cold.” (NIV). Depending on the translation. We’re gonna see that.
We’re gonna see family members betraying other family members. That’s happening in other parts of the world, right now. Folks, Jesus did not come, as He said, “…to bring peace, but a sword.” And He’s gonna divide, sometimes, in the middle of families.
Boy, it is gonna…God’s gonna prove the reality of those who have the goods, who’ve given Him their hearts, because anything short of that is gonna come up short. That is the unfolding message.
You know, right before this, He talks about how there are servants to whom responsibilities have been given. Okay? And how they carry them out is pretty revealing, because there’s one who’s a faithful servant. And even though there’s a delay, seemingly, he just goes on and he does what he knows to do because it’s the right thing to do.
Folks, we’re gonna have to walk by faith. We’re gonna have times when there are no feelings and it doesn’t look very good, but I’ll tell you, God’s Word is still true. And just as we have so many examples in scripture, of this principle of somebody walking when it didn’t look right, didn’t look good, but yet God honored faith. And so the faithful servant just kept doing what his master had told him to do, came to the end and was rewarded.
But what happened to another ‘servant,’ quote/unquote? He began to say, wait a minute. This is kind of going on and I’ve got other stuff I’d like to do. And so, he began to eat and drink with the drunk and began to party, began to just…anyway, he didn’t…acted like anything other than…he acted like anything other than the faithful servant. What happened to him? He was out the door.
What happened was not somebody who had it and lost it, but somebody who never really had it in the heart. Over and over again that is the message! That is what God is getting at! It has to be something that is real in here. If it isn’t, something is going to bring it out. Okay?
So that’s the context. That’s the time that He’s talking about. What’s it gonna be like as we get closer and closer to the end? All right? Now He’s talking about…He makes use of a…the custom of how a wedding was carried out in their day. And I want to be very careful not to try to make something out of every little thing, but rather to get to the heart of what He’s talking about here.
You know, a lot of times you had these elaborate ceremonies where the wedding party would be gathered and then the bridegroom would then make a very special entrance. And, I remember, very, very plainly, being in India. One of the times we were visiting Timothy, Brother Jimmy was with me on this occasion, and he had put us up in a hotel in a city that was actually on a beach. We didn’t go into the beach, but I mean, it was a, you know, reasonably nice place.
And we had become aware that there was some kind of a wedding scheduled, but we didn’t know how it was gonna open up, or how it was gonna unfold, and what the traditions were. And so, we woke up on Saturday morning, and just about daylight, all of a sudden, we heard what sounded exactly like gunfire!
Well, we knew there was potential danger. There were people who didn’t like Westerners, didn’t like Christians and we said, oh my God, what’s happening? Well, what it turned out was, the bridegroom was arriving on horseback with firecrackers! That was part of the ceremony.
But Jesus is taking, basically, something that was part of their culture and talking about being ready for the arrival of the bridegroom, and that became a picture of the arrival of Jesus Christ at the end of the age. Okay?
Now, one of the things that…I mean, there are so many parts to this, I don’t want to belabor them, but of course it’s at midnight, isn’t it? The center of the story is at midnight. How many of you know that there is a point in time when God calls it midnight? God has a schedule. He knows the day, the hour. He’s the only One that does know the day or the hour.
But there is a time in which every process is absolutely fulfilled, and there is a darkness that Brother Ricky was talking about, that is enveloping our world, and it’s no secret. I mean, it’s no surprise. God has told us. If you have people that absolutely harden their hearts and continually say no to God, in here…some of them can be religious, but nonetheless, there is that inward resistance to really surrendering to Christ, there is a darkness that grows until it…you pass the point of no return and only judgment follows.
Is that not what happened in Noah’s day? The thoughts of men…the thoughts and intentions of men’s heart were what?
( congregational response ).
“…Only evil continually.” (KJV). There was no capacity anymore! They had resisted the voice of God, because He said, I will no… “…My spirit shall not always…”
( congregational response ).
So, what does that tell you? Had God just sort of left them alone, or had He been striving? Yeah! There had been an outreach.
I’ll tell you, my God is merciful! He had been reaching out, but they had been saying no, and they reached a point where there was no more capacity. Even then He said, yet it’ll be an hundred and twenty years. Isn’t that amazing? But you see the process unfolding, of darkness, and what happens when a civilization says no.
What happened to the Jewish nation when Jesus came? He came for the sheep, but what about the rest? Jesus said, “…your house is left unto you desolate.” And when His disciples showed Him the amazing construction of this temple, this magnificent building, He said, “…there shall not be left here one stone upon another.” And He talks about the time of destruction when their enemies would shut them in, and there would just be utter destruction, utter wrath poured out upon that people.
I’ll tell you, that’s the destiny…there are two destinies. Either we’re gonna…either people are gonna be part of God’s Kingdom, or they are going to literally be under the wrath of God.
( congregational amens ).
People don’t want to hear that, but we need it. We need to have a realistic message out of…that is true to the Word of God. Jesus didn’t hold these things back! He wept over Jerusalem, but He still predicted their downfall, predicted that the wrath of God was gonna come upon them.
And as we pointed out recently in a service, He even said, you’ve embraced the heritage of this lost, rebellious culture—this religious culture. You’ve embraced it! And so, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna send you apostles and prophets. And some of them you’re gonna kill and you’re gonna persecute them. And what I’m doing this for is because I want the guilt of all the generations to fall upon this generation, and then wrath is gonna be poured out.
Folks, we’re seeing that…that principle play out in our world today. The Gospel has gone out. Thank God, to some degree it’s still going out! But the Gospel has gone out as a witness to all nations, but we are seeing a separation take place. We are seeing God call people out, but we are seeing people on a…that are exposed to that truth rejecting it and saying we are going to chart our own future. We have our own plans. We embrace that. And, from God’s point of view it is darkness—it is gross darkness!
And the fact that it’s midnight, I think, is significant. You know, the Jewish day, technically, began at six o’clock in the evening, went to six o’clock the next day, so the night portion of it was from six to six, isn’t it? Midnight is exactly in the middle of that. I don’t think that’s an accident. I think God is saying this is an appointed time in the middle of the darkness of night. And what He’s saying is, all that has been unfolding all these years, it’s coming to a climax, when the only option, the only thing left is judgment!
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November 13, 2022 - No. 1571
“You, God, and the Devil” Conclusion
Broadcast #1571
November 13, 2022
November 13, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1571 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: No matter what we face, even if it’s to die, even if it’s pain, even if it’s persecution, or some other form of difficulty, He knows about it, He’s with us. It’s not something that we have to fear.
We do not have to bring the worries about things that might happen in the future into the present and carry them like a burden. You have the right, He invites you, He tells you to cast it upon Him.
This is not, if you measure up, maybe I’ll help you. This is God’s instruction to every believer. You’re going to worry about things in this life. But we don’t have to! We have the privilege of carrying…of throwing them! Say, God, You take it. I can’t handle this, but it’s not my job to handle it. It’s yours.
My life is in Your hands, as we sing. Is it really? You know, if it is, we don’t have to carry that burden. Oh, may God help us…to wake up to such simple truth…we’re familiar with these things. But how many have really got this nailed? See, this is only the first part, this is us and God.
But, if we get this right…the more we learn to humble and cast, with respect to Him, we’re gonna have what it takes to get into the next paragraph. I need that, because if all…if I have to deal with is, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him…” (NIV). Okay.
But if I haven’t got that first part nailed, or I’m working on it, I’m learning that area, in that area, I’m gonna have a problem with this. Because I’m not facing the devil in His strength, I’m facing it in my own. I’m trying to stand. I’m trying to do this, and it doesn’t work, folks. The devil has got power, and he’s got an ally in our flesh, that agrees with him. And all he has to do is keep looking for those weak places. May God help us.
And this is not written to unbelievers! This is written to believers, where the devil, if we will fall into the habit of yielding to him in certain areas of our lives, he will gain a hold. He will do damage to our spiritual lives. We will not be all that God wants us to be. There will be things that He wants for us but we are making choices not to stand.
Folks, every one of us…it is quiet. Every one of us needs this, don’t we? How reminiscent of Ephesians 6 this is. He uses that word ‘stand’ several times…stand, stand, stand. But doesn’t he begin it with His power? That’s a good thing because I don’t have it. But you know, when I am looking to Him, I have it.
But listen to what he says, “Resist him, standing firm in the faith….” Now, if you would say that in many circles, standing firm in the faith means standing firm on the doctrines that my group professes. “…Standing firm in the faith….” I know what the faith is, and then they’ll recite the Apostle’s Creed or whatever their particular statement is, and they can nail the theology of it, they can describe it, they can understand it, they’ve got it nailed, they’ve gotten it mastered in their minds, I’m firm in the faith.
Is that what it’s talking about? No, there’s something a whole lot deeper that than. Yeah, we need the knowledge. It’s good to know what is true. But folks, I don’t need a faith in a creed. I need a faith in a Person! I need a confidence! I need something that reaches out to Him and says, Lord, I know in spite of what I feel, in spite of what I see, I know You’ve got this! I know You have allowed me to come into this place to work in my heart to help me.
This is part of the deliverance. This is part of why I need to humble myself, put myself in Your hands, so You can change me! I’ve got to be willing to do that. But Lord, right now it doesn’t look good, right now it doesn’t feel good. But that’s no excuse to stop standing, because there are going to be times, like we’ve said many times in the past, when faith is all you’ve got. But faith is enough—faith is enough! That’s what the Lord wants us to learn, to believe Him, no matter what.
And I’ll tell you, that alone, just that dynamic of us having to face the devil, and not feeling like there’s any help, but believing in Him anyway because of our relationship to Him and what we know of Him. We believe Him anyway and we stand in that!
Man, the devil has no answer for that! Whether that comes out as quoting the…quoting the Word like Jesus did, or however it comes out, God can give us the strength to stand and say, I don’t care what you say, Devil, God is true. He is faithful. He is my God and I’m trusting in Him in this moment.
Faith is an active trust in the living God, that what He says is true! It’s pretty obvious from scripture and experience that God has determined, He has planned, I guess is a better word, to gather a family out of a broken world, and obviously…that family is going to need to stand against something! We’re gonna have to overcome something!
There are going to be difficult choices, where we’re gonna have to choose to follow God and choose to reject something else, reject the world and our own nature. He’s not just simply calling us out of a passive little world where everything is sweet and lovely. He’s calling us out of a broken world where we are at war with a relentless enemy who has real power. But folks, He has greater power!
( congregational amens ).
There is no power greater than God! And I’ll tell you, those who align themselves with Him, we have everything that we need, to stand. So, when he’s talking about standing, resisting, firm in the faith, he’s not talking about just believing certain doctrines, he’s talking about a confidence in the Person, just like Abraham exhibited time and time again. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.” (KJV).
But anyway, these are not new truths. But, do you see the connection, though, as you move through this dynamic of us relating to God, having a foundation built in our lives where we’re confident, we’re surrendered, we’re looking to Him, we learn how to not dwell on things we can’t control from the future or the past, but just trust Him in the moment! And now we’re face to face with an enemy. We’ve got something to stand on. We’ve got someone to whom we can look. Praise God! Anybody here need that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Every single one of us that’s serving God needs what he’s talking about here. All right? But not only that, Peter wants to encourage us, “…because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” (NIV).
How many times have we said before, one of the devil’s big tactics is that, you’re the only one, or God has somehow allowed you to be singled out because, and then you fill in the blank about whatever that negative reason is? Folks, this is how, this is the pathway to the Kingdom of God.
Did not Paul go back to encourage new believers with the words, “…we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” (KJV). The way into the kingdom is going to be through opposition. We’re gonna have to be willing to fight, and in the fighting thereof, as we draw it and do it by His strength, we are changed. There’s something that happens to us that actually makes us fit for what God’s purpose is.
This is not God somehow losing control and trying to vainly bring us through. This is absolutely God…Satan is God’s servant and doesn’t…doesn’t like the idea, but He absolutely…the Lord knew all about this. He has purposed to bring His people through everything this world can throw at us.
And so, in the middle of this, the other end of this sandwich, in verse 10, “And the God of all grace…” (NIV). Aren’t you glad it uses the word all? It’s not “some.” It’s not a little bit. It’s not, I hope it’s enough. This is all grace! Grace is that divine help, without which I cannot serve God! It’s God…this is God’s mighty hand reaching down and saying, here’s the strength you need in this circumstance. The God of all grace is there.
But, are we looking to Him? Do you see why our part at the beginning of this is so important? Are we willing to take that humble place and say, yes Lord? I get that my life is not about me. It’s not about what happens in this world. It doesn’t revolve around me. It revolves around a purpose that goes way beyond this world. You’re the only one that can get me there, and I humble myself into Your hands because that’s what my life is about.
Folks, if that foundation is laid in a heart, we’ve got everything we need to stand in this hour, whatever hour, because God is a God of all grace, “…who called you…” See, now we’re back to God and you. “…Who called you to his eternal glory in Christ….” Praise God!
So, while on the one hand, we’re living in the world and He brings us through…He gives us what we need to get through the circumstance, and He makes us stronger, and He has a place, a time when He’s gonna lift us up and make us something more.
But oh, look at the final end. It’s glory, folks! There’s gonna come a time when you and I will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. And, we’ll look, we’ll bow…if He gives us anything at all, we’ll cast those crowns down at His feet and just worship Him forever and ever.
After 10,000 years we still have, no less…no fewer years, do we? Just like we sang this morning. Some of the songs were just…wonderful selection of songs this morning, about what God has given us, what He’s done for us.
But He’s called us, to eternal glory in Christ! This is His purpose, again, from the foundation of the world, He knew your name, He called you, He wants you to be part of His kingdom! What is our place? To humble, to cast! Two things! They’re big things, aren’t they?
But you think about how he begins that paragraph: “…The God of all grace….” That means when it’s tough for you to humble yourself, it’s tough for you to cast, we have every right to look to Him. He’s not sitting there saying, what’s the matter with you, get with the program. I’m just gonna go away and leave you for awhile until you get it right, and then you come and we’ll talk.
This is, I know where you’re at. I’m here to reach down with all of my strength, all of my might. Just put your trust in Me and I will help you right where you’re at, and I’ll give you the strength you need for today.
Can we let go and let God have His way? We sang that this morning. What a perfect, fitting way to express all of this. But just trusting Him. He’s promised His strength, His mighty hand. It’s not against us, it’s not to suppress us, it’s for us! To lift us up! Bring us to a better place. Do you need to be in a better place? I do.
“…Who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while….” So that must be part of His purpose if that’s…if He says that, unless the Devil’s just stronger, do you think? No! This is part of what it takes for us to become what He wants us to be.
Jesus went to a cross. That cross meant He was renouncing His life in this world. He was renouncing the world itself, and the devil who rules in this world. He was willingly laying it all down. But He knew that when He did, His Father was going to bring Him forth with a brand-new life that the Devil could not touch.
That is exactly what the Lord has called every one of us to, take up our cross. It means laying down your life and turning your back on it, giving it to Him, giving Him your future, your plans, laying it every bit on the altar, and saying, God, I want Your plan, not mine. I want Your life, not mine. Your purpose, not mine. Your will, not mine. Just grant to me the strength to be able to stand in that and put my trust in You when it doesn’t feel good. Praise God!
Because there will be times when we suffer. And again, that may be painful but it could be anything where we’re saying, no, to this old nature. It’s crying out to have its way and you’re saying, no. Because that’s not what God wants. That’s not pleasing to Him.
Oh God, give me the strength, because this has got to be power on power, folks. There’s a power in sin. There is a power that the Devil has. I need some power that’s better than that. That’s what God is offering in this. Praise God!
You, God and the Devil. So, what does He do in the process of this? He talks about the eternal future, but now he’s talking about what happens here on earth in this dynamic as we look to Him, as we face off with the battles, as we stand upon the foundation He has laid, which is perfect, what’s going on?
“…After you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you….” Now, who’s doing this? He didn’t say, come on, restore yourself. This is humbling ourselves under His mighty hand, trusting in Him. He’s going to be doing something that is eternal, that is supernatural. He’s gonna change me. He’s gonna restore me! He’s gonna, “…make you strong….”
Anybody here feel strong this morning? I’m strong, but in Him. I’m weak in every other way. I’m weak in myself, but I’m strong in Him. Thank God!
“…Make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever.” Isn’t it interesting? “To him be the power….” Do you see that…the concept of power at the beginning, His mighty hand? Now he comes down here, “To him be the power….” That’s what I need in my life. Anybody here need that this morning?
( congregational response ).
So, you see what the devil’s…the devil’s part in this. He is simply going to go around and try to gratify his evil nature by working on human beings and drawing upon their lusts, their earthly desires. He’s gonna try to feed on that, to somehow try to satisfy his nature. That’s the world we live in.
But God has called us out of that world, given us a destiny you and I could never achieve on our own. He’s given that to us. Thank God! He’s promised to take us there.
What does He ask of us? In this passage, what is he asking of us? What is our part in this, you, God and the devil? Humble and cast. See that would be a good title too, but I’ll stick with the other one. Humble and cast.
And this, like I say, is more than just that…what happens when we come to Him and give our lives to Him. It’s got to start there. But this is every day. This is when we get up in the morning and have that conversation with the Lord. This is recognizing who I am and who He is and what my life is really about, and what the world is about.
You know, he talks about being alert and of sober mind. Folks, that means thinking straight. That means seeing the world through God’s eyes so we’re not just caught up with the world. It’s so easy to go to sleep, so easy to get affected by what’s going on in the world, what your friends think, what…what’s going on. And going to sleep and not realizing what’s really going on. I’m so glad we don’t have to be afraid, but the Lord wants us to be alert.
I don’t care…the strongest saint is gonna be attacked, is going to have to contend with the devil one way or another. But God’s promise is that His hand is there and it’s mighty—it’s mighty! And there is grace that is stronger…the same grace, the same strength that brought Jesus out of, as we’ve said, out of the tomb, gave Him a life the devil couldn’t touch, set Him on a throne far above all the devil’s power…and He did it for us.
Jesus didn’t need that! He was already in that place. But He came down here so we could join Him, He could bring us to that same place. And He wants us to begin to experience that more and more in our day-to-day lives, right here. And He’s promised to be the one to do the work if we’ll just humble ourselves in His hand and say, God, I’m yours. Do what You need to do in me.
You know, it sounds scary in a way, if you’re thinking about, oh my God, what’s gonna happen? What’s He gonna touch? But God wants us to see His heart, His character, His mercy, His love…to see this, being under His mighty hand, not as a horrible, joy-killing kind of experience, but…one where He loves us enough to do what He’s done to bring us out, to give us a hope and a future. Praise God!
Well, I haven’t said anything new that you haven’t heard before this morning. But, do you see how the three characters in this little drama play out? There’s the devil doing his thing, but…before it, there’s the humbling and there’s the casting. And down below we see God at work to fulfil an eternal purpose and us becoming stronger and stronger and stronger in Him.
And if we’ll just humble ourselves to the process, God is going to do everything that’s needed. My job is not to engineer, it’s not to gear up my will and somehow…it’s to say, oh God.
Think of what the Lord said to Peter, “…when you were younger you dressed yourself and you went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” There are a lot of things we would like to avoid in this life. But God’s gonna bring us through whatever He has purposed, whatever is written in His book, He’s gonna bring us through it, and it’s gonna be okay. Because He’s gonna be with us and the end result is gonna be beyond imagining.
When we stand there and we’ll look back…isn’t it interesting that Peter says, after you have suffered a little while? Doesn’t that bring back the words of Paul…he talks about how temporary, how short this life is and how eternal that is. And where was Paul’s focus? It was on what was eternal. And all these little…these afflictions that were just for such a short time, he could see that they were pointing him to something that was eternal and that was what mattered.
I pray that God will lift up our eyes to show us what our part is in this dynamic, to put our entire trust in Him, and to realize that whatever God has called us to stand up to and to do in this world, He will be with us! We do not have to be afraid! When the devil ministers fear, you can take that bundle and just pitch it to the Lord and He will be glad to have it, because He’s not worried.
And He wants us to have that perfect rest and peace. And I’ll tell you, “…the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds…” (KJV), as Paul says in Philippians. Praise God!
Again, nothing new but…anybody need this this morning? I do. I’ll tell you, God is so wonderful, so faithful. This is one mighty hand I don’t mind submitting myself to, because it’s a hand that loves me…it’s the hand of One who loves me with an immeasurable love, and has my best interest at heart. Whatever it takes to get there, He knows and He is faithful. To Him be the glory!
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November 6, 2022 - No. 1570
“You, God, and the Devil” Part One
Broadcast #1570
November 6, 2022
November 6, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1570 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’m just gonna go ahead and read most of a chapter just as a setup. And it’s a familiar one in 1st Peter chapter 5.
And, I’m blessed, and I was gonna say amazed, but there’s no reason to be amazed with the Lord, in this sense. The songs that we sang are just so in harmony with what I believe the Lord wants to say.
And once again, I think…was it Matt the other night that said, it seems like we’re saying the same things over and over again, yet from a slightly different point of view, and it’s kinds of…the Lord’s just kind of filling in the gaps. Sometimes I believe the Lord wants us to really continually focus on an area of truth until we get it in a deeper way, because we don’t get it just hearing it once or twice. I don’t, at least. So, let me just read this.
“To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
“In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.” (NIV).
I’ll stop right there. Now, I just…I read the first part, because it’s hard to disconnect the context that Peter writes. He goes from one thing into another, into another, into another, and there is a connection. But my focus was not on the elders part, but still that’s real truth, isn’t it? Because God calls us to be shepherds, not to be bosses, but to be elder brothers who watch…watch and serve the others.
And then, of course, he says, “In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders.” And then, I was gonna make this snarky comment. We all know that the height of human knowledge and intellectual achievement comes when people are in their upper teens, right?
( laughter ).
And…if people are really smart, they spend the rest of their lives realizing and learning that they didn’t know what they thought they did, and their elders were not as clueless as they thought. And that tends to really come home when they have kids that are just like them.
( laughter ).
But truthfully, we need to recognize that we don’t know it all, and part of serving the Lord is being willing to listen and being willing to learn and humble ourselves. But it’s interesting that he says, after this comment to the younger ones, he says, all of you. So now he’s addressing, not just…he’s addressing the elders too. He’s addressing everybody.
And there is a characteristic of our relationship one with another that God is looking for. And it’s not strife, it’s not pride, it is humility. “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
And what we’ve read up to this point…the passage up to this point kind of sets up where I was intending to really focus this morning. Nothing new, but I hope the Lord will connect some dots. And, I thought one possible title would be “You, God and the Devil,” Because if you look at the next little…next three paragraphs, the way it is in the NIV, basically those are the characters that are involved.
And there is a way, there is a relationship that…how God seeks us to function as Christians, and how it really works, because if you were just to isolate the passage on the devil and disconnect it from what goes before, you would miss something very critical. But yet, if you were to disconnect that from the passage that follows you would also be weeding out stuff that’s really, seriously important.
So the foundation of what Peter is seeking to lead his believers, his readers to understand about serving God and living in this world, is really focused upon, what is our place, what is our responsibility in this equation where you have the three characters, if you will? And basically, verses 6 and 7 lay it out.
He says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” There’s a lot in that, and I don’t want to take the time to unpack it all, but…I’ll bet you, the natural reaction to anybody hearing something like that and knowing what it’s like in the world, would be to say, that sounds pretty negative.
Does anybody get that…the sense of humbling yourselves under somebody’s mighty hand? In this world, that’s not a good thing. That means that somebody is imposing their will upon others for selfish purposes, and the person who is under that, loses their freedom, they’re not able to do what they want, they’re servants to somebody else’s agenda, and it’s not about them, it’s not about their interests, it’s about the interest of the one who does this dominating…has his heavy hand upon you.
But I’ll tell you, the sense that I believe God wants us to get from this is exactly the opposite. It was interesting to me when I thought about this passage. Why doesn’t it just say, humble yourself under God’s hand? There’s a reason why that word ‘mighty’ is in there. Frankly, I need somebody with a mighty hand, because I am pretty powerless in this world. And if I’m gonna go into this section where I’m gonna have to deal with the devil and the reality of him, there’s got to be some power somewhere that I don’t possess.
Now, isn’t it interesting the parallels between this passage and many things that Paul wrote. “Finally…be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” And he talks about our warfare not being against flesh and blood, but principalities and…powers. See, there is some real power at work in the world.
And God has power, the devil has power…we’re pretty weak. We’re in a position of great weakness. I need something that I simply do not have. If I’m gonna be able to move forward in this passage, and enter into what God has planned for me, I need something.
And, you know, that humbling…there’s a lot in that, but certainly it is the opposite, as he says right above that…it’s the opposite of human pride where we feel like, number one, I want to do what I want to do. That’s human will and pride that says, I have my own ideas. I’d like to get God to help me, but I’m the one who’s basically…I’ve got to chart my own course. But here is God seeking to bring us to a place of submission.
And it’s not one where, He comes down with that mighty hand and forces something to happen, is it? He says, humble yourselves. God is not looking for people that He can just dominate and force into His mold, and take away…steal all our joy and steal all our freedom. He is looking to lift us out of a dark, weak place and bring us into a place that is amazing.
And you know, I thought many times about the scriptures in the Old Testament that talk about God bringing out His people with a strong arm and a mighty hand. Was that mighty arm and strong hand meant to intimidate them into submission? No! It was a strong arm against their enemies, anything that would hinder…there was a strong arm that was for them, not against them. Not to force some kind of submission, but God is seeking a willing submission of our hearts and our lives.
I’ll tell you, there’s no way to enjoy the relationship that God desires, until we come to that place willingly. And I understand it’s a process of learning how to be humble in His sight. Think about the man who wrote this, and what he went through while Jesus was being arrested and then crucified.
There was a point in time when the Son of God, the One that he knew was the Son of God, warned him that he was going to deny Him. He said, no. That sounds real humble to me, doesn’t it? No, you’ve got somebody who’s pretty self-confident, and very mistaken.
And then, Jesus warned him again, you better pray, because temptation is coming. I don’t remember the exact words, but you know what I’m talking about. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” And Peter just kind of…yeah, I’ve got this.
Oh God, do we need to get rid of that ‘I’ve got this,’ because we don’t got this! When it come to this equation of us and God and the devil, we need Him! And we need to come that place of just completely surrendering and realizing that we don’t have what it takes. That’s the starting point for that relationship. Praise God! I want to come to that place.
And I’m gonna throw something out at you that might be disturbing, but I believe it’s absolutely the truth. There’s a reason why…if you step back into the previous paragraph, he says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
Now we’re not just dealing with this private relationship…or, okay, God I’m humble. This has to be reflected in our relationships one with another. There is no such thing as having, as being in a place where, I’m good with God, things are great, but now that person, I just can’t get along…I can’t stand them. There’s a conflict between me and them. I’m resentful, I’m holding this against them. We just don’t get along, and I’m…you know, you get what I’m getting at.
If you are upset with any other human being and it lodges in your spirit and you’re…you just go on and you’re upset, you’re upset with God. It absolutely breaches the very foundation of what Peter is talking about.
Man, God…I need grace. I need help, because…well, think of what John said. If we don’t love our brother, whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen? I pray that God will help us to make this equation, and to realize how interconnected this is. There’s no way to have a right, free…the relationship God seeks with Him, and not be right with one another, not do our part.
Now if somebody else has a wrong spirit, that doesn’t mean you have to. You know, we’ve said this many times, no one has the power to “make you mad.” Being mad, and embracing any kind of a negative spirit toward someone else, that’s a choice you’re making…to yield to human nature, to yield to the voice of the serpent. But oh, how many people there are that just vainly imagine they’re just fine with God…but, out here it’s a different story.
I mean, the Pharisees are Exhibit A. They were confident of their relationship with God. I’m good with God, but I despise these people. I hate Jesus! He’s threatening our position! But I’m good with God. No, there’s no way that can be. Folks, if we’re gonna have a…if we’re gonna really have a relationship with God, we need to see that played out in our relationships with one another.
I know that those who serve the Lord any length of time, you know this. You know what I’m telling you is the truth. But boy, we need help, don’t we? And part of it is humbling ourselves to the reality of this truth and saying, oh God, this is true, and I need help.
Again, that picture of the grandmother in that last Kendrick movie…coming to a place where she realized she needed to…she needed to forgive the father of her granddaughter. And just crying out, oh God…You’re gonna have to help me. That’s a good place to be.
And I’ll tell you, when you talk about the mighty hand of God that’s there, what’s that about? Why does He have a mighty hand? Is it to crush us when we don’t do right? I think a lot of us sort of think that. Man, if I mess up, oh that mighty hand is gonna come down. No, this is a mighty hand, not to suppress, not to beat, this is mighty hand to lift up, to reach out with words of encouragement, with words of instruction. God, help us to be willing listeners!
( congregational response ).
Because again, this is not God saying, I’m gonna humble you whether you want it or not. He says, you humble yourselves. God is looking for people who will respond to Him and to His purposes.
And what is His purpose in this statement? “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand…” Why? See, where’s God going with this? Is He just using us for His own selfish purposes? Or is it ultimately to bring us to a higher and better place?
Now, how many of you think that higher, better place is a prideful lifting up? They did good for a while…now, I gonna really…no. Once God sets us free from pridefulness, from all the things that would cause us to react in the wrong way, I’ll tell you, we can be lifted up to a better place. It’s a place of freedom from all of that.
Man, don’t you want that peace that’s on the inside? There’s a peace that comes from that. Praise God! I’m sure it’s always the case when I see something in the Scriptures, that I’m the one that needs it. But always, the Lord tells me, reminds me that I’m not the only one, that God’s people need this. We need to understand this dynamic of how we relate to God and where the devil fits into all this, and what’s really going on.
But God wants every one of you to willingly recognize that this is not a God who’s a monster in sky. This is not a God who’s a tyrant, who just wants to take away all your joy and crush your dreams and…just use you for His selfish purposes. This is a God who sees your need, a need you may not even see properly. But He, with sacrificial love, has reached down, and reached out to you. And His purpose in extending that might, that power, is to help you and to lift you up.
Think about what Paul prayed, in Ephesians chapter 1. He asked for knowledge and wisdom to be given to the folks. But one of the things he wanted them to know was the “…incomparably great power…” of God. And one very key phrase in there, he says, ‘for you.’ Let that sink in. The power that God has demonstrated through what He did at the cross, what He did at the empty tomb, what He did to set His Son on a throne, is exactly the power that is available to every single Christian today!
( congregational amens ).
It’s for you! When He sends His mighty hand, it’s the mighty hand to give you strength, not to crush you, not to punish you when you don’t measure up. This is a hand of love that’s always going to be reaching out, to give you what you don’t have, because if we don’t get this, how are we gonna go out and face the devil? Peter found out the hard way, it don’t work, if we do it in our own strength.
But oh, what a blessed place God calls us to occupy. It’s just a place of peace that comes from surrender. And built into humbling ourselves before Him, is a sense of trust. You know, God calls upon us to believe in what He has done for us, to understand what the cross was about. It’s a place where One died for us so that we could be reconciled, so that we could have a relationship with Him. Praise God!
It’s like my dad said to somebody very early in his ministry, he was still a young man, before I discovered America, I guess. But he said, you know, you can trust somebody who died for you. Praise God!
I know every one of us is in need of learning this, in a practical way. Certainly, there’s this place of really coming to the Lord and realizing what He’s done for us, hearing His voice calling us out of our sins to give our lives to Him; that’s an event! There is a passing from death to life! But then, every single day He calls upon us to make that choice! Praise God!
I need to make that choice right now. You need to make that choice right now. Lord, I need you and I’m looking to you. Please help me right where I am. Praise God! Praise God. What a place to which He’s called us. It’s not a matter of, here’s a program, read my book, do what it says, and everything’ll be good. I need the Person. He’s real. He’s alive and He is intimately interested in me, and He calls for a spirit of trust and humility before Him.
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October 30, 2022 - No. 1569
“Just As I Am” One Part
Broadcast #1569
October 30, 2022
October 30, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1569 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t have any particular scripture in mind, but just thinking about what’s been said, I wonder how much we really believe some of the things we sing and claim? Do we really believe that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from, how many sins?
( congregational response ).
All of them. Do we really believe that we can come just as we are? You remember the song that, who was it, Jim, down in Florida, used to sing about how he messed up and then he wanted to go to the Lord, but he just went and messed around, blew another day and before he finally felt confident enough to go. Like we’ve got to make up…make up for it. We can’t go when we’re in need, which is what the scripture tells us.
And what’s been said this morning is exactly right. How amazing is it that the holy, pure, righteous, anything you want to…any adjective along that line you want to use, God of the universe, the essence of what He desires is relationship with us. And how easy is it for us to just kind of muddle along in our lives and not really get that?
You know, even the Law…you think about the Law that was given under Moses, and it certainly dealt, in a lot of ways, with the worldview of the Israelites, and how they viewed things, and how they did things, and trying to bring them more into line with God’s ways.
But when you boil it all down, what was the Law about? How did you summarize the Law? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…and…thy neighbour as thyself.” (KJV). It all comes down to that. And if you get the very life, the very Spirit, the very nature of God operating in us, man, there’s gonna be a power that will enable us to be something other than what we are.
But oh, how we walk…a little bit at arm’s length, some of it is just self-will, some of it is carelessness and getting involved. You know, I read the news, but I don’t read the news because I’m expecting good things. I just want to…I want to know what’s going on. I want to be aware, but if you read it and it causes you distress, don’t read it.
( laughing ).
Don’t look at it. But I’ll tell you what, God wants to be real to us, in this hour. And somehow, like I say…I don’t know that I really have anything other than just pointing out God’s faithfulness to want to be with us! And how, even in the wilderness, God’s presence was there.
And there was a way to deal with sin. They dealt with it through sacrifices that they had to repeat. But, look at what God has done for us! There is one sacrifice for all! And it sets apart everyone who is being sanctified.
I’ve thought of one scripture. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Praise the Lord! Is it 9, 10, somewhere along in there in Hebrews? Yeah, “For by one…” Hebrews 10:14. “For by one sacrifice…” (NIV). Well, he…let me go back and read this.
“Day after day every priest….” Now these were the Levitical priests that Steve was referring to. “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins….”
What an amazing statement! Praise God! When you and I mess up, we don’t have to go and say, oh God, I need a sacrifice for my sins! Please provide one. It was provided once, for all! That’s the hope that you and I stand upon, rest upon this morning. We don’t have to wait. We don’t have to…I mean, it’s been done!
You know, I can sort of visualize, under the law, the Mosaic Law, where someone would come and they’d feel the guilt, perhaps this was something personal, and they would offer the sacrifice and it’s like, I can’t really feel right until I offer the sacrifice.
Folks, we can feel right the moment we turn our hearts to Him, because it has been offered one time, for all! Thank God that we don’t have to wait and somehow re-qualify ourselves. Nobody here ever does that, right? You know what I’m talking about, because I certainly do. All right?
“But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God….” Oh, I love the reference Steve made to us, being in heavenly places with Him. You remember that in Hebrews? I mean, I’m sorry, in Ephesians? That thought came to me in the course of the end of the week, and like I say, I had a lot of thoughts and none of them really went anywhere, in terms of trying to put a message together.
But, think of where we are. Where are you today? Are you in a very earthly place? Do you know He has opened the door where you and I can be seated with Him in heavenly places? You remember how Jesus talked about the Son of Man who is…in heaven? There was a relationship that actually…He was in contact with heaven. Even though He was on Earth, there was a connection between Him and heaven that He called that being in heaven.
Folks, we are in heavenly places in Him. We have an authority. We have a place of acceptance. We have a place of victory if we’ll just…if God will make it real to us. Can we not ask Him to say Lord, I need this to be more real to me?
I need to spend time with You, and believe that I can come to You, and that You love me, and that in Your process of time You’re going to unfold my understanding, and You’re gonna build my faith, so that I can rest in You, and I can enjoy what You have given to me, because, as we sang this morning, “He’ll Give you Everything.”
Well, He’s not talking about Cadillacs and earthly possessions. He’s talking about everything we need to be a part of His eternal purpose. It’s already there. The riches are there. We don’t…we’re the ones who don’t tap into them. We’re the ones who get so involved in how we’re feeling and what’s happening in our lives that we don’t…we’re not connected to the source of everything! Praise God!
I’m talking about me just as much as I am you. But folks, the Lord is constantly—I sense Him constantly reaching out, wanting us to get ahold of these things. It’s not that we don’t affirm them as doctrines that we believe, it’s that we don’t enjoy the reality of what we say we believe. Do you really believe that when you feel that disconnect, that you can go just like you are?
You know, one of the lines of thought that I had and just didn’t pursue it…how many of you’ve read through the Psalms and been made very conscious of the fact that David, not only believed in God, in some general sense, but there was a real connection? There was a fellowship.
And it wasn’t just that, I know who You are, and I worship You and I’m doing all this. It was something where he could talk to the Lord very honestly about how he was feeling. Oh Lord, how long? Lord, I’m in a bad place. Lord, I’m feeling this and I’m feeling that.
Do you realize you can go to God when you’re feeling bad and say, God, I feel bad? And He’s not insulted. We can be at rest in His presence. He knows exactly what’s going on.
His Son was here. He knows what it is to feel sadness, to feel pain, to feel everything you and I could ever feel and to the nth degree. This is something that I certainly feel my need to get a hold of in a deeper way, but what a blessing it is to read.
This man didn’t even know…I mean, he saw something was coming, but he didn’t know the things that we know. Jesus hadn’t come yet. He saw him like afar off. He knew that there was a Redeemer coming, but…to be able to have that kind of a sense of God and the relationship that he could have with God, where he could just come and be himself.
And that’s not doing it in a rebellious way, but I mean, he was absolutely just…Lord, I’m having a rough time. What’s going on? Where…I’m trying to call to You- and I don’t hear.
You know, Psalm 13 we’ve used so many times. “How long, LORD?” And then he introduces that awesome word, ‘but’—’but,’ and then he expresses a confidence and a faith.
You know, there are times God is gonna put you and me in places where that’s how we feel, and He doesn’t show up and change our feelings? And that is not an indication that something is wrong. That’s an indication that God is seeking to bring us to a deeper place where our faith is more effective, because if your faith depends upon what you see and feel, it’s not really faith, is it? We’re going by something else.
But to have a revelation, to have God make Himself so real to us on the inside, that we can have a confidence in Him, regardless of what the circumstances and feelings look like. Folks, God is going to be putting us in places, we’ve said this many times, getting us ready for our place in this hour of earth’s history. He is going to be putting us in places of great need.
Look at what He did in the wilderness. He brought the people into places where there was no human answer. Anybody here in a place like that? Yeah. Well, nobody…you act like everybody’s doing great in your life, or everything is going great in your life, or else you’re just afraid to raise your hand.
But folks, every single one of us is going to be put in places where there’s no human answer. Is that because God’s angry at us? Is He…is there something wrong and that’s why He’s allowing us to get in this terrible place? How many times have the…I was thinking about the Israelites when they went out of Egypt. Of course we knew there’s a whole bunch of them that were rebels, and they were purged out, but still God was with His people.
And He led them to the Red Sea. How many of you remember in “The Ten Commandments” when Pharaoh rode out with his chariots? And he sits there and looks at the situation. He said, boy, their God is a poor general. But their God knew exactly what He was doing. He was bringing them to a place where all they could do was just say, Lord…and the people themselves didn’t even know to do that, but Moses did. And the Lord told them go forward. Okay.
( laughing ).
There’s a whole lot of water out there. And then he has this little stick in his hand that he’d used as a shepherd. You know, that’s all God is looking for from us, just to use what we have, just to be who we are. And there are situations where God’s gonna put us in where all we have to do is just look to Him and trust in Him and He’s gonna do something that we could never do.
We are so good at trying to work things out, and fix things, and make them better. Oh, how we need to just learn how to rest in the Lord. And He took them out into the wilderness, things we’ve heard many times, in a place where there was no human answer. And yet, was God faithful to give them their daily bread?
You know where that daily bread is for us? It’s hearing His voice—hearing His voice. You know, I remember Brother Ricky, and most of you will remember this, preached a message, oh, a few years ago now, where he talked about having a conversation, where we’re talking to Him and He’s talking to us. And as we go through our day, there’s this communication going on.
And it isn’t like we’re putting on airs and trying to be religious. It’s just, here’s where I’m at, Lord. I’m looking to You. But also having that listening ear that we talked about last week. Having an ear that’s able to hear when He does speak, because it is a small, still voice, many times. And didn’t the prophet say you, “…will hear a voice behind you, saying, This is the way; walk in it.”
I believe the Lord wants to lead every single one of His children. And He wants to be real to you and to me in a deeper way. And sometimes He does withdraw His presence, doesn’t He? And He does it…I’ll tell you, if He withdraws His presence and you feel that and it makes you…it draws something out of you, I need Him. That’s a good sign.
If the lack of His presence causes you to feel a need and a hunger that causes you to say, hey, God, where are You? What’s going on? Man, that’s an awesome thing! What an awesome sign, if you will, that God’s done something in your heart, if feeling your need draws you to Him and causes you to go out and just talk to Him and say, Lord, help me.
And even though He doesn’t always come with lightning and thunder, I’ll tell you, He can bring us to a place where what Steve was talking about happens. There is that little…that voice of peace on the inside. Oh man, do we need that.
You know, we are…we think a lot more of our own abilities than we have any right to do, and I believe God is absolutely…He knows the end from the beginning. Doesn’t He talk about the end as though it’s already happened? Wow! You want to put your faith in something? My faith’s not in America. It’s not in the world. It’s not in anything. My faith is in the One who said that I’ve already been glorified.
( congregational amens ).
Man, I don’t look glorified or feel it and you can get around me, you’ll know I’m not. But I’ll tell you what, we’ve got a God who is able to finish what He’s started. When He says something, it’s as good as done! And He longs to make Himself more real to every single one of us. Isn’t God awesome!
( congregational response ).
To be able to actually invite people like us…this is not for the super-spiritual giants someplace. This is for you and for me, where we can actually go to the God of the universe and have that relationship that is real. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to come to this place where we measure up in our own eyes, but we just come as we are and know that He has already provided a way of full and complete acceptance.
And I guess I never did get to that verse I was gonna read. I will read it. I got distracted there when I was in Hebrews 10. Anyway, “…and since that time…” talking about the sacrifice, “…since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.”
Man, that’s…you look at what the loosing of Satan that was mentioned this morning, and all the things that are going on. Don’t worry. God’s allowing that to happen, but there will come a day when, boom! That will be done away, and done away forever.
But here is the—here’s the key. Verse 14, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever…” That’s in the past tense, isn’t it? “…He has made perfect forever…” Who? “…Those who are being made holy.”
Isn’t that interesting? You’ve got people who are in the middle of a process, something happened back there that’s already determined the outcome. Folks, that gives me hope. That makes me want to just come to Him and say, Lord, I know You’ve got stuff that needs to be done in my heart and my life.
Lord, I’m just…I give You myself. I humble myself in Your hand. I draw near to You. I know that You’re the One who knows my destiny. You’ve already set it up in motion. Help me this day just to look to You and to talk to You and to listen.
And I’ll tell you, what a privilege we have! Oh my God! You’re talking about what Steve was talking about. The privilege we have that nobody else in this world has, those who know Him: to know the Creator of the universe, to have a hope that doesn’t rest in what happens in the world or even what we can do, but just yielding ourselves into His hands and listening to His Word, and growing.
Don’t worry, He knows what you and I need. He knows the place to which He’s called us. He knows the purpose for which we’re here and He’s, “…able to do…more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” To Him be the glory! Praise God!
Close
October 23, 2022 - No. 1568
“Daily Salvation” Conclusion
Broadcast #1568
October 23, 2022
October 23, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1568 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Bother Phil Enlow: Do we have stuff to be working on?
( congregational response ).
Do we need daily salvation? Yeah. I pray that…and I hope you’ll pray too, that God will give us a consciousness of these simple things, because if we’re gonna fulfill this awesome picture, in the first part of chapter 4, man, we can’t just live out these other values, if you want to call them that. We can’t just live out human nature.
But oh, the power of the human tongue to help and to minister or to hurt and to tear down. May God help us to come to a place where what comes out of our mouth is for the benefit of somebody else, that has a compassionate spirit when you see somebody in weakness and need, instead of running them down and walking away.
Oh, we have the power to help and to bless. Isn’t that what Jesus did for you? Did He see your need and despise you, or did He come down to your rescue? Thank God! I want to be like Him, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (NIV). Thank God this isn’t a question of God just walking away from you because your need is so great, but I’ll tell you, God can be grieved.
I wonder how many times we just persistently give into human nature, and that’s the clothing we wear, and the Lord is just sad, because He knows what He has the power to do, and He calls us to look to Him, to lay hold of this new life. It’s created to be like God, and here we are, it’s buried somewhere in there, and all people see is this old human nature.
Then he…this scripture I was referring to a minute ago, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” Man, you look at the world today. It’s angry. If stuff happens to somebody, they can’t let it go, bitterness, rage. I’m justified in feeling the way I did, because they’re so wrong, and I want to straighten them out and make sure they get it.
And all God’s wanting to do is change us and set us free. Oh man, you’re gonna destroy your health. Your mouth is gonna verbalize all this stuff. It’s gonna sit there and eat on you. It’ll destroy your life if you hold that kind of stuff in. May God help us.
You know, I was thinking about the picture of that grandmother in, praise God, “Overcomer.” I know many of you have seen the movie. And she had held a spirit of bitterness toward the father of her granddaughter, who had been a, just a drug addict, wasted his life, a fool, walked away and left her holding the bag. Her daughter had died. And she was just full of bitterness, had no power to forgive him. As far as she was concerned…he was concerned…or she was concerned, he was as good as dead. She didn’t want anything to do with him. And God began to work on her heart, and help her to understand that she needed to forgive.
But do you remember when she cried out? She said, oh God, You’re gonna have to help me. Did you know that the Lord will help everyone who cries out to Him? We don’t have to live with this kind of stuff. It doesn’t have to stay down in here and be buried and sit there and eat on you.
And so much of the time, we just pretend it’s not there. There’s stuff buried in every single one of us that God wants to shine a light, like the song we sing, He’s gonna take me in that room I don’t want to go in.
But you know, it leads to freedom, if the Lord can heal that and give us the grace, the supernatural strength to let go of everything like this. You think of the Lord forgiving us. Oh my! May God deliver us from whatever is eating on us, whatever is sitting in there.
I’ll tell you, if your reaction to certain situations is just to boil over and to boil over, that kind of tells me something. That didn’t come from nowhere. You know, when Mount Vesuvius erupts, it’s because there’s stuff in there. It gets under the right kind of pressure, it comes out! So don’t pretend it’s their problem! It’s you!
( congregational response ).
If there is boiling anger and rage that comes out of you, it’s because it’s in you! God wants His people to be honest about such things, and say, oh God, I need to be delivered, and I want to be a different person. I want to be the person You created me to be. But I need You to help me in the daily things that happen in my life, because that’s where this has to play out.
You can’t just come and sit in church and smile, and everything’s great and grand. If this doesn’t work in the arena of life, what good is it? See, that’s what Paul’s dealing with. He’s laid out this glorious picture, but now, it has to work out in real life.
And so, the opposite of all this bitterness and rage and anger is, “Be kind and compassionate to one another….” Again, the focus is on somebody else, and even when they’re in a place of great need, do we react by, what’s the matter with you? and anger, or do we have a compassion when we see somebody in need?
When Jesus went out among sinners, He didn’t go railing against the sinners, He reached out in mercy and love. He didn’t deny the sin. He didn’t soft pedal what was wrong, but He had a spirit of compassion. He saw need, instead of something that just needed to be rejected and condemned! Thank God! No hope for me if it had been any other way.
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” How many of you remember the words of Jesus? If you won’t forgive, then neither will your heavenly Father forgive you. Whoa! That’s some serious stuff.
And I’ll guarantee there’s gonna be situations where you, like that grandma, you need God’s help. But He’s there, if we’re willing, if that’s what we want and we know, oh God, I need Your help! I need this…some of that life, right now, to come out! I need it to be in charge! Oh God, help me. He will.
Follow Christ’s…I mean, “Follow God’s example, therefore….” Now, here’s an awesome verse. I thought about this verse last week. We were talking about God’s love, and this is one I never got to. But here’s a good place for it, because right in the middle of talking about all these terrible human qualities that we need to get rid of, how does God see us?
Listen to this, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children….” Okay, all you liars and thieves, all you bitter, angry people, God is saying you’re dearly loved children! I knew what I was getting into when I reached out to you in salvation. I’ve got what you need! But I want you to exercise faith, not just at the beginning, but today.
You’re gonna confront a need that comes from your human nature. It’s gonna come out today. But when it does, I want you, first of all, to be honest about it, and I want you to remember that I love you. It never changes that. And I want you to come to Me and realize that I have…that My life isn’t like that. You can put this other off. You can say no to it in the power of this other life. Put this on. It’s there.
Do you believe in it? It’s wonderful to believe that Jesus died for my sins, but do you believe in the life that He’s given you? See, that’s what the daily salvation is about. All right?
“…As dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immortality….” He’s getting real plain here.
Boy, that was a big part of heathen cultures. It’s a big part of our culture today. God gave you all kinds of natural desires in your body, but they’re not to be used the way people use them, for self. You don’t mess with this. You don’t go places on your computer when nobody’s around, that you wouldn’t want someone to looking over your shoulder.
May God help us to be honest, and say, God, I want to be pure. I want to be Yours. I want to be set free from whatever it is that pulls on me, whatever it is, Lord. God, give me the purity that I need. It’s just not in me to do this. Lord, I’m helpless in this area.
You may be. There may be areas where you’ve just yielded to the point where you’re helpless, but you’re not helpless…He’s not helpless. And if we cry out to Him from our hearts, I’ll tell you, God can lead us to a place of victory and purity.
Thank God that it’s in the context of being dearly loved children. Isn’t that amazing? You think about that. You think about some of the stuff that we Christians get into, if we’re honest! And yet, God calls us dearly loved children. What an amazing truth. All right?
“…There must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed…” See, you’re getting into these two different things. It’s either stuff that’s all about me and my body, or it’s out here and something I can possess. “…Because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.”
Again, other ways that we use our tongues that just don’t really accomplish anything, do they, except to be negative? God, help me. There’s a lot of stuff I’d like to be really negative about in society today. Phew! But I pray for grace to realize the Lord’s on the throne. All right? Let me jump down. Okay, I’m over here.
All right, “For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Now, in the first place, he’s talking about somebody where this is the characteristic of their life. Their life is given to these things. It’s not talking about a genuine Christian with a weakness that they want to overcome. This is talking about somebody whose life is defined by being one of these things.
Isn’t it interesting he calls greed idolatry? Now, I’ve been to India a number of times, and I’ve seen real idols. They were literally things that people bow down and worship as gods. But I’ll tell you, there are a lot of people right in Moore County who have gods that are just as real. Their fancy house, their whatever it is, their car, their possessions, their bank accounts, and they worship them. I mean, they have such a hold on their lives. I thank God for what He’s given us, but we need to be content with the things that we have and say, thank You, Lord.
( congregational response ).
That’s not what we live for. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness…” (KJV). And the necessary things will be added. Thank God we’ve got somebody Who watches over the sparrows. He hasn’t forgotten about us either, has He? All right? You’ve got all these kinds of people. This defines their life. They don’t have any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God.
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.” (NIV).
Did you ever see a weblink that takes you some place where somebody’s doing something really ugly, and you want to kind of see what it’s about? Lord, help us. There’s some part of us that’s kind of feeding on some of that. May the Lord, help us to be sensitive to what He’s saying in our lives and honest about it.
Aren’t you glad that when He tells us all these things, it’s not in a spirit of condemnation, but it is in a spirit of, these are things I’ve sent Christ to deliver you from, and I’m here, and I love you? My love is not at risk here. Thank God. All right?
“But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Boy, is that not true?
“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
That’s kind of the section that I had in my mind. There’s more that follows it, but…don’t you see the Lord reaching out into our lives? Is everybody here free from every bit of this? You’ve just graduated? You’ve grown?
The reality is every one of us needs this. If you don’t need it so much in one area, you need it in another. If you don’t need this today, you probably will tomorrow. But God’s gonna be continually shining His light. That’s how change happens. He’s got to shine the light, and we need to be honest and humble and say, Lord, thank You for shining the light there. Thank You for giving me Yourself so that I don’t have to yield to that. I don’t have to say…I don’t have to say yes to it. But I can say to You. And Lord, I need You.
But I can’t leave this without noting, again, the context that follows in chapter 6, because how many of you know this isn’t just a quiet little transaction between us and the Lord? How many of you have had battles this morning? Yeah. We have got a devil that is devoted to bringing down every human being he can, to cause them to rebel against God, to give vent to their fallen nature.
He’s gonna take everybody down with him. He knows he’s going down. But he hates God. He hates what’s right. And he hates you if you’re a Christian! And every one of us is going to have to learn, not just have this nice little sweet transaction between us and God…thank God for that, but, also to resist the devil and to be strong, not in our own strength, but in the power of His might!
( congregational response ).
See, you’ve got to put the whole context together to see where Paul is going with that section we just read. It’s gonna be a battle. You know, I was reminded again this morning of something I hadn’t thought about in a while, and that’s Pilgrim’s Progress. You talk about salvation being a process.
Yeah, he got in the gate. Thank God he was in the Way. But he had a long journey ahead of him, didn’t he, before he reached the City? And he had all kinds of battles, and there was one pitched battle he had with self. At the bottom of a hill, he got down into a place where he was in a place of weakness, and all of a sudden, he had a bloody battle with self.
Anybody ever been there? Yeah, we need the Lord, don’t we? And this is a kingdom for which we’re gonna have to fight. But we don’t fight in our own strength, but we have to fight. And so, when we reach these places where we’re dealing with something where we need daily salvation, we need God’s deliverance in a particular area, the devil’s gonna jump in, and he’s gonna do everything in his power to stop you and me from doing what we know we ought to do.
And we’re gonna have to say, God, help me. Help me to put up that shield of faith to believe You and not the devil when his fiery darts come, to be willing to take out that sword of the Spirit like Jesus said, and said, Satan, “it is written.” Because it is!
And I’ll tell you, God’s Word will stand when this world is gone. That’s where we have a place to plant our feet and say, Devil, I don’t have to listen to you. But folks, we’re gonna have to be able to stand. We’re gonna need the armor that he’s talking about. There’s a reason, that after putting all…after all these exhortations about what it means to live for God, and the things of the flesh that we need to start saying no to and be aware of and grow in grace in, that he comes to this section about the warfare.
And we realize this is not simply a quiet deal between us and God, but there is a devil that’s gonna fight you with tooth and nail. But thank God, He’s given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
But are we willing to rise up and say, God, give me the grace and the strength to stand? You have…look what You did for me. You stood. The devil did everything he could to stop You from doing what You were doing, thought he had won, but You won. And You won for my benefit.
And all the power in heaven and earth is in Your hands, and it’s available to me right now in my place of need, in this little portion of my daily salvation. And I have the right because of what Jesus did, because of the blood that was shed, to stand up and say, no, Devil, you can’t have my life. It’s given to Him.
And this issue that has bedeviled me, this thing where I put on my old nature, and this is how I’ve presented myself to everybody, I’m gonna, by faith, take that off and put on that new one, and say, Lord, change me. Give me the power to express Your life and start living for other people instead of just self.
I’ll tell you, the more we do that on an individual basis, you’re gonna see God take individual lives and begin to mold them together. He’s gonna pour out gifts. We’re seeing all of these things in a measure, but God’s gonna fulfill the vision of what He gives us in chapter 4, and all of it before that.
Oh, we have an awesome God! We have an awesome God Who’s given us everything we need and promised the outcome. I want to cooperate with the process. I need daily salvation, don’t you? There are things, every day, where my nature wants to behave in the wrong way. I need saving from that, and He has made a way through all what He has done and what He’s given us in Christ.
May God get the glory from our lives. May He awaken us so that we’re not living lives of self-defeat and self-deception, when we think we’re one thing, and we’re just denying what we really are, instead of saying, Lord, shine Your light. I know You don’t shine it out of condemnation. You shine it out of love so that You can deliver me, so that I can be free. Thank You, Lord, for what You’ve done. Help me to lay hold of it, today, by faith and grow.
You know, I’ve often thought, and I know many of you have if you heard Brother Thomas years ago, talk about the need for growth, and the fact that it doesn’t all happen in one little experience. And so, his advice was simply this. Start where you’re at. Start with what you have and what you don’t have. Just start.
We can all do that, can’t we? That’s all the Lord’s looking for. Praise God! He’s not saying, what’s the matter with you? You should be up here. Get with the program.
Just start. Deal with the issues of today. Didn’t the Lord say today has enough trouble of its own? The Lord knows the process, and He’s able to help us, so praise God. Isn’t the Lord good?
( congregational response ).
Amen.
Close
October 16, 2022 - No. 1567
“Daily Salvation” Part One
Broadcast #1567
October 16, 2022
October 16, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1567 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I’m afraid that in modern Christianity much of it is…some of it’s real but so much of it’s not. But the concept of salvation is almost an event. And you come to a place where you realize you’re a sinner and Jesus paid for your sins, and so you put your faith in His forgiveness, and then you are saved. Well, there’s a truth in that, where that’s real and where there is a genuine transaction with heaven and where Christ not only forgives sins, but there’s a new birth that happens. There’s a new life that’s imparted. Yeah, so in that sense, salvation is an event, but salvation, really, is a lifetime!
( congregational amens ).
It is a process. There’s a scripture, in one place, where the translation, the newer translation says, “…to us who are being saved…” (NIV). It talks about the Gospel, I believe that’s 1st Corinthians. The Gospel is foolishness to those who don’t believe. “…But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” So really, you’re talking about salvation as a daily thing.
And that’s where I see God wanting to work in me. Again, I don’t think this is just for me. But I sense His seeking to bring me to a deeper realization of the fact that there is a process in which I need to actively believe Him, and believe Him in the face of real needs. It’s wonderful to believe Him in the face of my need, when I come to the realization that I am a hopeless sinner, who has no power to do any better, that I have a load of guilt that I can do nothing about and then I see that He has done it all.
( congregational amens ).
He has…Christ went to the cross in my place, and then I come to a place where my faith is exercised in Him. But there’s faith that God wants you and me to be exercising every single day.
In fact…you know, I made this point, out of Romans 5, a number of times, that it’s not the death of Christ that saves us, according to Paul. The death of Christ reconciles me to a God. See, I was God’s enemy, and I needed to become His friend. I needed to be reconciled. I needed that gap, that barrier that separated us, to be gone. His death accomplished that.
But he says, while we’re reconciled by His death, we’re, “…saved through his life!” So, now you bring that into the context of salvation being a process. It’s that new life that has to find some expression in me. That’s what changes me into His image.
You know, salvation is not just a ticket to heaven because He’s forgiven my sins. I’m not fit for heaven. He’s got some work to do to get me ready. But He’s up to the task, isn’t He? So, Paul paints, first of all, this glorious picture of what God has done for us, and then he comes to the place…the verse we quote so often. “Now to him…” the end of chapter 3. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine….”
Do you sometimes get to a place where you can’t even imagine something changing? But He’s able to do, “…more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…” It’s not my power, but it’s His power. Praise God!
And He’s not gonna stop working, is He? Not in His people. “…To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!” So, that’s the context. A very quick summarization of it, but we’re familiar with the scripture. That’s the context that sets up everything that follows, because what follows is, now what about our place in this? What do we do with this? What is God looking for from us?
And of course, the first part of this chapter 4, up to verse 16, I believe, is again, a big picture. Paul is painting a picture of what the body of Christ is about, how in broad terms it’s meant to function.
And it’s really…you could look at this, almost, as a utopian dream. How many times do you think back, oh, isn’t that wonderful and I acknowledge that, but it’s like…okay, now back to reality? As though that’s…yeah, I see some heads nodding. And I believe God wants to get this beyond a utopian dream, that okay, this is something we acknowledge, theologically this is what we’re supposed to be, but in reality it just ain’t happening. At least, not quite like this.
But I’ll tell you, God has called us, and this is the picture. “…I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
Then he states the simple picture, the fact: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”
And then he talks about how Christ came down, and accomplished everything that the Father gave Him, and when He went back, He had a different position. He was in a position to share God’s love, to share God’s life with you and with me. Not just to be with us…remember He told His disciples the Holy Spirit is, “…with you, and shall be in you.” That’s what’s changed! Oh, God has been able, through the blood of Christ, to cleanse the human heart, as wicked as it is. To reach down to the lowest of the low and make us clean in God’s sight, so that He can come in and live! Praise God!
( congregational amens ).
So, he talks about how Christ ascended to heaven and now He’s in a position to fill everything. Oh, Praise God! I’ll tell you, there’s coming…there’s coming a creation that will be so full of the life of God that’s all there’ll be. Everything else will be done away with. It will end.
Then of course, then he gives us the picture of the order in which God has set up. And we used to hear about apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, and I want to drop this in because I think this was…there was a certain amount…I don’t know how to put it, exactly.
You know, one of the things that’s bedeviled the church, from the beginning, is this clergy-laity business, where you’ve got two classes of people. You’ve got the clergy and they’re up here, and they talk to God and then they come down and tell us what God says. And we’re just the ordinary people. What you have here is gifts that God has given, not to elevate a special group of people so we blindly follow them, but rather that they have the ability to impart what we need so that the whole body functions!
( congregational amens ).
I mean, you listen to some of the folks today who emphasize this kind of stuff, and then you listen to Peter, writing to the other elders, and said I, “…who am also an elder…” (KJV). He puts himself right there beside them, not above them, talking down to them. I just pray that God will help us to find the perfect balance where God can give whatever gifts He wants to, to whomever He wants. And we can respect those gifts. I mean, if somebody comes in and has the gift like the Apostle Paul, we need to recognize that.
( congregational amens ).
But God doesn’t give anybody a gift to be lifted up above everybody and be some kind of a dictator. We need to understand that Christ alone is the head of this church!
( congregational response ).
Lift Him up, and absolutely function under His headship, using…allowing all the gifts to be developed and exercised. And God has got a place for every single one of you and His place, His purpose for your life is that some aspect, some portion of His life and His nature will absolutely flow through you so that somebody else can benefit—others can benefit.
It’s not about selfishness anymore. That’s the very thing that God is doing away with. That’s human nature. But God has got a picture here where He is absolutely doing something that is miraculous. Okay, so that’s the utopian version of all that.
I just…I’m amazed when I think about what Paul is writing here and how high-blown and awesome and wonderful it is, and yet, then you come to a section that reminds us that Paul is not writing to super-spiritual people. These are people just like us. And he wants…and he’s writing to people who have just come out of heathen religion, heathen life. There were all kinds of sinful lifestyles. This is who Paul was writing to!
Again, these aren’t theology students. These aren’t special people who have paid a lot of money, gone off to this retreat because they’re hyper-spiritual. These are ordinary people. That’s what this message is for. And I just pray that this is something we will get. I don’t care who you are and what sewer God got you out of, or whether you may have lived a good life. I’ll tell you, we all come out of the same sewer!
( congregational amens ).
We all need a Savior! Praise God! There is One, that He has provided, the perfect Savior! But Paul, after he’s set up all of this amazing truth, this vision of where God is going with everything, now he gets down to the nitty-gritty of getting there, because you and I have a part to play, don’t we? It’s not just that we exercise faith to get our sins forgiven, it’s that we learn every day to deal with the issues of the day and exercise faith for God to save us from what we have been, and make us fit to walk in what He’s given us here.
( congregational amens ).
You see? That’s what I need. I don’t need to get up in the morning and say, well, I know it. I understand the thing. God’s gonna do it. Hallelujah! Let’s go about my day. God has got something that He is going to do in you and me, every single day, if we’re tuned in, and if we’re aware and if we’re honest. Okay?
So, first of all, he does give, again, a general principle here that sets up all the details he’s gonna go into. Verse 17 of chapter 4, “So I tell you this…” (NIV). So, again, everything he does is built…is a conclusion based upon what he’s already said. You know, he started chapter 4 with, based on all that God has done, here’s where we’re going with this, that we need to be the body of Christ. You need to learn how to be the body of Christ. And he talks about that and then he says, “So….”
Do you get the connection? This is not disconnected truth. In order for this…for what he’s just…the vision he’s just laid out to actually come into reality, this is gonna have to happen. Okay?
“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do…” Or, you could just say the people of the world who don’t know God. “…In the futility of their thinking….” In other words, they’ve got ideas as to how things are, that ain’t going nowhere.
“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from…God because of the ignorance that is in them….” Now, if you were to stop there you could say, oh, good, I know what the solution is. They’re just ignorant. We’ve got to go inform them. I wish it were that simple. You read Romans 1 and you see the picture Paul paints there. This is very parallel to that. All right?
It’s the ignorance…they’re, “…separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” That’s the problem, is when God confronts a human heart, and the human heart goes like this and resists. And you do that long enough, as we’ve said many times, you’re gonna get to the point where there is no more capacity to even hear God’s voice. And there’s nothing ahead but judgment.
“…Due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity…” See, there’s what we just said. “…They have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.” See, you’ve got people who just simply respond to their bodily desires, in any way they feel like it, or they’re all about possession. What I can control, what I can have and call mine, and that makes me feel like I matter and I’m important. Those are very common characteristics of human nature. All right?
It says, “That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
I mean, obviously you could easily build a sermon on that verse, and it’d be full of truth. In fact, I think we did one time. There was a sermon, or a message that we brought that was literally titled out of that, “Created to Be Like God,” something to that effect. But the fact is, that when we look at what God has done for us, it is so much more than the forgiveness of sins. There is a new life that has been imparted.
And he likens what the Gentiles do and what we’re not supposed to do to like wearing clothes. And there are clothes that we are to put off and we’re to put on something else. The reality is, what is it that people see in us, when we’re out here? Because that’s what comes out. It comes from something. How do we act? What are our attitudes? What are the characteristics of our life? What do…how do people see us? What affect do we have on other people?
And I see God wanting to fine-tune and work in all of us. But this is what salvation is about. This isn’t just us. This is every Christian that’s ever come to the Lord. And you know, again, we’ve talked many times about the Greek present tense, which is the simple present tense is a continuing thing. It’s not an action. It’s not something that’s done and over.
If a child grows, that’s not an action where they’re little and all of a sudden, boom, they’re big. But rather, there is a…they grow, and you see this gradual process that happens. And when the…it blows right over this, in verse 23, “…to be made new in the attitude of your minds….” Really, it’s be being made new.
See, there is…it’s like Paul says in Romans 12, we are being transformed, “…by the renewing of your mind.” Here, he talks about the attitude. But there is a life that we are able to put on. Now the question is do we do that? And this is what daily salvation is about, where we are confronted with a whole lot of situations that provoke what comes out of our human nature.
Now, how many of you know that if we don’t think about it, we will automatically react to life and to virtually everything based upon our human nature, which is always all about self, all about what I want and what I feel? And for that to change, in a practical way, there’s a lot that goes into that. Man, do I need the Lord?
( congregational amens ).
Do I have any hope of seeing this kind of change? I’m so glad that the message here is not, here’s all the bad stuff you’ve been doing. Stop it! You know, reform yourself! I’m sorry, the nature I was born with is way beyond reform. You can’t fix it! But God’s purpose is to give me a brand-new life, and that life is created. Didn’t he say we’re a new creation? Brand-new creation. It’s created to what? To be like God!
How many of you who really know the Lord, and you’ve been born of His Spirit, do you realize you’ve got a life in here that was created to be like God? In other words, what Paul is about to get into…do we have the resources for that or has God just sort of thrown us to the wolves and say, you’re a mess, go fix it?
Oh, thank God! From beginning to end, what God has given to us is so supernatural that we just don’t get it. And so often, we don’t connect what He has done for us. We don’t connect it with everyday life, and we just blunder through and act out…and the ‘clothes’ people see are coming from the old nature, and we don’t even realize it. We just do what it’s our nature to do and think, well, that’s just the way I am. It’s my personality, everybody knows that.
Oh, how many excuses do we make and yet, here’s Paul saying, no…you don’t live that way anymore. God’s given you the ability, in Him, to be a different kind of a person.
So, now he’s going to talk to these super-spiritual people here…and it’s very obvious they’re just ordinary people, aren’t they? That’s an encouragement to me that God reaches out to people like that, because I need—I need Someone like that. Oh my…apart from Him I’m a sinner without hope. But in Him, I have a perfect hope, because His name is Jesus! And Jesus—the name Jesus means God saves! It comes from Him.
Man, I believe in Him, don’t you this morning? That’s what God is seeking from me and from all of us, to exercise a practical faith in these little, daily things, so that we can actually participate and experience what He’s talking about here.
How many of you believe that God wants to bring us into a better and better picture of what He’s talking about in the first half of chapter 4? Where you see the Body of Christ, and every member is participating, and every member is a vessel through whom God gives life to others, and together we grow up, “…unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” (KJV). Do you believe that’s possible? Do you believe we can move in that direction? Praise God!
Okay, “Therefore…” Again, you’ve got this connection back to everything he said. Everything leads to something else. “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” (NIV). Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be sensitive to the Lord and have Him help us in this simple area like this, where there’s just a truthfulness and an honesty about ourselves?
My God, such a simple thing. And yet, how many of us blunder through life and justify this and justify that, and are unconscious of this and that? I want the Lord to shine the light where it needs to be shined, don’t you?
And you know, the devil could just make you afraid of that. But since God’s given me everything I need to overcome that, and to pull me out of that, that’s not a cause for fear. That’s a cause for thanksgiving. because the only way to get victory over anything, ultimately, is to face it!
And folks, if in one way or another you are a liar, don’t deny it. Say, God, work in my heart to bring me closer to what You want, because when I act in any way that’s deceitful, that’s not coming from You, is it? That’s not an expression of that new life that was created to be like God. That’s just my old nature trying to serve self.
Close
October 9, 2022 - No. 1566
“In All Things” Conclusion
Broadcast #1566
October 9, 2022
October 9, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1566 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew…” (NIV). I’m not gonna get into a long discussion about, you know, God’s sovereignty and man’s will. But I’ll tell you, we have a choice to make, when God calls, when God deals with the heart and God knows those who will surrender.
But what a picture is painted here, because when we’re in the middle of something, it’s awful easy for the Devil to sow all kinds of questions and doubts and sense of weakness, sense of need, all the things that would militate, that would fight against our restful confidence in God’s love and His purpose.
But listen to the language that we’ve used so many times, and those he predestined…oh yeah, “For those God foreknew he also predestined….” See there’s this sense that, I’m gonna take charge and I’ve got a purpose that’s gonna work out and it will happen! There’s not a devil in hell that can stop what I have purposed when somebody commits their life into my hands, it is in a safe place. I will bring them to that place where one day they will walk in a brand-new world and Jesus will walk among us as our elder brother.
What an incredible picture! Praise God! And the certainty that God is communicating in this scripture. If God predestines something, is there anybody that can say, no you can’t do that? No!
“And those…” in verse 30, “…he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified….” And that’s a simple word. It means He makes you righteous in God’s eyes, takes away…just removes sin from the equation. Praise God!
“…Those he justified, he also glorified.” What a way to put that! To say something like that, that hasn’t happened yet as though it has happened, that’s the certainty God wants His children to have, once they surrender their lives unto His hands and He comes in to stay and to seal the heart.
Folks, we have every reason, no matter what we experience, Covid or otherwise, to just say, Lord, I’m in Your hands, my life is in your hands…we sing the song. What a blessed place that is. And I feel like many of the things that we have experienced, in these last few weeks, have been to move us along in that direction.
( congregational amens ).
You know, God knows what’s ahead. We’ve said it many times. We’ve had it easy here in America. He talks later in this passage about, you know, persecution and famine and nakedness and peril and sword and a whole lot of things that are worse than any of us have ever experienced. And I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who will bring His people through, and will be with us.
But the only way to get there is to experience Him in real things, where we can look back and say, you know, that was tough, but God was with me! In the darkest time, He spoke His word to my heart, gave me the strength to believe it and it carried me through! It brought me through that dark time, and I am better for it and God has given me a real, living experience of His faithfulness. Praise God! Praise God!
I’m gonna move from this scripture just for a moment to another one that we read periodically that we really love. And that’s in James, the beginning of James. But I had this come to me, I don’t know how many different times. And I’ll read it in this NIV translation. But that’s not how it came to me because I grew up with the King James.
But…verse 2, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds….” Now of course, we don’t consider it pure joy, but the Lord wants us to see it…if we could see it through His eyes, see it through His heart, and really believe that it is His heart toward us, doesn’t that make a difference?
( congregational response ).
My God! Can’t we say, thank You, Lord. I know where this is headed. I’m just anticipating that, and Your strength is with me right now to help me through this.
All right, why are we able to do that? “…Because you know…” Here’s again, is something we know, and this is the kind of knowledge again that is cumulative. You go through something, you gain some knowledge, it’s more than just theory. Then you go through something else, and you go through something else, and knowledge increases. And God wants us to come to the place where we could have the knowledge that would enable us to say, Praise God, in the midst of something that wouldn’t naturally bring forth that response.
“…You know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Now this kept coming to me over and over through these last few weeks. And it was King James language: “…Let patience have her perfect work….”
And patience and perseverance are two senses of the meaning of the original. Because it conveys perseverance as in not giving up, continuing to put forth an effort to resist. But it also conveys the idea of time, that this is not a push-button deal, that this is gonna take some time in order to accomplish what has to be accomplished.
You know, and the obvious example that we’ve used many times is, suppose you want to be a weight lifter, and you’ve read every book that you could about weight lifting, you understood the science of it, you’ve looked at videos, you went to seminars. Would any of that make you a weightlifter? No.
Weightlifting…the very essence of weightlifting is exerting your strength against resistance. There simply is no way for muscles to grow and to become stronger unless they are literally exercised against resistance. And if they’re gonna grow really strong, the resistance is gonna have to get stronger, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what weightlifting is all about. How much can I lift?
Is it any different in spiritual matters? We’d like it to be. Every one of us would probably like to come to a place where we could come down to an altar, have someone lay their hands on your head, and just put in there whatever it is you need.
But it doesn’t work that way, and the Lord has used this particular period in a unique way, to cause us to have to face things and patience is that word that kept coming to me, this is something that’s gonna take time. You need be…you need to stand in your spirit against this thing. You need to have a constant confidence and trust in Me, but you need…the devil’s gonna be talking to you. Has the devil been talking to anybody?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. But there needs to be a stand that you take in your spirit when the devil starts saying…this is a time for self-pity, it’s time for self-indulgence, because of your self-pity…you deserve that. Nobody ever experiences anything like that I know! But whatever it is, that would cause us to draw back, or let go, or be tired, or give into something when it comes to the simple stand of faith and saying, no, God is faithful! I am trusting in Him!
( congregational amens ).
I will not give in. I’m gonna stand in the face of whatever the devil tells me is going on. I am His and that’s the end of it.
( congregational amens ).
Folks, how many of you got that in you to do that? Zero. Man, we need the Lord, don’t we? We need the Lord.
But do you see how this dovetails with what Paul had said over in Romans 8, that there is something that God is gonna…I mean, we’re here for a reason. Part of the reason is to let our light shine. But obviously, God’s purpose is to change us from people who fit in with this world, to people who fit into the one to come. And every single one of us needs a lot more change than we think we do.
( congregational amens ).
And so, when these things are allowed by God to work in our lives, what He’s looking for is simple faith that puts their trust in Him and says, God, I am one with You in this. I thank you for it, I understand what’s going on. My flesh doesn’t like it, my flesh gets weary, all these things that I have to battle, but Lord, I’m on Your side in this thing. I want to let this have its complete work.
Lord, help me not to cut it short. Help me not to bail on You. Help me not to accuse You of doing wrong because I don’t like it! All of the things that the Devil tries to bring about in our minds and hearts. But, oh what a faithful God we have!
( congregational amens ).
What a merciful God we have! You know, when you stand back from it and you’re not sitting there feeling the immediate effects, doesn’t it make sense to say, yes, God, I want this…I want the full deal. I don’t want to stop short. I want perseverance to have its full effect.
Let me go back to read this, “Let perseverance finish its work…” (NIV). There’s the time element. There’s where things aren’t gonna be… there’s no push-button solution. There’s no way to get to God’s goal in this thing except by submitting ourselves and trusting in Him and looking to Him, and keeping on doing that, because there’s a work that’s happening that cannot happen any other way. How many of you want to be what the Lord wants you to be?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, that’s a dangerous desire, isn’t it? Because it means there’s parts of us that… it means we’re gonna have to die. And we’re gonna have to learn His ways and be willing to let go and let God have His wonderful way. That’s what all this is about. So over and over again, I kept having that, “…let patience have her perfect work…” (KJV). Let patience have her perfect work.
( laughing ).
And then you get up, and a couple of days later, and you’re weak and wobbly and hanging in there. “…Let patience have her perfect work….” Over and over and over again that scripture came. But, do you think maybe, just maybe, there was a good reason for that? Anybody else have the same need?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, sure, we all do, don’t we? Another scripture that came to me, that we’ve heard many, many times. You know, it’s not a matter of just hearing new stuff, but it’s a matter of God making the old stuff real, so that it becomes something that we can stand on, and know it’s real, and know…and just be able to stand when somebody else is struggling, maybe even be able to help somebody who’s struggling, because we’ve been there.
( congregational response ).
And we know God is faithful! We know that this scripture, whatever scripture it is, it’s real, because we’ve experienced it in our lives. There is no substitute for that.
Another scripture the Lord brought to me a number of times was in 1st Peter 5, very familiar scripture, where it says, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” (NIV). In verse 6, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”
And of course, in the process, us being human, we’re gonna be anxious about things. So, he says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
But I can’t tell you the number of times that that scripture came to me. And again, is that not, does that not dovetail with the other things we’ve said? Because if God is at work, in all things, He’s at work. He has a purpose. He’s working it out. And, I’m to let perseverance, patience, have its complete work so that I’ll be what He wants me to be.
Isn’t it appropriate that he says, “Humble yourselves…under God’s mighty hand…”? That’s not natural. But oh, what a peace and what a rest there is when we’re just able to say, yes Lord, whatever. I just want You. I just want Your will for my heart, for my life, your purpose for my life. There’s nothing else worth living for.
But you know, the Lord has to let you experience stuff before you get that. If it’s just theory, that’s all it is. But I’m so thankful for God’s goodness in everything that has happened.
I think I’ll just go back briefly. Well, another scripture, I’ll quote a couple of scriptures. There’s one in 1st Thessalonians, chapter 5, I think, that talks about…that’s giving a whole of instructions, a whole lot of words of exhortation, I guess, is the word I’m trying to reach for. And he says, “In every thing give thanks.” (KJV).
That’s another thing that is a good exercise. When we’re in some of these ‘all things,’ and we’d rather they didn’t happen, and they’re not pleasant, and we’re in that place where the devil is beating on us and whispering in our ears, one of the things that God calls on us to do is to say, thank You, Lord. In all things. And, of course, I’ve had people actually express this. Yeah, I’m supposed to give thanks ‘in’ all things but not ‘for’ all things.
( laughter ).
Anybody ever heard that? Unfortunately, if you will go over to Ephesians, chapter 5, it says specifically, “…giving thanks…for everything…” in Christ Jesus. (NIV). You see, it takes, it takes faith.
You think of what Jesus went through in His life, to accomplish the Father’s purpose. Now, the Father’s purpose in Him, I mean He was like Jesus. I mean, He was Jesus, He never sinned. But yet He had to experience all of the things that we experience. And yet, facing the cross, I thank You, Father.
There was this sense of praise, of thanks, of confidence, of rest, of being willing to push forward, willing to wait on God and to receive the strength even to do it, to pray for three hours when it was necessary. All the things He went through and yet there was this sense, God, I know You’ve got this! I know what Your purpose it. I want to be part of that, come what may, Lord, whatever it costs.
That’s what God is seeking to bring about in our lives. And so, I don’t care what it is that you and I experience, that’s at the heart of it. And I want to listen, and I want to learn the reality of these scriptures, because again, what carries us through things in the future is what we’ve already learned and what we know because we’ve been there, and done that.
But anyway, one point probably needs to be made, because the reality is, all of these things, giving thanks, humbling ourselves, trusting Him, you know, rejoicing, being glad, all these things that we’re exhorted to do, again, not one of us here has the natural ability to do any of that! And so, one of the deep lessons that I see the Lord trying to teach me…I hope I’m learning in a measure, is the simple reality that every need is meant to draw me to Him because the unsearchable riches of Christ are there!
Listen to what he says back in Romans, chapter 8. “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
See, that’s one of the lessons that it’s not easy for us to learn. We are by nature self-reliant. Every time we feel a need, I’ve got to do something, I got to, I got to. Instead of saying, Lord, I have no resource for this, but You have promised. Everything I need is in You.
Again, going back to the unsearchable riches of Christ. Anybody here have needs that the Lord would draw your mind away from your ability, and your sense of need, and all your sense of self-pity, if that’s there? To say, I have what you need. I know you don’t have the ability to humble yourself. I can give that to you if you’ll just ask.
See, you don’t have because you’re not asking. And a whole lot of your asking is self-centered. And the Lord wants us to have a confidence.
And you know, when we feel those needs, many times, that’s when the devil tries to paint a picture that would cause us to say, well, I can’t go to Him now, I don’t deserve it. This is happening because I did something. That’s a lie from the pit of hell! And God wants us to wake up and realize that. Now, if there is something that we’re conscious of, that we need to confess, praise God! But we’ve got a place to go!
( congregational amens ).
“He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (KJV). We confess our sins, there’s a sense of agreement with God about it. God has made provision for that! No devil in hell could ever rightly accuse you and me of anything that would ever separate us. That’s what this whole passage is about. Praise God!
But do we get this? Do we really live as if this is true? Or do we just say, yay, Jesus, that’s wonderful! And then go on as though it’s not true. See, we’re in the process, aren’t we? We’re in school. But the Lord is so loving and so patient with us. Thank God!
But the reality is, and this again, is something that came to me many times…it’s come to me many times these past few weeks. “…How will he not also, along with him graciously give us…” How many things?
( congregational response ).
“…All things.” What is your need today? Is it for strength against temptation? Is it for courage? Is it for the strength to just stand in faith? Whatever it is, He is the answer!
( congregational response ).
That’s why He gave us the parable of the…praise God…the vine and the branches. Where does the vine…the branch get its ability to do anything? It gets it from the branch…the vine. Anyway, you know what I’m trying to say. There is a source outside of ourselves that we need to…that God wants us to learn to tap into. To let go of self in every form, whether it’s self-effort, pride, no matter what it is, we just need the Lord!
( congregational amens ).
And He is faithful and loving and ready to step into every life. I appreciate God’s faithfulness. I appreciate the opportunity to get to know Him in deeper ways.
( congregational response ).
You know, we need to be able to rejoice and look at things through His eyes, don’t we? I appreciate His faithfulness!
Close
October 2, 2022 - No. 1565
“In All Things” Part One
Broadcast #1565
October 2, 2022
October 2, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1565 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I just wanted to share some simple thoughts. I don’t know how long I’ll be up here, but, scriptures that we know are often are the ones that we need the most. And sometimes I think we can react and think, oh, I’ve heard that a million times. But the thing is, we need to hear what God says when it is relevant to our circumstances. It’s not just a matter of having a head full of Bible knowledge, we need the Lord in very personal, very real ways.
And several scriptures that have been quickened to me repeatedly, and one of them certainly, everybody has probably thought of this one at one time, is Romans 8:28. You know, where it says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (NIV).
Now there’s so much rich truth in that, you can’t really exhaust it. But, things that have been quickened in a special way…one of them is the word ‘know.’ What do you think he means by that? Is this the kind of knowledge you can get by reading a book or hearing a sermon?
( congregational response ).
See, there’s only one way to acquire the kind of knowledge that he’s really talking about here, and that is by experience, by having to go through something and experiencing God’s goodness in very practical ways. There is a knowledge you gain by that, you cannot gain any other way.
And so, I see the Lord’s goodness in allowing these ‘all things’ he’s talking about, allowing them to come into our lives and then turning our hearts to Him, speaking to us. I just pray that God will give us better ears to hear, where we’ll be more ready to listen and ready to open our hearts and say, Lord, I know You’ve got this. I know You’re on the throne. I know that there is a reason, there is a loving purpose behind this place that I’m in.
You know I was thinking about the ‘all things.’ And we tend to trot this verse out when something happens that we consider to be ‘bad’ and unpleasant to us. But the truth is, everything God uses.
( congregational amens ).
You know, sometimes He lets us go through an easy place, and it’s to see whether we’re gonna go to sleep and be careless, because we need to learn that kind of a lesson as well. And so, really…’all things’ means all things, not just all bad things, as we measure them.
But, you know, I was thinking about how God allows things in our lives. It’s not like God is literally just manipulating every little thing that happens, but He sure does allow stuff, doesn’t He?
Many times, He allows us, and I know everybody here, if you’re honest, can testify to this…He allows us to experience the consequences of our own choices. And they aren’t always good choices. But isn’t it wonderful that God can even take those things and turn them around into spiritual growth if we’ll just listen, and give Him our hearts?
These are such simple things, but they are so basic to what the Lord is doing. And so, I praise Him for knowledge, but I praise Him for the increase in knowledge, because we don’t know much. We’re in the process of being changed, aren’t we?
( congregational response ).
And that change happens…how did Paul say in another place? He said, it happens, “…by the renewing of your mind.” And the problem is, we come into this world and just even in growing up…even if we grow up in church, there’s so much of our thinking that is geared to this world. We see things through the eyes of the world.
We see the things that are valued by the world, things that are important…earthly security, earthly welfare of every sort. I mean, the list goes on and on, and that’s the way we see ourselves, and we see others, and we see our place in the world and everything. It’s just kind of a comprehensive…well, we call it a worldview.
Frankly, our worldview needs to change and that is not something that happens with a push-button experience, doesn’t happen with a series of lectures. It happens in life. As life happens, God uses everything we experience in order to change us. How many here need to be changed?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. How many have learned in the last few weeks that there are changes that you thought you had, and God needed to do something more than you realized. Aren’t you glad He’s in charge and He knows?
( congregational response ).
Praise God! We’ve got an awesome God. And all that He does is not for our hurt, it’s not for our…for anything other than His purpose. And that was another thing that really continually came back to me. That whatever God allows in our lives, it’s to serve His purpose.
And our problem, much of the time, is that we have our purposes. We have things that we seek. We have things that we value in life, and that has nothing whatever to do with God’s purpose! God’s purpose is not to fix the world. It’s not to make…give us a pleasant little cozy nest in this world where everything goes the way we would like it to.
His purpose is expressed, of course, in the next verse. And it says, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he…” the Son, “…might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
What a picture that is! How many of you are just like Jesus right now? I don’t see any hands, and I certainly couldn’t raise mine. I just…I see, every single day, I see areas where God is at work and needs to work. And I feel my need and that’s a good place to be. Isn’t it wonderful to actually understand, in some measure, that truth? It enables us to surrender to His purpose.
You know, I was talking about the ‘all things,’ and one of the things that…that should be obvious to you, if you’ve known the Lord any length of time, oftentimes the Lord allows the devil to do stuff, to have his way, up to a point…thank God, God has His hand on that. But the Lord stands back and allows the devil to do stuff, and then turns it around and uses it for our good!
Think about Peter, and the obvious examples we’ve had in scripture of Peter…had to go through what he went through, but when he did, he came out of it strong, he came out of it with a faith in Christ, he came out of it knowing that you can be at your worst, and He will still love you and pick you up and forgive you, and receive you. What an incredible lesson that…and it was just a few weeks later that same man was able to stand up in the power of the Spirit and proclaim the Gospel on the Day of Pentecost.
Folks, it doesn’t matter what the Lord allows the devil to do in our lives and how badly we fall in the mud, if we will lift up our hearts to Him and put our confidence in Him, He has a way of turning that around and absolutely allowing us to grow and become stronger, as a result of that! I thank God! How many need this?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. How many of you have fallen in the mud and you’ve wondered, oh how…when things happen, how the devil has a way of interpreting all those things, some of those ‘all things’ that happen. What did you do to deserve this? Is God mad at you? Is God upset with you? What did you do? You made a bad choice and now you’re reaping, and God’s just standing back there waiting for you to get it right. God’s waiting for ‘you’ to get things right, and then He’ll come back.
Oh my God! What an awesome God we have that is right there! But, oh how desperately do we need to absolutely go through real stuff, of every kind, whether it has to do with failure or pain or time, or whatever it has to do with. There is no substitute for going through something and experiencing what God is talking about in this scripture. Folks, if we’re gonna grow up, if we’re gonna become like Jesus, we’re gonna have to go through things that we don’t want to go through. And I praise Him, because it’s His purpose.
You know, who’s he talking about in this scripture? He says, those who love God. Folks, there’s not a human being on the planet that naturally loves God! It’s not in human nature to love God. You can be religious, but I mean, in terms of having the power to truly love God as he’s talking about here, that’s supernatural.
And doesn’t he go on and talk about those He’s, “…called according to his purpose.” You know we had a message on this a long time back, I don’t remember when: “By Invitation Only.” Do you know the Kingdom of God is by invitation only? People don’t just decide, I’m gonna serve God. God has to be actively at work, convicting and calling somebody to repent.
Do you remember what Peter said on the Day of Pentecost, when they said, what are we gonna do? You know, they were convicted about their sinfulness and their rejection of the Lord that had been sent to them. And Peter said, repent! That is a one-eighty. That is a renunciation of everything that we have stood for, our sins, our ways, our earthly life! It is a willingness to be baptized, which is laying that life down. It is willfully, willingly giving up that which we cannot keep in order to gain a life that we cannot lose.
( congregational response ).
And the promise of God to everyone who responds in true, humble repentance and faith to that call is the forgiveness of sins, to be absolutely right with a holy God, and to have Him come and impart His own life into us. Praise God! That’s what this is about. Then the work of transformation has a foundation! It isn’t—it isn’t, here’s a list of things I want you to do, work at it. This is absolutely a supernatural thing.
But you know, the problem is we don’t always understand. This knowledge he’s talking about is something that only comes over time. And I would guarantee I’m not the only one that has come through what we’ve just…some of the things we’re just going through still, trying to get strength back.
But these things have roused in us a sense of need, a sense of…oh God, I thought I had this…you know, I thought I had this, and I’m running into this, and I’m running into that feeling, and wanting to go this way, wanting to give in to self-pity, wanting to…you know, put forth an effort and then…I’m tired. And Paul says be not, “…weary in well doing.” (KJV). Praise God! Do we need the Lord?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, we need the Lord, don’t we? We don’t have what it takes. But He is so utterly faithful and committed. What an amazing, simple scripture that we have heard so many times. Praise the Lord!
And we know! Do you know this? That in all things…even when God lets the devil work, like He did with Paul. Remember, when Paul was doing good, doing everything he knew to do, there was no particular wrong or sinful thing that God was trying to correct in Paul, but He wanted…but Paul saw, or God saw a need in Paul.
How easy is it for us to be prideful, when we experience the good things of God, and it’s like He is shining His light on us, and aren’t we wonderful? And God wants us to never lose sight of the fact that we are objects of His love and mercy, that He never gives us something because we have earned it and we deserve it, and we should be lifted up in our own thinking.
And so, God sent a demon, allowed a demon to go and harass Paul, and Paul prayed and couldn’t get rid of it. That was one of those ‘all things.’ Paul was concerned about that. He wondered, God, I don’t get this. Something we’ve talked about many many times, until finally the Lord gave him the knowledge that he needed.
And he shared that with us. He said, Paul, I’ve got to give you a lesson here. Your pride was kind of in danger of getting in the way. But I want you to understand something. I know you feel weak right now. Anybody here feel weak? Yeah. I know you feel weak, but I want you to understand that when you’re weak, you’re strong. Why? Because you’re consciously depending on Me, and My strength is inexhaustible. Praise God!
That’s one of the things that God wants to teach us. It’s so easy, theoretically to talk about the “…unsearchable riches of Christ.” Okay…how does that affect me and my everyday life. What difference does that make? See, that’s what the Lord wants us to get, in deeper and deeper ways.
And I can testify that the Lord has…has come in many ways, and I’ve been in spots where I’ve tended to give in, I’ve tended to feel bad. And, the devil’s talking, and…why, when is this gonna be over? And, of course, who knows?
But I’ll tell you, God is so faithful. Just to give a word of testimony…this might be a good thing to have this morning. I shared this with the fellows the other night. But, I kind of reached a low point, and I think it had to come with energy production, coming from here, I just didn’t have any.
And I felt so weak on Labor Day, that in the evening I didn’t feel like I could get through the night. I didn’t know. I had to have some help. I had to have some answers. And so, I took my first, and I hope only, ambulance ride, because I didn’t want to sit in the waiting room.
But I experienced something that I can take absolutely zero credit for. And that was, “…the peace…which passeth all understanding….” Truthfully, I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I even made the mistake of commenting to Sue, before I left, I said, well you know, maybe the Lord’s gonna take…maybe this is the Lord’s time, He’s gonna take me home. Who knows? That didn’t help her through the evening.
( laughter ).
I was in perfect peace, and she was at home not knowing what was going on.
(laughter ).
Bless her heart. I shouldn’t have said that. But, I honestly felt that. I mean, that’s supernatural. If you can be in a place where you think there is a real possibility, I might die, maybe this is the Lord’s time, and to feel total peace! It’s okay. If that’s what Your will is, I’m good with it. And that didn’t come from me, I guarantee it.
And so, I just kind of relaxed in the hands of the people who were doing whatever they were doing. And, the Lord answered the need…gave me an IV infusion, which was enough to kind of get me over the hump a little bit. And just one little notation the doctor made in the report kind of put me on the track of where I needed to go. And so, a couple days later, I think my fevers were even gone.
So, I just praise the Lord! My strength is nowhere near back, but we’re on track. And the Lord knows what He’s doing. But what an experience! I mean, it’s wonderful to read about how we can not be anxious and take our petitions to the Lord. And, “…the peace…which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
What a glorious theory that is! Oh, how nice it is to quote that. But to experience it at that time, and to know that it’s real! Folks, that’s the confidence God wants to give every one of His children, regardless of the circumstances.
I mean, how could Paul talk about, for me to live is Christ, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” And have…you know, it’s just like, this is the way it is. If it’s my time to die, I’m good with that. How many can honestly say that? See, it takes grace! I know I’m not the only one who’s ever experienced this. But, you know, if we really have, if we really see our lives, and our lives in this world through His eyes, and His purpose, not ours, yeah, you can have that.
I mean, you look at the three Hebrew children in the Old Testament, and how they were able, not knowing how it was gonna turn out, to say, Nebuchadnezzar, we are not bowing to your image. “The God we serve is able to deliver us…” (NIV). But if He doesn’t, we’re still not bowing.
See at that point, they didn’t know. As far as they were concerned, they could just be tossed in there and burn up! And yet, there was a humble submission into the hands of a loving heavenly Father.
Is that a place that we need to be able to be brought to? Yeah. How do you get there? We’re gonna have to let the Lord take us in His time and His way. He will use all things in our lives if we will tune, in and say, Lord, I want your purpose and not mine.
Close
September 25, 2022 - No. 1564
“Two Temples” Conclusion
Broadcast #1564
September 25, 2022
September 25, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1564 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You want to know why things are happening the way they are now? More and more people are saying no. Thank God there are people who still are gonna say, yes.
(congregational amens ).
But more and more, people are saying no. “For this reason…” (NIV). This is why. “…God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie…” All right? “…And so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
Now, this is a case—one of those cases where the NIV gets it right and the King James gets it wrong, in one little, tiny point. You read that in the King James, it’ll say, they will believe ‘a’ lie. The Greek says, ‘the’ lie. What’s the difference?
See, this is not just believing a whole range of stuff that’s wrong, that’s a lie. This is believing the lie that goes right back to the beginning, that your destiny is to be your own god. You have these desires for a reason. They’re born in you, not to be denied but to be fulfilled! You’re supposed to follow that. That’s your destiny, so give yourself to it. That’s the lie! Whatever form that takes.
And I don’t know exactly how this is gonna unfold. I don’t have any dates. I don’t have any of that. I just know that God wants us to be alive and awake. But I’ll tell you, if the devil…to the extent the devil accomplishes what we’re talking about right here, and he gets the broad mass of humanity to, basically, reject God, reject the Gospel, and embrace ‘the lie,’ he’s gonna be able to manipulate this world any way he wants to.
He is a master manipulator, and it will not be hard for him to bring about a global society if that’s exactly what he wants to bring out. I know that’s the driving force behind the people that are ruling things in this planet right now, the money, the power, the philosophy. That’s where it’s headed. That’s where they want to take us. We’ll see what God allows.
But I’ll tell you one thing, there is a temple that is being built and occupied. It was designed to be God’s temple, but man is occupying it. Lost, rebellious man is saying, I am God, falling for the same lie that felled Lucifer in the beginning, who says, “I will be like the most High.” (KJV).
And again, Paul is writing this because he wants God’s people to understand this. Didn’t Paul, back in the first letter to the Thessalonians, talk about, you’re not in darkness, so wake up. Don’t get drunk like those who are drunk in the night. That’s what’s going on. There is a drunkenness with this spirit of delusion that God is allowing because people have rejected truth!
It’s going out with more and more force and more and more clarity every single day, and God wants His people to wake up and say, wait a minute. I don’t have to be a part of that. There is a temple that’s being built.
And I’m just…I’ve gone back and forth on this, trusting the Lord to…I don’t think I’m gonna have time to really go into the other. But do you know, there’s another temple? Do you know God has a temple? Do you understand what’s happening here?
Go back to the beginning. God’s purpose was to live in human beings, to actually live in us, to make His home—to make His home in us. But man said, no, this is my vessel. I will do as I please. I will be my own god.
But God has a people that He is gathering in this hour. We’re not being gathered into cathedrals and buildings as though they are the…that’s what God is after. God’s heart is to live in human beings.
Look at what he says…look what Paul says, in a couple of places. 1st Corinthians chapter 3. This is something that needs to be fleshed out at some point, but he’s talking…he’s talking to the believers there about the building of God’s church, the building of what God wanted to do and how it has to be on the foundation of what Jesus did! It’s not on the foundation of who I am as a human being trying to be me. It’s the foundation of Jesus Christ who shed His blood, gave His life up for me so that I can give myself to Him.
Any other foundation, you haven’t got a foundation. That’s what’s gonna hold people. I’ll tell you, if you don’t have this…if that foundation is not laid in a human heart, you will succumb to the spirit of delusion that is enveloping this dark world. How many times have we said, when you get to that day when Jesus comes, there will be such a radical difference between those who are caught up in glory to be with Him and those upon whom fire rains.
You know, I gave you my secondary title last week. “Glory and Fire” or “Fire and Glory.” That’s where we’re headed. But oh, praise God for the glory that’s coming. But Paul says in verse 16 of 1st Corinthians chapter 3, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple…” (NIV). That’s pretty plain language. He’s writing to Christian believers and said, don’t you understand? Don’t you get this? You are God’s temple! “…And that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
And then, he’s talking about people who would come in and mess with that in some fashion. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together…” you together, “…are that temple.”
How many of you remember what Jesus said that was so misunderstood? The religious leaders said, show us a sign, as to why You’re doing all this. He said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
Of course, they thought He was totally nuts, because they thought He was talking about the building that took 46 years to build. You’re gonna do it in three days? But it says that the disciples understand later on after He was raised from the dead that He wasn’t talking about a building. He was talking about His body.
See, God’s not looking for buildings like we think of them. He’s looking to live in human flesh. And at that point in time, Jesus was God’s temple on earth. His Father lived in Him, and that’s where the expression of everything He said and did came from.
But you know, there’s a glorious prophesy. I’m not gonna try to unpack all of it, but I’m just gonna refer to something that’s come back to me a number of times over the years. This goes back to the Old Testament. How many of you remember the prophecy about, there would be a messenger go out, but then the Lord, whom you seek, will do what? “…Suddenly…come to his temple.” What’s he talking about? When did the Lord come to the temple Paul is talking about? Yeah, that’s what, but when?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. How about the day of Pentecost? All of a sudden, the Lord came to His temple. I believe, by the way, it happened in the physical temple not in the upper room. I can easily prove that. But nonetheless, it wasn’t God…or Christ coming by the Spirit to the physical temple, it was the real temple!
And boy, before that day was ended, that temple was 3,000 members strong, and it became just filled with His life and His power! And there was a unity, there was a power that God exhibited, because it was His temple. Folks, God has called us to be His temple in this hour, when the spirit of rebellious man is occupying the mass of humanity! God still has a temple.
( congregational amens ).
You and I are that temple. I’ve heard a lot of expressions recently that I absolutely agree with. It’s the organic nature of the church. The church is not an organization, any more than your body is an organization. It’s living. It’s interconnected. There’s a shared life that animates, that makes us what we are and gives us power to be alive!
Folks, the only thing that gives you and me power to have anything to do with what God’s purpose is, and eternity is God living in us. That’s what the church is meant to be about. And I’ll tell you, God wants us to see what’s going on, but at the same time, to understand, what He is doing that affects me? He wants to absolutely live in us to the point where we grow up as His temple.
How many of you remember Ephesians chapter 3? Or is it the end of 2, I think? First of all, I’ve got to find Ephesians. There we go. Now I won’t take time to go through all of this, because we’ve seen it so many times. But basically, Paul is dealing with the fact that He’s working out a great purpose. He’s called us. He’s enabled us. He’s done everything that’s necessary to make us what He wants us to be. All right?
Now, he deals with the fact that there are Jews and Gentiles, and where does that fit in? And Paul says, that’s a thing of the past. God’s made us one. He broke the wall down. By the way, He’s not ever gonna rebuild it. God doesn’t have a separate purpose for them, than He has from us. It’s all His purpose for His people, Jew and Gentile alike.
But listen to what he says, in verse 18, “For through him…” through Christ, “…we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers….” He’s writing to Gentiles here…didn’t know anything about all this coming in. “…You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people….”
All right? Let’s go on and see what he says. “…And also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together…” In Him! “…The whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”
You want to know what the church is about? There it is. Anything else is just a religious organization. Folks, God has called us together, and I pray that He will give us a fresh understanding, not only of what’s going on in the world so we can be aware, but also of who we are.
We sing the song every now and then, “God is Building a House.” And I am part of that house. “…Building a house that will stand.” Folks, that’s what He’s doing with our lives.
And I had the thought come to me…this is probably where it needs to go in the future. I wonder how much God is at home in us? That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? Do we, maybe, just need Him to work in us a bit? A big bit…but He’s faithful, isn’t He?
But do you see, God is building us together, to be something that is living…that’s as living as a body, which of course, is the other illustration that he uses in the scriptures. We are literally the body that He lives in. Every one of us is a part of it. He’s designed each one of you to fill a certain place in that.
What other purpose do we have in being here? You see, you come to that day that’s coming, you’re gonna be in one camp or the other. I certainly don’t want to be in the one that’s unaware that He’s coming, and all of a sudden, fire falls. I want to be one that’s looking and ready and understands what God’s purpose is, what He’s called me to, so that I can be part of that.
But I want Him to be more and more at home in my life. I want my life to be more and more an expression of what He wants and His character and His Spirit. Do you think, maybe, the Lord just has a little bit of work to do to get us to where He’s more at home with us? And not just here in the assembly, but I mean outside.
Do you see where the two temples come in? There’s so much more that could be said, and I just…I feel like, maybe, that’s what needs to be said today. I confess I wrestle with these things. I’m trusting the Lord’s in this. The devil fights it. I think that’s what’s going on…because I’ll feel like I’m on the right track, and then all of a sudden…I’m not so sure. But I know that God wants us to understand the things that are going on in the world, so we’re not fooled like the world is.
( congregational amens ).
We’re not dismayed by it. We understand where it’s going. We can pray for those who still have a capacity, who haven’t said that final no. We’re here for a reason to bear witness to the Light, to live out the life of Christ for anybody that can see that Light.
But we’re getting nearer and nearer to that time that he’s talking about here, and we need to live with the knowledge of that. And it’s like I quoted that part of that chorus last week, living with eternity’s values in view. God has called us to live for something that’s eternal.
I think it’s something that I said this morning. We rely naturally on human strength to accomplish things that have to do with this world. That’s how we are constituted. But God is bringing His people to a place where we don’t rely on ourselves anymore, but we learn to let go and rely on Him, to do His will and preform what He wants to do through us, so that what happens, as a result, is not just something that will burn up when this world burns up, but it will last into eternity.
Do you realize the power, the potential that lies in the simplest, smallest, most unimportant, by human measurement, one that’s here…if you’re His, you have the power, by yielding to Him, to have things happen that will have eternal results, every single one of us, because it’s not about us? It’s not I, but Christ that lives in me.
That’s the whole secret of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God’s building Him a temple. And oh, there’s gonna be a time when that temple will rise, and it will be finished, and like the artist, the ultimate artist that God is, there’s gonna be a day when all that He’s been doing, the veil is gonna be pulled back, and He’ll say, this is what I’ve been doing—this is what I’ve been doing.
Where do you want to be on that day? I want to be part of that. I want to let Him do whatever He needs to do in me to get me ready for that. He’s doing it. To Him will be all the glory.
( congregational response ).
But that is the day that’s coming fast. We’re, well, more than 50 years out of the 60’s. A lot of us didn’t think it was gonna go this long. I don’t know how long it’s gonna go. It doesn’t matter. God knows! I know there is a day coming of glory, and I know there’s a day coming of God’s justice landing upon a wicked world that has chosen to rebel against Him! But oh, there’s gonna be glory for those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ. Is that a faith worth dying for?
( congregational response ).
Living for, dying for, whatever, because that’s all Jesus lived for. That’s all He came to do was to make it possible for you and you and you and me to be part of this. Praise God! Thank God for what He’s given to us through the Gospel. Oh, thank God!
And I’ll tell you, the further we go, the more we see evil arise, we’re gonna find ourselves in more and more difficult places. We’ve said many times, just look overseas, and you’ll find believers who have everything worldly taken from them, sometimes their lives. But there’s one thing they can never take, and that’s Jesus!
And He has promised to be faithful to the end. May He give us the grace to be faithful to the end. That’s what it’s gonna take. But I’ll tell you, when we lose everything that men value in this world, we still have Him.
( congregational response ).
And it’s gonna be okay, because He’s gonna finish what He started. To Him be glory. Two temples! Which one are you a part of? I want to be a part of the one that’s waiting for that day, because I know what’s coming. I know it because He rose from the dead, and He sits on the throne. He rules, and He reigns, and no devil in hell can stop the purpose for which God raised Him up. To God be the glory!
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September 18, 2022 - No. 1563
“Two Temples” Part One
Broadcast #1563
September 18, 2022
September 18, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1563 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I want to go ahead and just read a passage that we’ll look at today, at least in part. And, I’m going to do my best not to comment as I read. I think I will just try to read it. That’s hard for me to do, but I’ll do it anyway!
Beginning in chapter 2 of 2nd Thessalonians, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come.
“Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?
“And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
“But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.” (NIV).
One of the things you notice, as Paul looks forward to the end of the age, he sets forth the simple truth that there are two kinds of people who will meet the Lord. There will be those for whom it will be the day of days, when all of a sudden, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…” (KJV).
I don’t know the exact timeframe. The twinkling of an eye part is that our bodies will be changed. But whatever the timeframe will be, we will meet the Lord in the air and be there with every single believer in God, from all history. We will be there, and we will be glorified, unveiled, so that everyone can see, not what we have been, what we have deserved, but what God has done…
( congregational amens ).
…in spite of us. We’ll see the product of his mercy and his grace. But for the world, it will be a day of sudden shock and destruction. And we set this forth last week. In spite of popular teaching to the contrary, it is…this is something that happens at once. It is one day that affects two groups of people very differently.
But there’s a pattern, and there’s something Paul looks at. There’s a level of darkness and deception that he tells us will be at the end of the age. He says there’s something going on right now. It’s there, and you may see it in a measure, but there’s a restraint upon it, because God has a purpose He’s working out. It doesn’t say that here, but that’s the underlying thought. God has a reason, because the only one that can stop this is God. And if He doesn’t, He has a reason. Okay?
So, there is a restraint upon what will happen at the end, but there is also a period, at the end, when darkness will be released, and we will see what he’s talking about here. And it is an unprecedented level of deception.
And yet, we have seen this pattern throughout history, have we not, where there will be a timeframe in which God will speak to people, deal with them, and people will respond in one of two ways. There will be a small remnant who will receive what He says, and serve Him and believe in Him, but the majority will say, no, we want our way, we are going to live our lives the way we please and serve our own desires.
And there comes a time when that condition is so fixed that it cannot be turned around. You read Romans 1, and I’m not gonna take the time to read through it right now, but those of you who remember what Paul lays out in Romans 1, this is what he lays out. God will hold men responsible for what truth they know, but what they do with it.
And the reality is, the majority of people will know enough about God to be responsible, but they will say, no, get away, I am god of my own life. And that will become…that will precipitate…that will bring about a condition where God finally says, all right, I’m taking my hands off and I’m gonna let you wallow in your deceit, but judgment is coming.
And so, you see this period…this principle of God making himself known. It could be to a city. It could be to a nation. It could be to an empire. In Noah’s day, it was the known world. However many people that encompassed, there was a world of people who reached a point, as we pointed out many times, where every thought was evil. They had no capacity for God.
And do we not see the mercy of God? Even then, there was a waiting. There was a period of time when God waited. You wonder why God’s letting things happen and why He’s waiting? He has a reason.
( congregational amens ).
There are things He’s doing that will become evident when that day dawns. But for the world, it is mercy. No one’s gonna be able to say, You’re wrong, You are unjust in how this is turning out. Now, I can’t answer every ‘what if,’ but I’ll tell you, we serve a God who will do what is right.
( congregational amens ).
And everyone will have to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is, not just that He’s Lord, but that He has done right, and he has leaned way over towards mercy. Justice will happen, but oh, the mercy of God that has been held out to an unbelieving world will be just incredible! And we will bow before him because of that!
And so, we see the day come when God moves some out, by way of the ark, in that case, and judgment fell, and everyone left behind died…a very simple pattern. And that’s what Jesus said is gonna happen. It’s gonna be like that.
And of course, He uses two examples. The other one is Sodom. In this case, you had some cities, in a particular region, that had gone so far with the pursuit of their own lusts, their own desires, that they…I mean, they were ready to molest angels. They didn’t care. All they thought about was their lust. That’s all they lived for, was what they had given themselves to, and it had reached a point where there was nothing else to be done but to eradicate that. Judgment fell.
And over and over again you see the pattern. And again, everyone who was left behind, what happened to them? They all died, didn’t they? And so, you see the pattern, in various ways, happening.
It happened to the nation of Israel, when God sent the prophets over and over and over and over and over again with the same message. And some of them they killed. But they renounced and they rejected prophet after prophet after prophet and pursued their own ways until judgment came. There was nothing left to do but for God to judge.
And he raised up a wicked nation, a wicked empire, Babylon, and empowered them to come and to destroy Israel, because of their sin and their wickedness. Even then there was a restoration, of sorts, wasn’t there? God did bring a remnant back.
And we see the pattern again, repeated, in the New Testament, in the ministry of Jesus, coming as the messiah, the very one their prophets had promised was gonna come, prophesied was gonna come. There he was, and they recognized him not. They were completely blind to the point where they absolutely killed him, absolutely persecuted him, rejected him in every possible way, and then when the gospel went out, they were the main instigators of persecution to stamp out this terrible thing that’s happened.
And what happened? The very thing that Jesus said was going to happen. In fact, what he said was…it had to do with their heritage. Not only was that generation guilty of the sins that they committed…see, they were absolutely guilty because they embraced a heritage of sin. They said, we’re doing the will of our fathers. We’re following the religion of our fathers, but their fathers were the ones who killed the prophets.
So, Jesus said, I’m going to bring the guilt of all of these generations upon this generation. And he sent Rome, a wicked empire, but still, they became his instrument to completely obliterate Jerusalem, the temple, all of it was completely destroyed in ad 70. I’ll tell you, judgment is real.
( congregational amens ).
There was a lot…a lot of time went by, but there was a time there where darkness had so taken…taken the nation that judgment was the only answer. And thank God, it wasn’t all the Jews, was it? God had his people.
They were the only ones he really considered Israel in the first place, the ones who were born of Abraham’s faith. You read Romans 9 and you’ll get a clear picture of that. God had a people that he rescued and it was to them that Jesus was sent and they became the very foundation of what we enjoy today. Thank God!
I’ll tell you, God never loses His own. He always has a remnant, and that’s what’s happening today. But Paul was looking forward to something that, even though things were terrible in that day, there was a restraint, as we said. God was not allowing that evil to become all that it would be. And so, you have several things here that need to be brought out, I believe.
One of them is this expression, ‘the rebellion.’ Now, the Greek is very clear. There’s a definite article there. It is not just rebellion in some vague general sense. This is ‘the’ rebellion. This is a point in time when the human race, as a whole, begins to say we will not serve God. We will pursue the interests of man. We will follow our desires, our dreams. This is our planet.
And I’ll tell you, many of us are of the conviction…the things the Lord showed us, and I won’t go into that particularly…that we have seen this in our lifetime. We have actually entered the period that Paul was talking about and that’s why we’re seeing such a crazy world.
That’s why…how many of you listen to a news report of something, and your reaction is, how in the world can they possibly think that way? What planet are they living on? Well, this is the answer to that. Paul wants us to understand, because one of the things you see about this last time, before the Lord comes, is a world that does not understand. They are completely enveloped in darkness. Their minds are blinded to the point where when he comes, it’s a total shock.
But of the people of God, he says, “…you…are not in darkness…” (NIV). That day won’t surprise you. And of course, we’re encouraged to be awake and to walk in the knowledge of that. That’s why I believe God wants us to understand some of these things and understand what’s going on around us, because it’s very real.
But I believe that this rebellion was a point in history when God began to take his hands off and allow man to express himself. And I know folks who lived through the 60’s, particularly. You will remember the spirit that was loose. It was a whole younger generation said, we reject the values of the older generation. We are going to pursue free love, free sex, drugs, whatever we please, we’re gonna follow our own desires, and I see people who are of that generation going like this. Yeah, you remember what it was like. And you remember the prevailing atmosphere. In so many areas there was just disruption, rejection of the past. If you’re over 30, we’re not gonna listen to you anymore.
Well, the children and the grandchildren of that era are the ones driving the culture of our day. And this thing has been unfolding, and God knows exactly how it’s going to unfold. But there are several key things. I don’t want to try to unpack all of this, but I want to get to one thing, because if there’s one central thought I want to get across…it may sound crazy right now, but it would be this.
Perhaps this is a good title, “Two Temples.” Because, one of the keys in this passage is there is a reference to the temple of God, is there not? Okay? What in the world is that about? Now, if you listen to popular teaching, they will teach that there will be a temple, a physical building, literally erected in Jerusalem, and it will be considered, somehow, the temple of God. Don’t ask me how, but nonetheless…and then there’s going to be some key man, who’s going to walk in there and say, I am God, serve me. Is that what he’s talking about?
( congregational response ).
You know, in the Old Testament they did have buildings, but that’s very…but even in the Old Testament you had the sense that that’s not really where God lives. That’s not what He’s looking for. You remember when they hauled…was it Stephen, before the Sanhedrin and he made this long, impassioned address going back over their history? And he says…he refers to the temple and yet he says, but God does not dwell in human temples, or in buildings made by hands.
And what does He do? He just doesn’t assert that, he quotes Isaiah, where in Isaiah chapter 66, where the Lord talks about who He is, “…where is the house that ye build unto me? And where is the place of my rest…but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” (KJV).
God’s not looking to dwell in a building. Heathen temples were built to honor heathen gods. But I’ll tell you, God is not looking for a building to say, this is my temple. God designed humanity to live in. From the very beginning, that was His heart.
Was not…He’s a spirit, he doesn’t have a body. But he longs to live…His home is meant to be here, in the human heart. He designed human beings so that we could live in perfect harmony with Him. We can be all that he designed us to be and yet live in harmony with His power and His purpose, in a spirit of love that will last forever!
I’ll tell you, when you talk about something happening in the temple of God, what you’re talking about here is not a building, and it’s not just a man. There’s no man—there’s no one man that could live in humanity. Think about that. When he talks about the temple of God, he is talking about something that comes into possession of humanity, at least the broad spectrum of humanity. He’s talking about a kind of a spirit that takes over.
Now go back to the original. Go back to what happened in the garden. There were two ways that were set before the people, before Adam and Eve. Both people, I guess. Those were the people. But anyway, it was the tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. One way was the way of life. One way was the way of death.
God’s purpose is revealed in the tree. What did that represent? That was God himself. That was his own life that could have breathed life—eternal life into them, to live forever but in a condition of harmony with him. But they chose the other one.
And the foundation of the other one was what? It was a lie, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just, “…you won’t surely die…” But, “…you shall be as gods.”
And do you see what Paul’s getting at? He’s using language that, no doubt, he explained in a greater way when he was actually with them, but he’s referring back to something. He said, I’m telling you something is coming. There’s gonna come a day, when something that is actually going on right now is not gonna be a secret any longer. It’s gonna be right out there in your face.
Man is going to, absolutely, assert his own deity. He’s gonna say, we’re going to the stars. This is our planet. We’re gonna manage it. We’re gonna save it. We’re gonna bring everybody together. We’re gonna bring out justice. I mean, all the issues that come into play here.
What’s really at the root of it? It’s rebellion. What kind of rebellion? It’s against God, but it’s more than just rebellion against God. It’s declaring I am God! And what happens is you have a generalized condition that happens in the human family, where people more and more are encouraged to, basically, assert their own godhood. Okay?
It’s interesting to me how this happens. It says, “the coming of the lawless one…” (NIV). See, he pictures this as a man. Now I don’t know if it’s going to be an individual who will embody this, but there ain’t no man that’s gonna climb in the human family, in the sense of what he’s talking about here. And if there is such a man, he will only be able to wield influence because of the conditions that exist in people’s hearts. Either way, this is a generalized condition where people have said, no. All right?
“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie…” and this is interesting. “…and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing.”
That’s why you can’t look out and say, well, it’s one thing. This is the issue, this is the issue. It’s a range…it’s whatever appeals to human nature. For some people, it is as simple as just unfettered sex. Just be plain. I get to do whatever my body says I ought to do. Nobody has a right to tell me…to stop me, or even make me feel bad about it.
But for others, it’s pride. It’s trying to gain power. It’s trying to gain wealth. It’s trying to…I mean, every form of human, natural, fallen desire is being appealed to, in some fashion. And what happens is once people embrace that, and shut their ears to the gospel, there comes a point when God says, enough. My hands are off.
And I’m not only going to take my hands off, I’m gonna let you be deceived. And he calls it, I think, in the King James, a strong delusion. Here it is, “…a powerful delusion.” He tells you why people perish and why people get in this condition. It’s not because God says, that’s your destiny. I just decided that. No! It says, “They perish…” the middle of verse 10. “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” You want to know why things are happening the way they are now? More and more people are saying no. Thank God there are people who still are gonna say, yes.
( congregational amens ).
But more and more, people are saying no. “For this reason…” this is why. “…God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie…” all right? “…and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
Now, this is a case—one of those cases where the NIV gets it right and the king James gets it wrong, in one little, tiny point. You read that in the King James, it’ll say, they will believe ‘a’ lie. The Greek says, ‘the’ lie. What’s the difference?
See, this is not just believing a whole range of stuff that’s wrong, that’s a lie. This is believing ‘the’ lie that goes right back to the beginning, that your destiny is to be your own god. You have these desires for a reason. They’re born in you, not to be denied but to be fulfilled! You’re supposed to follow that. That’s your destiny, so give yourself to it. That’s the lie! Whatever form that takes.
And I don’t know exactly how this is gonna unfold. I don’t have any dates. I don’t have any of that. I just know that God wants us to be alive and awake. But I’ll tell you, if the devil…to the extent the devil accomplishes what we’re talking about right here, and he gets the broad mass of humanity to, basically, reject God, reject the gospel, and embrace ‘the lie,’ he’s gonna be able to manipulate this world any way he wants to.
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September 11, 2022 - No. 1562
“Something Worth Dying For” Conclusion
Broadcast #1562
September 11, 2022
September 11, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1562 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Is it worth everything, to be born again? See, we sing these songs, but there’s something about the ease of life in America that kind of puts it, makes it vague. Before it’s over, it’s not gonna be vague anymore. We’re gonna understand what it costs to follow Jesus.
But I believe with all my heart that God is with us, that He loves…He loves the people here more than we could possibly know. And He is here to be faithful. He is here to empower us to be His people in this hour.
So, Paul’s message was, basically…Paul wasn’t able to get back, that was part of the problem. That’s one of the reasons he was writing these letters. He kept wanting to go and encourage the people and he was able to send Timothy to find out how they were doing.
And his motivation was, well in verse 2 of chapter 3, “We sent Timothy, who is our brother and co-worker in God’s service in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith…” (NIV). Why? “…So that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them.”
What an encouraging message! “In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know.” And so now, this is why he was sending Timothy to find out how they were doing. And, he had a good report, and he was rejoicing and praying for them, night and day.
Verse 10, “…We pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”
Now you get another picture. He’s not coming alone, is he? Didn’t Jesus say there was gonna come a time when He would be openly coming? You’ll see it later, in some other things that He says. But it would be a very open coming and He was going to come with all the holy angels. Praise God!
Won’t that be something…all of a sudden to see that happen? Just when everybody else thinks it couldn’t.
But anyway, then he encourages them about Christian living, and how God wants them to live, and live a holy life, don’t get off into sexual impurity, for example, of that society they were living in which was very much given to that…kind of like America. We need to ask God to help us to live the kind of life that He wants us to live.
And I thank God, it’s by His strength and not by ours. And he exhorts them to love one another. These are some of the things that God is looking for. He’s looking for people who are willing to live for God in the middle of a world that’s going the other way. And to have a love one for another. That’s the essence of what God is looking for.
You know, we could sit here and try to make sure our theology is pure. But ultimately, it’s about relationship, isn’t it? It’s about the presence of Christ in the midst of His people. Thank God! But now, he gets to the subject at hand. Because as I say, these people living with nothing much to live for in this world, Paul wants them to know where this is headed and what the end of it’s gonna be. Okay?
“Brothers and sisters…” verse 13, “…we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death….” So, now there’s the concern and a question that could possibly arise in somebody’s mind, okay, I know about the coming of Christ, what about those who have already died? What’s God’s plan for them? Where do they fit in? And so that’s the question that he’s answering.
Paul wants them to understand how this is gonna play out. So that, “…We do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so….” Now, that’s a conclusion, isn’t it? Because we believe this, and so, there’s something that grows out of that.
“…And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” Boy, isn’t that a wonderful word, ‘with Jesus’? Doesn’t that make it worth everything? Didn’t Paul talk about, “…to be absent from the body…” is, “…to be present with the Lord.” (KJV).
Oh man! Is there anything that you love about this world that would…that you’d say, oh I’d rather have this than be there with Him. Man, that’s gonna answer every, every issue that could possibly ever arise, to be with Him.
But in this instance, you have people that are still spirits, souls, whatever you want to call them. They don’t have the body, they left the body in the grave. And so, Jesus is saying, or Paul is saying, Jesus is gonna come and those who are…He’s gonna bring with Him all of those who have previously died.
Okay? He “…will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede…” not go before, “…those who have fallen asleep…” or those who have died. “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command…” There’s nothing secret about this, is there?
( congregational response ).
“…A loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” I’ve had people ask me, well, which is it? Are they gonna come out of the grave or are they gonna come from there? I think God can figure that out. But you know, I had this thought. When Jesus rose from the dead, God didn’t give Him a substitute body, did He?
( congregational response ).
The body that He had, that was buried didn’t stay in that grave. God literally brought that out and transformed it into the one that it would become. And I’ll tell you, those who have gone on…we’ve had so many over the years that have gone on to be with the Lord.
Don’t worry. God’s gonna bring them, and there’s gonna be somehow, someway or other, there’s gonna be a union with whatever’s left of them from an earthy standpoint. God’s gonna take that and transform it and they’re gonna be just like Him, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we know from 1st Corinthians chapter 15. Praise God!
What a hope that there is! Praise the Lord! So, suppose they do shoot you? Well, in the first place, we’re gonna be with Jesus! Nothing could possibly be better. And when He comes in that triumph at the end, we’re with Him, and then we experience the same transformation that Jesus Himself did. He was the firstfruits…then we are transformed.
Man, what a hope! What strength to live by. If you really believe the message, and I’m not talking about being convinced because some person convinces you, I’m talking about the Holy Spirit gets down into the depths of your being and you know it! You know it because He’s put the conviction there.
Folks, that’s what’s gonna carry us through. We need the reality, the same reality that these believers had, when they were being persecuted and killed. So anyway, so they’re gonna rise first.
“After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
Remember the words of Jesus. I love this picture, when He said He’s gonna send the angels out to gather the elect. Won’t that be something? To literally be minding your own business and all of a sudden this begins to happen. And you see the dead raised and all of a sudden, an angel comes up, and takes you by the hand, and you’re transformed, and suddenly you begin to rise up into the air. And there’s Jesus, and there are all the saints from all ages. What a picture!
Man, there’s nothing secret about this. But see, this is a day—this is a day that’s coming. It’s real. It was a conviction that they were willing to die for. This is the day that’s coming but it doesn’t just affect us, does it? It affects the world. So, what’s the deal, what’s gonna happen to the world on this day? And that’s what he goes into next.
“Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, Peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
That’s a sad thing. You know, you put all the scriptures together and you see this picture, you could see where people would say, God, the awful things people are doing, why do You let it go on? Why is there so much trouble in the world? Why is so much evil allowed to express itself in the world? And then you find out, God’s being patient. He’s not willing, He’s not anxious to do this. He’s anxious for everything…every one that could possibly hear and respond to the message to come.
Folks, He is not going to…He’s not gonna close the door until the last one is in, and He knows. But I’ll tell you, every time the Gospel comes to a human heart, they make a choice, don’t they? And sooner or later…there are two ways set before them. That’s what the Gospel does. Either you’re gonna go your way or you’re gonna go Christ’s way.
And I’ll tell you, the way…your way leads to death. Christ’s way leads to life. But oh, you know, right at that crossroad, it doesn’t seem like there’s that much difference, but you go down the road a piece and you find out. You see where the world is headed, and you see what it’s gonna be like.
That’s some of what he gets into in the second book. But, basically, for you it’s gonna be awesome, He’s gonna come in the clouds and you’re gonna gather in the air. For the world, Satan, destruction is gonna come. And the Lord has shown us some of those things in the past, specifically.
“But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.” Thank God, we can have light that we need every single day. “You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober.
“For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet…” governing our minds and our thoughts.
“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us…” He died for us, “…so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.” There’s that ‘with Him’ again, isn’t it? “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”
And he goes on and gives them instructions and encouragement about being patient and rejoicing and praying and giving thanks and all of those things. But an interesting little part, down at the end, that comes right back into the coming of Christ, his prayer, in verse 23 of chapter 5.
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Okay, that’s a great prayer, isn’t it? Sure hope it happens. Verse 24 says, “The one who calls you is…” What?
( congregational response ).
“… Faithful…” And what?
( congregational response ).
“…He will do it.” Folks, you put yourself in His hands, He who started that work is going to continue it, until when?
( congregational response ).
The day of Jesus Christ. See, he’s talking about this same day that’s coming. There’s coming a day, folks, that all this is gonna be wound up. And this was the hope that Paul continually put before the people there. Yes, I know things are bad, but look what’s coming!
You know, I thought about this, when he’s talking about people that have died, and here he’s writing to these people about the coming of Christ in the first century. And here we are, and He still hasn’t come. And you got people saying, well, where is the promise of His coming?
But I’ll tell you, when you’re talking about the goal of serving Christ in this world, either way, it is pointing to that day. Whether they died and have been gone 2,000 years…been with Him for 2,000 years, or whether we’re here when that trumpet call comes, that is the day that we’re pointing to. That is the hope, that’s the reason we can keep going. Thank God!
Well, it’s very obvious that I can’t get to a whole lot more. But let me just go ahead quickly, and look at a little bit of 2nd Thessalonians. I struggled a lot with this because there’s so much truth in it, and I don’t want to just belabor this.
But anyway, Paul says, in verse 4…he’s talking about how they’re doing, and says, “Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance….” There’s another word. What did Jesus say, those who persevere, those who endure to the end will be saved. Where do we get the power to do that?
( congregational response ).
From Him. Thank God! If we’re willing, He’s able! “…perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. God is just….”
This is the question. Again, why does God allow all these things, these terrible things to happen? When is it gonna be made right? Surely, if He is the King and He is the Lord of all, surely there’s gonna come a day when He’s gonna put things right, and there’s going to be a justice, for your people.
Do you remember the scene in Revelation, about the souls under the altar crying out, oh God, how long before You put things right? And the Lord said, wait a little longer, there are some others…again, I’m just paraphrasing.
So, he says, “God is just….” Don’t look at the world and say, where is God’s justice? It’s there. And when it lands, there won’t be any question. “He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well.” So, there are two things that are gonna happen, There’s gonna be relief for God’s people, and trouble poured out, wrath poured out upon the wicked.
So, when is this gonna happen? “This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.” All happening at once. Do you see that? Do you see how he’s putting these two together where you don’t have this, well this was back here and that’s gonna be way out here. This is one event. One clear day when all of a sudden, everything will be absolutely made right, and there will be an end.
There’s no reason for life to go on here. When God calls every one of His people, and they’re His, and everyone else is sealed in their sins, what’s the purpose of going on with life on earth? There is a resolution that has happened in the human heart. That’s what we’re waiting on.
That’s what the condition was in Noah’s day. Every imagination in the heart of everyone outside of Noah’s family was only evil, all the time. And God even then, gave them more time. Boy, we got a patient God to put up with this world! But God’s gonna fulfill His purpose, isn’t He? And justice will happen.
“He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” It’s not a matter of just believing it, it’s obeying it. Because when it comes to being right with God or choosing the way of evil, it’s a matter of obedience. It’s not just believing doctrines and ideas. There is an obedience that God is looking for. It is basically, repent or perish!
Do you want to break down what the Gospel is about? It’s turn from your own way and surrender your life to Me and let Me make it what I intended it to be in the beginning, or you’re gonna perish. He that preserves his own life will…
( congregational response ).
…Lose it. Those who lose their life for me will keep it for life eternal. That’s a very plain, simple message, isn’t it? All right? “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.” Same day.
“This includes you, because you believed our testimony….” What is a tremendous scripture here, and I think I’m gonna probably wind up with this, because chapter 2 goes into a lot more. And there are things I want to unpack at some point, if the Lord’s in it.
But listen to what he says here, “With this in mind…” Understand, Paul is saying…understanding where this is going and how it’s gonna play out, and what the conclusion of all this is, “…we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power…” Boy, that’s a key phrase. Listen to that. Listen to everything he’s saying there, and think of it in the light of that little phrase. “… By his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.”
Think of this in the context of things that have been said lately. God’s called us to this time in history. He’s called us to live for Him, to live Godly lives in an ungodly world. And He has stuff for us to do. How does that happen? By His power!
And God is looking for a people, and you see where this is coming from, your every desire for goodness. There’s a response, there’s a desire coming from the people. Oh God, I need to be changed. I have this need. I have that need. Oh God, help me!
So do you see, it’s not just God just magically doing stuff, there is a response that He’s bringing forth out of the hearts of His people, to be like Him. And God is saying, I’ve got the power if you’ll just want Me. I will be there, and you’re gonna be able to live for me in the midst of a black world, that has turned itself completely over to Satan’s power. That’s where we’re headed.
But I’ll tell you, there’s gonna be a people that God will enable to serve Him. Some will die for their faith, others will stand and be there. They’ll be among those who will be there on that day when the trumpet sounds. But there is a power that God has available. If it’s in your heart to want to serve Him, He’s got the power! Don’t you be afraid! He’s got everything that it takes!
But it’s not just being something, and living for Him, living that kind of a life, it’s your every deed, prompted by faith. So now, you come right back to the thought we’ve given out of Daniel’s prophecy, “…the people that do know their God…” (KJV).
( congregational response ).
“…Shall be strong, and do exploits.” There are going to be things that God wants His people to do in this hour…in the face…I mean, did not Paul…was not Paul sent into Thessalonica in the midst of persecution, from persecution? He jumped right back into the fire. And his message was, serve Him! It’s worth serving Him, if you lose your life, it’s worth everything to know Jesus. And the people there heard the message and were convicted in their hearts and embraced it, in the face of that kind of a message.
Boy, is that different from what we hear in America? We need to hear this. Listen to what he says, “…your every deed prompted by faith.” (NIV). In other words, God is gonna be giving us faith to do things. He’s going to be laying things on our hearts in the midst of all this that’s going on in the world, and we’re gonna have to put our trust in Him.
But we have His power to enable us to do whatever He gives us to do. We’re gonna be a…we are a supernatural people in a broken world. And God wants to make Himself more real. This is not just a little religious organization with its own traditions. We need Jesus in the midst of this congregation.
I believe He’s here. I believe there’s something that He wants…there’s a seed maybe, and He wants to plant, because right now you look out and, here we are, we have freedom to meet here this morning. Will it always be this way? No, it won’t. But Jesus will always be faithful.
And no matter what happens, no matter where He calls us, what He calls us to go through, what He calls us to experience, if He calls us to lay down our lives for Him, that hope remains. That there will be a day when the skies will be split, when the trumpet will sound and Jesus will come, His holy angels, everyone who has gone before.
Man, the sky will be full, won’t it? It’ll be brilliant light, the people of the world will be in panic mode, and we’ll look up and say, this is what we’ve been waiting for! This is the end of it all, all of this will be forever passed, all evil and death and sin will be all done away! And there’ll be nothing forward…nothing going forward but to be with Him forever and ever and ever. And to experience His love.
Folks, this is what God wants to plant and grow in every single heart and life. And it’s not just an individualistic thing, either. Because Paul’s message in the midst of this is not just endure, but it’s love one another. Walk together, look to me. Do we have a faith worth dying for?
( congregational response ).
It’s available to every single one of us.
Close
September 4, 2022 - No. 1561
“Something Worth Dying For” Part One
Broadcast #1561
September 4, 2022
September 4, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1561 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know it was about a year ago, roughly, we had a service on “What is Happening?” And my mind has kept going for quite some time now to that general area of truth, because we’re not living for Christ in a vacuum here, we’re living in a real-world situation. And I believe God wants us to understand that situation, perhaps better than we do.
One thing that we have, in a sense, working against us, is the relative freedom that we have in this country. Now that’s disappearing, faster than, I think, a lot of us realize. But that’s not my subject. It’s not a political commentary or anything like that, but the reality is that we need to understand what it means to be a Christian, not just an American Christian, because it’s so easy for our focus to be in the wrong place.
And somehow my mind has repeatedly been drawn back to the book of…the books, and I’m not gonna turn right there right now…but to the books of Thessalonians, because Paul was dealing with a situation that was not at all uncommon, in that day, namely, that when they went out, they didn’t go out into a friendly world, did they? They went out into a world that was absolutely under the dominion of demons, who operated under Satan’s power. They worshipped idols, and the devil had no interest in Jesus and the message of Jesus coming in and rescuing anybody.
You know, Jesus said, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail…” (KJV). In other words, Satan is gonna be trying to close, enclose His people, and Jesus said, that ain’t gonna work. I’m gonna reach in there and get Mine. And so, the ministry of the Gospel is really a divine invasion. We’ve said that many times. But it is Christ reaching into Satan’s strongholds and rescuing people for His eternal kingdom, His eternal purpose. And I’ll tell you, when the people went out to minister, they understood that.
You know, when Paul went to the city of Thessalonica, and founded the church, I believe it was his second missionary journey. I know it wasn’t his first because he was traveling with Silas. And you remember how…what happened in Philippi, which was the city right before that? You remember how the crowds got stirred up and they were thrown into prison, and they were beaten.
And we sing the song about at midnight, how the Lord sent an earthquake, rescued them, and used it to minister the Gospel, to strengthen the believers there? Well, I mean, persecution for Christ was simply something they expected. It was not…oh my God, this is unusual, this is terrible. This was just the way it was.
And so, they didn’t think twice about…oh my God, something’s wrong here. They said, this is right. We’re doing God’s work, and this is what we can expect. That’s not a mentality you and I have, is it? I believe the Lord is emphasizing these things for a reason, because we are getting closer and closer to the end, and we are seeing things unfold that are unfolding with increasing rapidity every single day.
You know, one of these days, I’ve had in mind to read some recent headlines and they’re actually a couple of months old now. I collected them a while back. And they’re headlines that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up, and some of you who are of that generation. They just show how deeply Satan is growing his power in the world.
And don’t think he’s gonna continue to be a friend, or that he’s ever been a friend…but don’t think that society is gonna be a friend of those who serve Jesus. When the Word of the Gospel comes, it is absolutely an attack against Satan’s dominion, and he will fight with everything he has.
I thank God for the freedom we have had, but in a sense, it’s hurt us in some ways. And I believe the Lord wants to strengthen and purify His people, and He’s gonna do it. I thank God for His faithfulness.
So anyway, they finally let Paul and Silas out of prison, and they met with the believers, and then they left, at the end of Acts chapter 16. Let’s just quickly go there to when the church was founded. “When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia…” (NIV). Yeah, that’s right. “…They came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.”
Now Jews had been sent through…I mean, they’d been scattered through the Roman Empire. And so, almost every place you went that was of any size, there was a Jewish synagogue. And, you remember, the Gospel was first to the Jews, wasn’t it? God was gonna reach out to His people first and give them the hope and the message that the prophets had prophesied was coming. And so, this is what Paul did first. He didn’t go to Gentiles. He went to the Jews because God was still reaching out…still is, by the way.
“As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah, he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women. But….”
See this is what happens whenever the Gospel goes out. “But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city.” And so forth…they go looking for Paul and Silas. They can’t find him. They persecute somebody else. And so, basically, Paul and Silas were there at least three Sabbaths…we’ll say generously they were there in this city for about…for a few weeks, perhaps.
Can you imagine going and starting a church in that kind of environment, and having it succeed? Think about what the message was? Think about what the message is that’s going out in so many places today. Prosperity gospel! Serve Jesus and life will be better for you here on earth. You’re gonna prosper. Everything is gonna be great. You’ll have plenty of money.
It didn’t sound like the message Paul preached. That was not the context. And if you go to his letters, which I think I’m gonna go ahead and do right now. Let’s go over to 1st Thessalonians. I’ve had so many ways in my mind of going over this, and there’s more than I want to try to get into today.
So, I’m just gonna try to, I think, go through the book of Thessalonians, because there is a theme there, that I believe is important. There is a theme that recurs, and it has to do with the coming of Christ, because if you are serving God, and the Gospel has come to you, and there is a conviction about who Jesus is and you are literally putting your…you’re staking everything on who Jesus is, and now they’re coming and killing you, man, you’re gonna have some…you’re gonna have to have something.
You’re gonna have to have something that’s very, very real, but also there are going to be certain questions that the devil’s gonna plant in your mind. How is this gonna come out? Where is the Lord headed with all of this? I mean, you know, look at what it’s gotten for us. You remember how Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 15, and he was talking about the truth of the resurrection, and he made this point. He says, if all we’ve got to hope for, just to paraphrase him, if all we’ve got to hope for is in this life…
( congregational response ).
…Yeah, we’re of all men most miserable. That doesn’t make any sense. There’s got to be something more that we’re living for than what we have here. Okay? That’s at the heart of the Gospel.
And I believe we, above all, need to understand that going forward. There’s a reason why the Lord puts this on our hearts. We’re gonna need something more than we have had…I don’t want to phrase it in a scary way. But we’re gonna need a deeper understanding of what it means to serve Jesus, than perhaps we have had, because simply of the environment in which we live.
We can look across the world now and see places where it is…it’s a death sentence to place faith in Christ—it’s a death sentence. North Korea…their tradition has been, if one person is discovered serving God, they don’t just persecute that one person. They get their entire extended family and place them in prison and work them to death. That’s happening this morning…it’s night there, but anyway, that’s happening today in that particular region of the world. And other regions of the world, it’s that way. Folks, it costs something to serve the Lord.
You know, Jesus, when He was sending out His disciples, He didn’t basically say, I’m sending you out into a friendly world. The Jews have all…I mean, the Israelites have all been waiting for this message! Thank God, there were some that were! It’s just like the Gospel going out into the Gentile world. Not everybody’s gonna hear it. The majority will not hear it, but the Gospel sword is cutting…absolutely is dividing society in ways that we don’t even…we don’t see, because it’s sort of murky and free and all that, and we can kind of live our lives without fear of persecution.
But, folks, this is an anomaly. This is not the way it has been throughout history. When Jesus sent His disciples out, He said…everybody’s gonna hate you. The world is gonna hate you. Everybody…you’re gonna be persecuted, you’re gonna be brought before authorities. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you when you answer their questions.
Do you think that I’ve come to give peace? You know, we sing, “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” But you’ve got to understand what that is. Peace on earth…yeah, to people, to follow Him. We can have a peace in our hearts. Thank God! But did He come to bring peace on earth? No, He came to bring a sword. He came to divide families. He came to divide father from son, daughter from mother.
Now I thank God where you’ve got families that serve the Lord, but you get the point. Jesus did not come to absolutely bring ‘everybody’ under His…no, He came to give a message that was an uncompromising…you need to lay down your life, you need to serve Me, and you need to put…you need to move away from what this world is living for.
And when you do, the people that don’t receive the message, the people that reject this message, they are going to go radically in another direction, and you’re gonna be in trouble in this world. You’re gonna have a lot to face.
And that was the case with these folks. And you think about what it takes to go in with a message of who Jesus is and what it means to serve Him, and oh, by the way, when you do, you’re gonna be persecuted. They’re gonna kill some of you.
And it’s a matter of a few weeks…man, you’ve got to have some supernatural power going on there. You’re gonna have to have something that will absolutely reach down into the depths of men’s hearts to give them that kind of conviction.
Folks, do we have that? I believe it’s there and I believe the Lord is nurturing it in a deeper way. But I feel my need of being more ready. So, I’m just gonna kind of skim through so that we can get an overview of what Paul’s message was to these people.
In verse 2 of 1st Thessalonians chapter 1, “We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Wow! How many churches could you say…could you describe that way in America? And here’s a church that was founded in a matter of weeks, in the middle of terrible opposition. People had already died for their faith when he wrote this. It’s gotten quiet. Praise the Lord! I hope the Lord’s in this. But I believe, it’s His burden, it’s part of it.
“For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you…” Now how did he know that? “…Because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction.”
Folks, if the Gospel does not come with that, what does it come with? All you’re doing is convincing people of ideas. Human words have no power. We need God to invade…now He will use human beings, but we need God to impregnate those words with His power and His Spirit, so that they reach all the way down into the depths of a person’s being, and give them the kind of faith that enabled these people to stand up against the threat of death.
Folks, that’s what we need, in a deeper way. We need an understanding of what it means to serve the Lord, because that’s the world into which we are sailing. We’ve said it many times. And I don’t know if we realize. If you’re paying attention at all to the news, you know that the seeds of the kind of control that the devil is seeking to establish…they’re happening now.
There are plans being laid and unfolding just as fast as people can do them. There are mechanisms that are happening in our society right now that will absolutely begin to, like a coiled serpent, begin to tighten the coils, and tighten the coils, and tighten the coils. It wouldn’t take much for you and me to be on the outside looking in, at best.
Now I believe God is gonna be with us. I believe He’s called us, like we’ve said so much lately…He’s called us to this particular time, and He’s got a reason for our being here, and He’ll be with us to the end. Thank God. “He is faithful to the end.” And we sang that this morning. All right?
And he talks about, “You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.”
Does that sound like a modern revival campaign? You welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering. What a testimony. Okay? And so, they became an example and everybody’s talking about…do you see these people? Let’s be encouraged by the way that God has enabled them to stand.
Wouldn’t you like to be people like that, that the Lord could point to and say, now that’s what I’m looking for. We need Him. I need Him. I don’t have any of this in me. But He’s got everything that we need. Praise God! All right?
And so, the Word is…in 9, “…They themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.”
Okay? One theme that…the theme that I see throughout this book, and it’s a very appropriate one…. If you’re talking to people who, basically they’re serving Christ and as a result of that, they’ve got nothing in this world, but trouble, wouldn’t you, if you were in that position, want to know how is this gonna turn out? Where are we going with this? Give us some foundation, a solid foundation for having a hope that can motivate us, enable us to go forward with joy and expectation, because right now, it don’t look too good.
You know, Grandma just died the other day, and somebody else was a young person, and they killed them! Where is this going? What’s the Lord’s plan for this? How is this all working out? This is an awesome message of a kingdom that’s coming, but right now it doesn’t look like that.
And so, Paul deals with this repeatedly. He keeps coming back to this theme of how this is all gonna come out. And I’ll tell you, one of the things I see…and I’m not gonna fight about theology particularly, but I’m gonna share my convictions. Because I believe with all my heart, one of the things that the devil has done, particularly, in this country, is absolutely confuse the expectations of what’s coming.
I mean, in most places, many places, you’ve got these long charts where they’ve got it all figured out as to what’s gonna happen and when and how long it’s gonna go on. And, for them history goes on at least for more than another 1,000 years, on this planet. And that’s their expectation.
Boy, Paul didn’t know anything about that. There is a simplicity that unfolds as he’s talking about this. And he’s talking about to wait for His Son from heaven! Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. There’s both wrath and rescue happening, all at the same time, as you’ll see it unfold.
And Paul refers to the fact that we’ve previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, toward the beginning of the next chapter. “…But with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition.”
God, give us that kind of courage. It’s wonderful to be able to come here with the freedom that we have. But what about when we don’t have that freedom? What about when they start taking it away from us in various ways? Are we gonna have the courage to say, wait a minute, I’m serving Jesus, I don’t care what comes?
Because, you think about these believers…we think of the…we have a saying, ‘something worth living for.’ In fact, we sing a song, don’t we, the ensemble? God’s given me something worth living for. And I thought about that. I thought about several possible titles. But I’ll tell you, what this is about is something worth dying for.
Is Jesus worth dying for? You think about how He achieved victory over the devil. How did He do it? He died, didn’t He. He gave up the only thing, the only avenue by which the devil had any access to Him, His earthly life. He gave it up, but He gave it up in the expectation of the promise of God. And as a result, He came out of that grave victorious over sin, death and the grave, and the devil, all of it! He has the keys! He has the power to set free forever all those who put their faith in Him.
But for these people, it meant death, literally, in many cases. And suffering for those who didn’t die. It was no easy thing to serve God. Folks, what does it mean for us to serve Him? Is He worth dying for? If they came and put a gun to your head right now, and said, deny Jesus, we’ll give you a million dollars and we’ll set you up on easy street, or else…if you’ll just deny Him.
Folks, what was Paul’s testimony? He said, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is…” What? “…Gain.” See, Paul had already given up his life. You know, when we come to Christ, we’re basically surrendering our life.
Isn’t that what baptism is about, by the way? What are you doing when you’re being baptized? You’re surrendering, but you’re dying! You’re saying, I’m willingly going into a grave, symbolized by the water. And when I come out, there is a new life. That life is what I’m receiving. That’s what matters. That’s what…from this point on, my life is absolutely pointed at the Kingdom of God, and symbolized by the coming of Christ. I mean, that’s the day that I’m looking for. And so, Paul continually lifts up this day that’s coming. All right?
I wish in some ways I’d written down some of these Scriptures, but I want to just kind of go through this. And, he talks about how he worked among them. I don’t want to read it all, but how he labored among them.
And he says, in verse 11 of chapter 2, “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”
Thank God, for what God has given to us! But now, here…now listen to this also. “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”
You see, there’s something that actually has to accomplish something. Words are just ideas. But there is a power that God wants to impose…put into our lives. I forget the word I’m trying to use. But God wants to literally minister divine power that has life-changing power into a human heart that will open their heart to His Word. Praise God! That’s what I need! Because I haven’t got the power to do what He has in mind, but He does
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August 28, 2022 - No. 1560
“Paul’s Passion” Conclusion
Broadcast #1560
August 28, 2022
August 28, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1560 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Oh, I’ll tell you, Paul was walking close enough with the Lord that when the Lord spoke, not only did he get it, not only did the light go on, but he immediately agreed and said, most gladly, I’ll glory in my weakness! Thank God, I get it now! I understand. I am so…I am so geared up to the truth that I need to have Your strength come forth! And if that’s what it takes, then let it happen, Lord! Let death work in me so life can work in them!
But folks, that isn’t just for preachers. That’s for every believer. And there’s something very real about this that I feel like the Lord wants me to understand in a deeper way. I know He does. I mean, if Paul was in this place where, I’m putting the past in the past, and my eye is on the future, I want to know Him.
Like, Paul, get real. You don’t know Him? No, there is a knowing that doesn’t end. In fact, I’m not sure it ends here in this world. But as long as our story is still being written, there will be things that we need to learn, and you only learn them personally! You know, there’s one simple illustration I think we can all understand. If you were setting off into a dangerous wilderness, which would you rather have, a book written by a guide or the guide?
( congregational response ).
( laughter ).
See, a lot of people have a book! But we have the Author, who longs to walk with us personally so that we can know Him! But boy, I’ll tell you, by nature, we’re not too comfortable with that, if we’re honest.
You think about how it was in the beginning when Adam and Eve sinned…and how did their personal contact with the Lord happen after that? Did they go looking for the Lord and say, oh Lord, help us, we’ve sinned? The Lord came looking for them.
Isn’t it awesome we’ve got a God that, in spite of everything that’s wrong with us, He’s the One who seeks? He’s the One who reaches out. And they hid themselves and covered themselves with their own efforts. The Lord had to pull them out, but that’s…we see that everywhere in Scripture that the heart of God…He made us for fellowship, He made us for deep, personal interaction.
I mean, we see it reflected in…even in human society, as messed up as it is. One of things that’s most valued by people that get it, are these real relationships where we don’t put on a mask and pretend with one another, but all of a sudden, you can be open with somebody, and there’s an acceptance, and there’s a love, and there’s a depth to that interaction. We see that reflected. Is that not a reflection of the heart of God who made us in the beginning?
( congregational response ).
He wants us to have an unbroken fellowship with Him! And as we do, as John says, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, but it’s also with each other. There’s a fellowship that happens when He is…His Spirit just fills everything.
God, help us to see what Paul was talking about here. I want to know Him. I understand that in order to know Him, there’s some dying that has to happen, that I don’t even understand. I’m gonna go through things, and I’m gonna find out, oh my God, I see, I get it. There was something in me that was holding me back and hindering me from Your purpose for my life. And so, Lord, I gladly let it go.
But oh, how easy it is for us to draw back, to hide. We wouldn’t even sit here and admit it most of the time. But we can be in a place where we’re not all that comfortable with being close to the Lord. Now it’s gotten quiet. But am I telling the truth?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. There are so many things that the Devil uses, so many lies that he plants, pulling on human nature, for us to feel like He couldn’t possibly be interested in somebody like me. Look at me. Look at all that’s wrong with me. Oh yeah, somebody over there, they’re doing great, but me…there are a thousand and one different ways where we just don’t quite feel like we can be close to Him, because…and it’s always some deficiency in us, or some imagined feeling that He has toward us because of what we aren’t, or what we are in a bad sense. And isn’t the Gospel all about Him reaching out to sinners?
( congregational response ).
Don’t we sing, “Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me…” and so forth? Thank you. I appreciate all of you who have still got your memory. We sing these things, but yet, how many times do we pull back? We look at ourselves and think I can’t be close to Him right now, because I messed up again.
And here’s the Lord saying, I get it. I know everything about you. You didn’t seek me. I came looking for you, because I knew you. I had a plan. I wrote your story before the world ever was created, and I know how it comes out. This very Book talks about, as the verse we quote so often, “…he which hath begun a good work in you will…perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (KJV).
Folks, our story is, indeed, continuing to be written. But there’s a way that it’s to be written, and it’s to be written through a relationship. You know, I mentioned the danger of religion. Religion versus relationship…I don’t know if that’s…that’s probably not the title, but anyway, we’ll work on that.
But think about the church of Laodicea. You know, Jesus, in the revelation to John, sent letters, messages to seven different churches in Asia Minor. One of them was Laodicea. Now several of those…in several of those churches, the message was, you’re entertaining heresy, or there’s a false prophet or prophetess or something that’s going on. You’re embracing error in some ways! And you’d better get rid of that. Repent of it.
But in Laodicea, there wasn’t any of that. They were believing the right things. They were doing the right things. They lived in a comfortable, prosperous city. But what was their problem? They were…well, He described them as “lukewarm.” He said, I wish you were one or the other.
You know, if you really get in a bad place, God can wake you up and say, wait a minute, you’re in a bad place. They thought they were in a great place. What were they measuring by, though? We’re believing the right things. We’re doing the right things. We’re not entertaining bad people. What’s wrong? We’re living good lives. And they missed the one thing without which, everything else is meaningless. “Behold…”
( knocking ).
“…I stand at the door, and knock….” If anyone opens to me, I’ll come in, and we’ll eat together. Do you see how this ties in with what Paul’s talking about? It is a personal interaction, moment by moment, day by day, where Jesus is close and not somewhere way off there, doing stuff we don’t understand.
We may even resent it a little bit, or just feel…I’m such a mess. He couldn’t be close to me. He is right there! Has He not promised, I will never leave you? I will never forsake you. One of the great truths of Scripture is that He’s always there. The problem is we’re not tuned in.
I often think about the Scripture in the Psalms, where David wrote, enter into His presence. In other words, His Presence is there. He says in another place, where can I go from Your Spirit? It doesn’t matter where I go, You’re there. The problem is, we don’t enter into His Presence. At your lowest moment, your worst moment, He is there, and His heart is reaching out for you to open up to Him and show Him your heart.
Some of the songs we sang this morning are right on point. Open up your heart to Him and say, oh Lord, help me right now. Help me to see what it is that You’re seeking to show me. Lord, help me to be honest with my need and not to be afraid to come to You!
The scripture that we’ve used so many times, that we’ve heard so many times about us having One in heaven who represents us. But He’s One who’s been here, who can, “…be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” He knows what we are, and we can come to Him, not when we’re feeling good and feeling good about ourselves. Yes, then too, but we can come to Him in a time of need, the very time when Satan will say you can’t be close to Him now. You’ve got to fix it, get it right and then we can kind of scoot over a little bit and maybe feel a little bit closer.
Where is your Jesus? Is He somewhere out there, somewhere, vaguely? Jesus wants to be the “…friend who sticks closer than a brother.” (NIV). The One that we can come to, and know in every single moment of every single day, that He is love, He is faithfulness. He will be faithful to the end. I mean, how many songs have we sung today that were right exactly what the Lord was trying to say? He’ll be faithful to the end.
We come to Him as our great High Priest, and the first thing is mercy, meaning you don’t have to worry about deserving it. What He’s looking for is a heart that wants to have fellowship with Him and sees and feels the need, but the Devil says you can’t go now. He says, yes, you can, because I delight in mercy.
Isn’t that what He said through the prophets? The Lord delights in mercy. That’s the thing that gets Him up in the morning…if you want, the ability to show mercy to people who don’t deserve it but long to reconnect with Him.
And He says you can come, and I’ll gladly extend mercy, but I’m not gonna stop there. You just don’t need a merciful attitude. You need help. And I’ve got the help that you need. You know, put this scripture about knowing…knowing Christ, knowing Him in a very personal sense. Put all the other things Paul has said in the context of this one central thing, and it begins to make more sense.
Think of Ephesians 3 where he talks about the unsearchable riches of Christ! Everything you and I could possibly need is there, stored up, available, ready to come to our help and to our aid! Anybody here need help today?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, I do. Are you going through a place of pain, a time of pain, a time of difficulty? You think the Lord’s mad at you, or is He maybe seeking to maybe bring you to a deeper place? I know there are people here who have been…many who have been in difficult places, things they didn’t understand at the time, and it may have felt, emotionally, like God was a million miles away. And they didn’t know why…and yet, they came to the other end and looked back and realized that God had delivered them from something. God had brought them to a deeper place. There was more rest. There was more peace.
That’s worth everything, folks. That’s worth dying to have. That’s what Paul’s saying. The thing I want to do is find out how to die so I can have all this that He gives me. We just sang the song He’ll give you everything. He’s not talking about Cadillacs and the like. He’s talking about the things that matter! He’s talking about heavenly things, the reality of all the riches that Christ has provided for us, and He invites us.
You know, back in the scripture in Ephesians 3, to come to Him and to realize that He is able to do much more than we can even ask or imagine. We don’t even know how to ask for the stuff, but it’s there, and we’ll never come to the end of that treasury.
That’s why Paul was constantly, I want to know Him. I haven’t got it all yet. I know there are things He’s still working in me. I’m still here, therefore, He’s still working. He’s not done with me yet. He’s got me here for a reason, and there are things that He’s still wanting to accomplish in my life, so that I can have more peace. I can know Him better.
How many of you have been with somebody where you’ve known them, maybe, all your life, and all of a sudden, there’s a different circumstance that comes along, and you see something in there, and you say, I didn’t know that about you. I’ve known you all my life, and I never knew that.
That’s a good reason, by the way, to get to know somebody before you marry them. You understand what I’m saying, but seriously, at best, we are complex creatures, and you don’t get to know somebody just over a week. It is the work of a lifetime to really get to know the depths of a human being.
I mean, when you’re talking about Christ, and you’re talking about us and all that He has set out to change in us, man, that’s a bunch. But I’ll tell you, wouldn’t it be nice to just get up and say I don’t know, I’ve got so much wrong with me, I’ll never get it right, and He’ll never be happy with me.
Do you think He wants us to live that way? Or does He want us to get up in the morning, and say, Lord, I’m so glad? I’m so glad for what You did for me. I’m so glad for what You promised me. I’m so glad that I can walk with You today, and not be afraid, and not to be afraid even to learn things that are wrong with me, because You already know.
And You don’t point out things that are wrong and just say, fix it. You just say, I’ve fixed it. The power of My resurrection is available. I release that power, not so I could look like something, but so I could share God with you!
That’s what Christianity, that’s what real Christianity is about! It’s putting Adam to death and replacing him with God’s life. It is supernatural, and it’s the work of a lifetime, but it comes not out of a book or a religion, it comes from a Person! And that means every single believer has the privilege of getting up every morning and saying, Lord, I want to know You better today.
And I know You’re here, I know You’re faithful, I know You love me, in spite of everything that’s wrong with me. Lord, help me to humble myself under Your mighty hand. I know that if there’s some lifting up to do, You’re gonna do it. But it won’t be to glorify me, it’ll be to glorify You. To God be the glory.
Folks, you can go on and on, I guess, talking about the principle of people who have experienced His faithfulness. Even in the Old Testament, there were people who walked with God, but there’s something that happened when Jesus died and was raised from the dead and seated on a throne. Everything changed! We don’t have to go and offer a sacrifice every time we sin. There’s One we can point to and say it happened once for all. Jesus has paid it all!
( congregational amens ).
We have the right to stand there before a holy God free from all condemnation, not because we deserve it, not because we’ve done anything, but because of what Jesus did at the cross. That’s our foundation, and there is no other. To God be the glory. Praise God! Praise God!
But He wants every single one of you to know how much He loves you, how deeply He knows you, and how much He longs to give you the ‘everything’ that we were talking about.
But it means you’re gonna have to walk with Him without fear. Don’t be afraid to walk with Him. You don’t have to be. That spirit of fear comes from…where does it come from? It comes from the Devil. He didn’t give us the spirit of fear, but of power, love and self-control. That’s what I need.
But think about a man like Paul, who had done so many incredible things, written so many incredible things. He’s at the end of his life, and he’s sitting there and saying, I’m forgetting what’s behind. I’m reaching forth. There’s something that is so real. This is what gets me up in the morning, and I want you to be like me.
And he contrasts that, if you go froward in the passage, with people who are just living for this life and living for what they can get out of this world. What a foolish wasteful thing. I don’t care what your earthly dreams are. They are worthless when it comes to eternity.
Now, the Lord may allow you in part of your path to do things in this world, but the heart is going to be getting to know Jesus personally. If this church ever came to the point where it was just about what we believe and how we did stuff, it would die!
( congregational response ).
You can look back in history and see churches where that happened. They started out with life, and they wound up a form.
The thing that prevents that is the individual people, every member of the body of Christ getting up in the morning and saying, Jesus, I’m so glad You’re here. I’m so glad I know You personally, but I want to know You better.
And I want to live with You and walk with You without fear, knowing You love me, being willing to die when it’s necessary, being willing to let You do whatever You’ve got to do to fix me, to change me and to help me to be fruitful in this world, because You do have a purpose for my being here…like we talked last night, last week. Whenever it was. Praise God!
Like I say, you could go on and on talking about this, but I think we get the general idea. I want to know Christ. Yes, to know the power of His resurrection. You want to know some power? It only come from dying. If the Lord poured His power out upon us right now like we are, what would we do with it? We’d use it selfishly, wouldn’t we? In order for God to do a lot of the things that He needs to do, He wants to do through us, He’s gonna have to have us more and more out of the way.
Isn’t that what happened with His Son? Was there anything in His Son that clung to a selfish, Adamic nature? No. He lived for what His Father…there was a one-to-one fellowship. I know the Father, and He knows Me. That’s the relationship Jesus wants with us…with you right now, and with me today.
“…The power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” In other words, being able to live a resurrected life here.
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
So, how do you get there? Believe the right doctrines? Read the Book? All these things have their place, but if they don’t…if these spokes don’t all come into this hub, the Person of Jesus Christ and a relationship with Him day by day in the practical affairs of our life, all the rest of it is just religion.
May God open our eyes and open our hearts to be willing to say, Lord, I want to walk with You. I want to know You. I realize it’s gonna cost. But, oh, the reward of walking with You and knowing the power of Your resurrection, becoming what You made me to be in the first place. Lord, the peace that comes.
You know, we talked during convention about Jesus’ invitation to “…take my yoke…learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Do you see how all that dovetails into the same thought?
Paul understood what the Christian life is really about, and I pray that we will in a deeper way. And I’ll tell you, there is so much God wants to share with you and with me. May we open our hearts and see how it happens, and learn to walk with Him. Praise God.
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August 21, 2022 - No. 1559
“Paul’s Passion” Part One
Broadcast #1559
August 21, 2022
August 21, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1559 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: As is so often the case, I feel like I probably am not going to say anything absolutely new, but I’m praying that the Lord will make it new and make it fresh.
But I guess, a place to start would be to ask a simple question. What was it that got Paul up in the morning? You know, you think about when we say something like that, we’re talking about, what’s your purpose, what’s your passion, what is the thing that really defines what your life is about?
What would you say was Paul’s life about? I mean, it would be easy to say, well, he was a great teacher. He was the one God used in the New Testament to really flesh out what the Gospel, what the New Covenant was all about, and how…what the Christian life was about, the principles that govern it, the principles of building churches, and he demonstrated that as an apostle.
I mean, he could say, well, my passion in life is to go out and start churches. My passion in life is to preach the Gospel. My passion in life is to…win souls, or is to write…is to become the…is to probe the mysteries of God and just be able to expound them and help other people. I mean, you could…there are a lot of things that he did as part of his ministry and part of his life.
But I think there was something else that got him up in the morning. And we find it, I believe, in Philippians, chapter 3. And I would remind you of the general historical context of Philippians, because Paul is not early in his ministry. Paul is late in his life. Okay?
Paul has already been miraculously converted. We know the story of how the Lord met him, miraculously, when he was setting out to persecute Christians. And he met the Lord, and the Lord absolutely opened his heart, shined the light, as Paul said, into his heart, which is what has to happen to anybody. God has to shine something down in here, or we don’t know. But God did. God called him, turned him around.
We know he spent something like three years on the backside of the desert, undoubtedly getting to learn to know the Lord. He went back to Jerusalem and boldly preached until they were about to kill him, and so the disciples sent him off to…back to his hometown of Tarsus.
And sometime after that, the Lord began to reach out among the Gentiles, first through Peter. And, then there was a church that was founded…my mind just went blank, but anyway, there was a…you all know what it is. There was a church that was founded where they were first called Christians and a whole lot of Greeks began to come in. Gentiles began to come in, and the disciples, or the apostles, sent Barnabas to go and to begin to help these people and teach them.
Well, the first thing Barnabas did was to head off to Tarsus. And he found Saul, as he was known then, and brought him and they began to minister over a period of years. And it was out of that fellowship that the Lord said, separate me Paul and Barnabas, “…for the work to which I have called them.” (NIV).
And their story then began to go out into the mission work. And you remember how many things that Paul went through, including at Philippi. One of those places he was stoned, left for dead. He was persecuted in every possible way you can think of, and yet, there was a persistence of carrying out the Word of God.
He was faithful to go back and establish the churches. He was faithful to write to the congregations in Corinth. We have all those early letters. And then, of course, he took the offering back to Jerusalem. I mean, it’s a big story. I won’t go into, obviously, all the details.
And there he ran into trouble. He was persecuted, arrested, sent before Roman governors, and spent…this is over a period of years, now.
And finally, he felt like the thing he needed to do was to appeal to Caesar, and so that set him on a course to Rome where…and on the way they were shipwrecked…had to spend the winter on a heathen island. And you know, one thing after another and he finally gets to Rome, and then he’s in his own hired house…at least they didn’t put him in a prison, but he was in a hired house, under Roman guard, for like three years.
So, I mean, this is a real easy life, right? One thing after another…that’s just skating over the surface of what his life was like. And so, Paul is writing, not from the perspective of a new, zealous believer who’s just been excited to meet Jesus, and now I’m gonna go forth and serve Him. Here’s what my life is gonna be about.
This is a seasoned veteran. This is one that God used to unfold and unlock what matters in the Christian faith. And I believe that he unlocks the passion, the one thing that is the center…you know, we…back in the old day they used to have cartwheels. And the ones I’m thinking about were the wooden ones, you know with a center?
( congregational response ).
The hub. Thank you. And they had spokes coming out. And in a way, I feel like the things that I mentioned, like serving God, witnessing, establishing churches, winning souls, writing, teaching, all these things are like spokes. They all are part of the wheel. But they’re not the hub, they’re not the center. What is the center? Okay?
So anyway, I’ll go ahead and backtrack because I want to…the beginning of chapter 3, because I want to just touch on the alternative here, because Paul is looking back on his background as a Jew.
And he’s partly doing this, in this context, because there were people running around, trying to bring people under the Law, to the point of circumcising the men, to the point of dietary laws and all kinds of things, so he’s warning them against that. And he says in verse 3, “For it is we who are the circumcision, we who…” Do what? “…Serve God by his Spirit.” By the way, how do you serve God?
( congregational response ).
Ah! A little secret dropped in there, isn’t there? Because there’s no way you and I have the power to serve God. We don’t know what to do and we haven’t the power to do it if we did know! We need supernatural help!
The Gospel is not religion! The Gospel is supernatural! It is a divine invasion. These are things we’ve talked about many times, but I feel like it just…the Lord wants to emphasize this in a little different way this morning. But anyway, “…we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus…” That’s the only thing I’ve got to boast about.
( congregational amens ).
I can’t look in the mirror and see a single thing that I can say, yeah, that’s good! I can see Jesus! I can see One who gave everything to save a sinner like me! To Him be the glory!
( congregational response ).
Praise God! All right? “…Who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.” Oh, folks, we can read that all day and think we’re good. It’s not that simple. We are complex creatures who, by default, put confidence in our own natural abilities. And it is part of…it is central, I would say, to the journey of life that God has got a job to do to change us, and to make us fit to actually be lights in this world. Praise God, he’s just talked about being a light, I think, in the previous chapter.
But anyway…so, he says we, “…put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reasons for such confidence.” And then he lists all of his credentials, in the Jewish faith. “…Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin…” and so forth. His, “…zeal…righteousness based on the law….”
There wasn’t anything that anybody in the Jew’s religion could point to and say, you’re guilty. He kept it, zealously, all of his life. Folks, there is a lot of religion out here, that is outward. And I feel like that’s one of the things that the Lord is wanting to steer us away from, because you can “do it right,” you can believe all of the right things, you can do all of the right things, and be as lost as the worst sinner, anywhere, in a heathen jungle or skid row, you name it, or the red light district, you name where you think the sinners are.
Folks, the biggest sinners, in this world, are probably sitting in pews this morning. And I believe that God wants to get to the essence of what the Christian faith is about, because there are a whole lot of people…you walk in…what’s your faith about? And they’ll give you a doctrinal statement. They’ll give you their history. They’ll give you the things they stand for and their ways of doing things.
And, you know, you grow up in that, you can believe all that, you can do all that, but Jesus pointed out the simple fact that there are going to be many on that day who will say, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name….” Didn’t we cast out devils? Didn’t we do many wonderful works? And what’s Jesus gonna have to say?
( congregational response ).
Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. “…I never knew you….” Never knew you! It’s not, I knew you and then you lost it. I never knew you. And the word ‘iniquity’ there, in the Greek, is lawless, meaning they were in charge. Nobody tells me what to do. That’s the bottom line, is nobody tells me what to do.
Now, you can give me a religion to practice, and I will do it. I’ll decide and I’ll do it and I’ll decide how I’m gonna do it. But there is…I mean, I’ll tell you, the danger of anything, I don’t care how much life it may have, at some point in history, the danger of that becoming religion is real.
And the essence of what it means to serve God is not all of the spokes coming off, but it’s the hub. And I believe Paul had a…had it down in what he says here. All right? So, he lists his credentials.
But then he says, “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”
You could go through a whole lot of people’s lives, and you would ask them what’s your passion, what is it that gets you up in the morning? And based upon what Paul said, every bit of it, if it’s not what he’s talking about here, every bit of it is garbage! The hub, the center has to be what Paul…what got Paul up in the morning. What is it that got him up in the morning? All right? What did he say that was the most important thing?
He says, “I want to know Christ.” I want to know Him! Think about, again, the context of this! This is late in Paul’s life! You’re gonna say, well, what’s the matter? I thought you knew the Lord!
You know, there is such a superficial view of “knowing the Lord” out there, in many places, not everywhere, thankfully, but in many places. You know the Lord? Well, what they mean is, they had some sort of event, where they prayed a prayer, and maybe it was real. Let’s just suppose for a moment it was real. But their idea is okay, now I know the Lord. And that kind of is almost like the end of it. Now I’m gonna do the right stuff and I’m gonna just sort of wait for heaven one day.
Oh, my God! Is that what it’s about? Here’s Paul, at the end of his life, and he’s not sitting there in a rocking chair, looking back and saying, whew, I’m so thankful for all the Lord’s done. This has been a wonderful life. I did this, and I did that, and He used me to do this, and used me to do that.
Paul is looking forward, isn’t he? You can go ahead a few verses and he talks about forgetting what is behind and reaching for…there’s something that was before Paul. There was something that got him up in the morning that was more important than anything else.
Even writing to these people, he wanted to communicate the core of his being and his value system. Is it ours? Is it mine? God wants us to get this in a deeper way, what it means to know the Lord, and knowing the Lord is not just knowing ‘about’ Him.
( congregational amens ).
It is so easy for us to have a faith that basically believes a whole lot of stuff about Him, accurate as it may be. And we might rejoice in those truths and say, oh, isn’t that wonderful! But there’s something deeper that Paul is talking about here.
I think everyone here is well aware of the difference between knowing someone and knowing ‘about’ someone. You could have a wonderful, encyclopedic knowledge about some figure that is not here, that you’re not interacting with on a personal level. And you might know a whole lot of stuff about them, but do you know them? The reality is, no, you don’t. The kind of knowledge he’s talking about here can only come from one-on-one interaction.
And here’s Paul, late in his life…surely, he knew so much, and he experienced so much. He’s expressed it through his letters, out his whole life. And yet, he’s come to a place where he says, I want to know Him!
Think about the implications of that. If Paul had not arrived, as he says in a few verses…I count not myself to have laid ahold of all this, but one thing I do…this is the thing that got Paul up in the morning. My life is defined by this simple thing: I want to know Him.
I want to so walk in harmony with him, on a personal level, one-to-one, that He can steer me through life. He can walk through it with me. I can see myself and He can change me. He can do everything He needs to do in my heart, but it only happens when it’s a very personal, intimate thing.
Boy, there’s so much related to this. I just…Lord, You say this how You want to do it. And it would be easy to suppose, on one level, that knowing the Lord would be like walking through a meadow, and having Him show you all the flowers and all the birds, and the breezes are warm and pleasant, and He’s explaining all of this. Oh, it’s some euphoric experience where I’m just…isn’t this wonderful?
Was that how it was with Paul? No, it wasn’t. Paul went through all kinds of suffering, all kinds of difficulty. I mean, the testimony we just heard is exactly on point. Our path is a winding one. Our path is one designed by God, personalized to our needs and to His purpose.
It’s very simple, but very profound truth. It’s awfully easy for us to blunder through life, sort of having a little bit of mental acquaintance with this, but without really appreciating it in the moment.
Now, listen to what that meant to know Christ. “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection…” Oh, that sounds great! Power, yes! There are a whole lot of people out there that are just all about power, power, power, more power.
Well, I thank God for the power, and there is. It’s real. There is a power. The same power that brought Him out of the grave is available to us, through Him! But in order for that to work, there’s some other stuff that’s got to happen. That’s the stuff we would just as soon bypass. Okay?
I want, “… to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings….” Whoops! That’s kind of…He did all the suffering, we don’t have any of that. Folks…it goes on and says, “…becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
You know, the first time I read that, I’m wondering what in the world. Do you mean Paul was uncertain as to whether he was gonna be raised from the dead one day? No! Paul’s talking about the ability to walk in the world in resurrection life.
It doesn’t happen just because you believe the right doctrines, and you go to church, and you sing songs, and you do all the right stuff. It doesn’t happen because of that. It happens with people who walk with Jesus and are willing to die to obtain that life. There is a cross to bear and it’s a cross that we carry daily.
And Paul…things we’ve taught so many times…how many times did we see Paul talking about the reality that in order to fulfill the calling of God on his life, in order to be able to impart life and blessing to others, he had to do some dying, because there’s stuff in Paul that got in the way.
Anything in your life gets in the way of what our sister was talking about? The answer is yes. You can shake your head this way. Yeah! Every single one of us has got stuff that we were born with that’s got ahold of us and we don’t even understand it.
Think about the testimonies of Paul that we’ve referred to so many times. The time, in 2nd Corinthians 1, where he thought he was gonna die, and he finally, the Lord helped him to realize, hey, I was trusting in myself, and the Lord wanted me to trust in Him.
You know, mentally, that’s not a complicated thing. Spiritually, psychologically, that’s major, because our default is to trust in ourselves and rely upon what we got in Adam! And it takes more than classroom theology for us to get that.
And think about what it took for Paul to be able to come to a place like this and realize what got me here was not better theology, and more zeal for God, it was knowing Jesus personally, walking with a Person. Oh, my! God help every one of us. This is major, folks.
I want you think, for a second…well, let me refer again to the Scripture we’ve used so many times in 2nd Corinthians 9, 10, somewhere along in there, where the Lord allowed him to go, for a period of time, through a time of great distress, and he said it was a demon, basically. He called it a thorn in the flesh, but it was a spirit that was allowed to harass him and make his life miserable.
Now, the Lord allowed this and did not explain it right away. And of course, Paul, with this relationship with the Lord, he prayed. He talked to the Lord about it. He talked to the Lord. And the Lord allowed him to go through a period of questioning, wondering, and feeling like, Lord, I want to serve You. This is getting in the way, and I don’t understand.
How did Paul come to understand that? Well, I’ll tell you one way he came to understand it is very simple. He didn’t get mad at God over it, and go pout. How many of you have done that? I won’t ask for hands. Lord, I don’t understand. What did I do? And yet, here he is, humbly looking to God with a genuine desire to be used of God.
And finally, his ear is so sensitive, so tuned to the One with whom he was walking and getting to know, that when it came time, the Lord was able to whisper in his ear and he was able to hear it and receive it. “…My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (KJV).
Close
August 14, 2022 - No. 1558
“Finding Our Purpose” Conclusion
Broadcast #1558
August 14, 2022
August 14, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1558 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: He has done it, folks! Are you relying on that in a practical sense, or is this just doctrine? This has got to get beyond doctrine with every single one of us, that God has laid a foundation, that you and I can stand upon. And our sins can be gone! End of them!
God is the One that’s put them away! He’s not asking me to do something to qualify myself. He qualified me! That’s what Paul said in Colossians. Jesus is the one who qualified me. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” (NIV). What’s the gift of God?
( congregational response ).
Faith. Think about that. You know we think of salvation…but, faith…the very faith that I need to exercise in order to be saved, God has to give that to me!
( congregational amens ).
Oh, wow! This sounds a lot like surrender, doesn’t it? Since I don’t have any of this, I’m gonna have to come to God based upon mercy. My nature wants me to deserve something, so I can feel good about myself. And God has fixed it to where if we know Him, we’re gonna have to come on His terms. And it’s by mercy. That’s the only claim that I have. God have mercy upon me, a sinner!
Do you remember how Jesus…what Jesus spoke about this in the temple one day? I don’t know if He was in the temple or just talking about the temple. But He talked about the Pharisee who came in there to pray. He said, Lord, I thank You I’m not like everybody else. I’m not…you know, I do all this, I fast twice a week, I tithe all of my…you know I do all this, I give to the poor, and I’m not like that old tax collector over there.
And the tax collector was so convicted of his need, he didn’t even lift up his eyes, he said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. What was Jesus’ point? Which one did God hear? He heard the cry of that man who came with an honest heart and said, God, I have no claim upon you. I come because You have offered me mercy. God loves mercy! And oh, and that message is all the way through the Old Testament. Praise God! And certainly, through the New.
All right, “…and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” And most of the time, when people quote this scripture that’s kind of where they stop.
But I want to tie this in because the next verse is the one that I forgot to use last week, and I think the Lord is the One that caused me to forget it. Because here we are, being called to live for God in a particular time in history…how do we do that?
And this is the answer. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Man, that doesn’t sound a bit like religion to me! Does it to you? This is something that…it’s just apart from Christianity, churchianity. We need, I believe we need to get a handle on this.
And the thing that I sensed out of what we talked about this morning is, God has got to lay the foundation. If we’re constantly going back to what He’s saved us from, as though that somehow disqualifies us from any of this…man, that’s a burden God never meant for us to carry! Because Jesus carried that burden to the cross!
( congregational amens ).
It’s gone! Oh, may God help us to get that, to believe it, to see it, to understand that He set us free from the past!
( congregational amens ).
And He set us free for a reason! But how in the world am I fit to do anything? Well, I’m God’s handiwork. Are you His handiwork? Is He working on you? He’s got a lot to change, doesn’t He?
( congregational response ).
You know, you see that imagery in the Scripture about Him being the Potter and us being the clay. Remember a message I preached years ago about “Be the Clay”?
( congregational response ).
How contrary that is to human nature, just to say, God, I don’t know. You are the One who made me. You made me different from everybody else, my experiences are different, my personality is different. But my purpose in the Kingdom is unique. There’s no one else exactly like me, thank God.
( laughter ).
But You’re the one who knows the reason You created me in the first place.
( congregational amens ).
You know. And I don’t even know how to…I don’t know what to do, let alone how to do all of that! God, You’re gonna have to do the changing. And so, you see where Romans 12 comes in. present yourselves, “…a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” (KJV). Or spiritual worship, act of worship, and then the change begins.
Allow Him to renew us by…change us by the renewing of our mind. And then that leads right into the passage about the function of the Body of Christ, doesn’t it? But this is the thing. We’re God’s handiwork, and we’re gonna have to learn how to let Him work.
And you know, if God’s gonna do some sculpting on you, doesn’t that mean He’s gonna have to do some cutting and some things that aren’t gonna always be comfortable? And how easily does every one of us fall into the trap of supposing that if things aren’t going rosy, according to our definition of that…and you know, if God loved me, things would be different. No, because He loves me, He’s gonna work on me and change the things that don’t fit His purpose for my existence!
How easily do we listen to the voice of the devil when we don’t feel good, and things don’t look good, and we say, God’s mad at me? God’s…you know, this or that…every one of us fights that battle!
( congregational response ).
May God help us to so be grounded on the foundation, and to learn how to stand in those times and say, God, Your Word is true, and I am trusting You with this circumstance! I know You love me! I know You’re working in me, things that I don’t even understand, but I surrender, Lord. You have my full permission to change me any way that I need changing. That’s a dangerous prayer.
( congregational amens ).
He just might answer that.
( congregational response ).
But if we’re going to fulfill the purpose for which we exist, is there any other way to get there? Think of what God has to work with when He starts…a lost, helpless, hopeless, blind sinner. And yet, because of His love and mercy, He reaches down to the gutter-most and brings us to the uttermost. And then He begins to shape us for that purpose.
You know, we’ve talked about these things so many times. You see it all through the Scriptures…with the major characters of scripture, Moses, and Joseph, and others that God had these tremendous purposes for, and what He had to do to shape those vessels to get them ready for that.
You and I, don’t we need to have that sense of a vision? Lord, I’m here for a reason, and I want to know what that reason is. And I want You to do whatever it takes so that I can fulfill that. I can be a vessel for Your use.
Now God doesn’t call everybody to preach. You know, we have this idea about what it means to serve God. Every one of us, as we’ve said so many times, is a servant of God. And sometimes the most powerful, important thing anybody can do is to pray! Prayer is not giving a list to “Santa Claus” in the sky! Prayer is something where we learn over time, and by experience, we learn how to yield ourselves to the inspiration of God’s Spirit who knows what we need to pray for.
( congregational amens ).
And then when we do that, we yield to that, and we begin to speak as God anoints…we don’t just need an anointing here, we need anointing in prayer! When we do that, God can take you and cause you to affect something that’s happened on the other side of the world. There is power, there’s divine power that’s released. You don’t think that matters?
( congregational response ).
That’s at the heart of the Kingdom of God. If God has called you to be a prayer warrior, you may just be one of the most important people in this place. But, just speaking to somebody, just the interactions…I heard so many lately that just blessed me so much. How God is causing us to break the mold. We have this idea of just coming in here and sitting and listening, and going and living our lives. God, break that!
( congregational amens ).
God show us why we’re here!
( congregational response ).
Give us a vision of what it is that You want to do, and how You want to do it, and make us willing! And make us able to do it! But Lord, I’m gonna have to be Your handiwork and be willing! You’re gonna have to do this because it’s not in me to do it.
But what is it that makes this possible? It’s not just that God has done away with our past. It’s not like, okay, now you’ve got a fresh slate, I’ve wiped your guilt away, now let’s start over. Well, if I just start over with what I had to begin with, that ain’t gonna get it. I need something brand new, and so that’s why he goes on and says, created, “…created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” (NIV). Man, I need to be a brand-new creation. I need a new life, I need a new heart. That’s the heart of the Gospel!
( congregational response ).
Anything short of that is not the Gospel! There’s nothing that I’ve brought into this world that I can take and say, all right, Lord I’m here, I’m going to use these abilities and I’m gonna help Your kingdom out. I need to be a brand-new person. And only God can do that. Are you willing?
Lord, help me to see what You have done in me and to realize, to reckon on the reality. You read Romans 6 that Steven was reading a while ago, and you’ll read how we went down, and something was left in that tomb. We rose up to newness of life so that we’re able to serve Him. There is a new life here that we need to reckon on!
We don’t reckon on it enough! We still reckon the old is there. And so, we live like that. Every one of us! I’m talking to me. But God is teaching us. He’s working in us. We’re His handiwork. I pray that we’re further along this week than we were last. I pray that God is continually teaching us, and I see the evidence of it in so many lives. I praise Him for it.
But oh, may God give us a vision of what it takes to serve Him in this hour. We’re gonna have to be His handiwork. We’re gonna have to walk in the newness of the new creation, in Christ Jesus! That’s where the good works come from. They’re not good if they don’t come from Him!
If I’m being religious, is that good? No! That’s just self-righteous, do-gooding. There are a whole lot of things that, you know, you could say they have a beneficial effect in a sense, temporarily, on an earthly life. But you know, we talked a couple of weeks ago about the fact that we can’t do anything of any eternal value unless it’s Him doing it in us. Do you believe that? I do. There’s nothing I can do to help Him out. I need to allow Him to do it in and through me.
Again, you come back to what Jesus did. Did He do anything that He didn’t see His Father doing? Do you see where we need to be? We need to be a people that say, God, I want to be in tune with what You are doing. You’re the One who has a purpose. You are the One who’s working out a sovereign purpose! You’re going to reach every one of Yours!
Jesus Christ said, “…I will build my church.” That’s a pretty positive statement. All these things, we have a part to play in that. I don’t know fully what my part is. I mean, it appears that I’m to be here doing this at this point. Some of you, God’s gonna lay His hand upon you, He’s already done it, in varying measure.
But this isn’t all there is. Can we be in a place where we say, God, I’m beginning to get a picture how Your Kingdom works. There is a sovereign purpose that You planned before the foundation of the world. He knew about this service back then. Do you understand that?
Do you understand how great He is? He knew who was gonna be here this morning. He planned it all out. I want to get in harmony with that. I want to be able to say, God, show me what You’re doing, and show me my place in that, and enable me to cooperate with You in whatever way I need to.
Now, some people, you’ll give a message out like this, and they’ll say, yes, that’s what I’ve been waiting for! I’m an apostle after all! I’m gonna go out…you know. And what you have is a whole lot of selfish ambition and vain deceit and all of those kinds of things that you see as words in the scripture. I believe God can show us who we are, and what we are, and it will be right.
I remember Brother Thomas, many years, some of you will remember way, way back…Brother Thomas would preach a message on finding your place in the Body. Do you think we can ask him and say, Lord, what’s my purpose? What’s my place? Show me what You have…show me why You created me.
Because it’s not just to sit here, believe doctrines, carry out activities, and go to heaven someday, and basically live my life…it’s not that. God has a reason for me being here. What is it? I want to be engaged in that. I want to be one of these that can actually shine a light in a dark world that’s gonna get a whole lot darker.
Your purpose for me might be to be a martyr. But are we here to preserve our lives? Or have we laid them down to belong to Him? See, that’s the Gospel. If it’s anything short of that, if you’re clinging to that old life from which He saved you, that’s not a good thing. We need the newness of His life.
And here’s the amazing thing, the last part of that, “…which God prepared in advance for us to do.” You know, God knew in eternity past, who you are. He allowed you to experience what you’ve experienced. He reached down in grace to lift you out of the condition, and out of the…change your destiny.
But He has a reason for your being here, that He knew about back then. You are not a ‘nobody.’ You are not a digit. You are not simply a number sitting in a pew. You are God’s child and God wants His people to call out to Him and say, God, why am I here? I want to know, and I want to surrender my life to You, to make me what You want me to be, Lord!
( congregational response ).
Sometimes it means just waiting. And I know many of you’ve heard Brother Thomas’ testimony of years ago. When he started out in his ministry, he was a powerful evangelist, with a tremendous anointing on his life. And the circumstances changed, he wound up here, shepherding a bunch of you…some of you older ones. I see some smiles. It was a long time ago.
And, one day, he was sitting there thinking, God, what’s wrong? Back there You blessed me, there was power. I went out and I saw results and I saw…and here I am sitting here, shepherding a bunch of sheep, and not all of them even appreciate it. What’s wrong? Did I go off the rail somewhere? Am I out of Your will? What’s going on?
And that’s when the Lord quickened to him that scripture about what the Lord said to Peter. “…When you were younger you dressed yourself and you went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands…” And another will gird you and carry you where you don’t want to go.
Now, I don’t recall from the experience or the testimony that anything dramatic changed right then. It did later, didn’t it? The Lord visited the church in a mighty way. But Brother Thomas’ place at that time was simply to humble himself and do what God gave him to do in the moment and just wait. Because God was working.
He was God’s handiwork. There are things that God can only do when we’re just waiting on Him, and looking to Him, and willing, but not running in ourselves, not thinking I’ve got to do something. That ‘got to do something’ is just another way of trying to earn it. I just need Him to show me what to do and be willing when He says it.
It gets down to something that’s awfully simple, but it’s so contrary to human nature that we have a hard time getting it. But think of the reality, because you can talk about the grace, being saved and not by works and all of that, but if we don’t see where God’s going with this, we’re missing the point.
God did that for a reason, to get us to a point where, we could stand upon that foundation, and be the people He designed us before the creation of the world to be, in a dark world. It’s not just about believing in Jesus and going to Heaven. He’s got works planned for us to do.
Do you think He planned all that Moses went through? Do you think God had some wonderful things in mind when Moses had to run off into the wilderness and hide from Pharoah…and wait 40 years? God had plans Moses didn’t know about, and God was getting him ready for that.
And do you think God had plans when David was running around the wilderness hiding? Yeah, God had plans. God has plans for you, and you, and you, and you, and me.
( congregational amens ).
And I agree with what I heard Brother Steven say several times this morning, we want to finish well. Well, finishing well is not running in self-zeal. Finishing is saying, God, I’m yours. I’ve reached the point in my life, I don’t know. I’m not gonna sit here and try to get a committee and plan something. But I want to be open. Lord, I want to think outside the box. I want to be open to anything You might bring us to do. I don’t know!
Now you know, men would say, yeah, we need to innovate! We need to get a committee. Let’s come up with a program. No, we don’t need…we just need to hear from Heaven. And we need to exercise it, and we need to do what He gives us to do, with the ability that He gives us to do it, and it will be Him doing it instead of us trying to help Him out. He doesn’t need our help. But He longs to involve us.
Remember a message we had years ago, “Participating in His Purpose”? Seems like the Lord brings that thought back in so many ways, to me, to all of us. Do you see where we need to be rock solid on the foundation? If you’re struggling with the foundation, how in the world is verse 10 gonna amount to anything?
I’m constantly, oh, that means somebody else but me, I couldn’t be that. Jesus Christ has paid it all! Every last thing that needed to be paid, He paid! Our sins are gone! May God help us to get that and rest upon the foundation, and trust Him for the strength of a new life to live for Him.
But in the meantime, Lord, we could be asking, why am I here? What is my place? Show me what Your purpose is for me. I certainly can be praying. I can be looking to You. I’m not gonna run around and try to do something. But, Lord, if You show me, if You lay a burden on my heart, help me to…help me to follow that.
And help me to walk in harmony with the Body because you can have some wild-hair thing going on in your own head. I mean, we know how the devil works. But see, there’s a safety in the Body of Christ where we can say, yeah, I sense that. The Lord’s witnessing to me a witness of peace.
I don’t know, I don’t know why I’m preaching this, in a sense. I don’t have anything particular in mind. But I have this in mind, and I know God, again, put us here for a reason. We’re here for a reason right now.
And I pray that God will lay upon every single one here the burden of saying, God, I want to know why I’m here. I’m not here to live out my earthly life. I’m here to live out the life You gave me, the brand-new life. As long as You leave me in this world I’m here for a reason. Help me to find and experience that reason, so You have a vessel through whom You can live in a broken world.
( congregational amens ).
Is there any other reason to live? There’s no other reason to live. May God give us that grace to humble ourselves, to allow ourselves to be His handiwork without listening to the voice of the devil, when it’s not pleasant. And then realize God’s put a brand-new life in here.
Oh, praise God! He’s not trusting in my ability to live for Him. He gave me a brand-new heart and a new life. That’s what the Gospel is all about. So, thank God. I guess I’m gonna go rambling here in a minute. But…do you see how this ties in with things the Lord has said lately? We’re here for a reason. Let’s set our hearts to discover that reason and to walk in it and just trust God.
Do you think He’s going to be faithful to that? Do you think that’s what He’s revealed in His Word? I know it is. Let’s just trust Him, like I say, think outside the box. Don’t put limits on it and say, oh it’s got to fit in with our style. It needs to fit in with His program.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! To God be the glory!
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August 7, 2022 - No. 1557
“Finding Our Purpose” Part One
Broadcast #1557
August 7, 2022
August 7, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1557 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: It’s amazing how many times I come to a men’s meeting and what I have on my heart is already there and it’s being expressed. I think it was more so today than usual. But I’m trusting the Lord this morning, more than usual, I think. And that’s a good thing. Because I believe the Lord is wanting His people to be set free, to be able to live for Him and serve Him in this time.
You know, last week we talked about Satan’s dream and God’s purpose. And kind of toward the end, we got to a point where I was saying something to the effect that God has allowed us, He has ordained that you and I live now. We weren’t assigned to the 1800s or to some other period of history. God has us alive now and it’s for a reason. And I believe we are, coming closer and closer to the end of the age. I don’t have any dates for you. God told us just to be ready, didn’t He?
( congregational amens ).
He didn’t say we’re going know the time. We will know the times and seasons. And I believe we can see the way things are shaping up. But I don’t know what all God has. But I do know that He wants a people who are alive and awake…
( congregational amens ).
…able to, as we’ve heard in the past, make the midnight cry and say, He’s coming, be ready. But also, He’s not done…He’s not done sharing the Gospel with people and reaching out and changing hearts and lives.
( congregational amens ).
There will come a time when that voice will cease, people will have made up their mind, and the scripture in Revelation will be fulfilled where the voice said, let him that is sinful, be sinful still. I’m paraphrasing. Let him that’s righteous, be righteous still. There’s gonna come a time when everybody will be in one camp or the other. But I believe with all my heart, God is reaching out.
And I believe the things that Brother Steven shared, and shared downstairs, and others did as well, are very, very central to that. There’s a scripture that I’m going to get to, that I thought about last week and I realized after I sat down, hey, I meant to use that scripture. Well, that’s kind of the one that comes back now, because it has to do with this very thing, about God’s people being here for a purpose and a reason…this is not just happenstance.
And the Kingdom of God does not consist of ‘the ministry’ and ‘the people.’ as though you’re just digits sitting there listening. God wants…God has a place in His Kingdom for every single believer.
( congregational amens ).
And He wants us to learn how to enter into that. Christianity has been institutionalized. It’s been turned into man-made traditions and organizations, where we have this structure and everybody just learns how to fit into the structure and do the stuff, believe the doctrines. God wants to set His people free, not just to run here and there, but to be free to follow Him.
You know, I’ve said many times, Jesus didn’t do things the same way twice. We tend to do them in the same way a thousand times. But I believe the Lord’s helping us, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
Because we don’t want to jump in the other ditch, and everybody run off doing their own thing and it’s just us doing it. That’s the other side of it. But I believe with all my heart there has to be a foundation. And, I guess the scriptures that we’ve used so many times, but they’re needful…there’s not a person here who knows the Lord, who doesn’t fight the battles that Steven describes. Every single one of us fights. And whether it’s a particular thing in our past, or a thing we’re dealing with today, we are in need of salvation in some fashion, every single day.
( congregational amens ).
Now, being born again, that’s a one-time thing, but I’m talking about the growing and the changing and the things that God needs to do in our lives. I don’t know anybody here that’s arrived. I certainly haven’t. And I discover things more and more that the Lord has to deal with. But the thing is, if we ever forget the foundation, man, it’s a rough battle!
( congregational response ).
How many know what I’m talking about? If you forget who you really are in Christ and what He has done, and that begins to be compromised in the slightest in your mind, then there’s an issue. There is room for the devil to work. And the way he typically does that, is not to say, oh, that’s not true. He just says, that’s not true of you…because, and then he will enumerate his arguments.
And God wants a people to come to the place where we put all of our hope in Jesus, period! End of story! That stain ain’t coming back! Once the bleach goes in, the stain is gone! God has thrown it into the sea of forgetfulness.
And you know you’ve heard the expression, ‘don’t go fishing in the sea of forgetfulness.’ God has forgotten the things that are a part…that He has cleansed. And thank God, He did it! Anyway, I’m just gonna go ahead and read some of this scripture that we’re so familiar with in Ephesians. How many times have we heard this? But how many times do we need to hear this? I need this this morning, do you? Anybody here?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Verse 3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us…” (NIV). Now I want to stop and say, don’t you have this “gospel for everybody else but not for me” in your mind when you read words like this. ‘Us’ means ‘us.’
Paul is talking…now think about for a minute who Paul is that’s writing this. Think about his past. Now he declared by the inspiration of the Spirit that he was the worst sinner ever. So, don’t you think of yourself that way. That title has already been taken and God saved him, and turned him into a mighty servant of God. God can do anything, because it’s not our power, it’s not our virtue, it’s not anything that’s in us.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will….” Everything comes out of…do you see that? Do you get the sense of that? That everything comes out of His heart. Not one part depends upon us.
( congregational response ).
Thank God! It comes from Him, doesn’t it?
( congregational amens ).
All right. “…To the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have…” That’s a present tense possession, folks. “…We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance…” or agreement with, “…the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.”
Wow! Paul’s just struggling for words there, isn’t he? If you look in the original, this is a run-on sentence if there ever was one. He just doesn’t know how to end the sentence!
“With all wisdom and understanding….” Boy, I’m glad He understands, don’t you…aren’t you? And He knows how to figure out every problem, the ones that cause us such trouble. “With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will…” again, based upon His good pleasure, “…according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”
Wow! I don’t see anything in there that depends on some virtue in me, or some knowledge, some ability, some anything. This comes from the heart of our Creator! God help us to reckon on that and remember and include ourselves in all the us’s of this passage. I’m preaching to me, as well as to you. Praise God!
“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we…” Where’s he going with this, in other words? “…In order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.” It’s certainly not for ours. We have nothing to boast about, do we?
( congregational amens ).
“And you also were included in Christ….” Now this is the experiential side of it. You know, we see the heart of God before time, but there has to come a point in history when this becomes personal. And I’ll ask, has it become personal with you? If it hasn’t this needs to be the one thing you’re concerned about. Praise God!
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel…” or the Good News, “…of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”
Praise God! Simply put, that means if you’re His, if you’ve really been born of His Spirit, God put a mark on you, that no devil can counter! That mark says, that one’s mine! Devil, you can’t have him. You can’t have her.
( congregational amens ).
I’m guaranteeing, not only their present, where they’re at right now, but I’m guaranteeing how this is turning out.
( congregational amens ).
See, that’s…we’ve got to see this through God’s eyes. That’s why Paul’s expressing this. He longs to see the Ephesian church share the vision of the reality of what God had given to him. Praise God! All right? “…To the praise of his glory.”
And then of course, his prayer…I’m not going to read all of this, but the prayer that he has, that God would open their wisdom and give them the understanding that they needed to really appreciate the power of God that is available to be at work in us.
What is that power? How do you…what do you compare it to? How do you see it in action? Well, what Paul says, is we see the power of God in action by what happened when Jesus was in that tomb, and all hell meant to keep him there! And all hell couldn’t do it!
Folks, all hell can’t steal you from Jesus if you belong to Him! Do you belong to Him? Have you given Him your heart and your life? That’s the key. But oh, the power that God expressed, not just to bring him out of a tomb, give Him a new life, a life that cannot die, but He didn’t leave him there! He has caused Him to ascend into the heavens, and to sit on a throne.
I’m sure that…I don’t think it’s a chair sitting in heaven somewhere, but whatever it is, it’s a place of authority! Jesus…we’ve quoted this so many times, where Jesus said, all power, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And that’s where he says, go therefore. So, everything flows from the heart and the purpose of God, accomplished at the cross, and made known to us.
Folks, if you are building your life on anything else, you’re building on sinking sand. If we are sort of acknowledging this in a vague sense, but not really embracing it as, this applies to me. I was one of the ones God was thinking about all back there. Oh my!
If we’re going to be the people of God in this hour, we’ve got to get the foundation right, because God said in the prophets, he was laying a foundation in Zion. And this was a sure foundation! This was not like the religion that was prevalent in the day, that was just a bunch of man-made rules. This was God’s foundation and those who put their trust in that would never come to ruin, never be ashamed, never come to the place and say, boy, I was a fool to trust in that.
Man, we’re gonna have our eyes so opened one day that we will just fall down in amazement at the mercy and the grace of God, and what He’s done for us! So anyway, but the thing that always gets me out of this particular passage…I’m gonna get to the next one. But the thing that always gets me, he comes down to the end and he talks about the power that he expressed through Christ and what He’s done and then he says basically, He did all that for you!
He wants you to know that that power that’s in Him is available to us. May God help us to avail ourselves of it and believe it! I’ll guarantee, there’s not a person here who knows the Lord, who isn’t struggling with something in your life.
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. Let’s just be honest. We need the Lord!
( congregational amens ).
And I pray that the Scripture that Brother Steven read, in Romans 6…God has given us a place where we can walk in newness of life. But we need to get this! God needs to reveal it to our hearts in a deeper way so we can actively believe it, and receive it.
You know, it is a process, isn’t it? We know that. But…we need to see the foundation, so we constantly go back to that and realize, hey, I’m on a foundation. I don’t care, the winds and waves are blowing, the doubts are coming, the Devil’s trying to flood my mind with this and with that, but my foundation stands sure because I didn’t place it, I didn’t build this foundation!
This isn’t something…this isn’t philosophy that I came up with to make me feel better. This is something God did! The greatest power in the universe! The only real power in the universe.
Okay, so where were we, from a real experiential standpoint, when the Gospel came to us? Did He go out and look for good people? Yeah, there are no good people, not by God’s standard.
“As for you…” chapter 2, “…you were dead in your transgressions and sins….” Dead is kind of a serious condition, isn’t it? This is not somebody who could help themselves. This isn’t a deal where God says, here are the principles, here are the rules. You follow these, and everything will be good. Your life will be better and you’ll have a purpose in life. This is somebody who is so far gone, so out of…beyond help, they’re dead.
As far as the purposes of God are concerned, “…you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” And that’s what we’re seeing in the world. It’s taken over.
“All of us….” All of us! Now Paul’s including himself, isn’t he? All of us! “All of us also lived among them at one time….” Now, I don’t care if you grew up in this church and you’re a good person. Again, there are no good people, by the true standard. But sometimes that can mask your need.
If you have a real past and you’ve been out there, you know, there’s an appreciation for what God has done for you. I mean, I grew up in the providence of God, I grew up in a preacher’s home. That doesn’t make me any better than anybody else. I have the same nature, the same need.
But you know, sometimes you can grow up and not realize your need. You know, the greatest thing God can do for you is to let you fall in the mud, sometimes, until you see, oh my God, I’m a sinner. I need a Savior!
( congregational amens ).
I pray that if that’s you, if you don’t know your need that God will show you out of His love and mercy, show you that you need what we’re talking about this morning. Because you do! The world is full of people who’ve said, no.
“All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh…” That’s one of the biggies that the world is after. Oh, if it feels good, do it, follow it. “…And following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”
That is a pretty good description of the condition of the world. Now I know there’s a time when people who come along in ignorance. But I’ll tell you, there’s a time when God shines the light one way or another upon a heart, and that’s when people begin to be truly responsible. I’m gonna let God sort all of that out.
But I know that there is a…the condition of the human heart is beyond our ability to understand. I don’t think we really get it, particularly if we’ve grown up in a comfortable environment, and we hear the Word of God and we sing the songs, we just don’t have any idea what’s really going on here. But I’ll tell you, this is a desperate, desperate, needy world. And it’s only God that can do anything about it.
“But because…” What is the cause of what He’s doing? “…Because of his great love for us….” Not because He found something good in us, He didn’t. Not because He saw potential in us. Oh, if I recruit that one, they can help Me out in My kingdom. My God! We have nothing but ourselves to give to Him!
( congregational amens ).
Nothing! There’s nothing I could possibly present and say, Lord, here it is. I’ll trade this for eternal life. “…Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy…” He, “…made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…”
Who did all this? Suppose God had just stood back and let things…let events play out? There is not a single person who’s here or may ever hear this, not one single person who would ever escape the condition that prevails in this world. And the end of that condition is death. That’s it!
And you wouldn’t even know it. You would think you were living for some valid purpose. I’m trying to make myself something. I’m following my desires, I’m trying to be happy! And you have no idea what’s going on. But God intervened!
( congregational amens ).
Thank God! He’s the one who took the initiative, because without His initiative, we would have nothing! “…Made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” And I’ve got to put this in, because I’ve seen over the years, I feel like grace has been misunderstood. It’s just a kindly, accepting attitude on God’s part. Grace is God’s intervention!
( congregational amens ).
His grace is what works on my heart to make me aware of my need! It’s the influence and the power of His Spirit at work in my life. You can call it grace because I don’t deserve it! But grace is a real force, that invades my life, convicts me, and then not only convicts me, it gives me the power to believe!
I don’t even have the power to do that! That’s why the scripture says, “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” (KJV). Today is the day of salvation! That’s the only answer, because if God stops dealing with a heart, you don’t have the power to do it. You don’t even want to, let alone would you have the power if you did. I need God’s help!
The only answer that exists is for God to invade my life, show me my need, empower me to believe. Now He doesn’t overpower my will if I’m hard-hearted and resist it! You can do despite to the grace of God! But oh, praise God, that He has the will and the heart and the motive and the love that brings Him to that place of reaching down to me. because I don’t deserve it, and I could never deserve it!
“…It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us…” (NIV). This is past tense, folks. We don’t see ourselves the way God does. God has put us in a place that we don’t see. “…God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus…”
But why? Why did He do that? “…In order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” And this isn’t going to end. Ages to come.
I don’t have any idea what God’s planned. But I know it’s gonna be good. And I know there won’t be any sin, there won’t be any death, there won’t be any sorrow or sickness or age or anything else. It’s gonna be exactly what God wants.
And we will walk with Him in white because He had done it! He has done it, folks. Are you relying on that in a practical sense? Or is this just doctrine? This has got to get beyond doctrine with every single one of us, that God has laid a foundation that you and I can stand upon, and our sins can be gone!
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July 31, 2022 - No. 1556
“Walk With Me” One Part
Broadcast #1556
July 31, 2022
July 31, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1556 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know I was listening to Ben, as he prayed at the beginning of the service, and he just about prayed what I was thinking…for the service tonight.
But I’ve also been very, very conscious, that during this meeting the Lord has emphasized simplicity in a very special way. He’s not looking for theologians, He’s not looking for people who delve into the mysteries, who’ve got to get every…there’s some secret I’m missing so I’ve got to delve into it and find it, get a secret revelation. There’s so much of that that goes on in the world.
But there is a simplicity such that a child can know the Lord, and be what He wants them to be. And I want to be that. Didn’t Jesus say, unless you become like a little child, you won’t even enter the kingdom of heaven? We are so full of pride, so full of a false sense of self-ability, self-sufficiency, I guess, is the word I was trying to use.
But I appreciate the Lord emphasizing such simple things as being wholehearted, giving Him our heart. And once He has our heart, He can do everything else. All the issues of life flow from the heart, don’t we read in Proverbs?
And then how Jesus invites us to learn from Him, because He is the polar opposite of what human life on earth is. We’re filled with unrest and He wants to give us a rest.
And you know, I don’t know how well I conveyed some of it the other night, but the central thought of why we are at…why we have something other than rest is very, very simple. It’s our old nature fighting God. He says go this way and we say, no, I want to go that way.
In a thousand ways, we are resisting the simplicity of Him just…just learning from Him and saying Lord, You’re in charge. I’m not the one running the show here. And I yield myself to You and I trust You. And I’m not looking for it to be any other way.
And, even if I don’t like the way we go, from a natural standpoint, I know it’s right, because You’re the One that I’m learning from. That’s certainly how Jesus did.
And you know, Ben, in his prayer, used a phrase that came to me very distinctly this afternoon as I was just thinking about the service. I wasn’t looking for a particular something, but the simple phrase, ‘walk with me’ came to me. I mean, what could be simpler than the Lord saying, walk with me?
You know, we think of life as a journey, often. That’s the way it’s pictured, and that’s what it is. We each have, in one sense, our own journeys and yet, the Lord has intersected those journeys.
But, life is a very short journey. Young folks, you’re gonna learn that, if the Lord tarries. But it’s basically a journey from a mother’s womb to a grave. And the heart and the culture of our world is, what can I get out of it? How can I be happy? How can I find meaning? How can I find purpose? How can I gratify my own natural desires? A thousand and one things that all come straight in and center in self and what self wants.
Salvation is all about delivering us from that, because I think I said this last night, or one of the nights, you are not an accident. Not one of you here is an accident. God created you on purpose, and He loves you, made you like you are, so don’t try to be what you aren’t. Don’t say, I wish I were like them. You be you. You’re special in God’s eyes. God made you to be you, and He has a purpose and a plan, a road map for your life.
And wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be wonderful and wise, if we could get that to such a degree that we just say, yes Lord? I have only one job in this life, ultimately. Now you may give me things to do, but I mean the basic, guiding principle of my life needs to be so simple that…God, what do You want me to do?
You know, many of you will remember Brother Thomas giving, I think, what would probably sum up his greatest instruction or word of wisdom as to what we ought to do. How many of you remember what he said? “Seek God and do what He says.” It’s real complicated! But that was the guiding principle of his life.
But I think of people in the Bible that we read about. And one of them was a man named Enoch. And he lived in between Adam and Noah and the flood. And we don’t read a lot about his life other than he had a family and he was the father of Methuselah. And Methuselah’s grand place in history is the oldest recorded man in history, and that’s all we remember about him. But what do we remember about Enoch?
( congregational response ).
He walked with God. I mean, what a testimony about a life! He didn’t build skyscrapers. He didn’t do this, he didn’t do that. He simply walked with God. And there was a relationship that…it wasn’t just, he visited God on Sunday, and then went about his life. Every part of his life was lived with a God-consciousness, a sense that God was not only with him, but God had a path for him to walk, had something for him to do.
And we don’t have a record of any great works that he did, but he certainly did the one thing that mattered to God, that God made a special record of this, for us, for all time. God was so pleased with this relationship that He had, that Enoch is one of the people who didn’t die! You know, you’ve heard how the preacher described it as they went for a walk one day, and the Lord finally said, hey, we’re closer to My place than yours. Let’s just come on and go to My place.
( laughter ).
I don’t know. That’s one way to put it, I guess. But whatever it is, wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of a relationship? Do you realize that’s what He wants from us? We’re the ones who are kind of fearful and push Him…you know, hold Him at bay a little bit. We…part of it is self-will, part of it is fear. It’s a lot of things. But our nature doesn’t want that simplicity.
But God…that’s what God’s calling us to. And He loves you! He wants to have a relationship with you and with me. And He has a plan for our lives.
I’ll tell you, that’s something that young people wrestle with. Especially, because you’re setting out in life and you see a world out there, and it tells you what you’re supposed to do, and you feel desires, and you have abilities.
And, of course, the world says, follow your heart. Develop your abilities. Go out and conquer the world. Make your mark. Be happy. So many different ways that the same thing is put. But it boils down to a simple thing, it’s your life and your plan. I’m gonna go out and do what I think is right and meaningful, and basically, under your breath, you’re saying nobody else has the right to tell me what to do, this is my life. And that is so destructive, so wrong, not to realize that God created you for a reason!
( congregational response ).
He has a place. He has a journey for you and me to walk, and the end of our journey is not a grave! The end of our journey…that’s the beginning! That is graduation day when they put us in that tomb! Thank God! I like it when some saint goes on to be with the Lord, and instead of talking about them passing or dying, they graduated! They don’t have to be here anymore. God called them home, and their life, their path goes on forever and ever. Don’t you want that kind of a path?
( congregational response )
As I was thinking about this, I was remembering a man who made a tremendous mark on the world that was very unexpected by his friends. You remember…those of you who are old enough will probably remember the five missionary martyrs, in South America? I think it was Ecuador, but it was someplace in that region.
And they were seeking to reach a totally unreached tribe, deep in the jungles. They had to ride in an airplane to get there, and land on a jungle river. Sue and I and some others actually had the opportunity to touch that plane and you wouldn’t believe how small it was. It would easily fit on the platform, easily! And we could take it and rock the frame. I mean the frame was dug out of the sandbar, years later. I can’t believe five guys got in there.
But they had a vision…but Jim Elliot was the most famous of these guys. And Jim Elliot was a man of unusual talent, ability. He went to a university. And he was one of these guys that everybody expected to go out into the world and do wonderful things, great things! And when he told his friends and acquaintances that God had called him to be a missionary, they called him a fool! What a waste! And he was the one who penned the words that have been so oft quoted. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
( congregational amens ).
And even…a lot of people would say, oh, what a waste! They went in there and they were killed immediately! And I remember, vividly, when this happened. Boy, the word went out throughout the Christian world, and it was an earthshaking event! And more people went to missionary service because of that, not shying from it. God used them in a powerful way! And decades later, in the following decades, God took the Gospel into that heathen tribe, saved all kinds of people. And some of those people who were saved were the people who did the killing.
( congregational amens ).
And God saved them, took them out of heathen darkness, total demon rule. And one of the things that came out, decades later, from one of the men who was the leader, one that killed them, was that when they killed them, they saw angels. Man, God was right there. That was their path. Man, I want that path.
Did not Paul say…I quoted this the other night, I think, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (NIV). You have to know the reason for being here. This world is not about what you can get out of it. It’s about God’s purpose, and you and me being here! And our destiny is not anything in this world, it’s out there.
Oh God, I want that to be the testimony of my life, in some fashion, that I walked with Him! You know it’s walking with Him…that means that He’s the One in charge. He’s the One who says, this is the way you need to go.
I remember…some of you may remember, years ago, there was a book…I believe it was, of some sort, that came out in certain religious circles. And of course, the world was such a terribly, busy place. And they were trying to come up with some spiritual wisdom for people who just lived these busy lives. People in the cities, they’re going and they’re coming, and they’ve just got constant activity. And the name of the book was, “Are You Running With Me, Jesus?”
( laughter ).
I mean, talk about getting it backwards! The hope of the Gospel is not Jesus coming down to walk with you through your plans!
( congregational amens ).
He’s got His own plans.
( congregational response ).
And there is no other place where you’re gonna find rest, where you’re gonna be in the center of what God has purposed for your life, until everyone of us just asks one question, every day. Lord, what do You want me to do? Lord, I just want to walk with You. I want to have this relationship, this conscious—consciousness.
I remember Ricky…Brother Ricky preaching on this, having a conversation with the Lord. You remember that service? Yeah! That was special, because that’s what the Lord wants. He wants us to be able to breathe up our heart to Him and have a hearing ear. I often pray that. God, give me a hearing ear, so that I can discern when You’re talking to me. Do you know that God wants to…wants us to walk with Him to the point where we can actually hear His voice, and know what He’s saying to us?
But what an awesome testimony that that was for this man of God, Enoch, in the Bible. The whole character of his life, Enoch walked with God. And that was enough. That was all God was looking for. Oh, how complicated this is. But how we resist it!
Oh, you remember the scripture we’ve heard so many times about…from Isaiah 50, I think it is. All you who, “…compass yourselves about with sparks…” (KJV). And you walk in the fire you’ve built. In other words, you’re making your own plans. You got your own agenda, and that’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna lay down in sorrow.
But there’s another kind of people who obey the voice of the servant of God. They’re listening for His voice. Of course, they were under a system where they had to hear from God through prophets, and so forth. I’ll tell you, that’s the glorious thing. We can know Him individually! We all know Him, from the least to the greatest! That’s the New Covenant we’re in.
But basically, the heart is there where we’re saying, oh God, I want Your plan! I need to know…God, these plans that I have for my life, these thoughts about what I might do, Lord, I lay them at Your feet. God, I have no plan except to say, what do You want me to do?
Man, there is a surrender, but there is a surrender that brings peace to the heart. Oh, God! This is true for every one of us. I mean, you can get so busy in your life, and so involved in the things you think you have got to do, that we forget to just step back, take a deep breath and say, Lord, I’m not here to do what I think I need to do. You have promised to lead me.
Sometimes He could take you to a dark place where it looks like…looks hopeless, but you know, we just need to look up and say God, I am still in Your hands. You still love me.
( congregational amens ).
Lord, help me to just start where I’m at and begin to look to You. I’ll tell you, I’m so glad that God…He knows what’s wrong with us! He knew what was wrong with you and with me when He set out to save us!
( congregational amens ).
And it didn’t stop Him! How many of you get to a place in your Christian life where suddenly you come face to face with something, and you realize, oh my God, I didn’t know that was in there? I didn’t know I was so bad! Oh, Lord! How could You possibly have anything to do with somebody like me?
He said, “…I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (NIV). There’s something in the heart of God that gets a special joy out of taking something that is worthless in this world even, and making something out of it that will bring Him glory, and praise, and joy forever and ever and ever. There’s nobody too low for God to pick them up and say, you are my child. I have plans for you.
But oh God, do we need this! You know, we heard last night so much about the end of the age, and how we need to be ready. And people that aren’t even…that don’t even have oil in their lamps, they don’t have Christ in their heart, they’ve never settled the question. Do you belong to Christ, or do you belong to this world? It’s never been really answered. The door is there, but have you gone through that?
You know, you’re not born physically until you pass out of your mother’s womb. There’s an event. There’s a time. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic one. I mean, in the spiritual sense. But I’ll tell you, there is a time when we pass from death unto life!
( congregational response ).
And if it happens, you’ll know it, because there’ll be peace in your heart! And as people are looking on, they’ll know. You’re not gonna have to go out and shout it. They’re gonna see that there is something different in your life. But oh God! That’s part of the message that was there last night. I pray, I just call on God to bring you…that whatever’s stopping you, that you’ll step back and look, and say, is this worth throwing my soul away for? That’s the issue!
( congregational response ).
Let’s tell it straight! If you choose something other than Christ and His purpose and His plan for your life, you are choosing destruction!
( congregational amens ).
You might get a little bit of temporary pleasure out of this world and then it’s over! And you have thrown your soul away. And God loves you too much not to tell you the truth. Oh God! Help us, Lord!
And of course, we also were made aware that we’re living in the time that is…where that is approaching. We do not know the day nor the hour, and I am not gonna speculate. There have been too many idiots out there who try to calculate dates. Sorry for the word, but it’s the truth. Misled individuals, whatever.
( laughter ).
God has not fixed it to where we can calculate dates. He just says be ready! That’s all I need to do. But it’s be ready, if He should show up tonight! Wouldn’t that be awesome!
( congregational response ).
But it’s also be ready to stand in an hour of darkness! But you know the people who are gonna be able to stand are the ones that are walking with Him. You remember the scripture that Ben quoted in his prayer? I mean, like I said, we could have just said, there was my sermon.
( laughter ).
But he referred to that verse in Daniel, where Daniel was prophesying a time of terrible trouble that was coming in Israel, and it happened. About the second century BC, somewhere along in there. There was an evil king who came in and sacrificed a sow on the altar, desecrated it, took over, and compromised so many people.
But Daniel was looking forward. And he said, “…but the people that do know their God shall be strong…” and take action, is the sense of the Hebrew there. (KJV). They’re not gonna be paralyzed by the darkness. Folks, there is a darkness that is more than the absence of light. Or more than the absence of…more than wrong ideas. There is a spiritual power that’s very, very real!
( congregational amens ).
And it is swallowing up the world and it’s because God is taking His hand off progressively. And He’s taking His hand off because men do not want the truth. And there comes a time when God says, all right. And that is a form of judgment, when you are left to the mercy of demons.
But you know, He’s called us to live in this time? And it was said last night, very plainly, we’re not called to go live in a cave, and hide out and wait till Jesus comes. He’s gonna have a place for us. There could be people here who suffer in prison. People are doing it, all over the world, right now.
I don’t know where your path or mine takes us. But I’ll tell you, there’s one thing that matters in this world, and it’s people who are willing to walk the path that God has chosen! You know in Hebrews 12, there’s a scripture we quote so often. And it’s the one where we’re to, “…run with perseverance the race…” That is…
( congregational response ).
“…Marked out for us.” I think the NIV puts it. I like that. It is a…there is a path. There he calls it a race. But either way, there is a way that God has already marked out. He’s planned, this is the way where you’re gonna be able to go and serve me in a broken world. You’re gonna become what I want you to become. You’re gonna do what I want you to do. Your life is gonna be filled with purpose and meaning, because what you do will last forever. It’s gonna have eternal implications.
Everyone around you, just about, is gonna be out there wasting their time on stuff that’s gonna wind up being burned up, and they’re gonna lose out completely. But I’ve got a path that I’m calling you to walk it…or run it, in this case. It’s a race.
Man, that’s the one I want. That’s the one I want! And I’ve got to look to Jesus to do it. I mean, you look at other examples. This obviously isn’t very organized, but that’s all right. I rarely am. But you look at Jesus Himself. Again, do you think that was the way He lived? The Father had a purpose and a plan, and He went to His Father every day and said, what’s on the agenda today?
What do you think He was praying about? He says, I only do what the Father shows me. Somehow, the Father was able to communicate what He was supposed to do, where He was supposed to go. Some days the disciples were expecting Him to go this way and He went this way.
Often that was the case. Why are You going through Samaria? Why would You go to such a place? God knew about somebody in need, and He sent His Son, and His Son had a sensitive enough heart to say, I’m not here to do my own will. I’m here to carry out His plan. He’s already marked out a path that’s gonna fulfill a plan He had in His heart before the world was.
That’s my job. That’s the only job I’ve got. I don’t have to sit there and study to be a theologian. I mean, God may have people that want to…that He teaches, and all of that. There’s a place for some of that. But that is not the heart! The heart is just somebody who says, I’m Yours, Lord, and I need You to lead me. And I’m willing to let go of my life and my will and my plans, lay them all on the altar and say, what do You want me to do?
Is that the defining characteristic of your life? It’s a sobering question, isn’t it? Isn’t that a simple message, a simple word? And that’s what the Lord would say to me, and to every one of us, tonight. What do we take away? How do we go forward? How do we face our own issues, the issues of our lives? How do we get from here to there?
How do we walk…how do we find out God’s plan for us? How do we walk in it? How do we even realize He’s got a plan? Seek Him with all your heart…but walk with Me is His word to you, tonight. Just walk with Me. I’m here. I know you, inside and out. I know you better than you know yourself, and I’ve got a loving plan for you.
You can muddle around, you can strive, you can try, but you’re gonna just waste a lot of time and energy, when you could just come to a place of rest, and just say the defining characteristic of my life needs to be this simple…I’m just gonna walk with Him.
Close
July 24, 2022 - No. 1555
“Satan’s Dream and God’s Purpose” Conclusion
Broadcast #1555
July 24, 2022
July 24, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1555 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Think about this from the devil’s point of view. Here’s his dream, and now, all of a sudden, the Son of God was in his grasp, and he thought he had won, and all of a sudden, he realizes He’s gone! He’s gone to heaven, and I can’t get to Him, and the message is going out.
Man, if I were the devil, I would do everything in my power to thwart that. But what did Jesus say on one occasion when they accused Him of casting out devils because He was in league with the devil, and it was just all a big trick…is what they were saying? He said, how can Satan, if Satan is against himself, his kingdom won’t stand. His kingdom is divided. How can Satan cast out Satan?
I’ll tell you, the only way that can happen is if you’re gonna rescue somebody from a strong man, you’re gonna have to bind the strong man and then you can go in and spoil his goods. You’re gonna take something from him, I guess, in this case.
You see what Jesus was really saying about what was going to happen in world history? Do you think the Gospel would have gone to the ends of the world if Satan had had unfettered access to be able to do that? No. He wouldn’t.
That’s something the Lord has revealed, I believe, in a particular way, but, I don’t need special revelation, I can see it in the scriptures. Because that’s what we need to go by ultimately. We need to go by the fact that in order for the Gospel to go out, there had to be a restriction, a divine restriction on Satan’s ability to oppose the Gospel. Praise God!
And we call it the binding of Satan. I’m gonna go to something that will be…like I say, I have mixed feelings about trying to get into all of this, but I’m gonna go ahead and do it anyway. Well, look at the scripture that we use so times in Revelation 12. You remember how the child was born, and Satan, the dragon, tried to kill it, and then, it was caught up to heaven, and then, there was war in heaven? Do you remember what happened? What happened to Satan?
( congregational response ).
He lost a place in heaven. He was cast down to the earth and became aware that he only had a short time, and so he was filled with wrath, with anger. But the Word tells us in verse 10, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” (NIV).
Do you see the victory that was won there? And Satan literally lost a place. There was a restriction that was placed upon Satan. Now, here’s one that really, a lot of people, I don’t believe see, and that’s in Revelation chapter 20. Considering the time, I’m jumping out on a limb here, but I’m gonna do it anyway.
You see that prophesy of the 1,000 years. Now, if you were a Jew reading this, what would you assume, hearing about a kingdom that was established and rule and authority for 1,000 years? What would you assume by that? It’s a natural, earthly kingdom. Okay?
This book of Revelation is filled with symbols, and a lot of people think, oh, if it’s not literal, if you can’t touch it or see it, it’s not real. It’s just a vague…oh, it’s real, all right. But a symbol stands for something that is very, very real. Folks, this is real, but it’s not the way people have taken it. There was a restriction placed upon Satan.
“And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.”
Well, now, you could read that and say, oh, praise God, the influence of Satan is gone! Life is gonna be glorious and wonderful! You want to know what the binding was about? How do you know what the binding was about? How about looking down to the loosing? Think about that. If you want to know what this restraint upon Satan was really about, look at what happens when the restraint is released.
And you come down to the end, verse 7, “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out…” To do, what? “…To deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and…” To do, what? “…To gather them for battle.” And so forth. He goes around all over the world, and he encompasses the camp of the saints.
He’s got a…this is Satan being allowed one last opportunity to try to fulfill his dream. Throughout the ages…you know, Rome eventually fell, the great empire. There have been other empires. There have been other people that have risen up and tried to dominate the world. Hitler was certainly one of them, and no one has succeeded. Do you wonder why? Do you think, just maybe, Christ in on His throne and says, no, it’s not time?
( congregational response ).
We’re not there yet. There are people that I’m reaching out to right now. The Gospel is going out in power, and Satan, you can’t do anything that I don’t let you do until the time. Folks, the era in which we live, we are seeing in our lifetime the unfolding of the last loosing of Satan.
See, this kingdom that he talks about is real. There is real authority, but it’s in the spiritual realm. It’s real! It affects life on earth! But it’s not a political thing where you’re gonna have a reporter go in and interview Jesus and say, what’s your policy about this, and how’s, you know…I mean, get real. This is not that kind of a kingdom.
He reigns! But He’s on a throne where…beyond the reach of every devil. And every time he has tried to stop the Gospel from going out, God has overruled. In fact, many times, it’s when things are most difficult that the Gospel has gone out with the greatest power.
You know, in China, they thought they had squelched the Gospel, they had stamped it out with the great cultural revolution. Then all of a sudden, God began to raise up a younger generation, and they began to go out, and all of a sudden, you wound up with something like a hundred million people who are Christians in a place where it could cost you your life.
We keep getting reports out of Iran. Do you think Iran is a tough place to be a Christian? The word coming out of Iran is the mosques are empty! And Christians are meeting in little groups in homes! I’ll tell you, God has a way of reaching. His power reaches past what the Devil does!
But we are in that last time when Satan is being allowed to go out into the earth, and to seduce men with his lies and to try to gather them together. You want to know why the world is in such upheaval? Obviously, he’s used this disease. It’s become an instrument of control, greater control. You can argue the merits and demerits of this, that’s not the point.
But Satan is being allowed to do so many things. There are natural disasters that are happening. And seemingly…I mean, there are economic issues that are just…we see our society being torn apart because groups are being pitted against one another, and it’s just nothing but anger and hatred and name-calling on both sides.
That’s part of the world we’re living in. The devil is being allowed to tear apart the fabric of our world, because he has a dream. And, for a short time, God is going to allow him to, seemingly, fulfil his dream.
I don’t know exactly what that’s gonna look like for us. I haven’t got a neat little chart that tells you when and where and exactly what’s gonna happen. But I do know what the Lord has showed us. But what I see in the Word is enough. He is being allowed to pursue his dream. He’s being allowed to do something that he couldn’t do for almost 2,000 years. And suddenly, okay, it’s time. We are in the last hour of earth’s history.
And I guess, if I had to bring this down to what that means for us, first of all, we need live with a reality of what’s going on. One of the things that we are encouraged to do, because I’ll just refer to a scripture you know about. 1st Thessalonians 5 talks about how suddenly things are going to end. Absolutely, out of the blue, as far as the world is concerned, they will have no clue what’s about to happen, and suddenly, Christ will appear!
And we know from putting all the scriptures together, it means the end. It means the end of planet earth. God’s gonna gather His people, and disaster will fall upon this planet, and judgment will follow. But what does He say to us? It’s high time…I am gonna look it over. I’m gonna look up the scripture. 1st Thessalonians 5. I want to get it right.
“Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, Peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” That’s pretty sober language, isn’t it?
“But…” glorious but, “…you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.” Praise God.
“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep…” That is, whether we’re still alive or have died prior to this. “…We may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” Folks, God wants His people to be awake.
( congregational response ).
Interesting…I can’t remember exactly where, but one of the scriptures I read was a piece in Isaiah that talked about how God has to deal with the wicked. And basically, what it says, the paraphrase is, if God blesses the wicked, they don’t get it. They don’t learn anything about righteousness. They don’t appreciate it. They just take it for granted and think it’s an affirmation of what they’re doing.
The only way the wicked could possibly learn about righteousness is to be judged, and to suddenly face some form of judgment, and now, all of a sudden, oh my God! You know, something’s wrong. And in that context, God can actually reach some people.
You wonder why things get difficult? How else is God going to reach those that He’s going to reach? And you’re gonna see the same thing that we’ve seen throughout history. You’re gonna see people migrating into two camps, and it’s gonna become very evident the further we go which camp somebody’s in.
Right now, there’s still a scattered remnant. God knows His people. And I always, I pray this often, God, I want to be just as open as I need to be to every brother, every sister. I also want to be discerning, because I’m not smart enough to figure all this out. God is. We need Him!
( congregational response ).
Do you see the connection with things that the Lord has emphasized lately, how much we need to be walking with the Lord, how much we need to be looking to Him in a practical sense, allowing Him to live through us?
But you know, I got way into this before I suddenly said, my God, this is the logical next step for what we talked about last week. Because now, the question is, okay, what do we do? Do we just hunker down and find a cave somewhere and wait this out? Okay, Jesus, You’re here.
Here’s the thing that jumped out at me as I was thinking about…the more I was thinking about this. Do you think it’s an accident that you’re here? Do you think that it’s an accident that you and I are alive at this very moment? If we serve a God who plans and purposes the way it is described everywhere in scripture, then God has a reason for you being here and you and you and me. We’re not just here as digits, numbers on a page, numbers…you know, some vague membership in a vague kingdom somewhere. There is a reason we’re here.
How many times have we heard it referred to? Was it Ruth? Not Ruth. Esther is who I’m thinking of. Esther found herself in a very, very unlikely place, a Jewish girl as the queen of a heathen empire!
But yet, when the time came, that there was an evil man who had a plot against the Jewish people, guess what? She was right there! And her uncle said, who knows whether you have been brought to the kingdom for such time of this? And she had a critical role to play.
Jesus came into this world in the fullness of time. It was an expression of God’s heart and God’s purpose. He was there, not by accident. This is His time. And we talked last week about how Jesus lived when it came time, especially, for ministry. He says, the Father is working, and I work.
He didn’t get handed a handbook of what the Father wanted Him to do and go out and do it in His own wisdom. His whole ministry was devoted to just seeking God, walking with Him, basically saying, Father, what are You doing? What’s Your plan? And if there wasn’t something to do right then, He didn’t do it. He didn’t try to figure it out. He didn’t try to plan. He just listened to what His Father said, and He did it.
And by all human reckoning, it didn’t make much sense. You would think after He had gone to a few places and healed everybody that was sick, that that would define His ministry. My God, look what God’s doing. Let’s go out and organize this, let’s…but He’d leave there, and He’d go to some out-of-the-way place and heal one person. He’d preach to crowds, and He’d preach to one person. And when He healed them, He didn’t even do it the same way.
You know, we’ve talked about that before. There was this relationship that I believe God wants to bring His people to, where we know we’re not accidents. We’re not here to do our own thing. We’re here to be alert and awake, to realize where we are in history!
Satan has tried, throughout history, to fulfill his dream! Jesus went to a throne and said, you’re restricted to what you can do! You can’t fulfill your dream, until I’m done sending the Gospel to the ends of the earth. And now, at the end, okay, go for it.
In the very context of what Satan is being allowed to do, God is finishing His job. We’re not supposed to just sit here and watch the devil and see what he’s doing. We’re here to look to God and say, God, what are You doing?
( congregational amens ).
Because we are absolutely called to the Kingdom for such a time as this. It doesn’t matter who we are or who we aren’t, how big or how small our place is, every one of us has a place! Every one of us can rest in God, and speak as He speaks, and act as He acts. May God help us to seek Him.
Many times, we refer to the prophecy, it goes right back to Daniel. One of the things the Lord showed him out of the Book of Truth was that there was going to be a wicked emperor come around. It was one of…it was a descendent of one of the generals that had been under Alexander.
And he came into Israel with great anger, and he absolutely desecrated their temple! He took a hog and slaughtered it on the alter and rededicated the temple of God to a heathen god. I don’t remember which one. It says, he corrupted many because of flattery. He came in, he knew how to manipulate the people.
But what did it also say? “But the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.” (KJV). Firmly resist him, take action. The original is so simple. It’s just, take action is a pretty good way to do it. They’re not going to be paralyzed by fear. They’re going to be able to say, God’s still on the throne. We’re here for a reason. God, just show us what to do! Give us the courage and the faith to do it, and to do it with the energy You supply.
That’s kind of simple, but it’s kind of hard for us, isn’t it? Oh, man, we want to jump in there. We want to get it done. We want to see a need and fix it! And God said, I have a plan that has been unfolding from all eternity. “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” (NIV).
We don’t know His times. We don’t know His ways. We can’t do God’s work. God has to do His work, but the glorious thing is He wants to do it through us. He has a people that He longs to work in harmony with and through, just as He did His Son, just as He did the prophets, just as He did ordinary people in the New Testament. It’s not who you are in the natural. It’s who He is.
( congregational response ).
But oh, I’ll tell you, it’s not gonna be long. You see it unfolding. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. Things could just suddenly gel. It’s easy to see what’s happening in America. It’s not the America we grew up with, those of us who are older especially. Young people, you have no idea…how it’s changed.
But Satan is being allowed to capture the hearts and minds of those who just don’t want God. Some of them want religion, but they don’t want God. They don’t want Christ to rule in their hearts.
And I’ll tell you, when you start down that road, it’s darkness, it’s deception, and all Satan has to do is just to tear apart the fabric and then raise up a hope presented to humanity. Here is your way forward. We’re gonna get together. We’re gonna govern the planet together. We’re gonna be united! Justice for everybody!
You’re gonna hear those kinds of things. You’re hearing them now. But I’ll tell you, it’s happening under our eyes. Don’t you just go to sleep and think life is gonna get back to normal. There is no normal in this world. We are on a track. We are on a trajectory toward the coming of Christ.
As the Word says, it’ll be an absolute shock to this world. But oh, what an awesome thing it will be for those of us who are alive and remain. If we’ve gone on, we’ll come back with Him, to meet those who are still here. But if you’re still here, oh my God. Won’t it be something to have an angel fly up to you, take you by the hand and lead you up to be with the Lord forever? And your body will be changed like that. That, I can’t wait for.
( laughter ).
These old bodies are getting more and more wrong with them. But there’s one coming that nothing will ever be wrong with it. We’re gonna stand there, and we’re gonna…we’re just gonna be blown away with the greatness of His plan.
Yeah, I know there’s a lot of terrible stuff happening in the world. But God is allowing men to taste the fruit of what they have chosen. There’s no way He can bless the human race and bring them out of what’s going on. We’re gonna have to see…we’re gonna have to see iniquity for what it is, but that’s another story.
But anyway, maybe that’s more than enough for today. It’s a big picture. But do you see Satan setting out on his dream and God continually interrupting it all the way along, until He really interrupted it at the resurrection? And, all of a sudden, there was a period of history when Satan was restricted from his dream. He was allowed to oppose the Gospel but not to unite the nations! Okay?
And then, at the end, there’s this little period of time when he is allowed to pursue his dream, but we know how the story ends. It ends suddenly with the coming of Christ, and then the judgment and then eternity.
I’ll tell you, you need to be on one side or the other. You are on one side or the other. You could be sitting here, and you’ve never, never really opened your heart and seen who Jesus is, and how much God loves you and His purpose for your life. I can’t do that for you. I pray God will…I pray that God…I’ll tell you, if God lays somebody on your heart, pray for them. It makes a difference. Sometimes, we want to jump in and try to fix it and try to get somebody. We need to say, God, You are the One who…You’re the only One that can change somebody’s heart.
( congregational response ).
Lord, do it. We can’t be dismayed by how people react or don’t react. We’re gonna have to say, God, You know. You know every one that is Yours, and every one that is Yours will stand there in white one day because of what Jesus did, because of the heart and the purpose of God. Praise God!
I mean, you could go on and on talking about this, but I’ll tell you, we have come to the Kingdom for such a time as this, not because we’re anything, but because of the heart and the purpose of God. You and I are alive today, not in the 1800’s, or the 1500’s, or whatever. We’re here now, because God, in His purpose in eternity, knew about this time and ordained that you and I live right now.
We need to live with that awareness and say, God, help me to fulfill my purpose as a part of Your purpose. May the purposes for which I live align with Your purposes.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what God is looking for from His people, and I believe He’s gonna draw a people together more and more, that will live in harmony with that eternal purpose. Satan has his dream, but God has His purpose. We know which one wins. To Him be the glory! Praise God!
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July 17, 2022 - No. 1554
“Satan’s Dream and God’s Purpose” Part One
Broadcast #1554
July 17, 2022
July 17, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1554 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I had…we’ve had a lot of services, over the last while, that really cover the ground of Christian living, how we serve God in the world, in a practical sense and a lot of the principles to do that—that are involved in doing that. But I’ve had on my heart for a while, and maybe this is the time to begin, to set that a little bit more in its context, because we’re not just serving God in a vacuum, are we? We’re serving Him…not only in a broken world, but at a particular point in history.
And you know, the people of the world have their own worldviews. The one that seems to be prevailing, in a general sense, is a man-centered, forward-looking, we’ve got to get together and solve the world’s problems for the future of mankind and we can do it. And, it’s very much a way of thinking and working and conducting your life. And more and more you see that happening. And of course, obviously, there’s a lot of turmoil and people resisting that, but nonetheless, that’s kind of the prevailing spirit that’s going on in the world right now.
But I believe with all my heart that Christians need to understand the times. We need to know where we’re at in history and why things are happening. But more than that, what is our place in all of that? Because, again, we’re not just sitting here trying to muddle through the Christian life and then go to heaven one day, although that’s part of it. God has a reason for things happening the way they do.
And, I don’t know…I thought about painting a big picture, and sometimes I like to do that. I know it’s difficult to do. I’ve had so many scriptures come to mind. They’re all…most of them are familiar to us. But, I’m gonna try and trust the Lord to help me to paint a picture that will show us what’s happened throughout history, and where we’re at. And then, in the light of that, that’s where we go forward to what is our place and our purpose in it.
But we know, of course, that God had a plan before the foundation of the world. We’ve talked about these things many times, and it was to have a family that was in His likeness, that shared His values, that shared His holiness, His purity, His character and everything. He created a world that was pure. There was nothing wrong with it. Everything was as it should be. There was no death. There was no sorrow, no suffering, no…nothing like that, none of the curse that we see today.
But He created man in His own image, gave us a choice, and part of that was because He’s not trying to raise an army of clones. We’re not just robots. He wants sons who know good and evil and absolutely make a choice—a choice against all odds. And so, He allowed what has happened.
We know the story about how He had high-order angels—very powerful angels that He used in the creation. He gave them jobs to do that were specific in carrying out some of the ordering of creation. But of course, the story begins, very quickly, in the beginning of Genesis that one of the key angels that He had given such great power to rebelled against Him. And decided he wanted to be his own god. And so, things have unfolded ever since, according to that.
And of course, he seduced our first parents into throwing off God’s supposed yoke, and embracing his own philosophy that you are your own god, and that’s how you’re going to find your highest meaning in the world. And frankly, if you look around, that’s pretty much how the world lives. That lie still holds.
There are other things I’d like to go into, and I swear almost every aspect of what I’m talking about you could make a message out of, but I’m gonna try, by God’s grace, to, as I say, to paint a bigger picture.
If you want to see a summary of what God says about what happened in the beginning, look at Isaiah 24, familiar scripture. I’m sorry, Isaiah 14—Isaiah 14. One of…hopefully we will see this in a minute. One of Satan’s efforts, to fulfill his dream, had to do with the kingdom called Babylon.
Now Babylon wasn’t even really on the map when Isaiah prophesied this. It wasn’t significant. Let’s put it that way. It was sort of there, but it wasn’t a really significant kingdom. And yet, Isaiah was able, by God’s foresight and knowledge, to see what was gonna happen, that there was gonna be this great kingdom of Babylon that was gonna rise in the earth. And his prophecy looks beyond just the kingdom to its fall.
And one of the interesting things about God, when He prophesies something, when He inspires somebody to prophesy something, there is meaning embedded in that, that goes way beyond anything we could figure out, anything that the prophet himself understood. And so, we’re seeing, not only something that happened in history—in our history, but we’re seeing things that are going to happen at the end of time.
So anyway, God is looking past the human beings who were involved in Babylon and in verse 12, He says, “How you have fallen from heaven, morning star…” (NIV) – Translated Lucifer in the King James – “…Morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
“You said in your heart, I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
The heights of the north…there’s a…in this particular translation that uses Zaphon, that was apparently a Canaanite mountain that was worshipped as sacred. So, it became a symbol of where Satan established his throne over the world, and over the heathen religions of the world. But you see from God’s point of view, looking way past the physical nation of Babylon, He’s looking at the real inspiration behind it.
And we see what happened, in the beginning, where this servant of God, fell to the earth. And we know, from Revelation 12…you see it in symbolic picture as a dragon—a great dragon. And what did it say about the dragon when he did what he did, when he fell from heaven? His tail dragged a third of the stars of heaven.
In other words, I believe it didn’t all happen at once, but I believe, over time, there were many other angels that God gave jobs to. Go down, watch over this people. Go down and watch over this particular nation and this particular nation. And, one by one all of these angels rebelled—joined in the rebellion and became the heathen gods that they worshipped. There were real entities—real spiritual entities that absolutely existed, and they had real power.
And so, Satan began to gather his kingdom. I guess if I had to title all this…praise God, it would be, “Satan’s Dream and God’s Purpose,” because that’s what we live in the middle of. Satan had a dream when he rebelled against God and he has been working relentlessly, ever since, to fulfill his dream, but yet, there is an overriding thing that we need to ever remember, as God’s people, that God has a purpose! There’s nothing Satan can do about it.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! And so, just look down, for example. I mean, this is everywhere in Isaiah. What a powerful…this is where my reading is right now. That’s one reason that this came to me. But, down later in the same passage, he’s looking at this particular point to the Assyrians, which was another…this was an empire that preceded Babylon.
Verse 24, “The Lord Almighty has sworn, Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen. I will crush the Assyrian in my land; on my mountains I will trample him down. His yoke will be taken from my people, and his burden removed from their shoulders. This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?” Praise God! Praise God!
You know, we know that…I’m not gonna try to go into…there are so many questions you could branch out into. But we know, from later on in Isaiah, that God even created the Devil. Now, He didn’t tell him to be the Devil, but He knew what was gonna happen. And God, absolutely, is using the evil of this world to help to shape us. And so, God knows what He’s doing.
You know, we’re gonna get to the end, we’re gonna realize that God hasn’t made any mistakes, that all the terrible things that have happened in this world have served His ends and His purposes.
But anyway, we see Satan setting out to rule over mankind. And you know, we remember the ancient world, up until Noah’s day, there was a handful of people that God continued to reach out to, to move upon hearts to cause them to realize, hey, I’m God. But most men began to serve their own lusts. They lived according to what they could see, what they could feel, what appealed to them naturally, and they blocked out…you read Romans 1, you get a pretty good picture of what happened. They knew about God but they rejected Him.
And so, there came a day, when it looked like Satan had won. There was one man and his family, Noah, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and he walked with God. What a testimony! May God grant that that be our testimony, regardless of what happens in the world.
( congregational response ).
May we be some who walk in the spirit of Noah, who walked with God, regardless of what happens, because a lot of stuff is gonna happen. But I’ll tell you, God is on the throne!
But even in that terrible time, we see God stepping in. In other words, Satan has been pursuing his dream ever since, but God has continually overshadowed and overruled everything that Satan has done. Thank God! Oh, and we know how the story ends, don’t we? Praise God!
But anyway, we see how that unfolded and God reached a point where judgment was inevitable. He raised up Noah, gave them a provision to build an ark, to preserve life, and what happened to everybody else that was under judgment, as we’ve said many times? Every single one—every air breathing creature, for that matter, on the planet died.
And God started over. And then He commanded men to go out and replenish the earth, and instead they listened to a demon-inspired leader by the name of Nimrod, and they gathered in a particular place in the near east. It’s probably Iraq, today, somewhere in that area. And they decided they were gonna build them a city and a tower whose end would reach to heavens, “…lest we be scattered…” (KJV). We don’t want to be scattered. We want to join forces. You see that spirit at work still? It’s that same spirit.
But God said, We’ve got to do something about this. If We don’t intervene right now, nothing is gonna be withheld from them, “…which they have imagined to do.” And so, God stepped in, and He absolutely confounded their languages. All of a sudden, they woke up one day and they couldn’t understand each other. Different families…everyone spoke in different languages and so, the end result was everybody wound up having to scatter.
And people began to…people did migrate all over the world and that’s the way God intended it be, in the first place. Because He wanted people to be, basically, aware of Him and seeking Him. Always His heart has been to reach out to the human race.
You know, I remember mentioning this one time. How many of you are aware that there is a painting, I imagine it’s someplace in Europe, of somebody’s conception of the Tower of Babel? Anybody remember that? Yeah, there’s a famous painting. And this is what they imagine the Tower of Babel looked like.
Well, guess what? The European Union built themselves a headquarters, and it is an exact replica of that painting of the Tower of Babel! That tell you something about the spirit that’s driving the world today? It’s coming straight out of the heart of Lucifer. It is still part of his dream, to rule over mankind and to unite them.
Now obviously, in the ancient world, it was a communication problem and people were scattered. You would have a powerful nation rise up and they couldn’t influence people too far away because, you know, they didn’t have the internet, didn’t have transportation, didn’t have the stuff we have today.
But anyway, there were nations that rose up and became powerful in varying degrees. Egypt, until God dealt with them. Assyria became a pretty strong empire within its particular reach. But over time, there came to be four major empires that were raised up, one after the other. Daniel was in the middle of one of them and that was Babylon. God raised up Babylon and He raised them up, basically, to carry out His judgment against Israel, against Judah, at that particular time.
They had absolutely rejected God, and were serving heathen idols. They had done worse than the people God sent them in to displace. And so, judgment came. That’s a theme you see in the early chapters of Isaiah. You see God allowing…dealing with a nation, allowing it to go so far, and then its wickedness gets so great that finally He raises up somebody else and makes them strong and puts it in their heart to go over and conquer them and carry out God’s judgment.
And then, later on, you see God dealing with the very instrument of His judgment and saying, you went way beyond what I wanted. I was trying to make Myself known to you and you thought it was because you were great. And now I’m gonna have to judge you.
And so, God is continually intervening. Every time a nation tries to get too big for its britches, God steps in. I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who rules!
You remember how He taught Nebuchadnezzar? Oh, wow! Did Nebuchadnezzar learn a lesson that he’d tell the whole world about it? God has a way of making Himself known. The seven years that Nebuchadnezzar lived as an animal until God restored him to his throne.
The fact that he got restored to his throne is pretty much of a miracle! I mean, you want a guy to walk in after being seven years living like an animal and say, okay, I’m here to take over again? I mean, the very fact that God saved his place is a miracle. But oh, what was his conclusion at the end of this? There’s a God in heaven. He rules. Nobody tells Him what to do. He rules in the affairs of men, and I want everybody to know about this God. What an amazing God we have!
But the Lord revealed to Daniel a lot of things that were going to happen. How many of you remember we had a message, oh, several years ago now, called, “The Book of Truth”? And, what it was, was simply this. God sent an angel to Daniel in response to three weeks of fasting and prayer. And when the angel got there, he said, God sent me as soon as you began to pray, but I have been engaged in battle with the Prince of Persia.
Now, do you think that was a human being? No, this was a battle in the unseen realm. This was a real battle with a real enemy. And God was basically invading enemy territory. You know there are battles being fought right now that we can be engaged in? God has purposes that He is working out in the earth and He wants us to be engaged and aware. That’s the kind of…that’s the thing that I sense more that God wants to make real to us.
But in any case, he arrives and basically says, I had to fight and Michael, the archangel, the great angel came, and he helped me to fight, so now I’m come to tell you something. And what he’s gonna tell him were things that were going to happen in the future. And he says, I want to show you things in the Book of Truth.
How many of you know when God writes history, it’s not just things that happened, it’s everything that will happen? Do you know history has already been written?
You know, some people will take that and say, oh well, God’s determined everything, so we just sort of sit back and let it happen. No! God has a way to…think how great He’d have to be, to be able to foreknow every choice that every human being makes and to weave out of that a perfect purpose and a perfect plan, in which people will either be a part of His kingdom or they will be destroyed. That’s what it’s coming to. That is how…that’s how real. That’s what’s really happening on this planet. God is absolutely bringing things down to a conclusion.
But anyway, we see these empires that Satan was able to raise up, Babylon. God allowed him to do that. And then Babylon reached a certain point. You remember Belshazzar and the feast? You’ve been, “… weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.” And it was that very night the Medes and the Persians came in and took over, and their empire prevailed over the known world of that day.
And there came a day when it was time for God to intervene. They got too big for their britches. They thought their gods had done it and they were so great, and they were wonderful. And God says, time to intervene. He raised up Alexander the Great and the Greeks, who conquered the known world.
Amazing story when you dig into the details of everything that he was enabled to do. But he was a heathen man, and out of his kingdom four kingdoms arose as soon as he died. He died in his thirties. Started out as a teenager, died in his thirties, and four generals split into four kingdoms. And they were at war with one another.
And then eventually Rome came into power. And Daniel was told all about this, particularly in chapter 2, if you want to look it up. There was this tremendous prophecy of what was coming and the different kingdoms that were coming. And one of the things it says was, “In the days….” I’m gonna go ahead and open that up, if you don’t mind. A lot of these scriptures I should have written down so I could easily turn to them, but that’s…chalk it up to old age, or something.
Verse 44. He just told about all these kings and all these kingdoms, “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” (NIV).
Wow! You talk about God’s overreaching plan—overarching plan. I don’t care what the Devil’s dream is. God has a purpose that is being worked out. It is being worked out as we sit here this morning. I know many of you are like me. If you read the headlines at all, you look and say, how in the world could such a thing happen? How could people think that way? It makes no sense! The world has gone crazy.
People are afraid. They don’t know what…I mean, you got people that are progressive and then you’ve got people that are on the other side that have just as bad a spirit, many times. Folks, we need to have the Spirit of Christ and see what He’s doing!
( congregational amens ).
Because our job is not to fix America! Our job is not to fix the world! Our job is to live out the kingdom that he’s talking about here. It’s the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s the one that will last!
( congregational response ).
You remember the scripture, we need to go ahead and read it, because this is back in Isaiah. Isaiah, chapter 9. Oh, how many wonderful, awesome prophecies there are in the Book of Isaiah of what was coming! He prophesied against the people and against the sins of the people, but always there was this sense of looking forward!
And there were things that they didn’t understand, at the time, but God was…it was like God was launching a missile, that creative word that was gonna bring something—gonna make something happen at the appropriate time. I’ll tell you, God knows what He’s doing, knows how to do it. Isn’t it awesome that He involves us?
( congregational response ).
I mean, here was a man named Isaiah. He wasn’t anybody special, but God put His hand upon that man, and put words in his mouth and he faithfully gave them out and they’re recorded for us as well.
And look at the things that God has done. I’ve made this point before, but think about this. When the apostles and others went out to preach the Gospel in the first century, and they read the scriptures, what did they read?
( congregational response ).
The Old Testament. The Gospel is there! Once God opens your eyes to see what that was really about, and it wasn’t just about a natural people, natural kingdoms and all that kind of stuff…what was really in the heart of God that was coming.
Look at verse 6 of chapter 9 that we read so many times. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
Wow! I don’t see any wiggle room in that. I don’t know how in the world the devil manages to deceive himself, but he is one deceived guy. And you know, we’ve made the point many times how God hid what He was planning. His purpose was unfolding. He was interfering enough with the devil so the devil couldn’t fulfill his dream, but all the while He was setting something in motion that was gonna last forever. And I’ll tell you, it came at the exact point in time when God sent His Son into the world.
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July 10, 2022 - No. 1553
“Learn From Me” Conclusion
Broadcast #1553
July 10, 2022
July 10, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1553 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: We are the ones who make trouble for ourselves by the way we react to the things that God designs and allows in our lives. Let”s let that sink in. Quit blaming the stuff that happened ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, or whenever. Stop blaming the people in your life. You look in the mirror and say, I”m the one. Jesus experienced a lot more than you and I did. How did He handle it? Oh, yeah, but He was the Son of God! Yeah, He was a man, too. He came down to experience every temptation, everything that we experience. Did He not?
( congregational amens ).
Thank God, He showed us what it”s like to do that without sin. Thank God for the Lamb—the spotless Lamb! Praise God! But He doesn”t just say, learn from…I”m gonna give you a course in this. I”m gonna teach you the concepts and then you go out and do it. Learn from me!
How did He do what He did? There was a…not just a union with the Father, in the sense that He agreed with him. He did that. That”s a key right there. We fight God. So many times in our lives, He”s trying to do something, we”re fighting Him. We don”t even realize we”re fighting Him because we think we”re right, and He doesn”t have any right touching that. Or, it”s not really Him, or something. You know, there”s always some excuse to deflect. But see, not only was Jesus in complete agreement with his Father about everything…that”s a pretty good prescription for peace, isn”t it?
( congregational response ).
He was in agreement with the Father, but He was dependent upon the Father, because the reality is even when we know what to do, we don”t have the power to do it! God wants us to take that place. It does something in us that nothing else can do. You could get people to be religious and proud of it. But for us to take a lowly, humble, dependent, needy…the only hope that I can have is mercy, that is as contrary to human nature as you can get. But that is what salvation is about.
Do we want to enjoy what Jesus is so freely offering to all? This is how it happens. And I just pray that God will burn this truth into my heart, because it”s so simple but it”s so hard! We are so stubborn! We fight so hard, “cause it”s the way we think it”s supposed to go! God, we”ve got to go this way! What are you taking me this way for? Why don”t you fix this?
You know we can even get where Paul got. How many times do we use the scripture where the devil began tormenting Him and He went to God about it? God, get rid of this guy! And finally, the Lord said, “…my strength is made perfect in weakness.” (KJV). And Paul saw that there was a reason God had allowed that.
And what did he do? Did he say, all right, I”m not happy about it? No! Thank God for what you”re doing! God, I get it! Because my heart is to agree with You, to be useful to You. If this is what it takes, then okay, Lord, I get it!
Man, do you see Jesus pictured in that as well? You think about the Son of God. You think about somebody who was there, with the Father, before the world was, before there was any such thing as a creation…a glorious, divine Son of God, speaking galaxies into existence. And now there He is on earth dependent upon his Father for everything. What a place He took!
And his life is characterized by what He said, “…I am gentle.” (NIV). Think about how He treated the people around him, and how they treated him. And yet there was this gentleness, this compassion. They saw God in him. It was real! It was alive! “…I am gentle and humble in heart.” Does that describe you?
( congregational inaudible ).
I don”t think it describes any of us very well. We are proud and stubborn.
( congregational inaudible ).
See, I got somebody here who agrees with me. I know you all do.
( laughing ).
You all should. Because it”s the truth, isn”t it? Oh God, do we have stuff to learn to get to this place where we can just let go. Aren”t you glad God doesn”t dump it all on us at once? Oh my!
But you know, if we are just willing to get what Jesus is saying…the simplicity of it. To get up in the morning and look to Him and say, my place today is not to figure it all out. It”s not to chart my course. It”s not to do all the stuff that the world tells us to do, or my own nature drives me to do, or just to seek this because I like it, or I want it, or I think I should go this…God, I give you a blank check. Lead me.
Do what is needed in me today! Open my eyes to my own needs! Open my eyes to where I”m not being gentle and humble in heart, because that”s the big, great need that we all have. Every single one of us needs to come to a place…praise God, where we can just let go and find rest for our souls.
I believe there are saints of God in history that have come to a deeper place than most of us. And you read their testimonies and you will discover that in every case it was a surrender. It was coming into a perfect alignment, a more and more perfect, let me put it that way, alignment with the Father”s will, where we have a heart that trusts Him, enough to say, God, I don”t know what is right or best for me, and You do, and I”m giving You a blank check.
Work in me. Help me to surrender issue by issue, and learn from You how to handle life so that I can be this kind of a person. This is what You long for me.
What am I fighting for? My way! And some of us are more stubborn than others. But we all are stubborn in our own ways. Oh God, give us the grace to let go and have what He offers.
I was thinking of the scripture we preached three different messages on one time, where God…well, let me look over at it. It”s in Isaiah 26, the promise of God. “You will keep in perfect peace…” in the Hebrew there it says, “peace, peace.” You will keep in peace, peace, “…those whose minds are steadfast….” We don”t go this way and go that way based on our feelings, and how things look. There”s a steadfastness.
There”s a consistency. Lord, I don”t care whether I”m on the mountain or I”m in the valley, I”m trusting you! That”s where I”m headed! I want you! I want your will, period! There”s a steadfastness that doesn”t bend with the wind, doesn”t react to every little thing, everything that goes wrong that we don”t like. “…those whose minds are steadfast…” why? “…because they trust in you.”
( congregational amens ).
“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the rock eternal.” Man, you want a rock? Do you think we”re gonna need a rock in this world?
( congregational response ).
You don”t see it. It”s so close to coming apart that all God would have to do is say the word and everything would collapse in our society, and the world. We were talking today at lunch, it”s a house of cards, folks. I”m not saying that to make people feel afraid. But the reality is, we have no security in this world…except Him.
( congregational amens ).
Do you want to face this, the stuff in this world without him?
( sighing ).
You”re pretty blind if that”s the way you feel. May God open eyes. But I want to be one of these that comes to Him with these burdens and realizes this is not how He wants me to live. It could be a hard heart of self-will. It could be a reaction to somebody.
It could be fear. Fear is a burden people carry. God didn”t give us the spirit of fear. He doesn”t want us to sit here and be in a state of anxiety about what”s gonna happen to me? Praise God! We ought to be able to say with Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” What do you lose if you die?
( congregational response ).
Paul says, it”s gain.
( congregational amens ).
Man, that”s a ticket out of here. I”ll tell you, there are plenty of times… you know, getting a little older, you start thinking, oh my God, how long do I have to live in this place?
( congregational response ).
Part of me just says, God, take me on, I want out of here. There”s nothing here. I mean, you”re young, you don”t realize a lot of things, but you get a little older, you see the vanity of this world.
And especially if you see it at all with God”s revelation. God wants us to see clearly, through his eyes so that we can walk with Him and learn from Him. But, you know, as long as we”re here, there are gonna be people who are gonna have to stand in this darkness and this storm. We”re going to need Him.
( congregational amens ).
We”re gonna need exactly what Jesus said. Yes, there may be times we”ll fight battles. We may have to go say, Lord, if there”s any way I can get out of this, take it from me, take this cup from me. But the bottom line has always got to be, nevertheless not my will but thine be done.
( congregational amens ).
If that is the bedrock conviction of our hearts, and it”s not just a religious saying that we have, but it”s something that God has birthed in here, man, you”ve got what you need. Did you happen to notice that when Jesus got done praying that, what happened? Do you remember? Angels came and did what?
( congregational response ).
Strengthened him! You know, what did…what did Isaiah say about the fact that we do get weary sometimes. But those who hope, or those who rest in the Lord, wait on the Lord, different translations, anyway, those who wait on the Lord will do what?
( congregational response ).
They”ll, “…renew their strength.” And then all the different ways that that”s manifested. How many of you need your strength renewed?
( congregational response ).
How many of you need a deeper rest in your life? How many believe it”s there?
( congregational response ).
Are you beginning to understand what the issue is? Go look in the mirror and say, if I have a heart of unrest, God didn”t give it to me. I can”t blame the devil. Jesus had to deal with the devil and He had rest. How did He do that? Well, He was aligned at all points with his Father. He said, didn”t come to do my will, I came to do his.
And so, at every point, it was God, Father, what do you want me to do? I have no agenda here, no “dog in this hunt.” Lord, I”m just…Father, I”m here to do your will. Help me to be just surrendered and aligned with You and trusting in Your strength to be able to do what You want me to do.
At every point, He was just connected to his Father…His will, His might, His actions, every part. That”s what the Lord wants us to learn from Him. The more we do that, the more we”re gonna be what He wants us to be in this broken world, to one another, to people outside. As long as the Lord”s got us here, He has a reason!
( congregational response ).
He made you and me with a purpose! There”s not a single person in this place that”s an accident!
You were made by a gracious God on purpose, Who loves you and has an eternal purpose for your heart. But right now, He”s got you here, got me here. Yeah, there are battles. Yes, it”s a tough world. But He is right here with us, and He longs to bring us to a place where we can have, in spite of everything that”s going on around us, we can still have a rest in here, because we”re in harmony with him. And I”ll tell you, God”s looking for that kind of a person.
But think of what He offers us. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened….” is that you tonight? Well, He”s inviting you. What are you carrying tonight? Bring it to him. You know, like the old gospel Song, take it to the Lord. “Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.” Some of you remember that one. I hear Livera. I know she knows them all.
( laughter ).
Absolutely. Praise God! “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you….” Take it…it”s not saying I”m gonna impose this on you and force you to do. No, He wants a willing heart that says, God, I want to be connected to You. My safety is being connected to You and surrendered to Your will! I”m not safe trusting myself!
( congregational response ).
It doesn”t work! Oh, that”s the hardest thing in the world to find the grace to realize what our real problem is. And what God…the lengths God is willing to go to take somebody like me, and refurbish me, refit me, change me completely, replace the old me with a new me. And make me able to walk with Him in a totally different world. Man, that”s worth everything, isn”t it?
( congregational response ).
God wants us to go out of here with a deeper sense of rest. But not just the rest, like it”s an experience, a passing experience. He wants this to become more of a characteristic of our lives because we learn how it happens.
We learn how Jesus managed to stay in a place of rest. How did that happen? He spent time with His Father. He walked with Him. He sought His will. He did it. He trusted His Father in everything, and He understood that the supply of the Spirit that He needed to do what He did came from His Father. He said, it”s the Father in me doing the works. Well, Christ wants to be the source of our strength and the source of all that we are. He”s able to share that same life that was in Him with us.
( congregational amens ).
That”s what gives us the power to be something that we are otherwise not and could never be. “Take my yoke…” that”s a voluntary thing “…upon you and learn from me…” that”s the school-of-hard knocks, that”s not a classroom “…for I am gentle and humble in heart…” and what a positive promise, “…you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Oh, praise God! This world”s burden is nothing like this. It”ll give you burdens all right, but it”s nothing like this. And I don”t care what you achieve here, it”s going up in flames. And your life will be gone. But everything that we do in Him…peace is gonna be…is gonna reign with us forever. Love, joy, peace are the first three fruits of the Spirit. They”re going to be with us forever!
Do you think there will ever be any disharmony in the new creation? Perfect harmony! We hardly even know how to describe that! We are so full of disharmony in this world we can”t even imagine what that must be like! To be in perfect harmony, every need met, fulfilling the purpose for which we were designed in the first place. That”s what God longs for every person here, starting with me, to experience in a deeper way. Do you want that tonight?
( congregational response ).
Praise God! Then we”re gonna have to do what He says here. Come to Him. Do you feel…have you got a burden weighing you down? Learn how, by faith, to bring it to Him. Realize He means you.
( congregational response ).
If you”re weary and burdened. He just says, “…all you who are weary and burdened.” Are you a part of all? Yeah, so am I. This is simple stuff, isn”t it? I mean, how many times have we heard this scripture? But have we heard it? Have we really heard it? God wants us to hear it with our hearts, and say, yes, Lord. I”m willing to let go of my way and just put myself in your hands and learn.
And I thank you for the rest and the peace that You”re gonna increasingly impart to my heart. And I pray that other people will see it and experience that, taste it. And they”ll want what I have, because it isn”t a “what,” it”s a “Who.” Praise God! I”ll tell you, the Lord is so faithful to us. Think about…He”s looking for hearts but He”s longing to give every single one of us a deep rest in our souls. Are you a candidate for that tonight?
( congregational response ).
Praise God! Well, we have His promise, don”t we?
(congregational response ).
Close
July 3, 2022 - No. 1552
“Learn From Me” Part One
Broadcast #1552
July 3, 2022
July 3, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1552 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! I appreciate so much His mercy and His presence with us. I believe that God desires to do something special for His people in a time that is growing increasingly dark. We’re gonna need Him like we’ve never needed Him before. But I am confident, and I believe He wants us to be confident that He is with us and will be with us till the end of the age.
And He doesn’t want us to face life full of fear, full of uncertainty, full of all the things the devil wants to minister to us, but He wants us to have a peace and a rest. I had a…you know, last night was…we talked a whole lot about…what did we talk about? Praise God!
( congregational response ).
Being wholehearted, yes. That was a…this is very connected to that. And I had a scripture come to me, toward the end of the service, but I didn’t feel like it was time for me to get up and I believe the Lord ended the service exactly the way He wanted to, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah. He did it, and that’s what we want. We want Him to lead and to direct what we say and who says it. And, it isn’t about personalities. It’s about the One personality we worship. You know, if He isn’t here, we’re just practicing religion. We need Him to be a resident Lord over His Body, ministering to us out of His heart and the Father’s will. And that’s my desire.
But anyway, I just was thinking about this and it really does connect to what was said and it’s a very familiar scripture in Matthew 11, beginning in verse 28. But I’m praying that the Lord will just make it fresh, make it relevant to where we’re at, because there’s a need.
I mean, we can affirm Scriptures like this all we want to and sing about them and say they’re wonderful and praise God that this is true, and, unfortunately, it doesn’t often connect to our daily lives the way God wants it to.
Jesus said these words, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (NIV).
Now I don’t think, if I were to ask a question, how many of you have just gone through today with perfect peace in your heart, there’s just been a deep rest and nothing has troubled that rest or interfered with it at all, it’s just been awesome? I don’t think I would get any hands.
So, I dare say we need some of what Jesus is talking about here, in a practical sense. He desires to bring us to a place where we can have a peace regardless of what is going on in our lives, regardless of what’s going on around us.
Now, how many of you believe that Jesus, in His earthly life, given all that came against Him from the devil, from the people, and ultimately His own crucifixion, how many of you feel like He went around with a feeling of anxiety, and, what’s gonna happen, and I don’t like this, and it shouldn’t be that way? And yet, every single one of us deals with that, don’t we, in one degree or another?
You know, I was thinking about this. There’s so much you could bring out and I’m just trusting the Lord to emphasize what He wants to emphasize, to make it fresh. But you know, one word jumped out to me. Now the first place, we asked last night, what does the Lord want from us? And you might…this might be an answer to a question, what does the Lord want for us? What does He desire that we experience? What does He want to give us?
And we can say, oh, He wants to take me to heaven someday, wants to forgive my sins, and all of that’s true. But I mean from a functional, practical, this is what my life…this is the characteristic of my life. What does He want for us? I would say…wouldn’t you say this is a pretty good picture, right here?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Come to me. And the word that jumped out at me, as I was beginning to think about this, is ‘all.’ Now all…of course it is qualified by those who are weary and burdened, but I mean it’s not qualified by anything else. It’s not limited to the worthy. It’s not limited to people who haven’t done this or that, or this is wrong with them, or that’s wrong with them. This is just ‘all’ who are weary and burdened. I dare say that would apply, in some measure, to everyone here.
( congregational amens ).
We carry burdens in our lives. You know, we mentioned last night the Scripture about, “…casting all your care…” (KJV). “…Your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (NIV). And, I keep…every time I use this scripture, I have this picture in my mind from the old “Dick Van Dyke Show” and I know I’ve used this many, many times before, but he was a master of physical comedy, still is, I guess. He’s still around.
But he would walk out of the room in that show. And his wife would be telling him to put something down. Maybe that was the scenario. And so he’d put it down and he’d walk out and then his arm would reach back and grab it, and walk right out with it, in perfect harmony.
But you know, we don’t do it quite as a comedy routine. But the reality is we bring our anxieties to the Lord and then we take them away with us. And we just go right on. Okay, I cast them upon You. But if you cast them upon Him it means you’re not carrying it anymore. It’s His now.
It’s…I mean, how many times have you found the faith to have a real situation and a need, and somehow the Lord helped you to bring it to Him and then to walk away and say, Lord…it’s Your job now? This is what You told me to do. I gave it to You. This is Your battle, not mine. I’m not gonna worry about this anymore. I’m gonna go on about my business.
Man, that’s a place that God desires to bring us to. Is that not what His Word says? Do you think He gets joy out of watching us carrying life’s burdens and being anxious and angry and all of the emotions that we carry? Of course He doesn’t!
And yet, you see this verse…we’ve often used…heard this used, and I think it’s an accurate way to use it, that coming to Him to find rest is about salvation. Learning from Him is the Christian life. Well…if I could honestly say that I never have a burden and I never have a care, then I don’t need the first part of the verse, right? Yeah, we all need it! Yes, it’s true that there is a salvation rest, because if you are looking, if anybody who hears this is looking for a place of rest and satisfaction out of this world, you’re an idiot! Excuse my language!
( laughter ).
( laughing ).
You’re a fool! You’re blind, at worst. You ain’t gonna get it here. You know, we are in a world that is at war with its Creator, that is built on self and self-seeking! There is no way to ever acquire anything resembling real peace in the heart! If you’re living for yourself and what you can get out of this world, you might acquire a pleasant emotion for a short season. But it’s gonna be gone, and then you’ll feel more empty than ever.
Oh, my God, if there’s somebody here who’s in that place and you’re still on the fence and you haven’t really made up your mind, this is God’s invitation to you!
( congregational amens ).
Isaiah described the people of the world and he said there’s no rest for the wicked. “…No peace…for the wicked.” There’s no way to find…to fill the empty place, the void that God put in the human heart. He didn’t make you to live for self. You weren’t designed for that.
And when we do it it’s just like using something in the world for a purpose for which it wasn’t designed. It isn’t gonna work out. God longs to give peace to the human heart and as long as His direction is this way and you’re going this way, trying to find some way to fill that void, you will never, ever do it.
( congregational amens ).
Until you come and you lay every bit of your life at His feet and say, it belongs to You, it no longer belongs to me, you will never have peace!
( congregational amens ).
Oh, the peace that comes from being reconciled with God! Only Jesus’ blood, as we’ve sung tonight, only that can erase the sins that have separated you from a Holy God! Oh, praise God that we have a basis because of what Jesus did! For He could give such an invitation, come to me, I have the power to give you peace! I can make your heart so free as if you had never, ever sinned!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! Praise God! Our guilt can be gone! That’s what the Gospel offers. But you don’t get it if you just…if you’re hanging on to this and hanging on to that. There’s got to be a surrender! You’ve got to come to Him with a free and open heart.
Obviously you can’t come and bring your burdens and hang onto them and expect what He’s talking about here. God wants to give you and me rest. But oh, it’s the same principle when we’re…we find ourselves in those places. God longs for us to take advantage of the simplicity.
I mean, we talked last night about how simple all of this really is. Isn’t this simple? You’re running in your own strength. You’re reacting like a person out of the world. It’s your human nature in charge, from a practical standpoint? Be honest about it.
If it weren’t your human nature, what is it? It’s not Jesus. Oh, it’s that bad devil! Yeah, but you’re listening to him. Jesus had to deal with a bad devil, too, a whole lot worse than we did, and yet there was a peace. Where did He get that peace? What is that peace? What is it, really?
It’s peace with God! It isn’t a place of just personal, self-centered satisfaction, somehow. This is what…this is coming into a place of harmony with our Creator, where we’re willing to surrender to the purpose for which He made us, in the beginning. Only He can do that.
I’ll tell you, when we come to that place of surrender and faith, we have peace with God, as Paul said so plainly. Do you have that? Oh, praise God! Praise God!
Boy, I’m in need of this. I mean, every single day there’s something. There’s something that gets to me. But you know, we’re…I’m trying to think how to say this. But the thought, very distinctly, came to me last night that virtually, everything that robs us of our peace, robs us of our rest, is because of something in us. Don’t you go pointing your finger at somebody else in your life and say, it’s their fault! If only they would stop annoying me then I would stop being annoyed!
( laughter ).
Well, is that how Jesus handled it? Did He try to rearrange His environment and the people He was around to straighten up and fly right so He could have a peaceful life? That’s not what it’s about, folks. God wants to give you a peace that will stand strong in the storm, and there will be storms!
( congregational amens ).
The reality is if we’re not at peace, there’s something here that God needs to set us free from. It’s that simple. That’s why Jesus said, “Take my yoke….” Yes, we need to come to Him, be willing to lay it all down. But we’ve got stuff to learn. We think we know so much. We think…we have so many ways of identifying the source of our trouble, and it’s always out there, somewhere.
And God says this is what I want to fix. I want you to have My peace. And do you think I’m enjoying watching you go around in a stew all the time, upset about this, and upset about that, and struggling, and fear and everything else but peace, everything else but rest?
Oh, He longs to teach us. We just don’t want to be taught. That’s the problem. We don’t like it. And we’re so quick when God does something in our lives to try to bring something to our attention that He wants to set us free from, man, we’re good at, like I said, at pointing the finger, and complaining to Him about that person and how they’re annoying us and whatever…it goes on and on.
You could apply this to every kind of emotion, every kind of situation. But the reality is, God’s looking in here and He’s putting His finger. That’s why I need to walk with Him. I need to have a walk with Jesus every day. Yoked to Him, there’s a connection that I’m not gonna walk away from.
You know, one scripture I thought about was from Paul’s testimony. I believe it was the third time he gave…well, you have the account of his conversion, when Jesus met him, on the road, revealed Himself to him and then he tells the Jewish Sanhedrin in chapter 22, I think, of Acts…26, I think he’s talking about…to a Roman ruler, or a ruler, anyway. And in that particular occasion, he said the voice said to me, “…Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against…” The pricks, is what it says in the King James or the goads or the…what do they call it…now what they have?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, anyway, whatever it is that you stick in a horse to make him go that way? Well, Paul’s life was defined by such a strong, religious, self-will that even God Himself, or Jesus Himself couldn’t prick him to make him go this way. He was gonna go this way come hell or high water.
But we are the ones who make our own trouble. Ooh, don’t tell me that. We are the ones who make trouble for ourselves by the way we react to the things that God designs and allows in our lives. Let’s let that sink in.
Quit blaming the stuff that happened ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, or whenever. Stop blaming the people in your life. You look in the mirror and say, I’m the one. Jesus experienced a lot more than you and I did. How did He handle it? Oh, yeah, but He was the Son of God! Yeah, He was a man, too. He came down to experience every temptation, everything that we experience. Did He not?
( congregational amens ).
Thank God, He showed us what it’s like to do that without sin. Thank God for the Lamb—the spotless Lamb! Praise God! But He doesn’t just say, learn from…I’m gonna give you a course in this. I’m gonna teach you the concepts and then you go out and do it. Learn from Me!
How did he do what He did? There was a…not just a union with the Father, in the sense that He agreed with Him. He did that. That’s a key right there. We fight God. So many times in our lives, He’s trying to do something, we’re fighting Him. We don’t even realize we’re fighting Him because we think we’re right, and He doesn’t have any right touching that. Or, it’s not really Him, or something. You know, there’s always some excuse to deflect. But see, not only was Jesus in complete agreement with His Father about everything…that’s a pretty good prescription for peace, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
He was in agreement with the Father, but He was dependent upon the Father, because the reality is even when we know what to do, we don’t have the power to do it! God wants us to take that place. It does something in us that nothing else can do.
You could get people to be religious and proud of it. But for us to take a lowly, humble, dependent, needy…the only hope that I can have is mercy, that is as contrary to human nature as you can get. But that is what salvation is about. Do we want to enjoy what Jesus is so freely offering to all? This is how it happens.
Close
June 26, 2022 - No. 1551
“The Purpose of Hardship” Conclusion
Broadcast #1551
June 26, 2022
June 26, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1551 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Every bit of what He did was for us. Like I said, you cannot get any more opposite from human nature than what God is seeking to do in us. How easy is it for us to turn the Gospel, so-called, into something that really is self-centered? If I’m not seeking earthly blessing, I’m seeking self-satisfaction. I’m spiritual. I’ve arrived at this particular level in my life, and it’s good. I’m just blessed. I’m soaring like an eagle over life.
And here’s Paul going out with the same spirit that was in Jesus. And Paul’s motivation…I think it’s evident from all of his writings, Paul’s motivation was not so Paul could become something great. I mean, Paul didn’t go out and say, boy, if I do all of this and I write all of these great letters, think what they’re gonna…history is gonna remember me! I’m gonna be the Apostle Paul! Wow! They’ll be preaching…they’ll be talking about me for centuries to come. Isn’t that awesome?
How many of you think that even entered into his mind and heart? Somehow, he was brought into such a knowledge of what the Gospel is really about and what being like Him is about, that he got his purpose for being, not by what he could do for himself, but what he could for others. It’s not about me.
It’s about allowing God to put to death those things in me that are not like Him, but for what reason? I mean, why, when he talks about the hardships, we can ask the question, why? Why hardships? Is it, simply, so God can make something great out you, as an independent somebody? That is not the picture you get out of God or His nature. It’s not that at all. Jesus came, not for Himself, but for others.
You know, you could do…if human nature, to the extent that human nature got in on this equation, you could be like Paul and go out and be so…and understand I’m supposed to be sacrificial. This is supposed to be about others and not me. You could do all of that and resent it. Wouldn’t that be kind of natural? Yeah.
And then, if something bad happened, you’d look up and say, God, I’m serving You. What’s going on here? I don’t get this. I just sacrificially gave of myself to so many others, and what do I get out of it, but more trouble, and suffering and whatever? Something’s wrong. I don’t like this kingdom. I don’t like this.
Your human nature ever kick in with thoughts like that and feelings like that? Sure. It does for all of us at one time or another. But oh, isn’t that the time we need to do what the scripture says and humble ourselves under His mighty hand and say, wait a minute? God, You know what You’re doing. And all this is revealing is how little that I am like You.
Think about Jesus and what He went through. Do you think, in any of what He did…as I say, none of it was for Him. He didn’t have to do anything to be who He was. He was already the divine Son of God. Every devil knew who He was. But He came down here to suffer all that He suffered for us, to the point of laying down His life, and not just laying down His life, but with suffering.
Now, do you think that He ever came to a place where He said, okay, Father, I get it. I know where You’re going with this, and I’ll go along with You, but I sure don’t like it. See, that’s kind of how we would tend to react, sometimes.
But my Bible says that it was, “For the joy set before Him he endured the cross.” (NIV). There was something that was so real to Him that He saw past all that was wrong with this world, its self-centered culture, the things that motivate people down here. He saw past all of that. The only way we can have an eternal kingdom where there will truly be peace and love and joy and all those things, all that’s got to be done away. And the only way I can do it is to do this.
But I don’t do it with resentment. It’s not like…I mean, you think about those for whom He did this. He prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Have you and I always been grateful for what He did? The answer is no. No. There’ve been so many times when we’ve been uncomfortable with it, in one way or another.
And you think about the people of the world and the lack of gratitude, of having…being so blind to what He did for them, they could actually oppose Him and oppose us. Talk about blindness!
But how much of it afflicts us? And yet He, knowing what we were like, knowing how ungrateful we would be at times, He said, I’m doing this, and I’m doing it with joy, because I know how this turns out. I know the Father’s plan, and I am 100 percent with it. You know, God wants us to be 100 percent with the Father’s plan.
So, here was Paul, getting and understanding what Jesus was doing, and what motivated Him, and had given himself to God, and saying I’m willing to go out and spend…to spend and be spent, so that You can use me to spread this message of love and mercy to others. This is not about me. It’s not about what I will achieve for myself. It’s about what You can do through me.
How many of us live that way or think…even think that way? I believe the Lord’s helping us.
( congregational amens ).
I’m thankful for everything that I see Him doing and experience Him doing, but doesn’t God want to take us deeper? I mean, why in the world do we spend time wallowing under the devil’s oppression, feeling sorry for ourselves? Doesn’t that tell you that self is kind of at the center, right about then?
Wouldn’t the Lord be pleased if we would rise up and say, wait a minute. Not only am I a child of God, not only am I dealing with a defeated foe, not only do I have God’s promise and God’s provision to stand up against this and to resist it, and to stand fast like Paul says in Ephesians 6, but there’s a reason that I’m doing it that goes beyond what happens to me.
How many times have we read from 2nd Corinthians, chapter 4? That’s why I say I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over again, but I think we need it. I think I do. Paul talked about, to summarize what he said there, Paul talked about the amazing revelation that God gave him, what God had done for him.
But then he goes into a section where he talks about how he was persecuted. He was perplexed. He went through all kinds of difficulties, things that absolutely were an opposition that he had to go through. There were difficulties, the kinds of things he was talking about, the hardships that he was talking about to these people here.
He had to go through all of those things, and he didn’t say…I managed to get through, and here I am, God got me…it was none of that! This was someone who had such an understanding, such a vision of what God’s purpose, His loving heart and His purpose were, that he was able to say, I’m doing this, and I’m not doing it so I can be somebody! I’m doing it for you!
Death is working in me, but life is working in you, and that’s what it’s about! The entire purpose of my life is that God can so work in me that I become a channel of His life to somebody else.
That’s what the Kingdom of God is all about. I pray that God will get us to, bring us to a level of understanding where we get over the self-centeredness that afflicts us all, starting here. We quit complaining. We learn to lift up our heads.
I know we go through some of these things, and they’re real battles that we have to fight, and you can’t just sort of flip a switch sometimes. But oh, we need to see the heart of God in what He’s seeking to make out of us, and the blessedness of this.
You know, like I said, you could look at this and say, okay, I’m willing to even be sacrificial, oh God. It’s not really what I want, but I’ll do it anyway, because I know it’s what You want. So, okay, I’ll go along. Folks, God doesn’t want people to go along, God wants people who share His heart, who realize how His Kingdom works.
And so, here’s Paul saying God has put me in a position where I can actually have God so work in me that things of my old nature begin to lose their hold, and because they’re losing their hold, now He can work through me, and life can pour forth. Man, it’s worth everything for that to happen even if I have to get stoned for it to happen!
Whoa, that’s a measure of grace that most of us haven’t reached. But it’s there, and God wants to bring us to a place where our thinking changes. That is a ‘fur piece.’ For a lot of people, that’s a bridge too far. They’ll like a gospel that’s about them and making their life, especially if it makes their earthly life better and gives them a ticket to heaven. Whoa, that’s great! But this kind of thing where I lose my life, and the purpose of my life is not about me and what I can get and all the happiness I can achieve in this world. It’s so that God can use me as a channel to somebody else.
( congregational amens ).
That is a whole different ball game. How many of you believe God’s bringing us to that, and teaching us His ways? How many believe it’s worth it?
( congregational response ).
You know, I’ll just read some Scripture that I know we know, and kind of read through it. We used Peter recently, 1st Peter, but over in chapter…praise God. There are so many different places you could go, but let’s just look in chapter 4 and read some Scripture that kind of highlights this.
But I want us to see it freshly. You know, my prayer is that this won’t just be more information just regurgitated that we’ve heard before. But that God will actually impart something this morning that will give us the strength and the heart and will to do what He’s talking about.
( congregational amens ).
If it’s just words, we don’t need that! You can go read it. But we need God to speak! Here, now! And make this live in our hearts, give us a literal impartation of His Spirit! We need…you know, I remember Dave Wilkerson saying he didn’t want a visitation. He didn’t want a divine visitation. He wanted a divine habitation where God comes to live.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what we need. But beginning in verse 7, Peter writes, “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. Above all, love each other deeply….” Above what? All, well, that’s kind of the most important thing, isn’t it? Why? “…Because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
Man, if you’re looking for anybody to be perfect around you, quit looking. I mean, if somebody’s trapped in a sin, we know we’re supposed to help them with a humble spirit. But if you’re trying…if you’re just constantly aware of people’s faults around you and fussing about it, grow up!
( congregational response ).
That’s not God’s love. “…Love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to….” Do what?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, so that I can be somebody. No, “…to serve others.” How many times have we pointed out that the body is composed of so many different elements? And not one of them is self-centered. Every part of the natural, healthy body is designed to perform a function that helps the whole body, and in turn, the rest of the body gives it what it needs.
Folks, that’s God’s economy, where we so live for other people, that we just become a part of something that is so much bigger than ourselves, and God builds it together. But He doesn’t forget about you. He just wants you to stop being so self-centered! Be like Him! Be like Jesus!
And I’ll tell you, when we…when that becomes the heart and center, the most important thing is, God, I want to be a channel of life to others. I want them to be better because I’m around them. Not because of who I am, but because You are in me reaching out. You’ve given me certain abilities and certain gifts, and my job is to use them, not so people will think better of me, but so that they will be strengthened. But in return, God is gonna be working in them, and they have gifts that I need. Everybody has what they need in God’s economy.
“…To serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace….” Stewards of God’s grace. That’s where you get what you have to offer anybody else. It’s got to be what He gives, “…in its various forms.”
And so, then he enumerates, “If anyone speaks, they should do so as one speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever.”
Now, do you see, in the context, the Scripture we often use? “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” You think Jesus was happy with the price He paid? The answer is yes.
( laughing ).
Yeah. The joy that was set before Him. There is gonna be an eternal…there is an eternal joy that fills His heart, that says it was worth everything that I went through down here, because of the result. And look at all the brothers and sisters that I have, that through Me, the Father has brought into fellowship with Him. He’s put away all of their sin. He’s given them a new life and a new heart.
And He’s preparing them so that we can walk together in a kingdom forever and ever as brothers and sisters unto our Heavenly Father. That’s worth everything!
But oh, our vision is so limited to what we’re experiencing in the moment down here! God, deliver us! And when the Devil whispers, and we’re tired, and we start yielding to that, God help us to wake up and realize why we’re here and what God’s seeking to accomplish, why these hardships exist.
“If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” We’re rapidly coming to that place in our society. “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”
And so forth, and he goes on. I don’t want to read every little thing here but, he has this passage where he talks to the elders, and this is something I’ve used many times. I’ve used it talking to pastors overseas, because you’ve got this idea among so many that the elders are way up here somewhere, and here’s all the rest of the people down here.
And that’s not the picture Peter paints. It’s brothers who have a God-given responsibility to watch out for others. They don’t do it by commanding people and having a kind of a dominion spirit over them. They’re shepherds! They do it because they’re willing, not because you have to talk them into it.
They’re not lording over everybody, look at me, I’m big, you have to listen to me. This is one who leads by example and says, I want you to be like Jesus. And I’m not gonna just tell you about it, I want to live it before you. God, help me. God, help every one of us.
( congregational amens ).
We’ve got so much to grow…so much room to grow. But anyway, there’s this sense of, not of lording it over but of submission to the heavenly Father to fill a place that is one of service, and willing to pay the price, willingness to pay the price to do that.
“In the same way…” verse 5, “…you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders.” But in the same way as what? Why would he use that phrase right there? He’s just talked about the elders. “In the same way….” In other words, being an elder is one of submission. Your needs are more important than mine. You see? And I’m having…I’m having to yield myself to the Father’s plan, and so with others.
And so, every member of the Body of Christ has a place, but it’s always one where we’re here not to get, but to give, and to do it with the ability that God gives. God, help us to understand some of this, understand why the difficulties come. Satan’s gonna oppose you, in every way. But anyway, All of you…submit one to one another.
“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” And this is where you have that Scripture. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
And then he goes into being alert, aware of the devil, and all he’s gonna do. Stand fast against him. Understand that everybody else goes through the same thing. Don’t sit there and say, well, I’m so bad. This is because of…you know, we listen to so many reasonings of the devil. You know, that’s all he’s got to work with?
( congregational amens ).
All he can do is accuse, and try to repackage you, and try to redefine you according to his terms, so you’ll sit there and…poor me, I’m defeated, I’m no good. I am a child of the King, not because of any natural qualification. He has qualified me to be shared with the saints in light. He has qualified me! He has! To Him be the glory! Devil, you have no right.
Isn’t it interesting, though, that when you go to that scripture in Revelation 12 that we’re so familiar with, there are three things by which we defeat him? It’s the blood. That’s the only answer I’ve got for sin. It’s what He did.
But it’s the word of my testimony. It’s got to be such a conviction that it can come out my mouth as a conviction. The Devil has no answer for that.
But there’s a third element there. Do you remember what that one is? We don’t love our lives unto the death, “…so much as to shrink from death.” Depending on the translation. See, there are things in here that have to die, and that’s what God is accomplishing.
But again, the purpose of all of that is not self-centered so that I can, then, be somebody spiritually in the Kingdom of God. It’s so that all these things that are hindering me from God’s purpose in being a servant to you, will be eliminated.
But that’s just as much true for you. If you’re one of His, if you’ve been born into this Kingdom, God has called you to a life of laying down your life, so that His life can flow through you to others. The form in which that takes will vary with the call of God, but every bit of it has to come from the grace of God!
I feel like God wants to get us to a place of greater freedom and greater understanding of His purpose. We’re coming into a meeting. I feel like, in a way, this has been scattered, but I’m just trusting God to get what He wants across. Do you get the picture a little bit? Is this making any sense at all? Paise God!
Close
June 19, 2022 - No. 1550
“The Purpose of Hardship” Part One
Broadcast #1550
June 19, 2022
June 19, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1550 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I was very conscious, not only in my own spirit but in hearing about others, as how much the enemy has oppressed. I believe every time we move forward, every time the Lord begins to work in us, and we sense His working, the enemy goes to work as well. And, isn’t it something that even though we know and have heard so many times the truths relating to this, when it comes to real life, we still go right down into the same valleys?
And it’s like…you know, and my reaction to that is, well my God, here we need to preach the same things we’ve been preaching over, and over, and over and over again. And we do, but we need the Lord to really get in it, and intervene so that we can actually move forward. I believe we are. I believe He’s helping us.
But you know, we need to realize, again, how it works. Last week, I think, we talked about how God burns, puts gold in the fire, to burn away the stuff that isn’t gonna last so that the stuff that will, and is worth something, is purified. And He certainly is doing that. But Lord, we need to…we need to realize, I believe, in a deeper sense what it is that God has called us to, and to seek God.
And, it’s not just for ourselves, but for one another. I believe we’re doing that, but I believe God wants to take us further. We’ve had so many references, recently, to God taking us to higher ground. We need to know what that is, because there is a cost. There is a price to pay to serve God in this broken world.
When Jesus talked about following Him, did He not say that you need to count the cost? That was a very clear message. It wasn’t like, this is gonna be a breeze, this is gonna be…you’re gonna step out of a difficult world into a wonderful, glorious, easy, comfortable life and then you’re gonna go to heaven one day. It’s often the opposite. And we need to realize that, and I believe we need to grow in grace and with this understanding.
But I believe we need to see this whole business in a deeper light than perhaps we have, because everything about the Kingdom of God could not be more contrary to human nature. And it’s awfully easy for us to go along and not realize how much we are living and reacting according to the old nature. And God sees and He knows, and fortunately He understands and is very patient, with working with us and helping us to set us free.
And we come kicking and screaming a lot of the time. I mean, you think about…when I was thinking about it the other day, here I am. I’ve preached this stuff and here I am, listening to the wrong voice and sort of sunk down. What I’m thinking about, of course, is me. It’s all about…life is all about me, didn’t you know that?
( laughter ).
Yeah, this entire world, this universe, revolves around me. I mean, forget about you guys. No, but that’s human nature. That’s how we all think, when you break it right down. Even people that are known for their charitable works. If you really broke it down as God sees the motives of the heart, you would find self at the center, somehow. Whether it’s self-righteousness trying to make up for guilt, whatever it is, there’s something there where self is on the throne, or it’s seeking recognition for all this wonderful stuff I’m doing. God help us, and He is.
So, God’s gonna have to put something together or else I’m not gonna be up here very long. But anyway, my thoughts went to something that Paul taught and emphasized on his first missionary journey. You know, he and Barnabus, on that particular journey, set out. They were anointed. They were chosen of God.
It was by revelation they went out. I mean, God literally spoke, supernaturally. “Separate me Barnabas and Saul…” (KJV). I’ve called them to do something. And so, they set out on this journey, went from city to city, and began to preach.
And, because of God’s…I believe it was appropriate that wherever they went, they first went to the synagogues, because the promises of the Scriptures had been given to the Jews. It was never for them alone, but God didn’t want to just bypass them.
This is what the Old Testament has been about, was Paul’s message everywhere. And he went through and he said, we are preaching the fulfillment of what God spoke through all the prophets. And these words were sent to you and so we want to bring you the Good News of what God has done.
And of course, then he had to tell them what happened in Jerusalem and how their religious leaders rejected the One that was sent. They crucified Him. But God raised Him from the dead and we’re here to tell you all about it. And we’re here to preach a forgiveness of sins that you cannot find under Moses’ law. This is so much deeper. There is a putting away of sin, once and for all, through the Gospel, where you had to keep on going, time after time, you could never get a clear conscience through Moses’ law. But now, the promise of God has come.
And in every place, there was a division among the people. I’ll tell you, the Gospel is a great divider. When people hear it, they either say, yes, and they surrender to it, or they go their way, and they wind up among the lost. And so, in every place where they went, there was this division.
And, many of the Jews…some of the Jews would stick with Paul and learn more and others would get jealous of all the attention that Paul and Barnabus were getting. And so, first thing you know, there was persecution stirred up in every place. But in every place, Paul reached out, not only to the Jews who would listen, but to the Gentiles.
And they had crowds come in. One place it said almost the whole city gathered. And so, you had this dynamic going on of a message that divides and a persecution and opposition arising against Paul and Barnabus.
And so, they went…one of these occasions was when he was stoned, and left for dead. I mean, literally, how would you like to be preaching the Gospel and all of a sudden, they take you out and they stone you and it looks like you are dead? And then the crowd takes and drags your body out of the city and dumps it and leaves it, believing you have died.
Would it be worth it to serve God? Yeah, we say, yeah, because we know to say, yeah. But, emotionally that’s not so easy, is it? But here was Paul, willing to do that, and it doesn’t say anything other than the disciples gathered around him and he went up…he got up and went back into the city and continued to preach.
Seriously? I mean, this is an amazing call that was upon that man’s life. So anyway, they reached the point where, all right, this journey, we believe, has come to an end. And what they did was to backtrack through all the places where they had already preached and been persecuted, but they went back to encourage the believers.
They went back to appoint elders. I mean, you didn’t have this great, long, drawn-out process. These were brand-new Christians and, in every place, God was able to put His hand upon some that were a little bit wiser, a little bit more mature, and could help to watch over, like big brothers who were able to watch over others, and encourage them to walk together.
But one of the main messages that he said was recorded in Acts chapter 14. I don’t know how much scripture I’m gonna actually turn to, but we’ll see. Like I say, this is very…not organized, but that’s okay. So anyway, “They preached the Gospel in that city…” verse 21, “…and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith.”
Now here’s the key that he…here’s the key message. What would you want people to know? What message would you want to leave with people in your encouragement, as to how to stand and what this is all about? His message was this: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, they said. Paul and Barnabas….” Then it says they, appointed elders, and so forth, “…with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord.”
But think about the essence of what Paul was saying. Think about how that contrasts with the message of what it means to come to God that you hear in so many places today. Come to God and you’ll be blessed. Your life will be smooth. God will prosper you, this prosperity gospel that is so utterly foreign to the scriptures.
But here is a message where if you’re gonna follow Him, it’s going to be a hard way. You will experience opposition! And you might as well get ready for it. It isn’t necessarily outward persecution, but folks, if we are sailing into and against the wind, should we not experience some of that?
We ought to be encouraged, rather than discouraged if we experience the opposition of Satan, however it comes. We should be saying, hey, Satan is concerned here. It’s not that he’s concerned about me as a human being. He’s concerned because God is beginning to get a little bit more of an influence in my life and I’m beginning to matter in this world.
You know, we are called to an amazing Gospel. And a lot of times we have emphasized how God has to work in us. There’s so much in us that is there, naturally, that is in the way, and it becomes a contest, in a way, where we have this brand-new life that’s imparted.
Like we said so many times, religion cannot do this. No form of self-effort can accomplish what the Gospel is meant to accomplish. I don’t care. We have to come to a place of surrender, of letting Him have our heart and our life so that He can change it, because He’s the only One that can.
But once we start down that road, the rest of our life you’re going to live in a world that is absolutely opposed, in every possible way, to what God means to accomplish. God has ordained that it be this way. This is absolutely central to what He means for us to be.
Now, I’m not saying anything we haven’t said many times before. But, I kind of want to take it a little bit further, if the Lord will help me. But you know, we’ve emphasized so many times how there are things in us that He needs to change.
And you know, you think about hardships and things that happen in the spirit. Many times, there are things that are happening in your heart. I believe there are people, right here today, and you’re struggling. And you’ve experienced a lot of pressure. And there’s opposition and Satan has planted thoughts in your heart about yourself and who you are.
( congregational response ).
Yeah, isn’t that kind of like normal? That’s where we’re at, folks, in so many ways. But you know, we think about hardships in the spirit are a little bit vague. It’s awful easy to go around and put a smile on your face and not be seen.
But I’ll tell you, you think about someone in the natural world and they’re having to fight through a storm. It’s like saying, if you’re gonna get to the destination I have for you, you’re gonna have to go through some storms. You’re gonna have some winds and waves when you cross the water. You’re gonna have hurricane force winds blowing against you at times. Yes, there’ll be times when it’s calm and quiet and peaceful, but don’t you be dismayed when the winds blow and the storms come.
You know, one of the things that I’ve found…the Lord seemed to draw my attention to it. It’s nothing new, really. But as I was beginning to feel some of the feelings that I know you experience as well, it was like, all of a sudden, I said, wait a minute! I’m a child of God! I am loved and chosen before the foundation of the world! I am seated with Him in heavenly places. Devil, who do you think I am? It’s not who I am, as though I am important. But it’s what God has done!
And here’s one of the things that we need to realize, is that when we are in those times when we are giving into…everybody can have negative thoughts, but when we sort of embrace them and begin to give in to self-pity, when we begin to give in to, oh, I’m so bad…I mean, that can be part of it. Oh, I’m such a failure. I’m this, I’m that. Who are we listening to? There’s a wisdom that is coming into our hearts and minds. Where is it coming from?
( congregational response ).
It’s coming from Satan, who of course, always tells the truth, doesn’t he? No! See, that’s the thing. You know, Revelation 12 talks about the accuser of the brethren, and we think oh, he’s accusing me of sin. This is an accusation that you’re worthless. You just proved it by what you just did. God couldn’t care about somebody like you. You’re a failure. You have no hope.
On and on and on and on the lies go, and the more we yield to that…and of course, the thing is, if you are already tired, as some of us are, we’re getting a little bit older and there are infirmities that begin to kick in. And now all of a sudden, you’ve got something else to deal with.
You know, I’ll tell you, right to the point where we turn up our toes, we’re gonna have things that will oppose what God is doing in our lives, and instead of those things being our enemy, God is actually using them to accomplish what He wants.
( congregational amens ).
But of course, when we’re in the middle of it we don’t see it that way. And so, we’re sitting there fighting. We’re sitting there fussing. We’re sitting there giving in. And, all of a sudden, all of our attention becomes focused on us.
And so, that was the thought…that was one of the thoughts that the Lord brought to my mind, particularly concerning me. It’s like, wait a minute! Let’s step back from this scene a little bit. I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself, living in this little negative fantasy, whatever it is, whatever the particular issues were, and who am I listening to? And, what is he basically telling me that I am? He is absolutely attacking my identity in Christ!
The reality is, every one of us has shortcomings! Every one of us is, in ourselves, weak! Every one of us is unworthy. None of us does it, gets it all right all the time! But thank God that He has given us a perfect Savior!
( congregational amens ).
One who has taken every bit of that into account way before He ever saved us, knowing what our needs were! Oh, my God, what He’s done for us! We’ve got to step back and say, wait a minute! How did they overcome him? By the blood of the Lamb! It wasn’t by any virtue in me! And the message of the Gospel is, not that He has built a bridge that takes us almost to the other side if we can just build the rest of it. It goes all the way!
( congregational amens ).
But the price of going on that bridge is surrender…to where I recognize, I hear the call of the Gospel. It reminds me of what I truly am in myself and how much I need Him. I have no way to expunge the guilt, or the weaknesses or all the things that are wrong with me. All I can do is lay them at His feet and repent and turn around and say, oh God, save me. Give me a new life and a new heart. Do what is needed in my life. Lord, fill me with what You’ve given me.
Oh, what an answer for the devil—to the devil! And he’s angry! He knows his time is short! That was what the Lord was trying to give me a picture of. Let’s examine the players in this little drama here. You’ve got a devil who knows better than we do how perfectly he was defeated at the Cross and at the empty tomb! He knows his time is short! The scripture says in that very passage. He is angry! He’s, “…come down…having great wrath, because…” (KJV). Why? “… Because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” Do you sense that in the world?
( congregational amens ).
We have a satanic spirit that is seeking to absolutely destroy this country, through division, and the world. So many things…I’m not gonna get off into that. But I’ll tell you what, we are in a world…the devil is absolutely throwing out everything that he can—every weapon that he can to destroy, to confuse, to do what he can while he can because he knows his time is short. Oh, I love the line in the old Martin Luther hymn. “One little word shall fell him”.
( congregational amens ).
Think about a tree that’s being felled. All God has to say is, it’s over! And he’s done! He’s done! He’s fulfilling a divine purpose right now. Oh, God’s sons and daughters are growing up having to learn how to stand, not because we’re anything in ourselves, not because what we can do in ourselves, but because of His grace, that we open our hearts to, and it fills us with something that he cannot stand against. Praise God!
But I’ll tell you where I fall down and I think all of us do, at times. I know we do. This is…none of this is for condemnation. We all experience these things. But oh, don’t we need to step back like the Lord helped me to do the other day and say, let’s look at what’s going on here?
Look at who I am because of what God has said and what He’s done. I’ve got to go by what He says, not by what the Devil says or what I think, even. I mean, if I look at myself, I’m not gonna find anything to find any…I’m not gonna find any basis for hope, or confidence. The further I go, the less confidence I have in myself, and that’s an awesome thing! Because it turns my heart to Him where my only hope comes from. And that’s a perfect hope! Praise God! Praise God!
And so now, I can come to a place where, instead of sitting there and just drinking and wallowing in those lies about who I am and how bad I am and how hopeless life is and what did I do to deserve this? And I’ve been trying so hard and it’s getting harder, it’s getting worse! Something must be bad wrong!
And here’s Paul going around saying, “…we must through…” many difficulties, whatever it was in that particular passage. Yeah, I got it right here, “…hardships…” ah, there we go. “…through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” (NIV).
Oh, I’ll tell you, those hardships drive us, if we react correctly, instead of driving us into depression or whatever, they need to drive us to the Lord and say, oh God, You know all about this. You know, we mentioned several weeks ago how in all these things God will always make a way—the Lord will make a way. Yeah. He always…that’s His promise. Oh, we need to be going to Him and rising up.
I think I’ve said this before but, how many times, if we’re really honest, and we’re in a hard place are kind of a little resentful? Now it’s quiet! Did I touch a nerve? Yeah, isn’t that a human reaction? Yeah, because after all, if the universe revolves around me and something bad is happening, that’s not good! And yet, in God’s economy, it may be exactly—it is exactly the thing that I need.
Close
June 12, 2022 - No. 1549
“Gold in the Fire” Conclusion
Broadcast #1549
June 12, 2022
June 12, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1549 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You can’t fix Adam! You and I were born with Adam’s life, and you can’t fix it! It’s so corrupted, there’s only one thing you do, is kill it. But what He offers us is another life.
Have you ever experienced that? That needs to be the cry of your heart, that you come to a place where you know you have been born again of His Spirit. He has imparted the very life of God to you, shared it with you. You don’t deserve it. I don’t either, but He’s given me a brand-new life. Praise God!
Every life that’s part of this world will perish but this is a life you cannot kill! You go on, later on in this chapter, the end of the chapter and the beginning of the next one, it talks about how it’s immortal, it’s God’s own immortal life! What an amazing thing to possess! What is there in this world that you could possess that’s greater? Nothing! Nothing!
And that gives us what He’s talking about. He looks back to see what’s He done for us. He’s given us this new birth, but to what purpose? A living hope! That means I can come here this morning and it doesn’t matter what’s going on right now, in the middle of my life and what it looks like, what it feels like, I have a hope that goes beyond that!
( congregational amens ).
It isn’t dependent upon my perfect performance! It’s dependent upon a God who cannot lie! You read Hebrews 6 again, and you’ll read about a God who speaks, a God who cannot lie, who can look us in the eye and say, I have planted in your heart a hope.
And it’s not a just wish. We think of hope as a wish. This is an expectation of something that is as solid, that’s more solid than anything you see. It’s more real. I’ll tell you, we got to have something supernatural in here to have that kind of conviction. You can’t just psych people into this. I don’t want to psych anybody into anything. I want you to have an encounter with the living God…
( congregational amens ).
…where He will impart to you His own conviction, His own life on the inside, where you know that you know that you know that He’s real! And He will do it!
I know many of you know what I’m talking about. But if you don’t, oh my God! Cry out! It’s, “…a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (NIV).
What a glorious song we sang this morning about the power of what God did at the resurrection. How many times have we talked about all hell would have kept Him in there! And even His followers were completely disheartened. It’s all over, I don’t understand what’s going on. And a Roman guard standing there with a sealed tomb. And all hell, the unseen world, ganged up on him, having a party, saying, we have won! And in the face of that, God said, no…time to come out. And death itself could not hold him!
( congregational amens ).
In the natural course of events, every one of us is gonna wind up in a tomb. But this is a life that we saw come forth in Jesus Christ that you cannot kill! It’s real! Praise God!
That’s the…I mean, you can go back in history and look at that even from an intellectual standpoint and people have tried to do that, trying to disprove the Christian faith and wind up coming to faith because they couldn’t! God has given us so many witnesses. If there’s any honesty in a human heart, you’re gonna wind up with a conviction that Jesus Christ is real, that God’s word is real, that truth is real, that this world is gonna pass away and we need to be connected to Him.
( congregational amens ).
“…A living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead….” That authenticated everything that he had said, everything that God had promised. And the result of that is, “…an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” Remember how Jesus again, talked about the treasures of this world and how they’ll pass away? But here’s a treasure that you cannot pass away. Let me ask you this, does Jesus deserve an inheritance in that kingdom?
( congregational response ).
You think? Yes. But we’re fellow-heirs. See, that’s God’s purpose. It’s not just for Him as an individual, He shares that with everyone who puts their trust in Him! He has the power to make us fully fit for that! That’s what life becomes all about, is getting us, taking us from what we were, transforming us on the inside, making us ready to inherit that for all eternity!
( congregational response ).
If you’re His, you have an inheritance, that no demon in Hell can possibly do anything about. Praise God!
( congregational amens ).
“…It can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. Do you think the Devil can go up there and do anything about that?
( congregational response ).
He can talk…he can try to talk you out of it, discourage you, but that doesn’t change what’s true up there. God has done something no devil can stop. Praise God!
All right? Now again, who’s he talking about? “…For you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power….” Again, faith is not just some vague thing that I work up or come up with somehow. This is a supernatural thing that God produces in the heart, but it also releases God’s power into my life. And there is a protection, there is a shield.
In fact, doesn’t Paul talk about the shield of faith? Yeah, there’s something that stands between me and the efforts of the devil to take me down! And it’s not because I have anything, it’s because of God’s power! I don’t have any power, do you? I can’t stand up to any of this. But my hope and my confidence are not in anything that I am or that I’m capable of doing, it’s in Him! And He is faithful! That’s what Peter is conveying here. What an amazing picture. Praise God!
We, “…are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” So, you see, Peter on the one hand talking about where we’ve come from and how we got here. God reached out in mercy to awaken us to our need, to bring us to a place where He could beget in us His life. And he points to the future and says, look what I’ve got for you. There’s nothing that could ever touch that!
All right, now you come back to the middle. That’s what this is about, because we need to understand both ends. Folks, if you’re trying to be a Christian in your own strength, you need to go back to the starting line. You need God to do something supernatural in your life. And I’m not talking about some spooky experience. I’m talking about a reality. You’ll know. You’ll know when God has done something down in here. There will be a witness of His Spirit and yours. But, praise God! In this, “…in all this you greatly rejoice…” And there’s the word though…
( laughing ).
…That follows that. Though. In other words, this is awesome. But there’s something you have to deal with that kind of gets in the way here that’s coming against that. Though. All right? Where was that…oh, there we go.
“…Though now for a little while…” Thank God, it’s only a little while. Like Paul said, you know…all this that I’m going through, it’s just for a little short time but what’s coming is forever. You can’t compare the two. How do you compare, eternity with a little bit that we go through? Of course, it doesn’t feel like that sometimes, does it?
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” So obviously, with a God that has prepared all of this, has planned all of this, this has got to be part of His plan, right?
Do you think this is just sort of happening? Is this happenstance? Is the devil kind of coming in here and saying, I get to mess up God’s plan, I get to fight against it? God has absolutely placed us in an arena for a purpose. And everything He is doing in us is absolutely central to where we’re headed.
But, it’s not only that, it’s central to us living here and being effective as Christians. I sense the Lord’s burden to get us ready. I mean, the stuff…the kind of stuff that we heard about with Brother Kumar is not just for folks some place off in another part of the world. We don’t know what God may call upon us to face here. With the spirit that is over-running our society and transforming our culture into an anti-Christ culture, don’t you sit here and think the American way of life is just gonna go on and on and on and on. We’re gonna to need something that’s real down here.
( congregational amens ).
And folks, if you’re trusting in Him and you’ve given your life and your heart to Him and your eye is single to Him as a source of truth, you’ve got what you need. And regardless of what we may experience in the flesh, what He’s given us is real and it will hold. Okay?
But then he goes into something that’s interesting. This is kind of what drew me to this passage in the first place. “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
God is gonna do something here to demonstrate how real He is and how great His power is, that there’s nothing here that can separate us from the love of God. Read Romans 8 again. Nothing can separate us. All the things the devil can throw at us, nothing is stronger than this.
Interesting that he compares our faith with gold. And you think of earthly substances…and gold would have to be near the top of the list of those that are pretty indestructible. I don’t care how hot the fire is, gold ain’t gonna suffer. Gold is gonna stand there. In fact, gold is gonna get purer, the hotter it gets its gonna get purer, isn’t it? You kind of see a little bit of an analogy going on here?
And yet, there is a fire coming. Peter talks about it, particularly, in the second letter. There is a fire coming that is so hot, gold itself will not stand up to it. Folks, you want to live for something in this world? Seriously? If even gold won’t stand up to it, what else will? That’s God’s Word, isn’t it? That’s sobering.
But yet, there’s enough of an analogy that we can understand something of what God is seeking to do in our daily lives. There are things, there are imperfections, there are areas of need. You know, we’ve talked about it so many different ways, how God needs to transform our mind and all of that.
But folks, there are so many things that we have…that have become a part of our life, part of our thinking, part of how we live and react, that just doesn’t come from God. And just like the impurities that you put gold in the fire in order to burn them out, we need things that will burn them out.
We don’t just sit in a seminar and God says, here’s what you need to do, here’s how you do it…good, I’ve got that. It doesn’t work that way anymore than if you bring gold in there and say, look, gold, get rid of that junk that’s in there so you can be pure. There’s a process that makes it pure.
And this is one we prefer not to have. But the reality is, if God is going to purify that amazing faith that He has put in here, it’s going to have to go through stuff. And it’s gonna have to stand up to something that’s very, very real. And that something is gonna have the power to burn up the stuff that God wants to get rid of in you and me. Anybody here got any of that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I mean, you think about how we sing on Sunday about all the wonderful things that we have in the Lord and then we go out and the simple circumstances of life, produce all kinds of reactions that don’t come from faith. We get angry. We get discouraged. We get…you go on, and you name all the things that we’re prone to. We react to so many things in life…discouraged, weary, hopeless.
I’ll tell you, we’re gonna go through life, God is going to deliberately bring us to places where we’re gonna need to stand in faith. The Word of God is full of those examples. Abraham didn’t become the Father of Faith by simply going to a seminar and learning about it. He had to stand up under real-world issues.
And I’ll tell you, there are places we get in this world, where God will be silent… seemingly. And a thousand voices will be screaming in our heads saying, it isn’t so, you’ve done something, you’re bad, God doesn’t…maybe God doesn’t even exist, this is all a fantasy! You’re gonna hear those voices. Everyone here has heard those voices.
And I’ll tell you, at that time, that’s when we need to ask God to keep our eyes single and say, God, I need Your help! God, give me the strength to stand and simply believe You even when it doesn’t seem like it, I don’t feel it, nothing! I have nothing to go on that’s natural. But I know what You put in my heart! I know who You are.
See, Abraham just didn’t believe…we’ve said this many times. He just didn’t believe what God said, he believed God!
( congregational amens ).
It was a character issue. I know the character of the One who has talked to me, and whatever He tells me is right! And then what an amazing demonstration of that faith came when God told him to sacrifice his own son. And he got to the point where the knife was raised and he would have done it. Phew! And he didn’t have the Bible!
We’ve got a God who will lead us in so many ways. You know, Brother Steve was telling me last night about going through some stuff and how the Lord brought him. God leads us along. You know, there are times when God leads us beside the still waters and in wonderful meadows. And there are other times He leads us in dark valleys, the valley of the shadow of death.
But what does David say based on his heart experience? He said, no matter where I’ve been You’ve been with me. You’re walking right beside me. I didn’t even feel that You were there. There were times in his Psalms that said, oh God, where are You? I reach out, I can’t find You. What’s going on? I don’t understand. But somehow, there was something God had placed in the heart.
Is that in your heart? It needs to be. God wants to give it to you. He wants to give you that anchor in your soul.
Think of Jesus, at His weakest point and the Devil comes and says, “…If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” What did He say? “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (KJV).
Now he didn’t say that when he had just finished a nice meal and was feeling good. He’d just finished fasting for 40 days, and he was hungry and he was needy and he was at his weakest point. But somehow, his eye was so single, that conviction of his heart was so real that he was able to say, these natural things are not what I live for. This isn’t what I go by.
You know, God can take care of those needs while we’re here, but there’s something that’s more important. I need to live by what comes out of His mouth.
( congregational amens ).
And I’ve got to say this again. This has to get beyond words on a page. I thank God for every word that’s on these pages. And we can search them, and we can read them. But it’s got to get beyond my intellectually…taking hold of what it says here and trying to cobble myself a religion. I need a living relationship with a very real God who talks to me!
( congregational amens ).
And so do you. Because I don’t live by just the natural resources, I live by what He says. And I’m not talking about some spooky experience, I’m talking about the fact, that many of you could testify to, you were in a dark place and suddenly, finally, God spoke. It wasn’t a long speech, but just a quick word. It could be three, four or five words. But suddenly peace took hold. And you knew that God was real and that His Word was more powerful than anything you were experiencing at the time. Folks, that’s the kind of a God that we need.
( congregational amens ).
That’s the kind of a relationship we need. God wants a people that will walk with Him because we’re headed into difficult territory! Just living in this world is difficult enough. But we need a God with whom we walk.
We need the same thing Noah needed when he walked with God and God showed him what to do and protected him and brought him through in spite of the condition of a world that was headed for judgment. We’re in that same situation today.
And the God who was with Noah, the God who was with Abraham is with us. And we need to be with Him. We need to be saying, every day, when those voices scream in your head, and wanting you to give up and wanting you to go this way and believe this and believe that, we just need to cry out and say, oh God, I believe You, help my unbelief.
( congregational amens ).
And sometimes it’s gonna take standing. Sometimes it’s gonna take just standing in faith because you know what He has said to you in the past. But I’ll tell you, we have a God who knows how to speak in the present when there is a need. You and I need Him! In whatever situation you find yourself in, that would cause you to do something other than rest and trust and believe in this God who has called you out of darkness into light, and has set before you a hope that cannot be countermanded, we’re gonna need to have a heart that looks to God, consistently.
We stand by faith, we look to Him, we know where our help comes from! And whether it comes on our timetable or in the way we think, we’re gonna say, God, I know who You are. I need Your strength. I can’t do this on my own, but Lord, I receive this.
Do you know the effect of that is the same as putting gold in fire? Do you know there are things in our lives that lose their power over us when we stand in faith when the fire is burning? God is literally setting us free. That’s what he’s talking about.
We read the end of this passage, “…Even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” You see the process there? See, Peter’s talked about the beginning, he’s talked about where we’re going, but now we’re in the middle, we are receiving something.
God wants to impart something to me that I don’t have! There is no other way but for me to have to stand in times of difficulty, and praise Him anyway, and just look to Him. But I’ll tell you, what’s gonna get me through is the same thing that got Jesus through. I don’t live by earthly provision, whatever it is. I need to hear from heaven.
You could tell me all this stuff, but I have one source of truth, and it comes ultimately from God. And I’m gonna listen, and I’m gonna trust Him to speak to me exactly what I need, when I need it, and that is gonna be the anchor for my soul. I’m convinced of who He is and that He is truthful and faithful. And no matter what you say, Devil, I’m gonna stand, and I’m gonna put my trust in Him and He’s gonna bring me through.
God is gonna take His people through. But He wants us to understand what’s going on right now. So that every single day, instead of…we’re allowing God to deal with us. We’re allowing God to bring circumstances to allow us to go through valleys and difficult places, and they will bring up the conflict between ideas that come from the other source, and His truth.
And what we need to do is to cry out to Him and say, God, I believe You and I’m gonna stand fast, and I am looking to You for Your strength. Give me the wisdom I need, speak, if it’s just a word or two, whatever I need to give me the confidence to stand in this time.
And I’ll tell you, God’s gonna to burn that stuff up that’s held you captive, and me. God’s got a plan for that. It ain’t gonna…it’s not gonna be here. You know, there’s gonna come a day when nothing that afflicts you right now that’s ungodly, it won’t be here. But God wants to do something about a lot of it right now. And He knows how to do it and He’s faithful to do it. Praise God!
So, I want to be…I want to have my eyes single. I want to have a heart that says, Lord, I know that I’m in need. I know how I got here. I know You called me even though I don’t deserve it. I know what You’ve set before me, but also know that You’re with me right now, and I need to hear Your voice. I just want to hear from You, Lord, because You are the only source of truth that I trust. Whatever this world tells me is gonna lead me to destruction, but I need You.
And I’ll tell you, there is a God who is faithful to His promises. He is faithful to you. It doesn’t depend upon your strength or wisdom or any natural quality that you have. You can be the smallest child who puts their trust in Him, and you are stronger than the greatest giant in the kingdom of darkness, because it’s not you, it’s Him in you. Praise God! Do we have something to rejoice in this morning?
( congregational amens ).
We also have things to be sober about and to realize where we’re at, and what God has laid before us and how we get from point A to point B. But I’m so thankful He’s going with us.
( congregational amens ).
He’ll never leave us nor forsake us. And He is faithful. To Him be the glory. Praise God!
Close
June 5, 2022 - No. 1548
“Gold in the Fire” Part One
Broadcast #1548
June 5, 2022
June 5, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1548 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, it seems like the Lord arranges every time I’m supposed to be up here for me to feel especially weak, and it seems like that’s kind of the way it is…the way it’s supposed to be, if we read the Word, because we’re not supposed to be running in our own strength, and I certainly don’t feel like I have any.
But I’ve had a lot of thoughts, and again I’m trying to, I’m asking the Lord to help me to bring them to a focus that He wants, to express His heart. And as is so often the case, I don’t know how much I’m going to say this morning that is truly new. But it’s not what’s new that we need, it’s what’s real, and what’s relevant to where we’re at.
And, I guess, as good a place as any to start is in the beginning of 1st Peter. And, you think about the man that God used, think about where he was when the Lord found him as a self-confident fisherman.
Some of you have seen the…that series of movies that have been made about the life of Jesus and the…and so forth. And, Peter is quite a rascal. I don’t suppose…I don’t think they’re off in picturing him that way. He was self-willed rascal.
And you think about what the Lord had to do to him and how the Lord was faithful to him, in spite of all of his human weakness, all that was wrong with him, and the catastrophic failure that he went through. And yet, God blessed him, brought him through, made him a pillar in the church, and a blessing to us yet here today because of his writings.
You know, if God can do that for Peter, He can do that for any of us. And we need to lift up our eyes and see who it is we’re serving and what this is about, and have a confidence. I mean, for people who knew what Peter had gone through, and to see him in the role that he’s occupying, encouraging and instructing others, with a confidence and with an anointing, what an encouragement that needs to be to all of us. And it’s what it certainly would have been to them.
So let me just read a little. I think I’m gonna go ahead and go against my instincts here and just read and then I’ll go back. It’s hard for me not to stop and comment every other word, but anyway.
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (NIV).
Wow, there’s a powerful, powerful picture of where we’re at in Christ, what He’s done for us, and how we got there, and where we’re going. And, of course, Peter’s focus in the middle of it is, okay, we see the past, we see the future, what about now? So that’s kind of where he’s coming from.
Now, just to set it a little bit in context. You know, different people have different places in the Kingdom of God. And Peter’s place was to minister to those who were Jews by birth. And so, when he talks about the exiles, he’s talking about people who were Israelites but lived in foreign countries.
How many of you remember that on the Day of Pentecost, there were people who had gathered in Jerusalem from many other countries? And they had been so assimilated in those countries that they actually spoke their language and so, the miracle of them speaking in all of these languages was very apparent.
But these weren’t Gentiles, these were Jews. And so, Peter’s ministry was to reach out to those who had been born as Jews and knew the Law, but needed to realize what God had done for them and how He had fulfilled everything that was foretold in the Old Testament, and now was coming to pass.
And all that had been hidden that the prophets themselves, he says later in this chapter or the next chapter…he said they hadn’t even understood it. But here, now, it’s being unlocked. In fact, he says it right after the passage I read. The Spirit that was in them didn’t realize, didn’t understand, they didn’t fully understand what they were prophesying. But now it was time for it to be unlocked, and revealed to everybody. And so, that was the hope that he was going forth to proclaim. All right?
So, who is Peter addressing? Who is he writing this to? He’s writing this to those, “…who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God.” And of course, I won’t say a lot about this. There’s a whole lot of debate in Christian circles about the relationship between God’s sovereign election, on the one hand, and man’s will and responsibility to respond on the other.
Well, the truth is in the middle. There is not a person alive in the history of this world who has the power, or even the inclination to come to God and surrender unless God works with the heart. We are dependent upon Him to come and speak to us and convict us of what is true, and of our need of Him.
But God does not simply come and overpower somebody and say, I pick you and I don’t pick you, and you don’t really have any choice in the matter. We have a responsibility to respond. And God knows, God knows ahead of time those who will. And so, He works in harmony with what He knows.
But I’ll tell you, we have a responsibility. And yet, isn’t it an awesome thing to have the security of God’s overshadowing choosing? Thank God! I want to be one of those chosen. Praise God! I don’t begin to deserve it, but He has chosen.
And I just praise Him, because that’s my security. It certainly is in nothing I can find in here. It’s in His heart and His purpose. Folks, if you are His and you know you’re His, wow, you have something to shout about this morning.
( congregational response ).
I don’t care what’s going on in your life, what you’re experiencing…even if you were experiencing all the things Brother Kumar is experiencing, we have reason to lift up our eyes and to rejoice because of what God has done.
But it’s interesting how he characterizes this. The foreknowledge of God, but it’s, “…through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.” What is he talking about? This is how it happens, in other words. God has to go to work on the heart. What does sanctify mean?
( congregational response ).
It’s to set apart. Because you have a human race that is marching like lemmings toward a cliff, toward certain destruction. There is no future for this world. I don’t care what you try to do, what mankind tries to do. He can go conquer the stars if he wants to, if he thinks he can. Nothing is going to alter the future of this first creation, which we were born into.
Folks, we need God to rescue us completely, and it is because of the influence of His Spirit that begins to set one apart who responds to the voice. You remember how Jesus said, “All those the Father give me will come to me.” But in the same passage, He talks about those who have heard His voice. There has been an influence of God and those who have heard and responded to that, they’re the ones that have been literally set apart from the destination of everyone else in this world. Praise God!
Oh God, just continue that work. I don’t even know what I need. But I serve One who knows what I need and loves me in spite of everything that is wrong with me, and that’s a bunch. Praise God! That’s true of you, too, though. Praise God! The sanctifying work of the Spirit! God is going to continue to set people apart.
And I want to challenge people. Has God ever set you apart? Has God truly become so real to you, have you heard His voice? Has He become so real to you that that seals your destiny and you have turned from a different path, the path in which the world walks? But now you’re walking His path and you’re looking to Him and you’re trusting in…you see past all of this world and all that it seems to offer. I’ll tell you, if that doesn’t happen, that’s beyond serious—that is beyond serious. This is real, folks. But only the…only hearing His voice can do that. Praise God! Praise God!
And of course, the result of this is not just a mental acknowledgement of certain ideas, there is an obedience that comes with this. Do you remember when God spoke to Abraham, what was it that set him apart? He believed God, but he didn’t sit there and say, yeah, I believe You. He packed up and obeyed.
Folks, we need to have a heart that we allow God to mold so that we become…so that our values change. Everything about us changes. That’s when God sets somebody apart and they become His and not their own.
You know, there’s a…I just, it seems like I come into this…almost a sense of conflict, in a sense. Lord, who is this focused on, because I’m aware that there are saints who are in need of encouragement and instruction. But there are always people among us who need what we’re talking about and don’t know what I’m talking about. They don’t have a clue. I just pray that God will speak. But I also pray that when He does you will listen!
( congregational response ).
And realize who it is that’s talking to you, because…well, I’m jumping ahead in a sense. But one of the words that’s gonna come up in this passage is faith. And if you listen to a lot of people’s ideas, particularly unbelievers, who are looking on and they’re seeing all this…people talking about faith. To them, faith is just a blind belief, and ideas that just make us feel better about life. We’re trying to cope with life, and it’s scary. And so, we just latch onto some ideas that somebody found in a book, and we just blindly make up our ideas…I’m gonna believe that. That doesn’t even come close to what real faith is.
( congregational response ).
That doesn’t even come close. I’ll tell you, faith is a supernatural gift of God, that happens in the heart of a believer who listens to the Word of God and embraces it from the heart. God literally imparts a life force into you that gives you a conviction that will hold!
( congregational amens ).
Folks, we need that conviction in this hour like we have never needed it before. Folks, if you don’t have that, you cry out to God, because there’s a God who said, who promised that if we would seek Him with all of our hearts, we’d find Him. He is not looking for any to perish. There’s a heart that reaches out to anyone that will listen and humble themselves and reach back. God wants to impart to you a gift called faith. And it is a supernatural ability to trust God and to surrender your life into His hands and to know that there’s something beyond this world. Praise God! Praise the Lord!
I’ve had so many thoughts come and so many scriptures…praise God! Lord, You organize this, because I haven’t got it organized, but that’s all right. He knows what He wants to say. But always, I have this sense that I’m talking to two classes of people. I’m talking to people that’ve not come to this yet.
How many times have we seen, over the decades that I’ve been a part of this church…we’ve all seen? Young people grow up in the church, and to all intents and purposes, they’re just flowing with us and believing what we believe, and yet they grow up to a certain point, and they choose to go the way of the world.
Folks, we’re gonna have to listen. We’re gonna have to hear the voice of God. There are only two sources of wisdom. And we live in a world that is ruled over by the powers of darkness. There is a kingdom here whose absolute aim and purpose is to destroy…to steal, kill and destroy everything that God has set out to do. And they use every trick in the book, to make the wisdom and the appeal of this world seem to be the reality that we live in, that we need to live for!
And we need a God who can break through that darkness and show us the truth. There are only two sources of wisdom. And you’re either gonna get it from God or you’re gonna get it from the world. And we live in a world…how many times have we said this? But it needs to be constantly emphasized. We live in a world where darkness and deception are flooding this world like never before.
( congregational response ).
Folks, we need to be so grounded in what God says, that we are able to recognize what’s going on and where the wisdom is coming from. You can’t just listen to your worldly friends. You’ll have worldly friends that say, I’m a Christian. And they’ll give you wisdom that comes straight out of the mouth of Lucifer sometimes. Folks, we need to be grounded.
And as we’re going forward, we’re gonna need something that’s real, because we’re going to…we are on a trial here. I guess that’s what’s going on. The Lord is gonna make manifest those that are His and those that aren’t. And I’ll tell you, you don’t have to be strong or smart or a whole lot of things to stand in this. We just need God.
( congregational amens ).
It’s all based upon Him. But I’ll tell you, if we are going to be self-willed, if we’re gonna just listen to this and listen to that and not really focus on Him, we’re gonna be in a world of hurt. It’s interesting…I’ll just refer to these, to some of these scriptures that we read about in the words of Jesus. He warned at one point, about those who would seek earthy wealth. And He says, it’s all gonna burn up. You need to seek for heavenly wealth. You need to seek for that which will not pass away. “…Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
But it’s interesting what He goes right on to say about the singleness of your eyes, or the health of your eyes, depending on the translation. Folks, what we are looking at, what we are considering to be the source of our truth, quote-unquote. Everybody has their own today. But there is only one source of genuine truth, and His name is Jesus, and He was sent to give us the knowledge of God’s will, God’s purpose, and to open up a way where we can participate in that.
But oh, I’ll tell you, you can’t come here and listen and say, yeah, yeah, and then go out and listen and follow your own heart and follow your own ideas and the wisdom that’s coming in from the news media and the education. And today’s education, so much of it is corrupted. You go to most colleges today and you’re gonna be brainwashed with a philosophy that hates God.
You’re gonna have to…if you go, you’re gonna have to have something on the inside that will hold you. You’re gonna have to have an anchor for your soul. And you’re gonna have some battles if you try to go into some of those places. They don’t want you there, some of them. I know it’s not a hundred percent bad everywhere. But I’ll tell you what, the world is being overrun with doctrines and ideas and things to live for that have entirely to do with this world.
And everything that they talk about will pass away! Or else, Jesus is a liar! He didn’t mess around when He talked about it. But oh, how He talked about the need for our eye to be single! Is your eye single? Not just when you come in here, but when you deal with the day-by-day issues of your life, is your eye single?
That is, I know where, I know who I need to be listening to. I know where my wisdom, my true wisdom comes from. I know where truth comes from. And whether I feel it, or whatever is going on in my heart and my life, I am committed to Him.
You know, we used the Scripture recently about seeking wisdom, but not having a divided heart, not having a heart that’s uncertain which way it wants to go, like we want God to lay His cards on the table and then we’ll decide. This is an absolute commitment. God, I know…I know enough about You to know that I can trust You absolutely.
( congregational amens ).
Nothing short of that is faith. Nothing short of that will get you through this world. That’s world, that’s the situation we find ourselves in. And God has arranged it because, you see what we read about, the incredible…incredible picture of what God has done and where we’re going with that! It’s just amazing, it’s beyond belief, that He could take people like me, and you, and give us anything to hope for. Thank God! Thank God!
Thank You for the sprinkling of the blood that means that the sins that I committed that separated me from a holy God, He took care of it! I could do nothing about it, but He did! Oh, what a heart! I can trust somebody like that.
You know, I remember my dad witnessing to somebody way, way back. I guess this was before he even met my mother. And, his comment to somebody who was kind of an unbeliever said, you know, I can trust somebody who died for me. Simple statement. But it’s exactly the truth. Somebody who’s willing to do what He did for me, how can I not trust Him completely? How can I not put my faith in Him?
And I’ll come back to this. I want to drop this in again, because just hearing about this and saying, oh yeah, they believe it, it must be so. I don’t want anybody here to ever have second-hand faith! God doesn’t want you to have second-hand faith! Doesn’t want you to do anything on the strength of what I say or what anybody else says. God wants to be real to you personally and He will if your heart is open to Him and you’re reaching out to Him.
You will have a source of knowledge that the world cannot give you, no university can give it to you. There is a wisdom that God can impart to the human heart that is stronger and more lasting than everything this world can offer you.
And even though, many times, it leads to difficult circumstances, like we saw Brother Kumar’s experiencing right now, even though, it leads to death itself in this world, it’s worth everything to know Him! Because this is not the end! This is gonna have an end, but this is not the end for those who put their trust in Christ. This is only the means to an end. Thank God!
“Praise be to the God and Father…” in verse 3, “…of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy….” That’s the only ground I can stand upon today. I cannot begin to come and say, God, I’m a good guy, You ought to receive me.
Are you willing to come on the ground of mercy? Or, do you have so much pride that you’re just not willing to come down and realize you need Him as much as the worst murderer, sinner, dictator? You need Him as much as Hitler did. So do I. There’s nothing that we can offer to Him. It is on the ground of mercy.
Are you willing to come that way? Because that’s the only ground we can come on. God, I couldn’t possibly deserve it, but You have offered me mercy and I am willing to come on that ground. I renounce any claim to goodness. I just come because You have offered me mercy. To Your name be glory and praise!
( congregational response ).
But He’s given us a new birth! Folks, how many times have we said, you can’t fix this? You can’t fix Adam! You and I were born with Adam’s life, and you can’t fix it! It’s so corrupted, there’s only one thing you do, is kill it. But what He offers us is another life.
Have you ever experienced that? That needs to be the cry of your heart, that you come to a place where you know you have been born again of His Spirit. He has imparted the very life of God to you, shared it with you. You don’t deserve it. I don’t either, but He’s given me a brand-new life. Praise God!
Close
May 29, 2022 - No. 1547
“A New Heart” One Part
Broadcast #1547
May 29, 2022
May 29, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1547 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I confess, I was waiting for Brother Steve to come up, and he’s sitting there saying, oh no! He shared a wonderful thought with me before the service and I thought that he was going to feel free to get up, but maybe this isn’t the time. I don’t know. But, I just, I’ll share the germ of a thought.
I don’t know how long this is gonna go. It may just…it may be just something short. But Steve was mentioning something about the heart and how critical it is that we be turned to the Lord. It’s a very simple thought.
You know what the Lord is looking for from each of us is a lot simpler than we often make it. You don’t have to be a theologian to be a Christian. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar. You don’t have to have a long doctrinal statement and just get every little thing in exactly the right place. God is looking for a certain kind of people.
And you can be one of those people if you’re very small, very weak, don’t have any strength, don’t have any human resources. In fact, you’re better off if you don’t. If you have human resources that the world values, the chances are about 100 percent that if the Lord brings you to Himself, He’s gonna have to do something about that, because, we can’t come into the Kingdom of God and function based upon what we are naturally. We just haven’t got it. And, the sooner we realize that, the better off we are, the freer we are.
What a burden it is to carry the idea with us that I have to come up with something. I have to be strong. I have to measure up. I have to do this and not do that. I have to know this, and oh my God, I didn’t know that! Lord have mercy! You’ll wear yourself out!
And the Lord is looking for the simplest of things from every single one of us and it’s simply our hearts. And I thought of, as Brother Steve was sharing what he shared…I won’t go to the scripture that he particularly used, but it reminded me of something that happened be in my Bible reading today, and it had to do with the life of Asa.
And Asa was one of the early kings of the Southern Kingdom. You remember how Solomon went off track and because of that, the Lord allowed the kingdom to split? The northern tribes went off and did their thing and never did serve God after that. A remnant, interestingly enough, a remnant of the people in the north that actually wanted to serve God migrated south, became part of the Southern Kingdom.
And, where they had serious ups and downs, they had some kings that did serve the Lord. And Asa, at least for a while, was one of them. And early in his…ministry…his kingdom, he faced a tremendous challenge from…I think it was the Cushite army…I didn’t look up any of this, so I’m kind of getting back into what I read this morning. But basically, he faced an incredible army.
It sounds a lot like Jehoshaphat. You know, we talk about that particular incident in the scriptures. This was sort of like that…an overwhelming force that came against him. And Asa, in 2 Chronicles 14, verse 11, “…called to the Lord his God and said, Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty.” (NIV). That’s an interesting thought. I mean, you think in terms of a great battle, but every one of us fights battles. If you’re a kingdom…if you are one of His children, if you’re part of the Kingdom, you’re in a battle!
( congregational response )
If you’re His, you have battles. This thing we call the Christian life is not a cakewalk, as we say, it is warfare. And the warfare is not against flesh and blood. It’s not even against, entirely, against our own nature, although it certainly is, we absolutely war against the powers, and they’re very real, that rule this planet.
Do you see them getting loosed and more and more in control of people? Every single day the headlines tell us that. But anyway, the thought out of this particular scripture, at this point, is a very simple one. Do you feel powerless tonight?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! I think we can all put up two hands, if we’re honest. If you’re thinking about things that God seemingly requires of us, we are powerless. So, God is not looking for power from you, or me. That’s a freeing thing, if we can realize it. He’s not looking for any kind of, like I say, human resource from you. So, if you’re weak, that’s not against you, that’s actually for you.
“Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.” Whoa! That’s a strong prayer, isn’t it?
( congregational amens ).
That’s a good one. We can come in the spirit of that in a lot of situations…as we gather as a church and we sense the devil trying to come against us in some fashion, trying to divide, trying to bring down.
You know, Sunday we made a point of praying one for another and resisting the devil, because we are in these battles. But you know as we do that, we need to realize that we’re not just sort of throwing words into the wind. We are talking about a very real God who has won, through His Son, a very real victory that He wants us to experience in a very practical way!
But oh, does He respond to a heart that says, oh Lord, You are our God, we rely upon You! I mean, it’s more than just a doctrine. This has got to be something that proceeds from your heart, not just from your lips. These are not magic words.
But if this represents your heart, then that is everything, folks! You are in a position above the greatest theologians on the planet, the most religious people, the strongest, the wisest. God didn’t call that kind, did He? He called the weak and the mighty…I don’t guess the mighty. He called the weak…don’t mind me, just don’t get old.
( laughter ).
He called the weak to show up the strong. You remember the scripture anyway, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And, how God chooses the weak things of the world, things that are despised, to bring to…things that are.
( congregational response ).
That’s right. To bring to nothing things that are. Because everything we have is what we have in Christ, and that absolutely levels the playing field. We may be different in our function, in our calling, but everyone who is part of the Kingdom of God stands on the same ground! It’s the ground of what God did through His Son, and if we rely upon that, we are in a position of strength, in this hour, regardless of what happens in the world around us. Folks, that’s what God is looking for and I pray that that describes you tonight.
( congregational amens ).
Because if it is, boy you are in a favored place. So anyway, you go on and you read how God struck down the enemy and they had a tremendous victory. And down in the next chapter, “The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” That’s real simple stuff, folks!
( congregational response ).
We’re living in a world of people with divided hearts, at best. At best! How many people in the world want God, in some fashion? I mean, many are just turning altogether. But I mean, even those who are religious and want God, in some fashion, many of them—most of them, I would say, are hanging on, in some way, to their own life, their own will, their hearts are attached to things in this world, and the devil has a wide-opened position—he’s in a wide-opened position to absolutely bring them…bring people down, bring people into total captivity.
Folks, I want to be in that safe place. There is a place of safety. There is a place where I don’t care how small, how weak you are and what happens to you in this world…they could kill us, and we’d be the winner for it!
( congregational amens )
Because, we serve One who’s already defeated death! Death is not our enemy anymore!
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, sin and carelessness and a divided heart, that’s the greatest enemy that anyone of us could have. We need a heart that says, God, I am Yours come hell or high water, sink or swim, I’m Yours, Lord! Just take my heart and mold it. Give me that new heart that You promised, that’s really…that is the heart, literally, of the New Covenant.
Oh, what a better Covenant that is than a bunch of laws that we can’t keep anyway. But a new heart and a new spirit that God supernaturally puts in us? Man, that is everything! And you’ve got everything that there is if you have that! And you lift up your…you lift up your heart to God…if you’re feeling your weakness tonight, you lift it up and get your eyes off of that, onto the One who gives you strength.
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, one of the things I’ve had to learn, in a new way, I think, in a deeper way. It’s something that I’ve known for years, theoretically…that’s our problem, we know a lot of things, but to learn them? One of the things I’ve learned is what Paul learned in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, that, “…when I am weak, then I am strong.”
It’s one thing to say, I’m weak, but I guess it’s okay. I know, God, what you said. I don’t like it much but…you know, think of how Paul reacted to that. He came to the place where he gloried—gloried in his weakness! You want to find something to boast about? That’s not human nature, is it? But folks, I am so glad tonight to tell you that I am weak and helpless in myself!
( congregational amens ).
But I’m gonna tell you, I’ve got a mighty Savior! I’m not trusting in what I am. I don’t care what your need is tonight. God will meet your need and He will draw near to you if your heart gets undivided, if you’ll just give it to Him. What are the issues that the devil would use to pull on your heart and say, no, you need to be attached to this? You need to be attached to this. You need to worry about this or worry about that. Give it to God!
( congregational amens ).
What did he say in 1 Peter chapter 5, was it? “Humble yourselves…under the mighty hand of God…” (KJV). And He will lift you up at the proper time. I’m paraphrasing a little bit. But then he also says…I can’t even remember what he says now.
( laughing ).
( laughter ).
Yeah, the next thing is, “Casting all your care…” Casting how many of your cares?
( congregational response ).
“…All your care upon him…” Cast them upon Him! Praise God! Just, here it is, Lord, I’m not gonna carry that anymore. That’s up to You. You handle that.
We aren’t very good at doing that. We’re very good at affirming that idea, but doing it is another story. But oh, God wants us to be free! Are you free tonight? We can occupy a place of freedom.
And, as I say, I think the Lord has helped me, in a measure, this year. I’ve experienced a lot of weakness, and yet, I feel more peace than I’ve had in a long time. Just to say, Lord, it’s okay. I get it. I see what this is doing. I see what it’s about. And I’m thankful to You for it. Lord, I’d like to feel differently. I’d like things to go differently, but, the thing that matters most is my heart and Your plan and what Your purpose is. It’s not so that I can be something. It’s so You can be something in and through me. That’s the only thing that matters.
Oh, God wants to take our lives and make something out of them, but He needs our hearts, doesn’t He? Praise God! Praise God! Well, you know Asa went along pretty good for a while. He responded to what the Lord had said and anyway…I haven’t read all of this…I guess I went through it this morning, in a different translation. But anyway, toward the end of his life things changed. You know, I want to finish well, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
We have a tendency to kind of let down, and kind of go off a little bit when we get older. God wants us to be stronger in our spirits as we get older, even when our flesh gets weaker. Do you know we can if we’re willing to humble ourselves under His hand and say, God, I want Your program? I want Your plan for my life, whatever it is. Whatever it is, Lord, do what You have to do in my life to make me what You want me to…that’s the only thing that matters! I don’t care what your heart is attached to in this world, it will burn up!
( congregational amens ).
It’s so simple, but we don’t see it that way! God wants to open our eyes to where we can say, nothing here really matters! Yes, I have responsibilities. I’ll take care of them, but that’s not where my heart is. Didn’t Jesus say, where your heart is…or, “…where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” I got it backwards. Praise God! I think Jesus knew what He was talking about, didn’t He?
( congregational response ).
So anyway, we come down toward the end of Asa’s reign, and all of a sudden, he has a problem with the Northern Kingdom. They come attack him, and things aren’t looking so good. So, what does he do? Does he run back to the Lord and say, oh Lord, this is your battle? No, he didn’t do that, did he? He made his own plan.
He got a bunch of the treasures that belonged to the kingdom and shipped them off to a heathen king and said, hey king, we need some help here. Here’s a bunch of gold and silver. Will you please change sides and help us against this enemy? And he said, yup, I’ll do it. And so, he came and absolutely he attacked the enemy, the Northern Kingdom, and the battle went the way it was supposed to.
Verse 7, “At that time Hanani…” (NIV). This is in chapter 16. I don’t think I said that. “At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him: Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand.
Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand.” Real complicated stuff here, isn’t it? “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”
( congregational amens ).
What a simple principle! I’ll tell you, if people understood the real heart of what God was saying, through the prophet right here, wouldn’t everything kind of fall into place? The answer is, yes. Praise God!
Is your heart divided? You know, we’ve mentioned, several times recently, we’ve called attention to that scripture in James, where James asked, does any of you lack wisdom? Well, what was the principle that was enunciated there? Yeah, you better…if you’re…basically, to paraphrase, if you want God’s wisdom and you’re asking it, even if you ask Him, you better ask with an undivided heart.
Because…I’ve said this…I’ve put it this way several times, who are we to think that we can get God to lay His cards on the table? Here is my plan. Can I get You to agree to it? Who are we…
( congregational response ).
…To have a plan, is right, but to question the Almighty God? And it’s not just that He’s so great and grand, but that He’s a loving God. He’s revealed the kind of a God He is, that all…that His heart is for us, to bring us to the greatest place that anybody could ever reach, and here we are, needing wisdom, and we’re basically saying, I’m not 100 percent sure I want His plan. I’m asking for wisdom here, but I’ve got my ideas, too.
God, I want Your plan, period! And I want it in such a sense, my heart is so pure about this, I agree to it before I even know what it is. That’s faith. That’s trust. Do you trust Him that much?
I’ll tell you, if we will open our hearts as He begins to deal with us, He will begin to give us the ability to do that. You know, the heart is something that needs to be molded, and we need to learn how to walk in truth and in victory. But I’ll tell you, God…I mean, you and I…the heart we’re born with is wicked, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
There’s nothing good about it. And if you think differently, God has to open your eyes. You don’t see yourself as God sees you. I’m so thankful He loves us anyway, aren’t you?
( congregational amens ).
But oh, my God! We need to come with our heart and say, God, I don’t even see my…I don’t understand my own heart. I don’t trust it. Didn’t Solomon say, “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.” (KJV). Whoso trusteth…you know, you listen to Hallmark…follow your heart.
Well, I like some of their movies, but I see past a lot of their theology, if you want to call it that. Praise God! I need to follow His heart. He’s got the heart that knows everything, loves beyond my ability to imagine, and is He not worthy? We sang the song. Is He not worthy of our trust? Is He not worthy of just handing our hearts over to Him, and giving Him a blank check to do what He needs to do in our lives?
Wouldn’t that be a good thing, right now, just to be able to say, Lord, here’s my life, here’s my heart? Take it. I give You a blank check. Do whatever it takes to make me what You have designed me to be so that I can be that with You forever! One day you and I will walk with our Savior, in a brand-new creation! He will be forever our elder brother and together we will worship God…
( congregational amens ).
…From whose heart all of this came! But oh God, May He lift our vision from all this nonsense that’s going on in this world, and all the things that would appeal to us, on the natural level, and say, God, I want my heart undivided! Give it to me! Work it in me! Do whatever You need to do! Praise God!
I wasn’t even planning on getting up tonight, so maybe that’s all that’s necessary right now, and maybe there are others who will weigh in. But, what a simple thing, isn’t it?
Sometimes I think the devil tells us we just need that other secret little revelation. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m missing out because there’s some secret, wonderful, new revelation that God’s gonna give, and then we’ll be able to…He just needs our heart! Praise God! You can chase revelation all you want to. If God says something real, that’s one thing. But I don’t need to chase secret knowledge. I just need Him! He has everything I need! He is everything I need! Whatever I lack, He is!
No one else has ever lived the Christian life. Jesus has! His plan is to live it in me, but I’ve got to give Him my heart for that to happen. And I believe He’s gonna be faithful to every one. There are people here that have needs. You’ve come here with needs. I have.
We’ve got Somebody Who’s right here, and His eyes are ranging across this congregation, not just around the world. What does He see when He looks at your heart? Good question to ask, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just say, Lord, You see even what’s wrong with my heart, but, even with what’s wrong I just give it to You, Lord. Fix it! Fix my heart! Do what You’ve got to do! I do what I know to do. I just give it to You.
That’s all we can do. Can’t we just give up and trust in Him? What else is there to salvation when you really break it down? Isn’t it just handing over our lives to Him and trusting Him to do what we can never do?
( congregational amens ).
Does that not put us, as I say, all in exactly the same place? It doesn’t matter, whether in the eyes of men you’re big, or little, or strong, or weak, or pretty, or ugly, or whatever. None of those things matter. God doesn’t look at any of that. He looks at one thing, looks at your heart. What does He see?
And I think I’ll just leave it at that, and just trust God to convict and encourage and do whatever He needs to do based on individual lives and hearts, because He knows what He’s doing! To Him be the glory!
( congregational response ).
Praise God!
Close
May 22, 2022 - No. 1546
“What is Your Life About?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1546
May 22, 2022
May 22, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1546 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Paul, as I said, was here for one purpose. After he met Christ, there was only one thing that he lived for. Lord, what do You want me to do? I do not belong to myself anymore. I belong to You.
And I’m gonna ask you the question—ask a question again. Do you really think that this is only for Paul? Or, does that not apply to every member of the Body of Christ?
We’re not all apostles, obviously! We’re not all anything. We have all the variety of gifts and abilities that God has distributed, but these principles apply to everyone.
Didn’t Paul write, I think in one of the Corinthian letters? “…Ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (KJV).
What are you seeking? What’s your life about? What’s the driving vision and burden that you have for your life? Where do you see yourself going and for what reason? These are serious questions, aren’t they?
( congregational amens ).
They’re ones we need to ask ourselves. On one level, this is a question that has eternal ramifications for someone who has never really, really surrendered to Christ. But there are ramifications for every single believer.
Why do we do what we do? You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. And we need to understand. You know, I mentioned…I’m sure I mentioned it here, but where I grew up, we often had messages that were geared to the young people to get them to come to the place where they’re willing to surrender their lives.
It’s not just a matter of coming to a place of salvation, but…because the truth is, how can you have one without the other? But still, the emphasis was basically, you’re standing at the crossroads of life. Where is your life going? What’s it gonna be about? Are you going to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, to do His will, or are you just gonna keep doing yours?
And of course, many times, the emphasis was on, are you willing to be a missionary if God calls you to be that? Or, are you willing to be a minister? There was all of that in there. But the basic principle, the basic center of all of that was, are you willing to do God’s will?
I’ll ask you that today. Is that the governing principle of your life? God, it’s not my life! What do You want me to do? What do You want me to be? How do You want me to live? Change me at the heart level! Impart to me the very ability to do what You’ve called me to be!
Is there anything else that can be called real Christianity? And the answer is no. We’ve got a lot of churchianity in this country. Thank God He has a people in spite of it, that He knows that are His. But my God, don’t we need Him? Don’t we need to have a purpose in our lives that goes beyond living a comfortable okay life, not getting into trouble, not doing a whole lot of bad stuff? Young people, what’s your purpose? Where are you going? What do you want in life? You have to face that.
( congregational amens ).
Have you ever met Jesus? Has He ever taken possession of your heart? Because it’s not a matter of just you trying to conform to what I say. God, help you. It could never be that. I’m in need of the same salvation you are.
But on the off chance that Jesus is actually inspiring some of this, these are His words, not mine. And they’re not spoken to try to be a tyrant in your life. They’re not spoken out of any ill motive, but out of pure love because of what He has…what Jesus died to share with every one of us.
Now, the outworking of that is the polar opposite of human nature. It could not be more opposite than what God has called every single Christian to. It’s not about you. It’s not about me, in the sense that we usually think of it. It’s not about what I can have, what I can do, how I can be seen in the eyes of others, how well I can think of myself, none of that. God, deliver every single one of us from that kind of self-centered thinking.
Here was Paul, knowing that in order to do the will of God, he had to be willing to go out and suffer the things that he suffered. He had to be willing to be hated everywhere he went. There were going to be people that were inspired by the devil to absolutely oppose him, to have him beaten, to have him thrown in prison, to have…have him stoned one time, left for dead. On and on and on, there was constant pressure.
Boy, we don’t like that. We think something is wrong. How many of you have been tempted to think that something is wrong? Here, I’ve been asking God for more, and instead, all hell breaks loose. And I’ve had nothing but trouble.
Yeah, I see a lot of people who said, yeah, I get it. I’d have to raise my hand, too. It’s awful easy. See, that’s human thinking. What we ought to be saying is, thank God. If we’re stirring up the devil, if he’s upset, he has a reason to be upset. That’s a cause for rejoicing for saying God is hearing, and He’s answering my prayer, and the devil is scared, “…because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
And the devil knows that! He doesn’t want me to know it! He doesn’t want a people who are in touch with Him, doing His will, knowing that if we’re gonna go through the doors He opens, we’re gonna meet with warfare.
There are all kinds of things going on where the devil has…and the devil will pull on every opening that he has in any life. He does it, “…to steal and kill and destroy.” (NIV).
You remember when Jesus was about to go the cross, He said the devil, “…is coming. He has no hold over me.” Why? Because every part of His being was surrendered to the will of God. There was no way that He could get to…to Him, to Jesus. I wish we could say that about us, but that’s what the Lord’s working on.
You know, the things that the devil has marshalled against us, or he marshals against us when we’re going through some of these times of reaching out for more. Sometimes it’s just temptation. Are there weaknesses that the devil’s just had an extra…put an extra bit of emphasis on the last little bit? Would you admit it?
( congregational response ).
There are weaknesses that the devil still probes and still works on. And all of a sudden you wonder why he’s putting a little more effort into that? Yeah, he’s scared. But God lets us experience battles so that we can experience victory.
There’s an old chorus that I remember hearing many, many years ago. And…’how can we be overcomers unless we overcome?’ Somehow, we want to be shadow boxers, learn the theory, and man, I’m an overcomer.
But, to be an overcomer means there are real battles to be fought. There is a real enemy that we need to stand up against and overcome! And the Lord is putting us through the paces. We’re gonna see him pulling…because he has a hold on a certain life, you’re gonna see the devil rise up in varying ways. We’re gonna need the Lord. We’re gonna need to pray. We’re gonna need to look to God for strength and for discernment.
But God is gonna use the battles that He puts us through to make us into the very thing that He wants us to experience. And we are going to see, as I said, people are either going to listen to the devil and walk away, because of his deception, or we’re gonna wake up and be part of the Kingdom of God and part of…and someone that God can actually use.
Now, Paul was somebody that God could use. His life was laid down. It’s not mine anymore, it’s Yours, Lord! He talks about a great door being opened! To whom does God open doors…the kind of door he’s talking about here? There is an opportunity for advancement of the Kingdom of God, and here it is, Paul.
So, what did Paul do with that? Of course, he went through it, didn’t he? He absolutely responded to God! And he went through that door knowing that there would be opposition, knowing that he was walking into a battle! But he said, this is the whole reason I exist. This is the meaning of my life. It’s not mine.
You remember the Scripture in Revelation in one of the letters to the Philadelphia Church, about how the Lord said, I open, and no man can shut. I shut and no man can open. You know, we talked recently about how this entire existence is a process of God working out a sovereign purpose. He has His times. He has His ways. He has what He wants to accomplish, when He wants to accomplish it, through whom He wants to accomplish it, and He is the one opens doors and closes them.
Sometimes, there are seasons for waiting! Sometimes, there are seasons for going through a door! Folks, it’s not our plans, it’s not our ability. It’s not anything but simply saying, God, show us what to do. Give us the power to do it.
( congregational amens ).
And give us the conviction to go through knowing we are going into battle! Lord, help us. We can’t do anything without You. But the only thing that will matter on that day is what I’m talking about now! You can amass everything in the world, and it will all be burned up and worthless! But the simplest saint who says here’s my life, use it, and God literally touches other people’s lives through that life, that will have eternal value.
What’s your life about? Do you know that God has a purpose for your life and yours and yours and mine? It’s to say, Lord, I don’t even know what to do. I don’t want to live for just an earthly purpose. Lord, I just give myself to You, and I don’t have any ambition in this. I don’t have any…it’s not a matter of me seeking a place or trying to be this or trying to be that. It’s just, Lord, whatever, I’m Yours.
And then, having Him work and change and deliver us from that drive of self-seeking. And we’re gonna have to go through stuff that will cause us to have to die, to let go, to face things that we don’t want to face about ourselves, all the things that we’ve talked about so many times.
But God is going to mold a people that will be able to do, along the same lines as what Paul did, not necessarily being an apostle and doing those kinds of things, but we are called to be members one of another. Every single one of us has something that is from heaven for the rest.
As I thought about this, I thought again about the point that I made a little bit ago, of how easy it is to think of deeper life as just a private, personal thing. Again, think back to what we’ve referred to Philippians 3 where Paul was talking about one thing I do, and oh, my goal in life is to be this high eagle Christian.
But why? What purpose is there in that? Is it just so I can be a Christ-like person? Is it just about me and my spiritual advancement and achievement? Is that what this is really about?
But how easily do we think of it in those terms. Why did Jesus come? For Himself, to be a great somebody? He came to be a servant. He endured everything He endured, not for what He could achieve, not for what He could be, but for what He could give us.
Can you think of anything anymore contrary to human nature? See, you could actually appeal to some people and say, oh, just come and be this super Christian. But you start throwing in the second half of that, “…and there are many who oppose…,” and you realize it’s not just a smooth, easy way.
Okay, Lord, I don’t really like it much, but I guess if that’s what it takes. “…All things work together for good…” you know, to those who love God. I’ll put up with it so I can be what You want me to be. If that’s all there is, that stops way short of God’s purpose for your life and for mine!
Again, why did Jesus do what He did? Why did He put up with this? Why did He suffer and die and put up with everything He had to put up with to do what He did? Why did He do it? Was it for Him or for us?
Oh, you know, I can do a lot, I can go through a lot if it benefits me. That’s the amazing thing when you think about Paul. You think about some of the things that he said. I guess I’m just referring to them, but you want to go back…you want to back up in Philippians. I’ll go ahead and look at a couple of those things.
You cannot read Philippians 3 and that all Paul sought to do and to be without it being in the context of what he said in chapter 1! Now this case, where was Paul when he wrote this? Now, you’re afraid to say, aren’t you?
( laughter ).
He was in prison. Now, he was in prison in Rome writing to the Philippian believers. And some of them were tempted to be timid about their faith, because look what it gets you. Paul is cautioning them don’t you dare give into that, because I’m not here living for me. This is not about what happens to me.
Let’s see, verse 20. “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (NIV).
Now, again, you could read that and say, Paul had this vision of what he could become. It’s about me and my relationship, and I’m going to have this glorious love fest with God, and that’s what it’s about.
Is that what it was about? You go on a little bit, and he says, “If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me.” Oh boy, more work! “…This will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but…,”
Ha! There’s a good but, isn’t it? You see what’s in control there? This is what I would like. How many of you would just love to have this be over? You know, you go through times, and you say, God, what a burden life is here, and what You have for me is so much better. You can just come and end it right now if You want to. Take me on. You can see that yearning in Paul, the realization of what lay ahead.
“But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” Why did Paul do what he did? Why did he put up with all the stuff that he put up with? Because Paul wasn’t living for himself. Paul was living for the people to whom he was sent. It wasn’t about Paul. It was about allowing the Spirit of God, the life, the power of God to flow through Paul so that others could be helped and lifted up.
Is that revolutionary? Is that why we’re living? Yeah, we’ve got a ways to go, if we’re gonna grow up in the Lord. I believe there’s a measure of that. Thank, God. But I believe that our thinking…if we’re gonna start thinking about deeper life and higher ground and all of that, we need to see what that higher ground involves. If it’s not about me laying down my life so that life can flow to others, it’s not higher ground.
( congregational amens ).
It’s not the ground that He has set forth for us. I thought of an old hymn. I can’t remember whether…whether we’ve ever sung this here or not, but I know I sung it growing up. Anybody know the hymn, “Channels Only”? I guess we haven’t sung it then.
( laughing ).
But anyway, this is a pretty good expression of God’s purpose. “How I praise Thee, precious Savior, that Thy love laid hold of me; Thou hast saved and cleansed and filled me that I might Thy channel be. Channels only, blessed Master, but with all Thy wondrous pow’r flowing through us, Thou canst use us every day and every hour.” That’s the chorus.
“Just a channel full of blessing, to the thirsty hearts around; to tell out Thy full salvation, all Thy loving message sound. Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me, a clean vessel in Thy hand; With no pow’r but as Thou givest graciously with each command.” Wow! Powerful words that capture it.
“Witnessing Thy pow’r to save me, setting free from self and sin; Thou who bought me to possess me, in Thy fullness, Lord, come in. Jesus, fill now with Thy Spirit hearts that full surrender know; that the streams of living water from our inner man may flow. Channels only, blessed Master, but with all Thy wondrous pow’r flowing through us, Thou canst use us every day and every hour.”
Why did Paul do what he did? Do we kind of see it a little deeper? Is that what we want? I believe God is calling. And I tell you, when He opens a door and we go through it, don’t expect to be unopposed. Don’t be afraid. Ask God for the courage. Think about the Israelites and all they had to face and what the Lord told them. Be courageous. Don’t give up. Don’t be afraid. Oh, by the way, be courageous.
( laughing ).
He knows what we’re made of. But folks, if you’re looking for a trouble-free way to the Kingdom of God, you’re in the wrong kingdom. The devil is going to oppose. It is a warfare, but it is one where the war has already been won at the cross.
( congregational amens ).
Thank God, and greater is He that’s in us than he that’s in the world. If we will put our trust in Him, and lay down our lives for Him, He will work, and He will accomplish His purpose, but we’ll also be part of it. That’s where He’s going with all of this. May God continue His work in us to take us to whatever deeper ground and higher ground that He wants. Praise God!
Close
May 15, 2022 - No. 1545
“What is Your Life About?” Part One
Broadcast #1545
May 15, 2022
May 15, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1545 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Every week it seems like I go through, in a sense, the same thing. We have a service and it seems like the Lord blesses and it’s connected to what’s been going on and what we’ve had before. And then I come to this next week, okay, now Lord, and I just feel empty and nothing’s going on and then I’ll have a thought and before…and as it develops, I suddenly say, hey, you know, this actually is a kind of a continuation.
And I feel like this may be one of those occasions as well. I believe the Lord wants to take us deeper, don’t you? We’ve said that so many times. And, we’ve certainly…I believe many of us have prayed, and prayed from our hearts, Lord work in me, change me, mold me and make me into what You’d have me to be.
That’s a dangerous prayer, because the Lord will answer it, but He won’t answer it in ways that we always expect. We think that’s gonna be peaches and cream, and we’ll sing a song about, “There is a place in God where rest is complete,” and we’ll sort of imagine that in an earthly sense where all conflict is gone. We’re just…oh, this is wonderful! And, how many of you know it’s not that way?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! It isn’t at all. And I had a scripture come to me the other day and I just kind of meditated on it ever since. And it comes from 1st Corinthians chapter 16. Paul was writing to the Corinthians, as we’ve said many times, and he had a lot of problems with a young church that had come out of heathen darkness, the people had. And they didn’t know how to be Christians. They didn’t know what it was all about. And so, he had to do a lot of teaching and explaining, dealing with issues.
And, you know, that’s kind of the way it is. There are always going to be issues, aren’t there? But anyway, he was writing to them. And, how many of you know where he was writing from? Where was Paul when he was writing this letter?
( congregational response ).
No. No, he wasn’t in prison. Well, it actually says here. In chapter 16, verse 5, I’ll go ahead and read a little bit. “After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you—for I will be going through Macedonia. Perhaps I will stay with you for a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.” (NIV).
And, you look in the bigger context, you see that he’s actually got in mind going to Jerusalem because he wants to take an offering, because the saints there are really in a desperate situation with poverty, and oppression by the religious leaders there.
But anyway, here he says, “But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.” Now, I’ve had so many thoughts. Only the Lord can bring this together in what He wants to emphasize.
Part of it is a great deal of what Steve said. But how many of you, in the process of saying Lord, take me deeper, have discovered that it stirs the devil up a bit? Instead of pressing forward and suddenly finding yourself in a pleasant meadow somewhere, spiritually speaking, you find yourself at war and you find the devil getting upset.
You know, if we’re not upsetting the devil, what are we doing? We’re living in enemy territory. The Kingdom of God exists with opposition, and if we’re not experiencing it, something is lacking. And it’s not that we go out and try to make trouble, in a carnal sense. But I mean, just simply pursuing what God wants is gonna stir up trouble.
So anyway…I’m jumping ahead in a way here because I wanted to emphasize different parts of this. But there’s one word that interests me there. Just at the moment I’ll comment on it. He says, a door, “…a great door for effective work has opened to me, ‘and’ there are many who oppose me.”
Now, if it were you and me, I think we would be inclined to say, ‘but’ there are. And as we talked about this before where, there’s a great difference between ‘and’ and ‘but.’ ‘But’ is kind of like the controlling factor in a situation. I’m doing good, ‘but.’ Or, I’m doing all this, ‘but’…as though all this opposition is now in charge.
But Paul is recognizing that they go hand in hand. If I’m doing anything, if I’m actually making progress in the Kingdom of God, instead of just marking time and sitting in place, there will be opposition and I recognize that and I just embrace it. It’s part of the deal. I accept it.
And I believe, with all my heart, as God moves here, as He brings us into a deeper experience of Him, we are going to have battles with the devil in many, many forms. And we might as well just get our minds geared up that that’s the way the Kingdom operates in the world. Okay?
Now, one of the areas that I wanted to go back and talk about, was that the fellow who wrote this…now we all know that Paul was not always Paul. He was, at one time, Saul, the Jew, and he describes his own…I mean, we see, in several places, his own background described as a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I mean a leader, an up-and-comer, who had given everything in his life to a certain course of action that he believed was the right one for him.
He was right with God, right with man, zealous for the religion of his fathers. He was an intellectual. He was a lot of things. But he was a rising star in the Jews religion of that day. And something changed.
Folks, how many of you know something has to change? Regardless…Steve was talking about this a lot this morning. You can grow up in this church and have nothing. You can grow up in this church and wind up in the Lake of Fire. Because it isn’t just a matter of the outward and the religion you embrace, the ideas you embrace, the behavior and all of that stuff. We need the Lord!
And there came a day when God’s purpose began to prevail in the life of this man named Saul. He had gotten letters of introduction from the leaders in Jerusalem because he’d heard that there were Christians in Damascus! The very idea! I’ve got to do something! So, he said, give me letters. I’ll go take care of business here.
And so, he was on his way to Damascus with a group of soldiers, I suppose. Anyway, they were people who were gonna help him in the process. And something happened. Has something ever happened in your life? It doesn’t have to be dramatic like this. I mean, Paul was suddenly surrounded by a great light and heard a voice that said to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” (NLT).
I mean, talk about a shock! “…Who are you, Lord? …I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” (NIV). Whoa, what a truth that unveils! Whatever the devil does to you, he’s actually doing it to Jesus. And you know, we need to see the connectedness of the Kingdom of God.
But here was a man that needed something…needed a direction in his life! His life was going the wrong direction. And so, Jesus interrupted his life and there was a revelation that penetrated, not just the mind, not just the intellect! Paul, I want to correct…or Saul, I want to correct your ideas. This was one that went to the heart!
Has Jesus ever penetrated to your heart? Or, have you just gone along? You see the need that was there. Would he ever have been the person he became if something had not happened at the level of his heart? This was a man that was brought into a relationship with Jesus Christ, where Jesus was not simply “a savior I believe in.” And, good, I’m going to heaven one day. This was somebody who came to be in charge!
And he came to a place where he understood that his life was not his own to live as he saw fit. It belonged to Jesus Christ, for His purposes, and His purposes alone. Now, is that just for somebody like Paul, as he became known? Or, is that a truth that applies to every single person, who would actually have a living relationship with Jesus Christ, and have an eternal hope? That’s how serious it is.
And this is only part of what I’ve thought about, but I just cannot get away from this aspect of truth. This man who wrote this, was somebody who had a basketful of stuff…we read about it in Philippians 3, of all the things that he…that in his life he valued and gloried in, as though this is what makes me somebody that matters. My life matters. This is what I want to live for.
You know, a lot of people just live for whatever pleases them. This guy went way beyond all of that. And yet, he was on the road to fire, and didn’t know it.
Folks, we need the Lord. And we need more than just following along with the religion of your parents, or what you hear the preacher say or any of those things. It has got to come down to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ that transforms your heart, because if you don’t have His life in you, you don’t have anything. If He’s not Lord of all, He’s not Lord at all.
( congregational amens ).
And contrary to what you will hear in some places, if He’s not Lord, He’s not Savior! We are seeing a great division in our world. We’ve said…this is something that’s not new. We’ve said this, many times. But it is a radical one! When mankind stands before a Holy God, there will only be two categories. You will either be robed in white, because of what He has done, alone. Or, you will stand there, having lived your life, on your terms, doing what you want, and you will lose it! It’s that simple.
And we have a culture today that is absolutely inspired by Satan. It is attacking every value, every idea, everything that has to do with Bible truth, with Jesus. We’re gonna see it chipped away, and we’re seeing it step, by step, by step. We’re seeing the rebellion absolutely unfold, and oh God, do we need to see past it and have God open eyes!
And I’ve heard, many times, burdens expressed by different ones for young people. Folks, those burdens aren’t just I don’t want him to get away from me. I want him to be identified with me. These burdens are coming from the hearts of people who know what they’re talking about. They have been there. They’ve been where you’re at, if you’re a young person.
This isn’t just for young people, but it sure affects them, because many of them are on the precipice of life, the staging area, whatever you want to say. There are roads that stretch out ahead of them. And oh, my God, how easy it is to have our plans, and to somehow imagine that I can live out my plan and it’ll be okay, and Jesus is good with that, as long as I don’t get too far out. You know, I don’t start robbing banks, and dealing drugs, and something that’s obviously evil.
Do you know what the essence of sin is? It’s not a list of ‘sins.’ Those are symptoms. The essence of sin is self on the throne! There’s nothing else! If you have self on the throne, you will have some of these evil acts come out. But they flow from the heart of someone who says, it’s my life, I will do as I please!
And there are plenty of people who live outwardly, exemplary lives, but self is on the throne! And there comes a place where God says, all right, I’m gonna let you have what you want. I pray that God will implant a godly fear in the hearts of everyone who hears this! Everyone, period! That you’ll see just how important this is.
What would have happened to Paul, to Saul, the Jew, had Jesus not intervened? What would have happened if somehow he had said, no? My God! This man had absolutely flipped 180. And Jesus absolutely revealed Himself and sent Ananias to him to pray after he’d gotten to Damascus, when he was blind.
And, here was a man who was afraid to go until the Lord explained, hey, this is somebody I’ve chosen. You’re gonna pray for him that he’ll receive his sight, that he’ll be saved, he’ll receive the Spirit. And I’m gonna tell him how many things he’s gonna be suffering for Me. Whoa, what a wonderful life!
But you know, you read through what Paul shared with us about what it means to really be a member of the Kingdom of God—a part of the Kingdom of God, and you’ll see a man that has a different view than a whole lot of folks.
You know, a lot of folks, they think of a deeper life, they think of going deeper with God, and it’s like it’s this magical place where I come into this peaceful, wonderful existence. And, you know, there’s an aspect of it where we have this deeper, personal relationship with God. Yes, there is a deeper peace. All of those things are there. And then you read about Paul and all that he went through, and how does that fit together?
You know, so many people have taken the one side…some of these sides of it. Some of it is the outward. Let’s back off and say that. We’ve said it many times about the prosperity gospel. If I’m…what God really wants from me is to prosper me in this world and if I will just believe in Him enough, I’ll have plenty of money, I’ll have perfect health, and I’ll be successful in everything I do, and that’s the sign that I am in favor with God.
Well boy, Paul must have really been on the outs with God because he sure didn’t experience much of that. That wasn’t the course of his life at all! The purpose for which he lived was something completely different.
What’s your purpose? When you’re looking ahead to your life or, right now…like I said, this isn’t just young people, this is everybody. Why are you doing what you’re doing? What’s your purpose? Or, are these truths only for the special ones?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. But here is Paul…and you remember in that passage in Philippians 3 that we’ve referred to so many times. If you read that, you could almost zone in on what he says. I want to know Him. This is one thing that I do. I want to, “…know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” (KJV).
And, “I press toward the mark for the prize….” You could almost conceive of that in a very private, personal sense. How many of you know there’s a difference between private and personal? Private is just about me. It’s like me going into a cave and having this glorious lovefest with Jesus, and that’s what my life is about. Find a monastery somewhere and just have this glorious, personal sense of something with God.
I’ll tell you, you could almost get that from those verses unless you see them in their context. Is that what Paul…is that why Paul did what he did? You know it isn’t. What was the reason that Paul did what he did? Was it just so that I could be a very special Christian? I could be a successful Christian. I could feel better about myself. Other people could look at me and say, wow, there is a model Christian! Isn’t that wonderful?
We are so geared to being self-centered, self-seeking. How easy it is to bring that into our spiritual lives and think that this relationship with God is about me and how I feel and how effective that I am at just being the kind of person You want me to be.
Lord, just guide my thoughts here. I feel a burden I can’t even express. But I believe God has a deeper—much deeper sense of what He wants to accomplish in us, and we see it in Paul. Paul, as I said, was here for one purpose. After he met Christ, there was only one thing that he lived for. Lord, what do You want me to do? I do not belong to myself anymore. I belong to You.
And I’m gonna ask you the question—ask a question again. Do you really think that this is only for Paul? Or, does that not apply to every member of the Body of Christ? We’re not all apostles, obviously! We’re not all anything. We have all the variety of gifts and abilities that God has distributed, but these principles apply to everyone.
Didn’t Paul write, I think in one of the Corinthian letters? “…Ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” What are you seeking? What’s your life about? What’s the driving vision and burden that you have for your life? Where do you see yourself going and for what reason? These are serious questions, aren’t they?
( congregational amens ).
They’re ones we need to ask ourselves. On one level, this is a question that has eternal ramifications for someone who has never really, really surrendered to Christ. But there are ramifications for every single believer. Why do we do what we do? You can do the right thing for the wrong reason.
And we need to understand. You know, I mentioned…I’m sure I mentioned it here, but where I grew up we often had messages that were geared to the young people to get them to come to the place where they’re willing to surrender their lives. It’s not just a matter of coming to a place of salvation, but…because the truth is, how can you have one without the other? But still, the emphasis was basically, you’re standing at the crossroads of life. Where is your life going? What’s it gonna be about? Are you going to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, to do His will, or are you just gonna keep doing yours?
And of course, many times, the emphasis was on, are you willing to be a missionary if God calls you to be that? Or, are you willing to be a minister? There was all of that in there. But the basic principle, the basic center of all of that was, are you willing to do God’s will?
I’ll ask you that today. Is that the governing principle of your life? God, it’s not my life! What do You want me to do? What do You want me to be? How do You want me to live? Change me at the heart level! Impart to me the very ability to do what You’ve called me to be!
Close
May 8, 2022 - No. 1544
“Specific Faith” Conclusion
Broadcast #1544
May 8, 2022
May 8, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1544 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: My God, we need God’s leadership every time, every day, in everything. And I believe there’s a supernatural life, and effectiveness that we could have, if we would take the time to get with the Lord and say, God, I am Yours, I need You!
Think in this context of the Scripture we’ve used so many times, about…in Romans 12, about a people who offered themselves together now as one sacrifice. Though we are individuals, yet together, we present You as a living…ourselves to You as a living sacrifice. We know that we don’t even think right, but we’re willing for You to change our way of thinking.
What’s the result of that? You go right straight into a description of the Body of Christ, where each member is able to minister life, divine life, one to another.
And that life takes many forms. It could take the form of performing a miracle. I still have this, vision is a strong word, but I mean, I still have this picture in my mind, of how God wants to, would love to have a people for whom supernatural things would be so ordinary it wouldn’t even be a big deal.
It’s not that we consider it unimportant, you understand what I’m saying, we wouldn’t glory and focus on that. When God does something supernatural, it’s not meant to draw sign seekers and become the center of attention. It’s meant to point to the Son of God and what He did on the cross so that people can find eternal life!
How many times have we said, you could raise somebody from the dead but if they don’t get spiritual life, they’re gonna die and face Him in the judgment? We need…we need the Gospel. And all these things are just part of the life of God’s people living in the world.
Of course, you’ve got some people that…they’re not experiencing very much beyond just believing the right stuff and saying the right prayers and all of that. And they believe that all this supernatural stuff is gone. It was only for the New Testament era. Once we had the scriptures that’s all we need. We don’t need that.
That’s a bunch of malarky. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (NIV). That’s just an excuse for unbelief.
But you’ve got others that so glory in that, that that becomes the center. And it’s not that hard for a spirit of deception to get in. And it certainly isn’t about all of God’s people becoming prophets and running around. God, we’ve too much of that going on. We got a lot of these would-be prophets that are out there, making grand pronouncements and then they don’t happen. They’re either prophesying out of their own fantasy or the devil’s getting in it.
But I’ll tell you, my God pictures…gives us a picture of what His people are meant to be like. They are a body, they work together. When there is an expression of something for which we need to know the source, there are gifts of discernment. That’s kind of important, isn’t it? Just because something supernatural happens doesn’t necessary mean God made it happen. We need wisdom, we need discernment, even in ministry! “Let the prophet speak two or three, and…”
( congregational response ).
“…Let the others judge.” (KJV). There is a discernment. There is a wisdom. I don’t have the right to stand up here and demand that you recognize anything in me. I’m trusting God with that. If this isn’t Him, you need to tell me. But I believe that God wants to bring a people who are so interconnected, they’re so connected…they’re just as connected to Him as Jesus was.
Now, you and I don’t have the place that Jesus occupied in the Kingdom, but we have a place. It’s one designed specifically for you and specifically for me.
But I get back to this that I believe with all my heart God wants to bring us to a place where we can more easily exercise specific faith. We can be connected to God in such a way that He can give us faith to do something very specific. And it could be praying for the sick, it could be, you know, something on that line. But it could be so many things, where we’re literally moving in God. I mean, that’s all it is.
We’ve seen a measure of that in the past, in the history of this church. And the point is not to go back and recapture. The point is…Lord, what is Your purpose now? We exist in a particular point of history. You have something…You are working. Right now, You are working. You’re working in this community. You’re working in this body of people. Lord, we want to be part of that and not just simply, blindly muddle along, following our traditions. We need You, Lord.
Shouldn’t we be a people who cry out, who actually believe this? You know, part of the problem that I’ve always had I guess is, yeah, that’s great for somebody else, but I don’t feel it, I haven’t had this experience or that one. I mean, this is great for somebody, for some special people, but for me?
I believe with all my heart God wants to minister to us a faith, that a life of connectiveness to Him and to His purpose is for us, as individuals. So that when we pray and say, oh God, lead us to that higher ground, I want to know what this is about, and I want to be a part of what You’re doing.
I don’t know how, and I’ll probably make a lot of mistakes. But God, I believe this is for me and I need You, Lord. Show me how and help me to love and be sensitive to my brothers and sisters, to encourage them, to lift them up. Lead us into this. This is not selfish ambition, trying to be somebody. This is just saying, Lord, I want You to be You.
( congregational amens ).
And just like…Father, like You, when You were working in that day, Your purpose was to work through Your Son. But even then, it wasn’t just Jesus. He sent out a bunch of others and gave them power. And they came back rejoicing, “…Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name” And they were all happy. And Jesus said, don’t rejoice in that. Rejoice that your names are written above.
See, it’s so easy for us to glory in the wrong thing. That’s where our thankfulness needs to be. God, you’ve made me Yours! That’s worth everything…that’s worth everything this world could possibly offer. Let it go. If I have that I have everything.
But while I’m here, Lord…you know, I was thinking about this. I confess, this is something that I struggle with. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Thinking about where I started with this, in James 5, praying for one another that you may be healed. I know there are people who seemingly have that kind a faith. I’ve seen it operate.
I have seen very specific, very…there’s no possible way to explain the result other than God miraculously intervened, there was no possible medical explanation. I’ve seen God do that. I know it’s real! I know He still heals!
Now, the purpose is not just to make life on earth easy and fix every problem, but there are things God wants to do and He wants to use a people to do it. That’s what it comes down to. Look at a couple of the scriptures, couple of scriptures where I believe God recorded them so that we could be encouraged, and realize this just isn’t history.
This is for us, here, this morning to be able to go to God and say, Lord, I believe this is for me. I’m not there. I need You to teach me about this. I need to get close to You and spend time with You and learn Your ways and have You teach me how You do stuff, have you teach me how to walk with You and how to infuse, or allow Your faith to be infused in me in such way that You can tell me to do something and I can do it and something will happen. Do we need the Lord?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, we do. But listen to what Peter said on the Day of Pentecost. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (NIV). But he didn’t stop there, did he? He said, “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
Has God called you? Has God called you to His kingdom? We’re not talking about called to be an apostle. We’re talking about, has He called you into His kingdom? It’s for everyone, that we can have a life that is described in the New Testament church. We’re gonna have to the Lord do it. We can’t work it up. We can’t do anything except, oh God, here I am. Lead me to a place to where what I’m doing is what You’re doing in me.
What did Jesus say in John 14, I believe it is. This is where…the scripture we’ve used many times, but I just want to focus on it just for a second. In verse 8, “Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered: Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, Show us the Father? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?”
That sounds like a pretty close relationship, doesn’t it? “The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority.” Lord! I don’t want to try to speak anything and say, God, this is what I think, and I need to get people to somehow agree with me. I want the words to be what He wants. “Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing…” What? Whose work?
( congregational response ).
“…His work.” His work! His work, that’s the essence of everything. God is working. And so anyway…but he comes down, in verse 12, and says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
How many of you have read that, maybe all your life, and said, yeah, yeah, that’s fine for somebody else, some other time, some other way. That’s just not me. I could never be part of that. Do you think that’s true? That we’re just supposed to relegate that to some other time, some other place, some other way. It couldn’t possibly apply to us in any practical way. Do you really think that’s what we’re meant to get from this?
Or should we be able to go to God and say, look at what You said, Lord. I know I’m not worthy. I know I’m not capable. I know there’s so much in me that needs to be changed in order for me to be a part of anything, actually be useful to You. But Lord, I believe, this is what You said! Lord, I’m gonna come to You, and I’m gonna look to You, and I’m going to ask You to work in me so that I can be a part of what You’re doing, instead of trying to get You to do my stuff, and how I think things should happen. I need You, Lord. It’s kind of quiet. Either I’m missing the Lord or you’re just really thinking about this.
( congregational response ).
Is this the truth? Is God calling us to something deeper?
( congregational amens ).
But do we have a basis upon which we can go to God with some actual expectation that He will hear us?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, we do! We can go, and say, Lord, this is what You said. Lord, I am one of the weakest of the weak, and the most unworthy. But Lord, I rest, not upon anything that I am, but upon what You have done. This is all based upon Jesus, based upon Your provision, Your plan, Your purpose! It’s what You have made me, not what I could possibly be in myself. Not any plan I could come up with. Nothing of me, Lord! I just want to get to the point where it’s just You in me doing Your thing!
I believe God can bring forth, and is going to bring forth, a people who live out the purpose and the plan of what He reveals in His Word. I recognize that there are people who live in unbelief about these things and people who just go to seed and go off in a never-never land here. Don’t you believe God can help us to find the middle?
( congregational response ).
To find the scriptural balance where we’re serving Him in…we’re worshipping Him in spirit and in truth?
( congregational amens ).
Not one or the other?
( congregational amens ).
We need both! God is gonna lead us. That’s one of the things, when I look back, as much as the church went through so many years ago, I’m amazed at the degree to which God enabled Brother Thomas to keep his feet on the ground.
( congregational response ).
The stuff that was happening. Oh God, is this You? What do we do? How do we handle it? And there was always that sense of crying out to God. God, we want to do, we want to hear everything You’ve got. But we also don’t want to be deceived. Lord, You’re gonna have to help us here!
( congregational response ).
And always, we’re going to lift up the Word of God! It’s going to have to square with this! And I believe God honored that stand. Was he perfect? No. Am I? No. Are you?
( congregational response ).
( laughing )
No, we need the Lord, don’t we? But we’ve got a God who is faithful. He’ll start with us right where we’re at, and begin to teach us how to walk in His will, how to know what He’s doing. Where He can say, this is what I’m doing, I want you to do this. And this is how I want you to do it. I know you did it this way last time, but this is how we do it this time.
And God’s gonna begin to express Himself in ways that we haven’t seen. And it isn’t always gonna be the spectacular stuff. But it could be—it could be. Like I say, wouldn’t it be neat, wouldn’t it be something to be able to see God do miraculous things and we don’t run around, wow!
But just say, thank God, You’re still the same God, the same God that was in Jesus doing the things that He did, the same God that was with the early church and the apostles and doing the things that were done there. You’re still here, Lord! You’re still just as real today as You were then. And God, we just honor You and praise You. Help us to humble ourselves, never to glory in who we are but to glory in You.
( congregational amens ).
I believe You’re real, Lord! I believe You want us to taste this, and come to that place. I guess “Specific Faith” is as good a title as any. I often struggle with titles. But, I believe God wants to bring us to a place where we can so operate within the, with the knowledge of what God wants and with a sense of who we are and who He is, and what to do, that we can have faith to do something very specific. Isn’t that what we see in Jesus?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, it’s exactly what we see in Jesus. And yet, there He is saying you’ll do greater works than I have. And instantly the unbelief sweeps in. But I believe God wants to deal with that, little by little, if necessary. And just help us to say, hey, He actually meant that!
And He didn’t just mean it for people somewhere else, He meant it here, in our midst. Help us, Lord. Help us, Lord, to get in harmony with what You’re doing, because You are always at work. And the question is, is what we’re doing part of that, or is it just us doing it? I believe God’s with us, don’t you? I believe He’s helping us.
( congregational amens ).
I believe He’s giving us this to encourage us.
( congregational response ).
Not to condemn us in the least. But to lift up the hope that He has for us and it’s real. I believe it! Thank God!
Close
May 1, 2022 - No. 1543
“Specific Faith” Part One
Broadcast #1543
May 1, 2022
May 1, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1543 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I’ve had some thoughts rummaging around in my brain, especially since Wednesday night. And I just pray the Lord will bring something out of this and make it live. I don’t know that I’m gonna say a lot of things that are totally different, very connected to what we’ve heard recently. But how many of you really believe the Lord wants to take us to higher ground?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I mean we can get to a place where we’re simply coming and going through the motions, and doing what we know to do, and it’s following tradition, and we’re sincere and we look to the Lord, and we worship Him, but here we are, we’re kind of…almost staying in place. I believe the Lord wants to take us to higher ground.
You know, we were praying Wednesday night in the service and, in particular, for healing needs. And suddenly a phrase came to my mind, that I believe is in James chapter 5. I’m not gonna turn there but, “…pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (NIV). Now I suspect that when most of us read that, we think in terms of, well, somebody’s sick and what I’m supposed to do about that is pray. Now, I don’t know if God’s gonna do anything or not. That’s up to Him, but I’m supposed to mouth that to God somehow.
And that’s true enough, I guess. But somehow it struck me in a different way, that there was a sense in what God was saying that there is a definite result. There is very specific faith being exercised, and it’s not a question here of…well I don’t know whether God’s gonna do something here or not. I hope He is. There is a very direct correlation between the prayer of faith and God literally doing something.
How many of you believe that God wants to take us to a place where we can exercise specific faith? And it’s not something where you can just suddenly get an experience and jump into that. But I believe God wants to teach us and lead us beyond where we’ve been, so that more and more we can learn to pray very specifically and actually expect to see God work and do it, not because we thought it up, wanted it, and convinced God to do something. But rather, we stepped into something. We stepped into something that God was in.
And you know, I thought about this, in this regard. Think about Jesus. Now did Jesus go around and see needs and say, boy, I’d sure like to do something about that? Father, what do you think about this? Let’s just pray that You’ll heal people.
Was there this generalized kind of thing that we tend to live in, or did Jesus do things very specifically? I mean, why did He go through Samaria when most Jews went around Samaria? Why did He get in a boat and go across the lake for one guy, one maniac, full of devils, living in a heathen country? Why did He go into one place and heal one person, or why didn’t He heal this one and heal that one?
Why…there was so much that was specific in what Jesus did. And you wonder how did He know to do that? Why did He…when He heard about Lazarus, why did He stay where He was, instead of going? Now, our reaction would’ve been, oh my God, I’ve got to get there! Because that’s gonna somehow make a difference. Why did Jesus do what He did?
You know, His disciples and others around Him questioned that at times. There was this sense of…you know, this guy seems to be operating on a level we don’t know anything about. He just does things that are very specific. He will…well, I made jokes out of this, I think, years ago, about how people will dig around in the Scriptures and they will find something and say, oh my god, there it is. There’s the pattern. There’s the formula!
Well, if you try to do that with how to heal somebody who’s blind, one person will go to a passage where Jesus said, go, your faith has made you whole. So, all He did was speak. On another occasion, there were blind men that came to Him and expressed faith and He touched their eyes. On another occasion, there was a man where Jesus spit on the ground, made mud from His own spit, put it on the guy’s eyes and said, go wash. And he washed and he came seeing. Now, you’ve got the basis for three denominations right there!
You know, we are so geared to a world of sense and feeling. We’re so connected to this. And…part it’s our nature, I think. We want to feel like we’re in control, like we know what to do, we’ve got a certain amount of confidence that we’re doing the right thing, or we’re doing ‘it’ right…whatever. And so, boy, do we look for formulas. We want to know how to do stuff. And okay, now I know how to do it so I can just do it.
And I don’t see that in Jesus at all, do you? God just didn’t say, hey, go down there and do good stuff. He didn’t rely on His own thoughts to figure out ‘what I should do today.’ There was a relationship between His heavenly Father…with His heavenly Father that was absolutely unique in all of history, where…well, I mean, that’s where we’re gonna get into in a minute.
But somehow, Jesus knew what to do and how to do it and when to do and what to do and what not to do. And He never did…never did things the same way twice! Now, see that’s not how we operate. Like I say, every one of us wants to know the formula. We want to know the principle, so then we can…oh, now I’ve got it! Finally, I’ve got it. Now I can do stuff. Now I can get God to do what I want Him to do, which is kind of where we’re going with it a lot of the time.
But there is a whole different principle when it come to how the Kingdom of God works, that I believe we need to see in a different light, in a deeper way. And then, actually learn how…or allow God to teach us, I guess, is a better way to put that, allow God to teach us so that we can actually be part of that, instead of just muddling through, doing our best.
You know, doing what we think we know to do in planning…you understand what I’m saying? Operating more on a human level than we would like to admit. God wants a church that is literally the Body of Christ, where what we do is not us doing it at all, but it is Christ acting through His Body.
And I dare say, we’ve got a ways to go. Now, this is, again, one of these areas where I feel my need. And it’s like, who am I to be up here saying these things? I need this as much as anybody sitting out there. But the reality is, somebody’s got to say it. And so, I’m just gonna have to humble myself and say, Lord, these are truths that You want us to learn, and to learn how to walk in and grow into, so that we can be what you want us to be in the world.
This is a world that we know is getting crazier and crazier, and more and more controlled by the devil, and we’ve been told that it’s gonna be that way. We know that the Lord only works with people so long. He reveals Himself and He reaches out. But there comes a day when He says, all right, I’m gonna take my hands off and give you what you want. That’s the world we are more and more seeing operate around us.
And we need—we need a greater reality than we have if we’re gonna live in this and actually be a part of what God is doing. Do you believe God is doing stuff? I believe He is too. And I believe He wants us to share in that more than we do and be able to.
So anyway, let’s just read this particular passage in John chapter 5 as a starting point here. “Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, Do you want to get well? Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Now, we’re not given any great explanation of what was going on here. It may well have been that God was just allowing this…allowing an angel to come down and stir the water every so often, and it was just His compassion on the people. We don’t really know, but obviously the people were there with some expectation that when the water was stirred, they could actually be healed. Don’t ask me to explain that beyond what the Scripture says.
But anyway, so here’s Jesus walking into this situation. “Then Jesus said to him, Get up! Pick up your mat and walk. At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of faith, to be able to just…to be so in tune with God that we could know that that was the thing that God wants to do, and I have faith to do it, and all I have to do is say the word and God will act. That was the place that He occupied, thank God!
Anyway, so, “The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” You wonder why the Lord maybe picked this…this happened more than once where Jesus healed somebody on the Sabbath, and they were upset with Him.
My God, do our traditions need to be crossed? Do our ways need to be corrected and crossed? Do we…many times, do we run in the idea of what we…we think we know what we’re supposed to do and how it’s supposed to be, and, you’re not doing it right, and you’re not…you know. My God, we need to be set free from so much, that’s just our way of thinking, or ways we’ve learned, and we’ve imbibed from our environment, religious and otherwise.
But anyway, here was a bunch of leaders that were supposedly spiritual leaders and, instead of rejoicing that this man had been healed — My God…God’s among us! Let’s find out what’s going on here! I want to get in touch with God — They were mad at him for carrying his mat! I mean, wow, look at the condition they were in.
Anyway, “But he replied, The man who made me well said to me, Pick up your mat and walk. So, they asked him, Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk? The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.”
How many modern healers would do that? Man, they put signs out and just try to make a huge deal out of it…and crusades and oh my God, come! I’ve got this power to heal! Jesus did one little thing…do you ever wonder why He only healed one man right there? I wonder how He knew to do that? Think about the specificity, how specific His faith was. I actually got that out….
Think about how specific that faith was for Jesus to step into that situation, zero in on one man, heal him on the spot, and then slip away so that the man didn’t even know who it was. Just…I don’t know, He’s gone. But you know, God had a larger purpose in that. And somehow, Jesus knew to seek the man out, after this.
Did God know what the Jews were plotting and how they felt about it? Oh yeah. But Jesus…but God wanted something to be confronted here in a very specific way. And so, anyway, “Later…” verse 14, “…Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
Now, I don’t want to make some broad generalization out of that. But evidently, there are situations where people get in a condition because of sin. We need the Lord, don’t we? We need Him to deliver us from sin regardless of what the specific consequences are. But anyway, there was a warning to the man.
So, “The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.” Sounds like a real grateful guy here. But, you know, God had a purpose. God was unfolding something.
You know, if God could take the crucifixion of Christ—the crucifixion of His Son, and so orchestrate it that it was not the people themselves who were really doing it, but it was God who had ordained everything that was to happen, to accomplish something that could not have happened any other way. Do we have a God who is control? Who knows what to do and when and how to do it? Do you see how Jesus was in such complete harmony with Him in this?
And so, anyway, “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.” I mean, think of the spiritual condition, again, of people…here’s God, obviously done something very miraculous and they’re more worried about their traditions…and against this guy. He couldn’t be of God. This is terrible. We’ve got to do something about it. So, they began to persecute Him.
“In his defense Jesus said to them, My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” So, “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself.”
That’s an amazing statement. So many think that Jesus was a divine creature…not creature, but a divine being who could just do anything on His own while He was here. That’s not what He said. Here He was…had literally come to a place of dependence.
Do you understand that He was as dependent upon God as we are? Let that sink in. Does this, what He said right here, sound familiar? Does it sound a lot like what He said in John 15? “…Without me ye can do nothing.” (KJV). Now obviously we can get up and brush our teeth and go to work and all those kinds of things. But He’s talking about thing that have spiritual significance. He’s talking about the overarching purpose of God that is unfolding! The world is totally blind to it!
But the question is, who on earth among the sons and daughters of men, who are literally a part of that, and what they do is an expression of that, so that there is eternal fruit, eternal result? Do we want eternal result in the things that we do? Or do we want to just come here, do what we know we’re supposed to do, and then die, and then go to heaven, and that’s kind of all there is to it?
I don’t know, that’s not the picture I get in the Scriptures. Is it what you see? It’s kind of a sobering truth, isn’t it? How many of you think the Lord’s emphasizing this to condemn us? Not at all. I believe there’s a heart that reaches out to anyone who reaches back. I believe He’s built a hunger into many who say, God, I know there’s more. I just don’t know what to do. I see where we’re at, and I see what the church was like in the Scriptures. How do you get there?
When I read something like James 5, and they’re talking so specifically about praying and being healed as a result out of that…I’ll tell you, God has a way of encouraging us in this line, that He can work through His people.
I know those of you who were here last week remember what happened with Kenny. I got to talk to him a couple days ago and the Lord’s helping him. But I don’t know how many people here realize how serious that was. It very easily could have been fatal. It was that serious.
And, you know, when he got to the hospital, he had a hard time convincing them to look for the right thing. He kind of had some idea of what was going on because of the blood clots. And finally, he convinced them to go and let’s have a CAT scan. And he said, the look on the nurse’s face when they saw what was going on was priceless. And it was like they realized, this guy shouldn’t be alive! That’s how close he came.
And the interesting thing to me was that, while he was lying back there, you remember we stopped and had a brief prayer. He woke up hearing us praying. Do you think the Lord, maybe had inspired that situation and inspired us to pray, and it wasn’t just us doing it? I believe God was acting.
I believe that God wants more of that…to where we can learn how to tune in to what God is actually wanting and doing, and then expressing real faith, not something we try to work up. It’s not a feeling we work up. There is real faith that comes that’s supernatural, that enables human beings to do supernatural things. And this isn’t just about performing miracles, but this is about being the Body of Christ and being His heart and hand extended as we so often say.
So, here’s Jesus saying, “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself…” (NIV). That’s a statement of inability, in Himself. “…He can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” And so on, He goes on.
But think about…just meditate on that. Here is someone who had a relationship with God. God is acting. He’s doing stuff. In God’s purpose, He meant to do a great deal through His Son, who’d been sent for a particular purpose. So, what were the mechanics of that, if you will? You had someone who was so close to the Father in His willingness to do the Father’s will. He was totally surrendered to that. That was the only reason He was living. I didn’t come to do my will, I came to do His. He was so looking to Him and so believing Him, and the Father was expressing His love by showing the Son what He was doing.
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April 24, 2022 - No. 1542
“The Hand on the Sacrifice” Conclusion
Broadcast #1542
April 24, 2022
April 24, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1542 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: The Word reminds us that God sent Somebody who could understand us…Somebody who experienced all of the wounds that this world can dish out, not just the physical stuff but the stuff that gets in here. I don’t care what you’ve experienced in your heart and your life and your mind, we have got a Savior who’s been there and experienced that and gets it.
And He alone has the heart and the power to do something about it! We need healing at the heart level and Jesus is somebody who has been here in a place where He can do it! It’s not just…yeah, I see you down there, I see what you’re going through…He’s been here and experienced every sorrow, every hurt, every rejection, everything that could possibly touch your life or mine! He’s experienced it in spades.
So, when I identify with Him, it’s not just that I’m joining Someone who the world hates, I am joining Somebody who is capable of looking into the depths of my soul and loving me anyway and helping me because He understands. Praise God!
I want to put my hand on that, on the head of that sacrifice! Oh, praise God! Isn’t God good to give us Someone like that? “He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” (NIV). But the center of it is certainly what he comes to here. “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” That goes into the same thing, doesn’t it?
So, men interpreted that, of course, with the wisdom of the enemy, they saw the things that He went through, they saw the rejection, and all of that. How did they interpret that? What conclusion did they draw, based on what they saw and how He was rejected by the religious establishment of that day? He’s getting what He deserves. “We considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.” We thought He was a sinner that God was punishing and taking Him out of the way so we could be free of Him.
Boy, you talk about blindness! We have no idea. We think so highly of ourselves. We don’t get it. And here God was sending somebody who could come right down into the depths of where we live and experience everything that we experience and bring us hope. And we thought He was getting what He deserved. He got what I deserve!
But, in contrast to the world’s estimation of this, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.” Oh God, that should cause everyone to run to Him!
But it doesn’t because men will not own their sin! We judge as humans judge. Well, I’m not as bad as everybody else…I’m like that one preacher that said, I’m 99 percent good. Oh yeah. That’s the blindness of the human heart. We have no idea what goodness really is.
Isaiah knew, didn’t he? God took him to a place where that’s all he saw and he immediately knew what he was. In fact, he saw…think about the fact that he didn’t understand what was coming. He saw the very One that he’s talking about back in chapter 6 when he went and saw Him on a throne! That was Jesus that he saw, that was the Son of God. He’s the only form of God you’ll ever see. He is the full, perfect representation of the Father.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions…crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Now a lot of people talk about the physical side of that, and that’s fine. But I’ll tell you, the wounds that I need are not just the ones in my body, they’re the wounds in that part of me that lives apart from this body. They’re the wounds of the spirit, wounds of the heart, wounds of the soul.
But we have Somebody who can heal every single one of them, if we’ll just come to Him and seek Him and look to Him. He has the power to change it all! But in order for that to happen, in order for that to do us any good, we are going to have to come to God, not based upon anything else, except, oh God, I own my sin, I deserve what this sacrifice is taking in my place. I’m placing my hand on His head! That’s my only hope! He represents me. I am laying down my life. That’s what it means.
This is not just, take my sins away so I can go live my life, and then come and bless me, bless my plans. This is, oh God, I surrender. We see in Him the value of human life, which is nothing! Nothing in this world is worth preserving into eternity, except what God builds into the hearts and lives of His people. I’ll tell you, when He comes in and He begins to change, now you’ve got something that can last and is worth something. Everything here leads to corruption and sin and death and sorrow and suffering!
( congregational amens ).
That’s what He came to deliver us from. He laid down His life as my representative! Do you seriously think I’m gonna just take that and run with it and live my life? No! That’s not what it’s about! My hand is on His head! That means my heart is engaged in what He…in everything that He stood for on that day!
Is your hand on the sacrifice? Praise God! There’s more to this that just coming to Christ in the first place. You know, the people that sinned, they didn’t just come once, did they? And while we live here, we don’t live perfect lives, do we? We need that sacrifice. We don’t bring a different sacrifice, though. We bring the one.
But do you know, that same sacrifice that enabled us to enter the door of salvation, enables us to come at any time and say, oh Lord, I have sinned. Lord, I’m in need but You provided my sacrifice. I’m laying my hand on that sacrifice and I come to You based upon Your provision and Your promise! This is the way You’ve told me You will accept me, and I come Your way! I’m not gonna try to pretty it up or rearrange it. I’m coming Your way, period! No compromise! Jesus is my representative and I trust in Him 100 percent!
You think this doesn’t…you don’t think this applies to you somehow? We ‘all’…that’s a big word, isn’t it? “We all, like sheep, have gone astray….” Every single one, there’s no difference. I don’t care if you went into a place that was a den of iniquity, every kind of wrong and sin you could think of, you could not look at those people and say, I’m better than you in God’s eyes.
You have the same nature! And if the circumstances were different, and you gave yourself over to that stuff, you’d be worse! Not one of us can look in the mirror and say, this doesn’t apply to me. It does! I’ll tell you…was it Brother Thomas or John B. that used to say…I guess it was John B…he wished some people he knew would go steal a hog or do something so they’d have something to repent of.
( laughter ).
He felt like there was a certain amount of self-righteousness in some that he knew. And I’ll tell you what, I don’t care if you’ve grown up in church and you’ve lived a ‘moral life’ so called, you have the same need.
( congregational amens ).
I happen to have been born into a preacher’s family. I have the same need. I’m no better than anybody else. I couldn’t go into a prison or into any place in the world and tell people that I’m any better than they are. We need the same Savior! And there’s only one way! Put your hand on the sacrifice and come. From your heart, put your trust in what He did.
( congregational amens ).
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each one of us has turned to his own way.” That’s the problem, it’s my way! You can’t make a way and define your own way and say, but it’s moral. Oh, no it’s not! It’s you! It’s a spirit of rebellion.
But oh, the next part, “…and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” (KJV), John the Baptist said.
“He was oppressed and afflicted…” (NIV). Now oppressed, I think the sense of that, if you look at various translations, it had to do with the injustice of His being accused when He wasn’t guilty of anything. They arrested Him and He wasn’t guilty, but they arrested Him anyway! “…And afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open His mouth.”
How do you react when you’re faced with something that you did that was wrong? It’s kind of quiet. What is the human spirit, what is the natural response to that? Self rises up, and it’s not this, or it’s somebody else’s fault, I didn’t do it. You know, whatever it is, there’s gonna be some sort of resistance to that.
And here He is, going there with my sin upon Him and He’s not arguing! What right do we have to argue and justify self when we’re wrong? And here He is, silent! No self-defense! No, I’ll get you for this, this is unjust! I mean, He really was guiltless! And we’re not! May God help us to have a humble sensitivity and a willingness to take ownership of what’s really true. But He faced it. He knew what we were, and He didn’t open His mouth.
“By oppression and judgment He was taken away…” injustice again, “…and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”
There are several ways that that’s translated and the thought that makes the most sense, is basically that his generation didn’t understand what was going on. They didn’t get it. You look at several…I think the one you have, the NLT, puts it somewhat like that, if I’m not mistaken. But anyway…it’s basically that the generation that saw all this happen, had no idea what was going on. But boy, He did, didn’t He? He went into it with His eyes wide open.
“He was assigned a grave with the wicked….” In other words, basically this is a criminal who needs to be now disposed of in the ground and we’re gonna forget about Him. That was the spirit behind what he’s talking about there. But He also had a grave, “…with the rich in his death….” God had provided Him a tomb. There was a follower who stepped up to Pilate and said, may I have His body? I have a place to bury Him. So, the Lord even provided that, didn’t He?
“…Though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth….” Now here’s the amazing thing: “…yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer….” That’s incredible!
Do you want to see the heart of God, the heart that longed to show us mercy but had to uphold justice? I was guilty. There was nothing I could say. I had no answer. I deserved to die. But because God desired to show me mercy, He took my sins, charged His own Son, who willingly took them. There is no other definition of love that comes close to the willing sacrifice that took place on that day.
But it wasn’t just Jesus trying to placate His Father. This was God’s plan from the beginning. They were 100 percent united in what they sought to do. And remember how Jesus said, Father, if there is any other way, let this cup pass, but not my will but yours be done. That’s what was done.
Do you remember how the disciples prayed after they had been rebuked by the Sanhedrin? Lord, it was by Your determined will that they crucified Him. We know that they rose up in rebellion against You but it was by Your will that it happened! You determined ahead of time what was gonna happen. And they prayed to that same God who was in charge, God, empower us not to be intimidated by the spirit of this world that would shut us up.
So. “…it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.” Praise God!
See, that brings us to the resurrection! His death for me was not the end. It was the beginning! But oh, how we need to have our hands on the sacrifice. That is the one pathway to life that is ‘life.’ There’s a scripture that says that. I don’t remember where it’s at. There’s only one life that really is life.
Do you want life? I pray for anybody who doesn’t get this, that God will open your eyes to see that what we call life here is not life. You can’t keep it! It’s worthless in the end! But God has opened a way to impart the life that is life.
And it comes…and Jesus partook of that life by laying down His earthly life and He came forth with a life that cannot die—the very life of God. But not only did He come forth for Himself and just for His own glory, but now He was able to share. Now He’s able to share all that He is with us.
Is your hand on the sacrifice? Man, it better be 100 percent, from the heart. And it’s not being strong, it’s not being worthy…it’s being just the opposite most of the time. The people that heard Jesus were the ones that life had wounded, that were the guiltiest, that were the lowest of the low, the tax collectors, the prostitutes! They were the ones who came and felt the love and the mercy that God desired to show.
And God took care of the problem that had separated them from a holy God. God took care of it! God…that same God is here today! I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been or what you’ve done. There’s a God who is able to blot out your sins as if they had never happened because they were placed upon Him! But I’ll tell you, your hand needs to be on the sacrifice, 100 percent. This is the sacrifice that I am offering to You, Father, based upon Your heart and Your promise.
“…It was the Lord’s will to crush Him…the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” That brings us right down to today. Everything God has purposed, right down to what He’s purposed in our lives, and going forward, and finishing the job, and presenting the church to Himself, without spot, wrinkle or blemish or any other such thing, all of that will prosper in the same way in which this prospered! The same God who, by His will was…crushed His Son, is going to bring that to pass. Everything that God has put in His hands…all authority in heaven and earth has been put in His hands. He will finish what He started.
( congregational amens ).
Is your hand on the sacrifice? Man, do you want to hitch your wagon to something, to Someone and something that’s gonna last, something that’s gonna mean something in eternity? There will come a day when people will be screaming in terror and regret…screaming for another chance! And on that day, there will be no other chance. The Word of God is going out today.
One of the words that it says here, after the suffering…verse 11. I’m gonna stop with this, I think. “After the suffering of His soul, he will see the light of life, and will be satisfied.” Hebrews 12 tells us, “…for the joy set before him endured the cross…,” despised the shame, didn’t make any difference to Him what He had to go through. Oh, that’s worth everything!
Well, it’s worth everything for us to be 100 percent identified with that sacrifice! Say, this is my hope! “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” The same God who brought Him out of the tomb has power to make us into His children, to transform us from the inside out, to blot out our sins, to impart new life.
For the message is two-fold. Have you come to God with all your heart and your hand on the sacrifice? That’s the challenge today. If you stop short of that, you’ve stopped short of everything! You have missed it all! I don’t care what happens in this world, don’t care what you accomplish, it means nothing when we stand before Him.
But that picture that the Lord painted in the Old Testament of how they were to bring their sacrifices…if you read on, it wasn’t just that they put their hand on it, they actually participated in preparing the sacrifice. This was very participatory! This is me, 100 percent aligned with that sacrifice and all that it stands for! My death, my resurrection, my burial, my resurrection, my new life, my eternity. I’ll tell you, I’m aligned with Him. I don’t care what the world says. I don’t care what they do, what it costs. It’s worth everything to know Him!
( congregational amens ).
So, the question is, have you ever, from your heart, irrevocably put your hand on the sacrifice? If you stop short of that, you have missed everything! But for the believer, that becomes…God wants that to become the default setting, if you will, of our life. My hand is always on that sacrifice. This is always how I stand before You. This is always where the resources come for everything that I need in this life. It’s all provided through Jesus Christ. It is mine because of Him.
I’m never gonna get to the point where I say, ok, I’m past that now, let’s get to the good stuff. There are a lot of people who preach it like that. Okay, I believe in Jesus, my sins are gone and I’ve got a ticket to heaven. Now, Jesus, give me a better life. It’s Jesus all the way. It’s laying down our life and taking up a new one, all the way.
I’ll tell you, that’s something you and I…wherever you’re at today, you have the privilege of coming to God with your hand on that sacrifice, spiritually speaking. And it is the answer to every issue, one way or another, without having to spell out all the details. God has to lead us through these things. We’re all different.
But I’ll tell you, I want to be…I want to be one that has my hand on the sacrifice. Never allow anything to move your hand from it! He is the answer to destiny! He is the answer to everything! He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! He sits on a throne and He reigns and He prays for His own! He stands for us and He will finish what He started! Just as He triumphed in the cross and rose from the dead, He will return and His plan will be finished. God’s plan and purpose will be finished.
The only question is, who will participate in that? And that’s the message of the Gospel. If your hope is in something else or you think you can manage your life some other way, but that really true heart surrender, whew, you have drunk the Kool-Aid of this world. And if that doesn’t change, you will perish with it.
But let the name of Jesus be lifted up. Let His name be lifted up as the only name among men whereby we must be saved! To Him be the glory! Let’s have our hand on the sacrifice, folks. Praise God!
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April 17, 2022 - No. 1541
“The Hand on the Sacrifice” Part One
Broadcast #1541
April 17, 2022
April 17, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1541 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise the Lord! I’m so thankful we have something we can sing about this morning. I just praise God for His mercy and His grace. Thank God!
But I was just thinking about the reality of what the Lord has given to us, what we’re remembering today…obviously the death of Christ and what that means, but the resurrection that sealed the deal. I mean, the evidence, the reality, the proof, God’s stamp of approval on everything that Jesus said when He declared, it was accomplished, it was finished, was affirmed when He brought Him forth from the grave.
And the Lord arranged it so that nobody was expecting that! I mean, the only people that were halfway expecting it were the unbelievers, and they thought it was gonna be faked. But the disciples were the ones that had to be convinced. They didn’t believe it at all. They didn’t understand. They were left in…I mean, everybody was clueless on the day that all this happened as to what it was about.
But I’ll tell you, when God brought Him forth, the scripture tells us that it was by many infallible or, “…many convincing proofs…” (NIV). They knew! And somehow in a period of 40 days, they went from being scared and hiding to boldly standing forth before all the people and declaring the truth of the Gospel. That’s the Lord we need in our midst.
( congregational amens ).
We don’t need to practice religion. And that’s one thing I want to emphasize, I guess, about this movie. I appreciated the testimonies they made. The one danger is that you can go to seed on the doctrine…and think, well, I’ve got the doctrine right, therefore, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.
Folks, if that’s all we’ve got, we ain’t got it. We need the One the doctrine is teaching about. We need the presence of Christ. It’s not the truth in the abstract sense, it’s the One who is the Truth. He is the One that we need in our midst today and he is the One who will carry us through.
You know, just to lead into what I had on my heart, you will remember how John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the people around him. On one occasion, right in the beginning of the Gospel of John, John the Baptist declared, behold, “…the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
And you know, he was doing this in a religious environment that knew something about sacrifice. They literally sacrificed lambs. You know, we brought out, several years ago on an Easter, I believe, the amazing…it’s amazing in some ways it shouldn’t be amazing, but the coincidence of the very moment…what was going on when Jesus was on the cross was the observance by the Jews of the Passover, the Passover being a type of what was happening on the cross!
And so there He was declaring it was finished, and over in the temple there was a high priest offering up a lamb and about to go through the rest of the ritual of the Passover. And, all of a sudden, the veil of the temple splits from top to bottom and there’s an earthquake, and…God was trying to get somebody’s attention.
But I’ll tell you…the idea of sacrifice and of a lamb, and the need for sin to be somehow dealt with was clearly understood because of what had happened in the Old Testament. I just…a couple of scriptures that kind of bear this out, one of them is in Romans chapter 3. And this is preliminary but important.
Romans chapter 3, this is where Paul is laying out the truth of the Gospel, why we need it, the principle of the law, that God gave them laws in the Old Testament but they were never meant to be a pathway to acceptance by God. They were meant to show our need so that we would come to Him on another ground other than our performance.
How many of you here want to stand before God one day and declare, I am here and I am worthy of Your Kingdom because I have measured up? Not one of us could possibly do that. There has to be another way. But the issue is, God is just, isn’t He? Now what does justice mean?
( congregation inaudible ).
Well, what is…yeah, that’s true. But what does the principle of justice mean? It means that there is a law, and somebody breaks that law, then justice demands that the penalty for breaking that law be carried out! Well, that leaves us in a bad spot, because there is, as he points out, there’s none who do good. Every one of us has come short.
So, what is the…I mean, how can a just God possibly give any of us here this morning hope? If He’s just, how can He do it? And that’s the miracle of the cross. Let’s see…the scripture I literally wanted to focus on was in…well, in verse 25. “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice….”
See, God didn’t leave things…He didn’t just say, oh, I feel bad about this, I’m gonna let you in. Justice had to be honored. God…how can God be just and show mercy? That’s the conundrum here. But He has a way, doesn’t He? Thank God!
“He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
That’s the amazing thing. When Christ died in our place, God’s justice that I deserved was carried out upon Him. So, God upheld the justice of the Law, and allowed me to have hope in Him. Praise God! That’s the hope that God desires for every one that hears this.
And…I sometimes come away and say, oh my God, how…this has got to get through. This is not just religious doctrine we’re talking about. This is destiny-affecting stuff. And my burden is that anyone who hears me, I don’t want them to able to stand before the throne and say, nobody warned me, nobody told me.
There is no middle ground between the wrath of God and eternal life. Its one or the other, and there’s only one path to that life. I’ve said it over and over again. Those who cling to this life…that’s what every other lie is about. It’s, cling to this life, my will, my way, what I want, what pleases me! If you do that, if you pursue that and your interests are bound up in the desires of this world, you will stand before God in the Judgment and you will lose everything! It is only those who come by way of the cross, who lay down their lives and surrender them into the hands of a holy God….
John, the gospel writer, wrote very plainly in chapter 3…drew the difference between those who have faith in Christ and the end result is eternal life. Those who believed in Him had eternal life, but those who reject Him, those who do not believe, refuse to believe, is the real sense of what he’s talking about…those who have refused to believe, do not have life.
But it’s worse than that…and the wrath of God abides on them. The wrath of God is not on ignorance. The wrath of God is on people who absolutely possess the knowledge of what is right and…the only way of deliverance, and then they say, no, I’m gonna stand with the crowd. I’m gonna spit on Jesus. The heck with Him, I want my life.
And I don’t care how you package it. I don’t want anybody that I hear, or that hears me, to have any illusions about this. This is what is at stake. This is not simply religious dogma you’re meant to accept and go on with your life. This is the only reason we are here in this world, is for God to redeem a people out of it on the basis, not of merit, but of mercy! And it all is focused upon the person of Jesus Christ and what He’s done.
And we know from Hebrews, in particular, we get an understanding of what the Old Testament was about. Do you know the Old Testament was a mystery? The purpose of God was there! It was all encompassed in it and men think they can unravel the meaning of the Old Testament with their intellects! Folks, you can’t do that.
It’s not about a natural people with an earthly destiny, I’m sorry! It’s about a heavenly people with an eternal destiny! But oh, it was so…it was couched in such language that the Devil himself didn’t understand what it was about.
But think about this…we’ve made this point before. What was it, when the apostles went forth and preached the Gospel in the first century, and they opened the scriptures, what scriptures were they opening? The Old Testament! There was no New Testament! That evolved over time with Paul’s letters and the gospels and so forth. They opened the Old Testament.
God was the One through His Son who opened their eyes and began to teach them. You remember that occasion when he opened their understanding and showed them Himself, all the way through the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, there was Jesus. He’s the main player in the Old Testament. And suddenly their eyes were…I get it, now I know what it’s about. All that that went before was a type and a shadow.
And I thought about this, and I think it’s very plain from Hebrews. We know from Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats and lambs, and whatever, can they take away sin? No! So, what was the deal? What was that about? That was God giving them something, a way to express faith that would teach them, that would give them an understanding of what was to come.
And the God who saw into the heart of the person who was doing that, said, mark that one down. That sin will be taken care of. When was it taken care of? When Christ said it was finished. That was the sacrifice to end every other sacrifice.
If I was an Old Testament believer, one of the remnant, somebody who really had the understanding of what it was about and was doing this in faith, if I went and offered a lamb, God forgave my sins. How did He do that? Because He knew what was coming and it was as certain as if it…as if it had happened. Don’t mind me. Don’t get old!
( laughter ).
Praise God! But that’s where they preached from, was the Old Testament. And I’m getting to something because there’s a phrase, there’s a truth, there’s a principle that came to me over and over again…I just finally had to look it up. And, you see it right in the beginning of the Book of Leviticus.
Now I know everybody here loves reading through Leviticus, all the rituals and rules and regulations and how they were supposed to conduct themselves. But you know God was teaching things through that. I’m certainly not gonna try to unpack it all, but there’s one thing right at the beginning that had do with the offering of a sacrifice.
And…verse 3 of chapter 1, “If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he…” that’s the one who is coming, “…he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord.”
Now here’s the thing that kept coming to my mind over and over again. “He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.”
Now, if that was the only reference to this you might just dismiss it and say, oh well, that was interesting. But you read on through the next few chapters and over and over and over again, ‘and he shall lay his hand on the head of the sacrifice.’ He’s gonna bring this lamb, he’s gonna lay his hand.
And you go back into other places in the Old Testament and you will see when they were sanctifying the priests in the Temple and all of that, they came and they laid their hands upon them. When Hezekiah reestablished the temple worship and the Law and they offered the sacrifices again, there was a time when all Israel was assembled and Hezekiah and the others laid their hand on them. What’s the significance of that?
You know, was God gonna accept…was it acceptable, for example, if somebody sent a servant, hey, I need a sacrifice…servant, go take my thing down there, go take my animal down there. Or, here’s my sacrifice, see you later. Do you get a sense of what the Lord is trying to say?
“The Hand on the Sacrifice.” That’s as good a title as any, by the way. ‘The hand on the sacrifice.’ What does that mean? What is the Lord trying to convey?
Folks, when they brought a sacrifice, God meant it to be something that was participatory. They are saying, this sacrifice stands for me. This is me presenting myself. I’m coming because I’m guilty of sin. I broke His laws. I sense the guilt. I realize I need God, and I’m coming to the place where He told me to come and I’m bringing what He told me to bring.
It’s not just some leftover animal I don’t care about…with a broken leg, and ugly and all that kind of stuff. I’m bringing exactly…I’m bringing the best. But, when I put my hand on that animal’s head, I am saying, this is me. I am coming, oh Lord, there’s something in my heart that is represented by that gesture. My heart is involved in this. I am coming…I’m taking ownership of the reason that I’m here. I’m not making just excuses…they did wrong, and I…no! I did wrong.
Just like David, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” (KJV). Nobody made me do this. I did it, Lord. I take full ownership and I come. And I come based upon Your promise, Lord. I have nothing else I could offer, but what You told me to do. But, oh Lord, this represents me. He is my representative. I am the one who should be there, but God has shown me mercy and given me a way to die and yet live. Folks, it represents not just the end of His life, but the end of mine. The hand on the sacrifice…that means something. And I believe God was teaching something.
You know, I thought about how many times in the Old Testament the Lord said…talked about their sacrifices being worthless, meaningless. You’re going through the form. You’re doing it, but…your heart’s not in it, basically, is what it came down to. Or, okay, we’ve got to do it so let’s find that lame old beast that I don’t care about, nobody cares about. Let’s bring that. In Malachi, you’ll see that.
But so many places that same theme is brought out. But here’s a holy God knowing the basis and the foundation for forgiveness was to come in Christ! And we know that God doesn’t look on the outward appearance! There’s not a person here who’s impressing God by sitting in a pew on Easter.
( congregational response ).
God looks at the heart!
( congregational response ).
And what do you think when God looked down and He saw one man who came with a genuine sorrow, contrition, repentance, and he did what God said and he laid his hand on that? Do you think God made a difference…do you think it made a difference in how God responded to those sacrifices, and somebody else who just went through the motion and didn’t have their heart in it at all?
Do you think it’s any different today? Is God looking for the outward appearance? Is He looking for the form? Is He looking for agreement with doctrines and religion? He is looking for the same thing today.
And, while we don’t literally employ that gesture, that gesture has the same meaning today. It is a 100 percent identification with that sacrifice. And that’s what God calls every one of us to. Praise God! It’s such a simple thing, and I don’t know…but the reality is, the sacrifice of Christ has no value until it becomes personal!
Now I’ll drop this in here. One of the burdens that I have, and I know it’s been expressed in so many different ways…we want to see God change hearts, change lives. We don’t want to see people grow up and miss this. We don’t want to see people come in and just miss this! I know that there will be…I know not everybody will listen!
And we rightly emphasize the fact that the Word has to be anointed! You cannot simply stand up here and spout out correct doctrines and expect it to do something! God has to come and infuse words with His Spirit so that they have life-giving power! But that’s only half of the equation! Jesus had that in spades. He had the Spirit without measure and people walked away and didn’t see it.
What’s the other side of it? God has to prepare hearts! I am so thankful when people come up to me and say, I’ve been praying for you or I’ve been praying for the services. We’re asking God to come and to speak and to give the Word. But oh, don’t stop with that! Keep doing that! Thank God!
We need that, but pray that God will plow the ground in people’s hearts and make them so miserable and feel their need that they’ll come and their heart’s will be open and say, oh God, let that Word enter in here. Don’t let me be hard soil. Do what it takes! Oh God, I need what this is about and I need it with all my heart.
Only God can open a heart! And it’s different with everybody, but it comes down to the same thing. Pray that God will open hearts when the Word comes. Let’s pray on both ends that God will work, and I believe He will, don’t you?
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April 10, 2022 - No. 1540
“Christ’s Life in the Home” Conclusion
Broadcast #1540
April 10, 2022
April 10, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1540 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Isn’t it interesting, and I think significant, that after He deals with me as an individual, after He deals with me in this broad sense, now we’re gonna come down to where the rubber really meets the road? Because, as I say, it’s so easy to be one thing in here and another thing at home. And God wants us to be real there.
And I’ll tell you, if we have homes where Christ is at home, the presence of God is able to dwell there because we’re honoring Him and walking in the path that He has set out for us, man, we come in here, we’re not gonna have to work anything up! We’re gonna bring it with us. We’re gonna bring His presence with us.
But oh, I’ll tell you, the condition of a home is so critical to everything that God is seeking to do. It’s such a barometer. Let’s put it that way. It really tells us where we’re at, and that’s a sobering thing, isn’t it? It’s pretty sobering when you think about it.
And so, the first thing you look at it on this one level. Okay, there is an order. There is a divine order. The husband is the head of the home. Now, you take human nature and look at that principle and pretty soon it’s pretty easy for dad to be the boss and to make that a purely self-centered thing. I’m the boss, you’ve got to do what I say. Look what it says in the Bible. You’re disobeying God if you disobey me.
What kind of a spirit is that? Oh, my God! Think about Jesus and His nature. Did He come to be served? He didn’t, did He? He said it in so many words. I didn’t come to be served, I came to serve. I came to give my, “…life as a ransom for many.” (NLT). I came for the benefit of those to whom I was sent.
Look it over in the Ephesians passage in chapter 5. See, Paul has gone through this exact, same progression of, here’s the foundation, here’s the kind of person you ought to be, you need to relate to one another this way and now let’s get to the real crux of the matter.
Verse 21, “And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.”
That sounds pretty rough if you’d think in terms of human nature and a husband ruled by human nature. Boy! But now what does that mean for the guys? “For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.” Boy that sounds like a whole lot tougher deal to me than the other!
But here’s the thing. If you’re a man, and you’re called to be married, God has the equipment you need to be a godly husband, to be the leader of your home without being a dictator, to be a giver, a server without being self-centered, and making everybody in your household your servant and making everybody miserable when they don’t serve you.
God wants a people…and the thing is, if you look at this from the natural, people are born into broken situations. They come out of dysfunctional families, trying to form their own family and it’s a royal mess!
The devil has attacked the family because he understands! This is the fundamental relationship in the unfolding of God’s pattern, God’s purpose! Yes, the assembly! But it gets right down into the home. If you get the home in the order that God has laid out, it’s not a set of laws and rules for us to follow, it is a prescription for how God wants to relate Himself to us and share His presence with us!
And I’ll tell you, you have a man who’s committed to serving God and saying, oh God, work this in me. I have no power to be what You’re describing here. It’s just not in me. But the thing is, I don’t care what background you’ve come out of, there is a God who is able to take you from where you’re at, just as you are now, and lead you to a place where you can be what He’s designed you to be. Do you believe that?
( congregational response ).
Are you willing? Do you want God to fit you to be what He’s describing here? “…Love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy…” It’s not about Him, is it? “…To make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.
“In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself.” Boy, what a mystery He’s unfolding here about how Christ sees us! You could certainly say on one level, yeah, Christ is the boss! He tells us what to do. But is He anything like a human boss? Not in the slightest! Everything is about pouring Himself into us so that we can be everything we were meant to be.
And that is the role of a godly husband. God help us! Just saying the words, I feel so utterly unable because I am, in myself! But I know that God wants to begin to set the order of a home with a man who gets this and says, God, make me what You want me to be in my home! Not just in church when I smile and say, hi, to everybody and then go home and I’m grumpy, and everybody has to walk on eggs around me.
Oh, God! Do what’s needed to make me what You want me to be, so that the atmosphere of my home is one where You are at home! I don’t bring devils because of my attitudes. I need You to come!
You know, you have a place like that, and you’ve got half the battle, because I’ll tell you, you ladies, God has fitted you with certain abilities, with qualities that don’t exist in the man. We’re different. It’s only together that we are in the image of God! It’s not like, I’m in the image of God and she’s just something else. We share His attributes. God apportions some of the attributes to me, and some to my wife. And they’re special.
And it’s not a matter of one being better than another or more worthy or something. It’s all these value systems that we bring to it from our brokenness. God sees us together! In fact, one of the words that came to my mind as I was thinking about all of this that God is looking for is a simple word, respect.
I mean love, yes! Obviously love where my main interest is in their welfare, and you get two people that feel that way about each other and man you’ve got something where needs are gonna be met. But how about simple respect? Husbands, do you respect your wife? Do you value her? Does she know that you value her, that you respect her? Do we show that? It gets quiet, doesn’t it? Am I telling you the truth?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! You know, you have a passage that I’ll just refer to and you can go read it, but it’s over in 1 Peter chapter 3 where Peter’s dealing with a situation where there’s a godly wife and she’s married to somebody that doesn’t know the Lord. How is she supposed to handle that one? Well, she’s supposed to live as a godly, submissive wife, showing forth by her very way of life that she belongs to Him, where…He can actually…the Lord could actually get in the home through her and make Himself known to the husband.
Now, if she takes his ungodliness as an excuse to get mad and react on a human level, what good is that? But here is an opportunity for the Lord to absolutely open a door of mercy to that ungodly husband. Whether it happens or not, that’s her place.
But even then, it talks about husbands to dwell with your wife according to knowledge…different translations. Show her, gentleness and respect. “…So your prayers will not be hindered.” (NLT). There is a…and he uses the word partnership, in one of the translations. You’re partners together.
And we need to see ourselves, not like this, or one way up here and one down here, being a slave of some sort. We need to see ourselves as partners together in the Kingdom of God. And I’ll tell you, you get that relationship going the way it’s meant to be, and you’ve got a foundation for something. If it isn’t, there are needs.
You know, you bring the kids into it. I’ll refer to something that I’ve referred to a number of times over the years, but those of you who are in the homeschool community will particularly remember a message that was…a recorded message that was being passed around a lot, a number of years ago. And I believe it was recorded at one of the conferences.
And it was called, “The Curse of the Standard Bearers,” and it was talking about raising children. And, so often the pattern, and no doubt it’s been learned from previous generations, which you see this problem goes back.
You can’t…kids, you can’t look at your parents and say, oh, I see all these things wrong with them. What about previous generations? They were kids and they went through a whole lot of stuff, and they weren’t necessarily prepared by their parents to be what all they ought to be.
That’s why we need to put up with one another, and recognize that we all have faults, and be very tolerant and forgiving. See, all those qualities he talks about…man, it’s not just that they need to work on the level of the Body of Christ in a general…in the assembly sense, but man do they need to work in the house! Because every one of us has things that we need to be forgiven for and tolerated as God works on us. God’s still working on me…to make me all He wants me to be.
Anyway…okay, I’m trying to remember where I was now. Oh yeah! “The Curse of the Standard Bearers.” A standard bearer is somebody who just makes up rules. These are the rules and the guidelines for how we expect our children to behave in our home. And they’re basically just “rules to live by.” In the first place, if you approach any human being based upon rules and laws, what do you get?
( congregational response ).
Rebellion! Read Romans 7 and you discover how effective Paul, trying to serve God, even knowing what the Law said and wanting to do it, let alone being…not wanting. He wanted to do it. It’s the ideal situation. I want to be what You want me to be. I know what the Law says, but something is wrong here. I’ve got something that automatically just kicks into gear. You tell me to do something, and I say, no! My nature rises right up.
And the worst thing is, if you raise kids with nothing but rules to live by, and you don’t live by them…how does that work? Kids aren’t stupid. And so, you’ve got a real problem. And the answer that was proposed in that message was we don’t need “standard bearers,” we need “image bearers.”
I’ll tell you, you want to be godly parents in this world? Ask God to change you and to conform you to His image. It’s gonna take a lot of renewing of your mind. It’s gonna take a whole lot of changes that have to happen for you to be actually modeling the life of Christ, so you are bringing His presence into the home.
And now you have a situation where kids see an example and they want…it’s attractive to them. They want to be like them. How many of you girls want to be married to a husband one day that’s like your dad? That’s how much you love him and respect him and think about him.
How many of you guys, you want, one day, a wife that’s just like your mom? She is just so special, and you’ve been spoiled. You just want one that’s like her. You see in her the qualities that make a godly wife.
We need to be asking God, oh, God, we need Your presence in our home. Are we image bearers or are we just standard bearers? I think we’ve got the essence of what the Lord desires for us in the home. We don’t need to be in a situation where we have to walk on eggs around one another, where people feel afraid, feel all kinds of negative things that just mean the devil’s at home there. We need the Lord to be in our home.
( congregational amens ).
And every member of…every member of that household needs to be looking to the Lord saying God, I want to be what You want me to be.
( congregational amens ).
Young people, do you really want to grow up and know the Lord? This is the time in your life when His plan for you has more to do with your character than what you want. And many times that means submitting to imperfect parents, and just humbling yourself and saying, Lord, I’m in Your hands. And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who pays attention to that kind of a person.
And husbands and wives, I believe God longs to have healthier homes where His presence reigns. God wants to be so real in our homes where people want to be there because they feel emotionally safe and fed and peaceable and respected in their various roles and they’re willing to fill those roles, willing to do it God’s way. I’ll tell you, God’s blessing dwells there in a special in a special way. Praise the Lord!
Close
April 3, 2022 - No. 1539
“Christ’s Life in the Home” Part One
Broadcast #1539
April 3, 2022
April 3, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1539 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t believe that I have had any particular agenda, or sense that, hey, we’re gonna preach this and then it’s gonna lead to this and this and this, and so forth, but it seems like the Lord has had one. And, it seems like I’ll think about…well, last Sunday was this and this is what’s on my mind today.
And then I’d realize there’s a connection, and there’s an unfolding of truth about what the Lord has for us, the relationship that He wants with us. And, one thing I noticed, several times over the last two or three weeks, we used a lot of Colossians, a lot of the teachings of Paul in Colossians, and I’ve stopped at a certain point. And I believe the Lord wants us to go beyond that point today, and deal with one thing in particular.
But, I’m gonna start in an unusual place, and it’s over in Psalm 133. How many of you use the chronological Bible for Bible reading? How many of you who do have wondered about the day, I think a couple of days ago, when the entire Bible reading was Psalm 133? You know, usually it’s two or three chapters, or something like that, and all of a sudden, one day, Psalm 133. I remember that every year. Oh yeah, this is the day I have three whole verses to read. But what significant verses they are! Praise God!
And I’m gonna go ahead today and do something a little different. I’m gonna use the NLT. You know, I think it’s a good way to, sometimes, get a slightly different, clearer sense, with a different translation.
You know, language is a funny thing. It is nigh impossible to take thoughts from one language to another, and really convey everything. So, it’s a real job. But I believe the Lord can help us to get what He wants out of it.
Anyway, this is a well-known scripture to us. “How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony! For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe. Harmony is as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion. And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing, even life everlasting.” (NLT).
And the thing that drew me to this scripture, even before I got to that Bible reading, in the last day or two, my mind went to this scripture as a lead-in. Because, I believe what the Lord desires us to realize is that, again, He has not called us to a lifestyle but to a life, not called us to a religion but to a relationship that is founded upon His character, that is an expression of literally of His life.
And He likens it, as we’ve so often said, to abiding in a vine, where there is a literal—literal connection, between us and Him where it is His life that flows into ours and because of that, fruit is produced. And if you and I try to produce fruit of being a Christian any other way, it’s not gonna be—not gonna be what He wants. It’s gonna be something, anyway, way short!
But anyway, let’s go back to Colossians and I want to go ahead and read what I didn’t read in past messages. And, then I’m gonna go back and try to put this in a deeper context. You know, we came to the middle of, or toward the end of chapter 3, talking about what it means to express the life of Christ. And, we’ll get back to that in a minute, but we came to a point where I stopped with, “And whatever…” verse 17, “…whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.”
Then you get to some practical applications of this. “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.”
And then it goes on and talks about slaves and masters, which isn’t directly relevant except that we also have employees and bosses. So, in that sense, it is. But what Paul is doing is kind of getting this down to a level where we’re gonna really find out what we have.
You know, the reality is we could come together and, basically, present a face to one another, and act and react toward one another in harmony with this. We’re not robbing banks, we’re not doing terrible things, we’re not having open fights and all that sort of stuff and it appears like everything is wonderful when we’re here together. But you know where it really…where the rubber really meets the road is in the home. You know, we say, oftentimes, what you really are is what you are when you’re totally by yourself, and that’s true. But I’ll tell you, where what we are comes out is really in the home.
( congregational amens ).
And you could look at that and at what I just read and it’s almost…it’s really an outline, because he enlarges on this over in the book of Ephesians, in particular. But, there’s so much more. As I was thinking about this, there’s so much…it’s so much deeper than what we do and what are the rules? I mean, how is…what is this lifestyle like? How are we supposed to behave toward one another? What are our roles? And if you look at it on that superficial level, I believe we miss what God is after. Now, think about what He says over in Psalm 133. What is the result of brethren…brothers walking together in harmony or in unity?
( congregational response ).
It’s blessing. What is that blessing?
( congregational response ).
It’s God’s presence! In other words, God wants a place in the middle of this sin-cursed, broken world where He feels completely at home and His presence can dwell. I mean, that’s the key to our meeting together. If we don’t have His presence, all we have is religion. And we’ve got plenty of that in the world! We don’t need any more! And we can sit here and fool ourselves. But I believe with all my heart that the Lord is wanting to take us and is taking us to a deeper place. But folks, if what we have doesn’t work in the home, it doesn’t work!
( congregational amens ).
Because, that’s where our relationships really tend to reveal themselves. And I believe that God longs to have our homes be a place where His presence is there, in such a way that when people walk in from the outside, they sense it.
You know, I’m thankful that we’ve had people come in here and say, yeah, I sense something here. I sense the love in the hearts of the people. I sense the Lord’s presence. Thank God for the degree to which that’s true. I believe God wants it to be more and more true.
But I want…I believe God longs to so change us, to so mold us and make us into His image, that when we’re not here, and when we’re sort of letting down and being ourselves…you know, think about what we’re saying when you talk about being ourselves. What is our self? You know, that’s not such a good thing if it’s human self, if it’s human nature in operation.
And I’ll tell you, God has an order in the home, but it’s not just an order of things as, dad’s the boss, mom’s supposed to submit, kids are supposed to obey, onto the next topic. God is so much deeper than that. Because, it’s just like the Body of Christ. God has called every member to a unique place. Much that was said this morning. Thank God for every bit of it. We need it, and we need the part about needing the Lord. I guess I’m looking for Steve but he’s in there…about needing the Lord and having a place where we can go when we discover things that are not right about ourselves. Boy, do I need that! Do you need that today?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! And I’ll guarantee you, if we explore, in any degree, this subject and begin to say, Lord, make me the kind of husband, make me the kind of wife, make me the kind of kid that You want me to be, you’re gonna go on a journey of discovery and it ain’t all gonna be pretty! And we’re gonna come to places where we’re gonna have to make choices and come to the Lord as we are and say, oh God, fix me! Change me!
I can go to church and smile and everybody thinks everything is great, but when I go home I’m not the same person and I need to be authentic, in every part of my life. When I’m completely by myself, I don’t need to have a double life where I’m entertaining things, I’m giving the devil openings into my life by the way I’m thinking and the things that I’m doing.
But oh, God, I don’t want to bring that into the home and corrupt it, because a home is meant to be a place where His presence dwells. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (KJV). Just stay out of my house, Lord. I’m the lord here, I’m in charge! Oh, God, does human nature reign.
I started to talk about how God calls people to the Body of Christ. And He calls us to that which is, in the natural, impossible. Everything Steve talked about, about us being unique members of the Body of Christ, able to actually contribute to the life of the Body, even if it’s not standing up here, you’re contributing, one way or another, to the life of the Body, it’s impossible unless it’s Christ in us doing that!
( congregational amens ).
There’s no way that can happen. And so, God has fitted every member for what He has called you to. And so, life becomes a matter of discovery of, Lord, not my will but Yours be done. Mold me, make me into what You’d have me to be. Lead me into a path of Your choosing. I want Your plan for my life, not mine. And Lord, I am depending on You to equip me to fulfill the call that You have for my life.
Now, is that only for the ‘Body of Christ,’ when you’re thinking in just the general terms of a spiritual family? Or is that supposed to get down to the household level? Now, notice the progression. We’ve talked about this before. It’s really super evident in both Ephesians and Colossians where Paul spends a lot of time laying the foundation. Boy, do we need one! Anybody here need a foundation?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! We need to see with uncompromising clarity the reality of what God has done for us, because He has done everything that is needed for us to have everything we need to serve Him! That was redundant all over again, but anyway, you get the point! We need…there’s no way we can be what He wants us to be! There’s no way any of these instructions have any meaning unless we first establish the reality that He has blotted away our sins! He has done away with us and the old nature if we can believe it and actually enter into it! He has defeated the devil!
( congregational amens ).
We don’t have to invite the devil into our lives and into our homes, although we do, more than we would like to admit. But He has laid a perfect foundation. Now the question is, how are we gonna build on it? And so, that’s how He…that’s how Paul…that’s the foundation the Lord, through Paul, lays in both of these books.
And he comes to a point and says, okay, now what? Now, live in harmony with what He’s done for you. That’s how he starts chapter 4 in Ephesians. You know, walk worthy of the calling that He’s given you. Over here, in the beginning of chapter 3, “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.” (NLT).
Praise God! Is that a foundation? Yeah! You take that away, and we’re helpless to be anything of what he describes. And so, logically, now he goes to, okay, the kind of person that I am as an individual…my nature has, perhaps, driven me to do certain things. They may be acts of lust, acts of jealousy, acts of anger and bitterness, and maybe I was a thief, maybe I was immoral. Whatever it was, a thousand and one expressions of the old nature that want to rise up and the devil, I’ll tell you, will promote them, and when we give into them, he comes in and finds a home, where here’s the Lord wanting a home, but we give the devil one.
And so, the first thing is, since this is all true, since God has done this and you’ve come to Him, He’s brought you to Him, you have a new life, now let’s put that into operation. Let’s stop all this other stuff, because you can stop it because of what He’s done. You can’t stop it if it’s just you trying. But if it’s me believing in the Cross, believing that I was laid in that tomb, that I rose a new person, that we reckon on that to be an absolute fact, as we do that, step by step, God can give us victory to the point where we rule the roost. His new nature comes out instead of the old one being in charge. Okay?
So that’s the individual. That’s where I am as just an individual. But now, it isn’t just me and Jesus on the Jericho Road, as we’ve so often said. It does reflect my relationships with others. And so, now we get to the part of chapter 3 where he’s talking about how we relate one to another, being willing to forgive, allowing for one’s faults, having a spirit of mercy and kindness and gentleness and all those kinds of wonderful qualities that we need.
But isn’t it interesting, and I think significant, that after He deals with me as an individual, after He deals with me in this broad sense, now we’re gonna come down to where the rubber really meets the road? Because, as I say, it’s so easy to be one thing in here and another thing at home. And God wants us to be real there.
And I’ll tell you, if we have homes where Christ is at home, the presence of God is able to dwell there because we’re honoring Him and walking in the path that He has set out for us, man, we come in here, we’re not gonna have to work anything up! We’re gonna bring it with us. We’re gonna bring His presence with us.
But oh, I’ll tell you, the condition of a home is so critical to everything that God is seeking to do. It’s such a barometer. Let’s put it that way. It really tells us where we’re at, and that’s a sobering thing, isn’t it? It’s pretty sobering when you think about it.
And so, the first thing you look at it on this one level. Okay, there is an order. There is a divine order. The husband is the head of the home. Now, you take human nature and look at that principle and pretty soon it’s pretty easy for dad to be the boss and to make that a purely self-centered thing. I’m the boss, you’ve got to do what I say. Look what it says in the Bible. You’re disobeying God if you disobey me.
What kind of a spirit is that? Oh, my God! Think about Jesus and His nature. Did He come to be served? He didn’t, did He? He said it in so many words. I didn’t come to be served, I came to serve. I came to give my, “…life as a ransom for many.” I came for the benefit of those to whom I was sent.
Look it over in the Ephesians passage in chapter 5. See, Paul has gone through this exact, same progression of, here’s the foundation, here’s the kind of person you ought to be, you need to relate to one another this way and now let’s get to the real crux of the matter.
Verse 21, “And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.”
That sounds pretty rough if you’d think in terms of human nature and a husband ruled by human nature. Boy! But now what does that mean for the guys? “For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church.” Boy that sounds like a whole lot tougher deal to me than the other!
But here’s the thing. If you’re a man, and you’re called to be married, God has the equipment you need to be a godly husband, to be the leader of your home without being a dictator, to be a giver, a server without being self-centered, and making everybody in your household your servant and making everybody miserable when they don’t serve you.
God wants a people…and the thing is, if you look at this from the natural, people are born into broken situations. They come out of dysfunctional families, trying to form their own family and it’s a royal mess! The devil has attacked the family because he understands! This is the fundamental relationship in the unfolding of God’s pattern, God’s purpose! Yes, the assembly! But it gets right down into the home. If you get the home in the order that God has laid out, it’s not a set of laws and rules for us to follow, it is a prescription for how God wants to relate Himself to us and share His presence with us!
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March 27, 2022 - No. 1538
“Lord, Mold Me and Make Me” Conclusion
Broadcast #1538
March 27, 2022
March 27, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1538 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t care who you are in the eyes of people, or even in your own eyes! We are His! He has purchased us at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, don’t ever let the world or the devil define you.
We need to realize who we are and the fact that if we can do anything, it’s not based upon who we are. He raised us from the dead, for crying out loud! He is the One who knows. He’s the One who’s prepared works for us to do. My job is to seek Him and discover that and do them!
Isn’t that how Jesus lived His life? He spent time with His Father. He said, Father, tell me what to do. And He did it. And His life was not lived out just in being…like I said, in being a good person. It meant taking a detour through Samaria, because there was a woman there who needed Him. It meant getting in a boat, braving a bad storm so He could go across the Sea of Galilee to rescue a demon-possessed man, maniac, and deliver him as a testimony to everybody. God set aside all the other agenda of heaven to send His Son to that man!
You think about the awesome God that we have and the things that He sent His Son to do. It wasn’t just the kind of person He was, it was the deeds that God sent Him to do. And, of course, ultimately, it was the Cross itself! Thank God!
But you know, one of the other hindrances is, when we do rely on our natural abilities. And we think, I know why God called me. I got all this natural ability. Man, I’m gonna really give it all I got. Peter was kind of like that, wasn’t he? He had to learn some things. He was one that…some people are just reticent. They’re gonna hold back and not put themselves out. Peter was halfway down the road before you could finish telling him what to do.
But I’ll tell you, we need to have a lack of pride, a humility. We need to realize that we need the Lord. And we need to realize that natural ability is not what we need. We need supernatural clothing by the Spirit of God to make us a different person. He is able, and He is willing.
That’s what the Gospel…that’s the focus of why we’re living in this world. It’s not just so we can be changed to be somehow whatever this vague thing is where I’m not like I was…but that needs to be translated. God means for that to be translated into things that we actually do. Okay?
I guess I’m saying this over and over again, but isn’t that the message? Isn’t that what He’s talking about? And so, all these hinderances, stubbornness…anybody, nobody here has a problem with that, I understand. But oh, are we resistant! I mean, the Lord, many times, has to talk me into getting up here to say a particular thing. And He had to spend a little while talking Joel into saying what he did, but he did, and I think this was the right occasion. Praise God! Thank the Lord!
But we are resistant. We are full of self-will. We’re full of pride. And one thing you see mentioned in more than one place is this thing called selfish ambition, because if you talk about finding your place in the body, there are certain types of people that imagine themselves to be something that they are not, and they’re gonna go for it. I know what my place is. I’m gonna be a prophet. I’m gonna be…I’m an apostle. I’m this. I’m that.
And we’ve seen some of that in the past in the history of the church. We’ve seen people who had an inflated opinion of who they were supposed to be, instead of just saying, God, I have no idea. Show me what I’m supposed to do. I surrender.
It’s not real complicated, is it? But do you see how human nature jumps in, either to put on the breaks or to send us shooting down the highway in self-will? But God is looking for a people who just say…just like we were like we were called, as young people to come forward and literally, in altar calls, dedicate our lives, saying, Lord, I’m willing to do Your will. I surrender.
That’s the call of every single believer, regardless of what your call is. You have one. It’s to be a member of the body of Christ, literally a channel through which God’s Spirit can flow to everyone else. The form that takes is not the issue. The reality of that happening is the issue.
That’s what God is looking for, and so, what is needed? What do we need? Now, these are things we’ve talked about so many times. I’m just gonna basically kind of enumerate.
Humility, obviously. I can’t think of myself more highly than I ought to think. But I need to think soberly, as we read in Romans 12, according as God has given me the measure of faith. There needs to be a sober, honest assessment of who I am. I’m not who I think I am. I’m who He says I am. That, I need to be willing to spend time with Him and be willing to discover, do it on His timetable, in His way, and He will be faithful.
Trust. I need to believe God. I need to trust Him, because the path down which He’s gonna take me to bring me to that place, it isn’t always gonna be fun. I mean, you look in history, and you look at the characters in the Bible that God used in unusual ways, the training process to get to that point was pretty tough sometimes.
Moses. David, years on the run, having to trust God. The words that he wrote in the Psalms came out of real, heart-rending life experiences when he had to trust God. God was the only hope that he had! And he saw a faithful God who brought him through, brought him to a throne.
Joseph and all that he went through, so many others in scripture. I’ll tell you, the process…this is not just a thing where we get in our closet, and then, okay, you’re supposed to do this. Okay, go do it. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to bring us to the place where we’re actually capable of surrendering and overcoming this nature. It is a process. It’s not something where we can invite you down to the altar, and okay, let’s just turn a corner here and leave the past in the past! Here is your future! Go for it!
I wish it were that way. I’ll tell you, we can have experiences with God when we enter into something, but that’s not the…nothing bypasses learning and growing, and learning how to submit to Him in every kind of circumstance, whatever it takes, because our nature will fight us, and we don’t understand what God is up against.
He does. He knows everything in me that will resist Him, that will be a hinderance, that I will tend to run with. That’s why Peter went through what he did, and that’s why the Lord said, “…when you are old, you will stretch out your hands…” (NIV). It won’t be like when you were young, and you went where you wanted to go. You’ll stretch forth your hand, someone else will gird you, and you’re gonna be carried where you don’t even want to go.
I’ll tell you, if we’re gonna try to build our relationship with the Lord, and the things that we do on our human preferences and our human desires, it ain’t gonna work. It’s not the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ is the Head. That would be like part of my body saying I’ve got my own plans. I’m not gonna grab that bowling ball. I’ve got some other place to be. No, we have one Head, and His Name is Jesus.
( congregational amens ).
And His vision for this church and for every Body of believers that really knows Him, is that we come to this reality, that He has designed a plan, a purpose that involves you, that involves not just changing the kind of person you are, but giving you stuff to do that’s gonna make a difference in eternity.
Most of the stuff we do just has to do with here. And I understand we’ve got to carry out responsibilities, but like Sophie, the washer woman, we could even do that in such a way that it has eternal value, if we’ll walk with the Lord and learn from Him.
So, humility, trust, faith, perseverance, not giving up, because you’re gonna have plenty of times when you’ll feel that way. Thankfulness, we mentioned that last week of how all the things the Lord has to take us through, they’re gonna be times you ain’t gonna be thankful. It’s gonna take surrender and faith to say, thank You, Lord, for this.
I’m trying to remember if it was Brother Thomas or somebody else’s testimony I heard. But when Philip suddenly drowned, some of you can remember all of that, when his little boy, Philip, was suddenly drowned, and he had to go to the hospital. Again, I can’t remember…I know his prayer was a good one. I can’t remember, but one of these prayers in a similar situation was, if it wasn’t that one, was, Lord, I thank You even in this. You’re good. You’re a good God.
That takes surrender to be able to say, thank you. Not just, okay, I’m gonna put up with this, but I don’t like it. But to say, Lord, I know You know what You’re doing. My life is not about living here and being comfortable and doing what I want. It’s about what You want and what You have planned for me from the foundation of the world. You have things for me to do that are gonna have eternal value.
And so, there are guiding convictions, this would be a way to put it, that I believe we need in the context of doing exactly what Joel said. An attitude of life needs to be, I need to be changed, because, as we’ve said so many times, this is something that continues as long as we’re in this flesh. There will always be changes that will be needed.
There’s no place where we reach and suddenly, okay, I’ve made it. I’m at the goal. The Lord will bring us to the goal on the day of Jesus Christ. There will be a day when everything will be wound up. All of the work that He has done will be finished.
And, I’ll drop this in. We started with Philippians 1:6, and I remember thinking about…you know, there have been people like the thief on the cross, like other people I’ve heard about that had a literal death bed conversion. I wouldn’t count on that, but it’s happened, where people have had no opportunity to live down here, none of that. How do they fit into this?
I’ll tell you, I believe with all my heart that there’s teaching and work that goes on, on the other side. God knows how to fill in all the gaps. Their purpose was not to live here and serve and do that, but their purpose…but they’ll still have an honored, unique, special place in the Kingdom that God is building, and it will all climax together on that one day when God pulls back the veil, and everything that He’s been doing will be on display for everybody.
The Devil, the wicked of this world, the lost will see what He’s been up to. Lord, I want to be…I don’t want to get there and say, well, I sure messed up. My earthly life was just wasted. I’m here, and I got in the door, but I sure didn’t accomplish much.
You know, even where the Word was sown and did bring forth fruit, some of it was 30-fold. Some was 60. Some was 100. So, there are degrees of people who learn how to yield and learn how to do what we’re talking about this morning.
But I believe with all my heart, especially in this hour, God wants a people who have the whole deal. Jesus is free to be Himself in our midst, because He’s got a people that understand and are asking Him, saying, God, I need to be changed. That’s a fundamental principle of my life. I never get away from that. Lord, I need to be changed, but it has to get beyond that.
We could acknowledge, oh yeah, I need to be changed, but I don’t want to. When it comes right down to it, don’t mess with me too much, Lord. Especially, don’t mess with ‘that.’ But you know, a secondary conviction has to be I want to be changed. Lord, my focus has got to be on what You want and Your purpose for my living in this world, not my purpose.
Boy, I wish the young people were here, because this is…I pray that some of them will hear this, that they’ll hear it, because they’re at an age when they’ve got ideas about what their life is supposed to be like, where they’re going, who they’re gonna marry, what kind of job they’re gonna have.
We need to be willing to lay everything on the altar and say, Lord, when I’m a part of this joint sacrifice, that’s part of it. Who I am in the world is not up to me. Lord, You have a plan…like Jesus didn’t do His own thing, He did the Father’s thing.
Do you think we’re meant to be different, or do you think it’s only for preachers? This is for every member of the body of Christ. I need to be changed. I want to be changed. I want what God wants for my life, His will and plan, not mine. That has to be a bedrock day by day conviction of our hearts.
But not only that, we understand that there’s gonna be opposition to that. I’m willing to fight. I’m willing to fight. Paul referred to it as the fight of faith, didn’t he? I don’t know. Like I said, there’s nothing new I’m saying, and yet I hope the Lord’s emphasis comes across.
I’m gonna just look at a couple of scriptures that we…again, that we’re familiar with. I don’t think this is gonna take a lot longer, but we’ve read a lot from Colossians. I’m gonna go back to the first chapter and just read one thing. Because Paul’s praying, but listen to what he’s praying in the beginning of verse 9.
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will….” Now, wouldn’t that be a good thing to pray? God, I don’t know what Your will is, but I want to know it, and I want to know it so I can do it. Okay, so Paul’s praying that they would know what His will is. All right?
“…Through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives…” You’re not gonna get this from the world and your friends. “…So that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work….”
Does that sound familiar? Are we here to just to be and then go to heaven because we’ve got a ticket to heaven in our pocket? Or are we meant to be actually bearing fruit, and not just fruit in…well, he made a lot of money, made a lot of friends, did a lot of good deeds? No, this is eternal fruit. This is something that has eternal value that God is looking for. Only He can do that, but He can.
“…Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.”
There’s a scripture that I ran into that I hadn’t thought about in a while. It’s at the end of Hebrews. And there’s a prayer by the writer beginning in verse 20. This is the benediction and final greetings is sort of the subhead that’s put in here. “Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will…” Anybody here need to be equipped?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Anybody here, in the natural, can just, oh yeah, Lord, tell me what to do? I’ll…no, I need Him to equip me. I don’t have the power to do a single thing. But with Him, I can do anything that He sets before me because it’s not me, it’s Him doing it. So, you see the sense of this writer here, the prayer that he prays.
May He, “…equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” May He work in us. Does that sound familiar? He’s gonna continue that work until the day of Jesus Christ. See, that’s the work. That’s purpose of the work, is so that we can be in this world what He intends us to be.
Go back to Philippians for one more scripture. And, this is in a very familiar one in chapter 2. And by the way, Paul has really talked to them about unity and not having selfish ambition and vain conceit, and about serving one another in humility, and then using Christ as an example. But now he comes to a ‘therefore.’ In other words, in the light of all this stuff that I’ve been saying to you, I want to base something on that, and here’s what it is.
“Therefore, my dear friends…” verse 12, “…as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling….” So, that’s the part that we play, but that is founded upon something, isn’t it? Because if that’s all I…if I’m gonna have to do that on my own, I’m in trouble. “…For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
Does God have a purpose for you? Does He have one for you? He has got one for every single member of the body of Christ—every single one. And just because it isn’t to stand up here or to do something public, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have eternal value in the eyes of our heavenly Father.
You know, there are a lot of parts of the body we don’t see, but they’re vitally important. Every member of the body of Christ matters. Our coming to the fullness of all that God has for us has everything to do with every part, being a part of that and participating.
And I’ll just refer back to something that many of you will remember about Brother Thomas. And I think, if I recall correctly, this was well up into his ministry. This wasn’t just way back in the beginning. This was a prayer that God laid on his heart. And it was, “God, mold me and make me into what You want me to be.”
That’s a dangerous prayer. In fact, that’s what I’m gonna title this. But isn’t that what everyone of us needs to be praying? Lord, in the light of what I understand that You do have a purpose, You have works that You’ve prepared for me to do, Lord, mold me and make me into what You want me to be, and lead me so that…it goes on into leading, enabling me and showing me what to do and giving me the power to do it.
The thing is, God will do His part, won’t He? He wouldn’t tell us to do something and then not do His part. He’s longing to share Himself. What He desires is willing vessels. Are we? Are we willing to set ourselves to pray such a prayer?
See, this is where you jump right back to the things that Brother Joel shared in the beginning. What do we need to be praying? In the process of getting to know Him, which is central to it, that has to lead beyond simply having this wonderful, personal, private relationship. If that is not translated into what we do and how we live in relation to one another in the church and out of the church, what is that?
Did Jesus simply have a private relationship with His Father and then walk around and smile at everybody? No. There were things that God gave Him to do. What’s He giving us to do? I don’t know. That’s not my job to…but I’ll tell you, cannot we seek God in faith with a humble heart, with a willingness to say, Lord, I don’t care what it is? I just want Your will because that’s the whole purpose of life is to do Your will, and I’m willing, Lord, just to lay my life down and say, God, lead me in Your path to do what You have set me to do.
I wonder what works God has prepared for you to do. Do you believe that there’s a part and there’s a part that you play that matters? I won’t ask for raising of hands, but how many of us are willing to pray that prayer, and say, Lord, mold me and make me into what You’d have me to be. Lead me in Your pathway. Show me what Your will is for my life regardless of whether I’m in this full-time service, the ‘ministry’ kind of thing, all these stupid categories that we’ve come up with.
If you’re a member of the Body of Christ, you are in the ministry. Every single member of the Body matters, and you are a minister of Christ. You might minister in other ways than standing up here and talking. Most of you will, but I’ll tell you, everyone of us is a minister.
Let’s pray that. Let’s…in our relationship with the Lord and in listening and having a listening ear…that’s often a prayer that I pray. Lord, give me a listening ear. Help me to hear the things that You want to say to me, because I need them.
And again, I need this, I think, more than anybody…as much as anybody here, the things that I have said this morning. I mean, I can remember standing there with young people in the front of some of these services when there was an altar call. Who’s willing to surrender their life to be…and I was on a track to be a foreign missionary at one time, and the Lord had a different plan.
But…you know, that needs to be renewed. We don’t ever get over that in this life. Lord, you’ve got…there’s a reason I’m here. And while I cannot do anything of eternal value, that’s not the point. Your strength is made perfect in my weakness.
Well, I’ve got beaucoups of that. That’s all I got, Lord, is weakness. But, Lord, I give that weakness to You, and ask You to come and live in me. Do whatever it is You have purposed for my life. Let it count for something so when I get there, I can hand You and say this is what You did through me, Lord.
Thank you for the privilege of sharing in this. Lord, to You be all and glory, and I’ll tell you, if we get crowns there…you see the picture in Revelation. They cast down their crowns. They knew where…they knew where it came from. Praise God, and yet, isn’t the Lord amazing to actually honor people who would just have the faith to surrender and say, Lord, my life is Yours. Show me what Your purpose is, and help me to live it out. To God be the glory. Praise God!
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March 20, 2022 - No. 1537
“Lord, Mold Me and Make Me” Part One
Broadcast #1537
March 20, 2022
March 20, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1537 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise the Lord! This is one of those occasions when I have wrestled more than usual. But I appreciate the things Joel shared and I believe, in a sense, that they are a foundation for what I’m about to share, because it’s not gonna sound like it’s about prayer, but it is, because that’s where all of this, the thoughts that I’ve had on my heart, lead.
And I think…I doubt I’m gonna say anything new and revolutionary. But, many times when the Lord is giving out a truth, He’s putting it layer on layer on layer and He’s building…many times we’re looking at the same thing from slightly different points of view so we get a bigger three-dimensional picture, if you will.
And I’m gonna go ahead and mostly use very familiar scriptures. I’m gonna use one as a jumping-off point that we’re very familiar with in Philippians chapter 1. And this is Paul, of course, writing from prison to the church in Philippi.
Verse 3: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you…” (NIV). So, Paul was a praying man, wasn’t he? He didn’t just write, he prayed. “…I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Thank God, that’s an awesome scripture we often quote, and it’s sort of like…the sense that I think we typically get is, man, life is tough, it’s confusing, I don’t know…a lot of times I don’t know what’s going on, but I know how it’s gonna turn out! And I know God’s over all and He’s gonna make it all happen.
And that’s certainly true, but there’s another dimension to this, because this work had begun prior to when Paul was talking about and it was going to continue, but in the meantime, He was working! There was something He was actually seeking to do and to accomplish. So, it wasn’t just about the future.
You know, I remember something from the group that Sue and I both grew up in, different churches, different areas, but it was a missionary-oriented group. And it was very common for us to have missionary conferences in which a foreign missionary would come and hold some meetings, youth conferences or youth rallies, summer camps with special speakers.
And one of the common emphases that we would have would be a service directed at the young people. And I see, of all Sundays, a lot of them are gone. But nonetheless, a service directed at young people and the thrust of it was, are you willing to dedicate your life to seeking God’s will? And the thought was pretty much, are you willing to go to a foreign mission field if He calls you? Are you willing to be a minister, whatever? Are you willing just to surrender your life and do God’s will?
And I’ll guarantee that if I had asked somebody, did that only apply to people who were going into full-time Christian service they would have said, of course not! Everybody needs to know God’s will. Somehow, it came across that way. That’s the way we sort of looked at it because the whole emphasis was on, do you…are you willing, if God calls you to be a missionary, are you willing to do that? And so, it’s almost like seeking the will of God in a very particular way is for the ‘special ones.’ That’s for…that’s for full-time Christian service, being a missionary and a pastor and all that kind of thing.
But I believe with all my heart, God wants to bring us to a place where we realize that God has a purpose for every single life. God has a purpose for your life. If you’re His, He has a path for you to run. He has things for you to do. It’s not just about what we are, the kind of person we are. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be a nice guy and show us how wonderful God was. He came to do the will of His Father. There were works that God gave Him to do and He did them. There were all kinds of things in which people saw God in action.
And that’s what God wants from every one of us, to see that people will be able to experience God in action. Now certainly that has everything to do with the relationship in the Body of Christ, but even outside. God is looking for a people in whom He can live and not just simply, I’m gonna be a nice guy because Christ lives in me. There’s stuff He has for me to do.
And I think it’s something we need to be a lot more conscious of. And I thank God for the degree that we are, but this is part of deeper life. That I’m not just here to mark time and to kind of learn to be a better person and say no to bad stuff and yes to good stuff and smile more often and be freer. All that’s true, but it is for a reason. We’re here, not just to conquer the old nature and obtain the new one. God has stuff for us to do.
And let’s look at just some very familiar scriptures that mention this, in particular, because I want us to see it in this context. And of course, Ephesians 2 is certainly one where Paul is laying out the Gospel and the fact that it’s God reaching out to us. We didn’t reach for Him. He reached for us when we were lost and dead in sin and all of that.
But he says in verse 8, the familiar scripture, “For it is by grace you have been saved…” God intervening, in other words, “…through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” See, even that comes from Him. And it’s, “…not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Okay, that’s very plain. But, it’s awfully easy to forget verse 10. “For we are God’s handiwork…” Okay, what’s that about? “…Created in Christ Jesus to…” be good people. Wait a minute! “…Created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
You see where the emphasis needs to be there? God has actually stuff that He knew about before the foundation of the world that He meant for you, if you’re a member of the Body of Christ, to do! Do we think that way? Or do we fall into the trap of, well, doing God’s work is for people who preach, they may hold Bible studies, they might sing, they might lead a prayer meeting, they might do this, they might start a program. And the rest of us, well, we just are church members. We just come and we participate and yeah, we might sweep the church or do something else in a practical sense, but we’re just basically God’s people.
You know, the church has fallen into, over the millennia now, a terrible trap in which we have divided up the Kingdom of God into the clergy and the laity. And, in our own past, it was the ministry and the people, like it was almost an Old Testament order where you had these special people that heard from God and the rest of us were just supposed to sit there and listen.
And, you know, there are definitely gifts that we need to listen to and respect, but my God has made every single one of us a member—a vital member of the Body of Christ. Okay? I’m jumping ahead in a way, but let me look at, very quickly, at scriptures here.
1st Corinthians 12, where Paul is going into the gifts of the Spirit and the ones he mentions there, in particular, are supernatural ones. In a sense they’re…the reality is they’re all supernatural. If you’re the kind of a person that people can see Christ in, it’s supernatural, even if you’re doing something that somebody might regard as ordinary.
( congregational amens ).
I mean, how about the lady…I think Dorcas was in some of the translations? Her name was Dorcas, in Joppa. She was a sister in the church and Peter was residing there at the particular time, and she died, and everybody from the village of Joppa was there weeping and showing him all the clothes that she had made, the things that she had done that were…you could call them charitable works.
But there was something very different about what she did, because it wasn’t simply, oh, this is a charitable person, we need to honor all the things…this was not a ‘do-gooder.’ This was not just a human thing. This was Christ, in her, reaching out and when people received the things that she made for them, they were…Christ was in action. They actually experienced Christ, in a very particular way, and it drew them to Him. Not just, oh, thanks for this wonderful piece of clothing. Do you see how, even an ordinary thing, infused with the life of Christ becomes extraordinary, becomes supernatural?
Now, yes, it could be performing a miracle. But anyway, let me get back to this. This passage is about the spiritual gifts and how every one’s necessary. Let me see where I was trying to get. Verse 27…this was something that Brother Thomas used to read in the King James. “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” (KJV). I think is the reading there…that each one of you is a part of it.
But just out of curiosity, this is one thing I did look up. And the underlying meaning of the word is everyone has an allotment, a share, a division. And my mind went to how the Lord arranged things in Israel. How many of you remember how He allotted the land to everybody and the idea was every single Israelite had an inheritance that belonged to them? They had the freedom to use it, to raise crops, to raise herds, to live, to be charitable, to…anyway, this is my place.
And what a picture that is of what God has done…wants to do for us! If you’re a member of the Body of Christ, you have a place that is uniquely yours! No one else can fill it!
( congregational amens ).
No one else can fill it! How many of you know that the whole concept, the modern concept we have of private property comes from the Law of Moses that God established in Israel? That every person had an inviolable…don’t you dare move the boundary markers. This belongs to so-and-so, generation after generation. This is theirs.
Well, folks, you have a place if you’re part of the Body of Christ, that is yours. And so, the question is, what do we do with it, and how do we discover that?
So anyway, another scripture we have used many times in Ephesians chapter 4, and again, this is talking about how Christ, “…ascended up on high…and gave gifts…” (NIV). He gives supernatural ability so that we can be what God has called us to be. And, yes, there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. But the purpose of God giving those particular gifts is not just to do everything so we can sit here like little birds with our mouths open, but rather, it’s to equip, equip, equip the Body of Christ so they can do the work that God has called them to do. These works that God has foreordained, that He mentions back in chapter 2. Okay?
And so, the whole order of things…okay, I don’t want to read it all because we’ve read this so many times. But what He’s given is so that we can, “…reach unity in the faith…” verse 13, and, “…become mature…” and enter the, “…whole measure of, the fullness of Christ.”
But now, he says we can avoid the bad stuff but, in verse 15, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him…” From whom? From Christ. Where do I get…where are we supposed to get what we do? From Him, right?
“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love…” How? “…As each part does its work.” Do you see that concept is just built in to God’s vision of how the Kingdom of God works? God’s purpose for this church involves every single person discovering and walking in the will of God for you! Okay?
In Romans 12, we’ve read this many times. I think I can just refer to this, but this is where we…that we take many bodies and we present them as a single sacrifice. We are many…we’re individual people, but yet we collectively come and say, Lord, we belong to You. We offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, come and live in us, change the way we think, and as a result of that, now we’re gonna live out the reality of the Body of Christ.
Each one is going to receive something from Christ, but it’s not so we can just say, wow, isn’t that wonderful? It is because…it’s something that enables us to share with others and to express Christ’s life!
( congregational amens ).
You think about our human body. How many of our parts—the parts of our human body just exist for themselves? You know, I made the point before. You call that cancer, something that just takes and doesn’t give. But I’ll tell you, every single part is energized by the life that lives in this body, and it’s meant to contribute to the welfare and the function of the whole. That’s why my sore joints this morning need to do their part a little better.
( laughter ).
But anyway, that’s part of living in these bodies. But you know, I wonder how many times we’ve got sore joints in the Body of Christ that the Lord wants to heal? He wants us to become more…stronger with more of a sense of purpose.
And you know, it goes back to what Joel said. How do we discover that? That’s that relationship where we’re looking to God. But anyway, the basic thought of all of this, that God has a purpose for our lives is, again, it’s not just the special ones. It’s not just about heaven. But it’s about life here.
And it’s not just about being, it’s about doing. See, that’s God’s purpose for every single one of us. All right? Well, you know I think we understand that a lot of things in us that hinder us. It’s not just the impatience, which we all share, Brother Joel, but many things in us…a lot of it is just the idea that we become so comfort-oriented. We have what we call the comfort zone. We all know the expression. We get used to life being a certain way. We think ease and peace and all those things in the natural sense is the goal of life. I want to just find a place where I can feel…
( deep sigh ).
I’m comfortable, I’m at ease. Well, what if the Lord wants to lift you up and take you someplace and do something that’s uncomfortable? He certainly did that with Paul. You think Paul’s the only one? No, he’s not, is he?
And a lot of it I alluded to before. Unbelief is a biggie! We get to the point where we can say, yay God, I heard about somebody being raised from the dead! Isn’t that awesome? But that could never happen here.
That’s what we…you know, that’s kind of the underlying lie that takes over. I could never be that way. God could never do anything through me. Look at me. I’m this. And the devil has got us wound up with so many lies that are contrary to the Word of God.
It has nothing to do with human qualification! There’s not one of us here that’s qualified to do anything of eternal value. You know, religion values people who are charismatic in the sense that their personalities just naturally draw attention. They have a power with words. They can speak and people come. And so, religious works are built around personalities that people come and oh, this man has so much to give and I just soak it all in and then I go and I live my life.
God, what a perversion of the Kingdom of God that is! You know, we’ve heard the expression many times, ‘God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called.’ How many times does God take the most unlikely person and use them in an amazing way?
And I think I have referred to this example before, seems like we keep coming up with stuff that happened in A. B. Simpson’s day, but this was one. There was a woman, I believe in his congregation, named, Sophie the washerwoman. Now, you could not have found a more unlikely person to have an influence in the Kingdom of God than Sophie the washerwoman. She was uneducated, poor as whatever…Job’s turkey or whoever, made a subsistence living, barely, just doing laundry.
But that isn’t what her life was about. She didn’t sit there saying, oh, my God, why doesn’t He do better by me? I’m so poor. I’m nobody. She just gave herself to the Lord, and there was a quality in her spirit that just reached out and touched people, and she led more people to the Lord just by the Lord being in her, in her simplicity, than somebody who went to seminary and doesn’t have what Joel was talking about, this relationship with the Lord. She had the reality, and God did amazing works and people are still talking about her over a hundred years later!
Isn’t that amazing? I’ll tell you, it’s going to be interesting on the Day of Judgment, when we find out who really did something that mattered from eternity’s standpoint. I’ll tell you, God knows, doesn’t He? Praise the Lord!
But anyway, I think one of the hindrances is we don’t realize the depth of our need. We think, I’m okay, I’m a good person. I don’t do bad stuff. And I go…I participate in church. I lift my hands when we are supposed to lift our hands. I praise the Lord. I’m okay, as though that’s, again…does God have a purpose in your life beyond that?
( congregational amens ).
The correct answer is, yes. Praise God! And I talked about how the devil has got so many lies that bottle people up. We’ve talked about this so many times. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. But, if you have allowed the devil to define who you think you are, you need to be delivered, because God says you’re His child.
( congregational amens ).
You’re not somebody way down here, worthless. You are worth Jesus Christ shedding His blood on the Cross, and sitting on a throne and lifting you up to that place. You are His child! I don’t care who you are in the eyes of people, or even in your own eyes! We are His! He has purchased us at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Oh, don’t ever let the world or the devil define you. We need to realize who we are and the fact that if we can do anything, it’s not based upon who we are. He raised us from the dead, for crying out loud! He is the One who knows. He’s the One who’s prepared works for us to do. My job is to seek Him and discover that and do them!
Isn’t that how Jesus lived His life? He spent time with His Father. He said, Father, tell me what to do. And He did it. And His life was not lived out just in being…like I said, in being a good person. It meant taking a detour through Samaria, because there was a woman there who needed Him. It meant getting in a boat, braving a bad storm so He could go across the Sea of Galilee to rescue a demon-possessed man, maniac, and deliver him as a testimony to everybody.
God set aside all the other agenda of heaven to send His Son to that man! You think about the awesome God that we have and the things that He sent His Son to do. It wasn’t just the kind of person He was, it was the deeds that God sent Him to do. And, of course, ultimately, it was the Cross itself! Thank God!
But you know, one of the other hindrances is, when we do rely on our natural abilities. And we think, I know why God called me. I got all this natural ability. Man, I’m gonna really give it all I got. Peter was kind of like that, wasn’t he? He had to learn some things. He was one that…some people are just reticent. They’re gonna hold back and not put themselves out. Peter was halfway down the road before you could finish telling him what to do.
But I’ll tell you, we need to have a lack of pride, a humility. We need to realize that we need the Lord. And we need to realize that natural ability is not what we need. We need supernatural clothing by the Spirit of God to make us a different person.
Close
March 13, 2022 - No. 1536
“Building on the Foundation” Conclusion
Broadcast #1536
March 13, 2022
March 13, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1536 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: If we are angry, if anger boils up, and especially if it happens a lot, it’s because it’s in here. We need to stop looking around at the situation and at other people. It doesn’t matter…in one sense, God can take care…God will take care of His people. God can take care of situations. But the one that God is interested in, is you!
( congregational amens ).
When He allows a situation that causes anger to boil out of your heart, it’s because He wants you to face it, and me, and recognize and be willing to ask that question, ‘Lord, what are you saying to me in this?’ Do you believe there’s a God who wants to reveal himself in these areas? Do you think that if we really come to Him with an honest heart and say, Lord, I know this is in here, I don’t even know why it’s in here, Lord? In your time and in Your way, if needed, take me on a tour so I can see what’s going on down here and You can heal whatever it is that’s causing that volcano to be there, because it wasn’t in Jesus.
Yeah, there was a kind of anger that came out of Him, but it wasn’t like ours. Don’t ever lie to yourself and say, well, this is righteous anger because they did wrong. They may have. Did they do wrong when they…the way they treated Jesus in crucifying Him? Sure! That’s about as wrong as you can get! And Jesus didn’t answer a word, time after time. And on the cross before He died, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (NIV). Are you that free? I’m not. We need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational response ).
And you can’t just generalize this glorious picture of Jesus living in us. It’s got to get down to these issues. If these things are in us, they didn’t come from Him. And we need God to deliver us and to show us our hearts and bring them to Him, confess what they are. We come as we are. Didn’t we sing that this morning? Oh, what a selection of songs. Praise God! God was leading this morning.
But oh, I’ll tell you, we’re afraid to be honest. Well, I can’t even admit that because then God wouldn’t love me. If I were really that bad…I’m just not that bad. Folks, He can save the worst of the worst. We can be honest with Him about the true condition of our hearts and the needs and the things that want to rise up. We can tell the truth. We can confess the truth, and know that He loves us and He’s willing to help us. All He’s looking for is an honest heart.
Look at what David went through in Psalms 51. Read through that sometime. When it really dawned on him what he’d done, he was absolutely open, broken. Oh, God, You’re a hundred percent wrong…I mean You’re a hundred percent right, I’m a hundred percent wrong.
( laughter ).
Anyway, you got the idea. No excuses, no nothing, but just here I am, Lord. I need to be cleansed. And, He’ll do it. And if these things are coming out and they represent a failure at that point, can we not bring them to Him. But doesn’t He want us to go beyond the fact that we just messed up, and begin to attack the reasons we’re messing up, because we have learned to yield to something?
And it may be, in many of us, it may be something that happened in our life that just put this feeling, this sense, this weakness down in there. We’ve learned how to react to life in a certain way. Only God can take us down the road that will lead us away from those things. Has He not provided for that or is this just a half-salvation? It’s Him living in us.
So, you see, all these things that have to do with our relationships one with another, and how God wants us to learn how to say, no, and to gain the actual practical victory so that these things do not control us. We can be with somebody who can be really mad and nasty, and whatever, and God can give us a peace. Do you really believe that God can do that for you?
( congregational response ).
Whatever your particular weakness is…you’ve got them, so do I. But, some of these things affect every single one of us. And that’s the reason Paul enumerates them, he lays them out. He said we’re gonna have to learn how to say ‘no.’ All right?
And he goes right back to the foundation. Don’t do this, “…since you have taken off your old self with its practices…” See again, it’s not just this vague, old self, it’s “…with its practices and have put on the new self, which is…” What? “…Being renewed….” There’s that language of an on-going process, something God is doing to change us. Don’t be discouraged by the process, but engage the process.
Don’t just sit there and say, well, this is as good as it gets. I’m okay. I’m not out there robbing banks, murdering people. If we’re not like Jesus, He’s working on us. If there’s any part of our life that’s not Him coming out, then He’s working on us. Thank God, He’s patient. Thank God, He works with us.
But we need to be, to really live our lives in the knowledge of this and actively ask Him, God, I need You to change me! I’m not just recognizing that You’re doing it. I’m not just recognizing it and resenting it because You’re messing with my life. I’m wanting You to change me because my heart is set on what is coming not what is here! My mind sees where You’re going with this! My heart agrees with that. And so, on that ground, I say, oh God, set me free. I want to enter into the life that You purchased for me at such a price.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! “…Which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here….” And now he begins to transition into something where we…up to now it’s almost been an individual thing. It’s all about me and I’m looking at my own nature and how it wants to react and I’m having to learn to say, no, but now he’s reminding me, I’m not alone. He’s brought me into a fellowship of a family that is unlike any on earth, because he says, “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Oh, what an awesome reality that is! The world is so full of division, me and my group and we resent everybody else. And we’ve got people that are trying to tear down this country. I’ll throw in this, for free, they’re trying to tear down this country and destroy it! And one of the greatest tools is to set every group against every other one.
But God is establishing a kingdom where every earthly boundary, every earthly division is gone. We need to have a heart that’s open to those that Christ has purchased with His blood and lives in! They are our brothers and our sisters. It’s not a matter of who you are from an earthly standpoint. We have a heavenly calling. We have a brand-new life and it’s Christ in us. If Christ is in me and Christ is in you, then we’re brother and sister, whatever is appropriate. That’s what he’s talking about. Praise God!
Thank God I’m not alone. Do you ever just feel alone and struggling? We all do at one time or another. But we’re not alone. God has brought us into an incredible reality. “Therefore…” Again, now on the foundation of what he’s been saying, now we have a ‘therefore.’ “…As God’s chosen people….”
You want to know who God’s chosen people are? These are them. It doesn’t matter whether Jew or Gentile, it has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with those who are in Christ, those who have been bought with His blood, those who have been born into an eternal kingdom. That’s what it’s all about.
“…God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved….” I’ll throw this in, that’s a…that’s a bridge too far for a lot of folks, to really get a hold of that. I confess my need, to get this in a deeper way. Can you really look inside your heart and say, and really, truthfully say, I am dearly loved, by a holy God? I, in spite of all that I lack and all that I am, I am dearly loved. I am dearly loved!
( congregational amens ).
I pray that God will make that more real to me and more real to you, because emotionally we have a hard time signing onto that one. Life has a way of forming us and defining us in so many other ways, so many ways that are of this world. But if you’re in Christ, you are chosen, you are dearly loved. In spite of your needs, in spite of everything you think is wrong with you, and may be wrong with you. You are dearly loved. And God wants us to come with a confidence in Him. Like we don’t have to constantly prove that I belong to You. Oh, thank God!
( congregational amens ).
We can find a peace and a rest on this foundation. We can build, knowing that it, like Paul, we’re reaching forth for something, we haven’t arrived there yet. We’ve to still press through. We’ve got to deal with issues, day-by-day-by-day. But we’re on the way and we have a solid foundation and a solid hope.
Okay? I feel like maybe this is one of those things where God wants to continually put the foundation, not only the foundation, but where He’s going with it, how to build on that. It’s almost like, like what Brother Thomas preached so many years ago. I mean, has anybody here ever got all of this? You’ve just arrived and all of this understanding, you’re living the deeper life, you’re living everything? No! This is where God is dealing with us right now. We’ve got a foundation that’s incredible. What are we doing with it? What kind of life are we actually living out? What’s coming out of us? What do people see? What do they experience in us? Do they experience Christ, or do they experience us? Human nature?
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves…” Now we’re getting into the positive aspects of Christ’s nature, being like Him. “…Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Not one of these characteristics come from human nature. We may have limited imitations of them, but I tell you, there’s nothing. If I’m gonna be this way it’s going to have to be supernatural.
( congregational amens ).
It does not exist in me, except through Christ. If He’s here, though, I have the power to actually give expression to those, if I will. That’s where choice comes in. And so, Paul wants people to engage in that.
Now, how would I know that I need something like this? Do you think the Lord just might bring us down a pathway and lead us to circumstances where that isn’t how we react? And what’s the appropriate response? To wallow in pain and go eat a box of chocolates? Or to say, Lord, you have brought me this way to show me my need. But I know I’m dearly loved. And I know Jesus isn’t this way. And I bring my sin, my failure to You. But I’m looking to You to live in me. Help me, right now, to make a choice to believe in Your power at work in me so that I can actually live out what You told me to be.
Do you see how a day-by-day-by-day exercise of that kind of thing God’s gonna lead us step by step forward? I mean, how do you build muscles? All at once? No, you have to exercise every single day and it’s not always fun. For some people I guess it is. But, most of us it’s not fun to put up with that resistance and you get to tomorrow and we need a little bit more. Oh Lord!
( laughter ).
But how else do we grow? If we don’t face things that challenge what we are, and who we are? But God is faithful, isn’t He? And remember, He’s not gonna put you in a situation that by His grace you can’t handle, nor I. All right?
So, all these awesome qualities, they come right straight out of the heart of Jesus. We see it in His interaction with people. Even those who were terrible sinners, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
“Bear with each other…” Oh now we get down to the nitty gritty. And that focuses on the reality that in this process we ain’t perfect! You are going to run into members of the Body of Christ who are gonna really mess up big time, and it’s gonna affect you emotionally. How do we deal with it? How does Christ deal with it? Truthfully. But does He get up high and mighty and say, straighten up and fly right. What’s the matter with you down there? I’m disgusted with you, about to throw you out. There is a love that wants to reach down and lift up.
Folks, do you want people to put up with you? Well, we need to put up with each other. We need to recognize and be realistic about where we’re at and the fact that we are human. We have faults. We have failings. We have needs. And God has called us to be like the Savior in that respect. We love one another. Our heart is to reach up, or reach down and lift up, and encourage. All right?
“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” It’s not a new idea, is it? But if God’s gonna reproduce the very nature of Christ in me, how can I do less than be willing to forgive?
( congregational amens ).
Now, I realize emotionally, sometimes we say, I just can’t! Well, the truth is, you can’t, if you’re trying to pull on human nature, it ain’t there, folks. We’re gonna have to say, I’m willing if You’ll just make me able.
( congregational amens ).
I’m willing if You will enable me, Lord.
( congregational amens ).
But You’re gonna have to do it. How many of you remember the scene in that movie…what was the name of it? “Overcomer.” That grandmother who was so bitter, and then she wound up realizing she had a need in this area, and said, oh God, You’re gonna have to help me! He did, didn’t He?
Isn’t that what God’s looking for? Doesn’t He need to bring us to a place where we not only feel our need but we’re crying out and saying, oh God, I need Your help. I need You to change me. Isn’t that a prayer that He longs to hear?
( congregational response ).
And longs to answer? Can’t we make progress in this Christian life? That’s what he’s talking about. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Every single one of these, in one way or another, is an expression of divine love.
( congregational amens ).
And you remember what John said in his first letter, “We love because he first loved us.” And in this way, His love is made complete. God does not just love you so that you can have this private little lovefest. He poured His love into you so it could pour through you to other people. How else is God gonna spread His love? That’s how He means to do it.
That’s how He did it with His Son! His Son didn’t just bottle up and say, boy, I’m tired of these crazy people, I don’t feel like loving them. But He didn’t hold back. There was nothing but pure love that people felt. Even the woman at the well, with all of her history, she sensed something in Him, that didn’t just run her down and reject her because of who she was, but reached out in mercy and in love. And it drew her out of a cesspool of sin, to recognize there was somebody who loved her and wanted her to have a new life.
Oh, how we need that with one another. And how God is so ready, He’s so ready, to share Himself, if we’re just willing, and we recognize that we have a need.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts….” And I think we’ve probably made the point many times, and maybe you’ve heard others make it, it’s kind of like in baseball you’ve got an umpire that calls balls and strikes. How do we know we’re on the right track? It’s not always an emotion. But I’ll tell you, there can be a…there’s a peace that God puts all the way down in the bottom of our soul, we’re at peace with Him.
We know there’s no controversy. There’s no, ‘I’m mad at you, God, because You didn’t do things my way, on my schedule.’ There is a yieldedness, there is a humbling of ourselves under the mighty hand of God so He can lift us up when it’s proper, when it’s the proper time. That’s what He’s looking for, just somebody with child-like faith that says, Lord, I’m yours. I want to be in harmony with You, in every area of my life.
And Lord…and what’s the result of that? It’s peace, isn’t it? And when we get something that disturbs our peace, we want to go a certain way, we want a certain thing, and there’s no peace. You better step back. God has a way that He wants to lead us. He knows about our earthly lives and our earthly needs. But they have a heavenly purpose. That’s way Paul says, “Set your affection on things above.” (KJV). Your hearts, your minds.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” (NIV). Now, you could just sort of blow right over that. But think about all that he’s been talking about. He’s been talking about coming face to face with the ugliness of our own human nature, on a personal level. You’re having to come face to face with it and recognize it and say, the problem is in here. I have allowed my flesh to rule over me. I have allowed my old nature to rule over me. Thank you, Lord!
Let’s put this in its context. Is God doing you a loving, merciful favor when He allows you to feel that and sense that need? Yeah! It’s because He longs for us to face it and know that we need Him and cry out to Him. And He’s ready, right there, to lift us up! And so, in the midst of all of this, that Paul has been talking about, we have every reason to say, thank you, Lord, for not leaving me like I am. God, if I followed my own inclinations, I would be lost. But You didn’t let me. You came to me. You rescued me, at the cost of Your own Son’s life. Thank God!
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another…” Now we’re helping each other. “…With all wisdom…” Sometimes we don’t use wisdom, do we? We need God’s wisdom. “…With all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
You know, we talked about how the Christian life works, and the foundation for it all. You know, between the history of what God has done for us and our destiny, here’s today. But now Paul gets down to the nitty gritty, doesn’t he? There are things, there are appetites that will rise up in your flesh, that God…we need divine grace in order to use these bodies the way God intended us to use them in this world.
Don’t be dismayed when your old life shows up and demands control, and particularly if you’ve got a situation when you have yielded over decades sometimes. You’ve yielded in this area. There may be a battle. There will be a battle. But you have the power through Christ to begin to say no.
( congregational amens ).
And begin to gain the victory over that. So, Praise God! I’ll just leave it at that and just trust God, because I need this…every bit as much as you. We are all on a journey. Every one of us has aspects of our old nature that still want to rule and call the shots. But we need to recognize, I have this need. Lord, you are the only answer to my need. Jesus, give me the victory, right here, right now, so that I can act…I can act out. I don’t mean pretend, but I mean to live out Your life instead of mine. Praise God! Is God faithful?
( congregational amens ).
Amen!
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March 6, 2022 - No. 1535
“Building on the Foundation” Part One
Broadcast #1535
March 6, 2022
March 6, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1535 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: It seems like that the things that I have on my heart…on one level they seem rather repetitive, and yet, I feel, very strongly, that the Lord wants to layer truth in such a way that it becomes real and not just theology that we know. How many of you understand that we need to have, not just theology and not correct knowledge of the Bible, but we need to have it translated into our lives.
( congregational response ).
And I think that’s something we all struggle with more than we might care to admit even to ourselves. I was thinking of…something came back to me. You remember…many of you remember when Brother Thomas returned here in ‘76, and there was a need, wasn’t there? The church had sunk into a lot of legalism. And, there was a lot of bondage.
And do you remember what Brother Thomas told us that the Lord told him? He said, I want you to spend one solid year preaching nothing but foundational truth, because if we try to build on anything other than the one foundation that God has laid, which is Jesus Christ, then we’re gonna build something other than what He wants, and it won’t stand up. And so, thank God, he did that.
And, you know, we spoke last week, about Paul’s worldview, which is another way of saying the framework within which he laid that foundation, because he saw the world, not through the eyes of a Pharisee, but through the eyes of one that had been redeemed by that blood that we sang about this morning. He understood there’s a God who has set eternity in our hearts, whose plan is for it to have a people and a family and He’s made full provision for that.
And so, you notice this pattern, like we said last week that…in every, nearly every one of his letters, in one way or another in every one, he lays the foundation before he ever gets to Christian living and how we’re supposed live and what we’re supposed to do and not do.
You notice before he ever gets to that, he spends chapters, the way it’s been arranged for us, just laying out the basis upon which any of that can possibly happen. I mean, I know that we know, as we’ve said many times, there ain’t no way we can live a real, genuine, from-the-heart Christian life unless we get the foundation.
And…but you know, there does come a time when the foundation is there, but you don’t say, whoopee, I’ve got a great foundation, onto the next project. The foundation is there for a reason, and God wants us to build on that foundation. And that’s when it gets down to you and me in our everyday lives actually taking advantage of what God has done, entering into what He has provided and laying hold of it so that it becomes ours in a practical way. We’re not just sitting here affirming truth and thinking that’s all that it takes.
And so, we find Paul, in Colossians 3, I guess, is as good a place as any to go…. But Paul has, as we’ve pointed out so many times, spent the time letting us know who Jesus is, and the fact that our hope is entirely based, not upon anything other than Christ living in us. If we have any other source of what we do, then it’s futile, it misses the point completely. The only hope I have of standing there in glory one day is Christ literally living in my heart.
Is He in your heart? Has that really happened in your life? I pray that if it hasn’t, God will so convict you, that you will fall on your face and realize how desperately, how greatly…desperately is the wrong word…how deeply He loves you and what He has done for you, that it’s not just this generalized love, He loves you, as an individual, with all of your faults, all the virtues you think you have, but don’t. Everything about you, the stuff that you don’t want anybody to know about, He knows, and He loves you. And He has made a way for you to know Him and to have a new heart and a new life.
That’s the whole foundation of everything. And every possible obstacle that would keep us from the purpose of God, Jesus dealt with. He dealt with the guilt of my sins so I could even have a relationship with God, and what an amazing thing it is that I can come to Him and not only is my legal guilt taken care of, but I don’t even…I can come to a place where I don’t even feel the guilt of things that I just felt before I brought them to Him. It’s real!
( congregational response ).
When God meets the heart that reaches out to Him, from the heart, God is able to wash your sins away as if they had never happened, give us a fresh start. Oh man, what an incredible Gospel!
But the Gospel doesn’t stop there, does it? See that’s the foundation. That only gets us into the game, as it were. That gets us to home plate, to use a baseball analogy. Now we’re in the game. Now, it’s up to…now, God wants us to actually produce something.
And so, he has laid that foundation, and Paul summarizes in the beginning of chapter 3 in these words. “Since, then…” (NIV). Now see, since then, looks back, doesn’t it, to everything he’s been saying? “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”
Now the foundation that God has to establish in our hearts…and I understand that there are varying degrees with which we truly get this. I mean, we get it intellectually, but I mean, really get it in our hearts. The reality of what He has done with us has to become real to you, personally.
Paul was able to look at his own life and everything that he has done…he had been responsible for the death of Christians who were followers of Jesus. That’s how zealous he was in fighting against Christ. And in spite of that, God reached out, Christ reached out in love to him and gave him a brand-new heart and a brand-new life. Man, there’s no obstacle in your past that God can’t overcome, that the cross did not overcome.
But the reality is, if I’m going to live, He had to do something about me. And we talked last week about how God does something in the beginning of a race, as it were. In Adam, how did we get to be sinners? We were born into a family of sinners. We may not have been there personally making the decision, but our ancestor, from whom we inherited everything, was. And so, we were in Adam sinning. We were the ones who partook of that tree and made the decision to rebel.
But the same principle applies to what Jesus did. And I’ll tell you, God did something amazing when Jesus came out of that tomb. There was a victory for all eternity and there was a people that God placed in Him. Everyone born of that life partakes of every characteristic of that life, and one of them is that we died with Him on that cross.
The problem is, we don’t see that. We don’t live as if that’s really so. But I pray, I feel this need in me…I mean, this is one of the things that makes me hesitant to preach some of these things, but they’re real and God wants us to get them. We can’t just sit there forever and glory in the foundation. God wants us to do some building. It needs to be translated into real life, and that’s what God is saying and doing.
But here again is the re-iteration of that foundation. Folks, if we don’t, to some degree, if God does not make this real that I died…I died already. This thing that wants to rise up and control me, I died to that. It does not have the right to own me anymore.
See, there’s this way of seeing ourselves and seeing what God has done for us that forms a foundation. If you’re doubting that, if you’re struggling and…I don’t know if it’s really me, I don’t know if it’s really true…you know, there are a thousand and one ways, and our emotions get involved. But folks, God wants to plant that reality, that foundation in every heart, in the heart of every one of His children.
I get that it’s a process. There’s no experience you can have where you suddenly, you’re catapulted all the way into Canaan land. Of course, in Canaan land, there are giants, aren’t there? There are giants.
But anyway, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ….” He treats that as a historical fact. And God wants you and you and you and me, this morning, to reckon on the reality of what God has done for us. That is the foundation of everything that he’s about to say. Since that’s a fact, you’ve been raised with Christ, “…set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
Hallelujah! Glorious theology! But God wants that translated into everyday, practical life, dealing with very real issues. Bear in mind, Paul is not writing to the heathen. He’s writing to Christians, writing to us here this morning. All right?
First of all, he deals with a category of things, characteristics of the earthly old nature to which we died in Christ. “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.”
Okay? I’m gonna stop right there for the moment. But it looks to me like Paul is dealing with two categories of characteristics of the old nature. And it’s awfully easy for us to look at these and say, well, he’s talking about somebody else. He’s talking about all those people out there.
The truth of the matter is, every single person in here has these qualities, if you want to call them that, these characteristics of the old nature and they operate in us! So, this is not written to the heathen. This is written to Christians. And notice that even though God has done this wonderful thing for us in Christ, there is a part that we play!
Notice…I mean, you can go back and read…I’m not gonna take the time this morning to read Romans 6. I don’t know, I say I won’t…we’ll see. But Romans 6, Paul deals with this same truth and he really spells it out. And he leaves…he shows us that while this is true, we have a responsibility to make choices, don’t we? And in a practical sense, you can be a child of God and yield yourself to something that doesn’t produce good fruit, right?
( congregational response ).
That’s where you get the Scripture that talks about, “…the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.” We can yield ourselves to something, and if we do, do we not become slaves? You’ve got a world full of people that think slavery is a horrible thing and they are slaves and do not know it. We have a nature that, if we don’t…if we don’t rule over it, it will rule over us, in one way or another.
And, I’ll tell you, these desires are real. God has implanted, has given us physical desires…some of them are pleasurable, some of them are need, but they are real and God gave them every one with a wonderful purpose. If there were not…if sex were not a good thing God created, none of us would be here. But it has a reason, it has a purpose.
And Satan loves to take control of people’s lives in varying ways. Some of it is outward activity, that is way outside the will and the purpose of God. Oh, I’ll tell you, we need divine help. We need divine life, to be able to say, no, you cannot rule over me, Christ is in here. This is not my strength, it’s not anything of me, but Jesus lives!
How many of you think…we’re called to live the life of Christ, right? How many of you think these characteristics are characteristics of Him? See, if any of these things that he’s talking about…and he’s gonna be enumerating others…if they exist in our lives, they ain’t coming from Him. They’re coming out of the old nature.
And to the degree that they are given expression, to the extent that we make excuses for them, we yield ourselves to them, we just say, that’s the way it is, that’s just as good as it gets, I believe in Jesus, that’s good enough, we’re not doing much building, are we? God wants to take us further. He wants to take me further, I know. I’ll guarantee He wants to take me further than I have been and I want that, I desire it. I just…I praise Him. I praise Him that He’s put up with me all these years.
But oh, what a Savior we have! None of this is put out there as some kind of a, you’ve got to measure up in your own strength. None of it is that, but if we…if the Gospel is not honest with a real need, what good is it? We can’t pretend we’re not really sinners. Our sins are forgiven, so we’re good. And yet, we live enslaved by more things than we dare to realize. We certainly don’t want to admit it to one another. But the truth is, we don’t admit it to ourselves.
And I know it’s a challenge for young people growing up, especially in this world today which glories in, you were born that way, just give vent to it. To find out how to handle their bodies, they begin to feel attraction to the opposite sex, they begin to feel all kinds of things, and what’s right and what’s wrong? And oh, it feels good, so I’m gonna play with this and play with that…and you older ones, we’ve been there, right? We understand.
But oh, I’ll tell you, God has a…God has a salvation that can deal with these things, if we’re willing. We can find the way that God intended all these things to be used. There is a nature that will rise up and take you down paths, you’ll wonder how you got where you got…if you listen to it, if you yield to it, if you give vent to it.
But there is no place for sexual immorality. That covers a wide range of activity here. This is the actual act of using sex in a way that God never intended. And I’ll tell you, it leads to a bad, bad place. We need the grace of God, to say, Lord, you made me this way, and when I feel it, I need to bring it to you, and I need to let it find its rightful place. I need you to give me the power to keep it where it needs to be. And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who will hear that prayer.
But we have a choice, don’t we? We’ve got a lot of choices here, and there are a lot of people that have made shipwreck of their lives by just following their natural desires for a wide variety of physical reasons, psychological reasons. We are complex creatures, folks. You know, you have this expression, ‘people who seek love in all the wrong places.’ And I don’t want to say that in a joking way. It’s…those are real issues. Those are deep, deep needs in a lot of people’s hearts.
But oh, I’ll tell you where love begins. It begins with Him, where your worth, your value begins with Jesus Christ who shed His blood to open heaven’s door for you! You want to know what being loved is about? Open your heart to Him! Let it begin there! That will spoil every false form of it. God wants to set His people free!
( congregational amens ).
But notice, he doesn’t just stop with the act. He talks about, “…impurity, lust, evil desires…” There are so many things that happen where, it’s not like it’s an open thing or even involves somebody else. But what happens on the inside? What happens in our minds, in our hearts? What do we think about? What do we do when nobody’s looking? What do we…what kinds of thoughts do we let happen in here?
It’s a sober thing to think about, folks. This is stuff that affects us, right here, this morning. And don’t you look at me and lie to me, because you know what I’m talking about. We need God to give us, not just refraining from open acts of…but from the inside. Jesus said, ‘whoever looks at a woman and lusts after her in his heart has already committed adultery.’
You know, we act like if we’re doing something in secret and nobody else knows about it, that, well, it’s okay. Oh, I’ll tell you, we are standing on a perfectly lit stage and heaven can see everything that happens. Oh, we need grace. We need God’s help and God’s mercy. We need to be honest with ourselves about those needs.
Where do you go on the internet? There may not be anybody here that hasn’t gone the wrong place at one time or another. We just need mercy and we need grace. But we need to recognize these are real, real issues.
And God…I’ll tell you what, God allows temptation. Did He not send His Son into the desert to be tempted by the devil? And He was tempted in every way just as we are. And it was by divine strength that He was able to say, no. God didn’t send me down here to use this vessel that He has given me in ways that dishonor Him, and by His strength I say, no. God lives in me and that’s how it’s gonna be. God wants to bring us to real victory in these areas. And I believe He can.
You know, there are so many different levels of strongholds. But didn’t Paul say that God had given him a ministry, and it wasn’t just employing the world’s wisdom but there was divine power in it to do, what? To pull down strongholds and every thought that rises up against obedience to Christ. I’m paraphrasing a little bit…but from 2nd Corinthians 10. I’ll tell you, we need divine power, don’t we?
( congregational response ).
How many of you need divine power?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I do. I’ll put up every hand I can find. Yeah, I don’t have any strength. I’m no better than you in this area. There are areas where every one of us thinks things, that we need help. We need the Lord to give us victory, because you know, you might say, well, I’ve never ‘done the thing.’ But how many times has your mind gone in that direction? And you’ve allowed it and you’ve just played with it.
I’ll tell you, the devil has so many ways of pulling on our hearts and our lives. And so many of the things are not simply responding to physical needs or physical desires, some of them are an attempt to deal with real psychological issues. It’s another thing we’ve talked about before. But I mean, you could have real deep-seated needs buried down in here that you don’t even want to admit, or maybe you can’t even remember why.
But yet, there are certain things that happen in your life and you’re gonna respond to them by eating the proverbial box of chocolates. Isn’t that dealing with…trying to use a physical thing to deal with another issue? I mean, there are so many ways you could…spend all day, I guess, if somebody were to catalogue every kind of thing. But the reality is, God did not give us these bodies to serve them and their desires.
Paul is dealing with this over in 1st Corinthians or 2nd Corinthians one. I forget which chapter. I think it’s 1st Corinthians 6, if I’m not mistaken. But he warns about immorality and he talks about the bodies that He’s given to us. And he says, “…ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (KJV).
That is, they belong to Him. God gave Jesus His earthly body, for what purpose? So, He could just follow His desires and be enslaved by them? No! So that He could glorify God and carry out God’s purpose. This is what God wants to build in us. He’s laid the foundation, now, there’s some building that needs to happen.
And in order for that building…in order for the positive qualities of Christ’s life to come out, some of these other things have to be overcome. It’s like the Israelites, they couldn’t really occupy the land and enjoy the fruit of it without kind of dealing with the giants.
Well, you and I got giants to deal with. And they are very real. And I believe with all my heart God wants us to realize and be honest with our own needs. And when we read a Scripture like this, not just think, oh, that applies to everybody else. Folks, if you’re human, it applies to you. And I don’t suspect there are any Martians here this morning.
( laughter ).
We need…we need grace, don’t we? And that’s what God offers. These instructions are not to discourage. But I’ll tell you, they are to warn us that our growing in Him, the response to the wonderful, incredible foundation that we have in Christ and what He’s done for us, is that we need to begin to make choices that are consistent with what He has done. And when we do, He’ll help us.
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February 27, 2022 - No. 1534
“Understanding Our Wilderness” Conclusion
Broadcast #1534
February 27, 2022
February 27, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1534 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Remember, “Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness…” (NIV). All the way—all the way. Do you realize that in your life? I know there are people here who have gone through tough stuff in your life. Do you realize, if you’re the Lord’s, He’s led you all the way even in the hard things?
You heard Ricky’s testimony. Do you think all that that he went through was incidental, a waste? Or do you think God can take that and build something on it now, that could not have been, had he gone another way? It doesn’t mean it was easy.
But I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who can take nothing and make everything out of it. He kind of did that with the universe. He doesn’t have any limitations. There’s nothing impossible with God, and He wants us to realize that, but He wants us to reckon on it in our lives and see our lives through His eyes.
The Lord’s looking down and says, there’s one that’s gonna be with me forever. I’m gonna start working. They’re gonna go through stuff they’re not gonna understand, but I’m gonna help them as they grow to understand and to let go and to trust Me. See, that’s what He’s seeking to bring.
That’s what that older generation never understood. They would face some obstacle, and all they could see was the natural side of it and feel just helpless, and, God hates us! He’s brought us out here to die! We should have stayed in Egypt! Over and over and over again that spirit of stubborn unbelief that refused to see the mighty hand of God in all the things that He had done.
Folks, if you’re here this morning, God has worked in ways you don’t understand, and we need to just bow our heads and say, Lord, thank You. Lord, where I could have been if You hadn’t had Your hand upon my life. Where would I have been? Thank You, Lord! Thank You for the wildernesses of my life!
Thank You for everything You’ve done in my life to bring me to this point! Open my eyes to see, Lord! Teach me, that I might humble myself and just occupy that place that You desire, where I just bow down and rest in Your love, and I cast my cares upon You. So much that we sang this morning was so relevant to what we’re talking about.
“…Humble you and test you…” Again, this is not classroom stuff. This is real life. “…In order to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commands. He humbled you…” and this is the amazing thing, “…causing you to hunger…” Causing you to hunger.
Think about a God who will bring you and me into a place of need, and He does it, and He allows it. He might even use the Devil to bring it to pass. Oh, He knows how to use the Devil. But the Devil can’t win when it comes to God’s children.
But He will bring you into a place of need, because if He doesn’t, what’s gonna happen? We’re gonna be self-sufficient and proud of what we have accomplished. And we might have an outward show of being religious, being followers of God, being faithful and all of that, but way down in here, there’s something else that’s really kind of ruling, and the only way God can deal with that is to bring us to a place where it’s over our heads. We can’t handle it.
( congregational amens ).
We’re facing something that is beyond our capabilities. Does God do that because He’s mad at us, or does He do it because it’s the only way that we just throw up our hands and just let go and let God have His way?
See, some will come to that place, and they’ll rebel and they’ll be angry and see God as hateful. But we need to be able to see that this is a loving heavenly Father who knows what we need, who has nothing but good things ahead for all of His people. Yeah, we may have to go through all kinds of things to get to that, but you and I have no idea the things that He has ahead for His children.
I’ll tell you, only when our eyes are open to eternity will we really begin to grasp the greatness of His love and His mercy toward us, and what He has. He can let us know. He can give us a genuine faith so this is not just religious make-believe. I mean, there is a God who knows how to contact a human heart and minister a genuine faith that gives us a confidence that what we do not see is greater than what we do.
That’s what He seeks to impart in every willing heart. He’s able to do that. He’s able to bring us to a place where we can look at the Egyptians, and we can look at the sea, and know that’s not the end of the story, because we serve a God who has power over everything that would oppose us.
That’s the relationship God was seeking to establish, because they were getting ready to face some stuff. They needed to know. They needed to understand, be able to look back and say, this is how it was. Look what You did for us. My clothes didn’t wear out. I was always cared for.
“Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.” How many times have we mentioned that discipline…we tend to think of it as punishment because I did something wrong? Discipline is training. Yeah, sometimes we need consequences if we do something that needs correcting. The Lord knows how to do that, but always, the spirit behind it is one of love to help and to lift up and to deliver from something that’s really bad.
God doesn’t do it because He’s just mad at you, because you broke a rule. He does it because He sees you going in the wrong direction. I mean, if you were going toward a cliff without any consciousness about what was going on because it was fun, and someone snatched you back, does that mean they’re mad at you? Or does that mean they love you enough to see the consequences of where you’re headed?
And God could see the consequences of them being like the other nations, walking in self-will, walking without a spirit of trust in this God. He knew what they were facing. He had nothing but good things in mind, when you look at what He had promised them. When you look at what he said down in verse 7 of chapter 8, I sort of referred to this but didn’t read it,
“For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.”
I mean, the blessing that he was talking about here were earthly in a sense. And you know, the lesson from this is not, oh, come to Jesus, and you’ll get rich, in natural things. But it is that God has good things ahead for us, and we are a part of a kingdom that looks beyond all the riches of this world. God can take care of His own.
But I’ll tell you, we seek something that is way beyond this. “Seek ye first…” Jesus said, “…the kingdom of God, and his righteousness…” and all these needful things, “…all these this shall be added to you.” (KJV).
I’ll tell you, God is seeking to have a people whose heart sees like Paul. The things that I’m seeing, everything I see is temporary. The stuff that I don’t see, that lasts, and that’s what I’m living for! And I’m willing to let go of this, because that is so real to me that I’m willing to leave this behind.
Oh, I’ll tell you, God has so much ahead for His children. But don’t you for one minute think that where you’re at right now, is irrelevant to that. God hasn’t got you on pause. He hasn’t gone away and left you for a while, and then He’ll come back and renew the lessons. Every single day, God looks on you and cares about you.
Wouldn’t it be good if we recognized that? Wouldn’t it be good if we acknowledged Him in all of our ways, allowed Him to direct out paths, that we returned His love instead of complaining as we do, because the truth is, if we’re complaining, who are we complaining about? Now we direct it at situations and circumstances, but who’s the One who allowed all of that?
And does He allow it because He’s angry at us, or does He allow it because He’s because He loves us enough to take us directions that will break the chains, break the hold of earthly ideas and values and self? We are imprisoned by our own choices, folks. We need Him. We need to learn to see through His eyes, and that’s what He was seeking to do here.
Praise God. I’m just trying to focus on…trying to recall the things that I wanted to emphasize out of this. There are things that the Lord brought to my attention. One of them is this, that God wants us to be very realistic about things that we face. We have a way of avoiding stuff. I believe with all my heart, there are battles, right now, going on in people’s lives. There are battles that should be going on in our lives that aren’t, because we’re avoiding them. Does that make any sense?
The Lord kind of drawn my attention to things that…you know, here’s a battle that you need to be fighting. There’s an enemy, right now, that has had too much victory in your life, too much of a hold. And I want to bring you to a place where you don’t duck that and hide from it and pretend it isn’t there, because those are all things we do.
We lie to ourselves. I’m good. I’m okay. In the meantime, there are things…there are strongholds the enemy has. There are weaknesses that have a hold in our lives that God wants to deliver us from. And, we can pretend, or we can take the…you know, I’m just supposed to ignore it. I’m supposed to pretend it isn’t there. After all, I died with Christ. It can’t have any effect. I’m victorious, and we have this ‘victory in word’ kind of thing, which is, it’s all right to confess the Word of God, but I think you know what I’m talking about. We have a lot of techniques by which we avoid things that God wants us confront and overcome.
Now it is quiet. Am I telling you the truth? Every single one of us, there’s not one in here that doesn’t have areas of our lives where we need to grow, and need more victory than we’ve had. I certainly wouldn’t stand here and tell you that I’ve arrived. Paul didn’t. Paul was still battling, still working.
Look at examples like David. We know how the Lord had prepared him for the things that he had gone through. But what did the Lord do to do that? Just let him be quiet and sing songs by the sheep? No, He sent a bear out one time, sent a lion out another time.
And you know, the way we do it sometimes, he could have just ignored the beasts and gone ahead and sung praises to God. Isn’t this wonderful. It’s a beautiful day. But he didn’t. He confronted the enemy, didn’t he? He didn’t pretend it wasn’t real, didn’t pretend it wasn’t stronger than he was, in the natural. There was a total realism on his part. I’m up against something where I don’t have what it takes. I need God. And God showed up. God helped him.
And so then, Goliath shows up. And David arrived at the army to visit his brothers and bring supplies, and he sees what’s going on. And his counsel wasn’t, oh, don’t pay attention to that stupid guy, God’s with us, we can ignore all that chatter, that’s meaningless, just go on about your life. We’ll just stand here and proclaim the victory!
We can kind of duck and hide and never confront if we’re not careful. And David’s victory included him having to step forth and actually confront that giant in a real battle. We don’t want that. We’d prefer to find a way to kind of slide around it and pretend that’s not that big an issue. But there are issues that God wants to focus His heart and our attention on, where He longs to deliver us. But it doesn’t happen by singing happy songs and pretending if that’s…when confronting the thing is what’s needed.
And so, David…but David also understood something else, and this has been the subject of many messages. He understood it wasn’t just his battle. The Lord wasn’t standing off and saying, I want to see how you’re doing this. Let’s see your…rally your strength and see what you can do. He said, this is not your battle, David. This is My battle.
Do you know that every weakness, every enemy, every stronghold the enemy has in the life of any Christian, is not just your battle but His? That’s why it’s called salvation. That’s why the solution is not for me to somehow gear up, and be stronger and do better, quote more Bible verses. I mean, if I’m trying to do it through ‘technique,’ is what I’m saying, and human strength, it ain’t gonna happen. But do you see the picture of this in Israel and God’s dealing with them? There was a total realism about the picture that God painted.
Look at chapter 9, just for a moment. Look at the beginning of it. “Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you…” (NIV). Oh, how encouraging! “…With large cities that have walls up to the sky. The people are strong and tall—Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: Who can stand up against the Anakites?” There were still families that had descended from some giants. There were still some of them around.
“But be assured today that the LORD your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you.”
And you see this perfect balance. God is going to put you in a position where there is no possible human solution to your problem and your need and mine. I have no answer! But He doesn’t skirt around it. He doesn’t pretend it isn’t real. He doesn’t pretend the enemy is not real. There he is. He’s real. He’s a lot stronger than you. How many of you know the Devil is a lot stronger and smarter than you are?
( congregational response ).
How many of you know that your human nature has no power to change? You cannot call upon anything in your own resources to become what God wants you to be. We’re gonna have to present ourselves to Him.
( congregational response ).
And say, I need a Savior. But you know, it doesn’t just start with, oh God, I need a Savior. You know, we sing the song sometimes, ‘In times like these we need a Savior.’ Or you need a Savior, I forget which. But one of the lines in one of the verses is, ‘In times like these I have a Savior.’
See, that’s the balance that God seeks to bring, where there is an absolute honest reckoning upon our need and the fact that I have no power against what God is asking me to overcome. If it’s just me trying to do it, it’s not going to happen. I need a Savior. But He wants me to get past that, to where instead of looking at my…what I lack, I am looking at what He is and who He is.
He doesn’t just give me instructions and techniques to win a victory, He is my victory! The answer to the Devil’s power is not more resources from human life, it’s divine life. Those giants didn’t know what they had against them until they faced the Israelites when they did trust God.
When they went in on their own strength, man, it didn’t work out so good. But when they went in and looked to God, and God gave them the pattern of the battle, and they just did it in faith, even when it made no sense at all, like marching around Jericho, what did God do? He said it’s not dependent on human strategy and human strength. It’s dependent on Me and My Word. I can do anything if you will just trust Me, and look to Me and do what I’ll tell you to do, you can win the victory.
I believe with all my heart, instead of us ducking and pretending, God is looking for a people who will bring our needs to Him. First of all, recognize in our daily lives this is not meaningless. Everything that you and I do from the time we get up in the morning until time we go to bed and during the night, for that matter, we’re in God’s hands. God is working out a purpose.
He never leaves His own. His purpose, His heart is always to bring us to a place of greater victory. I know the thoughts that I have for you, it says later in one of the prophets, thoughts to bless you, “…to give you hope and a future.” I forget the exact words, but you remember the Scripture.
That same God is here this morning, and that’s what He thinks, and what He wants for you and for me. But in that process, I believe there are times when you and I need to be a lot more honest with ourselves, and not be afraid to be honest.
Are there persistent needs in your heart and your life? There are in mine. Wouldn’t it be a good thing to say, Lord, this is where I’m at. I don’t have any strength in this battle. It’s had a hold on me for all these years. There’s a need that I have. You know about it. There’s no sense pretending.
You love me anyway. You sent a Savior to the cross because you loved me enough to do something about it. But Lord, I can’t fight this battle in my own strength. I need You. I can’t make it go away by pretending it isn’t there, put a smile on, and I’m good, everything’s good.
There are battles God is bringing you and me to right now, and He means for us to learn His ways so that He can take us further in Him. We’re gonna have more battles and more victories as we go forward into the future.
I don’t know what all the Lord has for us. I know He’s preparing us for things, but I want us to make sure that we get the heart of what the Lord is saying here. He’s being very realistic about the things that He’s brought them through. He’s being very realistic about what they face, but He wants them to understand, you don’t do things with human resources. You need every Word that comes out of My mouth, because I have the power to overrule everything that arises out of this creation, including your own personal need. I have the power.
And as My power is released in you, you’re gonna grow up to be My people. You’re gonna experience things that are…you’re gonna experience the blessings that I have for you. Oh, if you had any idea what I’ve got planned for you, you’d just lay all this aside, and you’d quit fussing and quit worrying about it, and just reach out to Me and praise Me, and give thanks, and you’d bring your needs to Me, not afraid to do it.
Like, I shouldn’t be this way, I can’t come to you like this, oh, God. That’s exactly when He wants us to come, when we’re in need. I mean, the Lord kind of knows, doesn’t He? Is there anything about you that He doesn’t know? Wouldn’t it please Him for me to come and say, Lord, I have no power in this area? I’ve been like this. This is an area where the enemy has kind of built a bit of a hold and a stronghold over the years. I need help. I need You to teach me. I need You to show me how to overcome this and to give me faith to look up and to believe Your Words.
And I’ll tell you, God can quicken His Word. It isn’t just words on a page. It’s when God speaks to our hearts, and somehow, we come to the point where we believe His Word more than we believe the circumstance and the feeling and the weakness and all those other things.
But it takes…many times, it takes a process. There are battles that aren’t won in a day. But I’ll tell you, they can be won because His Word trumps everything. There’s nothing He cannot do. I want to let go and let God have His way. Don’t you? He is a loving heavenly Father who has nothing but good things ahead for His children.
May God make us what He wants us to be. May we experience what we talked about last week, the love of God. There’s nothing beyond it. There’s nothing greater. And I’ll tell you, it can power us to be able to live in this world and glorify Him, and keep our eyes fixed upon the goal that He’s set before us, because it’s real. Oh God, if this isn’t in your heart, you cry out to Him.
( congregational amens ).
I don’t expect anybody to believe something that God hasn’t made real, but I pray that God will make it real!
( congregational amens ).
He has the power to touch your heart in ways that no human knowledge can. This is not about a religion, it’s about a relationship with the God of the universe. To Him be all the glory. We just praise Him this morning.
Close
February 20, 2022 - No. 1533
“Understanding Our Wilderness” Part One
Broadcast #1533
February 20, 2022
February 20, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1533 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I would like to just start this morning in a passage that has been used many times, but always we’re trusting the Lord to bring forth something that is not just fresh information, but something that’s relevant where we’re living. That’s what I need. And, I think the further we go, if we’re at all paying attention, we realize that, in a deeper and deeper way. We need the Lord. And, He has ways of showing us that. But He does it because He loves us, doesn’t He?
Now the whole book of Deuteronomy is, basically, Moses’ last address to the Israelites. You remember how God brought them out with such power? And, it wasn’t all that long, within a year or something like that, I don’t remember the exact chronology, but they had been across the Red Sea and out into the wilderness, down to Mt. Sinai and met the Lord there in tremendous power, demonstration.
He led them across the wilderness and it really was not but a few days journey, if you were just…if that’s all you were doing. But they finally were brought to the border of the land and the people just rebelled. They saw the giants, they saw the obstacles and they didn’t believe God, in spite of everything He had shown them and demonstrated.
And so, there was a, basically, a judgment pronounced on that generation. And the Lord said everyone who is of fighting age at the census, as we were going into all of this, every one of you will die in the wilderness except Caleb and Joshua, because they believed in the face of whatever was going on.
So anyway, basically, then afterwards they wandered for forty years and, you think about it, probably more than half the population had never seen Egypt. It was secondhand to them. But there was a generation that had seen Egypt and grown up and now they were the ones who were the leaders among the people.
But God wanted Moses to really reiterate the covenant, to go over their history, to give God’s promises, basically, to prepare them to turn everything…so he could turn everything over to Joshua. He knew he wasn’t going in. And they would be able to go forward and inherit what the Lord had given.
And so, this was part of that and it’s a passage, as I say, we’ve read many times. But it seems like the Lord freshened it up in some ways to me, and I pray that He will do the same for all of us.
And so, Moses begins by saying, “Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today…” (NIV). And, of course, he tells them why: “… so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors.” See, that goes all the way back to Abraham, doesn’t it?
“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
“Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” And then there’s the exhortation, again, to keep His commands, all the Lord’s wonderful promises, what He’s taking you into is a good land. It’s full of everything you could ever want. It’s a land of blessing.
And then he warns them, be careful when you experience all this you don’t get proud and careless and turn away from the Lord. But anyway, the essence of what the Lord wants them to understand in this particular portion of Moses’ words, comes down to this, that God was teaching them, wasn’t He?
Now, it would have been about as natural as it could have been for the people to have said, well, our fathers sinned and we’re suffering the consequences of that and now we are in this meaningless waiting around in the dessert. There’s no purpose in it. It’s boring. I’m just…we’re just marking time. My daily activities have no relevance to anything except I’m just waiting to see what’s gonna happen next. Year passes…years pass and we’re just…we’re still here.
And of course, you know there were times when they complained about how it was so ‘samey.’ Everything was just the same. But you know, don’t we ever experience those kinds of things? You know, we’ve seen the Lord work in the past and oh, we’re hoping, someday, He’ll do something. But now, we’re just kind of marking time. We’re going through our daily lives. It’s not really relevant to anything particular. We’re just…it’s just the way life is. There’s no real purpose to it.
Ever feel that way, emotionally at least? Intellectually, maybe, we know better. But, emotionally we feel that way. Every one of us, I think, fights that. And what the Lord wanted them to understand was that nothing that they had experienced in the wilderness was empty, was meaningless, was without purpose.
And God’s purpose was not just simply to play games with them and test…and all that kind of stuff. It wasn’t like He was just some sovereign monarch in the sky abusing them, because He could. But rather, God’s heart was always to lead them to something that was better! It was always to take them from where they had been and to bring them to a place of great blessing.
But God knows what we are made out of. And all you had to do was look at the wilderness experience, and you see human nature. You see people who were so married to what they could see and touch and what their experience in this natural world had told them, they were so married to that that they could not get used to the idea that there was something more, something better, that there was a God who literally could overrule and override anything that they could see and touch here.
( congregational amens ).
But we’re pretty much like them, in more ways than we’d like to admit. And God knew, in order to bring them to that place that was better, He had to teach them a lot!
And, how many of you have discovered that when the Lord teaches us stuff, it’s simply not classroom material? It’s not like we sit here and we get a lecture and now we know and that’s good enough. Always, God’s lessons are life lessons. They’re things that we can only learn as we go through stuff and as we experience Him, because God’s covenant with His people is not simply about bringing a bunch of people under a bunch of rules and having them practice a religion. It is all about a relationship!
The heart of the covenant was not a bunch of rules, but the heart of it was, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” (KJV). That’s what it comes down to, is all about relationship.
But bringing lost, helpless, sin-bound creatures into that kind of a relationship involves a lot and God alone knows how much is necessary. And how much is necessary right now, for you and for me, more than we know.
And oh, how He wants us to have His vision, to see through His eyes, the things that are going on in our lives today. That’s what He wanted right then, for them to be able to stop and think. You haven’t been wasting time out here. This has not been without purpose. I’ve been seeking to teach you something that you have to know if you’re gonna be able to go where I want to take you. And my purpose, again, is not just simply to keep you in a dark and difficult place. It’s so that I can prepare you for something that is incredible!
( congregational amens ).
To a place of blessing. How many of you think the Lord has more for us?
( congregational response ).
Well, how many of you think that what we’re going through right now is irrelevant to that, and we’re just sitting here, waiting, twiddling our thumbs, saying, okay, one of these days God is gonna get tired of waiting and He’s gonna act again? Everything we experience in this life is central to God’s loving purpose for us.
And one of the things that He says repeatedly, if you’ll read it throughout the book of Deuteronomy, at least…I’ve seen it at least twice. But, I know there are more instances where the Lord said, out of all the nations in the world, you are My special treasure.
And He called them out to have a unique relationship with Him where all other relationships were severed, particularly with the gods of this world which we know are demons. They were demon entities that were ruling over people. That was the culture out of which they had come.
They had a historical knowledge of God, but they didn’t really know Him. All they knew was the heathendom of religion about them. That’s one of the reasons for a lot of the commands that God gave. It was, I don’t want you to be like this. This is what they’re doing. You don’t be like them. There are a lot of details that had to do with God specifically addressing the practices of heathen nations around them and saying I’ve called you out of that.
But the essence of it was, again, it was a relationship, founded not upon the dictates of a great monarch in the sky, but a love, a real relationship. And few really entered into that. But I’ll tell you, that’s God’s heart! That’s God’s heart for His people today!
And you know, we read this about a literal nation called Israel. But I’ll tell you, God has a chosen people today! And some of Israel, praise God for every one that is, is a part of that! But God’s chosen people today are those who have been brought to a relationship with Jesus Christ!
( congregational amens ).
We were born with a natural life that we cannot keep, as we’ve said so many times. And God’s covenant is to share…is to cleanse that, cleanse us from the guilt of that, to release us from its power, and to impart to us a life we cannot lose!
But that life connects us forever to a God whose nature is love and mercy! Praise God! That means if you know Him this morning, if you have been born of His Spirit, you are one of those that He has called out of this world to be His peculiar treasure.
( congregational praise ).
And we use that word peculiar in different ways, don’t we? We’re liable to say, yeah, I feel pretty peculiar sometimes. But I’m so thankful that God sees us as unique, and special, and called-out. And I don’t care who you are and how small and weak you think you are, you are…God has His eye on you with a heart of love to prepare you for something that is beyond where you’re at right now.
That’s what He wanted them to understand. And it’s interesting that the first thing that He mentions, that was part of this lesson that they had to learn was to humble them. What is the essence of human nature, fallen human nature?
( congregational response ).
It’s pride! It’s thinking that we’re something, that we’re important, that our capabilities are what we need to engage in order to handle life. We are so geared into a world that we detect through our senses. To us, that’s reality, that’s all there is.
And, of course, we know that isn’t all there is, by any stretch. We live on a prison planet. We live with a mentality that is way too much governed by what we see, and feel, and touch. And God has to take serious measures to set us free from the bondage to that.
And the first thing that He has to do is to humble us, to bring us to a place where we know that we’re not so great as we think we are. To know that we are in a situation that is so over our heads, beyond our capabilities, that the only answer is to experience a rescue, a salvation, that is given to us by somebody else who has the power to set us free, because we have none! We are in a hopeless situation unless God saves us!
( congregational amens ).
Now you know, a lot of folks, when they think about salvation, they think of an event. It’s almost like signing a contract. I’ll repent of my sins. I’ll put my faith in You and You give me a ticket to heaven. And I ‘got saved.’ And it’s an event they’re thinking about in the past. How many of you know that salvation is a process that happens as long as we’re here?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! How many of you wake up in the morning and realize, Lord, today I need a Savior? I need a Savior today! I am…there’s so much in me that still wants to rule me, still wants to control me. There’s so much self that wants to exert its influence upon my heart, my actions, and I need a Savior from that! I need You to walk with me today.
You know, Paul said in 1st Corinthians chapter 1, I believe it is, he spoke of the foolishness of preaching. And, he talks about how it’s foolishness to the world, “…but to us who are being saved…” (NIV). If you will look at the newer translations, they’re picking up a little bit from the Greek that’s accurate. “…To us who are being saved…” That’s present tense, means it’s an ongoing action. It’s something that’s continuing.
And, the saving part is not something where we’re saving ourselves. He doesn’t give us stuff to do and then I can save myself because I know what to do. This is, I need something from outside of myself, that’s beyond my power, every moment of every day I need a Savior, or I’m just gonna walk in my flesh and I’m gonna mess up and it’s not gonna be what God wants.
“…To us who are being saved…” The preaching of the Cross is, what? “…The power of God.” How many of you need power?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! Yeah! How many of you realize you’ve come through circumstances and you realize, man, I thought I had it? I thought I was okay. I’ve been a Christian for years! What’s the matter?
Well, you don’t ‘got it!’ I don’t either! I don’t have the power. I need Him every single moment of every single day! And you go through the New Testament and you will see that salvation is not simply an event. It’s also a lifelong process.
And Paul even said…spoke of looking forward to a salvation yet to be revealed. Or was it Peter, or both, probably? There’s always this sense, I have been saved, I’m being saved and I will be. I’ll tell you, we’re gonna have to experience a divine miracle in our lives all the way to the end or we ain’t getting there! But, thank God, He is faithful!
( congregational amens ).
Thank God that, “…he which hath begun a good work…will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (KJV). But oh, God, do we need—do we need to take that place of humbling. Didn’t Peter say, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (NIV). We’re more interested in being lifted up, but what is it that’s being lifted up? Most of the time there’s a strong element of pride in it and God alone knows what it takes.
And here was a generation and they didn’t get it all right, by a long stretch. But here was a generation that God had spent forty years teaching simple lessons and He taught it to them by the ordinary, day-to-day activities of life. It wasn’t some spectacular thing that happened. It was just getting up in the morning, let’s collect the manna, let’s process it, let’s take care of the animals, let’s…it’s time to move. Let’s pack up, let’s walk and go.
And, from their point of view, it was a meaningless, daily drudgery that they had to endure. From God’s point of view, He was teaching and preparing and humbling them, bringing them to a place where they would just say, God, I need You every day. And not only do I need you, but I praise You!
( congregational amens ).
He says to remember! I want you to look back and see the journey that I have had you on through different eyes. You took that manna for granted. Sometimes…sometimes you’ve complained about it. But do you have any idea what I did for you? Do you have any idea what other nations experience and how life would have been for them?
I took you to a place where there was no supply. I gave you supernatural food from heaven every day. You didn’t have to worry about going hungry. I cared for you. I was not off in heaven pouting and waiting on another generation to grow up so I could come back and be with you again. I’ve been here all the time. I never left you. In spite of all that was wrong, I was there caring for you, carrying you, bearing, “…you on eagles’ wings…” as He says, in one place.
Oh, what a picture God wanted to paint for that generation and for us, about a God who cares and carries us when we don’t have the strength to go. What an amazing God we serve! Praise God!
It’s not just love as this theoretical thing, but it’s a love that invests everything in bringing people out of prison-planet earth into a kingdom that will never end, whose foundation is love! So He did it to humble, to bring us to a place where we are willing to be honest with ourselves.
You know, that’s the problem. We’re not honest with ourselves. I’m humble. We lie to ourselves! God wants to bring us to an absolute recognition of who we are and who He is. That doesn’t mean a poor-mouth, oh, poor me, I’m worthless, I’m no…it’s not that kind of thing. But, it’s a recognition that without You, I can do nothing! But it’s okay, because You love me. And so, I’m gonna lift my eyes off of this need that I feel in here to be somebody. I’m gonna be somebody because I’m the object of Your love, and Your care and Your mercy!
And so, I can be honest about who I am and who You are, and the nature of the relationship You’re seeking, especially right now, when I’m in need of being delivered. I’m in need of salvation. I’m gonna have an honest assessment every single day without feeling like I’m worthless. Who cares? Oh, do we give in to self-pity and so many different things that just bedevil us. They arise out of our own nature to try to intervene in this relationship that God seeks.
And He doesn’t want a people to go through life and be clueless and have to look back and say, oh, I didn’t understand that. That was wonderful. Thank You, Lord. That’s good. But what God wants is to have a present tense relationship where we are aware of who He is and our relationship with Him so we can enjoy Him, recognize when He is active in our lives and praise Him for it and thank Him for it and be expectant! And not just sit there and expect that well, if He cared about me, it wouldn’t be hard.
Well, that’s not what Jesus said and frankly, that’s not what it takes to deliver me from what I am. If I don’t have things I’ve got…battles that I’ve got to fight, then I’m just gonna go right along feeling my own strength and walking in my own energy and just being…boy, this guy needs…it takes some serious effort to conquer this guy. Oh, we’re proud! Oh, we’re self-willed! Oh, we’re so…I’ve got to get it right! I can do this!
You know, there’s so much that we don’t recognize in ourselves that He does, and He knows what to do about it. And the very time when you’re sitting there chaffing and wondering, Lord, why am I here? Why am I in this wilderness place? Why are things the way they are? They’re hard! They’re just the same every day! I’m just…I get up and I’m going through the same routine. What’s the meaning of all this? Why don’t You care?
And that’s the very time when He’s caring, and we’re not recognizing it! We’re not looking to Him and saying, Lord, thank You that You’re here! God wanted them to look…be able to look back and see the amazing things that He had done for them! He brought water out of a rock, when it was needed, fed them every day, stayed there with His presence. How about your clothes not wearing out? That’s a good thing they weren’t so invested in fashion, in those days.
( laughter ).
But I mean, you think about clothes that don’t wear out for forty years in the wilderness! I mean, God removed them from every natural resource. Why would He do that except to deliver us from self-effort, self-will and bring us to a place where we realize we’re not limited by this world and its resources? We’re not limited by what we can’t do, because we can’t do anything if we just come to realize it! But that’s not the end of the story! We have a God who can work beyond all of that!
( congregational amens ).
And how do we learn that unless we go through stuff, unless we simply experience Him in the hard lessons of life, that seem to be necessary in order for us to learn that stuff? Well, it was for them. Remember! “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness…” (NIV).
All the way! All the way! Do you realize that in your life? I know there are people here who’ve gone through tough stuff in your life. Do you realize if you’re the Lord’s, He’s led you all the way, even in the hard things?
Close
February 13, 2022 - No. 1532
“I Led You This Way” Conclusion
Broadcast #1532
February 13, 2022
February 13, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1532 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, a lot of us, a lot of folks, come to God and they’ve been through hell, but they don’t understand that God was the one who used all of that to get them ready…for their place in the Kingdom of God.
But anyway, David is…the further he went, years and years went by…the further he went, the farther it seemed like he was getting from the call of God, the promise of God, and what was happening. We see the Psalms where he says, “How long, O Lord?” (NLT). How many times did we see him pour out his natural feelings…and Lord, I don’t understand…everybody’s against me, everything’s against me, they’re lying about me and how long is this gonna happen?
We see testimonies of God’s faithfulness all mingled in. But, oh, do you see his humanity in these Psalms? That’s why people can relate to them. This is not just somebody’s little Sunday School lesson. This is a whole lot deeper. This is real life. This is a man that God was preparing for a special place.
But look what it took for him to come to that place. And the day came when he had no place that was safe for him in Israel. He’d run out of hiding places. The only place he could do was to go over to the enemies, live among the Philistines, and essentially swear loyalty to them and their causes, and then, they went to war against Israel and wouldn’t even let him fight. And there he is, I’ve been faithful…go home.
And all of his men are discouraged and have a 2-day hike or whatever it was, it was a long way back. And when they get there, there’s nothing there! Because all of their stuff has been raided. A bunch of people have come through, an army has come through and raided all of their people, their houses, their animals, wives, their children, they’re all gone!
And you see the reaction of the men talking about stoning David. We’ve been following the wrong guy here. But what did David do? Even in that extremity, David encouraged himself in the Lord.
Wouldn’t it be good if we could learn to do that, in our darkest moments, when the Devil is beating us up, and telling us it’s all…nothing is worth it? You’ve been serving God in vain. Look how He’s treating you. Look at the circumstances in your life. And God is looking for people who say, I’m gonna serve my God anyway. I am trusting Him even now in this circumstance.
And we see God turn that around and it was a very short period of time when Saul was dead and David began to reign. You know, we have the saying, ‘it’s darkest before the dawn.’ Well, that was a pretty good example of it being the darkest moment in David’s life, up to that point. And so, God blesses David. He was prepared to serve God in a rough time.
I’ll tell you, a lot of the Israelites were not very faithful. There was a lot of stuff going on, right in his own family we see things going on. And we see David himself getting to a point where he becomes careless. And he starts resting on his laurels. Is there any place where the Lord tells us to do that? No! What happens when we do that? Who are we trusting? We’re trusting ourselves. Okay, I’ve become spiritually mature. Now I can…
( exhaling ).
I’ve got…I’ve arrived. Yeah, you’ve arrived in a place where the Devil’s kind of got you where he wants you, and you’re fixing to have some trouble here. We need the Lord, moment by moment, every single day. We either live by His life or we live by ours. And if we live by ours, it ain’t gonna be good. We need Him.
But anyway, even in that, we see a man’s heart reaching out to God and God reaching back, don’t we? Thank God! It was after this that the Lord enabled him to make all the plans for the temple, turn them over to Solomon, and God brought them to the zenith of Israel’s power.
Even in David’s failure, God was able to turn that around and record that honestly so that he could encourage every single one of us when we come to those times. How many times has that Psalm 51 blessed you? And met you in a time of need?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah. Thank God for the honesty we see in the Scriptures about real people and their lives.
But you know, I was thinking about this, and you remember, some of you who were here Wednesday night, remember that I read Deuteronomy chapter 8, and I’m gonna go ahead and quickly look at that. It’s something we’ve seen many times over the years. I don’t think this is necessarily gonna take a lot more time.
But, this is the occasion when they have wandered for 40 years. They did it because there was a generation of people, regardless of what God did, they saw mighty, powerful miracles that carried them through and brought them to the border of the land, and in the face of all of that, they came to a place where they rejected God’s promise, felt like they had no hope of conquering the land, and were talking about going back to Egypt.
And finally, the Lord said, I’ve had enough of this generation. I have reached out to them over and over and over and over again, and they made a choice to say, I’m not gonna trust God. And so now we’ve come, 40 years later, every member of that generation that was 20 years and up, is now gone.
Now Moses is speaking to the people, renewing the covenant, reminding them who they are, reminding them of God’s promises, and he says, beginning in verse 2, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.
“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” (NIV).
You know, we hear a word like ‘discipline’ we think of punishment, don’t we? And it can be, in a sense, that you know, children need consequences if they really do something that’s wrong. What would happen if you simply allowed a child to do whatever came into their head with no restraint? Not only that, every time they wanted something you rushed to their side and gave it to them. What would you have when they got to a certain point of life? Would they be prepared?
No! That would be horrible, wouldn’t it? We recognize that in the world, at least to some degree. I’ll tell you, it’s getting away from even that. But I’ll tell you, if you just let people follow their own nature, without any restraint, any training, it’s not gonna be good. And people are not going to be ready to face life.
The biggest…the underlying reason…sorry, the underlying meaning of the word ‘discipline’ is more like child training. And God knows how to train, how to prepare His children for their place in the kingdom. As I say, every one of God’s children is different, everyone is unique.
But here is God, looking down on us, and we’re a lot like children. We want what we want. We are tuned to this world and this life and it’s needs. And a whole lot of folks out there with this prosperity gospel, they picture a God who simply wants to cater to our needs, to our wants, put it that way. I’m glad God cares about natural things in life, too. He’s not unmindful of those things.
But God has another purpose than simply giving us earthly success, making us somebody in the eyes of others. He wants to bring us to a place where we’re like His Son. And His Son did not walk in harmony with this world and its ways and its ideas. He was in tune with God, He was in tune with a divine purpose.
And that is what God is seeking to reproduce in every one of us. So, if you’re one that went through hell in the early part of your…in some part of your past, don’t you think we need to see God’s hand in that? Because that’s exactly what Moses is saying, what the Lord is saying. Remember all that the Lord has brought to pass in your life. Why did He do it? He did it to humble you.
But how did He humble us? You know, we need to see God’s sovereign hand in a deeper way. “He humbled you, causing you to hunger.” You know, it’s easy to see, to sort of imagine, well, the Devil’s doing stuff and God’s just sort of standing back. But I’ll tell you, God arranges things far more than we imagine. Even when the Devil is doing something, and allowed to do it, is not the hand of God on that? Can the Devil do anything the Lord doesn’t allow him to do?
I’ve said this many times, it must be frustrating to be the Devil. He can’t win when it comes to God’s people! Jesus won the victory. It’s not based upon how smart I am and how good I am, or my performance. It’s not based on any of these things, it’s based upon what Jesus did, 100 percent!
( congregational amens ).
And if we will just…if we allow the faith that He will plant in our hearts to take root, and we just continue to put our hope and our trust in Him, even in those dark times, God’s gonna use those dark times to shape us to be something we could never have been any other way.
So, here’s the Lord saying, you want to know why you got hungry? You want to know why, Israelites, you went out three days from wherever it was and then you got to a place and there was no water? And what was your reaction? Complain against Moses. Why did you bring us out here so we didn’t have any water? We were better in Egypt. Who were they complaining against?
We need to ask God to help us. If you and I are going through anything right now, and our spirit is one of complaint, if somebody has mistreated us or done us wrong in some fashion, and our focus is on that and how wrong that is, who are we complaining about really? Aren’t we complaining about the Lord? Is He not on the throne? Does He not have the right to use things that are adverse to us, to make us, to shape us into what He wants us to be?
Yeah, isn’t that what He’s saying here? I’m the One who took you to that place. And I wanted you to understand something. I’m going to take you specifically to a place where natural resources will not work! You will not have what you need! But I’m gonna take you there so that I’ll show you that that’s not what you’re dependent on. You’re dependent upon me, and I’m faithful!
( congregational response ).
There’s one time, at least, in the occasion, in the early occasion of their journey, where God brought them to a place where there was no water and God miraculously provided water. And finally, they kind of got that, I guess. And they went on for a journey a little bit, and they came to a place where there were 12 wells, I think, and a bunch of palm trees, and they camped there for a while. So, it wasn’t all adversity, was it? Sometimes, it’s blessing.
( congregational response ).
God is over everything! But when it comes to His children, He uses everything to shape us. If you’ve been through a dark place in your life, or someplace in your past, don’t you waste your time being bitter at people, or being angry at God, or any of those things. You humble yourself under His hand and say, God, make me what You want me to be.
( congregational amens ).
Help me to see past all of the circumstances and to see your loving, merciful hand. If He has revealed Himself to you, it’s because you’re His. And He loves you and He cares about you. But there are things that He cannot accomplish any other way.
And that’s kind of what He’s saying here, isn’t it? Because I didn’t just cause you to hunger, I fed you, too. I gave you something that you couldn’t possibly have.
Now the problem with that generation was, they never did get it. Well, that’s what the book of Hebrews mentions, doesn’t it? Where the writer there was concerned about people who would profess to become followers of Jesus, but it never was really in here.
And that’s kind of how it was with that generation. They were glad to go through the Red Sea, and recognize this is a wonderful miracle. Praise God, isn’t He amazing? And then they watched the Egyptians all drown behind them.
My God, how could people see that and not trust God? And it’s because there was an evil heart of unbelief down…lurking down there. They were glad for something that sort of helped them along and gave them something they thought they needed. Folks, we’re not here to use God for our purposes. He is here to call us into a kingdom and change us so that we fit.
( congregational amens ).
And I’ll tell you, He can…in this Kingdom, He gives the abilities, He shapes you to be who you are. You know, I thought about this…see if I can pull my thoughts together and express it. We, somehow, react to the idea of God being in everybody and directing them and being submitted to Him, and allowing Him to live in and through us, there’s a part of us that doesn’t quite understand that, and a lot of it is…well I would say ‘it’ is because we react because of a human nature context. We think about how things are here when somebody acquires power over other people, what do they tend to do?
( congregational response ).
They abuse them. They use them selfishly, and people lose their liberty. And we value liberty, especially, theoretically at least, in this country. And those of you who are Star Trek fans, remember the Borg. I mean, the whole principle of the Borg, is that he had this one powerful queen, I guess they called her. And somehow, she had come up with the technology to control this vast army of drones who were conscripted into her kingdom, and she was going to take from them and use them for her purposes. And she couched it all in such noble terms.
But I’ll tell you, when it comes to God, God does not destroy your uniqueness nor does He do anything for self! It’s hard for us to recognize that because of the way we see things and how they work in the world. But this is a God whose whole being is devoted to the welfare, and the blessing of the objects of His love. But what can He do with us if we’re selfish, and won’t give up that way, and won’t allow Him in? Folks, we need Him! I need Him!
( congregational amens ).
If you run into one of those discouraging times lately, where things aren’t going your way. You’re weak, you’re tired, you’re discouraged, you failed in some fashion. Folks, we need the Lord. We just need to come to Him and recognize that He is the ultimate author of love and mercy and grace. That He has every need.
What was the other thing He wanted to teach them? “Man shall not live by bread alone…” (KJV). That represents human effort of any sort—human resources. But I have got resources that don’t depend on anything of this world, anything that comes from you. I can step in when there is no other answer. I am your answer. And I want you to understand that in a practical way. Because just understanding it in theory is wonderful, but it doesn’t work unless we live that way.
Folks, if you haven’t been through stuff, you will. But I know you have. I know we all have. But I know God is faithful. You know, it’s interesting, that at one point I thought about, I thought about calling this “Don’t Quit.” But I don’t think I will. I think I’ll call it “I Led You This Way.” Because everybody needs…every one of us that knows the Lord, we need to be able to look back and hear the Lord saying, I led you this way. I want to hear His voice more than I have. Anybody here?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I mean, I confess to my need as great as anybody here. But do you see the Lord’s heart in what’s being expressed? Here I am, Lord…the Lord’s saying, I’ve led you this way, I brought you because I’m trying to make you so you’re different from the nations. I want you to be a people who looks to me, who doesn’t depend upon human resources but knows that I am a God who is not dependent on any of that. I just want you to trust Me.
I have good intentions for all of you. I want you to have a place of blessing. I’m training you. I’m teaching you by what you’re experiencing. And how many times did that one generation, as we say, just failed to hear the Lord’s voice and recognize what God was doing for them?
It’s a simple thing. Can you hear the voice of the Lord saying to you this morning, I have brought you this way? As you look back on your life and you see things that you’d love to have seen be different. They were difficult, they were heart rending, some of them. Has God truly brought you this way? Is He in charge enough to do that?
Yeah, He is. If He can raise up Pharoah, knowing the kind of man he was, and use him to show His glory, I’ll tell you, He can use whatever circumstances. We have no place, any more than Jesus did, blaming, and looking around, and complaining, and being discouraged, and yielding to fear, yielding to all of those things. But rather say, Lord, Your will be done. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (NIV). Help me to be the kind of a person You want me to be, and to surrender to you and believe You.
And exactly what Brother Joel was saying…talked about His Word. You know, I thought about…I’ll just drop this very quickly. I’ve wondered about that. What did that mean, to learn that…to learn about His Word, that, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (KJV).
I don’t get the connection there, in terms of their history. But what happened every time they had a desperate need for food, for water, whatever it was, God spoke, didn’t he? He sent quails, enough to cover the whole camp and feed everybody. I don’t know whether He created them or assembled them, or what happened. But I’ll tell you, we have a supernatural God who speaks and stuff happens!
Well, the covenant that we have, God speaks. Wouldn’t it be good if what He speaks to our heart comes out of our mouth and becomes our confession?
( congregational response ).
That’s what we live by. That’s what gives us the ability to do what we’re talking about. It’s not human strength. It’s not just ‘happy talk.’ We need supernatural power that only comes from what God says and comes from His heart! And when our hearts are aligned with that, and we’re agreeing with it, to the point where we’re not just mouthing words, but where they’re coming from our hearts. Oh, there are changes happening. And there’s a God who can live in a people like that in a dark time. We need Him!
( congregational response ).
We need Him! And He’s faithful! Whatever He allows, it will shape us to be the people that will, “…know their God…be strong, and do exploits.”
( congregational amens ).
I want to be part of those people, don’t you? So, praise God! I hope everyone here can hear God’s voice saying, I brought you this way. And just trust Him and look to Him, because He’s faithful. Praise God!
Close
February 6, 2022 - No. 1531
“I Led You This Way” Part One
Broadcast #1531
February 6, 2022
February 6, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1531 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Christian life, life in this world for a Christian, is one of overcoming adversity in one form or another. And virtually, anytime we face something that we would prefer not to face, fear is a big part of it. And, how do we handle it?
You know, I began by thinking about a lot of the things that the devil throws at us, and circumstances that bring discouragement. Nobody here ever experiences that, I know, but…but of course, we all do, don’t we? We feel our own weariness. We feel our own lack of ability to stand up under something. We become tired. We become…well, expectations are not met. Disappointment.
Of course, think about this. If you’re disappointed, what does that mean, really? It means you expected something to happen and it didn’t, and now you’re bummed about it. But whose expectations are we meant to be living for? Whose will, whose plan? I believe the Lord, with all my heart, is working, not in spite of these things, but He’s working through the things that we experience in this world.
I don’t think any of the things I’ve been thinking about today are anything new to us, but…man, we just don’t…I don’t think we get it. We get it intellectually. We can assert the things that we know to be true, but actually learning to live by them, actually learning to overcome in day-to-day circumstances and not giving in to fear, when that’s the thing the enemy would oppress us in, those are major lessons, without which we’re not gonna grow up, we’re not gonna be of any use to the Lord in this world, and we’re not gonna grow up to be all that He wants us to be. And I believe with all my heart, God is faithful when we’re not.
You know, a lot of things we need to overcome. One of the worst of them is personal failure. And we, every one, come to places where we have fallen short and we realize we’ve fallen short, and boy, the devil is quick to jump on us and tell us, God couldn’t love you, look at you, you’re no good, you can’t serve God. And, of course, the truth is, we can’t.
But I believe with all my heart in every single circumstance in which we experience those kinds of feelings and emotions, God is at work, not against us but for us. And, there are lessons that we simply cannot learn any other way. We just are so constituted, so geared…I feel like I’m saying the same thing over and over every week, but I think it’s something we need…something I need.
We are so in tune with this world, a lot more than we think we are. The way we see things, the things that we pursue, the things that we value are so geared to the way the world acts and reacts and its values, that God has to do all kinds of things and allow all kinds of things, in order to help us to wake up and realize He’s called us out of the world, and He’s changing us.
These are things we talked abut last week. I mean, what about the Scripture that we’ve used so often about how God uses everything. In everything He works for the good, and it has to do with His purpose, and His purpose is to make us like Him, and like His Son. And His ultimate aim is to have a family.
Well, praise God, we need to grow up, don’t we? We need to learn if we’re gonna be His children and not just children of the world seeking our own thing, something’s got to change. And that’s why Paul, when he went back to the churches after he had founded them in that first missionary journey, you remember they went back through.
And what was his message? Was it prosperity gospel stuff? No! It wasn’t, God wants to bless you, God wants to fill your bank accounts and take away all your…you know, you never get sick, never feel bad. My God…that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
And our God…God can bless us in so many ways. I thank God that He is merciful and that He does. But He’d be working against Himself if He just gave us everything we wanted. We’re so selfish anyway.
But I’ll tell you, his message was, “…we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” (KJV). There are going to opposition…there is going to be opposition of the enemy in many forms. And one of them certainly is fear. And God wants us to wake up and realize what we’re facing, but what His purpose is in it.
You know…I’ve been asking the Lord how to…to sort of guide my thoughts because I’ve had so many different things that they haven’t gelled into a nice little outline. Usually that’s a good thing when that happens. But you can see people in the Scriptures…even people that God called in a special way, and yet you see what happened in order to get them where God wanted them, and it doesn’t make any sense to a human being. It’s like, that doesn’t make any sense. Come on, go train them, go teach them, go fill their heads with the right knowledge and everything will work out.
But you look at somebody like Joseph. And I mean, these are characters we’ve talked about so many times. But there is…there is reality that we need…that needs to become real to us, not just a Bible story, that we say, yay, God, isn’t that wonderful what You did. These things are meant to teach ‘us’ about how God deals with ‘us’ in our lives.
We may not have, and we don’t have the call of Joseph to become ruler over of all Egypt, but every one of us has a place that God has designed for us in His kingdom. Every one of us is an individual. And every one of us has a different course. And I believe, with all my heart, God wants us…wants us to see His hand better in our lives, and be reconciled to that. And not say, well, I wish that hadn’t happened, but now God’s in charge. God’s always been in charge, always working towards His end, even when things happen that we don’t see, naturally, as good.
And of all people, Joseph is an example. After God gave him these dreams where he seemed to be in a place of honor, and his brothers and even his mother and father were literally bowing down to him…. And you know, you remember the reaction of everybody around him, they didn’t like it at all. It was a very human reaction. And how easy would it have been for him to just sort of get a big head about it.
But somehow, God imparted to this man’s heart, this young boy’s heart, at that time, young man, a faith, this quality Joel was talking about. There is a faith that is supernatural that God imparts to those who are born of that Spirit. We can’t work that up. We can’t come up with faith. God has to give it.
Somehow, that faith was born in Joseph’s heart, and what an amazing…it’s amazing how we see that work out, when his brothers literally…they want to kill him. One of them rescues him from that and they decide they’re gonna make a profit and sell him as a slave.
Now in that moment, how do you think Joseph felt? Did he say, I’m cool with this, I know where this is going? The reality is, we don’t know, when we’re in the middle of circumstances, we don’t know by any natural means how it’s going, and every voice that cries out in our heads, just like Joel was talking about…every voice that screams in our heads will say everything but, things are okay, God’s on the throne, trust Him. But I’ll tell you, the things that God seeks to form in us cannot be formed any other way than having to stand in those times of adversity.
And Joseph…what a horrible time. I mean, so much of our…one of the things that people face, is a simple thing like this. We gain our sense of importance and self-worth from how people react to us, or even how we perceive they react to us. Are we important in their eyes? Do they treat us well? Do they mistreat us? What is their attitude? My God, are we so self-centeredly attuned to those kinds of things! What a horrible way to have to live. My God, my worth comes from my Creator!
( congregational amens ).
I am who He made me! I don’t need your approval. Did Jesus need everybody’s approval to function? No, He had a relationship with His Father that sustained Him, that gave Him everything that He needed to stand and have a good attitude toward people who hated Him.
And just to push through, like the circumstance with Jairus, and Lord, look what the Lord did through all of that. Raised a little girl from the dead. I mean, that was powerful stuff. But there He was, just single-mindedly…I’m here to do God’s will. My trust is in Him. I am not dependent upon my earthly circumstances. I can be, “…a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief…” and get along just fine, because I’m connected to heaven. I’m connected to that which is eternal.
Oh, how God yearns for us to learn those simple lessons…that simple lesson. It’s not easy, because we…like I say, we just don’t realize, we don’t realize the degree to which we are dependent and in tune with this world. Even when He saves us, we’ve got to grow, we’ve got to learn, and it takes time.
But anyway, so here’s this guy with a heaven-sent vision of him being in a place of rule, so what was God’s plan? What university did God send Joseph to, to get him ready for this? Sell him as a slave, send him down to Egypt, and instead of Joseph just sitting there being angry about it…I mean, what would happen is…naturally speaking the reaction would be, I’m mad at my brothers. How could they do such a thing to me. I’m just…you know…and it would be eating you up on the inside. God, I’m okay with You, but now them? But do you know if we’re reacting to circumstances like that, who are we really reacting against?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah, we’re reacting against Him, aren’t we? Because He allowed it, and He’s using it. And so, Joseph somehow had the grace to continue to be a man who could be trusted, a man that could continue to honor God and look to God. And there he was a slave in a heathen country. And God gave him that…that place of blessing.
And the devil come along, and he said, well, I’ve got to do something. This is a handsome young guy, I’m gonna send Potiphar’s wife and give her the hots for him and she’s gonna try to seduce him. And then when that doesn’t work, she’s gonna cry rape.
And the next thing you know, he’s falsely accused. He knows he didn’t do anything, but everybody else thinks he did. And so, there he goes into Pharaoh’s prison. This was an important guy he was working for. And now, there he is…and, the Scripture even says, he was hurt with shackles. I mean, he was literally…he was treated like a prisoner. But somehow, even there, his heart did not become bitter!
How many of us could have been in those circumstances and not been bitter? Man, it takes divine help! You can’t dig into human nature and find this. You’re gonna have to have God. And to have that, you’re gonna have to…to have Him, you’re gonna have to have a heart that says, I want Him, I want to be what I’m supposed to be, regardless of earthly circumstances.
And somehow, we see the grace of God reaching down and strengthening that guy to the point where he winds up in charge of the prisoners in his area. And the captain who was in charge of that part of the prison didn’t even worry about it. Joseph will take care of it.
But this didn’t go on for a week or two, did it? Years! Years and years went by. And we see Joseph’s humanity when he has that opportunity to interpret the dreams of Pharoah’s butler and baker. And they came true, but he tells the guy who was gonna survive…I think it was the…anyway, one of them. I think it was the butler, served Pharoah his wine. He says, when you get out of here, tell about me.
So, you know, we see that Joseph was human. He wasn’t some sort of magical person. He was human like us and he wanted somehow to get out of this. But do you know, it simply wasn’t time. Do we not see God in our circumstances? We can see them in Joseph. The problem is when things happen to us, that’s when we wrestle, that’s when we struggle.
But somehow, even in that, Joseph didn’t just sit there and…well boy, that didn’t work out. God, I’m getting tired of this. I’m mad at you. I’m sure those thoughts went through his head, because the devil is good to plant them. But it’s obvious that he didn’t go with that. He didn’t just yield to that and say, well that’s my stand here. I’m just gonna…I’m mad at God. I don’t trust Him. I don’t…He’s just not doing me right. Somehow, he just kept doing what he was doing until the day came when Pharoah had his dreams.
And we know how all that turned out. Joseph got up that morning…can you imagine? How many times have you been in a situation and just…all of a sudden, it’s over, and the Lord just works it out, and you didn’t have anything to do with it. Wouldn’t that be good if we’d let the Lord manage things instead of us trying to work things out with anxiety and all that.
He gets up one day and all of a sudden, somebody comes in, get dressed, shave, put on some clean clothes, you’re going to see Pharoah. Say, what? But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who knows how to get people ready for the place that He has designed for them. If God had taken a shortcut, and allowed him to have a life of pleasure and ease, he would never, ever have been able to do the job that God was preparing him to do, because human nature would’ve simply taken over.
You give people power and privilege, and what happens? Look around. Look at the world we live in. Folks, it is a corrupt world, in rebellion against God. We need to be a people who will serve Him regardless of earthly circumstances, because we’re gonna see them.
And…you know, you look at a congregation like this, I’ll guarantee there are plenty of circumstances in your past, and that the devil has whispered to you about, and said, why did God let that happen? Why did I have to be in that kind of a family? That kind of a situation? Why did He allow so-and-so to do that against me? Anybody identify with any of this? Yeah, why has it been like this? Oh, God could’ve done something different. I’ll tell you, you are a…how many times have we said this?
But you are a special…what’s the word? God exercises His craftsmanship on you and you are unique. There’s no one else like you in the universe. God has a place for you and He has a place for me. And the circumstances He has used to bring you to this day, this moment that we’re sharing, they are unique to you. They have to do with what God is seeking to accomplish in your heart and in your life.
You know, we’re good at looking at somebody else and saying, well, Lord, what about them? What about what You did for them? Why can’t I be like that? Well, you’re not like that. You’re you!
And all the while, Joseph’s brothers were living and carrying on their lives back in Canaan, there’s Joseph in prison, yet how in the world…how did all that turn out? God put him on a throne. There he was in a position to help his brothers, to help his family, to help all of Egypt, to help that part of the world.
Think what would’ve happened had they come into this time of plenty, followed by famine without knowing what was gonna happen. All of a sudden, famine has arrived and we’re not ready. And God was merciful to the whole…that whole region of the world, because Joseph was willing to just humble himself in God’s hands.
And boy, how many people could have come to the end…after his father died, you remember how his brothers reacted. Okay, now we’re gonna get it. Dad’s dead. Joseph’s just been biding his time. We know how…and what they were thinking about was, I know how I’d react. I know if I went through what he went through, man, I’d be ready for some payback.
And there’s Joseph…and his perspective on it was, yes, you meant it for evil. I’m not gonna duck from that. I’m not gonna pretend that didn’t happen. It happened. You did, you meant it for evil. But…oh, this is a good place to get your buts in the right place. But, God meant it for good to save lives.
And I’ll tell you, if you and I have gone through something in our lives, or are, going through, or will go through something in our lives, if we will look to God and put our hope and our trust in Him, we’re gonna come through and God’s gonna be able to live in and through us, and we’re gonna be more and more like Him every single day.
But oh, I’ll tell you, what this is about is about getting us ready, first of all to serve Him here, and to express His life in a broken world, but also to be ready for that one. Praise God! I want to be ready. I want to be someone that’s ready to serve Him.
And of course, we’ve used so many other examples. Moses and his being brought to that place…the Scripture tells us how he, “…was mighty in words and in deeds.” I mean, here’s a son of Pharaoh…I don’t know if it was like the movie portrays it or not, “Ten Commandments.” Is that the one? Where he’s out there commanding, and doing great projects, and this great, powerful man. Well, the Scripture does say, he was mighty in word and deed, so maybe that could’ve been true.
But yet, when he was in the middle of the desert with the people, there was one occasion where the Scripture goes out of its way to say, Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. This is a guy who wouldn’t even fight for himself. He wouldn’t fight back.
I’ll tell you, God did something to get him to that place, didn’t He? He allowed Moses to try to do something in his own strength, on behalf of his people, and the next thing you know, Pharoah’s angry with him and he has to run across the desert.
Guess where he ran to? Do you think there was any…you think there was any divine hand in any of this, just maybe? Yeah. He goes over there to a well and rescues some gals who were shepherds, and winds up being invited to the home, marries one of the daughters and settles down to be a shepherd for 40 years! Just happened to be in the neighborhood of Mt. Sinai. Wonder if that had any significance?
And there he is, and as far as Moses is concerned, he has forgotten everything. You know, we’ve heard these stories a thousand times. Now let’s make it a thousand and one. But I’ll tell you, somehow in all of this, God was bringing him to a place where he had no ‘self’ confidence.
Now, got to be careful how you say that. The world values self-confidence! But coming to a place where a lack…where you have a lack of ‘self’ confidence, doesn’t mean you have no confidence. You understand what I’m saying?
But where is my confidence? It’s in the Lord. You know, Joel quoted the Scripture, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” So, Paul had a confidence, didn’t he? He was able to face things, but he didn’t say, hey, I’ve got what it takes. I’m experienced. I’ve learned…I’m, you know. God had to bring him to a place where he didn’t have the strength and he found out that God’s strength was made perfect when he was weak, because it caused him to say, Lord, I’m faced with something and I don’t have what it takes. I’m in the middle of something. I do not have what it takes. I need You. And so, God was shaping him through all of those things.
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January 30, 2022 - No. 1530
All Music
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January 23, 2022 - No. 1529
“Trouble” Conclusion
Broadcast #1529
January 23, 2022
January 23, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1529 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, we’ve got an awesome God, and trouble is not our enemy if we can understand the purpose of God. It is a friend that we can rest in God in.
I’m not making light of trouble. Trouble can be a traumatic, difficult thing. There are some terrible things that, from a human point of view, that God allows His people to go through. But I’ll tell you, there’s never a time, there’s never a place where, if you’re His child, He has left you for one second. He will never ever leave His own.
You know, I thought about some of this in terms of the lives of some of God’s children. And I guess in my current Bible reading, I’m in the life of Joseph. Ron is shaking his head again.
( laughing ).
We’re on the same Bible reading plan. But think about Joseph and how God made Himself known to him. Somehow, when he was a young man, God gave him some special dreams. Do you remember?
And in both of those dreams, it became obvious that his own family would one day bow down to him. And of course, that made everybody excited. But I’ll tell you…God gave him that and somehow planted a faith in him. It doesn’t even go into the details of what was going on in his heart and mind and how in the world he had this relationship with God.
I had a customer the other day ask me about that. What did he do for worship? He was all by himself in a foreign land. You know, we have this conception of what it takes to serve God today. There he was…but I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who absolutely called this young man, seventeen years old when the story really begins, and you can see the hand of God overshadowing him.
But can you not see the devil saying, boy, I heard this. I better do something. In the first place, I’ve got an easy job, because I know his brothers are older than he is. They’re gonna hate him for this. So, I’m gonna work on them, and they don’t even half know God. They’ve heard about Him, but they don’t really have any relationship with this God. So, I’ve got an easy job here of getting them mad at him.
And then you remember how the father sent him out to find his brothers, and they saw him a long way off and conspired together, first to kill him. And then the Lord intervened and put it in Rueben’s heart to say, no, let’s not kill him. So, they put him in a pit for a while, and then some slave traders came by or some traders came by that were headed for Egypt to do some business. And so, they get together, and they decide we’re gonna sell him into Egypt. Well, where did the inspiration for that come from?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. But do you see the purpose of God? Do you see the hand of God in spite what happened and how it happened? Do you see that there was a God who was absolutely over all? And so, there he is, and his brothers even later talk about…the guilt was beginning to well up in their beings, they’re realizing what they did, and they said, didn’t we see the anguish of his soul when we did this to him? God’s paying us back. Their conscience is really getting to them.
But that gives you an insight of what it was like. Can you imagine the feelings that were going through Joseph’s heart and his mind? And yet, what an amazing account it is of somebody who still had enough faith in God to be able to go down there and live as a slave, and don’t you see the hand of God blessing him in the middle of that?
He wasn’t alone. God was with him. He may not have had human fellowship in the Lord, but he had the Lord giving him a confidence and a faith still to stand. He was called to stand for years. Well, he was 17 when this started. He was 30 when he came to the throne, to be second in the kingdom there. So, that’s a long time. That’s 13 years of hell on earth, in a way, most of it.
God blessed him in a way, and then all of a sudden, Potiphar’s wife lied about him, had him thrown in prison. The scripture talks about his feet were hurt with fetters of iron in the Psalms, Psalm 105, I think it is. So, you see from the devil’s point of view, everything that the devil was trying to do to engineer this man’s defeat, to cause the vision of God, the purpose of God to fail.
Think about that. Do you think God’s purpose is gonna fail? See, that’s what He wants everyone of us to understand. God’s purpose is not gonna fail. What He’s looking for from me, what He’s looking for from you is a heart that says, God, by Your grace, I’m gonna keep believing You. I’m gonna keep trusting You. I’m gonna see that what is happening to me that I may not like at the moment is Your tool. The devil may be allowed to do it, but You’re the One who has engineered exactly what’s happening to me.
And so, of course, he gets thrown in prison, and I know that was a traumatic thing, and yet, there he is, and he’s trying his best. All of a sudden, he’s just serving God and looking to Him in spite of the thing.
What a faith that is! That’s amazing to me, that someone who knows as little as he did about God…you see the hand of God overshadowing that man’s heart, giving him that kind of faith and confidence?
We have the same God today Who will meet us with what we need for God’s purpose for us. Now, my purpose is not…I don’t expect to be on a throne someday. I don’t think anybody here is going to be, in that sense. But, every one of us has a place. Every one of us has a purpose whether it’s in your home, your job, your school, whatever it is, God has a purpose for your life, and He’s shaping you for that purpose.
God was shaping Joseph for an amazing thing that he was gonna be doing. It wasn’t about magnifying Joseph and saying, whoop-de-do, I can do as I please. This was lifting up a man for a purpose in an hour that was critical, central to what God was trying to do in the earth.
And so, God gave him a faithful heart, and it was recognized, and there he was running his section of the prison. All the prisoners were in his hands. And of course, you remember the account. I won’t go through every detail, but you remember how two of the king’s servants were thrown in there, and they had dreams.
I wonder where that came from! Wouldn’t it be something, again, to stand outside and watch all this as an outside observer, and you see the Lord saying, well, it’s time to do something. Okay, we’re gonna give these two guys some supernatural dreams, and they’re gonna wake up and wonder. And they’re gonna go to Daniel, and Daniel’s gonna explain them.
In three days, both dreams were fulfilled. One man was restored to his position. The other one was hung. And Daniel…I mean not Daniel, but Joseph, of course, was trying to help himself like any of us would. We’ve got our…how many times have you been in a situation you had your timetable? You had it all figured out how it was supposed to happen. Steve mentioned that this morning.
Wouldn’t it be good if we would just say, God, I don’t know? I’m just trusting You. Lord, You do what You need to do. You do it Your way, and You do it on Your time schedule, because that’s gonna be right. And then, I don’t have to worry about it. But I can just say, Lord, I know that You will give me the grace that I need step-by-step, whatever’s going on.
That’s my only place that You’re…that’s why we can have peace. If we don’t have peace, are we really trusting Him? See what’s going on there? There’s a degree of lack of…I don’t really know. I’m not quite so sure about this.
But anyway, Joseph tried to engineer his own deliverance, and that didn’t work. It wasn’t time. So, two whole years, and all of a sudden God says, okay, now it’s time. Now it’s time! Let’s give Pharaoh a couple of really scary dreams that he’s gonna worry about, and he’s gonna call all the wise men of Egypt to explain it, and none of them are gonna be able to explain it.
And there’s the butler serving him the wine, and he’s listening in on all of this. Now, I remember. There was a guy down in the prison there when you sent us down there, and he interpreted our dreams. This guy knows!
So, you know, Joseph gets up that morning, and it’s a morning like any other morning, and he’s not even thinking about it anymore. And all of a sudden, the prison warden comes in and says, get dressed, shave, here’s some fresh clothes. You’re going to see Pharaoh. Say what?
( laughing ).
I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who can do more than we can ask or imagine, if we’ll trust in Him. And, this God that was overshadowing everything the devil had tried to do up to this point…had brought him down and seemingly sidelined him. Nothing could possibly come of all those dreams that he had when he was a kid until God intervened. And there wasn’t a thing the devil could do about it.
They brought him before Pharaoh, and he interpreted his dreams, and everybody was so impressed, he was given the second position in the land. And then you remember how the rest of it happened.
But do you see, also in that, how God formed the man’s character? How many of us would have come through all of that, and had a terrible time with the trauma of what our brothers did to us? How many of us would have had that festering in here all those years? How many of us would have taken advantage of the situation and said, boy, now I’ll show them?
And yet, there was a tenderness of heart, and when it finally came time for him to make known to his brothers, he was weeping. They were scared to death when they realized who he was. And he’s weeping, and one after another, embracing them.
And then after dad died, they come to him, and they’re scared. Okay, I know why he didn’t do it, just because our father was still around. Now, he’s gonna take it out on us. We know what we did.
And he said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. The devil was allowed to send some terrible trouble into my life, but that very trouble is what set me on the road that has brought me to this place today so that I can be here and save life.
What insight, what wisdom God had given His servant! Oh, wouldn’t it be good if we had that kind of insight in our lives? This is just for the high important people. Those are the ones we read about. But in God’s Kingdom, every one of us is just as important to Him, just as loved. We’re just designed for a different place.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants us to understand, just as if we were that person who was watching the world and seeing these things unfold, and being able to ask questions and say where we could understand, yes, God is using that wicked being down there. That’s His tool. He has no chance. He’s already lost. He just doesn’t believe it. He’s deceiving himself. He’s gonna fight to the bitter end! But all he can do is fulfill the very purpose of God. So, God’s children have no reason to be afraid or to be anxious or to have anything but peace.
You know, this is something that I’m super conscious of. We have got a lot of secondhand religion, secondhand faith. And, it’s wonderful that people can be exposed to truth, but that’s not enough! It’s got to become yours! It’s got to become personal, or what good is it? We could transmit the faith that we believe to every member of the younger generation, and they could recite it and know it and sing and do all those things, but if they never possessed it and came to know the God that we have come to know, what good is it?
So, how does God bring people into a practical knowledge of Himself except through trouble that drives us to Him and causes us to feel our need? I pray that God will bring whatever trouble it takes to bring you to Jesus Christ if that’s where you’re at…if it will cause you to realize the futility of this world.
The further I go, the more I see how stupid and ridiculous and idiotic it all is. Oh, God. I’ll tell you, God can deliver His people in a practical sense, but it doesn’t come by information alone. We need that, but we need the experience of God.
David had an experience with God, and so, he was able to realize what the real battle was. It was almost like he could step back like we were doing there, and seeing, hey, this is not just a battle with a physical enemy here. There is another thing going on. There’s a devil. There’s a false God. There’s a demon behind this, and that demon has the gall to challenge my God, and I know that He is God! So, this isn’t my battle!
Do we see that in our lives, or is that just a history lesson? Your troubles, your battles are not just your battles. They’re God’s battles, and He takes them personally! He wants us to come to Him! I mean, we can muddle through if we’re foolish enough to think we can, and just blind enough to charge ahead. I’ll tell you, God wants to use everything that Satan is allowed to do to turn our hearts to Him so we will come to Him from the depths of our heart and say, oh, God, I need You. I need You, Lord. Praise God. I need Him, don’t you? Oh, the further I go, the more I know I need Him.
What a blessed place that is! He’s not sitting here trying to bully me into fearfully serving Him and trying desperately to win His favor through my own efforts. Oh, God.
You know, we talked about Job recently and the place that he occupied. I believe that’s a pretty good example. I’m not sure, but I think this is a pretty good example of secondhand faith, hand-me-down faith. He lived sometime in the era after the flood. For all I know, Noah may have overlapped his life. I don’t know. Noah lived 350 years after the flood. But one thing is for sure. He knew about God. He knew there was a God who judges sin.
And from his own lips, we have the expression that, “…the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” (KJV). What was motivating his devotion to God was a whole lot of fear about this remote God who’s so great, and He judges wickedness, and I’ve got to do everything I know to stay on His good side.
Do you see that element in Job? And God saw him doing what he knew to do, but says, I’ve got better for you, Job. That’s not how I want people to relate to Me. I want them to know Me. And so, Job was taken down a dark, deep valley.
When he came to the other end, do you think he still had that same fear? Or do you think he came to a place where he had interacted with God? He knew God on a personal level. He didn’t have to just listen to the stories about Noah walked with God and look what God did! Isn’t that great? Now, Noah’s God becomes my God, and I know something about Him, because I’ve been there. I have experienced Him in the darkest times of my life. He came to my rescue.
And the blessing that He had afterwards was not just the fact that He had twice as much as he had before. God blessed him on that level, but the blessing that mattered was he had something that was real. He knew his God. God had removed the fear from his heart.
Everything the devil…did you notice in the beginning how the devil went before God. God brought him up, and the devil said, yeah, you’ve got a hedge about him. I can’t get to him. What do you expect? Of course, he’s gonna serve You. You’re blessing him.
But doesn’t that reveal something? Do you realize that every single one of God’s children has a hedge about you? If something comes through that hedge, it’s because God has allowed it. The devil could not just attack Peter. The devil had to get permission. He said, “Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.” (NIV). Here’s Satan asking for the permission to be God’s tool, if he understood, if he was willing to accept that.
But it was the same kind of spirit. Yeah, I know human flesh. I know humanity. You let me at him just the right way, and I can bring him down. And the Lord turns that thing right around and changes the individual and reveals Himself in a way that that person could never have known.
I know there are people here. You’ve been down roads you would never have chosen in a million years, but yet, it’s brought you to a place where you know something about God that you didn’t know before, and there’s a depth of faith and peace that you’ve got because of what you went through. Every single one of us could say that that have known Him any time. I thank God!
You know that song, “Thank God for the Valley,” that Jackie sang many times over the years, has a tremendous, simple truth. This is how we know Him. David had to go through the valley of the shadow of death, didn’t he? How many times we started to tell his story, and you know all the things that he went through, and the pathway to the throne was hell on earth, for how many years? We don’t know exactly. Probably, again, maybe 10 or 15 years. But it was a long time when he was on the run for his life.
The devil was free to attack him in so many ways, and yet, over and over again, he called upon God. He kept his integrity. He looked to God, and God was forming his character in it, but it was more than that! It was David coming to a place of rest, of confidence in God, of knowing God so that when he got on the throne, he knew…God knew there was gonna be stuff he was gonna have to deal with that was gonna be tough. But he was preparing His man just like He prepared Joseph, just like He prepared His Son, just like He prepared Paul and so many things that he went through.
You know, I thought about this in this context, as to what God is looking for in all of this. It’s easy to say God wants my behavior to match up to a certain standard, and then things will be good. Is that really what God is after?
What is the heart of the New Covenant? You know, there was a Covenant. There was a covenant where God said, this is how I’m gonna deal with you. I’m gonna do something that’s temporary. It’ll help prepare you for this, but there is a permanent Covenant coming. It’s not gonna be like that one. It’s not gonna be just a bunch of rules.
The Covenant that I’m going to do is I’m gonna put My laws in your hearts. Okay, and what was the result of that? They will…how many will know Me? They will all know ‘about’ Me? “…They will all know me, from the least…to the greatest.”
God wants a person-to-person, heart-to-heart, faith-to-faith relationship with every single one of His children. He cares about us. I mean, don’t we have the words of Jesus? He knows the…He’s numbered the hairs of your head. Do you think He doesn’t care about all the details of every single life?
I’ll tell you, when God brings trouble in our path, every single…His whole heart is to do one simple thing. It’s to bring us to a deeper relationship. God has purposed something, like I said, from the beginning. God has purposed to do something in eternity and to shape us for that. That’s what His heart is focused on.
Folks, I pray that God will help me. I pray that God will help every one of us to get this simple truth in a much more practical way. Trouble is gonna come in our lives. It comes at the hands of Satan, in one form or another. But Satan is only a tool. There is nothing he can ever do that can change the outcome of somebody who has put their trust in Him.
We can live with that confidence, and in that confidence, we can have a faith and a rest that will carry us through. God is gonna shape your life and mine. We might not like the process, but we’re gonna love the result.
And one day, we’re gonna stand there and just be blown away. The pictures of God’s saints casting…God gives us crowns, and we’re gonna say, my God, what did I do for this? Throw it down at the feet of Jesus! He is the One who has done it all. To Him be glory and honor! That Name is above every name.
But right now, we’re in the middle of the war. There’s a hedge about you. Satan can do nothing but what God allows, but when He allows it, God’s gonna take you through, and He’s gonna shape your character. He’s gonna build faith in you. He’s gonna glorify Himself. He’s gonna make you the kind of person He wants you to be in this world. He’s gonna help you to know Him in a way that perhaps you didn’t up until now. And there’s gonna be a lot more rest in it. To God be the glory!
In the world, you will have trouble! That’s a fact. But we don’t have to be afraid of it, because Jesus has overcome the world, and He has given us His peace, and we can lay hold of that in the middle of the worst trouble that we see, because God is faithful. Praise God!
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January 16, 2022 - No. 1528
“Trouble” Part One
Broadcast #1528
January 16, 2022
January 16, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1528 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I’ve just been thinking about the service and my mind keeps coming back to a single word. And it’s an exciting subject called ‘trouble.’
( laughing ).
But I don’t know, it just seems to keep coming back to that and I think we all know what that’s about. But, I feel like the Lord wants to explore it just a little bit this morning and give us, maybe, a fresh look.
And I thought of a scripture, just as a sort of starting point, in the words of Jesus in John 16. Jesus has just been talking with His disciples. This is the night before He was crucified, giving them words of instruction, of encouragement, knowing that very shortly they’re gonna be frightened and scattered, but needing to have a sense that, hey, this is going someplace good, even though we don’t understand what’s happening right now. We know who this is and we trust in Him.
And so, Jesus says in verse 31…they reach a point where they seem to have a settled conviction as to who He is and we know you’re from God. And so, Jesus says, “You believe at last! Jesus answered.” (NIV). This is 16, if I didn’t say that. “But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”
Praise God! Isn’t that a truth that we all need to lay hold of? “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.” That sounds like a pretty positive, simple statement, to me, doesn’t it you? “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
( congregational praise ).
Thank God for that balance. There’s the overcoming, there’s the peace. So, you see that the Lord is dealing with a fact, isn’t He? I mean, we all understand that. That’s the kind of world we live in.
And you know, I looked up the word ‘trouble.’ I don’t think there’s anything revolutionary about it, but it’s used as a translation of several different terms and some of them are just simply the word ‘adversity.’ You could really substitute that word. Our nature wants things to be smooth, doesn’t it? We’re born into a world that is bent a certain way and our nature agrees with it. And so, by nature, we want things to be smooth, to be easy, to be…to have the soft wind blowing and going in the direction we want it to go, to have our desires catered to and everything to be pleasant.
And yet, we know from the Word, we know from experience, hopefully, most of us, that that’s not the kind of world, really, we live in. That world that we would try to be a part of, by nature, is headed for catastrophe. We talked about that last week. There is a day coming. And this is a very temporary thing. And God has a larger purpose in it than just smoothing our feathers and making life smooth and easy.
And so, I was just thinking, as I say, of exploring this subject and even this morning I thought of a way to talk about this, and the Lord will have to help me, as He always does, anyway. I certainly can’t do this.
But I thought about it from this point of view. Suppose you were from somewhere else, other than this world. And somehow you found yourself here and you arrive on the scene and you say, what’s going on here? And imagine you were also able to see, not only the physical world, but the spiritual realm. And so, you’re saying, I don’t get this. Somebody explain this to me.
And so, whoever’s explaining it to you says, well, there’s a God who’s over all. He’s everywhere and He’s all-powerful and He has a plan from the foundation of the world. And He created this beautiful place and He created a race of people that He intended to be His sons and daughters, to live with Him and to enjoy Him and to share His life and all of that, but they rebelled.
And so…and there was an enemy that He had. One of His servants was an enemy. And so, he led them in rebellion and now the world is under the dominion of this other…this wicked being who just causes trouble. And so, that’s where it’s at.
And so, your question, of course, is, well, my God, He’s all-powerful. Why doesn’t He just fix it? Why doesn’t He just step in and end all this stuff? And so, whoever it is that’s explaining to you says, well, now let’s watch. Let’s see what God’s trying to do with this.
And so, we see God having a purpose. Perhaps He’s calling somebody out of this world. And He calls them to Himself and He makes them aware and they give their lives to Him and basically, coming to Him is changing sides, because we’re all born as citizens of this world and our allegiance, effectively, is here. That’s it. Satan is our god. We may not think that. We may think, I’m doing what I want, but that’s…effectively, we’re serving him.
But I’ll tell you, coming to Christ is changing sides. It is recognizing that God has established a King, His Son on a throne, and He is in charge. And it’s also recognizing that this world has already been defeated. Praise God! We sang about it this morning, the victory that was won at the Cross. It’s real! And so, there is a Kingdom into which we have been called.
But yet, you might look from the outside and say, well, that’s wonderful! Praise God! All He has to do is just lift them out of here and take them there. He said, wait a minute, they’re not ready for that. I’ve got stuff that needs to be done. I have got a…not only have I got a place, a special place, for every single one that I make a part of my Kingdom, I’ve got a special place in this world that’s to come that’s just exactly…they’re designed for it. And so, I’ve got to work in them to help get them ready for that.
Okay, well that’s great, but what about here? He says, oh, I’ve got purposes for every single one of My children here, every single one that I’ve got to make changes. They’re so geared, in a practical sense, to their life here and what people want out of this world, and so, I’ve got to change them.
Well, praise God! Then let’s just let the sun shine and let’s let them go to Sunday school and church and learn all about it and that’ll fix everything, won’t it? But it doesn’t work that way, does it?
And so, what happens…so you have this…I mean, you’re sitting there watching all of this and all of a sudden you watch one of God’s children and you watch this devil come up and begin to cause them trouble. All of a sudden, they’re going along, everything’s just great and grand and they’re not doing anything particularly wrong, but all of a sudden there’s this terrible trouble that comes into their life.
You say, wait a minute, what’s going on with that? Why isn’t God stepping in? Why doesn’t He stop that? And he says, just wait and watch. And so, you see the person involved begin to cry out and to say, oh, God, I can’t handle this. Lord, I don’t understand. There are all the questions, all the things that come up. But what it does is stir people up to say, wait a minute, I need God! I need this One to whom I’ve turned. I can’t handle this! Lord, help me to understand what I need to understand. Help me to be set free from things that you see in me that I don’t see. But oh, God, I’m looking to You!
And you’re sitting there watching all of this and you’re asking about it, and you watch them begin to grow and you watch them begin to get stronger in their confidence toward God and their attitudes towards others and they begin to be changed.
And whoever is talking to you says, you know, it’s kind of like a sculptor. God’s creating every one of His children as a special masterpiece. Everyone’s different and God is absolutely working on each one. And you know on a sculpture there’s stuff that’s got to be chipped away, isn’t there? Everything has got to…something has got to change.
And so, God is taking things out and chipping them away, and the person who’s being chipped usually doesn’t get it. And so, we react and we say, oh, God, not that! And the Lord says, yes, let go! Exactly what Steve said at the beginning of the service. Let go, trust God, just surrender into His hands. He knows what He’s doing.
Now remember, we’re standing outside, and we’re looking at this from God’s point of view and whoever’s talking about this says, don’t forget, God planned all this before the world was framed. And here we are, we’re watching the middle of it. We’re seeing the outworking of something. And so, our question is, okay, so how’s it gonna come out? I still don’t quite understand what’s going on. How does this come out?
And boy, I haven’t thought this part through but I’ll tell you, wouldn’t it be something if you could jump ahead to the end of time? But whoever’s saying this, I’ll tell you, God has got this! This God who planned this from all eternity, He has absolutely got His hand on that person. He knows the plan. He knows how much to let the devil get in there. Do you know the devil can’t get in there unless the Lord lets him? So, if trouble comes and the devil’s brought it, don’t ever forget the Lord sent it! And He sent it because of a loving, wonderful, personal purpose. And He has a reason.
I mean, there’s nothing I’m saying that we haven’t heard many times, but I’ll tell you, seems like we need this. We need this because it’s not just the information, we’re every one of us in real situations. And the trouble we’re talking about isn’t necessarily just some terrible, outward thing that comes upon us. You know, our property is destroyed, or someone’s sick, or someone’s just died or it could be a thousand and one things.
It could be something that’s inside your own heart that you’re struggling with and nobody else knows about. But oh, it’s trouble. Oh, God, I’m struggling, I’m full of fear. I’m full of…something happened to me that was traumatic and it’s just eating on me and it’s sitting in there and I can’t let it go. Oh, it’s just…and it rises up and it begins to cause trouble in the present. It just goes into every facet of human nature.
You know, we talked Wednesday night…we sort of had a service of participation where everybody chipped in and boy, the Lord helped us, didn’t He? I was sitting there fighting it, saying no, I’ll let somebody else, and then I don’t know, the Lord just…He won. But what we did was to explore all the ways that the devil works, his bag of tricks, if you will. Or, “…we are not ignorant…,” Paul said in one place, “…of his devices.” (KJV).
But we’ve got this enemy of God who is so deceived in his mind that he is still trying to win. And all his…it doesn’t matter whether he even thinks he can. His nature drives him to do what he’s doing. He is going to relentlessly work.
But you know, I want us to see something this morning, perhaps in a fresh way. Imagine now you’re still standing out there and looking, and saying, but help me to understand what’s going on. Why is the Lord letting the devil do that?
And the answer comes back. The devil is only a tool. He is a tool in the hands of God to fulfill something that is absolutely eternal. It is a purpose that God conceived in His mind. Every one that He deals with, every person that He calls is someone that He knew intimately before He ever created the world. That’s mind boggling! To think that there are things in the depths of my being that I don’t even know as I ought, perhaps, but God knew them! What a God we serve, who’s able to take that…to take the tangled threads of this world and weave them into something that is eternal.
And I can just hear you saying, well, looking on this scene, boy, the devil must be awfully frustrated. He can’t possibly win and there he is. All he’s doing is spinning his wheels and everything he does turns out for God’s purpose instead of his. Praise God!
I’ll tell you…and isn’t it interesting how the Lord wants us to react in all of this. He prefaces what He says there, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.” (NIV). Peace. That’s amazing!
But you know, if we could see, if we could take the vantage point of that person who has suddenly arrived on our planet, trying to explain it, trying to understand it, if we could suddenly see from that point of view, wouldn’t that change everything? You know, we could actually sing, “He didn’t bring us this far to leave us,” and believe it, in practice.
We wouldn’t…we tend to sing these things, and it’s good and I understand we’re in the process, we’re growing, we’re learning so I’m not saying that in any condemning way. But you understand what I’m saying. We sing a lot of things and it’s good to profess them but possessing them is much…there’s a lot more to possessing something than simply getting information.
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants to do something in us that’s real, that’s practical. We could have the most perfect doctrine, the most perfect program that one could conceive and we would still have nothing of eternal value if God didn’t come in and really transform lives and hearts.
And I’ll tell you, the only way He can do it is to introduce what we call trouble in some form or other. And so, I’ll tell you, it’s not our enemy, it’s our friend. But if we can see, as I say, the way…from His point of view, we would have a peace that passes understanding. We’d be able to cast all our care upon Him knowing that He cares for us. “But take heart…” He says. “…You will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
And you know, you could sort of look at the lives of people in the scriptures. We know about events that happened. But wouldn’t it be nice just to step back…wouldn’t it be nice if we could step back and take the viewpoint of somebody who is able to see all the stuff that’s going on, not just the physical?
I mean, you think about the life of Jesus. He came down into the world that we live in. He came to a world of trouble and experienced it all, in one form or another. And so…I mean, this is not somebody that we can’t go to. This is somebody who absolutely knows everything you and I have ever experienced to the ‘nth’ degree and He is able.
You know, we practiced an old song this morning, “He’s Ever Interceding.” What a glorious, simple truth that God has given His Son and just…He didn’t sit there on a throne or direct traffic from up there. He came down. You think of the weakness, you think of the vulnerability, in a sense, of being a little fetus and then a little baby, completely helpless, completely dependent upon a human mother.
But oh, I’ll tell you, there was a God who overshadowed every bit of that. There He was, a little child and some wise men came from the east and they went to the…in all innocence they went and said, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” (KJV). And the king got wind of it. He said, whoa.
Now what do you think was going on behind the scenes in that? Do you think, just maybe, the devil was trying to say, hey, I got a chance to do something about this? I know this was coming. Man, we’ve got somebody in here that I need to deal with. This is the Son of God.
So, what did he do? He came up with a scheme immediately to send to Bethlehem and let’s kill every baby under two years old. We don’t know which one it is, but we know we’ll get rid of Him if we do that. Now what was the inspiration behind that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! You see Satan intervening, but how about God intervening? Yeah! He sent an angel and said, get up…in the middle of the night, get out of here to Egypt. And so, they weren’t there. And over and over and over again you see this in the life of Jesus, how Satan is just constantly trying to find some way to get to Him, to undermine Him.
There were times He couldn’t go certain places because they were out to kill Him and it wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the purpose of God at that point. Every point…we see Jesus going out into the wilderness and at His weakest point the Father steps back and Satan is allowed to come at Him to appeal to His human nature from every possible angle. And Jesus went there and He prayed and He looked to God.
I don’t doubt that this was the place where the writer to the Hebrews must have referred to, certainly it was one of them. Where, “…with strong crying and tears…” He cried out, “…unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard…” There was some serious praying that Jesus did.
I wonder how serious we are, sometimes. But He understood the issues. He said, oh, God, I’m here to do Your will, I’m not here to do My will. I’m part of something that’s eternal and my whole hope, my whole trust is in You and I recognize there is a war that’s going on. Satan is being allowed to work in me.
And isn’t it interesting, that we pointed out so many times, that at that very scripture that talks about how He had to cry out and pray and He learned—learned obedience. There was something that Jesus had to go through to get ready to be able to do what He did. And it only came as trouble came. And trouble came because the devil…because the Father stepped back and let the devil do his thing.
But the devil’s purpose was to destroy Him, God’s purpose was to shape Him and make Him the Savior that we need and we worship today! Praise God!
So, the Father was changing Him and He learned, “…obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect….” Wait a minute, I thought He was perfect. But there was a completeness that made it…He needed a completeness that could only happen as He came here to the world of sin and trouble and overcame, personally, while feeling every weakness that you and I have ever felt. And He came through it all.
I mean, you talk about what He says right here, “…take heart! I have overcome the world.” (NIV). He knew that there was a victory that He had come to win. He understood the battle! He understood the Father’s plan! He understood His place in it and He yielded Himself to that place!
Is that not what God has called every one of us to in His Kingdom? To absolutely give our lives to Him so that He can shape us for what His purpose is, not only here, but in eternity? Praise God, I’m so glad that we don’t have to…that we can have an understanding. God wants us to get this because…well, I thought of a scripture, back in chapter 15, I think it is. I’ll just look at it real quickly.
In the first place, verse 16, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you….” Praise God! Folks, if you have come to a knowledge of God…I’m not gonna go down the line where it’s all up to God and we have no responsibility. I’m not gonna go to that extreme, but I’ll tell you, there is a God who chooses. There is a God who calls somebody out of this world.
We didn’t go looking for Him. He came looking for me. I would never, in a million years, have gone after Him. I would have lived and died in blindness, if God had not overshadowed my heart and made Himself known to me and then given me the strength and the grace to repent and put my faith in Jesus Christ. I would never have done it.
And so, here is Jesus talking to His disciples saying, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” Praise God!
But look down later on. “Peace I leave with you….” Jesus was about to leave this world but He says I’m gonna leave something for you. I’m gonna leave my peace. He says, “…my peace I give you.” Do you think Jesus is worried? Do you think He has any anxiety about whether God can pull this off? Does He want us to live in a state of anxiety? Oh, my God, what’s gonna happen?
No, we have access to the very peace of God. Isn’t that what it says? Is He at peace? He knows what He’s purposed. He understands, the devil is My tool. He cannot win when it comes to My people.
Do we understand that? Can we come with all the things that…all the troubles that life brings, that God sends to work in us to help us, can we understand that to the point where we can let the peace of God, which transcends understanding…you can’t even understand it.
Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. How can I be at peace with this going on? And there’s the world…I mean, there’s the Lord helping us but also bearing witness to the world. They’re looking on and saying, I don’t get this. Maybe they’ve got something I need. Just one of the purposes of God.
“…The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I’ll tell you, we’ve got an awesome God and trouble is not our enemy. If we can understand the purpose of God, it is a friend that we can rest in God in.
I’m not making light of trouble. Trouble can be a traumatic, difficult thing. There are some terrible things that, from a human point of view, that God allows His people to go through, but I’ll tell you, there’s never a time, there’s never a place where if you’re His child He has left you for one second.
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January 9, 2022 - No. 1527
“There is Coming a Day” Conclusion
Broadcast #1527
January 9, 2022
January 9, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1527 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: We have the same promise. What happened to Jesus is the promise! It’s the hope that we have been given, every single one of us. “Listen, I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep…” (NIV). That is, we will not all die. There will be people who are here when Christ comes.
“But we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Oh, wait a minute. We’ve got the last enemy, the last trumpet. This kind of sounds like the end to me, doesn’t it? Yeah, there isn’t anything happening after this other than judgement and eternity.
“…In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound…” There’s nothing secret about that, is it? “…The dead will be raised imperishable.” Wow. I need…I mean, that’s a miracle. Only God can do that. Only God can grant that kind of a life that cannot die, incapable of dying. “…Will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
How many here need to be changed? Oh, praise God! That’s the hope that we have in that day, and it’s coming. “For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then…” at that time, “…the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
So, what we have now is a picture of Christ reigning. It’s not a visible reign to the world. It’s a case where He reveals Himself to willing hearts. He comes to make His home in those hearts. He goes to work in those hearts to change us, to prepare us for that time. And I’ll tell you, when the work is done that’s the day of Jesus Christ. That’s the time when He comes, and He gathers His people out of the world, and there’s nothing left but destruction. That’s the day. What a day that will be!
But you think about how sober and how serious it is. It’s an awesome for everyone that’s put their faith in Jesus Christ. It needs to overshadow every other consideration in our lives, because there is coming a day. Praise God!
But I’ll tell you, if there’s anybody who’s not serious, who hasn’t really ever surrendered the heart to Christ, you are in a place where you need—you need to hear the voice of the Son of God when He speaks to you, and not sidestep it and not say, but it’s my life.
You know, one of the things that Jesus said…now He didn’t quite go there in Luke 17. I’ll just refer back to it, because Jesus warned about this life that we’ve been given. How many times did He say this in His ministry? He that hangs on to his life, just put it in our language. He that hangs on to his life…what’s the prospect? What do you have to look forward to? These are the words of Jesus that will never pass away. You better reckon on this. You want to hang on to your life and your plans and your way and say it’s mine? You will lose it!
There’s no question about that. That’s reality. You may not see that. You may not feel it, but I’ll tell you, I pray that God will open hearts.
And you think about what it takes for God to rescue somebody from this evil world. Think about what Jesus said, “…I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (KJV). Think about what He’s saying there. We live in a world that is in prison—that is a prison basically. It’s a prison planet.
Every person born into this world is a slave and blind. All you know is the desires that arise from your heart, the ideas that you take in from your surroundings. There is a nature that is bent against God, and there is a world of evil spirits that control everything, that rule over this planet. Satan is called the god of this world. This is what we’re up against, folks.
But I’ll tell you, I serve One who defeated him completely at the cross, who has all authority in heaven and earth. But I’ll tell you, when it comes to saving somebody, it’s not just a matter of informing people of the facts, and they just take their own free will, supposedly, and just…okay, I’ll accept You.
Man, this is a confrontation between God’s power and Satan’s power over the will of somebody. And it’s not, okay, I like Your plan. I’m gonna agree to it. This is, I’m surrendering. This is, I recognize my condition. I recognize that there’s nothing that I can do to help myself. I recognize that I can’t deserve this. I can do nothing, Lord.
But, it’s not just the fact that I don’t deserve it, it’s that I don’t have the power! I have no power to change! I know many who remember Brother Thomas talking about going door to door and witnessing and talking to a man one day who, best I remember the story, he told Brother Thomas that as a teenager he had picked up a pamphlet that was written by some atheist. And somehow, it had clicked with him, and he had embraced what he was reading, the philosophy, and he said from that day forward, he had no desire for God, no ability. You just couldn’t touch him at all. It wasn’t even that he was antagonistic. He just was dead.
You think about what it took for God to save Saul. You think about this man that had supposedly, in his own mind, devoted his life serving God. And he was there when they were stoning Stephen, and watched Stephen kneel down and say, Father, into Your hands, I commend my spirit. “Do not hold this sin against them.” (NIV).
And, he’s watching this Godly man lay down his life, and he’s standing there holding the coats of those who are throwing the stones and agreeing with them! Do you think he was just a little bit blind? You think about what it takes to reach a man like that. God had to arrest him. God had to penetrate the darkness of the human heart.
Oh, God, we need to pray that every one who hears this Word, that God will confront the heart, will penetrate past the mind and it won’t just be just a religious thing I can add to my life, that God will make real who He is and what your life really is about and what’s at stake. Is He Lord? Are you a citizen of that kingdom, or are you a citizen of this one?
It’s pretty plain to me that when that day comes, it’s gonna be one or the other. You’re either gonna be all in with one or all in with the other. I want to be all in right now. That’s the only safe place. Jesus didn’t say wait until you see all of this and then get ready. He said, be ready.
But oh, I’ll tell you what, the only possible way that anybody can be saved is when grace is extended, when God is there confronting the heart. That very presence of God is not just the influence to say you ought to give your life to Me. It is the very power by which we do it. If God is not there, you have neither the inclination nor the power to come to God. That’s why He says, call on Me when I’m near. That’s when you need to call.
Oh, I’ll tell you, if God ever speaks to you, you cry out to Him, and you say, oh God, help me…oh, God. I’ll tell you, I just pray that God will burn His Words, the reality of what we’re talking about today. There is coming a day! And God wants it to be a great comfort to those who know Him, but it’s a great, powerful warning to those who don’t. I’ll tell you what.
Here’s another thing that I see that encourages me, because I know that in our journey, we face many facts that we confront in our own lives, whether they’re circumstances, whether they’re weaknesses, whether they’re discouragements.
How many of you reach times in your life, you who know the Lord, when all of a sudden, you come face to face with something that’s in here? And it’s dismaying. And you wonder, oh my God, what’s the answer to this? This is discouraging. Here I’ve served the Lord for so many years, and look at the terrible thing I’ve just found out about myself, and it’s…what am I gonna do? Oh, could God love me?
I’ll tell you what, the very evidence, the very fact that God’s people become concerned at such a time, the very fact that you’re dismayed and don’t want things to be that way is the evidence that God is at work! What did He say in Philippians 1:6 about God who started the work will do, what?
( congregational response ).
Continue it. How long? “…Until the day of Jesus Christ.” There is coming a day. You see, there’s a graduation day for every child of God. There’s a time when the work is gonna be done, and He will pull back the veil and say, this is what I’ve been doing.
I’ll tell you, if God is at work in your heart, we need to let this reality that we’re in the middle of a process, but we know how it comes out! We need to lift up our hearts and say, praise God! Lord, You have brought me to a place of need, but You have the answer to my need! And so, my hope is in You this moment. I refuse to be discouraged by what I see, but rather encouraged that You are doing exactly what You said You’re gonna do. You’re continuing a work.
You know, I thought of this many times. Paul wrote those words in the first century. An awful lot of God’s people have died, but this Word says, He continues His work until…that means, in some sense, that work is going on. It’s not that people are trying to overcome sin in themselves. There’s a freedom when people die and go to be with the Lord. But I’ll tell you, there’s still a work.
God’s people have to learn stuff. God’s people, many of them perhaps, are among us more than we might realize. They’re sent on missions to planet earth. But I’ll tell you, God’s at work in every single child of God. Many die in ignorance. Do you think that God just leaves them in a corner in heaven? Or do you think maybe there’s some teaching that’s going on? And God is preparing every single child of God to come to that place together.
You know, there’s an awesome scripture that I thought about over in Ephesians. Ephesians is back in this other direction. Okay. Ephesians chapter 1. You know, Paul begins, and I don’t even want to try to go through his sentence, because it’s an endless sentence. But basically, Paul is exulting in what God has done for us, the forgiveness of sins and all that He’s done for us in Christ!
And, in verse 9 he says, “And he made known to us the mystery of his will….” Now, a mystery is something that you can’t understand unless God makes it known. I don’t care how smart you are. You’ll never figure it out if God doesn’t show you.
Isn’t it a good place to just humble ourselves and say, God, I can’t know anything unless You show me? I’m not smart enough to figure out Your Book. Think about that. There are a lot of people think they are. I’m not. I can’t figure this out. God has to reveal it.
But there is a mystery…according to what? Based upon what? His good pleasure, not my virtue, not anything in me. “…His good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ…” Okay? “…To be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
You think that’s talking about the day of Christ? You think that’s talking about that climax of the ages? Here, Jesus was raised from the dead, ascended to heaven, given all authority in heaven and earth, He has been reigning, not to fix the world, but to call a people out of it, to prepare them for a kingdom which will, all of a sudden, be unveiled before an unbelieving world.
It’s all gonna happen in one basic event. Don’t ask me to explain all the details. But, I know what Jesus said. I’m going with what He said, aren’t you? Praise God!
Now, here’s one thing that some people might be aware of. How about John chapter 5? I’m gonna just drop one little thing in…just a reminder that this all happens at the same time. John chapter 5, verses 28 and 29. Jesus said, “Do not be amazed at this….” Now, He just talked about the fact that God had put all judgment in His hands.
“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming…” Some translations say, ‘an hour is coming.’ “…When all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”
Does that sound like multiple judgments and multiple resurrections? This all happens at the same time, folks. The scriptures are consistent in how they present this day that we’re looking forward to. There is a day that’s coming. It’s real, and everybody in the grave is gonna be coming out. There will be a judgment, and there will be two destinies that will be manifest on that occasion.
What about 1st Thessalonians chapter 5? You know, we used that passage last week. And I’ll just refer briefly to it. 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, and Paul has been encouraging brothers about those who have died, that God’s gonna bring them with Him. We’re all gonna meet the Lord in the air. Does that sound the day of Jesus Christ? Sounds like it to me. It all happens together, doesn’t it?
“Now brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord…” Again, there’s that singular day. “…Will come like a thief in the night.” Unexpected. “While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, bothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.”
Do you see the singular event that’s going on here? See what the Lord’s getting us ready for? He is reigning ‘til all enemies are under His feet. And I’ll tell you, when He’s done, He’s gonna say, Father, I have done what You’ve asked. Here is the Kingdom. It’s complete. There are no more enemies. Oh, praise God! What a day that will be! You talk about something to sing about and rejoice in! That’s the day that’s coming.
And I’ll tell you, the same Word of God that is able to speak and galaxies fling out across the endless space, that same God can simply speak and dissolve it. He has the power to do anything He wants to do.
So, it raises the question. Look at the world. Why doesn’t He intervene? The Devil loves to raise that question in people’s minds. Oh, if there’s a God of love, why does He let such bad things happen? Why did He do it in Noah’s day? I’ll tell you, His focus is on calling His people out of this very kind of a world.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you.” Aren’t you glad He’s patient? I need a God whose patient with me, who knows how to work with me…all the stuff that He’s got to do in me, only God can do it.
The more I go, the more I say, oh, God. The stuff that needs to happen in my life, You are the only One who can do. I just call upon You to do it. I surrender. I believe You. I’ll tell you, there is no other path to life but surrender.
But, “He is patient…not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” That’s the reason God is allowing things to be like they are. There are still people that are hearing the Word of God. They’re still people. I don’t know how much longer. I’ll tell you, when we come to the end, it’s gonna be like it was in Noah’s day. There will be nobody who will be crossing the line. Like it was in Sodom, nobody else will be crossing the line. God knows when that day is.
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” Or “burned up” in other translations.
So, here is the conclusion of all of this for us. I’m about to lose my voice here. “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?” Folks, if you’re living your life under any other kind of idea about where things are at and how they’re going, you better reckon on this one. There is coming a day, and what Jesus has said will happen. There is coming a day.
Now, whether it happens in my lifetime or not, there is still coming a day! Because folks, like we said earlier, suppose I die, suppose you live your life and die, is that the end? A lot of worldly people would like to think so. That’s how they justify being able to do what they want while they’re here. That’s the only opportunity I’ve got. Then I’m gonna be dead and gone. There’s no God.
Good luck with that, because everyone is gonna be raised from the dead to stand before the One who sits on that throne right now. I’ll tell you, we need to reckon on these truths. They need to be so burned into our consciousness, that they are the reason we live. They are the hope upon which we constantly are able to lift up our eyes and see, no matter where we are at in our life and in our walk.
“You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” Praise God!
This is the same Word that Jesus said will never pass away. “So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.”
And so forth. I’ll tell you, we need to reckon on this and be careful. Jesus warned about being caught up in the world, about sleeping, about drifting and getting just enamored with the world and busy with that and losing touch with what God has called us to do, and what He’s called us to be. Folks, we need to have…this needs to be front and center in our thinking.
There is coming a day. What if it were today? If you’re not ready, there’s coming a day. And, I pray that God will penetrate the darkness of your heart and make this real to you.
But, if you are here today, and you know the Lord, regardless of where you’re at in your journey, regardless of the difficulty, regardless of the attacks of the enemy, there is coming a day, and it will be worth it all when we get to that.
We’re gonna get there, and we’re gonna be able to look back and understand. God, I get it. I know why You took me that way. I could never have let go of my own way and laid hold of Your way if You hadn’t brought me the way that You did. Oh, praise God! He who has begun this good work will preform it ‘til the day of Jesus Christ! That day is coming! That day that will shock the world, but cause Christians to throw up their hands in praise and be changed in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye and be with Him forever.
Are you ready for that day? Are you looking forward to that day? There is a day that’s coming. ‘There is coming a day,’ I guess is the line from the song. There is coming a day. Thank God for the reality of it. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words, Jesus said, will never pass away. Praise God! That’s my hope today. Is it yours? To God be the glory!
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January 2, 2022 - No. 1526
“There is Coming a Day” Part One
Broadcast #1526
January 2, 2022
January 2, 2022
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1526 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, there’s a song that we sing in the choir from time to time that’s always had a special meaning for me, and a special memory and that’s, “What a Day That Will Be.” And I know I’ve probably shared this on different occasions and I don’t know if this is all repetitious, you forgive me.
But, I guess my sense about that song goes back to a time when Sue and I were in college and we used to go…we’d get up a carload many times on a Sunday evening and drive from several miles north of New York City, at the campus, into New York and then over into Brooklyn. And there was a church there, at the time, that really had a lot of life and it was a tremendous help to us at the time.
And basically, something happened on one particular night. There was a…it was one of those churches, a lot like the Brooklyn Tabernacle, just not as big. But, they tend to give an invitation at the end of a service and this particular time the invitation had to do with people who needed the Lord, needed to come to the Lord, needed to come to faith.
And, instead of singing a song like, “Come” or one of those invitation songs that we typically use, they sang this song, “What a Day That Will Be.” And I mean, they sang it, and we sang it, and it got way beyond just the emotion of religious people singing. God came down. I mean, you remember…if you’re in an occasion when the Lord’s presence really comes down in a manifest way, wow!
And we must have sung that 15 times or more, just over and over again until people’s hands were in the air. I mean, I still choke up thinking about it. There were tears running down people’s face. I can’t imagine how anybody who didn’t know the Lord wouldn’t be shaken and awakened at a time like this. It was real!
And it was like the Lord was saying, yeah, I’m looking forward to that day, too! Praise God, it’s coming! And I want everyone to realize the reality of that. And I guess, that’s kind of the area of thought that I’ve had. If I had to give a title to this, and for the sake of our folks in the room there who want a title early, “There is coming a day…” is the first line. Might be as good a title as any, “There Is Coming a Day.” Folks, thank God there’s coming a day! That’s the hope of everyone in here who knows the Lord.
( congregational response ).
There is coming a day, regardless of where things are at right now, what we see in the world, what we experience personally, there is coming a day, and that’s our hope.
You know, we live in the middle of a world that’s got its own expectations. You’ve got some people who are terrified at what’s going on and they’re expecting bad stuff and they’re prepping. You’ve got rich people that are building bunkers underground ‘cause they’re afraid of what’s coming.
But you’ve got a lot of people who believe in human potential, and believe that we are meant to evolve into much more than we are. We’re gonna conquer the stars. We’re gonna conquer everything and we’re gonna be great and we don’t need God anymore.
I’ll tell you, there’s coming a day. And it’s gonna be an amazing time. I thought about…just as a simple place to start. I’ve got a lot of scripture. We may skip over some of it. But I just want to have what the Lord wants to say.
But in Luke chapter 17, it’s a scripture we’ve used a lot. In fact, I don’t think I’m gonna say anything you haven’t heard, but my prayer is that God will make it real. And God will apply it to the present company, and all who may hear this other ways and will touch every heart, beginning with mine. I sure need Him this morning, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
Praise God! I’m subject to the same needs and weaknesses that you are. But anyway, there was an occasion in Luke chapter 17 where the Pharisees came to Him and you know they had their religious glasses on. They had the blindness of their religion, and so they had a concept of this Kingdom that God had promised in the Old Testament and all they were thinking about was an earthly kingdom where Israel would be exalted above the nations, set free from tyranny like Rome and all of that. And so, they asked Jesus, when is the Kingdom of God coming?
Well, Jesus took the opportunity to say, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation.” (NIV). That’s a key principle that a lot of people need to realize. God’s Kingdom is not about this present world. It will never be a visible, political, whatever, kind of kingdom, over this present planet.
And I believe what God is telling us to expect is something we need to be…we need to have this as a world view, if you will. It needs to dominate our thinking that there is coming a day and we need to know about that day, and we need to be ready for it.
So anyway, Jesus wanted to let them know that that’s not the way God’s Kingdom works, in this present world. God’s Kingdom is not visible but it’s within. It’s something that you cannot see.
You know, I thought of a scripture that I don’t know if I’ve used it very many times but it really kind of highlights this in John…just hold that place…but turn over to John 14, just for a moment. And this is a…you know, Jesus said a lot of things to the disciples the night before He was crucified and I’ll guarantee you they didn’t understand much of it. An awful lot of what He said they did not understand until later.
But there was one thing that He said in, oh, beginning in verse 21. “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” See, that’s a key.
The disciples at least picked up on this. Said, “…Judas (not Judas Iscariot)…” who was gone now, but another disciple, “…said, But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” Do you see the principle that Jesus was talking about earlier, when He’s talking about a kind of seeing, a kind of revelation, a kind of making known that happens to some but not to the world? All right?
It says, “Jesus replied, if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” That’s what the Kingdom of God is about in this world. It’s God making a home in a human heart. The Kingdom of God is when the King comes to reign, not over an earthly, political kingdom, but in the kingdom of the heart.
Is your heart part of His Kingdom this morning? That’s a critical question. Because I don’t care…you can go to…somebody can go to church all their lives and Jesus never reigns here. That’s the key. And I’ll tell you, there is an amazing blindness in the world today.
But go back to Luke chapter 17, because Jesus takes this opportunity to talk to the disciples about something. And He says, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, There he is! or Here he is! Do not go running after them. For the Son of Man in his day…” Now, there’s that singular word ‘day.’ “…the Son of Man in his day….” There is coming a day.
So, what’s it like? “…The Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.”
So, Jesus is looking down the stream of time saying, yeah, there’s coming a day. It’s My day. It’s the day when I show Myself to the world and I’ll tell you, things will be over when I show Myself to the world. It won’t be something secret. It will be open. Everybody will know it. It will be as sudden and shocking as lightning. But boy, there’s coming a day. Okay?
So then, He says…now He’s comparing this, and I don’t want to belabor this because we’ve talked about it so many times, but He compares His coming to two different historical events. One of them had to do with Noah and his day. The other one had to do with Lot being rescued out of Sodom.
Now what are the characteristics of both of them? There was a world that had reached a place, spiritually, of no return. Do you know that can happen? Do you know that there comes a time when God ceases to strive with someone who just does like this and says, no!
When God works, and like He says in Noah’s day, “…My spirit shall not always strive with man…” (KJV). That tells me that God had, for a long time, a lot longer than I would have had patience to do it, but God’s patience was demonstrated in continually reaching out to convict the generation of that day, through Noah’s preaching, no doubt through many other ways, God was trying to speak and they were saying, no, we’re gonna go our way. We’ve got our life. This is my life, I’m gonna live it. Just go away and leave me alone. And finally, He did.
How many of you are gonna look back and say, wait a minute, I had plans? My wedding was next week. I had a business deal I was…oh, we were just getting ready to go on vacation. There are a thousand and one things that people value in this world.
I’ll tell you, if God truly transforms us, not just on the outside to make us religious, but I mean transforms us right down to the bottom of our being…I’ll tell you, if your heart is a part of what Jesus is talking about, there won’t be any looking back. Man, it will be, thank God, I get out of this place! Lord, You’ve kept me in it and you’ve even blessed. There are things that you’ve allowed me to enjoy here, but this is not where my life is. Oh God, come! “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
And yet, don’t come until everyone that’s gonna come in, comes in. Oh, there’s that tension between wanting to go and wanting it to be over, and saying, oh Lord, don’t hurry too fast. Don’t leave anybody behind. Do you believe He’s gonna leave anybody behind? I don’t either. He isn’t. Thank God!
But I’ll tell you, there is a sober warning to everybody. This has got to be a heart issue with every single one of us. You know, I was thinking about this business of how people could get in that kind of a condition where, as Jesus said in Matthew 24, I’ll just refer to a scripture there where He says, “And knew not…” talking about the people of Noah’s day. They didn’t know what was gonna happen.
But Noah had just been preaching about it for 120 years and building a boat and they didn’t know? There’s a kind of ‘not knowing’ that has a lot more to do with willfulness than ignorance. This was a deliberate ‘not knowing.’
And I thought about the process that leads to this. How many of you remember, and I’ll just refer to something that you’ve heard before? How many of you remember the parable Jesus told about the wheat and the weeds, or the tares, in Matthew chapter 13? And they’re wondering, how in the world? Lord, you planted good seed in the earth, where did all this come from? He says an enemy did this.
And the Lord said, don’t you try to separate them. Don’t you try to figure it all out. You just…you wait. There’s a harvest coming. What was the first part of the harvest? How many remember?
( congregational response ).
Gather the weeds out from the wheat. “…Bind them in bundles…” To do what?
( congregational response ).
“…To burn them.” How many of you remember Brother Thomas talking about some of this? I believe he was exactly right. What are some of those bundles? What does that mean about being bound together? I mean, you think, oh yeah, throw them in a pile, they’re gonna be…no! There’s a binding.
I’ll tell you, we live in a world of ideas, of religious deception, of political ideas, of social ideas, of lifestyles, you name it, there are a thousand and one things going on in our world that have captured people’s minds to the point where they think that is what my life is about. This is what I’m living for. Not only that, I’m not the only one and so I feel strengthened because I have these people that I can associate with and…I’ll tell you, there’s a strength when people begin to bind together.
And I’ll tell you, God allows people to make choices like that. He will strive, but He is not gonna override the choices that men make. And so, there comes a time when people are so bound up you couldn’t explain it to them. You couldn’t talk to them. I’ll tell you, it’s amazing what it takes to wake up.
And you think about that day that is coming. I’ve just wrestled with how to…the order in which to develop the thought. But I’ll tell you, I’m gonna drop something in that touches on what I ministered on several weeks ago.
What do the people of this world really have to look forward to, if they knew what was coming? In the first place, this world is going to be destroyed. Everything is gonna be destroyed. Everyone in it that doesn’t know Christ is gonna die! Is that the end? Is that the end? What does the scripture say that they have to look forward to?
You want to write a scripture down, look at Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26 and 27. There is a looking forward, “…fearful looking for of judgment….” And what’s beyond judgment? “…Fire that will consume the enemies of God.” (NIV).
Is that plain? You see these physical bodies that we live in, yeah, they’re gonna die, but that’s not the end of it. There’s still that person that has lived in here and has been in rebellion against God, or has known Him. You see where there’s gonna be such a radical, radical separation of the entire human race and it’s gonna happen on that day. It’s gonna happen at the same time.
I’ll tell you what…you remember what Jesus said? He said, no one knows the time. You know the crazy people that come along every so often and say, Jesus is coming on such and such a day. Jesus doesn’t know when He’s coming, for crying out loud! How do they know? But I’ll tell you, He is coming.
And there’s one thing that, besides this fact that there is coming a day, that needs to be burned into everybody’s consciousness. But there’s something else that needs to be burned into everybody’s consciousness. Jesus said, in the context of talking about His coming, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
Let that sink in. This world is planning for all kinds of things. Some of the things are things that might happen. Some of the things are things they hope will happen. But here is something that will happen. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Man, that’s what I want to bank on! That’s what I want to live for! How about you?
And so, we see, on the one hand we see Jesus talking about a time when the Kingdom of God will literally be in the earth but it will not be visible. Then He’s talking about a day that’s coming when everything will be visible and everything will be concluded. Okay?
You remember Jesus said something at the end of Matthew. He encouraged the disciples shortly before He went…this was the risen Christ now. They had gone through this period of time when the disciples themselves didn’t know what was going on. They were discouraged. They were defeated. They were confused.
And all of a sudden, Jesus shows up, raised from the dead and He has a body that’s different from theirs. It’s real. He eats fish with them. They can touch Him. But it’s not like their body. None of sin and death, none of the things that we live with in this world afflicted that body.
And so, He declared to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Yeah, that’s something we need to put in our pipe and smoke, as the expression goes. This is something we need to understand. In every situation of life, no matter what it looks like, no matter what the facts that we observe are, there is One who has all authority in heaven and earth.
He is absolutely carrying out the Father’s intent that He declared in His own sovereign will before the world ever was, this is what this creation is about. This is where I’m headed. This is my endgame. Jesus reached a point in carrying out the Father’s will where everything was put in His hand for Him to reign.
So, what was that reign about? One of the things it was about was, “Therefore go and make disciples….” I’ll be with you till the end of the world. It’s spreading the news about this Kingdom! Okay?
You know, I thought about another scripture that we’ve used from time to time and it’s in 1st Corinthians chapter 15. And this is where Paul is trying to deal with some craziness that has gotten into the Corinthian church. It seemed like they had a lot of problems and yet, I’ll tell you, it’s a comfort and blessing to me to see God dealing with people that He loves and yet they had real problems.
I can identify with that. I can be thankful that here was a church that came behind in no gift, and yet look at all the stuff that was wrong. And you actually had people telling other people, or trying to teach the idea that there is no resurrection. Well, good grief! What are we living for Christ for? What good does that do? We need to just, eat, drink and be merry, and tomorrow we die. That’s the end of it.
That’s what the world thinks! The world has just done away with the idea of God. We’re gonna just do our own thing. But I’ll tell you what, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and that is the evidence that everything He has ever said we can bank on. If there’s nothing else that you believe, believe what Jesus has declared to be the truth, because He is the Son of God. God authenticated everything about Him when He brought Him forth, conquered the grave, conquered our sins, conquered everything! Every enemy is under His feet! Okay?
So that’s where Paul’s getting here. And so, in verse 19 he says, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But…” Oh, praise God for the buts! “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
I’ll tell you, God has a plan to bring forth those who have died, because death is a part of this creation. Ever since sin entered, death reigns. But there is a victory over death and the beginning evidence of that, the firstfruits of a harvest, if you will, was Jesus Himself being raised from the dead. He’s the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, or have died. Okay?
“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Are you in Christ today? Praise God! There is a certainty of hope not based upon your qualifications, but based upon the purpose of God.
But here’s the thing. “But each in his own turn.” There is a time schedule. “Christ, the firstfruits.” That’s the evidence. That’s the reason you and I can have hope this morning, because Jesus was raised. God has a purpose of raising every one of us up, whether we die first, or whether we meet Him in the air on that day when we’re here when He returns.
It says, “Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
So, we have a reign of Christ. We had His own declaration that all authority and power in heaven and earth had been given to Him, so what was He doing with this? Is He, as some teach, basically just sort of sitting in heaven, waiting to come back and reign? You awake?
( laughter ).
Is that what this is about? No! He went to a throne and He began reigning. That was what Pentecost was about! What was the evidence that Jesus was on a throne reigning? It was the outpouring of His Spirit and the calling of people into His Kingdom, the beginning of the building of His church, and the beginning of the Gospel going out to the ends of the earth.
That’s the reign of Christ! That’s what it’s about! It is about calling people out of this world! It is about a transformation of hearts and characters. It is about the blotting out of sins! It is about defeating every kind of stronghold of Satan in lives! It’s about preparing a people to live with Him in a perfect place forever! Only God can do that! That’s what it’s about.
Do you want to know what the time frame of this thing is, and the evidence of it? Listen to what He says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Okay? When does that happen? When is death destroyed? Look at the end of this chapter. These are truths that we have heard preached over the years and we need to have a grasp of them. I want God’s people to know what they believe and know why they believe it, know where it is in the Word.
The scripture that we use so often, at the end of this passage, has to do with the coming of Christ. It’s sudden, and how we’re gonna be changed and transformed and gathered to Him. But listen to…well, listen to what he says in verse 31, well, verse 50. You want to know why God’s doing what He’s doing?
He says, “I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” That’s why the Kingdom of God has to be something that’s in here. And I’ll tell you, when it comes into…when it becomes visible to everybody, these bodies will be done away and changed!
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December 26, 2021 - No. 1525
“Enduring ’til the End” Conclusion
Broadcast #1525
December 26, 2021
December 26, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1525 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Think about Jesus. Many times, it’s been emphasized how the trial that He went through. And I know that…the 40 days, and the devil tempting Him, there was a lot more to it than the little handful of verses that we have as to what happened.
But think of some of the temptations that He had and how they touched on every point that John mentioned. You’re hungry? You’re the Son of God? “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Take care of your…serve your hunger! Let that become the priority right now. You’ve been here long enough. You’ve got the power, do something about it! He said, “…Man shall not live by bread alone, but by…” (KJV). What?
( congregational response ).
Every word that’s in scripture? “…Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” I’ll tell you, it’s when God speaks to our hearts and takes this Word and brings it off the page and makes it live to us. It becomes life when we receive it. Then what do we choose to go by? Do we choose to go by what He says, or what our flesh wants?
He was there in the will of God, doing what He was doing, standing up to the devil the same way we have to, and He did! And when He gave the Word of God to the devil, the devil had to…okay, moving along…moving right along.
One of the other things he did was to take Him up on a high place. A high mountain, I think it was, in one of the accounts, and he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, somehow. He could see it all. And the devil says, all this will I give You. Every bit of this I’ll put it in Your hands, if You’ll do one thing. Just worship me!
You talk about the ultimate temptation about what your eyes can see and wanting that, somehow to possess it, to have control over it, to rule over it. My God, if there’s anybody here, and this kind of thing has got your life to where what you have is the priority of your heart, anybody who hears this, you don’t have any idea of the danger you’re in!
Because everything…what did Jesus say? What will it profit you, what good will it do you, if you gain the whole world? Jesus was…that’s what Jesus was offered. What good will it do, if you, “…gain the whole world, and lose…” your soul? That’s what’s at stake! And God has opened, through His Son, a way that we can possess His life!
( congregational amens ).
And that’s a life that is incapable of dying! Everything about this life is capable of coming to an end! And it will for those who are serving what this world has to offer. Of course, Jesus pointed out that you’re supposed to worship the Lord God, “…and him only shalt thou serve.”
The other thing that he tempted the Lord with had to do with pride, didn’t it? He took Him up on a high place on the temple and said, throw Yourself down, because it’s written angels will save You. I’m just paraphrasing. He’s put You in the charge of angels, and they’ll bear You up, lest you dash Your foot against a stone.
Don’t put God to a foolish test. God didn’t give us the powers that we have in Christ to use them for self and pride. He is the only One who deserves to be lifted up.
( congregational amens ).
That’s why He brings us to places of weakness, because it’s in our weakness that His strength comes out, and everybody knows that it’s Him and not us! We’re not seeking to exalt ourselves, but we’re seeking that He should be exalted. Praise God! Praise God!
You think of some of the choices that people have had to make. I mean, the whole Hebrews 11 is about this. My mind is going so many different directions. I’ve thought about so many different scriptures but, you think about Abraham. I guess in my Bible reading I’ve just been through the life of Abraham, or coming toward the end of it. You think of choices that he had to make in order to serve God.
Now, Abraham was rich, and of course, you could sit there and say yeah, he was rich, so he had it made, everything was cool, but that wasn’t the issue in his life. The first issue was, am I gonna listen to the God who has spoken to me and told me to leave my family and go to a place I don’t even know, and live as a foreigner, or am I gonna put my family first?
How many people have family religion? You know, we can love our earthly families, but you put them ahead of God, if you ever put them ahead of God, what are you doing? Those who love father and mother more than me are not worthy of me, Jesus said. Jesus didn’t come, He said many times, to bring peace on earth. He came to divide families, and we’re gonna see that.
I pray for everybody that the Word comes to. I believe God’s heart reaches out to everyone to whom He speaks. But how many times do some of the members of a family lay hold of the Word of God and believe it and receive it in the heart, and how many others just find a way to, no, this is more important to me. My earthly desires and fulfilling them are more important to me.
But Abraham listened, didn’t he? And faith, to him, was not just believing mentally, it was obeying. It was doing what God said. And how many years did he have to live trying to wait on the promise of God?
You remember, of course, how he tried to fulfill it himself. And Sarah came up with this brilliant idea of letting her slave sleep with him and have a child so that it could be credited to her…some cultural thing of the day, I guess. And so, they had Ishmael.
And, Abraham’s heart got tangled up. This was his son. Maybe this is the one. We’ve fulfilled the promise of God. Ismael is the one. But Ishmael wasn’t the one, was he? That was their effort.
You know, God doesn’t need our plans and efforts. He needs us to just wait on Him. I’m glad the Lord didn’t condemn Abraham. He allowed us to see his humanity because he’s so much like us. But you know, the time came when the Lord said, no, I’ve got a different plan. A year from now, Sarah’s gonna have a son.
Abraham laughed. Sarah wasn’t the only one that laughed. He did, too, but nonetheless, in spite of all the twists and turns of what they were doing…this is like 25 years after he had come into the land, Isaac was born. And there came a time when it was necessary to send Ishmael away. It was obvious he wasn’t part of this, and Abraham said, oh no, Lord, let him live before You. Oh Lord, don’t send him away.
How many times do we fight it when the Lord wants us to let go of something? I know nobody here has ever been there, right? But isn’t that how it is? The Lord understands our nature just gets attached to things, and his heart was attached to this little boy. And the Lord answered his prayer in that, I’ll bless him, I’ll make a great nation, but you send him away.
He’s not the heir. He’s not the one I had in mind when I sent you here, and I told you that you would become great. I’d build a nation from you, and all families of the earth would be blessed. That’s not…it wasn’t through him. It was through Isaac.
And so, Isaac grew up…began to grow up. I think, wasn’t it…I didn’t really look this up this morning, but I think he was like 12 years old or something, somewhere in that range? So this is 37 years now, into all of this. We read this in a few pages, but 37 years is quite a bit of time, isn’t it, where he’s just having to walk with God and wait, and things are…normal life is going on? He’s dealing with the herds that he has, and going to war and various kinds of things happening all through this time. But most of it was just sort of normal everyday life.
And it says, the Lord tried him. Now you think of the trial that he was put through. When the Lord said, take your son, and then he didn’t just say your son, He said, your only son, and take him to a certain place and sacrifice him, offer him as a sacrifice. And there’s no record that Abraham even argued about it.
Can you imagine how he must have felt and thought about it? You know, the writer of the Hebrews says he…I don’t know if he was speculating or not, but he said that he figured that God could raise him from the dead. Well, maybe so.
But the reality was he just did what God said. That’s what trust is. It doesn’t hold back. It says, God, You know best. Lord, the issues of my life, I leave them in Your hands. I can’t…the things I can’t do, the things I can’t fix.
But anyway, he went out and cut some wood. Can you imagine what he’s thinking about? He’s sitting there chopping wood. I mean, that wasn’t a five-minute exercise. He’s chopping a load of wood, to load it on a camel or donkey or something, and start off on this journey. And then, they’re going on the journey, and he’s thinking about it. His mind is going all this time, and he gets to the place, and God hasn’t intervened.
He actually ties up his son, lays him on the altar, raises the knife. Can you imagine the faith that it took, the trust that it took in God to be able to do that? My! Then, an angel said, wait, hold up! Now I know that you won’t withhold anything from Me.
Do you know, God is gonna prove His own children one way or another? I hope He doesn’t put us through that particular trial, but He’s gonna put us through the one that He has for us. Real faith is gonna be tried in this hour, as it’s never been before.
You know, how often do we read of things, like I say, that our brothers and sisters are going through in other parts of the world? It’s just like…it’s just like it’s a storybook or something. I mean we read it, we sit in our easy chairs and read about terrible death and suffering and imprisonment…things that are happening in other parts of the world.
But I’ll tell you, God is absolutely bringing His Kingdom to fruition. He is gonna have a people who will do what Jesus said. They will endure to the end. Whatever comes, they’re gonna keep on believing God. They’re gonna keep on putting Him first over whatever of earth would appeal to us and hold us captive.
I’ll tell you, there’s no such…you think about, again, the Devil. How does he have a hold on us? Think about what Jesus said. We’ve used this many times. “…The prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me.” (NIV). What did he mean?
How does the Devil exert power over us? Again, how does that happen? Where does he get that power? It’s because we want something. Human nature wants something that is a part of this world, and it wants to the point where it’s not gonna let it go. That is the way Satan holds power over any of God’s children, if he does.
And that is the way that he holds it over humanity, is when we lift up any earthly desire, and we have become so attached to it that we’re not gonna let it go. And for God’s children, it’s a…it can be just bondage that God wants to deliver us from.
But I’ll tell you, for a lot of folks, it becomes the issue that causes them to depart. It’s not a light thing, is it? When Jesus said anybody who loves their life more than they love Me, they’re gonna lose it. You have to be willing to lose your life in order to gain this life that I’m offering you. It’s coming down to the little end of the horn, as I say, more and more. I don’t know the time scale, but, can you not see how things are unfolding?
( congregational response ).
Can you not see the spirit of the age? Will we always be able to meet like this? Probably not. Will God always be with us?
( congregational response ).
Yes! Yes, in one way or another, He will be absolutely with us. You think about people…a couple of examples come to mind from the New Testament, and how God was…how they appeared to everybody to have what they needed.
Judas was a prime example, one of the 12. Now, God knew what He was doing when he was picked. But here’s a man who, as far as the other 11 disciples knew, this is one of us! He’s one of us! And they gave him the job of being the group treasurer, so whatever funds happened to be donated to them and they used to help the poor or to feed themselves or whatever, he was the guy who had the treasury.
But the Bible says he was a thief. There was something in his heart that loved money that he could get his hands on, and he was willing to put that first. And I’ll tell you, when the Devil came in and inspired him to do what he did, to sell Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, where did that hold come from? Did Satan just invent that, or was there a weakness, a love of money?
Jesus said, you can’t love God and love money, too. Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody who loves God is gonna be poor. Abraham was rich! But the question is, do we possess our possessions, or do they possess us? That’s what it comes down to.
Paul, as we’ve said many times recently, had reached a point of contentment, so that whether he had a lot or whether he had a little was no difference to him. He was fine. It’s wherever I’m at in my journey, God provides for me. That’s not what I’m living for anyway. I’m serving Him. Even if I wind up in prison or they wind up killing me, it doesn’t make any difference. He’s the One I’m living for. That’s where my eyes are at.
You look at Hebrews 11, and you see what the saints of God were living for. They saw a city. There was something that God implanted in their hearts. It was vision. They didn’t see it literally, but they saw it. It was real to them. They knew it was real, and it became more real than anything they had down here.
The other one, I guess, I thought about was Demas. What a sad story. Some of the epistles, one of the epistles, at least, toward the end of Paul’s life when he was in Rome, he mentions Demas as one of his fellow workers, sends greetings from him.
But in the last epistle, where he’s just about to lay down his life, he realizes the time has come…I’m about to go to my reward. “I have fought a good fight…henceforth there is laid up…a crown of righteousness…” and so forth. (KJV). But he said, “Demas hath forsaken me….” But what was the reason? “…Having loved this present world.”
I don’t know what He’s gonna call us to endure, but I’ll tell you, we have One that went before us, who’s going with us and in us, who has promised to carry us to the end. But there’s one issue. Where is your heart—where is your heart? Because if our heart is with Him, we’re gonna have the ground to stand there and say, Devil, I don’t care. You can tempt me with this or tempt me with that, I’m gonna serve Him, and Him alone.
Whatever you lay before me, pales in comparison with what He’s offered me. He’s offered me eternity. I see with eyes that are beyond just the physical eyes of what I can see and feel in this world. God has opened my eyes to something that is eternal and real. That’s more real. You cannot detach me from Him. His Word is true. I make the choice to put my hope and my trust in Him.
That’s what God is looking for in every single one of us, and I want to encourage us to do what Hebrews says, to, “…encourage one another daily…” (NIV). To search our hearts, to say, Lord, if there’s something here that is so attached to this world, that there’s a danger, I’m gonna listen to that, and I’m gonna follow that, if You bring it down to that choice, God, help me to let go.
Help me to not be afraid to die in that area, because that’s what not loving our lives to the death is about. It’s being willing to let go of something. Take my hand out of the gourd and say, Devil, that’s your gourd. You can have it. I’m free, and Jesus Christ has set me free, and I will not yield to your temptation. I will not embrace the lie that you have told that my destiny lies in being my own God and fulfilling my own desires!
The world is perishing because of that, but there is a people who are being made alive eternally because if what Jesus did, the blood that He shed, the truth that He would give us in our hearts, and the purpose that He would set before us to serve Him and Him only.
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, you get that from the depths of your heart and you walk in that, God’s gonna bring you through. But that’s where we’re at. And I just pray that God will help us and encourage us this morning. I need this as much as you do. But nonetheless, this is truth, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
This is something that every single one of us needs. I don’t what the issue of your life is right now. You may be at a crossroads. You may be at a place where you feel the pull. These desires are real, and they’re strong. I don’t want to minimize this as though this is just some quicky little thing. Sometimes, there are real battles that have to be fought. Why do you think we fight the good fight of the faith if there’s not an opposition? And it’s not just out there, coming, it’s because of the pull of this in here.
( congregational amens ).
That’s why Jesus said the prince of this world comes, but he has no hold on Me. There was nothing in Jesus that wanted what Satan had to offer, so he could offer Him anything in the world. So what? I died to that. I renounced all of that. I am here to do one thing and to serve my God, come what may. And what came to Him was death on the cross for us.
Praise God that He was faithful. What an example He leaves for us of being willing to lay down our lives and saying, I’m with Him 100 percent. Folks, there is an easy-believism gospel out there, as we’ve said many times, and you couple that with American prosperity and ‘churchianity’ and believing a set of doctrines and so forth, and you accept Jesus into your life, and you add Him into your life, what an empty hollow thing that can be. Thank God, in spite of that, God is reaching His!
( congregational response ).
You’ve got to wonder how many are going to be, are gonna come through this, and be able to resist the onslaught of darkness? Only those who have Christ in the heart, and yield themselves to Him and trust Him, and stand in the face of it.
But don’t worry. God will be with you. God will be with us. But folks, we need to stand together, and be ready to serve Him, be ready to make the choices that we need to make, and be ready to stand and help each other and to live for each other, and the God of grace will take us through. To Him be glory. Praise God!
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December 19, 2021 - No. 1524
“Enduring ’til the End” Part One
Broadcast #1524
December 19, 2021
December 19, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1524 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, Jesus, or Paul, I guess it was, spoke about how the Lord…what the Lord is doing for His church and how He’s preparing us, and how He’s washing us with water. He uses an illustration as though He were bathing us, somehow, cleansing us. But what is it that cleanses us? “…Washing of water by the word.” (KJV).
And I’ll tell you, when we hear, not just the words of scripture, but when we hear God speak in some fashion to us, and we open our hearts to it, it has an effect. There’s a cleansing that happens. There is defilement that we, perhaps, just sort of absorb from the world around us. There are things that are lies. This world is full of lies. It’s founded upon lies…the world system is. And we’re seeing that unfold before us.
And, I guess, part of what came to me was familiar scripture that I’m not even gonna turn to all of these but, one of them is in where Matthew 24, Jesus talked about times when, iniquity would abound, is the King James language. Wickedness would prevail. Are we not seeing that?
( congregational amens ).
Are we not seeing that? I mean, it’s getting to the point in our own society where, I mean, when are they gonna start firing us because we’re Christians? How far off is that? We’re seeing a culture take over, that preaches tolerance, but the only people they will tolerate are people that agree with them. And so, we’re living in a time when we are seeing the things that God has told us were going to happen unfold before us, before our eyes.
( congregational amens ).
And one of the things that Jesus said was that when iniquity would abound, “…the love of most…” (NIV). Or with, ‘many’ in some translations, would do what?
( congregational response ).
It would grow cold. The darkness, the wickedness, the prevalence of darkness would have an effect, and that effect would be to cause people to turn away. We’re gonna see that more and more.
I remember a…many of you will too, the story that Brother John B. told of meeting a guy at a Christian camp. And the guy said there were gonna be three great surprises in heaven. And, one of them is that you will find people there that you did not expect to see. Another surprise will be, there will be people who will not be there that you did expect to see. And, of course, the greatest surprise of all is that you’re there!
( laughter ).
But you know, there’s an application of that to where we’re living. I believe with all my heart, there are people, in our society today, that we would assume that if anybody’s going to make it, they will. They’re real Christians. And the reality is, we may get to a point where we suddenly discover they’re not. There’s something else that has got a hold of their hearts and under just the right circumstances they’re gonna turn away and deny the Lord. There are things that…there are conditions that exist in people’s hearts that cause that.
And under the conditions that we have seen in the United States, where we’ve had such freedom, it’s easy to be religious! It’s easy to profess all of the right things. But, we’re gonna see, as time unfolds, we’re gonna see where people’s hearts really are at.
And, don’t worry, if your heart is trusting in the Lord, He’s gonna bring you through! None of this is meant to invoke fear, or to promote fear. But, this is a reality, folks. We’re gonna see and we’re gonna find out who’s really serving the Lord and who isn’t. And, we need to search our own hearts and ask God to help us to overcome in this hour.
( congregational amens ).
And, one of the things that Jesus followed this up by saying is that those who endure to the end will be saved. There is an endurance that’s necessary. Now, you can easily read that and say, oh my God, I’ve got to be strong. Well, no, I don’t have the strength to do that, but He does!
( congregational amens ).
And those who endure are those who continue to believe in the face of whatever happens.
You know, my mind went to the scripture that we’ve used so many times in Revelation 12, and it talks about how people overcome. How do people actually overcome the enemy? I mean, he’s got a lot of power, doesn’t he? Right now, we’re seeing his power exerted. It is absolutely spewing forth a tremendous flow of deception of every kind, and people who have rejected the truth in their hearts and said, no, it’s my life, I’m my own God, they’re drinking it up.
And it is bringing great delusion—strong delusion to people on a greater and greater scale and we’re gonna…that’s what we’re seeing unfold. But God has a remnant of people who have the real thing on the inside and it’s not real…it’s not my strength, it’s not my conviction, it’s His! There is a supernatural conviction that is born in the hearts of someone who opens their heart to that Word of God. It has a power to set captives free!
( congregational amens ).
But, remember how they actually overcame, because there’s a part that we play in exercising what the value and the virtue of what Christ did. And it’s first of all, of course, we know, “…by the blood of the Lamb…” (NIV). His main attack upon most of us is accusing us and reminding us of what we are, apart from Christ.
Well, He’s got plenty of ammunition if we’re gonna examine what we are, naturally! We can always find something that would cause us, if we would, to lose confidence that…how could God love me? How could anybody love me? I’m so bad. My God, what a horrible place for anyone to try to navigate this life and to feel that way. But Jesus Christ shed His blood that we don’t have to live under that condemnation!
( congregational amens ).
He has set captives free! We have the right to stand and say, yes, I’m a sinner, but I have been forgiven because of the blood of Jesus Christ!
( congregational amens ).
To Him be all the honor and glory! Praise Him!
( congregational amens ).
He is worth of our praise this morning! We have every…we have solid ground to stand upon and it’s not anything that I could accomplish, anything that is in me. It’s entirely in Him! Praise God! What a foundation has been laid!
And He also goes on to say, “…and by the word of their testimony….” And we’ve talked many times about how that’s taking the words that He speaks to us, the very word that begets faith in a receptive heart, and we actually exercise that when it’s needed. It’s wonderful to drink it in and to have it there, but we need to be willing to speak it out and the Word of God tells us that’s like a sword.
( congregational amens ).
And the devil feels that sword and he has no answer for that kind of a sword. If we will wield the shield of faith to believe what God has said and take, “…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God…” the devil will have to flee. He has no answer for the truth of God.
( congregational amens ).
Because it isn’t dependent, again, upon us! But you know, there’s a third part to that overcoming, isn’t there? And, “…they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” You know, human life is something else. Hebrews 2 talks about how all of our lifetime people have been held in bondage, why? “…Their fear of death.” They’re afraid to let go.
We’re born into this world, to our sense-driven life. This is all we know, naturally speaking. This is all we know. And every one of us is born with desires that rise up in us, and would teach us to try to make something for ourselves, try to satisfy those desires, in some fashion, that are a part of this world.
And John tells us what those desires…he breaks them down into categories, doesn’t he? He says, “…the lust of the flesh….” Every one of us has bodily desires that are natural to human beings. But oh, what a terrible bondage it is when that becomes the focus of one’s heart and one’s life! How many times do you see people grow up in church, and their hormones begin to rage, and they find somebody that they find an attraction to? The next thing you know, that is the thing that takes precedence in their lives. They’re willing to walk away because this is real, this is now, this is what I feel and I’m gonna pursue that.
I’ll tell you, overcoming is a lot more than just some, okay, shoot me, I’m willing to lay down my life. It could be that. But I’ll tell you, the kind of death we need is the daily kind. It’s when God brings us face to face with a choice between, am I gonna serve me, am I gonna serve my earthly desires, or am I gonna serve Him? That’s the…that is the thing that is absolutely at the heart of what God is doing right now.
And we’re gonna see, again, those who serve God and those who don’t. I don’t know how long this is gonna go on tonight…today, whatever it is. But, it may be there are others who will want to add to this. But I’m just gonna start and, like I say, and trust God to say what He wants to say.
But folks, there are choices that we’re making. And the devil holds power over people. And the reason he holds power, the source of every spiritual bondage is when we are clinging to something that is part of our earthly life, and we’re not willing to let it go.
How many times have we used the illustration of the people who learned to catch monkeys with a gourd? You know, if you just try to go out and chase a monkey, he’s got a pretty good advantage. He can swing through the trees and go where you can’t go, at least not easily. And I wouldn’t want to.
But you know how they did it. They recognized that there was something in the nature of that monkey that was so curious that he just couldn’t let go! And so, what they would do is hollow out a gourd, drill a small hole and that hole was just big enough for a monkey’s fist to go through. And then they put something in the gourd that would rattle, a stone, something.
And the monkey would come along…and then they would chain the gourd to a tree so he couldn’t walk off with that. And the monkey would come along and rattle it and he’d hear that rattle. And his nature would cause him to say, I wonder what that is? And he’d stick his paw in there and he’d grab it. But then he’d try to pull it out and he couldn’t pull it out! And there he was, unwilling to let go of the very thing that caused his captivity! All they had to do was walk up and grab him and they had him.
Do you know that every single hold Satan has upon our lives today, is because of something in our nature that attaches itself to something on earth? And when we don’t let go, and we’re still hanging onto that, in some fashion, the devil has a hold. It comes down to that simple, of being unwilling to let go of some part of our life.
And I started to talk about what John mentioned as what was in the world and what it means to be a part of this world and part of this world system. The, “…lust of the flesh….” But the, “…lust of the eyes….” Man, I see that, I want it! You know, we see things and we want to possess. There’s a possessiveness about us, that feeds something in us.
And you know, we live in a society, as we’ve said many times, that has enjoyed a prosperity that’s probably unparalleled in history, in terms of the breadth of it. Yeah, there has always been rich people, but I mean, to have a society that has enjoyed the level of comfort that we have had, and a relative security…I mean…I’ll tell you, society today…the kids that are growing up today have no idea what it was like when some of us were growing up. And it wasn’t that we were poor, but there are things that we take for granted, that even poor people have today, that we would have considered riches when we were growing up!
( congregational amens ).
Life was a lot simpler. And God has allowed this country to prosper. But oh, how people worship possessions! And it’s awfully easy, when nothing is challenging us like that, in that area, for us to assume that, I can have a spirit of possessiveness about what I have, and serve the Lord, too! But what happens when God brings us to a place where there’s a choice?
You know, it was interesting, the thing…what Ricky said. He was talking about serving the Lord, Wednesday night, and a willingness to walk down the street wearing just the clothes he had on his back, and walk away from everything. I don’t know what the Lord may have. I don’t want to minister a fear or a certain expectation. But I’ll tell you, when we serve the Lord it’s 100 percent, where whatever it costs, it’s worth it.
If you ever really see, if God ever really implants genuine faith in your heart so you know that that is more real than this is, this is temporary, and whatever we’re called to let go of here, doesn’t matter in the light of eternity. Paul said, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
They were warning him, when he was traveling back to Jerusalem, about all that he was facing. He said, what do you mean to break mine heart? I’m ready to be in prison, I am ready to die for the Lord. And all they could do was say, okay, go on. And the next thing you know, his life was in danger, he was imprisoned, and spent years and years in prison.
I’ll tell you, he made some choices, didn’t he? And you think he’s sorry now? Oh, no, he has been…for 2,000 years he’s been…almost…he’s been enjoying the presence of the Lord, living in His presence. But somehow it became so real!
Is it real to you? Has God ever really spoken? Has He implanted that in your heart? It’s what it’s gonna take in this hour. We have lived in a largely unchallenged society. Yes, we’ve had issues like I mentioned where our young people grow up and their flesh takes over, or their ambition takes over. Something of this world and their ambitions to what they can achieve, what they can possess here, that begins to take precedence over the Lord. Yeah, I get that.
But what if we come to a place where some of our brothers and sisters in the world are at, right now? Where it costs everything, right up to their life, to serve Him! I’ll tell you, we need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational amens ).
But even now the Lord is bringing us to choices, isn’t He, in our lives to help us? And you know, you think about Jesus. Well, I didn’t even get to the third thing, did I? “…The lust of the eyes, and the pride of life….” Well, the pride of life was the third one, wasn’t it? Where there’s something…I want people to think well of me. I want to do something that I can feel…look at me, look what I am, look what I did.
Where does that come from? Is that the Spirit of Christ that wants to lift up self? That is the spirit that goes back to the beginning when Satan said, if you partake of this tree, you’ll know good and evil and you’ll be like gods. You can make your own choices. You can pursue whatever you want.
My God, we’re gonna see the ugliness of what’s unfolding in the planet, Earth, as we see that spirit take over. Think about Jesus. Many times, it’s been emphasized how the trial that He went through. And I know that…the 40 days, and the devil tempting Him, there was a lot more to it than the little handful of verses that we have as to what happened.
But think of some of the temptations that He had and how they touched on every point that John mentioned. You’re hungry? You’re the Son of God? “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Take care of your…serve your hunger! Let that become the priority right now. You’ve been here long enough. You’ve got the power, do something about it! He said, “…Man shall not live by bread alone, but by…” (KJV). What?
( congregational response ).
Every word that’s in scripture? “…Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” I’ll tell you, it’s when God speaks to our hearts and takes this Word and brings it off the page and makes it live to us. It becomes life when we receive it. Then what do we choose to go by? Do we choose to go by what He says, or what our flesh wants?
He was there in the will of God, doing what He was doing, standing up to the devil the same way we have to, and He did! And when He gave the Word of God to the devil, the devil had to…okay, moving along…moving right along.
One of the other things he did was to take Him up on a high place. A high mountain, I think it was, in one of the accounts, and he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, somehow. He could see it all. And the devil says, all this will I give You. Every bit of this I’ll put it in Your hands, if You’ll do one thing. Just worship me!
You talk about the ultimate temptation about what your eyes can see and wanting that, somehow to possess it, to have control over it, to rule over it. My God, if there’s anybody here, and this kind of thing has got your life to where what you have is the priority of your heart, anybody who hears this, you don’t have any idea of the danger you’re in!
Because everything…what did Jesus say? What will it profit you, what good will it do you, if you gain the whole world? Jesus was…that’s what Jesus was offered. What good will it do, if you, “…gain the whole world, and lose…” your soul? That’s what’s at stake! And God has opened, through His Son, a way that we can possess His life!
( congregational amens ).
And that’s a life that is incapable of dying! Everything about this life is capable of coming to an end! And it will for those who are serving what this world has to offer.
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December 12, 2021 - No. 1523
“Speak Life” Conclusion
Broadcast #1523
December 12, 2021
December 12, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1523 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: The home is the microcosm, if you will, of the Kingdom of God. Is it not? And of the church. And God’s order there, is so critical to everything. You know, it’s wonderful to come here and hear from the Lord, and have a general kind of, okay, we’re okay with each other, we get along, we’re glad to see each other.
But the workings of the Kingdom of God come right down to the home. God has invested different members of that household with different authority, and the ability to contribute the life of God into the life of the home. As I say, it’s not her place to be his head. But think of the power she has to help him be all that God wants him to be. Praise God!
Now, let’s bring this into balance. We’ve talked about this many times. If you leave it there, you almost get the impression that guys, we’re in charge! We get to do as we please! We’re the boss! Nobody can tell us what to do! We can seek what pleases us! Do you think that’s what’s involved here?
No, not at all. That’s not God’s design. “Husbands, love your wives…” (NIV). And boy, that goes beyond just some sort of sentimental feeling. This is not just romance here. This is a self-sacrificial giving of one’s self for the welfare of another. Okay?
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…” So, what did that look like? “…And gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the…” Ah! We’ve got the word coming back into this, don’t we?
How does He work in us? He invests His words into our hearts and they begin to change us because we embrace them and they change the way we think and the way we look. You know, we present ourselves as a living sacrifice, and we allow ourselves to be changed by the renewing of our minds. That all comes into this. Do you see God’s handiwork and how He’s designed things?
Husbands, He’s given us a tremendous responsibility. I wish I could say I have lived up to it…not even close. God has given us an authority in the household. The question is, what do we do with it? How do we use it?
How did Christ use the authority the Father gave Him with respect to us? Aren’t you glad He did it for us? Aren’t you glad He was willing to sacrifice everything for our welfare? That’s what love is meant to look like. I need God. I have no power to do that.
But do you see the power that a husband’s tongue has? Does he use it to criticize and belittle? Does he use it to press down and try to get his way? Is it selfish? Do you see the damage that kind of a thing can do? I’ll tell you what, we need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational amens ).
We need the Lord to be able to live up to any of this. But there is an order. There is a place God has designed for husbands, for wives, and of course, it breaks down into kids. We’ll get into that in a minute.
But He has set…He’s working to cleanse us, “…by the washing with water through the word, and to present…” Now there’s a purpose. There’s a design in the end. “…To present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” That’s the work that’s ongoing right now. That’s what God is doing in our lives, taking us toward that goal.
And it’s gonna come to pass, isn’t it? Because of His mercy and His love! And you know, He doesn’t look at us in all of our imperfections, like we look at one another. And all of a sudden, our tongue comes out in a pretty negative, pretty harsh way. I’m so glad that God is…He knows how to speak the truth. But He speaks it in love.
We never…if we’re really listening to Him, we never come to the place where we feel rejected, we feel, just set at naught, I don’t care about you. Always, there’s this wanting to help, wanting to lift us up, wanting to deliver us, wanting us to experience more of His love and His mercy. I’m so glad for the character of His voice. What an awesome voice to hear.
How terrible it would be if He were like us. And how impatient we are with each other, and with ourselves sometimes. But we need to see past all of that and understand the power of God’s Word. God invests us with the authority to speak words. Those words have power. If you’re a member of the Body of Christ, you have a measure of authority.
Now, I’ll say this, for some of you may be aware of this, there are people out there who have taken this off into never-never land, this principle. Oh my God! We’re meant to be in charge here. God has given us authority to rule over creation.
I have met people who ran in circles where they believe that they were part of a prophetic community. Oh my God! We don’t deal with the petty little things, we’re up here above the nations. We’re commanding things to happen and things not to happen. And, oh what God…we just, this is where…the place we’re supposed to operate.
Folks, that’s fantasy land. How many of you, some of you may remember something that Brother Jim Cymbala said in a message one time, he was talking about this. And he talked about, I suppose some prophetic group, I don’t know what, exactly, the details were. But he supposedly…they supposedly convened some kind of a conference in San Francisco. And, the purpose of the conference was to take authority over the devil and drive him out of San Francisco…something along that line.
Good luck with that! You know, there are things God hasn’t given us authority to do? We have authority to do what He says here! But I don’t have authority to go out and start commanding the nations! But God has given you, and me, the authority and the power to do what He has called us to do!
( congregational response ).
If He does call somebody here to be an apostle, He will give you what it takes. But if He doesn’t, don’t try to do it on your own. And that…for every aspect of divine order in the Body of Christ, God will give you power.
But I’ll tell you, one of the key ways that that power is expressed is through the tongue, and through words. God has given us the same power that Jesus had when He created the world. You and I have the power to speak life…to speak in such a way that it’s God’s spirit that’s going and affecting people around us. If we’re gonna touch people in this generation, we’re gonna need God to do it through us. We don’t have any power to do that. Okay?
So, he goes on and says, “In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” You get this right, man, you’ve got an awesome place where Christ rules.
( congregational amens ).
The potential of life coming from this order of things is just beyond what we…beyond the norm. But now he gets down to, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Children, God hasn’t put you in a place to tell your parents what to do, and to straighten them out, even when they’re imperfect. God is more concerned with your heart wanting to have a submissive spirit than He is about the issue you’re so worried about.
Hey, we’ve all been there. All of us old folks, we were young once, too. We felt the same way, that sometimes you do. And how…and what about the relationships among all of us, but especially young people. I think every one of you know, words have consequences. You have the power to tear down, to set at naught, to marginalize, to shove aside, to hurt, deeply, with your tongue.
Or you have the ability to encourage. Isn’t that what the Word teaches us to do? We need to use our tongues to encourage one another, and to build one another up. Yes, we can speak the truth, but it’s in love.
How do people speak, how do people feel around you and the way you use your tongue? When you’re feeling rough, do you just sort of let it all lash out? There’s a lot in this, isn’t there? But when you mix this principle of how we use our tongues with the realities of divine order and authority and how that’s carried out, it becomes a big deal. All right?
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother—which is the first commandment with a promise—so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”
But here’s one that’s pretty important. “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” This applies to mothers, as well. But fathers, if God has made you the mayor of your house, the head of it, yes, there is authority, there’s power, but the question is, what do we do with it? How do we use it?
What happens for example, when a father…and some of you have been on the receiving end of this probably, when a father says to a child something like, you’re a failure, you’ll never amount to anything. What’s the effect of something like that? That’s devastating! That comes straight from the heart of Lucifer! He may be venting his own feelings, but boy, there’s a…his tongue has become an instrument of satanic life.
What do you think happens when Dad does that in some fashion? Do you think that the kid just blows it off? You’ve got something that gets planted down here that becomes ‘truth’ to that child, far too easily. And you wind up with a kid growing up, and they’ll try, and they’ll try, and they’ll try, but the underlying ‘truth’ that controls how they think about themselves is that ‘I’m no good, I’ll never amount to anything.’ And it sabotages their entire life.
Do you see how the devil destroys lives with the tongue? Sometimes, it may be just a passing, a passing word. As though, well, words are just…that’s just a word. Words have power! And the devil will take things that we say, that we don’t even intend the way we…the way he thinks. We may not even consciously intend them to be something, and the Devil will take that and destroy somebody’s life with it, or cripple them.
You know, we recognize if a child were, for example, were to break a leg and it not heal properly, and they went around the rest of their life like this, we’d recognize the crippleness of it—it’s physical. But what about physiological crippling? What about spiritual crippling? I pray that if that’s something that’s come into your life that you will let God heal it.
( congregational amens ).
Because Satan has sown a lie in you. If you are His—if you are Christ’s, you are His child! You’re God’s child! You have an eternal destiny! Jesus paid the same price for you as He did for anybody!
( congregational amens ).
And you matter to Him!
( congregational amens ).
And I just pray God will take that truth from here, and so…and will just replace lies that have been buried in people’s hearts. But, oh God, the responsibility we have as parents to use the authority and the power that God has given us in a way that will build up.
I’m not talking about flattery and happy talk, on a carnal level. You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about speaking the words of God. If our hearts are open to what the Lord is saying to us, and the changes He is making in us, we’re gonna have something we can speak. We’re gonna be able to reflect that, it’s gonna come out in our own speech and the way we treat our children, and the way God treats us.
Oh, we need to have that same mercy. God has given you and everybody in a home a place and when it operates the way God intends, God’s spirit is there and peace reigns. But oh, when tongues get attached to human nature, you’ve got a fight, you’ve got a mess, you’ve got broken lives, you got all kinds of heartache and damage done to people.
May God give us grace to humble ourselves and say, oh God. Wouldn’t it be nice if we said with David, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my Redeemer.” (KJV). It’s what we think about and what we say, what’s really gotten ahold of our hearts.
Didn’t Jesus say that it’s out of the heart, “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” Folks, if you’ve got those kinds of words coming out, and it’s kind of a characteristic of your life, there’s something down here that you need to get healed. If anger is boiling out of you, it’s because it’s in here. Don’t say, it’s their fault! We’ve said it many times, nobody can make you angry, being angry is a choice that we make. But it does become a habit. And we need God to break them.
( congregational amens ).
Just put this together in your mind and meditate on it. It’s a simple thought, in a way, but there is an order in God’s Kingdom. God has pulled us with raw, spiritual energy, power, that’s greater than everything the devil has. And He has brought us out, and He has made us a part of a kingdom.
I just thought of a scripture that we use all the time. Listen to the scripture we use all the time, in Revelation chapter 12. It talks about the victory of the Cross. Verse 10, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.” (NIV).
You see those words, power, kingdom, authority? We have all of heaven standing behind us, if we will hook up with Him, and be an expression of Him. God will be with us. And how does that come out? “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” Folks, this does get down to the individual standing against the devil. But you and I have been given a power against the devil because of what happened at the cross.
( congregational amens ).
The power and authority and the Kingdom of Christ has come! He’s called us into that! He has invested us with the ability, but the responsibility, to exercise the word that He gives to us in a way that builds people up, and sets people free! And the more we do that, the more we’re gonna have something that will help one another and build one another up, and have Godly homes!
But also, something to share with a broken world, because all they’ve got is power, the power of darkness, because lies…their entire lives have been built on lies. It could be that they were one of those that Dad said, you’re no good, and they’re living with that crushed spirit. Or they could have been one that said, you’re born for greatness, go for it! Either way it leads to death if it’s just this world.
But God has called us to something much higher. May His character and His spirit infuse our, what comes out of our tongues, greater and greater. I realize we are very imperfect at this, and we’ll still probably say silly things. I probably will today. But may God give us the power to recognize what’s going on, and the power to speak life.
You, if you are God’s child, you’re one of the only ones on this planet, who has the power to actually speak life. I’m not talking about just being positive with somebody, I’m talking about speaking divine life because we’re hooked up with the fountain, we’re hooked up with the source. That’s what this is about. May God give us grace to use the power that He has given to us in a way that accomplishes His will and His purpose in the earth. To Him be glory!
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December 5, 2021 - No. 1522
“Speak Life” Part One
Broadcast #1522
December 5, 2021
December 5, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1522 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I’ve had some thoughts going around in my mind the last…oh, two or three days especially. And, some of it is going to be things we’ve…many of it’s gonna be things we’ve heard before, but I saw a connection that I don’t know that I had really emphasized before. And so, I’m want to go ahead and start with the verse, perhaps this is the center of it, in Proverbs chapter 18, verse 21. And, it’s not, as I say, a new thought, but I felt like the Lord, you know, opened my eyes to something that I hope will help us this morning, because I need help, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
I need it as much as you do. I just happen to be the one the Lord has put up in this particular place. That doesn’t mean I don’t have needs, but the Lord is faithful. But anyway, these are the words of Solomon in the Proverbs.
And he says this, “The tongue has the power of life and death…” (NIV). Certainly, that’s not a new thought, is it? “The tongue has the power of life and death.” I don’t know if we realize the power of our tongue, and how central it is to virtually everything in our lives on this earth and God’s purposes for us. How many of you know we were created in the image of God? When God does something, how does He do it? I mean, when creation happened, how did He do that?
( congregational response ).
He spoke. There was power in the Word that He spoke, wasn’t there…enough to accomplish something? And I wonder if we realize just how powerfully creative human speech is, and the implications of that in so many different ways? But, it not only has the power of life, it has the power of death. I think we realize that by looking at the world.
You know, I was thinking…as I was thinking of this, my mind went back to the simple fact, I believe on a natural level, there are a lot of people in this world that actually understand this in a measure, but on a totally natural level, disconnected from God, that people have power to say things and make them come to pass.
You know, a little over a century ago, the human race went through a period of great optimism. You know, where a new century in 1900 is turning over and we’re seeing scientific advances and we’re just gonna go forward into a glorious future for mankind. And, what a…what a crazy introduction to one of the worst centuries that the world has ever seen, in terms of violence. But up until you got into some of that, there was this optimism. And there was an idea that began to be very popular. How many of you have ever read the book, or seen one of the movie adaptations of “The Secret Garden.”
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. It’s a very sweet story on one level. But if you actually read the original, do you know what the real theme of that is? That human speech is powerful, almost magical, that if we will simply engage that natural power that we all have, we could change our own future. We can change our…you know, our fortunes.
We can undo bad things and make good things come to pass. We have creative power through the mind, and so the characters were actually engaged in, not only in confessing positive things, but chanting them, as though, if we just chant the right things, then magical things will happen. That was actually the theme of the book.
It’s been soft-pedalled in many of the movie adaptations, thankfully, so you can kind of enjoy it on that level. But that’s not a new idea, and out of that you see that reflected in a lot of the motivational speakers…will talk about, think and grow rich. Or confess what you’re…confess the way you want to go, and you can confess yourself right into earthly success.
But you know, as I thought about that, Solomon wrote, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” And we tend to think of that as being just positive and negative. You know, some people are just negative all the time. They say bad stuff and so, they drag everybody down around them. And that’s true. And, but what we need to be is positive and just build everybody up and say positive things, and encouraging things.
And up to a point, on a natural level, that’s true. But just suppose that somebody was to listen to one of these motivational speakers and just really engage every part of their being, their mind, their emotions, their words, and they confess themselves into such wealth and power that they own the whole world! Then what? What did Jesus say about that? What will it profit, if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?
So, think about…let’s go back to the tongue part of that. What did the tongue actually produce? Did it produce life or did it produce death? See, this world is founded upon ideas, lies that have flown…thrown…whatever, they come from…flown, I guess is the word, sort of. They have flowed, from the mind, and the will or the heart of Lucifer, who felt like he could pursue his own best interest independently of God. And so, he has built an entire world system, a world order upon lies.
Those lies have been…I mean, central to the propagation of those lies has been the human tongue. And it gets obvious when Satan tears people down with other people’s tongues. That becomes rather obvious. But what we don’t always see is the philosophies, the ideas that are promoted that are supposedly high and wonderful and glorious and lead to a wonderful future. They are equally dangerous, because they are a lie from the enemy.
And you know, where it comes to God’s people, where we’re concerned…we’re not concerned about welfare in this world primarily. God is concerned about taking care…He’ll take care of His own, and He’ll accomplish His purposes even where there are difficulties to go through. But God’s purposes are not bound up in what happens in this world. We know this world is gonna pass away, and often we don’t live as if that’s really true.
We need to be…we need to realize every moment of every day that we are citizens of another world. We are here and we have responsibilities and activities and all of that, but that’s not where our heart ever needs to be. And so, what God is concerned about, and what He put this in the Book about has to do with more than simply having a positive attitude, and an upbeat and sunny personality. We’d like that, we enjoy it on the natural level, but boy, that doesn’t really lead to eternal life, does it?
Think of what Jesus said that we’ve quoted so many times in John chapter 6, and I’ve got so many different translations in my mind, I’ll give you the essence of it. But He said, “The Spirit gives life.” The only source of real life is God’s Spirit. Everything else may look like life and may feel good for a time, but it is infected with death and it leads to death.
There is no life to be found, and that’s what He says in the second part of that verse. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh…” profits nothing. In other words, anything that originates in human nature, that’s what the flesh really stands for there, it’s human nature…everything that originates in human nature leads to death. It does not profit. It cannot help God out. It cannot contribute to God.
That’s why religious effort is worthless. If it’s not actually infused with the life of God, if we are not living extensions, as it were, expressions of the Spirit of God in what we do and what we say, what are we? Are we accomplishing anything? You see how much we need the Lord? We need the Lord!
But Jesus didn’t stop there. He made the contrast, the Spirit gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words. “…the words that I speak unto you…are spirit, and they are life.” (KJV). Let it sink in. Jesus didn’t come to do His own will, did He? God didn’t give Him a general idea of what He wanted Him to accomplish, and say, go figure it out and do it.
He knew that the only way…I mean, He lived in flesh, same as we do, but He knew the only way He could accomplish anything that was eternal, was to stay in contact with God, and to have the Spirit of God resting upon Him and inspiring what He did and what He said, so that it really wasn’t just Him saying it. The words, He said later on, that I speak to you, or the words that I do, the things that I do, it’s the Father who lives in Me who is doing His work.
And so, that is what God is seeking to bring about in our lives. And every one of us, we are on a journey at best. We have a lot of things come out of our mouths that don’t really accomplish anything or that accomplish something bad. And I just feel like the Lord wants to shine a light on this, because it is so central.
The human tongue is so central to everything that we do, all of our relationships. I mean, if we just put a muzzle on and walked around, it would be kind of a dull world. We’d be having to communicate some way, with sign language or something. But God has given us this tool by which we can communicate, but do you realize the power that is released for good or ill by these tongues?
Every one of us has a place that God has designed for you and for me and He wants to get us to the place where we can exercise ourselves in a godly way, and where this ties in with where we started is, the tongue is pretty central, isn’t it? It’s very involved in every aspect of our human life.
And if God has put you in a place, you have a powerful member of your body, and your spirit, and that will either tear down or it will minister life, it has the potential to minister life. Just meditate on some of that. Think about, what place has God put you in? What are our responsibilities?
I’ll read some familiar scriptures, just as a backdrop here. But James chapter 3 is certainly one of them. These are general principles here. But I want to tie this in with this other business of the Kingdom and the order of the Kingdom, because this is an important thing, that I…I just sense God wanting us to get this in a deeper way.
But anyway, beginning in…the beginning of chapter 3 of James. “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” (NIV). So, you guys just stay back…
( laughing ).
…No. If God’s called you to be a teacher, you be one. But don’t be ambitious to try to be something that God hasn’t called you to do, all right?
“We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.” But there’s nobody like that, is there? “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.
“Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”
That’s a pretty good description of the world. You know, whether you’re positive or negative, or successful or beat down, it’s all part of the same thing if it comes from the heart and the mind of Lucifer. Oh, how God longs to inject His Spirit into every equation of our lives—every part of our lives. That’s what this is about.
“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.” And then he goes on and talks about the wisdom from above and so on. He goes into a…he enlarges in a different direction there.
I want to turn back to Hebrews…I’m sorry, Ephesians chapter 4. There is…this theme is kind of repeated in a number of ways, but I see it leading into something that I believe is central and connecting divine order on the one hand, with the human tongue on the other. That’s kind of the equation that the Lord helped me to see. All right?
So, Paul has talked about the Gospel and what He’s brought us to…the Body of Christ, and how we’re all gonna grow up together, because everybody contributes what God gives. So, I tell you…verse 17, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.” Where did their thinking come from? The tongue of the devil, one way or another, it got there. That’s where it originated.
“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
“That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Remember, how does God create? He speaks, doesn’t He? How does God create new life in a human heart? He speaks, doesn’t He? Remember the words of Jesus. They’re not…they’re Spirit and they’re life, they’re not just words and ideas. God has to speak to a human heart in such a way that it gets all the way down in here. And like a seed, that soil has to say, yes, I embrace that. That’s what I need.
I’ll tell you, when we do that, God brings forth a brand-new creation. If anyone is in Christ, what? He’s a new creation—a brand-new creation. There is a new creation that’s happening right now, that’s already part of what will live forever. When God get finished creating a new life in us, turning us completely into products of the new creation, the other is done away with, He’s gonna…then it’s gonna be new heavens and a new earth when He gets us finished. That’s what’s happening right now. It’s happening within the context of a broken world, but I’ll tell you, God is speaking life to human hearts. I want to listen, don’t you?
“Therefore each of you must…” Now he gets down to the individual believer. “…Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.” So now, you’re getting into the tongue, aren’t you?
“In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” Everybody here has done that one time or another. May God give us grace to realize what’s happening when we get angry. And we, every one of us, do. We just need the Lord’s grace to back off and say, God, if there’s a problem, let it not be in my heart. Let me let go. Praise God! Praise God! There’s freedom, if we’re willing.
All right, “Do not give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.”
Now, listen to what he says. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs….” According to their needs, not your needs.
We’re pretty good at using our tongues to try to advance our cause. Isn’t it something? Did Jesus do that? Did He go around trying to win people to Himself in a selfish, prideful way? Everything He did was the Father reaching out with a heart of love for the welfare of the listener. Boy, how unlike Him we are by nature.
But you see where God is going with all of this, what He desires out of us? He has given us a powerful tool, in these tongues, and He longs to see us be able to use them in a way that they become instruments of accomplishing His purpose. I can’t do that without Him—I can’t do that without a surrendered heart, without Him actually empowering what I say. But this is what He’s talking about.
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Then he talks about living in love, and there’s so much here, I don’t want to try to read all of it necessarily. But I want to get down to verse 15, and let’s go past that, because I want to get to something here.
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another….”
Now all of a sudden, you’ve got your tongue involved again. See, there is a…there’s something God…there’s Someone…God Himself wants to live within us in a way so that we have the power to say things that actually change people’s lives for the better. You see the power you have? God has given you…this isn’t just a power to stand up here and speak, this is a power that is meant to operate person to person in everyday life. Think about that.
“Be filled with the Spirit…” And that’s that Greek continuous sense. That’s a way of life, in other words. I need to have Him in me. “…Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
How good are we at that? Giving thanks to God for everything? There it is. It’s there, right in black and white. But you know, if we understand the heart of God and the purposes of God, we can say, Lord, thank You. I may not like this in the natural. I don’t feel good. I don’t understand it even, but I know You love me. I know your purpose is going to prevail.
I know, as we heard this morning, that you’re gonna continue to work in me until the day of Jesus Christ, and it’s gonna come out just exactly right. So, I’m just gonna be…I’m gonna be thankful for the process even when I don’t understand. That’s called faith. That’s believing God more than believing how you feel and what you want in the natural. Thank God!
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November 28, 2021 - No. 1521
“Battles are Coming” Conclusion
Broadcast #1521
November 28, 2021
November 28, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1521 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: God is just as committed to bringing…to exerting His power to accomplish His purpose in you as He was in His Son. Meditate on that. He is just as committed to you and you and you as He was to bring His Son out of that tomb when all hell was arrayed against that happening, and not only to bring Him back to the surface of the earth but to elevate Him to a place of the highest Name in all the universe other than the Father Himself.
And He has the commission to gather a kingdom, to subdue every other power on this planet. All the powers that He’s talking about there, He will subdue them, do away with them. There will be nothing left of Satan and his kingdom.
Folks, God wants us to step forward into this new year with a confidence in this that is not just in our heads, but it’s when we meet it in the battle.
You know, I was thinking about the simple thing of battles, and I think, sometimes, we think about these force-on-force…there’s an oppression coming against me, there may be some difficult circumstances, maybe I get sick, something external. I have a…you know, a hole in my bank account, and there’s a big bill coming. I mean, we think of these kinds of things…oh, that’s the devil.
But I’ll tell you, the devil has so many strategies that he uses against every one of us, and God wants us to be awake and aware. How many times, in our lives, do we have something come against us? Maybe it’s pulling on our nature, maybe it’s a temptation that we’ve tended not to handle very well. It’s a besetting sin that we call it. And there we are, and our lives are still so polluted with anger, unresolved resentments, unresolved issues that need forgiveness. Do you think maybe God just might want us to shed some of those burdens?
But, here’s the simple truth of that. Boy, it’s gotten quiet. There’s a simple truth about that. It’s awful easy to say, well, just stop doing that. You know, just forgive and move on. Do you know there are things that happen in every one of our lives where that’s impossible, unless God helps us?
So, it really comes down, not just to a question of ability, it comes down to a question of willingness. There are things that we cling to, every one of us, there are burdens that take away our peace. We’re not standing on solid ground. Satan has got an enemy on the inside that’s hindering us and holding us back. I’ll tell you, there are things that God wants to resolve in every one of our lives.
Perhaps, a good scripture for today would have been forgetting what’s behind, reaching forth to what’s before. But that comes into this, doesn’t it? How can we stand our ground, if we’re sitting there carrying the baggage of our lives, and all the bad stuff that’s ever happened, and how bad I think I am and all that kind of stupid stuff? It afflicts every one of us, in one area or another.
Did Jesus not die for all of those things? Is there a single burden that He wants you to carry, and says, I’ll forgive you for everything else, but you’re gonna have to live with that one now?
You know, sometimes we live with consequences, but there’s a freedom that we can have in our hearts and our spirits. If we’re gonna be able to rise up in the morning and look to God and step into a new day, facing whatever challenges come, man, you can’t drag your past into that and have much luck, have much success. We need the Lord to give us the grace to let go of everything that holds us back.
2020 is gone, and we need God’s grace to leave it and every year before that in the past. Whatever has happened in our lives, God wants us to cast our burden upon Him. He has got shoulders that can carry the burdens of the world all at once! There’s a freedom that He wants for me, He wants for you! Do you have it today? That’s part of relying upon His strength.
But, oh God, I just can’t let it go. It was so bad. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know what I’ve been through. Yeah, He does. You’re not any different than anybody else. He longs to set you free from whatever baggage you’re carrying. That’s part of having peace on your feet. It gives you a place to…man, I’m good here, I can stand.
You know, if you get up in the morning, and things upset you, or you’re already upset, you think Jesus went around like that? And He wants to share that with us. Let things happen around us. They can happen, and we can ask God to help us to be the light that we ought to be, but I mean, to take that into our being, and hug it, and just embrace that, you know, it begins to just color our whole personality. It begins to put us in deep bondage, and God wants us to be free.
I pray that God…as we face the battles that are coming, that God will give us a place to stand in Him, where we’re not shackled to our past. If you’re shacked to your past, and you know what Jesus did, then what’s the problem? What does it come down to? Are you willing to let it go?
Anybody here that’s really been forgiven by the Lord, did He wait for you to deserve it? Why do you think the scriptures tell us over and over again, forgive as God has forgiven you? Why does He tell us as brethren, we spoke about this recently, to dwell together in the bond of peace? God wants to take everything out of our hearts, regardless of whether something evil was done, it doesn’t have to plant a seed of bitterness in here.
I don’t know why I’m emphasizing this to the degree I am, but…I know the human condition. I know when we think of powers and principalities and battle and all that, we think of stuff out here that’s bad that’s gonna happen to me, some circumstance. But boy, it gets down to the issues of the heart. This is where Satan attacks.
You know, it uses the word strategies in here. When he’s looking…like you would be looking for a natural enemy, if you were in the military. You know, we’ve got guys here who are or have been in the military…and they’re looking for a way to defeat a certain enemy. Do you think they just say come on, let’s just pile up our resources and ram them head on, or do they look for weaknesses, look for vulnerabilities?
You know, as I say, we live, as Paul said, we live in a context of a world that is…we can’t see, but it’s real. How many of you know that it’s real? We don’t need to say this to be fearful of it, but we do need to be aware. There are real spiritual beings. They are real. They have names. The Lord has opened people’s eyes, in the past, to be able to see some of this. It’s real. And we need to…we need to be aware of that.
But do you know that there are spirits that are studying you…like I say, they know your “buttons”? And do you know, sometimes, the Lord allows Satan to test?
I mean, this is…you know, I’m starting again on the Bible that’s in order…I mean, in the chronological order. I couldn’t remember the word, the Chronological Bible. And you barely get started in the first few chapters of Genesis when you jump into Job, because most people, most scholars believe that Job actually lived between the time when the nations began to be spread out after the Tower of Babel and Abraham, sometime in that period.
Way off in central Asia somewhere, a man named Job lived, and you have this recounting. But how many of you remember how that started? Satan becomes before the Lord. I don’t know how that happened, but it records it.
Who brought Job up? God did! Do you think He was mad at Job? No! “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him.” (NIV). And, of course, the Devil says, yeah, sure. You put a hedge about him. You made him rich. Of course, he’s gonna serve you. Give me a break. So, the Lord says, all right, you can touch everything that he has, just leave him alone. And all of the sudden, he’s lost his possessions, his family, other than his wife, and she wasn’t much help.
And…but what was his response? You think about how he responded to that, the grace that this man who knew next to nothing about God. He’d heard about God. Noah could have still been alive at this point, but the truth of what happened in the flood was still pretty fresh in people’s minds. And there he was, and he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (KJV).
So, the Devil goes back before the Lord, and the Lord brings Job up again. Come on, Lord, give me a break here. I’m serving You. I’m doing the best I know how to do. What’s this about? And, the Devil says, yeah, people will give up everything, but You begin to touch them, they’ll curse You. Don’t worry. He says, all right, you can do what you want, just save his life. And so, he gives him boils from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.
And Job went through a pretty low time. And it wasn’t a matter of somebody being strong and saying, boy, I’ve got this. This guy went through hell. Interesting thing is, he said the thing that I greatly feared has come upon me. Do you know the Lord was looking down and knew that Job was in a place that He wanted to bring him to a better place?
Do you think maybe some of the battles that God is going to set us in, give us to fight, do you think maybe He has that in mind, He wants to bring us to a stronger better place where these truths are real, and we’ve experienced them? Yeah.
And of course, that’s what happened…with Job at the end. I’ve heard of You with the hearing of the ear. I’ve heard about You, but now I see. And he comes to a place of repentance and trust, and God blesses him twice as much as he ever had before. See, God wasn’t trying to hurt him, God was trying to bless him.
We need to see that God is seeking to bless us, when He allows you to be tempted, when He allows you and me to experience a challenging thing that brings us even to a place where we just throw up our hands and say, oh, God, I’m in a dark place. I don’t know what to do. But what did David say? When I go through the valley of the shadow of death, You’re with me.
And many times, you and I will face battles this year where we won’t have any feelings to go on. We’ll just be standing there, trying to do the best we can, and we’re looking to God. We’re confident we’re gonna do the right thing. We get to be like Peter. I’d never deny You. And suddenly, the Lord gives the devil permission to touch us in way that brings out, not our strengths which we don’t have, but shows our weaknesses and our needs.
Does He do that to hurt us? Does anybody here believe that God does that to hurt you? Of course, we act like that, don’t we? But I believe we…that God is gonna bring us through things that will make us stronger.
Think about what He did with Paul. I mean, like I say, I don’t think I’m saying anything new this morning, but somehow, I think we need a fresh, some fresh thoughts, some fresh thinking about this. All that Paul went through, that he refers to in the beginning of 2nd Corinthians when he just despaired of life.
Do you think Paul was happy-happy? No. Paul was…as far as Paul was concerned, it’s over. I’m about to die. Do you think his emotions were high, and he was just living in this high realm? I’ll tell you, the people of God, the most Godly people we run into in the scriptures, have times when they just are at the bottom, emotionally, David certainly. Oh God, where are You?
But here was Paul going through all of this, and then, he comes out the other end, and he says that God did this so that I would learn to rely on Him. Not only that, now I’ve been through something that He’s gonna give me the power to give somebody else comfort.
Oh, we have a God who’s purposed to do some things in us that we desperately need. And think about the foundation of what Paul is saying here. When he talks about the fact that…when he pictures the beginning of chapter 2, he pictures the condition that we’re in. I mean, it is one of totally being a helpless slave in a world system that hates God, and we’re just part of it, and that’s our destiny.
And it has nothing to do with any virtue in us, but because of God’s love and mercy, that’s what drives Him. That’s the reason He reached out to you and to me. It wasn’t because we deserved anything. It’s because He’s a God who loves to show mercy. He reached out, and He did what was necessary at the cost that we see at the cross.
And He did it, and He didn’t just bring us up with Christ, He set us on a throne with Him, in a place of power and victory. And even entering into that, which required faith, where can I find faith? It’s just…I look in here, it’s not in there. And He looks down and He says, I know, I’m giving you My Spirit. My Spirit is gonna make it possible for you to have faith. Yield.
You see that sense of a passive relationship? It’s passive in the sense that I have to receive something. I can’t muster it up. It’s passive. I have to allow God to possess my heart. I have to allow Him to give me faith, and then in the strength of that, I step forward, and I say, yes, Lord, I believe. I hand over the reins of my life. My destiny in Your hands. I am Yours, come what may. I’ll tell you, that’s what real salvation is about.
But you know, it doesn’t stop there. When he describes that process, it’s not by works that we’ve done, nothing that we can boast, but he says, “…unto good works, which God hath before ordained….” He’s planned them ahead of time, that we should do.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who’s gonna go to work. You come to that moment in time when you surrender, and you hand your life over to Him to do with as He pleases, to prepare you for something that’s way beyond this. Okay, then He goes to work. But how does He work? He’s gonna put you and me in situations.
See, Paul unlocks this whole foundation that we were talking about. It begins in the heart of God, doesn’t it? It begins with a purpose, but a purpose that just sits there, that doesn’t do anything…God, not only had a purpose, He had a plan, which means, how I’m going to carry out my purpose.
And that purpose, I mean, that plan centered in the life of His Son, since we had no power to participate in it. God knew about us. He planned for us. And He gave us, in all of this, for those that He reveals Himself to, He calls them into a kingdom and gives you a brand-new identity.
Folks, if you and I enter this…the new year, whatever it is…if we enter this new year, thinking of ourselves as, basically, losers, what hope do you have when the battle comes? I’m just a loser. I’m just a failure. And the devil can look at you and say, you’ve been here before. We know how this is gonna turn out. Quit struggling.
But God absolutely has made you and me His children. He has given us His Spirit, and the gift of His Spirit is the guarantee that He’s gonna finish what He’s started. Folks, you and I are not who the devil says we are. You and I are not who we think we are because of our own weaknesses. We are who God says we are!
( congregational amens ).
See how that underlies all of this? Because here’s what happens when we get in the battle. It’s all…like I say, it’s wonderful to sit here on Sunday morning, and talk about this and say, yes, Lord, this is wonderful. But when you and I get in the battle, it comes down to the ability to lay hold of these truths, not just as theories that we know about or truths…objective truth that we know, this has got to be me!
I can think about how all the things that He did and how wonderful they are, but does that include me? Anybody here ever fought that battle? I mean, you might not put it in those words, but somehow, all these things don’t quite mean me, and they don’t quite mean now. Am I the only one that ever feels that?
It’s not really…I mean, yes, it’s all wonderful, but look at me. Look at my weaknesses. Look at my history. Look at…all these things about me somehow negate that. And so, instead of being able to pick up the sword or pick up the shield…I guess the shield would be this way if you’re right-handed. Instead of being able to pick them up, I’m…who, me? I don’t have a right to do that. Who am I?
I’ll tell you, you are who God says you are, not who the devil says you are. But you’re not who you think you are. You’re not who the world says you are. You are who I say you are. I have planned for you from the foundation of the world, and I’m gonna finish what I started.
This isn’t gonna end this year. Well, I hope it does. Actually, that would be great, but anyway…this isn’t just gonna go so far, and then, okay, I can’t finish it. This is a God who will finish what He started.
And everything that happens, every battle that comes that He brings you through, He has given you and me everything we need. Everything we need is here. The same mighty power that brought Jesus out of the grave, is yours and mine, to enable us to stand just as surely as Jesus stood up to the temptations of the devil.
Do you think Jesus was just proof-texting the devil when He spoke the Word, or do you think that was something that was living and real, and that God had made real in His heart…and He spoke it? And He said, this is what God says.
You and I have that same power, and God is gonna accomplish things in you and me so that when 2022 arrives, if it does, when that arrives, we will be different people than we are today. We will have grown.
God will have set us free from things that have held on to us our whole lives. You and I will be in a place of greater strength so that we can help other people who are going through the same things we are. This isn’t just about you. This is about us.
And God has promised that…you think about what he said in chapter 5 about how He gave Himself to the church, to do what? To present her to Himself as a glorious church without spot, wrinkle or blemish or any such thing, but that includes you, as individuals and me.
Can you visualize that, that God has got a purpose to speak His Words into our heart to change us into His image, and actually be able to present us as finished products in glory one day? Only God can do that, but that’s the hope of the Gospel! And that’s what He wants everyone here to know.
There are battles coming, don’t be afraid. But the Lord wants us to, not just wait for the battle and put on the armor, but learn how to live in the reality of these truths. And when the battles come, we are equipped to stand, and the devil has no power against us, when we stand in His strength.
And I just praise Him this morning for His goodness. I praise Him for His faithfulness. I praise Him that that same power that brought Jesus out of the grave is on our side and with us to help us. He is just as committed to you as He was to His Son. And we need to live in that reality this year. Praise God!
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November 21, 2021 - No. 1520
“Battles are Coming” Part One
Broadcast #1520
November 21, 2021
November 21, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1520 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, one thought came to me and I guess it would be as good a title as any is, “Battles Are Coming.” It’s interesting how Paul has spent so much time in this book unlocking the mysteries of God and His purposes and what He’s done for us and who we are and all those things. But the focus at the end is in the context of all the wonderful things God has done, and how He wants us to live as a result of all of that.
The reality is, He has allowed His purposes to unfold in a world that hates Him, that is under the dominion…a world system that is under the dominion of a sworn enemy, who just absolutely opposes everything that is good and right, everything that has to do with God, who hates every single one of us, who is constantly at work and we need to live with the reality of that.
And this is not a mistake on God’s part. This is simply the way it is and this is the way God has purposed that things unfold. But Paul felt the need, at this point, not just to say, look at all this wonderful stuff God has done, isn’t it great? But to say, hey, there are battles coming, and we need to live with the knowledge of that. We need to have a sense of how God wants us to handle that.
And so, I think…I’ve gone round and around. Lord, this is too big a subject. How do I deal with it, even? And I’m just trusting Him to focus on the thoughts that He wants to bring out, because, as I say, I don’t know that I’ll say anything really different. But maybe, you never know. If the Lord says it, if the Lord breathes some life into it, then it’ll be worth everything, won’t it?
( congregational response ).
‘Cause I need this. Anybody here need this?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! We get weary sometimes and we don’t…this is something we prefer not to talk about. It’s not exactly the most exhilarating thing. We can’t just sit here and pretend things are awesome and wonderful and we’re like eagles soaring up here and we never feel anything, never struggle, because, reality is, we do.
And the one who wrote this, knew just a little bit about what he was talking about, didn’t he? Yeah, you remember how he went on his first missionary journey with Barnabas, I believe, in the first one. And they went from place to place and, over and over again, he would begin to preach and some people would begin to respond, but the population in each city that he went to eventually turned against him to the point where he had to flee.
And in one of those places, they…things turned around so dramatically that they stoned Paul, thought he was dead. Think about that. Picture that for a minute. Okay, we’ve got him. We’ve stoned him. He’s laying there dead. What do we do with him? Okay, get him by the heels and drag him out of town and dump him and we’re done! I mean, this is something Paul went through. Anybody here been through that? I certainly haven’t, or anything close.
So, Paul knew what he was talking about. And, of course, the wonderful picture there was that he got up and went back into the town. Would you do that? Stayed overnight and then left the next day and went on to the next place.
And when they had finished going through three or four places, I don’t remember exactly, the plan was, we’re gonna turn back around and go back through all of these places that opposed us so bitterly. But we’re gonna go there and encourage the believers.
Now, Paul…one of the things, one of the main messages he said was, “…we must, through much…” (KJV). It is necessary to go through much trouble…I’ll paraphrase it, to “…enter the kingdom of God.” We’re gonna have to go through a lot of trouble to do it.
Do you think they thought this was theory? Some of these believers had witnessed what we just talked about. They knew that it cost everything to be a part of the Kingdom of God. But I’ll tell you, if you ever see the Kingdom, if you ever see and have a confrontation—a personal confrontation with the God who is behind all of this, I’ll tell you, it is worth everything!
( congregational amens ).
It is worth everything to be born again and to be a part of this Kingdom! I’ll tell you…people who really serve the Lord and really get it, we can come to a place, by God’s grace, only, where we literally…if they put a bullet to your head and say deny Jesus or we’re gonna shoot you, we’d say go ahead and shoot me, praise God!
You think of the fellas in the Old Testament. They didn’t know all this glorious truth that we’re talking about here, but they had such a faith that when those three Hebrew children stood…or men, young men, I guess, stood before Nebuchadnezzar and he says bow or burn, these people stood up to the greatest emperor on earth at that day and said, we don’t know whether our God…our God is able to deliver us from your hand. He’s bigger than you are. Now, if He chooses not to deliver us, that’s okay. But we know one thing. We’re not gonna bow!
I’ll tell you, God is building that kind of a faith and a commitment and a character in our lives, and that doesn’t come by sitting in a seminar and just learning it with our heads. God is going to take us through the things that are necessary to form in us that kind of strength of conviction. Do you think we’re gonna need that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! If you’ve got any eyes to see and any sense into what’s going on in the Spirit, you see the way this world is unfolding. And it’s not, as he describes in this passage, it’s not just politics. It’s not just people. There is a kingdom of darkness that is literally molding the minds of people with deception, and convincing them of the direction that he wants to take humanity, and before it’s over, he is going to have the human race enslaved, in some fashion or other.
I don’t know, I’m not gonna try to predict exactly what or when. I’ve said that, many times. But, I’ll tell you, we know what the scriptures tell us. We know how the end times are described.
But God, in the meantime, wants His people to absolutely be aware of this. I’m just gonna read this, briefly, and then I’ll go back and try to comment on the parts that I think the Lord wants to emphasize.
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
“In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” (NIV).
And of course, he solicits their prayers for him and his ministry. You know, I was thinking about this passage, and I think it should be obvious that we’re not meant to just lift this passage out of scripture and just kind of micro examine all the ins and outs and the details of that. This thing exists in a context, doesn’t it? This rests upon a foundation.
Wouldn’t it be terrible if somebody built a roof and said, okay, there’s a roof, pick it up and hold it up. Now, there’s got to be something that roof rests upon. And everything that went before, in this awesome letter that Paul wrote to the Ephesians, is the foundation upon which he finally says, this is how it is, this is what you need to be doing.
You know, as my mind went to this, also…you know, I guess I thought back to the beginning and how much of this simply comes out of the heart and the mind of God, doesn’t it? None of what we are a part of today originated with us, did it? It originated in God’s heart.
Not only that, it originated in His heart before He ever began to create anything. And we know, from the scriptures that He knew your name and mine, knew everything about us, before any of this happened! That’s incredible! That’s incredible! And He knew everything good and bad, if there’s anything good. But the simple truth is He knew all of that.
And so, you could look at this and you could come to a place and some people almost do this, where it’s all up to God. All we need to do is lift up all His purposes and know that it’s gonna happen. But you know the reality is there’s a part that we play.
It’s not that we depend upon…it depends upon some quality in us. Thank God for that! God’s not looking for people who are strong, somehow, on the inside, and able to do what He’s saying to do. He’s looking for people that are willing to let go and surrender.
How many of you understand that sometimes God will put you on the deep end of the pool, as we say, and He does it to bring you to a place where you have no answers? You are in over your head. You know you are and you know there’s not a thing you can do.
It’s God’s mercy to take us to the end of ourselves. He does that, not because He’s mad or angry with us, He does it because He loves us enough to show us that we don’t have what it takes. I don’t! Trust me, standing up here I am conscious—more conscious every time I come here of how weak I am and how completely dependent I am on the Lord.
And I’ll guarantee He’s gonna keep teaching me that because I need it. I’m just like you. You know, as I come to these services, I fight battles myself. And…but, always there comes this thought that I’m not the only one. The people to whom you’re gonna be speaking are going through these same things. They need to hear my heart. They need to hear what this is about. Praise God!
And so, there are things that we are told to do…basically, put on the full armor. You go through…put on the full armor! Stand! Take up this, put on that and so forth, all these things that we are meant to do.
Folks, there’s a participation that we have in the outworking of God’s purpose and what He seeks to do in you and in me. We cannot sit there and lie and go to sleep and say, praise God, my ticket to heaven is in my back pocket, it’s all in His hands and I’m gonna wake up one day in glory and it’s gonna be wonderful.
God has a reason for bringing us through the way He’s bringing us through. The virtues, the qualities that He seeks to build, that we are gonna have and enjoy for all eternity, are formed in this. They’re formed in, ‘the furnace of affliction,’ to use a scriptural expression.
And I’ll…none of this is new, is it? We just don’t like to hear it. We want to find some other way. Oh, God, send in that powerful apostle, bring me down to the altar, let him lay his hands upon me, take it out and put it in, whatever is needed, and then I’m good to go and I’m gonna fly like an eagle over everything. Oh, my God!
You know, we can have experiences in the Lord that are genuine. But we don’t pursue experiences. And we don’t lean upon that. We don’t lean upon feeling like everything’s like it’s supposed to be. I’ll guarantee every one of us, in the battles that lie ahead, we are gonna be in places where we feel our weakest, where feelings are gone, because God doesn’t want us to rely upon our feelings but upon what is actually true. We’re gonna be facing those things, every single person here. And I’ll tell you, we need, we need Him, don’t we?
And one…one thing that just kind of popped out at me, in how he leads into this subject, is a simple statement. It says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” Now, particularly, if you cut that off after be strong, you know, he almost…it sounds like a motivational speech, doesn’t it? Come on, you guys, quit pussyfooting around. You got it in you. It’s in there. You got to muster your strength and your forces. Don’t you have a bad attitude, don’t you give up. Come on, it’s in there. Let’s…you know, rah, rah, rah!
But I’ll tell you, one thing I noticed about this, I had never noticed before. I just happened to look at this verse in the Greek. And, we would suppose that ‘be strong’ is an active verb. After all, I’m gonna be something, I’ve got to take action here. But do you know that that word, that verb, ‘be strong’ is actually passive?
In other words, I’m not trying to muster something, I’m allowing something. I’m allowing God to take action. I’m allowing a source of power to flow into me. Is there not implied in that the recognition that I don’t have it? I don’t have what it takes.
And the fact that this is also a present tense—a simple present tense, also means that this is not an event, but a lifestyle. This is the way God expects us to live, to face the battles that are coming. Because, Paul doesn’t say, be ready if something happens. Be ready when it does, because we know that they will come. There are going to be battles.
Obviously…I think it should be obvious, I should say, that Paul is not saying this to make us afraid. But he does want us to be ready and to realize what we have in Christ that enables us, not only to face whatever the Devil is allowed to throw at us, but also to be able to stand and be victorious in the end.
Thank God, He’s given us the victory! We didn’t earn it. We don’t deserve it, but He has given us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ! Thank you, Lord! I need this, myself, this morning, because we, every one of us, we get tired, we’re individuals, we have our own weaknesses, our own battles. But I’ll tell you, God wants us to be aware and awake.
But this is a key. Another thing I noticed about this, Paul did not sort of say, muddle along, live your life, keep out of trouble, go to church, just do the ordinary stuff, but when a battle comes, oops, you better stop. Excuse me, Devil, let me put my armor on. Doesn’t say that, does he? This is meant to be…I mean, we’re meant to walk through our lives wearing this armor. There is a readiness at all times.
It’s not like we’re sitting there fearful, but there’s an alert. He says it in one place. Be alert. Pray and be alert. There’s a recognition. Peter says the same thing, be alert, watch out, the devil is trying to have you for lunch, basically, to paraphrase. And I’ll tell you, there are so many people the devil has for lunch because they’re not alert.
But God wants the awesome truths that He has laid out in chapters 1 through 5, and up to verse 10 there. All these amazing truths, He wants them to become something that is not just information in our heads, but something that we can rely upon, when we need it. Because, you know, the easiest thing in the world, if you talk about these truths, if you’ve heard them and you’ve had your eyes opened in any measure, it’s not hard to say, oh yes, praise God, that’s true!
But how many of you have been in situations when you needed that, and it wasn’t so easy to say? It wasn’t so easy to rely upon. See, that’s where God wants us to get. And it’s not about…not a matter of just mustering up my strength to believe and somehow lay hold of this. It’s saying, oh God, I don’t have what I need, but You have promised! You are my source. You are the life upon which I depend, and I am reaching up to You to…I’m just opening my heart to You, Lord.
But I’m opening it, not with an ‘oh, God, I hope He hears me.’ This is an expectation that when I’m in that place of need…well, like I said, this is also a lifestyle. It’s especially in time of need.
But this is a business where we get up in the morning and we look and we say, Lord, Your plan for me this day is not just to do my thing and if something bad happens, stop and call on You and put on my armor. This is a way of life where You live in me and I have a strength that is not mine.
I’ll tell you, we’re gonna need this going forward. We need it right now. But I’ll tell you, there’s a darkness overtaking this world. It’s not our job to take bullets and go out and beat the devil, in a military sense. It’s our job to be the light. It’s our job to shed forth light in the midst of darkness.
How many of you’ve got a light in yourself? I mean, apart from Christ? I don’t have anything. There’s no virtue in me that could possibly convince anybody of anything. But I’ll tell you, I have One who lives in me, who in the beginning said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” This is the same One who shined in the heart of Paul, to give the light of the revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ…in the face of Jesus Christ. Praise God! That’s what it takes.
Boy, if you haven’t got it, I pray that God will just bring you down to a place where suddenly it dawns on you what you are without Him and where the world is going, and you will cry out to Him and just hand your life over to Him. He’s the only One who knows what to do with it.
If God brings you to a place where you have run out of answers, you need to cry out and say, thank You, Lord! I thought it was my life to live. I thought…I had my dreams. I had my…I had what I wanted to do. I knew what my life was about and You brought it to ruin!
Oh, how many testimonies have I heard over the years of somebody who was brought to that place and they were about to commit suicide? And the Lord brought them to a place where they were ready to end their life and the Lord just stepped in and said, what about letting Me have it?
I’ll tell you, you put your life in the hands of Someone like that, who loved you enough to go to a bloody cross for you, when you and I didn’t deserve it. Oh, I’ll tell you what! It’s worth everything! That same One who went to that cross is willing to finish the job, and to take your life and make it something that you could never possibly accomplish.
Suppose you did gain the world? Suppose you became the most important, powerful, richest person in the world and you had every pleasure you could ever imagine? What would it mean? Because, “…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” (KJV). What does it profit, Jesus said, to gain the whole world, and lose your own soul?
There must be a reason this came to me, because this was not something I have really thought about. But I’ll tell you, we need Him! And if He has brought you to a place where you feel your need keenly, don’t let it discourage you or turn you aside. Don’t let it defeat you! Realize there is a God who loves you enough to show you the truth!
( congregational amens ).
One of the things that we need in this armor…in fact, isn’t the first one the belt of truth? Yes we need, you could say, theological truth. We need to know the things that are true. We need to know about God and who He is and what salvation is about.
But the truth that I need the most is the truth about me, because, if I don’t see the truth about me, then I don’t need that. I think I’ve got what I need. But oh, I’ll tell you, I need that truth every single day that I need Him every hour, like we sing. I can’t get along a day without Him. I don’t want to. I don’t want to run and do, and then cry out when I’m in need…when I feel the need.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a lifestyle to which God has called you and me where we can get up in the morning and say, Lord, I put myself in Your hands afresh. I acknowledge my need, but I’m…I am not just asking You to come and live in me, I am expecting You to come and to live in me.
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November 14, 2021 - No. 1519
“God’s Promise to Lead Us” Conclusion
Broadcast #1519
November 14, 2021
November 14, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1519 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: This is the God of the universe who is making this promise, not just in some vague, general sense, He’s making this promise to you, and you, and you, and you, and me, this morning. I sense this in my own heart, the Lord wanting me to come to a greater place where every issue of life, I can put in His hands.
And there are times when, yeah, He wants me to step out. But He can let me know that. But there are other times He wants me to just put issues in His hands and not struggle, and strive, and plan, and work, and do all the things that we do to try to run our own lives. We just come to a place and recognize that this God has promised to lead me.
This God, who is…it’s said of Abraham, this is the God who can call those things which are not as though they were. He doesn’t need anything to make something happen. He can create something out of nothing. What a God!
I’ll tell you, you want to trust yourself in this kind of crazy world? Yeah, you’re going to have a lot of heartache if you do. And God loves you and He loves His people, and He wants us to understand this simple principle. Oh God, help me to do it. Help me to understand it.
What an awesome word that second word is, ‘I will.’ You talk about will, you talk about something that is meant to be certain. Are we not talking about a God who, by His own declaration says, He cannot lie? I don’t tell lies. If I say I will do something, there is a determination in His heart that you and I need to find rest in.
This is not, ‘I will, if.’ This is not ‘if you measure up, I will.’ This is not a bargain. This is a promise. This is a one-sided thing where, yes, there’s a condition in a sense that we need to give ourselves to Him and put our trust in Him. But in terms of our performance, folks, every one of us, to one degree or another, are victims of our own performance, or lack thereof. May God help us.
Think about what He said earlier, when He anointed His Son, some of the things that He said. He will not cry, “…will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break…” (NIV). Do you feel like a bruised reed sometimes? Man, I’m a mess. I have messed up. Things are not like they’re supposed to be. God’s gonna get tired of me. He’s just gonna break me and throw me away, says, it’s not use, this isn’t going anywhere, this is worthless.
But that’s not the kind of God we serve. Praise God! “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” Here He’s looking for a candle to give light, and the candle is just kind of smoldering and not quite getting there. Is this the kind of a God who’s gonna look at that and say, heck with that, throw it out? No, He’s not gonna snuff it out.
He’s not gonna snuff you out either. If you put your trust in Him, this is a God who can take our weaknesses and bring forth strength. That’s not an encouragement to give in and be weak. But this is a God who understands what He’s dealing with.
And He’s dealing with a mess when He’s dealing with me, and you, too, every single one of us. We are a lot deeper sense of need, we have a lot deeper need than we understand. Oh, we need the Lord! But oh, what an awesome God He is. What a spirit He’s portraying here, a bruised reed, a smoldering wick.
“In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.” This is somebody who sees your need and mine, this morning, says, I’m not giving up on them. They’ve put their trust in me, I’m the one who’s gonna bring them through. Yeah, I may have to lead them in all kinds of ways, but…I know how to do it. I know where the goal is. I know how to lead them.
And of course, that’s the next word. He says, “I will lead….” You know, we think of…you know, leading has to do with some place where you haven’t been yet. It’s out ahead of you. He’s not just talking about a physical path, like I need to be led down the steps here. This is into the future.
There’s something interesting, though, about God, that I think we need to recognize, we need to focus on for a moment. When you and I think about history, and written history, what are we talking about?
( congregational response ).
Something that’s past. And someone’s made a record of it so we have a knowledge of events that are in the past, they cannot be changed, that we can know about them and that’s about it. But history to us is past. But is that the way it is with God?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I remember, my mind went back to a message I preached a number of years ago, I think now, and it was called “The Book of Truth.” And if you want to read through Daniel, chapter 10 sometime, that’s where the reference is. But Daniel came to a point in his life where he wanted to, he felt the need to seek God to understand some things. God had shown him things and there were questions in his mind.
And he set his heart to seek God and he engaged for three weeks in what people have called a “Daniel fast.” Basically, he just didn’t eat all the tasty, good, rich stuff. He just ate very plain food. But during that time, he set himself to pray.
And at the end of the time an angel comes to him, and said, Daniel, from the first time you set your mind to pray I was sent. And then it unlocks the fact that there was a spiritual battle, something that happened. There was a demon prince that withstood him. There was a battle that took place and finally the angel came to Daniel to reveal some things to him.
But in the process of revealing this, he made an interesting statement. He said, I’ve come to show you things that are written in the Book of Truth. And then what he began to show him were things that had not happened yet. What does that tell you? When God talks about history, what He…writing a written history, what is He talking about?
( congregational response ).
He’s talking about everything that ever has happened or will happen. God’s history has already been written. Now, does that mean that He has predetermined everybody’s reaction, we are just pieces on a chess board, and God just simply…or is God so great that He knows how to take everybody’s choice and weave it together, into a perfect plan?
See, God is sovereign, but boy, we are responsible. You see that everywhere. Choices are made and what happens is a result of those choices…you can’t blame it on God and say, God made me do it. Oh, we need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational amens ).
But think about the greatness of a God who doesn’t have to say, this is where I’d like to take you, I don’t know how we’re gonna get there, but I’m gonna be with you. This is a God who knows your…this afternoon, He knows tomorrow, He knows the next day. He knows everything that will ever happen on the path between here and glory.
Think about what Paul said and how he put it. “…Those he called, he also justified, those He justified…” I forget what…did He sanctify them in there, in that particular verse? But anyway, he winds up, those He sanctified or set apart, He also…glorified.
What verb tense is that? That’s the past tense, isn’t it? So, here’s God declaring something about you and me, sitting here. We’re not glorified yet, in the process of time, and God is looking at you and me and saying, I have glorified them.
( congregational response ).
See, this isn’t just, I need somebody to guide me, I take that place of need. But think about who this is and what He has declared…and how He knows every detail of your life that hasn’t happened yet.
Do you want His plan or yours? See, we can…we know what to say. But learning how to take this place in everyday life is a challenge, isn’t it? We need the Lord. But oh, what an amazing, amazing God that we have. When you think about what it means to lead…well, let’s go along down to what he says.
“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known…” What does that tell you? Well, one thing it tells us as a group, we can’t sit here and build a tradition, carry it out, and think everything’s great. We are a people on a pilgrim journey.
When God led His people out of Egypt, He led them in all kinds of places, for one thing. But also, the entire journey was one in which they were dependent upon Him in every way, for their food, for their drink, for where to go, for when to go. Do you remember the rule, the pattern was, that when the presence of God would settle on the tabernacle and when it did, or it settled on a place, they were supposed to camp there?
And if that lasted a month or two, that’s it. You don’t say, I’m tired of this place, I want to leave. God’s presence was there. But there came a day when that presence lifted off the tabernacle, and everybody knew what to do. They had a prescribed order for packing up, who gathered their stuff, and the order in which they marched out, and they followed that cloud. Folks, we need that same principle operating in our lives as an assembly today, individually and as an assembly. We need the Lord.
( congregational amens ).
The further I go, as I say, the more I feel my total need of the Lord. I see things I’d love to see happen, but I can’t make anything happen. We just need the Lord. We need to be, as a people, to covenant together with that sense…oh God, we want…we need You and we want You to lead us! No conditions attached. Just tell us what we’re supposed to be doing, or not doing, how we’re supposed to do it.
Send your anointing in whatever way and whenever You want to do it. Lord, we don’t want to say, this is what it’s supposed to look like, come down and fulfill our vision. We want His vision. Do you believe He wants to lead us?
( congregational response ).
I do, too. I want to be…I want to be a people that just don’t follow tradition. I mean, God did some amazing things over 50 years ago now. But this work is not built upon just preserving that and talking about it and making a big deal out of that, as though that’s the foundation of everything. Christ is the foundation!
What He’s doing and saying right now is the foundation! We are living in a different time, in a sense, than we were right back then. We’re seeing…excuse me…the unfolding of the things the Lord revealed back then. And we need the Lord to lead us right straight through it. I do.
And I feel my need more and more the further we go. And I hope I’m not the only one. I don’t believe I am. But I believe this is something that God wants to stir up our attention about. And say, God…and say, Lord, I want my people…the Lord’s saying, I want My people to know the real deal, not to go to sleep and lose touch with what’s really happening.
But to always…and not to give in to the fear, not to give in to all the…this zeal that wants to make plans, or wants to…this is how it’s supposed to be, or all the things, the reactions that we have…human beings have. I just want people who look to Me, every single day and trust Me, because that’s the people I’m gonna take to the other side.
“…Along unfamiliar paths I will guide them….” That’s exactly what happened in the wilderness. And folks, we are in a wilderness here, too, just as much as they were. And I’ll tell you, God is gonna take care of the things that happen.
“I will turn the darkness into light before them….” Interesting, to put that in the same promise, if you will, when he’s talking about being blind and then he’s saying, I’ll turn darkness into light. But you see what he’s talking about. I’m blind. When it comes to being able to lead myself in spiritual matters, in eternal matters, I do not have the ability inborn to do that. I need God.
But there are times when He will open my eyes and see…to be able to see this or see that. And I’m gonna be able to see things the world can’t see, not because they can’t but because they won’t! I want to be somebody whose will is surrendered in this area, who knows where my help comes from. And this is a promise of God. If we need light in an area, God has promised to give it!
( congregational amens ).
And we need to remind Him of that and say, Lord, we don’t know but we believe You. We are trusting in You, and the problem is in Your hands. We’re just gonna rest it there. Cast your burden upon the Lord, the scripture says, “…and he will sustain you.”
Folks, we don’t have to go around anxious. We don’t have to go around worried about tomorrow, and worried about what’s gonna happen. We can put all of our tomorrows in His hands. The history of your life has already been written!
Didn’t David say the same thing? All of my days have been written in Your book before any of them came to be. What a revelation. Man, he knew something that only God could show you.
“I will…” again, that strong, definite sense there, “I will turn the darkness into light before them.” When we need to see something, God can pull the veil back and let us see. I believe He’s shown us many things already, but I believe that everything we need to see He is going to open up.
“…And make the rough places smooth.” Now I know none of you ever have any rough places in your life! But I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who can take us through whatever is appropriate in our lives. And you know, when we get in rough places, what does our nature drive us to do? Well, get out of it, deal with it with natural wisdom and natural energy.
But think about how God dealt with His people Israel. Did He not allow them to be trapped by the Red Sea? How did they get there? He led them there. He led them to an impossible place. So, did that mean He was mad at them and wanted to destroy them? No! He wanted to bring them to a place where there was no answer but God! And so, Moses obeyed the Lord, lifted up his rod, and God did the rest!
That’s what God is doing in our lives. If He has brought you to a place that’s impossible, there’s no human answer, you don’t know what to do, this is the time when God can shine! God will lead you and me into places like that.
And He will never abandon us there, those who put their trust in Him. It is not…it is not a tragedy, it’s an opportunity for God to show us who He is! And we need to lift up our eyes and look to Him.
I mean, how many times did Moses come to that kind of a place? Oh God, you got me out here, and it’s a mess, what am I supposed to do? “My presence will go with you…” God said, “…and I will give you rest.” Folks, that’s all we need.
Think about David in the 23rd Psalm, and how the Lord was…there again was something about a shepherd and a sheep. You had that same imagery going on, where there’s a shepherd and I’m just a sheep, I don’t know. But He leads me, some of it’s good places, still waters, plenty to eat.
But it’s not all good, is it, by our measure? Sometimes it’s through the valley of the shadow of death. And yet, David’s sense of the Lord’s love and compassion for him, even in that kind of circumstance, was such that he was able to say, “I will fear no evil.”
Now, why could he say that? Why could he say, I won’t…even if I’m in the valley of the shadow of death, I’m not afraid? I refuse to be afraid, because You’re with me.
Do you know there’s a God who is with you? Do you want to be one that puts your…that rests your hope and puts your trust in Him, puts your trust in this promise? This is a good promise to quote to the Lord. Say, Lord, this is what You told me. I fit the bill, Lord, I’m blind, I don’t know. I can’t handle life. But You promised to lead me. You promised to smooth out the rough places. You promised to turn light…darkness into light before me. Lord, I am just putting my hope and my trust in You.
“These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” Boy, what a positive promise, I mean right from the beginning to the end. Is He leading you in a challenging place right now? I suspect a lot of people could nod their heads and say, yeah, it is. I’m full of uncertainty. I don’t know how tomorrow is gonna unfold.
But I serve One who’s already written that history. I serve One who’s not only written it, but He’s promised to lead me through it. And not only has He promised to lead me through it, He understands who I am and how weak I am. And He’s not basing His willingness to do all of this on my qualifications. I don’t have any.
But oh, what a glorious Gospel we have for something…to be able to, in such a time in history, let alone anytime, but especially now, to be able as a congregation and as individuals, to say, God, my life is in Your hands. I am trusting in You with every issue of my life. I refuse to let the Devil fill me with fear. I don’t know the way, but You do, and my hope is in You. And this is Your Word, Lord. You told me You would lead me. And so, the ball is in Your court, Lord, I’m looking to You! Praise God!
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November 7, 2021 - No. 1518
“God’s Promise to Lead Us” Part One
Broadcast #1518
November 7, 2021
November 7, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1518 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I had a verse come to me several times earlier this week and then just continually coming back to me. And so, I’m gonna go ahead and use it as a focus for things I believe the Lord wants to use to encourage us. It’s found in Isaiah 42.
I’m gonna go ahead and just read the passage and try not to get bogged down in getting to where I want to get. But this was one of many prophecies that God had given to people in the Old Testament. And, we know from Peter’s writings, on the one hand, nobody who prophesied like this and it’s recorded for us did that because it was their own idea, their own interpretation. It was something that God overshadowed them to give.
We also know that they didn’t understand what they were prophesying. They just knew it was for somebody down the road and it would all be fulfilled in its proper time. And so, this was one of those prophecies.
You know, people think they can unravel this with the natural mind, you can’t do it. God has to unlock His Word. You remember how the disciples even had no clue what was going on until He opened their understanding to see what the Scriptures were really talking about in the Old Testament, and how they were pointing to what we are experiencing today. So anyway, let’s just go ahead and read beginning in verse 1.
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold…” (NIV). Now, this is…I think it’s clear as you go along, this is the Lord, this is the Father talking, and He’s talking about His Son, who would be coming to earth.
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.
“In his teaching the islands will put their hope. This is what God the Lord says—the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles….”
See, none of this was just about the Jews, was it? Always God’s purpose was to work through them to ultimately reach everyone, and bring forth one covenant. Praise God!
“…To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.
“Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you islands, and all who live in them. Let the wilderness and its towns raise their voices; let the settlements where Kedar lives rejoice. Let the people of Sela sing for joy; let them shout from the mountaintops.
“Let them give glory to the Lord and proclaim his praise in the islands. The Lord will march out like a champion, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies.” Oh, He did, didn’t He? Praise God!
“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools.”
Now this is the verse that kept coming back to me. “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.”
Praise God, what an awesome promise that is! And think about what the Lord was prophesying from a time when it was dark, and the nation of Israel was certainly no one to be looking at and saying, wow, aren’t they wonderful. There was a small remnant that kept serving God. In fact, this Book begins with, “Except the LORD…had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom and…Gomorrah.” (KJV). I’ll tell you, God has a way of preserving His plan and His people…
( congregational amens ).
…in every age. And that certainly is something we need to focus on right now, because we are in a very uncertain time, aren’t we? But I thank God for His promises, and these promises were looking forward to the era of Christ’s coming and all that was to follow.
And it wasn’t just the beginning, and a great beginning, this was something that was gonna continue all the way to the end. He was gonna finish what He started, basically, is what He’s saying.
But there’s an awesome promise here in verse 16. “I will lead the blind…” it begins, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known.” (NIV). And I’ve sort of gone back and forth in my mind as to how to unpack this. But I think I’m gonna begin with the object of this promise.
Who is He talking about here? When He’s talking about the blind, who is He talking about? Now, how many of you have a perfect understanding of all that’s gonna happen, all that’s coming, you know the ins and outs of God’s plan, and you can foresee your life going forward, you know all the…? No, none of us are in that position.
The reality is, that we as people are part of a prison planet, a planet that Satan, the god of this world, where he has blinded the minds of men. We are blind. We just simply do not know. And the question is here, what kind of blindness is He talking about?
My mind also went back to a Scripture that’s at the end of John chapter 9, I believe it is. This was an occasion when Jesus had healed a man who had been born blind. And so, they were, the religious leaders were trying to figure out what happened? What’s this all about? I don’t get this. And, arguing with Him, debating with Him, were you really blind? You know, going on and on and on.
Finally, the guy gets exasperated with them and says, “We know that God does not listen to sinners.” And he goes on and just basically says that this authenticates who Jesus is. This is a man of God, and they threw him out. They got him out of there.
So, you had people who were absolutely resistant to the ministry of Jesus. It didn’t matter what He did, they weren’t gonna believe. This was a problem of will, wasn’t it? Okay?
So then, the man encounters Jesus again. I guess, Jesus found him. And then, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Verse 35, and, “Who is he, sir? the man asked. Tell me so that I may believe in him. Jesus said, You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you. Then the man said, Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him.” So, there was a real turnabout in every way in this man’s life.
But there’s an interesting statement that Jesus makes in verse 39, that I believe reflects what we’ve been reading in Isaiah 42, because in Isaiah 42, you have a promise of some wonderful blessings that are gonna flow, of a plan that’s gonna unfold, but also of judgment. It’s obvious there are opposers, there are enemies to what God has set out to do.
And so, “Jesus said, For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” You know, when Jesus comes, when the Word of God comes to people, it makes a separation, doesn’t it? It always creates a separation. There are some who bow to it, there are some who say, yes. And then there are others who will say, no. They harden their hearts to it.
So, there were a couple of Pharisees, there were … “Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, What? Are we blind too?” And here’s a verse that I believe unlocks something about what Isaiah 42 meant when it talks about the blind that He was gonna lead.
“If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” So, what you have is a case of people who were spiritually blind, but then it comes along a light from God, a voice from God that tries to expose their condition and wants to open their eyes, and they say, no, I refuse. I can see just fine.
Do you see there’s a problem, not of ability to see, but of will? Imagine you were walking along and you saw a blind man walking toward a cliff. And in compassion you walked up to him and tried to stop him and tried to warn him and say, there’s a cliff coming. I can see it and you can’t. Listen to me. What if he said, get away and leave me alone, I see just fine, I know where I’m going?
Is that not a pretty good picture of the world that we’re living in? That’s the condition. So, this blindness that we’re talking about comes down to a place of will. When the Gospel comes to you and to me, one of the things that it does is to expose our true condition of need.
But human nature doesn’t like that. Human nature does not want to admit that we are people of need, and that we cannot chart our own…we’re not capable of charting our own course. We’re not capable of fulfilling God’s plan. In every sense, we are dependent upon God and His mercy. There’s not one thing we can do to qualify ourselves for anything that He has.
So, do you begin to see what the Lord is talking about in Isaiah 42 when He’s talking about a promise to lead the blind? Folks, I think the further you go, if you’re listening to the Lord and you’re learning from Him, the more we go, the more we come to a place where we realize, Lord, I am blind, I don’t know. I don’t know half the stuff I think I know. Lord, I need You.
( congregational response ).
I need You to lead me. I’m in a place where I can…it’s not like You can just tell me, here’s where I want you to go now. Work up a plan and get there. This is not the way it works. The people that God leads are people who surrender, people who willingly recognize their need to be led. Oh, God.
You know, you think about Abraham as a perfect example there in so many ways, the father of faith. Here’s a man that God spoke to. And He gave him a vision. It’s true sometimes the Lord can tell us where we’re going, but getting there is a different matter. He never says, work up your 5-year plan and let’s see how it works out, you know. You can get there. Use all these natural abilities I’ve given you and you can fulfill that. No!
There was a vision that God gave to Abraham, was there not? Leave your father’s house, leave your family, leave your country, and go to a land that I will show you. And there was a promise of God, there’s a land, but the Lord did not turn Abraham loose to just do his thing…like go find it. The Lord had to lead him step by step. And so, there was a faith in Abraham toward this God who had spoken to him.
And so, he was willing to do what the Lord said, to leave, to go, and God led him step by step by step, and unfolded the promises that we are still experiencing the benefit of today, because it was in his seed that all nations of the world will be blessed. We’re some of that. We’re some of the result of Abraham believing God and trusting Him and being willing to take that place where he didn’t know what to do.
You know, that’s something that we need. The further I go, the more I realize how much I desperately need the Lord to lead me. This isn’t just personal. This is the church. Do we know what to do? Do we really know what to do? We’re in an uncertain world. We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow. Folks, we need the Lord!
And we need to have that sense that we, that we need the Lord. You know, the Psalms tell us, don’t be like the horse and the mule. Well, how do you lead a horse and a mule? You’ve got to put a bit in their mouth and beat them. You’ve got to do something physical to make them go the way you want them to go. You can’t just explain, hey, this is where I want you to go. We need the Lord and we need to have a heart that agrees with this.
How many of you have known the Lord long enough, you see the difference between being like Peter when he was young, running and doing things in his own zeal, and coming to a place where you just say, I don’t know. I don’t even necessarily want to go anywhere, but Lord, I’m in Your hands. I’m just stretching forth…if there’s anything gonna happen, it has got to be You, Lord?
But do you know that’s something we need to learn? We need to have that as a people. We need to be a people who say, God, we don’t what to do, we don’t know where to go, we don’t know the future. But our place is to lift up our hearts and say, oh God, we are trusting in You! When it comes to the things that are eternal, we are blind and we need a Leader. We need Someone to show us the way. Oh God, help us.
And you know, you could sort of come to a place where you recognize, I just can’t manage my life. I don’t know what to do…then, okay Lord, I guess I’ll trust…you could do that almost with a grudging spirit. But I’ll tell you, what I believe the Lord wants. If we see Him, if we see things as they really are, shouldn’t we come to a place, not just of resignation, but a place of joy, and rest, and peace, where we say, oh Lord, what privilege I have to be in that place that’s safe?
What a privilege I have to know somebody who cares about me like You’ve demonstrated you care! Lord, I don’t know the way, and you do. And so, I just, I am resting. I embrace the reality of my own blindness and inability.
I’m glad…you know, it’s like Paul, who came to, who had to deal with that, with his weakness. We’ve used the Scripture many times, where he came to a point where he gloried in his weakness. Well, we can glory in our blindness, too, in this sense.
There is an opening of our eyes to see things the world doesn’t see. But in terms of, can I lead myself, can I go forward, do I have all that it takes to do what I’m supposed to do? No. I need Him step by step to lead me. And I embrace that with all of my heart. That’s who He’s talking about in Isaiah 42.
Isn’t it interesting when you come to the end of chapter 9, it goes right into chapter 10? How many of you know there were no chapters and no verses when John wrote this? So, this simply moves straight into Jesus talking about the Shepherd and the sheep.
Well of course, we know that sheep are very self-reliant, very strong, able to lead…no. Sheep are very…well, we’ve often used the word stupid, but sheep are very dependent creatures. And so, He’s talking, He’s just been talking about a willful blindness on the part of these religious leaders. Now, He comes and He talks about His people, His sheep who know His voice.
The Father has made them secure in Christ and in Himself. He goes on and He talks about all these things in the process. My sheep know My voice, they hear Me, they follow Me where I go. I want to be one like…I want to be that. I want to…that’s what God is…God’s word comes and it makes a separation.
But this is…the people that are on the right side of this are the people who say, yes, Lord, that’s me. I’m willing to lay down my pride, my self-sufficiency, all of this ‘I can do it’ kind of spirit in a wrong sense. Lord, You are my sufficiency.
Folks, I need the Lord. I’m glad to acknowledge that I can do nothing without Him. And I believe that’s what He’s looking for from His people, to bring us to that place where we, not only recognize our need, but there’s a joyfulness and restfulness in doing it.
So anyway, let’s go back to Isaiah 42. The first word in that promise is ‘I.’ So you know, it’s a pretty good idea to stop and say, well now, who is this that’s making this promise? Is He somebody who can do what He says He’s gonna do?
And I think it’s pretty plain that He is. You go back through the passage and you see all the…”I am the Lord,” verse 8, “I am the Lord, that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another…See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare.” Before they happen, I announce them.
But He talks about, I am the Creator. “This is what God the Lord says…” verse 5, “…the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it.” This is somebody who, this is ‘the’ ultimate source of all.
This is the God of the universe who is making this promise, not just in some vague, general sense, He’s making this promise to you, and you, and you, and you, and me this morning. I sense this in my own heart, the Lord wanting me to come to a greater place where every issue of life, I can put in His hands.
And there are times when, yeah, He wants me to step out, but He can let know that. But there are other times He wants me to just put issues in His hands and not struggle and strive and plan and work and do all the things that we do to try to run our own lives. We just come to a place and recognize that this God has promised to lead me.
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October 31, 2021 - No. 1517
All Music
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October 24, 2021 - No. 1516
“Remain in the Vine” Conclusion
Broadcast #1516
October 24, 2021
October 24, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1516 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: There is a resurrection that has been happening ever since the day of Pentecost for people who have heard the voice of the Son of God, and they have believed it, and they have been raised from the dead with Jesus Christ. And there is a life implanted in the heart that can never die!
( congregational amens ).
Doesn’t Revelation say, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection.” (KJV). That’s what he’s talking about. I’ll tell you, if you’ve been born of God’s Spirit, you have been raised to newness of life because of Him! You have already been raised to newness of life! Yes, the body is still what it is, but there’s gonna come a day when that will, “…be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” Thank God, I want to be part of that first…I’m glad I’m part of that first resurrection!
( congregational amens ).
That’s the one that matters, and it’s happening right now because He was raised from the dead! All right? So here’s kind of…He explains this. He talks about the fact that they hear and they live. “For as the Father…” verse 26, “…as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (NIV).
What’s happened is this. When Jesus walked among us, as a man, He had life in Him, didn’t He? “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (KJV). And people saw that life. They experienced it. But yet, we were not fit to have that life reside in us. Didn’t He tell His disciples…talked about the coming of the Holy Spirit and said, “… he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
You see the difference of what happened because of the death, burial and resurrection and ascension of our Lord. What has happened is He who had life in Himself, as a man, was raised to a newness of life, full of the brand-new…the life of God, the new creation and ascended to a throne.
Well, what’s He doing on that throne? What does He now have the power to do? He has the power to share that life. The life that is in Him is now able…He is now able to share it with us and we can have a living connection with the Son of God. It has nothing to do with what you can see and feel, in the natural sense. But there is a literal connection where we have the same life in us that He has in Him.
( congregational amens ).
In Ephesians chapter 1, the end of it, I think…1 or 2, somewhere in there. I think it’s the end of 1, where he talks about Jesus ascending. Maybe it’s chapter 4 I’m thinking of. But it talks about Jesus ascending to the heavens, “…that He might fill all things.”
How can an individual…you think about me as a person, how can I fill everything, if he was talking about me? I can’t. But if God lives in me, and He gives me the power to share that life, is that not what Jesus did in the first creation? Everything was created by Him, and though He was an individual, yet, the Father gave Him the authority to speak, and like we heard this morning, galaxies happened. There was something, there was a power that flowed out and made everything that we see.
Yes, it has become corrupted, and there’s a new creation being formed, but Jesus is sitting on a throne today because of what He did. That’s why we worship Him. His Name is above every name. That’s why the apostles were willing to live and die for Him because they knew that there was no salvation in anyone else except the name of Jesus, so they lifted Him up! And the authorities beat them and told them to be quiet, they said we’ve got to obey God rather than men. There’s no salvation in anyone except the name of Jesus.
( congregational amens ).
But oh, there He sits today. Think about this from His point of view. It’s like He’s saying, I’m sitting here. I’m here in this exalted place, and there are my children down there, there are my brothers and my sisters, put it that way. And God has given me the privilege of sharing Himself, His life, all that He is with them.
And the only way they can live the kind of a life that God has purposed, is to open their hearts to that life, and let it fill their hearts, let it fill their minds, let it be the empowerment of what they do, the kind of person they are, the ministry they may have, all these things all come together.
You know, I remember in school, there was a lot of debate among Bible scholars and teachers and preachers and so forth when Jesus was talking in John 15 about bearing fruit. Was He talking about the product of ministry or was He talking about the fruits of the Spirit? Both. That would be my answer, yes.
( laughing ).
Because the fact is, you can’t be the kind of person God called you to be and have those characteristics of the fruits of the Spirit without the Spirit powering that. We can’t imitate that. We can’t produce that out of human nature. It has got to be God or nothing.
But also, when we got out to minister, can we just do it by human ingenuity and build programs to build churches? People are doing it. We don’t need clever programs. We need Jesus!
( congregational amens ).
Because He will call everyone that the Father has given to Him, and He will not lose a one of those that the Father has given to Him.
( congregational amens ).
There’s nothing in that John 15 passage that should cause someone to say, oh my God, I might mess up, and He’s gonna throw me away. I’ll tell you, if you’re His, He’ll prune you. But if there’s a real connection and your heart’s ever been truly given to Him and surrendered, you’re safe in His hands. What He longs for us to do is to understand these things so that we can cooperate more like Jesus did. Jesus did a perfect job of living out that life. Okay?
“…So He has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because He is the Son of Man.” Just the same thing we said…that He’s gonna be the judge.
Now, he’s looking forward to the end of time. He says, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.”
Now, lets find out what Jesus was able, in His flesh, to do and how He was able to do it. He says, “By myself I can do nothing.” Anybody ever feel like that? But think about that? Isn’t that what Jesus said in John 15? “Without me ye can do nothing.” (KJV).
That’s a tough lesson to learn. We’re pretty proud, self-sufficient creatures. We actually think we can do stuff. You know, on a human level, sure, we can do the various activities and all of that, but I mean, when you talk about things with eternal value, there’s not one of us here who can simply take instructions and go out and produce something eternal. It ain’t gonna happen.
And the Lord wants to teach me, and all of His people to learn the secrets that enabled Jesus to be what He was while He was a man. He is our example, folks, of one who needed the Father to live in Him, but He understood that, and He yielded Himself completely to that.
“By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear…” (NIV). Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Aren’t we quick to judge situations and judge things? We need to kind of go slow and say, wait a minute, Lord. Help me to think Your thoughts and see things through Your eyes and be more in harmony with You. Okay?
“I judge only as I hear, and my judgement is just…” Now, here’s a key. “…For I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” And he said in another place, “I have come…not to do my will but the will of him who sent me.” Maybe it’s in another place in this passage that I didn’t have marked.
But I’ll tell you what, that’s pretty key, isn’t it? Jesus understood what His life was about. He didn’t come here simply to live an earthly life, have fun, have enjoyment and just acquire things and live a life to please Himself and maybe accomplish a few things that people would remember Him for. It was not an earthly existence.
I’m here for…I’m on a mission. I am part of something that does not belong to this creation. I have a ministry sent from God to a dying creation. Everything I do has to do with what He is accomplishing, what His purpose is.
That kind of weighs in on what we live for. If we’re gonna be plugged into the vine, to use modern terminology, whatever you want to call it…plugged in is probably a way we would think about it. They didn’t have electricity in those days, at least not the kind they could do anything with.
The Lord is looking for a people who would say, I’m not here to do my will but the will of my Father who sent me. That’s why He shares His life with us. And if we’re busy doing our own thing, and just kind of running in our own strength for our own purposes, we’re probably producing stuff that maybe, just maybe, has to be pruned?
But I see the Lord, in mercy, reaching out. Surely, He knows. He remembers our frame. He knows we’re dust. He knew everything about the failures that were coming. Peter hadn’t even…He’d even warned Peter at this point, and yet, Peter went right on and did what he did and failed so miserably, and the Lord reached out and helped him, didn’t He…received him? And then, Peter was the one who stood up on the Day of Pentecost.
I’ll tell you, we need…sometimes, we need to get knocked down real good to realize how things really are. Has that ever happened to you?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. That lesson about ‘without Him, I can do nothing,’ how many times have you had to have a desperate sense, or have you had a desperate sense of your own inability and weakness? And, if you’re gonna go by how you feel and how things look and your track record, you’re gonna have to say, oh my God, it’s hopeless. But how many of you know that’s a good thing?
( congregational response ).
If it brings us to a place where we recognize how things really are and it causes us to reach out…I’ll tell you, if you think of God as the angry judge, dictator in the sky, the rule-maker in the sky who wants to wreck your life and make it miserable with His rules, you ain’t gonna go there.
See, that’s people who don’t have that inward relationship. When God comes in, He comes in with what? His love. There’s a revelation of our need, but there’s a revelation of His love and mercy that comes in with it. His love, as Paul said in one place, “…is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.” (KJV). I’ll tell you, I want to respond to that.
And, as I say, I think the Lord drew my attention to this as much about me as it is about anybody. The life that we live here, how much of it is really having that living relationship with the vine where the life that is motivating us, the life that is powering us is God’s life, and not just us running in our own wisdom and our own strength? Anybody here need the Lord with me on this one?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I thank God. But I sense, in the Lord drawing my attention to this, not a voice of condemnation or what’s the matter with you, straighten up, and fly right, but a voice of One yearning, a voice longing for us to get this, because He wants to be more real. He knows that there’s not one thing that we can do to be the kind of people He wants to be, or to do the things that He’s called us to do, unless we get the strength for Him.
Jesus understood that, and that’s why He had that 24/7 connection with the Father. It never wavered. Thank God for what He has done for us. Thank God!
And, you see how the Lord had to bring others, like Paul, for example. How many times have we used the fact that Paul came out of a religious background and had a lot to unlearn, and how God brought him to a place where he just cried out, oh God, who’s gonna rescue me from this body that is so addicted to sin. It has no power. There’s a law operating here. I am not strong enough to beat it! No matter what I do, I can’t do what I’m supposed to do. Or I do what I’m not supposed to do.
And then, the Lord reveals to him in Romans 8. Yeah, my plan is not to get you to live by rules in your own strength. My plan is to give you My Spirit. If you yield to Me, and you draw upon My strength and My ability, you can do whatever.
I mean, look at the relationship that Jesus paints in that passage in John 15. Verse 7, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Now, this is not talking about being religious and saying, okay, I can ask for what I want. Give me Cadillacs, give me, you know. This is not that kind of self-seeking spirit.
But this was the relationship Jesus had. He was so geared to, Father, help Me in this moment. Lord, show Me what to do today. He said on one occasion, the Father tells Me what to say and how to say it, in one of the translations. Boy, wouldn’t it be nice if we had that kind of a connection to where everything that we did was an expression of what God wanted us to do, and God actually could live in us, to a greater degree? I’ll tell you, God wants to power the Body of Christ, not with religion, but with Himself.
( congregational amens ).
And, the thing that I see about this, is this is not just some, obviously, it’s not automatic. Why would He tell them to abide, over and over again? Remain in Me, or abide in Me. There’s obviously a part we play in this, isn’t there?
This gets down to choices that we make. Do we really want His will? Maybe that’s a place to start. Lord, I want to want Your will. Lord, bring me into harmony where I understand what my purpose is in being in this world. It’s not just to live for me. It’s not just to be a citizen of this world and to live my life and die and then, go to heaven one day, because I’ve got a ticket in my back pocket. Folks, we need to learn to walk with Him.
( congregational amens ).
We need to learn to understand what our purpose is in the world, need to be in agreement with it and ask God to help us where we aren’t. And then, we need to actually spend time with Him and expect Him, believe His promises. Didn’t Peter say He’s given us, “…great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature.” (KJV). Yeah.
Those promises are there. He has given us everything, but there’s a part that we play. And so, that’s why Jesus was saying so many times, remain in Me, remain in Me, remain in Me. You can’t do anything by yourself. Remain in Me. Let My life be the thing that powers what you are and what you do, and you will bear fruit.
How can we not if it’s Him doing it? Nothing we do will ever last for eternity if it’s just us. But everything He does is forever. Whatever God does is forever. Isn’t there a scripture in the Old Testament that says that? Whatever He does is forever.
So, I sense God’s heart reaching out to every one of you, wherever you’re at. If you’re in a weak place, if you’re discouraged, look up. This is the Lord’s invitation to you. He’s saying, I’ve got what you need. Wherever you’re coming short right now, wherever things just don’t look or feel right, just get your eyes on Me. Look to Me. Believe that I’m for you, that I’m able to fill you with Myself and make you into the person that I want you to be.
Don’t be afraid to come to Me like you are. I love you. I provided everything when Jesus went to the cross. He said, it’s finished. It’s accomplished. Do you believe that? Do you believe that when He died, you died? Do you believe we have a ground that we can stand upon and say, no, to what is wrong?
It doesn’t mean we always do it very well. We need to learn. We need to grow. These are areas where we need to grow. But everything has been provided, and we can do all things through Him who strengthens us.
But it comes not rules and religion, it comes by the life of Christ that He shares with us so freely. And so His call to every one of us is to remain in the vine, and fruit is gonna happen in every one of our lives, whatever that looks like, wherever we’re at. Praise God!
( congregational amens ).
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October 17, 2021 - No. 1515
“Remain in the Vine” Part One
Broadcast #1515
October 17, 2021
October 17, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1515 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve had some thoughts, as they kind of trickled into this pea-brain of mine…I’m just trusting the Lord to help me to bring out what He wants to say, and what He wants to communicate through it, because it’s so easy just to take words and put together a little sermon and convey information. But we need more than that, don’t we? When Jesus spoke, He said, the words that I…it’s not just the words but, “…the words that I speak unto you…” are what? (KJV).
( congregational response ).
Spirit and truth. And that’s what we need. We need God to actually get in it. And, I hadn’t realized…I hadn’t really thought about the connection, but Sister Peggy spoke to me briefly this morning about last week’s service. You know it’s crazy, sometimes a day or two after a service I can’t even remember what I preached. I have to stop and think. But she reminded me what the service was about, and there is more of a connection than I had thought. And so, I’m just trusting the Lord to put this together and to do what He wants to do with it.
But anyway, this is based on a familiar passage in John chapter 15. Of course, the occasion is they had just…Jesus and His disciples had just had what we call the Last Supper. Judas has gone to do his dirty deed, and while they are on the way, or perhaps they’ve even arrived at this point, at the Mount of Olives, where the Garden of Gethsemane was, Jesus is talking to them.
And a lot of this we don’t get from the other Gospels, but John fills in a lot of the blanks for us and this is one where he fills in what Jesus was talking to them about. Jesus knew what was coming and that’s why He said like in chapter 14, don’t let your…don’t be downhearted about all this, I’m with you. This all has a purpose. I’m gonna leave you but I’m gonna come back…and, all the things that He said to encourage them. I’m not gonna leave you alone, I’m coming.
But anyway, there’s a particular illustration He uses that was meant to teach them, and by extension to teach us, a whole lot of what the Christian life is about. Last week we talked about not being devil’s food. Basically, not letting the devil take control and do his…feed his evil nature through our flesh. But the reality is, what we need is just the opposite. We need God to fill these human frames and express His life through it and that’s exactly what this is talking about.
And so, Jesus uses an illustration from nature and he says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word…” (NIV). Or, you’re already pruned. It’s really the same word in the Greek.
“You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
“If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
And so Jesus…for one thing, He portrays the Christian life, not as religion, but as an organic expression of life. A branch that’s connected to a vine does not bear fruit because it goes to vine school, or branch school, or fruit school, or whatever. It doesn’t learn the rules and follow the procedures and say, how do I do this? It’s not about all those things.
And so many people have a false idea about what it means to serve the Lord and they’re trying to do it and it has formed into religious tradition and human effort of every kind. I mean, I’m not saying anything we haven’t heard many times, but I feel like the Lord wants to put a…wants to shine a little bit of a light on this this morning, in a fresh way, I’m trusting.
But I thank God that it’s not that! I thank God that His purpose is to share Himself with us! How many of you know that the Christian life is impossible? What God has told us to do, in His Word, is completely impossible!
And of course, when I say that, I mean it’s impossible for us. There is simply no way that God could somehow inspire or command or scare human nature into being what He wants us to be. It’s purely a matter of life. The human nature…human nature became corrupted in the fall and it is irredeemable. The nature itself…your nature will never be changed. It only has to be killed. Folks, we are in the process of dying, and that is the consequence of sin.
But thank God, death is not the end! We see that in Jesus. The disciples themselves didn’t get this at this particular time, but Jesus knew what was coming. He knew that He was soon to go to a cross. He was soon to prepare a way so that you and I could be connected to Him. Not one of us, not the best among us, let alone the worst, could possibly have a real relationship with a holy God unless God did something about what was wrong with us!
You know, I grew up in a preacher’s home. I didn’t go out and live a life of sin like some people might think of it. But I’m no different than anybody else. I absolutely have a nature that drives me in the wrong direction. It’s something that I have to put down all the time. Anybody with me on that? Yeah! You know what I’m talking about! There’s a big part of us that opposes everything that God wants to do in us. Man, if I don’t have a power that’s greater than my own, I am helpless.
( congregational amens ).
But see, that’s the picture that Jesus is painting. It’s not just an outward connection. And boy, you get that right off the bat. He says, “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit….” Now that sounds on the surface like, oh my God, I’d better measure up, He’s gonna throw me away.
What’s the picture there? Why would a branch be sort of ‘in Him’ quote, unquote, and bear no fruit? Think about what He’s actually picturing there. What kind of a relationship is it between a branch and a vine if there is no fruit? It’s just physical, isn’t it? The bark may be connected. The wood may have some sort of a connection there. On the outside it looks like, yeah, there’s a branch. But the problem is there is no inside connection.
What a picture of religion that is! How many people in our world…I pray not here, but God knows. How many people in our world have an outward connection to Jesus? Everybody looking on would say, yeah, there they are, they’re connected. But yet, there is nothing on the inside.
The covenant that we have today is not one of laws and rules. God gave that, not to save, but to show people that we needed a Savior. That was meant to prepare people for the coming of the only One who could loose us from the power of our sins, and the guilt of our sins. Thank God!
But what happens to somebody who simply takes Christianity, and takes the teachings of Christ and builds it into a religion? It’s no different than what the Jews did with the Law of Moses. It’s a bunch of outward stuff that they do. And so, you have people that can come and sing, “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me…” and there’s no inward connection in the heart.
The New Covenant was not a bunch of better rules to live by, it was a new heart and a new spirit that God was going to put in His people. Boy, if you don’t have that, you don’t have anything! And what a warning this is, about those who would come and would be outwardly a part and yet, at times, you couldn’t even tell, perhaps.
Why do you think there will be so many people on the Day of Judgement that will show up and say, like we’ve said so many times lately, “Lord, Lord, have we not…done many wonderful works…” in your name? (KJV). And it lists off all the things…we’ve prophesied, we’ve preached!
I wonder how many preachers are going to be rejected because they never actually knew Him? They went to seminary…I was about to say cemetery. Sometimes that’s what it is. But anyway, they went to seminary. They learned how to do it.
You know, I had enough education to know that…I believe there were some people that loved the Lord and there was a degree of reality to it, but the reality is that they teach you ‘how to.’ How to be a preacher, how to construct sermons, how to…all the stuff that goes into it, from an outward standpoint, and the danger is that you can learn all that and never have the heart changed.
And so, what a clear picture this is meant to be of the difference between someone who is outwardly connected to the Lord and someone who is inwardly connected. And that’s what I sensed the Lord talking to me about, but I believe it’s for every one of us. This is what God is looking for. He’s looking for something that happens on the inside and it’s not just a Sunday-go-to-meeting kind of thing.
This is not where we visit Him and get a load of sap so we can bear fruit. It’s not like a gas station. The Lord is looking for an organic, living, day-by-day, moment-by-moment relationship with His people.
Now, it’s obvious that being a true branch is not a matter of some high level of perfection, is it? Because what happens to the rest of the branches? Everyone that bears fruit, what does He do? Ah, He prunes it! Why do you prune a branch? Because you’ve got stuff there that isn’t producing fruit and it’s getting in the way. It’s eating up the life and drawing life into itself for some other purpose than bearing fruit. And so, He says, no, that’s not what I’m after, so I’ve got to prune that off.
Anybody here had any pruning done lately? Yeah, I see a little of this going on. Yeah! You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? We need the Lord to prune us, folks! So, we’re not certainly painting a picture of some high level of perfection, but God wants us to understand how the Christian life works.
This is…and it’s not just the Christian life, because the Christian life is not just about what kind of a person I am. It’s about my call, my purpose. Every one of us, like we’ve said so many times lately, we’re unique, we have a calling, we have a place in the body of Christ, we have a place…basically, what God is looking for is people through whom He can live and walk among men.
Wow! Where have we heard about that before? We have a Savior who did exactly what He’s calling upon us to do, didn’t we, or don’t we? Yeah. This is exactly what His life was about.
And I thought about a passage over in John 5 where we read this truth with great clarity. Because Jesus has just done something that the Jews didn’t like, the leaders didn’t…anyway, the religious teachers. He healed somebody on the Sabbath, and that was a problem to them. You’re not supposed to…He told somebody to take up your bed and walk, I think. Yeah.
Well, that was against their law! And so, Jesus basically said, hey, the Father is doing His thing, I’m with Him. If He wants to heal somebody on the Sabbath, Praise God! They’re gonna get healed on the Sabbath. I don’t care about your rules. You have turned this into a religion of do’s and don’ts that have nothing to do with God’s heart and God’s purpose.
And so basically, He said, “My Father…” In verse 17, isn’t it? “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” (NIV). So now they’ve got another thing to go after Him for. What, you mean God is your Father? Who do You think You are?
All right, so then He gives a real insight into His life and ministry. In verse 19, “Jesus gave them this answer: Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself.” I don’t know how that fits in with your theology. He doesn’t say the Son is fully divine and He can do anything He wants to, anytime.
When He lived on Earth, He lived as a man. His life…He was the Son of God, for sure. But His life, His ministry was 100 percent dependent upon His Father. He understood that. He had the same need for His Father to live and operate in Him as we have a need of Jesus to live and operate in us. Jesus was just as helpless as you and I are, apart from the Father.
Now the one thing that sets Him apart is He never sinned! He understood, completely, His purpose, His role, how it worked, and He cooperated with it 100 percent! Thank God we have a sinless sacrifice who could go to the Cross for us and take our sins away.
But Jesus did not say, I choose to do nothing by Myself. I’m gonna put on an example for you and act like I can’t do it. No, He says, I can do nothing. “…The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”
Do you see this totally organic, living relationship where His purpose in life was not to say, okay God, give me some instructions, or give me some general idea what I’m supposed to do, and I’m gonna run do it. This was a moment by moment, Lord, live in Me. Do what You want to do. Help Me to walk with You and to be in total harmony with You, so that what I’m doing is really You in Me doing it.
He says that later, doesn’t He? He said, everything I do, it’s not…in fact, He said it back in chapter 14, where we started in 15. He said in 14, the works that I do, I don’t do by myself. “… The Father, living in me…is doing his work.” So, you see how Jesus was setting up chapter 15?
But now go back to what His testimony was about His own ministry. “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we had such a close relationship with the Lord that He could actually talk to us, and give us wisdom and instruction and insight into what’s going on around us and what He wants from us and give us the power to do it? Yeah!
We live pretty distant, pretty disconnected lives more than I think any of us would like to admit. But do you see the picture the Lord is painting for us? What an amazing kind of life this is. All right?
“…Shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.”
You talk about Judgment Day, you know who’s gonna be sitting on that Great White Throne? Jesus! And He’s gonna be looking at the very people who crucified Him. Boy, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. I’ll tell you what, I want to be among those who’ve bowed to Him and worshipped Him and lifted Him up for all that we were singing about this morning! Praise God, it’s the truth!
And I’ll tell you, those who come to Him…and we come just as we are! What a wonderful song to sing. We don’t have to come and somehow qualify ourselves for any of this. We just come humbly and say, Lord, I come on the ground of Your promise and Your provision and Your mercy toward me, and Your love! And He welcomes with open arms. What a wonderful promise!
And I’ll tell you, there’s gonna be a company of people who stand there on that day in white! Thank God! Thank God I can be one of those, not because there’s any virtue in me but because of Him 100 percent. I hope that applies to everyone here. All right?
He, “…has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”
Have you? Have you crossed over from death to life? That’s a pretty definite kind of thing. I mean, one moment you’re dead and the next you’re alive because of Him, because He comes in and seals the heart with His Spirit. That’s what salvation is about. I mean, you can have all the outward connection to the church and to Christ that you want. It won’t do a bit of good, if you don’t have this. All right?
“…Crossed over from death to life. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” He’s talking about a resurrection there, isn’t He? But what kind of resurrection? He says it ‘now is.’ The time is coming. Well, it’s here! Dead people are gonna, “… hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.”
Isn’t that what Paul said? “You…were dead in trespasses and sins.” (KJV). There is a resurrection that has been happening ever since the day of Pentecost for people who have heard the voice of the Son of God, and they have believed it, and they have been raised from the dead with Jesus Christ. And there is a life implanted in the heart that can never die!
( congregational amens ).
Doesn’t Revelation say, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection.” That’s what he’s talking about. I’ll tell you, if you’ve been born of God’s Spirit, you have been raised to newness of life because of Him! You have already been raised to newness of life! Yes, the body is still what it is, but there’s gonna come a day when that will, “…be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” Thank God, I want to be part of that first…I’m glad I’m part of that first resurrection!
( congregational amens ).
That’s the one that matters, and it’s happening right now because He was raised from the dead! All right? So here’s kind of…He explains this. He talks about the fact that they hear and they live. “For as the Father…” verse 26, “…as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” (NIV).
What’s happened is this. When Jesus walked among us, as a man, He had life in Him, didn’t He? “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (KJV). And people saw that life. They experienced it. But yet, we were not fit to have that life reside in us. Didn’t He tell His disciples…talked about the coming of the Holy Spirit and said, “… he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
You see the difference of what happened because of the death, burial and resurrection and ascension of our Lord. What has happened is He who had life in Himself, as a man, was raised to a newness of life, full of the brand-new…the life of God, the new creation and ascended to a throne.
Well, what’s He doing on that throne? What does He now have the power to do? He has the power to share that life. The life that is in Him is now able…He is now able to share it with us and we can have a living connection with the Son of God. It has nothing to do with what you can see and feel, in the natural sense. But there is a literal connection where we have the same life in us that He has in Him.
( congregational amens ).
Close
October 10, 2021 - No. 1514
“Don’t Be Devil’s Food” Conclusion
Broadcast #1514
October 10, 2021
October 10, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1514 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: When you have the Armies of Heaven riding forth with truth and the Word of God and you have every…you have the whole world system in arms against it, saying, we will not bow, then there’s nothing left but judgment. That explains what we’re seeing in the world.
I believe there’s still a harvest. I believe there are still people. I pray that God will help us to reach those that He would reach. But folks, this world is drinking up the darkness and the flood…that’s right, the flood out of the serpent’s mouth. That was Satan’s answer to the Gospel. He saw the church formed and realized what we had, and so he sent a flood out of his mouth. It was deception.
Look at Revelation 12 and the imagery there. There’s a flood of deception sent to take down the church, and the world just drank it right in, all that deception. Folks…this is a sober business. I mean, you look at some of the awful things that have happened in this world. You look at the holocaust. I mean, you see what’s in man. And you look at the heartlessness of a system that could march people into gas chambers, incinerate their bodies by the millions, and believe they were doing good, with no conscience about it. Where does that come from?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. You’ve got the heart of Lucifer, and his hosts, joining with human spirits that are yielded to that. And like I said, there’s no door number three, it’s God or the devil.
Anyone…I mentioned this before, but my mind goes back often to an incident when I was a student. We had a group that would go out on Saturday evenings in Brooklyn, on the streets. At one point, we actually had street meetings. But usually, we would just go…later on we stopped those meetings and we would just literally go out in pairs and pass out tracts and witness to people, in that whole section of Brooklyn.
And one night, I remember encountering a man, and he was pretty cocky about his position, as I recall. And basically, what he told me was, no, I don’t serve God but I don’t serve the devil either. Right! Do you see the level of deception that’s going on there? How easy is it for anybody in this world, particularly if they don’t know the Lord…what is the most natural thing, if you feel a desire rise up in you, and you feel the need to…doesn’t it feel like that’s right to just express that, to follow that? Why would I have it if I’m not supposed to follow it?
But there’s more going on. Boy, don’t anybody be deceived and think that you’re some sort of free moral agent, that you can not serve God but you can not serve…you can be free from serving the devil. There is no in between.
We were, as I said, created to be temples of God. Right? Remember the scripture we’ve used so many times in 2nd Thessalonians 2, about the rebellion? There’s a rebellion coming at the end of the age, and what it comes down to, is the man of sin sitting in the temple of God. Now I’m not gonna take a strong, ‘I know all the answers’ position about whether he’s talking about an individual. But I know he’s talking about a condition!
( congregational amens ).
There’s no physical temple that you can call, hey, that’s the Temple of God and there’s a man gonna set up a government there. That’s not what it’s talking about. The temple of God is the human heart! But what happens when people confront the truth and refuse to love it? That’s what it says there. “…Because they refused to love the truth…God sends them a powerful delusion.” (NIV).
Do you see the spirit of deception? When people will not have God’s purpose and God’s way, God steps back. Do you think it’s just a vacuum and nothing’s gonna happen? No, there are devils who are hungry.
They are miserable until they can steal, kill and destroy! That’s all their nature is. They’re gonna rush in, they’re gonna affirm your values and your desires and all that’s a part of you, and you’re gonna feel like, man, now I’ve got it, now I’m on the right track.
I want to warn young people growing up. You’re living in a world that glorifies just following your heart, following your natural desires. There’s nothing more natural, in a sense, about that. But what you’re doing is, you might think that you’re just doing your own thing, it’s not so bad, it’s not so terrible.
You are absolutely inviting a devil to come in, join with you, and they’re doing it for their benefit. Sooner or later, one way or another, they’re gonna use you up! If you go down that road, you just keep going down that road, the consequence of that may not be immediate, that’s part of the deception. But you keep going down that road and sooner or later, at best, you’re gonna die.
But sooner or later, sin will take you down, and take you down a road, and the devil will finish using you, and they’ve probably already conditioned somebody else, maybe it’s your child. They’ve already gotten the child used to…this is how it is, this is how you think, this is what life is about. So, they’re done with you and they don’t care about you one bit. They’re not a bit sorry when you go into the grave! They’re saying, praise god, I’m done with that one…well, they don’t say Praise God. They say, I’m done with that.
( laughter ).
I’m finally done with that. They weren’t satisfying me much anymore, they were so old and so useless. Now I get to get somebody else, and I’m gonna satisfy that deep hunger in my nature. That, folks, is the world that we live in! Whatever imagery you use, whether it’s a roaring lion or a vulture or a serpent eating dirt, eating dust, it all comes to the same thing. And, folks, we need to recognize the world that we live in. And as I say, young people need to recognize what’s going on.
But I referred to the fact, that we were created to be God’s image. And the relationship that God seeks from every one of us, is to have a union to live in us, and for the lives that we live in this world to be an expression, not of human nature, but of His nature. But, folks, we have a part in that. If that all were automatic, why would Peter say, beware, be alert, watch out for the devil? Folks, we need to be alert and sober, and recognize what’s going on. It’s so easy just to go to sleep and become careless.
But I’ll tell you what, there’s so many different aspects of this that I’ve thought about. Think about what’s going on here. You have a devil, whose nature is to use, abuse, and destroy, has no conscience, no care for its victims. Just, I’m gonna use you and discard you when I’m done. No more care than a lion has for its prey. That’s door number one, if you will.
But door number two is a God. And the devil will try to portray Him as a great big crime boss in the sky who just wants to use and abuse us. And it is the absolute, utter opposite! He came to give life. Didn’t Jesus say, the devil comes, “…to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” God longs, not to use and abuse us and destroy us, but to fill us with Himself, to share all of His amazing goodness with us!
( congregational response ).
Praise God! There’s no end to His goodness and to His love! You and I cannot be what we were created to be apart from God living in us and there being a complete, willing union with Him!
( congregational response ).
And we’re not stormtroopers, like we said recently. We’re not just clones. We’re every one individuals, but to be all that God made us to be and to allow Him to live in us. That’s what it’s about. That’s what everything is about.
And God has chosen to build His Kingdom, as I say, in the midst of world where we’re gonna have to say some, ‘no,’ to the devil. We’re gonna have to learn how to recognize and say, no, I will not go your way, I will not yield my body to be your lunch!
Maybe that will make it plain as a way you can remember it, because that’s what we do, every one of us. And it isn’t just the physical stuff that we think about, the sins of the flesh. When we get really angry, when we get jealous, we get envious, all these types of things that tend to rise out of our spirits, where do you think the impulse for that comes from?
You could say, yes, it comes from my nature. But who’s encouraging that? Who’s speaking into your mind to try to make you feel that…the fear, every form of the polar opposite of what God’s given us. We haven’t received, “…the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love…” and self-control. (KJV). But oh, there’s a devil out there who will tempt God’s people, who will do everything in his power to divide, to deceive, to just throw a little monkey wrench into the works.
And Peter is concerned, isn’t he? Rightly. There is a devil, like I say, he wants to eat you and me for lunch. I don’t know how much more I need to say. There may be somebody else that has something, that can add to this.
But I just feel like, there are these three aspects to all of this. We need to understand our world, don’t we? We need to understand that God is coming down to the little end of the horn, history is. And what men do with His truth determines destiny. And when you have a civilization that reaches the point where they have said, no, and God has said, all right, I will step back. There is nothing left but judgment.
Didn’t Jesus compare His coming to the flood? We’ve talked about this many times. But what was going on with the flood? What was the condition of the human race? There was no more capacity for God, no more interest! They had so said no to a point where there was no more capacity to say, okay, let me think about that. Just absolute no.
Those devils had come to that civilization and so ingrained themselves, so embedded themselves in the lives of those people, there was a union of people and devils, that was totally aligned against God. And God’s heart was full of pain, and I’m sorry I ever made them. I mean, there was an emotion. It wasn’t like, oh good, I get to smash them. This was a heart of pain to see what had happened and how they made that choice.
But judgment was coming, wasn’t it? And every single one of them who had rebelled against God in that civilization died. The same thing in Sodom and Gomorrah. They had reached a point where there was no way forward except judgment. And every single one that was not drawn out and rescued, died.
That’s the picture of what’s gonna happen when Jesus comes. They can tell you all these other things about being left behind, everybody left behind died. Folks, the judgment is coming. But oh, I thank God for what He’s called us to.
Do you see how this plays into the Body of Christ? Do you see what the church is? It’s not just people following a religion and saying, this is how you do stuff, and this is how you behave, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. This is a habitation. We are built together for what purpose? For God to live in us!
And listen to what Peter says. You look back into chapter 4 and you consider this part of the context. Let me see if I can find exactly where I’m looking. Oh, I’m in the wrong chapter that’s why I couldn’t find it. All right, “The end of all things…” verse 7, “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind…” again, “…so that you may pray.
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God…”and so forth. (NIV).
You’ve got this sense, there is a literal union between a human being and a God who lives on the inside, so that what comes out is not just flesh, it’s not just human. There is a divine quality to it. Just the opposite with somebody where the devil really comes in and takes over. You’re not just talking to a person, you’re talking to a devil. How many know what I’m talking about?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, we’ve seen it. But you see it every day if you recognized it. This world is deceived. They think they’re doing their own thing, like that poor man in Brooklyn, who had no idea. But do you see the connection to the Body of Christ? It’s the polar opposite of the devil coming in for the purpose of using, abusing, and destroying.
Whereas, God comes in to enable us to fulfill His purpose and it’s the very opposite of selfishness and consuming and then going on to the next one. It’s so that I might serve. It’s so that I might share His love and His goodness with you, according to abilities that He’s given me. So, it’s not just me, it’s Him! It’s not I, but Christ who lives in me.
But that’s for every member of the Body of Christ. And I’ll tell you, we’re either gonna serve that purpose or we’re gonna serve the devil’s purpose. That’s what it’s coming down to. The Lord is bringing us to that place, and I thank God for it.
But do you see also, that Peter recognizes this is not just an automatic thing? Okay, I’m in, everything’s good. This brings us to a place where we make choices. And we’re in the process of being changed into His image. We’re not there yet. And there are still weaknesses in every one of us, where we’re tempted to give vent to something in our nature.
Where do you think the inspiration for that comes from? There’s a devil out there that’s hungry. He’s wanting to eat you for lunch, and me. And if we let him, he’ll get a hold, and he will hinder what God longs to do in the life of His child. I’ll tell you, if you and I have truly been born of His spirit, I mean…the seal has been applied, we’re His, thank God!
But there are a lot of Christian lives who are wasted, because of holds that the devil gets because of yielding through human nature to his power. Peter was talking to Christians when he said, watch out, there’s a devil as a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. You see the imagery there, it’s pretty plain. But I thank God that we have One who lives in us who is greater than he that is in the world.
( congregational response ).
I thank God that He has given us power over all the power of the enemy. Nothing shall anywise hurt you. We have the power to overcome through the blood of Jesus Christ and the name of Jesus Christ. We can pray for one another, we can…but do you see what Peter is interested in, what he’s concerned about…that we not just get lost in our lives and go to sleep and think everything is fine? We recognize what’s going on.
There is a cosmic battle raging around us, in an unseen world. There are devils who will try their best to take us down and hinder us. There is a Christ who would speak words of love and peace into our hearts. And we have the power to yield to Him and to have power over all of that. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony…” But they also “…did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”
There are things in us to which we need to die, because otherwise, the devil will pull on that. We’ve used many times…we’ve referred to the scripture where Jesus said, “…the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me.” He had been tested and tried in every point to see if there was a point in which he would yield to fleshly desires, and agree with the devil. And He never did! Thank God, we have a Savior like that!
But oh, we need to recognize our place in this. We are not just pawns on a chess board. We are creatures with wills and choices. And God is longing for us to choose to look to Him and to reach out to Him and say, God, take my heart. Fill me. I want Your life and not mine! I want Your desires, Your will, everything about You and not me! Lord, change me. Set me free from the influence of this world. I see the direction it’s going. I want You!
( congregational response ).
I want Your Kingdom! Praise God that He’s provided everything we need to be able to do what Peter says. And look again at the conclusion of all of this, “And the God of all grace….” Oh, thank God for grace. It’s that divine power that reaches down in our desperate need and helps us. “…The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever.”
None of this is meant to make people be afraid. We have power over all the power of the enemy. But it is to make us alert and aware. Don’t be surprised by what’s going on in the world. If somebody hears this, and you have not really ever surrendered to Jesus Christ, oh, I call on you to cry out to God!
( congregational amens ).
If you don’t, you have no idea what you’re up against. There are devils that will eat you and discard you and have no concern at all for it. They won’t pity you in the least. They’ll use, abuse, and destroy you. Jesus came that you might have life and have it to the full!
( congregational amens ).
Your happiness does not lie in following your earthly desires. It comes from knowing Him. And to God’s people, just take heed to the things…starting with me, take heed to the things that He says in this passage, because we have the victory, but we have a part to play, don’t we? So, thanks be unto God which gives us the victory. Praise God!
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October 3, 2021 - No. 1513
“Don’t Be Devil’s Food” Part One
Broadcast #1513
October 3, 2021
October 3, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1513 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve had some thoughts rattling around in my pea brain the last few days, and I’m just trusting the Lord to make some sense out of them and bring out of it what He wants. I’m gonna touch on a number of thoughts that I’ve touched on before and ministered directly on before, but I believe there are some things that are revealed in scripture that help us to understand the world that we live in, what’s going on, what our place is, what the Lord is looking for from us.
And, I’m gonna start in an unlikely place, in 1st Peter chapter 5. Of course, this is the passage that begins with how the elders are to handle themselves and be servants and examples to God’s people and all of us being clothed with humility. We talked about that recently…humbling ourselves, “…under God’s mighty hand…” and all that. (NIV).
But then Peter goes to something else in verse 8. He says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
And then he goes on with a word of encouragement. “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever.”
And my mind was drawn, because of this and a couple of other scriptures, to this picture of the devil. Now it pictures the devil in this particular passage as a roaring lion. There’s…we understand the imagery there. There’s a ravenous beast, and this beast does not simply go around to kill for the sake of killing. Why does a lion kill?
( congregation inaudible ).
For food, yeah. There’s something there that feeds his being, his nature. That’s the reason any of us eat, physically speaking. But the devil feeds on people. And that’s his nature. And so, we need to see that. There’s a reason why the devil attacks, and it helps to explain our world. It helps to explain the battles that we’re in. It helps to explain the choices people are called upon to make.
I believe there’s a truth that’s kind of locked up in here that I want to…I’m trusting the Lord to make plain today, and to bring out in a clearer way so that we can understand it. But, I know…I don’t know if I’m gonna turn to all these scriptures, but you remember what happened in the beginning.
There’s a scripture my mind has gone back to many times as to what happened in the original temptation. In that particular instance, we find the devil coming as a serpent, and he’s coming with a temptation. And God had placed His creatures, Adam and Eve, in a beautiful place, but they were in a place of innocence. They hadn’t really made a choice to go one way or the other. There was no sin, there was no death. But they also hadn’t really partaken of the Tree of Life, had they? So they were in that in-between place.
And the devil came, and he went to Eve, and he began to immediately raise questions in her mind about what God had said in commanding them not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Lord had said, you do it and you’ll die. And the devil says, no, that isn’t so and God knows! He’s holding out on you. He’s got evil motives here, selfish motives. He knows that when you eat of that you’re gonna become like gods knowing good and evil.
And so there was a temptation to strike out on a separate search for control of one’s own life, pursuit of one’s own interest, putting self at the center. That became the essence of what they partook of. And they fell for that. They made that choice.
And, where Eve was deceived, we read that Adam wasn’t deceived. He made a deliberate choice to agree with his wife and to follow her into that sin. And so, in a way, his sin was greater. But nonetheless, we come to the point where the Lord comes down and addresses the situation.
And he first addresses the serpent…and curses him. He said, you’re gonna be cursed above all creatures. You’re gonna lie on your belly…you’re gonna sleep…you’re gonna crawl on your belly. But one thing is particularly interesting. And He says that…let me go ahead and read it. I better go ahead and actually look at this because my brain is just not calling things up as quickly as it used to. Anybody else know what I’m talking about?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. All right? So in chapter 3, beginning in verse 14, the middle of it, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.”
Now how many of you think that snakes live on a diet of dirt? No. We know that’s not true. But the Lord is putting something out there. He’s revealing something. This is what devils are left with, having rebelled against God. And I certainly don’t put this out there for anybody to feel sorry for a devil. But they chose to rebel against full knowledge of the goodness of God and their honored place in it. And so their entire existence is now reduced to somehow satisfying an insatiable hunger.
How do they do that? Does the devil get all of his joy from standing off to the side and just getting someone to do the wrong thing? I mean, we know he tempts people. But there’s more to it than that. He literally is seeking to become a participant in sin, and all of his…every part of his being gravitates to that and lays hold of it, and finds his pleasure in it.
It’s not just that…let’s take something obvious, although it could be any facet of human nature. You know, sins of pride and sins of…you know, all those kinds of sins of the spirit that we call them are probably worse than the other. But let’s just take something we understand, where there’s a person, who for one reason or another, is hooked on alcohol or drugs.
And whether they’re seeking pleasure or to dull pain, nonetheless, there is a sensation, there’s a bodily sensation that becomes addictive. They can’t not do it after a while. It has a power, it gains a power. But I believe God wants us to see deeper into that and to realize that what spirits who drive people to that are looking for is to come in and participate in that, and they are actually getting something out of the bodily sensations that the person feels, that they wouldn’t get any other way.
You understand the difference. It’s one thing to stand off and say, do something bad and I’m gonna laugh about it. This is a participatory judgment. The whole place that devils occupy now is trying to get some…trying to satisfy a deep craving in their being, and they’re doing it by getting, not only getting people to sin, but joining with them in their sin. There is a union between people and devils.
And you see that in…and of course, there are all kinds of devils, aren’t there? They’re not all one thing. Some of them are seeking pleasure. Some of them are…have a spirit of utter cruelty. You look at the crimes, you look at the things that go on in the world, and you look past the human being who certainly is a willing participant.
But you look and you will see the cruelty of some kinds of demons who will take hold of a person and cause them to torture and kill somebody, and have no conscience about it, and actually gain a feeling of power and…they’re feeding something. They’re feeding something that’s very real.
Now others are getting pleasure out of causing people pain. But do you think that where a devil wants to come and gain some measure of satisfaction for his own depraved being, do you think he actually cares about his victims? No. You have a completely heartless being who will eat you up and dispose of you and laugh about it and go take up somebody else.
You look at the spirits that Jesus cast out. They had gained such a hold on their victims, that they were living there, driving them to do whatever it was their nature…the demon’s nature to do, that was in agreement between the human being and the person, and then laughing about it, killing them, eventually. Using, abusing and killing them, laughing about it and going on to the next victim.
Do you think a lion has a…cares about its prey? I mean, I’m sorry I have to do this, but I’m hungry. No, there is a ravenous beast responding to a natural drive that causes them to kill to satisfy their own needs. What an apt picture that is of the devil.
You know, when the apostles went out, we’ve talked about this before, when they went out to preach the Gospel, they preached from the scriptures, did they not? But they didn’t have the New Testament, so when they preached from the scriptures, they preached from the Old Testament. And the Lord gave them an insight into things that were not apparent back in Old Testament days.
I’ll drop this in. That should cause people to step back a little bit when they think they can read the Old Testament and understand it, apart from the New…just to tackle it with their mind and understand it. There is so much theology out there that’s built that way. Folks, we cannot understand the Old Testament except in the light of the New and only with the help of the Author. And even then, we better be slow about what we claim to know. We better look to the Lord and have a humble spirit, because we have a great deal of reason to be humble.
But anyway, there is one prophecy in Isaiah that comes to mind in this way, and it’s talking about the eternal future, but it’s also talking about the age in which we now find ourselves. When Christ went to the cross, when He was raised from the dead, when He was seated on a throne, when He poured out the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, something happened. There was a kingdom that came into being and it’s a kingdom that will last forever. And all the Old Testament prophets pointed to this time.
But one of the things in this particular prophecy says this, “…dust shall be the serpent’s meat.” (KJV). Do you see what’s locked up in that? Because…I didn’t go on in the end of chapter 3 here in Genesis, but when God pronounced the judgment, the consequence of their disobedience, to Adam, He ends up with the fact that they’re going to struggle for their food and all of that, and then you’re gonna, “…return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (NIV).
Do you see what’s locked up in this? Human beings, bodily human beings, corrupted by sin, they are nothing but devil’s food. I preached a message entitled that one time and I’m trying to come up with something different and I haven’t really come up with it yet. But, maybe it’s “Don’t Be Devil’s Food.” I don’t know…because that’s what Peter was saying. But folks, there is this imagery that comes from the scriptures that pictures demons…and like I say, it’s not just that they’re trying to, they’re angry and they’re trying to get us to sin. They need you and me. They need people.
How many of you remember the incident in the Gospels, where Jesus was casting out devils, and the religious leaders came to the conclusion, or they were thinking among themselves, yeah, I get it. He’s in league with the devil, and that’s how He’s doing it. They’re pulling the wool over our eyes. They’re tricking us into thinking that He’s got some special power and He’s come from God. Ha! The devil’s given Him the power to do that.
And Jesus goes on and talks about how ridiculous that is. A kingdom divided against itself will not stand. I’ve come with power, and the only way that you can free a victim of the devil is to have greater power than the one who holds him captive.
Thank God, we’ve got Someone like that! He has invaded history with a power greater than the power we’re talking about, that feeds on humanity. But there is a different…sort of a different imagery that the Lord uses, and He talks about the unclean spirit going out of a man. So now you’ve got a man who has actually had a demon, not just out there talking to him, but living in him, considering him his home.
You see what’s happened there? There has come a level of agreement between that human being and the devil, such that the devil finds that his home, considers that his home. And he gets to live there and express his nature.
But in this instance, Jesus says, when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he does, what? He goes through dry places. What’s he looking for? Looking for rest. What happens? He can’t find it.
I’ll tell you, there’s a phrase I remember a preacher saying many years ago. Brother Thomas quoted it. When it is…I mean, if somebody has a certain nature and they’re not able to do what their nature drives them to do, they’re miserable. Satan’s nature and the nature of all of his hosts are completely evil all the time. There is not one ounce of goodness. But there is not just a desire to do evil, there is a need to do it. There is a craving to follow that nature and express it.
Why do you think they prey on humanity? You take a devil that’s just out there and not bothering anybody…or not able to do that, that’s what Jesus describes. He’s in a dry place. He’s miserable. I can’t stand this. I’ve got to be doing what it’s my nature to do. I’m hungry, is another way to put it. You put all these images together and you begin to get a picture of what’s going on in the world.
But anyway, what happens then, the devil says, I’ll go back to my house. But what happens? What does he find? “…Empty, swept, and garnished.” (KJV). So this house is still empty. Man, we need someone better than the devil to fill it. We need the Lord!
( congregational response ).
But in this case, Jesus is portraying a situation where, for whatever reason, there’s a devil that’s left a man, comes back, finds it empty…it’s available, it’s been cleaned up even. Maybe he got a little religion. But it’s empty. And so what does he do? He takes seven others that are worse than himself and they come in, “…and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”
Oh, I’ll tell you, we need to understand a lot of these things, because it explains history, explains what’s going on in our world today, what we’re seeing unfold. And it’s a warning to people that there’s no neutral ground. There is no such thing…I think we said this last week, there is no door number three. It’s God or the devil.
We were not created just to be independent beings. We were created to have a living, practical union with God, who is Spirit. He’s everywhere. He’s able to be wherever…at the farthest reaches of the universe and still live inside a human being. We were made to be His temple. We were made to do things in harmony with Him so that it’s not just a human being doing it. It’s Him.
But what happens when a human being is empty and instead of doing that, he follows his own nature? In the firsts place, what drives him to do that? Obviously, there’s a hunger, just like in a devil, there’s a hunger to follow…if you find impulses rising out of your being, the impulse is to follow it, right? But you’ve got a devil who’s saying, yeah, that’s the way to go, just like he did with Eve. Be your own person. Do what you feel. Do what’s right for you. You’re your own boss, your own god.
But what’s he after? Eating you for lunch. I’ll tell you, this is a sobering thing that people need to get, believers need to get, because these are believers Peter is talking to here. But what do you think the world…what do you think of the condition of the world?
It’s an interesting passage and I’m certainly not going to try to decode it, even if I thought I could. You know, the further I go, the less I know about a lot of things that people are very sure of. But I just want what the Lord wants to make plain. Anyway, in Revelation 19 is an interesting passage and I believe that it sort of pictures something that happens throughout the age, but I believe it comes to a climax. And we are getting closer and closer.
How many of you know that? Do you see what’s unfolding? All right? This talks about what’s really unfolding and it pictures it in symbolic language, but you can see the reality of what’s going on here. In verse 11, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.” (NIV).
Well, is there any doubt who he’s talking about? This a very rich, symbolic picture that portrays for us the Son of God, not just…oh, there He is. But these are attributes. These are things about Him. Man, He is something beyond everything else. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
It’s so easy to think of Him as the Man walking around, but He was there in the beginning. He is the One who uttered the words, “Let there be light, and there was light.” He is the One who spoke the stars into existence. We’ve said this many times. And there He was, humbled, walking among us. But now He’s exalted again to the very place that He occupied before He ever came to earth.
But He occupies now a very special place, where He’s able to do something about the condition of this creation. God’s purpose is to raise up a people with whom He can have the kind of relationship we’re talking about, where it’s not just, I’m serving Him…it’s me, doing my thing, and I’m…He lives within us. There is a surrender of a vessel to have a full-orbed union with this God. Oh, praise God!
That’s what Jesus…opened up the way so that God could share His life. Our sin separated us from Him, but Jesus’ blood that was mentioned here is what took care of sin and blotted it out, so that we don’t have to face that anymore. We can stand before Him as if we had never sinned! And His blood makes us holy enough for a Holy God to be able to live in here. That’s what He’s seeking. That’s what this is all about.
But folks, we were not created…well, let me go on here. There are two or three truths that come out here. Anyway, “The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.”
So there’s a judgment that’s an aspect of this. You’re looking at the end. You’re looking at the final victory over all the forces of the enemy. “He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
Oh, you’ve got so many people that call themselves Christians today that think the wrath of God is a bad thing. If you ever see the reality of what sin and rebellion is…there’s no other answer but for God to blast it out of existence, to utterly crush it. And what’s going on here is, He’s coming, and all of the armies of the world…it’s talking about the whole power structure of the world system, instead of yielding to God’s Word, instead of saying, yes, thank You for coming to our rescue, they are resisting it. They are saying, no, we will not serve You! You may call Yourself King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but You’re not my Lord. I’m gonna do as I please.
And I’ll tell you, that spirit is what we are seeing unfold in the world. And I’ll tell you, He is gonna crush it completely.
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September 26, 2021 - No. 1512
“Be Real” Conclusion
Broadcast #1512
September 26, 2021
September 26, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1512 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Let me go over, just briefly, to read a scripture in 1st Peter. I believe it’s chapter 2. We scanned through, skimmed through 1st Peter recently, and talked about how God’s gonna judge the church first, and how that was an “honest assessment.”
But drop back to chapter 2, verse 1, because Peter has laid out the reality of what the Gospel is about. It’s a new heart. It’s a new spirit. It’s God’s power. It’s a new birth. It’s something miraculous, and those who have been born of that, now what? And so, that’s how chapter 2 begins.
“Therefore….” Based upon everything I’ve said up to this point, God’s called you. Look what He’s done for you. “Therefore…” talking to believers now, “…rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” (NIV). Then he goes on, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word…” and so forth. (KJV).
He’s talking to Christians. Jesus’ words were not just directed at unbelievers who were masquerading as believers, or self-deceiving themselves that they were believers. He’s talking about everybody. And you know, in thinking about this subject, I didn’t come here with anything in mind or anybody in mind. I have absolutely no one in mind. There’s a principle here that I felt like God wanted to emphasize, and the closer I got to the service, the more I felt it. I felt like the Lord has just quickened this. I have a need. Anybody here have a need?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, we all do, because we are very good at deceiving ourselves and thinking we’re something that we’re not. We need God’s light to shine, not just in behavioral matters, but all the way down into the very depths of our being, because we don’t know.
But you know, there are so many things. Are we Christians all the time? It got quiet. You know, we know what to do when we come in here. We know to participate and smile sometimes and lift our hands and sing and smile at people and say, hi.
I wonder how many times people will say, hi, how are you doing, it’s good to see you, and then go out and start gossiping, or running somebody down, or slandering or all these things? See, these are human behaviors that the grace of God needs to address, that we need to recognize are part of the old nature, that we have been given a new nature to enable us to overcome.
But we’ve got to participate in this kind of stuff. He doesn’t say, just lay on your couch, and God’s gonna magically take all this stuff out of your heart. He’s saying, you need to do this. You need to recognize these things are in you, and you need to stop it, by the grace of God.
So I mean, that’s just one little example of how we come in and we put on a happy face, or we smile at somebody, but we don’t really have what we need, do we? Do you think that effects anything?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Jesus calls it leaven. I’m no baker, to say the least. I eat the product, but I don’t bake, and I don’t know anything much about it, other than I know that leaven is supposed to be something you put in, what? Flour? Something. But it has an effect that permeates the whole, and affects how it comes out, so what Jesus is saying hypocrisy is one of those things that’s like leaven. You get a little in there, it affects everything. God doesn’t want His people to be affected by something like that.
You know, we sang, ‘Desiring God’s Presence’. Well, praise God! That’s a good thing to desire, but is this not part of that? There are so many areas where we’re one thing under certain circumstances and another under different ones, and that’s not exactly a good thing.
How many people are Christians in here, but then, you get out there, and you’re in a different set of circumstances, and you’re different? How many are one thing when you’re around fellow Christians and another when you’re around the people of the world and your friends in that realm? Do you just become a chameleon and blend in with your surroundings?
We all have a tendency in that direction if we’re not careful. We need…God wants to have people who are 100 percent given to Him in the heart, where we are Christians 24/7. How many of you would go off to some distant…if you went off to some distant place by yourself, there’s nobody who even knows who you are, let alone being around fellow believers, are there things that you would do that you wouldn’t do if you were around them?
It’s a lot to think about, isn’t it? Is our behavior…how much is our behavior dependent on where we’re at and who we’re with? God wants people who are real. We need to be real, folks.
When you’re alone sitting in front of a computer, or sitting on your phone, of course, in these days, or your tablet, are you real then? Are you a Christian then? Or when you truly are alone, and there’s nobody looking?
I mean, we’re all tempted. We talked about that recently. We’re in an area, we’re in an age especially, a point in the age, when the Devil’s power is reaching, is approaching its zenith. We’re not quite there, but I don’t know how far we’re off. It’s getting there. And we’re gonna have to have what’s real down in here to stand up against that.
And God is going to allow His people to be tempted. Did He not do that with His own Son? We can’t sidestep facing the Devil and overcoming. Thank God it isn’t based on me. It isn’t based on my ability. It’s based upon the cross. It’s based upon One who not only died for me, He took me into the grave with Him! He came forth victorious over sin and death, and He sits on a throne! And He invites me to reign with Him.
That’s wonderful theology, but do we live it out? I’ve been in situations where the Devil has come around and tempted me to kind of let down my guard just a little bit. What do we think about? What thoughts do we allow to, not just get in our mind, but sort of percolate and think about, and they don’t take you to some good directions?
You know, Brother Thomas used to use the illustration all the time, a bird may land on your head, but if that bird comes back and starts building a nest, that’s a different story. Every one of us has bad thoughts. Every single one of us have thoughts that come to us that aren’t from God, but do you sort of nurse that and nurture it?
Is there a spirit of unforgiveness that enables you to just take in thoughts that kind of flow out of that, create bitterness? Just one example. I mean, human nature is something else, and we’re gonna have to get the victory over it through the cross. Thank God, we’ve got a basis.
But, you know, our young people, this is not focused on them, but it’s an obvious example, because we all have been there. Are we one thing in church and another thing in school? If you’re in school, if you can even get there these days. But you know what I’m talking about. Do we just go along because we’re more concerned about what people think of us and whether they accept us?
You know, we don’t have to be religious nuts, but my God, if we’re just like the world, where is the light coming from in this dark hour? We need to be His people. As I said, we don’t have to be self-righteous, religious, rule-keeping kind of people. That’s not the spirit of it, that’s not the heart, that’s not God’s heart. But oh, if He doesn’t make us different….
See, Jesus didn’t despise the sinners. He actually reached out and spent time with them. He didn’t wallow in their sin, but He let them know that there was hope! He opened a door of hope for people who felt hopeless based upon the system.
You know, we talked about how the scribes loaded people down with all kinds of, with a heavy burden they couldn’t possibly carry. And it was all their rules about what you’re supposed to be to be righteous before God. And it was all a big fat lie! There are these poor people, the victim of all these self-righteous, religious people, and Jesus reaches out to them and lambasts the religious people.
I’ll tell you, that’s still God’s heart today. There’s a lot of religion. I thank God for everyone that’s really His. He’s got His people, but I’ll tell you what, there are gonna be a lot of surprises.
You remember the man that talked to Brother John B and Brother Thomas that one time. There will be three great surprises. There will be people in heaven you didn’t think would be there, and there will be people absent that you thought were gonna be there. The biggest surprise of all is that you’re there!
You know, God sees the heart—God sees the heart. He sees everyone’s heart here. He sees those who are in a weak place, and the Devil has gotten a hold in areas of your life because of conditions that are down here like what we’re talking about. There are areas of little compromises. Little, I can do this because nobody’s around to see me.
You know, I’ve had the Devil tempt me in that kind of a way at times, and I’ve had to stop and think, yeah, here I am. Nobody’s seeing me. It’s like I’m standing naked on a lit stage as far as the unseen world is concerned. God sent His angel to watch over me. What am I putting the angel through? What does he think about all of this? I’m not hiding anything. I’m certainly not hiding anything from God. He not only sees my actions, He sees my thoughts, and He sees the motives that are behind my thoughts. We need the Lord, folks.
( congregational amens ).
We need Him in ways that are deeper than we have perhaps thought. The Devil has so many ways of compromising believers. David was a man after God’s own heart, wasn’t he? It’s interesting how some of the things that he says…I mean, you could go through the Psalms and see many things he said, but I’ll just pick a couple that we know.
Psalm 19, I think, was one of them. David’s attitude, he first talks about the heavens declaring the glory of God and how amazing and powerful He is, and he comes down in 7 and following and talks about how the law of the Lord is perfect. In other words, the Word of God is what we need. This is what we need to make us what we ought to be.
He talks about the ordinances of the Lord, down in 10, “They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold…” (NIV). David valued the truth of God above gold and silver and anything that he could have, any treasure he could have had in the world. Do we value it that way? We need to. Oh, my God. Praise the Lord!
All right? “They are sweeter that honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors?” Who can discern his errors? Which one of us is so wise that we can say, yeah, this is not what it’s supposed to be. I’ll tell you, God has to convict us.
The truth of the matter is, there are things that probably exist in every one of our lives that we are oblivious to what’s really going on. We need God to shine His light deep down in our hearts so we know the truth. I do. I don’t want to go along fooling myself. My heart’s deceitful, my natural heart. God’s given me a new one. Thank God, my only hope.
“Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.” I think the King James calls it “secret sins.” There are things that nobody else knows about, and that would apply to every believer, not just the ones who think they’re believers that aren’t, but I mean real believers.
There are things about ourselves that nobody else knows about, but God does. And here’s David, a man after God’s own heart, reaching up and saying, oh God, forgive my hidden faults, the things that nobody knows about.
Are you concerned about things that nobody else knows about, but that you’re convicted about because they’re wrong? That’s a pretty good sign if we can feel that way about our own behavior. Or do we just concern ourselves with our appearance before somebody else?
I’ll tell you, we need to have a heart like David that says, this doesn’t have anything to do with what other people think. This has to do with what You think. I want to be real. I want to have the kind of heart that I need to have, and I can’t do it unless You help me.
“Keep you servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression.” And then his prayer: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
That’s a pretty good prayer, isn’t it? Because this gets, this ignores…I mean, if we have this, everything else will be what it’s supposed to be. The world will hate us, and God’s people will love us, the ones that really love Him.
But who cares what the world thinks about me if I am pleasing to Him? That’s where we’re going, folks. We’re gonna have to be willing to lay down our lives if necessary for this Gospel. That’s what it cost Jesus. That’s what it cost all of the apostles accept John, and they tried to kill him. What was it? They boiled him in oil or something, and he didn’t die. God preserved him.
You think about what it costs to serve this God. But it’s worth everything to be born again, to be His. Praise God! Paise the Lord!
I thought about another scripture that David wrote. I think it’s in Psalm 86. And again, I’m not gonna go through the whole thing, but he’s talking about how wonderful the Lord is and how he calls on Him in the day of trouble. But down in verse 10, for example, “For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth.”
Teach me Your way, and I will walk in Your truth. That gets down to how we live. That’s not just how we live in open relationship to one another. That’s how we live when we are alone, and nobody knows what we’re doing or what we’re thinking, about or going off and doing something.
But he says this: “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.” An undivided heart. You know, James, the book of James talks about people who are double-minded. Under certain circumstances, they’ll think this way, but you put them in another set of circumstances, they’ll think a different way. Folks, we need one way of thinking, and that’s God’s way. We need to have an undivided heart.
Oh God, we are so good at putting on a front for ourselves mostly, but God wants to deal with the other things. Are we one person here, or are we another person in the home? It’s not an uncommon affliction. We need God’s mercy, God’s grace to help us regardless of where we’re at, to be His 100 percent. Thank God!
Well, you know, you take a man like David, and you realize even David messed up royally. Of course, he was a king, but, I mean, he really messed up. He got in such a condition that he committed adultery, committed murder to cover it up, and then, it was something like a year later, he still had no clue what he had done and what God thought about it. Wow!
But do you see where the leaven gets if you let it work? It can take you a long way out of the way. But the one thing that you see in David that you do not see in the Pharisees is a heart that repents. Thank God!
You think about what it meant to be a king. You had the power of life and death. How many prophets went to kings, told them the truth and wound up being killed for it? But here’s the prophet going to David and telling him about his sin, and pointing his finger in his face and saying, “Thou art the man.” (KJV).
You think about David’s reaction. You see where the heart really is. Instead of lashing out, he humbled himself, and there we have Psalm 51. And you think about some of the things that he said there. I’ll tell you, I want to have that kind of heart.
None of this that we’re saying about this morning is about perfectionism. God knows we’re not. God knows we have needs. That’s why He’s addressing this. That’s why Peter said, lay aside these things. Stop being hypocrites.
Reality is, we’re all hypocrites more than we would like to admit. We would like people to have a…to project an image that would cause people to think a certain way about us, but is that entirely in harmony with the reality? God wants us to be real. That’s a good title, by the way, if somebody wants to write that down. “Be Real.”
David says in verse 10, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (NIV). David saw the problem. He just didn’t say I messed up in my behavior. Oh, God, forgive my deed. He realized where the deed came from.
Do we? Do we recognize where our…what it is that causes our thoughts to go in a way they shouldn’t, our secret actions, the places we go on the computer? I mean…it touches everything. Or the attitudes that we have toward people that cause us to run them down and talk about them.
Boy, it has gotten quiet. Is this truth? Is God concerned about this? Does He love us and want to help us? Folks, God wants to clean up the leaven in our lives. He wants us to be real. He wants us to be Christians, whether we’re sitting here, whether we’re outside, whether we’re at work, in school, or absolutely by ourselves, or in another country totally by ourselves and nobody knows us, and we could theoretically do anything and nobody would care. We want to be just as real in every scenario. We don’t want to be real here and then get to the home and be somebody different. We need God’s help.
( congregational amens ).
There’s not a bit of condemnation, but we need to be honest that we need God’s help. But He’s promised it, hasn’t He? What an awesome Savior that we have!
But do you see what Jesus was getting at? The leaven of not understanding the difference between what I am on the outside, and how I see myself and other people see me, and what’s really in the heart.
If we don’t have something that’s real down in here, we don’t have anything, and we need it, and it’s available. Let’s look to God with an honest heart and say, God, You fix what’s broke. Help me. Help me to be honest. Help me to be like David and say, search me, Lord. Do what You’ve got to do. Just work in my life and accomplish Your purposes.
But I praise God! We don’t have to live lives of pretense. God wants us to be real. We don’t have to act real super-spiritual. God wants to make us ourselves but free from all the things that are so wrong with the human nature.
And I understand it’s an outworking of a process, and we’re far from perfect. We need to accept each other and all of that. But we also need to be on that journey and recognize, hey, I haven’t gotten to a certain place, and I’m one the good guys. I got it nailed now. We’ve all got room. We’ve all got leaven that we need to get out so that we can be what God wants us to be. Praise God!
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September 19, 2021 - No. 1511
“Be Real” Part One
Broadcast #1511
September 19, 2021
September 19, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1511 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I confess today, as of, well on into yesterday afternoon, I really had no idea what the service was gonna be about today. But I just kept…a simple thought just kept quietly coming back to me, and I just let the Lord…I tried to let the Lord just kind of develop it. So, I’m gonna go ahead and share it and I think the closer we’ve gotten to the service the more I’ve had a sense that it’s something for all of us, starting with me.
But I’m want to turn to Luke chapter 12. And, the backstory of these two or three verses that I want to read is Jesus being invited to the house of a Pharisee. And so, Jesus went to dinner with this Pharisee and the Pharisee noticed that Jesus didn’t wash His hands.
Well, that wasn’t so much a cleanliness thing as it was a ceremonial thing in their law. And I rather suspect that Jesus wanted to make a point, whatever…anyway, that’s what happened. And so the guy was immediately…brought that up and wondered why in the world don’t you wash your hands? And so, He goes…He begins to talk about the Pharisees and what hypocrites they are.
And says, you wash the outside but you don’t wash the inside, you’re…He goes on and talks about how they’re like dead men…like they’re graves that look beautiful on the outside but on the inside, you’ve got dead men’s bones. And He goes on and on about how they make such a big deal about little things like tithing of all their little plants, the little pieces of mint and all that stuff, but they neglect the stuff that mattered.
When God gave the law, it wasn’t meant to be just a lot of rituals. In fact, Jesus summarized the law in very simple words. It was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” strength, soul and mind, and “…your neighbor as yourself.” (NIV). That’s the essence of the law. That was what He was going for, and all these regulations that came out of that were just expressions of the central principle.
But what happened was they built a religion out of the stuff and out of the rituals, and neglected what it was really all about. And, they had no idea of their true condition.
So, Jesus really kind of lets them have it, and there was one of the experts of the law sitting there and said, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.” So He said okay, well, let’s insult you, too. Let’s tell the truth about you. He says, woe to, “…you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did.”
I mean, He just…really letting them have it and telling them that judgment is gonna come, that their responsibility toward God is so great that God is going to deliberately send them such a clear message, knowing they will reject it, and He’s going to do it to effectively bring the guilt of everyone that’s ever been murdered, in all the history of humanity, upon that generation.
I’ll tell you, it’s not a good idea to reject truth, is it? Because the more we have, the more we’re responsible for. But anyway…of course, they loved Him for that!
In the end of the chapter it says, “When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.”
And that’s the problem with a religion that’s built on externals. If there isn’t something behind it, people don’t take kindly to having their need pointed out. And so, what you’re doing is provoking a strong, negative reaction against the source of truth and that’s what we see there.
“Meanwhile…” beginning in the beginning of Luke 12, that is. “Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”
Sounds pretty scary. How many of you would like to have everything you’ve ever said and done plastered for everybody to see? Well, that’s the condition that the world is in. And especially is that going to be true of religious people. I don’t know how many people there are in churches today that this would apply to. I’m afraid that’s the case.
But obviously…I felt, as I read this, and Jesus was talking again to His followers, professed followers, at least, that this really has, this principle has two applications. One of them, obviously, is to somebody who thinks because of what they do in the outward, that they are followers of Jesus and they’re fine and they’re expecting to be with Him on the other side.
Of course, you look back in David’s time and we see a lesson that the Lord…a principle that the Lord wants to make plain. You remember how Saul was anointed to be king and the Lord gave him a job to do, and he sort of did it halfway and then injected his own ideas and kind of countermanded what the Lord had said. And the Lord finally sent the prophet to him to reject him as king.
But what was the Lord looking for? He says it very specifically in that passage. You can look back in 1st Samuel. He said God was looking for, “…a man after his own heart.” Okay? So that’s what God was looking for, down through the ages. It’s not somebody who can outwardly conform to something, but it’s a matter of the heart.
And of course, you remember that same principle coming up when Samuel went to anoint David. And he went to the household where the Lord told him to go, of Jesse, and asked for his sons to be brought, figuring that the Lord, and believing that the Lord was going to tell him which one.
So, he goes down the line and he sees all of these fine, upstanding, handsome young men and the Lord just says, no, none of these. So he has to go to Jesse and say, do you have any more sons? Well, yeah, there’s David out there. We keep him out watching the sheep. He’s the kid. And so, well, bring him in.
And that was the Lord’s word to Samuel. This is the one I have chosen. And the principle that is enunciated so clearly there is simply this: “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
The truth is that human nature drives us to put on appearances, to appear to be one thing, and many times, far too often, especially in the human race, I would say, is 100 percent of the time, we’re not what we appear. And if you were to really look deep into the heart, you’d find something very, very different.
And, we’re very good at fooling ourselves. You know, you remember the Word of God to Jeremiah, in chapter 17 when He said, “The heart is…” what?
( congregational response ).
“…Deceitful above all things, and…” (KJV). What is it? Newer translations say, “…beyond cure.” (NIV). There’s no way to help it, no way to fix it. We have a heart that we were born with into Adam’s race that cannot be fixed. And so the only way that we can kind of convince ourselves that everything is okay is to do something about the outside.
That’s what the Pharisees had done. They had hearts that hated God. They were greedy. They were proud. They did everything in the world…they actually found ways to use the law to subvert God’s purposes.
You remember what Jesus said on one occasion that they…God had commanded them to respect and honor their parents. He says, but here’s the way you found a way around that. You take the money that could have helped your parents and you say, no, this is devoted to God, and you relieve yourself of the obligation to help your parents. So, you’ve elevated your tradition above the very purpose for which I gave the law in the first place.
Oh, I’ll tell you, we are good at fooling other people. We are good at fooling ourselves. And, part of this is a warning because throughout the ministry of Jesus, and especially as He approached this portion of His ministry, you’ll find Him talking a lot about His coming and being ready for it.
And so, that’s obviously one area of concern, is that people will feel like they are outwardly conformed to something and they’ll feel like they’re okay because of that. And over and over again we find that Jesus points out people who will expect to be received on the other end, and they’ll be rejected.
“Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? (KJV). And what’s Jesus gonna say? “…Depart from me, ye that work iniquity…I never knew you.”
And that point needs to be made. This wasn’t somebody who kind of had a genuine relationship with the Lord, and then He said, nope, you’re out, you messed up. I thank God it’s not like that!
( congregational amens ).
Thank God, that when there’s something really permanent and genuine, that doesn’t die! But the problem was that there are people who mistook their outward works as evidence that they were the Lord’s.
Oh, I’ll tell you, religion has a way of fooling people. And, this kind of thing…you know, when Jesus said it wasn’t just a few, it was many. “Many will say to me in that day….” So it’s not just a handful of people. This is gonna be a brutal wake-up for a lot of folks.
And so, one of the areas where we need the Lord to deal with hearts is, obviously, in this area. Just because people come to this church and sing the songs, and profess to know the Lord doesn’t mean…of itself, that doesn’t mean anything. God’s not looking at you lifting your hands and all of that. I mean, He’s pleased when it comes from the heart, but He’s looking at the heart.
And the problem with these people that we referred to in Matthew 7, where they got there and wondered why in the world they weren’t received, when Jesus said you workers of iniquity, He’s talking about…it uses a Greek word that means lawless. This is somebody who has never surrendered their heart. They have sort of conformed their behavior and their activities to what they thought God expected of them, but they had never surrendered their heart. They were still in charge of their life.
And there are so many people…this is not the new truth here, but this is something that needs to be spoken until the Lord comes. There are people who think that they know the Lord, who need to examine their hearts because they have stopped short. They have never gotten off the lordship of their life. They have found a way to sidestep.
Every time that God’s Spirit has come calling, they found a way to sidestep it. Say, well, I can do this and it will be okay. This is what He wants so I’ll do this, and it’ll be all right, without ever letting Him have the heart.
Boy, when the heart’s right, the other things will begin to…there’ll be a source of something. There’ll be a source of life and of power that will actually change the outside over time. Thank God!
But I’ll tell you, this is the worst kind of hypocrisy, and it’s a self-deluding hypocrisy. You know, one of the things we read about those who reject the truth, who harden their heart when God comes calling, what happens eventually is that God sends them…
( congregational response ).
“…Strong delusion….” A powerful deception. You know, when God…God’s not just gonna keep on speaking forever. There comes a day when He says, all right, you refuse to listen! I have gone overboard. I have gone way beyond anything that is…you can never look at Me and say, You didn’t give me a chance. I gave you chance, after chance, after chance, after chance, and you said no! I’m gonna step back.
There is a powerful spirit of darkness at work in this world if you don’t happen to know it. And I’ll tell you, you wonder…you look around and you see…how can people believe the stuff they believe? It’s because God’s taken His hand off!
And I always have to pray, and bring this in, I feel, because the saddest thing would be if there’s somebody who is in any way a part of this church, and you stop short. God, what a horrible thing!
Look at the…I mean, the Midnight Cry Ministries, named after the parable in Matthew chapter 25, where you have ten virgins, and the imagery there is of virgins who, in accordance with the…how things went in their culture. This was the practice of their culture, that virgins would come and meet a bridegroom, convey him to the wedding ceremony.
And so, you have all these virgins who were all ready to do their job, and then it became midnight. It became a dark time. And so obviously, they needed a source of light. Well, everyone had a lamp! See, I’m one of his. I’m here to do my job. I’m one of the ones. Certainly, they’ll let us in when we get there.
But there was a problem, wasn’t there? They had the outside but they didn’t have the inside. And the only thing that can power a lamp in this world is God’s Spirit, resident in the heart, because the new covenant that God came to…that Christ came to establish, and God established through His Son, is not a covenant of rules. It’s a covenant of a new heart and a new spirit, and where every single believer knows Him.
It gets to be very deep and very personal and very real, and if it isn’t, oh, my God, you need to be crying out! Say, God, show me! God, open my heart! I don’t have the power to do it. I can do my best to give out the Word of God, and just trust God to do the work. Jesus didn’t compel people to follow Him.
And you know, we talked about the fact, we mentioned the fact that this was directed at His disciples. What about John chapter 6? I’m not gonna turn over there but it’s something we’ve heard so many times where Jesus first talks about all the different motives for people to follow Him and to seek Him. You know, some come because of the loaves. Some come because of the miracles. Some come…this and that. They come for all kinds of reasons that stop short of what He’s really after.
And so, He puts the truth in very unusual language. You’ve got to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And if you don’t, you won’t have any life in you. Well, He’s not talking about something literal, but He was talking about the fact that His sacrifice of His body and His blood on the Cross was going to be the only means by which they could…they were gonna have to be all in with that. They were gonna have to partake of that, not just as a religion, but as a heart matter. Okay?
But the way He put it…they didn’t get that. A lot of people didn’t understand it. Jesus has a way of speaking that causes people to go one direction or another, because the only people that can hear His voice are those who have listened to the Father. We read that in other places. In fact, maybe earlier in this passage, in John 6. The people…all the people that…I mean all that come, “…to me I will never drive away.” (NIV). Thank God! What a wonderful promise!
But what a…we need to set that in its context, because Jesus also says all who have listened and learned from the Father, they come to Me. So, Jesus understood how it works. He understood that God…by the Spirit, is preparing and calling and working in hearts and preparing them to receive the Word of God, like the good soil in that parable.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got to have a heart that’s ready to receive it, and not everybody can. Not everybody can understand. And so, Jesus was making a distinction. God through His Son was speaking in such a way that people who just didn’t get this and thought it was really strange and stupid and why are we following this guy? He doesn’t know what He’s talking about. That’s crazy! What happened? They left and went back and said we’re not gonna follow this guy anymore.
Now, we read also where Jesus asked the disciples, “Will ye also go away?” (KJV). And Peter speaks up and says, no, You’re the Son of God, You have the words of life.
Of course, what it doesn’t say, specifically, there is that the twelve, though they were focused on, they were not the only ones who stuck around. Do you know that? There still was a pretty good group of people. But the Word says that, “…Jesus knew…who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.”
So that’s two different categories, isn’t it? In other words, there was a group of people, among His professed followers, who didn’t really understand and they didn’t have…it wasn’t a heart issue to them. It wasn’t revealed to them. They were impressed by the miracles, impressed by something, enough to say, hey, we better…let’s find out about this guy. But they did not have anything from God that enabled them to stick it out when it got tough.
And I’ll tell you, we need something that is real! My God, in this hour do we not need an absolute anchor for our soul? We need something that is real down here, because if we don’t have it, the darkness of this world is not just the lack of light, it is a power, that takes over people’s lives, and fixes them to where they’re blind and they’re gonna wake up one day and Jesus is gonna come, or they’re gonna go by way of death, and they’re gonna realize when it’s too late.
And I just pray that anyone who hears this will recognize, my God, you need something more than outward conformity. You need a Savior! You need a new heart and a new spirit!
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September 12, 2021 - No. 1510
“Divine Humility” Conclusion
Broadcast #1510
September 12, 2021
September 12, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1510 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Have you ever been in a place where you just felt so dirty, and so bad, and so…why would a God like that have anything to do with me? But the reality is, that’s what His heart is all about.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what His heart is about. I don’t care who you are this morning. Oh, God wants us to get off our little thrones and worship Him and give Him the praise that’s due to His name!
( congregational amens ).
But when He calls upon us to praise Him and worship Him, this is not an ego contest! This is not somebody who’s high and lifted up and they’re looking for praise for selfish reasons! I’ll tell you, when we pour out our hearts toward Him, what it does is get us refocused away from self.
Self is a small package. It leads to nothing but trouble, and evil, and judgment, you name it, it’s all bad. But when God can get us out of ourselves to where we can praise Him in spite of circumstances, in spite of everything, we can lift, we can pour out our hearts to Him. Guess what? He pours His heart out to us! That’s what He’s looking for.
You know, we have this image, this sense, I guess, of something that is valued among human society, and that is for someone to truly, deeply love someone, and for that someone to deeply love them in return. Is there not something magical and deep and wonderful about that?
Do you not see that there is a kind of a picture in a sense? There’s a little bit of an image of our creation, and how the creation works. The very nature of God is what He’s seeking to reproduce in this new creation.
All of this other is corruption. When you have a bunch of individual people, each trying to be their own god, what have you got? War!
You know, James says, where do wars and fightings come from? They come from your own lust and desires. You’re seeking for yourself. You’re seeking what you think is good for you, and if it brings you into conflict with somebody, well, that’s tough! I’m god after all!
Oh God, teach us His ways and His…and to become more like Him. I’ll tell you, there is a God who is gonna absolutely obliterate everything that does not come down to this kind of relationship.
But oh, when we open up our hearts to Him and invite Him to come in, He comes in, not with His dominion, trying to crush our dreams and take away our joy. He comes in with all of Himself! The fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace, and all of those wonderful things. I need more of that, don’t you? I need so much more than I know anything about.
And as I say, you can go on through the scriptures and you’ll see how this plays out. But…I guess, this comes back to the central thought. You can talk about the fact that we’re called to live and to serve one another, and to draw from God and give out what He gives us to another. Praise God, that’s exactly right.
But somehow, if we don’t understand the heart of God, and how it works, how it all is meant to come together…it’s so easy for the Devil to kind of plant that little idea. He’s remote, He’s great, I’m supposed to praise Him. God, if we see who He is, we will want to praise Him!
( congregational amens ).
We won’t have to put forth this, oh my God, I’ve got to do it. And it won’t be about working up an emotion. It’ll be just saying, oh God, thank you!
( congregational response ).
Thank you for the kind of God you are!
( congregational amens ).
That You would come down and You are so great…You would pay attention to me, and even when I mess up, there you are, ready to pick me up, ready to help me!
( congregational amens ).
That’s humiliation, that’s true humility, that is so focused on the welfare of the object of one’s love and affection, that it reaches the point of self-sacrifice, that no effort is too great to reach out. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (KJV).
You know, part of what me started down this line was the familiar scripture though, in Matthew 11. And that’s where Jesus invites us to come to Him. Everybody who labors and is heavy laden, the King James says, I think. Let me look it up in here…weary and burdened, is it? “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened…” (NIV).
How do you get weary and burdened in the world? If you serve yourself, that’s all you’re gonna get. You will constantly be frustrated, even if you achieve great feelings of exhilaration, and joy, and something that just feels really good, it’s not gonna last.
Why do you think people get hooked on alcohol and drugs and things of that nature, just for one example? They’re trying so hard to achieve a feeling that somehow meets some aspect of need in their life. And then it goes away, it wears down and then you feel worse and you need more, and you need more, and there’s no end to it. Or you’re trying to make your way and get what you want and there’s something in your way and it’s constantly a war and a fight, there’s no rest in it. It’s weary. It’s a burden!
And the Lord calls people to come out of that, to surrender their lives to Him so that He can come in and express His heart and His nature! But, where does that come from? That comes from the heart of our Heavenly Father…
( congregational amens ).
…Who sees the depth of your need and of mine, and comes down all the way to our level and reaches down with tenderness. He doesn’t come and say, what’s the matter with you, straighten up and fly right! He comes down and says, I know what’s the matter with you and I’ve made provision. Surrender to me and let me come in and give you a new heart and a new life.
You know, and Paul says, “Be completely humble.” Good luck with that if you don’t have Him in you. You might act it. But that’s just an act. God doesn’t say, act humble, He says, be humble. I need Jesus.
( congregational response )
I need somebody in me that’s not like me. And I need to learn from Him, don’t I? But that’s what Jesus says here, isn’t it? “Come to me….”
I’ll tell you, if you feel the weariness and burden of life, and you feel the frustration that it brings and the questions…what’s it all about? Here’s Somebody you can go to. And He won’t look down His nose at you, He will see you, just like He saw the woman taken in adultery, just like He crossed the sea to go to that man who was so full of devils…nobody could do anything with him. And Jesus spoke and he was set free.
Don’t you see the heart of the Father? Sending His Son on that kind of a mission, that was the Father going to do that. Did not Jesus say, the words that I speak, I speak not of Myself. It’s the Father who lives in me who is doing His work!
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, if He’s present today, this is the Father reaching out to us, to change us, to make us more like Him. But it’s also a call to somebody who’s never let Him take over, you’re still god! You’re still your own god! Get off your throne while there’s a chance! There is a God who calls you to Himself. He calls you, not to use and abuse you, but to set you free.
( congregational response ).
That’s His heart. And I’ll tell you, when we can come and express love and praise and worship to Him, He pours it out on us more than we could possibly ever give Him!
( congregational amens ).
And He is worthy! He is worthy! So, Jesus says, come, and I’ll give you rest.
But here’s the part that I think we need in a practical level, because there’s no experience where you can suddenly come down and get a humble experience, humility experience. You know, we’ll lay our hands on you and okay, boom, now I’m humble. That’s something we’re still learning. Okay?
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” You know, I don’t believe the Lord put this yoke in there with a sense that He’s gonna constrain us and force us. Does He not say, ‘take’ my yoke? This is me, having to say, God, I need You. If I continue to act and react the way I do to life based on my own worldview of things, and who I think I am, I’m gonna make a mess. But there needs to be a connection with You.
And to symbolize with that yoke. I mean, a yoke, you have two oxen for example, that are plowing together and they’re going in the same direction. And they stay together. God, we need the Lord! We need to walk with Him, not just in church gatherings. We need to walk…with Him through life. Like when we’re in traffic, just for a practical example we can all relate to. But isn’t that a place where we need to learn from Him?
( congregational response ).
And in our relationships when somebody does something that offends us or gets us upset about something, don’t we need the Lord?
( congregational response ).
When we’re watching the news and we’re going to get angry, don’t we need the Lord to give us a difference perceptive on it?
( congregational response ).
I mean, you go through, every aspect of human existence, things you want to do, whatever’s going on in your life, I need Him! I need to learn to see that instance, that experience, through His eyes, because He’s right there.
I’m not saying, it’s not me just wandering, blundering through life, and then getting in a bad place and saying, oh Jesus, come help me. He’s already there, because I want Him there. I recognize my need of having Him walk with me through life.
( congregational amens ).
In my relationships, in my choices, in the things that I do, how I act and how I react. My God! If I do it according to my old nature, it ain’t gonna be pretty. And I need help, don’t you? I need His help. I need Him to teach me how to do that. “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
But it goes back to a scripture that we use an awful lot, and I’ll just refer to it. I don’t think we even need to turn there. But, you know, in Philippians 2, Paul unpacks a lot of this, because he’s concerned that people learn how to, you know, what the unity of the spirit means. Because, if you just bring a bunch of people together, religiously, you’ve got a bunch of individual gods, each trying to pursue their own ideas, and you’ve got a mess.
And Paul says, that ain’t what it’s supposed to be. You need to consider, every one of you needs to consider every other one better than yourself. Boy, that’s human nature, right? We need a transformed heart to even be able to begin to do that.
( congregational amens ).
And so he promotes the idea that we need to be caring one for another. We need to have an attitude where we want the welfare of everyone else. The focus gets shifted, instead of inward it’s outward. What is my purpose? I’m here to bless others.
And that’s where he brings in what Jesus Himself was willing to do, to come and to give Himself. And we know that it was the Father’s will. I mean, even He said…Father, if there’s any other way. It was the Father’s heart that was behind all of that. It was Him humbling himself to reach fallen creatures, like you and like me. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord! Do we have something to praise Him about?
( congregational amens ).
Oh, praise God! But it’s in that context, he comes out of that and He talks about working out your salvation. That is, let’s put it into practice. Let’s see what’s in you come out.
And the foundation of that is God working in us to will and to do. So when Jesus says, come to me, learn from me, He also is offering His help to do it!
What about the scriptures that say, God resists the proud? We have more pride than we like to think. And it comes out in so many ways. We just do what comes naturally. And it takes God to open our eyes to say, wait a minute, where did that come from? God resists the proud.
And the thing is, if we make a choice right there and say, no but I’m right, and fight that, we’re gonna get in bondage pretty quick, or stay there. God resists the proud. But what does He do for the humble?
( congregational response ).
What is grace? Grace is the help I need! Grace is pouring in the ability to back that up and to put humility into practice—putting humility into practice. But I’ll tell you, I don’t know what to call this. I mean, my mind has gone around and around on this subject and there are so many aspects to it.
But I want to come back to this, maybe this is a crazy enough title to get people to pay attention. “Divine Humility.” Because genuine humility comes from the heart of God. It causes somebody to be focused, not upon self, but upon others. And if you get a whole creation that is filled with that kind of life, you’re gonna have a creation that is gonna be so full of joy and peace, because everybody’s needs, if you want to put it that way, will be fully met.
I’ll bless you, but you’ll bless me. I worship the Father, but when I do, He pours Himself. He doesn’t just pat me on the back and say, yeah, that’s what I want. Thank you for…fulfilling my ego’s desire. It’s nothing like that at all. It’s, I want you to pour out yourself to Me, get your focus off of yourself. But when you do, this is the kind of Person that I am, I’m gonna give myself to You, in a way that will set you free.
And what did Jesus say? What do we find when we go down this road, when we start walking with Him, and learning from Him in the arena of life? What do we get out of it? “You will find rest for your souls.”
I’ll tell you, if any of us this morning are anxious, striving, and there’s a deep unrest on the inside, there’s a reason. And it’s because to some degree or the other, self is on the throne. We haven’t really learned, to let go and let God have His way, and not fight our battles…there’s a lot of stuff that we do where we’re trying to fight for us! Instead of just letting go and letting God have His way.
Did Jesus go around fighting for himself? No, He told the truth many times, but it wasn’t in a, my God, I’m mad at you…how dare you, kind of spirit. It was always reaching out. Even when the people rejected Him, He said, “O Jerusalem…you who kill the prophets…” How often would I have gathered you, “…as a hen gathers her chicks…” but you wouldn’t, you weren’t willing.
When He told the truth, in a very plain way, it wasn’t a railing kind of a thing, it was a heart that was hurting. There was a weeping. There was that kind of a heart coming out of the heart of God. I love you. How can you just be blind and go down this other path? This is not how the universe works. It works when everybody is humbling themselves to love everybody else and there’s being harmony, there’s peace, there’s joy.
But, do you see where God wants us right now? Praise Him, absolutely…but learning from Him, because if we learn from Him and become that kind of a person, I’ll tell you, the world is gonna have something to see.
We don’t have anything to share with the world if it’s not Him. We’re nothing, we’re not really any fundamentally different from anybody else. We need the Lord. We’re sinners saved by grace, at best. But I’ll tell you, we have Somebody who lives within us who is the Light of the World. And He wants us to be like Him.
And so, I just pray that God will help us to walk with Him and learn from Him, as I say, in day-to-day living. If we will have this sense of connection, that’s what the yoke is, it’s something that connects us. That we voluntarily say, Lord, I want to be connected with You.
I don’t want to walk through this day doing my thing, ignoring You. I want a sense of connection so that whatever happens, You can help me to understand it, help me to see it through Your eyes, help me to learn how to react.
And when I choose that, You’re gonna help me to do it. And I’m gonna find rest for my soul. And there’s gonna be a ground laid for me to have that kind of relationship with Him, where I can love Him because of who He is.
I’m not afraid of Him in the wrong sense. I deeply respect who He is, but He doesn’t want to terrify me into some sort of subservience. He wants to enter into a relationship of amazing love, beyond anything we can imagine. Praise God! Isn’t He worthy to be praised, and loved, and served?
( congregational response ).
Have you ever thought about God as being humble? But it comes from His heart. And that’s what He’s seeking to reproduce in us. There is a kind of divine humility that is just simply focused on others. And there’s such a harmony that comes out of all of that. To God be the glory.
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September 5, 2021 - No. 1509
“Divine Humility” Part One
Broadcast #1509
September 5, 2021
September 5, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1509 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I confess I’m…questioning in my own mind the things that have come to me this morning. But I’m just gonna trust the Lord because I believe there is a tie-in that is important. And I believe the Lord has quickened some things to me, and I’m gonna use some familiar scripture. I don’t know far we’ll get, we don’t have a lot of time, but that’s all right. We have what we need.
There’s a scripture that I was gonna use as a jump-off point and it’s in Ephesians chapter 4. You know, Paul has been unlocking for us the amazing thing that God has done for us, to put away our sins, to plan…fulfilling a plan from all eternity, making us His children, calling us together, sending out His Word, not just to Jews, but to everybody around the world, and promising that He’s gonna continue to work, that He’s got all the riches we could ever need. I mean, it just goes on and on and on with the depth of what God’s done for us.
And so, of course, then he leads, as we’ve pointed out many times to a ‘therefore.’ There is a response that He’s looking for from us, and the kind of people He wants us to be. And so he says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then…” (NIV). That’s where the ‘therefore’ comes in.
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle.” That was the phrase that I wanted to jump on, because it’s something that certainly is completely contrary to our nature.
But I believe the underlying thought, the underlying principle here has everything to do with what’s been talked about this morning, namely, praising God. Because by nature we are, as I say, the opposite of humble, we are very proud. Human nature is built and founded upon pride.
We know that the root of it comes out of the heart of Lucifer, who, at some point, decided he wanted to be like the Most High. He wanted to serve…to seek his own godhood outside of a relationship with the one true God. And so he began to pursue that and he persuaded many others to do it, and ultimately we know how he appealed to Eve in the garden.
And it was, basically we’ve talked about many aspects of this, but the underlying theme is, you can be your own god, that’s what your real destiny…that’s what your destiny is, that’s where your hope and your happiness, your fulfillment lies. You need to seek your own godhood.
And it’s interesting to me that Paul and others so often emphasized these truths in talking to Christians. Be humble. Serve one another. Why would he have to say that if it were just natural? If we would somehow come to Christ and we’re born again, born of His Spirit, instantly, we’re humble, we’re gentle, our focus is entirely on everybody else and not upon us.
But the reality is, there’s a reason why Paul had to put this in here, because it’s exactly the opposite of what we are every single day. How many of you are completely humble and gentle when you get behind a slowpoke in traffic? I think most of us would react in a way that is anything but.
And what are we really doing? Are we not saying, I am God, get out of my way, don’t you know that I am more important than you are? And so much of our life reflects that sense of being self-absorbed.
Now we think of certain people that we have known, perhaps, who are really that to an exaggerated degree. That’s the only thing they think about. Their entire world is revolved around me and what I’m doing and what I want and how I feel, how I perceive people to treat me, and it goes on and on and on, where there’s just almost no awareness of anybody else. And it is the polar opposite of what God desires us to be.
And…I’m trying to ask the Lord to help me to unpack this in a way that will get to the point that really drew me to this, because there are so many things we’ve heard so many times. We’re called, not to a life of selfishness, but to a life of service one to another, are we not? That’s…my focus is meant to be on you, and what God gives me, I’m to give to you because it’s not just about me, it’s about you. I don’t exist to serve my own needs.
And, I think I will go for a moment to a familiar scripture in John 13, one we’ve used many times over the years. And trust me, I’m getting to something in this that adds a little depth, I believe, that I think will absolutely play into what we’ve talked about this morning. So, I appreciate it so much, because God does want us to have a certain kind of relationship with Him. Praise is at the heart of it. Okay?
So this is where Jesus is having supper with the disciples. This is the night before he is crucified. And so anyway, he said, Jesus, verse 3, “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”
And of course, we know how Peter immediately objects to this and says, You don’t wash my feet. Isn’t it interesting how many lessons God wanted to teach Peter, around the time of the crucifixion? Peter was filled with so many ideas about how things ought to be.
And so, the Lord says, if I don’t wash you, “…you have no part with me.” So he said, give me a bath. And then…the Lord goes through it and brings them to the end and says, you don’t really understand. But if I, your Master and Lord…down, I believe, it’s in verse in verse 14.
“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
And you know, there are many aspects of this that have been emphasized in the past, but certainly at the heart of this is a quality called ‘humility,’ is it not? But this is not simply an attitude, this is humility in action.
This is someone who has an outlook that causes them to observe their own life and their place in it with a humble attitude, but they realize there’s a purpose in that, namely that I am to serve my brothers and sisters, because, though we have been cleansed, praise God, by the blood of Jesus Christ, yet walking in the world, out feet get dirty.
You know, as we’ve said…we’ve heard Brother Thomas say it many times, our feet get dirty and we need cleansing, we need help. And while this does include the idea of correcting and helping one another with faults and failings, it’s bigger than that. It includes everything that has to do with the encouragement of one another. I mean, coming together this morning…have our feet not been washed?
( congregational response ).
And where did we get the ability to do that? God gave it to us…Christ in us became a source of life that helped one another.
But you know, as I was thinking about this, and how the Lord is constantly in one way or another telling us we need to be humble and we need to serve one another…there’s a dimension to this that I think, perhaps it’s only me, but I believe we need to see this in a deeper light.
It’s awfully easy for us with our natural way of looking at life…we tend to see ourselves as trying to forge our way in the world, right? I’ve got my place. I’ve got to find my place. I’ve got to find, love, happiness, meaning, purpose. I’ve got to figure out what I want to do. I’ve got to gratify my desires. It’s all…one way or another, it all comes back to me and my place. And, we tend to project that onto God if we’re not careful.
And when you read the scriptures, it says, praise the Lord, you need to worship Me, you need to praise Me. It’s awfully easy to kind of project onto God the way things work here. And we know what happens when there are very important people…you know, you’re supposed to behave a certain way. You’re supposed to give them deference and honor and all of that, because of who they are.
And, the truth of the matter is, people who kowtow to that usually are…the interest is in self. It’s not that they are so awed by the person so much as, by God, I better not mess up here. It’s in my interest to behave a certain way toward them because they’re important.
And of course, we have…since history has started we’ve had dictators who have usurped power over people and they’ve forced people to do their will instead of what they want. And so…and, of course, you’ve got criminal gangs. You’ve got the Mafia.
But I’ll tell you, God wants something better out of us than a forced worship and praise, where we are intimidated by who He is. He is the most awesome being in the universe. There is no one like Him. He has all power and all glory.
But, folks, we don’t bow down to Him like we would to some great dictator that we’re afraid of. God doesn’t want that kind of a spirit from us. Oh, I feel my need of this in a deeper way. And I believe God wants to add this dimension to our thinking about the kind of people He wants us to be.
You know, here’s Jesus carrying out the will of the Father, and He’s demonstrating an amazing humility, is He not? I mean, you think about who this is! This is the One who spoke galaxies into existence, and now He’s not only come down in flesh, but He didn’t come in and say, all right, I’m here to take over. Don’t you know who I am?
He takes the garb or the place of a servant, literally gets a basin of water and washes their feet, the most menial thing that He probably could have done for them. He said, this is what I want you to be like.
But you know, it’s awfully easy to kind of make a difference between the Son and the Father. I mean, we can see Him in His earthly life. We can relate to Him. We think of Him as Somebody who has been here, who understands. But God, now, He’s awesome, He’s way off there…oh, the only possible thing we can do is to bow down and worship. And we almost project something human onto Him.
But how many of you know what the scriptures teach about the relationship of the Father and the Son? Not only did the Father do everything through the Son, but the Son, we are told in Hebrews 1, for example, is, “…the exact representation of his being.” So you want to know what God is like, there He is, expressed perfectly, completely.
Did you ever think about humility as an attribute of God the Father? Has that ever entered anyone’s mind? That in the sense of what real humility is about…it’s not this phony thing that we often see in the world. But He is the most humble being in the universe.
You know, I keep…every once in a while, it comes back to me, this character from English Literature, Uriah Heep. Some of you remember him, if they actually read Dickens anymore. I don’t know…who knows what they read.
But anyway, he was a character who was just famous for always…I mean, he was humble…by his own testimony. And it was so exaggerated, that you couldn’t interact with him without him talking about how humble he was and how he wasn’t worthy to be talking to somebody like you, and on and on and on and on and on. And the whole thing was a coverup because he was a crook. In other words, he was pretending to be humble for his own advantage.
But I’ll tell you, the real humility that God seeks from us comes from very heart of our Father. And when you see Jesus do what He did on that occasion, it represents God, the Father, kneeling down to wash the disciples’ feet.
When you think of what He’s done for us…it’s not like we’ve got this sympathetic Savior who’s got to try to convince His Father to let us off the hook. I mean, you can almost get that feeling from the way some people talk about it.
But there is such a oneness. He is the expression of the invisible God. No one has ever seen God, John tells us. But the only begotten Son of God, He has expressed Him, brought Him into focus. Colossians has a similar expression. I don’t remember the exact words, but it’s the same idea. “He is the image of the invisible God…” I think it says there, the image of the invisible God. So when we are seeing Jesus go around, and do what He did, and do the things that He did, we’re seeing the Father do it.
We see religious people who look down their nose at somebody who didn’t live up to their standards, and yet we see the God of heaven going in the Person of His Son to a woman that nobody wanted to have anything to do with at the well, in a place called Samaria where the Jews didn’t even go, let alone talk to a woman who was in her condition.
This wasn’t just a sympathetic Jesus. This was the Father. This is the One that we praise, that we worship. He was coming down from the clouds of heaven to talk to a woman that nobody cared about. Praise God! Praise God! Does that give us hope?
( congregational response ).
It makes me want to be more like Him, to get off my high horse and stop trying to be god of my own life and lord of my own life. You know, the Devil will whisper in your ear. He’ll take away all your joy. He will just crush you and make you religious and try to make you act like you don’t really want to act. He’ll just paint a very humanistic picture. But I’ll tell you, the more we learn about Him and the more we get off our own little thrones in practical areas that we’re still learning about…anybody here still learning these things?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. The more we do that, the better it’s gonna be, and the more we’ll be like Him. I’ll tell you, I just praise God!
I thought about David. I don’t know many scriptures…I’ve thought about so many in there…not necessary to read, we know them. But in Psalm, chapter 8, you see this expression about David…it just suddenly dawning on him, I think in a sense, God, why do you care about us? Who are we?
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” You see the sense of how high and lifted up and pure and amazing He is. Of course, we’re supposed to bow down. God help us if we don’t. But that’s not the spirit behind what he seeks.
“You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet.”
And then he goes on about the majesty of the Lord. But do you see the humility of our God? Have you ever been in a place where you just felt so dirty, and so bad, and so…why would a God like that have anything to do with me? But the reality is, that’s what His heart is all about.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what His heart is about. I don’t care who you are this morning. Oh, God wants us to get off our little thrones and worship Him and give Him the praise that’s due to His name!
( congregational amens ).
But when He calls upon us to praise Him and worship Him, this is not an ego contest! This is not somebody who’s high and lifted up and they’re looking for praise for selfish reasons! I’ll tell you, when we pour out our hearts toward Him, what it does is get us refocused away from self.
Self is a small package. It leads to nothing but trouble, and evil, and judgment, you name it, it’s all bad. But when God can get us out of ourselves to where we can praise Him in spite of circumstances, in spite of everything, we can lift, we can pour out our hearts to Him. Guess what? He pours His heart out to us! That’s what He’s looking for.
You know, we have this image, this sense, I guess, of something that is valued among human society, and that is for someone to truly, deeply love someone. And for that someone to deeply love them in return. Is there not something magical and deep and wonderful about that?
Do you not see that there is a kind of a picture in a sense? There’s a little bit of an image of our creation, and how the creation works. The very nature of God is what He’s seeking to reproduce in this new creation. All of this other is corruption. When you have a bunch of individual people, each trying to be their own god, what have you got? War!
You know, James says, where do wars and fightings come from? They come from your own lust and desires. You’re seeking for yourself. You’re seeking what you think is good for you, and if it brings you into conflict with somebody, well, that’s tough! I’m god after all!
Oh God, teach us His ways and His…and to become more like Him. I’ll tell you, there is a God who is gonna absolutely obliterate everything that does not come down to this kind of relationship.
But oh, when we open up our hearts to Him and invite Him to come in, He comes in, not with His dominion, trying to crush our dreams and take away our joy. He comes in with all of Himself! The fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace, and all of those wonderful things. I need more of that, don’t you? I need so much more than I know anything about.
And as I say, you can go on through the scriptures and you’ll see how this plays out. But…I guess, this comes back to the central thought. You can talk about the fact that we’re called to live and to serve one another, and to draw from God and give out what He gives us to another.
Praise God, that’s exactly right. But somehow, if we don’t understand the heart of God, and how it works, how it all is meant to come together…it’s so easy for the Devil to kind of plant that little idea. He’s remote, He’s great, I’m supposed to praise Him. God, if we see who He is, we will want to praise Him!
( congregational amens ).
We won’t have to put forth this, oh my God, I’ve got to do it. And it won’t be about working up an emotion. It’ll be just saying, oh God, thank you!
( congregational response ).
Thank you for the kind of God you are!
( congregational amens ).
That You would come down and You are so great…You would pay attention to me, and even when I mess up, there you are, ready to pick me up, ready to help me!
( congregational amens ).
That’s humiliation, that’s true humility.
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August 29, 2021 - No. 1508
All Music
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August 22, 2021 - No. 1507
“Who Are We?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1507
August 22, 2021
August 22, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1507 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! Doesn’t that make a difference to understand who we are? We are not just nobodies. It’s not a matter of being proud, thinking we’re somebody in a carnal sense, prideful sense, but to realize we are not victims. We are…we are absolutely in the hands of an eternal God who knew us from the beginning, made a plan, and He’s carrying it out, and we’re part of that plan. Praise God!
Your life and mine have meaning! It has purpose! We’re here for a reason. We do need to do exactly what Steve said, walk with Him, and talk with Him, and listen. So, Paul’s burden at this point is a scripture…these are scriptures we’ve read many times, but that’s all right, I think we…I need it. I need it fresh.
“Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God.” (NLT).
You know, I want to stop and emphasize something here, because the reality is, I don’t care if you are the smartest person who ever lived from the standpoint of an intellectual ability, you do not have the power to understand the things of God. You cannot discover them.
You cannot study and read this book, as some people teach, and believe, oh, God meant us to understand it. All we have to do is study it and we can figure it out. Hogwash! The only people who understand what God’s purpose is and the real message of this book are those to whom God enlightens on the inside, and it’s gonna have to get past your intellect.
( congregational amens ).
You will never run out of questions that you could possibly raise. But I’ll tell you, it gets past that. I think about a simple illustration of the difference between knowing somebody and knowing about them, because you could know the facts about somebody and learn more and more about them, but there is a difference in knowing them and spending time with them and getting to know them as a person.
There’s a knowledge that goes past the mind. You might still not know a lot of facts. There may be more facts you would learn about them, but you can come to say I know them. There’s a knowledge that goes way down deep.
You know, that’s how when God called Paul, that was his testimony. God shined the light. The same God who spoke and said, let there be light, He said let there be light in Paul. And that’s what every single human being needs, is for God to shine His light, to bypass your understanding, go straight to your heart and say, I am God, there’s none else. I made you to know Me, but you’re a sinner. You need a Savior. You need to surrender your life to me, and I have the power to make it new. That’s the message and the hope of the Gospel.
But folks, is there anybody here that has such a level of knowledge, wisdom and understanding that you can say okay, I’ve got that, let’s go on to something else? We need to be praying. We need to be seeing more than we see. God has more for us. There is an endless array of knowledge and wisdom and understanding that you and I have never plumbed the depths of.
Even as Paul prayed for us, because this was not just to the Ephesians, this was to everybody. We need to be praying for ourselves. We need to be praying for one another. God, deepen our understanding. The scary part, sometimes is in a way, how does He do that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah, He puts us in situations where we’re gonna have to experience something rather than…this is not classroom stuff. You can’t just go sit in a classroom and get all this information, and then, you’ve got it. This is learned in the school of hard knocks, and we’re gonna have to say, Lord, teach me however, whatever it takes, so that I can see the truth about myself, the truth about You, the truth of Your love for Me and how to live for you, all of those things.
Lord, my skills are just…they need some help, they need some work. Anybody here that doesn’t apply to? I didn’t think I’d see any hands on that one. But oh, we’ve got an awesome God, don’t we? So, he’s praying. He’s seeing the need of this, “…so that you might grow in your knowledge of God.” Again, this is experiential, personal knowledge. This is not mere information.
“I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light…” your hearts, not just your minds, “…so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.”
Okay, so, so far, we’ve got a God who is able to look into the future and make a plan. We’ve got a God who accomplished this incredible thing at the cross, and has called us and shined His light in our hearts, but can He pull it off? Does He have what it takes to follow through…I mean, that Devil is a pretty bad fellow? And look at the hold he has on the world. Look at what he’s been able to accomplish. Can God really pull it off? And so that’s what Paul addresses next.
“I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him.” Do you think there’s anything the Devil can do, and God’s just helpless to do anything about it? Poor God. He meant well, but He just doesn’t have what it takes.
There is a God who has all power in heaven and in earth. He’s given that authority into the hands of His Son to gather Him a church, and Jesus said, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail…” (KJV). God has the power to reach into Satan’s strongholds and pull people out.
I don’t know who may hear this, but I’ll tell you, there’s a God who can save the worst of the worst, if that’s what you think you are. “…The incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him.”
So, where do we get a picture of this? “This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him…in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.” He didn’t just get him out of the grave and say, phew! He put Him all the way on a throne, gave Him the highest place in the universe under the Father, and every devil in hell knows it.
They don’t want you and me to know it. They will do everything in their power to lie to us and to pull on our nature and on circumstance to blind us to the simple truth that He reigns! I don’t care who wins, in one sense. I don’t care who wins in the election. I don’t care what happens in the world. He reigns! And if our eyes are on Him and listening to Him and seeking Him, we can find our place and our purpose in such a world as we find ourselves in.
Now, as a result of what God’s power did, “Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things…” But there’s no period there. “…Made him head over all things for the benefit of the church.”
Folks, what God did is for your benefit and your benefit and my benefit. He reigns over everything that would come against you or come against me or hinder you or hinder me. He is on a throne and He reigns over it. He might let us go through something like Job did, but did God have control in that situation? Yes, He did.
How did Joel…how did Job wind up? Sorry, Joel! How did Job wind up? He kind of came out okay, didn’t he? You think he’s sitting there, God, I like how this came out, but I sure didn’t like the process, I’m mad at You? No, we’ve got a God who has all the wisdom and understanding to accomplish His perfect purpose in your life and mine.
Oh, I’ll tell you, do we need to trust Him? Is that a need in any of us here? Do we trust Him perfectly? “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him? How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er…” like the old hymn. Every single one of us has lessons of trust where we need to learn. I can trust Him with this issue. I can trust Him with that. I can let it go and just say, Lord, I want Your will, not mine.
That’s what my life is all about is Your plan. I mean, isn’t that all of what Paul is unfolding here? Is it our plans? Are we making plans how to use God for our purposes, or does God have a plan from the foundation of the world, and it is unfolding? It is getting closer and closer everyday to being completely fulfilled! And here we are at our particular time in history experiencing that plan and seeking to learn how better to understand it and to fit in with it.
But He is, “…head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.” Praise God! Well, I’m gonna read a little bit more, because this is the scripture you tend to read when you’re talking about who we are and our identity.
Doesn’t that make a difference if you understand who you are, if we’re His child, if we’re blessed? I mean, how many times has God brought this front and center? We need this, folks. Every day, that truth is under assault if we listen to the wrong voice and we focus on the wrong thing.
If we do what Steve said and keep going to God, God can help us to understand, you’re my child, I’m with you. Yes, I’m allowing you to feel your weakness because I want you to feel my strength. I don’t want to leave you with only your resources. I want to pour in all that I have for you. Come, because you’re My child, and I love you.
So, where were we before all of this? Lest there be any person who somehow looks in the mirror and says, I’m part of this because I’m better than other people. Oh, my God. I pray there’s nobody here that would ever, would even emotionally think that.
There well may be people who listen to this who are in prison for terrible crimes. But I want you to know that I am no better than you are in my nature. If the right circumstances came along, there is nothing, no evil that wouldn’t, couldn’t come out of this nature, because I was born with every inclination being wrong.
Listen to what he says. “Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.”
Now, Paul puts it in a different way. He says, “All of us….” All of us—all of us! Paul is including himself, isn’t he? The self-righteous, religious Pharisee among the Jews who thought he was righteous before God because he kept the law…all of us. “All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.”
Folks, every single human being is in the same category of need. I don’t care if you grew up in the church and like me, you’ve never gone out and lived it up to the flesh and done terrible things. Then, you look at somebody whose life is wasted with drugs or alcohol or crime or what have you, and you look down at them and you say, I’m better than they are.
You are not. Oh, God, give us an understanding heart to know the mercy and the grace of God. If God has shown you mercy, He can show them mercy! If you’re hearing this, I want you to read the next part of this.
“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much…” That includes you. “…He loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.” Praise God!
Praise God, that’s my hope. I can’t look in the mirror and find a single reason to have hope, but I can look at Jesus. I can get to know the God who loved me that much, who saw everything that was wrong with me, and all that, still, He’s working on. But He loved me anyway.
Oh, praise God. Do we have Someone to worship? Is worship just a form we go through, or is it something that we need to reach out from the heart and say, oh, God, open my eyes to see so I can love You as You deserve to be loved, and praised.
“…He gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.” Then, there’s a parenthesis. “(It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.
“So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” Praise God!
I need to emphasize this once again. So many people have this weak, vague idea of grace, but grace is God extending His power, His help, His influence upon fallen human beings who are helpless and undeserving, because if God did not shine His light in your hearts, you wouldn’t know there was a problem. You would have no idea.
But God has to show us our need. He has to show us our sinfulness, our helplessness, and that has to become a divinely revealed conviction! What is it that does that? It’s God by the influence of His Spirit doing that. That’s grace showing us our need, but then, it’s also grace that shows us the answer and what Jesus has accomplished for us at the cross.
That’s supernatural. Every bit of this is supernatural. Only God can do this, but okay, now suppose I get it. I’m a lost sinner. I’m helpless. I’m hopeless. And then You’re calling on me to repent and believe? I don’t have the power to do that.
No, you don’t. Neither do I. But grace is what makes it possible. The same God who enlightens and convicts and calls you to come to Himself is the One who gives you the power to come. That’s His grace. I don’t have that power.
You know, you’ve got the age-old debate about the will of man and the will of God, and the truth is in the middle. God’s grace is the only power by which I have any ability to choose God. That’s why you have to come and call upon Him, when?
( congregational response ).
While He is near, because if He isn’t near, you don’t have the power. You wouldn’t even want to come. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who reaches out. He reaches the most hopeless people in this planet who would humble themselves and say, yes, Lord. I surrender. I put my hope, I transfer all of my confidence in myself, my will to live and do as I please, I surrender it. I put it in your hands, Lord. You have the power to save me, and You alone. I’m trusting in You.
That’s all He’s looking for. He has the power to do the rest. Praise God! That’s why He says…all right, you can’t take credit for any of this. We already read that. “It is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” All right, it’s not by works, is it?
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus…” What did He do that for? “…So we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
Now, you see another dimension of the plan. Yeah, we can look at the big picture and say, yeah, before the world every happened, God made a plan, and I know how it’s gonna come out, but who am I? Where do I fit into all of that? God has a plan for you. I mentioned that last week. Every single person is a unique masterpiece of God, and He has a place for you in His Kingdom, and our place is to look to Him and pray and seek Him and say, God, work in me.
But if there’s something I need to be doing…obviously, we all need to be praying, but if there’s something I need to be doing, tell me what it is, and then help me to put my foot out there, just like Steve talked about walking on the water. He never called me to do that either. But I’ll tell you, whatever God has called you and me to do, we can do, because it’s His power doing it and not ours.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who is over all. But He’s called you and me for a purpose in this time, in this place, and He is the One. He’s the One who is working out His plan, and I guarantee He’s gonna finish it.
So, there’s nothing new we’ve really said this morning, is there? We’ve heard these scriptures many times, but I just sense in my spirit God wants to bring us to a deeper understanding, and appreciation of this, so that it makes a difference on Monday morning and Tuesday morning and Friday evening and every time in between, until it begins to govern our lives, and we look to Him with faith and confidence knowing that we’re not just losers.
We’re not just poor, weak, helpless victims. We are seated with Him. We are God’s children, blessed, chosen from the foundation of the world, seated with Him in heavenly places. We occupy a place where the Devil…he is terrified that we’ll discover these things. He’s the one who’s afraid, because He knows his time is short. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing in the world. He gets it. He’s running out of time. Oh, praise God!
The closer he gets to running out of time, then time will be no more, and all of this will be behind us, but in the meantime, we’re the ones with the high ground. We don’t have to listen to the Devil and be intimidated. We don’t have to run off half-cocked and thinking we’re something, but we can look to God with a simple, humble confidence and say, God, show me my place in the Kingdom, and help me to fill it.
There’s no telling what God might do with people right here. You would never think about God giving you supernatural abilities. Everything about the Kingdom of God is supernatural. No one can get up here unless there’s an element of the supernatural in it! This is not a matter of human ability in any area of the Body of Christ, but it’s Christ in us. He is our hope of glory.
That same Jesus who reigns, reigns over everything for the church. It’s for you, and it’s for me, and it’s every single day, and we need to look to Him with that understanding and confidence. And I’ll tell you, He’s going to lead and empower us to be all that we need to be. Praise God!
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August 15, 2021 - No. 1506
“Who Are We?” Part One
Broadcast #1506
August 15, 2021
August 15, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1506 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: The only scripture that’s really come to my attention in the last few days…I keep coming back to it. It’s one that we hear a lot, but I’m not sure we can ever hear it too much. And it’s the whole first section of Ephesians, because it has to do with who we are and who God is and His plan, and the fact that He’s in charge and we fit into it. So, it very much flows with Brother Steve’s encouragement that we can go to Him and actually be who He wants us to be.
And I went ahead and brought my NLT this morning. The NLT is more of a paraphrase that’s an attempt to take a thought that people would have understood in that day and restate it in modern English, where the NIV is kind of half and half between being literal and being conversational. But anyway, I’m gonna go ahead and just read some of this and ask the Lord to help me to comment on what He wants.
But what a picture this paints, of who we are. Because you think about, again, the situation in our country, where this country is at, and living through a time like this, it’s awfully easy to feel powerless, to react to the things that are going on, both out there and with us personally, and just feel like, who am I? What can I do? And again, like Steve said, to let it beat you down.
But I believe with all my heart, God wants us to understand the big picture and how we fit in it and how He feels about us and who we are, so that we can be what He wants us to be in this hour. Don’t you? Praise God!
So anyway, I’ll just go ahead and read this and ask the Lord to help me to comment where it makes a difference. “This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. I am writing to God’s holy people in Ephesus, who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus.” (NLT).
Now, he says, holy people. You’ve got to put that is scriptural context. He’s not talking about a certain class within the church. These are the holy ones. Every member of the body of Christ, everyone He calls is set apart. And we’ll see exactly where that fits in as he goes.
“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” You know, I’ll call your attention to something we’ve noted in the past. What is the verb tense that he uses there? This is the past tense. So what God has called us to do is to step into something He has already done. When Jesus was on the cross and coming to the point of death, He said, “It is…”
( congregational response ).
“…Finished.” There was something that He accomplished there that God…it’s like there’s the full banquet table is there. It’s all loaded. What He’s calling us to do is to come and to partake of something that is a completed, certain work. Thank God!
Oh, Praise God, it isn’t left up to us to sort of make up the difference and somehow climb up there by our own efforts. God has done something and there is something that is unfolding in the history of the world around us, and we have our particular place in it, and God wants us to understand that in a greater and greater measure so that we can participate in faith and not be driven down by the things we see and experience. But He has blessed us.
Now, he goes back and he says, “Even before he made the world, God loved us….” Can you comprehend that? The fact that He even knew who you were…the fact that though you may feel like you’re nobody in the grand scheme of things in this world, and there’s nobody here that’s…the world would regard as important. We’re just kind of common, ordinary people…you know, landscapers and all kinds of other things. But, God knew you, and not only knew you, He loved you!
Now, there’s a reason God inspired Paul to write these words. God wants these words not to simply enhance our theology and our general knowledge of God and the things of God. God wants us to be able to live this way. God wants this to be our…you know, there’s a word they use, the worldview…how we see the world and our place in it.
God wants us to see everything about our lives in relation to Him, through the prism of truth, because the devil will constantly lie to every one of us, and he does to the extent he can get away with it. But God wants us to have such a knowledge of the truth, that we become strong, we realize who we really are. Because we are not nobodies, in the grand scheme of things, we are God’s children. He has called us and set us apart. That’s what he’s gonna be getting into here.
I’m jumping ahead. I’m gonna get excited here, in a minute. So, “Even before he made the world, God loved us…” And He did more than that! “…And chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.”
Now, you know, as I was thinking about this and reading this, it jumped out at me that God didn’t just say, all right, I choose you, and then put a period at the end of that sentence. Of course, Paul didn’t know much about periods, did he? He tended to run on and on and on.
But, God didn’t just choose us, He chose us ‘to be’ something. There is an outworking. There is a goal. There is something that will happen because He chose. It’s not just that, okay, you’re Mine, but I have chosen you to ‘be’ something.
Does anybody here have the power to be what he has talked about here? I don’t! I’m exactly lined up with what Steve said. I have nothing in myself that I can possibly bring to the table, when it comes to these things. I am dependent upon everything coming from Him.
But that is what salvation is about! It’s never about what I am able to do in myself. It is all about His plan and His purpose. So, thank God! So, if you look in the mirror and you have just come through a hard time, don’t lose sight of the reality of what God has chosen you, ultimately, to be.
Do you think God is able to finish what He’s started? We say that so many times. We quote that verse…of course, we know it’s so. And that’s some of what He’s going to be unfolding here. So, “God decided in advance to adopt…” In advance! Again, you see this…God, who’s able to see, everything is present to God. I can’t wrap my brain around that, but that’s the truth of the matter.
God is not bound by the procession of events in time. It’s not like He’s hanging on and hoping He can work it all out because it hasn’t happened yet. As far as God is concerned, it has happened. Praise God!
Don’t you want to step into something that’s certain and sure? I do! That’s what He wants us to get, because it makes a difference on Monday morning and Friday evening and every other hour of every other day, the middle of the night when you wake up and the devil’s trying to beat on you. God wants this to dominate our understanding so that it makes a practical difference in our lives.
It’s not just some theology that we get and we understand and we say, yeah, that’s true. But is it really true in our experience? That’s what God is seeking to do. That’s why I see the need to go over this, because God wants to make this live!
And if this understanding is not the dominating set of ideas, if you will, if this is not the worldview in which you and I operate practically, then we need this. We need to be going to God. We need to be saying, oh God, help me, because I haven’t got what it takes and I want to be part of Your plan!
So anyway, “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do…” He didn’t wait around and say, well let me see if they really want Me. It says, “This is what he wanted to do…” This was God’s…you talk about choices? God made a choice before the world ever happened, and He made choices concerning you and me. Wow! Praise God! Praise God!
All right? “This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” Praise God! You think God’s reluctant when it comes to you? He says, boy, I’ll let them in, but I sure am…you know, I’m almost sorry I called them in. No! This is something that God gets great pleasure out of.
The ability to take a broken, helpless, hopeless sinner, and make them a part of His family, a family that will live with Him forever, there’s nothing that gives Him greater joy! I don’t care what your background is, what’s wrong with you. There is a God who loves you, and if He has called you, don’t worry, He has all that it takes to make you what He wants you to be for all eternity, and to take care of the things that are wrong with you and the things that are wrong with me. And there’s plenty. But He’s a great God.
All right? “So…” And ‘so’ is a word of conclusion, in the light of what we just said. “So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.” Praise God!
“He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.” Again, how does He feel about you and how does He feel about me? Are we not prone to think, He must be disgusted with me, look at how bad I am?
But do we understand the heart of God? Even when we are at our worst, His heart is toward you and it’s toward me to reach down in love and kindness and mercy. That is always plan A with God. Praise God! All right? “He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.”
Now here’s something that jumped out at me in a way I hadn’t really stopped and paid attention before. “He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.” Now think about what he’s saying there. You know, we have this…we have this way of looking at ourselves and we’re aware of how we feel and how we think and how other people react to us and we’re prone to say, they just don’t get me. They don’t really understand. Oh, if they only understood it would be different.
We’re talking about Somebody who has not only set out to save us completely, but Who has a perfect, perfect understanding of everything that makes you tick and everything that makes me tick. If there is any need in you, He has complete understanding of it. He knows exactly what He’s doing.
Do you think God wants us to have a confidence toward Him? I mean, think about it. God, not only knows all about you and what’s wrong with you and what your needs are, He knows what to do to fix it! God knows what it takes! He can see all the way down to the end product of what He is doing in your life and in mine. He deals with you with a perfect, perfect wisdom and understanding.
Do you think maybe, just maybe He wants a little more trust from us that He knows what He’s doing? We are so prone to see our lives as a bunch of random, unwelcome events, much of the time. We are so geared to our life in this world that we would like to be in control, a little bit. Our ‘happiness’, quote, unquote, is so geared to wanting to feel like my life is in my control, it’s predictable. Nothing happens that’s outside of how I can control it. Oh, the unexpected just doesn’t happen. I’m so…that’s how we think.
But God is not gonna leave you or me the way we are. He is much too loving to do that because we are more broken, more prisoners of our own old ways of thinking than we have any idea about. But God…God’s kindness, His love, His wisdom, His understanding, enables Him to work with you as an individual in ways that may be totally different from somebody else.
Don’t you look down the row and say, oh, poor me! Such and such happened and look at them. They’re doing fine. God is so understanding and wise. He knows how and when to do what with every one of us! What He seeks for us is to understand that, so that we can cooperate and say, yes, Lord! I may not like what’s happening in the natural but I believe in Your love! I trust You with my heart and with my life. I am Yours. Do what You want to do on Your schedule. I’m Yours, Lord!
If we…don’t you think if we really understood His love and His compassion and His power, we could do that? It’s not easy, is it? That’s what He’s dealing with. That’s the hold that this world and this old nature has upon every single one of us, in one way or another. But God knows how to deal with it.
And I’m…and the more I go along, the more I want to say, God, do what You got to do. Do what You have to do, because I…I understand, I trust You because I know You love me, and I know how this is gonna turn out. Lord, I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong with me and You do. I don’t like feeling weak.
I don’t like feeling that I can’t handle stuff. I don’t like seeing and being conscious of a need in my heart. But Lord, I have to so I can bring it to You and trust You, because You said when I’m weak, I’m strong. There’s a different kind of strength that I need than something that I can muster up. I just need Him.
But oh, how gracious and how merciful and how faithful He is to bring me through all of the things He has to do in my life to make me what he wants me to be! How wonderful it is when we get to that place when He comes and we realize…it dawns on us what He’s doing and we just rest in His arms. He is worthy. All right?
“God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ—a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure.” He mentioned earlier that God did this because it pleased Him. And so God instituted a plan to carry out what pleased Him.
But we also know that he calls it a mystery…there’s a mystery to it, and the mystery was until Jesus accomplished what He did on the cross, God hid it. It was hidden from the eyes of men. It’s in the pages of the Old Testament, but even the scholars of their day had no clue what it was, and Jesus had to open the eyes of His followers to understand what the Old Testament was about.
He certainly did with Paul. He took Paul’s great knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures and opened his eyes to see…oh, my God, that’s what it was talking about! Lord, You’ve got a plan that You’re unfolding and all of this was just a preparation for it, and now it’s here! And now we can go and proclaim it to the world. Praise God!
And so, “God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ—a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure. And this is the plan…” Okay? So you want to know what it is? “At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.” Praise God!
There’s gonna come a day when you will not see what’s going on in this world anymore. God’s gonna deal with it. Sadly, there’s a world of men who are making choices to reject Him. And there will come an end to all of that rebellion.
But God is bringing us…His purpose involves us living here and making choices. Steve mentioned that. Every one of us makes choices every day. And God wants us to know and understand our part in this so that we can make those choices.
But I’ll tell you, He also wants us to be able to see the big picture and see His plan, enough of it to know, hey, I know how it ends. I’ve read the last chapter, like Brother Jimmy used to say so many times. I’ve read the last chapter and it turns out great for those who follow Jesus. Praise God!
Are we living every day, though, with that knowledge? Or do we get buried in the moment, and lost in our own weakness and our need? God wants us to be able at every moment to lift up our heads and say, I know how this ends. Jesus Christ is on a throne. He reigns. Praise God! And it’s gonna be at the right time. God knows when to pull the trigger.
And you know, Peter wrestled with this. I’m sure he did. In his letter he talks about the fact that it looks, at times, as though, why isn’t He coming? Why doesn’t He just put an end to all of this? Do you know what his answer was? Because He’s patient!
In another place Peter said He’s, “… not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (KJV). There’s a heart that is looking until that last one says, yes, or says, no. History will unfold. It doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a long time now. We need to live with a readiness in our hearts. But I’ll tell you what, God is patient.
But He knows when that time comes. He knew when it was time for Sodom and Gomorrah, didn’t He? He knew when it was time to tell Noah to get into that ark, because it was time. But that same God knows exactly when to say, Son, go get your bride. It’s over. Bring everyone before You and let’s settle every issue that has ever arisen in history. Let’s bring it all to a perfect conclusion, because You are in charge.
There’s a brand-new creation. You’re gonna walk and talk with Me and with all Your brothers and sisters. Man, I want to be one of them, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
Oh, it’s by His mercy and grace! Thank God!
All right? “…Everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance…” (NLT). Now he’s gonna add something else. “…He chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.”
If you think your life is out of control and random, you better think again. Yeah, we want to be able to manage it, but we’re gonna have to turn loose and say, God, I am not in control but You are. The things that look random and out of control to me are never out of Your control! Not for one second, do You stop loving me, do you stop working on behalf of my ultimate good.
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August 8, 2021 - No. 1505
“A Foundation for Prayer” Conclusion
Broadcast #1505
August 8, 2021
August 8, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1505 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I think I’ve said this in the past. There’s a part of me that says, oh God, I wish it were over. I wish we didn’t have to live in this crazy world anymore. You know, we heard about some things this morning, all the violence going on. It’s getting worse and worse. And it will, because the Devil is loose. And we can get to that place where we just get weary with that and say, oh God! I don’t think…as I said recently, we haven’t seen anything yet.
But another part of me that says, God, don’t come. Don’t send Jesus back until the last sinner is converted. I know that’s gonna happen. God will not lose a single one that He knows will come. And so, I want to be one that’s involved in that.
Thank God for the broadcast. I appreciate the encouragement that’s come because of that. I know there is not anything in me. I can’t take a first little bit of credit for anything. If God has used me, if God has used us, it’s Him.
( congregational amens ).
Let’s just bow before Him and give Him the glory. I want to be in a position where I can go to Him with that kind of a heart. Oh, God! I mean, when you really stop and think about the reality of our situation, how could we ever go to God on any other ground? What a foolish thing.
Peter didn’t even think he needed to go to God. And he found out, the hard way. And, you know, God turned that around and used it as a life lesson. Anybody been through one of those life lessons where you’re gonna do it your way and…there’s a willfulness there, and God has to say, all right, I can’t just talk to you, I’m gonna have to show you.
Well, God is faithful. Thank God! The song that was sung this morning, God is faithful! He’s not gonna leave you or me in the condition we’re in. I want to learn to come the easier way, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
And just lay hold of this and say, yes, Father, You said it, this is true, and this applies to me. Take my focus off of other people, and their needs, and how bad they are, and how much they need to be fixed, and help me to look in the mirror and say, God, open my eyes and fix me. How can I be that channel?
How can I be the one that stands in the gap, when I’m really standing in the way? God would use me to be a channel of life, but I’m sitting here full of other things…wanting Him, wanting Santa Claus to fix somebody, fix them, Lord, get them.
But here is the posture that God is looking for. It’s “…your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (NIV). Your will, not mine! There’s a place, and I can’t give you a formula for it, but there is a place where God can impart a faith that is specific, where we can believe that something specific is going to happen. That doesn’t come because somebody is somebody special, and they’ve got it in them to somehow be that. There is somebody who knows God well enough and God can impart that faith.
But there are other times when we don’t know. And when we come to God, we need to have a heart that is surrendered, where we are not dictating the outcome that we want to see. We’re saying, Lord, I don’t know. I’m laying this need before You because You told me to come. You told me You care, and I believe You.
But Lord, I’m not the one that’s in the position here to see Your plan and to know what the real need is. There are things about me I don’t know, let alone situations. What is Your plan? It might be Your plan to heal me and make me a great example of healing! It might be Your purpose to allow me to go through something because You want to do a work in me.
Is one better than another? Well, from an earthly point of view, sure. If we’re thinking selfishly, yeah, sure, I want to be happy and healthy and all of that. We need to have a heavenly point of view that says, God, You have a plan. Things are not happening randomly. You are the One who foresaw everything before the foundation of the world. And You are working that out and You allowed me to be part of that.
Oh God, who am I to sit here and try to tell You what to do? You’re the One with the plan, Lord. I want to humble myself and surrender to that plan. Is that your posture when you pray? I believe God can help us, don’t you? He has to help us.
That’s why this is called salvation. This isn’t called, you know, some sort of self-help program where we learn some religious principles and put them into practice and then we get God to do stuff. This is a surrender to a personal Father who knows what He’s doing. And Father does know best.
And so, we need to take that place where we just allow Him to do what He’s going to do. I’ll guarantee you won’t look back and say, God, You didn’t do right. I was right and You were wrong. It’s not gonna be that way. And I’ll tell you, we’re gonna be prostrate in praise! We will come there and be so blown away with His goodness toward us, when we look back and we see what He had to deal with!
You think you’re so great? Just like Paul, just like every other sinner, we are a mess and we need a Savior. But we’ve got one! We’ve got one who’s able to finish what He started. “He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him….” He’s praying for you right now, in your need.
Talk about prayer. Jesus is in a pretty good place to do some praying, isn’t He? And He’s praying for you right now, and no matter what your need is. If you’re conscious of that need, that’s a good thing, but don’t be discouraged by that. Don’t forget this. Okay?
Then he begins to get into some of the other things. Most of what goes before the foundation, but “…Give us today our daily bread.” There’s a word in there that kind of jumped out at me, as I thought about it. And it’s the word ‘daily.’
You know…this thing called prayer, this thing of going to God is not just bopping along through life and then all of a sudden, a big need happens, and then, oh, I better pray. This is a relationship, where we are looking to God, not just day by day, but moment by moment, with this attitude, Lord, I need You and I need Your provision.
Yes, I’m gonna to be faithful to do what You give me to do. But ultimately, my situation and my needs are in Your hands. Isn’t that what Jesus said? You look down, later on in this same passage, and He talks…well, we mentioned that, where He talks about our needs and not being absorbed with that. But seeking first, what?
( congregation inaudible ).
“…The kingdom of God, and His righteousness…” (KJV). So, here we come back to what Jesus had promised, that your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these things. But the daily part is what got my attention.
You know, Brother Ricky mentioned, ministered awhile back, and likened our relationship and our walk with God to a conversation, because prayer really gets to that point, where we’re waiting on Him, we’re looking to Him, and we’re talking to Him. But we also need to have our ears tuned, because the closer we get to Him, the more we know His ways, the more our hearts are prepared and humbled with the stature, with the position that Jesus describes here, we’re gonna be more and more in a position to hear His voice.
And I believe that’s what God is looking for, is a people that He can commune with, who walk with Him. That was the testimony about Noah. Noah walked with God. God could talk to him. And he listened. He knew his place.
I’ll tell you, do we know ours? God help us, every single day, not to get so self-absorbed in our mundane little lives that we forget why we’re here. We’re here to get to know Him. We sang, “That I May Know Him,” this morning. So many of the songs, so many of everything just seemed to dovetail into what the Lord is wanting. He wants a people who know Him, who can go to Him, who can talk to Him.
But if I’m gonna do that, I need to have a certain mindset, if you will—a certain way of seeing Him and seeing myself, and coming with that humble spirit. I’ll tell you, a humble and a contrite heart, He will not despise, the scripture says. He lives in a high and holy place, but also with him that’s humble and contrite. And I want to be one of those kinds of people, don’t you?
Oh, praise God! God is so merciful to His children. He cares about the smallest and weakest of His children. But here’s a big one, and this is an area where we can truly come to Him and think we are praying about something, and we’re the ones who are in the way. And by God, we’re justified!
“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (NIV). Folks, there is no place in the heart of a Christian, one who would truly follow Jesus, to have something that is harbored in the heart against anyone! If you’re harboring something there, man, you are carrying a load! You are getting in God’s way!
( congregational amens ).
Because it will drive you, it will color what you’re thinking needs to happen, because you’ve been injured, something’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Oh God, get us to a place where we can humble ourselves before this great and amazing Father, and be like Him. Oh, there needs to be a sense of a willingness to forgive.
Did not Jesus say, if you won’t forgive neither will your heavenly Father forgive you? That’s pretty plain language. I know it’s not easy. I know there are situations, there are traumas, there are things that have happened in people’s lives. But I’ll tell you, if we are willing—if we are willing, and want to be what He wants us to be, God will heal those. God will give us grace to let go, regardless of what somebody else does. We don’t have to carry that burden.
But oh, I want to have a heart that doesn’t harbor things, that isn’t quick to be angry, and all those…that just reveals a spirit that is self-centered, self-righteous, that thinks everybody else needs to straighten up and be different. God, why aren’t you fixing it?
Oh God, help us to come to a place where we see that we are the need! I don’t know what God’s will and God’s plan is about situations. We need to be willing to lay that in His hands. But if we’re harboring things, we cannot even see straight, we can’t think straight. God, take that stuff out of our spirits and set us free. How can we intervene on somebody else’s behalf if we’re just having those kinds of reactions and that’s the way we think and live? Oh God, set us free, deliver us!
“And lead us not into temptation…” I’m not gonna try to, “…but deliver us from the evil one.” I’m not gonna try to unpack that other than this. There certainly should be a desire on the part of God’s people not to dabble in sin, not to be against this holy, wonderful, awesome God.
Lord, I don’t want to be in a place, I don’t want to bring dishonor on You. Help me in this area. God, I’m just appealing to You, protect me, deliver me! Does that not also carry with it the connotation, I’m somebody in need! He is the Savior. It is by His power that I’m able to be delivered. Oh God, I just come. Please, deliver me! Whatever my need is, I need deliverance. I don’t want to go the wrong way, but I need to be delivered in order not to go the wrong way. Do you get that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Do you see the mindset that Jesus is painting here? Our Father, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed…” sacred, respected, to be your name, Savior,”…your kingdom come…” your will, not mine, “…your will be done…” Didn’t Jesus say that? Now, the Father didn’t get mad with Him because He said if there is any way to avoid this. But He said, nevertheless, “…not my will, but yours be done.”
If you’ve been in a place where that’s been a difficult prayer for you, think about Jesus. That was kind of a tough prayer to be able to pray, but He did it. And He did it for you and for me. Thank God! “…Your will…” not mine, “…be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Right here, right now! It’s gonna be fine there. It’s fine in heaven. But right now, in the presence of evil, living in bodies that want to go the wrong way with an old nature that wants to go the wrong way, I need a Savior!
I need to come with that kind of posture. I’ll tell you, if God can help us to learn how to come to God that way, we’re gonna be in a position where we’re not the barrier to what God wants to do. God can begin to work through us. We can begin in a deeper way to pray for others, to pray for situations, and God can help us to know how to pray and how to pray in faith.
And I believe God’s gonna do all kinds of things. As I say, this is focused mostly on the one who’s doing the praying. But we know from the Word, that God wants us to pray one for another, don’t we? But how can I do that if I don’t even get this? If I don’t have a foundation to be able to pray…God, build that into our hearts, so that we’re able to walk with Him and just simply seek His will in our own.
I’ll just refer briefly, I don’t think this needs to go on much longer. But I thought about an example that we’ve used so many times. But I want us to see it in the context of this prayer, because I believe it’s what this prayer looks like in action.
And you remember Paul, in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 12, talking about his own experience. And this was the experience where he alluded back to the time when God had showed him these amazing supernatural things, caught him up to the third heaven, saw all kinds of wonderful things. Well, what does that tend to do to a human being?
( congregation inaudible ).
Pride, yeah. He’s doing that because I’m somebody. Right. So, here’s Paul, and it’s obvious from the way the passage plays out, this is man who is humbled. This is a man who gets the ‘our’ part right. His life was not focused on him, it was on the people that he went to serve, that he sought to serve.
We talked about that recently, in chapter 4. It’s not about me, I’m your servant. I’m doing this, even though death has to work in me, life works in you. That was the focus of his heart. Man, that’s somebody who’s learned something of the ways of God, isn’t it? That he can think that way. We don’t think that way naturally. We need God to change the way we think.
So anyway, it’s evident that he wanted God’s will. It’s evident he wanted God’s blessing. It’s evident that he sought to serve God effectively. But God saw a problem that Paul didn’t see. God recognized that this tendency of human pride to get in the way was going to hinder him from doing the very thing that he wanted to do.
And so, Paul…well, let’s back up and say, you remember what the situation was? God allowed—allowed a demon to harass him. God literally stepped back and said, all right, go for it. Now, was God punishing Paul? Did he do something wrong for that to happen?
Paul, of course, reacted, based upon his understanding. Oh God, I want to serve you. I want to do Your will. This guy’s getting in my way! Get rid of this devil! What’s going on here? Lord, please, deliver me from this!
Well, one thing is encouraging to me…you know, Paul obviously coming with a right motive, but with a lack of understanding. God didn’t get mad at him for that. There is not even a hint of rebuke…oh, Paul, that’s not right. But God allowed Paul to do some serious praying about that need.
But obviously, what Jesus had said in Matthew chapter 6, was certainly his mindset. It’s the way he saw himself, the way he saw God, the way he saw the needs of the Kingdom being paramount. This is what my life is about. Oh God, I want to serve you more effectively! This guy’s getting in the way! Until the Lord finally spoke to Paul.
Now, if Paul had not been that kind of a person that Jesus described, would he even have heard God’s voice? He would’ve said, oh, that’s just the Devil. I know how this is supposed to work out. That’s just the Devil lying to me because he wants to hang around, wants me to give up…no. Paul was humbled enough, experienced enough in walking with God, that God could reveal to him why this was happening. Wouldn’t that be a good place to be?
And so, the Lord finally said, “…my strength is made perfect in weakness.” (KJV). You know, when the Lord speaks, it doesn’t take a lot of words. Just a handful of words and all of a sudden there is a power.
You know, I think I’ve mentioned many times how the struggle that John Bunyan, the author of “Pilgrim’s Progress,” went through when he came to the Lord. He’d go through a week of just horrendous bombardment of wicked thoughts, trying to tear down any hope, any sense that God would care about him. And all of a sudden, God would speak about two or three words and all of that would just dissipate. I’ll tell you, the Word of God is powerful.
But here was a man who was willing to do God’s will, just didn’t understand. And so, God was able to say, all right, now it’s time. This is here for a reason, Paul. I want to keep you from…I want to fulfill the desire that I planted in you to be effective. I want you to be effective! But I know human nature. I get the fact that if I let you go, you’re gonna get in my way. So, I got to do something about it.
And that’s why I let this devil harass you, because the very time that you feel that weakness, that inability, that’s when you’re gonna raise your hands and say, Lord, You’re gonna have to gird me. I don’t have what it takes, but You do. And Your promise is that Your strength is made perfect in weakness.
So, Paul changed his tune, didn’t he? He said, okay, I thought that was a bad thing, now I’m gonna glory in it, Praise God, I’m weak! Isn’t that awesome? Because that drives me to my Heavenly Father, where all the help comes from to begin with.
I’ll tell you, God is changing His people. Are we willing to be changed? Are we willing to have a real foundation for being a people of prayer, being that kind of people? Are we willing to let the Lord get in here and change us, so that we are able to be one of those who can stand in the gap?
God, deliver us. We have a lot more that we need to be delivered from than we have any idea. But we’ve got a God that’s faithful if we’re willing. I want to be willing today and just put my hope and my trust in Him. He truly is faithful.
And I’ll tell you, there’s no telling what He might use us for, and yet I don’t want to say that in a sense that, oh praise God, we’re gonna get out there and we’re gonna glory in this, and glory in that. We’re gonna glory in Him!
We’re never gonna be able to look in the mirror and say, man, you did good. Hogwash! He did good! We need to get out of His way and learn how to be instruments in His hands. He is going to bring us through.
But we have Someone to whom we can go. He is our Father! He’s ‘our’ Father! We’re part of a community, part of a family that’s gonna live forever! Let’s start living that in a deeper way right now. And God will be with us! Praise God!
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August 1, 2021 - No. 1504
“A Foundation for Prayer” Part One
Broadcast #1504
August 1, 2021
August 1, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1504 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: It’s interesting to me the emphasis that the Lord has put in some of the things that have been said so far on prayer, because my thoughts have been along that line. I wish I could stand here and tell you that I’m an expert in that area, but I’m far from it. But then, I don’t believe any of us are experts. I believe we all are in a place where we need to learn more.
You know, we spoke recently about what’s happening and the fact that the real battle is not the social issues and the virus and all the things that are happening. The real issue is spiritual. There is a Devil that is raging, that is behind what is happening in our world, and the Lord wants us not…He’s not gonna whisk us out and take us away before all the trouble hits. He’s gonna empower us to stand. Those who look to Him will have everything we need, because He is faithful. He promised to be with us to the end of the age. Thank God! He keeps His promises.
And, just by way of introduction, one scripture we use and often refer to is in Ephesians 6 about warfare. And I thank God for the first part of it, because Paul gives us pieces of armor as an illustration of the full provision of Christ…peace, righteousness, truth…His Word, and all those kinds of things. I’m not gonna enumerate them all. But it represents the fact that we are equipped.
And we’re not equipped because of who we are, but he tells us to be strong in the power of His might, not in ours. Thank God, it’s in Him.
But there’s one part of that that tends to get…doesn’t often become the central emphasis when you talk about the armor, because then he goes immediately and says…and goes into prayer, and how we’re supposed to pray in the Spirit with all kinds of prayers and all kinds of occasions for God’s people.
And so, that is a very big, major part of the battle that God has called us to in this hour. And I believe God wants us to learn more of what that means, and how to pray. And I know we’ve often used the scripture where Daniel talked about a people yet to come who would go through a terrible time. “…But the people who do know their God shall be strong…” and be able to take action, is the sense of the Hebrew there. (KJV). And I believe God wants us to be in a position to take action.
Now, you know, we remember another scripture that we’ve often referred to in James, where he says, you don’t have because you don’t ask. I’m paraphrasing a bit. But then he says, you ask and don’t receive, “…because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (NIV). And so, the thoughts that really have come to me this morning have less to do with prayer as a technique and more what it takes to be able to pray.
You know, a lot of people you ask what prayer means, it’s, well you’ve got a need, you go to God and you ask Him to fix it. And, it really doesn’t get a whole lot beyond that. It’s very self-centered, it’s very earthly oriented. I’ve got a problem, I’m sick, I need this, I need that, and so we go to God, and there’s a place for that in the context of prayer, but the center of it is that.
And I’ll tell you, there are a lot of people who will come upon a need…who will come to a place of need in their lives, and they’ll take it to God, but they take it to God with a perspective that, I know how this is supposed to work out. I know what He’s supposed to do. I know what I want Him to do.
And so, when it doesn’t happen, then they actually get mad at God. And they get sort of upset with Him. Or, what’s wrong with me? Boohoo. You know, why does God answer this prayer and not that one? There’s a lot we don’t know about God that we need to learn.
But why…the thoughts that I had this morning…now I don’t know how long this is gonna be. We’ll see what the Lord has. But, it’s to back to Matthew chapter 6 and what is called the Lord’s Prayer. And, I guess if I had to title this, it would be something like “A Foundation for Prayer.”
You know, I think Carl made the reference or somebody that wrote to him made the reference about standing in the gap. Do you believe God wants a people who will stand in the gap?
( congregational amens ).
Who will be able to…there’ll be a need and we know there’s a God that wants to help and wants to move, but He does move through His people. And so, He needs those who are able to stand in that gap and be effective. And I fear that much of the time when we’re trying to stand in the gap, we’re standing in the way.
And God is a lot more interested in working in us and changing us than He is in fixing whatever it is we think needs to be fixed, in the way we want it to be fixed and when we want it to be fixed. You know what I’m talking about? And so, I feel my need in this area.
And I see God working and I see Him doing it in ways that I would prefer He didn’t, but He knows what He’s doing. And so, I don’t know, let’s just take this, and just ask God to kind of unfold some of this, and what the implications of this prayer are for us.
Now, of course, the prayer begins, “Our Father….” And, most of the time, I think, when I have talked about this, my emphasis has been on the Father part. But I believe there’s a significance in the fact that He says, ‘our’ Father. Why doesn’t He say, My Father?
God wants us, as a foundation of being able to be an intercessor, to go to Him…which we’re told we can go freely because of Christ and not because of us. But how do we go and with what mindset? Do we truly get it? Do we truly understand our place in the scheme of things? Because if you’re thinking self-centeredly, this is not gonna do a lot of good, is it?
We have this expression about certain kinds of people, that they are self-absorbed, you know what I mean? And what we mean by that is their entire world is centered on me, what’s happening to me, what people do to me and my feelings about that, and that’s their whole world! I mean, somebody once said that a person wrapped up in themselves makes a very small package.
And, this is the polar opposite of God’s nature, when He is other-centered. We need to be in a position where we’re so grounded in Him, who we are, who He is, what He wants, that we are able to get out of that trap of our world being all about me.
God has not called us to be just an island, serving Him individually, separately, doing our thing and it’s me and Jesus, as we’ve heard so many times. We are part of a body. We are part of a family. And, there are plenty of scriptures that talk about that, the fact that we are a family in God.
You know, you recall the time when Jesus was ministering and it was crowded and somebody came and said, your mother and your brothers are here to see you…sisters, I think also, perhaps. And so, He took the opportunity to say, who is My mother, who is My sister, who is My brother? Those who hear the Word of God and keep it, the same is my…you know.
In other words, we have the earthly relationships that we naturally find they’re important to us and in a sense they are. But, the relationship that matters is the eternal one because God has brought us into a family of which we are an integral part.
And if our life, if we’re coming to God with this ‘me’ centered approach, right off the bat we’re in the way. We’re not in a position to do much good in the Kingdom of God. We need to come and say, our Father. I’m a part of a kingdom. I’m a part of something that is bigger than myself. I am not…I don’t even live for me.
You know, we’ve mentioned how Paul described his own ministry. He didn’t take a high and mighty place, did he? He didn’t even…I mean, I think if Paul had had his way, he would’ve been comfortable being quiet. He was in prison a lot of the time of his ministry. He wasn’t up in front in people talking…my message is not me. I didn’t come to promote me. I came to promote Him and I’m your servant. I mean, what a mindset.
But I’ll tell you, if we could start out our approach to God with this sense that I’m a part of something, that is bigger than me, and God has called me to be a vital part of that. That’s a pretty good start, isn’t it? How are you thinking? How do I think?
Oh, how easy it is when something happens to begin to just close in and, oh my God, fix my situation. But God wants us to have a bigger picture and a sense of where we’re at. You know, a lot of this prayer here winds up being about personal things, but we’re talking about a foundation for prayer. If I can’t get this right, how can I help anybody else? How can I even be in a position to help somebody else?
And of course, the second word is Father because we are part of a family and the thing that makes us part of that family is not just because we decided to follow Jesus and go to church and be religious. There is a birth—there is a real birth that happens because we come…we’ve said these things many times, we come into this world with a life that has a death sentence upon it. It will end—one way or the other, it will end! There is another life that doesn’t end, and the question is, which one do we have?
And the only one that matters is the one that we receive when we surrender this earthly life, that we can’t keep anyway, in order to obtain the one that we cannot lose! And there is a real birth that happens when the Spirit of God, who is everywhere, literally comes to reside in these earthly vessels. We are temples meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit, right? God wants to come to reside to find a home in the heart.
And I’ll tell you, once we surrender and come to Him, laying down our lives, we do become a part of a family. I mean, you can build churches and you can…there are all kinds of church growth programs out there. This is how you make your church bigger. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in just giving out what God gives me, or seeing it given out by whatever means God chooses, and letting Him build His church.
And I’ll tell you, like I’ve said and many others…Brother Thomas used to say, give me five people who really want to serve God, rather than 5,000 people that just want to play church. Thank God, I believe there’s a lot more than four, than five here. But thank God!
But He is our Father. But it’s beyond that because the ultimate model of what a Father is meant to be is our God. He’s not just some monarch way off somewhere in the distance that we hope to somehow get a handle on.
So many people think about prayer as a technique for getting what they want. And they don’t see Him as Father, they see Him as Santa Clause. Lord, I’m sick, or I need money, or I’m this, I’m that and they’ll go to Him when they sense that need, and then, okay, what’s the technique? How does this work?
You’ll hear unbelievers talk about, well, how does that prayer thing work? You know, why doesn’t God answer? Did I not believe enough, did I not try hard enough, as though there’s a technique to it? This is not technique.
You say, oh, you’ve got to believe. Well…how many of you have the power, based upon the nature you got from Adam, to have real faith? I don’t. I need Him! You know, we’re gonna have to have a relationship to God in order to be able to possess the abilities to do what He’s talking about here. It’s got to come from Him.
But He is a Father who loves His children, okay? And one thing I thought about mentioning is this. You know, there are people out there who have a view of God that makes Him of one sort and Jesus as another. God is this angry monarch, angry about sin, pouring out wrath and fire and brimstone, and He’s this…and here’s Jesus, and He’s become one of us and so now He’s sympathetic. And so, He’s trying to convince His Father to go…to let us off the hook. I mean, I’m putting this in extreme terms, but they make a difference between the two.
Folks, they’re not! Jesus is the perfect expression of the Father. I guess…this fits better in something that’s coming here. But I want to get that across. This heart of the Father towards you…I don’t care how small you are, how weak you are, if you are literally His child because you have been born of His Spirit, He cares about you and will never forget you.
And He wants us to come to One that has a compassion for your needs. He sees your needs. He’s not unmindful of where we’re at. I mean, we need to see ourselves more as what we are. Little children who don’t get it, who don’t understand. And we need Somebody who does.
You know, some of you are old enough to remember a program that aired and was very popular in the 1950s. It would be laughed off the air today. “Father Knows Best.” But anyway, this is one case where Father definitely knows best.
And so, coming to Him…if I’m really coming to Him, I need that sense of community, but I need that sense that He’s my Father and He knows what the deal is. I don’t come to Him and tell Him what to do. I don’t come and demand that He do this and do that. I’m coming to a Father who knows and cares, and I need to have that mindset when I look to Him. There’s a humility.
I need to know my place. And yes, my place is being loved with an everlasting love, but my place is not to sit up here and talk over to God and say, here’s what I want You to do. It’s to come to Him with a humbleness. Didn’t Peter say to humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and He’ll lift you up at the proper time? That’s a paraphrase of it but…you know the scripture I’m talking about in chapter 5, I believe it is.
So, our Father…and again, it’s, “Our Father in heaven…” There’s a place of exaltation. That needs to remind us that we’re not where He is. He’s the One that’s way up there. He’s the One that we need to always bow before, bow to when we come into Him, again, we’re not coming with this angry, You’re not doing what I want…what’s the matter with You…talking almost down to God. Some people actually do that. It’s amazing. But, our Father in heaven. He occupies the highest place in the order of things.
The human race decided it didn’t need Him. It wanted to go its own way and seek for its own godhood. I’ll tell you, if we’re gonna ever have the relationship with God where prayer means anything, we’re gonna have to get off of that high horse and take the place that is rightfully ours. I need a heavenly Father. I don’t have the knowledge. I don’t have the wisdom. I don’t have the ability. I am in need. And I’m gonna thankfully, gratefully, humbly take that place.
Oh, what a place of peace that is, too, when we can just be what we are. We don’t have to pretend. It’s not like we have to hold our mouth right to get God to do stuff. That’s not what this is about. This is about humbly coming with a degree of understanding of who He is, who I am, what my place is in the scheme of things, and willingly taking that place before Him.
Our Father in heaven…simple words, but don’t they mean something when you start to meditate on those words? Oh my God. It needs to make us take a step backwards and say, Lord, am I in the way here? I need You to change me.
There are things that I don’t even know about myself that You know, and here I am trying to focus on getting You to do stuff, and You’re wanting to do stuff, all right, it’s just that I’m the one You’re wanting to do it in. Help me to occupy a place where whatever the need is, whatever You want to say, You’re the One who knows and I humble myself to Your hand. It’s a good place to be, isn’t it?
“…Hallowed be your name….” Hallowed, holy, set apart, lifted up. It’s a name that’s above every name, isn’t it? And, I’ll kind of put this together with the ‘name’ part. There’s a scripture…I’m gonna turn over there. Just hold this, but in John chapter 17…that is kind of mind blowing, because this really highlights what we said earlier about the Son being an expression of the Father.
There is no…what you see in the Son comes from the Father’s heart. It’s not like He’s trying to convince an unwilling, reluctant God to be good to us. This comes from, this originates in the heart of God. Jesus is the visible, human expression of that. He is the perfect, full representation of the unseen God. Praise God!
All right, in verse 11, somewhere in the middle of verse 11, when He says, “…I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name…” Jesus is praying for His followers. “Holy Father…” He’s calling Him Father, too, isn’t He? “…Protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.”
So where did the name Jesus really originate? ‘Your name you gave me.’ What does Jesus mean? It means ‘God saves’…it’s a Savior, yes. When the angel told Mary, I believe it was, you’ll, “…call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.” (KJV). It means really, God saves.
And that’s the whole point. The whole idea of seeing our need and reaching out to us comes from the heart of the Father. Man, we need to lift up that name and it’s above every name. That name was given to Jesus after what He did. And He was given a name, as he says in Philippians, I believe it is, “…a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God.”
I’ll tell you, you want to know what the Father is like, you look at Jesus and you’ll see. But I want to respect that name above every name, but I want to understand its implications. If the name means ‘Savior,’ does that not imply that that’s what I need? He’s not looking to me to get up to this high, spiritual place where I just…okay, now I’ve got it. I need a Savior every day.
From the time that I come into this world until the time that I leave it, there will be things from which I need to be delivered. I need to be delivered from me. Now, I’m not trying to paint salvation as something that, oh my God, if I don’t measure up, I’m gonna lose it, lose it. No, if there is real salvation going on, we’re not gonna lose it.
But there is a progressive aspect to salvation. We don’t ever get to the point where we say, okay…I’ve arrived, I don’t need any more saving. Man, I need it every single day. If I’m gonna approach this God, our Father in heaven, I’m gonna have to understand my relationship to Him, that there are things that I need to be delivered from. I need His help! I just need Him!
I can’t even pray without His help. I need Him to save me and to help me. Doesn’t the scripture tell us that we don’t even know what to pray for, we don’t know how to pray, but the Holy Spirit helps us, “…with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Sometimes there are just things that well up in our heart and in our spirit…I know that some of you know what I’m talking about. There’s just something that’s there, that’s yearning, and that’s God.
What a wonderful place it is to come to a place where we can just be so, yielded, is the word, so trusting in this Heavenly Father who invites us into His presence, that we can just…we can feel what He feels about something, and actually give expression to that.
But oh God, there’s so much self in the way! There’s so much of us that gets in the way of what God has called us to, and God wants to purge and help us.
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July 25, 2021 - No. 1503
“Who Are You?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1503
July 25, 2021
July 25, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1503 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: If I were…let’s say I was looking for…silverware, let’s just pick silverware. And my only source for the silverware was to go through all the junk shops around, and pick through all of the dirty, tarnished, messed-up, bent…all those kinds of things that have just really reached the point of being junk, and I began to choose. You know, there might be one that kind of looks halfway okay. Do I choose it because of that?
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who will look there and say, there’s one that’s bent and tarnished, but I’m gonna take that one. That’s in My pile. And here’s another one. That’s in My pile. And there’s a God who can take you from the junk heap, and clean you up and unbend you, and make you fit to serve a king.
( congregational amens ).
The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! That means chosen, set apart! This pile is going into the trash. This pile is mine! That’s the God that we serve! Folks, I want to be one of those!
But there is a sanctifying work. There is a work that God would do. He’s a Spirit and He will come and work on your heart and convict you and drop thoughts into your minds and show you your need.
The real question is what do we do when He does that? Do we resist and fight and put up our guard and just demand this is my way? Just get away. Leave me alone. I’m okay. I want to do my thing.
Or do we say, yes, Lord? I’m exactly what You say I am. I am a sinner in need of a Savior. And I cannot help myself and I don’t deserve Your help, but I’m listening. But I believe the words of the promise, the hope of the Gospel. I’ve heard your words, Lord, and they touched my heart and I embrace them. I let go…I gladly hand over this life that I cannot keep anyway. I give it to You, and I receive You into my heart as my life, as my Lord, as my Savior.
You know, Brother J.P. asked last night…last week, who is Jesus Christ to you? Very related to all of this, today. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who knew you, who went out to look for you when you weren’t looking for Him. I wasn’t either. He came looking for me.
He didn’t come because He thought I was special, better than anybody else. I have exactly the same need as anybody else! If there’s somebody that’s hearing this and you’re in prison because you’ve done horrible things, I am no better than you are! When it comes to being a human being, we were born with a nature that drives us to do the very opposite of how God means us to be.
And there is no religion that can fix that. There is only a Savior who comes to the inside, gives us a new heart and a new life, and then we learn how to live that life!
Listen to how Peter puts it. He’s exhorting us as to how to live and how God wants us to live. Verse 22 of chapter 1, he says, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth….” (NIV). See, there’s that choice. Truth is gonna come. What do we do when it comes? There’s a respect. There’s an obedience that has to happen, and from the heart.
“…Obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers….” You know, you don’t have anything that could be described as real genuine love, unless He, the Author of love, comes in. We can sort of like each other, for very selfish reasons. But the kind of love that he’s talking about here, only God can put in our hearts. That’s what we need.
“…So that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.” Okay, how does that happen? How can I do that? “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”
I’ll tell you, when God speaks it’s like planting a seed and there’s life in that seed. And our hearts are like soil. Oh, my God, I just sense…just a tiny little bit of what the Lord is feeling. I wish I could sense it better. I’m such a poor vessel.
But, there are young people right here. You need to realize what God thinks about you and how much He cares about your life. And I’ll tell you, if He ever saves you, no matter what it takes, you’re gonna look back with such incredible gratitude—incredible gratitude that God would go to such lengths to cross your stubborn will and mine, and reveal His love and His perfect provision!
He’s not coming and saying, measure up and I’ll accept you. He’s saying, come broken as you are. Give me your heart, your life. I’m the only One that can rescue you and make you what you need to be! I’m the only One that has the power but you’re gonna have to give me your heart and your life! It won’t be yours anymore, it’ll be Mine!
“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed….” See, human life just doesn’t have the power to endure. It’s not in it. It’s been corrupted by death. You’re born into Adam’s family, that’s all you’ve got. You’re gonna die, and so will everybody else that’s born into Adam’s family.
“…But of imperishable….” The kind that cannot perish. If God can die, so can we who know Him and have been born of His life. It’s His life that He shares with us. “…Through the living and enduring word of God.”
Now, here’s….you want to look at the world and see it through God’s eyes? He says, “All men are like grass….” You want to glory in what’s happening in the world and feel like you can step in and fix things, and make…make a life for yourself here, and conquer and do all those kinds of things, achieve things?
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fail, but the word of the Lord stands forever. And this is the word that was preached to you. Therefore…” because of all of this, because you’ve got a new life in you, now, “…rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.”
So, how do I do that? You better go to the God who can give you that…exactly what brother Ricky was saying. When I feel those things want to rise up in me, any one of us…don’t you lie to me. They rise up in you too. We’re gonna have to go to the Source. We’re gonna have to say, Lord, Your plan for me is not me, but it’s You in me. I need You. I need You to set me free. I do not have the power to be the person You’ve called me to be, but You do.
There is only One who’s ever lived the Christian life, and that’s Christ! But the Gospel is about Him coming and living that life again through me. Listen to how that happens. It’s just kind of like a human family, isn’t it? It says, “Like new born babies…” They’re born, but they’re still babies. “…Crave pure spiritual milk…” We better get something from Him. “…So that by it…” by that spiritual milk, by what we get from Him, “…by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Oh, ‘Taste and See’ that we sang this morning, have you ever really tasted, I mean beyond just being in a place and feeling good? I don’t know who this is for, but I just pray that God will…if you are one that has just gone along, and you’ve never come to that point where you have passed from death to life, and it’s a one-way trip, and the bridge is burned behind you, and you are His come hell or high water…if you haven’t done that, you are in an incredibly dangerous place.
( congregational amens ).
You have no idea what’s coming! But God loves you enough to look you in the eye and say you need Me—you need Me. “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
God’s building Him a house. It’s just like Livera was saying. She likened it to an orchestra, But there are so many ways to illustrate the simple things, the body of Christ, the parts of the body, a building, the various stones that go into making up that building. Though every one of us is unique, if we are born of His Spirit, we have been called into a relationship, not only with Him, but with one another!
You want to enjoy the fruits of truly being a part of the family of God, you better have Him in you. You better have been born of that Spirit, because I’ll tell you, events are going to unfold where if you do not have Christ in you, you will fall, and you will go away, and you’ll turn away. You will embrace the darkness, and you will feel like you did the right thing. That’s a scary thing. That’s where we’re at in the history of this planet.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a God is so patient. If He weren’t patient, He would have ended things a long time ago. You look at the things that are happening in the world, and they’re gonna get a lot worse. I’ll tell you, this is who, by God’s grace, I am. I’m His. I cannot look in the mirror and see any reason why God would choose somebody like me. But that applies to every one of us. But that’s the kind of a God He is. Thank God!
Then he talks about the fact that He’s laid a stone, a foundation. But down here in verse 9, I’m gonna read this. I don’t think it needs…for more to be said. (Anyway, I only stutter when I talk!)
“But you are a chosen people…” Is this your identity this morning, or are you just sort of going along? Are you just sort of, well, I’m born here? This is what my parents believe, my teachers believe. Have you ever entered into this? Has it ever really become yours? I mean, have you crossed that bridge and literally burned it behind you? Have you opened your heart and said, oh God, I am a sinner, and I need a Savior? Please come in. Take my life. Make me the kind of person You need me to be. I’ll tell you, I pray that if you haven’t, you will.
This is the result. “…A chosen people, a royal priesthood….” I’m not gonna go into a lot of the detail of this. It just means we’re in a position to help other people, because God’s in us. “…A holy nation…” separated to God. Yes, that’s going to have its implications in how we live and the kind of people we are! But basically, it means I am His, period! I’m not the Devil’s.
Now the Lord may allow that Devil to fight, and he does. We have seasons where we do go through the kind of battles we heard about this morning, but we have a God who fights those battles with us if we’ll trust Him and stand fast. There’s a time when we are called to stand. I mean, having done all, what do we do? Stand, because God is faithful, and God is strengthening the hearts and the faith of those who have to fight. “Fight the good fight of the faith,” He says.
“…A holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God….” Are you part of this? “…Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Now I confess, this is an area where I wrestle. I’m no evangelist. And you know I’m not…I don’t think there’s any terrible wrong, but I’m not much for giving invitations. I’m gonna do what I think they did in the scriptures. If God’s talking to you, you need to respond to Him. You don’t need a big public something, necessarily.
I’ll tell you, the answer, first of all, it has to be you and Him. The Lord does tell you to repent and be baptized, doesn’t He? Repent is turning from your own life and your own way and giving it to Him and recognizing that if you follow your own way, it’s gonna lead to death. You say, Lord, come and give me Your heart and Your new life, and change my heart.
And then, there is that testimony, that public testimony. But this is between you and Him. If He’s talking to you, you don’t have to wait. It’s not a fancy prayer. It’s not certain words. It’s reaching out from the heart and saying, oh God, I need a Savior today. I put my faith in You now, today. Come into my heart, and be what You have promised in Your Word. Lord, I don’t come because I’m anything or because I’m worthy…none of that, Lord. I just come as I am, “Just as I am, without one plea,” but that Christ died for me.
And I’ll tell you, if you do that from your heart, you’ll know it. Others around you will begin to know it. And I believe God will put it on your heart to come talk about it, and say, I need to be baptized. I’m His. I’ve been going along with it. I didn’t know.
Maybe it wasn’t time. There’s a time that God is gonna bring everybody to that point of decision, that point of choice. Is this your day? I don’t know. All I can do is put the Word out there and say, God, You’re gonna have to do it. Pray, folks. Pray that God will convict those who need convicting.
The saddest thing is for someone to grow up, to hear all of these things, to go along, and just look like you’re part of it, and then you get to a point in your life, and it’s never really taken root in your heart. Do you think you’re gonna find it somehow in yourself to go on and be a good person? I’ll tell you, if it isn’t in here, this darkness out here will swallow you up.
I warn you, I promise you, that there is Someone who sits on a throne, who went to a cross, because you and I needed a Savior. He willingly came down, humbled Himself to that cross. But He didn’t stay in that tomb, did He? He proved, by His resurrection, that He holds the key of death and hell. That’s the One I want to serve.
If you miss this, you miss everything. If you see this and humble yourself and come put your faith in Him, you gain everything, regardless of how events play out in this world. If you have Him, you have everything. If they walk up to you with a sword and cut your head off, are you gonna be the loser? You’ll be the winner. Man, that’s a one-way trip out of this place.
You know, Brother Timothy wrote the other day and mentioned that his Dad had passed. I just had a scripture come back to me, and I think we’re gonna see this in greater need. It’s one that I think about every now and then, in Isaiah. I’ll just read this and be done. I didn’t think I was going here, but, “The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.”
Do we really believe the promises of God that this world is not where it’s at, that He has something beyond? If that’s the case, then we can say with Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” You want to talk about the kind of interest that pays eternally? There’s where your investment needs to be. It’s in Him and in the Gospel.
It comes back to this. Who are you? When we talk about being chosen, being His children, are we talking about you? That’s a fair question. I pray that every one here who is unsure, you will begin to seek God from the depths of your heart until you know, because He will help you, if you really want help. He loves you with an everlasting love. Praise God!
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July 18, 2021 - No. 1502
“Who Are You?” Part One
Broadcast #1502
July 18, 2021
July 18, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1502 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! How many of you know what Brother Ricky is talking about with being in a battle?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. It seems like there’s an increase in the power of darkness that the Lord has allowed to flood our earth. We’re told to expect it, and the Lord is using it, and He’s using it to prove who we are. He’s using it to prove who He is. And I believe He’s using it to bring about a separation in the human family.
And, you know, we sing so many wonderful songs about who we are in the Lord and what He’s done for us. And that’s an awesome thing! It’s an amazing thing that He has chosen us, “…before the foundation of the world.” (KJV).
I mean, what a God we have, that knows us ahead of time, isn’t choosing because we are worthy somehow and better than everybody else. He has a way of taking the worst of the worst and saying, “That one’s Mine. Look what I’m gonna be able to do with that one. I’m gonna take them out of the gutter. I’m gonna clean them up, and they’re gonna be something in My Kingdom for My glory.”
I’ll tell you, we have no reason to live for anything else. But this is an hour when I believe God is calling His children to grow up, to learn to know Him, exactly what Ricky’s been talking about.
And somehow, in thinking of who we are, my mind went to an unusual place, perhaps, this morning and in the last couple of days. Because, the question really is, how do we become an heir of all these things? Who is it that this is all about? When we’re talking about who we are in Christ and being chosen and loved and His children and all of that, how do we get to that place? Who does that…is that talking about you, for example? Something to think about, isn’t it?
And a simple illustration…now obviously everyone here has been born into the human family. That’s how we became human. But just to talk about a particular family, let’s just pick on Philip. Hi!
( laughing ).
But, how did Phillip become a Johnson? Did he adopt a code of ethics and a code of conduct, and learn what the beliefs were and did he earn the place? No! He was born! He was born a Johnson. And, God help him. Yeah, well that’s all right…
( laughter ).
I was born one-quarter Johnson myself, my dad’s mom. But anyway…and you know, there’s obviously a process of being born and growing and learning and learning how to live out that identity, but that becomes the identity of anybody, in the natural sense. You know, we learn who we are and we learn what our place in the scheme of things is.
But you know, it’s not like that, I mean, it is like that in the Kingdom of God. But we tend to think that we can somehow be born into a natural family and, well, this is our religion. We can simply come to church. We can learn the songs. We can claim the blessings for ourselves. We can just sort of embrace the faith of our fathers, in that sense, and that becomes, well, I’m a Christian, I was born into a Christian family. But it isn’t that way, folks!
And I think one of the burdens that I have, and I just have to trust the Lord with this, is this really…when we talk about things like this, is this talking about you? Jesus spoke to a religious leader who came to see Him with questions. And that religious leader was…was a leader. He was a teacher. He was somebody who would instruct somebody else. They would come to him with questions and he would give them the answers that his religion dictated. His name was Nicodemus.
And, Jesus began to talk about some things that he didn’t understand. He said, you have to be born again because if someone is simply born of flesh, that’s what they are. You know, it’s not enough to simply be born into the human family and adopt a Christian religion.
I’ll tell you, what the world is coming to is gonna make a distinction. People are gonna go one way or the other. They are going to either be in God’s family or they’re gonna be in the human family. And the future of the human family is not a good one, apart from Christ.
But anyway, Jesus began to talk about a different kind of birth. And the one who gives that kind of birth is God! It is from above. It is something that brings and it introduces into the heart, not just a new religion, but a brand-new life! Something has to happen on the inside that doesn’t happen simply because you’re born into a family and come to church.
That won’t do you any good unless you really come to this place where God does something…performs a miracle in your heart, and gives you a new heart and a new spirit, and comes to live within you! You will not have what it takes to stand in this darkness.
( congregational amens ).
Now, you can pray all the prayers you want to, but if you’ve never let Him have your heart and your life, this is not talking about you. And my prayer is for anybody…I’m thinking about young people who grow up here. We’ve seen them come and go, too many times over the years. They sing in the choir. They learn the words. They sing the songs. They profess the professions. But it never has really taken root in the heart.
Brother Ricky talked about the choices that we make. You know, even as a believer we can make wrong choices. But, you know, so can Philip. And so do we all, in our natural families. And that doesn’t make him not a Johnson anymore. He just needs correction. And we’re like that in our relationship with the Lord and He’s faithful to correct His children. He doesn’t throw them out because they mess up. Aren’t you glad about that?
( congregational amens ).
Thank God! He is faithful! Oh, His love goes way beyond that of any human parent. But I’ll tell you, the problem is that there is a choice that has to be made at some point in someone’s life. And until that point is past, you’re still on the outside looking in, trying to be this or trying to be that, trying to find who you are. And I’ll tell you, I want to be His child!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! You know, Livera talked about when she was baptized, and the thing that was the most real to her was, I’m losing my life. Well, that life needs to be lost. Now you know, you live a while and you suddenly realize this is a pretty temporary place. You know, I can remember when Livera was a teenager, and many others here. And some of you were just kids. Some of you weren’t born yet.
And now look at us. And here we are, and we’re feeling the infirmities of our age, and we’re having to make arrangements and see doctors and all these kinds of things. And, we’re burying people from time to time. That’s the way of the world. That’s the world you’re born into. Don’t you just feel your youth and say, oh, I can make choices, I can do what…it’s my life, I’m gonna do what I want with it.
I’ll tell you, you cling to your life…Jesus said, you want to save your life? You’re gonna lose it. Now did He say that ‘cause He was mean, wanting to be a big bully? No! It was because His heart was…I’ve got life that’s really life!
Do you know why you’re here? There’s no other purpose in your being here except to come to know the One who made you! You’ve got a temporary life in a temporary world. Something we’ve said many times. But oh, the choices that we make when He comes calling, when He comes and begins to convict and begins to call people out of the human family into His family!
And all of these earthly identities go away. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, or slave or free, or all the things He mentions in the scriptures that affected people in the first century. All those identities go out the window when we become a member of the real family!
That’s the family that’s gonna live forever! Not because they’re worthy, not because of any other thing but what Jesus did on the cross! He is the One who defeated this one who’s fighting against us so hard! The battle was won at the cross! His blood cleanses from every sin that could ever separate us from a Holy God!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! Oh, but have you ever entered in? Jesus talked about passing from death to life. You know, when a baby’s born, they pass out of the mother’s womb into the world outside. There’s a birth. It’s a real event. And it’s not like you have to have a certain experience or anything like that. Everybody’s absolutely different. Somebody could have one that’s very dramatic and somebody else it’s just a very quiet surrender. It’s just private.
But have you ever passed that point? Have you ever, ever been born of God’s Spirit and come into His family? That’s the question that hangs over every—that hangs over every single person on this planet.
You talk about who you are! Every earthly distinction ceases to matter, because the very world in which we live will one day…it won’t be here. You could live your entire life, and as Jesus said, “…gain the whole world…” (NIV). You could be the one that owns everything and everybody looks to. You make all the decisions.
And you live out your life in grandeur and power and riches and pleasure and anything you want and your heart desires and then you’re gonna die! And you’re gonna face Him, and everything you worked for will be burned up and forgotten! You realize that?
Does not the Lord say of the new heavens and the new earth, “…the former…” won’t even, “…come to mind?” Do you think we’re gonna go through eternity just thinking back, oh, I wish that could have been different? Oh, my God…full of regret. There is gonna be such a newness, such a freshness, such a reality, that God will put everything of the old out of our minds. It will be as if it never happened.
Talk about something being brand new! That’s incredible! That’s the family I want to be a part of! That’s the family that God would build and nurture here! Praise God! That’s the burden, I guess, I’ve had on my heart.
I think of some scriptures in 1st Peter that back this up. Peter is writing to some of God’s children. He calls them God’s elect. And he talks about all the places they live, in the beginning of the book. And he says they’ve, “…been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father….” That means God knew you long before you were here.
The fact is, He knew you before He ever started creating the stars. God knew about you! He knew everything that was wrong with you, and He still loved you.
But how does that choice work out? “…Chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit…” What does sanctifying mean? Set apart! That’s the greatest meaning of the word.
If I were…let’s say I was looking for…silverware, let’s just pick silverware. And my only source for the silverware was to go through all the junk shops around, and pick through all of the dirty, tarnished, messed-up, bent…all those kinds of things that have just really reached the point of being junk, and I began to choose. You know, there might be one that kind of looks halfway okay. Do I choose it because of that?
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who will look there and say, there’s one that’s bent and tarnished, but I’m gonna take that one. That’s in My pile. And here’s another one. That’s in My pile. And there’s a God who can take you from the junk heap, and clean you up and unbend you, and make you fit to serve a king.
( congregational amens ).
The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! That means chosen, set apart! This pile is going into the trash. This pile is mine! That’s the God that we serve! Folks, I want to be one of those!
But there is a sanctifying work. There is a work that God would do. He’s a Spirit and He will come and work on your heart and convict you and drop thoughts into your minds and show you your need. The real question is what do we do when He does that? Do we resist and fight and put up our guard and just demand, this is my way? Just get away. Leave me alone. I’m okay. I want to do my thing.
Or do we say, yes, Lord? I’m exactly what You say I am. I am a sinner in need of a Savior. And I cannot help myself and I don’t deserve Your help, but I’m listening. But I believe the words of the promise, the hope of the Gospel. I’ve heard your words, Lord, and they touched my heart and I embrace them. I let go…I gladly hand over this life that I cannot keep anyway. I give it to You, and I receive You into my heart as my life, as my Lord, as my Savior.
You know, Brother J.P. asked last night…last week, who is Jesus Christ to you? Very related to all of this, today. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who knew you, who went out to look for you when you weren’t looking for Him. I wasn’t either. He came looking for me.
He didn’t come because He thought I was special, better than anybody else. I have exactly the same need as anybody else! If there’s somebody that’s hearing this and you’re in prison because you’ve done horrible things, I am no better than you are! When it comes to being a human being, we were born with a nature that drives us to do the very opposite of how God means us to be.
And there is no religion that can fix that. There is only a Savior who comes to the inside, gives us a new heart and a new life, and then we learn how to live that life! Listen to how Peter puts it. He’s exhorting us as to how to live and how God wants us to live. Verse 22 of chapter 1, he says, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth….”
See, there’s that choice. Truth is gonna come. What do we do when it comes? There’s a respect. There’s an obedience that has to happen, and from the heart. “…Obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers….” You know, you don’t have anything that could be described as real genuine love, unless He, the Author of love, comes in. We can sort of like each other, for very selfish reasons. But the kind of love that he’s talking about here, only God can put in our hearts. That’s what we need.
“…So that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.” Okay, how does that happen? How can I do that? “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”
I’ll tell you, when God speaks it’s like planting a seed and there’s life in that seed. And our hearts are like soil. Oh, my God, I just sense…just a tiny little bit of what the Lord is feeling. I wish I could sense it better. I’m such a poor vessel.
But, there are young people right here. You need to realize what God thinks about you and how much He cares about your life. And I’ll tell you, if He ever saves you, no matter what it takes, you’re gonna look back with such incredible gratitude—incredible gratitude that God would go to such lengths to cross your stubborn will and mine, and reveal His love and His perfect provision!
He’s not coming and saying, measure up and I’ll accept you. He’s saying, come broken as you are. Give me your heart, your life. I’m the only One that can rescue you and make you what you need to be! I’m the only One that has the power but you’re gonna have to give me your heart and your life! It won’t be yours anymore, it’ll be Mine!
Close
July 11, 2021 - No. 1501
“I Can” Conclusion
Broadcast #1501
July 11, 2021
July 11, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1501 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, we’re gonna have to be a people who are willing, and looking, and expecting that we’re going to be put in all kinds of situations, where we’re gonna need the Lord. We’re gonna need to have a willing heart that never just sits back and says, I can’t!
I mean, sometimes it’s an emotional issue, sometimes it’s a physical issue, it’s fear. We’re so much a product of what we’ve been through in our lives. You grew up and there was a bully and you were always the one that was being beat on, and you were the one made feel worthless. And somehow it helps to form your vision of yourself. And you just want to sit there and get through life.
I’ll tell you, the way the world is going, there are people right here, God’s gonna call you, and He’s gonna put His Spirit upon you, in some fashion for something. And your initial reaction is going to be, who me? I can’t do that.
But I’ll tell you, if God has called you…God could take somebody here…I don’t know that this is going to happen. God could take somebody here and put you on a world stage with a word of authority and it won’t be because of who you are and what you are. It’ll be because it’s the purpose and the heart of God.
I’ll tell you…Christ’s church in this hour, we’re going to be called upon to be something we have never imagined in situations. We have mentioned this so many times, we have brothers and sisters, and this was mentioned this morning, that have had to serve God in situations they would never had asked for. They live in prison, they suffer, they suffer the deprivations that Paul talked about.
You know, when Paul talked about this particular issue, you know, whether I have a lot or whether I don’t have a lot, that’s the smallest of issues. When the Lord called him, and when He talked to, was it Ananias? I can’t even remember now, my old brain here isn’t working. But the guy that went and talked to him and baptized him, the Lord revealed to him, that this guy is my chosen vessel and I’m gonna show him how many things he’s gonna suffer for my name’s sake.
How’s that for an introduction to the Christian life? That’s how it was for Paul. So, when Paul talked about, I can do all things through Him who strengthens me, he had some real experience of things that you and I have never experienced…stoned, left for dead, in danger, in prison, beaten.
We sang about it this morning. Had to go against feelings, had to say, Lord, You have called me to this and if You have put me in a situation, number one, You’re the author, You’re the one who’s with me in it. But, it’s not my strength that is going to carry me through, it is Your strength!
There is a long list of things, if we were to sit down and just consider what we might have to face in the future, I’ll guarantee you, we could list a lot of things and say, I’m not ready for that, I couldn’t do that.
And if it came to ministry, if God put a burden that’s genuinely from Him upon somebody’s heart, to reach out to somebody in this hour, I don’t know what He has. I appreciate the burden that the Lord gave Kaitlyn. I believe others. God wants us to respond and to do it prayerfully and not pridefully seeking a place. But to say, Lord, I’m a servant, make me a servant.
We sang that this morning. Lord, make me a servant, I just want to do Your will. I don’t care about the adulation of the crowd. I don’t care about making a name for myself. Lord, You put me here to serve You. And if You’ve called me to do something, it will be done with Your ability, not with anything that’s in me. You don’t call me because I’m qualified, You qualify the called.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! So, God brought Peter down to that place, and said what He did, and Peter became a mighty apostle, not because he had the strength and the zeal. He put all that aside and said, oh God, it’s in You. God made him a mighty servant.
God can do that with every…I don’t care what your place is. You may be somebody that nobody ever hears about. But God’s gonna put you in a place, where if you thought about it right now, you’d say, I can never do that. No way could I ever do that. But when the time comes, you will.
And of course, so many examples out there, but the one that we’ve used so many times, is relatively modern, and that’s Corrie ten Boom. I mean, those of you who know her story…a middle-aged lady, she was 50 something I think, who was just living a quiet life, as a watchmaker in her father’s watch shop.
And she did have a little ministry to some people on the side…and she didn’t even have a real strong faith. Her sister was the one who was the mature person. She was full of questions…and all kinds of objections, and fussing and fighting and struggling with her circumstances.
But all of a sudden, the Nazis began to come in. And you remember the story, of how they began to round up the Jews, and God put it on her heart and the hearts of some others to form an underground, to do something about it. And they took their lives in their hands to hide Jews and to protect them and to do all those things that she was enabled to do.
And somehow, if you had told her, even that much, before any of this happened, what do you think her reaction would have been? No way. I’m just a watchmaker, Lord. Who am I? I’m nobody.
And then…finally they caught her, and was arrested. And she’s thrown in a dark prison cell by herself. I don’t remember the time frame, seems like it was weeks, certainly, if not months. Just living on next to nothing, struggling, lonely, pain, rats for company. I don’t remember all the details, but it wasn’t pleasant. Having to live with uncertainty, cruelty. Every sort of discouragement was brought her way. In the process, she and her sister survived that, but her dad did not. So now he’s gone, he’s dead.
And they’re rounded up and they’re taking them off to a horrible place. And you remember some of the miracles the Lord did…actually make her sick at one point and used that to help her get a Bible smuggled in there. I mean, God can do all kinds of amazing things if we’ll just pay attention and say, Lord, I’m yours, just do whatever You’re gonna do, and do it Your way. And I am trusting You in this circumstance to give me the strength, because I don’t have it. It’s not in me.
And this lady, in writing about it was honest about her own feelings, and the things she struggled against, the anger at the people that were doing these terrible things. Then, she winds up in a place she describes, all her life, as ‘hell.’ I mean, it was a women’s prison. They were forced into hard labor. People who were older, had no strength, they mistreated them horribly.
And she’s in a bunk house, and the bunk house is full of fleas! And her sister says, you know the Lord said we’re supposed to thank Him in all things. Let’s thank God for the fleas. And she says, you’ve got to be kidding me! Well, that would have been every one of our reactions. We’re not the spiritual one, like her sister. Every one of us would have said, wait a minute. What’s going on here? Is God really in charge? We’re in way over our heads here!
Until later on, they discover that, because of the fleas, the Germans wouldn’t come in there! So, they had perfect freedom inside that barracks to hold meetings and prayer meetings and to reach people, to minister Christ to people that never would have heard under any other circumstances!
I mean, isn’t that what we’re seeing unfold in our world? We’re gonna see it unfold more. God’s got a people He is still going to reach in the midst of this. Yes, the world is headed for catastrophe, but God has a people and He has a kingdom He’s building, too!
And His Kingdom will not fail. I just want to be a part of that. I don’t want to sit there and say, I can’t, just leave me alone, Lord, I want to be comfortable. God is gonna call people to a life that is beyond all of that. As I say, look at people around the world and what they’re going through.
But anyway, time goes on, she’s struggling, and she watches her sister get sick and die! Now she’s alone! And her sister had actually had a vision of what was going to happen after the war. She saw a place, a home, and she said, we’re both gonna be free before Christmas, or something, something around Christmas, anyway.
Well, her sister that had that vision, died, so she was free. And then through a clerical error, Corrie ten Boom is released! I tell you, we’ve got a God who can do all kinds of stuff. Do you think the devil would have liked to have kept her? But the Lord just sort of mixed up their paperwork. All of a sudden, she’s out, doesn’t hardly know how to behave herself, it’s been such a horrific experience.
And God brings her through it and in all these things she begins to learn about God in ways that you don’t learn just sitting in a pew in church. Her message…she began to minister to people and her message was, there is no pit so deep, that God is not deeper still.
And this powerful message of God’s faithfulness, but the fact that He gave her the ability to put up with that and to deal with it and to come through that and to trust Him, even when at times she was fussing about it. She didn’t like it! She was complaining, like Jeremiah. But God’s mercy continued to reach out to her. He knew that underneath all that there was a heart that said, yes, Lord, I want You. Aren’t you glad God is patient and merciful with His children?
( congregational amens ).
Every one of us here has had those kinds of complaints. Just be honest, I certainly have. But we’ve got a God who is so merciful to His children! Don’t you love Him this morning? Praise God!
But how many times have we mentioned this one other incident? Here she is, experiencing the triumph of God bringing her through something that was unthinkable. If you had told her ahead of time what she was going through, she would have thrown up her hands.
In fact, how many of you remember the other incident that we talked about, that we mentioned in the past, where before all this really got that bad, and it was evident things were gonna get tough, she was talking to her father, Lord, I’m not ready, I can’t do that. I don’t have what it takes to live under those conditions and to be able to experience persecution.
And her father reminded her of something they did from time to time. They didn’t have the internet where they could synchronize watches and do all the kind of stuff you can do today. So, in order to synchronize all of the clocks and to correct them in the shop, periodically they would ride to wherever the national standard clock was. They would take a train trip, and absolutely synchronize their watches with that, and then take that back, and that was the reason for the trip.
But the point her father made was, when do I give you the ticket? This was when she was young. I think this happened…yeah, when she was young. When do I give you the ticket for that? She said, well, when we’re about to get on the train. He said, that’s how it is with the Lord.
We don’t have to sit here this morning and just feel like, I can do anything. Bring it on Lord, prison, torture, you name it. I can speak like a prophet. I can do whatever. No, you can’t. Neither can I. But if the Lord brings the train and we’re supposed to be on it, He has the ticket. We get it when we need it. He is faithful who promised. And I’ll tell you, God is gonna bring us through.
But the other thing that I’ve mentioned so many times before, brings up another issue, and that’s trauma and feelings and those kinds of things where we just can’t because of that. She was having this glorious ministry of going around, telling people what God had done for them in that prison house! And oh, don’t be afraid of anything! God will be with you! He is in the deepest pit! His love is deeper still. Wonderful ministry!
And then she comes to the end of a meeting, and a man walks up. And she recognizes the man as one of the cruelest guards that had been in that prison, had beaten her sister, just had a merciless spirit toward those women, treated them like garbage, had no conscience, abuse them, kill them, whatever.
And he’s walking up, and he says, God’s touched my heart, He’s changed my life. And I know the terrible things that I did, but I want you to forgive me. Of all of the things that she had been able to do, and now she’s standing there saying, oh God, I can’t! I can’t!
Ever been in that situation? It’s not a matter of, I can’t be a prophet or I can’t do this, or I can’t…you know. Or I can’t put up with this kind of situation. But now we’ve got something that is a trauma from the past and, I just can’t forgive him!
Well…the reality is, you probably couldn’t! Every one of us has circumstances like that, where our emotions run so deep, that that’s the bondage that holds us captive and we just can’t break it.
But you remember what she did. Somehow the Lord dropped a simple thought in her mind about what she could do just as a simple act of faith. Well, I can reach out my hand. She’s not saying, I can forgive him. She’s saying, I can reach out my hand, and as she did, God’s love flowed into her heart, and there was a complete reconciliation.
That’s the kind of a God that we serve, folks. I’ll come back to what the Lord told Jeremiah. Basically, like we’ve said before, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But God wants every one of us to face what we have right now, to face the future, not with fear, but with an expectation that God has a reason, He has a purpose why you and I are here.
( congregational amens ).
It may be some great thing in the eyes of the world. It may be just to be a quiet voice. You might be in a prison cell with somebody someday, and instead of laying there feeling sorry for yourself, and angry at God, and angry at the people who did this to you, God can give you the grace to say, Lord, you have put me in this place and I’m gonna praise You. That’s what Paul did, Paul and Silas. We sing about it. But how many of us would so readily do that? We need the Lord, don’t we?
( congregational amens ).
But one reason for talking about this, on an occasion like this, is God wants to get us ready. And a lot of that readiness is mental. If we suddenly get thrown into the deep end of the pool and we’re totally unprepared for it, that’s a challenge.
But God is so faithful to talk to us, and to say, I have not put you in a world that loves you. You’re gonna be hated by everybody before it’s over. A lot of people hate you right now. There are people trying to totally upend our society and take it over, and they hate you, and they hate me. They hate everything we stand for.
We’re gonna have choices ahead of us. We’re gonna need the Lord! But what God is looking for us to do right now, is to say, God, prepare us, help us to have a relationship with You, and help us to make up our mind now that when the time comes, we’re gonna lift up our hearts and look to You and believe that You’re gonna give us the strength to do whatever You call us to do!
( congregational amens ).
Whether it’s a ministry, whether it is just enduring to the end. He said those who endure to the end will be saved. God’s strength is what makes that possible. Do we really believe that in all things, not only does He work for the good of those who love Him, but in all things that His strength will carry us through?
Well, God is putting you and me through things right now, that are beginning to teach us that principle, because we rely on our own strength a lot more than we believe, than we think. We believe more in our limitations than we would like to admit. Aren’t you glad that God sees past all of that and He knows everything about us and loves us anyway?
( congregational amens ).
And He’s so patient and so kind and so merciful! But He knows how to bring us through, how to nurture us and how to teach us His ways. I just…I pray for the next generation. I pray for this generation. I pray for whatever God may call us to endure, however He would call us to stand for Him in a dark hour, that He will impart to us the same faith we read about in the scriptures.
These passages that we read, these accounts of lives, we’re gonna be living many of them before it’s over. But the same God that brought them through will bring us through.
( congregational amens ).
And we will stand together with Him one day and cast our crowns at the feet of the only one who’s worthy, whose name is Jesus!
( congregational amens ).
To Him be glory and praise!
( congregational praise ).
I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. God wants to make that truth real in our lives and He will! I just want to be one that listens and cooperates with Him! Praise God!
Close
July 4, 2021 - No. 1500
“I Can” Part One
Broadcast #1500
July 4, 2021
July 4, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1500 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I had a simple thought, and it’s kind of an odd place to start in a way, and it’s in Jeremiah chapter 12. Jeremiah was a young man who seemed like an unlikely candidate to be a prophet, especially in one of the worst periods of Jerusalem’s history. He had to live through some of the…he had to live through the fall of Jerusalem, basically.
He watched the Babylonians come in multiple waves over years. He warned the people and he preached and he gave it his all, and they completely ignored him, and they paid the price. I mean, talk about a tough time to be a prophet.
And, while he was still a young man, you know, talking about talking to the Lord and complaining sometimes, that’s exactly what Jeremiah did in the beginning of chapter 12. And he’s looking around at society and what’s going on and where he’s at and where the wicked are at, and he says, “You are always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?
“You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts. Yet you know me, O Lord; you see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep…” (NIV). Now he’s…go get them, Lord. Ever feel like that sometimes? You know, we have all kinds of human reactions to our circumstances and to the way things are going.
But listen to God’s answer to this. It’s not exactly what we would expect. He didn’t sit there and smooth his feathers and say, it’s gonna be all right. He says…verse 5, “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?” Thanks, Lord.
( laughing ).
That’s real encouraging. “If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?” And then He goes on to talk about what he’s gonna be experiencing. And…so basically, what the Lord’s telling this young man who is trying to find some answers to what’s going on in the world around him, the Lord’s saying, you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s gonna get a whole lot worse and you need…if you’re complaining about this, you got something coming.
And you know, we are so natured…that there isn’t anybody here who isn’t afraid of a lot more than we would like to admit. And we live in a world of uncertainty. I mean, the reality is, we don’t even know how long the American republic is gonna be here, the way we have known it. That’s just the reality of it.
And we know how, we know what the Word says about the end of the age and how things are gonna get tough. We have had…we’ve said this recently. We’ve had an unprecedented run of prosperity in this country, and most of us have lived our entire lives in it, so it’s just normal. And I believe the Lord is, exactly what’s been said today, He’s shaking up our normal. And I believe God wants us to be ready for that.
And you know, there’s a principle, I guess this is as good a place to go as any…I didn’t really line this out exactly and organize it, which is probably, like I say, a good thing. But, Philippians chapter 4, there’s a scripture that we often quote. And it’s one of those things that we affirm to be true, but I honestly wonder how much of it is really true for us in a very real, practical sense.
Paul is talking about, in the context, that the Philippian people, the Philippian church had sent him a gift. And he was in a difficult place. He was imprisoned in Rome, writing all these letters to the churches. And so, they took the opportunity, finally, to take up an offering and send it so that he could have some practical help, and he was thanking them. Okay, so that’s the context.
And he says…so he says, thank you for doing it. “I am not saying this because I am in need…” verse 11, “…for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
You know, we sing songs based on that. We all love to quote it and it’s a good thing to quote, it’s a good thing to affirm. But I will guarantee, if we are honest and looking around, there are many things that we could imagine ourselves possibly facing, that we don’t feel ready for. Me? I can’t do that. I could never be that. I could never do that. Persecution is gonna come…oh God, I couldn’t handle that. Well, I couldn’t either…not the way things are, I mean, not in my own strength.
Folks, God has called us to something that is supernatural that does not depend on human strength. It does not depend on any resource that we were born into this world with. And so, that’s something that I see the Lord wanting to teach us, that even in His answer to Jeremiah…do you see past…just the almost passing off what Jeremiah had complained about and asked about, do you see the Lord trying to get his attention, saying wait a minute, Jeremiah, you’re so focused on your little world and how you see things…my God, do you have any idea what’s coming?
I have called you in a unique time in history, and you’re gonna see stuff that will make this look like a picnic, and you’re gonna need Me. You’re gonna need to learn, exactly what Joel and others were talking about. We’re gonna have to have a relationship with God. We’re gonna have to have a walk with Him. We’re gonna have to have an experience with Him where He puts us in the deep end of the pool in various areas of our lives and we’re gonna have to say, oh God!
And guess what? Do you think He’s gonna fail His children? Or do you think He’s gonna come, and do you think this verse is gonna become real? Paul was able to say this, why? Because he’d been there. He says, he learned. Now where did he learn this? Did he go to school? No, this is something he learned in the school of hard knocks, in the school of life.
Every single Christian, every single follower of Jesus, you are in school today and so am I. And God wants us to wake up and realize, God…there’s a journey ahead. We’re living in the world for a reason. It’s so easy to somehow settle into a routine in our lives where we know what to do, we feel capable of doing the things that we are called upon to do, and we just…we acknowledge the Lord, we pray, we come to church, as we say it.
We ‘come’ to church, instead of ‘being’ the church. We come to the church gatherings, we read our Bibles, we sing the songs, we affirm the things we’re supposed to affirm, but God, don’t mess with my little comfortable nest. Because even though I sing, ‘I can do all things through Him who strengthens me,’ or through Christ who strengthens me, either way, it’s the same thing…I can do all those things, but not that. Or not this or not the other thing.
And as soon as God begins to stir up our nest, all of a sudden, I can’t do that, I can’t be that. I’ll tell you, that’s…you don’t have to go far in the scriptures to see that. I just thought of a few obvious examples.
It doesn’t necessarily have to take a lot of time but, Jeremiah himself is a pretty good example of this, because he was just a teenager. How would one of you guys like for the Lord to suddenly show up and reveal Himself in a supernatural way to you and say, I have called you. I knew you when you were in the womb. I have called you and anointed you to be, “…a prophet to the nations.”
Huh? Say, what? Who, me? God, you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m just a kid. I’m just a youth. I can’t do any of that kind of stuff. And the Lord just blows right past that objection and says, I’m gonna put you in a position to build up kingdoms and to tear down others.
Yeah, me and what army? I’ll tell you, if we’ve got the Lord, if He has called us to do something, and it’s Him doing it, and we’re moving as an expression of Him, there is more power in the Word of God than all the armies of the world put together. We serve a God who created everything by just speaking.
That’s what we need, is His words in our mouth. God, deliver us from ever getting to where we are just regurgitating our traditions! We need to hear from God. I need Him this morning. I feel my need. Oh God! I’m convicted listing to Brother Joel. I mean…this is real. We need the Lord!
And the message that He gave to Jeremiah in chapter 12 is one that we need to listen to. We have an opportunity right now to face the future, but to know what to do when it comes, because there are things that are gonna upset our world and change our world in ways that we can’t even imagine now.
And if God were to suddenly say, here, let Me unfold everything that’s gonna ever happen in your life…oh Lord! Or we’d at least say, Lord, take me home. I can’t do that…I’m so weak, I can’t do that.
Well, the truth is, you can’t. And neither can I. And yet, somehow, this young man was able to trust God. God even told him, don’t you back down. When I give you a word, you look people in the eye and you tell them, because I’m gonna back up My word.
But you know, when God reveals Himself or when God puts us in a situation, we need to react. God wants us to react with a faith, and that’s a choice. That’s a choice to say…in myself I cannot handle this. I am totally unable to do what You said to do or to cope with the situation in which You have put me. I can’t handle this, Lord. But by faith, I’m gonna trust in Your promise when you said, I can.
( congregational amens ).
If you want a title, that’s probably as good a one as any…if the Lord blesses this. “I Can.” God wants you and me to face the future, instead of fear and uncertainty, and, oh my God, what’s gonna happen, He wants us to face the future with a spirit that says, I can, because I have a God who watches over me, who has planned everything from the foundation of the world. If He lets the Devil do something, it’s part of His plan.
If you want to read some stuff, you read Isaiah. That’s where I’m at in my Bible reading right now. It’s amazing the declarations of God and His power and His plans. He said, all these things that are happening, I planned them a long time ago. I’ve told you; which of your idols can do that? I’m God! I’m above all!
If that nation over there is allowed to thrive and to rise up and to do all these amazing things, these powerful things, and overcome others, I planned that. I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who knows how to work His will in this current world. It’s not about this world and what happens here. We want to find a nice, comfortable place where we feel in control. And we try to derive our happiness and our sense of peace from that, and God wants us to have our sense of peace be in Him alone!
( congregational amens ).
He is the only source to Whom we can look. Praise God! But I’ll tell you, God is gonna put people, every one of us, in places where we’re gonna, if we were to look at it naturally and think about our own resources, we would just throw up our hands and say, oh God, there ain’t no way.
You know, just quickly…to recount some of these things, we don’t even have to look up the scriptures, particularly. But you remember Moses. Of course, Moses had the opposite problem, didn’t he? He was a guy who was…who operated out of the throne, the royal family of Egypt, a man mighty in word and deed, the scriptures tell us. I mean, this was a guy that everybody looked to and knew was capable of doing great things, and God had a plan to use that man, and He said, he ain’t ready.
Do you know God, when He wants to do something, He doesn’t look for the strong, the capable, the wise, the smart, and say, now there’s somebody I can use? They can help me out with all their natural ability. It doesn’t work that way. Everything that originates in Adam, in us, if we rely upon that, it will get in God’s way. God chooses the foolish and the weak and those who are nothing in the eyes of the world. Praise God!
So, if you are feeling small and weak and afraid today, God wants you to rise up and say, wait a minute. I am a child of God. He is on the throne. He will never put me in a situation for which I am unable, because it’s not my ability that’s gonna carry me through. It’s what He puts in, it’s what He works in me.
So, God had to do something…and He got Moses in a position where all he could do was run away to Midian, way off in the desert. And, he married a girl there and settled down to raise sheep, and 40 years went by. And as far as Moses was concerned, this was his life. He was just gonna live it out. Everything was fine. Every day was the same, but it was comfortable. He didn’t have any real, major problems, until he saw a bush that was on fire and yet didn’t burn up.
And you remember the story of how he went over to see that and all of a sudden God speaks to him out of that burning bush. Take off your shoes, you’re on holy ground. And the Lord begins to reveal what His plan is for Moses.
And Moses says, yeah, I’m Your guy! No, he didn’t do that, did he? He argued with the Lord over and over again. And he got to the point where the Lord answered every one of his questions! They won’t believe me…here’s some miracles you can perform. Over and over again, he objects and he resists the Lord.
Basically, why is he doing that? Well, there are two things. He didn’t feel like he had the capability to do it. And he didn’t really want to. He was comfortable. You know, we’ve got both problems, don’t we?
But anyway, the Lord…finally, I mean, he got to where the Lord had answered every one of his objections, and he still said, send somebody else, Lord. So, the Lord allowed his brother Aaron to go with him in the process, but he still had to go, didn’t he? And, what happened was, the mightiest prophet of the Old Testament, known to people as the meekest of men…but there he was, doing all those amazing things. Why? Because God…a mighty God was able to work through a willing vessel.
And all the mighty things he did…now, was he perfect? No, we had the reference this morning of him smiting the rock…and you see his humanity come out. But I’ll tell you, there’s a lesson, that should be a lesson to us that God could take somebody ordinary…Gideon is an obvious example.
It’s interesting, Moses ran away to the Midianites and that’s where he was living…the Midianites were the enemy when Gideon came along. They were oppressing the people, and an angel shows up and says, hail, “…thou mighty man of valour.” (KJV). Or something like that.
Who are you talking to? This guy had no idea of doing anything except surviving one day after another. Keep your head down. Just do your stuff, don’t worry, don’t rock the boat. Anybody here kind of natured that way? I think we all are in some fashion. I don’t think we’ve got too many crusaders here who are out to fix the world. You ain’t gonna fix it anyway, I’ll guarantee you. But the reality is, a lot of people just want to be comfortable, and that’s all he did.
But the Lord got his attention and even allowed him to put the Lord to the test, and say, if this is really you…you know, the test with the fleece. And we know how all that turned out. God brought a mighty victory through Gideon.
And, others in scripture…I can’t even remember who else I was gonna say. But that’s all right. It doesn’t really matter. The principle is there. One other example, though, of how the Lord has to work in us, is the one we have used so many times and that’s Peter. And Peter’s another one like Moses. God had the opposite problem. All you had to do we tell Peter to do something…yes, Lord, I can do that!
And God had to bring him to a place where he felt an utter failure to the point where I guarantee that he thought that there was no hope for him. But the Lord’s word to him was this, and we’ve heard this so many times. When you were young, you girded yourself, you dressed yourself and you went where you wanted to go. But when you’re old, you will stretch forth your hand, somebody else will dress you and carry you where you don’t want to go.
I’ll tell you, we’re gonna have to be a people who are willing, and looking, and expecting that we’re going to be put in all kinds of situations, where we’re gonna need the Lord. We’re gonna need to have a willing heart that never just sits back and says, I can’t!
I mean, sometimes it’s an emotional issue, sometimes it’s a physical issue, it’s fear. We’re so much a product of what we’ve been through in our lives. You grew up and there was a bully and you were always the one that was being beat on, and you were the one made feel worthless. And somehow it helps to form your vision of yourself. And you just want to sit there and get through life.
I’ll tell you, the way the world is going, there are people right here, God’s gonna call you, and He’s gonna put His Spirit upon you, in some fashion for something. And your initial reaction is going to be, who me? I can’t do that.
But I’ll tell you, if God has called you…God could take somebody here…I don’t know that this is going to happen. God could take somebody here and put you on a world stage with a word of authority and it won’t be because of who you are and what you are. It’ll be because it’s the purpose and the heart of God.
Close
June 27, 2021 - No. 1499
“What Do We Do?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1499
June 27, 2021
June 27, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1499 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: It’s interesting the number of times in scripture, and I don’t want to make an exact equivalency out of every one of them, but where God’s people actually went to God in prayer and talked with Him about judgment that was pending…and in some cases, postponed it.
Now, Abraham is an example of somebody who went to God on behalf of Sodom and, of course, the situation had gone beyond that point. But did not God say, yes, if I find as many as ten, I won’t destroy it? So, He’s listening and responding to the intervention of…to somebody who’s reaching out and saying, oh God! And you see this throughout history.
You see Moses…you remember the time when things got so bad, I think it was in the wilderness, was one of those many incidents, when the Lord said, stand aside, let me destroy them. I’ll make a greater nation out of you and Moses said, no! What about Your great name?
You can argue the theology of that. I believe God was testing him, but the heart of Moses was an expression of God’s heart. It was, Lord, I know we don’t deserve it, but God show mercy! Lord, for the sake of Your great name, forgive, pardon. Lord, if it’s necessary, I’ll give my life so they can be spared. Wow! What an expression of God’s heart came through a man.
And how many other times do we see it? We see…I mean, do you remember how after Solomon, who kind of drifted away from all that he’d had as a young man, started giving into idolatry, actually established heathen places of worship for some of his wives, who led him astray? And then God tore the kingdom apart. The northern kingdom of ten tribes established their own government, and from day one, they worshiped idols instead of the living God. They never did ever come back to God.
He sent them Elijah, Elisha, all kinds of situations. Foreign governments came in. You name it. God reached out to them for generations. He judged their sin in so many different ways, and they still hardened their hearts and refused to hear. Finally, He said, it’s done, sent the Assyrians in and dispersed them everywhere.
The southern kingdom was there in Jerusalem. But you look at the southern kingdom and it’s a checkered history. Over and over again, there were wicked kings. And even when there were good kings who actually, to one degree or another, they reached out and said, Lord, we want to serve You. We recognize You are our God. Oh God, help us!
God honored those who reached out, but the people out in the villages and out in the towns, they were still…idolatry was still in the heart. All it took was for that leader to pass off the scene and somebody else come in and boom, they were right back in all their wicked practices, sacrificing children, all the things that they did.
But it’s interesting how the history unfolded. I’m not gonna try to…I couldn’t even go through it. I’m not gonna try to go through all of that, but you remember how Hezekiah was a faithful servant, somebody who really reached out to God and established righteousness, did away with a lot of the idolatry, and they began to celebrate the feasts, they began to observe the law. He did everything he knew to do. And he reached the end of his life, and God gave him an extra period of time.
Yet, out of the heritage of that, his son Manasseh, came to the throne, or the next ruler of any significance was Manasseh. He ruled for 55 years. And the Lord said of him, through the prophets, that he had done worse, committed worse sins than the Amorites that he had driven out so Israel could have the land.
How many of you remember back when the Lord was talking to Abraham and talking about what was coming? One of the things He said…He talked about the Amorites. It was a particular group of people that lived in that area. And He said, “…the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” (KJV).
It’s like there’s a cup, and it represents the wickedness of a nation, and every time a nation acts wickedly, something more goes in that cup. And God was withholding judgment even from a wicked nation called the Amorites, because it hadn’t reached a certain point.
Do you see the hand, do you see the mercy of God that’s not anxious to judge, but wants to wait and wants to give people an opportunity? But here was a nation that was the nation of Israel, Judah at this time, became more wicked than the Amorites that they had displaced. And it reached a point where judgment was inevitable. They reached the point that, I believe, America has reached, where it’s not a matter of if, but when.
And the reality is, even Manasseh humbled himself toward the end of his life. How many of you know that? God allowed him to be so humiliated in battle that he humbled himself and began to actually undue some of his stuff, and acknowledge the Lord and all of that. But do you know that didn’t stop it? His son came along, ruled for about two years, and did exactly the same stuff that he did, got assassinated by some of his officials.
And then, Josiah came along. How many of you remember Josiah? What an amazing interlude in that period of history. So, here was a man, a young man. He was about the age of some of you or younger. And he had already been king a number of years. And the scripture says he began to seek the Lord, and it came into his heart to restore the temple and to clean it up and to get rid of all the bad stuff, all, everything that had to do with idolatry.
He even went back into the northern kingdom, and there were altars that had been dedicated to idols, and he burned bones of their prophets on those idols, desecrated them, did everything he knew to undo all this evil that had been done. They had a celebration of the Passover and all that went with it that was unlike any that had ever gone before.
This was a man with all his heart sought God. Do you think that stopped judgment? No, but it sure did postpone it. God gave them a space. Whatever was coming, it’s not gonna come while My servant, Josiah, is there. We’re gonna hold off on this.
It’s coming, and there were three or four more kings, and it began to unfold as Nebuchadnezzar came three different times to tear down the nation. Finally, he said I’m done with you. We’re gonna tear it all down. All of that was prophesied in the prophets. But you had godly people who intervened.
One of the scriptures that came to my mind was in Ezekiel. Ezekiel was carried away from Jerusalem with the first group. You remember how Daniel and his friends were carried to Babylon? There’s a whole bunch of people that were literally carried off into exile, and they settled in communities in Babylon. Well, Ezekiel was one of them.
And God began to give him all kinds of visions and revelations, and it was very obvious that he was somebody that God was speaking through. Even then, the people weren’t listening to him. But one thing that he said…I think you can look this up. I’m not even opening the scripture so far. I’m sorry, I’m just talking, and just referring to scriptures, but I believe it’s in chapter 22 at the end of Ezekiel.
He talks about the conditions over there in Jerusalem, and how bad they are, and how much evil they’re doing. And it says, the Lord looked and wondered, there’s nobody to stand in the gap. He looked for somebody to stand in the gap and make up the hedge, plug the wall, different translations. But do you see what is happening, what God is looking for?
There’s another scripture in Isaiah. This is much earlier in their history…the same thought in chapter 59. All the terrible things that are going on, and nobody was standing up and wanting to do what was right. God is always looking for people that will stand up and do what is right.
And I tell you, we have a power to intervene, to make a difference in this country. We are not victims. We are here for a reason. How many of you think you’re an accident, that living now is just happenstance? Oh, this is just where I happen to live, and you know, God knows about me and all that. God is a God who plans. You and I are here because of a divine appointment.
You know, one of the scriptures that I said, another one that came to me, as I’ve thought about all of this, meditated on it over the last several days especially, how about the story of Esther? The Devil had a tremendous plot, in this case, that he had hatched against Israelites, who were still, at this point, they were scattered through the empire that followed Babylon. The Medes and the Persians had this empire, and a lot of the Jews were still settled among them.
But this wicked man named Haman got it into his heart, not just to punish the guy who had disrespected him, but to exterminate the whole bunch. Where do you think that came from? That came from Satan. That came from the heart of Satan, who hated anybody that represented God to any degree.
And the people got wind of all this. They began crying out, but you remember what happened, don’t you? The Lord had placed Esther as queen. Do you think that was an accident? That was no accident. God had His hand…the king did not even have a clue what her background was, probably didn’t care. She was the one that caught his eye and just captured his fancy. And God was behind every single bit of it, raised her up, prepared her in every way.
And so, you remember the story of how her uncle, Mordecai…I’m trying to remember. Don’t get old! But you remember how Mordecai, her uncle, was mourning, and she’s trying to find out, why is he doing this, why is he acting like this? She sent out one of the servants to find out, and finds out the whole story.
And he sends back word and says, go to king and plead for us. And she says, you can’t do it. It doesn’t work that way. Anybody that walks into the king uninvited, it’s automatically death unless he extends the scepter. I am as good as dead if I go in there. I’m not messing with that.
But do you remember what message that he sent back? Who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? “For Such a Time as This,” is not a bad title. For such a time as this, you and I have come here, just like Esther did. And she got to the point where she said, if I perish, I perish. Let’s pray. I’m gonna go into the king, and I’m gonna plead our cause.
Do we not have the right to call upon God on behalf of the nation, on behalf of its people, on behalf of the purposes of God, for us, but not only for us but for others that He would still reach? God’s not through. I don’t believe we’ve gotten down to that point where we’re gonna hear that trumpet this afternoon. We’re here for a time and for a purpose, to reach out to God and to cry out.
One of the things that’s interesting is in the life of Daniel. You go back and read the beginning of chapter nine, and you find out where Daniel reads the prophesy of Jeremiah, which was just a generation or so earlier, that says the captivity is gonna last 70 years, so, what does he do? He sets aside a time of fasting and prayer and goes to God.
And he starts confessing the sins of Israel, and he doesn’t say, those bad people did all this bad stuff! He says, we have sinned. If you’re an American, America has sinned. We can go to God and say, God, we’ve sinned.
And Daniel’s appeal to God was not, oh God, we deserve another chance. It’s, oh God, the only basis upon which I’m coming to You is because you’re a God of mercy. I’m not appealing to You on any merit of ours. I’m appealing to You because of Your mercy, Lord. Please show mercy. God, fulfill Your Word.
I know there’s a lot of people out there that, and I confess I have reacted with mixed emotions when people have pulled out 2nd Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves…and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (NIV).
And I think what I’ve reacted to is the notion that, for many people, it’s, oh God, if God’s people will just cry out, everything will get back to normal, and we’ll live a prosperous, happy, comfortable life. That’s not the heart and the purpose of God. Sometimes, we get that as a bonus. We have for many years.
The other thing is the equivalency some people make with Israel. Well, we’re not Israel. We’re America, but we have a responsibility to the heritage that we have been given. God has allowed us to have a lot of divine principle baked into our culture, that is being canceled and rebuked and shut down, right and left in our nation today.
But I’ll tell you, we have every right to go to the highest court in the universe, and to make it a matter of genuine prayer, that God will forgive the sin and will show mercy to this nation, will give us some time, not more time to sleep, but time to be about His business, that He will reach people, that He will reach right into the halls of some of the very people who are our worst enemies, spiritually right now…that He will reach in there and pull some of them out of the fire.
Did not Jesus say, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail…” (KJV). Satan will put up gates and try to trap his people inside his kingdom. Jesus has the power to reach past that. There are people that He wants to reach, but just as Satan uses people to accomplish his purposes, so does God.
And I believe this a time when God’s people need to wake up and cry out to Him and say, oh God, this nation has, indeed, rebelled against You and is deserving of judgment. God, we appeal to You for mercy! Forgive, help us, raise up voices among Your people. It’s not about the Constitution. It’s not about all this other stuff. It’s about the Kingdom of God!
( congregational amens ).
You notice the prayer that we referred to so recently, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” But what about…you know, it gets down to our needs, as individuals, doesn’t it? But, before that, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” That’s what needs to be the heart of God’s people, at whatever level it happens, whatever…I mean, we are among the people of this planet like leaven. We have the power to influence, to slow down things, to create opportunities for the people that God will reach.
May God give us the faith and give us the burden to cry out. What a song we sang about our land, heal our land. This land is in horrible, spiritual shape, but God has a remnant. Even though much of this, much of what proports to be Christian religion is false, there is that which is true. God has His people.
And I believe there’s a burden that’s being shared among many right now, that we are at a tipping point. If God’s people just sit back and let things happen, it ain’t gonna be good. We have an opportunity to band together in the spirit and cry out to God and say, oh God, intervene…God, may Your purposes in this hour be fulfilled. May every one that is Yours come.
Work in our hearts, help us to see what this world is about. It’s a temporary place in which God is calling and gathering a people. Yes, there are people right and left who are making choices. They are coming to that final crossroads and they’re saying no to God, and they’re going down this road. It leads to judgment.
I don’t know how many of you remember it, but there was a…we’re not quite to this point yet, but we will get there. There was a vision given, very plain, just about 50 or 51 years ago in our church, and it showed America and its judgment. And it showed the entire nation on fire. I don’t know exactly what and when and all of that, but I do know that’s what’s gonna happen when the whole world comes to an end. Thank God, just like Sodom and Gomorrah, God will get His people out, and then judgment will fall. That’s where this world is headed.
But in the meantime, are we here for such a time as this? Has God ordained that you and I live right now? Has He given us nothing to do but circle the wagons and wait for Jesus to come? Or can we actually intervene? Satan has witches that are trying to intervene. We have the power of the Son of God who lives in us. We have power to make a difference if we will.
I just pray that God will help me. I mean, of all people, I’m probably the last one to get up and say some of these things. I’ve seen them, but like I say, my own tendency is just to, oh well, there’s nothing we can do. But there is something we can do. We can live for God. We can live out the purposes for which God has placed us in this time, in this place, in this hour. And ask Him for the grace to be faithful until He comes, because that day is drawing ever nearer.
The things that God has shown us are unfolding. We are seeing Satan loosed. He’s being loosed because people are making choices to reject God. But God has a people, and we’re here to rise up and resist what is happening in the Spirit and fight.
Don’t you know there are angels of God who are at work? But, do you know that we have a part in their effectiveness? When we pray, angels receive strength to fight the battles. We’re gonna learn a whole lot of things when we get to the other side, but God has given people enough of a glimpse to know those things happen. That’s reality. We literally have a part to play.
May God give us that grace, and may His name be honored. Praise God! I didn’t even open this, but we referred to a lot of scripture. But I believe with all my heart, God has brought us to the kingdom for such a time as this. And may He give us the grace to live with an awareness of it, and to cry out to Him to intervene in what we’re seeing taking place in our country and in our world, not just that we might return to a comfortable life but that His purposes will be fulfilled, that everyone will come who’s gonna come. Praise God!
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June 20, 2021 - No. 1498
“What Do We Do?” Part One
Broadcast #1498
June 20, 2021
June 20, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1498 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve had so many thoughts and they’re certainly not organized. All I can do is say, Lord, You’re gonna have to get out what You want. But my thoughts have run to…I guess, in a sense it’s a follow-up to the service that we had a few weeks ago about, “What is Happening?”
And, of course, that became the subject of the article in the MCM this time. And, I think the focus of that was on the fact that what is happening is not simply events in the human realm, but rather there is a satanic design behind it. And that’s certainly true, isn’t it? We see the hand of Lucifer doing everything in his power to bring about his dream of ruling over this planet and driving God’s influence out of it.
And, for God’s purposes…thank God He reigns in spite of whatever we see…for God’s purposes He is allowing these things to happen. And He’s allowing them for a reason. And, of course, we talked about that fact that this is satanic, and so then, how do we react to that?
But I guess my thoughts this morning go beyond that to what do we do? Because, I confess, when I see things unfold as they are and I’m at an age and a place where I feel my infirmities, I feel weak and tired a lot of the time…I think tired is my middle name, but thank God He’s got the energy I need. But, an easy reaction is, oh well, throw up our hands. You know, things are unfolding as they are. All we can do is hunker down and wait for Jesus to come.
But I believe that God has put us here for a reason. We’re living when we are and there’s a purpose in it. And it’s not just to sit here and do nothing. And, of course, you’ve got people out there that say, well yeah, we need to take to the streets. We need to get on social media. We need to pack guns. We need to do all kinds of stuff. And, I don’t believe those are the answers. But I believe God does have a place for His people in an hour like this.
Now, you might ask, how do we get to a place like this? What happens to bring it about? And the fact is, if you look through history you will see that nations have arisen and fallen throughout history. They have been…in the ancient world there was one empire after another and we even see, through the prophets, that God’s hand was in raising them up!
Nebuchadnezzar had the power that he had over the known world of his day because God gave it to him for a divine purpose. Part of that was judgment upon other nations. But then of course there came the time when their own wickedness caught up with them and God raised up yet another empire to tear them down. And we saw Daniel literally reading the handwriting on the wall. That wasn’t just an expression, that was quite literal. And it was that very night the Medes and Persians came in.
Well, they lasted for a while and then the Greeks came in. And then they split apart into four different empires that fought against each other until Rome finally took over. And you know, Rome had its day and you see this throughout history that God has allowed nations to rise up, within His purposes, but then He has judged them for their wickedness.
And nobody exemplifies that more than Israel itself. Israel has a unique place in history. And God raised them up to bring forth the prophets, to reveal Himself, not just to them but through them to the nations, and we see Him doing that. You read the Old Testament prophets and the history and you will see that it wasn’t just to Israel that the prophets were sent. They were sent to other nations as well and other nations recognized, hey, if a prophet of Israel says something, you better listen.
And so, we see Jonah traveling way out into modern Iraq, to Nineveh and the people immediately just take warning and they listened and they humbled themselves and God changed history, didn’t He?
And so…but we see this pattern come forth in Israel is where I started, where they had access to the Word of God like no other nation. And how many of you know that the scripture says to whom, “…much is given, of him shall be much required…”? (KJV). And so, Israel had a responsibility that went way beyond the other nations around them. Yes, God judged them. But He judged them based upon their reaction to the light that they had.
But Israel had prophets sent to them generation after generation after generation. And yet, the word of the prophet was, I spoke to you, I did all of this, but you chose what is evil. You chose to do what you did.
And, you remember last week we talked about the key to the Christian life is choices, that we have a God who has placed us in a place where we can make choices, if we will, but we reap the consequences of those choices. Those who yield to the flesh, what are they gonna get out of it? Corruption. Those who yield to the Spirit, there’ll be the fruit of life in us. And so, a lot of what defines our individual lives is built upon the choices that we make.
And it’s what we think about. That’s one thing I never really mentioned last week. What do you allow to happen in your mind that nobody else knows about? Do you realize we have a choice what we think about? That’s why Paul says, whatsoever things are good and honest and good report and all of that. There are choices that you and I make, but there are choices that human beings make.
There are choices that nations make, and God judges people based upon their response to His light, whatever it is, whether it’s a little or a lot. And God judges a nation for their choice to either accept or reject that.
And I believe with all my heart what we are seeing in this country is a fruit of America’s choices. How many of you believe that this is a nation under God’s judgment? We saw a shot across the bow, if you will, is what people have called it, 9/11. There was an act of judgment where God took His hand back and allowed us to be attacked in a way we had never before been attacked.
And, you know, we need to stop and realize where we’re at in history. If you go back to our beginnings, if you were to research it…and it’s out there for anybody to read that wants to…there is a Godly heritage in spite of all that has been wrong and all that is wrong in our nation.
There is a Godly heritage of people in the beginnings of this country, going back to the Colonial days, going back especially to the founding of the nation, of the government, of a recognition of God. A recognition that we live under His laws, under His reign, that if we respect Him and live with that acknowledgment that His blessings will be upon us and He will be with us. But if we ever depart from that, it won’t be so good.
I mean, George Washington was explicit in his inaugural address about that principle. You don’t have to go back to George Washington. Go back to Reagan. He made the statement something like this. If we ever cease to become a nation under God, then we will become a nation gone under. Simple, but truth.
And you go back…I mean, literally there are people who have documented the things that have been stood for, in our founding. You go back to the Constitution and its formation. It took a lot of people a lot of time to come up with our Constitution. And when they got done, someone was asked what they had come up with and it was a Republic, if you can keep it, was one of the statements.
But there was another one of the Founding Fathers who said this style of government, this Constitution that we’ve come up with will only work among a religious people. And, of course, he didn’t mean religious like I sometimes use it, but rather a people who respect God.
How many of you realize that during the Constitutional Congress, when they called people together to devise the Constitution, they were wrestling with different issues? In the first place, many of the delegates were ministers. They were a fruit of the first great awakening when God mightily visited this nation, back in the middle of the 1700s. God was…there was an influence baked into our culture, into our thinking, of recognizing that we live and operate under a God who is supreme.
How many of you know, and here’s a simple fact, how many of you are aware that there came times when they were devising our Constitution that they would come up against a sticky issue? How are we gonna handle this? What are we gonna devise to meet this particular need? They would literally call a halt, call a time, perhaps a day or whatever, of prayer and fasting to seek wisdom from God.
Can you imagine that happening in Congress today? You see where we’ve fallen? See what’s happened to this country? That’s our heritage. And for probably the first hundred years of our heritage, if you went to law school or you went to some kind of law training, the entire theory of law was this. There is a God who is supreme. He has laws that govern human affairs, as to what is right and what is wrong. Any law that we devise, anything that we stand for, has to first recognize that. That is over all, and under that we get down to the details, and so we make laws that respect those laws.
And somewhere toward the end of the 1800s that theory began to change, and all of a sudden, we become humanistic and, no, we’re gonna do things our way. We don’t have to recognize that stuff anymore and it just…they began to move away from that. And we have been moving away ever since.
And of course, we talked about…we talked about what happened in the 60s and the rebellion that occurred in the 60s. Well, the reality is the society we live in today the children and grandchildren of the 60s are our college professors, our newscasters, our entertainers and many of our politicians, and you go on from there.
People have gone into industry and business, and they’re still children of the 60s, people who no longer recognize that we are a nation under God. We have a major party that refuses to say those words. So, do you think that these facts have anything to do, perhaps, with where we’re at?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah, they have everything to do with it And you look back at the sins of ancient Israel that caused them to find the place…to find themselves in the place that they found themselves, facing judgment, one of them was idolatry! What do the scriptures say in the New Testament? How is idolatry defined? I mean, what is idolatry?
What would it be in our society? We don’t literally bow down to blocks of wood and stone and images. Most people don’t. You still see that in India. I’ve observed it but…what do the scriptures say? It says, “…covetousness, which is idolatry.” The materialism, the worship of money and stuff and all that comes with it, the power and the pride and all of that, we have been given over to that.
We have taken God’s blessings and worshipped the blessing and despised the Blesser. And we have imagined it is because of our goodness and our worthiness that we have what we have and we are what we are. God has allowed America to become the greatest nation, arguably, in the history of the planet. There’s never been one like it.
But we’ve got to this place because of God’s blessing, and for no other reason. We cannot look in the mirror, like Nebuchadnezzar did and say, look at this great country that I have built for my name and my glory. The spirit of Babylon…let’s build us a tower and us a city that’s gonna reach into heaven. God help us!
But we’re guilty of one of the great sins that plagued ancient Israel that God pointed out to them. But what about the area of sex and gender? My God, have we not rebelled against God and against the order that He established in the world? And it’s not just that people do certain things, but they glory in it. They have enshrined it in law.
Talk about no longer recognizing the supremacy of God’s laws? They have enshrined it in law and they are teaching it in many public schools, right down to the kindergarten level. You do what you want. It’s all about what kind of inclinations arise in you. It’s all good. And don’t dare say anything against it!
That’s where we’re at. You think God just is gonna sit back and say, oh yeah, I’m gonna bless you? God bless America. Folks, we have a nation that God has warned, that has rejected and renounced the God we supposedly recognize as supreme. The question is not if judgment comes, but when, and how?
And I believe with all my heart the things we’re seeing unfold this year are part of that…9/11 was. God knows what’s coming. And none of this is to minister fear. But I’ll tell you, we are seeing the repeating of patterns.
One of the things I’ve reacted to over the years are so many people making the equivalency between us and Israel. Well, we’re not Israel, but they’re not us, either. Israel had its place in the economy of God in that time, but we have had a place. We have had a sphere of influence on this planet. God has used America to spread His fame when we did what we were supposed to do.
I’ll tell you, how many people have read some of the effects of World War II? Some of the things the Lord did through that era. God used the United States to take down Japan, which was a stronghold of Satan. And because of that, and their defeat, and their disillusionment with their system, the Gospel found an entryway in there.
I’ve told you before about…as a young man…a boy, I guess, meeting the man who led the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. He was the commander. He was in the lead plane. Come on! Let’s attack them at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That man later came to Christ, and became an evangelist. And I’ve still, somewhere…I’ve got a little New Testament with his signature in it, Mitsuo Fuchida.
And there are so many other tales that have come out of how God used people from this country to reach out, to break down walls. God knows how to take the events and the choices, the nations of this world, and to mold it all together to reach His, because God has a purpose! Satan does have a purpose, but God has a purpose, doesn’t He? The words of Jesus, “All that the Father giveth me…
( congregational response ).
…Shall come to me.” Thank God! That’s a positive statement. There’s not anyone gonna be lost. I remember seeing, years ago, on a TV network, they’re raising money and their pitch was, if you don’t give to us, millions of people will go to hell because you didn’t give.
Seriously? I’m all for supporting something that is getting the Gospel out, but my God is faithful! My God is not going to lose somebody because of me! If I mess up, He’ll have somebody else to step in, but God will save every one of His! That’s His purpose.
His purpose is not to bless nations in material ways and make that the center of anything. But God has a purpose to reach His people and they will be reached, and when Jesus comes, His Kingdom will be complete! Every seat at His table will be full!
And I’ll tell you, we’re gonna look back and say, Lord, how did you take that mess and make this out of it? What a great God you are! But the question comes again, what do we do about it?
It’s interesting the number of times in scripture, and I don’t want to make an exact equivalency out of every one of them, but where God’s people actually went to God in prayer and talked with Him about judgment that was pending…and in some cases, postponed it.
Now, Abraham is an example of somebody who went to God on behalf of Sodom and, of course, the situation had gone beyond that point. But did not God say, yes, if I find as many as ten, I won’t destroy it? So, He’s listening and responding to the intervention of…to somebody who’s reaching out and saying, oh God!
And you see this throughout history. You see Moses…you remember the time when things got so bad, I think it was in the wilderness, was one of those many incidents, when the Lord said, stand aside, let me destroy them. I’ll make a greater nation out of you and Moses said, no! What about Your great name?
You can argue the theology of that. I believe God was testing him, but the heart of Moses was an expression of God’s heart. It was, Lord, I know we don’t deserve it, but God show mercy!
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June 13, 2021 - No. 1497
“What is Happening?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1497
June 13, 2021
June 13, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1497 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I had made a lot of notes and I just was back and forth in my mind…I’m gonna go ahead and pull out just part of it, because you could go on and on talking about it. But, I don’t want to do that, I don’t think it’s necessary.
But if you want to know what’s happening, men are being turned over to darkness and Satan is working out his final plan to rule the world. And God’s going to allow him to seemingly accomplish that before it’s over. And we need to find our place in all of that.
( congregational amens ).
And recognize what’s happening. So, what do you do? Well, in the first place, don’t be afraid! Nothing that is coming is meant to cause the child of God to live in fear!
( congregational amens ).
There’s no place for that! His promises are too great! He said, I’ll be with you until the end of the age! Even though there will be times it will be difficult, there will be valleys of the shadow of death…there are martyrdoms that are happening in many places of the world. God has promised to be with His people ‘til the end and I believe it!
This would be a good place…I didn’t put this in my note, but this would be a good place to say, to remind us of this thing that we call ‘normalcy bias.’ Most everybody here has lived within the postwar period. There are a few people that were young and could remember a little bit before that. But since the end of World War II, we have had, with some interruptions along the way, some crises here and there, we have had a way of life evolve in this country that is unprecedented.
Generally speaking, there has been prosperity, there has been freedom, there has been opportunity. The stores are always full, right? Whatever we need we can always just pop in the car and get whatever we need — until you need toilet paper and there’s a virus hitting! We need to get over that mentality that this, the way we have seen, the way we have learned how to live, is normal and it’s just gonna go on. Yeah, we’ll get through this little bump in the road and it’ll go right back to normal. Well, I hope in some respects that it does. But, don’t you count on that.
I’m going to throw in one thing that I have wrestled with saying something about all along, and it has to do with some practical wisdom. And I’ll relate it to this, do you remember a few years ago, we had that course called “Financial Peace.” And the essence of that was to train people to handle their money sensibly, responsibly.
And the author of that particular series laid out a bunch of practical baby steps to get people to a place where number one, they were out of debt, number two, they had three to six months’ worth of living costs in an emergency fund. Those were two main things, there were other particulars, but those were the main things. If you’re living hand to mouth…and I realize there are all kinds of circumstances, but I mean, if that’s a choice to live that way, that’s not very smart.
But I’ll tell you, there are other things. There are things that we need to operate our households that everybody knows we need, from food to personal care items, to you name it. Does it make any sense to have one on your shelf…to be using one, say, oh, it’s about to run out, run to the store and get another one. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have two or three, to build up at least a reserve?
Didn’t our parents used to live that way? We used to have pantries. We used to have…I mean, I realize a lot of people still do. We used to have a reserve. We used to have a sense that things will not always be…I need to be self-sufficient. I mean, you don’t have to be a doomsday prepper. That’s going to the other extreme and I…bless people that do that, that’s all right.
But, you don’t have to be stupid, and just assume that everything’s always gonna be like it is and we can always go and just run to the store any time we need something. We need to have a little bit of practical, common sense in some of these things. All right, enough said about that, because I’m not gonna get into, well, we need a bug out location. You know, there are a whole lot of things that God can lead us about some of the practical things. We’ll never get to the point where we’re beyond needing to trust God.
( congregational amens ).
But trusting God doesn’t mean taking no personal responsibility. I mean, should I trust God…does trusting God mean that He’s going to pick me up out of bed in the morning, dress me, sit me at the table, and then…then He’s gonna put food in my mouth. Or, do I have a little bit of personal responsibility there?
You see, I don’t have to live in fear, I don’t have to build my life around, oh, I need this, I’ve got to have that. Jesus spoke about that, and we don’t live in that kind of anxious state. But to say, I have no personal responsibility to take, to work, and to take care of myself. That’s an extreme, that’s not right. So, we need to be wise in those things.
Jesus talked about some of the terrible things that were coming. What did He say, when you see all these things, do what? Hide and put your head between your legs and…no, lift up your heads, your redemption is getting close. And that’s what we need to be doing. Man, we don’t need to be looking around and being distressed. We need to say, God, You’re on the throne.
( congregational amens ).
You’re letting things play out. There are things going on…we need to lift up our heads. We’ve spoken many times about that prophecy in Daniel, where he told about a time when a heathen emperor was gonna come in and defile the temple and take over and it was just gonna be a bad time. But he dropped this in there. He said, “…but the people who do know their God shall be strong…” and take action. (KJV).
Now when do you suppose those people got to know their God? You see, this has to do with preparedness in every area. The folks that didn’t have toilet paper, when the problem hit, it was too late. You think about things ahead of time. The people that knew their God, they already had an experience with God. They already had a history with Him. They knew to trust Him in all kinds of circumstances. God had prepared them. And so, when the crisis hit, they weren’t paralyzed by it. They didn’t stop and say, oh I got to get serious…they were already serious.
I believe God wants to work in His people right now, so that He can have a people who can stand in this hour. And so, you have expressions like, wake up, be alert, don’t be drunk like the world. Be ready…it has that sense of being ready. You know, so many people talk about being ready, as though I’m ready to vanish into thin air. We need to be ready to stand in an hour…
( congregational amens ).
…That’s coming. You know, Paul, in Philippians, chapter 3, we have the place where he’s talking about pressing forward and what his life was all about. But down toward the end of that chapter, he talks about people who are living for this world, their focus was on satisfying the needs, their earthly needs, this was… their whole attention was down here, and he said, but you’re citizens of heaven, live as citizens of heaven. There’s something coming, there’s a victory, there is a glory that’s coming to your life. That’s what you should be focused on. That’s what you should be living for, not just gratifying earthly desires. Live as citizens of heaven.
Obviously, pray! You know, Paul’s words, in Ephesians 6…they remind us we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. See, our warfare is not against points of view and political movements and all that kind of stuff. Our warfare is against the devil, against his kingdom.
And we need to see past people. Wouldn’t it be something if we could see somebody who is hateful and has an opinion with which we disagree, and we don’t hate back. We could actually pray and love them. I believe that there is, that we need the Lord more than we ever have. And we need to be looking to Him.
We need to have a heart that says, God, we need you to lead us! We are not here to be the custodians of a hand-me-down religion! We are here to walk with a living Head, a living Savior, who has promised to lead us in paths that we have not walked in before! We’re not here to simply carry on the traditions handed to us by Brother Thomas. But to do what he said, to seek God and do what He says.
( congregational amens ).
Because this isn’t that day, this is this day. And we need Him. And if time goes on, and my generation has to go off the scene and hand everything over, the next generation is going to need to do the same thing.
( congregational amens ).
You’re gonna need Him! And He’s gonna be faithful. But we need to pray. I shared something along this line with the men the other day because I know I’ve heard a lot of people say, oh, don’t watch the news. Well, I can understand it. If you’re just glued to the news and letting it have a negative effect on your, letting it ruin your whole day because it’s so stupid, then, yeah, you might want to not do that.
But, I read something interesting recently, and it was a little booklet on prayer by Brother Andrew, “God’s Smuggler.” And, it was written in conjunction with Al Jansen, who apparently works with him, at Open Doors. And I don’t know which one wrote this…it might have been Al. But the point he made was, that he deliberately watched the news.
But when he did it, he did it in order to pray, in order to intervene in things he read about, in order to pray concerning the powers that were at work, the people that were involved, the people that were affected. There were opportunities to pray out of all of that…to actually make a difference.
Do we believe prayer is just throwing up wishes into the air? Or does prayer actually change things? Can we have an effect upon what’s happening in our world?
(congregational response ).
Yes, in prayer. Because we’re invoking the real power, the name that’s above every name, the One who rules in heaven and on earth. Praise God!
Boy, Nebuchadnezzar found that out, didn’t he? The Lord had a way of letting His fame spread through the whole world in that day, by allowing Nebuchadnezzar to experience all that he went through until he came and said, there is only One that rules “…in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” And he made sure everybody heard that. Do you see how God has always gotten His witness out? Yes!
What about…there’s a verse, I’m not gonna to turn to all of these, but if you want to write them down and look later. Philippians 2, we have the passage about how we’re supposed to walk in unity and treat one another as more important than ourselves, be like Jesus who left heaven to do what He did for us and now He’s exalted. And he goes on to talk about the fact that we need to live out the salvation that we have for it is God who works in us.
You have that wonderful balance between our responsibility to live something out, but the fact that the power comes from Him, not us…not a matter of legalism and trying to do something in your own strength.
But what is the result of that? The result of it is that we live as shining lights in a dark world. You get somebody that has God living in and through them, and you’re gonna have a tremendous contrast with the darkness that’s happening in this world, that’s taking over people’s lives, because God is still doing His work, too.
I don’t want to just paint this as a terrible, oh my God, the darkness is taking over, what’s gonna happen? God is doing His thing too! And we have the opportunity, not to just go hide in a cave and say, tell me when it’s over. We have an opportunity to be a participant in what God is doing, whatever that is in this hour. He’s the only one who knows. As I say, I don’t know His time table, but He does.
And if we will agree to walk with Him, that’s all Noah did. Noah walked with God. When something needed to be done, God told him and he did it. Real complicated. But God help us, to be just that simple in our faith, and really trust Him. But God wants us to let our light shine.
And what we talked about the other night…I appreciate the spirit that was here, on Wednesday night. I appreciate the…everybody has their thoughts and feelings, but the central theme came back to this, we need to be united. We need to guard the unity of the spirit. One of the things that we see more than…perhaps, the greatest expression of what Satan is trying to accomplish in the world today is the division that he has created.
( congregational amens ).
I mean, I saw one poll the other day where something like fifty percent of the people think civil war is a very real possibility in this country. You have militant groups on one side that want to overthrow everything. You’ve got so-called patriot groups on the other side that are ready to take up arms and say, you ain’t gonna do that, we’re going to defend the Constitution. You think it’s impossible that there’s not gonna be some real chaos coming? We need the Lord!
( congregational response ).
We don’t need to be afraid, but we need to be alert and aware and walking together in unity and not let the fights from this world percolate into us and put us one against another. We need to love one another and say, God, give us the discernment, give us the wisdom to see past what’s going on, understand it. We see men being turned over to darkness. We see Satan coming down, what he feels, is the home stretch, to establish his kingdom over the world.
One way or another, I’ll say it again, he’s got to bring this country down and change it from what it has ever been. So, if you’re sitting here and expecting life to go on, American life to go, not forever. I don’t know.
You know, a few years ago we thought it was headed south a whole lot quicker. And the Lord put the brakes on just a little bit. But now you have a huge backlog of power and anger, and it’s all focused on just tearing everything down. One way or another, it’s coming down.
But God’s going up, too. God’s purpose is going up. Guard unity, walk in the light. God is gonna give us what we need. One of the things that we saw years ago was not simply that darkness was gonna get worse and worse, but light was gonna get more and more. God is going to have light for those who want it.
( congregational response ).
There will always be a word from heaven that will strengthen and encourage the hearts of those who want that word.
(congregational amens ).
Do we? Are we content to just practice our religion or do we need to hear from Heaven? We need Him! But there are two things going on. Yes, the darkness is growing greater but so is the light!
( congregational amens ).
God is finishing His purpose. There are two harvests that are maturing, there was a harvest of evil, and there are reapers that are gonna go forth, and they’re gonna cast all of that, and they’re gonna harvest that and then cast it into the fire.
But there’s another harvest that’s going on. God is going to use the things that are coming on the earth at the end of time to finish the work that He has promised in His people. He has promised to finish the work until the day of Jesus Christ.
Whether we’re here, whatever our personal place is in that, God is going to present us together on that day when He unveils what He has been doing to the devil and all the world, it’s gonna be an amazing picture of God’s grace.
Can you imagine when we don’t have to deal with these bodies anymore, with this nature that wants its way. When we’re set free to live out the life that He has birthed in us. That’s why we need to be born again, folks. Flesh and blood cannot inherit what God has purposed.
( congregational amens ).
You need to have a brand-new life born in you of God’s Spirit. When you have that, God will bring that to fruition. It will grow up in Him to be something amazing. We will leave this behind. But if your heart is here, if this is what you want, you’re gonna perish with this world.
But I’ll tell you, our eyes need to be on the fact that God has promised. What God has told us is absolutely going to happen. There is going to be a harvest time when He will send forth His angels and they will gather His harvest into His barn. In Matthew, chapter 11, is it, somewhere along in there…13 maybe, the one about the parables.
He talks about the fact that there is going to be a time when the harvest is gathered in, then the saints, “…will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” (NIV). He’s the only One that can do that. Ain’t nothing that shining about me. I need a Savior, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
But I’ve got one. I’ve got one who’s already won the victory! And He’s going to allow the devil, as we’ve said so many times, He is going to allow the devil to seemingly achieve his objective. And at just the right time, He’s gonna intervene and say, that’s enough. It’s over. He’s gonna show up in the air. Angels are gonna come forth and gather His elect, and everybody’s gonna see it. And wrath will be poured out upon this world. There won’t be any joy in heaven over that except that it’s over, except evil has been put down and it’s forever behind us.
So, I don’t know. I just trust God to help us with all of this. But do you understand what’s happening? When you turn on the news, and you see the stuff that’s going on, I hope we can see it through His eyes. Recognize the condition of people who say the insane things that they do…and then mainstream media just laps it up and doesn’t want to listen to anything else. It’s insane.
But it’s a fruit of a people who have said, no, to God, until God finally said, all right, I’m taking my hands off, you have made your choice. Do you realize that happens?
Now, I want to be careful in saying that, because the devil loves to take that truth and oppress people with it. There will be some sensitive saint who feels their own need and sees their own shortcomings, and they’ll hear about God turning people over to darkness and say, maybe that’s my problem.
And the devil will say, you’re not really saved. If you were, this would be the case and that would be the case. Folks, if you have got a heart that cares, if you care about knowing the Lord and being His, trust me, you wouldn’t care if God wasn’t working.
( congregational amens ).
Don’t you listen to the lies of the enemy! The people that turn their back on God and walk away, they’re happy in it, they’re comfortable, they’ve been set free in their own deluded minds. They’ve been set free from all that restraint, about all that God stuff. And they’re as blind as bats and headed for catastrophe.
But I’ll tell you, we’re headed for glory because of the One who went to the cross in our place. To Him be the glory for all eternity! Oh, praise God! Even so, come Lord Jesus!
But I’ll tell you, we’re gonna see a lot more. I’ll agree with the statement, we ain’t seen nothing yet. There are gonna be a lot of things that are gonna happen in this world. And we just need to wake up and be ready, practically, spiritually, loving one another, looking to God, and God is going to bring His people through.
And not only that, we can be instruments of the things that He is doing. I’ll tell you, this Gospel of the Kingdom is gonna be preached in all the world and then the end will come. There’s still some preaching going on. There are still people that the Lord is calling. I’d like to be an instrument, to be a part of what God’s doing in that…in reaching them. May God help us. I believe He is, don’t you?
So, we need to walk with a sense of what’s going on. We don’t need to be looking at it from this political point of view, that political point of view, and what we want to happen. We don’t need to get involved so much in the world’s battles. But say, what is God doing in this? What’s really behind all of what’s happening and what is my place in it? And God is gonna be with us. And He is gonna get the glory.
Praise God, I don’t know of anything else that needs to be added to this necessarily. But, I just praise God for His faithfulness. I praise Him that He hasn’t left us without a witness. I praise Him that He hasn’t just left us in the darkness to wonder what’s going on, and to be afraid! But He’s given us every reason to lift up our heads and say, God, You’re on the throne and we’re Yours, and we’re trusting You! Praise God!
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June 6, 2021 - No. 1496
“What is Happening?” Part One
Broadcast #1496
June 6, 2021
June 6, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1496 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’m just gonna start sharing some of the thoughts that I’ve had and if it doesn’t…if the Lord isn’t in it, hopefully I’ll have the discernment. If I don’t, please speak up. We want to hear from the Lord this morning. If somebody else really feels like they have something, now would be a good time…so, praise God!
All right. I guess many people’s thoughts these days have gone to a simple subject, what is happening? It’s obvious that this year has been a year of turmoil and trouble on many fronts, and I believe the Lord wants us to have an understanding, not just of doctrine as a theoretical, somewhere-out-here, bunch of ideas, but as something that is a real picture of what God is doing and where we’re at in history.
And it’s obvious that there is, you know, a lot of things have been upset. Our concept of normal has disappeared. And, we’re having to just look to the Lord, walk by faith. That’s a good thing, because God is faithful, isn’t He? But we’re at a time in history that I believe God wants us to understand.
You know, years ago, when Sue and I first came and some of us, some of you were here, and some others came in around the same general time period, we saw…we went through a period when God was revealing things in a very spectacular way.
And, I thank God that we never went to seed on the supernatural side of it, because always the witness of the Spirit and the witness of scripture took precedence. But I believe God took things that we find in the pages of scripture and brought them to life and said, hey, it’s happening now.
And so, it was common when I first…when we first came to hear messages that were geared to what’s happening and what is the end of the age going to look like? And I don’t think we need to get away from that. I don’t think we need to just talk only about that, but I believe we have to have a sense as we go along.
I think a lot of us, in those days, felt like, well, we’re right…it’s just gonna happen, like five years at the most. Then the Lord’s gonna come and it’s all gonna be over. Well, guess what? The Lord doesn’t work on our timetable, but He works on His and His is certain. And it’s just as certain as the things that He showed us.
But one of the things…there are two threads that I see coming together. One of them is simply the condition of people. We see a pattern throughout history, of God reaching out to men and men responding one of two ways, and usually it’s the great majority that respond in a negative way, and it’s a small minority, a remnant, that says, yes Lord, I surrender. And throughout history we have seen that.
You know, from the very beginning we see God’s heart. When Adam and Eve fell for the temptation, they deliberately made a choice to join and to listen to Satan’s wisdom, and to rebel against what God had told them. They felt a separation from God.
What did God do about it? The Lord was seeking after them. He went after them and began to make provision, didn’t He? And, we know, of course, that the Lord knew all about this, knew it was gonna happen and planned for it.
But you come down a few centuries later, and you find the condition of the world in Noah’s day. These are things we’ve talked about many times. I want to just pull threads together today. The thoughts, every imagination of men’s hearts was, what? Only, “…only evil continually.” (KJV). It wasn’t like, well, I’m kind of leaning this way, but there’s still a capacity…they reached a point where there was no more capacity for people to hear God’s voice.
Do you realize that happens? That people can get in a condition where they can no longer hear God’s voice. They make a choice. And so, we see the world of that day being judged, and we see a remnant being preserved perfectly through the flood. Thank God!
But yet, coming out of that, immediately the Lord was foreshadowing what was gonna happen. I know what’s in man, I know what he’s made of, I know this is gonna…he’s gonna turn away. I won’t destroy the world by a flood again, but I know what’s coming.
And so, we see this pattern throughout history of God dealing, like with the nation of Israel and yet they rebelled. He sent prophets and He waited and He held off judgment and they still rebelled and kept going the wrong direction. Finally, judgment fell.
We see the nation of Israel being utterly destroyed by the Romans after Jesus warned…and yet His heart was expressed in the words of Jesus. O Jerusalem! You wouldn’t listen to the prophets! “How often would I have gathered…as a hen gathereth her chickens…and ye would not!” You wouldn’t listen! You wouldn’t heed what I said. And so, judgment is coming. You’re gonna be abandoned to judgment.
You know, we see the principle of what happens expressed in Romans chapter 1, a scripture we’ve read many times, as to why God’s wrath comes. I mean, we know He’s a God of love, and yet, we know He’s a God of wrath. You can’t have it…you can’t just ignore that side of it. It’s a reality. This world is headed for catastrophe! It is headed for a judgment! It is headed for the wrath of God being poured out upon man!
Why? Is it because this is the way God just wants it to be and He’s just getting a kick out of this? Oh, no. Verse 18…familiar scriptures. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who…” (NIV). Do what? “…Who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” It’s not an absence of truth. It is, I don’t want to hear that. I reject that. I make a choice here between the truth that I know and what I want to do. There’s a spirit of rebellion.
So he goes on and says, “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile…” worthless, useless, “…and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
“Therefore…” You see the choices being made. See what they’re doing is not ignorance, it’s rebelling against what they know, saying we’re gonna do it our way. “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity…” and so forth, “…for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.” And it goes on to elaborate what the result is, and you see a world dominated by selfish people in rebellion against God and all it does is create chaos everywhere.
( congregational amens ).
And one of the things that we’re observing…I mean, how many of you have listened to some item on the news where someone has expressed a thought, a belief, and you’ve said, what planet are they on? That’s insanity! How in the world is it possible for a human being to actually believe such nonsense? Well, this is the reason.
We are seeing…and I believe…I was gonna say the final generation. I don’t know the timetable, but we are careening through the last hour of earth’s history in my judgment and I believe God has revealed this to us. We are in that last period. The countdown to judgment is on.
Well, what should we be expecting? If that’s the case, what is going to be the condition of mankind in this period of time, but a rebellion against God, a choice to say, no, to the God of heaven, and yes, to me and what I want. That’s what is dominating people’s hearts and conditions. You want to understand what’s behind all of the turmoil that we see? That’s a major thread, is it not? That’s what’s going on.
But obviously, that’s only part of it, isn’t it? Because we’re not talking about men who simply live in a vacuum and it’s either me or God. There is a kingdom of darkness that rules over the affairs of this world. It began when Lucifer, a servant of God with great abilities, chose to rebel against God. He said…his ambition became, I will be like the Most High. I’m not content just to do what He says, I’m gonna step over here, I’m gonna be my own god, thank you very much.
And he succeeded…I don’t know if it all happened at once or over a period of time, but he succeeded in leading one-third of the angels in rebellion with him. And we see throughout the pages of scripture, glimpses of the reality of the simple fact that there is kingdom which you and I cannot see with natural eyes, that rules in the affairs of men.
Now, thank God, that He’s over that, that His purpose is the one that will prevail! But when you’re talking about the world system, you are talking about a literal kingdom that provides the inspiration behind world affairs. So, we’re not just dealing with people, we’re dealing with a satanic agenda. From the beginning, his aim, is like I say, to be like the Most High, to absolutely rule, unchecked, unchallenged upon this globe.
And he’s tried it over and over again, and we see this constant battle going on behind the scenes where the devil is allowed to do all kinds of things to raise up great nations. Then we see God putting them down, God sending judgment, God intervening here and there. One kingdom will rise up and be filled up with great power and trample over nations, and God said, all right, it’s time. We’re gonna raise up somebody else and your day is over. There’s always this intervention.
You know, you get the glimpse in Daniel that we’ve referred to a number of times over the years, of how Daniel was praying and God sent an angel to Daniel. But, there was a three-week delay between the time he began to pray and that angel came with the answer that he was looking for.
Now what was the cause of that? Why was there a three-week delay? Because he was…there was a Prince of Persia with whom he had to do battle. In fact, he had to have help come down so that he could do battle with this prince.
Now, do you think that was a human being? No, no, no. That was the real power behind the empire. This was a literally…there was a government of Lucifer and there was a kingdom called Persia, and through that kingdom you saw the inspiration come down to the people who were involved.
So, let me just go back to some of the things the Lord revealed to us, and I’m just praying the Lord will help me not to try to cover too much ground. But, one of the things the Lord revealed to us, in those days, concerning the loosing of Satan…remember that? And it was specific, that this was the last loosing of Satan before the end of all things.
Now you’ve got a lot of people that will look at Revelation 20 and they will see a future, earthly kingdom, a political, military kingdom ruled by Jesus from Jerusalem lasting a literal thousand years. Well, they don’t understand the book of Revelation is put in language that is meant to be symbolic, but it’s symbolic of things that are very real. Saying it’s symbolic doesn’t mean it’s just vague. It’s real! There is a kingdom, there is a binding, there is a loosing of Satan. But we have seen that. It is history to us.
I’ve said this before, just to be…I don’t know, humorous, maybe. Poor humor, but nonetheless, you show me a beast with seven heads and ten horns, crawling up on a beach somewhere, ready to take over the world, and I will show you a future political kingdom lasting exactly a thousand years.
There is a reign, there is a binding of Satan that took place at the cross. Jesus gained the victory over Satan! He paraded him in defeat, as we read in Colossians chapter 2. There was a victory parade when…when you see the Gospel, you see demons absolutely bound, Jesus said that He would build His church, “…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (KJV).
The gates of hell represent the gates of his kingdom where he keeps people prisoner! This is not a neutral world. If you are ever saved, you will be rescued from a very real power. You have no power to escape that apart from Christ and the Gospel!
( congregational amens ).
When you come to Christ you are rescued from the power of darkness and translated, “…into the kingdom of his dear Son.” There are gates that he would place between you and that victory, but God has the power to breach those gates and rescue every one that He has foreseen. Every one of His elect will be rescued, and brought out. In order to do that, He had to win a victory.
Do you think the devil would have been able, if he rules over this world, to simply stand by…or that he would have just put up with the Gospel going out to the ends of the world? Obviously, he’s been allowed to oppose it. But he has not been able to stop it! The Gospel has gone where God has purposed it!
Yes, it has gone in the face of persecution, it’s gone in the face of resistance. But Satan, if he had his way, would stamp it out, end it forever, unite the world under his dominion and that would be the end of it.
But Jesus said to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” (NIV). And that’s what has happened. Thank God! I’ll tell you, when this binding in Revelation 20:7 took place. It had to do with one thing. It was to keep him from deceiving the nations any more until the thousand years were ended.
The thousand years is just a symbolic period. God doesn’t put stuff in the scriptures so we can calculate dates. People have done that to their shame over and over and over again. I don’t know when this is happening. I haven’t got a copy of God’s schedule, but He does. He doesn’t tell us to figure it out. He tells us to trust Him and be ready.
But anyway, there was a specific thing he was not allowed to do which was to unite the world under his dominion. So what happens when the thousand years are over? “When the thousand years are over…” verse 7, “…Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to gather them for battle.”
And so forth, and it goes on and talks about the fact that they gather and they come against the camp of the saints. You’ve got this imagery of, probably not a lot of people left at that point. I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole lot of people wind up going to heaven by the upper-taker…I mean, by the undertaker…the upper-taker, too. You understand.
A lot of people are gonna die for their faith in years to come. A lot of people are doing it right now. But I’ll tell you, God’s gonna get us every one there. The end is certain. Praise God for His promises!
But here you’ve got a picture of Satan somehow being allowed to bring the world to a place where he’s got them united against God. And he’s just about to snuff out the last little bit of the influence of saints, even their presence in the world! We’ve got it! We’ve got the victory in our hands. We’re just…ready to pounce…we’re poised and ready to pounce. Praise God! Anyway, then what happens? “But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” Praise God!
God knows exactly when to do what. You know, another scripture that the Lord used many times, and has over the years, in 2nd Thessalonians 2. And I believe we are seeing this play out. Paul is writing and he’s writing concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him. So this is about the coming of the Lord. He’s not talking about God’s gonna make you vanish into thin air and then trouble’s gonna start. This is the point at which He comes, is what he’s gonna be talking about.
Then he immediately says…well, he says first of all…apparently somebody had been writing to him…writing to them and saying, this is what Paul is teaching. You need to listen to this. He says, wait a minute, that’s not from me. I didn’t send that. “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”
There’s more to this than some singular individual. This is what we’re seeing unfold before us. I believe with all my heart, the rebellion it was talking about certainly fit what the Lord was showing us in the late 1960s. There was a spirit of rebellion against anybody that…against the existing order, against anybody over 30, don’t trust them. Tear down the system. Replace it with…you know, love and peace and joy and drugs and sex, I guess. But whatever it was, we want to do what we want to do. We’re tearing everything down.
And I’ll tell you, you had some of the same things going on then that you do now…militia marching in the streets. I mean, that was happening in neighborhoods near us. I don’t know what it was like here. But it was a terrible spirit of rebellion.
Do you think that just kind of went away? Or do you think it has been percolating in different ways through our society ever since? Those of you who lived in the 50s, let’s say, especially, and you can remember them…I don’t mean if you were two years old. But I mean, you remember the 50’s? Does the American of today even begin to resemble? No resemblance whatsoever! And it’s because the people involved had begun to make choices to not listen to the voice of God. There is a rebellion against God. That’s what you see unfolding here.
So there is a man of lawlessness being revealed. “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” You’ve got all kinds of stuff where…they’re gonna build a new temple in Jerusalem. God’s temple is not built with human hands! God designed human beings to be His temple.
We were made to be a house for God to live in! Your body, if you’re a believer, your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. You don’t belong to yourself, you belong to Him. We were made for a Holy God to live in us, to empower us to be all that He made us as individuals to be.
We’re not clones. Every one of us has our own individual personality and abilities and all those things, but the energy needs to come from God. That’s what we were made for. But here you have a rebellion going on, in which men say, we’re not going along with You! We are going to be our own gods!
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May 30, 2021 - No. 1495
All Music
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May 23, 2021 - No. 1494
“Our Hope of Glory” Conclusion
Broadcast #1494
May 23, 2021
May 23, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1494 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, good morning! I must confess this is one morning when I would be very happy if we had recorded the men’s meeting and simply played it back. The Lord blessed and an awful lot of what’s been on my heart was expressed there.
And I believe it’s from the burden of the Lord’s heart. He wants us to know something more of the reality of what He’s given to us, rather than us living on theology and theory, to the degree that we may. But I believe with all my heart, the Lord is coming forth in a way to stir up a hunger in His people.
You know, I had that burden Wednesday night that we needed Him and His presence, that it’s not enough to come and go through the form of what we do. And that’s all right, singing and worshipping and reading our Bibles and all that stuff is wonderful, but if the Lord’s not in the middle of it, it’s just a form. And we need Him.
( congregational amens ).
And I feel—I keenly feel my need this morning. And all I’m gonna do is just say, Lord, You’re gonna have to help me, You’re gonna have to help the people. That’s what this is for. If the Lord’s laid anything on my heart, it’s not for me, it’s for you, and it’s for everyone that may hear it.
But anyway, I’m gonna turn to a familiar scripture, as a jumping off point, in one of my favorite books, Colossians. Colossians was written by Paul the Apostle at a point in his life when he was in prison. He had suffered for the Lord. He had paid a high price to do what he did. And…but there he was.
He had heard about this church. It’s the one he’d never been to. It was founded by somebody who was in his circle of acquaintance in the ministry. But, anyway, he had heard of their faith and there just came into his heart a real burden to share the essence of what it meant to serve the Lord and encourage them, to instruct them.
But there’s one expression, toward the end of chapter 1 that just seems to come back to my mind, repeatedly. And, it’s found in…well, let’s see. Praise God! I’ll back up to verse 25. “I have become its servant…” the church, he’s talking about, “…by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness…” (NIV).
Then he refers to that as, “…the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” That’s the essence of what it means to be a part of God’s Kingdom, to be a part of His Church.
You know, the world is full of stuff…of organizations called churches. But I believe with all my heart, God has a Church. I’m not trying to say, we’re ‘it.’ I’m just trying to say, God has a people in the earth. And what distinguishes His work from everything else is this simple fact. It’s not Christ out there. It’s not the Christ of history, not the Christ who will come. It’s not the Christ of a book, although He is all of those things. It’s a Christ that literally comes into the heart of an individual.
Without that, that’s…that will be the dividing line of history. When everyone stands before the judgment seat of Christ, everyone will be divided by this issue. Everyone that Christ has literally come into their life, to take up residence, not just in the mind, but in the heart, to come in as Savior but also as Lord, as all that He is, everyone who has been begotten, literally, born by God’s Spirit, they will be standing on one side and they will be standing there in glory! There will be a brightness. There will be a purity that not one of us could ever think about deserving or achieving.
But everyone else, and it’s going to include a lot of religious people, will be standing there and some of them will be saying, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?” (KJV). We’ve preached! Think about…think about what He’s saying there. There are preachers, who’ve given their lives to talking about Jesus, who will stand there and say, Lord, didn’t we preach in Your name? Haven’t we done many wonderful works in Your name? Haven’t we done all this stuff? We’ve performed miracles! Lord, what’s the deal here?
And He said, “…depart from me, ye that work iniquity….” The original word is lawlessness. There’s a spirit of self that’s on the throne. This is not somebody who’s surrendered the heart to the lordship of Jesus Christ. This is somebody who has embraced religion, but they’ve never had Jesus Christ come in and possess their hearts. And he said, “…depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” “I never knew you.”
Boy, this is the essence of being the Church. And I believe with all my heart, God wants to bring us to a fresh reality of this.
( congregational response ).
The Kingdom of God is a supernatural thing! And that’s what He means it to be. I mean, you go back to the beginning. All that Adam and Eve received from God, in the beginning, was created life. It had no power in and of itself to endure. And they had a choice before them, didn’t they? Am I going to go my own rebellious way and seek my own godhood, take charge of this life that I have been given and use it for my benefit and for my, whatever? Am I gonna be in charge, or am I gonna surrender my life to Him?
And they made the choice that they made and this world has been plunged into darkness ever since. And the reality is, the life that became so corrupted by sin can never be changed! That’s what’s amazing! There is only one solution to this life and that’s to die!
That’s what’s wrong. There’s…I mean, you can’t come, for example, you can’t come to this church, or any church for that matter, and simply…come to church, talk about Jesus, sing about Jesus, and live a good life and expect to be received on that day. It’s not about that.
( congregational amens ).
Every one of us has been reduced to exactly the same level and the same level of need. I don’t care whether you came out of a gutter of sin. There will be people who will hear this, at some point, who are in prison for murder, and other terrible crimes. You are no worse…you have no greater need than I do! I was born into a world of sinners. I have a nature that I don’t care what I do, it will absolutely resist God. It will fight to the last breath for its own will and its own way.
I’ll tell you what, this is the issue that absolutely divides humankind. Jesus had some pretty pointed things to say about that, didn’t He? He said, he that loves his life, or he that will preserve his life, what’s the end result of that?
( congregational response ).
He’s gonna lose it! I mean, this world is full of people who value this life above everything and what they think they can get out of it, fulfilling their desires, pursuing their dreams—earthly dreams, and when they come to the end, what will they have? Jesus said, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
I mean, suppose you could suddenly become the king of the world, in some fashion. You own every diamond, you own every piece of gold, you own every bit of wealth there is, any pleasure that comes into your heart and your mind, you have instant access to it, you can do whatever you want to gratify whatever desire arises.
In the first place, you’re gonna be chock-full of empty! Look at the people that this week have committed suicide, and they’re talking about suicide being an epidemic. What’s the problem? People are trying so hard to get what they think they want out of this life, gratifying its desires, and they’re winding up feeling the emptiness to the point where they say there’s no use going on, the best choice that I can make is to end my life.
And some of them are wealthy people who had seemed to have it all. And people would look up to them and say, oh, if I could only be like them. And yet, there they are, demonstrating the emptiness of this life.
But suppose you could come to the end of your life, and have it all and not even feel that. Somehow, you’re so immune to reality that you think you’ve got it all. Your life is gonna end!
God had a reason, when He created this world. You know, it’s something we’ve said so many times lately, and the Lord must want to emphasize it, God had a purpose in eternity to build a family, but it’s not gonna be a family peopled by folks who are possessed of human nature as we know it. These are gonna be people who are absolutely changed, born, literally living by His life! That’s what’s really at…that’s the issue with the Kingdom of God!
It’s interesting that Paul, earlier in this very passage, he describes a lot of the background that leads into that summary statement of, “…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” And he talks about how we have been delivered “…from the power of darkness.”
This world doesn’t know, for the most part, what in the world is going on or why things are the way they are. There is a kingdom ruled over by God’s enemy, the Devil. It’s real. His emissaries, demons, are real. We are seeing the effects in our society of the loosing of Satan—the last loosing before the end of all things. And we are…I’ll tell you, it takes divine power to deliver people. But there is power in Him!
( congregational amens ).
He has already won the victory at the cross. Thank God! But it’s a real war. It’s a real battle. Boy, there’s a lot of stuff…like I say, I could’ve just played this from the men’s meeting this morning. But Praise God! That was an encouragement. The Lord’s trying to remind me that…trying to encourage me because I’m…I’ll tell you, the Devil has battled this.
I’m in this battle with you. If you’re fighting battles in your mind and your heart right today, yeah, so am I. But the Lord is putting us through battles for a reason. He wants us to know that the enemy is real. He wants us to know that the issues are real. He wants us to know that we need Him. We need deliverance from what we are naturally. But He also wants to drive us to call upon Him and to open our hearts to the reality of who He is. He reigns!
( congregational response ).
He lives! He reigns! How little do we enter into that! What a low level of life that we accept as normal and natural and we’re just doing fine. Oh, God! It’s like I’ve said several times lately, the greatest danger I see and I can imagine if Brother Thomas were here he’d be saying a lot of the same things—the greatest danger is that we will simply take our history and the truths that the Lord has made real to us, and that they will simply become doctrine. They will simply become tradition. We will seek to indoctrinate the next generation in all of these wonderful things that we have learned, and imagine that they’re just gonna embrace them with their minds and go on and carry on and do ‘church’ just like we have taught them to do. My God, we need Christ!
( congregational amens ).
We need His living presence! It’s not Christ out there. It’s not Christ of history, like I’ve said, or Christ of doctrine. It’s a Christ in us! He literally lives in a people! Praise God! You know, in the Old Testament, God was doing a work of preparation, wasn’t He? He never meant for that to be the end game.
He gave them laws to follow, but He gave them laws knowing full well that they could not possible live up to them. But along with those laws, He gave them sacrifices. And so, when they failed and when they sinned they had a way to go to God and it was a sacrifice that involved death.
Oh, do you see the lessons that He was teaching in that? How sin…the consequence of sin is death! That’s the only answer. When something becomes truly infected with this disease called sin, there’s only one cure, and that’s death! But oh, there came One into the world—there came One, the very Son of God.
And again, you look back in this passage and you see who this was. Look at 15: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (NIV).
I mean, it goes on and on with who this is. This is amazing. This is the One who absolutely spoke the stars into existence. And here we were, worthy only to die and be destroyed, and just a blot on the universe. And yet, He came.
And He didn’t come as some grand monarch. He came as a little baby, born of human flesh, and He experienced everything that you and I experience. But by the grace of God, He never gave in to the principle of sin.
And so that time came when He, the Lamb of God, assumed the guilt for every sin, every lie you’ve ever told! Every evil thought, every evil word, every evil motive, every evil deed that’s ever proceeded from your life and your being, every one that’s ever happened in the world, He took it upon Himself, as though, I accept the guilt. I’m guilty, I plead guilty of all of it.
This is Somebody pretty amazing! And yet, He took it upon Himself. And they killed Him in the most painful, humiliating way possible. And they put Him in a grave and the demons danced. And three days later they shrieked as they realized what had happened, that God had turned what looked like absolute defeat into complete victory.
And it was through that that you and I have hope today. We don’t have hope because we’re anything. We’re nothing! I don’t care who you are today. We have the same need before God but we have the same Savior.
( congregational amens ).
You know, one thing kept coming back to my mind as I was thinking about when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a man who was schooled in the Jews’ religion. They had taken the laws that God had given them and turned them into a man-made religion of self-righteousness. They imagined that if they did things the way they had learned to do them and followed their traditions that God would think highly of them and accept them.
And Jesus made the point very clear, you have to be born again. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what religion you practice. I don’t care how you live your life, in one sense. I mean, obviously, we care, but you understand what I’m saying. It’s not a matter of how you live your life, it’s a matter of what kind of life you have. You have to be born again!
You can take flesh, somebody that’s simply born into Adam’s family and you can make him as religious as you want to! All you’ve got is a religious sinner, who’s gonna die in the end.
Oh, Nicodemus couldn’t understand that. You’ve got to be born again. You’ve got to have a literal birth, a miracle of God, because God’s new covenant is not about laws and do’s and don’ts and religious practices and all of that. It’s about a new heart and a new spirit that only God can put in us.
Do you know what the price of that is? See, Jesus doesn’t come in to enhance your earthly life. He doesn’t come in to fulfill your dream—your earthly dreams. He comes in as a replacement. You know the entry ‘rite,’ if you want to call it that, but the outward expression of somebody coming to Christ? You look in the New Testament. What was it? When somebody came to Christ, what did they do?
( congregational response ).
They were baptized! They didn’t have altars. They were baptized. What did that mean? What does baptism mean?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, it’s death, isn’t it? When I go into the water, I am literally laying down my life. I am giving it up. I’m saying, Lord, I embrace what Jesus did in my place on that cross. I deserve to die. I deserve what He got. And I am willingly laying down my life, but I’m doing so based upon your promise, the hope of His promise…what we were just singing about. The hope of His promise, that if I lay down my life and call upon the name of the Lord, that You will come and give me the life that came forth out of that tomb.
That’s been Your dream. That’s been Your plan from the beginning is to share Yourself with me! All that You are, the joy, the power, the freedom, all of that to come in and to literally live in me! That’s what it means to be His child! That’s what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ.
Oh, the greatest danger for younger generations is to grow up and learn the truths, learn the doctrines, learn how to sing, but all you’ve got is up here. And you never come to the point where you realize what it means!
There’s one thing that really jumped out at me, among others, but one particular thing that jumps out at me right now is that Paul calls this a mystery. The NLT uses the word ‘secret.’ This is the kind of knowledge of what he’s talking about. You cannot posses this knowledge by…I don’t care who you are, how smart you are, how diligent you are to search out truth. If you’re simply going and looking for it with natural intelligence, you will never, ever discover this.
( congregational amens ).
It is so contrary to human nature to think that I live because I die, that I am…in myself I am a worthless sinner deserving death. But in Christ, I am loved as His child because I have received His life in my place…in its place.
I’ll tell you, it’s like I said recently, the Devil had no clue what was going on, what he’d got himself into when he crucified the Lord. He thought he was winning. But I’ll tell you, what does the scripture say? That, if they had known, if they’d understood these things, “…they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (NIV). You see why it was kept a mystery? This is truth that can only be revealed by God’s Spirit.
And one thing that is interesting to me in Paul’s words of exhortation to these people. Look…go back and…let’s see, back in verse 9, there’s a thought here that needs to be expressed. Paul says…he’s writing to believers here, by the way. “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
Now this is Christians he’s talking about. And basically, Paul is saying, I know you don’t really understand what you need to understand. You don’t fully appreciate what God has given you when He gave you His Son. And so, my prayer for you is, God, open your understanding.
Well, my God, if that’s true of Christians, how much more true is it of people that have never come to this! You can’t explain people into this. We need…my God, we need to pray that God will bring every person for whom this is not true, Christ is not your life…that God will bring you to such a point of conviction where you will know what you are! You will know who He is! You will know what’s needed and you’ll be moved by the grace of God to lay down your life and embrace His!
There’s got to be that point in time, whether it’s dramatic or quiet, there’s got to be a point of real divine revelation that goes to the heart! You think about Paul as the poster child of this. This was a guy who was so given to his religion that he used that as a pretext to go out and persecute Christians! That’s how blind he was! That’s how much of a mystery what he later came to understand was to Paul. Paul had no clue what was going on and what he was really doing until he met Jesus, rather dramatically, in his case.
But how does he describe that? He describes that as the revelation of the mystery, “…of the knowledge of…God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (KJV). And where did it come to? Was it just his mind? Did somebody sit him down and say, let me explain this doctrine to you? No! This was something that God used to penetrate his heart!
Close
May 16, 2021 - No. 1493
“Our Hope of Glory” Part One
Broadcast #1493
May 16, 2021
May 16, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1493 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, good morning! I must confess this is one morning when I would be very happy if we had recorded the men’s meeting and simply played it back. The Lord blessed and an awful lot of what’s been on my heart was expressed there.
And I believe it’s from the burden of the Lord’s heart. He wants us to know something more of the reality of what He’s given to us, rather than us living on theology and theory, to the degree that we may. But I believe with all my heart, the Lord is coming forth in a way to stir up a hunger in His people.
You know, I had that burden Wednesday night that we needed Him and His presence, that it’s not enough to come and go through the form of what we do. And that’s all right, singing and worshipping and reading our Bibles and all that stuff is wonderful, but if the Lord’s not in the middle of it, it’s just a form. And we need Him.
( congregational amens ).
And I feel—I keenly feel my need this morning. And all I’m gonna do is just say, Lord, You’re gonna have to help me, You’re gonna have to help the people. That’s what this is for. If the Lord’s laid anything on my heart, it’s not for me, it’s for you, and it’s for everyone that may hear it.
But anyway, I’m gonna turn to a familiar scripture, as a jumping off point, in one of my favorite books, Colossians. Colossians was written by Paul the Apostle at a point in his life when he was in prison. He had suffered for the Lord. He had paid a high price to do what he did. And…but there he was.
He had heard about this church. It’s the one he’d never been to. It was founded by somebody who was in his circle of acquaintance in the ministry. But, anyway, he had heard of their faith and there just came into his heart a real burden to share the essence of what it meant to serve the Lord and encourage them, to instruct them.
But there’s one expression, toward the end of chapter 1 that just seems to come back to my mind, repeatedly. And, it’s found in…well, let’s see. Praise God! I’ll back up to verse 25. “I have become its servant…” the church, he’s talking about, “…by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness…” (NIV).
Then he refers to that as, “…the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” That’s the essence of what it means to be a part of God’s Kingdom, to be a part of His Church.
You know, the world is full of stuff…of organizations called churches. But I believe with all my heart, God has a Church. I’m not trying to say, we’re ‘it.’ I’m just trying to say, God has a people in the earth. And what distinguishes His work from everything else is this simple fact. It’s not Christ out there. It’s not the Christ of history, not the Christ who will come. It’s not the Christ of a book, although He is all of those things. It’s a Christ that literally comes into the heart of an individual.
Without that, that’s…that will be the dividing line of history. When everyone stands before the judgment seat of Christ, everyone will be divided by this issue. Everyone that Christ has literally come into their life, to take up residence, not just in the mind, but in the heart, to come in as Savior but also as Lord, as all that He is, everyone who has been begotten, literally, born by God’s Spirit, they will be standing on one side and they will be standing there in glory! There will be a brightness. There will be a purity that not one of us could ever think about deserving or achieving.
But everyone else, and it’s going to include a lot of religious people, will be standing there and some of them will be saying, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?” (KJV). We’ve preached! Think about…think about what He’s saying there. There are preachers, who’ve given their lives to talking about Jesus, who will stand there and say, Lord, didn’t we preach in Your name? Haven’t we done many wonderful works in Your name? Haven’t we done all this stuff? We’ve performed miracles! Lord, what’s the deal here?
And He said, “…depart from me, ye that work iniquity….” The original word is lawlessness. There’s a spirit of self that’s on the throne. This is not somebody who’s surrendered the heart to the lordship of Jesus Christ. This is somebody who has embraced religion, but they’ve never had Jesus Christ come in and possess their hearts. And he said, “…depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” “I never knew you.”
Boy, this is the essence of being the Church. And I believe with all my heart, God wants to bring us to a fresh reality of this.
( congregational response ).
The Kingdom of God is a supernatural thing! And that’s what He means it to be. I mean, you go back to the beginning. All that Adam and Eve received from God, in the beginning, was created life. It had no power in and of itself to endure. And they had a choice before them, didn’t they? Am I going to go my own rebellious way and seek my own godhood, take charge of this life that I have been given and use it for my benefit and for my, whatever? Am I gonna be in charge, or am I gonna surrender my life to Him?
And they made the choice that they made and this world has been plunged into darkness ever since. And the reality is, the life that became so corrupted by sin can never be changed! That’s what’s amazing! There is only one solution to this life and that’s to die!
That’s what’s wrong. There’s…I mean, you can’t come, for example, you can’t come to this church, or any church for that matter, and simply…come to church, talk about Jesus, sing about Jesus, and live a good life and expect to be received on that day. It’s not about that.
( congregational amens ).
Every one of us has been reduced to exactly the same level and the same level of need. I don’t care whether you came out of a gutter of sin. There will be people who will hear this, at some point, who are in prison for murder, and other terrible crimes. You are no worse…you have no greater need than I do! I was born into a world of sinners. I have a nature that I don’t care what I do, it will absolutely resist God. It will fight to the last breath for its own will and its own way.
I’ll tell you what, this is the issue that absolutely divides humankind. Jesus had some pretty pointed things to say about that, didn’t He? He said, he that loves his life, or he that will preserve his life, what’s the end result of that?
( congregational response ).
He’s gonna lose it! I mean, this world is full of people who value this life above everything and what they think they can get out of it, fulfilling their desires, pursuing their dreams—earthly dreams, and when they come to the end, what will they have? Jesus said, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
I mean, suppose you could suddenly become the king of the world, in some fashion. You own every diamond, you own every piece of gold, you own every bit of wealth there is, any pleasure that comes into your heart and your mind, you have instant access to it, you can do whatever you want to gratify whatever desire arises.
In the first place, you’re gonna be chock-full of empty! Look at the people that this week have committed suicide, and they’re talking about suicide being an epidemic. What’s the problem? People are trying so hard to get what they think they want out of this life, gratifying its desires, and they’re winding up feeling the emptiness to the point where they say there’s no use going on, the best choice that I can make is to end my life.
And some of them are wealthy people who had seemed to have it all. And people would look up to them and say, oh, if I could only be like them. And yet, there they are, demonstrating the emptiness of this life.
But suppose you could come to the end of your life, and have it all and not even feel that. Somehow, you’re so immune to reality that you think you’ve got it all. Your life is gonna end!
God had a reason, when He created this world. You know, it’s something we’ve said so many times lately, and the Lord must want to emphasize it, God had a purpose in eternity to build a family, but it’s not gonna be a family peopled by folks who are possessed of human nature as we know it. These are gonna be people who are absolutely changed, born, literally living by His life! That’s what’s really at…that’s the issue with the Kingdom of God!
It’s interesting that Paul, earlier in this very passage, he describes a lot of the background that leads into that summary statement of, “…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” And he talks about how we have been delivered “…from the power of darkness.”
This world doesn’t know, for the most part, what in the world is going on or why things are the way they are. There is a kingdom ruled over by God’s enemy, the Devil. It’s real. His emissaries, demons, are real. We are seeing the effects in our society of the loosing of Satan—the last loosing before the end of all things. And we are…I’ll tell you, it takes divine power to deliver people. But there is power in Him!
( congregational amens ).
He has already won the victory at the cross. Thank God! But it’s a real war. It’s a real battle. Boy, there’s a lot of stuff…like I say, I could’ve just played this from the men’s meeting this morning. But Praise God! That was an encouragement. The Lord’s trying to remind me that…trying to encourage me because I’m…I’ll tell you, the Devil has battled this.
I’m in this battle with you. If you’re fighting battles in your mind and your heart right today, yeah, so am I. But the Lord is putting us through battles for a reason. He wants us to know that the enemy is real. He wants us to know that the issues are real. He wants us to know that we need Him. We need deliverance from what we are naturally. But He also wants to drive us to call upon Him and to open our hearts to the reality of who He is. He reigns!
( congregational response ).
He lives! He reigns! How little do we enter into that! What a low level of life that we accept as normal and natural and we’re just doing fine. Oh, God! It’s like I’ve said several times lately, the greatest danger I see and I can imagine if Brother Thomas were here he’d be saying a lot of the same things—the greatest danger is that we will simply take our history and the truths that the Lord has made real to us, and that they will simply become doctrine. They will simply become tradition. We will seek to indoctrinate the next generation in all of these wonderful things that we have learned, and imagine that they’re just gonna embrace them with their minds and go on and carry on and do ‘church’ just like we have taught them to do. My God, we need Christ!
( congregational amens ).
We need His living presence! It’s not Christ out there. It’s not Christ of history, like I’ve said, or Christ of doctrine. It’s a Christ in us! He literally lives in a people! Praise God! You know, in the Old Testament, God was doing a work of preparation, wasn’t He? He never meant for that to be the end game.
He gave them laws to follow, but He gave them laws knowing full well that they could not possible live up to them. But along with those laws, He gave them sacrifices. And so, when they failed and when they sinned they had a way to go to God and it was a sacrifice that involved death.
Oh, do you see the lessons that He was teaching in that? How sin…the consequence of sin is death! That’s the only answer. When something becomes truly infected with this disease called sin, there’s only one cure, and that’s death! But oh, there came One into the world—there came One, the very Son of God.
And again, you look back in this passage and you see who this was. Look at 15: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (NIV).
I mean, it goes on and on with who this is. This is amazing. This is the One who absolutely spoke the stars into existence. And here we were, worthy only to die and be destroyed, and just a blot on the universe. And yet, He came.
And He didn’t come as some grand monarch. He came as a little baby, born of human flesh, and He experienced everything that you and I experience. But by the grace of God, He never gave in to the principle of sin.
And so that time came when He, the Lamb of God, assumed the guilt for every sin, every lie you’ve ever told! Every evil thought, every evil word, every evil motive, every evil deed that’s ever proceeded from your life and your being, every one that’s ever happened in the world, He took it upon Himself, as though, I accept the guilt. I’m guilty, I plead guilty of all of it.
This is Somebody pretty amazing! And yet, He took it upon Himself. And they killed Him in the most painful, humiliating way possible. And they put Him in a grave and the demons danced. And three days later they shrieked as they realized what had happened, that God had turned what looked like absolute defeat into complete victory.
And it was through that that you and I have hope today. We don’t have hope because we’re anything. We’re nothing! I don’t care who you are today. We have the same need before God but we have the same Savior.
( congregational amens ).
You know, one thing kept coming back to my mind as I was thinking about when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a man who was schooled in the Jews’ religion. They had taken the laws that God had given them and turned them into a man-made religion of self-righteousness. They imagined that if they did things the way they had learned to do them and followed their traditions that God would think highly of them and accept them.
And Jesus made the point very clear, you have to be born again. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what religion you practice. I don’t care how you live your life, in one sense. I mean, obviously, we care, but you understand what I’m saying. It’s not a matter of how you live your life, it’s a matter of what kind of life you have. You have to be born again!
You can take flesh, somebody that’s simply born into Adam’s family and you can make him as religious as you want to! All you’ve got is a religious sinner, who’s gonna die in the end.
Oh, Nicodemus couldn’t understand that. You’ve got to be born again. You’ve got to have a literal birth, a miracle of God, because God’s new covenant is not about laws and do’s and don’ts and religious practices and all of that. It’s about a new heart and a new spirit that only God can put in us.
Do you know what the price of that is? See, Jesus doesn’t come in to enhance your earthly life. He doesn’t come in to fulfill your dream—your earthly dreams. He comes in as a replacement. You know the entry ‘rite,’ if you want to call it that, but the outward expression of somebody coming to Christ? You look in the New Testament. What was it? When somebody came to Christ, what did they do?
( congregational response ).
They were baptized! They didn’t have altars. They were baptized. What did that mean? What does baptism mean?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, it’s death, isn’t it? When I go into the water, I am literally laying down my life. I am giving it up. I’m saying, Lord, I embrace what Jesus did in my place on that cross. I deserve to die. I deserve what He got. And I am willingly laying down my life, but I’m doing so based upon your promise, the hope of His promise…what we were just singing about. The hope of His promise, that if I lay down my life and call upon the name of the Lord, that You will come and give me the life that came forth out of that tomb.
That’s been Your dream. That’s been Your plan from the beginning is to share Yourself with me! All that You are, the joy, the power, the freedom, all of that to come in and to literally live in me! That’s what it means to be His child! That’s what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ.
Oh, the greatest danger for younger generations is to grow up and learn the truths, learn the doctrines, learn how to sing, but all you’ve got is up here. And you never come to the point where you realize what it means!
There’s one thing that really jumped out at me, among others, but one particular thing that jumps out at me right now is that Paul calls this a mystery. The NLT uses the word ‘secret.’ This is the kind of knowledge of what he’s talking about. You cannot posses this knowledge by…I don’t care who you are, how smart you are, how diligent you are to search out truth. If you’re simply going and looking for it with natural intelligence, you will never, ever discover this.
( congregational amens ).
It is so contrary to human nature to think that I live because I die, that I am…in myself I am a worthless sinner deserving death. But in Christ, I am loved as His child because I have received His life in my place…in its place.
I’ll tell you, it’s like I said recently, the Devil had no clue what was going on, what he’d got himself into when he crucified the Lord. He thought he was winning. But I’ll tell you, what does the scripture say? That, if they had known, if they’d understood these things, “…they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (NIV). You see why it was kept a mystery? This is truth that can only be revealed by God’s Spirit.
And one thing that is interesting to me in Paul’s words of exhortation to these people. Look…go back and…let’s see, back in verse 9, there’s a thought here that needs to be expressed. Paul says…he’s writing to believers here, by the way. “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
Now this is Christians he’s talking about. And basically, Paul is saying, I know you don’t really understand what you need to understand. You don’t fully appreciate what God has given you when He gave you His Son. And so, my prayer for you is, God, open your understanding.
Well, my God, if that’s true of Christians, how much more true is it of people that have never come to this! You can’t explain people into this. We need…my God, we need to pray that God will bring every person for whom this is not true, Christ is not your life…that God will bring you to such a point of conviction where you will know what you are! You will know who He is! You will know what’s needed and you’ll be moved by the grace of God to lay down your life and embrace His!
There’s got to be that point in time, whether it’s dramatic or quiet, there’s got to be a point of real divine revelation that goes to the heart! You think about Paul as the poster child of this. This was a guy who was so given to his religion that he used that as a pretext to go out and persecute Christians! That’s how blind he was! That’s how much of a mystery what he later came to understand was to Paul. Paul had no clue what was going on and what he was really doing until he met Jesus, rather dramatically, in his case.
But how does he describe that? He describes that as the revelation of the mystery, “…of the knowledge of…God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (KJV). And where did it come to? Was it just his mind? Did somebody sit him down and say, let me explain this doctrine to you? No! This was something that God used to penetrate his heart!
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May 9, 2021 - No. 1492
“Ready for a Dark Hour” Conclusion
Broadcast #1492
May 9, 2021
May 9, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1492 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Folks, we going to, every one of us, be in situations that we’re gonna have that knowledge. You can’t just pull out a book, what am I supposed to do? This is something that becomes ingrained in us, when we recognize the battles of our lives are not our battles. They’re God’s battles.
And if we’ll humble ourselves in His hand and trust Him, God’s gonna put you through the lion and the bear situations, so that when Goliath comes, you’ll be able to look back and say, I know God. I know Him because of what I have been through.
He taught me how to trust Him. He taught me what was really going on. I had a vision of circumstances that’s different from everybody else who might have reacted in that situation. I’ve learned from God Himself, by humbling myself.
We talked a little bit the other night about Peter, and how he came to be the powerful apostle that he was, man full of zeal, full of natural strength, always quick. But there was a lesson that Peter needed to learn.
Now think about the time in which he learned this. Was it not an hour of darkness? Yeah, it was an hour of darkness. And Peter professed the right thing, but he didn’t know that his own strength was not enough! And so he said, I will never desert you! I will never deny you! And Jesus said, yes you will. Satan has desired to test you and basically he had permission to do it. But wasn’t it an awesome thing…when you think about what was going on. What was Satan’s desire?
( congregational response ).
Destroy Him. Destroy Peter. Destroy His influence. Take away his confidence. Cause him to just walk away defeated. What was God’s objective in allowing all of this? God wanted a man who would be in a position to strengthen his brothers. He said, when you’re converted, strengthen your brothers.
Why could Peter strengthen his brothers? Why wasn’t all the rest of them who didn’t do this? Why wasn’t it their job? He had been through something that caused him to know something about God that they had never experienced: God’s love and His mercy and His acceptance, recognition!
God was the one who knew what Peter was made of! Peter didn’t know it. But God brought him through something deep, and as a result of that, and his humbling himself, and learning God’s grace is enough, God forgives. He doesn’t throw me out because I’ve trusted myself.
And I know, I know now I can’t trust myself. And so now he’s able to write, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (NIV). He’s able to write all the words of encouragement that he gave to his brothers and to all the saints to whom he wrote.
What did it take for Peter to be able to do that? What did it take for Peter to be able to stand in an hour of darkness, when he faced death? He knew his God. How did he know Him? He had been there and done that and God had tested him at every point in his life. And he’d seen, not his own strength, but God’s faithfulness—God’s faithfulness! How many of us know these things, in our heads? But how many of us have areas of our lives where there’s need right now?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Yeah. Well, God knows about that. He’s not mad at us. He loves us. He knows. He’s patient. Thank God, He’s patient. He’s got a lot to be patient with in me. But I’ll tell you, He is so faithful.
And of course, we know, we’ve heard so many times of the purpose of God in the wilderness. I led you this way to teach you, and all of that. But here’s a point that…as soon as I sat down last week, this thought came to me and I didn’t get up to give it out again. But, we have this idea, if you’re in school…school to us is kind of a duty. You might enjoy it or you might not. But either way, it’s something that you kind of have to conform to a schedule and whatever the regimen is to be in school.
So we think as school as one thing and life as another. I get out of school and now I’m free to be me. I’m free to do fun things. I’m free to do what I want to do instead of what they tell me to do.
Here’s the thought that I had: in terms of the Kingdom of God, school is ‘always’ in session. The Kingdom of God is not classroom learning. It is learning to know God in life, over and over again. But here’s the thing. You know, where we might look at school as a boring duty, what did Jesus say about it? “Come to me…take my yoke…learn from me…and you will find…” What? “…Rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I’ll tell you, God wants us to know that this walking with Him and learning from Him is not meant to be drudgery. It’s not a burden. It’s not a duty. It’s not works. It’s not law and obedience, in that sense. It’s simply the privilege of walking with Him.
What was it that enabled Noah to stand in his day? Did he suddenly wake up one day and say, oh, wait a minute, I better, I better, you know, listen to God. It says that Noah…what did he do before this? He walked with God!
What does that mean? He walked with Him! The ordinary stuff that he had to do every single day, he was conscious of God and looked to God for the needs that he discovered in his circumstances, but also in himself. He walked with God. He got to know Him. And so when it came time for the flood, God had somebody that He could talk to. “…Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” (KJV).
I’ll tell you, God is gonna have a people…He has a people. But right now is the time for God’s people to be ready, because being ready is not waiting for the hour of difficulty and struggle and strife and challenge. Being ready is learning from Him right now.
I pray that God will help me, and you, because darkness is coming. Darkness is coming on the earth. And as I say, this principle, the principle I’m talking about today would apply regardless of the circumstances. But is not darkness coming? Did not God talk about an hour that was coming that would be like none other in the history of the world?
Now you think about how God allows the Devil to do certain things in certain times. What about what Jesus said when He was arrested? “But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.” (NIV). God had ordained that He would step back and allow the Devil to do whatever he wanted and he inflicted upon Jesus the most ignominious, painful, humiliating death that they could imagine. And the Devil thought he’d won.
But all the Devil did was fulfill the very purpose of God that enables us to be here today! Thank God! Because when He died, He took my sins with Him. He took me with Him! When He came forth He brought forth a brand new me! Thank God! So we see that even when God allows darkness to happen, it’s for a great, eternal purpose. And I’ll tell you, the darkness that will end this age will be for eternal glory. It’s going to absolutely be the instrument of God finishing His purpose.
I want to be ready for that hour. I don’t know when, and what, and all the details of that, but I know it’s coming, don’t you? Do we not see the spirit of the age…they talk about globalism. It’s not about nations anymore. The elites are pulling as hard as they can to build a global society.
Who do you think is behind that? Doesn’t this sound a whole lot like the Tower of Babel? Let’s unite mankind lest we be scattered across the earth…let’s build a tower, reach up to heaven. We’re gonna have our own religion. We’re gonna have our own society. We’re gonna solve humanity’s future. We don’t need all that Christian stuff. That’s the spirit of the age. Darkness is coming. It is being engineered and God is allowing it. We are in that age.
But here’s the thing, that I really didn’t get to last week. And I just want to kind of touch on it. Because it’s not just that there’s an hour of darkness, it’s not just that there’s a people who know their God, but it’s the people who become people of action. Where others are compromised, where others immediately fall away…or they run and hide because they’re afraid, I’ll tell you, there’s gonna be a people who know their God.
And what it means is they’re gonna see what’s really going on. They’re gonna understand. They’re not gonna say, God, where are You, I don’t get this. They’re going to say, I know exactly why we’re here. I know that God is the one who has foretold what is happening and I’m not dismayed by it. I know that God is gonna bring His people through. Jesus said, I’ll be with you to the end of the age. And He didn’t lie!
And He said there’s gonna be a day when He’s gonna come in triumph, and destroy this world. And I’ll tell you, that’s gonna happen. So even though we’ve got to go through this time, when it looks like the Devil will have won…and he seemingly is exterminating Christians, right and left, it will be an hour in which Christ will triumph. He will rule and reign.
Did we not sing that this morning? Is He not ruling even when those are the circumstances? Yes, God will finish His purpose in the earth! But He’s gonna have a people who will be able to act at that time.
Now what does that mean? What is ‘doing’? “…The people who do know their God shall be strong, and do…” (KJV). What is it? Well one…certainly one of it, one of those things is just standing when others fall. Didn’t Jesus warn about a time when iniquity would abound and, “…the love of most will grow cold, but he stands firm to the end will be saved.” (NIV).
I’ll tell you, there’s gonna come a time when we’re gonna find out who really knows the Lord and who doesn’t. It’s hard to tell in America today. Man, there’s so many people that profess, oh yeah, I love Jesus. And I’ll tell you what, I pray that…I believe there’s a good number that do.
But I’ll tell you what, what’s going on in the world today…there is a darkness that is already descended in many countries. But I believe with all my heart, there are far more real Christians outside of the United States than there are here. There are large, strong movements of the Gospel, calling people out of the highways and hedges of the other parts of the world. There are real harvests going on in the midst of deep darkness and persecution.
Do you think America is gonna escape? I’ll tell you, we have a sleeping church, quote-unquote in America. But we’re gonna find out. But when do you get ready for that? Now! That’s what this is about. You don’t wait ‘til something happens. The people who knew their God, they knew Him when it was nice—when the weather nice and the circumstances were good. They were faithful then. That’s what it takes.
But I’ll tell you, this spirit, this ability to endure to the end doesn’t come from you and your strength. It comes from Him. It comes from Christ in us, the hope of glory! We learn that we can’t do it and we learn to rely upon Him. We learn about His faithfulness in every circumstance. We learn it now. And so when the challenge comes, we’re equipped. Not because of who we are, but because of who He is and His faithfulness.
But I was thinking about this, when Christ comes, what’s He’s gonna come for? A bride…a confused, divided, weak compromised people? Or is He gonna come for a bride who has made herself ready as He says in Revelation 19. There is a process by which that’s going to happen.
How many times have we read Ephesians 4? See, I’m not even opening my Bible. You all know these scriptures. But Ephesians 4, and the process by which he describes how it happens. And so many times the emphasis is on the apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists, I guess was the other one. And all these great ministries…they’re gonna get us ready.
I’ll tell you, what is their job? Why does God give gifts like that? It’s to get you ready. It’s not to do all the work, it’s to get the saints ready to participate in the work. Now participation doesn’t necessarily mean standing up here. But it does mean finding your place in the Kingdom of God, and living and walking with God even if it’s like Sophie, the washer woman.
You know God and you’re living for Him right where you’re at. That’s what God is wanting. But God wants every member of the Body of Christ to become a channel of life to the rest! How do we reach the fulness of the measure of Christ? It says, every part participates, every part is active, every part is doing its part.
I’ll tell you, do you think that just maybe God will use the darkness to purge and purify His people, and finish the job that He has set out to do? That’s part of it. How does He equip us for that? Will information do it? No, God is gonna to have to build real changes in our lives and it’s while you’re doing the ordinary stuff that you don’t even think about right now as having any relevance to this. That’s where God is gonna teach you and me the lessons that will enable us to rise to the occasion and be His people in an hour of darkness. That’s where God’s going with this.
I’ll tell you…I want to get that, because God has promised that He is going to have a church without spot, without wrinkle, without blemish, or any such thing. Only God can do that. But I want to see past what happens in this world. I want to see that God is going to use this. I want to be somebody who can rise up and say, I refuse to be dismayed by what the Devil is being allowed to do. I know God is in charge. I know that He is gonna help His people in this hour.
And one of the other things that we mention from time to time, is what about the simple fact of being light in the darkness. When there comes a time of great darkness…we’re seeing it in other parts of the world right now, many times, that’s the key to a harvest! God will use the darkness to wake up some people to say, hey, wait a minute, my life here is miserable! I see where the world is going! Everything I’ve lived for is worthless! Oh, God! And suddenly you have a heart that’s prepared.
Where are they going to find out about Him? From compromised people who just give in to the world and go with the flow? Or with people who simply know and love God. Not people who point their finger and say, what’s the matter with you, straighten up and fly right. But people who say, I know where you’re at. God has brought me out! He’s given me a reason to live! He’s given me life! He forgave my sins! I’m not better than you, but I lift up a Savior who is!
There’s going to be people who absolutely will be able to stand in such an hour and God’s going to use you. He’s gonna use the ordinary people. It’s not going to be the great evangelist who stands before thousands. It’s going to be the ordinary people who just live their life and have something different. It will shine like a light the darker it gets.
But only Christ can give us that power. Only He can change us! Only He can form those qualities in our lives, and only as we humble ourselves to His hand in ordinary stuff. May God help us!
And one thing that we’re gonna see a lot of, I’m persuaded, before it’s over, we’re going to see a need for dying grace. You think about the apostles, every single one of them, except John, died a martyr’s death. I’ll tell you, it takes something to able to stand there when they’re saying, bow or we’re gonna put you to death…and say, Jesus is Lord. I gladly lay down my life for Him. He gave His life for me. I lay it down.
You think about the three Hebrew children. You think about Daniel and the place they were put, and how they had such a confidence toward God, they said, I don’t care what the circumstances are, God is God! If I die, I die! If I live, I live! It doesn’t matter!
Paul could say that, no matter whether I live or die, I’m the Lord’s. But I’ll tell you, those prophets, apostles rather, who wrote such stirring words, words of encouragement, and instruction to God’s people, there came a time when they had to put up or shut up. They had a time when they were standing before the rulers of that day.
Paul had a time when he stood before Nero and made his final testimony of faith in Christ, and his head was taken off with the sword. I’ll tell you, you don’t just come into that casually, as a casual, Sunday-morning Christian. God has to work those qualities in our lives and He is doing it right now. He may be preparing somebody right here to lay down your life as a testimony to a dying world that Jesus is Lord.
How do you get to that point, where you have that kind of strength? Man, we’ve got to start learning now. We’ve got to say, God’s teaching me every single day. I’m in school and I want to learn.
I’ll tell you, what did Jesus say to one of the churches? I think it was Sardis. I didn’t look this one up, but if you look at the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, one of them was in a particular place of persecution where the authorities were trying to exterminate them and what was the instruction? Go hide in the cave? That might be the case in some instances. But God said this, faithful…Jesus said, His words, “…be…faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” (KJV).
Man, it takes something more than human strength to be able to say that. God has to work that in a human being, to have that kind of confidence that God is in charge. He’s worth serving no matter what happens down here, because it’ll happen. Satan is going to be allowed to take over and when he does, do you think he’s gonna be happy with us?
Do you think the holocaust was something? I don’t want to just be sensational about this. But I’ll tell you, there’s darkness coming, but God is faithfully working in you and me, every day, right now, to get us ready. And I want to be one of those that listens to His voice, that learns.
Jesus gave us a principle about the Kingdom of God. He said this: he that’s faithful in little, will be faithful in much. Now, do you begin to see the relevance of ordinary life? How easy is it for us to let little things slip and slide…I don’t have to be really totally honest about this. I can let that slide. I don’t have to do a serious job of this. It’s not important.
Everything is important in the economy of God. If God has put something in front of us to do, what does He say? Do it with your might. Demonstrate a heart that says, God, You have put me here and I’m trusting in You, and I’m going to do what’s right come what may.
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who sees a heart that will be faithful in the little things. Who do you think He’s gonna give the responsibility to when it matters? If you’re one of those that thinks you can just slip and slide by and not pay a lot of attention right now and be careless, and you’re gonna be fine with the real test comes, you’re deceived.
I’ll tell you, God is faithfully working, isn’t He? And I don’t want this to sound like it’s a scary kind of thing. God doesn’t mean it to be that. But the reality is, we’re living for God in world that hates Him. The god of this world would love nothing more than to exterminate you and me from this planet and take over.
I don’t know what all God is going to allow him to do, but I’ll tell you what, everything God allows the Devil to do will wind up for glory for us, for everyone that puts their trust in Him and is willing to learn.
But I guess it all comes back to the simple things. God, help us to be faithful in little. God, help us to live with a God-consciousness that says, God, where You have put me is where I need to be. Help me to learn to love You. Help me to learn how to trust You, to know You in a practical way.
You’re going to bring me face to face with needs about myself that I’d rather not know about, rather not face. But You’re doing it so that I will be able to bring those to You, and I’m gonna learn something about You as You meet my need that I didn’t know any other way. I knew it by theory, but now I know it, I’ve been there. I’m gonna have a knowledge of You that’s gonna carry me in darker and darker times.
God is preparing His people right now. Jesus’ word continually about the end of the age, is what? Be ready. He doesn’t say, wait ‘til stuff happens and ‘get’ ready. He says, ‘be’ ready. This is the hour when God is working.
So, if your life seems ordinary, boring, you wish it were different, what did the Lord say? “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God….” We need to start seeing our lives through God’s eyes and learning how to rest in Him and cooperate with Him, because God is going to have a people. I want to be one of those people, don’t you? It’s not in me to be that. But God is faithful, isn’t He? He’s gonna get us ready. So, Praise God!
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May 2, 2021 - No. 1491
“Ready for a Dark Hour” Part One
Broadcast #1491
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1491 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t know, I’ve just had a sense that the Lord wants to prepare us, that things won’t always be the way they are. Even if that weren’t true, though, the truths that I have on my heart are still true and they are things that we need to know about, we need to live in the light of.
And…I took off last week on Daniel’s prophecy that we have referred to a number of times in the past, and I’ll just refer to it in Daniel 11. This where he prophesied of a dark time in Israel’s future, when a heathen king would come in and just be angry because he had just suffered some military disappointment, and he would decide that he was going to destroy this terrible worship of Jehovah. And he came in and slaughtered a hog on the altar of the temple and basically took over and just…it was just a seeming triumph for evil, for darkness.
And, of course, Daniel prophesied that many would fall under this. There would be a lot of compromise, there would be a lot of people who just wouldn’t be able to stand up to it, but he said, the people who know their God will be strong, and in the King James, do exploits and other translations different things. But the original Hebrew doesn’t have any idea of what they do, it just says that they do. Basically, they are people of action as opposed to all the rest who kind of fell under the pressure of what was happening.
How many of you believe that God wants us to be a people, regardless of the hour in which we live, who are able to act when He wants us to act? We’re not compromised, we’re not afraid, we’re not living in compromise or fear. And I believe that’s something in the heart of God.
And so, how do you get to that point? And so, the first part of this is the focus on the fact of knowing God. And it’s something we’ve talked about a number of times lately, but I seem to…I sense in my own life and in all of our lives, I believe God wants us to have a deeper perspective on what it takes to get to this point.
And one of the points that needs to be made is that this is not a “switch” that you “turn on” when times get hard. Either somebody already knows God and then they arrive at a time where that strength is called upon, or they get there and they’re not ready.
Folks, God is not wanting us to live in a compromised, careless, sleepy way and then suddenly expect that when times get difficult and when the challenge comes, we’re gonna be ready for that. God is working right now in every one of us to make us what He wants us to be.
And, one example that came to my mind — I didn’t use this last week — but the foolish virgins. As far as they were concerned, they were ready, weren’t they? But they had somehow just never really gotten what it was all about and so the time came when the Bridegroom came, they weren’t ready. And so, they were shut out. They had to go try to do something…but those who were ready went in.
There’s a sense throughout scripture, regardless of what the circumstance is, the principle of being ready long before anything happens is there, isn’t it? Ready for the coming of the Lord, ready for the things that are gonna happen.
Noah was ready, wasn’t he, when the time came for the judgment of the flood? Others throughout scripture, there’s this sense that God is always working in His people and there will come times when what He has been doing will be the foundation for doing something.
Folks, we don’t have what it takes. Absolutely, we do not have what it takes. We might think we do. We might think, oh, I know about all that stuff so I’m good. But there is a work that has to be done by…that only God can do. And it has to be done at the heart level, or we do not have what we need.
But oh, I thank God for His faithfulness! I thank God, who knows the way that we take, who knows how to prepare His people. God’s working in hearts and lives. And He’s bringing us to a place where we ‘know’ Him.
And you know, one of the things I did emphasize and I think we need to recognize this and repeat it until we get it: this is not just for special people. You see, what God has for His people is not just for, well, yes, that applies to the ones who are gonna stand up in the front and they’re gonna be the preachers, the apostles, the prophets, whatever. They’re the important people and they’re the ones who really need to know God. We’re just gonna hang on their coattails, I guess, is the way we sort of unconsciously think about it.
Folks, I’ll tell you something about the New Covenant: ‘all’ will know Him. That’s what it’s about. There was a sense in which in the Old Testament there were people who knew God and had a particular calling and people went to God through those people. That’s not the way it is now. God wants every single person to ‘know’ Him!
And I’ll tell you, what God is doing is making a minister out of every single member of the Body of Christ. There are no unimportant people…what God has purposed to do in His church, in the world involves every single person in the Body of Christ.
And you see this unfolded, and yet, how easy is it for us to sort of exempt ourselves and think, oh, that’s for the special people. You know, when we read about these wonderful stories, we find it hard to relate to them because we don’t have this exalted call. We’re not called to be a prophet. We’re not called to be a king. We’re not called to lead people across the Red Sea, so I guess we’re just part of the herd.
Folks, there ain’t no herd. This is something where every…God has a purpose for your life, right here, today. You matter. You might think your life is ordinary and I’ll get to that in a second. You know, let’s go ahead and get to that, because this is a point we’ve made several times lately and I just want to make it more clear.
This involves all of life. We tend to think of spiritual activity as one thing and ordinary life as another. And so, we come to the services, we fellowship with the people, we pray and we read the Bible. That’s when we get to know God. Then the rest is just kind of…that’s life, as though that’s irrelevant.
Folks, every part of life is important because getting to know God is not simply coming to a knowledge of information. It’s not about information. It’s about coming to ‘know’ Him! And the only way we can truly know Him is when we are brought face to face with needs in our lives, where we have a choice. We can just fall under it. We can look for a human solution or we can do what God wants us to do, turn to Him with our hearts and say, oh God, this is when I need You.
We just sang the song. Well, how appropriate. This is when I need You, Lord. You have created in me a sense of need because of something I’m experiencing in my everyday life. And so, I come to You to discover what it is that You are able…how You are able to bring me through this and change me! Not just get me through circumstantially, but change my heart through this.
You know, we tend to think of ordinary activities as just ordinary. What about your housekeeping? Oh well, that’s just…you know, boring, stuff I’ve got to do. It’s duty. There’s nothing spiritual about it.
I just…remember the story Brother Thomas told and I guess he repeated that many times and I’ve probably referred to it, about the lady he encountered who was just convinced that she had a ministry of God and she was just so frustrated that she couldn’t do it! And the situation was that she was living in a dirty trailer that she wasn’t taking care of. The dishes were piled high. It was dirty. Her kids were not well kept.
And Brother Thomas said, yeah, you have a calling from God. Clean your house, wash your dishes…put decent clothes…clean their clothes and put decent clothes on the kids and wipe their noses! You have a calling from God!
But most people don’t see it that way. If you’ve been put in that place, God wants you to learn about Him in that! That’s not an impediment. That’s not just a side track that is irrelevant to your spiritual life. That’s where God has you and that matters! Oh my, does it matter!
You tell Susanna Wesley that being a housewife and mother is unimportant. And then you ask John and Charles Wesley, her sons, about the influence that their godly mother had upon them…they touched the world, folks, in their day. And it all came out of the fountain of a faithful mother who worshiped God and instilled in them a sense of God and His salvation.
I’ll tell you, if God has put you in a place of keeping a household, that matters and every little detail of it matters! You might sit there and be bored to death and…oh, I’ve got to do the laundry, oh, I’ve got to clean! I’ll tell you, you look to God in those times. You fellowship with Him. You learn patience. You learn faithfulness. You learn honesty. You learn all the virtues that come with being a godly person.
You don’t learn them in school. You don’t learn them in the big stuff, the important stuff, as we think of it. You learn them in the everyday, ordinary things of life. Job…oh, that job! Oh, if I could just get a different job then my problems would be solved. God, help us to learn how to find His place in the beginning, and then to humble ourselves and say, God, You’ve got me where I’m at. Help me to be faithful!
Help me to learn the things that I need to learn! I’m gonna discover things in this place that I may not even like. It may seem mundane, ordinary, unimportant! How could this be relevant to the Kingdom of God and yet, God put you there so that you could confront, not stuff, but stuff in you!
This is the problem. The problem is not our circumstances. The problem is here and how we react to our circumstances. And if we will humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand, He will help us to rejoice!
My mind goes back to a rather famous lady in the early days of the movement I once was a part of. And I’ve referred to her before, Sophie, the washer woman. I mean, here was an uneducated lady who made her living washing clothes in New York City! Poor woman…I mean, by every earthly standard, she was just one of the unwashed masses, if you would, just unimportant person.
Yet, she so radiated the Life of Christ that she touched untold numbers of people. They saw Him in her and her joy in spite of her circumstances. She bloomed where she was planted. But she didn’t treat the ordinary stuff of life as though it was ordinary and separate from her spiritual life. Housekeeping, job, school…any aspect of ordinary life.
How about failure? Everybody here just loves that one. When you really run up against yourself and you’re sure that you can handle this and you find out you can’t, and you blow up and things come out of you that you’d rather not admit were there. Does that matter?
It’s not that we seek that or just yield to that. But I’ll tell you, doing the best we can do, we’re gonna run into those circumstances. Does that matter? Is that important? Yeah, it is. Do we learn something about God at those times?
( congregational response ).
Can we have a real knowledge of God that does not take that into account? What is God like when we mess up really bad? What is He like when we lose our temper for the umpteenth time in a row and we’re struggling with that? Whatever it is, when we’re struggling with this one besetting sin…oh, God help me! Is that when…do you think maybe that’s when we learn about God? Do you think that’s when we come to know Him? Yeah. That’s at the heart of it. Surely God can help us right here.
But I’ll tell you, and there is life, I believe His Spirit is here. There’s life that is going out. But it takes more than information to change us, to make us the kind of people that Daniel is describing, the people who know their God and are people of action in a time of darkness. May God help us not to have this attitude toward life that all this ordinary stuff…I’m just so frustrated with it, I don’t want to mess with it. I want to find a different way. Oh God, get me out of it!
God’s got you in it! And He’s got you in it because He loves you, and He’s doing things in your life that He can’t do any other way. I’ll tell you, do you believe that God has a path marked out for us? We’ve used that so many times in Hebrews chapter 12. Yeah, God has a purpose for your life in His Kingdom.
Now you might not be the one who’s lifted up in the eyes of men, but you matter. Your life has a place and if you don’t fill it, there’s something missing. God wants to do something in your life just as much as He did in the lives of these famous people that we read about. May God help us.
You know, Paul, for example, said something that he had learned. He said I have learned…we use this scripture, this scripture was used recently. I have learned in every circumstance to be content.
Do you suppose he learned something about God? Yeah. “My God shall supply all your need…” (KJV). Well, how did he know that? Go to Bible School, sit in a seminar? No! God put him in places of deprivation where there was a need! He put him in places where he had plenty. He had to learn how to keep his spiritual equilibrium and his confidence toward God in those circumstances, and he learned it by experience.
There is no school in God’s Kingdom apart from the school of hard knocks. We’d love it to be some other way. We’d love to be comfortable and simply learn it up here and suppose that we’re ready for a time like this. Folks, it doesn’t work that way.
But another thing about knowing God that I think really matters is that this is not an attainment. Now, yes, these people knew God, but there’s never a time where, okay, now I know God and it’s all…it’s the end of the journey in the sense that I know all I need to know. Paul said, there’s one thing I do…and that was that he pressed forward.
And, his aim was that I may know Him. And what he meant by that is, I want to experience Him in every aspect of my life! I want to experience His provision when I run into the needs that I will inevitably run into in my life.
And here he was an apostle writing…the greatest apostle, no doubt, in the New Testament, writing to believers to encourage them and he doesn’t say, I have gotten to the place where I know God, now you get there, too. He says, I don’t count myself to have laid hold of all this, but this is a pattern of my life. I have set myself to learn from Him, to yield to Him, to come to a greater, deeper knowledge because there’s always more.
We never get to the end in this life. I’ll tell you, when we come to the hour when our toes are turned up and we’re ready to go along to be with Keith and the Lord…praise God! But you’ll be still learning! We will still be learning even as we cross that river, we will be learning from God and need Him. We will need Him every step of the way.
And so Paul describes the pattern of his own life. I am learning, I am continuing to come to know Him in a deeper way. That’s how you should live, because, watch out, there are people who just simply live their lives for what they can get down here. They’re simply gratifying earthly desires. That’s where their heart is. But that’s not what God has called us to. He’s called…they hate the cross. They don’t see what God has done for us in the cross. It’s a place where can die to that so that we can live to something that’s eternal. God has got to work that in us. There is no shortcut. Praise God!
So, getting to be a people who know God when it counts, when it matters, is something that happens in every single day life, as we look to God for the simple things. Have you lost your keys? Does God care about all the simple stuff? Does He care about the laundry that has to be folded? Does He care about the dishes that need to be washed?
Does He care about the job that you’re bored with? It’s the same thing every day. Does He care about traffic? Does He care about all the other stuff, ordinary stuff? Does He care about your school work…and you having a sense of…well, you’re dedicated to it? I mean, you’re willing to submit yourself to it. You’re willing to do your best, to learn, to honor God where you’re at? Do you care about that or is that something you have to get out of the way so you can get to the important stuff?
God has us at any moment in our life where He wants us and He does it because He loves us, because He knows what’s going on. He knows where He’s taking us. He knows why. Folks, that’s why all things ‘do’ work together, “…for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (NIV).
I just sense…don’t you? I mean, isn’t that where we’re headed? Is the world getting better? Is it gonna get better? Are we gonna just all have a nice, comfortable life and live it out and everything’s gonna be peachy? No, there’s gonna be stuff happen. I’ll tell you, it’s gonna get worse.
But I’ll tell you, God uses life to prepare His people for the calling that they have. Now obviously, in the scriptures we tend to focus on the big, important people. But I want us, starting with me…I want us to recognize, even when we talk about these people, that these principles apply to us.
Now how did Joseph get to be the second in the land of Egypt? That was an awesome calling that God had for him. How did he get there? Did he go to government school? Did he go to some…hey, this is how you enhance your natural abilities? You’ve got all this ability, now we need to teach you how to use it to do the job.
No. God had him sent by his brothers, his own brothers…betrayed, sold as a slave to a foreign, heathen land, where they worshiped idols. And he becomes a slave in an important household there.
So what does he do? Does he just gets bitter and say, boy, I don’t know…this God…I don’t know about Him? Maybe those dreams I had…that was just a bunch of junk. I’m bitter at my brothers. I’m just gonna…no! There’s was something about him that had integrity.
And we’re talking about years here. We’re talking about a lot of time. This is where you get up in the morning…okay, what’s my day like? Well, his day consisted of organizing the affairs of an Egyptian household. He had to direct the affairs of other slaves and provide for the food and make sure everything was there, so the master…all he had to do was sit down and eat. He was busy with ordinary stuff. There was nothing spiritual, quote-unquote, about what he was doing, but he did it with integrity, didn’t he? He continued to do what he was supposed to do.
And then, of course, we know that, the…what happened with the wife there and how he got falsely accused and thrown into prison. These are thing we’ve talked about many times. But, how often do we hear this and not really identify with it, because we’re not one of those ‘important’ people.
Yeah, you are. In God’s economy every single one of you is important. Every one of you matters. He cares about you. And the circumstances He puts you in matter just as much to His overall plan as the circumstances He put Joseph in.
And so, Joseph took the opportunity there, not to get bitter, not to question God, not to give into all of the kinds of things that we would have given into. And, again, we’re talking years! We’re talking years of trying to deal with other prisoners, but yet, his character was such that the prison warden, whoever was in charge of the whole thing, put him over the prisoners. They recognized somebody who had integrity.
How easy is it to blow off the ordinary stuff as though that doesn’t matter? But, oh, if God gave me something important to do, I’d rise to the occasion. No, you wouldn’t. Your character and mine is formed in the ordinary stuff of everyday life. And our readiness to be His people in a time of challenge is formed by that everyday life.
And so it was with Joseph. And in God’s time — he tried to engineer his own deliverance, as we remember — but, in God’s time he was placed in that high position and he was ready. He didn’t even take vengeance on his brothers. I mean, what grace! You think about how unnatural that is!
You can’t say, oh, he was just a different kind of person. No! He was made of the same stuff as you and me. It took a work of the grace of God to fix that man’s heart to where he could react the way God wanted him to react. And there was no other way except as a slave and as a prisoner. I’ll tell you, God’s ways are not our ways.
Moses…man of great accomplishment, man who could stand up and command attention with his voice…you think that made him ready? That was all human ability. God had to bring him to a place where he was described as the meekest man on the face of the earth. Guy wouldn’t even stand up for himself.
I mean, how many of you, if somebody really got on to you would just take it, wouldn’t answer back? God got him to that place. Do you suppose maybe he learned a few things by having to humble himself?
And it wasn’t important stuff. He wasn’t out there taking theology lessons. He was keeping sheep. He was a shepherd in Midian and that’s all he imagined the rest of his life was gonna be. I’m just gonna live out my life, and when God called him, he said, here am I, send somebody else! But God had him ready to be the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. And God used him mightily.
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April 25, 2021 - No. 1490
True Repentance: Conclusion
Broadcast #1490
April 25, 2021
April 25, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1490 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Jesus took care of what I did. But oh God, why would I do the things that I do? I know God has got to get down into here and change this! I cannot allow myself to be satisfied with what other people think of me. I’ve got to say, I’ve got a relationship with a holy God who sees the depths of my heart. He doesn’t care about the stuff I do. There’s nothing I can do that will make up for what I am.
And so, David is really recognizing — oh God, I’ve got to get deeply honest, in the depths of my soul. Do you see the difference? This is not a small difference. It’s quiet in here. But it’s hard, but necessary truth.
Because what happens is so easy to happen, is that we can go through a repentance that changes our behavior and our appearance — what we call repentance. And we can adopt a religious way of life — churches are full of this — they’re full of it. And people, to all outward appearance, appear to be great Christians and nothing has ever changed in their heart.
Isn’t that the problem? Jesus said to the Pharisees, you know, you do all these righteous things but nothing — inside, you’re like dead men’s bones. It’s all full of corruption. Nothing has really changed in there. God sees that. It’s not that this is bad stuff, it’s just — God doesn’t care about that. I mean how many of you — well, I’ll wait until something he says later on in this passage.
But anyway, David is at least recognizing, this is not just a mess up in something I did, this comes from something in here, and I need help. I need You to cleanse me in here. I need You to do something in here.
“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean….” Now, I didn’t take time to look this up again. But I know that hyssop was a plant. I know it was a branch of some kind, whatever it was, they actually used it in the Law. It was actually the piece of — the kind of plant material that they used when they painted the door posts. Remember back in Egypt they had to put blood on the doorposts as a sign to the destroying angel. They applied that with hyssop. And there were other things in the Law. It became kind of a symbol of divine cleansing. And so, David is kind of referring to that.
“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity”. So again, now he’s talking about the need to be cleansed because I did stuff. How many of you know we need that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I mean, there’s a scripture over here in 1st John that really majors on that. Just hold your place there. But I mean, just go the beginning of 1st John, verse 6. If we claim — well, it says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light….”
Now think about what he’s saying there. Is he talking about externals? No, he’s talking about something that gets right down into the heart, because God sees it all. So walking in the light involves a heart honesty, doesn’t it?
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” Thank God! There’s a provision for that.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Boy, self-deception is a, like I say, it’s an easy thing. We need the Lord, we need one another. But here’s the promise, “If we confess our sins….”
Now, confess is not just admit. Think about it this way. I did something and God is, in a sense, the Prosecutor. He’s saying, you did something. Now, I could stand over here and say, but it’s not so bad. I didn’t really do it. You know, try to somehow defend, come up with some kind of a defense that minimizes what I did. Or I could admit, yes, I did.
But I’ll tell you what confession is. Confession is, I’m gonna step over here with God and look at that thing and call it what it is. I am 100 percent in agreement with the Prosecutor and everything He says about it. There is a confession, an agreement. If we confess our sin, we’re taking God’s side against what is wrong in us.
Folks, that’s the only hope we have. I have got to be 100 percent on His side and say, God do what it takes to make me fit to live with You one day, because there’s nothing good in me. That’s what Paul said. If Paul, the apostle, could say with a straight face, “I know that in me (that is in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing….” (KJV). We’ve pointed that out so many times here lately — seems like this has come up.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just….” (NIV). Now, there are two things there. Faithful is, He doesn’t change. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to catch God on a good day?
( congregational response ).
And avoid going to Him because He’s not feeling quite so generous today? No! He is utterly faithful to what He has promised. Man, you want someone you can depend upon, that’s God. Thank God! He doesn’t change! He’s Someone we can go to at all times, and He invites us to come. He invites us to come when we have a need. Man, that’s all the time with me.
But He also says something else here. “…He is faithful and just….” Now ‘just’ has to do with justice. It’s a legal issue, ‘cause remember, it’s not just that I jumped off the building and broke my leg, it’s that I broke a law. Folks, when we sin, we break God’s law. And the law of God says, the one who sins, dies. That’s the law.
And so how in the world — it’s a point we’ve made, but I think a lot of people need to get it, need to really get this in your thinking and understand the ways of God. How can a just God forgive sin? How can He uphold the justice of the law and say, yes, the law is right and I will carry it out — without destroying us?
You see, I have a representative that went to the cross in my place. I went there with someone who took the guilt of all the sins that I have ever committed upon Himself. All of God’s justice was poured out upon Him in my place. And so, God can be just and show me mercy. Thank God!
( congregational amens ).
Oh, if you’re trying to come to God any other way, you don’t get it. God is faithful to His promise but He can be just, if we’ll come to Him with honest hearts.
“…Just and will forgive us our sins and purify….” So now there are two different things — there’s a forgiveness and a purification. I need to be more than just, okay, it’s off the books, you don’t have to worry about that. I need Him to do something in me.
( congregational amens ).
Because the reason I did what I did is because I’ve got a dirty heart. I need some help. I need Him to do some cleansing in the way I think, the way I act, what motivates me. It’s got to get down in the depths of my being, to be real repentance. And I think David was getting this, don’t you?
“Surely you desire truth…” up in verse 6, “…in the inner parts.” You desire an honesty, down in the depths of my heart. And so, he says, “Create in me a pure heart, O God — create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Again, David is not simply wanting God to blot out the guilt of his sin because he’s broken God’s law. This is not an external thing. This is David saying, You’re going to have to get down in my heart. This is where it came from.
Oh God, how could I do such a thing? I did this against You and it came from the depths of my being. God, You’re going to have get in here. This is the same man, by the way, who wrote, “Search me, O God, and know my heart…and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (KJV). It’s a rough quote of it anyway.
But there is that sense of, God, I don’t know what’s here. There’s no way I can know the depths of what’s in here. But I know You love me. I know You’re for me. But Lord, because I love You and I want to be a part — I want to be in the everlasting way. I want the way that leads to home.
David took a detour but — I mean, he had a rougher path to get there, but he got there, didn’t he? He got there because he trusted God and had an honest, open heart. Thank God for that reality. But there is this sense in David that, oh God, You’re going to have to do something down in here so I don’t do stuff like that. I don’t trust me. I need You, Lord, to completely cleanse me from the heart on out.
Create in me: I mean, he recognized, I can’t do this, Lord. There’s a need in my life. I can’t fix it! But, I can call upon You because I know You have the power to do something deep in here that I don’t have, and I’m desperate for You to do what needs doing. God, work in me.
“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.”
The thing that I sense in all of this, is not some — this is not superficial, folks. This — I have all ideas, this took a lot of time, a lot of soul-searching, a lot of, God, just show me what’s going on. Show me how to live for You. Show me how to get victory over this thing. Show why I did what I did.
God is looking for that from me, from every one of us. He’s doing it because He loves us. Praise God! His desire for us is positive. It’s not like He’s looking down expecting us to do something we can’t do. He knows we can’t! That’s why it’s called salvation.
But oh, David is looking for not just something for show. This is not something where I can just push the magic button and go back and everything is like it was. In one sense, it never was. David had to learn to serve God in the face of what he’d done. And he did, thank God. God was with him. God helped him. God strengthened him. But man, there was stuff that happened in his life and his kingdom that — on this road they happened, on this one, he’d have been all right. But God worked. I’ll tell you where his spirit is manifest.
How many of you remember what happened when he had to flee from his son Absalom who had mounted a revolution and he had to flee from Jerusalem? And he and his entourage were walking through a valley and a fellow named Shimei shows up. Shimei was from the house of Saul. And boy, did he see an opportunity to give David “down the country.”
And so, there on one side of valley, he’s on the other side throwing stones, throwing up dirt, cursing David, you’re getting what you deserve, you bloody son of whatever, and just cursing him. And boy, David’s men were just incensed — how dare you! Don’t you know who this is? Let me go take off his head! How dare he say such things to the king! And David said, no, let him alone. How many of us would react that way?
( congregation inaudible ).
How many of us would react like this? This is after this sin. This is part of the consequence of that. And instead of getting mad at the guy, he says, God his bid him to do this that He might do me good. Do you see where God had done a work in his heart? On man! That’s powerful stuff.
( congregational amens ).
But there’s a God who could give us that kind of grace if we will open our hearts and want it. God can give us grace not to lash out at people and circumstances but just to simply — well, what does God say in the New Testament? “Humble yourselves, therefore, under…” What? “…God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.” (NIV).
So, David just did what he knew to do. He humbled himself under God’s hand and let God work out the details. And when the details weren’t pleasant, he didn’t get mad! And he just said, Lord, I’m in your hands. And I’ll tell you, there was — I mean God could look back, even in spite of what had happened, and say, now there was a man after my heart. He messed up big time. But when I faced him with it, there was a faithfulness in his heart. There was a heart that wanted to come to me and was willing to come to me, and willing to humble himself and just let it play out and go on with me from there.
Like I say, you start down the wrong road and you carry it down a ways, you don’t go back and just — like it didn’t happen. But on the other hand, we can go on with God, can’t we?
( congregational amens ).
Praise the Lord! So anyway, he’s seeing, he’s looking forward to a time when he’s actually going to be able to be a source of help to somebody. But I’ll tell you, this was not a five-minute deal. I don’t know what the time frame was. But for him to be actually able to help somebody else, God had to do a real work in his heart and a lot of it had to do with the things he went through, watching his own sons — there were two different rebellions that I remember.
One of them was his son, Absalom, who actually took the throne and drove him out. Another one was one of the other sons — called all of the king’s sons together and had himself crowned king someplace else, when Solomon was the one that God had chosen. Praise God!
So anyway, he says, “Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.”
Now here’s something significant, because God had prescribed things that they were to do when they sinned. There were sacrifices that were prescribed under the law and yet we see throughout the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, that that’s not really what God was looking for. There was an outward expression that was appropriate. But what God was looking for was from the heart.
And so he says, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” You know, what is God looking for when we mess up? Think about that word ‘broken.’ This is not somebody who’s broken because they — and we’ve everyone been there — because we got caught. This is somebody who’s broken because, oh God, no matter what else is involved, this is You and me, and I am broken hearted at what I did. There is a genuine, inward brokenness of the heart. That’s what God is looking for.
Do you remember what He says through the prophet? “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is…” (KJV). What? Broken, contrite heart. And that’s what God is looking for from every single person, is somebody who will be honest with Him in the depths of their being and say, oh God, what I do doesn’t matter so much as what I am. I need You to fix the depths of my soul and to face what I am, help me.
And so, then he says, “The sacrifices of God…” (NIV). What is He really looking for? “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” I’ll tell you what, that’s the way to bring God’s presence. That’s the way to bring God to our hearts and into our lives, to gain His favor, if you will.
And it’s not an act, it’s got to be something that’s from the depths of our being. Oh God, I need you. I just need to step back. I need to look to You. I need to have You fix what’s wrong in here. Help me. Aren’t you glad He knows what we’re made of?
( congregational amens ).
I mean, this is the same one who said, all of my days are written in your book before one of them came to be. God knew the choice that he was going to make and He wove it into His plan for his life. And the very woman that he had married in such a manner, it was her son, Solomon, who became the king! We serve a merciful God, don’t we?
( congregational response ).
But the one thing, the one lesson I guess, in this that I see above all, is that God is not looking for something that is outward. He is looking to do deep works in our hearts. And if we will present our hearts to him He will do it and the results will be good.
He doesn’t come with condemnation. He comes with mercy. In fact, somebody who comes this way, that’s what He loves! He’s drawn to it! He’s pleased with it, not pleased with the thing that was wrong but He’s pleased with the heart that’s just willing to come and say, oh God, I want to be free. I want to be what You want me to be. Do whatever is necessary in the depths of my heart to bring me to that place. Praise God!
For the sacrifices of God — and set in the context of the Old Testament, this is some real insight, because they knew the law, they knew what you did when you sinned! You brought a sacrifice and that was supposed to take care of it. David said, that’s not it! I could do all the outward stuff and look like I was doing exactly what God wanted. But unless You get down in here, it’s not fixed. And I need You to give me an honesty that goes to the depth of my soul, so I get why I’m the way I am, and how much I need You.
And my concern is not my image—what people think of me, propping that up, making — performing for one another. We need the Lord. And we need a humbleness and an honesty. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who will honor—will honor people who will come to Him on that ground. Man, that’s what He loves, that’s what He can work with.
“In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altars.” So, it’s not that they were doing away with the law, that was still appropriate. But David recognized there had to be something behind that. You do something with our hearts so that when we come to You and do the things that You said to do, then there will be something to it. It won’t be just for outward appearance.
Man, we need something that comes from the heart. I don’t know, that’s just my burden this morning. I see needs in me, I see needs in all of us. But, I don’t want this to sound like a downer. I pray it hasn’t. It’s something to be sober about, when you see a man of God who can get this far out of the way. Then, folks we need to be crying out to God and saying, God, search my heart.
( congregational amens ).
Don’t let me go down these roads. Don’t let me lie to myself. Don’t let me deceive myself, that this is okay and I can get away with sin. You know, we spoke a couple of weeks ago on God’s war against sin. He’s dead serious about it. God help us. But He is. So, on that level it’s a warning, but the other part, it’s an encouragement, that even when we go down the wrong path, God can still redeem, God can still work, God can still weave that into His pattern. For someone that really humbles himself under the mighty hand of God, it doesn’t change the ultimate goal. Thank God, it doesn’t take away hope!
( congregational amens ).
But you know we need to be willing to walk through that time, and trust God, and put ourselves in His hand and say, oh God, open my eyes to see. Don’t let me lie to myself. Don’t let me try to think that I’m this and I’m not. Help me, Lord. He will. He will.
And when He gets done it won’t be you trying to be this or be that, it’ll be Him being what He is in you. And it’ll be beautiful and it’ll be wonderful. And I’ll tell you, I want His presence. I want Him to be the Head of this church. I want Him to be the message of this church. I want Him to be the life of this church!
( congregational amens ).
And I want Him to be the goal…
( congregational response ).
The destiny of this church, for us to grow up in Him in all things! Isn’t that what the scripture says? This is the pathway. It’s a depth and it’s an honesty of heart that comes to God in all circumstances and just says, Lord, do what You’ve got to do. Do what You have to do in my heart. I need You, Lord. And He will and He’ll get the glory. Praise God!
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April 18, 2021 - No. 1489
True Repentance: Part One
Broadcast #1489
Aprill 18, 2021
Aprill 18, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1489 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise the Lord! I have some things on my heart this morning, and either this is a burden from the Lord or something, but we’ll see. But I feel like the Lord has laid on my heart something that is needful for all of us, and especially in the religious climate of today.
And it has to do with repentance, and what repentance really is, because we have so much that goes on in religion, where repentance is really kind of an external thing, an outward thing, where we take on religion, we take on certain outward things that people can see, but it never really gets down to where it needs to get.
And repentance, obviously it involves Christians, but it involves everybody that comes to the Lord. There’s no coming to the Lord without repentance. He doesn’t give us eternal life so we can continue to live the life we lived before and then somehow carry that to heaven, it’s a transformation.
And it’s what Josh mentioned this morning. There’s a reconciliation part where the legal issue between us and God is settled because Jesus paid our sin debt. But there is a transformational side of it without which it’s not salvation. And unless He replaces our life with His, all we’re doing is just living our life and that’s no good. And that can be religious. That can be a whole lot of things. And, it’s like the scripture says, we don’t know our own heart.
( congregational amens ).
We don’t know it. “The heart…” the Lord said through Jeremiah, is, “…deceitful above all things…” (KJV). And then He asked the question, “…who can know it?” And I think the implication is that none of us is in a position to know his own heart. We need the Lord! And I’m so thankful that He’s faithful to those that really come to Him from the heart, He’s faithful, isn’t He?
But anyway, the pretty obvious example in the scripture of repentance is David. And we know that the Lord chose him out of Israel because he was a man after God’s own heart. And so what happened to him is, not only an example for us, but it’s a warning for us, because he was a man after God’s own heart.
He was just a young man who kept his father’s sheep, and learned to know God and to worship Him and then had cultivated a certain amount of life with the Lord. And the Lord chose him because Saul had turned away and become self-willed in what he did. He had his own ideas. The Lord told him to do something and he sort of halfway did it, but then he injected his own ideas and his own fear, and other things crowded in. He wasn’t really faithful to the Lord in that.
And so, the Lord chose David and it quickly became obvious to Saul that God’s hand was with David and not with Saul. And so the next thing you knew, Saul was trying to kill David and David spent — I think something like 13 years in a very challenging school — of running for his life, hiding, trying to deal with this situation and that one, and gathering people around him. But forever and a day, he was in danger and struggling just to get by and looking to God.
But you know, God had him in school, didn’t He? This is how we learn about God. We’ve heard this so many times lately. We learn about Him when life is challenging and we’re forced to go to Him. David couldn’t simply rely on his skill as a soldier, which he had. He had, many times, just to simply rely on God.
And there were times when Saul’s army was on one side of the hill and David was on the other. And David was hiding in the back of the cave and Saul’s army was in the front. And finally, he had to actually leave Israel. And, we know all about that part of his life. But, God was shaping David, shaping his character, preparing him for the throne that he was to sit upon.
And then finally, Saul is killed in battle and David is brought into Judah, the tribe of Judah, and becomes their king. And that precipitated a seven and a half year war with the house of Saul in which, finally, after all this time when David was, what, about 30 years old, I believe, suddenly he is accepted and put on the throne in Jerusalem of all of Israel.
And we see him beginning to do the things that he thought he needed to do. He decided to bring the ark back to Jerusalem — didn’t do it the right way and that caused a problem for a while, But nonetheless, there was a disposition of his heart that you do see at every point in his life. Every time he failed, he failed forward. He learned. He grew.
He sought the Lord when he failed to bring the ark back. And finally the Lord revealed to him, you didn’t do it the way I told you to do it in Moses law. You can’t just ignore all that. And so, he brings the ark back to Jerusalem and there’s great rejoicing.
His wife doesn’t think much of it, one of his wives. So, the Lord had to deal with her. But anyway, now the ark is back to Jerusalem and so he prays and he comes to the prophet and said, you know, I live in a house of cedar and God’s house is in a tent. I want to build Him a house. And the Lord sent the prophet Nathan back to him and said, I’ve never dwelt in a house and never asked you to build Me one. But I am going to establish your house after you and bless your seed and your house is gonna last forever.
And, of course, we know it has because Jesus was born of the house of David, wasn’t He? His kingdom is forever. So, in that sense, the lineage of David will never end. So anyway, David praises the Lord and goes on about his business.
And you know, part of the promises to Abraham was that Israel would eventually possess, his descendants would eventually possess, a part of the land in the world. It went from Egypt to the Euphrates River. And so David set about conquering areas that had never really been subdued. And chapter after chapter, you will read about his exploits and how they’d go out to battle against this country and subdue it, and this one, and so on.
He was basically setting up what became Solomon’s early reign, the greatest king in the earth of his day. He basically inherited what David had provided. There was a peaceful kingdom of people who were subdued under Israel. They paid tribute. Israel ruled and reigned and they became the greatest kingdom in the world.
But David was busy doing all of this until one spring — and you know the story, but it’s worth repeating here, because it is a warning to every one of us that we don’t know our hearts and we can’t just get careless. We cannot just sort of assume, hey, I’ve got this, like Josh was talking about walking on the water, hey, I’ve got this. This is cool. I can do what I want.
David became careless and when his army went out to war, he stayed home. He said, you know, I deserve a rest. How many times do we indulge ourselves because we feel like we’re entitled? That’s human nature. We all do it. But anyway, he felt entitled to sit this one out.
And so, one night he was restless, got up out of his bed and from the vantage point of the castle, he saw a woman bathing and she was beautiful. And so he — you remember the story how he sent his servants out — so in that sense, this was not secret, was it? Servants knew. The servants went out and got her and he had a one-night stand with this woman.
And I’m sure in David’s mind this was no big deal — I’m entitled. I’m the king. I can do this. And so anyway, but the Lord saw what was going on, didn’t He? And so, what happened was, of course, that one-night stand turned into a pregnant woman, who sent word to David about that.
And so, he figures, I’ve got to do something. I can’t let this be known that I did this, that I’m responsible. And so, he calls and sends to the army and has Uriah, her husband, brought in. Uriah’s an amazing character. This guy’s not even an Israelite. He’s a Hittite, one of the heathen nations that they had conquered, and yet he had such a respect for God, such a respect for law, he was such a principled individual that you see it play out in his life here. I have an idea we’re gonna see him one day. You know, he was a faithful man, despite what happened to him.
And so, he came back and David says, go home, here are some gifts, go home and spend the night with your wife, but he wouldn’t do it. And his reason was, the armies of God are out in the field, should I go — am I entitled to this little vacation here? And he wouldn’t do it.
And David finally resorted to — I mean, you see how sin takes over, and begins to lead you down a wrong path? David had come to a crossroads, hadn’t he, in his life? And it was either continuing on what he was doing or…he took a little [detour], didn’t he? And Bathsheba was the detour.
And one thing led to another, led to another, led to another, and instead of stopping, he just kept right on going and he was gonna cover it up. And so, he has Uriah back. Uriah won’t go, so David has him for supper. But his real motive was to get the guy drunk. He figures if he gets drunk, his resistance will be down and he’ll do what I hope he’ll do and then my sin will be covered up. So anyway, you know how that didn’t work.
And so, finally David figures my only solution is to get rid of him. And so, he knows that Uriah is such an honorable man that he can actually send a message to the commander by Uriah and Uriah won’t even read it. He’ll be so honorable he won’t even read his own death sentence. And you remember how the message was: put him in the hottest place of the battle where the danger is the greatest and then retire from him so that he will die. There’s nothing really secret about this. His servants knew about it. His commander knew. But I mean, this is a king! And in an absolute monarchy the king’s word goes.
And so, he does it. He sends a report back to David and he tells the guy, if David complains about the dead soldiers, why did you do this? Don’t you know better than to use that strategy? Then he told the guy to say, Uriah, your servant is dead.
And so David got the answer he was looking for and obviously Bathsheba was notified of this. And there was a suitable period of mourning in their culture, and then David took her into the castle as one of his wives. They had multiple wives in those days. And so, she became his wife and bore him a son.
So one thing you notice about this, this is not some little one-day thing, is it? This is something that evolved over a period of time. There was probably a year or so. Because if they went out to war in the spring, they were back at war. So, I mean, there are nine months at least for the child to be conceived and born, and then — we don’t know what the time frame is exactly, but it’s probably close to a year. Let’s just estimate that.
And David is completely — this man who is after God’s own heart is clueless! He has no idea what he’s done! No idea how God feels about it, and he’s just walking in self-deception! Folks, we don’t know our hearts. We need the Lord! We need one another, don’t we?
( congregational response ).
And so, this is David’s condition. And in that sense, it’s a tremendous admonition to us. I thank God there’s a place of forgiveness, don’t you? But, I mean, David was in a serious condition. And so, you remember how God sent the prophet Nathan to David.
And in order to approach the king — I mean, you think about the faith of Nathan. You don’t take a message like this to the king and expect to live, under a monarchy. But Nathan had the faith to go to him and tell him a story.
And the story was, there was a rich man and there was a poor man. The rich man had flocks and herds and was just rolling in possessions. The poor man lived with his wife and family and they one little ewe lamb that they brought up and it was like a daughter to him. They fed it from the table. It was more of a pet than anything else, a member of the family. And so a traveler comes to visit the rich man and instead of going out into his own herds, he goes across the street and gets the poor man’s lamb and takes it and serves it to the traveler.
Well, David’s righteous indignation was boiling over when he heard about this. Man, he was ready to get the guy until Nathan said, you are the man. And the Lord began to tell him what he had done. You had everything. I gave you a kingdom. If there had been more, I would have given it to you. I mean, if you’d asked for more. I’ve given you everything, and yet, you had Uriah murdered so you could have his wife.
And it was a shock to David, I have all ideas it was a tremendous shock to him. And he recognized that he had sinned. But it wasn’t just, you’ve sinned. It was, from now on there’s gonna be trouble. You’ve done this, the sword will never depart from your life.
Folks, when we go down the wrong road, there are consequences, aren’t there? And, that’s what happened with David. There were things that happened in his family. He had rebellions in his own household. He had to flee for his life. There were all kinds of things because God’s name got dragged through the mud because of what he did.
See, folks, we’re representing the Lord, aren’t we? And we need to live like that. And I just pray God will give all of us grace and help us to really check up on our hearts.
But anyway, that brings us to Psalm 51. Because here we see David in a real genuine example of repentance, I mean, this is the model repentance. He really goes into the depths of what repentance really means.
And he begins by saying, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.” (NIV). So, from the get-go, he is not appealing to God based on anything he is or he has done. In other words, I have no right to come to You based on — I can’t look at my life and say, I’ve done good things, so therefore — there’s nothing. He comes on the basis of God’s showing mercy, end of story, that’s it! God, You’re a merciful God. I’m just gonna come because I know the kind of a God You are. Please have mercy on me, oh God. Lord, I need You.
“…According to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.” According to Your unfailing love…aren’t you glad God’s love is not failing? Wow! I mean, here’s — if this had been us, how would you have reacted to something like this? If somebody — if it had been you? Oh my God! But here’s a God who is pure and holy! There’s nothing at all wrong with Him. Everything about Him is pure and yet David somehow knew that he could come to God even in the depths of this situation.
And it’s evident from his language, he’s not soft-pedaling anything, is he? There’s no basis upon which I can come to You, Lord, except for the fact that You are a merciful God! “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.”
Now notice up to this point David is dealing with what he has done. Now you understand that are two levels of things going on here. ‘Sins’ are one of them. ‘Sin’ is the other. You understand the difference? Sins that are acts in the real world, they are acts of something. There’s something we do that is against God. Those are acts of sin. Those are sins. But where do they come from?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. See, they come from a nature that can only sin. There’s not a single thing you and I can do that is acceptable in the eyes of a holy God. I don’t care what kind of a golden chalice you use to dip in and serve something. If you dip it out of a sewer, it’s still gonna be sewer water.
And so, David has to deal with something else besides just what he’s done. He’s done these terrible things. He recognizes that it’s not just out here and against somebody. There’s nothing except, oh God, it’s You and me. This is between You and me. I have sinned against You, Lord.
I’ll tell you, genuine repentance gets us to the point, every one of us, where nothing else matters. It isn’t what somebody did. It isn’t the circumstances. It isn’t a mistake. Oh, we love, every one of us love to use that. I made a mistake. Well, no. It’s gone way beyond that. There is something that I allowed in my life, that came out of my life and my heart that caused me to do something and that was against God. Period.
And David is shut up. Everything else doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you, when somebody comes to Christ, there may be issues in your life, there may be things you’ve been hurt by, there may be all kinds of issues in your heart and your life, but I’ll tell you, when it gets right down to it, the issue is not gonna be what’s happened to you. The issue is going to be, I am a sinner before a holy God and if I don’t do something about it, I’m gonna be lost and condemned in the end.
This is just You and me, Lord. Nothing else — it doesn’t matter what anybody else has done or ever will do, that’s not the issue. It’s You and me. Oh God, I need mercy, and the only ground upon which I can come.
But David, as I say, up to this point, all he’s dealing with is the external. I ‘did’ stuff. It was against You, Lord. And so he puts that in its proper perspective. But now, he’s going to get to something else. And here he says, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.”
So you see where David’s going here. This isn’t just stuff I did, this is what I am. And he’s realizing, he’s having to face the fact that what I did is not just some little boo-boo. This comes from here. Something’s got to happen in here if I’m gonna really be right with God. I can’t be satisfied to say, oh God, I sinned. Forgive my sin.
See, remember when the prophet, Samuel went to Jesse, David’s father, to anoint a king, and Jesse’s oldest son was brought out before the prophet. And he was tall, handsome, just looked like the perfect — this is surely the guy. What did God say? He says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
And I see in this prayer of David, I see David kind of getting this. Human nature wants to deal with externals. We really want to appear well before one another, don’t we? And it’s awfully easy for every single one of us at some point in our life to feel like, if I can present myself to others in a certain light that everything is okay, and it may not be, because the need that I have, the need everyone of us has — I’ll start with me. It’s not what I do, it’s what I am.
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April 11, 2021 - No. 1488
“Which Thief Are You?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1488
April 11, 2021
April 11, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1488 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: This is the dividing line of history. This is the defining moment in history which everybody’s destiny is determined by where they stand in relation to that. And I’ll tell you, His resurrection, as I say, was a victory over death. Here was the greatest enemy, the consequence of my sin is that I die—I’m destined to die! I cannot live with God. I cannot bring this sin that infects me into His kingdom! It has no place! “…Flesh and blood,,,” the scripture says, “…cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” (KJV). Man, something radical has to change!
But Jesus came forth, and He came forth as the Victor, the Conqueror of death itself! As I said, He convinced all of His doubting followers! Do you remember that first Easter morning? There were different encounters with different individual people, but the body of disciples were still, huh, what’s going on? I don’t get this. You know, people said this, I’m confused. I don’t know what’s going on.
And then, Jesus meets, joins up with a couple of disciples not part of the apostles but just two other followers, and they’re headed out to the village of Emmaus. How many of you remember that simple story? They’re walking along, taking about all the stuff that’s happened, and Jesus kind of joins them and says, “What you talking about?”
They said, “Are you a stranger around here? You don’t know what’s been going on? We saw this…we followed this guy, we thought He was the Messiah, we thought He was the One, and they killed Him! And it’s been three days! And then some people have been coming up with these crazy stories! They’ve seen Him! We don’t know what’s going on.”
“O fools, and slow of heart to believe…,” He said. And as they walked, He began to open up the Old Testament scriptures. Boy, would I have loved to — wouldn’t you have loved to listen in on that and have Him take the Old Testament scriptures and open them up? Do you know when they preached the Gospel in the New Testament, they preached it from the Old Testament? The New Testament wasn’t written yet! That’s where we go.
But I’ll tell you, the Gospel is there from Genesis right on through, what is it, Malachi? Anyway, right through the end of the Old Testament. And here’s Jesus taking them right through, showing them exactly what had to happen and why He had to die.
They still didn’t know who He was. So, they come to the house there, and so, He says, “Have a nice day.” And they realized, “Hey, wait a minute. Stay with us. It’s late in the day, we’ve got a house here. Come on in. Let’s eat something together.” So, they sit down to eat, and He breaks the bread and thanks God for it. And all of a sudden, they realize who it is. And instantly, He vanishes from their sight.
You want to know something about this life, this other life? It pays no attention to laws of physics. It’s not bound by all the things that bind us. This is something different. So, man, they’re excited. They go running back in. I don’t know if they ran. It’s several miles, but anyway, they hurried back into Jerusalem. They knocked on the door, because the disciples were in a locked room, and they let them in.
They said, “We’ve seen the Lord,” and locked the door again. All of a sudden, Jesus is in there. And you know, in the state that they were in, oh my God! We’re seeing a ghost! He said, “Don’t be afraid. A ghost doesn’t have flesh and blood like you see me have. He holds out His hands, and they touch Him. They…my God, He’s real! He’s got a body! We see Him just exactly — I mean, He’s right here!
And just to really settle the issue, Jesus said, You got anything to eat?” They gave Him a piece of fish, and He sat there and ate it in front of them. And they’re trying to take this in. And over the next few weeks, Jesus turns a bunch of scared, hiding people into people who are ready to just embrace the power that He was about to send, and stand up to that whole generation with a conviction that nothing could shake!
Every single apostle was martyred for their faith, went to their grave convinced and standing for the simple truth that Jesus was raised from the dead, except John. They tried to kill him, and it didn’t work! The Lord preserved him so he could write the book of Revelation, experience that revelation for us.
And do you know what we’ve read this morning several things that Jesus said prior to the cross. There were many other things, of course, through the Gospels. But I want to make this simple point. Everything Jesus said was completely authenticated by the fact that He rose from the dead. People may hear this and be angry with me, but Muhamad is dead. Confucius is dead. Buddha is dead. Plato is dead. All these people that had these great ideas about what the world is about and how we should live and all those things, but Jesus Christ is alive!
( congregational amens ).
He lives today, and He can be known today! We may not see Him with our natural eyes, but He is alive, and He is real, and every word that He told us is the truth!
( congregational response ).
When He says the one who loves his life will lose it, you can bet your last penny, let alone your dollar, you can bet your last penny that it’s the truth. And I’ll say again, He’s not telling anybody that because He’s condemning, angry, trying to put you under His thumb and make you miserable. It’s because He sees the condition that you’re blind to.
And He longs to reach down and pull you out and lift you up to a place where you’ll say, “Oh my God, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. How glad I am I gave You my heart and my life.” Praise God! He authenticated everything that He said.
Here’s something that’s sounds like it’s gonna come out of left field, but, when Jesus died, He wasn’t the only one that died that day, was He? There were two thieves, one on His right and one on His left. And the crowd was down there mocking! “You claim to be the Son of God! If You’re the Son of God, come down from that cross! Who do you think You are?” Just mocking Him.
When they started all of this, both thieves were in agreement with that. And one of them particularly said, “If you’re the Son of God, save Yourself and save us!” You see where His interest was, preserving his life? That was the most important thing to him! I’m about to die here. Fix me up. Save my life. That’s the prime value that I hold.
Somewhere along the line, one of the thieves began to find his spirit touched. The only explanation is that God touched his heart. Nobody has the power to come out of this kind of darkness. If you have any inclination at all towards God, God did that! God’s reaching out to you. You wouldn’t care!
Somehow, that thief began to see things in a different light when he heard Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” He listened, and he watched, and he saw His reaction to everything. And finally, he rebuked the other thief and said, “We’re dying because we broke the law. We deserve what we’re getting.” Then, he turned to Jesus and said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
And one of the points that’s really come strongly to me was the divide that happened that day. Everybody connected with that event that day was on one side or the other. There is no middle ground. How many of you know that?
( congregational response ).
There’s no middle ground. You are either 100 percent identified with Christ on the cross, including you dying, laying down your life, following Him, or you are part of those who will perish! There simply is no middle ground.
And I’ll tell you, any message that short-circuits that is a deception! I want to stand there that day and say I told people the truth! Where did I hear — a while back about a church that had — when people came, they were invited to say this little prayer. Sorry for all my mistakes. Thank You for salvation and something — that was the essence of it. And they consider them Christians! My God!
Do you have any idea what it takes for God to confront a life, and say, “You need Me! Without Me, you will perish!” And then to come and to realize that it’s not a voice of condemnation, but it’s a voice of love that entreats, that calls, that draws, that offers something at the cost of the Son of God laying down His life.
My God, what’s it gonna be like on that day? Do you think there’s gonna be some middle ground between those who are in glory and those who are marched off? That divide exists now. We don’t always know. That divide is in this room this morning. It’s wherever people may hear this. And all I can pray is that God will do what it takes.
You know, one sort of quirky way I thought about putting this is, there were two thieves there: which thief are you? You’re as guilty as either of them. Are you gonna stand with the mockers, or are you gonna stand with those who surrender? And they willingly lay down their lives because there’s a hope of something beyond all of that, that is as sure as the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ?
I’ll tell you what…when they went out and preached the Good News which is what the Gospel means, when the apostles went forth into that world and preached the Good News, man, it was not some easy-believism. It cost people their lives to follow Jesus. People were persecuted, thrown into prison. Some of them were killed.
That’s still happening today. In fact, there have been more — I believe there were more Christians killed in the 20th century than in all of Christian history combined before that. And the trend is going up. I heard one figure, and I don’t know how reliable, but it’s just an indicator. There’s something like 100,000 Christians that die every year from some form of violence. You see the world we’re going into? We need the Lord.
( congregational amens ).
We need Someone who will carry us through. Whether we live or whether we die, we’re gonna be with the Lord. Now, I’ll tell you, one way or another, your life is gonna end here. We can live it for Him and enjoy what He has for us forever, or we can perish with a dying world.
But their message was an uncompromising one! It was repent! Your attitude needs to be totally reversed about sin! Whatever is wrong, displeasing to God, you can’t say, “Oh, I’m gonna toy with this, I’m gonna hang on to this, I love this! I’ll give up this if You’ll let me have that!”
No! There is a repentance where your heart, your attitude, you see the evil that it is and you say, “God, by Your grace, I turn my heart away from that. I want to — I need to be delivered from this! I need to be forgiven for all the things that I feel guilty for!” And I’ll tell you, you will feel guilty when God confronts you. Don’t run from that!
( congregational response ).
Take that to the cross, because the answer is not to cover it over! You can try to cover it over with alcohol or whatever you want! You’ll never escape the guilt! There is one answer for the guilt that comes when we realize what we really are, and that is to bring it to the cross! And I’ll tell you, when the blood cleanses us from that sin, even the sense of guilt is gone!
( congregational response ).
Thank God! That’s real salvation. Only God’s power can do that! Thank God! It wasn’t just, repent of your sins, it’s to lay down your life. My life doesn’t belong to me anymore. Just as surely as Jesus made a one-way trip to the grave on the cross, when we come to Him, that’s the journey we make. Our life, our heart, every part of us is presented to Him.
Yes, I understand, like Michael was talking about, there’s an outworking of that. We have to learn. We have to grow in all those things. But I’ll tell you, there is a time when we are literally laid down. We’re repenting of our sins, but we’re giving up our life, as well, and saying, “God, it is Your life. You do what You will with it, while I’m here. But You remake me into someone who can live with You forever.”
And I’ll tell you — and you believe the Good News. You believe the promise that God will take your life and give you His gift of eternal life. There is repentance, there is a laying down of life, a surrender, and there is faith.
Where do you think the ability for that comes from? It doesn’t come from me. It comes from God! When God is speaking, when God is dealing, that’s the time when we have the power to do what He commands us to do. And I’ll tell you, we become responsible to do that.
But then, what did they do? When they preached the Gospel, how did that work out? I mean, what was the expression of that? I’m trying to get to something. They were baptized!
Do you understand the connection between baptism and everything we’re talking about this morning? That’s what baptism means! It means I am laying down my life! I am going down under the water! I’m surrendering! This is not just a religious ordinance that I’m practicing! I am — this is what’s in my heart, to lay down my life and to give it to You, but I am doing it in the expectation that when I come up, I will come up with a new life!
I’ll tell you, there is a God — when somebody lays down their life in faith, there’s a response to the Gospel, there is a God who will seal you with His Spirit!
( congregational amens ).
You will be a different person on the inside! Yes, you will have to grow! Yes, we will have many battles! Yes, we will go through many valleys and mountains! But I tell you, there’s a change.
When Jesus was baptized, what happened? The Spirit came on Him and He said, this is My Son. There was an identification of God. This is My Son. I’ll tell you, when somebody really is responding to the Gospel in faith and they’re baptized, God says this is My son. This is My child. He will give you the response to that exercise of faith. This is the Gospel. This is the way they preached it. Is this right or wrong?
( congregational response ).
This is right. I want people to think about this. I’m not gonna try to make something happen. I don’t think they did in the New Testament. I don’t see a place where they gave altar calls and you know, a lot of the things — God can use all those kinds of things. But I’ll tell you, I want God to take His Word and so convict the heart, that people will just cry out to Him until He does what is necessary.
And they will respond and say, “I need to surrender. I need to be baptized.” I want God to do it. I don’t want to try to add my efforts to make something happen. But that’s God’s part. My part is to repent, to lay down my life and believe the Good News and express it in that manner. And God’s part is to give His Spirit. That was the way it happened.
And I’ll just ask a simple question. Which life is yours, earthly or heavenly? Everybody here has some kind of life. We all have the earthly life in our bodies, but you understand what I’m saying. Do you have the heavenly life? Do you have what Jesus is talking about in this passage?
This is what God’s heart is! He longs to share His life, but He’s not gonna share it with sin, with somebody who means to go on like they are and cling to their earthly life, and intends to go on in a life of self will!
That’s what religion — that’s the track that Satan leads people off into a religion. Oh, I’m okay because I’m religious! And their heart’s unchanged. That’s what Jesus said about the Pharisees. Outwardly, you appear righteous, but inwardly, you’re just a bunch of graves with dead men’s bones in them. I don’t want to be that. I want to be real from the inside out. Only God can do that.
Folks, we need God to come in miraculous power. And I’m not talking about signs and wonders, particularly. I’m just talking about — we need God to come and change hearts and lives and do something that is unmistakably His work, because He’s the only One that can do it!
Just coming here and participating in the church isn’t gonna do it! You need to meet — you need to have a personal encounter with the God who raised His Son from the dead. Have you been born again, or are you just religious?
Everyone before the cross, as I said earlier, was in one camp or the other. Everyone! Everyone made a choice that day. I reject Him. He’s a phony. He’s a fraud. He deserves to die. And then some said, I’m with Him—I’m with Him.
Are you with Him? Praise God! There is no middle ground! And look at the last part of what Jesus said. “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.” (NIV).
We’re living in a world that is falling under what Paul called strong delusion. Strong delusion means you are absolutely certain you are right, and you are totally deceived. When Christ comes, it will be a shock to this world, because they were so sure. That’s the power of darkness from which we need to be delivered.
( congregational amens ).
When God comes, and He begins to convict the heart of the need, that’s the time. There’s light right there shining in your life. But now, there’s a choice that has to be made. What will that choice be? Will I reach out?
I’ll tell you, if this concerns you at all, I pray that there are people who will go and cry out and say, “God, help me. I don’t even get all of this, but I need You. I know that I need You. I feel the sense of my need of You! But oh, God, open my eyes. Help me. Strengthen me. Give me faith. Give me whatever I need.”
There’s a God who will hear that prayer! That’s what He longs to hear! Oh, He’s not a God of anger and wrath. That’s not what He wants. There will be plenty of that for people that say, no, I will not have this — we will not have this Man to rule over us, as Jesus said some people would say.
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who loves you with an amazing love that we can’t even fathom. There’s a Creator who came down and walked among us, sinless, took every bit of your shame and mine, willingly embraced the wrath of God that was justly due for everything you and I have ever done.
Oh, I embrace that. I am what You say I am, Lord. I need You. But I bow, and I put my faith in Your — in what Jesus did and in Your power to change that and to give me a different life. Lord, without that, I will perish.
I pray that everyone here will just rejoice in what God’s done for you, if you know Him. But God has begun this good work. He’s not gonna stop. You put your faith in Him no matter where you’re at in your journey. The same God who has begun that has planted something in you. Do you know the life He gave you can’t die? If He saved you by His Spirit, that life cannot die! We just need to put our faith in Him.
But I’ll tell you, if you’ve never known Him, I just pray that God will just turn you every way but loose until you are sure, because if you’re not sure about this, what else is worth anything? This is the question upon which our destiny hangs. This is why Jesus died. This is why He rose again, to demonstrate God’s power to save, to destroy sin and death that would otherwise rule over us. It’s the only way of escape. Put your faith in Him. Seek Him with all your heart. Praise God!
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April 4, 2021 - No. 1487
“Which Thief Are You?” Part One
Broadcast #1487
April 4, 2021
April 4, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1487 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, Praise God! The Devil’s certainly been fighting me this morning so I hope that’s a good sign, because the Lord has done so much for us and that’s what so many are celebrating today was the victory of the resurrection.
And you know, there’s so much to talk about and I always come to this and say, oh, Lord, what do we talk about this time? And that’s just human reasoning and all that stuff and I just don’t want to, I don’t want to fall into that trap. But I just — I’m gonna give out the thoughts that the Lord’s given me and just trust Him with it.
Because without the resurrection, I mean, without what goes before the resurrection, the resurrection is just a nice history lesson. And, I thank God for the cross and for what it means to us. And we’ve sung so much about that this morning.
And, there’s one passage that’s always kind of intrigued me. It’s just a little bit different, and that’s in John chapter 12. Jesus is speaking, of course, before going to the cross and I believe He gives us some insights into what it’s really about. I mean, we know some of the basic things. We hear them all the time, but there are some truths in here that I pray everybody will get.
And I don’t know, my burden, I guess, as much as anything is for people that don’t really understand all this, that don’t get it. And I’m certainly not an evangelist. But I just trust that God will breathe life into His truth so that this won’t just be a, okay, this is Easter, we’re supposed to talk about the resurrection and go on with our lives. This is something that has Eternal significance. And so, let’s just read the words of Jesus beginning in verse 23.
“Jesus replied…” to something that’d been said, “…the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” (NIV). Boy, isn’t that a good way for us to react to life?
“Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.
“The crowd spoke up, We have heard from the Law that the Christ will remain forever, so how can you say, The Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man? Then Jesus told them, You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light. When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.”
I’ll tell you, we need divine intervention in our lives! The condition of the general population certainly reveals a whole lot, doesn’t it? They were just blind to what was going on. And, I’m just gonna try to bring some thoughts out of this and other scriptures and, like I say, I’m just trusting the Lord this morning. I feel extra weak, which is probably a good thing. But Lord, You take over this and just have Your way and speak Your truth.
You know, one of the things that really jumped out at me, as I was reading this the other day, was where Jesus began. It said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Now think about the context in which He said this. He’s about to go to the cross and He’s saying, I’m gonna be glorified. Do you think maybe, just maybe, He had a pretty good confidence in the Father’s plan? Yeah! Wouldn’t it be good if we could see beyond today and beyond what’s going on and realize that God has an immutable plan, that He is carrying something out that no devil in hell can stop?
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! He’s not saying, oh, I’m gonna be crucified, it’s gonna be terrible. He said, I’m gonna be glorified. He was seeing right past all of this. Wasn’t it — didn’t the scriptures say it was, “for the joy set before him,” that He was able to see that and the cross was just a stepping stone to get to that? It was necessary, but it was only a stepping stone to something that was real.
You know, when Gospel truth comes to someone who has never seen it and never really bowed to it, it sounds an awful lot like a threat. It’s a threat to human nature! It’s a threat to my own will and my own wanting to do what I want to do.
But I’ll tell you another thing, a thought that came to me very distinctly in thinking about all of this was: everything Jesus said was truthful, but the spirit behind it was one of love, a desire to reach out. If He had just never intervened, men would just die, live and die like lost animals. I mean, it would be no more significant than that. But I’ll tell you, God intervened in history, because of our condition and our need. Thank God!
( congregational amens ).
And I’ll tell you, bowing to that is the ultimate freedom, not the ultimate prison. Natural man says, “You’re gonna take away all my joy. You’re gonna constrict me and make me live a religious life. It’s gonna be terrible.” And God says, “I want to set you free.”
How many can say you’ve been on both sides of that, maybe, where you’ve suddenly seen and God’s opened your eyes and when you finally bowed, you said, “Why did I wait so long?” You remember Brother Thomas’ testimony, so many years ago.
But anyway, some of the things that He said…He said this is verse 31, “Now is the time for judgment on this world…,” talking about the significance of the cross. We always think about it in, well, He died for my sins. Yes He did! But I’ll tell you, there was something deeper going on there. God was judging the world! I mean, I understand that the outpouring, I mean, the outworking of that is something that is yet to come in our future, when this world will have its end. But I’ll tell you, you want to know why I can have confidence that that’s true? Because God’s already done it!
( congregational amens ).
God has already judged the world. Now when we talk about the world, what are you talking about? You just talking about the rocks and the trees? You know, we know better than that. But there is a system. There is a government, if you will, that is over this world that is ruled by wicked spirits. They are behind the scenes of everything that exists in this world.
And I realize there are things that are held up as, oh, this is noble. Man’s got so much nobility buried in him. If we could just get rid of the bad stuff, we could rise and conquer the stars. I’ll tell you, there is a world, a system—a spiritual system that is in rebellion against its Creator. And I don’t care what happens, God has already judged that and said, that will not continue! Jesus said, the world will pass away, “…but my words will never pass away.” And I’ll tell you, if you see any hope in this world, you are seeing something that I can’t see. There is no hope!
And I thank God that the end is coming, but I’ll tell you, I see something else. I see the mercy of God! Why has it not happened already? How in the world can God put up with what’s going on in this world? A lot of people wonder about that. How can God — you know, if God can do anything, why doesn’t He just stop all this? I’ll tell you, there’s one reason. Because God is, “…not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (KJV).
And I’ll tell you, as long as there is any hope for an individual, God is gonna be reaching out. God is gonna be confronting people saying, I love you. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can give Me your heart and give Me your life and surrender. I’ve got different plans for you.
And I’ll tell you, the principles of this world are sin and rebellion. They are slavery. It’s not just that I follow my natural desires. That would be a basic principle of this world, that life is about just, I have desires and I’m gonna follow them. I’m gonna try to satisfy them. It’s not just that I do that, it’s that they become my master! I become a slave! I cannot stop from being that kind of a person who lives in this kind of a world.
I’ll tell you, this world is a prison house! Well, didn’t we just sing about that? Yeah! “I was in sin’s prison.” And there is an inescapable dominion of spirits of darkness that only the cross and the resurrection can overcome! There is not a man, woman, boy or girl that’s ever been born that can overcome or escape any of this!
How many of you remember, oh, some of the old movies? Ben Hur was one of them I remember. You remember the rowing scene, some of you who have seen that? When the Roman galleys, when they would go to war, what was it that powered their ships?
( congregational response ).
It was slaves who were down in the bow, down in the belly of the ship. And they were, many times, chained in place. All that they could look forward to in life was to row as hard as they could and die, sooner or later. If the ship went down, they went down with it.
And I’ll tell you, that is a picture of life in this world. You have been given a rowing — a place to row and you are chained to that and you’re gonna row, thinking you’re getting somewhere.
I’ll tell you, this is a world that God has judged. The ultimate fate of what is coming upon this world was foreshadowed on the cross. God drew everything — He became the representative of the entire human race! God created a perfect world, and Adam and Eve chose to rebel. I’ll put it this way. Eve was deceived into rebelling. Adam made a choice. She had already made the wrong choice and he made a deliberate choice to follow her instead of God.
I’ll tell you, that’s a terrible thing to do! And because of that, all that’s part of this world, this creation, has been corrupted by that rebellion. There is no solution except for God to exterminate it from His universe! None of this is gonna survive! Thank God!
If you want to know, you want to get a picture of the blindness that sin causes? How about the Lord using the Devil to carry out His plan, and allowing the Devil to think, I’m winning! I’ve been able to crucify the Son of God! Now we can rule! Now the Creator Himself is gone and we can rule!
The scripture says, if the princes of this world — they didn’t understand this — if any of them had understood it — this is 1st Corinthians 2, if you want to look it up. If they had understood this, “…they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (NIV). You want to know how deceptive sin and darkness is? The Devil thought he was winning and he was engineering his own defeat. Boy, I’ll tell you what, I want to be on God’s side, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
That’s a darkness I want to escape! But you know the main thing we think about with the cross, thank God, is deliverance from the guilt of sin! You know, I need — I mean, it’s so obvious, all of the sins that I have committed in my life, what am I gonna do about them?
What are we talking about? “The acts of the sinful nature….” Look at Galatians 5, 19-21. I’m gonna read it but you can look it up when you want to. “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”
So this is not a exhaustive list, is it? It can go on and on, but all of it is built around gratifying natural desires and impulses, in a very selfish way. I’ll tell you what, every one of us has sins that separate us from God, apart from Christ. And here’s the kicker! Let me ask you this question. Is God just?
( congregational response ).
I mean, how do you find justice? If there is a law, and a judge says, “Well, I know what the law says but I’m gonna change — I’m gonna do something different this time. I feel sorry for you. I’m not gonna apply the law.” Is he just? No! So, how in the world can God be just and we have any hope whatsoever? Is there anybody here hasn’t sinned? No, of course not! So, how in the world can God remain just and we get off? “The soul who sins…”
( congregational response ).
He’ll die! That’s the law! That’s the law! There’s no escape from that principle! God has to punish sin! And it’s not just the — these acts that we talk about. There’s something deeper than that.
I want you to imagine a scene right now. You’re standing before the bar of God’s justice. God’s sitting there in judgment of you. And you are aware that you can’t hide anything. And I want you to think back to the most shameful things. I’m assuming you’ve got a conscience. I want you to think back to the most shameful things that you have ever done in your life, things that maybe nobody else knows about it, but you do. And if they were ever brought out into the open, you would just be filled with — you’d want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you, as the expression goes.
But now, let’s go beyond that. Maybe you’re not somebody who’s done a lot of these things. You haven’t robbed any banks. You haven’t actually committed adultery with somebody. But what did Jesus say about that? He said the one who’s looked at a woman with lust in his heart, has already committed adultery.
How many of us would want, not just our deeds to be brought before the bar of God’s justice, but all of our thoughts and our intentions, our attitudes? Every time you’ve rebelled against your parents and been angry, or been angry with somebody, or gossiped in a malicious way or, anything you can think of. Or you just let your mind dwell in the wrong places. You went to the wrong places on your computer. I’ll tell you what, we’ve got a lot to deal with.
But now you’re standing there and the Lord reads off this long list of charges. How do you plead? Everybody here would have to say the same thing. “I’m guilty. I deserve to die. Your law declares that I deserve to die.”
But now there’s a different scene that comes along. And now your Creator, who has come down to this earth to become a part of His own creation, to come down in flesh and live His life among men, just like you did…. But there’s one difference in Him. He has never been guilty of the first thing. His life has been one of perfect harmony with His heavenly Father. He’s perfect.
But now, instead of you standing before that bar of God’s justice, He stands there. And God reads that same list of everything that you have ever done that’s been wrong, every shameful act, every shameful thought, all of these things that cause you such deep conviction and shame. They’re all read. But now they’re read against Him, who has done nothing! And God says, how do You plead? He says, I plead guilty. And the sentence is passed, and it’s a sentence of death.
I’ll tell you, that’s a sobering thing. But until we come face to face with that truth in a personal way, what we’re talking about this morning is nothing but a history lesson, something we can say, “Yay Jesus,” and go on about our lives.
But I’ll tell you, the reality of what happened there has to become deeply personal. It’s not just that He died for everybody, in this vague, general sense, but that I stand before the bar of God’s justice as a guilty sinner and that He steps into my place. He embraces my guilt and willingly goes to the cross.
And so, in that way God’s justice is perfectly satisfied. There have been sins committed, there has been One who has embraced the guilt of all of that and He has received that ultimate punishment. All of God’s wrath against all the sins that have ever been committed were poured out on Jesus Christ and He willingly did it!
I’ll tell you, what does that mean to you? Does that mean anything? I’ll tell you what, that’s some sober stuff to think about, isn’t it? Thank God! Thank God! We have a God who is just and yet able to forgive. Thank God for Jesus. Thank God for the cross. Thank Him for the blood.
Has that ever become real to you? I’ll tell you, if it ever becomes more than just a Sunday School lesson to you, it’ll change your life. It’ll change your destiny, ‘cause that’s what this is all about! You’re part of a system that’s gonna perish. I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what men do. I don’t care whether they try to go to the stars. This world is gonna perish! God has already judged it, but He’s already judged your sins and mine. I’ll tell you what, that’s something to think about, isn’t it?
Now one thing that Jesus said that bears some comment, He said back here in verse…is it 25? “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (NIV).
You know, there are three times, I guess, the word “life” is used but most people would not know that there are different words in the Greek. When Jesus talks about your life and my life, He’s using the word soul. He’s using the word for the created life that came in the beginning. God imparted a life, a created life to Adam and Eve. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of, literally, lives, because it’s reproducible. But he had a created life that God gave him and that is what has been hopelessly corrupted!
But what are the words of Jesus? Here are people who are faced with a choice. Am I going to serve Jesus? Am I gonna embrace what He did for me or am I gonna cling to this life that I possess? This is what matters to me. What I want, that’s what matters. The words of Jesus cannot be countermanded! He said, “The man who loves his life will lose it….” There’s no wiggle room in this.
But the other kind of life, when He mentions eternal life, that’s a different word! That is that word, “zoe.” That is God’s life. How many of you know there are different kinds of life? This is a subject — I probably — it keeps coming back to me from time to time and it may be — one of these days it’ll be time to address it, as a doctrinal issue, is this question of what happens? Is the soul immortal?
I don’t happen to believe that it is. I’ll tease you with that much. My Bible says only God is immortal. I’ll tell you, there are gonna be a lot of people, on the Day of Judgment, whose eyes will be opened, finally! They will have no choice. They will see what God has purposed! They will see the righteous standing there, not because they did something, but because they surrendered to what God could do! And they’re standing there in glory and power and freedom and life that will go on forever!
And there they are, guilty in their sins being marched off to a place of destruction! Crying, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, begging for another opportunity when there will be no remedy on that day. But these are the words of Jesus. The one who loves his life — they were clinging to it.
And I’ll tell you, the most — the scariest part of that is when people embrace religion, in some fashion, but they never really let go of their life. Jesus talks about that in Matthew chapter 7, because He says there are two gates and there are two ways. He talks about the false prophets who essentially let people believe—they lead people to believe that they can come in and somehow, in some sense, acknowledge Jesus, even call Him Lord, they use the words the Lord Jesus, but as Jesus says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?”
And it’s in that context that He talks about people who arrive on that day and say, Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, didn’t we do great works? Lord, we were working for You all our lives. We went to church. We never missed Sunday School, all the things that you’re supposed to be doing as evidence that I’m a follower of Jesus. What was the problem? They never let go of their life!
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March 28, 2021 - No. 1486
“Perseverancey” Conclusion
Broadcast #1486
March 28, 2021
March 28, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1486 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I just have this sense in my heart. I haven’t even got this organized. It seems like the Lord, so many times, He won’t let me organize it, and that’s all right. But we need to have a heart that says, God, there ain’t no ‘quit.’ There’s no going back. I’m going on. There are songs about some of that, about that theme. There’s no going back. Folks, if you’ve got something less than that, you don’t have what you need.
( congregational amens ).
I just pray that God will help every one of His children to wake up and realize what we need.
You know, one of the things that I thought about was…of course, coming up to Hebrews 12, we said that the faith chapter leads into that, but there’s something that leads into that. The whole book was written to a group of Jews, who had heard of Christ and perhaps, in varying degrees, had embraced the Gospel and the hope of the Gospel, but yet, the writer was concerned. He saw in them too much of a tendency not to let go of the past and their traditions, because after all, God spoke to Moses. We can’t just leave that alone. We’re just adding Jesus to that.
And over and over again, he goes through in tremendous detail showing how God did something back then. It was temporary. Now, we have what is permanent. We leave that behind. It’s Jesus and Him alone! That’s our hope. All that the Old Testament Law pictured was fulfilled in Christ! There’s no more sacrifice, but One, and that’s for all time. And so, we leave that behind, and we lay hold of the hope of the Gospel, 100 percent, and trust in Him to be able to bring us all the way through. Okay?
So, on the heels of that, in chapter 10, what is the conclusion of that? Verse 23, “Let us hold unswervingly…” (NIV). That sounds like what we’ve been talking about, doesn’t it? “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess….” It’s something that we don’t possess at the moment, but it’s there. It’s before us. We have enough of a conviction to give our lives to that hope, for that to become more real than this world in which we live. That’s what the Gospel is about. It has to be that real.
“…Unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he…” Why? “…For he who promised is faithful.” Over and over again, you have this sense of a God who cannot lie, who has promised. He has had a purpose from all eternity. You read that in chapter 6, and that’s the reason we’re here this morning, because there is a God who has made you and me and…and me, all of us. He’s made us a promise of something that we can participate in. He’s called us to it. Praise God! Do we want to take that lightly, or just try to mix it in with our life and our will? No, you don’t.
You know, I’ll just interject this. Back in Romans, Paul talks about…unlocking the Gospel, trying to lay it all it all out. And early on, he deals with why the world is in the condition it’s in, and it’s because people have known truth but rejected it. Okay?
But then, he comes, in chapter 2, he talks about two classes of people. One of them seeks for glory and honor and immortality, and they do it with a persevering spirit. They go against the grain. They go against the flow. But, their whole life is defined by that quest. And everybody else goes on in sin and self-will, married to their lusts, their earthly desires, and they reject that.
Boy, do you think that’s a diametrically opposed destiny involved there? But it’s interesting that he actually uses the word ‘perseverance’ in that passage. That’s how we pursue life and immortality. Is that something that we can achieve? Through Christ, we can, certainly not any other way. So anyway, we’re told to hold unswervingly to this hope.
“And let us consider….” Now, here’s another dimension that we need to recognize, and that’s that we’re not alone on this journey. Yes, we may have an individual journey, but God has woven our journeys together, so that you and I, we will, every one, come to places where we are discouraged, we are struggling. We have battles that we need to fight, but thank God we’re not alone.
Yes, we always have Him, but I’ll tell you, we have one another, and that’s what God wants to bring to pass, to make a functional thing. I’ll tell you, the church of Jesus Christ is not just a bunch of people who come together, have a religious service and go on with their lives. It’s a family, that loves one another, that watches out for one another.
“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Let’s encourage each other. That’s what it says in the next one. “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Does anybody here see the day approaching? Do you see the trend? I don’t know the dates. I’m not gonna worry about that. That’s in God’s hands, but I know where this world is going. And so, here is the Word of God to us today. We need to be in a place to encourage each other.
The Devil is gonna do everything in his power to divide, to give us a self-righteous, critical spirit, if we trend that way, to make us super sensitive to one another. There are a thousand and one ways that self-will and our old nature rises up to divide us. We need to recognize it! We need to say, go back to hell where you came from, Satan.
God wants us to rise up and say, we are one in Him. We will walk of the unity that He gave His life for to provide. And when we see a brother and a sister struggling, we’ll pray, we’ll stand with them, we’ll encourage them, because that’s part of the battle that we fight. That’s part of winning the battle.
“Let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Boy, here’s something that…I’m gonna throw this in, because this needs to go out. We don’t need to have this mealy-mouthed Gospel that just kind of embraces everybody with this this happy, happy, lovey-dovey thing, that doesn’t really confront the problem.
“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left.” Now, I will not…don’t ask me about people, specifically people, or specific people. God knows. I pray that God will be merciful to every one that might come to your mind when I read something like that.
I don’t know when someone has reached that point, but this is something to think about. Man, you don’t mess with this. Your eternity hangs on what you do with Jesus. What’s left? “…No sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” Man, that’s the world in which we live, and the world that opposes us and hates us, that’s the destiny they are choosing.
If you and I serve God, we’re gonna have to go against that. We’re gonna have to swim against the tide, and be willing to do it and not give up, and not hold back, because there’s a God who’s gonna take us through. But man, it’s that serious.
And he goes down and he encourages his people. He’s saying, look, when you came to the Lord, look at all you went through. You were persecuted. You suffered things that we haven’t ever even suffered here. These people had already stood up under that for a time.
Verse 35: “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere….” Ah, there’s that word again. “…You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.”
That is central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s not just, believe in Jesus and go to heaven. This is, put your faith in Jesus Christ, turn your life around into His care and for His purposes, and you’re gonna serve God until you die, until this life is over. Your life becomes defined by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His claim upon your soul.
I’ll tell you, if you don’t have that, if you don’t have the reality, cry out to God until it’s real, until He reveals Himself to you! This is…I mean, do you see how serious this is? I don’t know why I’m emphasizing this, but there’s got to be a reason. People need to know that this is serious.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a call of God to every child of God to face the facts that we’re gonna have to fight, and we’re gonna have to walk together, and lay hold of what He has given to us.
“For in just a very little while…” he goes on, “…He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.” See, that was the issue here. It was people who were coming up to it. They learned about the Gospel, and then, they kind of drew back and went back to their old ways.
Man, we’re gonna have to press in. We’re gonna have to be among those who have turned our back, burned our bridges, and said, I am His, come hell or high water. If they line me up and shoot me, I’m still His. There’s nothing in this world worth clinging to when He offers me that.
You know, like Jim Elliot the missionary said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” But that conviction can only be planted in the heart by the Word of God, that we open our hearts to and say, yes, Lord. I humble, I yield my life, I yield my everything to You.
But oh, I’m thankful that the writer has more confidence in the people to whom he’s writing. He feels the need to say these things to show them how serious it is. But he says, “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.” And then, he launches into chapter 11. Praise God!
We have every reason in the world, looking back at these examples, to know that there is a faithful God. We might find ourselves this year in the same place that David did when he said, “How long, O Lord?”
How many of you have ever been in that place? It’s not only that what I’m facing is difficult, it just doesn’t stop! It goes on and on and on, and I’m crying, and You’re not answering me…it doesn’t feel like You’re answering me. Oh God, what’s going on? How long, oh Lord, am I gonna have to put up with this, and on and on?
I’m so glad that we can find a perfect balance between being reverent and respectful of God, and at the same time, having a hope and a confidence that we can come to Him with an honest heart. I don’t believe that when David said how long, oh Lord, he was being irreverent, but he sure was telling how he felt.
You know, you’re gonna feel that way sometimes. Don’t be dismayed by that. Don’t say, something’s wrong! Look at Brother so-and-so or Sister so-and-so, and they’re just happy, happy. They might have a pasted smile and going through something worse than you are, for all you know. Oh, I’ll tell you, God wants to bring us to a place where we’re willing to fight, and we’re willing to stand up.
So, of course, when you start talking like this, the question naturally arises, okay, I’ve got to find that somewhere. I’ve got to dig down deep and find this ability somehow to persevere. How’s that gonna happen? I’m just a weakling. I’ve failed so many times before. How in the world is this gonna happen? Well, I guess we probably better look at some scripture, hadn’t we?
How about Romans 15? Romans 15. Let’s see. Well, I’ll begin with the first verse, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.” That’s a pretty good exhortation, isn’t it? You don’t come to a place where you say, well, man, I’m handling it, What’s the matter with you? We need to help one another along.
If you’re one that the Lord has taught, and you’re experiencing some victory, then you just humbly say, thank You, Lord, and you help and encourage somebody else. God didn’t do that just for you. How many times did Paul say that the things that He has done in me and allowed me to go through where I was in over my head, and all I could do was cry out to God, God did that so I could help you! Everything God does is not just for you, it’s for the entirety of the Body of Christ and His Kingdom. All right?
“Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” Now, he goes back to the scriptures, because this is one of those things. We’re gonna have to go back to the Word of God. It’s not just for correct theology, it’s for God…it’s a vehicle for God to speak to us according to a present need. That’s what I need.
( congregational amens ).
It’s great to be…and to learn about it and to get it in my head and know what’s true and all of that, but oh, there are times that I have a deep need. Anybody else here?
And, I need to be able to go, and I’ll find something, and it’s like God shines a light on that scripture, and suddenly, it jumps off the page, and it feeds me, and it helps me, or it’s an example of somebody who went through something, and God brought them through, and I can learn from that and be encouraged.
So, Paul says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us…” Okay, why? What’s that going to accomplish? “So that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” See the place of the Word of God in this thing? The Devil is gonna fill your mind and mine with every lie that we will accept…and God help us to learn how to identify those things, and not just say…but it’s true!
We need to look at what God says, and not live by feelings, not live by past experiences. We talked, Wednesday night, about how we leave things behind. We forget things that are behind, we reach forth for what’s before. It’s a good time to do that, isn’t it? We’re reminded it’s a brand-new year.
You don’t have to carry all those past failures. We need to learn from them. But we need to come to God and say, God, let this be the year when I grow, when this issue…I gain ground and I learn from You. But help me to devour Your Word and lean upon it and learn that this is how You speak to me, oh God.
They’re, “…written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Now, that word endurance, by the way, I believe, is that same word that we’ve been talking about. Okay? But there’s a sense where you’re gonna have to push through, not give up. All right, so, “…encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
All right, here I am again! Lord, I’ve got to have courage, I’ve got to do all this stuff. How do I do that? “May the God who gives endurance….” Ah, now, that puts a different light on it, doesn’t it? He’s not just dumping all this stuff on me and saying, come on, dufus, be strong. What’s the matter with you, you weakling? I’ve called you to fight. Get up off your duff, and fight.
Wait a minute…He’s not calling us to dig deep and find this in the inside. This is a word that is meant to encourage the weakest of the weak, who have put their trust in Christ. My hope does not lie in one single thing that I can find in here. Every time I’ve tried to lean on this and figure I’ve got it handled, I fall like Peter did. It doesn’t work. Of course, even when I do that, the Lord helps me to learn from it.
But listen to these words. “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity…” So, it pulls it all together, doesn’t it? “…Among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s where it comes from. Every bit of the ability to do everything we’ve been talking about this morning has got to come from Him. That’s why he says, looking to Jesus.
Now, if you’re like me, when I run into a wall, whether it’s an experience, whether it’s something on the inside or it’s something on the outside, whatever it is, and I run into a spiritual wall, or I’m just worn out, and don’t feel like fighting anymore, where am I looking, typically? Inside.
You see what the Lord wants us to learn to do? Every time we hit the wall…Lord, You’ve allowed me to hit this wall so that I can look up. You have everything that I need. It’s those who wait or those who hope in the Lord who do what? Renew their strength, because we all get weary.
The question is not that we come to a place where we don’t ever get tired, don’t ever get weary, never tempted to feel that way. You will. We all do. The question is, do we give into that and say, well, that’s just the way it is. I’m just a weakling. Poor me.
God, help us to learn to lift up our eyes and to know that there is a God who has more than you can ask or imagine. He longs to show up and lift you up and bring you through something you could never possibly handle in any other way. You don’t have the wisdom. You do not have it in you to love somebody that just really rubs you the wrong way, pushes your buttons, a situation…a thousand and one things that constantly will pull on your old nature and cause you to try to move in that.
God will give us, if we will open our hearts and believe His promise, God will give us what we need to put one foot in front of another and say, God, I’m Yours. I’m going forward. I will not be beat down or defeated by this thing. I don’t know, this has been kind of scattered this morning, but I just feel like this is the Lord’s Word to me. Is it to you?
( congregational amens ).
We are facing another year. We will face many things. Don’t you go into this world or into this year and just say, oh man, this is gonna be a year of great victory and feelings and wonderful…you go to a lot of places, that’s what they’ll tell you.
You’re gonna have a lot of battles. But every battle that God send your way, He has designed so you can experience a victory that you would never experience any other way, and what He wants is to come to the end of the year and be stronger, have a deeper hope, a deeper, more experienced faith than we have right now, looking forward into this year.
God wants us to be able to look back and say, look what He’s done. Thank God! Yeah, there are still battles, there are still battles to fight as long as we’re here, but God has brought me down the road, because when I face those things, I didn’t just look inside. I just didn’t boo-hoo and feel sorry for myself. I looked up, and Jesus gave me His strength, not just His example, but His life and His strength, the only way I could handle it. Anybody here need any of this?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. See, there’s nothing new here this morning, but this is a Word that we need. The world we live in, we need to take an honest look at what the Christian life involves. It is a battle. Some of you may lay down your life, literally for Jesus. Is that worth it? Is there anything here that’s worth rejecting Him so that you can have this? A lot of people think there is.
But I’ll tell you, it’s worth everything to serve Him. There’s no place to grow weary and give up. I mean, we get weary, but there’s no place to give up because of it. There’s always that call from heaven to lay aside the things that we need to lay aside, as God puts His hand upon them, and say, Lord, give me the strength today.
I don’t have to think about next month and all those kinds of things. I can just think of today. Lord, help me today just to put one foot in front of another, and trust You for the strength to be able to do it, and to know that You are faithful. That’s the reason.
That’s what I stand upon. I don’t stand upon my ability to be faithful. Good luck. You don’t have what it takes, and I don’t either. We are in a battle that is way over our heads, but it’s not over His. And He has promised to finish what He has started.
So, let’s go forward into this year with a realistic look at what we face but with a realistic look at the resource that we have to draw upon and where it’s taking us. It’s taking every single one that has put their trust in Him to a better place, and we will look back and have reason to give Him the praise and the glory.
We won’t be able the look in the mirror and say, look what you did. We’ll say, God, in spite of what I am, look at what You did. Praise Your Name! To God be the glory. Praise God!
Close
March 21, 2021 - No. 1485
“Perseverancey” Part One
Broadcast #1485
March 21, 2021
March 21, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1485 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I believe the truths that we need are not ones that we don’t know. It’s not that we need deeper and stronger information, although there’s a place for all of that. I believe God wants to teach us things. But the things that we need, on a practical level, have a great deal more to do with things that we know intellectually but need to remember, need to constantly remind ourselves about.
And I was thinking about the year and the fact that we’ve got another year coming and what is it that we need, Lord? What is it that you want us to focus on, as we think about the way ahead?
And I just kept coming back to a simple word that we know, and so I doubt I’m gonna say anything brand-new this morning, but I’m praying that the Lord will bring it out in such a way that it will help us and encourage us in our walk. Like I say, it’s not always more information we need, it’s life, it’s ability, it’s God’s Spirit actually coming to bear upon our situation so that we have the strength to walk in those things that we know intellectually. And the word that just kept coming to me is perseverance.
And, just as a jumping off point, a scripture that we’re extremely familiar with in Hebrews chapter 12, and the writer here is following a passage in which he is showing the fact that there were a whole lot of people that persevered by faith through all kinds of circumstances.
And so, he begins with the word, ‘therefore’ which kind of refers back to what he’s been saying, in light of these examples that God has given to us in history, about people that served God in the world, but had to overcome a lot to do it. See, that’s the foundation of what he’s about to say.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (NIV). And so forth, and he goes on.
Well, I’ll read the next verse. “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
And, you know, there’s a lot of folks in the land that will try to portray the Christian life as…one mountaintop to the other. You’re supposed to be joyful and happy and icicles running up and down your spine all the time and blessings…just like a glorious thing.
And, praise God, there are blessings. There are things that are real that we can enjoy here. But that is not a realistic picture. If we’re gonna think about our lives going forward, we don’t need to just expect, okay, now I’ve finally gotten to the mountaintop, now I can…
( exhaling ).
…I can just coast. There’s no place for that in this life. There’s no place where we come and we just coast, and there’s no more effort to put forth.
And, you know, I was thinking about the very word, perseverance. And of course, it’s in the context of a race, isn’t it? And, we’ve pointed out many times how that God has set before each and every one of us a race. It’s a path that we run. It’s a way that we go that leads from where we’re at to someplace else.
And the Christian life is that. It’s not a matter of signing something on the dotted line, getting a ticket to heaven and going on about our life and then just suddenly, magically going there. There’s something that God longs to accomplish in your life and in mine, here and now, in our walk.
And our walk has everything to do with what we will become. And it’s not just a vague, generalized race that God has set before us. There’s something particular. It’s marked out.
And we need to always remember, as we go forward, that we are unique. We’ve said it many times, but it’s something we need to remember. Everyone here is different. Every one of you has a particular course, a particular road, if you will, that is marked out for you, and it’s designed to accomplish something in you because you have a unique place in the kingdom that God is building.
If you’re one that’s called to His kingdom, if you’ve been born of His Spirit and that’s your destiny, then there is a particular place in His kingdom that only you can fill. Nobody else can. God has designed it just for you. And what He wants to accomplish in our lives has everything to do with that. And that’s what…I sense the Lord wanting us to move forward in a very real way, this year. But if we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna have to understand, realistically, what that involves.
You know, I thought about, in this context, Paul’s first missionary journey. You remember how he set out and they went through…I think Philippi was part of that, and various other places, where he went to one place after another. He was persecuted, very severely, in some cases. But anyway, he went from one place to another to another to another and he stayed there as long as he could, but in every place, he gathered groups of believers and followers of Jesus.
And so, now it was time, okay, let’s go back. This journey is over. We’re going back to where we came from. And so, what they did was to reverse their course and stop in and visit every one. Now what do you think was the essence of Paul’s message to those believers? What did he focus on?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! He said, “…we must through much…” and the King James is, “…tribulation…” through much suffering, through much difficulty, “…enter into the kingdom of God.” (KJV). This was the essence of the message.
He didn’t say, man, you’ve entered it, you’ve got it now, you’ve got it, just enjoy it and come together, and just…sing happy songs, life’s gonna be grand and great. Praise God! There is a price to pay to follow Jesus Christ! There is a course that…and if you’re thinking that there is ever gonna come a time in your life when it’s just gonna be easy and there’s gonna be no opposition, you are in for a whole lot of education about how it really is.
And I don’t sense the Lord wanting us to emphasize this this morning to discourage us, certainly, but rather that we have a realistic view of what it costs. Look at what it cost our Savior!
( congregational amens ).
The opposition of sinful men…I mean, everything the Devil could mount against Him, he did. And you know, I was thinking about the very word itself. The word perseverance, does that not suggest that there’s an effort toward an end? You’re not just sitting there, okay, I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for heaven one day. I am having to put forth some effort and it’s toward a goal. There’s a reason God has called me.
We used the scripture Wednesday night about Paul. You know, I haven’t arrived, “…but I press forward to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (NIV). He laid hold of me for a purpose. There’s something that He wants to do but, in the doing thereof there’s stuff that I need to lay hold of.
Does anybody here have stuff you need to lay hold of this year? See, that’s what this is about. The Lord wants to bring us into possession of more of what He has provided for us. Thank God, that’s everything that we could possibly need to fulfill His purpose for us. But you and I…every single one here, that knows Him, there’s stuff, there’s ground that we need to take.
And I just want to say…I guess, how do I put this? Just think about the things that oppose us. Well, I was talking about perseverance. There is a race. There is something that we are going for. It’s founded upon a hope. Not just, I’ve got to do this. This is not a hamster wheel that we’re on. It goes someplace.
But there is a literal hope that if I go down this road, there’s something at the end that’s worth everything! It’s worth leaving everything behind so that I can have that.
See, anything short of that is short of the Gospel. Folks, we don’t hang on to the world and go after that, too. It’s one or the other. It’s a very clear demarcation between the two, in the scriptures.
But the fact that he emphasizes perseverance, does that not also emphasize the fact that there’s gonna be a lot of stuff that’s gonna try in every way to hinder us and to hold us back and to stop us, if it could? We’ve got a Devil that is absolutely determined to put a roadblock in everybody’s way.
It’s interesting that he…the writer here talks about the things hinder, but, “…the sin that so easily entangles….” I just want to say to everybody here, starting with me, whatever besetting sin, whatever thing is a weakness in your life, that you have tended to yield to, you will be tempted. We will be tempted this year! Don’t expect to slide by. Don’t expect that it’s just gonna magically…you’re gonna magically stop being tempted. Jesus wasn’t…the temptation only ended for Jesus when He took a strong stand against it, and it was not effective.
But I’ll guarantee for everyone here, there are areas of our lives that God is dealing with and He’s working on. I know that there are in mine. Absolutely! There are areas that I don’t tend to be as victorious as I’d like to be, as I need to be. I don’t think I’m the only one.
( congregational response ).
See, this is something that…and you will be tempted. And God wants to bring us to a place where we experience more of the victory that He gave us. You know, He talks about the fact that when He died, we died with Him. And the way we gain victory is by reckoning on that, believing it, acting as if it’s really true.
You know, I’ve used this illustration in the past, I think, many times. If you have a dead person lying here…let’s say we have a funeral and it’s the kind with a casket. You don’t see many of those anymore. But you have somebody who’s literally lying in a box. Their body is there.
And somebody…Donald comes along and blows a trumpet. Okay? Now, we who are alive will hear that, and we’ll react. What’s going on? But that person that’s lying there won’t react. Now, it’s not that the trumpet stops blowing, but rather, that person is dead to that. They don’t respond to it anymore.
See, if you are waiting, in your Christian life, for a time when the temptation will just be gone, it won’t be there anymore. Good luck! In this life, that ain’t gonna happen! Your body still wants all the wrong things. It’s not gonna stop trying to holler. It’s not gonna stop blowing its trumpet to say, pay attention to me, feed me.
But what the Lord wants to do in every one of us is begin to teach us to stand up to that and say, wait a minute, I don’t have to listen to that. I died in Christ. And I’ll tell you, the more we reach up to Him and believe Him and ask Him, I believe He’s going to give us the strength to where that just won’t have its affect—that won’t have this affect that it does.
Sin is very addicting. We think of things like alcohol and drugs, for example, as very addicting because they have a physical appeal that just cries out for more. But how many of you are willing to admit that that’s true of every sin?
( congregational amens ).
Every sin is addicting. You give into it and it’s easier the next time to give in, and harder to say no. I’ll tell you, we have no reason to look down on anybody who happens to be hooked on one of those other things. Every one of us needs victory over sin! And Christ has promised that.
And I believe with all my heart, He wants us to be further down the road, at the end of this year, than we are right now. But we’re gonna have to go through some things. We’re gonna have to face those temptations. And many times, those temptations will come when you’re at your weakest point.
The Lord is gonna teach us to trust in Him, to look to Him, and to find that victory. Every one of you is gonna be tempted. Every one of us is gonna be tempted this year. Every one of us is gonna go through dry times. The Lord has not promised us that we’re gonna always feel goosebumps serving the Lord, that joy is just gonna flow out of us all the time, and if it isn’t, something is wrong!
But I think those of us who’ve served the Lord any length of time, you know that there are times when your emotions will be dead, as far as the things of the Lord are concerned! You will have nothing to look into and say, I feel like serving the Lord. Everything will be contrary, and you can’t even work it up, sometimes. And the Lord withdraws His presence. Does that mean He’s left us?
( congregational response ).
No! Because He’s promised He would never leave us, never forsake us. But I’ll tell you, there are times when He doesn’t make His presence known, because we’re not called to walk by feelings, and all those kinds of outward things. We’re gonna have to learn how to exercise faith in those times. And so, I guarantee there’s gonna be times like that. Don’t you be dismayed when they come.
You know, I mentioned the fact that we’re unique. Don’t you look around at other people and start comparing yourself with them. God wants every one of us to learn how to persevere in those kinds of circumstances. You’re gonna have sadness come into your heart, sometime. Something’s gonna happen that will really…maybe it’ll rock your boat, something you didn’t expect, and there’s gonna be trouble in your life that you’re gonna have to face.
Do you think God just went to sleep and the Devil slipped in? I’ll tell you, there’s a God who knows what to do and when to do it to accomplish His purposes. And when He does those things, what is He wanting from us? Wanting trust, He’s wanting faith, He’s wanting a persistence to say, I don’t care what happens, I don’t care what it costs. If it costs me my life, that’s where I’m going. But there will come those times. Don’t you be dismayed when they come.
There will come conflicts between you and other people! Particularly, the Devil wants to sow discord among the brothers and sisters. I don’t have anything particular in mind in this, but I’m just saying, these are principles. The Devil will attack this church in every way that he knows how to do it! God wants us to have an awareness, an alertness!
Didn’t Peter say, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” (KJV). God wants a people who are alive and awake, who realize they’re in a battle, realize that there’s a road to walk that this world will oppose you in every possible way! But we can walk it, because we’re not alone.
But it calls for people who are willing to pick up their foot and say, I’m going forward with Jesus, no matter what. But boy, it’s hard sometimes when…the Lord knows our weaknesses and so does the Devil. And if you’ve got a weakness with people and attitudes and those kinds of things, the Devil is gonna allow someone to push your button…the Lord’s gonna allow someone to push your button, the Devil’s gonna cause them to.
And the Lord wants us to learn how to let go and let God have His way. Let Him work. Learn to be the person that He created you to be. He created us to be in the image of His Son. Praise God!
You know, some of us have been down the way long enough and we reach a point in our lives and we say, oh my God, this is impossible. Well, you know, the fact is, if you’ve reached that point, you might have an advantage over somebody who thinks they can handle it, because the truth is, it is impossible. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who knows how to bring us through.
I mean, you look at some of the examples in scripture of the people and all the things that they went through. Abraham and Noah, and you go down the list. You think of what Abraham had to do. What was the thing that kept motivating him? He believed God’s promises! God’s promise trumped everything!
And even though he wobbled, and struggled a little bit in his faith…there were times he tried to do things on his own and it didn’t work out like he thought it would. Always the bottom line, he came back to this. God, You promised and I am banking my entire existence on the truthfulness of Your promise! Folks, that’s what it takes! That’s what the Kingdom of God is about.
You know, I thought about the example that we’ve used so many times of the parable that Jesus told about the four kinds of soil, four kinds of people that hear the Word of the Gospel, but they respond differently. And of course, the one just has no capacity, whatsoever, to hear it. Our world is getting more and more full of people like that, who have heard and rejected. And their hearts are hard. The Word makes no impact on their lives whatsoever.
But there are two classes of people who actually seem to receive the Word, and yet, when you look down the road, it doesn’t really come out like it should. Is that right? One of them is on rocky soil. And it’s soil where the deep issues of the heart have never been confronted. Self is still on the throne down here. Okay? And that’s never been really identified and confronted.
The person has never become aware…oh, my God, the problem is not just stuff I’ve done and this little fault and that little fault, the problem is me. I am totally unfit for the Kingdom of God! I need my heart changed. I need a new heart and a new spirit. I need the reality…I need a miracle that only God can perform!
I’ll tell you, you have somebody that just…they hear the benefits of the Gospel, they feel the presence of the Lord and they enjoy that, and they say, oh yeah, that’s for me! But in the parable, what happens? After a while it gets hard. You see? That’s just the way it is. If you’re gonna serve God in this world, it’s gonna get hard. You’re gonna have hardness to deal with.
But these people, they say, wait a minute, I didn’t bank on this! That’s not what I want. I’d love the idea of Jesus loving me and forgiving my sins and taking me to heaven one day, and so I’m glad to ‘add’ Jesus to my life. You understand what I’m saying? It’s my life. It’s still my life, but I’m gonna add Him, because of the benefits I get from Him. And it doesn’t work.
And one of the reasons…one of the functions, if you will, in the purpose of God of allowing…of causing us to have to fight, causing us to have to press through, and stand in the face of all kinds of opposition, is to eliminate people like that. Because they have no place…if that hard heart has never been conquered, if self is on the throne, they have no place in that Kingdom! God is gonna conquer us through the Gospel. His Word is real! His purpose is real.
But there was another kind, wasn’t there? And…the seed went in among thorns. There was other stuff that grew. You’ve got another example of somebody that tried to add Jesus to their life. I’ve all kinds of things I’m interested in. I’m building a business. I’m doing this. This is what my life is about. And they hear about Jesus and yeah, go ahead, I’ll add that.
Man, you don’t add Jesus to your life in any shape or form, because if your heart is in this world, that’s what will define your life, that’s what will define your destiny. We live here in this world, and God can help us to get along in it, but I’ll tell you, if your heart is here, this is what matters to you the most, God will arrange the circumstances where you will say forget this, this is what I want.
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March 14, 2021 - No. 1484
“Don’t Be a Monkey” Conclusion
Broadcast #1484
March 14, 2021
March 14, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1484 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Boy, we need the Lord to invade our lives, don’t we? But when He does, it means a one-eighty, from living for the world and trying to find our happiness and our meaning, our purpose here, and turning around and saying, I can let all of that go. If they take me and line me up against a wall and shoot me right now, I’m not a loser because I’ve let anything here go, I’m a winner, and that just sets me free. Praise God!
What a glorious hope He has opened up! This is not where it’s at! We cannot allow our hearts to find a home here. And you think of all the things that Abraham had to go through in his life. He came to that point, he’s 99 years old, and he’d already come up with a way of his own to have a son, but that wasn’t the one. And the Lord promised him, in a year you’re gonna have a son.
Well, he was married to a woman who couldn’t have children. Now, he didn’t have the Bible he could look back to like we do. He had a God he walked with, that he had learned to trust. There was something in him that just trusted when God told him something. He didn’t have to explain it, didn’t have to discuss it. He just said, I know the One who told me, and He has the power to do anything He says. And so, he just believed it. And a year later, there was a baby that was born.
And a few years later, the Lord said, I want you to sacrifice him. You talk about a test of faith, and about a willingness to let go. How many of us are willing to let go of our children? You understand what I’m saying, not responsibility while they’re young, but I’m talking about letting God do what He has to do.
This is true in every area…in every relationship we have. We can get concerned about people, and we should. But you know where that concern has to play out? In prayer. Because only God can change a heart. Only God can change somebody’s heart and somebody’s life. But boy, He can do it when the time comes. He can invade somebody’s life. If He can save Paul, or Saul, the Jew, and turn him into Paul the Apostle, He can do anything!
( congregational amens ).
He can do anything! Thank God! And He’s the only one that can! Man, if we fix them, they’re gonna be broken!
( congregational amens ).
You can make somebody religious, but you haven’t helped them a bit if Christ hasn’t come into their heart and taken hold of their lives. I’ll tell you, they’ve got to come to that point of surrender. But the minute they do, and He comes in, they’re gonna have a different heart. And I’ll tell you, these tangled things that come into our lives that hold us captive…in such captivity, we’re gonna find that by His strength we can let them go, and find freedom in Him. That’s the only freedom that will ever be.
( congregational amens ).
But what a test that was for Abraham. Lord, You promised. All the things that You said were gonna come to pass, and now the one through whom You said they were gonna come, you’re telling me to take him out, lay him on an altar and kill him, as a sacrifice! And the Lord just…he didn’t get an answer, so he said, okay.
So, he went, and he was to the point where he had raised the knife. You think about the trust. And I don’t know what was in his mind, the Word says in one place in the New Testament, that he trusted that God could raise him from the dead. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe he said, well, all right, God wants me to do this for a reason. But when I do it, He’s gonna raise him back from the dead and that’s how it’s going to work out. Well, that isn’t how it worked out, was it?
But ultimately, God stopped him, put a substitute lamb on that altar, a ram, whatever it was, and they went on. But God said, I see that you are the kind of person who will trust Me and obey. And so, the promises of God…we’re walking in the promises right now, that God gave to him. Thank God! The ramifications of people who are willing to let go and let God…just go on and on and on because…then all of a sudden, you’ve got somebody who can become a channel, not of human desire and human life that attaches itself to every little thing, but you’ve somebody that God can live in.
( congregational response ).
There’s a power that’s released into the world and people see His life and they come into contact with it and they find out there’s something more than all the things that they are attached to here.
( congregational amens ).
What are you attached to? What did Jesus say in…several places, but I’m thinking of Matthew 10, I guess is one of them. Anyone…well, verse 34. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” (NIV).
I mean, there are a lot of people that are so invested in this world and what happens in politics and world affairs. I don’t mind doing my duty as a citizen and all of that, but my hope is not here, especially the way things are going! We better have something that doesn’t depend on how society works out here, because it ain’t gonna stay this way.
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth? I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” There is an absolute division that is happening in humanity. It’s not that we’re going to war against somebody, but this is a division between those who cling to the world and those that say, I’m walking away from it, I’m with Jesus!
( congregational amens ).
That’s the sword that He has come to bring. “For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
That’s pretty straight talk, isn’t it? But do you see the issues? Do you see how Jesus, at every point, says He was tempted just like we are? But at every point, He chose to say, my heart is not in this or that, that my flesh might want to gravitate to, I’m here to do God’s will! And even though I might, my flesh might feel deprived at a certain point, I’m free! The Devil has no hold on me.
Does the Devil have a hold in your life right now? Does he have an influence that’s not good? Are we as free as God wants us to be? I believe we can look to the Lord and say, God, show me why, show me what the issue is?
And you know, we’re inclined, when we think about this, to think about something external. But the truth is, it’s, even in the external things, it’s the spiritual side of it that makes it what it is. But our problem is not just that gold or silver or dollars or houses or lands or all those things are so in of themselves important, it’s how we feel about them and how we see them. And so, it’s the emotions and the desires, and all these instincts that come from human nature that absolutely keep our hand in that gourd. We will not let go!
( congregational amens ).
Because somehow, we have fallen prey to the lie that my security, my happiness, my meaning in life, it depends upon this, and I cannot let it go! Don’t you dare tell me I can’t have Jesus without letting this go. Well, Jesus said, that’s the way it is.
And the thing is, God might let some people be rich. There’s nothing evil about those things. But if somebody’s heart is locked up in those things, then it becomes evil. I mean, think about Paul’s testimony. “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am…to be content.” (KJV). Now what was he talking about? He was talking about times when he really had nothing. He was in poor condition. Economically he was just, you know, God had to help him with every meal.
And other times he was comfortable, living in a nice house with people who had money, and everything was great. He didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff. And Paul learned how to handle it, either way, without his heart getting invested in those issues. Lord, you choose, you arrange my circumstances. Praise God!
There’s got to be a letting go wherever our hearts are attached to things, like that, or we’re not really free to let them go and say, God, I just want Your will. I don’t care whether I have, don’t have it, or what happens. Lord, I am not coming to You to serve You on a condition that You’ll do stuff my way. There’s a lot of religion like that out there.
Well, I’ll show you one issue. In Psalm 37, there’s a pretty good scripture to go with, because it touches on some other issues. And this is an experience of David, because now he’s dealing with the reality that there are evil people who succeed in the world. And they’re crooks, they’re evil, they do things the wrong way, and yet they succeed! How do you handle that? What do you do with that?
And he says, “Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong…” (NIV). You know, there are a lot of folks that just can’t take that! Oh my God, that’s just wrong! Somebody cheated, somebody lied! They lied about me! That’s even worse! And they were believed, and they succeeded in what they were trying to do! God, that’s not right!
How would Jesus have reacted to that? Father, I just put myself in Your hands. You’re the judge. I’m not the judge. Let it go. “…For like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.”
This was the verse that reminded me of this passage. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Well, we better put that in its context in the scripture. Let’s not misread that, and say, if I get religious, and I sing happy songs and I go through all the form of delighting myself in the Lord, He’s gonna give me whatever my flesh desires…no. If you really delight yourself in the Lord, from the heart, your desires will be changed by that. You will desire things that He wants, and He will bless, and He will lead you in His path, not in yours.
“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.” If you’ve been in a situation where you’ve been really, really wronged, you’re not the judge, God’s the judge. Just humble yourself and let God sort it out. Do you really think on the Judgement Day, God’s not gonna get that straight? Wait a minute, Lord, You forgot this. Seriously? God knows what He’s doing.
( congregational amens ).
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret…” Don’t worry. “…It leads only to evil.”
Let’s put this into perspective. “For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.” God will let you and me go through all kinds of things in this world to discover where our hearts are at.
( congregational amens ).
And there’s one area that we keep coming back to, but it’s a very real one, because we can think, as I said, in terms of externals. But what about the wounds of life? We see the wounds in our bodies. We see the lack of health if there’s an issue. But what about the ones that are in the spirit? What do we do about those things?
They’re there. And the Devil will have a stronghold over any life that nurses, and covers, and just tries to pretend those wounds are not there. And it doesn’t fix it. We’re gonna have to come to the place, and only God can help us to do it, where we let God into the deepest places of our hearts, the deepest wounds we have ever experienced in our lives, and say, Lord, I just lay it before You. If I was done wrong, Lord, by Your grace, I forgive, I let it go.
( congregational amens ).
I am not going to nurse those feelings, those wounds anymore! There are so many people that there’s a stronghold in their life, but that’s the root of it. It’s not a question of, can I stop this or stop that. It’s the question of, God, You’ve got to heal my heart.
You’re gonna have to bring me to a place where I’m willing to let that go…and not let this sense that I’ve been wronged, I’ve been hurt, I’ve been wounded, I’m justified in feeling like I have, it’s not been…God, you didn’t do right. God, you know…and a thousand and one ways that we cling to it, and refuse to let God in there and heal it. We cannot, we just will not let it go, is what it comes down to. Because God is the healer…
( congregational response ).
…Of broken hearts. But He’s got to have our heart before He can heal it. What would it do if you had a bad physical wound and it got infected, and you just…I can’t let people see it, I can’t let people know, I’m going to cover it up, bury it? We know what happens when that happens.
But it’s even worse down in here. And sooner or later, this is going to interact with our health, and our health is gonna be destroyed because of something that’s in here. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” (KJV).
Isn’t that something, how we’re so interconnected, that what happens in our spirits can destroy health, can destroy so much? And thank God, because of Jesus, none of this has to be that way. There is a way of victory. There is a way of deliverance!
But it’s coming and laying every issue at His feet and saying, Lord, break the hold that this has on my heart! Give me the power to take my hand, my paw, out of that gourd and let that stupid stone go! It means nothing! The only power the Devil has over any single one of us is what we give him.
And I just feel like the Lord longs to make this truth fresh and real because every one of us has areas…it might just involve fear. We’re afraid of what might happen, or what could happen, or what did happen, or our inadequacies, and God wants to set people free! Let it go! Trust in Him! Give Him the issue! Be real with Him! He loves you, with a love you can’t even imagine. And He longs to wrap His arms around you and give you the peace that Jesus walked with.
You think of the things that were against Him. Man, if we were in His shoes…how dare you, don’t you know who I am? And just, you know, if they said something bad, we’d be railing at them, we’d be telling them, trying to straighten them out, we’d be doing all kinds of stuff.
And the Lord just humbled himself and when they accused Him, at the end…how many times did they say…and He just said nothing? Even the heathen ruler, aren’t you gonna say anything? Do you hear all this stuff they’re saying? Aren’t you gonna say anything? And He just…completely humbled into His Father’s hands.
Like I say, when you and I come to our death bed, what are you gonna do to hang onto everything then? You know, an awful lot of being ready to go is reaching that point, the person who goes, reaching that point where, okay, Lord, into Your hands, Father, I commit my spirit.
Boy I’ll tell you, for those who don’t know the Lord, that’s a terrible, terrible moment, because they’re plunging into what they don’t know. But you know, it’s for the people that stay behind, too. How many situations have there been when someone has come to that death bed, and part of it is the person who is left behind being willing to let go?
This principle touches everything that has to do with our life, serving God in this world, because there’s nothing in this world you can hang onto! How foolish is it that we do it, but we all do it! Only God can shine the light and say, this has got you in bondage because you can’t let it go. God wants us to find our happiness, our sense of who we are, our wellbeing, to get it from Him!
( congregational response ).
Regardless of the circumstances around us! How is it that Paul and Silas, fastened and beaten like they were, and having their feet fastened in stocks, at midnight were able to praise God? Now some of us could imagine, well, they’d have a prayer meeting. Oh God, please help. No! They were praising God!
Where do you find that? How does a human being behave like that? We’re gonna have to have Him in us! But we’re gonna have to let go, and yield to Him, and say, God, I want Your will and not mine. Father, I’m in Your hands. You are the one directing my steps, and You’re going to bring me through and You’re gonna use everything I experience to get me ready for what’s coming.
My only purpose in life is just to serve You. What I have or don’t have, or what happens to me or doesn’t happen to me, all these things, Lord, I let them go. Or what somebody did, 30 years ago, or 5 minutes ago, let it go. And the Devil will have no hold over you. And he’ll be looking for something else.
But at every point, this is the key to freedom in the Lord…that we are willing to let go of those things that hold us captive and attach us to this world. So, just let it go! Praise God! Isn’t God good to us?
( congregational response ).
Jesus is the One who’s made all this possible! To His name be the glory! Praise God!
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March 7, 2021 - No. 1483
“Don’t Be a Monkey” Part One
Broadcast #1483
March 7, 2021
March 7, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1483 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I have had one thought come to me a number of times…oh, over the past weeks, I guess. And then, Brother Ben actually referred to it specifically Wednesday night, and so, I’m gonna kind of pick up on some of the things he talked about.
And he mentioned the fact that right before Jesus went to the cross, if my memory serves correctly…can you imagine this…that Jesus made this statement about the Devil: He said, “…the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on Me.” (NIV).
And there’s a powerful truth locked up in that, that I believe every one of us here needs in one form or another, because the Devil, obviously has a tremendous stronghold on the world and he has a lot of influence, certainly on everyone that doesn’t know the Lord, but I mean, on every one of us, there are holds that he has.
And there’s a reason for that. And I think one thing we need to understand is that the holds that Satan has, don’t just come out of the ether waves. It’s not like he has unbridled power to just take over anybody he wants to. Rather, he takes advantage of things that are in us. And if those things were not there, then he would have…it would be like Jesus. He would have no hold, nothing he could take a hold of. If Satan does not have something in our nature that he can appeal to, that we tend to run to, then he is in a world of hurt.
And, I know we’ve used this subject before, but I feel like…I just pray the Lord will make it fresh and apply it to where we’re at right now in our journey. That’s what we need. We just don’t need a doctrinal lecture, we need something that’s gonna help us.
And, you know, many of you will remember the illustration that comes from some part of the world…I don’t know all the details, but you’ve heard about how monkeys are caught in some places. And the trick is to hollow…take a hollow gourd, drill a hole that’s just big enough for the monkey’s hand to get through, his paw to get through, and then put something in there that rattles around. And…but what you do, you chain the gourd to a tree, or to something.
And so, the monkey, his nature is to be relentlessly curious, to the point where he won’t let go. And so, he comes along and wonders what that is, and he picks it up and rattles it, and there’s something inside. And he wonders what that is, and he sticks his paw in there and he grabs it. But the hole is just such that he can’t get his hand back out. And so, the monkey is trapped, not by something that clutches his hand and puts him…he’s not in a cage, he’s not any of the ways that we normally think of trapping animals. He traps himself, by simply following his nature.
And that is the truth with every single one of us. And we have, again, the perfect example is our Lord and Savior. And of course, we’ve talked many times about how, when it came time for His ministry, what was the first step? He went into the Devil…into the Devil…into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil…spent 40 days, was in a place of great weakness and great need. He didn’t eat for 40 days. And so, He came to the end and, of course, His body began to react to that, and He began to be hungry.
And so, the Devil came and tempted Him in three particular areas that we’re told. Now I’m certain that that was not the whole of the temptation while He was out there. But basically, it was a temptation between following human nature, the desires that we are born into this world with, or following God’s will.
And so, He was tempted to satisfy His hunger. Well, He was out there in the will of God, and putting His own hunger and His own personal, physical needs ahead of God’s will was not right, and so He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (KJV). There was a humbling of Himself in a time of real need, when His nature cried out to do one thing, yet He chose the will of God.
Was not that the pattern of His life? And is that not the pattern that He sets for us to live in this world. And so, then he appealed to His…okay, You want to do God’s will, let’s…why don’t you go prove to everybody…you say You’re the Son of God, go prove it. Let’s take You up on the pinnacle of the Temple and throw Yourself down. After all, doesn’t the Word say that if You cast Yourself down, if You fall down, His angels will catch You, and then everybody will know who You are, and it’ll be wonderful.
Well, that wasn’t God’s plan. And what’s behind that is kind of…what he was appealing to was human pride, that wants to do what we think is God’s will, our way. Now nobody here has ever done that…I get that. But if you ever run into anybody that has that problem, you’ll know what to tell them, right? We would never get in God’s way, we would never try to do a good thing a bad way, or in a self-willed way. But see that was what Jesus was being appealed to on the basis…that was the basis of the appeal.
But there was another thing that had to do with human pride, as well. And that was…You worship me. I’ve got control over the world, right? This is my world. You’re invading my world. But I have the power to give You authority over everything. But the condition is, You have to bow down and worship me. And so, obviously that’s not God’s plan, that’s not God’s heart or will.
But there is a heart of trust that God desires to bring us to, where we are able and willing to let go of everything that flows out of human nature, that attaches us to this world, because to the extent that we hold on to anything, it holds on to us. We are the prisoner. We’re not holding anything. And if you think you are, you just wait until the days comes when you’re in Dan’s position…and there ain’t no holding on. And we come to a point where we have to let go of everything that has to do with this world.
Well, thank God, this is not all there is! Now, the way human nature reacts, we would think that this is all there is. But…we know intellectually that it isn’t, but emotionally we have a problem with that. And so, as God deals with us in our lives, virtually every situation that we run into that gives us any trouble at all, where the Devil has any influence over us, the root cause of it, is that we are attached to something, that is of this world, in a way that is contrary to what God’s plan and God’s heart is, and God wants to cut us free from that.
But that involves, not some magic miracle, that involves us letting go of something to which we are attached. Now, you think about what it says that we’ve read many times in Philippians chapter 2, the perfect example that we have in our Savior. And this is what Paul is appealing to, wanting the disciples to be like him, and having the same love, and not just living for self, because human nature, as we’ve said many times, is all about self. It’s what pleases me, what makes me happy, what makes me secure, what…you know, whatever it is, there’s something that we get so attached to that we can’t let go.
I mean, you think about a little child. You know, we have ways to sort of disguise it, but a little child…you give them something that they feel very attached to, don’t you dare try to take it! That’s mine! We have this sense of, that’s mine, this possessiveness. And boy, I’ll tell you, you get a doll or something that a child has a hold of, that could be a stronghold in their minds and their hearts. Their emotional welfare is wrapped up in a piece of material.
But are we any different? We just have ways to make it more sophisticated, more grownup, but it all comes from the same thing.
So, here’s Jesus, and remember that He was with the Father before the world was, something we’ve pointed out many times. This is the One who spoke the worlds into existence. This was the One who was a glorious being before everything happened, was privy to God’s plans, knew from the start what was gonna happen, what was gonna be involved for Him.
And think about human nature versus the nature that was displayed in Him. He took all that glory and laid it aside and said, I am going to become a single cell in a human being’s womb, a human mother. At one point in my existence, I am going to be reduced to a single cell in a woman and then grow into a fetus, grow into a baby and be born and live in a broken world.
But I’m not gonna live like everybody else. I’m gonna show them what God is like, because I’m gonna let Him live in Me and I am not gonna live the way people do. And I am gonna do it so that I can set people free. I’m gonna show them the way out. I’m gonna provide the way out.
It’s not a matter of me educating them and saying, if you do it this way, then you’ll be okay. It’s…I’ve got to go to a cross. There are sins that separate human beings from a holy God, and the only way I can deal with that, the only solution to that, I’m gonna have to come down and be their sin-bearer. I’m gonna have to step in the gap for every human being that will put their trust in Me, because their sins stand in the way. But for someone to be willing to do that, how utterly contrary, different from human nature is that? Praise God!
Oh, how self-centered we are! Oh, how our happiness is invested in so many things that mean nothing. When we come to the end, we look back and we say, my God, that was so important to me! I just couldn’t let it go! My whole happiness was bound up in some stupid thing that I’ve got to totally let go of now. What does it mean, in the grand scheme of things? About nothing.
And so, here He was, “…made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…” in Philippians 2, “…being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (NIV).
Boy, the idea of being obedient to death, it kind of runs counter to human nature, doesn’t it? There’s nothing we fear more than letting go and dying. And here’s Jesus, “…he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!”
But thank God, the message of the Gospel is to remind us that’s not the end! That is a pathway to the beginning! How many times have we said, we’ve inherited a life we can’t keep? And God has a life you can’t lose! And Jesus is the One who went to that cross to open that gateway so that we would have a way to live with Him forever free from all of this! He became sin for us, that we might, “…become the righteousness of God,” in him.” What a trade! Praise God!
But how do you become the righteousness of God without laying hold of the reality of what we are, and coming and just laying ourselves at His feet, and saying, oh God, I let go. I have no hope in myself. Lord, I’m nothing but a sinner. I have the guilt of my sins and the power that they hold over me! Lord, You are the only one that has the power to set me free! But it means I’ve got to let go.
There are so many things that hold men captive! You know, it could be simply the material things of this world. We have, certainly, many examples of that. The rich young ruler is the obvious one. There was only one thing that stood between him and this Kingdom that we’re talking about! Only one thing! What do you think he thinks about all this now?
I mean, you stand back and look at anything from a standpoint of eternity. What does anything that pertains to this world…what’s it worth? Absolutely nothing, but that’s not how we feel about it when we’re in the middle of it.
And you take a rich man, who is really used to his place of privilege. There’s pride, there’s a sense of possession…that’s mine. I can do as I please. I’m not like those poor beggars out there! And Jesus said, you only lack one thing. “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor…then come, follow Me.” Well, that was a bridge too far for that fellow.
But do you see what the barrier was? Was God keeping him out? Did the Devil have…did the Devil just absolutely prevent him…he had no possibility of getting in because the Devil had such a hold? No. He made a choice. There was something here in this world that was more important to him than the Kingdom of God.
I wouldn’t want to be that guy on the Day of Judgment, who was so close to the Kingdom of God. And Jesus wasn’t mad at him. It says, Jesus loved him in one of the accounts of that story.
I’ll tell you what, it’s…this is the price of admission. And it’s…and we think about it in terms of getting into the kingdom, and getting born again, and even getting our foot in the door…and that’s a critical thing. It was obvious it was a critical issue for him.
But our problem is, once we get in there are still areas…with every single one of us, of things that we’re not able to let go. I mean, it gets right down to stupid stuff. There are a whole lot of people who just get all bent out of shape if the toothpaste is rolled instead of squeezed. I mean, their welfare depends on how you handle the toothpaste! And it’s a silly example, but it’s a real one.
Our emotions get so invested in the smallest, most inconsequential things of life! Oh, how we long for…just happiness, whatever that is. Happiness is related to the word ‘happening.’ It’s trying to find pleasure in circumstances. Good luck…in this world!
If you and I suddenly acquired divine power to do whatever we wanted to do to please ourselves, how do you think that would actually work? We would be miserable in short order! There is nothing to be gained from investing our affections in this world. Those that are Christ’s have crucified the world, with the affections and the lusts thereof. God wants to set us free. He gives us, He blesses us in so many ways in this world!
But I’ll tell you, it’s like Jesus said. I mean, look at Matthew chapter 6, familiar scripture. The more I started to think about this, the more scriptures I thought of, and I said, whoa, there’s a lot to get through here. But I’m not gonna worry about any of that. I’m not gonna get emotionally invested in that. I mean, I’m serious! This is a real issue with all of us. The silliest little thing. I wrestle with stuff getting up here that the Lord wants me to let go! Anybody else have that issue in your life?
Yeah, because Jesus was talking about the reality, in chapter 6, of how we don’t store up treasures on earth, because everything spoils here. What sense does it make to invest all of your life’s energy into something that you will walk away from? You will die. It will go bad. Something will happen. There is absolutely no way to hang onto it. And yet, the world is invested in such things that cannot last, have no power to last!
My God, do we need, as Christians, to not put our hope in the ‘stuff’ that God blesses us with? We’ve got brothers and sisters in this world who have nothing. And yet, we are so full of pride in the car we drive, the house we live in, the job we’ve got, the career, the thousand and one things…the size of our TV. Every little thing has got to be just so to please ourselves and feel comfortable and like everything’s okay. God’s blessing me!
Sometimes it’s just self wanting to have its way, wanting to please itself. And then something comes along and messes with a little of that and our whole life…oh God…like that’s our…that’s where our security, our happiness comes from. God wants to set His people free.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
And I’ll tell you what, am I the only one that gets to issues in my life and suddenly I realize my heart’s a little too invested in this thing or that thing? It isn’t just things, either, but issues. All the kinds of things that are so important to us that we just cannot let go!
And we’re just being a monkey, when it comes right down to it, because Satan is on the other end of that chain, and here we’re trying to be free, but we won’t let go of this in order to be free.
Satan has no power over us that we don’t give him. Christ has set His people free! We need to walk in that freedom and find grace to do so.
“The eye….” What we look at, I mean, in the sense of…beyond just the physical eyes, but I mean the eyes of the heart He’s talking about here. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
See, that’s just one issue. But I’ll tell you what, if there is a person here or listens to this anywhere, if there is something in your life that is so important that you cannot let it go, that’s in this realm, I pray to God that He will do whatever it takes. If He has to destroy your wealth, your earthly wealth, to give you eternal life, you will look back and fall down and praise Him! Oh, praise God!
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February 28, 2021 - No. 1482
“Not What, But Who” Conclusion
Broadcast #1482
February 28, 2021
February 28, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1482 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: God’s purpose is not just to tell us what to do, it is to give us His Spirit that makes us a different person from the inside out. Laws are imposed from the outside, trying to get people to change their behavior. It does nothing to fix what’s in here. So what God’s purpose is, is to give us a new heart, a new life, a new spirit from the inside and then let us learn to have that come out.
So, what was the answer to Paul’s question? Did they gain this gift of God’s Spirit by obeying the law? No, God gave them a message, and they believed it. They yielded to it. They allowed the seed of the Word to be planted in their hearts and to grow into life. And they found out that God accepted them, not because they earned it, measured it, measured up for it, deserved it. No other purpose but God’s love and His mercy and His grace, and they came to Him, and they found they had the gift of God’s Spirit living in them.
Jesus spoke of the river, coming to Him, and there would be rivers of life flowing from the inside. “…This spake he of the Spirit, which they…should receive.” (KJV). That happened on the day of Pentecost and from then on.
But here are people that have entered into that. Here are people…so the question is obvious, isn’t it? No, it was not any kind of effort on my part to deserve this. I simply believed the promise of God. I didn’t have to qualify myself to get this. Okay?
“Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (NIV). It’s like, okay, He let me in the door freely, now, I’ve got to earn it. You know, doctrinally, we know that’s not right! But emotionally, I would guarantee there are people here who live that way, and God wants to set people free.
He wants you to walk out of here and realize that He loves you because He is a God of love. The greatest joy He gets is to take the most broken person He can find and put them together, and give them His life and set His love upon them, and give them a hope and a future, without there being any merit on their part other than surrender, and trusting His promise. That’s the hope of the Gospel!
But God doesn’t want us to fall into this trap of ‘doing,’ because you can do all the right stuff, and think you’re…and always, you’re trying to say, oh, if I just do it right, if I say it right. Oh, I did that wrong. Oh, God! I’ve got to get it right, and then I can come, and I can gain His favor again.
I’ll tell you, God isn’t like that. You have His love. Yes, there are times we need to humble ourselves and repent for sure. But you can’t outlive God’s love, and His mercy toward you. It never ever is based upon your performance. You don’t ever have to climb up to get to Him. You just come. You come when you’re in need!
How many times have we said that? What it says in Hebrews, chapter 4…we come to Him, to the throne of grace, to the very throne of the universe! Forget the Supreme Court! Forget all the courts of this world! We can go right past every one of them to the supreme court of the universe, and know that we’ll be accepted, not because we deserve it, but because Jesus gave His life for you and for me. And we don’t go when we deserve to go. We go when we’re in need, and we know we’ll be received.
Oh, may God set His people free from trying to qualify yourself to be loved, and accepted, and approved of, and all of that. Oh, how much we try to earn His favor. God, help us to let that go.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you just…you know, that means okay, like He accepts me so I can do as I please. Yeah, that’s not where this is going. This has got to be the operation of the new nature in us.
I’ll tell you, if the new nature operates, do you think it’s gonna be doing that stuff? No. If we learn that it’s not by trying and struggling and striving in the flesh to do anything. It’s by believing His promise and saying, oh God, I see this need in me. I’m facing something where ‘I can’t.’ We talked about that recently.
So, what do I do about it? Do I try harder? How do I handle it? Do I sit there and just feel sorry for myself? Do I give up, throw up my hands? How do I handle all that? I bring it to You and say, God, Your promise is that You have come to live in me, that what I cannot do in myself, I can do in You! And so, I begin right now with this particular situation. Lord, strengthen me. I will, by Your grace, do what You say, but I’m depending on You. It’s not in me to do it.
I believe God will take us through issue after issue after issue in our lives, in our daily journey and take us to places we might not want to go. But I’ll tell you, for everyone that’s willing go and to look yourself in the mirror and say, God, I need You, there’s a God who is looking for that.
Oh, how the Devil paints a picture of how we’ve got to somehow qualify and earn His love. You don’t have to earn a thing. God chose to love you when you were unlovable. You weren’t even thinking about Him, and He planned for you from all eternity. He knew then, every need you have in the depths of your being, the ones you don’t want anybody to know about. He knew about every one of them, and His plan was not to teach you how to live a better life, it was to give you His life in place of this.
Oh, I’ll tell you, I pray if there’s somebody here who’s never been born of that Spirit, I pray that the thing that will drive your heart right now, more than anything in this world….what could be more important? What, possibly, could be more important? You’re part of a creation that’s already marked for destruction.
You look at the cross, and you know how God feels about it. That’s when the judgment of God was manifested in the death of His Son. That’s the destiny of this world you’re a part of. If this is all you have, you’re gonna perish with it. God doesn’t want that.
God has opened a door of hope for you, and I pray that if you’re not sure, if this is an issue in your heart, you will cry out to God until He brings you to that place, where your heart is opened and surrendered, and He comes in and you become His, because then, your destiny is entirely different from everybody else in this world.
You know, pray! Is this something…believers, is this something we need to be praying and saying, God, do this? Does this matter? Yeah. Destinies hang on this. I don’t care what your lot in this life is from that standpoint. This is the thing that matters. One thing matters. Here were these people trying to work it out.
But, as I say, one reason we try to work it out is for our own benefit. We want to feel like we qualify and deserve His favor and all that kind of stuff. We’re trying to impress ourselves.
But the other thing that we do, when it comes to the ‘what we do,’ is that we’re trying to appear right before everybody else. We know that there are people who can see us, who observe us in their interactions with us, and we want them to think well of us. We want them to consider us to be fellow believers, and doing stuff right, and oh, how concerned we are with saying it right and doing it right.
You know, from time to time, you’ll hear somebody talk about how common it is for church people, basically, to wear a mask. We’re all wearing one. We all want people to see us in a good light, and so, we’ve learned how to ‘do’ Christianity right. Is that where it’s at? No, it’s not where it’s at, is it? Do you think God just might want something more than that?
You know, I was thinking about this from another point of view. We talked last week about the characteristics of Kingdom nature and how they’re complete opposite of human nature. But you know, Paul gets into the fact that God has called us to a place of freedom, but we’re not to use that freedom just to give vent to our flesh and do whatever the flesh wants, but to rather to serve Him. The whole point of Him giving us His life is so that we’d be able to live out that life.
And so, let’s see…verse 13 of chapter 5. Let’s just pick it up there. “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”
So, obviously, this business of being born of God’s Spirit is not something that automatically fixes everything, is it? This is a life that we then need to learn how to live out, and the problem is we’ve still got a nature that wants to be in charge.
“So I say…” Paul said, “…live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.”
You know, you don’t need a moral code to tell you what to do and what not to do if Christ is living in here, and you’re living in harmony with Him. Is He gonna lead you to go rob a bank? No! That’s the key. We need to be living out a real life. There is Somebody who wants to live through us. It’s not what, it’s Who. You see, do you get that?
So now, he’s going to identify these characteristics of the two natures. “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immortality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy….”
Now, we need to point out, we tend to think in our idea of what a Christian life is supposed to be like, we identify these gross, outward sins of the flesh, right? It’s obvious…that’s bad, we want to stay away from that stuff. But what people don’t realize is that the same nature that drives people to do those things, drives these things as well. There are sins not just of the flesh but of the spirit, and how easy it is for those to still be in operation. All right?
“…Idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” That’s quite a list, isn’t it? “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this…” that’s the defining characteristic of their life, they, “…will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit…” Now, is this not talking about…I mean, put this in the context of the new creation. Is this not what the result of the new creation being born in us is meant to be? Are these characteristics not meant to be expressed in our lives? “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” And he goes on to encourage that we need to walk in these things.
Of course, down in chapter 6, he talks about the fact that if you go the wrong way, you’re gonna reap what you sow. But here’s how this principle of, not what, but Who, comes into play with a lot of us. What is the evidence that every one of us deals with, that we’ve got a little too much of the what and not enough of the Who? Something like that.
How much of this internal stuff that he describes as acts of the sinful nature, how much of them exist on the inside when we’re doing the right stuff on the outside? Oh…that’s why we need a mask. I don’t want people to see the real me.
Do you think, just maybe, the Lord wants us to be authentic…that the more He gains the rule in our hearts, the more we’re like Him, the more He changes us, are we not supposed to come, more and more to a place where what we are on the outside is the same as what we are in here?
How many of us can smile and say and do the right things, and inside, there’s turmoil, there’s dissention, there’s jealousy, there’s envy? There are all these things that just…oh, they just don’t want to go away. They’re there, and we’re covering them up, and we’re pretending they aren’t there. We’re pushing them down and saying, I won’t give into that, but it’s there. It’s gotten quiet. Is this relevant?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. I believe, with all my heart, God wants us to experience this new creation in a deeper way. And the way we get there is, often painful, because it means that we’re gonna have to come squarely, face to face with the realities of what is in here, and what literally operates on the inside, the part that we don’t want people to see.
And we’re gonna have to come to the place where we bring that to the Lord, and as I said earlier, how do you deal with that? We’re gonna have to bring it to Him, honestly and repent of it, but how do you go forward? Do you just say, I’ll try harder, or do you just say, oh God, this is beyond my capability? I cannot do, I cannot be what You want me to be.
A simple example that we’ve used many times, I guess, is forgiveness. Somebody’s done something, and you just cannot let it go. And, I think many times that’s a real problem that people cannot let it go! But does God want us to let it go?
So, what’s the solution? Think about that. Where do we go for the answer to something like that? Lord, I can’t. I don’t even know if I’m willing, but I come to You, Lord, with this need. I know what You want. I want what You want. I just can’t, but Lord, I’m willing, if You’ll just…I’m willing to be made willing to be made willing.
I mean, wherever you have to start. It’s just coming to Him with an expectation. Has He not given promises on these things? Has He made no provision for this? That’s what the new creation is about. It’s His life being reproduced in us and beginning to grow in the very presence of these, or within these bodies, and learning how to use these bodies as instruments of the new creation and not the old one.
Man, there’s a lot of learning, there’s a lot of growing, there’s a lot of dying in order to live, that has to happen in all of that. Man, I need the Lord. None of this is in me. I run into stuff every single day, and if you’re honest, you do, too, where I have to look inside and say, you know, the stuff, the turmoil, the things that go on in here, that’s not the fruit of the Spirit.
God, I want my inside to match. I want to be right on the outside. I want to treat my brothers and sisters right. I want to treat people right. I want to be an expression of Your Kingdom. But God, I don’t want to be an actor. I don’t want to be a pretender. I don’t want to just put on a form and a fake smile and pretend to be something that I’m not. I want You to change me down here so that I am what You want me to be.
And not only that, I believe that’s what You want, and I’m asking You, I’m coming to You, because You have told me that’s what Your purpose is in my heart and my life. Lord, deliver me.
We need Him in these issues that come up day to day as much as we needed Him when we entered the Kingdom, when we had to surrender and leave our sins behind us. Thank God we could do that, but He has a provision for this.
That’s what Paul came to when he said, it’s no longer I that lives. When I look at the cross, I don’t just see what Jesus did for me, I see me. That was the end of me, and I’m going by that. That’s what God did for me back then. I want to experience that right now. I know I haven’t arrived.
You know how he talks in Philippians. I haven’t gotten there. I’ve still got a lot of territory to gain, but that’s my goal in life, is to learn how to live out this new creation, to be a part of that and not a part of this. Would that not change everything? What’s the answer to that?
( laughing ).
Anybody awake? It’s a lot to think about. There are a lot of implications to the simple principle where Paul says, really essentially, there’s one thing that matters. What counts is the new creation. You could do or not do all these other things, but the one thing you cannot do without, is the new creation.
But oh, that has got to be the thing that is defined, the defining characteristic of our lives. God is going to bring every one of us down whatever road it takes, whatever it takes, whatever’s necessary, to bring us to that place, and He’s gonna do it because He loves us. I thank God I don’t have to earn this. I don’t have to try to be what I’m not.
That’s the point. I come to Him because I can’t. I come to Him because I’m in need, and I don’t deserve a single thing. Oh, God, help me. I’ve gone around this mountain so many times, and I just need help. I need the new creation to come and just take charge of my heart and be reproduced. It’s your life that has the power be and to do. It doesn’t matter how right or wrong I do stuff. It matters Who does it.
I’ll tell you, do we not have an awesome Savior? Think about this. Your life and mine, your Christian life and mine, does not consist of just ‘the what’ we do. It’s about ‘the Who’ is doing it. And when you run up against yourself, don’t just pretend it isn’t there. When you run up against the bad stuff that still wants to rule in here, we need to come and say, Lord, this is the truth. This is where I’m at, but I need You.
And I come to You knowing You love me, knowing You planned for this, knowing You have the answer that I need, that Your Spirit is not like this. And so, if I learn how to yield myself to that and operate in that, I’ll be free.
God wants His people to be free. God is getting us ready to stand in an hour of darkness, and this is the key! The what you do kind of stuff and doing it right will not get us through. We’re gonna need Jesus living in His people, and then, we will have everything that we need. To Him be the glory. Praise God!
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February 21, 2021 - No. 1481
“Not What, But Who” Part One
Broadcast #1481
February 21, 2021
February 21, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1481 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, by nature, we’re nothing like Jesus. But he came down to show us what Kingdom nature is like. He walked among us, not through any strength of His own, but through the power of His Father that lived and expressed His life through Him. May God give us the grace to let that happen in our midst.
How many people are in places of spiritual bondage, and it has to do with our relationships one with another? Because we’re just not like Him. We expect Him to forgive us, we expect people to be tolerant of us…after all, we’re not perfect. But let somebody else do something, say something, look at us cross-eyed…and it just, there’s something that rises up in us, that reacts to that in a way that is very much like the world—it is the world. It’s human nature.
And God is looking for a people who are able to see beyond what’s wrong. My God, we’re all sinners! My God, the best of us come short! We don’t need condemnation, we don’t so many things that are dished out, that we dish out to one another, in one way or another. We don’t need all these things. We need the heart of the Father toward us, who reaches out so willingly to show us mercy.
What is mercy? Is mercy some sort of favor that we earn? No, it’s entirely underserved! It’s a favor that is completely undeserved! And here’s a Father who just longs to reach down and say, I know where you’re at. Come to me as you are. There’s a foundation for mercy, because Jesus died in your place. There’s a place where you can come and find peace.
But what did Jesus say on more than one occasion? I think it’s mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, but other occasions too, about somebody who won’t forgive. You know, Steve referred to this the other night, about the man who owed a huge debt to this guy he worked for, and was about to be thrown into prison for it. And he got down on his knees and he begged, ‘oh forgive me,’ and the man forgave him.
And so, he went to a fellow servant who owed him lunch money, basically. And the guy couldn’t pay and he threw him in prison…had him thrown in prison…that was part of their culture, I guess, in that day. And what did Jesus say here? It’s so plain. If you won’t forgive….
There’s a load of debt…of guilt that people carry that they don’t have to carry. And a lot of times it’s because you haven’t forgiven somebody. Somebody did something, maybe it was years ago, maybe you’re carrying something buried in your system, and you’ve never let it go. And the Lord is longing to fill your heart with His peace, and there you are struggling, trying to feel forgiven, but you won’t forgive somebody who basically owes you lunch money, compared to what you owe Him.
These are pretty central principles of the Kingdom, aren’t they? These are things that affect every one of us, because we just default to human nature and human reactions so much of the time. And the Lord wants us to see that’s not how His Kingdom works.
I’ll tell you, we need more of God’s presence. I thank God for the degree that He comes in our midst, but there’s so much more that He longs to flow, but the flow is all blocked up, because we’re not walking in some of these simple things. I’ll tell you, if somebody has done something, and somebody may have genuinely done something, but if your reaction is one of anger, bitterness, the unforgiveness, you’re the sinner! You’re the one that God needs to deal with about that!
Don’t you go looking at them and say, well if they’ll get straight I will, then I’ll be good. What did Jesus say when they crucified Him? What did He pray on the cross? Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. Now who was the one who was free? Did that free Him, you think?
Oh, how many of us so easily just lay hold of something and say, they deserve it, it’s only right that I feel this way, and I’m justified because of what they did. But you’re the one in bondage! And Satan has wrapped chains around your heart, and you won’t be merciful to somebody else, but you expect God to be merciful to you.
Do you see why this is not something you’re gonna get out of your human nature? Human nature is the problem, not the solution. I need Jesus! I need Kingdom nature! I need to first of all have it, but I need to walk in it! I need to say, oh God, fill me with You right now, in this. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
You see, there are so many things that have been related to what we’re talking about today. What we’re talking about today, in Kingdom nature, is totally impossible for human nature! It takes a miracle! It takes God birthing a brand-new life, but now we need to learn to walk in that and live in that. And as we do, we’re gonna experience the same thing that Jesus did, the peace that He had, the rest, the certainty.
God wants to bring us into a larger place. Are you willing? Are we willing to search our hearts and say, God, help me? But don’t let the Devil take any of this and turn it into condemnation, turn it into ‘oh poor me, I can just never measure up.’
Well, that’s the point. But if you can come to a place where you feel your need and you want Him to change you, this Kingdom is for you. It’s not for the other kind of people. It’s for you, this morning, right now. There is a Lord who wants to come in and fill you with His peace and His rest. Do you want it? It’s there! Is there anything He hasn’t provided? Everything has been provided.
You know, I think about Peter. I can’t remember if I mentioned this specifically, but, when Peter asked the Lord how many times should I forgive my brother when he comes and repents…up to seven times? And, of course, the Lord said, up to seventy times seven.
( laughter ).
What did he say? What was Peter’s response to that? Lord, increase our faith.
( laughter ).
Isn’t that revealing, about how we look at things? Peter was looking at this from a human point of view, okay I know I’m supposed to forgive but I’m getting tired of this.
Do we want the Lord to get tired of forgiving us? Do you see His heart revealed in all of this? He wants to reproduce that heart in every one of us. Oh, there’s a rest that comes with all of that. This is not about exhilaration and all the things that religion tries to generate. This is a place of…this is a walk with the Lord, where we can have His rest and His peace on the inside. We can be free from the things that human nature drives us to crave, and fight for, and all that stuff. That’s what we need to be delivered from and He’s able to do it! And willing to do it, if we’re willing.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NIV). Obviously, he’s not talking about seeing an image. God is not some old man sitting in a chair somewhere. He’s a Spirit that fills eternity. He’s called the Invisible God. There’s no way you’ll ever see Him.
But what do we see? We see His image. Jesus Christ is the image of the Invisible God, He is the perfect representation of what this immense, unfathomable God is. You want to see what He’s like, you look at Jesus. That’s the expression.
But isn’t that the life that He longs to express in us? But now we’re talking about living in a world in which bad stuff happens. And many times, we’re called to experience things that we don’t get, we don’t understand. Why is this way, why isn’t it that way, what’s wrong?
And, how many times when we say that, or feel that, are we looking from a human point of view? If God really loved me, everything would be wonderful. I would have plenty of money in the bank! I’d have perfect health…you know, a thousand and one natural considerations.
And many times, it needs to be just the opposite, because God is setting us free from the craving for those very things! God knows what He is doing! God may allow one person to accumulate a lot of money and use it for His glory, somebody else may be poor. People have all kinds of circumstances, but the ability to see God in that, is a supernatural thing.
And it’s a supernatural thing for those who are willing say, oh God, my life is not mine to direct. It’s not be lived for selfish considerations. My life here is Yours to direct as You will, to lead me down the path of Your choosing, whether it follows earthly values or not. I want my life to follow heavenly values and You’re the only one that can make that possible. But You’re the only one that can give me the ability to see that You really are in charge, and You really still love me even when bad stuff happens.
How did Moses, for example, endure all that he went through? We’re told specifically in Hebrews 11…how did he put up with all that…all the stuff, the rejection…getting kicked out of Egypt, chased away for his life, living the way he did? “He endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” (KJV).
Isn’t that an interesting way to put that? Seeing Him who is invisible. That doesn’t sound right, does it? But there is a seeing, with the heart, that says, God, I know You love me. I know You’re in charge. I know that no matter what the pathway may lead through, I know that in the end, I know how this comes out, because You’re in charge. And I’m gonna find my rest in that.
Oh, I’ll tell you, we have so much unrest because, again, the fleshly nature strives for something that is earthly based. We want our security. We want our pleasure. We want what we want here!
And how many people try to use God to get that? Instead of saying, God, my life is…You’ve called me into a kingdom that is not of this world. It’s not based upon its values, it’s gonna live when this world is done away with. This is a kingdom that’s eternal. But it is powered by Your life. You didn’t call me because I was somebody special, from an earthly standpoint. You called me because of my need, because You love me, because it’s Your nature to love.
But oh, I’ll tell you, are you in a place right now where you resent your situation? You’re mad about it…a thousand and one human reactions to things instead of saying, God, I rest my case in Your hands. I’m gonna see past all my circumstances and I’m gonna see You, loving me and supporting me, and walking with me through whatever You choose. You are God and I am not, and You love me. I’ll tell you, that’s what real faith does. This is real faith.
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” (NIV). Now you’re coming down to human relations again, aren’t you? Oh, how easy it is for us to add fuel to the fire of problems that separate people. It’s been real quiet this morning. Is this stuff true?
( congregational response ).
Does it affect us?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. But where we value self in trying to exert self and trying to protect self and advance self, Jesus and His Father value peace, and harmony between people and promoting that…and being an instrument where, instead of trying to create strife and advance it, we try to bring people together, we’re trying to solve and resolve. God, give us that kind of a heart.
Gossip comes into this, doesn’t it? There are so many things that the enemy provokes human nature to do, that run exactly counter to what Jesus said. And yet, here’s a blessing. Oh, this is a blessed thing to be a peacemaker—someone whose heart is always wanting to bring together, to remove barriers, to bring about unity. Doesn’t God prize unity? Isn’t that where He commands the blessing?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. Do you see where some of these things come into play right here? God longs for His Spirit to flow in a greater way in our midst. The problem is not with Him. The issues are with us. May God give us the hunger to live by Kingdom nature. It’s freely available to everyone who will humble themselves and say, yes, I’m a candidate. I want to be part of Your Kingdom. I want to be like You, Lord. We sing about it. Do we mean it? Do we understand what that means? Jesus is kind of just giving you a birds-eye view of some of these issues.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” Does that matter? Does that matter to you? Do these blessings that He pronounces matter to you? And of course, He goes on…you could go on and on in this. That’s the main thing. But I’ll tell you, it comes down to our relationship to the world and there are two main things that He talks about here that are very relevant to us.
This one not so much yet, but it will be, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
We haven’t gotten quite to this point yet, but it’s coming. May God give us a heart, instead of one that’s out there fighting. There’s so much anger, there’s so much fighting in our society. God, give us a heart that sees past that.
Yes, the Devil is doing everything he can to destroy everything…every value that America has ever held, particularly when it comes to God! That’s the spirit that is doing everything it can to take over. This world, human nature, hates God. And if we are His children and we’re living by Him…I mean, we could be the most wonderful, peaceable people in the world, and they will hate you! And they will persecute you! And God says, you’re blessed!
And I’ll drop this thing in, where Peter warns, he talks about…persecution and things happening. He says, but when you’re persecuted let it not be because you, you know, you did bad stuff basically, you’re a murderer or you’re something. If you do something wrong and somebody says something against you or the law comes down on you, you don’t say, I’m being persecuted for Jesus. That’s not what he’s talking about.
But this is somebody whose heart is driven by the Spirit…by Kingdom nature, by the Spirit of God. And because of that, the Devil makes you his target, that’s where the blessing comes. Those are the ones who are blessed.
And I don’t want to spend a lot of time, but just to mention what he follows up with, because this…this is a critical part of Kingdom life in this world. How do we influence this world? What do they see when they see us? What do our young people see in the older ones? Do they see Kingdom life? Or do they just see a kind of ‘church-y religion’? What does the world see when they see us?
Do you see the issues that come to play here? How we can’t just be external practitioners of a religion, we need Jesus to live in us in a practical way, because He compares us to salt. He compares us to light. God wants to set His people in a place where they can be a light to this world. Does this world need some light?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah, it does. It’s not gonna just come out of the ether waves, it’s gonna come through His people. God’s gonna create situations where they see us and they see something in us that they don’t see in the world. And it won’t be us acting out the part that we’re supposed to play, it’ll be real life like it was in Jesus.
There were those who saw who He was, they recognized there was something in Him that they couldn’t get out of their religion. And I’ll tell you, when the Lord inhabited His church on the Day of Pentecost, and then the message began to go out and people began to come in…I’ll tell you, God…do you think the people saw something in those people that was not like the world? That’s what He’s looking for from you and from me.
And I don’t want to stop with, oh poor me, I’m not like that, or I just can’t be that way. Well, that’s the point. But God’s promise to people who will just come to Him as they are, and say, Lord, I do not have what it takes to participate in this Kingdom but You do and You’ve promised, and so, I open my heart and say, come, help me to be the kind of person You want me to be.
Help me in my relationships with others. Help me to let go of every bit of baggage that I have held onto that is weighing me down, and keeping me from being able to serve you with freedom. Lord, just come and dwell in me, and bring me to that place that Jesus promised, where I would learn from Him. His yoke is easy, His burden is light, and we will find, what? Rest for our souls. Anybody here a candidate for some rest in your soul?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. It’s there! That’s His heart for you. He doesn’t look down and despise you because you’re needy. That’s why Jesus came. What He can’t put up with is human pride that says, I’m gonna fix it, I’ve got to be…and there are a thousand and one ways that we react with human pride. Let it go! Trust Him! Just let Him have your heart and lay your life.
Look at the positive promises that follow every one of these blessings! Blessed are they, for they ‘will be’…over and over again you have God’s heart revealed in this. We can be that people, if we want it, because His promise stands today. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is as real today as He has ever been. And He longs to change us into His image.
And I believe He’s doing it, don’t you? I want to be positive about it. I don’t want to just paint such a picture and say, oh my God, I could never be that. Well no, if you’re looking within, trying to find the resources, you never will. Neither will I. But He has everything that we need to be His people.
That’s the message of the Gospel. That’s the hope of the Gospel. It isn’t better rules to live by. It isn’t, you better do this, or I’ll get you or I’ll punish you. It’s, I love you with an everlasting love. And I have provided My Son to demonstrate that love. And all that you need, comes not from your resources but from the life that I want to give you, if you’d just open your heart and surrender. That’s the hope of the Gospel. To Him be the glory!
Close
February 14, 2021 - No. 1480
“Kingdom Nature” Conclusion
Broadcast #1480
February 14, 2021
February 14, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1480 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, by nature, we’re nothing like Jesus. But he came down to show us what Kingdom nature is like. He walked among us, not through any strength of His own, but through the power of His Father that lived and expressed His life through Him. May God give us the grace to let that happen in our midst.
How many people are in places of spiritual bondage, and it has to do with our relationships one with another? Because we’re just not like Him. We expect Him to forgive us, we expect people to be tolerant of us…after all, we’re not perfect. But let somebody else do something, say something, look at us cross-eyed…and it just, there’s something that rises up in us, that reacts to that in a way that is very much like the world—it is the world. It’s human nature.
And God is looking for a people who are able to see beyond what’s wrong. My God, we’re all sinners! My God, the best of us come short! We don’t need condemnation, we don’t so many things that are dished out, that we dish out to one another, in one way or another. We don’t need all these things. We need the heart of the Father toward us, who reaches out so willingly to show us mercy.
What is mercy? Is mercy some sort of favor that we earn? No, it’s entirely underserved! It’s a favor that is completely undeserved! And here’s a Father who just longs to reach down and say, I know where you’re at. Come to me as you are. There’s a foundation for mercy, because Jesus died in your place. There’s a place where you can come and find peace.
But what did Jesus say on more than one occasion? I think it’s mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount, but other occasions too, about somebody who won’t forgive. You know, Steve referred to this the other night, about the man who owed a huge debt to this guy he worked for, and was about to be thrown into prison for it. And he got down on his knees and he begged, ‘oh forgive me,’ and the man forgave him.
And so, he went to a fellow servant who owed him lunch money, basically. And the guy couldn’t pay and he threw him in prison…had him thrown in prison…that was part of their culture, I guess, in that day. And what did Jesus say here? It’s so plain. If you won’t forgive….
There’s a load of debt…of guilt that people carry that they don’t have to carry. And a lot of times it’s because you haven’t forgiven somebody. Somebody did something, maybe it was years ago, maybe you’re carrying something buried in your system, and you’ve never let it go. And the Lord is longing to fill your heart with His peace, and there you are struggling, trying to feel forgiven, but you won’t forgive somebody who basically owes you lunch money, compared to what you owe Him.
These are pretty central principles of the Kingdom, aren’t they? These are things that affect every one of us, because we just default to human nature and human reactions so much of the time. And the Lord wants us to see that’s not how His Kingdom works.
I’ll tell you, we need more of God’s presence. I thank God for the degree that He comes in our midst, but there’s so much more that He longs to flow, but the flow is all blocked up, because we’re not walking in some of these simple things. I’ll tell you, if somebody has done something, and somebody may have genuinely done something, but if your reaction is one of anger, bitterness, the unforgiveness, you’re the sinner! You’re the one that God needs to deal with about that!
Don’t you go looking at them and say, well if they’ll get straight I will, then I’ll be good. What did Jesus say when they crucified Him? What did He pray on the cross? Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. Now who was the one who was free? Did that free Him, you think?
Oh, how many of us so easily just lay hold of something and say, they deserve it, it’s only right that I feel this way, and I’m justified because of what they did. But you’re the one in bondage! And Satan has wrapped chains around your heart, and you won’t be merciful to somebody else, but you expect God to be merciful to you.
Do you see why this is not something you’re gonna get out of your human nature? Human nature is the problem, not the solution. I need Jesus! I need Kingdom nature! I need to first of all have it, but I need to walk in it! I need to say, oh God, fill me with You right now, in this. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
You see, there are so many things that have been related to what we’re talking about today. What we’re talking about today, in Kingdom nature, is totally impossible for human nature! It takes a miracle! It takes God birthing a brand-new life, but now we need to learn to walk in that and live in that. And as we do, we’re gonna experience the same thing that Jesus did, the peace that He had, the rest, the certainty.
God wants to bring us into a larger place. Are you willing? Are we willing to search our hearts and say, God, help me? But don’t let the Devil take any of this and turn it into condemnation, turn it into ‘oh poor me, I can just never measure up.’
Well, that’s the point. But if you can come to a place where you feel your need and you want Him to change you, this Kingdom is for you. It’s not for the other kind of people. It’s for you, this morning, right now. There is a Lord who wants to come in and fill you with His peace and His rest. Do you want it? It’s there! Is there anything He hasn’t provided? Everything has been provided.
You know, I think about Peter. I can’t remember if I mentioned this specifically, but, when Peter asked the Lord how many times should I forgive my brother when he comes and repents…up to seven times? And, of course, the Lord said, up to seventy times seven.
( laughter ).
What did he say? What was Peter’s response to that? Lord, increase our faith.
( laughter ).
Isn’t that revealing, about how we look at things? Peter was looking at this from a human point of view, okay I know I’m supposed to forgive but I’m getting tired of this.
Do we want the Lord to get tired of forgiving us? Do you see His heart revealed in all of this? He wants to reproduce that heart in every one of us. Oh, there’s a rest that comes with all of that. This is not about exhilaration and all the things that religion tries to generate. This is a place of…this is a walk with the Lord, where we can have His rest and His peace on the inside. We can be free from the things that human nature drives us to crave, and fight for, and all that stuff. That’s what we need to be delivered from and He’s able to do it! And willing to do it, if we’re willing.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NIV). Obviously, he’s not talking about seeing an image. God is not some old man sitting in a chair somewhere. He’s a Spirit that fills eternity. He’s called the Invisible God. There’s no way you’ll ever see Him.
But what do we see? We see His image. Jesus Christ is the image of the Invisible God, He is the perfect representation of what this immense, unfathomable God is. You want to see what He’s like, you look at Jesus. That’s the expression.
But isn’t that the life that He longs to express in us? But now we’re talking about living in a world in which bad stuff happens. And many times, we’re called to experience things that we don’t get, we don’t understand. Why is this way, why isn’t it that way, what’s wrong?
And, how many times when we say that, or feel that, are we looking from a human point of view? If God really loved me, everything would be wonderful. I would have plenty of money in the bank! I’d have perfect health…you know, a thousand and one natural considerations.
And many times, it needs to be just the opposite, because God is setting us free from the craving for those very things! God knows what He is doing! God may allow one person to accumulate a lot of money and use it for His glory, somebody else may be poor. People have all kinds of circumstances, but the ability to see God in that, is a supernatural thing.
And it’s a supernatural thing for those who are willing say, oh God, my life is not mine to direct. It’s not be lived for selfish considerations. My life here is Yours to direct as You will, to lead me down the path of Your choosing, whether it follows earthly values or not. I want my life to follow heavenly values and You’re the only one that can make that possible. But You’re the only one that can give me the ability to see that You really are in charge, and You really still love me even when bad stuff happens.
How did Moses, for example, endure all that he went through? We’re told specifically in Hebrews 11…how did he put up with all that…all the stuff, the rejection…getting kicked out of Egypt, chased away for his life, living the way he did? “He endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” (KJV).
Isn’t that an interesting way to put that? Seeing Him who is invisible. That doesn’t sound right, does it? But there is a seeing, with the heart, that says, God, I know You love me. I know You’re in charge. I know that no matter what the pathway may lead through, I know that in the end, I know how this comes out, because You’re in charge. And I’m gonna find my rest in that.
Oh, I’ll tell you, we have so much unrest because, again, the fleshly nature strives for something that is earthly based. We want our security. We want our pleasure. We want what we want here!
And how many people try to use God to get that? Instead of saying, God, my life is…You’ve called me into a kingdom that is not of this world. It’s not based upon its values, it’s gonna live when this world is done away with. This is a kingdom that’s eternal. But it is powered by Your life. You didn’t call me because I was somebody special, from an earthly standpoint. You called me because of my need, because You love me, because it’s Your nature to love.
But oh, I’ll tell you, are you in a place right now where you resent your situation? You’re mad about it…a thousand and one human reactions to things instead of saying, God, I rest my case in Your hands. I’m gonna see past all my circumstances and I’m gonna see You, loving me and supporting me, and walking with me through whatever You choose. You are God and I am not, and You love me. I’ll tell you, that’s what real faith does. This is real faith.
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” (NIV). Now you’re coming down to human relations again, aren’t you? Oh, how easy it is for us to add fuel to the fire of problems that separate people. It’s been real quiet this morning. Is this stuff true?
( congregational response ).
Does it affect us?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. But where we value self in trying to exert self and trying to protect self and advance self, Jesus and His Father value peace, and harmony between people and promoting that…and being an instrument where, instead of trying to create strife and advance it, we try to bring people together, we’re trying to solve and resolve. God, give us that kind of a heart.
Gossip comes into this, doesn’t it? There are so many things that the enemy provokes human nature to do, that run exactly counter to what Jesus said. And yet, here’s a blessing. Oh, this is a blessed thing to be a peacemaker—someone whose heart is always wanting to bring together, to remove barriers, to bring about unity. Doesn’t God prize unity? Isn’t that where He commands the blessing?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. Do you see where some of these things come into play right here? God longs for His Spirit to flow in a greater way in our midst. The problem is not with Him. The issues are with us. May God give us the hunger to live by Kingdom nature. It’s freely available to everyone who will humble themselves and say, yes, I’m a candidate. I want to be part of Your Kingdom. I want to be like You, Lord. We sing about it. Do we mean it? Do we understand what that means? Jesus is kind of just giving you a birds-eye view of some of these issues.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” Does that matter? Does that matter to you? Do these blessings that He pronounces matter to you? And of course, He goes on…you could go on and on in this. That’s the main thing. But I’ll tell you, it comes down to our relationship to the world and there are two main things that He talks about here that are very relevant to us.
This one not so much yet, but it will be, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
We haven’t gotten quite to this point yet, but it’s coming. May God give us a heart, instead of one that’s out there fighting. There’s so much anger, there’s so much fighting in our society. God, give us a heart that sees past that.
Yes, the Devil is doing everything he can to destroy everything…every value that America has ever held, particularly when it comes to God! That’s the spirit that is doing everything it can to take over. This world, human nature, hates God. And if we are His children and we’re living by Him…I mean, we could be the most wonderful, peaceable people in the world, and they will hate you! And they will persecute you! And God says, you’re blessed!
And I’ll drop this thing in, where Peter warns, he talks about…persecution and things happening. He says, but when you’re persecuted let it not be because you, you know, you did bad stuff basically, you’re a murderer or you’re something. If you do something wrong and somebody says something against you or the law comes down on you, you don’t say, I’m being persecuted for Jesus. That’s not what he’s talking about.
But this is somebody whose heart is driven by the Spirit…by Kingdom nature, by the Spirit of God. And because of that, the Devil makes you his target, that’s where the blessing comes. Those are the ones who are blessed.
And I don’t want to spend a lot of time, but just to mention what he follows up with, because this…this is a critical part of Kingdom life in this world. How do we influence this world? What do they see when they see us? What do our young people see in the older ones? Do they see Kingdom life? Or do they just see a kind of ‘church-y religion’? What does the world see when they see us?
Do you see the issues that come to play here? How we can’t just be external practitioners of a religion, we need Jesus to live in us in a practical way, because He compares us to salt. He compares us to light. God wants to set His people in a place where they can be a light to this world. Does this world need some light?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah, it does. It’s not gonna just come out of the ether waves, it’s gonna come through His people. God’s gonna create situations where they see us and they see something in us that they don’t see in the world. And it won’t be us acting out the part that we’re supposed to play, it’ll be real life like it was in Jesus.
There were those who saw who He was, they recognized there was something in Him that they couldn’t get out of their religion. And I’ll tell you, when the Lord inhabited His church on the Day of Pentecost, and then the message began to go out and people began to come in…I’ll tell you, God…do you think the people saw something in those people that was not like the world? That’s what He’s looking for from you and from me.
And I don’t want to stop with, oh poor me, I’m not like that, or I just can’t be that way. Well, that’s the point. But God’s promise to people who will just come to Him as they are, and say, Lord, I do not have what it takes to participate in this Kingdom but You do and You’ve promised, and so, I open my heart and say, come, help me to be the kind of person You want me to be.
Help me in my relationships with others. Help me to let go of every bit of baggage that I have held onto that is weighing me down, and keeping me from being able to serve you with freedom. Lord, just come and dwell in me, and bring me to that place that Jesus promised, where I would learn from Him. His yoke is easy, His burden is light, and we will find, what? Rest for our souls. Anybody here a candidate for some rest in your soul?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah. It’s there! That’s His heart for you. He doesn’t look down and despise you because you’re needy. That’s why Jesus came. What He can’t put up with is human pride that says, I’m gonna fix it, I’ve got to be…and there are a thousand and one ways that we react with human pride. Let it go! Trust Him! Just let Him have your heart and lay your life.
Look at the positive promises that follow every one of these blessings! Blessed are they, for they ‘will be’…over and over again you have God’s heart revealed in this. We can be that people, if we want it, because His promise stands today. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is as real today as He has ever been. And He longs to change us into His image.
And I believe He’s doing it, don’t you? I want to be positive about it. I don’t want to just paint such a picture and say, oh my God, I could never be that. Well no, if you’re looking within, trying to find the resources, you never will. Neither will I. But He has everything that we need to be His people.
That’s the message of the Gospel. That’s the hope of the Gospel. It isn’t better rules to live by. It isn’t, you better do this, or I’ll get you or I’ll punish you. It’s, I love you with an everlasting love. And I have provided My Son to demonstrate that love. And all that you need, comes not from your resources but from the life that I want to give you, if you’d just open your heart and surrender. That’s the hope of the Gospel. To Him be the glory!
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February 7, 2021 - No. 1479
“Kingdom Nature” Part One
Broadcast #1479
february 7, 2021
february 7, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1479 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: My mind has gone, this week, to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. And the Sermon on the Mount was an occasion when Jesus…a lot of crowds were following Him. Understandably, they saw miracles and they heard this unusual teacher, and they followed Him, and He led them up to a mountain and He began to teach. And so, we have quite a long record in Matthew.
But it begins with what we call the Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes are blessings. And we think of various human beings as blessed or not blessed based upon human criteria. But, Jesus’ picture was very different, wasn’t it?
You know, you go back to the beginning and you see the context into which Jesus came, and we see a world that has gone into a state of decay, into a state of corruption. In the beginning, the human race had a choice, and the choice was the wrong one. It was a choice of independence. It was a choice of seeking my own godhood, doing what I want, doing it for me. There’s a very selfish spirit that has taken over the world and we call it human nature.
And, we know that it’s not only a problem of human nature, but there is a malevolent power that is at war with God, that is set on having its own way and ultimately destroying all that it touches. And, this is the context into which the Lord came.
And we see the heart of God in just the fact that He came, that He did something about it. He didn’t just say, I’m gonna wipe it all out and forget about this ridiculous experiment. He never lost sight of the original plan.
And so, when…you remember when John the Baptist came. He said, repent, “…the kingdom of God is at hand.” (KJV). And Jesus came preaching the Kingdom. He sent His servants out, sent the disciples out, to go and to preach, the Kingdom of God is coming, it’s at hand.
So now, what we are beginning to see in this passage is what you might call Kingdom nature, as opposed to human nature, because the reason we are the way we are is because of nature. It’s because of a spirit that is born into us. We don’t have to learn how to be liars. We don’t have to learn how to do a lot of things that make the world what it is, it’s just inborn.
You know, in one sense, we talk about people who are born that way, well, we’re all born that way, in one fashion or another. And so, what Jesus is preaching here is utterly, completely…completely contrary to human nature. It’s the polar opposite of how we would react with different situations and different issues.
And so…and I believe we need to see this in the context, at least, of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, don’t we? What did He say to Nicodemus about the Kingdom of God? He said, you’ve got to be born again. You can’t even see the Kingdom of God, let alone enter it unless you’re born again. There has to be another spirit.
What Jesus is preaching here is not a better way of life. It’s not…here are some better rules to live by and things will go better. This is whole different Kingdom. It has a King. There is a life force that literally we have to receive if we’re ever gonna be this. It simply is impossible.
And so, what He is preaching, what He’s teaching here, is meant to instruct us, certainly, but it’s meant to show us, Lord, we need something we don’t have. That’s the starting point for the Kingdom. It’s this is a whole new order of things. Jesus came to invade Satan’s territory, and to rescue people. But what kind of people is He looking for? What is He looking for?
And the other thing I want to point out about this passage is, this is the Kingdom of God operating within the context of this broken world. It’s not just talking about what’s yet to come which we sang about this morning. Thank God for that. There is a new heaven and a new earth coming. And, in preparation for that, God is creating, what? A new life in us. It’s not simply a new way of life.
This is not religion. I mean, you look at the beginning, the Beatitudes, and you will see every principle here played out in the rest of what He said. And it’s obvious He’s not looking for religion. He’s not looking for the religion of the Pharisees who were concerned with the outside and what people thought of them, and their religious practices.
And, this passage is certainly relevant to people that God would awaken to their need, to realize you need something more than a better religion. You need a brand-new life and there’s only one way to have that and that’s through Jesus Christ and what He accomplished.
But here’s the other issue. We who know the Lord, we who have literally been born of His Spirit, He now lives in us, this stuff is not automatic, is it? We live with the tension between what our flesh wants, that is, the life that still animates these bodies until we leave this world…the spirit that is operating in the world still tries to operate and still tries to rule and control us. But Christ is here, too. And so, we are living in that tension between what the flesh wants and what God wants.
And the easy thing is for us to carve for ourselves a religion, if we are not careful. One of the issues that you see in the scriptures is where people have literally learned how to ‘do’ church, let’s put it that way, put it in terms that we understand. And they know how to be a Christian, quote-unquote, but it’s something that really doesn’t come from the heart.
Notice the very first thing that Jesus said was, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (NIV). I mean, there’s a lot you could dig into there. But this world does not prize, it does not value poverty, does it? In any form.
If you’re poor economically, that’s a bad thing, isn’t it? If you’re poor in terms of, all the values that we have of how to get along and how to really gain something in this world…you need courage, you need smart…you need intelligence, you need ‘something.’ You know, you need to be able to influence people. You need power. You need all these things that we value as human beings, that human beings value.
But here’s Jesus saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, the ones who don’t have what it takes, particularly when they come to a place where they realize that there is a God, that I’m gonna have to stand before Him one day, that I’m not just simply an accident down here, waiting to happen…no, an accident that just has no meaning and no purpose. There is something beyond it, and I do not have what it takes.
Now, human beings don’t like that, because the root of all human nature is pride and self! It’s all about me. It’s all about what I can do and what I can get for me. Doesn’t that make it obvious that all that’s gonna do is create trouble and conflict? But how many times do we still operate too much in the old nature? And it shows itself.
And yet, here’s Jesus talking about a blessed kind of people. And we are prone to look at somebody who has really made it, they’re viewed by society as a success, they may even be doing charitable works, and they’ve got money and people look up to them. They’re smart, they’ve accomplished things in the world. Oh, how blessed they are. Are they?
You know, many times those are the very people that never come to the place that Jesus is talking about here. They’re gonna trust in what they can do and what they have in their own resources. I’ll tell you, the only way we can enter this Kingdom and really participate in it from a standpoint of living in this world, especially, we’re gonna have to come to a place of bankruptcy, in a sense, where we realize, I can’t do anything—not anything that matters.
When God came to gather…let’s think about it this way. If you were somebody who longed to have power in the world, maybe you wanted to start an empire, I mean, what would be the considerations? Are you just gonna sit there and talk about it, or are you gonna have to have people that are smart, you’re gonna have to have an army? You’re gonna have to have technology in our world. You’re gonna have to have a whole lot of stuff if you’re gonna…because you’re gonna have to force your way into power. People aren’t gonna willingly say, oh yes! They’re gonna say, well, who are you? I’ve got my own ideas.
But I’ll tell you, the kingdoms that have risen and fallen in this world have been built on human nature striving to take control of other people and enforce their ideas. And all of it is drawn from human nature.
But when Jesus came, He didn’t go looking for that kind of people, and say, I want to recruit a better kingdom. I’m gonna look for the best army, the most courageous people in the world, the smartest people, and I’m gonna put them to work to build My kingdom. Is that what He did? No. Jesus’ values are very different from ours. Blessed are the poor.
And you know, our pride doesn’t like this. We don’t want to…even as Christians, we don’t want to think of ourselves as, ‘I can’t.’ But you know, in one sense, that’s the truth. You know, how many times did the Lord’s people have to find out? Peter found out the hard way, didn’t he?
What did Paul have to find out? What did he say when he looked back at his life, a very successful life in the eyes of the religious people of his day? He was a rising star in the religion of the Pharisees. Man, he kept it perfectly and he, not only, kept it, but he wanted to advance it, bring everybody into it. Oh, he was a success!
But when he met Jesus, and realized what really mattered, he came to the place where he said, I have no confidence in my flesh. Now flesh is a word that was used by the New Testament writers to refer, basically, to human nature, that happens to reside in our flesh, but it’s human nature that still strives to be proud, to be self-reliant, to do our thing, to be in control.
Folks, that’s the danger of so much religion. Men find a way to remain the lord of their own lives, to remain in control, to feel like they can handle it. My God, I’m so thankful…what a blessed place it is to be brought by the mercy of God to a place where we know we haven’t got it. Thank God!
Oh…I’ll tell you, it’s something…our tendency is to say, oh, I should be different. Oh, poor me, I can’t do this. I’m just nobody. I don’t matter. And here’s the Lord saying, if you feel that way and you’re looking at you and your resources to serve me and to be the kind of person I want you to be, you are blessed. I have a Kingdom for you. I have a Kingdom that’s designed for people exactly like you.
I’ll tell you, if you’re here this morning, and God’s brought you to, maybe to a fresh realization that you just haven’t, in yourself, got what it takes, and you tend to be down about it, you think that something is wrong, something is bad, I’ll tell you, God wants you to lift up your eyes and realize His Kingdom is for people exactly like you, because until we come to that place, we’ll never enter that Kingdom.
We’re gonna remain in charge. We might adopt a religion and feel good about ourselves, but we’ll never let go and say, oh God, I just come to you as I am. I’m broken, and I come to be mended. But I come because the life that I have cannot possibly participate in that. I need Your life.
See, then it’s a matter of learning how to live out that life within the context of this world. But you know how easy it is for us to get to a place where we suddenly think we’ve got a handle on it. Anybody been through that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. What about the people in Laodicea? I mean, if you had looked at the church that Jesus spoke about in Revelation chapter 3, the writer…Jesus didn’t say anything about, well, you’ve fallen into false doctrine, you’ve done this, you’ve done that. It’s just that they had come to a place of such pride and complacency that they said, we’re rich, we have need of nothing, we’re doing great, things are good!
And Jesus was outside knocking to get in, as we’ve said many times. They had lost the essence of living in the Kingdom in this world. It is a life of joyous, restful dependence upon another life. It is letting go of pride. It’s a way of seeing ourselves as we really are. It’s a total honesty about what we are and what we aren’t.
But it’s not feeling bad about it, as though, oh my God, it should be different. No, that’s the way it is. Thank God! It’s a joyous place to come to a place of rest, to realize that’s not a bad thing. That is an awesome thing! Because God has a Kingdom that is just for you, because He’s provided everything that you’re not, and He’s done it willingly. Don’t you see, not only our place and what we are, but God’s heart?
You know, human society runs on pride, runs on power, runs on some people up here looking down and exerting control. Oh, I’ll tell you, this Kingdom that He’s building is not built on fear! It’s not built on a tyrant who says, you do this or else! This is built on a God who says, I know where you’re at…My nature is so…is such that I’m just not like you. I don’t run to the strong. I don’t reward the strong. I don’t reward those who make me feel good and help me out. I’m not selfish in this. I want, sacrificially to reach out, I delight in reaching to the weak, and giving them of Myself.
I’ll tell you, that’s the kind of heart that God wants us to see that He has, to be willing just to let go and let God, and take our place, and participate in the Kingdom. Man, there’s peace in that. I don’t have to struggle and strive to be something I’m not. I can just look to Him and trust in Him.
I praise God for that this morning! I mean, are you in a place of turmoil and struggle and strife about stuff? See, that’s not the kingdom that He’s come to establish. What did Isaiah say…I didn’t even think about this scripture, but, “Of the increase of his government and peace….” Of the increase of his government, that’s Jesus’ government…there will be no end. And it’s His government and peace! God wants every one of us to have a place of peace and rest.
And you know, it comes to the second verse…but what positive statements. “…Theirs is the kingdom….” They will be, they will inherit, they will…and it’s obvious that every little thing here is God stepping into a situation that human nature would say, this is terrible! This shouldn’t be this way! And God says, you are blessed if this is true, because I’ve got what you need. I am what you need. I am all you need.
“Blessed are those who mourn….” In a sense, you could say the first Beatitude gives us a picture of what we are. But I believe, in part at least, the second beatitude deals with, how do I feel about that? Because, we could come to a place where we sort of give in and acquiesce and say, yes, God, I just can’t do anything…and we could sit there and poor-mouth. We could sit there and feel sorry for ourselves, which is nothing more than pride. We could feel resentful. Well, I’ve got to do this because I’m just so bad. I mean there are a thousand and one human emotions that are anything but saying, I’m blessed!
I’m blessed, because not only do I see the need in myself…I don’t want it to be that way. I don’t want to be a person who’s striving for self. I don’t want to be full of unrest, and anger and hate and all the things that possess this world. Oh God, I not only see what I am, I don’t want that. I need You.
Not only that, you see the world and all of its glory, if you want to put it that way. Boy, it’s getting worse and worse though, isn’t it? But you see all of man’s achievements and you say, oh God, I long for the day when we’re out of this, when this is over. I don’t see any value in living here, apart from living for You as long as you’re gonna let me live.
But there’s no other purpose, there’s no future in this world. Oh, they’re trying to save the planet. Good for them! God’s gonna burn it up and there’s not a thing anybody can do about it and it’s gonna happen on His schedule. The question is, where are we gonna be on that day?
I’ll tell you, I want to be part of this Kingdom and He is the One who has opened the door where we can be a part of that Kingdom, not by our achievements, not by our abilities, not by any good thing in us. There’s nothing good in us! That’s what Paul had to learn the hard way. There’s no good in this flesh. “O wretched man that I am!” he cried out. “…who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (KJV).
And then he realized the answer is in Jesus. He has given me His Spirit and all that He longs to produce in me comes not from my efforts, it comes from just yielding to Him and allowing Him to live in me, instead of this old nature. Which is in control? That’s the question. I believe God wants to help us to see a fresh picture of this, because it’s so easy for us to be religious and not really walk in this.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (NIV) What a positive statement. I’ll tell you, if you feel bad about who you are and long to be different, there is somebody who says, you are blessed. Not only that, I’m gonna take care of the issue. I’ve got the answer. I just need to have people who get to the place where they need me, because I am all you need. I’m not looking down my nose at you. I’m not demanding things you can’t do. I’m not…all the things that you see in human society, I’m not like that. I just need you. Praise God!
“Blessed are the meek….” Oh, how we love that one. You talk about something that is the polar opposite of human nature. There is a humility…didn’t Jesus say, come and learn from me, for I am meek, in one translation, humble and gentle in heart? Oh, how we react to life.
See, the first deals with…these first two deal with kind of our relationship with God. Am I who I think I am or do I have to just come clean and say, oh God, I need You and I want You? That’s the foundation. You don’t even get into the Kingdom until you come through that door. See? You don’t bring yourself in and say, I’m gonna do this and God’s gonna reward me.
But now we’re beginning to deal with living in this world and our reactions to it. And, I think we don’t have to look very far in comparing ourselves with how Jesus reacted. I mean, what did they do to Him? This is the Son of God! This is the Creator they are looking at, in the eye, and they’re reviling Him.
Many people are saying, You’re doing this by the power of Satan. They’re just telling lies. They’re doing everything in the world to oppose Him and He’s just…how is He reacting to that? How dare you say such things about the Son of God! Don’t you know who I am? I’m gonna call thunderbolts down.
You know, they wanted to do that…Peter wanted to do that in Samaria one time, didn’t he? They were going through and the people didn’t receive Jesus, because He was on His way to Jerusalem, and you know the antagonism they had with the Samaritans and the Jews. And Peter said, do You want us to call down fire?
( laughing ).
No. You don’t know what kind of spirit you are of. Isn’t that revealing? See, Peter was getting his inspiration, not from the Spirit from Kingdom nature, but from human nature. You see, God is trying to teach us how to live by Kingdom nature, because that’s the only way His Kingdom is gonna actually exist here and be seen.
Oh God, do we need this. We cannot simply take the heritage that we have received from Brother Thomas and others, and say, well, we’ve got it, we’ve got it. All we have to do is do church right, believe the right things, come to services and sing the songs, and stay out of jail and we’re okay. Oh Lord, we need to exhibit Kingdom nature in our relations one with another, in our lives and our relations to the world. I need Him every day.
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January 31, 2021 - No. 1478
All Music
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January 24, 2021 - No. 1477
“What Does He Want From Us?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1477
January 24, 2021
January 24, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1477 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Boy, there’s so much. You could just go on and on and on talking about what it means to be humble, but I’ll tell you, basically, it is an absolute surrender, where God gets to do whatever is needed, and it’s not only okay, but we can say, thank You, Lord. I see beyond this. I know there’s nothing that can separate me from Your love, and Your purpose. It doesn’t matter what instrument You have to use to fix me, to change me, to get at the things that are in me. But Lord, I’m looking to You. I surrender.
Jesus said, I’m…learn from Me, because I’m humble and gentle—gentle. That doesn’t mean he was Casper Milquetoast. But what you get is this sense of, I am not going to run on human emotion. I’m not gonna let human emotions, negative emotions take over, and usually it’s anger. It would be the opposite. That’s when you get mad at somebody and blame them for your trouble, and say God, fix them!
And here’s the Lord…by God’s strength, don’t ever forget that, by God’s strength there still is an ability to have a gentle spirit that never gives way to that anger. I’ll tell you, human anger does not accomplish God’s purpose, and every one of us gets mad. We, every one, struggle with this thing.
And the funny thing is, that if we’ve got a need in a certain area, God’s gonna keep bringing you back to that point, until we learn to say, thank You, Lord, I get it. It’s not about them. It’s about this. Help me to find grace and strength and the willingness…that’s usually the problem, the willingness to say, Lord, the real issue You’re dealing with, I don’t care how You do it, the real issue You’re dealing with is right here, and I surrender. Lord, teach me how to be like You. This is not imitating Him. This is an expression of the same life that powered Him in His earthly walk.
There are so many places you could go, and I don’t want to just belabor it, but I don’t want to shortchange it either. But you know, you go back to Isaiah, and the second thing that he says after being humble, what is it? Do you remember? It’s contrite.
Now, what is contrite? What is contriteness? Brokenness, being crushed actually is part of the meaning, but it has to do with our attitude about the things that we discover about ourselves. When God brings us to salvation, it comes with a knowledge of our need before God, that we are sinners, but when we walk with Him, we will meet ourselves over and over and over and over and over and over again in ways that we’re going to have to face what we are, and boy, we don’t like that.
We are going to find every excuse in the book to side-step that. It might be…I remember there was a time there was someone in the church who absolutely reacted like this about their needs in the area of sin. Well, it’s all taken care of. Oh, God. Does that sound like contriteness? No.
There has got to be an absolute honesty, that recognizes what it is that God’s dealing with, what the real problem is. See, our problem…the root problem of human nature is, what? It’s pride! And if God brings me to a situation that brings out something that is not very godly in me, is not my natural reaction gonna be to say, wait a minute, I’m not really like that? I made a ‘mistake.’
No, you didn’t. You acted in your human nature…a thousand and one ways that we will side-step. It was their fault. We’ve already talked about that…so many ways in which we will…we can blame God. Anybody here…ever kind of fallen into that one? God, this is just the way I am. What can You expect?
Well, this is what we’re talking about. What is God looking for from us? He’s not looking for excuses, not looking for, well, it’s just you way I am. You’re gonna have to take me like I am. Just as I am does not mean He saves us ‘in’ our sins but ‘from’ them.
He brings us to a knowledge of what we are so He can deliver us, but how can He deliver us if we don’t take ownership of that, if we don’t come to Him with a humble honesty of heart that says God, not only do I recognize the truth of the this, the facts of this case, but God, I want to be on Your side. I don’t want to have this controversy between us about what happened. I want to stand over here and join the prosecutor and say, guilty.
Thank God it doesn’t end there. You know, what does John say? If we confess our sin—confess. What does confess mean? You’re taking ownership. You’re agreeing with the prosecutor. There is a total laying it out and saying, Lord, I offer no defense. I bring this to You, and the contrite part is, I’m in agreement with You. God, this distresses my soul that I could do this, that I could be this way. Oh, God, I come to You, longing for deliverance from this, and I look to You based upon the cross and the blood that was shed there as my only hope!
God’s promise is that He will take away that guilt and that shame. There is an answer to everything, but there is no way to side-step the issue, and we do it a thousand and one ways. We just accept, we compromise, we minimize…we just side-step the absolute truth.
Look at what David went through. I mean, was he guilty? Oh, my God. Was He clueless? He was a lot more clueless than most of us. He committed adultery and murder, and didn’t have a clue until God confronted him through the prophet, and said, thou art the man.
But what a picture of a contrite heart do we find in Psalm 51. He took complete ownership of what he had done. God, You are completely right. I am completely wrong. I offer no defense. I don’t offer any excuse. I don’t offer anything to rebut this. There’s no debate here. Lord, I was utterly wrong.
But what a promise he understood, that a humble, “…and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (NIV). Thank God, that we’ve got a God like this! What an amazing thing it is that we can take complete ownership of our need before God, and yet, come to Him with a confidence of His love!
That’s what we’re afraid of. I don’t want to admit that I have this need, that I’m this bad, or that this is wrong with me. I don’t want to face that. God, I want to come and pretend that everything’s okay.
You wonder why bondages hang on? You wonder why needs hang on? What God is looking for is that humbleness, but that contriteness where we just literally come and lay our case at His feet. That’s what He’s looking for. He doesn’t despise you when you do that. He loves you. There’s something in His heart that reaches out. Mercy is what He’s looking for! Mercy triumphs over judgement!
He hates when He has to judge the world. It’s not something He looks forward to. He doesn’t have any pleasure in the death of the wicked. There’s one thing He’s looking for, and I pray that He finds it more and more in my heart, because this isn’t just something for the people out there. This is something for everybody in here.
You and I are facing issues in our lives right now that are bringing things out that we don’t like, and we don’t want to admit, but God has an answer. And the answer is not to duck it, deny it, side-step it. It’s to come just as we are, just as I am. What a perfect song to have led into this, “Just as I am…I come broken to be mended.”
That’s the kind of heart God is looking for. If you’ve got a heart like that, man, you’ve got something that only God can impart. Praise God! Praise God! There’s nothing of any greater value on this planet.
Oh, how this world values strong-minded, strong-willed people who can go out and conquer the world. And the Lord is looking for a child who will just say, Lord, I need You. Lord, You’ve got a plan that goes beyond this world. I have no way to participate in that unless You perform a miracle, and so I am in Your hands. You are the potter, I am the clay. Go for it, Lord. Well, He does, doesn’t He?
( laughing ).
He does. A lot of folks here can testify of things that you didn’t know were coming. You didn’t have any idea they were needed. And I’ll tell you, when you’re in the middle of it, and we have emotions to deal with, that’s when we need grace. That’s when there are battles to be fought, and the battle isn’t, God, fix it, always. It’s, God, help me to see what You’re doing in this to fix the needs that are in here.
Help me to trust You, because trust is not simply a theological principle. It means, when the rubber meets the road in the circumstance I never wanted to face, here I am! How do I feel about God and my place before Him? Do I stand in that same place as when I was over here rejoicing? See, that’s what God is looking for. He’ll give the grace to do it, but there comes a place where we’re gonna have to trust Him, and we’re gonna have to listen.
You know, that’s the other thing that he says there. It’s for, “…he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” He’s not talking about the kind of fear that we think of. He’s talking about a deep respect.
And I’ll tell you, if your heart is really surrendered to the Lord, He has a way of letting you know when He’s talking. It might be through a message. It might be through something someone says, something you read, or just in the quiet of your own heart. You know when God’s talking.
And I’ll tell you, when God speaks, it’s not a time for debate. It’s not a time for, ‘but’ this or ‘but’ that. We don’t say, well God…I’m really a good person, I just made a mistake. Good luck with that one.
God knows, and when He says something, we need to say, yes, Lord, and not just in a resentful way, certainly not in a resentful way, but in a way that recognizes this is the author of love itself. I’m His child. He loves me, and He’s loved me from eternity past, and He will love me in eternity future. He knew exactly what He was getting into when He saved me. The things that I still haven’t…haven’t come to the surface in my life, He’ll still love me when that happens.
But what’s He looking for? What kind of a response is He looking for? To humble myself, to believe His Word, to believe His promise. I’ll tell you, the thing that the Devil is likely to try to jump in with if you hear something like this is, okay, well, how can I do that?
I thank God that serving Him is not something we have to try to work up in ourselves. And the time when we feel our deepest need is usually the time when we have the hardest time going to God. Some of it is pride. Some of it is unbelief! But that’s the very time we need to be going to God and saying oh, God, I come as I am, because You have promised! Lord, I look to You right now in my time of need. I need heavenly grace. I kind of need what Jesus needed.
Think about that. Jesus just didn’t blow through life because He was the Son of God. He got down on His face and said, oh God, this is hard. This world wants so hard to suck me into its ways, to suck me into this rebellion that’s led by Lucifer. Oh God, if You don’t give me strength, then I won’t have what I need! But You are faithful, and He knew where to go to get His help. Folks, that’s what we need.
At the moment of need, we need to go to that throne of grace, not later on after we’ve fixed it, and we feel better about ourselves. It’s when we’re in need is when He invites us. When Jesus was facing the cross, oh, did He feel the need? Oh, boy. I mean, three hours of prayer that was so intense that He bled…He sweated like great drops of blood. That’s pretty intense.
God, give us the grace to realize there are no quicky fixes to this. So many people out there have an idea that they’ve got some experience or some mantra that you can say or some something that will just kind of let you blow through life and fly above it like the eagle. We’re gonna be down in the depths, many times, looking to God and crying out.
Look at Paul’s life. Did he have it easy to accomplish what God wanted to accomplish through him? He went through deep sufferings. He went through battles. He went through so many things to be able to give out God’s Word and to seek God, and God brought him through. And he recognized at every point, this is God’s hand upon my life. I could not do what I’m doing if God didn’t kill something in here that wants to live.
We want some easy way, and we think if there’s something hard going on in our lives, something’s wrong. It might be the very thing…I’ll take the ‘might’ out of that. It’s the very thing that we need.
Do we really believe it when we sing nothing can happen outside of God’s will? It’s really easy to sing when everything’s going good, plenty of money in the bank, and we’re feeling good, everybody likes us…well, most people anyway. Nothing can happen outside of God’s will. Praise God!
It feels good, and then, all of the sudden, the hammer comes down, and the clouds settle in, and there’s something that looks impossible. And it looks awful, and we’re trying to figure it out. What did I do wrong? What’s going on? And all God’s trying to do is shine a light on something in here that He wants to bring out to the surface.
How can we be delivered if He doesn’t bring the stuff out? We want to find a way around that. We would like an experience that would just make it sort of all vanish, and suddenly, we’re what we’re supposed to be. God is going to continue the process that brought us into the kingdom where He had to show us our need. He’s gonna be showing us our need every single day, in one fashion or another.
And what is He looking for? He’s looking for a heart that will be humble, and honest, that will be contrite, join Him in His feelings about that, instead of looking around and trying to find somebody else to blame, and somebody that takes Him at His Word.
I’ll tell you, the Word I need right then is His promise. He has got all the promises that we need, and this is a God who cannot lie. Praise God! He’s given us every reason in the world why we can rejoice, and give thanks in every kind of situation.
“Rejoice in the Lord always.” Did I ever read this verse in Philippians? I don’t think I did. Philippians 4:4. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” This is somebody who’s writing from prison, by the way. Life is not a happy thing in the natural. There he is suffering for Christ! And he writes them and says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” That’s a testimony that you can listen to and believe. He was living it, wasn’t he?
But I guess I started with this because of the reference to gentleness. It says, “Let your gentleness be evident to all.” God, You’re gonna have to do that. It’s not in me. There are so many situations where my natural reaction is just gonna be anger, blame, fix it! And God wants to reproduce His nature in me, but I’m gonna have to face, honestly, what’s wrong.
Can I duck it? Can I just pretend it’s not there? Can I act spiritual and pretend and think the Lord’s stupid? That’s what it boils down to. I mean, does He not know? Can we not trust Him? Can we not trust somebody who went to the cross for us?
Oh, what it cost Him to be able to do this, and the example that He set of total humility and dependance upon His heavenly Father. He called Him, My God. There’s an order. There’s a dependance that was real in His life. This was not play acting on His part. He absolutely looked to His God in, many times, travailing prayer, and that was the reason He was able to offer Himself without spot to God. God gave Him the strength to do it.
That same God is with us, and He will give us the strength that we need to face the things that we need to face. God knows what He’s doing. If we’re gonna humble ourselves and trust Him, we’re gonna have to trust what He does. We’re gonna trust when He does it, and how long it takes, because we know where this is ending.
I’ll tell you, if you’ve got that faith born in your heart, you know how it turns out. It’s like Brother Jimmy said, we’ve read the last chapter, and we know how it turns out. It’s the process that gets to us and we need to learn how to handle it.
I’ll tell you, we have a God. And I’ll tell you sort of in a summary way, there are several things God does not want us to do. He doesn’t want us to be fearful. Don’t let any of this cause someone to be afraid. Oh God, what’s about to land? God, it’s been too good. I’m just waiting for the next, no…waiting for the hammer to come down. I’ll tell you, God does not want us ever to react with fear as though somehow everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket. The Devil’s winning. He’s a liar!
( congregational amens ).
Jesus Christ is on His throne! He is ruling, and He’s reigning, and He loves you! Whatever He brings, He doesn’t want us to be cowering in fear because of it. He doesn’t want us ever to be discouraged, or to give up, or to be weary in well doing and to say it’s not worth it, I can’t do this.
Of course, you can’t in yourself! I can’t either. I find that out all the time. God, I need You. And it isn’t always just this quicky okay, Lord, I need You. A lot of times, we’re gonna have to go to God, seriously, and cry out. Anybody know what I’m talking about?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. That’s part of it. That forms something in us when we do that. There’s an exercise that strengthens that part of us that God is wanting to build, that’s wanting to grow up that new life. It exercises itself against the resistance of this world and this nature.
( congregational amens ).
God makes it strong when we have to fight. We don’t want to fight. We want Him to do all the fighting and us just coast. There’s a reason God says it’s a battle. It’s a warfare. “Fight the good fight of the faith.”
I can’t even remember what the last point is, but that’s all right. The Lord knows…but we need to trust Him with all of our hearts. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways…” Praise God.
( congregation inaudible ).
“…Acknowledge him…” Thank you. Don’t get old! “…In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” We’ve got a God who knows what He’s doing.
I don’t know where you’re at this morning, but I know there are battles that are real that are being fought in people’s lives. What is He looking for from you right now? He’s looking for trust, humbleness, to know who you are and who He is, and to accept that with an open, free heart, to have this trust that looks to Him, to acknowledge when He puts His finger on something in your heart that isn’t right, not to be dismayed by it, but to be honest, and to bring it to Him and say, Lord, this is what needs to be changed. I agree with You about it, and I believe Your promise.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God that’s gonna take us through. He’s not looking for your strength, not looking for you to be smart, not looking for you to have a strong will, and great performance in the outward way. He’s looking for a heart that comes like a child and says, Lord, I’m Yours, do what it takes to get me to the other side, and help me just to trust You with the process and look to You. I’ll tell you, is God faithful, or isn’t He? Praise God. Praise God!
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January 17, 2021 - No. 1476
“What Does He Want From Us?” Part One
Broadcast #1476
January 17, 2021
January 17, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1476 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’m so glad He’s on the throne, knows what He’s doing! Praise God! You know, if we’d get our mind off of, and our eyes off of ourselves, and all those things, it would be a whole lot easier, because I tell you, we serve an amazing God.
And I guess, if I had to summarize what I was thinking about is, what is the Lord looking for from us? That needs to be a little bit tighter title but, what does He want from us? I don’t know. Maybe that’s a simpler one. But what is God really looking for in His children?
You know, you’ve got people out there that think He’s looking for effort and righteousness that they can produce and all those kinds of things. But I’m so glad it’s not that, ‘cause it’s not in me to live up to anything that He’s…that He can set before me that I need to do.
But there are things that God is looking for out of His creatures. And, I want to understand and I want to cooperate, because even what Dave just shared…I mean, we all experience that, every one of us. It could have been any one of us up here talking about something like that, where we suddenly realize something about ourselves, and then the Lord has to bring us back to the center of the fact that He’s in charge and we’re looking to Him.
But, I guess one scripture that might be a good jumping off place is one we’ve heard many times in the past. It’s in Isaiah 66. And the Lord, through Isaiah, is dealing with a people who have, basically, chosen their own way. They…I don’t know to what degree they realized it, but they were still, in some sense, acknowledging the Lord and trying to do stuff for Him. But really, they were on the throne of their heart.
I’ll tell you, that’s a dangerous place. I pray there’s nobody here or nobody that hears this, that this applies to, where you are sort of acknowledging God and taking ideas and fashioning them into…weaving them into your life and somehow claiming His blessings but, basically, you are the one running the show. I’ll tell you, God has got to bring us to something different than that. That will never fulfill His purpose. That’s the thing that’s wrong with us, is self-will.
But anyway, “This is what the Lord says: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?” (NIV). See, what can you do? I’m the greatest. I’m in heaven. The earth is just a footstool for me. What are you gonna actually do for me?
“Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being? declares the Lord. This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” That’s a pretty good outline, isn’t it? Because the first thing that God is looking for from me and for any one of us is summarized by the word ‘humble.’ The word ‘humble’ has to do with taking a low place.
You know, literally, particularly in this day, if you had somebody who was a king, the appropriate response for somebody coming in his presence was to get down on the floor and bow down. And it was an acknowledgment of your position relative to them.
Well folks, we’re talking about the…we’re talking about God! We’re talking about the highest being in the universe who has a purpose that was created in His heart and mind before this world began. And He has allowed this world, through the choices that men have made, to come into a place where we have a need before Him. We cannot fix what is broken. There is only one possible way that we can relate to this God, and that is to take that low place.
It’s not groveling. You know, somebody could come before a king and, they don’t really feel particularly humble. They don’t really want to do it in their hearts but they know the right thing to do is to get on the ground, or get on the floor. Folks, we need to see the reality. Being humble starts with an honest assessment of who I am and what I am.
And, you know, if God is going to…if we’re gonna have a relationship with God, it’s gonna have to start with a divine revelation of our need. You know, we were singing about that, coming before Him, just as we are, with all of our needs. But you know, people don’t think they have a need. People think that they can sort of navigate their own path. They might want God to fix this or fix that, but basically, as I say, they’re gonna stay on the throne of their life.
God, in order to even initiate a relationship, has to bring us to such a sense of lost-ness, hopelessness, in terms of where we’re headed in life, the destiny of our souls, He has to bring us to a genuine revelation of that before we will ever bow down and say, okay God, I surrender. I turn my life over to You. I put all of my hope and care in what You can provide and what You can do.
There is no other place to be! I mean, anybody who stops short of this has missed everything! ‘Cause this is what God is looking for from your heart and mine, is to come to that place. And I don’t know, there is a place, there’s a beginning point where God has to bring somebody to that point before they will say, yes, Lord, come in and be Lord. Reside in my heart, direct my steps, provide for me the gift of your righteousness, but Lord, your presence in me to begin to change me so that I, who am not fit for your Kingdom, will become fit for your Kingdom.
You know, these are things we’ve talked about many times, but somehow, I felt like the Lord wanted to focus a little differently this morning. But again, what is God’s purpose? Once we come to that point, what is God’s…what is God doing? Why doesn’t He just save somebody and take them on to heaven? See, His purpose in building this family is that we learn and we grow up in a world that hates Him, that is going the other way, where we are forced to swim against the tide, and make choices to serve Him in the face of everything that is going wrong in this world.
God is going to call His people, in a place, out of a furnace of affliction, is one expression that He uses. And so, humility…what God is looking for from those of us who know Him. He is looking for every one of us, at every point in our lives, to humble ourselves, to take that place of submission, of confidence toward Him. You know, the scripture says, and scriptures we’ve used many times, “…Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must…” (KJV). Do what? There are two things.
( congregational response ).
“…Believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” You know, there’s a saying that’s popular out there in many places and it’s absolutely true, that one way to express what faith is, is I believe God is who He says He is! I believe He can do what He says He can do! I would add something to that and I would say, I believe God ‘will’ do what He says He will do!
So, faith is absolutely a confidence, that instead of trusting in me and trusting in anything that has to do with this world, any resource here…I’m not trusting in my church, I’m not trusting in a man or a person, I’m trusting wholly in what Jesus has provided in the will and the purpose of God! I have no other confidence, no other hope, nothing that I can trust in. How in the world does somebody come to that if God doesn’t impart that?
( congregational amens ).
But to whom does He impart it? Who is the one who absolutely winds up with this quality we call faith, this ability called faith? How does that get in here? God has to speak! But the one who winds up with faith in here is the one who bows and surrenders and receives that Word, without just sitting here, and debating it, and questioning it, and saying, I want my way and I’m gonna compromise here.
This is surrender. This is saying, Lord, what You’re saying is exactly right and I put my faith in You! And so, faith is born and there is a confidence toward God that absolutely becomes the anchor of the soul.
Now, you know what the scriptures calls the anchor of the soul is hope. But, what is hope? It’s faith directed at the future. There is a confidence that I have in Him right now, but that confidence is that He will do something to change my…to secure my future. My future has already been defined by God. It’s already been secured, but not by anything I can do, but by what Jesus has done.
And so, that faith begets in me a hope and an expectation. It’s not simply a ‘hope so,’ is it? It’s an absolute expectation in what God is going to do! Praise God! What a foundation He’s given us to stand upon! Thank God!
But I’ll tell you, if we’re going to walk in this, we’re gonna need what He’s talking about here. This is what God is looking for. Because once I enter the Kingdom, now what? Now we just said, He is going to conform us…that’s what I was leading up to. His purpose is to conform us to the image of His Son. We’re not like Him. Our character is not like Him. Our values are not like Him, not naturally.
And so, in order for us to absolutely learn, within this context of a broken world, to become like Him, that means we’re gonna have to let Him work in us, and become what…and change us so that we don’t act and react to the world. We don’t react with…in the case of what Dave said. We don’t react with this anxiety. Well, we all do. So, do you think we might have some needs here? Yeah! And so, God has got us in this furnace of affliction.
So, what is my place? Is it to complain? We do. Is it to have resentful feelings? ‘Course you would never do that, would you? I know! You know, why is it like this? Why does it have to be this way? Why can’t…why doesn’t God fix this? Why are my circumstances like this and they’re doing great? What did I do?
There are a million and one things that the enemy will throw into our minds that will be anything ‘but’ simply a childlike faith and a humility that bows before God and says, God You know what You’re doing! You love me. I am trusting in You.
And you know, this faith leads into what we call trust. To me I would make only the subtle distinction that trust is the practical side of faith. That’s when we’re in the fire. That’s when we’re in the circumstance. And instead of questioning and fearing and believing the worst, we’re continuing to say, God, I may not understand this, I may not like it. I don’t like it, necessarily, but I trust You. I know who You are! I know You know what You’re doing. I know that regardless of how this feels, I know You have my best interest at heart.
And I’ll tell you, one of the things you discover as you go along is that we don’t know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. As long as we are in this flesh, we will discover things about ourselves that will not be pretty.
And if you think you’re doing great right now, and you truly know the Lord and you’re looking to Him, just wait. God will bring you to something that will just…oh, my God! How could I react like that? How could I be like that? It’s just so contrary to what I know in my head. My theology is correct but, oh God…the emotions that I have to deal with and the questions and even the anger sometimes! There are a thousand and one reactions that we have. And I’ll tell you, we need to be able to take that place of humbleness.
You know, one of the biggest things is when God uses a circumstance that involves people, and they do something that, maybe it’s really and truly wrong. But God allows it. And so, we are injured in some fashion. Maybe there’s a real injury. Maybe there’s just an emotional injury. And so, we direct our anger at them, but it’s not righteous indignation, is it? It’s a human reaction of anger and frustration that blames them, instead of looking past that and saying, God, You allowed that because You wanted to show me what I am made of.
And so, this is the issue. We’ve said many times it is not my job to straighten people out! And if you expect to go through this world and not have anything bad happen to you, not have people mistreat you, you are in for a rough ride!
( congregational response ).
God is going to allow all kinds of things, but every one of them is nothing more than an instrument of God’s love and God’s purpose to make us like Himself!
( congregational amens ).
And so, what He’s calling upon me and every one of us…I need this absolutely as much as you do. I was sitting here waiting and hoping the service would just go on and I could sit here and listen. I’m telling you the truth. But I have to humble myself to this, and say, Lord, You just have to take over because I have not got it! I don’t have it, Lord! But You do!
You see, it isn’t just this, oh, poor me, kind of thing. That’s a bad reaction, isn’t it? That’s not real humility. Real humility is the ability to be honest, and realize what I am and be able to face everything that comes along where the Lord shows me something about me that I don’t want to face.
We don’t want to humble ourselves to that. We want to blame and look and excuse and find everything in the world…every possible way to deflect from the real issue that God is absolutely gonna do what it takes.
I’ll guarantee, and I know for a fact, that there are many battles going on. There are things I don’t know about in individual lives. Your way is hard right now. And the Devil is beating you up with emotion about it. Why does it have to be this way? Oh, God, what’s wrong? Why are You treating me this way? And you know the only possible solution to this is to humble ourselves, and learn how to say thank You, Lord. Lord, help me!
And I’ll tell you, our best example has a name, and His name is Jesus. A scripture we’ve used so many times, “Come to me…and I will give you rest.” (NIV). “…All you who are weary and burdened…Take my yoke upon you and learn from me….” What is it that we learn? Ah, the first thing is, I’m humble. Ah, here’s the Son of God, the One who spoke the universe into existence, He is walking around in human flesh, humbling Himself, to that process.
Was it an easy place? Oh, no! It was a lot harder than you and I will ever face. You know, you think about…I mean, He was 30 years old before He made Himself known to anybody, except His mother, and the Lord witnessed when He was a baby and all those kinds of things. But I mean in terms of, okay, here’s the ministry that God has…the purpose for which I came to earth…30 years, He’s just humbling Himself to His parents, to His work, to just getting up in the morning and being the kind of person that the Father wanted Him to be.
‘Cause we know He never sinned. I mean, the power of God in Him just enabled Him. But I don’t think we realize the degree to which He was dependant on the Father, how much He had to humble Himself. You know we have this…we rightly uphold the deity of Jesus Christ. In him dwells all the fullness of deity bodily, but I’ll tell you, when He was here, He lived a life of dependence and humility where He knew His place.
When He was raised from the dead, now He’s got the new life. He’s got the Eternal Life and the new body. He still looked at Mary and said, go tell my brothers, I’m going to “…my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Instead of, I’m way up here…I’m standing right here beside you. We have a Heavenly Father. I’m taking my place of subservience to Him. The Son of God does exactly—did exactly, and still does, what He asks of us.
I’ll tell you, does this not all go back to the very heart and the purpose of God? Everything that arises against that, is nothing short of rebellion and evil. It leads right straight to death. There’s nothing else that can happen other than just coming to that place of saying, Father, “…not my will, but yours be done.”
And I’ll tell you, there are battles to fight, to make that happen. You’ve got a lot of folks out there that their idea of Christianity is that nothing bad should ever really happen to us or at least not continue to happen. We ought to be able, if we get sick, just to go…
( snapping fingers ).
…Say the magic formula, the magic words. If only we had enough faith. I’ll tell you, God has all kinds of purposes. God can heal! He can raise the dead, or He can take somebody through an affliction and make Himself so real to them, in a way that He couldn’t have any other way. God has purposes that are particular to you and to me. We are different. Every one of us has a unique place in His Kingdom and He is doing something that no one else has the power to do. Oh, to Him be glory! Him be the praise!
But you know, it’s hard to praise Him when things aren’t going the way we think they ought to go. “How long, O Lord?” David prayed. You know, we all say that, but you know one thing about David was always…even when he complained and questioned and all of that, his bottom line was, but I know You’re good. But I trust You.
That’s getting our ‘buts’ in the right place. We can express our emotions sometimes, but…and the Lord understands that. He knows what it’s like to be here. That’s why He can be a “…merciful and faithful high priest…” ‘cause He’s been here. He stood up against everything that ever afflicts any of us, and He knows what it’s like.
You know, I thought about a scripture we’ve used many times. I think it’s in Hebrews 5. I’ll just refer to it. But, though he were a Son, “Although He was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.” There was a scripture before that that I meant to look up, so I guess I will look it up.
Hebrews chapter 5. “During….” This was when he’s talking about His life. “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”
I’ve sort of had some ideas about that, but I think I see just a little something else that I’ve never really noticed before about that. “…Save him from death…” What does that mean? What is it that brings about death? Sin! Sin is the thing that, inevitably, when sin takes root and that’s the dominating principle, that leads to death. Jesus was tempted, “…in all points…” the scripture says, “…like as we are, yet…” What?
( congregational response ).
“…Without sin.” (KJV). You look at chapter 9 of Hebrews and you will see that He, “…offered himself without spot to God…” But there’s a little phrase in there. It says, “…through the eternal Spirit….” Do you know it took God’s power working in Him, in order to enable Him to be sinless?
There were real battles that had to be fought. We don’t want battles. We want nice little sayings that will just make all the bad stuff go away and make life comfortable. But there are battles, sometimes, that have to be fought. Jesus went forty days in the wilderness and we have this little summary of some of the temptations.
I’ll guarantee it wasn’t this quiet little conversation at the end. There were pitched battles when the Devil came at Him with everything he had, and He had to rely on God and call upon God for help and strength. God, it’s not in me! I’m a human being. I have come here with the weaknesses of those around me. Oh, God, I need You!
Why did it take three hours of incredible prayer, in the Garden of Gethsemane? He was the Son of God. He should have said, I can handle this. Big deal! Bring it on, Satan! But He didn’t do that, did He? He cried out to His Father. Under the same…just fighting against the same feelings that try to rise up and take control in us. He fought against them and He took them to prayer in battle. There was a war that was going on! I’ll tell you, that’s where the war was won!
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January 10, 2021 - No. 1475
“His Provision” Conclusion
Broadcast #1475
January 10, 2021
January 10, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1475 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I know that there are people right here that struggle with fear in a special way. But I’ll tell you, God wants you to lift up your eyes, He did not give you that. He may allow it, but He wants you to rise up and recognize where it’s coming from! God did not send that to you because it represents His heart toward you!
How many times in the scriptures do we see somebody with some kind of a divine encounter, it’s an angel, or they see Jesus, or they see something, and all of a sudden you see heaven’s glory and you know, oh my God! This is real. This is supernatural. This is power beyond anything I’ve ever known. And what’s the natural human reaction? Fear, terror.
You know, somebody read recently, I think Steve read recently about how John saw Jesus in this vision. And his reaction was to fall over like a dead man. But do you notice, every time there’s some servant of the Lord who was literally overcome with fear because of the presence of a heavenly being…what is His reaction to that? Don’t be afraid!
God does not give us the spirit of fear. He gives us His spirit of power. Isn’t that what He says? Have courage! Be strong! Does that not mean I can go to God and based upon His heart and His provision and His promise, I can partake of strength that I don’t have? Strength is available!
Do I feel weak? Is that all I’m left with, my own resources? No. I have the right to go to God. I don’t have to earn His favor. He did all the earning that’s ever necessary! Jesus went to the cross in my place. He took my sins. He took me with Him into that grave, to set me free so that I could share with Him forever and ever.
Don’t be terrified, don’t be discouraged…dismayed is the word the King James uses. Discouraged…that’s when you look at the circumstance, and you start measuring what you’re up against, against your own capabilities, your own expectations, your own experience, your track record, whatever it is. And basically, your conclusion is, it’s hopeless!
Now I imagine, if somebody put one of us in a wrestling ring, with somebody who was 7’4” and 400 pounds and said, go for it, I think we would have reason to feel dismayed. But you know, the reality was, when Joshua was leading the people into the land, there’s a lot to look at! There was a lot to take in and to realize what they were up against.
They were up against bigger armies, walled cities, and among the people were some giants! They weren’t all giants but there were some. And they weren’t about to just walk away and give up their homes. They were gonna dig in and fight with everything they had! And so, if they had simply gone by what they could see, how do you think they would have felt about it?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. They would have said, okay, I’m supposed to fight. How many of us fight spiritual battles that way? Well, I’m supposed to fight, but I ain’t expecting anything. Nothing’s gonna change. I’ve been down this road before, been up this mountain before. I know how this turns out. You know, where is our faith? What we having a faith in? We’re having more faith in the problem and the insurmountability of whatever it is we’re facing, than we are in the promise of God!
( congregational amens ).
And God’s saying, wake up! Look to me! Let’s not just sit here and sing about and rejoice and affirm in all that Christ has given us, I want you to experience more of Me in your everyday life. I want real life to be able to lay hold of some of those things and get out of our stuck position.
Am I the only one that’s feeling some of these things? Am I the only one where you get geared up and your mind is sort of engaged in some of these things and all of a sudden, the Devil knows exactly what button to push, and the next thing you know…
( blowing ).
( congregational response ).
Yeah. We need to learn to recognize how the Devil works, and where this opposition is coming from. And don’t ever take opposition as a sign that God is not with you and doesn’t want to give you everything that Jesus bought…paid for! It is simply how the Christian life works! Those who enter into the Kingdom of God will enter through much tribulation. There is going to be opposition.
But I’ll tell you, it’s worth everything to put our hope in the promise and simply learn to look past everything, including the stuff that’s in here. This is the greatest obstacle…it’s what’s in here. But God is gonna bring us to the place where the promise outweighs everything else.
And this is what they faced. And so, you know, we see kind of a mixed bag as they did go in. But every single time, every single time, when they looked to God, got their instructions from Him, and then did what He said, even when it didn’t make a lot of sense naturally…think of Jericho, God came on the scene!
And the reality is that the people of Jericho are the ones that had no chance, because they weren’t just up against a bunch of people. It didn’t matter what their resources were. I mean, you know, the stories we refer to over and over again…Gideon, and how God delivered the whole nation from a huge army with 300, using only 300 men. But 300 men plus God…they didn’t have a chance! They just didn’t know it…until the time came.
Folks, you know, this is one thing I sense. Why do you think when we begin to get geared up, sometimes it’s just emotional, but when we begin to get geared up and say, God, I know there’s more, God, I want to experience it, I want to lay hold of it, and the Devil begins to oppose that by every means possible, why do you think he’s doing that? He is scared to death!
( congregational response ).
He is scared to death that there will be a people who will actually believe what’s in this book! And not just relegate it to some other part of the world, some other time in history, some special person way back there. But will say, wait a minute, this is written to me—this is written to me. I have every right because I don’t come based upon my own righteousness. I come based upon His promise.
And that is the hope that…that’s the thing that levels the playing field. You can’t look at somebody and say, well, it’s just not for me, it’s for the special one over there. We are everyone on the same level. We have the same need. Yes, there are personal differences. But I’ll tell you, salvation isn’t based upon personal differences. It’s based upon what Jesus did, 100 percent!
And how many times, we’ve referred to the stories in the scriptures…David, obviously, the example. But think about what David had going for him…David, when he came to face Goliath. Now here’s the problem. All the people there of this army, were looking at this how? Were they looking at it spiritually or through the eyes of the promises of God, and who God was? All they could see was somebody that they had no chance to beat. This guy was a whole lot bigger than 7’ 4”. And there he was, mocking their God, and they weren’t ready.
Folks, I believe God wants to get us ready for earth’s darkest hour. I believe He is getting us ready! I believe He’s faithful! I believe He’s going to bring us through, one way or the other. But I believe He longs for a people who will, like a harvest, they will ripen in the midst of this darkness, that He will become real! Folks, it’s not about who we are, and what we are. It’s about Jesus!
( congregational amens ).
And the more Jesus has of us, the better things are gonna be! It’s not our movement, our church, our doctrines, our ways of doing stuff, it’s the presence of Jesus in His body.
( congregational amens ).
And how much of that is expressed, depends on how much of our lives He has. And so, here’s David…he comes on the scene and looks out there, and basically, what’s the problem? And everybody else is going crazy. But see, David had already cultivated a relationship with the Lord, hadn’t he? He knew something about his God. Isn’t that what the Lord is seeking to bring us to?
What about the scripture in Daniel! Those who, “…know their God…be strong and do exploits,” will be the ones that’re able…those people will be the ones who will be able to take action in the face of what the Devil is gonna throw at the Church. (KJV). And he’s gonna throw everything he can possibly throw at the Church.
Of course, the Lord said, I’ll be with you ‘til the end of the age. There’s no one that can pluck any one of His out of the Lord’s hand. Praise God! Whether we go by way of the bullet or the sword, or by whatever means, or by the upper-taker…under-taker or the upper taker. The end result is gonna be glory!
But you know, the Lord wants us to experience more of it here. You go on in Peter and you’ll see what Peter’s getting at, is I want you to be able to arrive on the other end…I want you to have an abundant entrance into the Kingdom. I don’t want you just to sort of sneak in…and say, well, I got here, I didn’t avail myself of very much that was provided but I got here.
Peter says, you lay hold, you take hold of the promises in every situation, you grow. When you struggle with brotherly love, you lay hold of my promise regarding that, and I will love through you. I will be your strength and your help! Grow in these things! I’ve provided for you! I want you to grow up, and when you get there, you’re gonna able to get there with abundance.
But here’s David, and there he is, and he recognized the nature of the battle. It’s not flesh and blood here we’re dealing with. It’s somebody who’s challenging the very promise of God. And the one who doesn’t have a prayer is that giant over there. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know what’s about to hit him! And so, in the strength of a simple faith in God’s power and God’s promise, David went out there and killed the giant.
I’ll tell you, there are giants in our pathway. Every single one of us has got a giant. It looks just as scary as old Goliath. What do you think the Lord desires out of all of this? Do you think He wants us just to experience the fear and to give up under it? Or do you think He longs to say, I’ve got the answer to this! I have allowed this so that you can grow. Look to Me! Believe My promises!
You think about Jehoshaphat, and certainly an obvious example that we use many times. They were minding their own business and all of sudden about a million-man army comes marching in to take, to lay waste to the land and take it over. What did they do? They did the right thing, didn’t they? They called together everybody to pray and seek the Lord, to fast, and to just call upon God.
But…read it sometime, about how they called upon God. They didn’t just say, pretty please God, we’re in trouble here, help us out. They went right to the covenant. He absolutely recited back to the Lord, God, this is what You said, this is what You promised, this is why we are looking to You. Do you think just maybe that God would be pleased if we would do that sometimes? All the time!
But when we’re facing an issue that we cannot defeat, which is kind of like all the time, that we learn to say, God, you said. And we spend time with the Lord and we look to Him and we ask Him for understanding, we ask Him to breathe life into the words. And we determine to take hold of them because they’re for us, they’re the only thing standing between us and defeat!
Do you not know that’s what the Christian life is about? It’s God putting us in places where there is nothing standing between us and defeat except what He promised, which is kind of like enough!
( congregational amens ).
That’s more than enough! When a God who doesn’t lie and can do everything, gives us His promise. This is the way by which we take hold of what we need in that hour of need. It’s to say, God, I’m praying back to you what You said. I’m coming to you, not on the basis of self-will, wanting things my way, I’m coming to You on the basis of Your promise to me in Your word and I’m gonna stand on that until You answer.
Sometimes it takes time. Daniel prayed for what, 21 days, that one particular time. And he just continually went to the Lord and said, Lord, you said…and the answer came exactly at the right time. Of course, the right time for us is, ‘now!’ But God knows exactly what He’s doing. Thank God! He knows exactly what He’s doing.
So, here’s Jehoshaphat just lifting his heart to the Lord and calling out to God, and God gave the answer, didn’t have to even lift a sword that particular day…send the choir out, we all know the story.
I’ll tell you, ‘that’ God is our God. That was a time when an actual people and a king, and a literal kingdom were facing an army they had no hope of defeating. Every single one of us is facing something in our pathway today, that we have no hope of defeating unless we get help from on High.
And God is looking for a people, not who are gonna try to get emotionally worked up, and do something in the strength of that, but who are going to come to Him and say, Lord…the future will take care of itself. Excuse me while I stutter a bit! The future will take care of itself. But right now, this is where I’m at, and I need help. And I need You to breathe life into Your promises. Lord, I need You to speak to me.
Do you believe we can wait on God and God can quicken something that is…do you know what quicken means? It means to breathe life into it. It means to bring the words off the page and speak them to our hearts. We have the right to this covenant! We never earned it but He earned it for us! But this is how we take hold of what He has given to us.
But I guess it comes back to what started me down this road, is that there are times in our lives when we get geared up. Do we know what I’m talking about? You get geared up, ok, I’m gonna do it this time! And then, all of a sudden, before you know it, you’re right back where you started, and nothing has changed.
And God wants to get us off of dead center, and show us that there is a road that we can walk. Stop looking for the feeling. Stop looking for the experience. Stop looking for anything except the raw promise of God. Isn’t that all Abraham had to go on? He’s the very example, the Father of Faith, the example of how God deals with humanity. It’s on the basis of believing Him, that He takes care of everything else.
And so here we are, living in the time that we live in, and the Devil is loose as he has never been before. And we’re gonna see that power increase. God wants to build a people that He can express Himself through. It will happen as we believe His Word and it’s gonna be a day-by-day-by-day-by-day thing.
And a lot of times, there ain’t gonna be no feelings. It’s not even gonna make sense. But God wants people who will take hold of His word, not just get geared up and say, I’m gonna do it this time! If you’re trying to do it that way, you won’t. I never have. I don’t think I’m any different than you are. But there is a God who will honor faith.
And he says in verse 6, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (NIV). That’s what it comes down to. God is gonna reward a people who look to him and come to him on the basis of what He has promised, what Jesus purposed, and purchased for us. We could never earn, could never deserve it.
But, I mean, we sing about what we own and how rich we are in Christ and we live like paupers. And so has the church down through the ages except for these individuals that suddenly seemed to be able to tap into this, but it’s not just for the special ones. It’s for you, and it’s for me. God wants to take us deeper and higher. And I believe with all my heart He’s doing it. I believe He’s going to do it!
But He wants us…He would say the same thing to us that He said to Joshua, “…be strong and courageous….” Don’t be afraid. I forget the exact words, but don’t be dismayed, don’t be afraid, don’t be discouraged. Don’t give into that side of it. Take hold of what God has said, and trust Him for the strength to even be strong. I mean, it all comes from Him.
Don’t ever fall into the trap and say, I’ve got to. If by ‘I’ve got to’ you mean somehow, it’s got to be in me. I mean, the resources have got to come from me. They always are gonna come from Him. See, if you’re one that thinks it’s got to come from you, the first thing God’s got to do for you is to show you that ain’t so.
That’s what He did for Paul. God, I love you! I’m gonna keep Your law. I can do this now! And he ran smack into his own nature, that was stronger than he was, until he realized that God’s plan is not for me to keep the law and earn my way, it’s to let His spirit come and live in me, and give me what I don’t have so that I can live, I can produce the righteousness of the law by His indwelling presence.
Boy, that’s why we need Him, isn’t it? This is Christianity 101, folks. But I sense God wanting to alert us to the reality. Don’t be surprised when you…that there’s a part of you that begins to reach out and want more, that it gets tough. Don’t be surprised! Why should that surprise us? That’s the Devil’s business.
But I’ll tell you, God is gonna give us victories over that, and in the winning of those victories we’re gonna grow stronger, our faith is gonna get more, we’re gonna see this gradual growth into being more and more mature sons and daughters of the Living God. God’s gonna have a people in this hour.
I want to be one of those people. I don’t have it in me to be that, not in myself. But we have everything in Him. His promises, by His promises, we can lay hold of the divine nature and that which is ‘up there’ in a sense, can be in here, and actually begin to make a difference. Do you believe that?
( congregational response ).
Do we really believe it? See, that’s where the Lord has us right now. And I want to be one of those that really believes it! When everything else says, no, I’m gonna say, this is what You’ve said, Lord, and I’m trusting in You. Praise God!
Close
January 3, 2021 - No. 1474
“His Provision” Part One
Broadcast #1474
January 3, 2021
January 3, 2021
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1474 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise God! I believe the Lord’s trying to tell us something, starting with me, this morning. I’ve many of the same thoughts that have been expressed. I appreciate Ron expressing what he did. I read the same passage this morning, by the way. But anyway, no matter what I try to think about, it seems like I always come back to the same thing, and it has to do with the…the basics of the Christian life.
And we…we live like paupers. That’s the reality. There’s so much that we claim to believe that we don’t live and we don’t experience. And we just sort of accept it. And I just feel like the Lord wants us to go on, wants us to get past some hang-ups.
But turn, if you will, to…just for a moment and as a jumping-off point to a familiar scripture we’ve used many times in 2nd Peter chapter 1. You know, one of things the Lord has mentioned—has emphasized, over and over lately is the completeness of what we have been given. And it’s wonderful that we embrace that and affirm it as a doctrine. But the reality is, as I say, most of Christendom, most Christians throughout history have never really tapped into, but the tiniest little bit of it.
You know, it’s almost like, well, my sins are forgiven, I have a hope of heaven one day, and the Lord knows I’m weak so He just accepts me like I am. We wouldn’t quite say it that way, but that’s kind of, almost, what it gets down to, and then we just practice an outward form of Christianity in some fashion, and that’s all…that’s as good as it gets.
And, we may hear about somebody like Hudson Taylor or Andrew Murray or A.B. Simpson, or so many others of the past who seemed to break into another realm and live a different kind of a life. And, well, that’s great for them. That’s just not me. All these things are true, but not for me.
Now, I wouldn’t dare to ask for a show of hands of everybody who, if you’re honest, wouldn’t say, that’s kind of how we approach a lot of these things. There’s a level of unbelief that I believe God wants us to break through.
And in one sense, it’s the Devil that we’re fighting against and all of his resistance. That’s absolutely right. But I’ll tell you, the power that overcomes that is not in us. It’s simply not us. We don’t have it.
And the sooner we come to a realization of that…the earlier, the easier…the sooner, I guess, is the word I want, we will get to a point where we realize, hey, wait a minute, that’s not how it’s done anyway. This is called salvation for a reason, because in ourselves, we are helpless, hopeless. There’s not a thing we can do to qualify ourselves for what God has purposed. And so, it all has to come from Him.
Well, here’s Peter at the end of his life, he is facing crucifixion pretty soon. I don’t know if he realized specifically that’s how it was gonna happen, but anyway, he’s in prison and writing to believers one last time, wanting to leave them with something that they could hang onto. And so, he greets them in verse 2, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” (NIV).
Boy, I need some abundance of grace, don’t you? Grace is God coming down and helping me, because I can’t do it myself. But I sure need abundant grace. Anybody here with me on that one?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. But here again, we were saying earlier about the foundation that’s laid. Let’s just lay it again here. Let refer to that before we get into something else. “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these….”
Through, what now? His own glory and goodness, not mine. I don’t qualify for being able to enjoy these things because I’m anything. In fact, the pathway to enjoying these things is, first of all, to declare bankruptcy, spiritually, and to recognize that I’m not worthy, I can’t. But I come to You on that ground because that is who Jesus came to save. He did not come to save the righteous people who try to be righteous and qualify themselves for His favor. He didn’t come to save those kind of people. He came to save sinners!
Well, everyone of us qualifies, whether we would like to think so, or not. Every one of us has nothing by which we can commend ourselves to God. It’s just not there. But He has given us promises, not based upon our performance…that was one word I left out of that little bit I said a while ago about how we read this. It has never been based upon our performance! It’s based upon His provision!
Time and time again I need His provision for my lack of performance. Thank God that there is a provision, and it’s not meant to just leave me there either, but there is a…but I’ll tell you, no matter what happens I have someplace I can go.
“There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins, and sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.” Thank God, He’s made a way that I can stand before Him as if I had never sinned! What an incredible hope the Gospel of Jesus Christ is!
But through these, based upon His own glory and goodness, “…he has given us…” We didn’t have to earn it, did we? Oh, the language is so clear throughout this whole thing. “…He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
So, God’s provided everything! It’s based upon promises that He has made, and it’s through those promises that we are able to actually lay hold of something, and that which He has provided now becomes ours, in our experience.
Okay now, you’ve got so many ways people approach this. You’ve got some that think it’s an experience we’re all supposed to get…that suddenly catapults us to this level. And of course, you’ve got people that go way off in the ditch and say, there’s a place of sinless perfection that we can achieve. No, it’s not that at all.
But there is a life, there is a provision, and our Christian lives are a matter of learning and growing and laying hold of things as we go, instead of just muddling through and saying, well, that’s as good as it’s gonna get. The reality is, a lot of us, that’s where we’re at. This is as good as it’s gonna get. Well, it ain’t. All right?
So here’s how he portrays this. This is not a matter of learning doctrine and getting our doctrine clearer. This is not a matter of entering unto some supernatural experience, though God can do all those kinds of things. That’s not a substitute for this. God becoming more real to us is not a substitute.
I don’t care if God comes down and fills you full of the Holy Spirit and you’re just enraptured, that’s not a substitute for this! People can experience the power and the presence of God and then it really not change them underneath. And all you have to do is have that go away and you find out what’s really still there, what’s in control, is what I’m talking about. Okay?
So he goes on and he says, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance…” The quality of never giving up, “…And to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.”
That sounds like it’s a very gradual, progressive kind of thing, isn’t it? Thank God, He doesn’t hit me with everything at once! Thank God, I can just go to Him and get up in the morning and look to Him and He brings across my pathway the things that I need to face that particular day. But with that, He always gives me the way of escape so that I can bear it. Isn’t that what scripture tells us in 1st Corinthians chapter 10?
Always, there’s that perfect balance. I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over again, but I feel like I need this. And I feel like God sees the hearts of His people, many of whom are hungering and saying, Lord, I know there’s more. Why can’t I get there? What’s going on here? Well, I believe God wants to begin to inspire us.
I’m very conscious as I say this that, it would be easy to turn something like this into a pep rally. And a pep rally is designed to evoke people, to bring people into an emotional state where in the strength of that, they can go out and whip the other team, or whatever. Well, what happens when the emotions are gone? See, we need something that is not dependent upon how we feel. Isn’t that what we just sang?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. It has nothing to do with how we feel, because there are gonna be times when we feel pretty alone and pretty empty. That’s part of living in this world. And that is not a sign, necessarily, that something’s wrong. We go through, though, every kind of experience where God…I mean, God will bring us to a place over and over again in our experience, where we have nothing to hang onto except His promise! That’s the essence of the Christian life!
But we don’t like that. We want something to kind of see and feel…and we’re focused on experiences, when God is focused on changing us. Isn’t that what he’s talking about here. He’s not talking abut God rearranging our experiences and making our life pleasant. I thank God He can do that. He can meet practical needs. He does, many times. But the greater need is for me to become like Him and I wasn’t born that way. And so, the Christian life is presenting our lives to Him so that He can begin to transform us!
How does He do that? We’re gonna have to go through experiences that challenge this old man’s dominion over this vessel. I’ll tell you, when we are united to Christ…this is something I’ve preached and I struggle with it myself. When we are united with Christ, the old man has died. But we don’t live as if that’s so, do we?
You know, it’s like you’re…you were a slave, okay? And you had a slave owner. And, in your state as a slave, you had no choice but to obey what he told you to do. If he said jump, you said, how high? But then something happens that changes the relationship between you and that slave owner. And now you have been set free and you’ve got a new master who treats you differently.
But what happens when the old slave master come around and starts giving orders? See, this is what happens. We still act as if the old nature is in charge, far too much. And this is where God is going to take us down a pathway that is unique to our needs, and bring us face to face, not with just everything out there that’s wrong, but everything in here that needs to change.
And His purpose in doing that is never, never to discourage, but always so that we will reach into the unsearchable riches of Christ, so that we will reach into things that go beyond our understanding, beyond our expectations, and realize that there is no end to His provision for us.
I see the Lord looking down and saying, there are people here that love me, they want me, but they’re stuck. They’re stuck at a certain level. I want to come forth in power. And it’s not like we’re seeking signs and wonders. I’m not talking about anything specific. I’m just talking about the living presence of Christ in a greater way!
( congregational amens ).
I’m talking about His nature reproduced in us, so that when people look at us, they don’t see us anymore, but they actually see Jesus! Jesus was the image, and is, the image of the invisible God. He is exactly, the exact representation of His being. But is it not His purpose to conform us to that image?
You know, what would be the result of that, in varying…as we go along and in varying degrees, do we not become the image? From glory to glory, is right. Is that not where God is going with this? We’re living in a dark hour. We’re living in a bubble in a sense. It’s almost too peaceful here. And we go to sleep and we don’t realize what’s happening in the world around us and how dark it’s getting, and how much Satanic power there is.
But I’ll tell you what started me in this direction. I didn’t start with this scripture, as I was thinking about it. I was thinking about exactly what was expressed this morning…how much pressure we experience, how much Satanic opposition we experience as we begin to try to reach out. I’ll bet you anybody here who has heard some of these truths and say, yes, that’s right! I need more! There’s more in God! I want more! Oh God, give me more.
Everybody who does that, the Devil just walks away and says, oh well. How many of you recognize that, boy, the hammer comes down? All of a sudden, you are fighting a major headwind. You have got everything in the world coming at you and it’s just like…in the face of it, you’re struggling. And then, all of a sudden, he pushes just the right buttons in you, and whoa, that old nature just kind of goes into gear. And there you are and you say, well…pretty soon, you’re right back where you were. I’m gonna climb that mountain! Oh, and then, I’m not…then we back down.
Every one of us…I mean, this is Christianity 101. This is the nature of it! Paul didn’t say to Timothy, “Fight the good fight of the faith,” for nothing. Somehow, we think that if we can just get our doctrines right and do the right stuff, then everything is gonna be hunky-dory, but it’s a war.
And what God has purposed to make us, of us, to conform us to His image, to build that family that He is building, it happens in the furnace of affliction! It happens against everything that the Devil can array against us. This is normal!
And we act like…oh my God, something’s wrong. And inevitably, the way the Devil works is, well, ‘something’s wrong with you!’ You’re the problem. God would like to do stuff, but you’re just such a problem. I’ll tell you what…in one sense, we are the problem, because we don’t believe Him. But what happens is, we’re believing more in the opposition than we are in the Lord.
You know, where I started thinking about was actually in Joshua. How many examples do we have that are…you know, circumstances in life that we can relate to, because there are physical battles, physical opposition?
You know, if you go through Deuteronomy you will see Moses reiterating the history and the law and the promises of God for the new generation that had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They’d grown up there. They hadn’t seen a lot of that, many of them. They were born in the wilderness. And, all the older ones that had been 20 years and older were gone, except for Caleb and Joshua.
And now it was time to go in, and over and over and over again, you hear the same language. Be full of courage. Be strong and courageous—be strong and courageous. A chapter later, be strong and courageous! Do you suppose there’s a reason for that? Do you think that might have some relevance to you and to me this morning? It certainly does to me. Be strong and courageous.
And so, now we come the point where, Moses is gone. Up to this point, I’m sure Joshua would think about it. What’s it gonna be like? And whoa! The Lord comes to him and says, “Moses my servant is dead.” And all of a sudden, it begins to dawn on him, what’s going on. Now, everybody’s looking to me. Oh my God!
I mean, this was a man. This was not some superman. This was a guy just like us. God had His hand upon him for a particular purpose. And He reiterates the promise in verse 3 of Joshua chapter 1. “I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.” And then He describes the territory.
But look at how verse 6 begins. “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous.” I mean, okay, Lord, You said that. But do you see what the Lord understands about our need? Here He is looking down at His servant, recognizing, man, this guy is up against it. Everything he is going to be looking at and experiencing, is gonna be against what I have told him is going to happen. He is gonna need to have something on the inside, if he’s going to really be able to believe My promises over what he sees and feels.
Do you see where the Lord is going with this? Isn’t that kind of where we’re at? Where there’s only one principle by which anybody can ever lay hold of anything…it’s gonna have to be this quality of faith? I thank God that God is the one that gives it to us, but we have to take it. We have to lay hold of it and say, yes, Lord, I need Your faith and I need You to strengthen me. Oh God, help me to focus my vision upon You and Your promises until that becomes more real to me than what I see and feel.
See, boy, we are human beings living in a broken world, and I don’t care what the Lord’s done for you, as long as we’re in these bodies, these bodies still want what they want. You know, being set free from the old slave master doesn’t mean the slave master was shot dead! And if we never feel anything that he’s, or never hear his voice again, the question is, does he have the right, does he have control? And if we yield to him, then, for all practical purposes, he does.
Thank God, God has given us everything that we need. So, over and over again, “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey…” verse 7, “…all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”
Boy, do you think there’s a lesson is that? If we spend our time, listening to the world, meditating on its thoughts, embracing the things the Devil puts in our mind, looking at circumstances, going by how we feel, we will live in a state of defeat.
And we’ll sit there and feel sorry for ourselves. Like, God’s just against me. Or, this stuff is wonderful but it’s not for me. Hogwash! This is for the weakest of the weak, the lowest of the low. I don’t care how you see yourself in the natural, this is God’s gift to His people.
And we see this picture being formed, and God knows the weakness of humanity, and He sees His servant facing something that he’s never faced in his life! He always has had Moses there! And now, all of a sudden, he’s alone, and everybody’s looking to him. Okay, tell us what to do. Oh my God! And there he is.
And now, verse 9, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.” Wait a minute. You said that, Lord. Do you see how much we need to hear His voice that would tell us, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
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December 27, 2020 - No. 1473
“Prince of Peace” Conclusion
Broadcast #1473
December 27, 2020
December 27, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1473 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: He is out to destroy everyone. He is angry! He knows he has lost the war! And he is determined to take down everyone he can. Thank God, he cannot countermand what Jesus has set in motion! God is gonna reach a people!. He knows who they are! He knows how to reach them! We need to be in harmony with Him, and let Him do the work, because He is the only One who’s able to do this. But, He will never fail.
“All that the Father gives me…” Jesus said, “will come to me.” (NIV). And what about them? None of them are gonna be cast away. Do you see the perfect union with the Father and the Son there? Everybody He gives is gonna come, and nobody will be turned away. Thank God!
So, you’ve got a wisdom here that causes people to live, trying desperately to satisfy itches that are in here, and it doesn’t work. “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and every evil practice.” Now, he’s talking to Christians. Folks, these things affect us.
If there’s anyone here who has any lack of peace in your heart, where does that come from? Ah, it comes from our old nature wanting something—wanting something that’s self-driven. It come from this so-called wisdom. It comes from the world. This is how it should be. Go get it. It comes from the heart of the Devil himself, but it affects us—it affects us.
We live our lives singing about peace, but we don’t have the peace that God wants us to have. I realize it’s not something you can snap your finger and say, oh, now I’ve got it, I’ve got it. This has got to come as a learning experience.
You know, I think somebody had quoted Dave this morning. I thought it was a wonderful way to put it, about how…we can live with the stuff we know as though this is all what we’ve learned in the past, but it’s not what we’ve learned. It’s what we’re learning. It’s not about past stuff. It’s about present action. We are meant to be learners. We are meant to be people who learn the wisdom that is from above, which he’s gonna talk about in a second.
There is a wisdom that comes from God, that is meant, not just to tell us about what glorious things are gonna happen one day, but how we can cope with a world that hates God, where it’s a world of people who don’t know what peace is about. They make a treaty, and oh, we’ve got peace. Oh, yeah. You break it down to the individual level, you’ve got broken lives, and messes, and people who are snared by every form of sin imaginable. Okay?
So, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and every evil practice.” That’s the root of every evil thing in the world. It’s simply, my desires. There was somebody else who talked about being in a situation where there was a conflict with somebody, or feelings about somebody.
This is something we’ve said many times, and we, every one of us, fall into it over and over again. The problem is them! If they wouldn’t do that, or say that, or act that way, I’d be fine. Why do you think God caused them to act that way, or allowed them to act way? It’s not about how they’re acting. It’s about how you’re reacting! And you’re reacting because you’re following the dictates of your old nature instead of Christ. We’ve said it over and over again, and we do it over and over again. But you know, the Lord’s teaching us, isn’t He?
( congregational amens ).
He loves us enough to keep reminding us and showing us where it’s at, because He is the Prince of peace.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what He longs to give us. Thank God! All right, so you’ve got the Devil’s wisdom. “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all…pure; then peace-loving….” Okay, it’s first of all pure. But it’s, “…then peace-loving, considerate….”
What does considerate mean? Who are you thinking about when you’re considerate? Me? No, we’re thinking about somebody else. That’s what He’s after. “…Considerate, submissive….” Oh, we love that one. That’s human nature, right? Oh, I just love to be submissive. No, we want to be in charge. We want what we want, and that’s right, and everybody needs to get out of our way and let us have it. That’s the source of all that’s wrong with humanity. That’s why there’s no peace to the wicked. God doesn’t want us acting like them, but we do more than we should.
Okay, “…submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” Boy, those are amazing qualities, aren’t they? And the thing is, not one of us was born with those qualities. If we’re gonna have them, we’re gonna have to get them from Somebody.
And when he talks about wisdom, we’ll see this as we go, and of course, we’ve talked about it many times…he’s not talking about us having better information so we can act different. It takes more than just knowing what’s right to do. I mean, you can read this and say, oh, good, now, that’s what I’m supposed to do. Well, good luck, because you don’t have a nature that will support that, and that’s gonna constantly get in the way!
That’s what Paul discovered in Romans 7 when he tried to serve God by obeying the law, and he discovered his batting average was zero. Even when he did it outwardly, it wasn’t here, like it was supposed to be. My God, we need a miracle, don’t we?
All right, so what happens when you’ve got that kind of wisdom in operation? It says, “Peacemakers who sow in peace…raise a harvest of righteousness.” My God, you see what God is trying to do? He’s trying to plant His life down here and raise a harvest. This is the context in which we have to serve God. We’re gonna need supernatural help. We’re gonna need God. We’re gonna something we can’t get from this world. We can’t get it from ourselves. It only comes from Christ. That’s the hope of the Gospel. Thank God!
What now, now he goes on. Really, there’s a chapter break here, but it wasn’t there in the original. This goes right straight into chapter 4, verse 1. So he goes back to the question, “What causes fights and quarrels among you?” Why? Why don’t you have perfect unity with everybody around you? I mean, you know, we understand that’s not a good thing, but it happens, constantly.
You put two people in a room, sooner or later, you’re gonna have a fight. Why? “Don’t they come from your desires….” No, they come from him! They some from the other guy! He’s not doing right! He’s not measuring up to my standard! He’s not like I think he should be, or she.
No, “…they come from your desires that battle within you?” That’s the problem. It’s a heart issue, isn’t it? “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want…you do not have, because you do not ask God.”
See, this is where it gets into our relationship with Him. See, you’ve got people, first of all, we don’t [have] things because we don’t ask Him. But now, we’ve got another problem, because we’re still here in this carnal state where we’re following too much the old nature.
“When you ask, you do not receive…” Why? “…Because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” So, you see what the problem is throughout this? It’s human nature in control. We’re meant to be yielded to Him, to learn how to live by a different life.
This is why religion can’t help you. This is why perfect theology can’t help you. Perfect creeds can’t help you. We have got to have a new heart, and a new life, and only Jesus can give us that.
But I tell you, even when He does, that does not automatically guarantee that in every instance we are going to follow that life, we’re gonna live out that life. This is what the problem is. We’re still in the middle, and James is dealing with Christian believers, and yet, he says there’s fights. You get in a fight. You’re having a problem. Why? It’s because you’re following your desires. Wake up! This is what it’s about.
“You adulterous people….” An adulterer is somebody who’s married, but they’re messing around with somebody else. “Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?” You’ve got two opposing kingdoms. The kingdoms of this world are God’s enemies! If we live according to the dictates and the ideas of the world, we’re absolutely fighting against God. We’re fighting against ourselves, really. But God wants to set His people free. Praise God!
“Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace.” Now, let’s just take a step back and say, now who does He give the grace to, or for you grammarians, to whom does He give the grace?
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” You know, sometimes, the proud are the ones that think they can do it. They’re bopping along in a situation. I can handle this. I’ll wait ‘til I get to the big stuff, and then I’ll, oh God, I need You. We need Him all the time, about everything.
The wonderful thing is, He is available all the time about everything. He’s interested all the time in everything, and He’s willing, but we’re too proud. If we could think differently, and ask Him for the grace to think differently…I mean, you’ve got to start where you’re at, don’t you? If I’m proud, I need grace to stop being proud. I need to recognize, I need You, Lord, in this area.
Wherever I’m at, Lord, I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have the desire to do the right thing in this particular area. I heard some amens, but I think everybody here could have said it. Yeah, there you go. So, what do we do?
Oh God, I need You. Lord, You’ve promised, You’ve promised, and I’m coming to You. I’m believing Your promise in the face of all that says it can’t ever be. Lord, I need peace in my heart. I need something that only You can give.
You know, there are so many scriptures you could use. Lord, we preached three different Sundays…straight Sundays on peace one time, didn’t we, from Isaiah 26? Peace, peace. But one scripture that I think is critical to this…let me go ahead and turn to it. I think it’s in John 14, right at the end.
And remember this is where Jesus was…it was the night before His crucifixion. He was talking to His disciples, gave them a lot of information. Okay, it was not at the end. It was verse 27, talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit. You’re gonna be taught. But in 27, He says, “Peace…” It’s what we’re talking about today, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
Isn’t that interesting? It’s not like I’m gonna give you a box of something and it’s called peace. This is My peace. Where did Jesus get His peace? From the Father. Okay, is it just sort of a warm, gooey feeling? What did that mean in practice? Think about…what does that actually meant for Him to have a state of peace, given everything that happened to Him?
He trusted. That’s a key. That’s what Isaiah said, “…because he trusted in thee.” (KJV). You have peace, peace. It was an absolute unity of His heart and His will.
Now, we know He had battles. He cried, “…with strong crying and tears…” didn’t He? And the Lord saved Him out of that. But the salvation is not what we think about, because He wasn’t rescued from the cross. He had to go through that, but what He did have was a heart that was yielded and willing and able, by God’s power, to go through something that was impossible for a human being to do.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what salvation is about. Doesn’t John 14:27 give us a clue about what salvation is all about? In effect, Jesus is saying I’m giving Me to you. I get it. You don’t have what it take to have what God wants you to have in this world! But I have come to a place where, now, God has invested in me a life, and I have the power to share that life with you, and that peace that has carried me through my earthly life, it’s Mine, I have it, and I’m sharing it with you!
That means He’s sharing it with you, and you, and you, and me, today. This is not just something that happened the night before He was crucified. This is all through. It’s called time and time again, the Gospel of peace, the Good News!
Thank God, the foundation is that we can have peace with God, and have our sins dealt with and washed away as if they had never happened, but then there’s a practical side, that God wants us to be able to walk through our lives and actually have a peace…that we’re not constantly knocked off kilter by all the stuff that happens as though, why did it happen to me?
Well, get your mind off of yourself, and just put yourself in God’s hands and say, thank You, Lord. Your grace is enough. I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who can give peace in your situation and mine, today, if we will let Him.
That’s the problem. Do we want to cling to our way so much, and our rightness in a situation, so much that we’re just not willing to let go? Boy, that came up today several times, about how much we need to come to the place where we can let stuff go.
There’s a wonderful scripture…it might be a good one to finish with that we certainly all know very well, and that’s in Philippians chapter 3. Well, I’ve been all around it here. There we go. I’m sorry, it’s Philippians, chapter 4.
Now, it’s interesting that right before he gets to the scripture that we always think of, in verse 2, Paul’s writing to believers in the city of Philippi. He says, “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.” (NIV). So, is this a problem? Is this a natural…I mean, is this the kind of thing that you deal with when human beings are together, even in the Lord? Are there not conflicts? Is that what God wants? Is there an answer? Is there a solution to this problem?
He pleads with them. “Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow…” to whom he’s writing, “…help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”
Now, the scripture that we’re all so familiar with…because if you have got…your human nature is too much in charge, is that not the source of fear and anxiety, among other things? Yeah. You’re always…there’s always something that’s got you going and got you worried, and you’re worried about this. You’re worried about something else. There’s a burden. I can’t fix this. What’s going on? There’s all this unrest.
Oh, my God, God doesn’t want us to have to live that way, and He knows…like Peter said, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” (KJV). But here, Paul says, “Do not be anxious about anything…” (NIV). Okay, so how do I do that? Good luck. Stop being anxious, everybody! That doesn’t work, does it? Better have a way to do that.
“…But in everything….” Everything. That comes to all the little stuff, all the little things that we run into in our lives. It gets right down to the nitty gritty of where you and I live, in everything, about anything. “…But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving….”
How many of you pray and petition with complaining? See, there’s no trust in that, is there? It’s like, God, You’ve got it in for me, and I don’t like it, and I’m gonna pout. No, we come to Him…Lord, You’ve allowed a need in my life. I feel it. I’m in a difficult place, but I know You love me. I know that in all things You’re working together for my good, and You have a purpose in all of this. So, in my request, I’m thanking You, Lord. I’m thanking you for the circumstance, but I’m thanking You because You have the answer and the grace. Okay?
“…Prayer and petition, with thanksgiving….” That’s a pretty good prescription, isn’t it? “…Present your requests to God.” And how many of you think when we do it, we just over and over, and over and over…and I know there’s a persevering in prayer. I understand that part. But how many of you think that when we come to the Lord, we give Him our burdens, and then we take them back go to sleep…and try to go to sleep with them?
How many of you have done that? Yeah. That doesn’t work too good, does it? See, there does have to come a place in our prayer where we say, all right, Lord, I have handed this off to You. It’s in Your hands, and I’m just leaving it in Your hands. The old hymn, “Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.” Some of you remember that.
All right, “Do not be anxious…by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And…” What? “…The peace of God…” The peace of God. Do you think God’s worried? Do you think God is in conflict? Oh, my God, I’ve got so many people to imagine. Look, there’s Carl. Look what he did again. I’ve got to worry about him. And Dorsey, I don’t know.
( laughter ).
And Ron. Oh, I’m just so overwhelmed. No! God’s got a perfect rest. He’s perfectly in control. There’s nothing the Devil can do to undermine His plan. He wants us to share how He feels about everything, the reality of it, not just how He feels, the reality of it. He wants us to rest in that.
“And the peace of God, which transcends….” It goes beyond all understanding. You can’t explain this to somebody. Why do you have such peace? Because God’s got this, and I’m trusting in Him. I mean, even the words, that still doesn’t convey the reality of something that goes beyond simply explaining it to the mind. It’s something that possesses the heart. That’s what He’s after, because that’s what he says. It, “…transcends all understanding, will guard you hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
All right, and he says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble…” It gets into to what we think about, what we allow our minds to dwell on. That’s where a lot of our trouble comes from. “…Whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And…” What? “…The God of peace will be with you.”
Thank God. If I’m living, and I don’t have peace, it’s not His fault. It’s because I am dwelling in a low realm. I’m operating by human wisdom, by human nature. If I’m gonna get out of that, I’m gonna have to start lifting my eyes and looking to Him, and believing His promises, and giving my burdens to Him, and His promise is that we can have peace.
This is peace that’s on earth. We’ll have peace there, if you know Him. But He wants you to have it now. And I’ll tell you, you get into…just life in general, but this season is supposed to be peace on earth…a lot more stress usually. But God can give us peace, even in Christmas. God can give us peace, if we’ll just open our hearts to Him. He is the Prince of Peace, and behind Him is the God of Peace. That’s what it’s about, and He is faithful. Praise God!
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December 20, 2020 - No. 1472
“Prince of Peace” Part One
Broadcast #1472
December 20, 2020
December 20, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1472 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise the Lord, and good morning to all! The Lord is so good. I appreciate His presence this morning. We certainly have nothing in ourselves, but we have everything in Him. And as long as we look to Him from our hearts and lean upon Him, He will be here and He will show up. That’s His heart toward every one of us.
You know, I was thinking about the service today, and over and over my mind went to a simple word that we’ve heard a lot and is associated a great deal with this season, and that’s ‘peace.’ The kids sang one song about peace this morning. And, as I thought about it, I said, it wasn’t that long ago I preached the same message. And I looked back and it was three years ago I preached on “Peace on Earth.”
And while I’m sure a lot of the thoughts will be similar, but somehow I feel like the Lord wants us to focus on that this morning. You know, we don’t need my sermon. We don’t need anybody’s program. We just need something from His heart to us, because I doubt that anybody here is enjoying perfect peace this morning, despite the fact that we know we’ve been given it in Christ. It’s ours. But yet, He wants us to come to a place where we experience that in a much deeper way than we do.
You know, there are so many scriptures you could use. I’ll just pick one just to start reading and that’s in Isaiah chapter 9, familiar scripture. And this is where we have the wonderful prophecy about the coming of Christ. You know, the Lord hid these wonderful prophecies from the eyes, even the minds, even of those who uttered them. They didn’t know what was coming. They gave out the word that God gave them, in faith, not really quite grasping how it was all gonna work out.
And you know, as we said many times, God hid it deliberately, partly from the Devil. So the Devil just walked into a trap, thinking he was doing away with the Son of God, and he wound up engineering his own defeat. But when you look back with the eyes of what has happened and what God has now revealed, suddenly the Old Testament becomes a different book.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! Not just a book of laws and all that stuff. It’s about the coming of Christ. So anyway, in verse 6 the prophet writes, “For to us a child is born…” (NIV). Boy, isn’t that something? Right off the bat, to us. It’s to us. Everything that God has done is because of our need!
( congregational praise ).
Praise God! Do you have a need this morning? God’s interested in that. He knows about it. I mean, we’ve sung so many things about that this morning. But it’s reality. We don’t want to just sing this, and talk about it as though, well, this is our theology, we’re just gonna uphold it. This is meant to be real! This is meant to make a difference in our lives! God help us! God help me! I need this as much as you do!
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isn’t that an interesting title? I mean, you think of God being the God of love. Could have said, the Prince of Love, but He said, the Prince of Peace.
There’s something about this Kingdom that stands in absolute distinction from every other kingdom that we know about in this world. There’s no peace here, is there? Because there’s no peace in the human heart. But here is One who is the Prince of Peace. But isn’t it interesting the language that He uses? The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and yet, here is the Son being called by those names.
Why…you know, I don’t want to go into theology here, but the fact is, God was in Christ. This was not something where the Son said, hey, I’ll go do something and then try to convince my Father about this. This was God’s initiative, to not only send His Son…can you imagine Him being willing to come down and start out as a single cell in a woman’s body? I mean, you think about the willingness of our Creator to come and to do that!
But when He came, He didn’t come just to be a human being, He came to be a vessel. He came to be a way for God Himself to inhabit a human vessel and live among men so that men could actually have a contact with God if their hearts were in tune, if their eyes were open. He was there!
Now, most people who met Jesus didn’t see the Father in Him. They didn’t understand. They just thought this was a…maybe a special man, maybe a miracle worker or prophet. But they did not see that the God of the universe lived in Him, and was making Himself known. And so, that’s why this language is the way it is.
But the, “…Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.” Thank God! Thank God! So, He’s talking about a Kingdom that was going to begin here but it was going to have…it was not gonna have any end. I was gonna say it was to end over there, but it’s not gonna have an end, is it? This is gonna be…you know, one day we will stand there. Those of us who know Him, those of us who have been born of that same life that was in Him, He will finish what He has started.
( congregational praise ).
How many times have we said that? He is not…we sang somewhere in the music this morning, the Alpha and Omega. That somehow jumped out at me. That’s the beginning and the end, the first letter and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. And He is the beginning and the end but He’s also the middle. He’s everything that we need.
But His purpose is not just to bring us along and hope He gets there. This is absolutely a done deal. And one day, every one who knows Him will stand there in purity, in white.
If you have any conflict in your heart, now, that will be gone! Can you imagine a place where there is zero conflict? Now, to a human being, that sounds boring. But oh, my God, that’s what God intended from the beginning! He invested so many abilities, so many qualities in us that…because we’re born in His…I mean, we were created in His likeness, weren’t we? We have a will, we have the ability to create, we have ability to imagine things and we have feelings, we have all of these qualities about us. He even invested things in our bodies that have a part to play in this.
But we know, from the beginning, that there was a rebellion that took place. And that rebellion was in the heart of one of God’s servants who happened to be especially powerful and beautiful. And he got to looking at himself, and all that God had invested in him, suddenly he began to imagine, this is for my benefit, this is to make me somebody, and so I’m going to be, “…like the Most High.” I’m gonna be…I’m going to be like God!
And that thing was born in him and it absolutely twisted every good thing that God had done, into something that was evil, something that was destructive. And we know how he led a great host of angels with him, and then he led our first parents into rebellion and sin. And the world has never had any peace since. The very nature that was in Satan was reproduced in Adam and Eve. And all that God had given them began to be focused upon self.
And you know, that’s the essence of sin. We think of sin as rulebreaking. Here’s some stuff that God doesn’t like and we’re not supposed to do that. Well, I mean, those are representatives of what the real issue…the real issue is when you take anything that God has given us and use it for a selfish purpose, then everything becomes twisted and broken, and it leads to death. It leads to corruption. It leads to conflict. It leads to everything other than what God designed us for in the beginning.
My God! He is the only One that can bring us back, folks! That’s what this is about. You think about the world. You know, we remember the scriptures, in a couple places in Isaiah where God said, “There is no peace…for the wicked.” Now, I’ll imagine that most of us, when we think of somebody who’s wicked, we think of somebody like Hitler, or a mass murderer or somebody who’s done something really terrible. And that’s what a wicked person is.
The fact is, every one of us was born with a nature that is wicked, that is against God. I don’t care who you are, how righteous you appear before men, how commendable your deeds might seem, at the root of it, it is self! And I don’t care what you do and how many homeless you feed…I mean, that’s a good thing, but I mean, don’t you depend upon that to make you right with God! It will never do it.
And how many times have we pointed out the example of Isaiah, who surely was one of the righteous…I mean, the guy wrote this, was used to write it. And how, just a few chapters before this, he records the time when he, who had been called to denounce the sins of Israel was suddenly called up into the presence of the Lord, and all of a sudden, oh, my God! I had no idea. I knew He was Holy. I heard about all that. I see the things that they’re doing wrong. I know God doesn’t like it, but I had no idea what He was really like!
Folks, if any human being was suddenly transported into the presence of God, we would…you know, I think most people would be vaporized. It would just be overwhelming, the difference, and yet, that is what God is going to reproduce in the hearts of His children! Only God can do that! Praise God!
But you think about the nature that we were born with, and how it works. I had so many scriptures come to me and they’re not in any particular order. I’m gonna go ahead and turn to one that you might not think of. And that’s in James chapter 3. Some of this was quoted this morning. It’s amazing how many times we come through a men’s meeting and a lot of the thoughts that I’ve had will come out.
But James is writing to believers here. But he is obviously recognizing the fact that when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we don’t automatically become perfect. There’s a whole lot of stuff that needs to change. We have got a nature that is still operating in these bodies that is still aligned with the world. It’s aligned with the kingdoms of this world.
And so, what he describes here is an example of what Christians need to recognize, in themselves, and say, look, that’s not what He’s after. He is after something else, and I need to recognize when these things rise up in me.
He asks an interesting question, here. “Who is wise and understanding among you?” I’ll ask the same question. How many of you are wise and understanding? Yeah, an interesting question, isn’t it? We sort of read right over some of these things. So, let’s see what wisdom and understanding bring to pass.
“Let him show it by his good life….” So, obviously this wisdom and understanding is simply not a mental comprehension of Christian doctrine, the ideas that we are all supposed to affirm. This is not simply an idea kind of thing. It’s not a cultural kind of thing. There is meant to be a reproduction of His life in ours. Okay? You say you’ve got wisdom and understanding. Let’s see it. Okay? Now it’s getting quiet.
“Let him show it…” How? “…By his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.” Boy, if we ever learn…if you think…if you acquire some kind of spiritual knowledge and it begins to make you feel…you know, I’m better than other people. I’ve got all this knowledge. Oh, my God! You don’t know anything! Knowledge puffs up. It’s love that builds up. If we ever see ourselves through God’s eyes, we will discover that we’ve got a lot to be humble about.
( congregational amens ).
We have nothing to be proud about. Isn’t it amazing that God would look down upon somebody like us and love us anyway? And commit Himself with such an amazing Gospel to reach to the lowest of the low and say, I have the power to make something of you! Boy, there was a wonderful example given in the men’s meeting this morning. Was that you, Carl, that rebuilt something? Somebody did. What Ben was talking about?
( congregational response ).
David. Oh, okay, Beth’s dad. Yeah! That’s right. I knew it was a dad in there somewhere.
( laughter ).
But there was some piece of furniture that looked like, to them, it was junk. Nothing! Worthless! I mean, just throw this thing out. And somehow he had the vision and the ability to look at that thing and see, not the wreck that it was, but what it could be. And so, he went part by part, took the thing apart, replaced things that he could replace, improvised what he had to improvise and wound up with this beautiful piece of furniture you could probably get a lot of money for it.
You know, we’ve got a God that’s invested…I mean, doesn’t that reflect our Creator? The fact that somebody would have that kind of ability built in. This is our Creator and…He’s…there’s no way to compare any ability that we have with what He has in His heart. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you’ve done, where you’ve been. We’ve got a God who can pick you up and make you something that’ll last for eternity.
And I’ll tell you, if you think you’re…if you measure yourself by other people and say, well, I’m not one of them. I’m one of the good ones. He’s got an extra job on you!
( laughter ).
‘Cause He’s first got to show you what you really are, and then He can pick you up and do something. You know, sometimes the one in the gutter has an advantage. You don’t have to tell him he’s a sinner. He knows it. Oh, my God!
But, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…” and Paul said, “…of whom I am the worst.” Isn’t that amazing?
All right. So, there’s a humility that comes from wisdom. Now here’s an interesting way to measure wisdom, what we call wisdom. “…If you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.” Now, is that not a pretty good description of human nature? Human nature is just about a bunch of desires that we have, and we try to deal with them.
Sometimes one desire will just carry us along and take us down a terrible path. I mean, you could…an obvious example would be alcohol or drugs. But it could be anything. I mean, if you don’t happen to have that particular problem, don’t you look down on the one who does. You’re just as bad in a different area. Every single one of us has things that we’re born with!
You talk about being born a certain way. We’re all born sinners. Every single one of us, if we simply follow the inclinations of our…of the nature with which we were born, we will be prisoners of Satan! There is no hope for it.
And I’ll tell you, if you’re on your own…no hope outside of Christ. And if you’re on your own, you think about how Satan works. I’ll tell you, this is how he works on believers. You’ve got a besetting sin. You’ve got a weakness. And it rises up, and it begins to pull on you. And it begins to pull on you and you sort of…no! I’m not going that way. No! Been down that way. Don’t want to go that way. And you fight and there’s a battle going on.
How many times does the Devil come and say, you ain’t gonna win this? You might as well give in. Save yourself the trouble. You’ll feel better when you give in. My God! Satan has got us by a leash because of this nature that we were born with. We got it from him. All it does is long. All it does is reach out and want.
And you talk about a lack of peace. It’s not just that I want this, it’s sometimes I want two different things! And I can’t have them both! They were conflicted. My God! There’s nothing but unfulfilled—an unfulfillable desire built into every one of us. Folks, if we’re gonna find peace, we’re gonna have to have it some other way.
I’ll stop and inject this. Again, there are so many logical orders you could put this in. But one of the phrases that you will hear a lot, this time of year, is ‘Peace on Earth.’ Right? ‘Peace on earth, good will to men.’ And, a lot of people will get the idea that that’s what God wants. He’s gonna bring peace to this world. Everybody will hold hands and, I think I put it one time, sing “Kumbaya.” And you know, there’s just gonna be an end to all conflict.
That will never, ever happen in this world. Now, I realize there are people’s theology that says different, and I’m not gonna fuss about it, I’m not gonna worry. I’m not gonna throw you out because of it. But I’ll tell you, the picture that I see in the scriptures is one that this world is gonna get worse and worse, darker and darker. The hearts of men who say no to the Gospel is gonna get to the point where they are completely blind, and what they believe is gonna sound absolutely insane to somebody that knows the truth, and yet they believe it with all their hearts! Don’t we see that happening now?
( congregational amens ).
It’s happening now! It’s gonna get worse! The Devil may indeed bring this world into a sort of a union, but it will be a union of rebellion against God, and there will be no peace—no real peace in the hearts of men. This is not about peace—that kind of peace in this world.
In fact, there’s another place where Jesus was talking to His disciples and said, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?” How do you put those two together? The angel said, ‘peace on earth.’ Jesus said, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?” How many of you remember that scripture? It’s in Matthew 10, if you want to look it up.
No, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” What did He mean? Because people are going to make a radical choice. They’re either gonna remain in the kingdom of darkness, serving and following the dictates of their own nature, saying, it’s my life, I will pursue what appeals to me, or they’re gonna surrender that, come to Him, see the problem and surrender to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace!
( congregational response ).
And it’s gonna divide families. It’s gonna divide…bring all kinds of divisions. Now, does that mean we need to have a bad spirit? Of course not! But I’ll tell you, there will be a division that is radical.
I mean, you think about the division that’s coming. How many destinies are there gonna be on the Judgment Day? Two. There will be those who have surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ, and put their faith, not in themselves or their church or their religion, but in His saving power, the power of a brand-new life imparted to the heart! They have surrendered to Him and they’re part of that kingdom that Isaiah was prophesying would come. Or, they remain a part of this and they’re gonna be destroyed. That’s pretty radical, isn’t it?
But yet, the angel did say, peace on earth, didn’t he? So, there has to be some meaning to what he said. Now we know that there’s going to be a peace that will come. Like I say, once all of these kingdoms are destroyed, every opposition is thrown into the fire and it is gone, there’ll be nothing but peace! Oh, man! We will be set free to be everything God ever intended us to be. That’s not like we’re gonna sit here and be little knots on a log or something. I’ll tell you, we will be able to do, but there will be no conflict in the doing thereof.
( congregational amens ).
There will be no frustration. There will be no…I was first, this is mine. You know, all the stupid stuff that goes on in this world. We’re all like kids. We laugh when kids say that, but we do the same thing. It’s just we have more sophisticated ways of doing it.
But oh, I’ll tell you what, what God is talking about…what He came to do, though, was not simply about the future. Thank God for the future! But God…do you think God wants His people to have peace here and now?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! See, that’s what James is getting at. And he’s showing the contrast of what human nature does to us and what real wisdom is. So, he’s talking here about, “…bitter envy and selfish ambition….” I want something that I feel like is going to give me satisfaction. If I get that then I’ll have…good luck with that! I don’t care what you get, it will never satisfy the itch that’s in here. It’s deeper than any man can scratch, and you will be chasing…you’ll be like the…like they used to use for an animal. They would dangle a carrot out in front.
But I mean, isn’t that a picture? Oh, if you could just have this. I know it didn’t work out last time, but if you just do it this way, or do it just one more time. Do it. You’ll be happy. You get these fleeting moments of good feelings and then they’re gone, and then you’re empty and then you’ve got something else. Oh, my God!
If you harbor that envy, that unfulfilled, natural desire…if that’s what’s driving you, were does that come from? “Such wisdom does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.” You see where the source of that comes from? It comes straight out of the heart of Lucifer!
How many of you think he wants your welfare? Good luck with that! He is out to destroy everyone. He is angry! He knows he has lost the war! And he is determined to take down everyone he can. Thank God he cannot countermand what Jesus has set in motion!
Close
December 13, 2020 - No. 1471
“All We Need is Him” Conclusion
Broadcast #1471
December 13, 2020
December 13, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1471 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: At every point, where I have a need, what’s the answer? Well, I asked the wrong question, didn’t I? ‘Who’ is the answer? should be the right question. God is going to constantly, frequently, at the proper time, in the proper way, He’s gonna bring me face to face with me.
You know, my real problem is not everybody around me. My real problem is me. It’s how I react to everything else, that God is mostly concerned with. But I’ll tell you, God is going to bring you and me face to face with our need, just as He did when we realized, I’m lost, I’m in a state of rebellion, my sins are piled up to heaven and I’m gonna have to answer for them one day, and I have a need.
I have a need when I get up in the morning to get through a day without walking in self-will and rebellion and all kinds of things, giving vent to the wrong thing that’s still in my body. It’s still part of this earthly life. Thank God, the day will come when that will be gone. Praise God!
But what God wants us to know and what God wants you to know, if you’re somebody who’s setting out in this life, what do you have to look forward to? You have Somebody who has everything that you could ever possibly need to get all the way home, who’s not just out there telling you what to do and shouting down encouragement, but who actually lives on the inside.
That’s what Christian faith, real, Biblical Christian faith is about. It’s a Person who comes to live on the inside, and He has everything you could ever need. Thank God!
I could just sit down right now, that’s an awesome thought. But thank God! That’s the message Paul is trying to get across. So, I’m faced with a need. What do I do? Like I was…several times this morning, I’ve had to stop and say, wait a minute, you better practice what you preach, because I felt especially weak, I felt especially scatter-brained, couldn’t even remember half the songs.
Just, you know…but you have to come to a place and say, well, Lord, you have got me where I’m at. I have the needs that I have, but what is the answer to this place that I’m in right now? It’s to reach up to you. And it’s to say, Lord, I have a need, but You have promised that You are the answer to that need! Come into and be what I need in this circumstance, that I cannot handle in myself. That’s the description of the Christian life, right there.
If your idea of the Christian life is committing yourself and your resources to serving this Jesus in the sky and keeping the rules, you are in for a rough ride! And it ain’t going anywhere either. You’re gonna be on a hamster wheel your whole life if you live like that.
But listen to…to what he says and how he describes this. I mentioned the fruit tree. In this case, we are the tree, “…continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him…” (NIV). And so, now you have the imagery that we all understand of a fruit tree. If you want a good crop of fruit, what do you do?
( congregation inaudible ).
You prune it, yeah. But I mean, where do you plant it? You plant in good, fertile soil, because, why? That’s where the plant gets…that the tree gets all of its nutrients. It draws up the water. It draws up the nutrients from that soil. If the nutrients aren’t there, the tree is going to suffer. It’s not gonna produce what you want it to produce.
And so, I’ll tell you, if you’re going to plant your life in any resource that this world has, it ain’t there, folks. But in all of this mess that we’re living in, God has given us the perfect soil. Every nutrient that you could ever want is there.
And so, as we navigate this life and we look to Him and He leads us on the path that’s marked out for us, like it says in Hebrews 12, we’re gonna confront those needs and what do we do? Oh, I’ve got to try harder. I’ve got to do this. I’m so bad, I can’t do this.
Listen to all the stupid lies and wisdom the enemy’s gonna put in your head and you say, God has promised! God has planted me in One who has every resource that I could ever possibly need. What He wants out of me at this point, is to dig my roots deep. Begin to reach down, reach up, but reach down…you understand the imagery he’s giving us right here.
Maybe right now our roots aren’t as deep as they need to be. You know, when you start out life as a baby, you have everything in you, in one sense, that you’ll ever have. Right? But you need something…well you need several things. You need nutrients. You need care, obviously. And you need exercise, and time. And you can take this little bundle of whatever, and it might turn out to be a mighty warrior, an astronaut, a football player…you know, somebody that’s…we look at their resources…where did they get all this? It was in there.
Do you know, when God plants us in Christ, everything we will ever be is in there? You see what Paul’s talking about? He wants us to grow up. He wants us to learn how to tap into the resource that He has given to us, so that we can grow up in Him to be all that…all that He has purposed. Thank God!
In Christ, I’m sure I mentioned this before, but the first time I ever heard Brother Thomas preach was in January 14th, or something like that, of 1968, 1969. He preached on this scripture…of course it was King James translation. We are complete in him! And he went over and over the fact that there’s so much doctrine out there, that oh, Jesus is good but now you need the Holy Ghost, or you need this or you need that, or you need something else. No, we need to go back to Jesus! Everything is in Him!
( congregational amens ).
In Him, “…all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form….” Now, if the Spirit of God that is in Him, that power, that life, all that God is, is in Him and He’s in us…we live like paupers, when we have within us, if we know Him, we have all the riches that we ever need. We need to learn what we have and believe in it and receive it and exercise it. I’ll tell you, God’s gonna grow us up if we start doing that. I hope I’m listening to this. Boy, this is fresh stuff, this is raw stuff, but it’s reality.
( congregational amens ).
It’s reality and God wants us to get to the point where we just don’t get bogged down with what we aren’t…bogged down with all the needs and all the shortcomings, and all that’s wrong, and we lift up our eyes, we see that, not as a problem I got to fix…but as something that will redirect our attention to the source that He has already given to us, the Person of Jesus Christ!
Boy, did he spend a whole lot to time in chapter 1, telling us about Him and how great He is? Who is this? Well, He’s just the Creator. He’s just the One who could speak and stars happened, galaxies. Not only that, He’s the one right now who upholds it. I had to remind myself of that this morning. I said, Lord, if you’re upholding the whole universe, I guess you can handle me…my little problems.
Just think about who this is! Oh God, we get so lost in the clutter of this world and of the weariness, and our mind is everywhere in the world except on the Person of Jesus. God wants Him to be so lifted up that we’ll always look and realize it’s, “Looking unto Jesus the author and the finisher of our faith.” (KJV). Praise God!
“…All the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ…” nothing lacking, “…who is the head over every power and authority.” (NIV). It’s not just that He’s so great, He’s…everything that could possibly rise up against me, to stop what God has purposed, it’s got to answer to Jesus.
Do you think anything is greater than He is, can overrule and say, Jesus, You can’t do that? Oh no! We’ve got Somebody we can look to. I don’t care what happens in the world. I don’t care, in one sense, what they do to us. There’s nothing they can do to defeat what God has set in motion! Man, I want to be part of that, don’t you? I’m thankful for all that He’s done to bring me into that, and everyone here that is.
And so, He talks about the various needs. We need forgiveness of sins coming into the Kingdom. We need a different life because we don’t have one that’s capable of living that kind of a life. We need Him. And we need power against all this that’s coming at us from the outside. And every part of that, He has answered.
But what did He do about my sinful nature? God…”When you were dead in your sins…” verse 13, “… and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all of our sins, having canceled the written code….” Talking about the Law that God used to show us that we had a need, you can’t be saved by that. But He uses it to show us what sinners we are so that we’ll turn to Him. That’s what he’s talking about.
So now that’s gone. We don’t have to try to measure up and try to earn our way. “…That was against us and stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” Okay? I jumped over something that I meant to go back to in verse 12. What is the significance? We’re having a baptism service today. This comes into it. What happens? “…Having been buried with him in baptism…” There is a union with Jesus Christ that is real.
( congregational response ).
You know, I remember seeing this years ago, that there is a certain amount of similarity to marriage, to a wedding. Now, I’m not talking about what it has become and how corrupt that it’s become. I’m talking about the way God sees it, the way God instituted it.
It’s one thing for a young man and a young woman to be drawn to one another and to reach a place of conviction, we call it love, where they know, they sense the oneness that has come. There is a commitment and a spirit in each of one, and they’re engaged at one point. But even at that point, there’s still something that is not done, right? You still have a wedding. And it is a time of clear-cut, ‘no turning back’ commitment before God and men. There is a status that has changed. Everything changed, two have become one.
And I’ll tell you, there’s an authority, now obviously that God’s involved, but there’s a civil authority that recognizes what’s happening on that day, and puts its stamp and there’s a record of it in the courthouse. It becomes official.
Folks, I see in baptism where this is God’s equivalent to that in a sense. There is a point in time where our commitment to Him, our giving over of our life, we become united with Him. When He left this world by way of the cross, He willingly gave up His earthly life. He demonstrated for us the true value of earthly life…it’s nothing. You can’t keep it. It’s borrowed. You’re gonna give it up anyway. He gave it up willingly. He died to Adam, to everything it represented, because He had the promise of another life that could not be corrupted, that was forever.
That is the same promise that becomes ours, when we are truly married to Him. There is something that happens. There is a supernatural transaction that God institutes, and it’s real. Why does He relate this to baptism? “…Having been buried with him in baptism….” ‘By baptism’ is another sense of that word, that preposition ‘in.’ “…Raised with him through your faith in the power of God.”
How does all this happen? Is this something that I have to somehow come up with? No. I am presenting myself to Him. I have no power. I can’t give myself eternal life. I am believing Him, that when I do what is right in His eyes, I give myself to Him, He’s going to respond. There is a transaction that happens when a human heart truly repents and believes.
Isn’t that what…it’s obvious on the Day of Pentecost they believed, because they gave the invitation. They said, what are we supposed to do? They obviously believed the message. What did Peter say? “Repent and be baptized….” There’s an expression of faith and a willingness to turn away from sin and say, this is not what my life is about! I want that other life. I want Jesus to come in and change me and make me His.
And what happens? Your sins will be forgiven, “And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” There is a real transaction that happens. You know, I thought about this verse in Ephesians 1, several times this week, and it came up in conversation with my wife the other day. Interestingly, we were both thinking about the same thing.
But Paul is writing here to the Ephesian believers, and he talks about the great things that God has done. I’m not gonna read all of that. But I’ll go ahead and read from verse 11 for a minute, moment. “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will….” Sounds like He’s in charge doesn’t it? “…In order that we…” What’s His purpose now? “…In order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ….” There’s a hope, there’s a confidence, there’s an expectation that God can birth in the human heart when we open our hearts to His Word.
“…Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (KJV). God speaks, a human heart receives that, and something is birthed in here that enables us to come to Him. “…The first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel…” the Good News, “…of your salvation.” (NIV).
So you see, there’s the time element coming into it. He did everything He did. The Gospel goes out. When am I included in that? When I hear and believe. When that transaction happens in my heart, then God includes me in something that’s already happened. The Devil can’t touch that! Praise God!
But now listen to what God’s part of this is. “Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession–to the praise of His glory.”
Whoa! Think about that. What’s he saying there? The seal. When God imparts His Spirit, like he’s talking about here, He’s calling that a seal. Is that not God saying, this one is mine. Do you want to be marked?
( congregational response ).
Whose seal do you want to have? There are a lot of people who are gonna have the wrong one. But I’ll tell you, God wants to do something that is just as real as real marriage, that changes your identity, changes your status. When God grants to you His Spirit to come and to reside in your heart, there’s something that goes beyond, saying, yeah, I believe in Him, I’m going along with it.
There are so many that ‘go along with,’ but they’re still on the throne. There’s gonna have to come a time of surrender, and faith, and believing the promise of God. And I’ll tell you, when a human heart does that, do you think God is gonna be reluctant? That’s the one thing He wants, He longs to do…to say, you’re Mine, you’re Mine!
That was the thing that burdened the heart of the one who wrote the book of Hebrews. It was that there were people who were in danger of stopping short of that. They just didn’t ever quite enter in. They were always…something in here, there was a reserve, there was a holding back, holding onto one’s own heart and one’s own way. And people can go along and taste the powers of the world to come, taste a lot of things.
But I’ll tell you, there’s something that’s real that God wants to do for every single human being that hears the promise of His Word. God is going to give you His Spirit if your heart is genuinely presented to Him in faith. You don’t have to be a theologian, you could be…I mean, didn’t the Lord say, unless you become like a child, you’ll never enter? It’s all the smart people that think God’s got to explain it to them before they’ll believe…or show them a sign.
There’s gonna have to come a point where we just simply, we hear the Word of God and we know in here that it’s real and we surrender to it. And we present ourselves to Him and God will give you His Spirit.
And I want to say that about today. For those who genuinely are coming to Him and looking to Him, you expect that God’s gonna give you the seal of His Spirit. And when you come out of the water, you praise Him and you thank Him. You thank Him for His promise.
Isn’t that how we come? We believe His Word and we thank Him for it! I mean, isn’t that an expression of faith? We don’t just beg, oh God, please, oh God, please, oh God, please. There has to come a time when we say, thank You, Lord. I’m coming to You because of Your Word and Your promise. Oh, there’s nothing that pleases God more than simply believing what He says. I want to be more like that myself, don’t you?
You see, the simplicity of what Paul is teaching here. And I want to come back to this. I don’t think it’s necessary to say a whole lot of things. I mean, there are a lot of things you could probably pad this with and I don’t want to do that. But everything–everything that you and I need, to be all that God has called us to be and purposed that we be…in the first place, He’s provided it. I don’t have to come up with it.
In fact, the problems that I have are when I try to come up with it, or try to deal with stuff on a natural level, instead of just coming to Him and saying, thank You, Lord. Open my eyes. This present need, if it’s coming to Him for salvation, if it’s just living out your life and confronting needs in your life as you go along, the answer is exactly the same. It’s receiving Jesus.
You receive Him as Savior. I need to receive Him as Savior, in one sense, every single day! It’s not that I haven’t been sealed, but I need some measure of Him right now to be able to handle what He’s put on my plate.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what every single day becomes about. And I learn more about Him. I get more and more free from doing things my way and thinking my thoughts. He is everything that I need! Didn’t the Lord say He, “…is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”? (KJV).
Sanctification is being set apart for Him. That’s what the Lord does when He gives you the Spirit. He says, this one’s mine, you’re set apart! You’re not just part of this world! You’re Mine! You’re on a different track. You’re gonna have a different destiny and I’m gonna take you there, and I’ve given you everything that you need in Christ! All you need to do is to look to Him and surrender and believe My promise! And receive it–receive it!
Oh, we complicate it. I complicate it. But God wants to bring us back to a simplicity. Everything we need is in Him. And we have the privilege of coming to Him. That’s what God is going to…is bringing forth, is a people that He resides in, that are sealed by His Spirit, joined together in their hearts. Christ lives, not just in the individuals but in the assembly.
This is what will…this is the One who will carry us through everything that comes. He has already conquered every enemy we will ever face, including the one we see in the mirror. He has already won the victory at the cross. We simply receive what He paid such a dear price for! Thank God! We have everything we need this morning!
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December 6, 2020 - No. 1470
“All We Need is Him” Part One
Broadcast #1470
December 6, 2020
December 6, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1470 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise the Lord! Good morning. I’d like to just turn, if you will, to Colossians. It’s one of my favorite books. Colossians was a letter written by Paul and he wrote it to a church that he had never visited. He was in prison. But an associate of his had gone there, taken the Gospel and founded a church, and so he was burdened for them and blessed by the reports, so he wrote a letter.
In fact, he wrote two letters. He wrote one to the church of Laodicea, and he told them to each read their own letter and then swap letters and reach each other’s letters. So, I’d like to read a little bit this morning…just a passage out of chapter 2, and I won’t read the whole thing. Wouldn’t that have been something, though, to sit there and actually hear the original letter from the pen of Paul. Praise God!
So, Paul has just lifted up the greatness of Christ and who He is and what He’s done and that He, in us, is the Hope of Glory. Then he comes to chapter 2, and he writes, “I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
“I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” (NIV). Wow.
“In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” Praise God!
“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
I’ll tell you what, there are some rich, rich words in that passage. But I see in this, two things that I think are relevant to all of us today. It’s certainly relevant to me. But I see the principles, the underlying principles, of what it means to know God and to have a relationship with Him. They are laid out in such clarity.
And it’s not only…I mean, it’s on two levels. One is the level where people come to Christ. They come and there’s that initial relationship that is officially established, if you will. And now they belong to Him. And so, now that is settled. They’re in a place where God is gonna carry them forward, but now we’ve got a life to live, don’t we? So how do we do that?
And he addresses that in very specific terms. And so, I want to just comment on this. This is another one where I don’t have anything organized. I’ve had a lot of thoughts and I’m just trusting the Lord to bring out what He wants, because we need Him, don’t we? We don’t need my opinion about anything. We simply need Him to speak to every one of us.
And Paul’s burden, Paul’s purpose in all of this is certainly not a selfish one, is it? I mean, he’s paid a high price to do what he’s doing. But his whole burden is for the welfare of the people to whom he’s writing. And he realizes that…we live in a broken world. We live in a world where there are all kinds of ideas…that are floating around, that would change the way we look at life, that would govern the way we look at life and ourselves and our place in the world.
And, he wants them to get it, that everything we need is in Him! There’s one source of wisdom that you and I can depend upon! Everything else is headed in the wrong direction! All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ.
And you know, we have the words of Jesus Himself that He’s not merely a truth-teller, is He? He ‘is’ the Truth. If you want to know what reality is all about, you look at the person of Jesus Christ and you will get, you will see in the light of who He is and what He’s about, everything else in its true light.
And we are in a time in the history of this planet, when darkness is taking over. And we know why it’s taking over. We know it’s because men are choosing darkness rather than light. The thing is, we are in such a condition that when truth and light and genuine divine knowledge come, they cross us. You can build a big church today if you will appeal in some fashion to human nature and make people feel good about themselves, somehow.
You can fashion for yourself a religion that uses the name of Jesus, but you don’t have anything, unless Jesus is the center of it. I don’t mean just simply the subject of everything, I mean, He’s in it! Because he’s just said in the last chapter, the whole point of the Kingdom of God…and the Hope of Glory that you and I have, that one day we will actually be there as glorious beings in the presence of God, what is it that gives me hope? Is it that I follow His religion? Is it that I live by good principles? No! It’s Christ ‘in’ you, the Hope of Glory.
Until He becomes resident, we don’t have anything. And the wisdom of this world, Paul said in another place, it’s coming to nothing–it’s coming to nothing. There is a wisdom, the ultimate source of that wisdom is earthly, it’s sensual, but it’s, what?
( congregational response ).
Devilish! There is an inspiration behind everything. And Satan is throwing out every idea that he can possibly think of in this hour, and his design is to appeal in some way to some aspect of human nature, so that if people latch on to that they will become prisoners of darkness, of the darkness that they have embraced.
And they embrace it because they do not want to come into the light. They hate the light. They reject what God would say. And so, so much in the world is turning to that darkness and it’s gonna get a lot worse. Folks, we need to be on the Rock. We need to be in a place that God has fashioned for us.
Thank God that there is a place, that we can actually live in this world and have a destiny that is sure. Thank God! And I’ll tell you, it’s Jesus, isn’t it? All the way. It’s the Person of Jesus!
So anyway, one of the reasons that Paul emphasizes this is that there were religious teachers who were coming along and trying to tell the people that there was another source of wisdom and they could…anyway, I won’t go into the details, but Paul is wanting to redirect them so that Christ, the Person of Jesus Christ, becomes, not only the source of wisdom, but the actual life that enables us to live it out.
Anybody here got the power to be a Christian? I don’t. Boy, if we’re left to our own resources in anything, we have no hope whatsoever. Our hope is a Person. That song that was sung during VBS…the center part of that song, “Amen,” blessed me. I don’t remember all the parts of it. But, “Victory has a name and it’s Jesus.” Redemption has a name and it’s Jesus. Over and over again, everything that you and I need–everything you and I need to stand there one day, comes in the form of a Person.
( congregational response ).
Okay? So now, let’s get to what he says, because he’s heading into the Christian life but he goes back to the beginning, doesn’t he? He says, so then, verse 6, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him.” So, in other words, the principle by which we start, we become His in the first place, is the principle by which we live. It’s not a different thing. So, all we’re doing is embarking on another life, not just a way of life, but it’s another life altogether.
But I thank God that there is…there are such simple terms here. You don’t have to be a scholar. You don’t have to be a theologian. The essence of coming to Christ is God convicting a human heart of their need. You don’t have to be old. You don’t have to be any certain age. But I’ll tell you, when God comes in and there is a conviction in the heart, not just in the mind, but in the heart…I need a Savior. I’m not ready. I’m on a road that leads to destruction. I have sinned against God. I need something I don’t have. I need Someone I don’t have.
And ultimately, the message obviously is not one of, work for it, deserve it, do something, dig down deep and bring this before God and say, God receive me on this ground. I have no ground. The ground is mercy! The ground is what Jesus did in my place that I could never do!
But I’ll tell you, what He did crosses me! It shines the light on what I am and what I lack! And so that is the problem. I’ll tell you, when a human heart yields and truly receives, does that not convey the clear idea of a yieldedness? See…you see the imagery that comes out of this passage and you could see it back in one…in chapter 1.
There is like a planting…there’s a fruit tree, I would say would be the best illustration of it. And I’ll tell you…you know, in order for the seed to get in there in the first place, there’s got to be soil that says, yes! This is now the purpose of my existence. It’s to allow this seed to grow in my heart. And there’s got to be that absolute surrender.
You know, there’s a concept of receiving Jesus today that is watered down, designed to fill the church with church members who have, most of them, many of them, never been born again, because the idea that I can…listen to what he says. “…Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord….”
The idea is put out there that you can just ‘accept’ Jesus…this is a very, kind of loose…oh, it’s perfectly free, completely free, no obligation. Get your sins forgiven, a ticket to heaven, but you can go on and continue to be your own Lord, is what it boils down to. You don’t have to accept Him as Lord, you can just accept Him as Savior.
Oh, I’ll tell you what, we receive Him as He is. He is Lord! And there’s a simple question that I would put out there, and it’s a rhetorical question, but I think everyone will know the answer. A rhetorical question, for those of you that don’t know, is one that’s just put out there for thought. You don’t have to…you don’t have to answer. But if Jesus Christ is not Lord, I mean on a personal level, if He’s not your Lord, who is?
See, this is…the whole issue of life and eternity hangs on this question. So, if we’re receiving Him as Lord, there has got to be the sense that I need Him! I must have Him! And then there is a yieldedness and a desire and a welcoming Him in, for what He is, and who He is! Okay?
So, all that is in this…there’s such a clarity to it. I don’t know how anybody could read this and not get it, and think that there are two classes of Christians. I’ve accepted Jesus and then others, oh, I’m dedicated, He’s my Lord. Folks, if you have let Jesus into your life, there’s only one way He’s coming in. He’s coming in to change you and to rule.
So, of course, the question, many questions that the natural man would have is, well what’s that like? That sounds horrible. Of course, it sounds that way to the natural man because he wants to do what he wants to do. He doesn’t want anybody telling him what to do. That’s human nature. We’re all that way. It comes out more in some than others, but, it’s there in every single one of us.
But I’ll tell you, there has to come a time when we let go and we begin to let God have his way. There is a fundamental commitment that literally hands our life over to Him! There is an exchange. I’ve got a life that can’t possibly be part of what God has purposed. It can’t be part of that. I don’t care how you reform it. I don’t care what principles you live by that may be wonderful. If you don’t have Him, you don’t have anything! I need to give Him my life and hand it over so that it is no longer mine. And in exchange He gives me His. Praise God! What an incredible exchange! Oh, thank God!
You know, there’s so much that’s short of this. We had a rather shocking, to many people, example this week. I’m not gonna go into all the details, but there was a very well-known teacher of godly principles, I guess you’d call it, professing Christian, who, suddenly this week, very publicly renounced his faith, walked away from his marriage and his faith, renounced Christ.
You know, Shelly shared with me an online discussion of what’s going on there. And I think the lady who was discussing this hit the nail on the head. There’s no such thing as an ex-Christian. If somebody comes to the point that Paul is describing here…when Christ comes in, He comes in to stay.
The problem is that so many people have carved themselves out a religion where they walk by principles. They do all kinds of good things, and that becomes the core of their faith, but they are still lord. Jesus has never really come in and taken over. The throne is still occupied by somebody other than Jesus.
Oh, I’ll tell you, we have got to lift Him up. He is always the center! Always, He is the center! And it’s not just He’s the center of attention, but He has got to be the One who resides in the human heart! If He isn’t, somebody else is, and destiny hangs on that question. The only hope we have of glory, is Christ ‘in’ us, the Hope of Glory.
Okay, but I thank God that it’s not a matter of my having to qualify myself for this. In fact, you go back and you find in chapter 1 that He’s qualifies us. Oh, praise God! That He actually qualified me…somebody like me, with all that’s wrong! I’m just like you. I’m made of the same stuff you are. With everything that I’m discovering about myself that is not like Him, that He actually has qualified me to be part of that. Oh, praise God! Praise God! We have all we need in Him. Praise the Lord!
So anyway, go back to the principle of entering in. It’s coming to a point where we recognize our need as a result of divine conviction. We hear the promise, the hope, the Gospel, the Good News, of what He has done to remedy that need, and we believe it. We open up and we embrace it at a heart level.
And I’ll tell you, there’s something that happens. When that happens, there is a divine…transaction, I guess, is the word I’m looking for, that happens. Then, we get to where many of us are at. Then life begins to happen, and we begin to have to learn how to live this life, and Paul wants his readers to know that there is a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom.
We don’t have to listen to our friends in the world. We don’t have to listen to the culture. We can lift our hearts to Him at any moment in our lives and say, Lord, I don’t get this, I don’t know what to do, tell me. Give me wisdom, Lord. Didn’t James say that those who lack wisdom, what should they do?
( congregational response ).
Okay, how?
(congregational response ).
Yeah, there is a commitment…the sense of that scripture in James 1 is, there is a commitment to walk in it. You don’t say, Lord, explain it to me and then I’ll decide. This is, oh Lord, I don’t know, but I am committed to Your way, whatever it is. It will always cross your natural inclinations, but it’s always right.
It sets us free instead of…we have this crazy idea of what freedom is. Freedom is free to be me and do as I please! Oh God, you are the biggest slave! This world is full of people…if you asked them what they thought of slavery, and whether they approved of it or not, every one of them would say, oh, no! Down with slavery! And yet, almost every one of them is a slave, a willing slave to their own nature, and blind to their condition, and headed down the pathway to being lost.
I’m so thankful God is still reaching out. I don’t know how much longer. It’s not gonna be forever. There will come a day when the door will be shut. But He’s still reaching–He’s still reaching.
So, here’s the simplicity of coming to Him. It’s knowing my need, going to Him, hearing His promise, believing that promise and receiving Him–Him! Again, it’s not just the words, it’s not the ideas, it’s the Person of Jesus Christ, receiving Him to be in me what I lack, which is approximately everything. Praise God!
So, how do you live the Christian life? Oh, you keep the Law, keep the rules, practice the religion. No, it comes down to the same thing. At every point, where I have a need, what’s the answer? Well, I asked the wrong question, didn’t I? ‘Who’ is the answer? should be the right question.
God is going to constantly, frequently, at the proper time, in the proper way, He’s gonna bring me face to face with me. You know, my real problem is not everybody around me. My real problem is me. It’s how I react to everything else, that God is mostly concerned with. But I’ll tell you, God is going to bring you and me face to face with our need, just as He did when we realized, I’m lost, I’m in a state of rebellion, my sins are piled up to heaven and I’m gonna have to answer for them one day, and I have a need.
I have a need when I get up in the morning to get through a day without walking in self-will and rebellion and all kinds of things, giving vent to the wrong thing that’s still in my body. It’s still part of this earthly life. Thank God, the day will come when that will be gone. Praise God!
But what God wants us to know and what God wants you to know, if you’re somebody who’s setting out in this life, what do you have to look forward to? You have Somebody who has everything that you could ever possibly need to get all the way home, who’s not just out there telling you what to do and shouting down encouragement, but who actually lives on the inside. That’s what Christian faith, real, Biblical Christian faith is about. It’s a Person who comes to live on the inside, and He has everything you could ever need..
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November 29, 2020 - No. 1469
All Music
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November 22, 2020 - No. 1468
“Whose Life is It?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1468
November 22, 2020
November 22, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1468 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Somehow, as I read about these foolish virgins, I just can’t get away from the simple thought, they didn’t get that. Somehow, they thought they could be Christians, getting ready for the coming of the Lord, and all it was…see, they had their religion externalized. It’s stuff I do and stuff I believe and stuff I profess to believe. But…human nature is so relentless at wanting its own way, it will deceive you into thinking that I can do Christianity my way. Now, I’m not your judge. But is this truth?
( congregational amens ).
And, why would God speak words? Why would He want words like this to be spoken? Because His love reaches out. How many times did He reach out to Israel and say, why do you want to die? Listen and live.
I’ll tell you, if anybody who is lost in the judgement, you’re gonna get to that point over the body and blood of Jesus Christ. That body that was broken for you, in bearing your sins, you’re gonna do it by spitting on that. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. That’s what it is. I’ll tell you, there has to come a time when we surrender.
You know, we’re talking about baptism lately, and I believe, maybe this plays into this. There has to come a time when we reckon…it’s just you and Him. How many of you remember that movie “The Encounter”? Yeah. That carried that theme. There were several lives that Jesus needed to have a personal encounter, and the issue in every life was different.
One man rejected it, in the end, and he perished. But others had to come to the realization…one of them was a woman who thought she was a fine Christian, but she’d never surrendered her heart. She didn’t belong to the Lord. She was trying to take from this and take from this and cobbled herself together a religion that made her feel okay, probably looked okay to most people looking on! But God was looking down here, and He said, you’re still running your life. It belongs to you. You have never given it to me.
I mean, think about it. In the condition we are, what if God took people who had unchanged hearts and deposited them in a new creation? How long do you think it would be pure and good? I mean, get real! We need a 100 percent miraculous transformation that only He can do. And the only possible answer to that is to say, Lord, I surrender my life.
Baptism is a symbol of death, where we are literally laying down our lives. It’s not mine anymore. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. I’m burying that one. Lord, give me the new one.
I get that the process of becoming conformed to that is a process and that we’re very imperfect. Don’t let the Devil use that against you and say, well, I’m as good as they are. In the first place, you might be pointing at somebody who’s in the same condition you are! But even if you’re pointing at someone who genuinely knows the Lord but is flawed and God’s still working on them, there’s an eternal difference between somebody who’s had a brand-new heart put in here, and someone who hasn’t and who’s acting the part.
And I’ll tell you, there are young people that grow up, and we’ve watched some of them. They make their choice. They go. Thank God that sometimes God will take them out there in the briars and bushes and then, bring them back. Thank God! But, oh God, how much grief, regret could be spared. I pray that young people will listen to what Ricky said the other night.
But it’s not just young people. Do you believe Jesus was telling the truth in this parable? Is He picturing people who are just out in the world somewhere? No, He is picturing people who are still, at this late, dark hour…they’re saying, I’m here. Here’s my lamp, or my lantern, whatever it is, that represents my testimony. I am a follower of Jesus. I am here waiting. I am ready to do my duty right here as part of this custom.
But they weren’t ready, were they? What was lacking? They didn’t have the oil. They didn’t have the thing that would give light and reality to that testimony, that really enabled it to be real.
As I say, I don’t want to try to make something about every little detail, but you get what He’s getting at here. The tragedy, is not just the people of the world, the worst tragedy, in a way, is people who are professing at that hour to be followers of Jesus, and they get to the end and He says, I don’t know you.
It’s a time we need to look inside. And I’m very conscience as I do this that one of the things the Devil does is to focus people’s attention on themselves. And sometimes, he will take, oftentimes, he will take somebody and just beat them over the head, you’re not one of them, you’re not one of them, you’re not one of them.
The chances are, if that’s the case…the chances are he knows you are, and doesn’t want you to have any confidence in Him. He wants you to measure yourself by your performance, by the things you see wrong in yourself that are in need, and say, well, you couldn’t be a Christian because…this is not aimed at you.
We need to examine ourselves, but when I’m talking about examining ourselves, I’m talking about the heart. What does your heart really want? Are you trying to have Jesus and your life too? If you’re in a state of imperfection, which we all are, but you have given your heart to Jesus, you start looking at Him more than you’re looking in here, and you say, Lord…I see a need, but I know You’re the answer, and I refuse to be deterred from looking to You, because You are not only the author of my faith, You’re the finisher too. And You will finish what You started. My hope is no longer in myself. It’s in You. You have everything! You are everything I need!
But the foolish didn’t get that. They’re still thinking that they’re okay somehow, and they didn’t find out until it was too late. You know, throughout all of this passage, where the disciples asked Jesus about His coming and all of that, the one theme that comes out over and over again is, be ready!
There is never a suggestion that you could live your life and then, recognize things are getting to a point where I need to get ready, so now, I’m gonna get ready. It doesn’t work that way. What you’re really saying, if that’s the way you’re looking at it, is I’m in charge. I’m gonna do what I want to do in my own self-interest, and when things get bad, my self-interest is in self-preservation, therefore I’m gonna jump over in Jesus’ camp, and it’ll be okay.
Good luck with that. Do you see what’s really going on, who’s really on the throne of your heart? You see, there’s only one time that we have…I say one time…the key to coming to Him is listening while He speaks. Hear Him while He speaks. Several scriptures, that the exact wording doesn’t come to my mind…but one of them is, that we’ve heard so many times is in Hebrews 3, where the writer is so concerned with people who have heard about Jesus, but his burden is that they have stopped short.
Is that not the condition of these virgins? They’ve heard about Him. There’s a certain amount of attachment, but they’ve stopped short. Well, his example of that was the people in the wilderness. God did some amazing things to get them out of Egypt, to deliver them. You know, when they went out, they didn’t have a lot of choice, did they? God had plagued the Egyptians to the point where they said, get out of here, for heaven’s sake, we’re gonna die. And so, they went.
They got as far as the Red Sea, and they saw this impassable water, and they started complaining. And God brought them through that. Then, of course, they rejoiced. Oh, praise God. If you’d looked at them right then, you would have said wow, what an awesome group of believers!
Three days later…you know, one thing after another. What God was doing, was demonstrating the true condition of their heart. They did not understand. They did not really believe in Him. All they were doing was acting according to present-tense self-interest. I’m in charge! And every time there was an opportunity to turn in unbelief, that’s the direction that they went.
I’ll tell you, God is going to allow conditions to be such in your life, that it will prove whether your heart has ever been turned over to Him.
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, if it ever is, you’ll wonder why you waited. Do you remember Brother Thomas’ testimony along that line? God had spoken to him so many times in his life, and he just kept right on going, and went from bad to worse, went through so many things. Then, when he finally just surrendered…why did I wait so long? It wasn’t the surrender to a tyrant who wanted to abuse him. It was the surrender to the source of all love.
Yes, we have hard times in this world, but there is an underlying peace. There’s an underlying assurance. There’s an underlying love that carries us through the darkest of times, because He walks with us to carry us through. Oh, it’s worth everything to be born again. It’s worth everything to give your heart and your life to Jesus.
I thought about another passage that we’ve used, we’ve heard many times over in Matthew 7, because this is an example of the same thing we’re talking about here. It starts out with a wonderful promise about prayer, ask and seek and knock and all of that.
But then down in verse 13, you get into another subject where Jesus says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (NIV).
Then He goes on, and He talks about religious teachers. It’s obvious there’s a connection between the teachers and what they’re teaching, and how people are approaching the idea of being a Christian and serving God. You have churches today that are filled with people who have never been confronted in their heart level by Jesus Christ! And yet, there they are singing the hymns, going through the rituals, whatever their particular church is about.
Oh, thank God, there’s a remnant. He knows them that are His. He won’t lose them. But there’s a wide gate out there. And what that wide gate essentially boils down to is, you can have Jesus and your life, too. Let’s bring it down to the common denominator. I don’t care which form it is. You can have Jesus and a hope of heaven, and you can do it your way.
Well, lets see how that works out. You come down to verse 21 and you see what the real issue was. “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
See the difference between somebody who calls Him Lord and says and does, outwardly, the right things, but He’s not really in charge. There’s never been a real surrender. And so they have found a way, religiously, to feel good about themselves, and believe somehow, I’m okay, and yet, they’re still doing their thing.
If you are truly His, if you are truly one of those who is ready for that day, you’re not your own. You don’t own yourself. I don’t own myself. I’ve got a merciful, patient God who works with my heart. I wish I did everything always right. I don’t. He’s still working on me, but He is working on me. And there’s something down here that the bottom line is, yes, Lord, yes, Lord. I’ll tell you, that’s something He puts in there.
But if you’re always, no, it’s my life. No, I’m gonna do it my way, I’ll tell you, you’ve got a bad road ahead. But the scary thing is, when people can get to this place that He describes…well, in Matthew 7, I better finish that, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom oh heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
So, here’s what Jesus said looking forward. “Many…” not a few, but, “…many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?”
I mean, that’s beyond what people could generally say here. I mean, you see the level of deception that’s going on here, where someone could literally feel like, Lord, I’ve taught Sunday School all my life. I’ve done this…what do You mean I’m not one of Yours?
Well, the problem was they were saying the right thing, maybe even doing many…commendable things! But the heart has never been surrendered. Every time the voice of God would come, they would find a way to…yeah, but I can do it this way. Oh no, I can do it this way. I’m okay.
I’m not your judge. I can’t see your heart, but all I can do is put it out there, and let God take His Word and apply it where it needs to apply. That’s God’s job. He’s pretty good at it. Praise God!
“All that the Father gives Me will come….” Do you know who they are? The Word says in John 6, that everyone will be taught of God. Everyone who hears His Word and listens, everyone who listens to His Word…you get the idea of what He’s talking about there? It’s not just okay, I heard it. This is, I’m listening. I’m taking it in. I’m allowing it to change me. I am submitting to Your Word, to Your truth.
Everyone who hears it with that kind of a heart, they’re the ones that come. So you see, there’s perfect balance between God reaching out and man having to reach back and say, yes, Lord. There has to be that response.
But somehow, you’ve got a class of people here who came in thinking all they had to do was be religious. So they said all these things. Lord, we did all this. “Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
The Greek word is ‘lawless.’ It means I’m not under anybody. I’m not subject to anybody, but me. There is nothing out here that can tell me what to do. That’s human nature. And boy, does that rise up in young people. But it rises up in all of us.
You know, I remember being at the age when I knew everything. And I didn’t need older people to tell me any stuff, anything anymore. I had it all figured it out. I don’t know that I ever quite got to that point, but you know the feelings that you have at a certain age. We all were that way, if you’re older.
But oh, God, we don’t know. We’re in a world that is under the deception of a wicked kingdom that is determined to use, abuse and destroy. And God’s heart is to reach out and to tell people the truth. Unless you repent, you’ll perish. Unless Jesus really is Lord, many people are gonna come to that day and discover, I never knew you.
He did not say, I knew you, and then you messed up and I stopped knowing you, I turned away from you. I never did. Jesus said, “I know My sheep. My sheep know Me.” And I know them. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” I’ll tell you, there’s so much hope and rest.
It’s not based, thankfully, upon my ability or any goodness in me. There is none. In fact, that’s the problem. We still want to assert that there is something worthwhile and good that we can bring into the Kingdom of God. We can help God out and serve Him.
And the reality is, the only way we can come is as a broken sinner, looking to Jesus and realizing my only hope is that He took my place. He got what I deserved. What put Him on that cross was my willful rejection of His voice, my asserting of my life, my will. That’s what put Him on that cross.
And I’ll tell you, if you’re gonna come to Him, there’s gonna have to be that time when you just say…we’ve said this expression so many times. I’m all in. I am 100 percent with Jesus. I come, not as someone who can present some righteousness to Him and think He’s gonna accept me, I come as a broken sinner on the ground that He has established. He will accept me. He will love me. He will give me a hope and a future and all the glorious promises that are in here, if I’ll just surrender.
But you see what that means. It’s not your life anymore. How many of you who have really come to that place would go back and say, no, I messed up. It should have been my life. I want to do my thing. I lost out.
We heard some wonderful testimonies this week of people who understood. They came to Him, and they know what it means. And you know how I feel about trying to make people do something publicly. I’m not totally…I don’t have any rule, but I know that you can bring people to an emotional state. It’s too easy to do that. And then, people feel like they’ve got to do something or they’ve got to conform to something if somebody else does it. This has got to come down to you and Him!
And folks, we need to pray that God will take His Word, and bring somebody so relentlessly, certainly to a place of confrontation. It’s a loving confrontation. It’s not a tyrant trying to ruin your life. It’s Someone who desperately wants to reconcile you to Himself…to rescue you from certain destruction.
But there’s a cost, and you need to count it. Which do you want? This is what it comes down to. Is it my life or His life? That choice, regardless of whether you just go out and do your thing in an open sense, or whether you sit here and profess something that you don’t have in your heart…that’s the choice. That is what the Gospel comes down to. If I come to Him and I truly repent of my…it’s not just of the stuff I did. I’m sorry I did it.
This is, I am repenting of my sinfulness, my nature, everything about me, Lord. I need a new heart. I need a new life. I need to be cleansed and forgiven! But I need You to come in and make me somebody different, and lead me down a different path. Lord, I surrender. I leave one life in the grave, and I take up another one by faith. I’m trusting in Your promise, Lord. That’s what it comes down to.
What is your choice? In terms of how this applies, who it applies to, that’s God’s business. I’m so thankful He’s faithful. I’m so thankful that He will…He’s able to work. He’s able to do more than we can imagine. But I just pray, this morning, that whoever this is for, that you’ll hear it.
There has to come a time when you surrender your heart to Him and you become His for time and eternity, by His power and His mercy alone. Oh, you’ll never regret it if you ever come down that road and you ever go through that door. Don’t stop short of that. You will regret it, bitterly, at a time when there will be no way to go back. The Lord wants to put out His Word today to stop that while there’s a chance.
These virgins were not ready. When the time came, there was no opportunity. Jesus didn’t say, wait and then get ready. He said ‘be’ ready. Are you? Praise God!.
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November 15, 2020 - No. 1467
“Whose Life is It?” Part One
Broadcast #1467
November 15, 2020
November 15, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1467 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t know, lately I’ve been thinking about…you know, a word for God’s people to help us in our battles. But I don’t know, I keep coming back to something that I feel like is necessary. And I want to go back to a passage in Matthew 25, that really, from which the name of the ministry that we are a part of was taken.
And I feel like there’s a need for the Lord’s Word to be spoken plainly, because it’s one thing to come and participate and sing the songs and do all of that, but I’ll tell you, that’s not enough. There’s something else the Lord must accomplish, and that is highlighted in this particular passage. And I’m just, for right now, going to read it.
And this was…in the context, Jesus was talking about His coming, the end of the age, some of the things that were gonna happen, and He gave little snippets of, this is a picture of it, this is a picture of it, and so forth, different aspects of that coming, and this is one of them.
It says, “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.” (NIV). Now, just to stop and say, this was Jesus taking from a custom of the time. When people had weddings, there were certain rituals they went through.
I remember being overseas and observing some of these and they’re quite different from ours. I remember one time, in India, in a hotel, waking up to what sounded like gunfire. It turned out to be firecrackers. And part of the tradition there was that the bridegroom would arrive on a…this was a Saturday morning. And he would arrive with a wedding party and they would shoot off firecrackers as he arrived. Well, I’m glad that’s what it was!
But, in this case, there was a custom where some young maidens would gather and would escort the groom to the wedding feast. And so that’s what He’s…He’s taking off on that. He’s gonna draw a certain lesson from…from that custom, okay?
But in this case, of the ten, “Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
“At midnight the cry rang out: Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him! Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out. No, they replied, there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.”
( coughing ).
Excuse me. We’re getting there. Thank the Lord. All right? “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. Sir! Sir! They said, Open the door for us! But he replied, I tell you the truth, I don’t know you. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”
And so, there are many, very sobering things that the Lord communicated to His disciples about the time of His coming. And, I want to avoid trying to make something out of every little thing. I think we can go to an extreme in some of that and I undoubtedly have in the past. But there are some very clear lessons.
One of them is the sense of being ready, that, when the Lord…the events that will overtake the end of the age, and especially the coming of Christ, will be a total shock to this world! It will be, as Jesus said in one place, when people least expect it. And we know that the condition of the world is not going to be a good one.
He pictures that in many places, where the days of Noah, for example, are given as an example. And you know, we know what that period was like when God said that the imaginations, what people were thinking, what they believed to be true, what they lived for, every bit of it was darkness. It was against God. Their imagination was, in His words, ‘evil.’
And it wasn’t just occasional mess-ups, this was, “…evil continually.” (KJV). This was a direction. This was a deliberate choice that had been made by people to reject what they knew about God, and to simply live for their own earthly desires, and as far as they were concerned, that’s what life was about. That’s all there was. And so, if they even heard Noah and his warning, they obviously dismissed it. And, you don’t even get the sense that there was any interest, any movement going on. So, I think that alone is a picture of the end of the age.
And we talk about darkness being…that being a time of darkness. It certainly is. You know, in the New Testament Paul warns of a time when, “…because they refused to love the truth…” (NIV). See, that’s the reasoning. That’s what’s behind this. This isn’t God saying, oh, I’m done with you. This is men making a choice, saying I will embrace what I want to embrace. I reject You. There’s a deliberate choice being made. I want that to get very clear today. There is a choice.
But what is God’s response? Finally, it is to take His hands off. Now, how many people can be saved if God’s not involved?
( congregational response ).
Zero! See, we are dependent upon His influence, His strength, His grace, His working with the heart. When we say no to that, there’s nothing left. That’s a condition we’re watching unfold in the world. I mean, how many of you, who are in my generation, could have imagined the world and the climate…the moral climate in which we live today? It was absolutely unthinkable!
I mean, we were worried about things like chewing gum in school. I mean…I’m exaggerating a little, but that was the truth! That was one of the big deals! You got sent to the principal’s office if you did something like that. And you know, there were obviously more than that to that age but…the idea that it’s not only that there is evil, but that it is being celebrated. And woe to anybody that says different! We are in a different moral climate and it is the result of men rejecting what they know about God and saying I will do what I want!
( congregational amens ).
And so, this is part of the picture that He paints and He says it’s gonna be like the days of Noah. And so, I guess the burden that I have and the concern is for people here! Because we’re going to see and we are seeing, as time unfolds, we are seeing people make choices.
( congregational response ).
And on the one hand, I don’t want to stress over it, as if somebody makes a choice then it’s my fault. If that were the case, Jesus was a total failure. How many thousands and thousands and thousands of people followed Him, celebrating His miracles, who utterly rejected what He said, and went on as they were? But see, Jesus wasn’t stressed out about it, was He? He knew that everyone that the Father had given Him was going to come.
Now, you can go to the…I don’t know…this is not organized, and I’m sure it will sound that way. But, I don’t want to paint the picture that God just arbitrarily picks people. There’s a reason. There is something going on. There is an interaction between a human heart and God, where, yes, we’re dependent on Him, but He is, “…not willing that any should perish…” (KJV). He wants everybody to come. There is a reaching out of God’s heart to a human heart. It’s not about external stuff. It’s about the heart.
And I’ll tell you, when the heart says no, there comes a time when God steps back and says, I will leave you to your delusion. It is a fixed belief that just absolutely has such control over a person, they’re absolutely sure they’re right, and they’re wrong. Did not Solomon, with his gift of divine wisdom, say that “There is a way….” It seems right.
I mean, you know, if you talk to somebody and you can’t convince them. They’re sure that they are right! And yet, looking on, you know…my God, you are in delusion! You have no clue what’s going on. You’re headed down a path to a cliff…surely, it must sadden God’s heart. I know it does…to see the course of people.
You know, it says about the rich, young ruler who turned and walked away. Jesus explained that he was gonna have to give away his riches. Now that was not a blanket kind of thing, but for him it was. For him it was the issue of his life, his heart, his will, everything about him was wrapped up in his possessions. And the idea that in order to have eternal life he had to give that up, well, I’ll choose this. What a foolish choice!
But it’s the choice everyone makes, in one form or another, if they say no to Him. Here’s a God who has fashioned us for an incredible purpose: that we should know Him, who is the source of life, who is the source of love, who is the source of everything that is possibly good in the universe…and He longs to share all of that, to leave us with our uniqueness, our individuality. He doesn’t squelch that and make robots out of us. But He…but when His life is joined to our uniqueness, it makes something that is incredible! That’s where He’s going!
But that’s what the human race, in its fallen, deluded condition, is saying, no, to. And I started to talk about the fact that I believe God’s burden is about people that are here. We see, from time to time, people will just walk away…and what’s going on? It’s, I want to live my life. It’s my life!
You know, that’s the issue. Whose life is it? You know, you can do all kinds of things and you can dress up the issue any way you want to…but when it comes right down to it, it’s a question of ownership. And the human race is so natured, that it will take the life that it finds itself in possession of, and say, well, this is my life. I feel all kinds of desires arising within me so my purpose is to simply gratify those, to follow my heart, to do as I please. And that becomes the guiding principle of their lives.
But many times people will come in and be exposed. They might grow up in it. They might just come in, and they are exposed to the truth, that you were not created to be your own god. It doesn’t work that way. There’s a bad end, and we see the fruit of people seeking to be their own god in the condition of the world and the wickedness that’s here.
And God’s voice, I believe, is still going out, yearning, to reach out to people who are making choices and don’t understand…lest they…I mean, there’s no one that’s gonna be able to say, on that day, God, you just picked me to go to hell. I didn’t have a chance. And He’s gonna point back, do you remember, do you remember, do you remember, when I spoke to you and you made excuse and you sidestepped it and you found a way to do what you wanted to do?
But one of the ways that people respond to the Gospel, if you will, is to be exposed to it and to walk away and say, it’s my life, I will not stay where that voice is being proclaimed. I will go out. I will do my thing. Oh my, they have no idea! “…When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them…and they shall not escape.”
That’s how serious this is. This is not about religion. It’s not about the Bible Tabernacle or Midnight Cry Ministries, or all these things. You know, we have our ideas and our external…we externalize stuff. Did not God say to Samuel, men look on the outward appearance, don’t they?
See, we go by what we see on the outside. But God looks at the heart. We probably…I’m sure we have people here that are pretty flawed. God’s still got a lot of work to do on you. He does on me, for sure. But you know, if your heart’s given to the Lord, He’s gonna take care of all that.
( congregational amens ).
But you might have somebody else, and if you look at them, you say, oh, aren’t they a wonderful Christian? But they’ve learned to act the part. They’ve constructed this external persona, if you will, and it’s kind of like a mask they put on. Now, if they suddenly were to take a trip to Las Vegas you might see something different, if nobody else was around. But you know what I’m talking about. What we’re about here is not a matter of conformity to a religion. It’s got to go way beyond that.
You know, as I was thinking about all this, I guess my focus came back to the virgins because they…I don’t know how long this is gonna go, but I’m just gonna look to the Lord. But here you have people who by all profession, all appearance, in a time of great darkness, were nonetheless all together. As far as anybody could tell, they were all waiting for the bridegroom. Anybody looking on could not have told the difference.
And that is a scary thought. It’s not just those “bad people,” those foolish people out there who reject the Gospel and go live for their lusts. There are people sitting in church pews, who profess to know the Lord, who profess to be walking with Him, ready for His coming, expecting to be received, only to find out at the end, they really weren’t ready.
And how easy is it, for what we do here, to never get beyond the external? Now, I’m partly thinking about young people growing up. And I understand that there has got to come a time—there’s got to come a time when it becomes personal.
I understand that when you’re young, for the most part, you’re gonna be going along with, you’re gonna be adopting what your parents tell you…if they’re a part of all this. You’re gonna be, in a sense, performing a part, and that’s all right, until God gets to that point. But there’s got to be a point, where you make a choice. Is it my life or is it His? Because there is no middle ground.
And the problem, I believe, with these people right here, these foolish virgins, they thought there was a middle ground. They didn’t understand. And I’ll tell you, it’s got to be something more than just, yay, Jesus, aren’t You wonderful, and all that. Yes, He is. Thank God! But do you know why? Do you know what it’s about, on a personal level?
You know, you can go along and you can sing the songs and hear about Jesus and all of that, without it ever really dawning on you what it means to be lost. Have you ever had the sense, in the depths of your heart, not just externals, but in your heart, oh, my God, I’m lost? If something doesn’t change, I’m gonna be lost.
That has to happen. It doesn’t have to be any particular kind of experience. It could be very quiet. It could be very demonstrative, very dramatic. The outside is not what matters. God is only looking for one thing. He’s looking for someone who comes face to face with the fact that you’re not ready. It’s still your life. You might be acting the part of a Christian and even professing to believe all of this, but your heart’s never been surrendered. He has never really come in.
You know, part of my reading, I guess, in the last couple of days, had me in Isaiah 53. What an amazing prophecy God gave through His servant, Isaiah, looking forward to the time of Christ. It was that prophecy, you remember, the Ethiopian eunuch was traveling back from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, and God sent Phillip on a special mission just to talk to that man. He was reading the scriptures, did not understand it. Do you know we need God to explain it to us? You can’t just unravel the scriptures with your mind. How many of you know that?
( congregational amens ).
God’s got to reveal it and take those words and impress them down here, not just here. They’ve got to become real. And he’s reading about this man, who’s suffering and what he’s suffered about, and his question was, is he talking about himself or somebody else? Who’s he talking about?
And so, there was the wide-open opportunity for Phillip to begin to explain. He’s talking about Jesus. He’s talking about something that just happened. Do you know why He died? I mean, it talks about a man who was despised, rejected by men. He suffered a horrible indignity…a death full of indignity. Humiliation, I guess, is the word I was looking for. Couldn’t have been anything worse, from a human standpoint that was inflicted upon Him.
And what was the reaction of the natural people around Him, as to why this was happening? Did they understand it? No! They thought He was getting what He deserved. This is a bad guy. God is making sure that He’s taken care of.
But do you know why He died? He died because of you. He died because of me.
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November 8, 2020 - No. 1466
“A Desperate Prayer” Conclusion
Broadcast #1466
November 8, 2020
November 8, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1466 — 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?
Close
November 1, 2020 - No. 1465
“A Desperate Prayer” Part One
Broadcast #1465
November 1, 2020
November 1, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1465 — 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!
Close
October 25, 2020 - No. 1464
“What We Are” Conclusion
Broadcast #1464
October 25, 2020
October 25, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1464 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: If I were to ask you how God sees us, what would you say? How does God see us?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! How does He see us? Is He sitting there constantly looking at what you were and what you are and your weakness and all of that kind of stuff? Or is He saying, you’re My child? You’re my child. I love you. I have brought you to a place, I have given you life. I’ve already put away your past at the Cross. Don’t worry. It’s fading away. It’s on the clock and that clock’s gonna run out, and there’s gonna be nothing left but what I’m doing.
But I want…My focus is on you. I don’t see all that stuff that sticks to you, that clings to your heart. You can’t get free from what you are naturally to be what you are in my Kingdom. And God says, I don’t see you the way you see yourself. You see all of your weaknesses. You see all the reasons why God couldn’t love somebody like me. You feel the pull of doubt and struggles and all these kinds of things.
I don’t see you that way. I see you as my child! And I want you to know it. And that’s why I put that little exclamation in there. Behold…”How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (NIV). That’s God inspiring the pen of this servant of His to speak to the believers and call them to the reality of what they are in Christ.
Do you think we need this? Is this just something where we’re going over old ground and blowing smoke, or do we need…I need it. I need this. There’s not a day goes by that my mind doesn’t drift to my needs and my deficiencies, and my this and my that, when I need to say, Lord, I’m Your child.
And I’m not being boastful when I say that. I’m not being…I’m not talking about that as though, well, I deserve to be. Look at how well I’ve been doing. This is, oh God, You have, in Your love, for reasons that I could never fathom, You set Your love upon me. It was when I was still an enemy, that Jesus went to the cross. He didn’t wait for me to get good.
He says, I’ve got a plan. There’s gonna be somebody come along with all kinds of needs in their life. They’re gonna be caught in all kinds of sin traps, but I’ve got the power to change all that if they’ll just let go and give Me their heart and their life. I can make something out of nothing. I don’t need stuff. I just need a heart that’s willing to ‘let go and let God have His way’ as we sing so often.
I mean, you can go on and on talking about stories of people…and who are the ones that God chose. How about reading just for a moment…hang on to this passage, but a familiar passage in 1st Corinthians 1 where Paul is talking about the wisdom of the world, the message being foolish and all of that.
But now, think about what he says in verse 26, 1st Corinthians 1, “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called.” Okay, let’s think about that.
“Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world…” Are you weak today?
“God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not…” Wow! I mean, you’re running out of ways to describe it. “…Things that are not…” To do what? “…To nullify the things that are.” Why would He do it that way? “…So that no one may boast before him.”
So, how did this all come about? Did we go looking for Him? “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
There’s God’s recruitment program. I don’t care who you are and what your need is and how you see yourself. If you’re His, if you’ve opened your heart to Him, lift your eyes from what you are to what He is and His purpose, because that is what will prevail! We will stay in prisons if we don’t. Simply listen to what He says. That is what we are, John says.
And of course, the reason the world doesn’t really get this is because they don’t get it with Him. So now, he reiterates, “…now we are children of God.” You know, on one level, this is just more of the same. But how deeply do we get that? How deeply can we look in the mirror and say, we…or I am, that person that I am seeing, I’m a child of God?
I don’t have to listen to the old master. I don’t have to live under the dominion of what I once lived under. God has pulled me out. He did not do it based upon my qualifications. He did it because He had a loving purpose, and because He has the power to change something into something…to take nothing and make everything out of it. Now, right now!
He’s not talking just about, oh, one day, maybe we’ll muddle through, and then, all of a sudden everything will be okay. He says right now you’re My child. Don’t we need to be seeing ourselves through God’s eyes?
Yeah, I know what I was. I know my weaknesses. But God has made me His child. I have every right to expect Him to come. My eyes are not on me and my abilities. I realize that. I’m a child. I don’t know how to function in this Kingdom. Lord, help me…every moment to have that sense, yes, I’m Your child, but I’m a young child. I need help. I need my Daddy…to teach me everything, and to impart to me everything that I need.
That’s a good place to take, isn’t it? Do you think God’s gonna listen to hearts that come to Him that way? Doesn’t He give grace to the humble and resist the proud? I want to be in that place.
I don’t care how long you’ve known the Lord. Don’t you be looking down your nose at somebody and say, well, I’m more mature than you are. We are, in terms of the big picture, we are kids. We are little children who need our heavenly Father. I’m so glad we’ve got One that loves us. Praise God!
Of course, like a loving Father, He does some disciplining sometimes, doesn’t He? But He does it for our good. He does it out of a heart that says, I see where you’re going. You’ve got something going on in your heart and your life and your will right now, that if you keep following that path, you’re gonna get in trouble. And I love you too much to let you keep going that way, so I’m gonna stop you. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to bring you back to that place.
You know, it was mentioned this morning about the illustration of the shepherd who has to break a leg to keep a stubborn sheep from running off until they learn how to stay close to the shepherd. We’ve got an awesome, heavenly Father who loves His children enough to do whatever it takes to keep us close.
Don’t we need to live in an awareness of that and say, God, not only do I understand this, I’m not just gonna run around and expect You to bail me out every day. I want to consciously say, Lord, I’m Your child. I want to live this life and not that one, that You called me out of. Help me to learn how to live out the life You have imparted to me to be Your child, to grow up, to point my life’s direction in that direction.
Now see this in the context. He’s talking about the reality of what Christian life really is, as opposed to the false, that’s just religious. I’ll tell you, there’s gonna be heart changes. Do you have a heart that ultimately wants Him? I’ll tell you, when God comes in, when there’s a birth, the impetus to do what’s right doesn’t have to come from outside all the time. Stop that, stop that, stop that. It comes from in here.
Now there may need to be some stuff from outside when we get a little bit ornery or we get…we get human. But how many know what I’m talking about, that ultimately there’s something in here you can’t get away from? See, that’s what God puts in the heart. There’s something that you just can’t ever, you can’t just turn away.
You can’t say, well, it’s not real. You ultimately just have to surrender to the One who lives in here, and recognize He’s called me for His purpose out of His heart, and He’s not a tyrant trying to make my life miserable. He is One who wants to share His love with me for all eternity.
So, not only do I need to recognize how God sees me, I need to start seeing myself the way He sees me. Anybody here need that? Anybody here have a problem with constantly seeing your weaknesses and living as though that’s the controlling factor, instead of saying, oh God, thank You for showing me what I am? But oh God, You have placed something in me that will prevail.
I’m looking to You, Father, take me forward. Take me forward, Lord. I know this does not disqualify me. This only causes me to lift my hands and say, oh God, work in my heart. I’m Your child, Lord. I’m not somebody You’ve just brought in as a servant, and You’re gonna kick me out because I don’t live up to it. I’m Your child. I’ll tell you, this Father will never abandon His children. Praise God!
“Dear friends, now…” Right now, this morning, if you’re His, you’re His child now! “…What we will be has not yet been made known.” There is a mystery. I mean, we’ve got pictures of it, but I’ll tell you, we won’t have any clue, really, until we stand there one day.
You know, we’ve talked about it. I’m not gonna go over that all of that detail again what we do know. But it’s gonna be amazing. But yet, God has seen fit to not tell us everything that’s coming. But I’ll tell you, what He has planted in the heart of every one of His children is a hope, is an expectation. There is the power within us, if He lives here, to know that this is not my world! This is not my destiny! My past does not dictate my future! Jesus Christ went to the cross to establish my future.
“…What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know….” Now, here’s something that John…he uses that expression a lot. We know this, or we can know this. Here is a solid statement from the heart of God. “…We know that when he appears, we shall be like him….”
Anybody here just thinking, oh yeah, I could do that? Oh yeah, I’ve got that. Or do you rather wrestle with, I don’t know how in the world something like that could possibly happen. Me? Why would He care about me?
It’s amazing, is right. You talk about the love of God…what kind of love it would take to do this, to say, you’re my child. Not only that, but I am giving you a hope and a future that is absolutely as certain as I am.
You see why the writer to the Hebrews calls it the ‘anchor of the soul’ is the hope that we have? It’s not just that I am His child, and yes, I’m in a place where I’m having to learn. I’m having to be the little kid, who has to look to Daddy. But oh, my destiny is fixed, not because of what I am and who I am and what I can do, but because of Him!
( congregational amens ).
“We know that…we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” I’m not gonna try to explain all of that statement right there. But I’ll tell you, there’s a connection between seeing Him, and being like Him.
And it really comes out, I think, in the next verse. It says, everyone! “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.” Okay, got to keep the rules. See, that’s where a lot of people will go with this. Okay, I’ve got to live up to it, got to obey the rules, got to keep the laws. How do we purify ourselves? Oh, God.
( laughing ).
There is no other way that I can be pure. He’s the One, by the way, who, does what? He, …purifies us from all sin.” See, this is the same writer, same book. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful…” on the one hand. He is just on the other, to do what? To, “…forgive us our sins and…” cleanse us, “…purify us from all sin.” He has the power. There’s this constant reaching up to Him. God, I want to be like You.
So, this purification is not…it’s the very opposite of self-effort. It is simply coming to Him, and looking to Him with an open heart and saying, help me, Lord. How many of you remember what Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 3, is it? He’s talking about the ministry of the Word and how some people are blind to it, and they’re blind because there is a veil on their heart.
But what happens? What is it that causes the veil to be taken away? The heart—the heart turns to the Lord! Now, there’s an ability to see something in the Spirit. Now, the ministry that comes from heaven, empowered by the spirit of God, now it has the power to come in here and make a difference.
And so, he says, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord.” (KJV). What are we looking at? Boy, do I look ugly today. Is that what we’re looking at? No, there is something where we can look at Him. We can see Him as He speaks. There’s this sense of the closer I get to Him, the more I’m gonna be like Him, the more my heart is open to reach out and say, Lord, I see You. I praise You. I worship You. I want to be like You. That’s how the change happens.
And it’s interesting to me that He’s not just talking about…I mean, it seems like an odd thing. You could almost say, when we see Him, we’ll be like Him. Okay, so I’m just gonna live my life. My hope is that when He comes, boom, I’m gonna be changed suddenly, I’m gonna be instantly made like Him.
Well, I thank God there is a change that’s gonna happen then. We’re gonna lose these old bodies, and we won’t have them anymore to worry about. We’ll have brand new ones. But, this is not talking, this is not picturing that kind of a life that’s so presumptuous as to say, I don’t really have to live [for] God. He’s doing it all. I just live my life and go there, and expect to be instantly changed into something that I’m not.
The heart that sees the hope of the Gospel also impels us to want to move in that direction. Do you see where John’s going with this and how he’s fitting it into the overall theme of what’s real and what’s not? If you get somebody that takes that other position, that ain’t real. Their heart’s never been changed. They’re just trying to lay claim to something.
But I’ll tell you, if Christ has come in, there is going to be a heart in you that wants to be like Him. It’s connected to Him. So, not only are we gonna see ourselves through His eyes, we’re gonna start to see His purpose, and we’re gonna start to say, oh God, I want to see You with clearer vision. Help me. Lord. Help me to see You when the Word comes, but help me to see You in my private prayer with You, to listen, to have a heart that’s open.
Lord, I realize I’m only seeing You in a…it’s not the image that I’ll see then, but I can still see You. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” How does somebody get pure in their heart? By faith…we’ve purified our hearts by faith.
I’ll tell you, do you see what’s going on? You’ve got people that are going in one direction. On the other hand, you’ve got people that are going in a totally different direction. Now, the Devil was trying to mix it all up and confuse the situation. John is trying to shed light. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus! God has set His love upon you! He has made you his child. He sees you as His child. That’s how He treats you. He looks forward, not back. And He wants us to do the same thing, as regard to ourselves.
There’s one other dimension, though, that comes into this. It isn’t really spelled out in this spot, but it is in the passage. We need to come to a place where we see each other, the way God sees us. Do you think that might stop some gossip? You think that might stop some prideful, ‘what’s the matter with you?’ Do you think we might learn how to see one another through God’s eyes, and realize that we’re on a journey together, that we’re not there yet, and we’re still gonna do some kid stuff at times, and we’re still gonna have to be corrected, and walk together and grow, and we’re all headed the same direction.
But my God, we cannot let the Devil cross us up in all these stupid ways that he does. God, give us the vision, not just to see ourselves as He does. That’s wonderful. But I need to see you. Instead of being critical, I need to have a compassion for you, because I know I’m made of the same stuff. I need to be able to pray, instead of getting mad, or talk, or do a whole lot of things.
It’s gotten quiet. Is this because it’s irrelevant and dead? No. You see…the picture God is painting, because this exists in a context where over and over again, it’s the love that we’re supposed to have for one another. If I love you, am I gonna sit there and feel superior to you because you’re guilty of something that happens to be on my list of bad stuff?
God, help us to have a caring, merciful heart, one toward another. And even where correction is needed, how do we go to one another? In a spirit of meekness. Why would we do that? Considering ourselves. There’s always that business where I’m standing beside you, and I get it. I know how this happens. And I’m not sitting here to be critical. I want to help you. I want to rescue you.
That’s God’s heart toward us, isn’t it? Yeah. He wants to reproduce that in us. And so, that’s part of being like Him, isn’t it? Isn’t part of being like Him, being able to love one another with God’s love?
You think about what Paul wrote in, was it Ephesians 4 or 3? Beginning of 4, I think it is. Just a handful of scriptures that we know real well. “As a prisoner for the Lord…” (NIV). He’s just talked about the immensity of God’s love, and His purpose, and all of that, and how He’s able to do more than we can imagine.
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling…” God’s called us children, right? See, that’s the calling. “…To live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle.” Boy, we’re gonna have to get that from God. It doesn’t come from us.
“Be patient, bearing with one another in love.” I’ll tell you, if you get a people that get that, and learn that and begin to walk in that, you have got something that this world cannot offer. We’re gonna see needs. We’re gonna see weaknesses in one another.
And God, give us a heart where the first instinct is, God, I want to help. God, I don’t mean fix it…you understand what I’m saying. But God, I get this. I love them, and I want to see the Lord help them and give them strength and give them deliverance, whatever the need is. Instead of, what’s the matter with you? God, give us that kind of a patience.
Boy, we like people to be patient with us, but shouldn’t we have the same patience with them? “Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body….” And he outlines the foundation of all of this. This is what God has done.
I don’t know. These are just sort of some scattered thoughts this morning. You could go on in a lot of ways from it, and I don’t want to try to go beyond. But is any of this needed? We are His children. So, we need to live in the reality of what we are, and not what we thought we are, and not what the Devil tells us we are. None of those things are relevant when we’re dealing with a God who calls things which are not as though they are.
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October 18, 2020 - No. 1463
“What We Are” Part One
Broadcast #1463
October 18, 2020
October 18, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1463 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I don’t know, I’ve been back and forth in my mind and I’m just going to go ahead and read a scripture and trust the Lord to bring out what He wants. It’s in 1st John chapter 3.
And you know, as we go from week to week, I find myself saying, well, Lord, we’re saying the same old thing, time and time again. But yet, I believe there are things that He wants to emphasize.
And I appreciate what Matt said the other day. He made the comment that, to that effect, that we’re hearing a lot of the same things but yet…we’re layering in truth. There’s kind of a breadth and a depth to what the Lord…to the picture the Lord wants to get…wants us to get, because it isn’t just a simple matter of, oh yeah, that’s true and then we go on with our lives. There are things the Lord wants to bury deep in us, a lot deeper than just our intellect.
And, I am as keenly aware of that as anybody, because of my own needs. But I thank God for His faithfulness! This isn’t dependent upon us. Ultimately, it’s dependent upon Him. And so, I’ll just read about three verses here and then we’ll just sort of start and see where the Lord goes with it.
John writes these words, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.” (NIV).
Now, this verse, this passage, as is the case with every scripture passage, occurs in a context, doesn’t it? We talked about that last week. We read verses surrounding the thought that I had. And John is writing late in the first century to believers to encourage them, but also there’s a particular need.
You know, there were many ways in which Satan attacked the people of God. One of them is obviously persecution. There were some terrible persecutions in the first century. But the most effective, perhaps, and subtle of his attacks, was with that which was false. There were supposed believers that came in among the believers and they really weren’t believers.
There were teachers that supposedly represented a message from God, but they weren’t. And so, there needed to be some real teaching and understanding on how to tell the difference…what’s real and what isn’t. And so, part of that is on the scope of the assembly and how we see things, how we understand the difference.
But a lot of it is also on a personal level. How do we know that we’re His? You know, what’s the difference? What are the signs of the difference? And so, he talks about many things. I’ll just quickly summarize.
But, you know, he begins talking about the fellowship. That’s the basis of everything. This is a real, organic relationship between us and God and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That brings us into a place of a relationship one with another.
And so, the first thing that he deals with is the fact that we walk in the light because He is in the light. He’s nothing but light. So, if we walk in the light, then we have that fellowship, but if we walk in darkness, there’s a deception going on there. So, you see somebody who’s not really walking with the Lord, their life doesn’t reflect what they say, there’s reason to say, wait a minute here, something’s not right.
And, he goes on, and yet, he talks about the fact that he’s not talking about Christian perfectionism. He’s talking about the fact that we have a heart toward God so that when there are things that are needful to repent of, we have a place to go. There’s a fountain that flows. We can come and there’s a place of forgiveness and cleansing and acceptance, not based upon us, but based upon the justice of God in having already punished the sin of which we’re guilty! That’s the amazing thing about the Cross. Praise God!
And he goes on and talks about things like the love of the world, and the love of the brethren and all those kinds of things. We often read a scripture about, don’t love the world, if you love the world the love of the Father isn’t in you. There’s a real clear picture there. And so, you find somebody who says, I know God, but obviously their life doesn’t reflect that, something’s…there’s a question. And he talks about false teachers coming in.
And then this is where he gets to this point. And, he’s about to launch into the point that somebody who really comes to the Lord, there is that difference in their life. They don’t just say, oh, I believe in Jesus and then go back to the life they were living…you know, go to the same places, hang out with the same people, have the same loves and same interests. That just doesn’t jive. That doesn’t go together.
And so, “No one…” it says in verse 6 here, of this same chapter, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” So, these are some of the guidelines he’s talking about.
One of the most often recurring things, though, is the love of the brethren. You know he talks about, later on, if you say you love God…how can you love God, whom you haven’t seen, and you don’t love your brother, whom you have seen? It doesn’t fit. If we really, genuinely experience the love of God in our hearts, that will be reflected in our spirit towards one another. And that’s one of the main things that is a sign of what God is doing.
And you know, he talks about false teachers coming in and we’ll know them because they have this independent spirit. They don’t recognize that Jesus is here. It’s not just that He came, back there, but He’s here. He has come in the flesh and He resides—He continues to reside in the flesh of His body.
So, you’ve got somebody who comes in and they’re just gonna stand here and tell you, but they won’t listen. See, there’s something wrong with that. There’s another spirit involved. And what a glorious truth he gives us there that, “…the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
And of course, chapter 5 deals a whole lot with the reality that we can know that we know Him. God wants His children to have a solid foundation for knowing that we know Him.
But this passage that I read is right smack in the middle of the book, I didn’t count the verses…but John wants us, wants his readers, but he wants us by extension, to understand the ground upon which we stand, in a deeper way, in a clearer way. Anybody here a candidate for that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! I mean, we know it intellectually, but emotionally we just don’t quite live up to what we know. And, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
The Greek is very simple. I remember my…what little Greek I did study…the book where we started, as an example of Greek, was the Book of 1st John, because the language is so simple, it’s almost like, ‘See John run. Run, run, run.’ You know, it’s the way you start reading.
But, there’s a simplicity about this fisherman that God anointed to write stuff. “God is love.” In Him is no darkness at all. Those kinds of sentences are just so simple to get.
And, the King James, in this instance, uses the word, ‘manner.’ “Behold, what manner…” (KJV). What kind? What sort is the love of God? And that’s a pretty big—that’s a pretty big thing to think about, because we have ideas in this world as to what love is, but we have no idea!
I mean, when you talk about any earthly love, I don’t care how noble it feels, and how deep and strong and all of that, it doesn’t even begin to compare with the love that forms the foundation for you and for me! And this is one of the things he wants us to understand. The foundation you and I stand upon has nothing to do with what we are. It has everything to do with a God whose whole nature is love!
We’ve said this over and over again, but I feel the need in my own heart to get this in a deeper way! Oh, the kind of love that He has shown to us simply doesn’t exist in this world. We talked last week about the amazing picture of our Savior before the world was, when He was fashioning these incredible stars, and all the immensity of it and yet, right down to the subatomic level every detail is exactly what it needed to be to uphold the universe.
And right now, He’s holding it up! You know why the stars hold their orbit? Because He says so! This is an amazing Savior!
And for someone like that, to come down, in spite of what we are…without that even being an issue, as to what we are, as people, when He’s reaching out to us. And to come down, not only to say, hey, I’m for you, I want you to be part of my family, I love you and all of that, but to turn that into a personal sacrifice of the level that He did. I mean, we could say the words, but I’ll tell you, when you talk about the love of God…we’ve mentioned this so many times.
How many times…what did Paul say in Ephesians 3? He wanted the Christians to get, “…the unsearchable riches of Christ…” (NIV), the immensity of His love. There’s no searching the end of it. With all my heart I believe that we’re not gonna plumb the depths of His love in all eternity! It is just so rich and so unimaginable!
And how hard we struggle, to somehow see that God can love somebody like us, especially when we become aware of our shortcomings and what we are and what we aren’t. To try to come to terms with the reality that God’s love is not dependent upon us and who and what we are! Thank God for the love that He has shown!
And not just that we should be called “subjects” of His Kingdom. You know, I’ll let you into a corner of my Kingdom. We’re His “children”! His children! Not just His subjects. But to be willing to share Himself with us and change everything about us, that’s amazing!
You know, if you and I were thinking about building an eternal kingdom and we decided we were gonna go out among human society and recruit members for our kingdom, do you think we might have a little different set of criteria than He does? Oh, my God! We’d look for the mighty, we’d look for the talented, we’d look for the good-looking, we’d look for the ones with strong will-power and great ideas and, oh man, we’re gonna really build something.
Well, who did Jesus recruit? Wow! Jesus said, I know there’s somebody…I know a good candidate for this Kingdom. And I know your normal way of getting to Galilee is to cross the river, go north, re-cross, ‘cause you won’t have to go anywhere near those ugly Samaritans. I mean, no good Jew would dare to go among the Samaritans. That’s not the people we’re interested in. They’re just a bunch of half-breeds. They’re just…we don’t want them. But they went through Samaria.
And they were hungry, so the disciples went to the nearest village to buy food…and there’s Jesus waiting by a well. And a woman comes out in an unlikely time of day, by herself. And instead of being a good Jew and turning His back and saying I don’t want anything to do with this woman. Boy, there’s something wrong here. I’m in the middle of Samaria, and it’s obvious the Samaritans don’t care about her. So, why would I care?
But He immediately engages her in conversation, and wants a drink of water. And one thing leads to another, and it uncovers a revelation of what her life had been like. This was not your recruit. This is a woman who’s just desperately looking for love in all the wrong places. She’s had five husbands! And she’s with somebody else right now and they’re not married.
You wonder why the women didn’t want to hang around her. She’d probably been with all their men. And there she is, a social outcast in every possible sense of the word…and yet, remember Jesus did what the Father showed Him? This comes right straight from the heart of God Himself.
Do you see what love is like? It looks for the people who are in need. What she was had nothing to do with anything. Oh my God! That should give every one of us hope!
( congregational amens ).
You see what John is seeking to communicate here? The matter…how great is that love that would not only do what He did, but apply it to the worst of the worst…to go down there and say, if you’d have known who I was, you’d have asked me. I would have given you living water. And that kind of water springs up to everlasting life. He’s inviting her into this Kingdom.
He’s not…he can’t reach these guys in Jerusalem who think they know it all. But He goes out to somebody that the world would have despised. She was the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. And there’s the love of God reaching out and saying you are a citizen. I want you in my Kingdom.
Jesus did, “…not come to call the righteous…” He came to call “…sinners, to repentance.” And oh, how we live so much in the…I was going to say the reality, but the fact of what we have been, what we are naturally…this goes back to the question of identity we’ve talked about lately. Who am I?
And if you are that low-down, less-than somebody who’s human characteristics are this, and it gives me a disadvantage, and I’m this and I’m that and I’m not the other. I’m not strong. I’m not worthy. A thousand and one things the Devil will point out about you that are true, but in God’s economy every bit of that is completely irrelevant!
It’s not about who you are. It’s not about what you can do. It’s not about the prospects that you bring to the Kingdom of God so you can help God out, and then have a better Kingdom. God is looking for people who just surrender, and say, Lord, everything I am naturally leads to the grave. It leads to death. But you are offering me life at the cost of Your Son going to the Cross in my place. Lord, that’s what I want. I want you to come and make me a brand-new person.
If God can bring the human heart to that place, it doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter what you’ve done in this world. There’s only one thing that matters at this point, and it’s the power of God to take nothing and make everything out of it!
( congregational response ).
That’s the power and the hope of the Gospel. Praise God! Praise God! To take somebody like that woman, and bring her to a place where she’s a child of God.
Now, do you think, thereafter, everybody looked down on her? I mean, the disciples and people in the Kingdom of God? Do you think God looked down on her? Do you think He always said, well, yeah, I let you in but I know what you are? Don’t you ever forget?
He wants us to come to a place where we can forget and leave everything about what we are in the past, be set free and go forward. I get that that’s a process, but that’s the reality. That’s the picture John is painting here.
He’s not saying you were all these things, you were this, you were that, and God sort of let you into His Kingdom, and now you got to muddle through…and try to live up to this religion you’ve embraced. This is a brand-new life.
There is a God in heaven. He did not do what He’s done for you based on you! It does not matter. If He can take somebody like that…if He can take somebody like Mary Magdalene…you know, we don’t know what her background is, but if she had seven devils it wasn’t good. I’m sure there was immorality in there. I’m sure there was a lot of stuff. She would have been a person who would have been an outcast in every sense.
Well, that poor woman…somebody lock her up, she’s having another spell. And yet Jesus cast those devils out of her and she became a follower. Did He look down on her because of her past? There was an honor. There was a respect. It’s not about your past, it’s about your future!
You see where God wants my focus to be? Do you see where He wants your focus to be? God sets people free from everything in their past and declares, you are my child! And it’s more than a declaration. There’s a literal birth that takes place when we give Him our heart! He comes in and He comes to live and there’s a brand-new you! Don’t you know you’re a child of God? “And that is what we are!”
That’s one little phrase that doesn’t exist in your King James and there’s a reason for that, because it was based on manuscripts that they had in the Roman Catholic Church. There are a whole lot of others that are a whole lot older, and that’s where that comes from. It’s a very simple thing in the Greek…in the Greek it’s something like, ‘behold what manner, or look what type of love the Lord has given you, that you should be called children of God…it’s children, not sons…children of God. And we are.’
It’s two words in Greek. You see how the meaning of that is kind of enlarged by saying, “And that is what we are!” Praise God! That’s the reality. Do you see the heart of John who wants to get that across? It’s not just, look what God’s done, that’s what you are!
Get this! If you get this, it will mean the difference between a defeated life, and a life that has purpose and meaning and looks forward to the very purpose for which God has done all…has shed this love upon your heart. It’s there. It’s real. God wants us to know what we are.
In fact, that’s as good a title as any. “What We Are.” Oh, praise God! You could go on and on with the people that God reached out to. The woman taken in adultery. I mean…Zacchaeus, the despised, short tax collector.
( laughing ).
I mean, from every human standpoint this was a guy that nobody thought much of, but Jesus did. He paid attention to this man. The Father said, that’s Mine right there. I know what he is in the eyes of men. But…oh, I have the power…my love has the power to change everything about his future! I can wipe away all that he is in himself and start brand-new.
I can make something happen that did not exist. If I can speak stars and galaxies into existence, I can speak new life into this man, and I can put away everything that he was, that would seem to cause him not to qualify for my Kingdom.
Oh, do you see what we need to be relying on? Do you see what we need to be getting free from? Oh God, help us! God, help us!
But one thing…I guess a major point out of this, is a very simple one. If I were to ask you how God sees us, what would you say? How does God see us?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! How does He see us? Is He sitting there constantly looking at what you were and what you are and your weakness and all of that kind of stuff? Or is He saying, you’re My child? You’re my child. I love you. I have brought you to a place, I have given you life. I’ve already put away your past at the Cross. Don’t worry. It’s fading away. It’s on the clock and that clock’s gonna run out, and there’s gonna be nothing left but what I’m doing.
But I want…My focus is on you. I don’t see all that stuff that sticks to you, that clings to your heart. You can’t get free from what you are naturally to be what you are in my Kingdom. And God says, I don’t see you the way you see yourself. You see all of your weaknesses. You see all the reasons why God couldn’t love somebody like me. You feel the pull of doubt and struggles and all these kinds of things.
I don’t see you that way. I see you as my child! And I want you to know it. And that’s why I put that little exclamation in there. Behold…”How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
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October 11, 2020 - No. 1462
“Leave Your Cage” Conclusion
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October 4, 2020 - No. 1461
“Leave Your Cage” Part One
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September 27, 2020 - No. 1460
“Do Not Be Dismayed” Conclusion
Broadcast #1460
September 27, 2020
September 27, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1460 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who can work with our ‘want to.’ Anybody here have a problem with your ‘want to’? Yeah, I mean, let’s be honest. We need the Lord. We’ve got strongholds in every one of us, and the problem is not the big bad Devil out there.
I’ll tell you, that Devil is scared that we’ll get this. He’s scared of the One who lives in us, because the One who is in us is greater than he that is in the world! You remember how the devils reacted when Jesus came around? They knew who He was. Have You come to torment us before the time? They were scared to death of what He was gonna do.
That Devil is scared to death of the Christ who lives in us. We need to get that. Don’t you ever be afraid of the Devil in that sense. The Devil will have no power over any one of us if he did not have help on the inside! That’s the issue. That’s what God is seeking to bring about, is the deliverance from these things so that the holds are not even there.
I was thinking about how Jesus gained the victory of the Devil. How did He do it, ultimately? He died! He gave up His life rather than give it for the Devil’s purposes. I mean, doesn’t that tell us the pathway for deliverance for us? He has given us a brand-new life. The only way to gain access, practically speaking, to that life is to let go of the other.
We don’t do that very easily. We don’t do that nearly as easily as we think we do. And I’ll tell you, like that lady discovered. Oh, this is great, this is wonderful! Wait a minute, I’ve got a problem here. You know, God is gonna bring us face to face with every issue of our lives, sooner or later.
Now, that’s not meant to cause you to be afraid. That shouldn’t cause any of us to be afraid. Isn’t that what He said? Don’t be afraid. Don’t be dismayed. Don’t come to a place where you say, oh my God, there’s no hope, there’s no answer.
I’ll tell you what, the Christian life is not going to be a cakewalk. It’s going to be a fight! But there is One in us and with us and for us, who knows what it takes! He is able to see the depths of my need when I can’t see it! And He is gonna bring about circumstances that force me to face that, be honest about it, and surrender it and bring it to Him! And however many times is takes around that mountain, He’s gonna be faithful.
Of course, one of the major reasons we get discouraged is ideas that are planted in us from our earthly experience. I’ve said this so many times. But I see it so much in myself. I see it in others…how easily we project onto God, and fall into the trap of performance-based ideas about Him.
How do you feel when you mess up, and you know you did? What does that do to your confidence? Do we just bounce up and say, well, God, forgive me, help me…but I know You’re for me, I know You love me? It’s, I don’t know how He feels about me now.
Emotionally, that’s where we get, very easily. And it takes a lot of walking with God to get over that. I’m still working on it. How about you? I’m still working on it. There is so much that the Devil has engineered. He has planted seeds in our hearts and minds. Some of it has to do with who we are in the world.
I mean, there’re plenty of people, I guarantee there’re people here, and your experience in the world has taught you, and the Devil has jumped on it, he has taught you that you are less than others. He might let you into His Kingdom, but you’re gonna be on the back row. You’re second-class. You’re not one of the favored ones. Look at so-and-so. God really loves them, but he tolerates me.
I mean, you fill in all the blanks, but you see where I’m coming from. If you get in your head that you are no good, you are worthless…and the world has taught you that, the people in your life have conveyed that to you, and the Devil has planted that seed, man, that is something God has to work on to get out of our hearts, to stop projecting that onto Him, and to realize His love, it doesn’t change!
I was just reading this morning about David and Bathsheba. My God, one of the great heroes of the Word of God, a man after God’s own heart, author of so many of the Psalms, the experiences that man went through, the battles he fought, how much he learned about God.
Boy, did that knowledge come in handy when he got in that terrible place. Imagine a man like that who becomes so careless. This is one of the ways we get in that place. He got so careless, he not only stayed home from the battle, but he saw that woman, and he didn’t think twice about sleeping with her. She was the wife of one of his special soldiers!
And then, he tried to cover his sin. When that didn’t work, he had her husband killed by the sword of the enemy! And the amazing thing is, even then, he had no clue! Oh God, we need the Lord, don’t we? You think about the need to be together and encourage one another. I’ll tell you, you get out there, and you just get to meandering and following your own natural inclinations, you’re gonna be in a world of hurt, and he was.
But what an amazing revelation it had to be, for him to be able to come to God, and pray what he did in Psalm 51. He didn’t base his prayer on, oh God, look at my track record. This was a mess up, but let me by on this one. He based it entirely on God’s unchanging love and faithfulness.
Folks, that is what God has for every single one of His! Well, we’ve said this so many times. Like I said, this is so repetitive, but we need it. God knew what He was getting into when He set out to save you! He saw every need! He foresaw all the issues of your life, and He said, that’s mine. I have the power to fix that. I have the power to deliver them from that, if they will only let go and be willing to die when they face the issue and trust in My grace. I can bring them through that, and I will. I’ll tell you, God is so faithful.
You want another example of the Lord…how many times have we used this, Peter? Did the Lord know what was gonna happen?
( laughing ).
Sure, He told him about it. He said, Peter, you’re gonna…before the rooster crows, you’re gonna deny three times that you know Me. Get real, Lord! I’d never do that, and they all said the same thing. But what else did the Lord say? I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not. Thank God!
Oh, how that needs to get our attention when we come into those very places. Jesus knew about this. He has already prayed for me. He’s not sitting up there saying I’m done with you, I’ve had it! You’ve messed up one time too many. You’re just gonna have to stew in your juices. I’m done with you! No! I have prayed for you. I already knew this was going to happen. You needed to go through this.
There’s one thought that I had that I’m sure I’ve said this before. This is an area where we need to learn how to believe Romans 8:28, and in how many things?
( congregational response ).
All things. “…We know that…God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (NIV). Do all things include failure? So…does failure lead to defeat? Is it meant to lead to defeat, or is it meant to lead to a steppingstone towards something else?
If we really see, through God’s eyes, everything that happens to a believer is meant by God to be a steppingstone forward not backward. How can such a thing be? How can it be like that? Because if our hearts are reaching out to Him, we’re gonna say, Lord, help me, to start with.
Forgive me, and we have a foundation for that. “If we confess our sins…” He is what? “…Faithful and just to forgive us our sins…” (KJV). See, the guilt issue’s been taken care of. But He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
But Lord, what is it that You want me to learn here? There’s something about me that I haven’t really got this yet, Lord. You’ve allowed this to happen. Help me to get the steppingstone. Help me to understand it so I can plant my foot and actually move forward because of this.
You know, I think we could safely say that Paul was one of the most knowledgeable people, not just doctrinally, but experientially in the New Testament. He went through years of obscurity with God teaching him and getting him ready. And then, there came a day when he began to share his gifts with others, and he went through hell. You talk about somebody who’d been through some deep battles, deep waters. God brought him through.
And he was able to stand up before the people and encourage them and write some of the very things that we read here, to encourage us! And late in his ministry—late in his ministry, he writes about something in 2nd Corinthians 1 that he went through. How many times have we referred to this?
He got in a place that was so bad. You talk about not having emotions? He wasn’t sitting there going like this. He despaired of life. He really thought it was over. This was a man who just threw up his hands and said, God, I’m in Your hands, but I don’t really think I’m coming out of this one. This was real. This is real deep stuff here. This wasn’t just a momentary thing. This was a valley of the shadow of death.
But do you remember why? When he came out of that, did he look back and say, God, what did I do to deserve that? It’s not a matter of deserving. It’s a matter of God trying to set us free and cut the ties that hold us captive!
There was something at this late date in his life that Paul did not understand about himself! He said, “…this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”
Boy, is that significant. This is a God that, even if I had died, He could have taken care of that. This is a God who can do anything! But God had to take me this way…as much as I know about Him, as much as I’ve experienced, I was still running in my own strength in a lot of ways. I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand. He had to take me down into that experience, but I learned it.
Not only did I learn it, God didn’t beat me up about it. The response from His heart was not, what’s the matter with you? He said, I know what was the matter with you, you didn’t. But I’m here to comfort. I want to fill you with a comfort, an expression of My love, and I’m doing this, not just so you can feel warm and fuzzy, I want you to take that comfort and help other people with it.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who’s gonna take us down the narrow pathway to the Celestial City. Every one of us is gonna face battles. I was gonna say, every one of us is gonna face ourselves. That’s the one we need to face. We need to learn how to face ourselves, look at ourselves in the mirror, and see ourselves as we are. We are not gonna do it any other way than having to face battles.
I’ll tell you, if we get to the place where the Devil himself could rage in our face, and it wouldn’t affect us, there’s only one reason, because there’s nothing in here. That’s the place Jesus came to. The Devil’s coming, and he finds nothing in me. He has no hold here. Why? Because I have declared every bit of this dead to him, and that’s where He longs to bring us.
If the Devil has a hold in your life, there’s a reason. It’s because, whether you realize it or not, you gave it to him. It’s still living. It’s not dead. It’s still wanting its way, its will and its way, and God’s gonna bring us face to face with ourselves, and He’s gonna do it because He loves us, and He’s not gonna do it with a heart of condemnation, but with love and faithfulness.
He’s gonna bring us down every path that we need to walk so that we can learn to know Him and learn to experience Him in ways that will transform our lives, whether it has to do with a besetting sin, no matter how deep-rooted it may be, whether it has to do with wounds that we’ve experienced in our lives, whether it has to do with just general human nature and pride and whatever we’re made up of. God’s gonna bring us through. Praise God! Praise the Lord!
Somehow, He’s gotten me through this morning! Praise God! You think maybe the Lord’s trying to tell me something? Yeah, I’ll tell you He is. He is so merciful. Oh, God, I don’t want to serve Him because I have to or I’m afraid of Him. I want to serve Him because I love Him.
( congregational amens ).
I believe in His power. I believe in His provision. It’s perfect. He’s already defeated all my enemies. He wants me…but if I’m gonna experience that, I’ve got to do some fighting. But if I do some fighting, it’s gonna have to be with His armor and His strength. I can’t just blunder along, and be caught up in the world, and careless in myself, thinking I’m good.
I’ve got to be alert, just like Christian was walking through that…do you think he was a little bit alert walking through that dark path? Man, if I get one foot off the path, I’m gonna fall into a ditch here. But God brought him through.
And I’ll tell you, when the Lord tells us don’t be terrified or be discouraged, do you think He means it? Do you think He means you? See, that’s kind of where it gets down where the rubber meets the road. Every one of us is gonna have to come to a point where we realize, God loves me. He has provided completely for me. Every circumstance He allows in my life is to help me and deliver me and get me ready for what He has planned in the future. To God be the glory!
And I’m gonna say this, and I’ll probably say it again, because I know how the enemy works. There are no second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God! If you’re the worst of the worst, the lowest of the low, the weakest of the weak…anyway, whoever you think you are, you’re down here, you’re nobody, God loves you! You are not nobody! I don’t care what the Devil tells you. You are somebody in God’s heart!
( congregational response ).
And He’s got a plan and a purpose for you, just as much as He does for me or anybody else. There are no backseat, second-class Christians is the Kingdom of God. You are loved. You were provided for with the same sacrifice that has opened the door of heaven for every single one of us. To God be the glory. Praise God!
So, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” That is not just to Joshua. That is to everybody here this morning that’s looking to Him. To God be the glory. Praise God!
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September 20, 2020 - No. 1459
“Do Not Be Dismayed” Part One
Broadcast #1459
September 20, 2020
September 20, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1459 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I feel more keenly than usual this morning, that the Lord is trying to make me walk in what I’ve been thinking about. Imagine that! And I feel, in one sense, like I’m saying the same things over again, but I feel the need in my own heart, and I believe it’s not just me. I believe the Lord wants to help us, in deeper ways, right where we’re at.
You know, one of the verses that we occasionally use, and we often use it to encourage people not to miss gathering together, but there’s another thought and I’m just gonna use it by way of introduction in Hebrews 10, where he says in verse 25, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing…” (NIV).
But what is the purpose of that? You know, I think a lot of times, we may feel like the purpose of that is, well, Christians just need more information. You know, we need to…we don’t know stuff, and there’s a certain amount of that. Obviously, we need to grow in our knowledge. But the reality is, we know a lot of stuff we’re not walking in, and we need to grow up in our walking.
But in order to do that, that’s where the next part of this comes in. It says, “…but let us encourage one another….” So, you know, it seems rather significant that the Lord would put that and the same thought in many other places in scripture. Why would He do that? Why would He tell us that there’s a need to encourage one another if there were not things that were naturally discouraging, if there were not a need?
And encouragement is not just about, hey, you don’t know stuff. This is, you know things, but don’t give up. Don’t let opposition get in your way. And, I mean, how many find yourself in that place very often, where the issue is not what we know, the issue is, are we walking in it? Are we really continuing to trust God and putting one foot in front of another, and doing what Paul said, pressing forward?
A lot of times we get parked, don’t we? Or we even begin to slide backward or, anything other than simply moving forward and doing what the Lord wants. We know from scripture, many, many places, that the Christian walk is a fight. Now, how many of you just love to fight? I mean, you want life to be tough! No, that’s not our nature, is it? We want to find that pathway of smoothness.
And we hear about coming to Christ and having peace in our hearts and joy and all of that, and it’s awfully easy to mistake that reality, that truth, and to kind of mix it up and project it onto…our life should be wonderful, our life should be smooth. We should be able to…if we hit a problem, we ought to be able to snap our fingers, throw a proof text at it and it should just vanish into thin air.
How many of you have it work out that way, in your heart? No. It isn’t that way. It’s not realistic. And we need to understand what it’s really like and know what God is trying to accomplish in us. Boy, am I speaking to myself today! The Lord allows me to go through things and experience my own weaknesses so that I feel like I’m one of you, because I am, for starters.
But you know, I guess I thought of one scripture, that perhaps is a kickoff point. It says much the same thing. But it’s in the beginning of Joshua. And Joshua has just lived under the leadership of, undoubtedly, the greatest prophet in the Old Testament, Moses. This…Moses was a man who knew God. He had his problems, too, but he was a man who saw the Lord face to face. I can’t imagine what that must be like. But I mean, there was a knowledge, there was a communion, there was an authority, there was a power in him, in spite of mistakes that he made. But still, there was a reality there.
And you know, you think about…oh, my God, Moses…we’ve always got him to look to. Now, all of a sudden, Moses is dead. And okay, Joshua, lead them. Who, me? How many of you have ever felt, in that situation, where suddenly something fell upon your shoulders and you’re looking at your capabilities and you’re saying, wait a minute, something’s going on here. I’m missing my…my crutch is gone! All of a sudden, I’ve got to actually start trusting God. Imagine that.
So anyway, the Lord is speaking in verse 2. He says, “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites…I will give you every place where you set your foot….”
Now, I want to make this comment. Most translations, and I think correctly so, translate it as, ‘every place you put your foot I have given you.’ I don’t know why they did that here, but that needs to be known. That needs to be understood. I think the King James has it that way, but there are other modern translations that do as well. In fact, I think the NLT does, and the ESV, so anyway, just for information.
But, this is something that God had determined. I mean, this is a God who operates outside of time and He can, as we’ve said many times, He can call those, “…things that are not as though they were.” And so, this is an example of God saying, I have already given you, but you’re gonna…you have a part to play in this. You’re gonna have to put your foot down on this, but when you do that, know that I have given it to you, so you’re not just simply stepping out in a presumptuous way.
And boy, the devil is good at telling us we’re being presumptuous, or there’s some reason why we can’t have what God has told us we have. But, those are the things that we need to overcome.
And so, anyway, He’s reiterating the promise. And He says, “Your territory….” He begins to define it, as to where all it’s going to be. And then He says, “No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Boy, that sounds pretty encouraging, doesn’t it? Do you know that’s the heritage of every believer? This is not just for the special ones that are up here, somewhere. This is a promise of God to me, first of all. It’s a promise of God to every single child of God, that you are precious to Him! You are special to Him!
He has given us a legacy in Christ, where we have a position that is not down here, under the circumstances, but it is up here, seated on the throne with Him! Praise God! I’m gonna encourage myself whether you get it or not, because I need this.
(congregational amens ).
But, “Be strong….” Now, He tells them all of this and then has to continually exhort, in the same kinds of language. “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them.” Again, “Be strong and very courageous.”
I mean, why is He repeating this so much? Think about that. Do you think there just might be a need? Do you see why the Lord would emphasize how that the major reason we get together is not simply to pour out more information, it is to encourage us?
Because every single one of us, that knows the Lord, is in a battle, or if you aren’t, you will be. That is the course of the Christian life. We are to, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” And, “Take hold of the eternal life.” Nothing I’m saying here this morning is new, is it? But how many of you need this, today?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! Yeah, we need this every single day. And we need this truth so impressed upon us so that we can stand, so that we’re willing to do what He says to do. I mean, this is not a push-button, automatic kind of faith that He’s talking about here. Okay?
“Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey….” So, there’s an admonition to walk in the revelation of the word that they had.
“Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.” Now, this is not talking about a ‘prosperity gospel’ kind of success. This is talking about success in entering into and laying hold of what God had given. You get that?
( congregational amens ).
In other words, success for us is gaining mastery over ourselves, learning how to serve God, learning how not to operate under the dominion of devils, where they have holds in our lives—strongholds. God wants to set people free from all of that. That’s what we need to lay hold of. That’s the success that God is looking to give every single one of us. Okay? Now, He can bless in other ways, but that’s not the main aim of what He’s trying to accomplish in us.
Then He says, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.”
Okay, Lord, You’re getting repetitious here. But do you see the need? Do you feel the need? There has to be constantly, because there are things that we have to overcome, that don’t just…they’re not just circumstances. It’s how they affect us.
Jesus went through everything that we would go through, felt every pressure that you and I will ever feel, and more, but yet it didn’t defeat Him. See, that’s what victory is all about. That God is wanting us to have that same kind of courage, to be able to stand, and not to do what He’s just about to say.
“Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged….” And I think the word that I went back to in my mind probably comes from the King James. Don’t be dismayed. And I guess if I had to put a title, for the sake of the ladies who want this, “Do Not Be Dismayed.” And, my God, how many of you’ve wrestled with this? How many of you have a problem with this?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah. Every single one of us! So, that’s why this is not just something that we need for mere information. My God, if you are dismayed, there’s a reason.
Now just think about the reasons. I mean, I don’t know that I’m gonna just make this participatory. I’ve had…I’ve gone all around the map on this thing this morning, trying to get organized and saying, there’s no way. I don’t feel like I can get it organized. Lord, is this really You? I mean, it’s been a real battle. The Devil just doesn’t want this. It’s such a simple thing.
And this is not about a performance in a sermon. This is about a reality that you and I deal with every day. But you think about the battles that they had to fight. They were looking at literal enemies. And they were going in against walled cities, and at least some of the inhabitants were giants!
Now, if a real giant walked in here we’d go, whoa! I mean, if you saw somebody that was somewhere between nine and ten feet tall and was a warrior, that would get your attention, real quick. I mean, you get somebody that’s seven feet tall, that gets your attention, let alone nine plus! And we’re supposed to…we’re supposed to go in there.
We don’t have bazookas. They didn’t know what those were, in those days, all the weapons that we have. They were gonna do it with clubs and spears and arrows. And they’re gonna go in against these kinds of…this kind of opposition. And they’re expected to prevail in it!
Now, folks, if we look at the circumstances, if we look at the realities of what we are expected to overcome, what do you think our response is going to be? If that’s what your focus is on, how’s that gonna make you feel? What’s that gonna do for your confidence, put in simple terms? Man, there ain’t no way! I can’t handle this! This is ridiculous! I’m way in over my head!
How many of you have gone far enough with the Lord where you’ve learned that God’s ways will continually put you in over your head? And He doesn’t do it to bring us to a place of defeat. He’s telling us, don’t be that! So there’s got to be a reason why we shouldn’t look at an impossible situation and be defeated by it.
But nonetheless, we are! We look at every kind of circumstance and situation and say, I cannot possibly overcome this. And of course, the problem with us is, it’s not just the enemy out there. The enemy that I have the biggest trouble with is this one. And I am more conscious, the farther I go, with the simple reality that…the fact that it’s just amazing what God has set Himself to do!
The more I realize what I’m made of and what I’m really like…you know, I feel like most of us feel like we’re basically good people. Good luck with that! If you put any one of us…you remove the Lord from the equation, you put any one of us in just the right circumstance, you would see incredible wickedness and ugliness come out, because it’s there!
( congregational amens ).
It’s there! A lot of people have learned to civilize it and cover it up and pretty it up and make…and all of that, but I’ll tell you, there is a depth here that you and I do not understand. We don’t realize the depth of our need, but we’ve got Somebody who does! Praise God!
I’m so glad that when we face the realities of what we’re up against, in the Christian life, it’s, oh my God, am I glad, the further I go, that it isn’t up to my resources to do something about it! Oh, the hope that God has given to us because Jesus Christ went to that cross in my place! Oh, He didn’t just remove my guilt, He removed me! When He died, I died!
But oh, just sharing that information, what does that do for you, apart from, oh, isn’t that great? I’ll tell you, you and I are gonna…the only way we’re gonna get hold of that information is in the field of battle. And how many of you have been round and round and round and round and round and round and round the same mountain? And the Lord is right there.
You know, it was mentioned this morning how patient He is. Oh, my God, the incredible patience of the Lord! And how easy it is for us just to get bogged down. I know one of the biggest things that gets me, is just a repetitive issue. I know I’m the only one here!
But there’ll be some issue where I just continually don’t do what I ought to do and it’s just, God, help me! God, is this ever gonna change? Will I ever gain the freedom? I know that there’s freedom. I know You paid it all! I know that You have promised to carry me all the way! I’m banking on that, Lord, because the more I’ve discovered about me, the less confidence I have in me. My confidence is entirely in You.
You’ve told me You’re willing and all of that, but oh, God, the effects of my own shortcomings, on my confidence, they’re not very good. There are so many aspects to this. I don’t even know where to go with it. Like I said, I just couldn’t seem to find the freedom to get anything organized, which is probably all right. But I’ll tell you what, facing our own…that’s the biggest one for me, facing my own shortcomings, yet again, yet again.
And, you know, one approach, and I mentioned this recently, and that’s coming to the place…one of the problems…let me back it up and say it. One of the problems is that we are trying to do something in our own strength. That’s what…that’s one thing God is trying to teach us. And as long as we are ‘trying,’ we are not trusting. God wants to bring us to a place where we will suddenly get it through our thick skulls, God, this really is impossible! If it’s ever gonna change, You are gonna have to do it in me.
But you know, you can jump into the other ditch. I kind of experienced that, recently. Okay, Lord! I give up! You’re gonna have to do this. Now, put this in terms of battles that Joshua would have fought. Suppose they had gone in their own strength, and made their own battle plan, and they had gone up against a city and just beat themselves up and beat themselves up and there it was and they couldn’t break through, they couldn’t win the victory!
And suddenly, they realized, oh God, You promised it! Okay, Lord, You take care of it. And then gone on back and sat there, under trees, drinking iced tea, or whatever they drank. Lord, You’re gonna take care of it.
God is bringing us to a perfectly balanced partnership, where we do what He has said, and face every foe and every enemy, especially the ones in here, but in every detail, when we do it, there is always that sense, Lord, not I, but Christ.
You know, I’ve mentioned more than once, recently, the issue of the will. And I’ll guarantee, with every one of us here, there are areas of besetting sins, weaknesses, where the issue is not whether we can be delivered. The issue is do we want to be delivered?
( congregational response ).
If we’re being honest. There is enough of an attachment to our particular sin…it may not be robbing banks or something out there where everybody can see it, but there is a particular attachment to it, where we can say, oh, God, help me, help me, help me, and then when He comes we don’t…we say, wait a minute.
You know, I used the scripture Wednesday night…Danny and I both used it, in Romans 12, where the Lord talks about how we’re transformed, we’re changed. There’s a renewing of our minds. And I looked it up in the Greek, just out of curiosity. And the main definition for renewing was renovation.
Now, how many of you have seen shows where they fix up houses, fixer uppers and that kind of stuff? Buy an old, junky house and fix it up and try to make money off of it. Well, the lady, of course, walks in and says, well, that wall’s got to go. You know, look at the space we could have here. Renovation…you’re gonna go into a house and you’re gonna change stuff.
Our problem is, we don’t want to be changed. Particularly, that closet! Don’t you dare even open the door to that closet! I’ve got stuff in there I don’t want anybody to know about.
Do you know what the Lord is gonna keep on doing, because He loves us? He is gonna keep on renovating. He’s gonna bring about circumstances where sooner or later we’re gonna have to face that issue.
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September 13, 2020 - No. 1458
“Getting Ready” Conclusion
Broadcast #1458
September 13, 2020
September 13, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1458 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: How do you…David, I mean, he’s got to be one of the ultimate examples of God getting a man ready to be a king in a pretty difficult time. I mean, the people of Israel were no prize. Spiritually speaking, it was a tough time. And then you had all these heathen people trying to come in and take over. Boy, it was a raw time!
And here’s a young man, that God is grooming for a throne. Did He take him out in the wilderness and say, all right, we’re gonna have perfect peace out here and I’m gonna explain it all to you? His pathway led into some terrible places.
And it seemed like it went from bad to worse. Every time he tried to do right, God took him into a deeper place, a worse place. It just got so horrible he couldn’t even stay in Israel. I mean, you know the story. You know all the things he went through.
Do you think he just got to where he just…did he throw up his hands? God, I tried to trust You but it just isn’t working out. Get somebody else. Or, in the middle of that…I mean, he expressed real emotions, didn’t he? And it’s wonderful that you can say, He’s my shepherd, He leads me in green pastures and beside the still waters. That’s part of it. But what about, “…the valley of the shadow of death…”? (NIV). That’s part of it too.
And David discovered something that you can’t learn in a book. He learned that he could be in that valley, experience all of the emotions of fear, and struggle, everything that we experience as human beings, it came out and it poured out of his heart, sometimes! But he found out that God was still there! God hadn’t gone anywhere. God was faithful! Underneath were the everlasting arms!
That’s what God is doing in so many of us. And it’s different for every one of us. How many times do we see David, struggling? You know, Psalm 13, it’s one of my favorites. But, “How long, O Lord?” How many of you’ve ever prayed that? “How long, O Lord?” Oh God, get…I mean, just tell me what You want me to know and we’ll go on.
It doesn’t work that way. That nature will…it has to be killed. It has to be put to death and there’s only one way we can do it. It’s to make choices. That’s the thing that blesses me about that. He’s praying, he’s pouring out his heart honestly to God. God’s not even…God’s not mad at him for doing that. He knows how we feel.
He says, oh God, how long? Have you forgotten me? But over and over again he will say things like that. Lord, You’ve forsaken me. God, why have you forsaken me? Why do I go about depressed? I forget the words in…was it 42 and 43, something along that line? There’s a scripture that says, “Why must I going about mourning…” Why am I going around mourning? Why is it like it is?
But yet, over and over again you will see him give expressions of praise. Now, how many of you think he just suddenly tapped into a pool of emotion? No! There was no emotion. Every one of us, if we grow at all in Christ, we’re gonna have to come to places where there are no emotions. You will not be able to find what you need to gain any sense of well-being in any part of your being, any part of your experiences. It’s gonna be just you and God.
And what do we do? It isn’t a matter of the feelings that we can muster up under those circumstances. It becomes a choice. That’s something we’ve said many times. Faith is really a choice, isn’t it?
And so, here’s David…the answer has not come yet, but yet he’s saying, yet will I praise God! I will! I’m gonna go ahead and read that one. I mean, there are so many others. You can just skim through the Psalms and see this theme over and over again. There are times when he’s just on cloud nine, just praising God! Isn’t God wonderful? Isn’t this great? He’s faithful in all that He does!
And then he comes along, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.” And he goes on and on, and then finally he says, but! How many of you know how to put those ‘buts’ in there in the proper place?
( laughter ).
Get your ‘buts’ in the right place…no.
( laughter ).
See, you’ll remember it that way.
( laughter ).
“But I trust in your unfailing love….” See, David has learned enough about God to know that God is faithful in every circumstance! You cannot measure your relationship with Him, His love for you, your worthiness or any of those things by your circumstances. God is there in the middle of them! He is using them to accomplish His purpose. And so, he makes a choice. I trust!
That’s what God will take you into the deep valley to bring forth. That’s what real trust is. It’s not something you learn in Sunday School, as wonderful as that is. That can lay the groundwork. But it’s not ours until we’ve experienced that reality, in some fashion, in our lives. God is faithful!
“…I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.” Over and over again! I mean, you see this simple principle of somebody who knows their God.
I mean, the obvious example is when Goliath came out. Now, was the Israelite army ignorant of Jehovah? They knew about Jehovah. They knew all the history. They knew all about what He’d done in Egypt, and all the stuff that had happened in the past. But, there was a giant. And somehow, they didn’t have this personal connection with this God who had done all that stuff. It was just hand-me-down religion to them. Then David comes in and looks at the giant and says, what’s the problem? That’s the Enlow version.
( laughter ).
What’s the problem? Why? How could he do that? How could he do that? He’s a young man, looking at a giant. Every natural circumstance would say, this is ridiculous! You’re no match for him.
Yeah! But he knew something about what the real battle was, didn’t he? And how did he know, this God? He had been in actual circumstances, where he was over his head and he experienced God coming to his help and his rescue. And so, he knew his God. He just didn’t know about Him. He knew Him! Praise God!
You could go on and on, I guess, with these. Look at the other men in the Bible. Abraham, and all the time that he went through, Moses and the things that he had to go through, Daniel, himself…the tests that they were put through. How do men come to a place where they know God?
But here’s the thing. I’m gonna drop this in. We have this expression, I think in modern Christianity, modern Evangelical Christianity, about knowing the Lord. Well, what did they mean by that? They mean somebody that has genuinely been born again. Okay, I know the Lord. End of story. You know, what’s the big deal? I know Him.
And thank God for the covenant that declares that they will all know Me. But yet…how, in the light of that use of ‘knowing’ God, do you account for Paul, at the end of his life saying, “That I may know him…” (KJV). Was Paul unsaved? No! This is an experiential knowledge that we know we need.
It’s fine for us to come in here and experience the…you know, we have our circumstances, we have our challenges, we have our difficulties. They’re heart-rending sometimes. But my God, we don’t have anything like they do in other parts of the world! We couldn’t even meet like this, to start with.
You know, what would you do if, literally, somebody walked up, held a gun to your head and said, will you deny Jesus or not? Yeah! It’s easy to think about, oh, sure. We better have something…something experiential going on in here. This is no time to say, well, that’s the religion my mommy had, I believed it, or my daddy. We’re gonna have to know Him. We’re gonna…and I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who is faithful to bring us through whatever it takes, to be able to be ready for whatever He has called us to. But we need to understand what He’s doing, don’t we?
( congregational amens ).
I mean, if your life is built around manufacturing and manipulating, I guess is the word, your circumstances so that everything is pleasing to you, in the natural, God’s got some work to do on you, because that’s what you’re trusting in. What happens when the circumstances change? What happens when this evil emperor comes in and starts persecuting followers of God, and desecrating everything? And you see people being killed in front of you. You see all kinds of terrible things happening. Ah, now what?
We’re gonna have to have…we’re gonna have to know our God. We’re gonna have to be able to see that there’s a God who is able to take us into the lowest place. I mean, you can hardly leave out Corrie ten Boom in a story like this. This middle-aged watchmaker lady…trying to serve God in the middle of Holland, and then the Nazis come in.
And she gets involved hiding Jews and winds up in a pit of hell, where ladies were treated like dirt, like garbage, killed. Her own sister died. And she was taken down to the point where when she got out she hardly knew how to use a knife and fork anymore. She was so lost in all of that.
And yet, she was able to look back and say, God brought me through, and He gave me a spirit of forgiveness for those who had done all these things. God took me there. And her testimony was, there is no pit so deep, but God is not deeper still! And God took the testimony of what that simple lady had been through and she carried it around the globe. God had a purpose for her life. Betsy went on to heaven. She carried the message forward. Could she have done that if she hadn’t been through all of that? No.
God has a purpose for us, too. Like I say, you could carry this on and I don’t know that it’s necessary. It’s a pretty obvious…extension, I guess, of what we’ve been talking about. I feel my need in so many areas. There are areas where I have confronted, and I’ve been confronted. I’ve felt bondages and weakness and needs in certain areas of my life. Anybody else?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Yeah. Every Christian who’s honest…if you’re at all honest with where you’re at, we have needs. We have a God who’s gonna take us around that mountain, as it were, and is gonna say, here you are again, what will you do? Will you look to Me? Will you surrender? Will you trust Me? Will you embrace My Word? Will you see Me in this?
How many of you remember Brother Thomas, so often, using the words of Jesus? “Blessed are the pure in heart: for…” what? “…They shall see God.” That’s not talking about seeing an image. That’s talking about the ability to discern His hand at work, in circumstances, in a broken world. To be able to see Him, yes, when it’s wonderful and His presence is there, and we feel exhilarated, but also to see Him in the deep valley. To see Him where David learned to see Him, even, “…the valley of the shadow of death…” And he learned that he didn’t have to fear.
You know, what is God’s promise in Romans 8? There’s a whole lot of stuff that God’s gonna use to work in every one of us to bring us to this place where we let go of the world and the things that hold us, the things in our own nature that want to hold us! And we learn to let them go! All these things that come against us, that would have the power, if we just gave into them, to take us down. He said there’s not one thing that can, “…separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus…” Not one! “…We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
Boy, we have, oftentimes, a simplistic view of salvation. It’s just, believe in Jesus and go to heaven. Well, I thank God in one sense it’s that simple, but the reality, the working out of it, we do not reckon on the strength and the hold of this old nature in us. Only God can take us through what it takes, so that we can be people who will stand up on that day of difficulty and challenge, and we know our God!
Goliath doesn’t dismay us. It’s not because we know we’re anybody, but we know Him. We’ve experienced Him in other areas of our lives. I’ve seen Him. I saw Him help me with the bear. I saw Him help me with the lion. I know He’s gonna help me with this. This is His battle, not mine!
( congregational amens ).
That’s what God is seeking to do in every one of us. I think I’ll just recount one story that you’ve probably heard before, and kind of let it go at this. Might be somebody else has something to add, I don’t know. But, in Chicago, in the 1870’s there was a man named Spafford. He was a Christian. He was a friend of evangelist D. L. Moody. He was a lawyer, a good one…one of the good guys. But he was also a businessman.
Somehow, he had had a vision of buying property and…he’d become quite wealthy. And he did have one real trial. He had four beautiful daughters and a son. The son had died, so there was one thing, already, that kind of, was a little bit of a blow to his well-being…this idyllic picture of a rich man, comfortable, friend of an evangelist. Praise God, isn’t this wonderful?
Until Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the…kicked over the lantern. Well, that was the supposed story of how it happened. I don’t think it was, but nonetheless, the Chicago fire. And all of a sudden, overnight, his wealth, basically, was wiped out, because it was all in real estate, all made out of wood and it all burned! Okay?
And so, on the heels of that…in the aftermath of that, I think, if I remember the story correctly, D. L. Moody was getting ready to hold some meetings over in Europe, and so they were gonna go over. Time to get away from things here in Chicago. We’re gonna make a trip to Europe. And so, his wife and four daughters got on shipboard. At the last minute, he had to stay there to take care of some business.
Now, you know the story, probably most of you. And so they sailed, and out in the middle of the ocean there was a terrible collision between ships. And the ship went down. And somehow, by a miracle, his wife was actually saved. The daughters drowned. And so, she gets to England, finally, by some means, and she sends him a cable. Saved alone, what do I do now? Something to that effect.
And so, he sets out on the journey to join her, gets out on the boat, in the ship, in the middle of the ocean, and the captain calls his attention. He said, this is where it happened. This is where your daughters are today, their bodies, their remains. And somehow, in the midst of that experience…I’ve heard different versions of it, but he went to his cabin…that is as good as any, and he wrote the words, “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”
And he wrote all those verses out. I mean, you think about a man who’s been through that. We sing that song and it’s wonderful. But you think about the man who learned to see God in that, who triumphed in his heart and his spirit.
Where was he getting his well-being? His wealth? His family? His circumstances? Every bit of it, just about, was taken, except his wife. They did have some more kids. But there he was, facing what to every other human being would have been a tragedy, and yet, in the midst of that, he wrote, “It Is Well with My Soul.”
The fruit of the Spirit is what? Love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, patience, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, seems like I missed one. But all of those things are things that reside where? Are they out here somewhere in our earthly circumstances, or do they reside in the heart?
I’ll tell you, where Jesus reigns, to the degree that He reigns, He brings His love, He brings His peace, He brings all of those things with Him! And that man found his well-being in the presence of Jesus in his heart and in his life.
Later on, he got back to Chicago and Phillip P. Bliss, who was a famous songwriter, Christian songwriter, wrote the hymn that went with that—the hymn tune. Oh, I’ll tell you, we serve a God who will take us through whatever it takes to bring us…you could sound scary. That’s not the point.
But I believe with all my heart, God has a purpose for you living in this time, right now. Every Christian, every believer, He’s got a purpose for you. He hasn’t forgotten about you. You’re not just a bump on a log. You’re not just a digit. You’re not one of His stormtroopers. He’s got a real, personal purpose for you.
And God knows how to prepare us for that. And it isn’t just learning to lay hold of divine stuff. It’s learning how to walk with a divine Person, a living Savior, who’s not just reigning somewhere, but who’s reigning here. And He’s doing what it takes to set us free from the power that grips men in this world. Anybody here need more freedom than you’ve got? Have you arrived? I haven’t.
You know, that brings up one more thought that I meant to really emphasize. You know, we love God on the mountain. We understand that sometimes we need to experience God in the valley so that we know experientially that He’s faithful, that He’ll bring us through. But there’s one valley that we struggle with. How about failure?
That’s one of the big ones. Where is God when I fail? Does He throw me out? I don’t want to just fail. I don’t want to be careless and presumptuous. But I’ll tell you, we have a God who can bring us through failure, and will never leave us nor forsake us. Many times, we’ve got to experience that, like Peter did, before we get it…that I really can’t do this on my own. I’ve got to surrender and humble myself and look to You.
But I’m so thankful today that there’s a God who looks past…who can be my God in the midst of every kind of human experience, and I can come to know Him as a real Person. This isn’t a religion I’m practicing. This is a relationship with a living Savior, who walks with me through life, who brings me through, and who’s got a purpose in my being here.
And it’s not just to make something out of me. He’s got stuff for us to do, too, to be able to help one another and to help others. But we have a God who knows how to take us through this broken world and prepare us so that we can be some of the people who know Him.
So, this has to do with getting ready. This is what God’s doing right now. Every one of us has a future. We don’t know what it’s gonna be. We don’t know how long the Lord’s gonna hold back the winds. One day, I don’t know whether it’s gonna happen in my generation or not. I do not know the time frame or not, but I know that there’s a God who’s getting us ready to stand in a dark hour. He is faithful. He will never leave us nor forsake us.
But I want to be one that learns. I don’t want to be one who just blunders through and muddles through and thinks, well, I know God, I’m good. I want to ‘know’ Him, and I’m gonna let Him take me through what it takes to know Him. He is faithful. To Him be the glory! Praise God!
Close
September 6, 2020 - No. 1457
“Getting Ready” Part One
Broadcast #1457
September 6, 2020
September 6, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1457 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise God! This seems to be one of those occasions when the Lord is actually wanting me to walk in what I preach. Can you imagine that?
( congregational response ).
But I believe the Lord is so merciful and so faithful. I thank God for all the things that He’s already enabled us to sing about this morning. These are not just happy songs, they are real. They reflect reality. I appreciate the Lord’s presence. He’s the One we need. And so, I’m just gonna trust Him with thoughts that I’ve had. He’s gonna have to put them together, but that’s the way it always should be, isn’t it?
You know, I found it interesting, considering the things that I’ve been thinking of the last few days that…right as we were about to break from prayer meeting last night, Kenny led out on a song, “Only to Know Him.” And, I guess that is central to what I’ve been thinking about. And, many times I’ll start to think about something and then I really won’t be that conscious about how it ties in with what’s been going on. But I believe the Lord is tying things together from week to week.
( congregational response ).
And, you know, last week we talked about the simple fact that we have not because we ask not, and how that’s a missing piece, many times, in our walk with the Lord. There are things that we need, there are places in our journey where we are in need, but we’re struggling in ourselves and not realizing, not laying hold of the thing that Christ paid such an incredible price to provide for us.
But you know, as I got to thinking about the connection, with my thoughts, and last week, I realized this…that we could almost reduce our Christian life to treating the Kingdom of God like it’s the great Amazon in the sky. That is, we have a need and we send off, hey, I need some grace, so send down grace overnight, please, I’m on Prime.
( laughter ).
And, you know, send me some strength. I need some help, I need…and all this stuff we need. And it’s almost like it becomes things. He’s up there and I need some ‘thing.’ And the reality is, we don’t need things, we need Him.
( congregational response ).
And that’s what the Lord is seeking to do. We are…and it’s not only in a general, generic sense. We’re living what we call the Christian life, which is the time that extends from when we are truly born again and sealed by His Spirit until He sees fit to remove us from this earth. In between, there’s this challenge, this amazing thing that we seem to not get so much of, we struggle with, we muddle through, and God seeks to teach us and work in our hearts.
There are things He’s seeking to accomplish. There’s…we’re digging in our heels with all we’ve got, without intending to. But I’ll tell you, God is so merciful and so faithful. But the reality is, it comes down to something more than just stuff.
But again, I was thinking in terms of the context and the time in history when we live. We are not simply living in an ordinary time. I don’t know if there ever has been one, truly. But, we are living in the end of the age. We do not know the schedule, and I’m certainly not here to try to tell you. But we do know that the world is going to end, as far as the world is concerned, in a state of darkness and deception, demonic control of the world system. And, this is the world we’ve been called to walk in.
As I’ve said many, many times, our brothers and sisters know what this is all about right now. This is daily stuff for some of them. If it becomes known in some countries that you’re a Christian, that is an instant death sentence. Now suppose it was that way here? But yet, I believe God has called us to live in a certain time and that He has promised to be with us to the end of the age, has He not?
And so, what He is doing in our lives has everything to do with the path He has chosen for us to walk as a people, and as individuals. He knows the way that we take, and He knows the way that we ‘will’ take, to extend what Job said. He knows exactly what is coming and what it takes for us to stand in the day that’s coming.
And where we would love comfort and ease, that’s not what it’s gonna take to get us there. God knows exactly what it takes for His people to be ready, not just to huddle in a corner or in a cave, and hang on ‘til Jesus comes, but to actually be able to function in His Kingdom in the midst of that kind of darkness.
I don’t have what it takes. And nobody here does. Humanly speaking, this is way beyond our capabilities. I mean, the Christian life itself is impossible. But you plant that Christian life in the midst of this kind of a world that’s coming, we need God! We need Him in ways that we have never experienced. And so, I think that’s where my thoughts have started, and I’m just going to refer to scriptures.
I don’t even know if I’m gonna read much. But, the scripture we’ve used many times, in Daniel 11, is Daniel looking forward. He was captured, along with a group of, a bunch of young men who seemed to have promise to serve in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian empire. He was captured and taken away in the first wave of captivity. And so, they were trained and God blessed them and used them and enabled Daniel to achieve a high place in the kingdom.
And he was there through a couple of emperors, and then the Medes and the Persians came in and they conquered. And he continued to have a high and mighty place. And God revealed many things.
But even Daniel looked forward to things that God revealed were coming. And he talked in great detail about what we know from history as the great conquest of Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world of his day, and then died at a young age, handed off his kingdom to four different generals who split it up and went to war with each other over time. And so, the history of the Middle East where Israel lived was one of being stuck between a kingdom of the Seleucids on the north and Ptolemies in Egypt on the south, and they were constantly fighting with each other…all kinds of intrigue, heathen emperors.
And so, they didn’t have a lot of freedom. They were under the thumb of somebody about all the time. And there rose one particular ruler that Daniel talked about in specific terms, as a guy who hated the Holy Covenant. Now what did that mean? He hated the God of Israel. He hated everything about their religion, as he saw it. And so, he just had it…it stuck in his craw that there was such a people.
But in the meantime, he said, I’ve got business to attend to. I’m gonna go down to Egypt and I’m gonna conquer, and I’m gonna go to war with them and gain some advantage. And so, he set out to do that, and things didn’t go so well. And so, he comes back all angry, and he said, boy, I know I’m gonna take it out…it’s their fault, I’m gonna take it out on the God of Israel.
And so, he comes into Jerusalem, and he, not only takes over, but he desecrates the Temple. He goes in and sacrifices a hog on the altar and dedicates it to a heathen deity, and begins to oppress the people. He’s cruel, he’s everything you don’t want in a ruler. And so, obviously, in that kind of a situation, you’ve got all kinds of people, and they will have different reactions.
And the thing is, when something like that happens, you can’t just say, okay, it’s happened now, let’s…the time to prepare, the time to be ready, and I think “Being Ready” is probably one title that I thought about. I don’t know if that’s a good one, or not.
But anyway, being ready for a situation like that was not something you could just simply wake up one morning and say, oh my God, there’s somebody here, I better do something. There’s a preparation time. There’s a time when God was getting a people ready to react to that and not to be paralyzed, because the reality is, you get in that situation…and we see it in parts of the world today, where evil suddenly takes over. What is the most prominent thing that happens? Compromise, collapse, a falling away from the faith, supposedly.
What you have really going on, is God showing up, and proving that most people don’t have real faith. They just have a religion. They have something they go through. They profess a kind of a faith in God. They believe the traditions they’ve been told, but they don’t really know God. They don’t really know Him. It’s just kind of a hand-me-down situation.
And you have other people that probably do know God, but they are so paralyzed by fear. They’ve never faced anything like this before and all they can do is just hunker down, and…oh my God, what am I gonna do?
But Daniel…the Lord, through Daniel, predicts that there is going to be a people, who are different from that. It says, “…But the people who know their God will firmly resist him.” (NIV). I think we’ve talked about this before. The Hebrew, kind of is just open-ended…they will “do.” In other words, there will be people who will not be paralyzed, but they will be able to act. They will be able to do whatever is appropriate in God’s plan and God’s purpose for that particular time.
But how did they come to that place? How did these people get to that place? That’s the question. Do you think, like I say, they woke up that morning and said, oh, yeah, I know about God. Let’s go to town, here. Or were these just people who were naturally, optimistic, naturally courageous…I mean, did they rely on natural ability in a situation like that? No! They don’t!
See, that puts every one of us on the same level. None of this has to do with natural stuff. In fact, God uses the weak, doesn’t He? Those who think they’re strong in themselves…I bet you, they were some of the very ones who said, oh boy, we’ve got a new regime in town and we better, I better just get along with them. Let’s just sort of find out what they want, and let’s see what I could do to get on their good side. That’s exactly what happened with so many of them.
But there were a people who are described in such simple terms…the people who knew their God. And like I say, we’re not dealing with the Amazon in the sky. We are dealing with a God who wants to have a living, active relationship with us.
You know, we could say, in one sense…we understand God’s purpose is to make us like Him. All right, tell me how I can be like Him? How does He act? What would Jesus do? And you get into all this kind of distant, kind of, me here and Him there, sort of relationship.
And Paul, of all people, understood the purpose of God. Yes, He wants to make me like Him, but how does that happen? I mean, the song that we sang is based upon the scripture we’ve used so many times in Philippians 3. What was it that Paul prayed? He said, oh, that I might be like You? No, that isn’t what he prayed. “That I may know him…” (KJV). That I may know Him.
And you know, when we’re talking about the Christian life, we’re not just talking about some vague, emotional connection that we have with the Lord. There’s something more than that. He’s called us to live here. He’s called us to function. He’s called us to live out His life in a broken world that hates Him. So, for me to know Him, means that I need to learn how to know Him in all kinds of circumstances.
Now you think about the people in the scriptures that God actually used. Now we don’t have the details about these people that Daniel was talking about. But how many people in the Bible that God greatly used, got there by floating from mountaintop to mountaintop? God was gonna prepare Joseph…is a prime example. God was preparing Joseph to be ruler in Egypt. So, did He send him to a great corporation? Did He send him to seminars to train him in business management and all those kinds of things? No! The course of action that he needed, because he wasn’t simply doing this as a human administrator, he was doing this as an agent of the living God.
( congregational response ).
He was doing this a someone who knew God intimately, and in order to know God in a way that would enable him to do the job that God had called him to do, he needed to experience God in all kinds of other ways.
You know, I’m conscious many times as we sing, how many wonderful things that we sing, and I wonder how much of it we actually experience, or have experienced? You know, a lot of times songs will arise when God is moving in a people. Certainly, we know that from our own history. There were songs that arose because people experienced God in fresh and real ways in their lives! And God enabled them to write a song that expressed what they had learned about God. They didn’t just hear about Him. They experienced Him! And so, they wrote a song and it became one of our songs.
And here we are a generation or two later…we still sing the song, but do we have what goes behind it? You see that’s what God is seeking to bring us to. It’s not enough to have hand-me-down religion.
Now I thank God that He has given us the Word of God. We have got a basis, something to go to, and we ought to, to absolutely know what is true and how God means for us to learn and to grow in Him. That’s wonderful that we have the scriptures.
Then again, we have somebody else that has gone through something. They have been in a difficult place and experience God in a definite way. And so, we have their testimony and that’s wonderful! That helps us.
But there is no substitute, for experiencing and knowing God for ourselves. This is what I see God doing for me. Boy, I can tell you this morning, just getting up here…the Lord means for me to learn something this morning, because if I went by my feelings, I probably wouldn’t have even been here this morning. I mean, we have to be honest sometimes and say, if I just went by how I felt, if I went by…you know, somebody says, how are you doing? Well, I have to honestly say, okay for an old guy.
( laughter ).
You know, we joke around, but the truth is, every one of us is experiencing something, and it’s real! And our emotions get pretty real many times. You know, we had a service Wednesday night when it was obvious everybody was…either they stayed home because they weren’t feeling good, or they came anyway. And it became very evident that everybody was…
( yawning ).
( laughter ).
So, I felt moved to stand up and say, you know, this is an opportunity…something like, this is an opportunity where we need to exercise faith here, and stop looking at how we feel, because we all feel tired. I certainly did. And start learning how to thank God in that circumstance.
( congregational response ).
I mean, that’s just one minor example. But do you see what God is seeking to do? It’s wonderful to have a service where we’re just challenged and lifted up to the heights of what God wants to do, and oh boy, this is wonderful!
But how does that happen? Is there any way that you can avoid having to go through the valley, and to go through the place where your flesh is crossed, your nature is crossed, and you have to start making a choice? Am I gonna let Jesus live in me? Am I gonna…I mean, I know that He’s there? I felt Him! That was wonderful! But where is He now?
I mean, you think Joseph maybe went through some of that? We’re talking about…we have a summary almost of years and years of going through hell, where God had promised him, and just pictured it in dreams…I guess they were dreams, that he was going to rise to a place of prominence, even over his own family. Of course, they loved him for that.
( laughter ).
And all those brothers…but God had a purpose for this young man’s life. But how did He prepare him for that? Well he…did he have to learn management? Yeah, he had to learn it. How did he learn it? Well, in the first place, he learned it as a slave. And he learned it, having to deal with the emotions that came with the fact that his own brothers had sold him into this slavery!
And there he was in a foreign land being forced by a bunch of heathens…among a bunch of heathens. And, there he is…how am I gonna handle this? Is he gonna live with bitterness and anger and strife? Or is he gonna learn how to trust God in a difficult circumstance, and learn something about the faithfulness of God, who in fact, when he continued to honor God, blessed him in the middle of a man’s household? And he wound up being in charge of the household.
Well the Devil couldn’t get to him that way, but the Lord had more for him, didn’t He? There was a whole lot that had to happen before he could occupy the place for which God had prepared him. He didn’t just experience God in the dream. He didn’t just experience God in Potiphar’s household. He experienced God in a prison…unjustly thrown into prison, falsely accused!
And there he is. And boy, if you were of a mind to go by how you felt physically, what your earthly circumstances were, that was the time to get bitter and just throw it all overboard and say, God couldn’t possibly care about me! There wasn’t anything to that dream or that vision! Where’s God? I’m gonna stop believing.
But there he was…somehow, God gave that young man the grace, not only to humble himself to his circumstances and to his God, but to continue to be so faithful, that the prison…the management of the prison was effectively turned over to him! The guy who was in charge of it didn’t worry about it. He said, Joseph’s in charge, I’m good.
I mean, you talk about a course in business management. How would you like that one? They hurt his feet with fetters. They did all kinds of mistreatment, and there he is, learning.
And I’ll tell you, a man who can experience God in that kind of circumstance, he knows something that other people do not know. He knew things that his brothers didn’t know. He learned to know God. He learned that God could be faithful in every earthly circumstance!
And God was doing something in him to shape him for a destiny that could not happen any other way. How many of you believe that God knows best? We all know to say, yes, of course. But how many of us like it when He does things His way?
( congregational response ).
No, we don’t much like that a lot of times. But I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who is merciful.
( congregational response ).
And what He is longing for me, and I feel it in so many areas of my life, is to come to a place where I’m willing to let Him do things His way, His time, because see, this didn’t happen with Joseph overnight. He didn’t say, all right, Lord, I’ve been here a month, I’ve got it now. It was years!
And then about the time he thought he was ready, he tried to engineer his own deliverance and it didn’t work…until the exact time, when God said, all right, now. Here is a man who knows Me enough to trust Me.
Isn’t that the issue? You look at every one of the men that God dealt with so deeply in the scriptures, and the issue comes down to one of trust. Do you trust Me, even though things are as they are? Do you still trust Me? Do you still love Me? Do you still believe in Me? You can’t feel me now, but do you still believe?
And somehow, Joseph found the grace to say, yes! Yes, Lord, You’re still real! Your promises are still real. I’m gonna stand…I’m gonna do what’s right, and let You worry about the rest. Oh, God, help us to do the things that we know to do and to learn to trust God.
Close
August 30, 2020 - No. 1456
All Music
Close
August 23, 2020 - No. 1455
“The Choice to Believe” Conclusion
Broadcast #1455
August 23, 2020
August 23, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1455 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: In every interaction that we human beings have with God, is God saying, here’s your way, here’s my way, make a choice? Folks, this isn’t just about…for all believers here, this isn’t just about people that don’t know the lord. This affects you and me. Boy, it hits me square between the eyes, and I thank God for it. I thank God he loves me enough not to leave me where I’m at.
But folks, we need to understand the nature of faith. There are so many excuses we make. But anyway, the problem was, you were not willing. I would have, but you were not. Man, that alone does away for me with all this extreme view of the sovereignty of God that says, he just exercises his sovereignty to choose one and not another. I’m not going to jump in the other ditch and say, we got a…God comes begging us to fulfil his plan. There’s a place in the middle where God confronts the human will and we have a choice, and he builds his kingdom around those who make the right choice.
We don’t make it because of any goodness in us! We make it because we are willing to renounce any claim to goodness. It’s exactly the opposite of what some people think it is.
What about the banquet that Jesus talked about? Yeah, what was the problem with that? He makes this perfect banquet, and he says, “Come, for all things are now ready.” (KJV). I have provided everything you need! You don’t have to…just come! What was the problem? Yeah, they made excuses.
One of the passages says, “…they refused to come.” (NIV). Well, refusing is not, ‘I just can’t.’ refusing is, ‘I won’t!’ something else is more important to me than coming. And that is exactly the issue when it comes to the lord and salvation in any fashion, any part of it. It’s not a lack of provision. God’s done everything.
He wasn’t asking them to make themselves over, to make themselves worthy to come. He said, “…come, for everything is now ready.” all you have to do is provide yourself. Just come, but you come on my terms. That wasn’t good enough. They weren’t willing. The things of this world were so much more important. That’s what they chose.
Oh God, I pray that anyone who hears this, who is in this place, you just should never really come to that place…that God will just turn you every way but loose, because he loves you! Not because he’s mad at you, but because he loves you. Man, if you saw somebody blundering along their way toward a cliff and you knew what was going to happen if they kept going that way, would it be an act of love to stop them and try to warn them?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Well, that’s what the whole human race is facing. There is a catastrophe ahead for everyone that does not humble themselves before the voice of almighty God and come and partake of his love and his mercy. Praise God! But it is not—it is not some feeling or inability, because I’ll tell you, if there’s anybody that begins to reach out to God, don’t worry, God will reach back. God will reach back! You don’t have to worry about that.
And of course, one other reference that you can write down if you want, is John 12:37, where it talks about the miraculous deeds that Jesus did. It says, for all those miraculous deeds they ‘would not’ believe! It wasn’t that they lacked evidence. It was right in front of them. But they knew that if they put their faith in him, it meant letting go of this.
You know, it’s a choice basically to serve self rather than God. And I don’t care what excuse is given, I’m weak. I’m too bad…something…I’ll do it later. There are a thousand and one ways that people have of doing like this to God.
The rich young ruler…man, he had it all together except one thing, didn’t he? He was rich. And that was his God. And God will have no other Gods before him. He wasn’t free. That thing had captured his heart.
You know, I think about the disciples. It might have even been in that passage where the disciples said, we have left everything and followed you…to follow you. What will we have? Kind of a natural question, I guess. But Jesus just told them about the glories of what was ahead, and it wasn’t just in the world to come. It was here. You’ve left houses and lands and fathers and mothers and all of that. I’ll give you a hundred times that much.
And it’s not like God promises to get saved and I’ll make you rich! That’s not it. But there’s a different kind of wealth. I’ll tell you, we have a family here that’s bigger than any of your natural families. And if we understand that—man, if we understand the relationship and the family into which God has called us, wow!
You know, one time Jesus’ family came to see him while he was in the middle of ministering. And everybody said, your mother and your brothers are here. And he took the opportunity to say, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” what was the answer? Those that hear the word and do it…doing it is not just hearing it, but it’s an action, isn’t it? It’s stepping out in faith believing it. There’s an obedience that comes and it’s a product of the will. I choose to believe it.
Demas walked with Paul for years and years and years, and it came time later on when the real condition of his heart came out, wasn’t it? And Paul had to write sadly, “…Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” (KJV). I’ll tell you, there is no room for any love, any earthly desire that trumps him. Faith means, what he says trumps everything.
Because otherwise, what are we really saying about God? Are we not impugning his character? Are we not saying, God, you don’t really love me. You don’t really care about me. If you did, you would let me do…you’d let me follow the inclinations of my own heart.
You know, one of the things that I thought to mention at one point in Isaiah, where Paul quotes…I mean in Romans chapter 10 he quotes from Isaiah. But back there it enumerates something very specific. It said, the problem with why they refused to believe was they had their own plans.
I’ll guarantee you, there’s people here, you’ve got plans for your life. You kind of know what you want out of it. You envision it. You’ve got your plans for your life. I’ll tell you, if we ever come to the foot of the cross, every plan, every affection, everything will be laid down. It doesn’t mean God is gonna make you leave your job, or a thousand and one things the devil will throw up and try to make us anxious about that. But I’ll tell you what, I trust his plans more than mine. He knows what’s best for me.
He knows…what did he say to the folks in Jeremiah’s day? “… for I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (NIV). Oh my! Whenever you and I assert our self-will over against the idea of just letting him have our lives in surrender, whenever we do that, we are basically saying, God, I do not trust—I refuse to trust you. I refuse to believe that you really care about me, that you know what is best, and you want what is best. I know what I want and I will go for it! I will resist your influence in my life. Of course, the scariest thing is when you think you can kind of be a Christian and do that anyway.
( congregational amens ).
Oh my, that’s a scary place, because you’re going to come to the end of the way and say, wait a minute. Which way did I go? What was really the God…who was the God of my life? Am I my own God or did I allow him to be God?
You know, there’s one scripture that highlights one of the issues. It’s in Hebrews chapter 2, and it shows how the devil works in hearts. And I’ll remind you as you’re listening, everything I’m talking about affects believers in some degree. We face the same nature, the same pull. But I’ll tell you, when you come to Christ, there is still a basic surrender where my life is turned over to him, I belong to you now. Then he goes to work, and then he deals with the individual issues. But there’s something, there’s a crossing over into the kingdom.
But listen to what it says of Jesus. And it highlights the reason why he came and lived as a man. You know, we know in other places, it was so he could know and understand everything we experience. He’s been here! Isn’t that awesome? There’s nothing you can feel in your heart…no desire, no struggle, no temptation, no nothing that he hasn’t felt!
He’s not just somebody up there who doesn’t get it. He’s been down here and he gets it! I don’t care what the issue is in your life, he gets it! He knows! “… since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
Now if you read that, superficially, what it sounds like is, I’m afraid to die someday. I’ll tell you, this is not that kind of death alone. This is the kind of death where I realize that what he calls me to is to let go of this life and the control that it wants to assert over me. I realize that his desires for me are better than me following the ways of the world, the wisdom of the world and simply the inclinations that arise from my nature.
I’m willing to let that go. I’m willing to take up my cross daily, every single day, and lay down my life with him. I’m identifying with him. I see what is wrong with me is measured by the fact that he went to the cross and took me with him. That’s what I’m worth. That’s what my earthly life is worth. I’m willing to let that go.
That’s how Satan holds people in captivity. They’re afraid. They’re afraid to let go. It’s fear! I’ll tell you, if there’s somebody here today that you just…there are things that have got such a hold on you. You don’t realize it, you’re the one in prison. You think, I can be free, I don’t want to…that’s prison over there to submit myself to Jesus. That’s prison. But you’re the one that’s in prison. And he came to set you free…came to set every one of us free. Praise God!
Oh the human race has it all backwards. What a mercy! What a love that God has for us! Unbelief is simply a rejection of God’s love and his truthfulness in order to embrace self. Let me say that again. It’s a rejection of God’s love. It is a rejection of his truthfulness, all the while embracing self and what self wants.
Anybody that doesn’t really believe God and surrender is basically saying, God, you’re lying to me—you’re not telling me the truth. I don’t really believe you. I don’t believe that’s best for me. I know what’s best. I’m going to do it my way.
I’ll tell you, you can grow up in this church and get to that place. Oh God, time and time again my heart goes out to the younger generation. You are living in a time that some of us have never seen. It’s not like when we were growing up. This world is on the fast track to judgment. People are living for themselves, they are finding every excuse in the world for doing what it is they want to do, whether it’s a deception that I can serve God and me too, or whether it’s just, “I’m the boss of me,” to put it in a childish way. I’m my own boss and I’m gonna do what I want to do.
That’s the philosophy of the world, and it glories in that, glories in it. Whatever inclinations that come from this nature, man, you better not only accept it, you better celebrate my right to be me.
I’ll tell you, it costs something. And it’s a battle, even to come into this kingdom. You’re gonna have every…every obstacle is going to raise its ugly head for someone to cross over into this kingdom. You’re gonna have to fight your way in. Haven’t we heard the scripture recently? The kingdom of God comes and everyone presses into it. There’s a forcefulness, there’s a willingness to fight.
Where does this fight come from? Is it some mysterious feeling that I have that comes over me that’s, oh, I believe? No! It comes down to, will I believe God or will I believe the world and my own nature? And if I believe God, I’m gonna have to take my stand upon what he says! I’m gonna believe it! I’m gonna commit myself to it! I’m gonna confess it! And I’m gonna take my stand and I’m gonna not give up! I’m gonna fight my way into this kingdom!
You know, I’ve used the illustration recently about that picture from “Pilgrim’s Progress” where the man was fighting his way into the castle. The castle was wonderful but there were obstacles. There were warriors that he had to actually press through.
Are you willing to fight your way into the kingdom? Are you willing to press through? Is it important enough to you to say, I will enter this kingdom! I will trust God! I will trust him for the strength to overcome whatever hindrances rise, whatever voices come to my head! I will press past them! I will believe God!
I’ll tell you what, there’s a God who’s looking for somebody like that! You say, I can’t do that. Yes, you can! You set your mind and your heart and your will to say, I will, and God will come to your help, will come to your rescue. I guarantee it!
How many times do you remember Brother Thomas talking about faith? And he said, faith starts where it’s at, with what it has and what it doesn’t have, it just starts.
And you go back to that principle of God beginning to deal with the heart. What is it that God is looking for that distinguishes one from another? There is a willingness to listen. There’s a willingness to embrace what you do know. There’s a willingness to reach out to God.
But when you do it, you need to know that there’s a God who will reach back to you! If you listen, if you’re willing, God will come! He will come running to your help and you will have the help that you need, step by step by step.
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! How about Hebrews 11:6? He that comes to God, “…without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I promise you today, if there is someone who has never really crossed into the kingdom of God, someone who hears it here or somewhere else…if there is any inclination in your heart, if there is a willingness to lay down your will and say, this matters more than anything else. This matters more than my next breath!
You begin to reach out…I don’t care whether your excuse has been, I just don’t understand, I just can’t, I don’t know how. There are a thousand and one excuses. You begin to reach out to God and God ‘will’ begin to reach out to you! He will help you! I promise you on the authority of the word of God!
( congregational amens ).
I don’t have to guess about this! God has told us that! He, “…is rich unto all that call upon him.” (KJV). What does he say in that passage in Jeremiah 29 about the purposes and the promises that he has for us…the purposes that he has for us? He says, “You will seek me and find me…” when? “…when you seek me with all your heart.” (NIV).
When God communicates with us in any fashion, it’s an awesome privilege, but it’s an awesome responsibility. Listen! Humble your heart before his voice. Reach out with all of your heart. Cry out to him whatever you don’t understand, whether you feel like you just can’t…whatever obstacle it is, God has the answer to your heart’s need! He longs to bring you into a place where his peace can dwell in here, no matter what’s going on out here.
You can know that you have passed from death to life! You know…you have a confidence that your life is in his hands, no longer in yours. And that he cares, that he has promised to take you all the way to the end! And you have this privilege now of looking to Jesus, knowing that he’s not just the author, but he’s the finisher. He’s the one who will take you every step of the way, all the way to his eternal purpose.
I’ll tell you, there’s a heart that is reaching. I know there are still people in this building perhaps, but in this world, that God is reaching their hearts. But whatever you think your problem is, it comes down to one thing, what do you want? If you want your life and what you want, and you are stubborn about that, there will come a day when God will step back. You might even feel a little bit of relief when he does. But it’s a terrible place to be because suddenly you’re in a place of deep deception for which there is going to an incredible shock one day.
But if God has ever spoken to you and put his finger on your heart and your life and the issues that stand between and him, and the need to surrender, oh, with everything within me, listen! I don’t care what the devil tells you. I don’t care what the world’s wisdom says about it. There is a God who loves you, who sent his Son to die on the cross for you, who offers you everything.
Your heart is full of the lies of this world and its wisdom. The truth of God will not come and coddle that! It will cut straight across it and say, you need me! You need me more than your next breath.
And I just pray…you know, this is about half of what I had down today. But that’s all right. I kind of felt like it might be this way. Because the truths, as I say, that I have tried to express today, they still affect us, folks. I’ll give you something as a Christian to meditate on this week. How much of the issues of faith do we realize are matters of the will? When we just can’t believe…we say, I can’t believe, and this and that, there is a problem with the will.
Because not to believe him is to believe something else. There is no neutral position. Human beings are not neutral toward God. We are enemies of God by nature. And I just praise God! There’s something in me that’s just risen up. This is so much in harmony with what the Lord has been saying, I believe.
There’s something that rises up in me that says, wait a minute, I do have a choice! Why do we tell the kids they got a choice and we don’t think we have one! Folks, there isn’t an issue in our lives where we don’t have a choice…to believe God.
But folks, if you have never crossed into this kingdom, God’s love…the problem is not on God’s side! You’re not too bad. You’re not too anything. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” The price has been paid. There’s nothing more than just to humble yourself before his voice, and then call upon him based upon his promise and his truth. I’ll guarantee you will never be sorry. Praise God!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! Do we have someone that we can rejoice in today?
( congregational amens ).
How many people here that have been brought to that place would say, yes, please listen?
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! Praise the lord! This is truth, folks!
( congregational amens ).
Eyes will be opened! Hearts will be set free! That’s what the gospel is about. Jesus came to set captives free! We are captives of our own nature that just will not yield. There is no barrier to faith that just simply choosing to listen, and trusting God for all the resources will not overcome. Praise God! He is Lord.
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August 16, 2020 - No. 1454
“The Choice to Believe” Part One
Broadcast #1454
August 16, 2020
August 16, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1454 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve just had some thoughts that have been very persistent in my mind and they’re thoughts that I feel very much my own need of really laying hold of in a deeper way. I believe there’s some really basic stuff that we’ve sometimes misunderstood and it’s become a barrier to us.
And, I’d like to start with an unusual scripture as a jumping-off point and I believe it’s in John chapter 20. And this is the occasion when, on resurrection Sunday, first of all, Jesus had appeared to several…some near the tomb, and then the road to Emmaus, there were the two disciples there, and then He met with the disciples…in the closed up, locked room, He suddenly appeared among them on this resurrection evening.
But in verse 21…I’m sorry, it’s 24…my eyes are getting old here: “Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord! But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” (NIV).
Now, it’s an easy thing to miss there. A lot of times we will look at that, perhaps, and we’ll say, oh, we don’t need to depend on what we see. We just need to believe. But notice his language there. He does not say, I cannot believe. I’m struggling to believe. I wish I could, but I just can’t. There is a statement that is so clear that he says, I “will not” believe.
And the thought that has just been continually coming to me, again in my own life, but there are so many things it touches on scriptural truth is this simply, that the true nature of faith is that it’s a matter of the will. It’s not a matter of ability, it’s a matter of the will. Will we believe God, or will we not? Or will we believe something contrary to Him?
Now, you know, a lot of folks…well, let’s just use Hebrews chapter 11, because the scripture defines…I’ll just quote the verse, defines what faith is. It says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” So there is a conviction that leads to a choice to believe God.
And you know, a lot of unbelievers would just look at religious people, as they think of it, and they’ll say, well, you just…there’s something that you really want to believe because it makes you feel good, it’s encouraging and all of that kind of stuff, but it’s really just fantasy. You’re just taking a blind leap and just sort of believing that it’s so, and it really isn’t. It just makes you feel good. And it’s sort of like the guy who leaps off the cliff in the deluded belief that he can fly. His belief will not enable him to fly, will it? He can’t defy the laws of gravity.
But, I’ll tell you, the faith that God talks about in the scriptures is not a faith that is without evidence, is it? God gives men ample reason to believe Him and to put their faith in what He has said. And again, the issue, over and over again, is not ‘can’ we, but ‘will’ we? And, this affects those who have not yet come to faith. It affects all of us.
I don’t know how far I’ll get this morning. The Devil’s been trying to work on me and I’ve had to walk in what I’m talking about this morning, where I’ve just said, okay, Lord, I ‘will’ just trust You. How many of you fight those battles every single day? Yeah. Where there’s everything in the world that just fights against you, doing the simplest things. But there is an evidence, and basically, I guess the summary…some of these I will just recite or refer to the scriptures.
But in Romans 10, verse 17, we find out that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. In other words, it’s basically like this. If God left men to their own devices, what would we do?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah, we would just die. We would perish. There would be no hope for any of us. None of us seek God, naturally. So if there is anything going on that has to do with God, God’s the One who’s reaching out. It’s His heart that reaches out to us and He communicates in so many different ways.
And that is what begins to make us responsible. It isn’t just simply the fact that we’re sinners. You know, death is a consequence of the fact that we are sinners and we walk in our own way and we violate every law of His being. But when it comes to the punishment and the responsibility for sin, that’s a response to our choices with respect to sin, not the mere fact that we’re sinners.
And so, the current issue of the MCM goes back and we reprinted some of the articles that Brother Thomas had written. “Does God Speak to You?” And without going through that, we know that God speaks in a lot of ways. He speaks through the human conscience. Everybody has a conscience. We’re born with an inward sense that when we do something wrong, there’s something that we feel on the inside. And there’s an inward monitor that says, that’s not right. You shouldn’t do that.
If we would listen to that, it would begin to lead us God-ward, wouldn’t it? But that’s something God implanted in the heart of every person that lets them know without any reference to the Law of Moses that certain things are right and certain things are wrong.
And of course, He speaks through the witness of nature, doesn’t He? I mean, you’ve got atheists out there that will look at all of this and they can’t find any reason to believe in God. Oh, it just confirms their atheism. What’s the problem? Is it an intellectual problem? No, it’s a problem of the will. It’s the problem of someone who wants to be their own god and wants to do their own thing and is looking for justification in their minds for it.
But I’ll tell you, the heavens, the scripture tells us, do what? They declare—they declare the glory of God. The firmament shows His handiwork! And there’s no reason, there’s no place for an excuse with that. That voice has gone everywhere. Everyone on this planet has the ability to look and to say, my God, this could not have ‘just’ happened. Somebody’s behind all of this. And it’s a witness of God.
And of course, God speaks through His Word. When He begins to send somebody out, because that’s the context of Romans 10, isn’t it? When God begins to send somebody out with the message…this is a word, not about, you straighten up and I’ll receive you, but I have put away your sins. I have sent a Savior to die in your place. There is a place of forgiveness. There is a place of deliverance and I have provided it. And so that’s the place where suddenly, over against what we, in our sinful nature we believe, there are ideas that hold human beings captive, and against that comes the Word of God. And ultimately it comes down to a choice, doesn’t it?
And let’s just look at some scriptures that kind of bear some of this out. One of them is in John chapter 6, and it’s an amazing thing when you look into the life of Jesus and you see that right before everybody’s eyes, he was performing miracle, after miracle, after miracle, things that they couldn’t deny were miraculous. And yet, for all that, the majority of people—the majority of the people rejected Him and collaborated ultimately in His crucifixion.
Now thank God, God was overruling all of that and turned it into a total victory, what looked like defeat. Thank God! Yeah, I appreciate that song about Barabbas, because that’s exactly true, folks. There is a reality behind the message of that song.
But anyway, Jesus is now in sort of a discussion, a debate, if you will, with some of the religious leaders. Verse 35, He says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Now He’s not talking about physical bread. There’s something much deeper. This is a bread that satisfies the deep needs of the heart, the very basic needs of our inner being. And He’s saying, I’m the answer. I’m the One that God has sent down to satisfy everything, every longing of your heart, everything that’s buried down in there that needs salvation, that needs deliverance, I’m the One! I can satisfy the thing that you chase, that hunger that drives you to chase after something. “But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.”
Okay? “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” Praise God! That’s an awesome promise, isn’t it? See God is all…you will find throughout the scriptures, God is always on the side of encouraging people to believe. He’s not looking for reasons to reject people. He is reaching way beyond, He’s going way beyond anything we could reasonably expect from a holy God, reaching out to sinners. His heart just goes over and above and beyond what reason would dictate in reaching out to us and encouraging faith.
So He goes on, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me….” Praise God! Do you see the…I’ll tell you, if you’re discouraged today, if you’re wondering, am I gonna make it, you’ve got the God of all gods, the God our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ on your side. He’s made a promise to you.
Of course, many times, the problem is, not His promise, but do we believe His promise? Do we really rest in it? So anyway, what an awesome promise that is. “…This is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life…”
What a simple, awesome statement that is! “…And I will raise him up at the last day. At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, I came down from heaven? Stop grumbling among yourselves, Jesus answered. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
You know, if you sort of stopped at that verse, it almost sounds like God just picks them, and we don’t have any choice in the matter. God just picks them and he says, you’re gonna be saved, you’re gonna be saved, and the rest of you are gonna go to hell. Is that what He’s talking about here? Is that what He’s trying to say?
You know, some people really take it that way. They go to that extreme, that God simply arbitrarily makes all the decisions and all we’re seeing is the outworking of something that He has put into motion and we really have no responsibility in the matter.
But listen to what the next verse says. “It is written in the Prophets: They will all be taught by God.” Not arbitrarily chosen, but they will all be taught by God. “Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”
So now you get a different picture. There’s more going on there than God just arbitrarily picking somebody. God is reaching out. God is speaking, like we said. And the ones that come are the ones who have done something that the others did not do. What did they do? They listened.
Now suppose you have vital information that affects me and because of your concern for me you come to me and you begin to give me that information. Now it’s kind of critical that I listen, isn’t it? If this is vital stuff, I may have my opinion. I may have what I think is the right way, the right whatever, but if you’re giving me truth and I sit there and I go like this…I don’t believe it, I believe what I want to believe, and just go away and leave me alone, who’s the loser here? I’m the loser.
Folks, you and I do not know the way. You and I will, if God leaves us alone and we go, we do what we think is right, what seems right to us, what’s the end of that? I mean, Proverbs tells us. It says, “There is a way…” that does what?
( congregational response ).
Seems right! It seems right. I mean, you’re gonna look at it and you say, yeah, it’s right. It’s what I’ve always believed and it’s how I feel. And of course, feelings are everything in today’s culture. It’s just…this is right! I have learned things about life and this is how I see it and you have no right to tell me any different!
Man, if you’ve got that kind of a spirit, there isn’t a God in heaven that can help you! I’ll tell you, God, in mercy, will strive and work and speak and convict and do everything that is possible to challenge the ideas that would otherwise send us straight to hell! Oh, thank God, thank God!
What a blessing it is when we get off our high horse and say, God, I don’t know anything as I ought to know it. Oh God, when You speak to me and You challenge ideas that I hold dear and I think are right, and seem to point in the right direction for me, and You put Your finger on that, God, I want to listen. I want to have a heart that says, yes, God, I receive what You say to me. I want to learn from You. I’ll tell you, God works in the heart of anyone that He brings to Jesus.
Do you see what’s going on? There’s a process by which God works with a heart and at some point He brings that person into a situation where they see, Jesus is the One I need. I’ve got to have Him! My sins will otherwise stand between me and a holy God and I would have no hope!
And not only that, it’s not just that I’ve committed sin, I can’t stop! Everything that comes out of me, that originates in my own nature, is so contrary to Him that, God, I just need a Savior. I need Someone, not just to forgive my sins and wipe my slate clean, I need Somebody to come in and change this and begin to work in me.
And so, you see how God draws and brings? It’s not this arbitrary, I choose you and not you. This is, you need to listen because as you listen to Me, I’m gonna mold your heart, I’m gonna change the way you think and I’m gonna bring you to a point where you’re gonna surrender and you’re gonna trust Me. And it’s gonna be good. Praise God!
Look at the scripture that bears this same thing out in Luke chapter 8. There are so many things that I thought about in this connection and it’s probably almost more than I need. But, this is the parable of the sower and I’ll just kind of go through it quickly because Jesus is talking about the different kinds of hearts that hear the Word that He speaks.
And one of them, the seed falls along the path. It’s a place that is trampled down, that’s hard, and the seed does not make any kind of penetration whatsoever…it’s just, the birds come and eat it and it’s gone, there’s no penetration at all. But some falls on, what He describes in other versions of this, as rocky soil. So there’s a little bit there. And so what happens is the seed penetrates that little bit of soil and it comes up and it’s looking great! But what’s the problem?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah, no root…down underneath there’s no place for it to go. It runs into the hardness and then it just withers. And so there’s another kind, though, that it grows up, but the soil is not just really given to the seed of the Word, which is what He says it is…it’s My Word sown in the heart. It’s not given to that. There are thorns and briars and other things that spring up and they choke it out. In other words, it’s not really dedicated to that. It’s like, I want Him and I want this, too.
So you see what’s going on in every case there? How did the hard soil get hard? How did it get to the place where there was nothing that could happen except birds come and take it away and it makes no impact at all? How does somebody get like that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah, God speaks and they say, no. There’s a persistence in saying ‘no’ to the Word of God! I will not hear! My idea is right. What I want is right. My life is mine to do as I please. I will not listen! Well, you keep doing that—you keep doing that and you’re gonna get to the point where you can’t even hear it. It makes no impact on your heart whatsoever, does it? That’s a scary thing.
But now, this second class…you’ve got a little bit of soil there, but what’s happened is the hardness is still there, but it’s just kind of down a little bit. There’s been a resistance at the real heart level! There has been a clinging…ultimately it is my life! I will not let go. I will do as I please.
And what you’ve kind of got there is a cafeteria Christianity. I’m gonna take the good parts. I’m gonna go down the row and I’m gonna pick every little tasty thing. I’m gonna get the ice-cream and the candy and the dessert and all the tasty stuff that I like, and I’m gonna leave all that other stuff. So you’ve got somebody that hears the wonder of the Gospel and the wonder of what God has promised, but they have no idea what it means to serve Him and to give up your life, and to be delivered from this condition! They don’t see the condition! They don’t see this as something from which they need to be delivered.
There’s a resistance at a certain level that says, I ‘will’ have my own life. I ‘will’ do my own thing. And so when the trials come, when you run smack dab into the fact that you live in a world that hates Christ and you’re called upon to stand up for Him, and there ain’t nothing there to stand up with, because your heart really is in agreement with the world. And so you walk away from Him.
And of course, you’ve got others that want that…well, praise God. I’ve got some water rolling around up here, let me get rid of that. Then you’ve got others, though, that their life is still theirs. They want Christ, but they want what they want. And so, they’re working real hard to give their life to both. They’re gonna come to church on Sunday and they’re gonna sing the songs and they’re gonna be Christians. The rest of the time, they’re gonna just go out and live their lives, plan their future, do what they want to do, and somehow it’s all gonna work out.
I’ll tell you, you have no idea what it means to really follow the Lord. Praise God! Is He worth serving? Is it worthwhile to give up everything and to serve Him? Absolutely! Boy, the Devil will raise up every kind of objection in here as to why it’s a dumb idea, it’s a terrible thing, you’re setting yourself up for a life of misery and religious bondage. And sadly, there are some people in that condition. But I’ll tell you, the Gospel does not lead people to bondage. It leads people to freedom…because I need freedom from this. Praise God!
So anyway, Jesus is explaining the parable and at the end, He says, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” His disciple asked Him what this parable meant. He said, the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, “…Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not…understand.”
Now why in the world would Jesus talk and deliberately hide truth? In a way I see God’s mercy, but I see God making a distinction between people because if these people had had a heart toward God, if they had listened when He spoke, if they been one of those that God could actually talk to and they would say, yes, Lord, I want to listen, I want to learn, then they would have been in a position to understand what He was talking about.
You see what’s going on here, because He really specifies it right here. And He talks about the meaning of it. He explains that the seed is God’s Word and so forth.
But, let’s see…all right, I want to come all the way down here to verse 18. “Therefore consider carefully…” “…Consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him.”
You see the pattern that’s being established in the scriptures here? God communicates. What do you do with it? The one who listens when He communicates, is the one to whom God will give more. Do you think God is anxious to leave people in the darkness? He’s the One who sent the Light. But what’s the problem when He sent Light, when Jesus came as the Light into the world?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. “Men loved darkness instead of light….” They made a choice, didn’t they? Do you see the will involved in this? It says, consider…what is consider? How do we consider…is this feeling that’s based on emotions? Is this, do I feel like believing it? No!
This is a choice of the will to say, I ‘will’ listen! This matters to me! This is truth that God in His love and His mercy is making me aware of and I need to listen. Now, I don’t understand it all. There are a lot of questions I have. I don’t get it all, but I believe what I have heard. And my heart is, God, I need this. I need more. Help me. Do you think for one second that God would despise a heart like that? That’s what He’s looking for!
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August 9, 2020 - No. 1453
“A Time to Choose” Conclusion
Broadcast #1453
August 9, 2020
August 9, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1453 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: We need to understand what’s going on in the world in which we live. We need to realize the hour in which we live and the incredible importance of taking our stand with Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God! He is Lord! I don’t care what the Devil says, what he is allowed to do! Jesus Christ reigns!
And we need to never look at this world and be dismayed by what we see and say, oh we’ve got to fix it, we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to shine our light and not be ashamed of Jesus Christ in this world, and just take what’s coming and trust God to bring us through.
But there is a — do you see what’s going on? People hate the truth! I mean, you look back at — well, I mentioned earlier, the days of Noah — how often we’ve used that. It’s because Jesus used it. That’s what He said, this is what it’s gonna be like when I come — like the days of Noah. And what an amazing, amazing demonstration of God’s mercy and God’s love we see in spite of the terrible judgment that came.
We have the Lord’s testimony at the beginning of that particular account, that the thoughts and intents of men’s hearts were what? Only evil continually. It sounds like they were already in this condition, and God says, yet, there’ll be 120 years! We don’t have a God that’s rushing to judgment, that’s looking to kill people, looking to judge people. We have a God who is gonna reach out with mercy to that last soul that will hear His voice and embrace His Son. Thank God!
Folks, if you’re here today, this should not frighten you. This should cause you to find hope in Jesus Christ, because the smallest child that puts their faith in Jesus Christ is safe for eternity! God sees every heart and He is in charge! There’s not a devil in hell that can steal anything out of God’s hand. Thank God!
But oh, we see that awful time of judgment when God waited that 120 years and then finally the day came. Those who were ready were prepared. They walked with God. They listened to His voice during all — in the midst of all of this they stood with God and God made a way for them to be rescued out of that. I’ve made this point many times over the years. You know, so many people talk about being left behind and all that stuff that’s gonna happen. What happened to those who were left behind?
( congregational response ).
They died, didn’t they? All of them — every single one that was left behind died. Man, this is not one of those deals where you can say, I’m just gonna just wait and see. One of these days the Rapture’s gonna happen, then I’ll get serious because I’ll realize, hey it really was true. It doesn’t work that way.
There’s gonna come a day when — I mean, this is the day of decision. This is the day when men are choosing. They’re either gonna be with Jesus or they’re gonna be with the world. There’s a division that’s happening right now. It’s astounding what’s going on. I mean, how many of you who can think back to the days when the Lord was showing us many of those things, and we looked at the world and we saw plenty wrong. But how many of you could have imagined some of the things that are part of our daily life today?
I mean — imagine if Brother Thomas suddenly, not knowing any of this, suddenly stepped back into this, and looked around and read the headlines. It would absolutely — I mean — obviously, he’s in a position to know. But, my God, what an incredible down-hill slide. And we’re in the middle of it. It just kind of happens a little at a time, a little at a time. But you suddenly look back and see where you were. Man, we’re not just heading for the cliff, we’ve gone off the cliff. But oh, thank God, Jesus is in charge.
( congregational amens ).
Thank God! And I’ll just refer — there are so many things you could bring into this. I don’t want to belabor it, but I don’t want to soft-pedal it either. I don’t know, for some reason my mind went back to this. It’s just something we need to bring out from time to time, so people don’t lose sight of where we’re at — people understand why things are going on in the world.
Do you ever wonder, do you ever look and say, why is this? Why is God allowing it? What’s going on? Well here’s the answer. God is letting lost men choose what they want. Oh my, how we need Him! My God, how we need Him! If there’s anybody that’s got a heart that something is pulling you towards the Lord, something is still tugging at the heart, man, you better run!
You better run to the Lord, because, I’ll tell you, you’re gonna go through one of two doors. There are only two destinies. There are only two doors through which any human being can go. One of them is to bow at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, surrender to His Lordship, open up the heart, invite Him in as resident Lord and Savior, and stand uncompromisingly with Him! That’s door number one.
Door number two is to say, God, I am my own god. I reject Your Word. I reject Your life. It’s my life! I’m gonna do with it as I please. That’s door number two. Those are the choices! It’s God or the Devil. And we are seeing the human race, more and more, being divided into those two categories.
What do you think it’s gonna be like when Jesus comes? Do you think there’s gonna be somebody that’s just — it’s going to be total delusion on one side, total shock. And it’s gonna be — I’ll tell you, hands in the air. Praise God! The race is run! There’s gonna be a handful still here on that day who will get to look up and say, praise God, the day has finally come! Jesus is here! Justice is finally gonna be served! We don’t have to live in this awful place anymore! We’ve got Jesus coming to take us to another place. The same Jesus who came out of that tomb so long ago has now come as He’s promised.
Of course, there’s another door, isn’t there? And that door is in here. And that’s the one that Jesus comes to and knocks. And what determines everything, everything, is what men do when He comes. When He brings the conviction of His truth, what do we do with it?
You have this contrast drawn — down below He’s talking about belief in the truth and the other group, the saints to whom He was writing. So, you’ve got a group here that has believed the lie. And you got another group down here who’s believed the truth. So you see, it’s exactly the same thing Jesus was talking about. There is a truth that will come knocking on the door of every individual heart.
( congregational amens ).
And that truth will show you some things about yourself that you don’t want to see. It will show you that you’re a sinner. You’re not the person you think you are. It’ll show you that you are not ready to stand before Him. It’ll show you what’s wrong but yet it won’t do it in a condemning way. It will do it in a truthful way that lifts up. And I’ll tell you, once we are willing to humble ourselves to that conviction, then God will lift up a Savior.
( congregational amens ).
And say, but I have provided completely for you. I love you. I’m not showing you this because I hate you. I’m showing you this because I love you and because I’ve made a way out of this. And I’ll tell you, whenever that heart just lets go and opens up — opens that door….
You see, there’s a choice that’s involved. There’s a choice that is made at some point. Do I push Him away and say, no, or do I open the door and say, yes, You can have my heart. I’ll tell you one thing, this is not — this is not a deal where we’re interested in taking our young people and brainwashing them with religion. That’s no defense against this. Christianity is not a lifestyle. It’s not a set of beliefs you embrace, and belonging to a church, quote-unquote, and participating in its activities and carrying on a certain lifestyle. Man, there’s only one thing that God is looking for. He is looking to take up residence in the heart and impart a brand-new life.
( congregational amens ).
If Jesus has not come in, you’ve never been born again. Then you are gonna be swallowed up. If that never takes place, you are going to be swallowed up by this darkness that is overtaking our world. Sooner or later, it will overtake you and that is where your destiny will lie. Oh God! I don’t know, I somehow sense that His heart is reaching out and wanting to warn, wanting to cause people to recognize what’s going on in the world, because it is a time to choose. It’s a time when men are making up their minds.
I believe it’s a time when God is going to reach out and pull in a harvest in the middle of all of this. God’s absolutely not taken by surprise. There is no dismay in Heaven. There are no emergency meetings! God has everything exactly under control! But the way this is playing out is exactly the way it played out in Noah’s day and also in Lot’s day when he was brought out of Sodom.
Do you think there was anybody in Sodom that Lot could have gone to and explained all of this to? No! There was a point in time when their condition was sealed! There was nothing left to do but get Lot out and bring judgment!
That’s going to be the way it is when Jesus comes! There won’t be any gray area! There won’t be any middle ground! Everyone will have totally identified themselves with Jesus, or they will have identified themselves with the world and they will be blind and shocked at that moment when He comes.
That’s the reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe — now I noticed this years ago. It does not say they will believe ‘a’ lie. This is not just any old lie. This is ‘the’ lie. There is something specific. And if you will go all the way back to the beginning, what was the lie that the human race was sold?
( congregational response ).
You will not die. You will be as gods. You see the connection? There is a lie. If you will take an independent course, you will be like a god. You have the right to choose your own path, to do your own thing, and you shall be as gods. And you will have a race of people on this planet who will embrace that lie. And there will be people you will not be able to explain this to. Folks, we’re gonna have battle in prayer.
( congregational amens ).
We’re gonna have to fight with God’s armament, God’s weapons. We have the privilege of standing in an amazing hour. And we have a God who will bring His people through. He will never leave us nor forsake us, not ‘til the end of the age. But it’s a challenging time. We’re gonna have to trust people into God’s hands. We’re gonna have to pray, and pray that God, who alone can penetrate that darkness, will do it, and change hearts and break them out of the dungeons of sin that hold them in darkness.
But, oh praise God for what comes next! This is one of the glorious ‘buts’ of scripture. All of this terrible thing that He describes, this period of the time of the end that’s coming, when evil will be allowed to reign and find full expression in the earth — ‘but!’ And that’s a message to everyone here that loves the Lord and knows Him today.
“But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers, loved by the Lord.” (NIV). Doesn’t that sound good? He doesn’t say, all you righteous people who have measured up and earned your way into His favor. This is, ‘loved by the Lord.’ That’s the amazing thing, when people have embraced, when people embraced the darkness that is overspreading the world, what they are saying no to is not the anger and the dominion and the spirit of God that wants to take over somebody’s life and ruin it. It’s the love of God! They’re refusing it! They’re saying, I will not bow!
But for those who bow, it’s not to a tyrant, it’s to Somebody who loves us with an everlasting love. I’ll tell you, I believe there are a lot of hearts — I mean, this is the nature of things. God made us to love — to be loved. There are a lot of empty hearts out there, hearts that have been wounded. And God has the answer to every wound, every hurt, everything — it’s His love. I’ll tell you, when we open our hearts to that love and it begins to percolate out into all of the things that have affected us, what a glorious thing it is! Thank God! Loved by the Lord!
Because from the beginning God chose you to be saved, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit! You see God coming to work in our hearts, God coming to knock on our door, God coming to convict us when we’re going down the wrong path, God intervening with our lives!
You know what God said in Noah’s day — He said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man.” (KJV). But think what He is saying there. In spite of all of the things that were terrible, that were wrong with the society of that day, all the evil things that men were doing, God was still working! God was striving! God was there trying to resist, trying to convict, trying to speak! Man, what a God we serve! That God is still at work. That God knows how to work with a heart, knows how to reach us, knows how to set us apart.
“… Through belief in the truth.” (NIV). Folks, that’s what we have in the world. We have the lie and we have the truth. And it’s not just a set of doctrines. It’s not a philosophy. It’s not just words of — my world view versus yours, and they’re all equally good. This is, Jesus Christ who is the truth and this lie that Satan has peddled, that you are really gods, and if you will take the independent course you will find your destiny. And that is what will separate the human race into two camps when Jesus comes.
But, “He called you to this through our gospel …” Through the good news, why? “… That you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Folks, the challenge to God’s people is that we take an uncompromising stand, not a hard-hearted, finger-pointing kind of thing, but an uncompromising stand with Jesus Christ, that we live in this world that we live in with an awareness of what’s going on.
The messages that are coming through movies, the messages that are coming through the television, through, you name it. It permeates our society. It can soften our understanding of things, it can soften our convictions. But folks, we need to stand absolutely for the truth of God and pray for everyone that we have an influence in, pray for our young people, because it’s not enough just to be brought up here and taught the stuff that we teach. You’re gonna have to have an encounter with Jesus Christ.
You’re gonna have to have an encounter where you surrender your heart. You say, oh God, come in, take my heart. It doesn’t belong to me anymore. I surrender my heart and my life. That’s why You made me in the first place. You made me because You want to love me and live with me and for me to live with You forever and ever. And I see what You’ve done to make that possible. The nail-scared hands that were stretched out, were stretched out because of my sins. Oh, my God! That has got to become real!
( congregational amens).
It’s got to become personal! Every heart is going to have to make a choice when it comes to this issue. I am with Him or I am with the world. There is a line. We’ve use that analogy before, the line drawn in the sand. If we are not seeing that in our day, when will we? It’s almost been 50 years since some of these things have happened, about 50 years — since I was in college. It hardly seems possible. But I watched my generation just absolutely going over the cliff and just setting their hearts against God.
And then the Lord began to reveal what’s really going on. It’s not just something in society. There’s a power — there’s a demonic power that has reached out to men and God’s taken His hands back and said, all right. This is a time to choose, because men are choosing an eternal destiny. Folks, if you know the Lord, praise God!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! As I say, you don’t have to be strong, you don’t have to be wise, you don’t have to be anything, except to trust in Jesus with all of your heart! He will bring every one of His through! We will stand! We will share in this glory that He has promised!
But there is coming a day when God is going to balance the scales of justice. The wicked things that we see in this world, they will not be allowed to stand. They will be brought to an end. There won’t be anybody that will be on the fence at that hour. Everyone will have made their choice. This is the time to choose, because I’ll tell you, there comes a time when God does take His hand off.
And I know the Devil loves to use that and say, well, you’ve gone too far. If there is something in you that has a desire toward God, you haven’t gone too far. That’s God encouraging you to put your trust in Him. The people that have gone too far don’t care anymore. They don’t have any real desire for God. If you have a desire for God, it comes because God’s at work in your heart and it’s because He love you. You need to latch onto that with every ounce of your being!
You need to say, Devil, get out of here! I don’t believe you! God’s touching my heart! That means He’s reaching out to me! That means He wants me! I want Him! I’m not gonna listen to you! It’s a momentous hour that we live in. I have no idea how long this is gonna go on. But man, is it not accelerating?
( congregational response ).
Do we not see a progression from day to day to day? It’s just mind-boggling! The headlines of today were unthinkable a year ago, some of them. And it’s getting faster and faster. But you know what, what did Jesus say? When you see these things, what are we supposed to do? Hang our heads? “Lift up your heads.” Rejoice! The day of redemption is drawing nigh.
We live in a momentous hour. But I just pray that everyone here, anybody that hears this, if you haven’t made your choice, if God’s knocked on the door of your heart, and you haven’t really made a clear-cut stand, you’re 100 percent with Him, man, you better listen to this!
( congregational amens ).
You better listen! This is God. This is not just me. This is God, reaching out because He loves you. Because if you’re not 100 percent with Him, then you are with the Devil. There’s no way to mix the two. You can’t have one foot in each kingdom. God is absolutely separating and we are seeing it, we’re experiencing it. But oh, the hope that He has given to every one who will put their trust in Him! Praise God!
Let’s go forward and look to Him and ask Him for the grace to stand in an hour like this, to never lose the sense that the God we serve, the Lord we serve, is on His throne! He will not abandon His own. He is going to come and He’s gonna come at exactly the right time. He’s not in a rush because He’s not willing that people perish, remember that?
( congregational response ).
See, it’s His mercy that’s holding back. It’s His mercy that is giving every possible opportunity to men to make the right choice! But there will come a day when that choice will end. And He’s gonna come and everything will wind up. And everyone will stand before the judgement of God. Oh, Praise God! I know I have no right in myself. There’s no possible way I could qualify myself for any of this. I stand by the grace of God!
( congregational amens ).
Everybody who stands at all, stands by the grace and the mercy of God who has done everything necessary to open Heaven’s door to us.
( congregational amens ).
So we have every reason to rejoice but we have reason to be sober too. Pay attention to what your kids are getting.
( congregational amens ).
Pay attention to what’s going on in schools, what’s going on in colleges. You have no idea how the Devil is at work. But I’ll tell you, God is at work too, isn’t He?
( congregational response ).
Let’s just cast our lot with Him 100 percent. Praise God! Praise God!
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August 2, 2020 - No. 1452
“A Time to Choose” Part One
Broadcast #1452
August 2, 2020
August 2, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1452 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, it’s interesting — some of the songs that we’ve sung this morning. It seems like periodically it’s appropriate to come back to a scripture that we’ve used many times over the years and it’s in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2.
I’m gonna back up and pick up the context a little bit. But I believe with all my heart, we’re seeing the unfolding of things that Paul is talking about in this passage. And we need to ever keep in our minds and our hearts the sense of perspective of what’s really going on in the world and our place in it, and the reality that we are in a time when men are choosing, and they’re making eternal choices.
I mean, it’s always been true, but there is a — there are times in history when that’s been more true than others, if you can put it that way. Noah’s day was certainly an example, because there was an expiration date on that ancient world. God had fixed a time when He was going to destroy it and save those that were His, the few that were His. And so it wasn’t a matter of, well, I’ll decide next week. For many, next week never came.
And so, we are in a similar time. And I’m just going to go ahead and just pick up a little of the context here to see what he’s talking about, because Paul is rejoicing at the beginning of chapter of 1 in the strength, the perseverance, the faith that was demonstrated in the lives of the saints at Thessalonica.
And they demonstrated it by standing up to a hostile world. And it was that the Spirit of God strengthened them and enabled them and their conviction was real. It was a heaven-sent conviction that was the result of God’s supernatural work in the heart. And so, they were standing against all of this and Paul takes note of this and he’s thankful for it.
And then in verse 5 he says, “All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right.” (NIV). So basically, he’s introducing a subject: judgment is coming! I’m sorry, 2nd Thessalonians, chapter 1. I thought I said that, but I may not have. But in any case, all this is evidence. In other words, judgment is coming and the fact that you are standing up for God and the world is opposing you is a pretty good indication that God’s judgment of the world that’s opposing what He’s doing is right. There is a sense of justice.
How many times have you been tempted to look at the world and its condition and things that are happening to Christians around the world, the persecutions, the seemingly senseless deaths of people at the hands of the devil’s crowd, and you wonder, what in the world? Where is God in all of this? Why is it like it is?
And I’ll tell you what, God is tolerating the wickedness of this world for a time and He’s using it to accomplish something in His people. He’s using it as a testimony of His righteousness. In the midst of some of the worst things that are happening in the world, God is reaching hearts that He might not reach any other way. We are gonna be able to look back on that day and we are gonna be amazed. We are gonna be blown out of the water with the amazing wisdom and the righteousness of God!
And it’s certainly reflected in that song. God will stand by His own, one way or another. It doesn’t mean we won’t be killed. It doesn’t mean we won’t suffer. It doesn’t mean a lot of things with respect to this world. But I’ll tell you, God’s people are gonna come out the winners in the end. There is no one who has put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ who will ever put to shame on that day, because there is a day coming when everything will be put right. And that’s kind of where Paul is going with this.
So it’s, “… evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.” So now, he talks about the justice of God. “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well.”
So, when’s that gonna happen? He says, “This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” And we’re gonna see as we go along that it’s not simply a lack of something, there is an adamance of spirit that’s involved in not obeying. Praise God!
“They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.”
Now, I’m not trying to give a lecture here on eschatology, on the end-time events, but there’s an awful lot in here that is pretty plain. If you start with the New Testament and you start with the words of Jesus, you’re seeing one event here. You’re seeing — here’s a world that looks like it’s out of control. Here’s a world where Christians look like they’re the losers.
But God is just! And He has appointed a day and He’s gonna take care of both sides on that day. One day He’s coming with fiery destruction, but He’s coming to rescue and put on display His people that He’s been working in all this time. So, this is just one little indicator here of how that’s gonna play out.
“With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill ….” Boy, isn’t that — over and over again you get this sense, man, none of this depends on me. If it did, I’d have no hope today. There’s nothing in me that can stand up to this world — stand up to my own flesh, let alone the world, or the Devil and all of his cunning and all his wisdom.
But it’s, “… by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God ….” Over and over again — His power, His grace, isn’t it? That’s what stands behind us and underneath us.
“… The grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” And I have a tendency when I read scripture that it’s hard for me to read and not stop and comment. I think I’m gonna go ahead and read this passage and then as the Lord helps me, I’m gonna go back and comment on it.
But I believe with all my heart this is a prophecy, it’s a word of warning, of instruction to God’s people, and I believe we are in the fulfillment of this. It’s happening as we speak. It has been happening for a long time. It’s something we need to understand. We need to re-visit, and really take in its implications.
So Paul is writing and says, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
“He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.
“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
“But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.”
So you see the context here. Paul is writing because apparently word has reached him that there have been some false teachers, haven’t there? There has been somebody who’s come along, come behind him and said, hey, the Day of the Lord has already come. And, so he’s writing — apparently, it sounds like somebody may have written a letter and signed his name to it, so that it would — gain a little authority or gain a little weight with those who heard about it.
But Paul’s saying, don’t you be deceived. Don’t pay any attention to that, even if it seems like it’s coming from me, don’t pay any attention. Don’t you remember how I told you about my coming — about the coming of the Lord, rather?
That’s what this is about. Notice how all of these things together — the last day manifestation of evil and the Lord’s coming all dovetail into one event, because he launches right into a discussion of the last rebellion, doesn’t he? But yet, what he’s talking about is the coming of the Lord and our being gathered to Him. That sounds like it’s all together, doesn’t it? It is.
So anyway, the subject is basically, the great rebellion — that’s not necessarily the title we’re gonna use. We’ll see how that works out. But the Lord — I believe with all my heart that many of us here, particularly the older ones, those of us who are older like me, and older, can remember some of the things that the Lord revealed in our midst years ago.
I’m certainly old enough to remember the 1960’s. How many of you here can remember that day and what was going on in that time? It was a time in which there was such a definite rebellion against every value that had gone before. I mean, the whole younger generation was inspired by a spirit of darkness to rise up and say, we cast off everything of the past!
If you’re over 30, you’re over the hill and reject your values! We reject everything you’ve ever stood for! We reject God’s — any authority of moral law over us. We’re gonna do as we please! We’re gonna get high and we’re — be immoral, whatever comes to our minds. We are in charge! By God, we are rebelling.
There was a — there’s always been some of that. Doesn’t he say that? The mystery of iniquity or this spirit of rebellion has always been here. But there has been a degree of restraint. But Paul is looking down the stream of time and saying, this is not right now. Right now that spirit is here but it is being restrained in a degree. But there is coming a period of time and that time will usher in the time of the end. It will lead up to the time when Christ will come, because He’s the One who’s going to crush it when He does come.
But there will come a definite time of rebellion. It doesn’t just say ‘a’ time of great rebellion. It says ‘the’ rebellion. There’s something specific about this. And it’s interesting to me and, boy, was it interesting to me when I first came here — to the old Tabernacle. And I had lived as a college student through that period, watching my generation just absolutely go crazy, and wondering what in the world is going on.
It just doesn’t make any sense the stuff they’re teaching, they’re believing. What they’re doing is just outright rebellion, not just against society, but against God. And then I arrived here and found out how the Lord had been revealing that this was the time of the loosing of Satan. And it was very specific. It wasn’t just some loosing. This was the last loosing before the end of all things.
There was a time — there was a point in time when God said, all right, now I am stepping back. I’m gonna let men have what they want. And so, we have seen the unfolding of that in amazing ways.
How many of you just look at the news today of what’s happening and the attitudes of people, the hateful behavior, the choices that are being made, the values that are being shoved down our throats — how many of you look at that and you say, good Lord, what planet are they on? I mean, it’s just mind boggling to see the things that five years ago would’ve been unthinkable — today, it’s just normal — not only normal, but you better shut-up and agree with it or you’re the one that’s in trouble.
If they have, if the spirit that is in the world today has its way, it will shut us behind our walls, and tell us, don’t you dare peep about God outside of these walls! And when they succeed in that, they will then come in here and do away with it all together. Satan’s aim is to destroy the influence of God everywhere.
And I’ll tell you, it’s not just colleges. I don’t know how it is here now, but some of us, especially older ones, we remember what school was about. It was about actual education — reading, writing, arithmetic and a little bit of sociology and history, and it was — there was a reasonable presentation of what was right. We learned about the Constitution. I mean, I’ve heard of campuses where if you hand out a copy of the Constitution, they’re gonna throw you in jail. I mean, it’s just absolutely insane.
You could go on and on talking about that kind of stuff. I don’t think we have a clue what’s going on in schools today. I don’t know how it is here. It’s probably not as bad as where I grew up. I grew up in what has become one of the more liberal areas. But I mean, they are teaching sexual deviancy beginning in kindergarten.
You don’t think Satan is loose? You don’t think the spirit of the age has come in and is just flooding men’s minds with darkness and programming them about the normalcy and everything that is against God? You don’t think there is a relentless rebellion against God’s institution of the family and how the family works? Man, you see this idea that children don’t belong to families, to fathers and mothers. Children belong to the state. You see the spirit of it.
I’ve told you before about the — just one example over in Europe. The government building of the European Union was modeled after a painting of the Tower of Babel. I mean, it’s just like man is just shaking his fist in God’s face! There is a spirit of defiance that is out there and that’s what Paul is talking about. There is a rebellion.
It sounds like, in one sense, he’s talking about an individual man. And I don’t know whether there’s an individual man coming or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is. But I’ll tell you, there’s no man who could come and fit this description and succeed in gaining any kind of influence over the people of the world if the people of the world hadn’t had their hearts and minds prepared for it.
This is not just some bad guy that’s gonna come and, oh my, he’s gonna wow us and trick us all. This is a spirit that is at work right now in the hearts and minds, trying his best to influence even people right here. Everywhere, the spirit of the age is to absolutely turn men against God and into a spirit of rebellion against everything that He stands for.
This thing called sin — it’s not just a list of do’s and don’ts, it is a life force that takes possession of hearts and minds and drives them to every form of selfishness, every form of evil behavior — in every way. A lot of the people who would point their finger at somebody who’s guilty of a particular sin and they have something that’s worse going on in them, just like the religious people of Jesus’ day. Oh my!
I can’t wait for the day when there won’t be anything of that. I see a new heaven and a new earth. God’s glory is filling the universe. Won’t that be something to be set free from that? To be able to be what God created us to be in the first place, to be energized with divine life and all the gifts and abilities, whatever God has invested in every single one of us would flourish to their greatest, to the highest degree, but not though selfishness, but through selflessness and enjoying the riches of God’s grace. Praise God! Oh, don’t you long for that? Oh, I’ll tell you, it’s coming. Thank God!
So, here’s the destiny. This is why Satan is so angry. “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.” Now remember, the beginning of this passage talks about His coming and our gathering to Him. But here’s something else that happens at that coming. He is going to destroy by the splendor of his coming all of this rebellion and all that’s wrong.
“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.” Now, it’s easy just to say, watch out, there are gonna be lying signs and wonders. There are gonna be miracles that really aren’t from God, and that is part of it. But there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be moved by that. It doesn’t limit it to that, does it? It says, ‘every’ sort of evil.
I’ll tell you, we have a nature that runs to everything that God hates. If you follow the inclinations of this nature, you’re gonna go in a dark dungeon of sin and destruction. And Satan knows how to appeal to every single person on this planet. He knows how to appeal to their nature and to portray sin in a way that it makes it seem like that’s the thing that will give you what you’re looking for in life. It’ll be moral corruption for some. It’ll be riches and power for others. It’ll be every kind of thing that Satan can use to appeal to people, I’ll tell you what, we need the Lord, don’t we?
So anyway, “… counterfeit miracles … and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.” Now why do they perish? What’s the deal here? What’s going on? Why are people perishing? Does God just get a kick out of saying, hey, you broke the rules, I get to judge you? That’s not the spirit of it.
It’s interesting to contrast this with Jesus. You want to know what God was really like, what His heart is like toward the race of men who fell into sin? You look at Jesus. And you’ll see Someone who looked down with compassion. You’ll see the Son of God who came into the world to die a sacrificial death and He didn’t come to condemn.
Sin was there! It was terrible! But He didn’t even come to condemn! He came to forgive. He came to save. He came to shine light on darkness so people could be rescued from that. That’s God’s heart! It’s always been His heart! It’s still His heart! That’s why today He’s reaching out in amazing ways in far corners of the world. God’s still at work in His creation. But I’ll tell you, there is something else going on.
Why then, does a God who can approach — like the woman at the well, all that was wrong with her? How is it that God could approach her with such compassion and then deal with these in such violent wrath? What’s going on here? How do you understand that? Do you ever wonder about that, how to put that together?
“They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” See, what you’re dealing with is not people who are simply caught by the power of sin, don’t know how to escape it, don’t know what to do. You’re talking about people who, when they do know what to do and they do know, truth comes, light comes.
Jesus said himself, “And this is the condemnation … “ (KJV). This is the reason for condemnation. “… Light is come into the world …” But, what? “… Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” They refused to come to the light. They didn’t want their sin exposed.
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July 26, 2020 - No. 1451
“The Missing Piece” Conclusion
Broadcast #1451
July 26, 2020
July 26, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1451 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: But think about the life of Jesus. Again, how did He do what He did? Do you think there was this difference between, okay, Father, I know You’re there, thank God, overshadow Me. But I’m doing carpentry today, that’s just ordinary. I can handle this?
Do you see the problem? We think we can handle stuff. We think, based upon the stuff we know, that we can take that knowledge and translate it into godly living. And as long as we don’t steal and rob and do something really bad and really stupid, we’re okay. Is that what the Lord wants? No. Are we really, if we’re doing that, are we really living out the life of Christ? No, we’re not. We’re just living out a religious façade. And God wants every one of us that knows Him to be real.
And so, Jesus lived His entire life dependent upon His Father. We’re told in Hebrews, in one place, that He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit. You notice the agency. Notice how He did what He did. See, we’re talking about the ‘how.’ How did Jesus do what He did? He offered Himself, without spot…sinless…without spot to God, by the eternal Spirit.
But I don’t need that, I’m good. You see the problem. Jesus knew how it worked. He knew if He was gonna produce the kind of fruit that God was looking for, not just what looked good to men — He knew if He were gonna produce the kind of fruit that God was looking for, it was gonna have to be done supernaturally. He was gonna have to depend moment by moment upon His heavenly Father and look to Him, and He did.
And so, I mean, there were battles that He fought. There were all kinds of stuff He had to stand against. He had to cry out to God. Oh, God, if there’s any way, as we’ve said so many times, let this cup pass but, nonetheless, Your will.
So do you see from this passage that we’ve talked about, what the issues are? In the first place, if you’re just living by your natural life, and there’s all this strife and all these things going on on the inside, don’t lie about it. Don’t pretend everything’s okay. If you’re conscious of that at all, God’s trying to tell you something, and there’s something that He wants to change. This is not how I want you to live. I don’t want you to live this life of misery and anxiety.
Serving Christ is not meant to be an unbearable burden. His burden is light. How can it be light if I’ve got to measure up, if I’ve got to try? This is not a passage about trying. This is a passage about learning how to, not just know that He provided it all but how we access that? How does that become real in me? And there’s such a simplicity to it.
But you’ve got somebody that really is under the control of their old nature, and I’m lacking something…okay, God, here’s what I need. Is that what the Lord’s looking for? He’s looking for a heart that says, yeah, not only am I in need, but I’m on board with what You want. It’s not about my earthly desires. It’s about Your heart and Your purpose and Your desires. That’s what I want, Lord.
You see how easily the barrier comes. But if you come along to God, and say, God, I’ve been doing good lately. I thank You that I’m not like other men.
( laughing ).
And, you list off all the stuff you do. What’s God gonna do to you? He’s gonna resist you, isn’t He? He’s not interested in you coming to Him in pride.
So, coming and asking is at the heart of all of this, but Lord, are we so corrupted by our own ways and our own ideas that we get in the way? And, there’s God longing to give us all that He has provided, and we are blocking the way.
We are either not coming to Him out of ignorance in many cases…I think ignorance is a lot of it. We’re not conscious enough of how much it’s true that we can’t do anything without Him. We can’t be the kind of people He wants us to be unless we come to Him and have that moment-to-moment attitude.
It’s not like there are magic words. I think there’s something real in saying, oh God, help me, whenever we feel the need, but those aren’t magic words. If they come from a heart that says, oh God, I’m running into something right now and my attitude wants to be wrong. My motivation wants to be wrong.
Something is not right in here with respect to the situation I’m in…and I’m aware of it, Lord, and I see where I go wrong here. This gets me over and over again. I have a need here. Oh God, I come to You as one who cannot help himself. I’m not coming because I deserve to come. I’m coming because I’m in genuine need, Lord.
I don’t think there’s a person here who’s served the Lord any length of time that doesn’t know, can’t identify with what I said about coming to God when we’ve made a mess. What about the need that got us in that mess? You think maybe we need to have a greater sense, every moment?
It doesn’t have to be some issue that’s in our face. We can still have that attitude. Lord, I’m not here to do my thing. I can’t live this life, but I know that You love me. I know You’ve given everything so that I can have this other life. But Lord, I just present it to You this day and say, live in me.
Help me with the things that You know are coming. Help me to be the kind of person, to ‘be’ the kind of person You want me to be, not to do the right stuff, but to have it in here…to love, to seek unity, to seek harmony, to seek the welfare of others, to praise You, just to have a peace in here.
What a witness that is, when there’s a genuine rest. How can you have that? I’m gonna be proud? No, we’re gonna have to put all that aside. There are no grounds for that. There are no grounds for anyone of us to lift ourselves above the others and say, I’ve got it, I’ve got it. Look up at me. You look up at Jesus. He gave himself for everyone here. Praise God!
Think of the things that Paul sought. You know, Paul was a man who was in danger, many times. He enumerates some of the things that he’d gone through, the beatings, the imprisonments, the deprivation, all the stuff that he was called to go through to do the job that God had given him to do, and he did it with a will to serve and please God.
But when it came down to it, what was the thing that drove Paul to reach out to God? What was it that caused him to say, oh God, help me? Was it, oh God, get the beating off of me, get me out of jail, get me out of…was it that, or was it, Lord, I want to know You?
I want to know the power of Your resurrection, the fellowship of Your sufferings, conformable unto Your death. God, I see past, I see past just the knowledge. I see past the wisdom. I’ve got the understanding of what this is about and where it’s going. God, I’m in—I’m all in. That’s what my prayer is about. Oh God, I want to press through!
You think of David…even the Old Testament before a lot of this was laid out for us like it is in the New after Jesus came…David was in a lot of places of real problem, wasn’t he? He was running for his life for years and years. He always had people that were against him. Things looked pretty rough at times, and he’d cry out, oh, help me, Lord! My enemies are about to close in.
There’s nothing wrong with that! But yet, David found the heart to pray for other stuff. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” (KJV). “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me…see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
You see, David was not simply looking for answers to his natural problems. He was looking for the heart things that he knew he needed, because he was a man after God’s own heart.
Are you? Am I? Do you see that God is looking for a response, from every one of us, a greater awareness of our need? What do we do with that? Do we hold back and say, oh, He wouldn’t do something for somebody like me? Look at me. That’s the very one He’s looking to do it for. If you’re in need, we have that throne of grace. That’s when we come is when we’re in need.
But oh, the missing piece so many times is simply, we don’t come to Him and say, oh God, help me. And of course, you have to throw this in, because it gets down to the understanding of how God answers our prayers sometimes.
Now, we all know, and we will all…anybody who’s been here any length of time will snicker at this. But how do you get patience? See, I told you. We know that patience comes from tribulation or trouble. It comes from, literally, having to go through something that calls for something we don’t have, that causes us to reach up and say, oh God, give me the strength right now to endure. I do not have it within me, but You have promised it to me. And so, I am looking to you, and God will form something in you through that that could not happen any other way.
But that’s true for every Christian virtue. They come from the experience of life in a broken world that causes us to have to cry out and say, oh God, I’m in need. Lord, I see the lack that I have right now. I see this part of me that wants to rise up and react in a certain way, and I know that’s not You! But Lord, I’m coming to You. Make me the kind of person who looks to You all the time. Strengthen that part of me that keeps getting in that weak place, so that I don’t make the mess to start with, and then help me not to get proud.
Oh, there’s so much that He’s got to work on. Do you have any idea what kind of people we’re gonna be over there and what He’s got to…all the stuff He’s got to do? Man, only God can do it. I’m glad. I freely give Him the job. I learned a long time ago.
And you know, Paul, didn’t he learn the hard way? He tried so hard in Romans 7 to serve God and discovered the problem. Ah ha! As long…as long as we’re in these bodies, there’s a law operating down here that keeps me, makes it impossible for me to please God. Who’s gonna set me free?
What was the answer? It was a new life. It was a new spirit. It was a new heart that only God can bring. I’ve got to have a power that doesn’t originate in me. And to use that power, I’ve got to operate…to do what He wants, it’s got to be in harmony with Him.
Do you think there’s a God who will answer that kind of heart that reaches out to Him? That’s what He says here. Come near to God, and He’ll come near to you. You stay away, and you just keep doing your own thing, and God will sit there and watch you until you get tired of it. And He’s doing it because He loves you and wants you to come. He’s looking for a response. We cannot be what He has designed us to be without responding.
I’m gonna say this to people that don’t know Him. Has God talked to your heart? Has He made these truths real? Has He pressed them upon your heart that you cannot succeed in this life? You’re gonna have to know Him! It’s not about this world. It’s about His purpose and His Kingdom.
What have you done about it? Are you waiting for God to just pick you up and dump you in the Kingdom? God is looking for you to call upon Him, to seek Him from your heart! He will answer! But it’s those who call upon Him.
See, the problem with Israel, so many over all the centuries, God said, I called, but you didn’t answer. God is looking for a heart that responds to His grace. Don’t worry. He’ll give you everything you need, but you’re gonna have to say, yes, I’m in—I’m all in.
You don’t have to wait. If you don’t know Him, you can call upon Him right now from the depths of your heart. You call upon Him to save you, He will! But it’s got to be from the heart, it’s got to be with your whole heart.
Do we have any reason to think that God will hear the cry of people like us? You think? That’s what it’s all about! I mean, look at scriptures that we know about. Luke 11 certainly comes to mind. This is where we have the so-called Lord’s Prayer, and I won’t read all of it.
But then, He has the parable of the three loaves, and this is the guy who’s got a man come to him in his journey, and he doesn’t have any food for him. He’s got a rich neighbor. He goes to him, and he begs him! He knocks on the door at midnight! It’s a bad time.
And the guy puts him off and puts him off, and he sits there, and he keeps right on knocking. I’m knocking. I’m in need. What is the Lord trying to tell us there? That the asking is not necessarily just a…all right, I asked Him, He didn’t answer. There’s a persistence. This is, God, this is my only hope. My hope is…I’m all in, Lord. I’m not looking anywhere else. I have a need. You are the only One that can give me that need. I’m gonna stay upon that until You answer.
There’s something that does to us. It’s not that God’s reluctant. It’s what He wants to form in us by the very act of that kind of faith, that kind of persistence. And so, that’s what He’s getting at here.
It says, eventually, “…because of the man’s boldness he will get up…” this neighbor, “…will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you: Ask…” (NIV). And, what about the paraphrase we’ve heard so many times? Ask, and keep on asking. Seek, and keep on seeking. Knock, and keep on knocking, and the door will be opened.
“For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
You have not because…you ask not. Don’t let the Devil talk you out of asking of God the things that He has promised to give us! That’s what it’s all about.
Listen to how Paul prayed. A familiar passage in Ephesians chapter 3, I believe it is, the one I’m thinking of. There are so many things you could bring into this, but that’s not necessary. But Paul has been expounding the what, the how and the why throughout this whole passage. He talks about God’s eternal purpose, and then he says, verse 14, “For this reason I kneel before the Father….”
So, Paul, at this point, Paul’s praying for them, because they don’t know enough to pray for themselves. But God wants you and me, every one of us, to get this so we can say, oh, that’s what I need to be praying. This is my need. This is the missing piece. I can’t just sit there and come to church and expect everything to happen and be like it’s supposed to be. God wants me actively engaged and saying, oh God, I need You every hour. I sense this need in my heart. It’s not just my circumstances, it’s my heart. Lord, I can’t get it right, but You promised. I need You, Lord. That’s what it’s about.
“…I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your…” Circumstances? “…In your inner being.” That’s the crux of the matter. That’s seeking first His Kingdom and righteousness. He’ll take care of the other stuff. All right?
“…In your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Is this just for a special few, or does God want every one of us to begin to tap into what He’s given to us?
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!”
You know, Romans 8 talks about His purpose and the fact that everything works together to help fulfill that purpose. His purpose is to make us like His Son, but what does He say there? “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (KJV).
You have not because you ask not. Where do you start? Well, you start at the same place Brother Thomas used to say…where you’re at, with what you have, and where you’re not, with what you don’t have. We don’t have to do all this in one day. It’s a lifestyle of recognizing our need of God, what His purpose is, how we participate in that.
God, I need You. There’s something going on in my heart right now. I know this is not from You. I can’t fix it, Lord. But I’m asking. But I’m not just asking as though, oh God, You’re not gonna listen to somebody like me. I’m not measuring up. You’re gonna answer because I’m in need, and I’m coming to the One who’s able to answer that need.
You think this is the missing piece for any of us? Yeah. God longs to share everything. The problem’s not on His side. But He knows how the whole thing works, knows what He’s trying to do, and He is looking for people who come to Him with all of their hearts. If we seek Him, search for Him, we’ll find Him, when? When we search for Him with all of our hearts.
You see what God’s after? God will take us through things and past things that have been issues all of our whole lives. He can heal. He can change. He can do whatever is needed! But we’re gonna have to come to Him with that attitude. Oh God, I’m humbling myself. This is not groveling. This is not acting humble. This is genuinely…God, this is where I’m at. I don’t have to pretend this. I am weak. It’s the truth. And I’m just coming to You on that ground, but I’m also coming because You have invited me to come, and I know that You’re just longing to step in, and answer my prayer.
And so, I’m gonna believe You. I’m gonna step out in faith and believe that You’re gonna help me right in my present situation. And if there’s a time element involved, so be it. I’m just gonna keep that same posture before You every moment, every issue, every day, all day, 24/7, so forth.
I’m all in, Lord…but I need You, and I’m not gonna sit here and expect things to magically happen, because I believe in what You’ve told me. This is how it works. This is the wisdom of God that he wants us to actively reach out and take what He given to us for His purposes and His glory. Let’s bring Him the glory that He deserves. Praise God!
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July 19, 2020 - No. 1450
“The Missing Piece” Part One
Broadcast #1450
July 19, 2020
July 19, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1450 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I feel like if I had to title this this morning, I would say, “The Missing Piece.” Because I believe, for many of us, the thought, the simple thought that I really am gonna get to is really the missing piece, when it comes to translating what we know into real life.
Now, I wish I could say that it’s a matter of picking up and plopping it in and it’s done. It doesn’t work that way, in the Kingdom of God, if we have the ‘understanding’ part right. But nonetheless, I believe God wants us to know, in a deeper way, how He means for this wonderful privilege we have of standing in the finished work of Christ…how does that work out, in our everyday life? Okay?
Now, I’ll turn to the Book of James, and again, by way of introduction, James talks in chapter 3 about two kinds of wisdom. Now, there is a wisdom, of course, we know, that comes from God. There’s a wisdom that comes from the world. All right, so what’s the difference? How do the two wisdoms work out?
“Who is wise…,” verse 13. “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life…” (NIV). Now, do you see where the ‘how’ comes in? This isn’t simply wisdom that’s out here in the ether waves somewhere. This is actually, again, translating what we know into real living. So, if you’re really wise, let’s see it.
“Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such…” quote, “…wisdom does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.” That’s pretty plain language, isn’t it?
“For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.”
Now, I wonder how many here could say that that list characterizes your life, 24/7. There’s never a hint of unrest and anxiety and all the things that come from this world. No, we’re not there, are we? And so, he goes on and he expounds upon the bad side of this, those who are really walking according to worldly wisdom. And, this is what he wants to get to.
“What causes fights and quarrels among you?” I mean, you know, we know that all it takes for it to have a fight is two people. That’s simply human nature. We are so self-absorbed that all we care about, ultimately, is our own welfare and if that comes into conflict with somebody else, well, you’re gonna have a fight, because they’re the same way as you are.
So, what you have here are Christians, but yet they are still living almost like they’re people of the world. Didn’t Paul say that? Yeah, in 1st Corinthians he said, I wanted to write to you like you were spiritual…but you’re still carnal. You’re still walking and live like men. So, I’m gonna have to talk to you on that level. We’re gonna get there, but right now, this is where you’re at.
This is where most of us are, more than we’d like to admit. We talk about the things of the Spirit, but too much we walk in the flesh. Now, the flesh is a way of talking about our old nature. And we respond and we act in harmony more with it than we do with the Spirit of God.
Now, you can…the thing is, if you’re just a part of the world, you’ve never been born of God’s Spirit, that’s all you’ve got. Now, you can take on religion and act like that’s not the case, but God’s looking at the heart. God is not looking for actors, in that sense. He’s looking for people who come to a real knowledge of the truth, and the truth is that you’re not fit for heaven. And God has the only answer and that’s the person of Jesus Christ!
There is another life that will ultimately replace this one that needs, basically, to be put to death. That’s what salvation is about. It’s putting one life to death so that another one can grow up and take charge. So, when the end product is finished—when there is an end product…I’m redundant all over again, here again! When we come to that end product, that’s all that’ll be left. There won’t be any of this old nature. It’ll just be that beautiful nature that comes from God Himself, and what he’s just described as the fruit of that.
See, it’s fruit. It’s something that doesn’t have to be manufactured. You don’t have to try to be something. How many of you are tired of trying to be a Christian? Yeah! That’s not what it’s about. It’s not trying, it’s trusting. I believe God wants to bring us to that place where we understand that His burden is not heavy. God has not called us to try to be something that we are not. He has called us to take on something that is real. But how does that happen? How does that work?
Okay, so now he’s going back to the reality of what he’s dealing with with people who are Christians and yet, they’re still walking very much, too much, in the flesh. “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.” Now, if you ever run into somebody that this applies to, you’ll know how to tell them, right?
( laughter ).
Okay? But, here’s the key. Here’s the scripture that just came to me over and over again this week. And it was very personal. It wasn’t just for you. “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” Is anybody here that there’s something you’ve really…you’re in a place in your life, you need something and you don’t have it, that apply to anybody here? Okay?
“When you ask….” See, here’s another dimension to this. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people….” Now, you know what adultery is. You’re married to somebody but you’re off having a fling with somebody that you’re not married to. You’re violating the relationship that you promised you would uphold.
“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?” Boy, how plain can that language be? You know, we’ve said over and over again, in other messages, what a radical choice it is to follow Jesus. And I appreciate so much the service we heard Wednesday night.
We had an unusual service. We listened to Pastor Cymbala again. It was wonderful. And I appreciate so much how he emphasized, at the end, when he was calling people to come and to really make that commitment, he kept using the expression that we know from our culture, ‘all in.’ I’m not calling you to come and just take on some religion, add Jesus to your life and go on. This is an ‘all in’ thing. You are either 100 percent with Him, standing against what the world stands for, or you are with the world 100 percent.
Now, you may think you’re on the fence. There’s no place on that fence to sit. Of course, he used the example of Pilot, who tried very much to straddle the fence and…I mean, he knew he kind of had to go along with the people to stop a riot, but he really wasn’t on board with what they were trying to do, but the fact is, he was…because he gave in, didn’t he?
I’ll tell you, God is looking for people who are ‘all in.’ Are you? It’s a good question, isn’t it? I believe…I pray that God will take that simple truth and burn it into your heart if you don’t know Him! Do you have any idea the danger you’re in? You cannot mix your earthly desires and ambitions with the call of God to leave that and come and follow Jesus! There is no middle ground!
“…Friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses…” notice this word, “…who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace.” Thank God!
Oh, how do we escape such a fate here? It’s divine grace that reaches down and fills…I mean, it becomes our enabling power. It becomes everything. That’s God coming on the scene and lifting us out when we could never do it.
“That is why Scripture says: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
Somebody who’s double-minded…you know, you want this on Sunday and you want the other the rest of the week. Or you say you want that on Sunday. Do you? Where’s your heart? “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
Now, one of the key things that strikes me as I read this…think about the players. Here are you, and here’s God. Now, is God reluctant to give us the things that we need? Is there any problem on His side? Here’s a God who loves us beyond our power to imagine. He knows that without Him we truly can do nothing and yet, in so many instances, in this passage, you have a case where there’s God and here’s you in desperate need, and you’re staying that way and He’s just standing there doing this.
Now, what is it that He’s waiting for? Is He waiting for us to get worthy? See, that’s the point. We can’t. We’re gonna have to come to Him…we’d be proud. He’s saying, resist the proud. If we could do that…so, there’s a principle that’s involved here.
You know, a lot of…this is something we’ve brought up, in the past. But, there are a lot of folks who emphasize the sovereignty of God, almost to the exclusion of man really having a choice in the matter and God just almost, arbitrarily picks people and puts them in the Kingdom and sends the rest to another place.
And I thank God for the sovereignty of God! God is in charge. The question is how does He use that sovereignty? And of course, you have people on the other side of the ledger who, they’re all about the will of man. You’ve got to choose. You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do that. But yet, preaching in such a way that it’s almost like, I’ve got to find the ability somewhere down in here. I’ve got to muster it up. I’ve got to work it up. I’ve got to do something to somehow get His attention.
There is a divine-human partnership in what God is doing in every one of us. And there is…the missing piece that I believe many of us, in so many individual, unique ways…the piece that we’re missing is in this area. Why is there something that you need today that you don’t have? Why? What does the scripture say? “You do not have, because you do not ask God.”
When we think about asking God, we are so prone, as human beings, to think in very earthly terms. I’m glad that God cares about earthly matters. He’s told us, with respect to our needs, He’s faithful. But you know, how often is most of our praying, an awful lot of it anyway, it has to do with, oh God, I’ve got bills I can’t pay. God, I’m sick. God, I’m…there’s this circumstance. Fix that person that annoys me. And so much of our asking has to do with these kinds of things.
But what did Jesus say in Matthew chapter 6? In the first place, He gave us a very clear, admonition about seeking earthly wealth, for example, because He was talking to people, and in the presence of people who just worshipped money. I mean, when it came right down to it, they loved money more than they loved God. And He says, you can’t do that. You, “…cannot serve God and mammon.” (KJV). Or money.
And then He talks about the needs that we experience. And I think many of the people probably lived a very subsistent living, existence. They were…I mean, daily food was probably an issue. The simple things of life, the needs that we have…and He talks about how He takes care of the birds. Don’t you think God cares? Don’t you think He knows? Aren’t you worth more than a bunch of birds? And God takes care of them. Look at the lilies. They don’t put forth any effort and yet God adorns them with such amazing beauty. Don’t you get it? God cares!
But what did He tell them to seek? He said this is what the world is after. This is all they’re focused on, is life here and our needs here. But says, I want you to focus on something else. I want you to seek first My Kingdom, and My righteousness, and all these things will be added to you, as well. God will take care of the things that you truly need in the world. This isn’t about prosperity. This is about God’s place for you, in the world.
And so, the focus is not on this world, but on the character that God is seeking to form in us. That’s what we need to be consciously asking God for. This needs to be the heart of our prayer. Oh, God, help me!
Now, here’s where we…here’s how we apply that, many times. We’re bopping along, living our lives, doing everyday stuff. And all of a sudden, we make a mess. I mean, spiritually. You understand what I’m talking about. We mess up, and we make a mess. Oh, God, help me in my mess! Oh, God, forgive me and…whatever we go through to…oh, God, I’m sorry, I did it again! Oh, God.
Do you know when we needed to be praying and how we needed to be living? Before we got in the mess. Because, the reality is, we may profess that we believe what Jesus said in John 15 that, without Him we can do…
( congregational response ).
Nothing. But we still think we can do stuff. The ordinary, everyday stuff…it’s not about the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. It’s not the outward things that we can…we do, we can function, in one sense, in the world. It’s the character!
See, the people that James was talking about, they were ‘doing’ the everyday stuff, but on the inside, they had all kinds of characteristics that sprung from the earthly wisdom and the old nature. This is where I need help.
And if I would focus more on that, and realize I can’t just bop through my day and just float and count on…oh, Jesus, help me today and then forget about Him and go through my day. I need Him.
How many of you have been in those places where you thought you were just coasting along, everything was fine? But all of a sudden, the Devil used your weaknesses to maneuver you into just the right place, and here we are again.
I believe with all my heart, God wants to teach us the truth behind the song that we sing, “I Need Thee Every Hour.” The Christian life is not about what we ‘do,’ it’s what we ‘are.’ If we get what we ‘are’ right, the other will happen, because it’s not the product of manufacturing that God is looking for. He’s not looking for manufactured results, He’s looking for fruit.
Fruit just grows. Fruit is an organic process. It automatically comes from a certain kind of life. You don’t have to manufacture pears and apples. You grow them under the right conditions and they are produced, naturally. There is fruit that God longs to bring forth in greater abundance in every single life here, starting with mine. Greater victory, greater experience of what we say we believe. But I believe with all my heart, God is looking for a heart that reaches out.
Do you notice, “You do not have, because you do not ask God”? (NIV). Well, what’s God supposed to do, just step in and give it to you anyway? No! There is a response, there’s something He’s looking for from us. He says, “Submit yourselves, then, to God.” He says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
Well, if you don’t come near to God…do you see what God is looking for? And we’re bad to project human characteristics onto God. Okay, it’s an ego trip. He’s peeved at me. His feelings are hurt because I won’t come around. No! He knows what it means for us to express faith. That’s what it is. We don’t come based upon our personal qualifications. We come based upon our faith in His power and the life that He’s put within us.
But we also come with a sense of why we need to come. I need to come because I have no other resource! I cannot do this. He has called me to a life that is impossible unless He lives it in me. And so, there’s this constant need for Him to have freedom to change me and to live in me. I can’t just muddle through and think I’m doing okay.
You might be accomplishing a lot of things, outwardly. Everybody might look on and say, there they are, they’re successful. But they don’t know what’s going on in here. But, you see, you do, if you have any discernment at all.
But here’s the other side of that. How much do we just mindlessly go along thinking we’re living out the life of Christ and we’re not really? We’re just living out natural…a natural existence.
We come to…you know, here’s an illustration. I will bet that if we ask any one of you to stand up here and talk to the people, maybe give a testimony, maybe open a scripture and read it, do you think you might say, oh, God, I need you?
Or, if you’re asked to do anything that’s spiritual, that’s…you know, we tend to break life into the spiritual stuff and the ordinary stuff and we think just living out our life and not doing anything really stupid is okay.
But think about the life of Jesus. Again, how did He do what He did? Do you think there was this difference between, okay, Father, I know You’re there, thank God, overshadow Me. But I’m doing carpentry today, that’s just ordinary. I can handle this.
Do you see the problem? We think we can handle stuff. We think, based upon the stuff we know, that we can take that knowledge and translate it into godly living. And as long as we don’t steal and rob and do something really bad and really stupid, we’re okay. Is that what the Lord wants? No.
Are we really, if we’re doing that, are we really living out the life of Christ? No, we’re not. We’re just living out a religious façade. And God wants every one of us that knows Him to be real. And so, Jesus lived His entire life dependent upon His Father.
We’re told in Hebrews, in one place, that He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit. You notice the agency. Notice how He did what He did. See, we’re talking about the ‘how.’ How did Jesus do what He did? He offered Himself, without spot…sinless…without spot to God, by the eternal Spirit.
But I don’t need that, I’m good. You see the problem. Jesus knew how it worked. He knew if He was gonna produce the kind of fruit that God was looking for, not just what looked good to men — He knew if He were gonna produce the kind of fruit that God was looking for, it was gonna have to be done supernaturally. He was gonna have to depend moment by moment upon His heavenly Father.
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July 12, 2020 - No. 1449
“Dealing With Depression” Conclusion
Broadcast #1449
July 12, 2020
July 12, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1449 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: There are so many facets to this. I mean, you could go on and on and on, and I don’t want to go on and on and on. But I want the Lord to make this real to us, so that we can see…some of the characteristics of this. The self-centeredness is the first thing. But notice when he comes to this place where, all of a sudden, it seems like everything is crashing down. All he can see is the negative and he begins to focus on that.
Of course, fear is right there at the top of the list, isn’t it? I’ll tell you, fear is a real thing. It’s a real tool of the enemy. Paul talks about the spirit of fear. He was warning his young protégé, Timothy, about this problem, knowing, from his own experience, that he was going to be experiencing things that would make him afraid.
And he says, God has, “…not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and…” self-control. (KJV). I love that song they used in VBS last year. “Fear Is a Liar.” You know, most of the time, the things we’re afraid of never happen, anyway. But even if there’s something that’s real, that would cause us to fear…you know, we’re right back to what we talked about a few weeks ago when it’s facts versus faith, or faith versus facts.
I’ll tell you, there’s one thing that triumphs over all of the world’s facts, and that’s God’s purpose, God’s faith, trust in Him and all of that. God is greater than anything that could happen to you and me, because what happens is, the Devil will cause us to be focused on us and our needs…and our interests and all of that, and then cause us to feel like, I’m afraid, something bad is gonna happen, this and that is going to be happening. It could be whatever it is.
And that becomes the controlling, dictating influence in our lives. And all of a sudden, God and His purposes and God and His power have no bearing on the situation. And we are just controlled by that, and we react and we act.
That’s what he did—that’s what he did. God deliver us from allowing ourselves to be controlled by fear. It doesn’t mean you’ll never feel fear. If you’re telling me you never feel fear, you’re a liar. You’re the liar! But I’ll tell you, fear and the things that happen in this world do not dictate our well-being. They do not dictate who we are. They do not dictate what God has purposed.
If someone marches in here and machine-guns every one of us down, I’ll tell you, if you know the Lord, man, that is a one-way trip out of here! Now, that doesn’t mean we say, well, bring it on! You know, we want God’s purpose in God’s time. But I’ll tell you, we cannot lose.
“For to me…” Paul said, “…to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (NIV). How can you lose in that equation?
But oh, I’ll tell you, life has a way of suddenly descending on us and we get down into this self-absorbed mode, and suddenly we’re paralyzed.
Well, you know, when you feel that way and you’re wallowing in self-pity and fear and all of that, don’t you just love to run to parties and have a…no, what we want to do, by nature, is to go hide, to be alone. We don’t want to be with people.
Do you see a design in that, an evil design? Here God has designed us, by nature, for relationship, first of all, with Him, but with one another. And there are times in every one of our lives when we are in a weak, vulnerable place. God allows us to go, “…through the valley of the shadow of death…” sometimes. (KJV). We go through a river, though we are not drowned, we go through a fire, though we are not burned, but still, it has an emotional, it can have an emotional impact upon us.
I’ll tell you, if the Devil has brought you into a place where you are just consumed with negative thoughts, you need fellowship. You don’t need to walk around and pretend everything’s okay and then go hide in your closet again. You need to reach out.
We need to have a compassion one for another and not a critical spirit. We need to have a heart that says I’ve been there! I know what you’re feeling. Let’s stand together in this. God is on His throne. Nothing is out of His control. You need help.
But what did Elijah do? Servant, you stay here. I’m gonna go have a pity party in the desert, tell God how bad it is and just take my life. He went off by himself. God, do we need…we need to wake up and realize the Devil’s design in this. Love one another, reach out to one another. Be honest. If you’ve got a need, tell us. There’s no shame in honesty. We need to be able to stand one for another in this kind of a world. We need one another. We need the Lord!
God has designed us that way. That’s why the scriptures say, they tell us, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together…and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” What’s the purpose of that? So we can go through a form? No, it’s so that we can encourage one another, so that we can draw strength from one another and from Him.
So, there he goes. He’s out there, but he’s just sort of wallowing in his own self-pity. Do you see just a bit of pride in some of this, though? I’ve done all this. I don’t get this. I didn’t do anything to deserve what’s happened. I’ve been zealous. I’ve done…oh, God! If we have done anything, He’s the Doer. If you did it, it’s probably worthless, if that’s all it is. But Jesus, if He comes and He uses us, praise God, it’s Him, and His purposes do not fail.
Here he is looking at the circumstances and looking at the results. My God! If Jesus had looked at the results of His ministry, in terms of how many good, dedicated, true followers He had, man, He’d have given up and said, I’m going back to heaven. This ain’t working. But He had a revelation to know that, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never…” cast out. (NIV).
What a difference the perspective of truth makes! I’ll tell you, we need to lay down our pride and anything that we have that gets in the way. There are so many aspects…praise God! I’m gonna jump ahead. I don’t have this lined out, which is probably a good thing, in this case. But I’ll tell you, we just need the Lord, don’t we?
I’m trying to think what other thoughts that I especially wanted to emphasize. Well, I’ll tell you one of them. It came to me very plainly. It’s simply this. When we are busy wallowing, if you want to put it that way, when we are busy just focusing in such…the kind of thoughts that bring us into a depressed state, are we not simply meditating upon lies?
Think about what we’re doing. Would you be liable to sit there and say, oh no, they really did that to me, or this really happened, or this is the case…I’m sick, I’m dying, I’ve got this problem, I’ve got that problem, my bank account is empty. Those are facts! Don’t tell me they’re lies!
I’ll tell you what the lie is. The lie is not the fact itself. The lie is the Devil’s interpretation of that. That’s where the lie comes in. When we see a circumstance and the Devil tells us, that wouldn’t have happened if God really liked you. Or, if God was on His throne, why did He let this happen? You see the problem?
We sang a song, just a little bit ago, about desiring that the Lord would help us to see everything through His eyes, see our whole lives through His eyes. You see that? Do you think Jesus just went through a little bit? Yeah, but He saw it in terms of the purpose of God that went far beyond this world. He saw everything that happened to Him in those…in that light.
My God, did He have stuff that He could have been depressed about if He’d been of a mind to do it. If He’d listened to the voice of the enemy…You’re wasting Your time Jesus! They’re not listening to You. They have ulterior motives. Listen to these religious people. They’ve studied the Bible all their lives and they don’t get You at all. You’re wasting Your time with these people.
Of course, the Devil’s never told you any negative stuff about you, right? And here’s the problem, sometimes, in dealing with this. It’s far too easy to deal with it on a level that’s kind of superficial, way up here, when many times the need is way down here. If we come in, and we ‘do’ come to the Lord, with a history, we have learned from our experience in this life.
And not all of what we’ve learned is good. Some people have come out of terrible situations in homes. They’ve experienced abuse. They’ve experienced rejection. They’ve experienced a thousand and one things, that have totally colored their lives. They’ve been hurt badly by somebody and that wound is still way down here.
God, we need a Gospel that can get down into the depths of our beings and heal the brokenhearted. Can Jesus do that? Yes! But I’ll tell you, there are people who are carrying those kinds of burdens and you don’t just…you just don’t paint over it with a proof text. What’s the matter with you? Here’s what the Bible says. What’s the matter with you?
It doesn’t happen that easily. We need God to minister that truth in such a way that it gets down to where the need is and displaces the lie so that we can stand in truth, and that becomes the governing influence in our lives. It’s what God said and not what the devil said.
( congregational amens ).
God, help us to have compassion on one another and realize where we’re coming from, and the fact that this is a process. It’s wonderful to uphold truth, but there comes a time we’re gonna have to say, oh God, I need that truth moved from here [head] to here [heart]. You’re the only One who knows how to do that.
A lot of times, God’s gonna have to take us through difficult circumstances, so that we are willing to bring out this. Oh, how do we deal with pain? If there’s pain down in here, how do you deal with it, typically? Cover it up, deny it, pretend it isn’t there, put on a happy face.
Does that solve your problem? No, it doesn’t. It just makes it worse. And you wonder why we struggle. God wants us to come to Him as we are, with all that’s wrong, and say, Lord, You see, You see this wound. Lord, I bring it out into the light. I need You to help me to see it through Your eyes. You can help me to have compassion on the one who caused the wound, to see past what happened and not think of it so much in self-centered terms. You can heal that, Lord.
How much of this thing that we call depression is just beginning to wallow back into pain? And you wonder why you see people try to medicate their pain, with alcohol and with drugs and with something, anything to feel…to not feel that, to escape it, just for a little bit.
And then the Devil’s there pulling the strings and he’s saying, yeah, but your real solution is, you just need to leave this. Your pain is just too great. You’re worthless. You’re this, you’re that. Whatever it is that takes us down into that realm.
But what are we doing if we are just sitting there thinking about all that? Are we not just meditating on lies? What’s the fruit of meditating on lies, if it doesn’t just reinforce all that the devil has planted in there? You’re just like pouring fertilizer and water on the devil’s plantings.
You think maybe we just need to come to the Lord and meditate on His truth, and just seek Him and say, God, You’re the only One that can deal with this? Come in and replace it.
So, here’s this guy, and we talked about his pride, we talked…and I’m sure he felt some of these things. I mean, some of this goes beyond exactly what he expresses here. But you know, one of the things that I’m sure he felt was failure. Lord, I failed here. I did all these things. I did it for You, and I failed.
Anybody here ever have that kind of a feeling? No matter how hard I try, I’m just always coming short. I’m always failing. Oh, God! Oh, poor me! Oh…down into the depths you sink. God wants to bring us up out of that pity party junk.
First place, he didn’t fail. He did exactly what the Lord wanted him to. But suppose we do. Did He not provide for all of our needs, at the Cross? Is there any failure for which Christ has not died? If that’s really the case, can we not say, oh, Lord, I come to You?
But part of the problem here was that he had gotten so zoned in on the current state of things and the condition, running back to Sinai, trying to find an answer. And when the Lord finally spoke to him, I’m not gonna get into all the details of that. You remember the wind and the fire and the earthquake and all of that stuff? I’m sure that’s probably what he was looking for, in one sense. But somehow, he recognized when the Lord spoke in a gentle whisper.
Little lesson in that…don’t go looking for God to do the same thing…to do things the same way every time. I don’t care if you go back and say, this is how He did it so that’s how He’s gonna do it. No, this is a different circumstance, and He just came with a gentle whisper.
I’m so glad the Lord didn’t come and say, what’s the matter with you? He did ask him. He said, what are you doing here? And he goes through his spiel again. All this stuff I’ve done, and it’s worthless and I’m the only one left. Now they’re trying to kill me.
And so, the Lord gives him instructions, doesn’t He? That’s one of the answers, to all of this, is that God, get us out of this self-absorption! In the first place, My plan has not failed. The situation is not hopeless as you are sitting here emotionally thinking it is. I’ve wasted my time. The situation is hopeless. There’s nothing left to live for.
Baloney! God is still on His throne! We know that this world is gonna go down, and most of it is gonna go into the fire when it’s over, but God is gonna save every one of His and He’s gonna bring every one of His back, all the way to glory, at the end! You know, the writer to the Hebrews talks about the hope that He’s planted within us as being, “…an anchor for the soul…” I need an anchor, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
Why would a ship need an anchor if everything is calm and peaceful and wonderful? It wouldn’t, would it? But I’ll tell you, in spite of the winds that blow in your life and in mine, if you’ve got a hope that goes beyond what you can do, and the circumstances in which you find yourself, then you’ve got something that’s gonna hold when those times come.
You know, one of the things that, I’m sure plays into this and I know that it plays into depression, in a general sense, is this: it’s false expectations! This is what I expected to happen. This is what the Christian life is supposed to be like, and it’s not. And I feel bad and I don’t have this joy that we’re supposed to have. I don’t feel the emotions that I’m supposed…oh, this was supposed to be wonderful and I’m going through a dark time.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.” Are you gonna argue with Him? Now, thankfully, He said, don’t be afraid, I’ve overcome the world. Don’t be dismayed…I forget the exact words. “I have overcome the world.”
Folks, if you’re looking for a smooth path, you’re looking in the wrong place. It’s not in the world, for sure. But if you’re gonna align yourself…allow yourself to be aligned with Jesus Christ, you’re gonna have some dark times. You’re gonna have some challenging times. You’re gonna have times when the Devil will do everything in his power to plant and water that lie, that’s down in here, that’s causing you to be brought down into that low place.
I’ll tell you, we need the truth of God in that hour. We need to exercise ourselves and lift up our hearts and look to Him.
But you know, here’s the other thing that really has come to me over and over again, in different ways, lately. And I said it last week. You could talk about a subject like this, very easily, and list all the ways that fear, that depression comes, all the things that cause it, all of its symptoms. And then you could say, all right now, here’s how you deal with that, and list off all the things that we’re supposed to do to counter that. And every one of them might be true. But that leaves out one extraordinarily, important, critical ingredient. How do I do that?
You know, a psychiatrist could tell you that. Of course, he’ll give you a drug, too. But, a psychiatrist could say, well, here are some steps you could take. Do this and do that and put on a happy face and act different and it’ll all go away. This isn’t about just coming into an equilibrium of emotions and all of that. There’s something deeper God wants to do.
And what He is seeking to do is not simply to rearrange our lives so that they are happy and profitable and spiritual and all that. It’s to live His life in us. There is a ‘putting to death’ of self that His life might come forth in us.
And what I said last week applies so much. Boy, do I need it. Everything God asks of us, everything He instructs us to do, He provides the resources to do it! So, everything we’re talking about this morning that is a needed antidote to falling into this state called depression is something for which we not only do what we know to do, we give Him thanks, we praise Him…we talk about the Word and we meditate on it, but we’re gonna have to always do that with this sense, God, I can’t do this in myself. You do it in me. But this is a real issue, is it not?
( congregational amens ).
But I’ll tell you, we have a real God, who has real answers to your need, wherever you’re at. There’s no way to cover all the stuff you could cover. But I’ll tell you, your answer is in Jesus. Your answer is in the truth of God’s Word being ministered deep in your heart. Your answer is in the fellowship of God’s people. Your answer is turning your eyes away from yourself and to God and to others.
And I’ll tell you, God can help us to live in victory over these things that will assault us, if we let them. We don’t have to live that way. God has the answer! And I’ll tell you, to Him be glory in the church throughout all ages! To Him be glory!
Oh God, what would it be like if we had to live in this world and we didn’t have a hope? We might as well go out and do this. There’s no hope here. More and more people are realizing that and they’re taking their lives. But I’ll tell you, God has got us here for this time and for a purpose. Let’s fulfill that purpose and glorify Him. Praise God!
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July 5, 2020 - No. 1448
“Dealing With Depression” Part One
Broadcast #1448
July 5, 2020
July 5, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1448 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I think a lot of times I’m conscious that…messages that I preach paint big picture, teaching kind of things, but you know, we need…and we need that. But we also need messages that get down into the nitty-gritty of life, of real life. And I feel like this is probably one of those. And I’d like to begin with 1st Corinthians, I’m sorry, 1st Kings…a little bit of difference…1st Kings, chapter 17, and I’ll just begin there.
And, this begins the account of one of the most famous Old Testament prophets, and his name was Elijah. He just suddenly appears on the pages of scripture without any real background. We don’t know anything about him other than, Elijah says this, and starts doing that, and all of a sudden, there he is. So, the Lord doesn’t give us a whole lot of background as to where he came from and what he was about as a human being. But boy, does he burst on the scene.
And, you remember what the scene was, that after the kingdom had split, the kingdom of Israel had split into the Northern Kingdom of ten tribes that were called Israel, and the southern two tribes that were called Judah, the Northern Kingdom never did serve God, did they? It was just…they immediately plunged into a condition of wickedness, sinfulness, everything you could think of that was wrong, idolatry…they set up heathen gods, and one king would outdo the next one.
And the king who had taken over this time was the worst of them. His name was Ahab. And he had married a lovely lady from a nearby tribe, nearby nation, called Jezebel, who was a hundred percent devoted to wickedness and idolatry, and you name it, she was guilty of it. And so, this was the condition of the land and of the nation. And so, it was into this context that God sent a man.
You know, I wonder…when you think about the nation and where we’re at in our world, and where we’re headed…do you think God’s gonna have a people in that time that are gonna stand up for Him, and have something to say?
But there are some lessons in his experience that I believe we need to pay attention to. And just to…not to spend a lot of time on it, but, all of a sudden, this man, this prophet called Elijah goes to Ahab and announces that there will be no rain until I say so.
Whoa! You talk about the power of God over everything and how He commits that power into the lips, through the lips of a man. And so, of course, Elijah didn’t hang around to see what was going on. The Lord told him immediately, go hide yourself. So, he leaves Israel proper and goes across the Jordan and he hides in a ravine. So, this is a real secret hideout. Nobody can find him there.
And, of course, he’s gonna need a little sustenance, so the Lord sends ravens twice a day. Can you imagine living like that? We have a great God, don’t we? So, here’s a man who obviously has natural needs and God’s mindful of that. That’s something we need to remember. And, all of a sudden, there he is, he’s hiding for his life, essentially, and every day ravens come and they give him all that he needs. He’s got a brook there to drink from. And so, that goes on for a period of time, and then, the brook dries up, of course, in a drought.
So then, the Lord says, I’ve got somebody that…I’ve commanded a widow to feed you. Well, the widow, I’m not sure…didn’t know anything about this at the time, but the Lord had it all arranged. And so, he goes over to the kingdom of Sidon, which was over by the seashore, over against the Mediterranean. And I believe, if I’m not mistaken, Jezebel was from there. Talk about the Lord doing something that was kind of ironic!
So there he goes, and he meets this woman and she is picking up sticks to cook her last meal so she and her son can die because of the drought. And the prophet says, all right, go and make me something first. That’s when she tells him the situation. And he says, no, you go and do that and here’s what the Lord says. The meal will not waste. You’ll not run out of what you need until the day that the rain comes.
She says, okay. So, she listened and…anyway he begins to…he begins to live in the home there and the Lord puts her through a trial, but as He often does with those that He is reaching out to, the trial was meant to lead to a blessing. How many of you have been down that road? The Lord put you through something you would not choose, but when you come through it, you realize you’ve learned something about God and you are strengthened in your spirit.
And so, here is the Lord allowing her son to die, to get sick and die. And so, she’s wondering about this God that he supposedly serves and what in the world does He have against me that He’s allowed this? “Did you come to remind me…” she says, “…of my sin and kill my son?” (NIV).
So, he takes the son up to his room, and he entreats the Lord, three different times he lays his body over this little boy and pleads with God to…Lord, give him his life back. And the Lord hears his prayer and answers it. And so, here’s man of God who’s commanding the weather and who raises the dead…I mean, this is a mighty prophet, isn’t it?
And so, he comes to the end of that particular episode and she says, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.” You know, the Lord has a way of making Himself known, doesn’t He? If we’ll listen—if we’ll listen, God will make Himself known.
So anyway, the time comes for him to go back…and I think this was like a period of three years all of this took place. It’s time for him to go back and show himself to Ahab and to make a long story short, he comes and Ahab goes out to meet him, and his greeting to this prophet is, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?”
He said, “I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied. But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.” We’re in the middle of chapter 18, if you’re trying to follow. So anyway…so now, there’s a challenge that’s issued. God is going to make Himself known and make the people responsible for their choices as to who they’re gonna serve.
So, he says, you go and you gather together all of the prophets of Baal, all of these heathen…bring them together. We’re gonna have a little contest here. And it was 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. So, there were 850, all totaled. And they all were gathered to Mount Carmel. And now, Elijah stands there, and…you know, we have this picture of this mighty prophet. And so, this mighty prophet stands and says, how long are you gonna halt between two opinions, is the way the King James puts it. “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” (NIV).
The people stood there and said…what are they gonna say? Nothing. He said, all right, let’s have a contest here. We’re gonna build two altars. And, let’s get a couple of bulls and we’re gonna prepare our altars. You call upon your god, I’ll call upon mine, and the god who answers by fire, he’s the one who’s really God. They say, okay, that sounds good to us. That’s not the words they used, but those are…anyway, that’s the idea.
“Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire.” So, they go ahead and do all of that. Now, they start crying and dancing around the altar and calling on their god. Oh god, come and answer our cry, and doing this heathen dance. This goes on for a long time. And finally, at noon, Elijah decides to mock them a little bit.
( laughing ).
He says, “Shout louder…Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
( laughing ).
“So they shouted louder and slashed themselves….” And they’re going through all this, all the shenanigans that they did in their heathen religion, and they’re going on and on and on. “…No response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” Praise God!
“Then Elijah said to all the people, Come here….” And so, he prepares an altar. He picks 12 stones to represent the original 12 tribes. He really does it the right way…prepares the bull. He says, I’m not done. Let’s get you four barrels of water and pour it all over the altar. Let’s make sure that we’re not gonna have any funny business here. Let’s really…let’s make a real contest out of this.
He said, all right, fill it up again. And they do it a second time. Okay, fill them up again. So, 12 barrels of water are dumped over the altar. I mean, water is running off, and pooling around the edges. He’d built a little trench…running over all of that.
So now then, he calls on God. And he says, “O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Mighty prophet, right? Praise God!
So, what happens? “…The fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.” I mean, there’s nothing! There’s no way anybody could say that he pulled off a trick there.
So anyway, then the people fell on their faces and said, the Lord is God, the Lord is God! So anyway, now…and of course, they executed all these false prophets. And so, now…what a mighty victory! I mean, how would you like to be on the winning side of that one? Wouldn’t that be exhilarating to stand there and see God do something mighty…wow! You’re just rejoicing in all that.
But He’s not done! Now, it’s time for rain. And so, he tells the king to go back and eat and drink, it’s about to rain. So, he goes up on the top of the mountain and bows his head between his legs and prays. Seven different times, he sent his servant out to look to the west toward the sea. Finally, he said there’s a cloud about the size of a man’s hand rising. He says, run, Ahab, you better run! It’s fixing to rain.
And not only did he go through all of that, it says, the Lord strengthened him. The power of God came on him and ran ahead of the chariot all the way back to the palace. I mean, you think about a man who has experienced the incredible things that he did, seen the power of God, tasted it, had God just bless him mightily, and mightily reach out through him!
Then, what? Chapter 19, “Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.” Ha! Sweet lady. “So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”
Well, now wouldn’t you expect that a mighty prophet of God would stand there and say, oh yeah? We’ll see about that. I serve the God who is God of all of your gods. Ain’t nothing like that gonna happen. But that’s not what he did, is it? That’s not what he did.
“Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah…,” which, by the way, was many, many miles. This was not like…and of course, he couldn’t just pick up a car and run over to the next county, drive over to the next county. This is on foot. This is dozens of miles away. It was a pretty good trip.
So, he’s traveling, he’s running in fear. And he gets to a certain place and, “…he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, Lord, he said. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors. Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.”
The message that I heard had to do with depression. And this scripture, as well as any in the Bible, reminds us that depression is, not only a part of this world, it afflicts God’s people. And it’s something that I believe God desires that we confront and be honest about our needs in this area, because we live in a time, as we’ve heard so many times, when the Devil’s power is increasing.
And we are not exempt, we…all of us here still live in these bodies. We still have that nature in these bodies. Thank God, if you’ve got Christ, “…greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (KJV). But the reality is, that if we are not careful, we are subject to exactly what happened to him.
And what happens is, well, I’m not supposed to be that way…so, I’m gonna do like the commercial on TV. I’m go around with a happy mask on. And I’m gonna pretend that everything is okay because…oh, I’m in Canaan land! Everything is wonderful! I’m supposed to feel good all the time. I’m supposed to be happy, happy, happy.
And the reality is, many times that’s not the way it is. And we need to be honest about it. I mean, the scripture doesn’t hide this. This is a mighty prophet of God, the guy you’d want to be just like…and there he is praying, oh God, I’ve had enough. God, take my life. It’s over. There’s no purpose in my living.
You know, one interesting thing that was quoted on that message…I’ll just refer to this one thing, because it was a statistic. And I didn’t realize, so I looked it up and checked it out and it’s right. And, he was referring back to the Vietnam war and those who fought there. We have brothers here who fought in that war.
And the statistic was this, that there are more Vietnam soldiers who died by suicide than were killed in the actual war! That’s a terrible…well, I’m leading into the fact that suicide has become a growing problem in our society. And it’s interesting that the Viet Nam war happened about the time the Lord was revealing to us the last loosing of Satan!
What do we expect? This world is a lie! It is built on lies! Everything about it motivates human beings to build their lives on lies, to try to seek happiness apart from a relationship with their God.
And I’ll tell you, the Devil enjoys destroying, stealing, killing, lying, destroying. And it’s not just Vietnam soldiers. It’s children! These issues of people reaching a point where life is so worthless that all they want to do is leave it! The fear of dying becomes weaker than the pain of living! Oh God, do we need Him!
( congregational response ).
And you think this doesn’t affect Christians? Sure, it does. Those of you who have been around, you know how the Devil attacks. Some of you remember Sister Thomas, and how she went through a deep, deep period of just black depression. Brother Thomas had to fight for over a period of months as I recall, just ministering truth, trying to bring her out of that state.
She’s not the only one. Brother Thomas battled depression. So, you look at me and say, well, preacher, what about you? You live up on the mountain, right? Are you kidding? I battle it just like everybody else does, and don’t always do it as well as I should! Of course, I’m the only one here, right? Everybody else here is just living on the mountaintop every day!
You know, the Lord has given us a mountain we can live on, but I’ll tell you, it doesn’t happen automatically. And we have been so programmed, more than we realize, with lies, and they bring us down to a place of weakness.
And you go on here. Here he is coming to that point where, all I want to do is die, Lord! My life is worthless! Nothing that I’ve accomplished has changed anything! Oh, God, I’ve come to the end.
Well, you know, we can come to the end, but God doesn’t. Thank God! How many of you’ve been in a place where you were about ready to hang it up and the Lord intervened? Well, the Lord intervenes here. So he’s asleep. All of a sudden, he’s awakened and it’s an angel that’s awakened him. He said, here’s a meal. He looked around. By his head there was a cake of bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water.
So the Lord sent down an angel who knew how to cook. He ate and drank and then lay down again and now he wakes up again, and the angel comes back and does the same thing. “…The journey is too much for you.”
Evidently…the scripture does not explain all of this. But somehow, I feel like, from where he went, there was something in his mind…God, if I’m gonna find any meaning in all of this, I’ve got to get back to where it started. And so, he takes off from wherever he’s at now in the desert, he takes off south for Mount Sinai.
Now the Israelites wandered 40 years in the wilderness, it took him 40 days. It was no small journey. And, there were a whole lot of altitude changes. Now, I’m a guy who doesn’t like altitude changes, especially when they’re up. And there he is in places where some of it was below sea level. Now he’s heading south through a desert, and then when he gets to the end of his journey after 40 days, he’s got to climb a mountain! Do you imagine he’s probably pretty tired?
You know, that’s one of the things that can get us in a bad place. We are not supermen and superwomen. You know, I thought of a…I think of a scripture from time to time. It’s in the Psalms somewhere. You can look it up if you want to know where it’s at. But I remember the King James Version of it, I think. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late…for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”
There’s simple, practical wisdom in that, isn’t there? How many of you have been…have just pushed it, pushed it and pushed it, and you’ve gone way overboard and you wind up getting so tired and all of a sudden, life just kind of descends on you and you get in a bad place and you can’t…you just emotionally can’t.
You see, we’re emotional creatures. And, too much of the time the emotions have too much of an influence over us and we begin to descend into this place that Elijah was. But somehow, there he is going back to Horeb, which was another name for Mount Sinai, going up into a cave and he spends the night.
( panting ).
I’ve made it, maybe I’ll get my answers here. “And the word of the Lord came to him: What are you doing here, Elijah?” (NIV). I don’t know what the tone was, but…I don’t know that it was condemning so much as trying to raise a question. What are you doing here?
He said, “I have been very zealous…” 19:10. “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
No depression there, right? After saying, I’ve had enough, kill me. You know I mentioned something on a recent Wednesday night that bears on this, and I was talking about vulnerability to temptation, and one of the factors that really makes us vulnerable. And it’s a very simple thing. It’s being self-centered…I forget the word now even that I even used…but, it’s self-absorbed, where I become so wrapped up in what’s happening to me, what has happened to me, all of the things that affect me and my feelings, that becomes my world, that becomes my universe.
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June 28, 2020 - No. 1447
“Taking Hold” Conclusion
Broadcast #1447
June 28, 2020
June 28, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1447 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: God, I want to be awake! God wants to have a people that are alive and awake, that believe in Him, that look to Him, that don’t look at any issue that they can see and feel and experience with their own eyes and say, this is impossible! Even God can’t fix this!
Now I doubt there’s anybody here who would ‘say’ that. But how many of us live as if that’s the way it was? God help us! But He is, isn’t He? Praise God!
I don’t believe, as I’ve said so many times, I don’t believe any of this has to do with a spirit of condemnation by God. It’s a spirit of encouragement. He knows exactly where you’re at. He knows where I’m at. And He’s not expecting me to be down the road somewhere, but He is expecting me, today, to live a certain way, and to have a certain attitude toward life and Him and His truth, and an expectation. Praise God! And you know, you think about faith…is faith necessary?
( laughing ).
Yeah! “Without faith…” we’re told, “…it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (NIV). Now there are two convictions there. Obviously the one the He is, that He exists, that He’s real, there really is a being.
But how many of us fall short on the second one? Who does He reward? Those who…how do they seek him? Earnestly. You see, there’s a heart that God is looking for. He will impart what we need, but there’s a heart response that He’s looking for that means business. It says, God, this matters! God, I need You! I reach out for You! That’s what faith does. It reaches toward God. It responds! I get the fact that we can never do that unless God acts first, but He does look for a response from us. And I’ll tell you, that is so central.
And as I kind of indicated earlier, this is more than just mere facts. You cannot be saved by theology. You’re gonna have to have an encounter with the living God. Now, objective truth matters, but I’ll tell you, without the Spirit, without the active intervention of the Person of God, what you have is just dead. It’s dead letter, and it can’t help. But it’s more than those facts. It’s a conviction about the character of God and His heart for us.
Notice a scripture that we quote all the time. It’s in Jeremiah 29:13 if you want to read it later. “You will seek me and find me…” When? “…When you seek me with all your heart.” Boy, that’s an awesome promise! That’s a promise to you this morning, and to me. Do we take that personally? God wants us to. Is there anything that He has left out that you and I are in need of this morning? Is there something that He has not provided, and He’s just saying well, too bad for you, I’m not…no! Everything!
Think of what Jesus said in that parable. “Come; for all things are now ready.” (KJV). That’s the hope of the Gospel. God has promised everything. Jesus said, “It is finished.” That’s good enough for me. Praise God! That ought to be enough for every one of us.
Now, here’s something about faith that’s important, and I know there are people that miss this. But true faith is submission. How many people are there in the world, and I’ve encountered many of them, who see faith in God almost as a way to ‘get what I want’? Show me the secrets of how to exercise faith so God will fix my life the way I want it to be. It becomes a self-centered, ‘using God’ kind of thing. It’s almost like this becomes a book of incantations, and I’m gonna take the letter of the Word, and I’m gonna bind God to do what I want through this.
I believe God wants to take us a place where we can operate in true harmony with Him, where it’s not just that we exercise faith for specific things, but we are in harmony with His will! We’re not looking for our own…what we want.
I mean, Jesus is the ultimate example. Father, if there’s any way, “let this cup pass from me….” Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done. Everything Jesus did, He did as an expression of the heart of God. He spent time with His Father. He knew what His Father wanted. And so, real faith is simply laying hold of what God has made real to us that is ours, and that we need to exercise faith to take hold of. That’s the essence of it. True faith is submission.
And of course, you think of what Paul was seeking. What was Paul seeking in Philippians 3? What was he after when He was doing all this pressing? What was his heart? Was he after a better life, in this world?
No, he says, I want to, “…know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” That doesn’t sound like anything human nature would every seek. But you see, God had transformed his heart and turned his heart’s desire in a different direction. And so, in harmony with that desire, he sought God, and God gave him promises from the Word of God, and he exercised his faith in those, and God enabled him to lay hold of it in the face of everything that the enemy would try to introduce, to discourage him and to hinder him.
I’ll tell you, it is not, how can I get God to do what I want? Faith is not a formula. Faith is a real power that God gives to His people. Faith is a choice. How many times have we said that? If you’re waiting for that feeling, you will have a long wait.
God puts us in situation after situation, it is more the norm than not, where we have to literally make a choice very much like Abraham did. How many choices did he have to make when everything else was against it? He had to be willing to hear the voice of God, believe Him, leave his family, leave his country, go to a place and live as a stranger, wait for 25 years for a promise that became utterly impossible and still stand in faith! Man, there’s something supernatural going on there.
But I’ll tell you, that same power to believe what God has said against everything else, every weakness you discover in yourself, every obstacle in life, everything that says it cannot be…but we’re serving a God who can take what is not and make it real. That’s why faith is a conviction that something that you cannot see is nonetheless so real that my hope can be in that and not in this. That’s what faith is all about. It is a choice.
How many of you can look back…at times, and you know that you didn’t have any feelings, but you came to a place…what am I gonna do? How am I going to…what am I gonna believe? All these voices are shouting in my head that say everything contrary to what I believe God is saying. What am I gonna do? Am I gonna wait for that feeling? Oh God, if You give me a feeling, I’ll go with it. Or has God put you in a place where you’re gonna have to say I just choose, I don’t care if I ever have a feeling.
Your faith will grow a lot more in those times when you cannot see and cannot feel, and you have nothing to go on but what God has said. And if your heart says, I want you, Lord. I don’t know what to do. There’s a God who knows how to impart to you a faith and a knowledge. It doesn’t mean He’s just gonna answer it in a second just because you popped the question. But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants to lead His people, wants to be as real to us as He was to His Son when he walked this world. Oh, praise God!
Did He not show us how it works? He spent time with His Father. He looked to Him. He said, I don’t anything except what You do, can’t do anything without You. I’ll tell you, there is something that has to bring us to that place where we see that all that rises up against what God has said is gonna have to be laid aside.
You know, I made this point earlier, and I have been in many places where perhaps historically there was an emphasis on the working of the Spirit…it may have been some real. But an awful lot of that sometimes is working people up. You know, let’s get the music going. I’m glad for joyful music. But you can get yourself psyched up, and then they call that faith. Okay, now God can work.
Folks, that’s not how it works. Faith is deeper than that. Faith is more real than that. We don’t have to get psyched up to have real faith. We have to have a real God and heart that loves Him and an open heart to Him, and I’ll tell you, He will impart exactly what we need.
Now, here is a truth and a principle that I think is so central, to what I’ve had on my heart. I keep coming back to this, because it is, perhaps you could call it, the principle of dependence. You know, it’s been expressed this morning. We’re dependent, we can’t do anything without Him.
But I wonder if we understand, because, it answers the question, “How do I do all this?” How many of you have run into this? You know all the principles. You know the idea that we live by faith, but you find yourself coming up short on the ‘doing’ part of it?
( congregation inaudible).
Yeah. How do we do all this? And that’s the question. And here is the principle, and I don’t know how to say this. I’m just gonna have to trust God to say it and make it live in our hearts, starting with mine. But here is the principle. Everything God asks of us, He supplies—everything God asks of us, He supplies.
God is not looking for any resource that begins with your human ability. We’ve come at this idea from so many angles before, because the Devil will build that barrier between you and God. Yes, I see it, but there’s a bridge that I’ve go to build and cross so I can get to the place where I can have what God…no. Everything God gives, every ability that we lack…stop looking on the inside for the help that you need.
I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have read the testimonies of people who seem to have tapped into this. Andrew Murray was certainly one of them…just finally came to the point where he realized, all this stuff that I lack, everything I need, God’s provided it all! I just have to step in and embrace it and believe it.
What do I lack today? Do I have to scramble and try and try and…how can I do this? Or do I simply say, Lord, You are asking me to believe? Well, where does faith come from? How many times have we made that point? Where does saving faith come from? Is God looking around in human beings and saying, well, there’s somebody, I can stir this up, and their faith will come…no! Faith is a gift of God!
It’s by grace…grace is that power that comes down and works on our hearts, and empowers us to do what God wants. That’s why the Gospel says, or the Word says, call upon Him, when? When He is near! Why is that? Well, in the first place, we wouldn’t want to call on Him when He isn’t.
In the second place, if He’s not there, we don’t have the power. His Presence, the overshadowing of His grace is what gives me the power to respond! All I have to do is let go, and surrender to that. It’s not pulling on some human virtue. I have none. It’s the renunciation of every possible hope in myself and placing it entirely in what He is offering in that moment. And I’ll tell you, He will impart.
You sit there and say, I just can’t do this, I can’t live this life. Well, good gracious! I can’t either. The Christian life is impossible! It’s supernatural. The only way that we can have any part in what God has given to us is to rely completely on what He has provided through Jesus Christ…and that comes right down to the entry into the Kingdom. I’ll tell you, when you come to that place, God will give you the faith that you need to lay hold of that, and it will become resident in your heart. That’s what has to happen.
But that’s the same principle by which we live. Where am I gonna get the faith to lay hold of all these wonderful promises and to see God work in the needs of my life? Oh, how we allow the enemy to erect barriers against that, and to make us feel us as though there’s something lacking in me, and if I can identify that and fix that, then I can have what God has given me.
But do you know what we need to be doing? We need to be identifying the sticking point. What is it that’s stopping me and keeping me right here, in this place? And then, say, Lord, You accomplish this in me. I cannot fix this, but You have provided everything I need to do everything that You have laid before me to do. I don’t care what it is in here, whether it’s something to believe, whether it’s a behavioral issue…don’t do this or do that…every single thing has to be supernatural! It has to be Christ in us.
That is my hope of glory, because I don’t have any in myself. I can’t look in the mirror and see a thing to trust in. But that isn’t the Gospel. The Gospel is a hope that comes from Jesus Christ alone.
What did Paul say about his own life? I have been crucified with Christ. He looked back and saw something that God had accomplished, that he was still entering into experientially. But this was not wishful thinking, this was a confidence that when Jesus said, it’s finished, He meant that I died!
That gives me ground to stand upon when the Devil comes. I have been crucified, but I’m living. I’m still alive. Ah, but something has changed. What’s changed? It’s “…not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Does that not put a whole different perspective on the Christian life?
I’ll ask the question again. What do you lack, today? What is it that’s the sticking point? I’m struggling with surrender. I’m struggling to really let go. You know, one of things that really struck me reading something that, in this case, it was Andrew Murray had written. He’s talking about surrender. And it was obvious that he had as much trouble with it as I do, or anybody else. But the conviction that took hold in His heart was, “You will accomplish my surrender.”
That sounds like a contradiction. But what he was saying was the very power that enables me to let go comes from You as I let go…I’m gonna start where I’m at. I simply start where I’m at. But whatever lack seems to hold me back and keep me from moving forward, I bring that to Him instead of looking inside and saying, where can I find the ability to do that. I say, Lord, You have provided the ability to do that.
That’s a deep truth. There is so much in Christian preaching today, that is all about doctrines to believe, sins to avoid, good things to do. But if you don’t preach this, what do you have? Very easily, you wind up with religion, and what we’ve referred to so many times as self-effort.
But I’ll tell you, the truth that God wants to burn into my heart, I confess this…like even about getting up here this morning. You know, there’s a war, in everything that we do in our Christian lives. Everything is going to be opposed. Your nature will fight. The Devil with fight. The world around you will seem to be…it’s an illusion that the Devil creates that this is the way your happiness lies is to pursue your dreams and you follow your desires. All of that will militate against everything that God has said!
But I’ll tell you, there is a God who can put such a conviction in here. But when we face those things, where does our attention go? Does it go down and in? Do you instantly look and say, where can I…how can I do this? Or do you say, Lord, You have made the way where I can do this, because it’s not I. This life is not I, it’s Christ in me. And I put my hope and my trust in that with this issue, right now, today. I am looking to You! I am trusting in You to accomplish in me this thing with which I am struggling.
The truth is that I lack everything. How about you? Is there anything you’ve got that enhances your salvation, any natural ability, any natural quality about you? No, it wouldn’t be salvation. I lack everything. He supplies everything. Let that sink in.
Oh, I’ll tell you, this is something we need to chew on. This is not something you can just kind of spit out and okay, I’ve got it, I got it. Everyone of us is gonna go out of here and face issues in our lives, and our instinct will be instantly to do exactly the opposite of what I’ve just said. But there’s a God who wants to teach us, and part of it is imparting this truth over and over again, so that we will see and understand.
It is no longer I. It is Christ in me that is my hope of glory. I need Him. I cannot believe in my own strength. I can’t surrender in my own strength. I can’t do anything in my own strength, but He provides everything in His person. This life that I cannot possibly live, He can live perfectly. And so, the more I learn to just yield and rest in Him, the better it works.
You know, I just…one scripture that I referred to…well, three or four weeks ago when we were down in South Carolina, that the Lord impressed upon me was not a bad thing or a negative thing. It was when that man said, “I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
We tend to look down on that and say, well…he was down here, and God just showed him mercy…and I’m way up here. I think he was the one that was in the right position. There was a willingness to respond, but there was sense of his need and he wasn’t shy about it. He said, yeah, I believe, but help my unbelief.
Can’t we go to the Lord that way? Will he not answer? I believe He will. I believe as the Lord teaches us, we can meditate on His promises. We can spend time with Him. We can ask Him to teach us, and lead us and help us to grow, and He will do exactly that.
Faith is necessary. It’s a matter of submission. It’s a choice. Everything that we need comes from Him, and it needs to be something with perseverance. But I’ll tell you, God will honor it. We live by faith and not by sight.
And I’ll tell you, God has given us the tool that we need, a supernatural one, to lay hold of everything that He has given us in Christ. May God help everyone right now where you’re at in your journey, and mine, to get hold of this in such a way that we actually start making progress. Faithful is He who called you, and He will do it. To Him be glory. Praise God!
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June 21, 2020 - No. 1446
“Taking Hold” Part One
Broadcast #1446
June 21, 2020
June 21, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1446 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve had some thoughts and it’s almost more than I can imagine getting out, but I don’t know, I’m just gonna ask the Lord to guide me through something. I’m gonna talk about a very unusual subject you’ve never heard before and that’s faith. But you know, I believe the Lord wants to make things fresh, relevant to where we’re at and there are some particular things that I’ve sensed, in thinking about this, that I believe the Lord wants to…wants to focus on.
And I think my mind was first drawn to the scripture that Paul wrote to Timothy. You know, Paul spent a lot of his time in prison, and in one way it’s good for us that he did because he spent a lot of his time writing letters. And a majority, or at least probably half of the New Testament, was written by the pen of Paul. But Paul’s writings of encouragement to him are meant for us as well, because the Lord has preserved them.
And the scripture that came to me was in 1st Timothy 6:12, familiar to us, where Paul says, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” (NIV).
And, you know, you could just simply build a message and never leave that scripture, because that’s the essence of the Christian life. It’s a matter of faith, isn’t it? It’s this mysterious thing that we call faith and I want to help us to understand, in perhaps a deeper way, what the Lord is talking about there.
But the fact that…faith is central, right? But the faith is a fight…that if you’re expecting to find a place in Christ where you will never have any opposition, you’re looking for the wrong thing. We’re in a world that hates God and hates you, and will do everything to destroy you, and God’s influence in your life if you let it. And so, if we’re going to go against the tide, we’re going to have to…we’re gonna have…well, we’re gonna have to go against the tide. I mean, we’re gonna go against that influence.
And it is a fight. And there are things that God has given to us and yet, for which we must fight. That seems to be a…it doesn’t seem to fit to our way of thinking. If God’s given it to me, why don’t I just step over and take a hold of it?
But you know, the picture that we’ve so often painted and referred to, is what God did with Israel, and the simple fact that He said, I’ve given you everything. I’ve given you the land. Okay, but Lord, there are giants over there. But you have to put your foot on it. Everything that you put your foot on, I have given to you.
That’s an amazing thought! That God had already given it to them. God foresaw everything. But you’re gonna have to put your foot on it. You are going to have to step out and…powered by this thing called faith, and when you do, I will be with you.
Folks, that’s the essence of the Christian life. And I think many of us are stuck in areas of life because we’ve sort of lost sight of the simplicity of this principle. And, it’s interesting to me that Paul is writing to somebody who surely knew this. I mean, he was in a position of teaching others, and yet he himself had to be reminded of how the Christian life works. Don’t you ever stop pressing into new territory. Don’t you ever settle and say, okay, I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it. There’s always ground to take. There will always be a fight, and yet God has given you all of this but you’re gonna have to take hold of it.
So, I mean, if I had a working title, I suppose, for the sake of the people that get after me if I don’t give them one early, is “Taking Hold.” How many of you need to take hold of things?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah! I certainly would have to raise both hands on that. And so, this is something…also, there’s an element in that scripture, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called….” Now where is the ultimate initiative in this? It’s from God, isn’t it? We were just minding our own business. God invaded. God called. There was something personal to which we were called.
And think about how this jives so perfectly with what Paul said, that we’ve used so many times, in Philippians 3. I don’t count myself to have taken hold, but I press forward, to do what? “…To take hold…” to lay hold, “…of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” So, when God invades our life, it is to call us to something that He has provided completely for us. But in order for us to take hold of that, we are going to have to exercise this thing that He has given us called faith. So that’s…I mean, that’s the whole thing.
And Paul reminds us in 2nd Corinthians 5:7 that, “We live by faith, not by sight.” Now, if you just ignore the chapter divisions and back up into the end of the last chapter you’ll see where he’s talking about how we look at the things, not at what we see, but we look at what we don’t see. The things that are unseen, are what? They’re eternal. They’re the things that last.
What you see with your eyes, it’s not gonna last. I don’t care what it is. This world…nothing about it that you see with your natural eyes will last. That just needs to sink into our minds so that we put the emphasis where God wants it to be put, and we understand what life is about.
So anyway…but I want to ask a simple question because, I think it’s necessary to define some of these terms. What is faith? You know, we talk about it. We sing about it. We think we know what it is. But what is faith?
And of course, we know the definition, the classic definition is in Hebrews 11:1. “…Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” So there is…faith is a quality. It is something that a person possesses that enables them to have a life-shaping conviction, on the inside, that something is true but it is not something that can be seen.
But it is so real, that one can absolutely lay hold…I mean, this becomes the defining characteristic of the life. I do not live for the things that I see. God has put in my heart a conviction that something is more real than all of this, and it is worth my laying aside all of this to possess that. It’s real! I’ll tell you, only God can do that—only God can do that.
You know, I was reading this morning just a little bit…reading, just sort of meditating on the beginning of this chapter and I noticed something in the third verse. It says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
Now, you notice that same theme about something being seen and something being visible, and unseen? I’ll tell you, when God created what He created, before He did it there was nothing that was seen, seeable by us, certainly in our natural state. But did that stop God from anything that He was doing?
( congregational response ).
So, how did He do it?
( congregational response ).
How did He deal with that lack? He spoke something, and as a result of what He spoke, something that was unseen became seen. Yeah! It’s so simple. You see how that’s connected with the first part? But the faith part is when we so understand…our confidence is so fixed upon the Word of God, the truthfulness of God, the character of God, that we can put more hope and trust in that, than we can in anything that we can see that’s part of this creation.
And you follow that chapter through and you’ll see how that plays out in the lives of real people, who are just like us. Praise God! So, faith is an assurance and a conviction of that which is unseen.
Now there are some things that it is not. You know, a lot of people will hear talk about faith and they’re coming from the outside and they don’t have any idea of what we’re talking about, and to them faith is just kind of a blind thing. It’s just a blind leap. I want something that I can feel good about, something that I can hope in. It doesn’t really have to be objectively real. I just want to put my faith in something so I’ve got some kind of anchor to give me meaning in my life. It’s a blind leap. One belief is as good as another.
Obviously it’s not that. See, this is not a belief that comes from wishful thinking, from need in us to have something that we can just sort of, okay, I’m gonna cling to this, and it’s gonna help me through life. It’s not a blind thing, folks.
When somebody puts their faith in Jesus Christ, really, the real deal, this is not a blind thing. I’ve heard about Him, I’m just gonna believe it! No, it’s not that. There is an outside power at work and if it is not, then it is just a blind…perhaps it is just a blind leap. But that’s not what Paul is talking…or that’s not what the writer of the Hebrews and others are talking about.
And it’s not a feeling. How many of you’ve made that mistake? You know…faith, oh, if I could just feel something. You know, a lot of people try to work that up. But, faith is not a feeling. You can have faith in God when your feelings are dead! And many times, that’s how God arranges it, not because He’s against us, not because He’s even against feelings, but He does not want us to depend upon feelings.
You know, my mind often goes to the old, old illustration of the old-fashioned train. And the different parts of the train represent parts of our personality. How many of you have had spiritual success making feelings the engine? That doesn’t work. Or feelings the coal car feeding the engine? Boy…we’re really going today. We’ve worked up…we’ve got some good songs going. We’re happy, happy, happy and boy, now we’re gonna go forth. And then, all of a sudden…
( groaning ).
…You hit one of those times when you feel terrible and the engine just sort of stalls. You know where feelings belong on that train? The caboose!
( laughter ).
You get your will, you get what you know, you get willful choice based upon facts, that’s where the engine comes from, it’s the Word of God is the coal car. We feed off of that and we make choices, and the feelings will come. You don’t worry about them. Don’t wait for them. Don’t ever wait for them, or assume that feelings have something to do with faith. They have no connection.
And there’s another thing that faith is not. It is not second-hand. We are not looking for people to follow us, or me, or any human personality. That’s where cults get going. People will say, I don’t know what to believe but here’s somebody who is so sure! I’m gonna latch onto them and that’s gonna be my security.
God, we don’t need that! But we don’t need people who just simply grow up in the church, and adopt our religion. We don’t have a religion, folks. Jesus Christ is the Lord and the Head of this church, and it is Him that you have to come to a personal relationship with. It is not a blind following. God wants this thing to be yours. Praise God!
Faith, we’re told, in Romans chapter 10…I’ll just refer to scriptures you know. It comes, how?
( congregational response ).
“…By hearing…” (KJV). Well, where does hearing come from?
( congregational response ).
“…The word of God…” Once again, you get right back to God speaking something into existence. Paul talks about the time when God invaded his life. You know, it wasn’t just the miraculous experience that he had of the blinding light and hearing a voice. There was something that happened that went way beyond that.
You can have an experience. That’s fine if it’s God. But I’ll tell you, the thing that made all the difference was not simply what happened out here, it’s what happened in here. He said that God…the same God who spoke everything into existence, shined His light, down in the heart, so that, “…the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” would come to be in here. (NIV).
Then he refers to that as a treasure, that we have in an earthen vessel. You see, faith is a supernatural gift of God, the real thing! God has to invade and He has to impart something into your heart you were not born with.
( congregational amens ).
Nobody is born with faith. We do not simply arrive as human beings who have all these abilities and we just say, okay, I’ll believe you Lord. No! You will never have saving faith until God imparts that. I’ll tell you, God is gonna have to do something…He’s gonna have to invade. That’s all there is to it. And that’s why the scripture says, “Today, if you hear his voice…” don’t do what?
( congregational response ).
“…Harden your hearts.” So, there’s got to be the voice of God to start with, but there’s got to be a heart that opens, and receives that and then something happens. Then there’s something that comes to be resident, in the heart, that’s personal, that’s yours, that changes your direction for eternity. It changes your destiny!
And I’ll tell you, everything about human nature will resist that, will fight it, tooth and nail. But I’ll tell you, if God is gonna ever invade your life, if it’s ever gonna be personal, if it’s ever gonna be real in your heart and your life, God is gonna have to show you your need.
( congregational amens ).
You can’t just hear about it from here. That’s fine…I mean, it’s gonna be involved because hearing involves preachers. It involves somebody who proclaims that word.
And it’s not just the doctrines. You can’t be saved by doctrine. You’re gonna have to be saved because the Spirit of God is ‘in’ the doctrine and in the teaching. Jesus said, My words are spirit and life. That’s the kind of words…see, the Word of God has to literally be a spiritual force that invades the heart.
But I’ll tell you, when it does, it’s gonna show you things about yourself you’re not gonna want to see, you’re not gonna want to acknowledge and admit. But I’ll tell you, when God can bring to your heart such a conviction that without Him I am lost, and hopeless and helpless, you’re gonna feel that, in some sense. You’ve got to know you need Him.
You’ve got to have that sense that, oh, God…but then when He does, thank God, that He shows you the answer! It’s not, do this and I’ll accept you, it’s look what I have done! I show you a Savior who has met every single need that you could ever possibly have. Put your trust in Him! Surrender your life!
Your life is headed nowhere. I’m showing you two ways today. There is a way that leads to life and there’s a way that leads to death. You’re on the one that leads to death. You’re gonna have to make a personal surrender to the voice of God, and I’ll tell you, something will be born in your heart that will carry you the rest of the way.
Oh, I’ll tell you what, the unseen—that which you cannot see has to become more real than that which is seen. Only God can do that in the heart. But oh, when He does, it’s worth everything!
And it’s not just simply the ideas and the doctrines, as though…if you leave out the character of God, you can almost see this as the ‘bully in the sky’ who just wants his way. And the only way we’re gonna achieve self-interest is to sort of kowtow to him, and go along with him.
No, I’ll tell you, when He comes, you don’t just see the facts of your need and His provision, you see the heart. You see the God whose fundamental attitude towards you is one of love! We sang this morning about the woman at the well. Of all people on the planet that Jesus should have shunned because of what she was and what she had been, that would have been the lady. But He went right to her and spoke to her against every social convention, every religious idea of the day, and He penetrated her heart with truth and love, perfectly matched. And her life was transformed that day.
That’s the power of the Gospel, folks! It’s real! But it comes down to, not only a conviction of that which is true, but a conviction of the One who spoke it and His character! It becomes a confidence in Him! Abraham was justified, not because he simply believed ‘what’ God said, he believed God! Because when you believe God, then it doesn’t matter what He says, it’s okay. Even if I don’t understand it, I know Who said it.
( congregational amens ).
That’s what gives me the confidence to put my faith and my hope and rest in that. But oh, I’ll tell you, we have somebody who has the power, as it’s said of Abraham, to take that which is not, to give, “…life to the dead, and calls those things which are not as though they were.” God wants to do that for people in this room, today, starting with me. Do you believe that?
( congregational response ).
Yeah! And I’ll tell you…so…I guess part of my heart always is to reach out to people who don’t really know Him yet. Do you know Him? We just sang the song, “Do You Know Him?” Is this just a way of life? Oh, you’re supposed to come to church, and then one day you’ll grow up and make up your mind and then it’s all about something else.
If this…if God’s faith and Christ Himself does not take root in your heart, you are gonna perish with this world. And God doesn’t want that! God’s heart is to embrace you with everything that He has. I’ll tell you, but it’s got to be personal. It’s got to be as decisive as if you went to the Cross and died and gave up your life there. That’s exactly how decisive it is.
And, like the song, “there’s no turning back.” I’ll tell you, when God comes in…you can’t just muster this up out of human energy. It isn’t gonna happen. But I’ll tell you, when God comes and we yield to what He does in the heart, then there’s a transformation that is eternal. That’s what has…that’s what it has to be!
But you know, Paul wasn’t writing to an unbeliever, was he, when he wrote to Timothy? He was writing to a believer. So, what is…the principle by which we come to God in the first place, is the principle by which we live. We’ve said that many times. We live by faith, we come to Him by faith, but we live by faith.
And so, it’s obvious that what we get at salvation—what we call salvation, the new birth, is not all there is, that God has so much more, and if we ever get to the idea that I’ve just sort of come along, I’m good up to this point, there are things that’ll never really change, this is just how I am…how many times have we said this?
But how many times have I needed it? You see, there’s something missing there. We can fall into a…a sleep. Is that not a characteristic of the last days that the Lord warns about? Sleeping virgins. God, I want to be awake! God wants to have a people that are alive and awake, that believe in Him, that look to Him, that don’t look at any issue that they can see and feel and experience with their own eyes and say, this is impossible! Even God can’t fix this!
Now I doubt there’s anybody here who would ‘say’ that. But how many of us live as if that’s the way it was? God help us! But He is, isn’t He? Praise God!
I don’t believe, as I’ve said so many times, I don’t believe any of this has to do with a spirit of condemnation by God. It’s a spirit of encouragement. He knows exactly where you’re at. He knows where I’m at. And He’s not expecting me to be down the road somewhere, but He is expecting me, today, to live a certain way, and to have a certain attitude toward life and Him and His truth, and an expectation. Praise God! And you know, you think about faith…is faith necessary?
( laughing ).
Yeah! “Without faith…” we’re told, “…it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Now there are two convictions there. Obviously the one the He is, that He exists, that He’s real, there really is a being.
But how many of us fall short on the second one? Who does He reward? Those who…how do they seek him? Earnestly. You see, there’s a heart that God is looking for. He will impart what we need, but there’s a heart response that He’s looking for that means business. It says, God, this matters! God, I need You! I reach out for You! That’s what faith does. It reaches toward God. It responds! I get the fact that we can never do that unless God acts first, but He does look for a response from us.
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June 14, 2020 - No. 1445
“Relationship, Not Religion” Conclusion
Broadcast #1445
June 14, 2020
June 14, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1445 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: God wants to be part of your life. He wants to be, not part of it, He wants to ‘be’ your life. He wants to be right in the center of everything you do. When you’re driving down the street, when you’re pounding a nail, when you’re…turning over the pages of your books, every part of it, God wants to be in the center of it.
But He walked with Enoch, didn’t He? “Enoch walked with God.” It says the same thing about Noah! There was a man, at a critical juncture of the world’s history, when the world itself had turned its back upon God to the point where He said, “…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (KJV). There was a man in the midst of this, who walked with God. And guess what? God walked with him, and talked to him, and made provision for him.
That’s the God that we serve. His eyes run to and fro in the earth, seeking those whose hearts are turned to Him. Oh, praise God!
And then, of course, you see the heart of God toward the Israelites. My God, you look at their history, you look at their beginning coming out of Egypt, a bunch of unbelieving rebels for the most part, yet how many times in the scriptures do we read about His reaching out to them, even during the wilderness journey? Like an eagle watching over you, “I bare you on eagles’ wings…” (KJV).
I think that was one scripture. I carried you, I brought you because I wanted you to be a people of my own. I loved you. I saw you in your condition and I reached out…my heart was to want to dwell among you. The problem was, of course, on their end. They didn’t understand this. They didn’t get…but, you see….
I mean, here’s the thing. When we feel like we’ve come short, that’s the time we feel we can’t go. But here’s God, knowing, and continually reaching out to a people that definitely don’t want Him. Why can’t we have confidence in that God, when He reaches out to us and when He invites us to come? That’s the way I want to see it in a deeper way, not just intellectually.
I know all this stuff, up to a point. I mean, I get the scriptures. I know what they say. But there is an emotional disconnect an awful lot of the time, that I want gone. And I believe the Lord wants it gone. He wants us to see.
And the testimonies of scripture are so rich, about God becoming so real to somebody that they didn’t see the presence of God as something threatening. They didn’t see it as something to be uncomfortable about…oh my God, I’ve got to really watch myself here. Oh, what’s He gonna think of me if I’m not perfect?
And yet, there’s a God who reaches down to the imperfect, and says, love Me, trust Me. I’m the One who’s gonna take care of what’s wrong with you. I’m the only One that has the power anyway. If I just give you laws, you’ll mess them up. You won’t be able to do it.
I mean, look at David. Look at a man like David. And you know, he was far from perfect. He did some pretty bad stuff. He was guilty of murder, adultery. But over and over again, you get this sense of how David longed for the Lord. He saw the presence of God as something to run to! This is my place of refuge. This is where I go! This is the place I long to be! If I’m not there, I want to be there.
See, it’s not a matter of just coming in here…okay, now I’m in the presence of the Lord. It should be everywhere—it should be everywhere. We shouldn’t ever want to be…okay, I hope He stays away right now. We should always be wanting to run.
But listen to his heart in Psalm 84, was one particular one. I thought of several scriptures I wanted to just read as an illustration, an encouragement. But here’s the heart. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (NIV). Is that how you feel? Is that how we feel? That’s what God’s looking for.
“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young—a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you. Blessed are those whose strength is in you….”
Is that the issue in your life? You feel God is ‘out there’ and so when you face an issue, you don’t really have the strength to deal with it. Do you see what’s going on there? I believe God wants to give us all a clearer picture of how all this works.
And again, it’s not just a matter of the technicalities of it, it’s the reality. We have not been called to a religion! We have been called to a relationship! The outward forms of what we do could change radically. We might be just meeting in homes, secretly one day. Will that change the reality of our relationship with Him and one another? No! Because that exists apart from the building, all the things, the programs that people run to.
God, I want to get a religious experience. I need something that just sort of excites me a little better, makes me feel better. God, the one thing that is missing, and could be missing right here, more than we realize is that He is not just the center of our belief system, but He becomes the actual operating center of our being, where we live and operate in harmony with Him.
I realize growing into that is a process, learning. I wish I could tell you an experience. You could come down, we could lay hands on you, and you’d suddenly leap to that, or leap into that. I mean, there may be experiences people have but, there’s no substitute for just growing and learning from Him.
And He’s not sitting there saying, what’s the matter with you? There’s a heart that is constantly reaching out, right where you’re at—right where you’re at this morning. God wants you to know you can come to Him just like you are, and say, God, I need You…but I know that You love me. I know that I’m welcome, to come into Your presence, to invite You here, right now, to help me.
But, you see the heart of this. “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” So, here’s someone on a journey. “As they pass through the Valley of Baca…” – which is a place of weeping, I believe – “…they make it a place of springs….”
A lot of things in our pathway, sometimes, in reaching out to the Lord, we go through all kinds of times, don’t we? But here’s…you see the heart just longing, that knows where the help is at, knows…it’s not just a self-help kind of thing. See, that’s what happens when we take religious principles and try to say, okay, I’ve got the secret now. That’s just self-effort. That’s just me trying to remain in charge, instead of saying, Lord, my job is to let You do it in me.
So, they go through this valley of weeping. “…They make it a place of springs….” It turns into something that is a positive. “…The autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion. Hear my prayer, O Lord God Almighty; listen to me, O God of Jacob. Look upon our shield, O God; look with favor on your anointed one. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.”
You see how God had just changed his heart. Do you think this was just some extraordinary individual? I mean, we would look at him and say, yeah, this is unusual. Is this not what God wants for every one of us?
“I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.”
I mean, do you get a feeling that David has a real relationship and not a religion? I was wondering about a title. That might not be a bad one. “Relationship, Not Religion.” If we could talk about the problem of strength…my strength versus needing His and all of those kinds of things, but it really comes down to the Person. God wants us to dwell with Him, and to know Him.
You know, one scripture that really highlights that is in Hebrews chapter 8, quotes from the Old Testament about what was coming, when it was originally written. And, I’ll go ahead and read this whole section. I believe it begins in the middle of verse 8, chapter 8.
“The time is coming….” This was the prophet, back in the Old Testament talking about what was coming, through Jesus. “The time is coming declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt….”
Do you not see the heart of God even in that? Knowing their condition, He took them by the hand and led them. Wow, is that a God who wants to be involved in the center of your life? Yeah, it sure is. He’s constantly doing the reaching. I want to reach back, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
“…When I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts” That’s where we need…His truth. It needs to be in here, but of course, part of that truth is that I can’t do it, I need Him. That’s central to it.
But, “I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying know the Lord, because they will all know me…” We don’t ever want something where people come in here and they think they’re gonna get it from the pulpit.
God wants you to have a personal relationship with this God, and walk with Him every single day…where you can talk to Him and know that He’s listening, and you can hear His voice. And He is central to your life. I’ll tell you, we’re gonna have a lot more power, a lot more freedom, than we’ve ever enjoyed because that’s all He’s about! I mean, how could we be in harmony with Him and not experience those things?
“…From the least of them to the greatest.” So, if you feel like the least, this is you, too. Praise God! “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Thank God! You see, it’s not only His heart toward us, it’s the fact that He has made the provision! How could I come as a sinner before a holy God, if He had not sent His Son to the cross?
And it’s by His death I have been reconciled to God! Reconciled means that I was His enemy and now I’ve become His friend. I have the right to go into the Holiest place! Is that not what God demonstrated? When Jesus cried, it’s finished, what happened in the Temple?
( congregation inaudible ).
The priests were actually there offering the ritual sacrifice of the Passover, and there was the real Passover over on the cross! And God took that curtain and ripped it down the middle. What did that curtain represent? It was a barrier between a sinful people and a holy God. And I’ll tell you, under that Old Covenant, if you as a sinner were to dare to go through that curtain, you would be instantly struck dead.
See, this is not a God who’s just soft on sin, but He knows how to deal with it. He knows how to deliver us! And now we have a way into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus. That’s my hope this morning. I can come! I don’t have to wait until I feel better about myself…well, I’ve mentioned a song that Jim Johnson used to sing, about how he’d messed up and, he wanted to come but he moped around another day…moped around and blew another day, I think was the line.
How many of you have ever done that? Yeah. Sure, we all do. But the Lord has told us that there is a place, there is a throne. I don’t have to wait until I feel good enough. I go when I’m in need. And I don’t come, tiptoeing in like, I don’t really belong here. I’m sorry, Lord, I shouldn’t be here, oh, poor me. I go in there with a freedom, with a thankfulness, with a boldness…not a boldness like, I’m somebody, but a boldness because He has made a way.
I’m not going in there because I deserve it. I’m not going in there for any other reason than He has made a way and He has invited me! I have an engraved invitation from the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! I have a right to go before the Son of God, and before the Throne of God, because of what Jesus did when He went to the cross in my place. Oh, God wants us to sense that freedom!
( congregational response ).
He doesn’t want that sense of distance! What did Paul say when he was writing to the believers in Rome about the things of God? He said, don’t anybody say in your heart, who’s going to go ascend to heaven and bring Him down? Who’s going to go down into the deep and bring Him up, like He’s somewhere else? He said, “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.”
Folks, God has given us everything we need to just, quit listening to the Devil and just enter into God’s presence, and to do it without this fear and this…all the barriers that the Devil is so clever at erecting.
You know, one of the things I was thinking about as I…pondering some of these things, I made a long list of scriptures and I said, there’s no way I’m gonna try to wade through all of that. But I thought about this. How did people…I’m not talking about the Pharisees, but I’m talking about people that actually gravitated to Jesus. How did He make them feel when He was here?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. There was a peace. There was an acceptance. He could go to a Samaritan woman…and there was a barrier between Samaritans and Jews. And a woman’s place was not a particularly good one in that society. And her’s was even worse, because she was a known tramp. And there’s Jesus, who engages her in conversation.
What in the world is this about? And He did not ignore her need. He was direct and He was truthful. But there was something about His Spirit that caused her to be, to feel loved. I don’t want to run from this, as though this is terrible, He’s shining light on my need. I feel loved! I feel hopeful! I feel accepted!
She runs back into the village and tells them all about this guy and they wanted Him to stay. He winds up staying there three days. They said, now we believe, not because you told us but because we’ve heard it with our own ears. This is the Son of God, robed in flesh, walking around meeting people, who were in all kinds of need. And the people that loved Him, that were near Him, that wanted Him, they felt loved. It wasn’t based upon their worthiness.
You think about the woman that was taken in the act of adultery, and how the Lord’s word to her was, “…neither do I condemn you…go…leave your life of sin.” You think of people like John, the beloved disciple. There was something about the love that he felt in Jesus, that just so captivated him that when they come to that last supper…I guess they didn’t realize this was the Last Supper. They didn’t realize still, what was coming.
But do you remember how…they would dine in a reclining fashion. They would lay on…I guess they would have to lay this way, wouldn’t they, and eat this way? But whatever it was, they would sort of recline at the table. And John was inclining his head against the Son of God. I mean, you think about that…and how we would think, oh my God, don’t you know who He is? You better stay clear. You better stand back…respect Him.
But here’s Jesus, welcoming somebody who wants to just lay his head on His breast, because this is where I feel loved. This is where I feel safe. This is where I want to be, and I feel welcome here.
You wonder why John was able to write later about the fellowship to which we’ve been called. You read the beginning of 1st John. We read that recently. I think we were talking about Body life. But it isn’t just this. He says, “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
There is something that is so real that God wants us to know, and He wants us to feel like John, that we can come. And over and over again, we see that same sense. What about with the children? Those disciples acted like, and reacted like normal people. I mean, this is Somebody, this is the Son of God! Don’t you know who He is, kids? Get away. And he said, don’t forbid them. Allow them to come. And He spent time with them and He talked with them. And they felt loved in His presence.
You might be a young one here today. I’ll tell you, that’s how God feels about you. He wants…I mean, He wants this to start now. There’s a hunger in His heart, if you want to put it that way, to just wrap His arms around you. I mean, you think about…there are so many incidents that came up. But one of them, I guess, that looks at it from another standpoint…you want to see the depth of that love, what about when Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
What did He say? “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you….” But what did He say then? How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you were not willing. Knowing the history, knowing all that was wrong, yet that was His heart. I want to gather you. I want you to be under My wings.
What did David say, about being under His wings, under, “…the shadow of the Almighty.” There was this sense of the awesomeness and the place that we can occupy, and the relationship that we can have with Him, even in a broken world.
Oh God, help us to see this. Help me to see it. I feel my need. Like I say, I’ve grown up knowing so much and seeing so much, religiously speaking, and yet, this has got to be the heart. I don’t care what you know and what you’ve, in terms of…okay, this is how it’s done. These are the principles by which you gain victory, this is…there is one principle. It’s just Him…and being willing to realize that He loves us, that He’s right there, He’s not off somewhere, that we have the ability to enter into that presence, at any time.
What did the psalmist say in Psalms 100? I’m trying to remember the words. “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise.” (KJV). Enter in—enter in. They’re right here. Again, it’s not somewhere else. He is right here with us! We’re not tuned in.
You know there are radio waves, TV waves, there are all kinds of signals that are all around us, but we can be totally oblivious to all of that if we don’t have a receiver that’s tuned in to that. But how many of us live like that? More than we want…more than we should. God wants us to realize that we have the privilege of tuning in, right at the point of our deepest need, and knowing that He loves us, and is right there.
This is His heart for you! Here! Today! I don’t care what your history is. I don’t care where you’re at. God loves you! He wants you to know Him. He wants…actually wants to spend time with you, and be real to you. And He alone has the power to make you what He wants you to be. And it is the pathway of peace.
Oh, humanly speaking, the Devil is so good at making us feel like…well, I’ve got to experience You all the time. We get this religious picture of what He’s after, instead of just saying, thank You, Lord. I’m gonna stop trying to be religious. I’m just gonna spend time with You and enjoy You, and let You change me. That’s a whole different ballgame, folks, but that’s what the Lord is after.
I’ll tell you, it’s relationship, it’s not religion. And, I just hope that in some way He’s communicated His heart to us, to you, today. He loves you. He wants to share your life, wants to walk with you. He’ll give you wisdom. He’ll give you what you need. He’s not gonna make life easy in the traditional sense, but He’ll sure walk with you. You may go, “…through the valley of the shadow of death…” but He’ll be with you, and He’ll take you safely to the other side. Praise God!
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June 7, 2020 - No. 1444
“Relationship, Not Religion” Part One
Broadcast #1444
June 7, 2020
June 7, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1444 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I feel my need especially this morning. I’ve had so many thoughts going through my head and a lot of them are gonna sound like a broken record for those of you who are old enough to know what that is. But I feel like the Lord has been emphasizing things to me, and maybe it’s mostly my life, I don’t know. Very closely related to what has been, and also even very closely related to Wednesday night and the thoughts that came to me there.
And one thought that’s very related, I think, to what we’ve been talking about…the Lord in us, and not a life of self-effort and all that, is this simple area of need. It certainly is one that I have experienced and I doubt I’m the only one or the Lord wouldn’t have put this on my heart. But the Devil does everything in his power to build a sense in us of distance between us and God. I see a few heads nodding. You know what I’m talking about.
We know He’s for us. We know He’s in us. We know it intellectually, but somehow, emotionally, we just still feel like it’s me down here muddling through and He’s off there. And I need to somehow get Him, and…we don’t realize God’s plan. We don’t realize God’s heart in all of this.
We imagine, far more than we would like to admit that He’s like us, that He reacts to our ups and downs, and, His emotions toward us are sort of reflected by how we feel. And we’re constantly looking for feedback instead of walking by faith and trusting what He says.
So many issues that the Devil uses, and of course, our ups and downs certainly play into it because, obviously when I feel like I have fallen short and fallen prey to something that’s a part of my weakness, it’s very difficult to feel like He loves me in that moment and He’s there, and I don’t have to do something to somehow bring Him back. I believe the Lord wants to share with us something along this line.
And I’ve had way more thoughts than I could possible express and all I can do is say, Lord, You’re gonna have to take and make sense out of this, and put it in some order. But you know, I began, Wednesday night, I think, or very early on, by referring to the very beginning. We know God’s plan was formulated fully in His heart. He foresaw everything, including this meeting this morning, before He ever created the world.
See, He’s outside of time. He’s not bound by the linear time flow that we are. And so, He created a perfect world, didn’t He? There was no sickness, no sin, none of the decay that we see, none of the evil, but there was a choice that was placed before our parents, and they made the wrong one, didn’t they? And as soon as they did, there was a barrier that rose between them and God. They felt a separation. And it’s something we’ve wrestled with ever since.
But they felt that separation, and what it caused them to do was, when they heard the Lord coming and walking in the Garden, what did they do? They hid, didn’t they? And even before that, they had been made conscious of something that they had not been conscious of before, that they were naked. And suddenly, it brought shame to them. And so, they concocted their own way of covering that.
And we saw the mercy of God revealed in such plainness, when the Lord didn’t say, oh well, they’ve messed up, forget about all this. He came and said, Adam, where are you? Don’t you see His heart in that? There was a reaching out. He surely knew, but He wanted them to confess what had happened.
And so, He provided the means and predicted ahead of time what was going to happen, prophesied that there was gonna come a time when that serpent was gonna have his head crushed, and it was gonna be Somebody born of the seed of the woman that he had deceived. Later on, there was gonna be some descendant of hers that was going to rise up and crush his head, and praise God for that descendent. He’s the One we worship today.
Of course, the interesting thing to me is…I hadn’t thought about this part of it until this moment. But, I’ll just drop this in. Whenever we see something like this, where the Lord God comes down and He’s face-to-face talking with them, who is that? Who is that? It’s the Lord Jesus. We’d know Him later. He became the Son…He was the Son of God. He became Jesus when He entered into the world.
But my Bible tells me that God is a spirit. He is an invisible spirit. No one has ever seen Him…nor will they ever. He is a spirit that fills everything and beyond. Whatever there is, He fills it. But the One who has made Him known, the One who is His image, He is the very image of the invisible God, we’re told. And it was through Him that He has done everything.
So, when we see a literal figure, like somebody who could stand there in the Garden and they could see Him, that was the Son of God. When Moses met with the Lord face-to-face in the Tabernacle, in the Tent of Meeting, that was the Lord Jesus. Whenever He appeared, at any point in the Old Testament, or since, that’s the way God makes Himself known, as Someone that we could relate to.
And of course, we made the point many times, that was what Isaiah saw. How could you see an invisible God? But he saw a figure, didn’t he? He saw, literally, the Lord. And so, he literally…I’ll just drop that in…because that helps us to understand a little bit when we read some of these Old Testament passages, how it could say, oh, the Lord God appeared to him. The Lord God appeared to the seventy elders of Israel. They saw a figure, didn’t they?
Well, they were seeing the Son of God, because before He came to this world, He was a…I was gonna say a creature. He wasn’t a creature. He was the divinely born Son of God, but He had all the glory that He has now. He laid that aside when He came into the world, but anyway…the purpose of bringing that up was to show you, demonstrate God’s heart.
And that is the pattern, that’s the reality, that’s the truth, that we see unfolding throughout scripture, is a God who seeks us when we would never seek Him, a God who desires, not just a people who practice a religion. He desires a people with whom He can have an intimate, close, 24/7 relationship, exactly what Carl was talking about, exactly what was expressed in our men’s meeting. How often does that happen? Like, every time. It’s the same thoughts that I believe the Lord wants to impress upon us.
And, there are so many scriptures that you could…I mean, that’s the problem. Where do you stop? But I want to turn to one at the end of Revelation. Let’s see where this is all going, because it isn’t just about here. But, we see this picture in Revelation 21 of a new heaven and a new earth and all of that, and how we will inhabit that.
But then it talks about God coming down, and then the new order of things. And this is the order going forward for all eternity. It said, “Now the dwelling of God is with men…” (NIV).
Now, that doesn’t suggest to me some separation, some deity who is up there, sort of smiling benevolently on us down here. This is a God who is with us! Absolutely, there is a union, there is a 24/7 relationship, and boy, we need to get that, don’t we? But this is where He is taking us and has promised to take us. He’s the only One that can do that.
How can I prepare myself for something like this? There’s no way. All I can do is lift up my hands and say, oh God, You have promised. Your Word declares that this is the destiny that You have set before us and You are the One who has prepared the way so that I can enjoy that destiny. Praise God!
“They will be his people….” It said, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.” Amazing! “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Praise God!
So, you see in the beginning how the Lord, even when He knew what had happened, came seeking, didn’t He, came providing…always this was the desire of His heart, to have a relationship with His creatures. So, He doesn’t treat us like little, old slaves running around, but as sons and daughters. There’s a relationship.
But what I…obviously, this is wonderful to talk about the hereafter, but I’ll tell you, God wants us to…this is something God wants us to enjoy here and now. This is meant to be an order of things that we enjoy in this world! We begin here. We don’t say, well, it’s gonna be wonderful someday. Right now, I’m muddling through. Thank You, Lord.
You’re up there, sort of…I can call on You when I need You, and I come, and this, that and the other thing. But, oh God, just stay up there, because I’m uncomfortable around You. Kind of got quiet, didn’t it? Where do you think that comes from?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. This is not God’s order. God wants us to get to a place where we feel at rest in His presence, where we want Him close. And there are so many things that work against that in our nature. Oh, I don’t want Him close. He’ll see what I’m doing, like…good grief! Give me a break. Do you think He doesn’t know? He knows everything about you, and more than you know.
But oh, we don’t want Him to come too close, or…Lord, I’ll just cut loose on Sunday morning, and we’ll worship and we’ll just have a great old time, we’ll enjoy Your presence, but the rest of the time, kind of…go back someplace else. Don’t stay too close. Or, Lord, would You mind just stepping away a bit, I’ve got something I want to do?
The Lord wants us to come to a place where we walk with Him. If there’s that kind of sense in us that, Lord, I don’t really want You close right now. I’m doing something I’m not too comfortable with. I know You wouldn’t be comfortable about this, so, just indulge me here. I’m gonna do my thing for a little while.
Oh God! God wants to bring us to a place where He can be the center, where our greatest joy and our greatest rest is not…leaving here and going, whew! Now I can go back to being me and going back to what I want. Oh God, help us.
The Devil keeps us in places of weakness and I see this…you know, at times, when I’m struggling with a particular need and a weakness, and we all do…but I wonder, how in the world did I get back to this? You know, I think I used this same illustration but for a different purpose last week. How did I get here? Why is this still such a problem to me?
And…it seemed like last week, I think the emphasis was, well, you just really don’t believe My Word. But there’s another aspect to it. You can believe what He says all you want to, but if in your mind He’s out there and you’re down here obeying principles, then it’s still just you!
Think about that. If the secret to the Christian life is wrapped up in the things that we do, the lifestyle we adopt, then how does that differ from any other religion? You may differ in the details and all of that, but it’s something we practice. We go to church, which is not a biblical concept at all, but anyway, you understand what I’m saying. That’s how we put it. But we come to church gatherings.
Well, that’s part…I’m a Christian, now what do I do? Well, you read your Bible. You pray. You go to church services. If you have a problem, you ask God about it. And all those things are fine. But if they become just activities and things that we do, my God, that’s just another form of Law, where everything we do is just distilled down into an outward thing, an activity.
And how long do you have to do that before it feels like a duty. Oh God, I didn’t pray, or I didn’t pray long enough. And we just think in these terms of, this is my duty, this is how I’m supposed to do this, when God wants to get us to the point where, I ‘get’ to do this. Lord, I want to be with You.
And not only that, it’s not like we divide life into secular and sacred, where if I’m building something and I’m nailing something that…okay, God, I’ll get with you later. God wants to be in the middle of that! God wants to share every moment of our lives with us and for us to be okay with that, for us to be totally at peace with His presence.
And I confess a need. I know I’m not alone. But there are barriers, there are ways that the Devil has of tricking every one of us into sort of letting down and just…and feeling like God is there and I’ve got to do something—I’ve ‘got’ to do something, instead of, He’s right here.
You know, the point I made Wednesday night was…like I say, I don’t know how all of this is going to order. This was not exactly how I imagined it, but that’s okay. My imagination needs a lot of help. But the point I made Wednesday night was, we get it backwards. When it comes to the presence of God and feeling ‘okay’ with Him, like everything is okay, we feel…when we feel a need, we feel like, I’ve got to do something and then I can go.
And it’s exactly the opposite. It’s when I feel a need, that’s when I need to run to Him and sing, “O Lord, I Need You.” What a perfect song to lead up to this. I was ready to quit playing and come on over here. And then…I’m thankful that song was sung. That’s exactly what we need.
And here the Lord is saying, I love you. I get where you’re at. I know your struggles. But you can’t just cherry-pick scriptures out of here and quote them and quote them and quote them, and beat this. You can’t change just by affirming the Word of God, as important as that is, if you’re leaving Me out. I’m the key to everything.
I didn’t give you a religion to follow. I came down so that I could have this relationship, starting now that we’re gonna enjoy for all eternity. I mean, do you think in eternity we’re gonna say, oh my God, He’s close. I’ve got to be careful here. I’ve got to watch how I think and watch what I…God doesn’t want us walking on eggs around Him. He wants us to be completely at rest in His presence, and to have a confidence that’s not based upon us.
Folks, if we’re in His presence, there are gonna be changes. There’s gonna be strength that comes in. I mean, one illustration would be, you could take an electrical appliance, and you could study it, you could take it apart, you could know everything possible about it, but if you don’t plug it in, what good is it? You might be the world’s best expert on how that thing works, but if you don’t plug it in there’s no power.
And I can’t tell you the number of times when I have just kind of bopped through my day and next thing you know, I’m in a weak place and I just feel like God’s gone somewhere. Of course, the reality is, He’s gone nowhere! I mean, where does He go? Is He…well, I guess I’ve got to leave Him alone awhile. He is right there. The problem is, I’ve sort of disconnected.
And He’s trying to encourage me to reach out. Not just to reach out and I feel good and He’s gonna be happy with me because I’ve been doing good, with the outward stuff, but He wants me to come to Him, every moment of every day, when I’m at my worst, my weakest, whatever has just happened, I can run to Him and know that He loves me.
Isn’t that the message of the Word? But do we really get that? Do we live as if that’s really true? Somehow, I feel like God wants to make Himself more real. And I believe He’s willing to take us there, if we will…if we’ll seek Him. I don’t know where to begin with all the scriptures, but I know there’s so much in the Word that’s an example, both of God’s heart but also, of men who walked with God.
What about Enoch? I mean there’s a guy…he couldn’t have known a lot. So, this isn’t about being an encyclopedia of divine knowledge. God knows where we’re at. I mean, a child can walk with God! Do you think they need a theological degree to know about God? We…see all the things we substitute sometimes. It’s good to have knowledge. And I’ll tell you, I have…this is one of my issues, I guess…my own personality, I tend to assimilate information, organize it, dispense it…that’s part of…that’s the way my mind works.
But, do you see the danger of that? That you can substitute knowledge and suppose that that gives you power by itself. It doesn’t do it, not unless we are connected to the source of power. Then there can be an understanding. It all works together, but if I’m leaving Him out of the equation, then what?
But here’s Enoch…early in earth’s history, walking with God! Now think about that from God’s point of view. There’s this guy down there and he sure doesn’t know much…I’ve got better things to do. I mean, that’s how we think, but God doesn’t have any better things to do. His whole being, His nature is defined, as we’ve said so many times, by love! And love is that quality that devotes itself sacrificially to the welfare of the object of that love!
I don’t know how in the world…a God, a being like Him, that breathe out stars, could want anything to do with somebody like me, but that’s the focus of His heart! And I feel the need and I know others feel that need, of us coming to a place of deeper rest…where it’s not like, I know I need to be in His presence, but I’m uncomfortable with it. There’s this back and forth tension that’s going on. And I just want to get to the place where, yes, just as I am, I’m welcome in His presence.
Now you understand, I’m not talking about somebody who’s just willingly going on, trying to live their life, and trying to use that as an excuse. If you get near Him, that’s not gonna work. You’ll know it. But I mean…there are people who delude themselves that they can have that kind of relationship.
But I’ll tell you, if your heart is to want Him, that’s the desire of your heart, God wants you—God wants you! God wants you—God wants you! God wants to be part of your life. He wants to be, not part of it, He wants to ‘be’ your life. He wants to be right in the center of everything you do. When you’re driving down the street, when you’re pounding a nail, when you’re turning over the pages of your books…every part of it, God wants to be in the center of it.
But He walked with Enoch, didn’t He? “Enoch walked with God.” It says the same thing about Noah! There was a man, at a critical juncture of the world’s history, when the world itself had turned its back upon God to the point where He said, “…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (KJV). There was a man in the midst of this, who walked with God. And guess what? God walked with him and talked to him, and made provision for him. That’s the God that we serve. His eyes run to and fro in the earth, seeking those whose hearts are turned to Him. Oh, praise God!
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May 31, 2020 - No. 1443
All Music
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May 24, 2020 - No. 1442
“Are You in Prison?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1442
May 24, 2020
May 24, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1442 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Don’t we need to take seriously the kind of a person that God is making out of us? Think about what Jesus said in this same context, back in verse 8. See this is a further confirmation of the use of this verse. What does He say? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (NIV).
And we’ve used this many times. Obviously, He’s not talking about physically seeing God. There is a discernment of God in the details of our lives that somebody whose heart is right toward God can actually discern…you can see that. It’s the eyes of faith that the eyes of the heart are able to say, God’s in this.
How did Moses endure? Hebrews tells us, in chapter 11. How did Moses endure all the things that he had to put up with? “…He endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” (KJV). It’s the ability that only God can confer that enables someone to see past circumstances and say, God is orchestrating events even though they may be unpleasing to my flesh—distressing to my flesh.
There’s a God who’s orchestrating the details of my life. And I surrender to Him and His purposes. I know that it’s gonna come out the way He wants it and it’s gonna be good. I refuse to act like everybody, and react like everybody else in the world. I want to serve Him. I want to humble myself in His hand and believe Him in the face of all of this. Is this touching anything in your life?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, every one of us. I wish there was some magic button we could push and it would all vanish. We’re gonna go through life confronting things that are a part of our old nature. And there’s a God who’s not gonna give up on working. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it….” He will! How long? Until He gets tired of you? No! “…Until the day of Jesus Christ.” He’s not gonna give up!
He is so faithful to His purpose! That’s why I have a foundation of hope that is not based upon my ability to serve Him! It’s based upon the promise of Someone who cannot tell a lie, and who has done all of the work that needs to be done to give me a foundation to stand upon!
But oh, if I’m standing over here, and I’m clinging to my sense of self-worth, and self-righteousness, and the rightness of my cause and all of that, and I’m refusing to give in and give up and let go, who’s hurt by that? You are. And I am! I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants to let us out of prison.
( congregational amens ).
But you know what it’s like many times? We’re sitting in the back corner of a jail cell. The door’s open. There’s a light shining through the door! There’s someone outside saying, come, I have purchased your freedom. And we’re sitting there in the back corner, facing away from the light, refusing to give up! And in the face of it, declaring that we’re the one that’s right! Is that a picture?
( congregational response ).
That’s exactly how it is! Oh my God, we’re as stubborn as Pharaoh sometimes!
( congregational response ).
And who are we hurting? Folks, we’re hurting ourselves. We’re hurting other people around us that we could help.
( congregational amens ).
Oh my God, give us a deeper vision, a broader vision to be able to step back and see past the minutia of our life and the events, and see a God who knows how to orchestrate everything in a broken world, to gather together a people, to set us free, to break holds of sin in our lives that come because we cling to our own ways and our own ideas! Oh, what a joy it is when He brings us to the place where we let go of something! How many know what I’m talking about?
( congregational response ).
Oh, you’ve struggled, and you’ve struggled and you’ve struggled and one day you let go! And how was it? Wonderful! This freedom…why didn’t I do this before? And yet, how many of us are sitting here right now?
( laughter ).
I ain’t giving up! My cause is right. I will do what I will do! I’ll tell you what, my God, help us to understand.
( congregational response ).
What a simple thing this is, because there’s is an opportunity. You know, there are times we get mad! We’re angry about a circumstance! But God doesn’t want us to take that to bed with us and hang onto it! There’s a way to let go of that, because He says to settle matters quickly, while you’re in the way. There’s a point of time where we’re walking together and something is happening, and we have the choice of turning off the road or stopping, or whatever. What do we do? Settle matters quickly while we are in the way. And if we don’t, what happens?
( congregational response ).
Then you wind up in prison. And you don’t come out until you pay the utmost farthing. Now that’s not bribing the jailer to let us out and let us keep our sense of self-righteousness. That’s not what it means to buy your way out. What buys our way out is humbling ourselves the way we should have in the first place.
( congregational amens ).
And repenting of our inability, of our unwillingness, to do it! Oh I’ll tell you, what a blessing it is when God puts His finger on something in our lives. What do we do? At that point, we’re in the way with Him. He’s not doing it because He hates us! He’s doing it because He loves us!
He wants to show us something that’s desperately wrong and says, I want to help you with this! I want to deliver you from it! Will you just let go? Will you surrender? Will you repent? Will you trust Me? I’m allowing you to go through something terrible but will you trust Me in this? I know what I’m doing!
Boy, the poster child for this has got to be Joseph. You think about somebody…I mean, we talked about David and all that he went through. But Joseph…what an amazing example God has given to us of somebody who had a genuine revelation from God about his own destiny. He saw, in figurative…in a picture, his own family bowing down to him. And of course, they were excited and joyful when he told them about it.
( laughter ).
But, I don’t know, there was just an innocence about him. But somehow, he got it. Somehow, he had…God had worked with his heart. He was somebody who understood enough about God’s ways to keep trusting Him. And so he was able to endure the betrayal of his own brothers, who not only sold him into slavery but went back and told their father that he was dead. That’s a pretty bad betrayal.
Did he have something to gripe about, from a human standpoint? Man, talk about justified bitterness and anger…a spirit of revenge! Oh I’ll tell you, human nature thinks revenge is the answer. It just perpetuates the evil. Think about the spirit of Jesus. There was no revenge in His heart. Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. They were still in the condition they were, but He was free. He could face with joy that incredible circumstance…He had to endure the suffering but there was a joy on the inside, because He saw! I’m doing something that is eternal! This is worth it all!
And Joseph, somehow, had enough faith to wind up in Egypt, getting sold into Potiphar’s house. And instead of letting that eat on him…someday I’ll [pay] them back, I’m gonna make something of myself and one day…was it the Count of Monte Cristo…was that the theme of that one? I think…some of you that have read it. But anyway, you’ve got somebody who’s badly wronged who comes back in a position of great power and takes all of his enemies out.
He didn’t have any of that kind of spirit, did he? He just went to work for Potiphar and became such a faithful worker that Potiphar recognized, there’s something about this guy. I can put everything in his hands and just take my hands off. He’ll take care of it. He’s honest. He’s trustworthy.
What enabled him to do such a thing? He did not take that fire of revenge and bitterness into his bosom! He let it go and he said, God, I’m in Your hands! I am gonna trust You! I’m gonna look to You! I’m gonna believe You! I will not carry this stuff forward! I’m gonna serve You and do what’s right. And he did! And God’s blessing was with him.
But God had something more that He wanted to do. It didn’t make any sense by human value standards. But one day Potiphar’s wife began to put her eyes on him and he rebuffed her advances. And she cried rape. And that was the end of his service in Potiphar’s house. He wound up in the prison—central prison, the worst possible place. I’m guessing it was right there near the capital, because he didn’t have far to go when the Lord brought him out.
But there he was. Can you imagine what the devil must have been telling him in the middle of all this? It’s not recorded, but can you imagine? I mean, he’s human! He’s like you and me…made of the same stuff! This is not some alien! This is a human being! God, what did I do to deserve this? I’m doing my best to be faithful in every circumstance, and here I am! Oh, God! What’s wrong? What did I do? What kind of God are you?
See how it kind of turns when we’re so relentless in clinging to our own rightness? The real danger is that we’ll begin to start to say, God, I don’t know about You anymore. You’re not doing right. But he didn’t fall into that trap. Something enabled him to humble himself, right where he was.
And once again, he rose to the top, even in that place where they hurt him with fetters. But he became the trustee of the prison. Everything was put in his hands. Even the prison officials trusted him to help the others and to help them keep order and meet the needs…whatever he did in that capacity. God was with him!
And you remember how he tried to engineer his own deliverance and it wasn’t time, and God blotted the thing out of the baker’s, or the butler…butler, I believe. Anyway, blotted it out of his mind…he was sent there by Pharaoh and then came out. And Joseph said, when you go out tell him about me. This isn’t right. Well, you know, that’s just shows his humanness, doesn’t it?
But there was a perfect time. But what God was doing…and how easy it is for us to sit here today, looking back over the whole story, we see what God was doing. He was in the middle of it. He didn’t know. But we can see that God was shaping the character of a man to be so humbled, so ready to just let go of any earthly hurt, however justified it might have seemed, and say, Lord I am going to get my security from You. I’m gonna get my validation from you. I’m gonna get my…everything that I need, that my nature would drive me to some human source, and then blame them if I don’t get it…I’m gonna get it from You. I’m gonna do right in Your eyes.
God was building a man, preparing him for a place of incredible responsibility, a man that would handle that just as faithfully, would not fall into the temptations. And oh what an amazing testimony it was when he got into that position, when all of a sudden, he goes right from the prison to the second place in authority in the entire kingdom! He has the power of life and death over all that population except Pharaoh who is over him. Oh, if he’d been the Count of Monte Cristo, what would he have done?
( congregational response ).
But he wasn’t. He was God’s man, who had at every point humbled himself in God’s hand and said, God, I am trusting my life, my destiny, the course that takes me to that destiny, into Your hands. I let go of all the stuff that I would gather to myself that would keep me in a prison that doesn’t have iron bars, but is far more real. Lord, I just want to be free to do the job you gave me to do.
And what an amazing testimony it was when he was reunited with his brothers. Oh, the guilt that they carried. They were the ones really in prison all those years, because they knew what they’d done. Oh, they never had a moment’s freedom from that guilt. They had never really let it go. And the terror they must have felt when they realized who this ruler was. This is…I am Joseph whom you sold into slavery.
And yet, God has so worked in his heart that he was able to react to all of that with love…didn’t hold a thing against them. And when Isaac finally…not Isaac, when Jacob-Israel, finally died, they figured…the brothers even then figured, he’s been waiting for Daddy to die, then we’re going to get it. And so they came to him and they lied and they said, Dad told us…be kind to us, or something. I forget what the words were. And his answer showed what he was able to see. He said, you meant it for evil but God meant it for good.
( congregational amens ).
Do you and I get that in our lives? How many times is it a matter of our will? We know what’s right, but oh, man, something just grinds in here and we can’t let it go. Man, we need to be crying out to God.
( congregational amens ).
There’s a throne. The right to that throne has been purchased for us, at the price of our Savior’s blood. We don’t go there because we deserve it.
( congregational amens ).
We go there because He has opened the way.
( congregational response ).
He has created a perfect way so that you and I as sinners could be reconciled to a holy God! Not only that, we can go to get the help we need. What do we get at that throne? We get mercy! That reminds us that, I don’t deserve this. But He’s giving me something anyway because it’s His purpose and it reveals to us His heart, His love for us. Here I am in a bad place and yet He’s willing to listen to me! He’s willing to help me!
But isn’t that what He says? We come there for mercy but also grace. Grace is that divine, enabling power, because I can’t be the kind of person He wants me to be. It’s just not in me. But if I’m willing and will come to Him, He will empower me and it will change me. It will make the new life that He’s put within me stronger. It will make the hold of the other one weaker.
That won’t go away completely until I die, but it doesn’t have to have a hold on me! God has given me a stronger power and a life that’s so much greater. Grace is greater than sin. The power of grace to help us is stronger than the power of sin to control us. But it does involve our wills. You and I can be stubborn. We can sit in our little prisons if we want to. But the way is open. The door is open. We can find grace. And when is that grace given to us?
( congregational response ).
In time of need. Are you in need this morning? Are you in prison? There’s a throne, whatever the issue is that’s put you in prison. I don’t care what circumstances brought that condition in your heart about. That’s not the issue. Your adversary in that thing was not the circumstances or all these other things. It was God.
And God did it, not because He hates you, but because He loves you. God is against the nature that would drive us into the grave, into judgment. But He is for everyone who will lift their hearts to Him and put their trust in Him.
I’m praying this morning that God will give me a deeper level of trust, and when He brings things to my attention and shows me why I’m in prison, He will also with it give me the grace. And I know He will, if I’m willing…the grace to let go and say, yes, Lord. I surrender into Your hands. Isn’t that…I mean the verse we’ve heard so many times. “Humble yourselves…” What? “…Under the mighty hand of God…” That’s whose hand is over everything!
If you’re His, He is going to use every circumstance of this life to shape you for eternity. There’s no way that He can make us like His son, which is His purpose, isn’t it? How can He do that and not deal with this? If all He does is bless the righteous and curse the wicked…what’s our motivation for serving Him? Hey, life is good! All that would do would be to strengthen the very thing that is going to kill us. He has got to deliver us.
But oh, what peace and joy there is available to every one of us, what freedom there is when we let go and we find out. Oh, we let the hurts go. We let the things that have happened go. We let the disappointments go.
We let our anger at Him because of things that have happened in our lives…when we let it go and say, God, I’m willing to come into a place of reconciliation with You. I refuse to judge You any longer. I recognize that when I’m angry with somebody, it’s really You that I’m angry with. And I repent of that, Lord. Oh, give me grace to let it go.
If you’re in prison this morning, the door is open. The real question is what are we gonna do when God…we realize who our real adversary is and why He’s our adversary. And the fact that in being our adversary He’s really the best friend we ever had. Didn’t Solomon write, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” We’ve got the greatest friend that could ever possibly be today.
Oh, I’ll tell you, there’s such peace. Why did Jesus say, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (NIV).
Now that’s not our way, is it? Our way is to hold everything and measure everything by how it affects self. All that leads to is bondage. But the way of the cross, the way of following Jesus, learning from Him…and not living in that personal little prison of ours, what a joy and what a freedom it brings. To Him be all the glory!
I’ll tell you, if there’s adversity in your life, you’ve got an adversary. Oh, I pray that God will give you the grace to recognize who your real adversary is, and to humble yourself and agree with Him.
You want peace? He’s got all the peace you could ever want! And He longs to share it with everyone who will humble themselves today. If you don’t know Him, I pray that when He calls, you’ll recognize your need of Him. You’ll let Him bring you to that place where you say, there’s no point. The direction I’m going, if I’m gonna cling to my life and my way and my rightness and my hurts and all those things, it’s gonna lead to death. It may seem right to me, but it’s gonna lead to death. But you have opened a way of life, if I will humble myself, repent of my sins, put my faith in Jesus.
It’s not more complicated than that. That’s all it comes down to. Just surrender. There is a God who will wrap His arms around you, and give you a hope that, “…he is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede….”
( congregational amens ).
To Him be all the glory! Praise God!
Close
May 17, 2020 - No. 1441
“Are You in Prison?” Part One
Broadcast #1441
May 17, 2020
May 17, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1441 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ve had thoughts going through my mind and my mind’s come back to something really over the last two or three weeks, I suppose. Last week was a particular service, and so we went in a particular direction, because there was some ordination going on and I think that was exactly right. But I just want to share some thoughts that are not new, but yet we maybe haven’t heard them exactly this way in a while. And I’m gonna preface what I say today with this simple question. Are you in prison? There are all kinds of prisons, aren’t there?
( congregational response ).
But I’d like to just read a verse from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. Many of you who’ve been here for a long time and remember Brother Thomas, you will remember that he ministered many times on this particular verse, and brought something out of it that I just have felt in my own heart, needs that I have…but I see it in all of us and it’s a dimension that we need to know if we’re gonna think about being in prison and what that means…and being free, for that matter.
In verse 25…now I’ll say this first. Jesus is talking a lot about human relations and He’s portraying what godly character looks like in our relationships one with another. He describes all kinds of situations including persecution, and you name it…disputes of various kinds.
But here’s one in particular where He says, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” (NIV).
So it sounds to me like He’s talking about a situation in which you really are wrong and somebody is trying to use the law, at least on the natural level, someone is using the law to take you to a place where you may wind up losing your freedom if you are stubborn about it. You won’t give in. You’re right. You’re gonna cling to your rightness and your way, and by God, nothing’s gonna move you off of that. And so, watch out, you might wind up in prison and then you’re gonna have to pay the price.
But, there is a deeper level of truth that Brother Thomas often…and he’s not the only one who’s ever done this…has brought out. And the question really we need to ask is, who is our adversary, ultimately? It’s one thing to talk about conflicts between people. But do we or do we not believe that there is a God who reigns, who created all of us with a purpose, who is working out His purpose, and who is doing it in spite of the fact that we live in a broken world of lost men and women who are motivated by a nature that hates Him? And yet, in the midst of that He is at work.
And I’ll tell you, there’s probably not a person here, certainly not, who has not been…had your nature and what you want and how you feel and all of that, come into conflict with something where you got wounded real good. You were really angry at somebody. You were holding onto something…there’s some conflict between you and somebody. Maybe it’s recent, maybe it’s just in the distant past. But by God, you’re right and you’re right to be wounded, you’re right to be hurt. You’re right not to forgive and all that stuff.
And you know, we’ve heard these kinds of truths, but this other dimension is one that we really need to get if we’re gonna have the whole picture. If you’re just gonna think in terms of, well, somebody hurt me and God wants me for forgive them. Well, that’s true as far as it goes. But when you bring in this truth into that, it changes the whole picture, because regardless of the means by which something happened to you which wounded you, who is really behind it, ultimately?
( congregational response ).
You see, that’s the whole point. God is! God is sovereign. We see it played out throughout the scriptures in so many instances. We see God raising up a man like Pharaoh, knowing the kind of man he was, knowing he was proud and stubborn, and no matter what God did, he was gonna rise up and fight him back.
Well, God used that, didn’t He? He used that to teach His people, to bring a great deliverance. But He used it to spread His fame across the whole globe. I’ll tell you, there’s a God who knows how to use a broken world to accomplish His purpose.
But oh, how we, as His people, need to understand how He works in us, because the same God who raised him up, the same God who raised up Nebuchadnezzar and then brought him low and taught him who was really in charge…that God is in charge of our lives. He reigns! If there is something that has happened in your life that is adverse, we need to remember who the real adversary is.
Now that sounds like a contradiction in a way because why would God be against me? That’s what it sounds like to human nature. Oh, God’s against me! How many of you have ever been in a situation where no matter what you did, you were spinning your wheels, you didn’t get anywhere, and it’s like…God, why are You against me? Why don’t You…you know? We have this simplistic view of God.
You know, we’ve recently used Job and his experiences as a backdrop for talking about some of this. You know, all of a sudden Job was righteous, doing everything he thought he could. I mean, even stuff that he was…oh man, my kids had a party, maybe they cursed God. I’d better offer a sacrifice…everything he could think of to do right in God’s eyes and to be a righteous man.
And God recognized the effort, even though he had an incomplete picture. His theology really wasn’t complete. God used all of that. But all of a sudden, the inexplicable happened to him. He lost everything that he had in his possessions. He lost his family, all in one day…everyone but his wife, and she was no help.
( laughter ).
And then, on top of that, he loses his health in such a way that he is in misery, and no clue as to why any of this happened! And his wife is sitting there, why do you keep your integrity? “Curse God and die!” Get out of this! This is ridiculous!
And you know by the theology that people had in that day, that shouldn’t have happened. I mean, everybody knows that God blesses the righteous and He curses the wicked! So if something bad is happening, it’s because you’re a sinner and God is punishing you. That’s the only concept they had.
And the consequences of righteousness and sin were always thought in terms of earthly things. Again, you’re blessed in an earthly way. You have wealth and status in society and possessions and blessed in good health and all of that stuff.
There’s an awful lot of that in Christianity today. At least, what purports to be it. There’s such a mixture of this blessing, legalistic kind of stuff that God just wants to bless His people in an earthly sense. I’ll tell you, there are blessings that go so far beyond that. We have no clue. And it just sounds like, as I say, it sounds like a contradiction for God to be our adversary. Why would God be our adversary?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, there’s the answer right there…because He loves us. But think about what’s going on here. What is it that God’s against? We have got a nature that hates God and if we simply do what comes naturally, it will absolutely take us down to death and judgment. Our nature, the carnal mind, we’re told in the scriptures is, what?
( congregational response ).
Enmity against God. Those that are in the flesh can’t please God—cannot please God! I don’t care what you do. You can do all the good works in the world. That doesn’t gain you a thing with God. It’s not righteousness in His eyes because it comes out of cesspool of nature that is self-seeking! All we want to be comfortable and happy in the sense of…the worldly sense.
Oh, I’ll tell you what, we have got a nature if God didn’t do something about that, He really wouldn’t be for us, would He? What God is against…what God is seeking to deliver us from is that very thing that possesses us and we are so clueless about the depth of that! We don’t get it! We don’t understand!
Oh, how righteously do we react in our own feeble imaginations, when some evil person does something that makes us feel bad or actually injures us in some way! Oh, how right our cause is! Oh, how right we are to be angry and to be upset and to point the finger! You shouldn’t have done that!
Oh, my God. What else can you possibly have in a world full of people who are selfish, with fights and conflicts? My God, everybody in the world wants their fur rubbed the right way. Who in the world is gonna do the rubbing?
( laughter ).
Boy, are we so turned in…oh, as I’ve said many times recently, our culture today has just gone off the deep end in terms of ‘it’s all about me and my feelings.’ Good Lord! What a horrible pit that is! What a trap that is of Satan!
But I’ll tell you, there is a God who knows how to intervene in our lives to move us in the direction that He wants us to go. I’ll tell you, the most wonderful thing that God can do for someone who does not know Him, has never really come to the place that we’ve been singing about this morning. You’ve never really…that barrier is still there. There’s still a barrier of sin and unbelief and you just…you see it and you hear people talk about it, but you really haven’t entered in. The most wonderful thing that God can do for somebody like that is to bring trouble into your life in some form, something that makes you feel your need!
How many testimonies I’ve heard over the years of somebody who has just gone down the wrong road! They’ve lived with abuse! They’ve lived with a thousand and one wrong things and they’ve tried to drown their sorrows with this and with that! And they come down to a point where, it’s no use! Life is not worth living. I’ve got the pills, I’m gonna take them. In fact, the girl that sang that song that we sang a while ago…praise God, what was it?
( congregational response ).
“Mercy Tree.” Thank you. How many of you have seen that video on line of her singing that? That’s amazing, the power behind that. But the story behind that is what’s more amazing, because that was her story! Life was not worth living! She was dead-set that she was going to take her life and some friend would not let up on her, and said, you’re coming with me to a meeting tonight! I will not take no for an answer!
And she finally gave up and said, all right, I’ll go with you. I’ve got the pills. I’ll come back and take care of it afterwards. Well, you know what happened. God used that meeting to touch her heart and basically, the message is, you’re ready to throw your life away, why don’t you give it to Me?
( congregational amens ).
Oh, praise God! And she did!
( laughing ).
I’ll guarantee she’s never been sorry. God did a marvelous work of filling that empty heart with a peace. That doesn’t mean everything is all fixed up instantly. But I mean, there is a whole turning around, a new direction in life.
And if you’re here today and…the most wonderful thing God can do for you is to bring you to an awareness of your need. And whatever He has to do to do it, He will! He may use people! He will use circumstances and your inclination, and mine would be the same…to blame them, and if you’re really thinking about it, you’re gonna say, God, why did You do that to me?
And if you take that stance and that attitude and you will not give it up, what’s gonna happen? Do you think you’re gonna succeed? Do you think that’s the right course, to cling to yourself and hang onto your life against all odds? My God, there’s a God who loves you enough to run you down, to bring you to a place where you’re ready to give up and let it go and give Him your heart and your life!
( congregational amens ).
Oh, when His voice comes, listen! Open your heart! He does it because He loves you! He will bring trouble into your life because He loves you enough not to let you get away with sin! He knows what it’ll do
My God, is a doctor mean because he treats cancer cells the way he does? Man, they’re the enemy! Well, sin in your enemy and mine. And there’s a God who is faithful to His purpose. He is going to have a people, when it’s all said and done, that have been cleansed forever, from every taint of sin and death, able to live with Him in a place of perfection. Only God can do that!
( congregational amens ).
But it’ll never happen with an unrepentant heart that refuses to let go and let God have His way in the heart and the life. Oh, praise God! But I’ll tell you, this doesn’t just affect people who don’t know the Lord yet. It affects every one of us.
There’s not a person here who doesn’t have areas of your heart and your life where things have happened! Like I say, they could be way in the past, they could be an accumulation of things, they could be stuff that happened today…where something adverse has come into your heart and into your life, usually through somebody—often through somebody. And the Devil would focus all of your attention upon that and would focus your heart upon the rightness of your position and the wrongness of what they did! And you miss the point completely. God does what He does to deliver us from ourselves!
( congregational amens ).
I’ll tell you, when something comes along and “makes me mad,” as is the expression. You know, I’ve pointed this out many times. Nobody has the power to do that. That’s a choice I make! I am not compelled to be angry!
What better example do we have than Jesus? All the stuff that He suffered! “He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” (KJV). He knew all about this stuff. They persecuted Him and hounded Him to a point of a miserable, tortured death, for you and for me.
But there was something in His heart that was so surrendered to the will of His Father that even though the God of heaven sent that adversity, arranged for it, stood back and let it happen, there was a reason, there was a purpose, there was something eternal that was being accomplished.
And so it enabled Jesus to look up to the Father and say, oh God, if there’s any way, let this cup pass. “…Nevertheless not my will…” Not my will, but Yours be done! What a place, what an example for us! He knew that God had ordained this! And we see the Apostles later talking about this. They say, they killed Him by Your appointment! They killed Him, Father, because You ordained this for our salvation! Praise God!
But, oh do we not see this in our personal lives. Can we not see the hand of One who loves us enough to do whatever it takes! Many times it will bring out the very worst in you and the worst in me! But I’ll tell you, it’s like taking that deep wound and bringing it out into the light. How can it ever be healed, if you don’t? How can it ever be healed, if we cling to our own way and our own rightness? I don’t care if the Devil himself comes up and with all the wickedness he can muster, he does something against you…if that happens, God let it!
( congregational amens ).
God did it! Not to us, but for us! He did it to bring something that happens in our lives so that we will turn our hearts to Him. My God, I need to know my need!
( congregational amens ).
I need to understand what’s wrong. Why would God do such a thing? Because He longs to turn my mind from my own way to see what’s wrong…oh God, to able to bring it to His feet and say, yes, Lord. Yes, all of this was wrong, but I see the wrong in me. I see what happens when I hang onto this…when I refuse to humble myself, when I refuse to let go of the hurt, when I refuse to let go of what’s wrong, what they did! Who is hurt? Does what’s going on in my heart hurt them? I’m the one that’s in jail. I’m the one that’s in prison and God wants to set me free.
( congregational amens ).
Oh God! Praise God! Are you getting any of this? Does this make sense?
( congregational amens ).
Can you relate this to your life and things that have happened? I believe as God brings us to an awareness of things, we can bring them to Him and say, Lord, I want to see that through Your eyes. I want to see past what happened. I want to get out of prison, Lord. I want to agree with You.
You know, sometimes people, maybe because of the circumstances, I don’t know…sometimes people come to a place where they realize, hey, this is really God! I’m in something here and it isn’t like somebody did something terrible to me. My circumstances are so bad, God’s the Author of this! And they’re wrestling.
Again, we talked about Job and the battle that he had with his religious friends and how they just brought their theology books out and tried to explain it to him. And he was so relentless in defending his own righteousness that he actually fell into a trap of beginning to somehow entertain questions about God’s justice.
God helped him. God was bringing him to a deeper revelation, that there are other purposes besides God blessing you or cursing you in an earthly sense. He wanted Job to know him in a deeper way and to understand that there are purposes that sometimes require bad stuff to happen. In fact, they often do. How do we…when do we learn more about God? Do we learn about Him on the mountain top, or do we learn about Him in the valley when He carries us through?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, I can see a lot of heads. You know the answer to that. You might not want to admit it, but you know. I think about Joni Eareckson Tada…we’ve used her many times. What an example! This beautiful, young athletic 17-year-old that suddenly finds herself a quadriplegic and she’s been a Christian, at least…not in a deep sense, but at least a Christian.
And I appreciate so much in her writings the honesty with which she lays out the battles that she fought. And oh there were deep, deep, heart-rending questions, where she was just wrestling and just had this sense…God, why? God, I don’t get…how could such a thing happen? How could You be a good God and let this happen to me.
And this wasn’t just an overnight thing. This was a long, long drawn out battle to be reconciled. Oh my! And it was just a terrible battle for her and it would be for anybody, for heaven’s sake!
( congregational response ).
I respect how the Lord brought her through that. I don’t know what I would have done. I’m not gonna stand up here and boast. I don’t have any strength in myself. My God, if we have anything, if have any ability to be in agreement with God, it’s gonna have to be His ability! It’s gonna have to be surrendering to the grace by which I can do those things! I have no power to do it. Oh, He’s so ready, so ready to give us what we stand in such desperate need of.
And the Lord brought her through and there was a period of time when everybody said, oh, you’re supposed to be healed. Well, God can do that, if that’s His purpose. But oh, she had to wrestle with this question. Why are other people being healed and I’m not? What did I do wrong? Why me?
I went through something like that…a little bit. I mentioned it…I’m not gonna go through it again. But that experience I had in college when I just got mad. I pouted. It wasn’t a drawn out thing but I just gave up. God wasn’t doing me right and I wasn’t happy about it. But He so patiently brought me through that. He didn’t get mad with me about it. He understood what I was going through.
How many times do we see it in David? I mean, here’s a man that was anointed to be king and his life just falls apart, as far as circumstances are concerned! He goes from bad to worse! Running for his life! Going through periods of time when he wrote like in the Psalms, Psalms 13. “How long, O LORD?” (NIV). How long am I gonna have to put up with the wicked seemingly triumphing and I’m in misery, and I call and You don’t answer me, Lord? How long is this gonna go on?
But somehow there was a degree of faith down in his heart that enabled him to end Psalms like that: “But I trust in your…love.” Oh, isn’t that what God is looking for? And I’ll tell you, where does that kind of trust come from? It comes from God, I understand that. But how is it formed in us? How does it become part of us?
( congregational response ),
Experience…what kind of experience?
( congregational response ).
When we need it. When that is the only thing standing between us and disaster, and we’re willing to trust God. We’re willing to let go and say, God, I know You love me. I know that You’re doing this for me. Yes, You may be…there’s an adversarial relationship with things that are wrong in me from which I need deliverance, but You are my God and I still trust You! I mean, you think about what enabled Job in the beginning to say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” (KJV).
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May 10, 2020 - No. 1440
“God’s Kingdom in the Home” Conclusion
Broadcast #1440
May 10, 2020
May 10, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1440 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You talk about a high calling. You talk about something that flies in the face of human nature. Man! This is…all you can do is say, oh, God! I’m not like this. God, my nature is to be selfish. I would take this principle of the husband being the head of the home in a selfish way. I just want to do what I want. I want to make her serve me.
That’s not the spirit in which Jesus came to rescue lost, helpless sinners. He didn’t come to be a king. He came to be a servant. He came to give Himself completely for the eternal welfare of a people. That’s the same spirit that He desires godly husbands to have for their wives, to create for them a place of safety.
And I don’t mean just physical safety, but I mean emotional safety, where they can be whole. They can know that they are valued and loved and cared about and provided for, and someone whose heart they can trust. I’ll tell you, we need God, don’t we, folks?
( congregational response ).
Every one of us needs God to be able to fulfill such roles. We don’t have this in our nature. It comes from Christ alone. We don’t know what love is until we meet Him.
( congregational amens ).
We call it love, but most of the time, it’s lust, selfishness. Oh, God gives us that kind of a spirit and heart that He had toward His people. And I desire that in a greater way. I recognize that…Lord have mercy just like everybody else, there’s so much in which I come short.
But guys, you’re the head of your home—you’re the head of your home. But what kind of a head are you? Are you just selfish? Do you live for the welfare of your wife and your family? Do you look to God and say, oh, God, I’m not the top one here. You are. She may be in a position where she needs to look to me as head, but I’ve got a head, too. I’m not some tyrant. God, take that spirit that would cause anybody to be a tyrant, an abuser in any form, take it out of our hearts and cause us to be the kind of godly people that He designed us to be in the beginning!
There is a place of blessing! The Kingdom of God exists in that kind of atmosphere! God is present! You know, it’s not enough just to come in here. And I thank God for His presence. Thank God for when He meets with us. But I’ll tell you, the devil understands that the family and the unit, the family unit and the marriage relationship is the foundation of God’s world and God’s society. That’s why they hate it so much. That’s why they’re doing everything that’s possible to tear it down.
I’ll tell you, we have the opportunity, not just to have a place here within these walls, but to have a place in our homes where God is honored, where people can come in, they can sense the presence of God. They see it. It’s not just talked about. It’s not just a set of rules to live by, but we’re literally allowing the Lord to live in us and change us and help us to fulfil each one, the godly role that He’s given to us.
We cannot do it except He live in us. But the other side, the flip side is we can do it because He’s in us to strengthen us to do it if we will. So we have opportunities every single day to say, Lord, help me to be the kind of person, the kind of husband, the kind of wife that You want me to be.
And of course, then you get to…well, I’ll go ahead and read the rest of this. “After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect the husband.” (NIV).
So you see what’s going on. Paul is talking about two different things, and the one is the model for the other. We have a Lord who has died for all of us to bring us together…to bring us together as a congregation, as a people. And I’m talking here, but also wherever His people are. He has brought us together, and He has given everything for us.
And He exists, not just as a figurehead in Heaven…we’re not walking with a figurehead in Heaven in a book. We’ve got a living Savior who is here. He’s among us. He dwells in His people, and He’s seeking to bring forth…and all of His energy is seeking to bring forth His nature in us and to recreate His kingdom upon earth.
To the extent we cooperate with Him, we enjoy the benefits of His kingdom now. Thank God for what will come. We don’t have to wait, though. We don’t have to live here in frustration and misery. We can enjoy His presence now, if we will.
So, on the one hand, it’s this glorious mystery of Christ in the church, but that is the model for the husband and the wife. Praise God! I’ll tell you, do you see God as a mean judge, rule maker, repressing us, trying to make us live in ways we don’t want to…do things we don’t want to do, an abuser?
Oh, my God! There is no greater love than we have experienced from Him. And to submit to that love, to surrender to it, to have the kind of a spirit that a wife in this passage is meant to have for her husband…this applies to every one of us. To have that kind of thing is to submit to love itself and to be set free. Praise God!
But let’s ask God to help us model that. We’ve got young couples that probably have been married since some of this stuff has been preached openly. I pray God will just bless you, that He’ll help you with all the issues, because there are plenty of issues. We’re human beings. We’ve still got this nature to deal with.
There are gonna be times when we’re gonna bump heads. But may God give us that spirit to remember. Who am I? I’m His child. What is He trying to accomplish in me? How do I get there? Lord, give me a spirit to humble myself and to submit.
I’ll tell you, the husband does a lot of submitting too, not just submitting to his wife’s opinion, though he ought to value it and ought to listen and consider it. But I mean it is a humbling, it’s a giving of his whole life for her and for the family. There’s a pretty big submission in that. He just doesn’t use them for his own enjoyment. They’re not his servants so he can live his life and do what he pleases. He’s to have the same heart toward them as Christ has towards us. That’s the model. Praise God!
That’s an awesome model, isn’t it? Praise the Lord! But obviously, it doesn’t stop with them, does it? It gets into children. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Now, let me point out that it doesn’t say children, obey your parents in the Lord, for ‘they’ are always right.
( laughter ).
Thought I better throw that in, because we are very, very good, especially the young age, of justifying self-will and rebellion, because the one who is commanding whatever, the one who is in the position of authority is less than perfect. But God, once again, is more interested in our character than He is in every little issue that comes along. And it is right for someone to have a heart that is willing to submit and surrender.
God is…I’ll tell you, young people, in this world if you hang around the people of the world all you will learn is rebellion. If you drink in their values, that’s all you’ll be is a rebel, and you will justify it! And of course, most of us can remember being teenagers. It was a while ago, but I can still remember.
And of course, we all know that teenagers are the smartest people in the world. They know everything. And especially, are they aware of how dumb everybody is that’s older than they are and trying to tell them that it’s not like they think it is. And of course, if they’re wise at all, they reach a point where they realize that their parents have learned an awful lot in the last while. They’re a lot smarter than they thought they were. But that’s human nature, folks.
But I’ll tell you, God has a place for you in His kingdom. And if you’re a little child, right now, your place is to learn from Him. Your place is to humble yourself and submit. Your place is not to say, well, my parents…I’ll submit if they’re right. What you mean is, if they agree with your rebellion. But have a humble spirit and look to God and say, Lord, I want to be the kind of person You want me to be. Help me at this stage of my life to walk in Your ways, because You are preparing me to be to be an adult who can continue to model Your nature and Your Spirit in the world. One day, I’m gonna have a family. One day, I’m gonna have a kid just like me.
( laughter ).
Pay back.
( laughing ).
( laughter ).
But seriously, you see where I’m coming from. You see it from the Lord’s point of view. Oh, we make such big issues out of such little passing things, and God is trying to build character. And the way He does it in His kingdom is when you’re young, you exist in this unit called the family with a loving father and a mother.
I get that the world is broken. I get that it’s not always like that, but God can still work in you. If you will look past the imperfections of those around you and honor the God whom you claim to serve, God will fight your battles. God will build character in you, and you will be the kind of person that maybe your parents aren’t. Don’t ever use that as an excuse.
But I’ll tell you, God wants to build something in you that’s real, that’s eternal. “Honor you father and mother…” I know they don’t always deserve it. None of us deserves God’s favor and blessing. But, “Honor your father and mother—which is the first commandment with a promise…” It goes back to the Ten Commandments. Why? “…That it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” There’s a blessing that goes with honoring your father and your mother.
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children.” That’s what’s in the NIV which is a good way to translate that. There are ways that fathers can lead and rule over their children that actually ‘frustrate’ them, is another word. How does our Heavenly Father treat us? Does He demand things of us that we can’t do? Oh, how patient, how loving, how kind He is. When we mess up, His love doesn’t change.
And that’s the model that God is seeking to reproduce within the home! It’s that we should have the same spirit towards our children that God has toward us! There are times when discipline is needed, but discipline is never to be meted out in anger and personal frustration! It’s not that they are bothering you and messing with you, it’s that there is a spirit that is trying to take over their lives and their minds, and it needs to be corrected.
You know, I have memories of…when I have needed it, when I was a youngster, but I appreciate one memory that I have, and I guess I have it because it occurred a number of times. You know, when my parents would discipline me, I don’t ever remember my parents disciplining me in anger. I’m thankful for that. I praise God for that.
But I do remember them sitting down and saying I really don’t want to have to do this, but I’m doing this because I love you, and it’s necessary. That was the sentiment that was carried out, and you know, that kind of sticks. You don’t like it at the time much. That’s what Hebrews 12 says. We don’t always appreciate it at the time, but it produces a harvest of good fruit in people that are exercised thereby.
God, help us in this area. I’ll tell you, if you’ve got a Christian home, you have got an awesome responsibility, but you’ve got an awesome privilege to help bring the Kingdom of God to this world and to have one little place, at least, where Jesus rules, where His Spirit is the dominating atmosphere in which our kids are raised. So, “…do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
And I think I’ve mentioned this before. Some of you, particularly among the home school crowd, remember a book that was circulated a quite a while ago. And I’m trying to remember. I think it was “The Curse of the Standard Bearer.” Some of you remember that one? And it was a very insightful book. And basically, what it had to do with was your style of raising a child.
Basically, is your home run by rules? Because if it is, then we’re just legalists. Does God’s Kingdom run by rules? I mean, yes, there are admonitions. There are principles and all, but is it fundamentally just rule based? Hey, you broke my rule. Whack! Here’s our standard for this. Here’s our standard for that.
And, the author made a very strong case for how destructive that is, and how many kids just want to grow up and get out from under the rules. But the alternative that was presented was we need to not be standard bearers but image bearers. So that’s not simply a matter of laying down rules, but it is demonstrating the Spirit of Christ in what we do so that they have something to model. We become models for our children instead of just simply law givers.
And I’ll tell you, that’s a sobering question to ask ourselves as to what degree do our children see in us what we profess? It got quiet, didn’t it? But isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that what God’s plan is, that we should not only look in here and find what out rules to live by and then just enforce them, but rather, we need to have a relationship with Christ that our children can see? My parents just don’t tell me what to do, they live in a way that I want to be like them.
I’ll tell you, if we do that, that doesn’t…there’s not a formula that guarantees all the results. But I’ll tell you what, it gives, it opens up a door for God to work in hearts. You know, there’s a point in time when all we can do is just say, God, help me to be the kind of person I want to be and then, just pray. How many of you have been in situations where your kids reach a certain point and all you can do is put them in God’s hands? And every time you try to do something, what does the Lord say? Take your hands off. There’s a place for that.
But I’ll tell you, we have a Heavenly Father who watches over His own. But do you see the principles that are in operation here? God is wanting to build little replicas, if you will, of His Kingdom, little outposts of His Kingdom in each of our homes so that we raise…the generations that follow do not have hand-me-down religion or ‘I’m out of here.’
That’s about the two options if you don’t have what God wants. You’re gonna have a decline. You’re gonna have a moving away from life and truth, or you’re gonna have people that just rebel against it and say, I don’t want what they have. They’re hypocrites. I don’t want to be one.
All the imperfections that I can see in myself, I just look to the Lord. But I want for me, I want for His people, and I believe this is God’s heart…He brought this to me when I woke up this morning. It just…I don’t know, I wasn’t looking for anything, so that’s usually a good sign, when thoughts just start coming unbidden, and they’re peaceable.
This is on God’s heart. He cares about your home. He cares about the relationships in your life. He cares about making you the kind of a person who can be at home in His Kingdom. I’ll tell you, your highest peace, joy, love, welfare is to be found in submission to His place and His will.
I don’t care if you’re a small child, God has a place for you in His Kingdom. He’s thought about you before He ever created the first star. He planned for you to have a place of love and joy and significance and all the things that atheism cannot possibly promise. He designed you for that. You’re unique. Nobody else is like you.
You’re important to Him. He died for you. He did all that it takes to make you the kind of a person that could enjoy a special place in His Kingdom, where you will have all the significance and the joy and the peace. You won’t be jealous of anybody. All of that’s gone out of our nature. There will just be the total freedom to be everything that God made us to be.
But doesn’t He want us to begin to model that now in our lives, our relationships and our homes? Yeah, I know they’re broken. I know you may have an unsaved husband. You may be single. You may not have a husband or a wife. But every one of us has a place in His Kingdom, and everyone matters. You matter to Him. He died for you.
And He can help us right where we’re at to be such models of Christ that people say, I want what they have. I don’t want to just come and sing the happy songs and do all those kinds of things and then not really live it out there. Does that make sense? Is that what the Lord wants? Praise God!
I’m so glad that we can look to Him, because I can’t do any of this. But that’s what salvation is about. It’s not about God giving us rules to live by and saying, hey, if you’ll just go this way instead of that way, everything will be right. No, I need a brand-new engine. That’s what God provides through salvation. He provided me a Savior. He comes in to live. He…you know, we read the beginning there about waking up and being filled with His Spirit. You see how that’s the key to everything that follows? That’s where we get…it’s His life on the inside.
But He wants that to find expression in the practical areas of our lives, and as He does, He’s going to create these little enclaves of divine presence and blessing. There’ll be people who come into our homes, and they’ll feel something. They’ll say, what is different? It’s peaceable here. I just feel something good here.
I want them to feel it when they come in here, but I want them to feel when they come in to our homes and say this is a place where God lives. I want what you have. Folks, as the darkness grows, the light is gonna become far…and more and more significant. God’s gonna use it. Basically, it’s no more than us being the people God designed us for, and just living for Him within our sphere of life. And I’ll tell you, God will get the glory. Praise God! Let His Kingdom come. Let His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Praise the Lord!
Close
May 3, 2020 - No. 1439
“God’s Kingdom in the Home” Part One
Broadcast #1439
May 3, 2020
May 3, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1439 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise the Lord! It’s good to see everybody this morning. This is one of those occasions when I went to bed last night and had no idea what the service was gonna be about this morning. And sometimes it works that way. Sometimes you have something ahead and the Lord gives you time to think it through and all of that, but the Lord has different plans, doesn’t He? He doesn’t have a formula by which we do things. And I’m glad, because we need to know that we’re dependent on Him.
But as I woke up this morning, I just had some thoughts that came back to my mind and I’m just going to trust the Lord to help me to walk through a subject, because I was thinking about the glorious, ‘order,’ I guess, is the word, in God’s kingdom.
And how…what a contrast there is between God’s kingdom and the beauty and the order that there is in it and this world. And then the fact that God desires that we taste of His blessing and His order while we’re here. Because, what exists in Heaven is not meant to just remain there. You know, Jesus encouraged His disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (KJV).
You know, there are people out there who take that to mean that a special group is going to drive the Devil out of the world and turn this present world into the Kingdom of God. I don’t believe that’s what it’s talking about at all. But, it does have a reason for being there. God desires that we learn how to walk in His order, because it’s an order of blessing, of freedom, of joy, of everything that He has planned for us.
And of course, we know that in the beginning, God had a perfect order, didn’t He? There was a beautiful, perfect creation. He beheld it and He said all was good. He had angels, every single angel was…though they were servants, it has none of the connotations of this broken world. They were powerful, beautiful beings who were entirely, perfectly suited for what they were given to do. And they were given responsibility and just everything was exactly the way it should be, exactly the way the Master designed it to be.
But you remember how one of the angels, at least, rebelled against that order and decided that he wanted to, “…be like the most High.” He didn’t want to take that place, he wanted the ultimate place and he wanted to lead a rebellion, and thought that his highest good was to be found by going his own way, doing his own thing, being independent. And he succeeded in leading a rebellion that resulted in him and his followers being cast out of Heaven.
But where it affects us is what happened in the beginning, when we know that God created Adam. He invested him with the attributes of His own being. Adam was not just a created angel, he was created “…in the image of God.” The attributes, the qualities of being that we find in God, our Heavenly Father, were invested in Adam. And truly they needed to grow, and all of that, but they were there.
And Adam was given a place of great honor. All the works of God’s hands were put in his hands. He said, you’re in charge. I’m giving this to you to rule over and to enjoy. And, of course, we know that there came a point pretty early on when the Lord looked down and realized it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. And so, He put him to sleep and before it was done, He brought Eve to Adam’s side. And they became one in God’s purpose and God’s plan. And it’s been all downhill…I mean…
( laughter ).
( laughing ).
No, not at all. But one of the points to understand in that, is that Eve was not an afterthought.
( congregational amens ).
Nor was she some sort of subservient, lesser being. Rather, that between the two, they shared the attributes of God. Adam had part of the image of God, the qualities that enabled him to lead, to love, to protect, to provide. All of those kinds of things were in him.
But other attributes of God’s nature and character, come straight from Him, were invested in Eve. And God’s plan was that she have the ability and capacity to love, to nurture. She was by no means a lesser being, a servant or anything of the sort that this world has turned ladies into. But she had an honored, awesome, perfect place for which she was perfectly designed.
And so, for a very brief period there, we don’t know how long, there was this perfect order. They existed in innocence at the time. They didn’t know what evil was. But then along came the deceiver. And the lie that he sold Eve was that she was missing out, God was holding out on her, that He knew that if she only acquired some knowledge, that she could chart her own course and she wouldn’t be sort of like a divine pet. It was almost like he was implying that she was being held down and God was being basically, selfish and restricting her from, and holding her back from her destiny.
And she fell for the lie and persuaded her husband to join her and now it’s been all downhill since, because of that rebellion. And so, the dominating characteristic of the human race, ever since, has been one of rebellious, selfish independence. I want what’s right for me and I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to get it. And so, we obviously live in a very broken world.
But I believe God is calling us out. I know you do, too. And He’s calling us out to become a part of His Kingdom! And it’s a Kingdom where those qualities that existed in the beginning, they exist in that Kingdom and He longs for us to share in that.
But we live in a culture today that is about as broken as it can be. And we have a culture in America today that is running as hard as it can away from God, thumbing its nose in God’s face, declaring that we’re not going to abide by any of your principles, any of your rules…they see them as rules. And, we’re gonna cast away your cords and throw off your restrictions. We’re gonna do what we want to do.
And, we understand the real spirit behind it is that of Lucifer. He hates God! He hates everything that is right! He hates everything that would bring about a blessing to human beings. All he wants to do is use, abuse and destroy.
And you know, we actually…there was a movement that he used, and it happens, in this case, to be the Communist movement in this country, decades ago. And they made a long list of what they needed to do in order to take over our society. It would scare you if you went back and read that list, because, probably 90 to 95 percent of what they set out to accomplish, has been accomplished!
And one of the areas where they really sought to tear things down was family and morality. And who would have thought, a generation ago, we would be where we’re at today? Where marriage is just…God’s definition of marriage is gone. Now people are whatever gender they imagine themselves to be. Nothing is sacred anymore. And God help you if you dare to say anything about it!
But you know, we need to stand up and we need to say, with love and with grace, that God arranged, God designed the universe. He designed us to work a certain way, and if we go against the manufacturer’s instructions, we do it to our hurt!
And so, it’s awfully easy for us, as often as we have heard many of these truths, over the years, to go on and just suppose that everybody gets it. But I think there’s a time and a place where we need to sort of reiterate God’s plan and purpose because it affects our lives, it affects our families! It affects the way we live! And we have young families growing up and they need to understand. We are being bombarded.
We’ve young people growing up…we had several graduate. Congratulations to every one of you! But you’re going off into a world that hates God and you better understand that. You better know that they have values that they have embraced that are absolutely anti-Christ, that will lead people straight to Hell while promising them liberty, promising them blessing and meaning in their lives. And the crazy thing, in this world, is that if the powers that be had their way, we would not believe in God at all.
( congregational amens ).
And what they don’t get, and what they don’t understand is they are taking pride in the idea, that as I’ve said in the past, they are nothing more than accidental descendents of pond scum, having no meaning, no purpose, no significance, and no hope. And that’s what they want us all to embrace and believe is the hope of mankind.
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! It makes no sense at all! And here we have a God who loved us, who made us in His image and who’s done everything necessary to open a door of hope so that we can be part of His eternal Kingdom and be restored back to what He designed us to be in the beginning! Well, Praise God! I want to enjoy those blessings here, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
I believe His heart is that we do it. And so, I’m just gonna go ahead and turn to some familiar scripture and ask the Lord to bring out of it what He will. In Ephesians chapter 5…and you know, we need to get back to what God’s principles are. And they’re not just principles, they’re laws of being. I’ve made this point before. God just doesn’t make up a bunch of rules. The principles by which His Kingdom operates, they come out of His being. They are just the way it is!
And it makes as much sense to go against them as it does to ignore and rebel against the law of gravity. You might decide that you want to fly, that it would be fun. But you will reap the consequences if you violate that law.
The problem is, with God’s character and God’s moral law is that the consequences don’t appear right away. You don’t do something wrong and then go splat, right away, always. But I’ll tell you, they’re real! And there’s so much brokenness that God would redeem us from and help us with.
So anyway, well, let me backtrack a little bit from where I was going to start. I’m gonna start where he says, in the middle of the chapter, part of verse 14, “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (NIV).
That’s some good—good admonition, isn’t it? Praise God! You suppose there’d be some peace and joy in living according to such things? Absolutely, there’s freedom in that. Then it says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Now submission is one of those things that human nature doesn’t like. It’s the very opposite of what we are…of the nature we were born with. Man, we want our way. We don’t want to be beholden to anybody. No authority is gonna tell us what to do! And boy, is that the spirit of the age, more and more and more?
( congregational response ).
I mean, just…Lord have mercy! It’s just absolutely running…we see it like a runaway freight train in our society today. But you know, in God’s Kingdom, it’s entirely different than what we envision. We think of submission as a form of losing myself. I’m losing my freedom. I’m sacrificing what I…what is good and best for me. I’m giving over my will to another. And in this world, that’s a dangerous thing, no question about it. Slavery is a terrible thing. But in the Kingdom of God, what we are submitting to is the Author of life! It’s the Author of love!
( congregational amens ).
We are surrendering to be the recipients of His love, to enjoy the place for which He has designed us, for which we are perfectly fitted, in which our highest happiness exists. But you know, as He brings us together, into assemblies, there is a spirit of submission. There is a spirit where I’m not a law unto myself. I’m not here to do my thing. I’m not here to just assert my will against everybody else and refuse to…you know, that kind of a spirit.
God longs to begin to bring that under control and to help us, to teach us this principle of submission so that we are, not so that we will be frustrated and repressed and hurt and abused and all of that kind of thing, but so that we can be set free from those things that would hold us in captivity! Our nature will drive us to distraction and to destruction, ultimately, if we give into it and we will suppose that we are being free when all we’re doing is being enslaved.
( congregational amens ).
Because our passions, our earthly desires become the master, they will drive us right into Hell, if we let them. But God wants to set us free. Well, part of that…part of coming back under His divine love and His Kingdom and its glorious order is learning how to say, no, to the rebelliousness of self. And so, He calls upon us to walk together and there’s that sense of submitting one to another. So, it’s not just a few up here and everybody else just submits, like they’re bosses or something. This is to everybody. You remember, Peter said the same thing, didn’t he? He said, “…all of you…”
( congregational response ).
“…Be subject one to another.” (KJV). So, there is that sense of community, there’s that sense of not this independent willfulness. God wants to begin to help us to govern that and to submit it and to lay our wills down. Even though we are in an imperfect state, there’s a principle at stake that is a lot more important than the issues of the moment. And God longs to set His people free! But now we get to one of the ladies favorite verses in the whole Bible.
( laughter ).
Verse 22, he begins to enumerate how some of this plays out. He says, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (NIV). Well I’ll tell you, the movers and shakers of our feminist-oriented society love this one. And to them, it sounds like slavery and frankly, the way you look around the world, often it plays out that way, sadly. Lord, have mercy!
What must happen in the heart of God, to see the way women are abused and dominated and misused and treated like slaves and treated like cattle in so many parts of the world? That’s not how He designed things. Oh, my God! But neither did He design feminism that exalts this defiant, ‘I am woman’ kind of spirit. I’m equal to a man. I’m this, I’m that. That’s not His Spirit either. All that leads to is trouble and conflict and everything that’s wrong.
But here’s a place where wives are so constituted, the attributes of God that exist in them find their greatest, most perfect expression in a place of submission, where they’re not the ones with their hands on the wheel and telling the man what to do and all of that kind of thing. It just works out that way. That’s how God designed those attributes to function.
And they are an awesome, beautiful, amazing thing, when you see a godly woman, who is in her rightful place, looking to God and trusting Him and exerting a Christ-like influence. You have no idea how valuable that is, how God…how God is pleased with that, how it blesses His heart to see. And you know, the world will paint that as everything but what God wants. But oh, it’s a place of blessing!
And he says, “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
And I don’t think Paul had in mind if your husband tells you to go rob a bank that you need to do that. That’s not the idea. But there is that sense that she is always looking to him when it comes to issues of leadership. There is a recognition, that in the providence of God, God has put him over her with a place of responsibility. And the minute she tries to take that, she’s getting out of her place and it’s going to be a lot of strife.
But if she is able to see, even past the…even, yeah! I was gonna say past the failures and the limitations of the guy, which we all have. We’re in a very imperfect state. Yet, if there is a spirit in the heart of a godly woman, Lord, I want to please you, I know my husband’s not perfect. But I believe the principle. I believe there’s a place of blessing that you have for me and I want to occupy that. Lord, show me how to have the right spirit, even when things are not ‘right’ quote, unquote. It’s more important what you’re doing in my spirit, as I say, than the issues of the moment.
Oh, how we love to justify a wrong spirit in here because that’s not right, or he didn’t say it right, or he didn’t do it right. God’s interested in changing you and changing me. And we cannot change our spouse or anybody else in our circle. We cannot change them. We’re gonna have to do our…our responsibility, our place is to model Christ, to occupy the place under His rule, under His headship, under His leadership, that He has designed us for.
And the more we do that, the more freedom we’re going to have in our spirits, the less bondage we’re gonna be living under, the less of a burden of, ‘I’ve got to fix this’ kind of thing we’re going to be experiencing. But the life of Christ will flow through your heart and through your life in such a way that it will touch everybody in your circle of influence.
You read what God says about a virtuous woman in the end of Proverbs. It doesn’t sound like a slave or somebody who’s being abused, to me. It sounds like somebody who has a glorious sphere that God has carved out for her. And within that, she is even enterprising, she makes and sells stuff, she keeps her house. She turns a house into a home. The heart of her husband safely trusts in her.
There are all these wonderful, glorious virtues. Does that sound like slavery and abuse to you? No! God designed her for that! I’ll tell you, when we are in the place for which God designed us, it’s a place of glorious blessing and joy and freedom! We don’t have to try to be something we’re not, or try to fix brokenness that’s not in our power to fix.
So anyway, this is a truth and we can’t escape it. I don’t want to escape it. I want…I love to see a godly woman. And I’ll tell you, the heart of Jesus goes out to the ladies. You think about how He reached out when He was here. Society looked down on women, treated them as second class. Jesus didn’t. He honored them at every occasion. He reached out with a heart of love to lift them up and to cause them to understand how valuable they were, the worth that they had in God’s eyes. I’ll tell you, the real message of the Gospel elevates everyone who bows to it.
( congregational amens ).
But there is an order! There is a way the universe works and the way His Kingdom works, that brings us to that place of blessing. So anyway, there it is, ladies. Ask God for grace. I know there’s nobody here who has a perfect husband. My wife would certainly stand at the head of the line, for that one!
( laughing ).
( laughter ).
But that’s all right. All we can do is work from where we’re at and go forward. We can’t fix the past. We can’t do anything about that, but we can say, God, here I am, but I yield to you, I want to be the person you made me to be. That’s what it comes down to. What did you make me to be? Did you make me to be a feminist? No! Especially not me!
( laughter ).
I was speaking for you there. But anyway…but listen to how this is balanced. Because the Devil would take those two verses and say, boy, you are setting us up for a life of slavery and abuse. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
You talk about a high calling. You talk about something that flies in the face of human nature. Man! This is…all you can do is say, oh, God! I’m not like this. God, my nature is to be selfish. I would take this principle of the husband being the head of the home in a selfish way. I just want to do what I want. I want to make her serve me. That’s not the spirit in which Jesus came to rescue lost, helpless sinners.
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April 26, 2020 - No. 1438
“Trouble” Conclusion
Broadcast #1438
April 26, 2020
April 26, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1438 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I’ll tell you, we’ve got an awesome God, and trouble is not our enemy if we can understand the purpose of God. It is a friend that we can rest in God in.
I’m not making light of trouble. Trouble can be a traumatic, difficult thing. There are some terrible things that, from a human point of view, that God allows His people to go through. But I’ll tell you, there’s never a time, there’s never a place where, if you’re His child, He has left you for one second. He will never ever leave His own.
You know, I thought about some of this in terms of the lives of some of God’s children. And I guess in my current Bible reading, I’m in the life of Joseph. Ron is shaking his head again.
( laughing ).
We’re on the same Bible reading plan. But think about Joseph and how God made Himself known to him. Somehow, when he was a young man, God gave him some special dreams. Do you remember?
And in both of those dreams, it became obvious that his own family would one day bow down to him. And of course, that made everybody excited. But I’ll tell you…God gave him that and somehow planted a faith in him. It doesn’t even go into the details of what was going on in his heart and mind and how in the world he had this relationship with God.
I had a customer the other day ask me about that. What did he do for worship? He was all by himself in a foreign land. You know, we have this conception of what it takes to serve God today. There he was…but I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who absolutely called this young man, seventeen years old when the story really begins, and you can see the hand of God overshadowing him.
But can you not see the devil saying, boy, I heard this. I better do something. In the first place, I’ve got an easy job, because I know his brothers are older than he is. They’re gonna hate him for this. So, I’m gonna work on them, and they don’t even half know God. They’ve heard about Him, but they don’t really have any relationship with this God. So, I’ve got an easy job here of getting them mad at him.
And then you remember how the father sent him out to find his brothers, and they saw him a long way off and conspired together, first to kill him. And then the Lord intervened and put it in Rueben’s heart to say, no, let’s not kill him. So, they put him in a pit for a while, and then some slave traders came by or some traders came by that were headed for Egypt to do some business. And so, they get together, and they decide we’re gonna sell him into Egypt. Well, where did the inspiration for that come from?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. But do you see the purpose of God? Do you see the hand of God in spite what happened and how it happened? Do you see that there was a God who was absolutely over all? And so, there he is, and his brothers even later talk about…the guilt was beginning to well up in their beings, they’re realizing what they did, and they said, didn’t we see the anguish of his soul when we did this to him? God’s paying us back. Their conscience is really getting to them.
But that gives you an insight of what it was like. Can you imagine the feelings that were going through Joseph’s heart and his mind? And yet, what an amazing account it is of somebody who still had enough faith in God to be able to go down there and live as a slave, and don’t you see the hand of God blessing him in the middle of that?
He wasn’t alone. God was with him. He may not have had human fellowship in the Lord, but he had the Lord giving him a confidence and a faith still to stand. He was called to stand for years. Well, he was 17 when this started. He was 30 when he came to the throne, to be second in the kingdom there. So, that’s a long time. That’s 13 years of hell on earth, in a way, most of it.
God blessed him in a way, and then all of a sudden, Potiphar’s wife lied about him, had him thrown in prison. The scripture talks about his feet were hurt with fetters of iron in the Psalms, Psalm 105, I think it is. So, you see from the devil’s point of view, everything that the devil was trying to do to engineer this man’s defeat, to cause the vision of God, the purpose of God to fail.
Think about that. Do you think God’s purpose is gonna fail? See, that’s what He wants everyone of us to understand. God’s purpose is not gonna fail. What He’s looking for from me, what He’s looking for from you is a heart that says, God, by Your grace, I’m gonna keep believing You. I’m gonna keep trusting You. I’m gonna see that what is happening to me that I may not like at the moment is Your tool. The devil may be allowed to do it, but You’re the One who has engineered exactly what’s happening to me.
And so, of course, he gets thrown in prison, and I know that was a traumatic thing, and yet, there he is, and he’s trying his best. All of a sudden, he’s just serving God and looking to Him in spite of the thing.
What a faith that is! That’s amazing to me, that someone who knows as little as he did about God…you see the hand of God overshadowing that man’s heart, giving him that kind of faith and confidence?
We have the same God today Who will meet us with what we need for God’s purpose for us. Now, my purpose is not…I don’t expect to be on a throne someday. I don’t think anybody here is going to be, in that sense. But, every one of us has a place. Every one of us has a purpose whether it’s in your home, your job, your school, whatever it is, God has a purpose for your life, and He’s shaping you for that purpose.
God was shaping Joseph for an amazing thing that he was gonna be doing. It wasn’t about magnifying Joseph and saying, whoop-de-do, I can do as I please. This was lifting up a man for a purpose in an hour that was critical, central to what God was trying to do in the earth.
And so, God gave him a faithful heart, and it was recognized, and there he was running his section of the prison. All the prisoners were in his hands. And of course, you remember the account. I won’t go through every detail, but you remember how two of the king’s servants were thrown in there, and they had dreams.
I wonder where that came from! Wouldn’t it be something, again, to stand outside and watch all this as an outside observer, and you see the Lord saying, well, it’s time to do something. Okay, we’re gonna give these two guys some supernatural dreams, and they’re gonna wake up and wonder. And they’re gonna go to Daniel, and Daniel’s gonna explain them.
In three days, both dreams were fulfilled. One man was restored to his position. The other one was hung. And Daniel…I mean not Daniel, but Joseph, of course, was trying to help himself like any of us would. We’ve got our…how many times have you been in a situation you had your timetable? You had it all figured out how it was supposed to happen. Steve mentioned that this morning.
Wouldn’t it be good if we would just say, God, I don’t know? I’m just trusting You. Lord, You do what You need to do. You do it Your way, and You do it on Your time schedule, because that’s gonna be right. And then, I don’t have to worry about it. But I can just say, Lord, I know that You will give me the grace that I need step-by-step, whatever’s going on.
That’s my only place that You’re…that’s why we can have peace. If we don’t have peace, are we really trusting Him? See what’s going on there? There’s a degree of lack of…I don’t really know. I’m not quite so sure about this.
But anyway, Joseph tried to engineer his own deliverance, and that didn’t work. It wasn’t time. So, two whole years, and all of a sudden God says, okay, now it’s time. Now it’s time! Let’s give Pharaoh a couple of really scary dreams that he’s gonna worry about, and he’s gonna call all the wise men of Egypt to explain it, and none of them are gonna be able to explain it.
And there’s the butler serving him the wine, and he’s listening in on all of this. Now, I remember. There was a guy down in the prison there when you sent us down there, and he interpreted our dreams. This guy knows!
So, you know, Joseph gets up that morning, and it’s a morning like any other morning, and he’s not even thinking about it anymore. And all of a sudden, the prison warden comes in and says, get dressed, shave, here’s some fresh clothes. You’re going to see Pharaoh. Say what?
( laughing ).
I’ll tell you, there’s a God Who can do more than we can ask or imagine, if we’ll trust in Him. And, this God that was overshadowing everything the devil had tried to do up to this point…had brought him down and seemingly sidelined him. Nothing could possibly come of all those dreams that he had when he was a kid until God intervened. And there wasn’t a thing the devil could do about it.
They brought him before Pharaoh, and he interpreted his dreams, and everybody was so impressed, he was given the second position in the land. And then you remember how the rest of it happened.
But do you see, also in that, how God formed the man’s character? How many of us would have come through all of that, and had a terrible time with the trauma of what our brothers did to us? How many of us would have had that festering in here all those years? How many of us would have taken advantage of the situation and said, boy, now I’ll show them?
And yet, there was a tenderness of heart, and when it finally came time for him to make known to his brothers, he was weeping. They were scared to death when they realized who he was. And he’s weeping, and one after another, embracing them.
And then after dad died, they come to him, and they’re scared. Okay, I know why he didn’t do it, just because our father was still around. Now, he’s gonna take it out on us. We know what we did.
And he said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. The devil was allowed to send some terrible trouble into my life, but that very trouble is what set me on the road that has brought me to this place today so that I can be here and save life.
What insight, what wisdom God had given His servant! Oh, wouldn’t it be good if we had that kind of insight in our lives? This is just for the high important people. Those are the ones we read about. But in God’s Kingdom, every one of us is just as important to Him, just as loved. We’re just designed for a different place.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants us to understand, just as if we were that person who was watching the world and seeing these things unfold, and being able to ask questions and say where we could understand, yes, God is using that wicked being down there. That’s His tool. He has no chance. He’s already lost. He just doesn’t believe it. He’s deceiving himself. He’s gonna fight to the bitter end! But all he can do is fulfill the very purpose of God. So, God’s children have no reason to be afraid or to be anxious or to have anything but peace.
You know, this is something that I’m super conscious of. We have got a lot of secondhand religion, secondhand faith. And, it’s wonderful that people can be exposed to truth, but that’s not enough! It’s got to become yours! It’s got to become personal, or what good is it? We could transmit the faith that we believe to every member of the younger generation, and they could recite it and know it and sing and do all those things, but if they never possessed it and came to know the God that we have come to know, what good is it?
So, how does God bring people into a practical knowledge of Himself except through trouble that drives us to Him and causes us to feel our need? I pray that God will bring whatever trouble it takes to bring you to Jesus Christ if that’s where you’re at…if it will cause you to realize the futility of this world.
The further I go, the more I see how stupid and ridiculous and idiotic it all is. Oh, God. I’ll tell you, God can deliver His people in a practical sense, but it doesn’t come by information alone. We need that, but we need the experience of God.
David had an experience with God, and so, he was able to realize what the real battle was. It was almost like he could step back like we were doing there, and seeing, hey, this is not just a battle with a physical enemy here. There is another thing going on. There’s a devil. There’s a false God. There’s a demon behind this, and that demon has the gall to challenge my God, and I know that He is God! So, this isn’t my battle!
Do we see that in our lives, or is that just a history lesson? Your troubles, your battles are not just your battles. They’re God’s battles, and He takes them personally! He wants us to come to Him! I mean, we can muddle through if we’re foolish enough to think we can, and just blind enough to charge ahead. I’ll tell you, God wants to use everything that Satan is allowed to do to turn our hearts to Him so we will come to Him from the depths of our heart and say, oh, God, I need You. I need You, Lord. Praise God. I need Him, don’t you? Oh, the further I go, the more I know I need Him.
What a blessed place that is! He’s not sitting here trying to bully me into fearfully serving Him and trying desperately to win His favor through my own efforts. Oh, God.
You know, we talked about Job recently and the place that he occupied. I believe that’s a pretty good example. I’m not sure, but I think this is a pretty good example of secondhand faith, hand-me-down faith. He lived sometime in the era after the flood. For all I know, Noah may have overlapped his life. I don’t know. Noah lived 350 years after the flood. But one thing is for sure. He knew about God. He knew there was a God who judges sin.
And from his own lips, we have the expression that, “…the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” (KJV). What was motivating his devotion to God was a whole lot of fear about this remote God who’s so great, and He judges wickedness, and I’ve got to do everything I know to stay on His good side.
Do you see that element in Job? And God saw him doing what he knew to do, but says, I’ve got better for you, Job. That’s not how I want people to relate to Me. I want them to know Me. And so, Job was taken down a dark, deep valley.
When he came to the other end, do you think he still had that same fear? Or do you think he came to a place where he had interacted with God? He knew God on a personal level. He didn’t have to just listen to the stories about Noah walked with God and look what God did! Isn’t that great? Now, Noah’s God becomes my God, and I know something about Him, because I’ve been there. I have experienced Him in the darkest times of my life. He came to my rescue.
And the blessing that He had afterwards was not just the fact that He had twice as much as he had before. God blessed him on that level, but the blessing that mattered was he had something that was real. He knew his God. God had removed the fear from his heart.
Everything the devil…did you notice in the beginning how the devil went before God. God brought him up, and the devil said, yeah, you’ve got a hedge about him. I can’t get to him. What do you expect? Of course, he’s gonna serve You. You’re blessing him.
But doesn’t that reveal something? Do you realize that every single one of God’s children has a hedge about you? If something comes through that hedge, it’s because God has allowed it. The devil could not just attack Peter. The devil had to get permission. He said, “Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.” (NIV). Here’s Satan asking for the permission to be God’s tool, if he understood, if he was willing to accept that.
But it was the same kind of spirit. Yeah, I know human flesh. I know humanity. You let me at him just the right way, and I can bring him down. And the Lord turns that thing right around and changes the individual and reveals Himself in a way that that person could never have known.
I know there are people here. You’ve been down roads you would never have chosen in a million years, but yet, it’s brought you to a place where you know something about God that you didn’t know before, and there’s a depth of faith and peace that you’ve got because of what you went through. Every single one of us could say that that have known Him any time. I thank God!
You know that song, “Thank God for the Valley,” that Jackie sang many times over the years, has a tremendous, simple truth. This is how we know Him. David had to go through the valley of the shadow of death, didn’t he? How many times we started to tell his story, and you know all the things that he went through, and the pathway to the throne was hell on earth, for how many years? We don’t know exactly. Probably, again, maybe 10 or 15 years. But it was a long time when he was on the run for his life.
The devil was free to attack him in so many ways, and yet, over and over again, he called upon God. He kept his integrity. He looked to God, and God was forming his character in it, but it was more than that! It was David coming to a place of rest, of confidence in God, of knowing God so that when he got on the throne, he knew…God knew there was gonna be stuff he was gonna have to deal with that was gonna be tough. But he was preparing His man just like He prepared Joseph, just like He prepared His Son, just like He prepared Paul and so many things that he went through.
You know, I thought about this in this context, as to what God is looking for in all of this. It’s easy to say God wants my behavior to match up to a certain standard, and then things will be good. Is that really what God is after?
What is the heart of the New Covenant? You know, there was a Covenant. There was a covenant where God said, this is how I’m gonna deal with you. I’m gonna do something that’s temporary. It’ll help prepare you for this, but there is a permanent Covenant coming. It’s not gonna be like that one. It’s not gonna be just a bunch of rules.
The Covenant that I’m going to do is I’m gonna put My laws in your hearts. Okay, and what was the result of that? They will…how many will know Me? They will all know ‘about’ Me? “…They will all know me, from the least…to the greatest.”
God wants a person-to-person, heart-to-heart, faith-to-faith relationship with every single one of His children. He cares about us. I mean, don’t we have the words of Jesus? He knows the…He’s numbered the hairs of your head. Do you think He doesn’t care about all the details of every single life?
I’ll tell you, when God brings trouble in our path, every single…His whole heart is to do one simple thing. It’s to bring us to a deeper relationship. God has purposed something, like I said, from the beginning. God has purposed to do something in eternity and to shape us for that. That’s what His heart is focused on.
Folks, I pray that God will help me. I pray that God will help every one of us to get this simple truth in a much more practical way. Trouble is gonna come in our lives. It comes at the hands of Satan, in one form or another. But Satan is only a tool. There is nothing he can ever do that can change the outcome of somebody who has put their trust in Him.
We can live with that confidence, and in that confidence, we can have a faith and a rest that will carry us through. God is gonna shape your life and mine. We might not like the process, but we’re gonna love the result.
And one day, we’re gonna stand there and just be blown away. The pictures of God’s saints casting…God gives us crowns, and we’re gonna say, my God, what did I do for this? Throw it down at the feet of Jesus! He is the One who has done it all. To Him be glory and honor! That Name is above every name.
But right now, we’re in the middle of the war. There’s a hedge about you. Satan can do nothing but what God allows, but when He allows it, God’s gonna take you through, and He’s gonna shape your character. He’s gonna build faith in you. He’s gonna glorify Himself. He’s gonna make you the kind of person He wants you to be in this world. He’s gonna help you to know Him in a way that perhaps you didn’t up until now. And there’s gonna be a lot more rest in it. To God be the glory!
In the world, you will have trouble! That’s a fact. But we don’t have to be afraid of it, because Jesus has overcome the world, and He has given us His peace, and we can lay hold of that in the middle of the worst trouble that we see, because God is faithful. Praise God!
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April 19, 2020 - No. 1437
“Trouble” Part One
Broadcast #1437
April 19, 2020
April 19, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1437 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I’ve just been thinking about the service and my mind keeps coming back to a single word. And it’s an exciting subject called ‘trouble.’
( laughing ).
But I don’t know, it just seems to keep coming back to that and I think we all know what that’s about. But, I feel like the Lord wants to explore it just a little bit this morning and give us, maybe, a fresh look.
And I thought of a scripture, just as a sort of starting point, in the words of Jesus in John 16. Jesus has just been talking with His disciples. This is the night before He was crucified, giving them words of instruction, of encouragement, knowing that very shortly they’re gonna be frightened and scattered, but needing to have a sense that, hey, this is going someplace good, even though we don’t understand what’s happening right now. We know who this is and we trust in Him.
And so, Jesus says in verse 31…they reach a point where they seem to have a settled conviction as to who He is and we know you’re from God. And so, Jesus says, “You believe at last! Jesus answered.” (NIV). This is 16, if I didn’t say that. “But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”
Praise God! Isn’t that a truth that we all need to lay hold of? “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.” That sounds like a pretty positive, simple statement, to me, doesn’t it you? “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
( congregational praise ).
Thank God for that balance. There’s the overcoming, there’s the peace. So, you see that the Lord is dealing with a fact, isn’t He? I mean, we all understand that. That’s the kind of world we live in.
And you know, I looked up the word ‘trouble.’ I don’t think there’s anything revolutionary about it, but it’s used as a translation of several different terms and some of them are just simply the word ‘adversity.’ You could really substitute that word. Our nature wants things to be smooth, doesn’t it? We’re born into a world that is bent a certain way and our nature agrees with it. And so, by nature, we want things to be smooth, to be easy, to be…to have the soft wind blowing and going in the direction we want it to go, to have our desires catered to and everything to be pleasant.
And yet, we know from the Word, we know from experience, hopefully, most of us, that that’s not the kind of world, really, we live in. That world that we would try to be a part of, by nature, is headed for catastrophe. We talked about that last week. There is a day coming. And this is a very temporary thing. And God has a larger purpose in it than just smoothing our feathers and making life smooth and easy.
And so, I was just thinking, as I say, of exploring this subject and even this morning I thought of a way to talk about this, and the Lord will have to help me, as He always does, anyway. I certainly can’t do this.
But I thought about it from this point of view. Suppose you were from somewhere else, other than this world. And somehow you found yourself here and you arrive on the scene and you say, what’s going on here? And imagine you were also able to see, not only the physical world, but the spiritual realm. And so, you’re saying, I don’t get this. Somebody explain this to me.
And so, whoever’s explaining it to you says, well, there’s a God who’s over all. He’s everywhere and He’s all-powerful and He has a plan from the foundation of the world. And He created this beautiful place and He created a race of people that He intended to be His sons and daughters, to live with Him and to enjoy Him and to share His life and all of that, but they rebelled.
And so…and there was an enemy that He had. One of His servants was an enemy. And so, he led them in rebellion and now the world is under the dominion of this other…this wicked being who just causes trouble. And so, that’s where it’s at.
And so, your question, of course, is, well, my God, He’s all-powerful. Why doesn’t He just fix it? Why doesn’t He just step in and end all this stuff? And so, whoever it is that’s explaining to you says, well, now let’s watch. Let’s see what God’s trying to do with this.
And so, we see God having a purpose. Perhaps He’s calling somebody out of this world. And He calls them to Himself and He makes them aware and they give their lives to Him and basically, coming to Him is changing sides, because we’re all born as citizens of this world and our allegiance, effectively, is here. That’s it. Satan is our god. We may not think that. We may think, I’m doing what I want, but that’s…effectively, we’re serving him.
But I’ll tell you, coming to Christ is changing sides. It is recognizing that God has established a King, His Son on a throne, and He is in charge. And it’s also recognizing that this world has already been defeated. Praise God! We sang about it this morning, the victory that was won at the Cross. It’s real! And so, there is a Kingdom into which we have been called.
But yet, you might look from the outside and say, well, that’s wonderful! Praise God! All He has to do is just lift them out of here and take them there. He said, wait a minute, they’re not ready for that. I’ve got stuff that needs to be done. I have got a…not only have I got a place, a special place, for every single one that I make a part of my Kingdom, I’ve got a special place in this world that’s to come that’s just exactly…they’re designed for it. And so, I’ve got to work in them to help get them ready for that.
Okay, well that’s great, but what about here? He says, oh, I’ve got purposes for every single one of My children here, every single one that I’ve got to make changes. They’re so geared, in a practical sense, to their life here and what people want out of this world, and so, I’ve got to change them.
Well, praise God! Then let’s just let the sun shine and let’s let them go to Sunday school and church and learn all about it and that’ll fix everything, won’t it? But it doesn’t work that way, does it?
And so, what happens…so you have this…I mean, you’re sitting there watching all of this and all of a sudden you watch one of God’s children and you watch this devil come up and begin to cause them trouble. All of a sudden, they’re going along, everything’s just great and grand and they’re not doing anything particularly wrong, but all of a sudden there’s this terrible trouble that comes into their life.
You say, wait a minute, what’s going on with that? Why isn’t God stepping in? Why doesn’t He stop that? And he says, just wait and watch. And so, you see the person involved begin to cry out and to say, oh, God, I can’t handle this. Lord, I don’t understand. There are all the questions, all the things that come up. But what it does is stir people up to say, wait a minute, I need God! I need this One to whom I’ve turned. I can’t handle this! Lord, help me to understand what I need to understand. Help me to be set free from things that you see in me that I don’t see. But oh, God, I’m looking to You!
And you’re sitting there watching all of this and you’re asking about it, and you watch them begin to grow and you watch them begin to get stronger in their confidence toward God and their attitudes towards others and they begin to be changed.
And whoever is talking to you says, you know, it’s kind of like a sculptor. God’s creating every one of His children as a special masterpiece. Everyone’s different and God is absolutely working on each one. And you know on a sculpture there’s stuff that’s got to be chipped away, isn’t there? Everything has got to…something has got to change.
And so, God is taking things out and chipping them away, and the person who’s being chipped usually doesn’t get it. And so, we react and we say, oh, God, not that! And the Lord says, yes, let go! Exactly what Steve said at the beginning of the service. Let go, trust God, just surrender into His hands. He knows what He’s doing.
Now remember, we’re standing outside, and we’re looking at this from God’s point of view and whoever’s talking about this says, don’t forget, God planned all this before the world was framed. And here we are, we’re watching the middle of it. We’re seeing the outworking of something. And so, our question is, okay, so how’s it gonna come out? I still don’t quite understand what’s going on. How does this come out?
And boy, I haven’t thought this part through but I’ll tell you, wouldn’t it be something if you could jump ahead to the end of time? But whoever’s saying this, I’ll tell you, God has got this! This God who planned this from all eternity, He has absolutely got His hand on that person. He knows the plan. He knows how much to let the devil get in there. Do you know the devil can’t get in there unless the Lord lets him? So, if trouble comes and the devil’s brought it, don’t ever forget the Lord sent it! And He sent it because of a loving, wonderful, personal purpose. And He has a reason.
I mean, there’s nothing I’m saying that we haven’t heard many times, but I’ll tell you, seems like we need this. We need this because it’s not just the information, we’re every one of us in real situations. And the trouble we’re talking about isn’t necessarily just some terrible, outward thing that comes upon us. You know, our property is destroyed, or someone’s sick, or someone’s just died or it could be a thousand and one things.
It could be something that’s inside your own heart that you’re struggling with and nobody else knows about. But oh, it’s trouble. Oh, God, I’m struggling, I’m full of fear. I’m full of…something happened to me that was traumatic and it’s just eating on me and it’s sitting in there and I can’t let it go. Oh, it’s just…and it rises up and it begins to cause trouble in the present. It just goes into every facet of human nature.
You know, we talked Wednesday night…we sort of had a service of participation where everybody chipped in and boy, the Lord helped us, didn’t He? I was sitting there fighting it, saying no, I’ll let somebody else, and then I don’t know, the Lord just…He won. But what we did was to explore all the ways that the devil works, his bag of tricks, if you will. Or, “…we are not ignorant…,” Paul said in one place, “…of his devices.” (KJV).
But we’ve got this enemy of God who is so deceived in his mind that he is still trying to win. And all his…it doesn’t matter whether he even thinks he can. His nature drives him to do what he’s doing. He is going to relentlessly work.
But you know, I want us to see something this morning, perhaps in a fresh way. Imagine now you’re still standing out there and looking, and saying, but help me to understand what’s going on. Why is the Lord letting the devil do that?
And the answer comes back. The devil is only a tool. He is a tool in the hands of God to fulfill something that is absolutely eternal. It is a purpose that God conceived in His mind. Every one that He deals with, every person that He calls is someone that He knew intimately before He ever created the world. That’s mind boggling! To think that there are things in the depths of my being that I don’t even know as I ought, perhaps, but God knew them! What a God we serve, who’s able to take that…to take the tangled threads of this world and weave them into something that is eternal.
And I can just hear you saying, well, looking on this scene, boy, the devil must be awfully frustrated. He can’t possibly win and there he is. All he’s doing is spinning his wheels and everything he does turns out for God’s purpose instead of his. Praise God!
I’ll tell you…and isn’t it interesting how the Lord wants us to react in all of this. He prefaces what He says there, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.” (NIV). Peace. That’s amazing!
But you know, if we could see, if we could take the vantage point of that person who has suddenly arrived on our planet, trying to explain it, trying to understand it, if we could suddenly see from that point of view, wouldn’t that change everything? You know, we could actually sing, “He didn’t bring us this far to leave us,” and believe it, in practice.
We wouldn’t…we tend to sing these things, and it’s good and I understand we’re in the process, we’re growing, we’re learning so I’m not saying that in any condemning way. But you understand what I’m saying. We sing a lot of things and it’s good to profess them but possessing them is much…there’s a lot more to possessing something than simply getting information.
I’ll tell you, there’s a God who wants to do something in us that’s real, that’s practical. We could have the most perfect doctrine, the most perfect program that one could conceive and we would still have nothing of eternal value if God didn’t come in and really transform lives and hearts.
And I’ll tell you, the only way He can do it is to introduce what we call trouble in some form or other. And so, I’ll tell you, it’s not our enemy, it’s our friend. But if we can see, as I say, the way…from His point of view, we would have a peace that passes understanding. We’d be able to cast all our care upon Him knowing that He cares for us. “But take heart…” He says. “…You will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
And you know, you could sort of look at the lives of people in the scriptures. We know about events that happened. But wouldn’t it be nice just to step back…wouldn’t it be nice if we could step back and take the viewpoint of somebody who is able to see all the stuff that’s going on, not just the physical?
I mean, you think about the life of Jesus. He came down into the world that we live in. He came to a world of trouble and experienced it all, in one form or another. And so…I mean, this is not somebody that we can’t go to. This is somebody who absolutely knows everything you and I have ever experienced to the ‘nth’ degree and He is able.
You know, we practiced an old song this morning, “He’s Ever Interceding.” What a glorious, simple truth that God has given His Son and just…He didn’t sit there on a throne or direct traffic from up there. He came down. You think of the weakness, you think of the vulnerability, in a sense, of being a little fetus and then a little baby, completely helpless, completely dependent upon a human mother.
But oh, I’ll tell you, there was a God who overshadowed every bit of that. There He was, a little child and some wise men came from the east and they went to the…in all innocence they went and said, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” (KJV). And the king got wind of it. He said, whoa.
Now what do you think was going on behind the scenes in that? Do you think, just maybe, the devil was trying to say, hey, I got a chance to do something about this? I know this was coming. Man, we’ve got somebody in here that I need to deal with. This is the Son of God.
So, what did he do? He came up with a scheme immediately to send to Bethlehem and let’s kill every baby under two years old. We don’t know which one it is, but we know we’ll get rid of Him if we do that. Now what was the inspiration behind that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah! You see Satan intervening, but how about God intervening? Yeah! He sent an angel and said, get up…in the middle of the night, get out of here to Egypt. And so, they weren’t there. And over and over and over again you see this in the life of Jesus, how Satan is just constantly trying to find some way to get to Him, to undermine Him.
There were times He couldn’t go certain places because they were out to kill Him and it wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the purpose of God at that point. Every point…we see Jesus going out into the wilderness and at His weakest point the Father steps back and Satan is allowed to come at Him to appeal to His human nature from every possible angle. And Jesus went there and He prayed and He looked to God.
I don’t doubt that this was the place where the writer to the Hebrews must have referred to, certainly it was one of them. Where, “…with strong crying and tears…” He cried out, “…unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard…” There was some serious praying that Jesus did.
I wonder how serious we are, sometimes. But He understood the issues. He said, oh, God, I’m here to do Your will, I’m not here to do My will. I’m part of something that’s eternal and my whole hope, my whole trust is in You and I recognize there is a war that’s going on. Satan is being allowed to work in me.
And isn’t it interesting, that we pointed out so many times, that at that very scripture that talks about how He had to cry out and pray and He learned—learned obedience. There was something that Jesus had to go through to get ready to be able to do what He did. And it only came as trouble came. And trouble came because the devil…because the Father stepped back and let the devil do his thing.
But the devil’s purpose was to destroy Him, God’s purpose was to shape Him and make Him the Savior that we need and we worship today! Praise God!
So, the Father was changing Him and He learned, “…obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect….” Wait a minute, I thought He was perfect. But there was a completeness that made it…He needed a completeness that could only happen as He came here to the world of sin and trouble and overcame, personally, while feeling every weakness that you and I have ever felt. And He came through it all.
I mean, you talk about what He says right here, “…take heart! I have overcome the world.” (NIV). He knew that there was a victory that He had come to win. He understood the battle! He understood the Father’s plan! He understood His place in it and He yielded Himself to that place!
Is that not what God has called every one of us to in His Kingdom? To absolutely give our lives to Him so that He can shape us for what His purpose is, not only here, but in eternity? Praise God, I’m so glad that we don’t have to…that we can have an understanding. God wants us to get this because…well, I thought of a scripture, back in chapter 15, I think it is. I’ll just look at it real quickly.
In the first place, verse 16, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you….” Praise God! Folks, if you have come to a knowledge of God…I’m not gonna go down the line where it’s all up to God and we have no responsibility. I’m not gonna go to that extreme, but I’ll tell you, there is a God who chooses. There is a God who calls somebody out of this world.
We didn’t go looking for Him. He came looking for me. I would never, in a million years, have gone after Him. I would have lived and died in blindness, if God had not overshadowed my heart and made Himself known to me and then given me the strength and the grace to repent and put my faith in Jesus Christ. I would never have done it.
And so, here is Jesus talking to His disciples saying, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” Praise God!
But look down later on. “Peace I leave with you….” Jesus was about to leave this world but He says I’m gonna leave something for you. I’m gonna leave my peace. He says, “…my peace I give you.” Do you think Jesus is worried? Do you think He has any anxiety about whether God can pull this off? Does He want us to live in a state of anxiety? Oh, my God, what’s gonna happen?
No, we have access to the very peace of God. Isn’t that what it says? Is He at peace? He knows what He’s purposed. He understands, the devil is My tool. He cannot win when it comes to My people.
Do we understand that? Can we come with all the things that…all the troubles that life brings, that God sends to work in us to help us, can we understand that to the point where we can let the peace of God, which transcends understanding…you can’t even understand it.
Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. How can I be at peace with this going on? And there’s the world…I mean, there’s the Lord helping us but also bearing witness to the world. They’re looking on and saying, I don’t get this. Maybe they’ve got something I need. Just one of the purposes of God.
“…The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I’ll tell you, we’ve got an awesome God and trouble is not our enemy. If we can understand the purpose of God, it is a friend that we can rest in God in.
I’m not making light of trouble. Trouble can be a traumatic, difficult thing. There are some terrible things that, from a human point of view, that God allows His people to go through, but I’ll tell you, there’s never a time, there’s never a place where if you’re His child He has left you for one second.
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April 12, 2020 - No. 1436
“The Hand on the Sacrifice” Conclusion
Broadcast #1436
April 12, 2020
April 12, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1436 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: The Word reminds us that God sent Somebody who could understand us…Somebody who experienced all of the wounds that this world can dish out, not just the physical stuff but the stuff that gets in here. I don’t care what you’ve experienced in your heart and your life and your mind, we have got a Savior who’s been there and experienced that and gets it.
And He alone has the heart and the power to do something about it! We need healing at the heart level and Jesus is somebody who has been here in a place where He can do it! It’s not just…yeah, I see you down there, I see what you’re going through…He’s been here and experienced every sorrow, every hurt, every rejection, everything that could possibly touch your life or mine! He’s experienced it in spades.
So, when I identify with Him, it’s not just that I’m joining Someone who the world hates, I am joining Somebody who is capable of looking into the depths of my soul and loving me anyway and helping me because He understands. Praise God!
I want to put my hand on that, on the head of that sacrifice! Oh, praise God! Isn’t God good to give us Someone like that? “He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” (NIV). But the center of it is certainly what he comes to here. “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” That goes into the same thing, doesn’t it?
So, men interpreted that, of course, with the wisdom of the enemy, they saw the things that He went through, they saw the rejection, and all of that. How did they interpret that? What conclusion did they draw, based on what they saw and how He was rejected by the religious establishment of that day? He’s getting what He deserves. “We considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.” We thought He was a sinner that God was punishing and taking Him out of the way so we could be free of Him.
Boy, you talk about blindness! We have no idea. We think so highly of ourselves. We don’t get it. And here God was sending somebody who could come right down into the depths of where we live and experience everything that we experience and bring us hope. And we thought He was getting what He deserved. He got what I deserve!
But, in contrast to the world’s estimation of this, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.” Oh God, that should cause everyone to run to Him!
But it doesn’t because men will not own their sin! We judge as humans judge. Well, I’m not as bad as everybody else…I’m like that one preacher that said, I’m 99 percent good. Oh yeah. That’s the blindness of the human heart. We have no idea what goodness really is.
Isaiah knew, didn’t he? God took him to a place where that’s all he saw and he immediately knew what he was. In fact, he saw…think about the fact that he didn’t understand what was coming. He saw the very One that he’s talking about back in chapter 6 when he went and saw Him on a throne! That was Jesus that he saw, that was the Son of God. He’s the only form of God you’ll ever see. He is the full, perfect representation of the Father.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions…crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Now a lot of people talk about the physical side of that, and that’s fine. But I’ll tell you, the wounds that I need are not just the ones in my body, they’re the wounds in that part of me that lives apart from this body. They’re the wounds of the spirit, wounds of the heart, wounds of the soul.
But we have Somebody who can heal every single one of them, if we’ll just come to Him and seek Him and look to Him. He has the power to change it all! But in order for that to happen, in order for that to do us any good, we are going to have to come to God, not based upon anything else, except, oh God, I own my sin, I deserve what this sacrifice is taking in my place. I’m placing my hand on His head! That’s my only hope! He represents me. I am laying down my life. That’s what it means.
This is not just, take my sins away so I can go live my life, and then come and bless me, bless my plans. This is, oh God, I surrender. We see in Him the value of human life, which is nothing! Nothing in this world is worth preserving into eternity, except what God builds into the hearts and lives of His people. I’ll tell you, when He comes in and He begins to change, now you’ve got something that can last and is worth something. Everything here leads to corruption and sin and death and sorrow and suffering!
( congregational amens ).
That’s what He came to deliver us from. He laid down His life as my representative! Do you seriously think I’m gonna just take that and run with it and live my life? No! That’s not what it’s about! My hand is on His head! That means my heart is engaged in what He…in everything that He stood for on that day!
Is your hand on the sacrifice? Praise God! There’s more to this that just coming to Christ in the first place. You know, the people that sinned, they didn’t just come once, did they? And while we live here, we don’t live perfect lives, do we? We need that sacrifice. We don’t bring a different sacrifice, though. We bring the one.
But do you know, that same sacrifice that enabled us to enter the door of salvation, enables us to come at any time and say, oh Lord, I have sinned. Lord, I’m in need but You provided my sacrifice. I’m laying my hand on that sacrifice and I come to You based upon Your provision and Your promise! This is the way You’ve told me You will accept me, and I come Your way! I’m not gonna try to pretty it up or rearrange it. I’m coming Your way, period! No compromise! Jesus is my representative and I trust in Him 100 percent!
You think this doesn’t…you don’t think this applies to you somehow? We ‘all’…that’s a big word, isn’t it? “We all, like sheep, have gone astray….” Every single one, there’s no difference. I don’t care if you went into a place that was a den of iniquity, every kind of wrong and sin you could think of, you could not look at those people and say, I’m better than you in God’s eyes.
You have the same nature! And if the circumstances were different, and you gave yourself over to that stuff, you’d be worse! Not one of us can look in the mirror and say, this doesn’t apply to me. It does! I’ll tell you…was it Brother Thomas or John B. that used to say…I guess it was John B…he wished some people he knew would go steal a hog or do something so they’d have something to repent of.
( laughter ).
He felt like there was a certain amount of self-righteousness in some that he knew. And I’ll tell you what, I don’t care if you’ve grown up in church and you’ve lived a ‘moral life’ so called, you have the same need.
( congregational amens ).
I happen to have been born into a preacher’s family. I have the same need. I’m no better than anybody else. I couldn’t go into a prison or into any place in the world and tell people that I’m any better than they are. We need the same Savior! And there’s only one way! Put your hand on the sacrifice and come. From your heart, put your trust in what He did.
( congregational amens ).
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each one of us has turned to his own way.” That’s the problem, it’s my way! You can’t make a way and define your own way and say, but it’s moral. Oh, no it’s not! It’s you! It’s a spirit of rebellion.
But oh, the next part, “…and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” (KJV), John the Baptist said.
“He was oppressed and afflicted…” (NIV). Now oppressed, I think the sense of that, if you look at various translations, it had to do with the injustice of His being accused when He wasn’t guilty of anything. They arrested Him and He wasn’t guilty, but they arrested Him anyway! “…And afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open His mouth.”
How do you react when you’re faced with something that you did that was wrong? It’s kind of quiet. What is the human spirit, what is the natural response to that? Self rises up, and it’s not this, or it’s somebody else’s fault, I didn’t do it. You know, whatever it is, there’s gonna be some sort of resistance to that.
And here He is, going there with my sin upon Him and He’s not arguing! What right do we have to argue and justify self when we’re wrong? And here He is, silent! No self-defense! No, I’ll get you for this, this is unjust! I mean, He really was guiltless! And we’re not! May God help us to have a humble sensitivity and a willingness to take ownership of what’s really true. But He faced it. He knew what we were, and He didn’t open His mouth.
“By oppression and judgment He was taken away…” injustice again, “…and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”
There are several ways that that’s translated and the thought that makes the most sense, is basically that his generation didn’t understand what was going on. They didn’t get it. You look at several…I think the one you have, the NLT, puts it somewhat like that, if I’m not mistaken. But anyway…it’s basically that the generation that saw all this happen, had no idea what was going on. But boy, He did, didn’t He? He went into it with His eyes wide open.
“He was assigned a grave with the wicked….” In other words, basically this is a criminal who needs to be now disposed of in the ground and we’re gonna forget about Him. That was the spirit behind what he’s talking about there. But He also had a grave, “…with the rich in his death….” God had provided Him a tomb. There was a follower who stepped up to Pilate and said, may I have His body? I have a place to bury Him. So, the Lord even provided that, didn’t He?
“…Though He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth….” Now here’s the amazing thing: “…yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer….” That’s incredible!
Do you want to see the heart of God, the heart that longed to show us mercy but had to uphold justice? I was guilty. There was nothing I could say. I had no answer. I deserved to die. But because God desired to show me mercy, He took my sins, charged His own Son, who willingly took them. There is no other definition of love that comes close to the willing sacrifice that took place on that day.
But it wasn’t just Jesus trying to placate His Father. This was God’s plan from the beginning. They were 100 percent united in what they sought to do. And remember how Jesus said, Father, if there is any other way, let this cup pass, but not my will but yours be done. That’s what was done.
Do you remember how the disciples prayed after they had been rebuked by the Sanhedrin? Lord, it was by Your determined will that they crucified Him. We know that they rose up in rebellion against You but it was by Your will that it happened! You determined ahead of time what was gonna happen. And they prayed to that same God who was in charge, God, empower us not to be intimidated by the spirit of this world that would shut us up.
So. “…it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand.” Praise God!
See, that brings us to the resurrection! His death for me was not the end. It was the beginning! But oh, how we need to have our hands on the sacrifice. That is the one pathway to life that is ‘life.’ There’s a scripture that says that. I don’t remember where it’s at. There’s only one life that really is life.
Do you want life? I pray for anybody who doesn’t get this, that God will open your eyes to see that what we call life here is not life. You can’t keep it! It’s worthless in the end! But God has opened a way to impart the life that is life.
And it comes…and Jesus partook of that life by laying down His earthly life and He came forth with a life that cannot die—the very life of God. But not only did He come forth for Himself and just for His own glory, but now He was able to share. Now He’s able to share all that He is with us.
Is your hand on the sacrifice? Man, it better be 100 percent, from the heart. And it’s not being strong, it’s not being worthy…it’s being just the opposite most of the time. The people that heard Jesus were the ones that life had wounded, that were the guiltiest, that were the lowest of the low, the tax collectors, the prostitutes! They were the ones who came and felt the love and the mercy that God desired to show.
And God took care of the problem that had separated them from a holy God. God took care of it! God…that same God is here today! I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been or what you’ve done. There’s a God who is able to blot out your sins as if they had never happened because they were placed upon Him! But I’ll tell you, your hand needs to be on the sacrifice, 100 percent. This is the sacrifice that I am offering to You, Father, based upon Your heart and Your promise.
“…It was the Lord’s will to crush Him…the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” That brings us right down to today. Everything God has purposed, right down to what He’s purposed in our lives, and going forward, and finishing the job, and presenting the church to Himself, without spot, wrinkle or blemish or any other such thing, all of that will prosper in the same way in which this prospered! The same God who, by His will was…crushed His Son, is going to bring that to pass. Everything that God has put in His hands…all authority in heaven and earth has been put in His hands. He will finish what He started.
( congregational amens ).
Is your hand on the sacrifice? Man, do you want to hitch your wagon to something, to Someone and something that’s gonna last, something that’s gonna mean something in eternity? There will come a day when people will be screaming in terror and regret…screaming for another chance! And on that day, there will be no other chance. The Word of God is going out today.
One of the words that it says here, after the suffering…verse 11. I’m gonna stop with this, I think. “After the suffering of His soul, he will see the light of life, and will be satisfied.” Hebrews 12 tells us, “…for the joy set before him endured the cross…,” despised the shame, didn’t make any difference to Him what He had to go through. Oh, that’s worth everything!
Well, it’s worth everything for us to be 100 percent identified with that sacrifice! Say, this is my hope! “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” The same God who brought Him out of the tomb has power to make us into His children, to transform us from the inside out, to blot out our sins, to impart new life.
For the message is two-fold. Have you come to God with all your heart and your hand on the sacrifice? That’s the challenge today. If you stop short of that, you’ve stopped short of everything! You have missed it all! I don’t care what happens in this world, don’t care what you accomplish, it means nothing when we stand before Him.
But that picture that the Lord painted in the Old Testament of how they were to bring their sacrifices…if you read on, it wasn’t just that they put their hand on it, they actually participated in preparing the sacrifice. This was very participatory! This is me, 100 percent aligned with that sacrifice and all that it stands for! My death, my resurrection, my burial, my resurrection, my new life, my eternity. I’ll tell you, I’m aligned with Him. I don’t care what the world says. I don’t care what they do, what it costs. It’s worth everything to know Him!
( congregational amens ).
So, the question is, have you ever, from your heart, irrevocably put your hand on the sacrifice? If you stop short of that, you have missed everything! But for the believer, that becomes…God wants that to become the default setting, if you will, of our life. My hand is always on that sacrifice. This is always how I stand before You. This is always where the resources come for everything that I need in this life. It’s all provided through Jesus Christ. It is mine because of Him.
I’m never gonna get to the point where I say, ok, I’m past that now, let’s get to the good stuff. There are a lot of people who preach it like that. Okay, I believe in Jesus, my sins are gone and I’ve got a ticket to heaven. Now, Jesus, give me a better life. It’s Jesus all the way. It’s laying down our life and taking up a new one, all the way.
I’ll tell you, that’s something you and I…wherever you’re at today, you have the privilege of coming to God with your hand on that sacrifice, spiritually speaking. And it is the answer to every issue, one way or another, without having to spell out all the details. God has to lead us through these things. We’re all different.
But I’ll tell you, I want to be…I want to be one that has my hand on the sacrifice. Never allow anything to move your hand from it! He is the answer to destiny! He is the answer to everything! He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! He sits on a throne and He reigns and He prays for His own! He stands for us and He will finish what He started! Just as He triumphed in the cross and rose from the dead, He will return and His plan will be finished. God’s plan and purpose will be finished.
The only question is, who will participate in that? And that’s the message of the Gospel. If your hope is in something else or you think you can manage your life some other way, but that really true heart surrender, whew, you have drunk the Kool-Aid of this world. And if that doesn’t change, you will perish with it.
But let the name of Jesus be lifted up. Let His name be lifted up as the only name among men whereby we must be saved! To Him be the glory! Let’s have our hand on the sacrifice, folks. Praise God!
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April 5, 2020 - No. 1435
“The Hand on the Sacrifice” Part One
Broadcast #1435
April 5, 2020
April 5, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1435 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise the Lord! I’m so thankful we have something we can sing about this morning. I just praise God for His mercy and His grace. Thank God!
But I was just thinking about the reality of what the Lord has given to us, what we’re remembering today…obviously the death of Christ and what that means, but the resurrection that sealed the deal. I mean, the evidence, the reality, the proof, God’s stamp of approval on everything that Jesus said when He declared, it was accomplished, it was finished, was affirmed when He brought Him forth from the grave.
And the Lord arranged it so that nobody was expecting that! I mean, the only people that were halfway expecting it were the unbelievers, and they thought it was gonna be faked. But the disciples were the ones that had to be convinced. They didn’t believe it at all. They didn’t understand. They were left in…I mean, everybody was clueless on the day that all this happened as to what it was about.
But I’ll tell you, when God brought Him forth, the scripture tells us that it was by many infallible or, “…many convincing proofs…” (NIV). They knew! And somehow in a period of 40 days, they went from being scared and hiding to boldly standing forth before all the people and declaring the truth of the Gospel. That’s the Lord we need in our midst.
( congregational amens ).
We don’t need to practice religion. And that’s one thing I want to emphasize, I guess, about this movie. I appreciated the testimonies they made. The one danger is that you can go to seed on the doctrine…and think, well, I’ve got the doctrine right, therefore, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.
Folks, if that’s all we’ve got, we ain’t got it. We need the One the doctrine is teaching about. We need the presence of Christ. It’s not the truth in the abstract sense, it’s the One who is the Truth. He is the One that we need in our midst today and he is the One who will carry us through.
You know, just to lead into what I had on my heart, you will remember how John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the people around him. On one occasion, right in the beginning of the Gospel of John, John the Baptist declared, behold, “…the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
And you know, he was doing this in a religious environment that knew something about sacrifice. They literally sacrificed lambs. You know, we brought out, several years ago on an Easter, I believe, the amazing…it’s amazing in some ways it shouldn’t be amazing, but the coincidence of the very moment…what was going on when Jesus was on the cross was the observance by the Jews of the Passover, the Passover being a type of what was happening on the cross!
And so there He was declaring it was finished, and over in the temple there was a high priest offering up a lamb and about to go through the rest of the ritual of the Passover. And, all of a sudden, the veil of the temple splits from top to bottom and there’s an earthquake, and…God was trying to get somebody’s attention.
But I’ll tell you…the idea of sacrifice and of a lamb, and the need for sin to be somehow dealt with was clearly understood because of what had happened in the Old Testament. I just…a couple of scriptures that kind of bear this out, one of them is in Romans chapter 3. And this is preliminary but important.
Romans chapter 3, this is where Paul is laying out the truth of the Gospel, why we need it, the principle of the law, that God gave them laws in the Old Testament but they were never meant to be a pathway to acceptance by God. They were meant to show our need so that we would come to Him on another ground other than our performance.
How many of you here want to stand before God one day and declare, I am here and I am worthy of Your Kingdom because I have measured up? Not one of us could possibly do that. There has to be another way. But the issue is, God is just, isn’t He? Now what does justice mean?
( congregation inaudible ).
Well, what is…yeah, that’s true. But what does the principle of justice mean? It means that there is a law, and somebody breaks that law, then justice demands that the penalty for breaking that law be carried out! Well, that leaves us in a bad spot, because there is, as he points out, there’s none who do good. Every one of us has come short.
So, what is the…I mean, how can a just God possibly give any of us here this morning hope? If He’s just, how can He do it? And that’s the miracle of the cross. Let’s see…the scripture I literally wanted to focus on was in…well, in verse 25. “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice….”
See, God didn’t leave things…He didn’t just say, oh, I feel bad about this, I’m gonna let you in. Justice had to be honored. God…how can God be just and show mercy? That’s the conundrum here. But He has a way, doesn’t He? Thank God!
“He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
That’s the amazing thing. When Christ died in our place, God’s justice that I deserved was carried out upon Him. So, God upheld the justice of the Law, and allowed me to have hope in Him. Praise God! That’s the hope that God desires for every one that hears this.
And…I sometimes come away and say, oh my God, how…this has got to get through. This is not just religious doctrine we’re talking about. This is destiny-affecting stuff. And my burden is that anyone who hears me, I don’t want them to able to stand before the throne and say, nobody warned me, nobody told me.
There is no middle ground between the wrath of God and eternal life. Its one or the other, and there’s only one path to that life. I’ve said it over and over again. Those who cling to this life…that’s what every other lie is about. It’s, cling to this life, my will, my way, what I want, what pleases me! If you do that, if you pursue that and your interests are bound up in the desires of this world, you will stand before God in the Judgment and you will lose everything! It is only those who come by way of the cross, who lay down their lives and surrender them into the hands of a holy God….
John, the gospel writer, wrote very plainly in chapter 3…drew the difference between those who have faith in Christ and the end result is eternal life. Those who believed in Him had eternal life, but those who reject Him, those who do not believe, refuse to believe, is the real sense of what he’s talking about…those who have refused to believe, do not have life.
But it’s worse than that…and the wrath of God abides on them. The wrath of God is not on ignorance. The wrath of God is on people who absolutely possess the knowledge of what is right and…the only way of deliverance, and then they say, no, I’m gonna stand with the crowd. I’m gonna spit on Jesus. The heck with Him, I want my life.
And I don’t care how you package it. I don’t want anybody that I hear, or that hears me, to have any illusions about this. This is what is at stake. This is not simply religious dogma you’re meant to accept and go on with your life. This is the only reason we are here in this world, is for God to redeem a people out of it on the basis, not of merit, but of mercy! And it all is focused upon the person of Jesus Christ and what He’s done.
And we know from Hebrews, in particular, we get an understanding of what the Old Testament was about. Do you know the Old Testament was a mystery? The purpose of God was there! It was all encompassed in it and men think they can unravel the meaning of the Old Testament with their intellects! Folks, you can’t do that.
It’s not about a natural people with an earthly destiny, I’m sorry! It’s about a heavenly people with an eternal destiny! But oh, it was so…it was couched in such language that the Devil himself didn’t understand what it was about.
But think about this…we’ve made this point before. What was it, when the apostles went forth and preached the Gospel in the first century, and they opened the scriptures, what scriptures were they opening? The Old Testament! There was no New Testament! That evolved over time with Paul’s letters and the gospels and so forth. They opened the Old Testament.
God was the One through His Son who opened their eyes and began to teach them. You remember that occasion when he opened their understanding and showed them Himself, all the way through the Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, there was Jesus. He’s the main player in the Old Testament. And suddenly their eyes were…I get it, now I know what it’s about. All that that went before was a type and a shadow.
And I thought about this, and I think it’s very plain from Hebrews. We know from Hebrews that the blood of bulls and goats and lambs, and whatever, can they take away sin? No! So, what was the deal? What was that about? That was God giving them something, a way to express faith that would teach them, that would give them an understanding of what was to come.
And the God who saw into the heart of the person who was doing that, said, mark that one down. That sin will be taken care of. When was it taken care of? When Christ said it was finished. That was the sacrifice to end every other sacrifice.
If I was an Old Testament believer, one of the remnant, somebody who really had the understanding of what it was about and was doing this in faith, if I went and offered a lamb, God forgave my sins. How did He do that? Because He knew what was coming and it was as certain as if it…as if it had happened. Don’t mind me. Don’t get old!
( laughter ).
Praise God! But that’s where they preached from, was the Old Testament. And I’m getting to something because there’s a phrase, there’s a truth, there’s a principle that came to me over and over again…I just finally had to look it up. And, you see it right in the beginning of the Book of Leviticus.
Now I know everybody here loves reading through Leviticus, all the rituals and rules and regulations and how they were supposed to conduct themselves. But you know God was teaching things through that. I’m certainly not gonna try to unpack it all, but there’s one thing right at the beginning that had do with the offering of a sacrifice.
And…verse 3 of chapter 1, “If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he…” that’s the one who is coming, “…he is to offer a male without defect. He must present it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting so that it will be acceptable to the Lord.”
Now here’s the thing that kept coming to my mind over and over again. “He is to lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.”
Now, if that was the only reference to this you might just dismiss it and say, oh well, that was interesting. But you read on through the next few chapters and over and over and over again, ‘and he shall lay his hand on the head of the sacrifice.’ He’s gonna bring this lamb, he’s gonna lay his hand.
And you go back into other places in the Old Testament and you will see when they were sanctifying the priests in the Temple and all of that, they came and they laid their hands upon them. When Hezekiah reestablished the temple worship and the Law and they offered the sacrifices again, there was a time when all Israel was assembled and Hezekiah and the others laid their hand on them. What’s the significance of that?
You know, was God gonna accept…was it acceptable, for example, if somebody sent a servant, hey, I need a sacrifice…servant, go take my thing down there, go take my animal down there. Or, here’s my sacrifice, see you later. Do you get a sense of what the Lord is trying to say?
“The Hand on the Sacrifice.” That’s as good a title as any, by the way. ‘The hand on the sacrifice.’ What does that mean? What is the Lord trying to convey?
Folks, when they brought a sacrifice, God meant it to be something that was participatory. They are saying, this sacrifice stands for me. This is me presenting myself. I’m coming because I’m guilty of sin. I broke His laws. I sense the guilt. I realize I need God, and I’m coming to the place where He told me to come and I’m bringing what He told me to bring.
It’s not just some leftover animal I don’t care about…with a broken leg, and ugly and all that kind of stuff. I’m bringing exactly…I’m bringing the best. But, when I put my hand on that animal’s head, I am saying, this is me. I am coming, oh Lord, there’s something in my heart that is represented by that gesture. My heart is involved in this. I am coming…I’m taking ownership of the reason that I’m here. I’m not making just excuses…they did wrong, and I…no! I did wrong.
Just like David, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” (KJV). Nobody made me do this. I did it, Lord. I take full ownership and I come. And I come based upon Your promise, Lord. I have nothing else I could offer, but what You told me to do. But, oh Lord, this represents me. He is my representative. I am the one who should be there, but God has shown me mercy and given me a way to die and yet live. Folks, it represents not just the end of His life, but the end of mine. The hand on the sacrifice…that means something. And I believe God was teaching something.
You know, I thought about how many times in the Old Testament the Lord said…talked about their sacrifices being worthless, meaningless. You’re going through the form. You’re doing it, but…your heart’s not in it, basically, is what it came down to. Or, okay, we’ve got to do it so let’s find that lame old beast that I don’t care about, nobody cares about. Let’s bring that. In Malachi, you’ll see that.
But so many places that same theme is brought out. But here’s a holy God knowing the basis and the foundation for forgiveness was to come in Christ! And we know that God doesn’t look on the outward appearance! There’s not a person here who’s impressing God by sitting in a pew on Easter.
( congregational response ).
God looks at the heart!
( congregational response ).
And what do you think when God looked down and He saw one man who came with a genuine sorrow, contrition, repentance, and he did what God said and he laid his hand on that? Do you think God made a difference…do you think it made a difference in how God responded to those sacrifices, and somebody else who just went through the motion and didn’t have their heart in it at all?
Do you think it’s any different today? Is God looking for the outward appearance? Is He looking for the form? Is He looking for agreement with doctrines and religion? He is looking for the same thing today.
And, while we don’t literally employ that gesture, that gesture has the same meaning today. It is a 100 percent identification with that sacrifice. And that’s what God calls every one of us to. Praise God! It’s such a simple thing, and I don’t know…but the reality is, the sacrifice of Christ has no value until it becomes personal!
Now I’ll drop this in here. One of the burdens that I have, and I know it’s been expressed in so many different ways…we want to see God change hearts, change lives. We don’t want to see people grow up and miss this. We don’t want to see people come in and just miss this! I know that there will be…I know not everybody will listen!
And we rightly emphasize the fact that the Word has to be anointed! You cannot simply stand up here and spout out correct doctrines and expect it to do something! God has to come and infuse words with His Spirit so that they have life-giving power! But that’s only half of the equation! Jesus had that in spades. He had the Spirit without measure and people walked away and didn’t see it.
What’s the other side of it? God has to prepare hearts! I am so thankful when people come up to me and say, I’ve been praying for you or I’ve been praying for the services. We’re asking God to come and to speak and to give the Word. But oh, don’t stop with that! Keep doing that! Thank God!
We need that, but pray that God will plow the ground in people’s hearts and make them so miserable and feel their need that they’ll come and their heart’s will be open and say, oh God, let that Word enter in here. Don’t let me be hard soil. Do what it takes! Oh God, I need what this is about and I need it with all my heart.
Only God can open a heart! And it’s different with everybody, but it comes down to the same thing. Pray that God will open hearts when the Word comes. Let’s pray on both ends that God will work, and I believe He will, don’t you?
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March 29, 2020 - No. 1434
All Music
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March 22, 2020 - No. 1433
“There is Coming a Day” Conclusion
Broadcast #1433
March 22, 2020
March 22, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1433 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: We have the same promise. What happened to Jesus is the promise! It’s the hope that we have been given, every single one of us. “Listen, I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep…” (NIV). That is, we will not all die. There will be people who are here when Christ comes.
“But we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” Oh, wait a minute. We’ve got the last enemy, the last trumpet. This kind of sounds like the end to me, doesn’t it? Yeah, there isn’t anything happening after this other than judgement and eternity.
“…In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound…” There’s nothing secret about that, is it? “…The dead will be raised imperishable.” Wow. I need…I mean, that’s a miracle. Only God can do that. Only God can grant that kind of a life that cannot die, incapable of dying. “…Will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
How many here need to be changed? Oh, praise God! That’s the hope that we have in that day, and it’s coming. “For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then…” at that time, “…the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
So, what we have now is a picture of Christ reigning. It’s not a visible reign to the world. It’s a case where He reveals Himself to willing hearts. He comes to make His home in those hearts. He goes to work in those hearts to change us, to prepare us for that time. And I’ll tell you, when the work is done that’s the day of Jesus Christ. That’s the time when He comes, and He gathers His people out of the world, and there’s nothing left but destruction. That’s the day. What a day that will be!
But you think about how sober and how serious it is. It’s an awesome for everyone that’s put their faith in Jesus Christ. It needs to overshadow every other consideration in our lives, because there is coming a day. Praise God!
But I’ll tell you, if there’s anybody who’s not serious, who hasn’t really ever surrendered the heart to Christ, you are in a place where you need—you need to hear the voice of the Son of God when He speaks to you, and not sidestep it and not say, but it’s my life.
You know, one of the things that Jesus said…now He didn’t quite go there in Luke 17. I’ll just refer back to it, because Jesus warned about this life that we’ve been given. How many times did He say this in His ministry? He that hangs on to his life, just put it in our language. He that hangs on to his life…what’s the prospect? What do you have to look forward to? These are the words of Jesus that will never pass away. You better reckon on this. You want to hang on to your life and your plans and your way and say it’s mine? You will lose it!
There’s no question about that. That’s reality. You may not see that. You may not feel it, but I’ll tell you, I pray that God will open hearts.
And you think about what it takes for God to rescue somebody from this evil world. Think about what Jesus said, “…I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (KJV). Think about what He’s saying there. We live in a world that is in prison—that is a prison basically. It’s a prison planet.
Every person born into this world is a slave and blind. All you know is the desires that arise from your heart, the ideas that you take in from your surroundings. There is a nature that is bent against God, and there is a world of evil spirits that control everything, that rule over this planet. Satan is called the god of this world. This is what we’re up against, folks.
But I’ll tell you, I serve One who defeated him completely at the cross, who has all authority in heaven and earth. But I’ll tell you, when it comes to saving somebody, it’s not just a matter of informing people of the facts, and they just take their own free will, supposedly, and just…okay, I’ll accept You.
Man, this is a confrontation between God’s power and Satan’s power over the will of somebody. And it’s not, okay, I like Your plan. I’m gonna agree to it. This is, I’m surrendering. This is, I recognize my condition. I recognize that there’s nothing that I can do to help myself. I recognize that I can’t deserve this. I can do nothing, Lord.
But, it’s not just the fact that I don’t deserve it, it’s that I don’t have the power! I have no power to change! I know many who remember Brother Thomas talking about going door to door and witnessing and talking to a man one day who, best I remember the story, he told Brother Thomas that as a teenager he had picked up a pamphlet that was written by some atheist. And somehow, it had clicked with him, and he had embraced what he was reading, the philosophy, and he said from that day forward, he had no desire for God, no ability. You just couldn’t touch him at all. It wasn’t even that he was antagonistic. He just was dead.
You think about what it took for God to save Saul. You think about this man that had supposedly, in his own mind, devoted his life serving God. And he was there when they were stoning Stephen, and watched Stephen kneel down and say, Father, into Your hands, I commend my spirit. “Do not hold this sin against them.” (NIV).
And, he’s watching this Godly man lay down his life, and he’s standing there holding the coats of those who are throwing the stones and agreeing with them! Do you think he was just a little bit blind? You think about what it takes to reach a man like that. God had to arrest him. God had to penetrate the darkness of the human heart.
Oh, God, we need to pray that every one who hears this Word, that God will confront the heart, will penetrate past the mind and it won’t just be just a religious thing I can add to my life, that God will make real who He is and what your life really is about and what’s at stake. Is He Lord? Are you a citizen of that kingdom, or are you a citizen of this one?
It’s pretty plain to me that when that day comes, it’s gonna be one or the other. You’re either gonna be all in with one or all in with the other. I want to be all in right now. That’s the only safe place. Jesus didn’t say wait until you see all of this and then get ready. He said, be ready.
But oh, I’ll tell you what, the only possible way that anybody can be saved is when grace is extended, when God is there confronting the heart. That very presence of God is not just the influence to say you ought to give your life to Me. It is the very power by which we do it. If God is not there, you have neither the inclination nor the power to come to God. That’s why He says, call on Me when I’m near. That’s when you need to call.
Oh, I’ll tell you, if God ever speaks to you, you cry out to Him, and you say, oh God, help me…oh, God. I’ll tell you, I just pray that God will burn His Words, the reality of what we’re talking about today. There is coming a day! And God wants it to be a great comfort to those who know Him, but it’s a great, powerful warning to those who don’t. I’ll tell you what.
Here’s another thing that I see that encourages me, because I know that in our journey, we face many facts that we confront in our own lives, whether they’re circumstances, whether they’re weaknesses, whether they’re discouragements.
How many of you reach times in your life, you who know the Lord, when all of a sudden, you come face to face with something that’s in here? And it’s dismaying. And you wonder, oh my God, what’s the answer to this? This is discouraging. Here I’ve served the Lord for so many years, and look at the terrible thing I’ve just found out about myself, and it’s…what am I gonna do? Oh, could God love me?
I’ll tell you what, the very evidence, the very fact that God’s people become concerned at such a time, the very fact that you’re dismayed and don’t want things to be that way is the evidence that God is at work! What did He say in Philippians 1:6 about God who started the work will do, what?
( congregational response ).
Continue it. How long? “…Until the day of Jesus Christ.” There is coming a day. You see, there’s a graduation day for every child of God. There’s a time when the work is gonna be done, and He will pull back the veil and say, this is what I’ve been doing.
I’ll tell you, if God is at work in your heart, we need to let this reality that we’re in the middle of a process, but we know how it comes out! We need to lift up our hearts and say, praise God! Lord, You have brought me to a place of need, but You have the answer to my need! And so, my hope is in You this moment. I refuse to be discouraged by what I see, but rather encouraged that You are doing exactly what You said You’re gonna do. You’re continuing a work.
You know, I thought of this many times. Paul wrote those words in the first century. An awful lot of God’s people have died, but this Word says, He continues His work until…that means, in some sense, that work is going on. It’s not that people are trying to overcome sin in themselves. There’s a freedom when people die and go to be with the Lord. But I’ll tell you, there’s still a work.
God’s people have to learn stuff. God’s people, many of them perhaps, are among us more than we might realize. They’re sent on missions to planet earth. But I’ll tell you, God’s at work in every single child of God. Many die in ignorance. Do you think that God just leaves them in a corner in heaven? Or do you think maybe there’s some teaching that’s going on? And God is preparing every single child of God to come to that place together.
You know, there’s an awesome scripture that I thought about over in Ephesians. Ephesians is back in this other direction. Okay. Ephesians chapter 1. You know, Paul begins, and I don’t even want to try to go through his sentence, because it’s an endless sentence. But basically, Paul is exulting in what God has done for us, the forgiveness of sins and all that He’s done for us in Christ!
And, in verse 9 he says, “And he made known to us the mystery of his will….” Now, a mystery is something that you can’t understand unless God makes it known. I don’t care how smart you are. You’ll never figure it out if God doesn’t show you.
Isn’t it a good place to just humble ourselves and say, God, I can’t know anything unless You show me? I’m not smart enough to figure out Your Book. Think about that. There are a lot of people think they are. I’m not. I can’t figure this out. God has to reveal it.
But there is a mystery…according to what? Based upon what? His good pleasure, not my virtue, not anything in me. “…His good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ…” Okay? “…To be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
You think that’s talking about the day of Christ? You think that’s talking about that climax of the ages? Here, Jesus was raised from the dead, ascended to heaven, given all authority in heaven and earth, He has been reigning, not to fix the world, but to call a people out of it, to prepare them for a kingdom which will, all of a sudden, be unveiled before an unbelieving world.
It’s all gonna happen in one basic event. Don’t ask me to explain all the details. But, I know what Jesus said. I’m going with what He said, aren’t you? Praise God!
Now, here’s one thing that some people might be aware of. How about John chapter 5? I’m gonna just drop one little thing in…just a reminder that this all happens at the same time. John chapter 5, verses 28 and 29. Jesus said, “Do not be amazed at this….” Now, He just talked about the fact that God had put all judgment in His hands.
“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming…” Some translations say, ‘an hour is coming.’ “…When all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”
Does that sound like multiple judgments and multiple resurrections? This all happens at the same time, folks. The scriptures are consistent in how they present this day that we’re looking forward to. There is a day that’s coming. It’s real, and everybody in the grave is gonna be coming out. There will be a judgment, and there will be two destinies that will be manifest on that occasion.
What about 1st Thessalonians chapter 5? You know, we used that passage last week. And I’ll just refer briefly to it. 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, and Paul has been encouraging brothers about those who have died, that God’s gonna bring them with Him. We’re all gonna meet the Lord in the air. Does that sound the day of Jesus Christ? Sounds like it to me. It all happens together, doesn’t it?
“Now brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord…” Again, there’s that singular day. “…Will come like a thief in the night.” Unexpected. “While people are saying, peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, bothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.”
Do you see the singular event that’s going on here? See what the Lord’s getting us ready for? He is reigning ‘til all enemies are under His feet. And I’ll tell you, when He’s done, He’s gonna say, Father, I have done what You’ve asked. Here is the Kingdom. It’s complete. There are no more enemies. Oh, praise God! What a day that will be! You talk about something to sing about and rejoice in! That’s the day that’s coming.
And I’ll tell you, the same Word of God that is able to speak and galaxies fling out across the endless space, that same God can simply speak and dissolve it. He has the power to do anything He wants to do.
So, it raises the question. Look at the world. Why doesn’t He intervene? The Devil loves to raise that question in people’s minds. Oh, if there’s a God of love, why does He let such bad things happen? Why did He do it in Noah’s day? I’ll tell you, His focus is on calling His people out of this very kind of a world.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you.” Aren’t you glad He’s patient? I need a God whose patient with me, who knows how to work with me…all the stuff that He’s got to do in me, only God can do it.
The more I go, the more I say, oh, God. The stuff that needs to happen in my life, You are the only One who can do. I just call upon You to do it. I surrender. I believe You. I’ll tell you, there is no other path to life but surrender.
But, “He is patient…not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” That’s the reason God is allowing things to be like they are. There are still people that are hearing the Word of God. They’re still people. I don’t know how much longer. I’ll tell you, when we come to the end, it’s gonna be like it was in Noah’s day. There will be nobody who will be crossing the line. Like it was in Sodom, nobody else will be crossing the line. God knows when that day is.
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” Or “burned up” in other translations.
So, here is the conclusion of all of this for us. I’m about to lose my voice here. “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?” Folks, if you’re living your life under any other kind of idea about where things are at and how they’re going, you better reckon on this one. There is coming a day, and what Jesus has said will happen. There is coming a day.
Now, whether it happens in my lifetime or not, there is still coming a day! Because folks, like we said earlier, suppose I die, suppose you live your life and die, is that the end? A lot of worldly people would like to think so. That’s how they justify being able to do what they want while they’re here. That’s the only opportunity I’ve got. Then I’m gonna be dead and gone. There’s no God.
Good luck with that, because everyone is gonna be raised from the dead to stand before the One who sits on that throne right now. I’ll tell you, we need to reckon on these truths. They need to be so burned into our consciousness, that they are the reason we live. They are the hope upon which we constantly are able to lift up our eyes and see, no matter where we are at in our life and in our walk.
“You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.” Praise God!
This is the same Word that Jesus said will never pass away. “So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.”
And so forth. I’ll tell you, we need to reckon on this and be careful. Jesus warned about being caught up in the world, about sleeping, about drifting and getting just enamored with the world and busy with that and losing touch with what God has called us to do, and what He’s called us to be. Folks, we need to have…this needs to be front and center in our thinking.
There is coming a day. What if it were today? If you’re not ready, there’s coming a day. And, I pray that God will penetrate the darkness of your heart and make this real to you.
But, if you are here today, and you know the Lord, regardless of where you’re at in your journey, regardless of the difficulty, regardless of the attacks of the enemy, there is coming a day, and it will be worth it all when we get to that.
We’re gonna get there, and we’re gonna be able to look back and understand. God, I get it. I know why You took me that way. I could never have let go of my own way and laid hold of Your way if You hadn’t brought me the way that You did. Oh, praise God! He who has begun this good work will preform it ‘til the day of Jesus Christ! That day is coming! That day that will shock the world, but cause Christians to throw up their hands in praise and be changed in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye and be with Him forever.
Are you ready for that day? Are you looking forward to that day? There is a day that’s coming. ‘There is coming a day,’ I guess is the line from the song. There is coming a day. Thank God for the reality of it. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words, Jesus said, will never pass away. Praise God! That’s my hope today. Is it yours? To God be the glory!
Close
March 15, 2020 - No. 1432
“There is Coming a Day” Part One
Broadcast #1432
March 15, 2020
March 15, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1432 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, there’s a song that we sing in the choir from time to time that’s always had a special meaning for me, and a special memory and that’s, “What a Day That Will Be.” And I know I’ve probably shared this on different occasions and I don’t know if this is all repetitious, you forgive me.
But, I guess my sense about that song goes back to a time when Sue and I were in college and we used to go…we’d get up a carload many times on a Sunday evening and drive from several miles north of New York City, at the campus, into New York and then over into Brooklyn. And there was a church there, at the time, that really had a lot of life and it was a tremendous help to us at the time.
And basically, something happened on one particular night. There was a…it was one of those churches, a lot like the Brooklyn Tabernacle, just not as big. But, they tend to give an invitation at the end of a service and this particular time the invitation had to do with people who needed the Lord, needed to come to the Lord, needed to come to faith.
And, instead of singing a song like, “Come” or one of those invitation songs that we typically use, they sang this song, “What a Day That Will Be.” And I mean, they sang it, and we sang it, and it got way beyond just the emotion of religious people singing. God came down. I mean, you remember…if you’re in an occasion when the Lord’s presence really comes down in a manifest way, wow!
And we must have sung that 15 times or more, just over and over again until people’s hands were in the air. I mean, I still choke up thinking about it. There were tears running down people’s face. I can’t imagine how anybody who didn’t know the Lord wouldn’t be shaken and awakened at a time like this. It was real!
And it was like the Lord was saying, yeah, I’m looking forward to that day, too! Praise God, it’s coming! And I want everyone to realize the reality of that. And I guess, that’s kind of the area of thought that I’ve had. If I had to give a title to this, and for the sake of our folks in the room there who want a title early, “There is coming a day…” is the first line. Might be as good a title as any, “There Is Coming a Day.” Folks, thank God there’s coming a day! That’s the hope of everyone in here who knows the Lord.
( congregational response ).
There is coming a day, regardless of where things are at right now, what we see in the world, what we experience personally, there is coming a day, and that’s our hope.
You know, we live in the middle of a world that’s got its own expectations. You’ve got some people who are terrified at what’s going on and they’re expecting bad stuff and they’re prepping. You’ve got rich people that are building bunkers underground ‘cause they’re afraid of what’s coming.
But you’ve got a lot of people who believe in human potential, and believe that we are meant to evolve into much more than we are. We’re gonna conquer the stars. We’re gonna conquer everything and we’re gonna be great and we don’t need God anymore.
I’ll tell you, there’s coming a day. And it’s gonna be an amazing time. I thought about…just as a simple place to start. I’ve got a lot of scripture. We may skip over some of it. But I just want to have what the Lord wants to say.
But in Luke chapter 17, it’s a scripture we’ve used a lot. In fact, I don’t think I’m gonna say anything you haven’t heard, but my prayer is that God will make it real. And God will apply it to the present company, and all who may hear this other ways and will touch every heart, beginning with mine. I sure need Him this morning, don’t you?
( congregational response ).
Praise God! I’m subject to the same needs and weaknesses that you are. But anyway, there was an occasion in Luke chapter 17 where the Pharisees came to Him and you know they had their religious glasses on. They had the blindness of their religion, and so they had a concept of this Kingdom that God had promised in the Old Testament and all they were thinking about was an earthly kingdom where Israel would be exalted above the nations, set free from tyranny like Rome and all of that. And so, they asked Jesus, when is the Kingdom of God coming?
Well, Jesus took the opportunity to say, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation.” (NIV). That’s a key principle that a lot of people need to realize. God’s Kingdom is not about this present world. It will never be a visible, political, whatever, kind of kingdom, over this present planet.
And I believe what God is telling us to expect is something we need to be…we need to have this as a world view, if you will. It needs to dominate our thinking that there is coming a day and we need to know about that day, and we need to be ready for it.
So anyway, Jesus wanted to let them know that that’s not the way God’s Kingdom works, in this present world. God’s Kingdom is not visible but it’s within. It’s something that you cannot see.
You know, I thought of a scripture that I don’t know if I’ve used it very many times but it really kind of highlights this in John…just hold that place…but turn over to John 14, just for a moment. And this is a…you know, Jesus said a lot of things to the disciples the night before He was crucified and I’ll guarantee you they didn’t understand much of it. An awful lot of what He said they did not understand until later.
But there was one thing that He said in, oh, beginning in verse 21. “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” See, that’s a key.
The disciples at least picked up on this. Said, “…Judas (not Judas Iscariot)…” who was gone now, but another disciple, “…said, But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” Do you see the principle that Jesus was talking about earlier, when He’s talking about a kind of seeing, a kind of revelation, a kind of making known that happens to some but not to the world? All right?
It says, “Jesus replied, if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” That’s what the Kingdom of God is about in this world. It’s God making a home in a human heart. The Kingdom of God is when the King comes to reign, not over an earthly, political kingdom, but in the kingdom of the heart.
Is your heart part of His Kingdom this morning? That’s a critical question. Because I don’t care…you can go to…somebody can go to church all their lives and Jesus never reigns here. That’s the key. And I’ll tell you, there is an amazing blindness in the world today.
But go back to Luke chapter 17, because Jesus takes this opportunity to talk to the disciples about something. And He says, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, There he is! or Here he is! Do not go running after them. For the Son of Man in his day…” Now, there’s that singular word ‘day.’ “…the Son of Man in his day….” There is coming a day.
So, what’s it like? “…The Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.”
So, Jesus is looking down the stream of time saying, yeah, there’s coming a day. It’s My day. It’s the day when I show Myself to the world and I’ll tell you, things will be over when I show Myself to the world. It won’t be something secret. It will be open. Everybody will know it. It will be as sudden and shocking as lightning. But boy, there’s coming a day. Okay?
So then, He says…now He’s comparing this, and I don’t want to belabor this because we’ve talked about it so many times, but He compares His coming to two different historical events. One of them had to do with Noah and his day. The other one had to do with Lot being rescued out of Sodom.
Now what are the characteristics of both of them? There was a world that had reached a place, spiritually, of no return. Do you know that can happen? Do you know that there comes a time when God ceases to strive with someone who just does like this and says, no!
When God works, and like He says in Noah’s day, “…My spirit shall not always strive with man…” (KJV). That tells me that God had, for a long time, a lot longer than I would have had patience to do it, but God’s patience was demonstrated in continually reaching out to convict the generation of that day, through Noah’s preaching, no doubt through many other ways, God was trying to speak and they were saying, no, we’re gonna go our way. We’ve got our life. This is my life, I’m gonna live it. Just go away and leave me alone. And finally, He did.
How many of you are gonna look back and say, wait a minute, I had plans? My wedding was next week. I had a business deal I was…oh, we were just getting ready to go on vacation. There are a thousand and one things that people value in this world.
I’ll tell you, if God truly transforms us, not just on the outside to make us religious, but I mean transforms us right down to the bottom of our being…I’ll tell you, if your heart is a part of what Jesus is talking about, there won’t be any looking back. Man, it will be, thank God, I get out of this place! Lord, You’ve kept me in it and you’ve even blessed. There are things that you’ve allowed me to enjoy here, but this is not where my life is. Oh God, come! “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
And yet, don’t come until everyone that’s gonna come in, comes in. Oh, there’s that tension between wanting to go and wanting it to be over, and saying, oh Lord, don’t hurry too fast. Don’t leave anybody behind. Do you believe He’s gonna leave anybody behind? I don’t either. He isn’t. Thank God!
But I’ll tell you, there is a sober warning to everybody. This has got to be a heart issue with every single one of us. You know, I was thinking about this business of how people could get in that kind of a condition where, as Jesus said in Matthew 24, I’ll just refer to a scripture there where He says, “And knew not…” talking about the people of Noah’s day. They didn’t know what was gonna happen.
But Noah had just been preaching about it for 120 years and building a boat and they didn’t know? There’s a kind of ‘not knowing’ that has a lot more to do with willfulness than ignorance. This was a deliberate ‘not knowing.’
And I thought about the process that leads to this. How many of you remember, and I’ll just refer to something that you’ve heard before? How many of you remember the parable Jesus told about the wheat and the weeds, or the tares, in Matthew chapter 13? And they’re wondering, how in the world? Lord, you planted good seed in the earth, where did all this come from? He says an enemy did this.
And the Lord said, don’t you try to separate them. Don’t you try to figure it all out. You just…you wait. There’s a harvest coming. What was the first part of the harvest? How many remember?
( congregational response ).
Gather the weeds out from the wheat. “…Bind them in bundles…” To do what?
( congregational response ).
“…To burn them.” How many of you remember Brother Thomas talking about some of this? I believe he was exactly right. What are some of those bundles? What does that mean about being bound together? I mean, you think, oh yeah, throw them in a pile, they’re gonna be…no! There’s a binding.
I’ll tell you, we live in a world of ideas, of religious deception, of political ideas, of social ideas, of lifestyles, you name it, there are a thousand and one things going on in our world that have captured people’s minds to the point where they think that is what my life is about. This is what I’m living for. Not only that, I’m not the only one and so I feel strengthened because I have these people that I can associate with and…I’ll tell you, there’s a strength when people begin to bind together.
And I’ll tell you, God allows people to make choices like that. He will strive, but He is not gonna override the choices that men make. And so, there comes a time when people are so bound up you couldn’t explain it to them. You couldn’t talk to them. I’ll tell you, it’s amazing what it takes to wake up.
And you think about that day that is coming. I’ve just wrestled with how to…the order in which to develop the thought. But I’ll tell you, I’m gonna drop something in that touches on what I ministered on several weeks ago.
What do the people of this world really have to look forward to, if they knew what was coming? In the first place, this world is going to be destroyed. Everything is gonna be destroyed. Everyone in it that doesn’t know Christ is gonna die! Is that the end? Is that the end? What does the scripture say that they have to look forward to?
You want to write a scripture down, look at Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26 and 27. There is a looking forward, “…fearful looking for of judgment….” And what’s beyond judgment? “…Fire that will consume the enemies of God.” (NIV).
Is that plain? You see these physical bodies that we live in, yeah, they’re gonna die, but that’s not the end of it. There’s still that person that has lived in here and has been in rebellion against God, or has known Him. You see where there’s gonna be such a radical, radical separation of the entire human race and it’s gonna happen on that day. It’s gonna happen at the same time.
I’ll tell you what…you remember what Jesus said? He said, no one knows the time. You know the crazy people that come along every so often and say, Jesus is coming on such and such a day. Jesus doesn’t know when He’s coming, for crying out loud! How do they know? But I’ll tell you, He is coming.
And there’s one thing that, besides this fact that there is coming a day, that needs to be burned into everybody’s consciousness. But there’s something else that needs to be burned into everybody’s consciousness. Jesus said, in the context of talking about His coming, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
Let that sink in. This world is planning for all kinds of things. Some of the things are things that might happen. Some of the things are things they hope will happen. But here is something that will happen. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Man, that’s what I want to bank on! That’s what I want to live for! How about you?
And so, we see, on the one hand we see Jesus talking about a time when the Kingdom of God will literally be in the earth but it will not be visible. Then He’s talking about a day that’s coming when everything will be visible and everything will be concluded. Okay?
You remember Jesus said something at the end of Matthew. He encouraged the disciples shortly before He went…this was the risen Christ now. They had gone through this period of time when the disciples themselves didn’t know what was going on. They were discouraged. They were defeated. They were confused.
And all of a sudden, Jesus shows up, raised from the dead and He has a body that’s different from theirs. It’s real. He eats fish with them. They can touch Him. But it’s not like their body. None of sin and death, none of the things that we live with in this world afflicted that body.
And so, He declared to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Yeah, that’s something we need to put in our pipe and smoke, as the expression goes. This is something we need to understand. In every situation of life, no matter what it looks like, no matter what the facts that we observe are, there is One who has all authority in heaven and earth.
He is absolutely carrying out the Father’s intent that He declared in His own sovereign will before the world ever was, this is what this creation is about. This is where I’m headed. This is my endgame. Jesus reached a point in carrying out the Father’s will where everything was put in His hand for Him to reign.
So, what was that reign about? One of the things it was about was, “Therefore go and make disciples….” I’ll be with you till the end of the world. It’s spreading the news about this Kingdom! Okay?
You know, I thought about another scripture that we’ve used from time to time and it’s in 1st Corinthians chapter 15. And this is where Paul is trying to deal with some craziness that has gotten into the Corinthian church. It seemed like they had a lot of problems and yet, I’ll tell you, it’s a comfort and blessing to me to see God dealing with people that He loves and yet they had real problems.
I can identify with that. I can be thankful that here was a church that came behind in no gift, and yet look at all the stuff that was wrong. And you actually had people telling other people, or trying to teach the idea that there is no resurrection. Well, good grief! What are we living for Christ for? What good does that do? We need to just, eat, drink and be merry, and tomorrow we die. That’s the end of it.
That’s what the world thinks! The world has just done away with the idea of God. We’re gonna just do our own thing. But I’ll tell you what, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and that is the evidence that everything He has ever said we can bank on. If there’s nothing else that you believe, believe what Jesus has declared to be the truth, because He is the Son of God. God authenticated everything about Him when He brought Him forth, conquered the grave, conquered our sins, conquered everything! Every enemy is under His feet! Okay?
So that’s where Paul’s getting here. And so, in verse 19 he says, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But…” Oh, praise God for the buts! “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
I’ll tell you, God has a plan to bring forth those who have died, because death is a part of this creation. Ever since sin entered, death reigns. But there is a victory over death and the beginning evidence of that, the firstfruits of a harvest, if you will, was Jesus Himself being raised from the dead. He’s the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, or have died. Okay?
“For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Are you in Christ today? Praise God! There is a certainty of hope not based upon your qualifications, but based upon the purpose of God.
But here’s the thing. “But each in his own turn.” There is a time schedule. “Christ, the firstfruits.” That’s the evidence. That’s the reason you and I can have hope this morning, because Jesus was raised. God has a purpose of raising every one of us up, whether we die first, or whether we meet Him in the air on that day when we’re here when He returns.
It says, “Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
So, we have a reign of Christ. We had His own declaration that all authority and power in heaven and earth had been given to Him, so what was He doing with this? Is He, as some teach, basically just sort of sitting in heaven, waiting to come back and reign? You awake?
( laughter ).
Is that what this is about? No! He went to a throne and He began reigning. That was what Pentecost was about! What was the evidence that Jesus was on a throne reigning? It was the outpouring of His Spirit and the calling of people into His Kingdom, the beginning of the building of His church, and the beginning of the Gospel going out to the ends of the earth.
That’s the reign of Christ! That’s what it’s about! It is about calling people out of this world! It is about a transformation of hearts and characters. It is about the blotting out of sins! It is about defeating every kind of stronghold of Satan in lives! It’s about preparing a people to live with Him in a perfect place forever! Only God can do that! That’s what it’s about.
Do you want to know what the time frame of this thing is, and the evidence of it? Listen to what He says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Okay? When does that happen? When is death destroyed? Look at the end of this chapter. These are truths that we have heard preached over the years and we need to have a grasp of them. I want God’s people to know what they believe and know why they believe it, know where it is in the Word.
The scripture that we use so often, at the end of this passage, has to do with the coming of Christ. It’s sudden, and how we’re gonna be changed and transformed and gathered to Him. But listen to…well, listen to what he says in verse 31, well, verse 50. You want to know why God’s doing what He’s doing?
He says, “I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” That’s why the Kingdom of God has to be something that’s in here. And I’ll tell you, when it comes into…when it becomes visible to everybody, these bodies will be done away and changed!
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March 8, 2020 - No. 1431
“Perseverance in Joy” Conclusion
Broadcast #1431
March 8, 2020
March 8, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1431 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, it’s awful easy…a lot of people look at the world and they’re try to make sense out of it. And if you’re trying to make sense out of it with your human, your limited intellect and your limited viewpoint, it’s gonna be a mess, because this world is full of suffering. It’s full of terrible things that are happening. There are things that happen to us when we think we’re doing good.
You know, we need to come to a place where we can see beyond what this puny brain thinks it knows. I’ll tell you, real faith, real persevering faith, is able to come to the place where we simply are able to rest questions that we don’t have answers for in God’s hands.
And, you know, one thing that I notice about all these things that he says in that particular paragraph, 16, 17 and 18: everyone has a choice. We think of joy as an emotion, and it is. But to us emotions are simply our reactions to things that happen to us. And so, if something happens that is pleasant, that, oh boy, I’m happy about it. I’m enjoying that. If something happens that’s bad, oh…
( groaning ).
Oh me. And we go and have a pity party. But I’ll tell you, God wants us to have a faith that is practical, that is able to deal with the realities of this world that we live in because it’s not a nice place.
And God knows what He’s doing. I’ll tell you, if you don’t know it now, you walk with the Lord awhile and you’ll find out. There are things you and I don’t know about ourselves. There’s a lot you and I don’t know.
And we’re serving a God…even as He revealed himself to Job, He didn’t just say, I’m doing this, I’m doing that. He said, were you there in the beginning? Do you really know what this is all about? I’ve got purposes that stretch from eternity to eternity. You’re in a little tiny…you just got here. And you think you know, and you’re trying to reason out to the point where you’re almost ready to accuse me.
Folks, we get in the same spot. When something happens to us and we get…and we let questions settle in our minds. Is God really fair? What did I do? A thousand and one things that come that are negative and they provoke emotions of self-pity and depression and all those kinds of things. I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God that doesn’t want His people to live in that. Praise God! Praise God!
And it’s gonna take a consistency of faith. I don’t want to present this as a simplistic thing where you just, oh yeah, I’m supposed to be happy…and we paste this smile on. There are gonna be times when it’s gonna be a real, real battle. We need to be realistic. God knows!
It was for Jesus! How many times have we pointed out in scripture where He cried out in prayer, “…with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him…” (KJV). He needed help. But yet he says in the midst of that, there was a joy that was the dominating principle of His life so that he was able to be a Man of Sorrow, acquainted with grief. He could feel all the emotions that you and I’ve felt and yet not allow them to get him off track or to weigh him down or any of those kinds of things. He was always able to see past that.
Isn’t that he says in Hebrews, chapter 12, where we are exhorted to be patient and to run with perseverance and all of that. But, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy….” Now where was this joy? In his circumstances? No, there was a joy set before him! He endured the cross! He despised its shame…there was one thing that absolutely dominated His being…His constant looking to God and knowing that, knowing where this was gonna end.
That’s the hope that God wants to plant in every one of His children, starting with me, where we can look at the circumstances of life and see a God who…and know what the end of the story is, and know that He is doing what He knows is best for us.
My God, we are not the Potter. We are the clay. Oh, how we reason, how we look at others and say, well, this was the way it was with them, why isn’t it that way with me? Every one of you is not…we are not cookie cutters, cookie-cutter Christians…the result of being…you know what I’m talking about. He doesn’t manufacture us as clones. Every single one of His children is a special work of divine art.
That’s why sometimes people will look in the scriptures and say, well, I see what happened here. They did this and this was the result, so if I do that, that will…you know, I thought about a…this may sound crazy coming in here, but I’ll say it anyway.
Every once in a while, I’ll pull out the Narnia Chronicles and read them. Some of you have. Aslan is the Christ figure in that very interesting series. But one of the lines that really stands out, in one of the books in particular…I won’t go into where it is. But, Lucy, one of the main characters, is talking to Aslan and she remembers what he did in a certain time before that. And, why don’t you do that? And he says, dear child, or dear heart, nothing ever happens the same way twice.
You know, that’s a simple lesson. Isn’t that profound? But we need to realize that God wants us to learn to walk with Him and to let Him do what He needs to do in us, the way He wants to do it, in the time frame He wants to do it and realize He is the Potter. We are the clay.
And where He’s going with this is gonna be amazing. One day He’s gonna take the cover off and put us on display…not as, look at them and look at what they did. It’s, look what I did! They came to me just as they were, as the song we sang this morning, broken, having nothing to offer Me, but they offered Me themselves. And so, I went to work and I changed them.
It’s not just a superficial change, where they learn how to behave and go to church, and say the right words. You notice that scripture we read about what God does. Paul said, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.” (NIV). That goes all the way to the depth of our being!
So many times, we’ll reach a point in our Christian life where we think, okay, I’ve got it down now. I’m on cruise control. We’ve reached a nice plateau, I’m just gonna put one foot in front of another and everything’s gonna be great. And God is seeing all kinds of stuff that’s way down here, hidden things we don’t even know about…maybe we do, but maybe we don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you, God is gonna keep on working, isn’t He? God loves us too much to leave us in the shape that He found us in.
( congregational response )
Thank God! But oh, does this call for a kind of…something that goes beyond mere perseverance as we think of it. God wants us to be able to go through this with such a vision of what is going on, what’s really happening, that we don’t sit there and get mired in the moment, mired in the emotions that naturally flow out of difficult experiences.
God wants us to say, thank God, I know! I’ve got a joy in my heart You have planted there. And I know where this is headed and so I’m rejoicing that God loves me enough to take me through this. And I know that I’m gonna learn something about Him…I’m gonna experience Him in a way that I have never experienced Him before. And I’m gonna come through this richer.
Didn’t Job come through it richer? Yeah, he had twice as much as he had before. And there’s a testimony in scripture of a God who is able to take somebody beyond their ability to comprehend what in the world was happening? What could possibly be the reason for this? Oh, how we need to stop asking those questions and say, God, if there’s something I need to know, help me to know it. But Lord, I trust You.
( congregational response )
Is this not faith? I mean, isn’t this perseverance in action? Is not mere…
( groaning ).
We don’t go through life grudgingly, and sort of a little bit angry at God because of the way He does things. Think about what we do when we give into negative emotions. Are we not exhibiting them against God? Are we not saying, God, where are You at? I don’t understand. This doesn’t make sense.
We’re doing the same thing Job did, where he said…basically the conclusion that he came to, when you boil it all down, was, I’m righteous. There must be something wrong with God.
Think about that. When we act and react. And again, I don’t want to say this in a way that comes across as condemning, God knows. We go through times when we experience genuine emotions that are really difficult to deal with. And God knows that. But I’ll tell you, there comes a bottom-line moment when God wants us to be able to rise above that and just commit things to God and say, God, I’m trusting You, with this moment, this day, this time. I’m not gonna sit here and yield to that.
All you have to do is go through the Psalms, and you see David pouring out his heart. The scripture, one of my favorite psalms that Brother Danny read the other night, was “How long, O LORD…” Psalm 13. And I don’t see God condemning David for even expressing that.
You know, we can come to God that way, can’t we? Can’t we be honest about how we’re feeling? But yet, I don’t want to come to God with a spirit that’s condemning Him and saying, there’s something wrong with You because this is happening. I want to come to God with that sense of, help…I need help with this, Lord, because I want to see beyond it.
I want to be able to do what Paul said when he was…though the outward man was perishing, what was he looking at? Was he looking at the things that were temporary or was he looking at the things that were permanent?
That’s the only thing that’s gonna carry us through, folks. God wants us to have such a sense, such a genuine heart conviction, not second-hand information. God wants you to have a first-hand knowledge that there is a God who loves you, who has a purpose for your life that extends way beyond the circumstances of this one. And He is gonna take us to the other side and it’s gonna be awesome when we get there, not because we’re special, but because He is…everything! To Him will be the glory forever and ever.
But I’ll tell you, there’s a whole bunch packed into that, “Be joyful always….” And you know, coming from Paul, they knew this was not something that he learned in theology class, because, remember what happened right before he came to Thessalonica, he had just come from Philippi…I don’t doubt that he still had the marks and the wounds that they had suffered because they were stripped and beaten and put in the stocks…praised God at midnight.
And here’s the other thing. You know, it’s awful easy, like I say, to look at a situation like that and say, oh, I know how to get out of this. Let’s just sing and praise God, and the circumstance will be done away with! And so, you do that and…wait a minute, this isn’t working. Oh God, we need to have a faith that just simply says, I’m gonna do what’s right. I’m gonna leave the details to God.
( congregational amens ).
I don’t know what His plan is, because you remember in Hebrews 11, how God moved mightily to bring great deliverances to some and other people, He let them die! And yet, every one of them was a hero of faith. Praise God!
But here’s Paul writing…I mean, they knew that this was somebody who had been in a terrible circumstance and been serving God and this was their reward, to be cast in prison and yet there was a spirit that enabled them to sing and praise God!
And God just had a particular purpose that He manifested Himself the way that He did. And so, they knew, this guy knew what he was talking about. This was not theory to Paul.
And so…but think about this, in all that we’re talking about is his exhortations to the Thessalonians. These guys weren’t people that had been sitting in church for 40 years. This was a three-week church, quite likely. And then a short time later, he goes through Berea. He goes to Athens. He sends Timothy back. Timothy comes back with the report and he writes the letter. So, you’re talking weeks maybe…certainly not more than months. You’re talking about some very young believers.
I’ll tell you, if God is at work, we don’t have to wait until we’ve been in church 40 years to grow up. There’s a God who can do stuff right now if we’ll let Him, and can teach us the deep things of the faith. This is real Christianity right here. Anything short of this is just a lot of theory.
You know, we sing some songs that aren’t exactly realistic here and there, praise God! I’m serving Him. I’m on the mountain. All my problems are gone. Well…no, they aren’t. But I’ll tell you, we can still have a joy in here.
( congregational response ).
And most of the time, it comes down to a choice to surrender and to believe God. That’s what He honors. If you let your emotions dictate your state, you will be all over the map and a lot of times you’ll spend your time down here in the valley. And the Devil will make sure that you feel all kinds of things, when God wants us to lift up our eyes and look to Him and be joyful always, always.
I’ll tell you, is this not a pretty good description of what faith really is in action? It is not just gritting your teeth and hanging on and saying, oh God, I know You’re gonna get me through and I don’t like it much but here we go, I’m gonna hang on. This is where we get past that and we can see…we can share Jesus’ joy. That’s what He longs to share.
Is that not His heart for you this morning? Does He not want you to have His joy this morning? You see, the problem is, we’re not quite willing to let go and just really embrace this and say, yeah, that applies to me. This is mine. I have every right to lay hold of what God…what Christ has paid such a high price to give me.
Oh, His heart and His purpose are so infinite. Just like Job who stood there and philosophized and tried to come up with an answer, and all of a sudden God just said, were you there when I formed the earth? Did you help me measure it out, and the skies and the stars and all those things? Do you know enough to be actually talking about all of this?
Folks, you and I don’t know. We just got here. But we serve a God who knew about you. That’s how great He is. He’s outside of time. He knew about you, He knew everything about you, the good, the bad, the ugly. The truth is, by His standard there is no good anyway, but you know what I’m saying. He knows everything. He knew everything about you and me before the world ever was created.
And He planned something that you and I have stepped into because He has reached us. We didn’t go looking for Him. He came looking for us. Oh, don’t we need to open our hearts and say, oh God, I don’t want to live a life of mere endurance. I want to live a life of joy. I want to live a life of conscious dependence upon You, where I know that I need You every single day, every single moment of every day. I can’t make it. But I want to get beyond those things. I want to get to the point where I’m thankful.
Isn’t that what he said in Philippians? You pray about everything, with thanksgiving. Do you see how all these things dovetail together, they’re all pieces of the same faith, expressions of the same faith in a God who knows what He’s doing.
I’m in the same battles you are. And there are times we get weary. There are times we’re prone to yield to those emotions of things, based on how we feel. I certainly fight the same thing you do. But I believe with all my heart, God is calling us to something that’s deeper. But, we’re gonna have to be willing.
The awesome side of this coin is, that God’s promised to do it. He is the One who is doing something. The other side of the coin is, we have choices to make. And the degree to which we enjoy this in a practical sense, is very much dependent on our willingness to make the choices to do what Paul exhorts these brand-new Christians to do.
My God, if he can exhort them and expect that this was a message they would understand and benefit from, what about us who have served the Lord for years? This is pretty much basic Christianity, isn’t it? Don’t we have an awesome God?
Let’s go back down to 23, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you…” Set you apart. “…Through and through…” Right down to the center of your soul, all the things that you don’t even know about and don’t want to know about. “…May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”
Oh, praise God! Do you see where there’s a foundation for what Jesus said about coming to a place of rest? Where we’re not sitting there serving God fearfully like Job did. We’re not struggling with the things and trying desperately to explain them or else we’re not gonna believe God.
We’re saying, oh God, I know who You are. I commit myself into Your hands. I believe in Your salvation and my need for it. And so, I’m just willing to rest in Your faithfulness. Lord, if there’s something I need to know, You can tell me. But if You want me just to walk in blind trust…if you want to put it that way…where I don’t have the answer to the specific situation but I’m gonna trust You anyway, then I’m willing to do that.
I’ll tell you, that cuts across a lot of what’s wrong with us, if we’re willing to come to that place. How many of you are candidates for more rest today?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. Put up both hands. This is central. This is central to walking as Jesus walked. How in the world? He knew everything that needed to be known, and yet there was a joy, because He saw past what happened to Him as a man. He saw past all of that, to the heart of a loving God who was planning something that He could share with everybody.
He wants that same joy, that was in Him, even on the cross, to be in us in our day-to-day walk with Him. Praise God! I want that too, don’t you? Praise God!
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March 1, 2020 - No. 1430
“Perseverance in Joy” Part One
Broadcast #1430
March 1, 2020
March 1, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1430 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: You know, I was thinking this morning, or this week, I guess, about the service and what the Lord might want to have emphasized and my mind went back to the last couple of weeks, but particularly two weeks ago when the emphasis of the Lord was on the Book of Hebrews.
But the message that the writer gave to the people, the burden that was on his heart, was the fact that there needs to be a persevering faith in our service to God…that it’s not just that we’re gonna live a easy, smooth life, but rather there needs to be this ‘never quitting’ kind of spirit that always has a confidence toward God and always goes forward. And, that’s an awesome truth.
I’m so glad though, that the Bible has a balance in its rendition of truth and the truths that God would have us to understand. There’s always this incredible balance. And you know, as I thought about that, it would be easy for us to take that, or for someone to take that business about persevere and say, oh God, that sounds like a dull, horrible life.
You know, we’re gonna just hang on by the skin of our teeth and maybe we’ll get there, and it’s just gonna be kind of miserable on the road, on the journey. But, you know, I’ve just got to put one foot in front of another and just got to suck it up and keep going. How many of you think that’s the kind of life that God wants us to have? No, that’s not it at all, is it?
And I was trying to think of this in terms of what Jesus said. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (NIV). Now how in the world do you reconcile that with the reality of what we go through in the world, and yet, here in America we go through so little, compared to many of our brothers and sisters who are in incredible places of difficulty and challenge and suffering? How do you reconcile all that?
And again, I believe this is the balance that the Lord wants us to understand. And I’ll just trust the Lord to guide me through this. I thought of the Book of 1st Thessalonians, and there’s a passage, there’s a very short passage in chapter 5 that kind of came to my mind in this regard, and it has to do, not just with the fact that we’re supposed to be persevering, but how does that work? What does that look like?
And you know, is it this kind of ‘oh God, I’ve got to get through this’ kind of thing, or is there something deeper? Is there something more real that God wants us to enjoy?
Look at 1st Thessalonians. It’s either the first or second book that was actually written in the New Testament era. You remember how we’ve talked about in the past that when they went out and preached the Gospel, they preached from the Old Testament, exclusively. There was no New Testament. They simply gave the…they showed the fulfillment of Christ and all that He’d done, right through the Old Testament, from the beginning to the end, and preached Christ and then preached the message that He’d given, and that was it.
But as the churches began to be formed, then the occasion arose for putting down on paper these things, and writing to encourage. And what had happened here in the church of Thessalonica was…you remember how Paul and Silas had gone out on the second missionary journey, and along the way Timothy, young Timothy, had joined them in the ministry, and so, they came to a place where they wanted to go one direction and the Lord said, no, go another. And then Paul had that Macedonian vision. “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” So, they went.
And one of the main places they went was Philippi, and you remember what happened in Philippi. It’s recorded in chapter 16 of Acts, and that was where they had ministered for a while and God performed miracles and all of a sudden, people just began to riot against them, and they were thrown into prison and beaten.
And at midnight, you remember the account of how God shook the prison and wound up being the salvation of the Philippian jailer. But right after that, they actually left Philippi…spent a short time there, founded a church, left it in the hands of the Lord and went on.
The next place they went was Thessalonica. And, in the early part of chapter 17, you find out that they basically spent about three weeks there. How to plant a church…well, let’s just go for three weeks and see what God does. Well, God did something amazing, didn’t He?
They went into the synagogue on three successive weeks, but it wasn’t just the Jews that they influenced. There were some among the Jews who believed, but there was a great number among the Greeks. And it mentioned some of the prominent women in the city there that came to Christ and began to be a fellowship of believers.
And all this happened in three weeks. I mean, it’s amazing what God can do, if God’s the one doing it. You know, you can build up a program and establish a tradition and have a personality and you can build a religious organization, but this was something that God did. And His power came in and revealed the truth of the Gospel to hearts and changed people.
So, they had convictions that were able to stand in a context of tremendous opposition and persecution. This was not just, well, glad you found something you like, neighbor. This was real…invading Satan’s territory and experiencing great opposition, and of course, you remember what happened… how there were folks there that stirred up a riot. And, there was a terrible riot against Paul and Silas and the believers, and they actually…the brothers actually sent them away.
So, after three weeks, they are, all of a sudden, they are leading a brand-new group of people that had just come out of…on the one hand, vain traditions of the Jews, on the other hand, a heathen religion, and just basically commending them into God’s hands.
And so, they went on and they went to Berea after this. And you remember how the Bereans there, at least they considered the scriptures. But over time, they moved on from there and they sent Paul away, ahead of them by himself, to Athens. And so, it was while Paul was in Athens…so this is not very long after that, that he actually wrote back to the church.
And the occasion was, obviously he had had them on his heart and his mind, he’d thought about them, and said, oh God, please help them. You know, we weren’t able to be there with them. Lord, is this gonna work? Are they gonna stand?
Finally, he writes…and this is all recorded in the earlier chapters of 1st Thessalonians…he talks about how the power that he saw demonstrated, how evident it was that this wasn’t just a work of man, but God had come on the scene and built real, genuine, supernatural conviction in hearts that changed lives. And he talks about how the Apostles themselves conducted themselves among them and how they responded. And it was such a blessing to him.
But finally, he says, in chapter 3, we couldn’t stand it any longer so I sent Timothy to find out what was going on. I want to make sure you guys are okay. And so, he reports the fact that Timothy has just come back and given a wonderful report, and praise God, that makes our joy full, and what a glorious thing it is.
So then, from chapters 4 on, he begins to exhort them, what it means to live for Christ. He talks about how that God has called us to live holy lives, to leave the sexual, licentiousness of the culture around them behind them, and offer themselves to God in a holiness, and live according to God’s purposes. Then he goes on and he exhorts them about many things.
But the exhortation that I was most interested in came in chapter 5, when he lists a whole lot of things. But before I get to the particulars, there is a scripture that we have used many times that absolutely overshadows, it gives a context in which all of these exhortations…you should do this, you shouldn’t do that, and all that…all those fall under the context, or within the context of what he says in chapter 5, verse 23.
“May God himself, the God of peace…” (NIV). Isn’t that a wonderful thing? “…The God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” Praise God!
You know, it’s so easy to look at exhortations in scripture, this is the kind of person you should be, this is what you should do, and then to feel, oh God, one more thing…and I can’t do it. I’m just so…Lord, okay, I’ll try hard, but You know…and then just live under this, almost like it’s turned into a law.
But thank God, the context for all of this is what you’re doing is putting yourself in the hands of a God who has promised that He’s started what He’s done and He’s gonna finish it, and He’s gonna carry it through. So, you’re in the hands of one who is absolutely true and faithful in His promises.
You know, he’s just talked about the fact that we don’t even have to worry about people that die in Christ. Yes, we grieve, but we sure don’t grieve like those who have no hope, because we know that there’s coming a day when Jesus Christ will come in the eastern skies and every one who is His will be gathered to Him. The dead in Christ will rise first and so forth, and then we’ll be caught up together with them in the clouds. What a hope that we have!
And he exhorts them in the meantime to live, to put on the armor of God. This is the first reference we have to Paul referencing putting on armor. And to live sober lives, serving God, and to live as people who are awake and alive and know what’s happening. We’re living in a context…we don’t have to be buried in what’s happening in the world and how to explain it, we live in something that’s greater, with a deeper understanding.
But the passage that I came to that just seemed to jump out at me begins in verse 16. There are three verses there, very short exhortations. And the first one is a very simple one. “Be joyful always.” Be joyful always! Now, you put that in the context of living in a world that does not supply joy from our experiences, and especially if you’re serving Christ and you live in a world where the Devil hates you and is gonna stir up every kind of trouble that he can. And there are all kinds of trials and difficulties that we’re called…and yet, he says, “Be joyful always.”
How many of you think that this means we go around with a pasted smile on our face and act joyful? But I’ll tell you, I believe with all my heart, if we put this in the whole context of scripture, there is a joy that you and I can have. It’s not just gritting our teeth and saying, okay, I’m gonna hang on ‘til He gets here. This is living with a joy, a genuine joy, that comes not just from the outside and from trying to ‘be’ joyful, and act joyful; this comes from the heart. And that’s what God wants.
And, again, the greatest example that we have of that is our Lord Jesus. And He talked to the disciples…the night before He was crucified there was a long series of speeches, I guess, is a word, but exhortations where He teaches them and prepares them and then He prays for them. And one of the things He talks about is the fact that He has walked in His earthly life according to the Father’s will. He didn’t come to do His own bidding. He came to carry out the Father’s will.
And as a direct result of walking in harmony with the Father, there was a joy that He had on the inside. And He talked to the disciples and said, I want you to have the same thing. I want you, as I have walked, carrying out His commands, I want you to carry out Mine so that you can have My joy. God wants us to have a reservoir of something in our hearts that is so real that it becomes the dominating principle of our lives, despite the things that happen to us on our journey.
And so, He prays that same thing over in chapter 17. I won’t turn over to it, but last week we mentioned His prayer for unity. Well, I will turn over there. Let’s go ahead and read it. John chapter 17…verse 13, “I am coming to you now…” Now He’s talking to the Father. “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.”
I’ll tell you, God wants us to have something on the inside that’s real. Something that…that isn’t dependent upon circumstances. And my God, this is an issue for every one of us. We are dependent, far more than we might like to think, on our circumstances. And we can say, oh I’m trusting God, but I’m miserable. And a lot of us live in that far too much, far too…well, far too much.
You know, I thought about Job. It’s easy to think of him because if you’re following the reading plan that takes the Bible in its chronological order, and I know Ron is shaking his head because he does the same thing, this is the time of year you’re reading Job, because he was one of the oldest characters in the Bible.
And so, we know how Job reached a point in his life where he was doing his best to serve God in a world that was beginning to move away from it as it already had. I believe this was after the flood and no doubt it was after the Tower of Babel, but almost certainly before Abraham. So, the flood and all of that was a fairly recent memory. They knew about God. They knew about God’s judgment. And so, there were a lot of people…there were people among the people of that era that knew about God and they served Him with what they knew.
And the Lord Himself was the one who brought to the Devil’s attention, His servant Job. Have you considered Him? And so, the Lord allowed Satan, as we know, to do some, to bring some terrible circumstances in Job’s life. First of all, he loses his whole family. He loses all his possessions and he still says, “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (KJV).
Wow! How many of us could do that? I mean, that takes a confidence. That takes a faith. So, there was something that was real in Job’s heart and his life. But then, the Devil is allowed to touch his health, not to take his life, but to make him miserable with pain and suffering. And then, it hits the fan. And then, old Job is really having a time, isn’t he? And we see the emotions break out.
And then, he’s got some friends there that aren’t any help. His wife’s no help. “Curse God and die,” is her advice. And some friends come along and they’re gonna explain it all to him. Have you ever had friends like that? You know, every one of us, we are subject to taking our understanding of things…what we think we know about God, what we think we know about truth and then trying to explain our circumstances based on what we know. Good luck with that!
And that’s exactly where they were. And they’re sitting there trying to philosophize and go through every bit of supposed theological knowledge that they had and the three friends…I mean, talk about being stuck in a simplistic, legalistic way of looking at things. All they could see was, you have suffered calamity! It’s obvious! We know that God judges and He punishes the wicked and He blesses the righteous! You’re experiencing all this. Come on, come clean, Job. You know you must have sinned. All you have to do is confess your sin and God will make you prosperous again and everything will be great and grand.
Well, that’s a pretty limited view of God. You know, one thing that was kind of obvious. This was really a second-hand knowledge, wasn’t it? None of these people had ever really had an encounter with God. They heard from Noah and others about this God. They knew that He was serious. They knew that He judged sin and so they had this little simplistic, world, worldly centered view. You know, my circumstances are dictated by how I deal with God and how I obey Him, and I do what I know He likes, and I avoid what He doesn’t, and that’s kind of what life is about.
And so, they were just constantly pestering him. You know this is what it is. Look at the wicked. They do wickedly. Their children go hungry. And on and on and on they go with these long, windy speeches. And Job says, I haven’t done anything. I’ve done everything I’ve known to do.
But you know, I noticed something in Job, too. Job is still subject to a lot of this same second-hand thinking. Not only that, he’s living a life of fear. How many of you think God wants us to live a life where we’re afraid of Him? And we do what we do out of…oh my God, I’m afraid to make a mistake. He’s gonna beat me down. He’s a powerful God and I’m just afraid of Him.
Oh, God wants to take us beyond that. Oh, thank God, He doesn’t want us to serve Him that way. And I see in the account of Job…I see a lot of me, I see a lot of us, but how God had a purpose…Satan obviously wanted to bring him down. But God had a purpose of taking this one man that he saw was so zealous to try to do what was right and please Him, that He wanted to lift him out of a place of serving Him out of this fear. He wanted Job to have a knowledge of God and to know that there’s a bigger picture than just worldly prosperity and circumstance.
I mean, even Job is wrestling with the fact that…he’s trying to tell his friends, look, it’s not as simple as you’re saying. Don’t you know that there are people that are wealthy and wicked and they’re just doing fine, and their lives are great? And don’t you know that there are good people that have bad things happen to them? I mean, it’s not that simple.
But the mistake that Job makes trying to make sense of the world and what’s happened to him…the thing that he really falls in the ditch on is, he is so convinced of his own righteousness. He’s basically saying, all I need to do, if He’ll just get with me, I can plead my case. I can tell Him that I haven’t done anything wrong. What’s going on?
That’s not a good place to be, because we’ve got a God who knows a little bit more than we do. He has a bigger picture and a larger purpose. He knows what He’s doing. And so, that was the mistake he finally makes. He begins to question God. He begins to say, I’m not so sure that He really is just. I know I haven’t done anything!
I mean, you think of the fearfulness of a man whose kids have a party, and what’s his reaction to that? He says, they might have sinned. I better offer a sacrifice. I mean, there’s this fearfulness in everything that he’s doing. Yes, he wants to please God, but it’s so distant, God is just somewhere out there and I’m afraid of Him.
And so, God begins to take him through all of this. And what is God’s approach to…when He finally shows up on the scene and he talks to Job? Job, where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me all about it. And He goes through all of creation and the stars and the creatures and all of that. Where were you?
And Job, all of a sudden…he’s just standing there…oh my God, I think I know stuff. My perspective is so limited. This is an amazing God. He has purposes beyond what I can imagine. And in all of this, at the very end of it…Job repents of what he did.
And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who came right to him. He was not ready to smack him down because you didn’t do everything perfectly. This was a God who was looking for a reason to lift someone up and to bless them.
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February 23, 2020 - No. 1429
“Faith vs. Facts,” Conclusion
Broadcast #1429
February 23, 2020
February 23, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1429 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: I wonder how much you and I, more than we dare realize, are prisoners of this “realistic” thinking, where we live in a prison house of earthly ‘facts’ so-called, when God wants to take us beyond those facts and show His power in us. Do you think maybe, just maybe that’s where He’s going with a whole lot of things that’re happening in our lives?
How many of you just love…I know you’d all love to have an easy way and just, praise God, I’d jump on the bandwagon and it’s gonna take me to heaven and everything is gonna be great and grand and we’re gonna sing and shout all the way there. I’ll tell you, we can sing and shout but it’s gonna have to be through tears, sometimes. It’s gonna have to be through pain, sometimes. It’s gonna have to be through difficulties of many kinds!
It’s not “realistic.” God has put us in a world where every fact that the Devil can bring forth is rallied against what He has said and what He has promised, and we’re gonna have to make that choice! And only God’s power at work in a heart can enable us to do that! That’s why we’ve got to open up and say, God, help me!
( congregational response ).
And in those times when you have no answer, in those times when it hurts, when there’s sadness, when there’s sickness, when there’s all these things that rise up against faith and you’re wondering, does God really care? That’s when faith grows! That’s when God wants to enables us. He’s promised to give us the grace, the divine help that we need in every kind of…every time we face that type of circumstance. God wants us to reach out and lay hold of Him.
You know, that was the service Wednesday night, wasn’t it…how that God has given us everything. Some of you weren’t here. But anyway, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. So, what’s lacking? Why don’t we have it?
See, we need to lay hold of His promises, and God will take us through life experiences in which the virtues that He longs to form in our character will be called for. We’re gonna need them. When every ounce of your natural being wants to hate somebody, and God says love them, I need help.
But has God provided that help? So, what’s my place? It’s to reach out by faith and say, God, I feel this, but You promised. Well, I’ll tell you what, there are a whole lot of people that blame God, effectively, for their troubles. I was born this way. If God wanted me to live this way, He wouldn’t have allowed me to feel this. Oh, yeah? You don’t have a clue what’s going on in this world. God has fixed it to where we live in a world where we are gonna have to go against this, and it’s gonna take divine power to do it. But we have a God who is faithful!
( congregational amens ).
So, here’s Abraham, and of course, you remember. Well, let’s see…let’s talk about what he…in verse 13, back to Hebrews 11, “All these people were still living by faith when they died.” (NIV). And so, the faith, the things that they had a hope of, many of them extended beyond their natural life, and still they reached their deathbed, and they didn’t say well, God promised this, and I don’t see it, so, therefore, poo on that!
There was a conviction. They were able to breathe their last breath and say, God, I know You’re faithful. This is worth dying for. This is more real to me than all of Satan’s facts. Is He that real to you? That’s what God wants to build in every single one of us. Okay?
So, “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.” Now here’s a part of it. “If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.”
That’s a real issue, folks. Where is our affection? There are a lot of people in the world who feel needs that life brings, and they would like their circumstances to be improved, and they see in God a means to that end. They want to come and believe in God and trust God and ask God and all this, and God’s gonna come, and He’s gonna do this, and thus and so in my life. That’s what I’m looking for.
What’s the motive in that? That’s trying to use God as a servant to fix me up, to make my life what I want it to be in this world, My God, that’s not what the Kingdom of God is about. The Kingdom of God is about rescuing Satan’s prisoners and changing us from the heart level out and getting us ready to leave this life behind and embrace one that is to come.
And the reality is that there’s a God who can make that so real that you would be willing to lay down your life. Man, we need that. I don’t want any of these precious young people down here to have second-hand faith. I want you to have your own encounter with God.
( congregational amens ).
He will come and speak to you and make Himself real to you if you will open your heart when He comes! And you can have something that’s real. Boy, I wish you could see more in us. I guarantee we’ve all got room to grow, don’t we? But this God is real, and He wants to be real in this hour that we face. We face the darkest hour the world has ever seen. I don’t know how that will play out, but I know that there’s a God who has put something in us that will prevail over all of that if we will trust Him. Okay?
So, people who say…okay…if they had been thinking about these things, there would have been opportunity to return. “Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” How many believe that God has genuinely set before us a hope that is eternal, that there is a kingdom that’s real?
( congregational amens ).
The world will look at you and call you a fool, and tell you that this is just pie in the sky, feel-good, imaginary religion, that you’re just trying to do this as a coping mechanism because life is hard. Well, there may be people like that, but I’ll tell you, there is a God who’s real. That God was real to Abraham.
( congregational amens ).
And he looked past everything that there was wrong with this world, and he said, this is not my home. God’s purpose for me goes way beyond my individual life, and I’m gonna die in faith.
I tell you what, the faith that took him through was the faith that enabled him when God said, sacrifice your son. You think about the reality of the facts that that man had to face. Can you just feel the fight and the questioning within him? But God, this is the son You promised. Lord, I know he was supernaturally given to me. God, this is Your son. How can you ask me to do this? But his confidence in the Person of God went beyond his questions. Think about that.
Every one of us will face things in life about which we will have many questions. But I’ll tell you, we need to have such a knowledge of who this God is and what He has done and how much He loves, how much He has demonstrated that love and the promises that He has. His promises are more real to us than anything we can see and touch and feel, because they’re that real.
And so, we see how God allowed Abraham to come to the point where his arm was raised then God stopped him and said, I see that you’re not gonna withhold anything. I don’t know whether I could face that test or not. But you think about the facts that he was having to deal with. The scripture here says that he, “…reasoned that God could raise the dead.” Well, that was one way to look at it. That isn’t how it happened.
You know, God has His own way of fixing things and bringing circumstances to bear on our lives and changing them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we would just learn to rest in that? Oh, how we struggle, and we strive, and we question. Oh, God, if You really loved me this wouldn’t be this way. God…when are You going to answer my prayer, Lord?
Why don’t we just say, God, I’m gonna take one stance, one stand before You, and I’m just gonna simply believe You. And I am well aware that the Devil is going to raise up every kind of fact he can that will oppose that conviction, but God…I can’t do this in myself. Lord, by faith, I ask for the grace to fuel this faith and enable me to rise up and enable me to have that conviction and to stand in the middle of this.
Of course, you have the example of Moses, “…when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.”
That’s a pretty good picture of what faith is, isn’t it? Do you see, even among such a rag tag bunch of people that doesn’t impress anybody in the world…I don’t care. I want to have something that’s real. We’ve got a lot of room for improvement, but I want something that’s real.
I don’t care whether we impress anybody. God will reach people. God will work with hearts, and He will draw people that…where He opens the heart. My God, we don’t need a program that’ll bring people in here and appeal to their flesh. We need God to change hearts and lives.
( congregational amens ).
But here was a man, somehow, God enabled him to have enough faith to make a rather radical choice. How many of us would have said God, I praise You? My people are in trouble, and You allowed me to grow up in the palace! Think of all the good things that I can do for them because of my position. But that isn’t how it worked.
Oh, we would love to stay in what we think of as a safe, comfortable, nice, circumstantially profitable place, and simply extend help to those poor people “down there.” He stepped over, and he said, I’m one of you. I recognize that this Egyptian empire that’s so real…. He didn’t pretend it wasn’t real.
This empire that is so powerful and so real at this point in history that they enslaved my people, I see where this is going. They’re not serving God. They don’t have any kind of a future. My future is gonna be here with these people, because I know the promises God gave to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and I’m with them.
You know, even then, you remember what happened when God was ready to use Moses? He came to a place where he had to deal with some facts, and they were facts in his mind. I can’t speak. I’ve spent 40 years in the wilderness tending sheep. You got the wrong guy. They’re not gonna believe me. Oh, God…on and on and on. Finally, basically, he said here am I, send Aaron.
( laughter ).
But you know, God took the weakness that he had when he surrendered it to God, and God made him the mightiest prophet of the Old Testament.
God doesn’t need your resources. God doesn’t need your facts about who you are and who you aren’t in this world. God is not looking at us as a natural people with all of our particulars in life. God is simply wanting a people who will come to Him and say, God, You are my God. Lead me in a plain path.
Lord, we’re facing another year. I don’t want to come to the end of this year and be where I’m at right now. I don’t know what Your path has for me. I don’t know how much we will see Your power and glory. I mean, we’d love to see that, but this may not be the time for some of that. This may be a time when God is gonna be digging in our hearts and getting us ready.
I’ll tell you, there are times when God pours out His Spirit, and there’s a people that just are so superficial and so immature, they can’t handle it. I want to see God work, don’t you? We have seen Him in the history of this church. We have seen Him do mighty things. And that’s not the sort of thing that we see from week to week right now, is it?
But I’ll tell you…we need to have a heart that says, God, bring us to a place of maturity where You can do everything that we see that’s a characteristic of Your church in the Word. We can see the gifts of the Spirit. We can see miracles, when that’s appropriate. And we won’t go to seed on it, and we won’t become a bunch of sign-seekers that glory in that. We’ll always keep You in the center.
Folks, how many of you are praying that way? We should! We need to cry out and say, God, we are not satisfied just to sit here and be keepers of the tradition! We are not called to simply occupy ‘til He comes, in that sense, or like Jen Hartman put it so many years ago, hang on ‘til I get there.
There’s more to it than that. God has things that He wants to unfold in our lives. The things you’re going through right now and the things I’m going through right now, where so many facts raise themselves up and say, look at you, you’re weak. Look at this circumstance, you’re defeated. Look at your life. You’ve been this was all your life! All these things rise up, and they’re facts! They’re real! But God says I’m bigger than your facts.
( congregational amens ).
If you’ll just reach out to Me and trust Me, I can take you out of that. I can lead you forward, and it won’t always be with exhilaration. It will be sometimes with pain and tears and perseverance, but that’s what the nature of the Kingdom of God is about in this world. That’s what the writer here is talking about. That’s where he’s going with this. This is to God’s people to help them understand what real Kingdom faith is about. Praise God!
You think about the…oh, Lord, you could just go through the whole Bible and talk about facts. How about when the Israelites were standing on the shore of the Red Sea…I mean, the near shore? Those were some pretty serious facts. The mightiest army in the world was poised to destroy them. They have an impenetrable body of water in front of them. They have no arms to possibly be able to do anything.
They’re trapped by their circumstances — except that they weren’t! There was a God who had power over that sea, and they were enabled to walk through that thing on dry land, and not only that, that very sea closed over and destroyed the army that was chasing them.
Folks, I want to serve that God. He may not do something that dramatic, but that’s the same God that’s here today. These are not history lessons. These are meant to cause us to reach out and say, You are my God, today! You can do everything that You said You would do in the scriptures, but Lord, help us to walk with You when we don’t see the fire flying. Help us to trust You. Help us to look to You every single day.
Oh, can you imagine what was going on in the minds of some of the folks when they went up against Jericho? Never mind that they had just walked across the Jordan River at the flood stage, and God had opened that. I mean, that was pretty cool. But now, all of a sudden, they’re gonna defeat a city, and God gives them a battle plan of marching around it and singing. Seriously?
And you know, you get to the point where the seventh day, they march around it seven times. This is getting ridiculous. That wall is a fact. We can’t sing it down. Only, when they trusted God, God intervened, and God took care of the fact. And that fact wasn’t a fact anymore, was it? Praise God!
Over and over again, you see this same theme. Gideon, Barak, Samson, David. I’d say he faced some pretty good facts, didn’t he?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Goliath was at least twice as big as he was. I mean, they had genuine giants in those days, and he was on up there, probably higher I could jump these days, and touch the top of his head. But anyway, that was real. He had a sword that David could barely pick up. And David had no experience with armaments. And the whole army was afraid. I mean, on and on and on, there was nothing that he could look to in his natural environment that would give him any kind confidence or hope.
So, where did his hope come from? It came from his relationship to God that he had seen in lesser things. He had seen God at work in his life. And so, he didn’t even sneak out there and say, I’m hoping this will work out. He ran. He got five stones and only needed one of them. Why? Because God’s power trumped every earthly fact!
I don’t care what the facts are in our lives. We have a God whose power trumps those facts. I mean, you think about so many of these things that are accounts that we know about, and some of them are referred to here as, shut the mouths of lions. Of course, he’s talking about Daniel, isn’t he?
You know, you don’t go into a den of hungry lions and have the door locked behind you and expect to come out in one piece. Everybody knows that. The whole history of the human race would tell you that. Be realistic, Daniel. Hide yourself. Don’t be a fool. You can still pray in secret. He went and opened his window and prayed exactly like he always had. And I’ll tell you, there’s a God who took him through that and shut the mouths of the lions until he threw his enemies in there, and then they had a feast, didn’t they?
Can you imagine being one of the three Hebrew children? What were the facts? You’re standing there under the power of a king who is the greatest emperor on the planet at the time. His army is there. There ain’t nowhere to run. He is demanding that you fall down at his image and worship that image, and you know that’s not right! How many people would have pretended? God wants a people who are so steadfast that nothing will cause us to compromise with the facts of this world. Kind of quiet, isn’t it? But it’s the truth, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
And I’ll tell you, we have a God who will fight our battles. And of course, we know how that one turned out. Not only did they survive, the Lord was in there with them!
But here’s the other, the flip side of that. Down in the middle of verse 35, “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated.” Praise God!
But yet, they are listed among the heroes of faith just as much as the ones who saw a supernatural deliverance. See, it’s not about how things work out. How many of us fall into that trap? Oh, I’ll believe You. And then, I’ll believe You, and it’s a little bit less and little be less, and the next thing you know, we’re just, oh well.
God wants a people like He said to the church at Smyrna in Revelation, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.” There are people that God is going to do something amazing. There’re gonna be supernatural deliverances like you have never seen, if that’s God’s purpose for that situation. But God may well call some of us to literally give up this earthly life and be killed. Does what you have…will what you have take you through that?
If you have the Lord, you have what you need. He is what we need. When we choose to believe God instead of the facts, quote unquote, God is going to minister the faith that we need, and faith is going to become stronger. We are gonna become the kind of people that God wants us to be. There is no other way to get that.
You can’t come down to the altar and get filled with faith. We’re gonna have to get it in the field of battle. And I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who has never failed His people. He’s never failed for one that has looked to Him from their heart, and He won’t fail you! I don’t care who you are! I don’t care what your history is, don’t care what your circumstances are! This God is greater than all of that!
( congregational amens ).
He, “…calls things that are not as though they were.” Oh, I thank God that we’ve got Somebody who transcends facts. He’s not limited by you and your weakness and you circumstance and your failure and your track record and all these things. We have a right to go to a God who can take us beyond all of that.
So, lets cry out to Him and say, God, build the kind of faith in me that I need to please You and to walk with You. Help us to walk in this and not simply use it as a history lesson, a theology lesson. Bring the words off of these pages, and make them real here, now in our midst. Praise God!
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February 16, 2020 - No. 1428
“Faith vs. Facts,” Part One
Broadcast #1428
February 16, 2020
February 16, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1428 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! My brain is really…I need what I’m preaching this morning. I feel especially weak, but that’s good. Didn’t Paul say, I glory in my weakness? Well, praise God! Anybody with me this morning? You feel weak this morning? Praise God, let’s thank God for it and say that doesn’t hinder you at all.
But I’ll tell you, I guess what I was going to say is this. We have in human culture different kinds of people with different kinds of personalities and one thing you see in some is kind of a fantasy life, where they imagine things like they would like them to be and sort of…and then somebody will come along and say, “Come on, be realistic?
How many of you think we need to be realistic? Not in that sense, because I’ll tell you, if we’re realistic we’re gonna miss everything that God has, because what the Devil means by realistic is you are confined by your circumstances. You are confined by the reality, the facts.
And I guess if I had any way of characterizing this today it would be faith versus facts. Because every one of us is confronted with facts…they’re apparently…and they’re real. It’s not that you can look at something and say, that’s not real. It is.
But look at how the writer begins the…chapter 11 of Hebrews and he defines what faith is. What is it that God’s looking for, for you and me? I guess that’s a good question to ask. What is He looking for? Okay? He’s looking for something more than just a hand-me-down religion, isn’t He?
( congregational response ).
You know, we could look at ourselves through the world’s eyes and there’s very little that’s impressive about us. We’re just a bunch of people that probably a lot of people would say, they’re crazy, they’re dreamers, they’re just walking in delusion, what they’re embracing is just feel-good, hope-so, old-fashioned…all the ways that these things get characterized, because you’re not really dealing with the reality, with the facts.
And I’ll tell you, God deals with facts but I’ll tell you, He deals with it with a supernatural power that transcends everything. And, the one thing I do not want to see is people who grow up in this church and simply embrace, outwardly, what we stand for and never have the reality on the inside. That’s a horrible situation. We don’t need anybody with hand-me-down religion. We need people who have a conviction that God has placed in your heart that enables you to see things that others cannot see, and they’re real!
This is not fantasy. But I’ll tell you, you’re gonna have to have the real thing. There’s a God who will speak to any heart that’s willing. And I’ll guarantee there are probably people here that God has spoken to and when He spoke to you, you weren’t willing. That’s a scary thing. But oh, I’ll tell you what, there a God who will open blind eyes and enable you to see things that the world cannot see and considers to be foolishness. Praise God!
And so, the writer defines faith very simply. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). Now how does that comport with the idea of living by facts? It doesn’t do…no! I mean, what we hope for, is that a present thing? You know, Paul says in Romans 8, if you hope for something, you’re talking about the future, aren’t you? You’re talking about something that isn’t here yet, but you place all of your hope and your confidence in that, rather than the present circumstances. I believe God has shown me where He is going with all of this, and I don’t know the path that will get me there, exactly the details, but I know the God who has spoken to me and my entire confidence rests upon that. That’s one way to look at faith.
The other one is it’s, “…certain of what we do not see.” Because I’ll tell you, there is a God who does invade and give witness to His Word, but ultimately, we’re every one gonna have to occupy a place where we have an inborn conviction that’s in the heart. It doesn’t matter what circumstances we go through, it’s there.
You know, I won’t go into the details but I told you about that time in college when I just kind of gave up. I was mad at God and disgusted and, more discouraged than anything else, I guess. But, after the Lord let me stew around for two or three days, there was something deep down in here that I couldn’t escape.
It wasn’t like people outside were telling me. They didn’t even know what was going on. But, it wasn’t like my external, religious upbringing carried me through that. There was something that God had put in here that I knew was right, and I knew the only course of action that I could possibly take was to surrender and say, God, I’m in your hands. I don’t understand what’s happening, but I’m trusting in You and I’m gonna go forward by faith. If I never have a sign…had something to do with that…signs and experience…and God brought me through.
And how many of you have been through times like that in your life? You know—you know what I’m talking about. God is gonna try faith. He’s gonna allow us to be in situations where every fact is lined up on one side of the ledger and faith and confidence in God in His present love for us and in His future plans for us, that stands absolutely, utterly opposed to this and we have to make a choice.
I’ll tell you, it takes the supernatural power of God at work in the human heart to bring people through to this. This is not a religion. Folks, we are not in the business of marketing this church and trying to compete with other churches. We are in the place where what we want to do is simply lift up Christ.
( congregational amens ).
And allow Him to reveal Himself to hearts and that’s the ones that He’s gonna bring through.
You could come here and profess everything and do all the activities and miss all of this. I pray that that won’t happen. I pray that God will become so real that that will be the deciding factor in every circumstance.
That’s what chapter 11 is about. And I’m not gonna go through all of it but, we have the famous verse that we quote so often in verse 6: “…Without faith….” You want to please God? Without faith it’s impossible! That’s what God is looking for, more than any other one thing, is that quality that He puts in there. It’s when we hear His Word and we open our hearts to it, it does something! It changes something. It gives us a quality. It gives us an ability that we do not possess apart from God at work in the heart.
“…Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (KJV). And you look in the context and that is somebody that God has sent and empowered to speak words from heaven. And I’ll tell you, when the heart is receptive, receives that word into the soil of the heart, it brings forth something that is eternal.
And I’ll tell you, that’s what…I just pray…folks, if you know God here today, shouldn’t we be praying? Shouldn’t we be crying out and saying, oh, God, make this…just be real to young people that are growing up, to others that come in?
Oh, that this would not be just another form of Christianity. We don’t need that! If that’s all we have, let’s go find something that appeals to our flesh and makes us feel good. We need Jesus Christ to come into our midst and be who He is and lead us forward! And that needs to be our cry.
But anyway, “…without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (NIV). So, you see what the writer is encouraging here. He knows that we’re gonna be going through all kinds of circumstances where every fact that we could point to is against trusting God.
How many know what I’m talking about? Every single thing you could possibly point to, circumstantially, in terms of your own condition, conditions around you, everything is utterly contrary to trusting God. And you’ve got someone sitting on your shoulder saying what a fool you are! You’re missing out. Look what’s going on. You need to take control of your own life and live it. This is foolishness.
But you think about…I mean you could go through all the scriptures and just point out the fact—point out the facts in every case. When Noah walked with God, and the whole generation that he was a part of heard God’s voice, because He had been striving with them, had He not? Said, “…My spirit shall not always strive…” (KJV).
So, God had been really…has been reaching out to them but they’d been saying, no. I want to do my…I’m gonna live my life, this is my life. I believe in what I can touch and taste and the feelings that I have, they’re real and that’s what I’m going with. And so, it came down to a time when judgment was coming.
Now, what facts did Noah have in his favor, outwardly? Absolutely none. I mean, the idea that there was gonna be a flood…some people believe that there wasn’t any rain before this. I don’t know. But regardless, there was…I mean, the idea of there’s gonna be a flood that’ll wipe out all life on earth, all land-dwelling life at least. You’re kidding me, right?
You know, all of our experience tells us, no! And you talk about a God who’s gonna judge us for what we’re doing. Where’s He been all this time? Here we’ve been living our lives, we’ve been doing our own thing and God hasn’t intervened. God hasn’t done anything and no judgment has fallen. You’re just living…I mean you’re wasting your entire life building a boat on dry land. Every fact that you could possibly point to is against what you’re doing and causes us to believe that you’re a fool.
So, you see what’s going on in his life and you see what God had called him to do? Man, the perseverance that enabled him to work for, what was it, 125 years? It was a long time…120 years? Whatever it was, it was a long time that he absolutely had to persevere. And yet, you remember how Peter uses this same example, because this applies to us. How did Peter use this, you remember? Anybody awake yet?
( laughter ).
How did Peter use this when he was talking about the coming of Christ? He says, we have a…there is a generation that is willingly ignorant. They refuse to consider the reality of what God once did when He judged the world and it overflowed with water and everybody perished except those that He saved. That same God, by the same powerful Word is gonna show up and this world and everything you see, all of these facts that men depend upon—all of those facts will be burned up!
I’ll tell you, I want to be part of the generation that says, I see past the world in which I live. God has given me a kind of sight that only He can give and I want to embrace it. I want to live in the reality of that, and I want to walk with people who live in the reality of it because my God’s Word trumps everybody else’s facts!
( congregational amens ).
There has never been a condition in the world, never been a fact, if you want to put it that way, that God’s power did not trump when the time came. You think about Abraham. My God, the faith that that man exhibited. He was told by God to leave his family.
Now, what does the world think about that kind of thing? Well, it’s all about family. Well, he listened to a voice from heaven. He didn’t see this God, but somehow there was real faith that was born in that man’s heart that enabled him to leave his family and ultimately migrate to Palestine, to the Promised Land.
And, how many years was all this going on before the promise came? Wasn’t it like 25 years, 30 years? It was a long time that he was living there, in tents, and his brother-in-law was living in a house back home, and just having a big time and living a normal life based upon facts. And here is Abraham living and believing and not…and just willing to wait for it.
How many of you are willing to wait for things that you are trusting God for? Is that kind of an issue with a lot of us? I’ll tell you, we are so geared to seeing things, to seeing results in our circumstances that we don’t really know,
I think, many times what real faith is about. Think about the years that Abraham had to listen to the voice that would constantly tell him, you are a fool, Abraham! Face facts! If this God wanted you to be the father of many nations, why aren’t you a dad? And of course, as the years passed, we came to the point where he couldn’t even father a child and she couldn’t bear a child, and there they are, still believing in the promise of God.
You want a picture of what faith is about? I’ll tell you, God is gonna work on our faith, isn’t He? Every single one of us has a lot of room to grow in our faith. We’re all about believing God. There are a lot of folks out there, religiously, that they’re gonna believe God, and yet when something doesn’t happen in the time frame they’re looking for, then you got a problem.
How many of you remember the thing that Brother Thomas…the experience that Brother Thomas told about over the years? And I think some of you old-timers would remember. This happened before my time here. But, he prayed for a cancer, I believe, that was on Brother Hughes’ ear, is that correct? All right, I’m getting the okay. And, there was a cancerous growth that was on his ear and Brother Thomas prayed for it. Well, guess what Brother Thomas looked at every time he came into the service?
( laughter ).
There it is. And guess what the voices in his head were trying to tell him? It didn’t work. It’s not gonna work…and on and on and on, and somehow the Lord enabled him, in that, to say, wait a minute, I’m still trusting God, I believe God, and to make a choice, because there are no feelings in here. There’s no circumstance to go by, there are no feelings, but just a simple faith to trust God.
And ultimately, it came down to…but the Devil’s telling him, he’s gonna die, this is gonna take over his life…and you’re at fault here, on and on and on with the voices in his head against the circumstances. Using…trying to use facts to destroy faith. And you remember what happened. One time he came into the service and the thing had gotten a little smaller instead of bigger. And he said, aha!
( laughing ).
And he took comfort from that and said, see Devil! And so, he continued to pray and to believe God and ultimately that thing just fell off and was gone.
But I’ll tell you, we are addicted, more than we dare realize, to seeing something and feeling something in our exercise of faith. And I’ll tell you, the saints of old did not look at…I mean, I’m sure they dealt with the same battles that we fight, but ultimately, the ones that God upholds as examples of believing God, they simply believed God, period!
You and I don’t know God’s plan. You and I do not know God’s timetable. And how presumptuous is it for us to simply say, God, I’m believing You for this and I’m expecting it to happen this way, on this time schedule, and if it doesn’t…see, then we back off and then we’re mad at God or we’re discouraged. God is looking for people who simply say, yes, Lord, I believe You! That’s the bottom line.
And so, here he is, living for all those years…and I’m gonna just flip over to a passage we have used many times that really enlarges on what’s going on here, Romans 4. Like I said, there’s nothing really new here, but I sense in my own spirit a need here. I sense that God is wanting to develop a stronger faith in me.
We’re gonna need the kind of faith that will stand against facts. This world is gonna look like it’s gone to hell in a hand basket and it’s gonna take the real thing. I’ll tell you, we’ve got Somebody who’s gonna be faithful to the end. Think of the songs that were sung this morning…all about God’s faithfulness and persevering faith. That’s what it’s about. See, the Lord was leading in the picking of songs. Praise God!
But here was Abraham…and the point of the passage here is that the thing that caused God to accept Abraham as a righteous man was not what he did, not his works, but the simple fact that he believed God. When God said something, that’s the end of the story.
And his faith was translated into practical action. He didn’t say, God, I believe You and I’m gonna stay here and…stay here with the family, but I believe You. He did what God told him to do and he did it step-by-step and he went to the ultimate, I mean the ultimate expression of faith.
But listen to what it says, and who he was believing in. “He is our father…” (NIV). This is down in the middle of 17. “…In the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”
Doesn’t sound to me like we’ve got a God who’s dependent at all on circumstances. It doesn’t matter what the circumstance is, God is greater than that circumstance. Praise God! And He’s looking for a people who will constantly look to Him and say, God, You do things Your way, You do things on Your schedule.
So anyway, “…calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, so shall your offspring be. Without weakening in his faith…” This is one scripture that really kind of made me connect this word fact. “…He faced the fact…” Okay? “…He faced the fact that his body was as good as dead….”
There is nothing about the faith to which we are called that is a matter of fantasy. Folks, our imprisonment, when we come to Christ, our imprisonment in sin and death is real. This is not just some imaginary thing that we’re…well, I’m better than somebody else. It doesn’t apply to me.
It applies to you! Every single one of us is living in a world in which we are imprisoned in a world ruled by sin and death. And those circumstances are real. But thank God the Gospel gives us a way to look that situation in the eye and say, but God!
How many remember Ephesians chapter 2 where Paul describes the condition of people who had been living under the power of Satan, doing what he wants, prisoners of sin and death? I forget the exact language, but you remember the scripture.
And then, how does verse 4 begin? But God! So, all those things were wiped away! In a flash they ceased to have any power over these people because God intervened and He has power against sin, against death, against everything that stands between you and me and His ultimate purpose for you and me. Thank God!
So anyway, “…he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.” Man, can you imagine? I mean, put yourself in the position of these people. God’s made this wonderful promise but there ain’t no way it’s gonna happen.
How many of us would look past such a limitation and say, but I believe God? I have waited 25 years but God is still faithful! That’s my bottom line. I am looking to God. God promised this and that’s the end of the story, and I’m trusting in Him. I’ll tell you, that’s what faith is about. That’s the faith that God wants to build in every single one of us, and it only comes from Him, doesn’t it? Praise God!
So, he faced the fact and so forth, we read that. “…Being fully persuaded…” in verse 21, “…that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
I’ll tell you, there is something that needs to…that God wants to build into your thinking and mine. And I’m just gonna say this at this point, because this is kind of where this is going. I wonder how much you and I, more than we dare realize, are prisoners of this “realistic” thinking, where we live in a prison house of earthly ‘facts’ so-called, when God wants to take us beyond those facts and show His power in us? Do you think maybe, just maybe that’s where He’s going with a whole lot of things that’re happening in our lives?
How many of you just love…I know you’d all love to have an easy way and just, praise God, I’d jump on the bandwagon and it’s gonna take me to heaven and everything is gonna be great and grand and we’re gonna sing and shout all the way there. I’ll tell you, we can sing and shout but it’s gonna have to be through tears, sometimes. It’s gonna have to be through pain, sometimes. It’s gonna have to be through difficulties of many kinds!
It’s not “realistic.” God has put us in a world where every fact that the Devil can bring forth is rallied against what He has said and what He has promised, and we’re gonna have to make that choice! And only God’s power at work in a heart can enable us to do that! That’s why we’ve got to open up and say, God, help me!
( congregational response ).
And in those times when you have no answer, in those times when it hurts, when there’s sadness, when there’s sickness, when there’s all these things that rise up against faith and you’re wondering, does God really care? That’s when faith grows!
Close
February 9, 2020 - No. 1427
“A From God Life,” Conclusion
Broadcast #1427
February 9, 2020
February 9, 2020
Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1427 — taken from Closed Captioning Text
— Brother Phil Enlow: If you have been called to be a part of the Body of Christ, to be a part of His Kingdom, there is a call of God in your life. You may be called to be a faithful housewife and mother of children. You may be called to be a faithful mother in Israel. You may be called to be a faithful worker on a job who manifests the Spirit of Christ, or the father of a home, the man of the house that builds a godly home. All of these things are divine calls that are just as real as the one Paul had.
And it’s interesting in the context here, he has just been talking about that what comes through him, he calls it, “…the aroma of Christ…” (NIV). You know, a good sermon title sometime might be, ‘what do you smell like?’ Well, Paul had the right kind of odor, didn’t he, spiritually speaking?
When Christ is in the life, there will be an aroma. There will be an atmosphere that that person generates that people…I’ll tell you, the Devil will know about it. It will have an effect on those around you.
I pray that God will…God will give us more of that, give me more of that, because I confess my need. God, it’s so easy for us just to run and do and be in our own strength and not realize what God has us here for. It’s not for this! It’s for eternity and God has a place for every one of us in this place.
But are we living from God? See, if we’re living from God, we’re gonna have an effect that will draw some, and they’ll say, man, I love that smell. Tell me more. And then there are gonna be others that are full of self-will and sin, and they’re gonna say, no, that stinks.
But are we really making that kind of a difference in people’s lives? May God help us to recognize that. So, of course Paul has this ministry now. God sent him. Okay, now how do I do this becomes the next question, doesn’t it?
And the scripture we have read so many times in chapter 3, he talks about the confidence that he has. “Such confidence as this…” in verse 4, “… is ours through Christ before God.” Now, he jumps right in and says, “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.”
Our ability—our ability to do the job! How does it come? It comes from God! Every one of us, if we’re honest and we’re seeking God, and we’re wanting to do His will, we confront inability and this sense of inability constantly! I certainly do. Oh my God, I’m not up for this. I can’t do this.
Well…guess what? Of course, you can’t. That’s the point. That’s why we’re called to live a ‘from God’ life. If God has put you in a place, you have every right to go to Him and say, God, You put me in this place. I’m trusting in You. I want to live with Your energy, with Your ability…You give me what I need.
This is not a…this is an ongoing relationship he’s talking about, isn’t it? I mean, every time I stand up here, I’m literally saying, God, I can’t do this, because He knows that in myself I can’t. This isn’t about human ability. This is about God. But God wants you to know that. He cares about you!
You…if God’s put you in a place, you have the ability that you need. God will supply it. God deliberately puts us in places where…we know we need Him. We don’t have any choice but to look to Him with all of our hearts. I’ll tell you, and it shows in the results.
You put somebody that’s an orator, that has a natural ability, that can entertain, you can fill churches with that. But I’ll tell you, I’d would rather stand up here in God’s energy, to whatever degree, and preach the truth and see a true remnant, because that’s all that’s going to be left when it’s done.
Those are the only ones that are going to stand, the ones that have the goods in the heart. It’s not the strong, it’s not the wise, it’s not all those things that the world values so highly. It’s those that come to this humble place and say, God, I don’t have anything. I just need You! And that’s what you’re offering through Christ. Praise God! That’s a message of hope for everybody.
And of course, we know the scriptures in chapter 4. This is when Paul talks about the outworking of that ministry. Now, he’s got the ministry. God’s given him the ability. He goes to the fountain, the source of that, and he talks about the fact that, yes, the world is blind, the Devil has blinded them but God brought me to a place where He shined His light in my heart.
The same God that spoke in the beginning and said, “Let there be light…” He shined deep in my heart and what He put there was a revelation! It’s the kind of knowledge that you cannot get from a book. You cannot get from another human being…I mean, unless God’s using it.
You cannot get it any other way except God penetrating the heart with the knowledge of who Jesus Christ is…not just to see Him as a babe in a manger but of Lord on a throne, who rules, before whom all men will one day stand. And not only seeing Him that way, but seeing the heart that would draw us and say, this is the glory I long to share with you. This is what it’s all about!
Do you think that made a difference in Paul’s life? It was a 180. He went from being a relentless opposer of anybody who would name the name of Christ to the greatest warrior that the first century had, who relentlessly went out and proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ with power.
But look at what he says in verse 7. How many times have we used this scripture? “But we have this treasure…” What’s the treasure?
( congregation inaudible ).
Well, it’s Christ, but, “…the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” It expands it just from the person to the attributes of that person. This revelation of God’s glory and God’s heart, God’s purpose for us.
“…We have this treasure in jars of clay…” Why? “…To show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” That’s what God was trying to…wants every one of us to know. And so, this is where he launches into the discussion about how God wants to get the treasure out of Paul into the people. What does it take?
( congregational inaudible ).
Yeah, we’ve got…if we’re left to ourselves, we will simply live in human energy, human will, all these human characteristics will dominate, won’t they? And so, God had to deliberately bring Paul through circumstances that put those to death. Why? Because He was mad at Paul? No, because He longed to fulfill the desire, that He put in Paul’s heart to share Christ.
I’ll tell you, something is going to dominate our lives, some form of life is gonna dominate in every single one of us, and God wants it to be Him. And so, you know, if He puts us in things, in situations that show us how much we need Him and how the wrong thing would just…it’s there and we need to let it go, we need to turn away from it. We need to say, oh God, let Your life live in me. If He does that, He’s doing it because He loves you.
But it isn’t just for you. It’s for somebody else that He’s ordained that you be in a position to help. God wants to pour life through every member of the Body of Christ for the benefit of every other member. This is what it takes.
And Paul…you know, Paul comes to the end of this and he’s just exulting in the glory of what God has given to him. And where were his eyes in all these troubles, all these difficulties that he goes through, where are his eyes? What’s he looking at? Is he looking at the trouble, looking at this world and, oh God, poor me? He is looking at the glory. He’s looking ahead.
There are some words that he uses in this that are interesting and I’d forgotten this. I’ve probably pointed it out before. You know, we have this word in English called ‘hyperbole.’ We tend to use it as an exaggeration, you want to make a point and you say it in a ‘way over the top’ way like, you’re on time today! Oh my God, the world’s going fall off its axis. Well, obviously, you know what we mean. We’re making a humorous point. It’s an exaggeration. Of course, my Dad used to call me ‘the late Mr. Enlow,’ I’m afraid.
( laughter ).
Sadly, I gave him reason, at times, to do that. But, nonetheless, we use it in a humorous way, but the same word…that’s a Greek word, hyperbole, and it means surpassing. It’s this, but it’s way beyond that. That’s the sense that you get. And when he’s talking about the power that’s from God, he’s talking about this all surpassing…this hyperbole power. This isn’t just power, this is way beyond, this is all we could ever hope to need.
But oh, when he comes down to the end, “…our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” How in the world do you translate that? In the Greek, it’s hyperbole unto hyperbole. It’s not even just way beyond, it’s way beyond way beyond!
You know, Paul had this sense of what it was about. Now I understand that Paul had actually had visions and been in heavenly places. He had seen with his own eyes. But God did that because He wanted a witness to the reality and the power and the glory that lay before us so that we would never be bogged down with the world, never be bogged down with our troubles here. But always say, wait a minute! This is part of getting ready for that! That’s where my eyes are.
And I will continually draw strength because He is enough. He is the one who’s going to take me there. I’m gonna live a ‘from God’ life instead of a ‘me, all about me’ life. And so, Paul launches directly into that with the hope that we have in chapter 5. “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed…” What’s he talking about?
( congregation inaudible ).
Our bodies. Yeah, we know they’re gonna die. I don’t care what you do with it, how pretty it is, and all this stuff you do with it to get through this life, it’s gonna die. It’s not eternal. So that’s what he’s talking about. It’s destroyed.
“…We have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” Well, wait a minute, it’s a house from God, isn’t it? There’s that phrase again. Paul is not just living a ‘from God’ life here, but he’s recognizing my future is from God. That is what He’s promised me! One day I’m gonna have a body that won’t be like this one. It’s going to last forever.
This is a temporary home for me. I live in it right now, and it’s getting older, and all those things. And it’s gonna go away one of these days. But boy, I know what’s coming! I’m living for that! Praise God!
He’s got something for me that’s worth everything over there! He’s with me now! It’s not just that I have to wait for it all. He’s with me right now to get me through all this, to use it for His purposes here! But oh, what I’ve got waiting for me over there is amazing! The glory of what He has given…praise God! He talks down here about what is mortal being swallowed up by life.
“Now it is God…” verse 5, “…who has made us for this very purpose….” You want to know why God made you? Do you ever think about that? Why did God make me? He made me so that He could fill me with Himself and I could live with Him forever. That’s the purpose for which He made us.
Now, there are a whole lot of people that, sadly in this world, they’re gonna say, no, I want my life here. This is more important. They’re completely blind to reality.
But I’ll tell you what, God made you because He loved ‘you’ and wants ‘you’ to live with Him, forever, in a world that is nothing like this. Praise God!
He “…has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” I’ll tell you, when God comes in, by His Spirit, and we are born of that Spirit, that’s the seal! When God says, that one is mine, that is the guarantee of what is to come. Praise God! I’ll tell you, God’s able to finish what He started, and He’s promised to do it.
There’s one other expression that he uses and it’s later on this same chapter. When God is talking about the new creation…I needed to underline…yes, I have it. Down here he says, “Therefore…”, in verse 17, “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation….”
Now, that’s a present tense thing, isn’t it? That’s talking about here. Yes, we’ve got some of the old that we live in, but there is something eternal that God does in here. “…He is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Now, listen to what he says. “All this is from God….” Everything is from God. There is always this sense that Paul is laying out. Now think about this context. He’s saying, my ministry, I need to defend it, because there are people that are coming in that are messing with you. And I know that what I have is from God. This is not about me.
But in the context of that, he is painting a picture of himself as one who lives a ‘from God’ life. Everything about Paul, whether it had to do with his relations with the world, or the ministry, or the church, or whatever it was, God, You’re the source! God, You are my resource. I don’t want to live any part of my life just in my own strength, for my own purposes. God, help me. Paul’s whole life…it defined his thought and his actions.
Very quickly, what are some of the lessons…things that we know very well? And one of the lessons is, my resources are not enough. How many of you know that?
( congregation inaudible ).
Yeah. We need to reckon more readily than we do…my resources are not enough. If you’re bopping along through life and you think, yeah, I got it handled, God, you are blind! If God is constantly, or frequently, showing you your insufficiency in any area of your life, you need to be praising God. Why would He do such a thing? Except to deliver us from the tyranny and the slavery to our old nature so that we can be set free to live out His life! Praise God!
Now think about this simple lesson. God ‘is’ all we need…not just, God ‘has’ all we need. Do you get the difference? There are a lot of people who look at God as a divine vending machine…where I put my little faith nickel in there when I feel the need and I get out a blessing, and then I go on and live my life. And they want to use God for their purposes.
But I’ll tell you, we need to be seeking the Blesser, and not the blessing. And…while Paul talks about the particulars of what he receives from God, there’s this constant sense that, oh my God…if ‘from God’ is what my life is about, then He is the one. It’s my relationship with Him, so that whatever comes, He’s my resource. So, yes there was a blessing, but I’ll tell you, there was a relationship with the Blesser.
How many of you remember the scripture where God spoke to Abraham? What did He say to Abraham in Genesis 15? You look it up sometime. He said, “I am your shield, your very great reward.” He didn’t say, I will give you a shield and I’ll give you a reward. He said, I am—I am your reward.
What God…God wants us to see, wants every one of us to see Him in a deeper sense as, Lord, if I have You, I have it all. If I just have You, whatever I need will take care of itself. But I want you, Lord.
I don’t you just to heal me so I can go live my life. I don’t want You to give me money so I can pay my bills and then the crisis is over. I want You to…I want to have a relationship with You, I want my life to be connected with You as much as the branches are to the vine. I want to live out Your life. Isn’t that what God is looking for from every one of us in a deeper way?
You know, a lot of people look at God as a gas station. They live their life and they run on their own strength until they’ve run out of gas, and they want to come to a service and get gassed up a little bit. And you know, it’s important that we come together. I’m not minimizing that aspect of it. But, if that’s the source of your spiritual life, you’re gonna come and you’re gonna get something and go away and feel good, and you have a little bit of encouragement and then you…
( draining sound ).
That’s not how God wants us to live. He wants us to live where, when we walk out of here, we have learned something about the God who wants to walk with us, wants to be our resource, on the job, in the home, all the other, all of it…wants to be Himself in