The God Seekers
In
this blog I’ve basically attempted to condense my notes (There’s just so much
good stuff) from a message that was preached back in December of 2010 at my
home church in Sanger Cali. The message was taught by my Pastor’s Wife’s Father
J, and it was a compilation of HIS
notes over the previous year or possibly longer. He basically presents several
different ideas and scriptures that challenge some of what we’ve adopted as Christian
doctrine and leaves it up to the listener, or in this case the reader, to dig
in the word of God, dedicate time to prayer and study, and search out the truth
for themselves. In this message he refers to the ‘God Seekers’. The ‘God
Seekers’ are those who aren’t satisfied with the status quo; those who are
hungry to know more about God and who are seeking, and looking, and searching
for more truth.
Question Everything
Question Everything!
God doesn’t want robots. God doesn’t
want people that pre-programmed to do what’s been programmed in them to do. Because
you’re personal relationship with God depends on it, question everything! It’s
not my intention to explain everything to you, but what I want to do is put a
lot of questions in your mind.
Religion/Relationship
Because it’s
not about rules, it’s about relationship. It’s not about fear, but it’s about faith.
It’s not about law, it’s about love.
Religion is a good place to hide from God. Do you understand the
difference between religion, and a relationship?
Religion can be Buddhism.
Religion can be Shintoism.
Religion can be Islam.
Religion can be anything.
Religion can even be Atheism.
Religion isn’t relationship.
Religion isn’t always true.
Religion is just a form.
Religion is just a ritual.
Religion is
just something you go through and sad to say, many Pentecostals (as well as
other denominations and churches) do just that every Sunday, or every time they
come to the building they go through a ritual. You’ve got your three songs, and
then you’ve got your prayer requests, and then you’ve got an offering, and then
you’ve got your little sermon, and then you pray, then you’re dismissed and you
go home and you go through that ritual time and time again. There’s nothing wrong
with order. There’s nothing wrong with a lot of things that we do… until they
become a ritual so much so, that you do it without even thinking, THEN it
becomes religion.
So religion is
a good place to hide form God. You can go through your routine and get lost in
the shouting and the singing and the goings on, until God hones in on you and
begins to talk to YOU personally and that’s not always easy for him to do
because you’re hiding there among the stuff, your hiding among the prayer
requests, among the offerings, among the sermons, among the song services, among
the worship, among the routine, and you never really get singled out by God. That’s religion.
But He may
remove these things just to get to YOU face to face. There may come a time when
he’ll remove you from the place that you’re in until you have no place to come
and worship with anybody else but just you and your living room couch. He may
do that just so he can talk to you personally. Don’t be surprised, and you know
the situation the world’s in today, and the economic system that we’re plagued
with around the world and it’s in turmoil. So don’t be surprised if some of
these great big beautiful edifices that people attend are taken away from them
just so God can talk to them personally, because as long as you’re part of a
big crowd he may not be able to get to you.
God Is
“God is like a
parade,” because your perspective is determined by your elevation. And
sometimes we don’t understand what’s going on. Things happen. People get sick.
People die. People are plagued with trials and tests. But in time… in time, you’re
going to understand. But God, who dwells
in the eternal now… He’s the “I AM”. That means he’s the ever-present
one. Comes from a Hebrew verb which means “To Be”, so I’m not saying that it’s
in Ebonics but where He Be, He Is! It’s whatever the date is, he is. He’s
already been here. He declares the end
from the beginning. He understands all these things and we need to get a little
more of the perspective that God has. You may be going through something, you
may not understand it, you may wonder why? But in time you’re going to
understand. Get a little more perspective, get up there. Elevate yourself. Get up there where God is and look at the
total picture.
Good Religious Men
We are guilty
of preaching the product but not the producer.
We’re guilty of preaching healing, but not the Healer. We’re guilty of preaching salvation but not
the savior. I’m talking about getting a
personal relationship with God. I want to create some questions in your mind;
I’m just getting you prepared for some bigger things here.
Joseph wanted
to put Mary away privately, because even good religious men don’t always
recognize the move of the Holy Ghost. He
didn’t’. He was going to put her away. He thought well I’m going to have to do
something. He didn’t recognize the move
of the Holy Ghost, and sometimes we don’t recognize the move of the Holy Ghost.
And it could be that the Holy Ghost is moving today, this very hour, and if
we’re not careful we won’t recognize it. They didn’t in Jesus’ day. I’m going
to talk about this more later, but when Jesus came, he became the Lamb of God
which taketh away the sins of the world. That lamb that they would eat at the
Passover every year, that all pointed to Jesus!
But when he came there was no more need for that lamb.
The Move of the Holy Ghost
So now the
religious people, the people that are religiously oriented into a routine or a
rut, and a rut is nothing more than a grave with both ends kicked out of it,
they were in this routine and this rut when Jesus came along, he came as John
said “Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world,” now
they’re saying “but... but… what are we going to do, aren’t we going to have
the Passover supper anymore? What are we going to do?” No! All that was just a
sign pointing to the real lamb that was going to come, but some people would
rather live with the model or the small object lesson rather than the real
thing. You know what they say about model Christians, they say “Oh he’s a model
Christian,” you know what a model is? You go and buy a model. It’s a cheap
small imitation of the real thing! What would you rather have; a little plastic
camaro or the real camaro?
And so today if
we’re not careful we’re going to find ourselves seeing the move of the Holy
Ghost changing things, and we’re saying “but, but, we still have to have our
three songs! We still have to have our prayer request; we still have to have
this and that!” Jesus can come back, set his kingdom up on the earth and there
would still be people saying “but we’ve got to go to the church house to
worship God”, and there he is sitting on the throne, a beautiful kingdom, and
they’re still wanting to go back to some building somewhere. Even good religious men don’t always
recognize the move of the Holy Ghost!
We Are Spirit Beings
Jesus didn’t
just come to die for us; he came to die as us.
Now there’s a deep subject I could get into. When he was on the cross it
was really you there. He represented you, not for you, but as you! You
have been crucified. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we
are spirit beings, having a human experience.
And many have discovered his Spirit with the big S, that’s his Spirit…
but never really discover the little spirit with the little s, that’s your spirit. You’re a spirit
being. And you haven’t discovered that. When
he said to the woman at the well he said “they that worship me must worship in
spirit and in truth, he wasn’t talking about his spirit, he was talking about
your spirit. You worship in your spirit, and your spirit is not your flesh.
Your flesh is incidental, that’s proven every day that somebody dies and they
put it in a grave, but your spirit lives on, you are a spirit being!
Temporarily you have a human body, that’s all that you have but you are a
spirit being!
Tired and Discontented
Many are tired
and probably this hones in on what I want to talk about here the rest of the
service but they’re tired and frustrated within the body of Christ. Has anybody
been bored lately with religion or with your spiritual existence with God? It’s
alright to be honest. Anybody been a little bit bored and dissatisfied with who
you are, and what you are and what you’re doing and after while the same ol hum
drum routine that you’re going through?
Many are frustrated within the body of Christ because they’re busy doing
religious things. And Religion is
works. And works relates to Babel; and
Babel to the “Babel syndrome”. I’ve talked about that before.
The Babel Syndrome
The Babel
syndrome is the root cause of all trouble within spiritual bodies everywhere.
What is the Babel syndrome, the Babel syndrome was ‘those people’ that said “We
will build a tower, that it might even reach to Heaven.” Within men there is
that idea that somehow if I can be good enough, if I can work hard enough, I
can make it to heaven. And that is the biggest falsehood of all, because you’ll
never be good enough, you can never do enough, you can pray 25 hours a day and
fast 8 days a week, and you would never equal the righteousness of God. The only way we’re going to be there the only
way we’re going to stand in his presence is in his righteousness. He already
did the work, and when Jesus said on the cross it is finished, there is a deep,
deep meaning in that little phrase “It is finished.”
The Finished Work
It wasn’t just the
fact that he was about to die upon the cross, he was saying the whole work that
I have come to do is finished. Now any time the enemy comes in and whispers to
you that you’re not good enough, point back to the cross and tell him “Jesus
said it was finished, I am perfect in him; it is finished. I don’t have to do
anything else, it is finished.” Now I
know that there’s a lot of people that say well, this, that, and the other,
I’ve done this and I’ve done that, let me tell you what, we categorize a lot of
sins and a lot of mistakes and a lot of faults that people have, but you know
what? We all have them all. All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God.
If you wait til you get perfect you’ll be waiting forever, he finished it. Thank God for that.
Afterword Judas went out and hung
himself. And this relates to works, but
if he’d only waited a few more hours, Jesus was going to hang in his
place. Before you go out and do something
foolish, thinking that you have to pay for your faults, remember Jesus is gonna
do it for you. Just wait on him. He
finished it. He finished it.
We ARE
The Church
You don’t go to Church. I heard someone
here not long ago talking about going to church. Well, we all say that, that’s part of our
vernacular, “I’m going to church”. You
don’t go to Church. This isn’t the
church. This is sheetrock. This is block
walls. This is electric wires. This is a building. It could be any kind of
building. It could be a bowling alley, could be a bar, could be a Wal-Mart,
could be, in fact, Wal-Mart beats you every day of the week in getting people
to come to their building. I’m sure December 24th they were thicker
than you could have stirred with a stick. You don’t go to church, YOU are the
church. Okay I said I wasn’t going to
explain everything and I’m not going to go into detail and explain it. In fact
if I can see a few perplexed looks and frowns and some puzzlement on your face I’ll
think that I’m doing alright.
The church building, now remember this,
that the first 300 years of church history they had no church buildings. I can
remember when I was a little boy, and how little boys do, you know, get to
running, and one of the older grownups would say, “Don’t run in the house of
God,”… I wasn’t running in the house of God, now this may be a house dedicated
to the worship of God, but it isn’t the house of God, “What?” he said, and that
was a question, Paul said “What? Know ye not that ye are the temple of the Holy
Ghost?” God doesn’t dwell in buildings made with hands. He dwells in us. And so one of the biggest detriments to our
relationship and our service to God have been church buildings. We have taught
children that that’s where you got to meet God.
So what if I’m out there on the sidewalk
and I’ve fallen on my bike, or what if I’m at school and a gang of bullies have
ganged up on me or what if I’m in the store and I’ve lost my mom and dad, or
what if as an older person I’m at home sick in bed, you mean I have to come
here to find God? He’s everywhere, he’s omnipresent, the church is within you!
The church is within your spirit. But
we’ve got used to the idea “Well I can’t worship God till I get there,” Can you
worship him driving down the road, can you worship him in your home, can you
worship him out on the sidewalk, can you worship him on your bed at night, can
you worship him anywhere, sure you can, you don’t’ go to church, you are the church. Like they’ve said “Going to church doesn’t
make you a Christian, anymore than walking into a garage makes you a corvette.
God’s
Got Plans for You
And this came to me just a few days ago,
early in the morning I was thinking and it really seemed like that he spoke to
me when he said, that he wants us to think about what we are saved for, more
than what we are saved from. We’re always talking about what we’re saved from,
saved from this, saved from that, and that’s good but don’t concentrate on that
forever cause that’s a small part of it, what are you saved for? What do you
think all of the eons and the ages to come have in store for you? Our vision is
too small. And for many people they think about going to a golden city gates of
pearl streets of gold and they’re just gonna live there forever. 1500 mile square, somebody once taught, I
remember them teaching that we could never come out. But what’s a place called
that’s got walls around and you’re put in it and you can never come out… PRISON!
I don’t wanna go to that place, what I wanna think about are the eons and the
ages to come. I don’t know what he’s gonna do but I’ve already got request in,
I’d like to be governor of Hawaii for a while...
Gotta get in line… ages to come… think
about it, what you are saved for, is more important than what you are saved
from. God’s got special plans for you,
that’s why you need to be happy, that’s why you need to rejoice, that‘s why you
need to get excited about looking into the future, because God has great plans
for you. Oh, “he said eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man the things that God hath prepared for them that
love him.” But then the verse goes on to say “But the spirit hath revealed
those things” you wonder what it’s all about? Get in the spirit, and he’ll begin
to tell you what he has prepared for you…
Ignorance
isn’t Bliss
Never has there been a day when we’ve had
at our hands and our fingertips instantaneous knowledge. There’s no reason for
people to be ignorant. Now I know ignorance, the word ignorance, sometimes is
cast off like a slur, ignorance is the word… divided up it means I, without
Gnosticism, or knowledge, Gnostics, it was all about knowledge, we won’t get
into that but it just simply means, with-out knowledge. There’s no reason to be
without knowledge. There are books, and there
are computers, there’s access to knowledge of all kinds. And what I want you to
do and what I’m challenging you to do and anybody that I would address today
personally, get a personal relationship with God and began to search for him.
Those that are seeking God, are the ones that are gonna be rewarded.
Silence
in Heaven
The God Seekers are the ones that are
going to receive revelation. You want revelation? A lot of people say “well I
don’t understand God,” well do you seek him?
Do you have questions? Or are you just content where you’re at? If you’re
dissatisfied, if you’re bored with the relationship that you have, if you seem
to be running into a wall, maybe… just maybe, you need to start searching, and
seeking for that revelation, because I promise you it will come. I may mention this again but do you realize
that in the 8th chapter I believe in the book of revelation it
speaks, or maybe its not, but you’ll remember the verse that I’m talking about,
where it talks about a time of silence in heaven, for about the space of a half
an hour. Silence in heaven, not silence on the earth. Some of us are
experiencing that right now, there’s silence in Heaven. You’ve been ramming
your head against a wall, you’ve been praying and heaven is silent. You’ve been asking for answers and nothing
happens, why?.. Because there’s silence up there; we may be going through that
individually, and we may be going through that as a body of Christ. Because I believe that we’re about to see
ourselves ushered into a new dimension, a new time with God, of new things;
Built upon what we already know, we’re about to step through the threshold of a
new day just like in Jesus’ day when they left the Old Covenant, they left the
old lamb, they left the old sacrifices and they beheld THEE lamb of God. We’re
about to step through another threshold; and so right now there’s silence up
there.
A lot of people think that’s going to be
after the church is raptured and we’re all gonna get up there and, no… there is
silence right now across the land. I’ve heard it from many, many people. They’re searching, they’re seeking, but
they’re saying you know what? I’m not getting anywhere. They feel frustrated,
they feel like…. That there’s an answer, but I can’t quiet get a hold of it. It
could be that that’s the silence in heaven but you know what, it’s only 30
minutes. It’s only about a half hour long. It’s going to end and there’s gonna
be great light that comes flooding into your soul and into your spirit.
God’s
Exceeding Greatness
Alright, we’re gonna have to do this one
at a time and I’m going to leave some questions in your mind about the
exceeding greatness of God.
Ephesians 1:19 [KJV]
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward
who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,
I like that word, us-ward, that compound
word us-ward. “What is the exceeding greatness of his power, to us-ward?” It’s
all flowing to you, there’s too many of us that have been conditioned to think
that God’s against us; that God’s angry, that God’s a grouchy old man sitting
on a throne up there waiting for you to do something bad. Let me tell you,
everything that he’s planned, he’s planned for your good, and so everything
flows us-ward. Like the tides of the
ocean, it’s flowing to you… “Who believe,
according to the working of his mighty power.” Now, we don’t realize just how powerful he
is, and that’s our number one hang up.
His
Power
Psalms 8:3-4 [KJV]
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art
mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
I’ve been fascinated all my life but more
so lately. Now if you’re going to get me something for Christmas, to presume
you might buy me something, I want “The Universe” that was put together by the
history channel. Now I know some of you, you don’t know what the History
Channel is, or at least you pretend you don’t, but it’s a TV program… and so I
got this season 1 for my birthday, I got season 2 for Christmas, I got season 3
and 4 for Christmas, I’ve got enough to keep me going for hours and hours and
hours, of these programs but what it does is it reveals this universe out here,
and since the Hubble telescope and all the things that we’ve got today we can reach
out into space and see things that we couldn’t see back in Galileo’s time and
now we can see these things.
But if you go to the book of Romans
chapter one he said “These things,”
speaking of the Godhead, “are clearly
seen, CLEARLY seen… by his creation.”
You wanna know about God, look at what he made. That will tell you about
him. And so David said “when I consider the heavens, the work of
your fingers,” he just did it with his fingers, he said “let there be light,” and there was
light. He flicked those fingers and flung sparks off of his fingertips and
vaulted the stary stary sky with diamonds upon the velvet blackness of the
night. He’s that powerful. He created
the mountains I saw driving into Sanger yesterday with great peaks that are
capped with snow. He created the great
oceans, and the great fish that swam beneath the oceans; those jungle cats that
walk upon silent and velvet paws, he created that but when he created you, he
created something else.
Our
God
Totem pole: Wherever you go in any
society you’ll find different images of their gods; because man creates his
god. That one there he put the eagle on top and they’ve got various gods
underneath up there from the north west and Alaska and Canada, but that
represents the gods from around the world, because your god is what you make
it. Now, I know there is a true God and he is what he is, and we can’t change
that, but we DO change that, many times, because our faith and our vision and what
we believe him to be, limits him into what he is to us.
For a lot of people, their god is this small.
For a lot of people he can only do so much. For a lot of people this plan; Adam and Eve in
the garden, that was all a mistake. God made them, they fell into sin and we
say “Well God made a mistake, he created this people and some how they just
didn’t do right, now he’s been trying”… God doesn’t try!… He doesn’t have to try anything. He’s not
nervous, he’s not worried, we got people all upset, “oh God’s so upset, so many
people are dying, going to hell it’s”, God’s not upset. He’s got everything in
control.
“God’s having such a tussle with the
devil, oh he’s just wrestle” let me tell you what… The devil works for God. Now
I know you’ll question that, but just think about that for a while, the devil
isn’t over here, and God over there like they’re two equals in the ring
somewhere. No! There’s no competition
between God and the devil. God can get rid of the devil anytime he wants. He’s got a purpose for him. And when that
purpose is accomplished, that will be all for the devil, but right now we limit
God by our ideas. We think he can do some things, but we think he can’t do
others. So we’re no different than the Eskimos or the Indians up in the
north. We create a God in our own image, with limitations that we
put on him. But I want to tell you we’ve got a God who’s Exceeding great!
Exceeding Great
He’s not just great, he is EXCEEDING
Great! That means he exceeds or excels or goes beyond. When something exceeds
that means it excels or goes beyond, when the lakes get full they exceed their
capacity and they go over the damn. God’s power exceeds anything you could ever
imagine. When he made the sun and the
moon and the stars that was great, but let me tell you what, when he made you,
he exceeded himself, because he made somebody in his own image. We haven’t
thought about that enough. You are the
image of God. And he’s got great plans for you, don’t limit God.
One
Hundred Billion People
One hundred billion galaxies... amazing…
It would take you a lifetime to count to one billion. I used to
illustrate it this way, if you took those little kitchen matches and if you started
at San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge, and you laid one down, and then you
put another beside it, and another one beside it, and went across California
across Nevada, Utah, all the way over to New York City, you might have a
billion matches. That’s how many a billion is. And there are over one hundred
billion galaxies known, and probably more than that. Each one of those galaxies
has at least one hundred billion stars.
Your pastor and I were talking, I believe last night and what is it you
said? That there are more stars in the
universe then there are grains of sand in all the beaches of the world. Think
of that, some beach you went to, and just take a mile stretch of it, and just
think about counting every grain in those sands why it’s impossible, and yet
there are more stars than there is sand in all the beaches of the world.
One hundred billion people have lived. That’s
an approximate estimation, they don’t really know, but they figure probably
about one hundred billion people have lived. What is God’s desire for all those
souls, that’s from the time of Adam untill now, one hundred billion. Paul wrote to Timothy and he said, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight
of God our savior, who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the
knowledge of the truth”, that’s what he wills…
The
Power of the Will of God
Do you know how strong the Will of God
is? He can cause great tidal waves to rise up out of the oceans, he can cause
the earth to quake until it shifts and makes great mountains out of it, that’s
the Will of God, your talking about the Will
of God and it says right there, HIS Will, not my Will, I can’t lift or
levitate anything. I can’t make anything lift, but he can hang the world in
space and hang it on nothing. And his Will holds it there. We’re depending on
his Will right now to hold this world in place, hanging on nothing, there’s no
strings attached to the world, just his Will is holding the billions and
billions and trillions and trillions and tons of rock, and earth, and people,
and buildings, and highways and villages and cities, it’s hanging there, and
hanging on nothing, you think his Will isn’t strong?
He’s
a 100% God
That very same Will is working on
everyone to save them. He is not willing that any should perish, he would have
all men to be saved. Not even one, he’s a “100%” God.
Matthew 18:11-14 [KJV]
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. 12 How think ye? if a man have an
hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and
nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? 13 And if so be that he find it, verily
I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine
which went not astray. 14 Even so it
is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little
ones should perish.
Now if it was us we’d say “Well I got
99…. What’s one…” He is not satisfied with less than 100%. Not just 99, that’s an ‘A’ I believe for all
you college students that’s an ‘A’ in anybody’s book, no, he said I want 100%.
And so he said I’m going to leave the 90 and 9 to find the one. Even so it is, it is not the will of your
father which is in heaven, not his Will, there’s his Will again, the WILL that
holds the world over the empty place, that one of these little ones should
perish, wherever that one is, he’s working on it.
Who
Wins?
If most of 100 billion are lost… now I would
have to get to talking to some of my old bible school roommates that are way
over on the “right” side of the ledger. They believe it’s “Us four no more”…
and they’re not very sure about the other three… “I know I’m saved; I’m not
sure about you fella’s”, “Us four no more”…
And so if there are 100 billion people that have lived, they believe
most of them are lost. Now if you even
had 1 billion that are saved and I’m sure they don’t even believe 1 billion are
saved…. Maybe a few million, maybe a few thousand, MAYBE… if you’d stretch it
but… not a billion, which is a thousand million so if most of 100 billion are
lost... does that mean love failed? Did
the devil win out? He got 99 and God got 1… 99 billion, God got one, did mercy
not endure? Is God not exceeding great?
It creates some questions in your mind, you wonder…
Love
NEVER Fails
The NKJV translates the word charity into
love as it should have been,
1 Corinthians 13:8 [NKJV]
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies,
they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge,
it will vanish away.
But what? Love never fails! Never means never. That means a billion years
from now it will still be there, it still never fails… But we’ve got it failing;
we’ve got it failing in places.
His
Mercy Endures
Psalms 18:1 [KJV]
Oh give thanks unto the Lord for he is good, because his
mercy endureth forever!
Because what? His Mercy endureth…. For a
1000 years?... NO, forever! His mercy endureth forever! That means a billion
years from now his mercy’s still going to be out there! But we’ve got some who
believe his mercy failed, because the devil got 99 and God only got one.
All
Things Are Possible
And Jesus, looking upon them sayeth “With
Men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God ALL things are possible,
that little word A-L-L, ALL things, means ALL, not just some. I told you I’d
create some questions. I don’t know all the answers to some of these, but there
are questions. If all means all, all means 100%. I’m not saying I believe this
but I’m saying it’s something for you to consider. Does that mean he can’t save the devil? If he
could do all things? You say “Oh no he
could never save the devil,” well that means he can’t do all things then.
Ephesians 3:20-21
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly
above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to
Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and
ever. Amen.
Great power, EXCEEDING ABUNDANTLY ABOVE
all we ask or even think. See you haven’t even thought of some of those things that
he can do yet. He said if you can think it, I can achieve it and exceed it.
“Throughout all ages, world without end…
world without end,” There’s no end to this.
I’m not satisfied to be stuck in a little old city 1500 miles square
with a wall around it. There’s worlds
without end, this is not just gonna end, I’m not just gonna go to some heavenly
Disneyland and ride the e-ticket rides all day, I’m not gonna go there and just
stay there, and have nothing to do but just be bored, twiddle my thumbs, not me,
you can go there if you want, but I’m going to world’s without end. I’m… I’m
tempted to say something here but I won’t, I’ve got it later on to say in
another segment here, but there’s a lot of things out there for us to think
about.
God’s
Spirit Moves
Luke 113:11 [KJV]
11 And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of
infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself
up.
Change is in the air. I feel it, there’s
a stir in the spirit dimension. God seekers are restless and they’re tired of
the status quo, or that which is considered the ordinary. They’re seeking more of God, they’re seeking
greater revelation. If you don’t believe there’s greater revelation then you
would have trouble with the scripture that said, the path of the just is as a shining light that groweth brighter and
brighter unto the perfect day. If your satisfied with what you found in
1955, and I’ve got religious friends and old buddies, they’re satisfied with
the things that they learned in 1955 and they don’t think anything changed
since then, Lord bless em, but they’re gonna get left in the dust because God
moves, God’s spirit moved upon the face of the deep, when he created the waters
and the heavens and separated the earth from the waters above and when God
moves, you gotta move with him and he’s moving all the time. He’s moving all the time…
As I said in the book of revelation there
was a period of a half an hour of silence in the heavens and we’ve looked at
that and wondered I heard it preached about, talked about, what in the world
was he talking about there, so we’ve had it explained, I can say a lot, what,
probably shouldn’t, now this isn’t me, this isn’t me, I’m just going to repeat
what I heard, there were some even wondered if woman were gonna go up in the rapture
and be saved cuz, there was a half hour of silence in the heavens, and I guess they
were gonna come in later (Laughter) I
didn’t say that, I’m just telling you what I heard, I don’t believe that.
Please don’t hold it against me I don’t believe that.
Everything
is Spiritual
And so we wonder what’s happening, and if
your like me, your digging in there, and your praying and your seeking God and
your thinking all the time, your mind is going in whirls and your looking in
all your 20 different versions of the bible you got, and your on the computer
and your searching and your seeking and, and your praying and, that is first
and foremost what you have to do first is pray and enter into the spirit and
ask, and it seems like of late that there has been this barrier that’s there,
and it’s like God, did you quit talking? Why the silence?... But the answer’s
coming… The answer’s coming. First of
all I want to say that everything is spiritual. When I went to bible school,
and God bless them those teachers, and they were, and I honor those men who
have gone on. They helped me to learn
how to study. Study habits, taught me
some foundational truths that are very good, but one of the rules when we
entered into bible school at Stockton was, don’t spiritualize anything unless
your given permission to. This whole
book is spiritual. Everything is
spiritual about it. I think maybe we
ought to turn that around and say don’t make literal anything unless you’re
given permission to.
Whenever you read it, take it that it’s
spiritual, and when I say spiritual I mean, it may tell you a story, of a
literal story that happened but in that story there is a spiritual truth
somewhere. Was it just a lesson about a
farmer? Well that’s what the crowds thought, until the disciples took him aside
and asked him what do you mean by this fellow that’s throwing seed out there,
and planting it in stony ground, and thistles and thorns, and good ground, what
is it all about? Then he began to explain, this is a spiritual lesson that I’m
teaching you, they thought I was telling a story about a farmer. Was it just a
treasure hunter, looking for a treasure in field, was it just a wondering boy,
woke up in a pig pen one day. Is it just a funny little story that God said
well I think I’ll entertain them with a story, or was there something deeper
there? Yes, it was spiritual. It’s all
spiritual. The story of Adam and Eve, spiritual, the story of Noah, spiritual,
the story of Abraham, spiritual, the story of Jacob, spiritual, the story of Israel,
spiritual, he said these things happen for our ensample.
Everything he allowed, everything that
happened with God’s program didn’t wind up in this book. There are a lot of
things; in fact, John writes it, and he said I suppose all the books in the
world couldn’t contain the things that could be written about him. So it all
didn’t wind up in the book only certain things that are there for our example,
he said, well, I don’t need to put this in but I need to put this in, because
there is a spiritual lesson in it, and I need for them to learn… so everything
is spiritual.
The
Book of Revelation
There’s always a hidden lesson in fact it
says in the book of Mark and I believe also in Matthew, that Jesus did not
speak anything when he was teaching on his ministry of three and a half years
that wasn’t spoken by a parable, everything he told was in a parable. And what
is a parable, it’s a parallel story, parallel/parable, a parallel story, that
means something else, much deeper, much richer, and so everything is spiritual,
and that’s why we miss so much, because we don’t realize that. The entire bible
is for our example. Jacob and Esau, spirit and flesh; Ishmael and Isaac, child
of the promise, and child of the will of man… Israel’s journey to the promise
land, it said the rock that they got water out of that gave them their
beautiful crystal clear water that kept them alive in the desert before they
got to the promise land, what does it go on in the new testament to say, that
rock was Christ. Well we know that that
rock literally wasn’t Christ he wasn’t born until Bethlehem, but we know that
the rock was a rock, but he’s saying spiritually that rock was Christ, and out
of that rock comes the living water, so you see it’s all spiritual. So we get to the book of revelation, and somehow
or the other we haven’t learned to spiritualize it.
That’s why we have trouble understanding
it, the book of revelation comes along, I don’t want to ruin anybody’s dreams,
I don’t know what God’s going to have, anything that he has is going to be even
greater than what we can imagine, but the city in the new Jerusalem, that
wasn’t meant to tell you the city your going to live in, it was a parable, that
is a spiritual example of the bride of Christ that’s what he said. John said “and
I beheld the bride adorned” or this wife of God as a bride adorned to her
husband and what was it he saw, he said the city come down out of heaven,
twelve gates, everyone of those gates has a name on it, what was it? The name
of one of the twelve tribes, how did we come into this kingdom, how did we know
this; it was through Israel, that’s the entrance!
The foundations of the city has the names
of what, the twelve disciples of the land, Peter, James, John, we’re built upon
the foundation of the apostles and profits, Jesus Christ the chief cornerstone,
all these things are parables. All these things are object lessons… I’m sure if
he wants to build a city for us it will be beautiful. But the one you read about in the book of
revelation wasn’t meant to tell you what kind of city you were gonna live in,
it was meant to teach you spiritual truths that you haven’t really
discovered yet. You read the book of revelation everybody
gets depressed, this is the revelation that God gave to john, this is the
revelation of Jesus Christ. This is to reveal HIM to us and instead we’re
worried about monsters, we’re worried about all kinds of terrible
creatures. Those things were all
spiritual examples. For us to understand
what was happening within this world right here. That’s where it’s happening,
in this world right here.
Mark
of the Beast?
Now I can really cross your
theology. Everybody’s worried about having
this number 666 tattooed on their hand or their forehead. Well let me give you
another way to look at it. Number one, everybody in the world’s heard about the
666. You’re not gonna fool anybody, everybody knows about the 666, there’ve
been movies about it; scary movies about some little boy that grows up to be
the anti-Christ. He said “he that hath
wisdom let him understand this number is the number of….” Yeah you quoted it
like it’s written in King James version but that isn’t the way it is in the
original, the ‘a’ is left out of it. The
word ‘a’ in italics, the translators added the ‘a’. “This number is the number of man!” Not just
a man it’s my number! What is six? On
the 6th day man was created. Man’s number is six, God’s number is
seven. And on the 7th day he rested. And we haven’t even learned how
to rest in him. He’s trying to tell us all about that even now. We’ll talk
about that later, but that number is man.
The beasts’ system, the system that’s in
the world today is man’s system. That’s the mark. What would be more insidious,
what would be more clever, for the enemy to come in and tattoo 666 on your
forehead, or for him way back century’s ago to have infiltrated this into the
thinking of men; where it’s cleverly hidden in the teachings of colleges and
universities, this idea that YOU can do it without God, by your works. In the
Christian schools, and universities, bible translations and organizations, and
all these things he’s woven this idea into your thinking until now. What is it?
What does that mean, in your forehead? It doesn’t mean you have an actual tattoo
on the skin of your forehead. It means your thinking has been infiltrated by
the enemy! Your hand, your hand represents what you do, your action, what you
do has been changed to do the things of the flesh, and when I say the flesh I’m
not talking about fleshly sins, I’m talking about what we were talking about a
while ago, the “works” of men that makes them think that “if I can just pray
enough, fast enough, read my bible enough, I’ll be good enough to go to heaven.”
Works
That will never be, and if you don’t
think that exists today, then you can get around some of these kids… I’ve especially
seen it In young people. The young people will get around at youth camp
conferences and if their standard is a little less, you know, your church says
that you can only wear your sleeves to your elbow but we believe in wearing our
sleeves to our wrist. We’re closer to
God. My hair is longer than yours, I’m closer to God. They really believe that. The works that you do will never save you!
It’s the works that he did that saves. And so this idea gets into our mind, it
gets into our hands; it gets into our activities, it gets into the way we
think. Dragons? Horses? Beasts? Falling stars? These are word pictures of
spiritual truths. And so it is, with the
woman in our text; and there’s an important lesson! That was just to lay the
foundation or framework for this and I just want to mention a few things and I
won’t hold you much longer. In this 13th
chapter, Jesus was in the synagogue, not only in the synagogue, but it was a
double situation, he was in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He was in the place
that they taught the word of God and it was on the Sabbath day.
Now I challenge you to go in your word in
the scripture and began to observe how many times he did things on the Sabbath
day. Almost like he wanted to just kind of antagonize those Pharisees, so it’s
the Sabbath day, they’re walking through a field of corn, picking corn, eaten
it, and the people are looking on saying you can’t do that, you cant’ do that,
and he said did not you read that David and his men went to the priests and
went to the tent of God and ate the show bread because they were hungry, don’t
you know the Sabbath was created for the man, when our religious observances
become a burden and began to rule us, and dictate to us, we’ve got things reversed.
The Sabbath was created for you. And the Sabbath represents the rest, when God
rested the seventh day, it meant that he had performed everything he had
finished all the work, and before Jesus said it is finished God himself said it
is finished, and I’m gonna rest on the seventh day. That meant he’d done
everything that he needed to be doing and there is nothing left for you to do
but become involved and related, and involved in a personal relationship with
God.
You say “There’s nothing for me to do?”
Not to be saved! But there will be
things you will do, if you’re saved! If you’re saved you will love God, if you’re
saved… Jesus said if you love me you’ll
keep my commandments, sure you’ll do a lot of things! But those things won’t
save you, it’s your faith that saves you, it’s your relationship that saves
you. So she’s in the synagogue, some of the greatest ills of Christianity today
are found in church; or in the church building. Some of these ills are found in
the place least expected! You’d think, “oh no not in the church house, not
where all of this is happening?” Yeah because I told you that’s where you can
hide, people are shouting, nobody see’s me, nobody notices me, I’m just hidden
here among all the shouters, and the singers, and the word of God’s going forth…
and you can hide that way for years. But
God has a way; he’s going to have a confrontation with you face to face!
If I’m talking to you this morning
believe me, he’ll separate you. He’ll
put you in a place where’s it’s just you and him. Maybe that was the way it had to be with
John, I don’t know, John finds himself alone on the isle of Patmos on the Lords
day. Now that was their Sabbath or that was their Sunday, he finds himself on
the isle of Patmos, they say Patmos means the place of my death and now he’s
there on the lord’s day and the spirit of God begins to speak to him, God had
to get him away from everything and everybody, so that he could say John I want
to tell you something, it could be that God’s going to do that to you. You can
run but you can’t hide. And it’s on the Sabbath, that’s where true rest is
experienced.
You see when Israel came out of Egypt… I
just don’t’ have enough time; I’ve got too many thoughts in my mind… when
Israel came out of Egypt, they had the Passover in Egypt, they wound up in Horeb
or Sinai, the mountain in Horeb, and they stop there. And when they stopped
there God gave Moses the law. And they called it Pentecost, the feast of
Pentecost was instituted there, why, because Pentecost means 50, it’s very
simple it had been 50 days since they had left Egypt for mountain Sinai, that’s
why it’s called Pentecost, it means 50.
Well when they got there he gave them the law, and they stayed there,
camped there 21 days. They camped there until finally God said “How long are
you going to camp here? I didn’t mean for you to stay here, there’s a promise
land over there,?
Now for years Pentecost has tried to
teach that the Holy Ghost or the outpouring at Pentecost was the promise land.
It’s not, the Promise land was still over a journey away, Pentecost is just the
door, or the entry into the Kingdom, he said I still have a rest for you, and
that rest is canon’s land, over on the other side of Jordon, you can’t stay
here, at Pentecost. You can’t stay here
at Sinai, you’ve got to move. And he’s telling you that today, if you’re just
staying here at Pentecost, if you’re just staying where you first got to speak
with tongues and where you were first filled with the Spirit, you’re not
staying where God wants you to be. He wants you to move. Over into the promise
land, so the writer of Hebrews said let us fear, lest that anytime any of us
should come short of the promise that was left unto us of entering into his
rest, because Israel did, they’re our example and they fell short of it.
Remember everything’s spiritual, you want to know what this is all about, look
at Israel, they were our example, everything is spiritual, we’ve come to
Pentecost just like they did and we’ve been, we’ve had the tendency to camp
there just like they did, and now today, this last hour he is calling us to
move on into the rest, what is the rest, the rest Is the promise land, the rest
is where you relax in God, the rest is where you walk on water, the rest is
where you see the dead raised, the rest is where you completely relax in God
and say God I can’t do it but YOU can do it. Quit trying to do it yourself!
You’ll never do it! Just rest in God, cuz God is going to do it. In my name you
cast out devils, in my name you will lay hands on the sick and they shall
recover, I’m going to do it you just rest in me, and expect the results to come
it will happen!
The
Woman
So that’s the Sabbath, she was in there
on the Sabbath day, in the synagogue, in church, and she was bowed over. She was bowed over, and she can’t straiten,
she can’t raise up, or stand up straight, I think I’ve seen in my life time one
or two people like this, bowed over, remember everything’s spiritual, when
Jesus taught this he was talking to Israel, he’d been sent to give them an
opportunity to accept him as the messiah, but they, like this woman that has
been given to us in the scripture, were bowed over. They’re worried about
keeping the Sabbath, they’re worried about paying tithe on their spices on
their spice rack, they’re worried about keeping themselves cleaned from anybody
else around about them, and they’re worried about keeping the Sabbath day. They’re worried about, not the 613 Laws that
God gave them in the book of Deuteronomy, but they were worried about the
16,000 laws, that they had incorporated, called the Mishnah. They’re worried about that. They couldn’t see God cuz they were looking down,
at the dirt, looking at the rocks. Walking along the same old pathways they’d
always walked, proud in saying we have Abraham the father, you can’t tell us
anything? We know it all. We’re the oracles
of God, God chose us to be his chosen people, and so they were bowed over.
But Israel was our ensample, so all
things are spiritual, and so the woman represents the church today. Could it be
that we’re bowed over, it’s not Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be,” no, for us its
hair-do’s and hair-don’ts; whether to wear a wedding ring or not to wear a
wedding ring. Now I’m telling you the truth, I know a very strict man of God
that’s gone on that insisted that all of the people that he married at least
the woman wear a wedding ring. We talked about it last night, two men that were
brother-in-laws, both of them I know very well, they were my teachers, and they
believe that if you were a teenage girl, you could wear your hair down, but
once you were married you had to wear it up. Now these are the same people that
believed you weren’t supposed to cut your hair but somehow if you wore it up,
if you didn’t wear it up you had to put a hair-net on. If you came to church you had to wear hose,
and hose had a seam in them. That’s when
you could buy seamed hose, NOW if you buy seamed (Fishnet) hose they’d think
you were worldly. Back when I was in
bible school we went on a choir tour and the girls ran out of their hose, we
stopped in Chico for them to go to a drug store to try and find hose, and this
was when things were really getting modern, in our day this was in the 60’s,
and they were beginning to put out seamless hose, all they could buy was seamless
hose, but rule says you can’t get on the platform unless you have seamed hose
on, so while they were there, they bought these makeup pencils, these eyebrow
pencils, and they drew lines up their legs so it looked like they had a seam on
it. And so they’re bowed over, and we’re looking… like I said, Hair-Do’s and
Hair-don’ts.
It’s
Time to Straighten Up
Who are we going to elect in the next
election to be our presbyter? Who in the world is gonna be our
superintendent. What are we going to do
about the TV question? What are we going
to do about these people that want to read other versions of the bible. What
are we going to do we got people singing off the screen on the wall. What about those old times when we used to
sing out of the book. I like those old
songs, I don’t know whether Pete James and John sang out of hymnals of praise
or not. But what I’m saying is we can
get so involved with the minutia of religiosity until we become bowed over until
that’s all we can see, is the dirt and the pebbles and the rocks and religion. And Jesus sees this poor woman and he reaches
out and touches her and says woman thou art loosed. And when he does that, the
Pharisees around him says what are you doing healing her don’t you know this is
the Sabbath?
So he said what are you doing healing
somebody on the Sabbath day. He said
this woman has been bowed over for 18 years.
Everything’s spiritual, now listen…. Can you divide 18 by 3? Three is God’s perfect number, not seven but
three is a perfect number, what does 18 divided by three give you, 6… 6… and 6…
6 plus 6 plus 6 is 18, there you go, there you find that 666 again, there you
find that number of man. There you find that way of man doing things, it’s mans
ideology; its man’s efforts. It’s mans earning his way. The more you fast, the
more you pray, the longer your sleeves, the holier you are. The higher your
sideburns, the less facial hair you have, you’re more holy! That’s 666… So she’s bowed these 18 years,
and all she can do is see all this stuff down here, all this mess, arguments, whose
right, whose wrong, whose holy, whose not holy, he said woman, thou art loosed.
And when he said that she rose up and began to praise and glorify God. The
glory of God the praise of God can only come from those that are loosed, from
those that are not bowed over looking at all of this craziness and all of these
debates, and all of this strife, but lets get our minds on Jesus, lets’ get our
eyes on Jesus, and the only way you can do that is STRAIGHTEN UP! STRAIGHTEN UP! Get away from all of the
stuff! STRAIGHTEN UP! And become a worshipper of God. Let’s stand shall we…
The
Star Wormwood
In closing… remember these are word
pictures, in the book of revelation the 8th chapter, and the third
angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven burning as it were a
lamp, and it fell upon a third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of
waters, and the name of the star is called wormwood and the third part of the
waters became wormwood and many died, and men died of the waters because they
were made bitter. Remember these are word pictures. We know that a real star
couldn’t fall to the earth. A real star
is a thousand times, or more, bigger than the earth, it would consume it. So
what is it? It’s a symbol, it’s a sign, the waters; they’re signs. It speaks in
another place where the waters represent people. The waters are people, the
fountains and the rivers of these waters are people’s ideologies and thoughts,
the things that they know, the things that they think about, the things that
they come up with, the things that they’ve written, even their religious
thoughts. And God said he’s gonna cast a
star down called wormwood, means bitter…. And he’s gonna cast it to the earth,
and he’s gonna cast it into those waters. In other words he’s going to cause the
waters of the ideology and the religiosity and all these thoughts that men have
today as to what God is and who God is, and what religion is, and what
religions all about… and he’s gonna make it bitter. He’s going to make them
bitter about it. Now do you wonder maybe
why you’ve been a little discontented lately?
Now do you wonder why, perhaps, things
just don’t satisfy, when you go to a conference and hear somebody preach, and
it’s good, but it didn’t hit me like it used to. It just didn’t feel right, I didn’t’ hear
what I wanted to hear, I’m listening for something and I’m not hearing it. You
go somewhere and the worship it might have been great but it still, it’s like
you wanted to eat something, you know how you are sometimes, and you eat, just like
I was doing last night, you know trying to find something, I was so full I was
miserable, I was trying to find
something to eat, and nothing really hit the taste buds just right, and so
we’re looking for something spiritual to eat, and we can’t quiet find it, it
could be that God has allowed the star wormwood to fall into your life, we’ve
looked at that, and I know this is completely different than what you’ve ever
thought, but that star has fallen into your life and it’s making things bitter,
the things that maybe were false, the things that maybe were true but he’s ready
for you to move on, sure they have even been true, might have been great, might
have been good, not to make light of anything that we’ve ever had or
experienced in God but you know what, one day or the other God’s gonna say you
can’t stay here, you can’t camp at Sinai, you can’t stay at the place where you
were saved, there’s another place for you to go, and if I have to, I’ll make
you bitter, I’ll make it where you don’t satisfy anymore, so that you will move
on, into the new dimension in him, my friend, a change is coming, mark this
down, whether you have agreed with anything that I’ve said this morning or not,
mark this down, put it down on your Calendar, 2011 is upon us, a change is coming,
get ready for the change, Amen!
