The Firehouse Church: Recent Episodes
The Firehouse Church
August 9, 2026, Message by Stevin Johnson
Transcript coming soon.
The post 2026.8.11 TFHC – Proverbs 3:1-12 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
August 2, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Thank you, Lord. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6, CSB)
Thank you for the way, Jesus. Thank you for the truth, and thank you for the life.
We are in 1 Corinthians, and tonight we’re in chapter 10. We’re going to go through the first 13 verses tonight. So, if you got your phone, if you got your Bible app, and you want to open it up and follow along, you can. I’ll be using the Christian Standard…
By the way, people ask me what version I use. I use the Christian Standard Bible. So that’s the one I use. In Bremerton I use the Holman Christian Standard Bible, and this is just a modification of that one.
Sometimes people ask me what Bible they should use, and I like what Jack Deere said. He says, “Use the one that tells you to love your enemies.” All right? I’m of the mind that all of the modern translations, evangelical modern translations, are good, and they are reliable and trustworthy. They are put together by godly scholars.
There are different translation theories from easily readable to more literal. And everybody, you know, “Oh, we want the more literal.” Well, oftentimes the more literal is not the best because language does not translate literally. There are different idioms, different catchphrases. And so often the better way to go is more of a thought for thought. And what I like about the Christian Standard Bible is it is a hybrid between literal and thought for thought. And basically they say, “We go literal as much as we can, but when we feel like the literal—just doing literal word-for-word translation—actually hides the meaning from modern English readers, we try to do what they call dynamic equivalent. We try to convey what the passage, what the original passage was saying to the original audience, which is the point.”
But if you want to know more on Bible translations, as in all subjects theological, I can give you a half an hour rant. And I would love to do that. I just love to do that. But I’m not going to take up the time here to do that.
But come on Thursday night to the Men’s Bible study, where I’m famous for my half an hour rants. And it is all Ats’ fault. It’s 90% Ats’ fault, 10% Stevin’s fault—99% because Ats asks very insightful, very thoughtful questions. So does Stevin. And therefore, they tempt me into these long theological rants, and then they don’t complain, moan about it, and therefore they encourage me. It is their fault.
So if you like that sort of thing, if you like listening to somebody drone on for a half an hour, I’m your huckleberry. All right, I’ll do it for you.
All right, I’m going to do about a half an hour tonight, but I’m going to try to stay on topic. Everybody say, help him, Jesus. Help him, Jesus. There you go. Got the white hanky out. I always knew you were a black woman in hiding.
1 Now I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:1-4, CSB)
Wanna see Jesus in the Old Testament? Paul says that that rock that Moses struck and that water came out, that Jesus said that the sustainment of the Jews walking across the desert was Christ. That Yahweh was Christ sustaining them, the visible Yahweh.
5 Nevertheless God was not pleased with most of them, since they were struck down in the wilderness. 6 Now these things took place as examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did. 7 Don’t become idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to party. 8 Let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day twenty-three thousand people died. 9 Let us not test Christ as some of them did and were destroyed by snakes. 10 And don’t grumble as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 So, whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall. 13 No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:5-13, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So, I grew up in the day… back in the day, when I was in junior high school—Sofia, Sydney, we would ride our horses like, you know, your dad, and we’d tie them up at the post. You know, some people would take a buggy, and we’d get to school. We get to the old one-house school, and there we would be. And that was the day where your P.E. teachers, your coaches were still allowed to do what we call, what I call, hard coaching, which meant they were allowed to cuss you out. And there was no HR. You couldn’t complain about it. You couldn’t lawyer up. You couldn’t say you were abused. That was just coaching. And they could just… They could yell at you and get in your face and use cuss words and the whole bit.
P.E. Coaches, back in my day, they had a solution for everything. One thing would solve any problem.
“My girlfriend broke up with me, coach. I’m so sad.” Take a lap. Take a lap. Anything that ailed you. The answer was, “Take a lap.” And so we ran lots of laps.
And then they could put hands on you. Now, that’s the… “Oh, you can’t touch them. You can’t touch them.” You see these old football coaches and they grab a kid’s face mask and pull it down and yelling at the kid, we’re like, “Oh, that’s a crime against humanity.”
Well, these guys…
I played quarterback in the eighth grade. I didn’t go out for football in the eighth grade because I went out in the seventh grade, tried out for quarterback, and the coach didn’t give me a single look. Well, he was the same coach that was the eighth grade coach the next year. So I’m not going out for quarterback. I’ll just… I play basketball. My basketball coaches like me. I’ll focus on basketball.
Well, he didn’t have a quarterback that year, and I had a couple friends who were on the team. He was complaining, “I don’t know who we’re going to use at quarterback.” And they ratted me out. They said, “Clancy could play quarterback.” Because I’ve been throwing balls to them for years.
He says, “Clancy?”
“Yeah, in your PE class. He can play quarterback. He’s a good quarterback.”
So, we’re playing football out there for P.E. one day, and he saw me play. After P.E., I’m walking to my next class and he goes, “Clancy!”
“Yeah, Coach?”
“Ain’t you out for football this year?”
“No, I’m just gonna focus on basketball. You know, I’m gonna focus on basketball this year. I’m not going out for football.”
He says, “I think you’re going out for football this year.”
I said, “Nah, I’m just gonna play basketball.” And he got me up against the wall, put me up against the wall. He put his elbow in my chest. He put his hand on his fist, with his elbow in my chest, he said, “I think you’re going to play football.”
“Well, I just want to play—”
“I think you’re going to be out there for practice today.”
“I’ll see you this afternoon, Coach.”
I started starting quarterback. I had the job. I was conscripted. That’s called irresistible grace.
But I’ll tell you, this coach also had a paddle. You know, I don’t know how many of you grew up in schools where the principal had a paddle. This coach had a paddle. And one of the things they made us do on rainy days is they made us—they’d take us inside, and they’d take the girls inside, and we’d dance. We’d have to dance with the girls.
Now, in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, I loved dancing with girls. That was the best. Seventh grade? No, I don’t want to dance with girls. No seventh grade boy wanted to dance with girls. All right? I don’t know if you noticed this when the boys were in the seventh grade, girls, but they’re dorks, all right? They actually stayed dorks for a long time.
But anyway, they get a little more handsome, and they get a little better. They get a little more appealing.
But we were pretty dorky, and… But we had to dance with these girls, so we did it. But one kid refused. And this kid, he came from a rough home, and he sassed this coach all the time. And he was not… you know, he was a troublemaker in school.
Coach said, “Dance with those girls.”
He said, “No, I’m not gonna dance with those girls.”
“I told you to dance with those girls.”
He said, “No, I’m not gonna dance with those girls.”
He grabbed that kid, took him outside, grabbed his paddle, put that kid over his knee, and that kid says, “You can’t hit me.” We’re listening to this. “You can’t hit me, you blankety blank, blank…”
We’re listening to this, and we hear this: “Aaagh! You blankety, blank, blank—”
Swish!
He beat the snot out of that kid. I think there were like eight or nine good whaps. I mean, today he’d lose his job. He’d probably go to jail, get sued, whatever.
Well, what does this have to do with 1 Corinthians 10? That kid served as an example to the rest of us, as a bad example. Here’s what not to do with this P.E. Coach. All right?
Israel, as they cross the wilderness, Paul says to the Corinthians, “They’re an example, but they’re not a good example.” They’re good examples in the Old Testament. Abraham’s a good example. Moses is a good example. Joshua is a good example. Deborah is a good example. Daniel’s a good example. David, for the most part, is a good example. I mean, all for the most part. They all got their weak spots, but they’re pretty much held up often as good examples. Israel as a whole, there are several kings, King Asa, King Hezekiah, several kings who are held up as good examples. But Israel as a whole is not held up as a good example.
And this started in the wilderness. And Paul says they passed through the cloud and through the water. What does the cloud mean? They experience God’s presence and guidance in their life—a cloud by day, a fire by night. God’s presence was with them. His visible, manifest presence was with them. And they experienced His presence.
We, too, have the presence of God. What does Jesus say? I’m with you always to the end of the age. Go, make disciples. Go ahead and be bold. Go ahead and walk with me. You don’t have to worry about it. I’m with you. He breathes on His disciples and says, what? Receive the Holy Spirit. And at the day of Pentecost, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, God himself, the third person of the Trinity, lives inside of Christians.
And sometimes, oftentimes, we experience what we call His manifest presence. The cloud, the fire. Remember when Solomon dedicated the temple and the glory of the Lord was so powerful that the priest could no longer minister? That’s His manifest presence, His glory.
Marsha knows about that manifest presence. She gets prayed for and sometimes goes, “Man, I just need a touch from God.” And God touches her.
I remember going to a conference one time, and I’m sitting there. I’m just sitting in my chair listening to the speaker. And he’s talking about Revelation, and he’s talking about the living creatures in Revelation who say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.” And they turn and they look at the Lord, and what do they do? They fall down. And that’s so awesome, they get up and do it again. They get up and do it again. His glory is so awesome, they keep falling down. And as this guy is saying, “Holy, holy, holy,” the manifest presence of God fell in that place.
Not everybody experienced it. My associate pastor was looking at his watch, like, “Why is this guy taking so long?” But other people like me, and that doesn’t mean he’s less holy than I am. It’s not what that means. But he wasn’t experiencing that.
But other people like me were experiencing something. I was sitting in my seat and it was like every bone in my body was disappearing and I was turning into an amoeba. I just felt myself kind of just slipping in my seat. It was kind of like that feeling—some people hate this feeling. I love this feeling. You know, you go into the doctor and you’re in pain, and they give you—I remember the first time I got Demerol. I’d had a very painful procedure done, and I’m getting ready for my ride home. They say, “Here, we’re going to give you something, because what we just did is going to hurt for a while.” They gave me a shot of Demerol, and, oh, the world got lovely very quick. “Oh, let’s go home, Mother.”
Some people hate that out of control, floaty feeling. Not me, man. Keep me away from the heroin and fentanyl, you know… wouldn’t be good for me. I was just like, “This is wonderful.” Well, that’s how I was feeling in that chair. I think there was probably a big thing of drool coming out of my mouth. I didn’t care. I’m just like, “Holy, holy, holy.” Oh, my gosh.
There are other times I feel the manifest presence of God not so much where it’s like I’m losing control, but it’s like, man, I gotta put my hands on somebody. Sometimes you all see it. Sometimes I’m up here singing, and all of a sudden, this is happening. And some people are like, “Oh, man, church is going to be longer,” and other people are going, “I got to get me some of that.”
Whatever. I don’t care.
But listen, the manifest presence of God is not the assurance of His presence. The assurance of His presence is the Word of God. Whether you experience that manifest presence or not, that manifest presence is simply an invitation. God’s given you an invitation. “I’m here. Ask me something.”
But if you don’t experience that manifest presence of God, that doesn’t mean you’re not holy or there’s something wrong with you. But the Bible tells you that He’s with you. And faith is more commendable than experiencing the manifest presence. Believe it. Believe it. You have His presence, just like Israel—they had His presence. The manifest presence is just an encouragement to your faith and an invitation to seek God.
They passed through the sea, all right? The most powerful army in the world is chasing this group of people who just left with all their riches. But they did not leave with spears and swords and shields, and they weren’t a trained army. And the chariots. No army on foot ever defeats an army in chariots—unless God’s involved. The chariots are chasing them down, and God stops them with His manifest presence so that they can cross the Red Sea. They don’t know how to swim. How did they cross the Red Sea? Dry land. Divides the waters.
They go across the Red Sea. Problem is, the dry land’s still there and the army’s still there. And that manifest presence now lifts. And Pharaoh’s armies are like, “Go get them, boys.” And they go get them.
And the people of Israel are looking back like, “Oh, no, here they come. What good does it do to cross the sea? Here they come!” And all of a sudden they see… bloop. And the most powerful army in the world…
What do they sing? What song does Miriam sing? Kind of a morbid song, but it’s “horse and rider thrown into the sea.” Thrown into the sea.
Not only did that allow them to get free then, but what did that do to the most powerful army on the face of the earth? And the most powerful man on the face of the earth? That subdued them for a generation.
What’s God doing for Israel? He’s protecting them from Egypt for a long time. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild that army. And guess what the king of Egypt is going to become? He’s going to become very conciliatory because he doesn’t want to war with anybody right now. He doesn’t have an army left. The most powerful man in the world in a matter of seconds becomes an impotent king at the hand of God.
Israel bore witness to it. They were delivered from slavery to this powerful king. That passage, the New Testament says, of going through the sea is our baptism. We are delivered in our baptism from the power of Satan. The most powerful, the prince of the air, the king of this world! Slaves to Satan. Not anymore. You have been declawed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and you are set free. Satan is no big threat to you.
Listen, parents, you don’t need to raise your kids to protect them from the devil. You need to raise kids that the devil needs protecting from. Greater is He who is in you. Hello? Greater is He.
People are like “Pastor, I’m under spiritual attack.” I know what that feels like. I’ve been under spiritual attack. I’ve been a pastor for 50 years. I’ve been under spiritual attack for 50 years. What do you think? The devil wants me to keep preaching? I’ve been under spiritual attack for 50 years. You know what I say? Bring it. Ooh, I’m thinking of saying things that I shouldn’t say to the devil. Yeah, yeah, bring it.
I’m not asking to be attacked by the devil, but he has a limited supply of arrows, and if he’s wasting them on me, then he’s not wasting them on somewhere else.
But here’s the deal. I got Jesus on my side. I’m not scared of you. I’m not as scared of you. There’s a story of the devil shows up in this church in all his rage. People scream, and they’re running out of the doors, screaming in panic.
One old man sitting in the back, and the devil goes, “Aren’t you afraid of me, old man?”
He goes, “Nah, I’m not the least bit.” Now, it’s the wrong reason, but he said, “I’m not the least bit afraid of you.”
Says, “Why not?”
He says, “Been married to your sister for 50 years.”
That’s not why you’re not supposed to be afraid of the devil, but you’re not supposed to be afraid of the devil. We’ve been delivered. You don’t have to worry about Pharaoh. His army drowned. You don’t have to worry about demons and devils. They’ve been declawed.
Our King rose from the dead. All the powers of hell could not hold Jesus in the grave. He gave you the Holy Spirit. Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. I read that. It’s in the book.
So, then they ate and drank. Food for provision. He gave them sustenance in the wilderness, in the desert. He gave them water out of a rock. He gave them fresh food every day.
This corresponds, of course, to communion. Eat and drink the sustenance of God. Why is it that Christians are baptized once and yet we take communion regularly? Because it corresponds to, like I said, marriage. Baptism is marriage. Baptism is getting married. That’s what it’s like. You can recommit your marriage vows, you can recommit your baptismal vows in water, but you really can’t be re-baptized.
People want to be re-baptized all the time. And I’m, you know, I just tell them, “Well, I’ll get you wet again. But the first one took. The first one took.”
But you take communion all the time. Why? Because you need food to keep you on your feet. It also corresponds to marriage, right? Jill and I just celebrated our 45th anniversary up in Tahoe. Well, why do we go to Tahoe on our 45th anniversary if we’re already married? We don’t need to go to Tahoe. But what’s Tahoe? Tahoe was where we went for our honeymoon, and so it was a reconnection because marriages have to be—you not only get married, you have to sustain a marriage. That’s why you have date night. If, you know, you call it date night.
That’s why husbands are stupid. They think, “What? I married her. What?”
You know, a guy couldn’t understand why his wife was upset. This guy showed no emotion, no passion, no love, no appreciation. You know, he put a ring on her finger, went through the ceremony, bought her a house, and, you know, making a living, you know, he’s working hard for her… That’s good. That’s a good sign of love. But, you know, typically people need more than that. They need some affection, they need some attention. They need some kind conversation. So, you know, you have a date night.
This guy takes his wife to the therapist and says, “I don’t know what’s wrong.” And the therapist is trying to explain to him, “You got to show her some love. You got to show her some passion. You got to show her that you still care. You got to pay attention to her.”
This guy’s like, “Huh? What? Huh?” So finally—now, of course, this is not a true story. Therapists get fired for this. He says, “Let me show you.”
The therapist gets up, lifts his wife off the chair, bends her over his knee, and gives her a passionate kiss. And she’s a little embarrassed, but she’s a little flushed. But she’s also like, “Oh, my goodness, no man has kissed me like that for a long time.” She’s kind of like, “Oh, my.”
And the guy could see the change in his wife. And the therapist goes, “You see what I mean?”
And the guy says, “Yeah, yeah, I get it. You want me to bring her back next Tuesday?”
So, ladies, men are stupid about these things, but help them out. Say, “Hey, let’s go out for a date night. I could use some time with you.”
Men, listen to your wives. When she says that, take her out, buy her some flowers, talk to her. Hello? Have a relationship with her. That’s communion. Communion is a relationship. It’s sustaining. It’s walking with Jesus on a regular basis. That’s gathering together for worship. That’s saying your prayers. That’s reading your Bible.
Your Christian life needs to be sustained because there’s all sorts of pressures between the world, the flesh, and the devil trying to pull us away from a relationship with Christ. We have to be intentional about that walk with Jesus.
And you have to step into mystery. Nothing is more mysterious than communion. Why does eating a little piece of bread and dipping it in wine or juice sustain my walk with Jesus? It doesn’t. Except when you do it by faith. And then in a mysterious way, you meet with Him and you are fed by Him, and His life infuses life in you.
Christians instinctively know this because when I ask… you know, we did communion once a month in Oakdale. When I came up here, I had a commitment. Every time we meet, we’re going to do communion. Every, every time, you know, we’re going to do communion. I asked our leadership team a couple of times over the years. I’ve asked them, “Should we just do once a month? Or you think…?”
And they always say, “No, no, no, keep it once a week.” What do you guys think? Once a week better than once a month? Why? It’s just eating a little piece of bread. What’s that? You’re forgetful. Exactly. You need to be sustained in your walk with God.
And so there we go. And so they experience this. But what did they do? They grumbled and complained. They committed idolatry, immorality, unbelief. It starts with grumbling and complaining.
People, you got a choice. Every morning when you wake up, life is hard. There is not a person in here who doesn’t have legitimate reasons to grumble and complain. You do. It’s not fair. There are hard things in life that you have to deal with. If you’re a kid, you have less than perfect parents. They might be good, but they’re less than perfect. If you’re a parent, your kids are less than perfect. If you’re a wife, you married a less than perfect guy. If you’re a husband, you married a less than perfect woman. If you go to church, the people you gather with are less than perfect. Your pastor is less than perfect. His wife is nearly perfect, but also less than perfect. And you can grumble and complain about that, or you can be thankful.
And I would say after 40 some years, 50 years in the ministry… I would say the most underestimated virtue is thankfulness. It’s in the Bible. It’s all over the place. Give praise, give thanks, give praise, give thanks. It’s all over the place. I don’t know of anything on the planet that has a greater impact on our level of happiness.
I think there are people who are genetically, biologically, in our fallen nature predisposed to depression and darkness. And I’m one of those people. My father was one of those people, was treated for mental illness and depression that was exacerbated by his alcoholism. There were times in my life where just getting out of bed in the morning was a huge battle. But one of the things that made a difference was I switched my musical, my primary musical listening from classic rock to praise and worship. And I didn’t even do that to battle oppression. I can’t even remember why I did that.
But I remember after doing it for three months, this revelation came upon me. It’s like, oh, it’s easier now to get out of bed. It’s easier. It doesn’t mean that I don’t get depressed. Doesn’t mean that I don’t get discouraged. I do, but it’s easier.
And I noticed this creeping. Starting my late 50s, I noticed the grumpy old man syndrome beginning to take place in me. I don’t know if it has to do with lowering testosterone, but it’s a real thing. The grumpy old man thing is a real thing. It’s real. And I started becoming the “I hate traffic. I don’t want to do that. Disneyland is terrible.” Which, by the way, it is. Yeah.
But I found that I was ruining or really injuring people I loved by my grumpiness. And I thought, I don’t want my grandkids to know a grumpy old grandpa.
And I started complaining about traffic. I live in the suburbs of Port Orchard. Traffic is not a huge problem. But every once in a while, Sedgwick’s just nuts. I’m just like, “Oh, Bethel! What are all these people doing and living in my town that I just recently moved into? Go home, watch TV…” Which my grandkids picked up on, and “What are you people doing? Get off my road. Go home and watch TV.”
And then I saw a Christian comedian, and he corrected me. He said, “You know what kind of people grumble about traffic? People with cars. You know what percentage of people in the world own cars? 12%. Shut up. You’re in the richest 12% of the people on the planet.”
So now when I’m tempted to grumble about traffic, I’m very intentional about this, people. I am fighting. And if you catch me being a grumpy old man. I was being a grumpy old man when I walked into church today, and I just confessed it to Ats and Aiko and Stevin, and they were so kind and helpful. And the thing I was really complaining about, they did not help me fix it all, but I felt loved and I feel much better afterwards. So, appreciate it.
You know, Ats and Stevin, they had their stuff out there. They were helping. Aiko was probably just praying and thinking, “Geez, what’s the big deal, dude?” But I was fit to be tied.
But really, I fight against it, and it’s helped. At this point in my life, I am more intentionally thankful than I’ve ever been. And, you know, really, in about the last nine years, nine months, whatever, I couldn’t tell you the time—I can honestly say it is completely reversed. Not that I don’t grumble sometimes about traffic and stuff, but I can honestly say I am happier and more content now than I’ve ever been in my life.
And I think a part of it was just that turnaround saying, “I am going to intentionally wake up every morning…” My back hurts. You know, first 15 minutes, I walk around my…
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember Tim Conway as the old man on the Carol Burnett show doing this… That’s me. The first 15 minutes in my house.
“Okay.” And then I get the courage, like, “Straighten it out. Straighten it out.” But then after a few minutes, like, “All right, that’s better. That’s better.”
And I thank God, and I thank God for my wife, and I thank God for my kids, and I thank God for my grandkids. And I thank God for a great salvation. And I thank God for y’all. I thank God that Sydney feels so familiar with me that she can stick out her tongue at me at will.
You raised them so hard to be respectful of elders. You know, when they were little, it was like, “Oh, Mr. Clancy. Oh, Mrs. Clancy.” They were like the Cleaver kids. They were so respectful. And now Sydney just pulls that thing out like nobody’s business. “Hey, Mr. Clancy.”
“What?”
I thank God for Sydney. I sure thank God for Marsha and Sailor, her little child.
Listen, dear ones, don’t grumble. It all starts with grumble.
Then they committed idolatry. What’s idolatry? It’s not giving your whole heart to God. God wants your whole heart. The Old Testament, Solomon, half a heart. The kingdom gets divided.
The Bible says, “If you seek me with your whole heart…” I don’t even know what that means. I just pray about that. I’ve been praying about that recently. Lord, I want a wholehearted devotion to you.
I just know this: any second thing put first becomes demonic. Seek first what? The kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Listen. Idolatry, sexual immorality, unbelief… They all start with grumbling. They built a golden calf after God had delivered them. That’s a bad example. Balaam tempted them toward the Midianite women, and they committed sexual adultery with the Midianite women. That’s a bad example. All right?
Guys, if you’re ever anywhere and some woman comes up to you kind of seductively and says, “Hey, I’m from Midian,” run. Watch those Midianite women.
I remember I had a niece. And she would—she’s cute, but she knew it. And she would dress fairly scantily. And my future son-in-law and his brother went to visit my sister, you know, their future aunt. I think they went with my daughter and stuff. But my niece was running around in her little shorty shorts and her little midriff.
And I remember one of the brothers looked at the other and said, “There she is.”
“Who?”
“Jezebel.”
Called my niece Jezebel. There’s probably some truth to it, at least. A Midianite woman. So be careful of those Midianite women. Don’t commit sexual immorality.
And they didn’t believe in God. God said, “Enter the Promised Land.”
“No, they’re too big. They’re too strong. We’re like grasshoppers.”
“Hey”—Sydney, remember, right? “Remember.” Remember what? “Horse and rider I’ve thrown into the sea. They’re not more powerful than the Egyptian army. What did I do with them? Now go get them.”
“No, we can’t. We want to go back to Egypt. Leeks and garlic.” I don’t even know if leeks and garlic are any good.
Guess what? God said, “Fine, I’ll give you what you want. You’re not going back to Egypt, but you’re gonna die in the desert.”
And only and only a few entered the Promised Land. Who were they? Joshua and Caleb. That’s it. They’re the only ones who said, “Let’s stand and fight. Let’s go.”
They’re an example to us. It’s a picture of our salvation story. God saying, “I will deliver you from this powerful enemy through your belief in baptism, and I will destroy his power to work against you. I will sustain you in a dry and weary land where there feels like there’s no water. I will sustain you regularly with food and drink. If you will just believe in me and seek it, my presence will be with you to guide you and protect you all along the way entering the Promised Land. And you’re going to enter into the Promised Land, but it’s going to involve some fighting. It’s going to involve some struggle. It won’t all be easy, but I will give you the victory. Just have faith in me and confidence and see what I do.”
And they didn’t do it. And so, they perished.
So, what does that say to us? It’s a negative example. Don’t lust after evil things.
Now let me make a difference. Let me make a distinction between desire and lust. It is okay to desire good things. Having sexual feelings is not lust. Having sexual feelings is human. Lusting is trying to take them in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with the wrong person or people.
Desire is fine. Desiring food is good. Eating food out of exhaustion, emotional need, or anxiety when you’re not hungry is gluttony.
Desiring provision is good. You need a house. You need a car. The Bible never says it’s a sin to be rich. But living for earthly riches that you cannot keep, that the moth will eat and the rust will destroy, is fruitless and silly and stupid. And it will destroy your life if you seek that before instead of seeking God. Don’t lust after these things. Simply receive these good things that come from God’s hand as you seek Him.
Don’t commit idolatry. Have a whole heart for God. “God, I don’t know how to have a whole heart for you, but I want to have a whole heart for you.” Bingo, you’re there. He’ll get you there. He will perfect the work He has begun in you.
Don’t commit sexual immorality, again. Right place, right person, right time. One man, one woman, heterosexual, monogamous, till death do them part. You get married, you can have as much sex as you want. Knock yourself out.
I remember this young man. I’d been married 20-30 years at the time, and he was like a week away from his wedding night. He was so excited. He said, “This is so great. I’m going to get married. I’ve waited, and now I get to have sex as much as I want.”
I didn’t want to burst his bubble, so I didn’t say it. I didn’t say, “No, son, you’re going to have sex as much as she wants. You are not the gatekeeper, my friend. You are not the gatekeeper.”
But still you have strong desire toward a person? Great. Make babies, be happy. Nothing wrong. Everything’s right with that. Be intimate. Be connected. God created it for that.
But when I was a young man, I had sexual feelings toward everything that walked past in a tight pair of jeans. And God said to that, “No, son.”
And I’m so glad that He did because I married a wonderful woman and I’ve had a great life with her. I would have destroyed that before it ever got started. If I had committed sexual immorality with those other girls, Jill wouldn’t have had anything to do with me.
They were judged and they died in the wilderness. We can ignore the blessings of God, and such come under judgment. God’s not a big meanie. He’s a blesser, He’s a lover. But He created the world in such a way that when we invite upon ourselves things that are destructive, we will be destroyed. Idolatry, covetousness, lust, immorality, grumbling… These things bring negative consequences.
Secular psychologist, but very popular author and speaker who has some leanings toward Christianity, but I don’t think he’s submitted to King Jesus yet, Jordan Peterson… He says this. He says, “Nobody gets away with anything.” He says, “In my practice, I’ve realized nobody gets away with anything. You think there’s secret sin? You think there’s hidden sin? Your soul, whether anybody ever finds out or not, your soul pays for that.” And it’s only the blood of Jesus that brings us back to sanity.
Take these examples, dear ones, to heart. Take these examples to heart. Paul says, “If you think you stand, be careful because you will fall.”
What’s the phrase? Pride cometh before the fall. That was the Corinthians’ problem. Their whole problem. The reason this book is in your Bible is because they had spiritual gifts and they could speak in tongues and they could prophesy.
And you know me, I’m all about that. I’m all about that stuff. That is great stuff. I’m like Paul, I speak in tongues more than all of you. Maybe I don’t, but I think I do. In my devotional life, I am a tongue-talking man. I love prophecy. I’ve been praying to God, “God send the Firehouse Church, some accurate prophets, and Lord start giving me more prophetic words.” Prophecy really helps people. I love to prophesy. I love to receive good prophecy. I love it. I’m all about that.
And all that, just like marriage, all that works perfectly in its proper context when it is used in love to serve others. But when it is used as a tool of pride, “Look at how spiritual I am. I speak in tongues, and I prophesy, and I heal the sick…” Then it becomes destructive. Be humble.
The Corinthians were saying, “Well, we are able to judge which apostle is best. We are able to endure sexual immorality. It doesn’t even bother us. We’re able to eat meat offered to idols, even if it violates my brother’s conscience. We’re so spiritually mature.”
And the whole letter Paul is telling them, “No, you’re not. You’re stupid, proud children. Be careful. Humble yourself before God.”
I’m thinking about getting off social media just because I spend too much time there. But the thing that’s hardest for me to give up is the humor. There’s so much funny stuff I’m always showing my wife. “Look at… You gotta look at it. You gotta look at this. You gotta look at this. This cracks me up.” You know, and she’s always sending me stuff.
And you know, one of them, one of my favorite memes, it’s not that funny, but it’s kind of funny, but it’s just so true, you know? You know… “People come to me and they say, ‘Do you really think I need Jesus to go to heaven?'” And the response is, “Dude, you need Jesus to go to Walmart.”
Which is true! I need Jesus to deal with that notorious Port Orchard traffic and be grateful that I’m one of the 12% that has a car, even if the software is wigging out on me right now. I got a car. Yay, God.
There’s no such thing as a new temptation. “Oh, I struggle so much. My temptation is overwhelming. Nobody is tempted like me. Nobody is tempted like me.”
I was just with two—at my friends’ retirement party, and I was just with two gay men, and they were married and all gooey and stuff. And I’m—you know, it wasn’t a time or place, you know, for me to get on my high horse, you know. And I didn’t know these guys and stuff. You know, I was just fine. I was just like, “Alright.”
And it’s like, you know, the argument is: “Hey, we’re just being our authentic selves. We’re just acting on our feelings. And these feelings are deep within us.”
And I understand that. I believe them.
“We’re not attracted to women. We’re attracted to men.” Okay. What does the Creator say? He says that’s broken and to act on it is sinful.
“Well, that’s not fair. You don’t understand any of that. You’re attracted to women. You have no empathy for me.”
It’s like, no, I know what it’s like to lust. I don’t know what it’s like to lust over a man. But I had to practice self-control. I had to practice self-control. I can’t go out there and chase every woman that looks attractive to me. I can’t respond to every woman who throws herself at me. And there are myriads upon who do that. You know, I just am always fighting them off. It’s like, “Back off, ladies.”
Aiko, you laugh like you think I’m being facetious. You’re correct. I am.
But no, there’s nothing new under the sun. You don’t think there were men who struggled with same-sex attraction in the ancient world? Homosexual practice was rampant in the Roman world and accepted and embraced. There’s nothing new under the sun.
What does the New Testament tell us to avoid? Idolatry, immorality, greed, pride… Oh, good that those things don’t exist in the 21st century.
There’s no temptation that you have experienced that is unique. Welcome to the club.
But here’s the great news. The great news is if you just muscle up, you’ll be able to resist it. No, the great news is God is faithful and He is strong. And if you want the way of escape, He will provide it. If you want the way of escape, He will provide it.
But here’s the real question. He will make a way of escape, but do you want it?
So, I want to give up social media, but I saw something really powerful on YouTube the other day. YouTube’s not really social media. And it was a young man, a young podcaster, and somebody was calling him, calling in and saying, “How do you be happy?” And this podcaster got basically honest and says, “I don’t know because I’m not happy.” He says, “Here’s what I’m not happy about.” He begins to recite. He doesn’t recite it, but he begins to describe what Paul talks about in Romans 7. He says, “There are behaviors in my life that I have wanted to quit for years, but I can’t. We Christians call that besetting sin.”
And he said, “And so I started praying to God, ‘Help me.'” And he never mentioned Jesus, but he said, “And God did. He helped me. And I would have longer periods of being able to resist, but it’s still there.”
And then this young man, he said something so insightful and so profound. He said, “Then I realized there was a part of me when I said, ‘God, help me,’ that really didn’t want Him to help.”
Anybody relate?
Because half the time when we’re praying for God to deliver us from our sins, half the time or half of us or a part of us is really asking God, “Deliver me from the consequences of my sin, but I still enjoy this.”
I remember my dad and his drinking. There were periods of time when he would try to regulate it. “I’m only going to drink beer, not hard liquor, and I’m only going to drink on the weekends.”
And he would be good for a month or two or even sometimes four or five months. Then, eventually, the vodka would be hidden in his golf bag out in the garage again.
He didn’t want the consequences. He wanted his family. He loved his kids, he loved his wife. He wanted his family intact. He wanted to keep his job. But he also wanted to be able to drink. He loved it. It helped take away the pain of his childhood, and there’s probably a genetic predisposition to it and the whole bit. It’s probably why I like those floaty drugs. It’s probably in my genes.
And it wasn’t until he really hit bottom and he couldn’t visit the birth of his first grandchild because he was too drunk, and a lady, an alcoholic lady across the street, was found dead in her house. Our neighbor confronted my dad when she caught him drinking and said, “You’re up dead just like so and so if you don’t stop that.”
He started going to the AA meeting, and the last 30 years of his life, he was sober because God got into the place of his life where he wanted to be a different man, not just without the consequences of drinking.
And he became—it was funny because he became a sponsor. And talk about grumbling. If you run into an alcoholic, you’re going to run into a self-pitying person. Every alcoholic I know is like, “Oh, life’s so unfair. It’s so hard.” If you ever run into somebody who always complains about their bad boss, you know what you’ve run into? An unemployed person.
Anybody here not have a bad boss at one point or another in their life? So what? You got a job, do it. Do it well. Find a better job with a better boss.
So my dad, my dad was always kind of a coarse guy, which I really enjoyed. He wasn’t, he didn’t beat around a bush, and he’d call me and say, “Yeah, I was talking to this drunk today,” like he was 10 years ago. “I was talking to this drunk today. He was feeling sorry for himself. So you know what I told him, Kev?”
I said, “What’d you tell him, Dad?”
I said, “Hey, get off the cross. We need the wood.”
That’s a great line for somebody who’s pitying themselves, isn’t it? Get off the cross. We need the wood.
“Yeah, you can’t coddle these guys.” Kept him sober, and he didn’t coddle them. He told him straight up, “Quit feeling sorry for yourself and get to another meeting.”
I pray for people all the time. “Pastor, I want to be delivered from this.” And I pray that they get delivered.
And then they get up and I say, “Here’s what you need to do.”
“No, I just got prayed for. I got slain in the Spirit. I must be delivered.”
“No, here’s what you need to do.” And I’ll tell them, “You need to go to a 12-step meeting. You need to go to this. You need to do this. That being slain in the Spirit, that was an invitation. God was getting your attention. Now that God has your attention, listen to me. Here’s what you need to do.”
I have people all the time come in for marriage counseling. You know what they come into marriage counseling for? So I’ll fix their spouse. “I know I got problems, but fix—” Usually it’s “fix him.” Sometimes it’s “fix her.” Let’s fix my spouse.
Like, I don’t have the power to do that. And then I tell them what they don’t want to hear. “You want to have a better marriage?”
“Yes, and I will if you fix my spouse.”
Like, “No. I give you a guaranteed way to have a better marriage tonight, 24 hours. Within 24 hours, you have a better marriage.”
“How? How?”
“Go home and be a better wife. Go home and be a better husband. Go home and love her better. Serve her better. Go home and think of 10 things you’re thankful for about your husband.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Three then.”
I think one of the reasons I’ve been married 45 years is because my wife will not get up out of bed in the morning until she thanks God for three things about me. Some of those mornings when she’s in there a long time, I’m thinking, ooh, am I in trouble? Like, “Honey, you’re not out of bed yet.”
“Be quiet. I’m at one and a half, all right? I’ll be there in a bit.”
I tell this story on her all the time, but it’s true. I exaggerate a little bit. One time, I was just sitting there, and I just looked at her and I said, “Here’s why I love you…” I gave her 10 things right off the top of my head. You know, I don’t know if it was 10, but it was a bunch, you know? “You’re a great mom. You’re a great grandma. You’re beautiful, you’re smart. You work hard for your family. You do a very meaningful job, and you do it excellently. You’re kind to your aging parents. You’re fiercely loyal. You work all week, and then you get up on short sleep and teach Sunday school to these kids and lead these kids to Jesus. I mean, my gosh, you got so many good qualities. You’re amazing.”
And you know what she said? I said, “That’s why I love you.” You know what she said? She looked at me and goes, “Oh, thank you.”
Ladies, if your husband ever does that, just a clue. He’s looking for just maybe a little reciprocation, maybe. “Well, here’s why I love you, honey…”
But she said, “Thank you.”
And I’m sitting there like, “You going to complete the circle or what?” And finally, it dawns on her. She goes, “Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.”
And then after she says, “Yeah, yeah,” this is what happens. “Hmm…”
I gave her a list of 10. I get one. And granted, she wasn’t prepared for the question, but here’s what I get: “You make me laugh.”
I got pressure to stay funny. I hope I’m funny to you guys, because I got pressure on me. I got pressure to stay funny.
I hear tell that’s big with women, a sense of humor. Is that true, girls? You know, funny guy is good? Humor is good? All right, good. I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know that at the time. But yeah, all right.
So be thankful. Don’t grumble. God will provide the way of escape.
I’ve prayed for God to help me with my sins. And I’ll get a word from God about “this is what you need to do,” and I don’t do it. So I want a way of escape that’s not as costly.
Do you want the way of escape? Do you want the way of escape? Then listen to God. He is faithful. It’s in the book. He’s faithful, He’s strong, He is able. But He doesn’t hand out, often, shortcuts.
“God, we want to enter the Promised Land.”
“Good. Leave Egypt. Be chased by Pharaoh. Watch what I do. Walk through the desert. Watch how I provide. And then attack the giants. And you will live in a land of milk and honey.”
“No, we just want you to transport us there. We don’t want to do any fighting. We don’t want to do any struggle. We don’t want to do any… Our feet will get sore.”
Jesus shows you the way. We sang it tonight. “I’m the way. Follow me.” And then we follow Him, and what do we do after a couple weeks of following Jesus honeymoon period?
“It’s too hard.”
It’s not too hard. One day at a time. It is with His grace. It is entirely doable. It is entirely doable.
Do you want it? He’s faithful. And when you fail, if you confess your sins—what does the Bible say? He is faithful to forgive your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, CSB)
He is the God of the second chance. If you’re a biblical literalist, according to Jesus, He’s the God of 490 chances. The 491st time you commit that sin, you’re done. Sorry.
You’re good. That is a literary device saying genuine repentance will always be acceptable.
He’s a good father, He’s a good God, and He is faithful. So, come to His table tonight and be nourished for the journey because you got a whole week before you’re back here, all right? You got a whole one, two, three weeks before you get to hear me again. All right?
So, what’s that?You’ree gonna go before that? I’m gonna miss you. I’ll miss you so much.
Sofia, could you do me a favor? Next year when you come home from school and visit and Sydney’s over in Japan, just occasionally stick your tongue out at me? All right. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. I’d ask your mom to do it, but I don’t think she… You know, your dad’s not gonna. Your dad’s not gonna do it. Grandma might do it.
All right. So, dear ones, come to the table. Come and eat the food of God for the people of God.
The post 2026.8.2 TFHC – The Example Of Israel In The Wilderness | 1Cor 10:1-13 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
July 26, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
And we are His subjects, His children, His servants, and He’s coming back for us. And He will establish an everlasting kingdom, world without end. He is the small pebble in the book of Daniel that crushes all the other kingdoms of the earth and then grows and grows and grows until it’s a mountain that covers the whole earth.
The Bible is a story about kingdoms, and it’s about King Jesus and God taking His kingdom back and then inviting us to inherit His kingdom as His children.
So, Acts 1:5-11.
We’ll be back in Corinthians next week, good Lord willing, and the creeks don’t rise, my dad used to always say.
And so, here’s what it says:
5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days.” 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 After he had said this, he was taken up as they were watching, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going, they were gazing into heaven, and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you have seen him going into heaven.” (Acts 1:5-11, CSB)
God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable, Lord, in your sight, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Daniel 7:13 says this:
13 I continued watching in the night visions, and suddenly one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him. 14 He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14, CSB)
The Bible is a story of kingdoms. God created Adam and Eve, and they were to be His co-regents on the earth. They were to spread His dominion, His kingdom, over the whole earth.
And then rebellion broke out. Adam and Eve listened to the deceiver. They rebelled, and that gave a foothold to the evil one. And then the evil ones continued to rebel. There was more than one evil one. There were many evil ones. And they rebelled, and they ruled these little kingdoms of Earth because human beings submitted themselves then to the evil ones, not to the one true God.
And so you look at ancient history, and you see human sacrifice, you see barbarism, you see cruelty. When the Spaniards came to the New World and they discovered these great civilizations, they were horrific civilizations. They thrived on human sacrifice. They thrived on blood, as did every single culture in the world before the Jews came in and forbade human sacrifice. The kingdoms of this world were ruled by the kingdom of darkness.
But God was not going to give up His plan for planet Earth. And so, He chose one people, just one people in the midst, just one tiny people, because He was going to display His glory through this tiny group of people. And He wanted to be their king. He said, “I’ll tell you what, let me be your king.” But they would not have it.
And so, then they had many kings, but He made covenant with them, and He said, “If you will follow my covenant, you’ll be a light to the nations, and people will see who the real king is, who the real God is.” There’s only one God. And these other gods are fake gods. These Baals, these Molechs, these Asherahs—these are fake gods. They are small “g” gods. They are spiritual powers for sure. But they are usurping the kingdom of the true God, and God is insistent that He’s going to get it back.
And so, the story of the Bible is the story of spiritual warfare. It’s the story of the battle of kingdoms. It’s the story of God fighting for His creation, fighting for us, fighting to take back what is His.
And that’s the story.
Jesus came and He preached the kingdom of God. That is the central message that Jesus preached. He said, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” And the last Old Testament covenant, God makes covenant with David. And He says, “There is going to come a king, and He is going to sit on your throne, and His kingdom will never end.” Daniel prophesied the exact same thing in Daniel 7. We just read it. And when Jesus ascends, when Jesus goes to heaven, that is Daniel 7 coming to life. One like the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days.
When Jesus says, “Behold, you’ll see me coming on the clouds of heaven,” Christians have taken that historically to mean His second coming, coming back. But Jesus, that’s His ascension. He’s on the clouds of heaven. He’s coming. Where is He coming? He’s coming to His throne to sit before the Ancient of Days and take His place as King, where now He rules as King, and His kingdom is expanding.
And so the disciples and the Jews of Jesus’ day were looking for a king. They were looking for a kingdom, but they had too small of a vision. They didn’t understand God’s promise to Abraham that God was going to make them a light to the nations, a light to the Gentiles, and that His kingdom was going to be a kingdom over all the earth.
They were looking for a king like David, who would make Israel the next Rome, would make Israel the next Greece, the next Persia, the next Babylonia. All the people they had suffered under these hundreds and hundreds of years, and now finally, again, just like when David was king, we’re going to be the big dog on the block, and everybody’s going to be afraid of us for a while. That’s the kind of king we’re going to get. And so, the disciples… “Is this going to be the time you’re going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Why was Jesus crucified? Because He was a disappointment as a king. He came in on a what? He came into Jerusalem riding a what? A donkey. What did they want Him to come into Jerusalem riding? A charger? A horse. They wanted Caesar, and they got a crucified man on the cross. A slave’s death. A humiliating slave’s death.
Nope, that’s not a king in the ancient world. They couldn’t see the humble King. The disciples saw it, but they still couldn’t get rid of that image that “Ah, you died, you rose. Now comes the white horse. Now comes the army. Now comes the battle against the Romans.”
And Jesus says, “You don’t know times, you don’t know seasons, you don’t know nothing. But here’s what’s going to happen. There’s going to be a power that’s going to come upon you, and that power is my power. It’s the power of my Spirit. And it’s going to continue to live and teach you and train you to live by the rules of my Father’s kingdom, by humble love. And by humble love, this kingdom is going to spread all over the world till the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.”
And 2,000 years later, the world we live in is radically transformed from the Roman Empire because of a crucified carpenter and a converted Pharisee teaching about this kingdom and this kingdom conquering by love, not by the sword.
It’s not a geographical, political kingdom in the sense that we know of as geographical and political kingdoms, but this kingdom will cover the earth. Jesus is going to get back what is rightfully His. And every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
It is an inside out, upside down kingdom. It’s not a kingdom that wins by the exertion of physical force on the outside. It’s a kingdom that works and grows by the transformation of human beings from the inside out.
It’s upside down. It’s a kingdom where the King serves, where the King washes feet. And if you want to be great in His kingdom, you’re not a mighty general riding on a horse and in a cavalcade, and you’re not a president or an emperor. If you want to be great, you’re a neighbor who serves the people in their neighborhood. You’re a co-worker who encourages the discouraged people that you work with. You’re a husband who serves his wife. You’re a wife who serves her husband and her family. If you want to be great, you go low.
It’s a strange kingdom. Jesus never gathered an army. He never traveled more than 30 miles from His hometown, except as a child when He went to Egypt. He never had riches, He never had slaves, He never owned property. He lived off the generosity of others. And nobody in human history has had an impact like Him.
And it continues. Think about it. In Poulsbo, Washington—yumpin yimini, sure, you betcha—a group of people are singing songs, worshiping this crucified carpenter. If there’s any evidence at all that Jesus is King, it’s that. All the Caesars have crumbled, all the empires have fallen. And yet His name still ascends. He is taking back His kingdom from the kingdom of darkness. It is the kingdom of light and the darkness has not overcome it. And there is now a power in the kingdom, and it’s not weapons, it’s not guns, it’s not drones, it’s not nuclear, it’s not the weapons of this world. The power is the power of His Spirit.
And it is the Holy Spirit, Christ in us, who gives us the hope of glory.
So in the midst of a world that doesn’t understand us, in the midst of the world that still is honoring and looking for human kingdoms and looking for power and looking for might, we have a different kind of power that is fueled by hope because we know Christ in us is the hope of glory. We know how this story ends. We know who our King is. We know that He rose from the dead. We know that all the powers of this world and all the spiritual powers of wickedness, the principalities, the powers of darkness, the rulers of this present age will bow before Him and proclaim that He is Lord.
And we will be raised as He was risen, as He is risen, and we will inherit His kingdom. We have the hope of glory. We have the Holy Spirit, who is Christ in us. He changes us from the inside out.
One of the things when you take Jesus as your King, one of the things is you start to want to emulate… you want to emulate Him. I mean, everything in me wishes that I was a better father. Everything in me wants to be a good husband. Everything in me wants to be a good pastor to you all and love you well and impart Jesus to you. Everything in me wants to be a good man. And yet, guess what? I’m not always a good man.
But I’ve got this power inside of me that has first given me those desires. And then it says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
I do not doubt for a minute that everybody in this room wishes they were a better person. Anybody think “No, I’m great. I’m good, I’m good. I got no flaws. I’m perfect. I got it going on”? I mean, some of you are close in my estimation. But we all struggle. But that “want to,” even that “want to” is the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us.
And so, we have this hope of being of inheriting His kingdom, this hope of glory. But that hope—none of us want to go to heaven without being like Him. I don’t want to be a stinker in heaven. I don’t want to be the one bummer in the beautiful city. You know, it’s like everybody’s like, “Oh, well, Jesus let Kevin in. But, you know, he kind of brings us down.” No, I want to shine bright.
And the Bible says He will finish the work He has begun in us, and we will be like Him when we inherit the kingdom. One day, you’re going to be as good as you want to be. You’re going to be as good as He is. And that is joy, and that is hope, and that keeps us on our feet. That keeps us going.
And then He gives us power to do His kingdom work. We get to do the ministry of Jesus. We get to serve others. We can heal the sick. We can cast out demons. We can proclaim the gospel. We can have endurance to love and serve the unlovable. We have the power to love our enemies and love those who persecute us and not hate back. We have the power to forgive.
And so the Holy Spirit gives us the power to do the ongoing ministry of Jesus. The Book of Acts starts this way. Well, first of all, Luke writes two volumes. He writes the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts.
In the Gospel of Luke, he says, “My dear Theophilus,” whom he’s writing to, “I wanted to put out in an orderly fashion, I wanted to give you an account of all that Jesus began to do and teach.”
In the Book of Acts, he says, “My dear Theophilus, I want to give you an account of all that Jesus is now continuing to do and teach.” And the first thing he tells is Jesus’ ascending. Well, how is Jesus continuing to do and teach? Because the Book of Acts is Jesus’ ministry going on through who? You. You.
Have you ever met somebody and thought, “Oh, my gosh, they need Jesus.” And I’ve actually prayed this: Lord, you need to send a Christian into their life. I’ve prayed this on several occasions. I always get the same answer. Always kind of just dawns on me, like two seconds after I say that prayer.
“Kevin, I have.”
I remember the first time I said that. “Lord, you got to send a Christian into their life.” And I hear this in my head: “Kevin, I have.” And actually said, I said, “Who?”
And it’s like, oh, oh, no. You ought to send a better Christian into their lives. No, you’re it.
Brian, you remember the A-Team? The TV show, the A-Team. Karen, you remember that? Stevin, right? Mr. T: “I pity the fool. I pity the fool.” But you’re God’s A-Team. You’re God’s A-Team. You’re what He’s got. You’re the Christian in their life. You’re the ongoing ministry of Jesus.
“Oh, I need help doing that.” Good. You got help doing that. Holy Spirit, come and fill me.
“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t talk to people about Jesus.”
The Spirit will give you the words to say. You get the power to expand His kingdom. You get the power to do the ministry of Jesus.
And the mission of the kingdom—we just sang it. Go tell everybody. Go do three things: proclaim, make disciples, baptize them. “Teach them all the things that I have taught you.” We’re to disciple the world.
You have babies? Step one, disciple your kids. Listen, you and your husband, you and your wife, you got together and you created some original sinners. You made selfish human beings. Now fix them. Get them to love Jesus, or they’ll be scary, man.
Man, I’m glad Sydney and Sofia love Jesus. They’d scare me if they didn’t. I’m glad Isaiah knows Jesus. He’d be scary with that mind. He’d be scary. He could be like Pinky and the Brain, you know? He could be the brain. “I want to take over the world.” But look what a humble, sweet man he is.
We have a commission to know Christ and to make Christ known. That’s what the power—read Acts 1:8 again. “You will receive power…” Oh, so we can get people slain in the Spirit and have great revival meetings? Yeah, sure, fine.
“You will receive power…” To what? “Be my witnesses.” All power, all signs and wonders, all miracles is to one end—that we will be witnesses, that we will be examples, that we will be lights of the truth of our King and His kingdom.
I love to see in our family—Jill and I, over the years we’ve been married, we’re seeing it in her side of the family now. We’ve seen it in some aspects of my side of the family at other times. But we’ve seen people moving toward Christ. We see people moving toward Christ.
And this is not bragging. This is just the truth of the gospel. Jill and I are very, very convinced that we’ve had an influence in that. Our prayers and our lives and our marriage has had an influence on that. We have nieces and nephews who look at our marriage and they say, “I want what they’ve got.”
My wife and I just celebrated our 45th anniversary. Went up to Lake Tahoe where we honeymooned, and… I just saw a Catholic philosopher, Peter Kreeft. He was talking about, should you get married? He said, on the day your wife dies and she’s all wrinkled and emaciated and she’s chubby and, you know, she’s not this beautiful, hot babe that you married. He said, “If you look at her and think she’s beautiful, then, yeah, you get married.”
And I realized, I do not say this to flatter my wife, but my wife walks in the room, and if you ever saw pictures of her when she was like, when we first started dating, mamma mia. She was a hottie. She was. She was smoking. Yeah. I’m telling you. But now, 45 years later, 50 years later, she walks into the room, I think, there’s the most beautiful woman in the world. There’s the most beautiful woman in the world. I love her soul. I love her soul.
And I look at her and go, there’s a great mom, a wonderful grandmother, a loyal wife, a hard worker, and the fountainhead of almost all my jokes. This is a wonderful person. This is a wonderful person.
And so it starts with our families, and our marriages are witnesses. Our children are witnesses. We want people to look at us and say, “What have they got?”
How is it Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the brilliant Soviet author who writes about the horrors of the Soviet Union under communism and escaped and just wrote these incredible books… He wrote a book about—a fictional book, but it’s a true book about his time as a Russian doctor in Siberia. He was put in prison because he didn’t toe the line right. And he talks about the Christians in prison. They were Baptists. We pick on the Baptists, but these were Baptists.
And I’ll never forget, as a teenage boy, I’ll never forget this line I read in his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It said, “The troubles of prison life were like water on a duck’s back to the Baptist.”
Solzhenitsyn became a Christian because of Christians who probably passionately prayed, “Don’t let us go to Siberian prison camp,” and got arrested and went to prison camp anyway, and said, “Lord, why didn’t you answer our prayers?”
And the reason God didn’t answer their prayers is because He was going to make them a witness to a man who was going to speak truth to power for the rest of his life in an articulate and powerful way and help shape much of the world’s resistance to communism.
You know what the word “witness” in Greek is? The same word for martyr, same root word for martyr. You will be my martyrs. You’ll be my witnesses. Just as my death on a cross displays the love of God, so your humble witness in the midst of not good times, but bad times will expand my kingdom over the wicked kingdoms of this world.
In all four Gospels and in the book of Acts, Jesus in one way or another tells His disciples, “Go, go, go, go, go. And let somebody know. Go tell it on a mountain.”
On my way to church, I stopped into Burger King, and there’s a long line, so I went in to get my soda. I just went in. I said it’d be quicker than going through the drive-through. So I went in to get my soda. I came out, and in just the five minutes it took me to get my soda, a flock of seagulls must have flown over my car. It was spotted white, like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like, really? Really? And it wasn’t, like, parked under a building. It’s like they just said, “There it is. Let’s just poop on Pastor Kevin’s car.” So I took it across the street to the Chevron station for a quick wash.
And I get in there to buy my wash. The guy next to me is telling the guy at the counter about Jesus. You go. You go, son. You go. You go, son.
All four gospels and Acts. Jesus ascends. His ascension is Jesus being exalted as King. He’s coming into His throne.
And then in His ascension, what He does is, as He rises to the Father, He then, who was filled with the Spirit, now pours out His Spirit. And who does He pour out His Spirit on? All flesh. There’s no distinction: male, female, your sons and your daughters. Old, young, your young men, your young women, your old men, rich or poor, even on your menservants and maidservants, I will pour out my Spirit. There’s no longer an economic discrepancy in Christ. There’s neither male nor female.
You know who have been the greatest missionaries? You know who’s written up? All the missionaries in the church history books are men. But, you know, the greatest missionaries in the history of the world have been women. Women have shared the gospel because women do something that men rarely do. It’s called talking.
Women raise their children to love Jesus. No male, no female. It’s amazing. You know, we argue whether or not women can preach, but we have no problem sending them over to third world countries and letting them preach. We just don’t want them preaching in our pulpits. Women line up to be missionaries. They line up to share the gospel.
All flesh qualifies. If you repent, believe, and baptize—pinch the person next to you and see if they have flesh. Go ahead.
Yeah, Sydney’s going, “Oh, good. I wanted to pinch somebody tonight. I was hoping I get to pinch somebody.” Yeah. And Sofia’s going, “Oh, too bad Levi’s not here.”
Hey, the last time I preached, I didn’t take a shot, so I get to take one tonight.
So, dear ones, you’re flesh. You qualify. You qualify to be a witness for Jesus. There’s nobody better than you to be in that person’s life. God sent you. God sent you. Be intentional about it. Don’t be obnoxious, but be intentional.
Bill Bright, one of the most known evangelists of the last generation with Campus Crusade for Christ, not known as a Charismatic, evangelical. I don’t know he ever, like, spoke in tongues or any of that. But he did believe in the Holy Spirit, man, because every morning he would breathe in—one of his first prayers every morning… Bill Bright, he’d breathe in and say, “Holy Spirit, come fill me.” And as a symbolic act, because the word “spirit” means breath, you just take a deep breath. Holy Spirit, come fill me. Fill me to do the work of Jesus today and expand His kingdom.
Christ is your King, people. Christ is your King. He’s not elected. He died on the cross to demonstrate His love, to ransom us from evil and to conquer sin and death. He rose from the dead victorious. He ascended and is seated right now at the right hand of the Father. He’s seated on His throne, and His kingdom is expanding.
And the prophet Isaiah said, “Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.” And that’s the story that you and I have been invited into. That’s the purpose for our life. That’s why we’re drawing air. It’s not to make a bunch of money and hopefully to enjoy it for five years after you retire.
Now, are you going to get a job? Yes.
Are you going to do all the normal stuff that people in this culture do? Yes.
And in the midst of that, you’re carrying this amazing kingdom, and it’s all over the world.
I said at the beginning, it’s not geographical or political, but it is, in a sense, because Jesus will have the world back. And the most political statement you can ever make, and every political power in this world hates this statement, even if they pretend to like it, they hate it: Jesus Christ is Lord.
When you say that, you know what you’re saying? You’re not. You’re not.
Mother nation, Father nation… Hey, be a patriot. That’s fine. Love your home. Love your home. Love your homeland and pray for your homeland. We live in a land that has drunk deeply of the well of Christian civilization. It’s one of the reasons this has been such a blessed land. It is the reason this has been such a blessed land. Even the people who deny it are swimming in those waters.
So, yeah, I want America to prosper. I want America to thrive. I want the abundant riches of this nation to continue to fund and fuel the worldwide missions movement. But I have also this great hope and assurance in me. If America falls, guess what? My King Jesus is not going to go, “Oh, that caught me by surprise. I didn’t see that happening to America. Oh, golly, what am I going to do now? I was putting all my chips into the American basket.”
No, no, no.
I’ve been to Africa. I’ve been to Mexico, I’ve been to Haiti, I’ve been to the Dominican Republic. And you know what? We got, brothers and sisters. We got people there who know King Jesus. And of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.
Yes, fight for it here. I want my kids and my grandkids to grow up in a Christian civilization, but I don’t want them to grow up in a Christian civilization and be ignorant of who the King is.
So, dear ones, John Wimber said this: Christians are at war. And we are. There’s a battle going on. We know the final victory. We know the outcome. We win, but the battle rages. I love what John Wimber said. He said, “Christians, you’re at war. 80% of the church doesn’t even know they’re at war. They just think they said a prayer and now they’re saved.” But 80% of the church doesn’t even know the war, that they’re at war.
And then he says, “And the other 20% are trying as hard as they can to remain civilians.”
Don’t do it. Get in the game. Just get in the game. It’s better that way. It’s just better living for Jesus.
People don’t like Joel Osteen. This is not a pro Joel Osteen sermon or this Joel Osteen sermon at all. All I know is people get on him because he wrote a book called Your Best Life Now. And I think the take of that book that people are opposed to. But actually, I like the title. I like the title.
There’s no better life now than following Jesus. There’s easier lives, at least in the short term, than following Jesus. There are paths that look easier. In the long run, they’ll be infinitely harder.
But there’s no better life for you now than following Jesus. There’s no more happiness and joy you can find in this world apart from Jesus than you can find with Jesus. I promise you that.
I promise you, if you have Jesus in the middle of your marriage, 45 years in, you’re going to look at your wife and your husband and you go, “I love that person more than I did on my wedding day.” And you’re going to be grateful, and your soul will have joy, and you’ll die one day a happy idiot if you’re wrong. But you’re not.
Like every kingdom, we have little things we do, right? Like if an American, they play the national anthem, what do you do? Stand up, take off your hat, put it over your heart. Right? That’s what we do.
Well, in Jesus’ kingdom, we gather weekly, and we eat, and we eat the simplest of meals. Because He’s a humble King. One day there’ll be an indescribable feast laid before us. But right now, this is a reminder: It’s coming, coming.
And so, dear ones, take and eat. Take and eat. The God of the universe, the King of the universe, has chosen you to represent Him in this world. How could you ask for more meaning in your life than that? How could you ask for a better job description than that?
If you’re a store clerk, you’re a store clerk for Jesus. If you’re a school teacher, you’re a school teacher for Jesus. If you’re a homemaker, you’re a homemaker for Jesus. You serve in the military, you serve in the military for Jesus. If you’re a preacher, you do it for the money.
No, you do it for Jesus. You do it for Jesus.
And so, dear ones, come.
.
The post 2026.7.26 TFHC – The Kingdom And The Power | Acts 1:5-11 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
July 19, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Thank you, God, for your love.
Dear ones, I pray that we would know it in our heads, but I pray that we would know it in our hearts, that the almighty, sovereign, all-powerful, unapproachable light, glorious, hallowed, supreme God of the universe is a good, good Father to you.
He loves you. He cares. Listen, cast your cares upon Him, for He cares for you. If it matters to you, it matters to Him. If it matters to you, it matters to Him.
Thank you, Lord. Would you apply that to our hearts? Let that sink in, that you’re a good, good Father, that Jesus came to reveal you in a way that nobody had revealed you up until that time. That you are a good, good Father.
And I thank you. Through Christ we pray, Amen.
That concept of God the Father is seen in the Old Testament somewhat, but not—it’s revolutionary. It is a part of the Christian revolution that Jesus teaches God as Father. What does Islam say? God is great.
God is great, God is powerful. That’s the Old Testament. If you ask somebody, “What does the Old Testament emphasize—the fatherhood of God or the glory, grandeur, sovereignty of God?” They would say the glory. It would be the glory, grandeur, and sovereignty of God.
And if you ask certain brands of Christianity, “What does God lead with? What is God’s priority? His glory or His love?” And there are Christians who would say, “Oh, it’s His glory. His love is secondary. God does all this to glorify Himself.”
But I disagree.
I think Jesus comes and puts that on its head. I think God’s primary motive for creating and God’s primary motive behind everything is love. And He’s glorified in His love. He’s glorified in His love. And so that’s just my take.
I don’t know if you know that that’s kind of a debate in Christendom, you know—glory before love or love before glory? I’m settled on that one, man. I’m settled on that one. Our Father. Jesus comes and leads with Father. Notice, “Our Father…” Then He goes to glory—they’re both there—”hallowed be your name.” But He starts with “Daddy”; He leads with “Daddy.”
The whole Sermon on the Mount… do you not know? Not a sparrow falls… how much more does your Father value you?
I mean, we are so immersed in a Christian worldview that that’s the water we swim in, that God is loving, that God is good, that God is Father, even to the point where people will just say, “we’re all children of God,” as if that’s just a normal human assumption that people have been making throughout history.
First of all, it’s not really literally true from a biblical perspective that we’re all children of God. But I would say also that, listen, you are children of God by faith in Christ, and so, dear ones, you are God’s children and you are deeply loved.
That song just kind of got that little mini sermon going in me. All right? He’s a good Father and He loves you. And much of our struggle in our Christian life comes from the fact that we believe it as a doctrine in our heads, but maybe because of the insufficiency of our earthly fathers, the woundedness in which we live out this world, the trauma we’ve experienced, we don’t know it in our hearts.
And that’s certainly been the case for me throughout my life. You know, if somebody says to me, “Kevin, do you know God loves you?” I say, “I believe God loves me, yes. I mean, the Bible says God loves me.” “Do you feel it?” Not as often as I’d like to. I can count my blessings, you know, it’s like, God must love me. I’m just so blessed, you know. He gave me all, you know, so I’m happy. I’m happy. But just to feel loved is… Lord, let it reach our hearts that you’re a good, good Father.
Just say a quick prayer for somebody on your right or on your left or maybe both—somebody else in this room, just say a quick prayer. Let’s close our eyes. Let’s say a quick prayer and say, “God, I pray that that person would experience in their hearts that you’re a good Father.”
And Amen. Amen.
While we were doing that, did God speak to anybody? Did God just say anything to any of you when you were doing that? Did you get a little like a word, or a picture? All right. If you did, and you’re going to come up to me afterwards and say, “Kev, I just didn’t want to say it in front of everybody, but I just want to tell you,” I’m going to stop praying for you, all right? Don’t do that to me, all right? Don’t do that. Don’t be that person.
You know, I love you introverts, but come on, come on, make it happen.
All right. 1 Corinthians 9, and we’re going to do the whole chapter. On your mark, get set, go.
1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 2 If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you, because you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. 4 Don’t we have the right to eat and drink? 5 Don’t we have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife like the other apostles, the Lord’s brothers, and Cephas? 6 Or do only Barnabas and I have no right to refrain from working? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Or who shepherds a flock and does not drink the milk from the flock? 8 Am I saying this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the law also say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Do not muzzle an ox while it treads out grain. Is God really concerned about oxen? 10 Isn’t he really saying it for our sake? Yes, this is written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes should thresh in hope of sharing the crop. 11 If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it too much if we reap material benefits from you? 12 If others have this right to receive benefits from you, don’t we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right; instead, we endure everything so that we will not hinder the gospel of Christ. 13 Don’t you know that those who perform the temple services eat the food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the offerings of the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should earn their living by the gospel. 15 For my part I have used none of these rights, nor have I written these things that they may be applied in my case. For it would be better for me to die than for anyone to deprive me of my boast! 16 For if I preach the gospel, I have no reason to boast, because I am compelled to preach —and woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 For if I do this willingly, I have a reward, but if unwillingly, I am entrusted with a commission. 18 What then is my reward? To preach the gospel and offer it free of charge and not make full use of my rights in the gospel. 19 Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law —to win those under the law. 21 To those who are without the law, like one without the law—though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ—to win those without the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some. 23 Now I do all this because of the gospel, so that I may share in the blessings. 24 Don’t you know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize. 25 Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown. 26 So I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. 27 Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:1-27, CSB)
And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
All right.
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is all about correcting problems and abuses from an immature church, an immature church that thought they had arrived. And Paul is reminding them that they have only just begun. And then he brings out evidence after evidence of their immaturity. There are divisions. There is sexual immorality. They flaunt their freedom and eat food offered to idols, even though they’re free to do so, to the spiritual harm of those who conscientiously don’t do that and think it’s wrong to do.
And so, he says, “Your pride just shows that you’re spiritually immature.” And they accuse him. Paul came as an apostle, and they accused him of not being a genuine apostle. And it’s basically like, “We don’t have to listen to you anymore, old man.”
It’s like, you know, you raise your kids, you’re their dad, you love on them, you discipline them, and you know, they just come to a point… “I don’t have to listen to you, old man.” You know? “I can do what I want to do.”
And that was the kind of their attitude toward Paul. “You don’t have the right to speak into our lives anymore. We’ve arrived. In fact, we’re probably more mature than you. We’re more spiritual than you.” And his whole letter is to say, “Well, no, you’re not. No, you’re not, and here’s the evidence.”
And so here he defends his apostolic authority. First century apostles had some authority. We Protestants have taken the authority of the first century apostles and taken their book and have said, “This is our apostolic authority. We don’t have apostles coming around teaching us. We have the original apostles through their writings, through their teachings, continuing to teach us.” And that’s why we say that this is authority.
The other branches of the church say, “No, apostolic authority has continued to some degree through apostolic succession. And we have both the Scriptures that the first-century apostles wrote, but we also have the apostolic authority through, you know, through the…” What’s the head of the Church in the East called? In the West, it’s the Pope. In the East, it’s… Anybody know? I do know, and it’s not coming to mind.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Only say that in Greek, and you might be right. So…
But it’s still—Paul is asserting his authority to speak into their lives, and that’s what he says:
“Am I not free? I’m not under anyone but Christ. I’m not under Peter and James, the head of the churches in Jerusalem. In fact, I rebuked Peter to his own face when he was acting out of accordance with what an apostle should be doing.
“Now, I submit myself to the Jerusalem council; I submit myself to the council of elders because all Christians,” he says, “all Christians, we are to submit to one another.”
But he does that freely and voluntarily. There’s nobody who comes to Paul and says, “I have a bigger apostolic authority than you do.” He says, “No, I have apostolic authority.” The evidence that we have of that—Paul’s going to give the evidence that he gives for that. But the evidence that we have for that is that 2,000 years later, his writing still functioned very effectively and very authoritatively in his body.
And every branch of Christianity, whether they agree that there’s other apostolic authority, still says that this is apostolic authority. The Eastern Church, the Catholic Church, they don’t deny the authority of the Scriptures. They just deny sola scriptura, that Scripture alone is the authority. So just be clear on that.
But as Protestants, we say, “No, nobody carries the authority of a first-century apostle, and therefore we have the writing.”
I will say this, that begs the question, what about apostles today? Are there apostles today? Is the gift of apostles still functioning today? And my answer to that is yes and no. My answer to that is yes and no. In the sense of a first-century apostle who is not under the authority of Scripture, my answer to that is no. We have nobody out there today who can write new Scripture for us, who can say, “Yeah, the Bible has changed its mind on this.” All right? We don’t have that kind of apostolic authority.
However, an apostle also, in the New Testament, is one who is sent to establish new works and to oversee new works and often to oversee a multiplicity of churches. I believe that that gift still exists today.
Ephesians 4 says that Jesus has given to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
11 And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, (Ephesians 4:11, CSB)
Most people would agree that the last three are functioning today. Many people disagree that the first two, apostles and prophets, are functioning today. They say that those gifts especially have ceased at the writing of the Scripture.
I don’t think they have. I think we still need people who establish works and who aren’t maybe local pastors, but who oversee, who are a pastor to works, who are a pastor to pastors. I think people can have the gift of apostleship as well as be a local pastor. I think there are people who have pastoral oversight over other pastors and can be a pastor. But I think basically, I think there is the gift of one who is sent to do that kind of work.
Not everybody who proclaims to be an apostle, however, is an apostle. A lot of people take that on as their self-designated title—”I’m an apostle.” I think it is always best that the church names these things, not the individual, because the church is the one who experiences these things. The church is the one who says… Thomas Omenta, who I went to visit in Africa, we were talking about what our gifts are and stuff. I looked at Thomas and I said, “Thomas, you’re an apostle. You are an apostle.” He’s got his hand in so many fires. He oversees so many works and leads so many different people. And he’s very organized at it, and he’s very good at it.
And his administrator just lit up, and she said, “Yes, exactly. That’s what we try to tell him.”
And Thomas, very humbly and I think very rightly, said, “I’ll never take that title onto myself.” In other words, “You can call me that, Kevin. My administrator can call me that. But I’m never going to go around in different churches and say I’m Apostle Thomas,” and I just respect that in him. I think that’s great.
But he carries it. I think he carries it.
Now let me say this, all five of those—this is not a sermon on Ephesians 4, by the way. If I ever do Ephesians, I’ll get into more depth on this. All five of those we all carry to some extent. We’re all sent. You know, in a sense you’re the apostle to your neighborhood and workplace. You are commissioned by God. You’re sent to that place to begin something. And we’re all prophets. We all have the ability to hear the voice of God and speak the voice of God. We’re all evangelists. We’re all called to be witnesses to people and to share Christ. We’re all pastors. We all are called to give some care, some care for the spiritual well-being of those around us. We’re all teachers. If you’re a parent, you’re a teacher, right? The first line of teaching children the faith is the home.
But there are some people who function in a larger, more public kind of way in all five of those, and we call those people, then—we say, “Oh, Christ has given that person not just to a small sphere, but to a large sphere, His Church, as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.”
So that’s all we’re doing on Ephesians 4. Just to answer the question, does Kevin believe in the modern-day gift of apostle? My answer to that is yes, but no in the sense of a first-century apostle. You say I might be equivocating, but I don’t care what you say. That’s fine. I just think that’s how it shakes down, and it’s a tertiary matter. So if you disagree with me, that’s fine too. It’s secondary.
Paul, though, is defending his apostleship to the Corinthians, and there’s no doubt… if there’s a doubt about anybody being an apostle, there’s got to be less doubt about St. Paul even than Peter and the Twelve because Paul’s impact on the centuries has been secondary only to Jesus Christ himself.
I just finished reading Tom Holland’s book, Dominion, and his thesis is that Christianity has revolutionized the world. He says it’s just amazing to him that a crucified carpenter and, then a converted Pharisee have changed, have formed Western civilization.
By the way, I questioned, I think a couple of weeks ago, whether or not Tom Holland had come back to his Christian faith after writing the book, Dominion. And the answer to that is yes. Yes. So that was good news when I found that out. He’s forsaken his atheism and become a Christian, believing in the God of his upbringing. So good news for Tom Holland.
All right. Good book if you can endure it. It’s heavy. It’s dense, it’s dense, but it’s worth the read. Or in my case, audiobooks. It was worth the listen.
Man, how long have I gone? I’m still on point one. I got two pages of notes. Poor you.
All right.
Paul says, “I’m free. There’s no apostle over me. I’ve seen the risen Lord on the road to Damascus.” He saw the risen Lord, which is a qualification for a first-century apostle to have encountered the risen Jesus. There may have been other times that Paul had seen Jesus, but he certainly did, it’s certainly recorded in Scripture that he saw him on the road to Damascus.
And then his great proof of his apostleship is the Corinthian Church. An apostle is one who is sent to establish works. “Hello, Corinth, you’re here. What does that make me? Peter didn’t preach to you. Apollos didn’t preach to you. They’ve preached to you since, and you’ve benefited from that. Yay. Other people have come through and said that they were apostles and I’m not. But guess what? You exist because the Lord sent me to preach in this place and stay with you for several years. You are the seal of my apostleship. You are the proof of my apostleship. If I’m not an apostle to anybody else, I’m at least an apostle to you. Therefore, I have the right to speak into your life.”
But he goes on, and his next point—and he elaborates on this in great detail—is that apostles so love the fruit of their work that they will lay down their rights, their absolute rights, so that you might prosper. And Paul begins to talk in great detail about the rights of an apostle, a preacher, a teacher, a prophet, and that these rights are valid and good and established in the Bible.
And yet his whole point is, “I’ve laid these down for you that you might benefit from my apostleship.”
And so he says he has the right to receive a living in his preaching and traveling ministry from the churches that he preaches to and travels to. And yet he forsook that and was bivocational and became a tent maker so that he would put no burden on these churches whatsoever.
He brings this out to the Corinthians. A soldier, a farmer, a shepherd, all receive the benefit of their labor. They all receive the benefit of their labor. He says, “Don’t muzzle the ox in the Bible.” That’s true, certainly in the literal context of a farmer. If you have a working beast, you care for that beast. It only makes sense. Who wants a weak ox treading out the grain? Who wants a weak plow horse? You want a well-fed, sturdy plow horse. And so you take care of your animals.
By the way, just another little rabbit trail here. The Bible fully embraces, which the ancient world did not really embrace at all, the picture that cruelty to animals is wrong. And as always, human beings go to two extremes. Human beings go to both ends of the scale, and the golden mean is right down the middle. And there are some people who just think animals are purely here for our disposal and there’s no need to have a conscience toward them. Use them, abuse them, do whatever you want to them. They’re just stupid animals. And that’s cruel.
Nate Bargatze, the comedian, talks about in the ’80s, you know, they used to go to the fair, and his dad was a musician. But it was always hard for his dad to get a crowd because right next to where his dad was doing magic, they had donkeys jumping off high dives into a pool.
He says, “It’s really hard, you know? ‘Hey, is this your card?’ The guy’s going, ‘Hey, hang on a second. It’s a donkey jumping off a high dive.'”
And Bargatze, you know, he just said, “You know, I don’t know what your feelings are on PETA, but they were right about that one. All right? They got involved; they shut that down.” Yeah, that’s cruel. Well, maybe the donkeys like to jump off high dives. No, they sent dogs up after him to bark at him and chase him off the high dive. It’s cruel. All right? For pure human exploit—you know, Stevin’s just getting mad right now. He’s just getting mad at those people. Exploitive entertainment for human beings. And so we shut that down.
On the other hand, you have those, the extreme PETA and others, who believe that there’s no distinction between human rights and animal rights. And there are. Animals are not image bearers. They are not created in the image and likeness of God. You may love your little Snuffins, and you may treat your little Snuffins like they’re your child, but they’re not. They’re not. They’re a dog. They’re a cat. And it’s perfectly appropriate to love them and care for them. And if you own them, you better care for them. Because cruelty to animals is wrong. It’s a sin. But so is the elevation of animals, where their lives then begin to take priority over human lives. They do not.
If you’re driving down the road and there’s a family in the minivan behind you, and if you slam on your brakes and there’s a good chance they’re going to rear-end you and may come to severe bodily harm and you may come to severe bodily harm as a human being, and if Bambi runs out in front of your car, you take out Bambi. Horn blaring, maybe slow down a little bit. But Bambi, you’re a goner. Because those kids in the van behind me and myself also are image bearers. That’s the distinction, all right?
Now, if nobody’s behind you, by all means, don’t hit Bambi, you know? Don’t hit Bambi. But otherwise…
And you know, I don’t know how far this applies, but I think if you kill it, you ought to eat it, or somebody ought to eat it. You know, I’m fine with hunting for sport, but you think you ought to eat, gotta eat what you… I was at a friend’s house one time, and we’re out there having our little cigar bonfire. One of the guys brought his little .22 rifle, and he bragged that he could hit a robin from 100 yards. And he could not. All right? He couldn’t hit a robin from 100 yards.
But one poor robin got within about 30 feet of us, about 10 yards from us. And I’m sorry, Aiko, I see the distressed look on your face. He shot the robin. He killed that robin.
Then my other friend, whose property it was, says, “Okay, let’s dress it out and eat it. You don’t kill something on my property that we don’t eat, all right?” And so they took the feathers out, they cut it open, and they cleaned it out. Not that big of a robin breast. We had our little fire going. They put it on a stick. We roasted it over the fire. And I have tried robin breast. I have, and it was gross.
What did it taste like? I’ll tell you what it tasted like. Worms. That’s what they eat. All right? I will never eat robin breast again unless somebody really seasons it.
Well, and just an aside, don’t tell—you know, I used to tell this to my kids: Don’t tell your mother. Don’t tell Jill that one, all right? She won’t let me go play with my friends again.
Stevin might even forbid me at this point from going.
I just want to tell you that one of those guys passed away and the other one moved to Maine, so I’m not playing with those friends anymore, all right? And I did not endorse the shooting of that robin. I was just there. And they’re gross.
All right, enough on animals.
Don’t muzzle the ox. Then Paul says, “You know, that’s not really about oxen, though it applies.” He says, “That’s about those who work on your behalf sowing spiritual seeds. Someone who plows receives from the harvest. Someone who sows spiritual things should receive material compensation.”
By the way, this is a sermon about Paul’s apostleship. It is not a plea to pay Kevin, just an aside. All right? You guys take care of me so well. I got absolutely zero complaints in that department, so don’t worry. This is not a “give me a raise” sermon. All right? So there you go.
The irony is that the Corinthians did not support Paul and then they thought less of him because of it. The other apostles who would come in and who were paid and who dressed nicer, they were obviously more spiritual. This is the beginnings of kind of a prosperity gospel. They had nicer horses, they had better chariots, they had newer robes. Obviously, the blessing of God was upon them.
No, the blessing of God is found in humility. And I’m not saying some of the false apostles may have been showing off. I’m sure Peter and Apollos weren’t showing off. But showing off and saying, you know, “I have a bigger private jet than you have” is not proof of your apostleship.
And by the way, I’m not even opposed to preachers having private jets if they can justify it. Some people are just aghast that a preacher has a private jet. Well, if they travel a lot and it’s convenient… And I know there are preachers with private jets who share them generously with other ministries and other preachers and stuff like that. I don’t care. I don’t care.
What matters to me is people’s hearts. And I’m not judging people on their outward activity at all.
I remember Benny Hinn used to wear a white suit when he preached. I don’t know if he still does, but he used to always wear a white suit. I remember telling one of my Pentecostal friends, “I’d never wear a white suit.” And my Pentecostal friend said, “What if God told you to?” And I told my Pentecostal friend to shut up. I don’t like it when people prove their point against me. I like being right.
But Paul says, “No, I don’t ask for it so as not to hinder the preaching of the gospel. I Have every right to ask for it, every right to insist on it. But I refuse.” He says, “The Lord has endorsed it. He’s laid upon the church to do this.” I don’t know where exactly what Paul is referring to when he said, “The Lord endorsed this.” It could be when He sends out His apostles two by two. He says, “Whatever house you go into,” you know, “receive their hospitality, receive their food.” That could be all he’s referring to. But it seems like it may be more. Certainly, the Old Testament, right? You have the tribe of Levi. And the tribe of Levi is different than the other tribes. They live off the offerings of the other tribes because they take care of the household of God. And today, that’s part of what tithes and offerings do, all right? And God’s endorsement is on that. God says, “Yeah, that’s a good thing to do. That’s a right thing to do.”
Another place, Paul says of people who preach the gospel, that they are worthy of double honor. What does that mean? They ought to get paid better than other people because they do more important work than other people.
Again, just a note of the Scriptures, not a plea, all right?
But he says, “I put that aside because my desire is to preach the gospel for free.” He’s setting an example of being willing to lay down those rights. And he says, “Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel.”
I remember two instances from my past, and the Lord really corrected me on both of these very early in my life as a pastor. And I’ve just followed these forever. Both of them had to do with this kind of thing, with reimbursement for work done.
And when people would ask you to come preach at their church—I was the associate pastor, so a lot of churches would ask me, “Oh, our pastor’s out of town. Can you send your associate to prepare?” And so, I’d be preaching. We had a large Methodist church, and they were all surrounded by all these different small cities with smaller Methodist churches. And that was great to me. I wanted to preach more.
So I’d get to preach in Porterville, Dinuba, Exeter, and Farmersville—all these little towns around, you know, these smaller churches. When their preacher was on vacation, you know, I was on the Rolodex, and they’d call me to preach, and I’d come preach. Always, these churches would give me some kind of honorarium.
And I remember one church didn’t. And I… Yeah, I don’t think I asked for it in this case, but I got resentful. Like, my gosh, I drove all the way down there, and I prepared this sermon. I preached, and, you know, nothing. You know, they just said, “Thank you very much.”
In fact, later that church actually wrote me a nice note and said, “My gosh, we forgot. We wanted to do this.” And they sent me money.
But I remember the Lord kind of, as I was complaining about that, the Lord said, “Listen, whenever”—and I’ve lived by this. This is why I went to Ghana a couple of years ago, because of this word from God: “Whenever anybody asks you to preach the gospel, do it. That’s what you do. That’s what I called you to do. Do it. Don’t ever ask for money again. Don’t ever expect money. Just do it. I’ll take care of you. You preach the gospel.”
So when my friend Rob Mangus got a hold of me and said, “We want you to come speak at our pastors’ conference in West Africa,” I immediately thought, I don’t want to. I’m too old to travel. I don’t like mission trips. I don’t want to go to Africa. I like Rob and Laurie, but they don’t have In N Out Burger. There are no Denny’s. Grace Covenant was broke. They couldn’t pay for it, even though it was their conference. And when Dallas would go speak, you know, that’s covered in the Grace Covenant budget. But when I went, because I’m not Dallas, it’s like, suck it up, buttercup.
Rob and Laurie sent me money. Missionaries, poor missionaries sent me money to help me go. I sent it back. Said, “I ain’t taking money from people poorer than me.” That, you know, go do this. Forget it. I sent it back. I was like, no, I’m not doing that.
And I just thought, okay, Lord, how do I get out of this?
And God did not help me get out of it. He reminded me. He said, “Remember when I told you somebody asked you to preach if you’re not providentially excluded—you’re sick, you can’t be in two places at once, whatever—if you’re not providentially excluded, you know, you’re working at church and they don’t want to let you go and do that…”
You guys could have helped out a lot by just saying, “Kevin, you can’t go.” All right? Stevin, Jamie, you know, maybe I need a sign. Like, okay, this means say no. Then I can say, “Hey, my board said I’ve been out of the pulpit too much and I gotta stay, you know.” If I rub my nose twice and clear my throat…
So, I just, so I just had to write back and say, “Okay, I’m coming, I’m coming.”
And Thomas… I go to East Africa. Thomas says, “I want you to come back in December.” And I said, “Yeah, we’re gonna check in about it twice in one year.” I’m not gonna do that again. It’s like, I don’t wanna, you know, I can’t afford that. You know, this trip was covered by you and by somebody else my last trip. And so, I’m thinking, “Yeah, but this next trip again, you know, I’m gonna ask Grace Covenant for some money. I know they’re kind of broke, but doggone it, they ought to pony up on this.”
And my son—did I tell you this? My son’s father-in-law is a rich surgeon in Dallas. And he says, “Yeah, Michael was telling me about your trip to Africa.” And he sent me a check for a substantial amount. “Here, I want to help cover that, you know, your last trip.”
And so, I called him up. I say, “Hey, Don, that was already covered. So, you want me to send your money back?” He goes, “No.” I go, “Okay.” I said, “Well, the guy asked me to come back in December. Can I apply it to that?” He goes, “Yeah.” It’s like, dang. Dang.
So, you know, I’ve been praying, “Lord, do you want me to go in December?” And so, He sends me, you know, this big chunk of money and says, “What do you think?” So I’m going to go again in December, unless, of course, you guys come to my rescue.
So anyway. Yeah, yeah. Oh, good, I don’t have to go. Actually, I’m looking forward to it because this one I do get to preach.
And here’s the deal. So the Lord… And the other one was same thing. I did a wedding, and when I was a poor preacher, I was at this big Methodist church, and we had a, it was a nice, you know, nice side hustle with weddings and funerals. And, you know, mainline church, big church. We were on the Rolodex at the funeral parlor. If somebody, you know, wasn’t a Methodist and they died and they didn’t have a preacher and they wanted one, we were, you know, amongst the top ones to call. So, I’d get a lot of calls to come do a funeral. And then we had a nice sanctuary, and so a lot of people would use our building as a wedding chapel, and I would get a lot of weddings, and you usually get reimbursed for that.
And again, I remember one time, you know, I did a wedding and there was nothing. It was during the counseling, you know, the couple asked, “Well, what do we do for you?” And I always would, you know, say, “Here’s what’s customary, but do what you want. You know, this is what people normally give. But, you know, don’t worry about it. Just do what you want.” And so, they said, “Okay, yeah, we’ll do that. We’ll do that.” So I was expecting it.
And then the wedding came and went, and we’re kind of waiting, and the reception, and nothing, you know. Usually, it’s the best man who’s been given the job of handing over the check. So I went to the best man and said, “Hey, you know, they said this…” And he goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot.” He reached his pocket, and he gave it to me, and I felt so slimy. I just felt like… and again, I felt like the Lord said, “Hey, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Just offer it as a service. And, you know, if people ask you, ‘What do people do?’ You can tell them, ‘This is normally what people, you know, do on these things.’ But if they don’t ask you, don’t ask. Just do it.”
And the third thing I will say—I’m like Paul, I’m not boasting here. I’m just saying this is the priorities. There are times in the past where this church has run low of funds and we haven’t been able to pay all our bills. And I just want to tell you—and I’m not saying this as a hero or nothing. I just think this is the right way to do it: I’m the first one not to get paid. We pay our missions, we pay our bills, we pay people who work for us. And mine’s the biggest chunk. And so it goes the furthest when we cut that out.
And, yeah, just like the Lord has, the Lord—and He has… there’s been times throughout the years where I haven’t received some checks and stuff. Almost every time at the end of the year, that’s been made up, and the Lord’s taken care of it. And you know what? Never gone hungry. Never missed a house payment. Never, you know, never, you know, wasn’t able to give my kids, my grandkids, Christmas gifts.
God is faithful. I agree. I agree with Paul here. Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel.
16 For if I preach the gospel, I have no reason to boast, because I am compelled to preach —and woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! (1 Corinthians 9:16, CSB)
I remember Jill one time when times were hard and we were trying to get the Firehouse Church started, you know, she kind of said, “Have you ever thought about doing something different?”
I thought, “Well, you know, I can do the bi-vocational thing.” But I really felt like the Lord had said, “No, just trust me in this.” And so I launched out twice, kind of bi-vocationally, and both times it was like, nah, I shouldn’t be doing this.
But anyway, I said—but I looked at her, and she thought I was being dramatic. And maybe I was, but I basically said, “If I stop preaching, I die.” And I kind of feel that. And so now as I’m approaching retirement, it’s like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait. So, you know, whoever, you know, takes over at the Firehouse Church, invite me for some guest appearances or I’m a goner, man. I’m a goner.
But really, I mean, the call—I’m not equating myself with the Apostle Paul by any means, but I get that when he says, “Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel. Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel.” And so that’s Paul’s defense. “Woe to me if I don’t preach the gospel. You cannot take this boast away from me.”
And he says because of this he’s obligated to no one, which is true. If you’re a pastor of a local church and you have a board and they pay you a salary, it’s got to be established up front: You do not dictate what I preach.
But there’s a sense sometimes you get blackmailed. Sometimes people try to blackmail you. I’ve had people say on several occasions who were upset with the direction that the church was going. These were not people on the leadership because those decisions are made as a group. I don’t make those decisions unilaterally. But people who didn’t agree with where the group was going would come in and talk to me. And they say, “If you don’t change this pastor…” And almost word for word, “I’m leaving and I’m taking my check with me.” I’ve heard that more than once. Not a lot, but I’ve heard it more than once.
And I always say, “Oh, no, please don’t do that. What do you want me to do?”
No, those of you who know me know that there’s another response that comes to mind that I also don’t articulate, or I articulate it in much kinder words than the thought that comes to mind. Something about a door hitting people at a particular… Anyway, I don’t say it. I think it, but I don’t say it.
But Paul says, “I’m obligated to no one. You don’t own me. This is why I can rebuke you. Because I’m not interested in your approval. I’m interested in your sanctification. I’m interested in your growth. I’m interested in having you be formed in Christ.”
And then he says this, and this has been misused, but he says, “To the Jew, I become a Jew. And to the Greek, I become a Greek.”
Again, two opposite extremes. The truth is down the middle. Some people have taken this passage, and they’ve used it to water down the gospel. To a culture that’s easily offended, “I don’t want to offend, so I’ll just gain a hearing, and I’ll be very, very seeker friendly, very, very warm and welcoming. But I won’t give them the whole truth until they take the bait.” And that’s dishonest.
I believe in being warm and welcoming. My goodness, let’s not be the mean church. Let’s be the nice church.
And one thing about small churches, when somebody comes in that typically is not a problem. You know, big churches are the churches where people come in and nobody talks to them because everybody thinks, oh, they must be regular. But a small church like this, when somebody comes in and visits, I mean, we’re on that person like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.
You know, everybody’s like, “Oh, you know…”
“I’m just here to fill out papers.”
“Okay. Want to come to church?”
“I’m crazy.”
“That’s okay. We don’t care.”
All right. But it can be watered down. I remember in college… this was famous back in college days… “Hey, I’m dating unbelievers. I’m a believer, but I’m dating unbelievers.” Remember what was that called, Brian? Missionary dating. “I’m doing missionary dating.” And actually sometimes it worked, but usually it worked when the affection was real.
But it always struck me as interesting, even back as a college boy, I recognized this. All the girls who were doing missionary dating were focusing in on cute Cameron and, you know, Harry the Hunk, you know. And all the boys who were doing missionary dating were focused in on all the girls in Chico State who would come out during the first warm day in Chico. And these girls would do this. I mean, it doesn’t happen now, but they would all just like, get in their bikinis and sunbathe on the lawn in Chico State. Hundreds of girls out there in bikinis. I crashed my bike more than once. Ran into a few trees, dumped it in the creek, you know…
But those guys… I wanted to pick up the handbook on missionary dating and say missionary dating is particularly designed to reach the hot ones. Because nobody missionary dated Dorky Dan or Big Betty. All right? No, you weren’t being a Jew to the Jews or a Greek to the Greek. You were being a normal college co-ed, hitting on people and using the name of Christ to justify it with your small group on Thursday night. All right?
Did they do missionary dating at Stanford? Too many Dorky Dans there? Yeah, there weren’t that many hunks out there. Football team was a small slice.
All right, so here you go. What does it mean to the Jew? Become a Jew to the—
Oh, and the error on the opposite extreme is we exclude people because we hold on to our rigid traditions instead of making the gospel accessible to people when nothing of the gospel is at stake. But all that’s at stake is a shift in culture.
You can say what you want about Chuck Smith, and I’m sure he’s not perfect. I’m sure he wasn’t a perfect man. I know he wasn’t a perfect man. I know Calvary Chapel wasn’t a perfect movement. I believe they got their eschatology completely wrong and the whole bit.
But one of the things I just admire about Chuck Smith and, to that matter, Jack Hayford at Church on the Way and other pastors—the original Jesus Movement pastor… and I wish I could remember his name. I got to read that book again, God’s Forever Family. In San Francisco… Conservative Baptist church. A hippie came to them and said, “Hey, man, I met Jesus. You got to come down to Haight Ashbury. That’s a huge mission field.” The pastor went down with him to Haight Ashbury, and he left. He said, “I can’t reach those kids.” But he said, “You can. And when you bring them to church, when you bring them to this church, I promise you they will be welcome.”
And basically, a tie-wearing, short hair pastor said, “They don’t have to change their clothes. I want them to get Christ.”
And the story—and I don’t know which is true. There’s two stories that go with this. Chuck Smith, the hippie, started coming, you know, to church. And the old folks in church were upset. They didn’t dress right, they didn’t speak Christianese, they didn’t know the hymns. They were just bothered by these, you know, folks in church. Sometimes they wouldn’t sit in the pew. They just sat, you know, cross-legged on the floor, because, “Man, that’s just the way to be free.”
And then the big complaint was, you know, “We just spent several thousand dollars on this carpet, and they got their dirty, grimy bare feet and sandaled feet coming in here, and they are destroying our new carpet. Pastor, what are you going to do about that? You got to teach these people some hygiene.”
In fact, that was Chuck Smith’s first… You know, his wife had the heart first. She said, “These kids need our prayer.” And he said, “These kids need a bath.” You know?
But the story goes, and here are the two stories, and I don’t know which one is true, but they came, the board came to Chuck and said, “You got to take care of this. They’re destroying our carpet.” Chuck Smith said, “It’ll be taken care of by next Sunday.” And everybody came to church next Sunday. And Chuck Smith had the new carpet torn out of the church.
Right on, Chuck Smith, that’s being a Greek to the Greeks and a Jew to the Jews.
The other story, and this is the one that’s portrayed in the Jesus Revolution movie, is the next Sunday he was at the front door, and he was washing everyone’s feet when they came into the sanctuary. Either way, he nailed this when he did that. He nailed this when he did that.
The original Jesus Movement in San Francisco, it cracked me up. I was reading about it, and to the extent they wrestled with this, how do we be authentic Christians but not add our Christian cultural baggage into a message that other people won’t be able to hear the gospel because of our cultural baggage.
And so, they actually had discussions, the early hippies, “What drugs do we need to give up?” And they decided, “Yeah, we should probably give up LSD and heroin.” But they decided, at least the original band decided, “We can’t give up smoking pot because if we stop smoking pot, they will think we’re narcs because the narcs don’t smoke pot. And then, therefore, they’ll reject us.”
And then my favorite story was in those—us oldies remember that you know, a big thing in the late ’60s and early ’70s because people just wanted to be free, get rid of all those, you know, cultural inhibitions. And so they established nudist colonies. And so people would hang out at these nudist colonies. And the only rule was no clothes. Just nude all the time, you know, and you’re just free and you’re nude. And it’s like, yeah, well, don’t go picking berries. You know, don’t go out in the bushes.
But, you know, they were nude. And so this guy just… “How do I reach these people at the nudist colony?” So, bless his heart, everything but a big King James Bible. And he went into the nudist colony and started sharing Jesus.
All right, you say, “Well, Kevin, are you telling us to preach naked?”
I’m telling you that essentially that’s not a violation of the gospel. That’s not a violation of the gospel. The English missionaries did a great job missionizing the world, but they made huge mistakes. When they moved from foggy, cold, rainy England in their modest full suits and, you know, neck-to-toe wool skirts, and they go someplace like the Philippines and they’d preach the gospel, and these Filipino natives would convert to Christ and immediately they would dress the women and men up as British people, right, Brian? That was the history. The early history.
What? No, but that’s the early history in the 1800s, 1700s-1800s.
And these people would die from heat exhaustion. They never asked the important question. They knew what modesty looked like in Britain, but they didn’t know what modesty looked like in that culture.
The important thing isn’t “You have to prescribe to our understanding of modesty in our culture.” But whatever modesty is in your culture, modesty is a biblical principle. Obviously, when it’s 100 degrees and 95% humidity, modesty cannot entail full-length wool skirts. All right? It just can’t. People die from that.
And so Paul says, “I want to reach people but without compromising the message.” The message is unchanging; the method is flexible. Behold, no choir, no pipe organ. None of you are wearing suits. And my goodness, I’m scandalized. You women are wearing slacks and you don’t have your heads covered. You brazen women, you.
All right, good. You can now pray and prophesy. The rest? I’m not so sure. There you go, Jamie, put the glasses up there. There you go.
All right. Then, Paul, finally, he concludes his message and says, “I’m like an athlete. I run and I fight to win. I’m disciplined. I’m disciplined.” There are two things that make somebody an effective Christian. The anointing of the Holy Spirit and the discipline, the discipleship in that person’s life. And it’s not either or.
Michael Jordan, one time an incredibly gifted basketball player, perhaps one of the most gifted basketball athletes to ever live, went to a coach and said, “I want to be the greatest ever.”
And the coach says, “Then you need to work hard, harder than all these guys.”
And Michael Jordan didn’t hear the coach. He said, “I work as hard as these guys.”
And Roy Williams, the assistant coach, said, “No, that’s not what I said. You have more talent than all these guys. But if you want to be the greatest ever, there’s somebody else out there with as much talent as you. Which one’s going to work harder?”
That’s the story of every great athlete, every great composer, every great surgeon, every great engineer, every great farmer, and every great parent. Discipleship, intentionality. You want anything significant to happen? You know, when Spain won the World Cup, Stevin? It wasn’t this afternoon. It was when they were six years old, they got into the Spanish soccer system. They’ve been trained, coached, and disciplined in that system all the way till their twenties. Then their supreme athleticism melds together with this system, and they become the world champions.
And they all dance and sing and we go, “Oh, wouldn’t that be great, to be the world champions.” There’s a price to that. There’s a price to that.
You want to be effective as a Christian disciple? Then be a disciple. Discipline your body.
We play to win the game. That’s why we’re in discipleship.
Yesterday, went to my grandson’s baseball game, and they played a game, went extra innings. Really close game. They came back, then the other team came back, kept going into extra innings, and finally the score was tied. And it looks like we’re going to go to play another extra inning. They have a guy on third base and a batter comes up. They have two outs, and the batter comes up, and he hits a fly ball to left field. If the kid catches it, we’re going to another extra inning. But the poor boy dropped it.
And the mothers on the other team are like mothers universal. It’s not like “They’re the bad guys; we’re the good guys.” All the mothers are the same. They said the exact same thing the mothers on our team would have said. First of all, they cheered wildly. “Way to go, Tommy. Way to go, Quincy. Way to go, boys. Great game. We won. We won. We won.” Then they looked at our kid out in left field, wiping the tears away from his cheek. And all the mothers like, “Oh, that poor kid.”
And his mother was sitting by me, and she was devastated. You know, you could just see she wasn’t crying or anything, but you could just see the pain in her face, like, “Oh, my gosh, my kid feels terrible.” And they’re like, “Oh, that poor kid.”
And, you know, after the game, Jill and I are driving away, and I go, “Yeah, poor Ryder. That was tough. You know, Noah”—my grandson—”dropped a pass earlier. It didn’t cost his team a run or the game. But, yeah, that was tough.”
She goes, “I know.”
And then my wife said the worst thing, almost grounds for divorce. Just the absolute most horrible thing anybody can say about a sporting competition. “I wish they’d just tie so nobody felt bad.”
And I just like, “Blasphemy!” You do not play all those innings, you do not go to all those practices, you do not sacrifice all that time to tie so nobody feels bad.
There was a famous coach, Herm Edwards, and they were questioning him about a call he made. “Why did you make that call?”
And he just was tired of the reporters, their stupid questions. And this has become classic. They still quote it 30 years later. “You play to win the game. You coach to win the game.” The Seahawks won the Super Bowl. They did all those hot, sweaty workouts in July, all that weight training, all that exercise. Why? For that moment of glory at the end.
Paul is saying, “That’s what it means to be a disciple of Christ. You run this race, but you don’t run to tie. You don’t run because it’s just fun to run.” No, there’s all sorts of recreational runners out there. Let them do it. You want to win the gold? Then you get up at 4 o’ clock in the morning and you run. You join the Academy and you sacrifice.
And that stuff isn’t really worth that much. That’s fleeting glory. But, oh, my goodness, you live a discipled life, you live an intentional prayer life, you live as a Christian, as a Christian person… You’re anointed then by the Holy Spirit, and you combine those two—you will bear fruit for the kingdom. Whether you see it or not, your life will bear fruit for the kingdom.
You play to win the game. You discipline yourself. Discipline simply means being a disciple. You say your prayers, you read your Bible, you go to church, you give your money away. You do the Christian disciplines, not because you have to, but because of the prize.
And Paul says, “I do that so at the end of the day”—Paul says this—”at the end of the day, after preaching to y’all, I won’t be disqualified.”
Two schools of thought on that. One is he’s talking there about losing his salvation. The other one is he’s talking there about losing a reward. “I’ll be disqualified from winning the reward that I could have won.” And there will be rewards in the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus is quite clear about that. Every cup of cold water given in His name will receive a reward.
And so, as one who does not believe in “once saved, always saved,” I could see where he’s talking about—he’s making the drastic statement that “After everything I’ve done as an apostle for Christ, and all the beatings I’ve taken, and all the things and all the churches I planted, I still could apostatize and lose all of this if I just get lazy and sloppy about this.”
The other position is that I’m not going to bear all the fruit that I could have borne and just lose that reward. In either case, he says, “I’m not going to do either. I’m going to play to win the game.”
One day, dear ones, inescapable, inescapable. Inevitable. It’s going to happen. You’re going to be face to face with Jesus. You’re going to be face to face with Jesus and it’ll be, well, you will receive love, you will receive forgiveness, you’ll receive acceptance. You’re a child of God. You’ll be welcomed into the family, and you’ll enter into your inheritance. And to whatever level we played the game, we’ll probably receive a “well done.”
I’ve often thought there’s lots of people that I want to say thank you to when I get to eternity. People who wrote books that I read, you know… Peter Kreeft, whom you were talking about, certainly C.S. Lewis, John Wimber, Jack Hayford… people that I’ve never met, but who, you know, John Wesley… I’ve benefited greatly. My great-grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, who took her to the Baptist church and prayed for her whole family. Just people that I wanted to say thank you to.
I thought, “Man, some of those people are going to have a long line. They’re going to have a long thank you line,” you know. And I remember thinking this, and not out of vain glory, but just thinking, “This is how I want to live my life. I want there to be a long line of, ‘Hey, besides thanking Jesus, I just kind of want to come and thank you for what you allowed Jesus to do in your life that helped me.'”
I really do want that to be a long line. I think that would be a great reward in terms of heavenly rewards. It’s just people saying, “You know, you never knew this, but that time when you said, ‘Did anybody hear from God when I said that prayer?’ I actually heard from God for the first time. And it opened the door to me hearing from God. Now, I didn’t get up and tell you that, even though you implored me to do so, because I was still very mean and selfish at that point in my life, and I let you hang out to dry. But I just want to say right now, thank you for doing that, and I’m sorry I let you hang out to dry.”
And I’ll say, “You’re forgiven. All is well. All is well.”
So, we have a great Savior. And the Bible says He endured the cross because He played to win the game. He endured the cross for what? The prize that was set before Him, and the prize that was set before Him was getting back what is rightfully His—you. Getting back His kingdom, getting back His children, taking it back from the usurper and building what He’s always wanted to build: a great eternal family, co-heirs with Christ.
And so we get to participate in that. And He told us to come and never forget and feed on His blood and on His body, that He changed the world by a sacrificial death. The God of the universe.
Paul sets an example for us. He doesn’t demand his rights and lays down his life for the Corinthians in a way. He’s simply following King Jesus. He’s simply following King Jesus, who laid down… “Have this attitude in you which was in Christ Jesus,” Philippians says. “Although He existed in the form of God, He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but He emptied himself and became a man, taking the form of a servant. And He humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, (Philippians 2:6-7, CSB)
And so, Jesus comes and He says, “This is who I am and now I’m highly exalted.”
And He tells us the same thing. As we follow His example of descending into humility and love, God then will exalt us to the highest of glory. And so take this meal and say, “Thank you for the great gift.” He’s standing right there. Just tell Him, “Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you for your body and blood that was given for me.”
The post 2026.7.19 TFHC – 2027.7.19 TFHC – Paul The Apostle | 1 Corinthians 9:1-27 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
July 12, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
So, 1 Corinthians 8.
1 Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “we all have knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know it. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by him. 4 About eating food sacrificed to idols, then, we know that “an idol is nothing in the world,” and that “there is no God but one.” 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth—as there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father. All things are from him, and we exist for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through him, and we exist through him. 7 However, not everyone has this knowledge. Some have been so used to idolatry up until now that when they eat food sacrificed to an idol, their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8 Food will not bring us close to God. We are not worse off if we don’t eat, and we are not better if we do eat. 9 But be careful that this right of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone sees you, the one who has knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, won’t his weak conscience be encouraged to eat food offered to idols? 11 So the weak person, the brother or sister for whom Christ died, is ruined by your knowledge. 12 Now when you sin like this against brothers and sisters and wound their weak conscience, you are sinning against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food causes my brother or sister to fall, I will never again eat meat, so that I won’t cause my brother or sister to fall. (1 Corinthians 8:1-13, CSB)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength and Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So, Paul is dealing with a series of issues in the Corinthian Church that he planted and spent 18 months there. And so he introduces each issue with these words: “Now about…,” “Now, concerning…”
And so the first issue, if you remember, were divisions in the Church—”I’m of Apollos, I’m of Paul, I’m of Cephas.”
The second has to do with sexual morality and what marriage means and what it means to be husband and wife and marriage and divorce and singleness and all that. The Corinthians were saying first, there were divisions. Second, they were saying, “Since we have liberty in Christ, we can still go to the temple prostitutes and indulge there with the prostitutes. But, you know, we’re free in Christ to do that. We don’t worship those idols anymore. But we still…”
And Paul says, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t join your body, which is joined to Christ, to that of a prostitute. And don’t you know, in God’s ideal of marriage, one man, one woman… It’s found in Genesis… one man, one woman. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife, not his wives, and the two will become one flesh.”
5 and he also said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? (Matthew 19:5, CSB)
And that is strongly reinforced then in the New Testament. I know in the Old Testament they practice polygamy. There are reasons for that, historical reasons. There’s reasons God allowed it, mostly for the protection, safety, and care of women. But God’s ideal has always been to represent His covenant love with His people, with the picture of marriage. And so that he reinforces that to the Corinthians.
Now, the third issue he’s bringing up is food offered to idols. And you think, well, if the Bible is ever irrelevant, it’s this. I mean, none of us today are in a quandary over—you know, we went to Safeway, and we were looking in the meat aisle and said, “I don’t know if this food has been offered to idols or not. I don’t know whether I should get it or not.” You know, when I went over to Brian’s house and he would graciously barbecue up for us burgers and brats, I never—my conscience was never smitten with—”I wonder if, you know, Brian dedicated these brats and burgers to idols before he put them on the grill.” I just ate them. They were good, you know, and when Stevin cooks something up, same thing, it’s like, it’s good.
But there are analogies in our modern world. And the basic point Paul is making here is don’t let your Christian liberty, or as he calls it, your knowledge—and he uses that sarcastically with the Corinthians. Oh, your knowledge allows you to do this? Well, does your knowledge allow you to destroy another brother or sister in Christ who has a conscious qualm about this thing? And yes, you think their consciences are weak and you’re strong, but when you wound them, when you hurt them, you’re doing a great disservice.
And so he starts by just being very clear up front. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. And so this section is about simply this: the primacy of love over knowledge. The primacy of love over what you know or think you know.
And so he deals with that because the Corinthians thought that they had arrived. They were a young church, but they were an arrogant church. They were all that. And later we’ll get to this issue on spiritual pride when he talks to them about spiritual gifts. You know, they use spiritual gifts in the wrong way. They use spiritual gifts to elevate their status. Look, I speak in tongues, you know, a lot… And I prophesy a lot… I’m more spiritual than you… I’m free to eat meat offered to idols… I’m more spiritual than you. And he’s saying, “You’re not spiritual at all. You’re destroying your brothers and sisters. You’re not spiritual at all.”
Knowledge can only lead, he says here, to being puffed up and the sin of pride. Does that mean don’t study? No. The Bible says study to show yourself approved. Does that mean be willfully ignorant? No, don’t be willfully ignorant. But one thing’s true. There are very few areas in human life that are more prone and more dangerous to the sin of pride than intellect.
And I always preach to myself. When I preach, I just don’t preach to you. And this one applies to me, man, because I love, love, love, love to win the argument.
And part of that is… I think part of that is a gift. You know, I think logically, I think reasonably—I think I do—and I think things through, and I can articulate them. And that, I think that helps me be a teacher, but it also can make me a jerk. And I’ve done this.
Now, some people are not offended because when I basically debate somebody theologically—not just theology, by the way, baseball versus sailing, for example, which is kind of a no-brainer—but, you know, I’ll debate people about all sorts of things, and I’m very opinionated. I’m very opinionated. And actually only a handful, not all sorts of things. There’s only a handful of issues I think I know anything about. You know, I would not debate Stevin about horses. Like, you’re the guy. I know nothing about horses. It’s just that they’re big, and I don’t want to get on anything that big. When I have a car, why would I? But I’ll trust you that there’s fun and joy in that. I’ll trust you with that.
You know, I wouldn’t debate Brian about anything to do at all with math or engineering. I easily concede, you know way more than me about all that stuff. You know way more than me about bicycle repair, you know, you know way more than me.
But when it comes to, like, the three or four issues that I think I know something about, you know, there we go. And some people like that interchange, and they’re not offended by it. Other people, when you’re just talking about things and say, “Well, what about this opinion? What about that?” And you think you’re just bringing stuff up, actually they see that as an attack. It took me a long time to learn that. People are like, “Why are you attacking me?” I’m not attacking you. I’m actually helping relieve you of your stupidity and ignorance in my humility and brilliance. I’m your friend here.
Other people are fine with it. Other people are fine. You know, I got in an argument online with Josh D’Intinosanto, who’s our one Calvinist at Firehouse Church, and we were debating online. We were going at it, you know, it was on Facebook. And we had friends—I had friends interject and say, “Now, now boys, be good to each other.”
And neither Josh nor I were the least bit offended. I mean, you know, I called him a gravy-sucking, determinist Calvinist, and he called me a semi-Pelagian, heretic wimp. And we were fine with that. It was like, all in love and so…
But other people get offended by that sort of thing, and so you got to be careful.
And so there was another guy I was debating with online, and the Lord just really—it was during COVID, and he was stating the principle, he’s a Christian man, and he was stating the principle that out of Christian love all Christians should get the vaccine because if you love your brother and your sister, you will get the vaccine so you won’t get and transmit the disease. And I said, “I concede that point if the data showed that the vaccine stopped you from getting and transmitting the disease.” But very quickly after the vaccine got going, the evidence seemed to suggest that the primary benefit of the vaccine was that it prevented people who had comorbidities and got Covid from nearly a serious case of COVID. And I thought, well then great, let my 80-year-old mother-in-law get the vaccine. I’m entirely in favor of it, but I don’t want my, you know, 30-something-year-old pregnant daughter to get it. And I certainly don’t want my grandsons to get it because I’m not sure what this thing does. You know, if you’re 80, 85 and it does something a little cattywampus to your body, yeah, you’re good. You’ll be all right.
So, you know, we started arguing on Facebook over this, and we started going at it, you know. And at one point, you know, the Lord said, “Kevin, you’re not gonna change his mind. He’s not gonna change your mind.” He said, “It’s his page. Let him have the last word.”
And I realized at that point, my pride. It’s like, because he had just said something that I had a perfect comeback to. “No, that point doesn’t make sense because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Touche.
And the Lord said, “I want you to let him have the last word.” I said, “Okay, after I write this paragraph, then he can write the last word.” And it was very clear. The Lord said, “No, you keep that paragraph to yourself. Stop it.”
And there have been several times since then where the Lord has just said to me, “No, you don’t have to have the last word. You don’t have to win the argument.”
I got a feeling when I die and meet Jesus, He’s not going to say to me, “Hey, how many of those Calvinists did you put in their place? Hey, how many of those woke liberals did you show how wrong they were?”
Oh, this is a big one for me. I’m at a baseball game, and some guy behind me is trying to impress his girlfriend, telling her stuff about baseball that is just wrong. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the rule. He doesn’t know what the play means, you know, but he’s like talking like, “Yeah, baby, I’m a baseball guy.” There’s everything in me that just wants to turn around and nicely say, “Actually, that’s not true. This is what the rule is. This is why this happened.”
And of course, I never do it because the Holy Spirit says, “Nobody cares about your opinions.”
But the real principle is it’s better—being right is the booby prize of eternity. Loving people is the eternal reward. Love builds the body of Christ. Arguments do not. Debate does not.
I’m not saying that truth doesn’t matter. I’m not saying there isn’t a time to stand for truth. But there are many things we divide over and get angry over that are really tertiary issues. And it’s fine to have an opinion, and it’s fine in the right context, with the right people to share those opinions and express those opinions. Like I said, I love that kind of environment. But many times it is wrong. And I love this: If you think you’re smart, if you think you have knowledge, you probably don’t.
And I’ve actually discovered this the more—and anybody who studied any subject deeply has discovered what? The more you know, the more you know you, you don’t know. You know a ton more about farming, Ats, than you did five years ago. And not of her own wishes, so does Aiko. But one of the things you probably realize is, oh my gosh, there’s so much to this. There’s so much about raising pigs I don’t know. You know, there’s just so much, there’s so much stuff about owning, you know, and starting a farm.
The minute you begin to think you know something, the minute you realize, oh my goodness, there’s all sorts of intricacies in this and there’s all sorts of… And so really intelligent people, really well-informed people are often very humble about, you know, the vast amounts of information and knowledge that are available. And that’s a great attitude because God knows so much more than we do about everything. We have such an infinitesimal grasp of reality.
And so Paul says, you know, the more you know, the more you don’t know. And if you think you really know a lot, you’re probably ignorant. Then he says this, which I love. “But if you love God, then you’re known by God.”
I don’t know about you, but the most scary Scripture in the Bible comes from Matthew 7, where Jesus says to those who come before him and say, “Didn’t we cast out demons in your name? Didn’t we prophesy in your name? Didn’t we do miracles in your name?”
22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ (Matthew 7:22, CSB)
And he says, “Depart from me.” And he doesn’t say, “You never knew me.” What does he say? “I never knew you.”
23 Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers! ‘ (Matthew 7:23, CSB)
But here Paul says, “If you love God, you’re known by God.”
Let me tell you something else because the Bible is very clear on this. John is very clear on this, as well as the rest of Scriptures. If you love God, you’ll love your neighbor. Why? Because He does. The most dull, uninteresting, boorish, annoying, obnoxious, mean-spirited person is loved by God.
I saw a great meme. So funny. That’s the one value of social media. It’s not arguing as much as I, you know, would like to indulge. The one great thing about memes is humor. My wife and I always say, “Look at this.” We’ll show each other stuff. “This is a crack up.”
And this one was just hilarious, this little cartoon. And Jesus is speaking, you know, He’s preaching to a bunch of people, like Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Love everybody.” And then the little voice bubble comes from the crowd: “Even Charlie?” Another one: “Yeah, Charlie’s a jerk.” “Yeah. Do we have to love Charlie?”
And Jesus, kind of exasperated, goes, kind of sighs, goes, “That’s what everybody means. Yes, love Charlie.”
Then you see another from a guy standing off on the side, another little bubble says, “That’s right! Suck it, losers.”
And Jesus has got His hand on His head. “Charlie, you’re not making this easier, you know.”
Love everybody. Who’s your neighbor? Whoever you’re in contact with, whoever you have road rage at, or whoever has road rage at you. Whoever is that government employee at the department of licensing who is going through a bunch of ridiculous bureaucratic questions that are just eating your time and life away. And you just have to smile and realize this is their job. This is what they’re trained to do. It’s not their fault, you know. And love them. Be kind. And be kind. Be kind to your wife and be kind to your husband, even at the times they annoy you. And just love the person you’re with. And just be kind and be compassionate and be patient and allow the love that you have for God to fill your soul. And love other people.
God is not going to ask me how many people I won the argument with. I do think He’s going to ask me, “How many people did you love well?”
And this is Paul’s argument. “I don’t care if you know that meat sold in the idol market is okay to eat. If your brother thinks it’s wrong, don’t sit in front of him and say, ‘Well, I have liberty in Christ and you just are a weak brother.’ Just eat something else that night.” Because eating food does not make you spiritual, and it doesn’t make you unspiritual. An idol in and of itself is nothing. A piece of wood, a gold statue. They’re nothing. They’re created things.
Now, there are many impostors. There are spiritual powers that are behind those idols. Paul says, “There’s only one God,” but he says, “Then there are many gods, many lords, smaller case, G and L.”
What’s he talking about? Well, remember when we read Michael Heiser and talked about the supernatural realm, the reality of the watchers, the reality of the principalities and powers and spiritual forces of wickedness? Those are real things and they seek the worship of human beings, and they do that through the presentation of idols. But if you don’t believe that that idol is anything and you know that that power is real, but you acknowledge one God, one Lord, then that thing is powerless over you, and that meat has no power over you.
Listen, demons work the demonic realm. The hellish realm only works through the agreement and invitation of others. In other words, if you believe the lie, the lie has power over you. If you don’t believe the lie, the lie has no power.
There have been times where I’ve been doing a deliverance, and the demon has been kind of hard and snarky and resistant. And I’ll finally just say, “Wait, my boss rose from the dead. And your boss and all of those who work with you, all of hell, could not hold Him in the grave. you. You know that and I know that. And you have no authority here because of that.” See, the power is in knowing and believing the truth.
And so Paul says, “Your knowledge is right. You can eat meat offered that has been offered to the idols and now is being sold at the market.”
That’s what was taking place, by the way. They would offer these sacrifices at these idol temples, these idolatrous temples to these false gods. And then, because there was extra meat left over, they would just sell it at the meat market. And so people would buy it, and people would eat it.
And Paul says, “That’s fine. I don’t care. I don’t care. If they got the best prices on ribeye this week, knock yourself out. But if you’re inviting a brother over to dinner who used to be heavily involved in idol worship, and that’s a stumbling block for him, eat vegetables. Eat vegetables.” Why? Because the principle of love is greater than the principle of knowledge. Those kinds of things, eating or drinking, do not make us more spiritual. But not everybody knows that.
In our culture, it’s a few other things, right? I was an interim pastor at a denomination, and the denomination had a 16-statement statement of faith. And that was a good Christian denomination. I agreed with 14 out of the 16. Well, because I was working for that denomination or at least one of their churches, I never mentioned the two that I didn’t agree with. They were off the table. They’re tertiary issues. They’re not matters of, you know, first-level issues. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is He our Lord? Is He our King? Did He rise from the dead? We all agreed on those things. We all agreed on the big things.
But they had two things in their statement of faith that I was like, yeah, this is why I’m not that denominated. That’s why I’m not a pastor in that denomination. I couldn’t sign on to those things. And I feel like if you’re going to be a pastor and represent a group and they say, “This is what we believe,” I feel like you got be about 100% there. That’s just one of my scruples.
I have friends who don’t believe that. I have friends in that denomination who actually have at least one, sometimes both, of the disagreements that I had, and they said, “Yeah, I just kind of held my nose and signed the paper.” I have scruples about that, right? That offends me. I can’t do that. But you know what? That’s my business, not theirs.
Anyway, at this church, I didn’t know—it’s not in their statement of faith, but it is in their code of practice—that this church is officially teetotalers. All drinking is wrong.
Now, I just want to confess to you. I’m a teetotaler. My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. All my uncles were alcoholics. Clancy family as far as… and on my mother’s side, too, plenty of them. You know, why did God invent whiskey? Why did God allow whiskey to be invented? So the Irish wouldn’t rule the world. All right? And we’re all Irish.
I don’t know if it’s a genetic thing or some cultures are more prone or it’s a cultural thing, but I just grew up culturally just infused with drunkenness, and it was repulsive to me. And so I just didn’t… I remember the last time I took a drink, it was like early 1990s, and my wife and I went out to dinner. She went to the restroom, and I’m watching a ball game on TV, and I order a rum and Coke. It was kind of tasty. It was like, I usually didn’t like alcohol anyway, but like, oh, that’s kind of nice.
And I know from my previous medical experiences of getting, you know, pain shots—you know how some people just hate those and they hate that feeling? I love that feeling. I could so easily be a heroin addict. Like, yeah, take me to the floaty place. And so I knew that that addictive propensity was in me, and I didn’t only know it from that one time. One time, I smoked marijuana… for seven straight years. So I knew. I knew I was prone to addiction. And I thought, I’ve seen this monkey on people’s back. I don’t want it.
And so that night, the first time I really liked what alcohol tastes like, that night, that scared me. And I said, “That’s it. I’m not gonna have another drink.” And I haven’t since like 1992 or whatever it was.
However, I’m not a teetotaler. In principle, if I went to your house and you had a glass of wine or you had a beer, I would not be the least bit offended or upset. If we smoked a cigar… Oh, there’s another one. But if we smoked a cigar out my backyard and you even brought a little bourbon with you, or whiskey because you like to pair it, as long as you didn’t get drunk, I’m good with it. That’s something people do; that’s something people enjoy. It’s fine, go ahead.
Anyway, I preached at that church. I preached my view of alcohol, making sure to tell them I was a—I didn’t know their principal. And oh my gosh, you would have thought I said to at least some of those people, you’d have thought I said, “You know, it’s not really wrong to sacrifice your children to demons.” You know, I had brought up demon drink, and I realized that I offended some.
And so instead of arguing my case when they came in and said that they were hurt by that, offended, I said, “I’m sorry I was ignorant of your denominational stance. Please accept my apology. I should have never preached that.” I was right, in my view of my view. But I was wrong because inadvertently I violated the principle of love. That should have been off the table. I could preach lots of things besides, “Hey, it’s okay to drink.”
There is Christian liberty. Paul says, “Big deal, we all have liberty. But if you feel guilt about it, don’t do it. If you feel guilt about it, don’t do it. If your brother or sister feels guilt about it, don’t do it and tempt them to sin.”
AA, meeting right over there. You know, it would be wrong for us on somebody’s first week of sobriety to say, “Hey, brother, I really… You know, Sunday night, man, it’s great, and it just culminates my week. And before I go home, I just like to go down to this little pub and just grab a beer. Why don’t you join me?” No, no, don’t do it.
Jesus says, “Better that a millstone be casted around your neck and thrown in the depths of the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
6 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away—it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:6, CSB)
Your brother’s well-being, your sister’s well-being is more important than our precious right to Christian liberty, our being right. It’s better to deny your liberty than to cause someone else to stumble. You don’t have to flaunt it. Who cares if you’re right? Who cares if you’re right?
I remember the first time in my life I was humbled. And God has not stopped ever since. I guess I need a lot of humbling. But I remember the first time, I was 3 years old and I had a tricycle. I would ride this tricycle, and I would ride it vigorously. Oh, I would ride it. Adults, trying to be kind and build you up, would overinflate their compliments on my bicycle riding speed. “Oh, Kevin, you’re just the fastest bicycle rider ever.” I took them at their word. “Wow, I’m the fastest bicycle rider ever.”
So we had at a park by our house, in summer, there was a bicycle bicycle festival day. We all decorated our bicycles, got ribbons and streamers. We all did up our bicycles and we showed them off, and they graded that. I didn’t care if I won that competition. I didn’t win that competition. I didn’t care.
But I knew the last competition… oh baby, it was going down. The last competition was a bicycle race. Never dawned on me at 3, 4 years old—this is one of my earliest memories—never dawned on me that 10 or 12-year-old boys with 10 speeds would probably win the race over me and a tricycle because I am the fastest bicycle rider ever. That was deeply ingrained in me. And boy, these, these kids are in for a schooling. They’re going to be so impressed with how fast I go on my tricycle.
So, “On your mark, get set… Go!” Zoom, zoom, zoom.
I think I came in third to the last. Two other small kids… I think one of them was crippled. You know, I was like, I was devastated. I thought I knew something. That day I learned I knew nothing.
Now it’s a shame that God has had to teach me that lesson over again. But I am committed, at 67 and a half years old, I’m committed to being able to stand before Jesus and not get any accolades or how clever I was, how smart I was, however I was, whatever. I don’t think He’s going to be impressed.
My wife’s not impressed, amazingly enough, with how many baseball stats I know. In fact, when I start to bring them up, I get an eye roll. Can you imagine? I spent years accumulating this information. It’s like, “Honey do you want to know what OPS means?” And she’s like, “Never, never.” Oh, man.
That’s on base percentage plus slugging percentage as an indicator of how good a hitter really is versus batting average, which is a way overrated stat. Aren’t you glad I shared that with you now? Aren’t you glad you have that piece of information that will help you with Micah? “Well, Micah, what’s your OPS?” You know, so…
No, what I want when I stand before Jesus, all kidding aside, is I want Him to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, because you gave a cup of cold water to the homeless person outside of the church in Bremerton. Because you shut up and listened to somebody with an opinion other than yours. And you were kind and you loved them. Because you delighted in traveling halfway around the world to see a group of people who are, by this world’s standards, infinitesimally less blessed than you are. And you were delighted and humbled to be in their presence and to see their delight at handing Bibles to them.”
And your church didn’t really have anything to do with that. But you glommed onto this mission trip, and you were delighted with the pastor and the people of that other church at the good work that their church did, because guess what? That’s my church, too. One church.
I told Peter, I said, “This is a win for City Chapel.” And then I looked and said, “It’s a win for the church of Bremerton.” And it was, Bill. It delights me even now to see, to just remember the light in those people’s eyes as we handed them their Bibles. It humbles me. It humbled me to sit and talk to those pastors and realize these men are facing trials that I never have to deal with. And they’re doing it faithfully and prayerfully, and they probably do not know the ontological arguments for the existence of God. And they’re miles ahead of me at being good pastors.
So, dear ones, love looks out for one another, not just ourselves. It’s as simple as that. What is love? It’s not a gooey feeling. I mean, I remember when Jill and I first started dating. It’s like, oh, my gosh, I couldn’t, you know, just wanted to see her all the time. She wanted to see me all the time. We had that, you know, that infatuation going on.
Nope. Love is—by the way, yesterday, 45 years. Thank you for your applause. Really applaud for her. Applaud for her. That’s why you didn’t clap. You all were thinking, “Wow, Jill’s an amazing person. That’s incredible.”
I’m just saying, in five more years, if I’m still around and still preaching to you guys, I want a big blowout. You know, I want gift certificates for bacon cheeseburgers or something. I want a few cigars. I want something big. So…
Yeah, you should try one before you knock it. Wednesday night, my house. She used to, when she was fun. Yeah, I think it was when, you know, she used to like baseball and cigars when she was in that twitterpated phase and wanted to impress me. And now, 45 years later, like, “That stinks.” We’re happily married, though. She’s a delight.
All right, dear ones, love looks out for one another, not just ourselves.
On the night that He was betrayed, Jesus Christ took bread and He broke it. He said, “This is my body, which is given for you, and this is my blood, which is shed for you.”
19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19, CSB)
There is nothing that has ever happened on planet Earth more revolutionary, more transformative than the God of the universe coming to earth in Nazareth as an obscure carpenter in a poor, occupied country and dying the worst, most humiliating form of death because of His great love. Nobody before Jesus and even people after Jesus. This is scandalous. Even today, Muslims think this is scandalous. Scandalous. We just sang, “How great is our God.” A great God would never do that. A great God would come as a conquering king. Guess what? He’s coming back as a conquering king.
But He came first to demonstrate His love as a humble servant. And so with His beloved disciples, He tells them, “Never forget that when you come together, I want to invite you to my table, and I want you to do this and be bonded to one another and be bonded to me in this shared meal.”
Don’t come with your opinions on what it means. You know, me, I have opinions on, you know, the communion debate and what it means. But I love what my hero, C.S. Lewis says. You know, “After all, the command was take and eat, not take and understand.”
I’ll take communion with an Anabaptist who just feels this is just straight symbolism, nothing more, and a Roman Catholic who thinks it’s literally the body and blood of Christ, and me who think it’s spiritually partaking in the body and blood of Christ, but not physically or literally.
And we can, even if we can do it peacefully, we can even sit down after church and talk about what that means. But here, right now, all I care is my King never said going—He never said, “Sing songs every week.” He never said, “Listen to a guy go on and on talking every week.” Though I think those are great exercises.
He did say, “Do this when you gather together.” So, dear ones, what a great privilege that the King of the universe, the humble King who transformed the world with a sacrificial death, not with a sword and bombs and an army—the humble King, now in His great love, invites us to His table. So be nourished tonight. Come and take and eat.
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June 7, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon.
The post 2026.6.7 TFHC – Being Filled With The Spirit | Acts 2:1-13 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
Message by Ats Kagawa
Transcript coming soon.
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Message by P. Thomas Omenta Nyangau
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
So this evening we have as our guest Thomas Omenta, and he is a pastor in Kenya, East Africa. I’ll be going in a couple of weeks to visit Thomas and see the ministry there. He is doing Bible translations with our friend Eric Roberts for Wycliffe Associates, translating Bibles. Well, he’ll share with you. Translating Bibles basically into the heart language of the different tribal communities in Eastern Africa, helping get those projects going. He’s also working on planting churches. He’s going to share some stories tonight of some of the things God has done through that ministry.
I met Thomas over a year ago. He was out again visiting Eric, and Eric and I were planning a Bible study at his house on a Saturday night that Thomas was there. Dallas Elder, the ministry director for Grace Covenant, also happened to be visiting me that same weekend. So, Dallas and I drove down and met Eric for dinner before the Bible study. Thomas was there, and we met Thomas and we went out and we had some barbecue. Very few things bond like good barbecue, so we bonded over barbecue.
And I don’t know if it was the barbecue or the fellowship, but Thomas thought, “I like these guys.” We went to the Bible study together and we prayed together.
Afterwards, Thomas kind of approached Eric and said, “You know, I haven’t found for the ministry I do I haven’t found a covering in Africa that I’m comfortable with. Would the Grace Covenant consider being my covering?”
Eric called us and said, “What would you guys think about that?” I know Dallas is very, very cautious about that. He doesn’t want to just give it.
Many times in Africa and other places, Americans have gone in and said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll cover you.” And it has not been a good relationship. The Americans weren’t invested in the relationship. They just wanted numbers. They wanted, “Oh, we’re doing this in Africa,” to have bragging rights. And for the Africans, oftentimes it was like, “Well, you know, Americans got all the money. We just want all the money.” And so, you know, the relationship started on a bad footing in both places.
So with Grace Covenant, when we, you know, develop ministries in different countries, we lead with, not money and resources we lead with relationship because that’s what a spiritual covering means. We’re invested in you and your family, and you’re invested in us, and we try to get together.
And of course, travel makes it difficult, though we live in a marvelous day and age where you can actually Brian, can you imagine this? You don’t have to ride a bike to Africa. It would take a while even for you. You don’t have to get on a boat with sails and trust the wind. Hopefully, you don’t get swamped by a storm and capsize in Paris in the ocean. It takes you eight months.
I was complaining about the plane flight that I’m going to take, that it’s going to be 24 hours and hours in the airport. Then I thought, well, I could be going to Africa 300 years ago and it would’ve been a little harder.
So anyway, the world we live in and the technology where Thomas and I can communicate over WhatsApp and etc . And we can travel back and forth as time and resources permit. This makes it easier to establish those kinds of relationships.
So we commissioned Thomas as a Grace Covenant pastor. He now serves in that capacity in Kenya, in Thika, which is right outside of Nairobi, the leading industrial city in Kenya. He and his wife and three children are working, as I said, in Bible translations, planting churches, and training and equipping pastors.
We are honored to have Thomas here. He is a good brother. And so, can we welcome Thomas here with more than a golf clap? Come on, you can do more than a golf clap.
Good evening. Okay. Okay. So, thank you, brother. Thank you.
It’s such a privilege and a wonderful honor to be here this evening, to have the privilege to share the Word of God with you.
Thomas is my name. I come from Kenya. I’m married. I’m blessed with a family of three. My wife is called Masa Washuka, and my firstborn daughter, six years old, is called Solani Kellen. My son is called Jonathan Baraka, and my last born daughter, Tahila Imani. The Lord has been gracious to us. The last born is 15 months, and together as a family, we serve the Lord. He’s called us to do this work together.
We serve with different organizations on Bible translation, both the written, audio, and visual. Now we are using Tango Technology. There is animation that we are using to bring the Bible to the communities so that those who have not gone to school can be able to hear and see the pictures. It is such an amazing experience.
This evening, I want to share with us the Word of God from the book of Matthew 5:13-16. And I’ll read: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It shall then be good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
“You are the light of the world. And a city is set on a hill. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16, CSB)
And this is, to me, a very profound portion of Scripture that really encourages me and reminds me every day who I am and what I’m supposed to do.
We live in a world where there’s a lot of decay: decay in marriage, decay in society, and a lot of hopelessness, a lot of propaganda, and everything. It seems like everything is dark, and there is so much hopelessness around us. What do we do in those moments as Christians? Do we join and say, “Oh, yes, we are hopeless”? What do we do?
One of the things why I love this verse, 13, is that it specifically talks about salt. Salt is found everywhere. It’s very simple, but it has very profound and tremendous benefits.
Pastor Kevin shared that we had a barbecue. I’m imagining if that barbecue didn’t have salt, how sweet could that be? You can’t enjoy that food. Imagine having cooked that nice meal that you love enjoying, and you don’t have salt in it. You would not enjoy it.
Salt has different things to do with our lives. And part of those things that salt has been presented to us is to help us preserve so that we don’t decay. As we live through life, so many things seem to be falling apart.
But Jesus here is talking to this crowd, this part of the Sermon on the Mountains, reminding them, even when there is all this darkness, remember, you are the salt. He is telling you, you are the standard. The world is looking up to you. When everybody around you seems to be losing hope, you are the hope. And this has been the thing that has been me as a missionary has encouraged me to keep going every day to the field to do the work that we do.
One of the stories I was sharing this morning I’m gonna go to it. Don’t worry, I’ll keep moving up, back and forth. This story is about a community in northern Kenya called Elmolo. It’s a thousand people only. So being a small community anywhere, that means economically, it’s not very viable. So it’s not mostly taken seriously.
For a long time, they have had a drought because of the place where they live. Cattle are dying, and they are losing everything. They have no food. And the media can only say a bit of it. And after that, they leave it on their own. But we kept having this call: “Kindly, can we get help?”
And one of the times I talk to Pastor Eric and say, “Hey, Eric, there’s this community up with the north. They are really, really suffering. And the deaths and all these, the pictures we are seeing and nothing’s been done. Can we do something about it?” Because it keeps reminding me: I am the salt, as a Christian. I don’t need to impact the whole world, but as salt, I can impact that section that God has given me.
And Eric got a way of us getting some funds, and we went out there, gave them food, but we realized a small, greater need. They don’t have water. For a long time, they’ve been drinking water from the lake, which has very heavy metals, and children who are 15 years old, they don’t have hair because of the heavy metals in the water. The majority of them are sick because of the kind of water they’ve been drinking.
And then we went up there and put up these wells.
This is the first time those kids came to us when we were doing the pump testing, to come and just pray over the water. That was great joy for them, having clean water that they can drink. Not just clean water they can drink. Because of the presence of the heavy metals in this area, we had to put a reverse osmosis machine to make sure that they have clean water that is safer for them to drink.
And when we went there, we did not just do the wells. We finished the wells, and the wells gave birth to a church that is now growing because they saw the love that was shown to them, and they wanted that Christ. And now in this area, we are having a very thriving church. And these wells are continuing, and these people now have an opportunity to gather, not just to get water, but also to share Christ. They are growing.
Now, because of that, even other ministries are coming on. I was sharing this morning, the ministry, the Catholic Church has come in and built a school and also the part of the sanctuary. This community now has hope. Why? Because God has called us as a church to be the salt of the world, to go heal the wounds.
You know, when we grew up and if I went out and played and I was hurt, my mom could wash me with salt before we go to the hospital. And you feel if you put salt in the wound, it stings it’s not nice, but it heals. And that’s what God has called us to, that we see our brothers and sisters who are wounded out there emotionally wounded, financially wounded, who just need help, who need somebody to talk to.
In our offices, people have lost hope. Some of us have lost jobs because of how the economies of the world may be. Even in the darkness of the economies of the world, we have been called to be the salt and the light.
You have been called to be the salt and the light, even when the doctor said, “There’s no hope.” But we know one thing: that our hope is in Jesus Christ. It’s not in what the doctor said. We believe in medical science; we honor that. But still, we know one thing: We will still put our hope in the Lord because He has called us to be the light and the salt of this world. Where there’s confusion, to be able to show direction. And that’s what all of us have been called to.
This community has grown to be one of the most encouraging points that I’m people that I’m not related to, that you are not related because people gave money for these wells. They have never seen them, and they may never know them. But one of the things that they have given life. They have given light and hope to our people in generations to come.
Now, because this community has started an irrigation scheme, they can now grow their own food. Because they have clean water that they can drink, their children now can continually go to school because of this act.
That’s what God has called us to. And this is what Jesus is telling the disciples on this Sermon on the Mountain. You are the salt of the world. You and me. He’s addressing us directly and telling us we are the salt of the world.
That neighbor that is hurting from something. It’s our duty to reach out and check on one another. That co-worker in the office that we feel everybody feels weird about, and everybody keeps staying away from them. Run into the world and be the light.
And this has been the thing that has kept me going every day.
Apart from that community, there’s this group called the Sanya community that we started their translation in 2023. The Sanya is in the south coast of Kenya, in an area called Witu near the Somali border. They are the farthest of us, and these are a Muslim community, all through a Muslim community. We had around 15 Christians in it, and we decided to do a Bible translation.
I know when we asked for that opportunity to do a Bible translation, all the question was for only 15 people. Yes, Christ loves the 15 people in that community. They are the light of that community, and they are passionate, and they want to have the Bible in their own language. And Wycliffe has allowed us to start that.
When they came, they brought an old man. This old man here. And this is the same man here. You see, the guy is 93 years. They brought him for the Bible translation, and he could not sit well on the seats. To me, I was very confused because he’s an imam. He’s not just an ordinary member of the mosque he’s the head of the mosque.
And we kept asking them, “How did you do that? This is a Bible, and these two things don’t go together.”
“He’s the only one who can help us explain the language better, because he knows the language better.”
We made him sign documents that he’s gonna keep the integrity of the Bible. But we said, “We are going to keep checking because we have guys in your group who will keep the checks and the balances.” They did some work, left, and went home.
This mango tree is now Grace Covenant Church of 35 people that came out of the Bible translation. They went home and started translation under this mango tree on the road in the village. So that as they every day they met to translate, people could pass and say, “What are you guys doing here?”
“Oh, we are translating the Bible.”
They joined the discussion. They joined the discussion.
But the most amazing part of this is that this man, when they got the Book of John, he called the chairman, said, “I want this Jesus.”
That was the turning point. All because the Christians in the community showed him love during the translation. They became the light, and they became the salt. They were never throwing stones at them. Even the ones who came during the translation under the mango tree, they showed them love and welcomed them to come and listen. And when they brought in their opinion of how the Word is supposed to be, they didn’t tell them, “Oh, keep quiet. You’re not Christian. You don’t know these things.” No, they allowed them and gave them an opportunity, and they felt important and they felt accepted.
Dabbo gave his life to Christ one morning, the day before they went for the translation because he said, “You know, one thing I’ve been explaining back to you about this Jesus, I want him.” They led him to Christ. He gave his life to Christ. And he said not him alone. He also wants his friends. He invited some few old men who are Yeah, he invited this one, this one here, this one is the one here, and this one. And they are all leaders of the mosque. They gave their life to Christ, and that became a turning point for the community.
We had so many people come to Christ because now this guy is telling them about Christ. He has known because he has been hearing and explaining the Scriptures to the team members to write it in their language. The Scripture has been doing something in him because when the Word of God gets into us, it brings transformation.
And they gave his life to Christ. Not only him, but he brought many people to Christ through his testimony. Not only that, and he said, “All I’m asking for, please help me hold the Bible in my hands before I die.”
We requested for special aspect of getting funds to move quicker, and we got that privilege. And last year we had a privilege 2024, we had a privilege of launching the New Testament of the Sanya community. And you can see the old man, he’s here holding it and with all his friends.
And one of his friends, when we did this, he said for him now, he has done God’s work and is ready to go. And God is so gracious. This man, after two days of the lounge, went to be with the Lord, but with great joy. All he said, “Please keep loving my sister. My sister has not given her life to Christ. Show her the love.” Until today, the pastor of this church goes every week to just read the Bible for her, not to tell her to turn into Christianity because she just wants to hear the gospel. And that’s what God has called us to.
You may not have the courage, the privilege of knowing a lot of theology to go and explain. Just go read and share. Just go tell somebody Christ loves them, and that causes and transforms a lot.
We are the salt whenever we are. We have been called not just to come to church, not to be just members of a congregation, not to just give only, but also be the example. Show love, stretch our hands and help the strangers, stretch our hands and be kind to the neighbors, be compassionate to one another. Because that’s what being the salt means, that that neighbor needs just compassion to feel cared for, feel seen. And that’s what God is calling us to.
And I can tell you a lot of stories and how I’ve seen this transform lives of people.
This is a community called the Kiptani down in the Kerio in Kenya. We started that translation there in 2023, towards the end. This area has been having a lot of tribal clan clashes for a long time because of cattle rustling. Communities that keep cattle love stealing from one another. Some of this stealing is because of traditions for marriage. During the season for marriage, they steal to go and pay dowry. In the season for circumcision, they will steal so that they can prove to be warriors that have taken enough.
And that’s the practice in this area. Because of that, there’s a lot of castle rustling, and it doesn’t end well. People die because of cows. People die because of goats for so many years.
And it has grown into a great bitterness that has been passed from generation to generation. There are fathers telling the sons, “Remember, they kill your brother. And remember ” And then that goes down in generations. And we grow as a bitter generation and community. And for a long time, that’s what has been happening.
So when they left the translation one of the communities called the Kiptani as they were going home, they were attacked by the neighbors, and two of the four of them were injured. They called, and they were taken to hospital. We helped out with that.
Then they asked, “Will it be possible for you and Bishop Atanas to come along and help us with a mediation process?”
I was like, “No, I’m not a mediator. I’ve never mediated anything.” And then I was 33 years. I’m like, “No.”
And then I tell Pastor Eric, and Eric is like, “God has given you an opportunity. You better take it.”
And anyway, we got an opportunity to go down there. But I went there with a lot of questions. I’m like, “Is this the wise thing to do? What am I going to tell them?” And one of the things I just told God, “You know, one thing, as you said I’m the salt. Help me bring favor as we go to that place. Help me bring the healing.”
And we went to one person from our board, and we drove and sat there. This was our first meeting with the elders of that community. Not only one, all of them, they came together. The first time we had some, around five goats killed. We ate together. And after eating, now we can talk. And we had a huge conversation. We asked ourselves, “Is this how we want the generations to be for all the years? It’s over 20 years, the same senseless killing happening and stealing and hurting one another. Is that what we want to do?”
And after that, the chief said, “We are going to gather together and start having meetings.” And they started having their own meetings.
This is them now having their own meetings.
And keep asking ourselves what we’re going to do. One of the meetings, they decided to say, “No. It’s high time we tell each other the truth.” This is what the gospel can do. They’re telling each other, “Now we’re going to tell each other the truth. We know who’s stealing. We know whose son is stealing. We know whose grandson did this.”
And they wrote down all the names. And we advised them, “Don’t go to the authorities. Just try to mediate this within the community.”
And they were summoned and they were told, “We know you and if this is going to happen, this is what’s going to happen. We will take action as a community. Now, because it’s either we, all of us, keep quiet and keep dying, or we take action and live by peace.”
And after a while, they made a decision. “We will start returning the cows.” No questions asked. In this area, cows and all the animals every family has their own symbol. So the skin of the cow, with a hot iron, they put a mark on it. So I will know this belongs to that one. This mark is that family. That’s how they are marked.
And this picture here, these are not cows being grazed. These are cows being returned because of the gospel. Now the community, after being told, “All the cows that you have that don’t belong to you, return them to the chief’s camp and we will nobody’s going to ask you a question.” These were returned, and I was told that last month 20 more were returned. And they’re doing until now. When anybody’s stealing, they’re like, “No, they don’t belong to you. And I’m not going to be the cause of lack of peace and the death of other people.”
These cows have been returned, and they brought a lot of peace among the community. And we did not need to stop there. Then we decided to do this as an organization. We went out and decided to bring the youth together for a youth tournament. And this was fun. For a few months, we made them have their own competition in their own villages, form their own community team that you compete with the other communities. And the one who wins will go home with a prize, and we give them football, and we had a great time together with them for a whole month where we did this.
And we did not only do this. In the process, in the field, the young people were greeting one another and saying, “We are sorry for what we have been doing. We have been hurting one another. You are just like me.” They realize they are one. They realize that just the things that have been passed through generations they have been told of the stories of how bad the neighbor is. That has kept them away from seeing the true person that is with them.
And this group, as we did this tournament, has brought the youth together. And now they can talk together.
And we did not stop there. By God’s help, we got an opportunity to have wells in this community. And we put them along the edges of the communities, so that two communities we share, three communities we share. So that now there are even more reasons to meet every morning and say, “Good morning, good evening,” because they share the water point.
And that’s what God has called us to do, because we are the light and we are the salt. Where the people are wounded, go and heal. Where there is darkness, go and show light. Where there is hopelessness, go and give hope, because Christ is the hope of glory in us. And we who are the representative of Christ here, it’s our duty to go out there and share to that neighbor, share to that person on the street, share to that person who lives under shed, share with that person in the hospital who feels it’s over and there’s nothing more for me.
There is something more. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow. It doesn’t matter what we may be going through. Because Christ lives, even when things are tough, He is our hope of glory.
And I’ve seen this transformation, and it keeps reminding me I am the salt of the world. In my own area, I am the salt. You are the salt of your world where the Lord has put you. And all of us, we are able to bring favor and bring healing and preserve the decaying aspect of the world. Then we are able to heal the world in our own ways. So we don’t need to join the world when everybody is saying, “Oh, we are doomed. Everything is bad.” Yes, things may seem so dark, but we are the lights. Things may seem so hopeless, but we have the hope in Christ.
When the world says, “It’s over,” until Christ says it’s over, it’s not yet for us. Let’s go into the world and give hope. Let’s go out there and show them love. Because that’s what God has called us to be.
Now we have these young men who have hope of glory, who are showing love to one another because somebody took a step to tell them, “You are better than this. You don’t need to hand your life that way, dying by a spear because of a cow. You don’t need to carry the bitterness of your fathers that you do not know how it started. It’s high time to build a new way, a new path of your life.” And they’re doing that.
Last year we’re not able to do this tournament, and they’re trusting God this year that we are able to do this again and bring them together again, that they may have time to share.
And when we were doing this, we didn’t just do football. We had guys among them who were sharing Christ. From this group, I remember well, we had around 66 young men give their life to Christ. In the field as they were doing this, we had guys from communities that don’t greet each other, greet each other in the football.
We had this fear one of it being that we feared that if they lose, they’re gonna fight. They lost with grace. We were like, “Maybe it’s gonna be bad.” We were like, “If so and so lose, we may find ourselves in trouble.” But the truth is they lost, but they went and greeted their opponents with hugs and joy and say, “Thank you, that was a good game.”
And that’s what we are called to do, that we can reconcile that group and that group that is fighting together and bring them. Because that’s what Jesus has come to do. Bridge the divide and give grace to each one of us.
What are we doing in our own area? You are the salt in your office. You are the salt in a business. You are the salt in your community, the salt in whatever you’re doing. Are you adding flavor to that community?
You are the light. Are you shining it out there, or are we putting it under the table and saying, “You know, I’m shy, I don’t know how to speak well”? Oh, no, you’re just light. That’s all the light can do. And the Lord will do the rest for you.
Let’s be the salt and be the light that God has called us to be. Touch one person at a time, one individual at a time, and we will all change the world. You may not go to all these places, you may not go to Somalia, but you may touch the person around you who will be in Somalia tomorrow to transform their lives.
I’m telling Pastor this year when he comes for a pastor’s conference, we are trusting God to do this year in December. We want to do this tournament during that time. Now I want to have him come and see the joy that these young people have together. And you could not believe that a few years ago, these people could not see one another. There are communities that could not come together. But because of the gospel and because of taking that step, that we are the salt just to go heal the wounded, now they can talk to one another, they can meet with one another.
And the chiefs are still meeting monthly, continuing to keep the process alive and saying, “Hey, what is going on? How are we doing?” And making sure that the peace process, because it takes a while. One of the things now they’re asking is, how do we start doing a women empowerment program to be able to enable the women to have some economical training on doing things together. These are the things that God has called us to do.
Go out in the process of bringing them together to do this, we have a definite opportunity to share the gospel. Like in this tournament, we had an opportunity every day. We had a speaker to speak from the grassroots. Every day, our pastors in this community had an opportunity to share the gospel daily with a crowd that had gathered to come and watch football. They could take 30 minutes and share Christ with them. The crowd listened to them, bowed down, prayed, and rejoiced during the game. It brought the community together. That’s what the gospel does.
We are the light, and we are the salt. Let’s go out there and give hope to the hopeless world. May the Lord bless you. Thank you.
Okay, Pastor, thank you. Thank you.
So thank you, Thomas, for sharing that. Three great stories. An impoverished community without drinking water, and Jesus comes in with water and the water of life. And a Muslim community and isn’t God’s way wonderful? Who can translate the Christian Bible into this language? Oh, the imam. Wait, we can’t have the imam do it. And in the process of doing the translation, the imam says, “I want this Jesus.” And then he invites the other imams and says, “You want this Jesus.”
And then, in a community filled with violence and bitterness, filled with vengeance you know what an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leads to? A blind and toothless world. I mean, when that commandment was given, it wasn’t given to say it was given, actually, to withhold over extreme, you know, “you take one of my teeth, I take two of yours” kind of justice.
But this is what forgiveness brings. And so, just wonderful stories of the power of the gospel.
So thank you for sharing those three stories. Appreciate it.
Tonight, Jesus is the salt and the light, and we are here to keep being salty. Turn to somebody next to you and say, “You’re pretty salty. You are salty.” All right. And so, yeah, some of you think you’re salt, but you’re pepper. So I don’t know what that means.
The Bible says, “Refresh yourself in the Lord, strengthen yourself in the Lord.” The way we do that is by in faith, not in legalism, but in faith, we just practice the spiritual disciplines. We practice walking with God. We’re intentional about it. We read our Bibles, we say our prayers, we serve the poor. We give our money, and we receive this meal.
And so I invite you to strengthen yourself in the Lord with the food from heaven. Manna was the food from heaven. This is our manna. It’s our provision to keep us on our feet in Christ.
And so I invite you to come at the invitation of Jesus to His table and to receive His grace. So, dear ones, come.
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Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon.
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May 10, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Amen. Okay, dear ones, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.
Last week I had a question for you: Are any of you suing other Christians? And you all said no. Good. This week, this is another important question: Any of you sleeping with prostitutes? No. All right. There’ll be principles in this sermon that will apply, but the specifics, I think you’re free and clear from. So that’s what Paul’s dealing with here.
Oh, by the way, I am an encourager, I hope. I pray to be an encourager. I believe flattery is a sin. So I believe telling people things that are lies about them to make them feel good for the purpose that they will think well of you is a bad thing for human beings to do.
I think encouragement is a good thing to do. So what I’m saying right now, I believe to be true. I’m not saying this to flatter so that you think, “Oh, what a nice guy Kevin is.” I’m saying this because I think it’s true. And the mothers that are in this room, I highly respect you as mothers. I think you’re doing a great job. I think your kids are blessed to have you. And the devil beats up mothers. I just want to say you’re wonderful. You’re doing great. Your kids are just You all obviously love your children and work tirelessly for them, and I commend you for that. I commend you for that.
So now just go home and tell everybody, “Kevin’s a nice guy. He says strange things, according to Karen, but he’s a nice guy.”
All right, so 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. Let’s go there and read it.
12 “Everything is permissible for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me,” but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 “Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will do away with both of them. However, the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 Don’t you know that your bodies are a part of Christ’s body? So should I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not! 16 Don’t you know that anyone joined to a prostitute is one body with her? For Scripture says, The two will become one flesh. 17 But anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. 18 Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. 19 Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:12-20, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Amen.
All right, so Scripture is taken out of context. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, eat right and exercise. That’s not what this means. It’s not what this means.
Now, can we make other arguments for eating right and exercising? Absolutely. You’ll be in better shape. You can serve the Lord better. Paul says bodily exercise has some profit. But Paul also says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And I’ve never seen how those two things are compatible. So I don’t know how to make that work.
Yeah, you know, but anyway, that’s not what this passage is about.
This passage is 100% about sexual morality. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that’s what Paul’s talking about. And this is not Paul’s first letter or first correspondence with the Corinthians. We get clues about that all the time. And here’s one of the clues: “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible, but I will not subject myself to the authority of anyone.”
12 “Everything is permissible for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me,” but I will not be mastered by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12, CSB)
And so, “everything is permissible,” obviously, is something they’re quoting to him. “We can do this. You said it, Paul. You said ” He goes, “Wait, time out.”
I don’t know if your kids have ever done this to you. Like, you said something and then they turn it on you. “But you said I could do this, you know, so that means I can do this.” You’re like, “No, those are apples and spaceships. They’re different. All right?”
And so Paul had this debate in the early church around the Judaizers and things like circumcision and then dietary laws. The big crux, the thing that brought the dietary laws to a head, was meat offered at pagan temples as sacrifices and then sold in the meat market. There was a group of Christians who were saying, “You cannot eat that meat. That’s participating in pagan idolatry.” And there were other groups of Christians that said, “No, those are the best prices for meat. That’s where we get it. That’s the bargain shopping place for meat. And so that’s where we get our meat to eat.”
And so, Paul’s argument is, “You can do that because that meat is you give thanks to the Lord and it’s sanctified. It is not taking part in pagan idolatry.” But he says, “If someone has a strong conviction about that, then don’t flaunt your Christian liberty. Because if somebody eats that meat, violating their conscience, then you’re actually causing them to sin. Though eating that meat in particular is not the sin, but violating their conscience is the sin.” You get it? And so out of Christian love and charity, you say, “All right, tonight we eat vegetables.” And so you don’t eat that meat.
And that’s the argument that the church always had trying to walk the balance between liberty and license. A modern example would be, there are denominations… I got in trouble when I was preaching at the AG Church. For a year and a half I was the interim pastor at an AG Church, and I tried very hard. There are things I disagree with in the AG, but I tried very hard just to avoid those subjects. I felt like I needed to honor them. You know, I’m speaking in an AG pulpit. I should honor their position. I didn’t know, though, that they were total teetotalers. I didn’t know that was a position in the AG, that drinking is a sin; don’t drink.
And the argument is, again, a lot of those holiness groups will say that the wine that Jesus talks about in the Bible wasn’t fermented wine; it was grape juice, et cetera, et cetera. I’m not convinced of that argument. But there is an argument to be made against drinking, and that is: drinking causes so much harm in our culture. Drunkenness causes so much harm in our culture that, you know, the world probably would be better if just nobody drank.
On the other hand, Jesus drank, I think. And I think the Christian principle is very clear on these things. Very clear to me. Moderation. “I will not subject my body to be under the authority of anything.” In other words, I will not be a slave. Gluttony is a sin. What you eat is not. Jesus declared all foods clean.
And, you know, one of the greatest benefits of the New Covenant is bacon. We had Mother’s Day brunch with my daughter and my wife today. We went over to their house at Mother’s Day brunch. We had French toast and bacon and eggs, and I ate mostly bacon. It was wonderful.
And that’s how this argument was being used. Paul was saying, “You can eat bacon, you can eat food sacrificed to idols. Jewish dietary laws do not everything is permissible for me; not everything is beneficial. There’s times to refrain from it, but it’s permissible.”
So, they were turning this argument on him, saying, “Well, if it’s okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols, it’s also okay to sleep with the temple prostitutes. Everything is permissible to me. Not everything is beneficial.” And he’s saying, “Hold on. Now you’re taking your Christian liberty and using it as a license to sin. Now you’re taking your Christian liberty and using it as a license to sin.”
Because the Bible is very clear that thou shall not commit adultery. Sleeping with temple prostitutes, I think most everybody would agree, comes under the heading of adultery if you’re married, and certainly comes under the heading of fornication if you’re not married. And so, Paul is saying to them, “No, don’t.”
And again, this general issue of liberty and license, Christians have struggled with for 2000 years, trying to figure out how to walk the golden mean between liberty and license. You know, and the holiness groups will fall off on legalism, you know? They’ll fall off on legalism and kind of denounce Christian liberty. Don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t chew, don’t go with don’t go to movies. And it just becomes hypocritical at some point.
I knew a denomination, you know, they would not go to movies. That was forbidden to go to the theater, but they would rent movies back in the day when you had Blockbuster. “Well, if we go to movies, it’s a bad witness.” Well, isn’t it the same if you rent movies? I mean, if somebody’s working at the counter and they’re seeing you rent the movie You know, it’s like
And we build fences around sin and think those fences will prevent us from sin. And we’re going to see that some of those fences actually work and others don’t. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
But listen, the point is not to sin. But the point is also that you don’t have to make unnecessary rules that Jesus got rid of. Having sex with prostitutes is a sin. And Paul is saying food and sex they’re not the same thing. You can eat what you want. Jesus declared all foods clean. But Jesus also strongly upholds the one man, one woman bond. This is the standard for Christian believers. One man, one woman, monogamous union, till death do them part.
That’s the standard, you say? Well, wait, the Bible allows for multiple marriage partners. It allows for polygamy in the Old Testament.
Yeah, there are reasons for that in the culture that those people were living in, but God never endorses it. And if you look at the Bible, it never works out well. There’s not one positive case. You got Rachel and Leah. That was a mess. I’m reading through the Bible, and I just finished the story of King Solomon, who started so incredibly well and ended so bad. And what is the Bible’s reason that he ended so bad? His wives led him astray.
Listen, one wife might lead you astray, but you might stand a chance. But 700? You’re sunk, dude. You’re sunk.
“Solly, build us a temple for our God. Solly, don’t you love me? Solly, build me a temple. You built her a temple. Build me one, too. I want one, too, Solly. Come on, honey. Build me a temple. Come to my temple with me. I don’t like going alone. Come with me.” He destroyed everything. Now, it’s not his wife’s fault. It’s his fault, you know, but he destroyed it. So it never works.
Genesis says, “For this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and be united to his wife.” And what? The two not the 700 and the one the two will become one flesh. And then the New Testament reaffirms that. Jesus reaffirms it time and time again. Jesus takes a stronger stance against divorce than the legalistic Pharisees of His time.
And Paul says if anyone desires a role of leadership in the church, he must be married to how many people? Must be the husband of what? One wife, one wife. And so the Bible upholds the one man, one woman bond.
This is an issue on the mission field, by the way, where Christians are evangelizing Muslims who have multiple wives. And when that Muslim man comes to the Lord, the question is, you know, what do you do with them all? And I think that you walk the balance here between legalism and license. I think the legalistic answer is divorce every one of them but one. I think that’s actually cruel because those women are relying on those men, and their children are relying on that man for their livelihood.
I think the best, the wisest answer is, teach your sons that this ends now. This is the last generation of polygamy. Christians ought to be monogamous.
And then I think it’s also probably wise, out of your seven wives take care of all seven, but pick one. She’s the real wife now. The other six are going to get mad at that. Or maybe they’ll be relieved, like, “Yay, I get supported and don’t have to do anything.” I don’t know. But pick one.
It’s a question that missionaries are dealing with this very day. What do you do with polygamous converts? Because the Christian standard is the one man, one woman, till death do them part.
It is irrelevant what kind of food you eat. Yes, it will impact your biological health. And it’s pretty hard to eat a lot of sugar and not be addicted to it and not be mastered by it.
You notice Paul says, “I will not come under the authority of anyone.” What happens when you have illegitimate sex with somebody is you come under their authority because you become one with them. In a sense, they own you. They own you. And so food shouldn’t own you, sex shouldn’t own you, tobacco shouldn’t own you, alcohol shouldn’t own you, drugs shouldn’t own you, money shouldn’t own you. But none of these things are necessarily wrong. The problem is when you you cannot have casual sex because sex will always own you.
You can eat, and food won’t own you. You follow? You can eat, and food doesn’t necessarily you can become addicted to food, but food won’t necessarily own you. Sex will always own you because that’s how God designed it. Food is for the stomach; the stomach’s for food. Food keeps you on your feet. Sex bonds you with another human being. And we think we have a choice in that. We do not. Our bodies are united with Christ, and we become one with whoever we have sex with.
And I’ll tell you, it’s a reason we call it “getting intimate” with somebody. It is the most profound act of intimacy that human beings can experience. And it means you’re connected to that person, even if you divorce them, even if you weren’t married. And you go, you know, you sleep with a dozen people before you get married. Guess what? On your wedding night, there’s 13 of you in bed with that person. You brought all those partners with you because they become a part of your very soul, and it’s hard to get rid of them.
I was married a virgin. I’d never slept with another woman. Never have in my life. I’m a one man, one woman guy. However, in high school and college, I made out with a few girls. I kissed a few girls. I’m not going to tell you about whatever base. I don’t know. I’m not even clear what the bases are. Probably a couple times got more than a single. I don’t know.
But I tell you, I went to my 25th high school reunion, right? A lot of old friends, a lot of people. There were two girls in that room that I’d kissed. Two women now, 25 years. And when we looked at each other, you know what happened? There is a knowing. Oh yeah, yeah. It’s just a reality. It’s just a reality.
And therefore we unite our bodies who belong to Christ with something in an act that Christ has not condoned, does not want to be united with. We take our bodies and give them over. It is more pagan idolatry to sleep promiscuously than to eat meat offered at an idol. As I said, there’s no such thing as casual sex. There’s no such thing as recreational sex. It is all intimate sex, whether you want it to be or not. A one night stand is a lifetime bondage. It’s a lifetime connection. And so don’t do it. We have no right to join our bodies with anyone but our spouse. That’s it. That’s it.
And inside of that relationship we’ll talk about this more next week. Sorry, this is only sex talk 101 A. There’s going to be 1 Corinthians 7:1, which talks about marriage. So we’ll talk about it some more next week.
I really don’t think I’m preaching to a congregation of rabid, sexually promiscuous people. But I do think I’m preaching to a congregation of people, 100% of you, who have sinned sexually, if you take Jesus’ definition and you’ve ever lusted in your heart. I have never met a human being who was free from that. At least I’ve never met a human being of my gender who is free from that. But I think it’s also true of females.
So we have no right to join our bodies with anyone but our spouse.
And then the Bible says, “Flee sexual immorality.” Well, wait, doesn’t Paul say, “Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you?” Yes, resist the devil and he’ll flee from you.
7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7, CSB)
You can beat up the devil in the authority of Jesus. It’s your flesh that’s weak.
And so there are sins of the flesh and there are sins of the spirit. And let me define the two. You know what a sin of the flesh is, right? It’s where we indulge our flesh to feel good with something outside of the will of God. All right? Be it drug, alcohol abuse, sexual immorality, gluttony, whatever. And Paul says, “Your flesh is weak. You can’t withstand too long of a temptation of those things. So run away, flee it.”
If you were to make a bet with me, “Kevin, Sluy’s Bakery in Poulsbo is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. I want you to go in there with $100 in your pocket, sit there for 12 hours and not buy a thing.” I will not take that bet. I will lose. I will lose within an hour because I’ll see people buying bear claws, cinnamon rolls and apple fritters and pecan rolls and slices of cake. And within an hour I’ll go, “I gotta get me some.” So how do I avoid the temptation of Sluy’s Bakery? I don’t go there. Except on special occasions. I just don’t go there.
I was a drug addict. I was a marijuana addict for years as a young man. I haven’t smoked pot in 40 years. There are all sorts of pot stores that have opened up. This is how I know I’m an addict. I know where all those stores are. When I drive by them, my brain marks them. Just marks them automatically. I don’t try to mark them.
My wife was saying, “Oh, I’m going to the fabric store.” I go, “We got a fabric store?” “Yes. It’s really huge. It’s right by Fred Meyer. You go to Fred Meyer. How have you never seen it?” Because I don’t give a patootie about fabric stores. I don’t care about fabric stores. I’m so glad my wife isn’t crafty and makes me go to the craft store with her. That would be horrible.
But I know where bakeries are, I know where hamburger joints are, and I know where all the pot stores are. And so what have I done with all the pot stores? I’ve been curious a few times. I wonder what the prices are. I wonder what they’ve done with marijuana. I wonder if, you know, they have different strains that produce different effects, and sometimes I have a hard time getting to sleep. I wonder if there’s a kind of strain that’ll help put you to sleep. And, you know, I could just use it I don’t go in them. I’ve never set foot in one, and I’m not gonna. Why? I don’t need that monkey on my back again. I don’t need that monkey on my back. I flee.
Now, what about sins of the spirit? Sins of the spirit is when the voice of the devil comes against you and accuses you or God of something that’s not true. It’s the lies that we believe that destroy our lives.
So I’m walking I’ve used this example before, but you guys forget stuff, so I’m walking to seminary. I’m in seminary. I’m studying God’s Word. And I’m calling myself just a bunch of bad names, right? We’ve all probably done this. I’ve done it compulsively in my life. “You’re such a loser. You’re such a jerk. You know, you’re no good.”
Here’s the one. I’ve actually said this before I even thought about it. I’ll just say it. This one, even, I don’t believe, all right? Loser, jerk yeah, sometimes I succumb to that. But this one I don’t even believe. But I said it. I’ve said it. I’ll say, “Kevin, you’re the worst person ever.” Anybody get that one? Or am I the only guy that bad? All right? Nobody else. Nobody else.
Ats? All right, brother, we’re united. You’re not the worst person ever, all right? And neither am I, all right?
I told people in Bremerton this morning, “I’ve actually heard I’m the worst person ever.” I said, “You guys really think I’m the worst person ever?” And again, like you guys, there wasn’t a rousing support saying, “Of course not.” It was just kind of, “Six, seven, I don’t know.”
But I’m calling myself these names. I’m walking to seminary calling myself these names, and I hear the voice of God. Here’s how I know the difference between the voice of the devil and the voice of God. The devil says, “You’re the worst person ever.” Or the devil says, “Take that bet up at Sluy’s Bakery. You’re the worst person ever.”
God says, “Kevin.” He uses my first name. Often when I hear God, He uses my first name. He speaks to me as a son. “Kevin, you know my book, don’t you?” I’m on my way to seminary to study His book in the original languages. Like, “Yes, I study your book. I’m, you know, I’m trying to become an expert on your book. I know your book.”
He says, “Do I ever call you those names in my book?”
I say, “No, you don’t.”
He says, “What do I call you?”
“Son. Royal priesthood. Holy Nation. Bride. That one’s a little weird, but I get it. We’re all part of the Church. Friend.”
He goes, “Where do you think those names are coming from?” And then Dana Carvey from Saturday Night Live, the old church lady skit, flashes in my mind. “Could it be Satan?” And so when I hear I’m a loser, jerk, worst person ever when those thoughts come into my head, I don’t run away from that battle. I don’t say, “No, be quiet. Don’t tell me those things.” I say, “No, that’s not true. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, here’s who I am. Here’s who I am in Christ.”
Several years ago, I had a recurring dream where I was working under a tyrannical boss. And you could never please this boss. And in my dream, I’m always discouraged. Stevin, in one of my dreams, I was working at a horse stable. Yeah, like that would ever be anywhere near the reality with me. Like, oh, yeah, I want to shovel poop for a living. Great.
But anyway, you know, the boss isn’t I know when he comes, you know, the inspection is never good enough. And all the dreams was a different occupation, but it was always under this tyrannical boss that you absolutely could not please and you were never good enough for.
And so if you have a repeated theme in a dream, chances are that’s a spiritual dream. That’s a significant dream. And so I prayed about it and said, “God, what’s this dream about?” And it took a while. You know, it’s not like I talk about these things and you think, “Oh, it happened immediately.” It took a couple of months.
And finally, I have one of those dreams one night, and I’m at a Grace Covenant conference, and we’re getting together for worship. And as we start worshiping, the Lord says, “You’re the boss. Who’s the tyrannical boss whose oppression you’re under?” And God said, “It’s you. You’re the perfectionist that you cannot please because you believe the lies of the devil that everything has to be perfect to please me or whatever.” But He said, “You’re that boss.”
And when I told the people at Grace Covenant that, they go, “Well, yeah, that’s obvious.” It wasn’t obvious to me the last two years I’ve been having these dreams, but the minute I said it, it was like, oh, yeah, yeah.
I thought about it. You know, I thought, I’ve never had a boss like that. Dallas Elder you know, he’s not like that. My wife’s not like that. Nobody’s like that to me. The leadership team is not like that. I’ve never had a boss like that, except one. Right?
And so I started praying. The dream, the interpretation, now the application. What do I do about that? And again, didn’t happen right away. I said, “Okay, Lord, what you want me to do about that?”
And about two or three days later, I hear what He says again. He says, “Fire him.” “Fire who?” “Yourself. Don’t be that boss anymore. Fire the demonic voice. And actually, fire the demonic voice behind that, you know, that tyranny.” And so, I felt like the Lord said, “Say it out loud. Say it now.” And I just spoke into the space. I said, “In the Name of Jesus, you’re fired.” And now whenever I feel, you know, whenever that lack of perfection comes and I feel like, oh, my gosh, I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough, whatever. I just say, I just repeat it. I say, “In the Name of Jesus, you’re fired. You’re fired.”
Resist the devil. Resist the temptations of the spirit. You get the difference? Flee the temptations of the flesh.
This will help you. Because a lot of people try to resist the flesh, and then they fall time and time again. You know? “I’m convinced I’ve overcome drinking. You know, my AA group’s really working. I’m going to go hang out at the bars.”
No, that’s why you go to the AA meeting. You’re learning a new pattern that you find your community there, not at the bars.
But when you run away from the devil, that just empowers him. Gotcha. Does that make sense? Flee sexual immorality. All right? But stand your ground and resist the devil.
All right.
We are temples of the Holy Spirit. The temple is the place where God dwells with His people. The whole story of the Bible is God wants to walk what does God do to Adam and Eve in Genesis? He walks with them in the garden. God wants to dwell with His people.
The story of Revelation is what? “I will be your God and you will be my people. And you won’t need the sun or the moon.” Why? Because God and the Lamb are with you, and they will illuminate the city. God is with you. God is with you.
When God saves the world. How does God save the world? He comes and dwells with us. “Tabernacles” is the word. When the Word became flesh and dwelt with us, that word, “dwelt” is “tabernacles.”
Well, what do you think when you think of the word “tabernacle”? You think of Exodus, the Tabernacle. What was the Tabernacle? The Tabernacle was the forerunner of the Temple. The Tabernacle was the place where you had the Holy of Holies, where God dwelt. And it was the place where God made atonement so that man and women could have fellowship with God. God is the one who wants to have fellowship with us.
It’s not like God’s up there begrudgingly saying, “All right, I’ll let you go to the Good Place if, you know, you accept my Son.” No. God does everything He can so that He can dwell with us and we can dwell with Him.
And here’s what He does. Before we go to the Good Place, before we get the new heavens and the new earth, what does He do? He says, “I so want to dwell with you, and I can’t wait for you to get here. I’m going to fill you with my very Spirit so that your very body becomes now what the Temple was in the Old Testament, the dwelling place of the Holy God.”
And when we come to Him in the name of and in the presence of the Lord Jesus, we find grace and mercy because He dwells with us. He says, “Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, don’t bring a prostitute into the Holy of Holies. Don’t desecrate the Holy Place.”
What we do with our bodies is holy. This is not all a spiritual game, right? What we do with our bodies matters. The Bible is full of instructions on what to do with your body. “Lift your hands,” “lift your heads,” “bow and worship.” When He comes near, we tremble. I tremble. Your body matters. It is now what Michael Heiser would call sacred space. That’s why the holiest thing you encounter in this world is another human being who’s indwelt by God. Don’t despise Christians. They are holy places even if the temple’s in disrepair and the paint’s not good and whatever.
Therefore, use your body to glorify God. Use the physical energy you have, use the mind, the brain, your muscles to glorify God. Your intelligence it’s all part of our body.
Use your sexuality to glorify God. How do you do that? By uniting with your wife and uniting with your husband and therefore representing, in the very act of your home, the intimate connection between Christ and His church and living that out in an enacted parable of love, faithfulness, intimacy, connection.
Listen, what does God want from us? Faithfulness. He wants faithfulness.
We’re saved by faith. What does that mean? Allegiance to Yahweh. Commitment, allegiance, faithfulness, fidelity.
What’s the biggest sin of the Old Testament? What does Israel get judged for time and time again? Yeah, it’s not rocket science, people. It’s in your Bible. You’ve read it. Idolatry. Idolatry. And what does God call it? Spiritual adultery. Duh. You get the connection?
Why is sexual morality so important? Because sexual morality is about union, connection, intimacy, faithfulness. These are the things God longs for from us and marriage, what we do with our bodies in marriage is training ground. How do I learn about faithfulness? I made a promise to this person and I’m keeping it. I’m being faithful.
I told my wife, you know, old person mind wanderings every old person has had this thought: “You know, I really just want to die peacefully in my sleep.” And I just said that to her. I just said, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep.” And she says, “Got it.”
What does she mean by that? My wife has told me. She said, “Divorce is off the table. I will not divorce. You said if you commit adultery, I will murder you, but I will not divorce you.”
So hopefully it’ll be a pleasant death, though I think she’d be pretty mad. It might not be. It might not be. Yeah, I might die in my sleep, but it might be with a pillow over my face. I don’t want to get too morbid here, but, you know, “Got it.” Is the life insurance paid?
So it matters.
Now, a lot of us can think, “Well, I’ve done that. You know, I didn’t have premarital sex, and I’ve been faithful to my spouse and all that. I haven’t sinned sexually.” And then Jesus comes along, and he ruins it. He says, “If you’ve lusted in your heart, you’ve already done it.” And so, whatever your level of sexual immorality is, I want you to know two things. I want you to know there is mercy. God is looking for your faithfulness, and He’s looking for your faithfulness whatever level you’re at He’s looking for it to start now. Will you be faithful to Jesus and faithful to your spouse? And if you’re not married, will you be faithful to your future spouse? Because premarital sex is committing adultery on your future spouse.
And then there’s grace. There’s grace to walk out that process. And if you don’t walk it out perfectly, you go back and repent and are forgiven. Dust yourself off and keep pursuing faithfulness. And there is grace and mercy for you. But don’t quit. Don’t call broke, fixed and wrong, right. Don’t justify your sin and say, “Oh, if my wife was just more affectionate, I wouldn’t do this.” Or “If my husband cared for me, I wouldn’t do ” You know, “This other man loves me, my husband, he ignores me. Blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Don’t justify your sin. Don’t justify your sin. Just repent. And then put the right foot in front of the left and the left foot in front of the right and keep going.
We’re in the school of holiness. We’re in the school of faithfulness. I don’t know that anybody here’s perfect. I just want to be better 10 years from now than I am now. I want to be more like Jesus at 77 than I am at 67. You know? I want to be more like Jesus at 87 than I am at 67 or 77. “I’m like Jesus.” I want to be there.
And the only thing that’ll defeat us is quitting.
And so, put your right foot in front of the left, your left foot in front of the right. I can’t think of a better way to practice putting your right foot in front of your left, than your left foot in front of your right, than doing something physically with your bodies tonight. And that is putting your right foot in front of your left and your left foot in front of the right, and walking up to this table of grace and mercy, and once again receiving physically through bread and the fruit of the vine, physically receiving the reassurance of that grace and mercy of God’s covenant with you.
So I invite you to use your bodies, not just your mind and your spirit, but to use your bodies to worship God and to walk up here and receive this meal and thank God for whatever. Thank God for the dear person you’re married to and the dear person you’re going to be married to, you know, if you’re unmarried, Isaiah. Or, you know, if you’re expecting your spouse to die soon, Jill, just thank God for that.
I don’t think but, you know, now, if I die in my sleep, it could be natural, but there could be a suspect. All right, I’m just saying there could be. You might want to tell the police. All right.
Anyway, dear ones, come and eat.
The post 2026.5.10 TFHC – Sexual Immorality and Why It Matters | 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
May 3, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Lord Jesus, thank you for our time together. Thank you for your Word. And as we dive into it tonight, may your words give us more than Bible information, but give us Bible transformation.
Lord, may we be shaped into the image of Jesus Christ, be restored to the image that you created us to have, and to walk as your obedient children. And Lord, use this time, we ask, to shape our lives.
We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Okay. “You turn graves into gardens./ You turn bones into armies./ You turn seas into highways.” The last two, I know where they are in the Bible. Elijah and the dry bones. And of course, Moses and crossing the Red Sea. Where did He turn a grave into a garden? Anybody know? He emptied the tomb, but did it become a garden?
Well, then He didn’t turn the grave into a garden.
I love the song, but I think the title in the main verse is a stretch. That’s all I’m saying. Isaiah, I’m with you on your literalism here.
All right, all right. But I’m going to keep singing it because, you know, I get the general point. God transforms things that are dead and bad, dangerous, into things that are wonderful, good. God causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Amen.
So I took a you just saw me do that, right? I just got to tell you, not that these things are all that reliable, but there was like a 12-minute test to take on where you land on the autistic spectrum. And I just want to say my wife is far further down on the scale than I was. I’m like, “Well, you’re probably not diagnosable, but “
All right. Well, you really want to get in this conversation?
So here’s where I’m not. Yeah, here’s where I’m not. Though I can be very literal, I also really get humor and irony. And, you know, my favorite book of the Bible is the Psalms, which autistic people are like, “What?” You know, “Give me the Proverbs.” So, yeah.
However, I get bored easily with social interactions when people are talking about things I’m not interested in and have to fight really hard to not check out. So I’m like, all or nothing, right? I go on forever about, you know, and monopolize a conversation about things that I am interested in. You’ve all experienced that. You’ve asked me a five-minute question, and two hours later you’re like, “Okay, enough.”
And, yeah, I have some, like, tics. I have some physical, you know, a few physical things that I do that are kind of, like comforting and stuff. So, yeah, yeah, I’m not Rain Man or nothing, but, you know, just saying, just saying.
And I think that was just an example of it. The graves in the gardens. Like, hey, wait a minute, that’s not in the Bible. So all you literalists out there go, “Yeah, we’re with you.”
All right, so 1 Corinthians 6:1-11. Let’s go there.
1 If any of you has a dispute against another, how dare you take it to court before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? 2 Or don’t you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the trivial cases? 3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels how much more matters of this life? 4 So if you have such matters, do you appoint as your judges those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame! Can it be that there is not one wise person among you who is able to arbitrate between fellow believers? 6 Instead, brother goes to court against brother, and that before unbelievers! 7 As it is, to have legal disputes against one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves do wrong and cheat and you do this to brothers and sisters! 9 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, 10 no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. 11 And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:1-11, CSB)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength and our Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Okay, none of you are suing anybody else in this room, are you? Great. Great. Okay, good, good. I just thought of that. I just thought, you know, that’s another reason to be against divorce, because you sue somebody for divorce. You’re suing another believer. There you go. All right. Well, there you go.
Lawsuits are continued evidence of the Corinthians’ immaturity. That’s the point of the letter. Paul is rebuking their pride, and he’s rebuking their immaturity.
It’s okay to be immature, but one of the problems with immaturity is immature people think they’re mature, right? Immature people think they’re mature just when they begin to mature. You know examples of that, right? Teenagers who know everything, you know, your teenage kid, they just know everything. And then, like 10 years later, they’re calling you on the phone for advice. It’s amazing how much smarter you get as your kids, you know, grow up a little bit.
I remember one time, my 15-year-old daughter, you know, she finally got that little 15-year-old girl attitude going on. Well, you don’t know about adolescent daughters, but they’re a treat. And so, my 15-year-old daughter just told her mother, “No.” You know? “Clean your room. Clean your room.” And she said, “No, I don’t want to clean my room.” And she just, you know, just stood up to her mom and I thought, “Wow, you talk to your mom that way? Come over here, step into this room with me. I’m going to talk to you. How’d you do that? I’ve been trying to learn that for 20 years. How’d you pull it off? That was awesome.”
It’s not a true story. That’s the non-autistic part of me. See, I can get a joke.
All right, so they’re immature.
The first piece of evidence: there were divisions in the church. Remember, we spent a long time on divisions in the church.
Second piece of evidence: they not only allow for sexual immorality in the church, they celebrate it. And the excuse is, we are so free in Christ and we’re so forgiven, it’s cheap grace. We’re so forgiven by grace. We can do anything we want and excuse anybody who does anything they want.
And now the third piece of evidence by the way, he’s going to get back to sexual immorality. But the third piece of evidence is “There are lawsuits among you.” And this is a sign of immaturity.
And here’s what the Corinthian church they were a new church; they were a young church, and they were gifted by the Holy Spirit. All the spiritual gifts are in operation in the Corinthian church, which is great. Spiritual gifts are great, but the gifts were puffing them up, thinking, “Look at us, look at how mature we are because we speak in tongues and prophesy.”
And Paul says, “And then you go and sue one another, and then you go and indulge in sexual immorality, and then you go and have divisions.” These are clearly signs of immaturity. Just because you speak in tongues and you get a prophecy right once in a while, it doesn’t make you mature. It makes you gifted. Right?
I’m a sports fan all sorts of gifted athletes. Very immature, very immature. And by the way, there’s a lot of them who I really admire their maturity because at 19 years old they’re thrown millions of dollars of money and they don’t destroy their lives, which I would have done at 19 years old. I’d have destroyed my life.
So just an aside, but giftedness does not equate maturity.
And then Paul, before he rebukes them, or in his rebuke, he actually tells us how amazing our standing is in Christ. He says, “You’re taking your disputes before secular judges. Don’t you know your destiny? Don’t you know who you are? You will judge the world. You will judge angels.”
We already have the role, and I don’t know if judging angels I don’t even know what that means. It may mean we get to judge the fallen angels, the demons who have tortured us our whole life. That would be quite a nice assignment, right?
And that would be the one time in your life you could say this, or the only other time you could say it is using it as a sermon example to make this point. So, I can say this right now because I’m using it as a sermon example. You can’t just go out and go say this, but that would be the one time you could honestly, without sinning, look at another being, another created being, and say, “Go to hell.”
So if you always wanted to say that, maybe you’ll get a chance, maybe you’ll get a chance. All right? Or, you know, do it the sneaky way. Become a preacher and say, “Haha, I can say it in this sermon because it’s still okay.” So now you can go home and say, “My pastor said ‘go to hell’ in the sermon today.”
All right, so this is incredible again, a lot of our problems come from forgetting who we are. A lot of our problems come from losing our identity as sons and daughters of the living God, as brothers of the risen king. We are princes and princesses. And so what the Bible often says is, “So act like it.”
Now, don’t act like spoiled royalty. That’s what we are. We’re kind of like spoiled tabloid royalty. But that’s not what royalty really is supposed to be like. Royalty is supposed to be noble. You know, read The Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis has a great understanding of royalty and kings and queens. And that’s what we’re supposed to be like. That’s what we’re supposed to be like.
Be who you are in Christ, and then you won’t be who you aren’t.
And so, dear ones, lawsuits are scandalous. We disagree with the world, and yet we take our grievances to them? Really?
He says these are people who are what? He gives a list. “These are people who are sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, swindlers who are not going to inherit God’s kingdom. And if you submit to them and if you follow them and you fall back into that world system, you neither will inherit the kingdom of God. Why are you taking your disputes to these people?”
And this is to their shame. Isn’t there anybody wise enough in your church to settle disputes?
Let me tell you something. It’s still a problem, right? This was not just a problem in Corinth. It’s a problem today. Because, listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ll tell you the number one reason people leave church, the number one unspoken reason people leave church. They’ll come up with all sorts of lame excuses, but I think here’s what it is a lot of times: conflict resolution they’re having conflict with pastor or leadership of the church or another person in the church.
And when we have conflict, we typically move into fight or flight. And because it’s wrong for Christians to fight, we flight. And that’s better. Because when Christians do fight, they really fight dirty because it’s wrong to fight publicly. So they fight passive aggressively and get all sorts of spiritual, weird stuff going on.
But there’s a better thing than either fight or flight. It’s called conflict resolution.
Now, I’m not going to go into an hour discussion on conflict resolution, but conflict resolution is huge. I do it in marriage counseling all the time. I say, “All right, here’s what you do.” And basically, it starts with what your premise is when you find yourself in conflict. Every human being, when we find ourselves in conflict, here’s where we land, here’s where I land: I want to win this fight. I want to win this fight, right? I want to show that I’m right and that other person is wrong because obviously I’m right. It’s self-evident. It’s obvious. The other person is thinking the exact same thing: I want to win this thing; they’re so wrong.
And so then we talk over each other. We don’t try to understand the other person. We use manipulation and we get, we just We want to win the fight.
No, no, no. Here’s how you do conflict resolution. Here’s the thing I’m going to give you tonight. Not going to give you the whole package, but here’s the thing: Just start somewhere completely different. Married people, this is very helpful. It’s very helpful. Really, all relationships. How can we resolve this conflict? Not, how can I win this fight? When you start there, everything changes.
Now the other ingredients, and we’re not going to go into detail because I got other things I want to say tonight. The other ingredients are: learn how to listen until the other person feels understood; learn how to talk where you express your feelings and the nature of the conflict, but don’t attack the other person; learn how to say you’re sorry; and learn how to say, and mean, “You’re forgiven.” Those four things, they really work. And you can resolve conflicts instead of running away. You can resolve conflicts instead of running away.
And you know, when you come to somebody and say, “Let’s resolve the conflict,” that’s so much better than the passive-aggressive thing we do, which is, “I just want to tell you this in Christian love,” and then open up both barrels on them. Right? “Here’s where you’re wrong and stupid and mean. And here’s where I’m right and holy and perfect.” No. “Hey, I got a problem “
And a lot of times people don’t even know you have conflict with them. They’re just, you know, like me. I step on people’s toes all the time. You know, I just say insensitive things. I treat something trivial when they’re… Because I joke around a lot and somebody’s coming to me with something serious, but I don’t pick up on it that it’s serious, and I make a joke about it. And then, you know, they’re wounded.
Listen, I do this all the time, so I’ve probably done it to you. Sorry. But you come talk to me, all right? You know, I might start by getting defensive, but I’ll work around it and just try to listen to you.
So, resolve conflicts. Don’t sue somebody. And if you need help, come to me. People, if you’re in conflict with somebody, come to me. I’ve reffed this. I’ve refereed conflict resolution many times and not always usually with married couples who have gone too far into their fight before they ask for help, it’s harder to referee that match.
But you know, early on, when the conflict’s not as big of a stake as marriage and stuff and the deep hurt that people have been carrying for 20 years and all that stuff we can settle this. We can work this through with just a few simple principles, if the parties concerned are really intentional about resolving the conflict and not winning the fight.
So there are people who can settle our grievances. There are people in the church who can do this.
And listen, when we take our problems into the secular courts, we bring disrepute to the church. “Oh, they’re no better than us. They’re worse than us.” You know, when Christian pastors fight publicly, name call, throw mud, we bring disrepute into the church. We don’t know how to resolve conflict.
And Paul says, “Listen, there’s something better than taking it to the court. It is just forgiving the person and being wrong. Walk away. Walk away and forgive the person.”
But we have a very heightened sense of justice when we’re the victims, don’t we? “They need to pay. They need to know how much they hurt me, by golly.” What do we say? “I need to get even.” No, you don’t. No, you don’t. Aren’t you glad God doesn’t want to get even with you? Aren’t you glad God doesn’t want to get even with you?
Listen, when I have that life review, if Jesus gets picky on me, He’s going to say, “All right, Kevin, here’s the things I have against you.” Huge scroll. And I’ll go, “Oh, my gosh.” And then He’ll say, “Oh, no, that’s just scroll one.” I’ll look behind Him, and there’ll be a mountain of scrolls.
Forgive one another. What does the Bible say? Forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Two ways Paul is using this here. First of all, he’s saying, why are you taking your disputes to wrongdoers who aren’t even going to inherit the kingdom of God? But secondly, he’s telling Christians, “When you do that, you then are participating in their world. You’re going backwards. You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. You were set free from these things. And now you’re going back into that whole world. Listen, you got to live in that world, but you don’t have to submit to it. You don’t have to submit to their values. And that’s what you’re doing. And so you’re putting your very salvation at risk here. You’re rebelling against the kingdom of God.”
We enter the kingdom of God by grace, through faith. But some people make the mistake of thinking the day we enter the kingdom of God by God’s grace, through faith, it’s all good. No, that’s the beginning. We celebrate new birth, but we also celebrate every birthday when people grow up, until you get my age, then you just celebrate one every decade. And the birthdays are no longer “happy birthday.” They’re like, “Hey, dude, you’re still alive. Great, great. We don’t have as much hope for 90 as we do for 80. But, hey, you made 80.” You know, I’m just glad the way I abused my body, I’m glad I made 60. And you know, I might make 70. I’m getting close. I’m getting close.
And you’re thinking, “Kev, you don’t look 70. You don’t look a day over 67 and a half,” which is what I am.
All right, so we are saved by grace, through faith. That’s how we enter the kingdom. But we inherit the kingdom through perseverance, and that’s still by grace, through faith. It’s still God pouring out His Spirit on our lives and us believing on Him and trusting on Him and walking with Him. But we inherit the kingdom by perseverance. We got to not quit walking.
And there’s an argument in the church about the people who do quit walking. One side says they were never really Christians. That’s why they’ve quit. And there are Scriptures that support that. Another side says, “No, they were legitimate believers and they’ve turned their backs on God.” And there are Scriptures that support that.
And that’s a conversation for another day. If you ask me that question, and we’re not in the context of church, where I got other things to say, you will get a long answer, guaranteed. I find there are very few people who like my long answers. However, both the Miller boys seemed like them once in a while. I appreciate that.
Jacob once said you know, I gave Jacob this big, long thing. Then I apologized. I said, “Jacob, I’m sorry.”
He goes, “Oh, no, I like to poke the bear and see what comes out.”
I said, “Okay.”
And Isaiah seems to endure them as well. I don’t know if he always likes them, but he endures. He endures them politely.
Stevin and Ats, you guys are great on Thursday night, but you know what? You deserve it, Ats, with your questions. You’re begging for it. You should know better by now. You should, be like, “Wait, before I ask you this question, I’m going to order food.”
All right. We inherit the kingdom by continuing along that path. But when we continue to willfully rebel, we harden our hearts.
Listen, the “once saved, always saved” conversation. I’ll just give you this. People always say, “Well, you think you can sin and lose your salvation?” No, I don’t think you lose your salvation because you struggle with sin. I think you lose your salvation because you no longer want God.
Now, where does sin come into that? Willfully, continually rebelling without repentance and seeking to get better, giving up the struggle, throwing in the towel and saying “I’m just going to sin this way” hardens your heart.
And so somewhere down the road after you start doing that, you don’t want God anymore. And you already know that, right? Because when you willfully and disobediently sin against God, and then the next day you’re supposed to get up and have your quiet time, how many of you jump into that quiet time? Or are you thinking, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this”?
It hardens your heart. And so you become like the Pharisees, where you blaspheme the Holy Spirit and you no longer believe.
And let me tell you I’ve told this before, but let me just remind you of this. When somebody comes to you and says, “You know, I really explored Christianity and I didn’t do it,” or “I was a Christian at one time, but I’ve fallen away.” And a lot of people will give you some you know, philosophical, theological usually it’s the problem of pain. You know, “How can there be a God when, you know, there’s children’s cancer wards, you know, and drunk drivers take out innocent families, and ” And it’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’re right. We Christians for 2000 years have never really struggled with those questions. We’re just a bunch of naive idiots who think, ‘Gee, if you say a few prayers, life will go hunky dory for you.'”
It’s like, no, we understand that. I’ll tell you why we understand that. It’s our story. Listen, there’s pain in this room right now, right? There’s not one of us without it. Not one of us without it. And so we get that.
I remember one guy. I didn’t know this guy, and I shouldn’t have done this, but he’s on social media and he’s whining on one of my friends’ streams. Here’s what he’s whining about: “I hate those happy, clappy celebration songs in worship because they don’t do anything to help me when I’m grieving and lamenting. My sister just died, and I go to church, and everybody’s clapping and praising Jesus, and I just don’t feel like doing that.”
And I should have just not hit the keyboard, but I did. And I started off, “Hey, man, I’m sorry. That’s rough that your sister died. That’s rough. But should the church then reject the biblical admonition to rejoice always?” And that’s all I said. I didn’t give any examples. I should have. Maybe that would have been better.
Oh, but he fired back, “How cruel of you to mock my pain.”
Now, I really wanted to mock his pain. I wanted to give my dad’s answer to whiny alcoholics when he was a sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous. You get these alcoholics who would call him, “Yeah, my boss doesn’t like me. My wife’s mean to me. I need a drink.”
And my dad, my dad would say, “Never coddle alcoholics, Kevin.”
No, he wouldn’t say that. He said, “Never coddle drunks. Don’t coddle drunks.” He said, “When they call me and tell me that, I say, ‘Ah, get off the cross. We need the wood.'” So that’s what I wanted to tell him next.
But here’s actually what I wanted to tell him. But I just thought, “No, you know, I made a mistake jumping in this in the first place.” Because I don’t have a relationship with this guy, I don’t have the right to pastor him. But here’s what I wanted to tell him: “You know, you’re right. But you know that little old lady over there who’s clapping and raising her hands? Her husband probably has Alzheimer’s. And that guy in the back row that you’ve never talked to and you think is kind of snobbish? Two years ago, his child died. And that guy over there who just keeps coming, but he’s no longer coming with his wife? That’s because she’s filed for divorce. In other words, dude, those other people who are singing those rejoicing songs? Like, you’re not the only one in that crowd hurting in life. Maybe that’s why Paul told us to sing those songs. Because in the midst of the pain, they give us hope. They reorient our perspective.”
I didn’t say any of those things. I just thought them. And I’ll tell them to you.
So, dear ones, every person who loses their faith loses their faith not because of the suffering in the world, not because of theological and philosophical issues. And I say “every” and I’m pretty sure this is true maybe you know, “every” and “never” are pretty dangerous statements. But here’s the reason they’re no longer walking with Jesus: Not because of child cancer wards. It’s because you’ve heard me say this. They don’t want to quit smoking weed. They don’t want to quit sleeping with their girlfriend, and they don’t want to hear another tithing sermon because they’re going to do with their money what they want to do and all that.
Again, I know there are greedy churches out there who are always hitting people up for money, manipulating people for money, and guilting people into giving money. I try really hard not to do any of those things, the Firehouse Church tries really hard, our leadership tries really hard not to do any of that. So listen, you do what you want with your money. I will never manipulate you or guilt you into giving money. All I want to say is tithe or go to hell. But otherwise I will never be, I will never be heavy handed or manipulative or anything about that.
So But again, in my experience, people who say “All the church wants is your money” are not telling you anything about the church. They’re telling you about their attitude toward what they perceive to be their money. “No, I want to do what I want with my money. And I don’t want somebody else with their hand out, saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you give some money to these missions and the poor? And your pastor has no marketable skills, so, you know, let’s employ that poor guy and whatever.'”
That’s why people leave. And that’s why people don’t persevere. And that’s 40 years of pastoral experience. People want to excuse their sin. They don’t want to confront it. It’s hard to confront your sin and especially hard to confront the sins that are sticky, right? We love talking about the ones we have victory over, but the ones that are sticky, we get tired of confronting them. We say, “Jesus, I did it again.”
He is okay with that. He said, you know, 49 times, seven times. And He didn’t mean that literally. The point He’s making is: you are to continually forgive others and God will continually forgive you. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, CSB)
But if you go on sinning willfully, not resisting, not struggling, not dealing with it, not confessing, not repenting, you will harden your heart and you’ll walk away. And you’ll come up with some lame philosophical theological reason to do so, to justify the fact you just wanted to be selfish.
So there.
Persevere so you do not fall back into what? A lifestyle of sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, thieves, being greedy, drunk, verbally abusive, swindlers. None of those things lead to the inheritance of God’s kingdom.
What does lead to the inheritance of God’s kingdom? Walking in faithful love to King Jesus and loyalty to King Jesus all the way to the finish line. Perseverance.
And you do that by faith and by the power He provides in His grace. We were washed by God. The pollution of sin is gone. When we stand before Christ, when we stand before God the Father, He will see us clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The great exchange. When we enter the kingdom, we take off the old sin-stained garments, and we put on the garments of Jesus, and we are cleansed from our sins. We’re washed. “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
Listen, all religions in the world are the same. Balderdash. Of course, they’re not. There’s no other religion in the world that says there is an answer for the pollution of sin.
You see, when sin enters your life, it’s not like this one isolated thing sitting over here. It’s like dye. It’s like watercolor entering into a glass of water. The minute that one concentrated drop gets in, the whole thing gets polluted. The whole thing turns blue. That’s why there’s no such thing as isolation. “Well, I only do this when nobody’s looking and it doesn’t really hurt anybody else.” Listen, if it hurts you, which it does, it hurts other people because you’re less the person that you need to be. Right? If your ship is not sailing correctly, you’ll run into other ships whether you want to or not.
I use this example. Suppose you were going to come over to my house for dinner. Suppose you’re going to come over to my house for dinner and I’m whipping up some brownies. You like brownies? I love them when they’re fresh out of the oven and soft with powdered sugar on them. Jill makes great brownies. They’re so good. I used to love them in my pot smoking days, but for another reason. We won’t go there. But now I just love them without the added chemicals.
And so I love brownies. Let’s say I’m making you the good kind of brownies, and you’re coming over to my house. All of a sudden, the dog’s making a ruckus in the backyard. So I go out in the backyard to bring the dog in. It’s barking at the other dog at the fence. And those dogs would sit there for four hours and do that because they’re stupid dogs. “Get in the house,” you know, “quit barking at the other dog.”
So I bring the dog in. I realize when I came in, I stepped in something that the dog had done, and it’s all over my foot.
And so I was stirring those brownies with one of those little red spatulas, you know, those rubber spatulas you use. And so I just, you know, I just take my shoe off, and I use that spatula. It’s pretty good for that. Just gets that all off, right?And I get that all off and then maybe I wash the spatula a little bit or not.
But you know, I just, I get that all off and I start stirring those brownies again.
Now you come over to my house, and I made those brownies. And suppose before you eat those brownies, I say, “Hey, I gotta tell you a funny story.” And if I tell you that how many of you would eat those brownies? No. Why? Because a little dog doo pollutes the whole batch.
Now I gotta say, one of the men that I respect most in this world, my brother-in-law he’s a pastor, he’s a counselor, he’s a wise man. He’s also cheap as anybody can be. I mean, he’s very generous, giving to the kingdom, but he’s so frugal. He’s so cheap. He picked up a penny once in a parking lot and he squeezed it so hard it groaned. All right, so that guy’s cheap. And so I tell him that. I use that story in a church. And everybody’s like, “Of course we wouldn’t eat those brownies.” And he’s doing the math, and he said, he goes, “Well, actually, how many particles of poop actually got in the brownie mix?”
And he didn’t do that because he’s a glutton and he loves brownies. He did that because it would be hard to waste all those brownies. You know, it wouldn’t be common sense.
But you’ve been washed.
I’m doing a pretty good job getting back from rabbit trails tonight, aren’t I?
You’ve been washed. God, what can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. All the poop’s gotten out of your brownie mix, all the dye. God takes that blue dye that polluted all that water, and it all comes out by Jesus. The solution to pollution. It’s Jesus.
You were sanctified. You were sanctified. You were set free. You were redeemed by God. You’ve been set free from the power of sin. It no longer owns you. You belong to the Spirit, and you are becoming like Christ.
And yes, in this world, it’s progressive, and we have leaps forward, and then we have years of struggle. Whatever. It’s progressive. But here’s the promise: He will perfect the work He has begun, and you will be like Him. In fact, He already sees you like that, seated with Him in the heavenlies.
The Christian life is becoming who you are in Christ. That’s what it means to be sanctified. you’re becoming who you already are in Christ. And that’s what you are. You have been sanctified. It’s already happened by His work on the cross.
And you are justified. God has looked at you and the devil has accused you, and God says, “Not guilty.” The cross in the book of Revelation, it says that He saw Satan fall from heaven. When did Satan fall from heaven? When Jesus died on the cross. Why? Because in heaven, he was the accuser of the brethren, and now his accusations are hollow because Jesus has justified you.
“All this is given to you by the gift of God, by the work of Christ, and in the power of the Spirit through God the Father.” The Trinity’s right there in Galatians or in 1 Corinthians 6:11. When anybody wants to argue about the Trinity, look at what it says.
“And some of you used to be like this, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified.” In the name of who? The Lord Jesus Christ. By what? The power of the Spirit. Of whom? Of our God. All this accomplished on our behalf by God.
11 And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11, CSB)
And so, the point is, why would we foolishly return to the world’s ways of living? Holding on to your childish sin is so not worth it. It’s so not worth not becoming like Jesus. Let it go.
“But I keep going back to it.” Yeah. I promise you, one day you’ll be free. You may need to take more steps to be free. Like, one of the steps you might need to take is stop dealing with this sin alone and confess it to a brother or sister in Christ who you trust. Because I’ll tell you what, when the monster gets out of the closet, the monster gets a lot smaller. Gets a lot smaller.
And right next to us, there’s a whole group of people who are discovering that tonight. Stand in front of a group of people and say, “I’m an alcoholic.” And all of a sudden, this thing that’s defeated you your whole life now becomes an enemy that can be defeated.
My dad, 30 years, lived that. Lived that 30 years. He came out. He came out and just owned it. Confessed it. Talked about it with a group of people every week. Never took another drink in his life.
Now, he never went to Donuts-aholic, but he’s good now. He’s good now.
Why would you go back? Why would you go back? Why would you trade in, for a lousy bag of marbles, eternal riches, eternal glory?
And so, dear ones, I have two admonitions, two takeaways for you tonight.
Takeaway number one. Pray this prayer like I pray almost every day. God, by your grace, I pray that I will be faithful and fruitful to the finish line. I pray that I will be faithful and fruitful to the finish line. I’ll keep putting the right foot in front of the left and the left foot in front of the right. And I won’t let anything stop me. I’m not going to quit. I’m not going to quit this journey.
And then the second thing, here’s the second takeaway. Don’t sue Christians. In fact, don’t sue unbelievers. Don’t sue people. I mean, there may be instances that are okay, you know? I don’t know, some kind of accident that wasn’t your fault, you know, or something that, you know, it’s just faulty by the government or something. You can sue the government. I’m okay with that. You know, you got a million dollars of medical expenses, and they caused it. Go ahead. That’s fine. But if somebody was mean to you in church, just forgive them. And if you find you can’t resolve the conflict, just resolve the conflict.
All right, so we’re good. Nobody’s here quitting tonight. Nobody here’s going, “Oh, this is my last Sunday being a Christian, Kev. I just want to go back to drinking and chasing women.” No? You’re good. Okay, good. I thought maybe Stevin was right on that ledge, but, you know, it’s pretty good. All right, Jamie. He’d be a fool. He’d be a fool. You’re as good as they come. So Yep, he believes it.
All right, dear ones, don’t quit. Turn to somebody next to you and say, “Don’t quit.”
Or for those of you who’ve been coming for a long time, like all of you, how’s it go? You cannot lose if you do not quit. All right, memorize the proverbs, but hold on to a few Kevinisms, and you’ll be good.
On the night that He was betrayed, He took bread and He broke it. He gave it to His disciples, and He said, “This is my body, which is given for you.”
In the same way, after supper, He took the cup, gave thanks to His Father in heaven. He said, “Drink this, all of you, for this is my blood. And in this, it declares the forgiveness of sins.”
You’ve been washed. You’ve been washed. You ever feel like you need to take a shower? There you go. You ever feel like your relationship with somebody needs to be renewed? Here you go.
Every once in a while, my wife and I go, “Hey, we got to go out to eat.” Why do we got to go out to eat? Because we’re going to sit down for an hour over food, which we both like, and what are we going to do? She says, “We’re going to reconnect.” We’re going to talk. We’re going to talk. We’re going to hang out together.
So, whatever it is, this renews our relationship. So come and eat.
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April 26, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right, dear ones.
Psalm 25: Teach me your ways, O God.
1 Lord, I appeal to you. 2 My God, I trust in you. Do not let me be disgraced; do not let my enemies gloat over me. 3 No one who waits for you will be disgraced; those who act treacherously without cause will be disgraced. 4 Make your ways known to me, Lord ; teach me your paths. 5 Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; I wait for you all day long. 6 Remember, Lord, your compassion and your faithful love, for they have existed from antiquity. 7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my acts of rebellion; in keeping with your faithful love, remember me because of your goodness, Lord. 8 The Lord is good and upright; therefore he shows sinners the way. 9 He leads the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. 10 All the Lord ‘s ways show faithful love and truth to those who keep his covenant and decrees. 11 Lord, for the sake of your name, forgive my iniquity, for it is immense. 12 Who is this person who fears the Lord? He will show him the way he should choose. 13 He will live a good life, and his descendants will inherit the land. 14 The secret counsel of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he reveals his covenant to them. 15 My eyes are always on the Lord, for he will pull my feet out of the net. 16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am alone and afflicted. 17 The distresses of my heart increase; bring me out of my sufferings. 18 Consider my affliction and trouble, and forgive all my sins. 19 Consider my enemies; they are numerous, and they hate me violently. 20 Guard me and rescue me; do not let me be disgraced, for I take refuge in you. 21 May integrity and what is right watch over me, for I wait for you. 22 God, redeem Israel, from all its distresses. (Psalms 25:1-22, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So, I’ve told you guys that about two years ago we went through a difficult season. Actually, more than two years ago now, two and a half years ago or so. And I just went through a difficult season. And I remember a preacher once said, when you’re going through a difficult season, read through the Psalms, and when you find yourself, stay there. As I started to do that, I started to read through the Psalms and I found myself in Psalm 25, 26, and 27.
And so I wanted to talk tonight about Psalm 25. When I was in trouble, here is one of the psalms where I found myself. For a long time, I’ve liked this psalm. I just like that. “Teach me your ways “
You know, as I’ve prayed in my life through the psalms, one of my prayers has been consistently from Psalm 25: Teach me your ways. Teach me your ways. I want to walk in your ways, God. There are all sorts of teachers in this world. There are all sorts of ways that are suggested to us. But I want to walk in the way of the Lord. I want to follow Jesus. And so, Lord, teach me your ways.
And so here he tells us when you are in trouble verses 1 through 7 first of all, trust God. Acknowledge trust in God. And brothers and sisters, here’s just a basic truth: You do not see the big picture. You only know an infinitesimally small amount of what’s going on in your life, in the world, and other people’s lives. And God is smarter than you. Turn to somebody next to you and say, “God is smarter than you.” You know He is.
Now, that in and of itself is no reason to trust Him, because lots of people who are smarter than me aren’t trustworthy. They’re wicked. But another thing about God is God is good. God is smarter than you. And God is better than you. He’s good, He’s loving, He’s kind. Jesus said He’s our Father. He has your best interest at heart.
And the third thing is that He’s powerful, that He is able to accomplish His will in your life when you trust Him. And His will in your life is going to be good, and even if you don’t understand at a particular moment what’s going on, when all of your life seems to be in chaos and you don’t understand what’s going on, the first thing to do is say, “Oh, God, I trust you.”
“Help me” and “I trust you.” Yes, you’ve been listening to me over the years. Good for you. Good for you.
Well, if you pray, “Help,” that’s a prayer of trust, right? That’s a prayer of trust. So acknowledge trust.
God defeats our enemies. God defeats our enemies. He takes down our enemies. The problems that we have that seem overwhelming, God is able to defeat.
We read the story in our Bible study tonight of David and Goliath. And I love what David says. It’s so exciting. Goliath comes to David, and he’s huge, and he’s got this huge spear with this huge you know, everything about him is physically imposing and intimidating. And he’s got total attitude, you know, and he just he’s got it. And he strikes fear in all the whole army of Israel.
And David stands there with his little rock, and he says and David can’t even fit into Saul’s armor, right? He’s a pubescent boy. He’s not grown into manly stature. And he says to Goliath, “You come against me with sword and spear, javelin and shield, but I come against you in the name of the Lord God who you blaspheme today. And you said you’re going to kill me and feed my carcass to the birds. But today” I forget if he says “the Lord” or “I will” But “in the strength of the Lord, you’ll die. And the Lord will feed not only you, but the army of the Philistines to the carcasses of the birds.”
God’s bigger than the Goliaths in your life. God is bigger than the Goliaths in your life.
And the devil tries to intimidate us with those Goliaths. Oh, my gosh, what’s going to happen? Oh, my gosh, what’s going to happen? Well, one thing’s for sure, you don’t know what’s going to happen. What you do know is God is smarter than you, God is good, and God is powerful. And that is Selah. That is a sigh, that is a breath. I trust Him to defeat my enemies.
And then I pray, and prayer is an act of humility. And when we pray and we ask God to teach us, He will. When we come to God in humility and say, “God, I don’t know the way in which I should go” James says, “If any of you lacks wisdom ” Well, dear ones, all of us lack wisdom. We don’t know how to face what faces us so often.
You know who are the smartest people about raising children? Young married couples who have no children. Because they’ve read two books. And I remember. I remember my wife and I, we were not the first of our set of friends to have children, but there were four sets of friends in Chico, and we were all working in Young Life, and we all, you know, got engaged the same year, and we all got married. It was fun. One couple got married in June, another one in July, another one in August, another one in September. So it was four weddings, but there was no funeral.
So we all got married. We were in July, the couple that got married in June they had the first baby. They were the first ones married, and they took off right out of the chute, you know? They got married. Had a baby real quick. And we loved their little son, their little son, Matthew. He was so cute. And we babysat Matthew. And, you know, and he loved Aunt Jill, and I was Uncle Revers. He loved Aunt Jill and Uncle Revers.
But, you know they went away for a weekend, and we got to take care of him and everything. But we would watch them parent Matthew, and we would just drive home. You know, we understood it’s tough and all that, but we would just drive home and say, “Well, you know, we’re not going to do that.” Like, they would argue over who’s going to change the diaper, whose turn it was. Because nobody likes changing a diaper. It’s gross. And we’re like, “We’ll never argue over who’s going to change a diaper.”
And so that day we made a rule. If you smell it, change it. Which is unfair to my wife because she’s got this she smells like a bloodhound. And I don’t smell that much. And not only that, but I’m wicked. So when Megan was learning to walk, and she was 1 years old, and I could see her walking and the diaper was hanging You know what I’m talking about? You know, on the box where it says 18 pounds, doesn’t hold nearly 18 pounds. I’m just telling you, you know. It’s coming out way before 18 pounds. I don’t know if that’s what the box means, but it’s false advertising.
So anyway, Megan would be walking toward us, and I knew my promise. If I smelled it, I’d change it. So, she’d walk toward us, and I just, “Hi, honey. Go to mama.” Didn’t smell a thing. Didn’t smell a thing.
But we were so smart. And then we had a baby, and we realized we know nothing. This little creature outsmarts us every day. Lord, I know nothing. Sergeant Schultz, if you’re old enough to remember Hogan’s Heroes: “I know nothing. I know nothing.”
Humble me, Lord. Teach me your ways. I want to be teachable.
In sports, you know, one of the things they, you know, athletes, especially really good athletes, can be incredibly cocky, and that’s part of their gift. They’re confident. And that’s really, you know, that’s one of the things that makes them great athletes. Like, “I can do this.” But one of the things coaches look for is, are you teachable? I want you cocky, but I want you humble enough to know there’s still stuff you need to learn. Are you coachable?
He says, “Repent of your sin for they’re immense. Repent of your sin.”
Don’t go to God demanding His power and grace in your life, and God says, “Okay, my power and grace are for you, but turn from your wickedness.” No, God, I don’t want to turn from my wickedness.
And it’s not that God is up there saying, “Well then I’m not going to do anything for you.” You can’t receive it because they’re contradictory. The cup has to be emptied of filth and garbage before it can be filled with God’s pure, refreshing, life giving water. They don’t fit together.
And then when you’re in trouble, worship. Remember God’s mercy and love.
This morning, Derek Haza preached at the Firehouse Church, and he talked about detours. He talked about the children of Israel, and they took a detour. The Bible says they didn’t go by way of the sea through the land of the Philistines because God knew if they faced the Philistines with the threat of war, they would turn around and want to go to Egypt. So, He took them the long way around by Mount Sinai, which was also important. And so it took them longer to get to the Promised Land.
But they got to the Promised Land in a relatively short time. It didn’t take them 40 years to get to the Promised Land. They got to the Promised Land in a relatively short time. But when they got there, they wouldn’t enter in. Up to that time before they got to the Promised Land, there are at least three times where they sarcastically say to Moses, “What did you do this for? Bring us out into the desert to die? We would be better back in Egypt.” Well, listen, be thankful and praise God. Don’t be a Christian whiner.
Why do they spend 40 years in the desert? Because they wouldn’t let God teach them His ways. They wouldn’t trust Him. They wouldn’t thank Him. Throughout Israel’s history, God is always saying, “Hey, don’t you guys remember what I did for you? Don’t you remember who I am?”
We do the same thing, right? We have a whole history of God delivering us in times of trouble, of God answering our prayers and taking us through tough times. And then we had another tough time, and we go, “God, why is this happening to me? What? You brought me this far just to slam me?” No, listen, the quickest way to get out of a detour is thankfulness.
And Israel whined. They whined.
Now, it’s okay to a certain degree to be a whiner. Job’s a whiner. He had pretty good reason to whine, but he’s a whiner. The Psalms are full of whines. But I love how the psalms end: “But yet I will praise you.”
So, you can bring your complaint before God. You can even ask Him, “Why?” Though, again, as Jamie would tell you, because not only is God smarter than me, but she’s smarter than me as Jamie would tell you, “Why?” is not nearly as good a prayer as “Help.” It’s a great prayer. It’s a great prayer.
So, worship Him. Remember His goodness, mercy, and love. Give Him thanks and praise. And then worship is bowing down to Him as Lord.
And so, you believe in Him, Psalm 25 says, and you keep His covenant. You keep His covenant. What is His covenant? This is the New Covenant that we now have fellowship with God as our Lord and King, and we walk in humble obedience to Him. We don’t have 613 commandments to follow. This morning this is so good. We don’t have 613 commandments to follow. This morning I ate bacon for breakfast. I did not break the covenant. Didn’t do it. It was wonderful.
And I was thankful. Lord, I’m thankful I’m not an Old Testament Jew, so I can partake of thine goodness that you made through the greatest recycler in the world, the pig. You give it a rotten apple core and it makes bacon. What a great animal that is.
So, remember, keep His covenant.
Now, how do I violate His covenant? When I sin against Him and when I sin against others. So by your grace, Lord, by your power, help me to love you, help me to learn your ways to stop sinning and keep your covenant.
And then when I don’t, what does He say? He’ll forgive your sin and still bless your life.
How many times have you messed up really bad and you thought, “Oh, God’s going to take me to the woodshed”? But you repent and you tell God you’re sorry. And then you go to church and you have the most wonderful experience of His love and grace and mercy flooding over you. And He didn’t even take you to the woodshed. He didn’t shame you. He didn’t spank you. He didn’t scold you. Twelve bad things didn’t happen to you. He just said, “I’m so glad we’re back on the right track, child. Let’s keep going. I love you so much.” He’ll forgive you, and He will bless your life.
Psalm 1. We read it. Blessed is the man, blessed is the woman who meditates, chews. Meditate is the word, “chew the cud.” What does a cow do? A cow eats food, regurgitates it, and then chews the cud. That’s how they digest. Well, I’m on a theme tonight, aren’t I? I must be hungry. That’s how they make stupid grass into wonderful ribeyes.
So we’re praising God for both the pig and the cow tonight. I’ll get to the chickens in a moment. Not quite as good, but still worthy.
God will forgive your sin. He’ll bless your life as we meditate upon Him. Blessed is the man. Do you want a blessed life? Well, a blessed life here’s what we want, right? We want a trouble-free life. I want a trouble-free life. God does not promise a trouble-free life. He says, “In this world you will have troubles. But take heart. Why? I’ve overcome the world. I’m bigger than that trouble. And if you’ll trust me and walk in my ways, worship me, repent of your sins just be my child you will live a blessed life.” You will live a blessed life. A life full of God, full of deep happiness.
We sang it. What joy. What joy. What peace. What peace. You’ll become a solid person, a real person, and capable of living forever in His kingdom.
And then finally, when you’re in trouble, hope. These three remain: Faith, hope, and love.
13 Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13, CSB)
I think hope is the one least preached on. It’s the third sibling. It’s the youngest sibling, right? You have three kids. You go through your pictures, right? And you’ve got a picture of every event of the first child. Rohan is going to be highly photographed. Second child, not so much. Third child “You have any pictures of me when I was a kid?” “I don’t know. Let’s see. I think we got one or two here somewhere.”
Yeah. School pictures. Yeah.
First child, they drop their pacifier. You call the poison control center. You sanitize it. You know, you go out and buy three new pacifiers. Second child, you drop the pacifier, you run it under some hot water, clean it. Third child drops the pacifier. Dog licks it.
This is true, man. I remember we were moving furniture one time, just moving furniture. We’re moving out of my house in Visalia, moving to Oakdale. And furniture. We’re moving heavy stuff, you know, we got all the small stuff or it’s packed anyway and had some friends over, and this is back in the day when I actually would help move heavy stuff. Those days are over.
So, I was moving heavy stuff and Katelyn, probably one and a half, two years old, is just underfoot. She’s the youngest, she’s just underfoot. So you’re dodging her and it’s just you’re carrying heavy stuff and she’s not being bad, but it’s like you don’t need to be looking out, you know, for a two-year-old here.
And so anyway, it’s like, I don’t know, Jill, you know, but Jill’s busy. She can’t take care of Katelyn. You know, it’s like we pick up a chair in the living room, and that chair is where the kids would watch TV and eat their snacks. Somehow all this snack food you know, the little cheddar cheese crackers, pretzels, Cheerios had made its way underneath that chair. I don’t know how it got through this stuff down, but it was all underneath that chair.
We pick up that chair, and underneath is fuzzy, dusty trail mix, right? Just gross. I look at it and go… Then Katelyn, who’s been underfoot and a nuisance, dives in.
Now, first child: “Oh, no, no, no.” Second child: “No, don’t do that. That’s ucky.” Katelyn was like, “Eh, that’ll occupy her. That’ll keep her busy.” Yeah, with her it was the Mimi. Yeah, the Mimi.
So I don’t know what that has to do with hope. What does that have to do ? Oh, hope is the third child.
We speak a lot about love. We speak a lot about faith. We don’t speak about hope. But dear ones, we need hope. And the gospel is full of hope. And Jesus is full of hope. He is the God of all hope.
My favorite Easter sermon I preached it this year Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a what? A living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3, CSB)
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. You can’t have faith without hope. Hope is what this culture needs. Christians who live with hope have a profound and powerful witness to a culture of hopelessness.
I mean, how could we help but be hopeless? Anytime you turn on the TV, right? “Oh, there’s a conspiracy.” You know, if you’re a leftist, you know the fascists are taking over. If you’re right, if you’re a conservative, “Oh, they’re a bunch of corrupt liars,” and they got all these conspiracy theories. And there’s five rich world rulers, you know George Soros and Bill Gates. And I don’t know who the other three are. Oh, the Rothschilds. Yeah. You know, I don’t know who the other two are, but they’re running the whole ship. Democrat, Republican, it doesn’t matter. And they’re just… We’re just pawns on their chessboard. And everybody’s like, “There’s no hope.”
Oh, my goodness. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. What does that mean?
I don’t care about the Rothschilds. I don’t care about Bill. I mean, I hope they’re saved. I don’t care about George Soros, Bill Gates. I don’t care about, you know, Donald Trump being the next Hitler. I mean, all those things, they don’t overwhelmingly consume my life because I know Jesus defeated the devil.
We were singing that song tonight. I had a moment. I had a God moment tonight. No one but Jesus. And it talks about when He rose. It talked about a heavenly roar. I immediately flashed to Chronicles of Narnia and the movie where Aslan comes out of the grave and he roars. Then he goes and he gives all the frozen people that the Wicked Queen of the North has frozen, and he breathes on them. C.S. Lewis knows theology, Holy Spirit. And they’re thawed.
But then he goes to the battle, and Peter’s fighting the Queen of the North, and she, you know, Peter’s doing valiantly, but he’s just a boy. And she bests him. You know, she just bests him. And he’s lying on the ground, and he’s about to, you know, be impaled by this wicked woman, this wicked demonic thing. And then Aslan appears on this rock above her in all his majesty. And she’s stunned because, “No, can’t be. You’re dead. We killed you.”
And then he roars.
She takes out her sword. She goes, “Okay, I’ll fight you.”
And he roars, and she falls back to the ground. And then he pauses for a moment, and they make eye contact. And then he pounces. And that’s all you see. You don’t see him crushing her, but he pounces.
It’s a kid’s movie. It’s a kid’s movie. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the carotid arteries ripped out and stuff. But anyway, they didn’t show all that.
And we’re singing that song, and I’m just I’m an old man. I’m corny. And I’m sitting up here, and I begin to cry at Christ’s victory over sin, Satan, and death. At Christ’s victory over sin, Satan, and death. And I just begin to cry. I begin to weep.
Obviously, you didn’t hear me wailing. It wasn’t that. But I was kind of like, “Oh, Kevin.” But no, because you know what I was crying about? Hope. Hope. No one but Jesus.
Dear ones, I know your life is not perfect. I know you struggle. I know there are things you’ve struggled with for years. I get it. I’m one of you. Don’t ever think, “Oh, he’s a pastor. He knows how to pray.” And hopefully you’ve known me long enough to know. No, he’s a goombah just like me. I know it.
But we both know this. We have great hope. We have great hope. And so, when we’re in trouble, we hope.
He will and has defeated our enemies. And He will and has forgiven our sins. He will and has been our deliverer. All those things He said, “It is finished. Your sins are forgiven, your enemies are defeated, and I have delivered you.”
And now, in our life experience, we are experiencing the reality of all those things in a way that passes through time. But at one particular point in time, when we see Him face to face, we will recognize it is finished. In fact, it was finished the minute I went under those waters of baptism. And I just had to experience the rest of it to prepare me for the kingdom that I now am inheriting with Him.
And, dear ones, you have a great hope. If you leave here with anything tonight, leave with hope. Leave with hope. Leave with hope for your culture. I have not given up hope that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I do see the goodness of the Lord of the land of living. But I have not given up hope that I will see more and more of the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living until I see a great awakening. Come on, George Whitefield, break out among us.
And I live in hope for my kids. And every so often, you know, one of my daughters will call and they’ll be crying. “Oh, it’s so hard. And the kids do ” you know, they all got their drama with their kids and stuff. My son’s got drama with their kids. I got stuff with their kids, real stuff.
And as a grandparent, you hurt twice. You hurt for the grandchild, but you hurt for your kid. That’s hurting too, you know, just like It’s a different hurt than being a parent, but it’s still It’s real, you know. And your kids struggle, and it’s like, man, I thought when you left, this would end. No, it doesn’t end. You’re always Mom, you’re always Dad.
In fact, when they get a little older and start having kids, sometimes you’re more Mom and Dad because it’s like, “What do I do?” More so with daughters than sons, typically. So, anyway, future advice. But you never stop being a parent. That was a lifetime assignment.
Now I got great news for you. They will leave. Change the locks when they do. Just saying. Just saying.
And, you know, one of the best things that happened to me, within just a couple of months after they left, the dog and cat both died. So the trifecta, it’s like, whoo.
I was a good husband. When my daughter left and Jill was crying, I was very sympathetic. I comforted her. And it wasn’t more than two weeks she’s walking through the house, and she goes, “This isn’t so bad.” I go, “I know.” Last kid had left the house. Empty nest wasn’t so bad.
And when the dog died I cared for the dog. I liked the dog. And when the dog died, my wife will tell you I was very sympathetic. Whatever this means, I got it that time I don’t even know what it means, but women like to use this phrase, “He was there for me.” Mostly he wasn’t there for me. And guys are going, “What do you mean? I was three feet away from you.” You know, we’re like literalists. Of course I was there for you, you know? “No, you were emotionally absent.”
None of my friends have ever said that of me. None of my male friends have said, “You weren’t emotionally there for me.” It’s like, okay, clueless, clueless. Don’t know.
But I made some lucky guesses when the dog died. And, you know, she bragged about me to our kids. Said, “Dad’s been really good through this.” So I was there for her. When the cat died, couldn’t fake it, man. Come on. Empty nest. I wasn’t there for her.
I kind of lost points with the dog, too, because she was grieving, you know. I did really good at the immediate. But about two weeks later, she was grieving and she said, “Man, I miss coming home and taking Kyra for a walk. You know, I just really enjoyed that, coming home from work and getting her on the leash and taking her for a walk.”
And I said, “Should have told me. I would have taken her to a taxidermist and have her mounted on a skateboard.”
That wasn’t there for her, was it? I thought two weeks was long enough to, you know, start bringing the sarcasm, but I think I needed to wait longer. I think I needed to wait longer than two weeks. Oh, well. Live and learn.
All right. Dear ones well, the cat, she was always worried because it was mostly an indoor cat, but it’d go outdoors to poop, and you know, it would want to go outdoors once in a while, and we let it. And she was always concerned because of the predators, the coyotes, and the eagles, and the owls and stuff.
And she said, “I don’t know, man. I’m so worried an owl or an eagle will get it.”
And I said, “I’m pretty sure an eagle’s not gonna get it.”
She goes, “Why?”
“Well, cause when you’re not here, I strap a trout to her back and it still hasn’t attracted them. So. It’s not working.” I have no idea what any of that had to do with the sermon.
All right. Dear ones, have hope. Of all people. Of all people.
Oh, yeah. You’re always a parent. I know you got troubles. Yeah. That was a long rabbit trail, wasn’t it? Sorry about that. All right. That’s what old people do. We ramble. I’ll wrap it up.
I know you got troubles. Have hope. God is bigger. God is bigger.
You know? Aren’t you glad when we ask people how you’re doing, they never tell us the truth? That would be so overwhelming. I kind of want to say, “Welcome to my world.” I do not bear the burdens that some of you bear. Like, I’ve never had a real job. It’s been so cool.
But here’s a burden I do bear a lot more than you, probably. When I ask somebody how they’re doing, I get a real answer. And sometimes that is wearying, that is wearying. You end up with a lot of other people’s pain.
And here’s what I found, though. I go home and I just ask Jesus. When you tell me your brokenness, I do pray for you. I really do. I go home, I pray for you. I’ll pray for you there. But I pray for you. And I’ve seen God answer some of those prayers for you, too.
But if I don’t cast those on Jesus, it does not work. It does not go well for me.
And so, I’ve learned. God, I’m a pastor, but I’m an under shepherd. You’re the real shepherd. Shepherd my friends. Shepherd these people that I love. Shepherd their kids. Get them the help they need. That’s typically what I pray.
I used to pray, “God give me great advice.” Now I just say, “God, get them the help they need.” It may be great advice through me, but more times than not, it’s not. More times, it’s not great advice through me. It’s some other way. But God will help. He will help.
And so tonight, leave with hope.
What do you do when you’re in trouble? Well, Christianity 101: you pray, you worship, and you hope. You pray, you worship, and you hope. All right?
And then if you want to go back to the beginning psalm, you meditate on His Word. You trust in His promises.
God is better than you. God is smarter than you. And God is more powerful than you. And because He’s smarter than you, we humble ourselves. Because He’s better than you and me, we worship Him. Because He’s more powerful than us, and because He’s good and He knows what He’s doing, we trust Him. We trust Him.
So, Lord, you told us to do this. And I’m not a symbolic person. I’m a literal person. I would rather have somebody preach the Bible to me than take a mystical meal.
But on the night that you were betrayed, you didn’t say, “Go to a weekly meeting and listen to a man or a woman. And the man, the older he gets, the more and longer rabbit trails he’ll take. Take, listen to him or her and try to mine some gold out of that for my Word.” He didn’t say, “Do that on a weekly basis.”
I’m not saying that’s bad to do on a weekly basis. It’s good to dig into the Word every day. But you know what He did say to do every time we gathered? He didn’t say sing songs. He didn’t say pray. He didn’t say listen to the Bible. He said, “Every time you gather, do this.”
And I love what C.S. Lewis said. You know, the command was take and eat, not even take and understand. And we try to understand it. And the church, in their efforts to understand it, has fought about it for the last thousand years.
But one thing, the most symbol-based Protestants and the most literal-based Catholics, one thing they all agree on was they all do it. They all do it.
And so tonight, dear ones, in obedience to Christ, come, take and eat and trust that Christ will meet you at this table and continue to work on making you more like Him. Amen.
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April 19, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right, we’re going through 1 Corinthians, chapter five. We’re in chapter five, so we’re looking at the whole chapter.
Paul is done with problem number one. Problem number one, there’s division in the church. “I’m of Paul, I’m of Apollos, I’m of Cephas.” He deals with that pretty thoroughly in those first four chapters and points out their immaturity.
Now he’s going on to say, “Here’s something else that you guys are totally missing the mark on.” And that is sexual immorality in the church and their response to that sexual immorality.
And so 1 Corinthians 5 talks about that. “It’s actually been reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles.” It’s worse than going on in the loose city of Corinth. It would be like Paul saying today, “There’s sexual immorality. It’s the kind of sexual immorality that’s worse than what’s going on in Hollywood, worse than what’s going on in San Francisco or New York or Las Vegas. And it’s happening in the church.”
He said, “A man is sleeping with his father’s wife.”
1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles a man is sleeping with his father’s wife. (1 Corinthians 5:1, CSB)
This is probably not his mother. There’s probably another marriage, but he’s having sexual relations with his father’s wife.
2 And you are arrogant! Shouldn’t you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this? 3 Even though I am absent in the body, I am present in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who has been doing such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. 6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. 11 But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13 God judges outsiders. Remove the evil person from among you. (1 Corinthians 5:2-13, CSB)
God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So, problem number two: there’s sexual immorality in the church, and it is of a very bad nature. You know, sin is sin, but there are some sins that are kind of worse than others. And in terms of their destructive nature within the body of Christ, he says, “This is a bad deal. And you guys are actually rejoicing in that Christ has forgiven us all and look at our freedom.”
This is the epitome of what we would call cheap grace. This is the epitome of what Paul addresses in Romans. He says, “Some say, ‘If grace abounds where sin abounds, let’s sin all the more, so grace will abound all the more.'” And that’s what the Corinthians were doing. They’re saying, “We are just showing how much Christ forgives. We can do anything we want and He’ll forgive.”
And there’s always this balance that the Church has to walk in. It’s the balance between license and legalism. License is the error of cheap grace, or the historical word for it is antinomism “against law” that righteous behavior, that following the commandments, that being obedient and loyal and being Christlike doesn’t matter because grace is so big, it forgives all sins.
Grace is so big, it forgives all sins. But grace is also so big, it transforms lives and it makes us more like Jesus. And if we’re not pursuing becoming more like Jesus, we’re not walking in grace. We’re walking in license, and we’re walking away from Christ, and we’re in rebellion.
The other is the sin of legalism. Legalism is that which, you know, is always trying to protect us from sin by dealing with secondary matters instead of matters of the heart. In other words, legalism is the sin, is the issue that says, “Don’t go swimming with women, don’t dance, because it might lead to lust.” No, the sin is lust, not dancing. All right?
“Don’t drink because it might lead to drunkenness.” No, the sin is drunkenness, not a glass of wine.
And so legalism is always trying to draw fences. Don’t smoke, don’t drink. Don’t chew, don’t go with women that do.
There’s the Holiness denominations. One particular Holiness denomination for years had a legalistic rule against going to the cinema. Don’t go to the cinema. Don’t go to the movies. All right? Now I knew people who practiced that. I know people who practice that. And yet, back in the days of Blockbuster but I imagine now in the days of streaming they would go to the video store, and they would rent videos. They just wouldn’t go to the movies to watch them.
I said, “Well, what’s that about if the movies are evil?”
“No, we don’t want to give the appearance of evil by going to the movies.” Well, you’re giving the appearance of evil to the person at Blockbuster who’s renting you the movies.
Those of you don’t know, Blockbuster is this ancient way of distributing movies to some older people that we used to partake in. And it was new to us. It was like we used to actually partake in we actually had to do this. We actually had to actually go to theaters to see movies. We couldn’t get them streamed into our homes. It was barbaric back then. It was rough. It was rough. But we endured.
And so there’s always the sin of legalism. And you see this, you know, portrayed as the self-righteous Pharisee. Sometimes the world will portray us Christians as being prudish and legalistic. But I think now, if you look at religion in America now, we far and away fall off more on the side of license than legalism. I think there’s more cheap grace out there than there is, “Hey, follow Jesus.” So that’s what Paul’s dealing with here. The Corinthians are saying, “Look at how great we are. We’re not legalistic and prudish.” And Paul’s saying, “No, you’re repulsive. You’re not following Christ.”
And so, the problem is that there’s no church discipline. And this passage actually talks about the practice of excommunication, the practice of kicking people out. Paul says, “You are proud when you should be mourning. You should be sad at the grievousness of this sin.” He says, “I’m not with you physically, but in spirit I’m with you because the Holy Spirit is one and we’re corresponding through these letters, and I planted this church. And as one who is with you, I have already cast my verdict. This man is guilty of gross sin, and here is my prescription: Kick him out of church.”
Well, there it is. All you sinners get out of here. No, that’s not what Paul’s saying. He’s not saying kick sinners out of church. He’s saying if somebody is in unrepentant rebellion, they are hurting themselves and they’re hurting the body of Christ, and they need to be handed and this is a hard word they need to be handed over to Satan. What does he mean by that? He says, “Take away the church covering and the church protection, and just throw them back out into Satan’s world.”
There are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who have the wisdom to learn from the elders’ wisdom. These are actually children who take their parents’ advice. My wife was like this. When I was dating my wife, she had a curfew, and she would regularly follow her curfew, which was an annoyance to me because I liked being with her and I wanted to stay out with her longer. Her curfew, I think, was midnight. And she was like, “I got to get home.” And my wife she could fall off on the legalist side. She’d be, “I have to be there 10 minutes before midnight. I don’t want to even push it.”
And I’d be like, “Eh, you could come in 10 minutes after midnight and you’d be alright.” And she’d be like, “No, get me home,” and just annoy me.
And I said, “Your parents are so nice. They won’t punish you if you come in late after curfew.” And here’s what she said. I always love this. She says, “I’m not worried about them punishing me. I’m worried about disappointing them.” After I was annoyed at her, I wanted actually for us to raise children like her. She learned from the wisdom of the elders.
There’s a second kind of person: me. I learned from the wisdom of rebelling against the elders and then learning from my pain. All right? I have a deep commitment to only be stupid once on any particular issue. And when I’m stupid once and I pay the price, I will at least want to have the wisdom of going, “Not going to do that again.”
Everybody learns that way to some degree or another, right? Pain is our teacher. It’s like, yeah, that didn’t work. You know, great handymen don’t always hit themselves in the thumb with the hammer. They’ve learned. How did they learn? They hit themselves in the thumb with the hammer enough times to know. “Oh, pay attention to the head of the nail. Pay attention. It hurts when you get distracted.”
So, learn from your mistakes. And that’s what Paul’s doing here. He’s not saying, “Hand this man over to Satan so that he’ll go to hell.” He’s saying, “Take this man out of the protective covering of the body of Christ. He won’t learn from the wisdom of the gospel. He won’t learn from the commandments of God. Let him learn from the hardships of life.”
Prodigal son. Right? Prodigal son. You won’t learn in your father’s house how good your father is. But I love what it says in that story. He’s eating with the pigs and it says this: “And then he came to his senses.” Pain will bring you to your senses. It can.
Then there’s a third kind of people in the world, and they’re the ones who are perpetually stupid. They stay in constant rebellion. The book of Revelation ends that way. As God is pouring out His judgments upon the world, and it kind of says amazed, “And they still wouldn’t repent. They still wouldn’t repent.” And so there are people who still won’t repent.
But understand that this excommunication that Paul is prescribing is prescribed out of a motive of love. “I want his flesh destroyed.” What does that mean? I want his sinful impulse crucified, and he won’t bring it to the cross voluntarily, so send him out there and let him experience the cross. You follow? It’s tough love.
I have a dear friend of mine and he’s a wonderful Christian man, wonderful father and his mother, who I knew, who’s now passed away, was a wonderful Christian woman. But this boy was trouble. And you can always say, “Well, you know, it’s the parents’ fault.” She was a great mom. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, but he was he just had that personality, you know, and he was just, he was rebellious and he was drunk in high school and racing cars and crashing cars and, you know, trying to hook up with all these girls. He was just a mess, and he was wreaking havoc on the rest of the family.
And on his 18th birthday, he got out of bed hungover and walked down to mooch some more breakfast off his hard-working servant mother. What he saw instead of a plate of warm pancakes or a breakfast for him was a suitcase packed in the front hallway of the house. His mom said, “This is the last thing I’m going to do for you. I packed your suitcase.”
He said, “Well, what for?”
She said, “You’re out. I’m kicking you out of my house.”
“But Mom.”
“No, you’re destroying this family. Get out.”
To this day, he’ll tell you, best thing ever happened to him. He ended up coming to Jesus because his mom wasn’t enabling him not to.
So, some people, you know If you have more than one kid, there’s probably one kid that you can say, “Hey, don’t do that.” They’re like, “I won’t.” There’s probably another kid that, you know, you got to lift them off the ground, drop them in a seat, and then three or four times later, they go, “Oh. Oh, you don’t want me to do that. Okay.”
Yeah, knucklehead. Don’t want you to do that.
All right, Isaiah, I’m sure you were the first kind, right? Jacob was the troublemaker. Oh, in the Bible, Jacob’s a troublemaker. We know. We know. Isaiah is the faithful prophet. Jacob’s the troublemaker. I got you.
All right, so this is an act of love. The destruction of sin and the repentance of the sinner is the goal, the salvation of those involved and the health of the church. When the church embraces it’s one thing for the church to endure sinners. Of course we endure sinners. This is the hospital for sinners, not the hotel for saints. But we don’t embrace and enable unrepentant rebellion against God. We discipline it. And that makes the church healthy, not legalistic and mean and judgmental.
I’ve known at least one situation. I was the associate pastor at the time, so it wasn’t my call. There was a man in the church who was divorcing his wife because he was having an affair with another woman, who, before the divorce was complete, was already engaged to this other woman.
But on the side, what his wife and the other woman didn’t know is he had a third woman. And his wife, who I think is ridiculously somebody yelled at me for this this morning who I think was a ridiculously foolish codependent, as this other woman was. And they said, “Well, you’re letting the man off.” No, the man is wicked. The man is wicked. But that these women were putting up with it is stupid.
He would still go back to his wife while he’s divorcing her, engaged in sleeping with his other woman, and spend the night and have sexual relations with his wife, and she’d be okay with that. And then he was having sex with this other woman that he was engaged to before they got married. And then on the side, he had his third affair going on.
And the pastor heard about it and called him in the office. And the pastor should have said, “Go back to your wife.” But he was so exasperated, he said, “Pick one.”
And this guy said, “No, I’m living the life, man. I’m living the life. I’m a stud.”
And the pastor said, “Then leave the church.”
And he said, “I can come anywhere I want. You can’t tell me to leave. I can show up any Sunday morning I want. What, are you going to call the police?”
And the pastor said, “If you don’t repent and you’re here on Sunday morning, I will call you out publicly. I’ll tell everybody here what you’re doing and that you’re not repentant.” And so the guy stopped coming. I don’t know if he repented or not. I’m not sure.
Oh, by the way, all three women that he was having an affair with, they were all part of the church too. So there can be gross dysfunction in the church.
And so that’s what Paul is saying here. It’s for the health of the church.
So then who do we break fellowship with? All right, number one, we share bread and do not break fellowship with fellow strugglers. Paul is not saying here, “Don’t have fellowship with people who struggle with sin.” Of course, we have fellowship with people who struggle with sin. The key point there is “struggle with.” They’re not giving into it. They’re not trying to justify it and say, “My behavior is right.” They’re coming with a broken and contrite heart saying, “I struggle with this.”
There was a man one time, and we were friends, and we would walk together in the mornings. His struggle was with homosexuality. He struggled with same-sex attraction. And there was a sign, a big billboard outside of town back in those days that was advertising cigarettes. And as it was advertising cigarettes, it did so with a healthy young couple in bathing suits. Because obviously, if you smoke cigarettes, you will perpetually stay healthy and young. It’s advertising.
And this healthy young couple was, you know, frolicking on the beach. And you know, it said, “Smoke Marlboros, and you’ll get a guy that looks like him and a girl that looks like her.” Was the message, I guess.
So anyway, he said, “You know that billboard outside of town with that young couple up there in their bathing suits?”
I go, “Yeah, I know that billboard.”
He goes, “Do you ever look at the guy?”
And I go, “You know, I don’t. That’s not my struggle. I don’t look at the guy.” I said, “But here’s the truth. I can tell you how many stripes are on that bikini. I look at the girl.” And this is what I told him. I said, “Mike, let’s meet at the altar of Jesus, and I will pray for your homosexual struggles, and you can pray for my heterosexual struggles.” That’s what we do with fellow strugglers. We don’t kick them out of church. We meet them at the foot of the cross, where we all find mercy and grace. That’s what we do.
And the other thing we do is we don’t break off fellowship with sinful unbelievers. We don’t break off fellowship with unrepentant unbelievers. Jesus was a friend to sinners. You are not sinning if you go hang out with sinners. You’re okay. You’re supposed to.
Who we break off fellowship with is unrepentant people in the church who say they’re brothers and sisters in Christ, yet are in intentional and proud rebellion against Christ. And those are the people we say, “No, no.”
Now, it doesn’t mean we don’t talk to them. We don’t say, “Okay, come back to Jesus.” But if they refuse, then let them learn. Let them learn. Hand them over to Satan.
By the way, when you skip church, when you and your family skip church not that you guys do, you’re all very faithful but if you’re a twicer, you know, Easter and Christmas, or, you know, once a month or whatever, those other three weeks out of the month, you’re handing yourself and your kids over to Satan.
My boys are involved in traveling sports, and so their weekends are taken up, but my kids are very intentional. They ended up going to a church that has multiple services. Why? “We’re going to church every weekend before we play baseball. We’re not going to raise mediocre athletes who don’t know God.” Nothing wrong with sports. Love sports. Love watching my grandkids play sports. But I respect my kids, and they actually left the Firehouse Church to do it, which was hard for me, but I understood it. It’s like, yeah, we got one service, 11 o’clock, you know. And they go on Saturday, they go Sunday morning, they’ll go Saturday night. Because the church has three services on Sunday, one on Saturday night. They’ll make it work so their kids are in church every Sunday, and they’re in church every Sunday.
“I don’t want to go.” Of course you don’t. You know, haven’t you experienced this? You’re all pretty experienced Christians. Y’all been hanging around church for a while. Haven’t you experienced this? The Sunday you want to go the least is the Sunday where God meets you the most. There was something there for you.
Now you’re sick. I get it. You know, there are reasons not to go. I’m not you know, if you miss, I’m not a legalist here. I’m not going to beat you up if you’re not in church on a Sunday. I’m just saying this is a covering. This is actually a spiritual covering that we experience when we gather together to corporately worship.
And it’s good for you. I once told a Baptist preacher in town, I said, “My mom was raised a Baptist.” I love his response. “Didn’t hurt her none either, did it?” Nah, it didn’t. It didn’t hurt her none.
So sexual immorality in the church.
By the way, sleeping with your father’s wife is not the only thing that’s sexually immoral. In fact, the Christian standard Here’s the Christian standard. Here’s sexual morality. One man, one woman. Monogamous heterosexual union till death do them part. That’s it.
But it gets harder than that. It does? Yeah. Don’t lust in your heart. Darn Jesus. I was doing so well till you said that. I was doing so well till you said that.
I remember I was walking with a friend one time. Here’s the difference between what I call creation appreciation and lust. It is not sin to look at somebody and say, “That’s an attractive person.” That’s not sin. Okay, that’s fine.
I joke about my wife. She likes Denzel. I told her one time. Church was full, it was packed, and I went to her and I said to her, I said, “Honey, in your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine it would be like this?” And she said, “In my wildest dreams, you’re Denzel.” So there you go. That’s my wife. That’s who I compete with. She likes tall black men. She married a short, fat white guy. Go figure.
So creation appreciation. That person is attractive. You’re not sinning.
I was walking with a friend one time 30, 40 years ago. We had small children. We’re having a God talk. We’re talking about God and raising kids and family. Oh, we’re so holy. The Bible. It’s California, and it’s the middle of the afternoon. Summer in California. It’s 90 some degrees outside.
By the way, Washingtonians, you will not die of heat stroke the first day it gets over 80. I’m just letting you know you don’t have to check on your old neighbors. You don’t have to bring the pets in. They’ll be fine. It’s 82, for crying out loud. All right? You’re all right. Just saying, I’ve been here 20 years. It still freaks me out when people go, “Oh, my gosh, it’s 80!” You know, we call that down in the Central Valley of California. February. It’s February, right, Aiko? Yeah, you’re fine.
So we’re out walking. It’s probably 95, 98 degrees. Two o’clock in the afternoon. We’re walking. Bet you think we’re crazy. No, the crazy person was the woman we saw. She was jogging in the middle of the afternoon in the California heat.
Now, whatever this woman’s health regime was, it worked. She was fit.
It’s 98 degrees in California. She’s jogging. What do you think she’s wearing, a sweatsuit? No, no, we’re talking about God, and this very fit young woman comes around the corner not smiling because joggers never do. I don’t care what Stevin says. He was never smiling out there. Whether the endolphins I don’t even know what dolphins have to do with it. I don’t know what those dolphins Everybody says, “I got dolphins.” What does that mean? I got the endolphins. Who cares about endolphins? It’s misery.
So she’s jogging, and she’s got this little white, little top on, cut off here. So her whole very fit midriff shows. And she’s wearing 30, 40 years and I still remember. I apologize. I remember she’s wearing these little blue shorty shorts. Little blue shorty shorts, little white midriff, all fit. Jogging. My son and I, “God is good. Oh, we love our wives. We love our kids.” She comes around the corner, we go…
Then we’re kind of embarrassed, right? Because we’re being so holy. And we get completely taken off track by Little Miss Shorty Shorts.
And he’s Texan, so he looked at me in his best Texan and he said, he said, “Son, the first look is radar.” He’s absolutely right. The first look is radar, you know? God created us to make babies. Make babies with her. No, wait, got wife. It’s what you do after the first look. That’s the issue. Right?
So don’t condemn yourself for creation appreciation. All right? But don’t go further. Love your wife, love your husband. That’s good enough. It’s better than good enough. That’s the best. That’s how God created it.
So sexual immorality. We deal with it. When do we break off fellowship? When people are in willing, arrogant, prideful rebellion. Like, no, you can’t do that here. You can’t do that here.
Now Paul says, “I’ve already judged him.” Oh, people get freaked out over this. “Christians aren’t supposed to judge.” Shut up. You know, when non-Christians look at us and say, “You’re judgmental, you. you’re supposed to not judge.” You know what they’re doing to us? Yeah. We are absolutely supposed to judge those inside the church. And here’s what we’re supposed to judge: behavior. And we’re supposed to judge ourselves. Behavior. It is perfectly legit to call balls and strikes. That’s wrong. That’s right.
I had a woman, she was cheating on her husband, and she tried to convince me with a theological argument. She said, “God is love.” She had two little boys, gonna break up this family. Her husband was a good man. He was a hard working man. He loved his sons. He loved his wife.
But she was kind of this romance addict and always wanted a fresh thrill, and so she says, “Well, wait, Pastor, God is love, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I love this guy, not my husband, so it’s okay for me to leave for the sake of love.” True love. True love.
No, it’s not okay for you to leave. And I’m not being judgmental when I tell her, “No, it’s not all right. You made a promise to that man, and through that promise to that man, you actually made a promise to the children you brought into this world that you wouldn’t destroy this family. Stay with him.” That’s not judging.
Here’s the judging we’re forbidden to do: We’re forbidden to judge motives. I actually just did it to her. I said she was a romance addict and wanted thrills in her life. So I’m saying that’s why she did that. I don’t know that for sure. That was my suspicion. But actually, I don’t know that.
We’re not allowed to say “because”. “You do that, and that’s wrong” absolutely. “You do that, and that’s wrong, and here’s why you do it. I know you. I know you.” No, you don’t.
Listen. One of the most heinous sins and it’s a sin we all hate, especially if we have children, grandchildren is the sin of molesting children. Child molesters, pedophiles. And you hear people talk about pedophiles in the worst possible way. You can be a rapist; that’s bad. But a child rapist People say all the time, “Kill them, string them up, execute them, shoot them on the spot.”
And you know what? It is a heinous sin, and I hate it. I hate what it does. I’ve had many people in my office who’ve been molested, and it destroys young lives. I hate it with a perfect hatred. I hate the sin. But you know what I’ve learned? I don’t hate pedophiles. Because every pedophile I know, and I know a few, was molested as a child. And that demon, that demonic spirit entered in.
It’s not an excuse. Doesn’t make what they did right. I’m calling balls and strikes. Your behavior is 100% wrong. I have no problem with justice being executed on that behavior, no problem with you going to jail, protecting children. But what I will not do is hate that person. No matter how heinous their crime, I won’t do it. And I will not give up hope that they’re redeemable. I won’t do it because I’m not allowed to.
Isn’t it amazing how we are so quick to judge other people’s sin, and we know perfectly why they do it, and yet every one of us in this room has had this conversation with God: “God, why do I keep doing that?” We don’t even know why we do the things we do. Is that not right? We don’t even know why we repeat behaviors that we shouldn’t repeat, but we’re so quick to judge other people’s sin.
I’ve never been tempted to gamble. I mean, I like to make bets with friends just because I’m competitive and I have fun with that. But I’ve never been tempted to gamble away my family’s money. I got a math brain. I know the odds are in the casino’s favor, right? I know if I do it enough, I will lose money; they will make money. That’s why they have all the expensive lights and they can give away free drinks.
And I’ll never forget this is back in the old days again we’re going through a casino. My wife and I are walking through a casino, and people are playing the slot machines. This is the time where you used real money and you pulled levers. It wasn’t the computer where you pressed in the card that you bought and pushed the buttons. Real money. And they would do this thing, right? They had four behaviors: money, pull, drink, smoke. All right? They’d have their drink, they’d have their smoke, they’d have their little coin of quarters, and they’d have the slot machine.
Put a quarter in, pull it, take a shot, take a drag. Put a quarter in, pull it, take a shot, take a drag. That’s what they did. Little dance.
And we’re walking through the casino, and I’m looking at this, I’m going, “You’re a bunch of stupid idiots.” I’m judging them. Notice I’m not judging the behavior. I’m not saying, “Gambling is irrational and it’s a waste of money and probably wrong to do, at least at the level you’re doing it.” No, I’m judging their motives. “You’re a bunch of stupid idiots.” That’s what I’m thinking. “You’re a bunch of dupes.”
And I start singing walking through the casino. “Give your money to the poor. Give your money to the poor. You’ll be so much happier if you didn’t fund the mob and gave your money to the poor.”
My wife goes, “Shh, be quiet.” Now, any man worth his salt, when your wife switches over to be your mama, do you be quiet? No, you sing louder. It’s like, oh, no, you’re not my mother. You don’t get to tell me to be quiet when I’m having fun.
“Give your money to the poor.” People are looking. I’m walking through the casino.
My wife’s like, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Let’s get out of here. The mob’s gonna come get us. Shut up.”
Now, I’m judging their sin like nobody’s business. I’m judging them like nobody’s business. You might ask, well, Kevin, if you don’t like to gamble, what are you doing in the casino? Ah. Because at the top floor of the casino you got it brother. There is an all-you-can-eat.
Did you hear those words? That’s a gamble I’ll take because they’re betting they can make money on me, and I’m betting they can’t. Right? That’s my kind of gamble. All you can eat. I’m thinking, you ain’t seen this boy eat. You know, I’ll keep coming back.
So, I’m judging them for their sin while I’m fully embracing gluttony. Right? Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Yes, Christians, don’t be buffaloed by the world who says you shouldn’t judge into not calling balls and strikes. Absolutely. Sin is sin. What the Bible says is sin is sin. Call it out. On the other hand, you don’t know why people do what they do, and neither do I. And so you don’t judge that.
So, Paul is perfectly legitimized in judging this man and kicking him out of the church, but he does it for his redemption.
By the way, if you read 2 Corinthians, this man ultimately came back to the Lord. And then the Corinthians wouldn’t restore him to the fellowship. And Paul says, “Hey, bring him back. He’s repented. Bring him back. He learned.”
All right. We are to bring correction to the church, not the world. We’re to bring correction to the church, not the world. We are to build one another up. Now, when I say we don’t bring correction to the world, what I mean is we don’t judge the world. Again, it doesn’t mean we don’t call balls and strikes. It doesn’t mean we don’t work for reform. It doesn’t mean we don’t try to transform the world, but we simply
Listen. This happens all the time. If you like to argue on social media, which I like to argue, so that seems like a good place to do it. But I’ve stopped because it’s kind of fruitless. Over 40% of arguments on social media it’s been studied over 40% of arguments are ad hominem arguments that use the motive fallacy instead of arguing against the idea.
And people and politicians do this all the time. It’s the lowest form of argument, and it’s name calling. “I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t have to listen to your ideas because you’re a fascist.” Notice how quickly names get applied to people. “I don’t have to listen to your ideas because you’re a commie.”
And the minute you label something, then you don’t have to listen to it. You already know. You know, All Wise One, where it’s coming from.
And so nobody talks about ideas, nobody talks about solutions. They talk about people. They’re the bad guys; they’re the good guys.
No. No.
So, yes, we can call balls and strikes in the world, but you can’t blame blind people for being blind.
You know this. When you became a Christian, one of the first things you realized was, why are all these people so stupid? Even though 6 months ago you were just as stupid. Right? My wife will say all the time, “That just doesn’t make sense.” No, it doesn’t, because you have 30 years of gaining a Christian perspective and worldview, and you know what makes sense, at least to a greater degree than they do.
But you know why they’re doing that? They’re desperately seeking something to grab onto because they’re blind. And if a blind person walked into church right now and tripped over that chair, you wouldn’t be going, “You stupid idiot. Couldn’t you see that?” No, they’re blind. You’d help them. That’s our position with the world. We can tell them they’re blind. That’s fine, but we can’t despise them. You can’t hate. You can’t hate your political opponents. You can’t hate your theological opponents. You can’t hate the atheists. You can’t hate whatever group that’s working against you.
It’s hard to do, right? I remember people conservative Christians, will always come to me and say, “We need to pray for a president. We need to pray for our leaders.”
And I get people mad at me because they’ll say that, and I’ll go, “Okay, we’ll pray for them this Sunday in church.” I’ll pray for them out loud. I begin by praying for Bremerton’s mayor, Greg Wheeler, who’s a liberal. And then I pray for, at the time it was, who’s the guy? Inslee. Then I pray for Inslee, and then I pray for Trump, and then they get all mad at me.
“Why’d you pray for Wheeler and Inslee?” Because the Bible says, pray for your leaders.
Oh, wait, I don’t have the version that says, “Pray for the leaders you agree with more than the others.” I don’t have that version.
Jesus says, what? Hate your enemies and crucify them in social media? No, he says, “Love your enemies.” That’s one of the ways we’re different people. That’s one of the ways we’re different. We refuse to hate people who are wrong, right? We refuse to hate people who are wrong.
And so, wives, you can’t hate your husbands. Just can’t do it. Even though he’s wrong. We know.
All right, what do we do with the world? We’re to bring the gospel to the world. We are a light, but not a judge.
Now, we can warn the world of the judgment to come. But Paul’s very clear. God is the judge. God knows the intentions of every heart. We can warn the world that apart from Christ, you are going to face the judgment of God. God will judge every intention of your heart. We can tell people that’s going to be the case, but we don’t get to cast the judgment.
There’s no worse curse than we can say to another thing or human being than “God, damn it.” We’re making ourselves a judge. “God, you need to damn this.” No.
All we do with the things that appear to be damnable to us is we lift them up to heaven and say, “God, I beseech you to save this. Rescue this like you rescued this.” That’s our position with the world.
With the church, if I find out any of you are sleeping with your mother-in-law tonight, I’m kicking you out. Shouldn’t I do that? Yeah, I mean, I’m kicking you out. I’m getting the leadership team together, and we’re going to say, “Repent.” And if you don’t come back when the devil beats you up enough, we’ll be here for you. That’s what we do.
All right, dear ones, I want to tell you this, though, about your sin because you are repentant, you are humble. I mean, you are; you’re here. You know, hopefully you didn’t come here to show off your spirituality. Hopefully you came here because you know you need help and saving like the rest of us.
And if you are, I want to tell you with full assurance, in the Name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven.
Not only do I want to tell you your sins are forgiven, I want to tell you that the power of sin over your body, over your mind, over your flesh has been broken. And you will not, you are not now a slave to sin, even though you may feel like it in some ways, and for all eternity, you will not be a slave to sin. You will be free.
You not only get the love of God, you get to be like Him. You get to be as good as Jesus. I mean, I’ve gone through the last 45 years of my life just wanting to be as good as Jill and now I get to be as good as Jesus, right?
And so He invites you to His table to remind you of that that sin has been defeated. Satan has been defeated. Death has been defeated. Yes, we’re still engaged in the war, but the war has been won. And Christ is the victor.
And, dear ones, you are in His family. You are His beloved child. So come tonight and take this meal and be grateful for the nourishment and the love of God. Come and eat.
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April 13, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
We speak your name, Jesus, over this time together. We exalt you and praise you as the Lord Most High.
Come, Lord, and give us the mind of Christ. Settle our hearts to sit before your Word and help our minds not wander, but to hear what your Spirit is saying to us tonight in our time together.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Years ago, a Christian popular song, popular worship song and kind of—you know, we get in those stages in the contemporary kind of evangelical, Charismatic world where we’re, oh, whatever, Elevation or Bethel or somebody or Hillsong, and we’re singing all the same songs for a while. And years ago, from a group of musicians called House Fires a song came out, and it just kind of was really popular there for a while—”Good, Good Father.” Remember that one?
And I remember being down in Arizona with my brother-in-law and sister and Jill and I. My nephew was down at Grand Canyon University; we were visiting him. And we also, as a gift, you know—it was our family vacation. But they all knew—none of them were big baseball fans—they all knew how I love baseball. I finally got to go to spring training, and so we got to see some spring training games. In fact, I got my first baseball ever.
You know, in a baseball game when the ball comes into the stands… Sean got one. We were with you and Sean that one night, and he got a foul ball. And Kyler, who we were with that night, I went with him to one game, and it was actually—a guy threw a perfect game. He threw a no-hitter that game. We had gotten there early, and one of the White Sox outfielders threw a ball up, and Kyler caught it. Kyler got a ball, but I never got a ball.
And I’m sitting down in the front row because it’s spring training, so I can afford front row seats finally. And I’m sitting down in the front row and it’s the best foul ball ever. You know, you don’t want to get a foul ball with a black eye. That’s—you know, a lot of people would be, “I still got a foul ball.” Just go buy one at the sporting goods store. You know, it’s not worth a black eye. So you don’t want to catch a line drive off the face and then pick up the ball and go, you know, “Consolation prize here.”
Now this one was just a weak roller. The batter just hit it, and it was just a roller, and it kind of just rolled right in front of me. The front row seats at spring training are real low, and so it just kind of rolled in front of me. I just leaned over the railing, and I picked it up, and I got the ball. “I got my first ball!”
And I turn to look at my brother-in-law, and my brother-in-law had gone to get something from the concession stand. And there was a four-year-old little girl who’d been wanting a ball the whole game. You know, when they were pitching in the bullpen, she’s going, “Can I get a ball? Can I get a ball?” She just, oh, she so wanted a ball.
I pick up this ball, I got a smile on my face, I turn, and she’s… So I had the ball for all of about three seconds. “There you go.”
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I should have, but I didn’t know that she was right there. But anyway. But hey, her dad offered to buy me a beer. So, you know, I didn’t get it. But what’s that? Good on me, yeah.
Well, you know, that’s like a… I gotta tell you, either you give the ball to the kid, and everyone’s like, “Oh, what a nice guy.” Or you don’t give the ball to the kid… You know, there’s no, there’s no neutral there. That’s heaven or hell, right? You’re an angel or a demon.
And so yeah, so anyway, I had my ball there for a while.
So we were down there in Arizona and this song was all the rage in all the churches. We were singing it at the Firehouse. My brother-in-law hates repetitive lyrics, but this song has lots of repetitive lyrics. “You’re a good, good father. That’s who you are. That’s who you are. You’re a good, good father. That’s who you are. That’s who you are. You’re perfect in all of your ways. You’re perfect in all your ways.” I mean, it’s like three lines that just go on forever.
I saw this comic one time and somebody said, “What do you do?” And the comic strip, you know, the little bubble where they’re talking? It says, “I write modern worship songs. I write modern worship songs. I write modern worship songs. I write modern worship songs.”
But anyway, I went by this church marquee and it said on the church marquee—I loved it—it said, “There’s a good, good chance this Sunday we’ll be singing ‘Good, Good Father.'” I just thought that was a cute church marquee.
All that to say, all my little wandering and ramblings to say, we’re going to talk tonight about fathers, spiritual fathers, as we go through 1 Corinthians.
As I was preaching this this morning, I thought, man, I should have saved this for Father’s Day. So just pay attention. Know the date, April 12, 2026. And when we hit Father’s Day in June, go on Rumble or YouTube and watch it again.
And it is predicated on this whole idea that the universe is predicated on a good Father. And just to bring you back up to speed on Corinthians, because we’ve been a couple weeks out of Corinthians… We, you know, Jamie spoke to us on Palm Sunday, and then I spoke on Easter. Paul is addressing the Corinthian church who were immature, and they were doing about five things that he has to correct in this letter.
But at the front of their immaturity is how mature and wise they think they are. They think they’re so advanced. You know, they’re like a teenage child, right? Nobody knows so much as a teenage child. They’re the smartest people ever. They just… they know everything. And, you know, then they get out and they get on their own in the world and pretty soon they’re calling you and saying, “Hey, how do you do this?” and “How do you do that?”
It’s like my dad always said. He said, “You know, when you were 16, I was the dumbest man on Earth, but by the time you were 25, I had gotten much smarter.” And that’s kind of how it works sometimes.
And the Corinthians, they’re like a teenage child. They’re like an adolescent child. They know everything right now. They’re the smartest people on the planet. And Paul is addressing them about this.
He says these five things are really bad. The first thing that we’ve talked about now is that they were dividing. There were divisions in the church, and it wasn’t divisions over some central issue of importance to the gospel. I mean, Paul was divisive over the issue of whether or not Gentiles needed to be circumcised to be Christians. Why? Because he realized that that was at the root of the gospel. Either we’re going back to the old covenant, or we are new. Either the gospel is for the Gentiles, or all you’re doing is just inventing a new system for the Gentiles to come into the old covenant.
And so Paul was divisive on that issue. Very divisive on that issue.
But here they’re dividing over personalities. It’s not even over doctrine. Apollos is a much more polished speaker than Paul. Peter, he was actually with Jesus. And then there’s Paul. And there were still the Paulites… “Hey, Paul is the one who brought us the gospel.”
But understand, Paul is not arguing here for his supremacy over Peter and Apollos. He goes on time and time again and says, “We are all simply stewards, simply managers. Look, Peter, Apollos, and Paul are all on the same team. It’s you guys who are divided. We’re all Team Jesus. And that’s a sign of your immaturity.” And so he rebukes them.
And then he concludes finally with a strong rebuke, a strong warning at the end of 1 Corinthians 4. And here’s what he says. He says,
14 I’m not writing this to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children. (1 Corinthians 4:14, CSB)
All right. So, he’s establishing the relationship. You are my dear children. Why can I chew you out? Because you’re my kids. You’re my kids. All right? I’ve earned the right to bring discipline because I’ve suffered for you, I’ve sacrificed for you.
Listen, mothers, you have the right to discipline your kids. “You can’t do that to me, Mom!” Yeah? I gave you birth. Hello? I fed you; I bathed you; I nursed you; I cleaned you. I cared for you. I held you when you cried.
Fathers, you have the right to bring discipline. I fed you; I housed you; I protected you; I played games with you. I have invested deeply in you. And because of that investment, as a father, as a mother, I now have the right to bring correction to your life. I have earned that right.
One of the things that bothers me is not when teachers bring correction to me from the Word, but when someone tries to bring correction to me as a personal authority in my life and they haven’t earned that right. One one time this man told me that I would never be a successful preacher because I was overweight, which is a hard thing. It was a shaming thing. You know, “I’m not saying this to shame you…” It was kind of a shaming thing that way. Well, your wife’s fat, you know. Go lecture her.
But anyway.
But he prefaced it because he was a generation older than me, he prefaced it—and this really bugged me. He prefaced it by saying, “As a spiritual father, I want to speak to you.” And after I got wounded, I felt like going back to him and saying, “Hey, Dad, what are my kids’ names? Do you know the other things I struggle with? What’s my wife’s name? When’s my anniversary? When’s my birthday? When have you invited me into your home? When have I been with you except for 10 minutes at this camp? Listen, if you want to tell me you’re offended that I eat too much and don’t exercise enough, go ahead. But, man, if you want to call yourself a father, we got plenty of those kind of fathers. We got plenty of absent fathers.”
And I wanted a spiritual father at the time. I’m 67. I still want a spiritual father. I never had one. I’ve had some men who have come into my life and been really wonderful older men, but none of them have really taken me under their wing. They’ve been good uncles; I appreciate them.
But Paul here is saying, “I’m a father.” And this whole gospel is predicated on a father. How does God have the authority to speak into our lives? Well, yeah, because He’s God and He’s great. But you know what? He sacrificed for us. He gave to us.
Every time He rebukes Israel, He doesn’t just rebuke Israel. He says, “Hey, remember who I am? I’m the God who brought you out of Israel. I’m the One who gave you this land. I’m the One who prospered this land. I did this for you. I did that for you. I did this for you. I did this for you. And now you’re worshiping these other gods. Not only are you doing that, I warned you, ‘Don’t do that.’ And you’re doing it.”
Paul now is asserting his right to speak hard correction into the lives of Corinthians. Why? Because he says,
15 For you may have countless instructors in Christ, but you don’t have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17 This is why I have sent Timothy to you. He is my dearly loved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you about my ways in Christ Jesus, just as I teach everywhere in every church. 18 Now some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. 19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk, but the power of those who are arrogant. 20 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. 21 What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness? (1 Corinthians 4:15-21, CSB)
May the words of my mouth and meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our Rock and our Strength and our Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Teachers are valuable. They impart truth. I have many teachers. I have countless teachers. Paul is not saying here that teachers are bad. Read books. Steve Gregg is a teacher of mine, right? We’re reading his book. He’s a teacher. I have many teachers.
When I first became a Christian, I was so grateful for C.S. Lewis. He just launched me on my Christian walk as this brilliant mind and this brilliant teacher. He wasn’t my dad. He couldn’t be, which is fine. I’d have loved it. Maybe. He might have been a pretty hard dad to live up to. But yeah, he wasn’t my dad.
Many teachers, but we don’t have many fathers. We don’t have many people who invest in us in this way. Paul says, “Just as God is a Father, I am a father.”
Fathers live truth worthy to be imitated. Teachers tell us the truth. Fathers live the truth in a relational connection with our lives. Paul has the audacity to say, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”
1 Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1, CSB)
My earthly father said things facetiously. He was a comedian, you know, like, not a professional comedian, but he was a jokester. And he would just say, “Well, do as I say, not as I do.” But he knew that was facetious. He knew kids don’t do that. They do what you do, not what you say.
And I regret this. This is one of my, you know, we all got a handful of regrets. Two handfuls. Maybe a bucket full, maybe a pickup truck full. I don’t know. One of my biggest regrets is that I said this, but it was true. I shouldn’t have said it. I should have had more respect for my father. But, you know, I was talking last week about my drug addiction, my pot smoking addiction. I’m smoking dope in the house one night. My father had gone out with one of his buddies to a soccer game. And he came back, as he always did when he went out and his family wasn’t there to be accountable to—if he went out with one of his buddies, he’d come back drunk, just drunk as could be. And so he was loaded. He was drunk.
My mom was angry and in bed. And he was just out in the living room, just drunk as could be. And I come home and I see him. So, I just skedaddle off to my room and I light up my bong and I start smoking dope in my room. Because that’s what they taught me in drug class. I was just following their instructions. Didn’t want to get arrested again.
And my father knocks on the bedroom door, and I go and open it. He goes, “Are you smoking dope in here?” And I regret this, but I looked at him, I said, “Like father, like son.” And I closed the door in his face.
He didn’t knock on my door again. You know why? He was drunk. But he knew it was true.
I’m grateful that my drunk father didn’t react like a lot of drunk fathers would have and went in and kicked my tail. But I wish I hadn’t said it, but it was true.
Kids will do what you do more than they’ll do what you say. Now, that doesn’t mean if your kids are acting out in some way, it’s like, “I’ve been a bad parent.” Listen, dads, you haven’t been a bad father if your kids are acting out in a bad way. Your wife was a bad mother, so she jacked them up, not you. Just trust me.
When people come in for counseling—ladies, don’t worry. When people come in for counseling—you’ll know that’s a joke in a minute. When people come in for counseling, the first question you get, the first question I ask people that just is like, 90% of the doors get unlocked with this key is: Tell me about your relationship with your dad. All right, bingo. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner!
All right, so fathers…
Still, it’s interesting—I’m not bragging on us because we jacked up our kids in lots of ways, but when we left the United Methodist Church over principle, left a job, left security, I asked my kids about that. Katelyn was just… It was heartbreaking to her because she loved her Sunday school teacher, she loved her church, and she was just a little girl.
My older two, though, said, “You know what? When you did that, we came to a deeper realization that you guys were serious about your faith, that this was something real to you, that you make life decisions based on this.” And it’s like, yeah, good, I’m glad you got that message and not the message that, well, you know, if I don’t get a job, you’re not going to get good Christmas presents.
Actually, they weren’t worried about that because there was Grandpa. Christmas was covered.
All right. Fathers often have many children, and they give responsibility away to trustworthy children. You give it away. That’s what you do as a parent. Right? One of the arts of parenting, and this is the art of discipling people as spiritual mentors, as spiritual mothers, as spiritual fathers—one of the things you do is when they’re young, you have to do a lot for them, all right? Babies can’t change their own diapers, they can’t feed themselves. But as they get older, what do you do? You expand both their responsibilities and their freedoms. You trust them with more, and then when they violate that trust, you bring the boundaries back in.
It’s like, “I got to take the driver’s license away for a while, you know. Can’t trust you with that yet.” But you basically do that so your kids grow up and now they can live without you telling them what to do, without you creating those boundaries.
And so you, you incrementally, in increments, you give responsibility away and you teach and then you trust. John Wimber used to say, “This is how we bring people into the healing ministry. We bring them along with us and say, ‘Watch us do this.’ Then after they watch a number of times, we say, ‘Okay, what you’ve seen me do, do it. Do it.’ They go, ‘Oh, I can’t do it.’ ‘Yeah, do it. You’ve seen us do it.'”
They don’t do that at first. They show them. “This is how we do it. This is how we pray for people. This is how we minister.” But then they say, “Do it.”
Then after they do it, he said, “Then we’d bring them back and we give feedback. ‘Okay, boy, that was spot on. You did that real good. Hey, just think about doing this. This is something you could have done in that situation.'” And they teach. And he says, “And then the more and more they do that with us watching and giving feedback, and the better they get, then next we go, ‘All right, now you go out and do it. And take this newbie with you.'” And that’s discipleship.
Paul says to Timothy, “As a spiritual father, what I have entrusted to you, now you entrust to reliable men. What I’ve done in mentoring you and fathering you, now you do in fathering them.”
As a father of children, we say, “As I fathered you, now you father your children. In fact, do better than me. You know, let my ceiling be your floor. But as I’ve taught you, then you finally go and teach others.” And that’s what fathers do. They teach. God teaches us to grow.
We don’t want 35-year-old children playing video games in our basement, smoking weed. “Mom, bring me some food.” No, make your own bed. Cook your own food. You can do it. Drive your own car. We impart and give responsibility away to trustworthy children.
Paul says, “I teach the same thing to you in every church.” Fathers are consistent. Parents are consistent in their message. They don’t change their message. They don’t change their message from one child to another one.
Now, children are different. You don’t change your message. You may have to change your tactics, right? If you’ve had multiple children, you know that. You have this boisterous, loud, obnoxious boy running around the house, and to get his attention, you got to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and say, “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
I have a nephew, kind of a nephew, and he’s playing video games, right? You want to talk to him? You ever try to talk to a boy playing video games? It’s impossible because men are single-focused, right? There’s, like, “Images on screen. Must kill them.” You say, “Hey, hey, hey!” And then you’ll try to—you say, you know, “Hey, I just found out on the news that the world’s coming to an end in six minutes. So you might want to get prepared.” And finally they will—they didn’t really hear that, but they think, “Oh.” Something registered, and they’re like, “That might be important.” And here’s the two words they’ll generally say—my nephew would say this all the time: “Wait, what?” Like, okay, we got him away from that, and now he’s starting to turn his attention towards something else.
And I looked at him, I said, “Bradley, on your wedding day, the minister is going to stand before you and your bride and say, ‘Bradley, do you take this woman?’ You’ll go, ‘Wait, what? Wait, I was looking at the shiny ring. Wait, what?'”
So, you got to use different tactics, all right? Some kids, they can’t respond till, you know, you get their attention. Other kids, you just say the slightest thing. You say the slightest thing, and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh!” They’re mortified.
My dear wife, she wants to get an A on every test. So she goes in for a job review and she gets these great job reviews. She’ll come home and go, “Oh, yeah, I got my job review today.” A, A, A, A, A, A minus. A, A, A, A, A, A minus. A, A, A, A. And she’s like, “Oh, it was horrible.” I go, “Why? Look at that. There’s two minuses on here. There’s two, like A minus. You know, there were two places. Room to grow.” It’s like, that’s horrible? Man, I’m like C, C, C, C, C, C plus. Oh, I got a C plus. That’s great. They like me, right?
And if you got two or more kids, you probably got, you know, they’re probably a variation of that sort of stuff. So your tactics change.
Paul’s tactics change to the Corinthians, from the Philippians to the Ephesians, to the Galatians. Wise parents know their children. Wise spiritual mentors know their children. The tactic changed. The message never does, right? The message never does.
Paul says, “Listen, Corinthians, I’m not being hard on you. What I’m telling you, I tell to all my churches. I tell everywhere. I teach this, everywhere I go. It’s the same gospel; it’s the same message. I’m not out for popularity.”
That’s one thing. Good parents don’t need to be popular. Oh my goodness. God doesn’t need you to approve of Him. You need God to approve of you. God doesn’t need you to approve of Him. Paul didn’t need the approval of the Corinthian church. He says in his letters, he says, “If I were still writing to please men, I wouldn’t be writing this stuff.” Paul is willing that they reject him. The gospel is offensive.
Now, don’t be an intentionally offensive person. There are people out there who are jerks and they say, “Well, I’m just preaching the gospel. That’s why I’m being persecuted.” No, you are being persecuted for the gospel, but you’re also a jerk.
But for every one of those, there’s another 2,000 of us who are so dang timid not to offend. Like, “I’ll just show them Jesus.” Good for you. Show them Jesus. When are you going to say something? When are you going to risk the offense?
I just saw the Great Awakening this week with the story of George Whitefield and his friendship with Benjamin Franklin. It’s a worthy movie to see. And you know, Whitefield and Wesley and those preachers of the First Awakening, they got hit with more rocks and more rotten fruit as they would go into these mining communities, in these poor neighborhoods, and preach the gospel.
And Wesley—I mean, I just read his journals. He’s amazing. Little five foot three guy, tiny man. And these big miners would come up with clubs and pitchforks and rocks, getting ready to disrupt the meeting. And instead of saying, “Oh no, here they come,” Wesley would get down off the pulpit, walk to the front of their captain, a guy twice his size, you know, with a club or a pitchfork, and rebuke him in the Lord. Often, he would convert that captain, and then that captain would become his bodyguard.
“I got my boy, John. Nobody touch John.”
It would happen time and time again.
Whitfield, they show this picture, and it’s an accurate description of the First Great Awakening. He goes to his first coal mine to preach. He starts to preach, and they just say, “Get out of here. We don’t want to hear from you. Get out of here.” And they begin to pick up rocks, and they hit him with rocks, and he, you know, he kind of backs up, and he just climbs right back up in his little handmade pulpit, blood running down his face, and he continues to preach.
And within minutes—and this is not just Hollywood. This happened in history. In minutes, they’re on their knees, repenting of their sins and coming to Christ. And then a bloody Whitefield goes out there and loves them and lays his hands on them and prays for them. The Great Awakening is born.
People who love risk being hurt. If you’ve been a parent, your kids maybe have said this to you, you know, “I hate you, and I’m not going to talk…” I remember when our oldest daughter was mad at us. She didn’t say she hated us, but she was… It was drama, man. It was drama at the time.
And she was good. But this was one of those times, you know, her life’s ruined, and we’re terrible, and this family is terrible. And finally, she just looks at us and goes, “I’m just going to go in my room and not talk to anybody. Close the door, and not talk to anybody.” And she stomps off.
And I turn to Jill and I say, “All in favor say aye. That’s the best thing she said in half an hour. Like, it’s like, hey, why didn’t I have that idea? Why don’t you go to your room, shut your door, and not talk to anybody? Everybody would be happy. That’d be great. That’d be great.”
She’s all right now. She made it. And one of the reasons she made it is we didn’t need to be popular. We didn’t say, “Oh, please don’t do that. Don’t go to your room. We’ll let you blackmail us with a hissy fit.”
Paul is not after popularity. He’s after spiritual children. He’s after spiritual children.
Fathers test the claims of their children. They don’t tolerate arrogance. They don’t tolerate arrogance. It’s like, “Yeah, I can do whatever I want.” Maybe, but not in this house. You can do whatever you want. Of course, you have to find somewhere else to get food because I’m putting locks on the pantry and the refrigerator. Yeah, do whatever you want.
The Corinthians are getting arrogant. They say, “Oh, Paul, he’s gone, right?”
Notice how brave people are when the opponent is gone. You know how much smack they talk when the opposition isn’t there. Guys do this. Wussy guys. We do it all the time with our wives. “Yeah. She didn’t boss me around. She didn’t tell me what to do.” Then they get a phone call, right? “No, no, honey, no, no, no. I’ll be home real soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I’ll get milk. Yeah, it’s all good.” Way to go, John Wayne. Way to stand up to that woman.
But if you ever see somebody who’s talking smack to an enemy who’s not there, that’s false bravado. I do it. I do it. “Yeah. I told them.” Yeah, in my car driving up here and they weren’t there, and my imaginary argument that I always win. I told them, put them in their place.
Paul says, “Okay…” Here’s what they were saying about Paul: “Apollos is a better speaker. Peter was with Jesus. You’re not that impressive, Paul. You’re not that impressive. We have better speakers here in our church right now than Paul ever was.” And Paul’s like, “Okay, okay, well, Lord willing, I’m going to come to you, and let me tell you this. Behavior is more important than talk. Don’t tell me what you got. Show me what you got. Show me what you got.”
I have been burned. As I look back in years of ministry, there are certain scenarios that I’m susceptible to, certain traps that I’ve fallen into more than once. And here’s one of them: people who talk a good game, but don’t play a good game. I get so excited when somebody shares vision with me, shares passion with me. I think, “All right, this person’s on fire for the Lord. They’re coming along.” And I’ve put them oftentimes in positions of influence, responsibility, and leadership, and they weren’t ready.
Now I look at two things, the two T’s. You talk a good game. Where’s your commitment of time and where’s your commitment of money? Time, and treasure. I tell young people—I had one guy come to me and say, “How do I become a foxhole Christian with you, brother?” That’s a good statement, isn’t it? “You want to be in a foxhole with me and fight the devil? Yeah, I’m with you, brother.”
How to be a foxhole Christian… He was already a timer, like a lot of young people. I said, “Good. Tithe.” “But that’s not exciting. I want to go out and witness with you on the street to the homeless.” That’d be great. Show me the—what’s that movie with Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr.? Something like that. Show me the… Yeah. I forget the name of the movie, but yeah, show me the money. Jerry Maguire. Jerry Maguire, yeah. The classic line: “Show me the money.”
And I always hate to say that because people say that I’m being self-serving. “You need to give money to this church.” That’s not it at all. I don’t care. I can retire. Jill and I can retire tomorrow. I don’t need your money. We’ll be all right. We’ll be all right.
No. Show me where your heart is. Your wallet reveals your heart, as does your calendar. Those are the two—you know, and then, you know, just general attitude and how you treat people, all that kind of stuff. But play a good game.
Paul goes to the Corinthians, he says, “Oh, you’re talking. Show me.” And then he says things that just are really interesting to me. Listen, he says, “Fathers carry real authority.” That’s what this whole passage is about. Fathers carry real authority. The kingdom of God is a matter of power, not a matter of talk. It’s a matter of real authority. It is the power of a transformed life.
People who are worthy to be spiritual fathers are people who have transformed lives. They don’t have to be perfect, but they’re walking it out. It’s not how clever you are. It’s not what a good CEO you are. It’s not how slick you are. It’s not how big of a crowd you can draw. Are you living the power of a transformed life? Are you different?
Listen, there are preachers all the time who are popular and you know, time and time again—evangelical, Charismatic, whatever—time and time again are caught what? Committing adultery.
No, I get it. Life’s hard; people stumble. Nobody’s perfect. We give them all the excuses, but doggone it, love your wife.
“Yeah, but this other woman understood me. My wife doesn’t.” Your wife does understand you. That’s why you like this other woman. You got her conned.
Love your church enough, love your family enough not to do that. Get some help. Tell a buddy, “I’m struggling with this.” But live a transformed life. Walk in the power of the gospel. Walk in the power of the gospel.
I’ll tell you what, some of the people that have impacted me the most have not been preachers, authors, Christian leaders. They’ve just been people in churches that live out the gospel.
There was a man I used to go to prison with to do prison ministry—two men, two gentlemen. They’ve been doing it for 20, 30 years. They’re both school teachers. One worked for the state or one worked for the county. One was a schoolteacher. Every Monday night, week after week, month after month, year after year, they’d go out and they’d share Christ. They’d sing praise. They’d go out in a van. We’d get the church van. There’d be like six or seven of us. But these two guys were the guys who were just consistent. They did it all the time.
They invited me to do prison ministry. So I said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” And I got a lot out of doing prison ministry.
Oh, it was so hard, though, because of my sports love and addiction. And I already had to give up football on Sundays because, you know, it’s the one day a week I work, so, you know, I couldn’t watch the football games on Sundays.
And they would leave to do prison ministry—the church parking lot was right across from my house—and I’d see them gathering for the van to start going right when this would happen. And if you remember, Monday Night Football… Dun, dun, dun, dun. The opening thing. And it’d be like, “Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun…” Can I call in sick tonight?
I never regretted walking away from that TV screen and getting in that van. That’s one of the best times of my life, going to that jail and talking to those prisoners. But, you know, what was a great time as an ordained minister, a seminary-trained theologian? Going to the school of what it’s like to follow Jesus with those two old guys.
And I would just watch them and something inside me would start to… “I want to be like that when I grow up. I want to be able to go to prison Monday after Monday after Monday, leading prisoners to Christ. Nobody recognizing it, nobody caring. With such joy coming back and sharing testimonies. Not just joy coming back, joy going out there.”
You know, these guys… I have a Bible from one of the guys and his wife given to me in 1984. It’s the NIV Study Bible. It’s on my desk in my office in Bremerton. It’s tattered. It’s ripped from Jerry and Ellen Cease. The other guy was Bob Felt.
I was in a church as an associate pastor filled with people whose lives were transformed by the gospel, and they humbly walked in the power of the gospel. They humbly walked in the power of the gospel.
Why do fathers have authority? Fathers have authority when they walk in the power of the gospel. And I say this to you, it’s more my problem than yours. But live for impact, not for recognition. Get your recognition in heaven. As if you’ll care—when Jesus says, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” you know, none of us are going to care, “Yeah, but am I in the top 10%?” Even Jill won’t care at that point whether she gets—Jill never does it for recognition anyway. She’s one of the most humble people I know. She just is a, you know, perfectionist.
But live for impact and you’ll carry the authority of Christ. Just be an authentic Christian and people will respect. I mean, it’ll just happen. Not everybody will respect you, but the right people will respect you.
Signs and wonders. The power of signs and wonders.
I think when Paul says the gospel is not just a matter of talk, but it’s a matter of power, you know, what are the Corinthians saying? “You’re not very impressive in your speech, Paul. Apollos is a much more eloquent speaker than you.” Paul says, “Yeah, I cast a demon out of you. How is that for eloquence? I laid hands on your mother-in-law and she got well. How is that for smooth speech?” He carried power.
And I don’t even know what he means by this next statement, but I believe it’s not an empty threat. Never make empty threats to your kids. Parents, never make empty threats to anybody.
When I watch old Westerns, right? And the old gunslinger is talking to the new gunslinger and the new hot shot’s like, “Yeah, I can do this, and this.” He says, “Well, son, never draw your gun unless you’re ready to use it. When you’re drawing guns, there’s no bluff. You’re not bluffing. Never draw your gun unless you’re ready to.” Never bluff. Spiritual fathers never bluff.
And Paul tells—did you read that last sentence? Paul says,
21 What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness? (1 Corinthians 4:21, CSB)
You talk a big game. You want a power showdown? I don’t even know what a Pauline power showdown would look like. Yeah, yeah. Ananias and Sapphira tried that. Ananias and tried to fool the church with how spiritual they were when they weren’t. How’d that work out for them?
I remember we were having revival in Oakdale. All these kids, all these high school kids, they’d come to the healing and communion service. We’d be praying for them. We just had fun. We had fun in the Spirit. I don’t know if we took it too far or not, but we had fun in the Spirit. And I’d pray for them and they’d all flop and fall, and then they’d all try to gang up on me and make me fall. They’d all pray for me, hoping that I would fall. But it was just fun. They would come and go bam, bam, bam, bam. They’d be dropping at my feet. Bam, bam. Like, “Show me something, kids. Show me something.” It’s fun, you know, whacking kids.
I also remember no empty threats. I also remember one time, my son. My son, 3, 4 years old, he’s disobeying. He said that “I’m a 3 or 4 year old. And this is… I’m a draw a line in the sand today, Dad.” I didn’t get up that morning saying, “Boy, I hope my son draws a line in the sand.” But he did.
I said, “You got to go to your room. Knock it off.”
“I’m not going to knock it off.”
“All right. You got to stay in here till you knock it off.”
“I’m so mad at you.”
“All right, I can live with that.”
He said, “I’m gonna hit you.”
“All right. If you hit me, I’ll hit you back.”
And his little hand starts going in motion. And as his little hand was coming down to hit my arm, this hand was coming up to hit his thigh, butt area. And so, it went like this, like, bang, boom.
I got bang; he got lifted about 6 inches off the bed—boom. He’s not done. You know what he said next? Yep. “That didn’t hurt.” Through a trembling lip. “That didn’t hurt.”
I said, “Okay.” And I’m so glad my son showed he was a wise man at this point. He had hope. There was hope for him. I said, “Do you want one that does?”
“No.”
We were both glad he said that. I was so glad he said that. He was glad he said that.
One night, a friend of mine had me and a bunch of his adult friends over for his son’s 18th birthday. It was cake, party, cigars… His son had his first cigar. All right, welcome, you know, welcome to manhood. Here you go. You’re a man now. You’re with the men, eating meat, drinking foofy cake, doing man stuff.
And he said, “All right, I want each of you men to tell my son a life lesson.” They were giving life lessons. I was, like, close to last. I probably went the longest. Imagine.
And so the guy who spoke before me was a prison guard. I don’t remember anything I said, but I remember this. I said, “There’s three kinds of people in the world. There’s people who learn from their father and their fathers and the elders. They learn the wisdom of the Bible, the wisdom of their parents.” And I say, “Those people will not go through life trouble free.”
You listening, Micah? It’s important you listen to the wisdom of the elders. Those people will not go through life trouble-free, but they will have less trouble than others.
Those people who you think, “Oh, they’re dumb. They’re a generation ahead of me. They know. They don’t know stuff.” Yeah, they know stuff. Being a teenager is no different now than it was in the 1820s. You know, you have cell phones now. They had, I don’t know, horses. I don’t know what they had. Got to watch those devil horses, man. They’re tough, but, yeah, so learn from the elders.
So if you don’t learn from the elders, you will have unnecessary pain. Everybody has pain, but there will be pain that your stupidity will create.
And sure enough, this kid, one of the things we told him that night is, “Hey, don’t sleep with a crazy woman.” There was a guy there who had been in prison, and he said, “Yeah, before I got straightened out, slept with a lot of crazy women.” Says, “That’s not good. That’s not good. Basically, don’t sleep with a crazy woman.”
Well, about seven, eight months later, that boy’s in my backyard saying, you know, he’d had his first girlfriend. He said, “Yeah, we did some stuff.” And he’s like, “I wish we had never done that. I wish we had never done that.” Yeah, he didn’t learn from the elders.
Second way you learn, though. And I had hope for him because he was like, “I wish I hadn’t done that.” And he said, “I’m not going to do that again.” He learned from his mistakes. If you’re too stupid to learn from the elders, then let the pain of mistakes teach you. Let the pain of mistakes teach you.
And so I said, “Be the first kind of person. But if they’re not the first company, at least be the second kind of person. You’re going to make mistakes. Learn from them. Don’t waste a mistake. Don’t waste pain that you caused. If you did it and it really hurt, don’t do it again.” That’s why gifted carpenters don’t hit their thumb very often when they’re hammering. Why? “That hurts. That really hurts.” Well, stop doing it.
I was out with my son one time. We’re playing catch. Ball tipped off his glove and hit him in the face. He was crying. I think I comforted him. I remember I comforted him. But what he remembers is not that I went over and comforted him. He remembers I looked at him and said, “That hurt?” He goes, “Yeah.” I go, “That’s what the glove’s for.”
Right, Micah? If you don’t want to get hit in the face, catch the ball. Nobody ever got hit in the face by catching a ball. Catch it. That’s what the glove’s for. Catch the ball. You won’t get hit in the face. Guess what? Never got hit in the face again. Smart boy. He learned from his mistake.
But then I pointed to the prison guard. I said, “If you don’t learn from the elders and you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’ll be hanging out with him.” That’s where you’re going, right?
What’s the number one population in prison? Repeat offenders.
One of my favorite lines from the movie years ago—Jim Carrey, Liar, Liar. Anybody see that movie? He got this curse put on him, and he was a habitual liar, and he got this curse put on him. His son made a wish that his dad would quit lying, and so he couldn’t not lie.
So he had this perpetual criminal that he was always, you know, getting off as a seedy lawyer through loopholes. And so, secretary says, “So and so called again. He got arrested for, you know, going through the roof of a house and breaking in. He wants to know what your counsel is.” He says—I won’t use the profanity—he says, “Tell him, stop breaking the law, blinkety blink!”
My wife and I, we always say that. Stop breaking the law. Hello, I don’t want to go back to prison again. Here’s a way. Don’t break into a house. Learn from the elders. Learn from your mistakes. Are you going to?
Listen. There’s going to be pain. But who wants the maximum amount of pain? I’ll take the minimum amount of pain. Dear ones, you’re here tonight. This guy’s up here yakking at you about the wisdom, the greatest wisdom that the human race has ever known. And I don’t know if I’m a father or an instructor to you, probably somewhere in between that. But I do tell you in love, and I do love you and care for you. Learn from this. Let the words of Paul speak to you. Let God come to you in comfort and peace, not with the rod of discipline, but if you do, if He does, have the wisdom to learn from that.
But, dear ones, listen to your Father.
And if you want to be a spiritual mentor, mother, father to others, live it out. Live a life, transform. Be a Jerry Cease and a Bob Felts, and just live a life before young people, old people. By the way, can be a spiritual parent to somebody older than you. It can work that way.
But live a life of the gospel, and you may not get recognition in this world, but God will use you to shape lives and make disciples. Jesus Christ said, “Make disciples.” He didn’t say, “Make converts;” he said, “Make disciples.”
And then he even said, right as Paul said to Timothy, “Go. What I’ve taught you, you do.” And then he said, “And then entrust it to faithful men.”
Paul teaches Timothy. He tells Timothy to entrust it to faithful men who then will teach other faithful men. You find somebody who teaches you, then take what they teach you and teach somebody else. And then tell them, right? If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach man to fish…
Listen, it’s not that hard to teach a man to fish. I mean, you watch these fishing shows on TV. You think it’s rocket science. No, put a worm on a hook. Not that hard. You can teach somebody how to fish. You can teach somebody how to follow Jesus. Say, “Here, do what I do.”
Wouldn’t it be great to have a life that was worthy, where you could actually say and still be humble and say, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ”?
Anyway, I won’t stop preaching. Help him, Jesus. Come get communion. That’ll stop me. Take this meal with thanksgiving. Jesus is here tonight and he showed us the good, good Father. And so let God father you. He wants to feed you. That’s one thing fathers do, they feed their kids. So come and eat.
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November 23, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Whom have I in heaven but you? Besides you, this earth has nothing I desire. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you’re the strength of my life and my portion forever. Seek and you will find; ask and it will be given to you; knock and the door will open.
Lord, tonight we seek you. We ask of you. We knock on heaven’s door. And Lord, what we want more than anything else is you. We want you to fill our lives.
And Lord, we want to be like you. We desire to be better men and women, to be more like Jesus in our interactions with others and our love and grace that you want to demonstrate. And we pray that you would demonstrate it ever increasingly in our lives. We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Amen. Well, it’s Thanksgiving week, and I just thought this was so funny as I’m going through Isaiah. And on Thanksgiving week, I’m going to talk from Isaiah 58, “Revival and the Discipline of Fasting.” That is, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Like what preacher preaches on fasting the week before Thanksgiving?
So here’s my admonition: Pay attention to what I say tonight. It’s important to fast. Just don’t do it this week. You don’t have to, you know—don’t go home feeling guilty. It’s like, “Oh, man, I was so looking forward to Thursday and leftovers on Friday.” Listen, there is a time for feasting and a time for fasting. So enjoy your feast. Give thanks and enjoy. That’s part of Thanksgiving, man. You enjoy your feast with thanksgiving. So do it, do it.
And then the week after that, not just because you have remorse of how much you ate, but for spiritual reasons, go ahead and fast. So anyway, we’ll get to that.
But Isaiah 58, and here’s the passage I want to read to you.
1 “Cry out loudly, don’t hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. 2 They seek me day after day and delight to know my ways, like a nation that does what is right and does not abandon the justice of their God. They ask me for righteous judgments; they delight in the nearness of God.” (Isaiah 58:1-2, CSB)
That all sounds good. But wait. “We have fasted, but you have not seen. We’ve denied ourselves, but you haven’t noticed.” And then they complain, “God, you haven’t honored our fasts and our seeking you.”
And here’s what the Lord says. He says, “Look, you do as you please on the day of your fast and oppress all your workers. You fast with contention and strife, to strike viciously with your fist. You cannot fast as you do today, hoping to make your voice heard on high.
“Will the fast I chose be like this? A day for a person to deny himself, to bow his head like a reed and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast? A day acceptable to the Lord?
“Isn’t this the fast I choose? To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? To bring the poor and the homeless into your house? To clothe the naked when you see him, and do not ignore your own flesh and blood? Then your light will appear like the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. Your righteousness will go before you, and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.
“At that time, when you call, the Lord will answer. When you cry out, He will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you get rid of the yoke among you, the finger pointing, and malicious speaking, and if you offer yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness and your night like the noonday sun.
“The Lord will always lead you and satisfy you in a parched land and strengthen your bones. you’ll be like a well-watered garden and a spring whose water never runs dry.
“Some of you will rebuild the ancient ruins. You will restore the foundations laid long ago. You will be called the repairer of broken walls, the restorer of streets where people live.
“If you keep from desecrating the Sabbath and doing whatever you want on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and a holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own ways, seeking your own pleasure or talking business, then you will delight in the Lord and He will make you ride over the heights of the land and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
3 “Why have we fasted, but you have not seen? We have denied ourselves, but you haven’t noticed!” “Look, you do as you please on the day of your fast, and oppress all your workers. 4 You fast with contention and strife to strike viciously with your fist. You cannot fast as you do today, hoping to make your voice heard on high. 5 Will the fast I choose be like this: A day for a person to deny himself, to bow his head like a reed, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will appear like the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. Your righteousness will go before you, and the Lord ‘s glory will be your rear guard. 9 At that time, when you call, the Lord will answer; when you cry out, he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you get rid of the yoke among you, the finger-pointing and malicious speaking, 10 and if you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday. 11 The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose water never runs dry. 12 Some of you will rebuild the ancient ruins; you will restore the foundations laid long ago; you will be called the repairer of broken walls, the restorer of streets where people live. 13 “If you keep from desecrating the Sabbath, from doing whatever you want on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, seeking your own pleasure, or talking business; 14 then you will delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride over the heights of the land, and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 58:3-14, CSB)
God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So we’re going to talk about fasting, good fasting, and bad fasting. And the context here is Israel had been returned from Babylon, back to the promised land, back to Jerusalem. They’re rebuilding the temple, and God is making all these wonderful promises to them. And they get back, and they’re facing some hardship and some struggles, and they’re fasting and they’re saying, “God, why aren’t you answering us?”
And He says, “Because you’re fasting with the wrong motives, you’re fasting for the wrong reasons, and you are not allowing your fast to affect your behavior.”
You know, it just… the New Testament, the whole Bible echoes this. If you say, “Peace, be still to your brother,” but you don’t extend the means of peace, the words are empty. And so this is the bad side of religion. This is religiosity that their fast is displaying. And you don’t earn a thing by not eating except a growling stomach.
But the Bible does talk about fasting. And so we’re going to talk about good motives and bad motives for fasting, and we’re going to talk about the river of fasting. What is there, what God has provided for us, and how fasting, like other spiritual disciplines, helps us step into that.
So what is fasting? Quite technically in the Bible, fasting is going for a period of time, a prescribed period of time, without eating food, sometimes without drinking water. That’s what fasting is.
Now, people will use fasting a lot of ways. I said I fasted from TV, or I fasted from sports, or I fasted from, I don’t know, I’ve made a, you know, I’ve intentionally tried to fast from hard physical labor. But people, you know, they’ll talk about doing that. I fasted from playing cards or social media. I went on a social media fast.
And so I’m a little bit split on that. That in a sense you kind of water down what fasting is. But I also agree, and especially there are some people who can’t fast physically—you know, they’re diabetic or some other reason they can’t eat. And I think it’s okay—you know, God can call you to self-denial in an area of your life.
You know, when I was a Catholic, you know, you’d give up something for Lent. So I call it, there’s fasting and then there’s kind of fasting. So like there was a year, there was a year I gave up watching television. All right? So it’s kind of, it was, you know, I thought this has become too much a part of my life. Watching sports has become too much a part of my life. It consumes too much time, and it consumes too much emotional energy. I’m just going to give it up for a year, just not going to do it for a year.
It was ironic that that was the year my wife was really into the NBA and really liked watching the Kings. It was such a switch. I’d walk by in the living room and she’s going, “Go, go!” And I’d be like, “…..” So that’s, you can do that, you can do that. And if you want to use the word “fast,” and I won’t be persnippity about it.
However, technically in the Bible, when it talks about fasting, it means you’re specifically giving up food for a prescribed period of time.
Is fasting required? Well, certainly not for salvation in the sense that, you know, the thief on the cross, you know, he didn’t say—well, you know, you know, Jesus said, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.” And all he said was, “Remember me.”
However, I think we don’t look in modern, affluent Western culture at how fasting really is and always has been a part of the Jewish and Christian tradition and heritage and discipline. You know, it’d be like saying, is reading your Bible required? “Required” is not a word I would use. But I would say, if you want to follow Jesus, it’s awful helpful to read your Bible. It’s awful helpful to say your prayers, and it’s awful helpful to fast. It’s one of those disciplines, and it goes right up there with the rest of them.
And I don’t know why, but in my evangelical experience, the spiritual disciplines, at least at the beginning—and I get it, they were just, you know, baby steps. But my mentors taught me that the two spiritual disciplines—anybody else get this? The two spiritual disciplines: read your Bible, say your prayers.
Oh, then you go to church and there’s a third one added: read your Bible, say your prayers, tithe. I had a friend and he said, “Yeah, my pastor could turn any passage in the Scripture into a three-point sermon on read your Bible, say your prayers, and tithe.” All right?
And that’s an exaggeration to say that that kind of has become a mantra. I don’t know what other churches preach. I just know in my early Christian experience, at least not the tithing so much wasn’t taught, but the read your Bible and say your prayers was—you know, people said, “Do this, do this.”
Now, let me say, didn’t hurt me none. Those are two good things to do. In what I’m about to say, I’m not saying don’t read your Bible and say your prayers. I’m just saying that’s not the whole thing. You know, they didn’t say “Help the poor.” Well, that seems to be a normal part of Christian discipleship. They didn’t say, “Worship God, give thanks regularly.” They didn’t say, “Devote yourself to your family.” And so there are lots of things that are part of Christian discipleship, lots of things that are about following Jesus that are more than that. And fasting is one of them.
And so what is the point of fasting? Everywhere the Bible, I think, talks about fasting, it either talks about fasting in terms of repentance or prayer or both. It’s either an act of repentance, but mostly, especially in the New Testament, it is one of the tools of praying.
Well, how does fasting help your prayer? Well, I don’t know, spiritually, I think spiritually there seems to be some impact on the effectiveness of prayer when you put fasting with it. The church has experienced that. I know that for many people, the way fasting helps prayer is it actually increases the time you pray because you’re actually spending the time you would have eaten praying, and it increases your focus of prayer because the minute you choose to fast, your body begins to rebel and says, “I want to eat.”
And I’ve noticed whenever I fast that restaurants all over town intentionally blow the smell of their food out of the restaurants more aggressively than the days I don’t fast. It wafts through the air and it hits me and it’s like, “Oh.” My flesh starts crying out, you know, “Feed me. What are you doing, dude? What are you doing?”
Then I think, well, why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, I was dedicating this time to praying for A, B, and C. That’s why I’m doing this.
And so I actually allow my little selfish flesh to serve the purpose, to remind me to pray. It’s a pretty good tool. I’ll tell you what, you fast for a period of time that you’re not used to fasting, you will find out that there’s—that the flesh in you doesn’t like it. It just doesn’t like it. It’s like, “What are you doing? We’re hungry.” You know, “Go to the pantry.” Oh, no, I’m not going to go to the pantry. I’m going to go to the prayer room. I’m going to go pray. You just tell the flesh, “Stay.”
Now you might look at me and go, “That boy don’t fast.” Listen, I do. I just prep for it. You know, everybody’s got your own method.
So what is the point of fasting? It helps your prayer life. What are the good motives to fast? Fast in response to God’s call. Fast in response to God’s call. God may call you to fast. They say, “You know, I want you to take a day.” There’s been times in my life I felt like God told me to fast.
I remember one time I was in the United Methodist Church and the evangelical conservative United Methodist Church, a group of them called for a three-day fast for the turnaround of our denomination. That prayer was not answered, but through that, other significant prayers were that were very akinly, closely related. God said, “No, I’m not going to do that, but I’m going to do this.”
Six months later is when I left the Methodist Church. And I believe that that fast was a key to that. That was the beginning of God saying, “Okay, I’m going to use this time to call you to what, you know, the next season.”
And I called the church to a three-day fast and I just told the church, I said, “I’m going to fast for three days and I’m going to pray for our denomination. I’m inviting you to join me. You can join me all three days.” Some people did. “You can take one of those days. I’m going to fast Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You take one of those days and join me on one of those days. If you’re not used to fasting, you’ve never done it before, take a meal. Say, you know, ‘Monday, I’m going to go without breakfast.’ But you don’t have to do it at all. Like I’m not the boss of you, you know, but hey, this is, you know, pastor, and you know, you expect me to lead you spiritually, so here we go.”
And so we fasted three days, and I felt like God called us to fast for three days. We fasted three days, and people did all of those different options. Some people didn’t fast at all. Some people fasted all three days. Some people took time in between.
And the night of the third day—I’d fasted three days before… I’d never in my life fasted longer than three days, and only once or twice I fasted three days. And it’s Wednesday night and Thursday morning’s coming, and I’m thinking, “I am going to go to sleep tonight. And tomorrow morning, here’s what I’m going to eat. I’m going to go and get the biggest breakfast. You know, I’m going to get two sides of bacon. I’m going to get French toast. Oh, I’m just…” And I was just, I was just, oh, my gosh, probably my thoughts were just gluttonously ugly. Yes.
And I hear this call, I hear this voice, says, “Kevin, I want you to go 10.” And so I say to the voice, “I don’t want to go 10. I’m really hungry.” I said, “If you want me to go 10, you’re going to have to take away these hunger pangs.”
And they didn’t go away that night, but I woke up the next morning, I wasn’t hungry at all. And so I fasted. That was the first time I’d ever fasted that long. And actually, that’s—I found out that’s pretty true of fasting, that the hunger, the flesh crying out in hunger, lasts for about three days. And on day four, you kind of lose the hunger. Your body shifts and goes, “Okay, we’re starving. All right, I’ll quit crying about hunger. I’m going to turn the metabolism down.” And you get tired and cold because you start to go into preserve-my-life-as-long-as-possible mode. That’s what your body starts doing.
And so I wasn’t hungry on day four, and I wasn’t hungry through all 10 days, the remainder of the 10 days. I did get tired. I did get, you know, I had less energy and I was chilly, you know, and that sort of thing, but I wasn’t hungry.
However, I do remember in the middle of that fast, you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday came, and it was communion Sunday. I had read somewhere that if you’re fasting and you go to church and there’s communion, don’t fast for communion. Take communion, you know, take communion. That’s another spiritual means… So take communion.
We had two services, and I didn’t tell everybody in the church I was going to go 10 days. But a couple of my friends knew. And so I remember I took communion at the—we had two services. I remember I took communion at the 9 o’clock service, and one of my friends—and I took communion first, often like I do here, and then the church followed—one of my friends came up to receive communion. He goes, “Bet that tasted good.” It was the best communion ever. We had, like, the chunks of French bread, you know, and I just found the, like, biggest chunk and I just dipped, and I could hardly wait for the second service.
It was like, “I get to do this again. It’ll be awesome.” So, best communion I ever had. Best tasting communion I ever had.
All right, so you fast in response to God’s call. You fast to defeat the enemy. You’re being attacked by the enemy. You talked about your friend today, Ats and Aiko. Might be something to give a shot. You know, she might want to give a shot at that. It’s like, just fast to break that, whatever that is, and, you know, take a couple days to defeat the enemy.
I remember one time—I’ve told the deliverance story about that little girl at camp. I remember one of my friends who was a part of that deliverance. He was kicking himself that night as we’re doing that deliverance. He said, “You know, this morning I felt like the Lord told me to fast today, but those cinnamon rolls at breakfast just looked so good.” He said, “I didn’t do it.” And now we’re in the middle of this deliverance. He said, “I should have fasted.”
There’s something about, again, not—God’s power doesn’t increase, but your tapping into it, can be more available. And he just thought, “Man might be more effective in this deliverance if I had fasted.” So fast to defeat the enemy.
Fast for transformation and breakthrough. If you’ve got—you know, this goes along with the feeding the enemy—if you’ve got a persistent sin, a struggle in your life, take a day and fast over it and say, “Lord, I want a breakthrough in this area of my life. I want a breakthrough in some area of ministry.”
That last song we sang, “More Love, More Power”… “I’m going to give you what you asked for. I’m going to give you what you asked for.” And I remember the first time I heard that, I said, “Well, Lord, you haven’t given me what I asked for. You know, I’ve asked for A, B, and C, and you haven’t given it to me.” And He said, “Yet. Yet. Keep asking and fast for breakthrough.”
I remember there was a time several years ago I was praying for my family, and every member of my family, I felt like, was in a holding pattern, kind of like circling an airport. We were all just kind of like… It’s hard to explain, but we all, you know, were seeking God, but we weren’t, we didn’t feel like we were moving anywhere. And we all had the same experience simultaneously. And as I listed it out, there were like seven things I listed I remember. I can’t tell you what the things were, but there were seven things that I felt like, you know, we need breakthrough in these seven areas to get off this pattern.
And I really felt like I heard God. And He said, “You know, if you’ll just fast one day and pray for those seven things, watch. Watch what I do.”
And I did. I just fasted one day. It wasn’t like a big, heavy fast. It was just one day, and I fasted one day, and I prayed for those seven things. And I remember—and I had the list down, and I didn’t give it much thought after that. I remember, like, 10 months later, I looked at that list, and, like, six of the seven. Six of the seven had been answered in very specific, concrete ways. I looked at the seven and said, “Whoa, you know, what? What’s up?” And like, a month later, that one clicked into place.
And so there’s a breakthrough. I want to be more like Jesus, fast. Jesus fasted. He fasted—by the way, back to the last point—He fasted to defeat the enemy. Forty days in the wilderness, and Satan came to tempt Him. And so He fasted in preparation for His ministry. That’s how Jesus launched His ministry, with baptism and fasting.
You know, you thought if he had come to Christ, you know—if Jesus would have come to Christ the same way I came to Christ, He would have started His ministry with Bible study and prayer. But He started it with baptism and fasting, two other spiritual disciplines that are important.
So Jesus fasts for breakthrough and then fasts for mercy and justice. Isaiah talks about that. One of the great things you can do is, you know, feed the hungry. And you think, “Well, Lord, there’s so many hungry people. How do I take this on?”
I look around Bremerton, and I think homelessness, and I think, “I don’t know the answer to this.” I don’t know how to help the homeless. I just don’t know. And I know that the temptation is… Today was the first day in a long time—it’s been such a glorious season at the Firehouse Church in Bremerton. Nobody has camped and left a mess on our doorstep for several months. And I got there to church—and I was losing my PTSD. I’m not kidding, there was a time when I would just drive up to church dreading it, like, “What am I gonna have to clean up?” I don’t even like to clean up my messes, but I hate cleaning up other people’s messes.
But, you know, you got to do it, right? And so that’s what I liked when Discovery met at the Firehouse church. They met before us, so when there’s a mess on Sunday morning, it’s like, “Eh, you got to get it.”
But this morning, for the first time in a long time, there was a mess there. And it was raining, and it was messy, and it was a wet mess. There was no real gross stuff, but there was old food and just, and you know, you’re trying to sweep stuff up and the ground’s wet…
Anyway, so I don’t know what to do about the homeless, but I know this: I know that the Lord will not let me despise. And actually, I have a pretty good relationship with some of the homeless simply because I’m one of the places that’s nice to them. You know, they’re out front of instead of saying, “Get out of here,” I’ll take them some water because Jesus said, you know, “If you give a cup of cold water in my name, you get your reward.” So it’s like, “Hey, there you go. Free rewards.” This doesn’t cost me hardly anything. Take water out to them.
And so… but yeah, just… I don’t know the answer. But I can pray that God will give me a heart of mercy and justice and provide an answer.
And when you fast, you save money. You save money when you fast. That food that you’re going to eat costs money, so why not figure out what your average food cost is per day, fast a day, and give that money to some benevolent organization that feeds the hungry?
“Well, I can’t…” You know, people, they don’t do things because they can’t solve the problem. But you can always do for the one what you cannot do for the many. Right? It’s like the little boy, you know, and he’s saving starfish. They’d all come in during high tide. Now they’re stuck on the beach. There’s hundreds of starfish on the beach, and he just bends down and grabs one, throws it back in the ocean. An old cynic comes by, “Boy, look at all these starfish. You can’t help this problem.” He picks up another starfish and throws it out and goes, “Helped that one, helped that one.”
So, yeah, you can’t solve world hunger with your budget, but you could fast a day. One American budget of a day not eating probably equals two and a half weeks for some poor kid in a third world country, that amount of money. I know for a pittance of money you can feed a child, clothe a child, and educate a child from early childhood till 18 years old for a pittance of money a month, far less than it costs to stream your favorite streaming service.
I remember I went into one lady’s house, and she was the finance chair. I said, “You know, we need to encourage people to tithe.” She didn’t tithe. And she was like, “The finances just don’t work. You know, it doesn’t work out. I got a budget. It doesn’t work out.” And her son’s in the living room watching cable TV. I thought, “No, your choices don’t work out. Your choices don’t work out. Okay, make your choices, but…” Make your choices.
But you can fast for justice and mercy.
Now, bad motives for fasting… Actually, you know, they’re kind of all wrapped up in that first thing, fasting for image. That’s like fasting out of religious ritual or fasting to feed a religious spirit, fasting to earn merit. All of that starts with this: “Look at me, God, look at me. I’m fasting. I deserve something from you. People around, look at me. Look how spiritual I am. Look how good I am.” And here is the sad part about that. God says, Jesus says in Matthew 6, He says, “If you fast with that motive, you don’t get answered prayer to your fast. What you get is whatever you earn from that.”
Look at me, I’m so spiritual, I fast. And three people thought, “Wow, that’s a real spiritual person. Congratulations, you win.” Three people thought you were spiritual. Like their opinion matters.
It’s like the guy who tailgates you and zips around you and then goes up, and you get up a half a block, and he’s at the same stoplight you’re at. I always feel like getting out of the car and knocking on the window and saying, “Congratulations,” and have a little trophy in my car. “You get the trophy for first person at the stoplight. Good for you. You know, you endangered people’s lives. You cut people off.”
I don’t do that, by the way. Nobody else has evil thoughts when you drive? All right. Yeah, it’s a great test of the condition of your soul. Because I always say this: my anger at other drivers is more a reflection on the condition of my soul than it is a reflection on their driving ability. Just saying.
And so they annoy me, and I, you know, I want to get back at them. And I realize, oh, that says more about me than it does about them. I had a friend one time say to me, “Man, the other day, you really cut me off.” I realized, oh, you can cut people off without being a stupid moron, selfish, bad, evil person. You could just do it out of a mistake. Maybe that’s why other people cut you off. Like, oh, they made a driving mistake, so… Nah, they were morons. They were idiots.
All right. I don’t know how I got on that. Fast for mercy and justice. Fast for mercy and justice.
Oh, I was past that. I’m sorry. Bad image. You get your reward. Earn merit. Look at me, religious spirit.
All right, so that’s what you get, the approval of others. Big deal. If I’m going to go without eating, I want answered prayer. Just saying. If I’m going to put up with my flesh whining and crying and sulking and screaming at me to eat and saying, “Shut up, I’m going to go pray,” I want an answer to that prayer. I want God. I want God in that mix.
And so you fast unto the Lord, and you fast for His purposes. And you cannot—just like any other religious practice—you cannot practice your religion faithfully, you cannot practice your relationship with God faithfully when you hate your neighbor. You just can’t do it. Kills the whole thing, and your fast becomes useless.
So you can’t earn merit. Fasting doesn’t—I’m going to talk about the 11 benefits to fasting and the danger of that in just a minute. The danger of that is thinking that our fasting earns these things. I always look at the spiritual disciplines—I want you to look at the spiritual disciplines this way. There is a river of grace that flows—Ezekiel 47—there’s a river of grace that flows from the temple of God. It’s this ever expanding river. And the river is there regardless of who we are, what we do, what we think, what we say. None of us makes that river flow. None of us made God send Jesus. The river flows because it’s who God is. And so spiritual disciplines don’t get God to act and to make the river flow toward our lives. Spiritual disciplines are the way we step into the river that’s already there.
So the 11 benefits I’m going to talk about in a minute are already there. They’re all ours in Christ Jesus. But the disciplines—worshiping, praying, fasting, the Scriptures—are ways we meet God and inherit those blessings and benefits of being His child.
So don’t—fasting earns nothing, but it does help us step into the things that God has given us. Do not feed a religious—fasting can feed a religious spirit. The Pharisees again. “Look at me. Look how religious I am.”
And here’s how to tell a religious spirit. What do I mean by religious spirit? I mean a demonic spirit that loves religion in the place of loving God, loves the form, loves the ritual, loves the tradition, loves looking religious, but oppresses the worker, hates the neighbor, fights and bickers and backstabs.
So one of the ways you can tell a religious spirit, they hate to laugh. Because a religious spirit, more than any other spirit, takes itself very seriously. Very seriously. I have a hard time trusting people who can’t laugh at themselves, who don’t have a measure of self-deprecation. You know, don’t realize that, “Oh, I’m a fool. I’m a fool, and God loves me.” And so don’t fast to feed that.
Don’t fast because it’s a tradition, a religious ritual. Let me say it. Let me tell you the difference between tradition and traditionalism. Traditions in and of themselves are never evil. And in fact, almost every tradition, especially in the church, exists for some good reason. In other words, people, at the beginning, people began doing this. And the reason was very legitimate.
I grew up a very liturgical church, and very ornate. All right? Liturgical and ornate. Why is it liturgical and ornate? To a large part, that church grew in an illiterate society. Why is it that the Protestant Reformation happened right after the inventing of the printing press? Because then people could start reading their Bibles.
Before people could read their Bibles, they had to rely upon the few literate people out there to interpret the Bible and tell them the Bible. And the other thing they relied on were pictures, art, stained glass. I grew up with a lot of stained glass. Every church I went to had stained glass. And all the stained glass told the same stories, told the story of the cross. And it was beautiful, you know, a unique form of church artwork. But it was there to tell a story.
And so the tradition of—you go to Europe and you see these cathedrals with these high arches that just go up and up and up and up and up. And you go, “Well, why did they spend all that money building, you know? Why aren’t they like us and… you know, worshiping in warehouses, man, dressed down and all that?”
Well, because in a poor culture, they wanted those things to represent the glory of God. And what? Draw your attention. Where? Upward. You go into an early Reformed church. And you walk in, there’s the church, but what’s up there? The pulpit. The pulpit is elevated. What is that saying? This is the Word of God. We elevate the Word of God.
So traditions exist. And if you dive into any tradition, typically you’ll find there’s a good reason behind it. You know, the story’s told around Thanksgiving of the grandma who always cut the turkey, and she cut a big chunk of the turkey off every year and then would throw the turkey in the oven.
So her daughter grew up, and before she would cook the turkey, she’d cut a big section of the turkey up, just wasted a lot of the turkey. And put it in the oven. And then the grandma’s granddaughter would cut a big section of the turkey off, put the turkey in the oven.
Finally, the daughter just thought, this is ridiculous. What am I doing? I’m wasting turkey. And she went to her mom and says, “Why do we cut? You know, why am I cutting this turkey off?” And mom said, “Well, that’s what grandma did, and her turkeys were always so good.” And so she went to her grandma and she said, “Why do you cut that turkey down like that?” And the grandma said, “Well, my oven was small.”
That’s a good reason. Bird wouldn’t fit. It’s a bad reason to do it today.
So traditions aren’t gods. They’re not sacred. However, if you look at them honorably, you’ll usually find, oh, that makes sense why they did that. That makes sense.
Now, traditionalism is the idolatry of traditions. “We’ve never… We always do it this way.” The death of every church starts with these words: We’ve never done it that way before. Now, I had a friend of mine who also pointed out that’s also the beginning of every cult. But, you know, take your risk. We’ve never done it that way before. It’s tradition.
I remember—here’s a good example of the value of tradition and the poison of traditionalism. When I pastored my first Methodist church, every year, the four weeks before Christmas, they did something that was foreign. I don’t know why it was foreign to me, but it was foreign to me. They would light a candle called an Advent candle. They’d put up an Advent wreath, and they’d light one of these four, and they’d have four candles and a big ritual. Somebody would come down with, you know—look, it wasn’t like a guy with a lighter. It had one of those little long sticks. And they’d reach out, and we’d play music. And, you know, I just thought it was like, “What are we doing? It’s a silly waste of time, you know, why are we doing this?”
And so I’m with all these dear old saints at an administrative board meeting, and I said, “Let’s not do the Advent candle this year.” And you’d have thought I said, “Let’s take your grandchildren, boil them for Christmas dinner, and eat them” by their response to that. It’s like, “What?” What do they say? “We’ve always done the Advent candle.”
So, not being the smartest person as a young pastor—however, I was smart enough to know this: this is not a sword I want to die on. So I said, “Okay, okay, okay.”
But then I did something else. I just went and I researched Advent candles, and I realized, oh, this is about the light coming into the world. There were Scripture readings for each of those Advent candles. The first candle represented this. They had gotten completely rid of that. They just lit the candle, which drove—you know, it was like, I’m going, “We have lights. Why do we need candles?”
But once I read that, I was able to satisfy everybody. “Of course we can light the Advent candles. I’m going to make it even more special. I’m going to have somebody come up and read this Scripture.” And then the whole congregation goes, “Oh,” what? “This is why Grandma cuts the turkey. This is why we do this.”
Traditionalism is: “We must light Advent candles because we’ve always lit Advent candles.” Tradition is: “We established this tradition to help teach people the Christmas story.” Traditions are actually the living faith of dead men; traditionalism is the dead faith of living men. And it’s idolatry. Got it? I went long enough on that. But you know what? I don’t mind.
Eleven benefits to fasting, and I’ll only spend 15 minutes on each of these. Revelation—and these mingle together. There’s a lot of crossover, so I’m not going to hit them all. You know, revelation has to do with guidance and answers, but you need revelation. You know, “God, speak to me. God, speak to me. God, I need to know what is your Scripture saying? What are you saying? What are you speaking?” And so you fast to hear God’s voice.
Now, let me tell you, when you fast—oh, here’s something about fasting. When you fast, the answers to your fast don’t often come in the fast. I’ve had people, I told them to fast, and they fasted. They said, “Pastor, I fasted. I didn’t feel close to God. I didn’t see any breakthrough. I was just hungry.” I said, “Well, give it a minute.”
But, God, I want to increase my ability to hear your voice, to understand the Scriptures, to walk in more friendship with the Spirit. And so you stop eating.
And you realize when you stop eating, one of the things you realize when you stop eating is how much time we spend listening to the flesh. I want. I want. I want.
I remember when Theo, my grandson, was three years old, I nicknamed him “I Want.” He’d walk into the house, walk straight to the pantry, open it up and go, “I want. I want that. I want that. I want that. I want that. I want. Grandpa, I want.” I want. Our flesh—I want. I want comfort. I want it to be warmer. I want more money. I want a nicer car. I want a bigger house. I want my wife to be happier and more affectionate. I want my husband just to do what I want. Solves every problem.
I want people at church to behave differently. I want the pastor to preach better. And when you fast, the I want goes, “I want food. I want to eat.” And you say, “No, you’re not going to eat. Because I’m training my soul to want God and to want His voice more than I want that voice.”
Who have I in heaven but you? You know I say that a lot, right? I say it probably over half the mornings when I wake up. Not every morning, but half the mornings. Over half the mornings when I wake up, I just get up and it’s just on my—who have I in heaven? I start the day, “Who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth.”
And when I say that, there’s always this thing in me. It’s like, “You’re a liar. You desire lots of things on earth.” But why do I say it? Because I want it to be true. Why do I fast? Because I really want it to be true. I want you, God, more than breakfast. And so, Revelation.
Healing. Fast for healing. If you’ve got a problem, if you’ve got an issue, if you’ve got a… just fast for healing and pray. Later, anointing. Fast for the anointing to heal the sick. Say, “Lord, I need a breakthrough in this area of my life. And so I’m fasting for healing.”
Fast for holiness. I want to be more like you, in my character. And so I fast for holiness. All these things are God’s answers to our prayers as we fast.
Protection. Protection. Psalm 33 is my protection—a lot of people, Psalm 91 is their protection prayer. That’s a good one. I just go to Psalm 3:3 for some reason. Thou, Lord, be a shield about me, be my glory and the lifter of my head. And I pray it over me, and I pray it over my family, and I pray it over y’all. Pray over it the Firehouse Church in Bremerton and Poulsbo. God, O Lord, be a shield about us. Be our glory and the lifter of our heads. And sometimes, if you need protection, if you’re feeling especially vulnerable, fast and pray for protection.
You need answers or guidance? Lord, I’ve got a dilemma. Do I take this job? Do I not take this job? Do I move to this location? Do I not move to this location? What do I do about this situation? When do I retire? When do I do that? What do I… You know, what do I…? My kids, got this problem. How do I? How do I? What’s… where’s the answer to these problems in my household, in my family? Well, fast for a day and say, “Lord, I have no answers. I’m not smart enough to figure this out. I need your help. I need your answers.”
Fast for His presence. It’s always there. But again, when you deny the flesh, oftentimes you become more aware of the Spirit. You become more aware of the Spirit.
And you know, “Oh, I just want, I just want to feel God’s presence.” Well, there’s a better chance you’ll feel it fasting than you will at the buffet. All right?
Now let me say I am not here arguing against pleasures, feasting, and food and the good things in life. One of the greatest things we can do together—in fact, it’s so great, we do it every week. We eat together. So there’s nothing wrong with going to the buffet.
You know, we made a mistake at the Firehouse Church… we have an 11 o’clock service, so we never beat the Baptists to the buffet. But, you know, start to have a 9 o’clock service and you can get there before the Baptists, get all the good desserts. That’s more of a southern joke…
But there’s nothing wrong with that. But when you deny yourself, you can experience His presence.
Deliverance. We already talked about that. Fasting to defeat the enemy. If there’s a stronghold, a demonic stronghold in your life or in the life of your loved one, you can fast. You know, God did say you can cast out devils, so cast out devils.
Guidance. You can fast for guidance. God, direct my life.
You can fast for provision. Listen, I’m not a prosperity preacher, but God does not desire you to live in poverty. If God thought poverty was so good, why does He tell us to alleviate poverty? And if you want to alleviate poverty, one of the ways to alleviate poverty is to be a person of means. And so God provides. He provides houses and cars and jobs and incomes and retirements, and He provides abundantly and extravagantly.
And if you’re short of provision, if there’s some area of provision you’re missing in your life, fast for provision, and God will give you provision.
Fast for anointing. Lord, I need power in my life to do the ministry of Jesus. How many of you desired—we sang the song… “more love, more power, more of you in my life”? Fast for it. God, how come that person prays and the sick get healed and that person prays and they don’t? Could be all sorts of reasons. Some of them just wrapped up in the sovereignty and the mystery of God. But some of it can just be, you know, that person spent a week fasting and praying that God would pour out His anointing on him. Did God pour out His anointing? Yes. Or better yet, he stepped into that waterfall while he was fasting. While he was fasting.
And fast for revival.
By the way, it’s happening. Church attendance in the last two years has doubled in the UK as the government in the UK has tried to basically hand over one of the longest-standing, greatest nations of Christian tradition, Protestant Christian tradition, in the history of the last four or five hundred years. Very few stand out like Great Britain in terms of sending missionaries and having worldwide impact for the gospel. And Great Britain just tried to turn all that over, tried to turn all that over to Islam out of the codependent need to be nice, inclusive, which is a mistaken view of love.
Never mistake nice with love. If you’re a parent, you know this, right? To love your kids… I look at my kids and say, “You know, I want to be the nicest guy on the planet. You won’t let me.” You know, the little stinkers, they won’t let you. And so now you have to, you know, you have to draw boundaries and say, “Don’t cross this boundary.” “Oh, you’re so mean.” Yeah, because I love you. Because I love you.
My grandson: “Mom only lets us have this much screen time.” Yeah, because she loves you. She doesn’t want your brain to turn to mush. I’m on her side. “Grandpa, how could you be? You’re always on our side.” No, that’s Grandma.
Fast for revival. It’s happening in Great Britain. It’s happening in the United States. One of the tells is—you know, it used to be church attendance. It’s harder for—you’d think with all of our ability to know stuff, it’s easier for people to track church attendance. It’s actually harder because it used to be, back in the day, the people who counted church attendance just went to the Catholics and said, “How you doing?” Went to the Baptists and said, “How you doing?” And now you’ve got all these non-denominational—you know, nobody comes to how’s the Firehouse down in Poulsbo, you know, it’s like nobody asks us. You know?
Actually there’s one guy in Bremerton—I get a survey once in a while, but it’s harder now.
But one of the tells on how the church is doing in America is Bible sales. They have been dramatically up the last two years. Dramatically up. All right? And this isn’t churches buying a bunch of paperbacks. I get it. Churches we go to the Bible site, buy a bunch of paperbacks to give out to people free. But no, these are Bibles that people are buying on Amazon and other places. They’re buying Bibles, more so than they have in decades, right here in America.
So I pray and I fast for revival, and I pray for revival in five stages. I start big. I’m not praying for worldwide revival. I don’t start that big. I’ll let the Chinese worry about the Chinese. And I want revival in China, and it’s happening. But I start with America. It’s my country. It’s not that American souls are more important than anybody else’s souls; they’re not. But I just pray, “Lord, send revival in America.” And then I pray, “Lord, that it would be so deep and so impactful that it would bring around a cultural reformation, a shift in the mindset and worldview of the culture.” Not everybody’s going to go along with it, but a shift.
And I actually see it happening. I’m praying for that.
And then I go straight to my state. “Lord, I see it more generically in America than I do in Washington at this point. But Lord, I want to shift. I want a revival so deep in Washington that it brings about a cultural revival.”
And then I pray for Kitsap County. I pray for the Firehouse Church. And I say, “Lord…” Well, first I just pray for a revival in Kitsap County. And I say, “Lord, I pray for revival.” That’s three, four. “I pray for revival in the Firehouse Church and in Bremerton and Poulsbo. And I pray that the revival be so big”—here’s your destiny—”that it rocks Kitsap County.” How about that? You guys can rock Kitsap County. Maybe nobody will ever know but heaven. Maybe it’ll be your prayers or maybe one day people will go, “What’s happening there?” I don’t know. But that’s what I pray for.
And then I realized none of that can happen—I mean, it all can happen without me, but if I want to be in it… And none of that can happen without individuals at least saying this prayer: “Lord, I want a revival in Kevin.” Because you can’t give away fire if you don’t have fire.
So here’s what I’m asking you to do. Feast this week. Feast. Eat your turkey. Eat your cheesy potatoes, your… what is it? What are they? The beans, the string bean casserole, your rolls, your buns, your pumpkin pie, whatever, yams, whatever. Whatever your Thanksgiving feast consists of. I don’t like turkey. So, yeah, usually, we usually do a turkey, and I usually grill up a tri tip. That’s my turkey. If turkey’s so good, why don’t people eat it all the time, you know?
So has anybody ever told you, just this aside, you know, you’re my friends, does anybody ever come to you and say, “Oh, I like bacon, I like turkey bacon.” Do you slap them? Just wondering. I think—I’ve never done it, but I always think about it. That’s not bacon. That’s thin slices of turkey grilled up, made to look like bacon. Be quiet.
So all right, enough of that.
So next week, the week after Thanksgiving, take a day. If you’ve never done a day, take a meal. If you’ve done a day and the Lord calls you to more, take two days or three days, whatever, and fast for revival. And pray for revival.
I don’t know. Years and years ago, I prayed for a church to fast together. And we fasted and prayed, and I got thrust out of a denomination into a whole new life. So who knows, if we pray for revival, what’s going to happen? But it’d be fun to find out. Be fun to find out.
So the best feast we have is already before us tonight. The best thing, one of the best things Christians can do together is eat together. And so we do it every week with our King and Lord, Jesus Christ, who invites us to His table as an appetizer to the marriage supper with the lamb that’s coming. He says, “Don’t forget what’s coming. And my body and blood opened that door for you.”
Because on the night He was betrayed, He took bread and he broke it. He gave it to His disciples, said, “This is my body, which is given for you.”
19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19, CSB)
In the same way, after supper, He took the cup, gave thanks to His Father in heaven, and He said, “This is my blood, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. And when you gather together, do this. Remember. Have a meal with me, and let your life be fed by Christ.”
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November 16, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and His great mercy. He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3, CSB)
Easter is our day, people. You say, well, why are you talking about Easter on this rainy November? You should be talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving and Christmas are great. You know, they’re great. Thanksgiving, always give thanks. Christmas, the Incarnation is wonderful. But Easter’s our day. That’s our day.
And the reason we worship on Sundays instead of traditionally on the traditional Sabbath of Saturday, you know, you’ve heard people say, “Oh, it’s this conspiracy. It’s this pagan conspiracy.” Everything’s a pagan conspiracy. Christmas is a pagan conspiracy. To use a good English term, poppycock. No, it’s not.
The reason why is because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Christians got together and they would honor the Sabbath. The Jews, especially, would honor the Sabbath. But then they started honoring the Lord’s Day. They would call it the Lord’s Day, the day of His resurrection.
And the Lord’s Day, as the gospel continued to spread, became a day of great celebration where, on a weekly, regular cyclical basis, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our enemies were defeated: death, Satan, the flesh. All those things were defeated at the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. History pivoted, took a great turn, and we are now on that trajectory in this world of struggles.
And yet we have a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
So Easter is our day. Sunday’s our day, so good to be here with you on a Sunday.
I’ll tell a story, and it’s my story when I was 16 years old. I think I probably told the story before, but it’s worth repeating. I was a high school kid, and like all high school sophomores, awkward, thinking I was a, you know, a complete loser. And nobody liked me, even though I had lots of friends. Outwardly, I’m sure there were kids who envied my life. And I played basketball. I was an athlete, and I was pretty—you know, I didn’t have to study that hard to get good grades, you know. There were lots of kids who really got mad at me because I’d just show up and take the test, and they’d have to study. It’s like, well, tough to be you, you know. I don’t know what to say.
But I wasn’t happy. I didn’t look at those things, and I wasn’t—I should have been grateful for those things. But I just thought, well, you know, there must be something wrong with me. And I desperately, you know, desperately wanted a girlfriend. I don’t know why I wanted a girlfriend, but, you know, I guess the affirmation of somebody liking you.
And I was going to catechism. Was brought up in a Catholic home, religious. I was going to catechism. It was a drag. Didn’t get it. I had followed all the rules.
And my sister, my older sister, who was a varsity cheerleader and had a bunch of cute varsity cheerleader girlfriends, started going to this thing called Young Life. And she invited me to go to Young Life, and my mom, in her wisdom, saw my struggle and she thought Young Life was a good thing. And so she said, “If you go to young Life, you don’t have to go to catechism.” So I made a very difficult decision: going to dumb, boring catechism or going with my sister in a car with all the varsity cheerleaders to Young Life.
Okay, that is the definition of no brainer, right? It’s like, “Oh.” And they would say nice things to me. They’d rub the top of my head, “Oh, you’re Kathy’s little brother.” I’d be like, you know, like a dog, you know, getting rubbed into the chest.
But anyway, I went to Young Life. And then mostly, it was fun, and they gave a little God talk that never really, at that point, didn’t really connect. But, you know, they’d give a, you know, a five-minute God talk. It was a lot of fun and a lot of cute, popular kids there. And so, you know, that was good.
And then they had this camp, and they said, “You need to go to camp.” And I said, “Why do I need to go to camp?” And they knew. They knew exactly why I was going to Young Life. They said, “Well, there’s two girls there to every boy.” And I said, “I need those odds. Those could work in my favor.” And so I went to camp.
When I went to camp, man, I heard it. I heard the invitation. I heard the gospel. And this God who I had always believed in—I wasn’t an atheist by any means—this God, who I always believed in, but who I thought with my upbringing was this huge cop in the sky, you know, keeping score on me, waiting for me to mess up, kind of like the guys parked on Highway 3 and 16 when I drive past them coming up to Poulsbo to come to church. I’m always driving too fast, and they’ve never come out after me. I think they like it if you slow down when you see them. I think they have a secondary speed limit. That’s what—I’m operating on that premise, because I’m always going over 60, but I’m never going over 70. So I think I’m in that area where they’re like, “Eh, it’s not worth it. Even if it is a red Camaro.” In fact, they probably… “Well, for a red Camaro, he’s showing restraint. So got to give him that. Yeah, got to give him that.”
So anyway, but, you know, that’s who I thought God was. I thought he was the Washington State Patrol waiting to clamp down on me if I got out of line and maybe giving me a few goodies if I behaved well. But here I came to hear that God was a loving Father who sent His Son into the world that He might have a relationship with me and that I might be His child, that He might invite me into His family.
And there was a—man, there was a pull on that. There was a pull on that. And the speaker quoted Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, opens the door, I’ll come in and sup with him and him with me.”
20 See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20, CSB)
And he said that “sup,” that’s a relational word. You know, all of a sudden, God wasn’t going to come in and spank me for not being good enough. He was going to come in and sit down with me and have fellowship with me. And there was a huge draw.
But I also knew I was—I don’t know if this may come as a surprise to you, but I was a contrarian, argumentative kind of person. There’s a shocker. And so my poor young life counselor. It was his first camp with kids, and he only had two of us. The other kid was just sweet as could be, Danny Pedersen. Just the sweetest guy. Already a Christian. So, you know, I would just argue with him. We’d have our nighttime little quiet times. “Well, what did you think about the talk?” And I would just argue with the guy. It wasn’t, you know, mean-spirited or anything, but I just, you know, I had an answer for everything.
And so the last night, when he gave the last talk, he took me to another room. My counselor is probably 21, so he took me to another room with a much more experienced counselor who, it was his third camp, and he was 22, and so he thought, “Well, this counselor can crack this kid.” And I go to that, and he’s got his six boys and us, me and Danny, in there with the two counselors. And they finally go around and say, “Okay, this. This weekend we’ve talked about Jesus. What do you say?”
And all the boys in that room were either already Christians, or that night they gave their life to Christ.
But then it came to me, and I thought, “No way, man. This camp is a setup, right? They’re trying to get me to cross this line. The girls, the talk, the music, the games, the food, you know.”
And I’m 16, I figured out, “Oh, this is a—this was their whole deal all along.” Yeah, no kidding. So I said, “No, no, I’m not stepping across the line.” And I thought, you know, my two counselors would be really disappointed and, you know, say, “Well, that was stupid, man. Why don’t you do it?” But the older, more mature counselor came up afterwards and shook my hand, and he said, “You know, with everybody saying ‘yes,’ I imagine there was a lot of peer pressure to say ‘yes,’ but if you weren’t ready, you know, it’s good that you said ‘no.'”
But he said, “I want you to keep thinking about this. You know, don’t just leave it. If something’s touched you here, don’t just walk away.” And he didn’t know anything had touched me, but I had been touched.
Then we went outside, and I hear my counselor talking. They’re around the corner, so they can’t see me. I hear my counselor talking to the other counselor, and he doesn’t mention my name, but I hear him say, “I don’t know what to do with this kid. He’s got an argument for everything.” I know who that kid is. The other guy goes, “Man, that’s just far out. He’s seeking. Let’s go pray for him.”
And so my two hippie counselors went off, and I was—that shook me. Why do these two guys who have known me, one guy for two, three hours, another guy for a weekend—why are they… why do they care? Why are they going off and praying for me?
So I went off and I said, probably at that point in my life, the most honest and sincere prayer I ever said. I said, “God, if this is real—I know, you know, I’m pretty sure you’re real. But if this whole Jesus stuff and all this is real,” I said, “the guy said, ‘I stand at the door. You’re standing at the door knocking.’ If this is a setup, fine. But if you’re really knocking, then when I get home, don’t stop knocking.” And that was my prayer.
And I got home, and every day for two weeks, something would happen during the day, just a random event, but it was kind of a surprising random event. And all of a sudden I’d hear this voice. And this voice would go off in my head, saying, “I’m knocking. I’m knocking.” And I still wouldn’t budge off my… “Well, you know, maybe. Maybe that’s just residual from that camp.”
And, you know, people say, you can’t get scared into heaven. The gospel of love was preached to me. All right? I was attracted to “Behold, I stand at the door. I want to come in and sup with you and with me.”
But I’m probably the only person old enough in here. Maybe, maybe. Maybe somebody else is… Brian.
But anyway, remember “The Night Stalker” with Darren McGavin? Okay, that’s all right. It was a TV show, and it was about this reporter, and it was kind of a horror TV show. He would go examine, like, paranormal events as a reporter and stuff, things that people couldn’t explain. I’d never seen the show before. And after about two weeks of knocking, I’m watching that show one night, first time I ever saw it. And it was about vampires.
And this wasn’t about cute vampires who fall in love with each other in Western Washington. It wasn’t about that. Wasn’t that vampires. These were like, you know, these were scary vampires. And they showed this girl who got bit and turned into a vampire. And, you know, and I got scared watching. That was shocking. You know, it was scary.
And I went to bed and I had a nightmare of these vampires chasing me. And I woke up from this nightmare and I’m kind of like, shaken. And this little voice that has been saying—the same voice that has been saying, “I’m knocking, I’m knocking,” now says this: “That’s what hell’s like.”
You know what? All of a sudden, all my arguments gone. I’m in. I’m in right there. That night—”Jesus come into my life, man.” And it just became clear to me that I don’t want a future filled with evil and darkness and wickedness when light and love and beauty is being offered me.
And all by myself, I gave my life to Jesus. And that was 50 years ago, and the jury’s still out, but I think it took. So that’s my story.
And that ties into what we’re going to look at tonight. You have a story, right? You have a story. So anytime you want to tell me—I love hearing stories about how Jesus came into people’s lives and reached into their lives. They’re great stories.
Isaiah 55: God’s invitation to revival. “Come…” There it is.
1 “Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the water; and you without silver, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without silver and without cost! 2 Why do you spend silver on what is not food, and your wages on what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest of foods. 3 Pay attention and come to me; listen, so that you will live. I will make a permanent covenant with you on the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David. 4 Since I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples, 5 so you will summon a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you will run to you. For the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel, has glorified you.” 6 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call to him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, so he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will freely forgive. 8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord ‘s declaration. 9 “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For just as rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout, and providing seed to sow and food to eat, 11 so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.” 12 You will indeed go out with joy and be peacefully guided; the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush, a cypress will come up, and instead of the brier, a myrtle will come up; this will stand as a monument for the Lord, an everlasting sign that will not be destroyed. (Isaiah 55:1-13, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Some of the passages in the prophets that delight me—this is just a complete aside—are, you know, the mountains will skip with joy and talks about like nature coming to a greater life than it has now. And of course, I’ve always read that poetically and, you know, metaphorically and symbolically. But wouldn’t it be great in the new heavens and the new earth if you’re out taking a beautiful walk one day and you see a mountain range skipping with joy and trees start to sing to you? You know, who knows? Eye has not seen or ear heard what the Lord has prepared for those who love Him.
Anyway, God alone is our heart’s desire. You’ve heard me say it a million times, that’s probably an exaggeration, but a bunch of times. Who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever. God alone is what our hearts desire. Augustine, I believe it was the one who said, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.”
God alone. We look for all—we look for love. There was a popular song back in the 70s or 80s and it was called “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places.” We look for love in all the wrong places, and Isaiah 55 says, why do you do that? Why do you spend money on what will not satisfy? Why do you buy food that does not satisfy? Why are you investing yourself in things that don’t bring what you’re looking for? And we do it all the time, but God alone is the one who satisfies.
And He says, “Listen. To all who are thirsty, come.” That’s the invitation. Are you thirsty?
I was thirsty as a 16-year-old boy. I was looking for life. What is life about? It’s got to be more than, you know, being a subpar basketball player, and you know, it’s got to be more than this. And there’s got to be more to this life.
I was looking, I was thirsty, and you are here because there is a thirst in you. You want something that will satisfy. We know that money doesn’t do it.
One of the great things about growing older is you just realize that, yeah, the empty promises of this world, the empty promise—and it doesn’t mean that the things we have and the things we’ve accomplished don’t have any value or they’re worthless. But it’s like that didn’t work. Fame didn’t work.
I remember when I was a young preacher, I used to just crave so much the affirmation, not of God, but of the people. You know, I just wanted to hear them say, “Oh, you’re such a wonderful preacher.” You know, they’d come and say, “Oh, that was such a great sermon.” It’s like, “Yeah,” you know?
But then I came to realize, pretty soon on, I came to realize, like, “Well, that didn’t work.” That made me feel better for about 30 seconds. And then this other voice would come in saying, “No, you’re not.” That old familiar voice would just come in and say, “They’re just trying to be nice to you” or “They don’t really know you. They don’t know who you are. They don’t know the things you do in secret. You know, they think you’re some holy man. You’re nothing but a hyp-,” you know. You know the voice. You’ve heard that voice, haven’t you? A bad voice. It’s a mean voice.
All right. That didn’t satisfy. I’ll tell you what will satisfy. And I live for this. Well done, good and faithful servant. Anybody else got a feeling that drink is going to be really satisfying? That’s going to be a good drink, and live for that. That’s what God says. Why are you living for this? Come to me if you’re thirsty, and I will satisfy.
And it’s free. It’s free. You don’t have to be good enough. You don’t have to be smart enough. You don’t have to be born of the right family. You don’t have to give enough money. You don’t have to, you know, you just… There’s no entry requirement. There’s no SAT here, all right? Just come. Come as you are. Come as you are. I will take you as you are.
We just read in Imagine Heaven, Howard Storm’s book and how he was just a wretch of a selfish, you know, man just living for his own pleasure and his own fame and. And yeah, he had some loving relationships. You know, he wasn’t nearly—he probably wasn’t as evil in that sense as he painted himself out to be. But he said, “As I died, I was going down the toilet because I was garbage. And I was going where garbage goes.”
And he called out, and this little voice said, “Pray to God.” And he called out. He called out to Jesus, and Jesus came at the point of death and saved him with pure love. And it’s like, he’s like, “I don’t”—yeah, he’s pretty clear—”I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. It’s free.”
Now, it will cost you. It’ll cost you. It’ll cost you all those other things that you were living for that were worthless. You got to lay those things aside to get the pearl of great price, but it’s still free because those things—you know what the value of those things was? Nothing. They were worthless.
And so it’s free. And He will satisfy. We taste it in this life. We taste the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. We just see it time and time again. And yet there’s more. There’s more.
Our lives find their place in Him. And that is the invitation to revival: come. That is the invitation we give to the world: come. Come and see. Come and find out.
I love the fact that those young life leaders were so persistent, getting me to that camp and coming out on my high school campus. Why should they come out on a high—? They weren’t getting paid for that. They just come out on high school campus and start hanging around with a bunch of kids that they’re barely… And they’re pretty much kids themselves. Just so they could say, “You know, I’ve tasted something and I want you to taste it, too.” He will satisfy.
He also is the one who gives purpose. You know, we’re looking for purpose. How do I spend my time? What do I do with my life? Do I spend it chasing money? Do I spend it chasing pleasure? Do I spend it being legalistically responsible and religious, you know, trying to earn favor with some distant and angry God? What is the purpose of my life?
And Jesus tells us what the purpose of our life is in the Lord’s Prayer: my kingdom come, my will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, CSB)
I used to think when I first became a Christian, that was a prayer for Jesus to return for His second coming. Let your kingdom come. Until I realized, oh, His kingdom did come. His kingdom is not waiting for the second coming. His kingdom came in the first coming. He established His kingdom, all right? He rose from the dead, right? He established His kingdom.
And now that prayer has changed for me. I’m not so much praying for the second coming and for the final consummation of His kingdom. I’m praying right here, right now. Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done right here on earth as it is in heaven.
And listen, that’s why there’s not more hell on earth. You know, we look at the bad stuff and go, well, there’s hell on earth, and there is. There’s pain and suffering and agony and cruelty and all these things, but there’s also a lot of heaven on earth. There’s also, you know, family thanksgivings and laughter and joy and good marriages and mothers holding their healthy babies in their arms and smiling and cooing at them, and friendships and laughter and, you know, there’s a goodness, there’s a goodness that comes on the earth, and that goodness is all of God’s kingdom.
When somebody comes, like I did as a 16-year-old boy, and—I’ll never forget, when I told my young life leader, I blew him away, you know, because he wasn’t there. He just heard all my arguments. And like a couple weeks after I had asked Jesus in my life, I said, “Uou know, Dave, I did it.”
“Did what?”
“I asked Jesus into my life.”
Like, “What?” You know, it’s like, hey, (it) paid off, man, (it) paid off.
I remember my sister, who was way worse than me. She wasn’t, she didn’t have an argument for everything. She was just a partier. And, you know, she was an incredible—she just, she flirted with every boy, and you know, I’d have friends over and she’d walk out in her bathing suit. “Oh, is my bathing suit too short?” It’s like, go back. My friends are like, “Hey, hey, Kevin, let’s go to your house.” Yeah, you should meet her.
But the Lord got a hold of her, and her young life leader actually told her, he said, “Of all the kids, you were the last one I thought…” That’s how good God is. That’s how good God is.
So, all right. He will satisfy. He will give us purpose. Our purpose, our destination is the new heavens and the new earth. Our purpose is to bring heaven to earth.
I don’t know how much heaven to earth we can get, but I always—here’s my belief: I don’t know how many people can get healed, I don’t know how many people can get delivered, I don’t know how many people can get saved, but I bet one more. I bet there can be one more breakthrough. I bet we can—I always think we can get more. More of heaven on earth. And now that is our life’s purpose.
You think, “Well, that’s a hard thing to do.” No, it isn’t. Isaiah 55 says we’re endowed with splendor. What’s the New Testament equivalent of “endowed with splendor”? Christ in you, the hope of glory, the Holy Spirit, God Himself dwelling inside of us.
How dare we say I’m not equipped to bring the goodness of the Lord into the land of the living. Who are you carrying? Who are you carrying?
This prayer is answered 100% of the time for me, these three words: Holy Spirit, come. Holy Spirit, come. Even when I’m not praying for somebody, even right now, I say those words. And it’s like, whoa, there he is.
Holy Spirit, come. He is always present.
A woman this morning came up, and she said, “Pray for me.” And I said, “Okay.” She gave me no specifics, and I started to pray for her. Then I prayed the 23rd Psalm over her, and I get done. She’s got this big smile.
And I prayed, “Holy Spirit, come.” And then I prayed that. And I ended up praying the 23rd Psalm. That wasn’t on my mind before she was up there. Wasn’t on my mind until I took her hands, prayed, “Holy Spirit, come.” And then it’s like, oh, she needs, you know, something—she needs to hear the 23rd Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd. I just quoted and prayed the 23rd Psalm over her.
And I get done, she goes—I love people who don’t have Christianese language down. She didn’t say, “Oh, that was prophetic.” No, she used the world’s term. It was so cool. “You’re psychic.” Yeah, you can call my hotline. “You’re psychic.” I said, “No, I’m not psychic.” I said, “That’s prophetic.”
She goes, “When I come up here, I just said, ‘God, I’m just going to ask him to pray and see if he knows what’s going on in my life.'” And, of course, I didn’t, but that prayer must have struck the nerve, because she was like, “You’re a psychic.”
Holy Spirit, come. What does that mean? Empowered with splendor. The whole point is, I’m not psychic. It was God. There was no innate ability in me, no mysterious birth thing that I have these wavelengths going off in my brain.
I am one of the least intuitive, observant people on the planet. I would make a terrible cop. I would step over a dead body and go, “Well, there’s a murder here.” “Where?” I’d be like—it’d be right behind me—”Oh, I guess so.”
You are equipped to do His will. The Bible says this. You have gifts. And listen, it doesn’t have to be spectacular. I love—never, never, ever underestimate the little things. The little act of love that nobody sees. Mothers, you do this a million times for your kids. Fathers, too. You know, you get up in the middle—you do whatever, you know, and you make these sacrifices for your children. And there’s no applause. Your kids certainly aren’t, “Oh, Mother, thou art wonderful.” They’re like, “What took you so long?” You know, “I don’t want to eat.” You know, you cook all day. “I don’t want to eat this.”
And yet not a cup of cold water is given in His name that doesn’t lose its reward. Never underestimate the simple, small acts of love. It is actually the thing that builds us for the greater things.
Never expect to show great character in crisis unless you’ve deeply ingrained the habit of following the Holy Spirit and exhibiting character in the little things of daily life. Courage is not going to all of a sudden explode on you in crisis until you have the courage to get up at three o’clock in the morning and change a diaper. Never—just… I mean this with all my heart. Do the little things. Do the little things. And then, if the big things come, you’ll find yourself prepared.
And every time you do the little thing in the Name of Jesus, His kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Every time you love a less than lovable person, every time you don’t insist on your own way, every time you put your hands on somebody and pray for them in faith in the Name of Jesus, you are empowered with splendor. The Spirit of the God of the universe lives inside of you. Let Him move. God gives you the ability. That’s what Isaiah says. You’re endowed with splendor.
God alone is our source of love and mercy. And we all need mercy, and we’re all looking for love.
I don’t know if you have these. Probably do. I think most people have these. And I call them the cringe moments. You know, the cringe moments? Just getting along with your regular day, and all of a sudden, you remember something you did 30 years ago, something you said, and you go, why’d I do that? Why’d I say that? Well, you know, that was so self-seeking or so blah, blah, or this or that. You just cringe.
Or my wife experienced this. She went to a training event, and she didn’t question the speaker, but it was the speaker’s first time. She was talking about a subject my wife was impassioned about. My wife, you know, spoke up on it. This other girl came up to the speaker afterwards, saying, “Hey, you did a good job, even if you did feel attacked.” Jill thought, “Oh, that was me.” She was crushed. She was devastated. I didn’t mean to attack her.
And she called her, she emailed her, and that lady said, “Oh no, you were fine,” you know? But she had speaker’s remorse. And she goes, “Kevin, do you ever get speakers remorse?”
“No, never.” I’ve never had that where I get up and speak in front of a group of people and five minutes later going, “Why’d you say that? What’s wrong with you?”
So we need mercy. Sometimes those things are not the things we really need mercy for. Those are things that aren’t, you know, the devil’s jumping on and weren’t even that bad.
But there are other things we need mercy for. I mean, I can’t believe it, but in two years, my 50th high school reunion’s coming up. I have no intention of going. I went to my 25th. It was fine, but I have no intention of going.
One of the reasons—but, you know, if I went, I think I would stand up and say, “Everybody, I’m sorry.” You know, “I’m sorry. I was mean, sarcastic…” And they’d probably go, “Oh, you were fine.” But I’d be like, I don’t feel like I was fine. I feel like I need mercy.
And God gives mercy. He freely forgives. His mercy is there. We all need mercy. God alone is our source of love and mercy. Don’t let the invitation pass you by. My assumption here is you all have received that initial invitation to open the door and let Him come in and sup with you and you with Him. But, you know, once you do that, you realize there’s continual invitations, right?
There’s continual invitations, like, “Hey, leave your secure home in Southern California and go to a place where it rains all the time.” There’s an invitation there, and you go, “Okay, we’ll do that. That’ll be fun.” Yeah, you’ll live in a camper for two years. It’ll be great. It’ll be great. And then, you know, Ats is going to get his dream farm, and Aiko will be going, “What the…?” See you out there churning butter, the music to “Little House in the Prairie” playing in the background. Be great.
All right. You know? Say ‘yes’ to the invitations.
And listen, the invitations won’t always make sense because God sees the big picture. God has a timing for things, and our knowledge is limited.
So I want to say two words about common sense. One pro and one negative. All right, so, Stevin, this is for you and my wife. Common sense is great, and people would save themselves. Brian, you too. I love you common—you’re a common sense guy. Common sense is great, and people would protect themselves from all sorts of misery if they just followed common sense.
There are people, you know, all over the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world—incredible opportunity, bucket loads full of money. People don’t feel that way, but there is. And they are in financial distress and in huge debt because why? They didn’t follow just this simple, simple mathematical equation. You’re right. You don’t need algebra to do anything as an adult. You just need to add and subtract. And here it is: spend less than you make. It will work out well for you. That’s common sense.
And yet millions of people can’t do it. We get these little plastic credit cards. We go, “I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it.” We go on these dopamine hits, and you know, and it’s like, why do we do this? Why do we do this?
And I didn’t do it for a lot of years of my life. I spent more than I made. Make a mess of your life not following common sense. Make a mess of your life. My wife the other day, she said, why do you have 14 cigar lighters? I said, “Because 15 is too many. What, do you think I’m weird?” I said, “There’s actually three reasons: I have insomnia, a credit card, and Amazon exists.”
“Oh, that looks like a…” But, you know, she can’t talk too much. Why do we have a cupboard full of coffee mugs and neither one of us drink coffee? Good question.
So common sense. “Oh, I love him. And if he just changes a little, we’ll be happily ever after.” Don’t do it, darling. Not gonna change.
“She’s so hot. I don’t care if she has the IQ of a gnat and the personality of a witch. She’s hot.” Don’t do it, dude. Don’t do it. Ruin your life.
Now let me say the other word on common sense. Oswald Chambers, who wrote the great devotional My Utmost for His Highest, says in one of his devotions, “Never deify common sense.” It’s one of the ways, but not the exclusive way that God speaks.
And it’s true. If you read through the Bible, there’s no great—show me a great hero in the Bible who got to be a great hero in the Bible by strictly following common sense. They all, at one point or another, had to do what made no sense.
“Abram, leave your retirement.” All right, what are we going to do? “I’m going to take you to a land.” Great. “You’re going to have babies at 75.” Where’s this land? “I’ll show you.” And you know what the Bible said? So Abraham went. That’s not common sense.
“Moses, leave your shepherding job. Remember those Israelites you thought you were going to save?” Yeah, that didn’t work out well, God. They chased me away. Pharaoh wants to kill me, and they want to kill me. “Yeah. Go back.” Go back? But I st- st- stutter. “Don’t worry. I’ll send Aaron.” He’s an i-i-i-idiot. “I’m going to send you before Pharaoh, the most mighty man in the world. And you’re going to demand of him that he lets my millions of people leave his service and go to that promised land I promised your ancestor Abraham. Go do it.” I- I- I don’t want to. “Go do it.”
Okay, so you’re sending me with Aaron. “Yeah, but not only Aaron. I’m giving you a stick.” That’ll show him. That’ll show him. Parted the Red Sea, didn’t it? Drowned the whole Egyptian army.
“Paul, remember those Gentiles you wanted to kill?” Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. “Yeah, now go save them all.” “Remember that zealous Jew that you were?” Yeah. “Trying to kill those Gentiles?” Yeah. “Now I’m going to sic all those jealous Jews on you. But in the meantime, you’re going to change history.”
“Hey, Son. Leave your comfortable throne. Be born out of a woman into a dirty, dusty stable, into a poor life in Nazareth. Grow up as a peasant on planet Earth, the King of heaven. And then be turned upon by the political power, abandoned by your friends, lied to and betrayed by one of your closest friends. And then the people that we have called and created and loved and nurtured for thousands of years—you and I, Son—are going to turn on you. Go do that, and Abraham’s promise will be fulfilled in you, that you won’t be able to count the number of brothers and sisters you have. More than sands on the seashore and the stars in the heaven.”
God is bigger than you. God is smarter than you. My ways are not your ways. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts.
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord ‘s declaration. (Isaiah 55:8, CSB)
As you rightly follow the Lord by living just a common sense, practical life and following the obvious rules, never deaden yourself to that voice that will call you deeper into the purpose that God has for you.
Now, the flip side of that. I know some pretty crazy Christians who think that every thought that runs through their head is the voice of God. It’s not. Learn to know the difference. Learn to know the difference.
Finally, God is the only one who brings transformation. God makes bad people good. There are two kinds of people who go to church generally, and they’re the people who are humble and willing to be molded. And God makes bad—and those people, God makes bad people good. And you are a witness to Jesus wherever you go. You are a light in the workplace, in the home, in the marketplace, among your friends. You don’t even know how bright your light shines.
There are other people who aren’t willing to experience the pain of letting those things die and God make them good, and so they use religion as a blanket to stay bad, but appear good. They are not good witnesses for Jesus. Don’t be that person. We have our quota. All right? Don’t be that person.
But the truth is, God makes bad people good. The Spirit of God really transforms us, and it begins to write new patterns in our life.
One of my greatest hopes and one of my regular prayers is that I would be an encourager. I want to encourage people. I’m trying to do that tonight. Trying to encourage you, all right? Trying to give you courage to live in a broken world, in a hard life, trusting in God.
One of the ways that I was a bad person was I had a quick wit, and I could make fun of people easily. And I wasn’t big and I wasn’t strong, so I couldn’t parade myself in that way. I don’t know why I didn’t get beat up more. I should have, being a small smart aleck, I should have. I had big friends or my sister protected me or something. I should have gotten beat up more.
But, yeah, like I said, if I went back to my high school reunion, I would: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I got a laugh at your expense. And you know what? I think God’s made me better.”
I still tease people. I don’t know if you knew that. I still tease people, but I think mostly, hopefully, it mostly lands on them, almost hopefully, universally lands on them as affection.
Because I want to encourage you. I know life isn’t easy, and so God’s made you better. God’s made you better. Some of you struggled with immense anxiety and perfectionism, and you’re able to just kind of go, “Hey, nobody would call me laid back, but I’m better than I used to be. I’m better than I used to be.”
You know, you don’t have to be perfect, but I want to be more like Jesus 10 years from now than I am now. You know? “Honey, am I more like Jesus?” “What?” “Bring me my teeth.” Tell you I used to make that joke and say, “40 years.” Yeah, 10 years. 10 years.
I told my wife, I said, “You know, one of the things we don’t want to lose is our independence, right?” And so I told my wife, I said, “I’m hoping by the time I get that old”—you know, they’re already, the technology is already pretty much there that they’ll have self-driving cars, so I don’t have to, you know, I don’t have to be an old person worrying about driving. And like, you know, in Florida, they actually have guards in front of the Walmart because people regularly drive through the front of the store because, you know, all the retired, they miss their brakes and stuff.
So I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to, you know, be a hazard. But I don’t want, you know, I don’t want to have to rely on my kids. Maybe they’ll have self-driving cars. They’ll be perfected. I’ll just get in the car and say “Walmart,” it’ll take me to Walmart. “Home,” it’ll take me home.
And we’re talking about, “That would be great, that would be great.”
But her dad got Alzheimer’s, and he would go out. He didn’t have his car anymore, and he’d go out with his little suitcase out into the parking lot at the retirement home, looking for his car because he had packed his bag to go see his brother and his father, who were in New Jersey and also dead for 50 years.
I thought, “Yeah, that’d be great. Except with your dad, he would have been in New Jersey. He’d have gotten into the car. ‘Take me to New Jersey.'” Where’s dad? He’s on Highway 90, man. He’s heading to Jersey. It’s like, oh well, yeah, there might be a problem even with the self driving cars. So there you go.
God makes powerless people powerful. God makes powerless people powerful.
I’ll never forget Julie’s words from Jesus. “The prayers of many righteous have come before me, so I’m healing you. I’m healing you.” We didn’t heal her. The church in Bainbridge didn’t heal her. But the prayers of many righteous, those prayers were powerful on her behalf. Those prayers were powerful on her behalf.
And so, as I already said, there’s never a time where I don’t feel the Holy Spirit come upon me when I pray. And when I prayed for people’s deliverance and other things, not all those prayers are answered. They’re certainly not answered the way I want them to be all the time. But I’ve seen power. I’ve seen the power of God operate.
And you know, this ex-Mormon was coming to church in Oakdale, and he had a bad shoulder. He came up for prayer, and I prayed for him. He fell back, and he got up. He said, “What is that?” “That’s my hand, man. I got super hands.”
No, it’s nothing. This is just, this is just the softest hand. This is a softer hand than any real man ought to have. Just saying. All right? There’s no calluses from hammers or anything, you know. Paper cut, maybe. Worst kind of pain.
So the power flows through this hand. Just like yours, right? Just like yours. I didn’t get a bigger Holy Spirit than you did because I went to seminary. In fact, there’s evidence now… I won’t go there.
Having said that, Jamie, you still should go to seminary. I don’t think it’ll ruin your faith. And it will—it won’t even satisfy your curiosity. It’ll just make you curious about a whole new realm of things. Things that are less relevant than the things you’re curious about now. Maybe you shouldn’t go.
I’ve had demons shut up. Eternal, everlasting, you know, not eternal backwards, but much older than me, with much more knowledge than me. And I’ve told them to be quiet in the Name of Jesus. And they were quiet.
“You can’t—” “Be quiet. I’m talking to her in the Name of Jesus.” Shuts up.
Wow, it’s—I mean, it’s bizarre to say, but demons obey better than children.
He’ll make you, He’ll give you power, as I already said, to be from a bad person, to become a good person. He gives you power to do two things: to become like Jesus in character, and then to partner with Jesus in His ministry. Power to work miracles, speak in tongues, prophesy. Power to administrate, to extend mercy, to serve. He’ll give you power to do what is required.
And finally, He gives hopeless people hope. He gives hopeless people hope. I remember there was a lounge singer, kind of a bluesy singer who was popular back in the day, and her name was Peggy Lee. And her song was, her big hit song was “Is that All There Is?” It’s just this bluesy song about is that all there is to love?
I met Barry Maguire, and he was a 60s rock star who became a Christian in the Jesus movement. If any of you are familiar with “Bullfrogs and Butterflies,” I think he wrote that. But he wrote like “On the Eve of Destruction,” which was a big hit in the late 60s. He came to our church, and he spoke, and he gave a couple of stories that I’ll always remember.
One was before he was a Christian. He’s still a rock star. And they’re all doing drugs. He’s doing drugs with these other guys in this house. And there’s a poster of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin on the wall who had both just very recently overdosed and killed themselves. And he said, he said, “Here’s how powerful, you know, here’s how powerfully denial works. I’m snorting cocaine. I look up those pictures and I go, ‘I wonder if this is bad for you.'” Like, they’re dead. And he goes, “Nah, I’m all right. I’m under control. I got it, I got it.”
But he came to Christ, and he says he remembers a story once where he was in Palm Springs. There were a bunch of stars there. He went around the corner and saw a semi-drunk Frank Sinatra. This was Frank Sinatra, you know, in his 60s, king of entertainment, just a huge star, money, everything.
He said, “Frank Sinatra didn’t see me. He thought he was all alone. But I saw him, and he was actually hitting his head against a pole and saying, ‘I’m so lonely. I’m so lonely.'” Which is the ultimate outcome of doing it—Frank Sinatra’s song: “I Did it My Way.” I did it my way.
There’s no hope. There’s no hope. Is that it? Is that what life is? Just spend a short 60, 70, 80, 90 years on this rock trying to swallow up as much pleasure as you can in a world of woe and then nothingness? A grave?
I tell you, the biggest difference I ever experienced between Christians and non Christians is doing a funeral. You go to a non-Christian funeral, and it’s all deer in the headlights, man. “I hope he’s in a better place.” Yeah, I bet you do. But, man, at a Christian funeral, it’s like, “We’re sad, death’s an enemy. We’re gonna miss her, but she’s good. And we have hope. This is not goodbye; it’s see you later, see you later.”
And dear ones, we have hope for this life, and we have hope in the life to come. Paul says if Christ does not raise from the dead, we’re fools and our hope is in vain. Our faith is in vain. But indeed, Christ has been raised from the dead. Therefore, death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?
55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting? (1 Corinthians 15:55, CSB)
I’m amazed as we read this book on NDEs. The first thing most NDEs say as they kind of leave their body is they always say the same thing. I never felt what? More alive. I never felt more alive.
Dear ones, I don’t deny that death is an enemy. God never intended it. Adam and Eve weren’t meant to die. They were meant to move from glory to glory. But they did. And now death has entered the human scene. And God’s answer to death is not “Tough to be human. Grab all you can in this world. You only live once.” No, God’s answer to death is resurrection. Resurrection in Jesus.
And so there ought to always be a bounce in our steps, hope in our hearts. And you know, the things we put our hope in in this world, one of the things is, you know… just as you grow, you just go, “Well, that, that didn’t really pan out.” Right? That didn’t pan out.
You know, I spent a life—and we’re not, we’re not filthy rich, but we’re Americans and both worked. And toward the end of our life, at least we spent less than we made. But in the process of that, we’ve accumulated a lot of stuff. You know what that stuff is now? It gave us a quick dopamine hit when we got it and maybe served some purpose, you know, but now it’s just stuff in our garage.
We go, “We got to get rid of this, we got to get rid of this stuff. Anybody want stuff?”
I heard there was a scam going on. I don’t know if this is true, but you know how you hear. Could be urban legend, but I heard there was a gang. They’re gangs that were actually going around and opening garage doors. I guess there’s a limit. There’s not an infinite number of codes to garage doors, so if you have a garage door opener or a couple of them, you steal a couple of garage door openers, and they go around and, you know, you might get lucky, and one might open. They would go around in moving vans, and they would open garage doors and just go in and steal stuff and take off.
When I heard that, I said, “Do they have a phone number? Can I make an appointment?” I’ll take the two things in that garage that I want, put them in the house, and say, “Somebody’s got to clean my garage for free in 10 minutes. Dude, I’ll leave them a tip. Like, here, there’s another $200. Knock yourself out.”
Yeah, the stuff didn’t work. And you know, you’re young and you’re alive, you go, “Oh, I’m going to climb mountains and I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this.” And then, you know, your body starts going, “Eh, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
There was a 30-year-old in church this morning, and he had been doing some rock climbing and mountain climbing. He said, “Oh yeah, my shoulders are so sore.” I said, “Shut up. You don’t know sore. Have you hurt yourself sleeping yet? Shut your mouth. You know nothing.”
Guess what? Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, CSB)
Jesus is going to heal my back in this world, or He’s going to heal it in the next. But I’m not going to live for eternity walking like Tim Conway on the Carol Burnett Show. “Honey, I’ll loosen up in a minute.” It’s not going to happen.
I have hope. I have hope. I’m not going to live forever being tempted by the devil. I’m not going to live forever living with the broken tracks that still push me in the wrong direction. I’m not going to live forever experiencing the grief of other people’s pain.
One day we’ll look at each other and say, “How you doing?” And we’ll say, “Fine.” And we’ll mean it 100%, we’ll mean it. And I have that hope. And until that hope is ultimately realized, I want to bring as much through the power of the Holy Spirit working in me, endowed with splendor, extending the invitation of God into the world in which I live. That’s my purpose. That’s my purpose.
And so God makes an invitation to you tonight. Just this is so apropos, right? My story. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I’ll come in and sup with him and him with me.”
20 See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20, CSB)
And now Jesus says, “Sup with me.” See that little white grape juice stained table? That’s a holy place, people. No ornate altar in the world could improve upon the invitation of Jesus to that table to come and share in His body and blood and just receive fully His invitation to fellowship with Him and allow Him and His glory to dwell in us.
As you go to that table tonight, just be full of gratitude for His life in us. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
27 God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27, CSB)
Dear ones, that hope is sure. That hope is sure, and you’re walking in it. So go home happy tonight, even if life is hard. Amen? Amen. Come and be thankful.
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November 9, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
You’ve shown me the path of life. In your presence is the fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Thank you Jesus. Your name is worthy. For a great salvation, we are so very grateful tonight. In the midst of the struggles, the trials that we face in this world, Lord, still we are overwhelmingly grateful for the love that sought us and found us.
In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen. Amen.
My father-in-law was one of those guys, his generation, very quiet about his religion and all that. Started hanging out more and more with us. As he got older, he got a little more boisterous, and he would give out—every once in a while he’d just give out this kind of loud, “Amen!”
Toward the end of his life, he had dementia, and he was in the hospital. What’s that disease, infection. They did septic, but no, it wasn’t sepsis. But anyway, you know, it’s what killed him.
And he was in the hospital, and it was during COVID. I had to put on this white hazmat-like suit to go visit him. I’m in there, and he’s non-responsive. I get down by his ear and say the Lord’s Prayer, you know, “Our Father who art in heaven…” I get done. All of a sudden, I hear this, “Amen.” I think this is the last, that’s the last word I ever heard him speak. Amen. Amen.
So we’ve been going through Isaiah. Starting in Isaiah 40, the book turns.
Just a note about the prophets of the Old Testament. Here’s what the prophets are. If you’ve read the prophets in the Old Testament, it can be kind of discouraging because they keep bringing bad news to Israel. And then at the end of most of the prophets, there’s this hint of hope. There’s this kind of messianic hope that shows up, nowhere more so than in the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah has like 26 chapters that kind of turn and focus on the hope.
And those chapters are a lot about the restoration of Israel from Babylon back to their homeland and the building of the second Temple. But then it also has application for us today because it reveals the nature of God and His desire to bring a Messiah who will bring hope and restoration to a fallen world.
And the prophets, like I said, there are a lot of bad news and here’s the reason why. They are actually what I would call covenant lawyers. The prophets are covenant lawyers. What does that mean? God establishes a covenant with Israel. You can read all about it at the ending chapters of Deuteronomy. All right? Moses goes over Deuteronomy, the second law. Moses goes over the whole covenant that God has established with Israel.
And basically, you know, the covenant breaks down this way: if you follow this covenant, things will go so well for you, you won’t be able to believe it. You’ll live in the land that I give you. Your crops will be blessed, your children will be blessed. All the nations will leave you alone. They’ll fear you. You’ll be the, you know, you’ll be a light on a hill.
And then He says, but if you don’t follow this covenant, and then the—that list is pretty discouraging. You know, your crops are going to fail, your enemies are going to pursue you, blah, blah. And it just. And, you know, and ultimately I will take you out of this land and put you into exile.
And so one of the reasons the prophets are so grim is they are—you know, it’s not like this is out of the blue, like God said, “Well, you haven’t been good, so I’m going to punish you.” He’s actually just, through the prophets, reiterating—they’re the prosecuting attorneys—this is the case God has against you.
And so that’s what the prophets are in the Old Testament. They are God’s prosecuting attorneys that talk about Israel’s violation of the covenant. And God is just keeping His word. He’s saying, “Remember I told this to you, you know, and y’all said, when Joshua read it, y’all said, you know, Joshua said, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ And y’all said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what we’ll do.’ Every time the covenant got ready. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what you do.’ Of course, within a generation, you stop doing it.”
And so that’s why the prophets are so, so kind of dim and difficult.
But there’s always this word of hope. And like I said, nowhere more than in the prophet Isaiah does He offer hope for Israel returning from exile and for Him establishing a New Covenant with His people. And that He is a God of compassion, He is a God that has a good plan, and He will accomplish it.
And so I think the covenant, the second half of Isaiah, has application for us. Not only does it teach us about God’s interaction with Israel, but whenever it teaches us about God’s interaction with Israel, it reveals His character, it reveals His plan. And I think what His plan was for Israel writ small, is now for His kingdom, His New Covenant people writ large.
And so let’s look at Isaiah 54: God’s vision and promise for revival.
1 “Rejoice, childless one, who did not give birth; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of the married woman,” says the Lord. 2 “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let your tent curtains be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your ropes, and drive your pegs deep. 3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will dispossess nations and inhabit the desolate cities. 4 “Do not be afraid, for you will not be put to shame; don’t be humiliated, for you will not be disgraced. For you will forget the shame of your youth, and you will no longer remember the disgrace of your widowhood. 5 Indeed, your husband is your Maker — his name is the Lord of Armies— and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of the whole earth. 6 For the Lord has called you, like a wife deserted and wounded in spirit, a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” says your God. 7 “I deserted you for a brief moment, but I will take you back with abundant compassion. 8 In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but I will have compassion on you with everlasting love,” says the Lord your Redeemer. 9 “For this is like the days of Noah to me: when I swore that the water of Noah would never flood the earth again, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you or rebuke you. 10 Though the mountains move and the hills shake, my love will not be removed from you and my covenant of peace will not be shaken,” says your compassionate Lord. 11 “Poor Jerusalem, storm-tossed, and not comforted, I will set your stones in black mortar, and lay your foundations in lapis lazuli. 12 I will make your fortifications out of rubies, your gates out of sparkling stones, and all your walls out of precious stones. 13 Then all your children will be taught by the Lord, their prosperity will be great, 14 and you will be established on a foundation of righteousness. You will be far from oppression, you will certainly not be afraid; you will be far from terror, it will certainly not come near you. 15 If anyone attacks you, it is not from me; whoever attacks you will fall before you. 16 Look, I have created the craftsman who blows on the charcoal fire and produces a weapon suitable for its task; and I have created the destroyer to cause havoc. 17 No weapon formed against you will succeed, and you will refute any accusation raised against you in court. This is the heritage of the Lord ‘s servants, and their vindication is from me.” This is the Lord ‘s declaration. (Isaiah 54:1-17, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
And so He uses the image here of a deserted wife or a divorced wife. It’s a common image that God uses for Israel, and also in this case, a barren wife. And He says, “Rejoice, shout for joy, give praise, for those who have not been in labor. For the children of the desolate woman will be more than the children of the married woman,” says the Lord. “Enlarge the site of your tent. Let your curtains be stretched out. Do not hold back. Lengthen your ropes and drive your pegs deep.”
1 “Rejoice, childless one, who did not give birth; burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of the married woman,” says the Lord. 2 “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let your tent curtains be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your ropes, and drive your pegs deep. (Isaiah 54:1-2, CSB)
God’s kingdom is meant to advance. God’s kingdom is meant to advance. He said in Isaiah, earlier in Isaiah, He said, “Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.” And though you might feel barren in the sense of His kingdom advancing, though you might feel childless, and the church is not growing and this and that, know for sure that God promises to His New Covenant people that His kingdom will advance.
And listen, our vision is myopic. We might look at Washington and the Pacific Northwest and say, “Well, what’s the church doing? Is it growing? Is it expanding?” And in some places it is, but around the world it most certainly is. And think about it. Twelve disciples run away. Jesus dies nearly alone on the cross. Let’s see, John comes back and the women are there, but Jesus dies nearly alone on the cross. And this whole movement that He started, preaching and feeding to the 5,000, it seems like it’s all turned on Him. And they all say, “Crucify him.” And this hero, this one who is going to bring hope and restore Israel, is now brutally killed at the insistence of the Jewish leaders and at the hands of the Romans. And it seems like all is lost.
And yet today, on a planet with 8 billion people, approximately 2 billion, 1/4 of the planet claims the Name of Jesus. Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end.
As we talk tonight, the conversion rate for Christians around the world is outstripping the birth rate. Means every day that you’re on this earth, the percentage of people who follow Jesus is greater than it was the day before. Africa, as we speak, under great turmoil, under great persecution, because the devil always fights this. But under great turmoil, great persecution, Africa, as we speak, is becoming the Christian continent.
And Southeast Asia, under great persecution in places like India—you heard Troy and Marsha talk—in places like India and in China, under great persecution and great oppression, Christianity is rapidly growing. In Cambodia, it is rapidly growing. We support missionaries in Cambodia, and they are converting. We buy Bibles for the Sunrise Children in Cambodia. And that ministry keeps growing and growing, and more and more children… They’re converting Buddhist priests to Jesus.
And so we are meant to grow and advance. But it starts with what? Rejoice, burst into song, and shout. It flows from worship.
If you go to Matthew 28, the Great Commission, “Go into all the world, make disciples.” Oh, we’re to evangelize and make disciples. Yeah, but, you know, it says two verses earlier, the disciples met him on the mountain and did what? They worshiped Him. You see, you’re not going to make disciples of Jesus, you’re not going to evangelize Jesus if you don’t bow down before Him and acknowledge that He is Lord and king.
Nobody does this for their own benefit. Well, some people might do it for their own gain. But the idea is the kingdom of God is growing, and it’s growing through us, those who worship Jesus. It starts with worship, and then it happens through evangelism, church planting, and missions. It happens through—
And when you say the word “evangelism,” people think of awkward conversations or they think of mass evangelism. You know, Greg Laurie, or, you know, one of these guys, Charlie Kirk, who goes on campuses and debates with people, Frank Turek, other people like that. They think maybe of apologists or the late Billy Graham or the late Reinhard Bonnke. They think, you know, that’s evangelism. Nope.
I mean, it is, but far and away is not the most effective evangelism. Research has been done on this. Study after study has been done on this. The most effective evangelism is caring, loving Christians inviting their friends and family into a relationship with Jesus and inviting them to a local church. Number one way.
A new family came to church today in Bremerton. A family that moved to Eugene—the two women were best friends, and she was back up visiting them. And they’re saying, “You know, hey, we’re out of church. We can’t really find a church.” She said, “Go to the Firehouse Church. We love the Firehouse Church. We loved it. We had a great time there.” Simple as that.
You say, “Well, I’ve invited several people. They never came.” Well, invite several more. Invite several more. You know, Shohei Otani has pictures everywhere in Japan, right? He’s successful three out of 10 times he bats. Three out of 10 times. If you count a walk, maybe four out of 10 times. And he’s the best player in baseball. 60% failure rate. Just do it.
What do you got to lose? “Well, I might be rejected.” Oh, poor sweet baby. Sorry your feelings got hurt.
Wait, was that compassionate enough? What? Try again. Come on, you can try again. You can do it.
Just take them to church. If it’s morning, take them out to lunch afterwards. If it’s evening, take them to dinner beforehand or make an appointment with them during the middle of the week. But just love on people and just invite them. It’s the number one way you can do evangelism.
Well, what about, do I have to talk to him about Jesus? Yes. And guess what? You’re here because you have a story about you and Jesus. You have what’s called a testimony. That’s a religious word for it. It’s a story, and it’s a true story about how Jesus has impacted your life. And it’s the best means of evangelism.
People say, “Well, I don’t know the Bible well enough. What if they ask me questions?” And you know what I’m going to say to that? If you don’t, you know, most of you know the Bible plenty well. Go home and research it and find the answer and come back to them with answers.
You know, non-Christians respect “You know, I don’t know. Let me dig into that and we’ll talk next week.” What’d you just do? You just established another meeting to talk to them about Jesus.
Or like I always say, you bring them here, bring him to me and say, “Well, I don’t know, my pastor might know the answer to that. Let’s go ask him.”
“Oh, your pastor, is he intimidating?” Oh, terribly so. Yeah, he’s, he is like, he wears a suit. Yeah, he’s, he’s pretty scary.
But you can do this. You can do this. And you might not have success in what you deem as success, but most research indicates it takes seven touches. So you might not be the finishing touch. You’re just one of the touches.
I love watching football and you know, in the NFL, you know, wide receivers are the divas of the NFL, alright? They’re the ones with the big personalities, and they love—they catch a touchdown pass, and they dance in the end zone. And now they do choreograph. The whole team gets there, and they do a little dance, all that.
And I’m old school. It’s like, you know, come on, just act like you’ve been there before. But you know, it’s entertainment. I realize it’s entertainment, so let them have their fun, let them dance. But you know, that wide receiver, he catches that ball in the end zone, and there’s a big celebration.
But he never would have caught that ball had the quarterback not stood in the pocket, taken that hit from the rusher, and delivered that ball just on time and right on target to get him.
And the quarterback never would have been able to throw that ball had the linemen not mostly done their job and protected him from those people, 300-pound monsters who were trying to destroy him.
And you know what? The coaches looked at hours and hours of film, and they drew up that play for that situation because they recognized the tendency in that defense to react this way. They thought, you know, if we call this play on 3rd and 5 from the 20-yard line, based on their tendencies of hours and hours of film study, we have determined that that receiver is going to be open in the corner of the end zone.
And the general manager drafted that receiver out of college because he saw the potential in him as well as the quarterback.
In other words, what am I saying? And the owner, by the way, wrote all the checks, and you, the fan, paid for it with your tickets to the game, your subscription to YouTube TV, and your purchase of beer. Mostly your purchase of beer or other items that they sell.
So guess what that wide receiver dancing in the end zone, “Look what I did”? A lot of people were involved. I’ve led hundreds of people to Christ. I’ve prayed with them in my office, and inevitably—after I say the prayer and I’m dancing in the end zone, “Hey, Jesus, I led somebody to Christ. Ain’t I a good evangelist and pastor?”—inevitably, I’ll ask them, “Tell me about your, you know…” and they say, “Oh, I got this really cool friend and he’s a Christian man. And you know, I always give him a hard time, but you know, he’s like the real deal. And he, you know, and oh, my grandmother, oh my gosh, she took me to church when I was a kid and she was always praying for me.”
And I realized I’m like that wide receiver. The linemen were blocking, the quarterback threw a perfect pass, the coaches drew up a perfect play, the GM drafted the right people. In other words, I was one of many touches. And just because of my job, sometimes I get to be the diva. And I think, you know, I can do that role well. I can gloat, I can dance. I’m good.
So evangelism, church planting. New churches make new Christians. New churches make new Christians.
When I moved up to Washington, the Lord didn’t tell me to plant a church. He told me to plant churches. So we’ve, you know, Poulsbo, we’ve successfully done that. It’s plural. But I think there’s more. I think there’s more that are going to be planted, maybe during my lifetime, maybe not, but the roots, the seed that it’s going to be a church planting movement.
I’m a firm believer in that my way of doing Christianity is not the only way because there’s just a variety of personalities out there. There’s people who like smells and bells and candles. There’s people who like laid back. There’s people who like traditional music, there’s people who like contemporary music. There’s people who like, you know, lots of program and of entertaining things. There’s people who have no patience for that. And all of them are open doors. All of them are open doors.
When my wife and I first moved here, we had about six months before we started the church and we just visited a bunch of churches in Kitsap County. And a lot of times I’ll, you know, I’ll hear people and they’ll talk about, “Well, these other churches, we’re the only ones doing it right.” It’s kind of that attitude, right? “We are the, at least if we’re not the ones, we’re the tip of God’s arrow.” And it kind of just drives me a little bit nuts when I hear that. It just really does.
And my wife and I went to all these different churches and I recognize two things. These people are good-hearted people trying to serve Jesus well, and they’re on my team. And second, I got a little different twist on things, and so there is a niche for us. I didn’t know the niche would be 11 people. Thought it might be a little more. But there’s a niche. There’s something for us. You know, we’ve got a corner on the market.
And so, dear ones, church planting… and finally missions. As I said, when you give money here at the Firehouse Church, some of that money goes to the Dominican Republic, some of that money goes to Nepal, some of that money goes to Africa, some of that money goes to Cambodia. So that money is going all over the place. All over the place.
Like I said, in Cambodia, we’re buying Bibles for kids who give their lives to Christ. We did it in Africa. In Togo, Pastor Sonte—Dallas told this story years ago, but—he went into a village. He goes and evangelizes in villages. And it’s different in Africa. In America, the hotbed of Christianity is in the rural neighborhoods. In Africa, the hotbed of Christianity is in the cities. But the rural neighborhoods that are unreached tend to be still very animalistic, very pagan in their belief system.
And so he went into this little village, and there’s a chief there, and there’s a witch doctor, the whole bit, right? And the village has been having a drought. And so the witch doctor sought his advisors. And his spiritual advisor said, “We need a sacrifice.” And they chose a boy. And they were going to sacrifice this boy in three days. And Sonte comes into this town and he finds out what’s going on. He says, “Don’t do it. It’s terrible. Don’t do that.” And the chief said, “Well, you pray to your God, and if your God sends rain, we won’t do it.” And so Sonte said, “Okay.” And he began to pray. And three days later, the rain started. And it rained steady for a week. You know, it just rained. And the drought was broken.
And the chief comes back to him, and the witch doctor, they come back to him and say, “Hey, we think your God is stronger than the gods we’ve been following. Tell us more about your God.” And so he told the chief and the witch doctor about Jesus, and they both converted and got baptized. And the whole village converted and got baptized.
And so they speak French in that country. And so you bought them Bibles. You bought them French Bibles that came from you and other Grace Covenant churches. We supplied that village with Bibles.
And so it’s personal evangelism, it’s church planting, it’s world missions. But the gospel expands, and it expands through us. We’re the A team. There is no B team. God does not have another plan.
Now, this does not simply mean “butts in pews.” That’s what BIP is up there. Butts in pews. All right?
There is a tendency to put the cart before the horse or let the tail wag the dog, to use a couple of old metaphors. There is a tendency to think that if we can do something that’s entertaining enough, that’s clever enough, that’s sharp enough, that programs are slick enough—now, none of those things, by the way, are evil. But when their goal ultimately becomes church growth, not discipleship, they miss the mark. It’s very easy to slip into that. Very easy to say, “Well, you know, we must be doing the right thing, because we got a big crowd.” No, make disciples. Make disciples.
And I’m not being harsh on big churches. I have no judgment there. I have no idea. I don’t know what churches are doing well at this and what churches aren’t. But I know there have been some churches that have come around and said, “You know what? We really missed. We missed. We got off track. We did everything for BIP, and what we got was a lot of people coming to our building. But we didn’t get sold out disciples of Jesus Christ, or we got very few of them.”
So it’s not about BIP; it is about the advance of His kingdom. What does the advance of His kingdom mean? He’s king.
There’s a debate. I don’t know if you’ve heard there’s a debate about lordship. This Lordship, this discipleship, you know, can you be saved if you don’t acknowledge Jesus as Lord? He’s just my Savior, but not my Lord.
I’m on the lordship side of that. I don’t think it’s an authentic conversion to simply say a prayer, buy your, you know, get your eternal life insurance, and not acknowledge Jesus. I’m not saying you’re saved by works or you have to, you know, just live this perfect life after that. But the idea is to follow Him. You know, if you don’t like Him here on earth, you’re not going to like Him in heaven.
And so we want to make—Jesus told His disciples to go and make what? Disciples. Go and make disciples.
And Paul says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” And confessing with your mouth again isn’t just saying the magic words. Confessing with your mouth is an acknowledgment that He is my Lord.
And so you follow Jesus. And we try to, we seek to help other people follow Jesus.
Now, it’s hard. Life is hard. But don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of intimacy with God because He’s your husband. Your maker is your husband. Church, God is intimately connected to us, intimately invested with us. He is our Redeemer. He has bought us back. The story of Hosea in the Bible, how the wife is a prostitute and Hosea will not let her go. He keeps buying her back. That’s God. He restores Israel. He sends a New Covenant. He keeps pursuing. He keeps looking for us. He keeps seeking us. He keeps finding us. He is our Redeemer. And therefore, nobody is on your side like God is on your side.
I often have to remind myself as a parent, as I get concerned for my children and my wife gets concerned for our children. I often have to remind myself, oh, there’s somebody much more powerful than me that loves them much more than I do. Isn’t that great news? You worry about your kids, right? Guess what? You would, you know, you think, what sacrifices would I make for my kids? And man, you would. You’re all good parents. You would. Well, God made a sacrifice for your kids, too. He sought them with a love and power that we do not possess. He sought us with a love and power that we do not possess.
Therefore, we can have faith in God’s unfailing love and faith that He has peace for us.
I seek, like all people, I seek a peaceful existence through circumstances.
My wife and I have this ongoing debate. You know, you marry opposites. My wife is a servant and a helper, which are great gifts. They’re great gifts. But as a servant and a helper, she just goes to the nth degree to make stuff special for people.
I, on the other hand, it’s not that I don’t love people. I, on the other hand, really value simplicity. I think with simplicity, it gives you much more time to just get to the nitty gritty and what’s important in people’s lives.
So, like, when it comes to buying presents, my wife will research and, you know, wrap it extravagantly and make it a big deal. And of course, I gotta admit, the grandkids love it.
You know what? Here you go, kid. Gift certificate. Go get what you want. Simple. And they would love that, too. Listen, I’ve given kids money before. They like that. Actually, sometimes they like it better than the well-thought-out present because the well-thought-out present may miss the mark. Maybe not what they wanted.
Anyway… just differences in how we love people.
All right, so we look for peace in circumstances. And sometimes, you know, we just go overboard trying to control our circumstances to get peace. But real peace does not come through circumstances. Real peace comes through simple faith in a good God. Peace is peace in the midst of circumstances.
One of the great authors of the 20th century was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and he wrote a little novel about his experience in the Gulags. He uses a fictional character, Ivan Denisovich. And Ivan Denisovich is a doctor who’s imprisoned by the communists because he didn’t fall in line in some particular way, and he goes off to the most horrible place you can imagine, a Siberian prison camp.
In the Siberian prison camp, this atheist Dr. Ivan Denisovich, who represents Alexander Solzhenitsyn himself, discovers there’s a bunch of Baptists, Russian Baptists, in this prison. The Baptists had smuggled in small pieces of the Bible, torn-off pages. And he said at night, around candlelight, they would break out from under their pillows and hidden wherever they could hide them—they would break out these little fragments of the Bible, and they would read them and pray together in the candlelight at night, hoping that the guards wouldn’t break in and find them.
And then here’s why Solzhenitsyn, one of the reasons Solzhenitsyn became a Christian and later came to America and was an apologist, both an avid anti-communist speaker and an apologist for the Christian faith.
And I’ll never forget this. I read it in high school. All right, so 50 years ago I read this, and I just remember this quote from the book. He said the troubles of prison life were like water on a duck’s back to the Baptists. That’s peace. The worst place you can be on a planet. And yet every other prisoner is looking at the Baptists going, “Why are those crazy people…? They’re supposed to be miserable.”
That doesn’t mean that prison wasn’t hard and horrible, but it means that they had a peace that Paul says in Philippians surpasses human understanding. You know what we’re supposed to be anxious for? No thing, nothing. But by prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God, and the peace of God will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
God is our Maker, God is our Redeemer. Paul says, if God is for us, who can be against us? Who can be against us?
I wish with all my heart, I wish you would walk in here on Sundays, and I would be able to tell you, because you read your Bible, because you say your prayers, because you come to church, because you’ve given your life to Jesus, because you’re a disciple and you’re trying to follow Jesus—I just want to tell you that your life is going to be hunky dory. But there’s neither hunk nor door. There’s trouble.
And the Bible doesn’t shy away from that. Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart. Why? I’m bigger. I’m bigger. And you win. I won. I rose from the dead. I’m taking you with me. And I will be with you in the troubles of this world until I bring you to that land where, in fact, the circumstances are no trouble anymore. There’s no trouble in the circumstances.
For a little while, we share in his sufferings so that in eternity He may show us His incomparable kindness and glory.
So when you come here, I don’t tell you that life will be hunky dory. I do tell you, hang in there. You’re playing a game you cannot lose. Yeah. Just don’t quit. No weapon formed against you will prosper. Right? Paul says that neither death nor life… Doctor says you’ve got blah, blah, blah.
Oh, got another one, by the way. Brad, who goes to church in Bremerton, a chiropractor from Silverdale, was talking about a woman that he knows through his practice—this couple he knows through his practice—and this woman had stage four breast cancer that had metastasized into her bones. Stage four cancer that’s breast and bones. Sounds like a death sentence, right?
So just recently, you know, they go to a little Baptist church. Not a Charismatic church, not a church that’s big into healing, but, you know, the people were praying, and they go to this little Bible church. And just recently, she went and had a PET scan, and no cancer in her body. No cancer in her body. So that’s two in two years. Two stage four, gonna die of cancer. No cancer in her body.
No weapon formed against you will prosper. God will give you protection in life and in death. God will rebuild what has been torn down. The human race was torn down in the Garden of Eden. The human race was torn down by human rebellion. And the human race is going to hell in a handbasket. We were cruel. We were barbaric. We were wicked. We still are. But you know what? Less so. Less so.
Isaiah and I were reading a book about revival, Firefall, last year. And in that book, what struck us both was how mean Christians were to other Christians who weren’t of their stripe. You know, how much the Catholics killed the Reformers, and then the Reformers killed the Anabaptists. And the only ones who didn’t kill anybody were the Anabaptists. They were on the bottom of the food chain. They didn’t burn anybody at the stake or drown anybody.
And so it was horrible. And then you look at the church divisions today that I already talked about, you know, my way, you know, very exclusive, my version of Christianity is the best. And all you other guys…
But you know what? We have debates with people about those issues. We don’t kill each other. Calvinists aren’t killing Arminians anymore. Catholics aren’t killing Protestants anymore. It’s just not happening.
And so what does that mean? I think it means that God’s kingdom is still advancing. People say, “Well, you know, the good old days…” No, come on, you just forgot. “Oh, the Roman Empire was glorious.” Forty percent of the Roman Empire were slaves. And now slavery, though practiced in the world still—every time I bring this up, people say, “Well, people are still slaves.” Yes, but 2,000 years ago, the number of people who objected to slavery, you could probably count on one hand. Everybody just thought it was a normal part of life. Yes, some people are lucky, aren’t slaves. Other people are unlucky. They’re slaves.
Now, that’s completely reversed. The percentage of the world population that believes slavery is okay is the minority by a long shot, and the percentage that condemn it, at least publicly, is a majority. Why? Because of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.
God will rebuild what has been torn down. He will rebuild what has been torn down. Tyranny will not rule over us. Only God will rule over us. That doesn’t mean there won’t be tyrants, but they won’t be our king.
We live in a democratic republic where we vote for representatives. And those representatives, in our best interest, shut down the government and don’t pay people while they still get paid because they’re public servants on our side. And forgive the cynicism.
But there are good ones. There’s some good ones. I’m not, I won’t even get into that.
But the reason we live in a democratic republic, and the genius of it, isn’t because we’re all so good, we all deserve a voice in our government. It’s because we’re all so bad that we have to break it up in as many tiny pieces as possible so there’s no accumulation of power in a king. Because history has told us that most kings who have an accumulation of power aren’t good. But my dad always taught me growing up, he said, “Well, our government is the best that humans can do.” But he said, “The real best form of government is a benevolent dictator, a benevolent sovereign.” It’s much more efficient, right? You have a good guy, you know, he’s not going to shut down the government. You say, “Oh, this is what’s best for the people. I have all wisdom, I have all power. I can do what’s best. And I love these people and I care for these people.” And you don’t have to go through, you know, have to go through courts, we don’t have to go through votes.
Just like the problem is you can’t find a benevolent sovereign, except one. Isaiah 54. He is compassionate. He is a good God.
And so no matter what a government says over your life, you always have this freedom because you are a citizen of heaven. They may take your life, they may put you in jail. So? They can’t take your soul, they can’t touch it. It’s untouchable.
No weapon formed against you will prevail. No king will rule over you, except King Jesus. Terror will not overcome you.
There are things worthy of terror. There are things you know, there are things that are terrifying. I had child terrors. I had nightmares continually from three years old to 11 years old. And a lot of kids are afflicted with that, you know, where sleep is not a good thing.
And my night terror started when at three years old I watched “The Wizard of Oz.” And a lot of people got freaked out by the monkeys. Not me, that witch. And that witch started visiting me in my dreams. For eight years that witch visited me in my dreams, and I would have witch nightmares, and I’d wake up terrified from the witch nightmare.
And my room was at the end of the hall, and my parents’ room was at the other end of the hall, and I realized I did not want to be in my bed alone because that witch was going to come get me. So I had to make it to my parents’ room, but I didn’t know where she was hiding. She could be under my bed, so when I leave my bed, I got to take a good leap out because I don’t want her to grab me. More than likely she’s behind one of those doors between my parents’ room and my room, so I got to go by them really fast so she doesn’t come out and get me.
You might say, “Well, by the time you’re 10 or 11, you should have enough rational thoughts to know that that’s not true.” I had plenty of rational thoughts that said that wasn’t true. But that witch was there just waiting for me.
And so I would leap out of my bed, so just in case she was under the bed, she wouldn’t get me. Then I would race down the hall, flying past all those doors. My parents had been married long enough that they no longer spooned, so they’re always in their big king-size bed. There was always a gap between them.
I’d get to the end of that bed running full speed, and I’d take an Olympic jump. And I would land right between them. Boom. My dear mother knew that I’d had another nightmare, and she would comfort me. And my dear father, I assumed he was praying because almost every time I did it, I did hear the Lord’s name. So I assume my dad was praying for me.
And talk about prophetic, talk about the goodness of God. This is such a biblical dream. I was delivered from terror. I was delivered from those nightmares. One night I had a dream and the witch was chasing me and I don’t know why, it was a bank. I just remember to this day it was a bank that was on fire over to my left. And then my father, my father appears in the dream, and he grabs the witch and he throws her in the fire. It wasn’t a lake of fire, but I took it.
Now that I’m like, oh, oh, my father. No weapon formed against me, no terror will overcome me. And from that moment on till 66 years old, 55 years, that witch…
A few times after that, as a boy, she reappeared in my dreams. There was no terror. It’s like, “Nah, my dad threw you in the fire.” In the dream, there was a certainty. It’s like, you know, initial shot—there, she… oh, that’s a memory. My dad threw you in the fire. That’s a deliverance. God will deliver you from terror.
We were talking today with Jamie and Stevin about martyrs who die these horrible deaths. And you wonder how Christians were able to sing being devoured by the lions. I think I know. Grace. I think it’s God gives people grace to die. Even terrible deaths. God gives people unimaginable courage.
And no matter how you leave this world, I believe God will give you grace to die. You know, we all have our list, right? And at the top of the list is “Comfortably in my sleep, Lord,” you know, comfortably in my sleep. And that happens, rarely. It happens. But whatever happens, there will not be terror.
I’ve listened to hospice nurses talk about their experiences of the dying. And they have some horrifying experiences of angry, mean, you know, self-pitying, unbelieving people who are railing against the universe. And they talk about, you know, these horrible, agonizing deaths these people experienced. And they see terror sometimes in their faces.
Then they talk about people who have faith, who believe. And inevitably they say, before they left, the room was filled with peace.
And I just think there’s grace to face any terror that comes your way. Attacks will come, but God will vindicate. God will vindicate you. And a lot of our problem comes when we try to vindicate ourselves because doggone it, they were wrong, and I want to be, I’m going to be right. And the only thing, like, you know, men vindicate themselves usually by a fist fight, right? All right, let’s take this outside.
Well, you know what? That ain’t my game. I can’t pick a fight. I would just lose, you know, all the time. Ah, but if we made a rule, who can argue and insult the best? I think I’d be in the top 10%, maybe top 3%. I like to argue.
And man, you might not hear it—sometimes you might hear it. Hope you don’t hear it too much. Sometimes there is a really snarky, sarcastic, cutting edge that used to come out of my mouth a lot. And I gotta confess to you, it still comes up the screen. Still comes up on the screen a lot. And it’s like, I mean, I said one today about your… and it was a good line, wasn’t it? They’re there all the time. But every time, you know, I hear the Holy Spirit say, “No, no.”
And I’m the same as you. I have those debates with people that I’m in a fight with or in a disagreement with when I’m in the shower or in my car. And I am undefeated in those inner debates in my head, arguing with that person. I always put them in their place. They always admit to me, “You’re right, Kevin, I was wrong.” I don’t know why that doesn’t work on social media with my clever arguments. It just doesn’t. They never come back and say that. I don’t understand why, when I’m obviously right and they’re obviously wrong. And I usually present it in such a humble, self-effacing way, and there’s no hint of passive-aggressive pride in there or anything like that.
You recognize when I’m being facetious, right? Okay. Just want to make sure.
And the Lord has just been teaching me for years now, “Don’t say everything that comes up on the screen. And Kevin, just keep your mouth shut, and I will vindicate you. I will vindicate. I’ll take care of it.”
And you know what? When He takes care of it, I don’t burn bridges. I don’t make lifetime enemies. I’m not mean and hurtful. I don’t speak out of ignorance. There’s a lot of times I think, exactly, I know what that person’s thinking and why they’re doing what they’re doing. And oftentimes later I found out, oh my gosh, I was completely wrong.
Yeah, just relax and let God vindicate you. 1 Peter 5:7. Cast your cares upon Him, for He cares for you.
God has a vision for revival. He has a vision to expand His kingdom, and He invites us into that vision. He does it through us. He does it in us. The church is His plan, and there is no other plan. We’re it, Tag, you’re it. Everything flows from us worshiping Jesus and acknowledging Him as king in our lives.
And when we do that, there is opposition. But if God is for us, who can be against us? And of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end.
And here is my prayer. And you’ve heard me say this before. I know. I pay attention. I’m a world Christian. I’m not just a Pacific Northwest Christian. I know what God’s doing in the world, and it thrills me. But this is my home. And so my prayer on a regular basis is that old spiritual. It has to do with personal salvation, but I apply it to revival. I say, “God, while on others thou art calling, do not pass us by.”
And years ago, the Lord spoke to me as I was sitting in a November rainstorm early on in my stay in Washington, like my second or third year. And I’m thinking, does this happen every year? And yes, it does. It starts raining in November. It doesn’t stop for a long time.
I said, “Lord, I’m praying for a revival in this wet, soggy place. And people don’t, people are depressed, and they don’t go to church. And, you know?” And the Lord spoke. He said, “Kevin, do you believe wet wood can burn?”
And I said, “Yes, Lord, if you light the fire. If you light the fire.” And so I still pray. Sometimes I get discouraged, but I still pray, “Lord, let the United States have such a deep move of your Spirit that you will rebuild what has been torn down in our culture. It will so impact your church that it will actually transform our culture.”
That’s a big revival. A lot of revivals transform churches. A lot of revivals get churches out into evangelism. But when revival hits big enough, it transforms. The Jesus movement, transformed a segment of our culture. But when a revival hits, it can transform culture.
The First and Second Great Awakening transformed culture, and I pray for a revival so deep that it will transform culture. I pray it’ll happen in America. But then I get more specific. I say, Lord, let it happen in Washington. Let it happen in Kitsap County, the sixth or eighth, according to stuff I’ve heard—I don’t know if it’s factual, but it’s not the most churched county in America—I’ve heard it’s the sixth to eighth most unchurched county in America. I used to hear that 10 years ago. I don’t know if those numbers are the same. I don’t even know if that’s true. I do know Washington is one of the 10 most unchurched states in America.
While on others Thou art calling, do not pass us by. And Lord, ignite this wet wood. Ignite it. Not literally, Lord. We don’t need forest fires. But, Lord, we need revival fires. And God, you come and vindicate our message. The world thinks we’re fools. The world calls us names. They completely try to turn the tables, 180 degrees around, that we’re the haters and we’re the bigots. And Lord, we just want to argue back. And there’s a time for that. There’s a time to speak the truth. And there are people who do that really articulately.
But in the meantime, we have a neighbor, a family member, somebody we work with who needs Jesus. And they’re not interested in any of those cultural arguments. They just want to know if their friend loves them. And when you do, they want to know where that came from.
And of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end. That’s the New Covenant. It was in His blood that it was established.
So on the night He was betrayed, He took bread and broke it, gave it to His disciples and said, “This is my body, which is given for you.” In the same way, after supper, He took the cup, poured it out, gave it to His disciples and said, “This is my blood which is shed for you.”
It’s shed for the forgiveness of sins. That’s the entry into the New Covenant. That’s the starting point. It’s not the ending point. Your sins are forgiven. That’s great news. Now we’re free to follow Jesus forever.
And so tonight, come once again and feed your soul on Jesus. He is our life, He is our peace. He is our Lord. He is our Redeemer. He is our husband, and He is the victor. So you’re on the winning team. How about that? You’re on the winning team. Lift up your heads. You’re on the winning team. Smile. Lift up your heads. You’re on the winning team. You’re on the winning team, all right? You’re not a—let’s see if I do it right, because this way is this way, right? You’re not a “L.” You’re a winner. Yeah. All right.
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November 2, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
What great love is this that while we were yet sinners, while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us, to reconcile us to God, to bring us peace.
Lord, for your great salvation, for your great hope, for the life that you put in us by your Holy Spirit, that you’ve made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of your Son, our Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you is too small a word, but it’s the word we have. We say, thank you.
How good are you? Thank you. Amen.
My father-in-law had Alzheimer’s before he passed away. He was never very expressive in his faith, but at the end of his life, he loved. you’d say something, and he just loved saying Amen. I went to visit him in the hospital, and he was nearly comatose. I just got down near his ear and I prayed.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, now and forever.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. (Matthew 6:10-11, CSB)
And I finished, and all of a sudden I hear, Amen. Amen. Amen.
All right, so we’re gonna look at Isaiah 52:13 through 53:12. As I watch YouTube at night, I stumble upon. You know, I kind of go in there and I hunt for a little Christian content. And it’s a little dangerous. Not dangerous, but it can be a waste of time because not all that’s good.
Anyway, I found this ministry called One for Israel. And I don’t. I don’t follow them. I don’t know everything they stand for, but they had a number of Jews who were Christians giving their testimony. And that’s what I really like.
And they’re about 15 minute testimonies of these Jewish folks who have come to Christ. And as I. And I just began to listen to these testimonies, and it’s very inspiring. For me, it was very encouraging. You know, hearing people’s testimonies and, you know, most of them and hearing adult conversions is always encouraging. And so they would share these testimonies.
And there are things that, as you begin to listen to a lot of them, you’d find some common themes. One of the common themes was a dissatisfaction with life before Christ. Some of these were devout Jews, and yet they found in their devout Judaism, you know, something was missing. Many of them were secular Jews, you know, not religious Jews, just ethnic Jews, and found that, you know, just like all secular people, found that nihilism isn’t a great satisfier. And so that was one of the things.
Another thing that continued to come up is they. A lot of them felt like Christians hated Jews and, you know, just didn’t like them at all. And they met some nice Christians, and it kind of shocked them. So here’s my. Here’s a piece for you. A little.
You know, usually you wait for the end of the sermon to give the takeaways, but here’s the takeaway. Be a nice Christian, all right? We have our quota of mean ones, so be one of the nice ones, all right? Be kind to people.
And they did. They would find these people at work and, you know, they’d really like them, and they would notice. Here’s something different about that guy. You know, he must be a naturally cheerful fellow or something like that.
And then later they find out this guy was a Christian, and they’re like, oh, no, he wants to kill me. And it’s like, no, I don’t want to kill you. You know, I love you. I want you to. And I love life and I love Jesus. And that kind of would pique their interest. But one of the things that. Not in every. Nowhere near every testimony, but in so many testimonies, the passage of Scripture we’re going to study tonight had a huge impact on them.
It is the passage of the suffering servant in Isaiah 52 and 53. And when they read that, they were amazed because they’d heard enough of the Christian story about, you know, Jesus dying on a cross and all that. And then they read this passage and they said, oh, my goodness, let me read the passage to you.
Starting in Isaiah 52:13.
13 See, my servant will be successful; he will be raised and lifted up and greatly exalted. 14 Just as many were appalled at you — his appearance was so disfigured that he did not look like a man, and his form did not resemble a human being— 15 so he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths because of him, for they will see what had not been told them, and they will understand what they had not heard. (Isaiah 52:13-15, CSB)
1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him. 4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. 6 We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living; he was struck because of my people’s rebellion. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death, because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully. 10 Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand, the Lord ‘s pleasure will be accomplished. 11 After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death, and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels. (Isaiah 53:1-12, CSB)
I didn’t read this this morning, but I want to read to you one more passage from the New Testament. Philippians 2:5-12
Philippians 2:5-12.
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Do you know how to? You know, sometimes we forget we don’t know the order of Paul’s letters. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Go eat popcorn. So, there you go. Little help for you there.
All right. Philippians 2:5.
5 Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. 9 For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow — in heaven and on earth and under the earth — 11 and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11, CSB)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
So I want to talk about the suffering Messiah and why this was such a strange concept. When Jesus came. In the Old Testament, a thousand years before Christ, you started getting words from the prophets about how there’s going to come one like King David. He will be a mighty king. He will be David’s son. He will be a descendant of David.
Israel would always look back at David as the golden age of the empire. Right? It was the golden age. It was when we were the big kids on the block. David, and then afterwards, Solomon, other kings would come and pay tribute. During David’s reign, Israel’s boundaries never contracted. They always expanded. He was all. He was a mighty warrior, he was a mighty worshiper. And he really brought Israel into prominence in that region of the world.
You know, you have the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Egyptians and all these mighty empires. But for a short season, the shining light was this little piece, this little strip of land, Israel. And everybody was afraid of David. And David was a mighty king. And the promise was that there’s going to come one like David. And so the idea of a Messiah began to grow.
And this is in the Old Testament. There are pictures of this, the idea of the Messiah as a conquering king. And Israel is going to be the big dog on the block again. You have grown up in America. You don’t know what it’s like not to be the big dog on the block in terms of nations. My whole life, America has been the most powerful nation on earth. It still is, people. Oh, China. No, it’s not China. It’s America. It’s the United States of America. Maybe one day in our lifetime, it won’t.
But for my whole lifetime, and it’s been a while. It’s been a minute, actually. It’s been a minute and six seconds. My whole lifetime, America has been that nation. Israel had not been that nation for a long, long time. By the time Jesus showed up, they had been oppressed by the Babylonians, by the Persians, by the Medes, before that by the Assyrians, then brutally oppressed by the Greeks and brutally oppressed by the Romans.
And when the Romans were killing the Jews, the Jews would always say, oh, the Messiah is going to come. You guys are going to pay for this. Messiah is going to come, and you guys are going to pay. And so they’re looking for. And this is the reason, this is the central reason, I think, that most Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. He didn’t come as a conquering king. He came as a suffering servant.
Now, those passages, as we just read, are also in the Old Testament. But man, in retrospect, we can harmonize those. But for first-century Jews, that’s tough. Well, which is he? The victor or the defeated one? The one who doesn’t vindicate himself. And even in this one, you get God’s vindication of him, but he suffers.
That’s why the cross is such an enigma for the Romans. Well, no, you know, the cross is scum of the earth for the Jews. The Messiah wouldn’t go to the cross. That’s when Jesus, you know, who are you? Peter says you’re the Christ, the son of the living God. you’re right, Peter. God told you to say that. you’re on to revelation. You know what you’re talking about.
Now I’m going to go to Jerusalem and suffer and die. This will show you how quickly we can fall from grace. Right, Peter? you’re right. The Lord has been speaking to you. My father’s been speaking to you. Oh, you can’t do that, Jesus, haven’t you read the Scriptures? You can’t go to Jerusalem and suffer and die. Get behind me, devil boy. Like, wow, you’re hearing from God. you’re the devil. That’s tough. Poor Peter.
All right, so why did Peter say that? Because he’s a good first century Jew. James and John, same thing, right? They’re heading toward Jerusalem. Hey, mom told us to ask. Yeah, mom told us to ask. Mom’s got a little ambition for her boys. Hey, Jesus, mom wants to know, can we sit on your right and your left? Huh? When you come into Jerusalem.
The irony, right? James and John were not on Jesus’ right and left when he came into his kingdom, but two thieves. And Jesus says, can you be baptized with the baptism that I’m going to be baptized with? Oh, sure, sure. Can you drink the cup that I’m going to drink? Yeah. What’s the cup? Where’s the cup? We’ll drink from it. There’s Mountain Dew. What do we got? They didn’t get it. They didn’t get it. They’re arguing on the way to Jerusalem. Who’s greatest?
And Jesus came. I came to lay down my life. Paul, then. And you can just see the disciples after the resurrection going back to their scrolls and reading this passage in Isaiah and going, oh, there he is. The Bible says Paul would go from town to town and he would argue from the Scriptures, proving that Jesus was the Christ.
So Paul would open up Romans. No, hadn’t written Romans. He said, you know, if you just look in the Book of Acts. No, you know, John says, you know, John 3:16 says, no, there was no John 3:16. There was no. No. Paul was arguing from the Scriptures, his Scriptures, these Scriptures.
And so all of a sudden, the suffering Messiah rises up. Now, is he a conquering king? You bet. Such great pictures in the Bible, right? He comes into Jerusalem on a donkey, humble, prophesied. Zechariah prophesies it. He comes into Jerusalem on a donkey. In the book of Revelation, he comes back, what, on a white horse? All right, I don’t know if that’s literal or figurative. I don’t know if there’s going to be like a big flying white horse in the sky. But the white horse is a symbol of what? The conquering king.
He’s both. And now we can see it. He comes the first time as the suffering servant. But he rises from the dead, the conquering king. And of the increase of his kingdom, the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.
And so let’s look at what Isaiah says, and let’s look at the relevance for that today. As now, our job is to open our hearts, our mouths, our minds, that his kingdom may come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This Messiah will be exalted. His life will become famous. He never traveled more than 30 miles from his hometown, never wrote a book, never led an army, was never rich, died a criminal’s death. And yet, thousands of years later, the most famous name on the planet. He is exalted in his life, in his death. His crucifixion was meant for the worst of the worst. It was where you would, you know, you would.
My wife. These. These aren’t. Maybe aren’t the worst people, but they’re pretty bad. My wife just hates scammers who exploit the old, you know, and steal their money. And, you know, she would. Stevin, she would love all the dogs to bite them, you know, and just. And, you know, war criminals and people who torture people and just. The cruelest.
And Rome reserved crucifixion for their worst enemies. It was a death of suffering, torture and humiliation. And yet now people wear the cross as a piece of jewelry to represent their allegiance, often to Christ. It would be like 200 years from now, people wearing around their neck an emblem of an electric chair, right? Or a needle for a lethal injection. And it’s saying, this is now the universal sign of hope. This is now the universal sign of mercy. His ongoing ministry is exalted. It says, kings, the most powerful people in the world will shut their mouths. How about that?
Powerful politicians shutting their mouths, having nothing to say because of him. It didn’t look the part. He was so marred and beaten. He was beaten and marred beyond human appearance in his death. And yet he is highly exalted. He was born a king, and yet he was born in great humility. He was born into poverty. He wasn’t a rich man. He was born into real poverty. I don’t mean the kind of poverty that’s like, ah, I can’t afford both Netflix and Prime. No, not that kind of poverty.
I mean, the kind of poverty is like, what are we going to eat? What are we going to eat? If we can’t pay taxes that are way more money than we have, the Romans are going to come and take our home. There’s no snap. There are no food stamps in the Roman Empire. If your relatives don’t help you, you’ll starve. That’s it.
Most people, by the way, throughout the history of the world, until about the late 19th, 20th century, beginning of 20th century, most people throughout the history of the world have always lived with food insecurity. Obesity, full pantries, and full refrigerators are a historical first for our generation. I remember one time I was on my little low carb binge. You know, I’m gonna eat meat, get thin eating meat. So I went to Costco. Man, you get a lot of meat at Costco. It all looks good. So I bought a lot of meat at Costco.
Problem is, I got one refrigerator and a small freezer, and I got home with all the meat, and it’s like, oh, my gosh, the meat won’t fit in the freezer. I’m gonna have to take everything out of the freezer, throw away the old stuff, totally rearrange it to fit my meat. And I was like, so grumbly. Oh, life. Horrible. And then, you know, I had one of those little epiphanies. It’s like, yeah, Kev, yeah, you can’t fit enough. you’re gonna have to eat steak for a week to make room in your freezer, you poor boy.
It’s like, oh, yeah, God, thank you. I have it so. I have it so good. I have it so good. That has not been. That has not been the experience of the vast majority of people who’ve lived on the Earth. It’s still not the experience of the vast majority of people who live on the Earth now. They’re not worried about how they can fit all their meat in their freezers.
Jesus had no such freezer for vast amounts of meat. He was born into poverty. He wasn’t Saul. He wasn’t strong, dark, and handsome. All right? He wasn’t rich and powerful. Yet there was nothing in his appearance that everybody said, oh, look at him. Look at him. Right? You know, at one time, I told my wife, you know, the church. The church was packed, you know, and we’re in California. The church was packed. And the youth were all up there praising God and just. It was so wonderful.
I turned to my wife and I said, man, when we left the Methodist church, did you ever in your wildest dreams think it would be like this? And she turned back and said, honey, in my wildest dreams, you’re Denzel.
All right, so he wasn’t Denzel. He wasn’t Denzel. There was nothing about him. He was poor. He looked normal. He was humble, and he identified with suffering humanity. He hung out with fishermen. Stinky, smelly fishermen. And he just. He hung out with the poor and he touched lepers and he spoke to prostitutes.
And he completely identified with the least, the last, and the lost. And yet his life has great impact. In his humility and in his suffering, there’s a great transference that takes place. By his stripes, by his infirmity, we’re healed. By his anguish, we’re brought peace. Our sins are laid upon him.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 5:21. God made him who knew no sin to become sin that we might become the righteousness of God. In each of us, there’s an instinct, and it’s a dangerous instinct. It’s the reason people play the lottery. It’s the reason people are addicted to gambling. It’s the reason people become suckers for con men and scams. And it’s the too good to be true. What? That news is too good. That stock will make me millions of dollars. Too good to be true.
And wisdom will teach you. You know, if you have wisdom, it will teach you. If it’s too good to be true, it’s not right. Deer don’t know this. That’s why they can put out corn. And the deer go, whoa, my lucky day. Look at all this corn. You know, right before the bullet goes through their head. It’s too good to be true. It’s not.
Well, why do we have that little twist in us? Because I think God put it there. Not so we be susceptible to scams and cons. Because there’s one instance in history where it’s true. There’s one. My dad used to say this. He wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t poor, but he wasn’t rich. He played the lottery.
I don’t know why my dad played the lottery. He’d always say to me, Kev, when I get that winning lottery ticket, I’m going to build you that church. And I always say to him, Dad, I’d rather have the $20 a month you spend on lottery tickets. I’d be a lot closer to building that church with that than I am with you winning the lottery. I’m going to win the lottery, Kev. I’ll build you that church. He never built that church.
But God made him who knew no sin to become sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. He carried away our iniquities in his broken body. By his stripes, we are healed. In his suffering, in the suffering Messiah’s humiliation and suffering, there is some transference that takes place that for us is too good to be true. How much does this cost? Where can I buy this great gift? It costs you nothing. It’s free. Really? Yeah. How do I get it? It costs you everything. What? Follow me. Lay down your old life, repent, and give me your life. And you lose all your sin, all your brokenness, all your shame, all your sorrow, all your sickness, and you gain the righteousness of God. It’s incredible. That’s what he did. And he resigned himself to it.
I love what Luke says. Luke says, “He set his face like flint to Jerusalem.” I’m going to Jerusalem. And he kept telling his disciples, and they did you ever wonder why the disciples never get it? You know, Jesus always spoke in parables, and they’re always like, what does that mean? What does that mean? And then it’s kind of, kind of, I guess, the trap of always speaking in parables. Then when you speak straight, everybody’s going, what does that mean?
And, you know, he spoke in parables. But then he said, all right, here’s what’s happening. I’m going to go to, and he just says it plainly time and time again. I’m going to go to Jerusalem. I’m going to be handed over to the Romans, and they’re going to kill me. And on the third day, I’m going to rise. What do you think he means by that? What’s he saying? What’s he saying? What’s the mystery of that parable? No, no, no parable. I’m gonna go to Jerusalem.
So he goes to Jerusalem, he’s handed over to the Romans, and they go, we didn’t see it coming, and they ran away. What’s this? That’s how deep you got to understand. That’s how deep this worldview is, that the Messiah can’t do this. And yet, and. And the. And his accusers are baffled by him. Don’t you realize we’re going to kill you? Why aren’t you defending yourself if you’re the Messiah? Prophets get off the hook. Come down off that cross.
Pontius Pilate. Don’t you realize these people want to kill you and I have the authority to do this? You have no authority but what was given you. What? Why aren’t you defending yourself? Because I’m going to drink this cup. I’m going to drink this. I came to drink this cup, and I’m going to the cross with great courage.
It’s one thing to suffer when you got no choice. It’s like, well, they caught me. It’s another thing. And even then, you know, what if they caught me and they were making me suffer? I don’t know that I’d be silent. Why are you doing this? Leave me alone. I didn’t do it. Ouch. You know, he drinks it in.
One of the biggest curses of that day and age is to die childless, no inheritance, nobody to take your name. There’s no, you know, there’s no son. He died childless, and then he died with sinners. Now, Joseph of Arimathea with a rich man even prophesies that. Right? Isaiah even prophesied that he was with a rich man. He went to the tomb, and yet he was buried. Still, he was buried with sinners. It seems like all is lost.
Philippians. Although he existed in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God as something to be grabbed, but instead he emptied himself. Instead he didn’t exploit his position as the Son of God, and he assumed the form of a servant. He took the likeness of a man, and he came as a man. And he humbled himself and was obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
The king of Heaven, the Prince of heaven, becomes a human being and dies the worst, most humiliating death without saying a thing. It is what C.S. Lewis calls the Celestial Dive, from the heights of heaven to the depths of the dregs of the human experience.
He never vindicates himself, but O, does the Father vindicate him. He is vindicated. He is raised from the dead. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name. He is raised from the dead. Where do we see Jesus’ vindication? That first Easter morning, all of hell conspired to drag him down into that death. The Roman Empire brought him to that death. The people he had loved and nurtured and called and gave the Scriptures to and came to preach to yelled out, crucify him. Crucify him. Everything conspired and brought him down to that place of the pit.
And from that place of the pit, all of a sudden, there was a light, an incredible bright light, an explosion of energy. And this life gets up, and the tomb is. And the stone is rolled away, and he comes out of the tomb. And he is alive. And all the enemies of God and all the enemies of humanity have now been defeated. And God has won through this suffering a great victory.
Death, sin, Satan, utterly defeated as he rises from the dead. God raises him from the dead. And instead of childless, now he has many offspring. By today’s count, on the world today, 2 billion and billions before we ever were born on this earth.
And you know what? As we’re talking here tonight, the conversion rate around the world is outstripping the birth rate. Every day there’s a greater number of Christians, a greater. A higher percentage of Christians on the world, in the world, than there was the day before, every day.
And he is honored by God, like Philippians says, the Name of Jesus in heaven, on earth and below the earth. Every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus was a great moral teacher and very influential in history. No. That Jesus is my personal Savior. No. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess he is Lord, King of the universe, risen and exalted. No one else. He is Lord.
You can imagine the disciples after experiencing Jesus risen from the dead and going back to their scrolls and reading Isaiah 52 and 53 and saying, There he is, There he is. Hidden, plain sight. We found Waldo. There he is. There he is. And so, 2,000 years later, what is our takeaway? We proclaim the suffering Messiah. We proclaim the suffering Messiah.
Listen, there’s no religion in the world like this. I’m sorry? There’s no religion in the world like this. There’s no story like this. There are other compelling stories out there. There are other wise men out there. I mean, it wasn’t like all these religious leaders out there of other religions were stupid and they didn’t have anything smart to say. You know, they gave some good advice and some good counsel, but there’s nobody like this.
Allah doesn’t come and die for humanity. He’ll kill you, but he’s not going to die for you. Buddha would say, huh? Jesus was a great example of resigning to the cosmic oneness or something, huh? But this bloody God hanging on a cruel cross because of his great love.
By the way, every other religion in the world says this as best as we can concern, as best as we can discern. Follow this book. Follow these teachings. Follow this Eightfold path. Follow these 12 steps. Jesus is utterly unique. Yeah, there’s a book, there’s teaching, but Jesus says, hey, follow me. Well, how? I mean, I can see how that worked for the disciples. There he was. How’s that work for us? He’s alive. Follow me. I will guide your life. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. All right, Lord Jesus, I’m trusting you with all my heart. Lean not on your own understanding, but I’m a pretty smart guy, God. Yeah, I’m smarter than you, Kev. All right, I’ll give you that one. I’ll give you that one. In all your ways, acknowledge me. I don’t get to take any other credit? No. All right, all right. I like it when I get the credit. But, you know.
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shalldirect your paths. (Proverbs 3:5, NKJV)
I’ve told people. I’ve told people I like it. I like it when people come to me and say, that was a great sermon, pastor. And I’ve received that a thousand times in my life. And it’s a couple people said it this morning. And you know what? If you want to say it, I will not stop you. No less, say it louder. But here’s what I found. It’s not a satisfying drink. Three hours later, that drink ain’t keeping me on my feet. With all my heart, I believe this. And I want to live these words. I want to hear these words. And to the best of my ability, I’m living for these words. Well done, good and faithful servant. I think if I hear those words, I’m healed for all eternity. I think that’s the drink right that’s the drink. And so we proclaim this. We proclaim this. We have a testimony. We can tell people what Jesus has done for us.
We can actually talk about Jesus. We don’t have to be quiet, you know, so many Christians. Well, I don’t want to be pushy, but I’ll just try to show them with my life. Good. Good on you. Show them with your life. Because if you don’t show them with your life, your talk is going to be cheap. But if all you do is show them with your life and you don’t talk, they’re going to walk away and just think, that was a strangely good person.
You see, every one of those Jews in those testimonies met nice Christians who told them about Jesus. And then they read Isaiah 53 and said, even in our Scriptures. Then they read the New Testament and said, this is a Jewish book. Yeah, it’s written by Jews. But somebody told them about Jesus. Somebody told you about Jesus, right? Somebody told you about. Aren’t you grateful for that person? I’m so grateful for my Young Life leaders. I’m so grateful for the people who told me about Jesus.
I don’t even know the name of the Presbyterian preacher who preached the gospel at the Young Life Camp I went to and gave my life to Jesus. But when I meet that guy, I’m gonna say, thank you for telling me about Jesus. Here’s an easy way to do it. This is Christian Witnessing 101. People will always tell you their problems. Once you get into a relationship with people, they’ll tell you their problems. Right? Right. My husband’s so mean. My wife, my kids, my money, my boss, my this, my that, my health.
Sometimes the problems are severe, sometimes the problems are whining. But they’ll always, they’ll tell you their problems. All you got to do is say, I really believe in Jesus and I believe in prayer. And God has answered my prayers. You know, doctor said I had cancer long time ago. Long time ago. You got a story, you got a story. You know, you all got a story. I believe he answers prayer. Can I pray for you? I can almost guarantee you they’ll say, yes, I can. Now they don’t. Here’s the trick.
They don’t think you’re going to do it right then. They think you’re going to go home in front of some shrine with candles and, you know, say some kind of incantation for them. But no, I’ll pray for you. Will you? Yes. Then you do this and they’ll look at you. Like, what is this, some ritual? No, give me your hands. And you take their hands and you say, Lord, I know you love my friend so and so. And I really don’t have the answer to their problem, but you have answers. And I pray you would touch their life with an answer to this concern and show them that you are real. Put God on the spot and see what he does. Amen.
I can almost guarantee you this, too. When you open their eyes, their eyes will be wet and they’ll say, thank you. And then when God answers the prayer, you’re on. Hey, this is what happened. Yeah. Yeah. You want to know more? Well, I’m kind of. My interest is piqued. Well, great. Come to church with me. Meet my pastor. They’ll talk about Jesus for a long time. He’s funny. He’s kind of chunky, you know?
Listen, a lot of people, they think times are going to get hard. And, you know, I got a lot of food in my pantry and a lot of food in my fridge. I don’t store up food. My garage isn’t full. I got a Jill, and I got a small. We got a small supply of earthquake. You know, we live in the Pacific Northwest. We got an earthquake supply. We got some water and some protein bars that are probably 12 years old. Now in our little corner, we got a small supply. All right. But I’m not one of those people who think, oh, you know, we’re all gonna be, you know, this Armageddon’s coming. We’re all gonna be starving.
But I do have a strategy. I just, I got enough junk in my garage right now, so I just stored above my belt right here. Yeah, you skinny people. You think I’m skinny? I’m healthy. I’m gonna live longer than you? In most cases, yes, but not in that one case. In one case where starvation is imminent. Have prepped. I am a prepper. I’m a prepper. Just saying. Just saying.
All right. We model the suffering Messiah. You know what? you’re exalted. He was exalted. you’re exalted. We have such a small view of salvation. Oh, when I die, I get to go to the good place. No, you get to be like him. That’s what it says, says servant. Yeah, you’re a servant. Friend. Yeah, you’re a friend. That’s been one of my prayers recently.
You know, I’m 66 years old. I’m starting to finally pray. Lord, I’d like to be your friend. I want to be a friend of God. Husband, wife, spouse. We’re the bride. Corporately, we’re the bride. That’s a hard one for me to get my head around, but, you know, there we are. Child? But then these. We don’t know what we’ll be like, but we’ll be like him.
Then this one knocks my feet out from under me every time. Coheirs with Christ. Coheirs with Christ. C.S. Lewis says if we were to see one another in our exalted state, we would be tempted to worship. We’d be tempted to worship. And so we are exalted. And because we’re exalted, we now can live humbly. Right? Nothing frees you from the praise of people than having your identity securely in Christ. Why do we crave the praise of people? We’re trying to bolster. Am I? Do I have value? Am I worth it? Am I? Does my life matter?
Howard Hendricks was an author years ago. He was a generation ahead of me. Christian scholar and author from Dallas seminary wrote several books. And because, you know, you write a few books and people buy them, you go on a speaking tour. And so you’re going on a speaking tour, and he’s speaking in these churches. And, you know, if you write books and you go on speaking tours, there are gonna be some fans out there. There are gonna be some fans.
And so a fanboy came up after one of the services and just, you know, oh, I love your books. your books have helped me so much. And, you know, and. And Hendrik’s just humble. You know, he’s just like, well, thank you. You know, glory to God. That’s good. Thank you. And. And just. And the sermon today, it was amazing. You know, he’s kind of. He’s feeling a little bit. Well, thanks, thanks. His wife’s listening. He said, I hope she’s hearing this. You know, she’s listening. And he’s like.
And finally, the guy just, could you sign your books? Because. Yeah, I’ll sign my books. He signs the books, and the guy finally leaves with this statement, you, you. You are just a great man of God. Thank you. So, you know, they say by the pastor and do all the things, they’re leaving the church, they drive. They get on the highway. He’s driving down the highway. His wife’s sitting next to him.
How many great men of God do you know? And she said, one less than you think. One less than you think. See, we think God gave us our wives to exalt us, but actually it’s like, yeah, let me put a pin in that balloon.
All right. We can live humbly because we know who we are. There’s two ways not to care about others’ opinions. One is you can be so arrogant and full of yourself. It’s like, oh, those little people don’t matter. But another way you cannot care about other people’s opinions is simply, I live to please the king. I live to please the king. You’re not my judge. You don’t speak the final word into my life. What you think, I mean, it matters because you matter. I’m not arrogant. It matters because you matter. But it doesn’t build me up or tear me down.
One time somebody said, you know, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of history. I said I could give two pieces of licorice about being on the wrong or right side of history. That changes every 30 years. I just want to be on the right side of God. Except persecution. Again, not everyone has to be happy with you. And don’t vindicate yourself. That’s. This is one of the hardest things for me to do. I love to win the argument. Oh, I love to win the argument. Happiest day of my life.
And men, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Here I am in the men’s hall of fame for this. In one 24-hour period, I got three “Honey, you were right’s” from my wife. I know of no man on the planet. I have not yet met him. I’ve heard guys say, I’ve waited 10 years for three. I say, I know, I know. One 24-hour period. I got three. Honey, you are right. I told her I would rather have one of those than a hundred I love yous. I mean, I’m just saying I love. You’re right. You know what? I can let that go. Jesus let it go.
It is entirely okay to pray for God to vindicate you. It usually is a big mistake to try to vindicate ourselves. You can vindicate the truth, but you know, we kind of get our ego and personality wrapped into that. You’ve had those arguments in your head with somebody who was so wrong and you’re going to put them in their place. You know, this is what I’m going to tell them next time I see them. Right? And aren’t you brilliant in those arguments?
I am brilliant. I’ll tell you what happened. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then blah blah blah and blah blah. And they’re just left going, uh, uh… There’s a great, there’s a great comic scene about this. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. My favorite comic, Nate Bargetzi. And he says it’s so hilarious because he just plays on this. He says, he says, you know, when I was growing up, my mom did my dad’s laundry, and I do my own laundry. And quite frankly, I think that has been underappreciated. I’ve been underappreciated.
One day I was just thinking, you know, one of these days, I’m gonna be in a fight with my wife, and I’m gonna be losing that fight. I’m gonna bring that up. I’m gonna bring that up. And he’s just having this. And, you know, you can just hear this. And man, argument over. She’s like, I forgot. I don’t know how good I got it. you’re a great man and all that. So I didn’t do it right away.
He said, I wait about five, six months. I’m in this fight with my wife, and I’m losing, and it has nothing to do with the argument at all. And all of a sudden, I just bring out. I do my own laundry. Like, they don’t make them like this anymore. And then he kind of gets this look on his face. I had no idea that would start a new fight that I didn’t see coming.
Every once in a while, Jill, I’ll be talking about something, and I’ll. I do my own laundry, which I do, and I think it’s underappreciated. All right, but you don’t have to do that. Good on you if you do your own laundry. But you don’t have to use it to gain leverage with your wife. It won’t work anyway. It’ll just… It’ll go south quick.
All right, don’t vindicate yourself. But, yeah, I do. I pray the Psalms all the time. Vindicate me, God. Vindicate me. Vindicate me. Yeah, let God vindicate you. Let God vindicate you. Just put it into his hands. And by the way, always remember what St. Paul said. When you get in a controversy with somebody, they’re not your enemy. We do not struggle against flesh and blood. Have you ever wondered how people come up with their opinions? And you think, man, you are so stupid. How did you know? Whatever political twist you have, and you’re on social media and people are just saying stuff and go, man, you guys are so wrong. And I. 99% of the time, I resist the temptation.
Every once in a while, it’s like, all right, it’s on, baby, it’s on. Here we go. And I’ve never convinced somebody to change their position. I’ve won every time on purely the points and the rationale and the logic of the argument. I’m undefeated, I just want you to know. But they’ve never acknowledged that.
I never got any. I never got from them. What I got from my wife. I never got at the end. You know, Kevin, I think you’re right. I’ve never gotten it. And now it’s just like, don’t press the keyboard and hit send. Don’t do it. Because they’re not the enemy anyway. They’re not the enemy. Let God vindicate the truth. Let God vindicate you. Trust God. Model Jesus.
It’s amazing how many times we can win by being humble. It’s amazing how God makes us go high when we go low. I don’t mean low like dirty low. I mean low like we just humble ourselves and God wins.
This meal. What a humble meal. You know, the highest feast for a Christian. And we would think, you know today we had our potluck, and it was “holiday food.” Bring holiday food. It was so hilarious. 70% desserts. Great. It was the greatest potluck we ever had. It was awesome. Like, a little chicken, a little ham, and then just like, yeah, it’s great. So I think I’m gonna do holiday food every other month now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like, all right. It’s cream puff and donut sundae. So. What a humble meal. What a humble meal. And yet the best meal. One day, right? Suffering servant, reigning king. One day we’ll have the wedding feast with the Lamb.
I think it’ll be splendid. But this is splendid. This is the meal of the New Covenant. So come and take and eat.
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October 26, 2025
Transcript coming soon.
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October 19, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right, dear ones, we are going through revival in Isaiah. All right, we’re looking at Isaiah. The second half of Isaiah is God restoring Israel back to the Promised Land. They’re in Babylon, and now He’s giving them these precious promises.
He’s really giving them two precious promises in the second half of Isaiah. The first one is the one they were really looking forward to, but the second one was even better. The first promise is: you’ve been in exile, but I’m going to miraculously restore you.
And after 70 years, Cyrus, the king of Persia, gave a completely unexpected decree that they would be able to go back and rebuild the temple, and the rest of the Old Testament is about that. Ezra and Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the temple. We call it Second Temple, kind of Second Temple Judaism and kind of the re-establishment after the glory years with King David and Solomon and then the bad years with all the kings that followed after them.
And it was a hard time after that. They went through some tough times. You know, they had the—after the Babylonians, they had the Medes and the Persians, and then the Greeks, and then the Romans, and finally Jesus came.
But the second promise, and that’s the big one, was He promises—He begins to promise in Isaiah, the Messiah, the Anointed One. “I’m going to send an anointed one, and that anointed one is going to bring my kingdom.” And so when Jesus comes, Israel’s looking for the Anointed One, and they think He’s going to be a king like King David. He’s going to gather an army and kick the Romans out. And God, of course, has bigger plans than they had.
But as we read through Isaiah, one of the things that’s revealed is God’s heart. And God doesn’t change. His heart through the prophet Isaiah is the same as His heart today. And just as God wanted to restore Israel, I believe God, through Jesus Christ, has come to restore His kingdom. To restore His kingdom. We are going back to Eden, people. God is going to re-Eden earth. We’re going to get the new heavens and the new earth. The Bible begins in a garden, and it ends in a garden. All right? So I hope you like a garden. It’ll be nice.
We’re going to Eden. How’s that sound? It’ll be warm there, Marilyn. It’ll be warm. All right. It won’t be, yeah, it won’t be gray and cloudy and rainy, so you’ll be good.
So anyway, one of the ways He does this throughout history is something—it’s not a word that’s found in the Bible—but it’s something church historians talk about, and it’s called revival. And you know, relive, re-energize, bring life back.
We often think of revival as something that happens in the culture, but actually, that’s not true. Revival is something that happens amongst the people of God, and it happens to them in such a dramatic way, then they impact culture.
There are different kinds of revivals. There are smaller revivals, there are revivals just at local churches. There are generally localized awakenings or age—you know, the Jesus movement was kind of an age-related revival. You know, it really reached a whole generation of young people.
But there are some revivals that are so big—First and Second Great Awakening here in America. Certainly, the Protestant Reformation would, I think, be amongst that. And the revivals are so big they bring about—Protestant Reformation—they bring about a cultural reformation, they bring about a shift in the culture. It is what I’ve been praying for for 20 years or so, that there would be a revival.
And listen, you know, I pray for a revival in America. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the rest of the world. I’m thrilled when I go to Africa and I see what’s happening there, and I’m thrilled when I go other places in the world, and you know, and I see God. But this is my home. And I think you’re supposed to pray for your home. I think there’s kind of concentric circles. I pray for other nations of the world as well. As I said last Friday night, we were at a little prayer meeting in the church in Bremerton. We were praying for missionaries that we knew who were in other nations. We’re praying, you know, and so it goes out from there.
But I pray for my home, and so I pray—there’s nothing wrong, you’re not some kind of wicked Christian nationalist—by the way, what kind of nationalist do you want to be? You know? I would like to see a more Christian society. I would like to see babies protected in the womb. I would like to see there be kindness and respect and more marriages staying together and less drug abuse and crime. Those are all kind of things we Christians are behind, you know? And so I don’t know, I think that would be a good way to go.
Now, I don’t believe, you know, we’re headed for a theocracy, but I’d just like to see more Jesus in the land. And so I think I’ve said this once or twice. I think it’s found in the Psalms. I’d like to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I’d like to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
And revival is one way that that happens.
And so we’re looking at Isaiah as He’s promising to restore Israel, but then applying it to our time on how God can, and I believe will—and I think actually we’re moving in it. We’re moving in it right now, and I just pray that it grows. I think we’re at an awakening kind of time. It’s not a full-fledged revival, but… Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That’s what got me started. Oh, Aslan is on the move. Aslan is on the move. All right? He’s not tame, but he’s good.
So I’m going to read to you Isaiah 49:8, starting at verse 8, all the way through Isaiah 50:3. This is a long reading. And I know Americans with Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram and 500 million streaming channels on TV. It has violently and horrifically attacked our attention span. So this is just going to be a couple of minutes reading of Scripture, so hang with me. Hang with me.
And one of the things that helps is if you read along with me. If you got your Bible, your physical Bible, which, by the way, I still recommend. I know they’re all on your phone, and I use digital Bibles. I use the one on my computer in my morning devotions, and I use my phone a lot. But actually, evidence has shown that you actually retain more still with that book.
So I recommend you bring your physical Bibles to church. If you want to read along with me word for word, just know that I read out of the Christian Standard Bible this year. I could switch it up next year, but you know, your translation, whatever it is, will be pretty close.
So Isaiah 49:8:
8 This is what the Lord says: I will answer you in a time of favor, and I will help you in the day of salvation. I will keep you, and I will appoint you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land, to make them possess the desolate inheritances, 9 saying to the prisoners, “Come out,” and to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” They will feed along the pathways, and their pastures will be on all the barren heights. 10 They will not hunger or thirst, the scorching heat or sun will not strike them; for their compassionate one will guide them, and lead them to springs. 11 I will make all my mountains into a road, and my highways will be raised up. 12 See, these will come from far away, from the north and from the west, and from the land of Sinim. 13 Shout for joy, you heavens! Earth, rejoice! Mountains break into joyful shouts! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. 14 Zion says, “The Lord has abandoned me; the Lord has forgotten me!” 15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you. 16 Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. 17 Your builders hurry; those who destroy and devastate you will leave you. 18 Look up, and look around. They all gather together; they come to you. As I live”— this is the Lord ‘s declaration— “you will wear all your children as jewelry, and put them on as a bride does. 19 For your waste and desolate places and your land marked by ruins will now be indeed too small for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. 20 Yet as you listen, the children that you have been deprived of will say, ‘This place is too small for me; make room for me so that I may settle.’ 21 Then you will say within yourself, ‘Who fathered these for me? I was deprived of my children and unable to conceive, exiled and wandering— but who brought them up? See, I was left by myself— but these, where did they come from?'” 22 This is what the Lord God says: Look, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my banner to the peoples. They will bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters will be carried on their shoulders. 23 Kings will be your guardians and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down to you with their faces to the ground and lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord ; those who put their hope in me will not be put to shame. 24 Can the prey be taken from a mighty man, or the captives of a tyrant be delivered? 25 For this is what the Lord says: “Even the captives of a mighty man will be taken, and the prey of a tyrant will be delivered; I will contend with the one who contends with you, and I will save your children. 26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they will be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine. Then all humanity will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” (Isaiah 49:8-26, CSB)
1 This is what the Lord says: Where is your mother’s divorce certificate that I used to send her away? Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? Look, you were sold for your iniquities, and your mother was sent away because of your transgressions. 2 Why was no one there when I came? Why was there no one to answer when I called? Is my arm too weak to redeem? Or do I have no power to rescue? Look, I dry up the sea by my rebuke; I turn the rivers into a wilderness; their fish rot because of lack of water and die of thirst. 3 I dress the heavens in black and make sackcloth their covering. (Isaiah 50:1-3, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So in Isaiah 49:50-53, there are actually five analogies that show up in this passage. Five pictures of who God is. And these analogies, as they are true for Israel, you know, 600 years, nearly 600 years before Christ, they’re true for us. God is the same.
And so here are the five analogies. And the first one is, the Lord gives us a picture of Him as a shepherd. He talks about your pasture lands, and “I will comfort you and I will protect you.” And a lot of that first section that we read, a lot of it kind of resembles the 23rd Psalm. And the shepherd theme is deep, as you know, in the Bible. David was a shepherd. The shepherds showed up at Jesus’ birth. Jesus Himself calls Himself what? The Good Shepherd.
Now, how many of you are familiar with raising sheep? That’s just a-, well, we got some. We got some. All right, all right. We got some sheep. We got some shepherds here. Not often do you find shepherds in a local American church, but in the first century and before that, shepherds were very common in Israel.
And because they have such an esteemed place in the Bible, we tend to think that they’re an esteemed part of the culture. They weren’t. They were not considered the affluent, the best. One of the reasons is, you know what shepherds smell like? Sheep. You know what sheep smell like? Bad. Yeah, they smell bad. So, I mean, they’re all furry and cute… sheep. No, sheep. They’re stinky. They’re kind of mean. They can be kind of mean. And of all the, you know, herd animals, they’re not the smartest. Yeah.
I mean, here God makes us the crown of His creation. He creates us in His image and likeness. And yet, in our fallenness and rebellion, He says, “Man, you’re a bunch of sheep. I got to take care of you like sheep.”
But the Lord is your shepherd, and the shepherd is—certainly in first century and before—the shepherd’s job was to provide. I will lead you out to where? Green pastures. I guess sheep are too stupid to find green pastures on their own. It’s like, “No, you can’t eat there. You already ate that. It’s all in the ground. Come on, look over there.” It’s like, you know, dogs are smarter than sheep. But, you know, one of the silly things that we do is we point for dogs. Like, we throw some food and they’re not seeing it. We go, “There,” and what do they do? They sniff our finger. It’s like, what sheep? It’s over there. No, the shepherd has to lead them to green pastures.
The shepherd also protects them. And back in the day, this was a real deal because sheep are at that part of the food chain that wolves and lions and bears and coyotes… That’s good eating. Yeah, that’s right.
And David learns this as a shepherd. He learns to protect the flock. And so when he goes up against Goliath, he goes, “What’s this nine foot Philistine? I have knocked out lions, I have not. I have defeated bears. God has been with me when I’ve been out on the field all by myself protecting the sheep.”
And Jesus says, the good shepherd will do what? He will get in front of the danger, between the danger and the sheep, and is willing to lay down his life for the sheep. The hireling will say, “Sheep shmeep.” You know, “I’d rather the wolves get the sheep than get me.” But not the shepherd. The shepherd will protect even with his life, and the shepherd will comfort. The shepherd will lead and comfort. The sheep feel safe in the shepherd’s care.
And that’s what the 23rd Psalm, right? The Lord is my shepherd. He provides. I shall not want. He leads me beside still waters. He takes me to green pastures. He restores my soul. He protects us. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Again, He provides for us. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live. (Psalms 23:5-6, CSB)
This shepherd analogy is powerful. It’s even powerful to modern people. I think I told you the story about the atheistic—not atheistic—the Baptist lady who had left her faith, and she was dying, and her husband came to—remember that story? You want me to tell again? I’ll tell again.
This lady, she—something happened to her in church when she was a young woman. She was a devout Baptist. Something happened to her. She got mad at church and therefore got mad at God and stopped going to church. Years and years later, her second husband knows of her faith in the past, knows that she doesn’t, she’s not walking in it now, and she’s dying. And he comes to me and he says, “Please go see my wife, please go see my wife.” And I said, “Sure, I’ll go see your wife.”
And I went to see, and we had a nice little chat, you know, by her bedside. And then I said, “May I pray for you?” And she’s one of only two people in my whole ministry who has ever refused. She said, “No, I don’t want that.” I said, “Okay.” And I walked out the door, and I thought, “Gave it my best shot.” And the Holy Spirit, walking out the door, I’m about ready to go down the hall and like a dog—really, it was literally like a dog. I hear, “Stay, stay, stay.”
The nurses were coming in to take her to the bathroom and get her kind of cleaned up and ready for her nap or dinner or whatever. So I’m standing outside the room. The nurses come in, they get her up, take her to the bathroom, do their business. That took a long time. And I’m just standing in the hallway like a geek, you know, it’s like people are walking by and I’m just like, “God, come on. You didn’t really say—” “Stay.” “”But God—” “Stay.” Alright.
Finally, she gets back out and the Lord says, Go back in and pray with her.” She don’t want me to pray with her. And God is a sneaky God. He’s tricksy. Yeah, He gives me a trick. I walked back. She goes, “Oh, I thought you had left,” she goes. “You know, I was going to, but,” I said, “do you like poetry?” She goes, “I do like poetry.” I said, “I’d like to recite to you an old piece of Hebrew poetry.” And she said, “That would be nice.”
And I said, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures and he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.”
And by the time I got to this verse, this little Baptist lady from her childhood with tears in her eyes begins to say, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” Got to do King James. Got to do King James. I’m not a fan of the King James, but 23rd Psalm, you know, you got to go there.
“He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies. He anoints my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: And I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. (Psalms 23:1-6, KJV)
Now the tears are running down her cheek as she finished that Psalm with me. I didn’t say a salvation prayer or nothing. I just knew. I just knew. God just took this, melted that hard heart with what? The picture of a shepherd.
He told her, “You haven’t talked to me for 30 years. Guess what? Here, at the hour of your death, I’m still here.” God is good. He is a shepherd, dear ones.
The second analogy is the Lord as a parent. As a parent, even if your mother forgets you, He will not forget you. Psalm 27 says the same thing. “Even if my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will not forsake me.”
The Lord is a good parent. He’s a good father, and in this Psalm, He’s a good mother. Oh, how can that be? Well, you know, it’s there, all right? So deal with it. All right, I’m not being a heretic. It’s in the Bible, so… But yeah, he’s a good, good Father.
Jesus talked to Him, talked about Him as Father. You know, if you’re all caught up in pronouns, I talk to God as I talk about God as Him. Just want to let you know, but He’s a parent. He has compassion on you, like every parent. Like a good mother has compassion on her children.
Oh, my goodness. I married a woman who is a wonderful mother. Jill Clancy is a terrific mom. I mean, I’m just… I’m so grateful that I married such a wonderful mother for my children. I had a call in my life to be a father, but I think the best thing a good father can do is marry a woman who’s going to be a good mother, you know, and she was a wonderful mother.
And I thought nothing could surpass that until she had grandchildren. I tell you what, if you were up in heaven, and I don’t believe in the pre-existence of souls, but if you were, but if heaven does have the pre-existence of souls, I know my seven grandchildren were up there beforehand and said, “No, we want to be her grandchild. We want to be her grandchild.”
She says she didn’t do this, but I think she did. I think I remember her doing this. I remember Theo one time, you know, my nine-year-old, he was younger then. He said, “Grandma, can I have an ice cream sandwich?” And she said, “Theo, dinner is 10 minutes away. So only one.” That’s Grandma.
And she just is. I mean, she was watching Narnia with them last night and reading to them, and, you know, now they’re 12 and 10, and they still want to come spend the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Mostly Grandma’s house.
Grandpa, you know, I roughhouse with them, and we talk sports together, and that’s all fun. But when it comes, you know, “You guys want to bake cookies?” Yes, we want to bake cookies. Yes, we want to sit down and eat popcorn and watch Narnia with you, Grandma. I mean, they just love it. All right?
Jill would not forget her children or her grandchildren. God will not forget you. He has more. He’s better. He’s better than her. And I gotta say, she’s pretty good. He’s better than her. All right?
Remember the song that was so popular? My brother-in-law, he hates, he says he hates repetitive songs, but he just loved “Good, Good Father.” That is one of the most repetitive songs. I mean, it just goes, “You’re perfect in all of your ways.” Eight times. “You’re a good, good Father. That’s who you are.” Who are you? “You’re a good, good Father.” Now what are you again? “You’re a good, good Father.”
I remember driving by a church when that song was really popular, and a little billboard outside said, “This Sunday there’s a good, good chance we’ll sing ‘Good, good Father.'”
When Jesus comes, when God comes to reveal Himself on earth, and Jesus reveals God three in one, what does He call the first person of the Trinity? All the names in the Old Testament, you know? El Shaddai, Yahweh, you know… all those names that God is called. Almighty one, Lord of hosts—all those names that are used for God. And one of the names that is rarely used for God, hardly at all in the Old Testament, Jesus brings forth as the primary address. And when He teaches us to pray, He says, “Talk to Him like this: Our Father.” Daddy. Daddy.
And so He is a good Father. He is compassionate. He will not forget you. He will encourage you. He will draw boundaries for you. He will instruct you in the way.
Fathers, good fathers, often are the imparters of wisdom. They’re the imparters of wisdom. Kids, typically, not exclusively, but as small children, they look to their mothers for nurture, for comfort. You get an owie, you go to mom. I love the fact—it’s not exclusive—I love the fact when my little 2-year-old granddaughter, Colette, we call her Letty. Okay, this is hilarious. She knows her name’s Colette, but everybody calls her Letty. So now she insists on being called Letty the Colette.
She’s Letty the Collette. So Letty got hurt at our house, and you know her mom and grandma are, “Letty, you want me to hold you?” And she looks at me, goes, “No. Kahuna.” That’s great. Come here, sweetie, I’ll hold you.
So grandpas can do it too. Dads can do it too.
But the kids tend to look to their mothers for nurture. Mother kind of—even if she works outside of the home, mom still kind of represents that domestic home life, that safe kind of cocoon of love and security.
Dad represents the world. And that’s why fathers, especially when their children start reaching adolescence, are so important. A lot of fathers have quit by then because men can be wimpy and quit, and some women can be overaggressive and chase them out of the role. “You’re not doing that right.” You know? It’s like, stop it. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. If you got a dad who’s investing positively in your kids, let him do it.
Hey, some of the greatest memories of most kids’ lives start with these words, father to a child: “Hey, here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t tell your mother.” That’s a recipe for a great memory or a disaster. You know? Here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t tell your mother.
I don’t know if you know this, Jamie, but Stevin was talking about future grandchildren, and he was wondering about how, you know, your kids and you are going to feel when he throws them up on a horse. Don’t tell Grandma, but we’re going riding.
But you know, that’s who God is. He is both nurturing, comforting, and caring. But He is also the God of adventure. Right? Right?
Hey, we came back from Kentucky to Washington. What are we going to do now? You thought Kentucky was a ways away. How about the other side of the world? How about the other side of the world?
Hey, God, I’m pastoring a church in California. This is cool, man. We got 500-600 people. They like me, I like them. I got sermon series lined up. My kids are happy, my wife is happy. Life is going well. I just, I can’t get Washington off my mind. I’m going to send up one of these young boys we’re discipling. They’re going to plant a church up there. God, how do you like my plan? “I don’t like it.” You don’t like my plan? “Nah, too easy. You leave everything and go.” I don’t want to. Had all sorts of excuses. I don’t want to.
So He’s the God of adventure.
He’s good. You can rebel against Him like children often do against their parents, but it’s hard. Listen, I got news for you. It’s hard to follow Jesus. It’s hard to be a Christian disciple.
I was talking to a guy. He was messing up. He’d given his life to Christ not long ago. And then he, you know, he was going through a divorce. Very painful. A lot of people give their lives to Christ. He’s going through a painful divorce. You know, he’s worried about his kids and all that. So he just kind of turned and said, “I need help, man. My life’s a mess. I need help.” So he gave his life to Christ and started getting better.
His wife was getting on with another guy, and so he’s like, “All right.” He’s kind of resigned. “All right, whatever, you know, here I am, Lord, I got this new life. I’m a single dad. What do I do?”
Then this cute gal came into his life, and guess what? Before you know it, she’s living with him. But here’s the deal. She’s crazy. You see, cute sometimes disguises crazy. And so now he’s living with crazy, and he’s complaining to me about it. And so I was very nurturing and caring and covering. I said, “Well, you were stupid, man.” I said, “You caved. You were following Jesus, and then you decided not to.” He goes, “I know, I know.” And I go, “Look, man, I understand. Girls are cute, you know, it’s hard not to fall for that. You know, she’s willing, she’s available. She’s flirty.” That’s how they get into your life, you know? They’re all warm and affectionate and cuddly and cute and flirty. It’s a trap. Just let me tell you. It’s a trap. Sometimes it’s a trap. And I told him, I said just what I told you. I said, “I know. I know, buddy. It’s hard to follow Jesus because it is, man. It’s hard to follow Jesus.”
And I said, “But you know what’s harder?” He goes, “What?” “Not following him.” He kind of like, “Yeah, you’re right. Because now I got to get rid of crazy.” You know, it would have been better not to start with crazy. He’s got to get rid of her now. I don’t know if he has yet.
Well, God is your parent. If you listen to Him, He’ll protect you from crazy. All right?
I tell young people all the time, “Let God pick your partner.” “I know what I want.” Let God pick your partner. He will do a better job than you. He will do a better job than you. All right?
And she won’t be perfect. And he won’t be perfect, but he’ll be the best one out there for you. She’ll be the best one out there for you. He’s a good parent.
The third. I love it. It’s right here in the back of the church. God engraves His name on the palm of your hand. Isn’t it nice for Empowered Church to put that up for my sermon? You are never forgotten. Your name, or God’s name, is engraved on the palm of your hand.
God is an engraver. What does that mean? He claims you as His own. He owns you. It’s like, it’s like… What do they call it? It’s like branding. You belong to my ranch. You belong to me. How do I know I belong to you? Oh, Jesus. Well, what? We have a mark on us.
It’s not a physical mark, you know, you don’t—it didn’t get tattooed on you. We don’t do tattoos when people come to faith in Christ, what do we do? We baptize them. That’s your mark. That’s your mark. You are marked as a Christian at your baptism. By the way, you go ahead and find for me in the New Testament where that’s an option. Go ahead, find it for me where God says, “You know, repent, believe, and, you know, if you get around to it in five or six years, you think it’s the right time and the weather’s good and the water’s warm… Well, why don’t you think about maybe getting baptized.” That’s not in the Bible. Everybody—the only exception, there’s one exception. Thief on the cross, unless Jesus spit on him. But other than that, repent, believe, be baptized. That’s kind of the formula.
Sometimes it’s only two of the three, but those three in the Book of Acts appear regularly. Baptism marks you. It engraves Jesus on you, it imprints him on your soul. You go under one person, you come up a new person. You go under with sin, you come up clean. You go under spiritless, you come up spirit full. You are refreshed, renewed, forgiven.
You know what the Bible says? Baptized for the forgiveness of sins. So if you haven’t been baptized, get baptized, all right? Just do it. It’s God’s mark on you. Don’t you want God engraved on you? Don’t you want to belong to the family of God? That is the initiation rite into the church.
Anybody can come in this building and hang out with us as long as they’re not disruptive. But you want to be a part of the family? This is what our family does, right? When you raised your kids, there are things—this is what our family does. We went to church on Sunday. That’s what our family does. Our kids had an option. They could choose not to go to church if they didn’t want to eat. Fair enough. If you don’t want to eat, you don’t have to go to church.
Luckily, fortunately—I don’t say luckily, I say because of God—our kids always wanted to go to church. They never knew any different. And church was fun. Church was a happy place. It wasn’t filled with a bunch of old fuddy duddies. All right?
If I ever turn into an old fuddy duddy pastor, just tell me, all right? I don’t want to be a fuddy. Am I fuddy duddy now? Did your kids have fun in church? All right. Good. Good. Yeah.
All right, so listen. You belong to God. You have family rules. You have, your family does certain things. And we have been engraved by God. We’ve been marked as His. We belong to Him.
He restores us, even to a greater glory. Listen, everything that God does in your life, He’s doing to bring you to another level of promotion. The hardships that you endure are preparing you, giving you the spiritual muscle to carry the next level of glory and fruitfulness.
And it may not look like it on the outside. God is not—listen, our perspective, God’s perspective. You’re not smarter than Him. You don’t know all the possibilities, all the possible answers. What you do know is when He says, “Jump,” your response is, “How high?” When He says, “Who will I send?” Like the prophet Isaiah, you say, “Me, me, me. Here I am. Send me. Send me.”
You’re marked. That means you belong to Jesus.
I had a friend in high school, and he got a bumper sticker. He thought he was being super cool. It said, “God is my co-pilot.” And the minute I saw that—I was a very new Christian—but the minute I saw that, I thought, “No, that’s off. That’s off. God’s the pilot. You’re the passenger.” You’re the passenger. God’s pilot. He doesn’t just help you every now and then when you need Him.
You know, many of us, we ask Jesus into our life because we got a problem, like my friend going through divorce, struggling. “Jesus, come help.” And He helped. Jesus came and helped. He gave him endurance. He gave him wisdom. He gave him patience with his wife. He gave him the ability to forgive his ex-wife. He gave him wisdom with his children. He gave him a new job. He helped him.
And then he goes off and, “Okay, great, thanks for that, God. Now I’m going to just go do this.” Gets himself in a mess again. It’s like, no, just listen. Let Him come into the house to fix the plumbing. But when He’s done with the plumbing, if He wants to start knocking out walls, let Him. Let Him.
You’re engraved.
All right, then. The Lord is as a conqueror. The Lord as a conqueror. He is the Mighty One. I love that He is the Mighty One. There’s nobody bigger. How do we know that? Easter. Easter is the defining moment in the history of this planet. And it’s the defining moment in the history of the spiritual war in the cosmos. It is the battle that declares the outcome of the war that had already been decided before the foundations of the world. But it is the battle. All of hell—and the Bible even says, it says of the Pharisees, but it’s also true of the demons of hell. They said if they would have known, they would not have crucified the king of glory.
Psalm 22: The bulls of Bashan surround me. There were no bulls there. Yeah, there were. The snarling beasts. Jesus is seeing spiritually, all the demons of hell, gleefully—
Narnia, last night, you know, all the wicked queen’s creatures are all cheering when Aslan is being killed. They’re all snarling, “Yeah, we did it.” All the demons of hell are surrounding that cross, and they’re snarling and they’re gloating. And the gloating and the arrogance that comes out of the Pharisees and some of the visitors is simply a manifestation of what’s happening in the heavenlies.
And they’re all going, “Ah, we got Him. We got Him. We got Him.” And they kill Him. And He goes down. He walks up to Satan, He takes the keys of death and Hades, and He rises from the grave. And all of hell that was snarling just a couple days ago, now they’re going, “Yikes. Our biggest weapon. Our biggest weapon, death. And He bounced up from it like it’s nothing.”
Why? You can’t keep the Author of life in the grave. Life rose from the grave. Sin has been defeated. Enemy number one. Why? On the cross He took the consequences of our sin. And in His resurrection He came to new life, and that new life now sets us free from the bondage of sin. You may still sin; I still sin. But you know what? When we sin, we’re not a slave to it anymore. We’re just living off of old tapes and moments of weakness. Our flesh is just reacting the way it’s reacted out of habit for years to come, and the Holy Spirit, through discipleship, is teaching us new habits. But it no longer has a hold on you. You’re free of the consequences of sin. You’re free of the power of sin.
Second enemy, Satan and his demons. Their lives are now powerless. Why? You have a name, Jesus, and a truth, His Word, that defeats every lie. That defeats every lie.
It’s amazing when people are traumatized as young children how the devil instantly moves in and speaks lies into their lives. Almost every child of a divorce. The devil is not creative, he’s just persistent. Almost every child of a divorce believes in their heart that it was their fault. That’s a lie. Doesn’t mean they weren’t little stinkers. They were, but it wasn’t their fault their parents got divorced.
And the devil speaks that to people, and people live out of that brokenness. It’s amazing. I’ve seen this happen, praying with people when you simply—you don’t—one thing we’re always tempted to do is to tell them the truth. Just tell them the truth. “No, no, no. God says you’re this. God says…” And that’s, that’s good, that’s good to do. But one of the things is sometimes you just let God tell them the truth. You just invite the Holy Spirit into that space, and you have them, you direct them to renounce that lie.
Just say this, you know, “In the name of the Lord Jesus, I renounce and reject the lie that I’ve been living with.” And then, “Holy Spirit, come and replace that lie with truth.” And the Bible will speak to them. God will speak to them. Either a thought will come to their head that’s scriptural, or a picture will come to mind, and that lie will be replaced by a life-giving truth. Because God is the conqueror.
The Name of Jesus, it’s not magic. The sons of Sceva found that out in the book of Acts. It’s not magic. But when it’s tied to the relationship with Jesus, there’s no more powerful name. Nothing makes hell tremble like a Christian who speaks the blood of the risen Savior, Jesus, over their circumstances. He has no answer for that. No answer for that.
Satan has been defeated, and finally death has been defeated. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will never die. And then Jesus acknowledges physical death. He says, though they die, yet will they live. O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?
Listen, death’s an enemy. You know, some Christians, we treat death like, “Oh, you know, they died, they went to a better place.” It’s all true. But God’s answer to death isn’t to celebrate death. God’s answer to death is resurrection, because death could not hold Jesus in the grave, so when you have a hold of Jesus, it can’t hold you. Your spirit will rise, I believe—some people believe in soul sleep; I don’t—your spirit will rise immediately. To depart from the body is to be like Christ. But guess what?
Just as Jesus experienced a physical resurrection, you get a physical resurrection, too. Our bodies will be resurrected, and they will be flawless and perfect, and they will never get sick again. They won’t hurt again. And you will have a resurrection, resurrected, glorious body. You’ll be recognizable for who you are. You know, I don’t know if you can pick your age, but, you know, you might look the age in heaven to the people who loved you, like when they loved you.
You might look like grandpa to your grandchildren and look like your high school buddy to your high school buddy. I don’t know how it’s going to work, but I know you get a new resurrected body. And this old tent, which wears out, all right? Anybody’s tent, you feel like it’s wearing out sometimes? You know, I remember, and this was years and years ago. I remember the first time I hurt myself sleeping. What’s that about? Sleeping? You know, used to sleep and feel better. You reach a point where you sleep and it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I pulled the muscle sleeping. How did I do that?” That old tent. God heals that tent. He touches that tent. He restores that tent. He saves that tent.
Often He demonstrates He’s the resurrection of the life by bringing somebody back from the brink of cancer. But whether He does or doesn’t, you are raised, you are healed. He has defeated death. You don’t have to fear it. You don’t have to fear it.
So He’s mighty God, He’s conqueror.
Finally, the Lord as a husband. The final analogy is the Lord is a husband. He said, “Where’s your mother’s certificate of divorce? I didn’t divorce your mother. She left me. It was her transgression. You think my arm’s too short to restore this relationship? You think my arm’s too… I will save you. I will restore you.”
One of the most precious pictures in the Bible. One of the most—God is always giving prophets. He’s telling prophets to do weird things to illustrate a point. Ezekiel has to lay on his side and eat food cooked over dung for a year. Jeremiah has to wear weird costumes. Isaiah has to preach naked. He’s, you know, He’s always giving, like, these instructions to these, you know, make your point visually, be an enacted parable.
But I think that the most amazing one is not out of the major prophets, but out of the minor prophets when God says to Hosea, go marry a prostitute. Go marry a woman that you know is going to be unfaithful. Every man’s dream on his wedding day. “Honey, I know you’re going to cheat, but here we are. I love you.”
And the minute you’re married and you love her and she goes out and starts cheating with other men, and instead of casting her aside, God tells Hosea, “Bring her back. Heal her wounds and love her again.” And God’s telling Hosea, “That’s me.” God will restore. God will bring His bride back.
The best thing about social media is all the arguments I’ve won on social media. No, that’s not… all the arguments I should have won, yes. But all the arguments I’ve actually won where people have actually changed their mind? Man, people are stubborn when they meet brilliant reasoning. I don’t get it.
So, no, the best thing about social media are the memes. They just are. They’re funny. They’re just funny. You know, and one of them is, you know, if Jesus or Paul was in America right now, church would be getting a letter. The church should be getting a letter. It’s like, all right, because God restores.
And so I believe revival is here actually, and it’s going to grow and it’s coming. And I believe it for three reasons. One, God is willing to restore His people and send revival.
You know, when people get healed by Jesus, they always have one of two questions. And this is the rarer of the questions. Mostly, you know, Jesus tries to increase their faith that “I’m able to do this,” but not with one man. The leper, in the beginning of the Gospels, Mark, he comes to Jesus and he doesn’t say, “Can you heal me?” He says, “If you’re willing.”
You see, he doesn’t know if God is good or not. He knows God is powerful. He knows Jesus is powerful, but he doesn’t know if his leprosy is some kind of punishment; if he deserves it; if, you know, Jesus is just going to say, “Get away from me, you filthy dog.” He’s just not sure about that.
And I love the answer to that. I love what the Bible says. It says, “Jesus, filled with compassion…” Well, who is Jesus representing? The Father. Jesus, filled with the compassion, says, “I am willing.” It says He reached out and touched the leper. We forget. He touched the leper, the unclean, untouchable.
I take it a bit further. I can believe this. It’s not in the Bible. You don’t have to hold it as a creed. I think He put His hand on the worst sore, the oozy, gross part, and said, “I am willing. Be clean.”
Is God willing to restore His church and send revival upon this land? I believe He is. Is God able? That’s the second question. Can God do it? I mean, God, we’re filled with so much sin. We’re filled with so much rebellion. We’re filled with so much materialism. And we could be like Israel, God’s wife in Isaiah. It’s your sin. If we don’t seek Him, then yes, I don’t believe He will send revival if we don’t seek Him. He won’t just do it automatically. But does He have the power to do it? If we would but repent.
What does that, Chronicles say? If you repent and seek my face, if you turn. That’s what repentance is. Repentance is God’s back there, and I’m doing this. Yeah, God, I got this covered. I can live my life my own way. I can do church my own way. By the way, I just read on this new church growth magazine all the best demographics on how to get more people to come to church. And how many parking spots I need. And, you know, and do I really need skinny jeans and new tennis shoes? Yeah, all that. And my hair’s got to be this way and all that.
And I’m not picking on that. Yeah, I am. I am, actually. And, you know, and it’s like, and God says, “Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I didn’t call you to be slick.” And we do this: “What?” Repent.
You know, all we have to be is a teenage boy. All we have to be is a teenage boy. Because here’s a teenage boy. They’re playing their video games, and you talk to them, and first they don’t even hear you. And finally you get their attention, and here’s what they say: “Wait, what?” That’s right. “Wait, what?”
I mean, I had, I have a nephew. And I mean, that is the first words out of his mouth every time. He’s just absorbed in something. “Hey, Bradley. Hey, Bradley. Bradley.” “Wait, what?” I tell you, that boy at his wedding… “Will you take Susan to be your lawful—” “Wait. What? Is that why I’m here? Huh?”
“God, I got this covered.” “Kevin.” “What? I got this covered.” “Kevin.” “I got this covered. Wait, what?” “Thank you.” Repent. God can do anything with a person in His hands. He prophesied through a donkey. He prophesied through a donkey. Wait, what? Yeah, you, too. You can do it, you know. God can do it. He is able.
God will do it. Not because we deserve it. Repentance doesn’t earn anything. Right? Your kids, right? Christmas. We all, you know, teach them, “Oh, Santa’s watching. You better be good. You don’t want to get on the naughty list.” They’re naughty. They’re naughty all the way up to Christmas. You still give them the gifts. Not because they deserve them. Your kids never earned a gift from you. You gave it because it was a gift.
But here’s what they did do. They sought it. They sought it. And if you’re a good dad, you delighted in that.
Jill’s dad was a wonderful grandfather. That’s where she got it. By this time of year, earlier, by September, he would have a piece of yellow legal paper, folded up, you know, before cell phones, folded up in his pocket. The kids would go over to his house, and he’d pull out this folded piece of paper. He’d say, “I’m making the list. I’m making the list.” And he’d, “Ask, ask me what you want. Making the list.” He did it out of pure joy and love.
God will give us revival, not because we deserve it, but because we need it and we ask for it.
If my people who are called by my name will simply humble themselves. Hey, we’re not smart enough. We can’t manipulate this into happening. We’re not clever enough. We haven’t, you know, we don’t have enough strategy books. You know, sometimes I think of the third. If Psalm 3, 5, and 6 were written for today, it would be: trust in your plans with all your heart and lean heavily on the latest demographic studies. In all your ways, acknowledge the experts, and then you will be successful in your path will be straight, and you’ll get to be one of the experts and write a book.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And do what? Lean not on your own understanding, just in all your ways turn to Him and acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; (Proverbs 3:5, CSB)
Holy Spirit, in the name of the Lord Jesus, this little group of people, Poulsbo, Washington… we’re not smart enough, we’re not clever enough, we’re not slick enough. We simply ask in the powerful Name of Jesus, the resurrected Savior, who died for our sins and rose from the grave, who sent His spirit to fill the earth and bring the glory of the Lord as far as the east is from the west. The prophet Habakkuk said, “As the waters cover the sea, so my glory will cover the earth.”
And Lord, we pray that in our lifetime, in our country, in our state, in our county, in the church that we attend, oh, your glory would fall. We humbly ask in the name of the Lord Jesus, send a revival so deep, so rich, that we’ll never be the same. And so deep and so rich that it will impact culture for generations to come, if you tarry. We pray it in Jesus’ Name. He is willing and able. Amen. Amen.
On the night that He was betrayed, He took bread and He broke it. He gave it to his disciples and said, this is my body, which is given for you.
And in the same way, after supper, He took the cup, poured it out, gave thanks to His Father in heaven. And listen to this: This is my blood. Wow. My blood is going to be poured out. And in that blood, I’m establishing a New Covenant with the human race where their sins are forgiven.
And I’m going to fill them with my Spirit and re-Eden the planet through ordinary people like Peter and James and John. Knucklehead fishermen.
And He can do it through knucklehead us. Isn’t that good to know?
Another meme I like is when God called you, He already factored in your stupidity. Isn’t that great? God’s not up there going, “Man, I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have given him that assignment.” No, He knew. He knew who you were.
You know what else he knew that you don’t know? You might be keenly aware of your stupidity, but you know what else He knows that you don’t know? The riches of the glory that dwell in you. How high, how long, how deep, how wide, how broad is His love for you. And the power, the incomparable power that raised Jesus from the dead—it’s in your belly. It’s in your heart. It’s in you.
So come and once again renew that covenant and say “Thank you for forgiving my sins and thank you for filling me with your Spirit, and Jesus, I’ve been branded by you in baptism and now I’m nourished by you at your table. And I will pour out my life for you in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
The post 2025.10.19 TFHC – The Heart of God and Revival | Isaiah 49:8-50:3 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
October, 12 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Again. Anybody? Bueller? Anybody?
How does it feel to have your sin atoned for? Yeah. How’s it feel to have your sin being eradicated and defeated? Sin, Satan, and death have been defeated, and so you are people of great victory. You are people of great victory.
In this world, you will have troubles. I wish I could say otherwise. I wish I could say, “Come to Jesus and everything will be both hunky and dory.” But no, not the case. In this world, you have troubles. But take heart, dear ones. That’s why you’re here tonight, to encourage one another. We want to encourage one another to take heart, for He has overcome the world. Christ is the victor.
I’ve told this story before, so this is all rambling before the sermon, so… blessed are you. You’re getting freebies tonight. All right, here you go. Corrie ten Boom, who wrote The Hiding Place. And, you know, you talk about suffering in this world, being shipped off to a Nazi prison camp. And her father was a godly man, and they were doing a Bible study through the Book of Revelation at the time that the Nazis arrested her family. Her and her sister were being taken to one concentration camp where her sister would die and she would live. Her father was being taken to another where he would die. And these two girls would never see their beloved father again. This was the last time they saw him.
And they’re being taken off in this most horrible of all situations. The girls are crying, and their father is being separated from them. He’s an older man, and he doesn’t move fast enough for the Nazis. One of the thugs takes the butt of his rifle and hits this older man in the back to make him move faster. Their father crumples to the ground, and the girls scream, aghast. He gets up, and this is so powerful. Talk about a legacy as a dad. He’s reading through the book of Revelation, so this is fresh on their hearts. He turns to his daughters, and the last word on this planet, this man speaks to his daughters before he goes off to die in a camp, as he looks at his daughters and he smiles and he says, “Christ is the victor.” Christ is the victor.
So that’s why we sing these songs, people. That’s why we sing these songs. We need reminders in this broken world that Christ is the victor. All right? We need reminders in the midst of our pain or in the midst of other people’s pain that Christ is the victor.
We’re looking at the Book of Isaiah, and actually the second half of Isaiah, chapters 40 through 66, sometimes called the fifth gospel. Isaiah turns at the end of chapter 39, and all of a sudden Isaiah becomes a prophet.
Most of the prophets are prophets of doom and gloom. And at the very end of their prophetic utterances, they give some kind of messianic hope, some kind of hope that “well, you know, it’s going to be really bad for a while, but better days are coming.” Isaiah spends more time on the “better days are coming” than any other prophet. And he talks about the servant of the Lord. And he talks about it in Isaiah 42, which we looked at a couple weeks ago, and Isaiah 49, and Isaiah 50, and Isaiah 52 and 53. He talks about this servant of the Lord who ultimately gets identified as the Messiah.
Israel, certainly in the Old Testament, is a servant of the Lord. Israel is a limping servant of the Lord. It’s not an irony that Jacob, Israel, had a limp, because as we read through the Old Testament, Israel had a limp. Israel had a limp. And they were often a hard-hearted and rebellious people.
And there was always the minority, almost always it was the minority of Israel, who really sought after Yahweh. The majority, you know, would give lip service to Yahweh and then go off and worship the Baals and the Asherahs, etc.
And so Israel walks with a limp and they’re a less than perfect servant of God. And then there appears on the scene the perfect Israel in one man, Jesus Christ. He is fully God, fully man. He is the perfect Israel. And therefore in Him He fulfills the law. He fulfills everything that Israel is meant to be. He fulfills the promise that God gave to Abraham at the very beginning, that “through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Through Jesus, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
18 Abraham is to become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. (Genesis 18:18, CSB)
And then so it’s kind of like this wide opening—Israel, but that gets narrowed down to the prophets, the remnant, the faithful, and then it gets narrowed down to this point, and this point is Jesus.
But then from Jesus, now it launches out again into this broad spectrum, and then that is the Church. The Church then becomes the bearers, the carriers, as Israel is the carriers of the old covenant and the promise to come. The Church now becomes the carriers of the New Covenant and the promise fulfilled. And then we become the servant of the Lord.
And so these servant passages, they speak very specifically, to my mind, of Jesus. But then there is application for us today as we model Jesus in the world. And so we’re talking about revival. And we’re talking about revival revealed in the Old Testament. And so I want to talk about the crazy way that revival happens. The crazy, and the kind of the craziness, the anti-“the way the world sees things”. God doesn’t work things that way.
And we see it in Jesus. In Isaiah 49:1-7, the hidden Messiah. I’m going to read the first seven verses.
1 Coasts and islands, listen to me; distant peoples, pay attention. The Lord called me before I was born. He named me while I was in my mother’s womb. 2 He made my words like a sharp sword; he hid me in the shadow of his hand. He made me like a sharpened arrow; he hid me in his quiver. 3 He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” 4 But I myself said: I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and futility; yet my vindication is with the Lord, and my reward is with my God. 5 And now, says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him so that Israel might be gathered to him; for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, and my God is my strength— 6 he says, “It is not enough for you to be my servant raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth.” 7 This is what the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, says to one who is despised, to one abhorred by people, to a servant of rulers: “Kings will see, princes will stand up, and they will all bow down because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel —and he has chosen you.” (Isaiah 49:1-7, CSB)
God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight. Lord, you are our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
So six characteristics of the Messiah in Isaiah 49.
He is called and named from the womb. He is called and He’s named from the womb.
And the angel comes to Mary and says, “You will conceive by the Holy Spirit, and the one I bring will be the Savior of the world.” In her belly, in her womb, the light of the world, the incarnation came.
We often talk about the virgin birth. Actually, you know, if you like to be literal and accurate, it’s the virgin conception, all right? And so Mary conceives without knowing a man, and then God gives the name. You shall call his name, He tells Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus.” He will be, and Jesus means God saves, He will be the Savior of the world.
From the womb He was called. From the womb He had a destiny. From the womb He had a purpose. And His words, Isaiah 49 says, will be piercing. They’ll be like a sword. They’ll be like an arrow. His words will carry power.
Words, words, words, and more words. We live in a culture of words, and yet there are very few—
You ever try to argue with somebody on social media? You can use all the best words. It doesn’t work. They use all their best words. We just throw words back and forth. But here are words spoken by a man and recorded by His disciples, so that 2,000 years later, in Poulsbo, Washington, a group of people gather and are shaped and are seeking to have their lives shaped by His word.
Thomas Holland wrote the book Dominion, and he’s a Greco-Roman scholar, and I think he’s still an atheist, though he may be a Christian by now. He’s definitely on that path. As a Greco-Roman scholar, he came to realize that Western civilization, which he also recognized for all its faults and foibles and cruelties and errors, is the greatest civilization ever known to human beings—the most just, the most equitable, the most fair, the most righteous, and not, you know, people argue, “Well, what about this? What about—” Yeah, I said all the foibles.
But match it up against anybody else. You don’t like Western civilization. All right, go back to ancient Rome. See how you like that.
Listen, you don’t like Western civilization because you don’t feel embraced and encouraged as a queer, as a homosexual, and you’re now a queer for Palestine? Yeah, try that in Palestine. See how that flies. You’re much better off here. Much better off here.
And Thomas Holland says that those values that have created this great civilization do not come from the Romans and the Greeks. He says, amazingly and almost inconceivably, they come from a crucified Jewish carpenter and a converted Jewish Pharisee. And those two men, this man and His most articulate disciple, have shaped the world we live in today.
His words are piercing. His words are piercing. And dear ones, my guess is they have pierced you. His words have pierced you. Right? You’ve gone to church and people like me have stood up in front of you and said, what? “Read your Bible. Read your Bible. It’s good to read your Bible.”
And so you’ve read your Bible, and you’ve read your Bible, and you’ve had a couple different experiences. One of the experiences you’ve had reading your Bible is, “I must not be a Christian. I don’t understand this.” No, you’re fine. It’s a hard book to understand in many parts, you know, and sometimes we preachers do people a disservice. Say “You read your Bible, and God will make everything clear to you.” Not always. There are some things really clear.
I love what Jack Deere says, talking about Bible translations. And, you know, I’m a nerd, so I get wrapped up in this, you know, different Bible translations and all this kind of thing. But I agree 100% with this. Somebody, you know, people will ask me, as a pastor, “Pastor, what’s the best Bible I can get?” And Jack Deere’s got a great answer to that. He says, “The one that tells you to love your enemy.” By the way, that’s the Bible Donald Trump should get. The one that tells you to love your enemy.
And so you’ve read the Bible, you’ve had three experiences, right? You’ve read the Bible, you didn’t understand it, but you’ve read the Bible for a long time, and what happens? It begins to shape your life and form your worldview. Like a river carving its way through a canyon, God begins to form you. And all of a sudden you begin to see the world differently. And you begin to go, “Yeah, that’s the way it should be. That’s nuts. And that’s the way…” And the rest of the world says, “No, this is the way to go.” And you go, “No, that’s nuts.” Why do you see it as nuts when you didn’t see it as nuts before? Because you’re having a new worldview shaped and formed inside of you. And worldview is important.
But then you’ve had a third experience. Most people have, most Christians I know have had a third experience. You’re reading the Bible, you’re getting your worldview shaped, you’re not understanding stuff, and all of a sudden, boom. These words, this black ink on white paper, lift off the page and, and like a branding iron, sear themselves on your heart and in your mind.
Sometimes you ask people, “What’s your life verse?” And they’ll say, “Oh, that one’s seared, that one’s tattooed, that one’s marked me.” I got more than one. I got a bunch of them. I’ve had this experience many times.
For me, surprisingly, it happens most in the Psalms. That doesn’t have to be-, not exclusively it happens, but it happens most in the Psalms. And you’ve heard me say that, you know, you’ve heard me quote several Psalms, but fairly regularly, Psalm 27:13. And of course, the one I quote probably the most—and I’ve told this story before, but as a young Methodist pastor on the staff, we would go in and pray every morning at 8:30 in the sanctuary as a staff. And one morning I was the first person there, which is quite rare for me on morning meetings, to be the first person there.
How many people here are morning people? Yeah, you’re weirdos.
All right, so, Karen, let’s stick together against the weirdos. Yeah, that’s fine. That’s fine. But you’re taking notes; you’re good.
All right, so I love you weirdos, but, yeah, I’m not a morning person. You know, people say “Mornings are so great.” Yeah, because I’m usually sleeping. That’s what’s great about it.
So anyway, but I was the first person there. Big pulpit Bible, you know, big ornate church. And on the altar they’ll put a big ornate, you know, $500 Bible up there. And that morning I walked up and I just thought, “I’ll just look at the Scriptures.” And there it was, open to Psalm 73. And all of a sudden, branding iron, man. “Who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.”
That was over 40 years ago. And that… right? I say it all the time. I wake up in the morning, and I say it more mornings than not. Seared.
His words are piercing. His words are piercing.
All right. Second or third: His life seems hidden. Palestine, now the center of the world, but back then, a dusty outskirt of the Roman Empire that the Romans couldn’t understand, these obstinate people who wouldn’t submit in the middle of the desert, completely defeated, impoverished, subjected.
And then a carpenter, not a philosopher, not a, you know, never had a title, you know, His disciples called him rabbi, but He never went to any school to become a rabbi. He never wrote a book, never traveled more than 30 miles from His hometown, never raised an army. He was just one Jew amongst millions of Jews, subjected amongst millions of people in the Roman Empire, amongst millions of people or thousands of people at least, that the Roman Empire crucified.
And why are we talking about him in Poulsbo, Washington? His life seemed hidden. There was no social media back then. Nothing went viral. There’s, you know, it just…
But all of a sudden, in His context, He started going viral. It’s amazing, you know. You start raising people from the dead, and paralyzed people start walking. It’s like, “Hey, let’s go listen to this guy.”
But His life was hidden. He wasn’t born in a castle; He was born in an animal barn. And His mission seems unsuccessful, right? He ends on the cross. He tried, another noble spokesperson doing their best to serve humanity and speak, and the bad guys win again. And the leaders conspire against Him, though He had committed no crime. And the political power who tried to practice justice on some occasions, and yet political expediency was more important than justice, and so Pilate caves in, His friends run away and hide. The people who He had loved and cared to and spoke, and because He didn’t look like the Messiah they were waiting for, now turned on Him and shouted out, “Crucify him.”
And everything about Good Friday doesn’t seem good. Everything about Good Friday seems “this guy failed.” It was a noble attempt. He made it as far as a noble person could. But ah, the forces of gravity of evil just pulled Him back down. And He died on the cross, and even His friends ran away from Him. Even His disciples denied Him. Everything seems lost that Friday evening. Everything seems lost that Friday evening.
But if the composer John Williams had been there and he had known what was about to happen, he would have begun to play the theme song from “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” You know the song, right? Old movie, old movie illustrations. That’s all the movie illustrations I have. I go to one movie a year nowadays, so I only got old movie illustrations.
But he’d begin to play—you remember, though, if you’ve seen it, you remember the theme song. The Nazis are winning. Indy is trying with all his noble efforts to defeat the Nazis and to save the ark and blah, blah, blah. And he gets the ark, and he finally finds it, and he fools the Nazis, and he gets it. And they’re waiting for him, and they take it back from him, and they throw it on a truck, and they’re going to take it to Germany. And because they have the ark, they’re going to rule the world. And everything seems lost. And you think, in the movie, all is lost.
But thank goodness for movie scores because they will tell you before the action happens that all is not lost. The music will tell you, right? Because the Nazis are driving this ark off in these trucks surrounded by armed guards. And very kind of biblically, a white horse shows up, and Indy mounts the white horse. You remember the scene, right? And all of a sudden the music comes on, right? You know that, you know it.
And oh, what’s going to happen now? Those Nazis are in trouble when that music plays.
Jesus is dead on the cross, and they put Him in the grave. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, this mission that seems unsuccessful, God makes His mission larger and more successful. Instead of an itinerant Palestinian preacher who does miracles, He now becomes the Savior of the world who kills and destroys by His own death, sin, Satan, and death. And He rises from the grave victorious.
And that’s what Isaiah 49 is talking about. It looked like the Lord had abandoned me. It looked like all was lost. But my vindication is in God’s hands.
Oh, how much trouble, Christians, we would prevent, we would protect our lives from if we just allowed our vindication to be in God’s hands instead of getting in fights to prove we’re right, instead of going and putting those people in their place, doggone it. “They hurt me. I’m gonna, I’m gonna show them.” They crucified me; I’ll let them. But watch what the Lord does. Watch what the Lord does.
You know what? If you’re in Christ, let me tell you what disappointments are. Disappointments are made for resurrections. You will have disappointments. You will have Dark Fridays. But because of the Easter Sunday that’s coming, they will become Good Fridays.
God makes His mission larger and more successful, even to the point, and we already talked about this. Now, 12 disciples run away. One comes back, John. But 12 disciples run away and hide. He dies on the cross. And today 2 billion people in a world of 8 billion people serve him gladly. Two billion people are, in a world of 8 billion people, one fourth of the world’s population. There’s no movement on Earth like it. And it’s growing. And the conversion rate is outstripping the birth rate daily.
“Well, not in Pacific Northwest.” Have faith, child. Have faith. I have prayed. Not that it counts on that, but God uses prayers of little portly pastors. God uses prayers of mothers and grandmothers. God uses prayers of godly men. Have faith. We will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and this wet wood will burn. Have faith.
God will make His mission larger and more successful. Nations are changed by Him, and rulers bow down to worship Him.
In the Middle Ages, at the height of Christendom, which wasn’t all glorious and good, King Charlemagne was the most powerful king during that time. Anybody got Charlemagne’s dates down anyway? You know, four or five hundred, six hundred, somewhere in there, powerful king, the Holy Roman Empire is now spreading throughout the world. He was rich. He was not a good man. He was like all kings and rulers. He was a warrior. He was a despot. He was selfish. He was greedy. He wasn’t a godly king. And yet at his death, he said, “When I’m buried, put me on my throne”—very pompous, you know, king—”I want to be buried sitting on my throne.”
But here was the twist. He said, “And I want an open Bible before me, and I want it open to this passage. And I want you to put my bony finger on this passage: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
Kings will bow to Him. Nations will be changed. This nation was formed upon His piercing words, and it grew upon His words. Evangelists, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians moved west along the frontier. The Methodists moved west to spread what? Scriptural holiness across the land.
So that’s what Isaiah 49 says. And when we read back in Isaiah 49, we go, “That’s Jesus. That’s Jesus.” But guess what? God will use you and me to bring revival in that same pattern, in that same way. Why? Because you have been chosen to bear fruit.
Jesus says that. “I chose you to bear fruit.” You have been chosen to be a contagious carrier of the life and kingdom of Jesus Christ, your King and your life. You are a Christ carrier into the world. You’ve been chosen to do that. That’s your assignment.
Your destiny is heaven, but your job description is to bring heaven to earth. That is who you are. “I’m a teacher.” Great. That’s your vocation. You’re a teacher for Jesus. “I’m in the Navy.” Great. That’s your vocation. You’re in the Navy for Jesus. “I’m a homemaker.” Great. That’s your vocation. You’re a homemaker for Jesus. And by the way, you better take your job seriously, Mama, because you and your husband beget original sinners, and we all want to be protected from them. So do your job and teach them Jesus.
Listen, I love each of your kids, but I don’t want to know them without Jesus.
And so that’s who we are. You’re chosen. You’ve been called out.
And listen, I believe—people say, “Well, you’re not a Calvinist. You don’t believe in predestination.” Of course, I believe in predestination. That’s a biblical word. And you have a predestiny. Your destiny is to be a child of God and to serve Him in this world. There are people—and every human being, that’s their destiny. There are people who don’t step into their destiny. But you have been predestined, so step into it. Do it. You’ve been called. You’ve been chosen. From the time you were in your mother’s womb, God desired for you to be in His forever family and to serve Him joyfully.
The words He speaks to you and through you are piercing. I already talked about the words He spoke to me through His Scriptures. They’re piercing. They’re piercing.
Sometimes those words are the Bible. Sometimes those words are just words that you hear in your head. I tell you, God convicts me. And He’s not mean and He’s not shaming, but His words are piercing. I remember I went to the Brownsville revival, and as I went to the revival, it was the first time I was really, like, slain in the Spirit. And God convicted me twice in one night.
As I’m lying there on the ground, I go, “Huh? I can’t lift my head. I can’t open my eyes.” And I’m analyzing the whole experience. And I hear this voice in my head, “Kevin, why do you analyze everything?” And I argued with the voice, which is always fun to do, but you always lose. And I said—and I blamed God; I was like Adam in the garden—I said, “Because that’s the way you made me.” And then there was silence.
And in the silence, I felt like God was saying, “Hey, I did make you that way, but I also made you to experience my grace and my power and my love. Just rest here and enjoy it. You don’t have to figure everything out.” And so I did.
And then I got up, and I walked back. I was hanging out with my friends, and I saw these people. They would get in line, somebody would pray for them, and they would fall. Then they’d get up, and they’d get back in line, and somebody would pray for them, and they would fall. Then they would get up, and they would get back in line, and somebody would pray for them, and they would fall.
And I judged them. I said, “Oh, they’re just spiritual experience junkies.” I know nothing about these people. I know nothing about what God’s doing with them. But I knew in my high place of seminary-trained skepticism, “Oh, they’re just experience junkies.”
And I heard the voice again, and this, this voice pierced me. And it wasn’t mean, but it was the longing of His heart. He said, “Kevin, would it be that you were that hungry.” Ouch. “Would it be that you wanted me as much as those people did.” That was God’s judgment on them.
And so ever since then, I’ve been a pew jumper. I’ll go to some conference, and they say, “Anybody want prayer?” Yep. “This prayer is for one-armed pregnant women with a limp.” Close enough. I’m coming. I think I fit kind of that description.
I’ll tell you what. There’s a woman, she reached out to me several years ago on Facebook. I pastored her over 30 years ago. Her and her husband started coming to the Methodist church. They were a troubled couple trying to follow Jesus, but struggling with drugs and alcohol and other things that I didn’t know about at the time. But I liked them. I became friends with them. The husband seemed like a really sweet, peaceful, calm guy.
And I remember they went on a trip, and she came back and her collarbone was broken. And she said, “Yeah, I slipped playing ping pong.” “Oh, okay, slipped playing ping pong, yada, yada, yada.” And then she tries to kill herself. And I find out the reason she tries to kill herself is this calm, peaceful, nice guy would beat the heck out of her on a regular basis.
Anyway, I visited her. Jill and I went and visited her in the hospital. And now I knew why she had a broken collarbone and why she tried to kill herself. And the Lord gave me these words. He said, “Tell her she can’t do this because one day I am going to use her life to help other women who are in the same situation.” And I spoke those words to her. That was 30 years ago.
A few years ago, she reached out to me on Facebook. She saw my name, reached out to me, and she shared her story. I helped her leave her husband. She had to pack, you know, all her clothes, and she wanted somebody there. Actually, the sheriff came. The sheriff—back in the time, the sheriff of Stanislaus County would help a woman leave. They’d stay for 15 minutes. Get everything you can in 15 minutes. I’ll stand guard so, you know, he doesn’t come and beat you up. But she asked me to be there, too, for emotional support. So I was there for 15 minutes.
She packed her daughter up, enough clothes, threw them in the car, and drove off. I never saw her again. I still haven’t ever seen her again.
But she reached out to me on Facebook several years ago and said, “Hey, remember me?” And she said, “I’m now in Arizona with my new husband, and I’m going to a Calvary chapel. And I’m a part of a ministry. I lead a ministry in our church that helps battered women.” And she said, “I will never forget those words you spoke to me in the hospital.” His Words are piercing. And guess what? God can use you to deliver them.
She just was on a radio broadcast or podcast or what. I don’t even know what people do now, but, you know, some kind of cast. And she sent me the link and I listened to it the other night, and it’s her story in two parts. It’s about 50 minutes, two 25-minute segments. In the first segment, she says this pastor, and she used my first name, says “Pastor Kevin came to the hospital and said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
And now guess what? God can use you in revival. Did I speak those words to her? Well, yes, they came out of my vocal cord. But who inspired those words? The one whose words are piercing. Balaam’s donkey. Right here. Balaam’s donkey. You get to be Balaam’s donkey. You get to be Balaam’s donkey. His words speak to you, and they speak through you, and they change lives. You won’t always know when they do. Do it anyway. Sometimes God will give you reminders.
Another story. I went to Cal State University, Chico. How many of you are from California? Chico State. Known as what? Just say it. Party school, right? You’re down in LA, everybody’s like, “You’re going to Chico? Party!” Every kid from Bay Area and LA goes to Chico State to party. Every kid from Chico wants to go to UCLA and get out of the tiny town of Chico and go to the big city.
And so. But, you know, I always have considered Chico State the Harvard of the West Coast. And so there I went, I went to Chico State and I worked at Round Table Pizza. Worked at Round Table Pizza, and Round Table Pizza was a group of college students and high school students. I was 21, so I got a job serving beer and wine. Then, you know, they taught me the kitchen. I worked everywhere, and there was a young man there, a lot of young men there.
But anyway, years later, I’ve left Chico, and I’ve gone down to Pasadena to go to Fuller Seminary, and I’m eating at Bob’s Big Boy.
Anybody remember Bob’s Big Boy? Okay, let me tell you a story about the one who says I have it so good, because what would one of my sermons be without a story about her? So, old movie reference again in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, a beautiful British accent. I mean, she was stunningly beautiful in my estimation. Her name was Jacqueline Bisset. Anybody know Jacqueline Bisset? Yeah, beautiful, beautiful, right, Karen, you know, Google her. Unless you have trouble with stuff like that, then don’t, but you know, Jacqueline Bisset. Don’t Google her now because she’s like 80 something, but, you know, Google her back then.
And so I told Jill one time, I looked at Jill one time and listen, I’m a romantic guy, right? Said, “You know, you look like Jacqueline Bisset.” You know what she said to me? This is true. “You remind me of Bob’s Big Boy.” How is that? Like a good, you know, I don’t get like, you know, back in the day, Burt Reynolds or somebody like that. Quit laughing, Aiko. “You remind me of Bob’s Big Boy.” That’s… but you know what? I have it so good. I have it so good.
So anyway, I’m at Bob’s Big Boy, Southern California. This kid walks up to the table and goes, “Kevin, Kevin, is that you?” You know what happens? You know, somebody comes, you know, “Is that you, Brian?” And your brain starts going, okay, I recognize the face. Now what’s the context? Work? High school? You know, my brain’s doing that.
He goes, “It’s me, Mike. Mike, Roundtable, Chico.” Ah, got it. Thank you, Mike.
And this guy was a little high schooler while I was a college student, worked at Roundtable with me. He was a stoner. You know, he’s a typical high school worker, trying to get away with as much as he could. And anyway, he goes, “Man, I gotta tell you, I gave my life to Jesus.” I go, “Mike, that’s awesome.” And then he looks at my friends and he goes, “This guy was telling me about Jesus all the time.” What did I tell this guy about Jesus? I’m thinking, “I don’t ever remember talking to this guy about Jesus,” but I guess I did it all the time.
But isn’t that great? I maybe did it once or twice. I don’t even remember. But God will use—He’ll put His words in you and use your words to change lives.
My friends are all looking at me, “Man, you’re a cool evangelist.” I’m like, “Yeah…” I don’t even remember talking about Jesus to this guy.
You may feel small and hidden, but God has a bigger picture. Christianity is filled with stories of great evangelists and great leaders. If you read church history, you read about the John Wesleys and all this. What you don’t read about are all the quiet heroes.
Billy Graham. I always remember Billy Graham’s great, his autobiography and his story about his conversion. There are three people I remember specifically in the story about his conversion. One is his cousin. His cousin was a Christian and desperately wanted Billy Graham to know the Lord. Billy Graham just wanted to drive. He was 16 years old, he wanted to drive. So his cousin said, “If you will come with me, I’ll let you drive my car. We’re going to pick up a few friends and go to the revival.”
Billy Graham goes, “I get to drive?” “Yep.” “All right, I’ll do it.”
The other is the town tailor. I think his autobiography shares the town tailor’s name. I don’t remember. I certainly don’t remember his name. Nobody remembers his name. Nobody knows who the town tailor was back in that North Carolina town. But that town tailor heard that the evangelist was coming to town, and so he trained to be an altar worker. And when the evangelist finished speaking, Billy Graham went forward, and that town tailor said the prayer that led Billy Graham to the Lord.
How would you like to be that guy in heaven? “Hey, Billy Graham, and Tom here, led thousands and thousands of people to Christ.” And who else? The people who were praying for him, his cousin who was praying for him. How about Tom’s grandma who prayed for him, that made him a Christian town tailor? We’re so interconnected.
Then there was the evangelist, and I do remember his name. He was a semi-famous evangelist back then. He had a great name for a southern evangelist, Mordecai Ham. Mordecai Ham, what a name. And Mordecai Ham preached the gospel when Billy Graham responded.
There’s a great story about Mordecai Ham in the book Firefall, a book on revival. And Mordecai Ham would travel the South and go into towns and lead revivals. And he went to one town, one small town in the South that was run by a family of thugs. You know, back, you know, that happens, right? Small town, you know, they’re a mini mob. They’re a mob unto themselves, you know, going around to the businesses and terrorizing them and collecting protection money and doing all that kind of stuff, and just running the politics and running the town and liquorin’ up and just a bully and a reprobate.
And Mordecai Ham comes and he learns about this. And the father of this family, let’s say his name’s Fred—I don’t know what his name was—but the father of this family, Mordecai Ham, says, “Bring me so-and-so.” Mordecai Ham’s going to preach to him. He’s going to, you know, he’s going to… And the guy gets scared. This town bully. That’s what happens when bullies are confronted, right? He gets scared and he runs away.
And Mordecai Ham chases him, and he runs into a cornfield, and he hides, and Mordecai Ham can’t find him. And so in the middle of the cornfield, Mordecai Ham says, “Fred, you come out here right now. I got the word of the Lord for you.”
He doesn’t hear nothin’. He says, “Fred, all right, if you’re not coming out, I’m gonna pray to God right now that He kills you.”
And all of a sudden he hears, “Don’t do it, Pastor!”
“Why not? you’re leading your kids to hell. You’re leading this town to hell. You’re going to hell yourself. Why shouldn’t I ask God to kill a person like you and get you off the face of the earth?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Comes out Mordecai and preaches to him. And Fred gives his life to Jesus in the cornfield. That’s a good evangelist right there. Yeah, I should try that one time. “All right then, pray God to kill you!” It works.
All right, you may feel small and hidden, but God has a bigger picture for your life. Let me tell you the definition of success in the kingdom of God. You may feel unsuccessful. Here’s the definition of success: obedience equals success. Obedience equals success.
Isaiah 49. It seems like it didn’t work, but Jesus was obedient even to the point of death. Philippians 2, right? “Although he existed in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a man, even a servant, and he became obedient”—what?—”even to death on the cross.”
And then John Williams starts to play in that passage. Somebody’s got to find out if John Williams is the composer of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” I could be mistaken on that. But anyway.
And all of a sudden the passage changes and says, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above all names, that at the Name of Jesus, every knee will bow and tongue confess in heaven and on earth and below the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross. 9 For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow — in heaven and on earth and under the earth — 11 and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11, CSB)
You may feel like you’ve been unsuccessful, but if you have been obedient, you have been successful. And God will multiply. Always. Always. Listen to this. Whether you see it or not, whether some guy in Bob’s Big Boy comes up and confirms it to you, God will always multiply your obedience. Just do it and move on and trust Him.
We are nation changers and history makers. We change the world. Why are there two billion people following Jesus? Because of town tailors. And because of people like you who are obedient in your context.
There are missionaries who are sent to other cultures, and we call them missionaries. But there are missionaries sent to your neighborhood, your household, your workplace, and the places you frequent for business, and they’re called church people. But you are God’s plan for the world. And I’ve read the book. There is no plan B. It’s the church or nothing. This happens to me all the time. I’m Bible trained, educated, I got a title, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people will come to me with their problems, and I’ll think, “Man, you need a Christian in your life.” This happens less often than it used to because I’ve used this story enough, I recognize it when it shows up in my head. But, “Man, you need, you need Jesus. You need a Christian to help you.”
And I’ve actually done this. I don’t do it anymore, but I’ve done it in the past. “God, send a Christian into your life, into their life.” You know, they’re telling me their problems, and I’m praying, “God, send a Christian.” And you know, I’ve learned. God always says, “I have.” And I mean, early on, a couple times I said, “Who?” And it’s like, then the light bulb goes on, right? “Oh, oh, oh, oh.” And then my next prayer is, “No, send a better one. Send a better one.” No, you’re it. Tag, you’re it. You’re it. You’re God’s person at the shipyard. You’re God’s person on your block. You’re God’s person in your family. You’re it, Tag.
Simply be obedient and your mission will bear fruit, and it will change one life at a time. And in that, nations will change, and history will be formed. And you are the carrier of that.
I remember once we were talking about a bunch of us Methodists were talking about turning the denomination around. Somebody said, “Oh, that edifice, that institution is so big, you’re nothing more than a mosquito on a water buffalo’s butt trying to change that.” And the guy—I loved his answer—he says, “Yeah, but what if we can recruit a million mosquitoes? That’ll get the water buffalo’s attention. That’ll get the water buffalo’s attention.”
God, I’m a nobody… filled with the King of the universe. Filled with the King of the universe.
And so, dear ones, I’ll say to you what Jesus said to His early disciples. This simple word: “Go.” I mean, we’re having communion, not right now, but pretty soon, go.
I mean, I love churches, you know, where they put a sign up at the exit and they say, “You are now entering the mission field.” You are now entering the mission field. And do it joyfully. Why? Because I got great news for you. As somebody who has been used, I can tell you times, more than the two I shared tonight, I can tell you times where God has used my words, the words that came out of my mouth, to pierce people’s hearts for His kingdom.
I can tell you that God uses knuckleheads. So you can feel like a knucklehead—you’re an earthen vessel, but you are filled with the oil of heaven. So just go, trust God, and change the world.
Jesus, thank you for your life that fills us and nourishes us. And so tonight, as you invite us to this table, this holy table, let us consume this bread and this cup and be filled, refilled, refreshed by the life of Jesus and the Holy Spirit to the mission and ministry to which we are called, from which we have been chosen from our birth to be the contagious carriers of Jesus Christ into the world.
Revival will happen when a million of us mosquitoes land on this culture. Oh, there will be a tension. There will be a tension.
Come, King Jesus, in your little church here in Poulsbo. And from this place we sing the song, “Let your glory fill this room, and let it go forth from here to the nations.” As the Kagawa family go to Japan, Jesus, fill them and go with them. As the Miller family goes to Silverdale, Jesus, go with them and fill them. As the Johnson family hangs out here in Poulsbo, Jesus, go with them and fill them. As I go back to Bremerton and Port Orchard, Jesus, go with me and fill me.
And tonight, as we come to your table, do that for us, as we eat this holy bread and this holy cup of the New Covenant. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
The post 2025.10.12 TFHC – The Hidden Messiah and Revival | Isaiah 49:1-7 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
October 5, 2025, Sermon by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
He is better than you can think or imagine. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. It never ceases. And His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O God. We worship you and we thank you tonight in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
All right, dear ones, I wanted to do a series on revival through the book of Isaiah. And I did one sermon a couple weeks ago, got Isaiah 40, so I had Isaiah 49 all prepared for tonight. And as I was getting ready to preach that, I’m also reading a book called The Holy Spirit and You by Rita and Dennis Bennett, written 1971, actually. And I just got inspired to talk about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so last night I changed sermons, and so we’re going to do that and probably get back to Isaiah pretty soon.
So I want to talk about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So… two views on this. One is that—and this is true; everybody agrees on this, by the way—when you come to Christ and put your faith in Christ, He gives you the Holy Spirit. You receive the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of you, and you are born again by the Spirit. You’re born again with God’s eternal Spirit. You are a child of God, and the Holy Spirit will live inside of you for, you know, for your life. And you know—how do you say—we’ll be glorified in heaven, and the Spirit will be there. I don’t know how the Trinity and how we relate to the Trinity in heaven, but it’ll be good. It’ll be better than even now.
But for now, the Holy Spirit lives in us. In John 20, Jesus breathes on his disciples and he says to them, receive the Holy Spirit. And they do. They’re born again.
22 After saying this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20:22, CSB)
And then you get to the Book of Acts after that, and He says, “I will pour out my Spirit upon you, and when He comes, you will receive power to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.”
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8, CSB)
And for centuries, the church has kind of dealt with this. Well, what is that about? You know, they already have the Holy Spirit. And in the 17th and 18th century, the Wesleyans, the Methodists, the Nazarenes… that group began to preach this idea of a second blessing. That God would come and give you a second blessing and pour His Spirit out on you for the purpose of sanctification, to make you holy, to give you just a pure love for God and neighbor, and that you would be—they would talk about entire sanctification, our Christian perfection… And that became a real revival doctrine in the 19th century, especially in the 1800s, by what we call the holiness preachers.
And a group of holiness preachers began to study the Bible, and they said, “Ah, this phenomenon, speaking in tongues, has something to do with this.” And a small group of them set aside on a retreat in Kansas and went to a house, and they began praying for this, for this gift of the second blessing manifested by the speaking in tongues.
A woman by the name of Agnes Ozman began to speak in tongues. Then the rest of the household began to speak in tongues. The leader of that group was a man by the name of Charles Parham. And what happened out of that is in the early 1900s, the Pentecostal movement was born. And you’ve got now the Foursquare Church—we meet in the Foursquare Church—Assemblies of God… all sorts of different Pentecostal churches came out of that.
And the hallmark, the defining doctrine of Pentecostalism, is that there is a second blessing called the baptism in the Holy Spirit, or the filling of the Spirit, or the Holy Spirit coming upon you. And in that second blessing, the initial evidence that you’ve received that second blessing is the speaking in tongues. And just because, as Isaiah has already said, I am contrarian, I don’t perfectly agree with either of those views.
I’m going to go through a survey of the book of Acts to look at what I think is the accurate understanding of what it means to be filled, baptized, have the Holy Spirit come upon you. And so I want to read the account of Pentecost first—Acts 2:1-13—and then we will kind of get into it. And what I’m going to do today, what I’m going to do tonight—usually I just read one passage and kind of dwell on that passage—I’m going to do a survey. I’m going to be in Acts 2, Acts 4, Acts 7, Acts 8, Acts 9, Acts 10, Acts 13, and Acts 19. Because in each of those chapters there is reference either to they were filled with the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit came upon them, and then it describes what happened. And so I want to talk about that phenomena.
Here’s the first instance, Acts 2:
1 When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. 3 They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. 4 Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven. 6 When this sound occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 They were astounded and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts), 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.” 12 They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But some sneered and said, “They’re drunk on new wine.” (Acts 2:1-13, CSB)
So the first Pentecost, this outpouring of the Holy Spirit—now remember, these are Jesus’ disciples who earlier He had breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And now it says, the Holy Spirit came upon them the day of Pentecost. And so they were in this upper room. In verse four: “Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” There’s your Pentecostal doctrine. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke in tongues.
But there’s other things that happened as well, as the Holy Spirit came. There is the sound of a mighty wind. And I’ve actually heard of instances where people were at prayer meetings and the sound of a mighty wind entered the building. There were tongues of fire that were visible that rested on their head. They spoke in tongues, languages, known languages, and began to proclaim the mighty works of God in languages that they had not learned or not heard. They began to articulately speak other languages, so that other people could understand them in their dialects from different parts of the world.
Then they had great boldness. Remember earlier, when Jesus was crucified? What did the disciples do? They ran away. They ran away. Am I the only person here who’s ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail several times?
“Brave, brave Sir Robin. When danger showed its ugly head, he turned his little tail and fled. No, I didn’t. Yes, you did. Shut up. Be quiet.” His minstrels are mocking him. That’s what the disciples did. They ran away.
Now they’re standing out in front of everyone proclaiming the mighty works of God. They’re filled with courage, with boldness. And finally, they have the appearance of being drunk. I’ve heard—and I used to believe this—”Well, that was because they were speaking in other languages.” But then I thought about that.
I grew up amongst a lot of drunkenness in my household and in the circles that my family… It was just a normal social thing for the people to get drunk. And one of the things that drunkenness does not impart to people is the ability to articulate a foreign language accurately. You, in fact, lose the ability to articulate your own language accurately. “Ociffer, I’m not as think as you drunk I am,” you know? And yet here they’re articulating a foreign language accurately, and people are saying they’re drunk.
That could just be slander and mockery. Or the other thing—and now that I’ve witnessed this is one of the things where you say, “Well, you don’t make your theology based on experience,” but no, when you have experiences, it may help you understand what the Bible is saying. And I’ve been in contexts where the Holy Spirit has fallen on people, and guess what? Drunk. They had a hard time standing, a hard time walking. They were laughing hysterically. They appeared to be drunk. In fact, we call that “being drunk in the Spirit.”
And so there was an appearance of drunkenness. Maybe it was because they were speaking foreign language articulately. Now that I’ve experienced otherwise, I actually think that they were so filled with joy and so filled with the Spirit, they were having a hard time controlling their bodies. They gave the appearance of drunkenness. And so those are things that happened.
Now, if you’ll turn over with me to Acts 4. The disciples begin to preach the gospel boldly, and because of that, they run into trouble with the Sanhedrin and they are arrested. And when they’re arrested, they’re threatened. And when they’re threatened—again, great boldness—they don’t hide. They go to a prayer meeting. And what do they pray for? They don’t pray to be protected. They pray for more boldness that they may proclaim the wonderful works of God, and God will stretch out his hand and perform signs and wonders. And verse 29 of Acts 4 says this:
29 And now, Lord, consider their threats, and grant that your servants may speak your word with all boldness, 30 while you stretch out your hand for healing, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” 31 When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly. (Acts 4:29-31, CSB)
All right, wait. Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Holy Spirit comes in. Acts 2, they’re filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the same crowd that’s Acts 2. It’s not a new crowd. These aren’t unbelievers who are just converted. These are people who have had been breathed upon, the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost, and now, just a few days later, they are filled again.
Now I come to one of my original statements. I don’t believe what I was taught as a young evangelical, that when you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes in you, you’re filled with the Holy Spirit, settled, done, complete. Nothing else happens. Nothing else is necessary.
Then I started hanging around some Pentecostals, and they said, “Oh, no, you got to speak in tongues.” They prayed for me, and I spoke in tongues. Now you got it. Now, filled, complete. Now you’re done. Now you’ve got the whole package. You only had half the package before. Now you got the whole package.
But here, this is the third time. My evangelical tradition taught me there is one blessing. My Pentecostal tradition taught me there are two blessings. The Bible says there’s more than that.
Eleanor Mumford was a—if you know the band, Mumford and Sons, the son, Mumford, is the son of the Mumfords in England, who for years were the leaders of the Vineyard movement in England. And Eleanor Mumford had a couple of great quotes, and my favorite one was, some Pentecostal went up and asked her, “When did you receive the second blessing?” And she said, “Between the first and the third,” which I thought was a great answer.
This is the third blessing. It’s three. I mean, there’s only two kinds of people. There’s only, or excuse me, there’s only three kinds of people in the world. Those who can count and those who can’t. Come on, help me out. Help me out. Thank you. Thank you.
All right, so this is three. And what happens in Acts 4? The room shook. Remember, you had a physical manifestation where the wind blew in Acts 2. This time you have a very localized earthquake. One room. One room shook.
All right, what else happened? They were filled. They asked for boldness. They were filled with boldness. They went out and began to continue to preach in the face of the threat of persecution with more boldness.
If you read further in Acts, and I’m just going to—I don’t have time tonight to read the full Scripture, but do your own homework. Be a Berean. Read through Acts 5:16, and you’ll see that everything they prayed for happened. Their community became a community of love. At the end of Acts 4 is this great description of the generosity and the love of the early Christian community. And so they developed a loving community. Generosity is the result of the filling of the Holy Spirit. You’re no longer afraid, and you just give stuff away.
And then amazing signs and wonders. Signs and wonders in judgment—Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Holy Spirit because they want to look good to other people. Remember, if you know the story of Ananias and Sapphira, Barnabas gave a large sum of money to the church. He sold a piece of property and gave all of it, laid all of it at the disciples’ feet. Ananias and Sapphira saw how much everybody applauded Barnabas for that, so they had a sum of money; they sold a piece of property. They withheld some of it, which was perfectly their right to do unless God had told them to give it all. We have no indication of that in Scripture. They gave some of it, and Peter, in the power of the Holy Spirit, recognized they were lying and said—you know, for the approval of men—and said, “Is this all the money?” And instead of saying, “Nah, it’s 50%”—beats a tithe, good for you; go on your way, go on your merry way, you’re fine. But they lie. They say, “Oh yeah, this is all of it. We’re as good as Barnabas.” They died. And then, in one of the great Bible understatements, fear grabbed the whole church. No kidding.
But then it said the disciples went out and performed many signs and wonders. And here’s where you get the story of Peter’s shadow. As people would line up their sick, Peter would just walk by them and his shadow would fall on them. People would be healed. Great signs and wonders.
I was preaching on this one time and I said, “I’ve seen people healed, but I’ve never seen a shadow healing.” There was a friend of mine sitting out in the congregation who had a bad back, and the minute I said that, the Lord spoke to him and said, “If you will go stand in Kevin’s shadow, I’ll heal you.” So he walked up afterwards and he shared that with me. And we were in a room kind of like this where lights are all over. It’s kind of hard to find a shadow. I mean, I can… Yeah, right there. I can see it there. I got a little shadow. All right. And so he came up and said, “This is what the Lord told me.” And so I kind of walked around till we could kind of find a shadow. He stepped into it, and the back pain left immediately. I’ve witnessed, been part of, a shadow healing. Isn’t that cool? I know. I want more of those. I’m a big guy. I could get a whole crowd, you know, whoosh, whoosh. Get ya. Yeah, there you go.
Amazing signs and wonders as the Holy Spirit is released. The next one I want to look at is Acts 7. Acts 7, toward the end of it, Stephen is lecturing and preaching to the Sanhedrin about their hard-heartedness toward God, and they don’t like it, so they kill him. And at the end, as they’re getting ready to stone him, if I can turn my Bible page, here’s what the Bible says about that. That’s Acts 8. All right, here we go. Acts 7:54.
54 When they heard these things, they were enraged and gnashed their teeth at him. (Acts 7:54, CSB)
“Stephen”—listen to what it says:
55 Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven. He saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 He said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57 They yelled at the top of their voices, covered their ears, and together rushed against him. 58 They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.(Acts 7:55-58, CSB)
And then he forgave them, just as Christ did, and he died. He fell asleep.
60 He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And after saying this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:60, CSB)
If melatonin doesn’t work, get an enraged mob to stone you, and you will fall asleep. All right? In the Bible, he fell asleep. He didn’t die.
But here’s what happened to Stephen: full of the Holy Spirit, he has a vision of heaven before he dies and has the grace to die like Jesus and forgive those who are killing him. Dear ones, the Holy Spirit can fill you with the grace to die when the time comes. Whether it be as a martyr or at a ripe old age, you will receive, filled with the Holy Spirit, the grace to die.
My favorite one, probably in the whole New Testament, is Acts 8. Philip goes down to Samaria, right? You all know where Samaria is, right? Galilee is in the north, Judea is in the south, and in between them is just Some Area. All right? That’s where Samaria is.
And so Philip goes to Samaria, and he preaches the Samaritans, which is—they’re not Jews. They’re half breeds. The Jews didn’t like them; the Samaritans didn’t like the Jews. And yet he performs many signs and wonders and miracles. And it says very specifically, the Samaritans believed and were baptized.
Word got back to Jerusalem that there’s a revival in Samaria, and so Peter and John go down to Samaria. And when they go down, they recognize, this is recognizable. They believed, they’re born again, but they hadn’t been filled with the Holy Spirit. And so Peter and John lay their hands on them and pray, and apparently they’re filled with the Holy Spirit.
Now, it doesn’t say what happened. It doesn’t say they spoke in tongues, doesn’t say they prophesied, doesn’t say they were bold, doesn’t say there were signs and wonders and miracles. It doesn’t say that a flame fell on their heads or the room shook or wind blew. Doesn’t say, or they appeared drunk. It doesn’t say any of that. So how do we know what happened? We don’t know what happened. But I am convinced of this: something noticeable, visible, manifested and happened.
Why am I convinced of that? Because Simon the sorcerer was so impressed by whatever happened, he offered Peter and John money to have that power to lay his hands on people so what happened to the people in Samaria he could do as well. And Peter gently tells him to go to hell. Kind of what he says. “To hell with you and your money because you thought the gift of God could be bought.”
But here’s the point I want to make: the Pentecostals make a mistake here, in my estimation. They say, “Well, obviously something happened, and obviously that something was they spoke in tongues.” I’ve heard many Pentecostals argue that from Acts 8. And my point is, you’re arguing from the silence of Scripture. All right? But what I am convinced of is something happened that was visible, dramatic, impressive, mind-blowing. I mean, I can’t understand Simon’s reaction—you know, there’s a bunch of people sitting there. Peter and John lay their hands on them, say, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and they’re still just sitting there, and Simon goes, “I want money to do that.” It’s like, no. I mean, we know that if not one of these things, something else happened.
So that’s Acts 8, which is great. It leaves room for today, because people do this with the Bible. They put the Bible in a box. In other words, at the end of this, I’m going to read a list of the things that happen in the Book of Acts when the Holy Spirit comes and fills people. And there’ll be people who will come along and say, “That’s all that. That’s it. That’s the complete list.” The Bible doesn’t say that’s a complete list. And so something else will happen when somebody prayed for to receive the Holy Spirit, and people will say, “Where’s that in the Bible?” Well, it’s not in the Bible. My question is, is it consistent with what’s in the Bible?
I think what Paul, or I think what Luke is showing us here is when the Holy Spirit comes upon people, fills people, that dramatic things happen, power is released, and it’s noticeable. I think that’s the point. But I think you can leave the specifics to God. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.
Sometimes when people say, when people criticize, they say, “Where’s that in the Bible?” And they’re good church people. I say, “The same place mission sending agencies and Sunday school and church buildings are in the Bible.” It’s like, not everything’s in the Bible, people. The Bible gives us enough. It doesn’t give us everything. It gives us enough to believe and to pursue.
All right, Acts 9. Acts 9. Saul has this dramatic encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He’s led blind into the city. God gives Ananias, speaks to Ananias—not the, obviously not the one that was killed earlier—speaks to Ananias and says, “Go lay your hands on Saul.” Ananias does what we all do when God speaks to us. We try to give God more information that He might not have. “God, don’t you know that this man came into Damascus to persecute us, and he might kill me?” Like, “In case you didn’t know that, God, before I go, I want to make sure that you understood that.”
And God’s like, “Yeah, Ananias, I had that piece of information available, but he is my servant that I have chosen to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. Now go. Go.” And so Ananias faithfully goes.
And then when Ananias appears, verse 17 in Acts 9:
17 Ananias went and entered the house. He placed his hands on him and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road you were traveling, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 9:17, CSB)
We don’t know if Saul had already converted to Jesus before this. My guess is that the road to Damascus did the job. You know, he believed in Jesus, and now he’s just waiting for what’s going to happen next. That’s my guess. I’m arguing from the silence of the Bible. This may have been his conversion as well. So he may have been filled with the Holy Spirit at his conversion as well.
By the way, just because it’s a second blessing doesn’t mean it can’t be a simultaneous blessing with the first. There are many people who experience this outpouring with the Holy Spirit the moment they confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. We’ll see that in the next example in Acts 10. There are many people who receive this outpouring when they’re water baptized. That’s been my experience. And we’ll see that in Acts 19. They get baptized and are filled. It might say Paul also laid his hands on them, but they got baptized. And then boom, this started to happen.
So here he goes in verse 17, he appeared to him on the road.
17 Ananias went and entered the house. He placed his hands on him and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road you were traveling, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 At once something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he got up and was baptized. 19 And after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul was with the disciples in Damascus for some time. (Acts 9:17-19, CSB)
All right, again, there’s no direct reference to what happened. But very soon afterwards, Paul begins preaching so boldly in Damascus about Jesus, they want to kill him. So I think we can safely assume that he received boldness. Whether he received them at this moment or not, certainly, in the Book of Acts, you have other instances—and in Corinthians, Paul talks about other instances—of things that happened to Paul in his lifetime.
He spoke in tongues. He says in 1 Corinthians 14, as he’s telling the people in Corinth, don’t be jabbering about in tongues in the middle of the service. It’s confusing. But then he goes on and he says, “I speak in tongues”—what does he say?—”more than all of you. I speak in tongues more than all of you.”
18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you; (1 Corinthians 14:18, CSB)
All right? So it’s a useful thing to Paul.
I had one lady, you know, she said, “Well, I prayed in tongues for a while, but” she said, “I didn’t see the point.” Okay, well, Paul did it more than everybody. I’m glad Paul didn’t say, “I don’t see the point. God, it’s not logical, it’s not reasonable. I don’t see the point. I’m going to quit doing it.” Paul says, “When you do it, you edify yourself.”
Some people say, “Well, see, you’re just being a selfish Christian.” No, when you edify yourself as a Christian, you’re becoming a stronger Christian and able to serve others. I use the analogy of like a uh, if you’re a quarterback on a football team, you have linemen. And on the other side, there are linemen. And those linemen are top, prime, incredibly strong, 300-pound athletes who are getting paid a ton of money to crush you. Now you also have linemen… top, prime, 300-plus-pound athletes, lifting weights, getting paid an incredible amount of money to keep those other guys off you.
Now, if my linemen, if I’m the quarterback and my linemen who are paid to protect me are in the weight room lifting weights, to do what? Edify themselves. Build themselves up. That’s what the word edify means. Am I going to say, “Stop doing that? That’s selfish?” No, I want them edified.
I’m a pastor of a church. I want you to be strong Christians. You know? I want to have a church full of fired up, Holy Spirit filled, excited, loving Jesus, committed to serve Christians. So go ahead and build yourself up. Yeah, yeah. You might improve on that status. Go ahead and build yourself up.
Paul spoke in tongues. He spoke in tongues. And I’ve heard the cessationists say, “Oh, that just meant he was bilingual and spoke in several languages.” No, if you look at the context in 1 Corinthians 14, when Paul says, “I spoke in tongues more than all of you,” it’s an adverb, not an adjective. Doesn’t mean I spoke in more languages. He said, “I did this activity more than the rest of you.” It’s amazing how people are just so fixated upon biblical inerrancy and then twist the Scriptures to support their preconceived notions or their lack of experience. Pet peeve of mine.
All right, Paul spoke in tongues. He prophesied. There were times Paul prophesied, and certainly we know that through the hands of Paul, incredible signs and wonders and miracles were performed.
Acts 10. Peter goes to Cornelius’ house. He has the vision of, you know, God presenting to him unclean food and Peter saying, “Nothing unclean…” And God says, “No longer call unclean what I have declared clean.” And the point of that vision is God is declaring that the Gentiles in Jesus are clean. We miss this, but almost the whole New Testament is written in the context of Jewish-Gentile controversy. And it’s written to show us the mystery of the Gospel, that the Jewish Messiah, God’s chosen people, His Messiah, is now becoming the universal Messiah. One new man, Jews and Gentiles together.
And we, you know, we look at the Bible, say, “Well, this is how you get saved.” That’s true. It talks about that, but it’s a book of incredible, the incredible miracle of reconciliation where God is bringing together these two distinct tribes, these two distinct worldviews, and He’s bringing them together under Jesus as one.
That’s what Pentecost in Acts 2 that we read is about, remember? What did God do at the Tower of Babel? Human beings were so evil, He had to divide them by language. What does He do in Acts 2? Now that Christ has come and the Holy Spirit has come, “I now will use language to do what? Unite you. Because I’m making one new man. I’m making one new man.”
And so this is—Acts 10 is a huge chapter in the Bible because the Gospel went to the Samaritans, that’s a half step. This is a full step. When Peter does this, the Jewish Christians rebuke him. “You went into a Gentile’s house?” And Peter’s like, “Hey, they spoke in tongues.” And they said, “Oh, okay, it’s good.” That was his argument. He didn’t even argue the vision. The vision makes it later. He said, “Well, you know, when I preached to them, they spoke in tongues,” and they go, “Oh, okay, they must be one of us.”
And so as Peter is preaching to them, two things happen. Let me read it. It says… let’s see. Oh, verse 44.
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. 46 For they heard them speaking in tongues and declaring the greatness of God. Then Peter responded, (Acts 10:44-46, CSB)
Then Peter’s like, “Well, I guess we can baptize them. I guess we could baptize them. They got it.”
This is one of the times where it happens—which tells you that God is not all that caught up with the order of things. Oh, my gosh. We love the systematic theology. We love to order things. First this, then this, then this. All right? Pentecostals: first you’re born again, then you have the second blessing. Here, first you’re born again, then you’re baptized, then you have the second blessing. Here, it’s like born again, second blessing all at once. Oh, I guess we’ll baptize them. God’s not all caught up on some of the things we’re caught up in.
But as the Holy Spirit came upon them, they began to speak in tongues, and they were released in the praise of God. They were released in the praise of God.
Acts 13. Two more. You guys doing all right? You bored? All right. If you were, I wouldn’t stop anyway. But I might speed it up.
So Paul begins to, Paul and Barnabas go out on their first missionary journey. The first place they go, there was a man named Sergius Paulus, who was an intelligent man, and he was the proconsul. But he had a false prophet named Elymas, or Bar Jesus, who was with him. And as Paul began to preach to Sergius Paulus, Elymas the sorcerer opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. That was verse 8.
8 But Elymas the sorcerer (that is the meaning of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. (Acts 13:8, CSB)
Now verse 9. “But Saul, also called Paul”—here it is—”filled with the Holy Spirit, stared straight at Elymas and said, ‘You are full of all kinds of deceit, trickery, the son of the devil and an enemy of all that is right. Won’t you ever stop perverting the straight paths of the Lord? Now look, the Lord’s hand is against you. you’re going to be blind, and you will not see the sun for a time.’ And immediately a mist of darkness fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.”
9 But Saul—also called Paul—filled with the Holy Spirit, stared straight at Elymas 10 and said, “You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery, you son of the devil and enemy of all that is right. Won’t you ever stop perverting the straight paths of the Lord? 11 Now, look, the Lord’s hand is against you. You are going to be blind, and will not see the sun for a time.” Immediately a mist and darkness fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand. (Acts 13:9-11, CSB)
So Paul, already filled with the Holy Spirit. When it says “filled with the Holy Spirit,” that’s not a past tense. Yeah, he was already filled with the Holy Spirit. That is an event that happened there. He was filled with—that’s what the Greek indicates—he was filled with the Holy Spirit at that moment, to pronounce that judgment on Elymas, and the power of the Holy Spirit went out and blinded that man to the effect that Sergius Paulus said, “All right, I’m in. I believe. I believe.” I wonder if Elymas came around to believe, too. We’re never told, but I might reconsider my opposition if somebody struck me blind.
Finally, there’s Acts 19:1-3:
1 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior regions and came to Ephesus. He found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” “No,” they told him, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 “Into what then were you baptized?” he asked them. “Into John’s baptism,” they replied. 4 Paul said, “John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people that they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 When they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began to speak in tongues and to prophesy. 7 Now there were about twelve men in all. (Acts 19:1-7, CSB)
So in Ephesus, Acts 19, several things happened. First, they spoke in tongues and they prophesied, and then a great revival broke out in Ephesus. And it says the revival was so strong—one of the Bible’s hyperbolic statements—but anyway, the revival in Ephesus was so strong, it said all the people in that region of Asia heard the gospel.
Now, one of the guys who made his living through idolatry, making idols to the goddess Diana—I think? I have to reread it—was so upset because people had stopped buying his idols because they were worshiping Jesus. And so he raised up a crowd against them, and there was a great riot. And so what does that indicate? When the Holy Spirit is poured out to the extent that there brings revival, which we’ve been praying for, there’ll be revival. Guess what? It’s not going to make everything hunky dory. There will be opposition. There will break out spiritual warfare, and spiritual warfare is broke up.
There’s two reasons a bunch of stuff is going wrong in your life. And it’s really important to figure, to try to discern what these two reasons are. One is because you’re being stupid. You just made a bunch of stupid choices, all right? All been there, all done it. Like, you know, people sometimes come in to me and they lay out their woes, you know, and “This happened and this happened. Poor me, and this happened and this happened. And, you know, I have no job and all my bosses are unfair to me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
It’s like, all right, I think I see where this is going. I think I see where the problem is here. All right? It’s not really spiritual warfare you’re experiencing. You’re lazy and ungrateful. Now, I’m much gentler. I save all my hard words for preaching. If you would come in to me for counseling, I’ll be very gentle. I won’t just flat out say, “You’re lazy and ungrateful.” I’ll help you figure it out.
Anyway, just don’t be afraid to come talk to me. I’m nice in private. But, you know, I mean, let’s face it. We all know people. Their problems are they haven’t taken responsibility for their life. Right?
However, there’s another reason Christians have problems. Because God is using you so wonderfully and so powerfully. Listen, hell has a limited number of arrows. The devil is not omnipotent. He doesn’t have all power. He has a limited power. And if the devil’s shooting arrows at you, rejoice. You’ve become a threat. You’ve become a threat. And those arrows that are being shot at you aren’t being shot at one of your other brothers and sisters in Christ and their walk with Jesus because you’re now drawing the attack of the enemy. All right, so spiritual warfare is not a bad thing. Spiritual warfare is not a bad thing.
And here’s what I say when people come and say, “Oh, Pastor, I’m under terrible attack from the enemy.” Great! Attack him back! Engage. You’re on the winning side, you know? He doesn’t have the Name of Jesus. You got the Name of Jesus. He doesn’t have the resurrection. He doesn’t have the resurrection. Well, I don’t, I don’t mock, and I don’t do this often, but sometimes when dealing with demonized people, some of them are resistant, and I remind them of this. I speak to the demon and I say, “I am an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead. And you know and I know that my boss beat your boss,” and it actually helps. You know, and I know that my boss beat your boss. You guys couldn’t hold him in the grave. He got up. That’s the firm I’m representing, the one that won.
So if you get caught in spiritual warfare, don’t whine. You can whine for a little while. I whine a lot. I mean, I gotta admit, I whine a lot. I pray to God. I pray Psalm 13 a lot. How long, O God? How long? Why did the Seahawks throw the game away in the fourth quarter today? Come on. Why didn’t my team ever win? I’m a baby.
But then God reminds me, “Be thankful.” And if he doesn’t remind me, my wife reminds me, “You have it so good.” I mean, they’re all reminding me I have it so good. I do, I do. You can, if I ever get too whiny around you, you can say, “Hey, you get to pastor us. You have it so good.”
By the way, you guys are on the top of my list of things I give God thanks for. You’re on the top of my list.
All right, so revival, tongues, prophecy, spiritual warfare. Alright, so in the Book of Acts, what happens when the Holy Spirit falls upon people, comes upon people, when they’re filled with the Holy Spirit? A bunch of stuff. There’s the sound of wind. There’s visions of fire. There’s tongues. There is boldness, the appearance of drunkenness. Rooms shake. Prophecy is released. Community is built, generosity is released. Signs and wonders happen. People are released in praise of God. Revival breaks out. Spiritual warfare happens.
Now, just to say, I don’t think this is an exhaustive list. Oh, visions of heaven and grace to die. Just to say that I don’t think there’s an exhaustive list. One of the things that I’ve noticed when people have a wonderful encounter with God and are filled with the Holy Spirit is they have an increased desire to read the Bible. All of a sudden, it’s like “I just got so hungry for God’s word.” That isn’t even in the list, but I think it’s a manifestation of the same thing.
All right, so what do I think this is? When you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes. But it’s like when my wife and I were driving through the Midwest. We went through western Illinois and Iowa, and corn, soybeans… Then you come into these little small towns, one after the other. As you’re coming into every small town, there is a distinguishing mark in that town—flat plains, so you see it. It’s a water tower. It’s the highest elevation in town. Filled with water. Why? So the town can get water pressure and water goes down. Right?
You got this, you got this huge water tank and you know the name of the town printed on it. And it’s just all over the Midwest. Fair drone through the Midwest. You see it all over the place. I came to Jesus. That water tank was built and filled with, in fact, unlimited supply, right? The Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. Poured out, Poured out. Not dribbled out, not sprinkled out. Poured out. Unlimited supply.
But in my house, if I want to take a shower and I step into the shower and say, “Well, there’s an unlimited supply,” I have to do one little thing, don’t I? I got to turn the knobs. Then all of a sudden, what happens? That unlimited supply starts to come into my house and saturate me.
I think that these fillings, these coming upons that the Book of Acts talks about, I think that’s the best analogy I have of it—that every Christian has the Holy Spirit. And so sometimes when Pentecostals say, “Well, they haven’t received the Holy Spirit,” I get the lingo, but I think it’s offensive to people. I think, you know, people are like, “What do you mean, I don’t have the Holy Spirit?” “Well, you haven’t spoken in tongues. You obviously don’t have the Holy Spirit.” Billy Graham didn’t speak in tongues, best I know. He had the Holy Spirit, and he was anointed with the Holy Spirit.
By the way, that’s the word that revivalists, Charismatics, and Pentecostals use for this filling. That’s the best—they think of it as speaking in tongues. But I think the word they use often is “he had an anointing.” What’s that anointing? The Holy Spirit has come upon a person to heal the sick, to cast out a devil, to evangelize to the lost, to edify the church with teaching, to speak a word of prophecy.
Now, if you’re really going to be in the Charismatic/Pentecostal tradition, you can’t use the word anointing. You have to take the “-ing” and make it “-en.” It’s the anoint-en. All right? I got the anoint-en. All right? And you have to say God in multiple syllables. Go-hod poured out His Holy Ghost upon me. And “Ghost” is better than “Spirit.” Both are acceptable. But you really want the anoint-en from Go-hod? Say the Holy Ghost. Go-hod anointed me with the Holy Ghost.
I’m making fun. But you know what? Tell you what, if I’m sick and I got cancer and I want the cancer to go away, I want to go to those guys. I want to go to guys who believe in the anoint-en. I want to go to people who believe in being filled with the Holy Spirit.
One more evidence that this is a repeatable action that God does in our lives. Paul talks in Ephesians 5:18. He says, “Do not be drunk with wine. Do not be drunk with wine, which only leads to debauchery, but instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
18 And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit: (Ephesians 5:18, CSB)
And again, I don’t know a lot of Greek, but I know enough to look it up. “Be filled” is not a completed—Greek has six tenses, not three. And it’s not in the completed, it’s not in the aorist tense, an act completed in the past. It’s in the continuing tense. In other words, be filled regularly like your car. Be filled regularly like your belly. Be filled regularly like your cup of emotions.
Bill Bright, the great evangelist of the 20th century, one of the great evangelists of the 20th century, said he would wake up every morning. He would breathe in and breathe out. And as he breathed in, he would say, “Holy Spirit, come and fill me. Come and fill me.”
All right, it’s not a reservoir. He’s not a reservoir. He’s a river. It is experiential. We can run dry. We can turn off the faucets. Deliberate sin turns off the faucet. Eventually, deliberate sin turns off the faucet. Ignoring God turns off the faucet. Lack of gratitude can turn off the faucet. Unforgiveness.
And so we can run dry, but we can be filled again. And I think we need to be filled on a regular basis. I remember—God speaks to me often in rebuke, but He’s not mean or harsh in His rebuke. He’s very gentle. And I went to Brownsville. Those of you can remember the Brownsville revival in the 90s. And a bunch of us—I was a Methodist at the time—a bunch of us Methodist pastors went to Brownsville, and they called all the Methodist pastors forward. They were an Assembly of God church. And they said, We came from you Methodists, you know, we owe you. You know, you’re the tree. We came out and we want to lay hands on you and pray for you.” And they began to pray for us. And guys were falling and dropping and all these, you know, good proper Methodists were getting filled with the Holy Spirit. And that was the first time I was ever slain in the Spirit. Just want to say, took four of them to knock me over. All right. Took four of them. Well, actually, the third guy touched me and I went down, but just for a second. But when the fourth guy touched me, I was down for the count. All right. Just couldn’t get up.
I had a conversation with God. It’s like, “All right, God, what’s going on?” I felt like God said, “Why do you analyze everything?” And I argued with God because I analyze everything. I said, “Because that’s the way you made me.” And then I felt like God just said, “Just relax and enjoy it, all right? Just chill.”
But then I got up, and I was back there with my friends. Then they called everybody forward, and I saw these people going up. People were praying for them. They would fall. Then they would get up and get back in line, and they would get prayed for again. And they would fall. They would get up, get back in line, and prayed for again.
And I started to judge these people in my heart. I said, “Oh, they’re just experience junkies.” Which I had no idea—I don’t know if they were experience junkies or not. I don’t know anything about them. Right? But I, you know, “I’m a smart guy. I know it’s, they’re just experience junkies.” And I’ll tell you, the Lord rebuked me, and I’ll never forget this rebuke. He wasn’t, He didn’t yell at me. He didn’t scold me. I just heard these words, and it chastised me to my core.
“Kevin, would it be that you were that hungry. Would it be that you were that hungry.”
So when I pastored a church in California and this stuff was happening—and I called them pew jumpers—every time I did an altar call, people would come up. You could do a specific altar call, and they’d be like, they didn’t care. You know, one armed, blind, pregnant women. And these teenage boys would come forward. “Close enough. Close enough. Almost described me,” you know. “Whatever.”
I just said, “Listen, listen.” I said, “I love pew jumpers. I love people who just want as…” and here was my condition. I said, “We’ll pray for the Holy Spirit to fill you as often as you want, as long as you’re giving it away. Because if you’re just getting filled for the experience, yeah, then it’s nothing. But if you’re getting filled with the power of God to do the works of God in the world that God wants to redeem,” I said, “come up as much as you want.”
I said, “I’ll tell you what. Push old ladies out of the way.” And I told the old ladies, “Trip them with your cane so you get there first.”
“Kevin…” Lord, let me never forget those words, man. “Would it be that you were that hungry.” Lord, make me that hungry. I pray that in sincerity right now.
I just want to confess to you. I came up here full of fire, and years of disappointment have dampened that fire. And I repent. I’m preaching to myself tonight. Lord, would it be that I was that hungry to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I pray fresh fire on lots of people, but I pray it now for me. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
All right, dear ones, let’s come and take the food of God tonight. Are you hungry? There’s food for you. There’s food for you. The food of God for the people of God. Come and eat.
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September 28, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
There is no other name given on heaven and earth by which men and women might be saved than the Name of Jesus, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. You are saved. You are saved and you’re being saved. And He is a great and wonderful Savior.
We worship you tonight. Almighty God, our Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We welcome your presence with us, and now just open our eyes to your word that we might learn it and be transformed by it. We want more than Bible information. We want Bible transformation. And we ask this, and we trust that you will do it for us and in us in the name of King Jesus, Amen.
All right, so every once in a while, every year or two, I preach the reminder sermon of who as the Firehouse Church, and we are the church—I call it the three-legged stool, a stool of three legs, and then the seat is the fourth kind of thing, but… but a three-legged stool is a sign of stability. And what I mean by the three-legged stool is: what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus and filled with His Holy Spirit? What does that look like? All right?
Many people, the traditional kind of view is you say the prayer, you ask Jesus into your heart, and you’re filled with the Spirit. And then the Pentecostals came along, and actually before them, even the Wesleyans, and said, “No, there’s a second blessing, a second filling.” The Wesleyans believed it was for entire sanctification. The Pentecostals were seeking that and started speaking in tongues, said, “That’s it. That’s the evidence of the second filling, which is for power to do the ministry of Jesus.”
And so they’ve debated. It’s been a debate for the last hundred years or so, and you’ll hear Pentecostals say, and I always cringe when they say this, even though I kind of are one of them. I cringe when I hear them say this. They said, you know, they always say to evangelicals, “Have you received the Spirit?” And, you know, people feel like, “Well, yeah, you know, I got the Holy Spirit.” And in fact, I believe you do. I believe if you have Jesus in your heart, you have the Holy Spirit. But there is a blessing that comes. And here’s where I kind of agree with the others, the Pentecostal group. There is a blessing that comes, where there is anointing or anointings. I would actually say anointings with power.
One of the leaders of the Vineyard movement in the ’90s, Eleanor Mumford, somebody asked her one time a good Pentecostal question. “When did you receive the second blessing?” And I love her answer. She said, “Between the first and the third.” It’s a great answer. It’s a great answer.
Paul says in Ephesians, be filled with the Spirit. And that in the Greek tense is a continual “be filled and keep on being filled.” And so it’s not just a one time event, it’s not just a two time event.
But I want to ask another question tonight. Whatever it is, what does it look like? What does it look like? And this is kind of the theme verse for the Firehouse Church.
2 Timothy 1:6-7:
6 Therefore, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. (2 Timothy 1:6-7, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
All right, I’m going to use Greek words tonight because every once in a while I just want to remind you that I went to seminary and you can go, “Ooh, wow. Hey, great.” Yeah. All right.
Alright. So… no fear.
Four key things. The three legs are going to be power, love, and a sound mind, and fear—courage is the thing that holds those things together. C.S. Lewis says courage is the foundation of all other virtues. Courage—you know, if you make love your aim, but you don’t have courage, your love is going to quit when it gets scary. Your faith is going to quit when the risk gets too great. Your hope is going to wane when it seems hopeless. And so, courage is the thing that keeps you on your feet.
And so, he says you did not receive a spirit of fear. It’s very interesting… in the Book of Acts as people argue about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit—and there are several instances in the Book of Acts when people are filled with the Holy Spirit, and they speak in tongues. That has become the Pentecostal doctrine. However, one of the things that’s mentioned, I think a few more times even than speaking in tongues, is they were filled with—anybody know?—boldness, boldness, courage, courage to proclaim the gospel.
One of the things that I’ve seen just, and this is too short a time to tell, but one of the things I have seen in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death has been other Christians rising up with more courage, more boldness.
And so the Spirit comes and He brings boldness to preach the gospel, boldness to live the Christian way, courage. The Holy Spirit does not bring fear, does not bring timidity. And, dear ones, we can have courage because if you heard me said, oh, a couple hundred times, we’re playing a game that we’ve already won. We’re playing a game that we already won. Bill Johnson says, “You know, you can’t threaten me with heaven.” You can’t threaten me with heaven.
Dear ones, we cannot lose if we do not quit. We are playing a game we’ve already won. When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, He won the eternal victory, and by us uniting ourselves with Him, we share in His life, death, and resurrection.
And listen, this story—it’s hard here on earth. I was talking to a young man recently, and he was telling me his woes. And his woes are largely of his own making. Because though he gave his life to Christ, he still vacillates between two worlds. He gave his life to Christ when his wife was divorcing him, which a lot of people do in crisis. Now he’s upset because his teenage daughter won’t respect him.
I said, “Well, what’s going on?” He says, “Well, you know, she just, you know, her mother’s living with her boyfriend, and she doesn’t like that. I’m living with my girlfriend, and…” Whoa, time out, man. You gave your life to Jesus.
“I know, I know, but, you know… I want her to go to church with me and stuff. I just don’t want to push it.” And he’s trying to wiggle off the hook, you know. He says, “I know it’s wrong.”
And listen, I’m a nice guy. Don’t act, don’t look surprised. I’m a nice guy. I didn’t beat him over the head, but I said this. I said, “Lookit, John.” I said, you know, just, I said, “I get it. A woman’s love is a powerful thing, man. It feels great to have to hold a woman in your arms. And, you know, that’s a powerful thing.” I said, “But, but, you know, you’ve gone through a divorce, and it’s a tough time. And I get it. It’s hard to follow Jesus. You’re not following Him doing this. And it’s hard to follow Jesus. It’s hard to say no to that. But you know what? As you’re telling me the woes of your life, you know what’s harder than following Jesus? Not following Jesus. Pick your hard.” Pick your hard. It’s hard to follow Jesus. It’s harder not to follow Jesus.
And so, dear ones, in this world, we have struggles. Jesus said we’d have struggles. All right. I’m never going to blow smoke and tell you guys, “Oh, everything’s hap-, you know, everything’s wonderful. Zippity doo dah.” You know, they’re going to be—
I just, I tell you, I’m a little weird. It, like, big problems typically do not faze me. I’m very calm in big problems. You know, our house caught on fire. My wife’s like, “Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.” And I’m like, “Honey, it’s just… You know what? It’s just a house. We got insurance. It’ll be fine.” Big problems don’t faze me. But my jack on my computer wasn’t working. Oh my gosh. I’m just like, “I hate life. What’s going on here?” And my family is mystified by it. You know, little things like mosquito bites. You know, I get a broken leg, and I’d be like, “Well, just take me to the doctor.” You know, they’ll, but, you know, mosquito bites… “I hate mosquitoes. Curse on all mosquitoes.” I don’t know what it is, but I’ve never had it—and the problem is I’ve never had a day without the little things.
The little things are much more frequent than the big things. And the Lord is really drilling this into me. He’s like, “Kevin, be grateful. Be grateful. Be grateful. Stop focusing on the six or seven things.”
Listen. Rabid sports fan here. My team losing can ruin a weekend if I let it. And that’s just ridiculous. What’s even worse is my fantasy team losing, because that’s me, baby. That’s ridiculous. I got a beautiful wife. I got wonderful kids. I got you all in my life. How could I not be happy with these three families? I mean, I’m not even flattering you. I love you all. I love your kids. You know, just, I love your grandson. Haven’t met him yet, but if he’s anything like your two sons and his mom, he’s awesome. Maybe he’s just gonna be like you, Brian. What a blessing to the world that would be. Another generation. That would be awesome.
All right, so we have it good. We’re playing a game we’ve already won. Yes, life is hard. Yes, there’s daily stuff. But dear ones, be grateful. Be grateful. We’re playing a game we already won.
You know, it’s like, they can’t, I saw this great cartoon one time. There’s these two little old ladies in church with their purses and the hats. Remember how little old ladies used to dress for church in the 50s? And laid out before them on the ground was the devil, just flat cold, knocked out on the ground. And one of the little old ladies was looking at the other and said, “Well, Martha, he tried to steal my joy.”
That’s what we do with gratitude. Knock that devil out. We’re playing a game we’ve already won.
Boldness, as I said, is regularly mentioned as evidence of Holy Spirit flowing. The gospel would not spread around the world without boldness. It always takes boldness to witness.
“Lord, I just want to witness. When it’s easy”—you never will. “I just want to pray for the sick when I’m overwhelmed with faith and know for sure they’re going to be healed, and I’m not…” Listen, this whole thing is a risk. Take a risk, take a risk. And so boldness is evidence of the Holy Spirit filling you.
And in that boldness, we walk in power. Dunamis is the Greek word used here. Power to become more like Jesus in character.
Listen, you can’t make yourself a better person. If you could, diets would be successful. New Year’s resolutions would work. There wouldn’t be a 12-step group down the street that people have to go to every week and have rigorous, intense community. It would work if you just said, “Oh, drinking’s ruining my life, I guess I’ll stop.”
It doesn’t work that way. I mean, it sounds like it should. Sounds like it should, right? But you all have bad habits. I don’t know what they are, but if you want to confess them, you can. I don’t know what your bad habits are, but I know that you’ve tried that, you know, “Well, this is stupid. I should quit doing this.” You know, I should quit getting mad and upset about little things. But it doesn’t work that way.
We need help to be like Jesus. We need help to get better. And one of the promises is He will make us like Him in character. We will have the fruit of the Spirit, which grows over time in our lives when we abide and have fellowship with Him, and then what grows in our lives is things like love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
We will mature in the faith, and we will represent Jesus better in our daily walk, in our attitudes, and how well we love people. We will represent him better. That is dunamis power. The Holy Spirit brings the power to improve in character. For some Christians, that’s the whole enchilada. Or as I found out today, the whole Sushi burrito. So that’s, you know, God’s going to make you a better person.
Well, He will make you a better person, but He gives power for some other things. He gives power to become like Jesus in His ministry. The character of Jesus is called the fruit of the Spirit. The power of Jesus to do the ministry of Jesus is called what? Read the sign. Doesn’t it say so up there? No, it doesn’t. Oh, now you have to come up with the answer.
What is it called in the Bible to have the ministry of Jesus? Gifts. Spiritual gifts. You get to do the—
John Wimber is one of my heroes. The founder, well, kind of the founder of the Vineyard movement. When he first became a Christian, he didn’t have much church. He had no church background. He started reading a Bible, and he went to this little Quaker church. Everybody wore suits, and he was a professional musician, and he just, you know, he thought the music was horrible.
And he couldn’t believe—this was in the early 60s—he couldn’t believe that they didn’t have ashtrays in the church. You know, he was used to hanging out in bars and restaurants, and he would always smoke. And he’s like, “Where are the ashtrays?” And he found out they didn’t smoke. And so he’d always just like, bolt out of church the minute the service was over so he could light up his cigarette. And nobody—good Christian people, they’re like, “What do you do with this guy? You know, he’s smoking a cigarette. I don’t want to get too close.”
But anyway, you know, finally one of the elders came up and talked to him, and Wimber had a great question. He’d picked up a black—because he believed at the time the Bible has to be black, you know—got a big black King James Bible, and he started reading the Gospels. The elder came up to him and he said, “Well, brother, you’ve been coming here lately. Got any questions?” And Wimber goes, “Yeah, when do we get to do the stuff?” Great question.
He means, “What do you mean, ‘when do we get to do the stuff?'”
“You know, this guy, He raises the dead, He casts out demons, He heals the sick. When do we get to do the stuff?” And the guy says, “Oh, we don’t do that anymore. We just kind of admire him for doing it.”
Wimber says, “We don’t get to do the stuff?” The guy goes, “No.” And Wimber looked at him, he goes, “Really? What do we do then?” The guy just pointed at the church building where they just finished the service that Wimber did not like. The music was bad. He didn’t understand the sermons, blah, blah, blah. He said, “Well, we do that.” He goes, “That?” He goes, “Yeah.” And he looked at the guy—everybody, I think this line is so funny; nobody ever laughs. I think this line is so funny. He said, “For that, I gave up drugs?”
Guess what, church? We get to do the stuff. Guy came to the Firehouse today. He walks in, he says, “Yeah, I was watching one of your videos, and you mentioned something about deliverance. I need to talk to you after church.” All right, all right. We’re going to kick some devils. So we talked to him after church. I don’t think he had any. He wasn’t sure, but we—you know what happens if you sweep a clean house? Still clean. Yep. I knew you would know, Stevin. And it probably feels good doing it. Might have missed something. All right, so, yeah, still clean.
But, yeah, we get to do the stuff so that Julie can stand up here and give a testimony of the prayers of many righteous at many churches going before God, and we get to see Him do the stuff and give Him glory and give Him praise.
There was a lady years ago at the Firehouse. Well, I just told a story today. We prayed for a woman who’s having seizures, and I remembered Celia. How many of you know Celia? You know Celia, if you’ve been to Bremerton church. Celia is one of our nursery workers. And years ago, she posted on Facebook. She said—you know, she’s a mother of three kids—and she said, “I get migraine headaches.” And she says, “The only place I can go and get any relief is I have to go into a dark, quiet room and just sit in the darkness and in the quiet.” She says, “I have three small children that, you know, this doesn’t happen. I can’t do it.”
And so I read that, and Celia’s sitting in church a couple weeks later, and that’s on my mind, and all of a sudden, God wants to do the stuff. I get what’s called a word of knowledge. I’m preaching my sermon, and I look at Celia, and the Lord stops me. He says, “Tell her that I want to heal her of those headaches.” And it’s always like, okay, is this weird? Am I going to be weird? Am I going to be weird? But I just stopped. I said, “Celia. I’m sorry.” And she kind of looked startled, and I said, “You have migraines, right?” She goes, “Yeah.” I said, “I just believe that God wants to heal you of those migraines.” And we prayed for her right then.
So, anyway, Celia’s kind of shy. She doesn’t talk a lot, so I found this out also on Facebook. A couple weeks later, shows up on my feed—I wasn’t stalking her wall, but it showed up on my feed. Though, listen, if you’re on Facebook, it’s not beyond me to stalk you. It’s public, you know, you want to put stuff out there, I’ll check it out.
But anyway, I wasn’t stalking her, but it came up on my feed again. And she wrote, she says, “Man,” she says, “something happened to me in church.” She said, “First of all, I learned, be careful what you post online because your pastor will read it.” That’s right. And dear ones, you already know this by now, but anything you post, anything you say, anything you do, can and will be used as a sermon illustration. So you’re fair game. All right, so she posts that. And she said—and here, and then she said, “And then he said, ‘You know, let’s pray for these migraines to go.'” And she said, “I felt so silly.” She said, “All these years I’ve been a Christian, and I just kept running off, trying to run off into a dark room.” She said, “I never even prayed about it.” But she said, “We prayed that day in church. When I got home, I prayed again.” And that was maybe eight, nine years ago. And last I checked with Celia, maybe it was a year ago. Never had another migraine. Never had another migraine.
Doing the stuff. He gives us power to do the ministry of Jesus. Supernatural Christianity is normal Christianity. We have been living subnormal Christianity. We’ve been worshiping the Great I Was and the Great I Will Be, but, dear ones, He’s the Great I Am. He’s omnipresent, He’s omniscient, He’s omnipotent. And He’s here. And He’s not just here to teach us about the wonderful things He did in the book. He’s here to release those kinds of things in His kingdom now so it might advance all over the world.
I hear people all the time say, “Jesus didn’t do miracles so that we’d replicate Him. He did miracles so that it would demonstrate that he’s the Son of God.”
Really? Then why did He send out His disciples two by two? And why is it all over the Book of Acts?
“Well, that was just for the first or third century. The first three centuries.” Okay, show me that chapter, verse, text. You know where it is? Nowhere. It’s not in the book. We receive power to become like Jesus in character. We receive power to become like Jesus in ministry.
Now, sometimes the gifts look strange. They look strange. God’s power shows up, and people react strangely, and I want to say two things about when it looks strange. Number one, if it looks strange, it doesn’t mean that God’s not in it. And if you feel uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean that God’s not in it. Some people say “I have the Spirit of discernment” when it simply is the spirit of fear.
Don’t miss the gift because you don’t like the package. Now, sometimes weird isn’t—weird means nothing. If something’s weird, it doesn’t mean it’s not that the Lord’s not in it. I mean, there’s all sorts of weird in the Bible. All right? There’s a prophet he told to walk around naked. What would we do if somebody started walking around the streets of Kitsap County naked saying God told him to do that? We’d all say, “No, he didn’t. That’s weird.” Probably, and that would probably be true. But you know what? You’d have to find out.
Now, there are other people, and I’ve run with this crowd, where if it’s weird, it must be God. It’s like, “No, that doesn’t work either.” What’s the test? Fruit. Does it produce fruit? Does it produce fruit? Don’t miss the gift because you don’t like the package, but don’t become so enamored with the package that you ignore the gift. You understand what I’m saying? Don’t be either of those two extremes.
Whenever something happens that looks a little bizarre, seems a little strange or out of the ordinary, through prayer, laying on hands, ask the Lord, “What are you doing?” It’s an invitation to seek Him. In and of itself, it’s a sign, all right? Signs are not the thing. Okay?
My wife and I just took a road trip through Idaho, and there would be signs. “Coeur d’Alene—so many miles.” We didn’t stop when we saw the sign and say, “Oh, look, honey, let’s rest here. We’re underneath the sign. This is Coeur d’Alene, 54 miles.” No. We wanted to get to Coeur d’Alene. But the sign was helpful. It told us, all right? It prepared us. Like, this is, how much, do we need more gas? Signs prepared us.
The goal is Jesus, not the signs. But the signs point us to Jesus. Don’t hate the signs because they’re not Jesus. Don’t worship the signs because they’re not Jesus. Let the signs be an invitation to you to draw closer to Jesus.
Follow? Say yes even if you don’t. Otherwise, I won’t go on. I’ll keep hitting this point until you get it.
All right. Next, love. We love God through worship and obedience. We give God our lives. He becomes the center. We love God through living a discipled life. We love others through service and generosity. We make others more important than ourselves. And the school of love is your home. Man, it is so easy to love humanity in a vague, warm, fuzzy kind of way. “I just love all people.” You treat your wife like garbage. No. Home is the school of love.
The next school of love is church. Now, we got a really—I mean, it’s a small church, and y’ all are really easy to love. We need, I don’t even want to say this, but we could use a few EGRs in here. Now, I’m not inviting you to become one. I’m just saying, you know what an EGR is right? Extra Grace Required. Yeah, God sends some EGR— You got some EGRs in your life, Karen? Yeah, me, too. I got some EGRs in my life. None in this room, though. None in this room. Isaiah graduated from an EGR a couple months ago, so you’re doing great.
Nah, you’ve always been really easy to love.
All right. We even love and accept ourselves in that Christ has forgiven us. We accept who we are in Christ.
I was, this morning in Bremerton, Derek H. preached, and H. preached, and he preached on 2 Peter. It says, “You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people chosen by God. You once weren’t a people of God, and now you are a people of God.” That’s who we are. That’s who we are.
And many of us listen to the devil’s lies. We walk around and say, “Oh, I’m such a loser, everybody’s better than me.” Listen. Humility—that’s not humility. Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself. It’s just thinking less about yourself and more about others and God. That’s what humility is. You’re not consumed with yourself. It really isn’t about me, and it’s not about you. And actually, that is so relieving. Right? I am so glad I don’t have to run the universe. I can’t run my own life, let alone run the universe.
So we love unconditionally. We love first. Love is the greatest of all virtues, all other virtues, really. All the fruit of the Spirit, all the gifts of the Spirit are love. The fruit of the Spirit gives us the character of Christ, which is love. The ministry, the gifts of the Spirit, are how we demonstrate in action the love of Jesus to the world we live in today. And so the power is given out in love.
And finally, the last word is a difficult word to describe. It’s sophronismos, and it means a combination, kind of self-control… If you have seven different Bibles, this word is often translated seven different ways. It’s not a Greek word that we’re very familiar with, but it means something like self-control, sound mind, disciplined thinking.
I look at it as discipleship. I look at it as discipleship. We want to live a long obedience in the same direction. This is a long-distance race and we want to—and you’ve heard me say it a hundred times, you cannot lose if you do not quit. Keep putting the right foot in front of the left and the left foot in front of the right. There’ll be good days, there’ll be bad days, there’ll be days you want to quit. There’ll be days where you’ll be grumpy and you don’t even know why you’re grumpy. You know, and just keep going, just keep going, just keep going. Follow Jesus. Be a lifetime apprentice and disciple of Jesus, and that gives you a sound mind.
Ready? Read your Bible on a daily basis. “Well, I don’t understand it.” Well, you—I gotta, I can guarantee you, there’s one way that I can guarantee you will never understand your Bible: if you never read it.
And here’s one of the keys to understanding your Bible. Ask me questions. I know every- No, don’t do that. You can ask me questions, but no. Begin to apply the things you do understand. That then creates a foundation for you to understand the next thing that you didn’t understand before. But if you wait till you understand it all to do it, you’ll be stuck at the ground floor all right?
“Well, I don’t know what this means.” Well, do you know what love your enemy means? Yeah, do that and then maybe you’ll understand who the Nephilim are. Just start where you’re at. Do what you do, do what you understand.
And so it’s a long obedience. A disciple is a disciplined learner. Discipline is not a bad word. We think of discipline like God spanking us, but actually discipline is simply a trained habit so that we can achieve something that we can’t just automatically achieve.
I’m a big sports fan. Super Bowl is going to be in February. And I always tell people the Super Bowl is won in July. The Super Bowl is won in July, when you’re working out in the hot sun, doing two-a-days and lifting weights, and there’s no cameras, and there’s no media, and there’s no crowds, and there’s no cheerleaders. You are just sweating and barfing and exercising and lifting weights and working so that when the time comes, when there are lights and crowds and cheerleaders and TV cameras, you have disciplined yourself into that player that can contribute to a Super Bowl-winning team. It’s all, that’s what discipline is. You know that. Nothing is ever achieved in life without intention. It doesn’t come just like snap, automatically. It is a continued repetitive habit.
Discipline is the fruit of passion. It’s not the fruit of will. And so many of us, we try to “All right, I’m going to read my Bible, I’m going to say my prayers, I’m going to have my quiet time.” And then it becomes just this horrible burden to us, like, “Oh, I don’t want to do this.”
No, no, no, no. Just fall in love with Jesus, and you’ll hear me say this. You know, this is one of, I’ve said this many times. You come to church here, and I’m going to tell you, you don’t have to read your Bibles. You get to. You don’t have to say your prayers. You get to.
That’s one of the things the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that God’s so good. He’s kind of just like, oh, my goodness. Oh my goodness.
I’ve been praying regularly lately that I would be a friend of God. And I was kind of complaining about it. It’s like, “God, I want to feel like I’m your friend. Why don’t I feel like your friend?” And He said, “You know, Kev, the problem’s not on my side.” It’s like, “Oh, maybe because I’m not acting like your friend.” Do I really want to be His friend? Maybe I should start acting like his friend. You know, like, if I had somebody who just always whined to me, that wouldn’t be my best friend. “Kevin, we’re good buddies, but let me tell you how bad my life is…” I mean, every once in a while, yeah, your life’s going hard. I’ll be an empathetic friend. I’ll listen to you. But you know, be cheerful once in a while.
So you want something? Be a disciple. Pursue it. Pursue it. Right? 90 something percent of the millionaires—Brian, you probably know this. What percentage of the millionaires were not born into money? Yeah, yeah, let’s go with that. Let’s, let’s go. Yeah.
I mean, the vast majority of people who have a million dollars weren’t born with money. And here’s how they got it. They got a job, and they worked that job faithfully. They realized we live in a society that really rewards compound interest. And so they took some money aside, and they disciplined, in a disciplined way, they didn’t spend all that money on their own immediate fleshly pleasures. They spent some on the, don’t you know, you got to spend some. You got to take some vacations and go out to eat with your wife once in a while and all that. But they had a disciplined approach to it.
And lo and behold, one day they’re millionaires. They’re millionaires. It’s like, “Well, how did I become a millionaire?” Well, there was an intention. It wasn’t like, listen, people who win the lottery don’t end up being that happy. I don’t know if this is true, but I heard this years ago that the one thing, one characteristic of everybody who wins the lottery is they gain weight, which nobody wants to do, because they got all this money… what are you gonna do when you got all that money? You’re not going to cook. You go out and let somebody cook for you. Well, what happens when you go to restaurants? They make bigger portions than you make at home. A lot bigger portions.
And they do really sneaky things. After you’re done, they come by and they ask you a blatantly obvious question. “Would you like some dessert?” Of course I would like some dessert. What do you think? I’m a knucklehead. Yes, I want some dessert. So yeah.
But if you want something, if you want a million dollars, get a job, get a job. If you want to pay more taxes, play the lottery.
Alright. Michael Sullivant, one of my friends, wrote a great book called Prophetic Etiquette, and that’s where I got this idea of the three-legged stool. Because he began to describe what happens when we as Christians or churches don’t operate in love, power, and a sound mind. When we just focus on one of the three or two of the three.
And so when all you focus on is power—and I’ve seen this, where people are so enamored with the power of God and the move of the Holy Spirit, that that becomes everything—what happens is it becomes triumphalism and hype. And I’ve seen it. “This conference is going to usher in the second coming. This is the greatest thing ever. Blah, blah, blah, blah.” Every year it’s like, all right, you know, there’s just this hype, man.
There’s hype around the rapture, people. There’s hype around the rapture. I didn’t even know that last week there was a big prediction out. Some guy had a dream from God and it was going to happen. And here we all are. Here we all are, you know? And Covid, man, all sorts of people, “Oh, it’s coming…”
My daughter, she had one friend, and her parents and family were all into, you know, September 2020 or 2021. It was a sure thing. They didn’t know the date, but it was going to be in September. And she was all worked up about it. This girl says, “I don’t know if that’s true, and my family’s saying I got to get ready and all this kind of stuff.” And so my daughter called me and said, “Will you talk to my friend and talk some sense into her?” And so, “I would gladly, gladly.” I said, “I’ll tell you what. October 1st, life’s gonna still be going on. Just keep going.”
By the way, if somebody predicts the rapture and they get it right and you missed it, here’s the great news. You still get to go. You still get to go. I always feel like if, you know, the whole pre-trib stuff is right, you know, that I’m like, “Eh, I’m not so sure,” I’ll just be going up to people saying, “Hey, man, you were right, I was wrong.”
Listen, I’ve been married 44 years. I’m very used to saying those words. You were right, I was wrong.
Sometimes my wife walks in the room and she says, “You know…” and I don’t even, I don’t even want to hear. I just say, “You were right, I was wrong. You were right. And, honey, I have it so good. Stand down, stand down.”
You know, she did it to me again. Remember the original? I told you the story where she, like, went in and just changed the channel on me. So I’m watching TV again just this weekend. I’m watching a football game, watching Notre Dame beat up on Arkansas. It was great. I was having a blast. And my son FaceTimes me, FaceTimed me, not her, thank you very much. And his son, my grandson, was celebrating his birthday in Telluride, Colorado.
So we’re talking on FaceTime, and I have not turned the TV off. The TV’s going on in the background. I’m talking to him just fine. My wife walks in. Again, no asking, no just like, “Stupid man, you do not know how to talk on the phone. Woman will show you.” She picks up the remote, hits the mute, sits down and sits next to me, and within a minute or two, she has the phone. She takes the remote, and it’s moved out of my reach. Then she gets up, and she goes and talks in the other room.
And I’m sitting there with a quiet TV, no phone, no grandkids, and I have to get off my butt to get the remote, which is a sin. No man should have to get up off his tush to get the remote. And all I could think of is, I’m getting that remote, thinking, “What just took place here? Shouldn’t she have asked me, ‘Hey, can I mute the TV?’ Wouldn’t that be the respectful thing to do?” Not too loud, Stevin. All I could think of as I stood up and got that remote was, “I got it so good.” She did it to me again.
What does that have to do with my sermon? I don’t know. Love. Power without love and discipline is triumphalism and hype. It’s just like… oh, the rapture. Yeah, I went down a long rabbit trail.
There’s just a lot of, in some of the circles that I run in, man, or I’ve ran in, there just is a lot of hype. And listen, I love all that stuff. I love people dancing and waving flags and blowing their shofars and prophesying and healing and laying hands on people. I get excited when I go to a service and the pastor starts praying, praying for people, and they start dropping and flopping. I go, “Whoa, whoa, Holy Spirit’s here.” But dear ones, if it’s not followed, are not married to love and discipline, it simply is empty hype. How many times did you fall?
All right. Love without power or discipline becomes humanism. If you want to see the example of how ugly love gets without power and discipline, look at the inclusive, tolerant, diverse culture we live in who love everybody but shoot their opponents. It becomes humanism, and it actually becomes the very opposite of love. It becomes codependent, enabling, and it becomes ugly.
I would say, at their extremes—not to label—power without love and discipline often has been the Charismatic Pentecostal renewal side of the church. Love without power and discipline has often been what we would call the progressive or the liberal church. And then discipline, thundering orthodoxy, without power and love becomes legalism, and this is often demonstrated through kind of hardcore evangelicalism. “We have the truth. You must believe the truth.” It’s almost like getting into heaven isn’t a matter of believing in Jesus; it’s a matter of believing the right doctrine about Jesus. There’s a difference. There’s a difference.
So, unbalanced stool, one of three. Hard to balance on one leg.
Two legs. What if you have two? That’s pretty good.
Well, Michael Sullivant says if you have love and disciplined thinking, but no power, you get spiritual boredom. That’s what John Wimber experienced, right? “When do we get to do the stuff?” That was a very loving church, and I’m sure they taught the Bible. He said those people were very loving to him, but it’s like, well, where’s God? We’re just learning stuff about God, but we’re not doing the stuff of God. And Christians just get bored with that. They get bored with that because that’s not where we’re supposed to live.
Steven Curtis Chapman, years ago, you know, he wrote the song about a guy. He just got up every week and tried to raise his family and went to church. But the song was “More to This Life.” There’s got to be more. There’s got to be more. If you’re real, Jesus, if you’re powerful, Jesus, if you’re here, Jesus.
Some people will chastise you for saying, “I want more.” They’ll say, “Just accept it by faith. Take your lot, you know, eat your porridge.” It’s like, no.
When I read the Bible, I get more excited than that. I get more excited than that. If the Bible doesn’t point you to someone and it just makes you religious, it makes you legalistic.
Now, if you love people, which is very important, but you have no power, you’re just, you know? You bring, you’re wonderfully comforting when people die, and you bring casseroles. But you know what? What if they didn’t have to die? Wouldn’t that be, isn’t that better than a casserole? Casseroles are good, but there’s better.
Now, if you have power and discipleship and disciplined thinking, but no love, then you have performance orientation. “Look how good we did.” And it becomes about, you know, how much I know and how much I manifest and show, but it becomes about my performance. And it’s kind of earning my salvation by the power I demonstrate and my correct theology, my correct thinking, but there’s no love.
If you have power and love, but no disciplined thinking, you get disorder and stagnancy. Everybody’s in love with everybody, and the Holy Spirit is moving, but nobody knows which way to point the ship. And so it’s like, it burns out.
I read one pastor, he said, “Yeah, a renewal swept through the church. But after everybody got renewed, we didn’t know what to do. You know, everybody had their Holy Spirit thrills and chills moment. It’s like, well, now what?” Because when they were having the thrills and chills, they didn’t ask the question then, “Lord, what are you leading us into?” Where’s the disciplined thinking?
So, one-legged stool: hype, humanism, legalism. Two-legged stool: better, but not good. Spiritual boredom, performance orientation, stagnancy, disorder. But power, love, and a sound mind, disciplined thinking, I believe, is a people of God that can’t be stopped. And I think that’s what it means to walk in the fullness of the Spirit.
I came up to Washington with this verse in my mind, like, “I got it. I know what it-” because I—remember Johnny Cash’s song? “I’ve been everywhere, man. I’ve been everywhere.” That is my Christian experience. I grew up Catholic, got born again in an evangelical Presbyterian, evangelical parachurch organization, went to an evangelical seminary, had Pentecostal siblings, and started speaking in tongues and got all wrapped up in the Holy Spirit and renewal movement.
And all of those things have been of a great benefit to me. But what I’ve realized is initially I try to pick out which one? You know, was my Catholic sacramentalism that I grew up in… was that the best? Was my evangelical Bible studying and programmed kind of apologetics, evangelism… was that the best? Was my fasting and praying in tongues and laying hands on the sick and seeing people slain in the Spirit… was that the best?
And all of a sudden, it just hit me, and I felt like God said, I said, you know, “Which, which road do I go on?” He said, “It’s one road, man. It’s one road.”
So we have communion, I preach a long time, and we lay hands on people. And I thought, “Man, I’m gonna go up to Washington, everybody’s gonna go, this is great. This is great.” I still think it’s great.
But, you know, just watch, just watch, all right? For I am certain—Isaiah, you can hold me accountable to this—I am certain that I’ll see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. When I start whining about not doing it, you can just say, “Hey, go read yourself some Psalm 27:13, preacher.” All right? Good.
Dear ones, that’s the Firehouse Church for good or for ill. That’s where we’re at. I still get that way still like, “Well, Lord, should we be more renewal oriented, more Bible centered, more, you know, sacramentalist?”
And I just feel like the Lord just says, “Hey, man, it’s all good. It’s all me.”
So now we come to the sacramental part of the service. The food of God for the people of God. Be nourished. Hopefully you were just nourished on the Word of God. Be nourished now on the food of God. That you might be filled with the power of God to be more like Jesus in character. I’ve always said this. We want to walk out that door more like Jesus than when we walked in. That you will be more like Jesus in character and more like Jesus in power to do His ministry that His kingdom might come and His will might be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Lord, we thank you for this meal. We thank you for your mercy. We thank you that our sins are forgiven and we walk in New Covenant with you. Amen.
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September 21, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
You know where revival starts, right? Draw a circle around yourself and step into that circle. Can’t expect God to revive somebody else if you don’t want him to revive you.
So, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, send your fire on the Firehouse Church, send your fire on me. Holy Spirit, come. Okay. Holy Spirit, come. Thank you.
All right, all right. I told you. I told you the story of the As-, when the Asbury Revival was happening, I went to our Grace Covenant Conference. One guy got up to speak, and he spoke as good, was my brother-in-law, actually, did a good job. Then a Dallas Elder, who was here last week, and our ministry director with Grace Covenant, just spontaneously asked me, “Kevin, could you close out this session in prayer?” I wasn’t expecting it, but it’s all right. You know, I used to have an old mentor of mine when I was a young pastor. He said, “Boys,” we were all boys back then; he said, “boys, always be ready to preach, pray, or die.” All right? So, you know, he just asked me to pray. So that’s probably the better of, you know, it’s not the worst of those three options, not the toughest.
Anyway, so I get up—and the old Vineyard, the Vineyard, when it, when the Vineyard started and God started moving through the Vineyard and John Wimber and all that, it started when Lonnie Frisbee prayed at a meeting, and he just prayed, “Come, Holy Spirit.” And the place exploded. God just came in power. And I thought, “Oh, okay.” So I get up in front of this group of people, and the Asbury Revival’s hitting, and there’s just an atmosphere of expectancy, and “I know what I’m going to pray.” And I prayed, “Come, Holy Spirit.” And I thought the room would just, you know, explode. And what happened was I ended up on the floor, and everybody else was just kind of looking at me like, “Well, look at that.” It’s like, okay, He came on me.
And then I came back to Bremerton, and I did the same thing that next Sunday. I said, “Holy Spirit, come.” And again, it’s like, “Okay, there it is. There it is.” And I came here and did the same thing. And every, every time now, every time I pray that prayer, it happens on me. So I don’t take responsibility for you. It’s up to you. All right. It’s up to you. You guys… Yeah, yeah, you know? It is. I love you, but you got to do what you’re going to do.
All right. Notice the theme in those three songs. Revival. Yeah, revival. And it just is on my heart. And so as I just finished going through Romans, I thought, “Well, what am I, where am I going to go next?” And been meandering with some thoughts. And there’s a book I read years ago, and it’s from Nicky Gumbel, the founder of Alpha. And it’s on, he preached a series of sermons on revival through the prophet Isaiah, the second half of Isaiah, Isaiah 40-66.
Isaiah is clearly divided into two halves, so much so that some scholars think there are actually two Isaiahs, two different authors. But I don’t think that. But I do think that the book has a clear mark of demarcation at the end of chapter 39 to chapter 40. And chapter 40 tells us this. It starts with these words:
1 “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. 2 “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and announce to her that her time of hard service is over, her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord ‘s hand double for all her sins.” (Isaiah 40:1-2, CSB)
Up until those words, Isaiah 1 through 39, there’s not a lot of comfort in there. There’s some messianic promises, there’s some hope in there. But a lot of Isaiah 1:39 is a lot of what we run into with the prophets, and that is the prophet saying to Israel, “Look, I gave you a covenant, I brought you out of Egypt, I gave you a land flowing with milk and honey, and I told you if you would simply walk in covenant obedience with me, that you would be blessed, your children would be blessed, your land would be blessed, my blessings would overflow upon you. I promised you this. And yet all you’ve done since you got into that land—and you said, ‘Yeah, Lord, we’re in, we’re in.’ Joshua said, ‘As for me and my house, we’ll serve the Lord.’ And you all renewed the covenant with Joshua. He said, ‘We’re in.'”
And then the Book of Judges happens. Within a generation or two, you’re spiraling downwards until the Book of Judges ends with this, you know, chilling word, “And every man did what was right in his own eyes.” That’s not living in covenant relationship with God.
And then they want a king. God sends them Samuel to bring reformation. They say, “N, we don’t want a prophet, we want a king.” And here’s why they wanted a king: the very thing God said you don’t want to do. We want a king so we can be what? Like the other nations. And God had called them to be what? Not like the other nations. You’re to be a light. And God says, “Fine, I’ll give you a king, but it’s not going to go well for you. You know, a few of your kings are going to be good and then it’ll go well for you, but most of your kings are going to be rotten. It’s not going to go well for you.” “That’s all right. We want a king anyway.” So they get a king.
And so, for about a thousand years of Israel’s history, God is wrestling with this people who He delivered, brought into a land, gave them incredible victories, and blessed. And occasionally, when they enter into seasons of repentance and obedience, they experience His blessing again. But time and time again, they break the covenant. And they break the covenant primarily in two ways.
There’s all sorts of legal things. You know, “God’s so detailed in the Old Testament, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.” Yeah, but here’s the complaint that the prophets bring against Israel. It wasn’t that you cut your hair wrong. The complaint that the prophets bring against Israel is: you have worshiped other gods and you have oppressed the poor. In other words, you haven’t loved God and you haven’t loved each other.
And people say, “Well, God’s so harsh in the Old Testament.” Well, that’s because you read it one day at a time and you don’t realize that it’s like you’re reading a thousand years. God sent prophets for a thousand years to warn His people, “Hey, you’re breaking the covenant. Remember what I said? If you break the covenant, I’m going to bring other nations, and they’re going to exile you.” “Oh, yeah, yeah. But we got the temple now. The temple will protect us.” Yeah, read Jeremiah and Ezekiel about how well the temple protected them.
And then, by the way, they get back to that same attitude when Jesus is there. “Oh, we got the temple. We got the temple.” 70 A.D. what happened? No more temple. The Romans came? No.
So prophets, I said this, prophets are covenant lawyers. They are the prosecutor. They’re God’s prosecuting attorney, and they lay out the case to Israel and say, “This is where you’ve broken the covenant. Here’s what the covenant says. Here’s what’s going to happen to you… for a thousand years—”
Some people say, “Well, God’s so violent.” God’s pretty patient. My kids growing up in my house, they didn’t get a thousand years. They got three, right? Anybody grow up, get the three? When I grew up, I got the three. And so I thought, “Well, that worked.” So sometimes you parent like your parents. Hopefully sometimes you figure out some things you can do better or whatever. But you know, I gave my kids three. “Hey, we told you to go to bed. You haven’t gone to bed. You’re messing around. You need to go to bed.” “Well, I mean—” “One, two…” Listen at my house, no two and a half. Sorry, no two and a half. If two hits and you’re not moving, three is coming, alright? Not a thousand years, you got three.
And so these prophets are covenant lawyers. And Isaiah 40 changes from Isaiah 39. All of a sudden, God now is speaking to a people that have been exiled. He’s speaking restitution. Because whenever you have judgment in the Bible, it is always followed by mercy. There’s only one case where judgment is not followed by mercy in the Bible, and that’s the final judgment. Everywhere else, judgment is intended to bring about repentance so that God can show mercy.
Here, God speaks mercifully.
1 “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. 2 “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and announce to her that her time of hard service is over, her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord ‘s hand double for all her sins.” 2 “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and announce to her that her time of hard service is over, her iniquity has been pardoned, and she has received from the Lord ‘s hand double for all her sins.” (Isaiah 40:2, CSB)
There’s a voice crying out. We sang it.
3 A voice of one crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert. 4 Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled; the uneven ground will become smooth and the rough places, a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord will appear, and all humanity together will see it, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 40:3-5, CSB)
A voice cried out, saying, what should I cry out?
6 A voice was saying, “Cry out!” Another said, “What should I cry out?” “All humanity is grass, and all its goodness is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flowers fade when the breath of the Lord blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God remains forever.” 9 Zion, herald of good news, go up on a high mountain. Jerusalem, herald of good news, raise your voice loudly. Raise it, do not be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” 10 See, the Lord God comes with strength, and his power establishes his rule. His wages are with him, and his reward accompanies him. 11 He protects his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in the fold of his garment. He gently leads those that are nursing. 12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand? Who has gathered the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains on a balance and the hills on the scales? 13 Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or who gave him counsel? 14 Who did he consult? Who gave him understanding and taught him the paths of justice? Who taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? 15 Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are considered as a speck of dust on the scales; he lifts up the islands like fine dust. 16 Lebanon’s cedars are not enough for fuel, or its animals enough for a burnt offering. 17 All the nations are as nothing before him; they are considered by him as empty nothingness. 18 With whom will you compare God? What likeness will you set up for comparison with him? 19 An idol?—something that a smelter casts and a metalworker plates with gold and makes silver chains for? 20 A poor person contributes wood for a pedestal that will not rot. He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not fall over. 21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not considered the foundations of the earth? 22 God is enthroned above the circle of the earth; its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like thin cloth and spreads them out like a tent to live in. 23 He reduces princes to nothing and makes judges of the earth like a wasteland. 24 They are barely planted, barely sown, their stem hardly takes root in the ground when he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind carries them away like stubble. 25 “To whom will you compare me, or who is my equal?” asks the Holy One. 26 Look up and see! Who created these? He brings out the stars by number; he calls all of them by name. Because of his great power and strength, not one of them is missing. 27 Jacob, why do you say, and Israel, why do you assert, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my claim is ignored by my God”? 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never becomes faint or weary; there is no limit to his understanding. 29 He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless. 30 Youths may become faint and weary, and young men stumble and fall, 31 but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not become weary, they will walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:6-31, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Isaiah is calling out to Israel, and God is calling out to us today. Where are you looking? Have you put your hope in the Lord? Or is your hope and is your vision still consumed with the things of the world? Have you stopped wanting to be like the other nations? Have you stopped wanting to create idols? Have you stopped wanting to live this short life where you wither and die in just a short period of time for your own pleasure, for your own purpose?
Or have you looked to God? “Have you not seen,” he says twice, “have you not heard about who this God is?” There is life in him. And we look to the wrong things. And so The Bible, Isaiah 40, is calling us to look back to God.
So here are some of the wrong things we look at. We look to the news. We look to the news. The news is designed—look at the news is not terrible. The news, well, it is evil because it is designed to make us fearful and angry. Those are the well-intentioned intentions of the news.
I saw this clearly. I had two relatives watch, and we turned on the news. It was the conservative bent, and they watched that. The first story came on, and person number one said, “Oh, that makes me afraid. That’s scary.” They said, “Oh, that’s scary.” Then we watched another story, and person number two said, “Man, that makes me mad.” Like bingo. Fear and anger. Now, it doesn’t mean there aren’t scary things in the world. It doesn’t mean there aren’t things in the world worth getting angry about. It just means that the news is designed to elicit those two responses in you because they’re kind of addictive. They’ll get you addicted to fear and anger.
I love what Bill Johnson says. He says, “I’ll watch the news,” he says, “but whenever that reality becomes a bigger reality to me than Jesus Christ in the room with me, I shut it off.”
I’ll tell you what, I think you can do a lot of harm to your soul looking at pornography, but I think you can do a lot of harm to your soul looking at the news. Not that we don’t need to be informed, but there’s places to get informed that don’t make you fearful and angry. You just look up data. Or some of you can handle it. Some of you can watch the news and not get fearful and angry. You can eat the meat and throw out the bones. You can get rid of the manipulation and just gather the facts. Good for you. I’m not saying that watching the news is sinful. I’m simply saying that if you look at it for your inspiration, you’re looking at the wrong thing.
If you look at others for your inspiration, if you look at others and worship heroes… now it’s not bad to have role models, it’s not bad to have people— But here’s the thing. As a young man, I desperately. And I became a Christian. I desperately started looking for theological pastoral role models that I could look up to. People who would just be perfect in their theology, in their behavior, in their attitude. I just started looking, and I just spent 20 years of my life being disappointed. And I remember telling a friend that I said, “Man, all these preachers and all these theologians and all my seminary professors and all these people, eventually they let me down.” It was funny because it’s such an obvious answer. I said, “Will I ever find one who won’t?” He says, “Well, yeah, yeah.” Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Could it be Jesus? There you go.
And stop putting these guys on such a high—it’s unfair to them, let alone to you. You know, if you come here thinking Pastor Kev’s the answer, and most of you have long learned that ain’t true, you’re like, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you come here thinking, “You know what? God is so good He can even speak through that man,” then you’ll be pleasantly surprised. All right? I hope. Hope you walk away here saying, “Well, you know, there was some gold in them there hills.”
Don’t look to others, look to Jesus. Yes, look to others, but not as perfect heroes, but as flawed people who can help you on the way. There are admirable things about others that we learn from. Don’t just dismiss them. But what we do with heroes in our culture is we lift them up to the status of idols, and then one small hiccup, we tear them down to the pit of devils.
I’ve experienced this as a pastor over the years. I’m always afraid of people who come to church, and they come to church and say, “Oh, man, you’re just what we’re looking for. you’re the best ever.” Man, when I was young, I used to love that. I said, “Oh, boy, that’s great.” You know? “I feel so good.” But I found out that what happened is those people were looking for a perfect—they were looking for a Jesus. And eventually, you would step on a landmine that you didn’t even know was there, some kind of trigger in their life, you know? You weren’t the perfect daddy. You know, they’re looking for a perfect daddy, and they think you’re him. And it’s like, and you, and you, and I have literally—this is not an exaggeration—literally, in five minutes, I’ve gone from Jesus to Satan in people’s eyes. I really have. And I just tell people all the time, “I’m not Jesus. And I’m not the devil. I’m not as good as one or as bad as the other.”
But people are looking for heroes. Well, you can look for heroes, but do it with moderation. You can watch the news, but do it with moderation. Those are not your answers. Those are looking to the wrong things.
Don’t look to other people to compare yourself. That will lead to one of two sins. You will compare yourself to people who seem to be, who seem to have everything that you want and you can’t get it, and you will enter into the sin of envy.
We have whole cultures and a whole political movement that is wicked and it’s based on envy. We have a name for it. It’s called socialism. We hate the poor because-, we hate the rich, because they have what we don’t, and we deserve it. It’s entitlement and it’s envy.
Now, there’s a good side to that. The good side is oftentimes the rich do exploit the poor and we need to pursue justice for the poor.
But envy is wicked. And it’s a part of the cultural shift that’s happening right before our eyes, today even, where that cultural shift is on, people. And that culture of envy, culture of identity politics, culture of lifting up the outcast to the point where you exalt deviance and sin. That King is being exposed for having no clothes, even as we sit here tonight. I just want to tell you that.
That’s why I’m preaching on revival. I think a revival is coming to America. I could be wrong because I’ve been preaching this a long time, and it hasn’t happened yet. There have been snippets of it, but I think a revival is coming to America that will be so deep, it will bring about a cultural reformation. That is my hope, and that is my prayer.
And so comparison will lead to envy. They’ve got it. I want it. What about me? Why not me? I—oh, these words I just, and advertisers use, “You deserve. You deserve.” It’s like, yeah, you know why I deserve to be rich and famous? Because I’m sitting on my tush watching TV. Yeah, I deserve. You know?
Let me tell you the other thing that comparison will do. Envy is a terrible sin. You know what else is a terrible sin? Pride. So you compare yourself to others—and we do this all the time, too—”Well, at least I’m not that. I’m better than them.” I joked this morning, I said, “You know, I go to Walmart? Because I go to Walmart and go, ‘I ain’t so fat. Look at that person. They’re wearing sweatpants too. Not only am I not fat, I’m actually better dressed than somebody, which my wife thought would be impossible.'”
I don’t know. Any of you other men have this problem? You put on clothes, and you get this disparaging look. You may not get the words. You know, many women have learned not to use the words, but you’re about to go out and you get this look. And this look says the words. And the words are, “You’re gonna wear that?” It’s like, how do you answer that? “You’re gonna wear that?” No, I just put it on so you’d have something to criticize. You wouldn’t be happy until you picked on me. So I picked out these ghastly clothes. But, you know, all I have to do is take my wife to Walmart and she’s like, “Well, you know, it’s not so bad.”
Actually, comparison will work in your favor sometimes. Because my wife used to go to this group with a bunch of women at the church and they had bad husbands, a couple of them, had really rough marriages and some bad husbands, which, as a loving pastor, I should have been concerned about. And I was. I wanted those guys to be better husbands. I wanted those marriages to work better.
But actually, whatever level of disappointment my wife had in me when she went to that woman’s group, she came back and I had scored high on the curve. And it was kind of like she came back. It’s like, “Hi, honey, I love you.” It’s like, “Oh, Richard’s being a jerk to his wife again? Great. No, wait, that’s not great.” How do I figure that one out?
Anway. Comparison can bring pride. “I’m better than them. I’m not like them. We’re not like that.” Don’t compare. Just live humbly and do your part before Jesus. Walk humbly with your God.
We look to idols. That’s what Israel’s problem was. We want great crops. Well, God says, “Obey the covenant. I’ll give you great crops.” “No, but over there, they got great crops, and they sacrificed their children to the gods of Baal and Molech and Asherah, and they have orgies. Hey, wouldn’t that be great if we could get great crops with orgies?” There they go. And God says, “What are you doing?” “Well, they have good crops.” Them devil crops. Those aren’t good.
But we worship idols. We chase, we look for success. We look for love in all the wrong places. And we have idols today. We typically don’t make little wooden statues, but we turn religion into idols. We think religiosity, the temple, the going through the motions, the ritual, replace an accountable relationship with God.
My wife and I just did a wonderful road trip through Idaho. And, you know, I got into Idaho, Brian, I got into Idaho and it was like, blue state, blue state, blue state. Welcome to Idaho. Ah, freedom. Freedom. You feel it. It’s like the oppression lifted… as well as the gas, and the gas prices went down. It’s like, great. Can afford a road trip in Idaho. Can’t afford one in Washington. Before we left Idaho, I said—we had three fourths of a tank in—and I said, “I’m gonna stop for gas.” My wife said, “Why?” “I want to get another quarter of a tank of cheap gas before I drive through Washington.”
And, you know, so we’re in Idaho, and we get down to southern Idaho. If none of you know what southern Idaho is like, you know, it’s not the Rocky Mountains. It’s not the beauty. It’s dry, it’s barren, and it is northern Utah. Southern Idaho is northern Utah, all right? It’s Mormon. And, you know, we were looking at these towns. We went to Shoshone Falls, which was gorgeous, and went to Twin Falls, Idaho. I loved it. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was suburbs, baby. You know, I am not the snooty city person who likes just the vibe of the city. And I’m definitely not the rugged rural person who, you know, that’s—I’m a Pillsbury Doughboy. I need conveniences nearby. Suburbs are for me. Free parking, big malls. Love it.
So we’re in these suburbs. And I said, and every, every time we go someplace, I always tell my wife, “We could live here. We could plant a church here.” So I’m in Twin Falls, Idaho. I said, “We could, we can live here. We could—you know, it’s halfway between our grandkids. We could do it, do this.” And my wife, my wife, her rule is we have to be not halfway between our grandkids. We have to be 30 minutes away from some grandkid. That’s the rule. She who must be obeyed has said 30 minutes. And the older we get, that distance, you know, we get, “We need to get closer. We need to get closer.”
So anyway, I’m trying to, I’m lobbying for Twin Falls. Twin Fall Falls is okay. It’s 25% Mormon. Then my wife looked at Idaho Falls. “This is pretty. Idaho Falls is pretty.” I like the stats. 81% Mormon. I ain’t moving there. I can’t handle it. I can’t handle it. She says “Mormons need…” They’re the hardest people to convert. Why? The idol of religion. They have enough. It’s like they’re vaccinated against the real thing. Did you say it? I heard it. That’s what I grew up in. I grew up in Catholicism.
And I’m not saying Catholicism isn’t Christian, but I’m saying in my growing up of it, the whole thing was dance the dance, take the magic bath, eat the magic food, go to the priest and get the magic word spoken over you. Then do your duty and say the right prayers at the altar and let them deal with Jesus. And you just dance the dance. And it becomes an idol.
Now, lest you think you’re safe, Charismatic evangelical Protestants, you can create idols. The non-Charismatic branch of the Evangelical church in certain sectors has actually created an idol out of this: “Oh, you’re talking against the Word of God?” No, I love the Word of God. The problem is there is a false trinity out there called the Father, Son, and the Holy Book. People worship the Bible, not the author of the Bible.
I’ve heard people say this, “I can’t live without the Bible.” Well, Christians did for 1500 years. Why? Because they had God. They have a Holy Spirit. I’m not saying the Bible’s not a great aid. I’m just saying. So you’re saying somebody who’s illiterate can’t be a Christian, can’t be born again, can’t get saved? “The Bible is sufficient.” No. The blood of Jesus is sufficient. The indwelling spirit is sufficient? Yes, the Bible is a wonderful, nearly, nearly indispensable—in fact, for the church, an indispensable aid. I’m a Protestant. It’s an indispensable aid for the church, but nobody’s going to be saved because they had, they could quote the most Bible verses.
Charismatics, we create idols. I’ve seen it. I’ve been around, I’ve been hanging around these revivalists now for a long time. I love them. I love their hunger for God. I love the manifestations. I love the power. I love the openness to God’s spirit. But they create formulas. They create formulas and put God in the box of their formulas. And they also step outside, sometimes, of the bounds of Christianity for the sake of experience.
“You got to pray this way. You got to use these magic words to get somebody delivered.” I’ve been involved in deliverance ministries and you have to… it’s very scripted. “You have to say this. You have to say this. You have to pray this. You have to do this to get people free from demons.” And then I look at Jesus, and it’s like, man, Jesus was terrible at exorcism. He didn’t know your formula. Man, you should have gone back, you should have taught Jesus your formula. He’d have been better at it.
Jesus’ formula was, “I carry the authority of heaven, and you know who I am.” And I found in doing deliverance that the books are helpful. They help you kind of get into stuff. But it’s not the formula that works.
The first time I did a significant deliverance, I had no formula. And I’ve told you the story before. This little 15-year-old girl, this demonic voice is coming out of this 15-year-old girl. I’m holding her hand so I can pray for her and deliver. And this voice, not hers, another voice comes out of her and says, “I’m going to hurt you now.” And she started digging her fingernails into my hand. I did not have a formula at that time to exorcise the fingernail digging demon. I hadn’t read that chapter in the book yet, and I just said, “In the Name of Jesus, stop it.” I thought it was an important time to pray that. And her hand went limp in my hand.
And my next prayer, my next thought anyway, was: “Glad that worked.” How about that? The authority of Jesus worked. I didn’t need a formula.
Jesus heals people without a formula. He heals at a distance. He heals by laying on hands. He heals by casting out demons. He heals by chastising their people or His disciples about their lack of faith. He sometimes heals by just telling people, “Go show yourself to the priest.” “Hey, heal me.” “Go away. Show yourself to the priest.” Really? You’re not going to do any, you’re not going to like lay hands on me or recite? “No, just go show yourself to the priest.” Heal my son. “Okay, bring him to me.” And this is the good guy. This is the Roman. He says, “Hey, I don’t even have to bring him to you. I know who you are.” And He says, “You got it.” Heals at a distance.
He spits on people. He spits on people to heal them. Listen, I’ve been in churches where people get upset that people fall down in the power of the Spirit. Wait till the spitting revival happens. See how people handle that one. “Pastor, lay hands on me.” “Nope, not going to do it.” Listen, you want the anointing, sit in the front row. It might happen accidentally. Is that why you’re all back there? Listen, it never goes that far. It usually is restricted to the front row. You’re safe in the second row until I start doing this.
I’ve actually seen it. I’ve actually seen it come out and land on my sister one time. Just landed on her arm. It’s like… and you know, you’d think, “Oh, you intentionally spit on your sister.” No, I didn’t. But it was still nice. And she behaved really well. She didn’t make a scene or nothing.
All right, don’t make an idol out of your religiosity. Don’t make an idol or don’t worship nature. You think, “Well, we don’t worship nature.” Yeah, we do. And some of you think, “Oh, new age, you know, tree hugger.” No. You know how we worship—that’s true, there are people out there like that. But you know how we worship nature? By worshiping science. Science is the worship of nature. When you worship science, you worship nature because science is… what does science study? Nature. Naturalism. That’s what it’s called. That’s what the worship of nature, the atheistic worship of nature is called. Scientific naturalism or scientific materialism. In other words, all there is in the universe is material and nature, and so we study that, and that’s where we get all our answers. And so you worship nature.
And then we have experts in everything, and their expertise is based on what they have deduced from nature. Now, here’s one of the things about these priests and priestesses of nature. And I believe in science. I love science. I love the data. I have benefited greatly from science. I love the fact that I can go on a road trip with my wife through Idaho and I don’t have to ride a donkey or a horse. That’s so nice. I love driving through beautiful scenic places.
I go with my son. I said, “Isn’t this beautiful?” He says, “Yeah, dad, let’s get out and hike.” I go, “Why? I’ve never been chafed driving. I’ve never,” you know. He says, “Well, there’s other beautiful sights.” “These are fine. They build the roads right through these beautiful sites. It’s great. You don’t have to get out and walk. There are mosquitoes out there. There’s bugs, there’s bears. This is great.”
But we worship, you know? I drive. Yay. Medical technology. I’ve been blessed by it. I’m so pro science. What I’m not pro is arrogant scientists who think they know it all because they got a degree. And I’m not pro our culture bowing at their feet. And I see it all the time. I’ll turn on my, you know, social- I’ll turn on my computer and I’ll, I’ll go online, I’ll get my homepage, whatever it is—I don’t even know, who Google or somebody shows me—and inevitably there’s an article that starts with these words: “Experts say…”
Well, I was a little skeptical before COVID, but now it’s like “Experts say…” Here’s the deal. Now whenever I see “expert,” in my mind, I translate that to “some guy with a degree.” Usually “some guy with a degree, some gal with a degree says…” Doesn’t mean I discount it, just means blah, blah, blah.
I’m not an anti-climate crisis guy. I’m not a pro-climate crisis guy, but color me skeptical. Why? I grew up in the 70s, and what did experts tell me in the 70s? I remember. “We’re entering a new ice age.” Then I went through the 80s, and what did experts say in the 80s? I remember two things they said. One is, “acid rain is going to destroy all our crops.” It didn’t. The other thing they said is, “population growth is going to get out of control, and it’s going to lead to mass starvation.” Population is as high as it’s ever been, and actually, food security is as high as it’s ever been on the planet, in the history of the planet. There’s about 80 to 90% food security on the planet. What does that mean? That only 10 to 20%, which is a lot, but 10 to 20% of the people are dealing with where they’re going to, you know, if they’re going to be able to eat.
And I’ve been in those places. I’ve been to Haiti, I’ve been in those places where that is true. However, 200 years ago, the 80, 90% number applied to food scarcity for everybody on the planet. You’re a farmer in North Dakota in 1850 and the locusts decide to come through that year, you better hope dad’s a good hunter or you’ll starve to death. And people did.
What am I saying? The experts were wrong. Their scientific projections said, based on the amount of food we produce today, a great number of people are going to starve if we have a great number of people. But you know what else science did? That’s why I’m pro-science as well as skeptical. You know what else science did? It discovered ways to produce more food on less plots of ground. Yay, science.
Guess what? Expert experts were wrong. Al Gore, he’s an expert. He won a Nobel Prize for being an expert on climate issues. He also, you know, theoretically, you know, he backed off this, but, you know, he didn’t invent the Internet. He was significant in the Internet. Maybe he was. I don’t know. But as an expert, as a Nobel Prize winner—you can look it up—he said major cities in the world, we’re going to be underwater by 2034? 2044? 2024? No, 2014. Here we are. Here we are. None of Bremerton has disappeared yet. Now, do I know whether that’s going to happen? I don’t know. I try to study, but I don’t just study one side of it.
And I don’t believe it based on one political view of it either. Listen, most of you are conservatives. Guess what? Conservatives can be wrong, too. What? Yeah, yeah.
But we worship at the feet of experts. We worship at the feet of celebrities. Oh, my gosh. Why do we care what the political opinions of people who get awards at the Grammys? I so appreciated the atheist who mocks Christians, but he doesn’t spare his mocking on others as well. Ricky Gervais, when he hosted the Oscars or something like that, and he said, “Listen, when you get up here, thank your girlfriend, thank your wife, thank your mother, thank your producer. But you know what? Don’t give us your latest political rant.” He said, “Nobody cares. What makes you think you know more? What, because you made a movie about it?” “I was in the movie the Handmaid’s Tale, so I know how men treat women.” No, that movie is a dystopian fiction. I know of no women who are living that life now. It’s just not happening. “Oh, but experts say it will.”
All right, all that to say we’re looking at the wrong things. Kevin, quit ranting and talk about the Bible. Really? I can’t just rant for another hour?
All right, where do we look? Where does Isaiah 40 say we look? Look to God, look to God, look to his Word. We have—again, just because people worship the Bible doesn’t mean I’m disparaging of the Bible. I love the Bible. Spent my whole life studying the Bible. I learned, for a while I could read the Bible in Hebrew and in Greek. Not so much anymore, but, you know, I spend tons of time studying and reading the Bible, and I want to bring to you sermons that are faithful to the Bible because I do believe the Bible is God’s inspired text.
I do believe the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible so that we have this deposit and we can look to God’s Word. And in God’s word are promises and hope for us, and it feeds us. And so we can look to his word.
Time after time, people will come into my office for counseling for problems, because pastors are supposed to know stuff because we’re experts. People come in, and I’ll just be honest with you, you know, now you’re going to come in, and you’re not going to have so much confidence. “Pastor Kevin, I got this problem going on,” and I’m thinking, here’s what I’m thinking. I’m not thinking, “Oh, I know the answer to that.” Here’s what I’m thinking: “Man, that’s a big problem. You should go talk to an expert.” Then I pray. Not out loud. I just pray. Maybe quietly or in tongues. Again, not really out loud. It’s hard when somebody says, “Man, I don’t know what to do with my husband.” “I’m going to [prays in tongue].” That doesn’t work. That’s not a good counseling technique.
Though I do find when cars are pulling out on the right and you think they’re going to come out in front of you, just rebuke them in tongues. And it’s, it’s my whole life I’ve done that. Never had a car come out from the right and hit me. It just works all the time. Some car comes out, and it looks like he’s gonna come out and go [prays in tongue]. And my wife goes, “Oh…” I go “It works every time. They always stop. They always stop.”
By the way, praying on public streets also keeps pink rhinoceroses away. Just try it. They never show up.
All right, where was I at? Oh, people in my office. And I’ll pray. It’s like, “Lord,” under my breath, I just pray, “Lord, this person needs help. Help me help them.” And the Lord will speak to me a word that brings encouragement, hope, wisdom, mercy. And you know what that word is nine times out of ten? A Bible verse I memorized years ago.
“Pastor, why should I memorize the Bible?” Because you’re giving the Holy Spirit ammunition. You’re giving the Holy Spirit ammunition. You want to wake up in the morning and start your day off right? Wake up with a Bible verse. “Well, which Bible verse should I wake up with?” Well, memorize a few. God will bring one to mind. God brings verses to my mind all the time. The one He brings most mornings—and I’ve said this many times, and I say it here many times, you heard me say it—who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you’re the strength of my life and my portion forever.
There are probably not 90%, maybe 80% of the mornings, I don’t get out of bed until those words have come out of my mouth. Not a bad way to start the day, right? Well, guess what? You know why that’s in there? Because by the help of God, I put it in there. I memorized it. “Well, Pastor, I don’t have a good memory.” What’s my name? Okay, you got my name. You memorize stuff that’s important to you. You know how to get home, right? You memorize stuff that’s important to you. Memorize the Bible.
Look at His power. Have you not seen? Have you not heard? Isaiah keeps saying look at his power. Look at his creation. Look at his wonder working miracles. We had Sandy Guillamo today in church and some of you know Sandy. She and her husband Nick attended the Firehouse for years before they moved to Arizona. Nick has an incredible healing testimony. He’s passed on since then, but he lived five more years. He was dying of heart failure.
I remember the night he was ashen gray. I was at a conference, and it was late, and somebody gave a word of knowledge. What sort of word of knowledge? God gave some information: there’s somebody out there with pain in their heart. Nick said, “That’s me.” He was taking nitroglycerin. The doctors had said, “You only have a certain amount of time to live. You need open heart surgery. But we can’t do open heart surgery on you because if we do open heart surgery on you, you’ll die on the table. So you’re either going to die on the table as we’re trying to heal your heart, or you’re going to die from your heart.” He had the death sentence, all right? Until Julie’s testimony, my best healing testimony, alright?
But it’s right up there because Nick walks up with his cane, ashen gray, and Georgian Banoff prays for him, and the team, and Georgian actually beat on his chest. There’s a guy with a sore chest and the guy starts hitting it. George, “I don’t remember doing that,” but he did. He just boom, boom, boom.
And you literally from where I was sitting—I didn’t know Nick and Sandy at the time. I got to know him later as they became part of the Firehouse Church—literally from where I was sitting, you can see the color rising back into his face. And he walked back to his seat, not using the cane, with a little spring in his step. He drove home that night for the first time, went back to see his internist. His internist actually wrote a letter saying his heart is completely healed. He had a heart this big. Now it’s normal size. He’s had two open heart surgeries. First normal EKG in 23 years. And it says, “According to what we can see, not only does he have a healthy heart, it looks like he has a heart that’s never been ill.” He got a new heart.
Then you say, “Well, he died of a heart attack five years later.” Yeah, but it wasn’t a prolonged sickness. It was instant. He just, like, it was afib. It just boom. So. And during those five years, he did prison ministry, led thousands of men to Christ. You know? People say, “Well, you know, God didn’t—he died five years later.” Yeah, Lazarus died a few years later too. You know, poor Lazarus, he had to die twice. Studying all these near-death experience people, they got to go through it again.
All right, look at His power. You know, it amazes me when I came back from a conference in 2003 and I started praying for people at our gently Charismatic church in Oakdale, California. And all of a sudden the gentle got taken away. People started being slain in the Spirit. They started laughing in the Spirit. All these revival manifestations started to break out, and people just got offended by that. I was the same pastor, and I was delighted by it. But people would just say, “Oh, those kids,” because a lot of young people were experiencing this, “they’re just faking that.” It’s like, well, how do you know? “I have discernment.” No, I think you have fear. I think you have control.
I’m not saying people can’t fake that. I’m just saying so many people, in my experience, so many people, we had like little Presbyterian people—not picking on Presbyterians—but very structured church backgrounds come up, and before I would lay hands on them and pray for them, they would say things to me like, “Don’t be disappointed. I never fall.” I said, “Well, I’m not praying for you to fall. I’m just praying.” And here’s what I would pray. “Heavenly Father, in the Name of Jesus, Holy Spirit, come.” It’s a pretty orthodox Trinitarian prayer. I don’t see any heresy in that prayer. So I’d pray, “Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, come.” Or Holy Spirit fill, fresh filling, fresh fire, something like that.
And these people would come to me. “I never fall.” “Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit.” Well, until now. There they go. All right? These aren’t people who are faking it. These aren’t people who grew up in revival cultures and that was the expected thing to do. That they were—and then people would come to me and say, “Where’s God in this?” Well, I don’t know. You think the devil did that? I prayed, “Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, come.” How did the devil get into that prayer? If the devil got into that prayer, good luck with “God, guide, guide the surgeon’s hands” or, you know, “give us travel mercies.” Nice, safe evangelical prayers. Nothing wrong with those prayers. If I go for surgery, I want guided hands. If I go on a trip, I want travel mercies.
But guess what? If God answers your safe prayers, maybe He’ll answer prayers that you don’t understand what He’s doing. And now you have an invitation and a choice, and your invitation is to say, “I’m not going to limit God to my understanding, and I’m going to let God be God.” Or “I’m going to restrict God in my life only to what I can explain, instead of being amazed by His power.”
I mean, literally, I had a young man. People are just dropping like flies. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The power of God’s breaking out. This young man comes up to me and he goes, “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a God. Where’s the evidence that there’s a God?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. It looks like a war zone here. You know, your friends are, they never, they don’t do this at Walmart, do they? This is not a normal behavior for them, right? They don’t go to Walmart and just like all of a sudden drop on the floor and start shaking. They did that in response to prayer, maybe.”
Well, you know why that person couldn’t find evidence? He didn’t want to stop sleeping with his girlfriend. That’s where he couldn’t find evidence.
Dear ones, look at God’s power. His power in creation, His power in miracles, His power in church history.
Look at His care, His care of people in the Bible. Isaiah 40 talks about it. I’m a comforter. I’m a shepherd. Constantly God says, “I’m a shepherd. I care for you.” You have a history of God’s care. That means the next time you face a crisis, you have a history of remembrance, that God did not fail me then, He won’t fail me now.
The older I get—I’m not that old—but the more I think about death, and not in a morbid sense. I don’t think, you know, “Oh, my gosh, I’m going to die tomorrow.” I might, but, but that was true when I was 20. I might. But the more I think about it, reflect on it, and here’s what I know: every difficulty I’ve gone through in my life, God has cared for me and brought me through. Why would His nature change at that one? Will He meet me with His grace there and beyond as He’s promised? The track record says what? He’s faithful.
My little daughter, three years old, we’re swimming. She’s got her floaties. She wants to take off her floaties. She’s learning a dog paddle. Now she wants to jump inside of the pool, jump off, and jump to dad. And she gets to the side of the pool, she doesn’t have her floaty, she doesn’t have her security on, and she’s ready to jump.
And all of a sudden, she stops and asks a very profound question. “Daddy, will you catch me?” That’s a heck of a good question. We might think, “Silly question.” No. She’s facing life and death, right? I mean, maybe she could dog paddle to the side, but this is scary. Will you catch me?
There is evidence of my care for the first three years of her life. That says I will, right? Me and my wife have kept her alive. We have not killed her. There have been times she’s deserved it. The wages of sin is death. Anybody who doesn’t know that’s true. you’ve never had a three-year-old.
“Will you catch me?”
“Yes, honey, I’ll catch you.” How do I know? Two ways. One not for certain, the other for certain. The one not for certain I just mentioned. There’s a history of care. You can trust me. I love you. I’ve demonstrated that love to you.
Then there’s the only way you can really prove it without a doubt. Jump. Lord, how do I know you’re out there? “Take a leap of faith.” But what if you don’t? Rough on you. But what if I do? You’ve stepped into the abundance of all life. You discover God’s care when you walk by faith. You have a track record of it.
But guess what? No matter where you are in your life, I just want to tell you this. The challenges have not ended. There will be other tests of faith. Lord, we’re sending our kids off to college. How do I know you’ll take care of them? “Well, who do you think is better at it, me or you?” Well, God, let me think about that. No, you. We cast our cares upon Him, 1 Peter 5:7 says. Why? Because He cares for us.
We look at His creation. Isaiah 40 says, “Look at His creation.” There’s a song, Vineyard—not Vineyard—Bethel used to sing, and it’s called “Never Lose the Wonder.” Never lose the wonder. I love little boys chasing lizards because a lizard’s an amazing thing. Or watching butterflies or fireflies or looking to the stars. Never lose the wonder. That’s why I love driving through scenic places. I’m filled with wonder. “Wow. That’s a great thing.” My son: “Let’s take a hike. Now, I can wonder from my car. You hike, boy. Pick you up later. Never lose the wonder.
The results: when we look to God, we are comforted in every time of trial, and times of trial come. I love comfort. But I have come to this conclusion after 66 years: God’s main priority in my life is not my comfort, not my ease. He wants to give me eternal happiness. And for that, occasionally I have to sacrifice temporal happiness. And I’m okay with that because of His track record, because of His faithfulness.
Charlie Kirk didn’t know he was going to be martyred, but he knew it was a possibility. That’s why he had a security team. His life had been threatened. And if you were to ask him today, was it worth it, he would say, yes. And his dear wife, who is suffering the greater loss than he did, would say, “I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t change it.” All right?
What? Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Because he was threatened. He was threatened.
But we are comforted in life’s trials, and we are strengthened for life’s trials. Isaiah 40: “Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They’ll walk and not faint.”
31 but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not become weary, they will walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31, CSB)
Lois was dying of emphysema. I was the associate pastor at a Methodist church in California, and I went to visit Lois in the hospital. Her breathing was troubled, and she was very sick.
And I walked into the hospital, and I grabbed her hands, and said, “Lois, the Scripture is on my mind. Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.” And she started shaking and crying. And I finished the verse. “They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. Walk and not faint.”
And I was pretty insecure back then. It’s like, “Oh, man, did I just blow it? Did I say something stupid? What is it, Lois? What is it? What’s wrong?”
And she said, “Last night”—she could barely get the words out—”last night, last night” because she’s crying and she’s not getting a lot of breath. “Last night,” she goes, “it was so hard, and I was here alone.”
And Lois’s husband, I don’t know what went wrong with him, but he did not care for her. When she died, he emotionally withdrew. And some guys just can’t take it, or I don’t know what the deal was, but it was sad for her. It was sad for all of us to watch that.
Anyway, and she said, “And in my worst moment, I cried out to God, and I said, ‘Help.’ And immediately, you know what came to my mind? Isaiah 40:31. And then I fell asleep peacefully, and I wake up this morning and you’re here, and the first words I hear were the words that gave me comfort last night.” That’s a great coincidence. It gets better.
The next day, the senior pastor went to visit her. Harry went to visit her. And Harry comes back, he goes, “Kevin, you’ll never guess what happened.” I said, “What happened?” He goes, “I went to pray for Lois, and,” he goes, “you know me when I go to the hospital.” And Harry was structured. He had a way of doing things. I was, you know, loosey goosey, but Harry’s pretty structured. He had a way of doing things.
He went to the hospital, he said, “You know me, I’m a Jeremiah 29 man. When I go to the hospital, I quote Jeremiah. ‘I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for your welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.'”
11 For I know the plans I have for you” —this is the Lord ‘s declaration—”plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11, CSB)
Harry just goes to the hospital. He’d speak that over people. He goes, “So I’m going to visit Lois, and I’m going to Jeremiah 29 her.” You know, I didn’t know if you thought, you knew pastors had these things, but, you know, he was going to pull a Jeremiah 29 out of his holster and just lay it on her.
And he says, “I’m about ready. ‘I know the plans I have for you…’ And the Lord stops me. And all of a sudden, out of my mouth, I hear, ‘Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.'” And he goes, “You know what happened?” I go, “She started shaking and crying.” He goes, “Yep. You know why?” I said, “Yeah, because she dri-, she spoke that. I spoke it and you spoke it.” “That’s right!” “God is good.” Here he goes, “He is.”
And he looked at me, says, “You know, Kevin, He is good, and ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord.” He had to get Jeremiah 29 out, you know, somewhere, so he laid one on me. So that’s good. I took it. I took it.
So what does this have to do with revival and awakening? I want to tell you something, we sang those songs. “I can feel it in my bones.” I don’t know if it’s 30 years off, but I don’t think so. I saw 300,000 people today—80,000 fit in an auditorium, another 220,000 outside—to celebrate Jesus and to celebrate a man who spoke for Jesus and spoke for a cultural reformation and shift in America. That is a testimony to Charlie Kirk. But more, that wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago.
I’ll tell you what’s happening. It is on. For 30 years, America has been bullied and enslaved by a culture that’s gone astray. And if you spoke against that culture just reasonably, compassionately, you are a homophobic idiot, hater, terrible, worthy to be canceled.
And you know what it did? It silenced a lot of people. And for me, I remember I spoke out against that culture in a mainline denomination for years. And it just, what it did is just chased me out. It’s like, “Hey, I’m not going to spend my life fighting these knuckleheads.”
But I found out I couldn’t escape the knuckleheads. They’re all around me. And it aggravated me that you couldn’t have a reasonable conversation. And then, and I’m just going to speak—I don’t speak politically very often. I’m not a big Trump guy, which some of you don’t like. And others of you, you know, but… And others of you, if… But I’ll tell you what—and because he says things that just make me cringe, you know. It’s like, golly, you know, making fun of handicapped people. It’s like, stop it. You know, he’s like a fifth grade bully sometimes, but that’s what he is. He’s a bully.
And here’s why he got elected twice, maybe three times, because he was bullying the bullies. And the people who were being bullied recognized it. They said, “That’s our champion.” People have talked about him, you know, “Is he this or is he a that?” Well, he’s not a Messiah. And based on some of his theology, I don’t know that he’s even born again. But that’s other people—that’s his concern, other people’s concern.
But other people have said this: he’s a wrecking ball. And he was a wrecking ball to that worldview, and they hated it. And then a whole generation—and then he gave spine to people—and then a whole generation of young people who were more articulate than he is are raised up. Charlie Kirk was one of those people. J.D. Vance is another one of those people, in my estimation. There are others who have been raised up. And he’s given people spine to speak against the evil that leftism has become.
Listen, we need Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. We do not need Pride Month. We need to have compassion on people who struggle with homosexual orientation and feelings. We need definitely to have compassion. That’s a hard struggle for people to deal with, and we need to embrace people and say, “You are welcome in the church, and we will walk alongside you in that struggle. We love you. Please be here.”
Guess what? Your struggle is not—we all struggle. And I got struggles and you got struggles. And don’t feel isolated because of that struggle. Please come to church. “Will you be nice to me?” We’ll be extra nice to you. But what we won’t do is codependently call broke, fixed and wrong, right.
And now, if you want to call us haters for that, go ahead. But the world’s waking up that that was a wicked bullying technique that actually really motivates unhinged people to do things nobody should like.
And because of that, that’s what Charlie Kirk represents. That’s what the reaction to Charlie Kirk represents, is that wicked cultural force is losing its grip, and they are squealing like stuck pigs because nobody likes to give up power.
But there is a cultural reformation that’s happening, and it’s driven by Christians. It’s not exclusively Christians who are involved in it, but it is driven by a Christian worldview and that, people, I feel like, is the beginnings of revival. I feel like that’s the beginnings of revival.
I feel like five years ago when a man got killed, maybe by an over-aggressive cop, maybe by fentanyl, maybe by both, cities were burnt down in “mostly peaceful..”, right? It was horrible. And the Left just sat by and said, “Well, we had the Summer of love back in ’69.” What?
And now another man gets assassinated, shot for simply wanting to have conversations, and the response is prayer vigils and revival services and his bride standing before a couple hundred thousand people saying, “I forgive that young man.” There’s a difference. There is a cultural difference.
And have hope because Jesus is on the throne and because we have prayed for it. It’s shifting. It’s an aircraft carrier, all right? Culture is an aircraft carrier. It’s not a little dinghy that just turns on a dime. It takes a while to turn one of those things around. But mark my words—I could be wrong, I’ve been wrong before. But I’m… And it’s not, Charlie Kirk isn’t the catalyst that brought about the change. The change has been happening, but he is definitely an accelerant to that change, and I don’t know Charlie Kirk, but if you were to ask him during his life, “Would you give your life that America might be transformed to a Judeo-Christian worldview and nation again?” I think he would unhesitantly say, “Yes.” I would say yes. I’m not 31 and I don’t have little kids, but at 66, I’d still say yes.
In fact, a bullet shot that kills me instantly? Aim well. Aim well. I don’t want to limp away from this, man. Bang. Hi, Jesus. I’m good with that. I’m not prophesying it, Lord, you don’t have to do it just to prove a point. I’m not speaking it into being. But all I’m saying is there’s a price to this thing.
The price I’ve paid up to this point has been 20 years of prayer and disappointment and discouragement, and then not giving up, having friends like Isaiah come and say, “I’m with you, Kev. I’m praying for this with you.” Young men like Isaiah praying with me on that. Appreciate you. Appreciate you helping keep me, keep me keeping my feet moving forward.
Firehouse, church man. I came up here because the Lord spoke, “Revival. I’m gonna bring revival.” I told my wife, “We gotta get up there. We gotta get up there. We’re gonna miss it.” Twenty years later, it’s like, “All right, big crowd tonight—16. All right, we’re, we’re cracking it. We’re cracking…” You know what? Here’s my promise. I will see it in my lifetime and I will pray to steward it well. Or if I don’t see it in my lifetime, I’ll die praying for it. I promise you today I’m not going to quit. And you shouldn’t either.
Psalm 27:13, I would have lost hope but for this: that I will see the goodness of the Lord, the land of the living. Be strong, take courage and wait for the Lord.
Lord, I pray you would fill us with hope in Jesus’ Name.
This is a meal of hope. You know what? You know what? Appetizers. You know what appetizers… Appetizers are meant to give you hope. You order an appetizer, you go, “This is good. Wow. What’s the main course going to be like?” You know what communion is? It’s an appetizer. It’s a meal that God gives us, and He says, “The next time you eat with me is going to be at the wedding Feast of the Lamb. So you think gathering in church together and feeding on the life of Christ is great? You just wait. It gets better.” But this is a food of hope. Your sins are forgiven. Jesus is with us. He invites you. Not me. The Firehouse Church does not invite you to this communion meal. The Lord Jesus invites you to this meal. And so come and eat and be grateful.
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September 14, 2025, Message by Pastor Dallas Elder
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Who have I in heaven but you? Besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you’re the strength of my life and my portion forever. Amen. Amen.
Dear ones, I want to let you know that tomorrow night at 6 o’clock at the Firehouse Church in Bremerton, we will be having a prayer night for revival in America, Kitsap, and our own lives. We experienced this week the shocking killing, assassination, of a Christian brother, and a high-profile Christian brother. I mean, people get killed every week, but it, but it, but it has shocked, you know, it’s kind of shocked us and caused some real sadness and some anger and a lot of things. But one of the things is that it has kind of spurred people into an increased boldness and desire to stand up for their faith and be a public witness for Jesus and not be afraid.
And those are all good things. Those are also emotions that sometimes last for a day or two or a week. And I remember when 9/11 hit, churches were full for a couple of weeks and then not so full. But I’ve been praying for over 20 years for revival in America, in the Pacific Northwest, and I have made a commitment to and what I mean by revival is an increased spiritual vitality in the church of God, an increased awareness of his presence, and increased repentance and increased faith that will be so powerful in the church that it will actually affect the culture to the point and this would be a nationwide revival would infect the culture to a point that it brought about really a cultural reformation, an establishment of, once again in America, of a Christian worldview.
It actually takes about 25% of the population to do that. Doesn’t take 60%, 90%. Takes 25% of the population who are not playing around with their faith, but who are real about their faith to actually bring about a cultural transformation.
Anyway, I’ve been praying for that 20 years at least. And I don’t know how many more years I’ll be running around, but I am committed to praying about it for all those years as well.
And then here, here’s the other prayer that I’ve prayed. I have prayed, “Lord, I not only want this revival to come, I want to be a part of it.” I tell Him, “I want to play in it. I want to splash in that pool, man.” And God is smarter than me. And if He wants to bring this revival after I’m gone, like I said, He’s smarter than me. He can do that. And I won’t, I don’t imagine in eternity, I’ll complain. I think my complaining and grumbling days will be over. Anyway but nonetheless, I think it’s fair. I think God wants you to tell Him the desires of your heart. And so that is one of the desires of my heart.
I’ve had visions at the Bremerton church of people just walking through that door and the power of God being so strong in that building that they couldn’t even get all the way through the door and they just fell to the floor. And I’ve had other pictures in my mind’s eye by visions, I don’t mean an open vision, you know, where I fell into a trance and saw this. It’s just the picture that goes through my brain. And I’m very aware that we can import our own fleshly desires into those pictures. I’m also aware that God can give us those pictures. And I’m not always clear on how to sort that out, but I don’t think it’s a bad picture to see a bunch of young people, a bunch of people just overpowered by the presence of God. And I’ve seen a group of young people surrounded that place right up front there, just on the ground, just hungering for God and under the power of God. I’ve seen that in my mind for a while.
And another, another thing I’ve seen is how many of you remember Bonanza and the little fire coming through the map, right? So I see a map in my mind’s eye of the western United States. And I see lots of those little fires burning holes in that map until they become one, until they coalesce into one big fire. And I don’t think that has to do with this time of season and California and Montana wildfires. I don’t think that’s what the vision means. I think it means the fires of revival.
Having said all that, tomorrow night at six o’clock, I’ll be down at the Bremerton church leading a time of prayer for revival for our nation, for our county, and for ourselves. You are welcome to join in that if you’d like to be there. I just want to invite you for that.
So I just would like to see this tragic event that has because God does this this tragic event that has spurred a spark of spiritual hunger, vitality, passion in our land. You know, people say, “Well, for Charlie Kirk’s sake, I don’t want to see this go to waste.” I’ll tell you what, for Jesus Christ’s sake, I don’t want to see this go to waste. Charlie Kirk laid down his life, not necessarily voluntarily, but he did, and I honor him for that. But Jesus is the one in whom we glory, and so for His sake, that He would get the prize for which He died.
So dear ones, just let you know, wanted to invite you to that.
I also wanted to welcome my friend, Dallas Elder. Dallas and I have been journeying together for 27 years. How old are you, Isaiah? 28. So when you were 1 year old, Dallas and I said, “Hey, Isaiah’s 1 years old. Let’s get together and start partnering together in ministry.” So long before Sophia was born, we began to meet up, and I had left a mainline denomination, and we joined with our church that we planted, joined with Grace Covenant, and we’ve been with them ever since. And so Dallas has been the ministry director with Grace Covenant for all those years. He comes out once a year to be with us, and it’s always a delight to have him. So I want to welcome my friend Dallas Elder to come share the Word of God.
Just hook that onto yourself. All right, welcome.
Thank you so much. Okay. How we doing with that? Ats, make me sound good. You always want to be friends with the sound guy. He’ll make you sound like a duck, otherwise.
Hey, so good to be with you. Always good to be with Kevin. The journey that we’ve had with Jill, his family, works of ministry, times we’ve served together for the kingdom. And it’s always a joy to come out and not only be with Kevin and Jill, but also these friends. I was telling him today that his friends through years become my friends. And so always good to be in this house.
And so we appreciate your partnership for our missions and all the different things that we do, as well as your part in our Grace Covenant ministry family.
This evening, I want to bring a message to you entitled “The God Who Sees Me.” “The God Who Sees Me.” And if you have your Bibles, either you know the book or you’ve got your phone, whatever you have, then turn to Genesis 16, because that’s where we will be for the bigger part of this message. I may make a couple other references.
“The God Who Sees Me.” Genesis 16.
Have you ever found yourself in a place in time where life just got complicated? I mean, we have the tendency to look at other people’s lives and think, “Well, they’re all hunky dory.” And by the way, you might ask, what is hunky dory? Well, that’s slang for having it as good as one could wish or expect. Life is good, fine, uncomplicated. It’s hunky dory.
So whether you want to admit it or not, we understand that our choices, however, can complicate our lives. We can, we will, reap what we sow. But what about and here’s a question for this evening but what about when life gets complicated and we’re just an innocent victim of circumstances that are beyond our control? It seems so random, unfair, and undeserved.
So we begin to ask questions. Why God? Why me? Are you there? Do you really care? Do you see my plight? What purpose could this serve? I see no hope for my future.
You know, God spoke to just to give you a little backstory God spoke to Abraham and Sarai and promised that they would have a son. And he would become a child of God’s covenant, and he would be a great nation. And through him here’s the Abrahamic promise through him, all the nations of the world would be blessed. Case in point, the Lord Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham.
So Abram received this promise when he was 75, and Sarai was 65. So when we get to Genesis 16, 10 years have gone by. Still no child. They ain’t getting any younger. So now they begin to work through this test of faith. Fill in the blank. As often happens with prophetic promises of God, sometimes and often, there is a long wait. And so we begin to think in our minds and initiate ways that we will fill in the blank and fulfill the promise. We feel the pressure, the obligation of fulfillment. The Lord spoke the promise. But we begin then to take it upon ourselves to fulfill the promise, produce the answer. We lean on our own understanding. We concoct the plan of fulfillment.
We see the evidence of this in Genesis 16. We’re going to begin reading through the first six verses. Genesis 16:1.
1Now, Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” (Genesis 16:1-5, NIV)
Verse 6.
6“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. (Genesis 16:6, NIV)
Hagar was a victim of circumstance.
Hagar most likely became part of Abram’s and Sarai’s household during their short stay in Egypt. You might recall the story. Upon entering Egypt, because his wife was stunningly beautiful, Abram devised this brilliant plan to present Sarai as his sister. Therefore, Pharaoh would take her and not kill him. He would just take her.
Because Pharaoh understood that Sarai was Abram’s sister, he did take her and put her into his harem, In protection, the Lord brought a vile disease, vile diseases upon Pharaoh and his household. Pharaoh said to Abram, “Why did you deceive me and cause me all this trouble? You all just get out of here.” And in the process, he probably gave to Sarai, the maid, the servant who had been her attendant. “And you can take Hagar with you.” She personally had served Sarai.
So after 10 years of not conceiving, Sarai was feeling the pressure of the unfulfilled promise. It’s a heavy thing. “We’ve been trying to have a child since we were married. The Lord spoke His promise. It’s been 10 years nothing.” So she said, “Abram, take my servant Hagar. Perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Fill in the blank. The Lord said Abram, Sarah would have a son. What was Sarai saying? I don’t believe God will fulfill His promise. This was her plan of fulfillment of the promise.
In the culture of the day, it was an acceptable practice. It was considered that servants can be part of the household. Sarah brought Hagar to Abram. He slept with her. She conceived. And then Hagar offended Sarai. Hagar was the servant to her mistress. Now she’s pregnant with her husband’s child. Now she stands in a position to do what Sarai could not. She is in the position to fulfill this promise. She seemingly had the Lord’s promise in her womb, and she began to flaunt her new status. Hagar became rude and crude to Sarai. You have to remember, Hagar has been a slave, a servant. She’s never had a status.
So Sarai confronted Abram with the situation, told him it was all his fault. “You’re responsible for my suffering.” Abraham told Sarai, “She’s under your control. Do with her as she wishes.” Sarai mistreated her so horribly, Hagar fled the home.
Let’s pick up the story in verse 7.
7The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” (Genesis 16:7-10, NIV)
Verse 11.
11 The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. 12He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Genesis 16:11-12, NIV)
What a beautiful redemptive scene. And you know, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve read through the Scripture. I’ve preached through Genesis. I’m still seeing things that I kind of just glossed over. The focus is always so much on Abram and Sarai, Abraham and Sarah. I’ve never seen this merciful moment and redemptive reach and mercy and kindness that the Lord shows to Hagar. And it so eloquently displays His love and mercy, the love and mercy of God that He has for every, every person on the face of the planet.
But you talk about complicated. Hagar moved from her own people. She didn’t really choose to move. She was taken from her own people no longer around family to a country, her nation, to another country, another location, become part of a new family. She’s a servant, a maid stronger language, slave. And then she was requested to sleep with her mistress’ husband. She becomes pregnant. Conflict arose with her mistress. She didn’t have a whole lot of choice, really, to be honest in this matter. Things got so intense, so conflicted. She runs away. She’s with a child in her womb, all alone in an unknown land.
It’s hard to imagine all the fear and all the anguish that Hagar must have been feeling. And in the midst of that, the angel of the Lord I love this the angel of the Lord found Hagar.
God knows where you are. As lost, lonely, isolated as we may be feeling, buried under incredible, challenging circumstances that weren’t initiated by us, the Lord, the good shepherd, always looking for us. You have value. You have worth. You are desired by God. We’re not some subplot in somebody else’s story. Not some sideline, some outtake, some footnote in somebody else’s story that He cares more about than He could ever care for us.
No, He makes himself available to every person to find you, engage you in the depths of your despair and in the midst of situations that seem so unfair, unjust, dark, and hopeless. No one, no one is beyond God’s search and His reach. No one is hidden in the shadows of somebody else’s spotlight. God knows you and your situation.
You know, we can get so buried in our backstory, under our baggage, swallowed up by circumstances, that we literally have an identity crisis. As we begin to recount our sordid history, we can conclude absolutely that we have no value, that we’re not heard, we’re not seen. Who knows that we even exist? With my life experience as a reference, how could I believe I have a purpose in this world?
Trace the journey of Hagar’s life with all the hardships and all the challenges that she’s faced. Now she’s brought into this complicated, isolated, seemingly hopeless situation, and she has a child in her womb, feeling responsible for the child, and yet forgotten and insignificant.
And the angel of the Lord called Hagar by name. He knew her address. He came to Hagar. “You are Sarah’s servant, Sarai’s servant.” God will engage you in conversation.
It was said of Jesus that he would be the Wonderful Counselor. Of course, Jesus said by the way, this was the angel of the Lord, the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Messenger, the Word who became flesh. “I’m going to leave,” He said, “but I’m going to send you another counselor to help you with, be with you forever.”
Have you noted in Scripture the number of times, the number of times that God calls people by name? And then He begins the conversation with a question. “Elijah, what are you doing here?” “Hagar, where have you come from and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress.” It’s a counseling tool, questions. The wonderful counselor. You want people to reflect on where they’ve come from and where they are, and where do you think this is going to lead? What are the reasons for the choices you’ve made? Those questions of the Lord require some introspection and some evaluation.
How about you? Let me ask you tonight, where are you going? Where have you been? Where have you come from, and where are you going? These are great questions. They cause us to step back for a moment and reflect rather than just react on all that has come our way. It enables us to push pause for a moment on the fight or flight mechanism and consider what we are doing and listen to what God has to say. God will guide you into His promise.
It wasn’t just Abram and Sarai who got a promise from the Lord. Did you note that Sarai got a problem? Got a promise. God equally had a promise for this seemingly insignificant servant girl who randomly got enfolded into this dysfunctional family and has become this victim of circumstances that are absolutely beyond her control.
Ever feel like a pawn? Just in this scheme of life, other people have promises, purposes I’m just a footnote.
God counseled to Hagar: “Go back to your mistress. Obey my counsel. Here’s your promise. I will increase your descendants. They will be too many to count. I will give you your portion of my favor. And you are now pregnant with this. And you’ll give birth to a son. You shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has” which is “God hears,” which is the fact that God has heard your misery.
Fourteen years into the future, God will give Abraham and Sarah their son. He will be called Isaac, which means “he laughs.” They laughed when they heard the promise that they would be old and have this son. They tried to fulfill it. They haven’t been able to fulfill it. God laughs at our unbelief as we try to fill in the blank, fulfill His promise with our plan.
But note this. God also gave Hagar a name for her son. God hears. Now He hears the cries of everyone. No one is beyond His hearing. God heard the cries, Hagar, of you and your misery. God knows. He’s mindful of our misery. And the Lord described the type of man Ishmael would be. Here’s the prophet, the prophecy. He will have the nature of hostility. He has a purpose in this world. It doesn’t look the same as Isaac’s purpose, but he has a purpose in this world. God brings no one into this world that doesn’t have a purpose. Everyone born in the image of God. Everyone has an opportunity to receive a promise, have a future and a hope.
The Lord weaves these tragic, dysfunctional, poor choices into a greater purpose. Every person loved by God. Every person created with a divine purpose.
Genesis 16:13.
13She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi;it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. 15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. (Genesis 16:13-15, NIV)
So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram, interestingly, gave him the name Ishmael. Hagar said, “Yeah, here’s what the Lord, the angel of the Lord, said his name should be.” Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne.
16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. (Genesis 16:16, NIV)
God sees you. Here’s an incredible declaration that this servant girl who is pregnant makes. In all her desperation, God showed up. He heard her cry. He spoke to her. He spoke purpose and promise over her. There was this realization: I’m not out of God’s sight. I have seen the God who sees me. When I was carried away by all my desperate circumstances that were not my own making, when I was rejected and cast away, when I was afraid and feared for my life and that of my unborn child, when there was no provision, no hope of survival, you saw me. You came to me. You called me. You counseled me. You personally revealed your presence to me in my darkest hour. You saw me in my great need. I have undeniably seen you.
Ever felt that you were beyond God’s vision, that you are so buried under your circumstances, that you created or actually were created by circumstances around you?
In my mind, this is one of the greatest declarations in all of Scripture. It totally reveals the tender mercy of God. I have seen the one who sees me. That’s just beautiful. What mercy, what love that God is displaying at that place of the God encounter.
Interestingly, was this life-giving spring and well. It now bears the name that Hagar gave it. She named the place “The well of the one who sees me.” And in obedience, Hagar returned to Sarai and submitted to her, and she bore Abram a son and called his name Ishmael: God hears.
I want to go fast forward to the rest of this story or at least another part of the story. And that’s in Genesis 21:17-21. See, God has a promise and a purpose for you.
In Genesis 21, I’ll just tell you some of the story. Ishmael is about 16, 17 years old. He’s a mouthy teenager. Isaac has been born and weaned, so he’s about 2 to 3 years old. Abraham is holding a celebration. Ishmael mocked Isaac and the occasion. Hagar once again, Hagar and Ishmael were then sent away.
The Lord said to distressed Abraham, “I will make your, the son of Hagar a great nation because he is your offspring.” Yeah, once again, Hagar and his son Ishmael were sent away. And they wandered alone in the desert until all of their water was gone. Hagar, Hagar put her son under a bush, one of the bushes, knowing that this will be the end. Put him in the shade. We’re out of water. I cannot watch him die.
Genesis 21:17-21. God heard Ishmael. God hears.
17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.“ (Genesis 21:17-18, NIV)
Here’s the promise again. This isn’t the end. “Then the Lord opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.” Mom with son had been here before. “So she went, and she filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. And while he was living in the desert, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.
19Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.20 God was with the boy, as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. (Genesis 21:19-20, NIV)
Verse 20 once again, “God was with the boy as he grew up.”
Well, were the only privileged folks here, Abram and Sarai? Only privileged? Only ones loved, only ones embraced? Only ones who have a promise and a purpose? No. Every person. Every person.
You see the parallels here? God heard the boy crying. Ishmael. God hears. This is all reinforcement of what the Lord had counseled and said and ministered, if you will, to Hagar. The angel of the Lord called to Hagar last time He showed up. He begins with a question, like last time. Here’s His assurance. “Don’t be afraid.” Affirmation of the promise again, restated. “I will make him into a great nation.” The well of provision.
When we get consumed with our anxieties and buried under our burdens, sometimes we can’t see the provision of God in the area. Didn’t see the well, but He opened her eyes. The God who sees helps us to see His guaranteed presence.
God was with the boy when he grew up. In the midst of our circumstances, our challenges, and the crises, we need the strong reminder that God hears us and that God sees us. God has a promise and a plan and a purpose for you. Hagar wasn’t a footnote. You’re not a footnote. Ishmael, not a footnote.
Let me end with this. He hears you. He sees you. He will sustain you. And He will speak His promise and His purpose to you.
Pastor Kevin.
When you cry out to Him, He hears your voice. And He answers. He answers in ways that will often be surprising. Maybe not in the ways you expect Him to answer. So keep your eyes and ears open. There are things you don’t see that are right in front of you, that at the right time He will show you.
So, dear ones, it’s come to a time of the service where we will receive this communion meal together. Jesus invites you to His table. This is at His invitation. This is because He loves you. He wants to have a meal with you. He told his disciples, “I have longed to have this meal with you.” And then He said, “As often as you gather, have dinner with me. Have dinner with me.”
It’s always a way dinner is, eating together is very relational, isn’t it? Eating together is very relational.
So come and eat the meal of the New Covenant. Your sins are forgiven, alright? Just in case I’m not sure, this is a pretty holy crowd; I’m not sure if anybody sinned this week at all or not but just in case you did, your sins are forgiven, all right? And I’m being facetious, but it’s actually a very wonderful and serious thing that the God of the universe bore our sins for us.
And so it is always appropriate to say “thank you.” And especially at this supper. And I’ve just made it a habit, as I take the bread and dip it, I just say I say it out loud I just say, “Thank you.”
So come and eat.
The post 2025.9.14 TFHC – El Roi : The God Who Sees Me | Genesis 16 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
September 7, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
I speak the grace and mercy of God over you tonight. Let His mercy wash over you. You are loved, and you are forgiven. Jesus came into the world to seek and save that which was lost. And He found you. Hallelujah. Found me. Hallelujah. And His mercy cleanses us and brings us into a New Covenant relationship with God. So we are His eternal children.
Lord, for your great mercy and for your grace that makes it all possible. We were talking about words earlier tonight, and these words are the best we’ve got, but they don’t express the depth of it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
God has been merciful to you. Hey, we sang a song for you tonight, Brian. Resting in His presence, that was just for you. You stayed awake during it, so that’s good. But thought about you when we were singing that.
Sunday afternoon, man, I took a long nap today. Sunday afternoon is a great time to take a nap. That is honoring the Sabbath. So never feel guilty about taking a nap, all right? It’s a good thing to do.
We are going to finish Romans tonight. When did we start? Did we start at the beginning of the year? Was it January? So it’s taking us nine months here or eight months? All right, well, we’re going to finish tonight. As my dad used to say, good Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise.
Romans, we’re going to do all of chapter 16 tonight. It’s kind of filled with greetings, but it also has some instruction as well.
1 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church in Cenchreae. 2 So you should welcome her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints and assist her in whatever matter she may require your help. For indeed she has been a benefactor of many and of me also. 3 Give my greetings to Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus, 4 who risked their own necks for my life. Not only do I thank them, but so do all the Gentile churches. 5 Greet also the church that meets in their home. Greet my dear friend Epaenetus, who is the first convert to Christ from Asia. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked very hard for you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews and fellow prisoners. They are noteworthy in the eyes of the apostles, and they were also in Christ before me. 8 Greet Ampliatus, my dear friend in the Lord. 9 Greet Urbanus, our coworker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys. 10 Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. 11 Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew. Greet those who belong to the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. 12 Greet Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who have worked hard in the Lord. Greet my dear friend Persis, who has worked very hard in the Lord. 13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother and mine. 14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers and sisters who are with them. (Romans 16:1-14, CSB)
Greet Something like that. And Julia, Neris and his sister, and Olympus and all the saints who are with them.
Greet one another.
And if you want to go ahead and do this, you know, if it’s appropriate in your relationship, greet one another with a holy kiss. There you go. All right.
15 Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them. 16 Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send you greetings. (Romans 16:15-16, CSB)
All the churches in Christ send you their greetings. By the way, I stumbled a little, but here’s Clancy’s rule for when you come across passages in the Bible with a list of names, Greek and Roman names or Hebrew names, or you come across a list in the Bible with a list of geographic regions. When you read them out loud, pronounce them boldly and with confidence. It doesn’t matter if you massacre the pronunciation. Nobody knows and you’ll just sound smart. All right, so don’t like go, “oh ” Just, just run over it like you’re, like nobody’s business. That’s how you get through that’s, you know, that’s, that’s a little Bible study tip for you.
You know, I watched, I watched Tim Mackey on what’s the Bible Project, and he pronounces all these names differently than I do and it’s like I just watch it and go, “Oh, you think you’re so smart. You’re just making that up just like I do.” But maybe he knows. He is smart.
17 Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who create divisions and obstacles contrary to the teaching that you learned. Avoid them, 18 because such people do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites. They deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting with smooth talk and flattering words. 19 The report of your obedience has reached everyone. Therefore I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise about what is good, and yet innocent about what is evil. 20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. 21 Timothy, my coworker, and Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, my fellow countrymen, greet you. 22 I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. 23 Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus greet you. 25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation about Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept silent for long ages 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic Scriptures, according to the command of the eternal God to advance the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles 27 to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ to him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 16:17-25, CSB)
Amen. And that Paul concludes his letter.
And so what do we make of all these greetings? First of all, this. Life is 100% about relationships. Life is 100% about relationships. Not 95%, not 98%. It is 100%. We make life often about stuff, about accomplishments. But those are empty drinks. Those are empty drinks. We need stuff. There’s nothing wrong with having stuff. We need cars that run and houses that protect us from the Washington weather. By the way, I have made the official pronouncement. It’s just official to me, but I made it nonetheless. When I got up yesterday morning, Saturday, September 6th, and looked outside, I said, “Alas, summer is over.”
So now we have two months of fall, eight months of winter, and then a month of spring and two months of summer. That’s 13. Maybe we just have seven months of winter. I don’t know. But enjoy the two months of fall and then it’s on.
So. But it was a fine summer, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that, wasn’t too hot, you know, for Washingtonians. I think we had one or two days over 90 where people, you know, were, you know, fearing that their neighbors might have heat stroke. And anybody get heat stroke? You’re good? All right. Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. You know, we have the fewest days in the Pacific Northwest of any heavily populated area in the United States of over 90 a year. You know that? Yeah. Yuma, Ari in the contiguous United States. Probably Anchorage, maybe, I don’t know. But yeah, we have one to two days a year over 90 on average in this area. Yuma, Arizona is like 180 days a year over 90, so Do I say this too much? Don’t whine about it being hot up here. Just don’t do it. We got, yeah, Washington. We are like Kevin. We have it so good. We have it so good up here.
All right. Life is 100% about relationships, not about the weather. Alright? It’s about relationships.
As a pastor, when I first, my first job at Visalia United Methodist Church as associate pastor was the pastor of visitation. I was supposed to make 40 visits a week, five days a week, that’s eight visits a day. That’s a lot. And I had this little form to fill out. I had to go just knocking on people’s doors. We had a big church, but I was supposed to visit everybody in the congregation, and I was supposed to do 40 a week: hospital visits, home visits. It was hard to do 40 visits a week, I’m telling you.
But it was interesting because one of the things I discovered, especially visiting the older members of the congregation, is oftentimes their happiness and their joy was directly connected to how many pictures they had on the wall of children and grandchildren and beloved family members. And I think Jordan Peterson says this. He talks about, he says you know, you live a narcissistic life and you live onto yourself and you don’t make the sacrifices.
Boy, having kids is a lot of work. It is a lot of work having kids. My grandkids were out. I watched my daughter and son-in-law and you know, and every time they had a chance like, “Hey, can we go get a coffee, and you guys watch the kids?” And we’re like, “Yes.” And they’re like, “Hallelujah, this is the greatest gift ever.”
You know, it’s just a lot of work. And you think, why would anybody subject themselves to this misery? And yet people want to do it. And I’ll tell you why. Because life is 100% about relationships. At this point in my life it’s those family relationships and these relationships in this room, and I go to Grace Covenant conferences and I have the friendships there. It’s all about those relationships that give my life fulfillment and meaning. Life is 100%. And the gospel brings us into those relationships.
And Paul has all these greetings without social media. He wasn’t Facebook friends with any of these people. They didn’t Instagram together. But all these people he knows or knows of, and he has relationships through letters and communications and meeting each other on the road for the gospel. He has relationships with all of them, and he loves them.
And in this passage in Romans, there is great diversity. There are Greeks, there are Romans, there are Jews. We have Jewish names, we have Greek names, we have Roman names. Rome was a cosmopolitan city. It’s where people gathered. And there’s great diversity, and there’s great diversity in culture. Paul’s writing the letter to Romans, in Romans, primarily to Jewish Christians in Rome, but also to Gentile Christians. And the point he makes, the whole point of Romans nine months we’ve been going through Romans the whole point is the mystery of the gospel, that through faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, is now accessible to the Gentiles. And we are all one in Christ.
And that’s what it is here. We’re all one in Christ. All right? We all come from different backgrounds. It doesn’t matter. Culture, sex, status, all these things are flattened in the gospel. We become brothers and sisters in Christ and one in Him. And there’s great diversity.
When I go to Africa on a missions trip, one of the things that I discovered as I started doing missions trips is a vast difference as I would go to these cultures, and even maybe a difference in how they express their Christianity. And yet you could recognize immediately, “Aha, you know him, too.”
I remember when I was a student at Chico State, walking around campus, and I was, and I was a religious studies major, and not everybody who took religious studies classes at a secular university are Christians. And certainly none of the professors. Well, one. Maybe one of the professors was. You know, it’s not a Christian education. But I remember just one class. I was just in one class, first class of the day, and we were just chatting it up, and, you know, I asked the professor a few questions and whatnot, and we walked out, and this girl walks up and she goes, “You’re a Christian, aren’t you?” And I thought, “Does it show?” And she goes, “Oh, yeah, I can spot them. I can spot them.” I’m glad it shows. I’m glad it shows. So, yeah, you’re one of those.
And I go to different cultures, and it’s like, yeah, I remember down in Mexico, and I was teaching on healing, and I was, I was studying a lot under John Wimber and the vineyard movement and their healing method. Their healing method kind of dialed down the Pentecostal enthusiasm of healing. Like, they wouldn’t slam their hands on people and shout, you know, “In Jesus’ Name, be healed!” I called it California Mellow Heal.
Wimber would wear a Hawaiian shirt and sandals, and he’d go, “Oh, you got cancer. Well, man, in the Name of Jesus, cancer, be gone. Yeah, just leave ’em, cancer. Yeah.” They just touch them and they fall. “Oh, look at that. He fell. That’s awesome.” You know, it’s California Mellow Heal.
And I thought, that’s the way to do it. You know, I’m a Cal I was a California hippie. Let’s do California so I go down to Mexico, and I’m talking about healing people and praying for people. I said, “You know, when you pray for people to be healed, they’re not deaf, unless you’re praying for that. And, you know, God’s not deaf. You don’t have to shout and get all loud and enthusiastic and stuff. You can just do it kind of mellow.”
And then I set them loose to pray for each other. And everything else I talked to them about, they took to heart, but not that. “EN EL NOBRE DE JESUS, GLORIA A DIOS !” And I just thought, “Oh, my gosh.” And I realized telling these people, telling these Pentecostal Mexican Christians to dial it down is like telling them to take rice and beans out of their diet. And I thought, big deal. It’s a cultural thing. And so I would start praying for them.
In fact, the word for “nine” and “new.” Anybody speak Spanish? “Nine” and “new” are very similar. Nueve and nuevo. What is it? Nuevo. Yeah. And I preached a sermon on Jesus being new wine. And then I called people forward. I was laying hands on them, and I was praying, you know, “In the Name of Jesus, new wine, new wine.” And they would look at me kind of like, startled, and then they would fall. They would look at me kind of startled, and then they fall.
After about four of them, my translator goes. She goes, “You know, you’re praying for the nine wine anointing.” In the Name of Jesus, nine wine, whatever. I said, “Yeah, that’s a new, that’s a new little thing going on in California. You know, we got the nine wine anointing going on.”
But the differences collapse. One of the things when I’m in those different cultures is, yeah, you know the same Jesus I know. You know the same Jesus I know. And the more close you are to Jesus, the less even those differences, you know, the less Presbyterian, Catholic, Pentecostal, whatever makes, makes less of a difference. Just the closer you are to Jesus, it’s like He is the center.
The gospel is a great unifier. It unifies us in our need. Every one of you is in this room tonight because you’re a sinner in need of God’s grace and in need of God’s mercy. We are united in that. When we come to this table, we all admit, “I need this.” We just sang the song about it. Only the blood of Jesus. There’s not a medicine out there. Chemotherapy is not going to do it. Radiation is not going to do it. Vitamin supplements aren’t going to do it. Vaccines aren’t going to do it.
The only thing that’s going to do it, the only thing that’s going to really fix what ails me, is the medicine that God brings: the blood of Jesus over my life. The mercy of God poured over my life, where I enter into a New Covenant relationship with Him. And I need it.
I remember I was debating with my uncle one time years and years ago, and I was a young Christian, and he was debating. We were just talking about I come from a family where a lot of them love to argue. And arguing typically isn’t a fight. Arguing is, you know, throwing out ideas and trying to prove the other guy wrong and you be right. It’s kind of a competition because, you know, we all want to be right. And nobody in that family ever admitted they were wrong, but we would still argue amicably mostly.
And so we were debating Christianity. And later he kind of became a Christian. But at this time, you know, I was telling him about my faith. And my family’s view this was my mom’s side of the family my grandpa had been burned by church, and so he was against it. And I think the family view was, well, you know, if it’s good for you, you know, if there’s probably some good in it, teach us good morals or whatever.
But I’m talking about him, and I’m talking about my dependency on Jesus. And he said, “What? Sounds to me like your religion is just a crutch.”
And immediately, I felt like the Holy Spirit said, no, tell him it’s not a crutch. I said, “It’s not a crutch. It’s an ambulance. I don’t need no stinking crutch. I need the zappers on my heart, you know? I’m a dead man walking. I need a Savior, not a helper.”
I think it shocked him because I think he was going to say, “No, I’m just as good as you. He’s like, “No ” Yeah. We are unified in our need. This is the hospital for sinners, not the hotel for saints. This is a place where broken people come to be you know, I pray it all the time, that we would be more like Jesus when we walk out that door.
Why do I pray that? Because we need to be more like Jesus. We’re not there yet. At least most of us aren’t there yet. Some of you, I got a feeling, are pretty close. Some of you, you know, you’re closer than me, but you’re still not there yet. All right? If you are there yet, raise your hand right now. All right, good. Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t offending anybody. All right, if you’re closer than me, raise your hand. No, I don’t want to know. Yeah, Kev. That’s pretty obvious, you know.
All right, we’re unified by His grace and His mercy. We are all in need, and we have all received grace, which is His power to transform us, to draw us to Himself in His mercy, which proclaims that our sins are forgiven. We are all the forgiven ones. And so we’re all here with hearts of gratitude.
We are unified by a shared mission. We are to make disciples. We are to make disciples. We all do it in different ways. Some of us have profound ministries of intercessory prayer. Some of us have bold witness to people. Some of us do acts of kindness on a regular basis. Some of us encourage other people who are great disciple makers. Some of us, you know, if we have children, it’s our job to make disciples of our children. It’s not all your fault if they don’t become disciples. They have their own free will, alright? And so, you gave birth to an original sinner. You gave birth to a knucklehead. But you know, it’s because of that, now you’re the first line of God’s defense to the rest of us. Right? You gave birth to a wicked person. Protect us, you know, make them better. And so that’s our job as parents.
We live in neighborhoods. We have workplaces. We have context in which we live, and we share a mission. You’re all missionaries. Maybe some of you are called to a foreign land, but you’re called to the land you’re called to Poulsbo, you’re called to Kingston, you’re called to Silverdale you’re called to the land in which you live.
And then we are shared, we are unified by belonging to a new, eternal family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are related. We’re going to spend forever together. And so, you know, this is a great place to get to know, to get to love one another. This is a school of love. This is where we learn to love one another. And because none of us are perfect in churches, we’re prickly. We can rub each other the wrong way, we can annoy each other.
How long have you guys been coming to the Firehouse Church? Since Sophia was just a little girl, fifteen years or so. With a, with a, with a hiatus in Hawaii. Right? I’m sure there have been people at the whole, at the Firehouse Church I’m sure that I have, though I find it hard to believe, but I’m sure that I have annoyed you or offended you at a time or two or 20 or 30. I don’t know. But, you know, we do that. We do that.
And one of the things that really bothers me is when people get offended and leave churches. It’s like, what do you think? You’re going to another church? What do you think? It’s not going to happen there. Figure it out. Stick around and figure out how to resolve conflict. Figure out how to deal with difficult people.
Now, I know there’s times where difficult people don’t want reconciliation. They don’t want to be right with you. There’s times to move on. I get that. I’m not saying there’s not, but I’m just saying, you know, if you leave because you don’t try to resolve conflict, that’s crazy, because it’s everywhere.
You know, quit your job. You ever notice the guy with I noticed this early in my ministry. Guys who, you know, went from job to job and they just had a series of bad bosses. You know, “Oh, that boss was no fair. This boss was a jerk. This boss was this. And this boss ” And I just had this sneaking suspicion that, huh, what is the common denominator in all your broken relationships? You know, could it be that you’re a part of the problem? Maybe, just maybe, that you’re a part of the problem? Could be.
But we’re being knit together as God’s new eternal family.
I got a feeling my heavenly address is going to be with the people, the Christians whose theology and practice annoyed me the most. They’re going to be my neighbors. Be hanging around those guys just because God’s going to say, “Look who your brothers are. Look who your sisters are.” And it’ll be delightful. We’ll get along really well.
All right. We’re God’s eternal family. God’s forever family. So you know what? you’re not going to get rid of each other. You’re not going to get rid of each other.
It’s like the dear old man and his wife died. He’s pretty old, and they put her in the coffin, and all of his pallbearers were old. They were all these old guys, and they’re all carrying this coffin. They walk, and they’re walking her out of the church after the service, and one of them trips, and the casket slides a little bit and bumps into the wall. When it bumps into the wall, they hear this groan and they open up the casket. “It’s a miracle she’s alive!”
And so they take her out of the casket, and she’s alive. And then, sadly, two years later, she dies again. They do the service of the church. Now, these pallbearers are two years older. They’re taking it out of the church. And as they’re walking out, the guy goes, “Hey, look out for that corner.” Not going to get rid of her. She’ll be waiting for you.
We’re God’s family. Get used to it, get used to it. Learn to love one another. This is the school of love. Those are things that unite us.
And then Paul warns, he says, “But beware of people who are divisive.” And there’s two kinds of divisiveness that I have noticed. One and they’re both theological. There’s also, there’s a third kind, and that’s just people who are just really contentious people in heart, you know, and they just, they like to cause division, they like to cause strife. You ever notice there’s some people just love drama? They just love to create it, love to so, you know, gossips and, you know, it’s like, and, and those people, if you don’t play their game, you don’t have to kick them out. They’ll leave if you just don’t dance their dance. Because they’re looking for people to dance their dance.
But there are other people and one is people who divide over being too particular over non-essential issues. Gavin Ortland wrote a good book on spiritual triage. He calls it theological triage. And he talks about first level things which we have, as Christians, we all hold to. And then he talks about second level things, which are differences we have, unfortunately, that maybe divide us in the church we attend. For example, I would have a really hard time going to a reformed cessationist church. But with those reformed cessationist Christians, I agree with them on all first level issues. Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible is the authority. Jesus rose from the dead. God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Sin’s a big problem. Everybody’s got it. Jesus is coming back. There’s going to be eternal judgment. You know, all these things. The church is God’s instrument to bring forth the gospel in the world. All these things we agree on.
And yet there are things we disagree on. The use and function of spiritual gifts in the church we disagree on. Free will versus determinism we disagree on. Maybe styles of worship we disagree on. Maybe complementarian versus egalitarian we disagree on. And it might make it difficult to regularly worship at that church, but it doesn’t make it, but if Greg Laurie was coming to town to do a crusade and they were in on it, and we were in on it, those things would not, I would not separate from that. You follow?
That’s first level, second level. Third level just doesn’t matter. I mean, I shouldn’t say it doesn’t matter. All theological issues matter. Of all people, I think that more than most people. So why would I say that? But they just don’t matter in terms of separating, all right? They just don’t matter. Are you a futurist, a preterist, a historicist, or an idealist? And you’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t know what any of those words mean.” There are four different ways of interpreting the book of Revelation. Listen, we are all pan millennial. It’ll all pan out in the end. We’re all pan millennial. It’ll all pan out in the end.
And then there’s fourth level issues. And churches actually divide over fourth level issues. The color of the seats. I heard a church that got offended the men in the church, men typically don’t get as offended over these kinds of issues, but they got offended because the church ordered pink urinal cakes, and they didn’t want to pee with pink urinal cakes. They wanted a manly color.
I’m thinking, are you kidding? You take time to notice those things? Anyway, and you know, somebody got upset and said, “We need to get, you know, I’m going to leave this church unless we get new urinal cakes.” Like, oh, brother. No, don’t be divisive over non-essential issues. Augustine said in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things love.
Now the other is, though we must divide from those who depart from those first level issues, who depart from the apostolic faith. I don’t mean divide from them that they can’t be our friends, we can’t have a relationship with them, but we can’t be in Christian fellowship with them.
Now that doesn’t mean people can’t come to church if they don’t hold the apostolic faith. We want people who don’t hold the apostolic faith to come to church, to come and seek it out and hear it and learn about it. But ultimately, you’re not going to be on the leadership of the Firehouse Church if you’re like, “Yeah, Kev, church is cool. I really love this church. I mean, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead or nothing. I don’t believe in that hooey. But, you know, but yeah, I’m good with budgets and stuff. You want me?” It’s like, no, I mean, I want you at church, but I don’t want you making decisions. I want spiritual people.
I left a mainline Protestant denomination, and in my process of, you know, going out the door, I just finally asked my district superintendent straight up. And I got to give him credit; at least he answered straight up. Usually, these guys would obfuscate. They would usually, like one church asked the bishop, “Do you believe Jesus Christ literally rose from the dead?” He said, “I don’t need to answer that. I’m an elder in good standing in the Methodist Church.” It’s like, well, that’s not what we asked you.
Now my district superintendent, to his credit, I asked him two questions. I said, “Do you believe Jesus Christ literally bodily rose from the dead?” He said, “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.” This was my Christian boss.
The second question, I said, “If you had a Buddhist friend, would you try to lead him to Christ?” He said, “No, I would simply help him be the best Buddhist he could be.” And I concluded he does not share the apostolic faith. So why am I raising money for this guy? Why am I taking my directions from this guy? You have to separate from people who don’t hold to the apostolic faith.
Yes? Three things. Biblical, Christological, ethical. We also have creeds. I think I’m creedal. I think the Nicene and the Apostles Creed are helpful, though they don’t define the whole apostolic faith. Most denominations, most churches have statements of faith which, though they may not, they may include more things than the many statements of faith include secondary issues, but most statements of faith at least can include primary issues as well.
Grace Covenant has a statement of faith, though it doesn’t include all primary issues. It could be more thorough in my view. But does the Bible talk about it a lot and clearly? “I don’t know if Jesus rose from the dead. I wasn’t there.” Read the book of Acts and see what the apostles, the first century church, the apostles preached. They preached the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul says very clearly if Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain. I mean, it’s not an ambiguous, “Hey, this could be It could be a spiritual resurrection. It could be ” No, it is very clear. You can believe it or not believe it, but it’s very clear what the Bible is teaching is a literal, physical resurrection.
Another non-negotiable: is, in fact, the Bible authoritative? Is that where we get our information about what the apostolic faith is? Do we get it from the Bible? Do we get it from the Holy Scriptures? Properly understood, I get we can have disagreements about the Scriptures. People say the Bible is clear. It’s not all clear. It’s not all clear. That’s why we have disagreements. But some things are clear.
You know, somebody once asked Jack Deere, they asked Jack Deere, “Which translation of the Bible should I read?” He says, “The one that tells you to love your enemy.” That’s pretty clear in Jesus’ teaching, right? NLT, love your enemy. King James, love your enemy. Greek, love your enemy. It’s there. I think the Jehovah’s Witness even got that one in there right. Love your enemy.
So there are things that are clear. Christological. That’s where the creeds come in. The creeds try to hammer out this concept of God. And when I mean Christological, another word in there might be trinitarian. Who is Jesus Christ? Because once we discover that Jesus Christ is fully man and fully God, then the doctrine of the Trinity emerges.
And so I use the term Christological because that’s what the early church was trying to define. Is He part God, part man? Is He all God and posing as a man? Is He all man and simply what liberals say today has a higher God consciousness than most of us did? But Jesus makes some pretty bold claims about being God.
And yet he also is very clearly makes claims and identifies himself as a man. And so who is Jesus Christ? And the apostles say, John says, if you don’t believe that Christ came in the flesh, you are who? It’s a bad name. Everybody thinks there’s one and he’s coming. But this is in the first century. He said, there are many out there already. And these are the people who don’t believe Christ came in the flesh. They are what? Antichrist. Antichrist. All right? They’re Antichrist.
It also says if you can’t confess Jesus as Lord.
So what does that say? He came in the flesh. He’s man. Jesus is Lord, He’s God. Fully man, fully God. If you don’t believe that, you’re outside of the apostolic faith.
And as fully man and fully God, what does He reveal? He reveals He’s in relationship with the Father, and He reveals that when He ascends, He’s going to send His Spirit. Well, His Spirit can’t be less than God. It’s His Spirit, for goodness sakes. So
And finally, ethical. It doesn’t mean you have to have perfect ethics. It means you have to agree with the Bible ethics. And when you break it, you have to call it sin. And if you have a propensity to break it, you have to say that you’re sinful. In other words, you don’t call broke fixed and wrong right. And we live in a culture that puts a lot of pressure on us to define love by calling broke fixed and wrong right. Only the people who do that do it very inconsistently. Because if you don’t agree with them, you are evil and wrong.
Have you ever noticed that the most intolerant people are the tolerant? The most exclusive are the inclusive. They don’t even notice it themselves. It would be funny if it wasn’t pathetically sad and annoying. No, tolerance is not saying “I tolerate your sin.” Tolerance is saying, “I love you even though you sin because you love me even though I sin. And God loves us both even though we sin.” But we don’t call our sin okay to make one another feel better about our sin. That’s the opposite of love.
And if you’re a parent, you know that. If you love your kids, you put a nix on their bad behavior. And if you think your kids don’t have any bad behavior, you’re a bad parent. Your kids are little stinkers. They’re bullies to their siblings. They’re defiant to your authority. They rebel against you and they rebel against God. In fact, when they rebel against you, they are rebelling against God because you represent God in their lives.
Nothing drives me more crazy than parents in the grocery store with a terrorist 3-year-old, and they’re letting the terrorist win the argument. It’s like you think this is going to make your life easier when they’re 13. I don’t think so. “Listen, if you’ll just be quiet. If you’ll just be quiet and stop throwing a fit, I’ll give you the candy later. You win by throwing a fit.” That’s not love. That’s the opposite of love. You’re destroying that kid’s life.
I’ll tell you what love is. Love is what? Old school. “You’re crying over not getting candy?” What do you say after that? “I’ll give you something to cry about. You think not getting candy is bad? Listen, this behavior is leading you down a path that’s going to be a lot worse than not getting candy.”
I saw a dad, he was doing a great job and he apologized and I just said, “You’re doing, you’re doing it right, man.” He’s taking this kid out of the store, and this dad is actually giving the kid options. “Do you want to sit in the front seat or the back seat?”
“I want to go in and get !”
“No, you already lost that privilege. But now I’m still giving you power. You want to sit in the front seat or the back seat? But you’re going to the car because you’re not behaving this way in the store.” And he’s like, “I’m sorry.” And I said, “Good, dad.” I don’t want to deal with that kid in the store. I don’t want to hear that. Take him out to the car. And he wasn’t yelling, he wasn’t beating on the kid. He was just very calm, very authoritative. But it’s like, guess what? You’re three, I’m 33. I’m the dad. You’re not.
That’s love. Don’t believe that just caving in to the world’s ethical system is love. It’s not. However, neither is being self-righteous and condescending. “I would never do that.” No, but you’d do worse. You’d do worse.
I’ve told you about my gay friend that we used to walk, and we’d walk and talk, and he asked me one time, he asked me, he said, “Listen ” there was a big billboard outside of town with an attractive couple on it. And they were selling cigarettes because, of course, if you want to be young and attractive, smoke cigarettes. And it’s a huge billboard. And on the billboard is a guy in a bathing suit, a well-built guy in a bathing suit, and an attractive young woman in a striped bikini.
And he said, “You know that billboard on Highway 99 outside of town?” I go, “Yeah, yeah, Mike, I know it.” He goes, “Do you ever look at the guy?” I go, “No, I don’t.” I said, “That’s not my deal. I just don’t. I’m not tempted to look at the guy.” He kind of sighed like, “Oh, I’m alone in my sin,” you know? I just looked at him and said, “Mike, I can tell you how many stripes are on that bikini.” All right? I said, “So I’ll tell you what we do. I will meet you at the altar and I will pray for your homosexual struggle and you can pray for my heterosexual struggle. We’re not going to call either one of those things right, but we’re going to love each other in the midst of it and grow as brothers in Christ.” That’s love.
And so ethics matter. Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on your husband. Don’t lie. Don’t murder. Don’t character assassinate. Don’t gossip. Don’t steal. It’s not yours, don’t take it.
Stevin, you probably like this. You know, they got the door, the door dashers, the people, you know, they follow the Amazon truck and take around Christmas time? So Jill just thought, “Oh, you know, I just, I hate theft. I just want to get them.” I said and I don’t, I’m not as just as crazy as she is, but I thought, “Well, here’d be a fun way. Let’s go collect all the dog poop in the neighborhood, put it in an Amazon box, and leave it on our doorstep and just see if they take that. That’d be like ” She goes, “Oh, that would be so good.” Yeah, that would be fun. They open it up and there’s all this dog poop in there. That’d be great. Merry Christmas. Does that sound good, Stevin? Yeah, or that stuff that explodes and gets blue paint all over you. Yeah, there you go.
Don’t steal. Jill and Stevin say, don’t steal. Don’t run away from the cops, or they might have to set the dogs on you. And if you get bit, stupidity should be painful.
All right, so that’s how we know, Karen.
Then finally, Paul gives a benediction. He says, you are going to have victory. I love this. I love how the Bible contrasts words so powerful. He says, I want you to know that the God of peace. The God of peace. The God of peace will soon crush Satan underneath your feet.
20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. (Romans 16:20, CSB)
Isn’t that great? Because sometimes to get peace, it involves violence. Sometimes to get peace, it involves violence. But here’s the good news. That the God who loves you will perfect the work He has begun in you.
And one day, those enemies that tempted you and tortured you and, you know, we all experience the same thing. The devil tempts us to sin. And then we sin. And then the very one who is telling us, “Hey, it’s no big deal. It doesn’t matter. Everybody does this. Don’t worry about it.” And then we go ahead and do it, right? And then the minute we do it, his tone completely changes. “Oh, and you call yourself a Christian? You’re not even saved. you’re terrible. A real child of God would you’ve did that before. You think God’s gonna just keep forgiving you?”
Guess what you get to do to that cockroach who’s been whispering those things in your head all those years? He gets crushed underneath your feet. I’ve told you this before. I’ll tell you it again. It’s the only time I think it’s appropriate to use these words. One day, we will judge angels. I don’t think we’re gonna judge our guardian angels. Like, “Dude, what about when I got in that accident? What were you doing?” You know, I don’t think we get to do that. Your guardian angel’s like, “You have no idea. You have it so good. I was your guardian angel. Believe me, you have it so good.” Jill will be like, “See, even the guardian angels know.”
No, but I think we get to judge those fallen angels who have tortured us. And it’ll be the only time Aiko, you can actually say this. You can say it. You can look at those little critters and say, “Go to hell.” Don’t practice on Ats, all right? Don’t do that. You can just know that someday you get to say it. All right? So the God of peace will give us the victory, and our enemies and His enemies will be destroyed. And we actually take some kind of process. We join him in that process, and for that, we attain eternal peace.
And so we are to stand firm in the gospel. Dear ones, you cannot lose if you do not quit. Don’t quit. Stand firm in the gospel. Everybody I know who has walked away from their faith gives intellectual reasons for walking away from the faith. “I don’t believe it’s true because of all the suffering in the world” is the number one reason. You know, if God was good, why are there children cancer wards?
It’s like, well, if children cancer wards are such a troubling thing for you, why aren’t you down there volunteering instead of accusing God? There’s a thought. Or donating your money. There’s a thought.
But no, that’s not the reason people don’t believe in God. Here’s the reason people don’t believe in God. They had a besetting sin, which is hard. They were dealing with something that they couldn’t get victory over. And so they finally just caved and said, you know what? I’m just giving into this. I’m going to go ahead and cheat on my wife. I’m going to go ahead and leave. I’m going to go ahead and be greedy with my money. I’m going to go ahead and lie at work to get ahead and be a dishonest business person to move ahead. I’m going to go ahead and do what I feel like doing.
And therefore, to escape any kind of condemnation, I’m going to have to unload this Christianity thing, and I’m going to have to come after clever answers of why I did so my believing friends won’t be able to, you know, come back at me.
That’s how it works. That’s how it works. You know, my friend Josh D’Intinosanto, he talks about one of his friends that he went to Bible college with. And this friend no longer believes in God, has all these intellectual reasons for no longer believing in God.
And I said, what do you think the real reason was? He said, “Oh, he didn’t want to give up pot.” And, you know, there was a conflict there.
Now, I got no condemnation for somebody who struggles with addiction. My deal is don’t quit struggling with the addiction. I said it wrong this morning. I said, “Listen, if you struggle with drugs, don’t quit.” And then people said, “What?” Struggling with the struggle. Don’t quit the struggle. Quit the drugs. Don’t quit the struggles. Do your best to quit the drugs.
Stand firm in the gospel. You haven’t been argued out of the gospel. You haven’t discovered that it’s ontologically, that it’s not true. You haven’t been proven that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead or that God didn’t really create the universe. None of those things have been revealed to you. Science has not concluded that this is all folly. No, you gave it up because there was something else that was in conflict with Him that you didn’t want to give up, and you committed idolatry. You made that thing your God, and so now you can’t follow this one.
“Well, I just didn’t want to be a hypocrite.” Really? Because we all are. Look at, there’s simply, there are only two kinds of people in the world: people who lower the standard or people who don’t live up to the standard but still own it. And those, those people are typically called hypocrites, right? I believe in loving your enemy, and yet there’s still people out there I think are scumbags and I want to punch. Well, does that make me a hypocrite? In a way, yeah. I’m supposed to love those people, but at least I own it and say, “God, help me love those people. I know you’re right and I’m wrong and I’m not going to quit so then I can give myself permission to hate my enemies and feel good about it.”
Listen, if you don’t want to be a hypocrite, yeah, lower the bar, right? You know, we do this all the time, right? We just find people who are worse than us. At least I don’t do that. At least I don’t do that. Well, that’s like, big deal, you know? I hate my enemy, but at least I’m not. I don’t kill him. Well, Jesus says in your heart you’re a murderer. We actually have a word for it if you talk about them, right? What do we call it? Character. What? Assassination. Character murder.
So stand firm in the gospel. Embrace the struggle. Embrace the struggle and don’t quit. Turn to somebody next to you, say, “Don’t quit. Have the courage to keep going.” Have the courage to keep going. That’s my problem with suicide. You took the coward’s way out. You took the coward’s way out. Don’t quit. Run the race to the finish line.
And here is the mystery of the Gospel. The New Testament talks about this all the time, and we miss it because it’s not a big mystery to us anymore because it’s been around for 2,000 years, but it was a huge mystery to first-century people. And what is this? That the Jewish Messiah is actually the Messiah for all the world. The mystery of the gospels: Jews and Gentiles are now one. And they all come to God on the same terms: faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ is the answer not just for the Jews. Christ is the answer not just for this culture or that culture. Christ is the answer for humanity. And this gospel is for all of humanity. It is for all of humanity.
I am not, I cannot hold to the doctrine second tier doctrine, I’ll give you that, second tier doctrine I can’t hold the doctrine that God has picked some to go to heaven and others not to. And I don’t think we went through Romans I don’t think that’s what Romans 9 is saying or Romans 8 is saying. I don’t think he’s saying that at all.
I think that this message goes to all the world. People can reject it, but the mystery is that He is the Messiah for all. He is the Messiah for all.
Are you saying that all have been predestined? You bet. All have been predestined to be His children. Some just don’t enter into their inheritance. So be it.
But God loves all. He came for all. And this gospel, that God’s love is for all, that He has gone to great lengths through Jesus Christ, through His life, death, and resurrection to bring about this hope for being a part of His eternal family and being made whole and being made like Him and restoring earth and bringing back Eden and having His ultimate desire and His ultimate victory, this great story brings glory to God. No kidding.
And we said it earlier tonight, we don’t have the words. “Thank you” is too small, right? I just don’t know of another thank you a lot. You know? Maybe if I spoke in 15th century English where they used, where they had vocabularies of 54,000 words where I think Modern English, our average vocabulary is like 3,000 words. Maybe I’d have better words to thank God. Maybe that’s why people appreciate the old hymns as they have these glorious poetic words, but even those words fall short.
But it brings glory to God, and that’s our lives. We are to reflect His glory. I want to be this has happened to me a couple of times, and I’m not bragging because it’s true of you. If He lives in us, He’s going to leak out but I want to be that guy where people say, for good or for ill, “I knew you were a Christian. I knew you were one of His.” I want it to show. I want it to show and give Him glory. It’s like, wow.
I have an aunt who doesn’t believe. But my life’s made an impact on her because she knew me when I was a teenager. I was talking to her a couple of years back, and I said, “You know, Aunt Sandra, I was in a bad way.” And she goes, “Oh, yeah, I knew. I know. We were concerned for you.” And I said, “And then it was Jesus that turned me around.” And she said, “Yeah, that was when it started happening for you.” I’m like, “Well ?” But she, you know, yeah. Yeah, she’s like, “You’re not as rotten as I thought you were going to turn out to be. I saw you headed up and, you know, got better. You’re not perfect.” It’s like, “No, I’m not, but ” There you go, there you go.
Everybody’s always like, they’re like, “Well, you can’t be that bad. I mean, Jill married you, and she’s wonderful.” I go, “I know. I have it so good.”
All right, dear ones. Only the blood of Jesus.
On the night that He was betrayed, He took bread and He broke it. And He said, “My body is going to be broken for you. Just like that lamb had its body broken, my body’s going to be broken, and my blood is going to be shed just like that lamb. And just like that, that blood on the doorpost made the sign of the cross, my blood is going to be spilled out upon a cruel cross. But in that blood is going to issue forth the forgiveness of sins and New Covenant. And humanity is going to be healed. And this is the love of God.”
God loved the world in this way. If you want God, how did you demonstrate your love? Here it is. He loves you and you are not perfect. And He loves you when you sin. And He loves you when you’re good and kind and gracious. And tonight, I want you to be reminded of that, and I want you to be fed by that. He wants you to be reminded of that and be fed by that. So come and eat.
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August 31, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
We give you thanks and praise tonight, Lord God Almighty, for your saving acts through your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We thank you for your holy Scriptures, Lord, that reveal Jesus to us. We thank you for your Spirit, and we pray that as we open up your Word, your Spirit would speak and enliven our hearts with your truth.
God, we want to leave this place more like Jesus than when we came in. And we ask that you would do that in us and through us. In His Name we pray, Amen.
Amen! All right, dear ones, good to be here. I told you the golf joke last week, didn’t I? Alright, so I won’t do that one again.
All right. This morning we did baptism. So we talked about baptism this morning. I’m going to talk about something else tonight. I’m not going to give you a baptism sermon. But we went down to the Sound and did the baptism, down to the Sound. And with Discovery Fellowship with Steven Olson and Discovery Fellowship, we’ve now done that three times.
One time we went to the Sound, and we couldn’t baptize on the Sound because of the algae, the red, whatever it is. That’s when we baptized Karen that night in Silverdale. Remember that, Brian? Yep. And we baptized Karen and Brandy D’Intinosanto. It was a wonderful night.
Then another time, you know, we did it this morning with the Discovery Fellowship. Two years ago, we went to Discovery Fellowship, and we baptized them in the Sound. And it was great. We didn’t have any baptism at the Firehouse, but they did at Discovery. And Stephen Olson baptized his son. It was wonderful. He baptized his son in the Sound.
Anyway, so, you know, we did that and we almost got done, and then, you know, Bremerton. So, you know, this, like, guy, I don’t know if he was drunk, if he was high or whatever. He just came running out in the water and says, “I want this. I want this.” And so it’s just exciting.
So Stephen grabbed him and he dunked him in the water and he pulled him up and he said, “Have you found Jesus?”
And he goes, “No.”
He dunked him again. He pulls him up. He says, “Have you found Jesus?”
He goes, “No.” He dunked him a third time. You know, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, dunked him a third time. Pulled him up, “Have you found Jesus?” The guy goes, “No! If you tell me where he went under, maybe I can help.”
So it’s not a true story. It’s a good baptism story.
All right, so we’re not going to talk about baptism. I could talk about, I could give the same sermon I gave this morning, and I talked about baptism. I’m not doing Romans. We got one more sermon in Romans. But I thought, I’ll do it together. We’ll do it in Bremerton next week. Do it here next week.
So I thought, let’s just go to the end of the Bible. All right. Let’s just go to Revelation 22. Just, let’s just jump right to the end. Let’s do it.
All right. So we’re going to talk about eschatology, the study of last things. And we’re in Revelation 22:1-7. Let me read that to you.
1 Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations, 3 and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever. 6 Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” 7 “Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” (Revelation 22:1-7, CSB)
May the words of my mouth, meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock, our Strength, and Redeemer.
So I want to ask a question. Obviously, we read Revelation 22, and we think, oh, this is a picture of heaven. And it is. It’s a picture of the new heavens and the new Earth. But I have a question, and the question is it’s a rhetorical question; you don’t have to answer it necessarily what does the word “soon” mean? Twice, He says, “Soon, I am coming. These things will take place soon.”
And if this is only about the last days, this is only about the new heavens and the new earth. I guess you could say, well, it came soon for everybody in that generation because they died and maybe experienced a picture of this. But it seems like He’s talking about something else. He’s talking about that this is going to happen soon. And so we struggle with that. And in fact, that’s how the Book of Revelation starts, right? Revelation 1:1. Jesus appears to John on the island of Patmos, and He says, “I have come to show you things that are going to happen soon.”
Now, I understand completely that God’s timing is not our timing. God has a different kind of frame of reference for time. But I also think if He’s writing something to reveal to His people, something about Himself, it seems to me that the word “soon” loses most of its meaning if we mean by “soon” 20, 100 years. Just doesn’t click with me.
I mean, when the prophets began to speak of the Messiah coming the first time, they never used the word “soon.” Isaiah didn’t say “He’s coming soon,” and then they had to wait for a thousand years. I can’t think of any of the prophets that say the Messiah is coming soon.
Jews expected him soon. Throughout that period of time, they’re always expecting him soon as they’re being persecuted. When’s the Messiah going to come? Is he going to come soon? But the word “soon” doesn’t I could be wrong, if somebody knows one place in the prophets that said he’s coming soon, but he just, he’s coming. But here in the Book of Revelation, we have “soon.”
Well, if this is a picture of the new heavens and the new earth and the end of all things, what does “soon” mean? And I think we have the answer in what we call, what theologians call “the now and the not yet.” Actually, theologians call it realized eschatology because they like to take simple words and make them big.
So realized eschatology, the now and the not yet, that this is a picture of the new heavens and the new earth. But what I think the Bible is telling us is that when we put our faith in Jesus and we look forward to the new heavens and the new earth, it’s kind of like there’s an attraction. And the new heavens and the new earth start to break into this world. It seems to me that’s a lot of the teaching of the New Testament. Jesus comes and teaches us to pray.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, CSB)
There’s a future reality that we’re all yearning for, a future hope that we all are craving. And God says, “As you look to that future hope, guess what? That hope is going to break in to this world. Heaven on earth is going to come.” And some people think, “Well, it’ll all be heaven on earth.” I don’t know. I don’t think it’s all heaven on earth. I don’t think this is as good as it gets. I hope it’s not as good as it gets. I hope it gets better. However, is it the case that ever since Jesus came, there’s a crack? I mean, that’s what Jesus’ baptism says, right? It says, heaven opened up.
All right, have you ever had a pair of jeans? I know now they sell them this way. Cracks me up. They sell them with rips already in them. All right, when I was growing up, that was a bad thing when your jeans ripped. Your mother and if you were poor, you know, your mother didn’t you’re not going to get new jeans. She’s going to, you know, sew on or not sew on, but iron on one of those stupid looking patches. But the last thing we do is go to school with our legs hanging out.
I see these girls, mostly girls, walking, you know, walking around and they got these jeans and they all got all these holes in them. It’s like, “Honey, do you need money? Do you need to buy a new pair of jeans? You know, is something wrong here?” But no, this is the way it looks. We want to look like poor people. It’s never been so expensive to look like a poor person. “Look, I’ve got bad jeans. They cost me $300.” All right, well, just go out, play football with your friends for a few days and you can get that look. We had it as kids.
What was my point on that? I have no idea. What’s that? World’s getting better. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know what my point was at all on those jeans.
However, here’s the point I want to make: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That the “soon” is upon us. The “soon” is upon us. And so this is a picture of the heavenly reality. But that heavenly reality is breaking into the here and now.
John sees a river. All right? This river is flowing from Jesus and from the throne. Well, some people ask, where in this picture of heaven is the Trinity? You have the throne of God. You have Jesus standing there. Where is the Spirit? Right here. The Spirit is the river of God.
In Ezekiel 47, we have a river that comes, that flows from the temple of God, and it brings life. It’s the Spirit of God. Jesus look at, you think, “Oh, no, no, you can’t say the river is the Spirit of God.” Yes, you can. Jesus says in John 7, “All who believe in me, out of their belly, out of their life will flow what streams of living water.”
38 The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” (John 7:38, CSB)
And then it says this is the Spirit who he was referring to. This is the Spirit of God. And “soon” began to happen at Pentecost.
And so when the Bible says “soon,” it means when the Spirit is present. The future reality of New Covenant, eternal, new heavens and new earth is breaking into the now.
John sees a river. It is pure and it is clear. It is holy. It’s the Holy Spirit. It’s not a muddied river. Anybody been to the Grand Canyon? you’ve seen the Colorado river and the Grand Canyon. Yuck. Nobody wants to drink out of that. It’s just nothing but flowing mud. It’s brown. Unless you imagine it’s chocolate. But it’s not. It’s not.
I remember my brother-in-law. We went to a wedding, and this was before these things were popular. Now you see them all the time. But it had one of those you’ve seen those chocolate fountains and it had strawberries and stuff. And you dip the strawberries in the chocolate. He just came back to our table, and he says, “There’s a fountain over there flowing with chocolate.” He was like, all right, that’s soon, that’s realized eschatology for my brother-in-law right there, a fountain flowing with chocolate. It’s like, that’s heaven on earth. All right?
But John sees a river that is pure and clear. It’s flowing from the Father and the Son. And this water cleanses us. The Holy Spirit cleanses us. This water refreshes us. The Holy Spirit refreshes us. This water brings life. The Holy Spirit brings life.
I am talking a little bit about baptism right now. Because when we submit to the waters of baptism, our sins are forgiven, we’re cleansed, we’re refreshed. We, it brings life. We are buried into death, and we rise into new life. And then the Holy Spirit fills us with the life of heaven, the life of eschatology now, the life of heaven on earth. And we are refreshed. And so it’s both. Revelation 22 and, in fact, the life we are living here on earth as disciples of Christ, is both heaven now and heaven not yet.
I was engaged for a long time. Jill and I got engaged, and let’s see, we got engaged in February, and then we got married in July a year later. So March, April, May, June, so 4, so 12, so 16 months. We had a 16-month engagement. All right, that was a long engagement. I was away at school. And it’s interesting, when you’re engaged, right? When you’re engaged, you’re not married. You know? But I went away to college, and she was still at home. And I’m a young guy at college, and I’m not married. What does that mean? I’m single. Well, no, I’m not. I’m engaged.
I got my first job when I went up there. I had at Round Table Pizza in Chico, California. They had Round Table Pizza back then. Chico, California. And I was, I’d just turned 21, and then I went in for a job. It was, it was really, it was, it was a blessing, right? My mom dropped me off. I’m sitting there. I’m all alone in my new apartment, and she bought me a ton of groceries. But I’m just like, you know, I’m just sitting here all alone, and college is starting. And it kind of hit me, you know, you’re gonna experience this. You’re just there.
And I thought, I shouldn’t do this, I don’t have any money, but I’m gonna go out and get a pizza. I’m not gonna, you know, make some food that my mom bought me. I’m gonna go out and get a pizza. I rode my bike over to Round Table Pizza, and lo and behold, they had a help wanted sign. And I said, “You guys are looking for help?” And they said, “Well, you got to be 21. We’re looking for somebody who’ll pour beer and wine.” I said, “I’m 21. I’m your guy.”
And so I got a job at Roundtable, you know, and I was working the bar. A couple of young ladies started showing up at the bar. I had no idea, all right? I was clueless. I had no idea. They just would, they were just nice gals. And we just, I’d pour them their beer, and they’d have their pizza, and we’d chat it up. And it was all good.
And I had this little studio apartment, and then right there in the middle of my one room is a big picture of Jill.
And one day I get a knock on the door, and these two ladies are at my apartment. I don’t know which one was on the prowl, but it never dawned on me. I just thought they liked beer and, you know, were friendly. But they show up at my apartment. It’s like, well, how did you find out? You know, they had to do some stalking to find out where my apartment was. And, you know, it’s kind of like, “Oh, well, hi. Hi. Hi.” You know, I said, “Well, come on in.” And immediately, I mean, the first thing you see, and immediately, one of them just stepped in the room. “Who’s that?” I go, “That’s my fiance.” Never saw those two girls again. They disappeared. Why? I wasn’t single. I wasn’t married, but I wasn’t single.
That’s us. We’re not there. But we got a foot in both worlds now. We got the now and the not yet. The Holy Spirit brings heaven to earth. And I tell people this all the time. I had a friend who said, “Well, you know, there’s this church and they’ve got an over-realized eschatology. You know, they expect too many miracles from God.” I say, how do you have an over-realized eschatology? I want to have an over-realized eschatology. I don’t know how much heaven we can get on earth. So I tell people all the time, I don’t know how much heaven we can get on earth, but I don’t know, I want more and I think we can get more. That’s just my hope, that’s my optimism. I think that river is flowing now and it’s flowing in the lives of people who are going to experience it forever.
What does John see in this heavenly vision? He sees the tree and the trees of life, the fruit that brings life and the leaves that heal the nations.
2 down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations, (Revelation 22:2, CSB)
That’s another thing. If this is all about heaven, why do you need leaves that heal nations in the new heavens and the new earth? You know, are we still going to be having peace talks in the Middle East in the new heavens and the new earth? Are we going to be sitting down with Russia and Ukraine and saying, “Come on guys, we’re in heaven now, let’s get along?” You know, I think the bombs are going to stop flying at some point. But here He says there are leaves for the healing of the nations. That’s a now word. The nations need to be, and it’s a heavenly word. It’s kind of prophesying that the nations ultimately will be healed. There will be no more war.
But there’s fruit that brings life, there’s healing for the nations. And so we have a job. And our job isn’t to wait around to get raptured and to get as many people in the lifeboat as we can. Yes, we want people to be born again. Yes, we want people to be saved. Yes, we want people to come to faith in Christ. But our job is to bring the goodness of the Lord you’ve heard me say it, Psalm 27:13 the goodness of the Lord into the land of the living, to bring that reality into this reality because that reality now lives in us. That reality now lives in us. And so it’s a Now and not yet. There’s no more curse. There’s complete restoration. The curse has been broken. We’re going to sing a song in a minute that talks about the curse is broken.
My family. My dad was an alcoholic. His dad was an alcoholic. All my uncles were alcoholics. I’ve gone back a little bit into the family history. My dad’s grandpa was an alcoholic. They were all alcoholics. They all attended church. They were nominal Catholics, but they were all alcoholics. And I come along and I just like, I don’t want any alcohol. You know, I just saw it in my family line, you know? As I was rolling a joint, I made the decision, I’m not going to drink. Oh, well, you know. But Jesus came into my life, and I gave up the alcohol. I gave up, you know, I didn’t take on the alcohol, and I didn’t, and I gave up the marijuana. And guess what? The curse is broken.
I was concerned about my kids because, like, well, genetic, you know, are they going to be predisposed? And my kids? Nope. They are not teetotalers. I’m a teetotaler. I don’t drink at all because I just don’t need another monkey on my back. But my kids can have a glass of wine or a beer or something like that. None of them have any inclination to drink compulsively. None of them. I’ve never seen any of them drunk. They’re sober. The curse is broken. God brings about restoration. If there’s a curse in your family line, it can be broken with you. That heavenly life can come. There will be no more curse there. But He’s breaking curses now.
There is a throne in their midst. That means there’s perfect administration. Jesus is king. Politics is not evil. Evil politics are evil. I got news for you. You might think this is bad news, but there will be politics in heaven. There will be policy. There will be Stevin, I got great news for you. There will be order. There will be rules. There will be structure. It will be good. It’s not just going to be a free for all. All right? But it will be a perfect administration. Even my wife will have to say, “That’s even better than I could do.”
By the way, in the political administration of our house the other day, we have grandkids and I’m watching TV. My wife’s not watching TV, I’m watching TV. Little two-year-old grandkid walks in the room and says, “I want to watch Daniel Tiger.” And my wife’s not watching TV. I’m watching TV. Now, I would have said, “Of course, honey.” And I would have switched off the sports I’m watching and let her watch Daniel Tiger.
But I didn’t have a chance to do that. There was politics that went on. There was a policy that was administered that I didn’t know was to be administered at the time. And my wife, who was not watching TV, it was not her decision, said, “Of course.” And changed the channel. To which I, I think very reasonably, raised an objection. Not that I would have done it differently. I wouldn’t have, but it’s like, I don’t think that was your call. And I was informed by the policy, I guess, the policy of our household. I was informed. “You have it so good.” That was her answer. I have it so good. Okay, so I guess I have it so good. Even though I can’t decide whether I want to turn off the show that I’m watching or not. I have it so good.
I’m lucky that I don’t have that power. So all day today, I’ve just been telling her, this one’s got to get, this one has legs. It’s going to live a while. I have it so good. I have it so good.
There are politics in my house. There is an almost perfect administration in charge of my house. But there will be a perfect administration. There is a throne in their midst. Servants shall serve. There will be meaningful work there. Guess what? Heaven’s not going to be just sitting around worshiping Jesus forever. There will be farms, Ats. All right? Aiko, there will be bunnies to raise who do not die. There will be horses, Stevin. There will be, there will be buildings to build. I don’t know if there’ll be preaching to do. I hope so. I hope I have something to do. Otherwise, I will be a heavenly sportscaster or Ats recommended, maybe a heavenly stand-up comic. I don’t know, whatever. So I’ll do something, you know, an eternity of jokes about Jill I think would be apropos, you know, because I have it so good. That could happen.
All right. But we will have meaningful work. Well, guess what? We have meaningful work now. We have the now and not yet. We serve the kingdom now. You have meaningful work now. And dear ones, everything you do that is honest work, that is not evil work, you know, you’re not a mobster out there. You’re not, you know, pimping out prostitutes or, you know, involved in, you know, you know, selling drugs or anything. Everything you do with your hands as you do it unto the Lord is holy and sacred work. And you’re serving Jesus. If you’re a mechanic and you are serving your customers to the best of your ability and not taking advantage of their ignorance of motors, but being an honest, good, true mechanic, you are serving the Lord.
Whatever you do, you are representing that heavenly reality of meaningful work. Your vocation is holy. One of the biggest errors the church has ever made is the two-tiered vocation, right? The holy men of God, the priests and the pastors and all that. And then all the rest of you. And I, you know, I make fun of that with my joke. You know, I’m paid to be good; you’re good for nothing. You know, and that’s meant to be, you know, an actual, I’m being facetious about that to bring out the point that there isn’t this two-tiered thing. There isn’t this two-tiered thing.
What I’m doing now is holy work. Guess what? What you do is holy work. Making cabinets is holy work, Ats. Doing it to the best of your ability to serve your customers and to serve your employer is holy work. Everything, being a student, Sophia, is holy work. All right? Growing a garden, Isaiah, is holy work. Everything we do with our hands unto the Lord, we will serve forever. There will be meaningful things to do, and there are now.
We shall see his face. We are transformed by glory. We sang the song tonight. It’s your presence, Lord, I seek. Do we get the full-on presence of that face-to-face encounter with Jesus that we’re going to have one day? No, but guess what? Even now we can experience His presence. Even now. I mean, Christians all over are like, “Well, man, God really showed up at that meeting tonight.” What do they mean by that? He’s an omnipresent God. He’s always, He’s everywhere at all yeah, but every once in a while we all have these experiences.
Sometimes it’s when we’re reading the Bible, sometimes it’s when we’re praying, sometimes we’re in a worship service. But all of a sudden, it’s like that veil between heaven and earth gets thin, and we begin to experience His glory.
I love that feeling, you know, that little addict in me that refuses to be an alcoholic. I’ll tell you what, I could be a glory-aholic. But even then, God won’t let you. He’ll take you there, but He’ll take you out of it and say, “Now get to work. You’re no good just lying on the floor 24 hours a day. You know, it’s time to get up. It’s time to get up and go about your work.”
But you’re transformed by those encounters. You’re transformed by his glory. Your identity is restored. Names are on people’s foreheads. Your identity is restored.
One of the things that delights me is this idea that the book of Revelation puts forth, that we all get an individual name that fits us perfectly. When I grew up, my parents named me Kevin because they fell into the trap. Many of you named your kids the same way. Hey, there’s not a lot of kids named like this. And a couple million other parents are thinking that exact same thought in that exact same generation, you know, Megan, Michael, and Kaitlyn.
Michael was a given. He was a lot of names. And by the way, just to show you I have it so good, here’s another policy that was established. We get pregnant. By we, I mean she. But, you know, I was there, and we’re thinking about naming the kids, and I’m throwing out names, and it’s like shooting skeet. It’s like, I throw out a name Pull! (gunshot sound) I say, “What’s the deal?” And she says, “Here’s the deal. You give them the last name, I give them the first.” Was a policy.
I have it so good. So I know she’s not here. I make her look terrible. She’s delightful. She’s a wonderful woman. What? Yeah, same policy. You have it so good. Way to go, though. Stand up for your manhood. I caved. I caved. All right. Good for you. And your kids have wonderful names. Don’t complain. You have it so good. Don’t complain. We both married rule people.
All right. But the Bible says we will have a name that fits us. We will have a perfect name. What does that mean? Oh, and I grew up. So I grew up. And there were three Kevins in each of my classes. There’s Kevin Zumwalt, Kevin Vance, and Kevin Clancy. First grade, second grade, third grade. Every class I was in, they were just Kevins because nobody named their kid Kevin. All right? And so I remember for a while there, in the 80s, it was boys were given the J names. There were a lot of Joshuas, Jeremiahs, Jacobs, you know, a lot of the J names were going around.
And I remember this one lady, she didn’t know the Bible too well when she named her kids, and she named him Jacob. And then read about Jacob in the Bible, and she goes, “Oh, brother.” You know? And, you know, your Jacob turned out all right. But this kid was a Jacob. He was quite the kid.
So anyway, you get a name. You have a unique identity with God. I don’t know how many snowflakes have fallen on the face of the earth, but by best, best guess, I mean science can’t prove this. We haven’t seen every snowflake, but every snowflake we have seen, we’ve never seen a duplicate. We’ve never seen a duplicate.
We’re the same. We’re a lot alike. And yet God sees each of us as an individual. I mean, Jesus says that, right? He says, “The hairs on your head are numbered. I know you in that kind of detail.” We try to find our identity in our relationships, in our success in work or whatever. When we find our relationship in Him, we are truly the most
I was dealing with this young lady one time, and she had this really shallow view of heaven. She wasn’t a Christian. And she says, I think we were talking about the LGBT issue. And I was saying, you know, it’s a mistaken identity. It is a mistake. And to make your identity your sexual orientation, what a sad thing. That’s who I am. Like, you’re so much more than that. And she says, “Well, in heaven, won’t we just all be the same?” And I thought, oh, you’ve got it 180 degrees wrong. In heaven, we will be more us. You know, you’ll be more Brian than you are now. Yeah. And it’ll be good. It’ll be good.
And we’ll all be more wonderfully unique in him as we find our identity in Him. CS Lewis points this out. He says, if you look throughout history, you’ll notice that all the tyrants are pretty much the same. He says, but if you look at the saints, they’re remarkably diverse. They are remarkably different. We have our identity in Him. Find your identity in Him. God is light. There’s perfect illumination. There’s no more night.
As we just sang that song, when the night is holding on to me, God is holding stronger. He is holding on to me. And so, dear ones, you know, the nighttime has always been the time when bad things happen, and there’s fear, and kids get nightmares. I was tortured as a child by nightmares from 3 years old till 11 years old. I had nightmares on a regular basis because my parents let me watch “The Wizard of Oz,” and that witch became a reality in my life. On a regular basis, that would appear.
I remember just getting out of my bed and running down that hallway because I knew she was behind that door or that door or that. Never under the bed. People get the under the bed thing. I didn’t have the under the bed thing, but she was behind one of those doors. I’d run past those doors so fast. And I would jump into bed between my parents. Bam. And my mother would comfort me, and my dad would pray. How did I know my dad would pray? When I landed on that bed, the first words out of his mouth were the Lord’s name. And he would speak the Lord’s name.
And for years, but the night fears are going to be gone. The darkness is going to be gone. Well, do we have that now? Yes, we have the illumination of God’s word, the illumination of His Spirit.
Didn’t you experience when you were born again? Like, wasn’t one of your experiences when you were born again, like somebody turned on the lights? That was my experience when I came to Christ, or I’m old enough here was how I described it. It was like we had this old black and white TV, and then we got our first color TV, and it’s like, whoa, hey, look at that. Football uniforms, you know? And it was like that. It was like all of a sudden, what was black and white just became color. Everything was illuminated. And I began to see the world completely differently than I had before.
And finally, we’re reigning forever. We have responsibility and royalty, and we are co-heirs with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus says, right? “You’re responsible over a little. you’re faithful. I’ll give you responsibility over much.”
Some of you may be over cities, you know, so you may, you may, you know, you may go visit Atsville, you know where Ats is over this city or whatever, you know, and we get there, you know, we leave Sophia Town and go to Atsville. Be a boss of a town, Sophia. Be a benevolent boss. Be a nice boss.
All right, but we’ll reign. Well, guess what? Now we already begin to share that royalty. We already begin to share that authority we have in Christ. We begin to reign and rule over our own environments.
And though there are politics and though there is governance in our culture, we also realize because King Jesus is our king, that we even rise above that. We submit to it. We’re told to submit to it. But we also know this doesn’t own us. This doesn’t own us. Nothing in this world holds our ultimate allegiance and authority. We belong to a different world. And because our king has told us to serve this world with faithfulness, we do it. But we do it with royalty. We’re princes and princesses incognito on this planet. We are always caring about us in our very presence, this other stronger, bigger, eternal kingdom. And wherever we go, even in submission, in fact, most often in submission, we are actually dispensing that kingdom life which is so above the life we’re serving here.
Does that make sense? Does that make sense? You’re already royalty. I love again what C.S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory. He says if we were to see each other in our exalted states, we would be tempted to worship. You know, if we saw Isaiah in his exalted state, we’d go, “Whoa, Isaiah!” It would blow us away.
But in fact, that’s who we are already. Little Firehouse Church, Poulsbo. Little Firehouse Church. Three families. Every time you gather here on Sunday night, you’re in the presence of greatness. You’re in the presence of God’s eternal children. You’re in the presence of co-heirs with Christ.
Man, we better treat each other well. We better treat each other well. This is, you know, I’m blown away by who I’m hanging out with tonight. Whoa!
Already, we carry it, and we carry it best in service and humility. That’s where it shines the brightest. Not in exalt not how, the world exalts that kind of stuff, right? I remember, I’ll never forget a life lesson in ministry. I was a part of a major denomination, and we had a new bishop. The new bishop sent out and it’s fine. It was, you know, protocol. And he assumed we’d want him to visit. He said, “When I come and visit you, here is the protocol for a bishop.”
And it was like, I don’t know, it’s like the queen of England or something. You know, “Here’s how I proceed in. Here’s what we do. Here’s all the proper protocol.” And I suppose it was, there was a politeness in it. It’s like, “Hey, I just want you to know this is how you know you’re supposed to do it,” I guess. But it came across to me, it’s like when I saw it, it’s like, oh, I have a solution for this. I won’t invite you to come. It just came across really pompous, like “I’m the bishop.” Anyway, I don’t know if it was pompous. I’ll give him grace.
But at the same time, we were having a ministry, a broad international ministry, come to present at our church. I don’t know if any of you remember Walk Through the Bible. Anybody ever do Walk Through the Bible? It was a wonderful ministry, you know, taught you the Bible real quickly, kind of put everything in place real quickly through mnemonic devices. It was fun, it was interesting.
And so we were having Walk through the Bible come to our church. And I was calling the guy who was going to come present, their presenter. I had just read this thing from the bishop and was kind of put off by it. And I called this guy who was going to come to be the presenter, and I called him up and I said, “Hey, you’re going to come do walk through the Bible at our church.” And the first words out of his mouth were this: “Well, hi, Pastor Kevin. How can I serve you? I’m coming to your church. I’m going to do a walk through the Bible. But tell me about your church. Tell me about your specific needs. How can I serve you and your church now?”
Now for sure, he was selling merch there. He was doing his thing. They were doing their thing. But the first words out of his mouth. And I thought, which model of ministry do I want? When Pastor Kevin comes actually, you can call me Pastor Kevin. And if you want to teach, you know, some people, it’s like a cultural thing that hey, let’s not, let’s not be casual, you know, and be respectful of adults. And I get it and I’m good with that. But on the other hand, I’m always more comfortable with Kevin. You can call me Pastor Kevin if that works for you, and I’ll receive it, but I’m just more comfortable with Kevin. Rev Kev. Hey, you. You know, whatever.
I just, the glory is carried in humility. It’s not in titles and positions and certificates and degrees and promotions. It’s simply beautiful, simple, humble service communicates to this world the royalty of Christ. And you carry it. You carry it. And I just want to encourage you because we’re a small church. I know you all see every week. I see it in each one of you. I see the glory. I see the royalty of Jesus. And it actually humbles me to speak the Word of God to you. It’s like, who am I to talk to God’s kids, you know? Who am I to talk to God’s I’m not worthy to wear your shoes into church. You know, I don’t pray like Aiko. I don’t serve like Stevin. You know, I don’t study and work like Brian. You guys are all better than me. I don’t serve all the mothers of families of Kitsap County, say, hey, there’s a better way to teach, raise your kids. Better way than sending them into the government machine.
You know I love a good rebel. Yeah. Defy the man. Defy the man. That’s right. That’s right. It’s just the kind of people that marry rule keepers. But let me tell you, Jamie, we got it so good. I’ve been informed by a high authority that I have it I know we didn’t know, but we have it so good.
All right. We reign forever. Responsible royalty, coheirs with Christ. That’s who we are. And here’s proof of it. He invites us to His table. It’s real simple. Isn’t it perfect that the King of all the universe invites us to His table and He says, “One day there’s going to be a feast. But now it’s the most simple of all meals for my simple, humble glory bearers. Just a simple meal of bread and juice. But in the simplest of all meals, I’ll feed you with my life, and you’ll continue to carry my glory in the now that’s not yet, but it’s now.”
So, Lord, may the goodness of the Lord come through us into the land of the living. As much of heaven as we can carry. As much of heaven that can flow through us. As much as that beautiful new garden, heavenly new heavens, new earth. Reality can make its way in us and then can make its way out of us to just shed that beautiful light and glory in this world. Lord, we ask for it. And Lord, would you feed us tonight with this simple meal that we might be more like Jesus and be carriers of the now and the not yet.
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August 24, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right, dear ones, we’re going to finish up Romans. We’re not quite finishing it up tonight, but this is the second to the last, so we’ve made it through Romans.
So I’m really praying about where to go next. And so I was thinking… I think I already mentioned this to you. I’m thinking about Revelation, also thinking about Genesis. I’ve kind of got the Bible bookended there, beginning or end. But I think maybe what I’ll do is I’ll start Revelation in the beginning of 2026, or Genesis at the beginning of 2026. And I was thinking maybe I’ll do a series. This is kind of a foolish name, but Kevin’s Greatest Hits. You know, just like some of my favorite passages, my favorite Scriptures and stuff. Just kind of…
Then I was thinking maybe around Christmas time, I thought maybe a sermon series on angels. See, yeah, that got the same reaction as—funny, a few oohs and ahs. Ooh, angels. That’d be interesting. Ooh, angels. And everybody’s like, “Oh, yeah, do Revelation. Do Revelation.” But, you know, here’s what everybody wants when you do Revelation. They want me to, you know, take the newspaper and say, see, this is happening, and this is happening, and this is happening. And you know me well enough to know, no, that’s not what we’re going to get. So probably won’t be as, you know…
All right, talk to Isaiah. He’s getting it down. Yeah, he’s got Revelation pretty well. He’s got the first eight chapters pretty well figured out. So, yeah, just sit down with Isaiah for breakfast and say, “Explain to me the first eight chapters of Revelation.” He’ll be able to do it.
All right, here’s the book of Revelation explained to you right here. Jesus is God. The devil is doomed. We win. All right, there you go. All right. So there you go.
All right. But now let’s back to Romans. Romans 15:14:
My brothers and sisters, I myself am convinced about you that you also are full of goodness. Man, he must be talking about this church filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. See, I’m gone and you’re able to instruct one another. You did great.
So nevertheless, I’ve written to remind you more boldly on some points because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the Gospel of God.
God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I have reason to boast in Christ Jesus regarding what pertains to God. For I would not dare say anything except what Christ has accomplished through me by word and deed, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by the power of miraculous signs and wonders, by the power of God’s Spirit. As a result, I have fully proclaimed the Gospel of Christ from Jerusalem all the way around Illyrium. My aim is to preach the Gospel where Christ has not been named, so I will not build on someone else’s foundation. But as it is written, those who are not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.
That is why I have been prevented many times from coming to you. But now I no longer have any work to do in these regions. I have strongly desired for many years to come to you whenever I travel to Spain, for I hope to see you when I pass through and to be assisted by you for my journey there, once I have first enjoyed your company for a while.
Right now I am traveling to Jerusalem to serve the saints because Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. Yes, they were pleased and indeed are indebted to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual benefits, then they are obligated to minister to them in their material needs. So when I have finished this and have safely delivered the funds to them, I will visit you on my way to Spain. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in prayers to God on my behalf. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea, that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, and that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed together with you.
May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
14 My brothers and sisters, I myself am convinced about you that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. 15 Nevertheless, I have written to remind you more boldly on some points because of the grace given me by God 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the gospel of God. God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 17 Therefore I have reason to boast in Christ Jesus regarding what pertains to God. 18 For I would not dare say anything except what Christ has accomplished through me by word and deed for the obedience of the Gentiles, 19 by the power of miraculous signs and wonders, and by the power of God’s Spirit. As a result, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum. 20 My aim is to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named, so that I will not build on someone else’s foundation, 21 but, as it is written, Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. 22 That is why I have been prevented many times from coming to you. 23 But now I no longer have any work to do in these regions, and I have strongly desired for many years to come to you 24 whenever I travel to Spain. For I hope to see you when I pass through and to be assisted by you for my journey there, once I have first enjoyed your company for a while. 25 Right now I am traveling to Jerusalem to serve the saints, 26 because Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. 27 Yes, they were pleased, and indeed are indebted to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual benefits, then they are obligated to minister to them in material needs. 28 So when I have finished this and safely delivered the funds to them, I will visit you on the way to Spain. 29 I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ. 30 Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in prayers to God on my behalf. 31 Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea, that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, 32 and that, by God’s will, I may come to you with joy and be refreshed together with you. 33 May the God of peace be with all of you. Amen. (Romans 15:14-33, CSB)
So that kind of sounds like a benediction, and it kind of is though. And then he’s going to go on in chapter 16 and send out a lot of greetings and give some more instructions and another benediction, and we’ll make sure to cover that as well.
But this is really a summary of Paul’s ministry, not just his ministry to the Romans, but his ministry as he was called by God on the road to Damascus. And later, he and Barnabas were sent out by the Church in Antioch. His ministry to the Greek-speaking world, to the Roman world—a Jewish Pharisee converted by Christ and converted with the mission to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles. And this is just a summary of that ministry that Paul had.
He talks about the Church being fully equipped in Rome, and yet he also wants to see them; he wants to visit them, which he hadn’t at this point. We know that Paul did make it to Rome. He made it to Rome in chains. We don’t know whether or not he died in Rome. We don’t know whether he was released from those chains for a while and actually made it to Spain. Some scholars think that Paul made it to Spain. Most scholars don’t think he made it to Spain. And on that first imprisonment in Rome, he stayed there until he was put to death under Nero. Others think he was released, went to Spain, then came back to Rome, was rearrested, and then martyred under Nero. We just, we don’t have clear history on that. But his desire was to go to Rome, and he made it there. Whether or not he made it to Spain, we do not know.
Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles was a priestly ministry. If you grew up Catholic like I do, you have a certain perception of a priest as one who administrates the sacraments, brings the absolution of God through confession, and that really, you don’t have very much access to Christ without that particular priest and his ordination.
But in fact, the New Testament teaches that we all, once we come to Christ, are priests and priestesses. The word priest literally means “bridge builder,” somebody who connects one side to another side. What Christ has done is He has connected, through His incarnation, broken humanity, and through His divinity, with the eternal God, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And His work on the cross is even a good picture that His arms stretched out create this bridge between humanity that has left God, and then God brings them back to Himself through the high priest, Jesus Christ, portrayed in the Old Testament with the high priest offering the sacrifices for the people. And Jesus, of course, being both the perfect priest to offer that sacrifice and in Himself, the perfect sacrifice.
But then the Bible says we are a royal priesthood. How are we a royal priesthood? We now represent Christ in this world, and there still is a mission between bringing broken humanity back to God, and we serve in that priestly function. And so, you are a priest; you are a bridge builder. You are a person who is connecting a lost world to a saving God. When you share Christ with your love and with your words, with your friends, when you raise a family and you bring your kids to church, and you pray for your kids that they might follow you in their faith and know Christ. You are serving as a priest for your children. And that’s a very important ministry, by the way, because your children need to get saved. They need to come to a personal faith. God has no grandchildren, all right? And when you and your husband and you and your wife got together and made a baby, you created a sinner. All right? Now you got to, now you got to raise them right and get them to know Jesus so that you can protect the rest of us from that thing you made. Alright?
So I appreciate the fact that you guys have worked hard on your kids, and we don’t have to be too afraid of them. Little scared of Sophia, but I think, you know, she’s all right. Just, you know, Stevin just said what a good shot she was, you know, so it’s like, don’t want to make her mad.
Anyway, you’re a priest in the workplace. You know, there have been many times people… I’m a pastor. When people think, you know, well, you really must be special and holy, and of course, you all know better than that. But, you know, people will tell me their issues and their problems and their brokenness, and I always think, “Oh, man, you need help. God, you need to send somebody to help this person.” And I always get the same answer. You know, that’s kind of like the instinctive thing. “Man, they need help. God, you need to send some Christians into their life.” And He’s like, and God’s always like, and I’ve done this more than once. “God, they need a Christian.” And God’s like, “Duh,” you know? Who? Where?
And then it just, you know, the obvious dawns on me. “You! You’re the Christian I’m sending into their life.” And if you’re like me at that moment, you think, “No, God, a better one, a better Christian.” And God’s like, “You’re it, man. Tag, you’re it. You’re the representative of Jesus in this person’s life.”
So step up, step up, people. You represent Christ in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in your home. Wherever you go, you bring about the aroma of Christ, and you serve as that function of a priest. And Paul’s ministry was priestly.
When we intercede for others in prayer, that’s a priestly ministry. That is, you know, we talk about praying for people as “standing in the gap.” God says “nobody to stand in the gap” in the Old Testament. And so when we pray for lost people, we stand in the gap.
We’re reading our NDR book, our near-death experience book, and talked about this young man named Ian, who is a complete pagan surfer playboy, just going after the best high, the best surfing high, the best drug high, the best, you know, chasing girls high.
And he gets stung by this pack of deadly jellyfish. And as he’s dying in the ambulance, she has a vision of his mother praying for him. And he’s wondering about life after death. And his mother was woken up and told, “Your son is dying, pray for your son.” And she began to intercede for her son. And her son ended up crying out to God for the forgiveness of his sins and had an encounter with Jesus before he came… And I’ve seen this guy interviewed and he’s, now he’s serving the Lord, a New Zealand surfer hippie, and he’s serving the Lord. His mother served as a priest, crying out to God for him to be saved.
So we connect a world, a lost world, to a saving God. That was Paul’s ministry. And Paul’s ministry was directed. He had a call to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, this Jewish Pharisee. And yet he’s called to bring the Jewish Messiah to the Gentiles that at one time he despised. And then the battle, the Jewish legalist, who at one time he was, and he says, “I was the best of all of them. I was the most devout.” And you saw it, right before he met Christ, he’s persecuting the Christians because he saw them as a threat. And then he does a complete 180 and he preaches the gospel to the Gentiles.
Let me tell you something, you have a call on your life. And when I say this, people mistake call. Because the calls in the Bible are often so dramatic, right? Moses at the burning bush. But actually Moses had that call before the burning bush. He was born with that call. And so we tend to think that these calls of God are dramatic.
But you have a call to the mundane things also. You have a call, but it’s a call from God, and you need to take that call seriously. You’re on earth for a reason. You’re on earth maybe for several reasons.
I remember when, just as a young boy, I wasn’t even a Christian yet, but I was in church with my mother. There was a father over in church, and he was pastoring. He was raising his kids right in church. He was touching them, he was talking to them, he was encouraging them as they worshiped God. I saw this another place. I went to my son and daughter-in-law’s church. There was a father there who was passionately worshiping God, but his children were also passionately worshiping God. And he would look down on them and kind of encourage them. I went up afterwards and I thanked him. I said, “Man, you don’t know how much that blessed me to see a father teaching his kids to worship God.”
I remember when my mother pointed out this father in church when I was just a boy and said, “Look at that man. He is being a good father to his kids.” You know, he just didn’t drag him to church and ignore him and then hope the church did its job. He was there as a priest in his family, you know, trying to raise his kids. And my mother just noticed that. I remember the minute she said that, something hit me. I was like, I want to be a good dad. I want to be a father. I want to have children and love them and be a good father.
And later, when I met Jill, one of the most attractive things about her to me, besides a hundred other things, you know, was that I knew—the Lord had actually spoken this to me, but it was also fairly obvious—that she would make a wonderful mother. And I thought, “Well, one of the things, if you want to be a good father, one of the best things you can do is pick a wife who’ll be a good mother.” Right? And so that was, you know, so I had this call on my life to be a father. And that helped shape, you know, who I married and how I spent my life and my time.
Anyway, there are other calls on my life. There was certainly a call, a very clear call, to move to Washington and to plant churches in Washington.
You know, ever want to hear God’s voice? You know, it’s not the same for everybody. But worked for me… was driving through Bakersfield, outside of Bakersfield, California, on Highway 99. Anybody ever been there? Highway 99, Bakersfield, California? Right? Okay. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s the same zip code, all right? It’s, you know. So if you’re ever gonna, you know, God speaks to people in the desert. There you go. Right outside of Bakersfield. They have a really nice suburb of Bakersfield. It’s called Oildale. How’d you like to live in Oildale? So anyway.
But God spoke to me and He said, “You’re gonna…” You know, I was raising up these young men and couldn’t get Washington off my heart and thought, I’m going to send one of these young men to Washington to plant a church. And man, as clear as I ever heard God in my life. I felt like He said, “You’re not sending one of those boys. You’re going to go.” And six months later, I was here.
So there are calls on your life. Ask God. Just ask God. Lord, what’s my assignment? Don’t expect it to be dramatic. Most of them aren’t. Most of you are not going to— you’re going to ask God, what’s my assignment? He’s not going to say, you know, “Move to the North Pole and evangelize the Inuit, you know, in the furthest point of Alaska.” You know, most of you aren’t going to get that.
You’re going to get something probably very much about where you are. But there might be a person that will come to mind and say, you know what? I want you to be a priest to that person. I want you to begin to pray for that person specifically, or whatever. There might, but there will be… Or he’ll give you a region. He’ll say, “This neighborhood.” Or “I want you to be a priest to this middle school and to begin to drive by that middle school and walk the grounds and intercede for it.”
But the Lord has a call on your life. He had a call on Paul’s life to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will what? Direct your paths.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6, CSB)
So live a life with a directed path. Don’t just kind of waft through life, tossed to and fro by the waves. Ask God to direct your path, and He will do it.
Paul’s ministry was to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles. He says that all the time. And he was a ministry of power. He said this Gospel is fully proclaimed when it’s proclaimed with signs, wonders, and miracles. And the Church in the West lost the idea of the power of God and began to proclaim God only with reason, knowledge, exegesis, teaching—all good things, but lacking the power. And therefore, opened the door for theological liberalism, which used all those other things as well and really hurt the church because we became cessationists. We became people… That was one of the downsides of the Reformation.
And arguing against, the Catholics would say, “We have this whole list of miracles which proves that our theology is better. You don’t have any miracles.” And they argued, “No, your miracles are false miracles. And God doesn’t do that anymore.” Not all of them, but many of them. That was their argument.
Listen, a lot of those miracles in the tradition of the ancient church are fanciful and superstitious and not real. But a lot of them are real. God’s never been out of the miracle business. He has never ceased. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. He’s never stopped. Eddie Hyatt wrote a great book, professor at Oral Roberts, called 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity. He just traces church history, and I love it.
Anytime I quote, I mention a book, who do you think is immediately writing down the name and the author of that book, right? Yeah. You know, Stevin. You’re an A student, Jamie. All right, don’t want to embarrass you, but she’s like, “Ooh, another book to read.” Good. 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity by Eddie Hyatt. Got it. All right, good. I expect you to read it. And I want a book report by Christmas. Gives you some time. Single spaced. If you need help writing it, Aiko’s a great writer. She could be your ghostwriter. Yeah, she could rock it.
All right, so Paul came with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. Now, the power of God never converts people. What it does is it gets their attention. It gets their attention. You see, when you just argue with people, you might have the best arguments, but people really can argue back. But the power of God gives people an invitation. What are you going to do— it’s kind of like God saying, “What are you going to do about that?”
My favorite example is the paralyzed man that was let through the roof by his four friends. And Jesus, rationally, because He’s God and knows this is why He came to earth, looked at the paralyzed man, realized that somehow his paralysis was not his primary problem. His primary problem was the guilt of his sin. And looks at the man and shocks everybody and says, my sins are forgiven. Immediately, the Pharisees reasoned in their hearts, accurately, by the way, this is accurate reasoning. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Good point. Your point is true. Nobody can forgive sins but God alone.
7 “Why does he speak like this? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7, CSB)
And then Jesus, noticing them, reasoning in his heart, says, “Why do you reason such in your heart? To show you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, get up and walk. Pick up your mat and walk.”
6 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” —then he told the paralytic, “Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.” (Matthew 9:6, CSB)
And afterwards, He didn’t say this, but I felt like He was going to say, “What are you going to do with that, suckers?” See, it’s an invitation. And that’s exactly what the invitation is. What are you going to do with that?
I remember we were at the Assembly of God church here in Silverdale. Not when we worshiped there, but when I was the, you know, back in the day. Only the Johnsons remember that day. Sophia was like three or something like that. So.
And I was pastoring there as an interim, and I remember I did an altar call and was praying for people, and they were falling. They were just dropping, you know, and literally, I just prayed for about 10 people. And they’re all on the ground, some of them are shaking. Just, you know, in the Name of Jesus. Fire. Fire. Fire. One of those kinds of things. This young guy goes up, he goes, “How do I know God is real?” And I felt like saying, “Well, dude, look around, people don’t do this at Walmart. You know, this is an invitation.”
And the invitation, when you see a miracle or experience the supernatural, here’s the invitation. God is saying, “I’m here, I’m alive, pay attention. Ask me something, engage with me. Don’t just go, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ Or be critical like, ‘Oh, I think they’re all faking.'”
That used to drive me nuts. People say, “Oh, I think all those people are faking.” People that they knew. “I have the Spirit of discernment.” No, you don’t. You have the Spirit of fear and control. I’m not doubting people can fake. I’m just saying I knew all those people, you know, and they weren’t faking. And so something’s happening. You got to ask, is this psychosomatic? Is this the devil? Or is it, in fact—and by the way, those are legitimate questions, but there are answers to those questions. But there’s a third answer that people are loathe to go to. Wow. God is really alive and present. And maybe I need to perk my ears up and open my heart. The power of God is an invitation.
And so it is good for the church to find power again. God heals. We’ve had testimonies of healing. I just came upon another one. In fact, this lady, I didn’t give her your information, but she asked, she said, “I want to talk to that couple you told me about who are from Japan” because she’s a Japanese native. Her name is Yoshiko Hanks. She married Lanny Hanks, who was an American Navy man, and moved to the United States. She became a Christian and started a ministry with Japanese students, where she built a business bringing exchange students over.
But she’s very upfront with the families. “I’m a Christian lady. I’m going to put these kids in Christian households, and they’re going to go to Christian churches when they’re here in America.” And a lot of the families are like, oh, good, good. We want them to experience American culture, and we know that’s part of American culture.
So the kids would come, and they would meet with Christian families. They go to Christian churches. A lot of them would get converted. And then she’d go back to Japan and try to find good churches for these kids. And, you know, she was the one who just kind of opened my heart to praying for Japan. And anyway, I saw Yoshi just last week when I was in California. Her and her husband Lanny, they came out.
And I still remember, I don’t remember if it was before I left and was just visiting or before I left or after I left and was visiting, but I remember the phone call I got from Lanny, and it’s like, “Yoshi has cancer. It’s a rare carcinoma, and she wants you to come pray for her. And the doctors are saying six months to a year.” That was somewhere before 2010. And I just saw Yoshi this last Sunday.
And you don’t know. You don’t know. Listen, we are due for an onslaught of people because every time I go to California, all these people always say to me, “We, oh, we’re going to come up and see you, Kev. We’re going to come up and see you.” You know, so one of these days, you know, if they all come up the same Sunday, man, we’re going to be packed. All right? You can, you can meet the, you know… I know, I know that you’re my fan club, but you can meet the other half of my fan club. It’s like, all right, these people like him, too.
All right, so maybe Yoshi and Lanny will come, but she actually wants to talk to you guys about Japan or something. You know, “I want—” I think I mentioned you to them, and she’s like, “I want to meet that couple. I want to talk to that couple.” But I didn’t give her, like, your phone number and stuff.
But anyway. All right, Yoshi, healed of cancer. That’s another one. Every time I start to think about this, you know, I think, okay. You know, I always go, Nick Yamo, Julie, you know, okay, do we have… And then the Lord just reminds me, it’s like, oh, yeah, Jamie’s sitting there every Sunday, Yoshi, and it’s just… And then I start to think…
And then the other one is, here is what’s more common than these dramatic, diagnosed, you know, cancers and heart diseases. Here’s what’s more common. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this experience where somebody will just come and said, “I went to the doctor and there was something not right. There was a mass. They don’t know what the mass is. And so, what? We’re doing more tests, and I’m nervous about the more tests.” And so we pray for the more tests, and then the people come back and go, well, so, you know, did they get healed of cancer? I don’t know. All I know is there was something the size of a tennis ball that isn’t there anymore. Or a grapefruit. Not a grapefruit. I haven’t had a grapefruit disappear. But, you know, that’d be a good one.
Here’s the one I want. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this on video. I don’t know how real this is or not, but, you know, we got obesity in America. You know, we’re the generation raised on fast food and sugar. It’s very addictive. And so a lot of us really, it’s like, we don’t want to be this way, but we’re this way. And I’ve seen, I’ve seen video on TV where guys are walking, people are walking up the front of the church and they’re holding their britches up because they instantaneously lost like 40, 50 pounds. Yeah. How cool would that be? Yeah. You guys want to lay hands on me for that one? I’m down. I got suspenders too, so it wouldn’t be too dangerous. That could be an embarrassing miracle. All right. Yeah, dance around in my Hanes ephods.
God of miracles, come. We just sang it. Don’t give up on power. Just because it doesn’t happen all the time doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Keep praying. Keep praying. Paul’s ministry was a ministry of power. You know, throughout the Book of Acts… anybody know, there’s one place that Paul went, only one place he went in the Book of Acts, where no miracles are recorded. Anybody know where that is? Bueller? Anyone? Athens. Acts 17. He goes to Athens and he argues with the Stoics and the Epicureans and the philosophers on Mars Hill.
And it’s very interesting in modern evangelical culture, there was a whole church planting, you know, called Mars Hill. And that’s fine. And there’s another movement called Mars Hill. And Mars Hill is kind of held out because Paul gives such a great, great apologetic for the church. And yet, when you look at the Book of Acts, all the places he went in the Greek-speaking world, where did he have the least fruit? Athens. You know, a few. It was very discouraging.
And it’s kind of like, I think, when signs and wonders are not present, you’ve preached the gospel, but you haven’t preached—that’s what Pentecostals used to call themselves, right? Full gospel preachers. Didn’t mean they ate a lot at the buffet after church. They preached the full gospel, which includes the ministry of power. So do not back away from power. You can’t make it happen, but man, you can ask for it to happen, and God will show up in power.
Paul’s ministry is a pioneering ministry. He was an apostle, was an apostle, one who was sent, usually one who is sent to a region that has not yet, the church has not yet been established. If you notice in Paul’s ministry through the Book of Acts, he didn’t stay any place very long. He’s not a pastor. He doesn’t hang out with the people and nurture them and guide their spiritual growth. He is there to ignite something and start a work and raise up leaders, and then he moves on.
And so he is a pioneer. He starts new works, he establishes, he takes new ground. And so it is an apostolic work or a pioneering work. He doesn’t want to build on somebody else’s foundation. That doesn’t mean that’s an unworthy call. Churches exist today because people build on someone else’s foundation. One of the reasons I like planting churches is because I like responsibility and accountability. When I was in the Methodist Church, and all us Methodists, we get appointed to these churches that have, you know, had dozens of other pastors before us. And it was great because when there were problems in the church, what could you do? I mean, politicians do this all the time, right? You just blame the previous administration. Like, well, you know, they, you know, I’m just trying to undo all the bad stuff they did. And, you know, you get around, you talk with other pastors and they’d be like, “Well, you know, so and so did this.” You know, it’s always the previous administration.
Well, when you plant a church, it’s like, you can’t blame the previous administration. You know, you got accountability and responsibility. “Remember that? That didn’t work. Yeah, we did that. That was us. That was on us.” So I kind of like that. I kind of like, you know, just, all right, do it, do it. It’s up to you.
Paul was that way. Paul was that way. He didn’t want to build on somebody else’s work. We need pioneers. We need people. There still are unreached peoples. There still are unreached people. Every generation, we need pioneers. We need pioneers to reach generations of new people, of young people, because old people don’t necessarily speak the language.
And so, you know, I’ll never forget the book I read about the Jesus movement called God’s Forever Family. And this guy Ted, who kind of was the point man. It wasn’t, what’s his name, Lonnie Frisbee. This guy named Ted was the point man of the Jesus movement. I forget his last name, but he was in Haight Ashbury, and he came to the Lord and he started going to this real conservative Baptist church. You know, the suit and tie crowd, the short hair. And this was back in the 60s, so even more conservative than we would…
But the pastor was a good man. And he saw, wow, you know, and he walks, he walked Haight Ashbury with Ted, and a lot like Chuck Smith, you know, when he would walk the beaches. And it’s like, man, these kids need Jesus. And he looked and he didn’t think, oh, these kids are stupid. They need a bath, they should go home, they should clean up. He really, he said, “They need Jesus.” But he told Ted, he said, “Look it, man, I will teach you about the gospel, but you got to reach these kids. You know, they’re not going to listen to me. They’re going to listen to you.”
And so there’s a part of that. We need pioneers in every generation to speak to a new generation. And we need spiritual mothers and fathers who will mother and father them and help them to do that. And that’s how it works. So Paul’s ministry was a pioneering ministry. One day, again, I will have a pioneering ministry. It’ll be at the old folks home, and it’s like, “Do you know Jesus?” You know? I’ll just be wandering around the halls, and I don’t know. I don’t want to speak that into being.
But anyway, wherever you go, you’re a priest and sometimes you’re a pioneer, right?
Paul’s ministry was to the ends of the earth. Spain, for Paul, was the ends of the earth. That was the furthest. That was the place that kind of the Jewish diaspora had gone out to. That was the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire. Jerusalem is on the other side of the empire. And Paul’s going to Jerusalem, desires to go to Rome. And he wants to go to Rome and get help to go to Spain. And so Paul took the Great Commission seriously.
We are to disciple nations. Go and make disciples of all nations. Of all nations. And so we are to reach all nations.
One of the reasons I have an optimistic eschatology is because I can’t imagine Jesus giving us an assignment to do, giving us the Holy Spirit to do that assignment, and then saying, “Oh, yeah, you’re not going to be able to do it. You’re not going to be able to disciple nations.” I think we are to disciple nations. I think the Western world, largely during the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, etcetera, was discipled by Christianity. It wasn’t completely won by Christianity. But today we still are swimming, and you’ve heard me say this a hundred times, we’re still swimming in Christian waters. We’re still swimming even though we look at it and go, oh, the secularists and the wokeism and all this stuff. No, no, no. Even those arguments have an underlying Christian foundation.
Now, we may be losing ground and people being converted to Jesus. We may be losing ground in those waters that we’re swimming in. But to a large extent, Western civilization was built upon Christianity. And now it’s happening in Africa, it’s happening in Southeast Asia. A hundred years from now, those cultures are going to be swimming in Christian waters. And I pray that God will send revival back into Europe and America, so we will also still be swimming in Christian waters and that this thing will grow and we will disciple nations. That nations will be founded on Christian principles and will live by these principles taught from a Jewish carpenter and a converted Pharisee.
We’re to make disciples, followers of Jesus in every language and every people. Paul’s heart was to do that. He wanted the Gospel to reach the ends of the earth. Paul’s ministry was held up through prayer. You read his epistles and he’s always telling people, “Pray for me.”
I remember a Korean student in seminary. We didn’t know his name. It was a Korean name, tough for us to pronounce. So he just, you know, like you Ats. He just said, “All right. Atsuro. Too hard. Ats.” All right, and what’s your first name? Aiko, what’s your name? But what, you’re what? Lori. Okay, so you go by Aiko. So, yeah. I thought for some reason you had a more difficult name to pronounce. Okay, so Aiko. Good. You’re good.
But, you know, some people have… They go into cultures and they have different… Like my nephews, my great nephews, my niece’s three sons in California. I just visited them. For some reason, they had a hard time pronouncing the name—you know, when Dylan, who’s now 6, was 4 years old. He’s 8. Anyway, he had a hard time pronouncing the name Kevin. And my sister, his grandma, “This is Uncle Kevin.” “Uncle Kleiben Klebben.”
And so finally, you know, we’re in In-N-Out Burger, where holy transactions happen. And I said, “Just call me Uncle Genius.” And it stuck. And now, two, three years later, I come to their house and I take these boys out for Slurpees and stuff. And they love me. And it’s like, and it’s like, “Uncle Genius is here! Uncle Genius!” And their mother, my niece, will say, “You know, actually, his name is Uncle Kevin.” And they argue with you. “No, it’s not. It’s Uncle Genius.” How cool is that? I’m Uncle Genius.
So, you know, names are, names are hard. Sometimes names are hard to pronounce. I don’t know where I was going with that. People pray for me. Yeah. Why is it… why am I saying that anyway? I don’t know. Paul’s always asking. Oh! Moses! Yeah, I got it.
See, I brought that rabbit back in from the rabbit trail. Come here, bunny.
And so, yeah, Moses was Korean, and we couldn’t pronounce his name in seminary. And so he just always said, “Call me Moses. Call me Moses.” And Moses, one of those Korean students at seminary that American students both love and hate because he was a delightful man and he loved the Lord. He was full of zeal. It’s easy to be inspired by him. But our first test in Greek, I was thrilled to get in the upper 80s on that test. It’s like, oh, good, a B plus, a minus in Greek. Moses got a 99 and a half. And he was arguing with the Greek professor that the Greek professor was wrong, that he had a hundred. And I think he was right.
But you would see Moses. I would see Moses coming out of the library. I never saw Moses in the library because I never went in the library. But I would see Moses come out of the library with a pile of books. He’d say, “Kevin!” I say, “Moses!” He says, “Pray for me. Pray for me.” I said, “No kidding, I’ll pray for you. You gonna read all those books?” You gotta, you know… But he had a passion, you know, to bring the gospel to his culture.
And so it’s, you know, people get this false humility. Say, “Oh, you know, I don’t want to ask people to pray for you.” Ask people to pray for you.
These little ladies down in California, you know, my old friends, they’ll come up to me and they say, “How you doing?” And I’ll say, “Pray for me.” And I love these ladies. They go, you know, they came up to me later and said, “I don’t, I take this seriously. What do you want me to pray for you about?” And I was ready for them because I knew these ladies. And I gave him a list of six things. I said, “Here you go.” Six things. Boom, boom, boom, boom with these two ladies, said, “We will pray for those six things.”
Now, you know these ladies. These six things are going to happen. All right? Pray for me.
Paul’s ministry. Why was Paul’s ministry so successful? He was brilliant. That’s true. He was tenacious. That is true. He was deeply converted. That is true. the Spirit of God was upon him. That is true. And guess what? The churches prayed for him.
Every effective ministry is, that’s part of the problem with the Western church. We have gone to formulas and programs, cleverness and demographics, and those things aren’t evil, and you can use those things. But oftentimes, in my experience, the tail wags the dog, and we need to have a prayer-driven, spirit-driven ministry or Kitsap County will continue to be one of the most unchurched counties in the United States. Pray for me.
And finally, Paul’s ministry was one of love. And we’ll see this as we finish in chapter 16. He just lists so many names from the church in Rome that he hasn’t visited, and yet he knows these people. This is before social media, right? They weren’t Facebook friends. He just knows so many people. And wherever he goes, he loves the churches that he plants and he loves…
And when he writes these churches, even though, like to Corinth, he writes stern letters, and Galatians, he writes a stern letter, to Philippians, he writes a very warm, affectionate letter. Even his sternness in those letters is what? It’s born out of love.
You realize, of course, that love does not mean, as our culture thinks it seems to mean, being nice. Sometimes love involves being nice. It’s nice to be nice. It’s good to be nice. We ought to be nice. We ought to be kind. But if you’ve raised children, you realize as a parent that the loving thing is not always, according to the child, a nice thing. If you do the nice thing for your children all the time, you will destroy their lives. They will die from diabetes because they’ll get ice cream for dinner every night. All right?
Kids will, you know, “You’re so mean.” I remember my kids at various times telling Jill and I we were mean. And Jill would be a little stung by that, and I would always take it as kind of a badge, like, “You want to see me? And I’ll be, I’ll be meaner.” You know, it’s like, you got it so rough. You got it so rough.
I remember one time, my kids in high school, I said, “Look at, I’ll be the nicest dad in the world. I will say yes until you give me a reason to say no. But if you give me a reason to say no, the hammer is going to fall.” I don’t know where I came up with that. It’s just kind of like one of those things popped into my head. The hammer is going to fall. And my daughter said, like, later I found out, she asked her brother, my son, “What do you think the hammer is?” “I don’t know.” I’m glad they didn’t ask me because I had no idea what the hammer was either.
But it was a good phrase, wasn’t it? Hey, you cried. You know, I… I’ll be the nicest dad in the world. But you violate that trust, the hammer will fall.
That’s love, actually. Love. Here’s what love is. Love is not being nice. You want to be nice, but it’s not being nice. Love is behaving in such a way that you are sacrificially pursuing the best life and outcome for the beloved.
You know what? Nice parents, they’re lazy because it’s easier to give in to a three-year-old. They’re terrorists, they’re persistent. They’re, you know, “You can’t have that candy bar.” “Why?” “Because it’s bad for you.” “Why?” “Because it has sugar in it.” “Why? Why is sugar bad for you?” “Well, science has found that.” “Why?”
Why? And finally, you tell them what you swore when you were a kid because it aggravated you, you would, you know, you would never tell them. Why? Because I said so. I said so. And that’s love. I am protecting you from destroying yourself with love. That’s what love does. That’s what the love of God does.
That’s why God has commandments, Stevin. That’s why there are rules. The rules are there for our benefit. They’re there for a reason. That’s why we only drive 60 miles an hour. Because if you drive 70 miles an hour, everybody’s going to crash, and cars are going to burn up, and it’s going to be chaos everywhere. You know? My wife, you know, she doesn’t, we don’t even know what they are. We just know that if people break too many rules, whatever they are, the amoks are going to run. Yeah, things are going to run amok. I don’t even know what amoks are, but I know they better not be let out to run.
And so, but it’s true. That’s why we have boundaries. Boundaries actually are our friend. They protect us. And so Paul’s ministry is a ministry of love. God’s ministry is a ministry of love.
We, in our rebellion, we chafe against boundaries. We chafe against rules, we chafe against obedience. But in fact, obedience is our joy and delight, and it’s where we find our life. And I loved what we were reading, that account of Ian, this rebellious surfer, and he meets Jesus, and as he begins to confess his sin that he’s overwhelmed with shame about, he says before he can get the confession, very much like the prodigal son story, before he can get the confession out of his mouth, waves and waves of love begin to flood over him.
You know, when you meet Jesus in heaven and say, “Jesus, I’m not perfect,” He’s not going to go, you’re not going to get a big sigh and an eye roll. “You don’t have to tell me, man. I saw it all. Whoo. Me and the angels, we had to turn our heads at a few points in your life there, Kevin. Oh, my gosh, what is he doing now?” It’s like, no. He’s going to say, “Your sins are forgiven. And for this reason, I came to Earth that I might love you forever.”
But here’s how good love is. He will not leave us in our miserable, sinful state. He will make us like Him. That’s Paul’s passion. That’s why he can write to the Philippians with such affection and write the end of his letters with such affection and, at the same time, bring stern rebukes and corrections to the church. Because his ministry is a mission of love. And he also passionately loved the lost.
You know, the Gospel of “everybody’s okay and God includes everybody,” the gospel of unity—Unitarian Universalism is not the gospel of love. The gospel of love starts with this word, “repent.” Repent. You’re going the wrong way.
Old movie illustration. “The Poseidon Adventure.” Gene Hackman. Anybody see the movie? Nope. I’m the only old person… you saw it Brian? Brian, you know what? It’s just good having another old guy in church with me.
Yeah, I don’t either, but I remember this one scene. Gene Hackman’s this preacher, and the ship is capsized by a tidal wave, by a tsunami. And so now the ship is upside down. Gene Hackman knows the last part of the ship to sink and the thinnest part of the hull where, if they’re going to get rescued, that’s where the rescue is going to come.
And so he’s leading these people to that place on the ship, on an upside down ship. And then the whole story is about how arduous that is. And he’s a preacher on this cruise ship, and he has a small band, and he’s leading them on this journey. It’s just really a Matthew 7 parable. The door is narrow, and the road that leads to life is narrow, and the road that leads to destruction is broad.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. (Matthew 7:13, CSB)
And he doesn’t make it there. Another parallel to the gospel. He sacrifices his life so that the others can make it to get rescued.
But anyway, halfway through the movie, they reach a wide place, a place of easy travel. They’re going one way, and then there’s a large group of people, much larger than his little band, going the other way, but they’re actually heading to the part of the ship that’s going to sink the fastest. But they’re on a broad path. It’s easy. You know, we think we’re going to get rescued going this way.
And his passionate message to those people is, “No, you are walking to the water. You are walking to drowning. you’re walking to destruction.” And he tells them, “You got to turn around and come with us.” And they refuse, and, you know, they die. And he gets most of his people, you know, get out and get saved. And it’s such a picture of, and everybody’s like, who is this crazy, mean preacher telling us, you know, “You’re going the wrong way”? He’s passionate. “You’re going, no, don’t do it.” He’s not nice.
And so Paul has a message. And yes, God is loving and God is kind, but He came to save humanity, to seek and save that which was what? That was happily skipping its way toward heaven. No, He came to seek and save that which was… lost. Lost.
That message will make us unpopular, but it is the message of love. Now, you don’t have to be mean about it. You don’t have to, you know, smile. “Hey, you’re going to hell. Hope you go there.” You know, don’t be like that.
But why is Paul going to all, why is Paul getting beaten up in every Greek town he goes to and facing robbers and disease? Because God called him to reach this group of people, and when God calls you to reach a group of people, He puts a love for that group of people in your heart, and He went to get them.
So Paul’s ministry is a mission of love. It is a mission of love.
So that’s a summary. Paul’s ministry was priestly directed, powerful, pioneering. It was to the ends of the earth. It was upheld through prayer, and ultimately it was love.
As we read through Romans and as we’ve gone through Romans and we get to the end of chapter 11, into chapter 12, and you know, I keep talking about this, the big “therefore,” and this is how you live your life. Paul just gives this great theological treatise and all these arguments for why Jesus is right and how to put your faith in Jesus and how to get saved and all this kind of stuff.
And then he gets to the “therefore,” how are we to live this out? And really, as you read through Romans 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, so much of it is just about this. How do you live this out?
Love. Love. Love one another, love the lost. Don’t be just selfish. Don’t be just self-absorbed. All right? If you want to learn to love, get married. That’s the first school of love. And you’ll begin to learn to love because you begin to, you know, God will trick you with, if you’re a boy, God will trick you because she will have cute, she’ll be cute. And you’ll think, “Oh, great, I’m going to live with cute. That’ll be wonderful.” It’s a trick. It’s a trap. All right?
And women, God will trick you. I don’t know how He tricks you because guys aren’t cute, they’re kind of doofuses. But there’s something that tricks you. It’s something like, “Oh, he’s so handsome and he’ll take care of me and…” you know, and all this kind of stuff. And it’s like, and you get married, it’s like, he’s a knucklehead, you know. Then you got to learn to love him.
And then you just start to get that down. Then you make a child and you have a 24-hour selfish need machine on your hands. And then for some reason, we make more than one, most of us. We make several of them. Like, it’s going to get better? You know, let’s roll the dice again. This one kind of didn’t work. Let’s try it again. All right?
And home is the school of love. And we build a little community of love. Husband, wife, children. Then we say, “Well, let’s go to that other, let’s go to church.” We go to church and all these people know Jesus and they’ll be wonderful. You go to church and you meet these people in church and it’s like there’s something wrong with all of them. They all got their problems. Why aren’t these people in church perfect? And I thought the pastor would be perfect. And oh my gosh, he’s not perfect. It’s like, oh, what do we do here?
We love. Wherever we go, the workplace, the neighbor. I’ve always looked for that utopia, you know, I’ve always looked for that perfect place or that perfect mentor or that perfect— And now I just realized they’re just not there. It’s Jesus. Everybody else is a work in progress, just like I am. And here’s the goal. Love them. Love them. Don’t make yourself the center of the universe, but instead get the heart of Jesus and love the people around you.
And I really think that’s the final, I think that’s the, if we do have a test score, I don’t think it’s going to be on perfect theology. I think, you know, it’s going to be, how well did you love? How well did you love?
And so God, I pray in the Name of Jesus that you would give us the grace to love. Give us the grace to love the less than perfect people who live under our roof. Give us the grace to love the less than perfect people that we work with, that we live next to. Give us the grace to love people who disagree with us politically and worldview wise. Give us the grace to love our enemies. Give us the grace to love people who inconvenience our lives, like maybe the homeless. But Lord, give us the grace to love.
And dear ones, if you want to know what love is, here it is. On the night that He was betrayed, all right, He gave His life. And He said I desire to have this meal with a bunch of men, a bunch of brave fishermen who are going to run away and one who was going to just utterly betray Him.
And He said, “I want to have this meal with you because I want to tell you something. As you put your faith in me, this meal will feed you. This Passover will be transformed from just a memorial to what happened in Egypt to now a message of what’s going to happen tonight on the cross.”
That the God of the universe himself is going to become the high priest for His people and build a bridge that all hell can’t tear down. And that by us broken people, not by obeying 613 commandments, but us broken people simply putting our faith in Him we’ll forever be restored to God and will ultimately be made like Him. He said, “When you gather together, remember my love. Feed on my love. Take it and eat and know your sins are forgiven.” And He is perfecting the work that He has begun in you.
So I invite you to come and take and eat.
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August 17, 2025, Testimony by Aiko Kagawa
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5, ESV)
Last week, Stevin reminded us of Proverbs 3:5-6, you know, to trust the Lord with all your heart.
And this week, our family walked through something that brought that truth close to us. So I’ll have Aiko share. But basically, our pet rabbit passed away. And, you know, initially we thought, well, kind of a trivial thing, you know. But I think through this week, God really spoke to us through this incident and really spoke to Aiko. She wanted, she had to write down her reflection. So…
And it really fit well together with, you know, what Stevin shared last week and what God’s been placing on my heart to share. So I just decided to have her come up and share what she wrote. So I’ll have her come up here and share her reflection, and then I’ll come up afterwards and add a few more remarks after that.
So I wrote this a couple, a few days ago, earlier in the week…or last week. I’ll just read.
Panda died two days ago. Mark came home and ran down to the basement to check on him and found him already stiff, lying on his side, legs outstretched, as though in mid-leap, in the way rabbits always are in death.
It happened quickly. I had just been down to see him and give him clean water an hour, an hour and a half before. He seemed then to be in some more discomfort, which pained me greatly, but he had still been sitting upright and he allowed me to pet his little head. He always loved to be petted.
When I got back upstairs, I opened my computer and looked up the nearby veterinarian’s office. As it was past 7 p.m., it was already closed for the day. But clicking around on the website, I found information for an animal emergency center that was open 24/7. Texting back and forth with Ats, who was out taking Mark and Emi to a scout meeting, I decided with him to take Panda to the emergency room as soon as they returned home from the meeting. But by the time Ats returned home with the kids, it was too late.
That night I stayed up for hours after the house was silent, watching videos and shorts on YouTube, trying to distract myself from thoughts and memories, hoping to eventually become so tired I’d just drift off to sleep. Grief lurked ever in the corners of my screen, itching to take center stage, whispering for my attention. When I paused the videos to go to the kitchen, it rushed in. I thought of how much Panda had suffered in the past few days. I’m sorry, Panda. I didn’t take care of you properly enough. Will you forgive me? And Lord, will you forgive me? You made me a steward over Panda’s life, and I failed to do my utmost for him. My sobs were weights pressed down on my chest. My face grew heavy.
Panda came to us In February of 2023, during our first winter in our new home in Kingston. Without telling me, Ats had purchased him from a family in Sequim that could no longer take care of him. He was two years old. Only a week prior, Ats had acquired a doe from a livestock auction in Enumclaw, and Ats and Emi’s plan was to breed Panda and the doe, whom we named Truffles. Panda was a satin angora rabbit, and Truffles was advertised as an English angora rabbit. Aspiring to build a small business, their plan was to harvest desirable angora wool from Panda and Truffles, and also possibly to breed and sell baby angora bunnies.
When Ats brought Panda into the house and opened the top of the animal carrier so we could see him, I thought he was the ugliest rabbit I’d ever seen. There he sat on a copious bed of hay, backed into one corner of the carrier, ears cocked and eyes wide. Those eyes were the oddest gray blue. Aside from albino rabbits, I had never known rabbits to have eyes other than brown in color. Those strange gray blue eyes gave Panda an alien, freakish look. In addition to his eyes, his body was weirdly colored. He was mostly white, but with an amorphous band of gray black around his middle, looking almost like a saddle. His ears were marled gray, white, and pink, and one side of his face and the opposite front paw were black, resembling a clown’s costume.
I wrote a lot.
Not only was Panda odd looking, but he was badly in need of grooming. His long angora coat was matted in many places, all over his body, so that he was bumpy to the touch. His rump was also a little matted and dirty.
Admittedly, I didn’t feel much affinity for him, and since I had never agreed to the angora enterprise, I let Ats and Emi know that I would have nothing to do with the care of the rabbits. Truffles and Panda were put in separate hutches out on our back deck, suspended two stories above the ground on that side of the house, and they were brought into the house by turns every few days to be brushed. The collected fur was plucked in tufts from the broad brush head and kept in Ziplocs. The deck was supposed to be a transitional space until we figured out the best permanent place to locate them. However, within a month of their arrival, Truffles had a litter of four kits, and after “accidentally” led her and Panda out together. Being busy with the care of Truffles and the babies, we left the rabbits where they were, and soon all six bunnies were de facto permanent denizens of the deck.
Although I had sworn against getting involved with the rabbits, I found it difficult not to get attached to them. Spending most of my day in the kitchen across from the living room window overlooking the deck, I enjoyed seeing them bound across its span. Sometimes I paused in the middle of housework to sit with my chin resting on my arms crossed on top of the windowsill, watching Truffles and her babies running to and fro and munching on the grass Ats gathered by handfuls from our property. When I went outside to visit them, Panda always rattled the bars of his hutch with his teeth, and I comprehended that he wanted attention. If I stroked his head in response, he settled down.
This was not my first experience with rabbits. From fifth grade to ninth grade, I had a rabbit named Nicodemus, who coincidentally was also white and gray black, albeit with different markings. Nicky was my comforter and support during my emotionally tumultuous, bewildering, and lonely middle school years. I spent hours outside with him in our backyard, where he delighted me by leaping and twisting in the air, a rabbit behavior known as binkying. He nudged my hand to ask to be petted and showed his affection by licking, like a dog.
Our current rabbits were not quite like Nicky. They were not really pets. They were also more skittish, and they disliked being handled, only tolerating one or two strokes on the head before they crouched and slid out of reach of your hand and hopped away. All the rabbits except Panda. Panda definitely seemed to appreciate the human touch and hardly ever shrank away.
Eventually, after Truffles had another litter, it was decided that most of the rabbits would be moved off the deck to an enclosure Ats was building below. Although only one of the second litter survived after weaning, seven rabbits was an overwhelming presence on our small deck, which was constantly littered with droppings and stained with urine. Hutches lined every edge of the deck along the railing. It was an issue of overcrowding. In the end, only Panda remained on the deck. It turned out that Truffles was not an angora, after all, but a lionhead, and so also her offspring were half lionhead, and none of them had the same kind of lustrous, fine, soft, wispy fur that Panda had. They didn’t get nearly as matted as he did, so it seemed to us that they would be fine in an enclosure that was half dirt floor. In this part of Washington state, where most of the year is wet, in order to protect him from becoming irreparably bedraggled, I felt that we had no choice but to keep Panda out of the main bunny enclosure, which, although mostly covered, still had areas of wet soil. After all his companions moved away, I wondered if Panda felt lonely. He now had the whole deck to himself, but he preferred to lie down along the railing on the side where the bunny enclosure was set up below or to sit looking through the bars at it.
Knowing that rabbits are social creatures and feeling sorry that he couldn’t be with everyone else, I determined to spend time out on the deck with him multiple times daily. I loved sitting for a minute or two and stroking his luxuriously soft fur or scratching around the base of his ears, and he seemed to relish it too, closing his eyes and settling into a relaxed resting position. At times he chattered with his teeth in what appeared to be enjoyment. When I lifted my hand and made ready to go, he would remain in position for several seconds, head flat to the deck floor, as though asking for more.
Soon, in spite of my avowal not to involve myself with the care of the rabbits, on realizing that Ats and Emi weren’t keeping up with Panda’s grooming, I took that job upon myself. Under our care, Panda had become a little less lumpy, but he required ongoing maintenance. For the most part, he seemed not to mind being brushed, but he didn’t like getting his matted clumps clipped off, and understandably, he was especially hesitant to allow anyone to touch his rear, genital area, and hind legs. By this time, his rump, which initially was only a little matted and slightly dirty, was now a solid mass into which his tail had fused, as though swallowed up and assimilated into the rest of his behind.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to get to cleaning up his underside, but I set to work gingerly and carefully, clipping off the exposed upper parts of his rear mass, bit by bit. Bribed with food, he allowed me to work for a time, but progress was slow and I could only get a little done each session. I admit that I wasn’t consistent with this work, and now I see that I was too gentle in my approach to his grooming. He always flinched and hopped away anytime anyone touched his hind feet or that general area. He struggled against being picked up. I only clipped and combed where he allowed me to.
After embarking on a project to “free Panda’s tail” and successfully doing so for a while, I neglected continuing on to the rest of his hind parts, which I sometimes jokingly refer to as his “dirty butt.” Indeed, it was soiled brown on the bottom, but he was pooping prolifically and peeing just fine, by which I mean to say that none of it seemed to be getting caught in his fur. So I chalked the dirty butt up to be being mostly stained from contact with the moist deck floor. Looking back now, I guess I was naive, and in this naivete I was tragically negligent.
Meanwhile, Panda and I established other little routines. Every morning, a handful of alfalfa pellets in hand, I’d open the door to the deck to go “release the Panda.” “Good morning, Panda,” I’d say cheerily. On seeing me, he was visibly excited, hopping back and forth in his hutch, eager to jump out. After depositing the pellets in the usual spot under one side of his hutch, I would unlatch his hutch door and open it wide. Then I’d give his head a little scratch and he’d jump out. After hopping over to the side of the house to take care of his toileting needs, he would stop for another petting session. In time, I took to praying for him each day that God would bless him and keep him safe and healthy in Jesus’ Name, so that he might live out the full extent of his years.
If it was spring or summer, I would make sure to go out sometime during the day to gather “Panda’s salad.” Being a picky eater, Panda turned his nose up at the hay or grass that all our other bunnies gladly received, so I daily picked a salad especially for him from among the nutritious weeds growing on our property. Panda loved dock, plantain, clover (both flowers and leaves), and dandelion. At times, I gave him a leaf of kale, cabbage, or lettuce from our garden. Then, every night, I’d grab a Crunchy Bear treat or two, plus half a small jar full of pellets, and go out to the deck. Anticipating the treat, Panda would crisscross the deck out of sheer delight, it seemed, before hopping back into his hutch for the night and receiving his beloved Crunchy Bears. “Good night, Panda buddy,” I would say. “See you in the morning.”
This morning the emptiness of Panda’s hutch is palpable, and my heart aches. Is it silly to sorrow so much for a pet? For indeed, Panda had become my pet. Is it reasonable to mourn not even for a dog or a cat, but for a rabbit? When Nicky died, I was 14 or 15 years old, and I felt the loss acutely. My last time with him, I was standing in the rain outside of his hutch door, stroking his head, crying. His muzzle was covered in mucus, and I knew he was sick. He still came to me, lowered his head with what felt like affection, and looked out at me with clear sentience. Shortly after that, I believe even later that day, my mom took him to the vet and he never returned. I was distraught.
I did not have another pet for 30 years after Nicky, and the immediacy of the pain of his loss eventually wore away. Although I never forgot about Nicky and how much he had meant to me during a vulnerable time in my life, somehow in the many years that passed, I lost a sense of how deeply I had mourned his sudden absence. So once, when a friend told me she was going to a pet loss grief support group to help her cope with her dog’s passing, I could sympathize, but I also couldn’t help feeling that it was a little bit frivolous.
Today I can empathize more. In one sense, going to therapy sessions because you’ve been bereaved of a pet is frivolous when we compare that loss to the loss of a human life or any human suffering. But that does not mean that it is not valid to grieve the loss. Nor does it mean that our beloved animal companions have no intrinsic value at all. Randy Alcorn writes, “Scripture says a great deal about animals, portraying them as Earth’s second most important inhabitants. God entrusted animals to us, and our relationships with animals are a significant part of our lives.” The relationships we build with our pets are real and important, and while they may not have the same depth as the relationships we have with people, they fill a place in our hearts that our human bonds do not. Instead, our delight in them is simple and pure, uncomplicated by the complex emotions that often accompany our interactions and with the people close to us. Thus, we ought not feel ashamed at the depth of our anguish when our pets pass.
Panda became part of the fabric of my day, interwoven between cooking and baking, tidying the house and vacuuming the floor, eating and washing dishes, homeschooling, drinking my coffee, playing the piano. Over the course of time, he grew dear to me. The kids joked that I loved Panda more than I loved Iroh, our dog. If I’m honest, in many ways I did. Panda was quiet, unassuming, calm. He didn’t demand anything from me and was not needy for attention. Yet he received my affection every time I offered it. I made up impromptu ditties about him, which I sang around the house. I gave him various nicknames: Panda Man, Panda Cakes, Bunny Buddy, Pandarel (to match Iroh’s Doggerel), Friend. I made sure he had food and water. I swept up his poop from the deck and cleared away the stems he left after eating his salad.
Once, on a gloriously sunny spring day, I brought a book and a cup of tea to the deck and sat there reading. (We rarely used the deck after the bunnies took it over.) After a while, I noticed that Panda had come near and sprawled out next to me, and so we were just hanging out and relaxing together, savoring the sunshine. In the heat of summer, I made sure he had adequate shade to rest in, and on the hottest days, I brought him an ice pack he could lie next to if he wanted. In winter, whenever we experienced freezing temperatures, I made sure his hutch was covered with a blanket and a tarp overnight. The next morning, I would lift the covers, stiff and crackling, and Panda would be there, peering out at me with those oddly beautiful gray-blue eyes.
Sometimes Panda liked to jump up to the roof of his hutch, at least 2 ft high. There he would rest, a fluffy black and white loaf, and I worried that a passing eagle, hawk, or owl would spot and grab him. But he seemed unconcerned. Those ears always remained cocked and alert, and I knew he could see over his head and around with his almost 360-degree peripheral vision. Often I would go out to him as he rested there on his hutch roof and crouch down so our faces were level. I called it “seeing eye to eye.” “Ah, Panda,” I would say. “Finally, we see eye to eye.” At that height, I could nuzzle the top of his head. He always smelled fresh, pleasant, clean, not musky and oily, like a dog.
There were times when I would go to the window and call to Panda and he would come bouncing over from another part of the deck. Then, erect and curious on his hind legs, he’d observe me observing him. At other times he would binky, jumping straight up into the air and twisting his body acrobatically in what looked to me like pure exuberance. It thrilled me.
I first noticed that something was wrong with Panda. Toward the end of last week, there was a morning when he didn’t immediately jump out of his hutch when I opened it. Instead, he hung back in a way very unlike his usual self. Later in the day, I saw that he was out on the deck, but all day there were no piles of bunny berries to sweep up and no puddles of urine. That evening, he didn’t want to go back into his hutch, so I left him out overnight. The next day, he ate and drank normally, but only very little poop. “Are you okay, buddy?” I asked him, and of course, he was silent. The gray blue eyes stared at me serenely.
The next day, Panda kept nibbling at his hindquarters on both sides, something he usually did periodically as a self-grooming behavior. But this day, it was almost constant, like he couldn’t quite scratch an itch. “I think Panda’s butt is bothering him,” I said to Ats, and I took the grooming shears outside and went to work on the sides of his bottom behind his hind feet. I actually was able to cut off a large portion of the matted mass, but decided after half an hour to resume again another time. Meanwhile, Panda’s strange break from routine continued on for maybe another day.
On Sunday, we arrived home from church, and I stepped out onto the deck to check on Panda. He was resting in his usual spot under the shade of his hutch, but something seemed off that I couldn’t yet fathom. I scanned the deck and still no new poop. When my gaze returned to Panda, it dawned on me that his rear end had become soiled black. Then I saw it. There was a little squirming gray varmint struggling on the deck next to him. A maggot.
It turned out to be a condition called fly strike. As near as I can speculate, at some point, probably very recently (Ats had read that the fly life cycle is very quick), Panda’s matted rump finally began to obstruct his waste elimination, causing excessive wetness and soiling inside the mass of his rear end. It being midsummer, this attracted flies, which consequently laid their eggs on him. The eggs had hatched and the maggots began their ruthless campaign of consumption, destructively progressing toward pupation and adulthood.
Ats spent the next two hours or more in the glaring sun, lying down on the heated surface of the deck so that he could be level with Panda, working with the grooming shears to cut off the matted and soiled fur from Panda’s rump, until finally he exposed bare flesh. Everywhere there were maggots, eating tunnels into the solid mass of his fur, burrowing into Panda’s flesh, which was wounded and raw. Panda seemed to know that the situation was desperate and that Ats was trying to help him. He hardly pulled away or scrambled off, even when Otz tugged on his hind legs to better access Panda’s groin area. Even after Ats accidentally nicked his tail, drawing blood, Panda was willing to return to the operating theater. Uncharacteristically, he merely lay there, splooted, with his rear end uncovered and vulnerable, enduring who knows what kind of pain.
I worried that more flies would lay their eggs on Panda, so we moved him into Iroh’s old dog crate down in the basement. Regretting that it was dark there and unfamiliar to him, we felt that it was nonetheless a better place for him than the deck. There in the basement it was quieter than in the house, and he could stay relatively cool and protected from flies.
Over the next couple of days, we settled into a new rhythm. Ats checked on Panda first thing in the morning as part of his usual rounds of feeding the chickens and other rabbits, while I visited every couple hours after that to refresh his food and water and to change out the soiled mats we used to line the floor of the crate. Then each evening, Ats labored more on Panda’s torn and inflamed bottom, cutting away clumps of fur and plucking off maggots by hand, while I served as nurse, comforting Panda and stroking his head, retrieving the tools Ats needed to accomplish his gruesome task, adjusting the light. Single maggots occasionally fell off Panda as he shifted position, and I pincered those with the shears. The other maggots Ats collected in a plastic container, which I periodically emptied by feeding them to the chickens.
Through all this, Panda remained relatively still and calm, quiet as always and enduring without complaint. One might think, how could he complain? He was a rabbit. And that is true. But there was something I can’t quite describe that he seemed to communicate inexplicably through his demeanor, through his eyes. Panda entrusted himself completely to us and our desperate attempts to save him.
No matter how many maggots Ats removed, there were more, always more of them. Maggots grown plump from gorging themselves, undiscovered over the past couple of days, wriggled among new ones, just hatched and tiny. They burrowed deeper into the tunnels they had hollowed so that they could remain unseen and escape Ats’ pinching grasp. Dread and despair came over me. But fighting to cling to hope, I said, “As long as we keep the flies away, we’ll eventually get rid of the last maggot.” We were determined to do that for Panda.
Despite his condition, Panda still seemed vigorous, and we marveled that he had made it through the past few days. He could no longer rest on his haunches. I think the rawness of his naked rump was too painful. But when we allowed him to roam around the basement, he hopped away at a normal pace. He ended up at the door, which is all glass. There he sat, gazing out at the grass, and my heart ached. A rabbit is made to hop about a field or in the brush, maneuvering through brambles, nibbling on grass and clover out in the fresh open air. But Panda, with his fine long fur, pearl white with a sheen, would never be able to live that way. He was bred to be an indoor bunny. In the crate, in the foreign gloominess of the basement, he seemed a little depressed. I wished I could take him back to his familiar deck home. Yet we would never allow him to take up residence out on the deck again to be prey for heartless flies. Determined to give him the best life I could, I decided that if he survived this bout of fly strike, I’d give him a large enclosure in the corner of the basement nearest the windows, with plenty of toys to keep him occupied and structures for him to jump up onto. I researched and put metal pet playpen panel sets into my Amazon cart, ready to order. My plans were in place.
On Tuesday afternoon when I was down to check on Panda, he had diarrhea. Quickly, I changed the lining pads and vanquished a couple maggots. Remembering how much he loved Crunchy Bears, I placed a few crumbs into a set of nesting cups for him. It was a game we used to play. I would put treats into the cups and nest them, and Panda would use his teeth to pull each cup out so he could gobble up the treats. That day I brought the cups, and while he was still eager to eat the Crunchy Bears, he didn’t seem interested or able to pull out the cups. I gave him the little cookies, and then I settled down to pet him. I spent a long time there, longer than usual, slowly stroking his head, massaging the base of his ears, and scratching the sides of his chin. He chattered his teeth, a sign of a rabbit’s deep contentment and pleasure, but also a sign of intense pain. This time he was obviously in much pain, but was it too much to hope that he also felt comfort and happiness from receiving my attention? He seemed otherwise soothed and placid, and I prayed that God would heal him, as I had been since we realized that he was unwell.
In the past, I might have scoffed a little at the idea of praying for a pet. However, recently I have come to believe that while human beings made in the image of God are the pinnacle of creation, God also treasures the animals he’s created, and we are explicitly given the responsibility of serving as their stewards, to have dominion over them, not as subjugating tyrants, but as benevolent masters. They have been entrusted by God to our care, a job we are to take seriously and perform to the best of our ability.
This is why we ultimately resolved to take him to the animal emergency center. In our current season we have been financially tight, so facing the cost of veterinary care, we debated about taking Panda and opted to try for a time to help him ourselves. The question is a difficult one. At what point is the cost of care too exorbitant for a pet when we are pinching pennies for our children and ourselves? However, after I refreshed his water bowl later in the afternoon, I felt strongly that we had been wrong not to provide him with veterinary attention earlier. He was hunched and looked small, having lost much of his fur. He stumbled slightly, unstable on his feet. He breathed quickly and shallowly, and he appeared drained of his vigor. And his eyes, the color of stormy skies, were more dull. Worried, I scratched the top of his head and he received it like always. And yet this time felt different.
I went upstairs, urgent to search veterinarians, and found the emergency center. God had given Panda to our care, and I was convicted that we needed to do everything we reasonably could for his well-being. Perhaps after medical evaluation we would decide that the price to save him was too much for us. Perhaps we would need to consider euthanizing him, and I didn’t know what I thought of that. But at the very least, once we’d taken him to the veterinary emergency room, we would have investigated every avenue of getting him help. In the end, there were questions we didn’t have to contend with.
I had experienced the death of many baby bunnies. Apparently, they become vulnerable to gastrointestinal distress at weaning when they lose the antimicrobial protection of their mother’s milk, and the process of their dying is excruciatingly drawn out. We once found a baby lying on its side, twitching and gasping. Out of pity and helpless to do anything except provide comfort—a soft place to lie in the shade away from the bustle of the bunny enclosure—I used a finger to gently rub its side and stayed with it, whispering to it and praying over it. I had to leave it after an hour or so, and it was still gasping even after that. In all, it may have been a few hours before it finally expired.
Panda’s death, by contrast, was quick. Within an hour and a half of my last visit with him, he was already cold, and rigor mortis had set in. We all gathered around his little body, Ats and I and Mark, Emi and Micah. I prayed, “Thank you Lord, for Panda, for giving him to us. He was a good bunny who brought us a lot of joy, and thank you Panda.”
I caressed his face inside one more time and felt its silkiness, the softest and fluffiest fur I have ever touched, no longer radiating warmth from his body. I looked one last time into his eyes, which were open, glassy, and devoid of any light. Now they were more alien even than when I first beheld them. Then Ats and I buried him in a corner of the front lawn where we have our vegetable garden boxes and where it stays shady most of the day. A wild rabbit shot across our path as we walked there with Panda’s body. I can see his burial spot when I sit at my desk looking out from my bedroom window. This weekend, or maybe next week, I will buy a hydrangea plant too, to plant above it to mark it.
I knew I would be sad when Panda passed away, but I didn’t expect this level of grief. Walking Iroh this morning, I saw large dock plants along the road with broad green leaves and briefly thought, “Panda would love that.” But I don’t need to gather leaves for his salad anymore. Every time I walk by the big living room windows that overlook the deck, I inadvertently glance that way to try to spot where Panda is. I didn’t realize that had become my habit, and for a split second, I almost feel like my eyes will alight on him lounging in the shade of the hutch or sitting on his haunches grooming himself. And then I remember. Panda is gone.
The most profound pain thus far has been the realization that God entrusted me with Panda’s care, and I didn’t do my very best to look after him. Last night I confessed to Ats through tears, “Panda depended on me to take care of him, and I failed him. I could have done more. I should have done more to make sure he was adequately groomed and clean. He suffered so much when he didn’t have to.” Not only was it a sin against Panda, but it was also a sin against God, who made me a steward of his life for two and a half years. I prayed silently again, “Lord, forgive me. Panda, I’m sorry.” 1 John 1:9 says,
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, ESV)
As I prayed, the feeling of being forgiven flowed into my heart. Then the thought of Panda well again, his fur pristine in the presence of Jesus, occurred to me. It felt like God was showing me that Panda is happy now and that his mute suffering at the end of his life on this earth is a mere wisp of a memory in comparison to what he’s now experiencing. Maybe he is frolicking in the fields of heaven, nibbling on the sweetest clover, infinitely more tasty than Crunchy Bears, the breeze gently rippling his radiant fur where there is no end of glorious days. Maybe he is held and cuddled by Jesus, his Maker. And perhaps he plays with other animals that are there, including other bunnies. The thought of it lightened my heart.
Of course, I will not know for sure until I meet Jesus, but I strongly believe I will see Panda again in heaven, and Nicodemus also. Many Christians have speculated on whether or not our pets will be with us in eternity. Among others, Alcorn quotes C.S. Lewis, who wrote in Problem of Pain “In immortality…” Sorry, the quote is wrong. I think I deleted it. But basically, he says, C.S. Lewis says in the immortality of their masters, the pets or animals may also, it’s possible that they may also find immortality.
And Alcorn also cites Johnny Ericson Tada, who declares, “If God brings our pets back to life, it wouldn’t surprise me. It would be just like Him. It would be totally in keeping with His generous character—exorbitant, excessive, extravagant in grace after grace—of all the dazzling discoveries and ecstatic pleasures heaven will hold for us, the potential of seeing Scrappy would be pure whimsy, utterly, joyfully, surprisingly superfluous. Heaven is going to be a place that will refract and reflect in as many ways as possible the goodness and joy of our great God who delights in lavishing love on his children.” Many accounts of NDEs, or near-death experiences, include a mention of pets as part of the heavenly welcoming committee. If such accounts are true, and if Alcorn, Lewis, Tada, and many others are correct, to see our pets in heaven will definitely be a special bonus. Like God saying, “But wait, there’s more!” Doesn’t it make sense that if we are saved into eternity via our relationship with Christ, so too animals are saved into eternity via their relationship with us? I look forward with great anticipation and excitement to one day being in my true and forever home with my loving God. And indeed, it will be “pure whimsy” to see Panda there too.
While I will always regret not doing more to prevent Panda’s untimely death, God has removed the heaviness of guilt. Now what’s left of the ache is how much I miss his peaceful and quiet presence in my life. And I know even that will subside with the swift passing of these last days of summer and when the busyness of fall begins again. However, I hope my gratitude will always remain. I cannot say that Panda gave me love in return for my love for him. I don’t know that he had the capacity for that, at least he didn’t love as I know love. But one thing he did give me was his trust. And that is a wondrous gift. He accepted my love and care without reservation and depended on me completely. I am grateful to God and to Panda for that gift.
And maybe that is a metaphor for how our Heavenly Father wants us to relate to him with full trust and dependence, withholding no part of ourselves and receiving his love for us without inhibition. And while we are imperfect stewards, the Lord is our Good Shepherd and does not lack in anything, neither in wisdom nor knowledge, neither in love nor goodness, neither in ability nor resources. John 10:11-18 says,
11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10:11-18, ESV)
I am overwhelmed when I consider the love of our Good Shepherd, how He provides for us, making sure we have everything we need; always aware of us, our activities, and the state of our hearts; delighting in us; sheltering us. He laid down His life for us. He loves us in a way we can neither comprehend nor reciprocate. The distance between God and our level of awareness and capacity of mind is even more vast than the distance between us and our pets. But knowing even dimly that He cares for us and that we are utterly dependent on Him, why should we not trust in him with all our heart, as it says in Proverbs 3:5?
This morning as I gradually woke up, Panda was there in the liminal space between sleep and my waking consciousness, like a faint and fading image. Had I been dreaming of him? I picked up my phone, and the Google photo app was open. Scrolling through it, I randomly started a video that caught my breath. The video was of Panda, and in it, I’m petting, stroking, scratching his little head like I always did. He looks content, eyes closed, with his chin flat and resting on the deck floor. And when I stop, he doesn’t move. So I resume petting him some more. That’s it. The whole video. I looked at the date. August 14, 2024, exactly a year ago to the day. I don’t even remember taking that video, but I took it as confirmation that my dear little friend is well, happy, and whole.
Soon I will put away or give away Panda’s things: his water bottle, the bag of alfalfa pellets we kept upstairs for him, his treats, his grooming supplies. The hutch will be taken off the deck and repurposed as a dwelling for new rabbits in the bunny enclosure. The deck will be swept and scrubbed. All the physical vestiges of Panda’s existence will be removed. But I plan to keep one thing there as a memorial to our precious deck bunny: a small metal rabbit figurine. I’ve already purchased it, and it’s being delivered tomorrow. I’d like to place it in the corner of the deck Panda preferred most because, while we are already looking forward to using the deck as it was originally intended, for me it will always be “Panda’s Place.”
Well, thank you, Aiko, for sharing, and I wanted to share a little bit more from my perspective as well. And let’s see.
So yeah, like Aiko said, the last few days we were frantically trying to help him. And when we went, finally face death of the rabbit or like anybody else, whenever we face death of our loved ones, including our pets, I guess, you know, one thing is that, like Aiko shared, we deeply miss him. And that I thought is such an indication, strong points to the fact that death was never meant to be. And the separation that we experienced through death was never supposed to be there. And that’s why when we experience it, although we know that it’s going to happen, especially pets all pass away before us, there’s this terrible sadness that we don’t get to see them anymore.
And yet, this hope for heaven. Aiko and I, especially recently, we’ve been really, you know, we’ve been studying, reading the book Imagine Heaven, and somehow the Lord has been bringing to us these ideas that heaven is much more than what I used to think. It’s much more fuller, extravagant, that God… as she shared, and our pets will be there.
So what an amazing hope that we hold on to because of what Christ was able to has accomplished. We can look forward to this reunion with all our loved ones and our pets, including our pets.
And especially when we go through this, although we were not supposed to experience this death, separation by death, once we lose something, when we regain it, we gain that something that we lost, the appreciation of what we’ve lost is going to be much greater.
So in amazing God’s wisdom and ability to even work for the sin of the world, sin of man, and the fallen state that we got into where death entered into our existence, God uses that to one day, when we are fully redeemed, our joy for regaining that life together with even our loved ones—of course, centered around Christ—our joy is going to be even more because we experienced this grieving grief of loss.
So that’s such a powerful reminder and hope to hold on to as we live our journey here, keeping our eyes fixed on heaven and the hope that we have there. And so, you know, the more death we experience, the yearning for heaven grows so much deeper, stronger, and we experience this trust.
And I got to this privilege… it was such a privilege to be able to have this bonding time with Panda. And like Aiko shared, he would never let us touch him or hold him too much. But you know, it came so desperate to him that he completely let him roll him over, and he’s on his back with his legs upwards. I’m holding his leg apart and cleaning him and snipping his fur, and to be able to experience that trust… I experienced that complete trust to me, into my hands, and into Aiko’s hands.
Isaiah 1:3 says animals are more obedient. I think I have it here. One, two, three.
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. 3 The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” (Isaiah 1:2-3, ESV)
Donkeys even know who feeds them. You know, the ox knows the owner. So you know they, even our dog, they, they have this, what is it? Complete trust over them or us as owners. And through that, I feel that’s how we ought to place our trust and faith, like Stevin shared last week in Our Lord. He is our Lord, He is our Master, He is our provider. And that was such a powerful lesson that we were able to experience through this time and through which that when we went, as a receiving end of that trust from even such a tiny creature, it brought me such a somehow strong delight, a sense of delight or joy, this ability to bond with a rabbit. Aiko shared how she was able to get face level, eye level, and see face to face. And the delight that I experienced was real.
And Psalm 147:1-11 says this:
1 Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. 2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. 5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. 6 The Lord lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground. 7 Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre! 8 He covers the heavens with clouds; he prepares rain for the earth; he makes grass grow on the hills. 9He gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that cry. 10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, 11 but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. (Psalms 147:1-11, ESV)
So the delight, pleasure is… God directs those, receives those, have those feelings, pleasure and delight to those who fear Him and put his full trust in Him. And I think I, as an image bearer of God, experiencing these little creatures, trust to me… the delight or the pleasure that I feel perhaps reflects, probably reflects God’s feeling, what He experiences when we place our trust in Him, our full faith in Him.
And how, what is, that’s what we want. We want to please our Father. And how do we do that? It is through putting our utmost trust and dependence on our Lord.
And so that’s the glimpse of God, God’s delight through the intimate bond that I experienced with our bunny, Panda. And then thinking about how the level, I guess, the order of creation that we are in compared to God versus me, us, man, human versus me and these creatures like rabbits. And I was thinking about the difference. And if you think about it, the gap between the Holy God, creator of the universe, is infinitely… the gap between Him and us is infinitely greater compared to my order or level as a human being to a rabbit. I think I’ve heard one preacher once say, you know, if you, God’s relation to us is even greater than my relationship to a microbe on a toilet seat, even infinitely greater.
So this, this is the God that we have. And yet, how does our Lord treat us? He treated us with utmost care. And all the details of our lives, our needs, He is aware of. And He cares so deeply for us to the point that He sent His only Son Jesus to take our place on the cross.
So go to the last. Should have had this ordered a little bit better. Jesus came down.
Philippians 2:3-11: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationship with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, 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, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself 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 God the Father.” Amen.
So Jesus is the bridge. He closed this infinitely large gap between God and man, his Creator, by coming down to our level and beyond. You know, Scripture says He even takes care of the sparrows; they don’t go hungry. You know, the flowers in the field, you know, God clothes them with beautiful patterns, and He’s even concerned about little creatures, all the entire creation order. And so, if Jesus has come down such a big gap to our level to relate to us, how are we to respond to that? You know, if my, if I consider maybe even microbe, but even at the level of Panda, my level and the Panda’s level… that gap, you know, if God cares about Panda to that degree, you know that the range between Panda—everything else fits in that spectrum, right? All our friends, all our people who are, we know, people who are in a more unfortunate life situation than we are. So the spectrum that we have, we have no excuse to come down to the level to interact with each existence, each being, let alone, you know, we were talking about still animals, but of course, you know, more higher order than a rabbit is, you know, our children, our friends, our family. How much more are we to have the, reflect God’s position of humbling Himself to interact and coming and share His love, pouring out His love to those who are in need.
So Jesus, through Panda’s, our interaction with Panda, our life with him, these are the things that we were able to experience and through which we, I think, understand God’s heart in a very practical way in that sense. So we praise God. We still are working through the loss of our beloved rabbit, but we’re so grateful that we were able to experience this this week. So thank you again, Aiko.
And may this be a, let us take courage to keep our eyes on our Good Shepherd, who is a perfect shepherd who’s able to take care of us way more than how we can take care of our animals or others. We place our utmost trust in Him and keep our eyes on the coming heaven, fulfillment, complete establishment of heaven, which is starting even today, even at this moment.
And may we all live to reflect who God is, who Jesus is in our own ways to the world that needs to experience this amazing love and His presence.
So that’s our, that’s the message that we wanted to share today. So yeah, let us go on to again, once again come to the table.
Jesus was able to accomplish the ultimate sacrifice to redeem each and every one of us who admit our fallen nature, our sinful nature, that we need His help on the cross. By the work of His work on the cross, we are called fully restored to the relationship with Him so as, to take that, to behold that truth, and to proclaim that truth, let us come and take the communion together and continue to give thanks to Him and to worship Him.
Okay, so come and eat.
The post 20250.8.17 TFHC – Putting Your Full Trust in the Good Shepherd | John 10:11-18 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
August 10, 2025, Message by Stevin Johnson
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right. So it’s oftentimes it’s interesting, right? I like Kevin, I love Kevin, and I’m glad to help him out when he’s gone. And it’s good to get up here and share my thoughts, but I feel like I’m literally preaching to the choir. So as we go through this tonight, I’m just going to kind of touch on things that I think we all know. Maybe sometimes we’ve forgotten them and we need a little reminder. I don’t know. I won’t go with the average ages in here, but, you know, for the most part, we’ve all been around and seen a few things, and there’s some that haven’t. You’re a spring chicken, Grandma.
So one of my life verses is Proverbs 3:5-6. It’s one that I’ve… I don’t even remember how far back it is that I first learned that one, but I was a young person, probably not even a teenager when I remembered this one. And it’s always stuck with me.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6, NIV)
I found that for tonight it’s kind of appropriate. It wasn’t where I started for tonight’s sermon and talk, but it fell into place as I want to talk about faith and what faith is. And I did have to go back to school this week to learn some things about faith. But fortunately for me, I have a live-in teacher who’s very good at what she does. She taught me about nouns and verbs, and I’m able to sort things out.
So faith and trust, and faith foundations and trust. Trust comes from faith. Without trust, there can be no faith.
I don’t know about everybody else, but I tend to, I guess, give people the benefit of the doubt. And I trust early on until you give me a reason not to trust you. I know other people can be quite opposite. They don’t trust anybody until somebody has proven themselves trustworthy. I think both extremes can be a little risky, but I know that that’s the extreme I live at. But for me, my problem, the trust part, is if I trust you and then you betray that trust. I don’t have the grace that Jesus has, and I have to work really hard to be gracious once you’ve broken that trust with me.
But staying on the topic of faith, faith generally stems from believing in someone or something. Somebody has proven themselves worthy to you. And I think as we, who are all believers in here, go out and evangelize or minister to people who are not believers, faith, they got to have faith in us that we’ve earned through trust. They believe in what we, we don’t have anything ill towards them, and we are good for our word, and we’re not going to lead them astray.
It is something that people have. That’s the noun part, right? Everybody has, you can have faith. And I think much like having a belief, like if you choose to believe that God is real and exists and Jesus came and lived on the earth, much like faith, you have a choice in faith. You have faith in something. I think everybody does. It’s either faith in yourself and who you are and everything you’re about, or it can be faith in somebody else or something else. Some that might be a science and other things.
And faith and faithfulness. Faithfulness is the action part. That’s the action part of faith. We can be faithful to our friends and family, loyalty, faithful. They can trust in us. They can believe in us that we’re going to be good for our word. We have faithfulness. We have faithfulness. Be faithful towards God because of His Word and who He is and who He says he is.
And you can have faith in just about anything. Some people that don’t have faith in God, they have faith in themselves. They have faith in an object that that object, that idol that they worship and have faith in, whether it’s a talisman they wear around their neck or whatever, that is going to be something they can believe in and they can trust in to have effect in their life. And it can have a profound impact, the things you place your faith in.
Okay, the troubles with faith, the world would be glad to tell each of us to have faith in it. And I think we saw that during the COVID pandemic. Everybody wanted us to have faith that they had the right solution for that problem. They want you to have faith in a person. And that faith is a hollow faith without, if you don’t have trust in that. Because a lot of people didn’t trust in the vaccination or they didn’t trust in people who were the leaders that were telling them that it was, things were good for them or they needed this, you know, do things that were contrary to what they believed in and what, and who they trusted.
But generally, the world’s faith is a distraction from God, to have faith in what the world tells you to have faith in.
As I was thinking about that, I was thinking this distraction comes from the prince of this world, Satan, who’s glad to take away your faith in God and distract you from having faith in God, and tell you to have faith in science, tell you to have faith in the person down the street who’s telling you lies and misleading you. And that faith is hollow because once that trust is broken and that belief is gone, what’s left?
If you don’t have faith in the One, and kind of, you probably already see we’re leading to, the One that we have the faith in is the only thing that’s going to be a solid choice for us. And faith is a choice.
Faith, we, as I mentioned earlier, we all are going to choose to be faithful or have faith in something. And it’s risky, it’s vulnerable. We see in history guys who were faithful to God and made choices. We can go back to Abraham. We don’t really have any clear, I don’t have ever seen anything clearly written about how Abraham had faith in God, why he had faith in God, why he believed in God.
The best I’ve come to is when we did the biblical history and we read the Bible through historically, just going through the chronological order from Adam down through Noah, Noah’s sons to Abraham. There was not a huge break in the chain of people talking about God from Adam. There’s a few hundred years. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but after looking at that now, that’s where I made that connection, that link that Abraham knew God and he’d been told about God from his father and his grandfather, and his great grandfather passed it on.
So he already had a belief, he already had a bit of a reason to trust, which led him to have faith when God came and talked to him. The God of the universe said, “I want you to pick up and move way over there. I’m going to make you a nation, and you’re going to be powerful, and you’re going to be more numerous than the sand on the shore and the stars in the skies.” If I didn’t already have a knowledge and a belief and a faith and I heard that, I probably wouldn’t go. So I do that as a point that Abraham, that he had faith, and he moved out.
And we see faith all the way down from people making the choice and making it, not a blind faith. Blind faith. I don’t know if there’s, if that’s just a word in a saying that people like to use, “It’s blind faith.” I don’t know that anybody ever really has blind faith.
Excuse me. I can use the example I don’t think it’s blind faith, somebody might think it’s blind faith, but I have faith can’t see him now, but that big brown guy that was on the screen earlier, I actually have faith in him, but not just because he’s a horse, but because of what he has done. I believe in him, and I have faith in him because I trust him to let me know when danger’s around. He’s always been good about that.
When we had a cougar around, and he didn’t bolt and take off, but his ears went up, and he went and looked in a certain direction. I’ve learned from him through trust, belief, and experience to have faith. When he tells me there’s something there, there’s something there.
So as an example of how I reasoned through faith, of having faith in him, the disciples and the martyrs who had faith, they had experience, right? Kind of the same experience. Jesus, right? Jesus was their experience. They walked and they had close the disciples, the 12, the fishermen had close intimacy with Jesus. They saw what he did. They heard his words. He didn’t lead them astray. He did them no wrong.
So their faith and their trust, their trust and their faith, was built up in Him. So that when He ended up going to the cross for us, to save us, and the teachings and what Jesus has said really started to click in those guys, they had faith in Jesus that He said who He was and resurrection was real and what he promised was going to happen. They had enough faith to go to their deaths. They didn’t hold on to their life so dearly as something that was so precious that they would give up their faith.
No, they believed all the way to Stephen is a good example, I think. Getting stoned to death by the Sanhedrin, taking him out because he said, “Look, I see God. He’s right there.” And they started talking about him. He was not afraid. His faith was so strong. It was reasoned. It was reasoned because they’d experienced it, they knew about it, they believed it.
I think everybody’s probably heard of somebody, everybody knows somebody who’s “walked away from the faith.” I don’t know what, I don’t, thinking about that, I don’t really believe there’s a walk away. It was a choice to lose they chose to live by the flesh instead. I think that probably would be a more accurate statement than saying they walked away from the faith because they have that knowledge already. They already know God. They already know the Word. And it wasn’t that they decided that they really didn’t believe that He existed. They can use that and put it in as their bag of tricks of why, but they really just chose to walk away from faith, to choose flesh, fleshly desires of the world. I think that you, I would find it really hard to agree with them that they walked away from the faith.
They might not have had enough faith. I don’t know. I don’t know. People do say I don’t have enough faith or I’m not worthy because of my lack of faith. Too little faith. I can tell you that God can work with any amount of faith that you have. It can be little, it can be large.
My own experience was when our niece came and visited us one summer while we were in California. We were living in Lemoore; we were stationed there. We would go to Spirit West Coast Music Festival in Monterey every summer. And our niece Sarah, who’s now 40 yeah, oofta she was 18, 17 then, I don’t remember, it was a while ago.
But she came, and they would make altar calls. You know, it was an all-day festival, so you could bring your blanket, your food, your coolers, and you throw out wherever you could find a place. You had Christian music artists playing on the main stage and other stages around. But somewhere during the day, they’d always have an altar call.
When they made an altar call, our niece Sarah jumped up and went forward. I was like, wow, that’s awesome, that’s great. Sarah’s going to go get baptized here in Monterey, which was a beautiful place to get baptized.
And at that point, I said a prayer to God and I said, “I want to be just like you, Jesus. Because that moved me to see her going to do that.” I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, I was, but I wasn’t because God had some plans, had some things in store for me that shook my faith, shook my belief, took me down to bedrock, if you will.
And then I deployed. So not only did I have that happen, then I deployed to Japan away from my family. Sean was a wee wee lad. Sydney was on the way. So there was, I was out someplace far, far away. I had guys all around me, but not and I had other believers, which was, well, here’s part of that story as well. It is 1, 2, 3. I think it was 5. I was the first guy in the squadron, and it was my department head tour. So I was in the middle management, if you will, of the squadron, and four other Christians showed up bing, bing, bing, bing, right after me into the squadron.
And we all got together one day, and we’re sitting around just having a good time being together. We all looked at each other and go, what is God doing? This is really weird. This doesn’t happen. You don’t see this in squadrons. In fact, there’s usually not a whole lot of believers in the squadron that or if they are, they’re not going to stand up and say they are. Why? Why are we all here?
I think years later, I figured it out. It was for me, which was cool, because that was a hard time. I was having a hard time.
Why am I telling you that story? Going back to faith. I hadn’t really thought about it. I was, for a lot of years, a very secular Christian. We got married. I started really focusing back on what faith was and what I believed. And it got shaken a little bit. And I found out I didn’t really know everything I thought I knew. But I did have that little bit of faith, and that was enough. I could have said I don’t have enough faith. Maybe that was true, but it was there.
God can work anything with the faith that you got. I think that’s probably an important thing that if you run into anybody to talk about if they do believe, but they’re not sure about their faith. “My faith is weak. I have little faith.” You could say, “You know what? All you need is that much. God will work with the rest. You’re already in there. You believe something and you have faith in something already. So don’t, don’t beat yourself up. Push the ‘I believe’ button.”
We had an “I believe” button in the plane. I don’t know if you guys knew that. It was there. “I believe” button used it a lot. Was that blind faith? No, not really. We knew our systems and we trusted the mechanics and the people who worked on our planes enough that they said, “Hey, sir, this is what I want you to do. I want you to, the jet’s running. I want you to take all your power and turn it off. Leave the engines running, turn off all your electricity.” Okay. “And then wait 10 seconds, turn it all back on.”
So you turn it off. And inside the jet, it’s making all kinds of noises. you’re hearing through your headphones inside your helmet. You can hear the motors going, you know, not really beeps and squeaks, but there’s noises that you’re comfortable with, and you listen.
But when you turn off all the electricity, it gets really quiet. Doesn’t-make-you-feel-good quiet. Something’s not right. And then you turn it all back on, and all the squeaks and everything come back on. And you’re like, you look out at the guy, and you’re like, “And?” He goes, “Is that problem still there?” “No.” “All right, you’re good to go.” What? It’s just the control-alt-delete of your computer. That’s what we did in the plane. Like, okay, I believe. And off the end of the ship, I go.
God is your “I believe” button. If there’s somebody with little faith, just tell them to push it. Push it, say their prayer. It’ll be all right.
Why should we have faith in God? Well, promises, really. He is a faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments.
9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. (Deuteronomy 7:9, NIV)
That’s right out of Deuteronomy. It’s a promise. It’s God’s promise that He will be faithful to us. He’ll keep His covenant. He’s faithful.
That’s pretty big coming from the creator of the universe. He says, “I’ll be faithful to you guys. It’s free. It does come with the commandments. You got to follow what I say.”
Some people might push back on that and go, well, what kind of… What is that? Is He telling you you have to have faith in Him or you’re not going to get what He has?
Well, as a parent, you know, we, as parents, use There’s a couple in here I see who have, on the receiving end of what their parents have to say. You know, it’s out of love. The commandments are not to put restrictions on you that are going to hurt you. There are restrictions of love to help you. And if you have faith in us, then it just gets better.
And we’ll be faithful to you if you keep those commandments. And His promises are never broken. His actions that are trustworthy and believable have always been there, and they always continue.
I am not a cessationist. I believe God still does miracles. I still believe He interacts with people. He is a God of relationships. Relationships are not cessation. It’s ongoing. It doesn’t stop. I have a very hard time computing that there’s folks out there who believe that God really kind of stops interacting with us, that He no longer does that, that He no longer has a need to do miracles to get people’s attention. Maybe there’s enough people out there now who can carry His word forward, but I don’t think that’s the God we serve.
I think he does miracles because He loves to do miracles. He loves to help heal people with cancer. He loved, I’m sure he loved telling Julie, “Hey, the prayers of the righteous have healed you.” I bet that gave him great joy to say that. And He would do it for everybody else, for Jamie, for our family.
Faith is healing, healing power. I agree with Kevin that when he talks about why do some people not get healed and some other people do when they have faith and mystery, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that one. But I believe that everybody who has faith can be healed. I don’t know how all that works. You don’t have to have a great amount of faith. Yeah, it was really just believing and accepting His gift and knowing it was there to take.
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. (Hebrews 11:6, NIV)
That’s just kind of, to me, it’s kind of a logical thing. How are you going to receive something if you don’t believe in it and have faith in it? If you don’t believe it actually is out there, it’s hard to not, it’s hard to take something you don’t believe in and have faith in.
And if you go out and actually earnestly seek that person, in this case God, you’re going to find the rewards. He’s already got them out there. If you earnestly seek Him, you’ll find them. So having worked through that one a little bit this week, I think that’s really what it’s saying is you believe in Him and He is real. He’s proven himself. You will see the proof in the existence. You will get that faith and then you will recognize the rewards He has for all those who believe in Him, all His children that He loves. You’ll recognize those rewards as you seek Him.
So what should you do? What do you tell somebody whose faith is a little bit in question? They’re not sure.
I think you do exactly what we talked about earlier. You tell them you only need that little bit of faith and now lean on God. Trust in God. He’s more than capable of handling anything that’s going on in your life. Any doubts, any fears, any problems, He does it testimony wise.
I’m going through family issues. Part of my country kick this week is because my family’s still in Colorado. It’s been getting close to fair time in Colorado, and I started remembering growing up on the farm, wearing my boots and my cowboy hat, and going to the fair and doing all the things that we normally did.
But I have an aging father who’s in a nursing home right now. There were things that were coming into head where he was no longer going to get that treatment unless we could get some paperwork sorted out. It was a long road that was way out there. And I was told, basically, I had a week to get it all straightened out, or he was going to have to be taken out of the nursing home and move back into his home, which is not safe for him because he falls a lot now. It’s just not a healthy environment for him.
I started getting anxious and worrying about it, trying to do all the things that I thought I needed to do, which I did do, and I think it’s okay to do it. But at one point, I had to, had to put my brakes on and go, wait a second. God has never let me down. Everything I’ve ever needed, He’s provided. What am I doing here? Where’s my faith? Why am I not just saying, stop, do the things I can do and leave the rest up to God? So I did. I put the brakes on. I said, nope, I’m not thinking negative thoughts. I’m not doing, you know, getting upset because this may not work out. I’m just going to give it to God and let it go.
And guess what happened within a few days? Boom, boom, boom, boom. Things lined up. My dad’s now in the nursing home. He’s not going to have to leave. The Medicaid came through.
You know, it’s one of those things you just stand around laughing at yourself because, like, I just about drove myself and probably was going to take my family around the corner with me for what reason? When I just, just needed to rely back on my faith and go, God’s got this. He’ll guide me where I need to go. He’ll do what needs to be done. I’m not going to worry about this anymore. Where does that go? Let go and let God handle the things you can’t or don’t understand. That’s it. That’s it.
There’s I love Jamie dearly, but that was, that was a touchy point for us at times. Let go and let God. I think we’re good now. But that was something besides Proverbs 3:5-6 I grew up with. I remember my mom saying, it’s like, just let go and let God, okay? And with childlike faith, I did. I just did that. There were things, problems, and whatnot. Okay, let go. Let God, and He’ll do it. He’ll take care of you. He wants to do that for you. He is a good, good father. We sing that song from Chris Tomlin that we play a lot. He is a good, good father. He wants to do these things for us. He wants to do the things we can’t do ourselves.
There was there’s another one that I remember growing up hearing as well. This one I, I don’t really like that much. What I can’t do for myself, God will do for me. There was a time where I held on to that one. I was like, oh, yeah, do everything myself. And then whatever’s left over I can’t handle, I’ll turn over to God.
Yeah, yeah. Now, now I’m on the other side of the fence of that one. I was like, wait a second. Why? God’s always said he would do things for you. It doesn’t say you shouldn’t do the things He’s giving you brains and power and the ability to do. But you’re kind of making yourself greater than God when you’re like, yeah, whatever I can’t do, I’ll just turn over to God rather than involve Him from the get-go and make it a relational thing, something you do together, which He enjoys very much.
And plant that mustard seed. Going back to little faith. Sophia, have you ever seen a mustard seed? Perhaps processed mustard, you know? Yeah, just a little tiny thing. And I should have gotten a picture of a mustard plant. Huge. For a little tiny seed, this thing is huge. That’s all you need. Plant your little mustard seed and trust in the one who still does miracles. Plant that little thing in there, and then you let it go. You do it. You be obedient to, and you listen prayerfully in meditation, and you follow what you’re instructed to do, but watch that mustard plant grow.
So Ats, I’m going to skip the last slide, but because it’s kind of, I’ve already covered most of that.
Going back around and try to finish this up. I talked a lot about what I think faith looks like, what I think faith is. How do we, as believers, evangelize to somebody who might not have faith, might not believe?
I think we use our experience. We tell them our stories and tell them that there is a God out there who loves them, who loves us so much that we are where we are right now, and we’re in a good spot because we’re loved. We’ve been studying, reading our book Imagine Heaven.
God’s got great things planned for us. We can bring more kingdom here. I’m with Kevin on that. We can bring more of the kingdom here by being good ambassadors and good, more like Jesus every day.
But as far as faith goes, I think we just tell somebody the truth, what we know, tell them to pray and then just stand by, tell them it’ll Just wait. God will answer. Our faith may have to be strong enough for them before they can get the faith they need.
That’s really it. I guess that’s, I’ve preached myself to the point now. I understand my faith may just need to be strong enough for that person who doesn’t believe that I can help them, just to have enough faith to hold on till
And God’s just waiting. We all know God’s waiting to swoop in and scoop that person up because he wants everybody. He doesn’t want to leave anybody behind. Have faith that you make a difference in every person’s life that you touch, because you do.
All right, that’s it. You guys got an early night on Sunday. All right.
So let’s be grateful, our God and our King. Let’s celebrate what He’s done for us that we have faith in and we believe that when He came, lived, taught, gave us things to believe in, showed us what He’s capable of, showed us who He was, and then died on the cross for us, that our sins were forgiven and His broken body and stripes healed us.
Let’s do that, and let’s have a moment of remembrance and gratitude for Him by taking the meal and celebrating our love for Jesus and His love for us.
So come and eat.
The post 2025.8.10 TFHC – Trust and Faith Foundations | Proverbs 3:5-6 appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
August 3, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right, Romans 15:1-13 tonight. We’re getting there. Romans has 16 chapters. We’re halfway through chapter 15. We’re going to finish Romans before we finish Imagine Heaven. We’re going to finish, we’re going to finish Revelation before we finish Imagine Heaven. We’re going to be in heaven before we finish Imagine Heaven.
All right.
1 Now we who are strong have an obligation to bear the weaknesses of those without strength, and not to please ourselves. 2 Each one of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. 3 For even Christ did not please himself. On the contrary, as it is written, The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. 4 For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures. 5 Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, according to Christ Jesus, 6 so that you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one mind and one voice. 7 Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God. 8 For I say that Christ became a servant of the circumcised on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises to the fathers, 9 and so that Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and I will sing praise to your name. 10 Again it says, Rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people! 11 And again, Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; let all the peoples praise him! 12 And again, Isaiah says, The root of Jesse will appear, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; the Gentiles will hope in him. 13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:1-13, CSB)
God, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight.
All right, we’re still in the “therefore.” We’re almost done with the “therefore.” Remember Romans 1-11. Paul is giving us two big truths.
And the truth is this, that you are not justified by works of the law. You’re not justified by outward observance to the old covenant, that Jesus has come and fulfilled the old covenant, and you are made righteous with God and justified with God by putting your faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. You are justified by faith. You have peace with God by faith. By putting your trust in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, His work for you and His life, death, and resurrection.
And you say, yep, yep, that’s what I need. I need your mercy. Lord, I need you. I’m yours. I’m yours. And God accepts you on that. God accepts you if you believe on Him and trust Him. He accepts you on that. You didn’t have to live a sinless week this week to be accepted by God. In the Name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven. And he says that applies and that was stunning enough for first century Jews. Here’s the second stunner: that applies to the Gentiles equally as it applies to you. Those are the two big truths that Paul is laying out to the Church in Rome.
You are justified by faith. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord by faith. And that is true equally for the Gentiles and the Jews.
23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23, CSB)
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23, CSB)
And you know what the distinction is? None. None. Same. One people of God by faith in Christ. Then he starts with the “therefores.” We’ve been going through the “therefores.” This section continues to “therefores.” And it starts by saying, by reiterating what he says in chapter 14. Those who are strong, bear with those who are weak. All right? How many of you have met or run into obnoxious, annoying, immature Christians? Kathleen has obviously run into a few. All right, and what does he say? Bear with them.
How many of you have run into legalistic or pharisaical Christians? Bear with them. How many of you have run into erroneous Christians? Bear with them. Bear with them. Maybe you’re that one that other people are bearing with. But we are to love and accept one another.
And love is, as we’re looking at all these “therefore” from Paul in Romans, the message kind of just keeps reiterating, oh, it’s love. Oh, it’s love. The big “therefore,” the big application, the takeaway. You know, you always want to have the takeaway. The big “so what?” God has died for us, Jesus forgives us. We are justified by faith. It’s the same for everybody. And then the “okay, well, how do I what do I do with that?” Love. Love. That’s the biggie.
In fact, Paul says in Corinthians there’s three virtues: faith, hope, and love. He says the greatest of these is love. I’ll tell you why. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Well, when we get there, you’re not going to need a truckload of faith. “I wonder if God’s going to move.” Well, Gee, he’s lighting up the sky. He’s everywhere. He’s right before me. I mean, when you’re in heaven, you’re not going to need a great lot. You’re not going to need hope. You’re swimming in it. You’re swimming in the realization of your hope. But you know what lasts? Love. Love lasts.
And love is a virtue. So is hope. We’re going to talk about both of them today.
We tend to treat the three great virtues of the Christian faith faith, hope, and love as feelings or affections. Right? I mean, our whole culture celebrates that sensation of feeling in love. And I will admit to you, it is easier to practice the virtue of love when your feelings are corresponding. It’s easier to be loving toward people that you feel love toward. It’s harder to be loving toward people that you don’t feel love toward. But we’re commanded to do both.
And in fact, you know, the great Jesus says what? Anybody can love their friends. Anybody can love the people who love them. He says love those who can’t pay you back. Love your enemies.
The “therefore” is love. We are to love one another. We are to accept one another. Our model is Christ. The Bible says, Romans says, while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. While we were yet enemies, Christ loved us. The prince of heaven. I bet he had it pretty good in heaven. I’m just thinking, sitting next to the Father on the throne, multitudes of multitudes of angels worshiping you. Elders casting their crowns before you. You know, “Your word is my command.” Everybody up there, “Yeah, your word is my command. That’s the rule. You know, you say it, we do it.”
I mean, I think it’s probably pretty cool for Jesus in eternity. I bet it was a lot more cool for Jesus in eternity than in a woman’s womb or in a smelly cradle or in a poor, impoverished town oppressed by the Romans. Dusty, dirty Nazareth. I mean, He didn’t even have the luxuries of this world. And then He chose 12 fishermen to hang out with. Fishermen have two prevailing characteristics. They stink and they lie. That’s kind of what fishermen are known for. “It was this big!”
So He became like us in every way. And He loved those who nailed Him to the cross. And even then He said, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”
Christ is our model of love. Christ is our model of love. That’s what he says. The insults that were meant for you have fallen on me. The curses that were meant for you have fallen on Him.
3 For even Christ did not please himself. On the contrary, as it is written, The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. (Romans 15:3, CSB)
And we are now to walk in the way of love. That’s the big “so what”
Now, praise God, we have help doing that. The Holy Spirit comes into our life and sheds abroad the love of God. That’s also from Romans. The Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts.
It is amazing that my affections of love, not only my actions of love, but my affections of love have grown since I’ve been a Christian. And this is true. This is not flattery. This is not. But whenever, 100% of the time, I stand before a group of people and do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, talk about God from the Bible, I feel strong affections of love for the people I’m talking to. So right now you’re on my good list. All right? If afterwards you complain or gripe about something, it might change by the time I get home. But right now, you’re on my good list. I love you. I love you.
But even if I didn’t feel like it, God gives us the ability. And there are schools of love, right? Hypocrites love humanity. Followers of Jesus love their spouse and their kids. Anybody can love humanity out there. You know, “I love this group of people. I love that group of people.” How about the people you interact with?
I tell men all the time, your job is to love your wife as Christ loves the church. Don’t be selfish. Life is not all about your toys, your money, your pleasure, your happiness, your comfort, your success.
Love your wife. If you want to learn to be like Jesus, love your wife. And I actually have a very simple “how to.” I didn’t bring it tonight. A very simple “How to love your wife.” It’s only the first volume, or actually, it’s 15 volumes. It’s the first publication. It’s 15 volumes, 500 pages a book. And the second is going to come out. I think there’s like 10 of those. And they will give you very specific instructions on how to understand a woman and love her. This is very simple. Just read that and you’ll be good.
No, it’s easier than that. You might not think it’s easier, but it is. And I learned it. I learned. I’ve been married a while and I learned it. Here it goes. I don’t do this every day. I probably should, but I do it several times a week. I look at my wife and I simply say these words: What can I do to help you feel loved today?
Now, she’s a good wife. She doesn’t say some of you are tempted to say she doesn’t say, this is the worst thing to say: If you loved me, you would know. No, he does not know. He’s a man. He’s dumb about these sorts of things. He can be brilliant about other things. You could be amazed at his brilliance about other things. But about how to love you, he’s like, “I don’t know. I said, ‘hello.'” Just tell him. When he asks, just tell him. For years, all right? You know, we’d have people come over. I found out this is pretty universal. People would be coming to our house, right? And my dear, sweet, lovely bride would turn into psycho, clean-the-universe-before-they-come woman. You know, and, you know, “Vacuum everything!”
We have, we have renters. They moved in, they’re moving into our rental house. And I was vacuuming a carpet for the second time after it had been shampooed in the middle of that. The carpet had been vacuumed, shampooed. And I said, what do you want me to do? Vacuum the carpet. I said, “There’s more dirt, you know, in a germ-free lab than there is on this carpet at this point.” But I didn’t say that.
What did I do? I vacuumed a clean carpet, which was actually great because that got me out of doing another job. So that was pretty easy. But I found out, just ask her.
And, you know, when we were first married, I didn’t know this. She would start getting all psycho and clean and everything. I thought the way to help her deal with her OCD is sarcasm, that that would be helpful. That was not for some reason. My humor went unappreciated at those times.
Then I found out a way when I had small children, and this was helpful. Instead of asking her, “What, what can I do?” I would simply tell the children, I said, “Come with me. We’re leaving.”
That made everybody happy because she could clean so much better without the kids there. And me and the kids did not want to be there. And so everybody was like, that was a win for everybody. “Let’s go. We’re leaving, Mom till this house is clean.” It was all good.
Then the kids left, and now I have to, but, but she’s good. She’s figured it out. She doesn’t say because she used to say this, I used to say, I used to, you know, “What can I do? We got people coming over. What can I do?” And she’d say, “Can’t you see?” Right? “Can’t you see what needs to be done?” And I would honestly tell her. I’d say, “No. No, the house seems fine to me.” “What do you mean, it’s fine?”
But now she’s learned. She’s really great. She’s learned. She says “Vacuum and clean the bathrooms.” Great, I’ll vacuum and clean the bathrooms. I’ll do it. And the guests are coming. “Can you help me put the sheets on the bed?” I can do that. I can do that.
Ask! You want to know how to love your kids? They will actually tell you. They’ll tell you. They have a love language. If you have a kid who’s always coming up and either, you know, if it’s a boy always coming up and wrestling with you on the couch or something like that, his love language is touch. “Come on, dad, let’s wrestle.” You know, if you have a kid who’s always like, “Could you help me? Could you help me?” Service, right? “Can you come play with me? Come play with ” Time. Some kids just need words of encouragement, but they’ll tell you.
But that’s home is the school of love. Neighborhood, church, workplace, all schools of love.
But the word love is completely irrelevant until it becomes concretely directed at a human being within your proximity. You follow? That’s the people you love. Those are the people you love. And some of those people are going to annoy you from time to time.
All right. We need endurance and encouragement that come from God. To live in this broken world, we need encouragement and endurance that come from God. We all have experiences that take the wind out of our sails. A bad diagnosis from the doctor, a divorce, a loss of a job, a prodigal child. We all have experiences that take the wind out of our sails.
And we need endurance. We need encouragement. Encouragement gives endurance. It gives us courage. That’s what the word means. It gives us courage to keep going.
And Paul says this endurance and encouragement come from two sources. He says they come from the Scriptures. You know what Scriptures Paul was talking about? The Old Testament Scriptures. How many of you know the Old Testament Scriptures are encouraging? They’re encouraging. If you read them, they’re in, I’ve heard people say, “Well, you know, God’s a big meanie in the Old Testament.” No, Israel’s really stupid in the Old Testament, which is encouraging because God hangs with them and we’re really stupid. And that’s encouraging because God hangs with us.
What we see in the old covenant is Israel being unfaithful and God being incredibly faithful. Will He punish them? After a thousand years. You’re not going to have a thousand years to disobey God. And even then, He brought them back and promised them a Messiah.
The Scriptures bring encouragement. Don’t just listen to me talk about them once a week. Read the Bible, and you will not read the Bible without a plan. Have a plan, and I will tell you. From my experience, everybody’s different, but from my experience, any plan will do. As long as I have a plan, I mean, I got the NIV Student Bible years ago. It has a three-year plan to read through the whole Bible. It has a six-month plan to do a survey of the whole Bible. It has 14 two-week plans to study different topics of the Bible. Three years, six months, 14 weeks. You’re getting on four years of Bible reading. Just checking off little boxes in your NIV Student Bible. You’ll read a lot of the Bible. Well, you read all the Bible.
We had a plan a few years ago, right? We read through the Bible chronologically in a year. How many of you read your Bibles more? You know, we had a plan.
I went through a difficult time a year, two years ago. I was going through a difficult time. I planted myself in the Psalms. I was reading other parts of the Bible. But mostly every day, I just went back to the Psalms, and I just read through 150 Psalms every month. Five psalms a day. Just every month. I just read through the Psalms until I got done, and then I just got done.
Recently, it’s like, “Okay, I got the Psalms. I’ve been reading the Psalms.” I said, “What now, Lord?”
And I said, “I’m going to read through the whole Bible again. Only this time I’m just going to do a chapter a day. Three years. And what I’m going to do is when I finish that chapter, whatever struck me in that chapter, I’m going to pray about that.” That way for the next three years, I’m going to pray the Bible. Yeah, well it’s good. Do it. Try a plan. Get the, get the, get the NIV Student Bible. It’s got little boxes you can check. It’s like, it’s great. Yeah, just make a plan, any plan.
But read your Bible. Read your Bible. It won’t hurt you none. In fact, it will encourage you and give you endurance.
The other thing that Paul says gives us encouragement, endurance is united worship. United worship. Listen, people say, “I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian.” You do to be a good one. You do to be a good one. “I can read my Bible and I watch so and so on TV.” Yeah, well you’re not rubbing shoulders with any less-than-perfect people on TV, are you? You’re not laying hands and praying for people on TV, are you? You’re not loving real, concrete, flesh-and-blood human beings on TV, are you?
“Well, preacher, I’m not much of a church-going man, but when I’m out in the garden, I talk to God.” Well, good. You’re selfish. “What do you mean I’m selfish?” Well, you’re not in church serving others. “Well, I serve in my community.” Yeah, right. I have never known anybody to have a vital walk with Jesus without being united with And it can be small, it can be big. I don’t care, house church. But without being with the two or three, without being with the “one another’s” The New Testament is stock full of “one another’s.”
John Wesley said the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion. In our evangelical culture, we talk so much about quiet time, which is important. I just said read your Bible, go to your prayer closet, have your one on one time with God on a daily basis. But then what? Gather with the ecclesia. Gather with the people of God.
We need one another. And if you don’t come, one of two things is going to happen. God gave you a gift to impart to somebody else and you selfishly stayed home and they didn’t get that gift. The other thing that happened is God gave somebody else a gift to deliver to you and if you stayed home, you missed it. Let me just ask if anybody else has this experience. The days you want to go the least are often the days where you experience the most from God. Anybody ever have that experience? Like, “I don’t want to go.” I mean, I’m 66 years old, I’m a pastor, I tell my wife, “I don’t want to go to church.” She goes, “Why not?” “Oh, the sermons are too long. You know, they don’t laugh at my jokes.” She says, “Well, they’ve heard them 14 times.” “I know, but you know, there’s not enough jokes to go around.” So anyway.
And she says, “Well, you have to go.” And I go, “Why?” She goes, “Well, because God wants you to go and you’re the pastor.”
And so I go, but it’s those days where oftentimes I am met. And you’ve probably had that experience too. It’s like “I don’t want to go to church.” And you get up and you drag yourself there, and the Lord is there for you.
And what does that mean? It means the devil’s not omniscient. But he knew God had something for you that day, and he was trying to stop it from happening.
Listen, you ought to have a little attitude in your life. You’re not going to let the devil win. All right? Right, Jamie? That’s right. Punch that devil in the nose. I’ll tell you what. I think he’s probably more afraid of you than anybody else in this room. I know Stevin is. Well, you try. Ask her. Just ask her. What do you want? There you go. Or read that 15,000 page. You know that’ll help.
All right. Welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed you.
7 Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God. (Romans 15:7, CSB)
Important context here. Paul is talking to Jews and Gentiles here. This is the whole point. He’s saying, “Jews, welcome the Gentiles into the family of God. Gentiles, welcome the Jews into your community and into your life. You have been different. You have been estranged. You have been enemies. And now you are brothers and sisters. Welcome one another.”
Whatever cultural differences we experience in 21st century America pale into insignificance compared to the cultural difference that Paul was dealing with in the first century church when he makes this incredible proclamation that the Jewish Messiah is now the Gentile savior and that they are called to come together at table, at fellowship, at community, and worship Yahweh, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together under Jesus, the Messiah.
And it is hard for them to get their heads around. Peter goes to Cornelius’ house and comes back to the church, and they say, “What were you doing?” And he has to say he had a dream. And then they spoke in tongues. “What was I supposed to do?” “Well, I guess so.” And then they were amazed. “God has poured out his spirit on the Gentiles?” They were amazed, Kathleen, it’s like God pouring out his spirit on Yankee fans. They’re amazed. Yeah. “Why did you go into his house? That’s against the law.” God had to give him a dream three times. “Eat the unclean thing.” “God, I’ll never touch what’s unclean.” “What I have called clean is no longer unclean.” And so this is the context.
But what’s the bigger picture for us? We are to welcome one another without regard for race, economy, gender, or age. We are to welcome one another. It just, we are, we are all co-heirs with Christ. We are all brothers and sisters. Black, white. I don’t like those terms. I wish our culture had different terms. We’re all just, we’re all, we’re all, we’re dark brown or light brown, really. You know, some of us are a little pink, but I mean, we’re just listen, all our blood is red. And really there’s, there’s, there’s you can’t find a non-mixed race out there. Everybody’s doing their little ancestry. It’s like, you know, you do your little DNA, you do your little spit in the tube, and you come back and you’re everything. If your family’s been in America for a while, we’ve just co-mingled. We have co-mingled. All right? It is stupid to make distinctions based on race.
Now, there are, race has created cultural differences. So what’s the deal? Welcome people with cultural differences. Other cultures aren’t evil. They’re just not the ones you’re used to.
You do this when you get married. You tend to get married to somebody who’s pretty similar to you in culture, but their family was a different culture than your family was, right?
Do you know that there are actually barbarian, heathen, heretic, horrible people who celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve? It’s like, what kind of family did they, what kind of degenerate family do they grow up in? You celebrate Christmas on Christmas morning like good, normal Americans. But there are people who do it.
Then there are people like me. You know, my wife, she’s a Christmas is the day. She’s getting better about that. But you know, her family, big deal. December 25th, Christmas, big day. And I’m like, well, we’re busy the 25th. Let’s do it the 27th. It’s like, “What are you saying? Did you just say Jesus isn’t God? What are you saying?” “No, I said the 27th.” You know, it’s like, “Is that all right?” I don’t know.
The churches have cultures. I remember I pastored this church, Oakdale Community United Methodist Church. If there was ever a name to yawn at. So I’m a new young pastor. I’m sitting there with all these people who’ve been a part of Oakdale Community United Methodist Church since the generation after the flood. And as a new young pastor who thinks he’s got great ideas, it’s like, “Hey, let’s change the name of the church to something more appealing.”
And you’d have thought I said, “Hey, let’s boil your grandchildren and eat them for Thanksgiving.” They’re like, “Change the name of the church?” Oh, my gosh. I thought I was going to get canned that night just for that suggestion. And I was at least smart enough to know that’s not a, you know, that was not a I was, “Fine, the name stays. We’ll keep the name. We’re good.”
But people are different. Accept one another.
Economics. One of the biggest divides in churches today in America is economics. You know, there are rich neighborhoods and there are poor neighborhoods. There are rich denominations and there are poor denominations. All right? I blew it going out of seminary. Episcopalian, Presbyterian, those guys live well. Good pensions there. Methodists are okay, but the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, they did the best. All right? Grace Covenant? No, we’re not well, never mind. Sad story. All right. But there are economic differences.
One of the reasons we dress down in American church is because we used to dress up. And people wouldn’t come to church because they didn’t, they couldn’t afford to meet the dress code.
It’s been very interesting to me in the late 20th century and now in the 21st century that people with affluence tend to dress down for church and poor people tend to dress up. And both of their motives are right. The people who dress down do so because they don’t want to put up a barrier from somebody coming to church by wearing expensive jewelry and clothing. The people who dress up who are poor do so because in their poverty, they want to present before God their best. And so it’s funny, when I preach here, you know, I can wear a T shirt and sweatpants and I’ll be good. And I go to Haiti, and it’s a white shirt and a tie.
And here’s what I’ve discovered. The instincts of both those are right. The motives of both those cultures are right. It doesn’t matter if you dress up or dress down. What matters is, is your motive for how you dress loving people? And in both those cultures, that’s what it is.
All right. Gender. There’s no male or female. All right? Now, not to get into the popular There is male and female. God made two, male and female. But in terms of Christ’s view on people, we are just like Jew and Gentile, male and female. How do men get right with God? By putting their faith in Christ and believing upon Him. How do women get right with God? By obeying their husbands. No, by putting their faith in Christ. Same thing. Same thing. You’re not a Mormon, ladies. You don’t have to hope your husband makes it to the highest heaven so you can get there, too. You can just pass him by. You just, “Hey, you don’t want to pray, you don’t read your Bible. I’ll pray for you. I’ll pray. God get you. But I’m not holding back my spirituality because of you.” And then, you know, at night when he falls asleep, you know the prayer, right? Holy Spirit, in the Name of Jesus, sic him, sic him. Get him. Get him. Get him. Get him. Get him. All right. Let God do the work.
I’ll tell you what. Christianity has, for centuries, Christianity has by and large been the church of the poor and the church of the women. It’s been the church of the people who traditionally do not have power in culture. The humble.
Age, age, old and young, your young men and your young women. I will pour out my spirit on your young men and your young women. Even your old men will dream dreams. I have made, since I’ve been a pastor, I don’t know, there’s just I’ve had this deep commitment, and I see it, and it drives me crazy. I see places, oftentimes, churches I visit other times. I see places where it appears to me that kids are seen as a nuisance and not as people and not as potential disciples of Jesus. And I’ve seen people who’ve had my job, who work really hard building relationships with the adults, but don’t invest in building relationships with the kids. And it’s driven me nuts. I have always felt like, man, kids are people. What? No junior Holy Spirit? No.
And kids, when kids get the Holy Spirit, they’re, like, unafraid. I mean, they get words of knowledge and prophesy and pray for people. I want every kid that comes to the Firehouse Church, I want every kid that grows up in the Firehouse Church not to have these memories when they’re old like, “Oh, church. That grumpy old pastor, he was a fuddy duddy.” And, you know, “That time I, you know, stuck my tongue out at him.” Not that anybody would. Not that any child would do that, but, you know, just in case one did, you know, “he didn’t come back with anger or hatred. He just stuck his tongue back out at me, you know, to you, too.”
So, no, I want And I want people who are old to be honored and not put aside and seen for, and be seen for the wisdom, beauty, and grace with which they’ve lived their lives. We want, you know, and we’re not just after the rich, young, energetic, successful.
I remember being a part of a youth ministry when I was a kid, and the youth ministry that I was a part of intentionally targeted the jocks and the cheerleaders. Their strategy wasn’t evil. Their strategy was, if we get them, if we get the popular kids, the rest of the kids will say, “oh, that’s cool,” and they’ll come, too. So I get it.
But it never, it just didn’t rub me right. You know, when I’m walking over to the most popular kid in school and there’s the lonely nerd over there, and I’m just like, “Why don’t you go talk to that kid?” “Well, but if he comes, other kids aren’t going to come. He’s not going to bring the whole football team with him.” There’s something about that. It’s like, yeah, but he matters. He matters to God.
And so age, you get the picture, Jew and Gentile falls to the ground. All these social, theological, all these things fall to the ground before Christ. And that gives us encouragement and endurance.
And finally, the thing that gives us encouragement and endurance, Paul says this in the final verse. And this verse kind of sums up Romans. The rest of Romans is just greetings and Paul explaining his ministry. But this verse kind of sums it up. In fact, this sounds very much like a benediction, doesn’t it? Romans 5:13.
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13, CSB)
That’s kind of what we prayed for tonight. This is a benediction. Paul is saying He is the God of hope. And again, hope is a virtue. Hope is something we lay hold of. Hope is something we practice when we have no hope. Hope is something we practice when we get, you know, when we get the bad diagnosis. Hope is something we practice when, when the wind is taken out of our sails by some event, and we hold on to hope. And hope is the assurance of good things, that we’re playing a game we’ve already won.
Therefore, hope gives joy and peace. Circumstances give happiness, but hope gives joy and peace. You cannot take my hope away. And because you can’t take my hope away, you can’t take my joy away. You can’t take my peace away.
I love what one Christian teacher said about martyrs. He says, “You know, if the world gets so angry at us, they threaten to kill us. It’s like what? You’re trying now to threaten me with heaven. You can’t threaten me with heaven. I have joy and I have hope, and I have God in the midst of all circumstances. And therefore, I can have peace. And because I have joy and peace, I can have endurance.” And that’s what this thing requires. This side, this world requires endurance.
And I’ll go back again to one of the most powerful things that hit me as we’ve been studying through Romans was Romans 8:17-18, where Paul says in Romans 8:17 that we are co-heirs with Christ. Great hope. So long as we share in his sufferings. Oh bummer, Paul. What a buzzkill that was. So suffering and glory are co-joined. You don’t get one without the other in this world.
But then Romans 8:18 says this.
But I consider the sufferings of this present life to not be compared, cannot be compared, with the glory to be revealed to us.
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18, CSB)
So they’re inseparable, but they’re incomparable. And I will hold on to this. And if I’m wrong in heaven, you can tell me I’m wrong. But I will tell you till the day I drop: the troubles of this world which I do not want to belittle, which I do not want to say are insignificant, which I do not want to say you don’t feel and don’t experience, and I don’t feel and I don’t experience. And they’re not heart-rending and struggles and the whole bit. But I want to tell you this, that there is going to come a day, and that day is fast approaching, when all those troubles will seem like a gnat’s eyebrow compared to the glory that you will drink in forever.
Believe it. It’ll change your life. Other people will look at you and say, “How do you stay on your feet during this?” I have hope. I choose hope. I believe in hope. Therefore, I have endurance and encouragement.
And dear ones, our hope is real. It’s real. I tell people all the time, I’m living for a real hope. If not, guess what? I die a happy idiot. But our hope is real. I’ve had too many stories, too many stories in this book. I believe. I really do. I believe it. I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead. I believe He’s the Son of God, the creator of the cosmos, became a man, lived a sinless life, took nails, bled, and somehow that blood affected me and cleansed me. And now I’m His son. I’m the brother of Jesus and the son of God the Father. And I’m a co-heir with Christ.
I think it’s all real. I think it’s true. I think every ache and pain, every mental problem that we have, every, every, every struggle that we have is going to be stripped away in the light of that presence and the beauty of that glory.
And then I believe that our big enemies, sin, Satan, and death, the trifecta of evil, my propensity to sin, my propensity, as Paul says in Romans 7, to do the things I hate to do and not to do the things I like, I should do and feel guilty about it. I don’t know if that, is that true for anybody else? Anybody else feel guilty about not being a perfect Christian? All right. Or some of you made it. Some of you got perfection going on. All right? I still got, you know, it’s gonna be gone.
And that little voice in my head, you know, that little voice in my head, “Go ahead, Kevin, do that. Go ahead, Kevin, do that. Go ahead. God, God will forgive you. Go ahead, do it.” Then I go ahead and do it. And then that voice just switches like that. “Oh, and you call yourself a Christian? You’re a scumbag. You’re a loser. You’re pathetic. How do you pastor a church? You should quit. What’s wrong with you? You got no reason to be on this planet.” I hear all those things.
You know what? One day, the Bible says, He’s going to put that little cockroach under my feet. I’m going to do a little Holy Spirit dance. What you saying now, little Kevin-torturing demon?
Sin, Satan, death. You go in there and hospice is there, and they got you hooked up to machines, and your breathing is slowing down, and your blood pressure is dropping. And all of a sudden that veil between this world and the next gets thinner and thinner and thinner. And all of a sudden, you have not lost one ounce of consciousness. You’re more conscious than you’ve ever been before. And for somehow you’re sitting up on the roof looking down at people crying over somebody that vaguely looks like you, but they don’t look well. And then all of a sudden, it hits you. It’s like, “Oh, I died. And yet I’ve never felt more alive. My brain has stopped functioning, yet my mind is more energized and alert than it’s ever been before. Oh, you know what dying meant because of what Jesus did, I live into all that I was created to live into, and all my brothers and sisters were created to live into. Our enemies are defeated, and we will be like him. We’re a new creation. Life with God as it always has been intended. God is re-Edening the earth. We’re going back to the garden.” Anybody remember Crosby, Stills, Nash and young? Back to the garden. All right. No? Okay, Brian? Yeah, all right. I got it on my computer. I can play it for you later. All right.
But anyway, we’re going back by going forward, we’re going back. It’s very interesting. The Bible begins in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in a garden. Genesis 2 and 3. It’s in a garden. Guess how it ends in Revelation 22? In a garden. Everything God intended, He’s getting back. Everything God intended, He’s getting back.
And we are, and here’s what the Bible says. God wants family. He wants a big family. You know, He wants a big family. I remember There’s something about big families, you know, small families a little easier, but there’s something about you go into a big family where there’s love and there’s all this chaos, right?
There’s a great movie. It’s an old one, I don’t know. It’s called “While You Were Sleeping.” Anybody see that movie? It’s a rom com, right? But it’s about this lonely girl without family and she saves a guy’s life who she has a crush on who doesn’t even know her, and then she lies that she’s his fiance.
And this big loud family that love each other, and they all have these personalities, adopt her into the family, and then she falls in love with the other brother, anyway and all that. But it’s beautiful to see just the, the. They have Christmas, they have meals together, they argue, they go back and forth. But it’s just beautiful to see the chaotic love in that family. And it’s wonderful. And they get that movie right. It’s wonderful to see how a lonely person just goes, “Oh, my gosh, this is a drink that I’ve wanted my whole life. This is what I’ve wanted my whole life, to be a part of a family.”
And we’ve got that in our homes. We got the nuclear family, we got it at church. But God is going to have a forever family. Jesus is our big brother and God the Father is our Father. And we will be like Him.
And dear ones, that’s, that’s, forever is a long time. And we’re going to enjoy it for a long time. We’re going to enjoy it for a long time, you know? I know I’m going to be in the neighborhood with all the discernment ministry, reformed pastors. I know that’s where I’m going to be. And God’s going to “See, you got to love these guys.” It’s like, “Okay, okay.” You know, I’ll be walking down the street, “Hey, John! How you doing, RC? What you doing?” And all those guys, we’ll be hanging out. It’ll be good. All right.
I’m reading through the Bible in a year or three years. Just finished last night. Very appropriate, the Passover.
There will be blood. There will be blood.
There’s something about blood. I don’t know what it is, but I remember when my second child was born and Jill was having the C section, and we’ve been going through labor, harder on her than me, but still exhausting. And they nicked something. We never got the report, but it was scary. And I’m seeing this blood drip on the floor, my wife’s blood. And the lights in the operating room are shining on that blood, and it’s glistening. And all of a sudden they go, “Oh, we need to get you out of here.” I don’t think they got me out of there because I was feeling woozy. I think they got me out of there because
But she came back. She was in shock. The baby was healthy. She was fine. She came out of it fine. We looked later for a report on what happened. Disappeared. Disappeared somehow they lost the file. But anyway, all’s well that ends well.
But there was something about that, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, you know, when one of your kids is bleeding. It’s like there’s something about that.
Jesus poured out his blood. There’s something about that. He said take the blood of the Lamb and make what over the door? The sign of the cross. That’s basically what it was when they put the lamb’s blood on the doorpost, was one horizontal, one vertical. Yeah. But the top extended past the sides. And so you’ve got a cross, and so you’ve got the blood of the Lamb.
And then Jesus, celebrating the Passover with His disciples, pours out wine and says, “Let me tell you about blood. This is my blood. It’s going to be poured out, and in its pouring out, because I’m the Son of God, the sins of the world, sin, Satan, and death will be atoned for, swallowed up, and defeated in my resurrection.” And He said, “When you get together, remember the blood.”
And so, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who bled and died, I speak the blood of Christ over you and the mercies of God over you and your household. May your household be covered, protected by that blood, over your extended household, over your kids who have left home. I pray it in Jesus’ Name. The blood. Come and eat and be grateful.
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September 29, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon.
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September 22, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Father, Whom have I in heaven but you? Besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
Thank you, Jesus, for our time together. As we break open the Word tonight, Lord, we pray your Spirit would be upon it and upon us. And, Lord, we ask for more than Bible information. We ask for Bible transformation. We ask that your Word would make us more like Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.
All right, dear ones, we are going through the Bible in a year chronologically, and we are almost done with the Old Testament. All right, we got one more week in the Old Testament, and then starting in October, we’ll be in the New Testament for the last three months of the year.
So tonight we’re going to look at Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel. We’re going to kind of do an overview.
I’m not just going to do a specific verse, but I’m going to do an overview of Ezra-Nehemiah, which probably in its original was one book. It’s the story of Israel returning from exile, just as the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied that 70 years after they were exiled, they’d return.
In the story of their return, and in the foundation of their return, there are these three main characters that are spelled out in these two books: Ezra, Nehemiah, and Ezra and Nehemiah.
So I’m just going to read the beginning of Ezra, because it is the commissioning, it’s what starts this. And it was what was prophesied by Jeremiah and also prophesied by the prophet Isaiah.
So Ezra 1:1.
1 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah. He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and to send it throughout his kingdom:2“This is what King Cyrus of Persia says: “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a Temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Any of you who are his people may go to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild this Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, who lives in Jerusalem. And may your God be with you! 4 Wherever this Jewish remnant is found, let their neighbors contribute toward their expenses by giving them silver and gold, supplies for the journey, and livestock, as well as a voluntary offering for the Temple of God in Jerusalem.” (Ezra 1:1-4, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable. Lord, in your sight, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
So there are three in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. There are patterns that emerge, but there are three main characters. There are three main leaders that are highlighted.
In Ezra 1-6, you get Zerubbabel. And then in Ezra 7 and forward, you get Ezra. And then in Nehemiah, you get Nehemiah. And so Zerubbabel is the first.
And there’s no Bible book named after Zerubbabel, which is a shame, because that is one of my favorite biblical names. I just love how that sounds. Zerubbabel. I mean, if I, you know, I missed an opportunity. I had a son. We called him Michael. Dang, we could have had Zerubbabel.
If those of you who desire to pray in tongues, and you’ve never prayed in tongues, you’ve asked the Lord for a prayer language. If you’ll just go home and repeat Zerubbabel 20 times really fast, chances are it’ll start. you’ll just get that. Yeah.
Now all the people on Internet will say, oh, that’s terrible. Teaching. That’s terrible. No, it’s a joke. Get a life.
All right, so, all right. Zerubbabel rebuilds the temple. Ezra rebuilds the people. Jeremiah rebuilds the walls. And so Zerubbabel’s job is to take the exiles back to the rubble that was Jerusalem and the rubble that was the temple, and rebuild the temple.
Solomon had built this temple. It lasted for hundreds of years. And now Zerubbabel was going to rebuild the place of worship. Zerubbabel was going to rebuild the place of worship.
And the first thing they do before they rebuild the temple is they rebuild the altar for sacrifice, and to make sacrifice for their sins. And then around the altar, they rebuild the temple.
Ezra is sent back as a priest, as a scribe, as somebody who understands the law, the Word of God. And Ezra’s job is to rebuild the people. Ezra’s job is to give the people the covenant. Give the people the laws of Moses. Give the people the instructions.
God set Israel free from Egypt. He took them out of Egypt.
He led them across the Red Sea. He led them to the promised land. And before he did, on Mount Sinai, he gave Moses a covenant.
And basically, this covenant is God telling Israel, look it, I’ve already delivered you. I’ve already loved you. I’ve already saved you. How do you respond to that? How do you live in covenant relationship with me? How do you live as my people?
All right. This is how the Canaanites live. you’re not to live like the Canaanites.
I don’t want you to be like the Edomites and the Moabites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Amalekites, and I don’t want you to be like those people. I want you to be different.
Well, what does that different look like? It looks like this. It looks like this covenant. And if you obey this covenant, you’ll get all these blessings, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.
And if you disobey this covenant and try to be like all the nations around you, I’m going to bring upon you destruction and exile. They got it. They got destruction and exile.
But now they’re coming back, and Ezra is coming back, and Ezra comes back, and he gives them the covenant again. He rereads the covenant and says, okay, Israel, you get a second chance. Here. You get a second chance.
And by the way, the exile, to an extent, worked. Israel does not become perfect by any means after they returned from the exile.
In fact, what happens is they fell off one side of the horse before the exile. They completely ignored the laws of God and became like the nations surrounding them. They came back, and then they fell off the other side of the horse, and they became very legalistic toward the laws of God, and they invented laws of God.
So, when Jesus comes 400 years later, he’s not dealing with idolaters. He’s dealing with people who don’t know the heart of God. They just know all the rules.
And they’ve invented all sorts of extra rules around God’s rules to help them keep God’s rules. And so they kind of fall off that side. But that’s Ezra’s job, to teach them the covenant.
Nehemiah goes. And Nehemiah goes to Israel because the walls around Jerusalem were destroyed. And back then, a city without walls was very vulnerable. All right? A city without walls was very vulnerable. The way people fought war in the ancient world is they would march upon a city, and if the city had walls, they’d have to stop.
Because you don’t want to attack a city with walls. Why don’t you want to attack a city with walls? Walls give the people inside the city an advantage. They can stand on top of the walls and shoot arrows down at you. They can throw rocks on you, right?
You got to somehow go up to that wall and breach that wall. But when you go up to that wall to try to breach the wall, all sorts of stuff is coming down on top of your head from that wall.
And so the way people would fight wars is they would camp. They would go to the city. The city was surrounded with walls, and they would camp.
All right, we’re not going to let any more food get in there. And when you get hungry, you’ll come out and fight. It’s called siege warfare.
By the way, this helps us understand some of the things that happened in the New Testament when Jesus fed 5000 people with two fish and five loaves. The Bible says immediately they wanted to make him king.
Well, why do they want to make him kingdom? He’s the super weapon for siege warfare, right? Camp all you want. As long as we got five loaves and two fish, you know, don’t eat it all. Save five loaves and two fish for tomorrow. He’ll feed 5000 more people. We’ll eat forever.
Not only that, but if you’re attacking somebody, food, right? An army travels on its stomach, so you’re doing siege warfare and you’re camped outside of someplace trying to starve them out. But you have to be fed.
And so you have to have a supply line that goes to wherever your food source is. And that supply line needs to be guarded by soldiers. And that is dangerous and expensive and burdensome, while your army’s just. I mean, it was, that’s basically warfare back then was months and months and months of boring camping, near starvation, then one big bloody fight. All right, so a city without walls, you’re incredibly vulnerable. your enemies, they just march right in. You have no identity as a city. you’re just kind of exposed. you’re out there.
And so Nehemiah comes to build the walls. And so these are the three main characters.
One, we’re restoring the worship of God. Two, we’re restoring the covenant or law of God. And three, we’re restoring the city of God.
Now, all three of these people have themes in common. All three of them are commissioned by the kingdom. Zerubbabel is commissioned by Cyrus, the king of Persia, prophesied by Jeremiah that 70 years after the exile they would return. Prophesied by Isaiah by name.
Isaiah, 100 years earlier, said a king by the name of Cyrus is going to issue a decree. And so Cyrus, the king of Persia, comes and he issues a decree. And so Zerubbabel is commissioned by Cyrus. Artaxerxes commissions Ezra. Cyrus’ son commissions Ezra and Nehemiah. All three, though, are commissioned by a foreign king, a non-Jewish king, a Persian king, to go back and do this work on behalf of Israel. And they don’t have perfect theology. Cyrus talks about the God who lives in Jerusalem.
He doesn’t know that the God who lives in Jerusalem is also the God who lives in Babylon. He doesn’t know that he is the God of all the earth.
So you know what? God can use rulers and kings who are less than perfect and don’t have perfect theology. The Bible says that the heart of the king is in the hands of God, and he can turn that heart wherever, which way he wants.
And so these pagan kings, who don’t particularly have any devotion to Yahweh, are used by God to fulfill prophecy and restore the people.
All three are commissioned by kings. All three face opposition. Zerubbabel starts building the temple, and the surrounding people write a letter back once. What’s his name? Actually, Artaxerxes was the grandson of Cyrus. But once Cyrus dies, the surrounding people send a letter back to the next king. Brian, what was his name? You got that. Darius. Might have been Darius. Yeah. Sent it back. And Darius stops the work. He says, oh, no. They say, hey, these Jews, they have a history of rebellion. They’re an ornery, gnarly people. We don’t want them building anything.
And so he stops the building. And then when Artaxerxes comes back, they’ve written another letter. And then he goes back into the archives and he sees what Cyrus has decreed, and he starts it again.
What I’m saying, though, is there was opposition. When Ezra came, there was opposition. He came expecting to have people who were devoted to Yahweh, and he found people who were starting to commit the same sins that they had done before that got him exiled in the first place. They were taking for themselves.
Foreign wives, you might think, well, what’s wrong with that? You know what’s wrong with a foreign wife? Well, foreign wives, that’s code. That means foreign gods, all right? And so they were again marrying outside of the covenant. God of Yahweh. That’s not good, all right? That’s what sent them down on the bad path.
You had King David. He’s a man after God’s own heart. And then you have Solomon. Solomon’s the most wise guy in the world, but he’s not wise enough not to take 700 wives and 300 concubines, all right?
I don’t know why you need 999 more women to tell you to take out the trash, but he’s got a thousand. He’s got a thousand, all right?
And he starts. And these wives start coming to him and saying, solly, sweetie, you know, I know your God. You built this nice temple for your God. But my God in Egypt was this God, and I want to go worship my God. And can you build a temple to my God?
So, well, you know, I don’t think Yahweh wants that. Oh, honey, come on.
And you know, you know how it is. Solomon was the head of the country, and he was the head of his wives. But he had 1000 necks to turn the head. And he started building these temples to these four. And he brought idolatry right into the heart of Jerusalem.
And so God says, don’t marry foreign women. Don’t let your daughters marry foreign men. Except there’s an exception. The exception is if they will make Yahweh their God. Right? And who’s the big exception to this in the Old Testament?
Who ends up being in the line of David and the line of Jesus? Ruth is a Moabitess, but she says to Naomi, your God will be my God. Guess what? you’re included, Ruth. you’re no longer a foreigner. you’re one of us. your God will be my God. And so she’s included.
So there you have it. Nehemiah faces opposition in that they don’t want him to build the walls. The surrounding people don’t want him to build the walls. They like a vulnerable Jerusalem in case they ever want to attack it. And they threaten.
They try to assassinate him. They threaten him. It gets to the point where the people are actually building the walls with a sword in one hand and tools in the other hand. And they have 24-hour guards.
And so all three, Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, face opposition. But here’s the thing. All three finish the task. They don’t quit. And this is Ezra and Nehemiah.
Part of the story of Ezra and Nehemiah is the story of persistence. The story of long obedience in the same direction, the story of faithfulness.
That when you’re commissioned by God for a task, you keep going. You run the race to the finish line. You don’t quit.
There will be opposition. But you know what? The temple got built. There was help along the way. The prophets came. They slowed down in building the temple. They stopped because King Darius made them stop. But then when they got the commission back to do it again, they were real slow on the uptake because they were just living their lives. They had a commission, but they were just living their lives.
And God, through the prophet Haggai, says, I’ll tell you what. Here’s why your crops are failing. Here’s why life isn’t going well for you. you’re building homes for yourself, and my temple isn’t done yet. Remember who called you and what he called you to, and get back on it.
And so they did. Ezra does the same thing. He faces opposition, but he doesn’t quit. He reads the law, and he tells people very severely. He tells people, expel your foreign wives. And we’ll talk about that in a second from a New Testament, new covenant perspective.
But he says, expel your foreign. We’re not going to make the same mistake again. And as I said, they didn’t. Israel, from this point on, thousand years, their big problem is they commit idolatry. They worship the gods of the Canaanites. They worship the Baals, the Asherahs, the Molechs.
From this point forward, Israel never again is committing the sin of idolatry. They got it. They got that, Nehemiah. We will get these walls built.
And to the dismay of his enemies, with all the assassination attempts, with all the threats upon the city and upon the wall, the walls and the gates are rebuilt. He finishes the task, and Jerusalem’s identity is secure.
All right, here are some takeaways for us, some analogies, if you will. The Old Testament was written for us. It wasn’t written to us. This is a story about the exiles coming back to Jerusalem and about how Jerusalem was reestablished. The temple was rebuilt, the people received the covenant, and the walls were made.
And so Jerusalem was protected and had its identity. But it has analogies to our Christian life. It has points of contact with our Christian life. All right? And here are the points of contact.
We are commissioned by the kingdom. We have been commissioned by the king. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have been commissioned. you’ve been commissioned. We call it the Great Commission. Right? Go into all the world, make disciples all. That’s the general. That’s the big job description. All of us are involved in that. All of us are involved.
Listen, we have far too long made the mistake of thinking people like me have a call, and people like you. your call is to sit on your bottom and listen to people like me. That’s not New Testament Christianity, all right?
And I’ve told you guys this. I’ll tell it to you again. I get it. I am called to preach the gospel. I am paid to preach the gospel. And I’ve told you this many times. I’m paid to be good. You guys are good for nothing. All right? So that’s how it works.
But there’s no difference between the call to do this and the call that you have on your life. And it may be, it may be an elaborate call. It may be dramatic. You may be called to go to the nations.
You know, I’m going to Africa in another week, and I’m going to be with Rob and Lori Mangus, who have been at our church and spoken to our church, but they’re full-time missionaries to Africa. They were called out of Texas, out of Oklahoma, to Africa.
Not a big difference, really, when you think about it. But, you know, they were called from one hot place to another hot place.
But you don’t have to be called to Ghana or Nigeria. you’re called to Poulsbo or Bainbridge or Quilcine, Port Orchard or Bremerton. Where has God planted you? you’ve been commissioned by the king to be his representative there.
Where is your job? You represent Jesus there. Where is your neighborhood? You represent Jesus there. Where is your school? You represent Jesus there. Where do you shop? Where do you go out to eat?
You are a contagious carrier of the kingdom of Christ. And that is your call. That is your purpose. you’ve been commissioned by the King.
Listen, you have children. You have a call, all right? You got together, you and your wife, you and your husband, you got together and you made babies. Those babies came out, and they were sinners. You beget original sinners, all right? And don’t tell me your kids aren’t sinners. In fact, most of you will tell me your kids are worse sinners than I believe.
You’re like, oh, you don’t know them when you don’t know what I know. My first daughter, I got my first, was a strong-willed child. Oh, she was a strong-willed child. She came out smoking a cigar, saying, I’m in charge. Oh, my gosh. My wife and I, we had deer in a headlight.
But listen, you made original sinners. Now it’s your job to protect the rest of us from them. It takes courage to be a parent, takes courage to curb that. But your job, you have a commission.
You have a call, your first call, your first line as a parent. You brought those kids into the world. You teach them Christ.
Now, ultimately, they’re going to have to believe on their own. You can’t make them believe, but you sure can pray for them, model to them, and lead them so that they can cross the river at the narrowest possible place.
I was on an airplane once. I was actually on a mission trip to Haiti, and I was coming home from Haiti. We were flying into Minneapolis.
And the instrument panel, that’s what you call it now, right? It’s not the dashboard. The instrument panel was saying that the landing gear wasn’t coming down, which is not good.
All right. I think landing gear of things on airplanes, I think, like, the wings are important, the engines are important. Pilots, yeah, they got computers, but, you know, they can teach monkeys to fly those things. Right? So. But the landing gear, I’m thinking that’s an important piece.
All right. I know. I found out later, you can land them without land, right? You can belly land them.
But I’d rather not. There’s a higher risk. So, you know, they’re telling us the landing gear is not coming down, and they’re taking this seriously. I mean, the flight attendants, they are no longer serving coffee and coke. They are getting everything ready, and they teach us the position. You know the position. Put your head between your legs. Like that’s going to happen. They said, well, if you can’t do that, just cross your arms and put your head on the seat in front of you. It’s okay. I’ll do that. You know.
You know what I call it, really? I call it the put your head between your legs and kiss your you know what goodbye position. You know, you’re gonna crash. So that’s it. They’re teaching us all that. And the plane got eerily quiet. It wasn’t panicky, but it got eerily quiet.
And these two ladies sitting next to me, I just looked at them and said, hey, I’m a pastor. Would you ladies like to pray? And they’re like.
And, you know, I held out my hand, and you could tell they didn’t know that, you know, now we hold out our hands and hold hands to pray. They’re like, no, don’t you do this. They didn’t know, but they prayed. We prayed.
But I remember thinking at the time, I remember thinking. I thought three things. I thought, I don’t think I’m going to die. I think this is going to be okay. I had a certain peace about that. I don’t think this is it. And I said, but, Lord, if I die, here was my request.
I would rather be squashed than burnt, all right? I’d rather be an ink spot on the Minneapolis runway than trying to get my seatbelt off with a fireball coming down the aisle. You know, you put in your request, right?
But the third thing is, I thought, you know, what? If I do die? My kids were all teenagers at the time, and they had all come to faith in Christ. They’d all come to their own personal faith in Christ. And I thought, you know what? There is a sense where I can die in peace.
That part of my job was done. That’s the commission. You have other commissions? All right. The way to find, you know. Lord, how do I know my call? I’ll tell you how you know your call. Be obedient to Jesus where you’re at right now, and if he wants you somewhere else, he’ll move you.
Lord, am I supposed to go to St. Louis or am I supposed to stay in Paulsbow? I don’t know. But while you’re praying about St. Louis, preach Christ, heal the sick, raise the dead in Paulsbow.
All right, do it in Paul’s bow. So that’s your commission. You are sent by God to the place you’re planted, and if he wants you to do something else, he’ll let you know.
You’re down in LA, you’re at a couple major universities, you’re all, you know, hoity toity, big educators making the big bucks, living in LA, and God says, nope, you’re going to be farmers in Kingston. You know, you’re going to be pig farmers in Kingston. you’re going to get those.
You’ll be churning your own butter and living out on the country. All right? So God directs you. God calls you. But do be obedient where you’re at, and the Lord will direct.
Second, there will be opposition. If you set your heart to seriously follow Christ, there will be opposition. It will not be easy. There will be opposition in personal holiness. you’ll be tempted to sin, you’ll be tempted to backslide. You won’t live this out perfectly.
All right, you’ll struggle with your growth in Christ and your maturity in Christ, and you’ll beat yourself up, or you’ll let the devil beat you up because you fell again or whatever.
There will be opposition. Expect it. There will be opposition from the culture. All right? Cultures are not friendly to the gospel. Have you ever wondered? It’s like, why don’t they like us? We’re preaching a gospel of love. We’re preaching a gospel of forgiveness. We’re preaching a gospel. We’ll use one of your favorite words. We’re preaching a gospel of inclusion.
Everybody’s invited, everybody gets to come in. Why don’t you like us? Because we don’t want to bend the knee to your goddess, and you’re proclaiming your God. If I don’t want to bend my knee to him, it is then an attack. I feel it as an attack.
And there’s resistance in the culture. There’s been resistance in the culture for 2000 years. People have lost their lives because of this gospel. They’re still losing their lives because of this gospel.
Jesus said, the world hated me. It’ll hate you. Don’t be surprised that you’re not popular.
Don’t be surprised that there are wicked stereotypes out there about who you are. Oh, you hate gays? No, not in the least. You hate gays. Why? Because you’re codependently calling broke, fixed and wrong, right, and allowing people to be enslaved in something that God has not called them to.
We’re proclaiming freedom. No, you’re haters. People will tell you about themselves, by the way. Right. People will tell you about themselves. you’re not inclusive and tolerant, says the least inclusive and tolerant people on the planet. you’re a hater, says the angriest, most hateful people on the planet.
Don’t be surprised. It comes with the territory. And don’t be buffaloed. All right. Love back. Love back. Don’t be baited. All right? Don’t be baited. Just want to let you know if you ever get into debate, don’t be baited. No real reference I’m talking to there, but nonetheless, you’ll do better in the debate if you don’t let yourself get baited. All right, so I digress. There will be opposition. All right, third takeaway. Zerubbabel built the temple. What does the temple represent? Worship. Build your life on God’s presence through worship. Be a worshiping person.
Now, you come here and we worship. We sing songs. And those songs are about him and about his work on the cross, and about his resurrection, and about his salvation, and about his exaltation, about his presence.
We humble ourselves when we do that. We don’t come and sing songs about us. We sing songs about him. That’s a part of worship. But worship is a lifestyle of humility. It’s a lifestyle of acknowledging you’re God. I’m not. you’re the creator, I’m the creation. you’re the Savior, I’m the saved. you’re the forgiver, I’m the forgiven.
You’re the lover, I’m the beloved. It’s just an admission, like Job. At the end of Job, it’s like, I get it. you’re God. I’m not. God is smarter than you. You don’t have a better plan than God. You don’t have a better way than God.
And so worship is a bowed down life. This is a part of it. This is corporate worship. We get together with other bowed down people, and we bow down together. And it’s life-giving, and it’s healthy, and it’s good.
But worship is about Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, etcetera, and seek God’s presence.
Listen, the God we serve is really alive. He’s real. When you pray, don’t do it like it’s mechanics. Like, oh, I gotta get this one in that. If I shake this rabbit’s foot enough, maybe some spirit in heaven will hear what I say and give me the goodies. Talk to a real, living, raised person. He’s alive. He actually likes it when you talk to him. you’re not bothering him, you’re not troubling him. He looks forward to it.
And somehow he’s so great that he can handle 8 billion at once. And it doesn’t. He can deal with you like you’re the only one you ever been. One in a million. you’re one in 8 billion. That’s better than the top 10%.
Sophia, you’re the top. When you turn to God in prayer, you’re it. All the attention of the creator of the universe is right there on you. And your dad can be praying at the exact same time, and that same reality is just as true for him.
And so live a life of worship.
They built the temple. First, let the first priority of your life be to humble yourself before God, to worship Him and seek His presence, and then listen to His word and separate yourselves from anything that separates you from God. That’s what it means to be holy. All right? It doesn’t mean I’m just all prudish and self-righteous, but it does mean that I separate myself from things that separate me from God. If there’s an idol in your life, get rid of the idol. Listen. And it’s not.
We don’t have hard and fast rules about that. Like, Christians shouldn’t watch sports on TV. No, also, Christians should watch sports on TV. But if it’s an idol, separate yourself from it. Right?
Christians shouldn’t be rich. You can be rich, but if money’s an idol, give it all away. Separate yourself. That’s what Ezra says. Take these foreign wives who are separating you from God and separate yourselves from them.
Now, a word on divorce here, okay? Because it’s like, is the Bible speaking out of both sides of its mouth?
Because a contemporary of Ezra is the prophet Malachi. And the prophet Malachi is famous for saying this: God hates divorce. Now here Ezra is saying, get divorced. What’s the point? The point is to separate yourself from idolatry. But in fact, God does hate divorce. God hates covenant breaking. And marriage is a covenant.
The New Testament is pretty clear on this. Jesus is pretty strict on the idea of divorce, right? He says, well, the Pharisees allowed divorce because of the hardness of your heart. But God’s intention is found in Genesis 2.
For this reason, a man will leave his mother and father, be united to his wife. And the two, not Solomon, not the two and a thousand. The two will become one flesh, one man, one woman. Monogamous, heterosexual, obviously, man and a woman till death do them part. That’s the Christian ethic. That’s it.
Less than that or other than that is brokenness and sin. Now, you’ve been divorced. Great news. you’re forgiven. You fornicated before you got married. Great news. you’re forgiven. You committed adultery while you were married. Great news. you’re forgiven.
I don’t know anybody who lives up to Jesus’ standard, all right? If you’ve lusted in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. I don’t know anybody who’s gotten free of that one, all right? I know men more than women. I know of no man who has not lusted in his heart, all right?
I struggled with it for years, you know, about a thousand times a day in high school. But, you know, every pair of tight jeans that went by, I was, okay. Follow that. You know, guess what? I’m forgiven. you’re forgiven.
My wife is as pure as the driven snow. But she told me one time, we had a bunch of people in church, and, you know, the church was just packed with people. I just looked at her and said, honey, in your wildest dreams, did you imagine this? She looked at me and said, honey, in my wildest dreams, you’re Denzel. So I was like, so even she’s not perfect. You know, it’s like, oh, okay, but separate yourself.
Now, I will just say this. In the New Testament, as best as I can tell, there are two grounds for divorce, and those are adultery and abandonment. Here’s not a grounds for divorce. Sorry to say, for folks in our culture, unhappiness. I’m not happy. I don’t like him. I don’t like her. It’s not grounds for divorce.
It’s not grounds for divorce if you become a believer and the other person is still an unbeliever. In fact, it’s the opposite. Why is it that Ezra says, get rid of the unbelievers?
And in the New Testament, it says, keep them around. Because in the new covenant, you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
That means there’s a greater chance for you influencing that unbeliever to become a follower of Christ than for that unbeliever to take you away from Christ. However, it also says, don’t be yoked to an unbeliever. Because when you’re finding a partner, if you’re a believer in Jesus, don’t marry somebody who’s not knucklehead.
I don’t care how good looking they are or what potential they have. you’re not gonna bind your life together with somebody who has a completely different worldview and completely different values.
But the New Testament says, if your spouse doesn’t believe, stick with them. And here’s mostly, most of the time, I get this from women who are married to unbelieving men. Sometimes it’s a man married to unbelieving women. Mostly it’s a woman married to an unbelieving man. And I just tell them, they say, what do I do about my husband?
And, you know, the Bible says, don’t nag him into the kingdom. You can’t nag him into the kingdom, all right? So don’t do it. He says, just by your godliness and by your good character, and by just the pure sweetness of your countenance, dear ladies, just your gentleness and mildness and kindness, you know what? You all exude 100% of the time. Just do that. Just do that.
But here’s what else you do. This is the Kevinism. When they go to sleep before you, just reach over and put your hand on their head and pray this prayer.
Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit. Sick him, get him. Get him. Get him. Sick him. Get him. Get him. And then just leave it to God.
All right, guys, you can do the same with your wife. If she doesn’t believe, you can just reach over, put your hand on her head, all right? Don’t put a pillow over her face, hand on her head.
Just say, Holy Spirit, in the Name of Jesus, get him. Sick him. Get her. Get her, Lord. But do whatever you can.
If you’re married, do whatever you can to stay married. The crisis, the biggest crisis in our culture. Almost every problem we have in our culture can be traced back to kids growing up without fathers. Really, I mean, it’s huge. That’s not an overstatement.
School success, school dropout rates, drugs, pregnancies, out of wedlock pregnancies, prison. The biggest indicator is not ethnicity. It’s not wealth. The single biggest indicator is fatherlessness.
So don’t read Ezra and go, great. My wife’s not a believer. I can kick her out. Read Paul. He says, no, your wife’s not a believer. Pray her in. God still hates divorce.
Then rebuild your walls. Rebuild your walls. Okay. Build your identity around Jesus Christ. Walls really create an identity. Right? Walls. You know, we’re having a big, great debate in our country. What makes a country? Do borders make a country? Are borders significant in what defines a country? Are boundaries significant? Are borders significant in what defines you?
A few weeks ago, I preached out of Psalm 1, and I talked about wickedness. And what wickedness is, is really people who have no boundaries, no borders.
Wicked people are not just people who, you know, they’re not serial killers or rapists or people who do these terrible things. Those are wicked acts. But wicked people. The definition of wicked is somebody without a foundation, somebody without a root, somebody without an anchor. They are just shaped by everything around them. They have no identity.
They draw their identity from other people, from the culture, from the world views around them, from the media, but they have no center.
Dear ones, we are different. We’re different. That’s what holy means. We’re holy. We have a grounding. We have a foundation. We have an anchor. We have a base. We have a substance. His name is Jesus. That makes us different.
We had a couple sailors, submariners, in church this morning in Bremerton, and one of them was wearing a t shirt about Guam. And I said, Guam?
And one of the guys says, oh, yeah, Guam is wild, man. There’s no laws in Guam. It’s just crazy. And we said, that’s probably not a great place to let sailors off the ship. And I said, no, it’s not.
And I looked at them. I looked at our two submariners, and I said, you don’t do what other people on that boat do when you’re in Guam. And they go, that’s right, we don’t.
And I’ll tell you why you don’t. you’re different. We’re not shaped by the lawlessness of Guam and the lie that there’s somehow freedom there, when in fact, all there is is slavery. We’re not shaped by that.
We’re shaped by a word. We’re shaped by a living word. We’re shaped by an indwelling spirit. We’re shaped by a story of a God who came to earth and died on a cross and rose again and now gives us his spirit and transforms us and invites us to a new covenant meal and feeds us on a regular basis.
We have walls. We have boundaries. We have an identity. And, dear ones, your identity is in Christ. And I’ll tell you, here’s how you grow your identity. It comes with intentionality.
That’s the problem with wickedness. Wickedness has no intentionality. Wickedness is the cosmic. Whatever. Whatever the news says, whatever Hollywood says, whatever the schools say, whatever the culture says, whatever my buddies are doing, remember that you tell your parents, well, all my friends did it, right? And what do they teach you in mom school? Right? I know there’s a secret mom school out there where they give you all these lines.
Well, if your friends jumped off a bridge, right? Would you jump off a bridge? And you know, a stupid boy would probably say, well, yeah, I don’t know.
I don’t know when you guys have time to go to mom’s school, but I know because you all say the same things. Not all of them are true, by the way. I got hit flush in the eye by a rubber band. In a rubber band fight, and my eye did not fall out, all right? My mom lied to me. You can lose an eye.
I got hit right in the eye, and I was sure. I just looked out of my hand. I thought my eyeball would be laying right there, because I’ve been told for five or six years, you know, shooting rubber bands, you could lose an eye. It hurt, but it’s still there.
So mom’s school is not infallible. This is, though. Mom’s school’s good. I always tell. I always tell people, I told my kids, do what your mom says, and the world will be a better place.
I tell you, if you knew my wife, if everybody just did what Jill said, the world would be a better place. But if everybody did what Jesus said, the world would be perfect.
All right, everybody. My wife, she loves justice, by the way. Oh, my gosh. We got robbed at the Bremerton church. All our music equipment got robbed a couple weeks ago. And my wife works at 911, and she is on this. She’s like, let’s get the serial codes. Let’s catch these guys. And she wants to catch them.
Say, honey, don’t you want these guys to know Jesus? Oh, I do. I want them to repent, and I want these thieves to repent, and I want them to know Jesus, and I want them to go to heaven. Yes, I pray for their souls, but can I tase them first? Can I just like. All right, now, are you going to repent? You need another one? Yeah. So, all right.
Build your identity. Not in jail, but in Christ. Build your identity in Christ. Those are the commonalities. Those are the things I take away from Ezra and Nehemiah.
First of all, there’s the historical story of God restoring Jerusalem, fulfilling his promise, keeping his promise. Foreign kings cannot stop God from keeping his promise. you’re going back in 70 years. Guess what? They went back in 70 years. you’re going to rebuild the city. Guess what? They rebuilt the city. We’re going to be reestablished as a people, and my Messiah is still going to have a landing strip 400 years later, when he comes to the earth.
There’s still going to be a people of God, a broken people of God, a fallible people of God. But there’s going to be a place for David’s descendant to come. There’s going to be an Israel for David’s descendant to come. God keeps his word.
But the other thing is, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God keeps his word by using the commission of a kingdom, by taking his people through opposition, by giving them the perseverance to endure, by establishing a center of worship, by giving them the book of his word, his instructions, his voice, by separating them from the things that take them away from him, and by giving them a new identity.
And that’s who we are. That’s who we are. Hagios. Holy. Holy. you’re holy. you’re not only St. Kathleen of Bainbridge, you’re the holy one of Bainbridge. you’re holy because Christ has made you holy. He’s made you different.
And so we do this thing we have in our community, in our kingdom. We have two things that we do that we believe Christ commissioned us to do.
One of them is when somebody enters this family, when somebody says, yeah, I want to be a follower of Jesus. I want to be a part of this kingdom. We baptize them because in baptism, they go down in the waters and they die and they rise again. Their sins are cleansed off them. They’re refreshed and renewed in the Holy Spirit. And that starts the journey.
But you know what? On the journey, you need food. You need food for the journey. And so we baptize people once, but week after week, we come here and we say, feed on Christ. All right, feed on Christ through reading the Bible, yes. Through saying your prayers? Yes. Through going to corporate worship, yes. But also obeying him. And he said, when you gather together, have a meal together. Let me invite you to my table. And when I invite you to my table.
Remember my covenant, that your sins are forgiven, and I live in you, and you are forever mine.
And so I believe when you take this meal, when you take it by faith, it what? It feeds and reinforces that covenant. It’s a symbol, but it’s more than a symbol. This is holy food. This is. This is. I don’t know. It’s a bad example, because I’ve never been to a health food store, but this is the healthiest food. This is better than kale. All right? This is better than. And I hear that’s good for you.
I don’t risk trying it to find out, but this is better. This will do more for you than whatever fad diet is out there. This is the food of God, for the people of God. So I invite you to come and eat.
The post 2024.9.22 TFHC – Ezra and Nehemiah: Return, Rebuild, Restore appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
September 15, 2024, Mission Report and Sermon By Pastor Dallas Elder (The Ministry Director for Grace Covenant)
Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty, we give you thanks that you impart to us your holiness. You make us like you, not just in your sight, but for all eternity. We will be like you.
Thank you, Lord, that you have completely defeated sin, not only its consequences, but its power and its dominion. And you have brought us into the kingdom of light, into the kingdom of your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. And you’re making us like Jesus.
Paul said we don’t know what we’ll be like, but we’ll be like him. Amen.
And, Lord, that is great news. That is great news. Anybody in here sick and tired of being less than you want to be? Yep. Well, you’re going to be like Jesus. Amen. Amen.
All right, good. And one of the guys who’s closest, just as close to Jesus as I have run into, is my friend Dallas Elder. All right, so Dallas is the ministry director for Grace Covenant. He is a ministry elder. He is the trifecta of ministry elders. His last name is Elderez. He is the ministry elder for Grace Covenant.
And he’s no longer a youngster. And so the trinity of elders will be speaking to us tonight. He’ll be sharing some stuff about Grace Covenant, but also sharing with us the Word of God.
So, Dallas, we’re very glad you’re here. Welcome.
I just want to say this, his comment about me being elderly and the thing is that I actually dye my hair. Yeah, I dye my hair. I’m actually just in my early fifties, but I dye my hair so I can get the senior discount. So that’s just it.
Well, listen, it is really good to be with you. I want to share some things. Kevin asked me to share kind of an overview or some updates regarding our ministries in Grace Covenant.
First of all, let me start out by saying this, that I so much appreciate the Firehouse Church here in Poulsbo. All of your partnership, the ways that you get behind us, these things I’m getting ready to show you aren’t possible without your participation. So I want to give you thanks in advance for that.
Well, listen, so I can get my deal to work here. Chaotz, let me know when we’re ready. There we go. All right. Okay. Thank you.
This one, that, first of all, these are the nations where we have ministry. We have a network of churches in the US, but then also in these nations, you’ll see.
And so I’m going to share some things about a few of these nations that the Lord is doing. First of all, just let me point out that we’re now in Mexico and Ensenada and have a ministry there.
One of our new missionaries is Kayla Lawmaster. You’re going to have an opportunity to tell you a little bit more about her.
And then also Ecuador, where there is a ministry with the Oriannas. I’ll share a little bit more about them as well. But those are two new nations where we happen to be.
This was our Midwest men’s conference last year. you’ll see Kevin in the background. That’s his friend Eric Roberts. How many of you know Eric? Okay. All right, good. So they came and shared in the men’s conference.
That’s there. And then, of course, Kevin, he showed up at our conference in March in Kansas City this year. You can ask him what all of that means.
Anyway, I want you to know that he was there. And next year I’d like for some of you to come. You don’t have to wear a onesie. You don’t have to wear a onesie, but I’d like to get some representation from the Firehouse Church in Poulsbo so that you can experience that.
This is Gianni Rucker. She has a ministry that’s based in Kansas City. It’s victim services, faith-based victim services. She reaches out to trafficked and traumatized individuals.
The ministry goes on. She has her story. She was raped as a freshman in college at Arizona University. She was there on a volleyball scholarship and from that needed the healing that would come. But then also has become an advocate in what ends up being a crisis point that’s an epidemic around the world relative to trafficked individuals.
So apostle Pam Brown is on the right. That’s Gianni’s family, and that is their facility in Kansas City. And then, of course, we were there for a fundraiser. That happens to be my wife and my daughter. That’s on your right. And that’s Gianni. So that was, like I said, a fundraiser last fall.
In the center there, that’s Marquis and Michaela Harris. And so Marquis has recently become the executive ministry director of Grace Covenant. So he will be working with me in my office. And he starts tomorrow. Or, yeah, tomorrow. So they came by recently. That’s their little one that just arrived.
Her name is Grace Lynn. And so we’re looking forward to the help that he’s going to be able to bring into our office and all the ways that the Lord begins to shape that ministry. This is our Next Gen ministry.
We are identifying our ministry leaders for the next generation and wanting to invest in them. So we’re bringing around the community. This is our California constituency. Kevin’s got relationship in that picture, and this was our Next Gen gathering as we came together in March in conference.
We always have dinners and fellowship opportunities, so we are building the community and also making the investment in them.
Fran O’Brien, maybe you’ve met her before. She’s a Native American from Oklahoma. She is Kiowa, and she leads our ministry called White Buffalo Ministries. It’s an outreach to Native Americans and the unification of Native Americans taking place in our nation.
After, as you know, for a number of other people groups, a history of some hurts and to bringing them and unifying them, ministering to their particular needs.
Suicide rate among Native Americans, six times the national average. Same thing for addictions, drug abuse, and just some real hopelessness that’s there.
So we have the opportunity to serve with her. This was a team that we send every year to reach out to Native American churches in Oklahoma with VBS. And so you see some of those needs then being met there.
This is the Impact Center. This was kind of a combined group with Comanche kids. It’s our first time to reach some Comanche children.
And so we’re going to focus in on that Comanche church that ends up being there, and that will be something we’ll be doing next year.
If you would like to go on one of our mission teams, the things that you’re seeing here, you have the opportunity to participate. I speak to all of you, but for some of the young people, that would be a great experience for you to come and be a part.
This is Kayla Lawmaster. She’s from Southern California. She was a gal that went to, I think, UC San Jose. I can’t remember… Anyway, one of the University of California schools to learn about how to do filmmaking. Her dream was to go to Hollywood and make it in the industry.
In the midst of that, she got saved. She then got in contact with some folks who were reaching out and creating animated Bible stories for the deaf. You talk about an unreached people group, the deaf, in lots of times. You know, we have programs in first world nations and other nations. They don’t know what to do with the deaf.
They can’t communicate with the deaf. Often, they don’t get any education, and certainly, they don’t get to hear about God. So, this is an incredible ministry.
I hope to have her. Kevin wants to have her drop by and see you all sometime. She’s in Ensenada, Mexico. My wife Connie and I will go and visit her in November. She’s a brand new missionary. She’s about 80% to 90% of full-time support. She was actually serving. She moved to Ensenada, was serving there and working remotely, doing TikTok videos for apparel, working for a company.
That company downsized, and she had a pretty significant job. It was a really sweet deal to make the kind of money she made, live in Mexico, and serve the needs that were there as she had time. Well, they laid off a number of folks, and her job left. So then she was saying, okay, what do I do? And the Lord said, I want you to do this full time. I want you to trust me that you’re going to receive support. Bless her heart. Since last December, this is the level she’s at.
So we look forward to seeing her at least being able, she works full time, at least being able to be supported for what she does full time by the end of the year.
These are new missionaries. They spent. This is Kim Anguito Oriana. She actually graduated from Ohio State and then got saved around 22, as she had graduated from college, and within nine months. This is very unusual. The Lord called her into missions, and at that point, she really wanted to have a husband. She wanted to have a family. That was her desires.
But she laid all that aside and said, I’m never going to be able to do that. I will go and follow Jesus.
She moved to Ecuador to serve in the area of orphan or foster care, and that’s where she met her husband. These are the three children. One of them just started at Grand Canyon State University, but we are delighted to have them with us. They were part of another mission, served for 20 years.
They came to a transition time, and so they now have connected with us. They serve in that area of orphan care, foster care, leadership, and training.
Listen to this. Listen to this. Ecuador has had such a dysfunctional system that has been so traumatic recently. In June, I’ll tell you one story. She went to Ecuador and was in a town near the jungle where there was an orphanage. There had been a murder of an orphan. There had been molestation of orphans, and a number of those orphans had tried to commit suicide.
So the Ecuadorian government realizes the incredible problem that they had. They came to Kim and her foundation and said, would you please give our governmental leaders training so that we’re going to be able to have better trauma and orphan and foster care, a better system.
And so she said, yes, we will, but our training is Christ based, so we are a faith-based Christian ministry. And if you want our training, it will include Jesus. And they said, please give us that training. Just an incredible story.
And so these are some of the children there who are benefiting. We have to be pretty sensitive on the pictures that we show, but at least this was one that we could show.
These are our missionaries in the Dominican Republic. Our missionaries in the Dominican Republic will probably host around 200 people on mission teams in a year.
These are our new directors. There’s Tyler and Callie. Franca. Hannah Hus is from Florida. I was trying to think of her town. She has recently come. She was full time. She’s started her second year.
So this is the team, and they feed about 100 street kids a day. And then they share Christ with them and have a number of activities to get them off the street and teach them life skills and values.
This is one of the barrios that we’ve ministered in for a number of years. I was there with them in April. So this is some of us who are walking down that street. The relationships they have are incredible.
And then these are the things. This is the property that we own there.
These are the classes that go on. This is music class. They’re singing Jesus bell, Jesus, excuse me, jingle bells in Spanish.
This is English classes. My wife and I were there to participate on the site. It’s been such a beautiful work that the Lord has done. And they just launched in August a preschool on the property, which is huge to be able to get the children before they get into a bunch of dysfunctional life, share Jesus with them and bring them into a safe place.
So we’re shifting gears now. This is Pastor Raul. Pastor Raul does evangelism and church planting in Peru. This is around the Amazon rainforest. There are a number of rivers that flow into the Amazon, with a number of villages along the way. So he takes a boat and then he will visit because that’s the only way to get there. Take a boat, visit the place. And that’s where they’re doing church planting.
One of the projects has been to purchase a new boat because the old one is wood and rotting.
And so we just received provision to be able to get a metal bottom boat that’s going to help in that. These are the folks who come to know Jesus, and they’re coming down to the river to be baptized.
So, a number of people are coming to know Jesus there through those efforts, as well as there are a few churches that have been planted from those efforts.
This is Buen Pastor. This is the prison ministry in Paraguay, led by Walter Vega. Walter has worked with us for a number of years.
An incredible invitation to be able to work with them in this prison for women to bring faith, to bring scripture, to bring bibles, and a reentry program.
So, they sign up for this opportunity to receive the training that helps to position these ladies for when they come out of prison. It gives them a foundation of faith. It is helping them with the way that they think, and they have some life structure so that they will be successful as they reenter society.
And these are the materials, then, and the booklets that they use. So they will go through, I think, a six-week, eight-week course, and the ladies there in prison will go through that. These are some of the ladies who are taking that. And that says, if you know Spanish, it says new life in Christ.
So Bill Murray, Eddie, in Spain, they’ve been our longest. Bill and I have been friends. We kind of got called into ministry around the same time. We’ve been friends for a long time.
And then, as we began Grace Covenant, the Lord called us to do that. He was our first missionary. And so, they’re in Madrid, Spain, in that area anyway. He’s been a church-planting pastor. There are a number of other ministries that they do.
The Lord recently called them back to a church that they planted a number of years ago to now lead that church. It had dwindled down to 30. They were very discouraged.
And so they now have taken that helm, by the way, on the right, that ends up being a Sunday school class for autistic children. So a tremendous outreach there at the church.
You see some of the activities there. I think that’s with youth group and some of the things that are going on then in the church.
This is Rob and Laurie Mangus. Have they been here? Okay, Rob. So, you know, Rob and Laurie. Kevin is going to be going in just a few weeks to be with Rob and Laurie.
That’s one of our point pastors there in Ghana. And so these are our ministers. So at that conference, these ministers are going to be coming, and they represent the five nations where we happen to be. There will be some other ministers there as well, but these are the ministry leaders in those nations.
So from left to right, that’s Pastor Barry from Nigeria, Pastor Sante from Togo, Pastor Roland from Benin, Pastor Alexander from Liberia, and then Pastor George from Ghana. And this will be what the conference looks like.
So that’s on the property that we have. That’s where not only our missionaries live, they will help to house the pastors. Kevin will have a room there, and hopefully those missionaries won’t mistreat him. The air conditioner works, and they have electricity. Then, of course, that’s where the conference is held. So it’ll be a great time.
Pray for your pastor as he goes. I don’t know if I shared this. I think I did. When I was here last year on this site, we had a church, and the pastor was Pastor Paul.
And so while the church was closed, they sprayed accelerant into that church just as a spiritual attack, if you want to say that. They lit it, and it burned so hot, it melted the tin and burned all the plastic chairs on the inside. I mean, it was just totally ashes and cracked the walls.
And so anyway, I shared that with the Grace Covenant Ministry family. Ats, you remember that? There was an outpouring of provision. And so this is what has risen up from the ashes.
So when I was there last October, this was the picture that I took. Kevin, I probably should have put the picture up that we rode motorcycles. We were on the back of motorcycles to get to that place. So maybe you might just want to bring your leathers as that may be some. I think they repaired the road, and probably the Manguses will get you there. But anyway, that’s what the Lord has brought about. You can see where they happen to be.
I understand that there are doors and windows that have been covered at this point. They still need to finish the inside and do the floors, those kinds of things.
It’s a new church that’s there, Pastor Julius, so you can see the primitive beginnings of that church plant. And this is Pastor Alexander and his wife de Conte in Liberia. And so that’s the church that’s being constructed there that we recently were able to help with putting the roof on it. Now it needs the windows and the doors.
And I just want to say, praise the Lord. We have received provision to take that project to another level. So windows, doors, and I. And maybe floors as well. So they’ll have some, a few other things, but they’re invested in the whole project.
Sorry. And so this is where they’re at now. This is a rented facility. The landlord came to them and said, listen, we can make more money if you move out. So the Lord has provided to help with the land. They were involved in that and then the construction to this place. So they’re getting very close.
You can see the congregation that ends up being there in Buchana City, Liberia. This is Pastor Togo, and our pastor Sante, who is in Togo. He just has this anointing for evangelism. There was a boldness about him, about proclaiming Jesus where Jesus hasn’t been proclaimed.
There are a number of villages that end up being out in the country, and they worship the devil. Witchcraft is a part of the culture. In a number of those villages, that’s just a way of life. They practice voodoo. Pastor Sante then goes and preaches.
Sometimes there are healings. There’s even been a person who was raised from the dead. There have been other kinds of miracles and touches, even witch doctors coming to faith in Christ Jesus.
The story is, you see this man here who has the Bible in front of him. He is a witch doctor. And so in the culture, like many other cultures, they actually still have sacrifices. So the curse, if you will, the cursor, will land on a person from the other witch doctors and said, you are the one that needs to be sacrificed.
They put a curse on the person, and because of what they believe, they get sick and they die. There’s power that the devil has. It’s limited; it’s not the power of Jesus. And yet, at the same time, that person gets sick and they ultimately die.
Sante came and preached, and this witch doctor gave his heart to Jesus, and he’s had health and healing, and he was given a Bible. So, Bibles are a huge deal in these villages.
Sorry, I went the wrong way. This is Pastor Rowland in Benin. Of course, he’ll be at the conference in Ghana. And so this is a new congregation meeting under a mango tree. We just sent money for them to be able to build a structure. This is kind of like the temporary structure.
As they gather in that, as they get some momentum, then they will build other ones.
Next month I will go to Nepal for the first time. Graciela and Antonio Chavez have been there for about 25 years. It’s their 25th anniversary. They are originally from Paraguay.
We’re a connection through our ministers in Paraguay: Angel Hernandez, Kevin, and certainly Walter. They were there. But Nepal is about 5% Christian, and there are radical Hindus that are there. So you can get arrested, you can get put in prison, you can get extradited. If you are found to preach Christ, there are some other kinds of things.
One of the recent things was that there were missionaries in a van from Canada, and they had some other local people, and they were passing out Bibles.
The radical Hindus surrounded the van, asked them to step out. They demanded that the people who’d received the Bibles tear out the pages of the Bibles or they were going to be harmed. There was the threat of that. Then they would give them a match to have them light the pages of the Bible, to burn them, and then say they need to declare that Ram is the Lord.
So anyway, those are some of the things that are taking place. We praise the Lord for the Chavez’s.
These were people as they have shared the gospel. These are people recently, within this last year, who were baptized. And so they’re being baptized in the icy waters of the Himalayans. Of course, Mount Everest ends up being there in Nepal.
So you see the believers there, and this is a church. It’s a prayer meeting for the women that are there. And then, of course, that’s Antonio’s bike, and that’s where he stuffs Bibles. And then he takes them out into communities and out into the country, and he hands out Bibles for Jesus.
So excited to be on hand with them for the first time. And if you are interested in some ministry training courses, we do those by Zoom.
This will be our next one. It ends up being on these Saturdays that are here. I’ll be teaching that class on cross-cultural ministry. It’s basically basic ministry for anybody.
You need to understand the person or the culture that you’re trying to minister to. We often are not only egocentric, we end up being ethnocentric. We think our culture is the standard.
And with that kind of in mind, we are looking for people to measure up. And that’s been the problem with missions, Christian missions. Folks coming from first world nations, they not just preach the gospel, they preach the form of the first world nation.
And the thing is, you go in and folks are disrespecting the people who are in that culture. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what’s appropriate. And saying, well, you need Jesus, and then it looks like American church, and those things don’t work.
So that’s great training, by the way. If you want to know the times, if you’re interested, it ends up being 07:00 to 10:30. So three and a half hours a day in my time zone, that’d be 09:00 to 12:30.
And so we’ll have people from across the United States, and I think I know Kayla will be part of that for her training. And then, of course, we have this Ignite Ministry Conference. We would invite you to come. This is in Kansas City. Platte City is ten minutes from Kansas City Airport.
And any of these conferences, we’d invite you to come. This has to do with workshops and training and encouragement and connection. It’s not one of. And there’s a cost that ends up being part of that to pay our instructors. But any of these things that would work for you, we invite you to come to.
Of course, the conference that we will have in the first week of March is free. All you do is you have to get your travel and your lodging there, but there’s no cost for that conference.
And that’s what we would call our ministry family reunion. So we invite you to come.
Before I move on, just. I’m going to give just a couple minutes here. About threw myself down a couple minutes. Is there a question about anything that you saw? And then I’m going to move into the message I have for this evening.
Yeah, Kevin, I don’t have a question, but when you’re done with questions, I want to give just an explanation to the church of how specifically this church is involved in the stuff that.
Yeah, please show that’s a good time. Yeah, yeah.
So if you don’t know, this is what we do for missions at the Firehouse Church. We support some missionaries every month, and three of the four of those were represented in those pictures: the Chavezes in Nepal, both the Francas in the Dominican Republic and Hanajus in the Dominican Republic, we support, and then Rob and Lori Mangus in West Africa. So those get a monthly support from the Firehouse Church, Poulsbo, Bremerton.
And then the other thing we do with missions, and there are other missions that aren’t a part of Grace Covenant that he didn’t show. There’s one in Cambodia that we support, a children’s ministry in Cambodia from some missionaries that I knew back from California days. And so that’s every month.
And then also every month, we picked a mission. Just as a leadership team, we pray and we pick a mission to support that month. Usually, it’s somebody that somebody in our church recommends, that we have a relationship with, that somebody knows.
For example, next month in October, Adam Ballstead from the Bremerton church, his brother has just left to go back on the full. He was a full-time missionary, came back to the states, and has just left to go back and to serve in Rwanda.
We usually send about $350 to that person as a one-time gift. And so we do that every month. We’ll send. We got, like, a flavor of the month. And we’ll send that person or that mission, that money. Some of those some. And some of the projects you saw there.
End up being our mission of the month. Kayla Lawmaster, the woman who’s ministering to the deaf. We made her our mission of the month.
We bought some of those bibles that went into West Africa for those conversions. I think we’ve helped with some of those building projects. And so you are a part of that stuff.
And so I just wanted to share that we’re involved in missions. We’re involved in going beyond the local church. And so your giving goes directly to some of those pictures that you just saw up there.
Just wanted to share that with you. Amen.
Once again, I wanted to say thanks for the support. And you can see the differences that are being made from your partnership. Otts, could you catch this light? All right? Perfect.
All right, I want to bring this message to you this evening. The voice of the Good Shepherd. The voice of the Good Shepherd. And you can turn to John 10. So we’re gonna deal with the first 18 verses this evening from John 10. I wanna start reading with verses one through six for this message entitled, “The Voice of the Good Shepherd.”
1 “I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! 2 But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. 5 They won’t follow a stranger; they will run from him because they don’t know his voice.” (John 10:1–5, NLT)
Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
There was a common practice in the day, and that is regarding shepherding. Sheep was a business. There are places in the world today where there’s a similar kind of culture, if you will. Shepherding culture. Nomads, Bedouins, roam the land with their flocks, and there’s a lot of open range. So shepherds would lead their sheep to pasture.
They would spread out over the countryside to graze. The shepherd would call them together and lead them to get water, would draw the flock together into a tight circle at night. And if a predator came to attack the sheep, the shepherd would defend the sheep and drive away the predator. So the shepherd led the sheep from pasture to pasture, made sure that they had water, made sure that they were well fed, cared for, and protected. This was the life of the shepherd and the sheep.
So the sheep got very acquainted with their Shepherd’s voice and counted on his care. When the shepherd needed supplies or had some reason to go into town, he drove the flock to a common corral. The gatekeeper would let his flock in, and his flock would come in and mingle with the other sheep that were in the common corral.
So when the shepherd’s business was done in town, he went to the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper recognized him. He opened the gate, and the shepherd called to his sheep.
And the sheep then would hear the Shepherd’s voice. And they came to him, and he led them out of the pen.
It was a real-life analogy that Jesus is giving to his hearers. And note verses 3 and 4 again. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him. The sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he’s brought them all out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice. (John 10:3-4, NLT)
Now, when I grew up, we grew up on about, I don’t know, three acres or so. And there were other neighbors that had about that kind of property.
I grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri. That’s the home of the Pony Express. It’s the beginning of the Pony Express and the end of Jesse James. So that’s kind of its claim to fame.
But so anyway, in the summer, I just played baseball. We loved baseball. I had the neighbors over all the time. We were playing baseball.
So this friend of mine who lived behind me named Steve, he would come over and play baseball. We’d be playing baseball, and he’d be ready to pitch me the ball. And all of a sudden he says, I’ve got to go home.
And I go, what do you mean, you got to go home? He goes, yeah, my dad’s calling for me. I’ve got to go home. I said, I didn’t hear anybody call. But his dad would sit on the back stoop of his house that faced the back of our property.
And he whistled, and he had this incredibly loud whistle. I didn’t hear the whistle. I mean, the distance there, two to three blocks. But Steve could hear the whistle. He knew the call of his father. You know, the sheep knew the shepherd, and the shepherd knew his sheep.
And get this, he calls them each by name. Anybody here ever dealt with sheep? Had sheep, had a flock of sheep, known people who had flocks of sheep? I don’t know about.
I don’t know about you, but all sheep look the same to me, but not to the good shepherd. You are intricately made.
This is the depth of relationship that the shepherd has with the sheep, where you are intimately known. You have a name, and he knows your name.
You know, our name is very personal. And if you want to begin a relationship with other people, ask them their name. It values that person. Learn their name, call them by their name.
You see, their name identifies the person, and a name is very personal. So you are deeply and personally loved by the good shepherd. Names are totally important to God. Look at all the names that are there in the Scriptures. It’s amazing the number of times that he calls people by name.
Here’s this one, Abraham. And he calls people by name. I mean, this is the most high God. And names are important to God because he says, and he shall be called Emmanuel, God with us. And he shall be called wonderful counselor. He shall be called prince of peace, everlasting father, mighty God.
So the names provide descriptions. Jehovah Rapha. Jehovah Nisi. Jehovah Jireh. The names are incredibly important. And do you know that God knows your name?
Psalm 147:4 says this. God determines the number of stars, and he calls them each by name.
4 He counts the stars and calls them all by name. (Psalm 147:4, NLT)
Now, think about that for a minute. Let’s break this down. In the Milky Way galaxy, in which the earth and the solar system are a small part, it’s estimated that there are 100 billion stars. Furthermore, scientists estimate that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.
So if you figure a hundred billion stars as a galaxy average and multiply that times 2 trillion galaxies, you come up with a mind-blowing, crazy number: 200 billion trillion stars.
The God of heaven is a mind-blowing God. I can’t get my head around the immensity of this universe that He created, and He spoke it into existence. 200 billion trillion stars. But don’t miss this. He calls them each by name, each star intricately and uniquely created and personally known by the Father.
Now, there’s just a measly 8 billion people on this planet. So I just want to let you know you’re not lost in the numbers. Jesus knows you by name. The question is, do you know him? Have you heeded his call to accept him as savior and follow him as your shepherd?
And by the way, regarding names, you may want to turn to Revelation 2:17. I think I’ll have it up here on the screen. Jesus says this to the church at Pergamum through the apostle John, who is to deliver that to the messenger of the church.
And he says this, he says, to the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.
Pergamum was a capital city. It was where the governor’s residence was. And so in Roman custom, when the governor had a banquet, he would send out an invitation to the people he wanted to invite to the banquet.
Now, also, interestingly, in that area, they were known for their white marble. And so often then, that invitation would actually be a name that would be inscribed on a piece of white marble and delivered then to the person. That was the invitation then to the governor’s banquet.
So, Jesus using this cultural practice of invitation, the white stone for every believer is an invitation to the banquet. What’s the banquet? The wedding supper, the lamb.
But what about that new name written on the white stone known only to the one who receives it? One Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, describes it like this.
He says it’s evidence of sonship and daughterhood. There’s another implication here in Scripture. When you got a new name, it was a mark of a new status.
For instance, when the Lord called Abraham to be the father of many nations, He changed his name, gave him a new name. It was Abram, father. Abraham, father of many nations. Same thing for his wife. You are going to be the mother, Sarai, and become Sarah, the mother of many nations.
And then, of course, there was Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of the Lord all night and said, I want you to bless me. And he prevailed, if you will. And the Lord gave him a new name, and it was Israel. Because you have wrestled, you have contended, you have persevered with God.
So a new name indicates a new status. you’re not unknown to the Lord. you’re not overlooked, insignificant, forgotten, lost in the population of the world. No. The good shepherd knows your name. He calls you by name.
Have you heard the voice of the Good Shepherd? Have you accepted his invitation for him to be your Savior?
So when you accept his forgiveness, you invite him into your heart. You become the sheep of his flock. You become a follower, and he protects you from evil. He leads you into everything that is good. You begin listening to his voice. He positions you under his favors to enjoy life to the full. And as you faithfully follow him throughout your life, you will be victorious.
And guess what? You have a guaranteed reservation in heaven. And you will be presented with a white stone. And inscribed on that white stone is your new name. Because you have a new status, you will have an eternal place in the new heaven and the new earth with your new name. Almost like a birth certificate. A new birth certificate.
Are you ever listening for and guided by the Shepherd’s voice? Verse four. His sheep follow him because they know his voice.
Well, I have a confession to make to you. I hear voices. I know what you’re saying, Pastor Kevin.
Why did you allow the schizoid behind the pulpit? Well, whether we want to admit it or not, we all hear voices. The question is, can you distinguish between the voices?
So what are the voices that we heard of, and whose voice are you following? Well, there’s the voice of others. There’s the voice of family. There are voices of workers. There are voices of neighbors. There are voices of politicians. There are all kinds of voices of others.
I can still hear my mother’s voice. Dallas, leave your sister alone. Dallas, get out of the flowers. She loved her flowers. It just seemed so often that that baseball would roll into the flowers and you’d have to go get it. Baseball’s more important than flowers. Not to mom.
And then there’s the voice of me. I have a will. I have a voice. Do you ever talk to yourself? Someone said, yes, I talk to myself when I need expert advice. Spoiler alert. You may not be the expert you think you are. You may be fooling yourself. You may just be wise in your own eyes.
So let me give you a Dr. Phil-ism. How’s that working for you?
And then there’s the voice of the devil, the tempter, the accuser, the deceiver, the slanderer, the father of lies. He will tell you God doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know you exist. He’s distant and disinterested in your puny, pathetic life. He doesn’t see you. He’s not mindful of you. He doesn’t love you. He has no kind of plan for you. You are a piece of random matter, a meaningless particle on the earth’s crust.
And then there’s the voice of God. The voice of God comes through his word and his spirit, speaking to your heart. God does love you. He has good for you. He will counsel and guide you into abundant life and into the promise of eternal life with him.
So who’s dominating the conversation of your life? Who’s leading the discussion? Who’s winning the debate? Whose voice of counsel and advice are you following?
It’s interesting. Verse six says that his sheep hear his voice. But it says in John 10:6 that the Pharisees and the Spiritual leaders didn’t understand what he was saying.
My sheep hear my voice. And let’s look at John 10, or, excuse me, John 7:13. As we work our way through this passage of the good shepherd.
Therefore, Jesus said again. Verse 7. Therefore, Jesus said again. Truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved.
7 …”I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me were thieves and robbers. But the true sheep did not listen to them. 9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. (John 10:7-9, NLT)
10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices his life for the sheep. 12 A hired hand will run when he sees a wolf coming. He will abandon the sheep because they don’t belong to him and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf attacks them and scatters the flock. (John 10:10-12, NLT)
The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. When the wolf attacks the flock and then scatters it, the man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
Jesus further identifies and illustrates himself as the good shepherd. He has genuine love for the sheep.
And Jesus uses actually another illustration. He talks about how the shepherd would lead the sheep, and if they were out in the open range, try to find some kind of enclosure, natural enclosure, and then lead them into a pen that wouldn’t necessarily have a gate but would have some kind of gathering that was there.
Then the shepherd would lay down at night across the entrance into that area and lie there with the staff, and he would then ultimately become the gate, if you will. The sheep were safely contained. They couldn’t wander away.
They were secure from intruders. So Jesus, drawing on that analogy, says, I am the gate for the sheep. Before me, there were a lot of imposters. They were thieves and robbers. They had their own selfish agendas and evil intentions for the people. But my sheep don’t listen to them. My sheep don’t listen to them.
And then he makes this reference, John 10:9-10.
9 Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved. They will come and go freely and will find good pastures. 10 The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. (John 10:9-10, NLT)
Jesus is the only way of salvation. And let me say this. If you haven’t received Jesus as your Savior and asked him to forgive you and invited him to come into your life, and you are offering yourself for that relationship, that you would be a follower of Jesus, this is absolutely the most important decision that you will ever make in your life.
There’s no other decision, no other life choice that would be greater than this choice. We have 70 plus or minus years in this life. And within the span of our life, we’re going to choose where we’re going to spend all of eternity. It’ll either be in heaven or it won’t be.
He is the only way to have a full, favored, purposeful, meaningful, fruitful, and eternal life. The thief is the devil who led a rebellion against God’s precious and pristine creation by seducing Adam and Eve into sin in the garden of Eden.
I’m talking about Lucifer. This once glorious, beautiful angel of God left the presence of the Lord, sought the worship of mankind for himself. Satan then becomes the personification of evil through the sin of man and brought all the successive generations under his reign of evil and dominion, chaos and wickedness unleashed on the world.
But God, can you say with me? But God sent his son Jesus into the world to redeem the sheep from the thief. The thief delights in bondage, destruction, and death. And he has an agenda for you.
He wants to steal everything from your life that’s good, godly, and meaningful to you. He wants to steal your peace. He wants to stir up continual conflict. He wants to rob you of your health, your joy, your future, and your hope.
He’s a sinister foe. He wants to kill your dreams, stifle your life. He wants to divert you from God, His love, and what’s truly life. Indeed, his aim is to capture your attention.
Have you listened to his lies, direct you by his voice, feed you false information, and lead you into death and destruction both physically and eternally?
Hear the words of Jesus. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. And the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Jesus came and took our sins, our deeds, and darkness upon himself. On the cross, he shed his blood to cover and cleanse us of our sin and our shame.
He gave his life as payment for our sin. The old song I owe to debt I couldn’t pay. He paid a debt he didn’t owe. He’s the good shepherd. He laid down his life for you, that we may have life and have it to the full.
We need to know what true and good shepherds really look like, you know? Throughout this passage, Jesus identifies these impostors. The church in kingdom ministry. We need to examine our motivations in serving and discerning the intention of those who want to express their gifts.
In leadership, Jesus contrasts the characteristics of the impostors and the tactics of the enemy next to the Good Shepherd and the security of the flock.
So here are a few of the impostors: the thief and the robber. You know, those who have desires and designs upon the sheep for selfish gain. They want to take them as a possession, use them for their purpose. The sheep are just assets to serve their vision and purpose of selfish gain.
So I was a church planter, and about two years in, as a young pastor planting a church, there was a young man who then came to our church along with his wife. They were going; they had a call of God on them. They were going to seminary.
And so we invited them in, and they began to serve. They certainly had gifts, and people responded to them. And so we were working together until we came to this crossroad. He had a vision to want to go this way.
And that wasn’t where the Lord was leading me, and he had called me to be the shepherd. So you know what two visions are? That’s division. And so that’s where we stood.
And so I came to the young couple and said, listen, it’s clear that you’re gifted. I would say you probably have a call of God on your life, but we’re not headed your direction and you’re not helping our church with you wanting to insert your agenda. And so I said, it would be best if you go and find what your ministry is.
Allow God to find that. Let him bring his flock then to you.
So they didn’t care to hear that. But at the same time, I was insistent that this wasn’t working. And so then they left the church. And when they did, they took about six families. They went to another place in town and started going to that church.
And in that church, then they were there about three months. And when they left that church, they took about 70 people.
When they took that group, they started meeting in a public space there in the city and began to have their church.
And then after three months, the young man suddenly announced to the people, oh, God has called me to be a chaplain in the military. And he left all of those sheep then high and dry. It never was about the sheep.
Certainly that is the Spirit of the principal thief, the devil, who comes to steal and kill and destroy. The thief doesn’t have your best interest in mind, but the good shepherd does.
And then there’s the wolf. Yeah, the wolf comes to attack the flock, devours, causes them harm, incites fear, creates division, scatters the flock.
There are people who get used as pawns of the enemy to do damage in the church. your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8, NLT)
Be mindful of the ministry’s tactics in your life. He wants to separate you from the flock. He wants to chase you around, weaken you, isolate you, and beat you down in your isolation and spiritual depletion.
You’re going to put up little resistance, and you’re no threat to his kingdom. You need to be in continual counsel and care under the good shepherd. And you need the flock. You need to find your place in the flock. You need to be consistent in your attending in the flock, receiving in the flock, serving in the flock.
And then there’s the hireling, the hired hand. For the hireling, serving in the church, working with the sheep is just a job. You may get some compensation, may or may not be money.
You get a title, you get recognition, you get some satisfaction of serving others with your gifts. But then comes the Spiritual attack. And when that happens, the hireling cuts and runs. The man runs. Verse 13. The man runs because he’s a hired hand, cares nothing for the sheep.
So trials in life, ministry, and your kingdom service will test your mettle and your motives. They will qualify your commitment and calling when conflict comes. The hireling runs because their serving was always more about them than it was the sheep.
So let me close this message this evening with three conclusions from this passage.
You know the good shepherd is wholeheartedly called and committed to the sheep. We want to finish with this passage here. John 10:14.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, 15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep. (John 10:14-15, NLT)
16 I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd. 17“The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again. 18 No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.” (John 10:16-18, NLT)
So Jesus said in his ministry, I have been called to the lost sheep of Israel. That’s the sheep of the pen that he’s speaking to at this juncture. That was his mission.
Didn’t mean that others were excluded, and there are certainly exceptions to that that we can read, but that was his primary mission.
But he also says, I’ve got sheep from another pen and I need to bring them in also. That’s everyone else in the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Jesus is the savior of the world. He is the good shepherd. For every person.
The good shepherd is invested in the relationship with his sheep. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. He knows your name.
You have an open invitation into his presence to live under his guidance and loving care.
Secondly, second conclusion, the sheep, my sheep hear my voice. Jesus wants to communicate with you. He wants to listen to your questions and your concerns. He wants to speak affirmation to you, give you guidance for the situations of your life and how you are to serve him.
And then don’t miss this third one. Those who serve me will help gather my sheep, care for my sheep, and serve to benefit my sheep and my father’s will.
I want to turn this over to Pastor Kevin.
Our Good Shepherd invites you now because he’s a provider to his table. And so Jesus wants to feed us with his own life.
Dallas said that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread of the Passover and he said this is my body which is given for you.
After supper, he gave thanks to you, Father.
He poured out the wine, the cup of blessing, and he said, this is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. It’s the blood of the new covenant.
You have one Good Shepherd. You have one Lord, one God. He knows your name, and he personally invites you to come and share this meal, this pre-meal to the wedding feast.
And he wants you to remember that you are loved, you are forgiven, you are made new, and you are a follower of King Jesus.
So, dear ones, come and take our family meal. You were invited to his table by his invitation. Be thankful.
The post The Voice Of The Good Shepherd (John 10:1-18) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
September 8, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Amen. All right, we’re going through the Bible, people, chronologically, and we are almost done with the Old Testament. I think we got three more weeks, and we’ll be in the gospels.
As we’re going through this chronologically, you know, what I’ve been doing is just taking one of the passages during the week that we read and preaching on that. I made a mistake last week. I made a mistake. I actually got a week ahead. Last week I preached Ezekiel 47, which was this week. And so I had a choice.
I was going to either go back a week and cover the week before. I was going to do Ezekiel 37, the dry bones. But then as I was reading, I came upon Daniel’s prayer in chapter nine. I thought, no, I’m going to preach on Daniel’s prayer.
So if you want to preach Ezekiel 37, if you want to hear that preached, go back there, write a sermon, preach it to the mirror, and you will be edified. Or maybe another day you’ll get the dry bones.
How about those huskers? This is their year, man. It is.
It’s not a prophecy. It’s a prediction. It’s not a prophecy. It’s a prediction. But this is the year they bring all those heartbreaking years where you were so close and lost. Close games. This is the year. This is the year.
All right. There you go. That’s a prediction. Yeah. All right. Spoken to God’s ear. Yep. That’s right. Hey, you have not, because you ask not.
All right, so Daniel 9. We’re going to read the first 19 verses. It’s Daniel’s prayer.
1 It was the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede, the son of Ahasuerus, who became king of the Babylonians. 2 During the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, learned from reading the word of the Lord, as revealed to Jeremiah the prophet, that Jerusalem must lie desolate for seventy years. 3 So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting. I also wore rough burlap and sprinkled myself with ashes. 4 I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed: “O Lord, you are a great and awesome God! You always fulfill your covenant and keep your promises of unfailing love to those who love you and obey your commands. 5 But we have sinned and done wrong. We have rebelled against you and scorned your commands and regulations. 6 We have refused to listen to your servants the prophets, who spoke on your authority to our kings and princes and ancestors and to all the people of the land. 7 “Lord, you are in the right; but as you see, our faces are covered with shame. This is true of all of us, including the people of Judah and Jerusalem and all Israel, scattered near and far, wherever you have driven us because of our disloyalty to you. 8 O Lord, we and our kings, princes, and ancestors are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. 9 But the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him. 10 We have not obeyed the Lord our God, for we have not followed the instructions he gave us through his servants the prophets. 11 All Israel has disobeyed your instruction and turned away, refusing to listen to your voice. “So now the solemn curses and judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured down on us because of our sin. 12 You have kept your word and done to us and our rulers exactly as you warned. Never has there been such a disaster as happened in Jerusalem. 13 Every curse written against us in the Law of Moses has come true. Yet we have refused to seek mercy from the Lord our God by turning from our sins and recognizing his truth. 14 Therefore, the Lord has brought upon us the disaster he prepared. The Lord our God was right to do all of these things, for we did not obey him. 15 “O Lord our God, you brought lasting honor to your name by rescuing your people from Egypt in a great display of power. But we have sinned and are full of wickedness. 16 In view of all your faithful mercies, Lord, please turn your furious anger away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. All the neighboring nations mock Jerusalem and your people because of our sins and the sins of our ancestors. 17 “O our God, hear your servant’s prayer! Listen as I plead. For your own sake, Lord, smile again on your desolate sanctuary. 18 “O my God, lean down and listen to me. Open your eyes and see our despair. See how your city the city that bears your name lies in ruins. We make this plea, not because we deserve help, but because of your mercy. 19 “O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act! For your own sake, do not delay, O my God, for your people and your city bear your name.” (Daniel 9:1-19, NLT)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and Redeemer.
As I came upon this prayer, I thought, well, this is Daniel praying for his nation. Now, it is wrong, I think, to make a direct correlation between God’s dealings with his covenant people, Israel, and the United States of America. We’re not Israel. We’re not ancient Israel. We’re not old covenant.
We live in a different time. We live under a different covenant. We live under a new covenant by faith in Jesus Christ.
But there are things that are true, and one of the things that is true is the nature of God. God doesn’t change. God is the same, all right?
God still hates sin. God still loves obedience. God still blesses, and God still judges, and prayer still works. And so, though you can’t draw a one-to-one correlation between America and ancient Israel, you can draw many correlations between God’s interactions with His people then and His people now.
The Old Testament was written for us. It wasn’t written to us, but it was written for us, all right?
And it brings edification. The New Testament says that. And so Daniel’s prayer has a lot to teach us as we pray for our nation. I pray for our nation. Listen, I don’t pray for our nation because the United States is more holy than any other nation, or God loves American babies more than He loves babies of any other nation. Listen, I pray for our nation because it’s my home.
The Bible says, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. I think we should pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but I think that also means he’s telling it to people who live in Jerusalem.
Pray for the peace of America. Pray for Poulsbo. Pray for Kitsap County. Pray for the state of Washington. Pray for the United States of America. God bless America.
And so I pray for our nation, and I pray. I have been praying for 20 years for our nation, and I’ve been praying, basically, I’ve been praying these three things repeatedly and hopefully passionately for the last several years.
And it’s very simple what I pray. I pray for a great awakening upon our land. God has sent great awakenings upon our land. Revivals, great awakening, renewals, whatever you want to call them.
I came to the Lord in the late seventies because a bunch of hippies came to my high school. They had read in the Bible they were supposed to look like Jesus. And they took that literally. They had long hair, they had beards, they had sandals. They came to my high school with young life, and they introduced me to Jesus. All right?
Now, I don’t think Jesus drove a Volkswagen van, but otherwise. And there’s no reference of Jesus saying far out, but otherwise, they were like Jesus to me. They were Jesus with skin on.
Later, I found out that that was the tail end of a movement, a tail end of a revival. It was less than perfect. Anything that happens here when God moves is going to be less than perfect.
John Wesley, one of the great revivalists of the 18th century, said, Lord, send us revival without warts, without distractions, without distortions, without exaggerations, without sin, without fallenness, messing it up. But then he said, but, Lord, if that’s not possible, send us revival, warts and all.
And so I pray for a great awakening upon our land. I pray there’s 350 million people in the United States. So I pray that millions would come to faith in this great awakening.
And I pray that this great awakening would be so deep in our culture that it would bring about a cultural reformation. It may happen. It may not happen. I don’t know. But I put my request in. I put one more request in. I say, Lord, I want it to happen in my lifetime. I want to play in this pool. And I’ve had pictures.
I don’t know if they’re pictures of my imagination or pictures from the Lord, but I’ve had pictures in my mind of a sea of young people on the floor worshiping and seeking God and calling out to God and just crying out because of His power.
I’ve had pictures in the Bremerton church of people walking in that, you know, that little side door that’s so embarrassing to walk in when you come to church late because we don’t have a back door. Yeah, that little side door where everybody’s like, oh, 11:10, isn’t it? There you go.
So there it is. You know, this is much, much more friendly, right? You can just sneak in. And by the way, if you come at 6:10, we’re not even done with our Bible study yet, so you’re good.
But people. And just the power of God being so powerful, and they walk in the door there. I don’t know if that’s me or that came from the Lord, but I pray for it.
Daniel is praying for his people. And as you know, if you’ve been reading the Bible, his people aren’t even in Jerusalem. They’re not in Israel.
They’re not in Judah. His people are in Babylon. And he’s the highest servant in the pagan nation of Babylon because God exalted him in that place. Because he was faithful to the Lord. God protected him from the lion’s den. He gave him the gift of interpreting dreams to kings, and he was exalted.
But Daniel prays for his people. And let me tell you where his prayer springs from. His prayer springs from reading the scriptures. He’s reading the prophet Jeremiah.
Dear ones, we think prayer springs from us, and a lot of prayer does, and there’s nothing sinful about that.
Lord, I need a job. Lord, I need this. Lord, I need. Lord, I need this to stop hurting. Lord, I need this to be healed. Lord, I need my kids to straighten out and fly right. I need the prodigals to come home. And we pray from our need, from our brokenness, from our hurt. Nothing wrong with that.
Give us this day our daily bread. God knows you have needs. But even the Lord’s prayer, when Jesus taught us to pray, didn’t start with, give us this day our daily bread. It started in response to our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name.
I’ll tell you, you want an effective prayer life, read the Bible and then let the Bible thrust you into prayer. I’ve told you this before. One of the best ways to pray. Pray the Psalms. Pray the Psalms.
So Daniel’s reading the Bible, and he comes upon this prophecy from the prophet Jeremiah that the people in exile are going to be returned to Jerusalem in 70 years.
Now, actually, Daniel has three choices, because there are actually three exiles. I love what Daniel does. He picks the earliest. That’s where we’re marking our 70 years from God. And that was only a couple of years away. And Daniel’s not seeing it. He’s not seeing it happening.
Let me tell you something. When you pray from the Scriptures, you’re going to be called to pray for things that you don’t see happening. But, man, there’s stuff happening. You know, the devil’s the devil of bright lights, headlines, right? Shouting things at us, and God is the God of the undercurrent.
And then all of a sudden, it springs forth and everybody, whoa, where’d that come from? Where’d that come from? Daniel doesn’t see it happening, but Jeremiah prophesied it, Daniel prayed it, and a few years later, Darius declared it.
By the way, that’s how intercessory prayer works. We believe God has something in his heart, and we let that launch us into giving earth to heaven. Prayers, Lord, this, this. Do this, Lord. Do this, Lord. Send our people back. And then heaven answers. And when heaven answers, somebody has to put feet on that prayer or a word on that prayer.
And when you speak a word but you haven’t actually heard from heaven, that’s presumption. There’s a lot of prophetic presumption that happens, all right? And I’ve been caught up in it. However, that doesn’t mean that prophecy is illegitimate.
It just means that we’re not perfect at it. But when we intercede and we actually hear from heaven and we don’t put legs on it and we don’t speak it, that’s incomplete. We haven’t completed the circle.
A woman came to me years and years ago, pastor in the church. She came to me and her kids went to a particular school in a particular school district. She wanted to keep the kids in that school and school district, actually the school my kids went to. Wonderful Christian principal, good school. We like the school, we like the kids.
And this woman goes, she was a renter. She says, our landlords, who we’ve had for years, are selling the house and we have to leave. I want to, we can’t afford to buy a house. I want to rent another house, but I want to rent a house where I can keep my kids in the school. But I’ve kind of been priced out of that neighborhood. So, pastor, pray.
So I prayed. Week one, Lord, I pray the right house, the right price, and the right place. In Jesus’ name, go your way.
I prayed, earth to heaven. Week two, Lord, I’m asking for this dear woman. I’m asking. I haven’t heard anything. I’m just asking God for the right house at the right price in the right place. God, I’m asking.
Week three, same prayer. She walks away. She’s got two weeks left. Week four, she comes to me. She goes, I got one week left. I go, I know. And I begin to pray. And this time I’m stopped in my prayer. I hear the voice, and the gift of faith lands on me.
And it says, tell her I have the right house at the right price, at the right place, and you will have it this week. And I said, instead of praying, I just looked at her. I said it. I declared it. I said it. God is giving you the right house at the right price, at the right place. Go in peace, you know, God bless you.
She kind of startled, walked away smiling. The gift of faith that landed on me immediately left. I turned to the lady I was praying with.
I go, I hope that was God. Set that poor woman up. But sure enough, right, the next week she comes, big smile on her face. Guess what? I got the, you know, and ended up, she was like three, the block behind us, so our back fence and her back fence, so the other street, but, you know, and like two houses down, almost kiddy corner to us. She became, she was our neighborhood.
All right, so that’s intercessory prayer. Jeremiah prophesied it, Daniel prayed it, Darius declared it. Now, Daniel’s prayer is serious.
He set his face, baby, when Jesus is going to Jerusalem, the Gospel of Luke says, he set his face. He set his face.
Have you ever seen, all right, my wife is strong-willed, all right. My son describes my wife this way. He says, she’s like a football goalpost. On the outside, it’s covered with soft tinder, so when you run into it, you don’t hurt. But if you bump into it, you’re not gonna move it. I thought that is the best description of your mother I’ve ever heard.
You know, you won’t break a bone running into it, but you’ll be on the ground. It’ll still use. My wife sets her face. All right. I had a strong-willed daughter, man, my first daughter, she sets her face all right.
There’s like, hey, God, could you do this for me? Maybe. But there’s another kind of prayer. It’s like, oh, God, oh, God, until you tell me to let go, Jacob, with the wrestling match, I’m holding on. Bless me. Let go. Bless me. I’m not going to let go till you bless me. I’m holding on.
I have set my face. Jesus set his face on Jerusalem. It wasn’t easy to go to Jerusalem. He knew what waited him. Jerusalem. But he knew. That’s why he came. He set his face.
Daniel sets his face on this prayer. God. I read it in Jeremiah. I don’t see it happening. Here we go. It’s on. It’s on. There’s got to be. Listen, there’s nothing wrong with casual prayer. I’m not putting it down. I mean, I think we should have, you know, the Bible says pray without ceasing.
Well, I think a lot of that has to be casual prayer. You know, you’re walking down the street and you see a homeless person, and you might not set your face, that case, but you might just say, Lord, help that dear soul. Help him, Jesus.
That’s not a set your face prayer. That’s a good prayer. That’s a good prayer.
Years ago, I had a grandson who was diagnosed with leukemia. My wife and I did some set your face praying. You know, that’s the time for set your face praying. And then he fasted.
That’s a way to set your face. Listen, fasting doesn’t earn God’s answers, but it makes us pray. It makes prayer serious.
Dear ones, I do not give up food easily, all right? I like food. Anybody here not like food? I mean, you skinny people, you’re acting like, oh, no, I don’t. Listen, you just have metabolisms, all right? Don’t gloat. And I love you. And I’m not mad at you for it, though sometimes I do want to sit on you. Ooh, look, I can feel those ribs. And you know what?
Fasting, that comes tougher for you people with metabolisms. Cause you’re wired to keep that engine. you’re like, you get 12 miles to the gallon. Not me, man. I’m a hybrid. I’m built for it. I’m built for it.
But it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. You know, and if you’re not good at it, don’t do ten days, do a day, do a meal. But, you know, the New Testament doesn’t really make fasting an option in terms of spiritual disciplines. Jesus doesn’t say, if you fast. He says, when you fast.
There ought to be times when we have set your face kind of prayers where we say, this is big enough not to eat, not to eat. And so he fasted, put on burlap, sackcloth, and ashes. That says he humbled himself.
I just read somewhere, praying on your knees, praying in a chair, and praying while you’re driving in your car are all different. And there’s truth to that. There’s truth to that. It doesn’t mean praying while you’re driving in your car is inconsequential.
If you pray in tongues, that’s a great place to pray in tongues, you know? And when you’re sitting, you can pray. But there’s something about the posture of your body when you hit your knees, because when you hit your knees, your body is declaring, hopefully, our hearts are constantly declaring: your God. I’m not. I bow before you. I come before you in humility, and prayer is 100% humble. God, I’m asking you for what I can’t do for myself. Daddy, I need you. Lest you be like a little child.
You know, my little grandson Theo, when he was three years old, we’d watch him a lot. And I just called him, I nicknamed him I want. I want, I want. Because he’s grandpa. I want, I want, I want, I want all day. I want, I want, I want.
Well, he wanted stuff. And you know what? It was too high in the pantry to get or too far back in the garage to find, to play with. And there’s kind of almost a bold humility about that. I can’t do this for myself, grandpa.
You got to help me. And, you know, he was persistent. I want. And sometimes I’d have to tell him no. And every time I did, I threw his mother under the bus. Well, your mom said I couldn’t give that to you. I would if I could, man. I’m on your side. But you know that mean lady? Yeah, I lived with her, too, for a long time. I get you. I feel your pain, but yeah.
All right. Here’s what Daniel did. He acknowledges God’s greatness, his justice, and his mercy. It’s a God centered prayer.
It’s not about us, and we feel like it’s about us. And there’s a natural reason for that. We are all self-conscious. And I don’t mean self-conscious in the shy sense. I just mean I don’t know what it’s like to be any other person in the universe but me. Right?
I can guess. you’re a human. I guess I can guess. We have common feelings, common experiences. That’s why we can communicate. That’s why I can talk to you. If I tell you something and you laugh, that means, oh, I get the joke.
I’m like you in that way. I can guess that there’s many ways we’re connected. But it’s hard not to put myself in the center of the universe because that’s my experience.
But as I read the Bible and as I am introduced to Jesus, as I meet the God of the Bible, I realize I’m not the center of the universe. That’s Job. That’s the book of Job. Job gets it. Job’s like, God, why’d you do this to me? Why? This is hurting me. God, this is no fair to me. God, you have to talk to me.
God, you have to answer me. God, you have to tell me why. And finally, God shows up, and he doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions. He doesn’t tell Job why. He doesn’t tell him why it’s happening to him. He doesn’t explain the whole mystery of why suffering happens to good people. He doesn’t give him any theology. He gives him nothing but this.
Hey, where were you? I’m God. you’re nothing.
And you know what? Job goes. you’re right. you’re right. I get it. I get it, God.
Daniel says, you are awesome and great, and your judgments on us are righteous and true. But I also know your nature is merciful.
And he prays to God about God’s qualities and God’s character. He prays God’s promises back to him. You know, there’s something in the Bible that’s effective about that.
I skipped that earlier, but about just praying the promises of God, it’s like some of the most effective prayers in the world. They pray this way. God, you said, you said one time, my nephew, you know, kids barraging you all day, right?
Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. And my nephew was the youngest, and his mom’s, like, doing something busy, and he just comes, mom. She didn’t hear what he says. And she goes, sure, honey. And he goes, really? I’m the luckiest boy in the whole world? And she’s like, oh, my gosh. What did I just say yes to?
I forget what it was, but I was like, I just said, okay, yeah, we can go to Disneyland this weekend. Sure. God, you promised. He is an awesome God.
And he brought his people out of Egypt with mighty acts and signs and wonders. Remember that? Remember his history. Remember his awesomeness.
He is righteous and just. And he punished Israel according to the terms of the covenant he made with them twice through Moses and once through Joshua. Israel agreed to this.
Sometimes people read the Old Testament and say, oh, God is so mean and he’s so harsh, and look at these terrible judgments. And they were hard judgments, but it was all a part of the deal. He spelled it out. Obey my covenant.
Follow my covenant, these blessings will fall upon you and your land. Disobey my covenant, and guess what? you’re going to get exiled. you’re going to get taken away. This is going to happen to you. And you think God is harsh.
Ezekiel, the prophet, is told to lie on his side for 430 days to represent 430 years God had been sending prophets to Israel saying, you are disobeying my covenant. I said it last week. I’ll say it again. The prophets in the Old Testament are covenant lawyers, and their prophecies are presenting God’s case to disobedient Israel.
They’re prosecuting attorneys. 430 years. My kids didn’t get 430 years. My dad. Now this is a joke. My dad’s an Irishman. You got to understand. Or at least he thought he was an Irishman. But he never beat us. He never did anything. But he’d look at us and go, all right, what do you want, sudden death or crippled for life?
My kids didn’t get 430. Right? They got. Anybody else? Get this. Three. Right. Pick that up. No, one. Two. There were no two and a halfs. My kids got no two and a halfs.
You know, and I didn’t wait a long time. You know, I give them a little second at three to consider, but three’s coming. No, 430 years. God punishes Israel exactly according to the terms and conditions of the covenant that they agreed to.
And yet Daniel says, also forgiveness and mercy belong to you. Israel sinned. Daniel says they did not obey the voice of the Lord. They did not turn to the Lord, their God.
Sometimes when you’re sharing faith with people and you say, you know, everybody needs Jesus, Jesus is the way of the Father.
And here’s one of the people will dodge that. All right? They’ll dodge it with, my grandmother was a Baptist. We’re not talking about your grandmother, you know, but I’m a good person or anything.
But one of the greatest dodges is, well, what about people who never knew? And my deal was, you’re in America, man. You know, what about you? We’ll talk about what people who never knew later.
You see, you got no excuse. Even in an unchurched county like Kitsap County, there’s still a church on every corner.
There is tons of stuff on the Internet now, and some of it is even good. If you want to find great theology on the Internet, all you have to do is go to the firehousechurchpalsbow.com. No, I mean, everybody thinks their theology. Listen, it’s not arrogant to think your theology is right. It wouldn’t be your theology if you didn’t think it was right.
All right, humility is admitting I could be wrong. But really, nobody has an excuse in our culture for not gaining. Jesus said it this way. He left people without excuse. He said, listen.
He didn’t say dude, but almost, listen, dude. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be answered. Ask and it will be given to you. Turn your head.
He says in Romans that God’s revelation is in all of nature. His power, his glory. His revelation is in all of nature. And yet we decided to turn from him and serve created things instead of the creator.
Israel had the covenant, had the voice, had the prophets, had the history. And Daniel says, we’ve not listened to your voice. Listen to the voice of God, people.
And I’ve had people come to me and say this, and I believe God speaks. I believe God speaks to your heart, your head. I believe he can speak. He’s spoken to me through road signs. You know, he can never speak to my wife that way, but he can speak to me through.
She doesn’t read road signs. She doesn’t know they exist. She’s oblivious to them. She is. I mean, it’s true. It’s like, is there an exit coming up? Yeah, that little sign said I’m 1 mile. Oh, I didn’t see that.
What’s the speed limit here? The posted speed limit? Anyway, God has spoken to me through road signs.
But dear ones, I had a guy come into my office marrying him, his wife, and talking, great time. You do marriage counseling, you talk to him about Jesus, right. As a Methodist church at the time, great church for weddings. Nice center aisle, beautiful church. So we did a wedding business. I didn’t mind doing a wedding business. It was great. I get people coming in all the time. Can we get married in your building? Will you marry us?
You bet. Six hours. You got to spend six hours with the preacher for me to marry you. I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about being happily married, and the foundation of that is knowing Jesus Christ.
And they got the gospel. I don’t know how many of them took it to heart, but they got it all right. One guy says, well, man, God never talks to me. I say, you got a Bible? Yeah, I got a Bible. You ever read it? No. Well, how do you know if He talks to you?
Never opened your mail. I believe in prophecy, but people come up and they say, oh, pastor, give us a prophetic word. Read your Bible. Lots of words in there, you know. Oh, I just want a prophetic word. I want a prophetic word. Well, God will give you prophetic words. Sometimes it’s words you don’t want to hear.
Martin Luther, this may be legendary, but Martin Luther, you know, he was all, you know, God’s. And somebody said, Martin, you got an important sermon coming up this Sunday. Are you preparing? He said, the Lord will speak to me.
Somebody told him the next day, Martin, you got an important sermon coming. Are you preparing? The Lord will speak to me.
Third day, Martin, you got an important sermon coming up. Are you preparing? The Lord will speak to me.
And Martin said, I got up to preach Sunday morning, and sure enough, God is faithful. He spoke to me, and he said, Martin, you’re lazy. So read.
There it is. Listen to the voice of God. If God doesn’t speak to you prophetically, if he doesn’t speak to you through road signs, if he doesn’t speak to you through dreams and visions, try your Bible.
In fact, all those other ways that God speaks will become more clear to you and more accessible to you the more you are a person of this book.
We did not turn to the Lord our God. When I went to seminary, I thought everybody who read and studied the Bible was a deeply devout believer.
But I found out there were thousands of scholars who were deeply immersed in the scriptures but did not believe. They said, how is that possible? They did not turn their hearts to God.
I will tell you this. In my experience, unbelief is never a head thing. It’s always a heart thing. That’s why I love apologetics. But I find that the main use of apologetics is strengthening believers in their faith, not convincing unbelievers of their unbelief.
You know what convinces unbelievers of their unbelief? A praying grandma. Holy Spirit. Sic em. Get them. Get that prodigal.
Bring them back. Reveal Jesus. Reveal Jesus. But they did not turn their hearts. They did not repent. They did not repent.
Listen, repentance has not left the gospel message. Oh, God is love. God is grace. God is mercy. Amen. Amen. Amen. Great. No. Step in the river. Step into love and goodness and mercy. I will. But I still want to smoke weed and sleep around. Now that doesn’t work that way.
Those were my 1980s. Listen, young people, those things were around in the eighties. Those were my two objections.
Lord, I want to smoke weed and I want to sleep around. And he said, well, Kev, the weed makes you stupid, and there are no willing women out there. You keep striking out, dude.
You’re right. you’re right. So repent. So I threw my weed away and I stopped chasing women. And one called me up and asked me out. And 43 years later, I’m using her as sermon illustrations. It’s great. I’m so brave when she’s not here.
Lord, you’re great. Lord, we have sinned. Lord, forgive again.
Yeah, I want mercy, but, Lord, for your sake, he says, turn from anger and instead make your face shine upon your sanctuary.
Forgive us, Lord, not because we deserve it, but to display to all the world your great mercy. Lord, hear us. Lord, forgive us. Lord, act quickly.
I love that. That’s what I got this week, man. I’ve been praying. I told you, I’ve been praying those three things, right? God sent a great awakening on America. Lead millions of people to Christ, and let that awakening be so deep that it brings about a cultural reformation.
And Daniel just gave me my appendix to that prayer. Now every time I pray that, I’m adding this: Lord, hear. Lord, forgive. Lord, act quickly. Thank you, Daniel.
Lord, hear from heaven. Lord, my face is set. My heart is turned. I have fasted, I have humbled myself. Lord, hear from heaven. Lord, forgive our nation. Forgive me, forgive your church, forgive us, Lord. And Lord, act quickly.
Man. I want to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And if I die before it comes, God’s smarter than me.
Okay, Lord, you know better than me. You answer prayers wiser than me. You get sent Jesus. Israel cried out for a Messiah for hundreds of years before the fullness of time came. I get it. You got a better plan than me.
But I also get that you adjust your plan to the passionate prayers of your people. How do I know that? Jesus at the wedding in Cana. Woman, it’s not my time yet. Yeah, let me go talk to your dad about that. Hey, do whatever he wants. I guess it is my time.
You don’t think Jesus knew the timing of the Father, and yet there’s such a faith in love, in Mary. It’s like the whole timetable of the revelation of Jesus. Well, we can work this out. We can do this because we just love this woman.
Why don’t you be that woman that so has the ear and heart of God that he says, yeah, we’ll do that. Lord, hear. Lord, forgive. I pray for revival upon America, Lord. Oh, Jesus. Not that we deserve it. God, the world’s number one leader in the exportation of pornography.
We don’t deserve it. But, Lord, if anything says we need it, it’s that statistic. Lord, we say we’re not pagans. We don’t sacrifice our babies to demons anymore, yet we just do it quietly before they’re born. Lord, forgive.
But, Lord, that’s why we’re praying for revival, that it would bring a cultural reformation and a repentance upon this land. And as the early Methodist preachers preached, that it would spread scriptural holiness across this land. Lord, hear. Lord, forgive. Lord, act quickly.
The final thing that Daniel does is he identifies with the sinfulness of Israel, not his own righteousness. Daniel did none of these things. He never sacrificed his kids to demon gods. He never made little idols and set them up in his household. In fact, he resisted idolatry in Babylon to the point of it threatening his own life. He and his buddies, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they would not worship the king. They would not worship idols. They would not violate their convictions to serve a pagan nation, and they were persecuted for it. Daniel was faithful.
And yet he doesn’t say, lord them. He says, lord us. He identifies with the people out of his great love, not only for God, but his great love for his people.
Now, I’ll confess to you my political ilk. Here’s a hint. My wife and I went and saw the movie Reagan last night, and I liked it. Okay. That’ll tell you where I am politically, right? And my guess is most of you are. I don’t know, but. And that’s not my point here. I’m not trying to convince you to be Republicans or anything, but.
But here’s the deal. But do vote, by the way. You got a great privilege. Do it right. Say your prayers, vote your conscience, cast your vote. My vote doesn’t count in Washington. If everybody who said that voted, it would. So just vote. All right?
I’m not going to tell you how to vote. I’m going to tell you what the Bible says, and that ought to shape how you vote. All right? But that’s not my point. My point is the US, and here’s the thing.
When Donald Trump was president, people of my ilk, I’d go to prayer meetings and, oh, there was passion. Pray for Trump, man. That wicked media is coming after him. Pray for Trump. They’re trying to bring him down. Pray for Trump. He needs our protection.
I had no problem with any of that. Here’s what I had a problem with. January 20, 2020. Those same people weren’t saying, pray for Biden. Pray for Harris. And I get it. It was harder, okay? Smite them, squash them, judge them. We want to win. Put them in their place.
What if their place is a place of being swept up in the mercy of God? Do you want that more than judgment?
Moses? Hard-hearted people. These people were a pain to Moses, dragging 2 million grumblers across the desert. We don’t have enough to eat. Here you go. Plenty to eat. Oh, it’s delicious. Week later. We want meat. Here’s meat coming out your nose. We don’t want meat. We want water. God’s provided you water. We want more water. We don’t want to fight them. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to.
We don’t want to go. Here’s the land filled with milk and honey. you’re going to defeat your enemies. We’re scared. We don’t want to go. Okay? I got to spend 40 more years with you out in the desert, and God says, I’m going to wipe them out.
Man, you went up to the mountain for a month. They built a golden calf. They didn’t build a golden calf because they hadn’t experienced my signs and wonders.
They’re fresh off ten plagues that delivered them from the most powerful nation of the world. They had all that gold to build a golden calf because they plundered the Egyptians. They were rich and free because of my hand, and they built a calf.
All right, I tell you what. I want a people for myself, Moses. But I’ll kill all these, and I’ll just raise up a new generation out of you. And here’s what Moses said. Kill me too, then kill me too. And God says, you passed the test.
You don’t think that’s good enough identification for you? What about Jesus before John in the Jordan River? What does the Bible say? The baptism of John was specifically about the forgiveness of sins. One person in the history of the whole universe who doesn’t need that comes before John. And John’s going, this is blowing me away. This is confusing me. You should be baptizing me. And Jesus says, do it so that all righteousness may be fulfilled.
Do it because I’m so identifying with a fallen and rebellious people that I will be baptized in their place because I’m going to die in their place.
And so Daniel says, when you pray, pray for us, not them. We’re a part of the us. And it’s not just the us who thinks like me, dresses like me, talks like me, goes to church like me. If you want the us to be saved, then you got to love the us. You can’t hate them. You can’t hate them.
Now, listen, I’m not saying, oh, by all means, don’t become a wimpy, soppy, convictionless person. We got our quota of codependent niceness in our country. We don’t need that. That’s not what love is. That’s not love at all. That’s cheap and lazy.
You can call wrong wrong. And you can call broke broke. But you can’t hate. James and John, you want us to call down fire on Samaria? That’d be a show. That’d be a 4th of July show. Sodom and Gomorrah, baby. Here we go.
And Jesus says no, I don’t want you to call fire on Samaria. I came to seek and save that which was lost.
So, Heavenly Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, you are awesome. And you are right in all your judgments. And, Lord, we have sinned. We have sinned, and we deserve judgment. We deserve, Lord, nothing from your hand, and we confess it. We have not heard your voice. We have not turned to you.
But, Lord, because of your great mercy and for the glory of your name that you would display to the world, that you are a mighty God of signs and wonders and of mercy and forgiveness, that you are a mighty God of salvation. That you are a mighty God who died on the cross and rose from the dead.
We pray for a great awakening in our land, Lord, that would lead millions of people to Christ and, Lord, would bring about a deep cultural reformation, not because we deserve it, but because we need it.
And we pray now. In the name of Jesus, God of heaven, hear, hear our prayer. God of heaven, forgive our sin. And God of heaven, we ask in the name of Jesus that you would act quickly. In his name, we pray for our land. Amen. Amen.
We got a God of mercy. On the night he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it, the Passover bread. You know, I delivered you from death, I delivered you from slavery. That’s a picture of a bigger deliverance, because this lamb, that lamb, this bread, unleavened bread, it’s me.
I’m the hope of the Passover, and my body’s going to be broken, and my blood is going to be poured out. And in that, all the blessings of Psalm 103 come to my new covenant people. your sins are forgiven, your diseases are healed, you’re redeemed from the pit. He crowns you with love and compassion, he renews your youth like eagles, and he satisfies you with good things.
This is my blood of the new covenant that starts with the forgiveness of sins, but goes deeper and richer, as C.S. Lewis said, further up and deeper in.
And when you gather together, I want you to take this simple meal, but I want you to know that it’s my table and I’m there. I don’t want you ever to forget whose you are and what I’ve done. Be filled not with remorse for your sin. Yes, repent, but then be filled with gratitude and great joy.
Dear ones, I can’t say this enough. I hope when I’m gone, there’ll be Kevinisms you remember. All right, like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat. You know, stuff like that.
But here’s one I hope you remember. I hope you remember this. We have inherited a great salvation, greater than we could know.
And so the Lord invites you to His Table. Take and eat the right. If you’re a traditionalist and you like wine, the redhead cup is wine. If you’re Scottish and Irish, that I am, and prone to alcoholism, the blue cup is grape juice, so, you know.
But come and eat, it’s the food of God for the people of God.
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September 1, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon.
The post 2024.9.1 TFHC – The River Of Life (Ezekiel 47:1-12) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
August 25, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
All right. Ezekiel 28.
11 Then this further message came to me from the Lord: 12 “Son of man, sing this funeral song for the king of Tyre. Give him this message from the Sovereign Lord: “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and exquisite in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God. Your clothing was adorned with every precious stone — red carnelian, pale-green peridot, white moonstone, blue-green beryl, onyx, green jasper, blue lapis lazuli, turquoise, and emerald — all beautifully crafted for you and set in the finest gold. They were given to you on the day you were created. 14 I ordained and anointed you as the mighty angelic guardian. You had access to the holy mountain of God and walked among the stones of fire. 15 “You were blameless in all you did from the day you were created until the day evil was found in you. 16 Your rich commerce led you to violence, and you sinned. So I banished you in disgrace from the mountain of God. I expelled you, O mighty guardian, from your place among the stones of fire. 17 Your heart was filled with pride because of all your beauty. Your wisdom was corrupted by your love of splendor. So I threw you to the ground and exposed you to the curious gaze of kings. 18 You defiled your sanctuaries with your many sins and your dishonest trade. So I brought fire out from within you, and it consumed you. I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who were watching. 19 All who knew you are appalled at your fate. You have come to a terrible end, and you will exist no more.” (Ezekiel 28:11-19, NLT)
God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our rock, our strength, our redeemer. Amen.
All right. There are two. Well, first of all, we live in a material and a spiritual world and universe. God created two orders of beings, both in his image and likeness.
And what he means by that is meant to rule with him, meant to not. Not become. Not become co-gods, but meant to share in his divine counsel. In one group, he gave over the heavenly realms to. To be part of his divine council over the heavenly realms. And loosely, we call that group angels. But they are. They’re a variety. That’s far too simple.
Angels and demons is a little too simple. There’s just a variety. There’s cherubs and seraphim and archangels and the whole. And, you know, there’s principalities and powers and spiritual forces of wickedness and demons.
And there’s a spectrum here that we aren’t given a lot of information in the Bible in. And we’re not given a lot of information on how that angelic order came into being. We’re given the story of how humans were created, not how angels were created, and we’re not given a lot of information on how they fell.
But there are two places in the prophets where there seems to be, where the prophet seems to shift from talking about an earthly king or an earthly ruler to talking about a heavenly principality and God’s judgment upon that principality.
That’s in Isaiah 14 and here in Ezekiel 28.
And so I just want to tell you, and I’ve told you this time and time again, and I think you all believe this.
We are living in a world where spiritual warfare is a reality. All the evil and all the goodness in this world aren’t simply the result of human choices. They are also affected by the work of God, the Holy Spirit, working in us and through us, the work of Jesus on the cross, the Father working throughout history.
These are all parts of what this world has been shaped by, along with the principalities and powers, the Spiritual forces of wickedness that fell, that rebelled.
And it seems like under the leadership or under the ruler of this one exalted angel at the beginning, this one kind of high angel, this one anointed cherub, who has the name Lucifer, or sometimes we call him Satan, though Satan is more a description, the Satan. Satan means adversary, the adversary.
And this passage looks like it’s a description of the fall of that anointed cherub. And this is just one of the few places in the Bible where we have information regarding that. And here’s the clue. The clue is in Ezekiel 28.
Ezekiel is prophesying against the nation, the city-state of Tyre. And he’s prophesying against the ruler of that city-state, the prince of Tyre. Up to verse ten, he’s prophesying against the prince of Tyre. And all the prophecies are very this-worldly. They’re very much about his ships, his armies, his cities, etcetera, etcetera, that are going to go down.
There’s a shift in verse eleven where he shifts from talking about the prince of Tyre to talking about the king of Tyre.
And this is one of the places in the Bible where the curtain is drawn back. And God now says, as I’m bringing judgment upon the prince of Tyre, the literal man that lives there and rules that city, so I want you now to know that behind him is a principality, is a ruling cherub, a ruling fallen angel, and this is the judgment upon that one.
And I think he takes the step even further to say he’s not just the principality of that region, but the king of Tyre is in fact Lucifer himself.
And God here is describing his fall and his judgment in Ezekiel 28. The clue is that he moves from the prince of Tyre to the king of Tyre, and then he moves into the heavenly realm. He’s talking about things in heaven. He’s talking about him being present in Eden. He’s talking about him being cast out of heaven, and all these kinds of things give us the clue. He’s moved on from talking about an earthly ruler to a spiritual ruler. He says that this spiritual ruler had perfection, wisdom, and beauty.
We were talking earlier. How could Solomon have fallen with all his wisdom? Well, an even better question is how could Lucifer fall with all his wisdom? And yet, there is something in the heart of men and angels that God has created who are to join Him to oversee all of His creation.
There’s something in that heart that is free, and that freedom does not create evil, but it does create the possibility for evil. It creates the possibility for rebellion.
I happen to think my best take on this is that, as I observe life and as I read the scriptures, love requires freedom. I’m not a Calvinist. Love requires freedom. And love is God’s highest value and therefore created beings with freedom who could freely choose to love or reject.
One of the greatest joys of life is to love something and to have that love returned, or to be loved by someone or something and to return that love.
I hope that just the last half an hour before I got up here and talked, you experienced joy as in music. You were returning love to the God who has loved you.
Singing is not meant to be a duty. It is a duty, but it’s meant to be a duty that’s filled with joy because we’re returning love. That’s how love works. I love you. I love you, too. All right.
You pour out love upon people, and one of the greatest pains of life is to expend love towards someone and to have it rejected. That’s painful.
God is willing because love is the highest value. It appears to be the highest value. He is willing to create beings who theoretically, conceivably, possibly can choose to reject and disobey.
We don’t know how many angels rejected and disobeyed God. Revelation 12 talks about the dragon, a picture of Satan and the powers of evil, and sweeping his tail, and a third of the stars falling from the heavens.
And some people have taken that to say, since stars often represent angelic beings and apocalyptic visions of the Bible, some people have taken that to say, well, ultimately, one third of the angels rebelled against God.
We don’t know that they all rebelled at once. We don’t know that they all went with Satan at once. There are some indications in the scriptures that maybe there were multiple falls. We see Satan in the Garden of Eden. Then we see the sons of God who apparently hadn’t fallen yet.
Maybe they had, but beginning to cohabitate with the women of the earth. And then God judges them, and they’ve fallen.
And then we see in Genesis 11, God turning the nations, the disobedient nations who tried to build the tower of Babel, over to these Elohim, these small g gods. And we’re not sure if they were fallen gods at that point or in their rulership of those nations, became fallen gods. It seems like they had already fallen. But we’re not. But those things aren’t even clear to us.
But what we do know is that this dark side of angelic powers is real. And Ezekiel 27 again talks about this leader. I’ll tell you. Anybody ever have any scary devil stories?
When I was, like, 18 years old, I got to house sit for friends of the family, and they were a little wealthier than we were. They lived in California, in the Bay Area, but they lived in the foothills. We lived in the valley, in Campbell. They lived in the foothills. Saratoga.
And they had this beautiful house in Saratoga, my dad used to say, where the other half lived. They let me house sit, and you could see over the entire Santa Clara Valley from their front window. It was just gorgeous.
I would go up there and house sit. The guy was an engineer. Engineers are the best people in the world. I love engineers. He’d give me the keys to his BMW and just say, here. I took Jill out on a date in that BMW. It was great.
Love that house. But one night, I came home from work around midnight. Three things happened simultaneously. I turned on the TV. I was watching TV. When I had come in from the garage, I had closed the door from the garage to the house, but apparently, I did not close it all the way, so it hadn’t clicked right.
And this engineer was a collector of grandfather clocks. He had grandfather clocks throughout the house, maybe a dozen of them or a half dozen. I don’t know—a lot of grandfather clocks.
And at midnight, three things happened simultaneously on the television. A commercial came on. This was way back when, for the movie The Exorcist. So I’m up in this house all alone, all the lights are off. And all of a sudden I see on the TV screen, Regan was a normal girl until head spinning, barfing.
But at the exact time that commercial came on, all the grandfather clocks began to dong. You know how unsettling that is? you’re all alone in this dark house. This commercial’s on—dong, dong, dong, dong. And the vibration from those clocks.
Donging took the door that had not been completely closed, and the door went squeaked and opened.
You never saw. I was an athlete in high school. I had athletic ability, but I don’t think in any game or practice I ever was in. Did I run so fast as I ran that night, turning all the lights on in that house and calling for their dog Fred to come and be by my side.
Fred, get over here. Get over here. And it was old school. I had to actually get up and turn off the tv.
I couldn’t just shut it off with the remote. It was terrible. It was horrifying. The movie The Exorcist. Oh, boy.
We have all these movies about demonic powers and demonic beings, but they work much more subtly than that. Sometimes they manifest as horrors and treacherous, but mostly they work through getting us to agree with them and to invite them into circumstances.
The devil was perfect in wisdom and beauty, but he fell, he rebelled, and he was cast down. And he’s in Eden.
Then the first place we see him is in the garden of Eden, where he tempts. He doesn’t horrify, he doesn’t scare, but he tempts men and women to join him in his pride. You will be like God. Disobey, and you will be like God.
He’s adorned with these magnificent stones that represent, really, a lot of the stones that Ezekiel 27 talks about were the stones that Israel’s priests were adorned with. And so there’s an indication here that the adornment of stones says he’s a priest. That is, he has access to God and access to humanity.
He’s a mediator between God and humanity. That’s part of his created purpose. He’s a leader of worship. He’s a great musician. He’s an anointed cherub. He’s one of the angels surrounding the throne of God.
And there’s even indications in this passage that he is possibly the prime angel, the leading angel in heaven. Mormons have taken it too far and said he and Jesus are brothers. It’s not that they have a wrong understanding at that point of who Lucifer was. They have a wrong understanding of who Jesus is. The devil is not God’s opposite.
He’s not God’s equal. He’s God’s creation that has fallen. Evil, in fact, is not the opposite of good. Everything in creation is good. What’s evil? The absence of good or the twisting of good.
There’s nothing that the devil has. You know, somebody will say, that’s just pure evil. No, it’s not. There’s no such thing as pure evil. Darkness is the absence of light. And Satan then brings darkness in his rebellion.
There are four ways. Ignore my slides. There are four ways, not three. I’m going to change this a little bit.
You get the revised sermon I preach in Bremerton, and go, that stunk. I got to make it better tonight for Paul’s bow. So you get the revised sermon, but he says, iniquity was found in you. And then he kind of describes what the iniquity was.
I’m going to talk about four areas of iniquity that are in Lucifer, but also then that Lucifer really brings to effect on earth. And they’re the kind of iniquities and kind of troubles and kind of evil that we experience on earth.
He says, first of all, you are competitive in trade because of your great trade, because of your great wealth. He had. Somehow he had this heavenly wealth. Maybe being the first, you know, that there’s something there.
But because of your competitiveness or your pride in trade, there now has created on earth a fallenness in trade. And we’ve seen it throughout the history of humanity.
The Bible says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Now, don’t make the mistake. And here again, is money. Is wealth.
Is the means to provide for your family evil? No. That is all part of God’s good creation. Nowhere does the Bible say money is evil. In fact, the Bible says these things were given that you might enjoy them.
You don’t have to feel guilty about your home or your automobile or your clothes, your hobbies. It’s the worldliness. It’s when those things take precedent, when we put too much value in those things, we invest our pride and our worth in those things.
Have you ever wondered why multibillionaires are still playing the game?
You know, it always struck me, why do people with generational wealth want more wealth? It seems to me it’s time to enjoy the wealth. But they still play the game, and they play it vigorously. Why? Because they want to win. They want to win.
For some who may be very humble, it’s okay to be the fifth richest man in the world. But others, I want that title. The richest man in the world. There is a competitiveness.
Let me tell you something about competitiveness again, the good side, the created side.
Lord, you have given me gifts, and I want to be the best that I can be. I want to excel in all the potential that you have given me to your glory and the benefit of others.
And then there’s the other side. I want to beat him. I want to put her down. I want them to be put in their place. It’s not, I want to be the best I can be to glorify God and to enjoy all the potential he has given me.
But it is that I can put my foot on the neck of my opponent and say, I won and you lost. Ha ha.
I’m a sports fan. I see both these in sports all the time. I see both these in sports all the time. And I see people excel in sports using both of those motivations.
I see people using the motivation of joy. I delight in what my body can do at this young age. I delight in this. And it makes me a great living, and it’s fun, and there’s a camaraderie and the teamwork.
And in that aspect, I just think sports is one of the best things you can be involved in. One of the best things you can get your kids involved in, learning teamwork and joy, and becoming physically fit and just feeling the pleasure, if that’s your ilk, feeling the pleasure of it.
But there’s a dark side. The dark side is they’re the enemy. And I always call sports fake war. It’s pretend war, right? Because you pretend that your team is the good guys and the other team is the bad guys.
And I’ll tell you something.
As long as it’s pretend, as long as Kathleen and Mick joke about the Yankees and the Red Sox, it’s fun. But if Kathleen and Mick come to blows over the Yankees and Red Sox (and I’m putting my money on Kathleen), it becomes something dark, right?
The same is true with money. If money ceases to be a means to provide for my family, to be generous, and to help my family, and to enjoy life and help others enjoy life, it’s good. But when it becomes “he who dies with the most toys wins,” it’s evil.
And what Satan, who had all the toys of heaven, has done is he’s twisted our minds to that perspective. And so there’s wickedness in trade, right? And we see it. We see one of the arguments in our country, one of the philosophical arguments in our country: is it better to have big government curb a big business? Or is it better to let big business run on its own and have big government out of the way?
And the problem is you look at either one of those things and it’s extreme and they’re bad.
If you let big business run its way, what does it ultimately end up in? Child labor and slave houses.
If you let big government have its way, what does it end up in? Genocides? Concentration camps.
Why? Satan and our following of Satan filled with violence. Lucifer became filled with violence. Might makes right. You get your way by force. You get your way by force. I want it. You can’t have it. I’m bigger. I’m going to punch you. I’m taking your lunch money. Bullies on local levels, on national levels.
Everyone in this room has probably been bullied at one time or another. Also, everyone in this room has probably been a bully at one time or another.
Ladies, don’t think that it’s only men who are bullies. Men tend to bully with the threat of physical violence. I can’t explain how women bully, but I did watch the, I did watch the movie Mean Girls. I think I saw it there. I think I saw it there.
But I get what I want through force or manipulation.
But I take what I want from you without regard for you and only for me. And I take it because I can.
Poland. We’d like to be a nation. Nazi Germany. We’re going to take you. We’re going to take you.
All right, Native Americans, you can have this property as long as the grass grows and the wind blows. Oh, there’s gold discovered in those hills. Yeah, that ain’t that we got. It’s ours now. It’s ours now. You take it because you can.
The devil has no regard for others. Demons have no regard for others, only for themselves. They’ll take what they can, whenever they can. It’s violence. History is written in violence.
Then there’s pride and vanity. I want to take two levels of pride here. I want to break this out. Vanity is the desire to be a people pleaser. That my satisfaction will come. And this is almost the most humble of all vices, but it’s still a vice. My satisfaction will come by the praise of other people. Please love me. Please like me. Look at me. I’m smart, I’m pretty, I’m successful.
Look at me. You see people craving fame. It’s amazing how many people have gained fame and have come to the conclusion of Ecclesiastes that, oh, man, this is the worst. I wouldn’t wish fame on my worst enemy.
Look at the plight of child stars. You know how many of them turn out well? A very small percentage. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. Misery, misery upon misery.
Oh, look at me. The famous comedian Bill Murray at his old age, a little Ecclesiastes. Momentous. Somebody said, what’s it like to spend your whole adult life rich and famous?
He said, I take the former, not the latter. I like being rich. I don’t like being famous.
When he was a young man, oh, did he want to be famous? You don’t get upstage and tell jokes in front of hundreds of people and do movies unless you want to be famous. You don’t keep doing them unless you want to be famous. Because once you do them, there’s other ways to make money. Once you make a little bit of money, there’s a lot of other ways to make money.
Vanity, please look at me. Please love me. We spend millions and millions of dollars on fashion and makeup and correct bodily surgery. Not to fix something that’s ill in our bodies, but just to make us look different so people will look at us and approve of us.
Oh, please, like me. And let me tell you the good side of that. We all desire to be loved, but the dark side that leads is the pride and vanity of I want it all. I want all the attention, all the affection. We can’t handle it, and yet we crave it.
And then, as I said, that’s probably the least, the most humble kind of pride. The worst kind of pride, which Satan had, is spiritual pride. I’m the most spiritual. And in fact, what does it say? I want to sit on the throne of God. I want to usurp God.
And it is the most dangerous pride out there. It’s the pride of the Pharisee. It’s the pride that says, I know what’s right and best. I am holier than you, I’m smarter than you. God likes me better than you.
And in fact, if I do everything perfectly, God is in my debt. If I obey the laws, God owes me. And so this is the pride of Satan he wants, and this is the pride he tempts Adam and Eve to. You can be your own goddess. It’s the pride ultimately behind all disobedience. All disobedience is I want to be my own God.
My little grandsons, grandchildren are great. You just love them so much. But my wife and I are not under the illusion that our grandchildren are not little original sinners.
We see it all the time. We just laugh because their parents have to deal with it because we had to deal with it with their parents. And we just see the justice in that, right? It’s like, huh? Yeah, you used to do that, too.
But my grandson told his father recently, my son said, you got to do this. He says, you can’t make me do that. I have a choice. And my son is a wise father. He said, you’re right. You do have a choice. You can obey or disobey.
And he says, I have a choice on what the consequences of that will be. So we both have choices. So, son, choose wisely. You have the choice not to do that, but that doesn’t end it.
But ultimately, our rebellion is God. You can’t make me. And God says, I won’t. If you want to skip to hell, I’ll let you. I love you.
The father and the prodigal sons doesn’t stop the prodigal son. Doesn’t stop him. I want my money and leave. I don’t want your life. Okay. It won’t go well for you. Too bad.
You and that little big brother of mine aren’t going to tell me what to do anymore. All right.
Was Jacob bossy? You got blessed sometimes. Sometimes. That’s a little bossy. Yeah, that’s a little bossy. That’s a little bossy.
I say, you should pick that instrument up. Just because I’m passive-aggressive that way. You should pick that instrument back up and go to his house and serenade him someday. Yeah, your mom and I think that would be hilarious. Yeah. Yes, that’s right.
All right. God says because of this, Satan, you’re judged. He is cast out of heaven. In fact, the Bible talks about four casting downs. He’s cast down to earth, he’s cast out of heaven, and he’s cast down to earth.
Jesus talks about when the gospel is preached and the kingdom of God advances in power, that he said, I saw Satan fall from heaven to the earth. He said, I saw him fall. And so there’s a sense where he’s cast down into the earthly realm at Eden, but he still has this control over earth.
But as the gospel is proclaimed and preached, he is cast down again. He is defeated again and he’s cast down.
If you want to cast down principalities and powers, do what I tell you to do, all right? Just do what I tell you to do. Lead somebody to Jesus. Heal the sick, cast out demons, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. Do the Jesus stuff in your life and in your community and in your world. When you do that, you’re doing spiritual warfare. you’re casting down the devil.
Then in Revelation 20, it says, he is bound. He is bound for a thousand years. Now, if you’re a futurist dispensationalist, you will take that literally and you’ll talk about the thousand-year millennium.
If you’re a millennialist or a post-millennialist, you’ll take that thousand years figuratively. And you’ll say, at the ascension of Jesus, at the victory of Jesus, through his resurrection and ascension, Satan has been bound from stopping the nations from receiving Christ. He can still wreak havoc through his commands and through his demons, but he can no longer own the nations.
He can no longer own people groups that the gospel now is free to expand. And so those are two views on that. You know me well enough to know which one of those I take. But we’re not getting into that tonight.
In either sense, though, his judgment is he’s cast down to the pit, and he is chained. And the final casting down is he is cast into the lake of fire. And so he will be cast down from his high and exalted place as the leading cherub in heaven.
He’ll be cast down to eternal torment in the lake of fire, and even saved humans will judge him and the other fallen angels. He’ll be cast down before kings.
You know who the kings are? Well, they may be literal kings on the earth, but you know who else they are? They’re the sons and daughters of the most high God. God says we will judge angels. Well, what angels will we judge? Not the good angels.
When I say, hey, guardian angel, remember that time I fell in the Denver airport? Were you taking a nap, dude? What’s up with that? No, we don’t get to do that. Though I do want to ask my guardian angel about that. It’s like he probably said, well, you know, I did warn you to not look at your phone. Well, all right. But anyway, not that we don’t get to judge those. No, I don’t think.
But we do get to judge those demons who have been assigned to us and tortured us, and tempted us, and spoke all those evil thoughts and words into our heads all our lives, who helped. We participated with them. We bear the responsibility, but we listened to them, and we fell into addictions and problems and struggles and then condemnation.
You know, the ones who tell us, do this, do this, do this. And then when they do it, then they’re the same ones who say, oh, and you call yourself a Christian. You know, those little cockroaches.
Anybody else got those cockroaches? All right, we got those cockroaches. One day you get to step on those suckers, hear them crunch under your feet.
All right, this is the only time you get to say this, and it’s going to be okay for you to say it. Or when you’re preaching a sermon and using as an example, you get to look at those creatures and you get to say, go to hell.
All right, you want to practice tonight so we can say, tell everybody we said go to hell in church. Is that too far?
All right, I’ll just say it again, just because. Go to hell, you can say it. It’s the time you can say it. Don’t ever say that to another human being. That’s one of the worst things you can say to a human being.
And the phrase God damn, it means that. So don’t use that phrase. God, send that thing or that person to hell. Don’t say that. All right? But on that day, you can say it. You will have the authority.
God will say that thing that tortured you, tell it where to go and you’ll tell it. I think that’s how it works. I could be wrong, but I think that’s how it works.
We will judge angels. Every knee will bow, every tongue confess. Satan himself will bow before King Jesus and say, Jesus Christ, you are Lord. All demons, all principalities, all powers, all spiritual forces of wickedness.
And C.S. Lewis says this, and I think he’s right. If you see, if you were to ever see an angel, a demon, or a human being in their eternal resurrected state, you would see a splendor that you would be tempted to worship. In other words, if Jesus walked in this room in His eternal state, we would have no choice but to fall on the ground. John, His best friend, does.
But I’ll tell you what. If your beloved family member were to walk in this room in all the glory that has been bestowed upon them, which isn’t the complete glory that they get with their resurrected bodies, you would be blown away.
And in the same token, if you physically saw a fall or you saw an angel, I love it when people see angels and the angels aren’t in disguise. The angels show up in their heavenly glory, and the first words out of their mouth are, fear not.
And I always, you know, I don’t long for this experience, but I think if I ever have this experience, just knowing my, and I don’t know if it’s right to be, you know, joking around with angels, but if an angel came to me and said, fear not. I would think what I’d want to say is too late, right?
Yeah. How about stop fearing too late? I’m fearing because of. Because of the incredible glory. But if you were to see your beloved grandmother, your beloved.
My parents, Jill’s parents, in their resurrected state, you would be tempted to worship them. The angel appears before John in the book of Revelation, and John bows down to him. What does the angel say? Don’t do it. Only worship Jesus. Only worship God.
All right. If we saw somebody in their damned state or if we see a demon, we will see a horror, C.S. Lewis says, that of which we only encounter now in nightmares.
So what’s the takeaway? Bob Dylan had his little Christian phase during the Jesus movement. I don’t know if it lasted.
I don’t know if it stuck. He seems kind of ambiguous on it now. But he did produce one Christian album, and in that album he had a song called you’re going to have to serve somebody. It might be the devil and it might be the Lord, but you’re going to have to serve somebody.
And it’s true, you will never be. We all, you know, the sinful pride in us wants to be on top. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do. Yeah.
The difference is you will follow a benevolent, loving father who only desires your good and has all the means at his disposal to bring it to pass for all eternity. Or you will become a slave to this lying, fallen cherub and his hosts.
And here’s a good thermometer. Look at those four. How much in this world am I worldly and competitive? And do I want mine at the expense of others? Or how much am I grateful for what God has given me? But I delight. I delight in the winds of others.
Second, how much do I get what I want through violence, intimidation, and manipulation? How controlling am I? How passive-aggressive am I? How much do I really? Just ask the Lord. Lord, show me when I’m angling for my way with my family, my friends, and I’m not. Listen, there’s nothing. Honesty is great. Here’s what I’d like to do. Here’s what I’d like. That’s perfect. But we don’t stop at that. How often is it my way or the highway?
All right. Third, how vain am I? How much do I want the approval of men and women? How much do I want the applause of the crowd?
And fourth, how just disobedient and rebellious and defiant am I? You know, it’s one thing to be tricked into sin. It’s one thing to fall into sin because you’re weak and you struggle. And God has great mercy for that. He says seventy times seven he’ll forgive you. So keep track, because at 491 you’re lost. That’s for the biblical literalists out there.
No, I think, again, I think Jesus is saying, for that kind of struggle, as long as you maintain your integrity and honesty before me, I have great grace.
But there are folks who just say, I know what God wants me to do. I know the right thing to do. I’m not even that tempted. I’m just going to do it my way. The heck with God. I’m the boss of my life.
Christians can say that. Christians can do that in certain areas of their life, and those are just good checkpoints for us.
How much am I like Satan? How much do I want to see others lose? How much do I want to get my way? How much praise do I want from men? How much willful disobedience is there in me?
Lord, I want to be more like Jesus than the devil. I don’t want to be cast down. I want to be lifted up. And the key, I think, is humility. you’re God and I’m not. Satan lacked humility. The deadly sin is pride, and the key is humility.
All who qualify for the kingdom of God are those who admit they’re not qualified. All who disqualify for the kingdom of God are those who think they’re qualified.
Jesus said that to the Pharisees. Because you say you see, you remain blind. If you said you were blind, I’d give you sight. But because you say you’re smarter than God, who’s standing right in front of you, you remain blind. you’re lost.
Don’t be lost, be found.
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner. I’m not smarter than you, God. I’m not better than you, God. I don’t want to run my own life. I don’t do a good job of it. I want your grace, your power, your wisdom, your instruction, your spirit, your people. I want to be filled with your love.
And I want to enlist myself in serving your kingdom, purposes, and God. I already know from the beginning I’ll do it less than perfectly.
But I ask for your forgiveness and grace to pick myself up and to never quit until I walk and stand before you and I hear these words that I don’t deserve, but that you enabled me to receive. Well done. Good and faithful servant.
And Lord, help me at every turn to recognize pride and vanity, wicked competitiveness and violence that is in me, and let me turn from those things and simply love like Jesus. That’s the kind of person I want to be.
And so I ask it in your Name, Amen.
Turn to somebody next to me and say, I don’t want to be like the devil. All right. I don’t want to be like the devil. All right, Mick. I don’t want to be like the devil. you’re my brother. If you ever see me acting like the devil, just say, Kevin, quit acting like the devil. All right? Thank you.
Thank you, Sophia. If you ever see me acting like the devil, you can kick me in the shins and say, Kevin, quit acting like the devil. All right? And you’d probably do it giggling.
Kevin, quit acting like the devil.
All right, dear ones, this is a meal of humility. Isn’t it? A humble meal? You think, man, Christ gave us a meal. You think steak and eggs or French food or patience? No. Simple bread, simple juice. But I fill it. Here’s what he’s telling us. I fill the simple things with the glory of heaven. I feel the simple things. I feel the humble things. I feel the plain things with the glory of my presence. I take what is small and plain and ordinary, and I make it beautiful.
That’s who I am. And so, this is the most beautiful meal, and it fills us with the most beautiful life.
And so, Jesus, thank you for new covenant love. Thank you that you’ve saved us from the devil, that we don’t have to. Though our forefathers and foremothers have joined him often in the fall. Though in our life, we have done behaviors and acts that have agreed with the devil and invited him in.
We renounce all those now, and we humbly come to this meal and say, fill us with the new covenant life of Jesus. We want to be new covenant people, forgiven of our sins, filled with your Holy Spirit, living a kingdom life.
Nourish us tonight with your presence in this meal. We ask in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Come and eat.
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August 11, 2024, Message by Jamie Johnson
https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/thefirehousechurch.com/2024/20240811_TFHC-Listening_For_Heavens_Sake2.mp3It’s good. Okay. Actually, I’ll repeat myself, because I want to see if Kevin’s actually. If. Does he listen to us? It’s pretty remarkable that he lets us talk about whatever we want to talk about. I think that’s a dangerous move on his part. But if you’re listening, Kevin, I want to know.
Okay, so, you know, Kevin’s in California this Sunday and next Sunday. And so Ats and I are taking turns this time. I’m giving Stevin a break.
Last week, Sophia and I were at a debate camp, and I attended because I thought I could learn a few things. But I didn’t realize I was going to learn a lot more than I paid for.
The very first part of the debate camp was on communications and what kind of communicators we are. I learned so much about myself, learned so much about my children and my family. Being an analytical type, I started analyzing everybody. But that’s not the point of it.
Learning how to communicate and some of knowing more about having some self-awareness, that’s a lacking piece for me. And it reflects the kind of communicator I am, which is a direct communicator. I really have been thinking about that a lot.
I’m also reading a book for a class I’m taking this fall called Listening for Heaven’s Sake. Have any of you seen this book? It’s a recommended book for parents of homeschoolers. And it’s in my class that I am taking on classical education. But it’s written by who? Is it written by?
Gary Sweeney, Dave Ping, and Anna Clippard. So I have heard some parts of this book before from a lecture I went to, but it didn’t really stick with me because I think the time. You know how God, just in time, you get a little bit of, hey, you could improve your communication style. And then, oh, by the way, listening, for heaven’s sake, is on their docket. And it really complements this idea of communicating.
So we have a problem in the western world. A problem and maybe even the entire world. It might just be a nature of a human problem, which is that we have a poverty in the quality of our relationships.
Partly it comes from seeking pleasure when we think that it’s happiness. And if you think back, if you remember the name Howard Hughes, he was a famous, very wealthy man from California with the stars. He had his own, I think he had his own airline company.
For a while, he chased after all the things, very rich. But by the time he died, he was six foot two. He weighed about 100 pounds.
He was paranoid and had isolated himself and died a miserable death. What did he chase after? Did he chase after pleasures and money and fame? And what did that get him in the end?
So do we really believe that pleasure equals happiness? And is that what we’re chasing after? And because we have hectic schedules and social pressures, and some of us come from broken families, there’s a lot of mobility in America especially. We move all the time for jobs. We see this downward spiral of unhealthy, indifferent, and destructive relationships.
And it’s when this book was written 20 years ago, Sweeney was saying that it was nearing a crisis. And here we are, 20, almost 30 years later.
I’d say that most of us would agree that we do have a society of broken relationships, leading to high divorce rates, increased single parenting of children, increased promiscuity. Suicide and homicide in America are right up there at the top of the list in the world for this kind of brokenness.
Families are suffering from the effects. Oh, I have this thing. That’s right. Oh, you did it for me. Okay, so families suffer from the effects of depression, alcoholism, physical abuse, sexual abuse. And it’s a thing.
Pastors and the church staff are overwhelmed with the emotional needs that we bring to them, the volume of people. And so the question that Sweeney asked was, how could the lay church, how could the lay people, the ordinary people of the church, come alongside and help in some aspects with this? What could we do?
And could we provide some kind of support in the church, but also at home and at work, and provide help for this complex problem that includes not only our spiritual health, but emotional and mental health? And so the answer to that is, yes. Yes, we can.
And that comes through the very first step in a whole series. But this is where we want to start, as Christians, as laypeople, is learning how to listen well. And so they’ve called it listening for heaven’s sake, which I like.
So how can we listen with greater insight and understanding? How could we improve compassion and friendliness to others and develop not only greater respect for others, but also self-respect and increase our sense of self-worth?
That’s a big problem for us, even within the church. There’s some more things there. But this really struck me because I was thinking about communication, but also as my children are moving on into their adult lives, going off to college next week and one that’s a senior, and thinking about what does that look like post, you know, childhood?
How do I transition to listen well to my children? So it had a lot. I’m preaching to myself for you, just in case you were wondering who this is aimed at. It was towards my own heart. Okay?
And so how can we experience more of God’s love and the fruit of the Spirit? And so what is the fruit of the Spirit? I had way too many slides, so I had to cut them down. And so if I click and go back, it’s because I took that slide out for your sake.
So you didn’t give you words. Too many words. Okay.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
22But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23, NLT)
How do we grow in these qualities? I hear those all the time. We’ve heard them many times, right? And we sometimes even try to memorize all of the fruits. But how do we actually grow in the fruit of the Spirit? And what is that going to look like in our relationships?
The fruit of the Spirit mirrors closely, parallels closely the same skills that we want to bring to listening as well.
They found that people who are effective listeners and who genuinely care about people have those qualities of the fruit of the Spirit.
So, developing sound listening, communication, and caring skills based on Christ-centered teaching, those fruit of the Spirit would lead us well.
And one thing we have to think about is a balance of ourselves and others with God at the core of that.
If we get too overly focused on ourselves and self-centered, and we can’t think about others too much, it’s not great. But it’s also easy to tip the other way on the seesaw, where we care so much about others and take care of their needs that we forget to take care of ourselves.
So keep that in mind as we talk about this idea of listening to others. Another thing we want to keep in mind is all the facets of personhood. As we think about what we could do to listen better.
And when we think about God and all that he is, we can describe a few of his characteristics that we, as Imago Dei, having the image of God and reflecting him, have as well.
Thinking, our will, emotions, behavior, relationships, our physical body, and our community. These all pour into what we’re trying to communicate to others. Not what we often think about when we’re listening to people, but that full picture of an integrated person.
And furthermore, how do we integrate back into all the facets that we are?
And because of sin, not only that, but also because of sin, our human nature reflects very little of God’s image. We might see emotions that are volatile, minds irrational, wills weakened, behaviors harmful, bodies diseased, relationships sinful, and family systems unhealthy. So depressing. Right to that one. Okay, you’re welcome.
How do we come back into wholeness? It all comes back to his grace, right? We start there. His grace.
But for God, who sent Jesus to restore our relationship with himself, only then can we try to even attempt to bring healthy balance to our own lives. So, as you can imagine, in order. We’re good, Kathleen. Okay. Right. There we go. So, as you can imagine, in order to develop healthy listening skills, the very first step would be to have Jesus in our hearts. That’s the first and most preeminent requisite to complete restoration. And only then can we walk in his fullness.
But it’s a lifelong process, and it takes time and effort in our willing cooperation. I think that’s why they call it progressive sanctification. It’s not going to happen overnight. In our instant gratification world, it would be nice if it was on Pinterest or YouTube and somebody showed it to us, right? And we could just imitate it.
A big problem for us Christians is we wonder. We feel a little bit of shame and guilt because we think, well, wasn’t that all taken care of at the cross? Aren’t we new creations?
And the old is gone, the new has come. Sweeney says this is one of the most common questions he’s asked as a counselor because people that come to him are typically Christians. And so they have a lot of baggage because they don’t understand, and often we don’t.
Why do we still have problems in our relationships as Christians? Because we think that we should all be perfect at this point, right? Or at least somewhat closer, which causes shame and confusion because we think we shouldn’t have any conflicts.
And if we do, it’s our fault or somebody else’s fault, you know? But this bit about it was all taken care of at the cross is the beginning of that relationship and that restoration with God. And it’s a process. It’s not the end of the journey.
And so the analogy is just like when babies are born, that’s the beginning of life. But then they’re going to grow, and there’s a lot of growing pains and a lot of mess that happens with kids, but that’s the beauty of it in the end, right?
So Jesus, it’s going to get us there. So they call their system the teleos system. And teleos is Greek for restoring wholeness because we have all these fractured parts of ourselves that’s caused by sin.
And we’re looking at a way to restore. Sin has four major aspects to it. We have rebellion, which is what we’re most used to comparing. Right? Like rebellion of violating the Ten Commandments, not keeping. Yeah. Being disobedient, which results in estrangement from God because we’ve broken his law. Which leads to moral guilt.
Not necessarily emotional guilt, but the moral guilt that we are in the wrong. However, that guilt does lead to shame. Oftentimes it leads to shame, but shame is more of a distortion of our sense of self.
It can be internal remorse, but it’s often a rejection of self and a condemnation of self, which leads us to hide our true selves from others and cuts us off from receiving help and love and affects our identity.
When I was going through my cancer treatment, and really, that’s a shocker to be diagnosed with cancer.
And it does make you think for a time or two. So I had some time to reflect on, you know, what. And we always. I’m a kind of person that wants to know the why. Why? And the answer is, just so you know, the disclaimer is, I still don’t know why.
But I got over trying to figure out the why, because the why doesn’t necessarily matter so much. There could be all kinds of reasons for that why.
But what does matter is that Jesus loves us enough to pull us out of the pit, and he does want to heal, and he does want to restore.
But for me, part of that journey was, there was a lot of self-condemnation. Even though I knew Jesus had forgiven me and I was a new creation, I still beat myself up inside. I had to work through that part of my spiritual journey during my physical healing as well, just in case anybody struggles with that.
It’s the real thing that leads to bondage, which are persistent patterns. We call them habits, really persistent patterns of behavior, of rebellion and guilt and shame that, over time, weaken our ability to destroy, to weaken our ability to initiate healthy change.
And sometimes we get so stuck in our sin and rebellion that we have difficulty even recognizing healthy choices. This leads us into a cycle of despair and dysfunction, of rebellion, disobedience, which leads to moral guilt. Conviction, which can lead to shame, keeps us in this bondage to sin.
And it goes round and round, and this spiritual, mental, and emotional blindness contributes to addiction, compulsion, disease, and feelings of hopelessness.
And the thing is, we’re all born into bondage, into sin. We’re all born into this. Not only does it affect ourselves, but it adversely affects the rest of the family, producing more dysfunction and problems. And it can multiply from generation to generation as we teach these cultures and these habits to our children and receive them.
Right. That’s sort of the attitudes, the beliefs, the habits, and the relationship patterns of.
And we have some defense mechanisms that we use. We deny reality of our responsibility. We blame shift to others. We suppress our true self. So nobody knows, like our deep, dark self.
In fact, we often don’t really know a person except for that tip of the iceberg of the person, what they’re willing to share. That’s open, their open area. It’s very, very small, but beneath that area, there are defenses and a whole array, a system of defense that include our memories, our thoughts, our experiences, and our beliefs that we hide in shame.
So we have guarded areas and then hidden areas and then even unknown areas that sometimes we don’t even know about.
Okay, so how do we escape this awful bondage of sin and find freedom? Right. Jesus is the first step. But then how do we apply grace to each other? And what is grace, anyway?
What was that? America’s grace? Yeah, what is grace? Oh, did you say unmerited favor? I thought you said America’s favor. Yes, unmerited favor. Thank you. Unmerited, unearned favor and mercy that God extends to us. It’s a wonderful gift that’s undeserved.
It’s freely given. But we must open our hearts to receive his grace.
All right, so how? Now that we’ve, like. Dude, that was heavy. I’m feeling like there’s this whole part of me I don’t even know, and I want to open up to God’s grace. But how can we, this crisis that we have, when we want to help as a lay church, not only others, but really ourselves as well. How do we help? By listening well. And there are three keys to this top layer.
This is our initial step in this whole process, and it’s to have warm, empathetic, and deep respect. And I’m laughing because how many of you, there are four types of communicators out there. Four styles of communication: direct, narrative, empathetic, and logical.
Forty percent of the population in general is a direct narrative. Forty percent are empathetic, 15% are narrative, and 5% are logical. And I’m laughing and smiling because I’m a direct, and Sophia’s an empathetic and directs.
So, about half of the population, we have a really hard time picking up nonverbal cues, physical cues that people are giving us or that we’re giving to people because we’re all about the words. I’m going to listen to your words and see what you’re saying. And don’t ask me why we can’t do the nonverbals. I don’t know if it’s just like too much information. I’m wondering.
Empathetics are the other large part of the population, and they are all about the feelings. They are very careful about what they say because they don’t want to hurt feelings, and they’re very sensitive to the nonverbal cues.
So what an interesting combination, right, of these directs and these empathetics. And then you’ve got the logicals and the narratives in there, too. But the real deal is here with the directs and the empathetics.
So that really hit a hot button for me because I want to get better at my nonverbal, like, assessing it.
And then also what I’m putting out there. So warm, empathetic listening and deep respect, right? To overcome these feelings that come derived from sin, right? Shame and rejection.
The memories, the secret longings, the unfulfilled desires, the things that we’ve done wrong, the things that others have wronged us with, both rational and irrational fears, and the pain of embarrassing secrets. How do we help?
Some of the ways that we help, that are not warm, empathetic, or deeply respectful are.
We deny, we joke, we withdraw, we attack, we work excessively, we rationalize, we control, we become perfectionists, or we might even spiritualize the problem.
And if we think about the heart as a well-defended fortress, at the first sign of a threat, the doors are going to slam shut, closing it off from the help of others and leaving us alone with our own pain, which isn’t what we really want for ourselves or for our brothers and sisters, right?
This poem was in the book, and I really liked it so much because being a direct, I’m not good with emotional, just like disregard it, thinking it’s not important, knowing it’s very important.
But I love this poem because he’s talking about even the most callous or person who comes across as gruff, still feels this.
I present to you parts of myself. Slowly, if you are patient and tender, I will open drawers that mostly stay closed and bring out places and people and things, sounds and smells, loves and frustrations, hopes and sadness, bits and pieces of, in my case, five decades of life that have been grabbed off in chunks and found lying in my hands.
It’s much easier to read than to say they have eaten their way into my heart altogether. You and I will never see them. They are me. If you regard them lightly, deny that they are important, or worse, judge them.
I will quietly, slowly begin to wrap them up in small pieces of velvet, like worn silver and gold jewelry, tuck them away in a small wooden chest of drawers and clothes. It’s a beautiful poem expressing the vulnerability of our hearts.
And it makes sense why 50% of the population tries to deny the feelings and the other 50% of the population is trying to understand the feelings. Okay, so tenderness and patience and thinking back, right? That wasn’t patience and gentleness. Two of the fruits of the Spirit are essential when we’re dealing with issues of the heart.
And if someone is caught in sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. Right. That gives new meaning to that word. Gently.
Anybody want some tissues? All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Okay.
Grace shows our care and respect, which are more likely to encourage people to open up rather than trying to fix them or make them simply confront their sinful behavior. That spoke to me, and it’s God’s love, not his wrath, that has called us to repentance.
Similarly, it’s the love of others that gives us the strength to examine the secret places of our heart. Patient and loving care are what are going to help us overcome our sense of shame and self-condemnation.
And just like John first, in John, he said, love people just as they are, to give them the courage to walk in the light. To walk in the light as he is in the light.
Okay, so not only do we need Jesus in our heart, and we need to have this understanding of the well-guarded fortress that it is, but another piece that we need to add to our repertoire is understanding why we’re worth so much.
Forgiveness is the deal maker, right? That gets us into the kingdom, and we are born into it as a new creation. But still, as human beings, whether forgiven or not, we are made in the image of God, and all of humanity, all people, are worthy of His love.
And it’s interesting that the controversy over we were made a little lower than the angels in Psalm 8. Is that really the angels, the Elohim there God? Or is Elohim meaning the angels or God himself? And there’s lots of discussion back and forth.
But wouldn’t it be interesting to wonder if we were made just a little lower than God?
And I think as humans, whether that’s true or not, whichever way you fall on that argument, I think it would also be true that as humans, we should think of ourselves as more valuable than we often do.
We just don’t, right? Because of our shame and condemnation. So we’re worth more than we think. And really the best reason to believe that is because Jesus died for us.
Why would he die for something he could just throw away? We’re not trash. So understanding God’s highest sense of our personal worth gives me a reason to esteem myself.
And it’s because not that I think so highly of myself, but because God thinks highly of me. Then I can also have self-respect for me too.
And it’s easy with 8 billion people on the planet to not be able to comprehend how He could do that for everyone. And that’s what makes us have personality, right? The person of us. All right. Yeah.
So, adoption into God’s family is that key to biblical self-respect. It’s almost as, it’s almost like the story of the prince and the pauper, where the pauper, the poor guy who put on the clothes, they traded places, and he put on the clothes of the prince. But he still couldn’t think differently. He couldn’t think like a prince because in his mind he was still a pauper.
And often I think that’s the story of the Christian, right? We have been made princes and princesses of God, right, kings, you know, under His dominion.
But we still think of ourselves as a sinner, and we don’t realize the value of the adoption into His family.
But I did like this, right, that the adoption is the foundation for the self-worth, to deal with the scars of fear and anxiety, of hiding and self-hatred that’s caused by shame.
And it doesn’t really help that evolution teaches that we’re made out of primordial soup and there was no design to that. And so what is that worth? It’s worth nothing. That’s where our culture feeds into that.
Okay, so how to communicate?
So, communication is encoding and decoding. We want to say something to you, so we encode a message, we send it to you, and then you’re supposed to decode it. And that’s communication.
Oftentimes, though, we miss the mark on understanding what the message was that was sent to us. These misinterpretations cause so many errors, particularly on the part of the listener. Right? Impatience, jumping to conclusions, jumping to causes the why. Unresolved issues, fears, inadequacy, over-identification, and under-identification.
Did you know your brain can think at least five times faster than you can speak?
And so often we are thinking way ahead of what somebody is saying and already crafting a response before we finish hearing what they’re talking about. We probably miss a good 75% of what they’re talking about.
Slowing down, being present, and slowing down is a key to listening well. It requires a lot of energy and focus, and sometimes we’re short on both of those.
Okay. And. Right. We know the Bible says be patient with everyone. Right? So that’s. And patience was one of our five nine gifts. I’m not going to go into all those.
There’s more on all that. But we’re going to get to. Sometimes our responses make us into very bad advisors.
And as you read this, do you identify with being one or two of these types of people where somebody’s telling you something and you become an interrogator? I’m a full blown interrogator. What happened? Who was there? Where did he go? Who’s doing what? It’s overwhelming. There are too many questions.
Or you might be the general, where you just start giving advice, like, okay, here’s what you need to do. Go to this place, give them this thing, and then it’ll be fine.
Or maybe you’re a Pharisee where you said, well, I hear what you’re saying, but what you should have done was x, y, z, and then this would not have happened to you.
Or maybe you’re a labeler where you identify the problem with, you know, go through your series of problems that you’ve heard before. You pick the box, stick it in that box, and put a label on it, and it doesn’t really matter what else the person is saying. That’s the box they’re in.
Or maybe you’re a prophet where you predict a future of doom and gloom for that person, and I’m guilty of that. If you don’t do your math, then, you know, blah, blah, doom and gloom, poor kids.
Or maybe you’re a historian where narratives tend to be this way. you’re like, oh, that happened to me, too. And now it’s all about you instead of them and their story.
Or you’re a quick change artist.
You don’t like where this is going, so you’re like, well, that reminds me of my uncle who once went fishing, and now it’s totally deflected from the person.
Have you ever talked to someone who’s like Mister Deodorant, where they can’t stand bad stories, unpleasant information, and so they’re going to change it and say everything will be fine? Don’t worry, it’s not that big of a deal. A couple more grandma chicken soup acts of kindness, which are really great. We’re going to hope that these acts of kindness will make your problem disappear and comfort you.
Or do you have cliches and quips that you use that are bumper sticker type answers? And then the robber who knows exactly how you feel before even taking the time to listen to the whole story. These are our typical go-tos for responding while we’re listening or how our position of listening. But maybe those aren’t so great.
This is a big eye chart, and the part that we’re talking about tonight is just the stuff in the green. So the seeker is the person who is talking.
And he used, because he does a lot of counseling, he didn’t want to call it clients and that sort of thing. So he started using these words seeker and helper. But we’re the helper by listening. So the person talking is talking and explaining something or sharing their open part.
We’re going to use for our listening skills, our warmth, our empathy, and our respect because we want to listen. For heaven’s sake, if we do it well, it can lead them into that area that’s a little more uncomfortable for them, which is kind of a yellow light.
These are like green light. People can usually share a little bit. If they get a good response and they trust, then they might share a little more, and they actually might come to some of their own self-understanding.
Especially if we show genuineness and concreteness along with them. In self-disclosure, speaking truth in love, renewing the mind helps to free the family and embrace God’s grace. The part that’s the hardest to get through is eventually getting to a position.
You can’t really read it, but it says down in the red is accountability and action on the part of the speaker through. If we don’t want to have to get to this point of confrontation or immediacy, but if we are trusted enough, we’ve made it into that part of the heart where they are trying to break a bondage of a habit, then that’s where that accountability could come in handy for them.
But keep in mind, we’re just at the top level of learning how to listen.
Well, in order for people to feel they can trust us, we have to be trustworthy, right? It’s a process of exploration and hopefully an understanding between an external hurt, external habit, and an internal hurt that we have.
Maybe I always react in a certain way. Have you ever had that, where you react a certain way and it has nothing to do with the person that was talking to you or an incident that happened?
It was just a trigger that set you off because we probably have an internal hurt that we don’t know about. Or if you’re a direct, you refuse to know about because you don’t deal well with emotions.
But if we can get it to an understanding of that external habit and that internal hurt, then that can lead us to discover new ways to grow and move towards change.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on more of his telios of that process.
And we’re going to focus just on the listening piece, which are the three of warmth, empathy, and respect.
As I was going along thinking about this discussion, I thought it was beautiful. He mentioned this, and so I wanted to share it with you. Thinking of the human heart, right? Because God says we are the temple, but thinking of the heart as that holy of holies spot, and having tenderness for our own heart and the hearts of others.
So go gently and solemnly and bring peace as you listen.
I say you, and I’m talking about me. All right? So warmth. The direct resting habit, my facial resting habit as a direct communicator, is a scowl or an ironic smile because I also, like, find the funny in everything, which is not good because a lot of things are not funny or shouldn’t be made fun of.
And so I learned at my communications class at Sophia’s debate camp that I should market my face better to reflect my actual feelings inside, which are neutral. So a smile would be nice. Right? Tell my face that I actually don’t.
I’m not mad at anybody. That just made me laugh because I’m like, that’s so true. Stefan would come and he’s like, why are you mad? I’m not mad. you’re mad about something. Like, no, now I’m mad.
So if I could just say, hey, it’s good to see you smile, because I genuinely like to see him. I could offer a smile. So think about everybody who does like to be invited for a cup of coffee or a cup of tea or at least a cup of water, right?
Jesus even tells us to give a cup of water hospitality. And then, hospitality is what makes us feel at home. It communicates love and care, and it makes us feel warm and accepted.
So by listening, we can communicate that we do have interest and love for this person. But how much of that actually comes from words and how much from the nonverbals? What’s your guess? How much? Oh, it’s already up there.
You know, it’s broken down into 50% nonverbals, 40% tone of voice that’s my other nemesis and 10% the actual words. That’s it.
Can you believe that? Not a good scenario for a direct or logical communicator. We’re like, I don’t know. What are you trying to say? Okay. And then the empathetics are like, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying. I can already tell you’re upset.
Okay, so what can we do to display warmth? Now, a lot of you, at least half of you, are already empathetic, so you know this stuff. But for the sake of the directs out there, we have to tell us, teach us, what are some of the things we need to do.
We’re talking about how our mouth, our head, our face, what all these things are saying. Our shoulders, our arms, our legs, and our feet.
So, facial expressions. The head tilt says a lot, right? The sagging shoulders. How about this one? Right? That’s not good. That’s going to be bad news. Or the legs crossed, if you’re sitting down, that can be an indicator. Clenched hands, maybe a quivering chin. Sorry about that. Fidgeting and foot tapping can indicate nervousness.
How about, do you have any nervous habits? Like, do you look at your watch a lot or your phone? Nowadays, I’m a knuckle popper. That’s my nervous habit or my resting habit when I’m waiting for the traffic light to change. I think it’s a symptom of impatience.
Maybe you look out the window while somebody’s talking to you, or you’re yawning, you’re sighing, you’re scratching, or you’re playing with your hair, your clothes. It’s really obvious when we see somebody else do it. Very difficult to be self-aware, to notice when we do it.
And often we get defensive when somebody points it out to us. So learning to be self-aware of our non-verbal communication is key.
So my guy here, Gary Sweeten, says 80% of family conflict comes from poor communication and our deficiency in ability to express warmth and caring. 80%.
And when we think about relationships, not only in the family of parents and children, but thinking about teachers and students or doctors and patients. Huge, right? When we talk about the bedside manner of a doctor, we’re talking about these skills that those doctors are lacking.
They’re probably all direct communicators. Okay? So we can work on those. And with the help of our empathetics, we can learn what those are and how often we do them and change, because they don’t necessarily mean what we’re expressing. But we’re certainly turning people off.
How about the tone of voice and also the emphasis? What does it say when I say, I didn’t say your outfit was silly? Yeah, but I kind of agree with her. I didn’t say your outfit was silly. It’s a little bit of denial, right?
I didn’t say your outfit was silly or looked silly. And I didn’t say your outfit looked silly. So that tone that can be nervous, irritated, laughing, or mocking, even our pitch can indicate fear or excitement, embarrassment, or pride. So when we’re talking about those voice cues, we’re talking not only tone of voice, but emphasis and thinking about how we’re delivering it to get across the listening and the care that we want to get across.
So here’s his little mnemonic for us to remember, the body cues.
First of all, the tone should be our tone of voice when we’re listening and responding. It should be low, soft, clearly audible, rich in inflection and variation, but relaxed.
So we’re thinking about our hospitality and offering somebody a drink. Opening up that space for conversation is sensitive seating, openness, leaning, appropriate eye contact, relaxation, touch, environmental awareness, and accommodating attitude.
And I think that’s why. Have any of you had the experience where you go on a car ride with somebody and you can have a really good conversation in the car that you can’t at home? Or, I don’t know, does that happen to just me? Just me.
I think the reason why car rides work so well is because the seating’s already arranged, the eye contact is already taken care of. you’re not expected to look at each other because you’re side by side instead of face to face, and you’re stuck there, you can’t go. you’re a captive audience.
Okay. But if you’re not in the car and you’re not having a good conversation, right? Generally, you want to sit within an arm’s length of somebody. If you’re sitting too far away, they don’t feel comfortable or invited.
Face to face, meaning you’re looking at them, but not necessarily your body straight on, because that’s intimidating. It can be so the body a little bit to the side, but making eye contact and facial contact. And if you’re standing, invite people, if you’re really intent on listening, to sit down.
Because standing, we have that sense of immediacy and time, and we need to move on, and people get tired. So those things being within an arm’s distance, we’re looking at them, but we’re not giving them the full aggressive frontal attack.
Sitting down is what invites people to share, and it lowers tension and defensiveness. Openness, emotional and spiritual openness, is communicated primarily through our posture and body language, such as arms crossed, legs crossed. Keep your feet on the floor for a more relaxed position.
The more relaxed I am, the more it signals that I am here and I’m present and I’m willing to listen.
We often lean into people when we’re listening. We don’t want to lean so close that they think we’re getting in their personal space, but we also don’t want to blow them off. And, you know, some of this is cultural, too, so you have to keep aware of that.
But in America, I do think that’s really common for the lean a little bit, and it might look just like that.
And our rule of thumb is to stay at least an arm’s length away. Appropriate eye contact. We struggle with that, and we struggle with teaching our kids appropriate eye contact.
It’s very important, and we want to do it right, particularly in the culture that we’re in. We don’t want to stare people down while they’re listening, but we also don’t want to not look at them. They may not give us eye contact depending on their emotional state.
Someone who’s feeling a lot of shame and embarrassment will probably not look at you, meet your gaze. Women tend to use eye contact more than men. So, you know, we got one thing going for us. And his rule of thumb was about 5 seconds of eye contact is good before you break it.
If, you know, if you’re like, I don’t know, am I swearing too much? Am I not looking enough? 5 seconds. Break eye contact and then, you know, look back, relax, try to be as relaxed as possible.
If you notice you’re getting tense or impatient, right, take a deep breath. You do need to have some strategies for exiting a conversation as well, because you don’t always have time for a conversation, but it’s a very hard habit to relax.
All right, touch. We were just talking about this at my house because I have people who don’t like to be hugged, and we have friends who really like to hug. How do you express that right to people? Like, stop hugging me. How? How? Hugs are important.
There’s a study that says we need four hugs a day to survive, eight hugs a day to be emotionally healthy, and twelve hugs a day to grow. Except for people who don’t like to be touched. I know, right? I am not a hugger. Maybe the length and have any of you seen the movie Rogue Saints, where these guys go dig underneath a church to find a diamond left by one of the parish ladies, who was.
Anyway, the one guy used to go to that church and he’s telling his buddy, who’s not a Christian, who is his partner, how to approach church. And he’s like, okay, first of all, you do the side hug, and if it’s male female, it’s only 2 seconds and then you’re out. Like all these rules about how to hug.
There was another study done where they watched couples sitting in restaurants and counted the number of times that they touched each other, you know, just by the hand or in some fashion, for an hour. They studied England. France.
Do I have that up here? No. England, France, the US, and Puerto Rico. Guess who had zero physical contact? England, France, Puerto Rico, or the US? England. Yep, England. The next worst was the US with two in the 60 minutes average. Then the French were at 110 and the Puerto Ricans at 180. They’re like sitting in each other’s laps practically. So they’re really healthy down there in Puerto Rico. Okay. But people don’t.
We have to be sensitive to hugs and how much contact, physical contact, particularly in our hyper-sexualized culture today, and the misconstruing of what that touch means.
So a really good place to start is a handshake. That is a physical touch, and it’s very, you know, you’re not showing any sort of sexual interest when you have. Hopefully, with the handshake, the next level would be like a pat on the back or on the upper arm. You know, nothing in between the waist and the shoulders inside there.
Look for nonverbal cues. Ask if it’s okay to hug somebody. Don’t assume everybody likes to be hugged or that there’s something wrong with them if they don’t like to be hugged. There’s nothing wrong with them.
But we do have a need for touch. Even babies do better when they’re held and touched; they’re healthier. I noticed this most when I went to college. I went away to Boston from Hawaii, and I was only going to go home once in a year. And I was in this.
Boston University is right on. Right on Commonwealth Avenue. So you’re just crossing the street, tons of people. And I was thinking how lonely I felt surrounded in a sea of people. And I think that’s common in a lot of cities where you’re alone, you feel so alone. And there was no physical touch. Right, because I didn’t know any of those people.
Okay, touch. Environmental awareness is talking about, like, your setup. If you have control over that, do you want to be behind a desk or not behind a desk?
Do you want a lot of stuff in between you and them, like clutter on your table or vases blocking it? People will tell you this room feels warm and inviting, or this room feels cold and sterile, and that has a lot to do with the physical environment.
And then the last thing is, accommodating attitude. Not everybody thinks the same way we do. What I think is funny might irritate somebody else and often does. And what he thinks is funny, I’m like, ugh. You know, even siblings can have experiences that are different. Their culture.
We assume as parents that they all grew up in the same culture, but they don’t. They have really different experiences, being male or female, birth order, family, culture. And people have different energy levels coming into a conversation, and they’re going to react differently to energy. Like, ooh, that person has big energy. They overwhelm me.
So you observe and try to decide if it’s appropriate to match the level of energy that that person that you’re trying to talk with and listen to has. And the Bible talks about it, as we could think about it this way.
Like, we mourn with those who mourn, and we laugh with those who laugh. And that’s an idea of that energy level being complementary to what we’re trying to achieve.
And remember, this is all a process. It’s a skill, and it’s not a checklist or a program that we can go down and check the boxes.
All right, that was the longest piece, so you guys were going to. You won’t be here forever.
Okay, so how do we measure our warmth? First of all, just remember, as the listener, you’re going to feel awkward as you develop awareness.
And again, we’re talking to the directs because probably all you empathetics already know this.
We’re going to be very self-conscious, but if we practice it and monitor our warmth feedback, we’ll get some success. And this is a temperature scale. Like, if you’re hugging or weeping with somebody, that’s a pretty hot, intimate temperature. If you’re moving closer and you have touch, that can be unpleasantly warm.
Where we want to be when we’re talking with somebody and that. Right, we’re talking about the tip of the iceberg here is attentive, interested, concerned, which expresses warmth.
If we just seem somewhat concerned or mechanical or clinical or distant, or we ignore people or literally just move away, walk away from them, we’re giving a cold response to their communication.
All right, so that’s the empathy, that’s the warmth part. How do we think about empathy? What is empathy versus sympathy? Sympathy is that idea of it’s a natural response that we have to suffering, whereas callousness, like we have, we can’t identify and we don’t have any interest in that person’s problem.
The trouble with sympathy is that we can often over-identify with the situation and end up getting into the situation with people rather than maintaining some awareness to come alongside and help.
So, empathy would be a better way for us to be a listener rather than sympathetic listening, because we want to communicate an accurate understanding. We want to show our care and compassion, and we want to help them move towards health, but we don’t want it to become our problem.
We don’t need to overwhelm ourselves with other people’s problems. So the important part about empathy is being willing to really understand what the speaker wants and needs from us. And what would be the most helpful way to respond to that answer?
What is the real question, question or request that they have? Often the problem isn’t understanding or responding with the right action because it becomes a problem, because we didn’t understand the problem in the first place.
And where we want to get to is this idea of reflective listening, where that involves understanding, involvement. This is the area of friendship, of emotional support.
Sometimes we see anger released here, or we might even see a mixed message that people are giving with their speaking. And our repose for this would be reflective listening.
If they’re just wanting information and we can determine that, then that’s a pretty easy one. We can give the information or refer them to someone who can give them information.
If they’re asking us for an action and we can think it’s an action that we are able to do, then we could answer yes and then do it.
Or if it’s something we cannot do or should not do, that would be more of an inappropriate action, then the answer would be no, and we don’t do it.
And particularly if it’s an inappropriate action, it’s good for us to remember to affirm the person, but decline the behavior and not reject the person because of the behavior as well.
So I liked his idea on reflective listening because he called it radar listening. And that’s not an acronym for anything. But he’s talking about this idea of like radar.
When you’re using your radar, you’re trying to pinpoint the actual location of a target. Or, I think, actually more modern 20 years later, GPS listening. Right. The GPS helps you determine not only the feeling that’s being expressed, but also the thought as well.
And that’s where we come in to help our empathetics who are just feeling it all, but they may not come around to what’s the thought. Because the feelings are so overwhelming. Say that again.
So we want to not only understand what the feeling is, but also the thought that goes with the feeling. And when we can understand, it’s like, right, the heart and the mind. And we’re looking for integration again. So we need to focus on both pieces.
Okay, so thoughts and feelings are coordinates. Think of those as coordinates that our radar is narrowing down on to get a lock on the spot in the person’s heart that they’re trying to direct us to. You often, if you’ve been involved in.
I don’t know, they use this a lot in companies. They certainly used it in the military. Or you’re trying. Was that where I learned it? I don’t know. you’re trying to understand the feelings. Actually, I learned it in CC. Confrontation, having to deal with confrontation. That’s where I learned it.
So that company trying to understand what people are actually saying. And we do that by saying, responding to them with feedback, like it sounds like you’re saying, or let me see if I’m getting this right.
I think you’re telling me whatever it is, right and there, and we’re pinpointing. Is it a feeling I’m hearing? Is it a thought? And can I summarize it and give them feedback that their message is coming across? I’m decoding.
So the kinds of feelings that you generally hear are there. Are these basic feelings of mad, sad, glad, afraid, confused, ashamed, or alone, lonely. And Gary Sweeten here says those are listed in order of intensity, that mad is actually the least intense. Sad, glad. Maybe I misunderstood him, but I think that’s what I was.
Surprised, afraid, confused, ashamed, and alone. It sounds like you feel mad because the dog ate the pizza, or I think you’re saying you feel glad because you won the lottery.
And that’s where we see both the thought and the feeling going together. Okay. When we can express to someone not only their thought and their feeling, that’s when they feel valued and understood.
Just keep in mind that if we have, if we’re expressing deep insight into their underlying issue, it can make them feel very vulnerable because we’re going underneath that top layer of the open part of the heart.
If we’re just touching on that underlying issue, they can feel just vulnerable. And we really want to be in this spot of interchangeable with thoughts and feelings expressed and not cause them to feel like they’re misunderstood, devalued, hurt, or rejected.
Some rules of thumb here, which is, it’s easy to do this, is to use a clip, a quip, or a pat answer or a cliche. We can overshare our own similar stories that we’ve experienced, we’ve had like that as well.
We don’t want to be grandma soup, you know, chicken soup or the interrogator, the general. We don’t want to default to those.
And I love this part, right from the Bible where he talks about pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
I don’t think we’ve really scratched the surface on the physical implication of those words, right? Integration between spiritual, emotional, and physical, but healing to the bones. If you’re a direct, it’s going to take a lot of practice.
Okay, so last bit, respect. Our third part of listening. Well, right? We had our warmth, our empathy, our empathy, and then respect. Respect communicates value or worth, what we desire, and we need to feel respected. We think in our society that respect is something that you deserve because you worked hard, you earned it.
Or maybe how you’re perceived by your outwardly display. We think differently of people when they’re dressed nicely versus when they’re not wearing makeup. Not wearing makeup. All kinds of reasons for people to either give respect or not.
So God doesn’t do it that way. He doesn’t show favoritism or respect based on our outward appearance or our work. Jesus’ culture changed the world with equality of man. No Jew, no Gentile, no male or female.
So, did you know that your eye, your pupil, actually will dilate based on how much you feel validated with what you’re saying, how much respect you think you’re getting from that person, and it’ll constrict when you tense up? I didn’t know that.
We’ll try not to stare more than 5 seconds at somebody, see what happens. But we really want to convey that position of respect because you are a child of God. You are worthy of respect because of imago dei, being the image of God, and to be thinking ourselves of.
I am, no matter what, I am lovable. I am capable. I deserve human respect out of just the worth of each human.
There are no ordinary people. Everybody is remarkable. So, this is the foundation for caring relationships. It makes marriages better. Our relationship with our children is better. Our inner self, coworkers, employees.
How do we respond? Can we receive respect or we don’t? This one is a little. Is it an anacrostic? Is that what it’s called when it does the resist pat answers or being manipulative?
Exercise personal responsibility, meaning don’t necessarily own other people’s problems. Try to suspend your judgments or your jumping to conclusions until you’ve heard the whole story.
Pray and practice. Extend yourself appropriately. Remember that balance we had with the teeter-totter. We’re not overextending, but we’re also not self-absorbed.
Consider the confidentiality of what’s being told, and then take the speaker’s comments seriously. And we’re going for this part right where we’re showing. It’s a position of strong humility. When we show respect for people, the higher values could be caring, love, and commitment.
But that is a greater cost to the listener who is committing to this speaker. Lesser would be your discounting. you’re judging, you’re condemning, or you’re attacking. Where you see some of these ideas of superiority, holier than thou, contempt, or open or hidden contempt.
So that humility is that position that’s between the two. Okay, so that’s the main thing that I’m talking about tonight. you’ve been patient. It went longer. Sorry.
Warmth with our body language and our nonverbals. Empathetic listening. Solar, right? Yeah, empathetic listening. And then respect. We can’t be everything to everyone.
We can’t get on our white horse and ride in and save the day and be John Wayne or Val Kilmer. But we can rest in what God has to say: He formed us, and sin deformed us. Christ has transformed us, and the Holy Spirit is continually reforming us.
So let’s try to listen, for heaven’s sake. Identify the problem, clarify whose responsibility it is. This was good advice. Delay the decision if you’re not sure yet who owns that problem, if you do have a commitment to it or not.
But if nothing else, affirm and empower the person and don’t fix the problems for everybody.
I liked his idea because oftentimes the church, not so much anymore, but maybe still, says science isn’t. There are no Christians in science, so therefore nothing that is in science or in psychology is even worth looking at. And we would put that under creation of the cosmos, of the things that we observe and see. So maybe there is some value to that.
The word is also a great place to get our information. And then the Holy Spirit.
So taking the cosmos, the logos, and I, the Rima altogether, to really try to understand what’s being said to us, the Spirit, and these are sweetin’s words and cosmos, they all have value as we try to understand and communicate and, of course, right still.
And listen to what God is saying to you about the situation and keep your balance. All right? Yeah. Thank you for listening. That’s my two cent. $0.20, maybe. Oh, thank. Thank you. Thank you.
So the fruit of God, for the people of God, right? He died for our sins, to take them away, because he took them for us. And he took that physical beating for our healing of our bodies in the here and now.
And of course, in the future, when we go to heaven, we’ll be completely healed. But even for the now, he says his will is for us to be whole and healed.
So please come and take communion. And then I think Steven has one more song for us and we’ll let you go home.
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August 4, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon.
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July 28, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
All right, dear ones.
Psalm 1.
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. 2 But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. 3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. 4 But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind. 5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly. 6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. (Psalms 1:1-6, NLT)
All right, we’ve talked about this several times, that wicked. It’s very interesting that the meaning of wicked is, and Psalm 1 just points it out so well, is that without anchor, that’s not planted, it’s not rooted, it has no foundation, there’s no substance to it. And Psalm 1 says, you know, don’t. Don’t hang with the wicked. Don’t follow the advice. Don’t do what the sinners are doing, and don’t join in with the mockers.
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. (Psalms 1:1, NLT)
And there’s a controversy that came at the start of the Olympics. You guys know about the Olympic controversy, that it seemed like there was a parody of the Last Supper, and Christians were upset by it. Some people are saying, no, no, it’s a Greek thing.
My whole deal is, I don’t care. I really don’t. My reaction is, if it was meant to mock the Last Supper, my response to that isn’t anger, it’s pity.
And the other thought I had was how grateful I am to gather with you and celebrate the table of Jesus.
I can’t think after I saw that, I can’t think of. My one initial experience was all of a sudden, my feelings about communion just got stronger. It was like, what a great deal that, wow, this must really be a special meal if, in fact, the enemies of Christ feel it worthy of mocking.
And so that was just my take on that. But it got me thinking about the wicked.
People who have no foundation, they have no basis, and they’ll be blown away in the judgment. And, you know, my desire is that they won’t be. My desire is that they will find Christ, that they will find something to ground their lives.
When I was 16, the love of God sought me and found me, laid hold of me. And I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to live my life. Less than perfect life, less than perfect, raw material, broken, Kevin struggles with all sorts of issues.
But I’ve been able to live my life with a purpose and a foundation and a planting, you know, a planting, a direction. I believe things. I live for things, and I’m so grateful for that.
And the fact that you’re here tonight means one of two things. And I love. Since love believes the best, I’ll say for each one of you, I believe it means this. You are seeking to develop a planted life.
You know, you’re given an hour and a half or 2 hours or whatever out of your life to sink deep into the soil of God. And so I said, good for you.
The other reason you could be doing it is because you know you’re a hypocrite and you want to look religious. But really, there are very few times in culture that got anybody anywhere. And in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, there are better ways to impress people. This one doesn’t work that well, so that’s. I give you the benefit of doubt.
I think you’re all doing it for the right reasons. All right, so God bless you.
Oh, there’s a third reason. You might be coming because your parents made you. That’s also a very good reason. I know. I know you. You both come because you just. you’re sitting at home going, you know, we haven’t been teased by Pastor Kevin for a week. We need to go to church tonight. I know. All right, so good.
It is good then, to be planted. And let’s plant ourselves tonight with word, prayer, worship, communion, all those things.
We got music to help us, and so we’re going to use music as a tool to give our praise and our thanks to God. So let’s stand and do that.
Let our hearts burn, God. Let our hearts burn within us. Holy Spirit, set our hearts on fire for Jesus. For the glory of his name and for his kingdom. Set our hearts on fire.
Thank you, Lord. you’ve shown me the path of life. In your presence is the fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Father.
Come, Holy Spirit. Be upon us. Be upon the preached word. Let it do what you created it to do. Shape us into the image of your son, Jesus. Let it go into our ears, into our head, and then down into our hearts. What’s dross, blow away. What’s eternal, settle in us. We ask it in Jesus’ Name, Amen. Amen.
All right, dear ones, we’re going through the Bible, and we’re going through the prophets. And the prophets can be some tough sledding because prophets are covenant lawyers.
And what I mean by that is God established a covenant with Israel. Prophets come to Israel, and they make God’s case. They say, all right, here’s the covenant. Here’s how you violated it. Here’s what the Lord says.
And the Lord says what he said when he established the covenant. If you violate the covenant, if you worship other gods, if you oppress the poor, those are the two biggies, right? Those tend to be the two biggies. He doesn’t even get mad at them for not holding Passover.
You know, when Josiah holds the Passover, he’s like, wow, great, guys, you finally did it. But it’s, I mean, I, he doesn’t even get mad at them for not having the right sacrifices.
In fact, he doesn’t like their sacrifices because they just come legalistically when they do and then they go and offer sacrifices to Baal and Asherah and Molech, and they sacrifice their kids to these false gods. And he says, your burnt offerings are detestable to me.
What he wants is he wants them to worship him exclusively and stop chasing after the other gods of the surrounding nations. He wants them to do right in the land like his covenant says.
If they followed his covenant, the poor would be cared for, the widow and the orphan would be cared for. There would be justice in the land. Instead, there’s corruption, there’s deceit, there’s debauchery, and everything’s just bad. And it’s bad for a long time.
It’s not like it’s bad for two years. It’s not like it’s bad for four years. It’s bad for hundreds of years. Hundreds of years. You have these practices, and God keeps telling them, don’t do it.
And you read the prophets, and you know, it’s like it’s all this judgment. Except in all the prophets, there’s this hint, this hint that though I’m going to bring judgment, though there’s going to be exile, though you know, hard times are coming that you have brought upon yourselves, I’m going to create a whole new day.
You are going to learn your inability to follow my covenant, and I’m going to come and I’m going to write my law, as he says to Jeremiah, on your heart. I’m going to do an inward work. I’m going to send another one.
Remember how good David was? I’m going to send another one from the line of David. Only his kingdom won’t be a kingdom that lasts a lifetime. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and he will be.
And the Jews had a name for that. They called it Messiah, the anointed one.
The Greek word Christ, the christed one, was going to come. And there’s all these hints about what this Messiah is going to look like, and we know he’s going to be a great king.
But then Isaiah comes along, and Isaiah probably does more than any other prophet to talk about the Messiah and the messianic age. From Isaiah 40 through Isaiah 36, some people have called it the fifth gospel or the gospel of the Old TestAment. But Isaiah puts another twist on the Messiah that is a little different than this mighty warrior king David.
And that is, the Messiah is also going to be a suffering servant. The Messiah is going to be a suffering servant.
And you realize how Israel had such a tough time with these almost two contradictory pictures of the Messiah, a victorious king and a suffering servant. Now, any human being that lived a human, human life can understand how both of those can be true, right?
We have the times in our life where we’re on top of the world, where things are going well, you know, and we feel like, you know, the job’s good and the family’s good, and everything’s happening good.
And then we have these other times where it’s like, oh, my gosh, everything’s falling apart and life’s crazy, and the kids are crazy, and why did I marry this person? And. And human life has always been like that.
But the idea of a majestic, victorious king and a suffering servant seemed really hard to. What? Bring together to reconcile.
And so when Jesus comes the first time, the disciples are like, you’re the Messiah. Look at all these signs and wonders. Look at this brilliant teaching.
And Jesus says, you’re right. I am the Messiah. Great. Let’s go to Jerusalem and kick some Roman tail. Let’s go to Jerusalem and defeat our enemies. And you’re going to be on the throne.
And John and James are like, hey, can we be the secretary of defense and the secretary of state? Can we sit on your right and on your left? We’re going to get rich.
We’re going to be famous. We’re going to be awesome. And Jesus says, no, you don’t understand. But Isaiah understood. Before the reigning king comes a suffering servant.
Isaiah writes four places in Isaiah. They’re called the servant songs, where Isaiah writes about this servant of the Lord and the Messiah as the servant of the Lord: Isaiah 42, Isaiah 49, Isaiah 50, and then Isaiah 52 and 53. Isaiah 50:2-13 through Isaiah 50:3-12.
All right, he writes about this servant of the Lord, and especially in the last passage, he really focuses in on this servant’s suffering.
And that’s what I’m going to read to you tonight, and that’s what we’re going to look at.
So Isaiah 52:13 starts out,
13 See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted (Isaiah 52:13, NLT)
Okay, that’s great. That’s great.
14 But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. 15 And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about. (Isaiah 52:14-15, NLT)
1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm? 2 My servant grew up in the Lord ‘s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. 4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all. 7 He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away. No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream. But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. 9 He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave. 10 But it was the Lord ‘s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord ‘s good plan will prosper in his hands. 11 When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. 12 I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels. (Isaiah 53:9-12, NLT)
And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable. Lord, in your sight, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
So the suffering servant of Isaiah 52 and 53. I don’t know if any of you have seen on YouTube. It’s where I’ve seen it, a ministry called One for Israel or something like that.
And it’s not just. It’s not like a pro-Israel, political pro-Israel, but it’s about Jewish people who have given their lives to Jesus.
And there’s just these. There’s probably, I don’t know, dozens, maybe. I don’t know how many. Now, they have recorded testimonies of several Jews who surprisingly surprised themselves, gave their life to Christ.
And I’ve watched a lot of these because they’re just kind of inspiring. And it’s after midnight and I can’t get to sleep, and I already have enough cigar lighters. I can’t go buy another one on Amazon.
I think, well, maybe I should do something holy. And so I’ll watch one of these. Let me hear a story about somebody coming to Christ. And I’m always glad I did. They’re inspiring. They’re exciting.
But one of the things that struck me as I was watching these is how many times, not every time, but how many times these Jewish Christians, these Messianic Jews, how many times they said that a significant part of their conversion was reading this passage. Because when they read this passage, what dawns on them is these are our.
These aren’t the Christian scriptures. These are our scriptures written a long time, you know, 600 years or so before Jesus.
And yet, just like Psalm 22 describes the death of Jesus on a cross, so Isaiah 53 describes the ministry, the mission, the suffering, the death, and the purpose of that death of Jesus.
And all of a sudden, we can see how this great king can also be the suffering servant.
And they come together, and he wins this marvelous victory, not by a battle with an army, but by, in fact, submitting himself to evil, to the point of death. And yet somehow, because of his obedience to the Father in that death, everything gets reversed. He wins this great victory and is exalted and vindicated throughout all of history. It’s the greatest of all turnarounds.
And so let’s look at some of the characteristics of the Messiah. Beginning in Isaiah 52:13-15, you know, it talks about his life. My servant will prosper.
He’ll be highly exalted. Well, that sounds great. Now, we start off with a victorious king, but then it says, it just shifts real quick. But he was disfigured. He was beaten. He didn’t even appear as a man.
But because of this, somehow, throughout history, kings will stand speechless in his presence. They will realize things that they have never been told. They will understand what had not been heard.
And, dear ones, you’ve got to think this is an amazing story. A crucified Jewish carpenter created western civilization. Let me tell you that again.
A crucified Jewish carpenter under Roman authority, from the land of Nazareth, from Palestine, has shaped Western culture so that 2000 years, over 2000 years later, we’re still talking about him. We’re still arguing about him. But our morals, our ethics, our culture has been shaped by what he taught and who he was.
And he never had an army. He never traveled more than 30 miles from his hometown. There were books written about him, inspired, we would believe, by his spirit. But he never himself sat down with parchment and ink and wrote anything down.
His public ministry lasted an incredibly short period of time. Three years before that, he was completely hidden, never raised a sword, never marched an army. And yet, as Isaiah said, kings, rulers, the most powerful men of the world, will pay homage to him and will be startled by his teaching, and even their lives will change.
One of the most powerful kings in the Middle Ages was King Charlemagne. And when King Charlemagne died, King Charlemagne was victorious.
He expanded his kingdom through, as kings always do, military victories, and through the sword, and through the armies, and through the bloodshed of men and women. He had this powerful kingdom, and he had wealth, and he had power, and he had prestige.
Yet, as he grew old in life, he realized how empty all that was. When he was buried, he said, bury me with an open Bible and place my bony finger on this passage.
And the passage was, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? The most powerful king in that era of the world said, you know what? Jesus is smarter than me. Jesus is smarter than me. And so it’s an incredible story. We believe people, well, people say, well, other religions gained, you know, gained a cent in the world. Yeah, they did. But none from such a man as this. Islam gained through the sword. Whenever christians have taken up the sword, it’s not gone well for us.
It’s not really gone well for us. That’s not the standard operating procedure God has for us to hold a sword over somebody and say, infidel, believe or die. But that is the strategy, and that has been the strategy of Islam throughout its history and to a large degree. And that’s their growth.
Throughout the Middle Ages, throughout the Mediterranean world, it was the growth of, like, a military kingdom. They grew through military conquest, but not Jesus. And yet his ministry goes on.
And even to this day, you can’t get elected president of the United States, whether it’s sincere or not sincere, without making some kind of allegiance to this man. Without articulating, “I’m a good Catholic” or “I’m a Baptist” or “I.” you know, I can’t think of. Is there any president, Brian, that’s ever not given some kind of, you know, whether it’s been genuine or not? Right?
They all went to church. They all conclude that, in fact, probably the least religious of all of them, Trump. You know, so that’s just the way it is.
He is strangely exalted based on who he was, where he was born, in Nazareth.
Listen, here’s the deal with Jesus. The Jews were occupied by the Romans. They were poor, occupied people. And amongst the Jews, there was also a status. If you were a southern Jew around Jerusalem, Judah, Tribe of Judah, Benjamin, down in that area, you were prestigious. It was like you were in Silverdale or Poulsbo. But if you were a northern Jew, it was like you were in Bremerton or Port Orchard.
I tell people I live in Port Orchard.
They say, oh, I feel sorry for you. Well, I live in McCormick Woods. We call it the Gig Harbor of Port Orchard. We live in the Gig Harbor of Port Orchard. And even in Bremerton, there’s a pecking order. I live in Bremerton. Oh, I’m sorry. Well, I don’t live in Gorst. I’m not in Gorst.
And, of course, Kathleen, there’s the queen. The queen of Kitsap County. Yeah. And it’s. We don’t even call it Bainbridge Island. We just call it the island brain dead. Okay. Yeah, well, kids like to rebel. Yeah. But Nazareth was Gorst.
Nazareth was gorsed. Jesus. Peter was seen. Peter was picked out in Jerusalem when Jesus was being crucified, and he was denying him. They say, oh, we know you’re one of his disciples. Well, how do we know? Cause you speak like a Galilean.
Now, it’s reversed. Back then, the northerns were the hillbillies, not the southerners. Right. In our culture, you know, it’s like, oh, you got a little south in the mouth, you know, and because the north won the Civil War, we looked down on the southerners, but then it was. They looked down on the Galileans.
That’s where Jesus came from. He was born in poverty. He wasn’t tall and handsome. There was nothing majestic in his appearance. He wasn’t like King Saul. He didn’t stand a foot above everybody else.
As a kid growing up, I always wanted to be tall. My dad wanted a son who had long legs. My mother had long legs. He got two of his three daughters had long legs, and he had me, and I didn’t. My dad was five nine. I never caught up to him. I’m five eight and a half.
Now that I’m older, I’m probably just flat five eight. And man, I loved playing basketball. I always envied tall guys, man. And the girls liked tall guys better, and I was just short.
As I got older, I got short and fat, you know, just so thankful I’m not bald. Short, fat, and bald, man. That’s the trifecta of bad news. Looked like Danny Devito, and I just. And the Lord healed me of my envy.
And you know, when the Lord healed me in my envy, when I got on a plane in coach and I looked at the tall guys and I said, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. This 6 hours is going to go much better for me than that guy over there who’s six foot three. It’s going to be a lot easier.
There’s nothing Jesus would not be. You know, I don’t know. Who are the hot tickets today in the acting world? I don’t even know. You know? You know? Go ahead, Sidney. No. Yeah.
You know who would play mister Darcy, Sophia? Colin Firth. All right. He’s not Colin Firth. He’s not handsome. He’s just a normal guy. But he identified with humanity, and he identified with their suffering.
He was despised and rejected. It’s hard being rejected. It’s one of the most difficult experiences any of us have. You know, I tell you, ladies, men take a big risk. You get all down on them because they don’t do it right. Just be glad they take the risk.
What a risk to go out and spend all that money on a ring, humble themselves, get down on a knee and say, will you marry me? With the possibility that you might say, let me think on it.
I just remember high school dances and the terror of going up and asking some cute girl to dance. It’s like, well, you want to dance? No. Or here’s worse. You got a crush on somebody, right? It’s like, oh, I just. I’m crushing on her, and you go and you finally take the risk. I really like you.
I like you too. Great. And then these deadly words, like a brother. It’s so hard to be rejected. You didn’t get the job, or you got fired, or you got handed the divorce papers.
Jesus was despised and rejected. He was misunderstood. He was a man of sorrow. He understood grief and people and his death. I mean, Judas betrayed him, one of his best friends, for 30 pieces of silver. Betrayed him.
We think, ah, his other disciples didn’t betray him. No, no. They stood by his side until they ran away. They ran away.
The people he created, who he called through the burning bush, who he gave a land to, who he tried to shepherd, and the people he made his own, shouted out the day of his death in unison, crucify him.
Even the Romans, he couldn’t even turn to the Romans for impartial justice. The Romans freely admitted he hadn’t done anything wrong. We see no reason to kill him. But even the Romans succumb to political expediency and there is nobody to stand for him.
He knows the dregs of human experience. You had a bad day.
He had a worse one. He had a worse one. you’ve been accused falsely. So was he. you’ve been rejected. you’ve been, you’ve been, you’ve been stabbed in the back by somebody you thought was a friend. Him too.
Have your friends ran away from you when you wanted them to stand up for you? His friends too.
I remember as the Methodist pastor in this little church, I was going into a meeting. I know it’s gonna be a fight. I knew it’s going to be, you know, it’s one of those meetings.
I had established a preschool in the church, and I was giving the preschool a good deal on using our space. You know why? They were bringing families to our church. It’s like we’re making money on these, you know, if you want to do it just business, we’re making money on these people.
But these trustees, these old trustees, they couldn’t see farther than their noses. Like, we need to charge these people more money. We need to charge this preschool more money for using it. We’re not charging market value.
And I had a room full of people, and three or four of them were just dead set, you know, that we needed to charge them more money.
The rest of the room full of people, probably five or six of them, were on my side. And I’m thinking, oh, when this easy.
I get in there and we start debating and, you know, what’s the deal with the good guys, right? The good guys just say, well, we don’t want to offend anybody.
They just let me fight that all by myself.
I kept looking around the rooms, like, when are you guys going to stand up here? Come on. You know, come to the. Come to the table.
And afterwards, they all came up to me and they patted me on the back, hey, you did great. It’s like, yeah, thanks for the help, dude. Could have used. Could have used. You could have said something.
Way to go, Jesus. Way to go to that cross. Yeah, thanks for running away, Pete. Denying me three times. He knows. He knows, but he did it for a purpose.
He brought us peace in his sorrows. His beating and his stripes bring us healing. His death brings us forgiveness. He does it all in our place.
That’s what expiation means. What it means is what 2 Corinthians 5:21 means. God made him who knew no sin to become sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.
It’s the one time in history where something that’s too good to be true for us is actually true.
All of our sin, all of our rebellion, all of our mockery of God, all of our antagonism, all of our shaking our fists angrily, saying, I’m going to do it my way. The heck with you. I’m not going to play by the rules. I’m going to look out for number one. All of that, Jesus, while we were still there. Not after we repented, while we were still there. Took it upon himself. It all climbed onto him, and he nailed it to the cross, and it was crucified with him.
Listen, if you’ve experienced injustice, let me tell you, there has never been or never will be an injustice perpetrated on planet earth like this one. He didn’t deserve any of it, but he took it. And in exchange, he gives us his life.
We become children of God. We become beloved by God. We become forgiven by God. We get his righteousness.
You know, when I was a kid, my parents taught me, and this is wise counsel. You ought to teach your kids this too: if it’s too good to be true, it ain’t right.
If the king of Abu Dhabi gets your email address and says he’s going to give you $20 billion and all he needs is your credit card number and bank account number, it’s a scam.
All right, if it’s too good to be true. You know you can get billions of dollars just by playing the lottery. No. You can increase the amount of money you pay in taxes by playing the lottery. If it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.
Why do we have this instinct that something could be too good to be true?
Because in all history, it’s true. Once God made him who knew no sin to become sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. This is the great exchange. This is the story that’s too good to be true, and it’s true. By his stripes, we are healed.
There’s a debate amongst theologians in church history. Is healing in the atonement? Is healing in the atonement? We know forgiveness is in the atonement. What about healing? And here’s the argument for healing in the atonement: Isaiah 53. By his stripes, we are healed.
He was beaten for our wholeness. Sounds like it’s there. It’s other places in the scripture too. Let me give you Psalm 103.
Bless the Lord, o my soul and all my inmost being. Bless the Lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives all your sins. What comes next? Heals all your diseases.
Listen, the way Hebrew poetry is constructed, one of those is not metaphorically, mostly true and the other one literally true. If one of them is metaphor, the other is metaphor. If one of them is literal, the other is literal.
So either he forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, or he kind of forgives all your sins and kind of heals all your diseases.
There’s the Lord’s prayer: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Where? On earth as it is in heaven.
I just take it as based on what I kind of read in scripture and based as a matter of faith, I just take it there’s no sickness in heaven. I don’t think anybody’s struggling with cancer in heaven. I don’t think anybody’s got a little diabetes thing. Little packs on them in heaven.
All right. I don’t think. I don’t even think we need these in heaven. All right. Nobody’s gonna get shots in their eyes, Kathleen, in heaven. Praise the Lord. All right, it’s all gone. It’s all done.
But, you know, I’ve worn glasses since I’ve been about 16 or 17. I’ve never minded. A lot of people, you know, they don’t like glasses. They want contacts. They think they look better. I think I look better with glasses. You know, I think glasses actually, you know, at least with guys, make us look smart.
And there’s a great move with glasses. There’s a great move you can do with glasses that will really make you look smart when you don’t know a thing.
Yeah, exactly. All you have to do is somebody say, Kevin, is there healing in the atonement? And all I have to do is this. See? Gotcha. Didn’t you? Didn’t it? You were thinking, wow, he is a thoughtful, reflective, wise, philosophical person.
Well, not when you’re giggling. No, it doesn’t help when you’re giggling. Yeah, watch Brian. Brian’s got it down pretty good. Yeah, Brian. Yeah.
Yeah, you can do this. You can do this. That, that emphasizes, touch the lip and then point. It’s a good move. All right. Yeah, got it.
Sidney, get up. Even if you don’t need them, get a pair of glasses. When you go to Great Northern and when your professor asks you a tough question, let us know. Bring back a report. It’ll get you higher grades. The professor will be so impressed, it’ll take a B and bring it right up to at least an A minus.
All right, no glasses in heaven. Back to my point.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Look at Jesus. He says we’re to pursue his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It seems to me that healing is a part of it.
I’ll give you my last argument on this. I’ve got others, but the last big one: Jesus never made anybody sick. He’s God in the flesh. He never made anybody sick. He never said, you know what? I’m going to give you blindness just to teach you a lesson, and you’re going to thank me later. I mean, that’s what sick people often say.
That’s what reformed theology often says, right? We got this, but God gave it to us to teach us this valuable lesson. Now, I believe half of that.
There was a young man, a high school kid, who had gone through cancer in high school, and he was healed. He got better and he said he thanked God for giving him cancer because he learned so many good lessons through his cancer. And usually at Burger King, I don’t feel the need to correct somebody’s theology. Actually, that’s not true.
I almost always feel the need to correct somebody’s theology. But usually at Burger King, I refrain from correcting someone’s theology. There’s a guy who gave me some bad theology today in church, and I didn’t correct him. And so anyway, I didn’t. But I couldn’t let it go. I just said, look at Randall. I got to tell you something. I don’t think God gave you cancer.
Now, second part, I learned so much going through that. Yeah, God did that. You can thank God for all that.
Now let me give you a big argument against healing in the atonement, all right? Everybody we pray for doesn’t get well. That’s the argument from experience, not scripture, though. And usually, the argument is a sovereign God gets to decide when somebody gets healed and when somebody doesn’t. And that makes perfect sense.
The problem is Jesus never says that when people don’t get healed in the ministry of Jesus. Oh, did I say oh, Jesus never made anybody sick. Let me point to everybody. Every single person in the scriptures who asked Jesus to heal them got healed.
He didn’t heal everybody. He goes to the pool of Bethesda, he heals one guy. Not everybody. But based on just the scriptures, we don’t know, maybe somebody asked him to get healed and he didn’t heal them. I mean, the chosen takes that position on a couple of occasions, which is my only grief against the TV show The Chosen.
But everybody that I know of who came to Jesus for healing as recorded in the scriptures got it. Now back to the argument against God is sovereign.
So obviously it’s his will if he heals somebody, and it’s his will if somebody doesn’t get healed. And God knows best, and God will cause good to come out of it.
Okay, you can hold that position. It makes sense. I’m just saying that’s not the conclusion I come to when I read the gospels. And I will admit that the conclusion I come to is a minority opinion in the body of Christ. And I will also admit that I can’t prove it by experience because I prayed for lots of people to get better who didn’t.
Well, what do you do with that then? Well, here’s the uncomfortable thing that Jesus does with that. Jesus doesn’t say, oh, a sovereign God just decided not to drive the demons out of this boy. He looks at his disciples and goes, why couldn’t you guys do this? You don’t have enough faith yet. Grow your faith.
Oh my goodness, now you’re sounding like a pentecostal. Now you’re sounding like a faith healer. Well, say that to Jesus. Now what I’ll never say because I think it’s cruel and Jesus actually never does that when somebody doesn’t get healed.
Jesus never looks at that person and says, well, you just don’t have enough faith. He looks at his disciples and says, you don’t have enough faith.
So if I pray for somebody and they don’t get healed. If I pray for you and you don’t get healed, don’t worry, I’m not going to blame you. I will go home and blame me. Maybe sometimes too harshly, but really, I think it’s the church as a whole that we have my operating theory on. This is the church as a whole.
We have not reached the level where we’re batting a thousand yet. But I’ll say this about my experience, all right? Not everybody I pray for gets healed. And people will say, see, Jesus healed everybody. So it’s not his intention to heal today.
Well, you know what? Here’s my deal. Jesus was better at it, okay? Dude, it’s like, Jesus was a better evangelist than Billy Graham. He was a better teacher than all these guys on the Internet who think they’re God’s gift to teaching, all right? He was better at it. Can he be better at healing?
Jesus never had to look at himself and say, darn, I just don’t have enough faith, you know? Hey, Father, I already know you’re gonna do this. I’m just saying this prayer for the people around here so they know that you’re working in me and I’m in you, and you always hear my prayers and you always do it.
That’s the only reason I’m saying this stuff out loud. Cause I knew a couple days ago when they came from Lazarus’ house and said he was dying, I knew that you were gonna do this.
That’s why I waited, because you’re going to be glorified through the raising of Lazarus the dead. So I’m just making this big speech on behalf of you and behalf of me so that everybody knows it’s about you and me and about the great thing we’re doing.
And by the way. Oh, here we go. Hey, Lazarus, come on out. Come on out, Laz. And he did.
Jesus never like, man, I got to work up my faith for this one. All right?
So anyway, whether you believe healings in the atonement or not, I just gave you, now you can. There are other. I’m not going to spend all night on. There are other arguments against it that do have some scriptural basis, but that’s. I just think. I just think we. I just think it is a. It is an over simplistic answer, and I feel like it is sometimes used as a cop out to just land on the sovereignty of God issue for our ineffectiveness in a ministry of healing.
I think God might be looking at us and saying, I sovereignly want to heal people. I’m just looking for some people who get in the game and believe it, who will risk looking like a fool and failing until they grow enough spiritual muscle to see the kingdom breaking.
I don’t know. I don’t know how much heaven we can see on earth, but here’s what I say. I’ll bet we can see more. And I want to die pressing into that instead of giving simple answers to make us feel better.
So that’s where I land on that.
It’s not a deal breaker. It’s not part of the doctrine of grace, covenant, and the firehouse church. It’s my opinion based on scriptures, so you can disagree with me. No big deal. All right.
And maybe for nobody in here but me, is that even a theological issue of whether or not there’s healing in the atonement? But just in case there is, I thought I’d give it a run. Ott is going there, you know. I’ve thought of that, Kevin, so that’s good. I don’t know if you’ve thought of that.
But anyway, yeah, it’s been a question for you. Good. All right. He dies for our sickness, for our sorrows, and for our sin. And the greatest miracle, I will agree, the greatest miracle is he die. Listen, whether there’s healing in atonement or not, there’s healing in the resurrection, right?
We already established that there’s healing in heaven. There’s healing in heaven, all right. I don’t even know if I’ll drop stuff in heaven.
But I hate dropping stuff now, and one of the reasons I hate dropping stuff is I got to pick it up now, or at least I have to have an argument with myself on how important is that. Is that worth the sacrifice of picking it up? You know?
So I think that stuff will be gone. Maybe even tonight. Maybe even tonight, my back will be completely healed. Amen. Maybe every sickness that’s in this room will be healed as we meet him at his table tonight.
Maybe as we take the food of the new covenant, every benefit of the new covenant will be applied to us. Can’t hurt. No. And I know somebody who is diagnosed with breast cancer who’s, you know, doing just fine. Just doing fine. Just happy as a tick on a well-fed dog. She’s doing great.
He resigned himself to this. He resigned himself to this. Best compliment you ever received. He resigned himself to this? Like a sheep before his shears, he was silent. Man. This is the hard one for me.
This is harder than believing there’s healing in the atonement. Is keeping my mouth shut and not vindicating myself. They begged him to try to vindicate himself.
The Jewish leaders. Have you nothing to say, Pilate? What are you going to look at? They’re going to kill you. Aren’t you going to defend yourself?
And the only thing she says gets him killed. Are you the Son of God? Well, metaphorically speaking, we’re all kind of sons of God, you know? Are you the Son of God? You said it. Aren’t you going to defend yourself?
Listen, Roman governor, I got more troops than you got. I got heavenly troops, but this, this is meant to be. This is God’s call. This is not my kingdom. you’re going to see my kingdom one day. It’s more impressive than Rome.
But he never. He never vindicates himself. Man, and you’ve heard me confess this before, I just want to put people in their place. They deserve to be put in their place, you know, I want to look right and I want them to be wrong. But he was silent. In his own defense, he died childless.
What does that mean? Well, here’s the vindicate we get. We’ll get to the vindication. But in that culture, not to have children was considered shameful. You know, if you were a woman and you couldn’t bear children, it was a reproach, something, you know, you must have sinned so that, you know, that retributive theology. You must have sinned if, you know, children were. Children were a blessing from the Lord. All right. your quiver should be full. Children were a blessing.
I think, actually, you know, I do believe the scriptures and their original languages are inerrant, infallible.
But I think there was a translation error that has gone down through the ages. Grandchildren are a blessing from the Lord. Children are simply the means by which you get them. That’s what I think the Bible really means. Not really. People don’t.
All right. He died childless. He died at a young age. He was buried with sinners. He resigned himself. He did not vindicate himself, but he trusted in his father. He trusted to the very end, and therefore he was vindicated. He will be given a long, eternal life.
Well, what? He died.
How’s he given a long life? He’s resurrected. He is resurrected from the dead. He is vindicated. The resurrection. The resurrection is a lot of things theologically, but one of the things it is, is it is the great vindication. It is the great turnaround. It is where the movie turns around. It’s where the adventure film, the western, the superhero movie, the Marvel movies, and the DC movies, they all, they all follow the same pattern. And it is the pattern of the gospel.
There’s a good guy and there are bad guys, and there’s not even really a lot of confusion. There’s not a lot of gray, you know, with some of the leading characters.
You know, Batman’s a little dark, you know, and Iron Man’s a little immoral, but, you know, but there’s good guys, but their hearts are good. You know, they’re in the right place. There’s good. And Superman, I mean, he’s just good, you know, and there’s just good guys and bad guys. And the bad guys are always really bad.
You know, in the western, there’s the cattle baron who owns the town, and he owns the sheriff, and all the poor people of the town are under his thumb.
And then all of a sudden, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, all my old movies, all my movies are old. Jimmy Stewart. They ride into town. Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer ride into town. The music changes. Indiana Jones. Dun dun dun dun dun dun. Oh, he’s on a white horse. He’s chasing down the Nazis. Things are going to change.
That’s the story. That’s why we like westerns.
They’re this story. The bad guys are really bad. They’re oppressive. But there’s a hero. And when things look the darkest and the most desperate and the worst possible scenario, suddenly things turn and the hero rises up and the story changes.
All right, have I used it in a year? Can I use it again? Tombstone, the railroad scene. Watch it on YouTube. Right? His brother, Kurt Russell, his brother has been killed.
The cowboys look like they’ve chased the earps out of town and Doc Holliday, and now they’re just going to run the town. They’re going to continue their villainry and their corruption.
It looks like the earps are running out of town, but they’re not. In fact, Wyatt Earp goes and gets martialized, and they’re there to kill his brother and to kill him at the railroad station. The bad guys are there, and they go, where’s Wyatt? Bam. One bad guy dead.
The other bad guy turns around, gun in his face, opens up his coat. He says, you see this? His marshal badge. You go tell the cowboys I’m coming. This is theological people. You go tell the cowboys I’m coming.
I see a red sash. That’s what the cowboys wore that was there. I see a red sash, I shoot the man wearing it. You tell them I’m coming. And what does he say? Judgment. Hell’s coming with me.
And the next scene, you see these horse riders and the sun rising behind them and the music playing. All of a sudden, the whole tenor of the movie has changed. Now the good guys are winning, and the bad guys are losing. We get a rush of emotion and a rush.
Boy, that’s Sunday morning, people. That’s Sunday morning. The devil, the cows of Bashan, those howling, snarling lions of hell, those dogs of demonstration who surrounded Jesus at the cross, drug him down into the grave, drug him down to the pit.
They didn’t know that he was gonna shake them off like nothing, walk to their boss, the devil, and snatch the keys of death and Hades from his hand, and get up on Sunday morning. All hell was screaming like, that’s not fair. We thought we won.
But God has vindicated Jesus, and because of that, he is honored by God and he has given many offspring. Hey, offspring, we’re here. We’re the offspring of Jesus. We’re the sons and daughters of the living God because he suffered, he died, and he rose again.
And a thousand years, or 600 years before it happened, Isaiah saw it. So that when his disciples read the scriptures, after he rose from the dead, just like those modern messianic Jews, when they read Isaiah 53, those disciples read Isaiah 53, they go, oh, you know, oh, my goodness, who is this guy? This is it. This is our guy. Isaiah told us about him. There he is.
Now here’s the rub. We want to be like him, right? I say it all the time.
I want to be like Jesus more when we walk out that door, when we walked in. It involves suffering. We can’t vindicate ourselves. We can’t smack our enemies back. We will be mocked and persecuted, misunderstood and slandered, and we don’t get to take up the sword and cut off their heads.
That’s not the way of it. We win by losing. We win by humility, by love. That’s our only weapon. That’s it. That’s all we got. We’re not Batman. We don’t have this whole. Well, we do. We have a whole utility belt of spiritual gifts.
And the purpose of every spiritual gift is love. Read every place. It talks about spiritual gifts in the New TestAment and either right before it or right after it. An exposition on love, that’s the only application of spiritual gifts is love.
That is what we bring to each other and that is what we bring to the world. And that’s all we have to offer. And sometimes we will see that vindicated in this world. And other times we will be despised and rejected. We’ll be slandered and cursed. Some will die, some, many have throughout history.
It’s not really at that point in our culture, but it could get to that point. Who knows? Certainly, slander and certainly mocking we endure. So be it.
In fact, Jesus says, be happy. Be happy when it happens. Why? Just shows you’re one of mine. That’s the badge. How do I know I belong to you, Jesus? You know, do they mock you? Do they slander you? Do they speak evil against you? Yeah, they do. Great. you’re in good company. They did it to me. What’s next? Oh, they’re going to kill you. All right.
What’s the Bible say? I’ve been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20, NLT)
Jesus didn’t come to make you better. He came to make you dead and to make you new.
That’s part of the suffering, right? Part of the suffering isn’t even inflicted upon us by others. It’s the suffering we have in our own battles within ourselves.
I’ll never forget one of the most poignant times of my prayer life. I’m reading the gospels and Jesus is doing miracles, and I love miracles. I love power.
And that’s not always, you know, that’s not just a selfish thing that, oh, I love power for my glory.
Part of that at least, part of the motive, I don’t know how pure my motives always are, but part of my motive is love, right? I want to see sick people made well. It breaks my heart to see sick children. It breaks my heart to see people in church that I love afflicted and sick and burdened.
And I want to be able to put hands on those people in the name of Jesus, say, be well, and watch them get well. I mean, because I love those people. I don’t like to see that.
And so I’m reading about Jesus and the deaf hear and the blind see and the lepers are cleansed. And, you know, it’s like. And I was moved by the Spirit of God to pray. And I got down on my knees in my office and I said, oh, Lord, make me like Jesus.
Power to heal and huge crowds to preach to and, you know, and all that. And immediately as I said that, this picture enters my mind of a man dying, bleeding on a cross.
And if you, you can’t give me credit for holiness here, but at least you got to give me credit for honesty, immediately out of my mouth were these words, oh, no, not that, Jesus. I actually said it before I could edit it, before I could edit my prayers. No, you misunderstood what I’m praying for here, God.
And then I hear the voice, right?
Not the audible, but in my head. And here’s what the voice says. That one comes with this one. There’s no separating them. There’s no Easter without a Good Friday, and Friday ain’t good without Easter.
Kevin, if you want to heal the sick and raise the dead, great. I want more people who want that. But it’ll cost. It’ll cost. you’ll be slandered.
We started in California, the church. We started in California, and signs and wonders started breaking out. And the Holy Spirit started breaking out. It was exciting. It was great. And people left the church.
People who came to that church for more of the Holy Spirit left because, no, we didn’t want that much more of the Holy Spirit.
Friends, friends left other churches in town who we were held in high esteem for because we stood up to those Methodists and these evangelical churches. You know, they respected us and they respected me, and it was great.
And I love that respect now because people were being slain in the Spirit, which is a phrase I don’t even like, going down under the power. People were laughing when we prayed for them.
These manifestations were happening that couldn’t be understood and couldn’t be unexplained. Our church was on a little hill, and we were called behind our back, but it got back to me, the cult on the hill.
Well, why are we a cult? Have I renounced any of the tenets of the apostles Creed? Have I stopped believing that Jesus is the Son of God? Have I stopped believing that the scriptures are the inspired word of God? Have I stopped believing in the literal, historical resurrection of Jesus? No.
Why are we a cult? Well, because that stuff’s demonic.
Really? So when I lay hands on somebody and pray in the name of the Father, Lord Jesus, send your spirit on this person, that’s a demonic prayer. Obviously.
They fell and laughed. you’ve not received, you’ve not received a spirit of, you know, fear, but a spirit of self-control. That wouldn’t happen if there was self-control.
Okay, all knowing one. And, you know, I’m not going to say anymore because my sarcasm and vindication will come out. That’s not a big cost to pray, but there was a cost. There was a.
I prayed for revival.
We got revival. There was a cost. Listen, we pray for revival here. If it comes, there will be a cost. There will be a cost.
I realized this morning there was a young couple in church. They were new to church, and there was a guy who came in and he started getting expressive. Kathleen, he started whooping and hollering and shouting and dancing. And I like that. But you know what? I immediately went to, ooh, I really like this new young couple. I hope that’s not too much for them.
And then the Lord just said, what do you want, Kev? Let me worry about that. Let me worry about that.
So, sister, as the Spirit leads you, you whoop, holler and dance all you want, all right? Really, you can do it here. It encourages me. It gets me started. All right. I hear it behind me. It’s like, whoo. Say, well, either somebody came in the streets, or Kathleen’s here.
All right, there’s a cost. I’ll pay the cost. He was raised from the dead. He was given many offspring. He was honored by God.
Philippians says it even better. Although he existed in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But he made himself nothing. Being formed in human likeness, he became obedient, obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
Therefore. Can you hear the music? The plot’s changing.
Therefore, God has highly exalted him, and he has given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus in heaven, on earth, and below the earth, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
CS Lewis calls it the celestial dive. He dives to the lowest points in humanity and is exalted to the highest position in heaven. I think that’s the pattern of the Christian life.
We dive in obedience and faith to God, and we say, whatever comes of it, comes of it. And I will trust you, God, that in the end you will vindicate me, you will be my savior, my sins will be forgiven.
Isaiah 53 says, your sins are forgiven. your sins are forgiven.
I had a few moments. It drives me nuts. Drives my wife nuts. But I’ll be sitting there and all of a sudden, out of nothing, we’re just watching TV. All of a sudden I go, oh, my gosh. And she’ll say, what?
And I’m like, oh, my gosh. I wish I hadn’t said, oh, my gosh, because I’m going to have to explain to her what I said, oh, my gosh about.
Women, you just need to know that talking about it makes you feel better. It doesn’t make us feel better. We don’t want to talk about anything, all right? No, we don’t want to talk about it. That’s just reliving it, all right?
My wife’s like, what? What was that about? Nothing. Well, you wouldn’t have said oh my gosh if it was nothing, all right?
I had a memory from 20 years ago and it just jumped on me. And you, you’ve had those, right? Those old memories, and you just cringe, like, why did I say that? Why did I do that? Oh, you knucklehead. Why were you such a jerk, you know?
And I’m just, I just, I just lived that. And it was painful for a moment, all right? And then I just look at my wife, go, satisfied, all right, we talked. We communicated. There you go. You feeling warm all over, feeling close and intimate.
I say, oh my gosh, just leave me alone, all right? I want to love you. Yeah, leave me alone. That’s the way you love me.
These men are just smiling in here like, yeah, yeah, exactly. You tell my wife. I don’t have the courage to, all right?
But then I remember this. After that painful moment and that painful interaction, I remember this. I remember this. My sins are forgiven. I can’t go back and make that better. If I ever meet that person again, I can apologize, but I can’t go back and make it better.
But I can trust him, who forgave me, to bring good out of even my bad. And I can have peace in my. Oh my gosh.
And so, dear ones, with everything in me, I want you to believe this. I can’t make you believe it, but I pray, Holy Spirit, you would apply this to each of our hearts. And I simply want to say this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to me. You are forgiven. That’s what this table says. This table is the covenant, the new covenant given for many. For what psalm?
I mean, Isaiah 53 said it. For the forgiveness of sins. For the forgiveness of sins. And so your sins are forgiven.
You are not a perfect person. You haven’t been a perfect person. There’s still stuff, probably of that old nature, that old dead nature, that still. There’s still memories that are going to rise up and you’re going to act like you used to act out of character. With who? Jesus, who you are in Christ.
Remember? That used to be your character. Now that’s out of character. When you act like Jesus, you’re acting in character.
That’s the real you. I hate it when people say, I just need to live my authentic self. It’s like, man, you do not want to see my authentic self. Yuck.
I want to live my new self in Christ. That’s now my authentic. That’s what you mean by your authentic self, which is actually true. That is, if you’re in Christ, that is your authentic self. Go ahead and live it.
And every time you slip back into that old dead person, that’s your inauthentic dead self.
But right here on the night he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it, gave thanks to his father in heaven, gave it to his disciples and said this is my body.
In the same way, he took the cup. And I love these words. He took the cup, gave thanks to his father in heaven, poured it out for his disciples and said this is the cup of my blood. It is the cup of the new covenant.
And where’s, what’s the entry point into the new covenant? The forgiveness of sins.
That’s not all the new covenant is. It’s not just the gospel. Is not just your sins forgiven and you get to go to the good place? No, it’s bigger than that. But there’s no other door than the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. So come and eat and let the forgiveness of sins be solidified in you, and let the authentic life of Christ be strengthened in you tonight. Amen.
The post 2024.7.28 TFHC – The Suffering Messiah (Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
July 21, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
1 The earth is the Lord ‘s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him. 2 For he laid the earth’s foundation on the seas and built it on the ocean depths. 3 Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies. 5 They will receive the Lord ‘s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior. 6 Such people may seek you and worship in your presence, O God of Jacob. Interlude 7 Open up, ancient gates! Open up, ancient doors, and let the King of glory enter. 8 Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty; the Lord, invincible in battle. 9 Open up, ancient gates! Open up, ancient doors, and let the King of glory enter. 10 Who is the King of glory? The Lord of Heaven’s Armies he is the King of glory. (Psalms 24:1-10, NLT)
So open up, open up the gates of your heart tonight and let the King of Glory come in. We are worshiping Jesus, and He is not an idea. He’s not an ancient philosopher.
He’s not a dead religious leader. He is a risen savior. And the Triune God is alive. He actually brings His spirit to dwell in us, and as we worship Him, to dwell among us.
You can experience His presence. Whether or not you experience His presence, His presence is still a reality.
The single best thing you can do with your life is not eat right and exercise, as valuable as some people think those are. The single best thing you can do with your life is to praise God.
And that is a verbal thing. What does this mean mentally? It means to use your voice to thank and praise God. One of the greatest tools we have to do that is music. You can do it without music, but music is a tool God has given us to praise God.
We’re thankful tonight that we have David Sheldon. David is Mick’s son and just a brother in the Lord who I love. He is going to lead us in worship tonight. So welcome, David.
~ Testimony by David Sheldon ~Amen.
So as Pastor Kevin said, my name is David.
And I just wanted to. I wasn’t planning on doing this, but I just wanted to take a moment to give my testimony on how I got connected with Pastor Kevin.
He grew up in a Christian home with great parents. My dad is here tonight and my mother, Patty, who just recently passed away, went to youth group, went to church. But in my teen years, I drifted off, kind of doing my own thing, going my own way, and ended up getting addicted to drugs. It started with marijuana and kind of partying on the weekends.
But eventually it was no longer me doing the drugs, but the drugs were doing me. They really grabbed a hold of my life.
And the Bible talks about sin being fun for a season. And there’s that time where the devil can really grab ahold of you and entice you with the passions and the things of this world to deceive us. He wants to come to kill, steal, and destroy.
And so going through that process still, you know, recognizing what I was doing was wrong.
I ended up, I think it was my mom saying, you know, there’s this interim pastor who wants to, you know, talk with you or is willing to talk with you and come to find out. That was Pastor Kevin.
So through that time where I was kind of going back and forth and struggling, recognizing what I was doing, I knew it was wrong. I’d been brought up better than that. I ended up going over to Pastor Kevin’s house, and he really played a real powerful role in bringing me to the Lord.
I still hadn’t fully repented.
I was still battling, going back and forth, but just always appreciated Pastor Kevin and how much he invested in me, even though I wasn’t worth investing in.
And so I ended up stopping counseling for whatever reason. I don’t really remember what it was, but then ended up going into a treatment center, trying suboxone clinics, all these different things and different methods to try to modify my behavior, because I thought that’s what it was. I just thought I had a drug problem. I thought if I just get off the drugs, everything’s going to be great and fine.
But really what I needed is I needed a heart transplant. I needed a heart transplant.
Jesus Christ is the only one that can really change your life. We can modify our behavior. That’s what religion does, is modify your behavior, modify your behavior, stop doing this, start doing this.
And we see that in the Scriptures. We see that we are to not do some certain things and we are to do other things. But Jesus wants to change your heart. He wants to transform your life.
And ended up finding out about a program out in Indiana called Saul to Paul ministries. It was a discipleship ministry. I grew up in church, so I understood some Christian lingo, but I’m like, discipleship ministry? What is that, you know?
Going out there, it’s a place. It was actually a program for guys who were struggling with addiction, but it wasn’t a twelve-step program, it wasn’t a rehab. Their philosophy was fall in love with Jesus Christ. Give Jesus Christ your heart. Surrender to Him.
Give your life over to him and allow him to transform you.
So leaving Indiana, I was at that point, essentially homeless and nothing to my name. I burned all the bridges with the people that I cared about. Even my druggie friends were like, man, David’s really messed up. We need to watch out for him, you know?
So it’s like I had no. I had nobody left. Nobody left and down to nothing. That’s really when I came to the understanding of realizing that even though I was down to nothing, I realized that God was everything.
And going out there, handing my life over to Christ, and he’s changed my life completely.
Now I’m out there. I have a ministry. It’s kind of a second phase ministry called Ladder Glory for guys who are coming off of drugs and alcohol out of that same program that I went through. We give them a place and try to help them with a job.
I have a wife and three beautiful children. We have a home out there, a business. We have all these different things and all these blessings that are so great.
And God will bless. Sometimes in life, the material things and the family, all those things are blessings. But the greatest blessing of all is having God and having God in your life.
We can be happy. A lot of different things in life can make us happy. Those are based off of our circumstances, our happenings. But being blessed is a position that we have in God. And whether we have a lot or have a little, we can be blessed because we have Christ.
We’ve been seated in the heavenly places with our Lord and Savior, and that’s what makes us blessed.
So this song’s graves into gardens,
~ Sermon by P. Kevin Clancey ~
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. 26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.(Psalms 73:25-26, NLT)
Thank you, King Jesus. Amen.
Thank you, David. It’s good to have live worship here at the firehouse church. Thanks for sharing your story.
So, 2 Kings, dear ones, 2 Kings 19 tonight, and I’m going to read the whole chapter to you. We’ve been going through the Old Testament chronologically here.
And so I’m going to bring you up to speed on where we’re at because I know it gets confusing as you’re reading through your chronological Bible. And then there’s this king, and that king, and this king, and this king did wrong, and that king did right. And who are all these kings and what exactly is going on?
So here it is. In just a few short minutes, we’re going to bring you up to speed. God called Abram, all right? I figure he got Adam and Eve, Noah, you got that down. All right.
God called Abram and said, okay, I’m going to make a people. I’m going to make a people to save humanity.
And remember last week we talked about the Bible being a book, a book of spiritual warfare. That is capital G, God. Or as Moses came to know him, and Israel came to understand his name, which could not be spoken, but we speak it, Yahweh, that God is the one true God, but he created these angelic beings. And some of these angelic beings fell.
They rebelled against God, and they became what you might call small g gods, and they tried to rule the nations.
And so God, after Adam and Eve fell, people naturally flocked to these small g gods. And you read about them throughout your Old Testament, gods like Baal and Asherah and Molech, and these idols that people would make, and the principalities and powers behind these idols.
And really the story of the Bible, to a large extent, is God, capital G, against the gods, against the small g, fallen angelic beings, all right?
And so human beings in their fallen state are naturally drawn to polytheism. They’re naturally drawn to worship many gods, to worship these small g gods.
God takes Abraham and he says, I’m going to create in this sea of polytheism, many gods, an island of monotheism, one God, me, the true God. And I’m going to grind it into a people’s mind and heart that there is one true God, and here is my heart, here is my law, here is who I am. And I’m going to make covenant with those people.
They’re going to be my people, and I’m going to be their God, and I’m going to reveal myself to the world through these people.
And specifically, that island of monotheism is going to become a landing strip for Jesus Christ, the son of God, the savior of the world, to enter the world and to win this war on behalf of human beings and to restore the universe and to put everything right.
And this is his strategy. All right, Israel is his strategy to do this.
I’m going to make these people, because think about it this way. If Jesus had come into a polytheistic culture and said, hey, I’m the son of God, they’d have said, great. We could always use one more. All right.
He wouldn’t have been specific, he wouldn’t have been unique, and they wouldn’t have gotten the message. But he came to Israel, and when he said, hey, I’m the son of God, to Israel, they’re like, wait a minute. Who is this? And it really caused a huge wrestling match during his time with, is he the Messiah?
And is the Messiah the Son of God? And is Yahweh able to express himself in human form? Is this who is before us? And so that’s how the thing plays out.
Here’s where we are in that story. Okay? Abraham got called. They went down to Egypt. 400 years in Egypt. Moses delivers them out of Egypt, gives them a covenant, gives them a law, and says, here’s how to live in response to this God who’s delivered you. And so they live in that covenant with God, and they do a terrible job of following that covenant.
That’s the book of Judges, where everyone did what was right in his own eyes, and they completely fell away. They were chaotic and confused and worse off than the nations around them.
They asked for a king. God gave them a king, Saul. Saul was not a good king. He wasn’t a man after God’s own heart. He started well but faltered pretty quickly.
Then they had another king, King David, who was their best king.
And God made another covenant with David and said, from your line is going to come a ruler who will be on the throne of God forever.
But things got bad after David. David’s son, Solomon, started well, ended poorly. And then Israel divided. They had a civil war.
Twelve tribes of Israel. Ten. The ten northern tribes separated from the two southern tribes. The ten northern tribes are called Israel, or Ephraim. The two southern tribes are called Judah.
The capital of Israel was Samaria. The capital of Judah was Jerusalem.
And then we read in 2 Kings and Chronicles the story of these two nations and specifically their kings. The Bible says when the kings would worship God, the land would be blessed. When the kings were evil and would worship the false gods, the land would be cursed.
For hundreds of years, the northern king, Israel, had it’s a real easy number to remember zero kings who worship Yahweh faithfully.
And in 722 BC, 722 years before Christ, the Assyrians out of Nineveh came to Israel as God warned them through the prophets. They captured them and they exiled them. And those ten tribes have been lost. They’re the ten lost tribes of Israel.
All right. When the little latter-day saint boys come to your front door and say, oh, no, those were the American Indians, don’t believe them. It’s not true. They weren’t the American Indians. They were lost, they were exiled.
They were intermingled, and they just became a part of the Arab world because in the southern kingdom there were several good kings. They did not get exiled nearly as quickly. And the best of those kings, from the time of King David until they were finally exiled in 586 BC, is King Hezekiah.
And that’s where we are in the story. We’re in the 600s. Israel has already been exiled. Isaiah is now a prophet to Judah. And King Hezekiah, a good king, a righteous king, is ruling over the southern kingdom, Jerusalem.
And the Assyrians are still the big dog in the region. And the Assyrians are just attacking everybody in the Middle East, wiping them out and exiling their people and garnering their wealth. They’re the power, and they come to Jerusalem. And that’s where our story begins.
2 Kings 19.
So there you go. Ten minutes of Bible history get you up to date. Y’all follow. Now y’all know where we ate. All right. All right, here we go. I’m going to read the whole chapter.
1 When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on burlap and went into the Temple of the Lord. 2 And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the court secretary, and the leading priests, all dressed in burlap, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3 They told him, “This is what King Hezekiah says: Today is a day of trouble, insults, and disgrace. It is like when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver the baby. 4 But perhaps the Lord your God has heard the Assyrian chief of staff, sent by the king to defy the living God, and will punish him for his words. Oh, pray for those of us who are left!” 5 After King Hezekiah’s officials delivered the king’s message to Isaiah, 6 the prophet replied, “Say to your master, ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king’s messengers. 7 Listen! I myself will move against him, and the king will receive a message that he is needed at home. So he will return to his land, where I will have him killed with a sword.'” 8 Meanwhile, the Assyrian chief of staff left Jerusalem and went to consult the king of Assyria, who had left Lachish and was attacking Libnah. 9 Soon afterward King Sennacherib received word that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was leading an army to fight against him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent messengers back to Hezekiah in Jerusalem with this message: 10 “This message is for King Hezekiah of Judah. Don’t let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria. 11 You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone. They have completely destroyed everyone who stood in their way! Why should you be any different? 12 Have the gods of other nations rescued them such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? My predecessors destroyed them all! 13 What happened to the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?” 14 After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the Lord ‘s Temple and spread it out before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the Lord : “O Lord, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth. 16 Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God. 17 “It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations. 18 And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands. 19 Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O Lord, are God.” 20 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer about King Sennacherib of Assyria. 21 And the Lord has spoken this word against him: “The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and laughs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head in derision as you flee. 22 “Whom have you been defying and ridiculing? Against whom did you raise your voice? At whom did you look with such haughty eyes? It was the Holy One of Israel! 23 By your messengers you have defied the Lord. You have said, ‘With my many chariots I have conquered the highest mountains yes, the remotest peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars and its finest cypress trees. I have reached its farthest corners and explored its deepest forests. 24 I have dug wells in many foreign lands and refreshed myself with their water. With the sole of my foot I stopped up all the rivers of Egypt!’ 25 “But have you not heard? I decided this long ago. Long ago I planned it, and now I am making it happen. I planned for you to crush fortified cities into heaps of rubble. 26 That is why their people have so little power and are so frightened and confused. They are as weak as grass, as easily trampled as tender green shoots. They are like grass sprouting on a housetop, scorched before it can grow lush and tall. 27 “But I know you well where you stay and when you come and go. I know the way you have raged against me. 28 And because of your raging against me and your arrogance, which I have heard for myself, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth. I will make you return by the same road on which you came.” 29 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Here is the proof that what I say is true: “This year you will eat only what grows up by itself, and next year you will eat what springs up from that. But in the third year you will plant crops and harvest them; you will tend vineyards and eat their fruit. 30 And you who are left in Judah, who have escaped the ravages of the siege, will put roots down in your own soil and will grow up and flourish. 31 For a remnant of my people will spread out from Jerusalem, a group of survivors from Mount Zion. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen! 32 “And this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: “His armies will not enter Jerusalem. They will not even shoot an arrow at it. They will not march outside its gates with their shields nor build banks of earth against its walls. 33 The king will return to his own country by the same road on which he came. He will not enter this city, says the Lord. 34 For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David, I will defend this city and protect it.” 35 That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. 36 Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there. 37 One day while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords. They then escaped to the land of Ararat, and another son, Esarhaddon, became the next king of Assyria. (2 Kings 19:1-37, NLT)
God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer.
So just because you’re a righteous king doesn’t mean that bad things aren’t going to happen? Kind of.
When you read through Kings and Chronicles, it seems like that’s what it says. If the kings were bad, bad things happened. If the kings were good, good things happened. What do we call that? Kathleen? Retributive theology? All right, all right.
Good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. It’s true. A lot of that is true, but it’s not absolutely true. Bad things happen to good people.
And the Bible struggles with, why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? And so Hezekiah is a good king. But Assyria is this mighty army, this mighty nation. And they come and they lay siege to Jerusalem.
Hezekiah knew they were coming. He built a canal to supply water during the siege, before the Assyrians got there. He was a wise king. And the Assyrian army gets out there. And if you read in 2 Kings 18, they mock Israel. They mock Israel’s God several times. They say, don’t trust your God.
They tell the people of Israel, don’t listen to Hezekiah. Your God’s not going to deliver you. We’ve captured all these other countries, all these other fortified cities. Their gods didn’t help them. Your God’s not going to help you.
And they continue to just kind of mock and threaten. And Hezekiah hears this. They’re outside of his city. They’re surrounding it. They’re going to starve them out. Like, that’s what siege warfare is. You just starve them out.
You surround the city until they go hungry or until their water runs out. They’re going to starve them out until they come out and fight.
Basically, here’s how it went. The army would surround the city, and they would say this: the spokesperson of the king, or the king himself, would say, here’s what we’re going to do. If you come out and surrender, we won’t kill you. We’ll take you back to Assyria and we’ll relocate you. You’ve got vineyards and crops in Jerusalem; you’re going to have vineyards and crops in Assyria.
We’ll give you land. You’ll be fine. We’re going to send Assyrians into your land, and they’re going to live in your land. Basically, we won’t kill you. You have to leave your homes, you have to leave your country, you have to become Assyrians. But we won’t kill you. But if you fight, you’re all going to die. You’re all going to die. We’re just going to wipe you out.
So that was the deal. But this is God’s place. This is Jerusalem. We’re not going to do that. King Hezekiah is not going to do that.
And so King Hezekiah does some incredibly wise things. The first thing King Hezekiah does is he takes the threat seriously. This is for real. There’s a powerful army surrounding our city. They’re bigger than us, they’re stronger than us, they got more arrows than us, they got bigger chariots than us. What are we going to do?
And so he mourned for the threat that was to Israel. He recognized the threat was real. He didn’t take it glibly, nor did he surrender, but he did grieve it. He took it seriously.
And when you take something seriously, Hezekiah knew exactly what to do next as a righteous kingdom. He said, go to the prophet Isaiah, because we need to hear from God. We need to hear from God. What does God say about this situation?
And so they listen for the prophet. Dear ones, there are going to be armies surrounding you some days. There are going to be seasons of your life where it’s either unemployment, where it’s relationship trouble, where it’s health issues, where it’s addiction. There are going to be seasons in your life.
Whether it’s a prodigal child, there are going to be seasons in your life. And it’s like. And the taunts of the devil are coming, and you’re going to need to hear from God.
Let me tell you something, there are two ways to hear from God. The first way, we call the Greek word, we call it the logos. That is the mind of God. In other words, you’re so immersed in the biblical worldview that you know the will of the Lord in this situation. You’re just immersed in it. You know the right thing. Right.
Somebody sins grievously against you, and if you’re like me and somebody sins grievously against you, you think of ways to pay them back. All right? That’s, you know, and I’m not physically strong. I can’t fight. And so I get all passive aggressive.
I think of ways to make them look foolish. I think of ways to win an argument. I think of sneaking out at night and putting a rock through their window. Just something they don’t get caught just being just. How do I get them back?
But then there’s the logos.
I’ve read the Bible for 40 years, and what does the Bible say about that? Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, forgive those who have hurt you. And if there’s going to be any vindication, it’s going to come from God, not you.
And so I got to do nothing. I got to do nothing. Oh, man. And you know, the hardest one for me, obviously, as I already said, physical confrontation is out. You know, unless the person is really puny, physical confrontation is out. All right.
But, oh, to get into a verbal with somebody and to be able to be sarcastic and, you know, and just do my best to make them look stupid and feel puny. And I’ve had so many of those discussions all by myself in the shower. I’ve won every one. I always win. I always make them look bad. I’m always clever and witty, powerful, and then the voice of the spirit comes.
You know you can’t say that, right? You know you can’t do that, right? See, I know the logos of God.
I don’t need a. I don’t need a prophet to come tell me to love my enemies and forgive my offenders. I don’t need a prophetic word. I don’t need to go to a charismatic service and have somebody say, thus saith the Lord.
I’ve read the book. It’s in the book. People come to churches like ours and they say, oh, pastor, I need a word from the Lord. Well, read your Bible. Lots of words in there. This is a prophetic book.
And so Hezekiah needs the word of God.
But then there’s the other word of God, and that is the rhema word. That is the specific word. That is the now word. That’s the word in season.
Let me give you the example. If you’re a young man or a young woman, the Bible, the logos, tells you to marry a believer, marry somebody who has your same worldview, your same values, your same principles. It’s hard enough to be married when you’re on the same page, let alone twelve pages apart. All right?
You don’t need a prophetic word for, you know, listen, you know, girls, someday some guys, you know, he better be a Christian. He better love Jesus, all right? Or your dad and I are going to show up at his front door, and he will either love Jesus after that conversation or not. And you don’t want to subject a young man to that. So find one who loves Jesus so that doesn’t happen to him.
Okay, we’re clear on that. All right, good.
All right, so here’s the deal. But.
So the logos tells you to marry somebody like that. But the logos doesn’t tell you which one to marry. But the rhema might, right, Jake? The Lord might speak to you and say, hook up with the Clancy clan, because there’s not enough craziness in your life.
And the Lord spoke to him about Caitlin. The Lord spoke to me about Jill. Now, that doesn’t mean how he’s going to have all of you get married. Not all of you are.
The Lord is going to put his finger on that person and say, that’s the person you’re going to marry. But with some of you, yes. And so both are legitimate.
And I’ve got evangelical friends, and they’re so afraid of the prophetic. They’re so afraid of. Oh, the prophetic totally throws out the Bible. Well, no, it doesn’t, because the Bible says, earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially that you might prophesy. Hello. It’s in the Bible. It’s in the inerrant, infallible word of God. It doesn’t have. It doesn’t denigrate the scripture. It fulfills the scripture.
You know, if somebody says, I have a word of God, word from God for you, it’s like, oh, call 911. But there are other people, my charismatic friends, and they’re running around for a prophetic word and trying to get the word of the Lord. And Lord, speak to me. It’s like, well, read your Bible, dude. Get some logos in you.
And so it’s not either or. It’s both. And. All right. The logos says, preach the word of God. Share Jesus. The rhema says, Kevin, you’re called to do it as a vocation.
And the rhema said, do it in the Pacific Northwest. Do it in Bremerton and Poulsbo.
So Hezekiah sought the word of the Lord, and the prophet Isaiah gave him the word of the Lord. Then the second time, they mock him again. See, here’s what happens. The word of the Lord is fulfilled. They’re not going to attack you. The king gets a report that there’s an attack forming on his army somewhere else. And so he withdraws his troop. He withdraws the siege from Jerusalem to go deal with that threat. But he sends a message.
He says, we’re coming back. We’re coming back.
And now Hezekiah says, you know what? I don’t need to talk to Isaiah. Here’s what I need to do. I need to go lay this letter before God, and I need to go into the temple and pray.
Dear ones, sometimes we need the church to help us. We need the prophet to speak into our lives. We need one another to bear one another’s burdens.
And that is so true in life, because life will sometimes hit us hard. We can’t do it by ourselves when there’s a loss of a job, a death in the family, some tragedy, or some illness. We need the body of Christ to come around us, to pray for us, and to carry us.
The Bible talks about bearing one another’s burdens. But you know what? There are other times when there’s a crisis, and we need to just strengthen ourselves in the Lord. David confronted a crisis. The city where all their…
All of David’s men’s wives and children were raided. While David and his men were out on a campaign, they were kidnapped and taken. David’s loyal, mighty men now wanted to kill him. They wanted him out. They wanted him ousted. I mean, they were like a bunch of democrats after a bad debate. Just saying, and here’s what David did. The Bible says David went and strengthened himself in the Lord.
Hezekiah had already spoken with Isaiah, but now he said, you know what? I need to go to talk.
I need to go talk to God. I have a relationship with God. I don’t need a relationship with God through somebody else.
I’m going to Africa in the beginning of October, and I’m going to visit Laurie and Rob Mangus and preach at the Grace Covenant Conference for the churches in West Africa. Laurie and Rob have spoken at our church before, and Rob’s a marine. I always like to say he was a marine, but whenever you say that to a marine, they get all offended. They get all, you know, tough guy on you.
What’s a marine? Always marine. Yeah. It’s like, everybody else wants to get out of the service. Marines like, where’s the fight? Where’s the fight? We got a fight.
So Rob goes. Rob and Laurie go to Nigeria. Their first year. Before they go to Ghana, they go to Nigeria. Had the worst first year of any missionaries. You hear these horror stories about the first year, but they had a horrible first year. Horrible first year on the mission field. Everything that could go wrong, they were robbed, they got sick.
The pastor who was going to be there and be their support decided he wanted a minister in America and never came back to Nigeria, although he invited them to go there. It was just a terrible, terrible year.
And I asked Laurie about that. I said, Laurie, that was a hard year. She goes, that was such a hard year. I said, did your husband comfort you? She said, yeah, sort of. I said, well, how did he comfort you? She said, I went to him, I said, Rob, this is so hard.
Our health, our finances, our support, it’s so hard. And I said, well, what did he say? He said he put his arm around me gently and tenderly, looked at my eyes, and said, suck it up, buttercup. Thanks, honey. Thanks. That’s a marine. That’s as tender as they get. Suck it up, buttercup.
You know, we bear one another’s burdens. Other times, dear ones, you gotta pick it up. You gotta strengthen yourself in the Lord. You gotta have a relationship with God.
Oh, I went to church, and the church hurt my feelings. You know what? Yeah. You know why that church hurt your feelings? Because it was made up of people.
Yeah, but those people are Christians. They should be better. Yeah, you’re a Christian and you should be better, too. Suck it up, Buttercup. You’re with wounded people. Strengthen yourself in the Lord. You be the answer to the problem. You see, instead of being the problem.
Now, I realize there’s abuse and other things. I realize there’s times to leave churches and all that kind of stuff.
I’m not saying that. What I am saying is we tend to be in a little bit. As the pendulum swings, we tend to be in a little bit of an oversensitive culture right now, all right?
And I love the fact that Hezekiah, all right, I need the word from Isaiah. I need the prophet. But the second time, it’s like, I need God. I need God. And he goes and he prays, and God answers him. And he says that Judah will be delivered.
He said, the prophet still speaks to Hezekiah after Hezekiah goes to the Lord. The prophet hears the word of the Lord and says, tell Hezekiah. The Lord says, tell Hezekiah, I heard his prayer.
And so Isaiah goes and says, the Lord heard your prayer. And here’s what he said. You’re going to be delivered. They’re not going to enter Jerusalem. They’re not going to shoot an arrow. Their threats are empty.
By the way, I love Hezekiah’s prayer. Hezekiah doesn’t pray. Lord, they’re picking on us. You know, it’s going to protect us, save us.
Those are all legitimate prayers. Lord, protect your people. But here’s what Hezekiah says. Lord, they’re trash talking you. This is about your glory, God. Jerusalem exists for your glory, Yahweh. It exists to be a light on a hill. It exists to be different. If Jerusalem is destroyed, what will the nation say?
Moses used to pray that way, too. I got to tell you, we seek for guidance in our life. Lord, what’s my destiny? What’s best for my life? I’ll tell you what your destiny is. What’s best for your life. Live to glorify God.
That’s your destiny. That’s what’s best for your life. Where. Where you’re planted. Well, when should I move? When God tells you to move.
But live for the glory of God.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.6Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take. (Proverbs 3:5, NLT)
God, what’s my specific calling? Love your wife. Be a good dad to your kids. Love your neighbor. Yeah, but that’s so mundane, that’s so general. Yeah, do that. Become a disciple of Jesus. I love that.
I was listening to the song History Maker today by Delirious, and they’re in a huge auditorium singing before a great crowd.
Martin Smith gets up there and he says, being a history maker is not so much about this. What, being a rock star in front of a huge crowd. And then he goes on and says, being humble, being a good friend, being a good spouse, you want to shape history. The first place is in your home.
The first place is just with your feet on the ground in your local church, in your home, in your community, in your workplace, in your neighborhood, following Jesus.
I got a feeling when we get to heaven, all the people that we thought were famous and great and amazing, you know, I’m sure many of them have just been faithful and great and amazing. But I got a feeling that we’re going to see a bunch of heroes that the history books never recorded. We’re not going to see the Billy Grahams.
We’re going to see the people who interceded for the Billy Grahams.
Winston Churchill was a great hero that rose up and led the world to defy Nazi Germany, a terrible cruelty that came upon the earth. Very few people know that Winston Churchill’s nanny was a devout Christian when he had two dysfunctional parents and taught him the Scriptures.
Although Winston Churchill was not a godly man, he still was so infused with the Christian worldview from that nanny. When they were fighting Hitler, he said we are fighting to defend Christian civilization, the greatest civilization known to the human race to this time, with a bottle of scotch in one hand and a cigar in the other.
You know, Winston Churchill one time was at the White House, and the butler came in. You know, let’s say the butler’s name was Charles.
I don’t know what his name was, but the butler came in and saw Winston Churchill late at night, alone with a drink in his hand. He said, Charles, I’m so glad you came in. And Charles said, why is that, sir? He says, well, if the wicked rumor ever comes out that I’m a teetotaler, I expect you can correct it.
And yet, perhaps because of an anonymous godly nanny, western civilization was saved.
There are history makers and heroes who will never know until the next life because they simply had a relationship with God and lived their lives for God’s glory and honor in this world. And God will answer that.
And so Judah will be delivered, Assyria will return home, and Sennacherib will be killed by his own children.
I love you, Caitlin, but if you do it, do it quickly. And it all came to pass.
All right, this has relevance just as a story to tell us and to teach us the ways of God.
I think it also, though, is a picture for us in the contemporary world of spiritual warfare. It is a picture of the warfare that we battle. The armies of the enemy sometimes surround us with taunts, and we’ve all heard them. They come at us at different times. The most common one, I think, that most of us have heard is the oh, and you call yourself a Christian because we failed one more time at being perfect.
And the enemy tries to discourage us, tries to defeat us, tries to tear us down, tries to get us to stop and quit pursuing Jesus and quit putting one foot in front of the other.
The other big temptation the devil gives us is to take a, you know, somebody says something or does something and we’re like, get all hurt about it and we don’t forgive, and we just carry the offense with us.
And these are the attacks. These are the basic attacks of the enemy. And the enemy taunts.
And I want to tell you that the threats are real, that these threats, that if we fall into those traps, that if we quit or we get overly discouraged, or if we take offense and we fight back, then those are real bad things that then can happen because of that, the threats are real.
And so what do we do when we are attacked by the enemy, which is constant? Listen, if you’re not being attacked by the devil, you’re not serving the kingdom of God. So don’t.
You’re not a bad Christian if you’re getting attacked. You’re a good Christian if you’re getting attacked. All right, he’s wasting his arrows on you, which means he can’t shoot them at somebody else.
But here’s what you do. You do what Hezekiah does. You seek the word of the Lord. What does God say about this? What does the word of God say about this?
Well, the word of God says, don’t take offense. Forgive the offender. The word of God says, don’t believe the discouragement. Don’t believe the discouragement.
But look to the encourager and don’t quit, but have faith and to hold on and to hold on to hope and to practice love and to endure to the end with the strength and the grace that God gives you. And so you seek the word of God. And sometimes there are different times where you’ll get a specific rhema, word of God, a detailed word of God that will apply to your life, and it’ll be like. It’ll set you free. Be like. That’s what I needed to hear. It was the right word at the right time.
I remember the first time in my life I was tempted. I was a young Christian, and this girl, I had done something kind of. Actually, my friend had done something kind of rude, and I laughed at it because I was a high school boy, and high school boys are stupid, and they laugh at rude things.
My friend had thrown like a piece of sandwich at these two girls, and I thought it was funny, and so I laughed.
Later, I realized it wasn’t funny, and so I went to apologize to one of these little girls. I went to apologize to her, and I said, hey, Joan, I’m really sorry about what my friend did, and I’m sorry I laughed.
Joan had already taken offense. Joan went, humph, and turned around and walked away. She did not accept my humble apology. Well, you know what I did? I took offense at her offense. Humph to you. I’ll double humph you. I’ll see a humph and raise a humph.
And I went home, and I was a young Christian. I was all mad at Joan and wanting to talk to me. And I humbled myself before her. Who does she think she is? Just because she’s a little cheerleader, a little hoity toity, I open up my Bible. It wasn’t even the words of the scripture. It was one of the headlines of the scripture. You know how the Bible has the little pericopes before the, I mean, the little headline before the pericope, you know, summarizes what’s about to be said. And here’s what it said.
Forgiveness for the offender. Holy Spirit came in the room and said, stop your humph. And you forgive Joan for not forgiving you. It’s the word of the Lord.
For three months, I was nice to Joan, and she didn’t talk to me. Three months. Hi, Joan. How you doing?
One day we were late for French class. Normal for me. A rarity for her. She was a little later. Don’t worry, James. I’m almost done, buddy. A little later for me, she was a little later than me.
I held the door open for Joan, and as she walked by, I said, even if you won’t talk to me, I’ll hold the door open for you. And this little voice comes back and says, thank you. And Joan started talking to me, and a friendship was restored.
Seek the word of the Lord. In spiritual struggle, God will give you the logos word. You know what you’re supposed to do in general, but he’ll give you specific strategies of how to deal with whatever you’re dealing with.
Commit yourself to pray for the glory of God.
Lord, be glorified in this situation. Not just get me out of trouble, not just get me out of pain, but be glorified in this situation.
Lord, let this circumstance, which is uncomfortable for me, which is difficult for me, bring glory and honor to your name. I’m your dime. Spin me how you want instead of God. Bless me, bless me, bless me. Make my life happy and rich and prosperous. I’m down with all that. I’m not against that. I want you all to be happy.
You know, I think the whole world should be as happy as Kathleen. I just do. That’d be great.
But you know what? My immediate happiness is not the top of God’s agenda. God’s agenda is to make me like Jesus and to pray that whatever circumstance I find myself in, whatever the devil throws me into, the best way to defeat the devil is not to pray. Oh, God, deliver me and make me better. The best way is to say, God, be glorified in this situation.
Oh, the devil hates that prayer now.
He’s defeated because no matter what he does, he loses because God is glorified. Pray that prayer long enough, maybe he’ll start leaving you alone. You might get sick of that prayer. God, be glorified in this situation. Let your name be honored and God will deliver you, and God will defeat your enemies.
How do I know this? Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That’s the decisive battle. Remember, I started with the island of monotheism amongst the sea of polytheism. All right, God against the gods. This spiritual struggle.
And Psalm 22 is a prophetic picture of Jesus on the cross. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Jesus points us to that psalm, and in that psalm he says, the bulls of Bashan. These demonic creatures have surrounded me. These howling dogs, these wolves, they’re all around me.
And it’s like Jesus on the cross. It’s not enough that the Pharisees are mocking him. It’s not enough that the passersby are wagging their heads and mocking him. It’s not enough that he’s hanging up there naked and humiliated in horrible pain.
But the demons of hell are rising up and they’re saying, yeah, we’ve got you. We’ve got the son of God. They are trash talking to him, and they’re slobbering and slobbering, just waiting to get their hands on him as he descends to the place of the dead, which they believe their master has all power over.
He’s coming to our realm. We’ve got him. We won. We’ve won this battle. But oh, wait. Because he dies and he’s buried. And it says, he descends, but when he descends, they don’t get a tooth in him.
They don’t get a claw in him. Instead, he goes to the devil himself and he snatches away from him the keys of death and Hades. And then he rises from the dead. And all hell wails and all history wins. And, dear ones, we win with him.
I said it last week. Christ is the victor. The army surrounds Jerusalem. The devil surrounds you. Listen, you are playing a game. You’ve already won. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. You have one thing to do and one thing only. Put your hand in his hand and don’t let go.
Don’t let go because he’s not going to let go of you. And through every storm and every trial, you will emerge.
You’re singing bless the Lord. And I was thinking that, and when my days are failing, man, I don’t know how my failing days are going to look. But it sure would be great if on my deathbed I had enough breath left to sing the praises of God and say, I’ve run the race to the finish line. And I win. Because Christ won for me, dear one, that’s our hope.
Hezekiah knew what to do. He sought the word of the Lord, and he prayed, and God delivered him from his enemies. Not rocket science. You don’t have to be a genius to get this, all right?
Turn to somebody next to you and say, it’s good. That’s good news for you. You don’t have to be a genius to get this, all right? You can be dumb as a bag of hammers. Read your Bible and pray. It’ll work.
My young life leaders, that’s what they taught us. We first read your Bible and pray. That’s not all there is to Christianity.
But, man, that’ll get you down the road a piece.
Hezekiah, you’re surrounded by enemies. I need the word of the Lord. Hezekiah, the enemy said, they’re coming back. I’m going to go talk to God about this.
Hezekiah died. Was buried with his fathers as the second most honored king in the history of Israel. Sennacherib, the most powerful man in the earth at that time, was murdered by his own sons.
By the way, a little archaeology, and then I’ll finish the Assyrians. Recently, you know, people.
People doubted whether this story was true because they always doubt the stories in the Bible are true. And then another archaeological find. So they came across a tablet as they discovered Nineveh. On the tablet, it is written about Sennacherib. It says, I, the great king of Assyria, attacked the Moabites. The Moabites, I completely destroyed. I, the great king of Assyria. It just goes through and through and through. And then it goes.
And I, the great king of Assyria, came to Hezekiah, the king of Jerusalem. And I. And I surrounded you like a caged bird.
And then it goes on to the next one. What does that say? What does that say? He’s bragging. About what? I surrounded you like a caged birdhouse. But all the other ones is. And I defeated you. And I destroyed you. And with Hezekiah and Jerusalem. Yeah, but. Yeah, but, yeah, yeah, but I had you surrounded. Yeah. How did that work out for you?
Even archaeology points to this and says, get the word of the Lord, say your prayers, and God will deliver you.
Israel, thousands of years before, were slaves in Egypt. And God saw their misery. And he sent a deliverer, Moses. And Moses gave them these instructions. He says, I’m going to deliver you tonight with a great deliverance. And I’m going to have a great victory over Pharaoh and all the false gods of Egypt. And here’s what you’re going to do.
The night before you leave, you’re going to take a lamb, you’re going to kill it. You’re going to roast it. You’re going to take the blood of the lamb and put it over the doorpost in, not ironically but prophetically, the sign of a cross.
You’re going to take unleavened bread and you’re going to eat it because you’re on a journey and you need to go quickly. And I will deliver you from your enemies and I will bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey, for I am your God.
And they call it the Passover because the angel of death, the angel of judgment, passed over the households that had the blood of the lamb.
About 1,300-1,500 years after Moses, Jesus comes and he sits down to eat the Passover with his Jewish friends and he says, let me tell you what this was pointing to. Like everything else Jesus did, in complete humility and yet complete confidence, he says, this was pointing to me. I’m the lamb and it’s my blood and my body. And death is going to pass over humanity.
Death is going to pass over you because the resurrection and the life has come. And so whenever you gather together, you know, as Israel, you’re supposed to do this once a year. Church, when you gather together, do this: take my body, my broken body, take my shed blood, take it into yourself, take my life and death into yourself. And as you do, you become more like me. You’re reborn, you’re renewed, and you’re my forever children.
You know, the Bible doesn’t say we’ll just get to go to heaven. It says we’ll be like him.
How good is that? How good is that? We get to be like Jesus.
So if you want to be like Jesus, right? What was the old commercial? The old, I think it was a cereal commercial. You might remember, Jake, I want to be like Mike. I want to be like Michael Jordan. Well, you know, the commercial was, well, then eat what Michael ate.
Well, I want to be like Jesus. Then eat the food of Jesus. His body and blood given for you, dear ones. This is the food of God.
Listen, anybody ever been to a health food store? Some of you, yeah. Good, good for you. Good for you. I never have. I never have. I don’t know if that comes as a shock to you.
I think you’re. What, Kev? You’ve never been to a health food store? I don’t know. Is Dunkin Donuts a health food store? I’ve been there. Yeah, that’s right. So good for you. That’s good. I’m not belittling that at all.
What I am saying is this, though. This is the healthiest food you’re ever going to eat.
There’s no food like this food. This is the food of God. And Jesus invites you to his table. Come and eat.
The post 2024.7.21 Part 1: Testimony by David Sheldon & Part 2: Hezekiah’s Prayer (2 Kings 19) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
July 14, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Thank you, Jesus. Lord, in a time of turmoil, in a time when our television screens are blasting at us that the world is out of control, it is good to know that the Lord sits upon the throne. He laughs not at our sorrows and not at our pain but at the foolishness of the rulers of the world who think that they’re in control.
You have enthroned your son, Jesus Christ. He is at the right hand of the Father, and he is reigning, and his rule and reign are extending over the earth.
And, Lord, one day, the goodness of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. King Jesus is winning. When all around us seems crazy, King Jesus is winning.
Ever since his resurrection from the dead, Lord, your kingdom has been expanding on the earth. Your goodness and grace are continuing to go out to cover up the darkness that the evil one has planted and that we have cooperated with. Lord, it is our sin. The evil one could do nothing on this earth without our cooperation and agreement.
But, Lord, we repent, and we say we want to be on the side of King Jesus. And so take us, as sinful as we are, and clean us up. Forgive us, extend your grace to us, fill us with your Holy Spirit, that we might become increasingly more like Jesus in character and in power, and we would be agents of bringing the goodness of the Lord into the land of the living.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen. Amen.
All right, turn to somebody next to you.
Well, if, you know, boy, you guys are kind of spread out. It’s kind of hot. I don’t know if it’s like a deodorant thing or what the deal is. You know, it’s like I always tell people, it can’t be my deodorant. I don’t wear any.
All right, so turn to somebody a long way away from you and say you’re a part of God’s army. All right. Yeah, you too, man. Right there. Just the two of you could just change all history. Pretty powerful stuff. And then you got the Johnson family.
Oh, my gosh. So there you go. All right, dear ones, Psalm 110. This is the most quoted Old Testament scripture in the New Testament, and that’s where we’re going to be tonight.
Let me read this psalm to you. I already read Psalm 2. This is the second kind of blatantly messianic psalm in the Psalms. And it goes like this:
1 The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit in the place of honor at my right hand until I humble your enemies, making them a footstool under your feet.” 2 The Lord will extend your powerful kingdom from Jerusalem ; you will rule over your enemies. 3 When you go to war, your people will serve you willingly. You are arrayed in holy garments, and your strength will be renewed each day like the morning dew. 4 The Lord has taken an oath and will not break his vow: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” 5 The Lord stands at your right hand to protect you. He will strike down many kings when his anger erupts. 6 He will punish the nations and fill their lands with corpses; he will shatter heads over the whole earth.7 But he himself will be refreshed from brooks along the way. He will be victorious. (Psalms 110:1-7, NLT)
If you’ve ever heard of The Hiding Place and the author Corrie ten Boom, about a woman and her sister who were taken prisoner by the Nazis in World War Two because their family, a Christian family, were hiding out Jews, were protecting Jews from the Nazis, and they were found out, and they were taken prisoners. Corrie ten Boom was, I believe, the only one from her family to survive.
And she wrote the book called The Hiding Place, where they used to hide the Jews out, and also in reference to God being her hiding place. He got her through this terrible time. She recounts the story in the book of her father, a godly man. The family had been going through a Bible study on the book of Revelation when the Nazis came and arrested them. As they arrested them, they separated the family out.
And the father got in one truck to go to one concentration camp, and the girls got in another truck and were taken to another concentration camp.
These young girls, probably teenagers, this was the last time they ever saw their father on this earth. The last thing they saw happen to their father was horrifying. He was an older man, and he wasn’t moving as fast as the Nazis wanted him to move. As they were shuffling him off to this truck, some Nazi thug took the butt of his rifle, boom, hit him in the back.
And this old man collapsed to the ground. And the daughters saw that and began to cry and were looking aghast at the brutality already being displayed upon their father. But their father stood up.
And this is, man, this is a legacy right here. Dads, here’s a legacy for you, right? The father stands up, looks at his daughters, and the last words those girls ever heard their father say on earth came from the book of Revelation. Jesus is the victor.
After being hit by the butt of a Nazi rifle, Jesus is the victor on Corrie ten Boom’s tombstone. Those are the words. Jesus is the victor.
Psalm 110 is about Jesus, the victor. Well, the victor over what? The Bible gives us what I call a spiritual warfare worldview. It is a spiritual warfare worldview.
And we read Michael Heiser, and we kind of looked at that. The idea is that God has created two orders of beings in His image and likeness. One we would generically call an angelic order or a non-material.
They’re spiritual, they’re not physical. They don’t have bodies like us. They don’t have appendices that burst and kidneys that get stones and those sorts of things.
We call them the angelic realm or the spiritual realm. The Elohim gods. Some of them not gods, small g. God gives them authority over regions, and they’re part of his divine council.
And the Bible teaches.
There’s just a few places that the leader of this group, there was a leader of this group that led a group of them, maybe more than one rebellion, but it led a group of them in rebellion against God.
We’re not told how many times they rebelled. We’re not told if they were ever forgiven for their rebellion and then rebelled again. We’re told very little about this story, except we’re given enough to know that there’s a war in the universe between the creator of all things, capital G, God, Yahweh, and these angelic beings.
And in the middle, God creates another group of beings made in his image and likeness. Only these beings not only are spiritual, but these beings inhabit the physical universe that God created with physicality. These beings have flesh, these beings have skeletons. These beings are us humans.
And God created humans, and humans, through the enticement of the fallen angelic realm, joined the fallen angelic realm in their rebellion. And God is trying to get the universe back. He’s trying to get the world back. And there’s war going on.
And the whole Old Testament is about, I believe, that war, where God selects particular people, the Jews, and He begins to teach them what people should have known from the beginning: that there’s only one God, Yahweh. There’s only one God, one creator, one maker of the heavens, of the earth.
And all these other gods represented by these little wooden idols and statues people have, are small g. They’re evil, they’re bad. They’re leading you to destruction. They’re giving you bad ideas. Don’t follow them. Follow the capital G, God Yahweh.
And all he does is he takes one group of people and says, look it, I’m going to teach you the truth, and you’re going to be what I would call an island of monotheism, one true God in the sea of pagan polytheism, many gods, the demons, the dark powers.
You’re going to be an island, just something that just sticks out in the middle of this. You will be holy, you’ll be different, because you will believe in the one true God.
And through that island, or on that island, is a landing strip, as it were, for my real answer to the brokenness and war in this universe. I’m going to send a messiah. I’m going to send an anointed one who’s going to turn the tables on this war and set all things to right.
But I need a people. I need a place to go. Well, if it makes sense, right? If one God is going to send one answer, and that answer is going to be himself, that can’t be.
In the midst of paganism, if the son of God lands in a pagan culture, what happens? He becomes just absorbed. Great, we’ll take another one. We’ll take another one, which is what happened, in fact, in Latin America when Jesus was preached.
But he was preached, and it really didn’t get clear in many cases. And it was a religious syncretism between Latin American paganism and Roman Catholicism. And all of a sudden, you had the saints and Jesus and Mary, and it just became kind of another form of polytheistic paganism in many cases, sadly.
But there’s a war, and God’s answer is Jesus. And Psalm 110 says this: The Lord Yahweh said to my lord, David’s talking about Yahweh. The one true God said to my lord, Adonai.
All right, whenever you see in your Old Testament, lord, capital L-O-R-D, Yahweh. Whenever you see, capital L, but small o-r-d, Adonai. Adonai means master, lord, boss.
All right, Yahweh. The one true God, the one true God said to my master, well, David’s a monotheist. The one true God said to my master, God, sit at my right hand.
Hints of the Trinity. Hints of Jesus. In the Old Testament, Jesus quotes this verse. This is the most. Psalm 110 is the most quoted verse in the whole New Testament from the Old Testament.
Jesus quotes it in Matthew 23. It’s quoted several times in Hebrews. It’s quoted. Who else? I think Paul quotes it at one point. And so, more than any other verse in the Old Testament, Psalm 110, parts of Psalm 110 appear. And this appears.
The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool under my feet.
What is going on here? The spiritual warfare worldview. Yahweh says to Jesus, adonai, sit at my right hand. What does that mean?
Well, we have Daniel 7 where the Bible says, I saw one like the son of man coming before the ancient of days. The son of man, Jesus, coming before the ancient of days, God the father. And he says, take place at my right hand.
Sit at my right hand, and I will give you a kingdom, an everlasting kingdom. The promise to David, the covenant promised to David, there’s going to be a king on your throne forever. This is King Jesus, and you will reign over all the earth.
And now he’s saying, sit at my right hand in Psalm 110. What does that mean? It means, Jesus, your work is finished. So how can it be finished? We still got presidential candidates being shot at. We still got wars and rumors of wars. We still got chaos. Yeah, but it’s done.
The decisive battle has been won. The devil is defeated.
Seven events in a short period of time. In about a 70-year period of time, seven events took place that turned the whole course of the universe. It was the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, the sending of the spirit, and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Those seven events turned all of history from, hey, we’re going south till we’re going north. We’re walking away from God to now all of history has turned, and Jesus has won. He’s won. It’s finished.
Tetelestai is the Greek word translated on the cross where Jesus says it is finished. The victory has been won.
Now we live in the times between the times. We live in the times when the decisive battles have been won. History has turned, and yet the devil is still fighting.
Some people think the devil is still fighting because he still thinks he has a chance to win. Other people think the devil is still fighting because he’s just fighting for time.
The longer he can keep us on a string, the longer it’s going to take for Jesus to return and all history to be summed up. Whatever reason, the devil is still fighting. The devil is still fighting. And so we’re still engaged in spiritual warfare. We still are engaged in struggle. But he is seated at the right hand of the Father. There is no competition. There is no other name in heaven and earth by which men and women might be saved in the name of Jesus.
How do we know Jesus is king?
Every time he meets a demon, what happens? Jesus wins. Demon loses every time.
In the book of Acts, Paul comes or Peter comes. And in the name of Jesus, they do what? They preach the gospel. They cast out demons. They heal the sick. The kingdom of God is expanding.
As I talk to you tonight, right now, the gospel is expanding rapidly in Africa and in Southeast Asia, and Cambodia is becoming a Christian nation, and all around sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a Christian continent. And, dear ones, there is no stopping it.
The devil can’t stop it anymore. He’s lost. He’s defeated. It’s over. It’s like World War Two. Berlin is getting surrounded. The Russians are on the east, the allies are in the south and the west. D-Day has been accomplished, and they’ve developed. The circle around Berlin is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and pretty soon, it’s just going to be gone.
That’s where we live. And the Father says, I am putting your enemies as a footstool under your feet. The Bible trash talks the devil. You’re under the feet of Jesus.
You see, in the Old Testament, sometimes when a king, when Joshua or another king wins a battle, they take the opposing king, and what do they do? They stand on their necks. Well, what’s that? That’s I’m the winner, you’re the loser. Language, all right? That’s macho guy language.
Like, you’re going, see that neck I’m standing on? You don’t want me to take my foot off that neck, because when my foot comes off that neck, the sword’s coming down on it. Your head is forfeit. You’ve lost. Sit at my right hand.
And all these spirits, all these small, rebellious demonic powers, try to rise up as an antichrist spirit and try to thwart the gospel, and they do great harm. I don’t want to minimize them. Nazi Germany, Soviet communism, radical Islam, secularism in the West, they do great harm.
But dear ones, fear not. They will not win. It is a game of cosmic whack-a-mole, all right? These little antichrist spirits, they pop their head up and they make a lot of noise, and they cause some damage. And pretty soon, Jesus comes along. Bam.
That one goes down, and he says, every enemy is ultimately going to be defeated. And the last enemy to be defeated is death.
You know what you and I are? We’re the mallet in Jesus’ hands. In the game of cosmic whack-a-mole, he applies us to the heads of demons. Boom. Took out another one. Took out another one.
I’m going to make your enemies a footstool. Your people will be a volunteer army. He says your people will willingly line up, Messiah, to be on your side. That’s who we are.
John Wimber said, the church is at war. Eighty percent of the church doesn’t know it in the West, and the other twenty percent are trying as hard as they can to remain civilians. But, dear ones, you’re at war. The sooner you realize it, the better off you’re going to be.
Life isn’t going to be easy. You have an enemy. You have many enemies. They’ll attack your thoughts, they’ll attack your health, they’ll attack your family. But you know what? Greater is he who is in you than he who is attacking you.
And it’s time we rise up and acknowledge there’s a fight going on. We’re going to win that fight, and we’re going to pray through that fight, and we’re going to walk through that fight.
We’re not going to succumb to discouragement, and we’re not going to quit. We’re going to keep putting the right foot in front of the left and the left foot in front of the right, and we’re going to keep praying.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And it will, and it will happen through ordinary, normal people like us.
I think I was voted in my high school yearbook the most likely to be mediocre. All right? I mean, but I can tell you, and I’ve put this hand on people and they’ve been healed of sickness, and I’ve spoke in the name of Jesus and see people barf out demons.
Why? Because I’m some super anointed guy?
No, I didn’t get the big Holy Spirit package because I’m a pastor and you got the small Holy Spirit package because you have to sit out there and listen to me.
There’s only one reason I’m a pastor and you’re not. You actually have marketable skills. Now, there’s probably other reasons, but you know what I’m saying? We’re all in this together. There’s no big distinction. I’m a paid talker, all right? My job is to equip you so that you do the ministry. It’s not that.
It’s not your job to come and sit here and pay me so that I do the ministry. It’s my job to equip you. You do the ministry.
I got an assignment for you this week. Here’s your assignment. You can do any one of these three things. Really easy, simple assignment. Just do one of these three things. You don’t have to do all three. Just do one.
Heal a sick person, cast out a devil, or lead somebody to Christ. All right, we’ll grade next week. If you do one of those three things, you get an A.
If you do two of them, you get an A plus. If you do all three of them, you get an A. All right. If you try to do one of those three things, you get an A minus. All right? You’re good.
A volunteer army. And he says, you’re the dew of my youth. You’re young, you’re vibrant, you’re alive, you’re victorious. This is not an old, crippled, hobbled army.
I love this passage because I like being new and young and vibrant. When I get out of a chair, I wake up in the morning, I don’t feel young and vibrant. I feel like, well, I actually say this many mornings: Okay, here we go. Here we go. All right, first task, get the socks on. I can do this.
But no, that’s not how God sees me. That’s not how God sees me. God sees me as with that sword in my hand, that vibrant warrior advancing with him as his kingdom expands. That’s who we are.
That’s who we are. That’s what Psalm 10 says. Christ is the victor, and we are victors with him.
And then it talks about he is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. And when we went through Hebrews, we talked about Melchizedek. But a quick reminder, Melchizedek appears only here, Genesis 14, and in the book of Hebrews. But he’s an important figure in the Bible because he is a priest of God that precedes, that goes before the Levitical priesthood established by Moses.
What does that mean?
It means that there is another priesthood that is bigger, deeper, richer, more ancient, more profound than the Levitical priesthood. The Levitical priesthood is a copy of this other priesthood, this Melchizedekian priesthood, and Jesus is our perfect priesthood. That’s what Psalm 110 says. He’s our high priest.
And people would say, how can Jesus be the high priest? He’s of what tribe? Anybody know what tribe Jesus is from? Judah. Judah. I heard somebody whisper, Judah. Who whispered Judah? Jamie, you know it. You knew it. All right. The A student, the teacher’s pet. All right. Good job, Jamie.
Judah. How can he be a priest? He’s not a Levite. And the answer is. Oh, wait a minute. Not so fast.
Genesis 14. Abram wins this mighty victory over these five kingdoms. And he brings home all this loot, all this bounty. And the prince, the priest and the prince of Salem. Salem means peace. The prince of peace, the king of peace. The priest of peace. Salem is also short for what would become later Jerusalem. The high priest and king of Jerusalem.
Are you catching the imagery here? Are you catching the typology here? Melchizedek comes out to meet Abram and blesses him, and Abram tithes to Melchizedek, this high priest.
The tithe represents what you represent, God. I’m humbling myself and submitting myself to your priesthood, and I’m honoring your priesthood because what you represent is greater than me. And so Abram tithes to Melchizedek.
And then Melchizedek brings Abram refreshments. And you know what, Abram? You know what Melchizedek brings to Abram? Communion. Bread and wine. I mean, it’s there, right? It’s there. This is a type of Christ.
And Psalm 110 says, there’s coming a forever, an eternal priest, not of the Levitical order, not that he has to sacrifice animals, but of a deeper order, an older order, the order of Melchizedek.
And what does a priest do? I grew up in a Catholic church. I thought a priest said mass. But here’s what priest literally means. And this is what the Catholic Church tried to represent through priesthood. The priest is a mediator. The priest is a bridge builder. That’s what priest means.
Priest is the one who connects one side to the other side, a sinful humanity and a holy God.
How does a sinful humanity connect with a holy God in the Levitical priesthood? It’s through multiple animal sacrifices and the Day of Atonement and the temple and all that. That’s how God dwells with his people.
But there’s a priest coming, an eternal priest who doesn’t have to offer sacrifice day after day, year after year, who offers one sacrifice once and for all.
And he stands forever as a mediator, as an intercessor between a sinful humanity and a holy God.
And that priest is Jesus, and he is the perfect sacrifice. He’s the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He’s the perfect priest without sin, of the order of Melchizedek, to offer to God himself as the sacrifice.
And therefore, forever, he is the mediator of the new covenant between God and humanity.
And therefore, Hebrews 4 says he was like us in every way except without sin, so that through him we may come into the throne room of God and receive grace and mercy for every time of need.
Jesus now gives. How is it that you and I can boldly approach God in prayer and say, hey, God, got a final coming up, man, I need your help. And God says, oh, you want my help with a final? What about the other night when you’re not drinking? You weren’t asking for my help then. Well, actually, God, I did.
When I saw that cop behind me, I did ask your help. Why doesn’t God just take? Like I said, why doesn’t God just take?
I got to get me one of these, by the way. I got to get me one of those electric fly swatters. Those are so cool. I love those things. All right, so I’m going to get one of those.
Why doesn’t God just take a cosmic electric fly swatter when we approach him in prayer and go, you know what? You’re not worthy.
Because we walk in with King Jesus, and he sees us as his son and as his daughter. And therefore, Hebrews 4 says this. It really says this. This is in the Bible. You can check it out. Where we receive in the throne room of God grace and mercy. For this and every time of need, we come into the presence of God. Bold I approach his eternal throne.
The presence of the holy king of the universe, the blazing, consuming fire who Moses couldn’t see except his backside or would kill him.
The God of Mount Sinai, you know, the God of the burning bush, the God of all glory, the God who just, you know, people fall down in his presence and angels are eternally falling down.
We can walk into the presence of that God and he can say, all right, I got grace for you, power, resources to meet the need that you’re calling out for. And I got mercy for your sin. So I don’t judge you. All I do is I pour my goodness.
How good is he?
You are forgiven, and you are filled with the spirit to live this life. That’s what the priest Jesus does for us, and that is forever. Forever, Jesus makes intercession for us. That’s what I mean, forever.
Jesus is praying for us like, oh, you know, it’s not going to be like 10 million years from now. God’s going to say, well, you know, Father Kevin’s still struggling some. You got to help him. No, his intercession is, he did it once and for all. The bridge has been built. The breach has been healed. The relationship has been restored.
Because of what Jesus has done, he mediates the new covenant. We don’t have to kill bulls and lambs. We believe, and our sins are forgiven, and we’re made new.
And this is the meal we celebrate every week. It’s the meal of the new covenant. It’s so good, people.
And then it ends with this. The messiah will judge the nations. He will judge the nations. Psalm 2.
Listen, dear ones, the greatest deception of our time is that God is not holy.
The greatest deception of our time is that God is just a kindly, senile old man who looks down at our sin and goes, boys will be boys, girls will be girls. Oh, well, what are you going to do? No, no. If you set yourself up as an enemy of God, you will be destroyed.
Well, I’m not an enemy of God. I just, you know, I just don’t want to be. I’m just not very extreme. No, Jesus is very clear. You love him or hate him. You love him or hate him.
You notice when Jesus walks on the earth, when he’s really revealed to that, nobody takes a middle stance, right? Ultimately, dear ones, you’re going to love him or hate him. You’ll be for him or against him. There’ll be nobody in eternity going, well, you know, Jesus, he’s okay. Buddha was okay. Muhammad was okay. Confucius was okay. Jesus is okay.
No, the Bible says people will call upon the hills to cover them up because his presence is so overwhelming and so terrifying. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
But some of us, our knees will bow and our tongues will confess with great joy and relief and satisfaction. Oh, my lord, you came to save me, Jesus, I humbly bow and worshipfully bow before you.
And others will bow and say, you are lord and I am eternally lost. The Jews missed the Messiah because they wanted the Messiah to come and bring his vengeance upon their enemies. Instead, his first act was to bring his mercy upon them and their enemies.
But don’t let that fool you that there won’t come a day when he will come as judge. That’s what Psalm 110 says. And he will judge the principalities and powers, the beast, the false prophet, Satan himself.
One day, I believe with our resurrected eyes we will see Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, bow before King Jesus and confess Jesus Christ is Lord and I’m going to the lake of fire.
He will judge the principalities and the powers, and he will judge the human beings, the earthly kings and rulers, and all human beings who have sided with that side, who have said we’re putting our eggs in the basket of this world.
We’re putting our eggs in what our eyes can see, in the pragmatism of this world. We’re not going to put our faith in God’s son. There’s not enough evidence for us, and it’s too costly.
And besides that, he wants my money, and he wants me to be sexually faithful, and he wants me to be a goody two shoes, and I don’t want to do any of that stuff.
Maybe I’ll do a little bit. Maybe I’ll do a few good deeds that’ll get them on my side. Hey, God, you know, I helped an old lady once. No, even the pagans do that.
God is holy. He will destroy his enemies. You know what the word hell means? Gehenna or Gehinna.
And Gehinna is the valley outside of Jerusalem that was forever on fire to burn trash. It burned garbage.
Ultimately, you were created in the image and likeness of God. Every human being was created in the image and likeness of God. But to reject him is to reject that created destiny and become eternal. Refuse eternal trash, worthless, no good but to toss into the fire.
The king is coming back, and he will reward his faithful servants. He will destroy his enemies, and there will come a time where the valley of decision will be done and fates will be sealed. But he, he will be exalted.
Psalm 110 ends this way: but he himself will be refreshed from brooks along the way.
7 But he himself will be refreshed from brooks along the way. He will be victorious. (Psalms 110:7, NLT)
This warfare where he’s judging and destroying his enemies. In the middle of it, he dips down in a spring, and he takes a drink and says, my work is done. And then it says, he lifts his head.
Psalm 3:
3But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. (Psalm 3:3, ESV)
The enemy’s footstools under his feet. The king himself and those who follow him, lifters of their head, exalted.
One day you’ll stand before King Jesus, and your head will be bowed, and you’ll say, Lord, forgive me for I have sinned. And he will put his hand under your chin, and he will lift your head and say, son, daughter, well done, good and faithful servant, enter the preparation, the reward prepared for you.
You are forgiven, you are loved, you are accepted, you are mine forever.
He’ll lift your head. Psalm 3:3, thou, O Lord, be a shield about me. Be you, be my glory, and be the lifter of my head.
King Jesus will lift his head. He will be exalted. He is the exalted king of the universe. That’s what Psalm 110 says.
Corey ten Boom’s father had it right. Christ is the victor. Jesus is the victor. Paul wrote about it. Or actually, Paul probably quoted this. This is probably one of the earliest Christian hymns.
It’s found in Philippians, and it says this. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Although he was God, the Lord said to my lord, Adonai, Yahweh, second Yahweh, second visible Yahweh. Although he was God, he did not think equality with God as something to cling to.
5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. 6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. (Philippians 2:5-6, NLT)
What does that mean? It means the incarnation. He became a baby. He pooped his diapers. He relied upon his mother’s milk for sustenance. He entered into dirty, fallen, broken humanity the same way you and I entered into it through a woman’s birth canal.
I mean, I was there when my babies were born. They gave me my first child. They brought that child out. They gave me Megan. I said, here, hold it. It’s like, wash it off, man. That is a slime.
That’s Jesus. He was a slimy, probably had a little cone head and everything. Baby God, that. This is incredible. Instead, he gave up his divine privilege. He gave up his glory in heaven, his omnipotence, his omnipresence, his omniscience. He didn’t cease being God, but he literally laid those things aside to be fully human for a season.
And he humbled himself and took the position of a slave, a servant, a poor carpenter in an occupied country by the Romans.
He was a human being. He appeared in human form.
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8, NLT)
This is what C.S. Lewis calls the celestial dive, the God of all glory. Angels adore him. Dives into humanity, into the depths of humanity.
Not into a royal family, into a poor family, an impoverished family, a conquered nation, a dirty living on dirt floors and hanging out with smelly fishermen and being misunderstood and slandered and scandalized, doing no harm to anybody and facing the worst injustice anybody ever faced.
You faced injustice. Things have happened to you that haven’t been fair. Let me tell you something. Nothing ever happened to you as unfair as what happened to Jesus.
And he died the cruelest death of his time, the death of humiliation and shame and cruelty, with nails driven into his hands and feet, a crown of thorns on his head, mocked and sped upon and whipped, and he just drank the dregs, his friends abandoning him, justice being denied him, the people he came. Remember the island of monotheism. The island of monotheism. He created, shouting out, crucify him, crucify him. Every back turned on him almost. And he does that to enter into our depths as the perfect priest, and save him. But here’s how. That passage.
That passage doesn’t end there. I love how this passage ends. His head will be lifted up.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11, NLT)
Hallelujah. Amen.
That’s Psalm 110. That’s Psalm 110. That’s the story, people. That’s the story. We’ve been invited into the humility and the exaltation of Jesus.
And when we join him, that is our lives. We humble ourselves. God, I’m a sinner. I die. I die to my flesh. I die to myself. I died a living life my way. And I humble myself. And I join you in your death. I submit to baptism. I go under the water, and I’m buried, and I die.
Then God has that. Therefore, you are exalted with Christ. He will lift your head when I’m dead and gone, which isn’t going to be for a long time.
Now, I’m not speaking that into being. It’s not going to be for a long time. It’ll be around a while. All right, 20 years from now, who knows? I still may be up here going, you know, one of these days I’m going to retire. But not yet. I don’t know. I don’t know how long. I mean, I’m going to do it as long as I can.
But you’re not going to forget this. You’re playing a game you already won. All right, that’s kevinism number seven. You’re playing a game you already won, and you’re at war.
You’re at war. But the decisive battle has been decided. And all you have to do is fix your gaze upon Jesus. And put the right foot in front of the left and the left foot in front of the right, and you will walk into glory. Amen. Amen.
The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand while we play a historic game of whack a mole. Here, take this mallet. What’s that mallet’s name? Stevin Johnson. Knock that one down. All right. Way to go, Stevin. What’s that one? What’s that mallet’s name? Mick Sheldon.
All right, bam. Got that demon. And you’ll walk into glory. We’re new covenant. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, King Jesus. Thank you, priest Melchizedek.
For the body and blood that poured out that we forever could find grace and mercy. You invite us to your table, and we want to feed tonight on grace and mercy that you have so freely given. We sang it. Oh, your grace so free. Washes over me right here. Wash us anew tonight with grace and mercy.
In your name, King Jesus, we pray. Amen.
The post 2024.7.14 TFHC – Christ The Victor (Psalm 110) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
July 7, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Alright. The psalms and the proverbs are called wisdom literature, and that’s because they contain, you guessed it, wisdom. And wisdom is really how to take information and knowledge and apply it in the best possible way.
And it doesn’t come necessarily with being old. There are old fools out there.
Alright. One of the advantages of growing old is if you pray for wisdom, I think your wisdom can increase as you grow old, as you observe life, and as you learn from life’s lessons.
But not everybody learns from life’s lessons. Not everybody.
And the Bible says that wisdom comes primarily from asking God, not from growing old. All right, so there you go.
But Psalm 1 starts off the whole Psalms, and it starts off the Psalms with an exhortation to plant your life in the instruction of God. And then the rest of the Psalms and the Proverbs give us the instruction of God. And the Psalms and the Proverbs basically teach us, if you’ll do this, there’s wisdom, your life will go well. It’s not an absolute. Doesn’t mean you won’t have problems.
I mean, the book of Job comes along and says, well, Job did most of that and he still had hard times. But it does mean that this is the way that God has designed for people to live in such a way that they have joy, blessing, abundance, fruitfulness, and ultimately eternal life.
And so Psalm 1 is just a great psalm to start the psalms on wisdom, on the wisdom of God and how to have a planted life. And so I’m going to read Psalm 1 to you. It may be my favorite psalm.
I don’t know. There are so many psalms I like. But I do love Psalm 1. And it says this:
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. 2 But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. 3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. 4 But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind. 5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly. 6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. (Psalm 1:1-6, NLT)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14, NLT)
And so I love this. I love this psalm. It starts out, oh, how joyful or how blessed is. And then it says, people who don’t do these three things. It starts off with a negative.
It reminds me all my movie illustrations are old movies. I haven’t watched a new movie in 40 years, few exceptions, but this one’s a classic. And it was from way before I was born. And it comes from mix time. And so, you know, this is the. This is the. This is the movie.
And now I can’t even remember. Oh, the quiet man with John Wayne. Yeah. See, I knew Mick would know it. It’s a great movie. It’s a great movie. The quiet man with John Wayne. And it’s about an Irish American.
He goes over to America. He immigrated from Ireland to America and becomes a boxer. In the boxing ring, he accidentally kills a man. He’s filled with remorse. As a way to reorient his life, he’s made plenty of money boxing. He’s got enough money to live on for the rest of his life. He goes back to the simple life of Ireland, and it’s not that simple, because he falls in love with a woman.
And for all the charms and beauty and grace and all the wonderful things that women add to the life of us men, I just need to say, simplicity is not at the top of the list. Just saying. But don’t worry. All the other blessings way outweigh that.
But he comes back looking for the simple life, but he falls in love with the woman. He doesn’t get the simple life, but he does get the woman. And that’s better. That’s a better prize.
But at the beginning of the movie, he gets off the train.
And how do you get to Innisfree? How do you get to this little village? You know, how do you get to this place? I’m going.
And the conductor in the beautiful Irish brogue says, well, let me tell you something. You see that path there? He goes, yeah. And it goes over. Goes over that hill there, and it goes across the brook down the way. He goes, yeah. He goes, well, don’t take that. He wants nothing to do with that.
That’s how Psalm 1 starts. It starts off with, blessed is the man.
Joyful is the man who. And you’re expecting, all right, who does what? And then he goes, don’t do this. And three things he says, three descriptions he gives. He says blessed is the man who does not take the advice of the wicked or stand around with sinners or join in with the mockers.
Blessed is the man who does not take the advice of the wicked. And we’ve talked about this before, wickedness. When wickedness is spoken of in the Bible, it doesn’t necessarily mean what it usually conjures up in our minds.
In our minds, when we think of wicked, we tend to think of people doing really horrible things. But the root of wickedness, it leads to horrible things, often leads to horrible things. But the root of wickedness is simply being unhinged. It’s simply being in a place where you’re not attached to that which has substance.
You’re like a ship. In fact, you’re like. You really. You’re like a ship without an anchor. Just the wind and the waves will toss you with whatever. Or as Psalm 1 says, you’re like what?
You’re like the chaff around a kernel of wheat. There’s no substance to you. There’s no weight to you. There’s nothing. You’re just blown away by the wind.
And basically, when the Bible says, don’t take the advice of the wicked, it’s saying, don’t adopt and live your life based on a worldview that has no substance. Most people don’t think of worldview, but we have one. Everybody has a worldview. A worldview is simply the lens through which we look through life. And the culture in which you live will shape a worldview.
If you’re like Ats and you are a double-cultured person, you understand this. You understand, oh, there’s a worldview in Japan, and there’s a worldview in the United States. And people look at the world. I mean, it’s the same world, and there are people, but there are differences in how people look at the world.
In fact, there’s a worldview of western Washington, and there’s a worldview of eastern Tennessee. And those worldviews are going to be different. All right? And so everybody has a worldview.
And the Bible says, blessed is the person who does not listen to a worthless worldview and adopt a worthless worldview. Most folks will simply adopt willy nilly whatever worldview is foisted upon them by the culture, the family, and the media that they are surrounded by. And the Bible says, that’s wicked. Don’t do it.
Now, there are two broad worldviews in our culture that I think are wicked, and I think the Bible would say are wicked, and they are largely adopted by our culture. The first one by people my age, baby boomers.
And we were taught a worldview. I would call it, or it’s called, materialism or naturalism or scientific naturalism or atheistic naturalism, atheistic materialism. Basically, the worldview is all that exists is matter. That’s all that we can know, that’s all that we can study, and therefore we ought to constrict our worldview to matter.
So whether you believe in God or not, functionally, your worldview is atheistic. Matter explains everything. Science, observing matter, testing matter, seeing how matter operates through the laws of physics, that explains reality.
Schools were instructed not to teach religion, not to teach God. And so schools tried as best they could to teach a neutral worldview. No such thing. To abandon a worldview is to teach another worldview.
And so we were taught this worldview not because the schools intentionally wanted to teach atheism or were intentionally anti-God. A lot of Christian teachers, I grew up with a lot of wonderful people. I’m not bashing the schools.
I’m simply saying by the very fact that they believe the Constitution of the United States and the separation, which, by the way, isn’t in the Constitution, separation of church and state. But the state shall not, the establishment clause, the state shall not establish religion, that they could not teach a worldview that had any concept of religion.
And they thought, well, we can do that fine, and families and churches can do their part. But in fact, it’s not a neutral worldview. It’s a worldview of scientific naturalism.
And I want to say that the atheistic view of scientific naturalism is a bad worldview. It’s a wicked worldview. And in fact, every naturalist who denies miracles, denies the existence of God, has to explain six miracles from their worldview.
So this will get a little, maybe a little philosophical or something. It may bore you. If it does, yawn widely, and I’ll move as quickly through it as I can. But I think this stuff is kind of interesting. And so every naturalist has to explain these things. Existence comes from non-existence.
I mean, every materialist has to admit, there’s matter, there’s energy, let there be light. A Christian worldview says, oh, yes, a pre-existent, eternally existent God spoke, created matter, energy, let there be light.
Okay, an atheist will say, well, you have no proof for God. Well, we don’t in that sense, in a naturalistic sense, but we do have this: that everything that has a beginning has a cause. And you say, well, that’s a big stretch to say a God out there said, let there be light, and there was light. Maybe that is a big stretch.
Let me tell you what’s a bigger stretch. Everything came from nothing. I’m a man of faith. But I got that faith. Everything came from nothing.
It’s one thing to say God created the heavens and the earth. Well, that takes some faith to believe that. Yeah, it might. It’s another thing that says nothing. And then there was everything. And naturalism has no explanation for that. No explanation.
The explanation before Einstein’s theory of relativity, the explanation before the Hubble telescope, the explanation before was that matter had existed eternally.
But now, almost all of science, or I think all of science, has come to the agreement that there was a beginning. Christians argue about the time of that beginning, but we all have said, yep, you finally caught up to us. There was a beginning, and everything that has a beginning has a cause.
And so miracle number one, if you hold this worldview, is that existence comes from non-existence. Order comes from chaos. Well, everything in observed nature says the opposite.
Okay, you have a yard. Does your yard get better? Do the weeds get less?
Does the lawn reach the desired height and stop? Do the edges of your lawn stay clean and edged properly as you ignore and allow the natural processes to take over your neighborhood? Take over your yard? No. What happens?
Well, I’ll tell you what happens. If you live in a neighborhood with a strict HOA, some little lady is going to come down the street with a ruler and measure your lawn, and you’re going to get a picture of your lawn and a letter of non-compliance and the threat of a fine if you don’t. What?
Bring some order to that chaos. And as much as I don’t like those little Nazi HOA ladies, they make a point. And the point is that, in fact, chaos breeds more chaos. Order comes from an orderer.
You know, the farmer was out looking at his orchard, and some guy came up and said, didn’t God do a great job creating this orchard? The farmer said he did, but he said, you know, you should have seen it before I got ahold of it.
What’s the farmer saying? I’m an orderer. I’m an orderer.
In fact, there is incredible complexity and order in the universe and the world in which we live. A naturalist has to explain how random mutations have led to more precise and defined order instead of more chaos. In everything we observe, unless you accept that as an a priori assumption to be true, the opposite is the case.
It would be like saying, if I took this and all the ingredients that made up this, and I just broke it all apart. Just took it all apart. Broke it all apart.
And then I put it in the blender, and I turned on the blender, and I let the blender run for a couple million years. After a couple million years, I opened up the blender, and the iPhone came out. Nobody believes that. Nobody believes the blender would come out. Nobody believes.
If you flew thousands of airplanes over a pristine, you know, Long Island before it was inhabited by anybody, New York City. And you.
And in those airplanes, you had cement and steel and metal and concrete. You just opened up the bomber doors on those airplanes over Manhattan. As those bombers dropped all that chaos and all those ingredients, boom, skyscrapers would appear.
The naturalist has to explain how order comes from chaos without intelligence and an orderer behind it. The naturalist has to explain how personhood, personal, comes from the non-personal. What do I mean by this? I mean, when life comes, life comes in higher forms of life with consciousness.
And they have to explain, how is it that that consciousness is differentiated from the matter that makes up that body?
Here’s what I mean by that. When somebody dies, the matter that makes up their body is still there. But we all say, and we all agree, the person has left, right?
You know, I told you the story of my mother-in-law recently dying in our house, all right? And, you know, she was there. The person was there at 3:00 in the afternoon, and at 3:30 in the afternoon, the person was no longer there.
The matter that made up her body was still there, but she was gone.
I told you I tested that, right? I told her I was going to vote for Biden. I’m not really, but I tested it, and she didn’t rise up in huge revolt and say, what do you mean you’re going to vote for Biden?
And, you know, say her beautiful. Her beautiful statement that, you know, we were going to put on her gravestone. Democrats have no common sense.
And so I figured there’s several of you out there right now, and I know who you are, who aren’t saying it, but inside you are articulating Sidney’s affirmation. You’re saying, sweet, we like your mother-in-law, sweet. I could have gotten along with her all right, but the person had left.
How does personhood enter into the non-personal? Matter is not personal. Rocks aren’t personal. How did there come a thing of first life and then consciousness and personality? No explanation. Again, how does life come from non-life?
Anybody grow up with a theory that there was some primordial swamp, and it got hit by lightning, and that brought together the proteins and the acids necessary to create the first cell? Wonderful theory. Nobody believes it anymore. Nobody believes it. It’s like, nah, that didn’t happen.
The goalpost about how life first emerged on earth apart from God, the scientific goalpost for that is actually every year moving further and further away from a purely naturalistic viewpoint. It’s like, nah, proteins and acids and molecules don’t work that way. They don’t come together to form a cell.
They actually move in such a direction that they move apart. How does life come from non-life? I’ve heard this one. Well, it was aliens. Well, that’s the dumbest answer ever. Because what does that do? That just begs the question. Right, exactly.
Sidney, sweet, you know what begs the question means. I know. See, I’ve always said you had a good mind. Thanks. Reason comes from non-reason. How is it that our brains can actually… How is it that an atheist can come up with the ideas of atheism and naturalism?
How is it that atheists can study the universe and measure the laws of physics, and non-atheists as well, and make reasonable arguments?
How is it that atheists can debate theists about whether or not God exists and use reason? In fact, if everything that’s going on between their ears is simply the billions and billions of years of random mutations in the soft gray computer between your ears that simply exist as random mutations, and there’s no individuality to it, there’s no real person to it. It’s just matter. It’s just matter.
Well, if it’s just matter, why do you trust the reason there? It’s just how the electrons ended up firing off in your computer. Why argue? Why argue? Why do you trust it? It’s just the product of billions of years of accidents in matter and nature.
And finally, how does morality come from matter? How does morality come from matter? How is it if you kick the atheist in the shin and he says, don’t do that? Why? It’s wrong. No, it’s not wrong. It’s just what my body, my matter said to do.
In fact, every argument being made today to embrace perversity and different sexual identities. Okay, what’s the basic argument that we hear for the sexual revolution, the gender revolution that we’re undergoing today? This is who I am. Well, why is it who you are? It’s because this is what I feel.
Okay, if that’s the bottom line argument, where are the breaks? Pedophile. This is who every pedophile I’ve met has said. This is what I naturally feel. I didn’t teach myself this. This is what I feel. Rapist. Every rapist. This is what I naturally feel.
Every serial killer. This is what I naturally feel. I’ve heard people say, be your authentic self. I’ve seen the authentic self that lives inside of here. No, I want to be the Jesus self, the authentic self that lives inside of here. You would not like. You think, well, we don’t like you anyway. But it would be worse. It would be worse.
Kevin, you’re just. You’re sarcastic. I’d be worse. I’m telling you. You know, Jill would not have hung around for 43 years with the authentic self.
Listen, I hope this is true for you because this is true for me. I don’t say everything that comes up on the screen. I sometimes say too much of what comes up on the screen. I don’t always edit perfectly, but I don’t say everything that comes up on the screen.
Listen, you know, my, you know, my, my wife, she never put me through this test, but I know men. You know, it’s like, don’t say everything that comes up on the screen. Your wife comes out and says, does this dress make me look fat?
Don’t say everything that comes up on the screen. All right? Don’t say no, it’s your butt that makes you look fat. Don’t say that. It’s a bad answer. Just ignore. Just pretend you didn’t hear.
For years, she’s known that you don’t hear everything. You’ve got an excuse. Now, how does right and wrong come from mere matter? In fact, we don’t ascribe right and wrong to our pets. We train our pets. We even use words like bad boy or, you know, good boy, good dog. But you know what?
We just kind of assume, oh, they’re just doing what comes naturally to them. But with human beings, we say, no, you need to restrain that behavior and practice that behavior.
Atheists say, you need to restrain that behavior. Well, where does that come from? In matter? It doesn’t. There’s no morality in matter. It only comes when God says, this is what’s right and true. This is what’s broke and wrong.
So naturalism is a wicked worldview. Postmodernism, don’t worry, I won’t take as long on this one.
Because postmodernism is simply naturalism from people who don’t want to admit that they’re naturalist. Postmodernism is not my generation. It’s my kids’ generation.
Postmodernism says two absurd things. Basically, they say there is no metanarrative, there is no grand worldview that speaks of the truth. And of course, the minute you say that, what did you just do? You created a new metanarrative. Here’s my metanarrative, here’s my grand scheme.
And then the one that gets me. And people are catching on. They don’t say this as much, but they used to say it all the time.
You know, pastor, there are no absolutes. And I love that statement because I always come back with this question: Are you absolutely sure there’s no absolutes? And they say, yes, I’m absolutely sure. And you can keep pressing it and see how long it takes, right, to go, well, I guess there’s one, you know, the one I just made up. In fact, it’s nonsense.
Don’t be like, don’t take the advice of the wicked. Don’t adopt an empty worldview, but be intentional about how you think about what’s true and what’s real. Truth matters. Truth matters.
Don’t join in with sinners. It’s gonna. This is not as good. It’s gonna be. This is gonna be quick. Don’t join in with sinners.
Well, Jesus says be a friend of sinners. Yes. Be a friend of sinners. Well, where do I draw the line? Can I go to bars? You know, some people say, oh, don’t go to bars. I think you’re fine going to bars. I think Jesus would go to bars. I think you should go to bars.
Well, you know, should I go? You know, where should I not go?
I don’t know where you should not go. Well, they sin there. Okay, now I know what to do. Don’t do that. Go to bars. Okay. Go to bars. Well, they get drunk there. Yeah. Don’t get drunk. Be friends with sinners. Don’t sin. Right.
Now, I know that’s complex. That’s deep. You have to meditate over that for a while. But seriously, right? It’s not that hard. I mean, it may be hard to do, but the concept’s not that hard.
When the psalm says, don’t stand with sinners, what it’s saying there is, you don’t participate in the lifestyle. You don’t go there and behave in such a way. But Jesus comes and he befriends sinners. He hangs out with prostitutes. He befriends prostitutes. Oh, my gosh. Do you know what kind of woman you’re standing next to? Yes, I do, and so does the father. And the father wants her as a daughter. And I am going to make, you know, Jesus. You know, and people will say to us Christians, will you judge sinners?
It’s like, no, no, listen. Jesus didn’t hang out with sinners to accept their identity and encourage their sinfulness. He hung out with sinners to love them and invite them into repentance in a new way of life and so should we. Don’t isolate yourself at church and none of it. Most of us can’t. We got jobs, we got lives, we got neighborhoods.
Well, be a part of the workplace, be a part of the locker or be a part of the water cooler conversation, and be a part of the neighborhood conversation. You know, join in and be a part, and I’ll tell you, I have had the best Jesus conversations over the last ten years of my life at cigar bars. I’m just sitting there smoking a cigar, which, by the way, is not a sin. That’s a sin. It’s like, show me in the Bible.
You know, I think it is an offering of incense and a pleasing aroma to the Lord. But I’m sitting there, and guys would be talking, and they’d be dropping f bombs right and left.
And here’s what I do. I don’t drop the f bombs. I don’t talk like that. I think it’s rude to talk like that. I think it’s offensive to talk like that. I think it’s a sin to talk in those kinds of terms.
And then the conversation inevitably, it’s so fun. This is so fun.
After they’ve been spending an hour dropping f bombs and complaining about their boss or their wives and telling dirty stories, and I’m just sitting there listening, then they say, hey man, what do you do? I’m a pastor. It’s so fun to see the color come out of their face. And then they, oh, man, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I say, I don’t come here expecting people to talk my language. But then here’s what happens.
After they get over the embarrassment, they start saying, yeah, man, I was divorced three years ago, and I don’t know how to connect with my kids. I love my kids still. And, you know, it’s hard and I listen.
At the end, all of a sudden this guy was dropping f bombs and had the world all figured out. At the end he goes, hey, I got to go. I said, yeah, I’m going to go too. He said, hey man, before you go, you want to pray? And the guy’s like, yeah, you’ll pray with me?
Yeah, I’ll pray. Give me your kids’ names. We’re gonna pray for your kids. And you get done. And these guys’ eyes are moist, right?
Hey, thanks, man. You’re gonna come back here? You betcha. You betcha. That is not an isolated conversation that I have had. Because I hang out with sinners. I know where to find them. They’re everywhere. It’s real simple.
Don’t stand with the sinners. Don’t join in their sin. But Jesus says, be friends of sinners. Absolutely. And finally, he says, don’t be a mocker. Don’t join in with the mockers.
Whenever the Bible talks about mockers, it’s about mocking the holy, about mocking the things of God. It’s not about joking or teasing or anything. It’s about mocking the things of God.
And when you mock the things of God, there is an air of arrogance. And I would say of all these sins, wickedness, participating with sinners, the most dangerous is mocking. Because mocking then is the arrogance that comes closest to blaspheming the Holy Spirit. It comes closest to seeing God actually work and saying, that’s not God. I’m more clever than that.
Nobody is more dangerous, in my experience, than this, than seminary students. Seminary students are the most. There’s no pride worse than spiritual pride. When I was in seminary and others were, and I was hanging around with seminary, we thought we were so smart. We thought we knew so much about, you know, God and the ways of God.
How many of you are familiar with the Christian Broadcasting Network? Not CBN, but the other one, TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network. They were run by charismatics.
And these charismatics weren’t brilliant theologians who ran that at all, but they were, you know, and we would look at them and in our arrogance, we would watch those shows.
But instead of watching those shows to be edified or hearing about what good thing God was doing, we would watch those shows and we’d play a little game because we were so smart and we knew the Bible so well, and we were so deep, we’d watch those shows and we’d play a game called name that heresy.
We knew all the historic heresies.
But I’ll tell you, as I watched those shows, I was attracted to one person who, to this day, I don’t think is a good preacher. He doesn’t espouse deep theological truths that move me or inspire me. But I’ll tell you what. When he would get done talking, which I was always relieved he did, and he would turn to the choir and wave his coat and say, touch, three-fourths of the choir would fall. There’s something in me that goes, what the.
Now I got to tell you something. I say, what the? But I never finish it. So you don’t have to get nervous. My wife, when I say, what the? She’s like, don’t go there. What the, I’d watch that. And I’d just go, what the?
And I’d hear the critics of this guy and say, oh, that’s psychosomatic. That’s what hypnotism are. Those people were pre-programmed. They say, hey, when he does this, you guys fall. It’s not true. I’ve been to those meetings now, I’ve been in those crowds now.
I’ve been one of the people that’s fallen now. And nobody told me beforehand, oh, you fall. And I’ve been with people who said to me, oh, I don’t fall. I’m not going to fall. And I felt the power.
Is it the power of the devil or is it the power of God? That’s the next criticism. Oh, that’s the devil. That’s the devil. Well, I don’t know, because I saw people get healed of terminal diseases and crippling diseases at those meetings, and they were healed in the name of Jesus.
And I’ll never forget watching one of those television programs. And a little girl came up with rheumatoid arthritis at ten years old. And you watch and you go, this girl ain’t faking. She’s stunted in her growth. She’s in a wheelchair, her mom’s car. These are people, right? And she’s all crippled up.
And this flamboyant healing evangelist, who still to this day comes under much criticism, and maybe some of it is justified, begins to pray for her. She begins to cry as her hands begin to move, and her mom begins to cry. Her mom says, I brought her three years ago to one of your events, and you didn’t have time to pray for her. She said, I went home devastated. She said, the Lord spoke to me and said, it’s not the time yet, but the time’s going to come.
And that night was her time. And that little girl got healed of rheumatoid arthritis. And I began to cry. This was back when I had testosterone and didn’t cry. It would be no big thing now for me to cry.
I did a friend’s funeral the other day. It’s so funny. My wife and I, we’ve completely flip-flopped. When we were newly married, she cried all the time. I would mock her, like, oh, you crying, you girly girl. Now, she spent 20 years working 911. She didn’t cry at anything.
She’s like, she’s like cop hardened. And I’m now, you know, I’m now just a soft, you know, sentimental old man. And, you know, a commercial comes on TV.
But I was, you know, this, this friend, he… I buried my friend. I did his funeral, and his son came up and gave a moving testimony. I told my wife a story about what the son shared about his father, my friend. And I began to cry as I was telling this story.
And then his father showed up at the door, and they spent the day together. They spent the day together. And my wife’s laughing at me, you big wood. It’s like, shut up. But this was back in the day when I wasn’t like that. I never cried, but I began to cry at this girl’s healing.
I heard the voice of God. Kevin, has that ever happened in your ministry? No. Would you want it to?
Well, what kind of Munster wouldn’t, what kind of monster wouldn’t want to see a little girl with rheumatoid arthritis stretch out her fingers for the first time in ten years?
I said with all my heart, I want it to. And I felt like the Lord gave me this rebuke. Stop criticizing and learn. And ever since then, I’ve tried to learn.
And I’m not going to sacrifice theology. I’m not going to sacrifice what I believe to be biblical and orthodox. That’s dear to me. But I’ll tell you what.
The places that parade their orthodoxy the most, I don’t see that. Sometimes the places that get criticized the most by the online guardians of the faith are the places where people get out of wheelchairs.
And I got to say, I’m not going to be a mocker of that anymore. I might not have all the answers. And I’m not saying there are false signs and wonders and miracles. They are. There’s such a thing.
But, you know, I’ve seen some amazing stuff. And so I do not want to mock the holy.
I want to never lose my wonder at what a good God can do.
All right, three things not to do, then. Don’t take the advice of the wicked. Don’t join with the sinners. Don’t mock the holy.
What do we do? Well, we ground our lives in the logos of God. Blessed is the one who delights in the law of the Lord, Old Testament, in the law of the Lord, in the Torah, in the stories of God, and the law of God, who takes the wisdom of God. And they intentionally invest their lives.
What does that mean? For us Christians? Blessed is the one who invests their lives in the Scriptures, Old and New Testament, who invests their lives in Jesus. That’s where you’re blessed and that’s where you’re called to be intentional.
Be intentional about grounding your life in Jesus. Don’t be wicked. Wicked simply lets the wind and the waves take you wherever they will. They simply let the culture and the world that you live in take you wherever it will. They don’t question things. They don’t ask. They don’t say, what does God say about that?
What does the Bible say about that? What does Jesus say about that? I want my life to be intentionally grounded in the worldview and logos of God.
And the Bible says you’re like a tree planted by streams of water. That’s where life, that’s the rootedness. It’s the exact opposite of wickedness. Wickedness is unhinged, unrooted, unanchored, like chaff.
But the intentional investing of our lives in the things. And I’m preaching to the choir tonight. You’re here. You’re here. If you’re here, you’re doing that to some extent. Good for you. Sweet.
My daughter-in-law will come to me again, a dangerous question. What is it, ladies? Do they, like, do you go to dangerous question school? It’s like, hey, here’s a question that’ll get a man in trouble, make him sweat.
My daughter-in-law comes to me and she’ll tell me about her and my son’s strategy in parenting and then ask me if I think it’s okay. It’s a dangerous question, right? Because if I disagree, then I got a spat with my daughter-in-law. And, you know, it’s like.
And if you agree, it’s like, well, do you really think so? I got my answer. I know my answer. Here’s my answer. And it’s actually true. I’m not lying.
I say, the very fact that you and Michael are intentional about that is already a sign that you’re good parents. And the strategy that you employ is not nearly as important to me as the fact that you are intentional parents. See? Clever, huh? I’m clever.
And she goes, you say that all the time. I say, you’re right, and I always will. And it’s true.
When I was in Oakdale, pastor in Oakdale, homeschooling was becoming popular. And there would be the debate. And I got to say, I’m not picking on anybody, but the most stringent and militant of the homeschool debaters weren’t the public school teachers. It was the homeschool moms. All right, my homeschool mom, like, this is the way, the only way, you know, and all that, like, all right. And they’d always. And everybody tried to recruit me.
We had a lot of public school officials and teachers in our church, and they’re like, we’re okay, aren’t we, Kevin? Yes, you’re great. I love the fact that you are there. I love the fact that light is there.
And we’d have Christian schools, you know. Well, we take our kids, and we have the homeschool moms, and we have the whole thing. The homeschool dads, too. But I’m just saying, you know.
But here was my deal. I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight.
Here’s my only thing. Parents, not the government, are the best people to make the decisions about what’s best for their children’s education. That was my. That’s the dog I had in the fight.
Parents need to have the power to do what’s best for their children. And we had one lady, she had three daughters. One went to the public high school, one went to a private Christian school, and the other was homeschooled.
And I thought, she knows what she’s doing, or she’s just a crazy woman, but I think she knows what she’s doing, because she was looking at as an intentional mother. She was looking at each of her children saying, where will they thrive? Where will they do best? What will help them the best? And I’m going to place them in that situation.
Be intentional about walking with the logos, the word Jesus. And so you apply the Christian disciplines. You use the disciplines not legalistically, but lovingly, because God.
Well, how do we be intentional?
Well, you know, there’s something, you know, read the Bible. That’s a good start.
When I first became a Christian, my mentor said, have a daily quiet time. What does that mean? Read the Bible every day and pray. Now, I later learned in life that was not the sum total of Christian discipleship, but you know what? It wasn’t wrong either.
But here’s what happened. As I read the Bible and I prayed, when I first started, I had that first love experience. Oh, the Bible is awesome. And God’s talking to me, and this is great.
And I pray, and he answers my prayer. And then about two, three years into it, what happened? I was reading the Bible. It’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Okay, I got that done. And I was saying my prayers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that done. And all of a sudden, it was dry and dusty.
And so here’s what I’ve discovered. Jesus talks about it to the church of Ephesus. Be intentional about first love.
And so, read the Bible, say your prayers, go to church, serve the poor, share your faith, be generous with your money. All the Christian disciplines, all the things Christians normally do, just avoid doing them legalistically. Do them lovingly.
And you’ve heard me. This is Kevinism. You’ve heard it a hundred times, but you know you’re going to hear it 101, dear ones. You’re not going to ever come to this church and have me say you have to read your Bible. You’re not going to hear me say you got to say your prayers.
You’re going to hear me say, what you get to makes all the difference.
God wrote a book. Hey, I want to read that book. The God of the universe says, when you turn to me in prayers, I hear from heaven and answer your prayers, and I am present with you because I love you.
Well, I’d like to hang out with. I love to hang out with people who love me. Those are the best people to hang out with. You know, I hate to hang out with people who hate me.
I love hanging out with people who love me. And so, practice the Christian disciplines. Walk with Jesus. Be intentional about the logos. Just don’t become a legalist about it, because then you become obnoxious. Just keep the relationship fresh.
All right. Nothing would be worse if I took my wife out on a date and said, yeah, I got to get this one done. But when I take her out on the date, I actually take her out on a date to enjoy her.
I like her company, and we laugh and we have a good time, and it’s fun. And we now live in a world with the four best worlds ever. And some of you are going to reach that world at some point. No pets, no kids. It’s a great world. It’s a great world.
All right, so, Sydney, when you leave, your parents are going to cry. It’s like, oh, Sydney’s gone. We’re going to miss her. And then two weeks later, they go, it’s okay. Kind of like when Sean left, you were like, oh, he’s going to leave.
And now it’s like, it’s okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. What are the results of this? The Bible says you have a joyful life. This is the way to the, you know what’s Joel Osteen’s phrase, your best life. Now this is the way to your best life. Now listen, following Jesus is not just the way to eternal life, it’s the way to eternal life. Well, it is. And eternal life starts now. You are not going to live a better life on this earth.
Don’t wait till you die to convert to go to the good place because you’ll feel like you’ll miss out on all the fun. And so you’re betting, well, maybe when I die I’ll have time to convert. No, no, no.
You’ll have all the fun you want. You will have the best possible life. You can live in this world and you can live in the next.
Is being a friend of Jesus intentionally investing yourself in the logos of God? Just do it. You will have a joyful life. You will have a fruitful life.
It will matter for all eternity. You will have a successful life not based on what our worldview and our culture says is successful, but based on what the Bible says is successful.
All right? It doesn’t mean you’ll just get rich. Listen, I love America. America is the best place to live. I’ve been to other countries. I’m going to Africa in October. I don’t want to go. Why don’t I want to go? Because I love being in America.
I love hot water. I love conveniences. I love Coke Zero. You know, I love watching baseball highlights at night on my TV that streams millions of channels. I love it all. I love a soft bed. I love America.
But I’m going to go because my friends asked me to, and I told God because part of investing for me in the Logos is obeying God. And I told God, anytime anybody asks me to preach, unless providentially I can’t, I’m going to do it.
So by the way, if you just want me to come preach at your house and invite me, I’ll do it. Nobody raised their hand right away. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll do it. All right.
But you will have your most abundant, fruitful, successful life. Let me tell you something, America is great, but the American dream simply means work really hard. So for the few short years after you retire, you have enough money to play golf every day. That stinks.
That ain’t worth, that ain’t a life worth living. Even if you love golf, whatever your hobby is, just living so you have enough money to indulge yourself in your hobby till you die is not a successful life.
A successful life is a life that lives and bears fruit for the kingdom of God. I don’t care what your 401k says when you die. I don’t care what my 401K says when I die.
Here’s what I want to hear immediately after I die: Well done, good and faithful servant. That’s a successful life. Live for that.
Be intentional, and that’s the reward. As if you are intentional. That’s what happens. You bear fruit in season. You will live a successful life. You will live a kingdom life, and God will use you for his purposes on earth. Then you will inherit eternal life, and death will no longer be your enemy. It will be done with. Pain and suffering will be done with.
You will live in glory and in his presence and in love, and the troubles of this world will be behind you. People, it is going to be so good.
We have no eye, has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man or woman. Conceive what the Lord has prepared for us. This is the path to that.
But, dear ones, it’s not universal. Not everybody takes that path. And listen, there is no ultimate middle ground. There is no heaven kind of heaven. There is life and death, heaven or hell.
And so the results for the wicked, a wasted and useless life. A wasted and useless life. But I made all this money, wasted and useless. The rich and the poor die alike.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? And you come under the judgment of God. It’s not that God is mean. God just tells the truth.
What did you do with the life I gave you? You wasted it. You took the advice of the wicked, you joined in with the sinners, and you arrogantly sat with the mockers, and you wasted your life. And now you’re like chaff, you’re blown away. You’re worthless. You’re eternal refuge. That’s what hell literally is. It was the garbage dump.
It was the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem where they burned the garbage. Gehinna, the valley of Gehinna, that’s where we throw our trash.
God has given you a great gift in life. Blessed is the one who intentionally, with faith and obedience, roots themselves in the logos of God.
And so I want to say to you, good fruit, good on you for coming to church tonight. Good on you. Turn to somebody next to you and say, you made a wise decision tonight. You made a wise decision, all right.
You intentionally, you know, nobody came here by accident, right? You didn’t just like drive and your car ran out of gas and said, oh, I’m gonna go in that building, right? So blessed are you. Blessed are you.
So the Lord bless you tonight. And bless. And he says, all right, this is part of the intentional. Come to my table. Come to my table. Eat with me. Feed on me. This is an intentional meal, right? This is an intentional meal. I want the food of God. It’s not.
You know, a dietician wouldn’t tell you that these wafers are the healthiest thing, or the wine or the juice. But how many of you have ever gone to, like, a health food store?
Okay. All right, Ats, the rest of us. Me neither. You know, I haven’t. I’ve never gone to a health food store. Do they still exist? I don’t even know if they exist. Do health food stores exist? I don’t know, but good on you, Ats. That’s intentional. That’s good.
But I promise you, I promise you, you may not trust me as a dietitian or a nutrition expert, and that would be wise of you. That’s not my strength. But I do know this. This is the healthiest food you’re ever going to eat. This is the best food you’re ever going to eat.
On the night of his death, Jesus took the bread, and he broke it, gave it to his disciples, and he said, this is my body, which is given for you. In the same way.
After supper, he took the cup. He poured it out, gave thanks to his Father in heaven. He said this is my blood. Drink this, all of you. This is my blood. It’s the blood of the new covenant, and it is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
And when you gather together, do this, and the implication is, and I’ll be there. I will be there. I’ll be at the meal. And we believe in the meal. He’ll be there to feed us with his life. So be intentional and come and eat.
You’re invited to.
The post 2024.7.7 TFHC – The Planted Life (Psalm 1) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
June 30, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Lord, tonight we want to say thank you for your presence, for the gift of the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the gift of one another.
These dear and precious people in this room with us, Lord, who carry you and who were created in your image and likeness and have been set apart, saved, sanctified, filled with your spirit, and reflect you, and together we reflect your body.
So we thank you for that.
Lord, release your gifts tonight, that your body would be edified and that we would leave this building more like Jesus than when we came in.
Thank you for scriptures. Thank you that you inspired a book so that we could dive in and hear your voice. We pray for biblical transformation, not just biblical information. And we pray you would open our eyes and our hearts to you tonight.
We love the church, God, the whole church, the big part, the little part, the real part, which is the person next to us. That’s the church.
It’s not some vague, ambiguous thing. It’s that person sitting to your right and to your left. And we love the church, and we’re thankful for it. And, Lord, let us love one another and magnify you. In so doing, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
All right, dear ones, we’re going through the Bible chronologically. We’re in the prophets. Prophets are tough sledding. I know I’ve said it a few times in the Old Testament. You know, Leviticus, tough sledding. Prophets can be tough sledding. Here’s why. The prophets are tough sledding, all right?
The prophets are tough sledding because the prophets basically are covenant lawyers. What do I mean by that? God made a covenant with Israel. And the covenant, you can read about it. It’s Deuteronomy. It’s in Exodus, Leviticus. God makes covenant with Israel. And basically, the covenant just lays down these stipulations and says, all right, I delivered you out of Egypt. I’ve chosen you to be my people.
So the covenant starts with grace, right? Covenant doesn’t start with a bunch of rules. Covenant starts already with the amazing acts of a merciful, saving God.
I delivered you out of Egypt. In fact, if you read the Ten Commandments, it says, I am the Lord your God, who delivered you out of Egypt.
Oh, okay, then the Ten Commandments are the. So what? So here’s how you dance with me. Here’s how you live in relationship with me. That’s the covenant.
And he went to Israel a couple times with Moses, twice with Joshua, went to Israel and said, you guys good with this? And of course, Israel said, yeah, we’re all in. We’re all in. We’re signing up with the covenant.
And then for the rest of their history, they break the covenant. And God doesn’t even hold them accountable for the little things.
All the prophets come and they say, look at you, made this covenant with Yahweh, and you’re burning your kids alive to Baalje. You’re prostituting yourselves to these foreign gods, these idols. And behind these idols are demonic powers. You’re prostituting yourselves and selling yourselves to them.
I told you that you were to be a people unto me, not like the other nations.
And all you do is run after the other nations and try to be like the other nations. I told you several times that if you do that, I will abandon you and hand you over to the other nations.
That’s what the prophets say. They say it poetically, they say it graphically, they say it with word pictures. I mean, they say it with actual actions in history, as we’ll see tonight as we look at Hosea. And that’s what the prophets do.
And people say, well, you know, I got this gal that I correspond with on social media. She comments on my stuff, and she’s an atheist or something like that. I try to be a good Christian, and she said, I think Jesus is real cool, but Yahweh in the Old Testament, he’s just a jerk, you know, and all that.
It’s like, no, no. A thousand years. A thousand years, these covenant lawyers come and say, hey, you know what, guys? Yahweh wants to tell you something. A thousand years, they break covenant.
I think I told you guys last week in my house, it wasn’t a thousand years. It was one, two, three, right? Anybody get the one, two, three as a kid? So, you know, it’s not a thousand. God’s a thousand years.
And so here, one of the earliest prophets is the prophet Hosea, and he’s a prophet in the northern kingdom, Israel. And they’re the first of the two kingdoms that gets exiled. They get exiled in 722 BC by the Assyrians. And Hosea says, the Assyrians are coming to exile you. And here’s the illustration.
God wants you to see why this is happening. He says, Hosea, marry a prostitute. Marry a promiscuous woman. In fact, I’ll read it for you, Hosea 1:1-2:1.
1 The Lord gave this message to Hosea son of Beeri during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel. 2 When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.” 3 So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son. 4 And the Lord said, “Name the child Jezreel, for I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel. In fact, I will bring an end to Israel’s independence. 5 I will break its military power in the Jezreel Valley.” (Hosea 1:1-5, NLT)
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And that’s exactly what happened. The Assyrians broke their power in the Jezreel Valley.
6 Soon Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to Hosea, “Name your daughter Lo-ruhamah—‘Not loved’—for I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them. 7 But I will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies—not with weapons and armies or horses and charioteers, but by my power as the Lord their God.” 8 After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she again became pregnant and gave birth to a second son. 9 And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God. (Hosea 1:6-9, NLT)
That’s bad news. Those are three curses. You’re going down in the valley of Jezreel. Judgment’s coming. You’re no longer loved. You’re not my people.
But then, right here in verse ten, it turns right around and says,
10 “Yet the time will come when Israel’s people will be like the sands of the seashore—too many to count! Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.‘ 11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves, and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be—the day of Jezreel —when God will again plant his people in his land. (Hosea 1:10-11, NLT)
1 “In that day you will call your brothers Ammi—‘My people.’ And you will call your sisters Ruhamah—‘The ones I love.’ (Hosea 2:1, NLT)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, NLT)
All right, Jezreel. These three children get these terrible names, these prophetic acts, and Jezreel is the first. The whole point of Hosea is that he marries a prostitute, he marries an unfaithful woman. It’s a picture of Israel chasing after other gods, not being faithful to Yahweh.
The first son, the name is Jezreel. Jezreel is the place of bloodshed and injustice in the Old Testament.
It’s a place of bloodshed and injustice. The first story of Jezreel is when wicked King Ahab and his wife Jezebel conspire against a simple man, Naboth, just a simple farmer.
The rich, powerful king, who has all sorts of land and all sorts of prosperity and all sorts of riches, wants Naboth’s vineyard. Well, Naboth’s vineyard is his family’s vineyard, and it’s not his to give away. First of all, the Lord, that’s his inheritance, and that goes to his children, and that’s his vineyard. And Ahab wants it. And he tries to make a deal.
He says, sell me your vineyard. I’ll give you another one. And Naboth says, no, this is my family’s inheritance. In Israel, kings just can’t do that.
Well, Jezebel doesn’t understand that. She’s not of Yahweh. She’s a foreign wife. So Jezebel says, what are you doing, Ahab? You’re the king. You can take whatever you want. She devises this plot to frame Naboth as a blasphemer of God and get him killed. Ahab then takes his vineyard. It is a bloody, treacherous act of the powerful, perpetrating injustice on the vulnerable.
And King Ahab takes the land. And the prophet Elijah comes to Ahab and says, God saw that. Dear ones, I got news for you. God saw that. God saw that. What nobody else saw, what you thought you did in secret, what you thought you did behind closed doors, God saw that, all right. His eyes don’t miss anything. He saw that.
And Elijah comes to Ahab and says, God saw that. And you’re going to lose your kingdom. Jezebel is going to be killed. They’re not even going to be able to bury her.
Before they bury her, the dogs are going to eat her. Happened. Your family line is going to come to an end.
And then Jehu is commissioned to do the work. And Jehu faithfully executes God’s judgment on Jezebel and on Ahab’s family. It was actually the armies that finished off Ahab. But Jehu comes in and he does the rest.
But then Jehu doesn’t stop. Jehu now has power.
And instead of honoring Yahweh as putting him in that position, what Jehu does is he begins to massacre everyone, as kings often would do in those days who appeared to be a threat to him. Everyone who appeared to be a threat to him, he began to kill.
And it was just the beginning of Jehu’s reign. In fact, Jehu’s whole reign was nothing but blood and violence. And so the valley of Jezreel is a valley of injustice and a valley of violence.
And God is saying, because of your injustice, Israel, there is going to come violence upon you in the valley of Jezreel, and you will be taken away.
And then the second child is not loved, Israel, not loved anymore. Now we have to understand the word love. In our culture, when we say the word love, we immediately jump to feelings, right? I just love somebody. You know, all of our media is about being, what, young and in love, falling in love.
And frankly, I remember when Jill and I fell in love. I loved that.
I loved the way she looked at me, you know, it was just great. But that’s not what love is. That’s not the deepest meaning of love. The deepest meaning of love isn’t falling in love.
By the way, when you’re 16, 17, 18, falling in love is not hard. It’s not hard. It’s pretty easy to do, all right, you know, it’s pretty easy. But 43 years of marriage, 50 years of marriage, that’s love. That’s love.
My wife has often said the difference between cute and annoying is time, right? She used to think things I did were cute.
She was highly structured, deeply organized, didn’t like mess, liked things in their place. Who made her the goddess of what places things belong, you know? This drives me nuts. Where’d you put that? I put it in its place. Oh, I’m sorry, high priest of placeness. I thought its place was where I left it.
Forty-three years, we haven’t resolved that one. So anyway. But she looked at me and said, you know, I could be a little more relaxed, I could be a little more kicked back. I need this in my life.
And I was completely relaxed and kicked back. I averaged going to school three out of five days a week. I mean, the beach was close, it was California, the sun was out. Why go to school?
You know, any teachers? You know, there’s always the kid that gets this lecture all the time, right? This was the lecture I always got. I wasn’t ADHD, I wasn’t like, oh, if you just sit still. I wasn’t that kid. I wasn’t the bully. Why are you picking on people? I was the kid that got this lecture. If you only. What?
Applied yourself? I said, I am applying myself. I’m applying myself to basketball. I’m applying myself to chasing girls. I’m applying myself to rock concerts. I’m applying myself to smoking marijuana. I got lots of things I’m putting my efforts into, just not trigonometry.
So I was applying myself, but I looked at Jill and I thought, you know, here’s a straight A student. She studies hard. She shows up for work on time. She follows all the rules, and you know, she’s beautiful. And I could use a little order in my life. That’s falling in love.
A few years into marriage, she’s thinking, mister laid back. I could use a little laid back, relaxed in my life. That boy’s a lazy pig. And I’m thinking, this woman’s a Nazi who keeps hiding my stuff. That’s love.
But here’s what the Bible says. Love is the active interest on behalf of another. All right? When you love somebody, you are actively pursuing their best. There could be feelings involved, there could be not feelings involved, but you are actively doing your best not for your behalf, but for their behalf. That’s love. All right.
03:00 in the morning. The child needs. The baby needs to be fed. You don’t get out of bed because you’re hungry. You get out of bed because the baby’s hungry and you feed the baby. That’s love.
When God says, Israel, you’re not loved. He’s saying, what? I’m leaving you to your own devices. You wanted the baals, have them. It’s a scary thing. Romans says that. Romans 1 says, so God gave them over. That’s what happens with Pharaoh. God says to Pharaoh, oh, you’re not going to serve me?
You’re going to throw my babies into the Nile River. Then I will use you by hardening your heart. I’ll give you over. In other words, I will stop actively pursuing your best.
I can’t think of anything more scary than to not be loved by God. It’s very interesting. In the prophets, the definition of love as affection shows up. God never loses his affection for Israel. He says things like, this breaks my heart, but I’m turning you over.
Parents sometimes have to do that, you know? We call it tough love, right?
My friend I talked about earlier with the strong-willed daughter, he was a terror himself. At 18 years old, his mother was a wonderful woman, beautiful Christian woman, terrific lady. And he was just. He was just an out-of-control wild boy.
On his 18th birthday, he got out of bed probably hungover, and he gets up and what he sees on the front door is a suitcase packed. His mother didn’t say, “I didn’t love you,” but she said, I love you dearly, but our family can’t live this way.
Bye. He says the best thing ever happened to him because it shocked him. Like what? There are consequences for my behavior. Israel, God will turn you over and then you lose your identity.
The last child wo ami. You’re not my people. You had this special privilege of all the nations on the earth, that the one true God had chosen you to be a reflection to the rest of the world of his nature, of his power, to be his source of light in a dark world.
You had that one special privilege, and you’re throwing that identity away, and it’s just so sad. You’re going to be judged. God’s going to leave you over to your own devices, and you’re losing your identity as the people of God.
And then in an instant, it changes. It turns around and says, but wait, there’s going to come a day when the place of Jezreel will be redeemed. It won’t be a place of injustice and bloodshed. It’ll be a place of mass population of who? People who are loved by God.
And once again, the people of God. And this is what the prophets do. The prophets prophesy doom and gloom, but not ultimate doom and gloom. The only place in the Bible where there is judgment that is not ultimately intended to bring mercy is the very end. The lake of fire. It’s the only place.
Every other place there’s judgment. The desire of the heart of God is that people would turn and walk in covenant relationship with him because he is rich. Listen, Psalm 16: You have shown me the path of life.
In your presence is the fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. We sang it tonight. For you are good, for you are good, for you are good to me.
Well, why does God judge people? Because there is no goodness outside of him. Don’t ask. C.S. Lewis says, don’t ask for peace and happiness apart from God. There is no such thing. He is peace and happiness. He is goodness, he is love, he is light.
And when we walk out of covenant relationship with him, when we think we have a better plan and we use our independence and our freedom to rebel against God, it is only pain, suffering, and misery.
And so he tries to fence us in and hem us in and bring us back. And he says to Israel, there’s going to come a day when there’s going to be a leader that’s going to rise. And in every prophet, there is this messianic hope, this hope of this day. Some prophets barely hint of it.
Prophets like Isaiah are all over it. But it’s never just clearly specific. It’s always veiled. And as we studied Michael Heiser’s book, we realized he’s hiding it from the powers and principalities, from the spiritual forces of wickedness that are behind all these idols.
And what’s going on is a battle, a battle for humanity, a battle for the souls of men and women, a battle for planet earth, a battle for the universe. And God says, listen, there’s going to come a day when there’s going to come a leader, and all this is going to turn around.
The places that were, places of injustice and violence are going to be places of gathering and peace and joy. And the people who are called not loved. God is going to again turn his affection and his attention to them, and they will be loved.
And the people who are not my people are going to become once again my people. They’re going to get their identity restored. And if you want to read Hosea, the two places in Hosea where this, I’m not going to read them tonight, but read Hosea 11 and Hosea 14.
Those are the prophetic promise places in Hosea where he talks about this coming messiah. All right. And those are the places of hope.
And dear ones, there is hope. And I want to spell to you, I want to teach you tonight how to spell hope. J e s u s. Hope has a name. That’s the leader. That’s the hope. That’s the one who transforms places of violence and bloodshed and injustice into places, into valleys of prosperity and peace and abundance.
That’s the one who takes the not loved and brings them under the care and the attention of God. And they are loved.
That’s the one who takes people without identity and gives them new identity. Jesus is the answer. Jesus is who the prophets are pointing to. They don’t even know it. They know a messiah is coming. They know God’s got something big in store. And God gives them these words, and they speak these words.
I don’t think they knew what their words meant, but they knew something’s up with Yahweh. And this judgment isn’t the final answer.
And so Jesus brings justice. How does Jesus bring justice? He pays for our sins. He pays for our sins.
Listen, there’s stuff that I’ve done that I can’t undo, right? There’s not enough apologies. There’s not enough restitution. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt people that. And sadly, this is how it works, right? You hurt the people closest to you. You hurt the people you love the most.
I’m a joker, I’m a kidder, I’m a teaser, and I think most of that.
I wish 100% of it would be heard and received as family familial love because that’s its intention. But I don’t realize the context of families that people grow up in.
And there have been times in my little joking and teasing and kidding that that has not been interpreted as familial love, but as an attack. And it breaks my heart. And that’s why I pray every Sunday.
You may not believe I pray this. You may think this prayer needs to work better, but I pray every Sunday.
Set a guard over my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips. Let my words be a blessing from heaven, not a curse from hell.
I’ve said things to my kids. I’ve said things to my wife. You’ve all done this, right? You’ve all done this. You’ve all almost seen the words coming out of your mouth. And as they’re coming out of your mouth, you’re going, no, come back.
As the words are coming out of my mouth, I’m looking at my wife’s face and I’m thinking, this will not end well.
That was not the right thing to say. And it’s like, no mulligans. You don’t get a mulligan on that. You don’t get a take back. You can even say, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, which is good. That’s a good thing to say.
But you know what? It would have been way better had you not said it and then said, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.
And dear ones, I got a confession to make. All that I just said, I’ve done, I’ve done.
I know some of you have never said a foolish or hurtful thing in your life, but I have. I have. I cannot do it. In fact, I was really mean as a young boy, before I met Christ. I was sarcastic. I was the king of the cut, and I was funny. And so everybody else would laugh, except maybe the one kid that was the target.
And with all my heart, I wish I could go back to every one of those kids and just say, oh, man, I am so sorry. I can’t.
And I got to stand before God, but here’s what God’s going to say. Yeah, I was wrong, Kev. I forgive you.
I just watched season four, episode two of The Chosen. Spoiler alert. Should I do it? Okay, I won’t do it. But it’s about forgiveness. It’s about forgiveness. It’s great. It’s a great scene about forgiveness.
All right. Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. He says, your sins are forgiven. What you can’t make right, he’s made right. What you can’t undo, he has covered. The other way he brings justice is through just people.
He brings justice on earth. You might think, oh, man, there’s so many problems on earth. Politics are so corrupt. You know, everything’s, everything’s wrong. Well, you watch the news and that’s the feeling you get.
I gotta tell you, the world’s a much better place than it was 2000 years ago. You did not want to live in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago. Women, you did not want to live in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
Men, unless you were one of the few men that were free, man, definitely you did not want to live in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago. You were a slave. All right? It was not a good life for the vast majority of the population.
And besides that, they didn’t have hot showers and indoor plumbing. They didn’t have baseball, Mick. Yeah. Who would want to live before baseball? So it was rough.
The world’s better. I’ll tell you why the world’s better. Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
And ever since that time, the goodness of his kingdom has been spreading over the earth. And people who have been infused with the spirit of God imperfectly, yes, with many mistakes and failings, yes, have been expanding justice and goodness on the earth. They’ve been expanding justice and goodness on the earth.
All right. You know, we get so wrapped up in the history, it’s like, oh, you know, I’ve endured this and my ancestors endured this. My ancestors endured that. They did. But you know what? You didn’t. Why didn’t you? Because things have changed.
Why did they change? Because God’s at work. God’s at work. Jesus brings justice everywhere there’s an advancement.
And I’ve said this before, and it maybe is a little controversial, but even in politics, even in what we call our culture war, both sides are basically arguing from Christian premises. Some of those arguments, in fact, I think in many cases, both sides of those arguments are often distorted Christian, but they start with Christian premises.
You can give me any culture war argument, and I think I can articulate the side that I don’t agree with and say, but I get where they’re coming from. From a Christian point of view, I get it. I think it’s wrong. I think they’ve twisted it, but I get it.
Why is that? Because Jesus rose from the dead, the goodness of the Lord is advancing on the earth, and guess why? It’s because of you. You’re part of the solution. Before, you were part of the problem.
Before, with my mean-spirited, sarcastic talk, I was a part of the problem. But now that I pray, set a guard over my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips, and let my words come from heaven, not from hell, I think, on balance, I’m a part of the solution.
I think I bring more words of encouragement than cursing people. I need an amen here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I didn’t want to look up and say people. I didn’t want to look up, and people say, you know, it’s about 50-50.
Kevin, come on, help me out here. Help a poor boy out. Help a poor boy out. All right. Thank you, Kathleen. I mean, I’m not as good as you. I’m not as encouraging as you or as humble. Listen.
And in the end, he brings ultimate justice. In the end, he brings ultimate justice. And we’ll all be able to go, okay? My wife and Stevin will be able to go, okay? The scales are balanced. It is good. It is good. It is.
Well, all you justice lovers out there, all right? You’ll be able to go.
Thank you, God. I’ve told you, my wife is such a justice lover. Oh, my gosh. I. She. Oh, she just hates when people do bad things. She hates when people steal and hurt people. It’s like, why do they do that, Kevin? And she loves it when they get caught. She really does. She’s like a 911 call, man. We caught the bad guys tonight. It was so great. We caught the bad guys.
And I think I’ve told you this before. She loves it when the bad guys get caught and they try to run away from the police dogs and get bit. That’s how much of a justice lover she is.
She’s like, did you have a good night, honey? Oh, yeah. There’s this idiot who, you know, stole from this store, and he ran away. The cop said they had a dog, and he kept running. She said, I had to call for medical aid for a dog bite. And then she kind of giggles.
It scares me a little bit, I gotta tell you. It scares me a little bit. You know when she says, I want a dog? Maybe not. Maybe not. Yeah, I know. I don’t want to. I don’t want. How about a cat? Cats are. Cats are dogs. Dogs are, you know, so much better. But cats are a lot less maintenance. There are a lot less maintenance. And, you know, so I tell you, here’s what I want. Here’s what I just want.
These have been.
The four words have been the reality of my household for a number of years. And they’re just wonderful words. They are beautiful, heavenly, terrific, great words. Four words. No pets, no kids.
Honey, you want to go? Sure, let’s go. We don’t have to board anything. We don’t have to find a babysitter. We don’t have to pay somebody to watch our children or watch our dog or our cat. We just go, no pets, no kids.
Grandkids come over. They’re great kids on loan. They’re fun. They make me so happy when they come over.
And then their parents come and take them away, and they make me happy again. It’s great.
But Jesus will judge all creation. There will be justice, and history will end as we know it, and eternal history will begin. And you may think it’ll be terrible that, you know, people are cast into the lake of fire and demons, but I got to tell you something. Nobody at the end of the day will ever be able to say to God that was not fair. God will always do the right thing.
Now, many, every single one of us in this room are going to be able to say to God that was merciful. God will never be less than fair. But God, in many cases, will be more than fair.
You know, I’ve heard people say, boy, I want God to be fair. I’m thinking, no, thank you. God, I want you to be fair with me. No, God. I know what I’m going to say. God, I want you to be merciful to me. I don’t want to get what I deserve. I want to get what Jesus deserves.
And that’s the exchange, right? That’s what he gives you. All right. Jesus brings love, not loved. Now you’re loved. We’re not left to our own devices.
There is no single act in history that more clearly says humanity is not left to its own devices than Christmas, the incarnation of the Son of God. God became flesh. How more can he say you’re not left to your own devices? He’s not a deistic God who wound up the universe and said, go for it. He is a God who is actively involved.
He came to seek and save the lost. He loves the world. He has not given up on the world. God became a man. That would be like you owning an ant farm. Anybody as a kid ever own an ant farm?
All right, did you, Sydney, see, one of the things I really like about you is you are just so curious. I love your curiosity. You know, he gave it a whirl. You gave it a whirl. But suppose you had this ant farm. You absolutely loved your ant farm and your ant farm. You actually.
It wasn’t in one of those little glass cages. You actually had trained the ants to live in your backyard, and they never came in the house. You had this nice ant hill, and you just would go out and look at your ants every day. You loved your ants.
Then you discovered that from the local zoo, a giant predatory anteater had escaped and was heading in your direction. You wanted to warn the ants: go deep. Get away. Save yourselves. Destruction is coming. The anteater is coming. And so you just.
You’re above the ant farm and you’re just yelling, hey, hey, it’s coming. It’s coming. Get away. You know, hideous. The anteater’s coming. It’s terrible. And the ants just ignore you. He’s saying, how am I going to communicate with these ants? You think, I know I’ll become an ant.
That’s the incarnation. God became one of us. To say, hey, you’re headed the wrong way. Follow me. Turn around. Repent. And we said, oh, thank you. We’ll kill you now. And he said, I’ll even turn that around.
God has not actively given us over. He loves us.
He proves he loves us because he is still actively involved in history and actively involved in our lives.
You know what? If you ever read the Bible and you’re troubled by what it says, that’s great. That means God hasn’t given up on you yet.
I always tell people, people say, pastor, I’m concerned that I’ve committed the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And I said, the fact that you’re concerned about it is proof that you haven’t. It’s proof that you haven’t. Your conscience is still alive.
Any activity of the Holy Spirit in your life, anytime the Bible speaks to you, anytime you hear the voice, anytime God acts and answers your prayer and the coincidences and details of your life, God is saying this: My Holy Spirit is my guarantee, my deposit of my love, and the constant reminder that I am still.
What? I have not turned you over to your own devices. I am actively engaged in your life. He loves you, and he loves you to the point of death, even death on a cross. Even his enemies. Father, forgive them.
The ones who sped on me, the ones who are mocking me, the ones who beat me with the whip, the ones who slapped me and placed the crown of thorns on my head, the ones who took the hammer and nails and drove them through my flesh. Those, Father, those. Forgive them, Father.
Even at this point of agony, death, torture, and humiliation, I will not withdraw my active love from them. The love of God is demonstrated in Jesus Christ, and then he fills us with the spirit of love. Listen, you’re changed.
You’re better because God lives in you. I know I’m better because God lives in me. Because I know what I was, and I know I ain’t much. But I’m better. I’m better. I’m more like Jesus. Amen.
To what? I’m not much or I’m better? Okay, both. You could say both. That’d be fine. All right. I pray that man. I pray when I pray that we’d be more like Jesus when we walk out that door. When we walk in. That’s not a cute prayer. That’s honest. Why would we do this if that wasn’t our goal?
Why would we give up an hour and a half of our Sunday night when we could be watching sports or napping if we didn’t want to be more like Jesus?
I want to be more like Jesus so bad. So good. What’s the best word to use there? So much. The only problem is I know it involves suffering. I don’t want to suffer. But guess what? If I don’t want to be like Jesus, that also involves suffering. So might as well. If you’re going to suffer, might as well make some ground on it, right?
But he fills us with the spirit of love.
One of the ways I know Jesus is in me is when I want to be vindictive, I hear a voice that says, don’t be vindictive. When I don’t want to forgive somebody, I hear a voice that says, forgive them anyway. When I don’t want to serve, I hear a voice and say, do what needs to be done and serve. I hear that voice, and it’s counter my flesh, and I realize that’s the spirit of love.
That’s God calling me out of my own selfishness, my own pettiness, my own smallness into his bigness, into his heart.
And here’s the thing: actually, in those things that oftentimes I don’t want to do is actually the place where I find joy, right? And in my selfishness is actually the place where I find that didn’t. That wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.
So he fills us with the spirit of love, and finally, Jesus makes us family. He gives us a new identity. Oh, my gosh. Can I say that? That’s a replacement word.
Oh, my goodness. Are we living in a culture that is desperate for identity? I mean, we try to get our identity by our gender, by our lack of gender, by our ethnicity, by who we want to have sex with, by what political values we align ourselves with.
You know what’s the most important thing about you? I’m gay, I’m trans, I’m republican, I’m Democrat, I’m black, I’m white. No, no. What does God say? God says to all those who believe on him, he has given the right to be what? Children of God, your family.
That’s where identity. You know why we’re in a culture that’s desperate for identity? Because we’re a culture that has lost family. That’s where you get your identity, right? As a. In the natural. That’s where you get your identity, right?
My family knows. My sisters know who I. Oh, that’s Kevin. And they know. They got all sorts of stories about Kevin. I got all sorts of stories about my sisters. We have identity in our family, all right? I. Your kids have identity, right? You could sit around. In fact, I was over at last week, Jamie.
I was over at your house, and Steven was showing pictures, and I saw some great pictures of Sydney and Sophia as babies that I would think would make great blackmail material at any future date. But anyway, I got to see all those pictures, girls.
Well, Sydney was there. She saw me anyway. But that’s identity, Manda. That’s identity. Yeah. And dad jokes. Why is there such a thing as dad jokes? Because there’s identity. There’s identity. Dads do those kind of jokes. And, you know, we get around for holidays and people just. Oh, yeah, that’s so mom.
Oh, that’s so dad. Oh, that’s so this. That’s so that. Why? We know each other. We have identity. Well, God says, I want forever family.
I had one gal. She told me, what does it matter about all this and that that you make a big deal about in terms of sexual faithfulness and being married? Aren’t we all going to be the same in heaven? And I just. I almost screamed in my email, no, you will be more you than you ever were. Everybody gets a new name.
When I was a kid growing up, you couldn’t.
Now Kevin’s very unpopular. Nobody names their kid Kevin anymore. But when I was a kid growing up, man, Kevin was popular. My dad named me Kevin because he didn’t think there’d be a lot of Kevins. I had three Kevins in every class growing up through school.
You know, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a Kevin, all right? Lots of Kevins. No Stevans, but lots of Stevens. But you got a unique one, all right? But anyway, you got a name in heaven that’s yours.
You are going to be so you and I’m going to be so me, and it’s just going to be billions upon billions of souls. And they’re not going to be all, like, walking around in white robes, like heavenly zombies, all looking the same and chanting the same mantra.
If you find yourself there, you miss the boat, all right? If there’s a bunch of people in white robes singing boring songs while playing harps on clouds, you’re in hell, not heaven, all right?
But if people are jamming and having a blast, and praising and dancing, and going to outdoor barbecues, rib eye steaks growing on meat trees from my orchard, and having rich fellowship, and laughing at deep jokes, and saying things like, oh, that is so Stevan. We just know Stevin. He is so. There’s nobody like him. There’s nobody like him. And nobody’s like Sophia. Oh, my goodness. Well, we already know that anyway. But, you know, you know, and Kathleen will be just around, just like smiling and dancing and just making everybody happy. And we’re already happy.
And it’s like she’ll just come down the street and make everybody happier, and they’ll be Mick, and we’ll be laughing at his jokes, and they’ll be Brian, and we’ll just go. He’ll be riding his bike everywhere, you know, it’d be like a heavenly bike. It’ll be heavenly bike trails. It’ll be awesome.
But you’re just going to be you, only more you and our identity. Dear ones, here’s the deal. Find your identity in Christ and listen. There’s a battle in your soul for identity. And I know it.
I know it by the names that bounce through our heads. The devil works. I don’t know if the devil works harder at anything than giving us the wrong identity. At least me. This is like, probably the primary battle or has been in my life: identity.
Because for decades, loser, jerk, failure, idiot, fool, dummy has been thrust upon me to embrace as my identity. And years ago, man, the voice of my good, good father said, that is not your identity. You stop that. You tell that to stop.
Well, just for years, I just would stop. And then what I would do, and here’s what I’m going to recommend you do tonight, is replace it with the true identity that the Bible speaks about you.
But what I did a few months ago, based on a dream that I had, or a recurring dream that I had, is I actually fired it. I told it, you’re fired. And now whenever I hear that voice, I say, oh, you’re fired. You don’t work here anymore.
But then it’s one thing to reject that
12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12, NLT)
.
Then look at what the Bible says to all those who believed upon him. He gave the right to become children of God, co-heirs with Christ.
What? I mean, we think too small. Lord, I just want to be saved. I just want to go to the good place, not the bad place. Oh, would you like to reign with Jesus? Just give me a small little corner lot in heaven. I’m good. That’s all I want. 32, 35 horses. That’s all you want? Just a corner lot? He says, no, you’re going to reign with Christ.
You’re going to be like him. You’re a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a chosen people. Listen. The promises in the New Testament, the identity in the New Testament. Together you’re the bride of Christ. You’re the crown of God’s creation. You’ll be higher than angels. Eye has not seen nor ear heard what the heart of God has planned and prepared for those who love him.
We need to start embracing identity now. There’s one segment of the body of Christ, and they love embracing this part of the identity. Well, I’m a wretched sinner, and that’s true.
That’s part of the identity. I will grant you that you’re a wretched sinner. Wretched does not mean horrible; it means pitiable. You’re a pitiable sinner. You’re worthy of pity.
But if you take that as your identity and you don’t add the others, you’re limping. You’re walking with a limp. And here’s the other thing. If you want to say that over yourself, you can. Paul says that I’m the worst of all sinners, but Paul completes that. He says, but God had mercy on me.
So if you say that, if the devil says you’re a loser, say no, I am a sinner. And then just throw this last one in there. Saved by grace, forgiven with mercy. Never end with that. Never end with that. That’s like being cancer-free for six years and still saying, I have cancer. I had cancer. Doesn’t mean you’re not still a sinner, but you’re saved by grace.
So here’s my assignment. We’re exactly halfway through the year. All right? January 1. Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions. I want you to make a half year’s resolution.
July 1, midnight tonight. Half year. You got half a year left. I know New Year’s resolutions don’t work. This one’s going to work. All right?
I want you to make the resolution that every time the devil speaks a negative identity toward you in your mind—I’m a lousy husband, I’m not a good mother—that you immediately step in and speak a biblical identity over yourself. I’m a royal priesthood. I’m loved by God. I’m forgiven of my sins. I’m a child of God. I’m a part of the bride of Christ. I’m a co-heir with Christ.
Just try that for half a year. I love, you know, I came to the Lord through the Jesus movement. All right. The Jesus movement was messy. It was not perfect. Certainly, the leaders of the Jesus movement weren’t perfect, etcetera, etcetera.
But, you know, I won’t talk about the bad things that came out of Jesus, but I’m talking about the good. One of the best things that came out of the Jesus movement was the music, for sure.
But one of the best things that came out of the Jesus movement was one of the identities that the Jesus movement quickly came because it was the first post-World War II generation that had experienced no-fault divorce, had experienced television, had experienced modern culture, and there was a real.
It was the first wave of the breakdown of family. And one of the statements that the Jesus movement, the hippies made is we are God’s forever family. That’s one of the strongest things that came out of the Jesus movement. We are God’s forever family.
That’s our identity. That’s our identity. And that is so biblical. That is.
Why did God create people? I think the best answer is he wanted family. He wanted family. He wants you. He wants you in his family. He’s got a big family.
I just was talking to a gal. She came to church last week. She comes from a family of 15. She married a guy who came from a family of six, and he thought, I came from a big family. His wife says, let me tell you something, all right? 15. That’s like an 1890s family, right?
And family of 15. But you know what? God wants a big family, and He can handle it, and we’re part of it. You are my brothers and sisters forever. You know who else, you know who our big brother is? Jesus. He’s a good big brother, and we got a good, good Father, and that’s our identity.
And so, dear ones, live in that. Live in that. You’re not a loser. You’re not a bad Christian, you’re not a terrible mom. You’re not a failure as a father. Have you made mistakes? Yes. Have you sinned? Yes.
Are you forgiven? Yes.
Is God making all things new? Yes.
Are you a child of God? Yes.
Does this story end well? Yes.
Are you a co-heir with Christ? Yes.
Are you God’s forever family? Yes.
Are you a holy nation? Yes.
Are you a royal priesthood? Yes.
Are you a chosen person? Yes.
Do you have the power of the Holy Spirit to heal the sick and prophesy and raise the dead and cast out devils? Yes.
Do you have the power of the Holy Spirit to give you love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control? Yes.
Are you more than a conqueror? Yes.
Does Christ live in you? Yes.
Will you reign forever? Yes.
Will the devil be defeated? He already is.
Dear ones. Amen. You got a good identity.
Turn to somebody next to you and say, I didn’t know I was sitting next to somebody so special. I didn’t know I was sitting next to somebody so special.
So what I just said, you will forget.
According to statistics, within 20 minutes on your drive home, you will forget. And somebody will say, what was the sermon about? And you’ll say, ah, Hosea married a whore. And Kevin said, we got a better identity, or something like that. Yeah. I don’t know. There was a prophet. Yeah. I forget.
Jesus says, don’t forget. He doesn’t say, don’t forget Kevin’s sermons. That’s fine. You can forget Kevin’s sermons. You know, when I preach, I’ll give you a half an hour. All I want is one thing to land. I fire out a lot of shotgun.
I shot a lot of pellets. But just if one of them lands, I’m good. All right. If just one thing goes, yeah, that’ll help me be more like Jesus when I walk out that door. That’s all I want. All right. If nothing landed tonight, I can keep going. All right. Anything. Land. You should probably say yes. Yeah, he probably says yes. All right. All right. Good. Good.
So Jesus says. Jesus says, you’re a new covenant people. Your sins are forgiven.
On the night that he was betrayed, he took bread. He took the Passover meal and he broke it. And he said, you know what Moses did thousands of years ago? Guess what? It’s pointing at me. That lamb, that first night, pointing at me. That blood pointing to me.
For 1,300-1,500 years you’ve been celebrating this, Israel. It is consummated. Tonight, this is what it all meant. And tomorrow you’re going to see me hang on a cross. You’re still not going to understand, but after I rise from the dead, you’re going to get it.
This is my body. I am actively involved in loving you to the point of death. And this wine is my blood. And this blood seals the new covenant that starts with the forgiveness of sins and gets better after that.
And whenever you gather together, you might sing some songs about me. You might hear a guy talk about me for 30 minutes. By the way, he never says do those things every week. I think there’s biblical precedent, biblical argument to do those things. But you know what he does say do all the time.
This, he says, when you gather together, don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget your identity. You come to my table at my family meal as my childhood and partake of my life because you’re mine. Nothing says you belong to Jesus like this. So come and eat and be grateful.
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June 23, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
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June 16, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
All right, dear ones, we’re going through the Bible, and we’re in 2 Kings tonight. 2 Kings, chapter 2. Elijah taken up to heaven, and his servant Elisha receiving his mantle. So this is good. This is good. So turn to 2 Kings 2. I’m going to read the whole chapter to you. The whole chapter.
Well, we have been going through the New Living Translation, but I left my New Living Translation at the other church, so I got the NIV. This was my car Bible. You said, I’ll have a car Bible.
By the way, if you ever get stuck, right, they always tell you, have a blanket, have water, all that kind of stuff. Have a Bible. Have a Bible in your car. I always have a car Bible. All right.
When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and asked, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?” “Yes, I know,” Elisha replied, “so be quiet.” Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went to Jericho. The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?” “Yes, I know,” he replied, “so be quiet.” Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them walked on. Fifty men from the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance, facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan. Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground. When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?” “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied. “You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.” As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two. Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, “The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.” And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. “Look,” they said, “we your servants have fifty able men. Let them go and look for your master. Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley.” “No,” Elisha replied, “do not send them.” But they persisted until he was too embarrassed to refuse. So he said, “Send them.” And they sent fifty men, who searched for three days but did not find him. When they returned to Elisha, who was staying in Jericho, he said to them, “Didn’t I tell you not to go?” The people of the city said to Elisha, “Look, our lord, this town is well situated, as you can see, but the water is bad and the land is unproductive.” “Bring me a new bowl,” he said, “and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, “This is what the Lord says: ‘I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.'” And the water has remained pure to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken. From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria. (2 Kings 2, NIV)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
So this passage is just loaded with stuff. It’s about mentoring, it’s about spiritual fathering, it’s about receiving the spirit or the anointing from God. It is about what it means to walk out the anointing, to walk out the Christian life. And it’s about what happens when the spirit of the Lord comes and revival comes.
And so we’re just going to look at all that quickly in this passage, or maybe not that quickly. We’ll see. But anyway, it is about, what does it take?
Elisha is now going to follow Elijah in his ministry as a prophet to Israel. Elijah is the first of the great line of prophets. You’ve got the Bible. I know Samuel was a prophet, Moses was a prophet, but Elijah is the first of the prophets of the divided kingdoms between Israel and Judah.
Who would go to the kings and be what basically prophets are in the Old Testament, covenant lawyers? They would come and say, this is the covenant that God made with Abraham on Mount Sinai. Here are the conditions of that covenant. You’re violating the conditions of that covenant. Here’s what God is going to do if you don’t repent.
That’s basically, I mean, you read the prophets and they go, a lot of woe is me in there. But that’s what they’re doing.
They’re saying, listen, you have violated the covenant, and here’s what’s going to happen if you don’t repent.
Elijah is a prophet mainly in his life to one of Israel, the northern kingdom. The kingdoms had divided after Solomon. They didn’t divide during Solomon’s reign, but because Solomon committed idolatry toward the end of his life, God said He was going to divide the kingdom under his son Rehoboam. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel went north. We call them Israel or Ephraim. Their capital was Samaria.
And then two of the tribes, Benjamin and Judah, remained south. They’re called Judah. Their capital is Jerusalem.
In 722 BC, Israel, the ten northern tribes, were exiled by the Assyrians. They were captured by the Assyrians and exiled into Assyria.
In 586 BC, about 140 years later, the southern kingdom, Jerusalem, was captured by the Babylonians and they were exiled to Babylon. They returned and rebuilt the temple.
The northern kingdom, we talk about them as the ten lost tribes, which basically they are. They were lost to history.
Anybody grow up Mormon?
Okay, if you grew up Mormon, you would say, oh, I know where they are. They’re the Indians in America, the Native Americans. They’re not. All right? They’re not. But that’s part of that story. All right?
So Elijah is prophets, that in the northern kingdom, all the kings in the northern kingdom were wicked. They had a series of kings. I forget exactly how many, but over a couple hundred years, a series of kings. They were all bad as you’re reading through your Bibles, right? So and so became king of Israel. And what’s the next line?
He did evil in the sight of the Lord. In Judah, same thing. So and so became king of Judah. But in Judah, you have about seven who did good in the sight of the Lord.
Israel’s ophir. Judah had some good ones, all right. Ahab was perhaps one of the worst. And that’s the one that Elijah prophesied to King Ahab. He prophesied three years of famine because Ahab was so wicked. There were three years of famine. Then he had this dramatic encounter with.
With all of Israel present on Mount Carmel, with the 450 prophets of Baal and Asherah that. Anybody know wicked King Ahab’s wife’s name? Jezebel. I mean, just saying it, right? Jezebel. It just has gone down historically, right? None of you listen, Sidney, Sofia, you know, if you ever get married and have little girls, you’re just not gonna name them Jezebel. It’s just not gonna. You’re just not gonna do it. You know, nobody names their kid. Nobody names her son Pontius Pilate. Nobody names her daughter Jezebel. Jezebel was an idolater. She worshiped these foreign gods.
She was a pagan. And we think, and we, with our modern sensibilities, we think, oh, you’re just pagan phobic. You’re just jezebelian phobic or whatever. It’s like, no. These idols behind these little wooden statues, behind these poles, behind these idols that they would build are demonic powers that are wicked.
These are wicked, wicked cultures, all right? And human beings follow wicked cultures if not restrained and brought under the lordship of Yahweh, under the lordship of the real God. That’s why for Israel, the number one sin with the prophets keep coming.
The prophets don’t come to him and say, hey, you’re not doing the sacrifices right. You’re not doing the Passover right. They keep coming to him and saying, stop worshipping idols. Worship Yahweh, worship God, worship the Lord exclusively, because you become like that which you worship.
And Israel, God tells Israel, I’m going to give you a land. I’m going to be your God. You’re going to prosper. You’re going to be a light to all these surrounding cultures. The only requirement is don’t be like them.
And for the next thousand years, all Israel does is huff and puff to be like the culture. Sometimes I think in the church, we huff and puff to be like the culture. We want to be so culturally relevant, we become irrelevant.
And so that’s the first place that Elijah and Elisha are in, Gilgal. Gilgal is the place where, when Israel originally crossed the Jordan River, all the men of Israel were circumcised before they invaded the land. And that is a place of separation. It is a place of consecration.
What does that mean?
Israel was separated unto Yahweh. Circumcision was a sign of that. You are my people. I am your God.
Let’s see. I forgot. Whose God am I? I got to go to the bathroom. Oh, yeah. Now I remember. I belong to Yahweh.
You have a sign in your life. It’s called baptism. In your baptism, you are set apart unto God. That’s what holiness means. Holiness means we’re set apart. Holiness means we’re different.
Don’t. I know it is troubling to feel like you don’t fit in the culture you live in.
But, dear ones, that is such good news. You’re not supposed to feel like you fit. You’re supposed to feel odd. That’s what it means. Holiness means I am different now. You’re not supposed to be mean and different. You’re not supposed to be holier than thou. You’re not supposed to hold up your holiness as some kind of bad so that you are better. No, you are saved. You have mercy. You have grace. But it is okay to be different. Gilgal is the place that says God’s people are different. We’re different from the world, all right?
And this whole story with Elijah and Elisha, you notice they keep going someplace. And Elijah tests Elisha. He tests him. He says, hey, I’m going there. You stay here. And Elisha says, as the Lord lives, you’re not getting rid of me. As the Lord lives, you’re not getting rid of me. It’s a test. Life is full of tests.
Okay, there’s a. I’ve told you about that nerdy engineer comedian, right? What’s his name? Don McWilliams or something like that? Anyway, I love comedy. I watch comedy all the time. And, you know, it’s YouTube and stuff.
And this one comedian, he’s an engineer. Now he’s a stand-up comic. His whole stand-up comic thing is, you know, kind of like, how did a nerdy engineer become a comic?
He says, you know, I’m an engineer. When I originally got married, you know, what are engineers good at? Problem solving. Engineers are good at problem solving. He says, I’m a good problem solver.
So he says, I got married. My wife came to me, and she said, I’m getting fat.
And so I think she’s asking for solutions. And he said, reduce your caloric intake and get more physical activity. He said that was not the right answer. It was a test, all right? It was a test.
Men, there are only two right answers to that. One answer is, you’re so thin, I can’t even see you. You have to run around in the shower to get wet, honey. Here. Just the other and the easier one, because even that one, you could get in trouble for. The other one is just to feign deafness.
You didn’t hear that just, you know, you just. Because there’s all sorts of times you don’t hear what she says anyway, so that you can just fake it that time and you’re good.
All right. Elijah is testing. Elisha, stay here. But Elisha said, no, no, no. I want everything God has for me. I want the ministry God has called me to.
And let me tell you, the number one quality in getting everything God has for you, the number one quality in that double portion, the number one quality in living out the Christian life is grit.
You want the anointing, then you stay till you get it. You pray till you get the breakthrough. If your prayers aren’t working, pray different. Jesus talks about persistent prayer.
There is something about. Listen, we’ve talked about this before. There are those suddenlies in scripture, and we love those suddenlies. We love when the room lights up and the miracle happens and God shows up in power. I love that. We were talking about when they dedicated the temple and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
And as we were just sharing that in our Sunday school time, the glory of the Lord started to come. We all started to feel it. It’s like, oh, my gosh, that’s real. You know, the Shekinah glory started to fall. We started to feel it. We started to experience it. We love that.
And that’s a big part of living out the Christian life. God is a powerful God. God is a real God. He’s not just an idea. He’s not just a concept. He’s not just words in a book. He’s alive, he’s present, he’s powerful, he’s real.
But there’s another part of the Christian life, and that is to put your right foot in front of your left and your left foot in front of the right and don’t quit because life is hard and it is discouraging. Can be right. And so the biggest thing that we need is courage.
In fact, in the book of Acts, when it says the Holy Spirit comes upon them, it doesn’t always say they spoke in tongues. So I believe in speaking in tongues. What it almost always says is they were filled with what? Boldness. What’s boldness? Courage.
That’s why, that’s why, you know, I told you my mother-in-law passed away. She was a devout Catholic and she was a devout political conservative. Oh, my gosh. And her line, we’ve every, you know, we’d get in the car with her and, you know, all she’d been doing all day would be watching Fox News. And we get in the car with her and she just, she’d launch, you know, Jesus launched. Democrats have no common sense. That was her line. Democrats have no common sense.
And we were talking about what we were going to put on her little gravestone, and I said, Democrats have no common sense. And everybody goes, yeah, that’d be about right. That’s what we ought to put on there. I think they’re going to put something else on there.
But no, so anyway, I don’t even know what my point was on that. Courage. Yeah, and Democrats have no common sense. Oh, I know what I want to put on my gravestone. I got it. There we go. Thank you. I got back to my bunny trail.
I want to be, I want, on my gravestone, he was a Barnabas.
You know, you identify with characters in the Bible. Some people identify with King David. They just love to worship and they want to be king. Other people identify with Moses and, you know, and we should all identify with Jesus. But that’s, the bar is pretty high.
If you’re a theologian and you love to debate and get it, you know, you might identify with Paul. If you’re a can-do kind of person and you just love to step out and you’re bold and sometimes you speak before you think, you might think Peter. You know, if you just passionately love Jesus and sacrificially want to pour out everything on him, maybe you’re Mary. You identify. But me, it’s always been Barnabas. I want to be an encourager.
I want to be an encourager because I just recognize as I go through my life and as other people go through their lives, it takes courage. And that’s what this is about, by the way.
A big part of why we gather as a community is because there’s this thing that happens where one’s up, one’s down, one’s going through a difficult season, one’s going through a pretty strong season. And we do what? We bear one another’s burdens. We encourage one another. And that’s why it’s no good to be all macho and like, oh, everything’s fine.
Nothing’s wrong with me. No, no. If you’re hurting, we want to know. If you’re, you know, we want to know. We want to help bear your burden, and we want to encourage. We want to give courage. Sometimes we think because we’re christians, that, you know, we have to project this thing. Like, everything’s fine, I’m fine. You know, we sing these songs, oh, God just gives me love, and he gives me peace. Yeah, but life gives you trials, man. And none of us are perfect. Even Jesus on the cross. Eloi, eloi, lama sabaktani.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Even he experienced that dark night, at least for a moment.
And so, dear ones, life takes courage, and courage takes encouragers. Courage takes encouragers. All right.
Gilgal, the place of repentance, separation. Bethel, the house of God, the presence of God. What else do we need for that anointing? I just said we need each other. We need the house of God. We need the presence of God. And God is omnipresent.
And so there’s two things about the presence of God. We need.
We need to know, whether we feel it or not, that he’s present, because you don’t always feel it. And so we need to have that.
My daughter was just sharing about a missionary who spent two years in a Turkish prison. And everybody wants to hear his story. They want to hear him say, oh, but the Lord was with me. He says, you know what? For those two years, the Lord was silent. He said, I felt like my prayers were getting nowhere. And he said, all I landed on was this. All I landed on was this.
Peter’s words, where else am I going to go? You have the words of eternal life. He said that’s what kept him alive for two years in prison. But even then, God was talking right, even if it was just one scripture.
And so we need to know, whether we feel it or not, God’s presence. But let me tell you something. We also need to experience his shekinah glory and his manifest presence. We need to taste and see that God is good.
It just baffles me. We’re talking about this as our friend Julie goes and shares her.
Her testimony in some cessationist churches and how afraid they are of that testimony. It saddens me, right? And a little bit, it angers me. And it’s like we need to know.
At any moment, the room could light up and all the darkness be gone in every corner. And a light so brilliant, confronting us face to face and speaking words that will forever transform our lives. It could happen. It could happen.
Before you leave this room tonight, he could show up to you or to all of us in such a way that we would be undone.
Bethel, the house of God. The presence of God. Both theologically and faithfully. Recognizing his omnipresence, he is always with us, whether I feel it or not, but also yearning and hungering.
Read the Psalms, for goodness sakes. The Psalms say, Lord, as a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after you. Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God.
Hunger and thirst are experiences. Have you ever fasted? All right. You ever fasted? Your body talks to you when you fast.
I know my body talks to me when I fast. Like, dude, what are you doing? This is our happy time. Rumble, rumble, grumble. But that hunger reminds me. Oh, there’s something more valuable in this life than food.
Bethel, if you want the anointing of God, hunger and thirst for his presence. Don’t be satisfied by mere propositional religion. You will not get into heaven by passing a theology exam. I want him.
What do those cessationists think when they die and meet Jesus? It’s like, wait, wait, wait. Let me. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to meet you.
I just wanted to read your book forever. Look at the book; it points to someone. It points to a person. You know, people who love the book more than the person are like people who read romance novels but never get into a real relationship. It’s all people who read novels or play video games about being heroes but never take a risk in their life. We want the real thing.
Bethel, the house of God. The presence of God. He takes him to Jericho, and Jericho is the place of spiritual warfare.
Jericho is the place where you have to act in faith and where what you do doesn’t seem to be making sense, but God says to do it anyway.
Okay, Jericho, march around this building. March around this city seven times. This is military strategy. And be quiet. When you march around the building seven times, and then on the last day, just for seven days, march around the building, then the last day, do it seven times. March around once a day. And then the last day, do it seven times.
And after the 7th time, blow your trumpets and the town will be yours.
And you read the rest of the book of Joshua. They do all sorts of military strategy. Okay, we’ll set an ambush over here. We’ll do this over here. But in that case, God tells him to do something that won’t make sense. And he says, and then watch what I do. And the walls crumble.
And faith and obedience is the key warfare to spiritual warfare. Do what? The general says, no, but gods.
And again, one of those dichotomies, just like the presence thing, God is omnipresent. Sometimes we don’t feel His presence, and we just simply have to believe and trust in it. Other times, His manifest presence comes.
Let me tell you something. There’s some of you out there, and you are just great salt-of-the-earth kind of people. And doggone it, you love the book of Proverbs, because the book of Proverbs is the book of common sense. Oh, my gosh, I married one of those people. My wife is like Miss Common Sense. She is so responsible.
She does the right thing. She believes in the right thing. She’s a 911 call receiver. And I think it must. I think she loves it because she’s putting wrong things right, which she loves to do.
But I think it also must drive her crazy. Cause I think you can’t give advice that is a 911 call receiver. You can’t say, well, stop doing that stupid. Which I know she wants to do. Stop doing that stupid Jim Carrey and liar, liar. Stop breaking the law. Do you have any advice? Yeah, stop breaking the law.
How can I stay out of jail? And I ought to tell you something. I have benefited greatly by being married to a common sense person. Kept me out of a lot of trouble.
But I’ll tell you something else, and my wife knows this. There’s no hero in the Bible who didn’t have to defy common sense to become a hero in the Bible. That’s faith and obedience for all you common sense people out there.
I’m going to tell you, God’s going to challenge you at some point and say, do this, and you’re going to say, well, that’s just stupid. Why would I do that? That’s because I said—the parents’ answer. Right? Because I said so.
I swore I was never going to tell my kids that. You know, that used to aggravate me because I would, like, argue with my mom. I’d put my clothes—well, first of all, I thought it was stupid to put my clothes away because I was going to wear them again.
Why not just lay them out on the floor? Or I could just pick them up and wear them again. I put them away. My mom would say, put them away. So I put them away. She says, well, close your drawer. Well, I’m just going to have to open my drawer again. I would explain this to her. It’s like this is common sense. Is something ringing true here?
Seth, make your bed. Why? I just have to unmake it again to get back in it. What’s the point of making my bed? All right, see, I told you.
We are brothers, man. We are soul mates. And then I just, like. And my mom would finally just get exasperated, and she’d pull out the I’m your mother card. Why do it? Because I’m your mother. Well, that just doesn’t make sense. It just would aggravate me, you know? And then, you know, if I didn’t do it, she had all this authority, and I was like, dang.
So then I had kids, and they would argue with me, and I swore when I was getting. I’ll never just say because I’m your dad.
But, man, I brought that out of time. Why do I? Listen, we’ve already. All right, here’s why. You do it. Because I’m your dad and you need to respect me and do what I say.
Call the ambulance. You’re going to do it, my son, one time I need you to mow the lawn. You going to pay me? I said, you want to eat? You want the combination to the lock? I’m going to put on the refrigerator. I’m already paying you, boy.
There’s a time, common sense, people. There’s a time.
God’s going to tell you, do it. But, God, that doesn’t make sense. There’s a time. Give away that much money. God, I can’t afford to give away that much money. Do it anyway. Move to that place. God, I don’t want to move to that place. Do it anyway. Go talk to that person. I don’t want to talk to that person. Do it anyway.
Now I’m going to talk to people like me who love adventure and love Holy Spirit. Spontaneous. Listen, just because it’s weird, it’s not God, all right?
99% of the time, the common sense people are right. You need to learn discernment, all right? Everything that floats through your head is not the voice of God.
You know, the Holy Spirit came to our church powerfully, and people were flopping and dropping and things were happening. And then these people that, they’d pray for prophecy, and we believed. You can get prophecy. You can hear the voice of God. But they’d pray one time for prophecy, and they’d just think everything that ran through their little brain was the voice of God.
Pastor. Pastor.
I’ll tell you what. If we all just wear our underwear and march around the church seven times and blow the shofar, his revival’s gonna come. Yeah, I’m gonna have to run that past the big guy myself, all right? I don’t want the who’s coming, the police. That ain’t gonna happen.
Now, that could get confirmed. That could actually be the voice of God, right? David dancing his underwear. For years, I’ve been trying to get a ministry going of the deuce or dancers, and I just can’t get that thing to get going.
But anyway, so maybe it’s not the voice of God, but just because you have to defy common sense to obey God doesn’t mean that common sense is the devil. Common sense is the way God. I mean, the book of Proverbs is in the Bible, right?
People say, pastor, I just need a word from God. Read the Bible. There’s lots of words in there. I got no prophetic word for you, but read the Bible. That’ll work.
All right, pastor, I just believe God wants to bless me with financial prosperity. Good. Cut up your credit card.
That’ll help. Try this. I just got a word. I don’t know if it’s a word from the Lord or not. Spend. You’ll like this one, Brian. It’s a deep truth and it’s mysterious. I went to years and years of seminary to get this. Spend less than you make. What? What is that? A word from the Lord? Well, it’s a word to cure stupidity. Spend less than you make.
I mean, some of you, you need some common sense, and some of you common sense people need some adventure. And here’s the problem.
I don’t always know when which is which. You got to discern that. But that’s Jericho. Jericho is learning when to draw up common sense battle plans and when to trust and obey the word from the Lord. That doesn’t make sense to you.
And we go through that, one side or the other, all of us, we go through that. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not easy. It’s necessary for the anointing to come on a new generation. Every generation has to learn. Everybody has to learn faith and obedience.
Then Jordan is the place of death and resurrection.
What do I mean by that? Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, and the Jordan, remember, the Jordan was the death, the end of the wilderness wandering, and the beginning of the conquest.
The waters parted at the Jordan for Joshua, just as the waters parting the Red Sea was the end of slavery in Egypt and the beginning of the people of God moving to the promised land. Whenever the waters part, there’s an end and a beginning. There’s a death and a resurrection.
In this case, it is the end of.
Of the ministry of Elijah and the beginning of the ministry of Elisha. I have prayed for my children, and here’s what I pray for my children: that my spiritual ceiling will be their floor. That when I end, they won’t start from where I started; they’ll start from where I ended. That’s what Elisha got. He got to start from where Elijah ended. But it was only because he went through the process of experiencing the death of his mentor.
And then he picks up that mantle, he picks up that cloak, and he doesn’t say, the prophets say, where’s Elijah? Maybe we can go find him. Maybe God dropped him off somewhere. Elisha says, you’re not going to find him.
And it’s so telling. When Elisha gets the mantle, he doesn’t say, where’s Elijah? He says, where’s the God of Elijah? I don’t need Elijah anymore. I got everything Elijah could give me. There comes a time in your spiritual development where it’s no longer your mentor.
I remember I had a senior pastor. He was a good senior.
I was blessed with a good senior pastor at a seminary, and I was an associate pastor. He was a good man. He kept me humble.
One time he told me, he said, Kevin, I know you’re an associate pastor, and it’s a tough job. He says, you know, the only job, you know, the only thing worse than being an associate pastor? I said, what? He said, having one.
I said, well, thank you, Harry. I got an answer for you, man. People come. What’s that young whippersnapper doing?
So anyway, but there’s a time when you have a mentor, when you’re a Timothy and you have a Paul. When you’re an apostle, right? When Jesus tells the apostles, I’m leaving. And they all freak out. No, you can’t leave. You can’t leave. And he says, it’s better for you that I leave. Why? I’ll give you my spirit. And now my ministry is going to be multiplied because I’m going to be living in all of you, and it’s going to go throughout the world.
Listen, if Jesus was still just doing it all by himself, that’s a lot of ground to travel. But there’s little Jesuses all over the place. There’s a bunch of them in this room, right?
The spirit of the living God lives in you. You carry Jesus. Wherever you go, you carry Jesus. And so he lives in you. And there comes a time where Jesus dies, and he says, it’s a good thing I’m going to die, but there’s going to be a resurrection. I’m going to raise. But as I raise, I’m going to go to the Father.
I’m going to send you the spirit. There comes a time in life for things that you are doing. They have to die. Seasons come to an end. Things have to come to an end for something new to be born.
There’s going to come a time when your body’s going to die and you’re just going to pass that on. There’s going to be another generation. You know, my mother-in-law was the last of Jill and our parents. Over the last ten years, I’ve realized I’ve had seven grandchildren and buried four parents.
I don’t know, that’s just probably normal for people my age. But I looked at my wife and I said, we’re it now. She goes, what? We’re the oldest generation in our family. We’re the old ones now.
I looked at a young man in the church and I said, I’m an orphan. The Bible says to take care of widows and orphans. I said, so give me some money. He just looked at me, said, what do you mean? Just do what the Bible says, dude. I’m an orphan.
But every time in the Bible, something dies.
Something comes to life. Moses hands it off to Joshua. Elijah hands it off to Elisha. Paul hands it off to Timothy. Jesus hands it off to the disciples. Abraham hands it off to Isaac. Isaac hands it off to Jacob.
Jordan is the place of death and resurrection. So something dies, but something begins. And then the anointing comes. You’ve had grit. Elisha says, I won’t leave till I get it. What do you want? I want the double portion. You got to see me taken away. There’s a distraction. The chariot’s a fire. Elijah does not go up.
I know. We sing the song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Coming to take me home. Actually, the chariot doesn’t take Elijah home. The chariot separates Elisha and Elijah. But what takes Elijah home is the whirlwind.
And the temptation is to look at. Wow, that’s quite the show. But Elisha knew I have to see my master leave. And when I see my master leave, what was on him is going to come upon me. And so he performs his first miracle. Where is the God of Elijah? Not where is Elijah? Where is the God of Elijah?
He strikes the water the same as Elijah had done. He learned, do what your mentor does, but do it with the God your mentor had. And the waters part. And he has the anointing.
The second miracle is he brings revival to Jericho. Literally revival, right? The town has dead water. The water is poisonous. The water is putrid. People can’t drink it. And it doesn’t make the. It doesn’t. It doesn’t work on the. Live. On the. On the agriculture. It doesn’t work on the crops. It’s bad water.
They come to Elisha and they say, the water is bad in this town. The town is beautifully located. It’s a great town. There’s fertile valleys. We ought to be able to grow crops. We can barely grow enough to live. The water’s bad.
And Elisha says, bring me some salt. What does salt represent? The presence of God, right? What does Jesus say? You’re the what? Salt of the earth. You bring. Preserve. You preserve. You bring flavor. You bring salt, you make things salty. Bring the presence.
And he just salts the water, which you think, well, that’ll make the water worse, right? Salt water. Nothing worse than salt water. But he just brings the salt into the water. And what happens? Death becomes life. The springs of water begin to flow with life. And there is revival. Revival.
When God’s hand comes upon what’s already there, he brings life. We’ve been praying our men’s Bible study, been praying the prayer of Jabez. And Mick keeps reminding me, that’s a good prayer, Kevin.
We got to pray that prayer of Jabez and the prayer of Jabez in Chronicles. Jabez was an honorable man. I pray, Lord, make me an honorable man. Make our church an honorable church.
And then he says, and bless me. Bless me, Lord. And people say, oh, you shouldn’t pray. Bless me. Of course you should pray. Bless me. Bless means to bring God’s goodness upon your life and your situations of your life. Bless me, Lord, and expand my territory.
Well, didn’t Jesus say, take this gospel to the ends of the world, expand my territory, o Lord, that your hand would be upon me? Because none of that, the blessing, the honor, the expansion of the territory, it does not happen without the Lord’s hand upon you. Listen, there are only two things that happen in this world. Things that people create out of their own ingenuity and out of their own flesh and in eternity that amounts to nothing.
And things that people do out of the anointing and the spirit of God and the smallest cup of cold water done there has eternal consequences.
We get distracted by looking at impressive things of the world. The world keeps throwing impressive things in front of our eyes and says, look at this. Look at this. Isn’t this great? Isn’t this great?
God is underneath and behind. He said, no, the real life, the real flow, the real blessing is here. Oh, Lord, that life would flow.
God, would you salt this church in Jesus name and salt the churches in Kitsap County? Would you take the water that’s there, the potential that’s there? And would you make it life-giving, Jesus, for crops and for people and for abundance and for harvest?
God, would you make us honorable and bless us? And would you expand the territory of your kingdom through the revival freshness that you bring upon your church?
And, Lord, would you put your hand upon us that we would not cause harm and pain, but we would bring life, that life from heaven would flow through us. Thank you, Jesus.
The headlines in heaven are going to be entirely different than the headlines on your newsfeed when you turn on your computer. Those are not headlines. Those are deadlines. I just came up with that. That was a good little play on word, wasn’t it? That might have been an answer to that prayer. That might have been a flow from heaven. Those aren’t headlines.
Those are deadlines. All right. Yeah. Yeah. You ought to quote me on that, Sophie. You gotta quote me on that. Yeah, that’s a kevinism. Yeah, yeah, right. Right up there. Yeah, it’s a new one. All right.
See, I said the prayer for new life, and we got a new little. All right, so revival comes now. The second miracle is troubling. The second miracle is just troubling.
Elisha goes out and I guess he was bald. And these mockers start to mock him for being bald. Don’t mock a surly prophet. He cursed them.
And two bears came out of the woods, mauled 42 people. Now, we may think it may be one of those passages people read, “Oh, the God of the Old Testament is so harsh, and the Bible is so harsh, and how can this be a God of love? And where’s the mercy and grace in this? And Jesus would never do that. Yada, yada, yada, yada.”
Let me tell you something. Don’t be a mocker of the things of God. These were not one-time mockers, and they weren’t boys in the sense of six or seven years old.
These were young men. They were boys in the sense of their maturity level.
We read Psalm 1 tonight and it says, do not sit in the seat of mockers. Don’t be a mocker of the things of God. We live in a culture filled with mockers of the things of God.
Let me tell you something. You go on YouTube, and there are people who are Christian people, believe the Bible, believe the gospel story, who are mockers of the things of God.
The hardest words Jesus ever spoke in the New Testament were for people who blasphemed the spirit of God, who mocked the things of God. Don’t mock the things of God because your heart will get hard.
And when revival comes, the presence. When the presence of. When the light of God is shining brighter, guess what happens? A lot of good things come. A lot of things that were in the dark get exposed, all right? The creatures of the darkness do not like the light.
When I went to seminary, my wife and I managed an apartment complex in Pasadena. It wasn’t our fault. We weren’t dirty or anything, but that apartment complex had a problem with roaches. We had cockroaches, and we had exterminators out, but they would just come back. It would creep my wife out, you know?
You don’t see them. You don’t see them until what? Until. How you doing, man? Good to see you. Come on in. Hey, we’re just having church. Anyway, you wouldn’t see them.
And then you’d come in at night, and you turn the light on. When you turn the light on at night, right there on your counter, you see something scurry. Just gross, right? But where was it scurrying to? It wasn’t scurrying to the light. It was going back to the darkness. Because the things, the dirty things of this world, they don’t like the light.
And I’ll tell you, it troubles me to no end that in the last couple of years, and just for a long time, but just in the last couple of years, it seems like more and more preachers have been caught in sexual scandal from their past.
But part of that is good news. And here’s what I mean by that. Many of these preachers have prayed to God, oh, God, send revival. Oh, God, bring the light. And God says, okay, okay, I’m gonna turn the lights on.
But when I turn the lights on, things are gonna get exposed. I’m just gonna be exposed to those that haven’t. Yeah, the light comes on.
So, dear ones, listen. Ananias and Sapphira, that’s another tough story in the Bible, right? Acts 5. The time of greatest revival. And the church is growing, and the church is expanding. And you hear all these wonderful stories, and miracles are happening. And Ananias and Sapphira come, and they lie. They lie to the Holy Spirit.
And in that level of presence, lying to the Holy Spirit doesn’t wash. And Ananias drops, and Sapphira drops. And so, judgment is not a bad thing.
Listen, fire. We’re the firehouse church, right? Fire. In the Bible, fire represents the power of God, the purity of God, the energy of God, the revelation of God, the light of God, the passion of God, the warmth of God. What else? Fire represents judgment.
When revival comes, people are gonna fall. People are gonna fall when revival comes. Why?
Because the light’s gonna shine on things that it needs to shine on. And judgment comes. And judgment comes first to the house of God, all right?
God is like my wife. He’s going to clean house. He’s going to clean house, he’s going to get things put in order. And, you know, you pray for revival, you get what you ask for. Revival comes to Jericho. But the mockers of the things of God get the bearers.
Don’t be a mocker of the things. Don’t mock things you don’t understand. Don’t mock things you don’t understand.
They may be good, they may be bad. But if you don’t know, don’t just jump to conclusions. If it’s, oh, that, God would never do that. How do you know God would never do that? Was it against the scripture? Yeah. There are things God would never do. God will never tell you to hate your enemy. God will never tell you to not forgive the person who hurts you.
There’s all sorts of things God won’t do. God will tell you to forgive. God will tell you to love. But there are some things that happen.
They just might seem strange to you, and you just immediately say, oh, God would never do that. Well, I read the Bible. He does a lot of things. He makes the sun stand still. All right? He tells a prophet to walk around naked for several years. He just better be glad he’s not doing that.
I have people who said we were praying for people and they were falling. They were falling in the spirit. Oh, that’s not God. Those kids. The kids were falling. The youth are falling. Those kids are just faking.
It’s like, how do you know that? Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Don’t make that judgment. They might be faking, but don’t say that. You don’t know that. No whole idea. We can’t judge. Don’t say that. You don’t know what’s in their heart.
And then they say, well, we’re uncomfortable with this. We’re uncomfortable with this revival. I said, you know what Jesus did? Jesus would never do this. Jesus spat on people. You’re uncomfortable with us laying hands on people? Wait till the spitting revival starts. How you be with that, pastor? You blew on that person.
That made me feel uncomfortable. Well, come here. I’ll spit on you. That work? No. Okay, listen, don’t be a mocker of the things of God.
I’m a mocker by nature, but I don’t think I’m a bad mocker. I mock for humor’s sake, not seriously. Like, my sister and I were at a vineyard conference, and these people were dancing, and we played a little game called name that dance.
All right, so one lady did this, and she’d spin around, and we go, oh, that’s the martini glass. That’s that dance.
And we’d name the different dances, but we weren’t mocking what God was doing in those people.
But then they sang the song. I don’t know if any of you remember this song. It was a Brian Dirksen song from years and years ago. It was the song that was “Come Now is the Time to Worship.” Remember that song was around 2000 or back then.
We were at this conference, and the first time they broke out that song, and a guy got up and danced, and he did kind of a Native American type dance.
And both my sister and I, we both felt the presence of the Lord on that dance, and we didn’t name that dance. It was like, oh, my goodness. God is on that. God is on.
It was just one man. It wasn’t the whole room. Usually, the whole room would get up and dance. Back then, there’s one guy danced to that song, and there was something about that, and it was like, the Lord is on this song, and the Lord is on that dance.
And I think that was the first time they broke out that song, and it became, you know, a song that the church used quite a bit.
But yeah, you can be a jokester, but don’t be a mocker. It’s simple juice, wine, fruit of the vine. It’s simple bread. It’s the simplest thing in life, just what human beings have been sustained on for years.
And yet, Jesus, you have sanctified that and made it holy. You have filled, as we receive that with faith. You allow us to partake of the life and death of Jesus Christ.
And you say in your blood, our sins are forgiven and we come into a new covenant.
And Lord, week after week we take this meal and say, yes, I am forgiven and I am a new covenant person. And as I eat this bread and I partake of this cup, Lord, your life, I believe it. Sometimes I experience it and it’s great. And other times I feel dry. But I believe that your life is in me.
Your life is in me. I am a temple of the Holy Spirit.
No other religion in the world says that, by the way. Let me tell you two things. No other religion in the world says. No other religion in the world will teach you the way to God. They never claim to.
You say, what about Islam? No, Islam doesn’t teach you the way to God. It says if you follow Allah, you get paradise. You get to go to the good place. Jesus says, if you follow me, you get the Father. Because Jesus teaches something very different.
Our culture believes that the goal is heaven.
Jesus says the goal is the relationship with the Triune God. And where you have the relationship with the triune God, that’s heaven. He says, this food is heavenly food. And so tonight, believe it and take it. You’re a child of God. I want to say that one more time. You’re a child of God. You’re a child of God. Let that sink in. Amen. Amen.
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June 9, 2024, Message by Stevin Johnson
So welcome, everybody.
Psalm 1 says,
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. 2 But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. 3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. 4 But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind. 5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly. 6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. (Psalm 1:1-6, ESV)
I was looking for my intro into my sermon for tonight, and I was like, I don’t know. Well, let’s start looking at the psalms. Psalm 1, I was like, boom, there it is. That’s the intro that I was looking for to talk about tonight, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about it.
But we’re in a pivotal part of the year 2021, leading up to elections.
And we know the strife and the mayhem and everything that happened for the last election in 2020. And now, what has changed since then? Time, really. Same players.
So we’ll talk a little bit about that, but let’s open up this time of worship with the singing portion of worship. I get it right. Kevin will be happy. I got it right.
So please stand and do what makes you comfortable and worship, and just enjoy the time of coming into the presence of the Lord.
So Psalm 2, which was a good segue from Psalm 1, was a good segue into Psalm 2. Funny how that works. It works in order, not necessarily. Just happens to be the way the writers composed it, put things together, but it works out well here.
1 Why are the nations so angry? Why do they waste their time with futile plans? 2 The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one. 3 “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.” 4 But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. 5 Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. 6 For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.” 7 The king proclaims the Lord’s decree: “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son.8 Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, the whole earth as your possession. 9 You will break them with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.'” 10 Now then, you kings, act wisely! Be warned, you rulers of the earth! 11 Serve the Lord with reverent fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities— for his anger flares up in an instant. But what joy for all who take refuge in him! (Psalms 2:1-12, NLT)
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, NLT)
Amen.
All right, so I was very pleasantly pleased when I found my slides from this last time. I was up and gave sermon from Kevin and found that they tie real well into this time, so I didn’t have to put a lot of administrative effort into this one. It was just as you see, part two.
Is it all meaningless? So as we are going through our year-long reading in chronological order, we just happened to finish Ecclesiastes this week.
And that’s always been an interesting book to me because the wisest man on earth feels hopeless and he writes about everything is meaningless. What is life worth if it’s just to have something now and die tomorrow and somebody else gets it? It’s a very interesting book to me.
Ecclesiastes 9:11. History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, here is something new, but actually it’s old. Nothing is ever truly new.
We don’t remember what happened in the past, and future generations will not remember what we are doing now.
10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now. (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11, NLT)
Historians and other people, not necessarily historians, will say history will repeat itself. It kind of seems true because we tend to forget the things that we’ve done in the past, and we don’t necessarily look to the future. Future generations will look back and not remember what we did in the past, or they will consider themselves so smart, so intellectual, and above.
What people did in the past is we won’t do that. We’ll do better than that. But they end up repeating what they’ve done. And I think we’re seeing that today. We saw it, and we saw a lot of people just turn their back on God.
We see that Solomon was given wisdom by God because that’s what he asked for. I want wisdom to rule the people. I want to do this wisely and be a good king. And he started out pretty well.
And then he met this woman, and then he met another one, and another one, and another one who all started turning his heart away from God.
God warned him and told him, I’m going to rip the kingdom out of your hands because you turned your back on me. And in the chronological order, we see that start. You know, Jeroboam, who was a servant of Solomon’s, was told by a prophet, God’s going to take the kingdom away from Solomon. He’s going to give it to you. You’re going to get ten tribes.
But because of his promise to David, whose heart was for God, he’s going to get to keep two tribes in his family.
But as we see, everybody started turning their backs on God on both sides of the border. The ten, the two, start turning their backs on God, and we start seeing them go back to pagan worship, sacrifices.
I don’t remember if it was the day before or reading, I think it was the day before reading. One of the kings in Israel, which I never really read this before until I read it today, rebuilt a city at the cost of his firstborn and the cost of his youngest sons.
I thought, well, that’s weird. Why did God kill his? Was it because he was so sinful? No, he killed his own sons as sacrifices to the pagan gods for these cities. Kill him. The first one is a sacrifice. We build the city, the city’s complete.
I’ll kill my youngest son. They’ve fallen off the edge. Right. Okay. I never looked at that perspective, Sydney, but you’re right. Middle children win.
Let me see here real quick. March, April, June. So which son was it? Was it Basha or…? Yeah, it was in a recent one. Yeah. So it was probably somewhere, if you probably will find it, somewhere between the 7th and the 9th. Yep.
Well, I’m not sure which of the Israel rulers it was, and I don’t remember. Jeroboam was the one who started, but it was one of.
Well, it wasn’t even his descendants because God killed all of his family because they all turned against him. If I remember it or I find it, I will text you during the week and show it to you.
Okay. Yeah. And because this translation, and this one is where it really, I finally figured it out, I was like, oh, he sacrificed his sons to build that, to finish the city off, to finish the fortress.
This one is New Living Translation. Yep. Then NLT. Mm hmm. Yeah. So did.
Yeah, Kevin may have some extra ones laying around. The chronological order last year, I did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It is anonymous history kind of guy, so it helps me out.
So Kevin had talked about wisdom being knowledge, and you can be an intellect or an information. It’s all about the information I take in. And I’m smart because I get all the information. Or sometimes I think there are kind of two crowds.
There’s some folks who live by the information, and then there’s others like me, who sometimes things are common sense. I’m more of a common sense kind of guy. I look at things from that perspective, and I don’t necessarily need to be a debater and be able to debate things with people because I don’t like to do it. People are like, well, where did that come from? It just makes sense. I don’t necessarily have to have the proof to show you that, but trust me, it makes sense.
So why did I throw that in? I don’t remember. It was my own little rabbit trail, but I think I threw it in there because of the way America is kind of tracking right now. People think they’re smarter than God.
It’s not a new tracking line that we are going through right now. This started a while ago. I mean, before the founding fathers, people were looking for a place to practice their religious freedom without persecution. They came to America. It was a long time people were here.
We had the British come in and all the colonizers. We started making money, business, and I think we started losing focus then, even though our founding fathers wrote a lot of Christian thought and process in heart, in the Constitution and in founding our government, because it makes sense.
I mean, it’s a lot of love and honor and freedom, and all men were created by God, and we should all therefore be equal. But I think that was a moment in time they had that idea.
And then ever since that happened, we’ve started falling away from that. World War I, World War II, we get in post-World War II, we’ve got the sixties and seventies, sex, drug, rock and roll, rebellious movements going on. Everything is just taking a path away from removing God from. I mean, I remember standing for the pledge of allegiance in school, public school. We stood, pledged allegiance to our country. But I also remember that God was not out of the school. There was still God in the school.
Now you get run out of the schools if you talk about God, that’s just an ex. Those are examples of where we’ve been going and how we’re tracking away from where I think we’re going away from common sense.
Because to me, even if I was not a believer already, if I was an intellect, this is a book I would pick up and read. Why do people believe in this guy called Jesus? What is all that about? I need to read this book.
I think I would get a lot of common sense out of this book and go, you know what? I need to fear the man that this book has written about. He has the power of life and death over me.
And it’s not just saying that it’s in here. We see it happen. You turn your back on me and you start doing evil things like sacrificing your children, you’re done. Get out of the pool.
So that’s where I was going with my common sense. We know the outcome.
We know that Jesus, who you even talk in Psalms 2, the king, I think, is easily substituted Jesus in that, and that’s the king that God has put on the throne who’s going to have the nations under his feet.
We can also look at some of the leaders who the rest of the psalm talks about. If they don’t follow God, it’s not going to go well for them. But we know the outcome. Satan knows the outcome, knows the war is lost, but he’s not given up the battle.
So he’s going to continue to try to corrupt hearts, minds, and souls of all he can. And he’s got an incredible arsenal of weapons. I think he used the women’s liberation movement to start separating the family. He used the sex, drugs, rock and roll to introduce immorality further. I mean, it’s not like it wasn’t there before.
Again, we kind of go back to Ecclesiastes. Nothing’s new under the sun. They had all kinds of nasty festivals back in the Old Testament days.
So if we think we’re smarter and we’re doing things better, I think you can make a pretty good comparison to the two, the constant entanglements in the, where we’re at right now. I mean, we’ve got this for me, and we’re in it right now.
This is the month of June. It’s a month out of the calendar year. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It never belonged to anybody before. But there’s an organization out there that claims it is their month. It’s not. It’s our month.
But I think part of what we’re experiencing right now and how Satan is still fighting the fight in the war is shifting people who don’t believe in that and don’t want the month of June to get taken away from them. But we don’t stand up and speak against it. We don’t talk out about it.
We have a problem as Christians, I think, and we have a problem in that we have hearts that are to love everybody, which is what we’re called to do, to love one another and not go after people we’re supposed to.
Our neighbors, I love them because Jesus loves them, but they live in sin. Their lifestyle is not the lifestyle that God created, but we don’t step up and take a stand for it, which I think we should.
We’re called to do that. We’re not called to be afraid to not stand up and say, no, it’s wrong. I can still love you, but I can still say that that style of living is wrong. I can still love you, but I can tell you that if you are trafficking young men and women, that’s wrong. That’s immoral.
You shouldn’t do that. And we should, I think, be able to be justified to stop that. Not necessarily we’re going to go around killing people. I don’t think that’s a good idea. But we do need to stop it by speaking up against it and figuring out better ways than just being passive and letting it continue to happen.
I heard somebody recently say that they wish it was November already. I thought that was an interesting statement. I wish it was November all the way.
And I was like, well, I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, well, what’s that going to change? What’s November going to change? I don’t think it’s going to change anybody’s hearts.
I think we’re going to be just as divided in November as we are today. That’s not where the change needs to happen. The change needs to happen in America’s heart. It’s individual people’s hearts that need to change.
Putting either Donald Trump back in the White House or leaving Joe Biden in the White House is not going to solve America’s problems of where we’re at today. We started down that track a long time ago. Change of heart is what needs to happen.
And how do you change your heart?
Well, first we need to stand up and tell everybody who Jesus is. When the opportunity arises, show them his heart and his love and explain. I think we need to get away from the stereotypical Christian view that says, “Well, you guys are supposed to just love people and not stand up and step out against people or say somebody is bad for what they’re doing.” How can you say anybody’s bad for what they’re doing?
Well, I can tell you, we can go right back here into this book here, and I can show you how history has gone when people have chosen to do bad things and to be immoral. It’s gone very badly.
Israel’s destruction happened, right? The exile began. Ten of the tribes disappeared, not to be found again. Two of the tribes survived. They were able to come back and rebuild the temple and continue the line of Israel, but because of the way they were living, many of them didn’t want to give it up.
People didn’t want to give up that sin. Probably way off the path where I was planning on being for this. But I guess it leads to don’t compromise just because it’s the path of least resistance, and I already started on that.
Don’t compromise your values as a Christian. Don’t compromise that. We’ll let LGBTQ, the rest of the Alphabet, come in and start saying that their rights are being violated and they need to have a month to stand up and celebrate them.
Every time I go to the Bainbridge ferry and I drive by the church that’s on the road there, Siebold. Yep. Every time I go by Siebold and I see that flag hanging above their foundational sign, I’m like, they’ve compromised.
So do you pray for them? I need to. You’re exactly right. And that’s where we should go. And, Kathleen, you’re absolutely right. And you’re about four bullet points ahead of me or two bullet points ahead of me, but, yeah, don’t compromise. It’s okay not to compromise on what you believe and what we believe.
Now, here’s.
I read an interesting article. My wife gets me some interesting articles every once in a while, and this one was good. It’s a challenging word for me, but it’s regime evangelism. Regime evangelism. What is that? That’s a very good question. It’s weird.
As American, the Christians in America got so used to being. Our government was founded on the Christian Judeo belief and system, and Christians have been protected just because the power that had been in play in our government was still fundamental Christian values. I mean, how many presidents and leaders?
It really irks me now because I don’t. I think. I don’t think they believe what they’re saying when they say it, but they all say, God bless America. They close everything. God bless America.
And I’m like, do you really believe that? Is that what’s in your heart? Because if it is, you got some things to change there, Buster, because it doesn’t hold with what you’re saying you’re going to do. If you’re God bless America, there’s some things that need to change.
And I don’t know how many of you guys think about what would you do if you were president. Am I the only one? Yeah, I might be. I might be the only one who thinks about, what would I change if I was president.
And I got ideas. I wouldn’t be president for very long in this country. I would. I think the Secret Service would probably step away and go, you’re gonna get us killed, dude.
And I gotta say, Jesus helped me because I’m like Kevin now. And I said I wouldn’t do it.
I went down a rabbit trail, told myself this morning I wouldn’t do that. Government protected Christians. Ah, thank you. Because. And you can. I think you can connect the dots.
When we started seeing God being taken out of schools, out of public speaking engagements, you know, you just. You see it removed more and more that the power has shifted, that if you’re a Christian, you don’t necessarily can step out and say what you believe. I think we can see that happening right now.
If you step out, there’s a Christian on that street out there next to an LGBTQ flag, which is a pride, which is a whole nother issue.
And you say, I’m against this. I don’t believe in this. We need to start taking these down because I didn’t vote to have that put up there. I don’t know why somebody else decided that they needed to put that up there.
You would probably get hit with hate speech real quick, which is to show you that your beliefs are not protected anymore.
So we as Christians, I know Kevin’s talked about it, that this is probably one of the few places in the world where you as a Christian could speak out your point of view, and you can meet in fellowship and worship together.
I don’t know how long we’re going to have that privilege in this country anymore. I pray we get to continue that. But that’s where the regime evangelism goes, is if you’re. If you’re the one protected under the government right now, you can. You can do whatever you want to.
And if we see the Siebold church and other churches who have swung to the government, saying that this is okay, we’re going to protect these people from hate speech and from the church or anybody else speaking out against them. But we’re going to love them and we’re going to support.
What side of the fence are you on? Are you on God’s side of the fence, or are you stepping over that?
The government has now become your God, and you’re going to do whatever it takes to please the government so that you maintain the protection of the government, and you don’t have to worry about it.
One of the other things I’ve been toying with is the church has been a nonprofit, right? Most churches can establish a 501(c) and be a nonprofit. As a nonprofit, you kind of, I think, open yourself up to government influence.
They could step in and say, ah, may not be able to put their finger on you, but it doesn’t mean they’re not going to try.
If you’re a for-profit church, at least you know, you can play within the for-profit system and you can go, eh, eh, go away. I don’t know how well that would work, but that’s one of the other.
I get some strange ideas at times. I don’t know that that would not be part of my presidency idea, but I might suggest it to people anyway. That was what that was about.
We as Christians is more somebody stands up and speaks what is true and what we believe. The more you’re opening yourself up for persecution in this nation, which wasn’t the way it was before, but we’re seeing it shift that direction.
So I guess really part of that bullet that’s up there that says, keep your guard up is we’re going to kind of get back on topic here. Solomon didn’t keep his guard up.
Solomon let his guard down, and he did so with the many wives that he had and who he set up a bunch of shrines. I think he even had set up some Asherah poles for his wives to go worship at.
Now, what Solomon did was interesting. He still was wise enough to know that you don’t turn your back on God. The smart person sticks with God because God is all-powerful, and the smart person fears God because that’s the best thing to do, to fear God.
But life is meaningless.
He got himself into a do loop, but he didn’t keep his guard up, and he got knocked down.
I think it would have fallen into an early trap. I mean, King married for alliances and teachings. Yep. Yep, that’s right. And that was why he married the Egyptian, the pharaoh’s daughters, is alliances. But what he didn’t do is keep his focus on God. And so it got him. He lost ten of the tribes right after he died, and then it just kind of, as we all know, it went downhill from there.
But he did say to stick with God because that’s the best thing you can do.
All right, so in the next slide, please.
All right, so we’ve been equipped with everything we need. God talks, or Jesus in the Bible talks about God made the lilies of the field, even more splendid than anything that Solomon ever wore. You know, he’s given all this beauty in the land. No sparrow is going to go without food, right? So how much more are we going to be supplied with? Everything we need to stay engaged. Engaged. Enemy. Engaged.
Enemy with prayer. Right, Kathleen? Yes, prayer.
Our struggle is not against the flesh and blood, right? It’s against the principalities and the rulers and the authorities of this world. And we’ve talked about it. Kevin’s talked about it. That’s not necessarily the fleshly people we see running for presidency in 2024 or throughout in other countries. That’s against the principalities and the rulers and the authorities in the spiritual realm, the unseen realm. That’s where the war is being fought. These other guys are not really the big worry that we have. We need to pray for them.
Those being the leaders that have been elected or who are in power. Those being the folks who want social reform and change. Those being the ones lost on the street under the influence of drugs, those being our family members who don’t believe.
We need to fight for them and engage the enemy in prayer, spiritual battle for them. I know that when I do that, it’s not all fun and games, and I’m probably pretty sure everybody in here has experienced that.
When you start praying in earnest and you start looking for change and you give your life over to Jesus and you start just really trying hard to bring the kingdom down, the enemy fights back.
He may not target you specifically and individually, because I like what Kevin has to say: Satan is not necessarily that equipped. He can’t be everywhere all the time. God can. God can be everywhere all the time. Satan can’t because he’s not God. But when he does a drive by, sometimes it hurts.
He’ll take a swipe at you as he goes by, or he’ll command one of his minions, one of the demons, to try to harm you. So don’t be afraid when that happens.
In fact, I would even say double down when that happens, because you know something you’re doing is right. So don’t quit, engage in the battle. Can’t run away. Your commander has your back. Jesus has got your back. He’s given you everything.
Interesting in the Bible when he sent the disciples out, take nothing, go out. I’m giving you my power. Go do the thing.
They went out and they came back and they’re like, that was awesome. Everything was great.
Later, as he was talking with the disciples and it came down to the swords, does everybody remember that discussion about swords? Hey, have your sword, sell your robe, get a sword, because I’m not going to be here much longer. All right, we got two. That’s more than enough. You don’t, and I’m like that. Why did he say that? Two’s enough. Two’s enough. Like, okay, two’s enough. Because he’s enough. That’s why. Two is enough. You don’t need him.
You don’t need an arsenal. You got me. Keep your eyes focused on me, and things will go. You’ll be able to. You’ll be able to battle all these things. You can do it. So we need to do it. We need to stop letting people say wrong is right. You need to be able to speak out against that if somebody’s talking to you.
For me, because I go to the office a couple of times a week, most everybody in my office is a retired sailor, so it sometimes gets a little colorful in the office.
And I myself need to have more of a backbone and stand up and say, come on, guys, I don’t really want to hear that. If you want to just do it the days I’m not in the office. But is that right? Wrong is not right. Right is right. And in your heart, you know right is right. And I know those guys do. I know. They all know what right is. Right. But they choose differently because of the atmosphere.
Groupthink, groupthink is, you know, it is a thing.
And when somebody steps out and nobody corrects them, then everybody goes ahead and keeps doing right. So, yes, there will be casualties, there will be struggles. Don’t. We’ve all heard this before. Don’t let what man can do to you. Don’t be afraid of that. That’s temporary. Be afraid of God and what he can do to you, because that’s eternity.
I want to be able to step in front of God on the day I die, which is inevitable.
I’m 1 second closer right now than I was before, and I do really want to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant.
And I’m going to be standing there going, yeah, well, what about, I won’t probably, if I can bring it up, I will probably be forced to because I think it’s just in his presence. You’re going to just break down and start going, well, I did this, I did that.
And he’s like, no, it’s going to be on a movie screen. You don’t even have to say, yeah, right.
And he’s going to go, what did you do? I forgot. Hey, come on in. I got this mansion. It’s really cool. Foosball table. You play foosball? Come on. I’ve yet to be beaten. Well, I’ll get you. I’m a horrible foosball player. I don’t even know why I brought that up, but it seemed funny at the moment, right?
So the strife, the struggles, maybe even death can happen when you stand up to man and what man thinks is right.
But God is the ultimate giver of life, and our life is guaranteed for eternity because of who we believe in, which is Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior.
So face it. When you face persecution, just remember that. So it is time, right? Saddle up your horses. It’s time to ride. And I almost put the. Wanted to put. I thought about putting that Chapman song up right now so we could all saddle up our horses. It’s time to ride. I didn’t, but it’s time to. We gotta prepare for it.
We gotta draw up our plans, our battle plans. Be ready.
So Jamie and I are doing our. Now she’s worried. Don’t worry. I’m not. I don’t tell. Kevin’s the only one I know who can get away with telling wife jokes. He’s the only one I know who can get away with that.
When we were active duty and flying, there was a strike fighter weapons tactics program. The Navy had just switched over to it, and it was a program derived from Top Gun, where everybody had to go through some form of that training.
And you spent hours preparing for it, and you drew up plans for the scenario that you had to go in and fight your way in, fight your way out.
You had this guy who’s a top gun graduate, who’s your wingman, and you had to prove to him you knew what you were doing. It was pretty stressful, wasn’t it?
And then it wasn’t just one flight. It was, like, 14. A lot of it was fun when it was over, but at the time, prepping and doing it was not good.
But why do I bring that up? Because we prepared for battle. We drew up plans. We were ready to go in and do what we had to do.
And was it scary? I remember the first time I saw AAA coming up at night when I was flying inbound into Iraq. And it was. I don’t know how far away it was. I was on night vision goggles, so everything seemed very close. And when a burning ball of fire is going through the sky, you just like, ugh, that’s too close for comfort. But it was.
It was nowhere near me, but so, but the point is, I was scared. It’s like, whoa, here we go. But we’ve prepared. This is not unexpected. We prepared for the fight. We have prepared for this fight that we know is going on around us right now. And we see coming even in our future of our country, we’ve prepared for it.
Our commander in chief has never been defeated. Victory is assured. We just need to not be afraid going into this. The election’s coming in November, and it could be tomorrow. I don’t care.
That’s not going to define my future. I’m going to put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness. I’m going to put on the belt of the truth and carry the sword of the spirit.
I’m going to have the shield of faith to put the flaming arrows that I know he’s going to try to launch at me, and he’s launched before at me. But my God is greater. And so my faith is going to be in that.
My faith is going to be in my prayer life, that I’m going to pray that there’s going to be revival in this country. I’m going to want the revival. Whether it’s painful or not, I want the revival. I want the revival because I want to live in the revival. I want to see America turn around. I want my children to live in a revived America. I want my grandchildren. No hurries. No hurries.
I want my grandchildren to live in a revived America in every generation until the king comes. Right?
I mean, that’s just what I want to do, to start mounting up. Saddle up my horse. I’ve already prepared for the battle, and I’m going to pray for strength and courage. We need to pray for each other, for strength and courage, to engage with the enemy.
Don’t you think the revival has to occur in the church first? The church is not strong. There are too many people who don’t fully believe. They don’t live up their faith. They don’t tithe. They don’t pray. It’s not, there’s not enough zeal in the body of Christ.
And I think God is gonna have to awaken our hearts and the whole body for a revival to occur. I couldn’t agree more.
And I think part of the regime evangelism that I spoke about before is that the church needs a revival. They need to remember who Christ is, why we are the church. We’re the church for him. It has to start with us. Exactly.
I worked for public schools for 25 years. Five years for Christian. And let me tell you about the liberal school districts. It’s bad.
And I thought to myself, when I started from day one, I had to make a difference. I said, Lord, I’m going to profess you whether I lose my job or not.
Guess what? I worked 30 years for school, never lost a job. But I started from day one. Maintenance guys. Most of the time I worked at district office, probably ten years of schools. But maintenance guys would come in with the dirty jokes and stuff. And that’s where you start, oh, walking away. And pretty soon, when they’re in that circle again, you’ve got business with them.
They go, okay, Sandy, it’s a good one. I go, okay. It’s the stand we make that they know who you are.
You know, I hear a lot of complaining on Facebook about the church. We are the church. It’s not the pastor. He’s our shepherd. But we’re supposed to be learning, you know, so stands we have to make. Yep, yep.
He’s very revival. What happened in Kentucky? What’s that? Those college kids just were worshiping the Lord, and he shows up with a sweet presence. To me, that’s what I look at. That’s what I want. Yep.
He’s going to revive us because we’re seeking him. And he’s going to show up because we’re seeking him and wanting him. And it spread, and it’s still spreading anyway. So, yes, but also, how do we do that? LGBTQ. How do we walk alongside them in love?
First, truth. If they need to know some truth, yeah, but if they’re not ready to hear truth, you gotta show them God’s love. I’ve seen it over and over. Love. This is it. The bottom line, I had this probably three weeks ago. Got new glasses.
And I walk into the eye place, and I see the lady sitting with the wig on. I mean, it’s very obvious. And so her name’s Annie. She helped me, but Annie probably was Andrew at birth. Okay? I mean, the features, the voice, the whole bit. Boy, it bothered my heart.
All we got is praying, knowing that last week, after I was going to get, what do I do, Lord? Well, this year I became a published author, and I wrote a 40-day devotional. And so Lord says, I want you to go.
I want you to put it in your purse and bring her a devotional.
So I’m waiting. I get in there, and there’s a guy helping me. And I said, is Annie here? And he said, yeah, she’s in the back. So I said, I’d like to talk to her.
So I went to the counter and you know what? She was so kind helping me. And that’s what I told her. I said, I recognize kindness. I said, I’m a kind person. I became a published author this year, and my first, I’d love to give you this devotional.
And she said, oh, thank you very much. So all I can think is, okay, there’s 40 days. 40. It’s 40 because that’s new. Because. And I pray God is going to take each of those days and do something with her. Amen.
You know, our hearts have. Have to hurt when we see things. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. It’s a heart issue, for sure.
The regime, evangelism. His closing remarks in his essay that he wrote were basically, the church kind of needs to get back to the form of government, if you will, is the priests and the king.
And the third one was God, wasn’t it? The prophet. The third one was prophet. The priests, the priests, were the ones who brought you to God. Right? They’re the intercessors. Right.
The king was the protector. And then the prophet was the word coming from God. The interesting one that he touched on, that I paid more attention to, was the king, the protector. Because the king, how does he protect his? How does he protect? Well, the protection is by love, providing, but it’s also by protecting through, dare I say, warfare. Right? That’s the struggle.
We don’t want people to get hurt. We don’t want to hurt people. People. Where’s that happy medium?
As a 25-year Navy warrior, I struggled with that at times. I was like, what? My moment that it finally had resolution was I just turned it over to God and I left it up to Him. I was like, if You put me in that position, then I know it’s You who put me here.
I don’t really want to kill anybody, but if you put me there, then I’m just going to have faith that it was you who put me there. I was never put in that position, and I never was, so. But that’s what a king does.
I think that’s what a king needs to do, is he needs to trust in the Lord with all his heart. Lean not on his own understanding, and God will make his ways straight and true.
So know your enemy. We see them out there. Our enemies are political foes.
Our enemies, our social agenda changers. Our enemy is Satan. That’s our enemy. That’s the one we need to know. This other stuff is his tricks and his trade that. He’s trying to pull one over on us.
Best defense is truly a good offense. Kathleen, what’s that offense? Prayer. Prayer, which is prayer? Right. Pray unending. Always pray about everything. Stay connected to the Lord. See injustice. Pray about injustice. See a change. Pray about a change.
A wise warrior is better than a strong one and a man of knowledge than one of strength.
For you should wage war with sound guidance. Victory comes with many counselors. Ask for wisdom and knowledge in your prayers, and God will grant it.
Many counselors. That’s us right here. That’s the church. Faithful and loyal to God. You can get good counsel from fellow believers. You can get good counsel from your pastor.
Prevent defense doesn’t always work. Watch. Prevent defense. And I see the question marks. Prevent defense. It’s an NFL thing. When a team is way up on the score, they go into prevent defense; they spread their defense way out.
All they’re going to try to do is keep the offense from gaining a lot of yards if they can help it, and just try to keep them from getting in the burning time, burning the clock down to win this game. It fails every once in a while. Prevent defense has never been a, has never been a good defense.
After your, when you get your third child, you’re in prevent defense. It’s no longer man on man. You’re now in prevent defense. Does that make you nervous, Sophia? That’s good. That’s why we only had two kids.
So go offensive. Work, fellow believers. Get your Bible out, read it, pray every day. Go offensive. I think that’s what we’re called to do: go offensive against the sin that we see. Don’t just let it ride. Do something about it.
So here, and I knew I’d written it down and I just couldn’t find it in my notes. But here’s Solomon’s final conclusion in Ecclesiastes.
13 That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. 14 God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, NLT)
The one that registers to me in that, because it’s just the way I operate, is this is everybody’s duty. Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. So that’s what I’m going to try to do. And I’m going to pray for strength and courage to do it.
I pray for strength and courage, Jesus, for each one of these fine folks in here, to be able to do that on a daily basis.
And I pray for each one of you who’s going to click the like button on Rumble and YouTube. And better yet, come visit us. Come to church here and meet the fellowship at the firehouse.
Paul’s bow, but I pray for strength and courage for you.
24 ‘May the Lord bless you and protect you. 25 May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. (Numbers 6:24-25, NLT)
Lift up his countenance to you and give you peace.
Go forth and serve in peace. Serve Jesus, who loves you deeply. Because I almost forgot because I was tracking that way.
Here’s a great remembrance right here. Communion. Great remembrance of who you are. Great remembrance of who loves you and who’s got your back. Come and eat the meal. Remember your Lord. Remember his love for you. Spread that love around. Come and eat.
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June 2, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
He has shown you the path of life. In his presence is the fullness of joy. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore. Amen. Amen.
Good. Good. All right, dear ones, it is good to be with you. And I mean that sincerely. I’m not lying about that. I actually really love you guys. Oh, my goodness. You know how to respond to that. See? You know how to respond.
I was telling these guys, I was telling them, a Bible study, 43 years, married to Jill, and it was like a year or so ago.
I’m just looking here at the couch, and I just love this woman. I love this woman, man. And I just said, you know why I love you? And I just started listing off. I said, you’re beautiful, you’re intelligent, you’re compassionate, you’re loyal, you’re a terrific mother, you’re a fantastic grandmother, you’re hardworking. I mean, I just listed off, like ten or twelve characteristics just right off the top of my head. No problem at all. Just listed them off. And she sat there and goes, well, thank you. And I’m waiting, right? I’m just waiting for.
She made me ask, well, why do you love me? And then I get this. That’s a good question. And here’s what she said. She said one thing. I just got one thing. She said, you make me laugh. So I have this pressure now to be funny. It’s like this huge pressure to be funny.
So anyway, all right, dear ones, tonight we’re going to talk about wisdom. And then after I talk about wisdom, we’re going to have communion, and then we’re going to have cake. And how could that not be a good thing?
So, Proverbs 8.
We’re reading through our Bibles in a year, and we’re into the Proverbs. How many of you just like the Proverbs? All right. I knew the minute I read the Proverbs, I think about Stevan, and I think about my wife.
Steven and my wife have many things in common. They are both these, like, stand-up, do-the-right-thing, loyal, hardworking, faithful, justice-oriented people. They’re just great. And I just love people like that. And I’m not the least bit like that. So that’s why I love that.
I’m not saying anything about you, Jamie.
But anyway, I love that. And so we had our Bible study Thursday night. By the way, Mick, I’ll be gone this Thursday night. But we had our Bible study last Thursday night, and we were going through the proverbs. And then they talked about it, and I said, I bet Stefan likes the proverbs. And sure enough, I knew it.
All right, so Proverbs 8 is the ode to wisdom. And a lot of the proverbs is about wisdom.
You know, Proverbs does a lot of contrasting: the wise and the foolish, the hard worker and the sluggard, the honest and the crooked. It does a lot of contrasting.
And Proverbs 8 is this great testimony to this attribute of God. You know, we talk about the omnis of God. God is omnipresent; He’s all places at all times. God is omnipotent; He’s all-powerful. God is omniscient; He’s all-knowing. But there’s another all of God, and that is God is all-wise. God is all-wise. He always knows the right thing to do.
He’s always got the right idea. He always knows exactly how to put things together. As I like to say in my prayers, and as I say to you often, God is smarter than me. God is smarter than me. His way is always right. Not mostly right.
I used to tell my children, you know, I used to tell them, listen, I’m a humble man. I’m not always right. I’m just almost always right. And I told them, I don’t know everything. I just know almost everything. And when they were small, they would listen to that.
When my daughter was a teenager, you could audibly hear her eyes roll as I said it. So anyway. But God is not almost always right. He’s always right. It’s very interesting.
In Proverbs 8, wisdom is personified. Wisdom speaks. It speaks about wisdom as, like wisdom as a person. It’s a female person. In Proverbs 8, wisdom is called a her. However, throughout history, church has looked at Proverbs 8 as a prophetic picture of Jesus, that Jesus is the wisdom of God. And I think it is.
I think it is a prophetic poem, a prophetic proverb about Jesus. But like all poetry, it’s not literal. Jesus wasn’t a woman. Jesus was a man. I got news for you people. The Bible is not always literal. The Bible is poetic. The Lord is my shepherd, but he was a carpenter. All right? And you don’t have wool, by the way. All right, be as gentle as doves, but don’t lay eggs, right? It’s poetic imagery. And so this is poetic imagery. And so wisdom is given the quality of a she.
It also talks about wisdom being born. And we know that Jesus and early church heretics would take Proverbs 8 and say, see, this is proof that Jesus is less than the Father in that the Father created Him, because it talks about the Father creating wisdom. And actually it says, wisdom was born. But the word born could also mean possessed. But the idea, actually, the poetic idea in Proverbs 8 is that wisdom is before creation. And so again, it’s poetry.
But I think as you read it, you will see how wisdom kind of portrays in Proverbs 8. You know, we’re doing our Bible study on how the Old Testament pictures Jesus. That wisdom is, in fact, a picture of Jesus.
And so I’m going to read the whole proverb to you all, chapter 8. I’m going to read all of chapter 8 to you.
1 Listen as Wisdom calls out! Hear as understanding raises her voice! 2 On the hilltop along the road, she takes her stand at the crossroads. 3 By the gates at the entrance to the town, on the road leading in, she cries aloud, 4 “I call to you, to all of you! I raise my voice to all people. 5 You simple people, use good judgment. You foolish people, show some understanding. 6 Listen to me! For I have important things to tell you. Everything I say is right, 7 for I speak the truth and detest every kind of deception. 8 My advice is wholesome. There is nothing devious or crooked in it. 9 My words are plain to anyone with understanding, clear to those with knowledge. 10 Choose my instruction rather than silver, and knowledge rather than pure gold. 11 For wisdom is far more valuable than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with it. 12 “I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment. I know where to discover knowledge and discernment. 13 All who fear the Lord will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech. 14 Common sense and success belong to me. Insight and strength are mine. 15 Because of me, kings reign, and rulers make just decrees. 16 Rulers lead with my help, and nobles make righteous judgments. 17 “I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me. 18 I have riches and honor, as well as enduring wealth and justice. 19 My gifts are better than gold, even the purest gold, my wages better than sterling silver! 20 I walk in righteousness, in paths of justice. 21 Those who love me inherit wealth. I will fill their treasuries. 22 “The Lord formed me from the beginning, before he created anything else. 23 I was appointed in ages past, at the very first, before the earth began. 24 I was born before the oceans were created, before the springs bubbled forth their waters. 25 Before the mountains were formed, before the hills, I was born— 26 before he had made the earth and fields and the first handfuls of soil. 27 I was there when he established the heavens, when he drew the horizon on the oceans. 28 I was there when he set the clouds above, when he established springs deep in the earth. 29 I was there when he set the limits of the seas, so they would not spread beyond their boundaries. And when he marked off the earth’s foundations, 30 I was the architect at his side. I was his constant delight, rejoicing always in his presence. 31 And how happy I was with the world he created; how I rejoiced with the human family! 32 “And so, my children, listen to me, for all who follow my ways are joyful. 33 Listen to my instruction and be wise. Don’t ignore it. 34 Joyful are those who listen to me, watching for me daily at my gates, waiting for me outside my home! 35 For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. 36 But those who miss me injure themselves. All who hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:1-36, NLT)
And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
Dear ones, wisdom calls out. Wisdom calls out. It’s not hidden, it’s not mysterious, it’s not secret. It’s not some new revelation. It’s not some new thing that God has brought upon the earth. And dear ones, wisdom is plain to be seen. It’s plain to be heard. It calls out. And ever since Jesus Christ came into the world, wisdom has now stood at the center of human history and said, come to me. And I want to. And here’s the thesis tonight. Here’s the point I want to make as I describe all these aspects of wisdom.
Jesus is the wisdom of God. Jesus is wisdom. He is the wisdom of God. And Jesus is not hidden, people. He is not hidden. He’s known now all over the world.
In October, I’m planning on going to Africa. I haven’t done a mission trip for a long time. I don’t even know why I’m doing this one. But it’s just on my heart to go to Africa and speak to pastors from five nations. And Africa, as we talk tonight, is becoming the Christian continent. And someday people are going to stand before God, and God is going to say, why did you ignore me? Why did you turn your back on me? Why have you forsaken me? And they’ll say, well, God, I just didn’t know. I mean, how could I know? And he’s going to tell them, here’s how you could know. You grew up in America. There was a church on every corner. Oh, but God, you know, they were full of a bunch of hypocrites. Yeah, well, there’s room for one more, bucko.
Wisdom is not… and we charismatics, we people who love the move of God and love signs and wonders and miracles and prophecies and all those kinds of things. And I love all those kinds of things, man. I love when God moves. But listen, there’s this kind of cult among charismatics about, ooh, you know, I got a new revelation. No, you didn’t.
Ooh, there’s this new secret formula. There’s this new secret sauce of how to get to the upper level. You want to get to a higher level? Obey the things at the level you’re at now. I’ll tell you how to get to a higher level. Love your enemies, feed the poor. Be a good husband, be a good wife. Go to church, read your Bible, say your prayers.
Oh, but I want to go off to this camp and have prophetic dreams and interpretations. People, come, boy. Pastor, I need a word from the Lord, and listen.
I believe in prophetic words, and my life has been changed by strategically timed, directive, prophetic words from God. I believe all that stuff. But listen, sometimes we just, we’re after the esoteric. We’re after the exciting and the fancy and the new.
But wisdom is plain, simple common sense. It’s the rock-solid stuff of discipleship. A prophetic friend I have, he says people would come to him and say, I need a word from the Lord. And he’d say, read your Bible. Lots of words in there. It’s not hidden. It’s not secret. It’s not new revelation.
It’s not mysterious. It’s accessible to all. Wisdom is for the simple. You know, here’s something that’s interesting. We tend to think that wisdom has something to do with what we would call intelligence.
Let me say about intelligence. First of all, every person is intelligent in something. We judge intelligence in our culture primarily by mathematical and linguistic intelligence. That’s what’s mostly scored in schools. So if you’re good at math and you’re good in language, you’re considered smart. If you’re good with your hands, but you can’t spell or add, you’re considered stupid.
But I want to tell you something. I can spell an ad. I can use words pretty well, I think. And I’m pretty good with math in my head. Pretty quick with math in my head. And yet you put a mechanical something doohickey in front of me and say, fix it. Listen, you are now dealing with a bag of hammers. You know, I’m just, I don’t know. You know, I don’t know how to fix it.
Everybody’s smart at something, dumb at something else. But wisdom has nothing to do with your IQ.
It has nothing to do with a high IQ. Turn to somebody next to you and say, good news for you. No, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
All right, so wisdom is for the simple. Here’s what wisdom is. I’ve already used the phrase common sense. Wisdom is how to apply the knowledge you know to live life successfully. And there’s lots of people with high IQs who are really stupid when it comes to wisdom.
And there’s lots of very simple grandmas and grandpas living out in the hollers who got more wisdom than a room full of philosophy PhDs. Wisdom, is that common sense? It’s like my wife, she’s the wise one, right?
When my kids were in the college, all three of my kids ended up going to Christian colleges.
And then when they were writing papers on eschatology or something, they would call me, all right, and I would, you know, wax eloquent.
When they needed to know how to get a stain out of the carpet or what to do with a crying baby at two in the morning, you know, they wouldn’t. They would call me and I’d say, well, you know, in the grand scheme of things, Jesus will return.
No. Get mom. Dad, get mom. I need help here. Get mom. I need wisdom. I need common sense.
I need somebody who knows what they’re talking about. That’s wisdom. Wisdom. And it’s accessible to all. And it is to be proclaimed. We’re not to keep it. And therefore, we are to proclaim Jesus. We are to proclaim the wisdom of God.
And, dear ones, my goodness, we get so buffaloed by the fact that the world doesn’t like it. We’re so dismayed. Recently, a pro football kicker spoke at a Catholic university, and he said nothing but Catholic things.
And he maybe was a little heavy, you know, in my opinion, maybe he was a little heavy-handed on the woman’s places in the home kind of thing. But basically, he didn’t even say that. He just said, you know what? There’s great value and joy about being a homemaker and a mother, and there’s nothing disgraceful about that.
And if that’s your heart’s desire, go for it. And do you know, for the first time in history now and since the history of polls anyway in America have been taken, women are less happy.
Young women are less happy than men because now we’ve told women that you only can be happy in this one path of life. And the traditional path of life that has been very fulfilling for many women for centuries is they’re told that they’re stupid and they’re less than if they pursue that path.
And this guy got up and he said, that’s not true. Oh, my gosh. People went nuts. And I love the fact that he’s not backing down. He says, no, I believe what I said. I believe what I said.
And so when you proclaim wisdom, when you proclaim Jesus, don’t be alarmed that there’s backlash, dear ones. It’s not our job to be popular. It’s our job to be faithful. It’s not our job to be popular.
And here’s what will happen. The message will resonate with some who have ears to hear and will be opposed by others who don’t want to hear it. So what? Well, they’ll get mad at me. They’ll kill me. Not in this culture, not in this culture, but in some cultures, they’ll kill me.
I love what Bill Johnson says.
You can’t threaten me with heaven. You can’t threaten me with heaven. And so proclaim wisdom. Proclaim Jesus. Proclaim the truth. Speak it.
Wisdom has great goodness and value, and people will use difficult questions to run down rabbit trails and to avoid the simple, direct confrontation of wisdom.
I’ll never forget the first time I was at a Pentecostal church. I was a young Christian, and I was a Kumbaya hippie, all right? I was a Jesus movement Kumbaya hippie. And we worship like this. Kumbaya, my Lord. Kumbaya.
My sister, who was trouble, man, she was getting in all sorts of trouble. I was praying for her, and the Lord saved her. He just didn’t save her in the way I wanted him to.
He saved her with a Pentecostal boyfriend who wore a suit and gold chains and drove a Porsche and took her to a Pentecostal church. I’m not talking about a 2024 Pentecostal church. I’m talking about a 1980s Pentecostal church. Men in suits with products in their hair, Pastor driving a Cadillac with a big ring. Women with poofy dresses and shoulder pads.
And you want to talk about big hair? I mean, if the ceiling fans were low, they were in trouble, all right?
These people are all dressed up. They’re all poofed out. And I go to this church, and they’re running. They’re running around the church, all dressed up. And they’re running around the church, and their hands are in the air, and they’re yelling hallelujah.
And nobody’s going, kumbaya, my lord. Ain’t Jesus cool, man? Oh, dude, he’s so cool. Right on. Nobody’s doing that. And I thought, I remember I judged these people, said, these people.
These people are all just faking it. They’re all just showing off. And I love how the Lord, that’s a rabbit trail. See, I’m being confronted with God saying, will you worship me passionately? And I take the rabbit trail and say, well, these people aren’t doing it. They’re faking it.
And the Lord won’t let you take rabbit trails. He said, well, let’s forget about their worship. Kevin, how about yours? Would you lift your hands to me? Regardless of what they’re doing, would you simply lift your hands to me? How hard is that?
It was hard because I was proud. And now the real issue, which had nothing to do with the big haired ladies, had everything to do with the heart inside of me, was being confronted by God.
That’s what wisdom does. It won’t let people take rabbit trails. It gets to the heart of the mission. So I did what every first time handraiser did. That was the beginning.
Now I’m one of these, you know, now I’m wash the window. I’m all over the place. It was a start.
We had guys, I go to a Bible study on Tuesday night with a bunch of guys. And the Bible study, there’s other things going on in the room where we’re having a Bible study, and there are a couple guys there playing cards. You could tell they were just paying attention to the Bible study.
One of the guys at the Bible study is kind of a bold evangelist. All of us noticed these guys paying attention, but we didn’t do anything. But he did something.
He said, hey, you guys, if you were to die tonight, where do you think you’d go?
I thought, well, there we. It’s on, isn’t it? That started it. And we just. And it was amazing that the rabbit and these guys actually engaged with us. And at the end, they were drawn in.
We didn’t lead them to Christ, but they did pray. They did pray, Lord, if this is real, reveal it to us. Show us. And they were actually drawn in. They were out at a distance, and they came in and joined us.
But it’s amazing the rabbit trails they would try to take. This guy said, well, you know, my grandma is a good, devout woman. Yeah, we’re not talking about your grandma. He said, if you died tonight. Well, yeah, but what about the crusades? That’s my favorite. It’s like, oh, yeah, bring up something 1200 years ago.
And it was great because the wisdom of the guys talking, they said, yeah, yeah. They wouldn’t go down and explain the crusades. I would have gone, well, you know, not all the crusades, the first crusade was actually justified.
You know, the others were kind of, you know, I’d have got into the history of it and all that because that’s the fool I am. But the guy who was talking to him, just perfectly wise, he said, yeah, there’s been some things done in history in the name of Christ that weren’t Christ. But what about you? This is between God and you, not between crusaders 1200 years ago. What about you?
And so don’t let complex theological issues that you haven’t figured out yet stop you from the main and the plane.
All right? And I said this earlier, the way to grow in wisdom is to do the things you do know. Someday you’ll understand the things you don’t know. But sitting around contemplating them and not doing anything now is the way to stagnation.
Don’t let the complex stop you from the simple. That’s wisdom. I think it was Mark Twain. I loved what he said. He said, listen. He said, it’s not the things in the Bible that I don’t understand that trouble me. He says, it’s the things I do understand. I love that. Yeah.
I had a woman come to me and say, what part of thou shalt not commit adultery don’t you understand? She was committing adultery on her husband. And she said, well, listen, pastor, God is love. I said, yes, God is love. And I don’t love my husband. I love this guy. So therefore, it’s okay that I leave my husband and my two kids for this guy. Because God is love, right?
No. God, who is love, said, thou shalt not commit adultery. That’s the loving thing to do, not to cheat on your husband.
That’s the loving thing to do for your kids, not to cheat on your husband. And this is why pastoral counseling drives me nuts. She divorced the guy, but I told her, you can be proud of me. I didn’t say, oh, gosh, that’s a great argument. Yeah. I guess I should cheat on my wife, too, because, you know, she burnt the toast this morning.
All right. So, dear ones, it is more valuable than jewels and more precious than precious metals. Can you imagine the line? There are 16 of us here tonight.
Can you imagine how many people would be here tonight if we were freely handing out gold coins and silver coins at the door? Pounds and pounds of gold. And then we had some jewelry too, some diamonds. And we’re just handing them out. Come on in. We’re handing them out at church. There’d be a line out the door.
That shows you that we live in a foolish world. Because, dear ones, I’m not saying I’m a great preacher, but I’m saying this is a great book and I’m trying to articulate it.
I’m telling you right now, I’m giving you something more precious than gold, more precious than silver, more precious than diamonds. It is the wisdom of God.
And here’s what’s so great about that. The Bible says that’s free. James 1 says, anyone lack wisdom. Yeah. Okay, here’s how you get it. Study for 32 years, pay thousands of thousands of dollars, get into the student debt. No, here’s how you get it. Ask and God will give it to you generously.
That which is more precious than the things that people fight wars for and die over and spend their whole lives pursuing, that which is more precious than that is handed out freely by God to the simple, faithful, believing person who asks for it.
And I thought, man, tonight, when we pray at the end of the service, you know, we can pray for healing and all those other things we pray for. But tonight we’re going to pray for wisdom.
And I thought, no, we’re not going to do it at the end of the service. At this point in the sermon, so I don’t forget, because I do that. At this point in the sermon, I’m going to do it right now.
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, heavenly Father, that is an incredible promise that you give us in the Bible. That which is the most precious gift that you can bestow, more precious than tons of gold and silver, more precious than diamonds and rubies, more precious than things people fight and die for.
You give freely to simple, humble people who say, oh God, I need wisdom to live my life in a way that lives it well, loves others, and honors you, and will inherit eternal life and eternal riches from your gracious hand. God, that’s what I need. And you said you’d give it generously. I believe it, and I ask for it upon every soul in this room.
Lord, would you pour out the wisdom to live a good and godly life that will lead to eternal riches and fruitfulness for your kingdom on this earth?
God, we don’t know how to do it. We’re not smart enough. We’re not clever enough. Sometimes we’re not brave enough. But would you give us the wisdom to do it and the courage to act on that wisdom?
Those are two simple things we ask for, Lord, the wisdom to know how to live life well, and then the grace, the courage to do it in Jesus name. Father, with all the sincerity we have, we’re asking for that. Amen.
Amen, man. Right there. That could change the world, people. That could change the world. God is good.
There’s no crookedness or perversity in it. There’s no crookedness or perversity in it.
We’re coming up on another election cycle and all. And the whole election cycle, you have one group of people saying that group is crooked and perverse. You have another group of people saying that group is crooked and perverse. You have one group of people saying, say, your guy’s a felon, he’s a liar, he’s a cheater.
We have another group of people saying, oh, you just have a corrupt, targeted justice system, and you’re liars and cheaters. We’re just shouting back and forth at each other, you’re crooked, you’re crooked, you’re perverse. Guess what? Jesus isn’t.
And as much as you might have political opinions about all that’s going on, as much as I have political opinions about all that’s going on, the truth is, we don’t even know. We have ideas, and those ideas lead to strong opinions, and that’s fine. And my opinion probably is shared with your opinion. Most of you, your opinion.
My mother-in-law, God bless her, she was just an arch conservative. And I told, I think I told you this last week, but, you know, she passed away in our living room, and my wife didn’t want to do the test. She said, Kevin, I think mom’s gone. Could you go in and check?
And so I went in, you know, and I put my hand in front of her mouth, and there was no breath. And I put my glasses, old school, I put my glasses down in front of her, no steam.
And I reached down to her neck, and I felt for a pulse, and I couldn’t find it. And I reached her wrist, and I couldn’t find any pulse, and she looked dead.
But I did. I had one final test. And you got to have humor at times like this. I bent down and I said, mom, I’ve changed my mind. In November, I’m voting for Biden. No reaction.
I told my wife she’s dead. Because she’d have been alive. She went, what? Democrat? Here’s her famous line.
She said this once, you know, once a week at least, probably once a day. Democrats have no common sense, no wisdom. That was her line. So, yeah, she’s a wise woman.
But, you know, I probably agree with you on those things. But the truth is, I’d always tell her. She’d always say, I know why they’re doing that. And I said, no, you don’t. You can judge what they’re doing and say what they’re doing is wrong, but you don’t know their motives, you don’t know their hearts. You don’t. You just don’t.
But we suspect perversity and crookedness. Maybe rightly so. But in wisdom, there’s no perversity or crookedness.
One of the worst things you can be on this planet is a crooked, perverse preacher who markets and traffics in the things of God. I would not want to be that person and face judgment.
And I just want to tell you people with all the sincerity I have, I love you. I love what I do. I thank you for paying me, but I don’t do it for the money. And I’m not after your money.
I’m not after your praise and adoration. Do I like that? No, it’s not. I want the reward, and I do love you. I want things to go well for you and for your children and in your lives.
And so as much as I am able, I want there to be no perversity or crookedness in the firehouse church, all right? And if you tithe tonight, God will return 700 fold. All right?
So listen, here’s how wisdom explains. Wisdom is self-control. It’s not given over to impulse. It’s not given over to impulse. So many.
So many things in our life we make a mess of because we act upon impulse. So many children are born out of wedlock. So many. So many. You know, we got this thing, you know, so many children are aborted because they were unwanted children, because people had impulse sex. People are in, are in huge credit card debt because they impulse buy, all right? And we do things out of impulse. We all do it. None of us is immune from that. I do it, you do it. But wisdom is self control.
It’s not given over to impulse. People get shot. People go to jail because of what we call crimes of passion. What’s a crime of passion? It’s a crime of impulse. Wisdom is self-control. And at the foundation of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
Listen, there’s no fear of the Lord in our land. The god of our culture is a gentle, slightly senile grandfather or maybe grandmother or maybe trans. But it’s gentle. You’ll all make it. Gee, golly, he just loves us all. Got Christmas presents for us all.
There’s no fear of the Lord in our life. But I just told you I don’t want to stand before God. And God said, Kevin, you are a corrupt preacher. You preach for money, you preach for fame, you preach for your own ego and your own satisfaction.
Man, I don’t want to go to that spot in hell. I have a little bit of fear of the Lord in my life. I’m going to meet Jesus face to face one day and give an account for every word that’s come out of my mouth.
Now, I’m not afraid of God because I believe very much that the blood of Jesus and his mercy covers my sin, and I believe very much in his goodness and grace that it’s aimed at me.
And, you know, we can’t seem to hold two ideas in our head. We can’t seem to hold the idea in our head that God can discipline us and God loves us, and yet every one of us who has kids understands, should understand that perfectly.
You don’t discipline your kids. You don’t love them.
I’m so glad I wasn’t a woman, not as the old, just because your job’s harder. You have kids. And I don’t know why kids do this, but they run around the house and they go, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.
I’d be sitting there going, I’m so glad I’m not mom. Then they go, dad. I would say, what? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what? I say, ask your mother. I’m so glad I’m not her.
But every once in a while, the kids get out of hand, right?
They get running around a little ragged, and she’d be tired. You know, my mother used to say this. My mother used to say, listen, I am sick and tired. And I would always want to say, well, then go to bed. But I had wisdom not to say those words. Those would not have been good words to say.
So. But, you know, every once I tell my wife was tired, and she would actually say this to me. She would say this to me. She said, Kevin, I need you to bark at the children.
I need you to bark at the children. This is when they were little. Didn’t work as well when they were teenagers, but when they were little, physically, I’m not imposing. You know, I’m not six-five and big and scary looking. In fact, at the last church I pastored, they nicknamed me the Pillsbury Doughboy. That’s, you know, so I was. I was only scary in the movie Ghostbusters.
But anyway, I have a. But my voice is scary. Dogs and small children respond to my voice. And so Jill would say, Kevin, bark at the kids.
And I would just do it. It was great. I just. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Yeah, right. Marilyn, listen to your mother, okay? Fear of the Lord. Fear of the dad. Fear of the dad.
My son is a very successful businessman. He loves Jesus. He’s a wonderful father. I’m so proud of my son. He’s a wonderful man.
Three years old, he did something very defiant. So I took him to his bedroom. He was throwing a fit. I said, you can’t come out of this bedroom till you stop throwing the fit.
And he looked at me at three years old and said, I’m going to hit you. Now, I know this is not politically correct, but you know, I didn’t say to him, I understand those feelings. Golly.
Here’s what I said to him. I said, if you hit me, I will hit you back. And his hand came into motion and struck me. As his hand was coming down from this side, he was looking at it. He did not see from this side.
And so it was pop, bang, and he lifted a little off the ground, and then with lip trembling, his last essence of defiance. That didn’t hurt.
This is the moment I knew my son would be successful. I looked at him and said, would you like one that does? And he said no. You will go far in life, son.
Fear of the Lord. That is actually the foundation of wisdom. God is bigger than you. God is smarter than you. God is not almost always right. God is always right. And you are going to face God.
It says, for man it is to live once and face judgment. You are going to come face to face with God, and you are either going to be covered in the mercy of Jesus, or you are not.
And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. People tell me all the time, oh, I just came to Christ out of love for God. Good. You should come to Christ out of his amazing love. But there ought to be something else in there. It’s like, you know what?
I don’t want to face the consequences of living life without God. There ought to be something. The proverb says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I grew up Catholic, all right? And here’s what I appreciate about being Catholic. Growing up, I learned the fear of the Lord, right? You go into a Catholic church and it is like you don’t know what it all means, but it’s all holy and mystical and powerful and transcendent.
What I didn’t learn in the Catholic Church, and I’m not saying they didn’t try to teach me this, I just didn’t learn it, was that I could have a friend in Jesus. That’s what the Protestants taught me.
But sometimes we Protestants, we’re so friendly with Jesus that we forget who it is that we’re friends with. He’s a good, good father. What does that mean? He loves to play with us on the floor. What else does a good, good father do? Yeah.
I used to tell my kids, I said, look, I’m going to be the best dad ever. When you’re a teenager, I’ll say yes till you give me a reason to say no. But if you give me a reason to say no, I said, the hammer will fall.
Now, I don’t know what the hammer was. It was a good line. It was like, ooh, we don’t want to see the hammer. It’s like, no, you don’t. I’m trying to think, what would the hammer be?
I don’t know why I came up with that, but it was like, Thor, you know, the hammer will fall. Okay. All right, dear ones, how is he like Jesus? He says, I love those who love me. Whoever loves wisdom, he loves. And there he says, just like Jesus, those who seek me will find me.
God is so generous with wisdom. Seek and you will find. Knock, the door will be open. Ask and it will be given you. He says, riches and honor are with me. Why would you be corrupt? Why would you take a bribe?
Why would you go up to somebody’s porch and steal their Christmas present, a $20 trinket in exchange for eternal glory?
Why would you settle for what does not bring life, instead of for what brings life eternal and abundantly, riches and honor?
Listen, if your daddy, if your savior is Jesus and your daddy is God, you got a rich daddy, you got a rich daddy and he’s good. What does he say? What does Jesus say? Jesus doesn’t just say you get to go to the good place, you get to go to heaven. What does he say?
Co-heirs. Do you hear that, co-heirs? With the eternal Son of God, you are co-heirs.
Why would you settle for the temporary and transitory pleasures and wealth of this world and pursue them in a corrupt and dishonest way, forgoing wisdom, forgoing Christ, and forfeit? What did he say?
36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? (Mark 8:36-36, NLT)
You know, King Charlemagne was the most powerful man in Europe in the 8th century. And it is said, it is said, and he wasn’t always a good man.
It looks like he may have repented at his death, because it said that in his burial, he wanted to be seated on his throne and he wanted his finger placed on that verse in the Bible. What does it profit a man, the most powerful man in the world of his time, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
And you know what wisdom’s answer to that is? Nothing. It profits him nothing. Wisdom promises honor, favor, eternal life, riches. It’s birthed and possessed before creation. God created the world.
He created the universe in wisdom. And as I said, this is a poetic picture of Christ. It’s not a direct one to one correlation, but it is a poetic picture of Christ in creation. And creation points to the great wisdom of God. It doesn’t point the opposite. This idea that science and religion somehow conflict is not true. It is true that science and religion are asking different questions. But nonetheless, every scientific discovery made in the 20th century points to a creator, points to an intelligent creator.
Every cell in your body has a code in it called DNA. It’s a language. You have a written language that told your body growing up how big your nose was going to be. And it told in the womb that you were going to have five fingers and five toes on your right and on your left.
There’s no such thing as a code without a code writer. There’s no such thing as a book without an author. This did not come to you because somebody dumped all the ingredients in the Pacific Ocean.
And the waves tossed and turned. And through millions of years and billions of years of mutation, wallah, a phone appeared upon the beach. Really smart nerds put this together. Sure, sure. Of course it could.
You could fly all the bombers in the US Air Force over a space the size of Manhattan with nothing but steel and concrete and water, and open the bombardier doors, and Manhattan would appear. It could happen. Sure. Just keep trying.
And that’s everything. The design of the universe, the fact that the universe has a beginning, DNA, everything, points to the creation.
The wise, incredibly detailed creation of God. And finally, wisdom makes an appeal. It says, listen and be blessed, hear and be wise.
I always tell people we dumb down. The word worship in church drives me nuts. Pet peeve. Pet peeve. Worship is the singing part of church. Oh, let’s. Let’s do the worship. I love the church’s worship. But then the sermon starts. No, no, no, no. Worship doesn’t mean singing and getting goosebumps because we sang your favorite song. All right?
And by the way, if we don’t sing your favorite songs here with the list that I pick out, and you’re critical of the list that I pick out, any Sunday you want, you can pick out the list, and we’ll sing your favorite songs. And actually, none of you gripe, none of you complain. But you know what? I get to pick out the songs. So if you want to, you can. But anyway. And you liked them tonight, right? Thank you. Good answer. All right, so if they’re about Jesus, sing them.
They don’t have to be your favorite. But worship isn’t singing. Worship is a bowed down life.
So if you’re paying attention, even the least bit of attention to this sermon, you’re still in a posture of worship, because what are you doing? You’re bowing down before the word of God saying, Lord, I want to be taught by your word. I want to be instructed by the scriptures.
When you give your money that box back, there isn’t a box. It isn’t a collection box to meet the fiscal needs of the church.
It is a worshipful offering unto God. You’re saying, God, I trust you with my finances because you gave them to me in the first place. They’re all yours. Not just 10%. 10% doesn’t belong. 100% belongs to the Lord. But you give him what you give him, and that’s an act of worship.
Your prayers, when you leave this place and you just act like a Christian in the workplace, in the neighborhood, and you humbly submit to God, that’s an act of worship. Worship is a lifestyle, not four songs on a Sunday.
Music is a great tool to worship. That’s what music is. It’s a great tool to worship. Use it as a tool.
You can sing those songs and not worship, and you can worship without singing songs. So don’t ever use worship. Don’t ever use the singing part of church as a shorthand for worship in my presence, because I will feel the need to be sanctimonious and correct to you. And so you mean the singing part of worship.
Every worship leader I’ve ever had, you know, they always. I just love it.
I go visit them, and they say. And they’ll say something in church, like, when the singing part of worship’s like, I got you. I gotcha. My words are in your head. I love it. All right. What does that have to do with what I was talking about? I don’t know. Wisdom? Yeah, yeah. Here. Hear and be wise. There you go.
You’re worshiping, you’re listening, you’re paying attention. Be intentional. Be diligent. Make this the goal of your life. Pursue Jesus. What’s the goal of your life? Pursue Jesus. I’m a businessman. Good. Pursue Jesus in business.
I’m a schoolteacher. Great. Pursue Jesus in school. I’m a homemaker. Good. Pursue Jesus at home. I’m a farmer. Good. Pursue Jesus on your farm.
There’s been this dichotomy in church that, like people like me, we pursue Jesus full time. People like you pursue Jesus for an hour on Sunday, and they go about your daily business. That’s a lie from the pit of hell.
You’re more important in this grand scheme than I am because you’re actually positioned strategically as missionaries in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the community. You are more strategically located than I.
People expect me to talk about Jesus. They’re surprised when you do it. You are strategically placed. You’re a teacher for Christ. You’re a homemaker for Christ. You’re a businessman for Christ. Whatever you do, it is for Christ. I do it for Christ. I am Christ’s witness in this place.
I remember, you know, people will come to me in my neighborhood and they’ll tell me their problems, and here I am. I’m a pro, right? Supposedly. There’s no pros at this, right?
I’m just somebody you pay to keep out of the unemployment line because you don’t like public speaking.
So the people come to me and they’ll tell me their problems. You know what I think? Oh, Lord, they need a Christian in their life. And Lord’s like, well, they got one now. They go, well, who? Who? Jesus, who? Oh. Oh, yeah, right, right. That’s right. Well, Lord, they need a better Christian. You’re the A Team, Kev. Okay. Your holy spirit must be big, and he is.
Make this the aim of your life. Be diligent. Be persistent.
When I die, I want to die chasing Jesus. I want to run all the way to the finish line, you know?
I want to be in a hospital. Well, pastor, you don’t have much time. Well, you know, Jesus, I’d like to talk to you some more, but conversation might take longer than the time I got, so make your reservation.
My mother-in-law was so pleasant to the people in the hospital. God bless her. She was a witness for Christ. She was suffering and struggling, and she was just pleasant and loving and kind.
I don’t know if that would have continued if any of them had told them they were democrats, but they didn’t, so it worked fine.
He who finds me finds life and favor. Why wouldn’t you make this the central pursuit of your life? He who finds me finds life and favor.
We’ve been praying in our men’s Bible study, the prayer of Jabez. Oh, that I would be an honorable man, Lord, and that you would bless me and expand my territory.
That you would put your hand upon me and protect me from doing harm or bringing pain or coming under harm and pain. I want the favor of God. I want the hand of God on my life. I don’t want to do this alone. I don’t want to earn this. I need Jesus. I need the Holy Spirit.
What does he say? Seek and you will find. Wisdom is there. God is there. Jesus is there. If you find him, you find life and favor. And then it ends with this. A warning.
If you ignore wisdom, if you ignore Christ, if you try to do it on your own and think you’re smarter than God, you love death.
And again, I just have to speak this to you. I know I’m talking to the choir, and I know probably most of you listening on this. If you’re listening on YouTube, I’m talking to the choir, but maybe some of you aren’t. But even if you aren’t, you need to know this as a witness for Christ.
The lie of our current age, every current age has.
Has lies, and they’re different down through the ages and in different cultures. But one of the profound lies of our current age and our current culture, and it’s being taught in some churches, is that the love of God equals universalism, that everyone is saved.
And I know Christians who, you know, have come to that conclusion, and it’s just not true. The love of God wants God’s voice to be heard because God desires people to be saved. But, dear ones, if you reject God, your heart will reach a point of no return.
And to hate God and to hate wisdom is to love death. The wages of sin is not. Well, in the end, it’ll all be okay. It doesn’t say that. The wages of sin, the wages of an unrepentant life, the wages of believing you’re smarter than God and ignoring the wisdom of God because you have a PhD, is death.
And the eternal gift of God is life and favor. These are absolutes. It’s not. Everybody gets to the mushy middle ground.
There is light and life and eternity and Jesus and glory and new heavens and new earth and the garden of Eden as it was supposed to be, and just living life to its fullest and its most abundant.
Or there is separation from God and all life and all eternity and all glory and all goodness forever. And there’s not. And listen, time is not infinite on that. And your heart is not immune to becoming hard.
And so if you’re hearing my voice today, if you’re hearing my voice on YouTube and you’re just drunk and you stumbled on this and you haven’t been able to turn it off, I just got to tell you, there’s a reason.
Come to Jesus right now. Call us, contact us, go to a church, but come to Jesus. Eternity is in the balance. Your life is in the balance.
God is good. He is loving, He is kind. He is abundant and gracious, and He desires to share that and shower it upon His children.
But if you hate him and reject it, he’ll not stop you. Don’t do it. He who does not love wisdom, he or she who does not love Christ loves death.
And so I end with a call, the wise call to repentance. Turn. Love God. Love his love. Love his life. Receive his forgiveness. It’s very simple. It’s very simple. Give your life over to Jesus Christ and follow him. Ask his spirit to come into your heart and into your life. Repent of your sin.
What does that mean?
You’re going to stop doing the stuff you’re doing and you’re going to start to follow God. Are you going to be perfect at that? No, you’re not. For at least a week. No, you’re not. You’re not.
Those of us in this room, we’ve been practicing that for years. You don’t have to be perfect in it. It’s a change of direction. And you just, you give your life, you surrender your life over to Jesus Christ, God’s only hope and savior, and you invite his spirit to come and live inside of you. And two things happen immediately.
All your sins are forgiven, and the spirit of eternal God, the spirit of Christ, actually comes and takes up residence in you. You become a new creation, and that will never end.
And so that’s my desire. That’s what it means to love wisdom, to love Jesus.
Father, I pray that we would love Jesus. It’s not complicated. It’s not rocket science, not heart surgery. It’s simply this humble God becoming a man and saying to humanity, follow me. I’m life. I’m life. Follow me. The ways of this world are corrupt. They’re perverse.
They lead to death. But God has come to seek and save the lost in Jesus Christ. Turn your heart to him and follow him, and you will have life. And I ask for it in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
For 2000 years, churches have been saying these words. On the night that he was betrayed, he took bread, and he broke it, and he gave it to his disciples. And he said, this is my body which is given for you.
In the same way, after supper, he took the cup. He poured it out, gave thanks to his father in heaven, and he said, drink this, all of you, in remembrance of me. For this is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. It is the blood of the new covenant.
This new covenant that God has established with us. The wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, has established this new covenant with us in his blood. And as you take this meal, you are partaking of the life of Jesus. Holy Spirit.
Just fill this meal with the life of Christ. At your invitation, we come to your table because we want to leave this room more like you than when we came in. So fill us tonight with the life of Jesus. We ask in his name. Amen.
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May 26, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, o God.
And all God’s people said amen.
God is good, dear ones, and we’re going to read about his goodness tonight in 2 Chronicles 7, as we’re going through the Bible.
Hey, welcome, Sean. Good to see you. Yeah. And so we’ve been going through the Bible in a year and reading it chronologically, and now we’re done with King David, and we’re into the reign of King Solomon.
And the story we’re going to read tonight is set during the time Solomon had the task of building the temple.
Remember, David wanted to build the Lord a temple. And the Lord said, you’re a man of blood. You’re not going to do it. Your son’s going to do it. David tried to get all the supplies he could, try to get it all arranged, and Solomon was tasked with building the temple.
It took him seven years to build the temple. And then they brought the ark into the temple.
And Solomon prayed this long prayer of dedication, and at the end of the prayer is in chapter seven. And here is what happened in chapter seven.
So if you got your bibles or your phones, I’m going to read the whole chapter. I’m going to read all of chapter seven. We’re talking about it all tonight.
1 When Solomon finished praying, fire flashed down from heaven and burned up the burnt offerings and sacrifices, and the glorious presence of the Lord filled the Temple. 2 The priests could not enter the Temple of the Lord because the glorious presence of the Lord filled it. 3 When all the people of Israel saw the fire coming down and the glorious presence of the Lord filling the Temple, they fell face down on the ground and worshiped and praised the Lord, saying, “He is good! His faithful love endures forever!” 4 Then the king and all the people offered sacrifices to the Lord. 5 King Solomon offered a sacrifice of 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats. And so the king and all the people dedicated the Temple of God.6 The priests took their assigned positions, and so did the Levites who were singing, “His faithful love endures forever!” They accompanied the singing with music from the instruments King David had made for praising the Lord. Across from the Levites, the priests blew the trumpets, while all Israel stood. 7 Solomon then consecrated the central area of the courtyard in front of the Lord ‘s Temple. He offered burnt offerings and the fat of peace offerings there, because the bronze altar he had built could not hold all the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and sacrificial fat. 8 For the next seven days Solomon and all Israel celebrated the Festival of Shelters. A large congregation had gathered from as far away as Lebo-hamath in the north and the Brook of Egypt in the south. 9 On the eighth day they had a closing ceremony, for they had celebrated the dedication of the altar for seven days and the Festival of Shelters for seven days. 10 Then at the end of the celebration, Solomon sent the people home. They were all joyful and glad because the Lord had been so good to David and to Solomon and to his people Israel. 11 So Solomon finished the Temple of the Lord, as well as the royal palace. He completed everything he had planned to do in the construction of the Temple and the palace. 12 Then one night the Lord appeared to Solomon and said, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this Temple as the place for making sacrifices. 13 At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. 14 Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. 15 My eyes will be open and my ears attentive to every prayer made in this place. 16 For I have chosen this Temple and set it apart to be holy—a place where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart. 17 “As for you, if you faithfully follow me as David your father did, obeying all my commands, decrees, and regulations, 18 then I will establish the throne of your dynasty. For I made this covenant with your father, David, when I said, ‘One of your descendants will always rule over Israel.’ 19 “But if you or your descendants abandon me and disobey the decrees and commands I have given you, and if you serve and worship other gods, 20 then I will uproot the people from this land that I have given them. I will reject this Temple that I have made holy to honor my name. I will make it an object of mockery and ridicule among the nations. 21 And though this Temple is impressive now, all who pass by will be appalled. They will ask, ‘Why did the Lord do such terrible things to this land and to this Temple?’ 22 “And the answer will be, ‘Because his people abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead and bowed down to them. That is why he has brought all these disasters on them.’”(2 Chronicles 7:1-22, NLT)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, o Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14, NLT)
Amen.
All right. The glory of God. The glory of the Lord filled the temple. In chapter seven, Solomon brings the ark of the covenant into the temple, brings it into the holy place, sets it down in the holy place. And something theologians have called the Shekinah glory, the visible, manifest glory of God, descended on the temple, and it was so powerful that everybody just kind of fell to the ground.
They all fell down, and they couldn’t perform their mighty works. They couldn’t perform their priestly works. Fire came down from heaven and consumed the first offerings that were made. God just whoosh.
And these things happen at other places in the Bible. The glory of the Lord came down, if you remember, not when the temple is completed, but when the Tabernacle was completed. When Moses completed the Tabernacle, in Exodus 40, it said, the glory of the Lord came down so powerfully that Moses couldn’t enter the Tabernacle.
Fire fell from heaven, at least on two other occasions that I can think of off the top of my head. When Gideon offers a sacrifice, fire comes from heaven and consumes the sacrifice. And then Elijah and the prophets of Baal, when Elijah offers the sacrifice to Yahweh, fire comes down from heaven and consumes the sacrifice.
These are powerful manifestations of the glory of God. These are when the veil between heaven and earth becomes so thin that God, who is always with us, is omnipresent. But when the veil becomes so thin that we get what we call his manifest presence, we get what happens when all of a sudden, we can feel him. We can sense him. He’s in the room.
John, who walked with Jesus, remember, Jesus walks on the earth. He’s the presence of God. But he’s veiled. He’s veiled in his humanity. But when John sees him in the book of Revelation, remember, John’s his best buddy. He’s very familiar with Jesus. When John sees Jesus in the book of Revelation, what happens?
He says, I fell at his feet as one dead. That’s the glory of God. God is glorious. The Bible talks about him as unapproachable light.
When Julie spoke here, she said that the whole room lit up and there was no darkness, not even the corners, that God’s glory showed up. And I’ve been in places, and I’ve had times and experiences, and you probably have, too, where what you believed, that God is always present. All of a sudden, you experienced. You experienced. I’ve been on the ground. I’ve had people pray for me, and I went down on the ground. I couldn’t get up. And I’ve prayed for people, and I felt God’s presence come upon me, and I feel it come upon them. And sometimes they fall to the ground.
People will say the Pentecostal name for that is slain in the spirit. It’s not my favorite language, but it’s the name the church adopted. When people get slain in the spirit, people will say to me, they’ll say, why did those people fall? And I have an answer.
I went to three years of seminary and spent thousands and thousands of dollars so that I could come up with this answer. And here it is. Because they can’t stand. That’s why they fell. The presence of God they experienced in such a way that they lost the ability to remain standing.
Now, not everybody has that experience. That doesn’t mean that they’re less spiritual. That doesn’t mean that they’re not experiencing the presence of God in some other way. That’s just different people react in different ways. Sometimes people cry. I pastored a church in California.
A lady cried every Sunday for three years. She’d come to church and she’d cry, and she’d come to me after service, and she said, why am I crying, pastor? Why am I crying?
I said, well, because I think you’re experiencing the presence of God. Some people laugh. You’ve heard holy laughter. Maybe you’ve heard where people. Yeah, there’s a surprise. Kathleen laughs yes, yes. No, it’s good laughter. In fact, I’ll tell you a story about that, Kathleen. I’ll tell you a story about that.
I have a physical healing happened with a friend of mine named Faye Hodges. He was a good brother in the Lord, and he had had. And Faye was very an optimistic guy. He’s a very upbeat guy, very friendly, happy guy, and he had open heart surgery.
And here’s one of the things I’ve experienced now with, just as I’ve looked at people who have had bypass surgery after bypass surgery, I don’t know if it’s true with women, but the men I’ve noticed who have had bypass surgery, they go into a depression.
Even the most optimistic and cheerful ones. My father-in-law, who was a very optimistic guy, went into depression. Faye, who was a very optimistic guy, went into a depression. And it just wasn’t like Faye to be depressed. And he was kind of down.
We went to a conference, and it was a healing conference. We’re at this conference, and late the second night of the conference, Faye waited to get prayed for. I was already in my room. I had already left. Faye got prayed for at 10:00 at night.
And he began to laugh as the presence of the Lord, the glory of God, descended upon him. And Faye laughed for 3 hours. He laughed till 01:00 in the morning.
The next morning he got up and he said, Kevin, the fog is lifted. The cloud is. And he was healed of that depression. It left. It was gone. It was gone for good.
And so that’s a story about that. But there’s different ways that happen. There’s different manifestations that happen.
When the fire from heaven comes, when the smoke or fog-like presence comes, the weight of God, God’s glory disables the priest. The weight of God’s glory can disable you.
In the book of Acts, what they looked at, the crowd looked at the disciples in the book of Acts, and it was 09:00 in the morning. And what was their conclusion about the disciples as they looked at them? They’re drunk. They look drunk. And they said, they can’t be drunk. It’s only 09:00 in the morning.
Obviously, God did not perform Pentecost in Ireland, so you can pick on your own people, all right? It’s not racist if they’re your people, all right?
So anyway, it’s only 09:00 in the morning. So God’s presence will do something to you, and it may just give you a conviction here. The conviction was it made them aware of God’s love and mercy. They became aware of God’s great love and God’s great mercy, and they began to spontaneously worship.
There’s another instance in the Bible where Elijah and Nehemiah are, the exiles have returned from Babylon, and they’re reading God’s law to them. They become aware of God’s presence. God’s presence falls on that assembly, and they cry. They begin to weep because of their sin, and they weep in repentance.
You might say, well, what’s the right response to God’s presence? Joyful singing and exuberance and praise or weeping and repentance? And my answer is yes. Yes. But I’ll tell you this. When you experience the glory of the Lord, it’ll change you. Something’s going to happen.
Something’s going to happen. And so these people began to experience God’s presence. As the glory, the manifest glory of the Lord, filled the temple, they did the right thing. They did the right thing. They began to worship. They began to worship.
In the Old Testament, worship wasn’t about coming to church, lifting your hands, and singing four songs. Worship was about killing some animals, bringing some animals to the altars, thanksgiving offerings, and sin offerings. So, 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats.
Let me tell you something about worship. Worship is sacrifice.
Worship is sacrifice. We have dumbed down worship somewhat in our culture, our church culture, to mean worship is singing my three favorite songs until I get the goosebumps. That’s not worship. The goosebumps could be a responsive word. We just talked about that. You could experience the presence of God as you’re singing your three favorite songs.
But worship is, in fact, a sacrifice, and you already made one. You’re here. Okay? Most of the culture isn’t here. 92% of Kitsap County does not attend worship services. All right? Only 8%. I’ve heard six. Six or 8%, maybe seven.
But most of Kitsap County won’t make the sacrifice to go to a public gathering where people worship. So you’re. I’m preaching to the choir. All right? You are. You are worshipers in the sense that you made a sacrifice of your time.
If you are in the least bit paying attention to what I’m saying and applying it and saying, yeah, that’s what the Bible is saying. Listening to the Bible and listening to the guy preach about the Bible, you’re actually. That’s an act of worship. You are giving of your attention. Worship is always about sacrifice.
It’s always about giving. If you put an offering in that box tonight, that is not a collection to keep the institution alive. I know churches treat it that way, and I know we use it that way. We pay bills with that money and all that sort of thing, but that’s not the purpose of it.
God doesn’t need your money. And I’ll tell you this. As much as I think the firehouse church needs your money, it’s not true. God doesn’t need your money. The firehouse church doesn’t need your money.
But giving of your money is an act of worship. It’s a sacrifice, right? You can spend that money on something else instead. You say, God, I trust you with the resources you have given me, and so I honor you in this act of sacrifice. This act of worship, all of that is an act of worship.
Giving God the fruit of your lips. When you sing praise songs, what we did, when we sing songs, that’s an act of worship. I’ve been going to church. I’ve told you this. I’ve been going to church for years.
My whole life, I’ve been going to church. We’ve never sang a song about me, right? We’ve never sang a song about Brian. Brian’s a wonderful guy, but we’ve never, you know, Brian walks in the door. We don’t all say, all hail the name of Brian. He’s such a wonderful guy. He rides his bike miles and miles. The hours go flying by. You know, we never say anything about Brian.
That’s a yeah. Yeah. I could write a song about all of you. All right, so we’ve never sing a song about Brian.
We never sing a song about Kevin. It’s all about Jesus. And what are we sacrificing there? We’re sacrificing. We’re humbling ourselves. We’re sacrificing my ego, my importance.
We’re reminding ourselves, hey, I’m not the center of the universe. It’s not about me. It’s not about me. God is in the center. I’m the peripheral. He’s the creator. I’m the creation. He’s the savior. I’m the saved. He’s the lover. I’m the beloved. He’s the provider. I’m the grateful recipient. He’s smarter than me.
Turn to somebody next to you and say, God is smarter than you.
God is smarter than you. All right. He’s smarter than you. All right. Sophia turned to Sean and said, Sean, God is smarter than you and so am I. That’s what she thought anyway.
All right, so worship is the response. It involves sacrifice. It’s extravagant. It goes above and beyond. If somebody came in off the street and saw our hands lifted up singing these songs and knew nothing of Jesus, they said, what are those fools doing? They’re singing songs to an invisible God with their hands lifted. One of them is crying and it’s extravagant. It’s foolish.
It’s foolishness. To those who don’t know, love is extravagant. Love is foolish, right?
Listen, I got lots of friends. I only bought one. A gold ring with a diamond. You know, I got lots of friends, but I only bought one. There was only one that I got that extravagant about.
You know, we’re called to love everybody and we do love everybody, but there’s a priority to our loves. All right? You love your family. You know, you do extravagant things for your family. You send them to college.
You pay a lot of money to send them to college. That is either extravagant love or you’re just spending a lot of money to get them out of the house. Either way, it’s extravagant.
Leave. I don’t want to. Here’s $100,000. Go. Go to that place.
And love is joy. Our worship is joyful. Worship is joyful. Listen, we live in a broken world. We live in a painful world. As I told you, my mother-in-law passed away this last week. It went quick.
She got sick May 15, and ten days later, May 25, she passed away. She died. And we loved my mother-in-law. I loved my mother-in-law. She was good to me, and her grandkids loved her, and they came up and saw her and all that.
But it was very interesting to me as she was dying and as the family was gathering and talking. And this has probably happened with you, too, as a loved one is dying. You’re crying and you’re sad, and there’s mourning. There’s grief, and also there are stories.
And in the midst of the stories, what happens? There’s laughter. There’s laughter. My mother-in-law was a Fox News addict and a staunch Republican. Oh, my gosh. She grew up as an Irish Catholic Democrat. But, man, they left her, and she left them for sure.
For years, for years, she’d drive us all crazy, except me. I would trigger her, too, just because it was fun. Everybody was like, don’t get mom talking about politics. And then at Thanksgiving dinner, I just say, hey, mom, what do you think about what Obama just did?
Everybody look at me with these eyes. And she would just launch. She would just take the bait. She would launch. And yes, I am a jerk. I’m sorry. That’s my sin, I confess.
But the other day, my wife, she checked her at 3:00 in the afternoon, and she was still breathing that kind of agitated, near-death breathing. And we went out in the family room doing some other things, and then she went back in at 3:30, and she said, Kevin. Kevin, you got to come in here.
I don’t want to check, but I think my mom’s gone. I think she’s dead.
And so I went in, and I’m not a medical, you know, I didn’t. But I put my hand up by her mouth. I couldn’t feel any breath. Tried to figure out where. Couldn’t find a pulse anywhere.
I did old school. I took my glasses off, put them in front of her face to see if, you know, any condensation. I said, I think she’s dead.
But then, listen, this is at the point of death. And my wife appreciated this.
I said, I’m going to do one more test. And I leaned down and I said, mom, because we know she’s a Christian. She’s going to heaven, mom. I’ve changed my mind. In November, I’m voting for Biden. And she didn’t stir.
I turned to Jill. I said, she’s dead. She’s gone. You may think, well, how morbid. No, what am I doing there? I am celebrating joyfully. We know who my mother-in-law is. We know who Peggy is. Doggone it. Everybody knows. And we also know that she is going to heaven.
And so there was a sense of sadness, and at the same time, joy. And, yes, we live in a broken world. And, yes, every one of you in this room has problems and sadness and heartbreak, and I certainly have mine today.
And yet, still, we’re playing a game. We’ve already won. King Jesus rose from the dead. God is sovereign. He’s our God. And so we worship with joy.
I remember I became a born again Christian through Young Life, and I was a cool, hippie Christian. And so we would sing songs like Kumbaya. Anybody remember Kumbaya?
We’d sing Kumbaya. But if you were a cool, hippie Christian, you’d do it with your hands in your pocket, and you’d sway. Kumbaya, my lord. Kumbaya. Yeah, dude. Jesus is cool. Right on.
My sister, she came to the Lord in a Pentecostal church. Not a modern Pentecostal church, a 1980s Pentecostal church, okay? That means men in three-piece suits, lots of product in their hair, women in real puffy dresses with shoulder pads. And I’m talking about big hair. I’m talking about big, big hair.
I mean, if the ceiling fans were low, there were problems, and these people would just dress to the nines. And I went to their church, and they’re all dressed up, but they didn’t behave like dressed up people. They didn’t behave dignified, right?
They were dressed to the nines, but they were falling and flopping and running and shouting hallelujah. And their hands were in the air. And I’m just going, wow, this is weird. I don’t know this man. And I started judging them. I started judging them. Oh, they’re just doing that to show.
They’re just showing off. They’re just showing off how spiritual they are.
And I love when you start judging other people and God kind of puts his finger on you. By the way, I’ll tell you this. This is true of me. It probably is true of you. Whenever I find myself judging somebody about something, typically, that’s a problem I have, right?
Like, I do not like long-winded, know-it-all preachers. Huh? No, couldn’t be. Couldn’t be moi.
So I’m judging these people for their worship, and this little voice goes off in my head, Kev, Kevin, why not stop worrying about their worship and why don’t you just worship me? I’m like, oh, yeah, okay, God. In fact, Kevin, why don’t you lift your hands to me?
And I did what every first-time hand lifter does, right? Tim Hawkins. What does Tim Hawkins call this? Carry the TV. It’s carry the TV, Kathleen. It’s carry the TV. So he has all the names for all the different postures. Carry the TV. How big is my fish?
How big is my fish? Touchdown, Jesus. Wash the window. All of them. So. But you know what? There ought to be something of joy, and I don’t. Your spirituality is not judged by how high you raise your hands during worship. Everybody’s got different personalities. Everybody’s different.
But there ought to be something joyful and extravagant in your relationship with God. And it went on to feasting. They ate together. Christians eat together every week. We come to the table of Jesus and we eat together.
And in Bremerton, we do the first Sunday of the month, we have a potluck. We should probably start doing that here. We should probably start eating together. We should probably figure out a way to eat together here.
All right, so pizza. Pizza. That’s what we’re doing in Bremerton next Sunday. Next Sunday is our potluck. Lunch is pizza lunch. Everybody’s bringing pizza. So if you guys all want to bring pizza at 05:00 next week, you can. We can bring pizza. You still going to be here, Sean? Great. We’ll get to eat some then.
Has he toned down? No. All right, God. Every. Every. I’ll tell you what the Bible says. There’ll be a wedding feast with the lamb. When Christians gather together around holy days, we feast.
There’s a time to fast. There’s a time to abstain from food and to fast and to pray and to mourn and to weep. But there’s also a time to feast joyfully. And that’s what they did.
If you read the Old Testament festivals, the Old Testament holidays, they’re all about feasting. They’re all about coming before God and having a meal together.
And so there’s joy in this God’s presence. Come, and they worship, and then they leave. And then Solomon gets alone with the Lord. And the Lord appears to Solomon for a second time.
Anybody remember the first time God appeared to Solomon? All right. Anybody? Bueller? Anyone? All right, Solomon’s praying to God as a, he’s a young king and he prays to God. He goes to God and he says, God, how do I govern these people? And God says, ask me anything you want and I’ll give it to you.
God appears to Solomon and says, whatever you want, I’ll give to you. And here’s what Solomon, at a young age, asked God for. He said, God, this job is too overwhelming for me. Give me wisdom.
And God is so pleased with that, he says, I will give you wisdom. And not only will I give you wisdom, but because you didn’t ask for it, I’ll give you riches, I’ll give you honor, I’ll give you glory, I’ll give you fame, but I will give you wisdom.
Do you know that that’s a New Testament promise, by the way, that God will give wisdom to those who ask?
And do you know what the Bible says, how valuable wisdom is? According to the Bible, it is more valuable than silver and gold.
Can you imagine if we handed out silver and gold bars at the front door for people who came to the firehouse church on Sunday night? There would be more than 16 people here. There would be a line.
Paul’s bow would be a buzz. They’re handing out silver and gold bars at the church.
People would just come. And yet people are fools because they would line up for silver and gold. And God says in James, if anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask God who gives generously and without reproach. And wisdom is more valuable than silver and gold.
Wisdom is really what to do with the knowledge and information you have in your life, to live life well. Ask God for wisdom. So God appeared to Solomon and gave him wisdom. God appears to Solomon a second time, and he gives him a great promise. He says, I’ve heard your prayers.
I’ve heard your prayers about this temple. He says, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll hang out in the temple. He asked me to hang out in the temple. I’ll hang out in the temple, and I will answer the prayers you utter. And others cry out to me in that temple. I will hear you from heaven, and I will answer those prayers.
This is a great promise. This is also a promise. In the New Testament, Jesus says to his disciples, ask anything in my name and the Father will give it to you.
Whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give to you. The Father will always hear you. And so Jesus gives this promise too. God’s up in heaven and saying, hey, just ask me. I’ll give you everything.
We go, well, I’ve tried God, and you didn’t answer this. You didn’t answer that, and you didn’t do it this way or that way. I understand that, but I still believe that God answers prayer. He doesn’t always answer it in the way or the timing we want, but he answers prayer. But there’s also.
He gives Solomon a promise about prayer, and then he gives him the conditions about prayer. In other words, God says, I’ll answer prayer, but there are conditions.
Here’s the promise. God will hear. He’s not deaf. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to shout to him. He’s not deaf. He hears us. He hears your whisper. He hears the prayers you pray when you’re crying alone in your bedroom and nobody else knows what you cried about and what you asked him about. He hears all that and he says, I’ll do this.
I will forgive your sins and I will heal your land. I’ll answer your prayer. I’ll heal your crisis. I’ll step into the situation. I will bring my kingdom, my goodness, my blessing, my forgiveness into the situation, into the condition that you’re calling out to me about.
And that’s an amazing promise. But he says, I have some conditions on that. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, turn from their wicked ways, and seek my face, three conditions. I’ll start with, turn from their wicked ways. You know what?
Christianity is still a religion about repentance. In some corners, we’ve turned it into a total feel-good religion, a self-esteem affirming religion. God loves you exactly the way you are. His grace is sufficient, and all that is true.
But there is an aspect of cheap grace, at least in some areas of our theology. There’s an aspect of cheap grace that doesn’t call for us to live a holy life, that doesn’t call for us to turn from the things that aren’t of God and turn back to God. And that’s what repentance is.
Listen, I’ve come to God and asked him some things, and God has said, yeah, that’s fine, Kevin. We’ll get to that. But let’s deal with this first.
It’s like, I don’t want to deal with that. I’ll tell you, here’s why people don’t believe in God. Because he’s hard to believe in. I don’t mean intellectually hard to believe in. I don’t mean, oh, where’s the proof? I mean, I don’t want to mess with a holy God, because I got a feeling there’s some things in my life he’s going to mess with. And you know what?
You’re right. Now, I got great news for you. If you let him, your life will get better, both now and forever. But we don’t want to let him.
When I first became a Christian, there were two areas that were very clear to me that I did not want to surrender over to God. One was my habit of smoking marijuana. I really felt like if I got too close to God, he’d want to have something to say about that. And I liked my weed.
I liked Jesus, but I liked my weed. And the other was, I was an 18-year-old boy, and I wanted to chase girls with nefarious purpose, all right?
I had a sense that the Bible taught things like marital monogamy and faithfulness and find yourself a good girl and settle down. I was down with that. I was fine with that at about 27. But between 18 and 27, I wanted to explore my options. And I didn’t think God was going to be good with that.
But you know what?
I loved him, and I was in a good. And so I would pray and talk about irony, talk about denial. My dad’s an alcoholic. He was an alcoholic at the time. He spent the last 35 years of his life in AA and sober, praise the Lord.
But this was before he was sober. And as a young Christian, I was praying, Lord, deliver my. You’ll hear from heaven. Lord, deliver my father from alcoholism.
Now, the problem with that prayer at that time is I was at Cal State University, Chico, and I was praying that prayer with my bong in front of me, loading up a bowl of marijuana, praying, God, deliver my father from alcohol.
Repent, and I’ll hear from heaven. And here’s what I hear. How can I deliver your dad when I can’t deliver you? And I looked, I go, oh, you mean this? Oh, I’m not addicted. I just do this to relax. And then I hear this, oh, I’m glad you’re not addicted. Throw it away.
And then I said a bad word in my prayer, because I didn’t want to throw it away. But the Lord began to show me. He said, look, Kevin, if you’re serious about following me, this can’t be a part of your life.
On the one hand, you have me, you have Jill, who you’re dating. You have your young life friends, and on the other hand, you have your dope, your pot friends, and that life, and you can’t ride two horses with one fanny any longer.
You can’t ride two horses with one fanny, can you, Steven?
You can’t ride Willie and Chester at the same time. You end up hurt. And so the Lord kind of drew a line in the sand that night. He said, which is it going to be, Kevin? Which is it going to be?
I had to repent to follow Jesus. I had to throw the dope away. And I did.
Now talk about conditions to answered prayer. A year after I threw that dope away, almost to the day, my father went to his first AA meeting and got sober. I think there was some connection there.
I think there was some connection there. And so repent. Turn from your wicked ways. You want to say, well, how did you get better about the other one? That’ll be a story for another time. But I repented of that, too. In fact, you’ve heard the story, so I don’t even have to tell you.
Repent and then humble yourself. Worship. And we just talked about Israel’s response to God’s presence is worship. Our first response to God in our lives is always worship. It’s always to bow down. It’s always to humble ourselves.
It’s always to realize that he is great and worthy of worship. Listen, God is not up there. He doesn’t have a self-esteem problem. God is not up there going, man, it’s hard being God. I’m feeling bad. It’s rough, man. It’s rough.
And then, oh, Mick just went to church and he sang a song about how good I was. I feel better about myself. Thanks for the pep talk, Mick. No, God doesn’t need your pep talk. He’s real secure. He’s real secure.
You need, and I need to worship him because what does that do?
That puts life back into order. That puts everything into perspective.
Remember the song we used to sing years ago in church? Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face, and the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
You got problems. You brought them in here, you sang praise songs to Jesus. Your problems didn’t go away, but they got smaller. Why? Because he got bigger. And your perspective changed. Your perspective changed.
And so you humble yourself in worship. You bow down.
That’s what the word literally means. You take yourself out of the center of the universe and allow God back into the center of the universe.
I had a friend in high school, and he had a bumper sticker that said, Jesus is my co-pilot. And I thought, that ain’t right. That’s bad theology. That’s bad theology? Jesus, take the wheel, that’s better theology. Jesus is my pilot.
What do they call the guy who sits behind the pilot? The one who dies in the movies. All right, yeah, but he ain’t the pilot, right?
No, you’re flying a plane. Jesus is the pilot. All right, yeah. The guy who flies behind the pilot in the movies is like the guy in Star Trek with the red shirt. It’s not going to end well for him.
All right, and then seek his face. We seek his face. What does that mean? God is not a magic genie who comes out of a bottle and answers our prayers. God is our savior, the lover of our soul who desires to have a relationship with us. Jesus uses relational words.
He says, when you pray to God, pray to your father. He is a relational God.
The pagan gods were all about magic. If you make the right sacrifice, if you say the right words, if you appease the gods correctly, they will do what you want. But the God of the Bible is always this God. I want to be with my people.
Read the book of Revelation. I will be with them. They will be my people and I will be their God.
Our God became a man and walked on the earth and made friends with twelve fishermen. Well, half of them were fishermen. They were assorted guys, made friends with blue collar, salt of the earth guys, made friends with women, ex-prostitutes, and sibling rivalry sisters.
And he hung out with people. And now he wants to hang out with you. Seek his face. Not because he’s hard to find, but that’s how the circle of love is completed. He’s already sought you. We never sought God. God sought us. But return the favor. He’s chased us, now chase him.
I remember these two girls in high school, and we were freshman boys. Freshman boys are perhaps the stupidest people on the planet.
We’re sitting on our little cool guy steps, and these two cute girls came by. We’re freshman boys. We have no confidence. We don’t know what to say to girls or anything. We’re just like, you know, just.
One of them turned back. I’ll never forget. She turned back and she looked at us and she says, don’t just stare, chase. We’re like, oh, no, we’re not going to do that.
We don’t know how to do that. We’re not going to do that, chase. What’s God say? I sought you, I loved you, I saved you, I found you.
Get up in the morning and meet with me and say your prayers and read your Bible. Not because you have to, not because of some religious duty that God’s going to whack you down if you don’t do, but because you get to.
There is a good and loving, saving, gracious God, and he desires to have a relationship with us and we can know him and so seek his face.
And those are the conditions of what God hearing, God forgiving, and God healing.
And finally, he tells Solomon, here’s the deal. I want to give you an everlasting kingdom, and I want to dwell in this temple forever to be with my people. Here’s what you guys have to do. Don’t worship other gods. Don’t be a spiritual adulterer, all right? Don’t worship other gods. Don’t do it. Be faithful.
And the kings of Israel couldn’t do it. They failed, and the people of Israel couldn’t do it, and they failed.
So God threw up his hands and gave up. Nope. God sent Jesus. God sent Jesus.
And what does God have in Jesus? A faithful king. He has a faithful king. Jesus is the fulfillment of the kingdom of God, a descendant of David sitting on the throne forever. And when he ascended to heaven, he sat down at the right hand of the Father. He is king of kings and lord of lords, and he is the faithful king.
He is the one where Israel failed, where Israel’s kings failed. Where Judah’s kings failed, God succeeded in Jesus.
Where Adam failed, God succeeded in Jesus. Where the kings failed, God succeeded in Jesus. Where the religious leaders failed, God succeeded in Jesus.
I’ve heard people say, I want to live in Old Testament times. No, you don’t. No indoor plumbing, but no faithful king. You got a bad king, and it’s not good having a bad king. Bad kings are bad. The country is bad. We complain about our leaders, our elected leaders. We pick them and we still complain about them.
And then he says, I will dwell with you forever in my temple.
If you don’t worship other gods, they failed. But God again succeeds. How does he succeed? He makes a new temple.
What’s the new temple? He makes you. You become the new temple. He says, when you put your faith in my son Jesus, I will put his life in you. My spirit will come and live with you. God will come and live inside of you, and you will become the temple, the place of God’s dwelling.
Read the promises God makes about the temple. I will hear you from this place.
When you call out to me, I’ll be attentive. I will dwell here forever. I’ll be here for you always.
And now God says, well, where is that? And Christians throughout the ages have made the mistake. They thought it’s been the church building. Right? Oh, let’s go to the church building. That’s the holy place. Look at the church building.
Here’s what makes the church building the holy place. You, you bring the holiness in with you. And when lots of us are here, that’s why the church building is the holy place.
Without you, the church building is not the holy place. The church building is architecture. It’s a building. My grandkids get this right. My grandkids used to talk; they wouldn’t say, we’re going to church. They would say, we’re going to the building. Why? Because that’s church. We have church at the building.
You’re the temple. You’re the place where God answers prayer. You’re the place where God dwells. Listen, you want to live in this time? You want. Jesus even said that. He said, of all the Old Testament heroes, John the Baptist is the greatest.
He’s the best example of what it means to be somebody living under that covenant. But I got to tell you something. Even the least in my kingdom is greater than John the Baptist. Why? Because in the old covenant, the spirit of God would come upon a person at a particular time for a particular task. But in the New Testament, the spirit of God comes and makes his dwelling in us and with us, and we become the temple.
By our faith in Jesus, God lives in us. He tabernacles with us. That’s why he says, what?
Your body’s a temple of the Holy Spirit. By the way, that doesn’t mean to work out. That’s not what he’s talking about there. Look in the context. What he’s talking about is, don’t commit sexual immorality. Why? Because you’re holy and therefore let your relationships be holy.
Everything you do is sacred. You carry God.
Now the new age philosophy of the world is, oh, everybody’s a child of God and everybody cares. No, it’s not true. Everybody’s created by God. Everybody has the potential.
But the Bible says this: it’s to those who believe in the name of His Son Jesus that He gives the right to become children of God.
12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12, NLT)
And He says, you were born naturally. Right? You were born naturally. But when you put your faith in His Son Jesus, you’re reborn spiritually and you become the temple of God, a child of God, and a friend of God.
And you will be like His Son Jesus, and you inherit eternal life, and your sins are forgiven. This is a great deal. People, this gospel is wonderful.
It’s not easy. Why? Remember when I talked about that repentance stuff? Yeah, there’s some stuff God’s going to want to get off the boat. He’s going to want to throw some stuff overboard. You’re going to be like, not that.
My wife and I have reached the age where we want to deaccumulate. Anybody else reach that age? It’s like we look at our garage and go, where do we get all this stuff? And we think, oh, it’ll be so easy to deaccumulate. We’ll just throw it in the.
But you know, as I’m de-accumulating, I’ll grab something and be like, I’m gonna get rid of it. And it’s like, well, but you know, my daughter gave me that. And there’s kind of like this attachment to it.
Do I ever use it? No. Does it have any value to anybody? No, but there’s this attachment, and it takes something. I’ve got, it takes an act of my will to say I’m throwing it out.
You know what’s made it easier? My wife taught me this. She said, take a picture of it.
You can save it here, and then throw it out. Throw it out.
I got a bunch of artwork people have given me down through the years, and I’m a pastor, so it’s religious artwork. All right, I just want to tell you something. You don’t have. You do not. If you want to give me a gift, I appreciate it. Don’t give me religious artwork, all right? Please don’t give me a plaque of footprints. I have one for every room in the house. I even got. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m setting myself up.
I even got baby Jesus soap on a rope once. I got baby Jesus soap on a rope. So what do you do with that? You can’t wash with it. You can’t scrub Jesus in your armpits. It’s like, can’t do it no more.
Listen, you guys do great on pastoral appreciation. You guys do great. I’m gonna get you over to paint my deck real soon here.
All right, so, all right, so what was my, oh, we want to deaccumulate.
Yeah, you come, you come to Christ, and he’s gonna, he’s gonna, he’s gonna call on you to de-accumulate. That’ll be the hard part of it. But the good part of it, people, far outweighs that. Far outweighs that.
You know what I, you know what I lost when I gave up smoking drugs, smoking dope? I gave up addiction. I gave up slavery.
You know what I lost when I gave up chasing girls that I wasn’t catching anyway? A beautiful wife of 43 years.
I’ve never given something up to God where it hasn’t come back to me, 30, 60, 100 fold. Because he’s good and I’m done. And now you’re saying he is good, and his love endures forever.
So dear ones, joyfully feast tonight. It’s a simple meal of bread and juice, bread and wine, but take it with joy, because in this meal, Jesus himself feeds us. He says this is my body. This is my blood. And I don’t take that literally in the sense that we’re cannibalizing in some way, but I take it more than spiritually.
There’s something about this, just like when you open up your Bible and read, just like when you get to your knees and pray. There’s something about this meal where heaven meets earth in a very earthly thing, bread and wine.
God comes and he says, I will tabernacle with you. I will dwell with you. I’ll be your God, and you can be my people. And that’s a good thing.
So come and eat. You can, because your sins are forgiven. He’s a good and gracious God, and his love endures forever.
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May 12, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon…The post 2024.5.12 TFHC – From Fear to Hope (Psalm 27) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
May 5, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcript coming soon…
The post 2024.5.5 TFHC – David, Jesus, Us (Psalm 18) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
April 28, 2024
The following transcript is provided by Beluga AI.
Lord Jesus, we exalt you for a great salvation. We are so grateful for your great love, for your great mercy. Lord, we are grateful to you. We exalt your name. And, Lord, we pray that your name would be exalted in all the earth and all God’s people said, amen. All right, so we have a special treat tonight. As you know, if you’ve been a part of the firehouse church last fall, Otts and Aiko Kagawa came to us with a prayer request for their neighbor, Julie Harris, who had been diagnosed with cancer.
And we began to pray. Other people, of course, prayed for Julie all over the place, but we were a part of that and we just began to pray for her. And of course, every week Ats and Aiko would come back and the report just didn’t get better. It felt like, wow. But we just continued to pray and we believe that God heals, that there is healing in the name of Jesus. He did it on earth when he walked the earth and he’s still doing it today. And so we were persistent.
And then the last Sunday, Iko came to us and said, I don’t know, this is, you know, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think Julie’s going to go and be with the Lord in a week, in this next week or so. Unbeknownst to us, that was Sunday evening. Unbeknownst to us, that Sunday morning, you had had quite an experience of meeting with the Lord. And so we wanted you to come, Julie, and share that. And so you’re just welcome here. You know, this is the first time a lot of us have gotten to meet you, but we feel like we’ve known you for a while. So, welcome to the Firehouse Church, and come and share for us, will you? All right, good.
Well, thank you for having me, and thank you for praying for me because Jesus does hear, and He does answer, and all glory to Him. And I’m going to follow my notes really closely because this time of night my brain gets a little scatterbrained. So, pardon me.
I’m really excited to share because it’s a story of God and his goodness from really the moment I was born till it brings me here today. At first, I was a little bit hesitant to come and share because I don’t really like to talk about me. But it’s also the realization that it’s not really about me, it’s about God and it’s his story.
And I really want to share that God is real, that there is nothing that he can’t do, as you guys already know by the fact that I’m standing here. I want to talk about the power and goodness I experienced in that moment of healing, but also the journey up to it, because that really revealed God in a way that I never knew him before. So last October, on October 22, I was in a hospice bed. I was barely alive.
It was nearing the end of a couple year battle against cancer, as you guys know, because you walked through it from afar with me, praying. I don’t remember much of that week. My last conscious memories were that I was too weak to lift my head out of the bed on my own. Breathing was painful and it took such effort. I was coughing up blood.
This is probably because I’m an oversharer, but I like to share it all because it’s in that oversharing, it’s in those details that we see the greatness of God, the extreme goodness of Him. Every movement hurt, every breath hurt. When I would wake up, it was just for brief times to be with my loved ones. And I don’t even really remember them coming. That last week, I would wake up, I would need more meds, and I would drift back into just restless slumber. I was filled with dreams of just darkness.
But I also can tell, looking back, that Jesus was with me even in those moments. And I was really supposed to die at any point. Like you said, Iko told you that I was supposed to die that week. They were surprised I’d made it to Sunday. It was at any point. And it was in that nick of time. So, there is proof that it’s nothing but Jesus. There’s no other. There’s nothing else that made this happen but Jesus. In a moment, on that Sunday morning, my brain was cleared of the darkness and the hallucinations.
I was fully awake. And though it still seems strangely wild to see, it almost feels like I’m saying something that I shouldn’t be allowed to say. I saw Jesus. I don’t know if he was in my room with me or if I was briefly there with him. And it’s really hard to come up with words to express exactly what it was like. He was so bright, I couldn’t see him clearly. But what I can say is that he was bright like a raging fire, a raging inferno.
And also, when the sunlight hits the water at a blinding angle, it was somehow like those combined, just that sheer brightness and majesty. And he was so bright that one thing that stands out to me, that’s wild, is even the corners of the room disappeared. You know how even in a brightly lit room, there’s still that teeny little darkness in the corner corners, and there was no darkness in the corners. And that has stood out with me as just, that’s the magnitude of his brightness and glory is that there is no darkness at all.
It was a powerful Jesus. It was like, I can’t use words really to describe it, but it was a powerful Jesus. It was the conquering King Jesus. It was the roaring lion of Judah King Jesus. It was not a weak Jesus. It was the powerful Jesus. And while I can’t really use words to describe exactly how, I know that what I also felt was perfect peace and perfect joy. It was everything the Bible says about in his presence. There’s perfect joy and peace. That’s what I experienced.
And I heard a sound that I can also not put my fingers on exactly what it is, but I think it was the sound of joy and the sound of peace. And it was amazing. And I heard Jesus say, the prayers of the righteous have been heard. And that is all of you who prayed for me. And I knew I was healed. And in that moment, I thought that I was healed with the forever healing. I thought that I was in heaven. I thought that I was with him.
And that was the end of the story. And that is where we want to be. I can confidently say that while I knew it before, in that moment, there’s that no knowing that where we want to be is with Jesus. That’s where we intended to be. That is the goal of all of us. That is where we definitely want to be. And all I could do, and all I wanted to do when faced with Jesus was fall on my face and worship him.
And that is where my husband found me when he came into the room a short time later. It seems unreal to say this, kind of like it seems unreal to say that I saw Jesus in that moment of healing. All of the cancer disappeared. All of the swollen lymph nodes disappeared. All of the masses that you could feel in my abdomen disappeared. I was no longer coughing up blood. I was no longer having a hard time breathing. Like in that split second moment, it was gone. And I kept saying, can you believe it?
It doesn’t hurt to breathe. It doesn’t. I’m not coughing up blood. And finally, dance like he’s, like, you’re not even coughing. And it was like, whoa, I didn’t even. It had been months that it had hurt to breathe. So it was just that instantaneous. Nothing but Jesus. So all glory to Jesus. That is the short story of my meeting with Jesus, and it’s where we want to be.
And I still can’t say why I was chosen to have my cancer removed, because I know it’s a fallen world and we’re all in these bodies which are decaying because of sin and we’re all going to someday die. But I can say that there’s nothing special about me. And it’s purely just to bring God glory, to show that he is real, that he can indeed still do anything. There is nothing outside of his reach. There was no magic formula.
He heard our prayers, and he answered them, but he wants to hear our prayers, even if he answers them in a different way. So I don’t. It’s nothing about me. And we can’t take credit for it. It’s all Jesus. And it’s also a little bit crazy to say it feels kind of strange to stand up here and say it, that while it’s this place of complete rejoicing in the power of God and that he is real and that he can do anything.
And I’m so grateful to have more time with my kids and my loved ones and my family, and I’m still excited to get to have. I get to stand and share God’s goodness. There’s still that part of me where I would so rather be there, just that tiny little glimpse of Jesus. That’s where we want to be. And I have to say that because that’s the hope that we all have, is that we have forever in that perfect place where we would not even want to come back.
So while I can confidently say that with Jesus, eternity is where we want to be, and that’s where we all will be, I can also just as confidently say that he’s with us here and will continue to be each step of the way until then. Because Jesus really, truly, he faithfully walked me home and to the point of death or healing as it was. And His faithfulness in walking with me to that point was amazing. And that’s kind of where I want to. I’m losing my notes.
I want to share on that because I feel like that’s something that God does for each of us as children. He faithfully walks us wherever we may go, wherever the road leads us, in the ups and the downs and the hard times. So I really wanted to share a little bit, actually, like four pages long of the way, of the way that I experienced God’s goodness to me over that year of dying.
And I thought I would start with just sharing just a little bit of a background about me because you guys don’t know me and I talk too much about me, even though it’s God’s story. I was born into a christian family, and I was raised in a very conservative, homeschooled family with four sisters. I was number two with four sisters.
During my teenage years, I rebelled and rejected God, and I spent the next ten years doing whatever I wanted, trying to prove that I could have real, full, abundant life without God and that none of that actually mattered. I worked as a firefighter in profession, and when I wasn’t working as a firefighter, I would spend my life trying to get the biggest thrill, the biggest adrenaline thing possible. It was basically, how much can I please myself? How fast, how quickly?
And I still believe that the biggest miracle of my life is that I lived long enough to meet Jesus, because there were multiple times I should have died before Jesus. And that carried me through the year of dying was I should have died so many other times. And it was his grace that brought me to knowing him first. So really, that was. That’s my forever miracle story, is that he proved himself real to me then and pulled me from the depths of sin and washed me and gave me a clean and new heart then.
Since then, I’ve been blessed beyond what I deserve with a husband, Dan, who I couldn’t talk into coming with me today, but he’s amazing. And with two kids, Amanda, who’s twelve, and Ben is almost ten. I’ve been blessed beyond words with a church family and with wonderful neighbors, with people in my life who have taught me who the God of the Bible is, that it wasn’t a God that I wanted to avoid like I thought as a child.
And I’ve just been amazed to watch God change my heart over the years, in drawing me closer to him. I’ve watched him change my heart and save my marriage. I’ve seen him take my heart of anger and give me compassion for people. I’ve watched over that first year or almost two years of being sick, just the way that he pulled me gently, faithfully, closer and closer to him, like, you can trust me. You can trust me a little more, a little more each day.
But then, in October of 2022, a year before I was healed, is really where I want to start my story. It was then that the reality of my terminal diagnosis was kind of sinking in. I’m a huge “why” person; I want to know why to everything, I want to have everything explained to me. So because of that, I kind of hit this breaking point where I really needed to go one step deeper with God.
I really needed to sort out with him how he fit into the picture of just continued pain and suffering, of dying, of leaving my family, my friends, how that worked, all those hard questions. And I needed to bring to God what I was really not okay with him about and figure it out. So when I honestly went there, I found that I was really disappointed in God allowing me to have cancer with a terminal diagnosis. And I had a lot of arguing with him about why it wasn’t okay.
A lot of telling him how he couldn’t fit this into his promises. Like, he has lots of promises for us and this doesn’t fit in. I was angry on behalf of my family and friends, I was. That they’d have to enter it with me. I was angry that I had no say and was helpless. And for a time, I told God all of that. I poured out my heart to him. I was hurting. I was honest with him, but I didn’t really stop to listen.
And I knew God enough to know that there were answers to it, and I knew I wanted them. But at the same time, I was also a little bit like an irrational, angry toddler who was like, tell me. Tell me why, but I don’t want to hear what you have to say because it might be something I don’t want to hear. And I spent too long like that. But then one day, I broke and I was like, Dan, tell me why. And I emailed my pastor. I’m like, answer me, tell me why.
And, like, just the whole long litany of it. And then that night, my insomnia was really bad. And I often, when I have insomnia, I play my audio bible. And the passage that was on that night was in the gospels, and it was the trial, the death and resurrection of Jesus. And as I listened through that, I was just, again, in such awe. Sorry, this makes me cry of the love that was shown on the cross. I was in such awe of what Jesus had done for me.
And it was like he so gently and so powerfully pulled the hands off my ears and like, okay, bring it to me. Don’t just complain about it to me. Come and wrestle with me about this. And he met the challenges with his goodness. Every single one of the whys, he somehow showed me what ones actually mattered, which whys actually mattered. It was like, why is it okay to die? Became, why would he suffer and die to save me and conquer death for me and give me such complete hope of forever. Why? How is this okay?
Became, how can I not trust the God who’s already carried me so far and whose ways are so much higher than mine? How can I not trust Him? What about redeeming the time lost in my life? Became, why not today? Why can’t you redeem today by living it fully? Is this of the devil? Is this the discipline of God? Is this just because life stinks? Those wise is to bring God glory, not enough. A why? Every single one of that long list of hows, of whys, it was met with just the goodness of God.
And to be honest, his power was really scary. I was kind of left with no words, no complaints. It was there on my living room floor, on my knees at three in the morning, that Jesus won. He became worthy of making the decisions. He became good enough to trust with my kids, with my wife, with my friends, with my cancer, and praying your will be done.
It became something that wasn’t just said as an afterthought or because it’s something I’m supposed to say, but in absolute sincerity as I truly surrendered it all to Jesus. And there’s something about knowing the magnitude of what’s asked of us, but then working it out and being in that place of complete submission to God, desiring only His way, only His glory, that that’s where real life was found. That is where God with us, with God, for us, it became reality.
Not when I was healed and was able to get up and walk, but when it was your way, God, that is where I had that complete confidence of he was with us. He was for us the entire way. And it was like that. It was like a culmination of years long process of Jesus Christ calling me further and deeper and more complete into his will and second to salvation, second to seeing Jesus in my bedroom last October. That was seriously the most powerful night of my life.
And just to experience the submitting to Jesus in the way he was so with us and for us. And it’s hard to put it into words. And I do believe that we are to pray for healing and that God wants to hear us and he does hear us and he does answer us. And there is that moment. This may be kind of silly to say I never prayed for healing again because I felt like God had told me my way, you just follow me.
And that was him readying me to experience the full, abundant life in the year rather than hanging on to the physical hope. And I’m not saying that we can’t hold on to physical hope because God is a healer and he can do anything. But in my walk, it was that complete giving it up that it readied me to receive his abundant life in the midst of heart. And I’m just really thankful that he brought me to that place. So then over the next year, there were good times. Basically.
It was awful because that’s what happens as you’re dying. And I don’t mean it as a victim, but just it’s the realizing the depth of it that it’s such a miracle that the healing happened, but also the magnitude of Jesus carrying me through. It was amazing. There was November after that, I was on this new medication which made me absolutely crazy.
It brought back out that ugly part of me of anger that I felt like I was going to ruin the entire world around me if I had just one little moment of freedom to do so. But there, Jesus was more real and he was more powerful. And he, day by day, mercifully gave me the grace to resist that, to just keep your mouth shut, just don’t do anything. Just that. And those are those little ways that just over the year, I saw Jesus at work in my life. There was no December depression.
Darkness itself came and could be felt. And it was like I was just held there. But Jesus is more real and more powerful than that, too. Even in the deepest parts of it, I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew he was giving strength to get up and do another day. He gave strength to keep opening the Bible day by day; in that opening the Bible to see Jesus and to have the man of sorrows become my closest friend. And then little bit by bit, pull back out into the life. There’s a purpose still here.
There’s a purpose to not waste today. So get up and live to love those around me with abandon, what little time I have left. In March, I was alone in a hospital yet again, and I wasn’t alone very much. It just felt like it when those midnight hours go on. And it was like the fullness of the broken dreams was overwhelming. As I realized what I was actively giving up, not just life, but future dreams to ever be pain free again, independence, dignity, my kids, my husband, my friends. It was just overwhelming.
But somehow in that moment, Jesus was there, and he tenderly came into the room and was enough in every way. It was almost like that little foretaste of heaven where he wipes the tears from her eyes, where he’s like, I am here. I’m in every way, enough. You are not alone.
And I love the prophets in the Old Testament and the way that they gave such full expression to all the emotions of lamentation as they warned people against sin, against sin’s coming punishment.
And I think in our culture, we often skip that step where it’s often the, “you’re not supposed to cry, be tough,” or, “That was last week’s problem. Get over it. Why are we sad about it today?” And I don’t think that’s what we’re meant to do. I think it’s when we step into that complete sorrow and heartbreak, when we pause in the lamenting in the morning, in the sadness, that that’s where we experience God being near us is the, the brokenhearted.
And then, like the prophets, always came back to the hope of God, making the current awful rite that he wanted to rescue. God was going to rescue his people. He had unending love for his people. I found that to be true, too, that it was in that lament, in the fully knowing the wrongness of what was happening, that it was like seeing God like the prophets did, as one who was coming to rescue, one who was coming to make all things right.
And while I didn’t think it would be all things right and that I could stand here and talk, it was all things right and that we’re going to have forever healed bodies in heaven. And it was just in experiencing that deepest part of lament that then it’s the freedom to stand up and to move on. Because Jesus actually wiped the tears from our eyes because we realized where we were. And I lost my notes again.
So over the summer, death became more real. Pain increased. God in his mercy became even more real.
It’s truly the God of the universe, the Jesus who already walked this world and suffered for me. He came and he did it again with me. He’s true to his promise of being right there when we call on him. He’s faithful to give rest to our souls when we come heavy laden to him when we approach the throne. We do find mercy and grace in our time of need.
And over and over again, he did that, sometimes in completely feeling his presence, feeling that he was wiping the tears from the eyes, and sometimes more just in that peace of mind of knowing the truth and knowing it without even the feeling of it. But in the long hours, he was there in the pain; he knew it. The prayers of “I believe, help my unbelief” were always met with peace and confidence. The peace that I was met with over and over again.
It’s hard to describe just the joy that was in the midst of it. And the knowledge of a powerful God only increased as the body became weaker, which is such a. I look back and it’s like that’s where I realized the power of God, really, in a way, almost for the first time. The peace that God granted in letting me know that my kids were loved by Jesus and that they would be cared for and loved by Dan and by so many people around us, that was beyond what I could ask for.
It was amazing to watch God at work with my kids, in my kids’ life, to see Him being enough for them as well each day, and watching Dan be able to trust God fully and see His faithfulness as he just did the next step each day. He did what he needed to do. And I still worried. I still had those moments of darkness, of anxiety, worrying about my loved ones, about my kids. There were still nights of darkness, moments of anxiety, times of discouragement.
I was human the whole way through, and I had all those human emotions. But everywhere I turned, I saw Jesus. And he met me again and again and again. In his word, I heard his voice assure me he was with me. I saw him in control of all his. I saw his majesty as coming king. I saw the light faithfully return in the morning after long nights, and just as faithfully, his presence was with me. I saw his forgiveness as the depths of pain can reveal sin that I really didn’t like in my life.
And I saw how faithfully he was to forgive. And I also saw him in victory over sin and strength to love. Well, as I ran to him, I saw him in the absolute, unshakable hope that there is life beyond the grave and death itself really held no fear. I saw him over and over again in my friends, my church, my family, hearing about people like you praying for me in the text, the visits, feeling the power of the prayers for comfort, watching my kids be loved by so many in each place, big or little.
I saw Jesus as good and worthy of all worship. And that is just the power of God at work. So the power of God at work in healing me, but the power of God at work in carrying us so faithfully, every step. And it was all his strength and my utter weakness, giving me even the strength to call on him.
And there’s this one I always debate if I want to share this or not, but I’m going to. About the time at the end of August or early September, I hit this point of complete despair.
My son had had surgery, and the same day, my palliative chemo had ended because they’d said it would kill me if I did anymore. And when he came home a few days later, I was too weak to really interact with him. It hurt to have him touch me and sit by me, and it was just the pain was too much, and I saw no purpose in continuing on. And the end was coming, but it felt like the end was forever away.
So I hit this point where if I wasn’t in my medicine induced rest, I would be like, I need to end this. So I started saving up all of my strong meds half at a time because I couldn’t just overdose, because I was, like, the whole way through. I’ve told my family Jesus is enough. I can’t let them know that I finished the bottle as the end, so I would save it up half at a time. And it was the night that I saved the last half of it.
It was like Jesus spoke, not audibly, but to my heart. He was like, you hate it when people do one thing and say another. And that is a pet peeve of mine. What are you doing? Am I not enough? And it just. It so makes me cry because it’s the beauty of being called out for sin, right? It’s like I took my eyes off of the one who is enough. I don’t just say he’s actually enough, he actually is enough. And repentance isn’t a bad word.
It’s turning back to the one who is for us and holds us and is in every way, enough. And that’s when I realized that it’s like an invitation to turn from sin, to admit my wrongness. But it’s an invitation from the king of all kings to return to him, to return to the place and let him be right. Let him be enough, because he is enough. So that was just his goodness.
Just his goodness in every little detail, in every little moment, where he met me, where I was, and showed that he really is a fountain of mercy that doesn’t run dry no matter how hard it is. He is that light in the darkness that nothing can stop. He’s enough. And he will faithfully do what he says he will, and he will faithfully walk us home. And he did that. And I’m confident he’ll do it again. So my last memories before seeing Jesus, after that, because it’s like from there, I just deteriorated down, aren’t. I?
Don’t remember the loved ones who came and visited and read the Bible and sang and prayed. But I remember hallucinations of dark figures and pain and darkness and feeling like I was drowning, I think because I was coughing up the blood. And I was convinced these dark figures were going to come and drown me. But I had perfect peace because I knew Jesus was there, and I knew that when they did, he would take me home. And I don’t know what was reality, what was dream, but once again, that is our God at work.
It’s him walking the darkest path that no matter how dark the hallucination, how dark the dream, how dark it actually is in the room, I don’t know what it is. He is there walking those paths with us. And if I would have died that October day instead of being healed, I would have done so marveling in the power and goodness of God, because that’s our powerful God at work. To live or die, He is with us, He is good, He is enough.
And when I saw that glimpse of Jesus, the glory and power of the risen king of all kings, it’s comparable to nothing I’ve ever seen or experienced. And I just love how it’s like what the Bible says is true, and I feel it’s true, and he’s also this. The same God that I saw is the God of the Bible. And he’s the same God that walked with me the whole way there. And I just, you all know, with Jesus is perfect joy and perfect peace.
And the presence that he showed me in that room that day is where we want to be. There’s really nothing in this world that compares to anything besides Jesus. And I can say that in the months since then, the battle is still real. There’s still pain and surgeries and all the stuff that we all could complain about, right? We can all talk half the day about the things that are wrong with us. But our alive, powerful Jesus is still there and he’s still giving victory and he’s still meeting me in his word.
He’s still renewing me in my soul with his goodness as I meet with him. And I just believe that the continued brokenness here point points to we don’t need the healing here and now. We need the healer. We need Jesus. He’s the only one who can walk it with us and that is enough. And he gives the forever healing with taking our sins and making it so that we can be in his presence now and forever.
So I had two things that I just wanted, I had on my heart that I wanted to share with you, kind of almost as like a message from the experience that I just want to share. The first is submitting isn’t a bad word. I thought it was for a really long time. I’m a really stubborn, ornery person, but it really is in submitting to God that real life is found. There’s nothing that we give up that isn’t met and made beautiful and fully gained in the presence of Jesus.
And I don’t say that because of being healed, but because I experienced that true life, more true life over that worst year of my life than ever before. We don’t really have a choice in what happens here and now because God is much bigger and stronger than us. But it’s in the wrestling and working through and giving up desires to God that real abundant life is found. And all through the Bible we see God calling his people to obey and follow him. And the call for us to submit and follow is just as real today.
And I wanted to share a couple of scriptures. In Luke 9, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. (Luke 9:23-24, NIV)
1 Peter 4 says, “So then, let those who suffer according to God’s will commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.”
19 So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good. (1 Peter 4:19, NIV)
James 4 says, “Submit yourself then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7, NIV)
Come near to God and he will come near to you.
And we are told in Matthew 6 to pray, our father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done.
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9-10, ESV)
And if there’s one thing I want to convey to my children as I talk to them, to you guys here today, it is that God is good if we truly believe that he is good, if we truly believe that he is in control of all.
There is nothing too big to submit to him and obey him in; there’s nothing too big or too hard to face because he is good. Jesus says in John 10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have life abundantly.”
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10, ESV)
And we do have an enemy. We do have an enemy, Satan. And he is real, and he does seek to steal joy, to steal peace, to destroy relationships, to destroy good things, to kill our hope and kill our purpose in life.
But we have a God who is bigger and stronger and gives victory over that enemy. And that Jesus, he suffered and died and rose in victory for us. And he will take all the hard things and he will make them beautiful because he’s with us in them. And I just wanted to just pause there. Do we see God as good? Do we see it as a good call to give up all that we want, all that we have?
Because a God who is in control of all, who is good and wants to give us real life, is that where we are? And I just want to encourage anyone, if you haven’t worked through, if God is good enough or trustworthy enough to submit to in every way, study in His word until you find it. Call on Him to show you. Today is the day to seek Him. Today is the day to repent from lack of trust, to repent from doing things our way. Today is the day to draw near and enter into His rest.
Rest, which is more full submission to Jesus, because there is no place that is too far away, no one who is too far gone, no sin that’s too deep for Jesus to save and make new. And that’s what the physical healing points to, is that there is nothing he can’t do. So today is the day to draw near to Jesus.
And then the second thing I wanted to leave you with is study the Bible. I know I’m preaching to people who study the Bible, but study the Bible. Study it, read it, pray over it.
Know the God of the Bible. We have an incredible gift to be given the word of God at our fingertips. And don’t wait until you have a hard period to seek God. Each choice we make here and now matters and sets the direction of our life. And I’m just so grateful for the years of growing and being transformed by Jesus leading up to that hard year.
And it’s in knowing what God actually says as we study the Bible that we see his goodness, because so many promises that sometimes we make God out to have are just kind of wishful thinking or like more of a prosperity gospel type thing of if we tithe 10%, we’ll be blessed with more money. If I pray enough, I’ll be healed. If I’m good enough, I’ll have an easy life. And those aren’t the promises of God. Jesus says in John 16, “I’ve told you these things so that you may have peace in this world.” You will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33, NIV)
He promises that hard stuff is going to come. But then, in knowing what the Bible actually says, when those hard times come, we aren’t disillusioned with God because we think that God isn’t being faithful to his promises. It’s in knowing him through his word that we know that this world is broken by sin and that it’s a fleeting life, and we see that what we need is his presence and that that is promised to us.
So I wanted to just share a couple verses about his presence being promised. It starts back in Exodus 22:23, “If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.”
23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.(Exodus 22:23, NIV)
Jeremiah 33, “Call to me, and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’ (Jeremiah 33:3, NIV)
Isaiah 65:24, “Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.”
24 Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. (Isaiah 65:24, NIV)
In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, NIV)
Matthew 28:20: “Surely I am with you to the very end of the age.”
20…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”(Matthew 28:20, NIV)
Hebrews 4:16: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, and we will receive mercy and find grace in our time of need.”
16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16, NIV)
Romans 8: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.(Romans 8:38-39, NIV)
So just that promise from God that he is with us, and that he will always answer our desperate cry in our time of need. He always answers the be near me, the give me more of you, the give me the fruits of your spirit, because there’s nothing special about me that I experienced that over and over. That’s because that is the father that we have. That is what God wants to give us. He wants to show us more and more of himself.
And it’s really just in reading scripture, knowing God, that we see his goodness more fully, because we see him more fully. So I just leave with the challenge of that. Today is the day to be obsessed with hearing from God, from his word, to relinquish the demands of what we think we want the Bible to promise and come as a child with the hands off the ears to a good, righteous father, just seeking to be with him, just seeking to know him better, because that will be answered. And in the end, that’s all that matters.
It’s the presence of Jesus with us. And I know I’ve just said, submit, read the Bible, seek Jesus. And if that seems like too much, start with just asking God for the desire to take the next step towards him, because I know I can’t even do that without his mercy and power enabling me. So I think I’m going to end there, because I’m not going to just ramble and leave my notes. But just join me in praising Jesus. Join me in praising Jesus that he’s real. He’s real to save from sin.
He’s real to heal the body. He’s real to heal for forever. And he’s real to be right here with us, walking this life. So praise the Lord.
Julie, thank you. You did a wonderful job. Thank you. And so we are very grateful. Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives all your iniquities. He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit, and he crowns you with love and compassion.
He renews your youth like the eagles, and he satisfies you with good things. Bless the Lord, O my soul, who have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
And trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight.
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.(Proverbs 3:5-6, NIV)
And so, God, we thank you for this story of your faithfulness, of this story of your power, of this story of your amazing grace, mercy and love. And let it move our hearts to submit to you, to trust you, to dive deeper into a relationship with you, to dive deeper into the study of your revealed word to us so that we might hear the voice of God and be transformed by it. We ask it in Jesus name. And here’s one of the things that Jesus said.
Paul says this actually in Corinthians, and I’m going to mix in what Jesus said. On the night that he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he gave it to his disciples. And he said, this is my body which is given for you. And in the same way, after supper, he took out the wine or the tart cherry juice, and he gave it to his disciples and he said, this is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:27-28, ESV)
Dear ones, I want to say to you, as you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. And I want to say to you, you’ve heard me say this before. I’m going to say it again tonight: Shame off you. Shame off you. In Jesus’ name, your sins are forgiven. You are part of the new covenant. God has made a new covenant in his love and in his grace. And Colossians says, this is the hope that we have: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27, ESV)
And so, dear ones, take this meal tonight and be thankful. Jesus invites you to this meal. Firehouse. Not the firehouse, church, not me. Jesus invites you to this table. It’s his table. And he invites you to have fellowship with him. So come meet Jesus at the table. We can meet him in his word, we can meet him in our community, we can meet him in our prayers, and we can meet him at this table.
Meet Jesus tonight at this table and tell him thank you for his forgiveness, for his new covenant, for his great hope, this great salvation that we have inherited. I invite you now to come and eat. Keep going. Ouch. Keep looking for it. There you go. How’s one of my favorite people on the planet doing? Not as good as usual. I’m sorry to hear that. Want prayer tonight? Sure. All right, good. We’ll do that. I’ll pray for you right now before you receive communion. So I pray for Isaiah, Lord.
And I pray whatever the distress is, whatever the struggle is, that you will answer faithfully the prayer you always answer. Help.
The post 2024.4.21 TFHC – Testimony by Julie Harris appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
April 21, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.
Who have I in heaven but you, and besides you I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalms 73:25-26, ESV)
Jesus, King Jesus, Resurrected Jesus, Living Jesus, Son of God, King of kings and Lord of lords, we love you. Heavenly Father, we love you. We’re so glad you’re our Father, we’re so glad you sent your Son to seek and save that which was lost. Holy Spirit, we love you. We love you working in our lives and moving mysteriously in our midst.
We love the surprises. We love your persistence. Lord, we want our church and we want our lives not to be a place for you to visit, but a place for you to reside. Dove, come land on our shoulders and stay there. We ask that we would not offend you, but we would welcome you. We ask it in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen means so be it. That’s good. That’s good. Did you guys find those 11 pennies or just bring them up here to be encouragement?
The 11 pennies on the desk here. Okay. Yeah. I’m a preacher. I will never say no to an offering. So yeah, sure. Bring the pennies. Bring the pennies. Yeah. Pennies from heaven, baby. All right. We’re going through the Bible. How’s your Bible reading going, folks? You doing good? You can stand up. All right. If you’re not, that’s all right. I want to give you, this is modern day, and I want to give you the benefit of technology. My wife uses this. She will, because she’ll be driving and stuff, and she’ll use the audio Bible.
That counts, alright? I just want to let you know, in case you didn’t think that counts. And there’s a reason I know that counts, because Jill’s using it, and she would not break the rules. So, I know it counts. If Jill does it, it’s got to be within the rules. And so, yeah.
Alright, we’re going to be in 1 Samuel 25, and I’m going to read almost the whole chapter to you. So, 1 Samuel 25, the story of Nabal, David, and Abigail.
So, then David moved down to the wilderness of Maon, and there was a wealthy man from Maon who owned property near the town of Carmel.
1Now Samuel died, and all Israel gathered for his funeral. They buried him at his house in Ramah. Then David moved down to the wilderness of Maon. 2 There was a wealthy man from Maon who owned property near the town of Carmel… (1 Samuel 25:1-2, NLT)
And if any of you have ever been to Carmel, you know that’s expensive property. Alright? Anybody ever been on the 17 Mile Drive, and Pebble Beach, and all that stuff? Man, those people down in Carmel, they’re living good.
He had 3,000 sheep, 1,000 goats, and it was sheep-shearing time. And this man’s name was Nabal, and his wife, Abigail, was a sensible and beautiful woman.
2 …He had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats, and it was sheep-shearing time. 3 This man’s name was Nabal, and his wife, Abigail, was a sensible and beautiful woman. (1 Samuel 25:2-3, NLT)
Alright.
Men, if you ever want to compliment your wife, just tell her she’s a sensible and beautiful woman. Alright? That’ll be good.
But Nabal was a descendant of Caleb. He was crude and mean in all his dealings.
Women, if you ever want to compliment your husband, don’t call him Nabal.
When David heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep, he sent 10 of his young men to Carmel with a message for Nabal. Peace and prosperity to you, your family, and everything you own. I’m told that it is sheep-shearing time, and while your shepherds stayed among us near Carmel, we never harmed them, and nothing was ever stolen from them. Ask your men, and they will tell you that this is true. So, would you be so kind to us, since we have come at a time of celebration, please share any provisions you might have on hand with us and with your friend David. David’s young men gave this message to Nabal in David’s name, and they waited for a reply. Who is this fellow David? Nabel sneered to the young men.
Who does this son of Jesse think he is? There’s lots of servants these days who run away from their masters. Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I’ve slaughtered for my shearers and give it to a band of outlaws who come from who knows where? So David’s young men returned and told him what Nabel had said. Get your swords, was David’s reply as he strapped on his own. Then 400 men started off with David and 200 remained behind to guard their equipment.
Meanwhile, one of Nabel’s servants went to Abigail and told her David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master, but he screamed insults at them. These men have been very good to us and we never suffered any harm from them. Nothing was stolen from us the whole time that they were with us. In fact, day and night, they were like a wall of protection to us and the sheep. You need to know this and figure out what to do, for there’s going to be trouble for our master and his whole family. He’s so ill-tempered that no one can even talk to him!
Abigail wasted no time. She quickly gathered 200 loaves of bread, two wineskins full of wine, five sheep that had been slaughtered, nearly a bushel of roasted grain, 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 fig cakes. She packed them on donkeys and said to her servants, Go on ahead and I will follow you shortly. But she didn’t tell her husband Nabel what she was doing. As she was riding her donkey into the mountain ravine, she saw David and his men coming toward her.
David had just been saying, A lot of good it did to help this fellow. We protected his flocks in the wilderness, and nothing he owned was lost or stolen, but he repaid me evil for good. May God strike me and kill me if even one man of his household is still alive tomorrow morning. Abigail intercedes for Nabel, and when Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed low before him. She fell at his feet and said, I accept all the blame in this matter, my lord.
Please listen to what I have to say. David is a wicked and ill-tempered man. Please don’t pay any attention to him. He is a fool, just like his name suggests. But I never even saw the young men you sent. Now my Lord, as surely as the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, since the Lord has kept you from murdering and taking vengeance into your own hands, let all your enemies and those who try to harm you be as cursed as Nabal is.
And here is a present that I, your servant, have brought to you and your young men. Please forgive me if I have offended you in any way. The Lord will surely reward you with a lasting dynasty, for you are fighting the Lord’s battles, and you have not done wrong throughout your entire life. Even when you are chased by those who seek to kill you, your life is safe in the care of the Lord your God, secure in His treasure pouch. But the lives of your enemies will disappear like stones shot from a sling.
When the Lord has done all He promised and made you leader of Israel, don’t let this be a blemish on your record. Then your conscience won’t have to bear the staggering burden of needless bloodshed and vengeance. And when the Lord has done these great things for you, please remember me, your servant.
David replied to Abigail, “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you to meet me today. Thank God for your good senses. Bless you for keeping me from murder and from carrying out vengeance with my own hands.
For I swear by the Lord, the God of Israel, who has kept me from hurting you, that if you had not hurried out to meet me, not one of Nabal’s men would still be alive tomorrow morning. Then David accepted her presents and told her, Return home in peace. I’ve heard what you said. We will not kill your husband. When Abigail arrived home, she found that Nabal was throwing a big party and was celebrating like a king. He was very drunk, so she didn’t tell him anything about her meeting with David until dawn the next day.
In the morning, when Nabal was sober, his wife told him what had happened. As a result, he had a stroke and he lay paralyzed on his bed like a stone. And about ten days later, the Lord struck him and he died.
3 …But Nabal, a descendant of Caleb, was crude and mean in all his dealings. 4 When David heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep, 5 he sent ten of his young men to Carmel with this message for Nabal: 6 “Peace and prosperity to you, your family, and everything you own! 7 I am told that it is sheep-shearing time. While your shepherds stayed among us near Carmel, we never harmed them, and nothing was ever stolen from them. 8 Ask your own men, and they will tell you this is true. So would you be kind to us, since we have come at a time of celebration? Please share any provisions you might have on hand with us and with your friend David.” 9 David’s young men gave this message to Nabal in David’s name, and they waited for a reply. 10 “Who is this fellow David?” Nabal sneered to the young men. “Who does this son of Jesse think he is? There are lots of servants these days who run away from their masters. 11 Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I’ve slaughtered for my shearers and give it to a band of outlaws who come from who knows where?” 12 So David’s young men returned and told him what Nabal had said. 13 “Get your swords!” was David’s reply as he strapped on his own. Then 400 men started off with David, and 200 remained behind to guard their equipment. 14 Meanwhile, one of Nabal’s servants went to Abigail and told her, “David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master, but he screamed insults at them. 15 These men have been very good to us, and we never suffered any harm from them. Nothing was stolen from us the whole time they were with us. 16 In fact, day and night they were like a wall of protection to us and the sheep. 17 You need to know this and figure out what to do, for there is going to be trouble for our master and his whole family. He’s so ill-tempered that no one can even talk to him!” 18 Abigail wasted no time. She quickly gathered 200 loaves of bread, two wineskins full of wine, five sheep that had been slaughtered, nearly a bushel of roasted grain, 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 fig cakes. She packed them on donkeys 19 and said to her servants, “Go on ahead. I will follow you shortly.” But she didn’t tell her husband Nabal what she was doing. 20 As she was riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, she saw David and his men coming toward her. 21 David had just been saying, “A lot of good it did to help this fellow. We protected his flocks in the wilderness, and nothing he owned was lost or stolen. But he has repaid me evil for good. 22 May God strike me and kill me if even one man of his household is still alive tomorrow morning!” 23 When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed low before him. 24 She fell at his feet and said, “I accept all blame in this matter, my lord. Please listen to what I have to say. 25 I know Nabal is a wicked and ill-tempered man; please don’t pay any attention to him. He is a fool, just as his name suggests. But I never even saw the young men you sent. 26 “Now, my lord, as surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, since the Lord has kept you from murdering and taking vengeance into your own hands, let all your enemies and those who try to harm you be as cursed as Nabal is. 27 And here is a present that I, your servant, have brought to you and your young men. 28 Please forgive me if I have offended you in any way. The Lord will surely reward you with a lasting dynasty, for you are fighting the Lord’s battles. And you have not done wrong throughout your entire life. 29 “Even when you are chased by those who seek to kill you, your life is safe in the care of the Lord your God, secure in his treasure pouch! But the lives of your enemies will disappear like stones shot from a sling! 30 When the Lord has done all he promised and has made you leader of Israel, 31 don’t let this be a blemish on your record. Then your conscience won’t have to bear the staggering burden of needless bloodshed and vengeance. And when the Lord has done these great things for you, please remember me, your servant!” 32 David replied to Abigail, “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you to meet me today! 33 Thank God for your good sense! Bless you for keeping me from murder and from carrying out vengeance with my own hands. 34 For I swear by the Lord, the God of Israel, who has kept me from hurting you, that if you had not hurried out to meet me, not one of Nabal’s men would still be alive tomorrow morning.” 35 Then David accepted her present and told her, “Return home in peace. I have heard what you said. We will not kill your husband.” 36 When Abigail arrived home, she found that Nabal was throwing a big party and was celebrating like a king. He was very drunk, so she didn’t tell him anything about her meeting with David until dawn the next day. 37 In the morning when Nabal was sober, his wife told him what had happened. As a result he had a stroke, and he lay paralyzed on his bed like a stone. 38 About ten days later, the Lord struck him, and he died. (1 Samuel 25:3-38, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer.
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord , my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, ESV)
All right, Nabal is a rich fool, David is a mighty warrior, and Abigail is a beautiful and wise and kind woman.
And in this story, basically you need to get the picture of 3,000 years ago in Israel. And 3,000 years ago in Israel is not like Paulsbo, Washington in 2024, it’s not like it at all, all right? And so this is a barbaric time. Think of, I don’t know, think of a movie like Braveheart, anybody see the movie Braveheart, you know, and people are raiding and they’re raiding castles and they’re cutting off their enemies’ heads and there’s these hand-to-hand battles.
And we tend to think, you know, the Bible talks about David and he writes all these psalms and he’s a man after God’s own heart, and we tend to think of David as this wonderful little shepherd boy who went out and threw a rock at Goliath. Let me tell you something, David is a warrior. David is a warrior. He’s kind of a barbarian. I mean, he’s a man after God’s own heart in that he serves God, he believes God, he doesn’t seek vengeance on Saul, he writes psalms, he prays.
But David is not a man of peace; he is a man of the sword. Remember when David wants to build the temple, what does the Lord tell him? He says, you can’t build the temple, Solomon’s got to build the temple, why? Because you have shed so much blood, all right?
You know how, you know, David, here’s a story of how David got one of his wives, Abigail. David had many wives; his first love was Michal, and she was the daughter of Saul. David wanted to marry Michal, and Saul wanted David to get into a battle where he would die. So, Saul told David, “This is the kind of people we’re dealing with 3,000 years ago, okay? These are barbarians.” And Saul says, “I’ll tell you the price for my daughter, Michal, 100 Philistine foreskins, all right?” And what does David do?
He goes out and kills 200 Philistines and brings 200 foreskins back, all right? And then dumps them out. I mean, you know, let your imagination work on this one. You know, it’s like, there it is. This is, yeah, there you go. This is, this is, this is life 3,000 years ago. Villages raided villages. Cities raided cities. When your crop wasn’t good, maybe the crop over there was good. And if you can surprise and attack them, you can kill all the men. You didn’t capture all the men.
You killed them because you don’t want those men alive to come back and get you. You either killed the women and children, or you took the women and children. You took the livestock. You took their food. You raided. David was a raider. David, when David, after this episode, David despairs and he goes over to the Philistines for a while. And he makes his living raiding cities outside of Philistia. He did, he was prevented from raiding Judah. He never ended up raiding Judah. But he raided other cities outside Philistia.
And not, not cities God told him to raid. Not cities God told him that that city’s under judgment. He, he was, David’s a violent guy. All right? Nabal is a fool. He’s a rich fool. But just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’re smart. In fact, there are a lot of rich fools. All right? You may be good at one thing. You may be good at accumulating wealth. But that doesn’t make you a worthy person or a person to follow and you can still be a fool. And Nabal is a fool.
And here’s how he’s a fool. He is rich in large part because he has 600 people, 600 warriors surrounding his property, keeping the Philistines from raiding his property. And those 600 warriors are honorable toward him because he is a part of Israel. And so they don’t steal his livestock, and they don’t raid his men, and they don’t take his wives. They, in fact, protect him. It’s a little bit like the mob except it’s different in a way. You know, the mob is different in a way.
The mob comes and says, hey, you need to pay us tribute for protection. Now why that’s bad is because the mob is basically saying, you need to pay us tribute and protection. Protection from who? Protection from us. If you don’t pay us tribute, you know, we’re going to burn your place down, all right? I think that’s how they do it in Jersey, I don’t know, that’s pretty much it, right? The Jersey guys, you know, we’re going to, the mob, all right? That’s what they do.
David is going to Nabal and saying, “you need to pay me for the protection I’ve already provided you.” Not protection from David, but because we’re out in the wilderness, living in caves, scraping a living, you know, hunting and living off the land and nearly starving to death, six hundred men, you know. David and his mighty men, that’s a smelly bunch of guys. Those are six hundred gnarly, bearded, those are, these are kind of wild men. They’re not, you know, they kill. We’re out there and we could have easily taken all the sheep we wanted.
We could have easily ruined you or abandoned you and let the Philistines ruin you, but in fact, we’ve been standing between you and your flocks and now that it’s time to gather in your sheep, gather, you know, shear the sheep and celebrate, we’d like you to be generous toward us. Now Nabal could have said, I don’t want to be, or he could have said, gee guys, I’d love to be, but I can’t afford it this time, you know, it’s, Saul’s putting a heavy tax on me, but instead he just hurls insults. Who is this David?
Then he knows who David is, right, because he starts saying, “you’re the son of Jesse, you abandoned Saul.” He says, “I owe you nothing.” Now, if David were Jesus, Jesus would turn the other cheek. David is a man after God’s own heart, and like I said, he’s a warrior. And what does David say? “Strap on your swords. Oh, it’s on. It’s on.” you ever get that attitude? That attitude, yeah, this is a fighting word. Did you ever get that attitude? It’s like, “Oh yeah, it’s on.” All right?
I never do it physically, because I would lose any physical altercation I was in, but if somebody wants to challenge me theologically, or even more importantly on baseball stats, it’s on. It’s on, baby. And that rises up. It would rise up when your little child defies you, right? That little parent to me goes, oh yeah, okay. You want to draw a line in the sand, little three-year-old? You know, who’s gonna win here? It’s on. David, it’s on. And when he says not one of your males will survive by morning, he’s not exaggerating.
Those 600 men knew what they were doing. All of Nabal’s shepherds were no match for David and his mighty men. The Philistine army wasn’t a match for David and his mighty men. There was nobody in the area who was a match for David and his mighty men. Throughout his career, nobody was a match for David and his mighty men. These were the elite, these were the best, these were the fiercest warriors, and it is bad for Nabal, and he’s a fool. He put himself in this position. And then comes Abigail.
And it’s interesting what the Bible says. The Bible says she is a beautiful and sensible woman. It’s interesting, there’s only three women that I know of in the Bible who get labeled as beautiful. Doesn’t mean others weren’t, but these women must have been very striking. I mean, the Bible calls them beautiful. Rachel, Leah, not so good. Rachel, Leah, not so good. Rachel, she’s the hot sister, all right. Esther. Queen Esther and Abigail, but more important than being beautiful, she was sensible. And the servant knows. The servant knows.
Don’t go to Nabal and say, “Hey, David’s coming with his 600 men to wipe you out.” Nabal would have thought, “Oh, we can beat him or whatever. He’s an idiot.” He might have been drunk by this time anyway. But he knows. He goes to Abigail, and Abigail acts immediately. She acts wisely. And she ends up saving David from something that he really didn’t want to do. And David recognizes it. The minute she stops him, David goes, “you stop me from shedding unnecessary blood.” And he thanks her. His heart turns. It cools down.
So as I read this story, and David doesn’t kill Nabal, and what does God do? God kind of takes care of it, doesn’t He? One of the most consistent themes in Psalms written by David is this. Vindicate me, God. Vindicate me, God. In other words, I don’t have to seek vengeance. I don’t have to seek my own vindication. God can vindicate me. That is one of the Psalms I actually pray more often than many others. It’s not that I want God to give my enemy a stroke and have them die.
But there are times where I want to be right, where I want to argue, where I want to prove my point, where I want to set the record straight. And more times than not, the Lord puts a kibosh on that. He says, Quiet, Kevin. Be quiet. Don’t say anything. Don’t go to that person. Just be quiet. Well, what do I do, God? He says, Pray the Psalms. Lord, you set the record straight. Because I wouldn’t do a good job at it, and I would sin in doing it.
And so Abigail protects her husband, protects David, protects all those servants, and she is a wise and sensible woman. This passage, when I read it, got me thinking about riches, because Nabal was a rich man, and it got me thinking about the different kind of riches that we can have, and the riches that we value in our culture, and the riches that are valued in the kingdom of God.
There are other riches than these eight, but I listed eight riches that are on display in this story, and on display throughout the Bible, and on display in our culture. And I would say that the first four are the kinds of riches that we idolize in Western culture, and the last four are the kinds of riches that are valued in the kingdom of God. And in our culture, these are upside down.
And the first thing I want to say about the first four riches that I’m going to talk about is none of them, in and of themselves, are evil. None of them, in and of themselves, are evil. The problem is, when we exalt them, we exalt something that’s fairly empty and shallow, and has very little value. But the other riches that our culture doesn’t highlight, that aren’t seen as valuable, in fact, in the kingdom of God, are incredibly precious, and powerful, and valuable. So let’s talk about these riches, and the people, Nabal, and David, and Abigail.
Nabal was rich in possessions, and that’s about it. Out of all these eight riches, that’s the only one I see here. He was rich in possessions. And we love rich people. When I was a young man, there used to be a TV reality, one of the first TV reality shows, it was called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Right? Anybody remember that one? Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And people buy magazines. They buy magazines, and go to internet sites, and search out… about what?
The lifestyle of people is fascinated with the Taylor Swifts of this world. And listen, I’m not a Taylor Swift hater. I don’t, Taylor, you know, people, and then, you know, the people overreact to that, like, oh, Taylor Swift is terrible. I don’t know if she’s terrible or good or anything. She’s tall and she sings pop songs, and she dates a football player and she sells lots of concert tickets, has lots of money. Good for Taylor Swift.
But that’s, I mean, I’m not going to buy, I’m not going to go read an article on her, and I’m not going to, you know, find out what she had for breakfast. Just, I don’t, I don’t mean I don’t care. I mean, as Jesus cares for Taylor Swift, I care for Taylor Swift. I want her to come to know Christ and be, and live and enjoy him forever. But my gosh, I’m not going to model my life after her. I just, and of course, my deal isn’t musical entertainers.
If I wanted to, you know, if I wanted to idolize anybody, it would be sports stars. I’ve been a sports fan my whole life. But here’s the deal. I definitely admire athletes for their athletic ability and the feats that they accomplish in athletic competition. It fascinates me. As a boy who tried to do that and wasn’t, had nowhere near the athletic ability, it fascinates me. And I’ll go to a, you know, I’ll go to a ball game or I’ll watch stuff on TV and I’m a fan and all of it fascinates me.
But you know what? I don’t want their lives. I don’t envy their money. I don’t envy their supermodel wives. I don’t envy their fame. And I don’t think apart from Christ, there’s anything there to, you know, set them apart from anybody else. They’re good at something. And our culture values it and gives them lots of money for that. I don’t, fine, I don’t care. But my goodness, is really the most important thing in life the ability to throw a ball? Or hit a ball? Or be 300 pounds and fast and be able to crush somebody?
Is that really what life is about? And then we idolize appearance. Oh my gosh, we idolize appearance. More so in females than males, but in males too. I mean, there are males that women tend to think are yummy. You know, and we idolize appearance. Oh, she’s so hot. But you know, appearance, listen, appearance just lasts for a season, folks. You know, your peak appearance years are, they’re like a vapor. They’re like a vapor, alright? I always told my daughters, marry a nerd, man. Marry a nerd. Don’t marry the high school quarterback.
He’s going to be sitting around at a bar in 20 years still complaining that he got a bad call in the last game. Say, marry somebody who’s going to MIT. I don’t care what he looks like, man. That guy’s gonna make you some money. Alright? Marry an engineer, for crying out loud. You know, Karen, good choice, good call. They’re good with math and they’re problem solvers. It’s hard to, that’s a great combination. Marry an engineer. You know, I tell you what, it’s hard being a good-looking person sometimes.
It’s a burden that I’ve borne for years, and it’s not easy. I tell people all the time, I tell people, you know, it’s not as easy as you think being a trophy husband. You know, but that’s, it’s a vapor. It’s a vapor and then…
And then I pity these Hollywood actresses who, you know, just desperately try with Botox and whatever, and they have to go their whole life without eating to maintain that. And it’s like, ah, how sad that is. There’s riches in fame. That’s a mixture. It’s nice to be loved by people.
I’ve heard these are two contrasting stories on fame from two Hollywood stars. One was Bill Murray, the famous comedian if you remember Bill Murray. And he’s pretty old now, but he made his fame on Saturday Night Live and did lots of movies. Very funny man. Very funny man. And somebody asked him one time, what’s it like to be rich and famous? And he’d say, I’d take the first but not the second. And so fame has been hard on him. It’s hard to not be able to go out.
None of us would want the paparazzi surrounding our houses and having to disguise ourselves. On the other hand, I heard Kevin Bacon, and he was talking about, everybody knows Kevin Bacon. He was talking about, he went to this mall in LA. And he said, 99% of my fame is a good thing. He says, what’s wrong with people coming up and say, hey, man, I loved you in that. You were great in that. He says, I love that. He says, I went to this mall. He said, I was in total disguise. Nobody recognized me.
He goes, “Man, most of you people, your life just stinks. It’s so great to have people tell me I love me. They love me. But you know what? That’s shallow, right? That’s a drink that doesn’t last.” I remember as a young pastor, and I started preaching, and people would come up to me, and they would compliment my sermons. And they’d say, “Oh, that was a great sermon.” In fact, just the other week, some guy, just two weeks ago, some guy at Discovery Fellowship came up.
And he told me, he just said, 80-year-old guy, he said, that’s the best sermon I’ve ever heard in my life. Now, that could be an incredible compliment. As an 80-year-old man, he’s heard a lot of sermons. On the other hand, as an 80-year-old man, he might not remember a lot of sermons. Yeah, so I didn’t know how to take it, but I just said, thank you. But I realized over the years, when people do that, people do that too. And I liked it. I like it. It’s not that I don’t like it.
I like it, but I also realized, man, that drink does not last. That’s gone by Monday morning. And so fame, all these things the book of Ecclesiastes would say are what? Vanity, vanity, vanity. None of them are evil. It’s not evil to be rich, by the way. The Bible never says it’s evil to have money, nor is it evil to enjoy your money. It says, it doesn’t say that money or the love of money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
It is the love of money. It is the vanity of physical appearance. It is the vanity of fame that causes evil. None of the things in and of themselves. Billy Graham was famous, and good. He was famous for Christ. He used it well. And finally there’s knowledge. You might think, well, knowledge is a good thing. Not necessarily. Knowledge is knowing stuff, but it’s not necessarily wisdom. And we so, oh my goodness, we so idolize experts in our culture, right? You turn on your news feed, and what’s the first thing it says?
Experts say, and usually they are experts in a particular field. But here’s what I’ve discovered about knowledge, about education, because I am knowledgeable. I know this about myself. I am knowledgeable more than the average person in our culture about two specific areas. One of those areas is Bible, Christian theology, church history, that sort of thing. I know more than probably most people on that. I’m not being vain here. I just do, right? I studied it. I got a three years master’s degree, and I’ve studied it my whole life. And I remember stuff.
And so, you know, somebody can say, you know, there’s a passage in the Bible that says blah, blah, blah, blah. And a lot of times I go, oh yeah, that’s blah, blah, blah. I can tell them what it is. And they’ll look at me like, wow, that’s impressive. And I go, I know. That and good. good-looking. I mean, it’s the package. It’s the package. You know, there was a line behind Jill. And the other thing I know is sports trivia, especially about baseball, basketball, and football. I know a lot of it.
And it is utterly useless information, except in conversation with a very narrow slice of people, mostly men, at cigar clubs. And then it comes in pretty handy. It’s a good conversation maker. I got baseball cards. I got lots of them. They got some value, maybe. But I didn’t know to take care of them when I was a kid. I used them for noisemakers in my bicycle spokes. Did you ever do that? Mickey Mantle. There’s thousands of dollars going down my Mickey Mantle rookie card. It’s like, oh, no. Alright.
So here’s what a PhD does for you. It doesn’t mean you’re smart, and it doesn’t mean you’re an expert about anything in life but one subject. In fact, it probably makes you ignorant of most other subjects because you’ve spent all your life studying the mating habits of the, you know, eastern panda bears in some obscure country. And, you know, you got that locked in, baby. But you’ve spent all your life studying that. C.S. Lewis pointed that out. He talked about Sigmund Freud.
He said he may have been a great psychologist, but he said when he got into my field of study, which was language, he said he found him incredibly ignorant. And that’s just true. I mean, here’s where my baseball knowledge gets me into trouble, or it would except the Lord tells me to be quiet. Literally, I go to a baseball game and I sit there and I hear some guy talking nonsense behind me trying to show off his baseball knowledge, and he is wrong about everything he’s saying to his girlfriend.
And it is literally, it takes everything in me not to turn around and say, that’s not true. Let me set you straight on what really happened back in 1924, or 1932, when Babe Ruth supposedly called his shot against Charlie Root in the World Series against the Cubs. Let me tell you what really happened on that day. It was an O2 kit, never mind, I won’t.
Now, knowledge, when I get on my newsfeed and it says, experts say, you know how I interpret that? You know how I interpret the word experts? Some guy, some gal.
Now, let me tell you what is valuable, wisdom. In fact, the Bible says wisdom is more valuable than silver and gold. Can you imagine if we were advertising at the firehouse church, and in fact, we could back it up, that if you walk through those doors, you would get a bar of silver and a bar of gold. Can you imagine, there would be more than 15 people here tonight, all right? They would be lining up for their bar of silver and bar of gold, because our culture thinks that’s incredibly valuable.
And the Bible says this: the Bible says more valuable than silver and gold is wisdom. And then it says this: God says, I’ll tell you how to get it. Ooh, this must be complicated; we have to be experts to figure this one out. He says in James, “Ask, and I give generously.”
5 If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. (James 1:5, NLT)
Wisdom is not knowledge. Wisdom is knowing what to do with the knowledge you have in life, to make it work right.
Wisdom is the application of knowledge in such a way that it brings the goodness of the Lord into the land of the living, that thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, ESV)
Wisdom is knowing when to talk and when to shut up. Wisdom is knowing what to say at the right time, what to do at the right time. Wisdom is knowing whether to move to St. Louis or Washington or stay where you’re at. Wisdom is knowing who to marry and who to refrain from marrying.
And wisdom is one of life’s treasures. You can be rich in wisdom. And dear ones, you can be rich in good deeds. You can be rich in good deeds. And good deeds are an incredible thing to be rich in. And God says he rewards good deeds. He rewards good deeds. Doing good gets rewarded, not always by culture, not always by the person you do good to. My brother-in-law, who’s a counselor, he has a saying, no good deed goes unpunished.
There are people that you love well, and you do good to them, and they reject you, and they hurt you, and whatever, that’s true. In this world, there’s not a one-to-one correlation. But God says this, Jesus says there’s not a cup of cold water given in my name that will go without its reward. And I got to tell you, I’ve talked to Isaiah about this, but I struggle with the homeless crisis in our culture and homelessness, especially around our Bremerton church where it’s rampant.
And we have people who regularly sleep at our property and they make a mess. And not having the spiritual gift of service in a large measure, I do not delight in cleaning up other people’s messes. I resent it, it makes me mad. I’m not your mother, you know, I don’t want to pick up after you. Be an adult, pick up after yourself. And because I resent that, I then resent the people I suspect are causing that. And the Lord does not want that in me.
He does not want me to resent those people who are people. Not the homeless. Not the addicts. Not the losers. But people with names. With mothers and fathers. Brothers and sisters.
And at the same time, I think I have an obligation to draw boundaries for the church and for the protection of the church and the people who go there. And one of my boundaries is if I see you camping there, I’m going to ask you not to camp there. Because I don’t want needles. I don’t want to clean up your poop.
I don’t want you to camp. So I ask them. I say, you can rest here, but don’t camp here. And the other day, there was a group, and they were looking like they were getting ready to camp. And so I went out, and I said, hey, I just want to let you know you can’t camp here. And as I go out, the young lady starts backing away. You can tell she’s kind of nervous. She goes, who are you? What do you want? And it just dawned on me, she’s been hurt. She’s been abused.
Somebody got aggressive. And most of the people, in almost every case except very rarely, there’s no belligerence. There’s a lot of compliance. Oh, sure, we’ll move on. No problem. But I went out there and I wasn’t gruff or brusque, but it was just like, hey, you can’t camp here. And I noticed the girl’s, the woundedness. And I went back inside and I was just, I was uncomfortable. I was like, ah. And I still don’t want them to camp there. But you know what? I got bottles of water.
And it was a rare sunny day last week and it was sunny. So I went and I got three bottles of water. There were three of them, three bottles of water. And I went out and I said, hey, what’s your name? And all of a sudden this girl who’s backing away, she takes a step forward. She goes, I’m Mary. I said, you’re Mary. And I gave them the bottles of water. And I said, look, I know it’s hot. Enjoy these. And I asked them all their names. It’s amazing what a difference that makes.
What’s your name? Because you know what that question says? you’re a human. you’re a human. I recognize you’re a human. You know what that bottle of water says? You might be hot and thirsty. And I can alleviate that. I can’t fix all your problems. I can’t give you a place to sleep. That’s not the power that I have. And the Lord, and dear ones, please. I ain’t Saint Francis here. Alright. But I walked in and that verse popped into my head. That a cup of cold water given in my name doesn’t go without a reward.
I said okay. Okay, I’ll give a cup of cold water and I’ll ask somebody their name. I won’t just brusquely go out there and say, get out of here. And I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how to be compassionate and helpful and at the same time draw boundaries that don’t allow for people to live abusively. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know where that line is precisely. But I know that God does not want me to become callous and not struggle with that question. I know that.
And so the Bible says, do good to all people as you are able. And then it talks about the churches, especially to those in the household of faith. We ought to be good to each other. We ought to be good to each other. We ought to try to do good for each other. So do good for the people of the household of faith.
10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:10, ESV)
And I’ve received goodness from you people. Thank you for your goodness to me. you’ve been good to me. Be rich in relationships. Be rich in relationships. Life is not 90% about relationships.
It’s 100% about relationships. It’s 100% about knowing, loving people. I’ve been a pastor long enough that I’ve been by enough bedsides that when people are dying, and I’ve never had anybody say, “Man, I wish I had made more money.” If you have enough, you’re rich. I have heard people say, “I wish my daughter was still talking to me. I would love to talk to her one more time and, you know, extend the forgiveness and grace and the apologies and before I die, have this relationship squared away.”
And when I was first a pastor, I discovered this as a young pastor. I would go, my job, here’s, I had an impossible job assignment, my first job. The senior pastor said, you need to do 40 pastoral visits a week. That’s eight a day. Yeah, I never made it. He had a little list for me to check the boxes and that was back in the day when people didn’t mind if you showed up without calling.
Now, people are offended if you show up without calling because, you know, the mom with three kids didn’t have a chance to clean the house, and she’s like, oh no, this is the worst day of my life. And so, you know, but, so I would try to visit, and we were a Methodist church. We had about 2,000 members, and so my whole first couple of months, I was just trying to visit everybody on that church roster. And as a mainline church, we had a lot of old people, right?
A lot of old people who weren’t coming to church, but they were members and they were shut-ins and I’d go visit them. And I could tell you something. I could tell you that their happiness could almost always be predicted by the number of photographs on the wall.
If they had pictures of children, grandchildren, and family, they’d take me to that wall and they’d start telling me, you know, about this one and this one and this one’s doing this and this one’s, this one’s riding horses and this one plays baseball. I do that now as a grandpa. You know, people talk to me and I say, hey, I bring out my phone, let me show you this picture. I got a hilarious, we saw four baseball games Saturday. Two from Noah and two for Theo.
And it was, it was like the most contrasting day. The morning, if you remember Saturday, the morning was glorious and beautiful. It was 72 degrees. It was like the days in Washington that you move up here for. And then all of a sudden the wind started blowing and the clouds came and it started raining and I got hypothermia. I thought I was gonna die.
But in the middle of that, my eight-year-old grandson, Theo, goes out to left field, and they play all this music in between the innings. Completely unashamedly and without a bit of self-consciousness, he is breaking out moves out there in left field and just dancing like a mascot on top of a dugout. We’re just cracking up, and we’ve got a film of it. You know what? I will bore you all with that film if you want to see it. I just, this is my grandson, look at that, look at these moves, he’s just dancing out there, he’s awesome, man.
But you’d go to these old people’s houses, and then they would just, they would light up as they would tell you stories about their relationships with people. I got to tell you this one story, this is a great story. A young pastor just out of seminary, and I’m visiting all these people. I go to this central California, Visalia, California, July, 108 degrees, and I go to this high-rise retirement apartment to visit this sweet old lady. As I drive up and I park, and I step by the apartment, there are guys out in the street, concrete, 108 degrees, jackhammers fixing the road, sweat pouring off their bodies. I’m thinking, I am not that guy, I don’t, you know. And I get in the elevator, go up to this air-conditioned apartment, and this sweet lady, one of the sweetest, you know, all these old Methodist ladies, most of them are just sweet ladies, you know. And a sweet lady, she baked for me, she knew I was coming, she had freshly baked chocolate chip cookies coming right out of the oven, you know where the chocolate chips still melty and gooey, and they’re soft, you know what I’m talking about, just. And she has ice cold milk, and she sits me down, and I can hear the jackhammers, and I’m eating this cookie and drinking this ice cold milk, like my mouth’s full of cookie, and she goes, “So, do you like your job?” Outside, there’s guys with a job, me, I got a great job, but I tell you what, be rich in relationships.
My wife and I talk about being married 43 years. We talk about it this way. We get it from the book Sacred Marriage. Great book on marriage, in fact, if you ever want to read it. Sacred Marriage. Gary Thomas. I just gave it to you again. There you go. Gary Thomas. And yeah, it’s a great book. Isn’t it a great book? And here’s what he says. He says, marriage is more about being holy than happy. And he says, what you do is you create a sacred history.
And I look at three kids who love Jesus, all married to spouses who love Jesus, and six grandkids, and the seventh on the way. And I look at my dear wife, and I’ll tell you this. I’ll tell you the truth. She is rich in appearance. She’s still, to me, I don’t know if anybody else, I still don’t get tired of sitting across a lunch table and looking at that face. I love that face. I do. And so, but it’s a, it’s a sacred history. It’s a relationship.
I haven’t been married to seven hot women and trade the old one in on a newer model like I want to do with cars. By the way, if you do it with cars or women, both, it’s very expensive. But if you’re going to do it with one or the other, do it with cars. It’s probably just as expensive, but it’s far less trouble. All right? Build a sacred history. Love your kids. Love your grandkids. Love your neighbors. Love the people in this room. Be rich in relationships. And finally, be rich in your heart toward God.
David was a man after God’s own heart. As I look at this, I would say, Nabil, Nabil was rich in only one of these. David was rich in a few. He was rich in appearance, apparently. You know, the Bible says he was ruddy. Is ruddy good? Ruddy’s good? You know, I don’t know. Is ruddy, ladies, is ruddy good? I don’t know. Yeah. I get a lot of this. You know, you ask women about appearance, like, how about, you know, I ask my wife, is he good looking? Is he good looking? She goes, yeah, yeah.
Is Denzel good looking? She goes, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, Denzel.” She’s got the Denzel thing, so yeah. All right, in fact, one time we were in church, we had like 600 people in church, we’re all worshiping God, and we had a bunch of youth up front, and it was so good, and I turned to my wife and I said, “Honey, in your wildest dreams did you ever think we’d be here?” And she said, “Dear, in my wildest dreams you’re Denzel.” So that’s, you know, I don’t know.
All right, David was handsome, he had fame, wisdom, he’s kind of impulsive. He was impulsive here, he’s a little impulsive with Bathsheba and Uriah, that was a pretty bad decision, but there are times he has great wisdom, there are times he operates in wisdom. He operated, he did some very good deeds, he had great relationships, those 600 men were loyal to him, he endeared himself to his men, and he had a heart toward God.
Nabal, he was a fool; he was rich in money, that’s about it, and that’s it, and it’s vapor, people, it’s a worthless life. Abigail, I think she’s got all of them, man. You want to emulate somebody, emulate Abigail here. My goodness, she was rich, I mean, she was married to a rich man. I always told my daughters, if you fall in love with a rich man, don’t hold it against him, you know. But she was rich, she was beautiful, you know. I don’t know if that helped when she interceded and cut off David.
I mean, certainly her wisdom and her generosity helped more, but you know, a young man’s more prone to listen to a beautiful woman than one that’s not so beautiful. I just know how young men operate; it’s like, whoa, hey, okay. I got an A in Hebrew in school because of a beautiful woman and a pestering friend. I was a terrible student; I would cut class all the time. I got to seminary, I started cutting class less because it was so expensive. Man, I’m paying for this class; I should probably go.
But most of my professors were bald, fat old men, you know. It’s like, it wasn’t all that stimulating. The subject matter often was interesting. But I took Hebrew, we had to take foreign languages, and I had a friend, and my friend was petrified of taking foreign languages, so he made me go to class with him every night, never cut, and he made me study with him. He said, you’ve got to help me get through Hebrew, you’ve got to study with me. So I never cut that class and I studied.
And there’s another reason I never cut that class. Our Hebrew professor was an Abigail. She was a wise, wonderful Christian woman and a scholar, had lots of knowledge and all that kind of stuff. And she was one of the most beautiful women. This is a seminary professor. She’s one of the most beautiful women I ever saw. So it’s like I have a friend saying come to class and there’s a beautiful woman teaching class, like okay, I’ll go. And I got an A in Hebrew. And I had an epiphany after I got that A in Hebrew.
And the epiphany was, go to class and study, you get an A. Who knew? Who knew that’s how it worked? I had been to school for 20 plus years and I finally put that one together. It’s like, I don’t know if you knew that, Isaiah, but go to class and study, best way to get an A. There you go. Who knew? All right.
Abigail was all for it. She was famous. At least she was famous with the people she worked for. The servants certainly knew what to do, right? David’s coming to kill us.
Should I go to Nabal? I don’t think so. I know who to go to. I know who the brains of this operation is. And he went to Abigail. She had knowledge. She knew how Nabal’s business worked. She knew where to get the sheep. She knew where to get the cake. She knew where to get the wine. She knew where to meet David. She had knowledge. She certainly had wisdom. She was abundantly generous and rich in good deeds. She was rich in her relationships.
Obviously the servants of Nabal’s household respected her and David ended up falling in love with her. And she feared the Lord and was rich toward him and she prevented David from doing something that he would later regret. So dear ones, I have two takeaways tonight. Takeaway number one, be an Abigail. Be an Abigail. She’s one of those characters who shows up just in a piece in the Bible, but who shows up well. Be an Abigail, and I’ll say this, if you’re a David, first of all, I’ll say this, if you’re a Nabal, stop it, knucklehead.
But if you’re a Nabal, you will not take that warning; you’ll just take it as an insult and so, whatever. But if you’re a David, let me tell you this: don’t be impulsive. Think before you act. But know this, dear ones, God has wonderful people that he is going to bring into your path and be a huge blessing to your life. Keep your eyes open. Keep your eyes open. Every morning I get up and I go through my email, and it’s junk.
But here’s what I say before I go through it: Lord, today, if it be your will, change my life. What if one of those messages is going to change my life? I mean, I go through them quick and I delete them, but what if one of them is going to change my life? Lord, what are you going to do today? What surprises are out there to change my life? There are, listen, most of life is being a steady Eddie, right?
Most of life is getting up, going to work, doing your job, but there are days and there are people who are life-changing. I was just a 17-year-old kid, recently converted to Jesus, still struggling with marijuana, sitting in the back, joking around with my friends, wanting to be a basketball star, and I’m flipping burgers and all of a sudden this girl walks in and all the guys go, “Oh, she’s new.” That day changed my life. That day changed my life.
I was driving my daughter home from a conference in L.A., and the Lord called me to come up to Washington to pray because I couldn’t get Washington off my heart. As I’m driving outside of Bakersfield, California with my daughter, just driving home, getting ready to go to Washington, saying, “Lord, what do you got for me in Washington? You know, who am I going to send up there to plant a church?” I hear a voice, “Change my life. Change my life.” Listen, you go about being your steady Eddie day by day, but never forget this.
There’s an Abigail around the corner. There’s a divine appointment. And it’ll change your life. And God has those. So be a David. Be on your tippy toes for the suddenlies of God. It’s really an interesting act, right? Because so much of the Bible is about what? Being solid, getting up, going to church, raising your kids right, going to work, being wise with your money, being generous, just being a good person. And we live our lives that way.
And yet, and yet, and yet, at just times, sometimes when we least expect it, except I never want it to be that time when I least expect it, because I want to be on my tippy toes with expectation. Here’s an Abigail. Not that I need an Abigail. I’m not saying that. Jill, I don’t need an Abigail. I’m good. But here, God’s going to change your life. In a moment, he’s going to bring somebody in. Or there’s going to be a conversation, and all of a sudden, things are going to change.
All of a sudden, you’re going to be leaving L.A. and moving to Washington. You know? And so, that’s the takeaway. The world was going about their business. Israel expected a Messiah, but they’d been expecting a Messiah for a thousand years. And they got oppressed by the Persians. And they got oppressed by, before the Persians, they got oppressed by the Babylonians. Before the Babylonians, they got oppressed by the Assyrians. After the Persians, they got oppressed by the Greeks. After the Greeks, they got oppressed by the Romans. And they’re just used to being oppressed.
And they’re just saying, “Lord, come on, when are we going to get a Messiah and get out from underneath this oppression? When are you going to send your promised Messiah? What’s going around, Lord? What’s going to happen, Lord?” And then the Messiah shows up. The Messiah shows up, and he does all the Messiah things, and most of them didn’t see it. But for a few, they wrote this book, and we name our kids after them. You notice, we name our kids after biblical heroes. Isaiah, your parents are like, “we want a prophet.”
Yeah, you’re not Nabal. Nobody ever says, here are my three sons, Judas, Pontius, and Nabal, and their little sister Jezebel. That’s nobody’s family, right? That’s nobody’s family. But there’s lots of Jacobs and Isaiahs and lots of Davids. I grew up Catholic and every Catholic kid I grew up with, almost without exception, their first name or middle name was Mary or Joseph. My father-in-law had nine siblings. I think five of them were boys. All of their middle names were Joseph. They were all Joseph. Come on, he’s Joseph.
All right, dear ones, don’t miss being a steady Eddie. Don’t miss God’s divine appointments. Every morning, wake up and say, God, change my life. What are you going to do today? And for ten years, it might be, go out and do your job. And by the way, don’t be a flake. Don’t be a flake. Do that. Do that. All right? Don’t sit around and let the horses starve because you’re waiting for God to change your life. Go feed those horses. All right? So do that.
Not that I worry about you being a man of responsibility, but yeah. All right, I think I’m done. Thank you, Lord, for Abigail’s. Thank you, Lord, for divine appointments. Thank you, Lord, for the times where we were just doing our thing, following you and praying for something, and then, Lord, when we despair and think that something’s not going to happen, boom.
Here it comes. Here it comes. Lord, give us the Holy Spirit awareness that our hearts would not be hard toward those moments, and we would see them and respond and have the wisdom. David, being impulsive and not wise, but he had the wisdom to recognize, Oh God sent Abigail. God protected me.
This is the intervention of the Lord. So, Lord, we thank you for those moments. We thank you that we regularly come and receive communion. But Lord, as we walk up to this table tonight, the table that you invite us to, that nourishes us for that daily life, Lord, we welcome you to change our life at that table tonight, that little white table with our little red and blue cups and yellow cup, Lord. We welcome you to just touch us and change our lives tonight as you invite us to this table. And so, Holy Spirit, meet us in this meal, feed us in this meal with the life of Jesus, and Lord, if you want to make us a little more like Jesus with this meal, we gladly accept it.
But Lord, if you want to bring healing to our bodies and transformation to our souls in a dramatic way, Lord, we receive that as well in Jesus’ name. And so, dear ones, come and eat, and come expectantly. Amen, amen.
The post 2024.4.21 TFHC – A Fool, A Warrior, and A Wise Woman (1 Sam 25) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
April 14, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.
Who have I in heaven but you? Beside you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever. you’re all I want. you’re all I need. You are the prize, King Jesus. You are the prize.
Set our eyes upon you, fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, shunned the shame of the cross, endured it to break open, just break open this amazing new covenant, this amazing kingdom.
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2, ESV)
Lord, we thank you for it. We thank you for your spirit who dwells within us. And even in the midst of our struggles, Lord, you are with us. You do not leave us nor forsake us. And Christ, you are the victor. And in Jesus’ name we pray, and God’s people said, amen, amen, good.
Good to be with you tonight. Hey, I got good news. Talking to Ats and Aiko, their friend Julie, who was incredibly healed from deathbed cancer, is going to come speak to us, not next Sunday, but in two weeks.
So, bring your friends to hear an inspiring testimony, all right? That’ll be good. So, she’s going to be here April 28th. So, how’s your Bible reading going? All right, good. We’re in Samuel now. All right. It takes a little turn for the better. You know, Judges is pretty, Judges is kind of a low point, but you know, now we got at least somebody who hears the voice of God. In fact, that’s what we’re going to talk about tonight. We’re going to talk about Samuel, hearing the voice of God. I was going back and forth.
You know, I go through these. You know, I say I’m going to read, I’m going to preach on a passage that we read that week, and then it’s, and then I do the same thing on Thursday night, by the way, with our men’s Bible study. I pick another passage that I’m not gonna preach on, so it doesn’t have to be redundant for those guys. And so we look at those, and I was really tempted. I thought initially I was gonna go with David and Goliath, because, I mean, that’s just such a good story.
You come against me with sword, spear, and shield, but I come against you in the name of the Lord God of Israel, the army of hosts. You know, and you’re gonna cut, you think you’re gonna kill me and feed me to the beasts of the field? I’m gonna tell you, I’m gonna kill you today. Not only you, but I’m gonna feed your armies to the beasts of the field, I love. Listen, that’s what, I mean, I’ve had this debate before. How can heaven be heaven if we can’t gloat? We can’t trash talk, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, there is trash-talking in the Bible, baby. I love every place in the Bible they trash talk. I get excited, I love it. When Elijah taunts the prophets of Baal, it’s like, “Hey, where’s Baal? Is he off at the john? What’s he doing, man?” I guess that’s the little sports guy in me. I just, I love biblical trash talk, so that gets me excited.
But I thought I’d do something even more practical. For your sake, I wouldn’t just dwell in trash talk.
And so, we’re gonna be in 1 Samuel 3, and I’m gonna take this passage of Samuel’s first encounter with hearing the voice of the Lord, and I’m gonna do what they told me not to do in seminary. They told us in seminary, when you read a passage, preach specifically on that passage. I’m using this passage to do two bounces on the diving board and jump into a broader teaching on hearing the voice of God.
So, if you wanna call any of my seminary professors, if they’re still alive, and say, “you know, Kevin broke your rules,” they’ll probably go, “Who’s Kevin?” So, all right, here we go. 1 Samuel 3:1. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel served the Lord by assisting Eli. Now in those days, messages from the Lord were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon. One night, Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed.
The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was sleeping in the tabernacle near the ark of God. Suddenly, the Lord called out, ‘Samuel.’ ‘Yes,’ Samuel replied, ‘what is it?’ And he got up and he ran to Eli. ‘Here I am, did you call me?’ ‘I didn’t call you,’ Eli replied. ‘Go back to bed.’ So he did.
Then the Lord called out again, ‘Samuel.’ Again, Samuel got up and went to Eli. ‘Here I am, did you call me?’ ‘I didn’t call you, my son,’ Eli said. ‘Go back to bed.’
Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before. So the Lord called a third time, and once more Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am, did you call me?” Then Eli realized it was the Lord who was calling the boy, so he said to Samuel, “Go and lie down again, and if someone calls again, say, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.'”
So Samuel went back to bed, and the Lord came and called as before, Samuel, Samuel, and Samuel replied, speak, your servant is listening, and that unlocked a history, a lifetime, of hearing the voice of the Lord, and the Bible says of Samuel that he heard the Lord, and he was a judge over Israel until he anointed Saul as king, and it says that none, get this, none of Samuel’s words fell to the ground.
He spoke faithfully for the Lord, and his word was true. And so, God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord. A rock, our strength, and redeemer. The voice of the Lord was rare, visions were rare. We got that from the book of Judges. Israel had fallen off, but God does not quit, and he uses faithful people.
The book of Ruth, which we did not dive into – you know, we got through with the book of Judges. The book of Ruth is actually, the book of Judges is a negative illustration of what happens when God’s people abandon the covenant, but inside of that, there were still faithful people. The book of Ruth is a story about what happens when God’s people do obey the covenant, and it’s a very lovely story of redemption and grace.
And it fits into then David’s genealogy as Boaz and Ruth are his great-grandparents.
And so it gives us a hint of Israel’s best king to come. And so God is not done with Israel. God is not done with his plan. And Hannah, Samuel’s mother, is another faithful person. And she cries out to God, and she prays to God. And God uses that, dear ones. God uses that crying out. There’s different kinds of prayer, right? There’s weak prayer. And you know what? God even hears weak prayers.
But there’s prayers that, like, well, you know, God, if you’re there and if you’re listening, maybe you could help me out of this jam I got with the IRS and whatever. You know, it is April 15th tomorrow. So, you know, maybe you can help me out here. That’s OK. If that’s all you got, pray it.
But there are places in the Bible where it says, “cried out.” He cried out. He cried out. Hannah cried. She cried silently. Eli thought she was drunk. She cried silently, but she was passionate about her prayer.
We studied in our men’s Bible study the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4. And it says, “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel.” He cried out. There’s something about that, crying out.
There’s something about praying in passion, praying in desperation. There’s something about saying, “God, if you don’t move here, God, I need you. God, I’m crying out to you. God, help. Help.”
You know, when Peter was sinking, right? When Peter got out of the boat and was sinking. And you know, he walked on water for a while. Way to go, Pete.
You know, we think, “Oh, Peter lost his faith. He looked at the wind and the waves.” Yeah, the other 11 didn’t lose their faith. They stayed in the boat. Peter gets my props as the man of faith there. He got out of the boat, alright? He didn’t have perfect faith, but he had enough to get out of the boat. He walked on water, but he began to sink. You know what Peter did when he began to sink? He cried out.
He didn’t say, ‘O thou sovereign of heaven, if it beest thy will, help thy humble servant in this most dire situation.’ you know, he was about five feet two, Peter was. All right, so he’s about 62 inches. I don’t know how fast gravity takes you down in water. Brian, I don’t know exactly the amount of time he had between when his feet started to go and his head was going under. If anybody here could figure it out, it would be you or your son Isaiah. You know, you guys got those kind of brains.
But anyway, he had a short period of time. And so he just said what? He said, “Lord, save me.” He cried out. All right, when people cry out to God, he moves. God doesn’t give up on his people.
The voice of the Lord was rare, but somebody was crying out, whether it’s God honoring Hannah’s prayer, God’s honoring somebody’s prayer here, and he speaks to Samuel. The voice of the Lord is reintroduced into the people of Israel. The voice of the Lord is reintroduced.
Visions and prophecies and God saying, “I’m not giving up.”
And we’re going to keep moving forward in this. But Samuel didn’t recognize the voice of the Lord. Guess what? We live in a day and an age where the voice of the Lord isn’t rare. Or doggone it, it shouldn’t be.
Because we live after Acts 2. And Acts 2 says this, in those last days, that’s these days, people, and I’m not saying that eschatologically, please. You know me, I’m not saying, oh, my goodness. I got stuck at a yellow light today.
It must be the sign of, you know, that was in the Olivet Discourse. You know, all right. Are you guys tired of my sarcasm about that? All right, so I’m not tired of my sarcasm about that. I enjoy it.
So, but last days, we’re living in the new covenant, the days of the spirit, and he says, ‘In these last days, in the days of the Spirit, in the days of the New Covenant, I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh.’
Just in case you don’t understand what “all flesh” means, we’re going to take on age and gender. your young men and your young women will prophesy. And your old men. There’s hope for people like me. We can still hear the voice of God. We might have to turn up our hearing aids. What? We can hear the voice of God.
Your old men will dream dreams and have visions. Even your menservants and maidservants. Economic distinctions, not rich or poor. The poor will hear “all flesh.”
So, if the voice of the Lord is rare, then it’s rare because we’re not listening. If you have the Holy Spirit, you can prophesy. If you have the Holy Spirit, you can hear God speak.
And I’m going to talk about some of the primary ways that God speaks. And I’m going to talk, not first, but second, I’m going to talk about the most important way to hear the voice of God, and then the most important way to be able to discern those other voices.
But there are two ways we discern what is the voice of God. The number two that I’m going to talk about is knowing the Bible. But here’s number one: understanding what the voice is saying. Because the different voices in our head give us different messages.
There are at least four voices in our head. Maybe three, but I’ve kind of divided up into four. There is the voice of the flesh. There is the voice of the devil. There is the voice of legalism, or as I like to call it, the voice of your mother.
That voice never leaves you. There is the voice, right? How many of you are adults and you still go, “Hey, I’m going out. I better wear clean underwear in case I get in an accident.” Because what a ridiculous thing that they taught at mom’s school. Because she’s afraid that they’re going to think poorly of her at the hospital because you got bad underwear.
But it’s the voice of your mother, the voice of the shoulds and shouldn’ts. It’s also the voice of your father. It’s a little joke there, but then there’s the voice of God.
Now, here’s the deal. All the voices in your head speak in the same voice. They don’t come with accents. It would be easy to discern the voices in your head if the voice of the devil sounded like Jack Nicholson. “Johnny’s here.” Then, I’ll be like, “Oh, creepy.” It would be easy to distinguish the voices in your head if the voice of God sounded like Morgan Freeman. But they don’t, they all sound alike. So, you distinguish the voices of your head.
This isn’t rocket science, people. By what they’re saying, by what the voice is saying, by content. The voice of the flesh is the voice that’s about me. It’s about my comfort, my wants, my desires, my satisfaction, my pleasure, my security. It’s about good things happening to me.
Now, let me tell you something. It is not evil to desire good things to happen to you. Jesus appeals to that desire. Hey, you want to live forever? In glory? I mean, C. S. Lewis says our desires are too weak, not too strong.
We ought to desire good things, but our flesh doesn’t desire good things. Our flesh desires lesser things that take us away from the best things. And so, that’s the voice of the flesh.
Christians will come to me and they say, “Man, God’s talking to me. What’s God saying?”
He said, “Buy lottery tickets. you’re going to win the lottery.”
It’s like, I don’t think God’s saying that, man.
“You don’t? I think that was God.”
And that actually could be. There could be a rare occasion.
I do know of one woman, and this woman, this is one of the reasons I believe this came to this woman because she was not the least bit prone to buy lottery tickets. She was morally opposed to it. She thought it was a terrible scam, and the Lord told her, “Go in there and buy a lottery ticket and you’re gonna win.”
And she said, “Lord, you know I’d never buy a lottery ticket.” And she did, and she gave all the money to missions, every dime of it. That was the voice of God.
But if you’re like, “Buy a lottery ticket because I wanna get out of this debt that I put myself into by reckless spending,” no, you’re just gonna get into deeper debt. Now, listen, dear ones. I don’t think it’s a terrible sin to buy a lottery ticket. If you’re a good liberal Democrat and you want to pay more taxes, lottery tickets are a great way to do it. you’re just paying taxes. Great, if you want to pay taxes. You know that people say, “People ought to pay more taxes.” There’s no logins, you’re paying more taxes.
Go ahead, pay more taxes. That’s for me and my house, no thank you. Till they spend it better, they can spend less, I think. All right, anyway, that’s the voice of the flesh. And maybe my objection to taxes is the voice of the flesh. I wanna keep more of my money.
College, I still remember college. Chico State, hanging out with all the young life Christians, all the inner varsity Christians, all us Christian kids, post-Jesus movement, Christian kids cruising on campus. We got our little Bible studies going on. We got stuff going on.
And these Christian boys, and a day like today would hit in Chico. You know what I’m talking about? A beautiful, sunny spring day would hit in Chico. Now, in Chico, you would not have to wait for April 14th for that day. It would happen at the end of January, or maybe it happened on Valentine’s Day. And you’d get a day like today, 70 degrees, the sun is shining. And these little college co-eds, these little cute girls, would come out of the dorms and they would do something that was somewhat distracting.
They would wear bikinis and sunbathe in the middle of campus. All right, they would do that. And there would be bike accidents, guys riding off the bridge because men are visible and these guys are college boys and they’d be looking and ogling.
Then these college boys would start getting prophetic words from God about who was going to be their life partner. And it was always the girl with the best figure, the best tan, and the smallest bikini, who was a Christian. She loved Jesus, but she was smoking hot.
And they would say, “Oh, the Lord’s told me I’m going to marry that girl.” And quite honestly, and I don’t mean this to sound insensitive, it was never the overweight girl with the good prayer life. You know, who would actually probably make a great wife because she’s got a good prayer life. You know, and, you know, maybe even her weight indicated that she liked to cook. I don’t know. Good wife. Good potential there. Whatever. It was never that girl that the Lord was speaking to him about. It was always Miss Christian Campus Beauty Queen.
And I remember, even back then, I had the discernment to think, “Yeah, I think that’s the flesh. I think I know how college boys’ flesh works. You paying attention, Sidney? All right. Just beware. I know how college boys’ flesh works.” That was that. I don’t think there’s a voice you got. All right.
The devil. The devil is the accuser of the brethren. Revelation 12:10 says the devil is the accuser of the brethren. The devil says you’re no good. They’re no good. I’m no good. God is no good. The devil is always accusing.
The devil is always accusing. He’ll go after you. He goes after you. He goes after your salvation. He goes after your confidence. He goes after your trust in God. All right.
I think everybody, the devil is not creative. He’s just persistent. I’ll bet everybody in the room has heard these words. Messed up and you sinned in some way, or you didn’t behave as Christian as you thought you ought to. Just a show of hands.
All right, really, you can raise your hands. You don’t have to be introverts. You can raise your hands if it’s true.
Have you ever heard these words in your head? “Oh, you call yourself a Christian?” That was a head nod. That was not a wave. All right, there you go. I’m still trying to get away with being an introvert. All right, there you go.
All right, everybody. I’ve heard those words. You heard those words? Yeah, we all heard that, Peter. Have you heard those words? All right. That was a real bold hand wave. That was like, “All right, you guys remind me of Tim Hawkins.” you know, the Christian comedian Tim Hawkins.
So, Tim Hawkins, he goes, he goes, ‘Yeah, I go to a hand raising church.’ He goes, ‘How many of you go to a hand raising church?’ And all these people raise hands. He goes, ‘All right, how many of you don’t go to a hand raising church?’ And then he mocks them. He says, ‘Oh, kind of hard, isn’t it?’
All right, so you call yourself a Christian? I’ve heard worse things than that. Oh, my gosh. The devil calls me bad names, cuss words.
And I’ve heard people say, ‘Well, you know, people who hear that, that’s because they heard it as a child.’ Listen, nobody in my family, my parents loved me. My parents never called me those names. Nobody in my upbringing called me those names that come from the evil one. Oh, my gosh. Terrible names. And I used to repeat them. I used to agree with him. ‘Yeah, that’s what I am. I’m just…’ And then the Lord just spoke to me. Then I got the voice of God. The voice of God said, ‘Kevin. What? You know my book?’
Yes, I do, Lord. I was in seminary at the time. Not only do I know your book, I know it in Hebrew and Greek. I mean, I really didn’t, but I knew a little bit then, you know, I’m becoming proficient. I’m an expert on your book, like every seminary student thinks they are. And he says, ‘In my book, do I ever call you any of those names?’ Like, well, no, you don’t. ‘What do I call you?’ And then all these names from the Holy Spirit started rushing at me. Son, child of God. Royal Priesthood? Beloved?
Prince? Co-Heir? Oh! He says, “Well, where do you think those other names are coming from?” I think I’ve told you this story before, but at the time, Saturday Night Live was really popular, and I used to watch Saturday Night Live. Dana Carvey would do this skit on the church lady. Anybody remember the church lady?
And what was the church lady’s main phrase? She would be, you know, scolding someone and self-righteously putting someone down about their behavior. Then she would look at them and go, “Could that be Satan?”
And I mean, it was so hilarious. This is how God speaks to you in your own language. I love humor. And the Lord says, “Where do you think those names come from?” And immediately, a picture of Dana Carvey pops in my head. “Could it be Satan?”
And from that day forward, 40 years ago, about, yeah it was about 40 years ago, from that day forward those names have not stopped coming at me but I don’t receive them anymore. You know, here’s one, here’s one I get called. I don’t know if anybody gets called this.
Here’s one I get called, and it won’t be a cuss word or anything. Here’s one I get called. I get called the worst person ever. Anybody ever hear that? Am I the only one who hears that? Karen, you heard that one? Yeah, yeah, I hear the, “you’re the worst person ever.” All right?
Now look at, all right, I just, again, show of hands. Am I? You guys have known me for a while. Am I the worst person ever? Yeah, I mean somebody raised their hand this morning. Sydney, thanks. Thanks. All right.
I love you, Sydney. All right, so, you know, and I think about that, you know, really? Really? I mean, I might not be very good, but really? I’m like below Hitler? Come on, you know? Come on. That’s the devil. He’ll accuse others, right? He’ll accuse others. He’ll accuse other Christians.
Oh man, I saw something set me off the other day. It was a theologian, and it was a picture that made him look really wise, and it was one of those little statements that sounded so wise and so profound. And it said this.
It said, you know, most Christians don’t really have a relationship with God. Most Christians in church don’t really have a relationship with God. They have relationships with other people who talk about God. And, you know, somebody put that up like, ‘Isn’t this wise, and isn’t this a corrective to the church and all that?’ And the minute I read that, I put down in the comments, ‘How does he know what’s in the heart of most Christians? How does he know what is in the heart of most Christians?’
I didn’t put the next thing that came into my mind, because, dear ones, you need to thank the Lord with all your heart that in my sermons and in my social media content, I edit. Amen.
Isaiah hears probably more than most of you on things that come up on the screen with me. But even you and your brother Jacob, in our times together, do not hear everything that comes up on the screen. I have a very vivid screen. I have a very loud screen.
I have a screen that says all sorts of language and thoughts in it that just are not appropriate for public consumption, and I edit. So all I said was, “How does this man know what’s in the heart of every Christian?” I did not put after… No, I’m not even going to say… I’m not even going to pretend to say it.
Yeah, actually, somebody… I got affirmed in that. Somebody… Yeah, somebody… Nobody argued with me. Somebody actually said, “Yeah, these kind of broad generalizations aren’t worth a dime.” Yeah. You get… Yeah. Yeah, you get barraged. Yeah.
I love that. Oh, yeah. Bring it, baby. Bring it. Let’s fight. Let’s fight. Bring it. I will fight with you in a godly way. In fact, I will post things, too, and I try to stop this, but I will post things that are provocative. Yes, yes, I will.
And people have called me on it and said, “you know, Kevin, you don’t have to always like say, you know, dare you, dare you to take a fight with me.” So, yeah, I’ve tried to calm that down.
What’s my point? Oh, the devil will accuse other Christians.
Now, let me be clear on this area of judging, and I’ve told you this before, but it’s so important, because people will always tell us, ‘Oh, you’re judging, judging is wrong.’ It’s like, ‘Well, what are you doing?’ you know, they’re doing, but guess what? No. Here’s where judging is right. We get to call balls and strikes. All right, if somebody came into me, just listen, this makes obvious sense. you’d all agree with this, right? Some guy comes into me and says, ‘Pastor, I no longer love my wife.’
I love this other woman down the street, and so I’ve started an adulterous affair with her. I’m going to leave my wife and my children, and I’m going to have her. She’s going to leave her husband and their children, and we’re going to break up both those families. We’re going to get married together, and we’re going to leave our spouses with the kids. We’re going to go off and live in Florida, because after all, love is supreme.
I’ve actually had somebody tell me something very similar to this, because the Bible says love is supreme, and I love this person, not my husband. So you’re okay with that, right, Pastor?
And I say, no, I’m not okay with that. Let me judge that. That’s wrong. That’s a sin. That is a terrible thing to do to your children, to do to the person you promised to stay with.
It’s a terrible thing to do to the community. It’s a terrible thing to do to this church. It’s a terrible thing to do to that family over there.
It is a terrible thing you’re planning on doing, full of death, destruction, and evil. Oh, you’re so judgmental. Dang right I am. Yeah. It’s bizarre, Sidney, how many people want their pastor’s endorsement on sin.
‘In my case, this is okay, right?’ Because if I say it’s okay, then that eases their conscience. Their conscience is being bothered. And I love not being that guy.
Well, I don’t love it because when people reach that point, the situation they’re bringing to me is very hurtful. So I don’t really love it.
But I have no problem being judgy at that point. No problem whatsoever. That’s wrong.
Here’s what I can’t judge about that person. you’re a terrible, evil person because you fell in love with this other person and you’re planning on leaving. you’re just rotten. you’re horrible. you’ve never had a relationship with Jesus, have you? No. I have no right to say any of those things.
You know why? I don’t know any of those things. God knows their heart. I don’t know their heart.
I know the intentions of their behavior, which I have every right to speak into. I do not have the right to speak into the condition of their heart that I don’t know about. You understand? I don’t have a right to speak of their motives.
Don’t say this, dear ones. Don’t say, “Oh, I know why they’re doing that.” No, you don’t. No, you don’t. I hear people say that a lot. “I know why they did that. They just want this and this and this and this.” Name-calling is a form of that.
They’re a this, and this, and this, and this. That’s the kind of judgment we’re forbidden to make. The kind of judgment that theologian made. Most Christians don’t have Jesus in their heart at all. You don’t know that one bit. Well, you can judge a tree by their fruit. Okay. You said most Christians. Do you know most Christians? Have you interviewed two billion of them to find out what their fruit is and to find out where they are in their maturity level in Christ?
And have you walked with them for months or years to discern what kind of character they have? Dude, you have not. Let me tell you something. When people talk that way, here’s the judgment I make, because I found out it’s true a lot. They’re not talking about other people, they’re talking about themselves.
This is not always true, so I can’t be all judgy on this one either, but people will tell you about themselves and their attitude toward others. It’s just the way it works.
All right. Oh, that church down the street, they’re not preaching the true gospel. That’s why they have so many people; they’re selling out. All right, now you may have evidence of that, but I doubt it. I doubt it. That’s the devil. you’re no good, they’re no good.
Here’s his worst ploy. He’ll do his work and get you to blame God. Why did God kill my nephew with cancer? He didn’t. Sin, Satan, the devil, all conspired to bring cancer on earth.
It’s the work of the devil, and the devil will do his work and then get us to blame God so we don’t believe in him. It’s the number one reason, it’s the number one excuse anyway, whether it’s a reason or not I’m not sure, but it’s the number in our culture. The problem of evil is the number one reason people have a difficult time believing in God.
How can there be a good God if there’s so much hurt, evil, destruction, pain in the world? Good question, it’s a good question.
You know how the Bible answers it? The Bible says, “God so loved the world that He took all that on Himself. He drank the dregs of it, so you don’t have to do it alone.” He doesn’t say He’s going to come and erase it all. He said, “I’m going to drink that, and I’m going to rise from the dead, and I’m going to change all that eternally. But it’s not all going away. Not right now. But one day it will.”
And we have a God who doesn’t erase suffering.
We have the only God in all the religions of the world who embraced it. He said, “Yeah, I know.” So when I go to God, man, this really hurts. You know what I get? “Yeah, I know. I know.”
I was shoveling garbage, right, downtown Bremerton, homeless people. It’s been good this last week. I’ve been so grateful. I don’t know who’s cleaning up, but it’s been good. And I don’t like to clean up. I don’t like cleaning. I don’t like cleaning up my mess, let alone other people’s. I really don’t like cleaning up other people’s mess.
All right? I just don’t. It’s like, I’m not your mother. I don’t need to clean you. And we got homeless people, and they camp out at our church in Bremerton.
And again, I don’t want to speak this into being. This last week’s been awesome. But many times it’s not awesome. And most of the time it’s just cardboard boxes and little garbage and stuff. It takes me 10-15 minutes before a Bible study to clean it up.
Well, I grumble about it. It’s like, ugh, I don’t like doing this.
And one time, we had on our back deck, we had this huge mess. It was just disgusting. I mean, it was huge. And I went back there to clean it up. And God bless him. Josh, for those of you who know him, Josh D’Intinosanto, brought his four kids down, let them play in the nursery, and he joined me. That was such an encouragement. That made that job so much better. And we were actually playing homeless person bingo, which probably isn’t a really good thing.
A sanctified game to play, but we were like, ‘Oh, hey, I found a needle. Okay, that’s one, you know. Oh, here’s a broken bourbon bottle, that’s two.’ I won’t even tell you some of the other stuff we found, but you know. But there have been many times, not one. There have been many times I’ve shoveled feces out of our planter boxes and parking lots. I don’t like that. So when that, that time that there was the huge mess, right? God, I don’t like cleaning up other people’s messes. Here’s the voice I hear.
I know, Kev, that’s what I did. And I did say that stupid prayer years back that I wanted to be like you, didn’t I? Oh, stupid prayer, stupid prayer. Now I’m cleaning up other people’s messes.
But yeah, the devil will accuse God. God did that. He is the accuser of the brethren. He’s the accuser of you. He’s the accuser of others. He’s the accuser. That’s the voice of the devil.
Then there’s the law, the shoulds and shouldn’ts, all right, that leads us up into shame.
If you grew up in a religious household, if you grew up in a fundamentalist household, if you grew up in a Catholic household, there’s probably lots of shame and lots of shoulds and shouldn’ts and lots of, you know.
My wife, you know, she grew up, both my wife and I grew up good Irish Catholic. And she went through a period in her life where she got in a couple car accidents, which my wife is so perfect. I have this perverse pleasure when she messes up in some way. It just makes me kind of happy.
It’s like, hey, I’m as perfect as you think. Are you, Mary Poppins? You know, it’s kind of nice.” And so, she got in these two car accidents. Since nobody was hurt and they were just, she felt horrible about it. She was like, “you know, they weren’t her fault. It’s like, fair enough. They weren’t her fault.” But one of her aunts said this and actually meant it. In all seriousness, “What have you done to upset God that he’s… That he’s doing this to you?
And my wife said, ‘Can you believe she said that?’ She goes, ‘What have I done to upset God?’ And I looked around and said, ‘Well, plenty. I mean, obviously. Obviously.’ I think what? I tell stories. What? No, I mean, she’s just like. She’s like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’
But that was a part of our upbringing, you know, kind of like this one to one correspondence. Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and there’s a lot of shame. And religious people will do this to you.
The religious people will give you the shoulds, and, well, you know, why are you sick? There’s more sin in your life. Why is this happening? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s a legalism and it’s a harsh religion. And so that’s another voice in your head. All right?
And so here’s the last one. The voice of God. It is the voice of encouragement, strength, comfort, strategy, the way back, correction. That’s how New Testament prophecy works. That’s how the voice of God works. It gives you courage to keep going. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s always nice.
Sometimes, edification is corrective. You know, it’s a hard word. God says, “Hey, don’t do that. Stop doing that. you’re messing up. you’re going the wrong way.” God will say that. “Repent.” He’ll say that, but he’ll also encourage and he’ll also comfort.
And sometimes when people are sitting under the voice of the devil or the legalisms, the Lord will come and speak a very comforting, encouraging word to that person. A very comforting, encouraging word. I don’t even know what nine words I spoke to this person. I have no recollection. I have the recollection of the event.
I have no recollection of what I said. But she came out of a very legalistic religious system full of shame and shoulds and shouldn’ts. And she married a very legalistic, self-righteous husband and they were in a very legalistic, straighten everybody out kind of ministry.
As often happens in those kinds of systems, the foundation, the wall begins to crack, because the foundation is not good. So this guy ended up committing adultery, leaving her. Mr. Self-righteous, behave, behave, behave, and she was devastated.
And almost lost her faith in God, you know, what’s going on, and fortunately she met a friend who was a good Christian friend, sympathetic, and she came. They started coming to one of our women’s Bible studies that was more along the lines of redemption and healing, and she was kind of cautiously stepping into this kind of semi-charismatic church. And you know, I’ve heard in the past, these are all devil worshipers in disguise, and you know, oh, they talk in tongues, oh, but you know, she was so hurting, she was like, you know, what I had before didn’t work.
And I got hit powerfully by the Holy Spirit right around that time in my life, and I came back from this conference. The leader of that Bible study was all excited, and she said, “I heard God really gotcha, you know, I heard.”
“Yeah,” I said, “man, it was something.” That’s when I started praying for people, and they started dropping. You know, I was like, “wow, that never happened at our church before.” And you know, my hand was shaking, and the Holy Ghost was all over me. I’m like, “yeah, it’s great, you know, I’m having fun.”
So this lady, bless her heart, this is so foreign to her. She’s been taught her whole life this is the devil, you know, but she’s so hurting. She’s like, “okay, pray for me.” It never happened to her in her life. I just put my hand on her, I said, “Jesus,” she’s on the floor.
Then I spoke nine things over her. Here’s how I know I spoke nine things over her, not because I remember, but her friend who brought her to the Bible study had her little pad out, and she wrote down nine things that I spoke over this woman. Later, this woman was now a part of a healing ministry for people coming out of trauma, her and her friend.
And she was a part of our church. And her friend came up to me and said, ‘Remember when you prayed for Jan, and she fell to the ground?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I remember that.’ She said, ‘you remember those nine things you said? Pastors lie.’ ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, those nine things, wasn’t it?’ I don’t know. I might have said, ‘I don’t know.’ I might have just said, ‘Sure, I remember.’ But I didn’t. Don’t judge me. You can judge the behavior. Pastors shouldn’t lie, but you don’t know what a rough day I had.
So I don’t remember if I said I did or I didn’t, actually. But she told me this. She said, those were nine pretty specific things. And she goes, in the last 18 months, I’ve watched all nine of them come true. It’s pretty good. I didn’t know that woman from Adam when I prayed for her. I didn’t know her past. I learned of that all after I said those prayers and spoke those prophetic words. That’s the God of encouragement. That’s the God of strength. That’s the God of comfort.
I remember God spoke to me about evangelism when we planted a church in California, just two words. But these two words imparted strategy to me. I was complaining to God about how hard it is to evangelize people. Because I was in my 30s or 40s, and I was thinking of evangelizing 30- and 40-year-old successful Americans. Very hard to do.
Unless they go through a divorce, get a serious illness, lose a job, face a life crisis, oftentimes, there’s no crack in that armor to get through. And I’m going to God.
I said, ‘God, we’re planting this church, and I want to evangelize. But it’s so hard to evangelize.’ Voice of the Lord, two words. Here are the two words: ‘Not kids.’ What was that? ‘Not kids.’ So hard to evangelize. It’s not hard to evangelize kids. Oh.
You know, most people who make a commitment to Christ do so before their 18th birthday, right? You know that, right? Not everybody. Don’t stop evangelizing your older neighbors. But most people who make a commitment to Christ do so before their 18th birthday.
You know, the other time people make commitments to Christ? Deathbed. Sick’em, Jesus. You know, I might want to reconsider eternity. Good call. Thief on the cross. I got great news for you. Jesus honors thief on the cross. I got great news for you.
The kids. We built a children’s ministry. The Lord built a children’s ministry there. It was a great children’s ministry. And we led kids to Christ. Lots of them. Lots of kids to Christ. Lots of youth to Christ. All right?
Two words, the Lord speaks. So that’s how God speaks.
Understand the content of the voice. Now, the most important tool in learning to discern and hear the voice of God is to study your Bible. All you evangelicals out there wondering about this crazy, charismatic, prophetic person, I’m on your side. I’m on your side. Inerrant, infallible, word of God, inspired, holy.
The only place we differ is you say that’s the only way God speaks. And I say in that way that he speaks, he tells us a lot of other ways he speaks. So there you go. I believe the Bible more than you do. Neener, neener, neener.
Am I provoking again? Am I provoking again? A little bit? Okay. None of those people listen. I mean, we get four views a week, so I’m not too worried that I’ll provoke anybody too much. All right. So here we go. Here we go. Study your Bible. Now, there are very important questions to ask when you study your Bible, and the last question on this list is oftentimes the first question Christians ask. How does this apply to my life? It’s an important question, a very important question.
But, you’ll not get the correct answer until you ask the questions that are above it on this list. What does this passage say about God? Twice, as we went through the book of Judges, two people came to me and said they knew of people who lost their faith reading through the book of Judges in the Bible, because God did such horrible things in the book of Judges. It’s like, no, he didn’t.
The whole point of the book of Judges is God saying, “Look at what terrible things people do when they don’t do what I told them to do.” But they just said, “Jephthah sacrificed his daughter. How could God do that?” Whose voice is that, people? Satan, the voice of the accuser. No, Jephthah sacrificed his daughter. God never endorsed human sacrifice.
Well, why was God with Jephthah? Because he’s a faithful God, and Israel cried out to him, and he had to find a deliverer.
And by that time, they had fallen so bad, it was like, “Well, this thug warrior’s the best I got.” Well, there’s this terrible scene at the end of the book of Judges where a woman is raped and then murdered, and then her body is cut up and sent to all the 12 tribes of Israel. It’s horrible, it’s gross, it’s morbid, it’s disturbing.
“Why does God do that? No, he doesn’t. That’s the point. You ask the wrong question. you’re just thinking, everything in the Bible, God is endorsing. Hey, you know better than that.”
Hey, Eve, eat this apple. Probably wouldn’t be an apple, but eat this fruit. My bet, by the way, it never says apple. It’s just tradition. My bet is kiwi. Here’s why I say kiwi. Kiwi is a delicious fruit, but it looks horrendous. And I think it looked great in the garden, and because it was used as the fruit of temptation, God made it ugly from then on. So that’s my kiwi theory, all right? Nobody subscribes to that theory but me. I might write a book, ‘The Kiwi Theory of the Fall.’ I don’t know.
So, you need to ask this question: What is the passage saying about God? What’s the truth about God in this passage? Is God endorsing those horrible things in the book of Judges? If you understand the context of the Old Testament, you go, no.
Just read the last verse in the book of Judges, “And there was no king in Israel and every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25, ESV)
God’s saying, “This is what life looks like when every man does what’s right in his own eyes.”
What’s the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant? Are you reading the Old Testament or the New Testament? You say, “Well, why is that different?” Because the covenants are different. The conditions are different. God is the same, but the conditions are different.
Prophets in the Old Testament and prophets in the New Testament prophesy a little differently. Why do they prophesy differently? Because prophets are covenant enforcers. They’re covenant lawyers. So in the Old Testament, a prophet comes as a covenant lawyer and says, “Here is the covenant that Moses gave you in Deuteronomy.”
Here is the covenant that was re-ratified in Joshua. Here is the covenant. Here are the promises of the blessings. If you obey the covenant, here are the promises of curses. If you disobey the covenant, you’ve been disobeying the covenant for a thousand years. Guess what? The Assyrians are coming. The Babylonians are coming. Here it is.
In the New Testament, prophets are covenant enforcers. They enforce the covenant. So if somebody says, “Repent and believe in Jesus,” and this is a hard word, “Repent or believe in Jesus, or you will perish.”
That is a prophetic new covenant word. Here’s another prophetic covenant word for those of you who have repented and believe in Jesus. I’m going to speak a hard truth to you right now. With all the authority of God, I’m going to speak a hard truth to you right now. That I have based on the words in this book and based on my relationship with Christ and His Spirit living in me, I’m going to speak to you prophetically.
If you have repented and believe upon Jesus, your sins are forgiven. your sins are forgiven. That’s prophetic.
That’s a New Covenant prophetic enforcement. If you came here with shame because you haven’t lived a perfect week and yet you are humble before God, and you know you blew it and you’re repentant, let me tell you something. New Covenant prophecy. Shame off you. Shame off you in the name of Jesus.
Let me give you another New Testament prophecy. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1, ESV)
Yes, it does. Thank you, Stevan. Thank you, Stevan. Good. Good.
All right. What’s the author trying to communicate to the original audience?
The Bible was written for you. It wasn’t written to you. It was written in a different time, to a different culture, to different cultural situations. The principles that that passage brings forward are applicable to this day. The specifics sometimes aren’t.
The one I like to use, I’m going to use it again just because it’s easy. It comes to my mind. How many of you women prayed tonight when we prayed? You ladies pray? Okay. Only Marilyn prayed correctly. She has her head covered. The rest of you didn’t have hats on your heads or anything.
You shameless women. You come into here without hats on. What are you doing? I’ll tell you what you’re doing. you’re dressing appropriately for the culture in which you live. None of you ladies are dressed inappropriately. None of you men are dressed inappropriately. Isaiah’s got his best T-shirt and sweatpants on. you’re doing great. You succeed, brother. You succeed. All right, we’re good, we’re good. Nobody is inappropriate. That’s what Paul is talking about.
First century Middle Eastern culture for women to go out in public and to meet with men publicly without their heads being covered was somewhat scandalous. It was somewhat presumptuous, maybe a little forward, maybe a little appealing, maybe a little immodest. Paul’s saying, “Look, when you gather together and pray and prophesy with one another, do so in a culturally appropriate way, so when people accuse us, they can’t accuse us of that. Don’t give the devil.” Peter says that, “If people are going to accuse you, at least let it be lies.”
All these Christians, they still make up lies about us. Those early Christians were cannibals because they ate the body and blood of Christ. So, we can kill them because they’re cannibals. Those early Christians are idolaters. No, we’re not. You guys are the idolaters. They believe in three gods, and they worship a piece of bread. They just lied about us. They still lie about us. They’re always going to lie about us.
That’s what the devil is. He’s a liar. He’s not going to stop lying about us. Those Christians are judgy and haters. Most of us aren’t.
I’ve run around those kind of Christians my whole life, this kind of Bible-believing, evangelical Christians. They don’t hate people who belong to the alphabet soup of our culture, the LGBTQTRFP crowd. Everybody’s welcome. We just tell the truth. Broke is broke, and wrong is wrong. But hey, join us.
You’re in a crowd of people who are broken and do wrong things. We don’t hate people. We love people. You got sin in your life?
Oh, well then, you get to sit, you know, it moves this way in our church, you know, the bad sinners, people getting better, to the really holy ones, you know, it just kind of goes, flows that way. So start over here, start over here, and then, you know, you’re gonna, you’re gonna slide a little bit, you know, so far Aiko’s the only one who’s made it to the, to the right hand of the, of the preacher, you know, but you can all aspire. All right.
Yeah, well, I basically must tell you what I… I’m just gonna tell you, Kathleen, you should be silent in church. You shouldn’t have asked that question. You were completely out of order.
All right, now, you know what? Listen, if you throw me batting practice fastballs, I’m gonna swing at them. I just can’t help myself. I can’t help myself. If you give me an easy joke, I will go there every time.
All right, so, men and women, first century, were separate in a communal setting. They didn’t have them sitting together, all right?
Women, for the first time, both in Greek and Jewish culture, were being introduced to the scriptures and introduced on an equal learning level with men, alright? Their husbands had studied the scriptures and had been educated their whole lives, and they hadn’t. So, in this context, some guy’s up there expounding on the scriptures, and a woman over here is saying to her husband over there, ‘Is that right? Are we good?’ They were disrupting the service. Women were disrupting the service. And Paul, Paul makes it very clear. ‘Women should be silent in churches.’
Is that, this is absolute prohibition? Well, it can’t be because earlier he said, “Women, when you pray or prophesy, have your heads covered.” Nobody prayed or prophesied silently. So, women were talking in churches and he tells them what to dress when they, how to dress when they talk in church. So, women were allowed to talk in church. They weren’t allowed to be disruptive in church. If you have questions, what does he say? “Ask your husbands at home.” Stop asking them in the middle of the worship service. Stop interrupting, all right?
I will tell you, I’ve been a pastor for 40 years. All right? I have never had to separate men in church. There are women that I have to kind of say, “you know, you can’t sit next to each other.” My daughter is the worst among them, you know?
But actually, I found out later, it’s actually my son-in-law’s fault because he whispers some sly joke and then she starts laughing and tells her friend next to her and pretty soon these women are all giggling and talking back and forth. I said, “What’s going on over there?”
You know? You know who’s the worst, by the way? Just a complete aside. The worst behaved people in church? Teachers. Teachers. Yeah, they’re the ones putting gum under chairs, handing out notes, sending text messages, laughing and yacking it up with their other teachers. It’s just true. It’s just been my experience.
I’ve pastored several teacher churches where we had a lot of teachers. They were always the ones who misbehaved the most. It’s like everything my kids do during the week, I’m doing to you, Pastor, on Sunday, so just deal with it. So yeah, don’t be disruptive.
Don’t be disruptive. All right, so once we get to what’s the author trying to communicate to the original audience, then we can get to how does this passage apply to me? How does it apply to the contemporary life we live in?
The Bible has several different genres. You need to know what kind of literature you’re reading to understand what the Bible is saying, all right? You know, the Bible is literal. Take the Bible literally. No, you don’t take, nobody takes all language literal. Language is very figurative. Middle Eastern language is much more figurative.
It speaks in metaphors, it speaks in word pictures, it speaks in poetry. Oh, does that mean that the liberals are right, that all the Bible is symbolic? No, the liberals aren’t right. The whole Bible isn’t symbolic.
It speaks in letter and historical narrative. What is, what do we, how do we deal with letter and historical narrative? Take it literally. Paul says, do this, don’t do that. All right, gotcha.
Jesus rose from the dead. Was that intended to be figurative?
No, everything in the New Testament accounts intends to point us to the fact that, oh my goodness, he said he was gonna do it, and he did it, and it changes everything. And the world got changed by that historical fact. That’s historical narrative.
That’s not a symbol that, you know, oh, you know, caterpillars become butterflies in the spring, you know, and you know, by mid-April, the sun will come out one day in the Pacific Northwest to get you hungry for July when it comes out for six days in a row.
And you know, it’s not that. It’s historical, it’s fact, it’s literal, it happened. However, Psalm 23:1, “The Lord is my shepherd.” you do not have wool. That would be literal.
Children, you must be like doves. You don’t have to lay an egg. Right? That’s figurative, poetic, metaphorical language. The Bible is chock-full of that.
Well, it should be easier. Call the ambulance, it’s not. Be a grown-up, study.
All right, you know, by the end of Sunday night, I get a little impatient, all right? I get a little grumpy. Call the ambulance, I’m sorry.
If you’re just beginning to study the Bible, all questions are good, right? We won’t do that to you. All right. There’s poetry, there’s apocalyptic literature, which isn’t even used today, but was a tool in ancient times to use all sorts of symbolism, to incite feelings and emotions, and not to be crammed into 21st century headlines. That wasn’t the point. In fact, I said, ‘Know your Bible.’ you know the best way, if you’re ever going to understand the book of Revelation? You know the best way to understand the book of Revelation?
Understand the Old Testament, because no book in the New Testament alludes so much to the Old Testament as the book of Revelation. It talks about the Old Testament more than any other book. All of its illusions, all of its word pictures, are pointing us back to something in Israel’s history.
There’s a parable. A parable is a story. It’s not a literal story, but it is a story that reminds us of normal things in life to make a point. Look at that farmer out there. Well, how many Israelites in an agrarian society had seen a farmer?
Look at that farmer throwing out seed. Oh yeah, we’ve all seen farmers throwing out seed. We’ve probably thrown out seed. You know what it’s like to throw out seed, right? Some of you throw out and the birds just come. Other seed you throw out and it looks like it’s going to grow, but then you get a hot Israeli summer and your tomatoes burn.
Other seed you throw out, but those doggone weeds grow. Right, Isaiah? Stupid weeds. No weeds in heaven, brother. Gardening will be glorious.
I will let you come over and tend to my meat trees. Meat trees. you’ve never heard about meat trees? Okay, here’s the deal. It’s Sunday night. It’s Sunday night. I can take tangents. There’s no meat in heaven because there’s no animal death. There’s no death in heaven. So, meat requires animal death. I would say there’s no meat in heaven, but then I’m thinking, how can it be heaven without gloating and meat? Those things need to be there, and I’ve come to this conclusion. It’s not biblical, but it makes sense. In heaven, there will be meat trees.
There will be bacon vines. There will be ribeye orchards. There will be hamburger shrubs. There will be meat trees, and Isaiah is a gifted gardener, so I’m just saying he can come over and help take care of my meat trees. There you go, Kathleen.
All right, you’ve seen a parable. you’ve seen a farmer. Some of that seed does what? It falls on really good soil, and the birds don’t get it, and the weeds don’t get it, and the sun doesn’t get it, and what happens to that seed?
One little seed produces a crop, produces food for plenty, because God is abundant. Oh, okay, so God, you’re teaching us about farming? No, that would be literal. I’m not teaching you about farming, because I preceded that story about the seed with this little phrase that I use all the time,” Jesus says, “the kingdom of God is like.” Ah, what’s the point? The point is human lives are like this. The gospel goes out. The word goes out, and some people, they don’t even receive it. The devil just snatches it away.
Other people, they receive it, and it looks like they’re going to grow, but the heat of the day, the persecutions of life, the trouble that comes, dries it up and kills it. Other people, it looks like it grows for a while, but then worldliness gets in the way, right? Worldliness, the concerns of life, and bills, and marriage, and kids, and blah, blah, blah, and career, and opportunities. I’ve seen Christians do this.
I’ve seen Christians who just start out all hungry for the Lord, but then it’s like, “Yeah, yeah, church is fine, and yeah, I’m a Christian. I bought my ticket to heaven, but you know, that promotion, this, that, the other thing,” or even more sad.
Sadly, the example I already used, you know, the wife that helped me get here, you know, she’s kind of old and tired now and there’s a young cutie and she kind of looks at me like I’m great and, you know, I’ll go get my trophy wife and live the next 20 years.
All right? And I, you know, it’s hard. It’s hard. I’ve told other people, I’ve told my wife this. I said, ‘Look, honey, you might think I have it easy, but it’s hard being a trophy husband.’ It’s just, but it’s a burden I will bear. I don’t know why she rolls her eyes as much as she does.
All right. So, different content, different. And so, Jesus saying the kingdom of God and he says, ‘But then it’s like the seed that falls on good soil, boy.’
And when we get one of those Christians, when we get one of those people, man, 30, 60, a hundred fold. All right. You get it.
All right. Finally, let me just touch on a few other ways that God talks to us. Prophecy. All right. It’s in the Bible. First Thessalonians 5. Don’t despise prophecy. Don’t despise prophecy. Don’t despise when God speaks through other people.
Here’s why people despise prophecy. There’s way too many people who say, “thus saith the Lord,” when it ain’t the Lord, thus saying it. That’s why people despise prophecy. All right.
So, here’s the problem. And here’s our responsibility. Once somebody comes to us and says, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ you know whose responsibility that now is. They just put it on your plate. It’s your responsibility. And Paul says, ‘What? Throw out what’s bad, hold on to what’s good.’ Yeah. All right. How do we test it? I just gave you two big ways. Content. Scripture. Those are two big ways. But what if it’s not clear with those two? Well, you have the Holy Spirit. Ask, ‘Holy Spirit, was that from you?’
There are people who come to me and say, “Kevin, thus saith the Lord.” It’s like, I don’t receive it. Why? Well, it failed test one, test two, or test three.
I had a young guy, I was just trying to encourage him in prophetic words. And I’d given him a little encouraging prophetic word. I said, “Look, turnabout’s fair play. Do you have a prophetic word for me?”
And he was troubled with the fact that I’m an overweight preacher, and he was in good shape. Of course, he was a chain smoker at the time.
But he said, ‘you know, the only thing I get is, you know, the body needs to be a temple of the Holy Spirit.’ And he fat shamed me. Actually, in the context where it says the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, I’m not saying it’s okay to be out of shape, but I am saying in that context, it’s all about sexual purity.
All right. So he misappropriated that. And I didn’t scold him for that, but I didn’t receive it. I wasn’t going to get shamed that day.
I wasn’t going to get shamed that day. That wasn’t from God. All right. That wasn’t from God. Right. First test. Who was that word from? I think it was from the devil. I think, you know, because it was accusing. It was accusing. And, yeah, it came from his own brokenness that that was the open door that I got through. So that word didn’t land. I didn’t take it. Didn’t receive it. Wasn’t even that it was untrue. Just like, no, I’m not going to get shamed today. All right. So. You test it. You receive the word.
There have been people who have spoken to me. It’s like, “Oh, OK. Yeah. That’s God. That’s God. All right?”
So, sitting at breakfast with a prophetic man that I only met once in my life, I was invited to have breakfast with him with another man who I only met twice in my life. I don’t know these guys at all, but anyway, they wanted me to have breakfast with him.
I think this prophetic man was a traveling prophet and he was looking for a gig, right?
So anyway, I was pastoring in California, but man, Washington was on my heart. Washington was on my heart. Church planting was on my heart. And I was a week away from coming up here to pray over the region, coming to Seattle and praying over the Pacific Northwest. And this guy asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m going down to this conference in LA and then I’m going to go up to Washington. I’m going to pray over the Seattle region.’ He’s eating his chicken fried steak. He stops and he looks at me.
He says, ‘The Lord says, take the ferry to Bremerton.’ I go, ‘Okay.’ I says, ‘Does the Lord say why to take the ferry to Bremerton?’ And he goes back to his chicken fried steak. He says, ‘Nope.’
I came up to Washington with my friend. We prayed around Seattle. I took the ferry to Bremerton. And this is not a diss on Bremerton, but I landed in Bremerton and it was like I was thoroughly underwhelmed. Many people have had that experience.
And by the time I left, in my heart, I knew I was going to plant a church in Bremerton, Washington. I knew it. I knew it. And then, the Lord reminded me of this. When I was a little boy, Mick, used to play simulated sports games. This was before Stratomatic. We used to play simulated sports games with my friends. And we were like 8:9, 10 years old and we fantasized about being high school athletes. We invented a high school sports league.
We would draw uniforms and stadiums, and we got a map of the Pacific Northwest. We started with Kent, Auburn, Seattle, Tacoma, Bremerton. We had all these teams, and we would draw their uniforms and pretend we were on those teams. The Lord reminded me of this as I was driving home. He reminded me, ‘Remember when you did that with your friend Danny?’ I responded, ‘Yeah, that was cool.’ The Pacific Northwest was on my heart when I was 10 years old, before I was a Christian.
He said, “Remember what team you were on, what team you put yourself on?” I go, “Yeah, it was Bremerton.” It was on a map, a dot on a map that little boys were playing and when I was 10 years old, the Lord said, “The Lord had put his finger on Bremerton, Washington.” That prophetic word landed from Mr. Chicken Fried Steak Prophet.
Then there’s other times people say, “Pastor, that’s what the Lord’s saying.” And I go, “Eh? Doesn’t fail the test, doesn’t really land.” you know what I do? I do what you should do. I pray.
“Holy Spirit, what am I supposed to do with that?” He says, “Sit on that egg. Sit on that egg and see if it hatches. Don’t throw it away, don’t scramble it. You know, some prophetic words take a long time. I found that out. Not every prophetic word you get on Sunday comes to pass on Tuesday. All right?”
Well, that’s, I talked about content. The Word from God. Encouraging, edifying, comforting, strategy. So yeah, content is one of the tests.
The other test. All right, here’s a failed test, right? Failed test.
This is not a real one, but here’s an example of a failed test. Somebody gives you a prophetic word and says, “you know what? I know you’ve been through a horrible divorce and I know you’re really struggling with resentment toward your spouse, but you know, for a season you can hold onto that anger. It’s keeping you alive.”
It’s like, no. What test does that fail? Yeah, I’ve heard that. Yeah. What test does that fail? That test, that fails the test of the Bible, people. There’s no place where Jesus says you can forgive later.
Or, you don’t have to forgive at all. All right. Dreams. Dreams. We’ve spent a lot of time in our 5:15 to 6:15 Bible study looking at dreams. And we know dreams, interpretation, application. I’m a dreamer. I don’t know that every dream comes from God. I’m not an expert at interpretation or application, but the Lord has given me dreams.
And very recently, he gave me a very profound dream about grief that was very vivid and very helpful to me, actually, at a time of real sadness. And he gave me the interpretation.
And it was just a beautiful thing. It was a very disturbing dream, but the interpretation and the application was actually very helpful. And so, the Lord does that.
And then visions. An open vision is just where you see. You see it. You see it. You know, you stop seeing Mick and Brian and Kathleen, and you see something else. And God is just showing.
I’ve never had an open vision. Maybe some of you have, but I never have. I’ve never seen an angel that I know of. Maybe the Walmart lady.
Maybe I’ve seen an angel incognito, but I’ve never, you know, seen a six-foot-ten angel with a flaming sword or anything like that. People have, though. Most visions are simply like a little movie scene that goes through your head. Right? A little movie scene that goes through your head. I don’t even call these visions. I call them prophetic pictures. But I get prophetic pictures almost any time I want to open that door. Almost any time I want to open that door, I get prophetic pictures.
Prophetic pictures, and I’ll just look at somebody and I’ll see something and that sort of thing. Yeah. Okay. What’s going on? Sometimes, I just tell the person what I see because maybe they have the interpretation.
So, a young lady at our Bremerton church who’s been leading worship for us some, I was just at home having my quiet time and she popped up into my mind. And I saw in her a tiger. I saw a tiger in her belly kind of thing, like there was this tiger.
And so, I just, you know, began to pray into that. What does a tiger mean? And I looked up “tiger” in the Bible and said, “There are no tigers in the Bible. They knew lions, but they didn’t know tigers.” But then, I began to look, do a little more research, begin to pray some more about it. And so, well, a tiger is a lot like a lion, represents some of the same things that a lion represents. That is, and it can be good or bad, right? It can be predatory.
It could be something’s chasing you, something’s after you, or the good is it represents strength, the power of God, royalty, you know. And then, and then I just, as I was praying about it, the Lord said, ‘Yeah, she’s a tiger. She’s like, she has the qualities of a lion, but here’s a difference between lions and tigers. Lions hunt in packs. Tigers are stealthy.’ So she has the characteristics of a biblical lion, but she’s stealth. She’s doing it kind of below the radar. So I told her that today.
I might have ruined the stealth, but, you know, there it is. There’s a tiger over there! That you’re a tiger. All right. So, yeah. So I just see, I see that kind of stuff. And visions. And I’m not going to tell you the vision I always tell you because I always cry during that vision. So if you want me to tell you afterwards, I’ll tell you. But you’ve heard it like 10 times and I just cry when I tell it. So I’m not going to do, I’m not going to cry.
I told it this morning, and I cried. I’m not going to cry twice in a day; I’m not going to do it. I want to maintain some sense of male dignity as my testosterone dives with old age, you know. I cry more than my wife now. You know, all these women are like, “Oh, that’s so good.” No, it’s not. It’s terrible. I know. I know you guys won’t let me leave Bible study if I keep telling you my crying stories. you’ll be like, “I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m sorry.” I’ll go to the bathroom.
You’ll be like, ‘Are you going to the right one?’ you know, it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re in that day and age. Never mind. Help him, Jesus. Get him out of this sermon now.’ How do we segue into communion from that? I love you people. This is so much fun. It’s the end of the night. I’m all giddy and silly, and you just go along with it. Thank you, Jesus. New covenant prophecy. your sins are forgiven. The Holy Spirit lives in you. Christ did for you what you could not do for yourself.
He came to seek and save the lost.
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10, ESV)
That’s the qualification to have this meal. You have to have simply the humility to repent and believe and say, “Yep, I once was lost but now I’m found. Thank you, Jesus.”
All right. If you’ve come to your senses and know you can’t do this on your own and you need a Savior, then you’re invited to the table of the Savior. Holy Spirit, as we take this meal tonight, feed us.
And Lord, here’s what we want tonight based on this sermon.
I want you all to say this prayer with me. And here’s the prayer. I’m going to say it once, and then you’re going to say it with me. It’s a real complicated prayer, so you have to pay attention. Speak, Lord, your servant listens. Okay, so on the count of three, one, two, three, speak, Lord, your servant listens. Come to this meal and let the Lord speak to you.
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April 7, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Who have I in heaven but you, and besides you I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. 26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever. (Psalm 73:25-26, NLT)
You are my waymaker, my miracle worker, my promise keeper, my light in the darkness. I thank you that you always answer the prayer help. You are faithful and good and true, and we are secure in you, in Jesus’ Name, Amen. Amen, dear ones. Alright, you reading your Bibles? Reading through Judges? Oh, messy. Judges is messy, man. That is messy stuff.
We’re going to talk about that tonight. Okay, so, I do want to tell you, though, let me ask you, I’ve got two stories. Have I told you the story about the four people in the airplane and the three parachutes? Okay, I’ve told you that story.
Have I told you the story about Robinson Crusoe and his island? Alright, so that’s the one you get here. So, you know the story of Robinson Crusoe, right? You know, Tom Hanks and, you know, but the original story, this man is on a deserted island and builds a life for himself.
And Robinson Crusoe was finally discovered. He was finally found. And when they came upon his island, they saw three shacks, three houses. And they thought that was curious, one man on this island and three houses.
And so they asked him, they said, “Well, what’s the first house?” And Robinson Crusoe said, “Well, the first house, that’s my house. That’s where I live. That’s where I sleep. That’s where I have my meals. That’s where I stay out of the rain. That’s my house.”
They go, “Okay, well, what’s the second house, the one in the middle?”
And he goes, “Well, that’s my house of worship. Every week I go there and I say my prayers and I worship God and that’s my church. That’s where I go to church.” They go, “Okay, well, what’s the third house?” He goes, “Oh, that’s the church I used to go to. All right.”
Judges. We’re going to look at kind of an overview of the book of Judges. We’re doing this occasionally as we’re reading through the Bible.
Instead of me taking a particular verse or a particular section of what we’re reading, we kind of cover a whole book in the week that we’re reading. And it just kind of lands on me. It’s like, hey, I want to give an explanation of this whole book. I think I did it with Job, and I did it with Leviticus, and so now I’m going to do it with Judges.
We’re going to do an overview of the book of Judges. But the summation of the book of Judges is in the last verse.
If you want to know what the book of Judges is about, read Judges 21-25, and here’s what it says. In those days, Israel had no king. All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
25 In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:25, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our strength and our redeemer. Judges is a hard book to read. There’s a lot of violence, a lot of ugliness.
And it starts actually in chapter 2. Let me give you the run-up to Judges.
The Israelites are in Egypt. God sends Moses. He delivers them out of Egypt with a strong arm and signs and wonders. He parts the Red Sea, destroys the Egyptian army. He takes them into the desert. He gives them the commandments. They build the tabernacle.
He takes them to the promised land, and they don’t want to go in. They’re scared. So God says, okay, you can die out in the desert. And so they spend 40 years in the desert until that generation dies.
Then Joshua leads them into the promised land, that next generation.
And the commandment is that you shall drive out all the nations that live in this territory: all the Canaanites, the Ammonites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Edomites, the Midianites, the Philistines, all the different groups that live in the land of Canaan that God had promised Israel. you’re to drive them out, you’re not to let any of them remain in the land, kill them or chase them out, because if they remain in the land, what’s going to happen is they’re going to tempt you with their gods. And they will become a snare to you, he says.
And so, the story of Joshua is about Israel driving the people out of the land, but they don’t finish the job. They start well, but they don’t finish the job.
And we pick it up in Judges 2:1. The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokom and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. For your part, God, I’m a promise keeper. I won’t break my covenant with you.”
But for your part, you are not to make any covenants with the people living in this land. Instead, you are to destroy their altars, but you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this?
So now, I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.
1 The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. 2 For your part, you were not to make any covenants with the people living in this land; instead, you were to destroy their altars. But you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this? 3 So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.” (Judges 2:1-3, NLT)
When the angel of the Lord finished speaking to the Israelites, the people wept loudly. So, they called the place Bokom, which means weeping, and they offered sacrifices there to the Lord.
So, Israel failed to do what God had called them to do, and within one generation, within one generation, Israel was abandoning Yahweh and worshiping other gods.
Now, let me tell you about these other gods. On the one hand, the Old Testament speaks of idolatry in a very disparaging way. And it says, “What is that, a block of wood? You worship a block of wood?”
What kind of fool are you? It’s just a block of wood. It’s just a stone. It’s just a carved stone. Why are you worshipping things that have no life? Why are you worshipping these worthless idols?
But on the other hand, there’s another line of thought that runs through Jewish literature and that runs through the Bible, that behind those worthless idols are actually fallen angelic presences, gods with small g’s, if you would, that have names like Baal and Asherah and Molech.
And these pagan gods are what Paul refers to in the New Testament as powers and principalities, spiritual forces of wickedness. They are, in fact, demonic beings who have control over different tribes, different nations, different city-states, over different regions.
And the Canaanite people worshipped these demonic beings. And this created a horrible society. Don’t think when God says to Joshua, “Drive these people out, kill them all,” He’s like, “These are just like innocent, sweet people farming their pasture lands.” These people are barbaric and cruel to the nth degree. They kill each other. They kill other nations.
They burn their children alive as child sacrifices to their gods. These are horrible cultures. These are demonic cultures. This is a cancer in the human race. This is a demonic cancer in the human race that God is lifting out of this region so that He can plant His covenant people in that place to send His Savior into the world.
It’s like God is carving out this island of purity and monotheism in this sea of pagan polytheism and horrendous kind of living, and basically so He can save the world. It’s a necessary surgery.
None of you would take a knife, I hope anyway, to your child. cut them open and cut out parts of their body. But you pay somebody to do it. You pay somebody to do it if that was a surgery that was going to save your child’s life. You pay somebody to do that kind of violence as a loving act to save somebody. They cut into me and took out my appendix. In fact, I’m down three body parts at my age of 65. I don’t know how many more I can spare.
They keep saying, “Well, we’re going to have to take that one out.” They keep taking out the unnecessary ones. They keep taking out my body parts. God is performing surgery in the book of Joshua so that he can save the human race from these demonic beings.
Israel doesn’t fully cooperate, and therefore we get this cycle in the book of Judges. The book of Judges is about a 450-year period. It’s 21 chapters. You read it like it happens in a week. It doesn’t happen in a week. It’s 450 years of human history.
It’s like the 1600s until now. It’s a long time. But in these 450 years, it tells the story of Israel in the promised land and this prophecy being fulfilled, the nations around them being a thorn to them as they continue to worship these false gods and fall away from Yahweh’s covenant.
And so, there is this spiral. There is this pattern in the book of Judges, and it ends up being kind of a downward spiral for Israel, and we end up with that statement, “Every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
There was no king in Israel. And so, here’s how the spiral goes. Israel worships false gods, and then the surrounding nations oppress them because the protection of Yahweh is lifted from them. And then, they get oppressed by these nations.
And when it says oppressed, it doesn’t mean they got their taxes raised. It means that hordes of raiders would come and kill them. They would come in, they would take all your livestock, they would burn your crops, and if they didn’t rape your women and steal your children, they would leave you there to starve.
That was oppressive. So the people then, under that kind of oppression, would call out to Yahweh. “Oh, we forgot about Yahweh. We’ve been worshiping Baal and Asherah and Molech, and we forgot about Yahweh. You know, Yahweh did some pretty good things there back in the day. There’s some stories about what he did to Egypt. Let’s try to turn back to Yahweh.”
And they’d turn back to Yahweh, and they would pray a prayer that is, in fact, always answered in the Bible, and to my experience, always answered to this day.
And you’ve heard me say it a hundred times. You know the prayer. Help. Help. And God would send help.
And in the Book of Judges, the help comes through a judge. Not what you think of when you think of a judge. Not somebody who sits up in a court and makes rulings. But a judge, in the Book of Judges, is really a military leader.
Somebody that God puts his spirit upon and raises them up to defeat Israel’s enemies, to defeat the oppression, and to return the Promised Land back to Israel so that they can worship Yahweh and they can have peace. And it works.
These judges raise up, they kill the oppressors, and God says there was peace in the land, sometimes for 40 years, sometimes for 80 years. I mean, it’s just one sentence in the Bible, but that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good to have peace in the land for 80 years, 40 years, a generation, two generations. Why?
Because they prayed for help, and God is faithful and good and brought the help. But then they forget. They forget. They defeat their enemies, they have peace, and then they worship other gods. And the cycle repeats.
And that’s the story of the Book of Judges. The problem is, they get worse and worse and worse. The longer they go in their history, the worse their memory gets about who Yahweh is, what His covenant is, and what He does.
And therefore, the first set of judges in the book of Judges aren’t that bad.
Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, they’re kind of pretty good judges. Deborah, she’s a female judge, unheard of. But there she is, judging Israel. And they’re being oppressed.
And so, Deborah calls the general of Israel’s army and says, ‘The Lord has told me He will deliver our oppressors into your hands. Go fight Him.’ And the big brave general says, ‘No way, sweetie. I’m not believing that unless you come with me.’
And she goes, ‘Okay, I’ll come with you. But guess what? I’m going to get written about in the Bible, not you.’ And she does. She does.
And in fact, it is exactly as she had said. Israel defeats their enemies. And they flee. And Israel is set free.
And the general of their enemies, this guy named Caesarea, he escapes Israel. And he runs into this woman. This is a you-go-girl story. Deborah and Jael. He runs and he hides in this woman’s tent, Jael. But Jael’s on Israel’s side. She’s figured it out. She’s like, “Oh, Israel’s winning this battle.”
And so she just takes this guy into the tent. He says, “Don’t tell anybody I’m here. Hide me out. Protect me from the Israelites.”
She says, ‘Now, now, I’ll do that. you’ll be fine.’ And she gives him a sedative. Warm milk. Ancient sedative. ‘Drink this milk. you’ve had a hard battle. you’ve had a rough day.’ Probably strokes his hair. ‘Poor sweet baby. It’s so hard being a general and losing. Have some milk. Take a nap. I’ll put a cover over you.’ And as he falls into a deep sleep, this dear, kind woman, probably a mother of many children, takes a tent peg and drives it through his skull. It’s a bloody book. It’s a bloody book.
Israel comes and looks for him. She says, “I’ve got him pinned down for you. There he is. He ain’t moving. You can find him.” The first set of judges are pretty godly.
Then we get to probably the longest story of any judge in the book of Judges, and it’s Gideon. And we like the story of Gideon. And Gideon’s a coward. He starts off as a coward.
God says, it’s so ironic, because God comes to Gideon and says, “Hey, almighty warrior,” here’s where Gideon is when God says that to him. He’s in a winepress threshing wheat.
What’s a winepress? It’s a cave. How do you thresh wheat? You thresh wheat by throwing it in the air from a blanket so that the thin layer that is around the kernel of the wheat, which is called chaff, actually gets blown away by the wind.
And the wheat, the good part of the wheat, falls back into the blanket, and the chaff then is blown away. That’s how you separate the wheat from the chaff. It would be a terrible process to take every little kernel of wheat and try to break that.
So, they let the wind do it. The problem is, Gideon is so afraid of Israel’s enemies, he’s threshing wheat, he’s doing this process in a cave. What do caves lack? Wind.
So, I picture, okay, I’m old enough to remember this. How many of you have seen the reruns of the Andy Griffith show? Remember Barney Fife? Don Knotts as Barney Fife? Okay, that’s Gideon. He’s Don Knotts.
If they made a movie about Gideon, Hollywood would turn him into this great warrior. But he’s Don Knotts. And he’s in this cave, he’s doing this.
He’s hyperventilating, threshing the wheat. And God shows up and says, “Hey, almighty warrior,” because I’ll tell you what, God’s identity on somebody’s life is bigger than their identity on their life.
And Gideon’s so brave, he makes God do two fleeces before he finally accepts his word. God does it. And Gideon ends up becoming exactly that. He becomes exactly what God calls him out to be. He becomes a mighty warrior, a mighty judge, a mighty deliverer, and Israel is delivered.
And you think, “Hey, the story of Gideon’s pretty good. That’s a good Bible story.”
And then, Gideon becomes a knucklehead. He first refuses to be king. Good, Gideon. you’ve got some humility. But then, all the men who didn’t fight with him, he kills them. His own Israelite men. Instead of forgiving them, instead of saying, “Hey, maybe I wasn’t clear. I really needed your help.” He just kills them.
And then he makes an idol. And his family after him become idol worshippers. He starts well, but he ends poorly. What’s happening? Israel’s getting further and further away from the God story.
The next judge that’s highlighted is Ahud. He’s a mountain thief.
He’s a guy who has his band of… He’s Robin Hood, except he doesn’t give to the poor. He’s got his band of men, and they raid merchants and other things. They steal. But he’s a good one, and he’s a good warrior.
And so when Israel needs deliverance, they go, ‘Who’s the best fighter? It’s Jephthah up in the hills there, stealing from us.’ And they go get Jephthah. And Jephthah says, ‘Okay, I’ll be your deliverer.’ And he does, and he’s successful.
But Jephthah is so far away now from the ways of Yahweh, he doesn’t even know the ways of Yahweh. And he’s just like any other pagan now, at this point. He’s an Israelite, but he’s like any other pagan. And he says, Well, you know, if God gives me the victory, I’ll sacrifice the first person to come out of my house. That’s a pagan thing, that’s not an Israel thing. No Israelite who understood Deuteronomy, who understood the covenant of God, would ever say such a thing.
But he says such a thing, and he ends up sacrificing his daughter, and so now Israel’s practicing what? Human sacrifice. They get worse and worse and worse.
And then finally, you have the biggest knucklehead of them all, Samson. Again, in the 50s and 60s, they would make movies, Samson and Delilah, and they’d be romance movies. Samson would be this brave hero, but when you read the Bible, Samson is just a fool.
Now, God is faithful. God says, “I will use him to deliver my people from the Philistines.”
And God’s spirit comes upon Samson, and he has superhuman strength. Time after time, he wreaks havoc on the Philistines, not because of his love for Israel, not because of his love for Yahweh, but because the Philistines annoyed him for some particular reason, the little poor sweet baby, the little primadonna.
And then he goes chasing after a prostitute, Delilah, and he just loves Delilah. Delilah is in cahoots with the Philistines on destroying Samson. Delilah, three times. This is how smart Samson is, all right? This is a clever fella.
Delilah says, ‘Please tell me the secret of your great strength.’ Men are so stupid. She strokes his hair. ‘Tonight will be a good night, Sammy. Just tell me the secret of your strength.’ And so he lies. Says, ‘Oh, it’s this.’ She betrays him. ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you.’ He breaks the bonds, kills the Philistines. Delilah looks bad.
She does it a second time. Get a clue, Muscle boy. ‘Oh, here’s the secret.’ Happens again. Now she’s like, ‘Samson, don’t you trust me?’ Here’s the obvious answer. ‘No! I’m gonna go find another girl. you’re bad news.’
But he’s like, “Oh. I guess those other two times were just a coincidence.” And finally, he tells her the real secret. It’s that he is a Nazirite. He has been pledged to God and he is not to ever let a razor cut his hair. And when he cuts his hair, he breaks covenant with God and the Spirit of God departs from him and now he is a simple mortal man. The Philistines bind him, gouge out his eyes, and turn him into a slave. This is not a godly hero.
At one point, he took the jaw of a jackass and killed a thousand Philistines with it because of the power of the Spirit of God on him. But you know, the guy who took a jaw of a jackass was kind of a jackass. He was a fool.
And yet, God uses him again upon his death with his eyes gouged out, portrayed as this conquered slave before the Philistines in their glory.
God, one more time, his hair grows back. God pours out his spirit upon him and he tears down the pillars of the stadium. The pillars collapse on the Philistines, collapse on him, he dies, but he once again destroys the Philistines and delivers, is a judge, delivers Israel from their oppressors. But, you see how the story’s going? They’re getting worse and worse and worse and further and further away from Yahweh. That’s what the book of Judges is about. Alright? It’s not a story of biblical heroes.
It’s a story that tells us what happens in Judges 21-25 when everyone does what is right in their own eyes.
Now, God does give His Spirit to all these judges. He pours out His Spirit on all these judges. Because in the Old Testament, God would give His Spirit on a particular person for a particular task at a particular time. It wasn’t because the person had faith in God or because he earned or deserved this blessing of God’s Spirit.
God had a job to do. He had to find somebody to do it.
He said, “Samson’s got to kill a lot of Philistines. He needs my Spirit to do it.” And so, God pours His Spirit out upon them. But it’s just for a particular person at a particular time for a particular task.
I’ve heard people say, “Oh, I wish I lived in Bible times.” Read your Bible. You do not want to live in the period of the judges. It is horribly violent. It is barbaric. It is insecure. It is dangerous. If the enemies aren’t raiding you, you have a bad judge who’s wreaking havoc on you.
And you don’t live in the time of the New Covenant when all of a sudden, you have this promise concerning God’s Spirit. In the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Male, female, sons and daughters, rich and poor, slaves and masters, old and young. I will pour out.
And you will not have the Spirit at a particular time for a particular task as one particular person. But you will be a part of a community of people that God has placed His Spirit in and upon.
Because now, we live in a New Covenant where the cycles of history are not going down, but going up. And the world is getting better, not worse. He says, “Oh, the world’s getting worse.” All right, you lived 200 years ago and tried to go to the dentist. “Oh, but sexual immorality is so much worse now.” Yeah, people weren’t sleeping around 200 years ago. Excuse me, they’re all dying of syphilis and gonorrhea for crying out loud. I’m not saying I’m, listen, I’m going to get to “every man does what is right in his own eyes.”
That still happens in our world today. And it still is chaos, and it’s a mess, and it’s ugly. I’m not saying there’s no evil in our world. There’s plenty of it, plenty enough to go around. What I am saying is, in Jesus Christ, God has reversed history. Those false gods, those demonic rulers, those demonic principalities were destroying God’s human creation in violence, and barbarism, and might makes right, and cruelty, and ancient cultures were deep in those things.
And then, in the midst of a cruel Roman empire and an occupied, oppressed people, the Son of God comes, and He rises from the dead. He dies for our sins, rises from the dead, and history takes a pivot. And we’re on that side of the equation. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. The Holy Spirit now is poured out on all flesh, and we are recipients of that.
And so now, the book ends. The book of Judges ends with two horribly gruesome stories.
It ends with Israelites killing Israelites, and it ends with vicious rapes, and ugly murders, and finally a civil war. And then you come to this conclusion. In those days, there was no king in Israel, and every man did what is right in his own eyes.
25 In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:25, NLT)
And the conclusion of the book of Judges is this, and this is a message our culture needs to hear. When every man does, and every woman does what is right in their own eyes, it leads to personal destruction and societal chaos.
You hear people say, ‘you don’t need religion, all you need to be is a good person.’ Hello? You can’t. You can’t be a good person. The problem ain’t ignorance. We don’t have a problem between knowing the good and the bad. We all know the good and the bad.
Listen, I’m… Now, I want to be clear on this. Some people might call me overweight. I like to think of myself as under-tall. I would be perfect at 6’4″. So, you know, that’s… I eat for a 6’4 person. But no, really, it’s not rocket science.
You know, why are you chubby, Kevin? Well, because I eat too much and I don’t exercise enough, and I don’t eat the right foods. Right? I’d rather eat donuts than broccoli. And I do. Too often.
My problem isn’t ignorance. I know if I never eat donuts and only eat broccoli, and I actually do go to the gym every day and work out a big sweat for about an hour, that I wouldn’t be chubby anymore. It’s not ignorance.
Would you agree that’d probably work? Probably, yeah, probably work. That’s what the data indicates.
I got no reason to doubt the data. My problem isn’t ignorance. My problem is willpower. It’s power that is our problem.
Now, God’s working on other things in my life, so I don’t feel particularly guilty about that. You know, He may get to that. But I’m just saying that, listen, it’s not easy to be good. It’s not easy to be good.
I’ve got the Bible. I’ve got the Spirit. I’ve been doing this for 40:50 years. And as I’ve told you many times, I’m actually paid to be a good example. I’ve got motive.
And I still find it hard not being a selfish jerk. It’s still a struggle to live a sacrificial life on behalf of others, instead of just to live for myself. These foolish people, these foolish modern people, who say, you know, just try to be nice. Just love your neighbors a little more and be a little kinder.
Yeah, if that worked, it would have worked by now. And let me tell you the stupidest advice, and this is rampant in our culture. This is why I say there’s still evil in the world. I’m not denying that.
Right? Go with your feelings. Be your true self. Let me tell you who your true self is. your true self is a hell-bent rebel against the purposes and will of God. your true self is rotten. And if you follow nothing but your feelings, you will destroy your life, and you’ll destroy the lives around you.
You know who follows their feelings? Two-year-olds and three-year-olds. We have names for that, the terrible twos and the terrorist threes. We have to teach them not to do that. No, you don’t get your way. That’s not how the world works.
You have to work in cooperation with your brothers and sisters, and you have to do what your parents tell you to do. “That’s not fair! I hate you!” And parents who don’t do that, who don’t draw those boundaries for their kids, actually lead their kids to destruction. “No. That’s the worst advice ever. Do what makes you feel good.” It will destroy your life and destroy the lives of people around you.
You see, Jesus didn’t come to offer us some good advice. He has plenty of good advice. I’m not saying that.
He didn’t come to help us, basically good people, become really good. No, he came because we needed a savior. Why? Because every man, every woman does what is right in their own eyes, and human history is written in blood.
Never forget, the monsters of the 20th century – Mao, Stalin, Hitler – all thought they were good guys, out to do you and the world a favor. Every man, every person did what was right in their own eyes. This equals societal and individual disaster.
That’s the story of the book, that’s what judges are telling us.
It just goes from bad to worse when you live this way. When you forget Yahweh, forget his covenant, just follow the cultures around you. Do what everybody else is doing. How many of you tried that one on your parents? ‘All my friends do blah, blah, blah.’ And what did parents learn in that generation to say to their children? They learn this at mother school. There’s a school called ‘mother school,’ it’s secret from us men.
And it teaches such things like, if you get hit in the eye with a rubber band, you’ll lose an eye, it’ll fall out. They teach you such things like that. And they teach you this saying, “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it?” It’s like, well, I don’t know, how high is the bridge? How drunk are we?
Is there any hope in the book of Judges? Yes, there is. In that day, there was no king. Judges is actually setting the stage for the next two books of the Bible, Ruth and 1 Samuel.
Ruth is the story of two things. It’s the story of what happens when Israel actually does follow God’s covenant, and there’s mercy, redemption, covering, and blessing. And life works well because Boaz, as a type of Christ, is the kinsman-redeemer for Ruth and her mother-in-law.
And their lives get saved by the kindness of a covenant-making Israelite, a covenant-keeping Israelite. And so it’s a picture, after Judges, is a picture of the disaster in Israel because people abandon the covenant.
Ruth is a picture of how good it could be if we just walked in the simplicity of this covenant. But Ruth, there’s another angle to Ruth. There was no king. Ruth is the great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king up until the time of Jesus.
And so, Judges is pointing, in that day there was no king, Judges is pointing to David.
If Judges, the end of the book of Judges, if that’s the low point in Israel’s history, and it kind of is until the exiles, it’s kind of the low point in Israel’s history, the high point of Israel’s history is King David. He is the king. There are some good kings in Judah, but none is ever exalted like King David. King David is the best king. Of the expansion of his kingdom, a type of Christ, of the expansion of his kingdom, there was no end.
His kingdom kept expanding, and he left Solomon a powerful and a wonderful kingdom, because he was a man. He wasn’t a perfect man, we know that, but he was a man after God’s own heart.
And so, Judges Ruth ends up being the great-grandmother of King David. And then 1 Samuel, the book after Ruth, tells us about how Israel got a king, Saul, who wasn’t a man after God’s own heart. Even though God gave him a new heart, Saul abandoned it and did his own thing.
Saul did what was right in his own eyes instead of following godly instruction. And so, he ultimately lost his kingdom to David, who was a man after God’s own heart.
God so loved David and his desire to please God that He made a covenant with David and said, “From your line, King David, which was really important for a king, not to lose his line. That was his kind of key to immortality. God says, from your line, David, is going to come a king whose kingdom will never end.”
Daniel sees this king in a vision as a son of man ascending to the throne before Almighty God the Father, the Ancient of Days, and he says he is given a kingdom that is without end. And so, Judges hints about a king. David, yes, but then the covenant that God made with David, Jesus.
So, there will come a day in this world where it will no longer be everyone does what is right in their own eyes, leading to individual chaos and destruction, into societal chaos and destruction, into this downward cycle.
There will come a day when a king will come to earth. He will be such a king, he will have such a perfect obedience to God. He will have such a life that his life, his death, and his resurrection will take that downward cycle, take away sin and sickness and Satan, defeat all of God’s enemies, rise from the dead, and then offer life to people. People actually will follow Deuteronomy.
Some of them, only a few at first, but at last count about two billion on planet Earth, will choose life and choose Jesus, and that cycle will change. And then the Bible says in Isaiah, of the increase of that government and peace, there will be no end. That government will cover the earth, and the glory of the Lord will cover the earth, as the water covers the sea.
And so, the book of Judges says, this is low, this is bad. But what did we talk about last week? Of the resurrection? But God.
But God’s gonna send a king, and there will come a day when instead of everyone doing what is right in their own eyes, there will come a day where every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
25 In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:25, NLT)
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11, NLT)
Amen? Amen.
So don’t do what is right in your own eyes, do what Jesus says. Instead of, “I feel like this,” try a little WWJD. What would Jesus do? Or even better, what is Jesus doing? And join Him, and you’ll be a part of that glorious kingdom.
So, like all kingdoms, we have traditions, rituals, and things we do that remind us of who He is, and who we are. Every week, we gather. Stevan gets here, and he brings out this little white table, and he’s got his red cup, and his purple cup. He’s got wine, and some elixir in the bluish cup. We don’t know from week to week what that might be, but it’s a reddish-purplish color and it’ll work. Why?
Because the Holy Spirit will pour out His Spirit upon this simple meal, and when we feed on it, we’re pledging our allegiance to King Jesus. His covenant burns alive in us. And dear ones, we are a part of that everlasting kingdom.
And I’ve got great news for you. You don’t even have to be perfect at it. All you have to do is repent, believe, and don’t quit. Turn to somebody and say, “repent, believe, and don’t quit.” Repent, believe, and don’t quit. And if that’s the case, you’re playing a game that you’ve already won.
So, dear ones, Holy Spirit, come and fill this meal and fill us fresh tonight. We sang it. Holy Spirit, come, fill us fresh with the life of Jesus as we come to this communion table in repentance, faith, and obedience.
We pray, Lord, that your grace, your fire, your spirit would come again and refresh us, and we would leave this building tonight more like King Jesus and less like people who just do what they think is the right thing to do or they think is the thing that’ll make them feel good.
We will leave this building living the Jesus life more than when we came in. We ask for that mercy and that grace. We ask this for our lives, trying to be more like Jesus. We ask help. And we believe this meal is one of the ways that you help us. And so we take it with gratitude in Jesus Name, Amen.
The post Everyone Did What Was Right In Their Own Eyes (Judges 21:25) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
March 31, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
We give you praise and honor tonight, our risen King and Savior, Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you because you are rich in mercy. You are abiding in grace and love, and you have forgiven our sins, and you have brought us into the presence of our Heavenly Father, where we find grace and mercy for this and every time of need.
Thank you for going to the cross. Thank you for defeating our three enemies, sin, Satan, and death. They are defeated foes. And Lord, we have a glorious hope.
And so, in the midst of this troubled world, in the midst of pain, in the midst of struggle, still we have hope because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His great mercy. He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the great hope of Easter. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen..
All right, crew.
As I was looking through the scriptures, you know, on the one hand, it’s easy to preach on Easter. You know, it’s a big theme. It’s easy. You know, I always tell people, if you can’t preach the resurrection, get out of the business. You know, this is the biggie.
On the other hand, you know, there’s four gospels. They tell the story. And, you know, you just don’t want to circle around those every year. And Paul’s got some.
But I realized the last time I went through the book of Acts, that in all of this, in almost all the sermons in the book of Acts, what do I mean by the sermons? The time Peter gets up and makes a speech, the time Paul gets up someplace and makes a speech. Most of those sermons are probably edited. They’re probably not the full sermon. I mean, you read them in 30:40 seconds. And so, Luke is probably condensing those.
But in almost all of them, the author, or the preacher, does not preach primarily about the cross, which is very much what evangelical preaching is. Very much, we preach about the cross. And please, I’m not even making a judgment about this. This is just an observation, all right?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t preach about the cross. I’m not saying the cross isn’t important. I don’t want to be, you know, listen, I don’t want to be, go out there and have, you know, the heresy hunters, you know, jumping down my throat because I didn’t preach about the cross.
We need the cross, of course. But it’s interesting to me, anyway, in the book of – this is just an observation. It’s interesting to me in the book of Acts that in every sermon, they highlight the resurrection. They highlight the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And so, one of the things I thought I’d do tonight, and I’m not going to do, by the way, maybe I’ll do this next year, is go through every sermon in the book of Acts. Not read them all to you, but look at every sermon in the book of Acts where they highlight the resurrection, and then see what they said about it. Because they always say something about it, and see what the resurrection, what message they were giving from the resurrection to the early Christian movement.
Tonight, I’m gonna do just one, and the one I’m gonna do is from Acts 13, where Paul is in Pisidian Antioch. He preaches first to Jews and Gentile God-fearers, and they reject his message. Then, he preaches to the Gentiles. It’s a big part of the transition of the gospel moving from primarily Jews to moving to the Gentiles.
That’s not the point I’m gonna make tonight. In fact, the point I’m gonna make tonight is just these two words that Paul uses in Acts 13, and the Bible uses a lot.
This would be another good study to do, another good sermon series. If you ever want to do a sermon series, Peter, here you go. All right, this would be a good sermon. Look up every place the Bible says, “But God.” “But God.” It’s all over the place. There’s got to be at least 50 of them. There was a British preacher, and you know, in Britain, they call your rear end your bum. All right, it’s your bum. And here, we call it a butt.
And so, there was an exchange between an American preacher and a British preacher, and the British preacher came over and he wanted to preach a sermon on the “but” gods in the Bible. The title of his sermon was “God Has a Butt.” Some of you have “buts,” too. Some of your “buts” are bigger than others, but God has the biggest “but.” you’ve got to know your culture. “But” God.
And so, I’m going to read to you first a fairly long section of scripture, and the “but God” is going to come right in the middle of it. Don’t worry, you don’t even have to catch it. I’ll highlight it for you.
Then, I’m going to look at a few other scriptures just to illustrate that this really is a thing in the Bible. We’re going to talk about this tonight, and especially talk about it in light of the resurrection.
So, Acts 13:16.
So Paul stood, lifted his hand to quiet them, and started speaking. Men of Israel, he said, and you, God-fearing Gentiles, listen to me. The God of this nation of Israel chose our ancestors and made them multiply and grow strong during their stay in Egypt. Then with a powerful arm, he led them out of their slavery. He put up with them for 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Then he destroyed seven nations in Cana and gave their land to Israel as an inheritance.
16 So Paul stood, lifted his hand to quiet them, and started speaking. “Men of Israel,” he said, “and you God-fearing Gentiles, listen to me. 17 “The God of this nation of Israel chose our ancestors and made them multiply and grow strong during their stay in Egypt. Then with a powerful arm he led them out of their slavery. 18 He put up with them through forty years of wandering in the wilderness. 19 Then he destroyed seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to Israel as an inheritance. (Acts 13:16-19, NLT)
All this took about 450 years.
And if you’ve been staying up with our Bible reading, that’s all pretty fresh to you. That’s all the stuff we’ve been reading.
After that, God gave them judges to rule until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people begged for a king, and God gave them Saul, son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for 40 years.
But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, “I have found David.”
David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, and he will do everything I want him to do.” And it is one of King David’s descendants, Jesus, who is God’s promised Savior of Israel.
Before he came, John the Baptist preached that all people of Israel needed to repent of their sins and turn to God and be baptized. As John was finishing his ministry, he asked, “Do you think I am the Messiah? No, I’m not. But he is coming soon.
And I’m not even worthy to be his slave and to untie the sandals on his feet. Brothers, you sons of Abraham, and also you God-fearing Gentiles, this message of salvation has been sent to us.
The people in Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize Jesus as the one the prophets had spoken about. Instead, they condemned him, and in doing this, they fulfilled the prophets’ words that are read every Sabbath.
They found no legal reason to execute him, but they asked Pilate to have him killed anyway.
When they had done all that the prophecies said about him, they took him down from the cross and placed him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead. And over a period of many days, he appeared to those who had gone with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to the people of Israel. And now we are here to bring this good news. The promise was made to our ancestors, and God is now fulfilling it for us, their descendants, by raising Jesus.
This is what the second psalm says about Jesus: “you are my son, today I have become your father.”
20 All this took about 450 years. “After that, God gave them judges to rule until the time of Samuel the prophet. 21 Then the people begged for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years.
22 But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’ 23 “And it is one of King David’s descendants, Jesus, who is God’s promised Savior of Israel! 24 Before he came, John the Baptist preached that all the people of Israel needed to repent of their sins and turn to God and be baptized. 25 As John was finishing his ministry he asked, ‘Do you think I am the Messiah? No, I am not! But he is coming soon—and I’m not even worthy to be his slave and untie the sandals on his feet.’ 26 “Brothers—you sons of Abraham, and also you God-fearing Gentiles—this message of salvation has been sent to us!
29 “When they had done all that the prophecies said about him, they took him down from the cross and placed him in a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead! 31 And over a period of many days he appeared to those who had gone with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to the people of Israel. 32 “And now we are here to bring you this Good News. The promise was made to our ancestors, 33 and God has now fulfilled it for us, their descendants, by raising Jesus. This is what the second psalm says about Jesus: ‘You are my Son. Today I have become your Father. ’ (Acts 13:20-33, NLT)
For God had promised to raise him from the dead, not leaving him to rot in the grave. He said, “I will give you the sacred blessings I promised to David.” Another psalm explains it more fully: “you will not allow your Holy One to rot in the grave.” This is not a reference to David, for after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his body.
Ancestors, and his body decayed. Know it as a reference to someone else, someone whom God raised, whose body did not decay.
Brothers, listen, we are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is the forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in him is made right in God’s sight, something the law of Moses could never do.
But be careful. Don’t let the prophet’s words apply to you, for they said, “Look, you mockers, be amazed and die. For I am doing something in your day, something you wouldn’t believe, even if someone told you about it.”
34 For God had promised to raise him from the dead, not leaving him to rot in the grave. He said, ‘I will give you the sacred blessings I promised to David.’ 35 Another psalm explains it more fully: ‘You will not allow your Holy One to rot in the grave.’ 36 This is not a reference to David, for after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed. 37 No, it was a reference to someone else—someone whom God raised and whose body did not decay. 38 “Brothers, listen! We are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. 39 Everyone who believes in him is made right in God’s sight—something the law of Moses could never do.
40 Be careful! Don’t let the prophets’ words apply to you. For they said,41 ‘Look, you mockers, be amazed and die! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.’ ” (Acts 13:34-41, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer, amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord , my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, NLT)
So here it is. But God. It’s throughout the Bible. Let me give you an example here, Genesis 50. So Joseph’s brothers, after Jacob died, were afraid that Joseph was going to take vengeance on them for selling him into slavery, since Jacob was no longer there to protect their sorry selves.
But Joseph said this, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God that I can punish you?” You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.
19 But Joseph replied, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. (Genesis 50:19-20, NLT)
The scripture I read to you, or I actually recite to you often, is a “but God” scripture. One of my key life verses, Psalm 75:25-26, “Whom do I have in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my life and my portion forever.”
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. 26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever. (Psalm 73:25-26, NLT)
Romans 5 has it.
In Romans 5:6-7, when we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God is the strength of my life and my portion forever. God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:6-8, NLT)
And the final one I want to look at, though there’s many, many more, is in Ephesians 2, talking about the sinfulness of human beings. 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 like everyone else. But God is so rich in mercy, and 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.
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.
3 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. 4 But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, 5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) 6 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. (Ephesians 2:3-6, NLT)
So, what does “but God” mean? “But God” means turnaround. “But God” means breakthrough. It means we’re not left to our own devices. God is going to do something to change things.
The world was struggling and the world was sinful, but God sent His Son, Jesus, and all history was changed. One day there’s going to be a “but God” on planet Earth.
We thought we were going to be around for another day, but God came back in Jesus Christ. In our lives, there are many instances of “but Gods.” I was angry, the child of parents who loved me, but still a broken home. Not broken in that there was divorce, but broken in that there was alcoholism, codependence, and a lot of dysfunction.
I was a sinful little guy. I was angry. I didn’t know what I was living for. I was sarcastic. I was lazy.
And I was just coming to the point where I was starting to mask all that pain with drugs. And that was my life. And that’s where I was headed. But God. But God. And you have your own “but God” story. Alright?
Now, listen, I love dramatic “but God” stories. I really do. I love hearing, you know, these stories and these testimonies, “man, I was a drug addict” or “I was a prostitute” or “I was in a gang” or “I was in the mob, but God reached down and got me.”
I was in a prison cell all alone. I love those stories. But as a parent and a grandparent, I don’t want those stories for my kids. I don’t want those stories for my kids. I want my kids to have a very early “but God” story. And I want them to cross the river at the narrowest possible place.
Those of you young people in the room, so, you know, just be grateful that your moms and dads raised you in a church and raised you to know and love Jesus.
So, you don’t have to, you didn’t have to go through the whole, you know, you didn’t have to get really dark before you embrace the light. But don’t ever let that stop you from being incredibly grateful for what God has done for you. Because Jesus had a saying, he said, “Those who’ve been forgiven much, love much.” So, love much, love much, even if you cross the river at the narrowest possible place.
But we all have a “but God” story. It’s just, it’s the way it is.
One day, you’re going to die, but God is going to take you to be with him. And you will be in his presence. And one day, he will judge the earth, but you will not be judged. God will give you a resurrected body. And you will have an eternal life with purpose, pleasure, passion, and meaning. Meaning forever in the new heavens and the new earth.
So, embrace the but-Gods. And if you’re in a downtime right now, if life has hit you hard, a but-God is coming. A but-God is coming. They always do.
And so, the biggest but-God in history is the one we read about tonight. It’s the biggest but-God in history. And Paul says he was in Jerusalem, our leaders, our Jewish leaders didn’t recognize the one whom the prophets were speaking about. They didn’t get it. And though he had done nothing deserving death, out of jealousy and pettiness and spiritual warfare, Paul didn’t say that, I added that, they brought him to Pilate.
And Pilate, out of cowardly political expediency, saw no guilt in Jesus, yet condemned him to death. He died a horrible death on a cross and he was laid in a tomb, but God raised him from the dead. But God raised him from the dead. And dear ones, I want to tell you that “but-God” is the hinge of history.
I was with some brothers last night. I was watching the NCAA basketball game and I met this guy, David, for the first time. And I just told David, I just took a shot, right?
Just take a shot. You know, you don’t know where anybody stands. I said, “Hey, have a great Easter weekend.” He said, “Thank you.” I said, “Rumor has it a dead guy got up.” And he goes, “Hallelujah, brother.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to get David saved. Somebody beat me to it.” He said, “He sure did.”
But, you know, I just started talking to David. And David, David must go to a good church with a good preacher because David said, I said, “Rumor had it a dead guy got up.” He said, “Hallelujah, brother.”
And history’s never been the same. Never been the same. Jesus Christ turned the course of history. Don’t watch old movies and romanticize the past. The past was brutal. The Roman Empire was brutal. The Greek Empire was brutal. The Persians were brutal. The Babylonians were brutal.
As you’re reading through Joshua and Judges, you’re going to read about what life was like back then, and it was brutal. You know, don’t romanticize the past.
If you lived on the British coast in the 3rd or 4th century, you were just waiting until one night the Irish pirates came, killed you, raped your wife, kidnapped your children. This happened to St. Patrick. Well, there’s a great historical but, God. This little English boy was kidnapped by Irish pirates, but God used him to evangelize a whole nation. Jesus Christ changed history.
We live in an incredible time to be alive. I know there are problems. I’m not arguing that there aren’t problems. There are problems. We still got trouble right here in Poulsbo City. All right?
We got problems. We got trouble. But dear ones, the trajectory of history, because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, is moving forward until his glory covers the earth like the waters cover the sea. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. I was talking to people today, you know, and they were saying, well, church attendance is down. Well, it is in the Pacific Northwest. Probably is after COVID in America. But as we speak, Africa is becoming the Christian continent, and so is Southeast Asia becoming a Christian part of the world.
And Muslims are converting to Christ in record numbers. But God. But God. And join me in this prayer for our region. I’m excited that God’s doing stuff all over the world, but I pray that that old hymn, that old spiritual. While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. Do not pass us by.
What a story it would be to have an earth-shattering revival, a nation-shattering revival coming out of Kitsap County, Washington. The Pacific Northwest? You gotta be kidding me. You know, and maybe a corresponding revival coming out of someplace like Vermont.
You know, so far removed from the Bible belt? You know, they’re not even the Bible hat. They’re in the Bible clothes hamper. But you know what, it could happen. You know why it could happen? But God. But God.
All right, so what does he say about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? Well, in this passage, he hits on a few notes. He says, first of all, there were many witnesses. There were many witnesses to the resurrection. So, Christianity rises and falls upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Not upon the idea of resurrection, not upon, oh, it’s like winter turning into spring, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, a dead man got up, physically. He got up, all right? He was raised from the dead. His body, he could eat. People touched him.
Now, it wasn’t exactly the same as his earthly body. It had some characteristics that the earthly body didn’t. Like, he could walk through walls, and he could appear in one place and then appear in another place.
And so, our heavenly bodies are gonna be very similar. They’re gonna be physical.
You won’t just be spirits floating around in heaven. When you get your heavenly body, we can shake hands. We’ll be physical, alright? We can be like, you know, we can be like Brett Favre. You know, we can slap each other on the behind. Alright. He used to do that on the football field to his linemen.
I don’t know if any of you are football fans, but he’s a famous quarterback and he was notorious for, you know, male, instead of a high five, his linemen would block for him and he’d come up and he’d give a big slap on the behind. And I remember a sportscaster asked him one time, he said, ‘Are there any rules about that?’ And he says, ‘Yes, no cupping.’ All right. So, I don’t know, I don’t know how much we can slap each other on the behind in heaven. I don’t know.
But Mick, you know, I might give it a try with you. You might come by and say, ‘Hey Mick, how you doing buddy?’ Might do it. All right. And what was my point? Oh, Jesus rose from the dead. He had a body. We’re going to have eternal bodies. There are, and there are many witnesses to this. Listen, if there was only one piece of evidence to the resurrection, and there’s more than one piece of evidence to the resurrection, the fact that the women were the first ones who spoke about the resurrection.
In fact, as a powerful witness to the authenticity of these stories, because these stories were made up, first-century Jews writing to a first-century audience of Jews and Gentiles would not have put that in the story. That makes the story look bad, not good for that audience because women were considered unreliable back then. They weren’t even, they weren’t even allowed to be a witness in a court case because, oh, they’re just, they were, there was such prejudice that, uh, that women and you look at the disciples’ reaction, right?
They just thought it was nonsense. Oh, you just crazy women. All right. That’s evidence, but I’ll tell you what’s evidence. 500 witnesses. I’ll tell you what, if somebody shot somebody and 500 people went to court and said, “Yeah, he did it.” That guy’d go down. He wouldn’t get off. He would not get off. He would not get off.
If there were two or three reliable witnesses and the disciples are reliable. Reliable witnesses. How do we know they’re reliable witnesses?
How do we know they didn’t just make this story up because they had nothing to gain and everything to lose they saw what they did to Jesus and They were hiding Until they encountered him raised from the dead He changed their lives and 11 of the 12 disciples Went to violent deaths Because they bore witness to the resurrection and none of them backed off their story you see people today in Cancel culture and they’ll say something and and the internet will rise up against them and they’re they’re tracking it back They’re they’re walking it back as fast as they can But the disciples were were beheaded hung on crosses stoned And all they had to do to avoid that feat was say, uh, well, maybe he maybe maybe it was a vision or a hallucination We’re not sure.
He really was raised from the dead. We just know his teaching was – he was a good moral teacher. They didn’t say that. That wasn’t the early Christian message. Jesus was a good man and a good moral teacher. No, he was raised from the dead. We’re not stepping down.
Listen, one of the reasons I’m not a big conspiracy theorist is people are really bad about lying together accurately over long periods of time.
I mean, cops catch all sorts of people because they lie poorly. All right, not everybody is a gifted liar. In fact, there’s all sorts of telltale signs when people body language or whatever that, and you know, people say the stupidest thing. Right, people say this, they’ll say, “Oh, kids are so honest.” Like no, they’re not. Why do we think kids are honest? Because we can discern the truth because in their young age, they’re bad liars. They learn how to lie better as they grow up.
And if they learn how to lie really good, now I’m not gonna say it, I can say it. You can ask me afterwards. But the disciples, they never backed off. They were never caught with a duplicitous story, you know, where this didn’t line up with that, and that didn’t line up with this.
Now, I get it, that some of the accounts of the resurrection, there were two angels, there was one angel, it was early in the morning, the sun was risen, the sun was still down.
But that, in fact, actually verifies the story, because that’s exactly how witnesses… We had a tragic, tragic thing happen in Bremerton today. As we were driving to church, out in front of the 7-Eleven, right by the church, there was a body bag. There was a murder last night, or this morning.
But it was very interesting, the reason I point this out, is somebody… The first account I heard was that somebody died at the 7-Eleven. The second account I heard is that somebody was murdered at 7-Eleven.
The third account I heard was that two people were murdered at 7-Eleven. All three were, none of them were eyewitnesses to the event, but all three were eyewitnesses to 7-Eleven, as they were driving to church. And the truth was, the middle one was the closest, that one person was murdered. But it’s interesting that when people are reporting on facts like that, right, the small details kind of just get mumbled. The person had his turn signal on, the person had the right signal on, the person didn’t have a signal.
But what is evident is all the witnesses bear truth to a guy who got killed. All the evidence bears witness to there being an accident. And so, the accounts in the Gospels bear witness to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead.
The disciples are the most reliable in any, if there was any other event in history that was as well attested as the resurrection of Jesus, no historian would doubt it. Let me tell you why they doubt this one. There are two profound reasons. One obvious.
In our experience, every dead person we know didn’t rise. Now, actually, that’s not true for me. I know one personally, and I’ve read the accounts of many. But in fact, next year, I’m going to have him come, and he’s going to speak at our Holy Spirit conference.
He’s Dean Braxton, and he died and was at Tacoma Hospital. They were filling out the death certificate. His heart had stopped for an hour and 45 minutes. He visited heaven and came back to life.
So there you go. I actually know one personally. I’ve met Dean. I like Dean.
I’m going to invite him to speak at our church. So, I know one. If you read Craig Keener’s book on miracles, he has a whole chapter on people who have been raised from the dead. So, it happens, but still, it’s very rare.
So, I get the skeptics saying, “This can’t be true because dead people don’t get up.” Actually, they do. Jesus wasn’t even the first. There’s some recorded in the Old Testament. But it’s rare. And what’s even more rare is really dead people getting up.
Most dead people who get up, according to the scale delineated for us in that great scientific movie, The Princess Bride, are barely dead or mostly dead. Jesus, though I don’t think they use this term in The Princess Bride, my term for Jesus was he was good and dead. He’d been dead a long time, days. Rigor mortis would be setting in, would have already set in. He was good and dead.
And 500 witnesses, they touched him. They ate with him. There are people who go to Graceland and say, ‘I’ve seen Elvis.’
But nobody, first of all, we don’t believe them because they’re not credible witnesses. I don’t think anybody who said, I’ve seen Elvis, if you told them we’re going to nail you to a cross unless you back off that story, yeah, it’s just a guy that looked like Elvis. Or it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. None of them would have said, yeah, and I shook his hand. We had lunch together, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, seen Elvis. Nope. So they don’t believe, first of all, because dead people don’t get up.
Second reason they don’t believe is because they don’t want to. If you believe Jesus rose from the dead, that puts a demand on your life. That puts a demand. What are you going to do with that? Here’s a guy who claimed to be God and proved it. Now, are you going to reject him or follow him? It puts a demand on your life.
All right. He fulfilled prophecy. Psalm 2 speaks of the father saying, “Today you have become my son.” And so, Jesus is the son of God. He is the son of God.
What does that mean? That means that he is the answer to all of life’s big questions. It drives me nuts that people don’t ask the best questions in life. All the questions we ask tend to be trivial questions. Some of them are fun. Some of them are entertaining.
Who’s going to win the NCAA tournament? Who’s going to win the World Series? Those are questions I like to ask as a sports fan. You might have your hobbies and ask questions around your hobbies.
Maybe you’re a farmer and you’re asking, what’s the weather going to be like next winter? What’s the growing season going to be like? Maybe you’re going to want to have a herd of pigs like Iko. What’s the price of pork bellies? What’s bacon going to be going for in a few years? You might want to figure that out. Those are all important questions. How much money am I going to make? What’s the real estate market going to do? What’s the stock market going to do? Those are all reasonable questions.
But nobody asks the real big life questions. What’s God like? And when people do ask that question, they tend to come up with a mistaken answer because they tend immediately to jump with, “God is like life.” But if God is like life, then God is not good, because life is hard.
Now, there’s beauty in life. There’s beauty in nature. There’s goodness in life. There are good times. There are exciting times. There’s love. But there’s also cruelty, wickedness, harshness, despair, depression, hopelessness.
And so most people jump to the wrong conclusion.
The Bible never says, “God is like life.” Here’s the simple answer to what God is like, according to the Scriptures: Jesus. “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”
Then there’s another big question. How am I supposed to live? And you’ve heard me say this before, but I’ll say it again. It gets so easy at this point, right? What’s God like? Jesus. How am I supposed to live? Could it be Jesus? Yeah. Jesus. Jesus is how I’m supposed to live.
Not only is God like Jesus, but also, if I want to see God, I need to look at Jesus. If I want to see a model for what my life is to be like, again, I look at Jesus.
And then the third thing is, big question, what’s my purpose in life? Anybody got a clue? Jesus. Sydney went to Sunday school. She knows. When in doubt, go with big J. Jesus. He’s my purpose in life.
God reveals himself in Jesus, I’m to live like Jesus, and what do I have to offer the world? Nothing but Jesus.
Nothing but Jesus. Well, I’m a brilliant architect. Great. Be Jesus’ missionary in the Society of Brilliant Architects. I’m a brain surgeon. Great. Be Jesus’ missionary amongst the brain surgeons. I’m a construction worker. Great. Be great, be as Jesus is, be His missionary amongst carpenters.
I’m a school teacher, you get the point. I’m a homemaker, you get the point. Whatever you do, do for Jesus. That’s what it means when the Bible says He’s the Son of God. He also says that He is the fulfillment of the prophecy. That’s in Psalm 2:1.
And then in Isaiah 55, He says He is the fulfillment of the covenant that God made with David. And God made several covenants in the Old Testament. He made one with Moses that said, “I’ll not cover the earth with water anymore. There won’t be a flood that will cover the earth.”
The first year I moved out to the Pacific Northwest, my first November here, it rained 21 straight days. I was doubting God’s covenant. I said, “Are we going to make 40?” But it’s just 21, and then we got a day off. And it didn’t flood.
All the Douglas fir drank it all up. They’re good. They love that stuff. So, it was all good. He said to Noah, “I’m not going to flood the earth. I’m not going to destroy the earth this way anymore.”
Then he made a covenant with Abraham, right? He said, “I will give you a child and your descendants, if you will leave and go to the land I show you and then circumcise your children, I will make you a nation, and all the nations of the world will be blessed through you.”
He made a covenant with Moses.
We’re deep into that in our Bible reading right now: Deuteronomy. Listen carefully and obey. If you listen carefully and obey, you will live long and prosperous in a land flowing with milk and honey. If you don’t listen carefully and obey, you will be destroyed. Life and death. Remember, choose life.
Then he made a covenant with David. And he told David this. He said, “One day from your line, there will come a king, and his kingdom will never end.”
It says in the book of Acts that He ascended to the right hand of the Father.
What does the right hand mean? That’s the side of coronation. That’s the throne of power. Daniel 7, the title Jesus took for Himself, the Son of Man. Daniel 7:13-14, “I saw one like the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven before the Ancient of Days, and He was given a kingdom and glory and dominion without end.”
You know why democracy, we were talking about civics earlier tonight, you know why democracy is a great idea?
It’s not because everybody is so good, they deserve a voice in government. It’s because everybody is so bad we have to divide power up into the smallest possible pieces so we all just get a vote. Because too much power in the hands of too few people always leads to disaster in a sinful world. But my father used to say this, and he actually showed great wisdom when he said this. He said, “Kevin, there’s nobody we can trust to do this, but actually the best form of government is a benevolent king.” He’s right. It’s sufficient.
You don’t have any gridlock in Congress with a benevolent king. With a good and loving and kind and all-wise and all-powerful king, that’s the best form of government. David’s descendant is Jesus, and He is now our king. I’m not good at taking orders from people. I’d have struggled in the military. You know, I’d have told my drill sergeant, you know, I might do it if you ask me nicely. Probably wouldn’t have gone well for me at that point. Probably wouldn’t have had a good outcome with that.
You don’t really have to use that tone of voice, sir. No, I wouldn’t have been that stupid. I’d have minded my P’s and Q’s, but I’d have resented it. And even today, if somebody bosses me around, I just don’t like it. I don’t like it. And I tell them. My kids or my grandkids will try to boss me around. Turn the TV to that channel. No, you ain’t getting the TV turned to that channel. Grandpa, would you please turn the TV to that channel? Of course I will. Try it that way.
But when they tell me the first way, you know what I tell them? I look at them and go, “you’re not the boss of me.” I told that to my kids. My kids are trying to, you know, there’s going to come a day when they’re going to try to boss me around in my decrepitude. And if I’m still sharp enough, I’m going to tell them, “you’re not the boss of me.” you know, there’s only two people I don’t tell that to. Jill and Jesus.
The reason I don’t tell it to Jill is not because it’s not true. She is not the boss of me. I just don’t want the trouble that would come if I said that. And I never tell that to Jesus. Because with Jesus, you are the boss of me. And I can be pretty proud. And I’m not proud of the fact that I’m proud.
But one thing I’m sure of, he’s smarter than me. His way is better than my way. He is my king. I once had a friend. And he had a bumper sticker.
And he thought it was all cool. Jesus is my co-pilot. And I thought, well, that’s just a dumb bumper. You know, I like some Jesus bumper stickers. But that one’s dumb. No, Jesus is my pilot. He’s my pilot. I don’t tell him, hey, put the landing gear down. He tells me, watch, I’m going to land without landing gear. Have faith. Whee! He’s my pilot. He’s my king. That’s what it means. And he is king forever. There will be no end to his kingdom.
“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, NLT)
Heaven, His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and we are forever His subjects, and it will be good.”
And the final one is, she says, “The Holy One, in Psalm 16, the Holy One will not see decay.” And that is evidence for the resurrection. Jesus did not see decay. And again, “The Holy One, just like the Son of God, is a statement saying Jesus is divine.”
The council, the divine council, at least one place in the Bible, are called Holy Ones.
But the definite article, the Holy One, is never used in the Bible for anybody else but God. God is the Holy One. And Jesus is the Holy One that Psalm 16:10 alludes to. How do we know? His body didn’t see decay. He was raised from the dead.
And so the evidence is that Jesus is God. The resurrection points to the fact that Jesus is exactly who He said He was. And then Acts 13 lists a major benefit and then rephrases it.
Basically, it says, “your sins are forgiven, and you have been justified,” which are kind of the same things. your sins are forgiven. This was the part in Bremerton where somebody went, “Woo.” So your sins are forgiven. All right. I know you shouldn’t try to manufacture revival, but I’m desperate, people. I’m trying to bring it. All right. your sins are forgiven. Yep, come on. It’s all right.
Listen, trust me. I’ll tell you when you go too far. And so that is great news. You are going to stand before God with your sins forgiven. That’s forgiven.
You no longer have to have this perfect report card to stand before a holy God. But the high priest couldn’t do but just was representing. Doing Christ has done for us. He is atoned for our sins. And the New Testament just says time and time again, by faith in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. Yes, your sins are forgiven. You have been justified. It says, what is justified? God declares you not guilty. you’re free, but I did it.
You’re not guilty, but you’re not guilty. You have entered into a new covenant. In the old covenant, you were guilty. You had to go make a guilt offering, a sin offering, a burnt offering, and then the day of atonement. The High Priest had to go through this elaborate ritual because you were guilty and you were not guilty. And it’s powerful imagery, and it helps you live in the presence of a holy God, even though you’re a sinful person. But it’s not perfect.
It has to be repeated time and time again, and they said in the temple, “It was literally a river of blood that would flow. Why? Because a river of blood is not enough to cover all the sins of people on earth. A river of cow’s blood is not enough to cover all the sins of people on earth. Of people on earth, a river of cow’s blood is not enough. A river of lamb’s blood is not enough.”
But I’ll tell you this, dear ones. One millimeter, one drop, one small – the smallest of smallest amount of Jesus’s blood covers your sin past, present, and future. It covers my sin past, present, and future. It covers the sin of eight billion people on planet earth today. It covers the sin of all the people that will live after us and all the people that have lived before us.
The blood of the Son of God was shed. A new covenant was instituted in His blood. And your sins and my sins are forgiven.
We’re justified before God. One day, we’re going to stand before God, and he’s not going to come to us and say, “you know what? I can’t let you into my heaven because you are just so guilty.” He’s going to say, “Welcome into the inheritance that has been prepared for you.” And you’re going to look at the Lord Jesus Christ and you’re going to say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing this for me. Thank you.”
God loved the world in this way: that He gave His Son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life. But God, who is rich in mercy, abounding in love and grace, died for us, not year after year, not day after day, not like in the temple, once and for all.
And so, dear ones, tonight, as we do every week, we have a simple, very simple, the simplest of all meals, but it’s the meal of the new covenant.
This meal declares to us: you are a sinner, separated from God, an enemy of God. But God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and He sought and found me and you, and invited us into this new covenant.
And the historicity of the resurrection bears witness to the truth of the new covenant. The same Christ, who said He was God and said He was going to rise from the dead, said that His blood would bring us into the forgiveness of sins and a new covenant.
What can undo that? What can undo that?
One more sin on your part? What can undo that? A lapse? A momentary lapse? All of hell can’t undo that. They can’t take you from this new covenant. So, come and take and eat and be grateful tonight. Because we were lost, but God found us. Amen?
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March 24, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
So, I grew up in a liturgical church. The priest would say, “The Lord be with you.” And we would say, “Anybody else? Episcopal. The Lord be with you and also with you and also with you, right? Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. It is right to give him thanks and praise.”
We have liturgies though. We’re not as sophisticated, but we have liturgies. Next week, there’s a liturgy. I think every Christian knows and it goes like this. Just to see if you know it, “Christ has risen.”
There you go. You got that one. And here’s the Pentecostal charismatic liturgy. God is good. Oh, well, God is always good. That’s a paraphrase. ‘All the time’ is the liturgy all the time, all the time. God is good. How good is he? All right.
All right. So, next week is Easter. And I know, and I know when you have evening church, it doesn’t quite seem the same on Easter morning, right? You know, we got up in the morning, but we’re going to be here. And since it’s Easter, uh, you have to invite a friend. You have to invite a friend to come to church on Easter because, uh, quite frankly, I call it fishing for twicers, right? Christmas and Easter, the twicers are there. It’s a part, it’s still a part of culture.
Uh, you know, people will go to church on Christmas and Easter. So they’re more susceptible to an invitation to church on Easter than, uh, and Christmas than any other time of the year.
So, call a family member that you’ve been praying for who doesn’t go to church, or a friend, and invite them to church. And if you bring a friend to church next week, um, Mick will bring you a piece of cake because he has a ton of it. It’ll be stale by then, but he has so much cake from yesterday that it won’t all be gone by next week. No, I’m not, I’m not obligating you to that, Mick. Yeah. All right. Why don’t you take it at home, man? Look at me. I’m all right.
So bring a friend next week to Easter. Uh, we’ll go fishing for twicers. All right. So, uh, dear ones, uh, we’re going through the Bible. We’re kind of reading through it in a year.
And so, as you know, I’m just taking a passage from our weeklies read weekly reading last week. We were in Deuteronomy 6, the Shema. Very, very familiar passage right here, “Oh Israel, the Lord your God is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. With all your soul and with all your strength.”
4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, NLT)
And here we’re going to be in Deuteronomy 30 tonight, another fairly familiar passage, Deuteronomy 30:11-19.
11 “This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not beyond your reach. 12 It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ 13 It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ 14 No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it. 15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy. 17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy. 19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 20 You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord , you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 30:11-20, NLT)
And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable, Lord, in your sight, you’re our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord , my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, NLT)
All right, Deuteronomy literally means second law. Here’s the story, right?
God gives the law on Mount Sinai, and Moses brings down the tablets, and Israel has the law, and they build the tabernacle, and they go to the promised land, and they get to the borders of the promised land. When they get to the borders of the promised land, the spies go into the promised land. The spies basically come back and say, “Well, God is right, and God is wrong.” Here’s where God is right: God is right in that it is a land flowing with milk and honey.
It is an abundant land, and it is a great land, and we’d love to live here, but does God know how big those guys are? They got some of the Nephilim there, or the Anakites. They’re big, they’re scary, we can’t fight them. We’re like grasshoppers to them, and so they talk the people out of obeying God, out of having faith, and entering the promised land.
God said, ‘Okay, you don’t want to go on the promised land? Die in a desert, 40 years.’
Caleb and Joshua, we can do it. Moses, we can do it.
Who’s alive 40 years later? Caleb, Joshua, and Moses, and all the children of the dead people in the desert. So now, the dead people in the desert are now on the border of the promised land, and they’re gonna go in. They saw what happened to their parents. It’s like, no, we’ll do this. We can die out in the desert. We can occupy the land, or they’ll kill us, but either way, we’re gonna do this, all right?
So, they’re gonna enter the promised land, and now Moses, who’s not gonna enter the promised land because of his own rebellion against God, is giving Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy means second law.
What’s he doing?
I gave the first law to your parents, and now I’m telling you what I told your parents. This is how you keep covenant with Yahweh. This is how you keep covenant with God.
This is the God who delivered you out of Egypt, brought you across the Red Sea, sustained you in the desert, and is now going to give you an abundant land and conquer your enemies. Listen, it’s not like we get the Bible so wrong. We think, you know what, if you just obey God, He’s going to give you all these blessings, which is kind of what this says. But wait, there’s precedent. The blessings have already started.
It’s really God saying, “If you stay in covenant with me, you’ll stay in the stream of my grace, you’ll stay in the stream of my blessings. If you leave the covenant, then you leave that stream, and then these countries around you are going to be bad news to you. You’re going to worship their gods, you’re going to fall, they’re going to occupy you, they’re going to attack you, and in fact, the rest of the Old Testament is really that story.”
So, God says, “Look, this is not impossible for you to do. It’s not too hard.”
What I’ve given you, and really, if you read through the law, I know it’s cumbersome. I know as we’ve been reading through this, my goodness, my wife said, “Oh boy, that description of building the tabernacle, make this many gold rings, this big, and it’s just so detailed.” Well, one of the reasons it’s detailed, the whole law, the moral, the ceremonial, the legal, one of the reasons it’s so detailed, it’s like, you’ll know what to do. You know, if you kill your neighbor’s donkey on purpose, this is what’s going to happen to you.
If you kill your neighbor’s donkey on accident, this is what’s going to happen to you. It’s spelled out. You don’t have to invent this.
And the one thing you really don’t want to do is do what the Canaanites do. They’re doing it all wrong. So listen to this that I’ve given to you in detail, follow it, and when you mess up, we have the ceremonial law, we have the sacrifices to cover for that.
In other words, when God says, you can do this, He’s not talking about moral perfection.
He’s just saying, “Israel, you can live in covenant relationship with me as you follow this, as you follow the moral aspects of this, the Ten Commandments, as you follow the legal aspects of this, the civics, God gives them civics on how to live as a people in governance together, and as you follow the ceremonial acts of this, your feasts, your festivals, your sacrifices, you have the tabernacle to atone for your sins, and you have these feasts to celebrate and remember my goodness,” and he gives it all to them.
Then he says, “Moses says, listen, it’s not too far from you.”
He says, “Rehearse it, speak it, put it in your hearts, and by the way, speaking things is a way to put things in your heart. Speaking is a way to put things in your heart. You repeat something long enough, you believe it in your heart. That’s why the devil is always after you with these kinds of accusations. Oh, you call yourself a Christian? Anybody ever heard that one? A real Christian wouldn’t do that. Anybody ever hear this one? you’re such a loser. you’re a failure. Am I the only person who gets attacked that way? No.”
Everybody’s like, preach, preach. You got the same devil I got. Yes, I do, but I learned a long time ago that God, even if I hear those thoughts in my head, God never wants them to come out of my mouth. And if they ever do slip out of my mouth, I’ve learned to repent immediately because I used to call myself those names all the time. But if you call yourself those names, you start believing the lies. It works in your relationships, alright?
My wife has caught on to this, but I do it, not as a trick or not as a manipulation. I do it to train my heart. When I get annoyed with her, as rare as that is, I usually will say something kind to her. You know, I’m kind of like, she’s bugging me right now, and I’ll just look at her and say, “I love you.” And I guess it’s the way I say it, because she’s kind of caught on now. She says, “you’re upset about something, aren’t you? you’re so pretty. I love you so much.”
We have our little games. Here’s one. I love this one. This cracks me up, right? I can tell something’s wrong. Guys, can you ever tell when something’s wrong? I mean, we don’t catch on as fast as we should. But once the word “fine” comes out of y’all’s mouth, we know.
And so, I can tell something’s wrong, and I go, I’ll just say, “Honey, what’s wrong?” Because we don’t know. We’re stupid. We don’t know what we did wrong. you’re like, “That’s part of the problem. It should be obvious to you.” I know.
I know how you think. I just don’t know how to fix it. So it’s like, “Honey, what’s wrong?” “Nothing.” And then I’ll say this. This is amazing. Like, why can’t she answer the first question? I don’t know.
So then I’ll say this. “If something were wrong, what would it be?” And then I get the answer. “If something were wrong, not that anything’s wrong, but if something were wrong, what would it be?”
All right. So I don’t know where, I don’t know the, oh, saying stuff. Saying stuff.
If you put it in your mouth, it’ll get into your heart. That’s why God is continually telling Israel to do what? Moses in Deuteronomy is continually telling Israel, ‘Repeat this. Repeat this. Repeat this. Tell it to your children. Tell it to your children. Tell it to your children. Tell it to your children.’
I love it when I hear things that I told my kids coming out of their mouths. I had an associate pastor for years. And my son preaches quite a bit. And my associate pastor, and I’ll listen to their sermons.
And they’ll bring forth a Kevinism, man. They will bring forth a Kevinism. You know, my son’s like, you know, he’ll be up there and say, “They were on that like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.” So that’s me. That’s me.
And you know what makes me feel great? Makes me feel great. Because what does the Bible say? “Teach your children. Teach your children.”
Here’s another one. My kids will say, “Oh, never say that’s not fair to dad. Never go to dad,” because they know. They know.
I guess they heard this many times because they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s not fair.’ What do you hear after that? Fair? Life ain’t fair. Get used to it.
I’ll tell you what’s not fair. You were born in America, not Haiti. You get three meals a day. You have a bedroom and a mother. They’re like, ‘Oh, shut up, old man.’
But they got the ‘not fair’ lecture, I guess, more than once because they know it. They know it. Teach your children. Put it in their heads. Put it in their heads.
There’s some things, man, your mother said to you, you can’t get out of your head. I think this is ridiculous. I think it is the stupidest reason in the world to wear clean underwear, because if you get in an accident, you’re going to go to the hospital and you don’t want to have dirty underwear. Listen, if you get in an accident, you’re going to have dirty underwear. But it’s in my head, right? Because my mom didn’t want the people in the hospital who she doesn’t know to think badly of her mothering skills.
It’s in your head. Well, I don’t care if you put the thought of clean underwear in your kids’ heads. I do care that you put the word of God into your kids’ heads. Put it in your mouth, put it in their ears. Put it in your mouth and you will believe it. Speak it.
Last week, I got all up onto you guys about memorizing scripture. I think I was a little hard. I’m sorry. What did I say? If you don’t memorize scripture, you’re lazy. I didn’t mean to accuse you of being lazy.
I want to repent of that, and I simply want to say, if you don’t memorize scripture, you’re slothful. Lazy is such a much harsher of a word. You feel better now? You feel loved? Did you feel the embrace? Almost, right? Almost. All right. Put it in your mouth. Put it in your heart. “Is near to you.” My goodness, people. He gave us a book. He gave us a book.
“Well, it’s hard to understand. Get a New Living Translation. It’s easier.”
“Oh, I don’t like the loose translations. Good. Get an English Standard Version.”
It’s more word for word. I don’t care. Listen, people debate. People ask me, “What’s the best Bible?” I have two answers to that. My answer is this: the one you read. The one you’ll read. That’s the best one for you.
My second answer, I stole from Jack Deere, an author. He said, “The one that tells you to love your neighbor.” No, he says, “The one that tells you to love your enemy.” Read that one.
It’s near to you, people. I don’t have an exact count. I can go home and count again tonight.
It’s either in the mid-30s or I’ve hit 40 Bibles. I’ve confessed to you, I’m a little bit addicted to buying goat skin leather, high quality Bibles. I just love them. I know I don’t need them. I know the words are the powerful thing. Look at this. Right there. Preaching with this kind of Bible makes you more of a Christian. I’m convinced of it. That has got a great preacher flop to it. That’s good. I’m on the verge of buying another one. I gave one away recently.
I gave away a nice goat skin leather Bible to somebody who didn’t have a Bible anymore. I’m entitled to buy another one.
Listen, wives. Husbands can be addicted to many things. If your husband’s addicted to buying Bibles, count yourself blessed. It’s better than some other things.
Why do you put it in your mouth? Why do you put it in your heart? That you may do it. That you may do it. Because the consequences of doing it and not doing it are huge.
Again, when God says it’s near to you and you can do it, do it. But he’s not saying to Israel, “I know you’re going to follow the Ten Commandments perfectly.” He wouldn’t have given them the tabernacle and the sacrificial system if he knew for sure that they weren’t going to sin.
But Israel, what is your intention? Do you want to live in covenant relationship with me? Will you strive to be in covenant relationship with me?
Will you build a society based upon my covenant instead of copying the kingdoms around you, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Philistines, the Amalekites, all the Yites, the Moabites? There we go. What was the tribe of Esau? The Edomites, the Edomites, right? And there was a tribe that was big into the woodcutting industry, the wood process, oh, the termites, yeah, the termites. So they were up north. And so I knew you’d appreciate that, Brian.
All right, all the Yites. Don’t be like them. Dear ones, Israel didn’t do it, but it wasn’t impossible.
There are those theologians who say that God gives this law, knowing Israel won’t believe it because God has written the whole script. God has plan A, and plan A is that humans are going to sin. He’s going to send Jesus. And I believe God has a plan. And I believe whether Israel kept this law or not, there was still going to be a necessity for Jesus.
But the idea that God only works with one plan, that he has scripted from all creation, some people think that makes God’s sovereignty awesome. I think it makes God puny.
I think God is so infinitely great and wise, He can bring His purposes to pass no matter what choices we make. Now, that’s a sovereign God. We can’t mess it up. That’s the story of Genesis, right?
Abraham, I’m going to give you descendants and I’m gonna give you this land through your wife Sarah. Great, but that guy’s kind of looking at her like he kind of likes her and I’m a little afraid of him so I’ll give Sarah to him. No, Abraham you’re not gonna wreck the Covenant by being stupid and cowardly. I’m giving her back to you and I’ll give you a couple hundred sheep and cattle and goats too just to help you out. He does it twice. Have you ever seen a hero–and you know Abraham’s a biblical hero–have you ever seen a hero in the movie say this, “do anything you want to the girl but leave me alone.” You know that’s not what heroes are made of.
He’s a biblical hero, Isaac, like father like son. He does it then Jacob comes along. Oh my gosh, what a mess he is and he raises 12 sons who all get named as the 12 tribes of Israel and they’re a mess. They sell one of their brothers into slavery because they’re jealous of the little brat because Jacob played favorites just like his mom played favorites. Dysfunction, confusion, mess and what does God do through it all? Keeps his covenant, keeps his word, and now God’s telling Israel, do you want things to go well for you? I have given you a recipe and an invitation of how to walk in covenant love with me, so that you will not be like the nations around you. And the consequences are two polar opposites. There’s no middle ground. Life and death, good and evil curses, blessings and inherited land or homeless exiles.
God are the idols there is no middle ground and God says–God is so compassionate–he says to them, “if you do this, surely you’ll be destroyed.” You know he sends prophets to him for about a thousand years before he finally sends him into exile for a thousand years. God says, really, I’m gonna do this. Repent. About five or six of the kings of the southern kingdom Judah were godly kings. None in the northern kingdom Israel were godly kings
The Bible says one generation after Joshua conquered the Promised Land, Israel began to worship idols.
And that’s the whole point, by the way. All the covenant, all the law, but the biggie isn’t if you accidentally kill your neighbor’s goat. That’s not the point.
What’s the biggie that the prophets are always railing on? you’ve committed idolatry. you’ve been a prostitute. you’ve gone after other gods. you’ve been unfaithful to me after all I’ve done for you. you’ve abandoned me.
And so finally, it happens to them. They’re disinherited. The ten northern tribes who committed idolatry continuously are lost to history. They’re gone. They’re gone.
There are people on the earth who probably have the bloodline, who do have the bloodline of Dan, Issachar, Naphtali, Reuben, Manasseh, and Ephraim in their blood, but we don’t know who they are. The only Jews that we know who are today are of the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, the two southern tribes, because they were exiled, but actually, they were brought back. They returned from the exile.
But it happened to them. The final point I want to make for Israel is that God is not neutral in this.
He’s on their side. God doesn’t say, “I’ve set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Up to you.” I mean, I wanted my kids to do well, but sometimes I was a bit like that.
“Hey, you know, what do you want? You want to go to bed now or you want to stay up and watch your favorite show for a half an hour?” I would never say, “Choose the good choice.”
Their mother, you could tell, their mother was rooting for them.
I’m just like, ‘you keep talking back, it’s not going to go well for you. You zip it, it’ll be all right.’ And some kids, my kids were actually pretty smart. I remember my son. I remember the time I realized my four-year-old son was smart. And yes, I spanked. And he did something notorious to his sister. I told him to quit doing that, and he would get the blessing. He would get the thing he wanted. He didn’t quit doing it, so I stopped him from doing it.
When I stopped him from doing it, he said, ‘Now, do I get the blessing because I stopped doing it?’ I said, ‘No, you don’t get the blessing. I had to stop you from doing it. You don’t get your treat.’ And so he just threw a fit. And so I said, ‘All right, you’re going to your bedroom.’ I put him in the bedroom, and he was really mad. And it’s the only time he did this. He looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to hit you.’
And my wife, good mother, she would have been mortified by that. I’m like, “Bring it. You want to draw this line in the sand? Bring it.” So I just looked at him, and I said, “If you hit me, I’m going to hit you back.” And his arm came down into motion, and he hit my arm. His arm started going into motion. His arm was coming into motion this way. My arm started coming into motion. So it was one of these. It was bang, bang.
And then the little kid, he’s going to push a little further. He goes, ‘That didn’t hurt.’ So I said, ‘you want one that does?’ And he’s like, ‘No.’ Smart boy. Good. I don’t got a dummy here. Good. Good. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. But I am like God in this sense. I didn’t want that to escalate. I didn’t want to give him one that did. Right? I wanted him to choose life. I wanted him to choose the right thing.
Everybody, as a parent, you’re like, “If my kid wasn’t such a stinker, this trip to Disneyland would be a lot more fun for all of us. Right? Stop being a stinker.” God tells Israel, “Choose life. I want you to have life. I want to be in covenant life and relationship with you. I want things to go well with you. I have brought you into this land not so I can exile you thousands of years later just to show everybody I’m right.”
I brought you into this land so that you would be blessed in this land, and you would live in this land, and you would prosper in this land. I’ve given you everything necessary to do that, but here’s the deal: I’m not going to force you to do it. I’m not going to take over in my sovereignty. I’m not going to take over the sovereignty that I have given you to make a choice.
You choose to choose life, and let me tell you something, this passage, he says, ‘Here’s how you do it right: you love the Lord, you obey his voice, you cling to him because he is your life.’ That’s it. I’m a living God, I’m a loving God, be in relationship with me, here’s the covenant, do it and we’re good.
There are a lot of parallels to this passage to the gospel. First of all, the gospel is not too mysterious, it’s near to you, right? It’s near to you.
It will be a shame on Judgment Day when somebody’s standing before Jesus, and he says, “I never knew you,” and they say, “Well, you know, I just… I thought things would work out. I never really pursued it. I never really…” you know, that may be a legitimate argument somewhere in the deepest, darkest jungles, but in Western civilization, there’s a church on every corner.
If you stand before God one day, and you’re obviously, I’m preaching to the choir right, but if someone, if one of your neighbors, stands before God one day and says, “you know, I never asked the questions. Really, the biggest holidays of the year centered around this one person, and you took your college’s English literature professor’s word on whether or not he was a fraud or not, and you never darken the door of a church? You never went and asked anybody? Hey, preacher, why do you think this is true?”
I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I can’t, I don’t know that anybody has ever asked me that question. And I think everybody should be asking me that question. Everybody should be coming into my office or some other and say, “I’m gonna die one day. What’s your take on that?” Instead of just assuming, “I’m a basically good person. I gave five dollars to Salvation Army last year. I mean, that doesn’t buy me a ticket to eternity. You know, I only cheated on my wife three times in 40 years of marriage. I’m pretty faithful.”
That’d be good. You know, do you know what a basically good person is? A person with a poor memory. A person with a poor memory. It’s not too mysterious. There’s a book. There’s a book. This book has shaped Western civilization. Why isn’t it required reading? Because there’s a devil, and he’s afraid of this book. It’s mysterious. It’s not that mysterious. The word is near. It’s on every street corner.
Listen, I promise you, if you come to the Firehouse Church, you’re gonna hear the gospel.
I promise you, if you bring your friends to the Firehouse Church, it might not be a gospel presentation every Sunday, but they’re gonna hear that, you know what? Apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ, you are lost and His death on the cross atones for your sins. His resurrection from the dead is His eternal victory. He is a victorious King. He reigns above it all.
He wants to come and live with you. He wants you to be His person and you to belong to Him. And Him to belong to you.
He wants to take you to the Father. He wants to bring you into a glorious eternity. But dear ones, you have to repent. You have to turn from your way to His way. And you have to believe. You have to put your trust in Him. You have to be a part of the church and be baptized. you’ve got to walk this thing out. That’s how it is. And you can bring your friends to church and they’ll hear that.
And if they don’t hear it, bring them up to me after church and say, you know, Kevin, that thing you said, say it to Him. Listen, you don’t even have to say it to them. I’ll do it. It’s good if you say it to them, but if you don’t, I’ll do it. Right? And you know why. Right? I’ve told you. Kevinism is coming. Right, Steven? I am paid to be good. And you guys are good for nothing. So, that’s how it works.
You know, you get more stars in heaven because you weren’t even paid to be good. That’s what I meant by that, of course. All right. you’ll hear the gospel. The word is near, that they may hear and be saved.
And dear ones, just like in Deuteronomy, there are two polar opposites. There’s eternal life and eternal judgment. The wages of sin is death. The free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23, NLT)
Heaven and hell. The new Jerusalem, the lake of fire.
There’s no purgatory. Well, actually, there is a purgatory. Now you’re shocked.
You believe in purgatory? Yes, we’re in it. We’re in it. This is where we work it out. That’s what purgatory is, where you work out your holiness, where you work out your salvation. This is it, all right?
My mother-in-law, a Catholic, I believe in purgatory. So do I. She goes, really? Yeah, we’re here. We’re here. I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you if I weren’t in purgatory. We’re here. I’m nice to my mother-in-law, Isaiah.
All right. God is on our side. you’re wondering why Christ hasn’t returned.
I’ll tell you why Christ hasn’t returned: because God is patient and he’s desiring that all men repent and be saved. Do I believe in universalism? Do I believe all men and women will repent and be saved? Sadly, no. But I know God’s heart on this. It’s my heart.
I’ve never seen anybody that I wanted to see lost. I’ve never been angry enough at anybody, even the worst criminal, even, you know, international villains, even a Hitler or Osama bin Laden or somebody like that. I’ve never looked at them so bad.
I just hope they go to hell and burn and suffer. And no, it’s like I want them to be saved. Now, I’m not as good as Jesus. There are people that I want to see suffer some before they get saved. Knock them around a little bit. Make their coming to Jesus hard, Jesus. Knock them around a little bit.
But honestly, people say, “Oh, I just want to hasten the second coming of Christ.” Not me. My sister doesn’t know Jesus yet. I don’t want to hasten the second coming of Christ.
I want to hasten Christ’s reign and victory on earth. Here’s what I want to hasten: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, NLT)
I don’t know how much heaven on earth we can get before Jesus returns, but you know what? I’m banking on the fact we can get more.
And I want to spend every day that I’ve got breath in these lungs advancing that cause. He can come back whenever he wants to. He’s smarter than me. He knows the perfect time.
But as far as I’m concerned, it’s like I talk to people, “Oh man, life’s so hard. I wish Jesus would just come and rapture me away.” So the rest of the year, the rest of the earth can be thrown into seven years of terrible turmoil and suffering. That’s what you’re hoping for? Not me. I want the rest of the earth to be as saved as I am. More saved than I am. Deeper love for Jesus. More joy than I have. On their side, we should be too. God is on their side.
And so, dear ones, it’s not that hard. Believe in Jesus. Just like in Deuteronomy, love God. Love God.
What does that mean to love God? We use the word love and we think of romantic affection. Nothing wrong with romantic affection. I love romantic affection. I love those in-love feelings. But that’s not love.
Love is just this wholehearted devotion and commitment to something that you want to give your life to. And that’s God. He is so beautiful. How good is He? He’s so good. He is so merciful.
He has led me to repentance throughout my life, almost exclusively through kindness, not through judgment. I repent often of my sins because God reminds me how good He is, not because He spanked me. He’s so good. He is so worthy. Nothing else is worthy.
So learn to hear and obey His voice. Learn to hear and obey His voice quickly and cling to Him. Don’t let a day go by without saying your prayers. Don’t let a day go by without saying, “Jesus, today’s your day.” Even when you’re feeling lousy. Even when you’re feeling guilty.
Even when you acted like a jerk the other day, don’t punish yourself and go three days without Jesus because you were acting like a jerk. Just go to Him and say, “God, I acted like a jerk.” And God will say, “That’s right. Go apologize to your wife. We’re good.”
All right, I’ll apologize to my wife or somebody else. But, you know, I live with her, so it’s her a lot. She’s my training ground for learning how to give good apologies.
All right. Cling to Him. Why? He is your life. He is your life.
I shared this yesterday at Patty’s service with Mick and David, and I said we’ve kind of, and you’ve heard me say this, but I like to repeat things over and over again so you will get biblical Kevanisms into your head. I don’t want you to get all Kevanisms into your head. Not all Kevanisms are good. You need to discern your Kevanisms.
All right. But I want you to get the biblical Kevanisms in you. Isaiah could testify. Not all Kevanisms are good. Many are funny, but they’re not all good. All right.
So, I want you to get biblical Kevanisms into your head, and here’s a Kevanism. I shared it yesterday. I share it here a lot. I’m going to share it again. That we have this conception that there was a TV show came out recently called The Good Place, and basically, it was a works theology. If you live good, you go to the good place. If you live bad, you go to the bad place.
And it was about how they had made mistakes in the good place, and not everybody in the good place was very good, and this one woman went to the good place by a clerical error, and she was a little stinker, and she’s trying to learn to be good. Anyway, what it is is popular theology.
The good place, you go to heaven. The bad place, you go to hell. You know, the bad life, you go to hell. Good life, you go to heaven. No, no.
Christians have come along, and we’ve taught, “If you repent of your sins and ask Jesus into your heart, you go to heaven, and if you don’t do that, you go to hell.” And so, we’re taught there’s a different path than being good to go to the good place. Say the sinner’s prayer, go to church, sit on your rocking chair, wait for the rapture, and you’ll go to heaven.
I think Christian theology, there’s truth in that, but I think Christian theology runs deeper and more relational. It’s not about the good place and the bad place.
That’s not the story the Bible teaches. The story the Bible teaches is this: “I want you to be my people, and I want to be your God.” When He’s your God, that’s the good place. Jesus is the good place. It’s the relationship, not the stamp-your-ticket, fire insurance. It is the relationship with Jesus.
What’s going to make heaven, heaven? What’s going to make the new heavens and the new earth glorious is exactly that. He will be our God and we will be His people.
And we will be in covenant relationship with Him, and everything in this world that caused us to mess up is going to be gone. Will we have freedom? Technically, I think in heaven you will have freedom. Except, nobody’s going to abuse it. you’re going to reach a point.
How about this? We talk about people reaching a point of no return in terms of their hardness of heart toward God, and I think that’s possible. I think it’s possible in this life. It’s scary. It’s called blaspheming the Holy Spirit. But it’s possible.
But I think in eternity, it’s not only possible, it is inevitable that our hearts are going to be so alive and so in love with Jesus that even though we have complete freedom, sin will be impossible. I mean, you can think, there are certain sins right now that you’re not going to commit. Right?
Like, I have done many funerals for people who have committed suicide. And that, and burying children, are pretty much the hardest parts of the job. And it makes me so mad when somebody does that.
I get so mad at the person who committed suicide because what I see, even though I know, I get it, they didn’t see this. They just thought everybody would be better off without them. Their minds were in a bad place. I have mercy for that and sympathy for that. But what I see is, you just ran away from your pain and barfed it onto everybody else. And now everybody else has got to deal with this. Is that?
And I think, no matter how depressed I ever got, one thought of my grandchildren, or my wife, or you all, I would go, “I’m not gonna do that. I’m not. I’m not gonna do that to those dear people. I’m not gonna make them feel miserable just because I’m having a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month, or bad years. I’m not gonna do that to the people I love.”
And so, I feel like that sin is out of the realm of possibility for me. Not because I don’t have the choice.
Not because I couldn’t do it. It’s just like, it’s not gonna happen. I kind of feel the same way about cheating on my wife. It’s like, I ain’t gonna do that. I’m not gonna do that. I mean, it’s like, are you kidding me? Why would I throw away 43 years of marriage for a little fling? You know, what’s that about?
I’m not gonna do that. I mean, why would I, why would I do that to God? He’s been so good to me, and gave me such a great wife. And so I think it’s possible, right?
It’s morally possible that I could cheat on my wife, I suppose. Not that there isn’t precedent amongst preachers, sadly. But it’s like, I ain’t doing that. I think that’s what it’s gonna be like. Only the list is gonna be finally the whole thing. You know? Because there are, you know, if you’d have brought that cake tonight, I might have gluttonized, Nick. That’s still a possibility for me. I might have had, especially those pieces with the big frost, all the frosting on the corner. Yeah, those are, those are so good. Those are so good.
All right. Dear ones, He is your life. And so I’m preaching to the choir. I know, you’ve done this. But you know, even though we’ve done it, and even though we’re disciples of Jesus, don’t those situations come around every day where we have to do what? Choose life. Choose life. Somebody, somebody tailgates me. I don’t like tailgaters. Man, I don’t like tailgaters. It’s like, just, you know, I’ll pull over. Just, you don’t have to be right on, right on me. And I’m so tempted. Dear ones, I got to confess, I’m tempted.
When they pass me, I’m tempted to let them… No, I did not appreciate their tailgating. And I’m just passive-aggressive enough that I don’t do the sign, I just scratch my ear with one finger. Just to make me feel better. All right?
But I had a choice at that moment, right? I had a choice. I don’t have to be bitter, I don’t, yeah, just pull over, what do I care? Maybe their child is in the hospital, for goodness sakes. And they, you know, they’re not even thinking about tailgating, they’re just thinking, I gotta get there.
I don’t know their situation. Why do I have to get annoyed at them? I can choose life. I can choose life. When somebody hurts me, intentionally or unintentionally, I can hold onto that, get vindictive, be bitter, resentful, or I can choose to love and forgive and choose life. I mean, it happens every day, right? So tonight, I wanna encourage you with these two words. Choose life. And he is your life. Right there. Life. The body and blood of Christ, the nourishment of heaven, the forgiveness of sins and the new covenant.
I want you to take this meal tonight, and when you do, you can, I know, I know, y’all. you’re a bunch of quiet people. That’s okay. It’s okay to be an introvert. It’s okay. Just pray that as a charismatic church, the Lord would send us more extroverts, just because it helps me. You know, a few hallelujahs, a few praise Jesuses, a few. We had this one get, we got this group. They weren’t there this morning, but there were four of them last week, and they’re all a little bit delayed.
They’re adults who are, not, they’re functional, but they’re functionally delayed. And one of them, one of them is just very verbal when I preach now. She’s come only twice, but she’s very verbal. And sometimes she’s inappropriately verbal. She gives the ‘amen’ at the wrong time. She butts in at the wrong time. I don’t care. It’s so refreshing to me. You know, it’s so good. She’s like, ‘you go girl.’ And so, but anyway, here’s what I want you to do.
You can do it in your head, you can do it silently, or you can do it out loud. But when you take communion tonight and you dip that bread in that cup, I want you to say, “Thank you, Jesus, I choose life.” Amen?
The food of God for the people of God. Come and eat. And thank you, Jesus, I choose life. I choose you.
The post Choose Life (Deuteronomy 30:11-20) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
March 17, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
I usually start with a psalm, and today I’m going to start with the Breastplate Prayer of St. Patrick. This is a rather famous. Are we good? This is a rather famous prayer, and so whether or not St. Patrick actually wrote this prayer is historically speculative. It could be anonymous, but it’s been ascribed to St. Patrick. It starts this way: “I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the creator of creation, I arise today.”
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism, through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial, through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension, through the strength of his descent for the judgment of doom, I arise today through the strength of the love of cherubim. In the obedience of angels in the service of archangels, in the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, in the prayers of the patriarchs, in the predictions of prophets, in the preaching of apostles, in the faith of confessors, in the innocence of holy virgins, in the deeds of righteous men, I arise today through the strength of heaven.
The light of sun, the radiance of the moon, the splendor of fire, the speed of lightning, the swiftness of wind, the depth of the sea, the stability of the earth, the firmness of rock, I arise today through God’s strength to pilot me. God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me from the snares of devils, from the temptation of vices, from everyone who shall wish me ill afar and near.
I summon today all the powers between me and those evils, against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of pagandom, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of witches and smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul. Christ to shield me today against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that there may come to me an abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me, I arise today through the strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the creator of creation.
So, St. Patrick, it’s funny how our culture should, you know, Christmas becomes Santa Claus and elves and reindeer, and that’s okay. I don’t have a problem with that. Easter is about bunnies and chocolate. We got plenty of bunnies in my backyard, I don’t care about them, but I’ve never been opposed to chocolate. Anything that makes my wife that happy, I’m in favor of.
So, I don’t get offended by that, and I don’t lose the meaning of those holidays with the cultural settings. The meaning of St. Patrick has been lost in the cultural setting.
It’s not a celebration of being Irish, despite what my dad always said. There’s only two kinds of people in the world: the Irish and them that want to be. That’s, I don’t even assume that’s true. I did my own DNA and I found out neither my dad or I were nearly as Irish as we thought we were anyway. It’s not a celebration of green, though it is my favorite color. It is actually, St. Patrick was actually an extraordinary man with an extraordinary story.
And the story started when he was an Irish, not an Irish boy, he was not Irish, he was British. He lived in a coastal town and, as was often the case in those coastal towns, pirates would come. Irish pirates came and raided the town. They kidnapped him, took him back to Ireland, and made him a slave. As a slave, his job was to be a shepherd.
And so, St. Patrick, as a shepherd, watched the sheep, and during those long, lonely nights and long, lonely hours as a shepherd – and isn’t it very biblical, right, the shepherd – he drew close to God. He had been raised in a Christian home but was nominal about it, wasn’t serious about it, but as a slave and a shepherd, he drew very close to God and became very devout and a young man of prayer. One night, he had a dream, and in that dream, God showed him the exact path of his escape.
Showed him the road to take, showed him the people he’d meet, actually showed him an image of the ship that he would take back to England. And he followed that dream, and it happened exactly as he had dreamt, and he made his escape from slavery and went back to England. He devoted his life to Christ and became a priest, and later became a bishop.
At the ripe old age of retirement, 40, people didn’t live as long back then, he’s getting ready to retire, he had another dream.
And in this dream, there was an Irish pirate, and the Irish pirate spoke to him in the dream and basically said something like this: “Come back to us, holy boy, and teach us the way.” And so, instead of retiring, the pastor gathered around him a group of nuns, priests, brothers, and sisters, and they went back and they evangelized Ireland. He suffered great heartbreak.
That original group grew as they made Irish converts, and he took all these young people along with him. He was discipling them, and they were all kind of living communally together. One day, he was out; when he came back, their little commune had been attacked by, guess what, Irish pirates. They had killed some and kidnapped the rest. St. Patrick went out and he said to God, “This is too hard. I quit.” And God, in all his mercy, said, “Nope, keep going. Don’t quit. But it’s hard.” “Yeah, don’t quit.”
So, he continued to evangelize. He got another band around him, and they continued to evangelize. It is said of St. Patrick, and this is probably not a hundred percent true, but at least within the generation after St. Patrick, it’s pretty true. He found an island, he found a nation that was entirely non-Christian, druidic paganism, and left it entirely Christian.
The Irish were very significant in the fifth, sixth, seventh century. The Irish monks were very significant when the Roman Empire fell, and the barbarians burned all of the literature of Western civilization. That had actually been preserved by Irish monks who not only copied the Bible but copied much of the literature of Europe and Western civilization, so that was all preserved for us.
Then, when the barbarians took over Rome and everybody thought that what the Christendom that had arisen in Europe was good, it was actually the Irish monks who sailed back into the mainland of Europe and re-evangelized the continent. If you want to read the full story, read Thomas Cahill’s book, a historian, called “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” There you go.
So that’s the story of St. Patrick. That’s why we celebrate. He is a great Christian figure in history who was a compassionate and masterful evangelist. And actually, they practiced a form of evangelism that we now know to be the best form of evangelism.
The Roman evangelism of the time was apologetics, was intellectual evangelism. Here’s why you should be a Christian. Patrick and his group practiced incarnational evangelism, relational evangelism. They would actually go into the town, live in the town, make friends, and through those relationships lead the town to Christ.
And then, they would raise up leaders in those towns, stay there, and go to the church, and they go to the next town. Some of those leaders would go with them on mission. And through that method, they evangelized the island of Ireland in the 400s.
So that’s the story. And just to let you know, that’s not even the sermon. There’s more to come.
All right, so let’s worship Jesus tonight.
Thank you, God of revival. It’s interesting. That wasn’t on the song list that I put together for tonight, but we couldn’t get that song list to work. It’s very interesting.
This morning, as I was praying, maybe it was last night, but I was praying for the worship services today in Bremerton and Paulsbo. And I said, “Lord, how do you want me to pray?”
There have been three things that I’ve consistently prayed through the years. And one is that Jesus would be here when we gather. The other has been from Psalm 90 and Psalm 141: “Set a guard over my mouth.”
Keep watch over the door of my lips. That’s Psalm 141. Then, Psalm 90: Establish the work of my hands. I just want to speak well of the scriptures, and accurately, and I want whatever I have to say to be established and be of benefit, especially to you.
And the third is, “Lord, bring the people you want.” And he does. I said, “Lord, don’t you want more people?” He says, “No, this is fine.”
And then, the other thing I’ve consistently prayed, because I believed when I moved up here that I moved up here for the purpose of revival. I believed that God was going to bring another awakening upon America and that he wanted to bring an awakening in the Pacific Northwest, and that he wanted me to be there, to be a part of that. And 16 years, you know, I feel like Abraham and Sarah, it’s a long time to wait for your Isaac.
And it’s like, in fact, the verse that God used to call me up here, the verse I kept coming back to was Genesis 12:1-3, go to a land, go to a land that you don’t know. And so I did.
And I told God, I don’t got 25 years. I don’t want it to be 25 years. Who knows? Maybe it will be. I don’t know. It’s down to nine now. You know, I’d only be 74. And Abraham was old.
But anyway, the proverb says, hope deferred makes the heart sick.
And there is, in some sense, that that has happened with me. It’s like, ah, and, you know, I’m kind of just like, “Well, God, you know, I got two little churches. I’m just going to love those people.” And so I did. And I told God, “I don’t got 25 years. I don’t want it to be 25 years. Who knows? Maybe it will be. I don’t know. It’s down to nine now.”
And there is, in some sense, that that has happened with me. It’s like, ah, and, you know, I’m kind of just like, ‘Well, God, you know, I got two little churches. I’m just going to love those people and preach till I’m done.’ And you know, and anyway, so last night or this morning, I don’t remember which one, I’m just praying, ‘Lord, how do you want me to pray for this weekend?’ And he said, ‘Pray for revival.’ It’s like, again, I’ve done that. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. I’ve done that.
He says, “Pray for revival.” And then he just reminded me, “you know what? My time is not your time, son. My time is not your time. Pray for revival. Pray. Pray that God would bring.”
And what I mean by revival is some of what that song said. “Come awake, your people, awaken your city.”
Revival is reviving, and so that the church would be passionate about, especially, Isaiah and I were talking about this recently. Especially about, you know, sharing the gospel with the lost, and that the lost, in times of revival, there is kind of an increased hunger and receptivity. And I was really, you know, weird as I am, I was really excited when COVID came. Because I thought, “This will get them, right? This will make people…” I remember 9-11, man. I remember 9-11 didn’t spark a revival, but it sparked about a one-month revival.
You know, the Sunday after 9-11, church was packed. It was packed. It’s not COVID, but church wasn’t packed during COVID. It was actually opposite. You can’t go to church, and you know, all that kind of stuff. But anyway, the Lord just put that on my heart, and then we started singing that tonight, and you know, God changed our song list tonight. I really like the list I put together, too. God changed it, so it’s a good list.
So, God changed the song list tonight, and that song just reminded me. It’s like, ‘All right, you know, what do I got to lose by praying for it, right?’ So, I’ll keep praying for it. You can hold me accountable to that. Cannot lose if you cannot quit. Don’t use my own quotes against me, man. No, that’s good. Thank you. You can use my own quotes to encourage me. That’s good. So, I already told this joke, Sophia, but I was told I had to tell it to you.
Did you hear about the little Irish boy who just was super hyper? And you know, in school, he’s one of those kids that’s always bouncing off walls, and the teacher can’t contain him. Do you know what his name was? Rick O’Shea. That was 100% for you. All right? Yeah, I thought you’d like that.
All right, good. So here’s my Irish drinking joke for tonight. All right, I got lots of them, but this one’s good. This one’s OK. It’s about this guy.
My great-great-uncle, when he immigrated here, he got a job in Boston. He’d go to work, and then every day after work, he’d step into a local pub before he got home. He’d order himself three pints of Guinness, one, two, three, three beers. He’d drink the three beers and then go home. Finally, the bartender said, “you know, you always have me pour three beers at once, and you drink them from three different glasses.”
It’d be fresher if you just drank one, and I refilled it, drank another, and drank another, and you have three.” And he says, “Why do you have me just pour out three beers for you?” He goes, “Oh, I’ve got to say this in a brogue.” He says, “Oh, well, you know, when I left the home country, I left me brother and me father there. And we used to, after work, we all used to sit down and have a drink together.
And I said, ‘you know, I’m going to keep that tradition alive when I’m not with you anymore.’ And so, I order three drinks, one for me, one for my brother, and one for my father. And the bartender goes, ‘Well, that’s a wonderful tradition. That’s a sweet tradition.’ So, he kept doing it. But then, a while later, he’d come in and he’d only order two drinks. And the bartender was confused. And the bartender thought, ‘Oh, my goodness. His dad died. His father died.’
And so the bartender just looks at him and goes, I’m so sorry about your father. He goes, what are you saying, man? He says, well, you’re only ordering two drinks. Was it your dad or maybe your brother passed away? He goes, oh, no, they’re fine. They’ll be fine. He goes, well, why aren’t you ordering three drinks? And where are you ordering two? He goes, well, my wife got me going down to the church. And they told me I couldn’t drink anymore. But it doesn’t affect me, brother, and my dad, none.
So, that’s my Irish drinking joke for you. All right. I want to read to you. There are scriptures, and there are scriptures. Now, that’s a heresy, right? People don’t like to say that there are scriptures that are more important than other scriptures, and all scriptures are inspired by God. But at least, there are scriptures that are certainly more, what?
Central, impactful, I mean, you know, if I was going to tell somebody to memorize ten scriptures, I wouldn’t take them to the first ten, or the first four chapters of 1 Chronicles and have them memorize the genealogies. I wouldn’t. There may be some, I mean, God inspired it, I’m sure there’s fruitfulness in it. It hasn’t dramatically, as best as I know, the genealogies have not shaped and changed my life. There are some that have, right, and I’ve shared some of those with you.
Who have I in heaven but you, and besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever. Psalm 73:25-26.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25-26, NIV)
Lamentations 3, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They’re new every morning, great is thy faithfulness, O God.
22 Because of the Lord ’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, NIV)
Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and died for me.
20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20, NIV)
Philippians 1:21, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain.
21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21, NIV)
Psalm 16:11, you have shown me the path of life; at your right hand is the fullness of joy, or in your presence is the fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16:11, NIV)
And certainly, you’ve heard me say this one, I would have lost hope except for this.
Psalm 27:13, “That I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13, NIV)
Proverbs 11:22, a deeply impactful and meaningful verse, “Has a gold ring and a pig snout, so is a beautiful woman without discretion.”
22 Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. (Proverbs 11:22, NIV)
It’s a life changer, I’m telling you.
But of all the scriptures that are big, this one is big, and it’s big because Jesus uses it as kind of, you know, one of the greatest commandments. And it’s in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, I’m actually going to read 4 through 9, and here’s what it says.
Listen, Israel, listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and you must commit yourself wholeheartedly to these commands that I’m giving you today.
Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you’re at home, and when you’re on the road, and when you’re going to bed, and when you’re getting up. Tie them on your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable, Lord, in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.
14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord , my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14, NIV)
And so, listen, says in the New Living Translation, or hear, hear, O Israel. And so, Moses is given all these commandments, and all of a sudden, he says, “Hey, pay attention.” Jesus used this tactic, right? He would say, “Verily, verily,” in the King James, or “Truly, truly.
In the Bible, there’s a way to emphasize things and say, “Stand up, pay attention, this is really important.” One of those ways is repetition, right? God is not holy, he’s holy, holy, holy. Pay attention. But another way to get people to pay attention, besides repetition, is to emphasize at the beginning just that, “Pay attention, listen.”
And the word, this is called the Shema in Hebrew. This is one of the few sermons I’m going to give you where I’m going to bounce around some Hebrew words. It’s called the Shema, and the Shema simply means, “Hear.”
Here it says, “Listen, we’re more familiar with the, ‘Hear, O Israel. The Lord your God is one.’”
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4, NIV)
He’s one. And so, this is central to the faith of the Israelites, and so, this is a statement against polytheism.
Okay, so there’s pantheism, there’s, there’s only, one of these four has to be true, and the other three have to be false. This is. This is one of those things where different views are mutually exclusive.
Theism, meaning the study of God or God, there is a, a theism. That means no God, okay?
That has been throughout anthropology, throughout the study of human beings, that has been far and away the minority position. There has never really been a culture that has grown up primarily atheistic, all right? It is kind of the invention of the modern west. You could say Buddhism is atheistic, and it is in a sense. But, it’s kind of pantheistic depending. But atheism, there is no God.
If you were to try to throw a rock and hit an atheist, which I don’t recommend you do, but if you try to do it, you could go into any major university and just launch a rock at the philosophy department and you’d probably get one. But anywhere else in the world, you’d have to aim, all right? They’re hard to find.
So, atheism, no God. Pantheism, all is God, all right? The best example I have of pantheism that would resonate with us is Star Wars. May the what? Force.
The force is not personal. The force is just the force. It’s just this power that’s in the universe. You can use the good side, the dark side, the light side, but it’s just the force.
All right, another, another use of pantheism, people use this all the time, but it just cracks me up. It’s such a bad use of language. “The universe is telling me.” Yeah, universe or nature is telling me. Well, if the universe or nature is personal, then it’s God.
And if it’s not, then you’re listening to voices in your head which makes you crazy. But, it’s. It’s a way of not coming to God, because if you come to God, if God starts telling me things, then there ends up being what? Obligation. But if it’s the universe, I can do what I want with it. So pantheism is great. All the benefits of a spiritual power with none of the accountability and responsibility. Problem is, throughout history again, most people haven’t been pantheists. You say, well, one of the world’s largest religions, Hinduism, is pantheistic.
It is, in its official understanding. And it’s official, in what Hindus write, it is pantheism. However, the vast majority of Hindus, who would say they are Hindus, do not practice pantheism. They practice the most popular of anthropological, what human beings naturally become without any kind of revelation or any kind of help, what human beings naturally become are polytheists. Poly, many gods. All right?
So if you go to India, where Hinduism is practiced, you go to a Hindu temple, and what will you see? Not a picture of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, modern day heroes.
You will see many, many idols to which you will make sacrifices. That’s not pantheism. That’s polytheism. If you go to a Buddhist temple that’s supposed to be atheistic, what will you see? you’ll see many idols, which people present fruit offerings and other offerings to these idols.
Human beings, apart from any revelation from heaven, float toward polytheism. You and I have grown up in a culture that has been deeply and significantly influenced by Christianity, and so polytheism is not the water we swam in growing up.
We swam in the water of Christian theism. Whether we believe it or not, that’s the pool we’re in. And so, this idea that God has to make this powerful statement against polytheism is not familiar to our worldview, but it’s significantly important to the early Hebrews that Moses is talking to.
“Hear, O Israel, you’re about to enter a land filled with idols, idolatry, polytheists.”
And as we studied in the unseen realm, those things, and in some places in the Bible, God says, “Oh, they’re just a useless block of wood.”
But in other places in the Bible, it seems like no, there are spiritual powers that the block of wood is not, but that are behind those blocks of wood. And those spiritual powers are principalities and powers and spiritual forces of wickedness, as Paul later describes them in Ephesians 6, that have rebelled against God and they are vying for human hearts. They’re wicked and they’re evil, and they bring people into wicked and evil religious practices.
God’s primary message to Israel in the Old Testament, he gives them 10 commandments, but he emphasizes one.
Hey, stop worshiping other gods. Stop sacrificing your children to Molech. I never told you to do that. Hear, O Israel, I’m telling you something that all the world around you doesn’t believe. All the world around you, in other words, the water you swim in, they don’t swim in theistic waters. They don’t swim in a theistic pool. They swim in a polytheistic pool and God is saying that’s not reality.
Now, what I think is reality is those beings are gods, not in the polytheistic sense, but at small g, they’re powers. They’re not just blocks of wood.
They are demonic powers. They were a part of God’s divine counsel. But that’s not the same as saying they’re gods, on the same level that God is God, because they are created and he is their creator and he is the one who holds all the power. He is, and that’s not their worldview. And so he’s changing their worldview, and that’s why he says, ‘Pay attention to this. I’m telling you something radically different than the world around you believes, and you must hold on to this. This is so important for you to hold on to.’ Why?
Because I believe what God is doing with Israel is, he’s creating an island of monotheism. One God, that’s the fourth view, right? We had atheism, pantheism, polytheism, monotheism or simply theism. One God. The world religions today who hold that view are Islam, Judaism, Christianity. One God, and he’s creating this island amongst the Jews of monotheism that there’s one God as a landing strip for Jesus, the Savior. So, when Jesus comes and says, “Hey, I’m that one God,” if Israel’s polytheistic and Jesus shows up, right? What do they say? “Oh, another God, great.”
That’s what happened when the Spaniards tried to evangelize the polytheists in Latin America. They said, “Jesus is God.” Great, we can always use another one. “Oh, you got all these saints? We’ll make them gods too. Oh, and we needed a good mother God. We’ll make Mary a good mother God.” And they syncretized monotheism into their polytheism. Why? The natural human tendency is to worship demons in a polytheistic fashion. Make sense?
“Hear, oh Israel, there’s one of me.”
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4, NIV)
Now, Jews have come along to Christians and said, “Gotcha. The Shema, no Trinity. You got three gods.”
The Bible says there’s one. How can that be? I’ll tell you how that could be. The word here for one is akkad. The other word for one is yachim. I told you I was going to use some Hebrew today. Akkad is unity, one, within plurality. That’s how it’s used in the Bible. Yaqid is distinct unity.
What do I mean by that? Genesis 22:2, “Abraham, take your son, your only son, the one you love, and sacrifice him.” What’s the word for son, only son? Yaqid. That’s it.
But yaqad is actually a word for a unity that contains within it a plurality. It’s used in Genesis 1:5. There was morning and there was evening.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning —the first day. (Genesis 1:5, NIV)
That’s a plurality. The what? First day. One day. Morning and evening. It’s also used in the most famous passage, Genesis 2. For this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and be united to his wife. Two, and they will become what? One flesh.
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24, NIV)
One of my marriage sermons when I marry people. you’ve got to know this about preachers, alright?
We preach all the time, but when we do marriage and funerals, we’ve got about two or three sermons for each. There’s not a new one. And if you got married, I got two marriage sermons. And one of them is this, 1 plus 1 equals 1. That’s the name of the sermon, 1 plus 1 equals 1.
And so, there’s a plurality. I think Ezekiel 37:17, God gives Ezekiel a picture and he has two sticks. And those two sticks represent the divided tribes of Israel. The northern tribe Ephraim, the southern tribe Judah.
And he says, “Bind together those two sticks to do what? To make a cod. To make a cod. To make a cod. A unity within a plurality, to make two one.” And that’s the word here. “Hear, O Israel.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4, NIV)
The Lord your God is Akkad.” He’s one God, but there’s an implied plurality in that. And even the word, “the Lord your God,” even the word for God, “Adonai your God,” the word for God there is Elohim. Elohim is plural. Now, it doesn’t, you can’t translate Deuteronomy 6:4, “the Lord your God’s is one.”
It’s the Lord your God. That’s a correct translation. But there still is an implied plurality in the unity of God. Now, I know the Trinity is hard to understand. How can something be three and one at the same time? My favorite, there’s all sorts of analogies. Find one that works for you.
Here’s my favorite. What’s H2O? Every time I say that, people say what? Water, right? At 32 degrees, what is H2O? Ice. Does it cease to be water? I mean, does it cease to be H2O?
It does cease to be ice, I mean water, but it doesn’t cease to be H2O. At 200, what is it, 212 degrees? Is that it? All you smart people? All right. 212 degrees, what does H2O become? Does it cease to be H2O?
So H2O is always H2O, and yet it manifests as water, ice, and steam. God is always God, yet he manifests as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Now, here’s where that analogy breaks down. That molecule of H2O can only be one of those three at any particular time.
It’s not water, ice, and steam simultaneously. But because God is bigger than H2O, God is always God, Father, Son, and Spirit. He’s always God, Father, Son, and Spirit.
And so that’s—we are Christians. We are not tritheists. We’re not polytheists. We don’t believe in three gods. We believe in one God, complete unity, three persons. Father, Son, and Spirit.
You say, “Well, Kevin, that is beyond reason.” Well, think about it.
If we’re trying to describe the infinite being who created the universe, don’t you think in trying to describe him, there would be parts of that that would be mind-boggling and stretching? I mean, Augustine said, “If you can explain it, it’s not God.” So that’s our view. That’s what we hold. And I think the Bible actually supports that.
And then the next one is love the Lord. With what? your heart. What is your heart in the Bible? Well, you know, you can’t love the Lord with a physical organ. That’s not what he’s talking about.
But the heart is one of the most frequently used terms in the Bible. I think over 800 times, it talks about the human heart. The heart means the whole encompassing of our thoughts, our wills, and our emotions. It’s not just our affections.
When we in Western culture talk about the heart, we tend to simply mean our affections, our emotions. But in the Bible, it’s more than that. It’s our thoughts. It’s our will.
Love God with your thoughts, with your will. Love God with your emotions. All of it. All right?
I mean, that’s how I love my wife. I love my wife with my thoughts. I love my wife with my will. I love my wife with my emotions. When we first met and fell in love, a lot of that was just loving her with my emotions. All right? That’s what infatuation, that’s what falling in love often is.
And we have highlighted that in Western civilization to a ridiculous level. We have said, that’s the end-all, be-all. And many marriages get ruined by that because that thing just does not… I mean, I’ve been married for 46 years.
Here’s the deal. When Jill and I met, we were in love. Oh my gosh, I just… I love… I loved to see her, I just desired always to be around her. And she was so Twitterpated with me that when we went out to eat, she couldn’t even eat. And yet we’d still go out to eat. This was doubly awesome for me, right? Because it totally flattered my ego. Wow, this girl’s into me. And she was smart and beautiful and good.
You know, how could a person so incredible as her be into such a schmo like me? And yet, she was. It made me really feel like much less of a schmo. You know, it made me feel good about myself. There must be something good about me for this incredible person to be in love with me.
And then, she couldn’t eat. And back then, I used to play sports so actually, I could do this without really harming myself, which meant every time we went out to eat, I got two dinners.
And you know, you always go to a restaurant and there’s always like more than one thing you like on the menu, right? And you’re back and forth between, ah, you know, do I get the Alfredo fettuccine or do I get the chicken Parmesan? I guess I’m wanting Italian. You know, what do I go with here? And so she’d be like, she’d go, ‘What do you think I should eat?’ And I would just pick number two on the list because I knew it was coming my way. It was the best.
I just want to say, after 43 years of marriage and after 46 years since we first started dating, she actually has no problem eating in front of me now. She’s like, “I don’t see that thing.” And that’s what happens, right? Anybody who’s been married, you know, several years, they say, “Oh, do you love your wife?” I still love Jill, but it’s not like, I’m not like right now going, “Oh man, I just want to get done with this sermon so I can just get home and see her.”
No, I’m fine with preaching a really long sermon to you. You know, she’ll be there. She’s been in there for 46 years. That’s good. She’ll be there, you know?
And we even talked about, you know, man, I first got married. I just chased her across the bed. I always be putting my arms around her and spooning and snuggling with her. And, you know, and now we both snore. It’s like, I’ll be in the other room, all right?
Yeah, we both need a good night’s sleep. You know, we still sleep together, but not all the time.
It’s like, yeah, you’re making too much noise. It’s what happens. So now, you know what I love her with? I still love her with my emotions. I still, and this is true, I’m still excited to see her, I’m happy to see her, and all that kind of thing. But I also love her with my will. I love her because I probably, you ever wonder why they make those wedding vows so powerful? Because people know that the emotions aren’t going to be enough.
I’ll love you as long as I’m twitterpated” is a great way to have a bunch of serial relationships. The word “twitterpated,” by the way, comes from what movie? Disney cartoon, anyone, anyone? Bambi, it’s Bambi, it comes from Bambi.
All right. So, I love you with my thoughts. I have couples, they come into me and they say, “How do I continue loving my husband?” And I say, “Well, what do you think about him?
And they say, ‘Well, I think he’s, you know, he sleeps in too, he smells bad, and he sleeps in too long, and, you know, he doesn’t give me enough attention, and he’s messy, and my goodness, the clothes hamper is not that hard to hit, and yet he misses it. My husband’s a hunter. He can hit a deer from 200 yards with a bullet, and yet the toilet bowl from 12 inches, what’s the deal?’ I say, ‘Well, you need to love, do you want to love your husband more? Change your thoughts.’
Don’t think the negative things, think the positive things. And usually, women go like, “What? Come on, there’s something there, right? There’s something there. Did it make any money?”
“Yeah, it makes good money.”
“Well, are you glad about that?”
“Yeah, I’m glad about that. Good. Be thankful for that. Is there anybody on the planet who loves your, is there any man on the planet, besides that guy, who loves your kids like that guy does?”
“No, there’s not another man on the planet who loves those two kids that I love like that man does.”
“Well, good.”
Think about that. It’s not that hard if you try. I can think about all sorts of things I love. I remember I told my wife one day, I said, “you know what I love about you?” And I gave her like 10 or 12 things right off the top of my head. And she’s kind of smiling. “Well, that’s nice.” And I’m sitting there like, okay. She made me ask. She made me beg. “Well, what do you love about me? Huh?” And here’s what she came up with. “you’re funny.” That’s pressure, people.
I have to keep a comedic edge to keep that woman happy. I’m sure there’s other things. All right. Love the Lord with your soul. That is, your soul is the essence of your life. In other words, give your life to God.
This idea we have in Western civilization that life is like a pie and there are different slices. You know, I give 40 hours a week to work. I give this, I give, I give, you know, uh, this much to my marriage. I give this much to my kid.
I give this much to my hobbies. I give this much to my yard work around the house. And, somehow, that fills out the 24/7 that we call a week. And there’s, I give this much to church and I give this much money to budget my money. And, that’s a chart. That’s a pie. I give this much to this and I pay this bill and I pay that bill. And we look at life in that kind of compartmentalized way.
But when the Bible says, “Love the Lord, your God, with your soul,” what it means to keep with that analogy is, God is not a slice of the pie. He’s the pie. And then he gets to divide up the slices for us. See, God does not demand 10% of your money. It’s not true. It’s all his. And he graciously says, “Live on 90%.” If you’re strict about tithing, live on 90%. Give the other 10% to expand the gospel, to care for the poor, to keep your pastor employed.
Just give the other, just, but you get to live on 90%. All right, I’m a Levite. All right, you guys own land. I don’t own any land. Bring me a cow once in a while so I can eat it. That’s how it works.
All right, love the Lord your God with your soul. I had a friend who was a police officer for a while, and he was in a terrible accident. He had pulled over a driver, was writing a ticket, and a drunk driver came by the highway and clipped him.
They thought he was going to die. The Bakersfield Police Department rallied around him and prayed. The community prayed for him. He miraculously lived. He miraculously wasn’t in a wheelchair, wasn’t crippled, was able to walk again, was able to function again.
He wasn’t recovered enough to ever become a police officer again, and so he became a schoolteacher. He went back to school to become a schoolteacher. And I asked him one time, I said, “Why did you decide teaching? Why do you teach, Mike?” I said, “Why do you teach?”
And he looked at me, and he said this with all sincerity and honesty. He said, “When I was a cop, I was a cop for Jesus, and now I’m going to be a teacher for Jesus.” In other words, what’s he saying? “I love God with all my soul. Doesn’t matter if I’m a cop or a teacher. I’m a Jesus guy. I’m a Jesus guy. You flip burgers, you flip them for Jesus. You raise pigs, you raise them for Jesus. If you were a Jew, you couldn’t do that, but see, you can do that now.”
All right. And so, love God with your soul. Love God with your strength, with your energy, with your time, with your intention. There’s a certain amount of energy it takes to live. A certain amount of energy to get up and go to work, a certain amount of energy to take care of your children, to take care of your land, to take care of, you know, there’s energy involved in life.
You have to make a commitment to things, and you actually have to do them, you can’t just think about them.
And so, you love God with your energy. Jesus says, you know, it’s one thing to say, “Be blessed.” It’s another thing actually to go out and bless somebody, to actually do something. You know, again, to use the analogy of my wife, her love language is not words of affirmation. She doesn’t mind when I say, “I love you,” but she actually likes when I put energy into it. You know, her favorite line is, “No man’s ever been shot pushing a vacuum cleaner.” It’s a good line.
Whenever she’s mad at me, it’s like, couple, we don’t, we’re, you know, some of you are going to think I’m a heretic and want to leave the church. I know you conservatives. I don’t own a gun. I don’t own a gun. Never owned a gun. And you think, ‘Well, Kevin, you should own a gun. That’s your patriotic duty.’ Have you ever seen me with a power tool? So don’t, don’t talk me into owning a gun. Howard Jill a while back said, ‘you know, maybe we should get a gun.’
And my first question was, are we good? Do I need to vacuum? All right. There’s an energy. There’s a time commitment.
I’m preaching to the choir. You are, you are being intentional, using your time to love God by attending a public worship service, by having a quiet time, right?
Every, you know, one of the reasons I don’t want, I want my iTunes to work is I use my iTunes in my quiet time.
I spend 20 minutes a day with the headphones on, listening to praise and worship music, and praying both in English and in tongues. I just pray, and then I go and I pray three Psalms a day, and then I just pray wherever the Lord leads me. That’s how I kind of use, that’s how kind of, I, I, I invest some time every day in having that relationship with God.
And so, it takes an investment of time. It takes intentionality. Again, when you first fall in love, there’s no intentionality.
It’s just so easy to be with people. But if you want to raise… You have a baby, and you look at the baby, and it’s, ‘Oh, it’s so cute. It’s so beautiful. I love my new baby.’ you’d do anything for that baby.
And then three weeks later, it’s three o’clock in the morning, and the baby’s going, ‘Wah! Wah! Wah!’ And you’re going, ‘What were we thinking getting a baby?’ And then you’re not thinking, ‘I would do anything for that baby.’ you’re thinking, ‘I would do anything for not even eight hours.’
Dear Lord, give me five hours of sleep. All I want is five hours. Wah! Baby doesn’t care if you get five hours of sleep. And what do you do? You love that child. You go and care for the needs of that child.
There’s intention now behind it. It’s not just they’re so cute. I’ll never forget Caitlin’s line. She had her first baby over a year ago, and Jill was back there, and she’s holding little Caroline, and she looks at Jill with these big eyes and says, “Mom, I have to keep this alive.”
That’s exactly what you have to do. That’s your job, because this ain’t going to stay alive without you. you’ve got to keep it alive. There needs to be intention behind that.
So love God with your strength. Put some energy into it. Put some energy into it. Don’t just sit back and say, “Hey, God, I love you. Well, talk to me. I kind of want to watch TV.”
Study the Scriptures. “Oh, that’s so hard. I don’t understand them. I’ll just wait and go to church and let them tell me what this Bible means.”
No, have a daily quiet time. All right. Hear, O Israel. There’s one of me. And I want your love, and that does not mean what 19th century romantics mean. Simply your affection.
However, I do want to say for those logical, like me, logical kind of people, it does involve your affection. All right? Some of us left brain males have trouble with emotional affection. Right?
It’s like the guy who took his wife to the counselor and, you know, he didn’t get it. You know, he provided well for her. He was nice to her.
But he was completely unromantic. He was completely non-affectionate. And this is not a true story, because any counselor would lose their license for this. But the counselor got so frustrated, he said, “Don’t you get what I’m saying?” He goes, “No, no.”
And so finally, the counselor walked up, stood up his wife, bent her over, and gave her a passionate kiss. The guy’s watching. He stands his wife back up, steps back, and the woman is obviously like, “Oh my gosh, that shocked me.” And he’s like, “Man, nobody’s done that for a while.”
That was kind of nice, you know? And so the counselor goes, ‘Did you get it?’ And the guy goes, ‘Yes, I get it.’ And the counselor goes, ‘Good.’ And so the guy goes, ‘So you want me to bring her back next Tuesday?’ All right. What was my point on that? I don’t know. Emotion, yeah. It’s not all emotion, but don’t use that. Involve your affection.
That’s why I like in worship, I remember the first time the Lord said, ‘Kevin, lift your hands.’ I’m not a lift your hand kind of guy.
You might think I am, because I am that guy now. But early on, I was not going to be that guy. I was not going to be that crazy, charismatic guy. I thought, that’s not right.
And I was looking at all these people raising their hands, and I was judging them. I was going, oh, they’re just showing off. They’re just trying to be like the Pharisees and show their spirituality.
A voice spoke to me and said, “Well, let’s not judge their worship, what about yours?” I was like, dang.
“Kevin, would you lift your hands to me? Checkmate.” And so, I did what every first-time hand lifter does. Tim Hawkins calls this “carry the TV.” “Carry the big screen.” And you grow, you grow. “My fish is bigger than your fish,” you know. “Window washer.” you grow. I don’t think Tim Hawkins has one for me. I don’t think he has that one.
All right, let’s move on. “Teach, teach, teach your children.” What is the first line of evangelism, mother and father?
You beget original sinners, now get them saved so we don’t have to deal with them later in life. All right, you beget an original sinner, now protect me from them. Teach your children to love Jesus. That’s the first line of evangelism.
Now, your kid’s got a free will, they could walk away from your teaching. That’s on them, not you. But here is what is on you. You cannot raise them neutral because the culture they’re growing up in is not neutral. The devil who is after their souls is not neutral.
And you are God’s first and most important line of defense for your kid’s souls. It ain’t the church. But doggone it, bring them to church. That’s a part of it. That’s a part of it, bring them to church.
Twice on Sunday, be good for Micah. Go to church twice on Sunday. It’s good for your kids. It’s good that Sidney and Sophia get brought to church. Now they just drive themselves. It’s a good thing.
I always say, I grew up, I had a drug problem. My parents drugged me to church.
I had to deal with my kids. You don’t have to go to church if you don’t want to eat. You want to eat my food? Go to my church. That’s how it works.
That also worked with chores. I remember one time my son said, I said, “Hey Michael, I need you to mow the lawn.” He said, “you going to pay me?” I said, “you want to eat? You want the combination to the lock I’m going to put on the refrigerator and on the pantry? Then mow the lawn.”
Listen, democracy is a wonderful idea.
I used to tell my kids, “Democracy is a wonderful idea. One day you’re going to grow up and vote. In this house, you have an opinion but not a vote. You can have an opinion, and you can share that opinion with me until I say I’ve heard it and you don’t need to share it again. But you’re going to church.”
Now, we were fortunate. Our kids loved going to church. They loved it. They loved the youth group. They loved the kids. They had good Sunday school teachers.
They loved going to church, so it wasn’t a big fight for us. But it’s your job to teach your kids. It’s not the public school’s job to teach your kids. Listen, I got no dog in that fight. Jamie, sorry, I got no dog in that fight. I don’t care.
Here’s my dog. Parents, be intentional because it’s not the school’s job, public, charter, private. It’s not the school’s job to teach your kid. The purest form is homeschooling because it is your job to teach your kid. It is your job. If other people help you, great.
But you impart your values, your worldview. You teach your children. Don’t sacrifice them to the devil. Don’t sacrifice them to the culture. You pray fervently about it, and you use your wisdom and you use your best skills.
Those children, the Bible says it time and time again, teach your children. Even Crosby, Stills, and Nash said it. Teach your children well. Teach your kids. We’ll help. We will help teach your kids, all right? You know?
Sean and I go out to eat, and he asks me all these questions. I’ll help teach your kids.
But you know why Sean has all those questions? Because his parents brought him up to ask good questions. So, teach your children.
And then, finally, remember. Remember! The Jews took this literally, and they created what we call phylacteries. They were little portions of the Shema, written in really small… And they would strap them on their hands and on their foreheads.
I told you last week about watching the movie Ben-Hur. Every time Ben-Hur would walk into his house, he had a phylactery at his doorpost. He’d pull it out, and he’d kiss it. What’s he kissing?
The Shema. That was a visible way of remembering. Jesus actually condemns the Pharisees. “you guys build extra-large phylacteries because it was no longer about remembering. It was about showing off, using this to show off how spiritual they were. My phylactery is bigger than yours.” All right?
But here’s the deal. Remember. It’s not legalistic. You don’t have to wear a little Bible verse on your head. You don’t have to wear a little Bible verse on your hand. You don’t have to have a Bible verse on your doorpost.
But why has the practice of memorizing Scripture gone out of vogue? I run into people all the time. Here’s what they say, with names and with Bible. “Oh, pastor, I just have a bad memory.” No, you don’t. You remember how to drive home. You remember how to go to your favorite restaurant. You remember your kids’ names.
Of course, when you’re flustered, you go through a list of them until you get the right one. It’s like my mom used to do. She had daughters. “Kathleen, call me Kevin.” It’s like, “Yeah, I’m the guy.”
Actually, what my mom would do, she had a younger brother that she used to boss around and parent. And I would be my Uncle Ted, because Uncle Ted was ornery. He was. He was wonderful, but he was ornery. And so when I was acting ornery, she’d go, “Ted? Ted?” I’d go, “I’m Kevin.” “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
The other thing my mom would do, this was so funny, because she was taught it was rude to point. And so she’d get mad at me, but she wouldn’t do this, because you can’t point at somebody.
So she’d do this. So if she’s mad at you, Brian, she’d be going like this. Be like, I want to tell you something, young man. And Isaiah’s going, what? I didn’t do anything. I used to be able to take her off her game. She was mad at me, and she’d do this. And I’d just look over my shoulder, like, who are you talking to? And instead of knocking me on the head, she’d start laughing, and she wasn’t mad at me anymore. So remember, remember. Memorize the Bible. Put the word of God in your heart.
You can remember whatever you’re intentional about. You don’t have a bad memory. you’re lazy. Sorry. Now, if you’ve got dementia, you’re off the hook. But if you don’t, memorize things. How hard is it to put the Bible to such time? Put the word of God in your heart. Remember.
I help you. I actually help you remember. There’s probably not a person in this room who doesn’t know Numbers 24:6. I know Sidney knows it. ‘The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.’ The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.
24 “‘“The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. ”’ (Numbers 6:24-26, NIV)
you’re going to be 80 years old, and somebody’s going to bump into you, and you’re just going to turn to them, and out of your mouth is going to go, “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you.” It’ll be there. It’ll be there.
You’re going to remember Proverbs 11:2, “As a gold ring in a woman’s snout, so is a beautiful woman without discretion.” you won’t forget that. Hopefully, there are others. I’ve told you this.
I wake up many mornings, and the first words out of my mouth, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, are, “Who am I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalms 73:25-26, NIV)
That’s why you come here, to remember. You come here to listen to some guy say, “Hey, guess what? Listen, hear, shema, O church. Jesus has given you a great salvation.” I loved it.
You know, one of the things I love is when my son preaches and my old youth pastor preaches. You know who I hear? They quote me. They use me. I turn to Joe. And you know what? Here’s what I think. At least there, I did my job. You know, if Isaiah is walking around a house some day, Karen, and you look at him, he says, ‘Hey, mom, I’d have lost hope except for this. I’m going to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.’
You can just look at him and go, ‘Thank you, Kevin.’ That’s why you come here. Because we tell you, we help one another remember. That’s why we tell God stories, right? Because I have 46 years of God’s faithfulness in my life. In fact, 49 years. Next year, I’ll turn 66. I became a Christian at 16. Next year in December on my 66th birthday, I became a Christian like a week within my birthday. I will have walked with Jesus for 50 years. And there’s been 50 years of incredible love and faithfulness. And you know what happens?
Something goes wrong in my day, and it’s like, “Oh, God, where are you? Why is this happening? Kev, remember? Remember who I am? Have you been okay these 50 years?”
“Yeah, I’ve been great. I’ve been greatly blessed.”
“Well, you think I’m going to pull the carpet out from you now?”
“No, I don’t. Remember.”
The Bible is a book of remembrance. The church is a service where we help one another remember. And every week, we do this. And what did Jesus say about this? “When you gather together, remember.”
On the night that I was betrayed, I took bread. And I said, this Passover meal… And the Jews, remember this Passover meal, how you were delivered out of Egypt? Well, guess what? There’s a new kind of deliverance coming that Passover was pointing to.
And this bread that you ate at Passover, this bread from this time forward is going to represent this body that God himself incarnated, became flesh, and this body is going to take a horrible beating tonight, tomorrow. This body is going to take a horrible beating. And they’re going to spit on it.
And they’re going to put a crown of thorns on it. And then they’re going to nail it to a cruel piece of wood. And this body is going to be torn apart and broken for you. Don’t ever forget the love of God. There’s no more graphic picture of it.
And then this blood that’s coursing through my veins. You Jews, you know about blood. For centuries, we’ve been sacrificing animals and saying, “Without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins.”
22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (Hebrews 9:22, NIV)
And now, the very blood that’s incarnate in the Son, the eternal Son of God, the very human blood that flows through the veins of the God-man is going to be poured out on that cross. It’s going to hit the earth. And when it hits the earth, it’s not going to be wasted. It’s going to extend the forgiveness and the mercy of God to the human race, initiate a new covenant and a new day. And I don’t want you to forget, well, God, how do we remember things?
I know how you humans remember things, eat. Let’s see, we should be thankful. Let’s have a day where we stuff ourselves with turkey and stuffing, and we’ll remember to be thankful. God became a man. Well, let’s have a day where we give each other gifts and have a feast. God rose from the dead. Let’s have a day where we gather together and we eat ham and chocolate. I don’t know how those two go together, but they do.
So, dear ones, his body was broken. His blood was shed.
So, between now and next week, don’t forget. Don’t forget. Be thankful for the great salvation that Jesus Christ has brought us. Here, O church, the one God has done this for you. Come and eat.
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March 10, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Who have I in heaven but you, and besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25-26, NIV)
You’re all I want. you’re all I need. For a great salvation, we give you thanks. Lord, open your word to us tonight that we may discover wondrous things and that we might see Jesus. We ask for Bible transformation, not just Bible information, that we would be formed into the likeness of Christ. His name we pray, Amen.
All right, we’re going through the Bible, people. We are in Numbers, and so Numbers is the story of the generation in the desert.
Numbers sets out with, we’re in Numbers 21:4-9 tonight, but Numbers sets out with, begins with a census, and it’s a census of all the fighting men, of all the men available to Israel who left Egypt, and they take a census, and they divide it under the 12 tribes, and three tribes on this side of the tabernacle, three on this side, three on this side, three on this side.
They get all organized. We’re going to go, and we’re going to march into the land flowing with milk and honey. We’re going to chase out the Canaanites, all the Ites, the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Edomites, we’re going to chase them all out, and God is going to give you that land.
And then they get to that land, and they chicken out. I don’t know how many of you remember the cult classic, all my movie illustrations are old, people. I haven’t seen a new movie in 20 years.
But Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” anybody remember “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”? It was the definition of a movie whose parts were better than the movie. And anyway, there was this one knight of the roundtable called Brave Sir Robin, and he had these minstrels. And they’d sing, “Brave, brave Sir Robin, brave, brave Sir Robin.”
And then, of course, there came this time where brave Sir Robin actually had a conflict and he ran away. And so the minstrels began singing, “When danger showed its ugly head, he turned his little tail and fled. Brave, brave.
And he said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘Yes, you did.’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ Monty Python humor. And so they reached the promised land, and they all turned into brave Sir Robin, except for Joshua and Caleb. And they rebel against Moses. And this was one of the rebellions against Moses.
And what happens then is they spend 40 years in the wilderness rebelling against God and Moses. Just rebellion after rebellion after rebellion. Grumbling after grumbling after grumbling.
And we are going to read the seventh grumble in chapter 21. This is the seventh grumble against God and Moses.
And so, Chapter 21:4-9, one of the most bizarre and interesting passages in the Bible. And it goes like this:
Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Eden. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” They complained. “There’s nothing to eat here and nothing to drink, and we hate this horrible manna.” So, the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. We pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So, Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it.” So, Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then, anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed.
4 Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, 5 and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!” 6 So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” 9 So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed! (Numbers 21:4-8, NLT)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord , my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14, NLT)
So, this is the seventh time that they grumbled against God and Moses. They were living in the desert. God was providing for them food every day. They didn’t have to hunt. They didn’t have to harvest. The food would just come down from heaven and land on the ground. It wasn’t bad tasting.
The original description is, “It tasted like honey. It was like graham crackers falling from heaven every day. Just honey grahams.” I don’t know if they had milk to dip them in, but still, it was good. So, they would eat every day.
The Lord protected them from their enemies, but he told them because they wouldn’t enter the promised land that they couldn’t go back and they were going to die. That generation was going to die in the desert, but he was going to take care of them until they died.
He was going to feed them and take care of them. The fire at night, the cloud by day, the cloud would lift and move, and they would have to move with it. They got tired of moving and they got tired of camping. So, they complained. The Lord sent snakes among them. This is a case where the punishment fit the crime because grumbling is poisonous. Grumbling, complaining, whining is poisonous. I remember my oldest daughter, Megan, when she was four or five years old. She just had this voice on her, “Dad, when’s dinner?”
I said, ‘Megan, stop whining.’ ‘I’m not whining.’ I go, ‘you’re right. You talk like that all the time. And now I’m whining. Wife, we have a whiny daughter.’ And this, I’ll tell you what, man, I grumble. I got to get better at this. I’m a grumbly old man. I’m a grumpy old man sometimes. I don’t like traffic. And I get caught in traffic. I was like, ‘What are all you people doing? Go home. Leave the road to me. This is my road. I want this road. What are all you people doing out here?’
And then, I came upon this youTube of this guy. He was making fun of grumblers. And he said, “I have this new mint. I’m selling this new mint. It’s called entitlements.” And he just started going off. He started saying, “you know what people grumble about traffic? People who have cars. You know what kind of people grumble about things in their house breaking? People who can afford a home, who aren’t living homeless.”
In other words, a lot, I realized a lot of what I grumble and complain about are actually great blessings that just aren’t working out perfectly for me. In fact, just tonight, just this week, I went back to Grace Covenant Conference and had a good time and was with all my peeps. My wife’s car broke while I was gone, and she was stuck out at Coppachuck Middle School with two grandsons having to wait for a tow truck. I was in Kansas City; I wasn’t there to help my wife.
I was like, “Oh, but you know what? The tow truck came, it’s fine. We gotta take the car in tomorrow. It’s gonna cost us money to get the car fixed.” you know what kind of money, you know what kind of people have to pay for car repairs? People who can afford cars.
And then we’ve bought a second home and we just got our renters just moved into our second home. It’s about three miles from where we live.
And the garage door came off its tracks, fell on top of the guy’s van, didn’t hurt the van, thank goodness. But you know, I went over there, I can’t fix anything. And you know, we tried to put the garage door back on the tracks, we couldn’t do it.
You know, so tomorrow morning, I’m taking my car in to get fixed. I’m calling the garage door guy to come out and fix my rental. You know what kind of people call garage door guys to come out and fix their rentals?
People who could afford to have a rental. Thank you, Lord. I was in another Bible study recently. And in this Bible study, we were studying through Philippians. Philippians 4:1. You know what it says? Rejoice in the Lord when? Always, again, I say rejoice.
4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! (Philippians 4:4, NLT)
Dear ones, life is hard. Stuff happens. And yet our salvation is great. Our promise is great. Our hope is great. And God calls us to be thankful, not to grumble. Grumbling is poison. It’s poison in a household. It’s poison in a church.
Any of you ever been in a part of a church where they grumble? You know, “Oh, the sermon was too long. Oh, they didn’t sing my favorite songs. Oh, the pastor doesn’t like me. Oh, I don’t like this missionary. Oh, he preaches that doctrine. I like this doctrine.” Oh, you know, and it’s been said that church people go out after church on Sunday and have roast pastor for lunch.
And I know you guys don’t do that, but people grumble and it’s poison. They grumble about, they gossip and grumble about other people in the church.
And so, God sends actually snakes. It’s a great picture. It’s a great image of what grumbling does to a community. It brings death, it brings pain, it’s poisonous.
And so, the people repent. Pain is a good motivator for repentance, right? God will always, I love the passage in the New Testament. It says, “It’s your kindness that leads to repentance, oh Lord.” I love it when the Bible says it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. And it’s great when we reach a place in our lives where it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.
I don’t want to do this anymore because you’re just so good, God, and I love you so much. I just don’t want to do this. But if we persist in our sin, if we persist in going the wrong way, pretty soon, because of God’s love, we’re gonna bump up against him. And it’s not gonna feel very kind. It’ll be kind because the goal is to make you repent. But sometimes, as C. S. Lewis said, pain is God’s megaphone to get our attention.
Doesn’t mean all pain is God telling you you have to repent of something, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s our stupidity. It’s our sin that has led to this pain, and then we repent.
When my kids were little, all right. All right? I would always try to motivate them with kindness. ‘Hey, let’s do this. It’ll be great. I don’t want anything. Or clean your room, and then we’ll get to go do this. I don’t want to clean my room. Come on, clean your room.’
And I just swore I would never do this when I was a kid. Because I would argue. I would argue with my parents. I wasn’t a brat in the sense that I was really defiant, and I’d snuck around behind my parents’ back. But I was very logical, and I was very lazy. And so I always tried to get my logic, use my logic to promote my laziness.
“Make your bed.”
Well, mom, if I make my bed, I simply have to unmake it again tonight to get back in it. That seems inefficient. Don’t you agree?
Close your drawers. Well, if I close my drawers, I have to reopen them to get my clothes out. Why not just leave them open all the time? Put the clothes in? Or why not even have drawers? Why not just put clean clothes and dirty clothes on the floor, and not just pick through the piles?
Well, those are perfectly logical things. And when I was a bachelor, I lived that way. And then I got married. And again, I had somebody saying, “Close your drawers,” and whatnot.
And my mom would finally reach a point of exasperation, because I had an argument for everything. In fact, I remember my young life leader trying to lead me to Christ was exasperated. I remember him talking to another young life leader, and I remember him saying, “That kid has an argument for everything.” He did not use my name, but I knew who he was talking about. I was proud that I did.
And so, my mother would resort, finally, to not arguing. And she would say, “Why should I do this?”
And she would say, “Because I said the same.” And I swore I’d never do that to my kids. I would give them an explanation, and they would follow the explanation. And then I had children. And I didn’t sell them, “Because I said so.” I told them this, “Because I’m bigger. you’re going to do it.” But, no, no.
And my wife would try to explain things to the kids. I would explain once. I mean, I was so inconsistent. You know, the guy who would argue on Indy.
Now that I have my kids, and they want to argue on Indy, it’s like, no, we ain’t playing that game. I know that tactic. I would explain once. Here’s why we’re going to do it. But, but, but. Yeah, your but, but, but’s going to feel something here if you don’t do it. And my wife would be like explaining to them.
And then finally, after about the 10th explanation, I would just stop it. I’d just step in and say, ‘Dad’s here. This is going to happen, right?’
It’s so fun to be bigger than everybody in the house. So, Israel, I got blessings for you. I got abundance for you. I got my presence for you. I got my protection for you. I got a land flowing with milk and honey for you. Yeah, the food’s no good. Moses is a big meanie. The people are too big. We don’t want to go in. All right, get bit by a few snakes, see what happens. Hey, God, God, hey, hey, Moses, pray for us. Repent.
Listen, if you’re getting bit by snakes, like, “Oh, where’d I miss the early repentance warning there, God?” And here’s, God is faithful. What does Moses do? Moses intercedes for them. They say, “Moses, pray for us.” Moses prays for them.
And here’s how intercession works, people. you’ve all heard of intercessory prayer. The word intercession, not all prayer is intercessory prayer. Intercession means to mediate. It means to be a priest, a bridge builder, a go-between. The Bible talks about standing in the gap, all right? So intercession, we stand in the gap.
I need a job or somebody needs a job. Lord, we intercede for so-and-so to get a job. Somebody’s sick. Lord, we intercede for so-and-so healing. And we begin to pray, we begin to intercede. And what we do is we pray from Earth to Heaven. What do I mean by that? We tell God what we want. Cast your cares upon Him. He cares for you. God, I want a job. God, I want a wife. God, I want a husband. God, I want to be well. God, I want my loved one to be well.
God, I want the rain to stop. God, I want the Cubs to win the World Series. You know, whatever it is. And if you pray long enough, pretty soon, in sports, you get your answers. The Patriots no longer win the Super Bowl. I mean, you get your answers.
But we intercede. Earth to Heaven. That’s half the job. We listen for Heaven’s voice. And then when we get Heaven’s voice, we obey. When we get Heaven’s voice, we obey. We declare. This is what the Lord has said.
We prophesy, or we do something. That’s exactly what happens.
Moses goes to God and says, ‘God, the people don’t want to be getting bit by snakes anymore. They ask me to pray.’ And God gives Moses an answer. He says, ‘Here, make an image of a snake and stick it on the pole.’ This is the weirdest thing God ever did in the Bible, just about. Because what’s God’s big thing with Israel about images? Don’t make them. It’s the last thing you want to do is make an image. And now he’s saying, ‘make an image of a snake.’ Okay, what’s the biblical reference to snake? The garden.
Bad. Snake, bad. Serpent, bad. Serpent, biting people. Serpent, killing people. Serpents aren’t good. Make an image of a snake. What? Yeah. And here’s what God’s doing.
Well, first of all, before I get that, let me just say, the prayers of a righteous man accomplish much. Alright, dear ones, you’re not going to get all your prayers answered, not the way you want them answered, I realize that. But the Bible also says, Eliza was a man just like us.
And he interceded for rain, and God said, ‘Tell Ahab there’s going to be rain,’ and he did, and it rained. God uses the prayers of people to impact earth. In fact, I think that’s why the spiritual world, both the satanic and the heavenly, invade earth through the intercession and agreement of humans, because God gave the planet to us.
We’re the ones who invite ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ And we’re the ones who invite the devilish stuff to happen.
It’s through our invitation and our agreement with those principalities that good and bad happen on earth. And so, a man, Eliza, and I love this, Eliza, we tend to think of biblical heroes as somehow superhumans, but it says Eliza, and then it makes a point, a man just like us. Alright? The heroes in heaven are probably not going to be the Billy Grahams and the John Wesleys. They’re probably going to be the people that we never knew who prayed for the Billy Grahams and the John Wesleys. The Patty Sheldons are the heroes.
The people who cried out to God, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ And God says, ‘Okay, make a snake. Make a snake.’ What is God doing? He’s saying this, ‘Israel, look at your sin.’ The first thing He lifts up is sin. Look at what you’ve called down upon yourself. Dear ones, life never gets better for anybody until they take responsibility.
There’s two things that are true about all of us. Well, let me start with this. There’s one thing that’s true about all of us. We all suffer.
There are two things that are true about our suffering. Some of it wasn’t our fault. Driving down the street, a guy T-bones you because he’s drunk and runs a red light. It wasn’t your fault. You know, it wasn’t your fault. However, if you get drunk, drive down the street and T-bone somebody, that’s your fault. And you know what? Both those things are true of all of us, right?
Some of my pain isn’t my fault. It’s just not. I didn’t ask to be born into an alcoholic family. I just was. All right? Other parts of my pain were my fault.
Nobody forced me to use drugs when I was a young person. I just did. That was my fault. And the suffering that accumulated in my life because of that was my responsibility.
But here’s the point. Whether it’s your fault or not, we never get any better until we take responsibility for our lives. You understand that? It’s like whatever hand you were dealt and however you contributed to that hand, now, right now, this minute, you got to play that hand. It’s your hand.
If you’ve been sinned against, forgive. If you’ve sinned, repent.
But you got to play that hand. And as long as we play the victim and don’t admit our part of it, and don’t take responsibility for our lives, things never get better, right? Because if you’re the victim, what is a victim? Powerless. If every bad thing that’s happened to me is somebody else’s fault, then poor me. Poor me.
Israel, you don’t like the snake bites? Look at your sin. You have grumbled and complained against God and His anointed leader time after time after time. you’re making yourself miserable, you’re making me miserable, you’re making everybody miserable.
Take responsibility. There it is. Lift up and then what? And then He says, it’s actually your healing. Look at your salvation. Isn’t this, twice in the Gospels, this image is used for Jesus and the cross.
John 12: If I be lifted up like the snake in the wilderness, I will draw all men to myself. Once we look at our sin, we also find God’s mercy. And that is, this snake lifted up in the wilderness is a picture of the cross.
What is the cross? The cross is a picture of human evil.
I watched Ben-Hur last night. Again, older than Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The 1959 version of Ben-Hur. If you haven’t seen it, you have not yet lived. It’s a great movie. And I watched it as a kid. I watched it as like an 11 or 12 year old because I heard that there was this awesome chariot race. And there is. It is an awesome chariot race. It’s a great race, man. And like all old movies, you’re not used to it. It moves really slow for young people. Things don’t blow up every five minutes.
There’s dialogue, and there’s drama. But it’s a great movie. The original story of Ben-Hur is a book. The book is “Ben-Hur, A Story of the Christ.” It’s about this man, Charlton Heston, I mean Judah Ben-Hur, who meets Christ in this story.
And I’ll give you a little bit of it because here’s the deal. He was a rich Jew, and his best friend growing up was a boy, a Roman boy, who grew up in Jerusalem. And they were best friends.
This Roman boy becomes a Roman official, and he wants to squelch any Jewish rebellion. He comes to Ben-Hur and asks him to, you know, snitch on his people. Ben-Hur won’t do it, and so he destroys him. He destroys his life, his wealth, his family, and sends him into slavery. As he’s going out as a slave to the gallows to serve in a Roman ship, he’s almost dead in the desert. He falls in the desert, and they show a man in a white robe come and give him a drink of water. He looks and makes eye contact with this man and says that man, for some reason, gave him the will to keep living. The rest of the story plays out, and he gets redeemed and the whole thing. He gets revenge on his Roman guy, but it’s not enough. His mother and sister get leprosy in a Roman prison, and he’s filled with hatred for the Romans. He’s just filled with hatred for the Romans, and all he wants to do is be a zealot. He wants to take a sword and start lopping off the heads of Romans. He just hates them with a passion. He wants to kill them.
Then he sees Christ again, this time at the crucifixion. He’s walking the Via Dolorosa, and Christ falls. Ben-Hur tries to give him a cup of water, and the Romans won’t let him. He stares at him in the face, and then he watches him die on the cross. He looks, and I was watching that last night as Jesus goes up on the cross. I just looked at that. I said, “Human beings are evil. The best man who ever lived, that we do that to any human being, nail him to a piece of wood to kill him slowly and torturously. But that we would do it to the best man who ever lived, that is… that’s the snake. That’s just evil. That’s just evil.”
And yet, Ben-Hur watches Christ die, and he goes back to his home. When Christ dies, his blood flows past his mother and sister, and they’re healed of their leprosy.
And he goes back to his love interest, and she’s met Christ.
She just wants Judah to meet Christ; she wants to get that hate out of him. And he looks at her and he says, right before he died, he said these words, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing. (Luke 23:34, NLT)
And then, this is the greatest line of the whole book or movie, he says, “And I felt his voice take the sword out of my hand.” Isn’t that a great line?
The greatest evil, the snake, lifted up and when it does, when he’s lifted up, it’s transformed into the mercy of God. What Satan meant for the worst thing, “I’ve killed the Son of God, I got him. This planet is mine, this kingdom is mine, I’m gonna win this war.” And instead, he descends and snatches the keys and then Sunday morning, when all of hell is saying, “Keep him here, keep him here, don’t let him get out,” he got out. He got out.
And ever since then, of the increase of his kingdom and his peace, there has been no end. And his mercy catches people like us. As we look upon our sin and say, “Is there any hope for someone like me?” And he says, “Yeah, there’s hope. Jesus Christ took it.” He took that snake, he took those bites, he swallowed it all, and he rose again with new life.
And it is abundant, and it is clean, and it is fresh, and the steadfast love of the Lord. And the steadfast love of the Lord, what, how does it go? His faith, never ends, his faith, the steadfast love of the Lord is never, his mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness, O God. I should have that, I have that memorized, anyway. His mercies never end. They’re new every morning.
22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. 23 Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. (Lamentations 3:22-23, NLT)
Our healing is in his mercy. And so, what do we do? I’ll tell you what we do. We repent quickly.
We stop our grumbling, and we become thankful. There’s lots of things to grumble about, small and big. I’m a strange man. I expected amens there. I’m a strange man. I tend to handle life’s big crises pretty well. It’s like, well, you know, that’s life. We gotta deal with this.
It’s traffic. Garage door’s breaking. Car’s breaking down, you know? The wrong team winning a sports game gets me mad. My wife doing some small thing that’s just a little thing that just annoys me.
So, she takes my stuff and she moves it to a place of her preference. It’s my stuff. That’s exactly what she did. That is exactly what she did. I came home from Kansas City. I couldn’t find my brush. I couldn’t find the toothpaste.
“Where is my brush and toothpaste? I just wanna brush my hair and brush my teeth. Where’s my stuff?”
It’s on this countertop where I left it. It was in a drawer that was closed. It took me five minutes. I went around looking for my stuff.
It’s like, I just wanna brush my teeth. And that kind of stuff is like, what is going on here? You know, if somebody has cancer, it’s like, well, you know, people get cancer, let’s pray. I’m strange. But you know what? Repent quickly. Stop grumbling. Be thankful.
I love the story of the Harbaugh brothers, John and Jim Harbaugh, both NFL coaches, highly successful. One’s won a Super Bowl. One just won the national championship in college football, and is now back in the pros. But what I love is they grew up and their dad was a coach.
And their dad was not a high, I mean, he became a highly successful coach at lower levels. He was a very good coach. But he was a high school coach at the time. They were little boys, just a high school coach. Not making a lot of money.
And I remember a story about, you know, their car was broken, and they had to walk down to the mechanic’s shop to get it, instead of the dad walking down to the mechanic’s shop, because he’s a coach. And coaches always do this. Boys, we’re going for a walk.
We’re all going. You know? And the boys are like, ‘We don’t want to go for a walk. Come on, we’re going to go get the car.’ And they’re walking, and it’s raining, and they’re walking down to get the car, and the boys are all mopey. And he’s like, ‘Boys, they fixed our car. We’re going to get our car back. Who has it better than us?’ And he kept saying that, and pretty soon the boys were like, ‘Yeah, who has it better than us?’ And now these guys are like successful coaches.
They’re making millions and millions of dollars, and they get all sorts of fame. And you know what they both tell their teams? They both get in with their teams and say, ‘We’re playing football for a living. We’re playing a boys game, and they’re paying us a million dollars to do this. Who has it better than us?’
Well, that other team’s big, and they’re strong, and they’re going to pound on us. ‘Oh, but we’re going to win. Who has it better?’ And they just inherited this optimism, this hope from their father as a coach.
And it’s made them very successful in what they do. Listen, I’m not into being ridiculously optimistic about sports. I mean, I’m a Cubs fan. I know better. But here’s my deal.
When it comes to life, who has it better than us? The God of the galaxies became a baby just to seek and save somebody like me, just to forgive my sins, and to fill me with His life, and to offer me eternal life.
And yeah, there are bumps and bruises and hardships in this world, but who has it better than us?
Really, we’re playing a game we’ve already won. Yeah, it might be hard at this quarter in the game, at this time in the game. We might be down, we might be feeling like, “Man, you know, I got garage doors that are falling off their hinges, and cars that aren’t running, and my wife’s hiding stuff on me in the house. I mean, for crying out loud, I can’t even brush my teeth.”
But you know what? I actually have a pantry, because I shop at Costco. I actually have enough toothpaste for life now.
Just one trip to Costco, and I’ve got like four tubes in there that have been there for two or three years. I’m trying to get through this tube so I can break out another one. I got enough. Listen, if you’re just one person, it’s a trap buying soap and stuff. You have it forever. It’s just like, yeah, I got… Who has it? There are people in the world who don’t have toothpaste. Oh, I have toothpaste, and my wife plays a game with me of hide and seek with it. How fun is that?
Who has it better than us? Nobody. We’ve got Jesus. We look at our sin, and we go, “Yep, Lord, that’s me. I grumble, I complain, I don’t believe.” you know what? To not hope is a sin. We tend to think hope is just something we have or don’t have. But hope is exactly like love and faith.
The Bible instructs us, “Love your neighbor, have faith in God, and hold on to your hope.” Hold on to your hope. How?
Look at the cross, and then look at the empty tomb. Then come here, get together, and go, “Yeah, I’m not alone in this. I’m not alone in this.” Some of you are carrying bigger loads than I am carrying right now. And you know what? I’m here for you. I’ll help you carry the load. I can’t carry, you know, I’m not going to be, I’ll help you carry it. I’ll encourage you. I’ll love you. I’ll take out the ones. What do you need?
And there’s going to come a time where I’m going to be carrying a bigger load than you. And you’re going to go, got your back. That’s what church is. We got Jesus. We got each other. All right. And I’m looking around this room, looking at the quality of people in this room. I’m going, who’s got it better than me? Who’s got it better than me? Some of you people in here actually pray for me. Who’s got it better than me?
On the night he was betrayed, he took bread, and he broke it, and he gave it to his disciples. And he said, “This is my body, which is given for you.” Who has a better than us that the son of God would sacrifice his body in the same way? After supper, he took the cup, gave thanks to his father in heaven. And he said, “This is, this is the cup of my blood shed for the forgiveness of sins. It’s the blood of the new covenant.”
You’ve been invited into a new covenant by the blood of Christ. And the entry point into that covenant is: all your sins are forgiven. But even, yeah, that one. But what about, yeah, but, but, but… I knew it. I knew better. And I did. Yeah. That one. Yeah.
Now, I want you to come to my table, and I want you to use this meal as a picture and a symbol of just receiving me and feeding on me and letting my life nourish you. So that when you walk out that door, you will have hope.
You will have hope. And you’ll be more like me than you were when you walked into the building. And you will have the hope that in all eternity, forever, ever and ever, that’s a long time. You will be like me. So come and eat and be thankful.
Don’t grumble. Don’t grumble if the bread’s chewy or you dip it in the wine and you wanted the grape juice. Don’t grumble because last week you had cran grape and this week it’s straight grape. People grumble, people grumble, oh it’s not gluten-free communion or oh it is gluten-free.
I don’t like the wafers; they don’t taste good. Don’t grumble at communion. If at any place you risk getting smitten dead, it would be grumbling at the communion table. It’s not going to happen, but don’t do it.
Just come and be thankful and ask the Lord to fill you with hope, to fill you with hope because of his great mercy. Thank you, Jesus.
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March 3, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you for your word that is life to us. Thank you for your spirit who applies your word to our lives and our hearts, who transforms us into the image of your Son, Father, our Savior, Jesus Christ. We pray tonight that we would walk out those doors more like Jesus than we walked in. We thank you for your blood that forgives us. We thank you for your resurrection that feeds us with resurrection life and new hope. you’re great, God. you’re the God of miracles.
Every one of us in this room today who has given their lives to Jesus Christ is a walking miracle. We have all moved from death to life. We’ve all had our sins forgiven. We have all become, by your grace, everlasting children of our heavenly Father, brothers and sisters with Christ, co-heirs with Christ. And we will be like him one day.
You are good. We worship you and we praise you, oh mighty King. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, Amen. Amen.
We’re going through the Bible. We’re in the book of Numbers.
And I thought, you know, for 17 years, I have been speaking these words over the Firehouse Church. We started in our little home in Bremmerdale, you know, right there between Bremerton and Silverdale. Our first Sunday was the first Sunday in July 2007.
My wife and I were both praying separately for that worship service. And as all church planters were praying, we were praying, “Lord, send people, send people.” And we both heard these words independently. We didn’t, later we shared this and we were both kind of amazed.
And what we basically heard was this: “Do you want me to be there?” We said, “Well, yeah.” And so, I can tell you with honesty that for 17 years, nearly every Sunday, maybe I’ve missed a few, I can’t remember missing one, I have prayed that prayer that the Lord would be present with us as we gather.
And that is what the Old Covenant, that is what Leviticus, Exodus, and Numbers is about. It’s about God wanting to dwell with His people.
In Exodus, God brings His people out of Egypt, promises to take them into the promised land, and leads them and says, “I’ll be with you.” And in fact, “I’m going to have you build a tabernacle, and I’m going to design that tabernacle very specifically to give you access to me, access to the forgiveness of sins, access to my presence and my leadership. And then I’m going to give you some instructions on how to walk and how to live in such a way that you won’t violate that presence. You won’t make me mad at you.”
You won’t chase me away so that I can be with you. I want to be your God, and I want you to be my people. The book of Exodus is about the building of that tabernacle. The book of Leviticus is about the instructions that God gives to the priests, to the people, and the tabernacle, and the feasts and the offerings, and all the things that ritually and morally make that presence work, make that covenant work.
And then, the book of Numbers is about the children of Israel in the desert for 40 years. First of all, it tells us why they were in the desert for 40 years. And then they’re in the desert for 40 years, and it’s one rebellion after another rebellion after another rebellion after another rebellion.
And it starts a long history of Israel and God having this back and forth where God’s saying, “Really? Really? I really want to bless you. I really want to be among you. I really want a people unto myself.”
And Israel’s saying, “Hey, that’s great. We love the blessings. And Baal’s got some good blessings too. And Molech and Asteroid got some good blessings. We’ll take all the blessings from all the gods.” No, don’t do it that way. Don’t do it that way. I’m not polygamous. I want to be your only god. I want to be your husband. I don’t want a wife chasing after other gods. And so, that’s the story.
But every week, I read to you, or I actually don’t read to you, I recite to you as we leave this passage from Numbers.
And basically, it’s God telling Israel, “If you will let me abide in your presence, here’s what happens. Here is who I am, and here is what is going to happen to you.” And here it is. It’s in Numbers 6. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons to bless the people of Israel with this special blessing. May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.”
22 Then the Lord said to Moses, 23 “Tell Aaron and his sons to bless the people of Israel with this special blessing: 24 ‘May the Lord bless you and protect you. 25 May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. 26 May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.’ 27When Aaron and his sons bless the people of Israel in my name, I myself will bless them. (Numbers 6:22-27, NLT)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer. Thank you, Lord.
Jill’s dad passed away a few years ago. He was a wonderful man, and he was a wonderful father, and he really was a terrific grandfather. And he was like my parents’ generation, he was a depression baby.
He grew up in the depression, World War II, you know, we call him the greatest generation. I think that’s an exaggeration. They went through some hard times. People have gone through hard times throughout history.
They had some wonderful qualities. They also had some qualities that maybe weren’t so great. But anyway, he was a wonderful man.
And he wasn’t rich, but he had made a decent living, certainly a better living than, as many in that generation did, who kind of experienced the huge economic boom post-World War II. He made a much better living than his parents made, and he ended up being extremely generous with his family. He was a generous man. He was generous to Jill and I, but he was really generous to the grandkids, and especially generous to the grandkids at Christmastime. He loved Christmas. In fact, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, they loved Christmas.
Has anybody ever been to Leavenworth here in Washington? Okay, and they have that Christmas store. You ever been in the Christmas store? It’s just filled, it’s just filled to the brim with both religious and secular, both the Santa Claus and the Jesus story, ornaments and knickknacks, and just, you know, just overflows with, it’s a Christmas store, and so it’s just, it’s Hallmark at Christmastime on steroids. Just everything you can imagine. That was my in-laws’ living room every year, and it was no, there was no distinction.
Nativity scene, Santa Claus, and eight reindeer, and just everywhere you went, they just loved Christmas. My father-in-law loved giving gifts to his grandchildren. There was a joke in our family because every year he’d say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna cut back a little next year,’ and of course, he never did. By September or October, he would have a little, you know, legal pad, folded up piece of paper in his front pocket. It was the list, and he would tell the grandkids whenever he saw them, ‘I got my list.’
What do you want? I’ll put it down. I got my list. My kids, growing up, believed very much that Christmas morning at our house was the appetizer, that the real meal was Christmas at grandpa’s house. That’s where the good stuff came. At one point, I wanted to pull him aside and say, ‘Hey, too much. Too much. you’re, you know, you’re spoiling my kids. Too much.’ But I decided against it. I think I was right. I think I had wisdom in that because I realized this.
I realized that everything about his gift giving, it wasn’t, there was, there was no bad motive in it. And what, here’s what I mean. Some people give gifts to try to buy people off, right? Daddy’s never there, but he’s rich. And so he gives you good gifts. And it’s like, “Yeah, dad, great. You know, you give me flowers on my birthday, but you know what I really want? you.”
But he was, he was more than available to the kids. And he didn’t give gifts to show off. It wasn’t like, “Look how much money I have.”
It just, it, I think it a hundred percent flowed from his heart. And that’s what made it okay. Because it was really a genuine expression of his delight and love in his grandkids. In other words, the gifts represented his nature.
We talk about God and the hands of God that give the gifts and people say, ‘Don’t seek his hands, seek his face.’ Guess what? They’re connected. If you’re looking at his hands and you want to see his face, it’s not that hard. Look up, look up. That’s what this passage and God’s blessings are about.
God’s blessings aren’t some way to try to trick us into behaving. “If you’re good, I’ll do this for you.” They’re not some way of trying to pay us off. They’re not some way like the pagans believed. “If you can, if you can shake the gods just right and please them with all the right sacrifices, then maybe they will grudgingly pour out their blessings. If you sacrifice enough of your children to them, maybe they will grudgingly pour out their…” No. What God’s blessings are, are an exact representation of His nature. They’re who He is.
And what God is telling Israel through this blessing is this: I want to be in your presence, and I want my priest to pray over you and bless you in this way because it’s my desire that you would be my children and I would be good to you. If you’ve ever had a rebellious child, you get God’s dilemma, right? I want to be good to this child. I want this child to be happy. I would tell my kids, “Listen, don’t fight me on this. We’ll both be happier. you’ll be happier.”
If you don’t rebel, you’ll be happier and I’ll be happier. It’s when you insist on doing it your own stupid, selfish way, then I can’t bless you like I want to and I’ve got to take the other posture, right?
It’s like, all right, I wanted to be nice to you today, but you’re not letting me. Here’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to draw the boundaries.
God’s desire was to bless Israel. Now this is Old Covenant. This is all preliminary. Remember that all that stuff in Leviticus is a precursor of Christ.
All the purification rites talk about our cleanliness in Christ. All the offerings and feasts talk about the sacrifices and the thankfulness that God provides access to us, the high priest, the priesthood. That talks about Jesus, who’s our perfect priest.
Remember, in the Levitical code, in the tabernacle, only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies and really get near the presence of God. But in the New Covenant, with Jesus as our high priest, the book of Hebrews says that he actually takes us.
Go in the Holy of Holies and sprinkle His blood on the mercy seat. His blood is so powerful. He brings us in there, and we stand before the Almighty, the burning glory, the blaze of holiness that created the universe.
And Jesus says, “Hey, Dad, here’s Kev. Kev has some requests.”
And the Father says, “Oh, son, I’m dying to bless Kev with grace and mercy because you died so Kev can have grace and mercy.”
And so, if these blessings that I’m going to detail in just a minute are true of Old Covenant, the point I want to make is: how much more for us? How much more is this reality, God’s heart always for His people, but how much more access do we have to the presence and the heart of God than even Moses did?
You know, the Bible says Moses, Abraham, David, Daniel, Deborah, all the Old Testament heroes. You know what it says? Well, we’ve read it. We just went through it last year in Hebrews.
They long for our day. You know what Jesus says? The least of you has more access and more privilege than the greatest John the Baptist in the Old Covenant. So, how much more for us?
So, when I go through these blessings for Israel, just realize it applies to you and it’s easier to get there. Here’s what it says. The Lord bless you. First blessing. The Lord bless you. You know what it means? To make you happy. Guess what? God wants you to be happy.
There’s this view of Christianity that we’re supposed to be sad, miserable, and suffer in this world so we can be happy in the next. It’s not true. Yes, there is suffering in this world. Fir everybody. And for Christians, there’s a specific suffering.
We are opposed to the world, the evil one, the wicked systems in this world. So they rise up against us and they push back against us. So there’s not only the normal suffering that comes with being a human on a falling planet, but there is the suffering that comes from fighting spiritual warfare.
Got it? Got it. Guess what? In the middle of that, Paul says to the Philippians, “Rejoice always. Again, I say, rejoice.” Rejoice when? When things are good, when I get good news, when I wake up without any aches and pains? Yes. Rejoice.
Rejoice when the doctor says what? Rejoice when my kids are doing what? Rejoice when I just got fired. Rejoice when I realized, boy, did I make a big mistake when I got married.
“Rejoice always, again, I say, rejoice.” God desires us to be happy.
This is simple, people, and I’m preaching to myself because I don’t do this either. But it’s not that hard to be happy. All you have to do is, instead of looking here, look here. Instead of looking at, “Oh, it’s rainy in Washington. Oh, nobody likes me. Oh, my back hurts. Oh, I’m this. I came from a dysfunctional family. Oh, I don’t make enough money. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, the doctor gave me a terrible prognosis.”
It’s all you got to do is go, ‘Oh, the creator of everything loves me so much that he sent his son into the world that I might be his child forever. My daddy’s rich. My daddy’s powerful. Oh, all my sins. Even the one I committed last night? All my sins are covered under the blood of Jesus and I’m forgiven?’
Oh, wait. He planted His life, His God life, His Holy Spirit life, came and planted itself in me. He is progressively, day by day, month by month, year by year, making me more like Him so that in eternity I will be like Him, and I will be a co-heir?
Oh, I have inherited a great salvation. For a short time, there is suffering, struggle, and trial, but for all eternity, there will be no more pain, no more crying, no more death, no more suffering. I will live in the new heavens and the new earth in glorious freedom, as life was always intended, in the presence of this God who loves me abundantly and desires for all eternity to pour out His kindness and riches on me. And even now, He’s starting to do it. By the way, I’m feeling better than I was five seconds ago when I was looking over there. It’s not that hard!
I’ll bet any one of you could be happier in ten seconds just by doing that. Just by rejoicing in the Lord, always. Again, I say, rejoice! God desires us to be happy. The Lord bless you!
Listen, child, I want you to be happy. My wife, her birthday is coming this week, we just celebrated it because I’m going to be out of town next week and I realized, take note, Peter, Isaiah, take note. Get married and you’re going to be out of town on your wife’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, or anniversary. Do something really nice to her before, not when you get home.
I don’t know how they think. I have three sisters, a mother, two daughters, a wife. My life, I’ve swam in a sea of estrogen. I still don’t know how they think. I’ve learned some things.
Here’s what I’ve learned. If you do it before, and then the day arrives, they reflect back and say, “Wasn’t that a nice night? And didn’t I get a nice gift? And he’s such a good man. And he made sure to take care of me before I left town. What a great fella.”
If you do it after, when the day hits, it’s like this: “Oh yeah, I’m just an afterthought with that guy. What the heck? He goes off and does his business and it’s Valentine’s Day or our anniversary.”
And he’s like, he probably didn’t even remember until the day before, so he didn’t have time to plan anything. A stinker. Am I on to something here, or am I completely off, ladies? I don’t want to know. I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. I just know it works better for me to do it before.
So, I took her out and did it before. But here, I have a deep commitment with my wife. I really do. I was thinking about it today.
If I die before her, on my deathbed, I want her to think, ‘This man loved me every day of my life that we were together.’ And if she dies before me, on her deathbed, I want her to think the exact same thing. ‘This man loved me every day of my life that we were together.’ Not that we didn’t have fights or anything, but I never doubted that God loved me. And I try really hard with that. I try to be very intentional that my wife would feel loved. And I’m a guy. I’m stupid.
I don’t do it great all the time. But I really try. I really do. And she notices that I try. I think she appreciates that I try. I want her to be happy. I want my kids to be happy, right? I want you all to be happy. I don’t like grumbling, mad, angry church members. I want you to go out to eat after church and say, we’re so happy with that church, and we’re so happy with that pastor, and we like the people there.
I want you to go, that sermon sucked, and he went way too long. And you know? I want you to be happy. God wants you to be happy.
And dear ones, I’ll get in trouble now. Oh my gosh, he wants you to be happy. He wants you to prosper.
Well, are you a prosperity preacher? What, you want me to want people to be in poverty and sickness? Of course, I believe that health and wealth are good things. Don’t you? Don’t you?
Don’t you believe people, you know, all these people are like, ‘We don’t like prosperity preachers,’ and they’re listening to Dave Ramsey. What’s Dave Ramsey saying? He’s telling you how to be rich. The only difference is he has a different strategy. The prosperity people say, ‘Tithe and God will make you rich.’ Dave Ramsey says, ‘Spend less than you make and don’t get into debt, and you’ll be rich.’ They’re both telling you how to be rich. I actually think both are appropriate strategies.
Where I’m not a prosperity teacher is, I don’t believe there’s an automatic thing that says if you tithe, God will bless you and make you rich. That does not work unless you tithe to this church. This is the only place that works. No, and I’m not baptizing greed. I’m not saying that God wants you to prosper so you can be selfish and greedy and show off how many Rolls Royces you have.
In fact, freely you have received, therefore do what? Freely give. God blesses so that we can be a blessing.
‘John 3’, or ‘John’, the book of ‘John’, the third letter of ‘John’. John says what? “I pray that you all prosper and are in good health.” If prosperity wasn’t a good thing, why do we try to alleviate it among the poor? Why do we try to alleviate poverty among the poor? Poverty is a bad thing. Sickness is a bad thing.
Why do we send people to doctors? Why do we pray for their health? “Oh, but I learned so much in my poverty and my sickness.”
Yes, God teaches us wonderful lessons in hardship, and one of the lessons he teaches us in hardship is how not to be stuck in hardship your whole life. Now, I get it. Some people suffer for the cause of Christ, and they’re neither rich, and they’re persecuted. I get that. In fact, we all suffer in some ways for the cause of Christ.
But, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, NLT)
How many of you think you’re going to be poor and sick in heaven? I don’t.
I don’t want to be poor and sick in heaven. I don’t want to be poor and sick on the new earth. Why is it that Christians were the first people to really establish around the world hospitals? Because health, not sickness, is God’s ideal. Why did Jesus heal the sick? you’ll see Jesus going around and saying, ‘you know, the Father wants to teach you many lessons by sickness.’ So, wham, leprosy on you. He never does it. He just meets lepers and says, ‘Leprosy off you.’ Oh, look at that lame crippled guy.
Man, your right leg is completely lame. Bammo, there, now you can’t walk on either. The left one’s lame too. Now learn the lessons God wants to teach you. Well, wait, who’s Jesus? He’s God. Who does he represent? His Father. So, the Lord bless you.
Dear ones, the Lord bless you financially. The Lord bless you in your health. The Lord bless you in your marriage. The Lord bless you in your family relationships. The Lord bless you in your work relationships and your neighborhood relationships. The Lord bless you with a deeper intimacy with you, with Him.
In every area of your life, the Lord prospers that area in your life and blesses you. He’s a good God. He desires our happiness. The Lord blesses you. The Lord keeps you. Keep you from what? Keep you from all evil. Keep you from harm. Protection. Psalm 91. The Lord is on my right. The Lord is on my left. God behind, St. Patrick, God behind me, God before me, God around me, God above me, God underneath me.
I’ve prayed, how many of you have prayed that God would give you a guardian angel to protect you?
Or, how many of you believe in a guardian angel? It’s not necessarily in the Bible, but angels are in the Bible, and they are sent to help us. So, I ask God for seven guardian angels. One on my right, one on my left, one in front of me, one behind me, one above me, one below me. That’s six, and then a rover angel, just to catch anything else that those six don’t get. And seven’s the number of completions. So, I want seven guardian angels. I pray seven guardian angels around each of you.
I pray, what is it? Again, go back to the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10, NLT)
Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from what? Evil.” The Lord protect us from evil.
Guess what? Demons are real. Martin Luther taught us the saying, “Though this world with devils filled, threaten to undo us.” They’re clawing and scratching and attacking and talking into our brains and trying to pollute our minds, trying to indwell our lives.
Lord, protect me. Protect my family.
Hands off my kids, in the name of Jesus. Hands off my home, in the name of Jesus. Hands off me, in the name of Jesus. Lord, keep me. Protect my salvation.
Some people think that eternal salvation is guaranteed, that once saved, always saved. Other people believe that there’s a way that you can walk away from it. Well, if there is, don’t do it.
And here’s what I’ve come down to. You cannot lose if you do not quit. When it comes to the perseverance of the saints, saints persevere. How do you persevere?
By trying really, really hard not to quit? No, by just turning to Jesus every day and saying, “Take my hand.” If you don’t quit on Jesus, you’re good. In fact, I believe you cannot lose if you do not quit. The devil is not powerful enough to make you lose.
The Bible says that neither height nor depth, angels or demons, right? Neither the present nor the future, nor anything in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NLT)
Lord, preserve us. Lord, bless you and keep you.
24 ‘May the Lord bless you and protect you. (Numbers 6:24, NLT)
Blessing number three: The Lord make His face shine upon you. The Lord make His face shine upon you. Be my father. Bring me provision and comfort. All right? Daddy’s faces, they shine upon their children.
When my kids were little, next week I’m going to a Grace Covenant conference. I’ll be away for five days. I used to do that when my kids were little. Twice a year, I’d go to these conferences. I’d go to other conferences. I’d go out of town. And when I’d come back, my kids would run up to me.
When I’d get home with hands in the air, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’ I’m talking when they’re three and four. When they’re 16, you know, it’s more like, ‘Did you buy me anything?’ But even then, my face would shine upon them when I would see them after I was gone for a while.
And when a little child comes running up to you with their hands in the air, what is the absolute natural, normal, loving reaction? Right? It’s not like, ‘Daddy, Daddy. Get out of my way.’ It’s not what you do. It’s not what you do. If you do that, we’re going to work on some things. you’ve got wounds that need to be healed. All right? Daddy, daddy. We come and we worship, daddy, daddy, what does he do? Come here, come here. I just pick up my kids and I’d hug them and we’d roll around on the floor and tickles and hugs and slobber-dobbers. It was so depressing when my kids got to the age of like, ‘yeah, I don’t do the slobber-dobber anymore dad, that’s just not good.’ It’s like, really? I think it’s awesome.
They’re in their 30s and they don’t want slobber-dobbers anymore. I don’t get it. But the grandkids were still there. We used to play a game called attack daddy on the floor, which basically meant I laid on the floor and they attacked daddy. It was always near like a couch or a beanbag chair because they’d come jump on me, and I would pick them up and launch them on the couch. My grandsons would come over and they would just jump on me for about an hour straight.
I’d just be sitting on the couch and they would just jump on me. When they were little, they’d jump on me, I’d catch them, I’d throw them to the side on the couch and tickle them a little bit and then they’d go do it again. Then they got a little older and after a few very ill-placed knees and elbows, I started stacking pillows on top of me. It’s like, all right, jump on me. They didn’t even come over. It’s time to jump on grandpa. They’d bring over the pillows.
Now, they’re 10 and 8; they don’t do it as much anymore. The younger ones do it now when I go to Denver. But it was fun the other day, my older grandchildren were there, my 10 and 8-year-old, and Theo, the 8-year-old, came over carrying a pillow. It’s like, oh, we want to do this again? Okay, man, bring it on, hop on grandpa.
Let your face shine upon me. What does a father do? A father provides, a father comforts, a father instills values. God’s face, his nature, his character. He wants us to catch that.
He wants us to be like him. I was on an airplane years and years ago. My kids were still younger, but they’d all made commitments to Christ. They were probably in their early teenage years or late 10s, 11s, maybe the youngest, but they’d all made commitments to Christ.
And I’m on this airplane and I don’t know what you call it. What do you call the dashboard on an airplane? The flight panel or whatever? I don’t know. Whatever that is with all those numbers and dials and digits.
And the pilot got on the intercom, and he said, “Our flight panel is indicating that our landing gear is not working. That is a little more unsettling than we’re coming into a little turbulence and your free Coke’s going to be 15 minutes delayed. The flight gear is not working. And so, we need to prepare for a landing without flight gear. All right?” I later found out that’s not just a death sentence. They can do that, but it is, of course, extremely more risky. And so, they began to prepare us.
And all of a sudden, I saw all those glorified waiters and waitresses on an airplane actually step into their training, what they hope they never have to do, but they did a great job. They stepped into their training and said, “Okay, we need to do this, this, this.” And they were taking stuff down and locking stuff up. And they were actually, they did a great job. I mean, they weren’t screaming and panicking. They were doing their jobs and nobody else was screaming or panicking.
I looked around a plane, and I was especially touched when I saw families with children. I thought, “Oh, how scary that must be for a mother and father to be in this situation with their child,” and prayed for them. But I was there by myself. My kids were at home, and I realized, I told God, “Hey, I don’t want to die right now. I’m in my forties. I don’t want to die yet.” But I also had this peace, and here’s what it was. Probably the most important job in my life has been done.
My kids have adopted my values. They believe in Jesus. Okay, Lord.
And then I said this. I really had a sense that I wasn’t going to die. But I said this. I said, “But if I do, here’s my request. I’d rather be squashed than burnt. I’m just saying. I’d rather be an ink spot on the Minneapolis runway than be trying to unbuckle my seatbelt with a ball of fire coming down. Just put in your request, right? I’d rather be squashed than burnt.”
And then I looked at these ladies next to me.
And they had kind of wide eyes. And I turned to them and I said, “Hey, I’m a pastor. Would you ladies like to pray?” you never saw such two eager head nods. And they didn’t know that they weren’t praying people. You could tell. They didn’t know to assume the position and all that. But we prayed. We prayed for our safety and prayed for God’s glory and all that. Then they gave us the instructions. You know the instructions, right?
Put your head between your knees, like anybody over six is going to be able to do that in those little tight spaces. I call it the “put your head between your knees and kiss your you-know-what goodbye” position. But anyway, they said if you can’t do that, do this. I said, “Yeah, that’s me. I’m doing this.” And then we’re heading for the Minneapolis runway. And then we hear, you know, this is all, you know, a half an hour or an hour. We’re wondering if a flight gear is coming down. And then we hear this sound.
And you’ve all heard it. You don’t really notice it because you’re just on the flight. But you’ve all heard it. You hear the wheels come down and lock into place. And when that happened, one of the flight attendants looked at somebody in the first row and said, “That was a good noise.” They flew a couple jets up to make sure that the landing gear had come down. And when we landed, it was all there, man. All the red lights, the fire engines, the ambulances, everything was on the runway. They hadn’t foamed the runway yet.
I guess they foamed the runway with some kind of anti-inflammatory so the plane doesn’t explode or something. But they hadn’t foamed the runway yet. We made it. We were fine.
But, all that long story to tell you, I had peace because my job as a father, a lot of it I felt like had been done, and God fathered me in that moment. He said, “Hey, you’ve done a big piece of what I put you on the earth to do.”
God wants His face to shine upon you to give you comfort, to give you peace.
He wants to father you. The Lord be gracious to you. Blessing number four. The Lord be gracious to you.
What does grace mean? We mistake what grace means in our evangelical culture all the time. We equate grace with mercy. Right? If somebody’s sinned against you, we say, “give them grace.” No, give them mercy. Mercy is, “I forgive you.” Grace is, “I give you power. I empower you.”
That’s why when Paul blesses the churches at the beginning of his letter, he says, “the grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.”
Those are the two great gifts of the cross. Mercy is, your sins are forgiven. Grace is, I now give you power to sin no more, to become like Jesus in character, and to do the ministry of Jesus. Undeserved, unmerited, free gift, the power of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. That’s what grace is. Grace is the Holy Spirit.
The Lord be gracious to you. The Lord give you power. Let his power come upon you. In the Old Testament, let his power come upon you to be my people, Israel, and to honor my covenant.
In the New Testament, to be sons and daughters of God, and to represent Jesus on the earth. Power to do the ministry of Jesus, and to walk in the character of Jesus. That’s grace. It’s amazing, and it’s free, and our access to it comes
through faith. It’s not by trying really, really hard to be powerful. That doesn’t work. It’s simply trusting in Him, relying upon Him, and believing His grace is available to us in every situation to do the Jesus thing, to behave like Jesus and to minister like Jesus. That’s grace.
The Lord pour out His grace on you. Then, the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, smile upon you with His favor, give you affection and pleasure. It is much easier to be a Christian when you believe God delights in you. It is much easier to be a Christian.
Most of us, one of our biggest lies that we believe from the evil one, because of our sin, because of our failures, we believe the lie that God doesn’t truly love us, He just tolerates us. He doesn’t delight in us.
One of the greatest things that you realize as a parent is you can love something that doesn’t behave all the time, deeply and passionately. I can honestly say I love my kids and my grandkids so much, and you’ve heard me say it before, my wife says I say it too much, but they were stinkers. At times, right? Right? I mean, I’m sure Jacob more than Isaiah, but nonetheless, they were. It’s a true word, isn’t it, Isaiah? I’m sure your sister more than you, Peter, but still.
I had three sisters, and I was the biggest stinker of the four of us, for sure. Though, they were all crazy, so I got to say that. I was the only sane one, but I was also the biggest stinker. I hope you’re watching, sisters, in that case.
So anyway, I love you. Actually, I hope they’re not watching. Anyway, let me just say this. The Lord lifts up His countenance upon you. What does that mean? He knows you’re a stinker sometimes.
He still is madly and deeply in love with you, just like every good parent deeply and passionately would do anything for their children. And they love their children. And they love their grandchildren. Just love them. And God taught me more about His nature, being a dad and a grandpa, than I ever learned before. Because I just realized, oh my gosh, I love these kids so much. I delight in them.
My wife and I, we get together and we go see the grandkids and we just tell, we’re sitting there at night and we just tell stories about our grandkids. Oh, they did this, and remember when they did that? And now we got FaceTime. Oh my goodness. FaceTime. I don’t have to wait for the post office to deliver a letter with a few Polaroids, like back in the dark ages. I get this thing FaceTime. Hi, Grandpa. Watch, I’m making baskets. Awesome.
The other day, my wife and I went to the store.
Kids, FaceTime right before they got to the store, so my wife got to talk to them on FaceTime. I went into the store, did like several, did like about 20 half an hour minute shopping, and she needed to shop for some stuff too. I didn’t get the list. I came back out to the car. She’s still like giggling and laughing and smiling, talking to these grandkids. It’s like, we’re never leaving this parking lot. I said, ‘Well, give me the list.’ She says, ‘I can’t. It’s on my phone.’
I can’t, you know, cut out FaceTime and get the list. It’s on my phone. I said, ‘I have to wait here forever. Great. I’d rather do that than shop.’ God delights in you. The Bible says He sings over you. ‘God, what? So loved the world.’ God saved you because He loves you. He desires you. When you meet Jesus, when you pass from this life and meet Jesus, I can guarantee this. If I’m wrong in heaven, you can say, ‘Pastor, you were wrong,’ but I’m right.
The thing that will most impress you about that initial meeting with Jesus is not the overwhelming guilt you feel because you aren’t worthy, but the overwhelming love and acceptance you feel though you’re not worthy. His countenance is upon you. He delights in you.
One of the things that bugged me about mass during COVID is with small children, facial communication is huge. Smiles go for miles. And one of the things that really feeds love to small children is the look of delight in elders’ eyes when they look at them.
You know, that’s why God makes them so cute, right? Because we just giggle at them, we laugh, we delight in them. A little girl in Bremerton this morning just walked up to me, “Pastor Kevin, what Danielle? I wanna give you a hug.” Darling, bring it on, bring it on. Pastor will hug you.
I delight in you, your parents delight in you. God delights in you. I’ve recently been praying, “God, I wanna be better at receiving love and giving love.”
I really, at the end of the day, that’s kinda, I got, you know, I’m getting older, I got no bucket list. Here’s my bucket list: that for the rest of my life, I would love well. I just, I hope when you encounter me, I really do, I’m not trying to beg for compliments here. You don’t have to come up and tell me afterwards, but I hope when you encounter me, at least, that you feel loved, that you feel like this guy actually has a delight, because I really do.
I can say this very honestly: when you, this great multitude of people, walk through those doors, every single face of yours I see and all your children, I get a sense of delight. And it’s not just because I’m desperate for people to come to church. I like you, not just that you’re a number. God delights, and God, I’ve come to this conclusion, is better than me. So if I delight in you, how much more Him, right? How much more Him?
Don’t believe the lie when the devil says, “How can God love you because you are this or that?” It’s not hard for Him at all. He saved you for the joy. He endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him.
And the joy that was set before Him was eternity with you. That’s why He endured the cross, His countenance. And finally, the Lord give you peace. Deep contentment with the life He gives you in this world and the next.
It is wholeness that the Lord wants to give us.
The Lord give you peace. This last week, I got some medical misinformation. I was given a test, but it was the wrong test, so it gave me a score that was deceiving. This made me think that I might have some serious problems.
In fact, I was given a retest with the right test, and I don’t have serious problems. But communication was down between the lab and my doctor’s office, and people at my doctor’s office in the reception area to my doctor.
So, when I called with concerns… about the results of this test, because it came back to me. And I got all the results of the test, and they’re like alarming. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s not good.’ And then, of course, the internet’s your best friend at times like that. No, it isn’t. I started looking stuff up, and it’s like, ‘Ooh, that’s not good. Ooh, nothing on the internet sounded good with the results of that test.’ So, I called my doctor. But here’s the thing, I was not panicked.
I was like, OK, this could mean A, B, or C. And you know what? I’ll deal with A, B, or C. I have Jesus. I got Jill. I’ll deal with A, B, and C. Now, it turned out they gave me the right test. And if A is the worst outcome, B is the, eh, maybe, maybe not. And C is, oh, everything’s fine. It turned out to be a C. Now, did I feel good when it was a C, when I found out it was a C? You bet. It was like, hey, guess what?
I’m healthy as a 65-year-old fat man could be, which is actually true. My doctor basically says, “you know, for the shape you’re in, you’re in really good shape.” Great, great. Means I don’t have to jog. Great.
All right, but either way, if it had been an A, I’d be standing before you today saying, “Hey, pray for me. I got this going on.” But you know what? I can say with St. Paul, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”
It even got my wife and I having conversations about, hey, at what age do we say, ‘you know, I’m not going to get surgery, or I’m not going to take those treatments?’ I think at 65, my kids and my wife would say, ‘oh, no. Do what’s necessary to hang in longer.’ I’m thinking if I’m 75. I don’t know. It all depends. When I get there, I’ll know, right? But at some age, they’re going to say, ‘you know, we can give you five more years if you’ll do this horrific treatment.’ And I’ll go, ‘what?’
No, that’s all right. I’m good. Put my teeth in. I’m going out for a burger, because I don’t care anymore.
All right, dear ones, the Lord give you a deep contentment. Where does that deep contentment come from? Him. We’re playing a game we cannot lose. We are loved by the creator of the universe. Our sins are forgiven. And God is for us, not against us.
This is his nature, people. These aren’t goodies he promises us if we’ll behave ourselves.
This is the heart of the God we serve: a God who blesses, a God who keeps, a God who makes his face shine upon us, a God who graciously gives us power, a God whose delight and pleasure is upon us, and the God of peace who surpasses all understanding and even in the most difficult situations will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. It’s his nature. It’s who he is. And so, for 17 years, I have been speaking this over you. And I say, and it is a ritual.
Don’t think of ritual and tradition as evil. Rituals and traditions become bad when the meaning gets sucked out of them, and we treat them like magic. You understand what I’m saying?
You know, if you think showing up your body, showing up in church will somehow make your life blessed, that’s a worthless tradition. But if you think engaging in a relationship with Jesus that includes community worship is a way to live in the presence of this good God, you’re spot-on.
So every week, ritualistically, as our tradition, but not empty, full of meaning, I say these words, and I say them from the authority that God has given me to speak His Word into your lives. I’m not better than you, but I’m standing in a place, and God said, in this place, over these children of mine that I dearly love, I want you to put with your words, with my word coming out of your mouth, I want you to place upon them this blessing of my nature.
And so, dear ones, with all my heart, I want to say, let this get you wet. Let this baptize you. Let these words anoint you. The Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth, King Jesus, the mighty Father, bless you. The Lord keep you. Make His face shine upon you. Be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you deep, whole peace in this troubled world. Dear ones, dear Jesus, these people are precious. Put it in their hearts. Put it in their hearts.
I ask you, wonderful Father, in the name of your Son, our ritual communion has changed tonight. Steven and Jamie aren’t here. You just got grape juice. In fact, I’m sorry, it’s even worse than that. It’s cran grape. It’s cran grape.
But you know what? The same Jesus who has the two little cups with Steven and Jamie and the bread already cut up, He invites you to this table as well. And so, come and take the food of God. Remember His nature. Experience His smile. Picture Him if you have the imagination to do it.
This is not a vain imagination or idolatry. This is true. Picture the Lord Jesus standing right behind that table and just welcoming you to His table and feeding you with His life. Holy Spirit, fill these elements that as we partake of them, we partake of the life, death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ and we live our lives as true sons and daughters of our Father in Heaven. The food of God for the people of God. Come and eat.
So, I’m going to read you another blessing because I just already said the priestly blessing that I say every week.
Then, I saw the new heaven and the new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared, and the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look, God’s home is now among His people. He will live with them, and they will be His God.” God Himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I’m making everything new.” Then he said, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” And he also said, “It’s finished. I’m the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To all who are thirsty, I will give freely from the springs of the water of life.” All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God. They will be my children.
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” 5 And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” 6 And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. 7 All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. (Revelation 21:1-7, NLT)
So, take that with you. God bless.
The post The LORD Bless You and Keep You (Num 6:24-26) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
February 25, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
“Who have I in heaven but you? Besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God, you are the strength of my life and my portion forever.”
25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalms 73:25-26, ESV)
I want to thank you, Jesus, for your word. I want to thank you for the book of Leviticus. And Lord, I want to thank you that you, as an all-good and all-holy God, have not cast us off but actually desire to dwell with the sinful people and make provision for that.
I thank you. In the Old Testament, you began to show your people what that provision would look like ultimately, and that we now live under that provision. Because of your son Jesus, we can say with full confidence what the psalmist wrote thousands of years ago,
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives all your sins. He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit, and he crowns you with love and compassion. He renews your youth like the eagles, and he satisfies you with good things.”
1Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! 2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 5 who satisfies you with good (Psalm 103:1-5, ESV)
Tonight, we bless the Lord, O my soul. We thank you for the great salvation we have in Jesus Christ.
We thank you, God, that you throughout history have demonstrated that you want to dwell with your people, and that throughout all eternity, you will be our God, and we will be your children. It’ll be good. God’s people said, ‘Amen.’ Alright, Leviticus.
I’m gonna do an overview of the whole book tonight, and interestingly enough, my scripture reading, I’m not gonna read all 27 chapters to you. Somebody say, “Hallelujah.” I’m going to read two verses, and neither one of them are in Leviticus. They are actually the parentheses to Leviticus, Exodus 40:35 and Numbers 1:1. And here’s what these verses say, and you’ll see why I read these in reference to Leviticus in just a moment.
Exodus 40:35, Moses could no longer enter the tabernacle because the cloud had settled down over it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
35 Moses could no longer enter the Tabernacle because the cloud had settled down over it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. (Exodus 40:35, NLT)
Numbers 1:1, a year after Israel’s departure from Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the tabernacle in the wilderness of Sinai on the first day of the second month, and on that year he said.
1 A year after Israel’s departure from Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the Tabernacle in the wilderness of Sinai. On the first day of the second month of that year he said, (Numbers 1:1, NLT)
And that’s as far as I want to go, because the point I want to make is, as we studied last week, as we looked at the tabernacle, that the tabernacle is God saying, ‘I want to dwell in the midst of Israel.’
And all those pieces of furniture and all those things in the tabernacle that all the way point to Jesus also are the conditions for God to dwell among his people and lead them in the wilderness to the promised land.
God wants to dwell with his people, and at the end of Exodus, when the tabernacle is built, the holiness of the Lord is so profound that Moses can’t get into the tabernacle. Exodus 40:35, Numbers 1:1, after Leviticus, Moses speaks to the Lord where? From in the tabernacle.
What does that say about the book of Leviticus? It worked. It worked.
Alright, so here’s the deal. The book of Leviticus is about holiness. It’s about God being holy and people being sinful, and the two do not mix.
Don’t think of God’s holiness just as this kind of moral indignation and wrath. That’s not it. God’s holiness is his bright, incredible, fiery glory that is 100% good, and if you approach it 100% sinful, if you approach it casually, if you approach it in disregard and flippancy, if you approach it unclean, morally or ritually unclean, you’re impure, you’re dirty, it’s like trying to fly into the sun without your sun suit, if such a thing could exist. You would be consumed. And so, how is it?
God’s desire is: “I want to be your God, and I want you to be my people, and I want to be right in the middle.” Remember how the camp was laid out, right? In the middle of the camp is the tabernacle. The Levites are around the tabernacle, and then the tribes are divided into four groups: one to the east, one to the west, one to the north, one to the south of the tabernacle.
God’s right in the middle of Israel, and the fire by night and the cloud by day. And when the fire and cloud lift, they go, and God is right there with them. How is it then that a holy God, this unapproachable light, can exist in the middle of a stiff-necked, rebellious people without them being consumed?
And Leviticus says this is how. This is how.
Now, the structure of Leviticus is very similar. Remember the lamp stand in the tabernacle? Anybody got that picture in mind? How many lights in the lamp stand in the tabernacle? Bueller? Seven.
Thank you. Outside, two more, two more, and then one in the middle. Now, we’re Westerners, and we think linear. So we read Leviticus 1 through 27 as if it’s a progression. That’s not how Leviticus is laid out.
Picture that candle again. Picture that lamp stand again. That’s how Leviticus is laid out. What do I mean by that? The first section of Leviticus corresponds and leads to, not the second section, the last section. The second section corresponds with the sixth section.
The third section corresponds with the fifth section, and right in the middle is the Day of Atonement. That’s how Leviticus is laid out. It’s a Hebrew book, all right? It’s not a Greek book. Greeks are boop to boop to boop. Here’s proof of it.
Read through Matthew’s gospel, a very Hebrew gospel, and it is written thematically, and it has five sections. Why? Five books of the Torah. And it is not chronological. It’s thematic.
Matthew tells stories about Jesus that make his point: point number one, point number two, point number three, point number four, point number five. Mark is the gospel for people with ADHD. It’s Peter’s gospel. “And then this happened, and then there was a rabbit, and then it was blah, blah, blah.” All right, it’s the gospel of immediately.
John is the philosophical, lofty gospel of the logos, and eternal life, and light, and life, and the great I am. And Luke comes along as a good Greek, the only Greek author of the New Testament, and goes, “Oh, my goodness.”
Theopolis. As many have set out to write an account of the Gospels, I thought it good that someone write an orderly account. A good Greek. This is what happened first. This is what happened second.
Here’s the point. If you want to get the closest to the chronology of Jesus, read Luke. All right? But, Luke is the only Gentile author in the Bible. And so, they’re Hebrew books. And so, the structure of Leviticus is important in understanding Leviticus.
So, let’s get to the first two candles. Leviticus chapters 1-7 and Leviticus chapters 23-35. These are the rituals.
The rituals performed to help Israel be holy and God to dwell in their presence. The first seven chapters are all about the offerings. Chapters 1-7 are about the offerings. There are five offerings. And the offerings basically are divided up in two ways. All right? You have the grain offering. You have the fellowship offering. Those offerings say, “Thank you. Thank you, God, for food, for abundance, for houses, for land we did not occupy before that we now occupy, for cities we did not build. Thank you, God, for your provision.”
Thank you for delivering us out of Egypt. Thank you, God, for making us your people. They’re thank you offerings.
The other three offerings, guilt offering, sin offering, restitution offering, burnt offering. Those offerings are offerings for atonement. They atone for our guilt. They atone for our sin. They atone to make restitution.
Those offerings where the blood of an animal is shed as a substitute for the guilt of the people of Israel.
And then, that blood is applied on the day of atonement. It’s applied to the holy of holies, but otherwise, it’s applied to the altar, and that blood then makes atonement as a substitute. That poor animal had to give his life because somebody punched his neighbor in the face. But you know, before we feel like that’s unfair to the animals, just the other day, an animal had to give its life so I could have a cheeseburger. I’m just saying, you know, it’s better that you’re a human.
Alright, so that’s what the offerings are about, basically thank you, and I’m sorry, and I need to be made right with God. And those offerings are performed by the priest. We’ll get to the priest next. Those offerings are performed by the priest so that God can remain in the presence of his people.
The last section of Leviticus, chapters 23-25, actually there’s chapters 26 and 27 which are simply Moses telling the people, giving them a pep talk saying, now do this.
If you do this, you’ll be blessed. It’s kind of a prelude to Deuteronomy. If you do this, you’ll be blessed; if you don’t, it won’t go well with you. But Leviticus 23-25 are about the feasts, and they’re basically seven feasts, and then if you add to that the regular observance of the Sabbath, it kind of makes eight. And so, you have the Sabbath, the Passover, the Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and then the Feast of Ascension. Fruits, weeks, or Pentecost, trumpets, Day of Atonement, and tabernacles.
The first thing you want to notice about the Feasts is the first four Feasts all center around the Spring Harvest. And the last three Feasts all center around the Autumn Harvest. Again, what are we saying? We’re saying God promised to bring us into a land flowing with milk and honey, and He has done it.
And this is where these Feasts is actually where we get our modern conception of what? What do you think? Holidays. Holy Days. Holy Days. Alright? These are Holy Days. They’re not meant to be a burden on the people.
They’re meant to be a feast, a celebration. Now, for many of us, you know, maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter has become a burden. You know, you’ve got the family coming over and Uncle Harry’s going to get drunk and he really likes Biden, and Uncle Phil really likes Trump and he’s going to get drunk, and it is not going to end well. And you know, maybe your family’s got that kind of dysfunction. But the idea behind a holiday isn’t for there to be dysfunction and fights.
The idea is, a holiday is to be a day of rest, a day of food, a day of celebration, a day of family, and God gives them a lot. God gives them a lot. The only people who make up more holidays than God is the U. S. government, alright?
And so, just holy day after holy day after holy day to give thanks for the abundance that God has promised to pour on His people of Israel. And what are these about? These are about to turn people’s attention to what? God is in our midst.
How do we know? Look at our crops! They’re incredible. Look at our bellies. They’re full. Let’s wave some grain. Let’s blow some horns. Let’s have a camp out for a week. We’re going to all gather together and give thanks to God.
And so that’s where we get our concept. That’s why we have Thanksgiving. That’s why we have Christmas. That’s why we have Easter in the church. That’s why we have Pentecost. And then we have national holy days.
I think there are too many holidays. However, I think we should get rid of a few.
And I think we should add one particularly, and it’s coming up in about a month, and that is opening day of Major League Baseball season. I think everybody should be able to go to a ball game on opening day, and instead of turkey, we all eat hot dogs. And that would be an awesome holiday, I think.
Anyway, holy days. So these are the two outside lights, the rituals and the feasts, the things we do. You think, well, we’re, you know, and every culture back then practiced rituals and feasts. Israel is not unique.
What’s unique is about the message and the meaning of the rituals and feasts they practice. They sacrifice bulls, sheep, goats as a substitute for human sacrifice, and the pagans down the street are burning their kids to Moloch. So, it’s different.
What does different mean? The theme of Leviticus is holy. Israel, you’re going to be different.
And for those of you watching on youTube, Jamie and Sophia just came in, but they ducked under the camera so you wouldn’t see them. Trying to be sneaky. Trying to be sneaky.
And you don’t have to worry about that as like any kind of public shaming, because I check our youTube numbers, and there are only going to be four people who are going to watch this. And chances are, three of them are already in this room. So you don’t have to worry about it. To that one loyal person who’s watching out there, God bless you. All right. So those are our feasts. Those are our offerings. The two middle lights, the two next lights, they’re about the priesthood.
Chapters 9 through 10 and chapters 21 through 22 talk to us about the priest. I grew up Catholic, and so when I think of a priest, I think of Bing Crosby, the bells of St. Mary’s, and little orphans gathering around. He was teaching them how to play baseball and giving wise and godly counsel.
I grew up in the Catholic Church, going to communion and having this guy strangely dressed, giving me this wafer. I was going into the small little confessional, you know, and doing all the things, and that’s what I think of as a priest.
That’s not what these guys are. These guys are not that. These guys are butchers. They kill thousands upon thousands of animals and perform religious rituals. If anybody here is glad we’re in the new covenant, it’s me. I like this job. I wouldn’t do that job. I wouldn’t do that job.
Well, I would if I was of the tribe of Levi. They didn’t have a choice. Why? Because they’re holy. When we say the priests are holy, we don’t mean they are morally more better.
We don’t mean that the tribe of Levi is morally better than the tribe of Judah. In fact, we see many examples in the book of Numbers, Leviticus, and Exodus where the tribe of Levi wasn’t better. But they’re holy because what? They’re set apart. They’re different. They’re ordained for the priesthood.
Only the tribe of Levi could serve. Not just anybody. You know, some little kid can’t just say, “I feel religious. I feel like I just love to be a part of that.” Nope, you’re Judah. you’re a part of the army.
You’re not a part of the priesthood. That’s your call. That’s what you’re called out to do. So, they are holy for this task. Now, Aaron’s sons are a great example of what happens to an unholy people in the presence of a holy God. They blatantly, casually, ignoring the commandments of God, walk into the holy place and the holy fire of God consumes them. Boom. Listen. It’s not God’s fault. He’s not a bad God. If you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, that’s not God’s fault. God said, “Don’t do this.”
It’s dangerous. I want to be among you, but here’s how it works. Oh, we can get in there. We’re a tribe of Levi. No. You are set apart for the task, and then you must do the task. you’re holy.
How does this apply to us? Guess what? you’re set apart and holy. Who lives in you? Jesus, Holy Spirit. What spirit? The unclean spirit? No, we cast those out of people. The clean spirit, the Holy Spirit. You have a call.
Somebody once told me, you know, I got ordained and somebody just, you know, kind of smugly said, ‘I don’t believe in ordination.’ And I said, ‘I do.’ ‘Oh, so you think you’re more special than us?’ ‘No, I think every Christian is ordained at their baptism. Every Christian is ordained at their baptism. What does that mean? You are set apart unto Jesus Christ for a particular life and ministry that God has called you to.’ I think there are certain people in the body of Christ that God has called to word, sacrament, and order.
The church has deemed that those responsibilities are so crucial that we don’t want that person having to find other employment, so we’ll set apart resources to provide that person the time to do word, sacrament, and order. But that doesn’t make that person more special.
In fact, typically in my experience, the people who do that, God has set apart for that because they’re unqualified to do any other work. They have no marketable skills.
So, I just want to say thank you for, you know, keeping my wife and I in food and housing and all that.
All right, the priests were required, in chapters 21 and 22, to live with moral integrity in their jobs. They were called to moral integrity. Why? you’re serving a holy God in the holy place. Remember, half of holiness is morality. We’ve come to believe that all of holiness is morality, but it’s not true. Half of holiness is morality. The second half of holiness is set apart with a particular call in a particular cultural setting.
And so that’s the priest. you’re called to moral integrity, and you’re called to ritual holiness.
If you read through Leviticus, you know, all the hard parts of reading through Leviticus, you know, oh, the priest has got to wear this, and they’ve got to wash this many times, and then they’ve got to do this, and then they’ve got to wash again. They’re always washing. They’re always doing this. Because why? It represents to us cleanliness or ritual holiness set apart to God, to be in his presence. By the way, how many of you struggled reading through Leviticus? Anybody? Okay, yeah. Yeah. So here’s the deal.
When I was 10 years old, I made a commitment to read through the whole Bible. I wasn’t born again. I don’t know why this, you know, maybe God, there was something in my life that God was saying, ‘Hey, I’ve called you to be this. You know, let’s get started, son.’ And so, my dad had a Living Translation, and I figured that’s probably going to be the easiest one to read through. So, I got my dad’s Living Translation and I read through Genesis.
I read through Exodus, and it’s the book of Leviticus that defeated me. That’s as far as I got at ten years old. About halfway through Leviticus, I said, “I can’t do this.” All right. I just read it again, studied for this sermon. And you know what? I just posted this on Facebook. As a matter of fact, here’s what I posted on Facebook: “I love Leviticus.” I didn’t. I heart Leviticus. Sorry, I’m just not that emoji of a guy. I love Leviticus. I love Leviticus because it is because we’re supposed to be different.
We’re supposed to be that we have a calling in our life. Did I tell this story a week ago about Dan, Meredith, and I going to this restaurant? No. Yes. Thursday night to Otts and Stevan. Yeah.
So, my friend and I, Dan Merritt, he picked me up from the airport and we went to a restaurant. And we both like to smoke a cigar. And this restaurant had a little cigar club in it. But first, we ate. Everything was fine in this restaurant until we were about halfway through our meal.
And then, much to our surprise, karaoke night began. And we thought, oh, karaoke, that’ll be fun. Somebody will get up there and sing these cute little pop songs. We knew in the… No, it was gross. Every song was sexual innuendo piled on top of sexual innuendo. And it wasn’t subtle. I’m not going to repeat the lyrics because we’re holy and…
And here’s the thing, I am not a self-righteous prude, okay? Go back to the point, I’m in a restaurant about to go into a cigar bar, all right? I am not a prudish Christian.
And Dan and I both looked at each other, and here’s what we said. We both had the same exact thought, “I’m so glad I’m a Christian.” It makes a difference, people. It makes a difference. If that’s what people’s life is, work all week, and then go get liquored up and sing gross karaoke. I’m glad that’s not my life. I’m glad I’m holy. I’m glad I’m holy.
So priests, be set apart. What makes us as Christians? What ritual makes us clean? We have moral integrity, but what ritual makes us clean? There you go.
You whispered loud enough to get the right answer. Yeah, with the authorities. Actually, Karen, studies have shown that it’s baptism. The experts at the CTC, the Center for Theological Control, have said that it is baptism.
All right, let’s get to the inside lights, the final inside lights. This is where I got bogged down in Leviticus. Clean and unclean, clean and unclean, clean and unclean, clean and unclean. Again, two sections on clean and unclean. First, what ritually purifies us, and second, what morally purifies us.
So, the first section: no contact with reproductive bodily fluids, not having contact with anybody with skin disease, not touching mold and fungus, don’t touch dead bones, and don’t eat certain foods. All of those, except the last ones, show us that ritual purity is all of those things relate to death. All of those things relate to death, and God is a God of life.
Now, if you did any of those things in Israel, here’s where we get lost. We think that that’s a sin. No, it’s not a sin to touch a dead body.
It’s not a sin to touch dead bones. It’s not a sin to come into contact with reproductive fluids. It’s not a sin to touch somebody with a skin disease, but it makes you unclean. So, you have to go outside the camp, perform certain rituals and functions to become clean again because what the Bible is telling us there is it’s telling us God is a God of life, not death.
Now, there’s two takeaways for us in that. We’re a people of life, not death. We live in a culture of death. We do not celebrate violence.
We do not celebrate blood and gore. We do not celebrate the killing of the unborn. We do not celebrate the devaluing of life based on our culture’s perception of a person’s worth, old or in some way disabled.
That all life is sacred, created in the image and likeness of God, and so we’re a culture of life, not a culture of death. But here’s a difference.
In the Old Testament, this movement of God dwelling among its children is in its infant stage, and in its infant stage, there needs to be protection.
Don’t touch that. Careful of that. That’s contaminating. What happens in the New Testament? Jesus comes along, it’s like, “Oh, don’t touch a leper.” Yeah, well, I’m gonna do that right now.
What’s the difference? Has God changed? No. Skin disease still represents death. What’s the difference? Life is here. Life is here. We’re still a culture of life, but now we’re no longer afraid of death. We conquer it.
Now we’re no longer unclean spirits. Stay away, stay away. See, one of the mistakes… Here’s the art of raising Christian children in a secular culture.
When they’re young, you protect them from the evils of the culture. Our kids are not going to watch gory, sexually, you know, laced movies when they’re at home at ten years old. Heck no. We’re going to protect our kids from that kind of world.
We’re going to guard their minds and their hearts when they’re vulnerable and soft. But ultimately, we are not raising children that need to be protected from the world. Ultimately, we’re raising children that the evil of this world needs to be protected from. Because our kids have Holy Ghost and life.
And so, our primary job is not to protect ourselves from getting unclean. Jesus has done that for us. Our primary job now is to go take Jesus into the world with a scrub brush and clean it up. And I don’t mean self-righteous, morally saying, “Oh, don’t do that,” and “We got to do this,” and “We got to do that.” I mean making born-again Christians, people. It’s changed hearts who change the world. Right?
You can’t, you know, people say, “you can’t legislate morality,” which in one sense is a ridiculous statement.
All morality, all legislation is about legislating morality. All right? The people who want to pass Green New Deal stuff, that’s about legislating morality. They believe it’s the moral thing to do, not to pollute the earth and destroy the earth, and we’re going to legislate that into existence. We might, some might disagree with if that’s really what we ought to do, or if that’s really, if the science really backs whether that’s true, or whatever, but they’re trying to legislate morality. When a non-Christian says, “you Christians are just trying to legislate morality.”
It’s like, well, so are you. We’re all trying to legislate morality. But ultimately, we Christians also know that’s a losing fight. An outward code never makes holy people, which is why Leviticus is in the end of the story, by the way. Leviticus is a pointer.
All right. So what’s the eating of clean and unclean animals about? Well, again, Israel, you’re going into this pagan world of all these demonic gods and all these horrible religious practices and rituals. And you’re going right in the middle of them. And you’re going to be my people.
And they’re going to be all around you. And their girls are going to be pretty. And their men are going to have impressive farms and barns. And you’re just going to want to cohabitate with some of them and start hanging out and intermingling. Don’t do it. They will corrupt you. Why? you’re still infants. You won’t corrupt them with your.
If they want to come and be a part of who our culture is, you are to welcome them. But you are not to let their culture infiltrate your culture.
Now, there are two things that separate people on the planet today. They’re very practical things. Every missionary in the world knows this. Language, number one. What’s number two? Food, which is a part of culture, right?
The missionary creed, where he leads me, I will follow. What’s the second part of that? What they feed me, I will swallow. I tell you, and everybody here can attest to it. If you’ve gone to another culture, they grow stuff. They eat gross stuff. You know what? It’s just gross. Why is it gross? Not because there’s.
Anything wrong with that food? It’s holy. Different. Israel, we want your food to be holy, and we want the food of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Termites, you know, whoever, we want their food to be gross to you. And we want, and I want your food to be like, eh.
Now, what does Jesus come and do about the, again, grown up, the movement’s grown up, we now take the gospel into the world, eat everything because you’re going to have to spread my gospel. Eat everything. You need everything.
Now you don’t have to eat everything, but you can. You can eat monkey brains. You ate pig brain? That’s why you’re so smart. Studies have shown that’ll increase your IQ by 10%. What? Yeah, the CTC. The experts at the CTC. All right. So, I mean, I’ll tell you what, man. I went to the middle of Africa and we went, one Sunday, we went deep into the jungles, man. We went, it was quite a ride. We’re bouncing along in this Jeep and we’re just having the time of our lives.
Woo, we’re in Africa, you know, and we’re flying down there and we go to have this church service. They’re auctioning off chickens, and the men and the women are sitting on separate sides. It’s a complete wild cultural experience. Then they sit us down for lunch.
Well, you know what? Here’s the deal. We are rich Americans, and these are poor Africans. They sacrificed to put food in front of us. Buddy, you better eat it. And I’m not opposed to goat, but that was the worst goat anybody could ever have prepared. It was gross.
And the guy in front of me wouldn’t eat it. And I thought, ‘But man, you got to.’ It kind of felt like a moral obligation. I’m a picky eater. I am high on the scale of picky eaters. And I just thought, ‘I got to choke this down.’
So, I’m eating it, get one piece down, get two pieces down, third piece. It just says, ‘Nah, what are you doing, bro? We ain’t doing any more of this.’ It’s just right there.
So, there’s this tea they have, and it’s a real sweet tea.
And I think, well, that’ll wash it down, right? And I get that sweet tea, and the minute the aroma of that tea hit my nose, exact opposite effect. That goat launched. Vroom. I closed my mouth just in time. I think it hit the back of my teeth so hard, I probably chipped a tooth.
I’m like, what am I going to do? There’s not enough rice on this plate to cover the goat, you know? And God bless the U. S. of A.
Out in the deepest, darkest of Africa, they bring out a case of Fanta sodas marketed by Coca-Cola. And I’ll tell you what, that sweet tea did not work, but that Fanta orange soda got the rest of that goat down, baby. I know there were no free refills. These are poor people, so I had to margin my soda. I couldn’t just guzzle the whole thing down. But I got that goat down. Now, I’ve got to tell you, goat got redeemed.
I went to Haiti and had goat, and the people there, whoever prepared it, they knew how to prepare it. It was delicious. And Haiti was also the place, by the way, foods that are gross to us in particular cultures, Haiti was also the place I ate cat. All right? And I had cat. And all I want to say, Sophia, is it was purr-fect.
I want to apologize to my friend, Crumb the Cat, who intercedes for me. All right. The second part of clean and unclean, this is the part we jive with.
Finally, we get to the holiness we know about, moral purity. All right. What does Leviticus say about moral purity? It has three big themes. Care for the poor. Care for the poor. All right. Iko was asking me, “What part of the Leviticus code do we carry over? What part, you know?” We carry over all the principles, but this is the one we carry over the most specifically. This is the one that still kind of has closer than any other one-to-one correspondence. All right, and so here’s the deal.
Jesus told one man, because this man needed to hear this, that he needed to sell all he had and give it all to the poor. Jesus can still be telling people that today. I don’t, he’s not telling me that, but here’s what Jesus, I know here’s what Jesus is telling all of us. Give to the poor.
Some of your resources have to go to alleviate the sufferings of those who are poor. Now, I got news for you. The Firehouse Church, you give to the Firehouse Church, we give to the poor.
We have missionaries around the world, some who work at an orphanage and a feeding ministry in the Dominican Republic. They get money from us every month.
We have missionaries in Ghana, West Africa, that we support, who then support the poor, but we support the poor also. We’ve given money, I think recently, we’ve given money to, was it Kitsap Rescue Mission in December? Kitsap Rescue Mission in December.
This month, in February, we’re giving money to Value Unconditional, a ministry in Kansas City that works with bringing healing and restoration towards sexually traumatized, sexually abused, and trafficked women.
Next month, March, we’re giving money to Kitsap Homes of Compassion. They actually buy houses here in Kitsap County and house homeless people. They help to rebuild lives by getting people off the streets and into shelter. They begin to start, you know, building up some time off the streets so they can work on their resources and work on, you know, beginning to build a more functional life.
And so, just by giving to this church, you’re giving to the poor, but you can do more than that.
I know many of you do, and so do I. I mean, you can’t walk around in the streets without encountering the poor. I don’t recommend giving every street person money. I don’t think that’s a wise choice in most cases.
But I do recommend that we can’t, on the other hand, just like, oh well, they’re just living that way because of their choices. Jesus wouldn’t do that. Jesus loves people, he helps people, and we ought to at least help people.
In fact, Christians have done this all over the world, and still do it all over the world. If you go anywhere in the world and there is a well that’s been dug so that people can have clean drinking water, studies have shown and experts have told us that there’s a 90 percent chance that that was done by Christians.
All right, this is a little inside joke going on here, but there is a really strong chance that that was done by Christians to do that. So, we ought to care for the poor.
The ways to do that are, I mean, different times at Christmas, we’ve had different projects. We’ve dug a well in Haiti. We’ve done that. What’s the ministry? Project Angel Tree, where we provide gifts for kids who have a parent who’s incarcerated, and the single parent can’t really afford to get them Christmas gifts. We’ve done that.
In fact, we can do that next Christmas. If somebody will head it up, we’ll do that next Christmas. There’s just a variety of ways. We do it, you do it. I’m just saying that Christians, we have a responsibility.
We will always have a responsibility to care for the poor. The second part is sexual morality. Sexual morality. So, here’s the rule. All right. I might need to say it twice because it’s so complicated. One man, one woman, till death do them part. Whoa, wait. Let me write that down. One man, one woman, till death do them part. All right. I’ve done it!
Never been with another woman. You know, in high school, I kissed a few, but you know, but the real deal, one. And not until we were married. And never since.
So, I am sexually moral and pure. And then Jesus comes along and says, “If you’ve lusted in your heart, Jesus! Oh, nuts! Nuts!” Well, how often? Because in my sophomore year of high school, it was 7,000 times a day. That was an exaggeration, but it’s closer to 5,472. We’ve all failed in this.
Does that mean we just, so what the culture does, right? It’s because we’ve all failed. The culture just lowers the bar. So then we don’t feel like hypocrites. There are only two kinds of people in the world.
Hypocrites and people who’ve lowered the bar. If you haven’t lowered the bar, you haven’t lived up to it. And so, in a sense, you’re a hypocrite. You don’t live up to your standards.
People say, “I can’t go to church and be with all those hypocrites.” Why not? There’s room for one more. You know, come and join us.
So here’s the deal. You don’t lower the bar. You go to the throne, and we’ll talk about this in a second.
You go to the throne where you find mercy for your failing and grace to do better the next time. That’s what you do. Well, how long do you do it? As long as it takes. What if I feel like I’ll never get better? you’re listening to the devil.
How do I know? Because I read my Bible. It says, “He who will perfect the good work that he has begun in you.” Well, I don’t feel very perfected right now. you’re listening to the devil.
God didn’t say He will make you feel like you’re being perfected every second. He just promised this: “I will perfect the work I have begun in you.” Listen, dear ones, there’s only one way to lose this battle. Quit.
There is always an infinite supply of grace and mercy. There’s an infinite supply. You cannot lose if you do not quit.
And by the way, there’s great help in revealing your secrets. There’s great help in revealing your secrets. Secrets have power over us. It’s the power of shame.
When we step out of our shame and say, I’ve done this, I struggle with this, and then somebody else says, oh, really? Okay, me too. Or me not like that, but like this. And all of a sudden that thing’s out of the closet and it becomes smaller. It’s like, let’s walk together in this. And God, you will make us clean. Final area of moral purity, justice in your dealings. your yes is yes. your no is no. you’re a straight shooter. you’re a person of integrity.
If you say you’re going to buy something for a certain price, you buy it for that price. If you say you’re going to sell something for a certain price, you sell it for that price. You don’t have, you know, they talked about jig scales, bad scales, you know, and so they could up the price. You don’t lie to people. You don’t manipulate people. You are honest and integrous in all your dealings.
I’ve already told you, you know how to tell a liar, right? They say this, “swear to God,” that’s a liar.
Because if you’ve got to take an oath, you’re a liar. Here’s an honest person. “I’ll do that.” Yeah, I’ve had dealings with you before, and you’ve batted 100%. What you said you were going to do, you did. All right?
Have moral integrity, have justice. Don’t over punish an offense. You know, when you’re a parent, whatever discipline you bring your child ought to be, it ought to be a consequence for the offense, not an over consequence, and on the other hand, not an under consequence. All right?
You don’t, you don’t do your children any favor by being their best buddy. I have found that if you discipline kids justly, fairly, and lovingly, they actually respect you and end up liking you later in life. You know?
I have a daughter who likes us a lot right now because we provide free babysitting, and I remember one time her saying, “I’m not gonna talk to you people. You make me so mad I’m not gonna talk to you. I’m gonna go in my room and not talk to anybody.”
She stormed off to her bedroom and decided not to talk to anybody. I turned to my wife and I said, “All in favor say aye.” That’s the best idea she’s had in half an hour. That’s what I was thinking a long time. “Why don’t you go to your room and not talk to anybody? That would be good.”
Anyway, now we get along marvelously, and she has children who throw temper tantrums sometimes, and I laugh. All right, justice. All right, the middle light.
Chapter 16, the day of atonement.
It’s the big, why is it in the middle? It’s the biggie. It’s the one Leviticus is trying to point our attention to, right? It’s the climax. The climax doesn’t come at the end. That’s linear. The climax comes in the middle. It’s the center. It’s the point. The day of atonement.
This is the day where the high priest not only goes into the holy place, he goes into the holy holies. But he can’t go into the holy of holies until he has made a sacrifice for himself, and then he goes in with a sacrifice for the people.
And central in this day of atonement are two goats. One goat is killed for the sins of the people. He’s a substitute. He’s an atonement for the sins of the people.
The other goat, the priest lays his head on that goat and sends him out into the wilderness, out to Ezeziel, who is a demonic spirit, and says, “Here, this is where all this sin belongs, out here with you.” And that goat then is a ransom for Israel’s sins.
And so people say, “Do you believe in substitutionary atonement? Or do you believe in the ransom theory of atonement?” And I say, “Yes. Yes. And also the moral influence.” They’re not incompatible. They don’t cancel each other out. They’re different facets of the same diamond.
And so, the day of atonement, listen, they had the burnt offering, the guilt offering, the sin offering. But you know what? God knew that didn’t cover it all. Israel knew that didn’t cover it all. And so, this is the coverall.
And we go back to Exodus 40:35. Moses could not get into the tent of a holy God. Numbers 1:1, after the institutions of the Levitical laws have been put in place, Moses meets God in the tabernacle.
And dear ones, I want to tell you this point. We went through Hebrews.
Remember, we went through Hebrews a year ago. What did Hebrews say? Hebrews says, dear ones, everything in Leviticus is a picture of the heavenly tabernacle and the holy of holies where our high priest, Jesus, comes into the Father after offering the perfect sacrifice himself.
Listen, first century Jews, before the temple was destroyed, practiced these rituals. Not perfectly, but they practiced them. So the Romans, not these, but they had, you go and tour, you know, the ancient Middle East, temples everywhere, temple of this God, temple of that God. Every religion had a temple. Every religion had priests.
Every religion offered sacrifices. So, you’re a Gentile, first-century Christian, and somebody says, “What, what? You believe in Jesus? Well, where’s, where’s your temple of Jesus?”
“Oh, Jesus is the temple.”
“Huh? Well, where’s the priest?”
“That would be Jesus.”
“Well, where’s your sacrifice?”
“We have the trifecta, Jesus.”
And here’s what I want to tell you. For thousands of years, Israel slit the throat of bulls, sheep, and goats, and gallons upon gallons upon gallons of blood was shed in the tabernacle and in the temple.
And all of the accumulated blood of all those sacrifices and all the burnt offerings that went up to heaven, and all the sprinkled blood of the priest on the mercy seat, is infinitely less effective than one drop of the blood of Christ. It worked. Because now, not only can Moses go in the tabernacle, but Hebrews 4 says he was like us in every way, but without sin. And he’s our great high priest.
And therefore, we can approach the throne, the mercy seat of God, and we will not be consumed by his holy fire. Why?
Aaron’s son did not. They weren’t prepared to go into the holy place. We’re prepared. The blood of Jesus, the righteousness of Christ, the cleansing of our baptism. We are prepared to step into the holy place. And what do we find there? Read it for yourself. It’s in Hebrews 4:16, but I’ll just tell you we find mercy and grace.
God wants to dwell with his people. This is a picture and a beginning, and it partially works. Moses can get in. Not everybody can get in, but Moses can get in. The high priest can get in.
This is a picture of what’s to come. And for all eternity, we will dwell with a holy God. He will be our God, and we will be his people. And here’s the great thing. We’ll be holy. We’ll be holy. In fact, here’s the promise. We’ll be like him. That’s how holy we’ll be. We’ll be like him. Isn’t that good?
Christian worship is about three things. And Leviticus tells us all three. Christian worship is about thankfulness. The feasts, a couple of the offerings, it’s about thankfulness. Look at what God has done for us.
Israel, he’s brought us into a land full of milk and honey. Christians, he’s forgiven all my sins and given me his Holy Spirit. Thankfulness.
All right, we practice thankfulness tonight. We sang songs. God, you’re so good to me. We sang songs and praised him and thanked him for his grace and goodness.
Second, worship is about remembrance. So much, right? The feasts. What are the feasts about? Remember. Remember I brought you out of Egypt. Passover. Don’t forget. Do the Passover. Why? Remember.
Well, we’re about remembrance. Remember me.
But not only that, I just read out of a book. Do you know how old this stuff is I read tonight? 3,000 years old. Remember what God did 3,000 years ago. That has practical application to your life in Paul’s bowl, Washington, Yom Kippur, in the 21st century. Remember.
Why do you come on a weekly basis? So you don’t forget. Let me tell you something. You will forget. If you stop coming to church, you’ll forget. If you stop coming to church, you’ll become a knucklehead. A ninny hammer.
I was with a young man yesterday, and I’m not going to tell you his name. You know him. Some of you know him. He didn’t go to church anymore. And he didn’t want my advice, and I wasn’t going to give it. But if he’d asked for my advice, I’d have given it to him.
I said, “you’re a dishonest person.”
He said, “No, I’m not. I think. What do you mean?”
I said, “Well, years and years ago, I baptized you. And in your baptism, you made a promise. Will you be Christ’s church by your prayers?”
I don’t know if he’s keeping that promise. He might be praying for the church. your presents? He’s not keeping that one. your gifts? I don’t know if he’s giving. your service? I don’t think he’s serving.
You made a promise. Keep that promise. Keep that promise. Oh, but pastor, the church is less than perfect. So are you. So what? There are mean people there. Yeah, you’re probably one of them. So what?
Go to church. Be the church. Remember. Week after week, remember. And then atonement. Atonement.
On the night that he was betrayed, he took bread and said, “This bread is my body which is given for you.” And in the same way after supper, he said, he took the wine, gave thanks to his father in heaven, and said, “This is my blood which is shed for you. Why? Atonement. For the forgiveness of sins. Do this in, what? Remembrance of me. And be what? Thankful. Right here. Right here.”
And so, dear ones, I invite you. God dwells not just among you. Jesus Christ’s work is so powerful, God dwells in you.
So, not only is he the temple, but together we’re the temple. I mean, you’re just a rock, and I’m just a rock, but we’re the temple, we’re living stones of the temple.
So, it’s all, what’s that Matthew Redmond song? This is a holy moment now?
Listen, every time you come up and, I just want to say this, I know I talk long, and you endure it. I just want to say this. I love the casual church.
I grew up in a liturgical church, and the problem with the liturgical church that I grew up in is, I didn’t get it. All it was was ritual, but the ritual had no meaning for me.
And so, I was attracted to the dress down, talk about Jesus, come as you are church. Obviously, I still am. But I think we can make the mistake of missing, in our casual dress and casual songs and joking around, I think we can make the mistake of missing the holy presence of God.
If Jesus were to walk through that door right now, not veiled as he was in Galilee, but as he revealed himself to his buddy John in the book of Revelation, what happened to John when he saw Jesus revealed in his glory? He didn’t want to say, “J-Dawg, what’s up man?” No. He was on the floor.
Look at, we would just be, we’d be, you know? And that Jesus, glorious, fiery, bronze, Jesus, eyes like fire, hair like wool, that Jesus says, “eat at my table.” This is a holy moment now. Come and eat.
The post A Holy God and A Sinful People (Leviticus 1-27) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
February 18, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
The post The Tabernacle Completed And The Glory Of God (Exodus 40:16-38) appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA.
Alright, dear ones, let’s worship Jesus together. Psalm 27 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Whom should I dread? When evildoers came against... Read More
2023.8.13 Evening Service @ Poulsbo by Stevin Johnson
So as I live out my life and the more I come to know Jesus and being 57 years old and have time to reflect on what my life was like and what it has become like, that song will be my end. All His promises are yes and Amen. Be in the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death, but when you turn and look for Him, He’s right there. His promises that He’s going to save you, will lift you up, are Yes and Amen.
So as we talk tonight, things may sound gloomy. But we’re going to try to end with the yes and an Amen of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. All right. So. All right. So. Sin is sin. Couple of weeks ago, we talked about our current culture changing wrong, right? Like making things that we know are wrong. We grew up knowing our parents grew up knowing are wrong and their parents. Sexual slavery, slavery. Sin is sin. Stealing, hating your brother. It’s all sin. It doesn’t matter how great we label it. Murder compared to saying, you know what? I hate you. They’re the same in Jesus’s eyes.
So the logic doesn’t work when we try really when you try really hard to believe it and persuade everyone else to believe it. A duck is not a cow and a cow will never be a duck. So don’t you can’t say otherwise. So why are people trying so hard to change it? Relatable wrong, culturally accepted things that go wrong as being right. Because trying to justify sin. The light is shining. Would you accept that? I think that people are trying to justify their sin.
So let’s just take old Merriam-Webster. It’s a reliable definition. You can always find it online. Look it up. And what is sin? Sin is an offense against religious or moral law. I think folks, and in some cases right, so whole Christians, as being just do-gooders, which we know we’re not, because that’s why we’re Christians. Because we know that we’re sinners. We’re Christians because we saw what Christ did for us. So we’re sinners as well.
But even if you didn’t have a religion in your life or didn’t even believe, there’s still this thing called moral law. And everybody knows it in their heart. We know it in our hearts that it’s wrong to take preschoolers and teach them that it’s okay to have sex with whomever, whatever you want. And it’s okay for adults. I don’t get it. It really bothers me. That we’re trying to change laws that make it legal to have sex with whomever you want. That make it legal for, in my opinion, their predators to have sex with children. It’s wrong. I feel it in my heart that’s wrong. And I think there’s a lot of other people who do too. So that moral law is out there whether you believe it or not in Jesus. That’s one part of the definition. Another is an action that is felt to be highly irreprehensible. I like the example they use. It’s a sin to waste food. I questioned that one. And an often serious shortcoming, a fault. Transgression of the law of God. An initiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God.
So I kind of touched on the moral law aspect a little bit. Even if you don’t believe in religion. But here’s another one. If somebody hurts you. Turn them back. Right? Now we’re in sin for sin. Thank you Kathleen. But you probably felt they violated your moral law. They sinned against you. Or they hate you for offending them.
And I think that’s part of what makes it right, wrong, and wrong. People are trying to redefine moral law. So that they can justify their sin. They can justify the things they do that they know is wrong. Now I’ll give you, there are probably folks out there who are absolutely right in what we’re doing. But the majority of people I don’t think are that way.
But what we’ve fallen into is the shame game. If I tell you that it’s wrong for an adult to entice a child and have a relationship with a child. Or that it’s wrong and it says so in the Bible. For a male to have a relationship with a male. For a female to have a relationship with a female. Then you will label me as a hater. That’s where we’re at today. You will condemn me as a hater. Because I said what you’re doing is wrong. Which is not logical because now you’re actually hating against me. So how does that work out? Yeah, it doesn’t work.
Come on. Our country was founded on the principles of Christianity. And I know Kevin’s brought it up a couple times. Winston Churchill said basically what they were fighting for in World War II. For was the Christian worldview. There’s a better worldview to live in than any other. Than under Hitler’s worldview. It’s fair and it’s just and it’s loving. And that’s one of the things people try to, are trying to change. Trying to say Christians are not loving. Because we believe in the Bible. We believe what it says here. To change people with time. And to treat people the same. It’s worked. It worked for a really long time. It will always work. It’s not, it’s not something you can change or that doesn’t change with time. It doesn’t change with time.
I don’t know about you guys, but it does bother me. When folks try to change the Constitution of the United States of America. Our founding fathers obviously put a lot of thought into that document. And it’s pretty good. It’s a good basis to live by again because it’s based off of here, off the Bible. And churches who were, I try very hard not to name names. Because I don’t want to point fingers at people. And I know, I won’t do it. But I know mainstream churches who promote Pride Month. While I think they’re confused and they’re mixed up, I think their intent, I don’t know for sure, but I think their intent is love the sinner. But while they’re loving the sinner, they’re embracing the sin. And they’re saying that it’s okay. But Jesus never said that. But Jesus did love the sinner. He loved each one of us because we’re sinners. I’m pretty sure I sinned today. That even as hard as I try, I still sin. But Jesus still loves me. But He doesn’t say my sin is okay or acceptable.
But the same people are saying, maybe not the same people, but people are also saying that this book is outdated. And that it needs to be a catch up to our culture. I don’t think so. I think this book is still pretty accurate and pretty good. It still defines everything we need to live by. We can still progress as a culture. But we need to stick to the book. We need guidance. You’ll go astray. Everything is just chaos at that point.
And I can’t think of a better book to stick by. One that tells you that the God of the universe loves you. And if you turn to Him and accept Him, He will forgive you of your sins. And you can live forever. You can live forever. That’s mind boggling. To be able to live forever. And if you live forever with Him, then it will be great joy. So I don’t think this book needs to be outdated. And not current with our culture.
Where does that lead? How does that tie in to dark and stormy skies? Well, I kind of said already. There’s dark and stormy skies out there right now. I grew up in the Great Plains, Eastern Colorado. And if you’ve driven across there or lived out there, you know what the summer thunderstorms look like. When they roll up in the afternoon. Big, cumulus clouds. Thousands of feet high.
And most of the time you see them coming and you say, oh, it’s going to rain. And there will probably be a little lightning. But sometimes when you look out across the plains to the west where I grew up. And you saw nothing but a dark, dark wall with no light coming towards you. You knew you were in for it. And it was going to be a huge storm. It was probably hail, maybe tornadoes. It was impressive, like, it gives me goosebumps thinking about it growing up. And I loved it. Scary as it could be. It was really cool when you see lightning streak across the sky. And you can see the curtain of water coming down. It was just black. It was impressive. So that was, I was already a little ahead of myself. That was the dark and stormy clouds that I was talking about. The constitution and the Bible and people wanting to change things. Chaos. Right is wrong. It’s a kind of a dark and stormy sky in our country and in the world really. You see it going on all over the world. And we know who’s behind it. Satan’s behind it. He’s using people to try to subvert the Creator, the God, the one and true God of the universe. Trying to subvert that authority.
But there is light even in that. You know there’s no such thing as total darkness. I even looked this up. I remember Kevin talking about it, but I looked it up. There’s no such thing as total darkness. There is an absence of light. But there’s light as energy. There’s still energy in the darkness. And you just can’t see that light. It’s interesting. Now granted I’m not an expert in that study. And it took me, we read through it a couple times on the internet to figure it out. But there’s still energy. It’s just unseen. So there’s no absolute darkness.
It’s like a cloudy stormy sky rolling across the plains. Blacks out everything and it’s just coming down and it’s loud and it’s boom and there’s hail and there’s rain. And it’s just dark. There’s still light above those clouds. As a pilot, as an aviator, I can tell you I have never seen anything like this. As a pilot, as an aviator, I can tell you I have flown up through some very thick clouds. Now we never threw, we threw thunderstorms. That was just not a good idea. But you would enter clouds at 5,000 feet and you wouldn’t pop out until 25,000, 30,000 feet. You were in clouds all the way up. And it was bright. It was bright on top of it. The light was still there even though you may not have been able to see it. That’s Jesus. That’s the light that we’re talking about tonight.
So there’s a struggle right now in our country. There’s battles going on right here right now. Mine and James’ life, most of the peers that we spent our professional life with trained for fighting. That was our job. That’s what we learned to do. Fight battles. That’s what we learned to do. That’s what we learned to do. That’s what we learned to do. That’s what we learned to do. That was our job. That’s what we learned to do. Fight battles. We fought back. The ideal, the American ideal and our ideal is what we believe in is that evil is wrong. And people who are committing evil and won’t stop, need to be stopped. It was wrong to go out and commit genocide. It was wrong to gas people. It was wrong to sell people with sexual slavery. There’s just all kinds of evil out there. So I’ve got to say I got it in my heart still. Even before I joined the Navy, I knew right and wrong. Even though I know I did wrong myself. The evil, I want to fight it. It makes me angry. It makes me angry at the things I see today in our culture.
I know when I mentioned them, the teaching children at an early age who just need to be children and grow up and have fun and learn to actually interact with one people, not what sexual life is about. We’re not changing the laws and regulations so that adults can have relationships with children. Selling women, children and men into sexual slavery. Walking down the street and just sucker punching somebody because you think it’s cool and you can drop them. They have no idea it’s coming. You just kind of get empowered. You’ve got nothing wrong with somebody. You just want to hurt somebody. That makes me angry.
I want to fight back against that. I feel like hurting them back. It makes me really angry. The lies and the deception. Teaching the lies and the deception to the children through false education. So I don’t know about you guys, whether you get that mad or not, but I sure do. I sure get that mad.
So what am I going to do about it? There’s a lot of things I could do about it. I’m going to turn it over to Jesus. I’m going to turn it over to Him in prayer. And I’m going to listen and I’m going to be obedient to what He tells me. What does that look like? What does obedience look like? Well, if you’re prayerfully talking to Jesus, He will tell you what He wants you to do. Probably. First thing He’s going to say is love them. You don’t have to accept their sin. I got that. Vengeance is mine. I’ll take care of those who don’t believe Me. You just need to love on them.
It’s not going to be tolerated through sin. It’s not going to be determined through some or all the Bibles are no longer available. It’s going to be lovingly telling somebody which doing is wrong. It’s a sin. It’s not acceptable to the Creator of the universe? Do you know the Creator of the universe? You don’t. Let me tell you about it. Let me tell you that He loves you more than anything. Even though you’re a sinner, He’s made a way for you to come to Him and be free of your sin. He’s made a way for you to come to Him and be free of all this.
The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome. That light is Jesus Christ. The Son of Man, Jesus Christ. I apologize right now if I get this wrong, but I think it’s John 3:15 and on. This is Jesus talking. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. That whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. But to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict. Life has come into the world, but people love darkness instead of life because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light. It will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light. So that it may be seen clearly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:15-21)
So people who hide know their sin and they know what they’re doing. And I tell those people, if you feel that in your gut that what you’re doing is wrong, and you are trying to justify it, you need to think about a little bit more because God’s telling you that He’s not going on your heart trying to tell you trying to get your attention. Trying to let you know that there’s a way out. That He sees everything you do. He wants to love you. And He wants to forgive you. And you turn your way to Him and He will do so and all that will be washed away. You will be white as snow. You may not have heard of the Bible. And I would let people know too. Because I don’t like the I don’t want to be a hypocrite and I don’t like the church being labeled as a hypocrite. We are all sinners like I mentioned earlier. And we know we’re sinners is why we are sitting here tonight. And hopefully while you folks whoever might be watching, watching and I hope our numbers go up. You’ve got a question. Or you know that without Jesus you’re nowhere.
Now I’ll let them know that I’m a sinner. I’ve done things that that were sinful against God. We were born as original sinners. You didn’t come into the world. Most of us did not know Jesus right at birth. Sometime later in life you learned about Jesus. Maybe you learned from your parents. Maybe you learned from somebody in high school. Maybe you even earlier. But maybe if somebody in college told you about Jesus. And it piqued your interest because they told you how much Jesus loves you. And that He created this world that you live in and He wants you to be a part of His eternal life. And this is how you do that. And I was a sinner just like you. So I know better than you. I was in the same darkness. I was in the same condemnation until I turned to Him. Maybe you heard the first time and you weren’t sure. You prayed about it. And then through understanding wisdom came. And the light shining. And it began to shine brighter for you.
Because you started getting into the word. You started going to church. You started talking to other Christians. People you knew who were Christians. And you started getting information from them. And it became very interesting. And hopefully it becomes more interesting. It’s a lifelong journey. Of opening your Bible and praying every day. And turning your eyes to Jesus.
I’m not real good about it all week long. I do. I have. I’m kind of a routine person. So I listen to my Bible in the morning. Sometimes I’m not consciously there. It’s playing, but I’m fixing breakfast. Other times something new will come up. And I’ll hear it. And I’ll start praying it. The Psalms are great. What a great learning. And I just learned that within the last year. The Psalms are great to pray. Because they’re still very fitting. As we read Psalm 73 tonight. Still very fitting.
And I pray when I go out to feed my horses. And some of them are routine. Wrote prayers for my family. For protection. That Jesus sets His angels in protection around my family and friends. And our properties that nothing evil comes near anybody. No weapon formed against us will prosper. Those people that I know don’t know the Lord. Or think He’s just a nice myth. I pray for them that God makes Himself known to them unmistakably. That there’s no way to deny that the existence of God is real.
Prayer works. Prayer is powerful. Yes and Amen. And I have to tell You. For tonight it was very interesting. It actually made me tear up a little bit as we were singing the “Yes and Amen” for our communion. I had no intention of praying for Julie tonight. It just came and then that song came on. And yes and amen.
And I know from our own experience. That we have to pray for her. And I know that she’s a great person. And I know from our own experience. The miraculous healing of cancer that happens. And I just hold onto that for Julie. She just becomes a living miracle. To the testimony of Jesus Christ. So, neither do people put light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead they set it on a stand. And it gives light to everyone in the house. To open their eyes. So that they may turn from darkness to light. From the power of Satan to God. That they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance of one sanctified by faith in me. And that’s Acts 26:18 and those are Jesus’s words to open their eyes.
“To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (Acts 26:18)
So with that light, we have hope. We have hope. Small crowd here tonight. Half this crowd went to Maryanne Prot’s memorial service yesterday. So for the folks that weren’t there and everybody else who hopefully is listening. It was, I’ve been to a few. Former career. Been to a few funerals. Been to a few other funerals. Not associated with that career. And this one was unique to me. It was, it was. The presence of the light was there. I felt it. I felt that it was very light and light in weight.
I learned more about Maryanne than I had known her previously. First I met her when her struggles with cancer, her battle with cancer first started. So I learned a lot about Maryanne. What a devoted woman to the Lord that she was. And Bruce, her husband. Bruce, his eulogy was just fantastic. Clearly the man loved his wife very, very much. And the man loved Jesus very, very much.
And that he concluded his eulogy with a word that caught my attention. And how it clearly was impactful in his life and that was hope. It was, it was both a summation of his and Maryanne’s life together in Jesus. A summation of the truth of the faith that we have in the things that are in our lives. The hope and the belief and the resurrection of the life that we’re at.
So, you know, hope is to wish for an event that one considers possible. And have confidence and trust to desire and consider the possible. And that’s how Bruce described it. That is exactly what I heard him saying. Is the hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. And that life eternal is coming. We’re all going to meet up one day. Like Kevin says, it’s true. If you’re born into the world and you’re going to die one day, you are going to stand face to face with Jesus.
Whether you believe that He’s real or not, it’s going to happen. The best way to do it is to prepare. To ask somebody to read the Bible. To get to know Him. And when you actually read this, it’s so irrefutable. You’re not going to be able to deny Him once you start reading the Bible. Old Testament to New Testament. I encourage people not just to focus on New Testament. The whole Bible has something for you in everything. I know a lot of, especially new believers, and the New Testament is a good place to be if you’re a new believer. Because it talks about Jesus and His salvation. But if you want to understand the history and how it all got to that point. And how Jesus was even in the Old Testament. Then you need to read the Old Testament because the more you understand, the more you get wisdom.
So that’s why you don’t need to despair. Hope is the thing we believe in and the faith that we hold is what we know is true. So if you’re listening tonight on the web and you’ll catch this. Find somebody you know that’s a Christian and ask them about Jesus. Get curious. Go discover what people are talking about. And pray. I challenge you. I challenge you. Whether you believe or you’re questioning or you don’t believe. I challenge you to pray to God. To make Himself known to you. And then don’t just close your ears. Keep your ears open and see what happens. Because the God of the universe cares about you. And He will make Himself known to you.
You can even say this prayer. Jesus, if You are real, show Yourself to me in some unmistakable way that You love me. And You want to be involved in my life. So if you’re at that spot in your life where you are ready to be free from sin. And you think you want to make Jesus as the Lord of your life. Then give your life to Jesus. And forever be changed. Your life will change.
Let’s say this prayer with me. Jesus, I’m the sinner in need of the Savior. I believe You are who You said You are. The Savior of the world. I believe You will take away all my sin. When I turn my life over to You. Because I can’t do that for myself. Your blood shed for me on the cross cleanses me from my sin. I give You my life, Jesus. Come. And live with me. Thank You, Jesus.
So if you said that prayer, congratulations. Turn around and look. Because the Lord of the universe, the God of creation is standing right behind you. And He’s probably clapping and cheering and all the angels of heaven are singing hallelujah. Because you’ve chosen to come and be with the King of the universe.
Get into church. Start fellowshipping with all other sinners. Because we’re just a group of sinners who figured it out. Because somebody else told us. Or God came into our life in an unmistakable way. And said, hey, look at Me. Here I am. Here I am. Take My hand. I want to take you out of this. And let you live with Me forever. So don’t despair. There is hope. There is light. You don’t have to be afraid. Eternity is coming. In which it’s all going to be good. You got nothing to worry about. Thank You, Jesus.
Father, I just thank You. Creator, Lord of the universe. The Father who’s taught me how to be a man and how to love. How to grow. How to be gracious, kind, forgiving. Even when I didn’t want to be forgiving. I knew that You said to be forgiving. And that was enough for me. To be obedient. To do what You said.
Jesus, just thank You for Your yes and amen. Thank You that the answer from you for somebody sees you is always a “yes.” Just cry Halleluia to the King of kings, for you are that.
So I bless you and keep you, the Lord makes his shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Kevin likes to say, “Go forth and serve in that peace.” I like to say, “Thank you Lord for giving me that peace to go forth and serve.” Amen
2023.8.6 Evening Service @ Poulsbo by P. Kevin Clancey Amen. We have a great salvation, people. We have a great salvation. As sins have been forgiven, we have eternal life with Jesus and for a little while we... Read More
Originally preached on July 5th 2015 at The Firehouse Church by Kevin Clancey out of Acts 3:19
John 12:23-26 A New Messianic Vision.
Originally preached on June 14 2015 at The Firehouse Church by Kevin Clancey
John 12:12-22 The Entry of the King
Sermon originally preached on June 7th 2015 by pastor Kevin Clancey Sermon
John 12:1-11 The Heart of Worship
Sermon originally preached on May 24th 2015 by pastor Kevin Clancey Sermon
John 11:45-57 - Reactions to Jesus
Sermon originally preached on May 17th 2015 by pastor Kevin Clancey Sermon
Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues. 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and 1 Corinthians 14:1-5
Sermon originally preached on May 10th 2015 by pastor Kevin Clancey
Originally preached on April 5th 2015 by Kevin Clancey, the text for the sermon was Mark 16:9-20
Originally preached on May 22nd 2015 by Kevin Clancey the text for the sermon was out of 1 Corinthians 12:8-10
Originally preached on May 15th 2015 by Kevin Clancey the text for the sermon was out of 1 Corinthians 12:8
Originally preached on May 8th 2015 by Kevin Clancey the text for the sermon was out of 1 Corinthians 12:1-7