Transcription
[Music] Do you see the difference? Faith doesn't come just by hearing. But yet, that statement is true in every case. Faith comes by what? Hearing. Write the word "faith" down. Stop making it religious. It's not a religious word. The word "faith," Greek word *pistis*, it simply means belief.
When you take a bottle of pills from your doctor with an instruction to take three of them a day, when you walk out of that office with those pills, you have faith in that doctor's words. That's faith. Simply means you believe what he said. So notice what Paul, the apostle, says. Paul says all belief comes by someone giving you some ideas. You're hearing some ideas. All belief, he says. So get your ideas from a specific source, he says, from the word of the manufacturer, God. Paul didn't say get it from his words, get it from the word of God. Let Him be the source of your ideas for your belief system.
Let me talk about this book called the Bible. Please see it as a treasure of ideas. It's a treasure chest of ideas, that's the Bible. And you go in there to get your ideas. And you need help, you know? That's why He gives you the Holy Spirit. He guides you because you open that chest, you can get confused. You need good teachers who have given themselves over to finding out the truth about this book. You are too important to God to to live your whole life wrong.
My father, whom I love, daily, hopefully you'll meet him before you leave. He's 89 years old. He's going to be 90 in May. And my father, he calls me almost every day, you know, when I'm home. He called me last night. You know, he, he comes and he sits in this place. At 89, he was a Baptist pastor all my life. And he sits here with a notebook when I'm teaching. At 89, he said to me the other day, he said, "Son, you got a lot of learning. You're smarter than me." 89.
David says, "Your precepts have made me wiser than my elders." Listen to his words carefully. My, your precepts. See, my elders got concepts. He says, "Your precepts have made me wiser than my elders." How's that possible? Because your elders may be expert in error. And God will reveal the truth to babes. What's a baby? A baby is somebody who comes to life with an empty hard drive. Am I right? See, the more you bring your ideas to a meeting, the less you learn. You can almost come before God constantly with a lot of delete in your life. "I delete everything, Lord. Teach me again." Your blessings are new every morning. Give me something new. I'm willing to exchange my loving ideas that I love so much. I'm willing to exchange them if I understand that they are not truth. That's a hard thing to do. Because remember now, you are in love with your ideas. So it's like a divorce. You got to divorce yourself from something you learn. Like my father, for 50 years. That's a, that's a hard divorce. That's why most people get exposed to the kingdom message, they get excited, and then they go back. The divorce is just too hard because they will lose their friends, lose their association with their organization, lose their denominational affiliation, lose their credentials. With the eye and go to that, forget the kingdom. I'm gonna state this whole idea. See, because the divorce is just so hard. So they'd rather live a lie for the rest of their lives than to get married to the truth. That's why we're here to talk about this.
Let me give some scriptures before we go. John chapter one says, "What in the beginning was the Word." The Word was with God. The Word was God. He was with God at the beginning. The Word, word is the word *logos*. The word *logos* simply means idea. Did you know that? So Jesus Christ is God's idea on two legs. The word *logos* means expressed idea. In the beginning was the expressed idea. The idea was God. The idea became God. The idea walked in the flesh. So when you see the word Jesus, you're talking about God's ideas in a body, *logos*.
So what did God send to save the world? Ideas. Why can I suggest something to you? This is very simple but profound. If God sent His idea to save the world, then what's wrong with the world? Come on, use your brain. Huh? That means the world got the wrong idea. That's what. Yeah, misconception. You're right. Isn't that wonderful? What did the devil use to destroy Adam and his relationship with God? Idea. So Christ came to what? Bring the old idea back and say, "You already God's." Now, to convince you is a hard thing because you've been away from that for so long. You think you are just an animal. See? So this, this, this is an important scripture.
"God sent His idea back into the world." Yeah. "Through Him all things were made. Nothing was made without Him. In Him was life." Watch this. "And that life was what? The light." The Hebrew word for light is the word knowledge. "In Him was life, and the life was light." So life is actually knowledge. Life is light. There it is. So life is what? Knowledge of the truth. So you ain't living until you know the truth about life.
It goes on to say, "The light shines in darkness." The Hebrew word for darkness is the word ignorance. So the idea is the light coming on. Hey, I understand now. Wow. And then the darkness, the ignorance goes away. In a couple of months, I'm going to be speaking in this church for three Sundays just on light. Because I've done some research again, it blows your mind. The Bible says, "You are the light of the world." The word "world" means systems. You are the actual knowledge for politics. You're the knowledge for economics. You have the knowledge for education. You don't even know that you have the truth about education. And yet we let them educate our children. Like it says, "The doctors did not understand. Couldn't comprehend." And in Him was life, not life was the light. It destroyed darkness. Write this down. Light. Life is measured by light. Post that on your Facebook right away. My husband wrote, "Quote: Life is measured by light." What is light? Knowledge. So you can only live to the amount of knowledge you get. Jesus Christ never said, "You shall know the truth." No. You shall. He never said, "The truth will set you free." He said, "You shall know truth." Which means that there's a measure of the knowledge of it. And the more you learn, then the more freedom you have. The more you get, the more freedom you have. So little knowledge, little truth, little life, little truth, little freedom. A lot of truth, a lot of freedom. Little truth, little life, little light, little life. Big light, big life. It depends on what you want. Pursue the light.
"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld this what glory, which was full of what grace and truth." He had the original information. This is why it's called glory. He brought the full weight back. He brought the weight of life back. The essence of life back. The word "glory" means heavy. He brought the, the weight of everything back. What an amazing thing. He brought the culture of heaven back. What it's supposed to be like.
Well, this stuff is in your notes. I just want to get some scripture before we close. Read the scriptures with me, please. Psalm 19, verse 8. "Read: The precepts of the Lord are right and they give joy to the mind." Heart means mind. Think about it now. Notice the word "precept." The one you never saw before. Hey, precept is in the Bible. Precept means the thought before the thought. Read it again. "The precepts of the Lord are right." In other words, there's no question. Once you get the precept, you could boast. You could be bold. You could be zealous. You can be even dogmatic. If you get the precept, you are right. That's why you have joy in your mind.
Psalm 11, verse 10. "Read: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and all who follow His precepts have good understanding." Is tied to understanding. See, I told you this seminar is really not about information. It's about precepts. We're trying to get the original ideas.
Psalm 119, verse 4. "Read: You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed." The precept is more important than the law. If you know the precepts, it's easy to obey the law. Because the precept precedes the law. If you understand why you shouldn't run across a highway with cars, it's easy not to run across the highway. Right? Yeah. So the precept helps you obey the law. The precept says, "I don't want to be killed if I run across that highway." Those cars flying by 100 miles per hour, I'm gonna get killed. So the precept says, "This is not a good idea." Do you want to die? No. So I obey the law. I control myself. I impose discipline on myself. So precepts are more important than law. The precepts give you the incentive to keep law. Most countries are teaching people to obey laws but never teach them the precepts. Precepts happen in the mind.
Let me quote the writer of Hebrews, which I think is very important. He said, "The day will come when no man will teach you right or wrong, for the Lord shall write His laws on your mind." He's talking about precepts. You wouldn't have to fight against temptation anymore. He says, "You just know this is the right thing to do. You'll be in your mind." That's what we need to get at.
Couple more scriptures. Psalm 11, verse 10. "Read: The fear of the Lord's beginning of wisdom. All who follow His precepts of what? Good understanding." And to Him belongs what? "Eternal praise."
Psalm 19, verse 27. "Read: Let me understand the teaching of Your precepts, then I will meditate on Your wonders." If I understand the thought behind making the sun, I'll wonder about the sun. Wow. Not the sun. I'm wondering about the precept that made Him make it. Say, "Gosh, the sun provides gamma rays, ultraviolet rays, all these wonderful things that provide chlorophyll for the plant that produces oxygen that gives me life." Wow. So He thought about the sun to produce gamma rays and ultraviolet rays to create chlorophyll in the plant of the leaf of the tree to produce oxygen so I could breathe and live. Wow, man. The sun. The idea of the sun is amazing because you understand the depth of it. Not just, "The sun is nice and I'm alive." It's like, I understand the reason why He made the sun. The precepts help you meditate on His wonders. Boy, wow. A leaf keeps me alive. Wow. Every leaf out there is giving me oxygen. I'll never walk past a plant again and ignore it because I understand the precept.
See, all of this is really to tell you that if you don't get the right ideas about the kingdom of God, you get the wrong theology. That's it. So let me understand the teaching of Your precepts, then I will meditate on Your wonders. Why? "Because I will walk about in freedom because I have sought Your precepts." Please have set you free. "I will speak of Your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame." Why? Once you know precepts, I tell you, you can be bold in front of a politician, a prime minister, president, which I am. Why? I ain't afraid of nobody because I have discovered some precepts that none of their theories could defy. They think I'm smart. No, I just know precepts.
David says, "I delight in Your commands because I love them." When you know God's precepts, you love His commands because His commands make sense.
Psalm 119, verse 93. "I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have preserved my life." Save me, for I am Yours. "I have sought out Your precepts." Some of you are sitting there going, "That in the Bible? All them precepts?" You'll be amazed what's in the Bible. Look how many words the precepts, how many times has been used, and you never heard about it in church, in your pulpit, because precepts are the most important factor in life. It is the foundational idea. David says, "If I learn Your precepts, they preserve me. I have more understanding than the elders because I obey Your precepts." There it is in the Bible. It makes you smarter than your parents and your teachers because your teachers may have the wrong ideas.
Last one. Psalm 119, verse 104. "I gain understanding from Your precepts; therefore I hate doing wrong things." Precepts make you hate unrighteousness. Idea. The power of an idea.
In this seminar, we're going to introduce ideas to you every session. Don't listen to the word, to the person. Try and listen to the idea that they're communicating, because the idea is more important than the words. Remember, meanings are in people, not words. So you have to listen. What's the idea that they're trying to teach?
The next session that we're going to have is going to be talking about nations and government. Listen for the idea of how the kingdom is supposed to engage nations. How it, how it's supposed to affect this concept we call nation. The idea behind it.
Well, I have a lot more to say to you, but our time is gone. So I'm gonna take this opportunity to thank you for listening, and I hope I got some ideas across.
[Music] Bye.