Transcription
Thank you for coming to church. Are you glad to be in God's house? How about the balcony?
[Applause]
We are certainly happy to have everyone with us, and we know we have visitors. But just enjoy the Lord with us today. And for those who are watching right now, we're live streaming. We greet you. Some of you are not well, and we're glad we have this live streaming thing so you can be in church with us. We especially want to say good morning to David and Ann Culberson. David, of course, is not here. He's had some medical procedures this week and he's recuperating, and we look forward to him, uh, being back very quickly. And and you too, take good care of him. And all of the others watching by any other source of media, God bless you today.
Lord Jesus, you taught us to come to the Father in your name. I do that. You've taught us that we can pray by the power of the Holy Spirit. I do that. I'm asking you now to help me. I read in your word, you said, "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God. If any man minister, let him do it as the ability that God gives, so that God may be glorified in all things." I read that, Lord. But I am horrified to stand here this morning unless you help me. I pray that people will see and hear Jesus Christ. Don't ever let me take this out of your hand. You use personalities, you use people, but we're supposed to decrease so that you might increase. Grant that. Give me the boldness, and as Pastor Evan prayed, give us hearing ears today and seeing eyes. Help people to understand that you're not an angry God. You just, you're calling people to you. You want to save them. And all this music about chains falling off and chains being broken is true. You can do it, Lord. But people have to come to you. And I pray that that will happen today. And make us a holy body. I ask it all in the name of Jesus Christ, who is coming sooner than we know. And the whole church said, amen.
Thank you for being seated. Smile at somebody on the way down. All right. I'm going to preach today on casting out devils. And I knew that that would really excite some of you because you think you live with one or know of one. And it horrifies the remainder of you because dealing with that supernatural is not something we are accustomed to. So when I say I'm going to preach on casting out devils, you, you probably recall that the disciples couldn't do it. Jesus came by and did it. And they said, "Why couldn't we do it?" And essentially he said, "Because this kind comes out by fasting and prayer." And you're thinking, "I cannot fast. I'll pray with you, but this fasting thing, I don't know." But when I say I'm going to preach on casting out devils, I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about walking up to somebody and speaking to a spirit and saying, "Come out." See, that's the, that's the glamorous, uh, part where people get to put on a kind of a show. What I'm talking about is every day living in the truth and walking in obedience.
And I want to begin by saying that I, after all these years of being saved and all these years of being a preacher and a student of the scripture, find myself still struggling to realize the enormity of sin, how all-pervasive and totally destructive sin is. But, but we tend to think that sin is drinking and running around on your wife or your husband, lying and stealing and gambling. And when we get saved, our testimony includes, "I quit all that when I got saved." So we have kind of relegated what Jesus did on the cross to making us better people, so we don't have as many bad habits. And we like to go to church. But brother, that is so shallow. Because in order to understand the depths and the horrors of sin, you have to see what God had to do to destroy it. And that was nothing less than put his own Son on a cross to be stabbed and speared and whipped and beaten and humiliated, to bleed to death while heaven is dark, and the Father has turned his back, and his mother is weeping, and his disciples have run away, and his, his enemies are laughing. That was the extent God the Father had to go to to serve up his own Son so that the power of sin could be destroyed and the works of the devil could be broken. We will never understand it. When we get to heaven, and when we spend eternity with Jesus himself, we will not be able to plumb the depths of the love of God or the power that it took to reconcile his world back to himself. It's, it is, uh, incumbent upon me as your preacher to do everything in my power, within my mind and my heart, along with the help of the Holy Spirit, to call you to a life that says, "Thank you to a God who would do something like that."
I've preached it for years that when the Lord saves a man or a woman, they are not just better people, they are new people. Salvation didn't just improve my life, it gave me life. I was dead before Jesus touched me, hopeless and without God. But by his great love and mercy, he saw fit to reach down into a horrible, dark, deep pit and pick up a corpse that didn't even know it was dead and didn't even want anything that was holy and good about God. And so when one comes to that place, they belong to a new race of people. Remember, they're called the race of the redeemed. And this race of people lives a different life than the people of this world. We as redeemed people are called to live a holy life. We are commanded to be holy. We are called by God to long for and thirst for holiness. As God's people, we chase purity. We want to be truthful and clean before God. We want pure motives because that's who he is and that's who he called us to be. We are people of faith. We trust what we cannot see because it's the only real thing there is. The world, the non-redeemed, look at things with these eyes and they determine their whole life by what they see and what they feel. Not so with us. I love what I've never seen. I crave what I can't even understand. I want to see him, and I don't even know what he looks like. I want Jesus in my life, and if this book says it, I can stand on it. These eyes can fool me. They have fooled me. These feelings have totally fooled me at times. But this book will not and cannot fool or fail the child of God. We believe it, no matter if anybody else believes it. Thus saith the Lord, we believe it. We walk in obedience. We don't just read the Bible, we obey the Bible. This is not a novel, this is God's instruction manual. He says, "If you want to live victoriously, obey what you read. If you want to be an overcomer, obey what you see. If you want to live in the fullness of your salvation, when everybody else thinks it's silly, do what I tell you to do, and you will have life, and you will have it more abundantly."
But there's another characteristic of this race of the redeemed. And I can't just talk about it, I have to read it to you because this sums up who Jesus was. Everything that Jesus was and is is found in these words that I'm going to read to you right now. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Now, wait. Don't read ahead of me. He says, "I want you now to start thinking the way Jesus thought." "Who, being in the form of God, he was God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God." Other translations say, "He did not hang on to his throne, but came to us, made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God has also highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." And that is my model. I am to not only be a man of purity, craving holiness and faith and obedience, but I am to live a humble life and put others before me and forget about my own ambitions, my own struggles, and lay my life at the feet of Him who laid His life down for me. Humility, purity, faith, obedience, holiness.
Ask yourself this question. I am fairly certain that everybody in this building would say, "You are a Christian." I'm fairly certain of that. So if you are, how is your life different from those people who stayed up all night drinking and shooting up? You say, "Well, I didn't stay up all night drinking and shooting up." How is your attitude about life different from theirs? How about the habits that you have and refuse to give up or refuse to kick? How about your mindset? How about your temper and your tongue? How much different are you than they? Do you lay yourself down, or do you consider it your job to fight anybody about anything and stand up for yourself? I tell you, friend, if we are not walking in humility and longing for purity and holiness, I'm not sure you can call yourself a Christian.
I knew that would settle things down a little bit. See, I'm your, your pastor here. You see, I'll go ahead and tell you what I've already said to the earlier crowd. When Sandra and I were young, she had long, pretty hair, and she was beautiful as she, as she is now. And I was younger and more energetic. I was an evangelist, and she sang at all the crusades. And I preached 340 times a year, every night. And I lived for the next night. You just get up every day and say, "I'm preaching tonight. There's a crowd coming tonight. I need to get in the prayer closet and get ready for tonight." So you live for the next service. Then after some years, we came here to be pastors of this church. And I didn't have to preach every night, just every Sunday. And I started living from Sunday to Sunday. You finish this one, and you, as soon as I leave the pulpit, I'll start getting ready for next Sunday or tomorrow night. But something's happened to me in the recent times. I find that I'm not living for the next service anymore. I'm not living for the next week anymore. I'm living for eternity. I sense deep down in my heart, I'm at the door. It's not about the next event for me. It's not about, "Do they like me?" It's about, "This could be it right here. I could step into eternity any moment." And I need to be ready now. I need to be seeking Christ in his essence and humbling myself in the sight of the Lord and serving my fellow brothers and sisters. So I'm your pastor, I'm your preacher. I'm not supposed to just say things you like. I'm supposed to say things that make you mad, which I'm about to do.
I tell you, if there's ever been a move of God in this church, it's happened in the last 16 weeks on Monday night. Brother, if I've ever in my life seen a revival, I am seeing God do something. But I had a check in my spirit this week as I was praying, and the Lord wants me to remind you that just because there's lots of noise and lots of people doesn't mean everybody's living right. Oh, I've seen it time and time again. You get a big thing going in a church, and all kinds of people show up, and they think that because they feel something that they're all right with God. But I'm going to tell you something. You can't shout on top of your sins. There has to be brokenness and humility, and you've got to stop sinning. You've got to stop lying and deceiving and lusting. You've got to present your body as a living sacrifice. I don't care if 10,000 people show up in this building and you're in the middle of it and you feel something. If you're not walking in purity and holiness, if you're not obeying the scriptures, you're just as lost as you can possibly be. You cannot let the noise of a revival crowd deceive you into thinking that your heart is right with God if you're not walking in the truth every single day of your life.
You know, when God called Moses up to the top of the mountain, he said, "Come up here with me." And there he gave the law to Moses, the two tablets of the law. And while Moses was up on the mountain, 40 days had passed, and the people got restless. And it's just so typical of people. They said, "Hey, we don't know what's happened to Moses. He may never come down. That old man may have died up there. Aaron, who was Moses' brother, why don't you make us a god? We want to worship. We need some leadership around here. We need to see the, the move of the Lord around here. We haven't seen anything since he parted the Red Sea." And Aaron said, "All right, all right. I hear you. Give me your earrings." And they all came up and they took their earrings out of their ears and off their fingers and they piled it up at the feet of Mos, uh, Aaron. And Aaron took all of that gold and put it in a smelting furnace, and he fashioned it into a golden calf. And when he put it in front of the people, they went berserk. They said, "These are our gods that brought us up from Egypt." Yeah, yeah. Look at this. Oh, we can have church now. And the Bible says they sat down to eat and drink in front of their gods, but then they rose up to play. May I be repetitive, brother? You can't mess with alcohol. It's going to make you want to jump up and play and do something. I see, see, I can hear it now. "That's why we don't go to Central Church. That's why we'd rather go to that other church because they say, 'Just have a good time. You're saved forever and praise God, you're eternally secure. Just live the way you want to.'" You're not going to hear that over here because my Bible says you will not see the Lord if you don't live a life of obedience and holiness. I don't care what the crowd says. I don't care how big it is. God's not looking for big, loud crowds. He's looking for a man who'll say, "That's for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord."
Anyway, Moses comes down from the mountain, and Joshua is with him, and says, "Do you hear that noise? That sounds like a war down there." Moses says, "No, I'm afraid that's not the sound of war. That's the sound of a drunken party." And don't you understand, ladies and gentlemen, I am, I am so sincere when I tell you, God is not looking for you to jump up and down and get free if you're not walking in the truth. And if you have deception or any other sin in your life, you have to repent of that sin. This prayer meeting should be producing holiness, purity, obedience, humility. It shouldn't be concocting a, or we shouldn't be contriving some type of holy boldness where we go around, "We ain't scared of the devil." You know, one of the arrogant ideas of the church is that we can just go around and speak to devils. And you better be careful about that because if you're not living in the truth of Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit, a devil will bite your head off. He'll come into your life and tear you up like a weed eater. You cannot fool around. This is not playtime. These are not toys, spiritual toys. God is looking for people who say, "I'd rather have Jesus than anything in this world, and nothing and nobody's gonna keep me from having all of Jesus I can possibly get in my life." This should be producing a kind of pure power we've never seen before, holy living where we are denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, where we set our eyes on things above and not on things of this earth.
I have to take you to Romans chapter 6 because I'm just going to be honest with you. As a pastor, over all these years, I can't tell you how many times I've seen this person get saved, come down to the altar, claim Christ, and for six months come to church, get involved, all kinds of good things. And then suddenly they're not here anymore. And then another Sunday they're not here. Then a month passes, then two months. And finally somebody says, "Where are they?" Well, I'm afraid they've gone back. You know, how can you do that? How can someone who's been raised from the dead go back to the tomb? How can somebody who's tasted of the goodness of God, seen the power of God in their life, suddenly be so overwhelmed by sin and your past that you can't say no and you go back to the bottle, or you go back to the needle, or you go back to her, or him, or them? I don't understand that because what I read in this Bible says something like this: "Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin." Brother, it, something's wrong somewhere. I know it's really old-fashioned preaching, but you know what? You got to hear it. You're here. There is something wrong when you can't live right the rest of your life, when there's the power of the Holy Spirit, when you've got the Word, when you've got the church, when you've got Jesus interceding for you in heaven. Either you didn't get saved, or something is really wrong in your life. And I tell you, brother, if I were sitting where you are, and I'm playing with the world like some of you are, and you're hearing this, I'd be shaking in my boots this morning. I'd be asking myself, "Am I really saved?" Because a saved person is not in and out and up and down, and holy one week and living like hell the next week. When you get saved, Jesus raises you from the dead, and you become a new creation in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah.
Let me just finish that. "Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lusts. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteous righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace." Do you hear that? You don't have to sin if you don't want to sin. If you do sin, you wanted to sin. The devil cannot make me sin. Only I can choose to break the commandments of God. The devil is not stronger than the Spirit of God. No, he's not. His power was broken. His works were destroyed when Jesus rose from the dead. And the same power that raised Jesus from the dead now abides in your mortal body, so that when Satan comes and tempts you, you can laugh and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan. I belong to God." See? But Satan is always trying to entice us to move on to his ground. You know, "Come over here, come over here into his area." When we do, he has authority over us. When I move into the devil's territory, I give him authority. He can't take it unless I give it. Did everybody hear me? He cannot do a thing to me until I go into his territory. Then he can operate as an authority over my life. And I'm saved. James said, "To him that knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin." Okay? Do you hear that? To him that knows to do good and doesn't do it, it is sin. What is sin? The devil's territory. That's his bailiwick. That's his governmental area. He has all authority when sin is present.
So let me just point out some things to you this morning. You can sing all those beautiful hymns that we sang, plus those contemporary songs, and feel all that, you know, and then walk out of here and start railing about something, and you've just moved into sin. And people wonder, "Why can't I get victory over this in my life?" Because you're letting Satan have authority in your life. You're, you're not doing something you're supposed to do. You're in some degree of disobedience. So, are you ready now for me to really aggravate some of these? Did you know you can't rail against the government without Satan moving into your life? Did you know you can't rail against our government leaders, angry? Sorry. And we'll leave here and go do that. Some of you are doing it against Trump. And I preach this a lot. Yes, I know I'm repeating myself. Some of you did it against Obama. We all do it because they don't line up with our way of thinking. It may not even be a biblical thing, it just may be a social, uh, idea about something. So we rail at them. The Bible never says to condemn or rail or even criticize government officials because government is of God. And a shocking verse says that when Moses, I'm sorry, when Michael the Archangel was contending with the devil about the body of Moses, they must have been saying, "No, I'm taking him. No, I'm taking him. I'll take him. No, I'm taking him." Michael wouldn't argue. He just said, "The Lord rebuke you. The Lord rebuke you." Even Michael the Archangel, who could have smashed Satan into nothingness, said, "God will have to take care of this. I will not."
There's an interesting story in the Old Testament about Saul and David. Now, you know, David at this point in the Bible has been anointed king of Israel, except he's not, because Saul's in the way. And Saul doesn't want to give up the kingship. So now Saul's trying to kill David. He's chasing David everywhere, everywhere. And so Saul is abandoned by God. He's a wicked man, he's a murderer, he's about to get into witchcraft, and he's chasing the holy king of Israel. So the Bible says that Saul and his men, in their effort to find David, decided to take a rest near a cave. Now, listen. And Saul went into the cave to take care of his needs, I guess you know what that means, okay? So his soldiers stay outside. Saul goes in and he takes his kingly robe off and lays it down and goes a little farther into the cave. And David and one of his men sneaked through the barrier, the guards. And David cut a little piece of Saul's robe off and said, "Let's go." And his assistant said, "Kill him! God has delivered you into his hand, or him into your hand. Kill him! You won't get another chance." This has to be God. David said, "Come with me." And he walks up a hill and he says, "I will not touch the Lord's anointed. He may be after me, and he may kill me, but I will not touch the Lord's anointed." And about that time, Saul walked out of the cave. And David said, "Saul, my father." Called him his father. How respectful is that? "You are the anointed of the Lord. Look what I could have done, but you are the king." And he had crocodile tears and said, "You're a better man than I am, David. I'm done." But then he changed his mind and started chasing him again. Listen. Are you hearing me?
And this time, Saul goes into a cave to take a nap. And the Bible says the Lord allowed a deep sleep to come on Saul's protectors, and they just fell asleep. And David and his one of his mighty men went in. And David took the sword, I'm sorry, the spear that was stuck in the ground that Saul's head, and took the jug of water and sneaked out. And his assistant said, "You're kidding me. This is the second time you're missing it. God, you didn't do it the first time. God's letting you do it now. Tell him, kill him. If you don't kill him, let me kill him." And David said, "He's the anointed of the Lord, and I will not touch him." "Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus." David recognized that Saul had an anointing on him at one time, and he was God's responsibility. And at that time, he was God's man. And David was not going to do anything. Right. How is it that we can rail, there's that word, the third time, blaspheme, cuss and swear towards our leaders these days with very, and they may be scallywags, are you kidding me? They, they could be, they are rascals in their actions. But God doesn't allow you to usurp his authority. He said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." And I would just submit to all of you because things are really heating up these days. There's a lot of division in this country. But I would admonish you that the Bible never says you have the right to criticize and swear and blaspheme and condemn. It says, "Pray for those who are in authority, that we may live quiet and peaceable lives." I would ask you, if you prayed as much for them as you criticized them, oh, what would happen? Brother, listen to your preacher. The only people who have the power to change anything is the church of the living God. But if the church moves into the sin area, the territory of the devil, we've lost our authority to pray. But when we refuse to do it, and instead bless and lift up and ask God to bless them, something's going to happen. When we complain, we move into the devil's territory. When, when we're critical of everything and everybody, that's the devil's territory, my friend. You're operating in the devil's territory, therefore he has the right to come against you any way he pleases. When you live in anger, that's the devil's territory. I hear you saying amen, and I see your heads nodding. Listen to the preacher. We are notorious for saying amen and yes when we are still guilty of stuff. You can't be an angry person and live with the authority of Jesus.
So how do you feel about the black man? How do you feel about the white man? What are you angry about? God saved you. What do you mean, "All of these aliens coming into this country and ruining our society?" Really? What about all those Asians coming and taking your jobs? Oh, there's a whole lot to be angry about, don't you know it? And we are. Yeah. I'm standing here saying, I'm looking you dead in your eyeballs. We're angry people. We are not humble. We have not learned to serve one another. We have not learned to forget the past and lift up one another. We are still walking in that area where we want some type of revenge and payment, no matter what. When you walk in lust, you're walking in the devil's territory, sir, ma'am. When you have an unbridled tongue, you know, James said, "If you can control your tongue, you can control every other part of your body." And we will gossip, and we will repeat stuff, and we will say things. This is full of deadly poison. You see, you can't bless with this and at the same time curse with this. The Bible says, because when you do, you're in the devil's territory. When we fail to honor God properly with our finances, we're in the devil's territory. He can do whatever he wishes with our checkbook, our bank account, or anything else. When we exhibit, go around with all our scars, "Look, somebody did me wrong. Look, I'm at a disadvantage. Look, I never had what you had." We are in the devil's territory because if I read this Bible correctly, the only person allowed to flaunt and parade their scars is Jesus Christ, because His scars made it possible for your scars to be healed.
[Applause]
And, and unforgiveness. Whoa. Wow. Unforgiveness. Just won't let it go. You know, at some point, don't you have to say, "Would I rather have the fullness of Jesus, or still be angry at her? Am I going to let him control me the rest of my life? Am I going to dodge people the rest of my life, or will I just open myself up to the fullness of the Holy Spirit and let the mind of Jesus Christ, which was humility and forgiveness, control me?" This little phrase that Jesus used, remember, he's about to go to the cross. He's about to be arrested. Judas is about to betray him. He said to the other disciples, "It's time for you to go, because the prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me." I love that. Said, "He's coming to get me, and they are going to arrest me, not because I'm guilty of anything. In fact, he has nothing in me. No lust, no deceit, no lying, no anger, no hatred, no pride. I'm completely empty of all of that. And I've come to lay my life down. He's coming, but he's coming for an innocent man. They're going to kill me, but they're going to kill an innocent man. And an innocent man is going to rise on the third day." And because that innocent man rose on the third day, we now have the power to walk in the authority of Jesus Christ. And it's either true or it isn't. "Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." I tell you again, Satan is not greater than Jesus. Which means he's not greater than you. I tell you again, you don't have to yield to sin. You don't have to give in to a habit. You don't have to go back. You don't have to revisit the pig pen because the Spirit of Jesus Christ has set you free from everything except the goodness and the blessing of the Lord.
Okay, let me finish just a bit. That would have been a good time to finish right there. But I'm living for eternity, and I got to get this one in. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says the Lord. "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." That's how you live victoriously. That's what an overcomer is. It's someone who says, "They did me wrong, but I'm going to bless them. They're laughing at me, but I'm going to pray for them. They took mine, but I'm going to give them my coat. They are unjust and dishonest, but I am honest and just, and I will treat them the way I want to be treated." And in so doing, who's hearing me today? You see, you do not win by fighting as a Christian. You win by submitting. You don't overcome by being stronger. You overcome by being humble.
Stand with me, please. Amen.
[Applause]
Obedience equals faith, and faith equals authority. That's why the message is about casting out devils, casting out demons. I know some of you wanted the more dramatic stuff, but every day when I get up, I have to cast out a devil. Every single morning. I'm honest. My feet do not touch the floor before I say, "Lord, keep me, help me, guide me. Don't let me see it. Let me be like Daniel, who when he was told he had to meet with the king at dinner tomorrow night, he sat in his room and prayed and said, 'I will not give in to the peer pressure. I will not eat the king's food. They can kill me if they want to, but my mind is made up.'" Before you even get going, do you hear me? Before you even get going, you've got to say, "I belong to Jesus, and I will not allow the flesh and the devil to encroach upon my life. I'll not move into his territory, and I'll dare him to step into mine." Can I get an amen? Wait, amen not for me. Don't amen me. I don't need it. I just want you to amen the truth of the living God. Can you amen that? If you can do it, they're going to sing. Lindsay, are you ready? They're going to sing, "What there it is."
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In the name of Jesus.
[Applause]
Tomorrow night, 7 o'clock. But how many will lift a hand and say, "Before I get here, I will prepare my heart for prayer meeting"? Lift your hand if you'll do that.
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I will say it again. You might ought to come early to get a seat. But if you will come with a prepared heart, I believe we're going to see the glory of the Lord. "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen." See you unless Jesus comes.
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