Transcription
First John four. You won't look at First John four. This would be awesome. Can we look at First John four? See, Jesus paid for our transformation. You see how the chapter starts? Beloved, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits. That doesn't mean you look at its leg. Oh, wow. Yeah, just giddy about everybody. Just, yeah, test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Now, watch. By this, you know the Spirit of God. Now, see, there's people that fight over this. People, church leaders, fight over this right here. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Why is that the barometer to test the spirit? Is it up there? Why is that the barometer to test the spirit, whether it's of God or not, that it confesses Jesus came in the flesh? Why isn't it that Jesus is Lord? That Jesus is the Son of God? Isn't that more spiritual?
Why is the barometer that Jesus came in the flesh? Because the lying spirits, the things that don't want to acknowledge His thing, don't want you and me to ever see what was accomplished through His flesh and what we've become because of it. Doesn't run off to ever step into the finished work, just pay homage to Him and bless our food and now I lay me down to sleep. And, yeah, test the spirits. Not only spirits of the Lord, but the spirit that doesn't acknowledge Jesus came in the flesh, it doesn't make much of that. Why? Why? I added to make much of it because you can't know that without making much of it. Why? 'Cause it's the whole reason He came. Yeah, there's a lot of people in the church that just fight with the theology of Jesus coming as a man. They just want to see, "Yeah, but He was God." He doesn't even want you to think that. As strong as He was a man, He said He's the Son of Man, not the Son of God. He wants you to see Him as a man. Paul said, "There's only one man between God and man, and it's the man." He didn't save. Oh, God, when He rose from the dead, He said, "Touch Me. Don't be freaked out." He said, "Come on, touch Me, man." A spirit doesn't have flesh and blood. Like, "What's He trying to say when He's raised from the dead? I'm still a man." Why? It's the blood of a man, not the blood of God, on the mercy seat.
An antichrist spirit doesn't want to acknowledge that Jesus came in the flesh. Why doesn't one ever want humanity to see the dividends and the power of what He accomplished through that flesh, so that you never step into what He paid for? And if all you do is fight over theology because we say He's more man, emphasize Him being man more than God, and you have a theological issue and think somehow we're insulting God, you're way wrong. It's imperative that you understand He came as a man, anointed by God. He defeated the devil. God defeated the devil through a man, anointed by God. He didn't defeat the devil through God, through a man, anointed by God. That should not be offensive to any Christian. Yeah, but He's 100% God, brother. Nobody's taking away His deity. And it concerns me when people get stumbled there because they won't see that He came as a man and reaped the fruit thereof, and they'll revere Him from a distance and worship Him from afar and never let the reality of who He is overtake their life. He doesn't want your homage. He wants your communion. Are you with me? Come on. Acts 10:38, "How God anointed." Don't be afraid. Jesus, with the Holy Spirit. Watch. God doesn't have to anoint God. He's already anointed. He's bringing out His man. Put His man's side. Jesus called Himself the Son of Man constantly. Can you tell? Can God be tempted? Then how was Jesus tempted at all points, yet without sin? Because He came as a man. Does God slumber? Then why was Jesus sleeping in a boat? Because He came as a man. Who? That's enough proof right there. I give you four scriptures to prove. Five. No mediator except God, a man. Six. "Touch Me." A spirit doesn't have flesh and bone. As I, I gave you six examples of His humanity. He went in and got baptized, came up, and the Holy Spirit came upon Him. We're following Him. That's the same way it's supposed to work for us. "Men and brethren, we're cut to the heart. What should we do? Believe and repent and be baptized, all of you, for the remission of sins, and you'll receive the Holy Spirit." Why? 'Cause He did this. This thing is not complicated. It's so exciting. It's new life through Jesus Christ.
Now, you could sell cheap and just try to serve a doctrine, have a belief system in language and same old emotion and same old reactions. Some days you're okay, some days you'd rather not. Woke up, self-conscious, "Flashy me, myself, and I." Well, he should know. Well, she's. Well, how come? Well, why didn't that? It's all your privilege, I guess, huh? Or you can say, "No, they're just going to live by faith. I'm going to put all that away and follow Him." We think it's humility. We think it's humility. Well, He's the Lord. We're just falling flesh. We're not living in the spirit. What about walking one with the Holy Spirit? What about following Jesus? What about being sincere and denying yourself, picking up your cross and really thought? But your buddies tell grace kicks in and empowers you. We say, "Well, that was Jesus." No, no. He hasn't even walked. You're saying that. He's not. You're making Him so special, man, in the flesh. Because if you make Him a special man in the flesh, you can't follow Him. You have to see He was loved. If you say, "That was Jesus," you missed that it was love, and we can follow love. What's the greatest commandment? Love. Everything you are. The second is like it. He marries them to make someone. But He has a woman to for the sake of a list. But what He's saying is the same. The same as loving God. This is how you can love God. We haven't seen. You can't even love those who you have seen. Here's the problem. We see people who what they appear to be instead of what they're created to be. But if you see them for their value and their purpose, your love will abound. And it's going to get mad at them. You'll hurt for them. It's family. And every you feel merciful instead of crying for yourself, that we need to cry for them. Why promoters change? No sudden you realize forgiving father, they know not what they do. You realize that people knew who they were, where they would be saying with the sand and act like they're acting, and it will break your heart for them. Not because of it. Why? Because that something has died, and you're not alive for you. Your life for history. Come on. I'm just preaching the simple gospel. You're alive for history. Yes, your life gets to bring Him glory. Your life gets to reveal who He is through your attitudes, your expressions, and the way you live in the spirit. Yes. Yeah. Bobby says, "If you live by the spirit, Galatians 5, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh." That's stop making the flesh like some monstrous Pac-Man that can't be fed and fuel. Dreamer. If you live with spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Then do yourself a favor and stop waking up thinking you're set and fail. Set to just live in the flesh. Wake up. Stick it. Miss it by 10, by 9, by noon. Come on. Tells me to live by the spirit, to get up and live in righteousness. To understand that He loves me for me and not against me. And I'm not taking a test. Jesus' test is already good. See, I'm not even asking you to agree with me. Just to think about what I'm saying. I just know this. This thing makes you free. And the biggest thing the gospel makes you free from is you. Don't be conformed to the world. Be transformed. What? Be transformed. So it doesn't say by biting your lip and trying hard. Let's get old million miles away from that. That works thing. That thing that tries to make you better on your own. Now you have a heart to be better. And that's where grace will meet you and change you on the inside. You change the inside of the cup, and the outside will be clean. You don't have to try. You get changed on the inside, and you'll look different outward. Yeah. Don't be conformed to the world. Be transformed. Romans 12:12. It says, "By the." How are you gonna get transformed? By the renewing. You look that up. You know what it literally means? Thinking like you've never thought before. So where am I gonna get those new thoughts? Where am I gonna get that new way? Where am I gonna get that new perspective, that new wisdom, that new mindset, that new process of thinking? Probably from Him, huh? Probably from looking at His life. You know what impresses me about Jesus? He's not just my sin sacrifice. He's not just the suffering Savior. He's my model for life. He showed me what life looks like in the Father. He didn't say, "Sing to me, pray to me when you're overwhelmed and have a list." He said, "Follow Me." That's amazing. He just said, "Depend on Me. Count on Me. Need Me. Follow Me." If you couldn't, He wouldn't ask you. If He wasn't going to empower you to, He wouldn't open the door to make it available. If you couldn't follow Him, He wouldn't ask you to. I'm so excited. He invited me into His life. And one of the biggest traps in our lives is being sincere about Jesus and missing these points. And all of a sudden, just relating to what always has been in the way that seems right to a man, and all of our human experiences and years' worth of mentalities and failures and weaknesses and and practices and saying, "Oh, well, this is the way we are." It's amazing. He loves us, though. He's telling me I'm created to be different. Then, and then when you start pursuing different, everybody looks at you different. Get real. Get out of denial. He didn't mean that we're just the way we are. What we've studied a fallen man and say, "This is us." And He tells me, "I find myself in Him." You can get mad at me if you want. I don't encourage it. It won't do any good for you. It'll just make you mad. But I'm gonna follow Him. I'm gonna follow Him. I'm gonna believe He's the way. And if He says I can be free, I'm pursuing freedom and understanding what it means. If He said I can live selfless, I'm going for it. If He said, "Follow Me," I'm going after Him. Now, I'm encouraging you to run with me and go after it with me. I'm gonna get on a plane tomorrow. I'm gonna fly home. Life's gonna be good in God. There ain't nothing nobody can do about it. I'm just me. I'm gonna be me in Him for the rest of my days. And I'm just having fun. You'll get mad at me. You can disagree with me, but you can't change what I'm seeing and believing. You can't stop this thing. We have the unity of faith. It doesn't matter what church you go to if you believe the same thing. In this, I wake up every day for His image. I'll wake up every day to love. I wake up every day to shine. Life's not a grind. Life's not a dread. Life's not a bleep or a blank. Life's a gift. And He gave me the gift of life through Jesus Christ. So if I wake up tomorrow, it'll be mercy that wakes me up to give me one more day to be like Him. That's Christianity. Can I be strong and straight and narrow? Anything else is missing. Why He came. If it's the strong motive, there's a lot of blessings to Christian. But that's the point. The point of Christianity is you being transformed back into His image and becoming loved and living by a spirit. And if we miss becoming loved, we missed the whole reason why. And we preach the gospel that serves us instead of transforms us. Ain't that something? I can be so sure that because of Scripture, it's the goal of our instruction, love. The purpose of the commandment, first Timothy 1:5. If you have not loved, first Corinthians 13, you got nothing. If God loved us this way, ought we not love one another? Watch this. Any, my first John, to any man says he abides in Him, ought to walk even as He walked. So you can't say, "Well, that was Jesus." Come on. How do we get out of these scriptures? If you live by the spirit, you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. That's just stuff. Think we're flesh waiting to fail. Now, you live your life in the spirit. You make the tree good. As a man thinketh, so he is. You think you'll fail, your wait to happen. Yeah, you got your fruit on the tree, and your fruit produces your belief, and it's a vicious cycle. And the more you hear the words, you got condemnation because of the wrong believing, because you don't see what you've become. So you keep repeating what you don't see. And we think you need to live. No, you need truth. We think you got a demon. No, you need truth. You make the tree good. And the first guy, you teach people who they are and what they were created for. Oh, hang on their branches and shine from their tree. But if you make the tree bad, the fruit will be what it believes. He's not talking about try harder, do better. You just talk about the, when he talks about the trees, talk about your identity, what you see yourself to be. It's the fruit. You'll better witness up. How do you know that's true? 'Cause He said, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit." And when you hear that, you become a fruit inspector. And all of a sudden, you think, "Oh my goodness, I can't even be a good tree 'cause I got something in my life I haven't dealt with." Or somebody thinks of somebody in the room. "Seriously, ain't no good tree 'cause it says a good tree can't bear bad fruit." But then He turns right around and says, "A bad tree can't bear good fruit." And you go, "Wait a minute, I'm confused 'cause not everything in my life's a throwaway, and there's some good things God's done in my life and through my life." Now I'm confused because I see something that needs to change, but I see a lot of things I'd love to keep in the Lord that I believe are God. It proves He's not talking about works. He's not saying, "If you're a good tree, prove it." He's saying, "If you're a good tree, believe it." And believe that you're the righteous tree, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified. Wake up every day and thank God that you're right in His sight. Wake up every day and thank God that He loves you. Wake up every day and thank God that you have nothing to prove. You're accepted in the beloved, and you can't be rejected by men because you don't live for the praises of men. You live to bring praises unto God, and you love the people around you. You say stuff in your bedroom like, "God, I thank You. The days of complaining are over. Nobody owes me a thing. I'm not gonna be complaining and devoured by the devourer and give myself away as if I'm living for myself. Even if things are right or wrong, I'm gonna walk in righteousness and overcome the world with love because You overcame the world." Yeah. So in the world you have tribulation, in Him you have peace. To be of good cheer, He said, "I've overcome the world." How do you overcome the world? Because if you overcame the world, we have tribulation. He overcame the world because of the perspective He came in. He came in love, and we beheld Him in grace and truth. He overcame the world because He came in a different eye than we were raised in. And now He brought us into the light and said, "If you have a single eye, narrow, confined, difficult is the way." Come on. All the scriptures make sense in this light. You preach, "Become in love," and all the scriptures make sense and come together like a beautiful picture. Yeah. So you got to say tonight in your heart, "I'm in. I'm going for it. I'm gonna become love." Tonight's another night to be condemned. Tonight's not to be hopeless. And I promise you, tonight's not like to be angry. It's not nice to be hopeless. You got home. Yeah. You gotta live by what God said, not by how you feel or what you've done. You gotta live by what God said. Through a song. Remember the first temptation when Jesus came out of the wilderness? What's the first temptation? "If you're the Son of God, turn these stones into bread." Did you ever think about Jesus's answer? I mean, he kind of made light of the bread part. Forty-day fast, belly growl. By saying, "Man shall not live by bread alone." He could have stopped there, and we could have just figured, "Okay, he's not going to give to the flesh. He's gonna live by the spirit, find grace and strength through the spirit." He said, "Man shall not live by bread alone." But he said something else after he said that. He made another line on it. What'd he say after that? "But by every word that..." So how? Why did he say that then? Why did he use that right there after 40 days of fasting? And Satan said, "Look, if you really Son of God, why don't you turn these breads into stones into bread?" "Man shall not live by bread alone." Okay, that sounds spiritual. "But by every word to presume." Why? Because when it came out of the water, what did God say? When he got baptized, before he went into the wilderness for forty days, what did God say when he came out of the waters of baptism? "This is My beloved Son." So the devil comes and says, "Hey, if you're the Son of God, do something to prove it." He said, "Don't need to do a thing. I don't need to turn no stones into no bread. I'm a Son 'cause He said so." He said, "On My Son." I settle it. I'm a Son. And I'm turning no stone into no bread. What's the point? You don't have to do anything to be. He did it. So go ahead and be. And here's the powerful point. All your being will translate into doing. And you can tell by a person's life what they really believe by how they live. You know them by their fruits. So is it really trying harder, clean up, get that out of your life? Or is it believing, clear and believing more consistent? The message He sent through a son, and being translates into doing. Are you with me? Okay, I'm done. I can tell I'm done. You.