Transcription
God Almighty, who was from the beginning, who wasn't, is, and is to come, who no one is greater, who always is and will be, decided to put himself in the womb of a woman and be born as a man to redeem the truth about men. And we're going to get mad at life and how it's unfolding, and where was God? I'll tell you where he was: in the womb of a woman. When he owed us nothing, he gave us all. In the womb of a woman, getting born of a woman, putting on flesh, and becoming a man. He had to eat. He had to go to the bathroom. And through a man anointed by God, who was Jesus, Son of God. Everybody freaks out when you call him a man. He was God. Yeah, I get it. He was a man too. You know what spirit you need to test the spirits? And and with spirit that's not of God is the spirit that doesn't acknowledge Jesus came in the flesh. We fight over when a minister says Jesus was a man. Everybody freaks out. And you have to see, he was a man. But you can't follow God. You can only follow a man anointed by God. I'm not saying he wasn't God. I'm not taking away his deity. People say, "Dan Mower doesn't even believe in Jesus's deity." You are absolutely lost in what you're saying, and you'll find out one day that you were on a tangent. You have to see the power of him becoming a man anointed by God because you can't follow God, but you can follow Jesus. He went around saying, "He's the Son of Man." The Son of Man. The Son of Man. Did Holy Spirit come upon Jesus at water baptism? If he came as God, why would Holy Spirit have to come upon him and baptize him and anoint him? If he came as God, why would he have to anoint him? Why would God? In Acts 10:38, "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth." He didn't say Jesus, Son of God. He said Jesus of Nazareth. Why? He's letting you know he came as a man. Does God ever sleep? Where was Jesus in the boat? Can you tempt God? Then how was Jesus tempted at all points? Hmm. We probably ought to read our Bibles more than we criticize and stop reading into what men are saying and living in presumption. I have never even thought for an inkling in my life to take away Jesus's deity. It's never even dawned on me. But I don't read the internet, and I don't pay attention to YouTube. But my friends get upset sometimes about it. They say, "People are like chopping you up, saying you don't believe in Jesus's deity." I'm like, "Okay, let them write. They should be out praying for the sick. They're just writing critical articles. They should be out ministering the gospel." The whole time they're writing that stuff, I'm sitting on a plane, and people are crying, and I'm getting words of knowledge. You think I'm threatened by an article when the Spirit of the living God is inside of me, and you can't do anything about it? You think I'm insecure and hurt when God loves me and lives in me? Are you kidding me? Oh, dear Jesus.
Think about the radical thing Jesus did. Don't turn it into an Easter, Christmas story, baby in a manger. Don't just get sentimental with it. Think about it. God became a man. In every religion on the earth, and I'm not criticizing other religions, I'm just making a point. I'm not making fun of people. I'm making a point. In every religion, you look at it, it's about a man dying for his god. He would give his life. We die by giving ourselves centeredness. But in our faith, God died for his people. It's so humbling. God died for his people. Why'd he do that? So we could step into that death, we taught it last night, and be buried into everything he died two and four, and raise in the newness of life, and get this thing on and live what it was intended to be before sin ever came on the earth. And then we turned it into blessings and favor and protection and prosperity. And when things ain't going our way, our countenance is down, and we prove again and again and again we don't really understand why he came. And somehow we think it was for us instead of his great name. He said through Ezekiel, "My people went out from among and went to every nation. They went, they profaned my name, my great name." He said, "So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to bring them all back. I'm going to put a new heart in them and their spirit in them. And I'm not going to do it for their sake. I'm gonna do it for my great name." In other words, I'm gonna restore my name through the lives of people. That's pretty humbling. That's what you get to be a part of if you're willing to live by faith. Or you can just go to church and pray for blessings and, "Yay, I got favor today." But make sure if that's your idea, that you're walking in love, you're making peace, and you're showing mercy, and there's no offense in your heart. Because that has to be if you're going to walk in the light as he's in the light. Are you with me? Pretty radical that Jesus would come as a man. It gets more radical as you think about it. I, I'm 26 years saved, and I'm not over it. I'm like, it motivates me. He was perfect. He did perfect. And he was always purely perfect. And he got treated as if he was as wrong as the wrongest wrong. And he never said a word about it. He hangs and dies. Pastor Kevin, they beat him. In Isaiah 40:52, they, they beat him and mar him more than anyone was ever marred by men. That means they disfigured him and misarranged him, that when they were finished, there was no way you could say who that was unless you watched from the beginning. That's intense. That's not just a slap on the hand. That's not just a few nails in the hands and feet. That's not 39 lashes. That's disfigurement. Come on. I, I met many Christians that said, "The Passion was too, too, too gross, too raw, couldn't watch it." Passion was too, too explicit. Two. You, every Christian should watch The Passion. Make yourself watch it and get sober because it was way worse than that movie. The movie was hard to watch. I got it just to watch it every few months just to stay sober, just so complaining never snuck in and thought it had a voice, just so I could never just be self-centered for a moment. I just see what he did and what he paid for. Now, he walked in love. Doesn't make him a doormat. It's a living epistle of love. The movie, The Passion wasn't even close to what the Bible says it was with Jesus marred more than any of the sons of men. He was totally disfigured. Come on. They burned people, boiled people in oil back in those days. They drug them through the wilderness and deserts on chariots. They drug them for miles sometimes. You, you stop that chariot after dragging a man for a mile through the rocks and the brush, and you tell me if you can tell who he is. They would tie people to poles in generations along the way, and they would burn them at stakes. You all aware of that? So when the fire goes out, you're telling me you can tell if that's a man or a woman? And Jesus marred more than any of them. Why? Why so brutal? Why would he do it? Because he loves us. He knows what he created us to be. And he knew us from the beginning. Even though he came to his own, and his own knew it's not knew him. Not he knew us from the beginning. And he wept with compassion because they had no shepherd. And he said, "I'm their shepherd, and I'm a good shepherd, and I'm going to lay my life down for the sheep. And I'm going to restore the truth about man. And those that believe will enter into this life." We, if we're not careful, have turned it into a beneficial message that blesses me and helps me get by. Why'd he have to get disfigured? Because when sin got done with Adam in the garden, he didn't look anything like he was created to be. He was totally marred. So Jesus lost his visage and lost his appearance to get our true identity back. He died so you could live. He was beaten so you can live unbeatable. There's so many parallels to the cross. My personal favorite, not that I need one, I just have one. He, he was marred more than any of the sons of men so I could walk in my true identity and walk in a new light. He paid for that. And we get discouraged if a certain prayer isn't answered. Please don't let that be you today. House, let Fairfield County know the love of God. Let's not go to church. Let's be her. Let's take the challenge and the charge today to heart. And don't get offended at me. If you're offended, you already got real hard issues because all I'm doing is sharing scripture. You'd have probably been mad at Jesus because all I did was share his word. Please don't think it's normal to be offended. It's normal to love. The kingdom of God is at hand. Don't look here. Don't look there. For it's inside of you. So go preach saying, "The kingdom of God is here," with your voice, maybe by the way you live, maybe by your conduct, maybe by your attitude. And all of a sudden, people will see that, and you'll have a voice with men. I worked for two years with my co-workers after working with them 13 years, just another guy, as bad as the rest. Now I get saved, get persecuted horribly for it for two years. How can you persecute me when I have God reality? I'm going to bed with peace in my heart. I'm waking up to the voice of God and his presence daily. And you're going to persecute me for being in the most incredible place I've ever been? You're going to write cartoon things on the bulletin board and think you're getting to me? I feel sorry for you. You have no idea what you're saying. You don't have a clue. It just boasts in your ignorance. You think I'm hurt by persecution? For two years, they thought they're persecuting me, and I'm living and having the time of my life with Jesus. And in time, they saw that I wouldn't change. You know what the Lord told me? He said, "Your life has unstopped the ears that had otherwise been closed, and now I'm moving." And I started seeing them get saved. I saw people getting healed. I could tell you a lot of stories about the workplace, and they persecuted me for two years. Two years thinking they're mocking me when I'm living in the realm of life, true joy in my heart. And just because nobody can relate, there has to be something wrong with me. Because it ain't the reality, brother. You probably ought to run that by Jesus. [Laughter] Because he had the anointing of joy and the oil of joy more than them all. I think we think Jesus was like, real mystic, mysterious, serious. If good tidings is great joy, and he is the good tidings, probably a lot of great joy in the heart of God. Amen.
So here's what I'm saying to you in closing. Don't grow weary in well-doing. Don't get deceived in this life. And don't let things matter more than what matters most. Check your heart always. And weigh yourself. If how you're thinking and what you're doing isn't producing life, I promise you, you're on the wrong track. There's a time we'll lose a dear loved one like Liz, and I just have, and we'll cry, and it'll hurt, and it'll be real. But the truth so supersedes the pain, and we know it in our heart that we cannot lose unless we let go. We can't lose mama's. So beyond okay. My brother is so beyond okay. I sat in my truck and thought, "I'll never text him again. And my phone will never." And I look, and it'll be him. We'll never. He'll never pull up his truck again and get out his rods and say, "Hey," and have his little cooler. Never again. It just was so surreal. It was like, "Never again." I'm sitting in my truck coming back from the hospital. I'm like, "Never again." And it was, it was, it was real. But it didn't seem like it could be because it was so close. The first thing I thought about, I said, "Lord, he's with you." I said, "I preach it all over the country. I say I believe it, but I don't think I see it like I could." I said, "He's with you." Like absent from the body, present with the Lord. Like right now, he's with the real you. Not a piece of you. Not a goosebump and a hair. Said, "Oh, I felt the Lord in worship." Now, no, no. He's with you. And I was like, and I said, I laughed. I said, "I bet that's better than sitting in a tree stand." Because I like hunting, man. And I like my tree stand. I like the sun coming up. I like Jesus in my tree stand with me. I know some of you don't like hunting while you're in Ohio. Most of you probably okay with it. As a matrix. Then one day the Lord said, "Hey, you better get up now and get ready, or you won't be ready." I said, "He's hunting with me." I jumped up and got ready. And all of a sudden, I realized why he told me, "Stand up." Little deer lost his life for the gospel, went right into my freezer and fed me for a year. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. He's in the tree stand with me. I said, "Lord, I bet what he's experiencing now is better than sitting in a tree stand." And you know what it did? It just did something. And even though he won't text me again, even though he won't hug bomb again, and I won't see my brother's face again, I got so many memories. I so treasure the 61 years. You so treasure who your mama was. You're a good mama, praying mama, a blessing. And we're going to get hung up that she died suddenly, and now we lost her and missed the rest of the beautiful story that was always here. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to be thankful. We're going to be humble. And we're going to keep him in his rightful place, and we're going to stay in ours. And we're going to worship him with our lives because we're believers. What do you do? I believe you're out of your mind. I'm probably out of yours. We're believers. I don't even know how to get mad at God. I don't even know how that could work. I'm 26 years saved. 25 years ago, I was in a home group in this position with people all around me, up the stairs, and in the room, because God was in our home always. And people flooded to our home. And I was barely a year saved, and I'm in the room. And I said, "I got a revelation today in prayer." And I love my wife and my family, and and I just love everything about that. But you listen to me. I pointed to my wife. I said, "You strip her from me. You take those two beautiful kids from my life. You burn down this house." And I was so intense, I went like this, and buttons blew off my shirt. I said, "And you rip this shirt off my back. You can't touch me now." You can see I'm not a Christian for well-being. I'm a Christian for his great name. I'm not a Christian for survival. I'm a Christian to shine. I said that, and people were looking at me like, "Well, brother, I don't know. We came for this message. We need to come to your house for this message." Because everybody's praying for the protection of everything that they care about. And if anything happens to anything on that list, they backslide and lose heart and stop praying and don't go to church for months. And prove that they never had covenant, they never understood covenant, and never really knew why they were Christian. And somehow reduced God to their busboy and their table waiter instead of their King. [Music] You can't touch me now. You just can't touch me now. And I might be too intense for you. You have to work that out. But I am probably a fraction of what I should be. If your mama could pop in here right now, if my brother could pop in here right now and preach to us, we'd probably be overwhelmed. You think I'm intense? We're going to find one day the greatest preachers on the earth weren't preachers that studied their Bible in theology. They're people that knew him, and they preached out of what they knew, not what they thought. And what they knew was evidenced by how they lived. And it's different. So it gets looked upon with a critical eye because it's different. He's different. We're in the world, we're not of it. Don't ever again be conformed to the world. Be transformed by thinking like you've never thought before. I could do a lot now. I got you all set up. I feel it in the room. Here's what I want you to do. Take the words you heard today serious. Don't get to your car and try to figure me out. "What'd you think of that guy?" "I don't know. He's pretty intense." Don't, don't let the highest revelation be your judgment of me because I told you, I'm getting in my car, God willing, and driving home, and I'm gonna have the time of my life. And the next time you see me, I'm gonna be like this, or a little worse, because I might know him just a little more. And it doesn't mean I didn't have trials. It doesn't mean somebody didn't make bad decisions. It doesn't mean I didn't lose a brother. It doesn't mean, just means I know him. And I understand why mercy woke me up today to give me one more day to be more like him. And outside of that, nothing else is priority. Everything flows through the eye of that needle. Are you with me? Could you stand your feet with me in humility and come before the Lord? I understand. I could have an altar call right now. I get it. Let your heart be your altar call. You get real with yourself. You get real with God today. If you haven't even been thinking to live in this way, ask yourself why not. If you're struggling with what I'm saying, make sure you ask yourself why you're struggling. And make sure your reason isn't self-centered because if it is, it's already a giveaway. It's just unresolved hurt, past conflict. You've still got some kind of thing toward God because of life. Come on. God promised us life in him. He didn't say everything would go the way we were hoping. But he promised us life in him. See, when you lose a mother spontaneously, when you lose a brother spontaneously, maybe that's when you need faith. Maybe that's why you have faith. Maybe you just don't have faith to get a better job. Maybe you have faith to continue to live the life you believe in the face of adversity. Maybe faith is more than a tool to get you a blessing. Maybe his faith is a mindset you live by, and you never turn back, and you never grow weary in well-doing, and you run the race worthy of a prize. And one day you stand before the Lord, and you rejoice because he rejoices over you and says, "Well done." You believed. Belief isn't a confession. It's an expression. The life you live reveals what you believe. There will not be a survey form filled out on judgment day. Your life will speak loud. What you believe is what you gave yourself to, and that's what every man will answer for. Make sure you live for what matters most. If you need to repent today, it's not a "boohoo, I'm sorry." It's a "duh, yeah, what? Okay." That's how easy repentance is. Duh. It's, it's yeah, what? Yeah, that's repentance. It's change. It's turning from and turning to. Father, I asked for blessing in this house. I pray we run this race. I pray that Fairfield County pastor come here. My man, I'm not doing this just to be emotional. You pray for this county. I've heard it in your heart. We believe. Believe with me, church, that Fairfield County will know the love of God because of the love of God in people. Not some just mystical outpouring that we read about 30 years later and wonder where the fruit is now. But because of the outpouring on men's lives and hearts, the surrender, the yieldness, the selflessness. Fairfield County will know the love of God because of the love of God in the people. And Lord God, we thank you for people that will stay steadfast. People that won't entangle themselves in the affairs of this life because they're enlisted by God, and they're going to fulfill the will of him who enlisted them. And Lord God, we will not, we will not grow weary in well-doing. Lord, teach us to search our hearts. Teach us, Lord God, to be accountable to our own consciences. And let us stay tender before you and gentle in your sight. God, in Jesus name, I ask for this grace. Amen and amen and amen.