- Psalm 46: Be still
and know that I am God. Now Father I thank you with
all my heart Lord Jesus Christ for the anointing of your Holy Spirit. I thank you for your mercy, I
thank you for your presence, I thank you God for your Word and the assurance that it
brings into our hearts, I thank you for divine change Lord, for your willingness to
endure us in our frailty and our failings yet still
love us and call us your own. Thank you Lord for inviting
us into the incredible victory that you won for us on the cross. Lord Jesus Christ, would
you open our understanding, would you cause your Word to live, would you cause us to grow
in the Grace and knowledge of who you are. I thank you for this. I thank you for covering this
frail body and frail mind. I thank you Lord for giving me thoughts that are deeper than my own. Thank you Lord for taking this
offering that I bring to you and to your people and
multiplying it a thousand ways and speaking to every heart
in a way that only you can. Build your church Jesus. For you said you'd build your
church upon this foundation, the gates of Hell will
not prevail against it. Build a strong Church in
this generation oh God. Father I thank you for
this and I praise you. In Jesus name. - [Congregation] Amen. - Psalm 46 beginning at verse one. "God is our refuge and strength, "a very present help in trouble. "Therefore we will not fear
even though the earth be removed "and though the mountains be carried "into the midst of the sea, "though its waters roar and be troubled, "though the mountains
shake with its swelling. "There is a river whose streams "shall make glad the city of God, "the holy place of the
tabernacle of the Most High. "God is in the midst of
her, she shall not be moved; "God shall help her just
at the break of dawn. "The nation's raged,
the kingdoms were moved; "he uttered his voice, the earth melted. "The Lord of hosts is with us, "the God of Jacob is our refuge. "Come, behold the works of the Lord," that means past and future, "Who has made desolations in the earth: "He makes wars cease to
the end of the earth, "he breaks the bow and
cuts the spear in two, "he burns the chariot in the fire. "Be still and know that I am God: "I will be exalted among the nations, "I will be exalted in the earth. "The Lord of hosts is with us, "the God of Jacob is our refuge." Be still and know that I am God; a phenomenal verse about
which songs have been written, poems have been made, countless numbers of
sermons have been preached. And when people hear a verse like that, they wonder what does it mean to be still? Does it mean I don't do anything? What's the context of
this particular word? When you look in the original text, it's a phenomenal context; it means admit defeat, it means let down your hands, it means give up trying to figure out and to work out everything
in your own strength. Come to the end of yourself
is really what it means. And let down your hands;
let go of the efforts, let go of all the striving,
the struggling, the trying, to even that which seems to be godly but it's got its fuel
source in human effort. Give up trying to be godly
in your own strength. There's a lot of noise
today in the house of God. And I have found over the years, wherever you have a lot of noise, nothing is going on in the supernatural. And in order to compensate for the lack of God really working in the midst of the people,
they have to create noise; that's what the Prophets of Baal did. You have to jump and dance, you have to leap, you have to shout, you have to create
things in the atmosphere, you have to create everything that you can in the sensory realm to
try to create an illusion that God is actually
there doing something. But the deepest work of God is actually that which goes on in the
hidden inner man of the heart. It's not something that
really makes a lot of noise. But listen to what Psalm 74 is, and think of it in the context
of at least what I have seen in the last 30 or more years in much of the testimony of God. The psalmist says, "Lift up your feet "to the perpetual desolations. "The enemy has damaged
everything in the sanctuary. "Your enemies roar in the
midst of your meeting place; "they set up their banners for signs. "They seem like men who lift
up axes upon the thick trees." In other words they appear to be people who are here for our benefit. "But now they break down
its carved work all at once "with axes and hammers." Keep that verse in mind. There's a carving going
on inside the temple and they come in with their noise, they come in with their fleshly ideas, they come in with their human effort and they break down that
which was designed by God. "And they've set fire to your sanctuary "and defiled the dwelling place
of your name to the ground." I don't wanna be in a
place that's just noisy. I don't know about you. I wanna be in a place where God is. - [Congregation] Amen. - I wanna be in a place where my heart just stands
in awe of Him every moment. I wanna be at a place
where I sing that song. I can only imagine, and I can imagine it in a sense because I've experienced some of it; a foretaste of glory divine
as the Scripture says. I've been touched by the presence of God that's created this insatiable
hunger in my heart for more. But how do I learn to be still when all around me is noise and flurry? And even in that which
claims to be representing God in the world. Listen what the prophet
Isaiah said in Isaiah 30:15. He was calling out to his own people; they were about to go into
a horrific moment in history when their very existence
would be challenged. And he says, "For thus says the Lord God, "the Holy One of Israel, "'In returning and rest
you shall be saved; "'in quietness and confidence
shall be your strength.'" In coming back to that
which is clearly revealed is the source of your life, your strength, in letting go of human effort trying to create the presence
of God in your own strength, and coming back and having confidence in the work that only God can do, this would have been your strength. But then he goes on to say,
"But you wouldn't come. "And you said, 'No, we'll continue to try "'to do this in our own strength. "'We'll strategize it, we'll push it, "'we develop an agenda,
we'll cultivate it, "'we'll make things happen
on our own in society "'and even in the house of God." And then he said, "No, you said,
'No, we'll flee on horses,' "therefore you will flee and
you will ride on swift horses." He said, "Therefore those
who pursue you will be swift. "A thousand shall flee
at the threat of one "and the threat of five you shall flee, "till you are left as a
pole on top of a mountain "and as a banner on a hill. "Therefore the Lord will wait "that He may be gracious to you, "and therefore He will be exalted "that they may have mercy on you." God says I'll let you run the
course if you choose to do so; I'll let you run so hard, so fast, so far, until you've exhausted all your strength, until there's nowhere
to go but where I am. And when you finally get
there, I'll be there, and I'll be waiting for you. I'll be at the top of the mountain when there's nowhere
else to go, I'll be there and I'll be waiting for you. (congregation clapping) And I will be merciful
to you in that place. Don't you just love the
graciousness of our God? The mercy of God to even
partner Himself with me staggers my mind. It's truly amazing. And so the question comes
into your heart today in mind; how do I learn to let down my hands and give up trying to
figure everything out and work out everything
in my own strength, when that's all I have ever done? Especially New York. It's almost like an oxymoron, preaching to New York
audience and saying, be still. (congregation laughing) You got on the street, everybody's running at a furious pace; everybody moves at 100 miles an hour, "Get out of my space, get out of my space, "get out of my space, got to
go to work, gotta make money." Got to get ahead, got to
do this, got to do that, and suddenly the Word of God
comes and says, be still, let your hands down, give up
trying to figure it all out and work it all out, especially the things
that pertain to godliness. Well, figure out your work environment if you have to do that. But you can't figure out the
supernatural inner working on the Spirit of God. You and I can't even, apart from faith, there's nothing we can do to
even help God in that vicinity. Psalm 47:7 tells us, "Sing
praises with understanding." In other words if you're
gonna come into a place where you worship God, it helps to know what you're singing about and who you are worshiping. When you look at the rest of the Psalm, it speaks of the absolute sovereignty and faithfulness of God. God is sovereign, what He
says He will do, He will do, what He says is gonna
happen is gonna happen, who He says He is is who He is; there's no fine line,
there's no bottom line, there's no small print. He says it clearly, says it straight out, He said it straight; every purpose and promise of God will be performed in the earth and will be performed in my
life if I choose to trust Him. Everything He said in this book is mine, every word that comes to life
as I read it belongs to me and it will happen. It will happen by the Spirit of God making it happen inside of my life. And so we come back to
the original question; so what do I do? Be still and know that I'm God. Give up, let down your hands. Give up trying to figure it all out and work it all out in your own strength. Let me give you an example
of what this looks like. I'll just gonna share it with you, I'll just paraphrase a lot of it here, but it's the very first
temple that God designed and built on the earth for Himself. He never really had had a
temple up to this point. In this temple that He built, He gave the pattern of it
to King David in writing. And He said, "This is what
the temple is gonna look like, "this how it's gonna be
built, this is every..." And He was so detail-oriented. There was nothing left a chance. Nobody had to figure anything out. The whole design was given right down to the color of the doorknobs, if they had such a thing, it was all designed by the hand of God; given to David by the Spirit and David gave it to his son Solomon when he passed on all of
the workings of this temple that God was going to build
for Himself on the earth. And when I read about, it
foreshadowed something; God had never had a physical
place to dwell on the earth until the building of what
we called Solomon's Temple. And in a similar way, He
now has another temple. Solomon's Temple is gone, the Dome of the rock sits
in that place essentially in the vicinity of it. Solomon's Temple is long gone
but God moved to a new temple; you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, you are the dwelling place of God. (congregation clapping) You and I have to understand, and I've said it many times
here, I'll say it again; you and I we're not recipients
of just ideas about God, a theory about God or somebody
else's testimony about God. When you opened your heart
to forgiveness of your sins, when you believed that Jesus
Christ died on the cross in your place, admitted
you couldn't save yourself, you opened your heart to
His offer of forgiveness, He came in the form of
the third person of God, the Holy Spirit of
Almighty God, who is God, and he took up residence
inside of your physical body. - [Congregation] Amen. - You didn't come here to meet with God. I know many people think
you did, but you didn't; you brought God with you, you came here to meet with each other. (congregation clapping) And the worst you've got a
member as a young Christian I always found it so humorous
when I go into a service and somebody would
suddenly say, "He's here," I'd feel like saying, "I
know, I brought Him with me." (congregation laughing) He lives inside of me. Christ in you is the
hope of glory, Paul said. We come here to meet with each other, we come here to worship God, we come here to thank Him collectively and to encourage each other and say, "Thank you for strength,
thank you for redemption, "thank you for our hope,
thank you for our future." (congregation clapping) Now in 1 Kings 6, when they
began to build this temple, verse seven it says, "And the
temple when it was being built "was built with stone
finished at the quarry, "and so that no hammer or
chisel or any iron tool "was heard in the temple
while it was being built." This is a phenomenal illustration. In other words, all hammering
was going on in the mountain. From the mountain were
brought foundation stones and stones to build this temple, and they were designed in the mountain; all the hammering took
place in the mountain. And I think about Calvary; the hammer coming down on the nails and the hands and the feet of
Jesus Christ the Son of God. All the hammering was
done in the mountain. All the work was done there. And out of that mountain
when you came to Christ, came wonderful stones of a
new foundation for your life. I thank God for that. The Bible says that if you're on Christ you become a new creation. That means the old foundation
slowly and quietly slides out and the new foundation
slowly and quietly slides in. A new foundation built
on the truth of God, built on the cornerstone of Christ, the testimony of the
apostles and prophets of God, those that have walked before, I thank God for this with all my heart. There doesn't need to be
noise inside the temple for God to work. Old things are carried out, sometimes you don't even know
until they're already gone. If you walk with God
for any amount of time, you've obviously had
the surprising moments. I've had those. When you look back and say, "Wow, where did that go with my life. "That was part of my life
since I was a child," and suddenly you realize it's gone, it left months ago. I didn't pray about it,
wasn't even thinking about it, but somehow that old stone just slide out and a brand new one came in, and I was placed on a new foundation. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God, thanks be to God. (congregation clapping) And says in verse nine; "So he built the temple and finished it "and paneled the temple with
beams and boards of cedar." Oh thank God. That speaks to my heart about the cross. In other words inside this
temple, the cross covers it all; the cross covers my flaws and
my failings and my frailties. Assuming that you are a genuine
believer in Christ my friend you are growing in grace and in knowledge, and while you're growing and
while the building is going on, there's a cedar wood inside of you; the cross of Jesus Christ that covers all the flaws in your life. Covers your mistakes if
you're a genuine believer. Think of it this way; if sin was imputed to you, in other words, sin was marked
against you as a believer, you would be lost. At two o'clock saved, at 3:00
lost, at 4:00, saved at 5:00 and you just hope you die at
the right time on the clock. (congregation laughing) It's not a license to sin but we can't run from the understanding that when you came to Christ,
you and I make mistakes, we do things that the Bible will call sin, I'm not doing it deliberately. Somebody cuts you off and suddenly a word
comes out of your mouth, and don't tell me it's holy. (congregation laughing) You make a gesture that
you shouldn't have made, and you put that on heavens screen, it falls far short of the glory of God. But yet you're covered if
you're a genuine believer in Christ. You're covered. The cross covers the inside of the temple. You can't be condemned, you have a righteousness
given to you from God. The devil can't get
through that to condemn you unless you let him. (congregation clapping) That's why the Scripture says, "Every tongue that rises
against you in judgment, "you shall condemn; "this is the heritage of
the servants of the Lord "and their rightness, their righteousness, "their cleanness in the sight of God "is given to us by Christ." It's not earned, it's not
deserved, it's a gift of God, lest any one of us should begin to boast. Thank God for the covering of the cross. It pushes the devil's voice
way beyond the other card, he can't even get close to the temple. Because I know in my heart
I'm a genuine child of God. I know in my heart. God has put that inside of
me to cry out Abba Father. I know it inside. Therefore as a son or a
daughter of God in your case, the devil can't condemn you
when you've had a bad day. (congregation clapping) You clap like you almost believe that. (congregation laughing) (congregation clapping)
Thank you Jesus. Now it says in verse 18, it says, "The inside of the temple was cedar, "carved with ornamental
buds and open flowers. "All was ceder, there
was no stone to be seen." In other words, suddenly these skilled
craftsmen start coming in. God knows how to take the
barren places of our lives and create something beautiful. You know, we sing that
song, something beautiful, something good, all my confusion He understood. All I had to offer him
was brokenness and strife but he made something
beautiful of my life. When you walk with God, people
come in and they're angry and suddenly they're finding
themselves with patience; that beautiful flower of God's carving comes inside the temple. There's a skilled work going on inside the temple all the time. You don't necessarily hear it,
you don't necessarily see it, but it is going on. Paul the Apostle said,
"As we simply behold Him, "as we look at His victory, "as we start to understand
who He is, why He died, "what He wants for us, "that as we simply behold
this graciousness of our God "we are changed from image
to image and glory to glory "even as by the Spirit of the Lord." It doesn't require noise
for this to happen. We read, we believe, and things supernaturally
begin to happen inside, and before you know it, where there was bareness
is a flower garden. Remember the psalmist said, "They've come into the house of God "and they appeared to be with us "and they appeared to be craftsmen, "but what they've done is they destroyed "this inner work of God with their noise, "and what their roaring and
with the shouting of fire "and all the rest that they do, "they've taken away there's
still quiet confidence in God." That is the real essence
of Christian growth. You see this is a supernatural life. This is not a natural life. I can't make myself holy
and neither can you. I can only yield my life to
the one who does it within me. I can only read the promises
and say, "God I believe you." That's what Jesus said, you know there was a religious
system of worship going on, probably the most God defined
in the world at that time. But Jesus made this
profound statement, said, "Is not this kind of worship, "neither at Jerusalem or
wherever you've chosen, "but God the Father is looking for people "in spirit and in truth." In other words, people who see the truth of the promises of God and are
trusting in the Holy Spirit to make these promises real. Spirit and truth, I love
to worship that way. I simply there's truths
I've seen all my life, there's truths I've
seen that as Paul said, I've not attained, I'm not there yet, I haven't reached the mark
of the high calling of God. But I'm gonna leave behind
what needs to be left behind, I'm gonna move forward to
where God is calling me. And I'm gonna trust the Holy Spirit to be that master craftsmen inside and carve a flower in this
barren area of my temple. The carved the flower of patience and carved the flower of love and carved the flower of the willingness to be what God's called me to be. Carved the flower of truth
in every area of my life. Carved the flower of humility. If I've become proud, I'm
trusting a master carpenter to do this. And all of these carvings, they're silent. That's why for those that
are listening online, beware of a place of too much noise. I'm not saying we don't clap our hands, but clap our hands for the right reason. If we're clapping our
hands to try to prove that God is with us, then really not much is going
on inside of the temple. Oh, if something's going on in the temple, all you wanna do, I feel like dancing this
morning all over the platform. Eventually, I'm gonna break
out of this white skin and I'm gonna be able to
dance on this platform. (congregation applauding) (congregation laughing) Then verse 19 says, "And he prepared the inner
sanctuary inside the temple "to set the Ark of the
Covenant of the Lord there." And that means, Christ wants to come to the
center core of His temple. There's a moment in your life where Jesus becomes everything. He is really all in all,
it's not just a song, He really is everything. You get to the end of your days or at least to the point
where you can see it from where you are and there's nothing but joy in your heart, there's nothing but life ahead, there's nothing but God's desire becoming in to mingled with yours. Jesus comes to the center,
and in verse 21 it says, "And Solomon overlaid
the inside of the temple "with pure gold and he
stretched the gold chains "across the front of the inner sanctuary "and overlaid it with gold." In other words, if you and I
will let Jesus do the work, we'll let the Holy Spirit
inside of us do the work, on our part we read the Word of God and we believe what we read, and we put one foot in front of the other by faith believing that
what I was yesterday I will not be tomorrow, and what I am tomorrow I
will not be the next day and what I will be the next day I will not be the day after that, we put one foot in front of the other and we say in our heart, "I am done trying to change my own life, "I am done trying to chart my own course, "I'm done trying to change my own destiny. "I'm done, I'm letting down my hands, "I'm giving up trying to figure out "and work everything
out in my own strength. "Let all hell and everything
of this world shake around me, "it's not gonna touch me any more "because God is my strength,
He's become everything to me." (congregation clapping) And I know who He is. And I know as Paul said
that He can keep in His hand everything I've been trusted to Him. I know He will not fail me, I
know He will not forsake me, I know He's not ashamed of me
in the midst of my struggles, I know it as that much
as I am known by Him. In 1 Kings 10, the Queen of Sheba came. Now you have to understand
she had a kingdom as well as Solomon did; she had servants, craftsmen,
cupbearers, a treasury, she had all of these things. But when she saw what God
could do in comparison to the best efforts
that men could perform, there was no more breath. Which means there was no
more resistance in her to what she was seeing. You see, there's a marked difference between well-intentioned
people and spirit-led people. And you and I are called to be a testimony in our generation of what only God can do, only God can do this. The church began that way with 120 people bursting out of an upper room, and all of the religion of the 3,000 that came to Christ that
day and witnessed it, all of the religion, the accumulation of all
that had offered them could not produce what they were seeing. They were seeing something divine, they were seeing something
that only God could do. And that's what your life is to be. We are the Bible now that this
generation is going to read. There won't be any Bibles in the hotels, if there still are in New
York, they won't be shortly, all of these things are
gonna be eradicated. We're not gonna be able
to pray at public events. All of these rules and
regulations will be in place, but there's one thing that
this society can't do, they can't take the
testimony of the Living God outside of His temple. (congregation clapping) And I believe as Psalm 46 tells us, that we are coming into
a season in this world that the earth will be
removed and all that means; mountains will shake, seas will roar, societies will be troubled, difficulty will be no doubt on every side as nations rage, kingdoms removed. That's why the Scripture tells us, "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts "and be ready to give
a defense to everyone "who asks you a reason for
the hope that is in you." Oh yes they're coming,
oh yes they're coming, they're coming by the hundreds
if not by the thousands. And when fear begins to break out, now there's a time of collective fear that may be coming our way, but there's times of individual
fear that are here now. People who are afraid they're not gonna make it till tomorrow, who are afraid that their
families are not gonna survive, who are afraid because
maybe they got a diagnosis from a doctor that's not very good. There's a lot of fear all around us. But in the child of God, if we have been brought to the place that God wants us to go to, there is a confidence in the heart. - [Congregation] Amen. - Though we have to go
through the same storms, we have to travel through the same waters, we have to live in the same society, we have to endure the same as those around us are having to endure. But if we have chosen to
set God apart in our hearts and let Him be the Lord of our lives, people will come and
say, "Tell me the reason "why you have such hope in your speech, "why you have such bounce in your step "and why there's such light in your eye "and such kindness in your voice, "in the midst of the calamity, the social, "physical, financial moral calamity "that we're living in today? "Could you give me a reason
for the hope that is in you?" See, this is the testimony
that's going to give hope to the people around us
in the days ahead of us. But in order for that testimony to happen, we have to be still, and know that He is God. I have a quiet confidence in my heart now that makes me wanna dance. I have just quiet confidence
that just doesn't go away. I hope you have it too with all my heart. I hope you come to the place
of just saying, I'm done. I'm even done trying to be
godly in my own strength. I'm going to let God be God now. I'm gonna invite you Lord to come into the center of your temple and bring in the craftsman, bring it everything that needs
to be inside of this temple and let your name be glorified there. Remember, when that temple was complete, the glory came so powerfully that nobody could stand in its presence. All arguments failed,
all human effort died, everything had to be laid
out before a holy God because He had come into His temple. When you look at the
dedication of Solomon's Temple, it was really all just about prayer. When you pray, I will answer you, I will be God to you. Thank you Lord. We're gonna come to the
communion table now together. And if you haven't done so, as
we receive communion together would you dedicate your life to God. Not in human effort but just in faith. Say, Lord I just give you my struggles, my trials, my past, my
future and my present I put it all in your
hands and I thank you Lord that you won't fail me,
you won't forsake me, but I'm asking you to
make my life a testimony that can't be debated, let it be an irrefutable
testimony of the reality of God. Your blood shed on the
cross covers my failure and my struggle, and your body given the bread
represents your promises to me that by these promises,
the Apostle Peter said, "We become partakers of the
divine life of God in Christ." By promise, is not human effort, by the promises of God. I thank God today and I hope you do. You don't have to promise God anything 'cause you can't keep it. You live by His promises to you now. That's how we live, that's
how we move forward, by God's promises to us. Thank you Jesus. Now Father just thank you Lord for this communion service together, we thank you God for
what this really means. We are inviting you to cover us, we're inviting you to cleanse us, we are inviting you to change us, we're inviting you to
be God in this temple. We're inviting ourselves to this stillness that produces a confidence
that allows you to be God, it allows you to do the work
that you do inside of us. And so Lord we yield our bodies to you as a living sacrifice which is reasonable, and we thank you for being faithful to us, and we will worship you
in spirit and in truth. We will trust you Lord for what we need to shine as lights in this darkened time. We bless you for it God. As we heard in the worship
service this morning, you are with us, O God
you are fighting for us. Help us to yield, help
us to put our hands down, help us to be still and
know that you are God. In Jesus name. If you could hold on to
the bread and the juice till everybody receives it, then we'll partake of it together. Praise God. Be you kind enough to take
the juice first please, and pray this prayer with me: Satan can't condemn me. - [Congregation] Satan can't condemn me. - Because the blood of Jesus. - [Congregation] Because
the blood of Jesus. - Has covered all my sin. - [Congregation] Has covered all my sin. - I belong to God. - [Congregation] I belong to God. - And I will be. - [Congregation] And I will be. - Everything. - [Congregation] Everything. - That He longs for me to be. - [Congregation] That He longs me to be. - I've opened my heart. - [Congregation] I've opened my heart. - To His forgiveness. - [Congregation] To His forgiveness. - And to His promise. - [Congregation] And to His promise. - Of new life. - [Congregation] Of new life. - And everlasting life. - [Congregation] And everlasting life. - In Jesus name. - [Congregation] In Jesus name. - Amen. - [Congregation] Amen. - Hallelujah. Now if you take the bread
and say these words: Satan can't stop me. - [Congregation] Satan can't stop me. - Because God. - [Congregation] Because God. - Has cleansed me. - [Congregation] Has cleansed me. - Come into my life. - [Congregation] Come into my life. - And given me promises. - [Congregation] And given me promises. - That I will become. - [Congregation] That I will become. - Everything. - [Congregation] Everything. - He says I will be. - [Congregation] He says I will be. - I'm learning. - [Congregation] I'm learning. - To be still.
- To be still. - And know.
- And know. - That He is God.
- That He is God. - In Jesus name.
- In Jesus name. - Amen.
- Amen. - Hallelujah. (congregation clapping) Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
