False Prophets, False Teachers & Deception (Knowing the Truth)

[Music] [Music] [Music] our topic for this session is false prophets false teachers and deception is that not a happy happy title i promise you there's good news in this it is not a dark day or a gloomy day at all in fact it's a triumphant day then i want to start just reminding you that jesus was not only our savior he was not only the messiah but he also stood in the role of prophet in fact jesus of nazareth is the greatest of all the hebrew prophets if you're doing the bible reading with us we're working through isaiah right now and isaiah is an amazing amazing book to read but of all the hebrew prophets jesus is the greatest and i would remind you of our working definition that prophets provide for us a god perspective to the people three offices identified in the hebrew bible the prophet the priest and the king the prophet provides a god perspective the priests represent the people to god they take the people's sacrifices and offer them to the lord jesus of nazareth is our great high priest today it's why we no longer need a high priest on earth because jesus is our high priest and then the king provided administration that people could live in security and safety with the freedom to worship god but the prophet's assignment was to give a god perspective not so much of future telling but to help every generation understand god's perspective on where they were now we're going to look at a couple of prophecies from jesus in matthew chapter we're going to start in matthew chapter 21. and before we read it i'm going to call your attention to the message jesus is going to pronounce judgment on his chosen city and his chosen people matthew 21 verse 43 therefore i tell you that the kingdom of god will be taken away from you and will be given to a people who will produce its fruit he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces but he on whom it falls will be crushed when the chief priests and the pharisees heard jesus parables they knew he was talking about them and they looked for a way to arrest him but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet it's pretty easily read past but it's one of the most sobering statements which jesus spoke while he was on the earth he put the people of jerusalem and the people of israel under interdict he said the purposes of god will move beyond you that's a sobering statement to the covenant people of god the chosen people of god i want to be sure you heard it and you understand the seriousness of it and the leaders of the people understood what he said they understood what he meant and they understood they were the root of the problem they didn't repent there was no remorse there was no regret in fact they not only doubled down they determined to find a way through which they could murder jesus that's a pretty serious conflict in matthew 21 jesus places the people under interdict in luke 19 jesus tells of jerusalem's destruction look at matthew 23 verse 37 jerusalem o jerusalem you who killed the prophets and stone those sent to you how often i've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing look your house is left to you desolate for i tell you you will not see me again until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord now there's a note of hope in that jesus has pronounced this very significant statement against the inhabitants of the city in the land but then he says you will see me again and the prompt for that will be a change of your heart thank god that he's a god of mercy he's not a god of infinite mercy because his judgments are made plain both in time and in eternity but he delights in showing mercy now i want to ask you a question because it's important and it's an important component of how you understand your faith are you prepared to believe that jesus would speak judgment upon his people it's biblical we've just read it in fact of all the people in the middle east in the first century we could argue that the jewish people were the most godly they're occupied by romans the romans were pagans they had a pantheon of gods they worshipped a whole host of gods they're idolaters from start to finish they're immoral they're wicked they're cruel they're occupying a force there's so many unkind negative things you could say but you see the focus of god's attention in his is his people we are salt and light when god said to abram he was going to destroy sodom and gomorrah the one thing that would have kept that from happening was 10 righteous people the problem wasn't the wickedness the problem was the lack of righteousness again the question are you prepared to imagine that jesus would speak judgment upon his people i hope you are because it's biblical and it's clear that he did see our understanding has been too small our understanding of our faith our framework of faith has been inadequate we have had a primary focus upon salvation and security we haven't really considered things like faithfulness and fruitfulness and obedience as essential components of our relationship with the lord we've imagined that if we could establish our bona fides that we had a an accurate entrance into the kingdom and we could justify them with dates and times and witnesses but our position is unassailable well one result of that too narrow of a framework is that it has left us as christ followers in the 21st century very vulnerable to deception defaults prophets defaults teachers defaults messages now again jesus is the greatest of all the hebrew prophets and i'm going to suggest to you that he has much to say to us in the 21st century that his messages weren't focused only on the first century i would submit that it really should be no surprise that there is a proliferation of false prophets as we approach the end of this age one of the characteristics as we approach the end of this age is going to be a bolder expression of the spirit of antichrist agreed jesus is less tolerated today than at any time in my lifetime in our public schools in our public institutions we don't want the ten commandments even any longer the name of jesus is considered to be contentious particularly if you would assert that there's something unique about jesus that he is the only way the truth in the life all of those points of resistance understand the motivation behind them it's not political ideological it's spiritual they are an expression of the spirit of antichrist and the spirit of antichrist fundamentally is the spirit of a false christ so if the spirit of antichrist is growing it's only logical that the spirit of the false prophets would be multiplying now if a prophet is someone who gives us a god perspective a false prophet is someone who gives us a perspective as if it were from god's vantage point but it's wrong it's inaccurate now the new testament clearly teaches us that this present age is coming to a conclusion that time is not infinite we're not going on forever and ever grasshopper that the final act is going to be an open conflict between satan's kingdom centered in some very high profile individuals an antichrist a world leader and his religious sidekick a false prophet and the conflict will be between them and god's people in the earth and then the punchline is that jesus returns to the earth as king and judge of all in defense of his people now this conclusion of this age can be understood can be understood in terms of a conflict between the true and the false it's not about a gray area it's not about a broad middle we're repeatedly told in scripture about this period of time so that we can be prepared we're told there's going to be an intense season of darkness defined by unprecedented immorality perversion violence it'll be a marked deterioration of human character and it will happen rapidly but don't be filled with despair at the same time that's happening we're told there'll be an unprecedented harvest of righteousness with more people accepting jesus of nazareth as lord and savior than any other time in human history i'm of the opinion we'll see more people come into the kingdom of god in that last great harvest than all that have come through in all the seasons prior to that so both the light and the darkness are going to be expanding in that same season now jesus gave us some very direct warnings about this period of time if you heard the the the talk from yesterday's session we talked a good bit about jesus prophecies over jerusalem and the jewish people but in that same passage he talked about the season that we're living in matthew 24 and verse 10 he said at that time and the time he's discussing is the time that that precedes immediately his return to the earth at that time many will turn away many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people he used the word many three times he said many will turn away from the faith many false prophets will appear and many will be deceived now i believe him and you need to decide whether you're going to ignore him or you're going to take his counsel it's important the council he gave to the first century believers spared their lives when the romans brought siege to the city of jerusalem and i believe that if we will listen to jesus words it will make a difference in the outcome of our lives in time he said many will fall away many false prophets and many will be deceived and because of the increase of wickedness the love of most will grow cold but he who stands firm to the end will be saved and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come if you want a big picture what should we do if we imagine we're approaching the end of the age do everything in your power to tell the story of the gospel of the kingdom tell it to the end of your world god may not have sent you to the end of the world so you tell the story to the end of your world that everybody in your sphere of influence everybody that will care about your opinion let them know your story of advocacy for the gospel of the kingdom it will accelerate the return of the king matthew chapter 7 jesus is speaking verse 15 watch out for false prophets if jesus says to watch out for false prophets may i suggest we should watch out we shouldn't ignore them we shouldn't act like it's not a problem i don't believe jesus wasted words we haven't paid very close attention to our lord watch out for false prophets they come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they're ferocious wolves by their fruits you'll recognize them do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles watch out for false prophets he says they're deceptive they will not present with their true intent they will come packaged in harmless packages but he said in reality they're ferocious predators now we're used to seeing wild animals in the zoo or on television or with marlin perkins between us and them i just told you how old i am [Laughter] but jesus said these people will be ferocious predators be alert he said he didn't say that we wouldn't interact with them he didn't say our relationship with him would deliver us from the interactions he said they'll be deceptive they'll appear harmless but they'll be quite the opposite and he said the best indicator isn't the label they wear or the building in which they sit or the language they use the best indicator of their true intent is the fruit of their lives now a couple of things immediately come to mind the fruit of the spirit it's about the character that is reflected in you by the presence of the spirit of god love joy peace patience goodness gentleness self-control against those things that says there is no law those things only emerge in your life because you choose to say no to your carnal nature and to say yes to the spirit of god and you intentionally cultivate them sitting in church will not cause the fruit of the spirit to grow in your life you could be a selfish self-absorbed carnal person and sit in church every time the door's open don't let labels don't let a christian vocabulary the fruit of our lives the evidence of what we've done now those were jesus warnings to us i want to take a minute and unpack with you a little bit about the nature of false prophets because i don't think it's understood very well by the contemporary church and to do that i want to go back to the the hebrew prophets of the hebrew bible jeremiah chapter 14 jeremiah is a prophet in jerusalem the primary message of his life his life message to the inhabitants of jerusalem is judgment is coming upon you it's a very difficult message do you have the imagination that god would call you and give you a message that didn't make you heroic so i think all of us would like a message that was you're going to be wealthy and prosperous your children are geniuses thus saith the lord but not every god perspective comes with that kind of affirmation now being negative doesn't make you more godly so if you have a tendency towards pessimism don't imagine you're led by the spirit but jeremiah's role is very difficult jeremiah 14 and verse 11 the lord said to me do not pray for the well-being of this people that's antithetical to how we understand our interaction together it's just the opposite of what we've been trained in god said to jeremiah do not pray for the well-being of this people and again he's not praying about the pagan babylonians that are coming their way these are the covenant people of god in the city of jerusalem the descendants of abraham isaac and jacob they would be the equivalent of the most religious amongst us and god's message is do not pray for the well-being of this people although they fast i will not listen to their cry and though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings i will not accept them instead i will destroy them with the sword with famine and plague and jeremiah responds but i said sovereign lord the prophets keep telling them you will not see the sword or suffer famine indeed i will give you lasting peace in this place so jeremiah has a problem he's delivering a message that's in opposition to the message being delivered by a much broader group of people and it's a message that the people want to hear the others are saying god has delivered us time and time again we have a history filled with god's deliverance you don't need to change you don't need to pay attention you don't need to listen things will continue on as they've always continued on and jeremiah has a different message and god says don't pray for these people anymore i'm not going to listen to them and jeremiah is pleading their case he's saying but god they have all these false prophets telling him what they want to hear [Music] that the lord said the prophets are prophesying lies in my name i haven't sent them or appointed them or spoken to them they're prophesying to you false visions divinations idolatries and the delusions of their own minds there's messaging being given to my people he said that have nothing to do with me it's the fabrication of their own minds of their own intents of their own desires and the people they're prophesying to will be thrown out into the streets of jerusalem because of the famine and the sword and there'll be no one to bury them or their wives or their sons or their daughters i'll pour out on them the calamity they deserve i would call your attention to the reality that god expected the people to discern between the true and the false the responsibility for understanding the message that was from the lord fell upon the people and the consequence for listening to the faults was the judgment of god see i think we've always imagined i spent my life around the church and church people and i interacted with lots and lots of people and but i think we often imagine that false prophets are kind of people with bad doctrine you know people that believe weird stuff they pray weird prayers and they try to get you to pray weird prayers perhaps someone who reads a translation of the bible that we don't prefer be careful it could be false doctrine after all it's the message and it's not really a translation and gene peterson you know or maybe it's someone who receives communion in a way that doesn't fit our pattern and so we've been a little torqued about that you know their juice is fermented see i would submit that in general we've expected false prophets to emerge from religious groups with whom we don't agree so if they weren't from among us they could be false so let's lock arms and say red rover red rover it goes a little bit like this evangelicals will look at catholics and imagine they embody a false prophet and the reality is there are catholics who are faithful disciples of jesus of nazareth and there are others who were lost but in a similar way there are methodists and baptists and presbyterians and pentecostals who are jesus disciples and there are others in those groups who are not we're going to have to learn to look beyond labels and recognize the fruit of a life yielded to the lordship of jesus where we sit on the weekend and the label we wear is far less significant than the fruit of our lives in fact i want to submit to you that false prophets may or may not be religious characters at all they'll be influential voices which mislead people into imagining wrong things about god i want you to think about that that false prophets don't have to wear religious garb and stand in religious buildings and preside over religious surfaces false prophets is any voice that delivers us a perspective that leads us in a direction away from god jeremiah 23 and verse 15 this is what the lord almighty says concerning the prophets i'll make them eat bitter food and drink poisoned water because from the prophets of jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout the land see any voice that causes ungodliness to spread is an expression of a false christ and the delivery system is a false teacher or a false prophet we've been too narrow in our thinking we've been unguarded we've accepted opinions and attitudes in fact we've aligned ourselves with people who are clearly ungodly and immoral because we like some other circumstances about their life their talents or their abilities or their affluence lamentations chapter two it's jeremiah's writings so the visions of your prophets were false and worthless they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity the oracles they gave you were false and misleading again this expanded definition the voices you were listening to did not expose your sin a god perspective will not allow you to sit comfortably in your ungodliness in the new testament he says we will choose teachers who tell us what we want to hear so we don't have to change 2020 is the year god has tried to awaken his church he has shaken us he closed our buildings sat us down in our houses and we've had to make some determined effort to regather he's asking us to listen again just for clarity false prophets promote ungodliness they don't have to be preachers or priests false prophets fail to identify sin they give license if the purpose of a prophet is to provide a god perspective a false prophet would do the opposite false prophets may or may not be identified as religious persons be careful where you take authoritative advice [Music] and you know the truth is in our culture for decades now pastors and ministers and priests have had dwindling influence in our culture anyway there was a time not in our distant past where on monday mornings in the leading newspapers of our nation on the front page they would print the sermon from the leading pulpit of the city can you imagine if the tennessee and put our outline on the front page tomorrow without ridicule the formal influence of the church has been diminishing for a long time what is the voice you listen to what is the authority in your life whose opinion you do you most value your own warning will rogers i once heard someone suggest that electricity was the great imitator of the holy spirit well that's true of electricity then we'd have to say that the our televisions are the great high priests because they deliver the messages think of the voices that constantly pour at you about ungodliness think of the authority with which they speak think of the license they have brought to those of us that imagine ourselves to be god's people think of the brazen way in which they dismiss god and mock his principles see we have thought of false prophets as being someone whose doctrine was askew and what the bible suggests to us is that false prophets and false teachers lead us away from god's truth not from theological subtlety and nuance i'll give you one example in second kings chapter 23 the king in israel is josiah he's known as a reformer he became king when he was a boy but he had a heart for the lord and he orders the temple in jerusalem to be remodeled the temple had fallen into disrepair can you imagine the temple in the heart of the city of jerusalem it followed into such disrepair the doors didn't work and while they're repairing the temple they find hidden in the wall the book of the law they have lost the bible and nobody noticed how many think you could call that drift if you lost the bible and nobody noticed i don't think it'd be a huge stretch to say in the 21st century we have almost lost the bible we feel like if we read it 10 minutes a day we have made some heroic effort oh come on i'm in it with you listen to what has this is second kings 23 verse 1 the king called together all the elders of judah in jerusalem and he went up to the temple of the lord with the men of judah and the people of jerusalem the priests and the prophets and all the people from the least to the greatest and he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the temple of the lord and the king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the lord to follow the lord and to keep his commands his regulations and decrees with all of his heart and with all of his soul and thus confirming the words of the covenant written in the book so the beginning of this reform comes with an awareness of the word of god i don't believe we can overestimate the value of putting god's word in your heart without it you really have no defense against deception you'll fall prey to conventional wisdom to the loudest voice to whatever propaganda is creating the most emotion in this season never in my life have i seen so much dishonesty wash over people the word of god gives us a grounding place to understand our lives our families our marriages our assignments as parents how we interact with the creator of all things and apart from the word of god we're left to the whim of whoever person has the biggest megaphone in the moment it's a dangerous way to live so josiah begins a national movement by honoring the word of god reading it in public the king humbling himself and saying god's word will be the predominant influence in this place he has much to lose it's a tremendous risk for him i won't read it all i'll give you just a sample it says the king ordered the high priest and the priest next in rank and the doorkeeper to remove from the temple of the lord all the articles made for ba'al and asherah and all the starry hosts the temple in jerusalem is populated with idols to all of these canaanite gods and they're canaanite gods that are based in prosperity in sensuality and blatant expressions of sexual immorality and i promise you that for every one of those labels that are there there's an infrastructure that supports them a group of people who have a hierarchy invested in them and resources flowing through them so josiah is standing in opposition to broad groups of people who think it's a good idea they've been in place for decades they've been engaged in the immorality they've been engaged in the the sensuality they've been engaged in the in the pursuit of more and josiah says no more destroy them remove them take them away sweep away those that have stood on their behalf i promise you there was antagonism well how bad was it well it says he also tore down the quarters on the temple mount around the temple he tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes which were in the temple of the lord and where the women did weaving for asherah there was perversion and immorality attached to the temple and the priest and the leaders of the nation didn't say maybe that's a bad idea there were such broad groups of people either enjoying the ungodliness profiting from it prospering from it that the word of god was so far in the distance it had been misplaced and nobody missed it that nobody had the courage to stand up see i'm asking you to think about false prophets in a new way i'm asking you to think about your bible in a new way the reading of scripture initiates change in your heart and how you see the world it gives you a choice you can choose a god perspective or you can choose the voices of the world but understand this you're making a choice every day what is the authority in your life the temple and the priest serving in the temple have been completely immersed in wickedness prostitution immorality sensuality greed they're all on display on full display in the temple area with no apology or shame the priests and the prophets were not opposing this onslaught of wickedness they were immersed in it so again rather than thinking of false prophets and false teachers as being about bad doctrine they're about voices that lead you away from honoring god with your life stop with the subtlety of whether the communion juice is red or blue whether you prefer the king james or the new american standard and look at the world in which we're living where godliness and purity and holiness are mocked and the leading voices in our culture mock people who choose purity and integrity and who believe the bible is the word of god and now we have to decide into which group we are going to with whom we're going to stand and over all of this the church has presided well we like to point our fingers we have those of us in the church at the first century jewish audience and how they failed to recognize much but i would submit to you we've enjoyed the blessings of god and freedom and liberty and abundance and we've managed to take it and pervert it and use it for license i want to take you back to jesus counsel it's matthew 7. watch out for false prophets they'll come to you in sheep's clothing we read this part a moment ago but we didn't finish it inwardly they're ferocious wolves by their fruits you'll recognize them every tree that doesn't bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire thus by their fruits you'll recognize them not everyone who says to me lord lord will enter the kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven many will say to me on that day lord lord did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles and i'll tell them plainly i never knew you away from me you evil doers again our framework has been inadequate we've been very casual with this recite a prayer take a dip in a pool and then articulate a position that provides you security and live however you choose jesus gives us a very different message in fact i want to submit to you if i can do it in plain words we need to recalibrate our fruit meter the one we've been using is not adequate we need discernment we need spirit-led discernment in our lives 2020 is a year that's teaching us a great deal about listening who to listen to what to listen to each day we're having to learn to listen to the lord if you're in a position responsible for making decisions this is not an easy this is not an easy time you have to make decisions every day and it seems to me that all decisions have loud voices of complaint attached to them no matter which one you choose somebody's going to go i didn't like that and there you hi usually hiding behind a keyboard someplace that you can't see there are many in the shadows chirping and the result of all of this all the confusion and the multiple voices is many many many many people have simply stopped moving stopped trying i think we're going to wait it out i don't believe that will be effective because i believe the forces the spirits that have entered the disruption and caused the confusion don't intend for us to re-emerge we're going to have to learn to listen better i'll give you one example think of the way we we even give our testimonies you know it usually begins with kind of a a litany of the highlights of our spiritual formation the good things we've done and we leave out the bad things and we try to establish trust because of the litany of good things that we can say we've done does that sound about right if you've grown up around church you've been to testimony time right been married this many years been doing this i've been doing that we kind of give our i'm not saying it's evil i'm just saying that's been the filter that's what that's been how we established it well i want to give you a biblical character you know him pretty well remember saul of tarsus by the way jesus recruited him all right well after jesus recruits him he goes to jerusalem because that's kind of the center of business at this point in time and he gets to jerusalem so when he came to jerusalem he tried to join the disciples i mean after all jesus recruited he said i want you to go to all the non-jewish people that's your deal so he goes to jerusalem the center of the church and he tried to join the disciples but they were afraid of him they didn't believe he was really a disciple smart guys because the season immediately proceeded last week he was taking people like us and dragging him off to jail in prison men and women he was happy when they killed people like us and he met jesus then he rolled in and he said i'm one of you and peter's going so barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and he told them how saul on his journey had seen the lord and that the lord had spoken to him and how in damascus he'd preached fearlessly in the name of jesus a little bit of fruit so saul stayed on with them and moved about freely in jerusalem speaking boldly in the name of the lord he talked and debated with the grecian jews but they tried to kill him i mean in his journey as a christ follower he still got on training wheels he's in jerusalem with the the the inner circle for the first time when they turn him loose for a few days and he gets in a debate and they try to kill him when the brothers learned to this they took him down to caesarea and sent him to tarsus the saul of tarsus is the apostle paul recruited by jesus transformed he arrives in jerusalem and they are struggling they're trying to understand who he is what's happening we've been a bit smug we've been arrogant we've been prideful we've wanted a a punch list where we could say if you meet these criteria we listen to you and if you don't we will shun you he's a murderer a violent angry man he's been trained by the opposition but he met jesus we're going to have to recalibrate our fruit meters because we've tolerated voices that have led us towards wickedness and ungodliness and immorality and have given us license and haven't called us to repentance because they met our punch list god be merciful to us [Music] i want to close with the message that oh i need to close with a message that jesus gave to two of his churches you know jesus is the head of the church you know people say to me frequently no pastor i don't need the church to be a christ follower that's true you can become a christ follower in the parking lot of a grocery store but you need god's people if you're going to grow up jesus is the head of the church he's the architect of the church in fact you know the challenge of the initiative is so great it requires jesus to be the head of the church god does not deploy his resources casually and if he established his son as the head of the church it's because no one else could see the church through the challenges that it will face if you think church is a lazy thing if you think it's a something that you can do with partial interest and a part-time commitment you are deceived if you're going to grow up in the lord it will take the greatest effort of your life well you can recite a sinner's prayer and get dipped in a pool but you'll be consumed by ungodliness you need one another desperately if we're going to grow and mature in the lord two messages jesus gave he gave him to seven churches at the book of revelation i'll give you two so we can go to the angel of the church of sardis right these are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of god and the seven stars i know your deeds do you live with that that jesus knows what we're doing it's not hard to fool pastor he's not that clever you won't hustle the lord i know your deeds you have a reputation of being alive but you're dead wake up strengthen what remains and is about to die for i've not found your deeds complete in the sight of my god these are god's people washed in the blood redeemed cleansed they'll meet all the criteria for all the theological things we could push at them and jesus message to them is i know your deeds you have a reputation of being lively but you're dead wake up [Music] that'll shake how we've understood our faith i haven't found your deeds to be complete in the sight of my god no we don't earn our way to heaven but what we do with our lives is a reflection of the value we attach to our lord and his message to them is remember what you have received and heard obey it and repent same chapter chapter 3 to the church the angel of the church in laodicea write these words i know your deeds you're neither hot or cold good middle ground folk i wish you were one or the other i'd rather you be cold than lukewarm so because you're lukewarm neither hot or cold i'm about to spit you out of my mouth you say this is your self-analysis they have no prophetic perspective they have no awareness of god's perspective on their lives until jesus issues this statement to them you say i'm rich and i've acquired wealth and i don't need a thing but you don't realize that you're wretched pitiful poor blind and naked you've got to be really messed up to be blind naked and poor and not know it that is deception and what is the belief that they have such confidence in that they have acquired wealth and therefore they don't need anything can you think of any contemporary messaging that says to us if you're prosperous and happy and you're shopping in the right stores and driving the right vehicles that you're good sounds like a lot of messaging we hear doesn't it jesus said i counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you could become rich and white clothes to wear and a salve for your eyes so you can cover your shameful nakedness be earnest and repent i think the appropriate conclusion for us this morning is to say to the lord lord we're listening we want to hear you i don't want to be deceived i don't want you to be deceived if i'm listening to voices if i've been giving an authoritative to voice an authoritative place to a voice that takes me towards ungodliness i want to turn down the volume on that i want to be identified with god's people i don't care who mocks them i'm willing to be out of step with the larger culture if i'm in step with the spirit of god i'm not going to define my life by the voices that don't hold a godly perspective it goes far beyond where we sit on sunday morning for a few moments it goes far beyond just your dress code or your beverage list it goes into the dreams of your life the aspirations you hold for yourself forget somebody else forget pointing fingers and wishing this is about us folks if we will bring alignment with our hearts to the lord he'll move heaven and earth to help us he will don't get heated up about the wicked get heated up about the voices that we've listened to that led us towards ungodliness those voices will grow louder they're gonna they're gonna become more numerous they'll be in higher places we're going to have to choose i want to kneel to pray if that's not a good idea for you because of health or wardrobe selections this morning or some other reason you can stand and pray but if you're if you're inclined i'd invite you to kneel with me you know prayer is not just about words it has to do with posture one of the reasons we bow our heads and we close our eyes to praise to focus our attention on the lord kneeling is a demonstration of yielding we kneel before the lord to acknowledge that we want to yield to him he is our savior he's the one who made us we didn't make ourselves we're not self-made people what baloney god put us in a place where opportunities were available to us we could have been born someplace on this planet where there were no opportunities god's been good to us father we bow our heads this morning and we kneel before you to come in humility lord you called us out of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son you love as an expression of your grace and your mercy and we thank you for that but father there are times and places where we've failed to listen we've we've taken your word and set it aside we've been too busy or too distracted or too disinterested we've been to something forgive us give us a love for your word a desire to read it may come alive before us as it's never come before lord we've listened to voices that have given us permission to be ungodly and immoral and selfish forgive us we've called good those things which have led towards evil and we have stood at a distance those who from those who were calling us to repent and lay aside our ungodliness forgive us but we want to finish well you're the author and the completer of our story and we kneel before you this morning and ask you to write an ending that is honorable before you find an ending that would enable us to complete our days under the sun in a way that's pleasing to you as men and women as husbands and wives as parents and as children as brothers and sisters as citizens may we make choices that honor you and are pleasing to you give us listening ears give us receptive hearts i thank you for your church breathe new life into us not just this congregation but into your church in our nation in the earth lord let there come an anointing upon us to preach the good news of the kingdom in the whole world with an authority and a boldness thank you lord that we will see the greatest harvest that our world has ever known we praise you for it i thank you for your truth for the hope it brings come quickly lord jesus come quickly lord jesus for it's in your name we pray amen hallelujah god bless you hey this is pastor allen thanks so much for giving me just a moment of your time i hope you enjoyed the video if you did i want to encourage you to do a couple of things give it a like share it with your friends most importantly subscribe that way when there's new content or a live stream you'll be notified i pray god blesses you in your spiritual journey i'll see you soon

Channel: Allen Jackson Ministries

Views: 39,528

Rating: 4.8768687 out of 5

Keywords: Pastor Allen Jackson, allen jackson ministries, world outreach church, alan jackson, sermons, preachers, how to be saved, Finding Jesus, pastor allen jackson sermons, Know the Truth, Truth, Deception, Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, Fruits of the Spirit

Id: RcRJ2vI0fWc

Length: 49min 36sec (2976 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020