Brother Gary Sunday Morning 3/17/13

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 3/17/13

Isa 64:4  For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.

The whole scene that would come from this scripture and from the New Testament when Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost said these same words, “Eye has not seen…” is that the Holy Spirit reveals the things that God has for us. 

This scripture spoke to me in almost a thunder this last week.  Sometimes God speaks to you and you hear it again and again.  It is like hearing a song on our CD player, you hear it but whether they are not enunciating real clear or you are hearing impaired like I am you turn it up a little more because you are trying to catch a phrase that you don’t quite understand. 

There are times when the Holy Spirit speaks softly and then comes back and speaks more definitely and then comes back the third time or the fourth.  Each time the volume is turned up a little more.  The message is that there are deep things of God that God has for every one of us in this audience.

As we mature in Christ, the times have taught us that we not only can be a tree planted by the waters but we must get our roots down or we will be a windfall and will topple over in one of the storms.  There will be many storms.

In 2013 there will not only be times of storms but there will be times of blessings.  We‘ve already enjoyed many of them.  There will be times of refreshing, there are definite times that you need to come apart and rest a while, be renewed, and have respite.  These are good times, God wants you to love Him enough that when He gives you one of those times that you fully enjoy it and are renewed.

In this congregation we recently lost three that were very dear to us in the month of February.  Jesus taught us that blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.

I want to go to another scene this morning. 

1Pe 5:8  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

The original meaning to the words, ‘be sober’ is “Don’t be drunk with wine; don’t get intoxicated on anything.”  Fishing season is coming up, and I hope you get to enjoy that season, but don’t get drunk on it.  Stay sober minded. 

Be vigilant.  That means to be awake.  It is important to know what is going on around us.  I told of the cop Wednesday night that distracted the man that was going to kill him and by distracting him, escaped being killed. 

Pray for me that I will not be distracted but realize that we have an adversary. 

I don’t know much about attorneys or the law.  I don’t know much about lawsuits and I hope that I am never involved in one.  This is not preaching against attorneys.  I hope that the attorney in Superior is one day a member of this congregation. 

This adversary is going to use every possible scheme to try to allure you into something that will cause you to lose out with God.  He is not your friend but is your adversary.  He is as an attorney suing for your life, for your talents, for your time, for your abilities, for your resources and for your soul.  He wants everything that you have.

Be sober and vigilant for the adversary is as a roaring lion.

Imagine a roaring lion in a herd of cow elk that have calves with them.  Imagine the concern of the cow elk in protecting themselves and their calves.  They are the life source of the calf.  I am not educated to tell you if other elk adopt calves whose mothers lose their life.  The mother is a life source and that calf means so much to them.  Picture that roaring lion roaring around, scraping, and chasing the elk to exhaustion. 

We know a little about that lion.  That roaring lion is a real voice that roars around.  Every one of us has heard that voice.  It seldom comes roaring very strong when I’ve had a good night’s rest and am rested.  It likes to attack me when I’m tired and sick, when I’m trying to make a decision, and when I least expect it.  He’ll ruin every occasion.

He walks about seeking.  I have been saved a while and have heard the very best of preachers.  I had a mother and father that wanted me to make it and taught me the best that they could.  Yet he is seeking to devour me and you.

The Holy Spirit brought the word seeking to me over and over in the past two weeks.  This adversary is not one that is out sleeping on the bar room.  He isn’t asleep on the house that burned down in Dixon where all that is left is a blackened frame.  That adversary is out seeking whom he may devour.

The goal is, that thought of devouring is, that he wants to glurp you up.  He wants to swallow one up entirely.  Jesus named Him as a thief.  I met Gracie on the streets of Plains last week.  She is seven weeks old and I asked her father and mother if she had a Bible.  They said that she didn’t so I told them that we want to give Gracie a Bible. 

I don’t know if wisdom would have me give the parents a Bible and show them two scriptures:  Fathers train up a child, and Mothers look well to the ways of their children. 

How many fathers and mothers have let the devil steal that time?  How many husbands have let whatever it was steal that precious time with their wife?  How many saints have let the cares of life or invisible barriers steal good times away from them for the fear of being rejected or the thought, “We cannot afford it.”  What God lays on our heart to do, we can afford.

We don’t want to be robbed of doing what God wants us to do. 

Daniel prophesied:  Satan will endeavor to wear out the saints.  He wants you to get so tired of the battle, of praying for that lost son or daughter, that you quit.  God wants to renew.

Rev 20:7  And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

This is today.  Even people that do not have an appreciation for all the truth will tell you that they cannot believe the times that we live in. 

Rev 20:8  And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.

This deception is that the devil will turn himself into an angel of light to ensnare someone into a total cult or as an angel of light to give them a sensation that they are right with God even though they don’t believe the truths of the Bible. 

Gog and Magog represent however many things he has to mix together.  There is a lot of mixed religion today. There are those that have taken a little of this false teaching and a little of that and have created their nest.  It is a part of the religious system, Babylon, Gog and Magog.

They are so deceived.  We would think of those on the barstool or involved with drugs and as deceived and we would not take away from that. But there is another deception of someone taking a doctrine that appeals to their mind, their flesh, or their personality that is contrary to the Word of God.

They will tell you they had an experience; the devil will give all kinds of experiences.  Millions today are deceived by unbelief or by procrastination. 

Millions today have the testimony: “a moment of pleasure for a lifetime of sorrow.”  It is beyond our mind that people would gamble with their soul or their life. That is deception to embrace something for a moment of pleasure and then down the road look back and wish that they hadn’t.  That happens every day.

Millions today are bound with invisible barriers “I cannot get to God I messed up my wife, my children, I messed up here or there.”  There is forgiveness, it requires saying, “I was wrong.”  I requires saying, “I messed up.”

There are those that tell the story of a lady that went to the altar and then got up without speaking to anyone and left the church.  In one of the next services she came back and said, “Folks when I left that altar, I went home and said, ‘You’re leaving we’re out of business’; I got saved.” 

There is a way to get right with God.  There are bondages that hold men and women.  People hang onto bondages to what will pass and trade them for a lifetime in eternity.

Everybody that gets deceived fights God and fights truth.

Rev 20:9  And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.

Satan and evil spirits compass the camp of the saints.  There is nothing that the devil loves better than to encompass the camp of the saints.  He likes to surround her and then to begin to shoot darkness into some soul that will cause them to be sympathetic to what they know that God is against. 

Then he loves to come and begin to shoot as an angel of light.  This gets as many in trouble as the other.  The first works to get men and women away from God.  The second, the angel of light comes and people begin to be aloof. 

If you are saved then you are a part of the Church of God and a part of the family.  We are not aloof from each other.  The enemy likes for people to become overcome with the angel of light in that actually they are risen up above others. 

I don’t have issues of pastoral authority you all know that.  I don’t want to be a tyrant. I have a job to do and I want to do a good job of it.  I want to receive my reward in heaven.  We are one with the body of Christ.  We don’t want to be above anyone else.  You are not. 

Brother Maconahae preached that if someone is really saved then they could feed a child and a child could feed them.  He preached and practiced his message.

This is an old story.  People getting lifted up and thinking that they know all the answers.  They say, “If you want to know anything then ask me.”  People that lift up above others think, “I’m the one that should be doing this or that.”  Or, “I’m called to be an apostle.” 

There was a man that came to my dad and said, “God has called me to be the general superintendent over the churches in the Northwest.”  Dad said, “Who is going to be under you?  There is only you and me.”  That is not how this works. 

When the enemy comes as an angel of light it appeals to the flesh.  We each have the flesh and we must keep the flesh under.  When I get a thought that would work trouble then I say, “I’m not going there.”

That is the reason that there are all the church wars.  Someone gets lifted up and becomes aloof.  They say, “You’re not really saved”, when is someone saved.  You are saved when you confess, repent, turn from your sin, and get up from that altar with a new beginning. 

An angel of light is a terrible thing, isn’t it?

Satan brings darkness to the souls of the saints.  The enemy shoots an arrow and you feel punctured.  He could even make you feel that you have done something wrong and you don’t know what it is.

The devil is loosed to roar around and shoot darts of attitudes, confusion, fear, anxiety, criticalness, and darts that love to aloof someone.

There is one thing that I don’t miss about minister meetings. To those preachers the most important thing was that they got their hair just right and couldn’t wait to get on that platform.  They had to get up and say that they were from the looking-glass church in some city or state, there is my wife over there, and that they are special folk. 

What about that brother from the hills of West Virginia that eats gravy and hunts squirrel?  They are special too.

Rev 8:1  And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

Rev 8:2  And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

Rev 8:3  And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.

Rev 8:4  And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.

Rev 8:5  And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.

In verse 3 we see an angel with a golden censor before the altar.  God loves to hear you pray.  God loves to hear the children pray.  God loves to hear young people, parents, and grandparents pray.  God loves to hear our prayers.  They have an aroma that God loves. 

It looks like God added something to these prayers in addition because it speaks of the incense.  This is a beautiful scene in heaven.  This came up before God; He smelled that sweet savor. 

The censor was filled again with fire off of the altar.  We are so blessed this morning that we have the opportunity to usher up prayer and worship.  God, His son, and the Holy Spirit are right there waiting.  As our worship reaches the place that it satisfies God then the censor was filled with fire off of the altar.  The fire is the Word and Spirit of God. 

Then that fire was cast into the earth.  This is collective and individual.  I cannot do it for the congregation and the congregation cannot do it for the pastor.  We can have the attitude collective that “I don’t want to do less and so that we are filled with fire.” 

This is what we hunger for: the Word and Spirit of God.  When there are voices, we begin to thank God first.  Begin to thank and seek God.  The thundering is not just the happenings from the past but God saying I have good things for you; I have things for you to do.

Your burden might be so big this morning.  He sends fire.  He sends a promise and another promise and another promise.  You comeback before him and he says, “I gave you this promise and that.”  You say, “It seems that the promises are coming like thunder.”  

Then he sends light, “I want you to do this” and then there is an earthquake, “God I shake and tremble before you.  I love you supremely.” 

Every night we thank God for a house.  We are thankful most of all for Jesus.  We need a personal earthquake.  “God I am not exempt, I really need you.  I am not an observer of what everyone else is doing, I am a laborer.  Work the work in my soul.”