Scripture reference: 1 Corinthians 12:20-24 (NLT); 1 Corinthians 12:27-31 (NLT); 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 (NLT); Acts 16:13-15 (NLT); Acts 16:13-15 (NLT); 2 Timothy 1:1-4, (NLT); 1 Corinthians 4:14-17 (NLT)
Praise the Lord. Alright. God’s doing something. And this afternoon I’m not sure that we will spend the whole time of Message Moments here. We’ll just see how the Holy Spirit leads but I’m going to use something that Pastor Sharon and I have been talking about that’s been big on our hearts for a long time. But in recent weeks we’ve been sharing more with each other and certainly, it’s come up in conversation a lot more often. The Lord has been speaking to her very specifically about some of these matters. It’s not difficult that when we start talking about these things, that God stimulates our conversation because it’s in our hearts. The Holy Spirit has put it there and we’ve been living like this for a long time.
So, I’m going to just flow and you’re going to just stay in my slipstream. Alright? Ready to go? Go! The Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 20, it says, 20 Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. 21 The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” 22 In fact, this is the New Living Translation. In fact some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary (1 Corinthians 12:20-22, NLT). Huh? This is a wonderful thing because actually this fairly, importantly tells us how important the body of Christ is. I’ve said this for many years, I’m saying it again and especially in the context of the message that I’m preaching, that I’m going to minister to you today, the message that we are going to talk about. Some of what I’m saying now is even more important.
When the Bible says that some of, in this translation actually, it says, 22 In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. 23 And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, 24 while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity (1 Corinthians 12:22-24, NLT).
So, standing in front of you today, you’re looking at my face and my face and my hands are communicating with you and you see these parts of my body. There are other parts that are covered. And so, the Bible is saying that the parts that have less dignity and the parts that we want to remain hidden, we spend more time clothing those parts but actually that these parts are more important. That’s why we spend the care of covering them. It could be argued that, quite reasonably and logically, my sons, my natural born sons would not be here except for some of those parts. Right? Those are not things that we talk about but they are highly productive things. They are future generation things. They are things that create legacy, they create a future, they create future strength, and yet they are parts that get covered. They are not parts that are revealed, they are not parts that are talked about, they are not parts that are shown around. They are parts that are covered up because they are highly productive. And one could argue, you know, that in the context of human society, they are extremely honoured. Yeah. Because we wouldn’t have future generations if there wasn’t a man and a woman that would come together both with dignified, covered parts. And children wouldn’t be here for future generations unless women were able to bring forth that which they’ve been holding for a long time through parts that are not seen, but dignified parts. A woman’s womb, her uterus, those are things that you can’t even see, skin covers it. But those parts are extremely valuable they’re extremely important. We cover them.
You know I mean I’m talking about productive parts but the fact of the matter is that with kidneys and livers and hearts and things like that, you can’t see them but try and live without them, you just can’t. God made us, in some of these, God made us with two of them so you can live a little bit with one. But for the most part, thank God that we are like that. So, this says that actually, 22 In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary (1 Corinthians 12:22, NLT).
So right now, this afternoon, I’m talking to you, and I’m talking to a microphone. I am not sitting behind the sound desk working my own microphone. Someone is sitting there, working my microphone. I’m doing all the talking. I’m getting all the eyes on me. All of the things that are happening in this auditorium are happening because I’m doing the talking and I’ve got the center of attention. But actually, there are parts that are happening in this body that are more important even though they are not the exposed parts.
And just as, you know, when I’m talking to any one of you I’m looking in your eyes, I’m talking to your face. And because I’m looking at your face all the time, one might think that that’s the most important part of your body. And certainly when you’re wanting to communicate with somebody that’s an essential part of being able to communicate is to see your eyes and see your mouth and see your face and the expressions and the things that are going on. But it’s just one part of the person that I’m talking to. There’s a lot of things that I can’t see about the person, I don’t want to. Right? But that person wouldn’t be there without those other parts bringing them there. (Pastor John laughs) Yeah.
And so for me, as the visible part of the church to think that I’m the only one that’s making this ministry work would be stupid. I would not understand biology number one, and number two, I wouldn’t understand the great gifts that God has placed in the body to make the body. So for me to say that I’m the most important part of this church, I’m not. We all are. You don’t get to see the face without the rest of the body working, and showing up, and being the body. Come on. I know you know all this teaching and you’ve heard parts of this before but this is important that we keep reminding ourselves that we all make the body. All of us. Amen.
So you won’t be able to see it on camera but on my right hand here, over the last couple of years I’ve had a bit of dead skin develop on my hand. Literally dead skin and over years it just got a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, and it’s just dead skin. So when I started to improve my nutrition and my overall body balance of minerals and trace elements and everything started to become at a more balanced, more normalized level, this thing stopped growing. And it started to get a little smaller and so what I did one day is I just decided, you know, I’m going to see if I can shave it off. So I did. I took a blade, I don’t use it anymore but I have some lying in my cupboard, to shave off this piece of skin. So I took the blade and I just started pulling it across the piece of skin, and little by little the layer came off until. It wasn’t sore, wasn’t sore. I’m Superman.
So little by little I started cutting off the skin and started shaving off bits and bits and bits and bits, until it was all the way down to the hand and then there was this pink new skin right on the hand. So I thought, “Huh, that’s interesting”. There came a point where I realized, if I shave anymore, I’m going to now cut my skin open and bleed, so I stopped. Even Superman has to realize, you know, he can get hurt. Anyway, so some time went by, I put some, kept rubbing some ointment on it and some time went by and a little of that hard skin grew back, but way way less than before and so after maybe a year or so I thought, ‘Oh there’s a little bit there again, I’m going to try and shave it off again. Just see what happens.’ I did that and it was back down to normal. Now it’s been, I don’t know how many months since then. You can hardly see it, it’s not really there. I might go shaving again.
What am I trying to do? I am trying to make sure that my skin has the best chance to return back to normal and have a normal interface with the world around it because the dead skin is not needed. The dead skin makes it ugly. The dead skin serves no purpose other than if I’m sometimes putting my arm on the table when I am working or on a computer when you go like this. And you put your arm to think, you put your knife and fork or whatever like this, the dead piece of skin would always just get in the way because it’s right there. You know? If you take your hand and you put it in your pocket, that dead skin is in the way. It just was in the way. It wasn’t hurting, it was just there. So, I want to have life ‘normal’ with this piece of skin.
Well, sometimes, in the Body of Christ, there are people and there are things that happen in the Church where you have to allow the Word of God to come and cut away dead skin. And come and do things where people refuse to change or they grow things in ways that are not good for the Body. Then you have to bring the Word of God and let the Word of God do the job. Yeah, you’ve got to let the Word of God do the job. You’ve got to let the Word of God do the job. And sometimes, you shave a bit and shave a bit and then, when the new skin comes it’s all fine, you don’t have to keep shaving. It just becomes normal again. Praise the Lord for that. Hallelujah.
So it is with the Body, in a month or so, maybe six weeks, eight weeks, or so we are going to have, Dr Gerrie is going to come here. He is going to come minister to us. He is going to teach us some things and we are going to have him on camera. His whole focus is keeping the body in the best possible shape that it can. So he has been to Canada. He has just recently been to Switzerland and Cyprus and different places and he is connecting with doctors around the world. And they are investigating what different communities eat and how they live their lives to have longevity and all of that kind of stuff. So. he wouldn’t consider himself to be a specialist of anything but he does consider himself to be a proponent of the most healthy kind of lifestyle that you can live.
When he analyses your body, he gets a blood test, and he checks out and he looks at your blood and he sees what kind of things are missing in your blood. And then he will take natural things to put into your body that will help your body form at the best possible way that it can form with all the trace elements and nutrients and vitamins that God designed for your body to have in itself. So he, as a doctor, believes in divine health, he believes in divine healing. And every time I have visited him, I have left his office with him taking your hand and praying with you and speaking the Word of God over you. We normally have a prayer session together, him and I. I pray for him as I leave his office. And he will say, “You need a little bit.”
And so what’s happened to me now is that he said every time and I visit him every, maybe year and a half or whatever the time might be. He will say to me, “You know, I’m nitpicking here, but you need a little bit more of this and a little bit more of that”. Because he wants this machine (Pastor John points to his body) to be optimized. He wants this machine to run perfectly well. So he considers himself a physical technician, a body technician. So if your body is healthy and well and strong, he will just make little adjustments as you might need it, say, “Drink less of this, do more of that, have a little bit of that.” And I mean, if you don’t do that, your body is not going to be in bad shape, he just wants it to be in the best shape. So why am I bringing him up? Because even though you see my face and you’re interfacing with my face. The wellness of my body has everything to do with what I can do here. And so it is with the Body of Christ. Someone has got to bring food. Someone has got to bring water. Someone has got to bring food. Someone’s got to bring nourishment, nutrition, doing all that kind of stuff.
Let me just put it out there, skinny people are not necessarily healthy people. Just because you’re skinny doesn’t make you healthy. Just because you’re fit, doesn’t make you healthy either. In fact you know, he was talking to me and certainly my condition was that I was training to go and do a race in Namibia, it’s called the Namibian Desert Dash. And before COVID came the race was three hundred and? Two hundred and? How much was it, Simon? Two-seventy-four? Three-eighty-five, hey? I think it’s three-eighty-five. Three hundred and eighty-five kilometres. And you have to finish the race in twenty-four hours. So you start from Windhoek at two o’clock in the afternoon and you ride to Swakopmund, and so you ride through the night. I think the old race that we were going to do was two hundred and sixty-five kilometres and they’ve now made it four hundred and five kilometres, so three-sixty-five is now four-o-five. They’ve changed it so that most people will race as a team or as a four-person relay. It’s only the strongest and really fittest people that will do four hundred and five kilometres in twenty-four hours. It’s quite a ride.
So, but we were training for that. I was training for that. I was fully, on a fitness level, I was ready to go there. And as a precaution, I went to Dr. Gerrie and I said, “Do a test on me and just check all my vital signs and check everything.” And after he did a blood test, he did a hydration test, he did a whole lot of other things. He said, “If I’m your doctor, you’re not going to do that ride.” And he said, “Because you’re completely dehydrated.” So I said, “I have water after every race, I drink water and I’m hydrating for every ride. I do, I know about hydration.” He said, “No, no.” He said, “The level of salts and acids and things that are in your body has dehydrated you at a cellular level and so this is what happens to a lot of athletes. They think they’re in good health and then they’re out there doing an extreme exercise and particularly if you’re competitive and you’re running for a podium or you’re running for a high position. What happens is, you put your body under extreme pressure and then under that extreme pressure the cellular dehydration reveals itself in ways that are unexpected. And most of the times what happens is that these top athletes have heart conditions while they’re racing. And they think they’ve got a heart problem but it’s not a heart problem. There’s other parts in their body that they’ve neglected or they haven’t properly taken care of and so it ends up manifesting itself as a heart condition, or a heart failure, or a heart attack, or something. Heat stroke or something that happens and now they have a problem.” So he says, “If your body is running as a well-oiled machine, your body will take care of the cholesterol problems that you have in life. You don’t need alternative medicine. You don’t need synthetic medication to deal with cholesterol. Your body can deal with cholesterol if you have the right kind of natural products that God said you put in your body it will fix that.” Are you hearing me?
Why am I telling you all of this? Because the body needs to work like that in the Spirit. The body needs the right kind of nutrients, the right kind of nourishment, the right kind of vitamins from the Word of God and from each other we need to nourish each other, we need to walk and work with each other to hydrate each other. To be in a place where we are making sure we are in a healthy place. Amen. And so I stand here today as part of the wisdom of God that worked in me and I literally believe that my visit to him then saved my life. Because as I began to implement, it took me some months to get my body to a place where it was well hydrated and then other things needed to be taken care of that revealed itself in my heart. And he said, “Give me 18 months and the things that are revealed in your heart, if we deal with it in a natural thing and with prayer and with faith then you’ll be good to go.” Well I’m here about 22 months later and I can tell you I’m in good condition. Praise the Lord I’m in really good health and there’s more. And there’s more. Hallelujah.
Well, I’m sharing this with you today because we all have a role to play in the body, all of us have different things. So, because I’ve got two other doctors at least in this audience. If I have a dental problem, I’m not going to Dr. Gerie. Because he’s not a dentist. If have something to do with ear, nose and throat or whatever. And sometimes even little issues, I’ve got another doctor that looks after me. He says, “No, Pastor John, don’t worry about this, you need a little bit of this, we’ll give you a little bit of that, it will help you with here.” Thank God. I don’t go to Dr. Gerrie for everything. I go to the things for him that I need him to go for. Amen.
You know, I’ve learned a lot from Dr. Nico because not so long ago I went to him. I actually went with Pastor Sharon to make sure her ears were hearing properly. I mean a husband has got to take a wife to have that done a lot. So, the result was that she’s got perfect hearing, above average hearing. Yes, absolutely. Now I know that she’s just not listening to me (Pastor John and the congregation laughs). So, anyway, we went there for her. So, he says to me, “So Pastor John, now that you’re here, let me just check your ears.” “My ears are perfect.” He says, “Let me just check.” He checks in my ears, he pulls out these horrible dirty things that are in my ears. I said, “I can’t believe that I didn’t think that this dirt was in my ears. I mean, I wash my ears all the time.” But, anyway, I’m not going to teach them today, Dr. Nico.
Anyway, he pulled this stuff out. You see he’s got instruments, and he’s got things, he’s got knowledge that only he can fix those things that are in my ears. And they allow me to hear better because he can get there. So, there’s things that are happening in our world that we all need different gifts, we all need different parts to take care of the body. Our personal body but we also need things to take care of the whole Body. And everybodies got a part to play. And not everybody’s part is the same part to play. Hallelujah.
And it’s a marvelous thing. It’s a marvelous thing. So, I’m just going to move along, and I’m going to read to you verse 27, 27 All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it. 28 Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church: first are apostles, second are prophets, third are teachers, then those who do miracles, those who have the gift of healing, those who can help others, those who have the gift of leadership, those who speak in unknown languages. 29 Are we all apostles? Are we all prophets? Are we all teachers? Do we all have the power to do miracles? 30 Do we all have the gift of healing? Do we all have the ability to speak in unknown languages? Do we all have the ability to interpret unknown languages? Of course not! 31 So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all (1 Corinthians 12:27-31 NLT). And then we go into 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which is love.
And so, he’s saying. “Hey, there’s all this stuff that’s needed in the church but you need to know that love is the greatest gift of all. And if you’re operating in love then all of these other gifts work well because it’s not all about the gift, the gift, the gift, the gift, the gift and which gift I am and how important is my gift and is my gift working better than someone else’s gift and let’s compete with gifts. No, but the greatest thing I can tell you is love. And love is not puffed up. And love is not trying to make itself a big deal. And love is not trying to be a noise and a clanging cymbal and say, ‘Look at me and look at me and look at me.’” On the contrary, if you read through 1 Corinthians chapter 13, it talks about love in a way that is like, it’s quiet, it’s just there all the time. And you know, 1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-2, NLT). You know, in the modern day church people want to be able to prophesy and they want to be able to say, “I understand all things, and listen to me, and watch my gift, and I’ll make money out of my stuff.” God says, “Let’s look like love. Let’s behave like love. Let’s do love. Let’s be love. Let’s be love.” Amen.
Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? I don’t know if you’re ready. You think you’re ready? (Congregation answers, “Yes”) Joh, ek weet nie so mooi nie (I’m not so sure about that). Okay, I think you’re ready. If you turn with me to Acts chapter 16 verse 13, 13 On the Sabbath we went a little way outside the city to a riverbank, where we thought people would be meeting for prayer, and we sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there. 14 One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth, who worshiped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying. 15 She and her household were baptized, and she asked us to be her guests. “If you agree that I am a true believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my home.” And she urged us until we agreed (Acts 16:13-15, NLT).
I need to go back to verse 1, actually. Sorry, I’m reading, well that’s important because of the divine connections that God puts. But I want to show you, that was the second one. I read the second one first and the first one second. Chapter 16 verse 1, 1 Paul went first to Derbe and then to Lystra, where there was a young disciple named Timothy. His mother was a Jewish believer, but his father was a Greek. 2 Timothy was well thought of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium, 3 so Paul wanted him to join them on their journey. In deference to the Jews of the area, he arranged for Timothy to be circumcised before they left, for everyone knew that his father was a Greek (Acts 16:1-3, NLT).
So there are two things that happen here. There’s a young man that Paul meets, his name is Timothy and everybody thought well of him, and he was well versed. And then he goes on and he goes to Thyatira and he meets Lydia. I mean what’s happening is that God has got a call on Paul, he’s got a calling on Paul’s life but Paul has yet to have the rest of the body around him that he can function the way that he needs to function. Because he can’t do it on his own, he needs the body around him for his ministry to work. Come on. So we know, later on, we know that Lydia and the people of Thyatira or in Philippi, they become the people that are his greatest partners. But he wanted to take a young man with him by the name of Timothy but Timothy was not circumcised because Timothy’s father was Greek, So the Greeks they didn’t circumcise their sons, the Hebrews they did.
Now, who’s Paul called to? Who’s Paul called to? Come on. This is a really wonderful bit of revelation I’m going to share with you today, so just hang in there with me now. Who’s Paul called to? When the apostles called Paul and Barnabas, they called them to go to Asia, to go to the Gentiles because the rest of the apostles are supposed to be with the Jews, right? Paul is called to the Gentiles. That means Paul is called to Timothy’s father, a Greek. So why would it be that Paul would have Timothy circumcised as a Jew when he’s actually called to preach to the Greeks and other non-Jewish people? Well, because he recognized that if Timothy was ever going to be his voice, that Timothy could go on his behalf to anybody, they would include Jews. Because he was a Jew and he would also talk to Jews in those provinces. But they would not receive Timothy because he wasn’t circumcised. So if he was going to be a son and he was going to be a messenger for Paul, he was going to have to circumcise him.
So, he was connected to the Hebrew community, they all knew him, they knew him as a man who loved God, they knew him as a man who understood the ways of God yet he was uncircumcised. But there comes a time when the call of God on your life requires you to do something that you may think is unnecessary. But for the calling, for the things that God has for you, you might have to go through something that is challenging. It’s not so that it can put you in a box. It, actually, is designed so that it can open up your world. Hello? I just want to note a few things and then I’ll be done today. Are you getting something out of this?
I just want you to note that Timothy became the one that Paul sent to others and he would say, “There’s no one that represents me like Timothy.” Yes? So, we just got through reading that Timothy was born of a Greek father but Paul talked about Timothy as “My son.” What was the thing that made Timothy Paul’s son? Circumcision. He didn’t need to be circumcised, he was a grown man in a Greek community but in order to receive the full call of God that might unfold in his life, he had to go through the circumcision of Paul. Not the circumcision of his natural-born father but the circumcision of Paul. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
So, I would like you to go with me to 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 1. 1 This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. I have been sent out to tell others about the life he has promised through faith in Christ Jesus. 2 I am writing to Timothy, my dear son. I am writing to Timothy, my dear son. May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace. Verse 3. 3 Timothy, I thank God for you—the God I serve with a clear conscience, just as my ancestors did. Night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. 4 I long to see you again, for I remember your tears as we parted. And I will be filled with joy when we are together again (2 Timothy 1:1-4, NLT). Does that sound like a son and a father relationship? But remember Paul had no natural-born sons. He had no natural-born sons but he’s talking to Timothy as a son. What was the event that made Timothy a son? Circumcision. Right? Praise the Lord.
So, now I’m just going to come back to talking about this in a while. I just want to read you one more scripture. 1 Corinthians 4 verse 14 says, 14 I am not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children. 15 For even if you had ten thousand others to teach you about Christ, you have only one spiritual father. For I became your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you. Listen to this statement. Are you ready for this statement? 16 So I urge you to imitate me (1 Corinthians 4:14-16, NLT).
14 I am not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children (1 Corinthians 4:17, NLT). So you’ve got ten thousand teachers, they can’t tell you what I can tell you. What am I about to tell you? Imitate me. Not their teachings, me. Huh? Next verse,17 That’s why I have sent Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of how I follow Christ Jesus, just as I teach in all the churches wherever I go (1 Corinthians 4:17, NLT). Come on. Hey. Hey. Hey.
So this morning I was led by the Holy Spirit. I tell you, I was ready to go wherever God wanted me to go this afternoon. I went into the back room. I had a cup of tea, lay down there. I had a bit of z’s, a bit of shut-eye. I was quite ready to have Pastor Sharon come and do message moments but I remained here because I wanted the Holy Spirit to show me if he was wanting to say something more through me this afternoon.
And so this morning the Lord had me ask the people that were here, He had me ask a very powerful question. “Do you know that I love you? Do you know that I love you?” And so everybody that I asked said, “Yes, we know you love us.” And then I asked you, “Do you love me?” Yes, you love me. There’s a love relationship going on here, it’s a spiritual love relationship. Yes?
I have never positioned myself to say that, “I want to be your spiritual father. I demand that you make me your spiritual father.” I’ve never done that. I never will do that but there are many in this church that see me as their spiritual father. It’s clear to me that the difference between a thousand teachers and a spiritual father is that a spiritual father will do what it takes to open up your potential and open up the possibilities that you have, not constrain them. And some people might say, “But circumcision is something that’s unnecessary.” But a spiritual father would say, “You are not accepted in certain circles unless you have a circumcision. And if you’re going to represent me and be an imitator of me and help others imitate the Christ that’s in me then you’re going to need to be able to talk to them. And they need to be able to listen to you as though they were listening to me. And those that are of circumcision will not listen to you unless you are circumcised.” So something that people thought was unnecessary became extremely necessary because he saw something in the future that Timothy couldn’t yet see, and his natural father couldn’t see it. Hey. Hey. Hey.
You know what happens in the natural world, in our modern day world. If I made a demand on anybody that seemed unnecessary and it seemed like I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and why you’re doing this to me, and why you should say this to me. Oftentimes people say, “I can’t understand it, I can’t see it.” And so they would consider it to be something that is a mark against my name in their whole credibility scale. Because they want to measure my credibility and they want to measure my honesty, they want to measure and weigh me up against a set of values. And so, along the line people have a tick box register of, ‘Pastor John ticks this, Pastor John ticks that, Pastor John ticks this mark, Pastor John does this.’ And so, if you have enough deposits of positive ticks you’re good, until you have too many negative ticks and then you’re no longer good anymore. And so that’s what happens in the church is that people have these ticks. And if I have to say too many things too often that people don’t like it’s a negative tick, a negative tick and then they end up just leaving the church. A lot of the time they just leave the church, they don’t come back because they don’t accept what’s being said through me.
But there is a very powerful relationship that is a relationship that is a father-son relationship in the spirit, and it’s one that is revealed here between Timothy and Paul. And it becomes so powerful because Timothy said, “I’m a grown man. I don’t have to be circumcised. I’m received in my community and as long as I’m in my community I’m good. Paul, I like your teaching, I receive your teaching, go your way I don’t need to go with you. I’m accepted here. My natural father’s here. I’m accepted in this community. I’m done. You want me to get circumcised? No!”
Do you think he would have been in his rights to say that? Of course, he’s a grown man. He could say that, he didn’t even have to ask his father. His father already made known what his father’s own personal will was for his life. I don’t need to circumcise my son because in my community it’s not necessary. So, he would have been within his rights to say, “I don’t have to do that. Paul, do your thing.” But for a divine connection and a divine assignment, he did what was necessary.
And so, it became that Paul ended up leaning so heavily on Timothy that the places he couldn’t go to, he would send his son Timothy, “Go and tell them, and remind them. Come and live among them. Live the way I live because I know you imitate me. And as you live among them the way I live and you live together, and you have lived like me, they will begin to see me in the way that you live. And when they see me in the way that you live then they will be reminded of the Christ that lives in me and they will be persuaded to continue to live the way that they’re supposed to live in Christ when they see you, Timothy.”
So, where does this whole thing come from? Does it not come from, and I’m not going to go there anymore because this is the end of it now. But does it not come from John chapter 15, 16, 17? Jesus speaks to everybody, speaks to His disciples, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father. Everything I have said has being the Father speaking. If everything I’ve done, it’s been the Father doing it. I’ve done nothing except the Father say it and the Father do it.” And then He talks to the Father in front of them and He says, “Now, My Father, I ask You that You would glorify Me so that in the way that You glorify Me that this glory can come upon them. And that the whole world might know that You have glorified Me because the glory will be seen in them.”
And then He goes on in John chapter 17 and He begins to pray and He says, “Now, Father, I ask You not to remove them out of the world but that You might save them from the evil one. Because they are the future. Because the words that I have spoken have cleansed them and You have saved them and You have separated them unto Me. And now they are clean and they are Mine. And Mine are Yours and Yours are Mine. And We together are the next. Look after them.”
“And the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you so that you can do what you need to do because you can’t do it on your own. And you’re going to be imitators of Me and you can’t do that on your own without the help of the Holy Spirit. But I’m going to have the Holy Spirit fall upon you so that when they see the Holy Spirit on you they will see Me all over again in thousands.”
So all that Paul is talking about is an extension of the relationship that Jesus had with His disciples. He said, “If you see Timothy you see me. If you hear Timothy, you hear me. And if you’ve heard me, then you’ve heard the Holy Spirit and the Father talking to you. And if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the gift of the Teacher, the Apostle, the Prophet.” You’ve seen the gift working among you. Now, body, you need to work like that together. And the one that facilitates it is not a thousand teachers. It’s a son. The one that makes it happen is not a thousand teachers. It’s a son. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
Well, do I have to say anything more than that? It’s not a thousand teachers that gets the body of Christ to grow. It’s sons. The most productive part of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a thousand teachers. It’s sons and fathers. That’s what makes it happen.
I see here on the front is an extended Delport family. It’s been my observation that you as a family have grown a lot since you’ve been in the church. Spiritually. Right? Because when you came here you started to become part of a body. You got planted. You had a spiritual father that understood the relationship. Yes? And now you’ve grown. It’s fair to say that you had lots of teachers in the past. Maybe not a thousand but lots. And they did good for you but they couldn’t have done this for you. Right? Praise the Lord. The other Delport is sitting at the back there. Praise the Lord.
Same with the Du Toit’s here. They could have had many teachers but they chose to come and be integrated and planted. And so they got to have happened to them what spiritual fathers can do not just what teachers do. They invested in it. And so I can keep going through the whole ministry. People that have had teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers everywhere. But it’s when you embrace the spirit of the father in the house. And you embrace the house anointing as Pastor Christi often says, the house anointing, the house anointing, when you embrace the house anointing, that’s something that’s powerful, it’s substantial, it’s productive.
Just because I get to be the one that stands up here doesn’t make me the house. It makes me the leader of the house. It makes the anointing come through the leader of the house. But we all together are the house. We all together are the body. The minute I lose sight of that ,I become arrogant and proud, and I puff myself up, and I want to become dictatorial, and I want to become authoritarian, and I want to do all of those kinds of things. I couldn’t do that even if I tried. Well, partly it’s because I’ve allowed the Word of God to grow in my heart. And as I have allowed more and more of the Word of God to grow in my heart, I’ve understood the implications of what a spiritual leader needs to do and be. So that the rest of the sons can grow up and mature and become strong. And when they walk around then they say, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the house that I represent. You’ve seen the father of the house.”
And so that happens to me when I go to Brother Jerry and I’m around Brother Jerry and Brother Copeland. I understand that I’m part of that father’s house and that father. And so, you know, nowadays he gets up and he talks about, “My church in South Africa.” Why? Because he’s comfortable that we represent him properly. That I am a son that when he talks about me, he talks about me with, “That’s my son. That’s my church. That’s my people.”
I got an email from someone just recently, they’re going to come here in December to visit. They’re coming to Pretoria and they got to hear about us and so they’re coming to visit here. I remember I met him one time. He was part of another church that I visited many years ago and so he’s coming to South Africa and he wants to make contact with us. It’s spreading. It’s spreading. It’s because we have a healthy Father-son relationship. Amen. Hallelujah. We allow the Heavenly Father to be the one who guides us and leads us. But we understand there’s a proper relationship going on. Amen.
I have lots to say about this. Over the years I have said lots about it. I’m going to just leave you with this, lead into whatever God may say in the future. I understand that when I was raising my own sons in the house. I understood that when they were little boys, they needed lots of discipline but they also needed lots of free play time. So they had that. And then as they become teenagers, you have to focus more on the responsibility than on the discipline. Because that’s a new phase of the life that they’ve got to go in. So while they can still have some fun, they’ve got to be focused much more on responsibility than they did when they were five or six. Right? You’ve got to start teaching them more about responsibility and freedom. And you’ve got to allow them the freedom to take initiative and to express their gifts because if you don’t that’s when sons become rebellious because they need the ability to express their uniqueness.
This is not a challenging thing. This is a natural growing thing. Because as sons grow up, father has been teaching them all along, “Do it this way. Do it this way.” And the son says, “You know, Dad, I know you’ve done it like this the whole time but you know what? If we do it like this and we do it like this and we do it like this.” And a father can look at his son and say, “That’s not the way I do it. You will do it my way.” “Okay?” What’s just happened with that teenage son is he says, “My father doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t think that I’m capable.” But if the father says, “Go for it” and he does it a different way and it still works, the father has learned something and the son has learned something. And the father and son can now talk about the new way and they can develop a relationship around the new way. It’s healthy.
Now in the sons heart, he’s to be careful that he doesn’t say, “Oh, so you thought you had the answers? So, how do you like mine? My answers are always better than yours.” Because then the teenage heart can become rebellious for a different reason. Then there’s no honour in the heart. it’s all about how good he is. Right? But if there’s a healthy relationship that develops between fathers and sons, the fathers will allow the sons to grow. Not in too early time because there’s some things that they just got to wait a little bit and I know sons sometimes don’t want to wait a little bit. But they have to wait a little bit because there’s just some things they’ve got to see and learn.
But when there’s a healthy relationship that develops, the sons continue to honour the fathers, the fathers have a healthy relationship with the sons, and then more productivity develops. The biggest challenge with the 14 in the natural now, 14, 15, 16 year old young man is that at 16 they think they know everything. And especially in the modern day world when technology is moving so fast and the younger generation are so integrated with technology and maybe the older generation is not so integrated with technology. They are generally tending to look at the older generation people and say, “You guys don’t have the value anymore because the new scope of what’s happening in the new generation is so past what you understand. And what you can do and we are so on the current edge and we’ve left you behind. So you don’t have value anymore.”
So they’re using natural things to determine a relational value. And that cannot work well in the long term. Not for anybody. Certainly not for honor, not for productivity, not for anything. And it’s like that in the spirit too. If people in the spirit think that they’ve got it all sussed, they know everything. “You haven’t heard, and you don’t know this new music and you don’t know this new way of speaking in tongues and you don’t know this new dance.”
When I first started a church there was this whole massive thing going on in the churches that everybody needed to be waving flags in the churches and dancing up, and down the aisles, and come up and stand in front of the church stages here, and be doing dances, and tambourines and tassels on the tambourines, and flags and everything. Anybody remember that? No? I’m dating myself now. Just shows I’ve been a father a long time. I mean there was huge pressure for me in my church to allow people to run around the church dancing, tambourines, flags, doing all kinds of stuff because this is interpretive prophetic dance. Interpretive prophetic movement and wada, wada, wada, wada. I said, “No.” They said, “Why not?” I said, “Because that was stuff they did in the Old Testament because they needed to do that in the Old Testament because they were not filled with the Holy Spirit. Now we’re all filled with the Holy Spirit, we don’t need to worship God like that. Because Jesus himself said you won’t have to worship Me in temples, you’ll worship Me in spirit and in truth. We only have buildings because we need a place to worship. But your worship happens from your heart.”
So I always used to answer this, “Okay go home, take your tassels, and take your flags, and go and dance in your own living room with your tassels and your flags. If you want to do that kind of dance before the Lord go for it. Go and do it at home. You don’t need my permission to do it at home. Go do it at home. If that’s how you want to do it, you can do it as long as you like. All the time. Just go for it.” “No, no, no, no, no, no. We want to do it in the church.” “Oh, why? Well because you want attention. You want people to be paying attention to you rather than giving attention to God.” So I said, “Ah-ah, no.”
People came and went out of the church because I wouldn’t allow flags, and I wouldn’t allow dancing, and I wouldn’t allow all that kind of stuff in the church. And now, now that’s not any longer a big thing in the church anymore. It’s not fashionable anymore. There’s new things that have come into the church. It’s all now about camera angles, and it’s about the way you stand on the stage, and it’s about crowd shots, and it’s about different things. Anyway, I’m not going to get into all of that today. Fathers and sons. It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. Because when you hear the heart of a father, and the fathers hear the hearts of sons, we have productivity and we have power. Amen.
Did we have a fantastic, amazing weekend? Hey? Blockbuster. Blockbuster. Daar is die ander Delport. Nou sien ek haar. Ja ek sien haar nou daarso. Hallelujah. We block the devil and we bust him in the chops. Hey? Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus.
Wow, wow, wow. What a weekend. What a weekend. I just want to say thank You to the Lord. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord for blessing us. Thank You, Lord for making our weekend so spiritually productive. Thank You for revealing yourself to us more and more. Thank You for Your joy and Your peace that has come upon us. Thank You, Lord that we are making great strides and we are crossing over. We are crossing over. We are crossing over. We are crossing over. In Jesus’ Name. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. So do you like this subject that I was touching on this afternoon? Hey Do you like it? Wat sê jy, Ester? Do you like it? She doesn’t just like it. She loves it. Good. Praise the Lord. Wat sê jy, Anke? Yes? You enjoy it. Lekker. Wat van hierdie hele ry hierso? One. Two. Three. Come on, give me a thumbs up or something. And the rest of you all go. There you go. What about all of you? Come on. Yes. And all of you. We’ll have a Mexican wave here in a minute. Praise the Lord. Alright everybody. I think it’s time for you to go home. Thank you. Bless you. Bless you. Bless you. Bless you. Bye.
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