Scripture reference: Revelation 3:1-4 (NKJV) Revelation 3: 5-6 (NKJV); Revelation 3: 7 (NKJV); Revelation 3: 8-9 (NKJV); Revelation 3: 10-13 (NKJV) (Revelation 3:14-15 NKJV), (Revelation 3:16,17 NKJV)
Isn’t it really amazing and wonderful to hear the word of God through other voices, other experiences? Doesn’t it really just minister to you how other people are encountering the Lord in their own ways? It’s an amazing thing to me, you know. Praise the Lord. You know, I’m glad I said this and I acted on this while I was alive, and just to pick up from what Gideon said; I also followed a man. The fact that he’s gone to heaven is just one of those things, but I did follow the man that God put into my life. I followed him as far as he followed Christ.
But there comes a time when you have to make a decision whether if that man does anything that offends you or upsets you or you don’t agree with, you have to make up your own mind that you’re going to walk with him anyway. Because, otherwise, any little thing can just upset your God ordained assignment, and that’s always the challenge. I mean, it’s all very nice when you say I’m following someone because God put me in their lives while they’re all perfect, but what happens when they’re not so perfect?
You know, I’ve said this many times, to everybody in this church, and I’ll say it again and again. If you wanna find some fault with me in my life, you will. It’s not it’s not going to be that hard because it doesn’t mean I’m at fault. It just means you have found fault with me. Right? So, I’ve said this many times, I am not a perfect human being. My spirit is perfect, I am being sanctified on a daily basis in my walk with Lord Jesus, and I’m walking ever more closely with him in an ever higher level of sanctification and purity and holiness. I’m making sure that my words line up with God’s words, my actions line up with God’s actions. I’m living in and according to the revelation and the insight that God has placed in my life, but that still doesn’t make me perfect.
Even to my wife, I’m not perfect. [Pastor Sharon: pretty close.] Thank you, baby. I mean, she lives with the man that is John, and so she will see things about the man that is John, that over many years of living together, she will see things about me that sometimes the John that she sees is not 100% the same as the Jesus that she knows. Right? So, in those moments, she could be in a place where she just takes offence to it, gets upset with it, and, you know, all of those things. Well, that doesn’t mean she can leave me. She better not. I know you won’t. I mean, nearly 45 years later, she never will. No.
But the point I’m trying to make is that even if you find something wrong with someone that’s really close to you, and for the most part, they live in a very spiritual state with God, that doesn’t mean you say you can just leave them because suddenly they’ve upset you. Somehow, that seems to be okay in church life. You know, as soon as somebody upsets you, it’s okay to change. Yeah. But, God’s not confused about this stuff, is He? Amen.
Well, we were just having wonderful conversations in the back there over, during the time – and really spiritual conversations like radiation from cell phones that affect your ears and ears of children and stuff like that, you know? Very spiritual stuff. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Well, again I want to say thank you to all of you for being obedient to Jesus and for giving your time, giving your focus, giving your energy, giving your gifts and callings and everything that you have to the Lord. Even though we understand the human component of where we live together, because we do it unto the Lord, there Is a lot that God can do with it because we give it to the Lord, amen? I want to just say it this way. In the same way that your tithes and offerings are managed by people, you are not giving tithes and offerings to people. You are giving it to God because the power in your offerings that you give, the power of your tithes is the fact that it is not being given to men. It is being given to God, right?
So, even though in your words, you may speak human words out into the airwaves, you may speak words that are heard by human ears.If you are speaking words that your own ears hear, the Word of God, even though it’s coming through a human vessel, contains a fourth-dimensional, God-dimensional power. That’s what everybody has been saying this morning. It’s that kind of thing that we sort of wrestle with sometimes in the sense that we say, but it’s just words, you know. Words are our everyday communication tool, and so, you have to have words to communicate. But at the same time, your words are so powerful that they are actually creating. Just because people use words like, “What are you having for lunch? What are you having for dinner? What are you making? What do you feel like eating?” These are words that are just communicating. They are just keeping life moving along, you know, “where are you going?” You know, stuff like that, I mean.
The challenge that we have is, these are basic words, but they are also potentially very powerful words. Yeah. We have to accept the fact that God has given us the ability to live in a God dimension, to live in the Kingdom of God. To live in the Kingdom of God, in the ways of God, in the knowing of God. God has given us this ability. Even though we have a human body that lives in a human three-dimensional world, we have this capacity to live in the fourth dimension, and it’s quite marvelous. Yeah. I was just meditating on something that Le Roux said yesterday, and it was his opinion, and so, but it is a worthwhile opinion. I mean, his opinion was, you know, he believes that there’s more than the fourth dimension in God, that there is multiple dimensions we don’t even know about yet. In our minds, we probably still can’t grasp the fourth dimension. But I guess his point was that God is so big that God must have more than a fourth dimension, you know.
I guess that’s what you were saying, Le Roux. So, I mean, I was meditating on that and I’ll say, well, how could we ever understand anything even in the fourth dimension, never mind the multidimensional-God. By the way, part of the reason I thought, because initially when I was speaking about relationships, I called them initially, I called my messages, multidimensional relationships because our relationships that we have, if you remember, touch, integration of ways, strategic intentions, divine productivity, Covenant, because, actually, it’s a multidimensional relationship.
So, when I first titled the messages on my relationships, the revelation that God gave me, I called it a multidimensional relationship thing. Because, actually, if we are having a relationship with a God-dimensional God, we have access to all of the multidimensions that God is through Covenant. That’s why we can have divine productivity. That’s why He can share strategic intentions with us, but it has to start with Him touching us and we integrating our ways with Him, then we can begin to understand the different dimensions that is God. It’s quite awesome, hey. Yeah. It’s amazing. Praise the Lord. We are accelerating into our future, and, I’m going to just finish off in this session this morning why I believe the Lord wanted us to talk about the seven churches.
The last church I talked about was the church of, Thyatira, I believe. Yes, Thyatira – so, now I’m just going to quickly cover the two other churches. The church of Sardis from Revelations, chapter three verse one, 3 “And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, or to the messenger, to the pastor in Sardis write, ‘These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wow. You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. In other words, there are certain conditions that the church can find themselves in that people looking at them can say you are alive, but actually you’re dead because everybody thinks that the way you’re living or the way that you’re behaving makes you look alive, but actually you’re dead. 2 Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. So once again, we’re talking about maturity and immaturity. So even though you look like you are mature and you’re alive, actually you’re living immaturely and you are dead 3 Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. 4 You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. So, even in this dead church, there were some people that were living alive and they were wearing garments of righteousness, of holiness, of being before God.
“5 He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. 6 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”‘ Revelation 3: 5-6 (NKJV) It’s interesting to me, and if you read all of these things going on in the different churches, it’s interesting to me how God is measuring some of the things that He is saying to the churches. And if you just bear with me, I’m going to talk about Philadelphia now, and I’ll just give an overview of what the Lord is saying about all these churches to us.
The faithful church, which is the Philadelphia church. “7 And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, ‘These things says He who is holy, He who is true, “He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens:”’ Revelation 3:7 (NKJV) I mean, this is an amazing scripture. Brother Jerry used the scripture a number of years ago when he had a prophecy that there will be a year that there will be open doors, and he used the scripture that when God opens a door, no one can shut it, and if God has closed the door, no one can open it. Well, again this talks about the divine component of God being involved in our lives, and if we give Him the possibilities, if we give Him our future, He will make sure that the doors that need to be opened for us will be open for us, and those doors that don’t need to be closed that He will close them for us. This is a good thing that we can have that confidence in our walk with God.
Again, it’s dependent on a few things. “8 … for you have a little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name. 9 Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie – indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.” Revelation 3: 8-9 (NKJV) You know, again this is so powerful to me because this talks about a category of people that have little strength, but they love God and they live in an environment where there’s lots of idol worship, there’s lots of things going on, and in this environment they’ve experience a lot of persecution, and the very people that persecute them, He’s going to make them come and bow down before them, if they will stay the distance. Amen.
“10 Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. 11 Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. 12 He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name. 13 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”’ Revelation 3: 10-13 (NKJV)
The church of the Laodiceans, the lukewarm church. The church of the Laodiceans, the lukewarm church. “And to the angels of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things says the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.” (Revelation 3:14-15 NKJV). Now, I mean, this is a condition that is rather unfortunate because these people are living in a state where they do not want to be completely sold out for God, but they also don’t want to completely not forget about God. So part of them says, I want to have God in my life, but I don’t want to give my life completely to God. So I’m not so hot, but I also don’t want to be cold. So they live in this lukewarm state, and look what God says about them. I mean, this is a really graphic thing that God says about these kind of people.
“So then, because you are lukewarm and neither hot cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.”(Revelation 3:16 NKJV). Hey, if we ever wanted to have any any condition that we should run away from and not want in our lives, then this should tell us and I’ve said this to people before, if you’re going to sin, then sin properly. No, I mean, what’s the point of of, you know, of acting like you’re not sinning for what reason? So, that other people can accept you. Find the people that you can sin with and sin with them properly so that you can be cold, cold properly. Because in that condition, you will know that you are cold. There will be no doubt about your coldness. But if you’re a person who says, I’m got to just sin a little bit and then I’ll go to church a little bit and I’ll sin a little bit and then I’ll go to church a little bit, then you, you do not have zeal for God.
I’ll say this, that it’s a condition in the church that is rather unfortunate because it’s the condition that does the most damage to the modern day church. It’s this lukewarm church person who says, I’m a Christian who wants to be a Christian, but they don’t live as a Christian. They don’t have the fire and the zeal of a Christian. So, when they’re around worldly people, they talk like those people, they live like those people, they want to be involved with those people, and they want to do everything that those people do because they like it. They like what it’s all about, and then when they get around Christians, they want to talk like the Christians. They want to be accepted by the Christians too because they like that too, but they’re neither cold nor hot, they’re just lukewarm. God says He’s going to vomit them out of his mouth.
“Because you say ‘I’m rich, have become wealthy and have need of nothing’ – and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.”(Revelation 3:17 NKJV). This is a condition of them having lots of material possessions and, at the same time, being absolutely unspiritual. I faced this in the previous church where I was a leader and spent 19 years of my life there. I experienced this that people associated their wealth and their prosperity as being spiritual. This is a real thing. It was a real problem in the church because everybody that had lots of material possessions immediately began to speak as though they were spiritual because of the blessing that was on their lives, and yet they were poor and wretched and miserable because they actually were not giving their lives to God. They were being dishonest in business and doing stuff in business that was as dishonest as any other non-Christian, but then they would come and say, “It’s God that is blessing me.”
18 I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eyesalve, that you may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. What is He saying? Actually, be white hot, fire hot, and repent, because in that condition, I can work with you. Right? Yes. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. 22 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 3:18-21, NKJV)
We are in this moment as a people, as a ministry, we are in this moment. I am just going to cover a few basic, spiritual facts here, a few facts or truths if you like, and one of them is that – I’ve preached this many many times over many years – that I believe the foundation of living in faith, is having an honest view of where you are at in your life. Primarily because, if you are not honest about where you are at, then you can’t have God deal with you as to what is going to come next.
Now psychologists will tell you this, that for the most part, people will only see the things about themselves that are better than they actually are, it’s called Johari’s window. Johari’s window is a kind of a window that people will say, this is what you think about yourself or this is how you perceive yourself. This is how you think other people see you. This is how some people really see you. There is four different categories of the way people see you in life, and they differ quite a lot in the four different panes. The way they describe it, they differ the way you see yourself, the way you think other people see you, the way other people want to see you, want you think they see you, and then the way they really see you. Have I got that right? Min of meer. Okay. I haven’t spoken about Johari’s window for a long, long time. If I’ve got it wrong, go read it for yourself. It’s something like that.
But one of the things is that actually, the way you see yourself and the way someone else see you will be quite different, because the way you see yourself, you always want to see yourself in a better light and a more positive light than perhaps you really are, because you want to live with yourself in a more positive self in yourself than you actually are, right?
For the most part, if you, can’t be honest with yourself, then you have to ask the Holy Spirit to help you to see yourself the way that He can help you see yourself so that He can bring you to the place of change.
So, that’s what the Holy Spirit of truth is all about. The Holy Spirit of truth is there to help you, to guide you, to lead you, to counsel you. He’s the Counselor. He’s the Helper. He’s theTteacher, and the Father—Jesus says that the Father wants to correct us as sons, and the Father loves us and corrects us because we are sons.
So, the way He’s going to correct you is He’s going to bring truth to you that will allow you to see something about yourself that needs changing. If you’d say, I’m ignoring this thing about myself because I don’t like it, so I’m not going to talk about it, I’m not going to —I’m not even going to think that I’m like this—then, by default, you’re not allowing the Word of God to actually change the condition you’re in because you’re just ignoring the condition, or you’re just completely saying, that’s not my condition. I mean, that’s the ultimate justification of sin, isn’t it? Where you say, “I deny the condition or I minimize the condition, so therefore, you know, I don’t have to deal with the consequences of it, or the state that I’m in, I don’t have to deal with it.” Well, you know, you all know me by now, and you know that I’m not one to go look for every sin in my life.
I think it’s rather useless to go and try and uncover all the sins in your life, write them down, and then try and deal with them. It’s like, okay, let me write down all my sins so I can confess them, and then, when I’ve confessed them, He’s faithful and just to forgive me for all of my unrighteousness. Okay. I’m forgiven now, Lord. Now, can I move on?
Until an hour later, and you found out there’s new things in your life that you didn’t think about. Right? It’s rather unfortunate, I mean, it’s rather silly to actually go about life like that, and I’m certainly not an inward, introspective person that I’m always trying to search out my sin so that I can be better before God. Because, fundamentally, I believe that He has made me righteous, and He has saved me from all unrighteousness, and He has forgiven me and will continue to forgive me.
As far as the east is from the west, He has removed my sin from me. Jesus has taken care of that. But, at the same time, if I’m going to have faith work for me, and I’m going to live in faith with God, I’ve got to be willing to let the Word of God work with the things that are in my life. For example, when I was in debt, I had to face the fact that I was in debt. I couldn’t speak to the Word, have the Word of God come and say, “I’m prosperous, I’m prosperous, I’m prosperous, and I’m just going to ignore the fact that I’m in debt.” Hello.
I mean, I had to accept the fact that I was in debt. I had to phone the bank. I had to phone the credit cards. I had to phone all the people that I was owing money to. I had to deal with them. I had to be honest about it. I had to say, this is my condition. Now, faith – let’s work together to change my condition. If I ignored my condition, then I wouldn’t have had faith to be able to work on my condition. Right?
If I ignored my condition, then I wouldn’t have had faith to be able to work on my condition. Right? There’s a starting point of faith in our lives that is about: where is my faith going to work from, and in the beginning of faith messages when and we’re going back 35 years or 40 years now, that literally people when they heard the faith message, they would say, “I’m not sick. I’m not sick. I’m not sick.” What they were trying to do is to say, “I’m living in faith, so I’m not sick.” No. You have to face the symptoms and the conditions that are in your body and then faith can change the conditions of your body, hey. You can’t say, “I’m not sick.” You can say, “The Word of God is more powerful than the sickness in my body. The Word of God overcomes all sickness and disease that is in my body. By His stripes, I’m healed.” So, you’re not trying to ignore that there is sickness in your body. You’re taking the Word of God to deal with what is in your body. It’s two different ways that you have to approach living in faith.
When we’re talking about the seven churches, we have to maintain a balanced view of our church, our church life, our ministry, that we can’t say, “We are really good at this, so this is our, but I do believe in this, that we have a redemptive calling.” That’s why Jesus had to talk to all the seven churches differently. Have a different message for them because they all had a different place, a different space. They had to deal with different gods, different spirits, different things that were going on, and so He had to give a different message to them. So, we do have a redemptive calling, but in our own redemptive calling as a ministry, we have to face the fact that maybe we’ve got some improvement to do, and there are things that God wants us to do better in. Amen.
So, what is the Spirit of God saying to the church today? Number one, to abhor doctrines that encourage believers to embrace compromise with the world. Messages that promote moral relativism and inclusiveness over absolute truth dilute the message of the gospel and strip it of its life saving power. So, we’ve got to make sure that we reject the doctrines that make church this kind of church; moral relativity, inclusiveness. If we don’t position ourselves as a church that stands for truth, then we are going to be in trouble. Right?
We must accept the Word of God as absolute authority and allow it to thoroughly equip us. The sure compass of God’s truth will safely navigate us through these perilous times and enable us to take a God ordained position in His plans and purposes. Amen. Hallelujah. So we must accept the Word of God as absolute authority in our lives. Yes? If we accept the fact that God’s Word is absolute authority in our lives, then it will allow His Word to equip us and position us for His plan and…
If we accept the fact that God’s Word is absolute authority in our lives, then it will allow His Word to equip us and position us for His plan and His purposes in our lives. Number three, we must stay alert for the signs of spiritual infection, worming its way into our company of believers. We must not tolerate the doctrines that corrupt or deviate from the simplicity that is Jesus Christ amongst us. Amen.
You know what’s happening by me ministering and preaching to you like this is that I’m declaring words that you receive, that you can meditate on, that you can pray about, and it holds me as a messenger to you accountable to the standard that God has for our ministry, for our people. As I’m speaking it, these words become the words that God says, “Here’s the standard and the order of what we must position ourselves going forward, then we all can hold each other accountable to this.” Choose to live free from the contamination of the world, then draw from the Holy Spirit, the spiritual nourishment we need for sustained strength to complete our divine assignment. Amen. Hallelujah.
If we do this, a sure reward awaits us. If we endure this, a sure reward is waiting for us. If we remain faithful, a sure reward is waiting for us. If we refuse to compromise our standards and do not conform to this world, a sure reward is waiting us. Well, that reward can be both present and future. That’s how Jesus has revealed Himself to us when He was on the earth, and since then through His apostles, He has revealed Himself to us that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Jesus, the way He spoke about it, He says, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven that cannot be corrupted, but you will in this lifetime and in the lifetime to come receive the reward of it.” Right? If we stay faithful, and we endure, and we don’t compromise, then we will be in a place where we will have the rewards both here and eternally. To be sure, the way that the apostle John writes it, he says that our faith overcomes the world and we are overcomers in this world. Amen. We need to be constant, continuous, and faithful, steadfast in making sure that we stay the distance. He that has an ear to hear, let him hear. Amen.
There’s a few things I just want to say here and the one thing is, the church of the Lord Jesus, that’s us, He has already positioned us with Him in the heavenlies. Right? We are seated at the right hand of the Father in Christ. We are already positioned there, but the daily work of the Word of God and the daily work of the Blood of Jesus, that daily work continues in us to sanctify us on the earth.
This is a fundamental truth that we must accept that as a church, we can never say we have arrived at a point. Otherwise, we are in danger of becoming one of the churches in the book of Revelation where we can say, “We have all of this stuff. Look how good we are.” And then Jesus can say, “But you’ve lost your first love, or you have tolerated Jezebel, or you are permitting this kind of compromise into your church.” And whether we lost our first love, whether whatever it might be, we have to be on guard always, always.
So, fundamental truth is, what happens if you don’t pay a speeding fine? Nowadays, they have these roadblocks, and they measure your, they take your number plate and they will pull you off and say, “Pay this now or you don’t you leave your car here.” Well, what gives them the right to do that? The law. Yes? Who gave them the right to enforce the law? Your vote.
In our country, anyway, your vote gave them the right to govern in our country. Yes? Your vote gave the government the right to govern. The governing government has the right to stop you and say, “Pay your fine.” Yes? The governing government has also said we must pay taxes. I know this is not a happy subject but just stay with me for a minute.
The Apostle Paul in the book of Romans says that God has given us these authorities to exercise government on the behalf of God in the earth. So what about the Chinese Communist Party? Has God given them the right to govern the way they choose to govern? The answer is yes. What about corrupt leaders?
Well, He doesn’t, authorize them to be corrupt, but He has authorized leaders to govern in the earth. If they govern corruptly, then God will deal with them and in time so will things on the earth. We’ll deal with, you know, it’s amazing to me that there are still leaders out there today and I think the CCP is one of them and Xi Jinping is one of them. He wants to literally, there’s a Chinese mandate that wants to govern the whole earth. They want to be the prominent, predominant governing nation on the earth. They want to tell all the governments of the earth and all the nations of the earth they want to run the earth. That might sound shocking to you, but this is a fact. They are open about it. This is what they want to do.
They want to be the government of the earth. They want to surpass and replace the United States of America as the most influential, most prosperous government on the earth. They want to run the earth. Well, that has been tried by many dictators, kings, rulers, leaders before him, and none of them have been able to get it right.
Well, some of them have thought they run the whole earth. The Roman Empire did. Alexander the Great thought he did. You know, all the different, I mean, there were even times of the Greeks and then there were other people that were less effective at it or less militant, in some ways, but the British Empire was a colonial empire and they were actually spreading colonialism throughout the earth.
That was also the case with the Dutch. That was also at some time, the Germans wanted to do that. I mean, we fought two world wars because Germany wanted to do that. The French wanted to do that. I mean, there’s been many nations on the earth that have wanted to govern the whole earth. They wanted all the resources of the earth, both the earth’s resources and the human capital, they wanted to control it and run it and manage it for their own sake.
Well, what does that sound like to you? Doesn’t that sound like Lucifer from the beginning? “I want to take God’s glory and run things for my own sake.” That’s never going to change. Wherever there is an influence on the earth, it’s never going to change. Humans are going to want to control the earth and control different things, but God won’t let them do that because it’s not what He has prophesied and ordained on the earth. So, it doesn’t matter how much they plan to do that, they can’t do that.
I’m really taking my time to make a point here, and the point I’m trying to make is that God has delegated the right to govern, in the earth, to humans. Has He not? Whether they’re perfect or imperfect, He’s delegated the right for humans to govern the earth. He has also declared through His Word that there will be kings who will be leading and God will use them as a sword for His own sake. That’s what Romans says, “For those that are sinners and do wrong, the government will be a sword to them. But for those who don’t, the government will be a protection to them.” It’s what the apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans. Yes, chapter 12 and 13. Amen.
So, do we accept that God gives governments on the earth? [Congregation responds, “Yes.”] Do we accept that? [Congregation responds, “Yes.”] Fundamental truth that God gives governing to the earth. Is this a fundamental truth? One of my eight eternal principles is government. So I’m just making sure we understand that. Didn’t God, the Father, talk about Jesus, that He was going to make Him the government and all the government will be on His shoulders? That means He’s come to place a new order on the earth that will be His order and eventually, all governments will come onto the government in the earth, as well as the heavens below the earth, everything will be on His shoulders. Okay. There is an exception, though, and I’m being tongue-in-cheek about it, but work with me. There is an exception. That exception is in the church. He doesn’t have a government in the church, does He? Of course He does. Who’s the government in the church? Who’s the government in the church? Jesus. Jesus is the government, and who’s He delegating authority to on the earth while He’s sitting at the right hand of the Father? Who’s running the church? Apostles, prophets, teachers, spiritual leaders. Who’s governing the church? Spiritual leaders.
But most people don’t like this. They will accept authority, they will even accept the principle of government, but when you want to govern, they don’t accept being governed. Because in the same way that the speed limit is a 120, and everybody will say, “I accept the speed limit until I’m in a hurry, then I no longer accept the speed limit. I will ride at whatever speed I choose that is convenient to me. So I accept the authority and I accept the government,” and so now you’re busy weighing up a decision and debating a decision. Is the breaking of the 120 rule acceptable to the consequences that I must pay? Come on now. Don’t look at me like I’m some smelly cheese that just happened to you on your plate this morning. Hey, I mean, if you’re going to go and break the speed limit, you are saying, “What are the consequences of me breaking the speed limit? And so the benefit and the reward of my breaking the speed limit must be better or equal to the consequences I might have to pay.” You’re making that decision in real time. Almost subconsciously, you’re making that decision because as your foot gets heavier, the consequences get stronger, and stronger, and you know it from every 5 km’s that you go over. Right?
What you’re saying in that moment, my circumstances are bigger than being governed. My circumstances are bigger than the someone who wants to govern me. I don’t want to be governed in this moment, so I’ll pay the consequences of not being governed. Until somebody steps out and says, “Sir, your consequences are you must immediately give your car to me because the speed that you’re travelling says I have to take your car away from you, put you in jail, and you must wait, and wait for a magistrate to decide what your fine must be because you’ve been riding too fast.” Now you’re thinking, suddenly, “These consequences are not what I expected.” So, “I wish I wasn’t going so fast,” but in real time, you were making a decision. “It doesn’t matter what the consequences are, I’ll pay them” until you have to pay them. Now you wish you didn’t have to pay the consequences.
That’s how the devil works with all government in your life that God has placed in your life. You don’t have to worry about being governed, just break it and pay the consequences because after all, the consequences can’t be that bad, hey?
God has placed in the earth a leadership that is a gift to the body of Christ, that will bring revelations to the body of Christ, and the way that you receive revelations is that you’ve got to receive the gift as a messenger from God, and when you receive the messenger from God and you receive the gift, you can receive the revelation. But coming with that revelation and with that gift comes a level of accountability and honour. Hello? This is a fundamental, truth. I just need to get to, I want to bring the balance to this and the balance is this, that no matter the gift and or the leaders that God has placed in your life, none of the leaders that God has placed in your life have ultimate authority over you. Only Jesus has ultimate authority over you. This is also a fundamental truth. Come on now. Work with me here. I’m bringing fundamental truths that are going to help us be balanced in the way that we live our Christian life.
Even though God has placed human delegated authority in your life, it doesn’t matter who that authority is, we all submit to a high authority. That authority is Jesus. If I tell you to do anything that is outside of His authority delegated, then I’m no longer the authority that has a say over you, hey? Then He becomes the One that has a say over you. I’ve been here before, but I need to just repeat it again.
So, many of these things I’m telling you now, many of these things I’ve not only got them for myself in reading the Bible, but they’ve been authenticated and or echoed by other spiritual leaders, many other spiritual leaders that I’ve been connected with in my life. When I say it, sometimes it feels like, it seems like I have an agenda by preaching this stuff. The agenda is that if we cooperate in the Word of God together, then we have a strong church and we can grow as a church and we can find out where we are missing it with God and where we need to do better before God because He’s our ultimate authority for all of us, and He’s going to guide us and lead us and direct us. Amen. If I ever take a position, and this is part of my accountability and my honour towards you. If I ever or anyone in this church ever takes up a position of leadership where he says, “You must listen to me no matter what.” Then you must leave the church. Because then I’m putting myself as the ultimate authority in everybody’s life. Right? So where do we draw the line on this matter? Where is the balance of this? Well, the Word of God is our line. Whatever the Word of God says, that’s what we need to do. Amen.
Ultimately, Jesus was not with Peter when Peter decided to betray Jesus, was He? Jesus was somewhere else. Peter was living his own life and so when he was confronted with a precious situation, Peter betrayed Jesus. He denounced Him three times, but I want to just show you something. Jesus was the ultimate authority and He was the authority over His disciples. When He was breaking bread with His disciples, He started to speak to Peter and He said, “Peter, the Lord, My Father, has shown Me that the devil has come after you and he’s trying to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail you. But when you have come the full cycle of temptation, Peter, you must encourage your brethren also when you come out of the cycle of temptation.” Then He said, “You’re going to betray Me three times.” Peter was like, “Never, not me, Lord. I’m gonna die for You.”
Then just later, he was in the garden and these guys came to arrest Jesus and now Peter wants to show Jesus that I’m ready to die for Him, so he draws his sword, cuts off the guy’s ear and he looks at Jesus and says, “See, I’m ready to die for You.” Because he knew that if he does something like that, it’s immediate death for him. So, he’s looking at Jesus saying, “I’m ready to die for You.” He says, “Peter, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, boy. Let Me heal this guy’s ear so there’s no evidence of the corruption that’s in your heart because the sifting has already been happening. You are already being sifted and you don’t even know that it’s happening, Peter. You think you’re acting according to your own passion and you’re trying to prove to Me that you are going to serve Me with everything, but it’s already happening to you, the sifting has already begun. The measuring of your spirit, the measuring of who you are has already started.” Come on.
I want you to see that Jesus already saw what was going to happen to Peter and He already spoke the end result of Peter’s coming through the temptation because of His prayers that would hold him. Amen. But He couldn’t let Peter see that He knew everything or everything that Peter was going to go through because Peter had to go through it himself. Yeah. When Peter finally betrays Jesus the third time, he realises this is what Jesus was talking about. He runs because he got to face himself. “I thought I was ready to die for Him but in a precious situation where Jesus is not around me, I caved like that.” Wow. Hey?
Here’s what I say. I say that we, as a church together, we have to receive the leadership of the Lord Jesus. We have to be in a place where we have the government structure of the Lord Jesus alive in our ministry. Where we are going forward, God is going to allow us to have a more inclusive leadership participation of people in this ministry. Yeah. Why is this important? A few reasons why; number one, I’m not 25 years old anymore, 35 years old anymore. I’m getting into the last phase of my life and ministry. I’m still around for about 30 years, but I am in the last phase of my ministry. We have to be in a place where this ministry that God has raised up for Himself remains with Himself, doesn’t go with my body or the body of Pastor Sharon. It doesn’t go with us that it remains for our children and our children’s children, that there will be a body that will be strong and steady and stable and stand the test of generations time if the Lord wills it.
If He’s delayed and He’s coming to the earth, then we have to prepare like this ministry is going to still be around for a 1000 years. Right? So, we have to do this. Even though it is me as the messenger that God has brought into the earth, this messenger and this spiritual leader has to raise up leaders and delegated authorities and delegated leadership to be able to sustain and maintain what God has put here and grow us into the future. Amen. Hallelujah.
This is what the Holy Spirit put into my heart for this session today so that I can move into the next phase of the message, which I will bring tonight. The Lord gave me wisdom this morning about how to bring to you what happened to me in my spiritual encounter, my supernatural encounter, and He released me to be able to bring it in a way that would, I’m going to put it to you this way – it’s not going to bring glory to the encounter, but it’s going to bring glory to the truth. Amen. That’s how I was fussing with it because, you know, everybody that’s had a supernatural encounter with God, they want to elevate their encounter, and the Lord has cautioned me not to elevate the encounter, but to elevate the truth, not the encounter. Hey. Amen. Praise the Lord.
Again, you know, people can have different things to say about other people that have had spiritual encounters and they shared this and they shared that. Well, that’s them and their walk with God and the way God dealt with them. This is me and my walk with God. Amen. Okay.
The other thing that I want to say finally about this is that, part of what was happening in the book of Revelations and the seven churches is that God was bringing His life and His order to the seven churches. So, part of the order of God is, “I commend you for this, I thank you for this, well done for this, keep going with this, but I’ve got something against you. You need to take care of this.” Well, that sounds like a father dealing with his family. Right? It’s like you’re doing good on this, but you still got more growing to do. In some cases, the stuff that they had tolerated was so severe that God says, “If you don’t fix this, I’m going to remove your candlestick.” Right?
And so, in my view, anyway, in reading those scriptures, He was very strict about that with the church of Ephesus because the church of Ephesus had become a standard of leadership. So he was more on the church of Ephesus than all the other churches, not because they were more compromised or did worse things, but because they were held to a higher standard. Amen.
Again, I don’t want to elevate a situation that has happened in the past, but it is an important thing of what God wants me to share, and I’ve got five more minutes or so or ten to share it with you now. At a time when Grobbies was dark – can I put it that way, Grobbies? It’s okay to put it that way? Grobbies was dark. I’m just wanting to remind you what was happening to Grobbies, is that Grobbies was in a condition where he was living in the church. He was presenting himself as a certain way in the church, but in his heart, he didn’t receive any of the truths that we had been preaching in the church. So, he was presenting himself as fake.
Again, you can see that if the Spirit of God wasn’t in this scenario, we couldn’t speak about this because there’s redemption here and there’s restoration here, and this becomes a testimony of the power of the love of God and someone who’s prepared to submit to the power of God. But when Grobbies was dark, I mean, Grobbies, in some ways, God had to deal with Grobbies because Grobbies and I were cycling a lot together, and I was traveling a lot with Grobbies in the car, and Grobbies would spend a lot of hours on the bicycle, in the car talking to me about, what about this money situation? What about these financials? What was happening is that he was pinging my spiritual depths of my leadership and my authority, and he was using it to make arguments for himself, why he didn’t have to live this way before God. I mean, I didn’t know that in his heart. I just would freely share with him questions that he had.
But because he touched the highest level of authority that could be in his life, those words and the counsel that he was receiving from me judged him. It judged his condition. So, the judgment that came upon Grobbies was much more severe than it would be on other people because he had access to me.
That will tell you part of the reason why I have to be careful in my relationship with everybody else because if I just allow all of my spiritual authority to be available to you all the time, you might think that’s what you want, but you don’t really want it because it’s going to be more harshly judged in your life if you have access to me all the time for every matter in your life. Amen. But here’s what happened, was that when Grobbies, on a given day in church, came and he presented himself on the floor and he came to bow down on the front of the floor here in an act of false worship, God called him on it through Pastor Sharon. God called him on it and said, “Grobbies, you will never do this again in this church. You will not come and bow down and present yourself as faithful and spiritual while your heart is against the things of this church and in this ministry with these people.” So, Grobbies took offence to that. Well, of course, his heart was dark. Grobbies took offence to that.
So, what did he do after that? He left the church and then what happened to Grobbies? He was telling everybody else stuff about us because his heart was dark. So, I had to wait and we had to let God do His thing. Pastor Christi had to wait. Pastor Sharon, we, and I know there were lots of conversations happening in the church at that time. Lots of stuff going on, but we had to be silent. We couldn’t come out and defend any action because God had dealt with it and we had to let it stand. And whatever was going to happen, we just had to let it stand. Until one day, the Lord spoke to me and He said, “John, the time of judgment in Grobbies’s life is over, but you must go and talk to him out of a spirit of love that if he will accept the judgment of God, he will be restored.”
So, what I did was I went before the Lord and I started studying the scriptures and I wrote a whole paper on God’s secret weapon of love, which is judgment. Judgment is God’s secret weapon of love. I wrote an entire document where I studied everything about the judgment of God and how it’s all about the love of God, the way judgment comes. Right? I took that document and I presented it to Pastor Lynn, Pastor Christy and it was a couple of people that I brought into my home and I said, “Here’s what God has shown me about God’s secret weapon of love, which is judgment.” And I said, “I need to read this to you because I have to go and tell Grobbies what God has told me, and if Grobbies rejects it, then the secret weapon of love, which is judgment, is going to come on Grobbies much harsher and it might lead to his death. And I’m telling you all that I have to come and tell you this before it happens in case he makes the wrong choice.” What would have happened if Grobbies made the wrong choice is the fear of God would have come into this church because he could have dropped dead. Like Ananias and Sapphira, he could have. It was a possibility.
How many of you want the position of the pastor now? [Congregation laughs] Hey.? Because, you know, these are things that God has you to deal with as a spiritual leader because we’re dealing with spirits that are affecting people. Amen.
I made an appointment to come and see Grobbies and Christi, and I went and I sat in the lounge, and I spoke the Word of God to Grobbies. I said, “Grobbies, I’m coming out of love. I’m coming out of the order of God, but I’m coming with a judgment too.” And I told him upfront, “This is what God has declared, but if you will repent, then God will restore you and bring you back and He will do everything else.” And just like that, Grobbies just dropped to his knees and he just started to repent. From that day to this day, he’s a different man. The fruit of repentance is in his heart. The fruit of repentance is in his life. Restoration is happening and continues to grow. Their relationship is restored and grows (Ps Christi and Grobbie’s relationship) because God’s great love was exercised so God wouldn’t let him go. God wanted to bring him back. It would have been his choice though.
You remember what happened with the apostles Peter, and Ananias and Sapphira? So, the husband came in first and he said, “Here’s the money.” And he said, “Who made this decision?” “I did.” Boom. He dropped dead. Then the wife came in separately and he didn’t say, “Your husband’s dead. Be careful what decision you make.” He had to test her heart separately. And when she made a decision in agreement with her husband rather than with the Spirit of God, she also dropped dead. Here’s what the Bible says, “And the fear of God came into the church,” because the judgment of God was on the disorder. Hey.
You know, there’s many people that proclaim this all over the place. They say, “We want to have a New Testament Church.” You know what they mean by that? What they mean is to say, “We want the power of the Holy Spirit to flow. We want the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We want the Holy Spirit to come upon us like tongues of fire and we want all the manifestations of the power gifts of the Holy Spirit, in healing, and miracles, and all kind of stuff.” Yeah. That may be so, but you’re also going to receive the same judgment of God who’s going to come into the church at the same time. You can’t have one without the other. Hey.
So, I trust that you are beginning to see why God brought me this whole journey till now in these weeks that I’ve been speaking to you about the God dimension and the dimension of the realm of the spirits because we do not, and I will talk about this tonight and tomorrow. We are not wrestling against flesh and blood. We are wrestling against principalities and powers, the devil is defeated in our lives, but we have to face strongholds and I will talk more about this. The strongholds are in our mind. The strongholds are the way that people’s cultures will envelop the church. So, do you understand that when Jesus is speaking to the churches, He’s directly connecting the behaviour of the churches to the influences of the world system, and the gods, and idols of the worship of the world system, and the impact that they’ve had in the church, directly or indirectly.
So, on the one hand, when the church was a lukewarm church, you know, they were wealthy, they were comfortable, they lacked nothing, and they were just very comfortable in their churchiness. God said, “I’m going to deal with this lukewarm stuff because, actually, you’re so unpalatable to Me I want to vomit you out of My mouth.” So, if we say we want a New Testament, New church like the book of Acts, then we’ve also got to have the standard of God and the order of God that comes with it.
It is unfortunate that the whole moral relativism function that has come into the Church has diminished the authority of God in the Church, and it’s diminished the judgment of God in the Church. Amen. So, the enemy of God, the truth is the truth and he can’t do anything against the truth. The truth is Jesus Christ, and it’s the Word of God, and it will be forever that way. Hey? Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of God will stand forever. Yes? Everything will be measured against the Word of God. It doesn’t matter what place of society or humanity you come from. Everything is going to be measured according to the Word of God. That is the standard. That is the standard. So, the enemy of God can’t change the truth, but what he can do is he can cause people in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ to dilute the truth, to have just a part of the truth, the convenient part of the truth. Amen.
So, I’m going to say this. I did a lot of studies, a lot of studies. Many, many years ago, I did a lot of studies. I read many books of people that researched church order and church structure. I came from a denominational church. I’ve been part of charismatic churches, which are generally churches that are not run by a council. Soos die Afrikaans sê, “‘n kerkraad”. (Like the Afrikaner says, “a church board”.) Or a church board or a council of people. So over the ages, there’s been this contest between the advisers to the church leaders and what is the balance between the church advisers, die ouderlinge (the elders), die kerkraad, church board, and the leaders of the church.
So, denominations will tell you that the way that the church must run is that you must have an independent set of administrators that will run the church, and they will tell the pastor what to do. “And if that pastor doesn’t work out at that church, we’ll move him to another church and we’ll bring another pastor in.” So they move pastors around because the function of the church is in the hands of administrators.
I don’t see that anywhere; I don’t see that order in the Bible anywhere. Even when the Apostle Paul handed over the church to the elders of Ephesus, he didn’t say, “But you must have administrators that must run your spiritual leadership.” Yeah?
When the apostles gave the leadership of managing the church governmental issues, administration issues to the deacons, they were still in charge of the church. Then you have – I’ve witnessed this for myself. You have firsthand church leaders that are so above and so powerful and have such an amount of clout that they can do anything they want to do, say anything they want to say, be anything they want to be in the church, and no one can question them. No one can actually have anything to say against them because they’re so powerful. That’s not right either, is it? Because what they’ve done is they’ve abused the authority that God has given them to use it for their own good and their own benefit.
So, where does that leave us for generations to come? Where does that leave us? Well, that leaves us with the heart of the people and the Spirit that is on the people because if we lose the heart and the Spirit of people and we leave it to a set of rules and governances and ordinances, we are lost. Because if you look at what happened with the AFM church, the AFM church was started with John G Lake who came in the Spirit of revival. He came with a message of the Gospel. He came with a healing power and anointing that was on him, and he came and he went all over sub Saharan Africa and he just let God use him in a powerful way.
What happened was that a group of leaders started to run the church. In the end, he had to leave South Africa, go back to America, reestablish his authority and come back with that authority and reposition himself as a leader. But when he died, that same administrative function took over the church, and now even though there might be 500, 700, 800, at one time there was up to a 1000 AFM slash AGS churches in South Africa and they were all run by an administrative state. So, what happened was they lost the spirit of the man who started the church. They lost it, and so what ended up running the church was a set of rules and regulations and governing positions. That’s happened in the NG Kerk. It’s happened in the Catholic church. It’s happened in all of the big denominations around the world.
They’ve got lots of assets and they’ve got lots of influence and they’ve got lots of wealth. It’s all run by administrators. So, they’ve lost the spirit of Andrew Murray who brought the Dutch Reformed Church to South Africa, who had a reformation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. They lost the spirit of it and they kept on with the rules so our future is that we have to have leaders that are willing to take up the mantle, Come on, church. That are willing to take up the mantle of leadership that will say,
“I’m going to come in the spirit – in the spirit of faith. I’m going to come in the spirit of the Holy Ghost’s wisdom. I’m going to come in the spirit of the order that God has brought into the church, and we have got to work together that we pass on this spirit to the next generation so that the next generation can take up the mantle and can run with it.” And I am a representative of a faith message that by and large around the world in many areas is busy fading away. Because the men that started, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Charles Capps, TL Osborne, many of those people, John Osteen, many of those people that have now died and gone away, the spirit of faith that was in them that brought in… into the earth this whole revival of faith, they’ve all died. There are very few of them left.
So, do you know why this… you know, Pastor Christi was there, and they witnessed Brother Jerry sitting around that boardroom table and said, “John, promise me you will not ever stop preaching faith.” You know what he was doing? He was talking to a son and he was saying, “I’m giving it to you, son. Don’t lose what we have spent our lives building. Don’t lose it. Keep with it, John.” We have to trust the next generation of you’s, meaning me’s, to do this and to keep with it. In the end, what kind of – what sort of regulations and rules are going to govern what we do now? It’s the spirit that’s in me that’s going to govern what we do now. Isn’t it?
It’s the spirit, And if you look at all of the Revelation churches, 7 churches of Revelation, God was talking about the spirit that’s happening in you. And if you’ve corrupted your spirit or if you’ve gone after another spirit or you allowed some other spirit to come in and get you, I’m after that thing. I’m not after the the do’s and the don’ts. Amen.
Staan op Grobbies ek wil jou just love. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to love him just because, you know, that was a tough moment we went through. You all remember the tough moment. It kind of affected the whole church. It was a tough moment. How thankful am I that God restored this fellowship, that now he can cycle with me again, and he can talk to me about anything and now we have a different fellowship and relationship because his heart is pure. His heart is open. His heart is clean. But I’ll tell you what, there was a moment there when many people in the church didn’t understand what was going on here.
It wasn’t for me at that moment in time to even explain it to you because I had to be watchful about what God was doing in the spirit of what God was doing it. And so I couldn’t get into my… I couldn’t get on my jukebox and, you know, say, “Hey, let me tell you what’s happening here.” Because, actually, his life was at stake and if I had spoken anything wrong, at that moment in time, it could have killed him. And therein lies the power of the delegation of authority and leadership because if you’re not sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is telling you, you could mess it up just like that. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I’m telling you, God is amazing. He’s amazing, He’s amazing, He’s amazing.
So, I’ll tell you what, I would rather have the judgment of God come on my life, come into my life and be in a position where He can restore me, than be in a place where I just think I’m right all the time. And if I, me, John, if I maintain a spirit of teachableness, right, if i have a heart that is being able to be taught the Holy Spirit and taught by God, then I’m always going to be in a place where I can look to myself and say, “Teach me, Lord. Correct me, Lord. Help me to do better here, Lord.” Right? And if we all maintain that together, then we’re always going to be ready for the Holy Spirit to speak. And then when His judgment comes, it can end up with a love fest. It can end up with a testimony of redemption and restoration. It doesn’t have to end bad. It doesn’t have to end bad. Thank God for it, it doesn’t have to end bad. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.
Thank you for listening to me today. Thank you for being here today. I’m extremely thankful to the Holy Spirit for guiding us and leading us and giving us these days in this time, over this season, to be able to speak the Truth. So, yes, I know I’ve gone about this in a long way, but the level of teaching that God has brought out over these days, you know, it can stand as a memorial and a monument for our church going forward. It can stand as evidence that our sacrifices and our obedience will move God. It will move God to say things in the right moment, in the right time for our church, that will be able to bring us forward into the next things that God has for us. And we’re only just getting started here, church. Amen. Amen. Won’t you all stand with me, please?
Thank you for being attentive in this holy moment, in this mighty moment that God has created in this church. Thank you for being amazing disciples of the Lord Jesus. Amen. I pray that the peace of God will rest upon you. That His comfort would be all over you. And that this afternoon, you would rest, but you will stay in a place of receptiveness that whatever the Lord’s going to say tonight and tomorrow morning, that you will still be able to receive the more that He has for us. As we close out this year and go into the next year, what a way to end. What a way to end – where God is creating a whole new platform of government and order and faithfulness to us going forward. In Jesus’ name. Do you all say amen to this? Do you receive the Word of the Lord today? Thank you for coming. Geniet die middagete. (Enjoy lunch.)
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