Scripture reference: Isaiah 8:11-20 (NKJV); Isaiah 9:2-7 (NKJV)
Hello Church. Welcome to this online service today. You’re watching this because we’re just exercising some precautions and making sure that people that have been in contact with people, that have been tested positive for corona, came into contact with some of our staff members. We felt it prudent and wise to actually, just for this Sunday, have an online service, rather than having a live service in the way that we have been doing or live services in the way that we have been doing it up till now. So, thank you for joining the online service today.
I pray that God will bless you, that the Word of God will touch your heart, touch your life and begin to minister words of strength and encouragement and hope and healing to you. That God, that the Word of God will bring about a momentum and a structured developing growing phase of your life till if we meet again, I suppose.
I’ve been talking to you about, your will is your platform and your worship is your power and so I want to just start off at that point and I want to say, “Do you know president Cyril Ramaphosa, do you know him?” Your answer to that question would probably depend on your status, but it would probably be, “yes we know him.” We know that he is our president, we know what orders he issues, we know what his instructions are. We know what kind of things that he is about and what party he represents. There are some things we know about him; we know what he looks like. You may even have watched him enough times to know that he has some mannerisms that you might be able to point out, but does that mean that you know him?
No certainly not, it means you know about him. You know lots of information about him, but that does not mean to say that you know him. What does it take for you to know someone? Well if you’re going to say, I know someone, it’s obviously more than just having a knowledge about someone. If you are friends then what it means to you, is that you have become friends because you have shared common interests. You’ve spoken about those common interests and perhaps you’ve even been active in some of those common interests together.
For example, there was a season in my life when I played soccer and I had people that played in the same soccer team as I did. Now some of those people, I stayed friends with for longer than others. Others were just soccer playing buddies, they were just club members. They were members of the same club and so we played soccer together. It was a common interest. We shared information and we shared difficult times, good times amongst that common interest.
One or two of those people, I could say, I had a stronger bond with, and we shared more than just soccer as an interest. We shared more life interests together, and so that caused us to be able to spend more time around those interests, we spent more time. We spent opportunity, we made opportunities and sometimes that would include our family and our children. Sometimes it would include going to a park, taking a soccer ball with and having our boys, our kids, kick a soccer ball together with them. Having a picnic together and so although we played soccer together and we were in the same soccer team, it went a little bit further and we shared other common interests. We had similar age kids, family, we did things together that were common interests and those days sometimes you would have a picnic with a and do a braai vleis or something like that and spend a lot more time together. You would share things about your life, you would share things, about things that were happening in your life, you would perhaps share your dreams with each other and some of the challenges you were facing perhaps.
Obviously then depending on how good the friendship was, you would go further, sometimes you would share things that were more intimate in your heart, about yourself and about things going on in your life depending on how close you became together.
You might say, “Pastor John, what is it that you are talking about here?” I’m talking about – your will is your platform and your worship is your power. In this scenario that I’ve shared with you about people that spend time with each other. In order for you to develop more than just a knowledge base about someone, you have got to have a will that will create a much deeper knowledge of the person.
So, there’s a few things that must happen; you must will it, you must want it, you must have access, and then you must have the capacity to be able to interact with the person. You must want it, you must have access, and then you must have a desire and a willingness to actually share things and speak and become open and transparent about things, if you want to have a deeper more meaningful relationship.
Well so it is with Jesus, so it is with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. They have made it very clear that They will and want to spend time with you and me. It is a great desire of Their heart. So strong is the desire of the Father to want to have a deep meaningful personal relationship with you and me, that when rules and regulations came between us, He actually sent Jesus to die on the cross so that in His death and His resurrection He could free the way. He could remove all the obstacles so that we could have free access. From His side He said, “I will to want to have a relationship with you. A deep meaningful personal relationship with you. Wherever access has been denied, I now make sure that through the death and the resurrection of Jesus, access is now granted.” All you have to do is believe that the access is granted.
There is one thing that remains for you to have and that is the willingness to go and become and share and be involved and connected to the living God. Now, here’s the thing, if you are willing to engage God this way, then you have a platform access, you have a platform for your will to give you access to Jesus. Your will gives you the platform. Your worship gives you the power to know more things about God and Him share more things with you and so your whole dynamic of your relationship changes, when you have exercised your will to create a platform and your worship creates the power for you to do this.
This is a very simple, few words that the Lord has given me as I started to share with you previously, but it’s also very powerful. It’s simple, but powerful.
I have shared with you that when your will is involved and you will to want to be with God the Father, it means you want to know more about His ways. It means that you are wanting to give Him worship and He wants to give you the power. Then your life becomes wonderful and then all the things that you work, you work with words, you work with hands, you work with energy, all of those things begin to work together, they all combine together, to create a life of goodness, a life of abundance, a life full of the energy of God. What a wonderful thing that you can have all this energy of God, working positively for your life.
I do need to just remind you and talk to you about, if you use your will to create a platform for something else that you worship, that creates power in your life because whatever you worship is going to give you the power to do what you worship. What you worship gives you the power to do and you have the power to do, creates more worship. It all is centered around your will that creates the platform. Now you have the will, you have the platform, you have the worship and you have the power to be able to do what you want to do.
If you want to make an assessment in your life, you could say this; that what my life looks like is the sum of all of my choices. I have to say to you then, that what your life looks like now is the sum total of what you have willed because your will has created your platform. Whatever your platform is that you have now, your will has created that platform. Then it will also indicate what you have worshipped because you have exercised the power to worship that.
Now, I’m not suggesting to you that if someone lives in a very expensive house and drives very expensive cars and someone else does not live in such an expensive house and not such expensive cars, that they have more will, more power, more worship. No. People start from very different places in life. They start from different things; they have different backgrounds. It’s not right to say, I can compare or have anything to say about where your life is at, because of things, material possessions that you have in your life. I’d rather say that this is about you as a person. It does have something to do with what is around you, but it’s more about you as a person and what relationships you have and how you’re currently living your life.
If you are someone that has used your will in a platform that has not been inclusive of God, then you are likely to be wondering in your life, not having a wonderful life, but having a wondering life. You find that with a lot of Christians even, if they haven’t made Jesus first place in their life. They wonder as in, they wonder, but they also are wondering. They wonder about many things. What they wonder about is, you know, “Who is doing this to me?” or “Who should I be connected with?”, “who, who?”. It is always about who and it’s always about the eternal why am I doing this and why should I do this? Then it’s always about, when is it going to happen for me and when is God going to come through for me? Or when is someone going to do something good for me? When is this pain going to stop? and what for? What do I do it for?
So, on the one hand, you have someone who is, is certainly having a wonderful life, having a worshipful life, having a life that is full of good things, and then you have someone who is wondering about life and is always asking a lot of questions.
I want to share with you that if you are in this space right now, where you are uncertain of your future, then I want to say, the first thing that you’ve got to do is to make a decision to say; “I’m going to worship, to access the power.” There is tremendous power in your worship.
You might say, “Well, Pastor John, I have so many complicated thoughts going on in my head. I’ve got so many different ideas about life and I have so much doubt about so many things. I am uncertain about if I do this, am I doing the wrong thing? If I do that, am I doing the right thing? Is God going to bless me if I do this or is He not going to bless me if I don’t do that?” If you have all of those kinds of questions, what it really means, is that you haven’t allowed yourself the opportunity to be fully engaged with God, for more than a little period of time. The more you engage with God, the more you will understand that He wants to be engaged with you. He has granted you access and He has given you the right to come into that access, regardless of your condition; He took all the rules away, He took all the laws away. He took all the barriers between you and Him, He took it away so that you could have access into His presence.
This is so essential to our lives right now, this is so essential to us walking with God right now because it is going to take a Christian that is connected to Jesus and connected to the Word of God, that is going to be able to stand strong in this moment of our time.
I want to read you this passage of scripture that is in Isaiah, and it’s Isaiah chapter eight, and it goes like this, this is a prophetic word that came to the prophet Isaiah. 11For the Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying: 12“Do not say, ‘A conspiracy,’ (Isaiah 8:11-12 NKJV). The first thing I want to show you, do not walk in the way of these people. The worst thing that you can do is look at the multitudes of people and say “Because there are so many people doing it, it must be right”. I will tell you something Church, when Jesus came onto the earth, there were a lot of people that were doing religious practices, but none of them were doing the right thing; they all rejected the Messiah and it was only a few people that actually received Jesus, as Lord and Master.
If you had listened to all of the Rabbis, if you had listened to all of the intellectual, intelligent people of those days, learned people of those days, they all rejected Jesus to be sure. They called Him a prophet, they called Him a good man, but they rejected Him as Messiah. They rejected Him as God, as the Son of God. So, you can’t say because of the majority of people think one way that that’s the way you should think. You have to find your way in the Word of God.
You don’t say, 12 “Do not say, ‘A conspiracy,’ concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. 13 The Lord of hosts, Him you shall hallow; In other words, Him you shall fear, you shall praise, you shall worship Him. Let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. (Isaiah 8:12-13 NKJV). This is not a thought process, this is not an anxiety fear, this is not when somebody gives you a fright. This is not that kind of fear. The fear of He is, the life of everything. He’s the life. He is the beginning and the end of everything. If I’m not with Him, then my life is away from Him and if my life is away from Him, then to the extent that my life is away from Him, that’s where chaos comes. If you dread that, then you’re going to want to be drawing closer to Him, all the time.
That’s what it means to be afraid or to have the fear of the Lord in your life, is that if you realize that all life is in Him and the closer you are to Him, and the proximity of life in Him and with Him, then the better it is for you. Then you become someone that says, “I don’t want to be away from Him. I always want to be around Him because that’s where the beginning and the end of all of my joy and peace comes from.”
13The Lord of hosts, Him shall you hallow; Let Him be your fear. 14 He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the house of Israel. See, here He is. It’s what you will, it’s where your power lies, it’s where you worship, it’s what your platform is. As a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15 And many among them shall stumble; They shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken. 16 Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. 17 And I will wait on the Lord, Who hides His face from the house of Jacob; and I will hope in Him. 18 Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me! We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion. (Isaiah 8:13-18 NKJV).
There is a conversation going on here, there’s a prophetic conversation going on here, and this prophetic conversation going on here is that even though there are kings, even though there are those that declare that they are for God and they are with God, He does not know them, but those that call upon His name those that fear Him them He shall be a God and a Father to them.
19 And when they say to you, “Seek who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,” should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? 20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:12-20 NKJV). I guess, I would say to you, “Are you going to all manner of different kinds of people for advice, for wisdom, for counsel?” Some people so desperately want to have counsel to do the right thing in life, that they even go to people that are in this case, wizards and mediums. People who are supposed to be able to interpret things that have spoken in the spirit realms, rather than going to the Living God and His Word. They would rather go and hear from voices beyond the life of the natural, and into the supernatural, regardless of who they’re touching, and what’s being said. We, do we not have a right to seek our God? To seek Him? He is the Person. He is the Divine Being, that we should be seeking.
He says there, if you go after all of these places for council and advice, there is no light in you. If I had to go, and have my whole financial future planned out, by a financial advisor on the earth’s economic finances. Do you think they can see into the future? Do you think they have the knowledge of what’s going to happen today or tomorrow? No, they don’t. They don’t know. No one knew.
I’m just going to use this as a very contemporary, modern day example. No one knew that there would be a police officer, in a state in America that would put his knee on an African American man, George Floyd, for eight minutes, eight plus minutes, and he would say, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.” That, that would trigger inside of America, months of chaos, rioting, burning, things that are just going crazy. Who would have thought that that one moment, where George Floyd breathed his last, who would have thought that there would be a Back Lives Matter movement, that would go across the earth? Who would have thought that it would cause such a big voice? But the potential for it to actually cause such chaos in America, where now people don’t want to go back to schools because of corona virus, but the riots are all happening and there’s such, there’s just so much. Who would have thought, six months ago, that this would be the state of events in this world?
If you had asked someone for advice on your finances, and they said invest here, invest here, do this and do that, and then you’d listen to them, things that turned out so radically different. You would say, oh what a terrible financial advisor. Well how do they know? What do they know? They don’t know. But I’ll tell you somebody who do know, who does know. His name is Jesus, the Holy Spirit. Smartest Beings in the universe. You can hear from God about what to do with money. You can hear from God what to do with your relationships. You can hear from God what to do with things in your life. Perhaps God would have said to you, I think you should just hold on to your money for the moment, do nothing with it, and you should, if you just had a peace in your heart, okay do this, don’t do that. Maybe you would have come out with a very different set of possibilities. Hallelujah.
I would rather put my trust in God, than put my trust in men. Now I’m not saying that in the natural order of things men haven’t got some good things to say about money, but I certainly would rather be obeying God with money, than I would obey man because men have a will for money. Their will is their platform and their worship is their power and if they are not worshipping Jesus, they are worshipping the god of Mammon – money. What they worship is where they get their power from. You as a believer, if you don’t hear what God says about your money, then the people who worship money and the power that they get from the worship of money, they will impose that will upon you. That your money becomes a part of their system and a part of their future, rather than working for you in your future, the way God wants you to do.
I mean, again I have to refer to this in the context of Isaac when God said to Isaac, “Don’t do what your father did in the past and go to Egypt, when there is a time of famine, but rather remain in this place and in this land.” He sowed his seed in that land and in the same year he received a hundredfold return. Isaac’s wealth multiplied so quickly and so magnificently because where he planted seed and reaped the harvest there was no food there. There was nothing. So, he could virtually name his price for his harvest.
His wealth was not just in the hundredfold return of the harvest, his wealth was in what he could trade with that harvest to get other wealth. I mean, Isaac became extremely wealthy because he obeyed God, in just one instruction.
We shouldn’t speak like other people and say, “Conspiracy, conspiracy.” We shouldn’t speak like other people and say, “Why would you want to serve this God? Why would you want to give all your life to God?”
I want to read from a bit further on in Isaiah and I’m going to read from Isaiah chapter 11 and I’m going to read from verse 2 and it says, 2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. (Isaiah 9:2 NKJV) I want to tell you, church, upon us a light has shined. Upon us, the joy of the Lord has come. His name is Jesus and it is the Holy Spirit.
3 You have multiplied the nation and increased its joy… It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. If you walk in joy, Jesus can touch and work in your life. 3 …They rejoice before Me according to the joy of harvest. (Isaiah 9:3 NKJV) What harvest is that? Well, that’s the harvest of your worship. Your harvest of your worship. Your harvest gives you power, it gives you joy, because you will it and your platform is created so that your worship creates more power in your life. It’s a harvest. It just begins to increase and increase.
3 …As men rejoice when they divide the spoil. 4 For You have broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. (Isaiah 9:3-4 NKJV) Well, that day of Midian was when all the Midianites came against the children of Israel, to rob them of the harvest and God raised up Gideon and He absolutely destroyed the Midianites with 300 men of Gideon, He destroyed the multitudes of the Midianites that kept coming to take the harvest of God’s people, year after year. And so, this is what God is saying. He said, “When things are looking gloomy and things are coming against you, I’ve shone a light upon them, I’ve raised up a joy in their hearts, I’ve raised the harvest up for them and their joy will be like that of the day of the Midianites. Their harvest will be great and wonderful.”
Your oppressors will no longer be able to pursue you, 5 for every warrior sandal from the noisy battle and garments roiled in blood will be used for burning in the fuel of fire. Here comes church. 6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and the government will be upon His shoulders. The government of everything is upon His shoulders and if you have a will that says, I will, to get close to Jesus. I will, to get close to His government, His order of doing things, then your life and your worship and your power comes from what’s on His shoulders. He is the ultimate governor of the universe. He will be called wonderful. He will be called counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6 NKJV)
I can say to you, for a surety this day, that God is my governor. He governs my life and everything in my life is governed by Him. God to me is wonderful and I have a wonderful life. God to me is a counselor and I have lots of wise counsel that comes from the Holy Spirit. God to me is my mighty God. He’s strength, He’s powerful, He’s mighty in my life, mighty to overcoming anything that would come against me. I will say to you that in my life He is my everlasting Father, from the day I got born again to eternity, He is my everlasting Father. I will say that He is my Prince of Peace, He is my Peace, He is my Peace.
There is nothing that can disturb my peace because I am in Him. I will declare that. I declare that to you of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, there will no end of His government and peace in my life 7 and upon the throne of David and over his Kingdom to order it and establish it with just judgment and justice, I receive justice in my life. I receive order of God in my life. I received the judgment of all things that need to be judged to that come against me or that may remain in me. From that time forward even forever, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this. (Isaiah 9:7 NKJV)
You see church, this is the zeal, the will of the Lord that will perform it, the zeal of the Lord gave Him the platform and that platform gave us, people the opportunity to worship Him with power and as we worship Him we have more power and we can declare that His government is my government. He is my counselor, He is my Mighty God, He is my Peace, He is my everything.
Now I go back to the beginning and I say to you, “Do you know President Cyril Ramaphosa?” Yes, you may know of him, you may know perhaps somethings about him, but in order to know him, you would have to spend a lot more time with him and you would have to be able to share things with him.
Well I want to encourage you church, that this is the time for you to engage your will to draw closer to Jesus, draw closer to the Father, draw closer to the Holy Spirit. Show Him that you will and even if you say, ”Well I have so many other things that distract me and I really want to will it,” then say it to Him, say, “Father I want to will to be closer to You. Holy Spirit help my weak will that wants to will it.” You will see that the same zeal of the Lord, that the Bible is talking about, will begin to rise in your heart. When that zeal comes to you, you must activate it. You must do something about it.
And as you will, that platform that God gives you, your worship will begin to increase your power, it will begin to increase what you can do with power, and then His mighty power that works in you, and allows you to do things and become things, that you couldn’t even imagine, and He says that He will do far above all that you could think off or that you can imagine, all the things that you can even beyond your wildest imaginations, you could say, “Well, I wonder if God could to do that?”
He can do all of that, because in you He has placed the capacity to want to pursue after Him, to go after Him, if you are a born-again Christian. As you let your will create a platform for you to worship, then power comes. The power will give you more time, and more opportunity to worship, and as you do that, you will find, church, that your whole life, order comes into place. You get so much more peace, so much more sure, instead of wondering, you begin to have a wonderful. Instead of having questions, you begin to say “I thank You Lord, for all of the good things, that You are working in me, all of the good things that You are working for me, and all of the good things that are happening around me.”
Well, I trust that you will be a worshipful person in the week ahead, worship Him, let the power of God work through your worship. Wake up in the morning and say, “Thank you, Jesus”. If that’s the first thing you say everyday “Thank you, Jesus”, just say, Thank you, Jesus.” No matter what you did the night before, doesn’t matter what time you went to bed, doesn’t matter. When you wake up the next day, just say “Thank you, Jesus”. Even if you wake up and say, “Forgive me, Jesus, thank you, Jesus”. That’s a will that you are exercising, it creates a platform for your day, that gives you the ability to worship Him and even in that, beginning of worship, the power is given to you to do more of it, and more of it, and more of it.
Well, I trust that this message has been a blessing to you. I just want to pray for you in closing. I pray that the Word of God that has come, begins to fundamentally touch your heart and change you and begin to bring fruitfulness into your life. A change of thinking, a change of heart, a change of activities in lifestyle, and I pray that the blessings of God overtake you and overwhelm you. Now I say that everything you put your hands to, will prosper, wherever your feet go, may they go with blessing. May you prosper, no weapon formed against you will prosper and you are covenant, secure under the Word of God and the Blood of Jesus. I ask the Father, that He give His Angels charge over you and that those ministering Spirits will go and take care of things in your life, and bless you and protect you and look after you. That the Holy Spirit will be your Counsellor and Guide and lead you into wonderful and new things and new doors and new opportunities and supernatural increase in your life, day after day after day. If you agree with this prayer, you say, Amen.
Thank you for listening to me. God bless you
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