I was debating whether to say something about
this or not, and after the testimony that
was just shared about how basically the pastor's
family was almost destroyed and they have received
some great damage.
But not only that, this man could have
been put out of the ministry, and I
don't know about other pastors, but I do
know a lot about a lot of them.
We feel like we're just living on the
edge.
The edge of being extinct.
The edge of being destroyed.
The edge of our families being destroyed.
That's how I live just any day.
Don't marvel that a man makes it or
that a man, you know, marvel that he
can stay there.
It's just a marvel that the grace of
God has allowed us to sustain.
And back in earlier years, we would break
away after six years, seven years of ministering.
Then we would break away for eight months,
fourteen months, one time.
And I felt this need for years, but
haven't been able to let go.
It's like the guy that grabbed a hold
of a bull one time, and the neighbor
come by and said, what are you doing?
He said, you need to let go of
that bull.
You're dragging him around.
He said, I'm trying to, I'm trying.
But we need to understand that the enemy
will destroy us if he can.
And so I'm going to take a little
time and go on into this again.
These messages, I believe, are very important.
As I've said, they're coming out of my
life.
They're coming out of over 40 years of
preaching, and I've been encouraged to do this.
How to destroy the church, or how Satan
destroys the church.
Christ is to be central.
He's to be preeminent.
He is to be everything.
And so if the enemy can destroy Christ
in our fellowship, or in our home, or
in our heart, if he can destroy the
reality of Christ, he can destroy the church.
I've titled this message, Strange Fire.
Strange Fire.
And I'm going to try to watch myself
on it today.
But since something was said by the pastor,
by Pastor Tim there, church leadership, church leadership
is what we're going to talk about.
We've gone through, I'd love to go back
through what I've just covered the last two
weeks for a review, but I'll just say
this.
That we started off that the basis of
the home is marriage, the basis of marriage
is a lifelong relationship, and the basis of
a lifelong relationship is agreement.
We went back to the, we started off
in the garden, and we came through and
we saw how Satan got in to destroy
Adam's home, and broke their agreement with God.
Agreement means to sound together.
Music, melody, harmony.
They had beautiful harmony.
And so if that can be broken in
a home, if it can be broken in
a church, if it can be broken between
a man and a wife, a lot of
destruction can come about.
Now I want to jump right into this.
Church leadership holding up the standard.
And I'm probably going to use one aspect
of that this morning.
But let me give you the definition of
example.
This is leadership.
It is example.
And so if the enemy can destroy me,
if he can destroy my family, he can
destroy a church.
If he can destroy you, he can use
you and your family to destroy a church.
And, you know, Jesus was known as a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And being associated as I am with many
pastors, I guess this has been my hobby,
my burden, pastors, and so studying them and
watching them for many years, my heart has
a continual ache in it, a continual sob.
And many times I actually do sob and
weep.
And even for friends.
But here's what the Bible says.
1 Timothy 4.12 But be thou an
example of the unbelievers.
Titus, showing thyself a pattern, which is the
same word, a pattern of good works.
1 Peter 5.3 But be an examples
to the flock.
They're not to lord over the flock.
But leadership is example.
And we are just hit by, you know,
Jesus prayed for the disciples to be kept
from the pornos, the evil, that they would
be kept.
The bombardment that's coming in in this area,
just the moral area alone, is enough to
just wipe us out.
And it's getting to be a horrendous amount
of infiltration.
A number of years ago I was invited
to go on a hunting trip, elk hunting.
We went into northern Colorado and to get
there we went through southern Wyoming.
And we pastored our first church in Wyoming.
I love Wyoming.
It's wild and woolly and wilderness and there's
not a lot of people out there.
And so we are coming down the interstate,
coming from Cheyenne, heading west.
And I saw something that's still in my
mind.
It's just as bright as almost the day
I saw it, as much as my memory
will retain color.
But out in the right side of the
highway, out in the field several hundred yards
out, was a yellow statue.
I looked at that and what?
It wasn't a statue.
Well, if it was, it was a statue
of a shepherd with a yellow poncho on,
watching his sheep.
He was just standing there on the rock
looking out over the sheep.
And maybe it was a statue, I don't
know.
Just a fool of the coyotes, I guess.
But I thought, what a picture of a
shepherd watching his flock.
And it was cold and drizzly.
What a picture!
Standing there, stable, alert, watching his flock, watching
over those sheep.
Now, church leadership, holding up the standard, is
very important.
I'm going to head on by starting off
this morning.
One of the standards which links with the
home, and that's the marriage.
More damage has probably been done in this
one area to destroy churches by leadership than
any other one thing I know.
And that is by not holding up the
marriage oneness.
I ask myself this question.
How long is a lifelong relationship?
Till divorce or till death?
Many of the leaders in our country are
saying, well, it's till divorce.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible says this agreement that we make
together is until death.
And many have broke their vows, and they'll
stand before God.
But this one area is destroying the churches.
Because, see, America is falling because the churches
have fallen.
And the churches are falling because the leadership
is falling.
The churches are losing their standards because the
leadership have lost their standards.
It used to be it was a rare
deal to hear.
Even in my lifetime, I remember when some
neighbors that were friends of mom and dad,
when they decided they would get a divorce.
And this was only like, what, I don't
know, however, 40 years ago.
It was shocking.
Now it's just almost everyday news.
I had a rude awakening on this one
time when I was taking a little break.
And I was in the church.
I think we were in the church.
And the pastor got up one day.
And he made an announcement, and my spirit
so screamed out within me, I thought, oh
no, oh no, he's not doing that.
But he got up and he said, his
grandfather had kept this standard.
And his father had kept this standard.
And through the generations, he was a third
generation pastor and preacher.
They had kept this standard of not allowing
divorce.
But he was making a public announcement that
he was going to allow divorce.
And he was going to start marrying divorced
people.
He was going off the edge, basically.
And I thought, this is horrible.
And it was horrible.
But what followed in his family the next
few years was just horrible.
Because that which he dropped the standard for
came into his family.
And it was just a nightmare.
It was just a nightmare.
Well, this area is pretty important.
It's very important.
And I might just start to read the
Scriptures just so that you know that I
haven't made this up.
Paul uses an example to the church in
Romans chapter 7.
He said, For ye know, brethren, for I
speak to them that know the law, how
that the law hath dominion over a man
as long as he liveth.
For the woman which hath a husband is
bound by the law to her husband so
long as he liveth.
But if the husband be dead, she is
loose from the law of her husband.
Now, in the church we have had to
learn how to deal with the damages.
Those that come that have had divorce and
have come to see that it's wrong and
that have had a repentant spirit.
And different churches have different ways of dealing
with things.
But I believe that there's forgiveness for that
sin also.
Even though the consequences continue and the damage
and the scars and the hurt is all
there.
But there's not a sin that the blood
of Christ doesn't cover.
Many will not let the blood cover that
sin.
But it's so terrible.
But the Bible also says, if I might
flip over to another part of Scripture, that
many youths, leadership, schools, teachers, seminaries, Bible colleges,
they take the Scriptures and I believe that
they just make it say what they want
it to say.
Just like we listened to a speaker a
couple of weeks ago, an evangelist speaking, and
he talked about one guy, he looked in
the front of the book and had 15
different versions.
He said all he's doing is getting versions
to make it reinforce what he wants to
say.
That's just horrible when you've got 15 standards
and they're all going to contradict each other
probably.
But anyway, 1 Corinthians 7.
1 Corinthians 7.
And coming on down through these verses, oh,
about 10.
Paul said, And
if he be pleased to dwell with her,
let her not leave him.
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the
wife, that means brought into the realm of
protection and covering.
And the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the
husband, else were your children unclean, but now
are they holy.
And here's where the rub-a-dub-dub
hits, where the fat hits the fan, so
to say.
But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart.
A brother or sister is not under bondage
in such cases, but God hath called us
to peace.
End of chapter.
Period.
Many say that's it, that's the end of
the chapter, they don't read the next verse.
For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou
shalt save thy husband?
How's that going to happen if you go
ahead and divorce?
Or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou
shalt save thy wife?
You may not be under bondage, but you
don't have that freedom as long as your
mate is still living to go get another
wife.
Now, is there any other evidence in the
Bible on that?
Well, right in that same chapter, in verse
39, the wife is bound by the law
as long as her husband liveth.
But if her husband be dead, she is
at liberty to be married to whom she
will, only in the Lord.
Now, many of us, we know this, but
it seems like many do not understand.
And Jesus reinforced this.
And this standard has been so chopped away
and attacked at and compromised in our schools,
our seminaries and Bible colleges, to where men
of God are coming out polluted.
This standard held for hundreds of years, thousands
of years.
This standard held, and when it was broke,
it was a reproach.
This is how the enemy destroys the church,
destroys the oneness of the man and the
wife.
You can destroy the family, then you can
get in and destroy the church.
This is what we're talking about.
Now, I guess I'm going to say this
again.
I may say it every time.
Because I have had the privilege to preach
in some 17 states and some other countries,
a couple of other countries besides ours, I
have also had the amazing privilege, I don't
know why, because I'm just nobody, to sometimes
get around some amazing men and to be
in situations and be with pastors.
The first church I pastored, the pastors got
together once a month in our district.
And we shared our heart and we shared
our struggles and we prayed.
And then once a year, we all got
together from our fellowship.
And so I spent a lot of time
and I've listened to a lot of things
and I've got my own stories.
But we would share and we would share
our heartaches.
And somehow or another, I have retained dozens
and dozens and dozens of illustrations in my
mind, which part of it still works.
But these things come to my mind.
Yesterday, they were just flooding in as I
was going over this one thing after another.
Leadership standards should not differ from the Bible,
but they do nowadays.
And it's just destroying the church to such
a degree, it's awful.
It's awful.
The first church I pastored, I was the
only one that went into this town.
And I loved it.
We were in Wyoming.
And it was wild and woolly, cowboys and
sheep and ranchers and miners.
I mean, I loved it.
It was tough.
That's what this old Cajun boy needed.
And we come in there.
And it was a town of about 1
,300.
There were some other churches there, but no
other pastors.
Right after I come in, the enemy got
somebody else in and got another one in.
And one was a woman pastor of a
mainline denomination church in town.
And I figured in those seven years, I
might have preached to everybody in the whole
area.
Because we did a lot of funerals.
There was one family, we buried five in
that family in a year and a half
time.
Very prominent family.
But this pastor of this church, Ms. M,
we'll call her.
You say, a woman pastor?
Yes, and I mean, we're going back to
1975.
I one day asked her, I said, Mary,
how is it that you, a woman, can
justify being a pastor of a church when
the Scripture says that the pastor, the elder,
is to be the husband of one wife?
How do you get around that?
I never forgot what she said.
Because she looked at me and smiled and
said, well, Paul had his opinion and I've
got mine.
It's funny, but it is sad.
Paul's got his opinion and I've got mine.
That wasn't Paul's opinion.
That was God's opinion.
And as a standard there in the church,
it's just amazing.
You know, this spirit, it's just like Nadab
and Abihu.
I was looking at this back over in
Numbers 3.
I don't know if I marked that, and
I was looking at Korah.
But this spirit is just like that in
the Old Testament where people just do what
they want to do, which is getting to
be a problem in our churches, especially in
the churches with homeschoolers.
I talked with an evangelist friend of mine
a number of years ago and he asked
me a question and I still haven't got
the answer for him.
We've went over this before.
We talked for an hour on it.
They were starting a new church.
They'd left the church where they were and
they were filling up with homeschoolers.
And he said, Don, and this man, I
consider him a pretty major evangelist in that
part of the country.
Anyway, he's really well known.
But he said, we've got a problem.
He said, how do you get these homeschoolers
to work under authority?
They just do whatever they want.
I said, I don't know.
I've got the same problem.
It's a spirit of rebellion.
We talked about that.
But it's just like this.
Numbers 3 and verse 4.
These are the names of the sons of
Aaron, the priests which were anointed, whom he
consecrated to minister to the priests.
And Nadab and Abihu died before the Lord,
when they offered strange fire before the Lord
in the wilderness of Sinai, and they had
no children.
I'm going to just stop right there.
You know the story.
This was Aaron's sons that offered strange fire
before the Lord.
I titled this message, Strange Fire.
Here's the deal.
Aaron was anointed chief of the priests.
His sons, I've got this list, six things.
Two, his sons were helpers.
They were not to work independently of their
father.
Now three, they were to work under authority.
And four, they offered sacrifices by themselves and
they died.
It's called strange fire.
About three times, I think, in Scripture, strange
fire is mentioned.
What is strange fire?
It's right here.
Strange fire is to serve without an order
or without authority.
It's to do things within the order of
God's spiritual kingdom without authority.
If that is done, Satan is invited to
come into the home, into the church, and
destroy.
It's given him a place because he only
respects proper spiritual authority.
And so this is what happens in our
churches when we do things without the authority
of the Word, without the authority of the
Spirit of God.
We invite Satan to come in, go back
to the Garden of Eden.
And what happened?
Satan had to talk Eve into letting her
have charge.
And once he got her convinced and she
disobeyed God, he was in charge.
And we've been under the dominion of Satan
in this world ever since.
Now Jesus came and died on the cross
to set you free.
Young people, listen to me.
You will die and go to hell if
you do not repent and surrender your life
to Christ because you're under the authority of
Satan.
He bought you back in the Garden.
Jesus Christ died on the cross to set
you free.
It is serious, it is so serious that
God sent His Son to save you out
from under the authority of the enemy.
Now let's keep going here.
Strange fire is to serve without an order
or without authority.
They assumed because they had seen it done
so much that they could do it.
Not so.
It was deadly.
This is the same thing.
Aaron and Miriam back over in Numbers 12.
They saw this going on with Moses.
Well, hey, we can do this too.
What happened?
God moved in and shut it down.
Moses let God be his defense.
The same thing over in Numbers 16.
Numbers 16.
Again, Moses, you know, he didn't ask for
the job to begin with.
You know, God had to keep jump starting
him to get him out of the wilderness
and go do what he's supposed to do
to the point he about got God pretty
upset at him.
And so he got out here.
He said, this is not my thing.
God has sent me to do this.
So when they attacked God's men, they were
attacking God.
Have you ever seen this happen?
I've got a list in my mind of
several men that died.
After this many years, I'm getting the observation,
I'm getting the facts.
Whoa, it's dangerous.
And I think I've shared this before and
I don't remember where I read this or
if I heard it personally from John R.
Rice.
But I think there's one time there were
four or five deacons, it's been so long,
that were opposing him to coming in to
Detroit.
And when the wheels of his plane hit,
those men dropped dead, all of them.
They were opposing God.
Well, number 16, 3.
This is amazing.
This is core.
16, 3.
And they gathered themselves together against Moses.
Verse 2.
And they rose up before Moses.
Verse 3 back again.
And against Aaron and said unto them, You
take too much upon you, see, and all
the congregation are holy, every one of them.
And the Lord is among them.
Wherefore, then, lift ye up yourselves above the
congregation of the Lord.
And when Moses heard it, he fell upon
his face.
And you know the story.
He came back.
You take too much upon you, you sons
of Levi.
And they went back and forth.
Seemeth it but a small thing unto you
that the God of Israel has separated you.
Look, you've got all this privilege.
Why are you doing this?
Why are you trying to move out of
your realm of authority over into mine?
And you know what happened to them?
It was such a terrible thing.
You see, God judges by fire.
God opened up the earth and took them
straight to hell.
Right straight into the pit.
He judges by fire.
Let me share something with you that comes
from Watchman Nee.
He's got a book called Spiritual Authority.
He said, How serious will be the judgment
upon those who grab God's authority with their
carnal hands.
May we fear authority as we fear the
fire of hell.
That's how much we need to fear authority.
You young people, you think it's a funny
thing to sneak things into your home?
You're opening up for demons to come in
and attack your parents and destroy your home.
I wasn't going to share this necessarily today.
We had a lot to share.
But when that testimony came, God said, It
is deadly, it is dangerous, it is damning,
it is destructive.
Men of God are being destroyed.
We know a pastor not too far from
here, back out to the west of us.
A major pastor influencing hundreds of churches around
the country.
And just a few years ago, because his
son went into rebellion, he stepped down from
his pastorate.
When you knock a major leader down, you're
going to weaken and attack all of those
that are working with him.
They don't even have to be under his
authority.
The effect was rippling.
Rebellion comes from hell.
And it spreads like a cancer through the
body of Christ.
We have to deal with it.
We cannot be nice anymore and say, Oh,
that's okay, I'll just turn my back and
pretend it's not there.
Or maybe it will go away.
Watchman Nee went on to say, To represent
God is not an easy thing.
It is too great and too marvelous for
us to touch.
We need to walk strictly in the way
of obedience.
The path for us is obedience, not authority.
It is to be servants, not to be
heads.
To be slaves, not to be rulers.
But Moses and David were the greatest of
authorities, yet they were not people who tried
to establish their own authority.
Those today who desire to be in authority
are to follow their footsteps.
There should always be fear and trembling in
this matter of being authority.
You know, if a man has to have
a position, he's a dangerous man.
Those like Moses that you have to encourage
to come home and get in there, those
are the ones that will have the meek
and the humble spirit.
Those that feel totally unworthy, that feel just,
Oh, God, I can't do that.
That's the one that God's going to come
get.
But those, I've got to have this.
If I don't get it, I'm going to
split the church.
And they do.
Powers and position.
I think it was Adrian Rogers, and he
might have got this, I don't know, from
Watchman Nee, but no man is ready to
be in authority until he's learned to be
under authority.
And once he's learned to be under authority,
he understands the awesome responsibility.
Many men would get out from under what
God has called them to do, but they
know that it's more dangerous to get out
than to stay in.
There's dangers all over, but they know that
God has done it, and God has put
them there, and they feel unworthy.
They may even feel like the pastor we
went and talked to, I think, about last
week, he had this great problem, and he
came to find out he felt so unworthy
to be doing what he's doing.
And I laughed.
That's the normal.
That's the standard.
Now, let me take you on into a
couple more things.
This is serious.
These things are serious.
And even the marriage issue, this is so
destructive.
I was in a church a number of
years ago.
There were three of us went into it.
We went into this thing, and they were
having revival meetings.
And we went in there, and we prayed.
And I only stayed two weeks, and then
I had to go somewhere else.
But when we went in there, when we
first went in there, I just got a
check in my spirit going past.
When we went into the office, there was
a secretary.
It's just like the Lord said, watch out.
Watch out.
You know, what's that?
And from the secretary, hmm, it's just there's
something there.
I don't know.
And all I know is just the Lord
said, watch out.
And that was a time when I was,
after I'd been traveling around the country for
a while.
And before I started traveling, right when I
started traveling somewhere in there, I asked the
Lord, how come our churches are being destroyed?
How come we've got to have revival every
year?
What's going on?
And the Lord came back in my spirit,
and God talks to you.
He talks to you in your spirit.
He talks to you through the Word, and
He'll say things to give you in your
spirit.
And He just said, okay, you keep your
mouth shut and your eyes open and your
ears open, and I'll teach you about churches.
And I was traveling around here and there
at that time and getting into quite a
few more churches than normal.
And one of the things that He taught
me was that every church is somebody's kingdom.
And so that's sort of what I got
this little check on.
It's somebody's kingdom if the Holy Spirit is
not in control of a church.
It's somebody's kingdom.
And you know it's their kingdom if it's
going to be threatened, and they start getting
nervous about it.
And I've done this myself one time.
The Lord came back and said, when you
disobeyed Me, that became your kingdom.
Oh, He melted me like butter.
He said, I told you that, but you
wouldn't understand until you violated and did it.
Oh man, it just broke my heart.
But here, what's going on?
We go in there, we have meetings, God
starts working right from the start.
A deacon got really right with God, and
I mean God was working.
This was a major church in the town.
And I'd already been going down into this
area for several weeks and working in this
area.
And before that, and so when the meetings
came, it had been probably a couple years
of working in the area and towns all
around, so it was sort of a gathering.
This is the way sometimes revivals work.
And so the meetings came, it was powerful.
And then I had to leave.
After the second week, I said, I've been
gone two weeks for my family, and I've
got to be up in another state.
And so I said, Lord, we need an
airplane.
So I just mentioned that one day, we
need an airplane.
And the lawyer there said, you need an
airplane, you got one.
And so we got flown home, all of
us, to see our families on the weekend.
The other two guys went back, and they
had one more week.
And it was really getting hot.
It was getting so hot that at the
end of that week, the people where these
two friends of mine were staying came to
them and said, you guys are just going
to have to leave.
You can't stay here in our house anymore.
Huh, okay.
And they were like in an apartment, a
garage apartment.
And so they threw them out.
The leadership of the church came to them
and said, I guess you guys are just
going to have to leave.
There's no place to stay in town.
They were that close to breaking through the
power of Satan in that church, and they
were basically thrown out of town.
It was somebody's kingdom.
I don't know if it was the secretary
or not, but it was somebody's kingdom.
You know what kicked that off from the
very beginning and got things stirred up and
hot?
It was after the first week the pastor
resigned in that church, major church.
You know why he resigned?
The Spirit of God convicted him and his
wife that they were not qualified to be
there.
They were both married and divorced.
And the Spirit of God did it, and
it started a fire.
Strange fire can burn back in the closets.
And that's why you young people, you can
bring strange fire into the home and destroy
the home and destroy this church, any church.
Strange fire.
Is it serious?
Well, divorce destroys the type of Ephesians.
We've been talking about Ephesians.
You know what that's saying?
Basically, the type of Ephesians is that when
we come to Christ, it's forever.
It is to be pure.
We're to be united.
It is to be oneness.
And it's foreverness.
And it's to be pure.
And so when a divorce occurs, it's saying
it's not forever.
When Christ saves you, He saves you forever.
And a marriage is to be a picture
of the church and a picture of our
union with Christ.
That is pure.
And it's forever.
And it's one.
And this is what Ephesians 5 is talking
about.
And this is why we started off our
first couple of weeks, Genesis in the beginning,
and 2 and 3, and then back over
there.
And so it destroys the type.
Because when God said, leave and cleave, that
was a threefold witness that He gave, this
oneness and this foreverness and this purity.
But it also destroys the permanence of marriage.
Romans 8, 38 and 39 tells us that
neither death nor life shall separate us from
the love of God.
Nothing is to separate a man and a
woman until death.
Then they're free.
And so it blows the type.
And it's also Jesus is saying here that
He's not going to leave us death.
Nothing.
Death is the only thing in a marriage.
And something else that destroys the pattern of
purity.
We have been so polluted.
I was reading back over in Hebrews.
Marriage is honorable, verse 4, in all, and
the bed undefiled.
But whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
God will judge.
It's a serious thing.
So you destroy the marriage and you can
destroy the home.
You destroy the home, you can destroy the
church.
That's how this works.
It's just how it works.
It reminds me of the story of the
Arab and the camel.
Remember that story?
The Arab and the camel.
How many of you remember the story of
the Arab and the camel?
Oh, good.
Let me tell you about it.
One time there's an old Arab out in
the desert.
And you know what happens in the desert
at night.
It gets cold, doesn't it?
Well, he's in his tent.
He's got his nice little warm fire there
and enjoying it.
And pretty soon he notices a little movement
over on this side.
And he sees an object come underneath the
edge of the tent.
He looks over there.
He says, what is that?
I can't believe it.
It was the nose of his camel.
And he said, what are you doing?
He said, oh, Master, it's so cold out
here.
I didn't think you'd mind if I just
stuck my nose under the edge of the
tent.
Can I just please leave it there?
Well, okay.
But don't blow it.
A little bit later there's some more rustling.
And he looks over there again.
And that camel has his head under the
tent.
He said, what are you doing?
Well, Master, it's so cold out there.
And since I had my nose under, I
didn't think you'd mind if I put my
whole head under the edge of the tent.
I won't cause any trouble.
I won't blow my nose.
I won't do nothing.
I'll just be still.
Okay.
No trouble.
After a little bit, he hears some rustling.
And he looks back over.
And the animal has his neck all the
way in up to his shoulders.
And he said, what are you doing?
He said, oh, the rest of me out
here is just getting so cold.
I didn't think you'd mind.
You've got a large tent that if I
could just get a little bit more in,
it would help keep me warm.
It's so cold.
Okay.
But don't cause any trouble.
And so he goes on a little bit.
And then he hears this tremendous shuffling.
And he looks, and the whole camel has
come into his tent.
Oh, brother, why did I ever let you
in?
What are you doing?
And the camel, he just sort of stretches
out a little bit.
And he says, oh, this feels so good.
It's so warm.
Can I just stay?
Okay.
You're in anyway.
But don't cause any trouble.
And so he moves around.
He shuffles it after a few minutes.
He says, you know, Master, I'm pretty big,
and you're sort of small.
I think probably if you just leave, there'd
be a lot more room in this tent
for me.
Would you get out?
And this is the way the enemy works.
He just wants a little bitty place in
your heart.
And he will work from there, and he'll
get a little bit more in, and a
little bit more in, until he takes over
your complete life.
Is it serious?
It sure is.
It really is.
To put men into leadership that are not
morally and scripturally qualified is to remove the
protection over the church and invite Satan in
to destroy and to control it.
Just like that first pastor that I mentioned.
It's a sad thing of how that happened.
Well, when men's lives do not live up
with the Scripture, when our lives do not
live up, when we do not come up
to the standard, you know what we do?
We do one or two things.
One or two things.
When our lives are confronted with the Scripture,
just like Ms. Zim, the pastor there in
that church.
We will fall and repent, just like in
Acts chapter 2 and verse 37, when they
are confronted with the Word of God, they
repented, many were saved, or either they will
go into rebellion.
How can you tell if rebellion is in
a church, or in a home, or in
a heart?
Here's how you can tell.
I've learned this, that what a man cannot
control, he then will seek to destroy, or
destroy the one opposing him within the church
circles.
I've seen this, and listened to pastor friends
many times, share about a struggle here or
there or whatever, and instead of not getting
their way, they will just, okay, they'll just
back down and go and get with God
and pray.
They step forward more.
I am going to get what I want
if I have to destroy you.
And I was told that one time.
I was told that.
And I thought, this is a horrible thing
I've been told.
So I'm just going to step back and
watch the church be destroyed.
But what he meant was he was going
to help it.
Because all of a sudden, he couldn't get
his way.
Horror, horror.
Are you trying to get the way in
your life?
Let Him have His way with thee.
Am I?
There lives within me an old boy that
would just like to have His way.
Or an old girl for you that are
girls.
It's the old man, the old nature.
What do you do with him?
Well, I've gone to God hundreds of times.
Would you just take him out?
He says, no.
My grace is sufficient for you.
But you need to die daily.
Paul said, I die daily.
He died daily to him.
He died daily to his desires, to his
dreams, his pleasures, his plans and everything.
He died daily and everything was put into
God's hands.
And that's the way he lived a victorious
Christian life.
So Cora's rebellion and ours today, what's the
difference?
No difference.
If we can't get what we want, we're
just going to go in there and destroy
it.
And that's what they were trying to do,
destroy the leadership.
I believe we're in apostasy when we destroy
the church by disobeying God's Word.
We're in a day of apostasy.
We're in a dangerous, dark day in our
country.
But it's also a day of opportunity.
God works deeply in dark days.
And those of us that will follow God's
Word, we will make it.
We will make it.
We'll make it.
Well, this last thing.
Why do men in churches go against Scripture
and thus destroy the churches?
Leadership or not?
Here's the answer.
Men are more apt.
And I'm going to go into this next
time on our next session.
This is actually going to be a statement
for putting us into our next thing.
But men are more apt to lean on
their own understanding than to depend on the
continual leading of the Holy Spirit.
I wrote this out so I wouldn't forget
it.
They do not believe that the Holy Spirit
can lead them and will lead them and
will take care of those issues.
And so they want to do it themselves.
They thought Moses was basically, you know, he'd
taken off more than he could shoot.
At one point he had his father-in
-law come along and said, You need some
help.
And he listened to the wise counsel, but
he didn't come in there.
Moses, I think you need to go on
about a 30-day leave.
I'm going to come in here and take
over for you and get things going, get
them straightened out.
No, he came in very wisely and laid
it out.
And Moses listened.
But these are others that are coming in
rebellion.
Men that do not believe that the Holy
Spirit can lead them and will lead them
are back in the garden.
We're right back into the garden listening to
the lies of Satan.
Hey, you know a lot more than the
preacher.
You are so talented.
You went to school.
You ought to just move in there and
maybe start talking to a few people back
behind the scenes.
And next thing you know you've got a
church that's destroyed.
Well, I'm going to close up on that.
Next week the title of the message is
going to be The Frog That Could Fly.
The Frog That Could Fly.
But let's pray.
Lord, may we not be guilty.
May we not be the ones.
May we never be the ones to move
out from under proper authority and try to
offer strange fire on the altar.
Father, our hearts are broke.
We see broken families.
We see men that have been destroyed, either
destroyed themselves or destroyed their ministries by not
following the Scripture.
God, would You put a spirit of grace
upon us to hear one another.
Open my ears to hear that we would
continually march together, that we would move forward
together in harmony, in one accord.
And Father, we know we're not perfect.
We know we've got many areas of need.
We know that we're needy.
We know our families are not where we'd
like to see them to be necessarily.
But we do know that You care about
us.
And we ask You to have mercy on
us as we move forward in one accord.
In Jesus' name, Amen.