I have two questions.
Question number one, it seems that Mrs. Jessie
Penn-Lewis said that it was only after
a believer had experienced the cold death and
cold resurrection with the Lord Jesus Christ was
he or she able to start to engage
the real spiritual warfare.
Could you elaborate on this point?
I will answer it very briefly just using
the experience of the children of Israel as
an example.
We find that after the children of Israel
left Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea.
And in typology, as you'll find in 1
Corinthians chapter 10, this going through the Red
Sea, they are being baptized unto Moses.
So in a sense, to us, you know,
after we are redeemed by the precious blood,
we are separated from the world by baptism,
and we are being baptized unto Christ.
But after that, you'll find that the children
of Israel were in the wilderness.
And as we have already explained, that the
wilderness is a place where our flesh is
being revealed.
Because oftentimes we think that after we are
saved, then we are perfect.
Not knowing that our flesh is still flesh.
It hasn't changed.
That which is of the spirit is spirit,
and that which is of the flesh is
flesh.
So the Lord has to reveal to us
our flesh.
He has to test us, to prove us,
to humble us, that we know what our
flesh really is.
And even though after we are saved, we
are in the war already.
Because we do not belong to the power
of darkness.
Now we have been translated to the kingdom
of the Son of God's because we belong
to another kingdom.
So the God of this world will begin
to attack us.
He will hate us.
And warfare began at the very beginning of
our Christian life.
But as we have mentioned, even though there
are, there were wars.
It is mainly war against sins, against the
world, against our flesh.
And so far as strict spiritual warfare is
concerned, these are just skirmishes, testing of grounds.
And they are real, but they are not
in the very center of spiritual warfare.
Not until the children of Israel, they cross
the Jordan River, and they were in the
land flowing with milk and honey, that the
real battle began.
Now we know that the crossing of the
river Jordan is also a type of baptism.
Because baptism really has two meanings.
One is we are being baptized unto Christ.
Formerly we belong to the world.
Now we belong to Christ.
But baptism also means we are dead in
Christ, buried with Him, and being raised together
with Him into newness of life.
And this is typified by these two crossings.
The crossing of the Red Sea is that
we are being separated from the world and
being baptized unto Christ.
We belong to Christ now.
And in crossing that you find it is
by the power of God.
Moses lifted his rod and the Red Sea
was divided.
But in crossing the Jordan is entirely different.
We find that the ark of God had
to enter into the river first.
And then the water divided.
And the children of Israel, they went through
the dry ground.
So it is a going together, the ark
together with the children of Israel.
So it represents co-death, co-burial, and
co-resurrection.
We are being dead with Christ, buried with
Christ, and are now being raised together with
Christ into newness of life.
And in doing that they enter into the
promised land.
So it is true that unless we really
know what is meant by co-death, co
-burial, and co-resurrection with our Lord Jesus,
we are not really in a position for
real spiritual warfare.
So it is true what Mrs. Penn-Lewis
has said is really scriptural.
Because unless we are in that resurrection ground,
we are not really in a position for
real spiritual battle.
Because spiritual warfare is not against flesh and
blood.
Spiritual warfare is against principalities, authorities, and universal
Lord of this darkness, and the spiritual power
of wickedness in the air.
So that's where the real warfare begins.
So I think this should be enough for
the first question.
Because it is more or less academic, you
know.
Now the second question I feel is a
real one.
King David was not allowed to build God's
temple because he was a man of war.
It seems that long-time engagement in spiritual
warfare deprived him some spiritual character, which will
otherwise make him a man of peace, like
Solomon.
This sometimes make me hesitate to enter into
active spiritual warfare, fearing that it will make
me too aggressive and even frightening to others,
and losing the good image of a peaceful
land we all desire.
Could you comment on this?
I think that's a real question.
David and Solomon, in typology, both
represents our Lord Jesus.
He is our David.
He is our Solomon.
So in a sense, trying to divide David
from Solomon, and Solomon from David, I think
it is a wrong perspective.
And if you have the wrong perspective, then
you come to the wrong conclusion.
So we should see that David and Solomon,
they represent our Lord Jesus.
The two faces in the work of our
Lord.
The two aspects of our Lord Jesus.
David is a man of war.
He sheds much blood, and he was not
allowed to build a temple.
But we must remember that it was by
the wars that David fought, that he was
able to gather the spoils of the war,
and then using these spoils as materials for
the building of the temple.
So in other words, you'll find these wars
that David fought, were not in any sense,
contradict this matter of the building of the
house of God.
Because his work is preparation.
To prepare for the material of the house
of God.
Then after the war was over, and there
was peace around, then you can really begin
to build.
Because you cannot build when there is a
war going on.
But after the war is won, and then
you gather the spoils, and use these materials
to build the house of God.
So in a sense, you'll find engaging spiritual
warfare will never take away any character of
Christ in us.
As a matter of fact, our Lord Jesus,
he overcame the enemy as the Lamb.
Because he did not fight the spiritual warfare
with weapons of the flesh.
He fought it with spiritual weapons.
It is as the Lamb that he overcomes.
Now you remember in Revelation chapter 5, when
John saw in a vision, there in heaven,
one who sits upon the throne, in his
hand a screw, and then the proclamation, who
is worthy to take the screw and to
open the seals, in heaven, upon earth, underneath
the earth.
No answer.
No one is worthy.
No one is able to defeat the usurper.
And you remember John wept, because he felt
it was a hopeless case.
Then he was comforted by the elder and
said, no, behold the Lion of Judah, he
has overcome.
But when John looked around, he didn't see
a Lion.
He saw the Lamb, newly stained, standing before
the throne.
And then the song, Thou Art Worthy.
So brothers and sisters, you find that our
Lord Jesus, he overcame the enemy as the
Lamb.
His tactic is not earthly, worldly, flesh.
No.
On the contrary, you find he overcame, because
of his humility, of his meekness, of his
denying himself, of his sacrificing his own life,
in obeying his father.
So you find that our Lord, he really
overcame as the Lamb.
There is a Lion character in him, but
it does not contradict with his Lamb character.
And eventually you'll find the Lamb in the
midst of the throne.
So in a very real sense, you'll find
that in engaging in spiritual warfare, you will
not lose.
Your Lamb character.
There is a Lamb character in us.
You know, in a sense, it's wonderful because
in our thinking, a Lion cannot be a
Lamb.
A Lamb cannot be a Lion.
And yet you find in spiritual reality, the
Lamb is the Lion, and the Lion is
the Lamb.
There is the strength of a Lion expressed
in the life of a Lamb.
So he does not fight with fleshly weapons,
but with power according to God.
So, brothers and sisters, I think it is
because we, in our thinking, we, when we
think of spiritual warfare, immediately we think, well,
we have to be aggressive, we have to
be overpowering, and actually we fight with weapons
of the flesh.
So that would be really frightening.
You know, you see people, they think they
are engaged in spiritual warfare, and they go
around and try to bind the enemy and
say, I rebuke you, Satan.
Now, Satan would say, who are you?
You know, just like the seven sons of
that high priest, in the name of Jesus,
that Paul preached, I command you to leave.
And the evil spirit said, now, I know
Paul, but who are you?
And they jump upon him.
So, brothers and sisters, if you try to
fight a spiritual warfare with weapons of the
flesh, it is terrible.
People will be frightened, you know, because you
have to put up a kind of attitude
as if you are a superman, you know,
and you have to shout so loud as
if you are in real battle, but you
are defeated.
So, I think we need to realize that
this spiritual warfare has to be fought with
spiritual weapons, and the most effective weapon is
the character of our Lord Jesus, because the
enemy recognizes the Lord, and when they see
it is the Lord, they flee.
But if they see it is you, you
are not his match.
So, do not be afraid that when you
are engaging spiritual warfare, the man character will
suffer.
As a matter of fact, it actually is
strengthened.
So, I hope that will answer the question,
and I have to leave more time to
my brothers.
Evidently, in the last two days, I wore
down the saints, and there were really no
questions for me.
However, being the youngest of the three brothers
speaking, that means I'm on the bottom of
the totem pole, and there is a question
for Ephesians Heil, which was passed on to
me.
I mean, Ernie Heil.
So, first we need to turn to Ephesians
chapter 6, and I will try to answer,
and then you check with Ephesians Heil and
see.
Let's read the first nine verses.
Here's the question.
In the passage before Ephesians 6, 10 through
20, there's an extensive discussion on family relationships.
How important is that in regards to spiritual
warfare?
Now, perhaps somebody's having some spiritual warfare in
their family, which makes it a good question.
Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1, Children, obey your
parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Honor your father and mother, which is the
first commandment with a promise, so that it
may be well with you, and that you
may live long on the earth.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
but bring them up in the discipline and
instruction of the Lord.
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your
masters, according to the flesh, with fear and
trembling, in sincerity of your heart as to
Christ.
Not by way of eye service as men
-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the
will of God from the heart.
With good will, render service as to the
Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever
good thing each one does, this he will
receive back from the Lord, whether slave or
free.
And masters, do the same things to them,
and give up threatening, knowing that both their
master and yours is in heaven, and there
is no partiality with him.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in
the strength of his might.
And then this matter of spiritual warfare comes
into focus.
Well, I wouldn't say that there's a direct
relationship here.
That is to say, Paul, speaking about the
family, remembers the intensity of spiritual conflict.
Paul is finishing up a section on the
outworking of our Christian lives based upon our
calling, our worthy calling, and based upon the
vision of who Christ is and what he's
doing in his church.
Then we are called upon to live a
life through Christ, not lying, working with our
hands, edifying one another in speech, not living
as children of darkness, but children of the
light, and so on and so forth.
And eventually he comes to these matters domestic
and brings these up.
I wouldn't say there's a direct relationship here,
but there is definitely a relationship.
It goes without saying, and all of us
know, that probably the primary training ground for
spiritual warfare is truly trying to deal with
our own families in a godly way.
And in fact, the same thing applies.
Of course, we usually take this masters and
slaves section, because we don't have slavery per
se, as interpreted as understanding that how we
deal with our employees or how we work
upon our jobs as employees has very much
to do with training that comes over into
spiritual warfare.
Now, I don't know if you know this
so much, but I went to a Baptist
college.
And in this Baptist college, there were certain
kids marked out from the very beginning, and
they were called P.K.'s, preacher's kids, or
M.K.'s, missionary kids.
And they were always the wildest.
They were the ones that struggled with the
faith.
They were the ones that struggled with the
staying out late, being generally rebellious, and all
of this kind of thing.
And it was my first beginning insight.
While I was in college, I was saved.
And while I was there, and so I
was just saved.
And back in those days, I was a
Baptist.
So, I was a good Baptist.
I mean, you know, I'm just reading the
Bible for the first time.
And here, all these kids who grew up
as preacher's kids were just living a life
that was far away from the Lord's purpose.
I didn't understand at that time something I
understand now.
When somebody steps up to serve the Lord,
the enemy goes after his kids.
If you have a heart that's merciful, would
you please pray for the brothers who are
responsible where you meet?
Because their children are assaulted especially if in
some way it can so embarrass or disqualify
their brother and sister that they feel they
cannot possibly serve God.
We see that right from the very start,
how much spiritual warfare is involved with raising
a child.
But it isn't just with those who are
responsible or those who serve the Lord.
It's with every brother and sister.
Your heart is set on really serving the
Lord.
You know the enemy is going to go
after our kids.
And the Lord forgive us for not seeing
that sooner.
There is spiritual warfare.
And the old saying goes, we get too
soon old and too late smart.
And many times we as young parents don't
realize all of the spiritual flack in the
atmosphere that our children are being raised in.
And sometimes Christians are the most naive, I
suppose.
Because we're trying to live in a godly
way and unaware of what our kids are
addressing as they go out into the world
and go out to school and all of
this.
I've been recently resensitized a little bit about
this.
You know, I have some grandchildren now.
And one of my grandchildren is a borderline
autistic child, which means that she cannot communicate
verbally yet, even though she's five years old.
But she's relatively smart.
But the thing that I've noticed about her,
because she hasn't had the usual sort of
training and communication skills, is her tremendous sensitivity
to traumatic things on television.
She picks up immediately when one of those
stupid and sometimes even demonic cartoon shows on
Saturday morning as her brothers and sisters are
sitting there just watching some kind of a
big klopsy, cyclops, enemy monster with these big
teeth.
Looks like a jack-o-lantern, you know.
And they play loud music as this monster
strides on the seat.
And all of my grandchildren are sitting there
just watching it.
But this girl is traumatized.
Because there is something evil behind the music
and the tempo and this rawr, rawr animal,
you know.
But, you know, we become so inured to
this.
We don't even realize the traumatic nature of
this kind of thing.
No wonder our children's souls sometimes have been
calloused to what the enemy can do.
Well, I just say that as one little
example as to say, may the Lord help
us and open our eyes to see that
it's only by his mercy that our children
will be kept.
A parent can almost, almost, well
actually the parent cannot in the end keep
your child from the world's influence is what
I'm trying to say.
Some parents I feel almost try to smother
their child just to keep them from these
things, but you cannot.
And so even though you try to send
them to the better school and you may
do these kinds of things, which I, you
know, I have no problem.
Your conviction and leadership I trust.
But even with all of that, still, we
really need to pray for our children.
Now, if parents can learn to pray for
their children and take hold of the unseen
things that are spiraling around our children in
such a way, bring them through.
I tell you, they've learned much in the
area of spiritual warfare.
Because the same thing happens on a larger
scale in our assemblies as is going on
in the church.
The young people, of course, they're always getting
shot in our assemblies, aren't they?
The teenagers are always getting shot, pulled away
from the fellowship, finding reasons to be offended
or this and that.
And so much of that is not flesh
and blood.
There are spiritual things under there.
There's ground being undermined and all of this.
But you see, we'll learn that at home,
won't we?
So there is spiritual warfare at home.
And sometimes, you know, I mean, I hate
to say this.
Ernie's in enough trouble already for talking about
women being all emotions.
So I don't want to go into too
much of this.
But, you know, sometimes the godly woman has
to, in a way, pray for her husband
because he's under some kind of influence.
Sometimes the godly husband has to pray for
his wife because she has fallen under some
kind of a spiritual influence.
Sometimes you find yourself, as it were, as
a child and servant of the kingdom, standing
against, if I could put it that way,
your very beloved own because they're not doing
something that's really in the will of God.
Now, you don't stand against flesh and blood.
You know what I mean?
You don't chuck your wife out and say,
you know, when you stop this, you can
come back home.
But no, you can't do that.
And really, with your children, you know, this
passage is very clear.
You can't exasperate your children by holding them
down, holding them down, holding them down all
the time, holding them down.
They become exasperated with that.
We have to trust the hand of God
to preserve and help them after a while.
I mean, it is God's mercy that gets
us through.
But we all learn these things and how
merciful we have to be to one another.
I just can't believe what the children are
going through these days.
I cannot believe.
I speak occasionally with teenagers and hear what
they experience every day in the hall of
the junior high.
It's unbelievable.
So, anyway, is there a connection here?
Yes.
And it's the same thing applies about work.
And you know that.
Those of you who go into the workplace
that's ungodly, it's almost a torment for you,
I'm sure.
And the temptations and the undermining for you
to go ahead and curse like everybody else
and you to go ahead and have the
attitude that everybody else has about the bosses
or whatever these things are.
But, you know, you have to do your
own spiritual warfare there.
Be sure when you come home at night
you ask Jesus to cleanse you by his
precious blood and wash your feet from the
filth of the day.
But even there, you know, those of you
who have small businesses and all of that,
now I think you go through spiritual warfare
too.
There are times when you realize that there
are circumstances that are more than economic or
circumstantial behind the sudden, I don't know, rebellion
of the employees or behind the sudden unreasonable
demands of the boss.
And, you know, these things become so real
at times that a person has to leave
a job as a godly Christian.
Because you know in the world, in the
world system, it wants your soul.
If it can get you day and night
and working 80 hours a week, it will
do it.
And hold out a carrot or more money
or something.
It comes a place where you need to
realize there's something behind that.
That the demands are unceasing.
It's not just a season of extra work.
They're laying off somebody and making you do
two man's work for the same money.
Now we have to watch that bondage that
can come upon us even in the workplace.
And so I think, so can I just
say, I think there's a connection here.
We'll find if you work on a job
in the regular world that even that is
not neutral.
It isn't a question.
It's no longer a question.
Here in the United States it used to
be a question.
If you do a good job, they'll keep
you forever.
And you'll get promoted and people will realize
your value.
Now, if you don't compromise somehow, they'll kick
you out or push you aside or harass
you or do something.
And so there's conflict involved.
So I do think that there is this
kind of connection.
Surely the things that we learn in our
regular life opens our eyes to the fact
that there is no regular life, even on
our jobs and even in our family.
There's spiritual conflict.
And God bless the husband and the wife
that can learn to stand together and raise
their children through all of these spiritual attacks
that they will go through.
God bless you.
And remember to pray for one another in
this matter.
You can see them.
You can see the teenagers when they start
getting out on the outskirts and start kind
of going away.
Pray for the parents.
Some of the parents are doing all they
can in their godly wisdom, but still the
enemy is so strong in these things.
We can stand for the victory of our
children.
We raise them, pray for them.
They'll come back to the Lord and stand
with the Lord.
So that is this one question.
Now, the second question I have, I think
we all have two questions.
And this is relevant to our present situation,
although it wasn't really touched on in the
messages this weekend.
As a nation, what would be a biblical
way to deal with terrorism?
Now here's where sometimes the redneck Christians flush
out of the woods.
And we could get into a real debate
on this.
You know, of course, down through the centuries,
this has been one of the great ethical
debates of the Christian church.
Just what our position is regarding warfare, retaliation,
revenge, turning the other cheek.
I mean, there's tons of stuff written on
it.
I don't even want to touch on it.
But as a nation, what would be a
biblical way to deal with terrorism?
Well, I'm going to suggest the first thing
we do is find a biblical way of
defining the nation.
Because I think all of us must feel
a little reticence about the United States being
called a Christian nation.
I don't think we could really say that.
However, I'd like to look at nation in
terms of three things, just very briefly.
One, the nation as seen under the judgment
of God.
Second, the nation as a minister unto us.
And third, ourselves as the nation and the
response to terrorism.
If you'll turn to Deuteronomy chapter 32, I
just want to show a verse and say
something about the nation under God.
Nation under God.
You know, we are a nation.
Of course, the United States is a very
visible political entity.
It has geographical boundaries.
It is a nation.
But do you know that every nation is
actually a vessel of God?
By the sovereign hand of God, he builds
up nations.
And by the sovereign hand of God, he
destroys nations according to their probationary response to
God's will.
I just look in verse 8 of Deuteronomy
32.
It's a most amazing statement.
When the Most High gave the nations their
inheritance, now that would include us, meaning our
size and boundaries and blessings.
And when he separated the sons of man,
he set the boundaries of the peoples according
to the number of the sons of Israel.
Now, just very simply, what this is saying
here in this song and revelation of Moses,
is that when God set the boundaries of
the United States, it's in terms of how
they treat Israel.
The whole boundaries of all the nations of
the world are set according to his purpose
in Israel.
Now, of course, I'm not being Zionist here,
but there's a spiritual principle there.
God has a purpose and a plan for
this whole world.
And behind the scenes, he's fulfilling this plan.
And according to nations and how they respond
toward God's plan, they're either ejected or exalted.
In Matthew chapter 24, or sorry, chapter 25,
in these messages where Jesus is speaking about
the last days, his final parable that he
gives in Matthew 25 in this particular section,
is about the sheep and the goats on
the left and the right.
And the king comes to his throne and
sits down, and then the nations come to
him.
And he judges the nations as to what
they did with the cup of cold water
and what they did to the prisoners.
And many interpret that this parable is not
about individuals, but that in the messianic reign
of the Messiah or during the millennium, the
nations of this world will be judged according
to their morality, according to their treatment of
Israel, and according to their treatment of the
poor and the neglected and those in jail.
There is some kind of a righteous judgment
that will be meted out based on the
nation's response during this present time, in the
millennium.
Now, this puts every nation on probation.
Although most nations don't see this.
We think we're entities within ourselves, and we
have our own plans and purposes.
The United States has its own goals, and
et cetera.
But you know what?
The Lord says, well, whatever your goals are,
if they don't fit in with mine, you're
out.
And in this, I am very thankful.
I am very thankful that the United States
has found itself, for whatever reason, entangled with
Israel.
Then Laden, in his announcement yesterday, you know,
he videotaped after the bombing, supposedly.
And in his announcement, he said, may America
not rest until there's not a Jew in
Palestine.
So he came out and said what he
meant.
Until there's peace in Palestine and all the
Jews are out, may America find no rest.
Now, we've got ourselves in this.
And it isn't for spiritual reasons.
You see what I'm saying?
What are we as a nation?
It isn't because, oh, we're such a Christian
nation.
But it's because there are Christians in the
nation who care something for Israel.
And now we're in a position where we're
being attacked.
I mean, if you are a Christian, then
you should probably see that the reason those
planes went into the Twin Towers had to
do with Israel.
And we find ourselves in a position where,
of course, most Americans really have no care
about Israel at all.
But as a nation, we're in such a
place.
And we will be judged by the Lord.
And I think perhaps rewarded as a nation,
if you want to say, if there is
a rewarding of nations, because we're standing with
Israel, sometimes all alone.
They're the Lord's people.
As blind as they are, as much as
so many of those people in Israel are
unbelievers, but there's something that God wants to
do.
And it has to do with that property
there.
And you can see that property is hated
by the enemies of God.
And so we're caught in a kind of
a thing.
So how does a nation respond to terrorism?
We already have.
We're standing with Israel and we're a target.
But you see, what I'm trying to say
is, as we read in Daniel chapter 4,
where Daniel was speaking to Nebuchadnezzar and he
said, Nebuchadnezzar, your kingdom is exalted or abased
based on whether you realize that the sovereign
God rules.
If we truly are in some measure, a
nation under God, it will make a lot
of difference for this nation, because the nation
is more than just its boundaries.
The nation is a vessel for the service
of God for his purpose.
Then on a second level, if you turn
to Romans chapter 13, now
let's just read through the first five verses.
I don't want to go into verse six,
it has to do with taxes.
The first five should be sufficient.
Romans 13.
Now, every person is to be in subjection
to the governing authorities.
For there is no authority except from God
and those which are exist are established by
God.
Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance
of God.
And they who have opposed will receive condemnation
upon themselves.
For rulers are not a cause for fear
for good behavior, but for evil behavior.
Do you want to have no fear of
authority?
Do what is good, and you'll have praise
from the same.
For it is, now here's a definition of
nation, it is a minister of God to
you for good.
Now, here's the nation, it's a government, and
it's a minister of God to you for
good.
But if you do what is evil, be
afraid, for it does not bear the sword
for nothing, for it is a minister of
God, an avenger who brings wrath on the
one who practices evil.
So now, first we looked at the nation
as an entity to serve God's purpose.
Now, we see the nation as a government
set up as a minister.
Now, you must be amazed that Paul is
writing this and telling these Romans to be
subject to their government, which is the fourth
beast.
But however, within the context of the world,
the Roman government administered justice, and it was
a minister of justice.
And so, in a second sense, a nation
has a government that's supposed to be a
minister of justice.
Now, how does this government deal with terrorism?
As you cannot be a nation that's going
to exist for more than six months, unless
you go by the natural law of an
eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth.
And preserve your borders and retaliate with revenge.
The most faithful to that law is Israel.
If you kill an Israeli, they kill two
Palestinians.
That's the deal.
And they're not kidding.
They don't make idle threats.
They do it.
I understand when they found out those those
terrorists who killed the Jews in Munich, Germany,
you know, the Olympic team.
And when they found out who killed them,
somebody just told me recently, they just went
around quietly and killed each terrorist one by
one back in their home in Paris and
Frankfurt and other places.
That is how governments work.
You don't have a Christian government.
Now, Geneva tried to be a Christian government
under John Calvin.
But the problem is power corrupts.
Even Christian elders get corrupted if you're running
a country.
And next thing you know, it's an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Our government is presently giving an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
But we are privileged to be in a
country, I don't know if this has ever
been done in a war before, that while
it's dropping bombs, it's dropping food.
The most unusual situation.
Quite a paradox.
But you know, thank God we have some
people who are Christians and some people who
care for humanity.
And of course, Afghanistan's a shipwreck.
And I feel compassion upon those people.
They've been cursed by drugs.
You know, their whole country's economy is drug
trade.
Heroin is their biggest product.
They were cursed by that.
And now by this regime.
Well, anyway, let's not get into the politics.
But what we need to do, of course,
our response as Christians need to be to
pray for wisdom for our government leaders.
We do thank God that some of them
really seem to be godly and are God
-fearing.
We need to pray for wisdom because they
do need wisdom.
The enemy's very shrewd.
They caught us completely blindsided on this thing
of using planes as weapons.
Nobody was ready for that.
And the enemy always is one step ahead
of worldly wisdom.
So it's good that we pray for wisdom
and pray that the measure of justice by
this minister, this government, be balanced and not
just terrible.
It would be awful if we just did
something terrible.
But so far it seems to be wise
and measured, the response.
So we need to pray for the government.
It'll maintain this course in this present act
of terrorism.
I think that's all I could say.
Then I'd just like to speak now about
how can the nation as a nation, how
can we in a biblical way deal with
terrorism?
And that means us now.
How can we as people, what's our response?
And as soon as this thing hit, you
know, Luke chapter 13 came to my mind
and it's still on my mind.
So maybe we could just finish with a
look at these few verses.
In Luke chapter 13, there was actually a
terrorist and a tragedy.
And Jesus responds to these things.
Luke 13, verse 1.
Now, on the same occasion, there were some
present who reported to Jesus about the Galileans
whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
What a terrorist that Pilate was.
He took some Galileans and mixed their blood
with their sacrifice.
And Jesus said to them, now, do you
suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than
all other Galileans because they suffered this faith?
I tell you, no.
But unless you repent, you will all likewise
perish.
Or do you suppose that those 18 on
whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed
them were worse culprits than all the men
who lived in Jerusalem?
Now, there was a tower in Siloam, maybe
by the pool, and it collapsed and killed
18 people there in Jerusalem.
And he answered in verse 5, I tell
you, no.
But unless you repent, you will all likewise
perish.
As a nation, as Christians, as the people
of the nation, how do we respond to
this terrorist moment?
I think the word is repent.
I mean, if Jesus is saying anything here,
he says there's no time to start doling
out judgment.
We find comfort in saying how evil Ben
Laden is.
We find comfort.
Even some people had comfort.
Some Christian ministers had comfort saying, well, we
deserved it because we're such an evil nation.
Assessing judgment.
These people are more sinful than these people.
These people are more sinful than I am.
Jesus said that's not even the point.
When a tragedy happens, it's a wake-up
call to all of us of the shortness
of our life and the need for us
to be serving in the kingdom of God.
And so this tragedy, if it does anything
for us, should do at least two things,
and both of them have to do with
spiritual warfare.
In this tragedy, as open for us in
the New York area, a sovereign season where
people are so shaken, they're open to the
gospel.
And if we have our heads in the
sand and don't realize it and miss the
opportunity, we have really need to repent.
This is an amazing time.
There's brothers and sisters from Huntington, where I
live, who couldn't be here this weekend because
they had a conflict of dates.
Once a year, there's a fair in our
town of Huntington where we have a booth
and we hand out tracts and speak the
gospel and whatever.
So there's some brothers and sisters in Huntington,
and we just got a report.
We called and found out how this fair
went this weekend.
Many people stopped because we had a sign
up there, anybody who wants prayer who's been
touched by the tragedy, and people came in.
Julia, help me out.
Was it a woman who's lost her husband?
A 14-year-old was going by the
booth whose father had died in the tragedy,
came in and prayed.
There's such openness.
I made a little tract.
We handed out a thousand of these tracts.
And the other thing, because in this time
right now, people are so shaken.
Unbelievers have no foundation.
They're shaken.
They don't know what's going on in New
York.
There's still people who are wandering down over
there by the tragedy site.
They're just wandering.
They don't know what to do.
And it's a time for us to wake
up and use this time to bring people
the comfort of Christ and salvation.
Thank God there are brothers and sisters.
David Wilkerson, I know, is sweeping many people
into the kingdom right now.
He's down there on the street.
They're preaching the gospel.
They're helping the people.
They're serving the coffee.
They're doing everything they can.
Thank God for that.
So when we see a tragedy like this,
we have to say, what time is it,
Lord?
What time is it?
This is what I think.
And the second thing, repent, is this.
Our brother Christian Chen, I heard a message
he spoke of last week.
And it was a very wonderful message.
And one of the things he said is,
you know, really, he was speaking to brothers
and sisters there in New York City.
He said, really, you know, we need to
repent.
He says, you know, we're the only people
who understand that there are spiritual forces opposed
to New York.
And we, as God's people, should be binding
the strongman from terrorizing our city.
But we were asleep.
The enemy came in and hit us.
We should repent.
Only the brothers and sisters in Washington have
the right, just like you and I, we
talked about doing spiritual warfare for our children.
See, this is our authority.
This is our right.
I mean, this is our family.
We can pray for them.
I can pray for your children, but especially
I have authority dealing with my children before
the law.
And if I live in New York, especially,
I have something to do with this testimony
over the city and the need for spiritual
protection.
The very fact the enemy just came in
like this.
And the brother just asked the question, were
we praying for God's protection from the spiritual
enemies?
Will we do a spiritual warfare on behalf
of our city?
And of course, the same could be held
in Washington, D.C. But it should be
a wake-up call for everybody in every
city to realize that though governments can set
up, put air marshals around and try to
block the roads for inspection, they cannot do
anything about spiritual warfare.
This is the one realm that the church
actually has something very important to do in
our area.
So I feel like, by God's mercy, may
we be awakened that we have fallen down
on our job.
Spiritual warfare is almost an unknown commodity in
the church today.
And may it be that we start taking
this seriously.
In this place that we live, we have
a measure of authority.
As we come corporately before the Lord, we
should be praying for the Lord's protection over
these places and stand for the Lord.
Psalm 127.
Okay, it sounds like you want to preach
on it, brother Joel.
Psalm 127.
Unless the Lord build the house, they labor
in vain who build it.
Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman
keeps awake in vain.
Well, brother, I think that verse preaches for
itself.
That's right.
The Lord, of course, wants to guard the
city, but who's willing to stand with him
with those keys?
And actually pray to him.
I must confess to you, brothers and sisters,
that these times of questions and answers are
a time when I don't feel comfortable at
all.
I was in Singapore a few years ago,
and at the end of their conferences, they
also have a question and answer time, and
they put a big table up on the
platform and set you up there as experts.
And I asked them the last time I
was there, please don't ever do that to
me again.
I would rather you put me in a
barrel of tar and send me back to
the U.S. And I've been thinking about
why.
Why do I feel that way about these
times?
You know what I feel like the Lord
said to me?
You're afraid.
You're afraid that your ignorance will show.
So, I come with fear and trembling to
try to even think in terms of answering
the questions that you brothers and sisters have
presented.
I also have two.
Actually, one of them says to Brother Kong.
So, the person who wrote this question, please
know that I did not steal it.
I didn't take it out of the basket.
My brother insisted that it was my area,
so I will try to have some response
to it.
So, I'll try to briefly share about the
questions and try to avoid preaching again today.
The question says, for us to be effective
in prayers, to bind and to loose, do
we need spiritual wisdom and understanding?
Is this related to the prophetic gift or
ministry?
And then there are two other parts of
the question.
How can we be specific in our prayers
in anticipation of God's interest?
And how do we have spiritual intelligence in
prayer?
First of all, how to be effective in
the binding and loosing?
As our brother mentioned in his response this
morning, I think there may be a great
deal of misunderstanding in this area of binding
and loosing.
And as Dana was sharing about the different
things about family life and our jobs and
all of that, I think that what we
see in these two passages in Matthew 16
and Matthew 18, where we have the references
to binding and loosing, to my knowledge, those
are the only two places that we find
them.
They were both spoken by our Lord Jesus,
and they both have to do with a
matter of the church.
In Matthew 16, the Lord Jesus is saying,
upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.
And also I have given to you the
keys of the kingdom, and whatsoever shall be
bound in heaven shall be bound on earth,
etc.
Then over in Matthew 18, the issue is
concerning a brother who has sinned, and we
are seeking to bring reconciliation, to deal with
the sin that he committed and bring in
full restoration.
That is the burden that our Lord seems
to be addressing.
And so he says, there is a procedure
that you follow.
You first go to the person in private,
you seek for reconciliation.
If he refuses, then you take a couple
of other people with you.
And then if he persists in not being
willing to be reconciled, then you take it
to the church.
In that context, our Lord Jesus talks about
loosing and binding.
I think we need to see, brothers and
sisters, that there is a very important role
that the church has to play in this
period of human history.
I don't know if you have given much
thought to it.
Even maybe you have at some point, but
there is a tendency that somehow the reality
of what the church is gets hidden behind
so many other things.
And just somehow by being involved, we lose
sight of what the church is and what
its responsibility is.
You see, most of us, even as those
who ought to know better, we fall into
a way of thinking that allows us to
think that the church is for us.
It's for our benefit, for our good.
We even call it ours, our fellowship, my
fellowship.
We don't call it a church, most of
us.
But in our thinking, it's something that belongs
to us for our benefit.
Now, the Lord Jesus didn't say, I will
build your church.
He said, I will build my church.
And when he's speaking about his church, we
can talk about our Lord Jesus in this
way.
He's talking about his own interests.
Now, his interests, brothers and sisters, are perfect.
That is, his ultimate intention is to bring
the whole created order, I know you must
get tired of me saying this, but to
bring the whole entire order back into perfect
harmony with his Creator.
Now, I can tell you without being critical
of us, that's not what we have in
mind.
Our focus is, sometimes we do what we
call navel-gazing.
Our world is only as big as ourselves,
and then sometimes it expands a little bit
bigger and then a little bit bigger.
But it never becomes cosmic in the sense
that our Lord is involved in this mighty
work of bringing this whole universe back into
perfect harmony with the will of his heavenly
Father.
And with that in view, he said, I
will build my church.
I told you I wasn't going to preach,
but it sounds like I'm going to anyhow.
So, when he talks about binding and loosing,
it's in that context.
We are not given this kind of authority
to go around doing things that benefit us.
Our interests are to be focused on the
fulfillment of God's heart, his interest.
And so, it's a very unfortunate thing in
my estimation that some of God's dear people
have somehow taken these verses in Matthew 16
and 18 and have reduced them down to
them having authority just to do things the
way they think they ought to be done.
There's a poison that's gotten into us as
a human race.
I think we all want to be authoritative.
Some of us express it in different ways.
Because we want to be in charge.
We want things to go the way we
think they ought to go.
It's part of our makeup as human beings,
just true of every one of us.
Just in the same way that Lucifer was
a rebel that has come into us and
we are rebels.
And yet the Lord has decided that the
way he's going to bring this about is
by having on this earth, on this rebellious
planet, a people who have direct link to
him at the right hand of majesty on
high.
And the reason they are here is not
for themselves.
The reason they are here, the primary reason
they are here is so that he will
have a people here who represent and can
execute his will.
And in that context, he gives this authority
to bind and to loose, to permit and
not to permit, to prevent things from happening
as well as to see to it that
things happen.
Now, Brother Dana touched a little bit on
this, but let me just quickly say that
there's a sense in which as a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, every one of
us have a measure of authority.
I don't know if our brother Gary Bufkin
is still here or not.
I think he's gone home.
But our brother Gary is from Louisville, Kentucky,
and he's a good old Kentucky boy.
And he has a lot of unusual things,
how he tries to express and say what
he wants.
He just has simple ways of saying what
he wants to say.
And a number of years ago, probably 25
years ago, I heard him say, every tub
sits on its own bottom.
Now, most of us, what does that mean,
every tub?
It means that we're all responsible for our
own life.
And when we believe in the Lord Jesus,
we have a measure of authority.
There are spheres of authority.
We have authority over our own life.
That is, in a sense, even though we
do bow our knee and we absolutely should
bow our knee to the Lord Jesus Christ,
there's a sense in which I have to
make decisions regarding my own life that nobody
else can make.
So in that sense, there's a sphere of
authority.
If there are things going on in my
life, if the enemy comes and attacks me
personally, I can take the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ and I can resist him,
I can bind him, I can do it
regarding my own life.
Then you take the sphere of our family
unit.
And here's where I think that there is
something about this matter of spiritual warfare in
the family.
Because if somehow the family unit can be
undone, weakened, dissipated, it has to have an
impact on the larger sphere of the church.
And so it is in the family unit
that the husband and wife, and ultimately the
husband, has the responsibility for that sphere of
influence.
And if there are situations going on in
their family life, then I think that he
can legitimately take these words of our Lord
Jesus and with the authority, with the name
of the Lord Jesus, take charge, resist the
enemy, stand against him, bind up that which
is not of the Lord, and loose things
that have been bound by the enemy, so
that the Lord is free to come into
that family unit and manifest, that is, establish
the reality of his kingdom in that family
unit.
And then we have the issue of the
church.
And this is the bigger issue.
So that in the sphere of the church
there is a realm of responsibility that we
have that is bigger than individual, it's bigger
than the family unit, and it is the
agency here on the earth that our Lord
Jesus has chosen to use as a way
of bringing influence into the world.
And I agree with what our Brother just
shared with us.
As assemblies, we've been asleep regarding some of
these issues.
And it ought to be a time for
us to change.
That's what repentance really means.
It doesn't mean just feeling sorry for what
went wrong.
Certainly we need to have that.
But that feeling sorry needs to result in
a change of the way we do things.
It means an inward attitudinal adjustment that results
in an outward manifestation, where something changes on
the outside.
It begins on the inside, but it has
its effect on the outside.
So I would want to caution us, first
of all, that we learn how to function
in our own sphere, that we learn to
deal with the things that we need to
deal with in our own lives in an
authoritative way, with what our Brother Stephen sang
this morning, both as a lion and a
lamb.
That we deal with it on the basis
of the finished work of Calvary.
My brothers and sisters, when our Lord Jesus
died on that cross, he did a work,
and he released a life that enables you
and I to be victors, to be overcomers.
We overwhelmingly conquer in all of these situations
through him who loved us.
And so only you can do that for
yourself.
And then we can include the family unity
and husbands and wives.
Interesting, I think it's in Peter.
Maybe it's Paul, I've forgotten right now.
You can help me with it.
But where he points out to us that
our prayers are affected when there's not harmony
between the husband and wife.
And so what we find, my brothers and
sisters, is that our Lord wants to manifest
his kingdom.
And in the church is another place where
it should be the ultimate place.
That's why the Lord Jesus says to us
as his people, you are the salt of
the earth.
You are stationed here as an embassy of
heaven.
And your responsibility is to bring an influence
of righteousness into that community that restrains evil.
So if the salt loses its saltiness, what
happens?
Then it allows the enemy to come in.
I mean, without being judgmental and critical of
anybody, brothers and sisters, we can talk until
we're blue in the face about America.
But the church in America is a very
weakened entity.
We are hopelessly divided.
Even among those of us who know better,
who stand for the oneness of the body
of Christ, we're having a tremendous struggle.
And we need to see that behind death,
it's not just flesh and blood.
It's not just human interactions and conflict.
But behind it, there's something spiritual.
And there are those who are in places
of responsibility among God's people who need to
see this and who need to learn to
rise up and bind it and lose it
under the direction of the commander-in-chief.
And so I would say to us that
we don't need to get so enamored with
the authority.
We need to maintain that lamb nature.
And yet at the same time, take the
finished work of Calvary and bring it to
bear on the situation that we face.
Well, it's hard not to get to preaching
when you are fellowshipping about something like this.
Now, one other part of the question, how
do we have spiritual intelligence in prayer?
I think we touched on this a little
bit last night.
But my brothers and sisters, may the Lord
in his great mercy register something deep within
us that we can never forget.
And that is our Lord Jesus is at
this very moment and for the last 2
,000 years is seated at the right hand
of majesty on high.
Given the name that is above every other
name, he is the highest position in the
universe, and he is the all-wise one.
And you and I, as God's redeemed people
living here on the earth, have access to
him who has all wisdom.
How does he communicate it to us?
By his Spirit.
So we need to look back to the
day of Pentecost and rejoice greatly that the
Lord has made himself available.
His fullness is now available to his redeemed
people who gather here on the earth.
And he is the one who can impart
intelligence.
What is going on?
What are we supposed to do?
What is to be the practical response?
How do we stand and resist?
The thing is, if we don't find a
way for the Holy Spirit to consistently communicate
these things to us, then when we are
faced with these battles, we only have one
other option, as I can see.
That is to revert to our fleshly activity,
putting our heads together, our fleshly minds together,
and coming up with conclusions that are wrong.
And so how can we have the intelligence?
Well, first of all, for us to be
sure that we do everything that we can
possibly do by the grace of God to
keep our own relationship with the Lord living
and alive and real day after day.
There is a price to be paid there.
And then in our assemblies and in our
homes, brothers and sisters, we need to have
times when we are certain that there is
a clear line of communication.
You know, I understand I didn't get to
hear the report, but from my son, he
said this morning that what they attacked in
Afghanistan was primarily their capacity to communicate with
one another.
That is the Taliban.
Well, do you think our enemy is not
trying to break down the communication between us?
Oh, it's a big problem.
Because where there is no communication, all kinds
of crazy things begin to happen.
We have all these imaginations about what other
people are thinking when reality they're not.
And when we start to think that the
enemy comes in with a magnifying glass there
and that thing has become so big that
after a while you conclude it's impossible.
But we have come to those conclusions without
consulting our Lord.
Our brother Stephen took the book of Joshua
and helped us see some of the matters
related to spiritual warfare.
But you know when Israel got into trouble?
You know when Joshua and the armies of
God got into trouble?
When they failed to consult the Lord.
When they took it into their own hands.
When they went to AI, they didn't stop
and ask the Lord, but they just assumed.
And this is a real problem.
It's a problem for us.
We conclude, hey, we are educated, intelligent people.
And we hear it all over the place.
Just use your common sense.
But common sense is fleshly sense.
It's fallen sense.
And that's why we have direct access through
our living head, the Lord Jesus, who has
absolute wisdom.
My brothers and sisters, the Lord Jesus designed
the church in such a way, if we
can put it this way, he designed it
in such a way that it can't function
without him.
If it starts to function without being related,
it becomes something other than the church.
It becomes something earthly, not something heavenly.
And we all have to be alert to
this.
So that the binding and loosing, brothers and
sisters, there's something that originates with the Lord
Jesus Christ, is communicated by the Holy Spirit
to the assembly on the earth.
And he awaits for them to act.
And when he acts, he backs up the
action.
But the initiative is never given to us.
The starting of the binding, we are at
his mercy.
We understand, brothers and sisters, there are situations
in every one of our communities that in
the Lord's timing, he wants to have things
done about.
There are things that are happening that, oh,
my brothers and sisters, I think we need
to let ourselves get free of some of
the callousness that has come upon us.
When we live in the kind of world
we live in, there's a callousness, an insensitivity
that settles upon us that doesn't allow us
to respond in the proper way to the
suffering humanity that is around us.
I mean, we just see it.
I mean, I noticed in some of the
interviews they did with people in New York.
You know, New Yorkers have a reputation for
many things.
But one of the things is they never
talk to one another.
When they're walking down the street, they never
see one another's eyes.
They look off to the side.
Now, some of this is self-protection.
I thought about this a number of years
ago, and part of it is self-preservation.
That is, if you respond to everybody that
you face in New York City, you'll get
exhausted within a few blocks.
So it's self-preservation.
But you know what's happened now since September
11?
The whole atmosphere has changed.
Now people are responding to one another.
They're actually engaging each other as human beings.
Well, you see, it can happen to us.
What our Lord Jesus, I think, in this
passage Dana was talking about was alerting us
that when these kinds of things happen, we
need to be sensitive to the people who
have suffered.
We haven't, you know, hardly any of us
have had any direct impact upon our lives.
It's been indirect, and I'm sure that those
who lived closer to it, they feel the
impact more than others.
But my brothers and sisters are saying the
kind of thing can happen to us.
There are situations in our communities as assemblies
that deeply grieve our Lord, and he wants
something to be done about it.
But he has given the keys to his
church, and if they don't use the keys,
then he has chosen.
And it causes a lot of misunderstanding.
He gets falsely accused of a lot of
things of not caring, but he has put
the responsibility of the caring into the lives
of his people.
And so it doesn't mean that we just
respond by doing good, kind things to them,
but we seek to get behind that whole
thing and bind it.
If the enemy has set up a headquarters,
we undo it under the direction of the
Lord Jesus, not on our own, not as
some zealous soldiers misguided, but know those who
have heard from the Lord, and who are
acting according to his direction, who are using
his name, and then we begin to see
the kind of results that he wants.
Now, this is a tremendous need among God's
people, for there to be an assembly of
people who are consistently in a place where
the Lord Jesus can communicate his mind, his
heart about things, and then lead them to
take some kind of action that originated from
heaven.
Do you think for one moment, my brothers
and sisters, that our Heavenly Father is blinded
to the things that have happened, that he
doesn't care?
Not even a sparrow falls from the air,
but what is I see?
Six thousand, seven thousand so-called innocent lives
snuffed out.
You think he doesn't care?
He cares very deeply, and he cares about
the situation that you and I are faced
with in the different communities and different situations,
and he wants us to learn how, under
the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Why does Paul say, praying at all times
in the Spirit?
We don't know.
We have to acknowledge, we don't know.
Is there anybody who is so fully educated
that they know everything that's going on in
this world, that they can give advice on
how is the best way to approach the
situation?
We don't know, but there is one who
knows, and he is the head of the
church, and he wants to communicate his heart
and mind to us.
Well, let me try to quickly answer this
last question.
We saints are citizens of this world, even
as we prepare and train for the life
everlasting in heaven.
When we see how America has slid from
the founding principles of, in God we trust,
to the secularism and the monetarism, I'll just
pronounce it as it's written, do we, one,
keep to ourselves and nurture our own personal
relationship with the Lord, two, turn to the
church and pray corporately for America, three, work
towards revival of America at the local, regional,
and national level.
I hope the person who asked the question,
wrote the question, is still here.
It's a very important question from the vantage
point that it gives us opportunity to get
our focus clear once again.
You know, one of the saddest things that
happens in human history is when religion and
politics get all mixed up together.
Men have done some horrible things to human
beings in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and it has come, in my estimation,
as a result of not maintaining a distinction
between that which is spiritual, that which is
heavenly, and that which is earthly.
The fact is, brothers and sisters, this person
who wrote this question, I think, needed to
read more carefully what the word of God
has to say.
We are citizens of this world.
Well, that's true, but that's not where our
primary citizenship is.
It's a secondary citizenship.
Where is our first citizenship?
Where is our primary citizenship?
That's right.
Philippians chapter two, I think it's chapter two.
Our citizenship is in heaven.
We are here as ambassadors in this world.
When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
you became a citizen of the heavenly realm,
and this is your primary citizenship.
And when you get that confused, when you
somehow allow yourself to think that your primary
citizenship is here, then you have, in a
sense, been disloyal to your primary citizenship.
We are here, living in the earth.
We're living in the, I guess most of
us are either residents or something in terms
of living here in the United States of
America.
But because God has been so good to
America, we have come to some false conclusions
about America.
Now, this person asked the question, when we
see how America has slid from the founding
principles of in God we trust to the
secularism and monetarism that we see all around
us.
Now, I have no doubts, not a little
bit I remember of American history, that the
people who were the founders of this nation
had great ideals.
I think they were godly people in the
sense that they sought to do what was
the right thing.
But I think it's wrong.
It's a false statement to say that they
were Christians.
Some of them were deists, but they were
not believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, as I said last night, brothers and
sisters, it is wrong for us to take
the name of our blessed Lord and put
it on something that doesn't belong to him.
This is not a Christian nation.
It has never been a Christian nation in
the truest sense of the word.
And it hasn't been established fully on Christian
principles.
As far as I know, Matthew 5, 6
and 7 is not written into our constitution.
That's the constitution of the kingdom of God.
And I don't find it anywhere in the
constitution of the United States of America.
Now, I know it's not easy to say
some of these things, because people take it
the wrong way.
I'm glad I'm an American.
I can't say I'm proud to be an
American.
I'm glad to be an American.
I'm privileged.
It's easy in a sense, in one sense,
of living in America.
I spent time in the military.
I'm patriotic.
Sometimes when I cry, when I hear the
national anthem being sung, I'm patriotic.
But my brothers and sisters, that does not
mean that I've concluded that this nation or
any other nation on the face of the
earth is a Christian nation.
It's not.
And it's good for us to face it.
Because when this whole matter of our loyalties
gets brought into this picture, we come away
with some very bad ways of approaching it.
You know, there was an instance in Matthew
22.
Some people were trying to trap our Lord
Jesus.
And they came to him and said to
him, who are you supposed to be loyal
to, Caesar or God?
And you remember what he did?
He said, anybody here have a coin?
So he took the coin.
And he showed them the coin.
He said, now whose inscription is on the
back of this coin?
And they said, Caesar's.
And the Lord Jesus, with such perception, said,
then you render unto Caesar that which is
Caesar's.
And you render unto God that which is
God's.
Don't mix the two up.
This becomes our problem.
And so the perspective of this question, and
I'm not trying to be critical of anybody.
I'm not being critical of the person who
asked the question.
I just want to appeal to you to
go to the word of God and discover
that this is the wrong way to view
things.
The issue is not whether or not America
is going to be brought back into a
revival.
That's not the issue for us.
It's not the issue.
The issue is, are we being a living
entity here on the earth as a church
that can be the salt and be the
light and be the agent that the Lord
wants to use in these most difficult times?
Our Lord is very clear, brothers and sisters,
there's going to be wars and rumors of
wars.
It's never going to end.
Why?
Because we are the kind of people we
are.
And if we had not been laid hold
by the mercy of God, we would be
a part of it.
We'd be part of the problem, not a
part of the solution.
And the Lord wants us to be a
part of the solution, not by becoming better
Americans, but how?
That's right.
Having a clearer, fuller, richer relationship with him
as an assembly of people.
Now, that we can respond to.
The person asked the question from the perspective
that our experience here on earth is to
train us to live in heaven.
Again, I think it would be well if
we would take a careful look that that's
not what the Bible teaches us.
This is not a training ground for heaven.
I'm not saying it's not the Lord's way
of producing character and training us for living
in the kingdom, but not heaven in this
mushy way that we're just going to float
around on a cloud.
No, my brothers and sisters, he's interested in
building real character, the character of our Lord
Jesus Christ firmly, permanently into our lives.
This is what he's after.
So we need to get beyond some of
the sentimental ideas that we have about heaven
and some of these sentimental ideas we have
about any nation.
We have to be very, very careful.
We're not any different than Israel.
When God blessed Israel, they became so proud.
Well, we become proud, too.
We need to be humbled before the Lord.
And we, as God's redeemed people, need to
be the ones who lead in this way
and be sure that we maintain that kind
of living relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ
from his heavenly position to where he's free
to live his life through us and able
to do what he desires to do through
any given assembly of his people.
Again, forgive me for preaching, but my brothers
and sisters, these are trying days.
These are difficult times.
And we need, more than any other point
in my, that I can remember in my
lifetime, we need to get down to the
business of being what we're called to be.
May the Lord be merciful to us.
Can we pray together?
Lord, again, we want to lift our hearts
to thank you and bless you for gathering
us together for these few days.
Lord, once again, it just seems to me
you go beyond yourself every time.