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My message this morning, the unrelenting love of
God.
The unrelenting love of God.
2 Corinthians 13th chapter, please.
Starting at verse 11.
By any brethren, farewell, be perfect, be of
good comfort, be of one mind, live in
peace.
The God of love and peace shall be
with you.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the saints salute you.
Now, here's my text.
The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the
love of God, communion of the Holy Ghost
be with you all.
Amen.
Father, I thank you for your unrelenting love.
I thank you, Lord Jesus, for the word
of truth that sets men free.
And I humble myself before you.
And I ask you, Holy Spirit, to take
every word that you've given me and anoint
it now.
Without the anointing, it's a dead letter.
And I ask you to anoint me with
your Holy Spirit.
I've been with you, Lord.
And I know you have placed this on
my heart.
You've opened my mind to this.
And I pray that you would give us
an understanding of the love of God today.
Lord, we've heard about it.
We've tried to understand it, but we do
not yet fully understand the magnitude and the
glory of your love for this world and
for your people especially.
And we ask you now to open our
hearts and our minds to receive it.
In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.
Unrelenting love of God.
This word unrelenting means that which does not
diminish in intensity and effort.
It cannot be diminished.
It means it's unyielding.
It's not capable of being persuaded by arguments.
Not capable of being changed.
It's uncompromising.
In other words, it's sticking to a determined
course.
And what a marvelous description of the love
of God.
It's a marvelous description.
Nothing can diminish or hinder his loving pursuit
of both sinners and saints.
Nothing can hinder him in his pursuit of
love for his people.
David the psalmist expressed it this way.
God, you have beset me behind and before.
In other words, you've closed me in.
You've hedged me in.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Where shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up to heaven or if
I make my bed in hell, behold, thou
art there.
David's talking about his lifestyle, the times in
his life when he was very high, feeling
good.
He's talking about having such lows that he's
like a living hell.
If I make my bed in hell.
If that's my human condition.
Sometimes my human condition is everything is going
fine.
Everything is all right.
There are other times that I am so
low.
I feel unworthy.
I feel condemned.
And he's talking about literally experiencing a hellish
manifestation in his life.
And yet he said, I can't get away
from your presence.
I can't get away from your love.
You're still pursuing me.
No matter where I go, no matter how
I've drifted away, no matter my human condition,
you were there.
Your love is unrelenting.
I can't chase you away.
You don't even accept my arguments against why
you shouldn't love me.
You find that all through the writings of
David through the Psalms.
God, even when I argue with you that
I'm unworthy, that I've sinned against grace, that
David sinned incredibly against.
He had godly men who were mentoring him.
He had the Holy Spirit ministering to him.
He had the law.
He loved the Word of God.
He said it was a lamp to his
feet.
In spite of all of this, David sins
grievously against God.
You know the story of David's sin.
You know how he lusted after another man's
wife and how he got her pregnant.
And then to cover up his sin, he
brings her husband home from the battlefield and
gets him drunk, trying to get him back
into his wife's bed.
And when that failed, he connives with the
leader of his army to have the man
killed.
And Bathsheba's husband Uriah is killed, literally murdered,
sent into a hopeless situation on the battlefield.
And God said, it was a grievous evil
thing that you've done, David.
And the thing David had done, the Scripture,
displeased the Lord.
God sent the prophet Nathan to him and
he said, you have despised the Word of
the Lord.
You've given great occasion to the enemies of
the Lord to blaspheme.
Now, God disciplined David for his sin.
You can be sure, no matter what your
past has been or your experience with the
Lord, how deep you've been in Christ, how
you've walked with God, when you sin against
the light, you're going to be disciplined.
Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.
And David is disciplined.
The baby died and it grieved David's heart.
But God never abandoned.
He kept pursuing David with his love.
Bathsheba gives birth to a son, and the
Scripture says, and David called his name Solomon,
and the Lord loved him.
He loved Solomon, and he loved David.
God's love was unabated, still unrelentlessly chasing after
him, expressing his love at all times.
You find it all through the Scripture.
You go to the New Testament and look
at Saul of Tarsus, making havoc at the
church, entering into homes of many Christians, dragging
them off to prison.
The Scripture said he was breathing out threatenings
and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.
You see him going to the high priest,
asking for letters to scour the country to
find other Christians to murder and imprison.
And yet, Saul, after conversion, when he became
Paul the Apostle, said, even when I was
in sin, even when I was a murderer
and I hated Christians, believers, I hated, he
still loved me.
Here's the Scripture that God demonstrates his love
toward us and that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
He said, amazing grace, that even then, though
I was not conscious of it, God was
pursuing me.
The unrelentless love of God kept coming after
me until that day that he literally knocked
me off my high horse.
It was the love of God.
Paul testified that God loved him when he
was blind, when he was full of racial
prejudice.
God's love was still with him, even when
he had murder in his heart.
Once you go to Romans 8, and let's
see it magnified in Paul's own words.
Romans 8, chapter of Romans, verse 38 and
39.
This is Paul's persuasion.
For I am persuaded, this is Romans 8,
38, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, things present
or things to come, not height, not depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus.
Paul said, he loved me before I was
a believer.
No, he didn't wicked my sin.
Yes, I've understood his chastening hand, but God
never stopped loving me, never stopped pursuing me.
And he said, now that I am his,
there is no devil, there is no demon,
there is no principality, there is no power,
there is nothing that can separate me from
the love of God.
There is nothing that can stop God from
loving me.
Please hear what the Spirit is saying.
Nothing can separate you from His relentless love.
We find that almost impossible to believe.
When we sin and fail God, we lose
the sense of His love, and then when
anything bad happens to us, we say, God's
whipping me, God's angry at me.
There's a problem here and a trouble here,
and something else breaks out, and we say,
well, and really what we're saying, God has
stopped loving me because there's some failure in
my life.
I have displeased Him, He's angry at me,
or we blame the devil.
Of course, the devil is active in this
way, many, many occasions, but you see, all
of these things that happen around you do
not affect us, it's not a result, it's
not always the result of God turning against
you, not at all.
It's that we're not comprehending His love, we're
not understanding that God still pursues, no matter
what the trouble, no matter what we're going
through, He continues, unrelentlessly, to pursue both saint
and sinner.
Paul wrote, by the way, I don't believe
you can face what's coming.
All the terrors that are now existing in
the world, and all of the things that
are ahead of us, both in your personal
life and in the world scene, I don't
know how you're going to make it until
you are convinced God loves you.
How can you make it?
If you have to live under this sense
that God is angry at you, and that
somehow God doesn't love you because you're unworthy,
you're unfaithful, or you're still struggling with sin,
and you feel that God is, there's no
way God could love me, there's no way
a holy, just God could love me the
way I am.
And if you have to live under that,
you'll never make it.
It'll tear you down, it'll lead to a
nervous breakdown, it can lead to insanity.
The thing that keeps us sane in this
day, the thing that keeps us with hope
and joy in our heart is that we
are convinced that God loves me.
God loves me.
Paul wrote two epistles to the Corinthian church,
first Corinthians, second Corinthians.
And in one sentence now, at the end
of the last book, the text that I've
just read to you, he says, the grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of
God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost
be with you all.
Now, this verse has been used as a
benediction.
It's used as a benediction when a service
is closed usually, now may the grace of
God, the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you now
and forever.
That's a benediction.
No, it's not a benediction.
This is a prayer, a one verse prayer
that sums up everything Paul is trying to
teach about the love of God.
He said there are three issues involved here.
There are three things I want you to
understand, and may it be with you all
the time, now and forever.
Get this in your mind, get this in
your understanding, and you will never again doubt
the love of God.
This one verse prayer deals with these three
divine issues, and I want to talk to
you about them, but let's start with the
grace of God.
Just what is grace?
Now, we know whatever it is, the scripture
said it's to teach us to deny ungodliness
and worldly lust, live soberly, righteously in this
present world.
How do I reach this place that says
the Holy Ghost is going to teach, or
grace is going to teach me how to
deny ungodliness and worldly lust?
What is that teaching?
Holy Ghost, you're my teacher, give me, this
is the foundational truth.
What is it now?
You're saying that if I have grace, if
I understand the grace of God, this is
going to teach me how to live a
holy, godly life.
I want to live a holy, godly life,
so Holy Spirit, what is the teaching?
What is the foundation of grace?
You find it in 2 Corinthians, don't turn
there, but 2 Corinthians 8, 9, chapter verse
9, for you know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich,
yet for your sakes he became poor, that
you through his poverty might be made rich.
He said, now you want to know what
the grace of God is, the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ?
He said he gave up his riches, became
poor, that you and I may become rich.
Now, I can bring up so many, I'll
bring up numerous scriptures that prove that this
is not material riches.
In fact, to those who are materially rich
without Christ especially, or those who pursue riches,
or those who have a love of money,
which is the root of all evil, how
would he suggest that he's going to bless
you with the root of all evil?
No, this scripture is full of spiritual riches.
Paul speaks of the riches of his glory,
the riches of wisdom and riches of grace,
unsearchable riches of God in Christ Jesus, true
riches as against the deceitfulness of riches of
the world, rich in good works, rich in
faith, rich in mercy.
Here's what it is, here's what Paul's saying,
summing it all up.
Jesus Christ came in this world to bless,
edify and build up others at his own
expense.
He came to show and manifest this very
character of God.
Jesus didn't come to magnify himself, to glorify
himself as a human being.
It's all through the scripture.
When he came up, he surrendered the privilege
of this capital I, me or my.
The capital I, in other words, emphasis on
me and my blessings and me personally.
He gave up every opportunity to pray down
blessings upon himself at the expense of others.
How many of us lack this grace?
We can't see other people blessed.
We can't really rejoice when somebody else gets
ahead of us.
A neighbor gets a car so far beyond
us, puts in a swimming pool and you
can only pay your bills.
Bring it into the church, bring it into
the body of Christ and you see God
blessing others with spiritual gifts and he's honoring
them, he's doing something special with them.
Are you able to rejoice in that?
Are you able truly and honestly to say,
I am glad, I rejoice in this.
God blessed them.
You see somebody being blessed in their home
and their marriage and their children, their children
are becoming very blessed.
For pastors, this is especially a needed grace.
Oh, how this is needed for pastors who
see a friend or a neighbor, pastor somewhere,
just taking off with the blessings of God,
apparently.
God just poured his blessings on and here
I am, this man is struggling in prayer
and he doesn't see, he's not yet seen
the fullness of blessing in his own life.
But all the grace, the grace to be
able, to be able to continue in what
you feel is your spiritual poverty and rejoice
in the riches and blessings of others.
This is the grace he's talking about that
he wanted the Corinthian church, the Corinthian people
to experience.
Christ didn't come to glory in his achievements,
his power, his ability.
He came to build up the body.
He would hear his disciples glory in his
miracles and he would back off and say,
oh, you're going to do far more than
me.
He said, when I'm gone, greater works than
these are you going to do.
You see, he was already rejoicing in the
greater works that his subordinates will experience.
And when the report came back that his
disciples were going everywhere and the demons were
subject and they were doing these great miracles,
multiplied more than Christ himself had ever achieved
up to that time, and Jesus danced with
joy.
Oh, God, I want to know that grace,
the grace of God.
This unrelenting love of God in Christ is
preferring others above yourself.
Let love be without hypocrisy, be kindly affection,
affection one to another in honor, preferring one
another in honor, prefer those around you.
Now, in 1 Corinthians, you find very little
of that kind of grace, very little of
that grace is in 1 Corinthians.
Read it through and you'll see what I
mean.
Instead, you find competition in the things of
God.
You find men glowing in spiritual gifts, a
church full of self-exaltation.
You find Christians jostling for position.
It's all there.
They're going to court, suing one another.
They're self-seeking, self-important.
Even at the communion table, they were strutting
with pride and arrogance at all of the
special foods and exotic things they were bringing
to the table while the poor around them
had nothing.
It was all contrary to the grace that
Paul was preaching.
1 Corinthians is stamped with an immense I,
me, mine, taking and not giving.
God knew their hearts.
He knew all about it.
He knew the fornication, the incest.
He knew all this is going on in
the church at court.
In fact, even today, when you talk about
carnality, you think of the Corinthian church.
Even today, that is stamped with the mark
of carnality.
And in spite of that, what amazing grace,
the Holy Spirit inspires Paul to open up
his greeting to these people, the same people.
He greets them as the church of God,
sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.
Incredible.
Can you imagine the people at Corinth when
that letter was read and opened up?
And here are people of carnality.
There's fornication in the church, so much so
that Paul turned one over the devil, destructed
the flesh, and the soul might be saved.
And all of this going to law against
one another and this individualism and all of
this self.
And Paul comes along and he writes to
the church, God's church, Christ's church, sanctified.
Sanctified?
Called to be saints?
Paul is under divine inspiration.
Is God winking at their sin?
No.
But God knows they have no resources to
fight their sin, because there's carnality.
They are not in a position, they are
not understanding the love of God and the
love of God, God on His own, it's
unmerited, unconditional love that He comes to these
people.
And he said, you're still my children.
I call you saints.
I call you sanctified.
Now, just listen very closely.
God is not winking at sin.
He is securing His people.
There has to be a position contrary to
your condition.
In other words, if God just judged you
and I on our condition, we'd be saved
one day and unsaved the next day, we'd
get saved ten times a day.
Backslide ten times a day.
You can't understand this until you understand this
word, position.
My position in Christ.
Now, my condition right now is struggle.
My condition that I'm still fighting.
I'm still trusting.
I am not where I should be.
There's still weakness and frailty in my flesh,
but I gave my heart to Jesus Christ
and I trusted His covenant promises, and so
He seats me in heavenly places with Christ.
That's my position.
And God says, I look at you at
your position in Christ.
Your position in Christ.
You claim that, and when you claim that,
God says, I want you secure.
I want you without that fear that I'm
giving up on you.
And then you come to this.
Once you see that, you come to this.
You come finally to 1 Corinthians 1.
But I am in Christ Jesus, who now
of God has become my wisdom, my righteousness,
my redemption.
Now He's become, He set me free of
my fears and my bondage.
He tells me He still loves me for
one reason, that I can now claim His
righteousness, His holiness, His purity in my heart,
because He's secured me.
He's secured me in His grace.
Doesn't mean that, I'm not talking about eternal
security, because you can absolutely, absolutely turn away
from the love of God and reject it
until your heart gets hard and the love
of God cannot penetrate the walls that you
erect yourself because of rejection.
The second issue Paul speaks of is the
love of God.
Now, in 1 Corinthians, grace is needed because
of their failure.
In 2 Corinthians, you find the focus now
is on the love of God.
Now, this second chapter of 2 Corinthians proves
that the love of God, this pursuing love
of God, is power to change.
It's power to change.
Now, I want you to follow me closely
on this.
Jesus, our Lord, said He didn't come to
condemn, but to save.
I read from John 12, 47, for I
came not to judge the world, but to
save the world.
For God sent not His Son into the
world to condemn the world, but the world
through Him might be saved.
Now, in 1 Corinthians, you find a powerful
truth about God's unrelenting love.
It's in verse 4.
Christ, or rather, charity.
Charity.
Do you remember this passage of Scripture?
1 Corinthians 13 is all about the love
of God.
In verse 4, charity, or love, suffers long.
Charity is kind.
Love does not envy.
Love does not brag or boast.
It's not arrogant or selfish.
It's not rude, not easily provoked.
Love seeks the best for others rather than
itself.
It gets no satisfaction in the sins and
failures of others.
Now, that's some definition of the love of
God.
Most of us look at that and say,
well, that's what God's expecting of us.
Yes, but first of all, that's an absolute
declaration of what the love of God is.
God is not easily provoked.
His jealousy is not arrogant.
He doesn't gloat in the sins of His
children.
He grieves over them.
All of this, and I can prove that
because when you get down a little further,
it says, and love never faileth.
Love never faileth.
Now, our love fails.
Our love for God fails.
But His love for us is never failing.
It's unrelenting.
It keeps coming and pursuing.
That's what I'm talking about here today.
Unconditional.
That love is going to withstand all of
our failures.
It will just turn to Him in our
failure and receive His love.
That receiving His love releases the power of
God in our lives, because His love never
fails.
Now, I said God's love is a power
He gives us, and the revelation of it
is the power He gives us to change,
that inner power of the Holy Spirit.
And it is a revelation of the love
of God.
I know now that I can pray about
my sins, and I can trust God because
I know He loves me, and He doesn't
remove me from my position in Him.
You know, look how it changes Paul, even
himself.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul had every reason to
give up on these people.
He had every reason to give up.
He could have started his letter like this.
Dear Corinthians, I wash my hands of you.
You are an incorrigible people.
The more I love you, the less you
love me.
You hate me, and all I've done is
pour out my life for you.
I leave you to your own devices.
Go ahead, fight it out.
My work's finished.
Amen.
He had every right, every reason, because it's
true, the more He loved them, the less
they loved Him.
Church full of failure.
But Paul had been apprehended by the love
of God.
He said, how can I not love these
people when God loved me even when I
was persecuting His body?
How could I not do that?
And even though He turns a man over
to the destruction of the flesh, that a
soul might be saved, He did it in
mercy, and then He turns to the man
when the man's despair and says, now that
you have repentance of heart, come back.
And oh, yes, He reproved sharply, the Scripture
says, but He said He did it through
tears, and He did it with the gentleness
of a nurse.
Paul preached the triumph, the triumph of the
love of God.
And these carnal people melted under that message.
Can you imagine when that was read to
the body, and they're looking at each other,
and here's the man who's suing this man
over here, and this man's looking at him,
and says, saint?
He's no saint, he's suing me.
And everybody looked at the fornicator, a saint?
No, no, no, no, we're going to throw
him out.
No, no, if he continued his sin, he's
to be put out of the church, he's
to be put out of the body.
There's discipline, spiritual discipline, and there's the discipline
of the body of Christ, by leadership.
You see, Paul had experienced the love of
God, and do you know what that kind
of preaching did to these people?
Absolutely melted and changed them.
I told you that the love of God
is the power to change, the unrelenting love
of God, the revelation of it is the
power to change.
And here's what the Scripture says, you sorrowed
unto repentance, godly repentance, you cleared yourself, you
became careful, you became indignant over your past
sins, God put His true love and fear
in your heart, you were filled with zeal,
you vindicated yourself in all things, you proved
yourself clear and clean before God.
But I am so convicted by this.
You see, the I is gone.
Immediately after this, the Bible says, they began
to get a vision of those that were
infamous, and they began to give, they began
to collect offerings and giving, not only their
money, but themselves, they started giving.
No longer are they all wrapped up in
gifts and signs and wonders and miracles, because
up to this time, these people had been
so centered in what they wanted for themselves
and identifying themselves.
But they were transformed by this love, this
message.
That convicts me, because for so many years
in my younger ministry, and even occasionally in
my later years, I've looked on the evil
condition of the church, the backslidden condition of
many in the ministry, and I've set out
with what I thought was the holy zeal
to correct it.
And I came in like a wild bull
with a sledgehammer, and I just started swinging
the sword in all directions.
Now, if Paul the Apostle had come in
to that church and started swinging the sword,
if he'd come with a sledgehammer, now the
Word of God is a hammer, the Bible
says, but it's in the hands of a
velvet glove.
And I want you to know, if he
had gone in, yes, fornication would have been
gone, adultery would have been gone, all of
these things, they would have probably stopped shooting
one another, but the church would have dissolved,
it would have been gone, would not have
existed anymore.
And boy, do I pray for wisdom, wisdom
of the Holy Ghost to come against carnality
and sin in a righteous manner.
Oh, yes, we're to cry out against sin.
We're going to have to do it through
tears.
If I stand in this pulpit and I
don't weep when I talk about sin in
the house of God or in this world,
then I'm in hypocrisy.
It has to be that brokenness.
Do you know why in my early years
I preached this in-your-face kind of
preaching?
I listened to some of my old sermons
and I say, turn it off, I don't
want to hear it.
I can't have it.
That's all I knew.
But looking back, I know why I preached
that way, because I was not convinced he
really loved me.
I wasn't convinced of his love.
I thought I'm not worthy of it.
I can't live up to his standards.
I failed too much.
And so how can he love me?
How can he love me?
So a lot of my crying out was
my own agony, this terrible agony that it
brings guilt and condemnation where it shouldn't be.
And finally, Paul speaks of the communion of
the Holy Ghost.
The word communion there in Greek is fellowship,
the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
Now at first these Corinthians didn't know anything
about fellowship.
Everything was me.
Everything was I.
Paul said, each one of you say I'm
of Paul.
I'm of Apollos.
I'm of Cephas.
Oh, but I'm of Christ.
And added to that individualism, there was an
individual attraction to the gifts of the Spirit.
So that there had been evidently such disorder
that Paul has to write clearly and explicitly
to this body in Corinth saying, look, there's
not divine order.
He said, you come in and one has
a gift of tongues.
And so there's four or five messages.
Everybody's waiting for the one to sit down
so the next one can get his message.
And here's somebody itching to interpret.
Here's somebody over here has a word of
wisdom and everybody's coming to church and everybody's
gathered together to edify themselves so that they
can leave and say, I had a blessing.
I gave a prophecy.
I gave a word of wisdom.
I was mighty in the Spirit today.
This was in the church.
It was a church full of individuals not
connected to each other.
Totally disconnected.
All kinds of gifts, all kinds of things
going on that look spiritual.
But it brought great grief to the heart
of God.
The deepest work of the Holy Spirit is
to establish fellowship and unity in the body.
The greatest work of the Holy Spirit has
nothing to do with the gifts.
Those are great works.
Those are spiritual.
Those are needed.
But the greatest work and the hardest work
of the Holy Spirit is to unite the
body, as Jesus said, to be one.
I'll tell you, the Holy Ghost has a
big enough job getting two Christians together, let
alone the whole church.
Paul ties this fellowship in to the other
two previous issues.
He said, if you're going to understand the
grace of God, the love of God, it
has to bring you together.
I'll tell you, what brings the body together,
where there's no jealousy, where nobody is being
easily provoked by another, where everybody is rejoicing
in the blessing of another, and all these
things we've been talking about, where we truly
experience the love of God.
You don't have to sit here and you
see someone blessing, well, God loves him more
than loves me or loves her more than
loves me.
You're not comparing yourself with anybody else.
You're just anxious to give, to give of
yourself.
Paul said, they not only gave of the
material things, but they first of all gave
themselves.
Now, you come here, you give your praise,
you give your tithe, and you give your
offerings.
Have you understood that God says, now I
want you to give yourself one to another?
And folks, we're just beginning to see that
more and more in this church, how God
is making a body, bringing people together of
all races, all colors, bringing them down to
one blood.
Glory be to Jesus.
Give me five more minutes.
Now, having said all this, what's the point?
What does this have to do with my
everyday walk with Jesus?
It simply boils down to this.
Are you willing to be changed?
Are you willing to allow the Holy Ghost
to show you where you need to change?
And I am open to the Holy Spirit,
God.
I say, God, after all these years and
71 years of age, now I'm asking you,
I'm asking you to show me the areas
of my life that have to be changed.
Now, I can tell you how much God
loves you and loves you unconditionally.
He loves you unrelentingly with his grace, but
there has to be a purpose to it.
There has to be a purpose to it.
It doesn't mean a thing if I just
tell you God loves you.
If you come to me and say, well,
I'm a good man, I'm a good person,
I'm not into any gross sin, and I've
believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But you see, we've been born with an
Adam nature.
And I'm going to tell you something, you've
got a problem today.
You've got a real problem.
I'm not a money problem.
It's not a family problem.
And it's usually not a lust problem.
It's an old nature problem.
It's the old nature in us.
And we're constantly trying to change that old
nature.
We're trying to do something.
We're trying to improve it.
I'm going to tell you something, your old
nature, your flesh is always going to be
flesh and you can't change it.
It's beyond redemption.
It has to be crucified.
And when I say it's crucified, I can't
do that.
It's something I acknowledge that Christ done in
Calvary.
So I acknowledge, I admit, I say that
I cannot in my own flesh, please God,
I cannot come into the fullness of His
grace, His peace, His mercy, and His love.
I can't fully understand it.
My problem is that I've been fighting against
something that I was born with, my nature.
We have a sin nature in us.
It manifests itself different in every individual.
Various kinds of lusts that come out, but
it's all from this root nature.
You can't, you can't redo it.
God's not interested in redoing your old nature.
He's not, listen, my flesh will always be
flesh.
I don't expect any good thing out of
my flesh.
I don't know any man after the flesh
anymore.
Listen to me closely, please, because this is
the key in the heart of understanding and
receiving the revelation of His love and the
ultimate goal of His love, the change that
we're talking about.
He has to give you a new nature,
the very nature of Jesus Christ.
It's a new nature.
The old has to pass away.
Now when it says my man crucifies, that
the flesh is crucified before the Lord, it
means that I look at it as as
not being able to help me.
I look at it as dead, as having
anything to do with my salvation.
I can't change it.
There will always be flesh.
If the flesh could be changed, then this
battle with the spirit would have ended.
And He said, no, there's going to be
a battle between the flesh and the spirit
until you die.
I'm trying to make this as simple as
I can, because this is the key to
the new covenant.
The new covenant is not just about power
over sin.
God's been dealing with me so much about
this.
I can't take all these promises just for
forgiveness and power over sin, because I can
have power over sin by the covenant and
still have prejudice in my heart.
I can still not come in.
He's bringing us out of sin to take
us into the promised land.
It's something He wants to do about our
whole nature, not just about forgiving our sins.
You can be sinning and forgiving of your
sins and still not loving your brother, not
being unity, because He wants more than just
forgiveness.
The new covenant has made provision for a
new nature.
God says, I'll be God to you.
And the only condition is faith.
Nothing can change me but my faith in
His promises.
Great and precious promises whereby I'm made a
partaker or sharer of His divine nature.
Glory be to God.
God loves me to change me into the
very image of Jesus Christ, not only the
image of Jesus Christ, but the very character
of Jesus Christ coming out in me.
And when you get this nature, you don't
start with the fullness.
Everyone has been given the Scripture as a
measure of faith.
I used to think that the only way
you can have faith is if God gives
it to you.
Well, He's given you already.
Everyone has a measure of faith.
The most vile sinner has a measure of
faith.
You have the capability to believe.
You have the capacity to believe.
If you believe His promises, God said, I'll
be God to you.
I'll be merciful to your sins and I'll
provide every resource you need to fulfill every
command that I made of you because I
love you.
So it all comes down to this.
Lord Jesus, show me what I need to
change.
I don't have this kind of grace that
Paul's speaking about.
If you tell me that you believe God
loves you unconditionally, you're confessing that you have
in you the power to change by His
grace.
That's the confession.
If you say, think about it a minute.
If you say, I know God loves me,
you're saying, you're confessing without knowing it, I
have the power by the Holy Spirit to
be changed.
Well, folks, that's it.
Will you stand, please?
If you're here this morning, in the annex,
the overflow, or here in the main attorneyment
balcony, wherever you may be, I can tell
you knowledgeably by the intuition of the Holy
Spirit that some of you walked into this
church this morning, not really believing in your
heart, that God still loves you because of
failure, because of something drifting away from Him.
Whatever it may be, you came in here,
you're not convinced that God loves you.
And usually that's the reason people don't pray
anymore.
That's the reason people give up, because they've
given up on this knowledge, they've given up
on this truth that God keeps pursuing in
love.
The Holy Ghost has been called the hound
of heaven, not to hound you about your
sins, but to hound you in love about
His mercy and His great love.
I'm going to tell you now, He's not
mad at you.
You say, Brother Dave, there's no way.
See, I'm talking about those who received Christ
as Lord at one time.
You're here now.
You're going through a struggle, terrible struggle.
You said, there's no way that He could
be looking at me and calling me one
called to be a saint.
He can't look at me and call me
sanctified.
There's no way.
You may have a Corinthian streak in you.
You may have the spirit of Corinth in
you.
I don't understand that kind of grace, but
I know I've experienced it.
I don't understand it fully, but I've experienced
it.
I've experienced God's mercy that in my most
failing hour, He's come to me with that
still small voice, David, I still love you.
You're still mine.
And because you're mine, let me change you.
Let me bring you back into the fullness.
If you'll just trust my promises now.
Just confess it.
Don't harden your heart.
Let my spirit bring your condition to match
your position.
It's the work of the Holy Spirit.
If you're here, you say, oh brother David,
I need this message.
I needed some hope this morning.
That's the good news of the gospel.
Not just the flip and God loves you.
You can see that on car stickers and
posters all over the world.
Nobody loves me because that's how He works,
the power of change and me to become
Christ-like.
Father, I pray for everyone in this building,
those in the annex, wherever they may be.
Lord Jesus, by your Spirit, now open up
our minds to receive, to receive that love.
Let us not reject that love.
God, that's what grieves you more than anything
else, that we should reject this unrelenting love
of God.
Do it for us, we pray.
Change hearts this morning.
Bring peace.
Lift the burden of guilt and condemnation as
we confess our need to you and our
sins in Jesus' name, I pray.
Wherever you're at, I'll pray with you.
You step right out of your seat, Pastor
David.
This was for me.
Upstairs in the balcony and even in the
annex, go to the hallway and the ushers
will show you how to get down here
and you can meet me right here at
the front of this altar.
Those in the overflow, those in the annex,
you feel the Holy Spirit, thank you.
Don't come with a spirit.
Now you may be backslidden.
You may not know Jesus.
You've not accepted Christ as Lord.
Come, receive this Lord and Savior this morning.
The greatest thing that I've ever learned in
my life other than the victory of the
cross, and that's a part of what I'm
about to say, is the day I became
fully, totally convinced that I'm loved by God.
And when I know that, and when I
rest in that, come into that rest that
remains for the people of God, then that
enables me to love others.
It's going to be hard to love others
when you don't feel that you're loved by
God.
How are you going to love if you're
not sure of it?
Will you let Him love you?
Now would you just say it right now,
Lord Jesus, I receive your love.
Cleanse me.
Sanctify me.
Help me in my struggle.
But never let me doubt your love again.
God loves me through Jesus Christ, Lord and
Savior.
By faith, I agree with that, and I
receive it.
And Lord, the next time I doubt that,
send back this Word and quicken it by
the Holy Spirit, that I can come back
and rest in your love.
In my worst failure, not as an excuse
to sin, but to melt my heart and
wound me back into your presence.
Lord, I give you thanks.
Just do that.
Just thank Him in your own words.
I give you thanks, Lord.
I give you thanks with all my heart,
all my soul, and all my strength.
Hallelujah.
In closing this service, I just have to
tell you what a church God has raised
up here.
I'm going to boast in Him, not in
you or me.
I'm going to boast in Him.
Here's a city that's under orange alert.
Here's a city that everybody's talking about being
pushed by government, get duct tape and seal
yourself in.
And nobody is hiding behind duct tape here.
And I'll tell you what, this church is
full, and the overflow is full.
And when Pastor Carter flipped to look in
the overflow and it was full, I said,
I told Pastor Carter, that's amazing.
And in my heart, I said, what a
church, what a people that are not afraid.
That is a testimony.
When people are afraid to come in to
the city, you came.
People are afraid to go in the subways.
Even political leaders who have children, those in
Washington have children here, sent telephone calls and
telegrams to their kids not to get on
the subway for a week.
Well, here we are, subway, bus, train, everything
else.
No fear.
Hallelujah.