Let's turn to Matthew, the second chapter, shall
we?
Matthew 2, first book of the New Testament.
Matthew 2, verses 13 through 16.
I'm not going to speak for long.
I want to say something very important and
then we can sing and pray or however
the Lord leads us and then go out
in the street rejoicing in our God.
Matthew 2, 13.
Now when they had gone, behold, an angel
of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a
dream and said, Get up and take the
child and his mother and flee to Egypt
and remain there until I tell you.
For Herod is going to search for the
child to destroy him.
So Joseph got up and took the child
and his mother while it was still night
and left for Egypt.
He remained there until the death of Herod.
This was to fulfill what had been spoken
by the Lord through the prophet, Out of
Egypt I called my son.
Then when Herod saw that he had been
tricked by the Magi, he became very enraged
and he sent and he slew all the
male children who were in Bethlehem and all
its vicinity from two years old and under
according to the time which he had determined
from the Magi.
Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the
prophet was fulfilled.
A voice was heard in Ramah weeping in
great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and
she refused to be comforted because they were
no more.
Right when Jesus was born there was an
attempt made once the baby came into the
world by Herod to destroy the child before
the child had reached even a few months.
At Christmas time we think about this story
as part of the whole Christmas narrative, the
verses that we treasure so much but I
want to direct it to you tonight not
to talk about the Christmas story of the
incarnation but to talk about the subject the
baby under attack.
What Herod did inspired by Satan was something
that happens over and over and over again
through church history, through the Bible that whenever
anything is young and new and vulnerable and
not fully formed that is when Satan who
is always attacking the things of God and
the people of God but that is when
Satan makes some very strong attacks to destroy
that which God is trying to do when
the baby is young.
In this case it was the literal baby,
it was the child, it was Emmanuel, it
was Jesus.
But I would like to suggest to you
tonight in this brief little discourse that any
time in your life when God begins to
do something new and fresh, when a new
calling comes on your life, when a gift
of the Holy Ghost begins to operate in
your life, when you say as Susan said
so eloquently that you make a fresh consecration
of your life to the Lord and you
make a new fresh beginning, a new start
of walking totally devoted to the Lord as
best God can help you.
When you step out into a ministry, when
you reach out for anything that is new
that God has birthed there will be an
attack by Satan many times right at the
inception so that when the thing is vulnerable,
not fully formed the momentum, the spiritual momentum
that comes with the things of God has
not yet been gained and when you are
vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks and when
faith has not fully solidified in the thing
that God is doing that is when Satan
tries to cut something off when it's brand
new and fresh and childlike.
The baby is under attack.
Now this is true throughout Scripture.
I'm going to give you three brief instances
but you will find out if you study
the Bible that this is an occurrence and
it will explain many things that happen in
your life.
When something is being birthed by God in
your life that God wants to use to
bless you, to bless others through you and
to bring glory to His name, then Satan
will attack you.
I'm going to say it again.
Whenever God gives birth to something in you
that will bless you and bless others it's
true even for new believers.
Some of the strongest attacks are made when
a new believer is vulnerable, doesn't know the
Bible, doesn't have Christian friends.
The story of the Christian church is replete
with instances where new converts have been attacked
in the weirdest kinds of ways because Satan
knows the baby is young and vulnerable.
But whenever God is going to bless you
and use you to bless others and bring
glory to His name through some new thing,
some new gift, some new ministry, some new
song, some new whatever, some new stepping out,
just as you begin to do it in
the first trimester, the baby comes under attack.
You remember that of all the new beginnings
that the world has ever known after creation
itself, there never was the kind of new
beginning that we read about in the book
of Genesis concerning Noah.
Noah had a new day like no other
person ever experienced a new day.
In Genesis 9, you can look at it
when you go home, we read the story
of the fact that Noah stayed faithful to
God, was a preacher of righteousness, trusted God,
built an ark when everybody was mocking him,
stood up to all of the flow of
ungodliness where when God looked down on the
earth, every thought of the imagination of everybody
was evil continually.
And Noah went against all of that and
built an ark in obedience to God.
He built it by faith.
And then the rains came, Noah got his
family inside the ark, and the door was
shut, and judgment came upon the earth, and
God wiped out and brought judgment like He
never will again according to His promise, water
will never destroy the earth again.
He brought judgment upon all these people who
were mockers of God and the ungodly crowd
that were making fun and ridiculing Noah.
After all of that rain and all of
the flood and after all those days and
weeks in the ark, the Bible says that
the ark came to rest and the water
subsided and Noah and his children went out
into a new world.
Do you understand what was beginning?
That was a brand new world.
It was Noah, his sons, their wives, God
was going to now have a godly seed,
God was going to have people who would
follow in the way of Noah.
Think of the responsibility on Noah.
God had used him as a prophet, as
a savior by building the ark.
And now here was the beginning of a
whole new day.
And what does the Bible tell us happened?
Noah planted some fields and began to tend
some vineyards and he began to be tempted
to drink wine.
There is no mention anywhere in the Bible
up to that point that Noah was ever
tempted to drink, much less get drunk.
And now at the beginning of a brand
new day, at the beginning of a brand
new headship of a new race, as it
were, of people who would serve God, the
Bible tells us that Noah drank so much
that he got drunk, went into his tent
and lay naked for his own sons to
see him in shame.
And that is so like the devil.
When just when God is beginning a new
thing in our life, he comes with temptation
to try to knock us out by personal
failure.
You start out to do something new for
God, you make a new consecration and sometimes
the temptation comes from left field.
You've never really been tempted by that before,
but here it is.
And Noah, the man who is mentioned so
wonderfully in the book of Hebrews, Noah, the
man who stands out as such a giant
of faith, Noah ends up drunk out of
his mind in a tent, laying naked, where
one of his sons has to come in
eventually and cover the nakedness of his father,
the one who had built the ark.
So I want you to know that whenever
you step out to do something for God
and whenever you consecrate yourselves to God's service,
there will very often come a time of
personal temptation and testing because the devil wants
to knock out the baby while the baby
is still young and vulnerable.
But I want you to know today, no
matter how you failed, the righteous man can
fall six times, but he gets up seven.
And Noah was drunk and Noah was ashamed,
but Noah got up and served God for
the rest of his life.
Never let anything the devil can do in
your life, if he beats you on one
battle, you get up, you don't quit, you
don't give up, you say, I'm going to
serve God with all of my life, with
all of my heart, with all of my
strength.
Because that's just like the devil to come
and try to use personal failure to knock
out something that God wants to do.
And I know lots of people who have
gotten discouraged, not by what others have done,
but by their own personal failure.
But if we confess our sins, hallelujah, he
is faithful and just to forgive us, hallelujah,
and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
But the attack came just when he got
out of the ark.
A brand new day was spoiled initially by
personal failure.
Later on in that same book, we read
about another great man of faith, by the
name of Joseph.
And in Joseph's life, we read in Genesis
37, 5, Then Joseph had a dream, and
when he told it to his brothers, they
hated him even more.
Joseph was the pet of his father Jacob,
which was not good.
You shouldn't favor any of your children.
You should never favor your children or your
grandchildren.
You love them all equally the same, because
that breeds contempt within a family when you
play favorites.
Well, Jacob played a favorite, and he gave
Joseph a coat nobody else had, and he
was his daddy's pet, and the boys didn't
like him.
But listen, his brothers, but then Joseph went
to bed one night, and you have to
understand that Joseph wasn't looking for anything from
God.
Joseph just went to bed as a young
boy, a teenager.
And Joseph had a dream from God.
And he saw his sheath in the field,
standing up, and he saw eleven other sheaths
bowing down to his sheath.
And he went and told his brothers, I
had a dream from God.
It's a different kind of dream.
I remember the dream.
God was doing something new in Joseph.
God was preparing Joseph to be the savior
of the people of Israel.
A famine was coming, and God had great
plans for Joseph.
And it all started with a dream that
Joseph did not ask for.
And when Joseph told the dream to the
men closest to him, his own brothers, his
own flesh and blood, they hated him.
And this is what Satan uses so often
when God begins to do something in your
life, or you step out.
He uses opposition to come against you in
a very strong way, sometimes opposition from your
closest friends, yea, even from your family.
And all of the freshness of what God
is trying to do, seems to be smothered
by this, not just opposition.
They hated him.
A few nights later, or a few weeks
later, we don't know, he had another dream.
And he saw the sun and the moon
and eleven stars bowing down to him.
He went foolishly, I guess, and told his
brothers and his father that.
And his father figured out he and his
wife must be the sun and the moon.
And the brothers must be the stars.
And even his father Jacob, as in Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, Jacob rebuked his own son
and said, Why don't you get a grip
on yourself?
Do you think your mother and father will
bow down to you?
Something's wrong with you, son.
This was the encouragement that Joseph got when
God began to do a new thing in
his life.
But it didn't stop there.
His brothers caught him out in the field,
and you know the story.
I don't need to tell it.
Their hot breath fell against his face as
they stripped him and beat him and threw
him into a pit, a cistern.
And Joseph, beginning this new thing that God
gave him, ended up with a one-way
ticket with some Midianite slave traders to go
to Egypt to be sold on the meat
market like a piece of pork chop.
Satan attacks the baby when it's still so
young.
A teenager getting a dream from God, and
Satan uses his own brothers and his own
mother and father to misunderstand him, and then
his brothers to almost kill him and send
him down the river.
But I want you to know that the
Bible says, even when he was being sold
down the river to Egypt, the Bible says,
but God was with Joseph.
And you know what?
If you trust God, no matter who hates
you and no matter who fights you, God
will have the last word.
How many say Amen?
Let's put our hands together and thank God
that He has the last word.
And the amazing thing about God is, Satan
tried to kill the dream of Joseph and
the ministry of Joseph when he was just
in his formative stages.
But by selling him down the river to
Egypt, hallelujah, that's exactly where God wanted him
to go, what Satan meant for evil, God
turned around and worked for good.
How many say Amen?
So I want you to know, I want
you to know when God begins to deal
in your life with something new, if you
are faced with sudden new opposition and it
hurts, don't tell me it didn't hurt.
Don't tell me when your brothers try to
kill you that doesn't hurt.
You stay strong in the Lord.
Let's keep trusting God no matter what people
do, because God can turn it around.
And the day came when Joseph, right hand
to Pharaoh, number two man in all of
Egypt, had those very brothers come asking for
food.
And Joseph was in charge of all the
food.
And this was years later and they didn't
recognize Joseph.
And then Joseph revealed himself to his brothers
and said, I'm Joseph who you tried to
kill.
And at first they were so afraid because
they realized we were so wicked to do
that.
And Joseph said, don't be afraid.
What you meant for evil, hallelujah, God worked
it out for good.
Listen, listen, no weapon formed against us shall
prosper.
This is the heritage of those who put
their trust in the Lord.
Amen.
Lastly, I'd like to bring before I tell
you about a personal experience that Carol and
I had.
I want to tell you about Moses.
Moses was out in the wilderness, out in
the desert for 40 years as a shepherd.
And God appeared to him in the burning
bush.
And God told him, you go to Pharaoh
and you tell Pharaoh, let my people go.
Let them go out three days journey so
that they might worship Jehovah God.
So now Moses begins a new mission.
He is obedient to the calling, although he
battles God about, I'm not able to speak
like I should be able to speak, but
God sends his brother with him.
And now he appears in front of Pharaoh.
You talk about starting out new.
Here is a man of God challenging the
most powerful man on the face of the
earth, Pharaoh of Egypt.
And the Bible tells us in Exodus 5
that Moses goes to Pharaoh and he gives
him God's message, let my people go.
This is what God says, let my people
go three days out.
Now, the people that he's asking to let
go are slaves and they're making bricks.
And this slave force has been multiplying and
Pharaoh is keeping one eye on it because
he sees it as a political threat.
So when Moses comes, fresh from God's presence,
fresh from the burning bush, fresh from talking
with God like a friend talks with a
friend, he goes to Pharaoh and he says,
Pharaoh, thus sayeth the Lord, let my people
go.
He's anointed, he has the word of God
on his lips, he's faithful and obedient to
the call of God.
And what happens?
Pharaoh says, you're not going anywhere.
And you've got a big mouth too.
That's not in the Bible, but I put
it in.
And you know what?
You're a troublemaker.
I've got all these slaves, they're supposed to
be making bricks.
Now you're going to talk about worship?
You've got to go out and worship your
God?
That's what you've got time to think about?
Is this what's going on here?
He dismisses Moses and says, blow off.
And he gets a hold of some of
his supervisors, and he says, go tell those
rotten Hebrews that they've got to make the
same quota of bricks, but take away the
straw.
And suddenly the word spreads among all the
Hebrews, you've got to make the same number
of bricks, but you've got to go out
and get your own straw.
The Egyptians are not going to give you
straw.
And suddenly they don't have any time to
go find straw, and then still keep their
quota.
So now, tribulation and trouble comes to the
people of God, because the slave masters and
the taskmasters are whipping them and yelling at
them and saying, get moving, get the bricks,
why haven't you met your quota?
Don't tell me about straw.
You want to talk about worship and going
out and serving Jehovah?
If you've got time for that, you better
make bricks without straw.
And one day the leaders of the Hebrews,
the elders, meet Moses and Aaron and say,
what in the world have you done?
What are you, stupid?
You have now made us a stench in
the nostrils of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
In other words, Moses' ministry begins in its
formative stages with an attack of the devil
through Pharaoh, that not only is it not
successful, it makes everything worse.
It's like the minister that I met, who
said he just went into the ministry, this
is true, and in the first meeting he
was in, he was asked to pray for
someone who was sick, this was all new
to him, the person came up, he laid
hands on the person to be healed, he
had never done that as a pastor, and
the man dropped dead while he was praying
for him.
That's a good start.
Nobody brought people for a while for that,
but my friend to be praying for him,
they were like, you know what, let's just
go slow with this.
Moses began with an attack of total failure.
This is what happens, seeming failure.
Seeming failure.
You step out and do what God wants
you to do, you're misunderstood, and Moses ends
up with the elders of his own people
saying, hey, you're the deliverer, give us a
break.
Why don't you go back where you came
from?
And it brought such discouragement on Moses, that
Moses went back to God, and if you
go home and read it, you find out
that Moses ended up telling God in chapter
5, why did you ever send me?
That's what the devil was after.
Such a collapse, such a seeming failure, such
opposition, misunderstood by his own people, and Satan
pushing him, because Satan must have known, God's
hand is on that guy.
So let me knock him out before he
gets momentum and faith in his soul.
And Moses ends up saying, why did you
ever send me?
By obeying you, I've made it worse.
And there's the devil laughing in the background
saying, I got him.
But chapter 6 begins with God telling Moses,
is that what Pharaoh told you?
Is that what the people said?
Step back Moses, because now I'm going to
show you what I can really do.
Hallelujah!
Let's put our hands together, Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
And then, come the ten plagues, and it
ends up that Pharaoh is begging Moses, Pharaoh
begs Moses, please stop it, you can go.
But he had a weather that first attack,
when the baby was young, when all hell
seemed to be breaking loose, and he wanted
to quit.
Everybody who ever has worked for God has
had an attack.
And many of the attacks have come when
you're young and you're new, and the thing
is new in you.
Attacks go on your whole life.
One of the signs that you're in God's
will is that you're being attacked.
If you're not being attacked, you're probably in
a coma, and Satan doesn't even want to
bother with you, because why wake somebody if
they're sleeping.
But how many have found in your own
life, when you get serious for God, you
face some attacks.
For we wrestle not against.
Most of you know the story that when
my wife and I came to the Brooklyn
Tabernacle, we were total novices.
My wife was way ahead of me, she
was a pastor's kid.
She had grown up with this unique gift
that God has given her, and music, and
playing, and perfect pitch, and harmonies, and all
this.
So she was way ahead of me.
Ahead of me probably spiritually, ahead of me
certainly in fitting in, because this was all
new to me, preaching, and so on and
so forth.
We came to the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and we
decided that this is where God wanted us
to be.
So we left the job where we had
a salary, in a church in Newark, and
then we started on Atlantic Avenue with just
a literal handful of people.
She got a job, I got a job,
to make ends meet.
That first year, I remember my friend did
my taxes for me, and he looked at
me funny when he said, your income was
$3800 for the year?
And I said, yep, but God's supplying.
But we didn't know anything else.
We didn't know anything about the ministry.
We didn't know anything about guaranteed salaries, or
benefits, or insurance.
That was totally off to us.
We didn't know anything about that.
We never talked about any future plans.
My wife had had, I think, a vision
from God when she was a teenager that
one day she would lead a large choir.
But I was just groping, and we were
just scrambling.
I was just trying to get through one
day at a time, one Sunday at a
time, learning to preach.
My sermons were so bad then that I
fell asleep while I was preaching.
And that's not good.
Well, we were in Brooklyn full-time about
two months, three months.
There were people living upstairs in the building.
There was an elderly woman who was around
90, who was a Norwegian woman who had
lent the previous two pastors before me, before
things really went bad in the church and
ended up with so few people.
She had lent the church $15,000.
This was right around 1970 that she lent
it, or 1969.
$15,000 was a lot of bread back
then.
That was a lot of bread.
Well, my schedule would be on Tuesday, I
would go in in the morning, and I
had no secretary.
I had no phone person.
I would go in and just, you know,
look at the bills and figure out how
could we pay the bills.
We're having meetings on Sunday nights, Sunday morning,
Sunday night.
And we came home one night, and about
11 o'clock at night, our home phone
rang.
I have no idea how they got our
number.
And a person, a minister, introduced himself and
said, I pastor, and he mentioned a denomination.
He said, I pastor a church in South
Dakota.
I have a wife, two children.
God's been talking to me about coming to
New York to work for him.
What do you feel?
Well, first of all, I had no idea
how he found me.
I was a novice, and he's asking me.
He had been pastoring for five or six
years in two different churches in a barren
part of South Dakota.
And I said, well, I really don't know
what to tell you.
There's ministries, there's Teen Challenge.
We're in a very struggling situation, and I
don't know if I could really help you.
He said, well, we're praying.
God's given us a burden, and, you know,
when God gives you a burden, He's going
to make a way.
I said, yeah, that sounds fairly right.
But I didn't, I was noncommittal.
I didn't know what to make of it
because, you know, here we were scrambling the
thought of somebody asking me about coming to
New York.
Certainly there was no position in our church.
The next Sunday night, at almost the exact
same moment, he called again from South Dakota.
And he said, our van and our cars
are packed.
We're coming.
And God is with us.
I said, well, sir, you know, I was
just so young then.
This is totally all new to me.
I said, I can't make any commitment to
you because we're just, we're in a very
touch-and-go situation.
Don't worry about it.
Praise God.
When God is able, God can do it.
He gave all the right verses, said all
the right things.
I said, well, when you get close to
the city, call.
We'll have you come to our house.
We were living in New Jersey then.
My mother had put down $8,000, and
my wife and I purchased our first home,
$32,000.
Those were the good old days.
Right?
Now you can't buy a car for $32
,000.
That was one of the things we were
working, just to cover the note on the
house, $24,000.
So he calls from New Jersey and says,
I'm here on a Friday, I think.
And we said, well, here's the way to
get to our house.
I gave him directions, and I said to
Carol, we've got to make, you know, a
meal for them.
They're coming, two of them and two kids.
So I went down to the supermarket and
bought some.
We wanted to be kind to them, so
we bought steaks, chuck steaks, you know, the
ones, you know, like two cents a pound
or some of those.
But, you know, we felt good, like we're
going to put something out nice.
And it's all bone and fat.
There's a little piece of meat there like
that.
So their car pulls up, and my wife
has, we just had Chrissy.
Chrissy was an infant baby.
So they come in our house, very quiet
couple, very, seemed very nice.
Wife had red hair, very thin.
Man was very, seemed very nice.
They sat, they ate in our house.
And then I said, well, listen, you have
no place to stay.
There is an apartment on the second floor
of the church on Atlantic Avenue, and I've
made it so that you can stay there.
Okay.
So I said, and, you know, I'll give
you directions how to get there.
Someone's waiting.
They will let you in.
There's an elderly woman up there, and there's
one other person staying there, a woman and
her daughter.
And you just stay there, and I guess
I'll see you in church on Sunday.
I really don't know what to say to
you, brother, because you don't know me.
I don't know you.
I don't really know where this is going.
Don't worry, brother.
God is on the throne.
That sounded right, too.
Well, I guess you can't really picture how
young and how vulnerable my wife and I
were at this time, because you only know
us, some of you, in this building, older.
Well, on Sunday, I go to church.
He's sitting there in the Sunday morning service,
amening everything I say.
And then in the night service, I had
him come up and introduce himself and just,
you know, share a greeting.
He spoke well.
Activities have been going on among some people
on Saturday, and he had met a lot
of the people, he told me.
A lot of the people, you know.
You have 18 people, you meet 18 people.
Doesn't take very long to know the whole
church.
So he was there on Sunday.
We said good night.
We said, well, we'll just pray.
We'll be in the prayer meeting on Tuesday.
Monday morning, I got a call from the
lady who lived upstairs, not the elderly one,
another one.
And she said, Pastor Cimbala, you have a
problem.
I said, what's the problem?
She said, you know this man that's here?
I said, yeah, he's a nice man.
He's been talking about you, and he's been
talking to the people in this church.
You have a problem.
I said, no, he's a nice man.
He's probably just being friendly.
And then she said something which made me
feel uncomfortable, which made me hold back.
She said, no, he's been using the phone.
He's gotten the phone number of some of
the people.
Besides talking to them on Saturday, he's been
calling them.
And he's saying that your time is up
here in this church.
And I said, sister, you misunderstand.
He's probably just making a spiritual point that
you don't understand.
Talk about not understanding.
So I dismissed it.
I, you know, love hopes all things, believes
all things.
And she just said, no, I listened in
on one of his phone calls.
And I said, sister, you shouldn't have done
that.
But she said, no, I love you and
your wife.
There's something wrong.
I said, there's nothing wrong.
This guy is just, there's nothing he can
do.
There's nothing to do.
There's no church.
There's no money.
There's the buildings run down.
And there's no people.
So what could he want?
Well, we had dinner Monday night, Carol and
I, by ourselves.
Carol went up to rest, put Christy to
bed.
And I began to study my Bible and
pray.
And suddenly as I was praying, the Holy
Ghost came upon me.
And I began to pray.
I really don't really like to tell this
story.
I'll be honest with you.
I don't like to talk about it publicly.
I can feel it now.
I began to pray, but I couldn't stop
praying.
I physically, literally could not stop praying.
I began to groan and intercede in the
Holy Spirit, but I didn't even know what
I was praying for.
But, you know, sometimes you don't know what
you're praying for, but God is praying through
you.
I tried to shake it off.
I started to walk through the house.
Carol was sleeping.
It was now 9 o'clock, then 10
o'clock, then 11 o'clock, then midnight.
I walked, I wept, I prayed.
My heart was pounding for no reason.
I tried to open my Bible to read
a scripture.
I couldn't read a scripture.
This thing, this like birthing a baby was
on me or something.
I didn't know what this was about.
It had never happened like that before.
When I looked at the clock and I
realized that it was 1.30 in the
morning, I said, What's the sense of going
up to try to sleep?
I'll just go into the church and find
a little empty room there.
And I left a note for Carol saying,
Carol, I feel like I should just go
to the church.
I didn't want to alarm her.
I didn't tell her a lot of the
details.
I just said, I'm going.
I was riding Highway 22, then onto 109,
approaching the Holland Tunnel, when I realized there
is no bedroom in the church.
It's all taken up by that woman or
daughter, by this family, by the elderly woman.
Now what am I to do?
It's 2.15 in the morning.
So I stopped and got a little room
right near the Holland Tunnel and said, I'll
try to get some sleep.
But when I got in this room to
just sleep, because it was too far to
go back, I lay awake probably till 4,
just weeping and praying.
But I didn't know what I was praying
for.
It was like God was preparing me for
something, but I had no concept.
Before God, I had no concept.
I got up after sleeping a few hours.
I pulled into the church at about 9
o'clock.
And after going to my little office, I
went into the kitchen area.
And I sat down at the table, and
I can see myself now.
I made a cup of tea.
And they came out of their bedroom, the
husband and the wife, and they sat at
the table with me, and we exchanged pleasantries.
And I was sitting there, not yet 30
years old, and said, Brother, I
think there's something I need to talk to
you about.
He said, fine, Brother, whatever.
You know, I love your church.
Love your church.
Love the way your wife plays.
She's got a gift, you know.
I said, yeah, okay, that's great, but now
I want to talk to you about something.
I would handle this differently now, but back
then I'm telling you the truth, the only
thing I knew.
I said, Brother, the sister that stays up
here, she tells me I have a problem.
She tells me that you've been talking to
the members and that you told them that
my time is up and that my wife
and I are living high on the hog,
eating steak.
This was one of the things he had
said.
Right, Carol?
I said, I bought that steak because you
came and we have no money.
I have no insurance.
I've had to drop out of Social Security
and years went on, I couldn't get back
in.
Have you been calling people?
I'm embarrassed to say that the lady listened
in on one phone call and I corrected
her for that, but she says that you're
talking nasty.
But, Brother, I don't want to believe that.
The Bible says don't answer a matter until
you hear both sides.
He just kept his head down.
And then he looked at his wife and
he said, Honey, should we tell them?
And suddenly she looked up with a look
from another world and started saying, Yes.
And both of them got up and started
to circle me.
They just walked and said, You're through.
God has sent us here.
We have a word from God.
You'll never speak again in this church.
I made a mistake by not discerning quickly.
I discerned, but I was too naive and
too young.
I tried to reason with them.
I should have hit them over the head
with a two-by-four.
I didn't mean that.
Or did I?
Either way.
And we started at about 9.30. They
circled me.
It was bizarre.
It was like from a movie.
I couldn't believe it was even happening to
me.
I tried to reason with them.
I tried to say, You call.
They spiritualized everything.
They said, We've talked to the people and
they believe and they agree with us that
God has sent us.
You're through.
We've talked to them.
And they started naming people in the church.
They hadn't been there 72 hours.
And as God is my witness, 10.30,
11.30, we went from room to room.
I'm trying to reason with them.
I'm trying to be kind.
And they're just stalking me.
And this woman...
You know in those movies when they're demon
-possessed and the head goes around like that?
She did everything but that.
This little wisp, red-haired little stick of
a woman turned into some kind of animal
in front of me.
And I couldn't...
I couldn't withstand her.
I couldn't.
I fought in reason.
I tried to be sincere.
I was so stupid.
I was so naive.
I tried to reason with something that was
unreasonable.
You can't reason with the devil.
Then he would come at me and he
would bring up something else.
Hours went on.
At about 1 o'clock, this is from
9.30, we're going from room to room.
And we sit down and I'm trying to
explain and they're trying to tell me, God
has spoken.
You can't defeat God.
And the people know it.
There's been a confirmation in people.
A sister in the church got a word
that you're through from God.
And I thought, maybe I am through here.
Because who wants the discouragements and the battles
we were fighting and no money and struggling?
It was so reasonable, I can't tell you.
And then at about 1 o'clock, they
said, and you know, Mrs., the lady, I
won't mention her name, the elderly woman who
lives here, she wants her $15,000 today
because she wants to help us.
When they said that, the playground started to
come out of me.
And I said, what?
And I ran down the hallway and I
knocked on the door and this little old
lady let me in and I said, sister
so-and-so, have they been taught?
She said, they're good people, Pastor.
I said, what are you saying?
She said, and I want my money.
And she pulled out an IOU with a
payable upon demand that some pastor had signed.
Payable upon demand.
She said, I want the money.
But you know what?
That went over the line with me.
He was standing like where the Altos are,
Esmeraldas are over there.
And I turned to him and for the
first time I spoke forcibly and I said,
you devil, because I realized what he had
done.
And suddenly when I said that as God
is my witness, he lifted his hand and
he started running at me with a scream
like from out of hell.
And he's running at me these 20, 25
feet and here's a 92-year-old woman.
And it's like, this is insane.
And he's running and I just had to
make a decision.
What am I going to do?
And I just closed my eyes and I
said, God, if he's going to hit me,
he's going to hit me.
But just hold me and protect me because
if I pick him up, I'll throw him
right outside that window three stories down.
I'll kill him.
I will literally kill him if you don't
hold me.
I'm telling you the truth.
This is not a very spiritual story.
And he ran and he ran to hit
me and I just closed my eyes and
I thought, you know, he's going to knock
me out.
He's going to do something.
And he stopped like within six inches, like
God just held him and he didn't strike
me.
But now I had total chaos.
She started crying.
He's going totally off.
But by me saying, you devil, something happened
in me and God began to show me
what I was dealing with.
And I said, you're out of here.
I will call the police.
You're out.
I will call the police.
You can get your money, ma'am.
And she got a lawyer and got her
money.
And for me to get $15,000 in
those days would be like getting today a
half a million dollars for this church.
$15,000.
The offerings were $85.
Literally.
I said, you're out of here.
Suddenly they shifted without even talking to each
other and they started to butter me up
and be kind.
And they said, you are a man of
God.
We know it and we want to work
with you.
Just let us stay.
I said, no.
Something was telling me I got to get
them out.
I have to get them out.
But now they were so complimentary and the
woman was saying, they're kind.
They're being nice to you.
How can you throw them out?
I thought you were a man of God.
I thought you were a Christian.
What kind of Christian throws somebody out in
the street?
So now I was betwixt and between.
What do I do?
Then the woman went and got the children
who had gotten up and they were crying
and she would walk in front of me
and hold her little children and say, are
you going to throw us out in the
street?
We have nowhere to go.
And I didn't know what to do.
Do I throw them out?
Do I let them stay?
But something, like God was saying to me,
if you let them stay one night there
will be no church left.
I was totally bewildered.
I was a mess.
But I held by the grace of God.
I said, no, I'll help you pack your
bags.
You're leaving.
But it took, listen.
Listen.
It took two hours to get your leaving
in.
This all took hours.
You just didn't say you're leaving and they
said, okay.
It was a battle.
Every inch.
I mean, it took 20 minutes to get
an inch.
And finally they packed their stuff.
Then I looked out the window and it
started to snow.
And then the elderly woman said, you're sending
them out in the snow.
I said, oh God in heaven.
And the children were crying.
And the lady turned from the animal into
this sweet, I'm telling you, I have never
in my life seen anything, experienced anything like
that.
At about 4, 4.30, they packed themselves
up in their car and they drove away.
I remember looking out the window and as
the car drove away, suddenly I burst into
tears.
The prayer meeting that night, I couldn't even
talk.
But it wasn't bad because only two people
came who needed to talk.
Just, how you doing?
How you doing?
Could have had coffee.
It would have been a better meeting.
I came home that night.
I didn't want to scare my wife.
I couldn't get up the next morning.
My wife's a witness.
Listen, I've been playing basketball all my life.
I grew up in the park.
I was still playing ball then.
I was in shape then.
I could, you know, I could navigate.
I lay down.
I lay down on the sofa all day
Wednesday.
All day Thursday.
I couldn't get up to do anything.
It's like I had fought Mike Tyson 15
rounds.
They went over to a ministry here.
They went over to Teen Challenge and said,
we've just come from Pastor Simbala.
He highly recommends us.
And he feels we could get a job
here working.
Thank God the leader of the center called
me and said, we got a couple here
named such and such.
They said that you highly recommend them.
I mean, this was like this was out
there.
I couldn't move the whole week.
My spirit, my body, my emotions, my mind.
Brothers and sisters, listen.
Don't you realize the devil saw that this
would all happen one day?
Listen, wait, wait.
He realized the gifting he would put on
my wife.
He realized the kind of caliber of people
he would save and bring in this church.
He knew Pastor Ware would start a prayer
band.
He knew one day I could write a
book.
And when the baby is young.
But let me close by saying this.
I never shared this with my wife.
I thought it would be immodest.
But you know how the devil, in one
way he's wise, in another sense he's a
jerk.
Because in the months that came after that,
and I realized what had happened, I began
to wonder, you play Jonathan, why would the
devil attack me so?
Unless God was going to cook up something
good.
In other words, if it was a dead
end and if my wife and I were
just never going to do anything for the
Lord, why would the devil even mess with
us?
And suddenly, the devil's own attack on me,
God began to use it to build faith
in me.
And I began to think, Satan, God must
have something in store.
Because why else would you do such a
demonic thing?
Even his attacks God can use to bring
glory to his name.
And the next time the devil attacks you,
and you feel like, Oh God, I failed
the Lord.
Here I just started out.
I've had a personal failure.
Why did the devil come so quickly to
tempt me and win a battle like this?
Just remember God's got something good in store
for you.
The next time you get opposition from even
your loved ones and they fight you, like
they did Joseph, say to the devil, Devil,
you must know God's going to do something.
Because why would you be messing with me
this way?
And if you start out doing something for
God and it bottoms out and there's a
feeling of failure and misunderstanding, don't give up.
Because if you'll just hold, God will say,
Now you will see the glory of the
Lord.
Let's put our hands together and praise the
Lord.
Hallelujah.
We bless you Lord.
Hallelujah.
Let our voices sing.
Listen.
Everyone hold steady.
Here's how we're going to go out of
the building tonight.
Listen, next time the devil tells you about
your past, you remind him about his future.
Listen.
We're going to sing that song, but here's
what we're going to do.
Bow our heads.
Close our eyes.
There's faith.
That's the truth.
He's never failed me yet.
Jesus Christ.
I want every pastor and their wives to
come up to the altar that's here today
in the building.
From our church, some of our daughter churches,
associated churches are here.
Come quickly.
And every worker on this staff, everybody in
leadership, anybody teaching in Christian Ed, every prayer
band member, get up here quickly.
If you're in service here to the Lord,
you get up here to the altar.
Come on.
Just come.
Don't anyone else move.