For the only thing that pleases God is
what He does Himself.
All things are from you, and through you,
and to you.
To you be all the glory, Lord.
His name is Jesus Christ.
And His name is the name above every
name.
He is the King of kings and the
Lord of lords.
And He is most definitely the Son of
God, the Only Begotten.
And He is the Son of Man.
And we know Him as such.
The child of the perfectly divine, Himself eternal.
And the child of humanity.
Fulfilling what Adam lost.
Fulfilling what was incomplete in David's kingship.
Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
He is the Son.
And to say that He's the Son is
not just to say He's fully divine.
It means He relates to God a certain
way.
As a son would to a father.
And that's His heart.
He's saying, oh, if you could enter in
to a sonship like I have.
You will be as invincible as I was
on the earth.
You can be forsaken of men.
And disappointed by earthly fathers.
And still be whole.
He's saying, you think as Charismatics and Pentecostals.
That the Holy Spirit is for your super
-duper worship services.
It's the Spirit who makes us sons of
God.
Hear what the Spirit is saying.
Not what your earthly fathers have said.
Not what your whining friends are saying and
complaining about.
Don't depend on man.
Do you want to be supernatural or not?
Do you want to depend on man even
in an apostolic thing?
Or are we going to do this right
from the get-go?
By the Spirit.
Man, I like the Holy Ghost.
Where the anxious longing of the creation waits
eagerly for the revelation of the sons.
Creation is not waiting for the revelation of
a Charismatic movement.
That will contribute to a greater whole.
When we come into a sonship.
Then we glorify God in the way He
wants to be revealed in His life.
Do we dare speak as though we can
relate to God the Father the way Jesus
did?
We have the same Spirit.
He says if I stay physically proximate to
you, you can't experience what I did.
Do you really believe it's to your advantage
He goes away physically?
Do you really believe that God gave you
something better than that?
By giving you your own relationship to the
Father through the Spirit in the name of
the Son?
It is not a work that we have
that has anything to do with making good
in this world.
It has everything to do with another age,
another realm, another kingdom.
And everything they do and we do should
be put in the context of the return
of Jesus Christ.
Period.
He is coming back.
And that alone is the framework of your
life.
Not what you can accomplish in the eyes
of men.
But the revelation of Him in fire at
the end of the age.
And what that event reveals in our lives.
That is the context in which we should
live every day and pray and raise our
kids and preach the gospel.
When the church loses her grip on the
reality of eternity and everlasting life.
She will lose her motivation to work or
she will exchange her motivation for something carnal
and worldly.
Of all people we should be absorbed, fascinated,
motivated by the reality that this age and
everything about it is already decaying, passing away
and is worthless.
With all of its grandeur and its splendor.
With all of its facade of everlastingness.
Eternality.
Just being in New York and seeing all
the flash in the pictures.
Just the way people look on a big
screen television.
The pride and the arrogance.
And spakeness and the falsehood that you just
see on these little things you see on
the airplane.
When the screen comes down and they're interviewing
entertainers like they're gods.
Look at the impression they're trying to give.
This is what is forever.
This is a lasting quality.
I'm thinking to myself every last bit of
what they're doing.
Even their bodies.
Even the beauty on their faces.
With all the cosmetics that make them look
the way they look.
And even if they're naturally beautiful.
One day, if they don't die completely wrinkled
and decayed.
After here, that body is trashed anyway.
It gives the impression that this is what
lasts forever.
But of all people we should be thoroughly
bathed in the reality that everything about this
life, even your body, will not last.
Do you live that life?
It is slipping away quickly.
This age is a runaway train going to
a certain doom.
Do you know this?
He's coming back and his reward is with
him and his kingdom will be with him.
And everything you did for him on that
day, that is what you'll have forever.
Everything you did for him that was not
for him or not from him will die.
You'll never see it again.
So the question is, do we live our
lives and work our ministries and what we
do in light of eternity, in light of
the return of the Lord, the Judge?
Or have we been tricked by this age?
It's facades of long-lastingness that in fact
is nothing but a facade.
It's nothing but a fake.
It is going to be one of the
most sobering, deeply challenging, shocking moments of the
day of the Lord.
It's coming.
And every one of us will stand before
God and give an account.
And everything we did that is what he
instilled will burn.
And I'm telling you, there are people in
this room right now who've spent much of
their lives in dead works.
Your accomplishments are going to burn.
Because there are things you are doing, things
you are even praying or not praying that
are not from the Spirit, they are from
the flesh.
They are religious.
And if you don't like hearing about it
now, just wait until Judgment Day.
Jesus is coming back.
And this life and the religious system is
trying to find a way to glorify the
temporary beauty of this life and call it
eternal.
Don't buy it.
Be in love with His appearing.
Live for eternity.
Do you long and groan for that day
or is it barely even a consideration?
According to the New Testament and the consistency
and the frequency of its witness to this
age, it should be the norm to meditate
on these things, to be motivated by these
things, and to work toward the goal of
these things.
And to groan for them.
Therefore I pray for me and I pray
for them.
That you will give us a spirit of
wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus
Christ and in the things that belong to
heaven.
That by gift, by grace, you will insert
it through our heart and just pour it
in there like something that gets inserted in
and then expands what's in there.
Eternity.
Values taxed on eternity.
Choices based on eternity.
Prayers motivated by eternity.
A loss in this life, even of things
dear, because eternity is real.
We want to be motivated by the beauty
of your kingdom.
By the fact that we will live with
you enjoying the things that we do through
the cross.