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I am glad to have my son Elias
with me and my wife's back home with our other four children.
And I'm just grateful that as the children were singing, I
was thinking about how that out of the mouth of babes thou hast
perfected praise. And so when I walked in, I was
late. I walked in and enjoyed just
seeing the beautiful facility. But more importantly, I enjoyed
sensing the warmth of God's love. When you come into a place and
you can sense God's presence, God's goodness, God's mercy,
it's home. So I know a few of you, but I
don't know many of you, but I tell you where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there's liberty, and I'm trusting Him to help us this
week. For those that may not know me, and probably many of
you don't, I'll share just a little bit about my testimony. When
I was about nine years old, I grew up in church. My dad was a deacon,
granddad was a deacon, great-granddad was a deacon, and grew up in
church. About the age of nine, my mom
asked me if I was lost, and I did not really know what it meant
to be lost. But at the end of that service,
I remembered that a lot of people were gathered at the altar, and
I came up, and I knelt down and prayed with everybody else. And
I got up, and my dad asked me, did you get saved? And I told
you I didn't know what it meant to be lost, and so how can you
get saved if you don't know what it means to be lost? But I did
not want to disappoint my dad, and I told him yes. And I went
on to get baptized, and not long after that, at the age of nine,
and they saw, some of them thought I had a bright profession. I
said I felt fantastic, and I did feel fantastic, and everybody's
hugging my neck, and I told them I just got saved. But I tell
you, that was kind of like that seed that fell on that shallow
soil that sprung up, BUT IT DIDN'T LAST. IT WASN'T GENUINE CONVERSION.
AND TONIGHT I WANT TO DECLARE TO ALL OF YOU, YOU NEED TO MAKE
SURE THAT YOU'VE BEEN BORN AGAIN BY GOD'S HOLY SPIRIT AND YOU'VE
GOT A PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF SAVING FAITH YOURSELF. IT CAN'T BE SOMETHING
THAT ANYBODY ELSE GIVES YOU. IT'S SOMETHING BETWEEN YOU AND
GOD. And so I struggled with that for many years. I was wondering,
am I really saved? And I went on to do the youth
group things in church and went to a Christian university. And while I was there in my early
twenties, I went to China. I signed up for a missionary
trip to China. I spent a summer over there telling
people about Jesus because I knew that was the name above all names.
That's the name that needs to get out. But I didn't know him
myself. And I'm afraid there's a lot of people around us everywhere
that is talking about the name of Jesus, but they don't know
Jesus. That's a big difference. And
so that's where I was. And so I graduated from college.
I moved to Nashville, Tennessee. I enjoyed driving up here this
afternoon because there's wheat fields and just fields and fields
and fields. Around Nashville, it's subdivision,
subdivision, subdivision. All the farmers are selling out
and they're putting houses in everywhere and skyrocketing the
prices. But I grew up in that and I eventually moved to Nashville.
And when I moved to Nashville that first summer, I really began
to question, what do I believe? I graduated from a Christian
university, which thank God, I went to a good school that
did not redirect what I was brought up in. And so I encourage you
to pray about where you're gonna go to college as you get to those
stages in your life. And I went to an environment
that helped shape me and direct me even though I didn't know
Jesus. It was still pointing me in the right direction. It
was extension of what my parents had been teaching me growing
up. And so I moved to Nashville. And I was tired of what everybody
else was telling me about Jesus, and I began to read through the
Gospels for myself. C.S. Lewis said that as you read
through the Gospels, you're going to have to determine a few things
about what the claims of Christ are. And he said that some will
say that he's a liar. That Jesus said some extraordinary
things. Lest you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall
have no part with me. That's a strange, that's a hard
saying. So C.S. Lewis is probably right. Some would say Jesus is a liar.
Some might say like his brothers would have said during his earthly
ministry, he's a lunatic. He's out of his mind. He's speaking
things out of his head that he's talking about coming down from
heaven and going to heaven and talking about his heavenly father.
And so some believe that Jesus is a liar. Some believe he's
a lunatic. But as I read through those gospels for myself, and
began to ask myself, it says, he who finds his life shall lose
it, and he who loses his life for my sake shall find it. That
Matthew 10, 39 stumped me. How do you find your life and
lose it? And how do you lose your life
and find it? And I was in the very moment of finding my life
in a career in healthcare, in a financial situation that was
much better than I've ever been in my life. as you're making
your first few paychecks, and I was finding my life, I was
finding my way. I had moved out of the little
small country town, and now I'm a resident of the Nashville area,
and I'm working in a very rich county in the United States of
America, and I was finding my life, but I was realizing that
that is not where life is to be found. And so I went to a
men's retreat. I heard several men give their
testimony. I stood up in the back, told about when I was nine,
but I knew it was hollow. It was empty. That weekend, by
the time Sunday night rolled around, I went to bed that night
and I realized today's not the day of my salvation. I went to
bed. I was troubled. I had already prayed. The minister
the night of the church had asked me to dismiss in prayer. They
all thought I was safe. They thought I was struggling
about whether to join the church or not. That night I went to
bed. I woke up about 140 and I got
down on my knees beside my bed and all those skeletons in my
closet, all those things I didn't want to confess, all those things
I was hanging on to, all that dirt and filth and guilt and
shame and fear, I began to pour out before God. I didn't get
saved in my bedroom floor. I got back in my bed, just kind
of went over the same prayer, Lord, forgive me for this. Forgive
me for this. Forgive me for this. And Lord,
if you don't save me, nobody can. You know, anybody that's
ever got saved had to get to that point. Because grace is
not grace without it being unmerited favor. And you have to get to
a point that I can't work myself into a right standing with God.
And as I got to that point, I said, God, if you can't save me, nobody
can. All I got is a black heart full of sin. Something like that
is what I said. You know what? It's just like
that. I describe it, everybody describes
it different. But I'd gone from age 13 to age
22 questioning and doubting, and for rightful reasons. Because
if you're not saved, you need to question and doubt it. But
if you have been saved, and you know it, you need to take what
God gave you and grow with it. But there that night is like
a cool gentle breeze of God's Holy Spirit swept through my
soul. You know what? Ever since April 7, 2003, about
2.20 in the morning, I haven't been the same man. God changed
my value systems that night. He changed the core, the fundamental
nature of who I am. He changed me in a deep heart
level. He changed my heart. This heart
of stone that I had was taken out. Nobody can take that heart
of stone out except God. And God took out a heart of stone,
and He placed... A heart of stone is insensitive
to God, insensitive toward other people. I was very selfish, even
though it may have not looked selfish. Internally, there was
a lot of selfishness in my life. But He took out that heart of
stone, He placed a heart of flesh, and He put a genuine, godly love
in my heart. And it changed me. He's still changing me. And you
know what? He's going to keep changing me
until I see Him face to face because He who began a good work,
He promised, is going to bring it to pass. He's going to bring
it to completion. Just like a telescope that you
look at this end right here and you see out there in the distance.
He is going to complete the work of salvation in my life. I'm
assured of that. And so, I know I'm saved. I'm
glad I'm saved. I want everybody in here to be
saved and to know it. Make your peace calling and election
sure. If the Holy Spirit of God works
on your heart, come to Him. Run to Him. Run to Christ. Pursue
Him. Even if you're just doubting
or whatever. Pursue Him. Run to Him. Chase Him. Because I promise
you, you'll never outrun Him. You'll never chase Him more than
He's already chasing you. I look back and say, God, You
were after me a long time. And I thank God that I finally
came to a place of surrender. It wasn't long after that that
a few months later I joined the church and was baptized at McFerrin. I was traveling around the nation
as a health care consultant, in and out of different cities,
and going in and out of hospitals and different stuff like that.
As I was in those hotel rooms and walking down the streets
of various cities, it was like the Lord was just calling to
me and saying, preach My Word. I spent a lot of time reading
the Scripture by myself, had a lot of time to study in that
hotel room, and they were paying me to work all week, they were
paying for my hotel, they were paying for my food, and eventually
the Lord said, follow Me. And so I had, he had called me
to preach the word. And then he said to leave my
secular employment and follow him. And so I started following
him. He led me down to the homeless shelter in Nashville, Tennessee.
He eventually led me into the prison systems in Nashville,
it was 2004. And I'm still doing some of that
work today. And not long after that, he called
me maybe a couple of years or less to pastor a church. And
so I've just been trying to follow Jesus. I'm not an expert in any
of this, I'm just trying to keep my eyes on Jesus. I want you
to keep your eyes on Jesus too. And I know that if He can save
some little country boy like me, that you wouldn't even know
the little spot on the map. If I were to tell you, you couldn't
have found it probably. If He could find somebody like
me, a needle in a haystack, and deliver me and rescue me and
fit me for heaven, He can do that for anybody in this area,
anybody in Indianapolis, Indiana, anywhere around this world. And
so I'm just grateful to be saved. And I'm grateful you're here
too. And I pray that God will bless us this week. If you have
your Bibles, I want to invite you to turn with me to Acts chapter
19. I could have probably just kept going on, I could tell you
a whole lot more about what Jesus has done in my life, but I'm
here to preach the Word and I want to try to bring a portion of
Scripture to your mind tonight. Acts 19, verse 1. The Apostle Paul has already
spent some time at Ephesus on the end of his second missionary
journey. We're going to find him on his third missionary journey,
and I want to read verse 1 down through verse 20. Before I read
that, though, I want us to look at this and consider this for
a moment. We're going to be looking at
the city of Ephesus before a church in Ephesus was ever officially
established. And so as we think about this,
and think about this church, as we think about why we're here,
why am I here, why is this church in this physical location, there's
a lot of fundamental questions, elementary questions that we
need to think of. Are we here? I think we've already
fulfilled that purpose to some degree tonight in our songs of
praise to the true and the living God. We're here to honor Him
and worship Him, but I just want to bring it back to give you
an idea that as the Apostle Paul is moving from place to place,
he's moving into new territory to another territory, and as
we think about that, we see that the Apostle Paul is motivated
by one thing. One thing, and that is the glory
of Almighty God. There are places all over this
world where God is not being glorified. And if He's not being
glorified in your life, that's why we're here, because He needs
to be glorified. He is worthy of all possible
honor, glory, and praise, not just out of your preacher's life,
not just out of a few deacons' life. He's worthy of all possible
honor, glory, and praise out of every single individual in
this room. and He actually mandates that
you give Him that glory and praise due unto His name. And so the Apostle Paul was going
into town after town, and he was preaching the glorious gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there truly was the Son of God
who came down from heaven, lived a perfect, sinless life, died
an atoning death on the cross, was buried, and on the third
day, he rose again. Forty days later, he ascended
to the right hand of God the Father, and he's seated there
right now, and Paul was going into every city and saying, you
need to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory
of God was being manifested through the good news that a Savior had
come into the world. And so he goes in to this city. And He begins to preach because
the heavens today are declaring the glory of God. There's not
a square inch of real estate in the entire universe that is
not dedicated to the glory of God. All of it should resound
to His praise and His honor. Where from the rising of the
sun to the setting of the sun, He is worthy of our praise. His
name shall be made great throughout all the nations. And so Paul
comes in here burning with a passion for God's glory. Let's begin
reading verse 1. And it came to pass that while Apollos was
at Corinth, Paul, having passed through the upper coast, came
to Ephesus. And finding certain disciples, he said unto them,
Have ye received the Holy Ghost, since ye believed? And they said
unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any
Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye
baptized? And he said unto John's baptism,
Then said Paul, John barely baptized with the baptism of repentance,
saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should
come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this,
they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul
had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them,
and they spake with tongues and prophesied. And all the men were
about twelve. And he went into the synagogue
and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and
persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when
divers were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way
before the multitude, he departed for them and separated the disciples,
disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannist. And this continued
by the space of two years, so that all they which dwelt in
Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. And God wrought special miracles
by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought into
the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from
them, and the evil spirits went out of them. Then certain of
the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them,
which had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We
adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preaches. And there were seven
sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and a chief of the priests, which
did so. And the evil spirit answered
and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? And
the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped upon them, and overcame
them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that
house naked and wounded. And this was known to all the
Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus. And fear fell on
them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed came and
confessed and showed their deeds. Many of them also which used
curious arts brought their books together and burned them before
all men, and they counted the price of them and found it fifty
thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of
God and prevailed. Let's consider this subject tonight,
the glory of God, and we see that is what was motivating the
Apostle Paul. Here's a few things I want to
bring to your attention. God is to be glorified in every
place. He needs to be glorified in your
heart, in your home, in this church, in this community, all
around the globe. Secondly, we'll consider we live
in a land of idolatry. We're living in a land of idolatry. God's Word tells us that we shall
have no other gods before Him. We are living in a world where
many are... God is the last thing on their
mind. They don't care. They want the
pleasures of this life. They're self-enamored. They're
even hammered. with the things that would please
them for the moment, all the while they are neglecting the
weighty matters of life. And when we talk about the glory
of God in just a minute, we're going to talk about the weightiness
of God. That's what it means. The glory
of God means His weight. When we use the word Christian,
it means it's got weight to it. When we use the word Jesus, it's
got weight to it because we know Him. And so we live in a land
of idolatry. And then I want us to look at
this and close quickly. With the glory of God must be
our aim in every generation. As the Apostle Paul, we have
the advantage of seeing this church here established in the
city of Ephesus. God was on the move. God was
saving souls. God was changing their lives.
They were burning books that they used to celebrate. They
were practicing magical arts and all of these things. But
God upheaved their value system. But you know what happened? Years
later, as we'll get, if you don't maintain the glory of God in
every generation, there'll eventually come a place where this very
location, where this church gathers, if we don't maintain a vision
for the glory of God, His goodness, His holiness, His righteousness,
and all of His attributes, His perfections, His unchanging character,
then there'll come a day where there is no church in this area. I didn't say there wouldn't be
a church somewhere because I believe the Lord will find faith on this
earth, but He's going to find faith on this earth where there
are people who have a vision for the glory of God. And so
as we think about it tonight, what is the glory of God? It is His splendor. It is His
brilliant beauty. As we think about, there is no
one. I drove up here this afternoon, and you see the depth of perception
of the clouds. You see creation testifying to
the glory of God. You see the brilliant beauty
of that. You see the sun shining down.
I'll tell you, there is no one more beautiful in all the universe
except God. And I'll tell you tonight, if
you're here and God convicts you anytime this week and you
realize it is God's goodness that is drawing you and leading
you to repentance, to reject Him is to turn away from everything
beautiful in your life. I go into the jails and prison
in Tennessee almost every single week and I see men who have rejected
the glory of God and they've changed it for a pill, a substance
that brings a life of a living death. It is very empty, it is
very I tell you, all the adversary has to do is to offer you some
shiny fruit that will lead you to something very shallow and
very empty. So I beg of you, dear children,
always turn your heart to the brilliant beauty and the glory
of God, the splendor of God, the radiance of God, the light
of God, the love of God, the life of God, because He is who
you need to draw near to. He is that good. I can't even
put into words how good He is tonight, but I'm trying the best
of my ability to proclaim the glory of God to you because He
is that awesome. As we think about this word glory,
as I mentioned, it means the Old Testament would use this
word over 200 times. It means heaviness or weight. Where do we see that demonstrated
when the people of Israel built that tabernacle according to
God's pattern? Guess what happened when they
put that thing together at the end of the book of Exodus? It
says the shekinah glory came down. The weight of God's presence
was so great that they could not even enter into that house
because God's presence was manifested in such power that they realized
that God is here. And when God is here, we use
the word awesome often about a lot of things. We can use the
word awesome about ice cream, or about a steak, or about a
car, or whatever that is, or a cyber drug, or any of those
things. But I tell you, God is really the one that we need to
use that word awesome. He is the one that is mighty
to save. He is incredible. He's indescribable. He's awesome. He's weighty. As
we consider this, Paul was moved by this. He knew these words.
There was a man in the Old Testament that had the bravery to ask this
question unto the Lord, or to beseech Him. And he said this
in Exodus 33, verse 18. Moses asked the Lord, he said,
I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory. And God told him that you cannot
see My face and live, but I'm going to hide you in the cleft
of the rock, and all of My goodness shall pass before you. And I'll
let you see not My face, because you can't see My face and live,
but I'll let you see a little bit of My hinder parts. Put Him
up in the cliff of that rock. And you know what happened? The
Lord passed by, and the God of glory preached about the glory
of God. And you know what He said? As
He passed by, He said, The Lord, the Lord. Listen to this. As
God begins to describe Himself. Sometimes you might say, well,
the first way that God might describe Himself is that He's
a God of wrath. He's going to punish your sin.
He is looking to send you to hell. I'll tell you this. The
first thing that God said about Himself. The Lord, the Lord God,
merciful. Do you know this great big God
in heaven wants to extend mercy, compassion to your lost, undone,
black heart stained with sin. Merciful. And then the next word
is gracious. Giving unto us what we do not
deserve. Slow to anger. When's the last
time you considered these attributes of God? He's patient. He's gentle. Thank God He's patient. He waited
on me a long time. The Apostle Paul said, I thank
God that you can see a pattern of God's patience in my life.
He put up with a whole lot of stuff out of me before I ever
came to Him. He's slow to anger. He's abounding
in goodness and steadfast love. He's faithful, He's true, but
He said He will by no means clear the guilty. I'm paraphrasing
some of these. He's a God who is willing to forgive, and I
encourage you to come to Him. But He's also a God who is righteous,
and holy, and just, and He will hold you accountable for all
of your lives. And here's the thing tonight
as we've gathered here, as Paul was motivated to go into this
new city of Ephesus, he wanted to preach where Christ had not
been named. He went into this new city to
preach Christ because he knew that all had sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God and we need someone to bridge the
gap. The one that bridged the gap
is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul went burning with
that passion for God's glory. You know God will not share His
glory with another. He's the all-in-one worthy of
it. And so he that boasts, let him boast in this. that He knows
and understands this true and living God. God has demonstrated
His glory in many ways. We see His glory in His work
of creation. The heavens declare the glory
of God. We see God's glory in His work
as He walked among the Israelites in the Old Testament days. We
see God's glory as He came in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the greatest manifestation of God's glory on this earth. It says that He came and He was
full of grace and truth. He's the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth. He revealed the glory of God,
the weightiness of God. The greatest way that He ever
demonstrated that glory was going to the cross. to meet up with
our lack of giving Him glory. And He was nailing the bullseye
of God's glory the whole time. We also know that God reveals
His glory in conversion. We sing that song, Heaven Came
Down. And guess what happened? Heaven
came down and what happened? Glory filled my soul. Went at the cross, the Savior.
made me whole. My sins He washed away. My night was turned to day. Heaven
came down. And what happened? Glory filled
my soul. I got something real, something
that's true. And so Paul was going into these
cities and he was preaching about the God of glory and the glory
of God. And as he went into this new
area, I tell you that the glory of God must be manifested in
every place. The glory of God is what was
motivating missions. We need a great resurgence of
missions and evangelism around this world among our people.
If you know what it means to be saved, we need to be getting
this word out to people. Not just for us, not just for
us to huddle in our churches, but we need to get this message
out because God is much bigger than these four walls. He can't
be contained in the heaven of heaven, so I know he can't fit
in this church house. If we really let him get a hold
of everybody in this church, he won't be able to fit in this
place. He'll have to bust down the walls. And he'll just keep
on adding and adding and adding. But Paul went to this new city
and we see Did you notice what happened in verse 8? He went
in the synagogue, first spoke boldly by the space of three
months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom
of God. What is the kingdom of God? It
is the realm by which the King reigns over. And in one regard,
He reigns over all things in the universe. But I tell you,
there's a difference. There's two kingdoms perhaps
even here tonight. There's the kingdom of Christ. There's the kingdom of the dear
Son of God. But there is also a kingdom of
darkness. And this is why it's so important
for you to come to the Lord Jesus Christ this very night because
here's what He's able to do according to Colossians 1.13. He's able
to translate you out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom
of His dear Son. And that is a powerful thing
where God demonstrates His glory? Where? In somebody else's life? No, He does that personally and
intimately in your soul. If you've been saved by the grace
of God, you ought to have a testimony that you say, there was a coming
of night, I was in the dark, and God in His mighty arm that
is not too short to save, His ear is not too dull that it cannot
hear, He was able with His long outstretched arm He saw me crying
out before Him, humbled down before Him, like a little child
realizing, God, if You don't save me, nobody can. And He,
by His manifestation of His Spirit, He lifted me up. He took me down
in conviction, but He also lifted me up. That's what He did. And so Paul was preaching about
the Kingdom of God everywhere he went. But I tell you, there's
also some counterfeits out there. He spoke about, just to summarize
it a little bit, we've got a lot of man-made religion around us.
We've got a lot of stuff like that, people that are coming
up with their own ideas about how to worship God. I'll tell
you, anything that does not line up with the Word of God is out
of bounds. It's strange fire. It is something
that does not please God. We see here the seven sons of
Sceva, a Jew, a chief of a priest. You know what? Those chief priests,
Jesus already moved on from that, right? He wrote the whole book
of Hebrews to say, we've already moved on from the old covenant.
There's some new things going on. You've already got a high
priest. He's seated at the right hand of God the Father. He's
not having to work every day. He's taking a seat because the
sacrifice for your sins have already been provided. And He
can sit, and He can rest, and He can draw, He can intercede
on behalf of us. But they're still going on with
some kind of concoction of spirituality. How many times have you ever
talked to somebody, Hey, do you know the Lord? I go to church
where I'm spiritual. When people talk, I'm spiritual,
there's a lot of explanation to be done going on there. There's
all kinds of spiritual, all kinds of spirits in the world. They
even name the liquor store, the spirit store. I mean, you get
all kinds of spirits in you. But it's the Holy Spirit. And
the Holy Spirit is going to lead you to live a life according
to the truth of God's Word. Why would He do that? Because
He wants you to glorify God. But there's man-made religion.
We see this here. There's idolatry everywhere. Later on in this
chapter, we see that Demetrius was a silversmith. He built these
idols, these physical idols of the goddess Diana that they went
to there and worshipped there. Now, you might say, well, Brother
Brian, we're not bowing down to these physical idols. We see here the results of Paul's
preaching though. You know, some, as they heard
the preaching of the Apostle Paul, you know what it says there
in one of those verses? It tells us here that the Apostle
Paul, it says some were hardened. Some were hardened. Some want
to have the glory for themselves. There's only one that is deserving
of all possible honor, glory, and praise. But some want the
glory for themselves. Some were hardened and they rejected
the message that the apostle Paul had to share with them to
the detriment of their own soul. And so not all are responding
in the right way. We see God's first three commandments
being broken all the time. You shall have no other gods
before Me. If we're not on fire for the
Lord, Where are we? What's more important tonight
than the very God who created you and saved you for Himself? You see, we forget as He brought
out the children of Israel out of Egypt, it tells us in the
book of Exodus that God brought them out, not just to bring them
out, but here's what He did. He brought them out that He might
bring them in. You see, the Lord has made you
for sweet fellowship, Sweet intimacy. He wants you to walk with Him
and walk close to Him that we might manifest His glory, that
we, as we walk around here and somebody sees members of Faith
Missionary Baptist Church, that they realize there's something
different here than maybe other places. Because the people here
at this church, when you come to this church and you sit with
the people in the pews in this church, when they talk about
loving the Lord, they've got a testimony. And not only do
they have a testimony, they have a daily walk where they're manifesting
God's goodness and His mercy and love and grace in their ministry
because God is very weighty to them. God is very heavy to them. When they say they're going to
do something, they do it. Why? Because just as God keeps
His Word, we're going to be a people that keep our Word. And if we
can't keep our promises, we're going to admit our failures and
our faults and our inabilities because we're not God. We're
limited. But He is unlimited and He always keeps His Word.
And we want to do the very best we can to honor Him and glorify
Him. And so just like it was in the
days of Paul here in Ephesus, We're living in a land of idolatry.
You shall not have any other gods before me, the Lord commanded. He didn't say you can have this
or that, and I'll tell you, Before I got saved, I had all kinds
of other gods. I didn't even realize. I was
so blinded to my own sin, I didn't realize that I had the god of
money, I had the god of athletics, in particular basketball and
baseball. Those were the gods that I worshipped.
Those were the things that I thought brought about my identity. They
shaped who I was. It was what I was about. It was
what I talked about. It is what I breathe. It is what
I ate. It is what I lived. And I'll tell you, that is a
demonstration of idolatry. Out of the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaks. And so, think about what we're
talking about. Think about where we're going.
Think about what we're doing. You see, the Lord really wants
to be number one in all of our lives. And that's what revival
is all about. We talked about praying for,
revive my heart. You know how you get revived
this week and how you can stay revived? and how you can not
get into cycles of getting cold and drifting. It is constantly
getting in this Word and being like Moses and saying, Lord,
show me Your glory. Lord, let me not put any other
gods before You. Let us have no graven images.
You may say, well, I'm not bound down to a statue, but I'll tell
you that graven images are basically a manifestation of the imagination
of a man's mind. There's a lot of things that
I allow to build up in the imagination of my mind that are so much more
important than perhaps what God would have me to do. And this
is why Paul said we've got to cast down every imagination and
evil thought. We've got to take it captive
that we might bring everything under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Lord, does this please You? I want you to see what happened.
As the Apostle Paul declared the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son
of God and Him crucified, to these sinners in Ephesus. Psalm. If you've been saved, you're
in that psalm category. Because there's a broad road
that leads to destruction and many are going in there at. But there's a few that go through
that straight gate and that narrow way that leads to life everlasting.
There's a psalm. There's a psalm that here The
message of the glorious gospel. And they respond. And they realize
God is worthy of all of my life. No sacrifice is too great for
you. My little boy came up to me this
morning and said, Dad, how many days are you going to be gone?
He's six. And I said, until next Sunday. And
he said, that's 24 plus 24 plus 24 plus 24 plus 24, 24, 24. I think I got that right. I said,
that's, I already knew how many hours were in a week. And I said,
that's 168. I had to impress him a little bit. I said, that's
168 hours. that I won't see you. And I knew
what the Lord had put on my heart to preach tonight. And I said,
Son, you know why I'm going to Indiana? I'm going for the glory of God. I pray that'll be burned on that
little six-year-old's heart. There's no sacrifice Too great
for God, because He sacrificed it all for me. As the message went out, look
at verse 18. I've got to show you this before
I close. It said, "...many that believed..."
You see, you must repent. and turn away from valuing anything
else above the glory of God. It could be your toys, it could
be your sports, it could be your education, it could be your career,
whatever it is. Nothing is more important than
God. It said many believed they came. You know what they did? They
confessed. They confessed that the way they
had been living their lives did not measure up to the glory of
God, and it says they showed their deeds. Do you know what
happened there? Most of the time, when we're
not living for God's glory, we hide things from people. When
I call church members as a pastor, There's times where I can pick
up on, it seems like they're kind of hiding a few things from
me. Yeah, I'll be there next Sunday.
And they just kind of, they're not exposing, it should be this
way, but that's just human nature. We don't like to bring things
out into the light and just be completely honest even though
David said, Lord, you desire truth in the inward parts. We
like to hide a few things, but right here, when these people
came to faith in Jesus Christ, when they trusted Him with all
their heart, He said they exposed, this is what we've been doing.
It's ugly, it's hideous, it's sin. And we can't live this way
any longer. We've been worshiping through
these magical arts, we've been bowing down to these idols, and
we've got to give them up. It says they confessed, showed
their deeds, many of them also, look at the manifestation of
repentance in their lives. It says many of them also, They
used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them
all before all men. They said, we're done with the
old life that we have. We're done. We're burning it. It's rubbish. It's filled with
vanity and fruitlessness. It has no life in it. They burned
it up. And how much was it worth? 50,000 pieces of silver. That
would be like you and I hiring 50,000 men to work at our home
for one day. That's a lot of money, isn't
it? Could you afford to hire 50,000 people? I guess every
one of your honey-do list would get done. You ladies would love
that, wouldn't you? 50,000. I don't know how much
it's worth, but that's 50,000 men working for one day. And
they burn it up. You might say, that's a lot of
money. Somebody just wasted a lot. You don't waste anything when
you turn in the rubbish and the value system of this world. for
the far surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. He is worth
it all. And they were manifesting a genuine
change of heart and life. And they burned it out in the
streets publicly to say, hey, we don't need this anymore. And
everybody asked them questions. Why are you wasting all that
money? Can I have those books? No, we're burning them. Because they're
not good for me, they're not good for you. We found Jesus,
we found Christ. We found the Savior of the world.
I pray you'll find Him this week. If you don't know Him already,
I pray you find Him. If you do know Him, I pray that God would
stir your hearts to want Him more and more and more. I don't know about you, but I'm
already halfway home. Already halfway home. I want
you to sober your mind on that. I don't know what age you are.
Some of you are almost home. I'm over halfway home. I don't have any time to waste.
I want to live every day. Redeem the time for the days are evil. The last point, the glory of
God must be our aim in every generation as we see here. I
told you earlier, we see we have the advantage. Paul was establishing
this church. And we have Apollos, the eloquent
preacher that was there. We have Paul preached there for
the space of three years. We've got Timothy who pastored
there as Paul's apostolic assistant. We also have the Apostle John
who served in that church. But by the time we get to the
end of the first century, And John the Revelator is recording
for us the first church he speaks about. He said you've got right
doctrine, but you're missing out on some practical things.
He said you've left your first love. You see, somewhere along
the path, You've got people, we've got men in here that I
look up to, that I've heard preach and I've heard about for years.
They've been holding up a standard of the glory of God. But you
know what, if we don't have and train as what you're doing here
just a little while ago as we see these children singing about
the glory of God, we must infuse the glory of God on the next
generation. Or the truth, where's the truth
going to be? We see the evidence of that in the city of Ephesus.
It faded away. And today we don't have any evidence
of a church being in Ephesus. You say, how can that happen? It happens all the time. In marriages,
in families, in churches. because we lose our focus on
the glory of God, and we drift into coldness, and we get comfortable
in the coldness, until we are reminded why we're here. Because if you and I are here
to bring honor and glory to God, it's got to start, revival's
got to start with me, and it's got to move outward. I hear people
talk in the church sometimes, and I'm like, well, if you'll
do what you're saying that person should do, if you'll live that
kind of way, man, you would be on fire. If you want to see more
shouting in the church, if you'd get a hold of the Lord and start
shouting or really get a hold of the Lord and pray, man, this
place would be rocking. It's always easy to point fingers.
Lord, help me have a renewed vision of Your glory and Your
majesty. and your work today. No one can fill the shoes you
are in today, where you are today, in your family today, in the
roles that you have today. May we live for Him. If you're here tonight and you have not been saved by
the grace of God, I pray that you'll feel the weight of His
glory bearing down on your soul in a good way, that you'll realize
that, man, I need Him. I need Him in my life. And as
He convicts you and draws you, if He does any time this week,
I beg of you, don't believe the lie that everybody's going to
look at you funny. I guarantee you everybody in this room has
a desire to get on their faces before this God of glory and
pray that the glory of God would come down and fill your soul
that you have peace with God and you can jump up and tell
somebody, I know what you're talking about. And so if He draws
you and works on your heart in any way, I encourage you to come. Thank you for hearing me tonight.
I'll turn it over to Brother Derek. God bless you.
The Glory of God
Series Revival
| Sermon ID | 632411461052 |
| Duration | 47:19 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | Acts 19:1-20 |
| Language | English |
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