
At the conclusion of the service last Sunday, you may have noticed that
they likely did so, that there were respondents in the service to the appeal.
I just want you to know, it’s more than worthwhile, something wonderful is transitioning. And especially
the couple that were here sat right in the front, friends of the tappers. For a few years now, I guess, living
up in the well-end area, they’ve been wanting to come. And in fact, there were two couples here last
Sunday. And so when I got to the appeal, I no sooner got the words out of my mouth, and both of their
hands shot up, it wasn’t like she responded and he thought, well, okay. It was, both of their eyes were
closed, and both of them simultaneously raised their hands. I tried not to get close to people last
Sunday because I was ill, and I’m still in a little bit of recovery mode. I don’t think I have anything to give
away now, maybe a few million dollars, and other than that. But I was trying to see out everybody’s way,
and maybe you noticed the gentleman wearing a mask, and he’s taking a course of chemo, and when
you’re taking that kind of thing, they say that your resistance to all kinds of germs and interruptions is
weakened.
And so I tried to avoid them big time. And pretty soon the auditorium was cleared, and so I made my way down over here and stepped through that door, and here they were still in the lobby. And I felt like I was intruding their airspace again. And so I just kind of navigated and tried to become a fly on the wall. But as they were leaving, they turned, both of them were weeping, and he held out his finger like this and said, we’ll be back for more. So they would be here today, but he’s having a very, very difficult time. He just received another shot of that stuff that sometimes they say, sometimes they say the cure is worse than the bite. And they specifically asked, could we go on their prayer list? They must have noticed up on the screen. But you know, I don’t know if you’re noticing. I’m hoping that you, when we put names up here, that there’s a reason for that, they noticed and they said, could we be included?
But would this church pray for us? So I just got that message just as we were about to embark. There you go, Ron Quinn, Bob Hudson. I went to see him this week and gave him communion. And we had a lovely time. He’s struggling in a lot of ways. And he’s slated for surgery again. I don’t have more information about what that’s all about. And Bill Richards is the name at the bottom of the list. And I think I’ve mentioned to you, he’s celebrating. We tried to organize a recording of his testimony. If you don’t know him that well, it wouldn’t mean all that much to hear his voice. I feel I know him pretty well. He’s got a spring and a step. He’s doing so well.
And he says, please tell the church, thank you, thank you, thank you. He said, it’s only the Lord. It’s only the Lord. So Heavenly Father, we lift up these people before you this morning. Tormented by physical infirmity. But we thank you Lord for divine healing. We thank you Lord that we’ve come to recognize this is a house of healing. This is a place where people come to get strength to recover. So Lord, we lift these people up. We don’t always know their names. But certainly the people that were here last Sunday, we’re very much aware of them now. And so Lord, I just pray that you’ll put your arms around them. And Lord, I pray that underneath the everlasting arms, that ministry of the Lord of the Holy Spirit will be more real to them today than ever, ever before. So I thank you for their commitment to you and for their embarking on a journey to get close to Jesus.
And for others who are even in this service this morning who are on that journey, I pray you’re blessed upon them as well in Jesus’ name. Everyone said, so I was looking for some kind of a pictorial to indicate the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. If you’ve been coming here for a couple of years or so, you’re recognizing, well, not these chairs. These are different chairs than I’ve used before. I just thought if I used different chairs, it would throw you off just a little bit. And so I use these chairs, one I want to talk about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the question is, which one do you pray for? Which one do you pray to? Think about this now. Do you ever say, Holy Spirit, I need your help today? I’m quite sure you’d say, Jesus helped me Jesus, helped me Jesus. I woke up yelling, helped me Jesus about a week ago. I thought I was dying in my sleep.
I woke up. I thought I was going to wake up dead, but now I woke up alive. But in my sleep I yelled, help me Jesus. How did the Father feel when I called out, help me Jesus? And he feel like, what am I? Chop liver? Like, why didn’t you call upon me? And you might say, David, that’s kind of a strange topic you’re embarking on right now. Now, unless you’ve got a good grip on the Word of God, that’s not a weird question. It was a question I had as a teenager. Let’s say I was about the age of 18. I was really getting serious about the things of God. And I would go home in the evening and I had this little prayer place out in the field, in a farmer’s field. I go up there in my little Volkswagen.
I’ve told some of you this story. I had it in my head. If you pray, you have to be on your knees. Anybody ever here trying to get on your knees in a Volkswagen? I’m just happy to be able to get in the car in the first place. But no, I had to be on my knees. Try and picture this. Try and picture me trying to roll over. You’re folded up in the car, trying to roll over. And you’re saying, David, this is ridiculous. No, no, no. It’s how I was raised. You kneel when you pray. It’s how I was raised. It’s typical worldwide in so many religious circles.
So I thought, if I want the Lord to know I’m serious, so I’ve got to kneel down. So here I was finally. Sometimes I had to open the car and get out and get back in. If anybody had seen me, they would have felt sorry for me. And so there I am with the steering wheel in my back. And there I was trying to pray. And then I had this little bit of a concern. And I actually would say, now Father, our Father, which art in heaven, Jesus said, this is how to pray. So I would include the Father. But then I’d get a little worried and I’d say, now Jesus, I love you too. And then I wasn’t sure if you talked to the Holy Spirit. And at that time, I might have readily referred to the Holy Spirit as it. Because I had not come to grips with the fact the Holy Spirit is a person. You never refer to the Holy Spirit as did you get it. Have you experienced it yet?
You would never say that about Pastor Dave. Have you experienced it? If I was a politician, you might. But we don’t talk that way. We refer with pronouns. And so I want to start with this to tell you that knowledge of the Word of God, knowledge of who God is, knowledge is a source of power. You understand that, you believe that, say amen. Five of you. Thank you. This is a good message I’m preaching against today. So I wanted to talk to you just for a moment by way of introduction. About power and about how we rely on power. And you heard a story earlier this morning as we started our worship service that Jay-Z said, well, we were without power this morning in our house.
And that’s a little disabling for you. We’re so used to flipping a switch, the light comes on. You ladies can turn on your hair curler. I don’t use mine anymore. You expect the toaster to work. You expect the coffee to work. When we haven’t got electricity, hello. And so power is essential to all of us. And so when I was thinking about that, I remembered a story that I, you like stories? This story is real and I’m not going to embellish it, not one little word. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story, which really excites me right now to think you’ve not heard this story because this story I think is priceless. So I was invited to go to Lima, Peru to do ministry there. And it’s too big a story for me to tell you the whole, to tell you why it was there, what I’m just going to shorten it up. It would be a long story if I got carried away.
And so I knew some people in Windsor and I contacted them because they, he, the pastor, was from Peru and I found out when I spoke to him, well, there’s always Guaramo, you’ll want to take Guaramo. So Guaramo was a Mexican who had come to Canada and had found the Lord since he arrived. And so I got to know Guaramo through that pasture. That pastor told me that a few weeks after Guaramo was attending the church, the pastor went over to visit him. Now Guaramo’s English, understandably, was pretty rough, okay? And, uh, is that your? So the pastor goes over to visit him. This is a true story. I got it from the pastor and Guaramo confirmed it. The pastor went over to see him and then the pastor, they’re having a cup of coffee, whatever. The pastor said, Guaramo, excuse me, I had to go down the hall for a moment. So he went down to the bathroom. He came out and he said, I noticed on your sink that you got a toothbrush there and a tube. And, uh, and the pastor brought the tube with him.
He said, how do you use what’s in this, in this little tube? He said, you know, I brush my teeth. He said, now this is not for the teeth. He said, this is called, see the fell poor, Max, he couldn’t read English. He said, see, it says on the tube, preparation H. And I did notice when I was with Guaramo, he had the finest set of gums I’ve seen in a long time. True story. So I paid for Guaramo’s flight and I took him with me because I don’t know, I don’t know Spanish and it turned out that when we got there, he hadn’t told me. But the Spanish of Peru is different from the Spanish of Mexico. Don’t ask me to explain, but they all come from the original Latin. So he’s actually able to interpret and help me out. And so, um, we went to this church site that turned out not to be a church at all. There was this raggedy little building and I just knew God’s going to do something here. We need, we need, we need space.
We can’t function in that little building. So I managed to find it was a compound with high walls that this congregation, whoever they were, owned this property and they wanted to build, but they didn’t have the money to do so. So I did find some planks and I got some nearby fellows who came to kind of inquire what I was up to and through Guaramo, I got some help with some stones and I actually constructed this little bit of a stage as best I could. And the only people that I could recognize who were part of this little church was a little group of about six or eight elderly ladies and I could have you on the floor laughing if I were to tell you how I worked with them. And I needed some power because what we were going to do, we were going to do in the evening and it was going to get dark very early.
So I called Guaramo over and I said, hey Guaramo, do you see that brass plate on that concrete wall there? Big high wall?
See? I said, well, here’s a screwdriver. I want you to, I said, I noticed that there’s four screws. I wanted to undo the screws. Don’t put your hands inside. I said, I have an idea that that’s the power feed from the government. I think that’s power in there and I want you to check it out for me. So he disappeared for, I didn’t see him for a while. And finally, I see Guaramo coming towards me like this. I said, Guaramo, what’s happening? He said, Sanjor, the power, she’s very good. We need power in our lives as Christians. And when you know and you have a relationship with a father and with the son and with the Holy Spirit, that is a source of strength and spiritual energy in your life. And when you don’t know about the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, you’re missing
out on a great, great deal. Three personages. So I found this picture and no graven image, we’re not to have any graven image of the Lord. And of course, this picture that I show you now at least sort of indicates I see the hands of the father, I see the cross in the hands of the father, and then I see the dove. What shall we understand? It’s the Holy Spirit. Remember Jesus in the Jordan, the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove. And so the church has sort of embraced the idea of the gentleness and the beauty of the dove. And so I use this picture just to bring us some reflection. But then I go back to my own journey in trying to come to understand who the Trinity was. And I still struggle with time. So just please know that as I share this with you, I don’t know it all.
It’s very difficult to think about three persons and yet the three are one. We get accused by some other religious individuals of believing in three gods. You know, the Lord our God is one. But in the Lord God, there’s the Father, there’s the Son, the Holy Spirit. And it’s important that we come to understand the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So when you go into the Scriptures, you need to know that is our only, that’s our only compass, the Scriptures, the Word of God. If it’s not in here, we don’t accept it. We don’t believe it. We do find it here, we take it literally. Literally. So it’s good for us to find in the Scriptures indications of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And so John chapter one, John chapter one, here’s the wording.
You know this so well. In the beginning was the Word. Say that little phrase with me right now. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was first. Please notice that this text is going to tell us about how the world’s were framed, how they came into being, everything that we know, everything that we acknowledge in the world. This is what it’s about, John chapter one. And yet, it’s about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And more particularly, John chapter one is about Jesus. You know as you read on the Word who was a person, in the beginning was the Word. The Word is a person, His name is Jesus. So in the beginning was the Word, and you know as you read a little further down, and the Word became flesh. He took on humanity.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He goes on to say that even though He was in His flesh, and this to me is miraculous. He came in among us and He took upon Him the robe of flesh and He identified as He a woman. But in that humanity, we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So in John chapter one, in the beginning was the Word, the Word. The spoken Word, the powerful Word of God, Jesus. And the Word was with God. So watch it. In the beginning, so you’ll have religious outfits who will tell you that God, they’ll say whoever God is, He created Jesus. So Jesus is at a lower level. And that is inaccurate. This first right here proves it. Even the beginning, at the outset, at the very beginning.
Now when it says in the beginning was the Word, don’t go in your own head to say, oh, on the first day of creation, Genesis chapter one. This is not referring to Genesis chapter one. This is talking about however you sense or whatever you picture or whatever your concept is of where did God come from? He’s the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the ending. And John tells us, and by the way, Alpha Omega, beginning and the ending, Jesus was always there. He’s not an afterthought of God. He’s not like you and I. We are an afterthought, you might say. We came later. We’re part of the creation. But when we want to think about beginning, now you see, this script is not a part of what Scripture is helping us because we cannot comprehend eternity.
You start trying to comprehend eternity. You’re going to get lost, real fact. Yeah, just look up in the sky. I go out and I look in the sky and I think I’m looking at millions of miles away. My head can’t handle that. And yet they tell us that the galaxies are too many to number. It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Who can comprehend that? So in the very beginning, whatever we think of as the beginning, because there is no beginning with God, so there is no beginning with Jesus. In the beginning, the word was there. And the word was with God always, but now watch this one. And this next couple of words are discredited by certain so-called churches and religious organizations. Watch it.
There’s no way around. And the word was God. Jesus’ deity always was, always shall be. But there were those who say, oh no, God created him. No. In the beginning, and in fact, the word the is there to help us to read the structure of the sentence. You can take the word the, out of in the beginning. You can take the word the, out of that verse and it actually makes more meaning. Because when we think about the beginning, this church had a beginning about 117 years ago. By the way, in the beginning of this church, I was so intrigued by this. I found the original purchase agreement on this property. Anybody want to take a guess what the congregation at that time paid for this piece of property? Your way of $80, come on.
Be realistic. If you just said 157, then that’s realistic. This church had a beginning, a beginning. But when it says in the beginning, it’s not referencing Genesis chapter 1. It’s referencing in beginning at the inception. There is no inception. There is no birthing time. Alpha and Omega beginning and the end. And the word was God then. He didn’t become a God. I’m trying not to mention church groups, but I have tangled with them at times. They’ll come to my door. We want to talk to you about God. I said, fine. You want to talk to me to be about Jesus, who is God, and they immediately start backing up. We believe that Jesus is God. I say, no, you don’t. You believe he’s a God, just like you believe that I’m a God. Turn the question around. Don’t ask, do you believe that Jesus is God? They will say yes. Turn the sentence around and say, do you believe that Jesus is God? Do you believe that God is Jesus? No, no, they can’t handle that because you see, that puts Jesus on an elevation equal to the Father, but that’s exactly what he is. He’s equal. He’s not God the Son. They would say, he’s the Son of God. Then they’d say, well, you’re a Son of God.
Jesus is a Son of God. No, Jesus is God the Son. He was with God in beginning. In beginning you want to talk about, he was always there. Then we go on, all things were made through him. The Word. How to interpret that, David? And God said God’s Word. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. So the Word of God, that’s Jesus’ identity. And the Word in the Gospels became flesh and dwelt among us. And the scribes and the Pharisees were blown away. Never have I heard anyone speak with such glorious authority on the Word. He is the Word.
He is the Word. This is why we must honor this book. This is why we must read this book because this is the voice of God to us. And there is no other voice of God that we’re to trust. Tommy says, the Lord spoke to me. Tell me what he said, and I’ll try and pair it up with what’s in here. If it’s not in here, it doesn’t belong. We don’t believe it if it’s not in the book. Hey, amen. I’ll go till five o’clock. You’ll miss your Kentucky Fried Chicken. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The sun is the image Colossians 1. The sun, Jesus God the sun, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation. For in him all things were created. Things in heaven, things on earth, visible and invisible. Thrones powers, rulers, authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. Created through him, but everything was created for him. We simply are riding in the caboose. We’re very fortunate to be enjoying creation, to enjoy the fruits of the land, to enjoy life as it is. But this wasn’t all made for us. It was made for him. And we get to ride and enjoy ourselves. All things have been created through him, and they’ve been created for him. He is before all things, and in him all things right now are being held together. There’s a wonderful video.
I’ve been threatening to bring it in here and just play it on a Sunday. It would be far better for me to do so because I wish you could hear this fellow’s name is Louis Giglio. He passes a huge church down in the Carolinas. And he’s become best friends with people in Nassau. He has access to so many things. And April and I went and heard him in a huge coliseum in Florida some years ago. That was an extraordinary visit. We were among thousands there. And this fellow has been connecting with all kinds of people who have been enthralled with his gatherings. He gets pictures from Nassau of our universe. And the first time I ever watched this video, I sat there and I used a box of Kleenex. I wept as I realized the creation of God. Oh, I was over home.
And then I came to understand that our planet in the universe is about the size of a grain of sand compared to all of it out there. We feel so important. We’ve got people who want to run the world. Good. Pick up this piece of sand and enjoy it, honey. Like, are you serious? You want to run the world. They can’t run a hamburger stand. And so God is so awesome, so huge, so wonderful beyond our comprehension. Going on in Colossians, he is before all things and in him all things hold together. He’s the head of the body, the church. That’s who we are. He’s the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead. How do we know we’re going to rise again from the dead?
Because he arose from the dead and we are in him. I’ve told this story before. My father, knowing about the war, he and my grandpa were running our farm out in Higgersville. My daddy became aware of the war and I wasn’t even thought of at that time. And if you can remember that, you’re way older than me. But there was something that happened to Canadians where men like my dad said to his father, I have to go. So my dad went to the coast and he signed up with the Navy and it was engaged in the Second World War. Interestingly, my dad came home alive. And that tells me that while my father was there, I was in his jeans. No, not his wranglers or his Levi’s. I was in my father’s jeans. Follow my thinking now. If my dad had not come home alive, there’d be no way I’d be standing here.
I’m speaking the obvious, but I’m trying to bring out a point here about being in him. I was in him when he was down at Cornwallis. And when he was looking at going out in the submarines and all the right, I was there. When he came home, I was still with him. I was in his jeans. The Word of God says that we, Jesus, are in him. When he went to the cross, we were in him. When he paid for our sin, it was not an obvious thing, but it’s not a hard thing to comprehend. We were in him. Our sin was embedded in him. And when he rose again from the dead, we were in him. And this is what water baptism speaks of, of being buried with Christ and coming alive because we are in him. The Word of God teaches the Jewish people about their father Abraham, who, by the way, was a Gentile before he was a Jew.
He was a Gentile. God called him out and said, your mind, and that made him a Jew. The people of Israel have learned this and they accept it. We were in him. But then the apostle paul tells us in the book of Romans that we were in him, that when he went to the cross, we were in him. When he rose again from the dead, we rose with him. And right now in your newness of life, Nicholas, you are now in him. You say, but Pastor Dave, you told me he comes into me. This is the beauty of it. He comes into you, but you have been immersed in him. You’ve got to get water baptized yet, which is a pure picture of your surrendering to Christ being buried under the water. You don’t want me to baptize you. I help people down until I see the bubbles.
I want to make sure they’re done. But the water baptismal process is a clear indication. I’ve died to the old life and I’m rising with him. We are in him. He’s the beginning of the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything he might have the supremacy for God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him. John chapter 1, if you love me, Jesus said, keep my commandments and I will ask the father. Jesus said, I, he sits at the right hand of the father, so now we’re going to play with the chairs, right? Jesus sits at the right hand, that puts the father here, and Jesus said, I will ask the father to send you another comforter, the Holy Spirit. Jesus goes on, by the way, when he says, I will talk to the father. The question is, when did Jesus talk to the father? When Jesus arrived in heaven and presented himself as the sacrifice, and I, Brittany, come on glued when I talk about this.
There’s a psalm, one of the earliest psalms. You know this. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, you everlasting doors. The king of glory is arriving. I see Jesus arriving coming up toward heaven with the marks of nails in his hands, his back having been scarred, but he’d been raised from the dead and had a new recovered body raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was there when Jesus arose from the dead. God the Father commanded it, the Holy Spirit saw to it. He was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit. So he’s arriving in heaven to present himself the sacrifice for you and I, the risen sacrifice, the proof that we have been justified, the fact that he arrived in heaven alive, see, the soul that sinneth shall die, he died, but he’s alive again. That’s the proof that our sin has been taken away because we were in him. And when he’s arriving, the angels come on glued.
I think there were a couple of angels that were kind of watching out for him to arrive, one angel has a voice louder than the rest. He’s coming! And then somebody hollers about the gate. Now you’ve got to go back to the old times when you’ve seen these fortresses in movies where there’s a big gate in the wall and in order for you to pass over the moat and go through the doorway, the gateway into the city, these guys had to work with chains and pulleys and they’d have to lift up the heads of the gates, lift up your gates, lift up the head, oh, you gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors for the king of glory’s coming in. And when Jesus arrived in heaven, when the angels saw him leaving, they could not comprehend it. They would actually wonder, what does God see in us that he’s letting the sun go? What did he see in us? What he saw in us is Jesus in the future.
When he looks at you now with all of your warts and so many of us now are wrinkles, he looks past all of our failures, he looks past all of our disappointments, he looks past all he sees when he looks at you is Jesus. When he looks at you, he sees Jesus because you see, you are in him and he is in you. Lift up your heads, oh, you gates and be lifted up everlasting doors and the king of glory shall come in. And another angel, they love to shout this back and forth. They already know the answer, but it’s like a little child who says, tell me the story again, grandma. You know, my favorite story. My favorite story when I was a little kid was Uncle Wiggly. I think he built a car in the basement of his house and then he couldn’t figure out how to get his car. Have you ever read that story? That was my favorite story.
He built a car in the basement of his house and he couldn’t get the car out of the house. Uncle Wiggly. That was my favorite story. Read me that story again. Read me a story. Read me my favorite. The favorite would be among the angels. Lift up your head, oh, you gates and the king of glory will come in. And another angel dies out. Who is the king of glory? And the response is, the Lord God Almighty. He is the king of glory. I can shout today because Brian Duggan is not here. Tell Brian he got carried away. He preached.
Bless God. Who’s the king of glory? The Lord mighty in battle. The one who destroyed death and hell and sin and the devil. He’s the king of glory. And watch this. When he arrived in heaven after the resurrection, where were you? You weren’t even born yet. But you were in him. So when the angels celebrated him, they were celebrating you because he is all about you. He is all about you. The Lord mighty in battle. The Lord is ever so powerful. And so now we’ve heard about, there’s the Father. The Father speaks.
The Father wills it. The Son speaks it. And the Holy Spirit sees to it. The Father wills it. The Son speaks it. God said, let there be light. There was light. The Father wills that you get saved. Jesus speaks it. I died for him. I died for her. And the Holy Spirit says, I witnessed that I confirm it. Do you know what’s happening in heaven right now? This Holy Spirit is celebrating you. The Holy Spirit right now is interceding on behalf of you.
And you need a lot of intercession if you believe that. Say amen. The Holy Spirit is a person who is vitally interested in you. You know what happened to the necklace when you gave your heart to Jesus? Jesus tells the story in Luke chapter 15 about a shepherd who had many, many sheep, 100. One got lost. The shepherd goes out. You’ve probably read the story. If you haven’t yet, you read it to Cheryl and she’ll explain it to you. They get together and they read the Bible all the time. I think it’s wonderful, Cheryl and Nicholas. So the shepherd goes out and he finds the sheep. Jesus said to the listeners, you know what that shepherd’s going to do when he comes home. He’s going to call all of his friends and say, come on over.
I found my sheep. I found my sheep. He goes on and says, a woman had ten coins. She lost one. She looked until she found it. She found Jesus said, you know what she’ll do. She’ll call all her friends and say, come on over. I found my coin. I lost a coin, but I found one. And then there’s the sun. That’s the third story of the trilogy. A daddy had two sons. Shepherd had a hundred sheep. The lady had ten coins, but now we’re down to humanity. A daddy had two sons.
Both of them had wickedness in their hearts. Both of them were undone, just like you and I. The younger one got curious, greedy, and he wanted his inheritance now. He went and he spent it all. Then he comes home hoping that his father will accept him as a servant. When he comes and says, don’t call me son. I’m not worthy. The father ignored that and started shouting to all of his servants. Kill the fatted calf. Kill the fatted calf. This my son was dead to me, but he’s alive again. He invited all of his friends to come. And most of his friends, I believe, did not want to come. Why would you want to go and celebrate the return of this guy who went rogue, who brought his whole family into disregard, who spent half of his father’s wealth on riotous living.
Do you want to go to a party of light in that and celebrate? I asked you, Murphy, why did the people go to the house? It wasn’t for the lost son. They went for the father. They went to honor the father. He was the only one that cared. Nobody cared about that lost son. Everybody else would have said about a son like that, I’d take a horse whip to him and you’re going to throw a party for him and his own brother got upset and said, that son of your, he didn’t say my brother, he said, that son of yours. You treat him like royalty. Celebration in heaven. Jesus said, after those three stories, he said, I tell you, in heaven, there’s more celebration over one person who gives their life to Jesus than all the rest who remained at home and were good people.
Nicholas, when you gave your heart to Jesus, the angels came unglued. You know why? Because the father willed it, the son paid the price and the Holy Spirit confirmed it. And the angels went crazy because they know what brings joy to the father. And the angels have been celebrating ever since. In my case, the angels are still bewildered, not him. In Genesis chapter 1, we will go there for a moment and I’m going to close. In beginning, it says, God created the heavens and the earth. God the Father willed it. Now the earth was formless and it was empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit was present and hovered over the creation. The Holy Spirit had work to do. He was on deck. There’s the Father.
There’s the Spirit. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless. It was empty. Darkness was covering the surface of the deep. The Spirit of God is hovering. Verse 3, And God said, God said, left there be light. And there was light. The Father willed it. The Son spoke it. That’s the story of your redemption, the story of our salvation. There is the Trinity in verse 1. You probably know this, that every time you read in the creation story in Genesis, it says, And God said, And God said, And whenever God says it, it happens. You need to know God is not a name.
I went to India some years ago. When I got there, I learned, before I got there, they already had five million gods. Is that a name? God is not His name. Interesting if you ask a Muslim, what’s your God’s name? The equivalent to the English word God in their lingo is Allah. If you ask a Muslim, what is Allah’s name? They’ll say Allah. You say, No. What’s our God’s name? What’s my God’s name? Jehovah. Jehovah Rafa. Jehovah said, Can you? The Lord my righteousness, the Lord my rich, the Lord my provider.
That is His name. Moses said, When God said, Go into Egypt and talk to Pharaoh, let my people go. He said, Who do I say? He said, Tell them I am. You know what that means? I am. Alpha Omega, the beginning and the ending. Hey, Pharaoh, God was there before you ever thought of anything. You are wrestling with the eternal God. You are wrestling with Jehovah and you lose. The eternal one, the eternal one. In the beginning, the everlasting God, God said, Let there be light and there was light. There’s the Father. There’s the Son, the Holy Spirit. Now, the word God in the original Hebrew, sorry to mess with this.
I’m no scholar, but this is an intriguing word. Every time you read the word God in the book of Genesis, the word God has been translated from this word, Elohim. Elohim is a plural word. Like us, let us make God in our image. I took, I went to great lengths to talk some weeks ago, at least more than two months ago. I went to great pains to talk about when God breathed into man and man became a living soul and man became like God. God said, Let us make God in our image, in our essence. And in every one of you, in every one of you, the soul belongs to God and your soul is part of the essence of Almighty eternal God. Every one of you has a little bit of God in you. It’s called your soul. And when this body becomes overcome with pain and lies silently and cold, my body will lie there quietly, but my soul has gone where?
Back to the one who gave me life. I’ve told you this before. I believe that when I was conceived, God was there. Hello? My birthing as a person, God was there. And I believe at that time, I believe He called me by my name. Welcome David. My soul, let us make man in our essence, in our image. When we think about image, we think about eyes, ears, nose, head, body, trunk, images. No, no, no, no. That word image means let us make God to be like us. So we can speak of ourselves. Now, I’ve got to quickly finish with this. This was part of my consternation when I was trying to figure out who do I talk to. Do I talk to the Father or do I talk to the Son or do I talk to the Holy Spirit?
The interesting thing is the Lord our God is one. Which one? Which chair was in the middle now? I don’t remember. Which one was the Father sitting on? Which one is the Son sitting on? Tim, it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter. When you speak to the Father, you’re speaking to the Son. You’re speaking to the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, it’s necessary for me to go away. But I’ll send you another, this is my wording, I’ll send you the other member of the Trinity. I’ll send you the Holy Spirit. I’ll send you another one to walk with you. As I’ve walked with you, I’m sending one to walk with you.
And then Jesus said something that mesmerized the entire group of disciples. He said, and don’t worry, you’ll recognize them because you already know him. And they’re thinking, no. What do you mean? We already know him. The one that you’re sending we already know. Yeah. He’s been with you all along. Remember, Andrew said, show us the Father. And we’ll be pleased. Jesus said, have I been with you for so long? You don’t recognize me? He that has seen me has seen the Father. He who knows me, Jesus is saying to his disciples, whichever one of you feel you know me, you already know the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit and I work like this.
And in fact, we sit in a circle. There isn’t one higher than the other. We are co-eternal, co-equal, co-knowledge, co. David, get out of your Volkswagen. Don’t be such a nutcase. You should have listened to the preacher. It’s not about worrying Neil. Some of you have a niece or two. Somebody told me this morning he thinks his knee is gone. He’d be best not trying to kneel down all the time. Some of you, your knees hurt too much. You can kneel down. Is God going to forgive you for that? Of course, don’t go into that old old theology. I had a lady come to me once and say, I’m sorry, I walked out of the service, but I
had to get over to the lunch counter. It was a camp. And she said, when she got out to the road, this camp was split by a gravel road. When she got to the gravel road, the cafeteria was on the other side of the road. I’m still finishing up in the tabernacle. She made her way across. She said, it’s so hot. And if I leave when everybody else leaves, I will be late for lunch. Everybody’s younger legs. They’ll be there. And I’ll be standing out in that blazing sun, waiting to get into the cafeteria. So I went early, but I felt so under conviction. I walked out on the Word of God. No honey, you can’t walk out on the Word of God. You can break something if you’re not careful, but you can’t walk out on the Word of God.
This is a Bible. This is a Bible. And the Word of God is something that’s in your heart and in your life. As she got out to that gravel road, she said there was a pickup coming along, and he was driving really, really fast. And she said, all of a sudden, I heard his brakes grabbing the gravel, and the gravel was flying. And she thought, oh, dear Jesus, I’m going to die. And she said, thank goodness the truck got stopped. But she said, that was a warning. You don’t walk out on the Word. I said, no, grandma, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I said, where do we get all these wacky ideas? You have to kneel. You have to pray this way.
You better talk to the Father. No, don’t live off the sun. Is it okay to talk to the Holy Spirit? My goodness, we get so. . . We turn into a huge pile of spaghetti, not the best kind. He’s not in heaven with a baseball bat looking for you to make a mistake. Bang. All of a sudden, he told you to do it like that. He’s not an ignorant harsh father. When your little baby fell, you’re trying to teach them to walk. When they hit the ground, you’d say, oh, what’s wrong with you? You’ll never walk around. No, you went over and you picked them up.
You smelled their diaper. You changed their diaper, and then you put them down and say, now, try it again. You were so careful. You were so loving. You were so kind. And when that child tries to talk to you, think about it. Think about it. When that child tried to talk to you, you didn’t understand the gurgles. They made bubbles when they tried to talk. I’m not. And they smile at you and they go, oh, he understands me. You didn’t understand the word. When you talk to the Father, I said this last Sunday, he’s not impressed with your prayer. He’s not impressed with the words. He’s impressed with your heart.
Are you saying a good prayer? Will you stop worrying about that? We started a church years ago. They were all deaf mutes. How do you think they talked to God? You should have heard that when they got all excited about this service, they sounded like a bunch of cats and geese. They started honking. They did. It was a weird sound, but it was a lovely sound to my ears. I love them with all my heart. Deaf mutes. They would give anything to hear you sing this morning. They’d give anything to be able to they themselves sing. They’ve never heard a sound of music.
They can’t speak a word. And then there’s the blind who cannot see properly and how they would stumble around in the world. And God loves them all. And it considers their heart. If you understand just a little bit about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, you will come and say, Pastor, the power, she’s very good. You’re discovering the power, Nicholas, of learning about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And they want a relationship with you. It’s about relationships. You’re not joining a club. You don’t sign the register. It’s none of that. Have you noticed I’ve never mentioned membership in this church?
I don’t care if you ever become a member. You see, you love Jesus and that makes you a member of his family. And that’s all that matters. Hallelujah to Jesus. Well, I can’t go on any longer because just like you, I’m feeling like it’s time for lunch. I guess you know I love to preach. No, I don’t love to hear myself. I love to take bread and break it. And I’m just always hoping that you’re taking it and that you’re digesting it. And I’m hoping against hope that your understanding is enlightened. Paul said, Oh, I pray that your understanding will be open. Oh, I pray that you’ll know the depth and the height, his majesty and his glory.
Oh, Paul said, that’s my prayer for you is that you’re not like little children, just living on little morsels, but you too are feasting on his goodness and you’re coming to understand the glory of his majesty. Would you stand with me? And I want to sing majesty. I’m willing to sing at acapella, but can somebody, here we go, here’s my buddy. Did I tell you I like you? I love this couple so much. And I would love him if his hands were all knurled and he couldn’t play another note. See, I don’t care about any of that. And I love you and you better love me or you’re going to pay for it. Sing with me, majesty, majesty, worship his majesty unto Jesus. Be our glory, honor and praise, majesty, worship his majesty. Now glorify the King of all kings, so exalt, so exalt, lift up on high the name of Jesus. Magnify, come, go. Sing it loudly, majesty, worship his majesty. He’s Jesus who died.
Now glorify the King of all kings. I finish, I love to finish. Jesus said, I’m going to talk to the Father. He’ll send you another comforter. When you arrive, the angels come unglued, the singing, the shouting, the worship, the worship, the King of glory, the King of glory. And I see Jesus with these myriads of angels holding out his hands like this. Nails guard hands. And heaven went silent. And he turned to the Father. Father, I made a promise. I made a promise to them that as soon as I arrived here, I would beseech you. Let’s send the comforter now. And on the day of Pentecost, there was the sound of a rushing mighty wind. It filled all the house where they were sitting.
And suddenly they repaired what looked like little flames upon every one of their heads. And they began to speak the language of heaven. They were prophesying of the goodness of God. Jesus who died, he’s now glorified, King of all kings. I’m going to ask my friend Alfred. Get carried away if you want to, but I’m just thinking, close us in prayer, Alfred. We are Lord Henry’s father. But a little word is more important. And then his brother’s life will grow. We thank you so much for it. We give you praise and honor and support.
God bless you