First giving honor to God the great head of our lives, to this very honorable Pastor, pulpit platform, to this very fine church, officers, members, visitors, and friends. It’s good to be here. It’s good to be in the house of the Lord one more time.
We don’t tend to hold you to long unless the Holy Ghost says otherwise. Ye who have your bibles, turn with us if you will to the Gospel according to John, John 10:10. And it reads as thus…
And from this passage of scripture we would like to use as a thought in form of a question, Have you been robbed?
As you know the book of John, the epistle of John (same book) to my understanding the key word of this book is believe. The key phrase of this book tells us that Christ is the divine son of God, now I’m talking about the book of John here y’all. John taught that Christ was the Son of God.
John also taught that in Him prophesies of the Old Testament were fulfilled. John taught that He, meaning Jesus, was the perfect teacher. And when I say perfect teacher that means he is teaching us how to walk, how to talk, how to live. Jesus was perfectly sinless. This can all be found in the book of John.
Everybody hates a thief, even thieves hate thieves. Most people inquire about the crime rate of a neighborhood before they move there. They realize that if the crime rate is high, there is a strong likelihood they will come home one day and everything of value will be gone.
Some of us b/c of financial situations can’t choose the neighborhoods of low crime rates. So one of the 1st things we do if we know that the crime rate is high is we begin to protect ourselves with burglar alarms, iron bars on the windows, iron gates at the doors, motion sensor light, a baseball bat on side of the bed, a hammer under the pillow, or maybe even a couple of pit bulls in the house.
But even after all of this, we are still vulnerable to the thief. However the thief comes, we realize that we have no hope of ever having or keeping anything worthwhile unless we find a way to protect ourselves. There is another kind of thief of the worst kind. This thief is not the one who climbs through your windows, he’s not the con man who knows how to win your trust, smile in your face, and rob you all at the same time.
We wish that all he would take is our cars, jewelry, and money, but he is taking so much more than that. This thief, the devil, is robbing people of their spiritual condition. It’s bad to see folks robbed and they don’t even know they’ve been robbed. It’s bad to see folk having so much taken and been robbed so many times that it has becomes a normal of life.
This thief is even working his way into the church. This thief has come into the church and stolen a lot of people’s praise, he has stolen a lot of people’s salvation, he has stolen a lot of people’s joy. And we wonder why our church services are dead and why we can’t feel anything, b/c the devil has worked his way in the church and robbed the saints.
For years I’ve sat back, watched, and came to the realization after receiving my salvation that it shouldn’t take someone telling you to clap your hands. It shouldn’t take someone telling you to sing along with us. It shouldn’t take someone telling you to stand to your feet and give God some praise and say halluejah. If God has done something for you on the inside it should just come natural to show on the outside.
One songwriter said if you love Jesus you ought to show us some sign. When you find out that praise is the key, you’ll praise him in advance, you’ll praise Him in spite of and you don’t need a church to tell you to praise God. Some people have messed up now, you wait till you get to church for somebody to light your fire. But when I get here, my fires already lit. When I get here, I just explode when I get in this place.
I gotta contain myself when I’m driving my car, I gotta contain myself while I’m on my job. But when I get in church I do like the Psalmist says I enter into his gates with Thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. I’m thankful unto and I’ll bless his name. And if you don’t want to praise him, I’ll praise him by myself. If you don’t feel like praising him just move on out of my way b/c I’ll praise him anyhow. B/c I’ve learned that joy is not predicated on what’s going on around you, joy is an inside job. Have you been robbed?
Then you got those worried about who’s going to preach and what choir is going to sing. I’m here to tell you that it shouldn’t matter who preaches, it shouldn’t matter who sings for your spirit to be moved. As long as I can get a word from heaven, it doesn’t even matter. If God has done something for you on the inside, you can ignore folks that don’t feel like praising him. That’s what’s wrong with a lot of us today. We to worried about what brother so-in-so sitting on side of us and what sister such-and such sitting in front of us is going to have to say about us.
Maybe you should look at them as if you are saying maybe you don’t want to praise him but this crazy look on my face is just a fair warning that something is about to happen on this row. So you might want to watch out. B/c I’ve always got a reason to praise the Lord! Have you been robbed?
I’ve just figured it out that the more I praise God, the better things worked out for me. But some folks you gotta dangle something in front of them to make the praise God. Almost like a horse, you gotta dangle a bit in front of a horse to make it go. Sit there with your legs crossed, lips poked out, arms folded, look like they got rocks in their jaws, come to church only when their friends come to church and when they come to church talk all the way through or there is a special event going on at the church or it’s a holiday and they just want to be seen in your new outfit.
But my coming to church is not predicated on when you come to church or what’s going on at church. Psalm 122:1 says, “I was glad when they said until me let us go into the house of the Lord.” And when I get here, I’m going to show out. How dare you shout and holla at a football or basketball game ON TV knowing the players can’t hear you and shut your mouths when you get in church.
If you can shout and holla at the Dallas Cowboys, if you can shout and holla tat he New Orleans Saints, if you can shout and holla at the Los Angeles Lakers, if you can shout and holla at the Miami Heat then you ought to go crazy when we call the name of JESUS! Yeah, have you been robbed?
Usually if we go home and see a thief in the house or see that a thief has been in the house, we call the police. To walk in the house and see that the furniture has been disarranged, or see that somebody has come in and taken our things of value we would immediately call the police.
Well when you see something stolen other than your furniture, jewelry, and earthly things of value. When you see that someone has come and stolen your joy, when you see that someone has come and stolen your praise, you need to call the police but not Lumberton, not Purvis, not Poplarville, or Hattiesburg Police. But you need to call the heavenly police and I tell ya there’s nothing wrong with asking detective Jesus to come on the scene and do some police work. There is nothing wrong with asking Detective Jesus to do some police work in your life. Jesus said the thief come but to steal, kill, and destroy but the heavenly police have come that you might have life.
The first things Detective Jesus will do for you is identify who the thief is and tell you where he hides. Once he tells you where he hides, Detective Jesus, if you feel like it’ll happen again and you request it, he will put you in protective custody. For the bible tells us in Psalm 27:5, “For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock.” Yeah he will hide you until the case has been solved.
One songwriter said, “Everything the devil stole, God’s giving it back to me.” So with that in mind, the second things Detective Jesus will do is give you back everything that was stolen from you. Through Detective Jesus, you can get your joy back, you can get your praise back, you can get your peace of mind back, you can be healed, delivered and set free. You can get that breakthrough that you’ve been waiting on. And not only will Detective Jesus give you what you lost, He will keep the devil from taking all the good things that he forgot to take first time around.
Once you get everything back, He will assemble a team and go on a stake out, park himself not far away from you, set up a surveillance team (this is when he puts his angels of protection around you), and stay there just in case the devil tries to come back.
A story is told of a woman who worked at a bank that was robbed and beaten. The thief had it planned where he would wait for someone vulnerable and weak, follow her to where she was going and attack quickly. The y attacked this woman as she was trying to get out of the car. The husband and wife called the police when she arrived home. The police came after a 3 hour time period has passed.
After they got there, they had a pad and pen in hand and said how much did they take? The couple said around $200. They closed their books and politely began to leave b/c it wasn’t worth their attention. The husband thought about all the trama and all that she had gone through but the point was unless they had taken more it wasn’t worth it. But I’m so thankful for Jesus that he’s not like that. He will not only give you back what was taken but he will stand besides you. Low I am with you always even until the end of the world.
Somebody may thin, well where is your Jesus I don’t see him. I say unto you, I don’t see the air that I breathe but I know it’s there. So the police walked out the house but it didn’t bother the couple b/c Detective Jesus had already been on the scene. The wife went on to tell her husband that the thief put his hands around her throat and began to choke her. The wife began to scream for help but nobody came. She hit the horn, nobody responded. She thought that if she spoke loudly, somebody would see her and come to her rescue.
So the husband asked well honey, what did you do? She said I started to black out but she said she reached down but this time I didn’t call for you or nobody else. I didn’t reach for the horn, I shouted but I didn’t shout for earthly help. I shouted 5 simple words from the epitome of my soul “IN THE NAME OF JESUS.” And she said when she shouted that, the thief jumped as if an army came after him. Jumped out the car and began running for his life.
I want to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you see with your natural eye, you’re never by yourself. How do you think you got home last night, it wasn’t b/c of your driving. But it was b/c Detective Jesus rode with you. How do you think you went home and slept all last night? You were sleeping with your soul sitting in between life and death. But while you were sleep Detective Jesus sat on side your bed and told that old death angel to behave. So you ought to not wait until you get to church to give God some praise, when you wake up in the morning you ought to shout GLORY.
Let the people riding along side of you in their cars think you are crazy b/c I’ll lose my mind for the Lord b/c I know what he has done for me and where he has brought me from. If you’re like me, when I think about Jesus and all he’s done for me. My soul gets happy and I gotta tell somebody. If people began to look at you crazy just tell them baby you don’t know like I know what the Lord has done for me. The reason I praise him like I do is b/c he’s been good. It’s b/c he’s a mind regulator, he’s a devil driver, he’s the strength of my life, he’s the joy of my salvation, he’s the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star, he’s my all and all, YES HE IS!
I’ve found the answer when I learned to pray. With faith to guide me, I found the way. The sun is shining on me each day. I found the answer I learned to pray. And when you pray just begin to praise him b/c I found out that when praises go up blessings come down. You may as well do like the baby bird when the mother bird comes to the nest. Just open up your mouth and get ready to be fed.
And if you don’t believe me, just try him for yourself and you will find out like the old saying goes. It’s not secret what God can do. What he’s done for others, he’ll do the same for you. Someone would probably say I remember there was a time when you would barely speak when spoken too and now you’re preaching. What brought about this change in you? And I’d have to tell them, I’m just saved, sanctified, holy ghost filled, fire baptized. I’ve got Jesus on my side and I’m running, I’m running, I’m running for my life!
