Let’s open this evening with Hebrews 10:35, the foundational verse for this message. It says, “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”
I was raised in a small country church in Tennessee in the 1960s and 1970s. When I say small, I’d say about 60 or so folks attended each Sunday. Most of the adults were related, and if they weren’t, they had known each other all their lives, so they might as well have been related.
The adults in that little country, from what I could see as a child and teenager, lived out their Christian values. The people we saw on Sunday in terms of their speech and behavior, we saw throughout the week. Being true to their faith was important. They did their best to live holy before the Lord and they held the Bible in the highest regard.
The Church that we see today bears little resemblance to that little country church. It is a lot more selfish and the beliefs and values that were once held sacred and indisputable are slowly being erased in the Church.
It’s like the scene in Back to the Future where Marty McFly and his siblings begin to disappear from a photograph. First his older brother, then his older sister, and then himself. The erasing began when Marty interrupted his father and mother’s first date. Marty almost changed their history, and his. His parents eventually went on their first date, danced, and kissed, and as a result, Marty and his siblings were back in the picture. 😊
Here’s my point: when Marty McFly went back in time to 1955, he almost changed the outcome of his parents’ first meeting and having teenage children in 1985 – 30 years later.
The genesis of what we are witnessing today in the Church began sixty-one years ago in 1962 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Engel v. Vitale, that school-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Establishment Clause – we know it as the separation of church and state.
Ever since that time, our country has been in a downward spiral of more and more sin, wickedness, and depravity. Ever since that time, the Church has also been on a downward spiral of an increasing willingness to tolerate ungodliness and, in many cases, participate in more and more ungodliness.
And the interesting thing about the Supreme Court’s ruling to take prayer out of schools – the matter was brought before them by two men of Jewish descent, an atheist and a person who practices Unitarianism.
It’s interesting to me that you have two Jewish people joining forces with an atheist and with a person whose standard for living is neither the Bible nor the Torah. Ladies and gentlemen, Satan brought together an unholy alliance and he’s still doing that today.
The decision removed All prayer from public schools. The student or teacher who wanted to pray privately was in violation of the law if they did so. A year later, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the Court ruled that school-sponsored Bible reading was also unconstitutional.
It took Satan sixty-one years to virtually erase a consciousness of God and the Bible in our country, but primarily in the Church.
Satan knows that, given enough time, he can influence the thought patterns of people who don’t know God and the people who are lukewarm in their relationship with God. And if he has his way, he will doom them to an eternity in the lake of fire with him.
And he is patient, especially with the Church. He doesn’t care how long it takes to convince the Church that agreeing with the world rather than God is in its best interest. He will literally wait decades to fully implement his plans. Sixty-one years and you see where we are.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that patiently influencing the thoughts of the Church over a period of years was a lesson that Satan learned after witnessing the impact of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt on the region many years later.
You know the story. It’s found in the second chapter of the book of Joshua.
Joshua had sent two Israelites to secretly spy out the land that included the fortified city of Jericho. Word gets back to the king that they had been spotted at several locations and were lodged in the house of a harlot named Rahab.
The king’s soldiers demand that Rahab turn the spies over to them. Before they arrived, Rehab had hidden the spies in separate places on her roof among the drying flax stalks. She told the soldiers the men were gone and should be found before the city gates closed that night.
Why would Rahab lie to the soldiers for two foreigners? Let’s pick the story up in Joshua 2:8.
(8) And before they were laid down, [the two spies] she came up unto them upon the roof;
(9) And she said unto the men, [Now I want you to pay attention to what she’s about to tell them.] I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.
[Verse 10 ladies and gentlemen.]
(10) For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed.
(11) And as soon as we heard these things our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of the you: for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above, and in the earth beneath.
What I want you to grasp in what we just read is that Rahab tells the spies that Jericho had heard how their God had delivered them from Egypt. Ladies and gentlemen, when we get to Joshua chapter two, verse nine, when Rahab tells the spies that Jericho had heard how the Lord had dried up the Red Sea for Israel, she was talking about an event that had happened 40 years ago!
Are you following me? Forty years earlier and now Jericho is terrified that two spies from Israel have shown up on their front door. The people had heard the story about how Israel’s God took care of them, and how He fought for them.
Remember Rahab said, “our hearts did melt” in verse 11. One of the things I thought about when I read that was that Rahab was saying that there was no courage, no mental or emotional strength left in the people to fight. They had already given up and thrown in the towel.
In 2015, when the Supreme Court was considering same-sex marriage, so many Christians just knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of it that they didn’t even fight. For most Christians, it was a foregone conclusion that same-sex would be legalized. Their hearts, ladies, and gentlemen, had melted. There was no fight in them.
Can you imagine that if the Church had had a backbone and stood on both legs and not bowed down to the same-sex agenda? Can you imagine what would have happened if the Church, together, had said “No, this is not going to happen and we’re going to take a stand against this?”
Do you think it’s possible that there would have been a different outcome? If you’re sitting here wondering if the outcome could have been different and you’re not sure, then ladies and gentlemen, you don’t know who you are. You have no clue.
You are looking with your eyes at the things happening in this world and don’t realize that you are in a spiritual fight. The Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage was a result of what was going on in the spirit that materialized in the natural.
And until we, the Church, get to the point of understanding that everything we deal with has a spiritual origin, then we are always going to be climbing uphill.
So, I began to think about how it could have been possible for Jericho to hear about the Red Sea. I going to use my imagination to describe what could have possibly happened.
After the Lord bankrupts Egypt with the ten plagues (Exodus 7-12) and destroys its army with the Red Sea (Exodus 14), the people with firsthand knowledge of the events would begin to migrate to other parts of the region. They would talk about what happened to Egypt with relatives and friends who, in turn, would retell the stories to their neighbors and friends, who would do the same. Imagine how many times this process was repeated over the years.
Because of the mind-boggling destruction of Egypt, the most prosperous and militarily dominant country of its time, the story was told again and again and again for years.
Imagine Grandpa Henry telling the family how he witnessed the fury of the Israelite God as He destroyed Egypt’s crops and animals by the hand of another Egyptian – an Egyptian who grew up in Pharoah’s house! See the wide-eyed looks and open mouths of wonder, amazement, and disbelief from not only the children but the adults too.
I can see the adults thinking, “Who is this God that is so powerful that even an Egyptian would serve him, that even an Egyptian would bow to him?” Then Grandpa Henry tells them the man was not an Egyptian, but an Israelite. I can hear them say with amazement: “He was an Israelite who grew up as an Egyptian in Pharaoh’s house? Are you serious? No way!”
Grandpa Henry describes the devastation caused by the ten plagues with such theatrics that you could see the wide eyes again and open mouths again and hear the gasps as some said out loud “What? Really Grandpa?” And then a hush comes over the family as they lean in to hear him describe, in a barely audible voice, the death of the firstborn son in every family. He said the sounds of women screaming and crying that night were nearly unbearable.
Now see the members of that one family going out and retelling the story again and again. We have no way of knowing the multiplication process involved in the telling and retelling of Egypt’s destruction.
Let’s say a caravan of ten families left Egypt after the devastation and destruction and spent a few days in villages and cities as they traveled. At each stop, they would tell the people about what it was like to see the wrath of the Israelite God on Egypt. Now imagine the people of those villages and cities retelling the story when they traveled to other parts of the region.
In a span of 40 years, Jericho had heard about Egypt’s destruction so many times from so many different travelers, who described the events with enough similar detail, to make the story believable. How many times did they hear it? I don’t know. But what I do know is this – Jericho had heard the report enough times from different sources that they believed Egypt’s destruction happened.
Now this is where I’m going with that. In our country today, five years ago, and I’m getting a little ahead of myself, there was no question about the definition of a woman. But you have people, who have voices in this country, who have following, who have convinced members of the Church that you don’t have to be a woman to be a woman.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s no accident. It’s part of the Supreme Court’s decision sixty-one years ago. And what’s even more disturbing to me is that you have women who are agreeing with them! Are you listening to me? You have women who are agreeing with them! Churches are agreeing with them!
I must be careful because I can get angry about stuff like this. If a church will stand side by side with an abomination like that, and the person who says that leads the congregation, the person who says that God fights for transgender women just like He fights for all women – I don’t wish ill on that person but unless he repents, heaven is not going to be his final destination.
And ladies and gentlemen, we have to be willing when we hear things like that and don’t get me wrong, we use wisdom, we don’t go out to pick a fight, but when we hear things like that, we need to let people know that it goes against what God has established. It’s not God approved.
So, Satan has worked overtime to get the Church to walk in lockstep with him. And he’s doing a great job of it. I remember reading that when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that were several churches who made it a point of calling women up to the altar and letting them know that they stood with them in abortion rights. Churches!
When hear things like this, I want to put on my Jesus shoes and say “Have you not read? Have you not read?” Because obviously, they have not read!
Over a period of 40 years of hearing about Egypt’s destruction, Jericho had come to the place of believing what they had heard.
Now here is the spiritual principle that the Lord helped me to understand with a new depth of clarity – “So then faith cometh by hearing.…” (Romans 10:17a) Jericho had heard about the destruction of Egypt enough times that it produced in them a terror of Israel and their God.
Jericho had come to the place of believing, of accepting, and having absolute faith in the fact that what the Israelite God had done to Egypt truly happened! For the people of Jericho, even though they had not witnessed the events, the more times they heard about them, the more real they became, and the more fearful they became.
Now, I am going to say this and then move on. How many of us confess the Word and after a few days, a week, a few weeks, a month, or longer – and when we don’t see it manifesting in our lives, we stop confessing? We have to be patient in the warfare. Satan wants us to be weary in well-doing.
Now I want you to imagine Satan sitting back and watching this play out. He sees how the consistency of the message – Egypt’s destruction at the hands of the Israelite God – had convinced Jericho that they were already defeated before the first sword was drawn, the first javelin was thrown, and the first arrow was shot. There was no fight left in them.
During the sixty-one years following the Supreme Court’s decision, our country has been on a downward spiral of increased wickedness and ungodliness, and unfortunately, there is no end in sight. Satan has been relentless in pushing his destructive agenda in our country, and in the Church – the body he needs most on his side – now listen to what I am about to say ladies and gentlemen – the body he needs most on his side because it is the only body that can derail his agenda.
One of the disappointing and revealing things that came to light when prayer and Bible reading were taken out of the public schools, was to see that prayer and Bible reading were not taking place in most Christian homes. Children, Christian children, were getting prayer and Bible reading at school and not at home.
While I understand and hate the Supreme Court’s decision, it is no excuse for Christian families. And I’m telling you right now, ladies and gentlemen, God is going to hold the parents accountable because they let their children become “wards of the state” in these situations.
Do you remember the question the disciples asked Jesus in Matthew 24?
(1) And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.
(2) And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
(3) And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
(4) And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
Jesus says the first sign of His coming and of the end of the world will be the rise of men and women in the pulpit who will deceive the Church, who will cause the Church to “wander out of the right way.” They are the ones Jesus is talking about. He’s not talking about someone outside of the Church.
He’s talking about false teachers in the Church. They will teach doctrines that will seduce the Church into supporting error and sin. In Galatians chapter one, the Apostle Paul calls such teachings another gospel. Turn with me to Galatians chapter one and we’re going to begin reading with verse six.
(6) I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another (heteros [Gk], not the same) gospel:
(7) Which is not another (allos [Gk], the same); but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
(8) But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed [let him miss heaven].
(9) As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
What are examples of teachings that pervert the gospel of Christ? I am going to give you four.
? Two men and two women can marry just like a man and a woman can marry. What’s wrong with this perversion? It contradicts God’s definition of marriage. I have scripture for that and it’s Genesis 2:20-25.
(20) And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
(21) And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
(22) And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
(23) And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Verse 24, ladies and gentlemen.
(24) Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his cleave unto his partner, cleave unto his girlfriend, no!] cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
(25) And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
? Every person is born a child of God. What’s wrong with this perversion? It contradicts what we read in Genesis 5:1-3.
(1) This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
(2) Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
(3) And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son [in God’s image. Is that what it says? No. It says Adam begat a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:
When we get to chapter five, Adam does not have the same image that he had he had in chapter one. Everybody is not a child of God. Yes, God created humanity in the beginning. But it was through Adam and Eve’s procreation after they had sinned that we came into existence.
? Having an abortion is not a moral decision. It’s a personal decision. Time out. Satan has taken sixty-one years to convince this nation and the Church that killing a child is a personal decision. What’s wrong with this perversion? The Bible says when a mother conceives, there is a child in her womb as we see in scriptures like Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 127:3, and Psalm 139:13.
Jeremiah 1:5 – Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Psalm 127:3 – Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Psalm 139:13 – For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
The moment a mother gets pregnant, God has a calling on that child – the very moment! The baby in the womb is a child. It is not a glob of cells. God says it’s a child and I learned a long time ago not to argue with God. It’s a losing proposition. In this life and certainly for all eternity.
? A person’s gender is not determined by biology. What’s wrong with this perversion? Jesus says in Matthew 19:4 that His Father, in the beginning (Genesis 1:26-28), made humans male and female.
Gender is not fluid ladies and gentlemen. A person will have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y chromosome. Period. And I don’t care who says something different. They are lying to you. But they may not think they’re lying because the Bible is not their standard.
And everything I am saying tonight, if the Bible is not your standard, you are probably going to disagree with me. I’m okay with that. I’d rather be on the right side of eternity than the right side of an issue.
Ladies and gentlemen, what we are witnessing has been in the making for at least sixty-one years. Satan has slowly and methodically gotten the Church to define things the way he does rather than the way God does.
It took Satan sixty-one years of constantly redefining how the world thinks to get the Church to this same place. But again, he’s patient. He has watched human history for 6,000 years and understands how to move many of us like pieces on a chess board.
And he also understands the impact of consistent messaging over time.
Perhaps that’s something that the Church needs to understand. Right now, we don’t have a consistent message. We are divided. We have different denominations. We have different doctrines. We have different values. We have different beliefs. And we are willing to argue with each other to hold on to what we believe.
An example of this is a well-known preacher who says there is no way a woman should step into a pulpit as a pastor. Only a man can be a pastor. That’s a twisting of the scripture.
The believing remnant
The Church, or at least a remnant of the Church, must draw a line in the sand and let the demonic horde that is running rampant in our country, and the world, know that we understand where the true battle is taking place – and it’s in the realm of the spirit.
1. I believe that the outpouring of prayer and worship that we’re seeing in our country is happening, in part, because of a remnant of believers who have committed themselves to hours upon hours praying in the spirit. This impacts the realm of the spirit.
2. I believe that the outpouring of prayer and worship that we’re seeing in our country is happening, in part, because more believers are spending time in God’s presence through extended times of worship. This impacts the realm of the spirit.
3. I believe that the outpouring of prayer and worship that we’re seeing in our country is happening, in part, because more believers are consistently declaring God’s Word for an increase of souls for the kingdom. This impacts the realm of the spirit.
4. I also believe that the outpouring of prayer and worship that we’re seeing in our country is happening, in part, because more believers have committed themselves to fasting as part of their lifestyle. Fasting increases our desire to pray in the spirit. It increases our desire to worship. And it increases our desire to declare God’s Word, and that’s why it also impacts the realm of the spirit.
Ladies and gentlemen, doing these four things may seem like you’re not actively engaged in the fight for souls. Don’t let the enemy deceive you into believing this. If he can get you to believe this, then you will stop doing these things.
We must make waging warfare in the realm of the spirit our #1 priority. And we must be patient because it will seem as though what we are doing isn’t working. But only those who live by what they see and what they hear will believe this. But for those of us who live by faith – we know that our victory in the realm of the unseen is unquestioned.
Please stand.
