If you and I are going to make a difference in this generation, we must turn away from that which imitates God but is not in reality walking with God. It's not finding its life source in God.
We must turn away from it. Welcome to A Call to the Nation with Pastor Carter Conlon and a message titled A Return to the Supernatural. Carter takes us to Matthew chapter 22, the parable of the wedding banquet. The invited guests paid no attention to the invitation and refused to come, so the king had his servants go out to invite anyone they could find so that the wedding hall would be filled. Today that request goes to you also if only you would accept this gracious invitation.
Here's Carter with more. Second Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 to 5. This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, that means without family affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, that means unable to retain anything of value, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such turn away. Now Paul speaks of the last days of this world in this passage of scripture as we know it, but his description of the obvious social, moral and religious decay also applies to any society coming to its final stages because of inward decay.
It's a sad thing in my heart to have to say that I am witnessing this in this country at this time. The things that are spoken about in Second Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 to 5 have almost become the normal now in our society. Proverbs 49 and verse 11 says their inward thought is that their houses shall continue forever. The arrogance of man, the arrogance of a society that turns itself away from God begins to turn to its own reasoning or lack thereof thinking that all things are going to continue as they have been from the beginning. But again in Psalm 55 and verse 23, Psalm says deceitful men shall not live out half of their days.
When we turn to deception, when we turn to evil, when we turn away from God, when we cover it all up with a bankrupt form of spirituality, then the end of things as we have known them is very, very near. In Proverbs 24, 21 and 22, God says to Solomon, my son, fear thou the Lord and the King and meddle not with them that are given to change. In other words, those who recklessly challenge that which has already been proven and tested, they come in and without any fear of retribution or consequence, they will trample on history. They will trample on what has been clearly proven and established to be the way of God.
And they'll call it a good thing. But God's word says for those that walk with God, fear God and don't meddle with those that are given to change. Don't become part of it.
Don't let it become that which occupies your thinking. For the calamity shall rise suddenly and who knows the ruin of them both? That means the previous verses talk about the evil and the wicked in the sight of God.
Who knows the ruin? There's a sudden calamity comes to those who recklessly challenge that which God has clearly proven of himself. Now you and I know that we're called in such days as these to make a difference. We are called to make a difference. We're not called to hunker down and hold the fort and hope to survive. We're not called to preserve ourselves.
We're called to make a difference in our society. And I thank God with all my heart that I've studied this Bible to know long enough to know that in days like this, when there seems to be so little hope that righteousness is going to prevail, God will always have somebody somewhere. He will always raise up a testimony and most often it's the least among us. It's that corner of the church or the testimony of God, where we least expected God to do anything because we are only looking with our natural eyes. If we were to walk through scriptural history, we have to ask ourselves the question, would we have had the eyes to see Gideon in his backyard sifting wheat as a mighty man of God? Would we have looked upon Deborah and Barack her general and thought that this was going to be what God was going to use to defeat an overwhelming army that was coming against them all throughout history? When things look the worst, one more time, God takes the weak and the foolish and the nobodies and the nothings of society.
And he begins to raise them up and he establishes a testimony to himself that could only so that people stand back and say, this could only have been God. How else could this have happened? These people don't have the natural strength or ability or reasoning power.
They don't have the strategy that could have made a difference. Only God could have done this. Paul says in Philippians chapter two, verses 15 and 16, that you might be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. This is the call of God in my life. This is the call of God on your life. We live in a crooked and perverse time, but you and I are called to shine as lights.
That light is not to be hidden under a bushel. According to the word of God, it's to be set on a hill that people can plainly see it. And we're to hold forth to this generation, something of God's word in such a way that people look at it and say, surely God is alive.
Surely God has a people in the earth. Isaiah 59 and 19 says, when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. God will raise up a standard. God will raise up an opposing force. May I call it that a counter to that which would swallow up society into ungodliness. And so you and I see there's tremendous power for good given into the hands of those who truly know and walk with God. But yet in order to know this power, we must turn away from all that has settled for imitation over the genuine.
See, this is the key. Paul is describing in 2 Timothy 3, a social climate of evil, where evil begins to be good and good begins to be evil. Where society itself begins to despise people who are good. They despise people who go to church. They despise people who speak the truth because truth has fallen into the streets. They despise those who say there is a God and there's a right way to live and there's a wrong way to live according to this God. They despise those who are standing and saying, you may think that you're going to go in this direction without suffering harm. But I beg to differ, for I have walked with God and I have studied the word of God and the direction you're heading and is going to bring about a destruction of not only yourselves, but those who follow you. But Paul says there's in the midst of all of this, there's a people who have a form of godliness, but there's no power in it. You see a true relationship with God leads somewhere. They're not willing to follow where it leads.
So they're settled for form. You settled basically for an imitation. We must turn away from all that's an imitation.
Now I want you to hear me on this. I'm not just sermonizing. I have something from God. If you and I are going to make a difference in this generation, we must turn away from that which imitates God, but is not in reality walking with God.
It's not finding its life source in God. We must turn away from it. It's easy to get drawn in by the crowd. It's easy to come to a place like this and to begin to sing the songs. You are my King. You are my God. You are my refuge. You are the one that I seek. You are the one that I love. You are the one that I follow. You are the one that will teach my hands out of war.
You are the one. And so we came in today and I don't know if you noticed, but there were powerful words in the songs that we were singing today. And so the question I feel the Holy Spirit would ask of every heart here, were these words true or were you just imitating worship? Which is it folks?
We've got to make a choice. Now that which is imitation is not going to make it through the coming days. Those who simply imitate others who are walking with God, you're, you're, you're simply, if you come to church just because it makes you feel good, it's not good enough folks. It won't get you through the coming days. It's not good enough to imitate.
It's not good enough to come in and sing the songs, but not really mean it in your heart. Now stay with me on this because the Lord's not given me this message to condemn anybody here. The Lord's given me this message because he loves you because he wants you to understand his power. He wants you to walk in something of divine life. Paul said, examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith and prove your own selves. We, we can't be afraid to have God examine our hearts and say, Lord, this is what I have genuine. I'm not really walking with you. Have I settled for some kind of a form of religion, but there's no power in it.
What is it that I have? What is it that I have embraced? Now in Matthew chapter 22, there's a parable that it's actually more than a parable because it's, it's the history of God coming through his son to Israel first. And when Israel rejected him, he invited that nation, which were his people in the earth to eat a wedding feast with his son, but they refused the invitation. And then when you get to verse nine in Matthew chapter 22, after Israel has soundly rejected Christ as a nation, he said to his servants, go you therefore into the highways and as many as you shall find bid them to the marriage.
Now that's you and me today. That's the highways. That's the hedges go into all the world. Israel was invited.
Israel rejected the invitation because of the rejection of Israel. The gospel came to the Gentiles of which most of us here today are and God's message to his servants was go now into the highways into all the world, rich and teach the gospel to all creation and bid them to the marriage that I've prepared for my son. So I thank God for that with all my heart. I thank God that I have an invitation to this, this banquet feast. So those servants went out into all the highways and gathered together as many as they found both bad and good. And the wedding was furnished with guests.
Those who went to church and needed the invitation as much as those who didn't go to church. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment and he said to him, friend, how did you come in here not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Now it's, it's amazing the fact that he was speechless. You see, if he was an open fraud, he would have already developed his, his conversation and his excuses would already be well developed and he would have had an answer. The fact that he was speechless tells me that he was not aware that what he possessed was an invitation.
It wasn't real. He thought he belonged to this family. He thought he belonged to this banquet.
He thought he had a lawful right to be there. He thought he was part of the bride of Christ. May I call it that only to find out when he came into the presence, the true presence of God, he had, he had no garment.
He had a garment of his own making, but it was an imitation. Anything that's an imitation, anything that falls short of that garment, which God provides through his son will be so blatantly obvious when we get into the presence of God. See the question the Lord would ask us today, have you seen the depths and the just penalty for your sin? Have you fully understand what sin is? Have you understood it? Have you, have you seen Christ on the cross?
Have you understood? Have you seen the ugliness of the cross? Have you seen that the vileness of it, the shame of it, if you fully understood that the son of God endured this for you because of your sin, it was not some judicial obligation. God loved you. The scripture makes that really clear. God so loved you that he gave his only begotten son, sent his son who had never done anything wrong, allowed him to be beaten.
It's I read it again last night and spit on and buffeted and mocked and slandered and put him on a cross virtually naked on a hill before the whole world shamed. Have you understood that he did that for you because that was your destiny without God, without the mercy of God. It was my destiny without the mercy of God.
Have you fully understood the depths of sin? Jesus didn't die on the cross to give you a better self image. He didn't die on a cross to get you a promotion on your job. He didn't die on a cross so you could add his name to your resume to make you a happier person in the world.
Although many of those things may happen, that's not why he died. He died for you because your sin separated you from God for eternity. Have you deeply received his offer of forgiveness?
Have you fully, fully understood that he died in your place and the way to eternal life through God is to bend your knee before him, bend your knee before the one who died for you and say, Lord, I yield my life to you. I opened my heart to your offer of forgiveness and I receive you as my Lord and savior and I yield to you the rights of my life. I yield to you my future. I give you my all. You bought me, oh God, with the price of your blood. I'm not my own.
I'm bought with a price. Not only do I receive you as savior, but I receive you as the Lord of my life from this day forward. I want to ask you the question, is the garment of salvation you have, is it an original?
Is it a genuine or is it simply an imitation? What really have you come to Christ for? Why are you in this house? What do you hope to get from God? Folks, I'd tell you, I got everything from God that I'll never need on Calvary. If I would have died the day after I received him as savior and Lord, that would be sufficient for me. He owes me nothing. He gave me everything on that cross on Calvary's Hill.
Thank God. I knew in my heart the day after I opened my heart to him that my salvation was real. I knew it because God had put his spirit upon me and in me. And the Bible says that when you belong to God, there is a cry. It doesn't come just because there's good worship in the church. It's a cry that's there Monday morning. It's there Monday afternoon. It's there Tuesday. It's there Wednesday. It's there Thursday. It's there when you're on the mountain top.
It's there when you're in the valley. It's a cry that says, Abba, Father, oh God, you are my father. God, you are my father. I am your son. I am your daughter. If that's the case, I know I am yours and I know you are mine because you have put the witness of your Holy Spirit within me.
I don't have an invitation. My praise of you is not limited to Sunday morning and Tuesday night. I can praise you on the subway. I can praise you in the job. I can praise you, God. Hallelujah. I can praise you when my son and daughter are heading out the door to do drugs and do things they shouldn't do because you are a faithful God.
And I believe that you're going to be faithful to me. So it comes to the after you've come to the cross and fully understood Christ, are you willing to let his life within you? You see, we don't grow in grace by help, helping ourselves and by self effort. That's not how it's done.
That's how the whole world does everything. No, God says, you tried to serve me. You couldn't. You tried to be godly.
It's impossible. And now you've bent your knee at the cross and I've come into your life in the power of the third person of God, the Holy Spirit. You are now my temple on the earth and I've left you promises, precious promises, Peter says, and by these you become partakers of the divine nature of God in Christ, not by human effort, but by believing the promises of God. My, my responsibility is to put my feet one in front of the other in faith and believe God, even though it looks like I'm walking into a brick wall, even though the certificates, if I had any on my wall, tell me I'm not capable of doing what God's calling me to do. My responsibility is when God opens the door, I walked through that door. I walked through it in faith.
I walked through it believing God, what you told me you're going to do in my life. You're going to do, you're going to stretch my borders. You're going to expand my mind. You're going to give me a new heart. You're going to flow through my life and God almighty, it's going to be an evidence that there is a God in this universe. It's going to be a, an open declaration that God's son was raised from the dead because I will be raised from the dead by the power of God's spirit within me. The chains of sin will be broken.
The bunches of hell will fall. There's nothing of this world that can hold me any longer. There's no prison door strong enough to keep me behind it. There's no wound to the past that can keep dragging my face through the mud. There's no lie of hell that can stop what God has determined to do through my life and yours. In those who belong to God, there's a willingness within us to let him become our total guide into the future.
I don't yield just little portions of my life to God. Here you can have this. You can have Monday from three to five. I'll give that to you and I'll give you Thursday a little slot here in my life and the rest of the time I'll leave me alone.
Thank you very much. I've got my plans. No, the true child of God, the true son or daughter of God lets the Holy Spirit become our total guide and can the Holy Spirit lead you out of weakness and into strength? Will you let him do it? Don't try.
You can't. It's not possible, but God Spirit within you can and will you let him lead you? Will you let him take you as a child of God and out of fear and into faith and out of the limitations of your natural body and your natural mind into the supernatural that of God, which knows no limit. I'll tell you, this is not always been an easy walk for me, but I'll tell you one thing.
It's been anything but boring for these 36 years. I've walked with God now. Oh my goodness. What a journey this has been. What a journey. I I've said it here before, but I often tell pastor Teresa, I fear sometimes like I, I came out of the church in Riceville.
I was hit by a truck. I've been in a coma all these years and none of this has really happened, which of course makes it really bad news for you. That means none of you really exist.
You're all, but the reality is that you do exist and it is a supernatural life and God is faithful. He does take us from, as he said, image to image and glory to glory. In other words, from place to place by his power.
That's the glory. Glory means that which is of God, which brings his own name to reputation through us. It changes us from image to image, from, from what we used to be to what he wants us to be.
And Paul knew this. The apostle Paul said, I've not arrived basically at this high calling of God. Now he says this close to the end of his life, but he says, I'm pressing on to this high calling of God that he has for my life. And I'm leaving behind me that which needs to be left behind, taken out of the natural and brought into the supernatural life of God. This is the standard which will push back evil and it will give in our nation a season for men and women to consider their ways and to turn back to God.
This is the standard. It's not some new super preacher somewhere. It's the body of Christ. It's the whole church. It's those who really know God. Finally, yielding, bending the knee, receiving their salvation, receiving Christ as the Lord, and saying, Holy Spirit, lead me now. And let my life be used for a divine purpose on the earth.
That divine purpose leading to one thought that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, because nobody else but God could do this. I had an old hockey coach one time that came to hear me preach. This is from years and years ago.
He was a coach for quite a few years. And after he'd heard me preach, he met me at the back door. And he said, If I hadn't seen it, I'd never have believed it. But now I've seen it.
And he said, I want you to know that I believe that's an amazing thing. There should be such change come into your life. Remember, the scripture says if anyone is in Christ, they become a new creation, the old things and then pass away. Behold, all things become new.
It's not necessarily overnight. But as we walk with God, the change of the past are broken. The roots that held us to the bondage of sin are literally cut away by the blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, the tree may still be standing, but it's lost its power to draw life. And it dies.
Little by little step by step, it begins to die. And this new life of God is worked within us. The willingness to let the Holy Spirit lead us.
We must come back to the supernatural again. We're in a situation in our time where evil thinks it has the upper hand. But I beg to differ because God is I beg to differ because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. I beg to differ because he triumphed over the power and penalty of sin. I beg to differ because God's word says he takes the weak and the nobodies and the nothings of this world. And he puts his spirit upon us. And he establishes a testimony of the reality of who he is. I beg to differ because God is willing to do things in us and to us that can't be done by human effort. Only by the Spirit of God.
I beg to differ because God is willing to put within us a song that is so deep, so profound, so powerful. The scripture says that men will see it and fear and trust in God. Give us boldness. Give us faith. It doesn't mean arrogance.
It doesn't mean rebelliousness. It means faith. Give us faith to stay to those that have no strength. Get up and walk in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to those that are behind prison doors.
You can be free in the name of Jesus Christ. Give us faith is what they were praying about. Let us speak the word of God with authority. Let us not cower back.
Let us not snicker when we're opposed and cower under opposition. And so my question today to you and to me is, is the place where we are right now, does it need to be shaken? Is your salvation real?
That's a question you have to be able to answer. Thank you for joining us this week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. You can count on a powerful message each week on A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
