Don't Buy the Lie (cont'd)

If God is for us, victory is certain, but that won't stop the enemy from doing his best to do his worst. In just a few minutes, Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his Destined for Victory message, Don't Buy the Lie.

But first, he joins me now from his studio in California. You know, every day here on Destined for Victory, we ask people to stand with us financially. That's because we're a listener-supported ministry, and let me underscore that for just a moment. And in 2021, our prayers that you might consider, if you haven't done so already, becoming a Destined for Victory partner. Partners are a special group of people that give a monthly gift of at least $20. Now, if you can make that commitment today, we have some special gifts that I'll tell you about in just a moment. But Pastor joins me now, and Pastor, take a moment and tell us why partners are so important to the ministry.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Wayne. Partners are really the lifeline of this ministry. Without those people committed to giving regularly, we literally could not continue doing what we're doing.

I guess people hear that a lot, but it is really true. Without partners, we simply can't get the gospel out to the world. The gospel is free, but the plumbing costs an awful lot of money, and we want to continue preaching. As I've said in times past, we've got generations to reach that have never heard the gospel, and they misunderstand when they hear people talk about things like serving the Lord.

And we need to make it plain to them. The only way I can do it is with my partners helping us reach them through their generous gifts. I'm so grateful for every single partner, and I'm praying in 2021 that God will give us thousands more. There are many more outlets and many more opportunities we could take advantage of in our ministry, but the only thing that holds us back is lack of income. So I'm praying that God's going to touch the heart of many more people to realize that with just your gift of $20 or more, you can help us remain strong on the stations and outlets we're on and reach many more with the gospel of Jesus Christ. All right, thanks, Pastor Paul.

That's what it's all about, reaching more people with the gospel. If you make that commitment by pledging $20 or more per month to help us do that, we'll send you with our thanks a couple of great gifts, including one of Pastor Paul's most popular CDs, The Best of Let My People Smile. It's a compilation of some of Pastor's most humorous illustrations and stories, something that will be sure to make you laugh and learn at the same time. Call 855-339-5500 or mail your gift, letting us know you wish to become a partner.

Our address is Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. And of course, you can also sign up by clicking Become a Partner right at the top of the homepage at PastorPaul.net. And if you're already a partner, Pastor Paul and I want to say a heartfelt thank you and challenge you to become a legacy partner. These are special ministry friends that are able to support us with gifts of $2,500 or more each year. The details are available at the website, PastorPaul.net, or by calling 855-339-5500. And if you can't become a partner today but would like to make a generous one-time donation to Destined for Victory, we'll be glad to send you, by request, Pastor Paul's booklet, Traits of a Virtuous Woman.

That's Traits of a Virtuous Woman, a booklet from Pastor Paul, our gift to you by request for your gift to Destined for Victory. Let me pause long enough to tell somebody who has some forces in your life trying to curse your progress, trying to curse the good things that are happening in your life. I got a word for you. No weapon formed against you will prosper. Make no mistake, we have a powerful enemy, one who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy, who uses half-truths and high-level manipulation to lead us astray. But Pastor Paul Shepherd has some good news for you today. The prince of this world is no match for the king of kings. When you embrace the infallibility of God's word, when you hold fast to your faith in his absolute truth, the enemy has no power over you.

And now, to share his message, Don't Buy the Lie, here's Pastor Paul. Israel greatly multiplied under the hand of God, and as they were passing through the territory that was reigned over by King Balak, he was very intimidated by them. He said, that's a large group of people. They're using up our resources. They could overthrow us if they wanted to. I don't like them being around here. So he went and called Balaam and he said, I want you to put a curse on these people. I want you to curse them so that they are not prosperous. Curse them so that they cannot have their way.

Curse them so that I can control them. He said, I want you to put a curse on them. And Balaam clearly heard from the Lord. Now see, here's a man who is spiritual but not godly. He's spiritual because he deals with demons. He deals with sorcery. He deals with witchcraft. So he's very spiritually sensitive, but he is not living under the lordship of the true God. However, because he's spiritually sensitive, he had no trouble knowing that he was talking to the true God when he heard from him. So the Lord speaks up. Read it when you get a chance in Numbers. The Lord speaks up and tells him in no uncertain terms, don't you fool with my people.

That's the Paul Shepherd version of Numbers 22. Don't you fool with me. I'm not playing with you. Don't you fool with my people.

You're going to have a problem with me, you mess with my kids. That's what God pretty much told him. And so Balaam came back and offered some money. He said, listen, I'm going to hook you up.

I'm going to make you rich if you will just do this for me. And so Balaam was trying to figure out how to get this done, but the Lord made it clear to him. In fact, at one point in that section of Scripture, he was on his donkey.

And the Lord sent an angel. And the donkey saw the angel, but Balaam didn't. And the donkey stopped and said, I'm not going down there.

Oh, man, you need to read your Bible. The donkey saw wherever he's from, I don't want to mess with him. The donkey stopped right in his tracks. And Balaam said, come on, get on, get on. The donkey said, no. In fact, he laid down.

He said, let me show you, I'm not going anywhere. And he laid down and the Bible says that Balaam hit him three times. Talk about a sovereign God we serve, the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey.

Here you are, sophisticated. I don't believe that. I believe that was metaphoric. I believe that was allegory and that it was simply an attempt for the writer to illustrate. Your problem is you don't believe you serve a sovereign God who if he created the donkey, he knows how to make it talk.

I don't have a problem with that. If God said, let there be and there was, he can say, let the donkey talk and he talks. The Lord opened the mouth of the donkey and the donkey said, what you hit me for?

That's the Paul Shepherd version again. He said, don't you see that dude in the street? The Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he realized that he's fooling with somebody from another world. And the Lord said, listen, I'm telling you, I'm not playing with you.

Don't mess with my kids. And so he could not curse those that God blessed. Let me pause long enough to tell somebody who has some forces in your life trying to curse your progress, trying to curse the good things that are happening in your life.

I got a word for you. No weapon formed against you will prosper. Doesn't matter who doesn't like what God's doing in your life, doesn't matter who doesn't appreciate the fact that you're born again, doesn't matter who doesn't like the fact that you serve the true king of kings and Lord of Lords. If they try to curse you, God has already blessed you and they cannot undo what God is doing. I want to let you know you're blessed and there's nothing your enemies can do about it. Sure, the Lord allows them to do what he allows them to do, but that weapon will not prosper in the way they design.

So God is always going to have the last laugh about your life because he's the one who began the good work in you. And you got to know that the enemy cannot curse with effectiveness what God has blessed. And so long story short, he decided, Balaam decided, I can't curse them.

God won't let me. He said, but I can cause them to use the will God gave them in a way God has not willed for them. So what you find out later on when you get up to Numbers chapter 31, you find out that what happened was Balaam, he taught Balak how to get the Moabite.

They were passing through the country of Moab. How to get the Moabite women to move in and entice the men of Israel. Because it was true of men then as it is true of men now. Ungodly unscrupulous carnal men will follow a woman to hell if he has to. That's why ministries like ours have to take time and make sure to preach the word clearly and call men up to the standard of God's plan and purpose for our lives so that we can lead our families and our churches and our communities in a way that glorifies God and does not take us down. And so he said, without cursing them, I can get them to curse themselves.

And he taught him how to get the Moabite women. Come on through there and start winking at those brothers. Tell them, put on those right outfits and come through there to me.

How you doing? What's your name, Jacob? You look kind of cute, Jacob.

Look at all them muscles you got and stuff. The Bible says that that was created by Balaam teaching Balak how to get the women of Moab to go in and entice those men and in getting in their heads, they got them to not worry about what God wanted and to begin to live totally out of their passions and their carnality. The result was we're told they began to commit sexual immorality against the clearly revealed word of God.

God has told them and has told us in his word. Clearly, here is my plan for your sexual life. I have ordained that sexual expression is to be part of a monogamous marriage relationship between a man and a woman. This is my plan from the beginning of the creation of mankind. It is still God's plan, not up for debate. Not up for debate. And so they began to commit sexual immorality.

What is that? That sexual expression outside of the stated plain will of God. And so they began to suddenly change the rules and say we can live any kind of way we want to. And what they did was decided that they had created a new morality. It's the same thing you see going on today. People want to determine their own version of sexual expression and call it moral.

Well, you can't call moral what God said is not my will. You can't change the rules because you didn't write the game. You want to steal second base? Well, you know on a regulation field how far first base is from second base and you decide I want to steal second base, I want to be safe, but I don't want to run all the way over there.

So you get up and pull up second base and put it over somewhere 10 feet from first base and then soon as the pitcher throw, you run over there, slide in, I'm safe. What you don't know is the Holy Spirit is the umpire over at the real second base saying you're out. So they began to redefine what was acceptable, driven by their loss and passion, and they decided to practice sexual immorality. Israel clearly knew God's plan for their lives, but enticed by these women, they began to practice sexual immorality. And he said that's what happened in the Old Testament. So here is what is being taught in this New Testament church in Pergamum. He said you have people who have done the same thing.

You have people in your church who are now teaching other people. You can live any kind of way you want. It's okay. God is a God of love. God is a God of forgiveness.

And so you can live any kind of way you want. God understands. Guess what is still going on in today's church?

Don't go away. We're only about halfway through today's Destined for Victory message with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Subscribe to Pastor Paul on YouTube to watch some of his best video clips. For more details and links to all of his social media, be sure to visit pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net where you can listen to on demand recent messages or find a variety of resources at our online store. Now, you're again as Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message.

Don't buy the lie. In today's church, we have people who have bought the lie, who decided I can live any way I want. And God will be pleased because God is a God of love. God is a God of mercy. God understands me. And you know, the worst lies are the ones that have nuggets of truth in them.

See, the reason why you can't grab half lies and half truths is because in order to swallow the truth part, you have to swallow the lies with it. And so we have people today. They have people in the first century church and we have people in the 21st century church who have decided I'm going to live the way I want to live and I will declare that it is righteous. And so now when we have a world around us who are living like pagans and heathens, we now have Christians adopting their lifestyle and saying I can live that way and still be a forgiven child of God. It was going on in that church. It's going on in today's church.

And so now the church is picking up the old pagan ways of the world. Church operating friends with benefits. And people saying, well, listen, we're not married because we're not sure we want to be committed to each other. Living like husband and wife. Not sure you want to be committed. Then I've heard some people rationalize, well, you know, all the people we know, soon as they got married, that's when their relationship really got messed up. They were fine until they got married. So we just figure we'll live together unmarried.

You have bought a lie. I'm not preaching to be popular. I just thought I'd pause and give you a disclaimer.

I'm not in this for popularity. I'm in this because God called me the one who let my parents name me Shepherd called me to be a teacher, a leader of God's people. He's the one who put the calling on me. He's the one I got to face in the end. He's going to want to know, how did you handle my calling?

And I have to be prepared to tell him I told the people what you told me. So I have to do what the word said. Paul told his spiritual son, preach the word. Timothy, preach the word.

Be instant in season and out of season. What does that mean? That means preach it when they say, oh, don't you just love that Pastor Paul.

Isn't he just the best thing ever? Preach it when they're saying that and preach it when they're saying, see, he up there tripping now. I got to preach the truth. My goal is not to hear you say I like that message. If you say it, that's great. If you grunt, that's great.

If you leave, oh, well, I have to preach with the goal of hearing the Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. So I can't tell you that you can have this arrangement where you just decide it just doesn't make sense to you to get officially married. It doesn't have to make sense to you. It's God's revealed will. It's just a piece of paper.

It's one you need. Because God determined it. God said, for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they too shall be one flesh. Marriage in the sight of God.

The Bible says that marriage is honorable in everything and the marriage bed is undefiled. That means what you're doing by creating this quasi-marital experience without the official marriage is not God's will. So God calls us, come up to my plan.

And we're seeing people do it. Told you I was preaching one of these messages where it was in the text like it is now, sexual immorality, and I stopped and started talking about people living together, not married and what have you, and wanting to be in the will of God. I said the way to get in the will of God is to realize I'm living right now in sin so I've got to make a change. And so I was preaching one of those messages. We gave the altar call and a gentleman walked up and he went in and prayed.

And when he came back, I found this out, he came up to me the next Sunday and told me. He said I'm a follower of Christ but I, you know, heard his word. So you got to understand to be a follower of Christ is more than to pray a prayer and ask Jesus into your life. Then you have to hear his word, study his word, understand his will, and as his spirit speaks to you, you then are called up to a place of obedience. This gentleman said I realize that day I can't keep living like this and call myself a follower of Christ. That's where you want to come to.

Why? Because once I know here's God's plan, then I strive to say Lord I want to do your will. Now this isn't a word of condemnation of people who have had falls and what have you. You know the Bible is clear.

We confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us. This isn't a word to mess with people who aren't perfect, that's the whole church, that's all of us. This isn't a word that condemns people who haven't gotten every area of their life together, who are struggling with some besetting sin. But you know as well as I do, there's a difference between a struggle and a lifestyle.

A struggle means you're not trying to live with it, you're not trying to normalize it, you're not trying to act like this is right. There's a difference between a fall and a living down there. See if it was a fall, I'd be up by now. If you're listening to this message on the radio or CD, I'm laying on the stage.

This is different, this isn't a fall. I'm down here making arrangements down here. You all pass me my food right over here. I'm going to just eat down here, raise my kids down here.

You all see where I am? This isn't a fall, this is a lifestyle. The Bible says if you fall, get up, thank God for grace, brush yourself off.

And you get up and say, by God's grace, I'm not going to be found in that place. But a lifestyle is when you move second base and call it right, when God called it wrong. And so he said, you got people in your church who are practicing sloppy agape, turning grace into disgrace. He said some of them have bought into the teaching of Balaam, some of them have bought into the teaching of the Nicolaitans, which I told you in one of the earlier messages to the Revelation churches, which was the same idea.

The idea that since grace covers sin, we might as well sin a lot to give grace a lot to do. And he said, it is not the will of God. So let me finish telling you that story.

So the young man told me the following week, last week I went in, I told the Lord, I realize I can't keep living like this and call myself a follower of yours. I've had this woman in my life for years. We've had our children together.

And I have never married her. And I now know whatever rationalization I had, it doesn't fly with God. He said, I walked back to my seat where the woman I've been living together with for years and our children were. He said, I walked back, looked over at her and said, we're getting married tomorrow. He said, pastor, I gave that issue to the Lord Sunday. We got married Monday and I want to introduce you to my wife and my kids. That's what the word calls us to do.

The word didn't beat you up because you're not perfect, but the word refuses to allow you to call right wrong and wrong right. Thanks so much for joining us for today's message. Don't buy the lie. To find out more about the Destined for Victory ministry or to contact us for prayer, be sure to stop by our website, PastorPaul.net. That's PastorPaul.net. I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance. Nevertheless, I have this against you. You tolerate that woman Jezebel. By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality.

I have given her time to repent, but she is unwilling. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd continues his study of Revelation and his message, The Danger of Being Misled. Until then, remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are destined for victory.