John Tesh, the Emmy award-winning host and musician, just kind of grew up in a normal, tame Methodist household. A little while back, Tesh was diagnosed with a rare form of prostate cancer and he was given 18 months to live. John Tesh said he turned to what he called the dual modality of treatment, medicine and scripture. He says, through inundating myself and saturating myself with the word of God, God stepped in, touched me and healed me and today he is cancer free.
He said that this cancer journey awakened him to the power of the word of God. Y'all believe there's power in that word? Honest, we've taken the word of God and we have tamed it. I love what Charles Spurgeon says. Spurgeon says, I keep hearing people say we need to defend the word of God. The word of God is a lion. You don't defend a lion.
You let him out of his cage and he'll defend himself. There's something powerful in the word of God. And the Lord, I told you last week, I believe is telling us at Cross Assembly, look, I want you to strengthen the base, strengthen the base. And we're going to 1 and 2 Timothy because in 1 and 2 Timothy, God told Timothy the same thing 2,000 years ago through the apostle Paul, Timothy of the church at Ephesus needs to strengthen its base. And listen to me, part of strengthening the base, every good church of Jesus Christ must be built on the solid preaching, teaching, memorization, meditation, study of the word of God. You don't have a commitment to the teaching of the word of God, you don't have a church.
That's part of the foundation. And so today I want you to look at 1 Timothy 1. We're going to go a little different today. I'm going to read from the New Living Translation because it brings out some good nuances here. Paul says in 1 Timothy 1, 3, when I left for Macedonia, Timothy, I urge you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those whose teaching is contrary to the truth. Don't let them waste their time in endless discussion of myths and spiritual pedigrees. These things only lead to meaningless speculations, which don't help people live a life of faith in God. The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience and genuine faith. But some people have missed this whole point.
They've turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions. They want to be known as teachers of the law of Moses, but they don't know what they're talking about, even though they speak so confidently. We know that the law is good when used correctly, for the law is not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their fathers or mother or commit other murders.
The law is for people who are sexually immoral or who practice homosexuality or are slave traders, liars, promise breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching. It's teaching that comes from the glorious good news entrusted to me by our blessed God. So here's what Paul is saying to Timothy.
Timothy, you want to strengthen the base. You got to silence these aberrant teachings that are going on in the church at Ephesus. And I see two categories of these false teachings.
Jot this down. First category is Paul says, Timothy, look, you got to correct, look, just downright weird teachings. Look at verse four. Don't let them waste their time in endless discussions of myths and spiritual pedigrees. Myths, scholars say, implies in the Greek, fables, fairy tales, just weird stuff. We're not quite sure what Paul means by spiritual pedigrees. Do you see that in verse four or genealogies? We're not sure. There was evidence in Paul's day that what people do is they would say, hey, I'm going to get a teaching from, a mysterious teaching from Abraham's cousin that nobody else knows about, and here's this teaching. I'm going to get this weird teaching from Elijah's nephew, weird kind of teachings going on, and they describe it to people that you knew from scripture. We're not sure if that's what's going on.
Maybe it is. But fundamentally, Paul says, Timothy, there's some weird teaching going on in that church. You listen to me. I love the charismatic movement. I love the Pentecostal movement.
Pentecostal movement. I love prophetic words. Somebody sent me just a beautiful prophetic word this morning.
It was so powerful. I read it to Darla coming over to church this morning. So don't hear me say I don't believe that the gifts of the Spirit and prophetic gifts don't operate today.
I do believe that. I'm going to say something to you Charismatics and Pentecostals. Y'all have been smoking some weird spiritual weed out there because it's getting real weird in the charismatic church. I was reading about a charismatic prophetess who has 100,000 followers on Facebook, and her claim to fame is, she says, God constantly teleports me to heaven, and I see what's going on in heaven, and I come back to earth, and I just share with everybody what heaven is really like. According to her, heaven smells like pumpkin pie. In heaven, cows drive around on tractors. Heaven is filled with 200-foot sasquatches and unicorns. There's a place called Jello Land in heaven that contains chocolate waterfalls and candy houses. Jesus rides roller coasters with you in heaven, and sometimes he dresses like a cowboy, and when you die and go to heaven, you are greeted by singing, dancing, and talking squirrels.
Another charismatic prophet said that Freddie Mercury from the rock group Queen is in heaven, and he constantly gives concerts in heaven. Another charismatic prophet says that he has been given the ability by God to speak squirrels into existence. Now, again, I thank God for the Pentecostal charismatic movement, but that kind of craziness, y'all got to be real careful about that, and here's what bothers me.
Some of y'all know more about what somebody said on the Elijah list than you do what the Word of God says, and at some point, you're going to have to get some discernment and say not everybody who says thus saith the Lord is speaking from God. And so Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, just number one, watch out for weird teachings. And then the second false teaching that Paul had to deal with, and I want us to focus on this for a few moments, is legalism. You know what I mean by legalism? Legalism means trying to be made right with God by following the Old Testament law. So if you want to be made right with God, you follow the Ten Commandments, you observe all the Jewish festivals, you worship on Saturday, not Sunday, you follow the Jewish dietary laws. Verse seven, Paul says, these people want to be known as teachers of the law, but they don't even know what they're talking about. And I'm going to say this, years ago when I was in seminary, part of our evangelism class, we had to go door to door and share the gospel.
And I had no problem with that. Now it's hard to do that today in this day and age. You come to a lady's house at one o'clock in the afternoon, she's 25 years old, she's got a couple of kids in the house, you knock on the door, yeah, strange religious man come into my house. And so I know it's tougher today, but in those days we would go door to door and we'd ask this question, how do you go to heaven?
How do you know that you have eternal life and that you'll go to heaven when you die? Do you know the number one most consistent response we get is something like this, I follow the Ten Commandments, I follow the law of God, I try to follow the moral law, I'm going to heaven because I follow the Ten Commandments. It's kind of what these legalists were doing.
And they were getting people even deeper into this stuff. Now I want you to listen to me, I thank God for Judaism, I study Judaism, I love studying the Jewish roots of the Christian faith, I love all that. I love messianic Jews, we're going to have a messianic Jew here in a couple of weeks, his name is Jonathan Cahn, Rabbi Cahn's written a great book called The Harbinger, I have nothing against Judaism. Here's the problem I do have, when you start putting people back under the law and saying to be made right with God, you've got to follow the law, then we've got a problem. And I, ain't that weird, people say you've got to make the Bible relevant, you don't have to make the Bible anything, it's relevant already. The same mess Paul and Timothy dealt with 2,000 years ago, I have to deal with today. I knew a guy in our church, sharp guy in fact, I think we'd even thought about bringing him on staff at one time.
Sharp guy, great personality, all this kind of stuff. And one day I hadn't seen him in a while and I asked him about it, I said what's going on? They said well you know here he's going back under the law, he's calling himself the Lord of the Land, they said well you know here he's going back under the law, he's calling himself Rabbi so and so, he wears a yarmulke everywhere he goes, he wants cross assembly to make sure all the men are circumcised, I don't know how you enforce that. But anyway, and I wanted to say to this guy, sir I'm sorry, you look ridiculous, you look stupid.
The black Hebrew movement is getting big, now that's cultic and it's anti-Semitic and that's growing. I had a meeting a couple months ago with a guy, holy ghost told me don't meet with that man. And I didn't listen to the Holy Spirit because the guy kept nagging me, you know some people have the spiritual gift of nagging, this guy nagged me into meeting with him and it was a horrible meeting, the whole thing blew up and I talked to somebody after, I said man what's this guy's problem?
He's gone back under the law, he's kind of into all the festivals and we need to go back under the law. That's the same kind of stuff Paul and Timothy are having to deal with. And so Paul says to Timothy, God's law has a purpose, the moral law has a purpose, the Ten Commandments have a purpose. Look at verse 8, we know that the law is good when it is used correctly.
Okay, well then how is the law used correctly? If you say Chad you don't go to heaven by following the Ten Commandments, that's not the use of the Ten Commandments, then what is the use of God's moral law and the Ten Commandments? Well Paul answers that in Romans 7 verse 7.
He says you want to know what the Ten Commandments are for? Romans 7, 7. Well then am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful?
Of course not. In fact, here's what he says, it was the law that showed me my sin. Here's what Paul is saying, the law is good when you use it right. And the right use of the law is to show you how messed up you are, how sinful you are, and drives you into the arms of the only one that can save you, Jesus Christ.
That's the purpose of the law. The law was not given to save you, the law was given to show you how much messed up you and I are. You know here's the gospel, most gospel presentations start with something like this, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
Okay let's stop. You know what the word gospel really means? It means good news. Before I can give somebody the good news, I got to give them the bad news. The bad news is you're messed up, I'm messed up, I'm headed for hell, you're headed for hell, we are under the righteous judgment of God. That is the bad news and when I hear the bad news I can turn and find the good news who's Jesus Christ who can rescue me, he can forgive me, he can wash me, he can do what the law can't do, he can make me right with God.
And that's what Paul says the purpose of the law is. You know when you go to the dentist, they use, you ever seen these little mirrors they use? You know the dentist holding that little mirror, he puts that in your mouth and he used that to try to find cavities.
And he'll look in there and he can kind of tell you what's going on behind your teeth. That mirror is designed to show you where you got problems and where you got cavities. That is the good use of that mirror. Now if a dentist were to take that same mirror once he finds a cavity and start pounding your teeth with that mirror and try to fill your teeth with that, that doesn't work, that's not what it's designed to do.
It's designed to show you your problem but not fix your problem. And the law of God is designed to show us our problem but it can't fix our problem, only Jesus can fix the problem. And it's interesting what Paul does. In verses 9 through 11, you know Paul basically gives us an overview of the Ten Commandments.
You know that? The Ten Commandments are really two tablets. The first four commandments, that first tablet, the first four Ten Commandments deal with our relationship with God. The last six Ten Commandments deal with our relationship with each other.
And so in verse 9, Paul goes through that first tablet, the first four commandments that deal with our relationship with God. He says, verse 9, these people are ungodly, sinful. They consider nothing sacred. They defile what is holy.
That's our relationship with God. Verses 9 through 11, Paul goes to that second tablet, the second six commandments, and he goes right down the list. You know what the fifth commandment is? Fifth commandment is honor your father and mother.
Verse 9, Paul says these people kill their father and mother. Then he goes to the next commandment, sixth commandment. Anybody know what the sixth commandment is? You shall not murder. Verse 9, these people commit murders. Then he goes to the seventh commandment. You know that commandment is?
Moral purity. Paul says, verse 10, this law is for people who are sexually immoral, who practice homosexuality. The eighth commandment is you shall not steal. Verse 10, he says these people are slave traders.
What do you mean by that? The ultimate way people would steal in Paul's day in the first century would be to go to villages, go to the inner city, and they would steal children. They would steal people and bring them into slavery. That was the epitome of breaking that commandment against stealing. Today we would call it human trafficking. That's what he's doing there in verse 8, hitting that commandment, you shall not steal. These people are slave traders.
They're human traffickers. Ninth commandment, you shall not bear false witness. Verse 10, these people are liars. He hits that commandment. Then verse 11, this is beautiful. Then he goes right back into the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You see that? I want to be a church that is open to the Holy Spirit, open to prophetic utterances. I benefit from that, but we can't go crazy. You got to have some discernment in the body of Christ. Paul is saying stay away from weird teachings and then also stay away from legalism that says to be made right with God, you got to put people right back under the law. Are you with me on that?
It's very critical. Now, let me do something I don't want to do, I don't like to do, but I got to do. Let's go back to verse 10 and talk about homosexuality for just a second. Pastor, you talk about homosexuality a lot.
Do you have homosexual tendencies? Because you talk about this all the time. Now, here's the problem. Y'all are hearing one thing from the world six and a half days a week. Can I have 30 minutes on Sunday morning to give you the other perspective, the Bible perspective? That's all I'm trying to do because y'all are getting inundated with the other side throughout the week. Let me say this, I know good solid Christians who love Jesus who wrestle with same-sex attractions. You are not defined by what you wrestle with. I know of Christians who wrestle with heterosexual attraction. I know Christians who wrestle with homosexual attractions.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Christians who've just thrown this thing out and said I want to embrace this thing and I want to wear the feather boas and the sparkly makeup and wave that rainbow flag and that's who I have a problem with. To call yourself a Christian and to say I embrace this lifestyle, that's not biblical. If you're a pagan, go out there and have all the weird kinky sex you want to have.
I don't care. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, there's a biblical standard for sexuality and that's one man, one woman in the context of marriage for life. That's the biblical standard. And again, if you look at these verses, there's all these wicked sins on there.
Why are you picking out homosexuality? Listen, because we and the pagan world, we agree with everything else on that list is bad. The pagans agree it's bad to kill your mom. The pagans believe it's bad to be a human trafficker unless you're a high-class politician connected to Jeffrey Epstein. The rest of us think that human trafficking is bad. There's only one issue on this list that there's debate over and that's homosexuality.
And so verse 10, Paul says, the law is for people who are sexually immoral or who practice homosexuality. Now again, I don't care about what's going on out there. I really don't.
I guess maybe in some ways I'm a libertarian. I don't know. I'm concerned about what's going on in the body of Christ. I'm concerned about what's being taught our young people in churches in Raleigh and in Christian colleges and universities.
I better be real careful because I'm about to get myself into trouble. So I'm going to keep my mouth shut. I'm concerned about what's even being taught in our Christian colleges. And they will read passages like this where Paul prohibits homosexuality. And here's what they'll say, no, no, no. Paul's not talking about loving homosexual relationships.
No, no, no. Paul is talking about pagan hookups in pagan temples. That's what he's talking about. Where's that in the passage? So you can't just make up scenarios and then read them back in the scripture.
It doesn't work that way. Or no, the apostle Paul, his prohibition against homosexuality, it's just cultural. It was wrong in the first century, but we're enlightened today.
We know the biological roots of homosexuality. And so it was wrong in the first century, but that's just cultural. It's okay today.
Well, what else on that list is just cultural? Was it wrong to murder your parents in the first century? But it's okay to murder your parents today. Was it wrong to engage in human trafficking in the first century? But it's okay to engage in human trafficking today. Now who's being selective?
And so I'm going to just tell you, you take the whole word of God or you don't take any of the word of God. And so, honestly, somehow we've lost our next generation on this issue right here. Dawn and I were talking to a leader in the pro-life movement. She said something very interesting. She said, I have found in the pro-life movement, evangelical, Pentecostal, Catholic, charismatic kids are with us on the pro-life movement.
They can see the pictures. They know it's wrong to murder a full-term baby. They're with us on the pro-life movement.
Here's what she said. But we've lost those same kids on the human sexuality front. They are with us when it comes to pro-life.
They are not with us when it comes to a biblical view of sexuality. There's a song years ago that John Mayer sang. It's called Waiting on the World to Change.
You remember that? Have you heard of that song, Waiting on the World to Change? There's a line from that John Mayer song, Waiting on the World to Change. It freaked me out then.
It freaks me out even more now. I don't know if Mayer's a Pentecostal, but I think he spoke prophetically. In that song, he says, Waiting on the World to Change, he says this, one day our generation is going to rule the population so we keep on waiting for the world to change. Okay. One day our generation, it's not we're going to lead the population. It's not we're going to serve the population.
No, no, no. One day our generation is going to rule the population, and it's happening right now, beloved. That generation is starting to take power, and they're ruling the population. They're telling us who we can and can't vote for. They're even telling us who we can and cannot have on the ballot. The next generation is ruling this population, and they're telling us who we can and cannot vote for and who we can and cannot have on the ballot in the name of saving democracy. Isn't that ironic? Don't you think? So we're looking at a generation that is coming along and they're ruling the population.
You listen to me. The area where they are not going to put up with much longer as they rule the population is us teaching a biblical view of human sexuality that will not be tolerated in the next generation when they take power. Pastor Chad, you have the audacity to tell me that my generation, you actually think that we're going to outlaw biblical teaching on homosexuality?
You bet your soy latte I do. This next generation, as they come into power, are going to tell us some things are off limits, and this is one of them. Don't tell me I'm being a conspiracy theorist. We're already seeing this when things like conversion therapy is being outlawed. Right now, there's a debate going on in the Mexican legislature. We ship all of our craziness all around the world, and we have sent this over to Mexico.
Right now in Mexico, here's what they're debating. If you're a sinner and you read this passage that I've just read to you, and you go to a Christian counselor under conviction and say, I want to get saved, and that Christian counselor says, Jesus can save you, forgive you, and break that same-sex attraction, you are guilty of conversion therapy. And if this law passes, you can face two to six years in jail and be fined $11,500 because you led somebody to, quote, change their sexual orientation.
If it's a minor involved, this is like 16, 17-year-old, it's four to 12 years in prison and a $23,000 fine. As of 2021, it is a federal offense in Canada to try to, quote, change someone's sexual orientation through conversion. Do you understand what I'm reading right now? That if you're a Christian counselor and somebody comes to you under conviction and says, I'm a sinner just like everybody else, how do you know you're a sinner? I am engaging in sin that is outside of the law of God, the law of God has convicted me, I want to cry out to Jesus and have Jesus forgive me and cleanse me and change me, and you lead them into that, you have just committed a federal offense in Canada.
16 states in the United States have anti-conversion therapy law. You're telling me they're not going to rule the generation? They're about to rule.
That generation's about to rule. And I don't know why my wife does this. I probably wonder if she had like a secret desire for me to go and drop dead and get the insurance money because she will show me videos that she knows is going to raise my blood pressure. And she showed one last week of Whoopi Goldberg on The View talking about how conservatives are trying to stifle free speech. We're not the ones telling people you can or cannot convert somebody to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's not us. That's the other side doing that. And so I'm just telling you, in this environment, it's okay to say I stand on the Word of God. I believe right is right and wrong is wrong.
I believe what the Bible says about human sexuality and marriage and sanctity of marriage. It's okay to say that right here. You go out there, you're going to get attacked.
In fact, I love this. I don't want to tell people this because I'm going to let the little secret out. The more people bash us online, the more we grow.
Because, you know, during the whole COVID thing, when people found out that we didn't play the COVID game, people post all these negative reviews and people would read and I'm like, man, they're not playing the game. I want to go to that church. Isn't that crazy? And so, you know, Ron is just telling me the next one online that said, Chad Harvey is a, here's the title, he is a Trump sexual.
Now I will say this, I think Trump is a good looking guy for his age, but I don't think I'm a Trump sexual. But it's because I call out the left on this and the left is losing their mind. They are used to our society, our pastors, our youth pastors, Facebook, kissing their tail. We don't do that here. We say the word of God is our standard.
We don't lick our finger up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing here. I'm just telling you. You stand on the word of God. I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but the day is going to come where this kind of teaching is going to be shut down. Paul would have been put in prison today for what he's teaching right here. So Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, make sure the word of God is read, studied, memorized, meditated on. Your standard is the word of God, Timothy, not the whims of culture. So Timothy, stop paying attention to all this weird stuff going on.
Stop paying attention to all these people who want to make us Jews and bring us back under the law again. Timothy, you preach the pure undiluted word of God. And why would he say that? Why is Paul so adamant about that? Well, the answer is in verse five. He says, the purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith. Paul says when God's people are committed to the word of God, several things happen.
You are filled with love. Love for God and love for people. The most unloving thing in the world is for me as a preacher to condone practices that will send people to a devil's hell, to coddle people in their sin.
That is the most unloving thing you can do. The most loving thing you can do is be so filled with the word of God that your heart overflows for God and you say to people, there's a better way to live. There's a way of escape. His name is Jesus Christ.
He can come in and change your life. If you really love people, I'm going to tell you something, that's why we don't preach against sin anymore. We can say it's because we're scared.
That's part of it. The other part is we just don't love people. And when you're filled with the word of God, you love God and you love people. And Paul says as you are committed to the word of God, Timothy, you're going to be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience.
Listen to me. There is a clear cleansing power in the word of God. There is a sanctifying power in the word of God. It's all over the Bible. In John chapter 17 verse 17, Jesus is praying to the Father and he says, Father, sanctify them through the truth. You know what sanctify means? God set them apart, make them different, make them holy, make them clean, let them have different standards.
Here's what I think is funny about young people, not ours, I'm serious, we've got the best young people in the world. But generally in our culture, young people say I'm going to be different, I want to stand out and so I'm going to get tattoos like everybody else, listen to the same music as everybody else, have the same moral standard as everybody else. You want to stand out? Follow Jesus.
Then you're going to stand out. Sanctify them. Let them stand out through the truth. What is the truth? Father, your word is truth. There's a cleansing power in the word of God. Psalm 119 11, David says, God, I've hidden, I've hidden your word right here in my heart.
Why? Because I don't want to sin against you. Your word helps me to leave a pure holy life. Ephesians five, Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for the church to make her holy and clean. He washed the church by the cleansing of God's word. The old timers used to be when people give their maybe son or grandson a Bible when they graduated or they're going off to college, a lot of old timers used to write this in the front of the Bible. I love this old saying. They'd write, this book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book. Paul says, Timothy, get them deep into the word of God.
There's a cleansing power to that. I remember years ago I heard, I think his last name was Snipes. He was a PhD in psychology, helped start the department of psychology at Appalachian state university. This is a guy that's got one foot in the secular world, but he was also an ordained minister. He's talking to us pastors one time.
I'll never forget this. He said, man, I was at Appalachian years ago and his young administrator walked up to me. He said, one of the best looking guy I've ever met. His young guy said, can I get some advice from you? He said, you're the guy that started the the psychology department's like, yeah. He said, I am. I'm struggling with lust. He said, I'm not making this up.
By the time I get to the other side of the campus, I could have a hookup ready for me tonight. I'm wrestling with this. I'm struggling with this.
I need a psychologist to help me. And Dr. Snipes said, well, let me ask you this. He said, are you, are you a Christian? There's something about, about you. Are you a Christian?
The God was Christ. That's my problem. I gave my life to Jesus a couple of weeks ago, and I'm struggling with this more now than I did before I got saved. What do I do? Dr. Snipes said, how disciplined are you? He said, I'm pretty disciplined. He said, go home. And for the next two weeks, read the Bible for 30 minutes, come back and talk to me. He said, two weeks later, the young guy came back and he said, it's not getting better in some ways.
This is getting worse. I'm still wrestling with this. Dr. Snipes said, okay, it was a psychologist.
I'm not going to tell you, read the Bible one hour a day. He said, that's it? Not, you know, hypnotize me, talk about my daddy issues. He said, no, no, don't do that. He said, just go read the Bible for an hour. Guy came back a couple of weeks later. He said, the battle's getting a little easier, but I'm still struggling. Dr. Snipes said, I'm going to give you the ultimate prescription.
Read the Bible for an hour and 15 minutes every day and come back and talk to me. He said, two weeks later, that young man came back and said, I don't know what has happened, but whatever it was has been broken. I am walking in freedom. I'm walking in purity. And I'll never forget what that man said. Again, this is not somebody, you know, I'm a 1983 Bible graduate from Bob Jones University. This is a guy that is in the secular world and the Christian world. He says, you pastors, you think you have to have psychology degrees to help people overcome their sin issues. He said, the power is not in you. It's in the word of God.
There's power in scripture. Church, we, look, neurosurgeons talk about, have you heard of this term neuroplasticity? What they're finding out now is your brain is really malleable and your brain may have been corrupted through pornography. Your brain may have been corrupted through this gut rot music you're listening to all the time. Your brain may have been corrupted, but your brain is plastic.
Neuroplasticity means your brain may have been corrupted, but the word of God can come in and rewire all those synapses and break those addictions and totally change your brain, your spirit, your soul. The word has that kind of power. Rabbi Akiva, who is a Jewish rabbi and also a shepherd, many years ago was taking care of some sheep. Rabbi Akiva came to a small stream and this stream was just trickling. Drop, drop, drop, drop onto a rock. Rabbi Akiva noticed that as that water was drop, drop, drop over the ledge onto a boulder, that water had worn a huge hole in that rock. It had worn a huge hole it had worn a huge hole in that boulder. Rabbi Akiva realized that it was the years of the drip, drip, drip that had done that. If all of that water had flowed onto that rock all at once, it would have never changed that rock.
It was the constant dripping of the water through the years that had changed the rock. And it is not the one seminar, it's not the one prophet, it's not the one experience where you fall out the spirit that totally changes your life. All that stuff is beautiful, but what changes you is over time the constant drip of the word of God, taking it in, listening to it preached, memorizing, meditating on it.
It's the constant drip, drip, drip, drip of the word of God that will change your life. Church, you need to listen. I want you to stand with me right now. I want to say what I just said a second ago. Sounds really good for me to say let's stand on the word, let's believe the word, let's preach the word, let's not be ashamed of the word. It's real easy to say that right here.
It's going to get harder and harder to stand on that out there. I'm just telling you the day is going to come when this society is not going to tolerate people. Isn't that the word right now? Tolerance. I call it totalitarian tolerance.
Everybody's expected to tolerate the same thing right here. They're going to tolerate everything but a man or woman who stands on the word of God. And so I just believe in these last days. If you and I are going to follow the word of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, here's one trait we're going to need more than anything else.
You ready? We need this one trait that's boldness, that's confidence. It's confidence. In these final days, your friends, they're going to start bailing on you left and right. And as you start to see this going on in this world and you start to see this end times falling away in the church, it's going to make some of you nervous. Now you want a prophetic word? Let me give you a prophetic word right now. In the last days, there are going to be two kinds of people. There's going to be warriors and there's going to be warriors and there's going to be warriors. Which one are you?
Are you a warrior or are you a warrior? Because I want us to keep our eyes on Jesus. I want us to understand, hey, I used to say this, one day the Lord is going to win the victory.
That's wrong. Jesus is not going to one day win the victory. He's already won the victory 2,000 years ago at the cross. Every good war has a cleanup operation. Jesus won this war 2,000 years ago.
We are now in a 2,000 year cleanup operation. But the day is going to come when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. And he will reign forever and ever. Can the people of God raise your hands and let's praise Jesus right now. Lord, you are the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
You are the one who walked out of the tomb and you're the one who's going to step off that cloud one day and come back for your church. Lord, there's not a mess going on. Everything is going according to your plan. You're in charge. You're in control.
You're the victorious one. Lord Jesus, we put our eyes on you, not the chaos of this world. Our eyes are fixed upon you and Lord, you whisper to us those beautiful words. You say to us. You say to us.
Which means cross assembly. Be bold. Be strong. Y'all gonna be afraid and you don't be terrified of anything.
Why? Because the Lord's going to be with us everywhere we go in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit we pray. Amen and amen. Lift your voices and let's praise the Lord.
