06-14-2020

Park Meadows Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

All right. We're so glad to have our home folks here today, and let me see if this works if I turn this on.

00:07

Testing. Whoa, baby. Yeah, you can turn that down a little bit. So glad to be able to meet here in person, and we are leaked down a little more too.

00:18

We're legal. We're all spread out over the entire building, and only families are sitting close to each other, and so I think we're we're gonna be all right, although we hear that the virus is kicking up a little bit in this area, but it could just because they're testing for it now.

00:34

I don't know how you know the truth on that, but anyway, I think it was time for us to get together, and I'm glad we were able to do that today, and we still have our online friends on today, so glad to have all you guys with us, and we're hoping that the technology will work where you can actually see my, oh, you can already see my

00:55

PowerPoint up there, so we may pull this off. It's a little, quite a bit different doing it here than it was when we're all in our different homes, because those of us who make this happen can do that on three or four different laptops, and our bandwidth here at church is so bad that we have to not do that, so we're all having to operate through this.

01:16

Makes it a little bit difficult. Let me just see if this even works. It might if I push the right button here.

01:24

Let's see. Yeah, it's working. All right, okay. Bad thing is, though,

01:30

I'm just figuring this out. I can't see that. It's so little, so probably gonna have to get a bigger monitor next time.

01:38

Anyway, good to see all you guys. Glenda, good to be back in person and have you play before I preach, even though you've been able to do that from home.

01:46

It's not quite the same, and good to see all of you home folks, and that's the one thing that's missing on there is you just, you can see the chats, but you can't see your faces, and this won't work with Zoom, unfortunately, that way, but at least it was better than nothing, wasn't it?

02:05

It was pretty much a blessing to be able to do it, and to have all you guys with us is always a blessing, and so we should be able to keep that going from right here.

02:14

We're having to do a few little new things. It's more difficult, so we'll have a few glitches, especially today.

02:21

We have a new TV set here at church where everybody and home folks here can see the PowerPoint, just like you guys out there are seeing it, so that's a blessing, and Dave Huber's cousin,

02:32

David, put that up for us, and I want to thank him for that. Did such a great job. I may, let's see,

02:39

I can see if I can see how the glasses on. Nope, makes it worse. I can see this.

02:46

I'll probably just end up having to watch that one up there, guys, so that will be a -okay. All right, so let's see.

02:57

We're going, we're obviously verse by verse through the book of Romans, and we've been in this little amazing section here on prayer, and this particular, what

03:11

I wanted, let me see, I think I'm missing something. Let me go back just a hair here a little bit. All right, we'll review just a little bit.

03:22

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. That doesn't look right.

03:29

You know what? I'm gonna have to fix this, guys. Sorry, we've had a bunch of people operating my thing today, and it's not quite right, so give me a second.

03:39

I'm gonna get it, make sure we got it in the right place. Sorry about that. I knew we would have a few technical difficulties.

03:51

I was about to preach a sermon. It wasn't the right sermon, and I knew it. I'm sitting here going, that's, I'm in the twilight zone here.

03:58

All right, now we're in the right place. As soon as it pops back up.

04:07

Okay, this will make a whole lot more sense. You were about to hear, like, four weeks ago's sermon.

04:14

You did not want to do that. We will review just a little bit. Anyway, here are the ten little lessons on prayer that I've taught so many times, and like I've said before, this passage in Romans 8, 24 through 28, is the tenth one, and that's really what we're talking about, but it brought number three and number nine into play as well, and especially number nine, the prayers of David.

04:35

We were on that all last week, and we'll be on that a little bit today, too. So, all right, so we will review a little bit here.

04:43

Now, we went into this passage in 2 Samuel, and I'm not going to go through the scripture again, because this is just review, but if you look up to the left, this was

04:54

David's method for praying, and David was an amazing prayer warrior, so I think it is really great when you understand that the

05:02

Holy Spirit inspired everything we have in the Old Testament about King David, and all of it, all the

05:10

Old Testament is an object lesson for those of us who live in the end times, the Bible says, to learn things, spiritual truths from these object lessons.

05:18

So, here's what he did. First of all, David consults the Word of God. You see where he says, the word that thou has spoken?

05:27

The first thing he did was he consults the Word of God. There's a lot of false teaching on prayer out there in the world today, because they bring in a lot of the

05:33

Eastern religious things, and try to think that's okay in Christianity, and so forth, where you just sort of blank your mind out, and you just try to almost have an out -of -body experience, and I will promise you that is not what a

05:47

Christian should be doing. My mentor, Dr. Erwin Freeman, four earned doctorates, one in psychology, one in biblical counseling, and two in theology, and he had the largest family counseling practice in Fort Worth for over 25 years, and he said most of the demonized people that he helped, it's because they had opened their, tried to blank their mind out, and opened it up, and just leave it blank, and that's when

06:10

Satan can come in. You don't want to do that. You want to be in control of your mind all the time. Self -control is one of the fruits of the

06:16

Holy Spirit, right? You're supposed to be under control. So, this garbage that's taught in so many churches, where all they want is something new all the time, and they'll take it from apocryphal books, they'll take it from other books, and they'll put those up on the same level of authority as the

06:32

Bible, and that is an old, old error. That goes back to 270

06:38

AD, 300 AD, the Roman, the great beautiful church at Rome that Paul wrote to, that was such a powerful church, all of a sudden started receiving government money from the

06:47

Roman Empire, and it went downhill from there, and all of a sudden they started bringing in their tradition as higher, or at least as high as the authority of the

06:57

Bible. That never works and God removes the candlestick when a church does that. Jesus, that's

07:02

Jesus's presence. Now, what you have is an institution which may be just a bunch of buildings, a lot of money with people in it, buildings with people in it, and the candlestick is gone.

07:12

That's not what we want. So, we have to keep the Scripture elevated. Now, the

07:17

Scripture indicates clearly you don't want to blank your mind out to pray. That's not what prayer is about. Look what

07:22

David did. It doesn't say David hummed a mantra or spoke a mantra so that his mind would go blank.

07:28

What it says is he consulted God's Word, so he was in the Word. So, you cannot have, you cannot have informed prayer without being informed by the

07:39

Word of God. You had to be taught to speak by your parents when you were a little bitty, didn't you?

07:45

You don't remember how that worked. You don't, you were so little, you don't even remember how it worked, but it worked.

07:51

You had to be taught a vocabulary before you could love your parents properly. Now, you might have had natural love because you were hungry, but that's not quite the same as affection, and you had to start to learn words to even learn what the word love meant, and your parents taught you that.

08:11

That's just a tiny little silly example of the fact on the spiritual side

08:16

God had to teach us to speak before we could speak to him, and the Word of God is how he teaches us to speak, and this is what

08:27

David did. He consulted God's Word first. Now, he reminds God of what

08:33

God had promised him. Now, I will say this. There are some authors out there who take it so far.

08:40

It's so funny how we are as humans. Like, we want to have God in a box, and we, you know, so what we try to do is we'll swing from one end of a spectrum to the other, and we're very seldom in the middle, and a lot of times the truth is somewhere closer to the middle between what two different groups say is the truth, but there are people out there who write that the only way you can pray is to pray

09:01

Scripture. That's not true either. We do have the Holy Spirit, do we not? So we don't just have the

09:08

Word of God, and there's a big error on that side too, and that would tend to be the guys I would read. A lot of them say that, and I disagree with them when they say it because Jesus said this.

09:18

You've got to have two, there's really three things, but one of them is the blood, so let's assume we've got the blood has been given.

09:24

It's been applied to the mercy seat in heaven. This is so different preaching with people looking at me.

09:30

I haven't done this in a while. This is better, but it is different. I had to get used to preaching to a screen, and I did, and now

09:38

I have to reverse that. It's funny, but anyway, so totally forgot where I was.

09:44

I should have paid attention. Choir, tell me what I was talking about. Scripture, three things.

09:51

Thank you, sir. All right, so you got the blood applied. The Holy Spirit applies it to you individually when he calls you at the moment of your regeneration, right?

09:58

So let's say that's given, so you really have two things, and this is for salvation, but it's also for growth.

10:04

It's also for walking with God, and there's only two things, and it's called the water and the Spirit. Jesus talked about it, the water and the

10:11

Spirit. The water everywhere is the Word of God. The living water is the Word of God, so you have to have the

10:17

Word of God, and you have to have the Holy Spirit. That's true of your works. That's true of your Christian life. It's true first before that of your salvation.

10:24

You cannot be saved without the Holy Spirit calling you and without having heard the water, the

10:30

Word of God, the gospel. You have to have both, and that's God that brings it to you, though.

10:36

You don't save yourself. It's God that brings it to you, either through other people or through the Bible itself, and then the

10:41

Holy Spirit's work to call you and open your eyes and all that. All of that has to happen to be saved, but it also has to happen to do good works, to live our life, and here's the thing we miss.

10:51

It also has to be that way for prayer, and people don't talk about prayer this way, but they should because you have to have the water and the

10:58

Word. You've got to have, I'm sorry, the water and the Spirit. The water is the

11:03

Word of God, so you've got to have the Bible, God teaching us the vocabulary, His vocabulary, how to speak properly, and you have to have the

11:12

Holy Spirit also. If you leave either one of the two out, it's not working right, and the funny thing is people like to polarize on one of the two sides, like the charismatic movement.

11:23

They don't want Scripture. Many of them are teaching from these esoteric books that you just close your eyes and hum or chant a mantra, or it may not even be an

11:35

Eastern mantra. I've read, so I'm hoping the author was telling me the truth, but I've read an author who told me that what many do is they say something like,

11:44

Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming, or something that sounds scriptural, but you say it over and over and over, and it puts your mind in neutral so that you can feel

11:54

God. You see, that's totally on, you know,

11:59

I feel God when I pray, and you do too, and that's good, but if that's all you have, it's totally uninformed prayer because we're supposed to pray with words, and people that believe there's a prayer language, it's totally out of context.

12:12

It's not taught anywhere in the Bible. In fact, they get it from the passage we're studying in Romans 8 right now. We've already, go back and check the archives.

12:19

You'll see what those words mean. It has nothing to do with a prayer language. When the Holy Spirit groans with words that we cannot understand, the

12:29

Greek word means sigh, for one thing. It's not even a sound. It's a sigh, and what it is, it's

12:36

God the Father's infinite language that He translates our language into and takes it to Him.

12:42

It has nothing to do with us speaking in tongues. That's a whole different subject, and you know, you've heard me say that several times in this study, and maybe someday

12:51

I'll teach on it out here, but not right now. I'm not interested in that right now. I'm just saying that's not what this is talking about.

12:58

So they want that to be that, though, because they've been taught by their parents and their grandparents and their preacher that that is operative today, that tongues is operative like it always was, whereas Paul said it would cease, and Christostom, less than 300 years

13:12

AD, said it is no longer in the church. Church history records it was gone, but they still insist on having it, and that's sad because when you do that and you don't deal in truth, you lose a lot of power, and you're feigning the power, but that's not to say.

13:28

See, so what we do, those of us who know that we know that church history, we know what Scripture says, and we don't go for that, then we get so afraid of emotion and so afraid that someone's going to accuse us of being charismatic because we feel things that we lose that side of the spectrum, and that's tragic.

13:44

So we don't need to worry what people think. We just need to worry what God thinks and what Scripture says and understand the

13:51

Scripture says you got to have the water and the Spirit. It takes both. You must worship me in spirit and in what?

13:59

Truth. See, there's another verse that says a different way, but the truth is the Bible part, and the Spirit is the emotional

14:04

Spirit -to -Spirit connection to the Holy Spirit and to each other, and to the

14:10

Father by the Holy Spirit, and to Jesus by the Holy Spirit. That is huge. You got to have it all. Well, David has both here, and we'll get to it, but the first thing we see is he connects with the

14:18

Word of God first, and the second thing is he then reminds

14:23

God of what God had already promised him, which was God had promised him, I will put someone from your family on your throne forever, and he reminds him of that.

14:32

Now David prays according to God's Word because he's already consulted God's Word. You see that?

14:38

And that's down in verse 26, and then God reveals his secret will to David, and that's, see, when you're talking about God's Word, that's

14:45

God's revealed will. He consulted that before he started praying, and had been for years of his life, but now

14:52

God reveals his secret will to him, and he flat -tells him.

14:58

The Holy Spirit lets David know. Now in the before -Christ time, before Pentecost, Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 says that God dealt with us differently than he does now.

15:12

There's another reason I don't believe in the modern tongues movement, because Scripture says he doesn't deal with us like he did through prophets and visions and things like that, like he used to do aforetime, as the

15:22

Scripture says in the Old Testament. Now he deals, he speaks to us through his Son, and his

15:28

Son told us very clearly how he would send his Holy Spirit to give the apostles and those connected with them who became the penman for the

15:38

New Testament to give them everything, including what they had heard from Jesus on the earth, to give them even more than that, and that's what became the

15:45

New Testament. And it was totally canonized. I don't remember the exact date. I used to study it for two whole years, but it was a long time ago.

15:51

Let's just say 300 something, or 285 to 385, somewhere in there you would get it.

16:00

The entire Bible was canonized, and when you get past that point, you no longer needed someone to stand up and give a word of wisdom and things like those charismatic sign gifts that were given to authenticate the speakers, mainly the apostles.

16:15

You had no need for that, and they ceased and they passed away. And now we live in a time of faith.

16:23

But does that mean the Holy Spirit doesn't work in our lives and with us, and does that mean he doesn't heal us, and does that mean any of that?

16:29

No, it doesn't mean that. So what it does mean is that the tongues of the Bible is no longer operative.

16:37

They will be. Three and a half years into the tribulation period, they will begin again, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy again.

16:46

But don't you find it interesting that in the Greek it uses the word again. Don't you think the word again implies that it had to stop in order to start again?

16:54

Is that good logic or not? You see, if you're really honest and you don't mind throwing away what you've been taught if it's false, you don't mind just letting it go if it's false, and you study the

17:05

Scripture honestly, and you ask the Holy Spirit to be your teacher, you will see little details you missed because your preacher didn't want you to see it.

17:12

Now, I'm not talking bad about all preachers, because there are many wonderful preachers out there, but there's a lot of preachers in the end times,

17:18

Jesus said, who would be false prophets. Did he not say that? So just because a dude's got a tie on, stands up in front of you, and smiles at you, does not mean he's telling you the truth.

17:27

He can even bias your mind so much that when you see the truth, you don't even get it. Listen, I've shown out -and -out

17:33

Scripture to people at tradeway meetings all across the country. I don't agree with that. I said, well, read this right here.

17:39

I'll hold my Bible up, say, where is my Bible? I got here with it.

17:44

It's not up here somehow. I do like the rest of you. I got it on my phone here, but anyway,

17:49

I'll show them the Scripture. I'll say, read that, and they'll read it, and I'll say, I still don't believe it. You see, that's bias.

17:57

That is satanic. Don't be that way. All you need to care about is the truth.

18:02

Who cares about who wins the argument, right? When you grow up, you don't care as much. Seriously, when you grow up, you don't care as much about winning an argument.

18:10

You want to know the truth. Maybe it's because you're closer to finding the real truth when you die. I don't know what that is, but you get where you just care about the truth more.

18:18

So now, the Holy Spirit reveals to David right there the God of Israel has revealed to your servant, saying,

18:26

I will build a house to you. The Holy Spirit told him that with a voice. Now, I don't believe the

18:31

Holy Spirit speaks to us with a voice because of Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 through 3. Go check it out if you haven't read it in a while.

18:37

Read it carefully and prayerfully. Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what it means, but it says God doesn't speak to us like he did four times.

18:44

Now he speaks to us through his Son. It doesn't say through his Holy Spirit, but he does speak to us in a way by his

18:51

Spirit because he gives us impressions. He gives us peace. He takes peace away.

18:58

He will close a door right in front of us and open this one and give us the distinct feeling to move through this one or then close that one and open this one, and we have the distinct feeling to move through there, and the whole time we're praying,

19:11

Lord, give me a peace if it's your will. If it's not, take the peace away, and there are many ways God speaks to us, but not with a voice.

19:18

Not now. Three and a half years in the tribulation period, who knows, because it'll be very similar to the first advent.

19:26

All around when you have major changes in Bible times, Moses, the prophets, the law, law of Moses, or back before that Abraham, then

19:37

Moses, then the prophets, and then you come into Jesus, the first advent, where the apostles needed to be authenticated.

19:43

These are where you see these types of signs happening, and then they begin to slowly pass away, and that's what happened.

19:49

So we don't want to buy into a counterfeit, but I will tell you this. Everyone in this room knows the

19:55

Holy Spirit has ways he speaks to us, does he not? Very clearly. Not as clearly as the

20:01

Word of God, because that's objective. The Holy Spirit, we have to try the spirits, because all of us will admit that demons can mimic the

20:09

Holy Spirit, so Satan could be telling us to do something, right, and make you think it's the

20:16

Holy Spirit, and you make a bad decision. I know Dr. Freeman used to tell me, David, don't ever make a major decision when you're really, really down, because you'll quit, and then don't make one when you're really high, because then you'll tell everybody in the world you'll do this stuff for them, and then you don't have enough time to do it all, because you got all this energy, and then when you're normal, you can't do it.

20:36

He said, so just, you know, always wait on the Lord when you're making decisions, and he said this.

20:43

New Christians always have the pride to believe that they know it's God talking to them when they think they're hearing something.

20:50

He said, you can't know. If you could know, the Scripture would not say, try the spirits, but it does say that, so you can't know without working at it a little bit, so you have to have patience, and you have to pray and say, now,

21:03

Lord, I don't want to be deceived. I want you to bind and rebuke any demons or Satan who might be here.

21:11

Put a herd on them and move them away from my house, and my family, and my church, and my business partners. Move him away so that I can hear you speaking to me clearly, and you have to take precautions like that, but that's not to say the

21:23

Holy Spirit doesn't move us and speak to us in his own way. It's just a little different than how it was done in the

21:29

Old Testament or during the Apostolic Age, which is now over. We're in the

21:35

Church Age, and I'm not a hyper -dispensationalist either. I know all about that. I'm not that, but there are dispensations.

21:42

I'll give you two, Old Testament, New Testament, so I rest my case, but anyway. All right, so God revealed his secret will.

21:48

Now, remember, there's two kinds of wills of God. There's the reveal will, which is revealed in the Word of God, and there's his secret will, which he's going to do tomorrow.

21:56

He might do it two seconds from now, or a year from now, or five years from now. You can't see the future always, although we do know quite a bit about the future because of the

22:04

Scripture, but as far as I know, my friend Ben Russell, he was on a minute ago.

22:12

I don't know if he's still on. I can't tell, but if you are, hi, Ben. But he's moving to Texas. He has to pick the exact house

22:19

God wants him in, right? Is that going to be in the Scripture? Will it? No.

22:25

It's not in the Scripture exactly which house to move into, so who has to lead him and show him God's will?

22:31

The Holy Spirit, and that's going to be God's secret will, but as soon as the Holy Spirit reveals it, it won't be secret anymore, and that's how this works.

22:39

Now, look, here it is right here. God spoke to him. He revealed to his servant David, and he said, I will build you a house, right?

22:46

Now, look what, this is beautiful. So what did David pray then? Therefore, hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer to you.

22:56

David, listen, we get it so backwards. We think prayer starts on the earth with us and goes up to God.

23:02

It actually starts in God's mind. The Holy Spirit brings it, puts it in our mind, and we pray for it. Why? Because it's

23:07

God's business, not ours. It's God's business which house Ben Russell moves into, not Ben's.

23:13

Ben is a servant of God, and he knows that, but how come a few Christians even know that, let alone the world at large don't even believe it?

23:20

But Christians don't know these things as much as they did, say, 150 years ago, but it doesn't change the fact of it.

23:25

God hasn't changed how he operates, so you have to be walking with the

23:30

Lord to know those things. You can't, legalism won't work. You can have a set of rules that we look like really great

23:36

Christians here. That won't work when it comes to this. You have to have a relationship with Jesus, and you have to be walking with the

23:42

Spirit of God and praying without ceasing and having that kind of life where there's no secular and sacred.

23:48

It's all just one life with Christ, and you just don't do it if he doesn't want to do it with you. If it's a secular thing, you just don't do it if he doesn't want to do it.

23:54

If he does want to do it with you, then it's his thing, and he has you doing it because it's his business, and he wants you to work with him.

24:01

Being a businessman has helped me to understand that part of God's relationship with us. So God prayed according to God's secret will right there, and then we can tell from Luke 1 through 33 -34 that his prayer got answered, and also pops in there in Revelation 11 -15.

24:20

That's last time, so that's amazing stuff when you think about it. Now we went into the practical application of this.

24:26

Once David learned how to pray this way, look what happened. This is what we covered last time, so we're not going to do the scripture, but I will pop them in fast.

24:34

Look there. The thing that I think is cool about David is he always ran towards the enemy, and the enemy was just stunned.

24:43

Remember the giant? Do you think that giant had ever seen anyone run towards him? They all turned their back and run, and he just kills them easily.

24:51

David was running right at him, this young man, probably still not fully muscularly filled out yet, running straight towards him, and he's just staring at it, and David slung that stone and hit him right there, and boom, he was down before he could wake up.

25:05

He cut his head off. I love to picture David running toward the enemy, and that's what we should be doing.

25:13

We should not be cowering down, saying, oh man, the enemy's all over me lately. He's attacking everyone in my family.

25:19

He's attacking everybody in my businesses. He just slows everything down. He shuts it.

25:25

Now, you know, that's not the same as running towards him. That's like running away from him because you don't want to engage him in battle, you see.

25:32

But that's not what David did. Secondly, he recovered the borders that the enemy had taken away.

25:38

The enemy had come in and encroached and taken away the land that God promised David. So what did David do? He prayed first.

25:44

God said, I'm gonna give that to you, and he reconsulted God's Word, right? God had said, here's where the borders is, Euphrates River.

25:51

Did I get the river right? I don't remember the rivers for that, but Jordan, I know, is one of them, right?

25:57

But David knew where the borders were because God's Word told him where it was, and they had encroached it.

26:03

So he prayed, Lord, help me to take that back. He knew that was God's will. How?

26:09

Because the revealed Word said it. Now, when you find stuff in the revealed Word and you pray it, his flag gets answered.

26:16

I'll give you an example. Do you think the Scriptures indicate that as a born -again

26:22

Christian you should be free from demons? You shouldn't be indwelt by a demon. How many of you agree with me?

26:27

You should not be. Now, there's a false teaching out there that you can't be. That's not true. You can be, but you shouldn't be, and I'm not saying possessed.

26:36

He never owns you. The Lord owns you, but I'm talking about indwelt by a demon. But don't you agree the

26:42

Scripture would indicate you should not allow that to happen, and it is not God's will, revealed will, for that to happen?

26:50

So what do you think would happen if you wake up in the middle of night and you know one is after you, and you pray,

26:57

Lord, rebuke this demon, bind him in the name of... well, I'm praying to Jesus. I'm not telling him to leave.

27:04

I'm never gonna try that, but I will never try to leave here. I don't do that, but I'll say

27:09

Jesus, please rebuke him, bind him, send him away, and while you're doing it, hurt him.

27:14

Put a hurt on him so he just doesn't like coming around here as much and messing with my family, and I'll go right to sleep, sleep like a baby.

27:20

You know why? Because that prayer gets answered a hundred percent of the time. So when you pray in God's will, it gets answered yes.

27:29

Are you with me? So some prayers are easy. If you find Scripture, you can pray. It's easy, but on things that are not in Scripture, then you have to have the

27:37

Holy Spirit show you the secret will of God and pray with that, or it won't be answered yes,

27:42

I'll promise you. You say, well, why pray? Well, that'd be like saying, why do any good works?

27:48

It's the same thing. Why do any good works if God's in control? Well, let me tell you something. God is in control, so if that bothers you, you can stop right there, but if you'll agree with me that he is in control, then probably the answer is it's his business, and he wants us to work with him, and one of the ways he does that, he gets us praying for stuff he's about to do.

28:07

Tell me that's not cool. You're pretty prophetic when you do that, so not everything has ceased.

28:14

God's still working, it just doesn't do it the same method. There's a church age way that he does it, and it's going to be that way whether you pretend otherwise or not until the second three and a half years of the tribulation when those things, those sign gifts, will come back.

28:28

You guys have been wanting to have it so bad. I want to be able to heal people, so that's the one

28:33

I want, but I'll be in a cave hiding. There won't be many people healed but my own family, but I'll pray for the gift of healing.

28:39

I know Sharon will be dancing and speaking in tongues. Raymond will be chasing her, watching her, and laughing and clapping his hands.

28:45

That's exactly what's going to happen. We'll probably all be in the same cave, and that will be

28:51

God at that point, but now that's an imitation. It's a counterfeit if you see that now. I'm not talking about the clapping and the joy part.

28:58

We're supposed to have that, but the other stuff. You know what? You get it here. I got people out here that never heard me preach, so you'll get to know me.

29:06

I seldom say anything I haven't studied for, at this point, 40 years, so I don't try to pop stuff out there without having researched it in Scripture thoroughly, and if I do mess up,

29:17

I want you to tell me. I will fix it, apologize, and never teach it again if it's not scriptural.

29:23

I promise you that. Everybody in this church is that way. I hope you out there listening will get that way if you're not already that way.

29:29

That's where we need to be. All right, so he takes his borders back. That doesn't sound like he's running from the enemy in fear, and then he takes the power of the enemy and turns that into power for God's kingdom.

29:40

He took their chariots away, destroyed some of them, and killed some of the horses, but he kept some of the best ones and some of the best horses, put them in his army,

29:46

God's army. Wouldn't you think we might take back the colleges and universities on the East Coast that Satan took away from the preachers who started them?

29:54

You think we have a chance to do that? You're the educator. What do you think, Brother Paul? Can we take those back?

29:59

We don't think we can, but that says we can, if it's God's will, and that's probably why you're doubting it.

30:06

Me, too, because until the Holy Spirit reveals to us his secret will that he wants to take them back, then we think the

30:13

Bible is teaching that apostasy is coming, right? So, see, that's not just biblical apostasy.

30:20

That's secular, too. So, there's a great falling away from the truth in the church, but also in America and also around the world.

30:28

Just common -sense truth, things that were what they used to call the wisdom of the ages, people are turning that backwards now and no longer believing it.

30:36

Oh, you mean a man should be married to a woman? Oh, not now. See, that's a falling away from the truth.

30:45

The Bible said we would get there, but David still had the ability to take ground that Satan took away from him, to take it back, and while he's doing it, he even took more of what the enemy had and used it for God's service.

30:58

Money, gold, it's all in this story. We already looked at it. When the enemy brought reinforcements,

31:04

David killed them. That tells us there's going to be other ones.

31:09

If we win a battle, and we do, we'll win battles and we have peace, but there's going to be another one. This life is going to be filled of battles until we be with the

31:18

Lord, so don't ever get comfortable because that's a fact. As soon as you get a little peace, boom, he's gonna hit you with a shotgun, never a rifle.

31:26

He's gonna hit several people in your circle of life. He'll hit them all at once, and they'll be a little grumpy. They'll be a little off.

31:32

They might even turn against you, but what's the answer? To argue with them? No. Pray for them late at night.

31:40

Pray for them. That's what David did, and he turned it around, and then he was able to win the victories.

31:47

This is the preservation of the Lord. We have it also, so the enemy, you know, built strongholds.

31:53

David took it back and used that to help protect God's kingdom, and then that which the enemy has taken should be recaptured for the

32:00

Lord's kingdom to decorate God's house of prayer, so he takes all the gold from the enemy and puts it in the house of God.

32:07

Others who had been oppressed by the enemy joined with David and brought more glory, so there were some people out there watching all this that weren't doing anything.

32:16

They weren't really fighting the enemy. They weren't fighting David. They were just watching, and when David won these amazing victories because of his prayer life, those people came in and said, hey, we won't follow you.

32:26

Well, guess what? His army got bigger. We want to go with you, and it got stronger. That can happen today.

32:32

More and more of us who are like -minded on the authority of the Scripture, how

32:37

God works with us, can band together financially and with our prayers, and we can be more powerful.

32:44

God grants that just because God is sovereign does not mean we don't exercise our will. We have to make good decisions, and we have to do prayerful decisions, and then we have to act, and man, you know, let's hope

32:56

I get to some of this good stuff because it's about that part of it.

33:02

Now, it ended up here where he found in his heart to pray, and he prayed according to what

33:07

God had revealed to him, and then the prayer was answered. You know what that picture is? Right there.

33:13

That little boy running towards that giant really threw him off.

33:20

I had to look to find one with him running towards it because a lot of people don't understand that, and they drew it differently, but that's a good depiction.

33:28

All right. Now, what I want to challenge you with a little bit today,

33:35

I think what we've been talking about, yeah, I had to fix that a little bit. What we've been talking about, because I knew it was going to be on a giant screen, so we've been talking about some pretty deep things with regard to prayer,

33:49

I believe. Okay. Let's take it a little deeper. Let's talk about the ability to know the mind of God aspect of answered prayer.

34:00

In other words, the secret will of God, the ability to know stuff he hasn't even done yet, and to know it so much that you know your prayer is going to be answered.

34:08

How can you know that what God's going to do, and if you could and you prayed with it, would it be answered?

34:16

Yes, the answer is yes, it would. So, that's what this is about. So, we're going to look at some other places in the scripture.

34:24

Now, remember where we're studying in Romans 8, 26, it's right in that area. It talks about that the

34:30

Spirit has to help us pray because of our infirmities. We are so weak when it comes to praying and being able to magnify a prayer in a proper language to the

34:38

Father, infinite mind. We have a very limited vocabulary, so the Holy Spirit magnifies it and translates it to the

34:46

Father, and it's probably huge by the time it gets there, our prayers are. Our meager, difficult to get out, our prayers that we worked so hard over while we're being distracted in a thousand ways, the

34:56

Holy Spirit takes that. It's almost like cleaning an audio and get rid of the hiss and all that stuff some of you guys know how to do.

35:03

Send a nice, clean message to the Father. That's what this is talking about. We don't even know, secondly, we don't know what we ought to pray for as we ought.

35:13

I wish my pointer worked on the TV, but it doesn't. I gotta figure something out for that. All right, so the

35:19

Holy Spirit searches God's heart and our heart. Notice the word hearts is plural. That's God's heart, the

35:25

Father, and your heart, and he brings the secret will of God to our heart as we ask him to adjust our prayers to fit his will, and that's a great practical way to pray.

35:37

You first start praying and asking for what you want. I want my loved one not to die, right? That's normal.

35:43

We should keep praying that. I want him to be healed, but as the days go by, you should pray,

35:48

Lord, Holy Spirit, show me God's will. Inform my prayer life so I can adjust my prayers to be in line with your will.

35:56

I'm open to that, so please do that, and that is an amazing way to pray. And then in Psalm 40 and verse 5, it said the same thing.

36:06

Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and your thoughts are to usward.

36:14

See, we don't picture the Father like that. His heart and thoughts are on us all the time, even when we're going about doing carnal things, and we've separated from him.

36:24

We're not spirit -filled. We're just doing our thing. Even in that state, he is, his heart is watching us.

36:31

He has things for us. He has thoughts for us. His thoughts cannot even be reckoned in order. He can't count them all, can't be numbered.

36:39

And then in 2 Samuel 7 27, therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer.

36:46

The Holy Spirit then brings you God's will, and you begin to pray it, and then the prayer gets answered. All right, so we had our parallel passage here where it said the same thing, basically, if you remember that.

37:03

The beautiful thing is, how could you pray this way if you didn't know the secret will? And the wonderful thing is, the

37:10

Holy Spirit wants to bring that to you. As he sees your heart yearning for something and direction, he knows the

37:17

Lord's heart. He brings that to your heart and mind. All right, now let's look at this.

37:23

I want to take you a little bit deeper. Look at Romans chapter 11 verse 33. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.

37:39

Now think about that. If his ways are past finding out, how can we know his ways enough to pray?

37:49

Well, for one thing, this scripture is telling us that God's wisdom and knowledge is so deep that you can't ever go fully that deep.

38:00

We're finite. We just can't. It's unsearchable in the sense that it's so broad.

38:07

Does that make sense? It is so broad. So if the Holy Spirit were to try to bring the entire knowledge of God to you in a moment, it would blow your head off, right?

38:17

It would blow our heads off. So the Holy Spirit has to go to the Father and do some work and capture that part of his mind and heart and will that you need for where you are in your life on your timeline right now and bring it to you.

38:33

Who has known the mind of the Lord or who hath been his counselor? Now see, that's one modern church needs.

38:41

How many books have we got out there where it says, oh, if we speak something, God's obligated to do it. If we just speak it, he's got to answer that prayer.

38:48

You've heard that too, preachers say it. Charismatics believe it. It's in their books. It's a lie. It's a lie because no one has known the mind of the

38:57

Lord and no one is going to be his counselor. You're not going to tell

39:02

God what he needs to do tomorrow. We think we can do that. And then I have this other group of people come to me, well, if my prayer is meaningless, why should

39:09

I pray? Well, that's the same kind of person that would tell Paul, oh, well, if you're saved by grace, why don't

39:15

I just go sin more so that grace will abound? And Paul said, you're not even thinking like a

39:22

Christian when you ask that question. Because how can we who are dead to sin live any longer in it was his answer.

39:29

But the person who says, well, if my prayers don't get God, don't move God or change

39:34

God, why should I pray? Well, you know what? You're not sovereign. You should pray because he wants you to be with him and what he's doing and love him and work with him, not because you get to be

39:43

God. And that's what that teaching is all about. But people just hadn't figured that out because their grandmom taught it to them or their mother or their preacher that they love had this bad language because they heard another preacher say it where it's been a cool old preacher say it.

39:56

So they started saying it's not even true. I've been guilty of that. Heard a cool old preacher say it.

40:03

So I said it in the pulpit and it wasn't even true. It is not true in one sense that your prayer changes

40:12

God because God is immutable. Scripture teaches that everywhere. So if you just think that through, there's a logical impossibility.

40:20

But yet we've all been taught, well, pray and move God. That's just not exactly the right order.

40:27

What we do is we find where God is moving and we pray with him. We engage with him and hold his hand and pray and say, let's do this,

40:35

Lord. I want to see you do it. You want to use me? Here I am. Send me. But let's see you do this because he's informed you where he's going.

40:42

It's a beautiful thing if you can grab hold of it and practice it. Or who has first given to God and it shall be recompensed unto him.

40:53

That one can bother you. You think, well, I'll live a devotional life so I can please

41:01

God. That doesn't please God. That's what we're supposed to do. That's not like giving him a birthday gift.

41:07

That's like, that's our duty. What are you going to give to God to pay him back for what he's done for you?

41:16

Let me ask you this. Is God in your debt? Does God have to pay you back anything? Is he obligated to do anything for you or me other than love us?

41:26

I think his own nature obligates him to do that. But you know what I'm saying. Is he obligated to give me a new house or a new car or anything

41:32

I'm praying for? And on the other side of that, since he's already given me eternal life and his own son and everything that he has is mine, can

41:43

I pay him back? Or you could ask it this way. If it's a gift, by definition, do you pay someone back for a gift?

41:50

It stops being a gift. So some of these ideas we have are foolish. But we can't pay

41:57

God back by working a lot for him, doing a lot of good works does not pay him back. Praying a lot doesn't pay him back.

42:04

Confessing a lot doesn't pay him back. Going to church, doing a bunch of stuff doesn't pay him back. What does happen is when we do those things because we enjoy doing things with him, he loves it.

42:17

Like a grandchild sitting on a grandpa's knee or snuggled up next to one like back there.

42:25

That is what we love. It's not that they're gonna come mow my grass that makes me love them.

42:32

But if they like riding the lawnmower while sitting on my lap, I like that. There's so much we can learn about God through our own relationships with our families.

42:42

That's why we get to have families, I think. It's a learning experience. But answered prayer is not us moving,

42:48

God. It's us moving with God. Does that make sense? For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever.

42:59

Amen. Have you ever seen a stronger sovereignty of God verse than that one? You want to read it again? Of him nothing happens without him doing it.

43:10

Through him nothing happens without him being involved with it. And to him nothing happens except what he desires to happen.

43:20

That's his will. It won't happen if it's not his will. You say, well bad things happen. Is that God's will?

43:26

Listen, I can't teach you all that in five minutes or even an hour. You have to walk with me for two or three years. You'll see how that fits.

43:33

But yes, God is pleased with his whole plan because he's only got one plan. When you're perfect, you don't need five plans or a thousand or an infinite number and pick one of them.

43:41

You already have a plan. It's the best plan. It includes bad and good. And guess who asked for that, by the way?

43:48

If I recall, it was Eve. Or if you're a female, it was Adam.

43:54

Right? Satan came and said, God didn't say you'll die if you eat that fruit.

44:01

What he knows is you'll know good and evil, not just good. All they had was good, like a child. Children think the whole world's good.

44:07

Bless their hearts. That's how it should be for them. Right? But Adam and Eve were like that. And Satan said, well there's a lot more to know than that.

44:14

You need to know the bad part and have that too, like me and God do. And all the gods know that.

44:19

You need to have that. Now he's offering for her to be a god. Well, all humans like that.

44:26

That's humanism. So we ate the fruit. So now all the beautiful waterfalls, the oceans, the beauty of our grandchildren, our spouse, all the beautiful things we have, we get with it disease and death and war and rioting in the streets and people being unjustly killed.

44:46

We get all that too. It all comes together as a package. And listen, it wasn't God who asked for it.

44:52

It was Adam and Eve. But do you think it surprised God? Because Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world.

44:59

So it was God's plan. That tells you, yes, he's pleased with the good and the bad. It happens. But there's going to be a recompense for the bad.

45:07

There's going to be judgment on those who do evil. And it will be righteous, perfect judgment. And there will come a day when we don't have that and we don't have death.

45:15

But that's in God's plan. That's part of his plan too. He will end it righteously because Jesus died on the cross and came out of the grave.

45:23

That's what makes it possible to end it. And he's going to. And that's what John 3 .16 is all about. So look at this.

45:29

For of God and through God and to God are all things.

45:34

How much is all? Does that leave out our little humanistic part, the stuff that we do?

45:40

No, there's nothing that's not involved in this. All things are of him, through him, and to him, to whom be glory and power forever and ever.

45:49

Amen. Now look at this. Almost out of time. But by the way, if you're out there, you're fortunate you're at home because our air conditioner went out for our first day of church.

45:59

Wouldn't you know it? So that's why I don't have my jacket on. But it's, we're not, our attention span is not going to last as long as it has the last few

46:07

Sundays where we're at home and comfortable. So I can't go much longer, but look at this.

46:12

Look at this. I mean, this little passage right here, a couple of weeks of stuff in it, but I'm not going to take two weeks on it.

46:20

Let's just see if we can get some of it. Look at this. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

46:27

Unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. And yet we have to find out some of his ways if we're going to pray according to his will.

46:36

But this word depth, the depth of his riches is the Greek word bathos. It means profundity.

46:43

It means he is profound, unsearchable intellectually. God is, and that's what the word means.

46:53

If you take that and you look a little bit farther into a bigger Greek dictionary, it just means deep secrets.

47:00

And if you go into 1 Corinthians 2 .10, it's the same as right there. It talks about the deep things of God. That's what this word deep means.

47:06

It's like a profound depth of intellectual knowledge that God has that we can't, we can't fathom because of our finite brains, right?

47:14

We cannot fathom all of it. He doesn't have to bring us all of it.

47:21

Then it says that God's wisdom and knowledge and the depth of it is unsearchable.

47:30

You see that word about halfway down the second line there. Unsearchable means it can't be searched out.

47:38

It is inscrutable, which is interesting because if you keep going down the sentence there, it says past finding out is a different Greek word.

47:50

That one means untraceable. So now think about that. The natural man or woman, the natural human being, a humanist, an agnostic or an atheist, they don't know the

48:03

Lord. They don't walk with him. They have not been informed by scripture. They haven't let God speak to them because that's God's word speaking to us is what the scripture is.

48:10

They are not open. Their eyes aren't open yet. The Holy Spirit hasn't called them yet. They're walking dead men and women and to them, anything to do with the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God are both unsearchable and untraceable.

48:27

There's no trace of it to them. They don't even see God's here. It's really interesting if you look at the context of Romans 11 and you go up in the scripture, which is not what we're studying today, but if you did go up there, that's the part where Paul is talking about how

48:46

God blinded the Jews in part so that the Gentiles could be saved. Remember that part?

48:52

I'm going to tell you what, to a Jewish mind, that makes no human sense. Do you know why most

48:58

Christians have trouble with the sovereignty of God? You think this is bad, you should try Romans chapter 9, which we'll get to it eventually, maybe in this lifetime.

49:08

It's a joke about my preaching, of course. We like to read it slowly. But people hate this stuff.

49:17

You mean to tell me that you have an innocent man, woman, boy, and girl in a

49:22

Jewish family that God himself blinded their eyes so that your Gentile children and wife could be saved.

49:32

Does that seem fair? Go like this. That does not seem fair, does it?

49:38

I'll tell you what it is. It's unsearchable, and it's inscrutable. It's beyond your ability to understand it very well at first without reading a whole lot of scripture and praying a lot and having the

49:49

Holy Spirit help you see it. I admit it does not sound like what we've been taught by the world that God should look like,

49:56

Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or someone who loves everybody and just lets everything slide and he's going to save everybody.

50:04

It doesn't look like that, God, does it? This God is inscrutable. This God is unsearchable.

50:09

His ways are beyond finding out unless the Holy Spirit brings part of it to your mind, just the part that you need to get your prayers answered, to get you in line with God's program and what he's going to be doing so you can do it with him.

50:24

But this is the setup for this. I want you to know this is hard for the natural man cannot possibly do it.

50:31

This is beyond the scope of most born -again people. Most born -again people won't take the effort to make this happen ever, and then they complain because their prayers aren't answered.

50:40

It's like God's not hearing me. There are times when we feel that way, but when you understand this, it takes you to another level in your walk with the

50:50

Lord. Then he goes on and says, for who hath known the mind of the Lord?

50:57

The mind, the word nous in Greek means the intellect, the intellectual part of God.

51:03

We're creating his image, right? So we have emotions and we have mind and we have will, right? He's got all three of those things.

51:10

This is the intellect part. Who has known the mind, the intellectual part of God? Who can even deal with the magnitude of facts and knowledge that God has and understanding and wisdom that God has?

51:23

Who can deal with that? Who's known it? Our who has been his counselor, right? Who's sovereign is what that's saying.

51:30

Who is sovereign other than God? Well, the church needs to hear that message because we think we are, and we're not.

51:37

Perhaps the greatest question of the modern church is to ask this, who is sovereign? Our who has first given to him and it shall be recompensed.

51:47

Who can give anything to God, add anything to God, cause God to owe us anything? You just can't do it.

51:55

There's no clearer statement of the fact of the sovereignty of God anywhere in the Bible than verse 36.

52:02

This places our prayer life squarely underneath the sovereign will of God.

52:09

But it begs the question, who has known the mind of God? How can we know his secret will and pray in it?

52:17

Well, only by the Holy Spirit's work, not by the natural man. There's no amount of preparation we can do at seminary or even in Christian school to teach us to do this.

52:30

I find it interesting that charismatics have schools to teach people how to be a prophet or how to speak in tongues, classes for that.

52:36

You can't teach spiritual gifts. So that's counterfeit when it's done that way.

52:44

It's not. You cannot devise a method for getting your prayers answered.

52:51

You're going to write a thousand books about it. The way you get them answered is for the Holy Spirit to bring the mind of God that you need that part for where you are to you and make you secure in it and have peace with it and give you faith.

53:05

And when you have faith, you can move this mountain into that ocean. But until the Holy Spirit gives you the faith, you're faking if you try to move that mountain and it ain't going to move.

53:14

So it has to be God given, but God does do it. It's all about knowing

53:20

God's mind and his will and doing it and praying for it. John 10, 22 says, and it was

53:26

Jerusalem at the time of the Feast of the Dedication, it was wintertime, and Jesus walked in the temple of Solomon's porch.

53:33

And then came the Jews round about him and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt that you're the

53:39

Messiah? Why don't you tell us plainly, or even better than that, do a miracle for us? Then we'll believe in you.

53:47

O ye of little faith, you adulterous and evil generation.

53:53

He would tell them in other places, but it goes on and Jesus answered them here and he said, I told you who

53:59

I am already, but you didn't believe me. The works that I do in my

54:06

Father's name, they bear witness of me. Now, what I want you to do from this point as we move through this to try to make it fit with our topic is

54:15

I want you to understand that prayer is a work. It's part of our good works system. It is part of what

54:22

God ordained that we would walk in them. Prayer is a big part, maybe the biggest part of it.

54:28

So there are many things we can learn about works in general and how that works that help us know how prayer works.

54:34

Is that too many uses of the word works? But you see my point? And we're going to see that here, but you're also going to see this relates directly to prayer, but it starts out talking about works, which is works in general.

54:46

But if we understand that prayer is the biggest, most important work we can do, you see, it's talking about prayer the whole time, at least partially.

54:52

Are you with me? Okay, this is hot and we're tired, but I'm going to go just a little longer for the sake of our friends out there who took their time to sit comfortably in their home.

55:02

No, I'm kidding. I'm glad you are. I was tempted myself. I called everyone in the world and said, is the virus going up in Corsicana?

55:13

I'm kidding. Well, I kind of did because I wanted to know. And then Katie says, yeah, dad, but it's because they just started testing.

55:19

All right. So anyway, all right. Think about this minute. The works that I do in my father's name, they bear witness to me.

55:26

Now, do you remember in our study of prayer, how we started out, one of the very first verses we looked at was, if you pray in my name, it shall be done unto you.

55:36

Remember that? So this is doing, Jesus is showing you how he operates. He is our model, is at least one of the things he is.

55:44

He's our model. He says, look, I don't do any works. There's no healing that I do.

55:51

There is no prayer that I pray. There's no good thing that I do or nothing that I teach that is not done in the father's name.

56:00

Now it's going to take it farther than that for our understanding, because it doesn't just mean in father's name, amen. It's not like Jesus name, amen.

56:06

That's not what it means. It means I only do things that I know God is doing right now.

56:12

And he's doing it with me and through me, but he's doing it. And if he's not doing it, I am not going to do it. Do you get that?

56:19

Well, what if you just translate that to your prayer life? I only want to ask for things that God is doing.

56:26

And if he's not doing it, I don't want to ask for it very long. I will at first, because it's the desire of my heart.

56:31

He wants to hear the desires of our heart. He just can't always answer. He's not always best for us. So he will direct us in a different direction when he needs to.

56:39

Sometimes he'll leave you right there and you know, he's going to answer it, won't he? We've had that happen many times among us in this church.

56:46

So he says, I only do stuff in the father's name and my works bear witness of who

56:52

I am. And you're questioning who I am and you want to know who I am. I've already told you who I am. But if you don't believe that, believe the works because God did them because I don't do anything he didn't do.

57:03

Do you get it? This is going to help us with our prayer lives in a minute. But ye believe not because you are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.

57:11

Now that'll help us with our knowledge and understanding of the way things are. Not everybody's going to be saved.

57:18

And not everybody who claims to be a sheep is a sheep because there are tares, wheat and tares. We've got two different allegories.

57:24

I've kind of split them up there, but are mixed, a mixed metaphor there. But when he speaks of sheep, he also speaks of goats and goats don't go to heaven.

57:32

Goats don't ever receive Christ. Goats never want to receive Christ. In fact, lost sheep don't want to receive

57:38

Christ to the very moment the Holy Spirit calls them because they walk just like a goat.

57:45

That's why it's hard for us to tell the difference between a goat and a lost sheep. So we give the gospel out. People say, well,

57:50

Calvinists don't give the gospel. Number one, I'm not a Calvinist. I'm an Augustinian. Not really.

57:56

I'm a Pauline. I'm a Christian. That's what I am. Number two, we witness because God told us to.

58:02

Same reason we pray. We obey our Lord. We witness and we pray. Listen, no one's going to get saved without hearing the gospel.

58:08

You're going to have what? The water? What is that? That's the gospel and the spirit. We're the ones that get to give the water out.

58:18

It's a beautiful thing we get to do. But the crowd he was looking at,

58:25

Pharisees that were questioning who he was, he says, you know what? I've already told you who

58:31

I am, and it's not because I haven't done a sign that you won't believe. You won't believe because you are not a sheep.

58:38

You're a goat and you're going to hell. He didn't say that part, but I know from other scripture, that's what he meant.

58:45

You believe not because you're not of my sheep. All of my sheep believe eventually. Before they die, they believe all a hundred percent because he said,

58:53

I will lose nothing. Right? So these are not sheep. These are religious people where the candlestick has been removed.

59:02

Jesus is not even with them and their doctrine is false and it's works oriented and it's humanistic oriented and it's false doctrine.

59:13

My sheep actually hear my voice, but you see, you didn't hear it because I've already told you who I was and you didn't hear me.

59:19

You know why? My sheep hear my voice. You didn't hear it. What does that tell you? You're not of my sheep, but my sheep hear it and I know who they are and they follow me.

59:30

He doesn't say they might follow me. He says, they do follow me eventually. At some point in their life, they're going to follow him.

59:35

And from that point, they'll follow him the rest of their life. And I give unto them, who?

59:42

My sheep who hear my voice. That's the calling by the way. You hear it when the Holy Spirit opens your ears.

59:49

And at that moment you hear it and it becomes, Jesus becomes irresistible for the first time in your life.

59:54

You resisted him really well the day before, but your eyes are open, your ears are open.

59:59

And at that moment you receive a gift, about 33 different gifts that I've counted. And one of the greatest ones is eternal life.

01:00:06

Another of the greatest one is you get Jesus' faith. That can walk on water when it needs to.

01:00:14

And I gave unto them eternal life and they shall never perish. There's eternal security if you've ever seen it anywhere in the

01:00:20

Bible. God's word can't be broken. He said, they'll never, doesn't say they might. He said, they won't. They won't perish.

01:00:26

In fact, if one single sheep went to hell, Jesus is the one responsible for it and would have to answer for it because he's the shepherd.

01:00:33

And I've been one before and those cows get out, it's not their fault. My grandfather told me it was my fault because I was the shepherd.

01:00:40

I don't know what you call a cow shepherd, but that's what I was. It's my responsibility to get them back in.

01:00:45

It's Jesus' responsibility to keep you in. And he will, and he will lose nothing, he said, and they will never perish.

01:00:52

Neither shall any, in the Greek it doesn't say man, that's why it's italicized, it says thing. Neither shall anything pluck them out of my hand.

01:01:00

You have this group that say, oh, well, you can pluck yourself out. No, because you're a thing. You're included in all things, right?

01:01:06

And nothing can pluck you out of my hand. My father, which gave them to me, that's election, that's predestination, that's foreknowledge, that's before the foundation of the world, he knew you and loved you.

01:01:18

That's what that is. For my father, which gave them me is greater than all. And no man, it doesn't say man, it says thing.

01:01:26

Nothing is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. I and my father are one.

01:01:31

There's the deity of Christ. Tell me that wouldn't be a good scrap to have if you're on a desert island and didn't have the Bible. That'd be a good one.

01:01:37

If all you had was have that one, that'd be a good one. A whole lot of the gospel is in those few verses.

01:01:43

But as you keep reading, a whole lot is informing our prayer life. So then the

01:01:50

Jews took up stones to kill him. Why do you think? Same reason they'll verbally kill you when you start talking about predestination, election, and God's in control.

01:01:57

God is sovereign. God knows who his kids are. And Jesus said,

01:02:03

I didn't plant the tares. The enemy, Lucifer, put them here. They're not mine. You start preaching that stuff, they'll pick up stone to kill you if they could.

01:02:11

They will. The world hadn't changed. Human nature hadn't changed. The truth affects people in one of two ways.

01:02:17

Either the Holy Spirit works in their life and they're open up to it, and they warm up to it, or they get worse of an enemy when they hear it.

01:02:23

Even if they're church members. Not so much in this little bitty church, but you get in the bigger churches, you'll find some enemies that won't like the truth like that.

01:02:33

And Jesus answered them, many good works have I showed you from where?

01:02:40

So did Jesus ever do a good work in and of himself? Never. Never.

01:02:47

Can we? Never. It's wood, hay, and stubble, by the way, if we do it that way.

01:02:53

And it burns off on the way up and never makes it to heaven. Many good works have I showed you from my Father. For which of those works are you trying to stone me?

01:03:01

He was pretty good at arguing, wasn't he? But they were pretty good too.

01:03:08

Look what they said. I mean, they studied religion their whole life. Well, I'll get there in a minute maybe. The point taken from this amazing passage today is that Jesus did only the works of the

01:03:16

Father. Only the things that the Father showed him to do. That's God the Father giving him his secret will out into the future a little bit, and then

01:03:24

Jesus would do it. It's the same mechanism that we have in answered prayer today.

01:03:30

To Jesus, it was not about Jesus, but about the Father's will. Say you of him whom the

01:03:44

Father has sanctified and sent into the world that thou blasphemous. They called him a devil. They said, you have a devil.

01:03:50

Right when he was teaching this stuff, they picked up stones to kill him. They said, you've got a devil. You've got demons speaking through you.

01:03:58

And he said, so here I am, the one that God the Father set aside, your Messiah. He sent me aside as your

01:04:04

Messiah, and he sent me into the world. And you're saying that I'm a blasphemer because I said that I am the

01:04:12

Son of God. If I do not the works of my Father, then don't believe me. Wow.

01:04:21

Wouldn't you like to be able to say that someday when you were about to be persecuted, even unto death? Like if I'm not doing good things on this earth because the

01:04:29

Lord led me, then kill me. Can you show any bad thing? Of course, we'd have problems saying that because they might find one with us, right?

01:04:40

But if I do do the works of God, though you believe not me, believe the works that you may know and believe that the

01:04:47

Father is in me and I'm in him. You see, it's not about us being elevated. It's not about us even getting our prayers answered.

01:04:54

It's not about our loved ones being healed. It's not about us. It's about God getting glory from whatever happens.

01:05:01

That is a hard, hard lesson for Christians, especially modern Christians today, where everything's comfortable, except when the air conditioner doesn't work.

01:05:08

It's a very, very hard lesson. Therefore, they sought again to take him, but he escaped out of their hand.

01:05:18

I love that old Renaissance painting where they're trying to throw him over and some angels are holding him up.

01:05:27

He escaped somehow. It's not how it happened, but it's kind of neat. They tried to depict it.

01:05:33

Over here, we see Jesus at the transfiguration, but there were many times Jesus had to receive from the

01:05:40

Holy Spirit God's secret will in order to pray so that his prayers would be answered and his prayers were always answered because he always had the

01:05:49

Holy Spirit without measure. John 9, 1 says, And Jesus passed by and he saw a man which was blind from birth.

01:05:56

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that was born blind?

01:06:03

Now, this is again the sovereignty of God and people hate this topic because man wants to say it's somebody's fault and figure it all out.

01:06:12

Was he blind because he was a sinner or because his parents sinned and God punished him? And Jesus said,

01:06:18

Neither of that's true. It's not A or B. There are other choices and you got it wrong. Neither is true.

01:06:25

Neither has he sinned or his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

01:06:31

So he was born blind so that God would be glorified was his answer.

01:06:36

You think they might have picked up stones with that answer? That doesn't seem fair any more than I'll blind the

01:06:44

Jews so the Gentiles can be saved. That doesn't seem fair. Listen, God's ways are inscrutable to us. They are beyond finding out.

01:06:52

They're unsearchable and untraceable to lost people. Totally can't figure that out.

01:06:58

It will never seem fair to them what God does because they invent their own God. They don't like God how he really is.

01:07:04

Listen, I meet Christians that don't like him. I confront them about it out there in the world when

01:07:09

I get to go out to trade way meetings. I'll show them and say, I don't believe it that way. And I'll say, well, let me ask you this.

01:07:15

You don't believe it that way because your preacher doesn't believe it that way. And I'll look them right now and say, well, let's just say for a minute, for sake of argument, what if it is that way?

01:07:24

And that is God is actually how he says he is here. Would you still love him? And then

01:07:29

I just get real quiet, stare him in the eyes. And I have had people turn on that question.

01:07:35

Well, I see your point. I'm going to go study. Isn't that something? Think about that. Like if he is this way and you don't think he's this way, but he says he is.

01:07:44

And if he is, do you still love him or do you like your own God you invented? That's what you're saying because that's what people are doing.

01:07:54

So he said the works of God are going to be manifested in him. And I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.

01:08:00

The night cometh when no man can work. As long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had spoken to us, he spat on the ground and made a clay of spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.

01:08:12

And he said to him, go and wash in the pool. And he went away and he washed and he came back with vision.

01:08:21

He could see for the first time since he was born. That changed the world. John 9 39,

01:08:27

Jesus said for judgment, I came not into this world that they would see not may see, and they would see might be made blind.

01:08:36

The Jews thought they could see, but they were made blind. And the Gentiles, the Jews thought were totally blind and he made us to see.

01:08:43

That's what that's talking about. Sovereign acts of God. So much here would help us.

01:08:49

We are not here for us. We are here for him. It is not about our work.

01:08:56

It is about doing his work with him. And all of this is true of our good works, but it's also true of our prayer lives.

01:09:04

Now we're out of time, especially in this hot room. So we'll have to pick it up here where we left off. But what you're going to see is these passages actually culminate in talking about prayers being answered, believe it or not.

01:09:16

So it's not just abstractly about prayer because it's a work. It is that, but it's also specifically about how to get our prayers answered.

01:09:24

And the key that we're looking at here is for the Holy spirit to bring us the part of the mind of God that we need for where we are in space and time with our duty that we're about to be involved with to bring us that knowledge so that we can pray together with God's will and get in line with what

01:09:40

God is doing and do it together with him. And that is what really massively enhances our prayer life when we understand that.