Dealing With the Lordship of Christ — Al Whittinghill

Deception Within the Church

Well, I'm convinced of one thing for sure, and that's that the that the foes of the church are not as bad on the outside as they are on the inside today. The greatest enemies of the church throughout history, many times have come from right within the ranks of the church.

You know, we face perilous times, their guns and guillotines and all these things threatening us. But sometimes we need to realize that we live in a day of deception concerning the truth of God's word is a great deception going on.

And the Bible warned us that in the last days that there would be those who would have a form of godliness and deny the truth of that and not experience the power that be seducing spirits, doctrines of demons, rationally thought out, cleverly put together spiritual things that would lead many astray.

It said there'd be many who would corrupt the word of God, that evil people would wax worse and worse and that people would be hearers and not doers and people would have itching ears and there'd be plenty around to scratch them right where they itch.

But God's faithful. You see, he's shaking the world. And a lot of what we're feeling on every side is God shaking that which can be shaken so that what can't be shaken will be shown to be real and genuine.

That's what's happening in our lives is a lot of mixture and in people's lives. And God is showing us what's for real, what will last and what won't last. And so I want to look in God's word tonight for two reasons, because in a group like this, many of us may have a mixture of theology in our own mind that the Lord wants to address.

And by the Holy Spirit, have us look into the word and see if it's right. And secondly, because we need to be saying the proper things to our friends and loved ones as we share the gospel, because we are accountable for what we share.

We've got to soak ourselves in God's words. I'm going to give a lot of scripture tonight, and I want us to prove ourselves whether we really be in the faith or not. You know, we all come from a lot of different backgrounds.

Some here are Baptist or Methodist or Pentecostal or non-Pentecostal, whatever you are. You may feel a lot differently about certain things than somebody else here. But, you know, if you've never seen truly for yourself from the word of God, what God is really saying, you may have just had what someone else has told you over and over and over again.

You know, the human mind always supplies its own ideas about things or people that it's never seen or known. For example, perhaps you've heard a person's voice on the radio a lot of times and you've never seen their face.

And if you hear him over and over and over again, hello there. You know, this big voice, you know, very polished. And you and you think it's some, you know, big athletic guy, you know, with tan and, you know, just the envy of all the guys.

And you finally see the guy and he looks like a toad. You know, I mean, it's amazing. I mean, it's just amazing. But you see, without trying, here's what happens. We began to put on to something. We hear an image.

And we began to think that that's what it's like. And I remember going to conferences and having people come up to me and say, are you out? I said, yeah. He said, man, I don't think you look anything what I thought you'd look like.

I've heard your I've heard your tapes and I thought you'd be tall and handsome and look at you. You know. Brother, there's a hum in this thing, I can't it's going to drive me nuts if you don't get it out.

Sorry. But you see, many times when we see the real person that we've got an image in our mind and it's not what's really there, we'll see a real person and you know what will happen? We won't even believe the reality.

We'll sit there and we'll rebel against what we thought they were like. I mean, we'll have it pictured. I may write somebody a lot and I finally meet him and I say, I don't like the way you really look.

I don't like the way you really are. I want you to be like I believed you were. Well, you see, the contrast is so sharp, we can't give up the imagery in our mind. And you see, we do the same thing with God.

Knowing God Through Scripture

You hear a favorite preacher over and over and over again, and I'm not saying anything about your favorite preacher, but I'm saying to the degree that he agrees with the scriptures, the degree to which you should listen to him, to the degree that I say that or Bill tonight or anybody else's degree that you've got to listen to them.

And you see, what happens is that what we we believe about God from the perceptions, if we don't have a deep experience of him personally and intimately, then we get secondhand information like Job. The best man on Earth didn't know that deep experience with God intimately.

And he cried out at the end of his book. He said, God, I have heard of you by the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you and I repent, in other words, of all the wrong ideas and what can happen to you and me, brother.

We can have an idea of God that we like because it fits into what we are used to or what we've been told. And it's comfortable. And what happens is we don't want anybody to change it, but it's perilous to have that kind of thing.

Failure to know the Bible, God, as he is, leaves us man centered and we will be undisturbed. They will go on having a form of godliness that may work quite well until we speak, until we stand face to face with God.

And then it's a rude awakening. So the great work of the Holy Spirit tonight and every day is to show us God as he is through the scripture. And so tonight he wants to lift our perspective to his. And I trust if if God shows you something new about the Lord Jesus, our theme is knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.

I trust that you will be humble enough by the word to say, Lord, thank you and that you'll adjust. That's what I pray every day. Lord, take away my spiritual lollipops if I have them and change me to what you want.

Let me see what you see. Now, I want to begin in Romans chapter 14. If you'll turn to Romans chapter 14 and I want to read verse seven through nine and then I'm going to give you a lot of scripture tonight and probably you will not be able to keep up with me turning.

But you could write them down to read them later. Romans 14, verse seven, for none of us lives to himself and no man dies to himself. Whether we live, we live unto the Lord and whether we die, we die unto the Lord, whether we live, therefore, or we die, we are the Lord's for to this end, Christ both died and rose and revived that he might be Lord, both of the dead and the living that, according to what Paul would write about dead and living, means that Jesus is Lord, not only of the saved, he is Lord of those who aren't living in Christ.

He is Lord of the dead. He is Lord of the living and the dead. And this is the end that Christ died and rose and revived. The reason he sends his spirit, the reason he came incarnate was to this goal, that Jesus Christ Lordship might be established over all the earth.

And that includes saved people and lost people. You know, the scripture in Philippians two that shows that he is Lord, even of people that every knee will confess, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father.

The word confessed there means to say under constraint. It doesn't mean willingly like those who love him, those who don't even want to acknowledge him as Lord one day will. Now, let's just pray again.

Father, use these words to grip our hearts, to show us that Jesus Christ is Lord and he remains Lord this day. And we have the privilege of coming into that understanding and and letting you change us into that light now, make it true in our experience, as well as our theology in Jesus name.

Christ's Lordship Established by God

Amen. When Peter was preaching on the day of Pentecost, he stood up and he said this same Jesus, the one that you took with wicked hands and crucified, you need to know this for sure, that God has made this same Lord Jesus, the same Jesus Lord.

You see, in that one phrase, he established that Father God has made forever Jesus Lord. We hear people say, well, I've made Jesus Lord. Let me tell you, nobody makes Jesus Lord. Father, God made him Lord when he raised him from the dead.

And he is tonight Lord over all the heavens and all the earth. In Second Corinthians, chapter five, listen to what it talks about, about the Lord Jesus and why he died. Second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 15.

You probably won't get there before I'm gone. Just listen, write down the note. Second Corinthians five, 15. He died for all that they which live should not henceforth from now on live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again.

That's the reason that Jesus died so that I wouldn't live for myself anymore, but for him, the Lord Jesus, who died for me and rose again. Now, I want you to imagine for a moment the following incident, the Lord Jesus being Lord of all the earth, and he wants to establish his lordship.

This incident I'm going to describe is going to illustrate that. Let's suppose that we lived years ago and there was a certain very powerful king and this great king had the authority and power to do anything he wanted to do.

And in his great kingdom, there was a small little section that said, we don't want this king over us anymore. We're tired of him. And so they proclaimed a rebellion. We're not going to have this king to be boss over us anymore.

We're out of the kingdom. And at that point, the king could have easily sent his armies and destroyed this little fiefdom and blown it off the map. But in order to show how merciful he was and how good he was as king, that he had mercy as well, that he decided not to destroy this kingdom, but rather he sent messengers to this little town and said, I will not destroy you.

I will give you mercy, but you must change your mind. You must come back to the authority of my throne based upon the word of my proclamation of grace. I will give you grace, but you must come back to me.

But if you don't come back to me, I want to tell you that I'll come back here in a day very soon and I will destroy all of you who continue to despise the authority of the throne if you defy it by continued rebellion.

Now, one of the rebels heard these messengers saying mercy, mercy, and he replied, I'm in no danger. I'm trusting the decree of the king. I mean, after all, he said that he would never break his promise of mercy or withdraw his grace.

But, sir, says the messenger, you're in rebellion. You're continuing in the course of action that the king condemns. Mercy is for those who submit to him and trust his grace and mercy. And the rebel says these words to the messenger.

Well, that's true. But mercy must be free and grace must be without condition. And if you put conditions on grace, it'll be no more grace. What would you say if you were a messenger in that day to that rebel who continued like that?

What would you say to him? I mean, you would say, sir, you're crazy. I mean, you're absolutely crazy to that reasoning. Well, this is, in a bottom line effect, what many people in our day are saying, in effect, when they profess to trust Jesus Christ as their savior from the penalty of sin while never dealing with the reason for the fact they need a savior, the sin itself.

You see, that's what people are doing when they say Jesus Christ is savior while they consciously refuse him as Lord. Now, this is precisely the picture that the Lord Jesus uses in Luke 19. He describes I'm not going to go there.

I'm just going to describe it for you about a certain man who went away from his kingdom and he left his servants in charge in Luke 19. And he sent back messengers to find out how things were that were under his authority.

And they treated these messengers terribly and beat them up and kicked them out. And the king who had left said, well, I can't figure this out. Maybe if I send my son back, then they will recognize I'm serious about this.

And so he sent his son back to this little area and they took his son and treated him despitefully and slew him. Jesus then says, what do you think that king will do when he comes back to that town and deals with them?

He says, I will tell you what he will do. He will come and he will say, bring those rebels out before me that didn't want me to rule over them and slay them in my presence. That's the figure that Jesus uses.

Sin as Rebellion Against God's Throne

Well, I want you to go back in your mind for a moment again now to the Garden of Eden. And I want you to imagine there in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve there. And the Bible says in Romans five that by one man, Adam sin entered and death came in through that one door of Adam's sin and it passed upon all men, Romans 512 says.

And so with that happening, I want to ask you, what was Adam's sin? Did he rob a bank? Did he commit adultery? Was he a homosexual? Did he murder someone? What was his sin that he tell lies or something like that or embezzle a lot of money?

The things that we call sin in our life. Did Adam do any of those? Absolutely not. You know what Adam did? Adam said this, I'll do it my way. I'll do it my way. He believed the lie of the devil. You don't need God to be a man.

You make your own decisions. Prove yourselves. After all, I mean, God created you with the mind. Use your mind, use your thoughts and and do it. Exercise your own independence. And you see, independence entered in a departure from the throne of God.

And that is precisely what God calls sin. And because of a departure from the throne of God, every other evil gripped man's heart. And there began to be adultery and all those other things. You see, adultery doesn't mean you've departed from the throne.

It doesn't. When you commit adultery, you don't depart from the throne of God. You you have already departed from the throne of God before you commit adultery or you never would. And that's what Adam did.

He became a sinner. He became independent in his heart from the throne of God, just like Lucifer rebelled against God's authority and said, I'll be like God. I'll run my own show. So he serpent bit Adam and Adam was poisoned with selfishness.

And it began to reign in our hearts as men doing our own thing, running our own business, doing our own ideas. And it's a dominion outside of the throne of God. And so what happened? Mankind became a race of rebels, one tiny little dot in the universe of all the great kingdom under perfect astronomical order, one little dot.

And God could have just gone and spent that little dot into a little burning little bump in the nothingness. And nobody would have ever known on any other planet. I mean, absolutely not if there's such a thing on other planets.

But you see, the wrath of God, it says, abides upon sin and the sinner, not just the sin. If it didn't abide upon the sinner, too, then God would just send the sin to hell and take the sinner clean later.

Unless the sinner deals with what God hates, then it says that that God is angry with the wicked every day. Psalm seven, verse 11. He's angry. And so it's to this end, however, that God, to show forth his grace and his truth, sent his word, his proclamation of mercy.

And the word became flesh. And the Lord Jesus was God's word of mercy and truth to man because of him. Our rebellion has an answer. God didn't have to blow us off the map. He wanted to show he was a good God and that he loved us.

And you see, his blood is enough to cover the sins of those who trust him. Now, God can show mercy and be righteous while doing that to all who trust the word and who come under the authority of the throne.

By grace, you see, it's not just a legal authority, it's a moral authority. That's where some people miss it. They think it's just doing deeds and trying to act a certain way. We're talking about a moral authority.

We're talking about an inside job where God shall have his will in my life. It's that kind of moral accountability. You see, man has to return to the throne of God. And if he wants to be free from the judgment of his independence, he's got to respond to God's word to his independence.

He can't be free from judgment if he's never dealt with the problem by the grace of God. That's just as logical as the Bible is true. You see, we've got to come back to the kingdom of God and let the lordship and the love and the person of Christ become in me what self was.

God wants to put Jesus where self once reigned. How do you know if you're in the kingdom of God? Well, how do you know if you're in the city limits of Atlanta? If you live 10 feet outside the city limits of Atlanta, you don't pay taxes, you're not you're not subject to the courthouse's law 10 feet outside.

But if you're 10 feet inside, all the benefits and liabilities of being part of that system are yours. See, there's an imaginary line that is perhaps drawn for the kingdom of Atlanta. Same thing in the kingdom of God.

How do you know if you're in the kingdom of God? The Bible is going to make it clear tonight, those who are under the authority of the throne are in the kingdom of God and those who are not under the authority may take a while to to visibly show they are under that authority.

Salvation and the Lordship of Jesus Christ

But those who are not under that authority may be very close, but they're outside, as we'll see in a moment. So we live in a day when the acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus Christ is considered by many men and many movements a secondary experience of grace, something for the extra spiritual, maybe or the missionary kid to equip you to be a missionary.

And they would say, Jesus is my savior. I had one say it to me Tuesday night. Well, I know he's my savior, but I haven't dealt with his Lordship yet. And you know what? He's read some books to confirm him in his unbelief.

And, you know, his life contradicts everything that Jesus died to do in his life. And down deep, he's hiding sin and he knows it, but he's hardened in that we tell people, people in our day make a decision for Christ and accept Jesus as savior.

And I know that you can do that if your heart if God sees your heart and your heart is right. I'm not attacking words, OK? But I'm I am going after this thing that you can just come to someone and say, I want you to make a little decision to accept Christ as personal savior and have them mutter a little one minute apology to God and then kind of say they're sorry and then have a ten decker crown on the gold street forever and then go on dishonoring God saying it's by grace.

I'm telling you, nothing could be further from the truth of God's word. Nothing, nothing. Some of you aren't sure, but I'll tell you about the time with you tonight is going to be a line. It's going to be a line and you're going to have to come down on one side of it.

You really are. The New Testament never once says to us, make a decision to accept Christ as personal savior. It never says that. And I know you can do that and be saved if your heart says what God wants it to say.

I'm not saying that you are saved if you really have done this and your heart's with the Lord. But but I could tell you that that the Lordship of Jesus Christ, when it's not insisted upon, is going to have to be dealt with totally at some point in your life.

It's going to have to be. And you're going to find out if you never have that you never knew really what God was after in your whole experience. You're going to be a man without a country before you face it and really deal with it.

People are beginning to realize in the churches that they've been tricked and they are willing to. They're willing. Excuse me. They're beginning to realize that they've been slipped a bill of goods because their life doesn't add up and they see all this stuff going on around them.

And they say, what is wrong? Why am I doing this tonight? Why am I covering this ground? Because I think that God holds us accountable for what we tell our loved ones. My dad's not a Christian. And if if you if you won't be honest with your loved ones and tell them what the scriptures really say about knowing Jesus, then there's no hope for them.

We've not only got to be knowing we're right with the Lord and prove ourselves, whether we're in the faith, we've got to know that they are and you may be the last chance they have to hear. I could tell you about pastors in the churches who one day after 30 years of preaching, realized that they'd never dealt with the authority of the throne of God and got saved.

I can tell you about pastors, wives who heard solid husbands preaching for a long time, who never dealt with their moral accountability to the throne of God. And one day got saved. I could tell you of youth directors.

I could tell you of deacons and people in the churches who looked so good. I know a woman who was sharing the gospel from door to door for 40 years in a meeting, stood up with tears and said, you know, I just realized today I've led others to Christ, but I've never gone myself.

And you say, well, I don't know if I believe that. Will you have a hard time convincing her as to how her whole being changed after she met Jesus for real? It was an amazing thing. You see, there are sincere people all around us who are holding on to a savior and they are hoping and they're praying.

But they they have never seen because they've never looked at the scripture seriously, perhaps that the call of the New Testament is to return to the Lord, to come back to the throne of God and and to see.

And when people really begin to look in the New Testament, they're astonished, they're astonished that all their sincerity and all the other things were not what God was after. He was after truth. I believe tonight that biblically you cannot accept Jesus Christ as your savior while treating his lordship as optional.

You cannot do it and you at least you can't. You can be a church, but you can't be a Christian. You cannot postpone the question of lordship, receive Jesus Christ as personal savior. We hear it all the time, but, you know, it's not once like that in the New Testament.

In fact, it does say how to receive Christ. Colossians 2, 6, it says, as you have, therefore, Colossians 2, 6, as you have, therefore, received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him. I'm not just pulling this out.

I'm not just choosing sides. I want to just give you some biblical evidence here. The Bible says confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You'll be saved. Acts 16, 31 says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved and your house. The emphasis on the New Testament is that. Did you know the word savior in the New Testament is only used 24 times, eight times the word savior is used?

It actually is describing the term to father God being savior. Did you know that? And every single time the word savior is used, it's a descriptive term of the relationship of a group of people who already belong to the Lord.

And he is our savior is plural. It's in the poor, all except for one time. And it's when Mary is saying my spirit has rejoiced in God, my savior. It's singular. And I think the Holy Spirit did that to show that Mary had to be saved.

Just a singular out that she was a wonderful woman, but she was a forgiven sinner, just like the rest of us. She was in the upper room waiting for the promise of the spirit of God because she was like us.

She said, but she said, be it unto me, according to your word, that all this in the scripture happened to me. You see, 24 times the word savior is used in the New Testament. And it's always descriptive of people who already know him.

Five hundred and twenty two times the word Lord is used in the New Testament, and every time we're told to come to Christ, it is as Lord in the book of Acts, where the church models for us what we should be.

The word savior is used twice in the book of Acts. The word Lord is used one hundred and twelve times, and it's filling their message with the Lordship of Christ. It's the message of the early church.

It's the emphasis of the New Testament's preaching in second Corinthians, chapter five, when Paul, excuse me, chapter four, second Corinthians four, verse five. Paul says we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ, the Lord and ourselves, your servants for his sake.

So I'm not saying that you have to say the words with your mouth. I accept you as Lord. I am saying that your heart needs to understand what God is calling you to and that you are a rebel from God and you are a sinner.

And God, when you come to him, is going to change your life to his will. And if you don't have that, yes, to him, you can't be saved. You can't be saved. And God knows if you have that. Yes, because he knows your heart better than you do.

You can't say I'm going to say this prayer and go on with my evil deeds that God hates. You can't do that. You're going to have to deal with what God has shown you. You see, it's by virtue of the fact, get this, that we receive him as Lord, that he has the power in our life to save us.

We receive him as Lord, we give him control and then comes his power and he saves us. Salvation is not just from the penalty of sin. That's what makes our thinking wrong. Salvation is from the penalty of sin.

That's true. But it's from the pleasure of sin and it's from the power of sin. And you see, we make the mistake when we think that we can be saved from the penalty of sin while still enjoying sin and not trying to mess with its hold in our life.

Do you see that? We think that sin's pleasure forever. Let me tell you, when Jesus changes a man's heart at regeneration, he takes the pleasure out of sin. You may go back to the mud puddle, but you'll find out lambs don't fit well in mud.

Pigs do, and a pig can go back. You can put a tuxedo on a pig, turn your back on him and he'll go back to the hog trough, the prodigal pig. But let me tell you what, you can you can put a lamb in a mud puddle and he'll actually get tears in his eyes because they hate mud.

They hate mud. See, this is how he saves us. Practically, he becomes our savior. Praise God for the fact he's our savior. But it's when we say to him, exercise all that you are and who you are in my life, we choose to let him take over.

And of course, lordship develops. Of course, our obedience is not perfect. Of course, we're deceived if we say we have no sin. The first John says we're deceived if we say that. But lordship develops.

I'm going to tell you, God told me something yesterday that I saw for the first time about myself and I have to deal with it. And it grows his lordship. It's a growing lordship. It'll be a growing lordship for all eternity.

But you can't stop at the beginning and say, I don't want anything to do with that. You see, he's a love king. He's a love king. And there's an error today, preaching error that announces a savior from hell only and not a deliverer from sin.

You know, most of the preaching in the New Testament didn't say come to Jesus and don't go to hell. It said come to Jesus and be delivered from sin. In fact, his very name in Matthew, chapter one, verse twenty one, it says you shall call his name Jesus.

Jehovah is savior. It actually means because he will save his people. Ek is the Greek word out of their sin. The people that are his will be being saved out of their sin. And if you're not being saved out of your sin, out of the penalty, out of the pleasure, out of the power, it's because you're not his.

And we'll show that tonight before we're through. You may still be dealing with mud in your life, but I'll tell you what, your heart's been changed. There's no such thing as fire insurance. Jesus is spoken about as our heavenly chum and the man upstairs.

And it's OK for the nightclub singer to go into his bars. After all, Christians are just like everybody else. We just believe about Jesus and they go into their bars at their diamond studded cross and sing.

Lay your warm and tender body next to mine and it's OK. You know, as long as they at the end just throw in, I'd rather have Jesus. It's OK. Rude awakening is coming. You're going to find out that that is not at all the case, if that's your theology.

Perseverance, Obedience, and the Evidence of Salvation

The Bible says don't be deceived. I want to just read you three passages from the Amplified Bible about what it says. Don't be deceived. You got to write this one down. Just listen. Just write down the reference.

First Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine through 11. Listen, do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share at all in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the pure excuse me, neither the impure and the immoral or idolaters or adulterers are those who participate in homosexuality or cheats or swindlers or thieves or covetousness or drunkards or foul mouthed revilers and slanderers or extortioners and robbers will have any share or inherit the kingdom of God.

Do not be deceived. He says none of these people who practice that as a way of life are going to have any share in the kingdom of God. And then he says, and such were some of you at one time. I mean, thank God he said that I would not have any hope tonight.

I mean, he hit me with all those except for one. Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were washed clean, you were consecrated, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Holy Spirit of our God.

You see, such were some of you listen to this one over in Galatians. This is a killer. This is a real killer. And and, you know, I think it's time for us to take it quite seriously. Listen to Galatians chapter five, verse 19.

Now, the practices of the flesh are clear and obvious immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, division, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing.

I'm warning you beforehand, just as I did previously, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Does he stutter? Listen to what the Ephesians says in Ephesians chapter five. I mean, how can you be any more clear?

He's saying, don't be deceived. Listen for the word. Don't be deceived. Ephesians five, verse five. Be sure of this. No person practicing sexual vice or impurity in thought or in life or one whose covetous, that is, who has lustful desire for the property of others and is greedy for gain or an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Do not let one delude you or deceive you with empty excuses and groundless arguments for these sins. For through these things, God's wrath will come upon the sons of rebellion and disobedience. You can't get any more clear than that.

First, John, chapter three, verse six. No one who abides in him who lives and remains in communion with him and obedience to him habitually commit sin. No one who habitually sins has either seen him or come to know him or recognize him or understood him or had any experimental acquaintance with him.