Having A False Peace — Randy Krahn

Good morning. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I just pray you'd open our understanding to understand what you want to speak to us this morning. I pray that it wouldn't be my words, but yours. Have your own way in our life and mold us and shape us after your will.

In the midst of the waves, as our brother shared, that you would be the calm in the midst of the storm, that we would get our eyes on you. In Jesus' name, Amen. Brother Aline shared about the waves and then being in the valley.

We used to have a boat and we would get away from shore because that's where it was told that the coho were running. The further you get out offshore, then the rollers are there. Then you can get the white caps on top of the rollers.

All of a sudden, when you're in that valley, you lose sight of land and you lose sight of your security. If you get a few miles offshore, it becomes difficult to see. You have to trust in your instruments.

Then you realize the fish are not so important. You start realizing maybe your life is more important and you start praying. I think of a passage that says that the sailors, they're a tough breed, but when the waves got tumultuous that they, even in the days of Jonah, they cried out to their God, everyone to their own God, save us.

All of a sudden, they believed in something. A lot of people don't believe in much until their life is in danger. Then all of a sudden, they believe in something. They cried out to their own gods. The only guy that wasn't crying out to his God was Jonah, who was asleep in the boat.

False Peace in Disobedience

Jonah was running from the call of God in his life. He was going the opposite direction. Somehow, he had peace. It says in Deuteronomy 29, there's a man who says, I shall have peace even though I walk in the dictates of my own heart.

You can have peace, but it can be a false peace. You can say, I'm not doing what God wants me to do. I'm going to go another direction. You can be a believer, you can have a call of God on your life, and you can have a false peace.

It says also in Ezekiel, it says, they say, peace, peace, when there is no peace. That's what the ministers say. People don't have peace in their life. I remember a time in my life, I would go and see the pastor before I was born again.

I was living in sin and I had the torment on me, but I prayed a prayer when I was 12 years old and I had the work in my life in those years. And then in my 20s, I fell away from Christ. I walked according to the sinful passions.

And in Galatians 5, all those works of the flesh were evident, which is not fitting for a believer. And it says, those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. It says, such were some of you.

And that's the way I was. But then I'd go to church and then I would go meet with the pastor and say, you know, I have this, I don't have peace in my life. I have torment. I even went to the doctor, asked him for depression pills because I had torment.

And the doctor told me to go to the gym. And the pastor told me, peace, peace, you accepted Christ, but there was no peace. And what that is, is that someone who, some of us are painters here. You take a primer and you have a wall that's filthy and dirty.

And you take a primer and you cover it over with whitewash. You just roll over it and make it look fresh, but doesn't do anything about the dirt that's in behind the paint. And sometimes it can bleed through and it can come through.

And so we can deceive ourselves. Jonah was deceived. God told him to go to Nineveh, that great city, and to preach the gospel, to preach repentance. And Jonah said, you know what? I know what God's going to do.

He's going to give them repentance. And then, you know what? I'm just wasting my time here because then no judgment's going to come on these people. And I know God's ways. He's merciful. I know God is going to relent.

I know God's going to have compassion on them. And he called them to go to that city. And Jonah went the opposite direction. And while these semen, these guys who are tough folks, are crying out on their God, they found out Jonah's sleeping in the belly of the boat there.

He had total peace. Now the opposite of that was when the waves were engulfing that little boat that the disciples were in, and Jesus was sleeping there. And he had total peace. You can say, well, Jesus had peace while the waves were engulfing that boat.

And Jonah had peace. Jesus had the true peace, the rest that comes from God. Jonah had a false peace. He had a false security. I shared on Thursday night about how I had life insurance when I was 21 years old.

A fellow sold his life insurance. And so we've been paying into this life insurance. And one day my wife told me, she says, it's been a number of months. They're not taking the payments out anymore. I said, oh, well, maybe we had a special insurance, a whole life, and it's covering the payments now.

We went another number of months and no payments were coming out. I thought, man, you know, this is a good thing. I have life insurance for my family. Everything's great. But there was this little prick in my conscience that maybe you should just make a call and double check.

Well, we went to double check. And what we found out was that they had put a freeze on my account because of a check that we deposited for a week. They froze the account. They thought it was illegal activity.

And what ended up happening was the life insurance payment never came out. And so the insurance was canceled. There was no insurance at all. But for those number of months, I slept like a baby thinking, man, I'm not even making payments anymore.

And I have the security. I have peace. But I deceived myself. You know, it's better not to have peace and know your state than to have a false peace. It says in Deuteronomy, there's a man who who has peace, even though he's following a sinful nature in his in his heart, as though the drunk man can walk together with the sober man and they can agree.

I don't know about you, but we go sometimes to the place where the people are drunk. And you can't walk together in agreement. We're there to share the hope of Jesus with them. It says no drunkard has any inheritance in the kingdom of God or in Christ.

And so it says that as believers, we're not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the spirit. There's a total opposite. To be carnally minded, to be intoxicated is death. You can liken it to that.

But to be spiritually minded is life in peace. Jonah eventually told them, throw me out of the boat, because nothing's going to change here unless you get rid of me. Because they were praying and they said, man, sleeper, call on your God.

See what he can do. Well, the whole reason the whole boat was in trouble was because Jonah was there running from the call of God in his life. Jonah had a call of God on his life. Some of us have a call of God on our life.

And we're running from the call of God because of different reasons. Maybe unbelief. Maybe, you know, the cost of what it's going to cost. Maybe we're procrastinators and we figure God will figure it out his own way.

He's sovereign. You know, God is sovereign. He'll sort it out. He doesn't need me. And so we have a lot of excuses why we're not going to be obedient to when God calls us to something. But it's very important that we obey the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Hearing and Obeying the Holy Spirit

If you hear his voice, then we need to obey that voice. Otherwise, we deceive ourselves. Faith cometh by hearing, it says in Romans in chapter 10, and hearing by the word of God. And if we get a prompting from the Holy Spirit and we don't act upon it, those promptings will stop.

You will no longer get promptings. And you can deceive yourself thinking that you're the wisest guy, that you're the smartest, that you know all the scripture, but you're no longer led by the Spirit of God.

And so you have become neutered. You may have gone to the Pollock Clinic and got yourself neutered because you're absolutely useless to the kingdom of God. If you're not led by the Spirit, then you're under law.

You're under bondage. You're not under grace. And we can live by rules and regulations, and we can think ourselves the most cleanest, holiest, whitewashed sepulcher that there is and deceive ourselves absolutely and completely.

You know, it says that Abraham had two sons in Romans in chapter 9. He had two sons, one born of the bondwoman, which is Ishmael, and one born of the free woman, which is by promise, which was by faith, which is Isaac.

And we get to choose. Do we want to walk in the flesh? Do we want to live according to rules? Do we want to be religious and just look good to men? Or do we want to be filled with the Spirit of God, led by the Spirit of God, and fulfill the purpose and call of God for our life?

You choose. You lay in the boat there and have a false peace on you, or you lay in the boat like Jesus when the waves are crashing and have true righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Because you can have two identical situations.

One is from the Holy Spirit, and one is absolute deception in the flesh. Paul goes to the Galatian church in Galatians 3, and he says, you foolish Galatians, having begun in the Holy Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

They had begun in the Holy Spirit. They had a touch from the Holy Spirit. And then what happened? They started to try to become holy based on the people that were in their midst, based on the people that they were listening to.

And it became an outward holiness thing, rather than a filled with the Spirit and led by the Spirit thing. He says, you become estranged from Christ, you who seek to be justified by law. You know what the law says?

The man who does these things shall live by them. And you know what? If you desire to be perfected in the flesh by law, you're estranged from Christ. What is that? What's the result of that? Death. You're never going to be made holy by the law.

If righteousness could have come from the law, that's one thing. But they were kept under guard and tutor until the appointed time when faith would come. When faith has come, when Christ is manifested, when Christ is birthed in us, then we're no longer under guardians and tutors.

It's no longer don't taste, don't touch, don't handle. It's no longer an outward righteousness so that nobody can dot i's and cross t's or find any fault with us. That we can be whitewashed tombs in other people's eyes.

How does God see us? The righteous shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith in the Son of God. So if we're led by the Spirit, we're no longer under the law. And it's important for us to have an understanding that we need to get out from law and get into grace.

Grace is where the power is. Grace is where the life is. You can have someone showed me we were up going up and some guy had this hot rod thing and boy would be the really nice car. You know what? That thing, that corruption will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And you can have the shiniest, nicest suit on. You can have the wonderful, most beautiful carton. And it can be just corruptible. It can be dead man's bones. That does not impress God. What impresses God is a spirit-filled life.

Outward Holiness Versus Spirit-Born Righteousness

The Galatians, they were new in the faith. They were filled with the Spirit of God. They began in the Spirit. But then something shifted. There was a change. He said, who has bewitched you? In other words, preachers came.

Maybe holiness preachers came and began to influence them. Hey, you guys got to wear the head coverings. You guys need to make sure you don't wear any jewelry. You guys make sure you guys make your fastings.

You do your prayers. All good things. But what happens is when it comes pressure from men and it's not from the heart, then it produces an outward righteousness which absolutely brings no life. Because if righteousness came from the law, then Christ died in vain.

But Christ didn't die in vain. And so we need to continue to look to him to be radiant. Look to Jesus. It was a third watch or the fourth watch I shared a couple weeks ago. And Jesus is passing by. And Peter says, Lord, if it's you, call me out of the boat.

The waves were boisterous, but he didn't see the waves. He saw Jesus. And as he comes out of the boat, after Jesus calls him, you need to hear a word. When you hear a word from Jesus, act upon it. That's faith.

But the man who does them shall live by them. When you hear the spirit say, follow me or make that phone call. Call that brother. Go make some amends. Go seek out this sister. Go share this word of encouragement with this person.

Go make a restitution at that store you stole from. When you hear the spirit speak, act upon it. As many as are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons of God. They put to death the deeds of the flesh and live.

This is what it says in Romans in chapter 8. Brethren, we're not debtors to the flesh. Verse 12. To live according to the flesh. For if we live according to the flesh, you will die. And part of living according to the flesh is obeying rules and regulations and looking good outwardly and observing days and months and seasons and years.

That has nothing to do with the lust of the flesh. But you can still battle like anything in your head. Battle like anything with lust. Because it's an outward, an outward show. So how do we get the victory?

Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. It says it also in Galatians in chapter 4. It says when we were under the beggarly elements of the world, then in the process of time Christ, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem us, redeem those who were born under the law, that we might become the righteousness of God by faith.

It's righteousness of faith. Abraham had two sons, one born of the bond woman, one of the free woman. The bond woman represents Hagar. Hagar is a woman of the flesh who is in bondage with her children.

You know what? The best thing you can hope for is coming to that mountain which may not be touched. No flesh is going to come near that mountain where God is, where the trumpet sounded and the fire came down and the people were exceedingly terrified and they ran away from that mountain.

It says we can't come to that mountain and we have not come to that mountain because we are born of Isaac, born of Sarah. We've come to the new Jerusalem, the heavenly mountain, Zion, the city of the living God.

This is the mountain that we can ascend. We're not going to ascend Mount Sinai and try to work our way to the top. If you touch even the base of that mountain, you're supposed, even an animal is shot with an arrow.

No flesh is going to inherit the kingdom of God, brothers, sisters. Flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of God. We can only inherit the kingdom of God by faith in the spirit. So it says walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh.

Dying to the Flesh and Reputation

Now the works of the flesh are evident. You say, well I don't know if I'm in the flesh. You're outwardly clean but inwardly you're battling with lust, immorality, all these other things. You're constant war going on.

Why? Because it's you trying to overcome it. We have to die to what we're held by, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and just say, Lord Jesus, all these things, I can't do this.

No more white knuckling for me. We have to embrace the cross, having died to what we're held by, even our own reputations, even what men think about us, what our bosses think about us, what the brothers in the church think about us, always trying to measure up, measuring ourselves among ourselves, comparing ourselves.

This does not bring life. This is not the way of the spirit. We have to let go. We have to die to what we're held by. Say, Lord, I want to become like you, Jesus. I want to become of no reputation. Those Pharisees judged Jesus something terrible and he wasn't concerned about it.

And you know what? The Pharisees, if you're full of the spirit, are going to judge you something terrible. You have to come to a place you're not concerned about it. They called Jesus all kinds of things.

All kinds of things they called him. He was not defending himself. The children of the flesh persecute them that are children of promise. It always will be that way. The religious will always persecute those who are too born against.

And you don't want to fit in with the religious. They'll exclude you. You'll say, well, you know what? We're going to exclude you. You know what? If you really want to be part of something, then you're going to want to join us.

I've seen that in times past. It's happened even in our fellowship years ago. We want to liberate people from that. Say, well, you know what? You're not measuring up with us. We're going to have to exclude you.

I'm not talking about bad company, corrupting good habits. I'm talking about, you know what? You want to be older and you want to become fit in with the holy crowd, with the holy club, then you need to join in with us and you need to start emasculating yourself.

You need to get the circumcision going and you start cutting off all kinds of things out of your life. And then, you know what? After we have a meeting and, you know, we decide on it, then you know what?

We'll make a vote and decide if we're going to accept you into our holy club. This is not from the Holy Spirit, brothers, sisters. This is from men. And you know what? Paul says, I'm afraid for you unless I labored for you in vain.

He says, I'm going to travail again. You know what travail is? Someone who's in labor. They're going to go to the hospital. The labor pains are coming. I'm going to travail in birth again for you until Christ is formed in you.

These are people who had the Holy Spirit. They've gone back somehow into the womb and they've become entangled again with the weak and beggarly elements. And Paul is afraid for them and he's going to pray for them.

He's going to travail for them. He's going to rebuke them and say, get out of the flesh. Stop working with the law and get back into faith. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for. It's the substance of that which is unseen.

If you have something that you can see, God's not pleased with it. He's pleased with faith. When you put your trust in a word that he gives you, you say, Lord, I'm hanging on your word. I'm trusting in your promises.

I'm not trusting what men say. You know what? Abraham didn't go and talk to Sarai and say, well, you know what? Should I offer my son Isaac on the altar? Yes or no? And then take a vote and see whether he really heard from God or didn't hear from God.

You know what? When you hear from God, you know. You don't need your boss's approval. You don't need the pastor's approval. You don't need men's approval. You need Jesus' approval. If he goes and tells you that you need to go and make things right and go confess and go and repay something that you stole, and the pastor tells you, no, no, it's all forgiven under the blood.

But the Holy Spirit's convicting you, but the pastor's just putting paint on it. And that conviction is not going away. And you say, you know what? I need to obey the Holy Spirit. Even if he says, well, that's works, brother.

It may not be works. God may say, you know what? I'm just going to bring you down a notch or two because you start thinking you're something in your own opinion. And you just need to remember where you came from.

You just need to remember that you are of no reputation. If you seek to become of reputation, what was you? What was you? Jesus became of no reputation. Taking on the form of a man, he wasn't ashamed to be born in a barn.

He wasn't ashamed when we were full of transgressions and sins. It says Christ died for the ungodly, that if we humble ourselves and we ask him to come and save us, to come and fill us with his spirit, he's not ashamed to come, to be born in this stable and to make us clean, first by his precious blood and to sanctify us and to make us his own special treasure.

It's not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. He says he's going to take a heart of stone and if we, if our heart softens and we ask God to have mercy on us and to take our heart of stone and to do a heart transplant and give us a heart of flesh, then the Holy Spirit will come and have his abode in us.

I remember when the Holy Spirit came and have his abode in us, I wasn't too far away from wine, women, and song, yet he came. It wasn't something I had to do except humble myself and look up. I had to acknowledge I was a sinner.

I didn't have to prove I was good enough. We don't have to prove we're good enough to receive the Holy Spirit. We don't have to prove that we're holy enough to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes by faith.

Receiving the Spirit by Faith and Obedience

He says also in Acts, he gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey him. And what does the scripture say? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Will you obey that? How shall they call upon him in whom they've not believed?

So then faith cometh by hearing, hearing the rhema word of God. This book is filled with word, but we need the rhema word of God. What if one of the elders says, hey, you want to show how holy you are, throw yourself down from the temple and show us that he'll give his angels charge of you.

Oh, for the elders, I'll do it. How about for the devil? Will you do it? Jesus said, it is also written, you shouldn't put the Lord to the test. We need to understand what the word of God is saying in every moment, in every situation to be led by the spirit of God.

We're to love sinners, but if the sinners are asking you to go to the pub and to go drink with them, you better make sure you're hearing clear because pretty soon they'll be driving you home drunk. This is how it was in the beginning when we were not hearing clearly.

And that's why it's important to surround yourself around mature believers that can help guide you in the way so that you can learn the voice of the spirit and do what is right. But if you just live by rules and regulations, there was a time when a man invited me to go for a beer with him and I was in Alberta at a thing.

I thought, no, never. I won't do this thing. And the Holy Spirit said, go. And I thought, this is a strange thing. I want to make sure this is the Holy Spirit. And the scripture came that Jesus was a friend of sinners.

He ate and drank with sinners. And you know what the Pharisees called him? A wine bibber. They called Jesus a wine bibber and a glutton. He wasn't concerned about that. What's most important is I was able to share my testimony with that man.

I went there and I had one beer. I never had two. We had one beer there and I shared my full testimony with that man. And who knows? He had never heard the gospel before. He asked me the next day to go and I passed.

You know what? What's the important thing is that we are led by the Holy Spirit and we don't put God in a box. We have to be led by the spirit. Otherwise we'll never fulfill the purpose of God. You know, you say, well, I have a Nazarite vow.

Okay, well, you have a Nazarite vow. Good. Jesus didn't have a Nazarite vow. He ate and drank with sinners. He was a friend of sinners. And wherever he went, he was concerned about one thing, not his own pleasure, but doing the will of the Father who sent him.

He said, well, what will they think of me if they see me there with those sinners? Never mind what they're going to think about you. You have no reputation anyways. He was made of no reputation. Everybody that I've known that's got born again, they were never on the top of the mountain when they got born again.

They were always low in the valley. That's where the river runs, brothers, sisters. That's where the river flows. That's where the spirit moves in the valley. That's where there's need of God. You know, we're not gonna, you know, just add to our righteousness, add to our goodness, add to all those good things that we can do.

You know, I used to be, I know brother Chad, you're a welder, I used to be in construction and boy, I could build high-rise or apartments and all this. I was really good at it. And I thought, man, now that I added Christ, I'm gonna become really something in construction.

And the further I got on, I realized there's less and less I can do on my own self. I'm not capable of it anymore. Even making decisions to organize men, go here and go there, I'm not capable of it anymore.

God has taken those things and made me weak. As brother shared, he's made me weak so that my dependency would no longer be in myself or in my abilities, but in God who raises the dead. Do you believe in the resurrection?

Resurrection Faith and Freedom From Sin

That if you confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, wherever we go, most people are confessing with their mouth, the Lord Jesus. But the second part is like it. Believe in your heart that God raised them from the dead, ye shall be saved.

For with the heart one believes under righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So do you believe in the resurrection? Oh, everyone would put their hand up. I believe Jesus was resurrected.

I say, do you believe God can set you free from drugs? Yes. Do you believe God can set you free from alcohol? Yes. Do you believe God can deliver you from anger? I don't know. They make me angry. It's on them.

Do you believe God can set you free from unforgiveness? Can you be set free from bitterness? I'm struggling this last week with bitterness because the circumstances are very bitter and I thought I was good with bitterness and now I realize I'm not.

And so I've been repenting and seeking to get that root out of my heart before I defile somebody. And I'm asking the Lord, I thought it was done with bitterness and I see there's more bitterness there because there's more pride there.

Those guys did that to me. You see how it works? How dare they say that about me? Bitterness, anger, resentment. You know what? It's a pride issue, guys. We're still of reputation. We're still of the circumcision in some regard.

We need to repent of this thing. Say, Lord, get this pride out of me. Get this bitterness out of me. Help me, Lord, that I don't feel cheated that they took advantage of me. You're not broke, Lord, but you're more interested in my spiritual well-being than in my reputation among men.

It's good to have a good reputation among men. But what happens when they start speaking lies about you? Are you going to defend yourself? You're going to fight to the end to save your reputation, to save face?

Jesus never did. They said all kinds of things about him and he wouldn't open his mouth. He said, as the lamb before the shearer was silent. Brother Alin shared about the lamb. As the lamb before the shearer is silent, he's ready to take his razor and take all the wool off of you and leave you there cold and naked with just a little fuss.

Can you be happy with that? That's the way Jesus was. They just tore his reputation down and they stripped him of all his human dignity there. Even they took his garments and they cast lots for them and they left him there to be ashamed.

And you know what he says? He embraced the sufferings. He despised the shame, right? And he overcame the agony of the cross and he now has received a name which is above every name. Seated at the right hand of the power.

It's not about saving face, holding on to our reputation, holding on to our integrity. You know, Job tried that. It didn't go well for him. But we have to put our mouth in the dust. If there's people like Shimei who rise up against you and speak and say all kinds of things about you, even if it's true, just say, Lord, it's true about me.

If they say things that are lies about you, say, Lord, you know they're lies about me. I'm not going to defend myself. Clearly, you have allowed this to happen to bring me down, not just a notch or two, but you want to bring me to zero that I might become like Jesus.

Have thine own way, Lord. You're the potter, I'm the clay. I seek to liberate us from legalism and from bondage, yet not giving a license for sin or an opportunity for the flesh. We can't say, well, you know what?

I tried to become holy. It's not working out for me. I'm still angry. I'm still bitter. I'm going to go and serve the world and I'm going to go make money. I'm going to try and get ahead. As long as the bank account's going up, you know what?

That's going to end in a fail, an epic fail, because you're going to find out stuff's going to be breaking down. People are going to be wrecking your things and it's going to be producing in you something.

And what it's going to be producing in you is something that was like a seed there always in the beginning. And it's only now that you're getting able to see these imperfections and that you're not able to measure up and you're not able to fulfill that high calling in your life and it's hindering you.

And just confess it, repent, and turn, even if you have to do it every five minutes in a day. Confess, renounce, and return. Say, Lord, I need you. Help me, Jesus. Call on the name of the Lord and he will bring it to pass.

It has to be not by might. It has to be not by power. It has to be by his Spirit in order for it to be a genuine work of the Holy Ghost. And after he's done a good work in you, then he's able to sanctify you.

He's able to settle you in your spirit and your walk with Christ. He's able to perfect you. He's able to keep you from falling, to present you faultless before him. In Jesus' name, be blessed. Amen.