Sunday Morning Sermon Series - Victory in Minutes and Seconds - Part 2

Now I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel. It wasn't their military guys.

It wasn't the type of people. It's amazing how many of us run from adversity.

Guys, understand this just for a second. You cannot win unless there's a fight.

You can't win. Tim Crumrod. I don't know if some of you guys my age that watch football in the day you may recognize that name.

He was the nose guard of the Cincinnati Bengals. He was playing in a game and on TV national television as he went someone fell into his right leg and snapped his tibia and fibula both bones in his leg and as he rolled over his leg the bottom part of his leg was flopping in the wind.

The running back coming through the hole went right past him and as he was rolling for the second time he reached out and made the tackle.

Now, he's done that a hundred times before. He is the nose guard on defense.

His job is to plug that A gap. And he had done it his whole professional career but yet I'm talking about it today not because he made the tackle but the adversity that he overcome to make the tackle.

Ladies and gentlemen if you don't have adversity in your life you're never going to aspire to a greater height to achieve a victory in your sanctification in obedience to God.

If everything is easy if there is no challenges in life, listen you're never going to grow in your

Christianity. Life is built on a series of defining moments.

Some of you may be going through it right now. It's built on a series of defining moments and those can be crises or failures and success and yes, even tragedy.

But it is in those moments that how we respond by faith in Christ that will determine our maturity and the direction of our life.

Some of you in this room have been given way too much credence to the world.

You're taking your Christianity and you're whoring it out for acceptance to the world.

Some of you your insecurities you still have not overcome them and so you continue to date in an arena of codependence and you cannot break that cycle or rather you choose not to break it.

I'm going to give you three things today. Three things today to help us learn what it is to overcome adversity.

Look with me in Luke chapter 23 and let me paint the scene for you just a second.

Jesus has just gone through in about eight hours six trials.

He has gone through three civil or criminal trials, secular trials and he has also gone through three religious trials.

Each of these six trials no evidence was presented. Yet all six judges found him guilty.

He is then taken down to Villa Dolorosa after having the flesh ripped from his back and he carries a cross beam there on Golgotha outside the city which we will be going there.

Outside that city he is nailed to a cross beam and lifted up into a place where the

Romans had with extraordinary efficiency mastered the art of the most painful execution man could devise.

As he hung there two thieves on the cross hung beside them, unrelated but they hung beside him and both of them started mocking

Christ. If you look with me and I wrote it on your piece of paper in Matthew chapter 27 verse 42 it says in the same way even the criminals who were crucified with him kept taunting him.

Man, that's rough ain't it? That's rough man. Not only are you being crucified unjustly now everyone's taunting and making fun of you even the other criminals who are being crucified with you.

Guys, let me tell you something. The reality of overcoming adversity is going to take time.

As we will see here in a second, both of those criminals are taunting and mocking

Jesus. I know religion has made it out that there was one good thief and one bad thief.

That is not accurate according to Scripture. They're both mocking Jesus yet one of them had a moment of clarity in the middle of that adversity and something changed in him.

To you who are out there today, right now some of you are facing a moment.

This is going to be your moment. Some of you are struggling whether you need to truly commit your life to Christ and truly be saved.

Some of you are afraid of what that will entail or what people will think or what will it look like.

I tell you today, even though you are having that fear with reckless abandonment and absolute intention, turn your life to Jesus Christ.

For there is no other peace on this earth except being in the center of God's will that is more restful than obedience to Christ.

Guys, the reality of adversity though is sometimes it takes time.

Guys, how many more scar tissue do some of you need? How much more adversity do you want to come into your life before you finally surrender to the

Lordship of Jesus Christ? Not only does it take time, here is the hardest thing for most of us to do.

It takes... This thing is not on. Is it? I don't care.

I'm just going to stand right here and we are going to preach the gospel. I don't need no stupid microphone. I don't care.

I'm going to preach. Guys, listen to me. Listen to me.

Forget stupid microphones, church sermons and all this other pretense. Hear the word of God for your life.

Listen, it takes humility. Some of you drunks in this room.

We got a bunch of them. Some of you drug addicts in this room. How helpful is humility to your sobriety?

It is critical. Guys, listen to me for a second. You have to have humility to overcome adversity.

Read with me Luke 23 40. Now, they both were making fun of Jesus but after the other answered rebuking him, don't you even fear

God since you are undergoing the same punishment. This man had a change of heart.

This man came to a place where he realized he was in the wrong. Guys, the first step in understanding the power of overcoming adversity is recognizing and absolutely admitting to the reality of your sin.

Guys, humility always brings about a place where you see the holiness of almighty

God and you realize you are by yourself are never going to measure up to it.

I was talking to a person yesterday and they said to me, but I am a good person.

I am moral. People let me tell you, your best five moments in your life are filthy minstrel rags before the holiness of God.

That's what scripture says. That is filthy before almighty

God. Oh, but I give to St. Jude. I'm a shriner. I help a little old lady across the street.

I tell you before the righteousness and holiness of God, you are destitute and depraved and on your way to hell.

Overcoming adversity means that you need to recognize your desperate state.

It needs to realize that for you to find the peace of God, you first must understand the humility of needing him.

Also, humility is not only recognizing our sin. Here's the big one for all of us in this room.

It's the humility to accept correction. Look at our verse.

The other answered him and rebuked him. How many of us as Christians run from the rebuke of our brothers and sisters in Christ?

How quickly are you insulted? How quickly are you offended by the word of God being used by God in the vessel of one of his people that come to you and say, you need to rethink this.

How arrogant must you stand? And God's word warns you, the minute you think you stand, take heed, lest you fall.

The minute I think I can walk through the life and face the adversity of this life without not only the help of Jesus Christ, yes, but without the help of a brother and sister in Christ and the accountability of a church,

I tell you you are doomed to fail. Your personal, private, spiritual life does not exist in the reality of Scripture without accountability, without humility, without that correction and that rebuke, you will continue to repeat the same cycle over and over again.

Now here's another thing about humility is this, when you're wrong, get up and learn.

Now look what this thief says, look carefully at that same verse, since you are undergoing the same punishment.

He actually in his little mind thought that what Jesus Christ was experiencing, he was experiencing as well.

Yes, the humanity of Christ was feeling the pain. Yes, the humanity of Christ was dealing with the thirst.

It was dealing with the pain. It was dealing with his heart and his lungs expanding to a place of bursting.

But that criminal had no idea of the other part of that hypostatic union.

That part of Christ, the deity of almighty God incarnate in flesh was taking on the sin of the world in which he was guilty of none.

Got to think for just a second. Think about this pain. Think about for a second.

You had to watch your child be falsely accused, tortured, and then butchered and nailed on the cross, and your child cried to you and you stayed your hand of wrath.

The same God who brought everything into creation with the word, with that same movement of his will could have obliterated everything, yet he chose to still his hand in the adversity that Christ was facing for the betterment and the love and the grace that he would bestow upon you and me.

That thief had no idea what Christ was going through. You see, for the first time in eternal history,

Jesus Christ yelled out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Because for the first time, the deity of the triune nature of God was split and God forsook

Jesus Christ through the propitiation of his wrath so that he would not have to forsake you and me.

Have a little humility when you walk. Have a little humility when you talk, and in that starting place of humility, you will find the strength to overcome adversity.

Now let's talk for a second about the reasons for adversity. Oh, I know, I've heard it all before.

Brother Jeff, I know I'm struggling with alcohol, but I've got a demon of alcohol up in me.

Oh, brother Jeff, I would submit to my husband, but he is not worthy to submit to.

Oh, pastor, if I could just get God's help in this, I would finally submit to the power of Jesus Christ.

Read with me. Read with me here. It says here in Luke chapter 23, verse 41, the very next verse, the prisoner continues.

The criminal says we are punished justly because we are getting back what we deserve for the things we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, can I give you just for a second a slight possibility that the adversity that you're facing is not because you had bad parents, you grew up in the hood, you had this, your dog ran away and died and married a country singer and ran off to Nashville, that your ex -girlfriend scarred you and you're unable to have relations, that your boyfriend was so bad, the trauma and the you just need all this therapy help, maybe the adversity you're going through is because of your rebellious nature towards almighty

God. Can you wrap your head around it, going back to the idea of humility, that you are not a victim of your circumstance.

If your boyfriend continues to treat you badly and cheat on you and you keep dating him, that is not your mama's fault.

It is because you stupid. Pastor, you don't understand.

No, you arrogant self -righteous codependent heathen, you don't understand.

Oh pastor, the racism in this country oppresses me and holds you down.

Do you honestly think that by the power there is anything made by man that can prosper against the house of God?

How arrogant of you to blame the weaknesses of your own flesh on the things that are formed by the hands of man.

God tells us that there is nothing in this world that with God is impossible to overcome.

Guys, the reason for adversity sometimes is our choices.

But, it's not the only thing. It's not the only thing. There is a reality that God does not give us a temptation.

Now, here's what some people think. www .hotsmokingchicks

.com Oh, Lord's tempting me. The Lord ain't tempting you.

Do you realize Scripture tells us that God does not tempt anyone. Your flesh is tempting you.

Oh, but wait. It is also true that God does put roadblocks in your life to test you.

The book of James tells us that our trials are meant to be there to grow.

I remember training fighters. I never trained them with lesser and lesser weights.

I remember training, I don't remember which one it was, Josiah, Joshua, Jeremiah, I don't remember which one it was, but we would shark tank them.

Now, if you don't understand what a shark tank is, let me try to convey to you in a brief but yet oh so graphic detail of what shark tanking is to a fighter.

Basically, you're in a walled room or ring or cage.

You send in a fighter. That fighter fights that guy for 90 seconds.

And then you yell break. That guy goes out and then you send another one right back in.

And this happens 10, 12 times. And you're just rotating this guy.

Basically, the guy standing in the ring, I used to call him a meat bag.

Because after about the 6th or 7th guy, I don't care how ninja, Green Beret, Navy Seal you are, it ain't like the movies in real life.

You get 3 or 4 guys tapping on your head in quick rapid succession, your Eagle Craw Northern Crane style goes right out the door.

I remember one guy telling me one time he was the baddest man at Shelby Farms. He was the leader of the white supremacist gang at Shelby Farms.

And I knew immediately he was lying. Because even if there was a white supremacist group, you ain't going to announce that at Shelby Farms.

But he said this. He said, yeah, it took 6 cops to bring me down.

Gotcha, buddy. Gotcha. Yeah, you bad. Come on in here. And he walked in there and Dana Michelle, one of my girl fighters beat his butt all over that ring.

Guys, trials produce trials produce strength.

In other words, if I've got a fight, and you can ask Pastor Josiah, if you've got a fight of 12 minutes,

I'm going to make you fight for 100 before you ever get in that ring. I want you to bleed and practice so you won't bleed in the fight.

Christians, some of you are trying to escape the adversity that God has convicted your heart of right now.

And you're praying to God, God, take this from me. But as a loving father, teaching you how to walk, teaching you how to overcome the things that he knows that are going to be in your future.

Christian church, listen to me. The adversity that we are going to face from our own government one day is coming.

Oh, Pastor, you're a conspiracy theory. No, I've actually read scripture. Understand this, that there is a day coming where to call yourself a

Christian it's going to cost you your life. Oh, Pastor, those days are yet far off.

I tell you, there is a pastor who is spending 30 days in jail right now.

No, it is not in Iran. It's not in Iraq. It's in Canada. Right up there.

Of course, we all know them crazy Canadians. We got one here. We're trying to get her saved, but so far to no avail.

Guys, you've got to go through the little fights now so that you can win the big fights later.

That's sometimes the reason. Here's another reason people aren't really happy about this one.

You know why you go through trials one time? Sometimes? Read Luke 23 -47.

When the satyrian saw what happened, he began to glorify God saying, this man was really righteous.

Well, what did he see? Did he see a three -point homiletic, exhortative sermon?

A great homily of epic proportions on the level of Spurgeon come down from the cross of Jesus Christ?

Did he see the power of a three -piece orchestra and the praise and worship music that I like to come to this conclusion?

No. What he saw was a broken and beaten and bloody body that cried out,

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And that love and that grace in the midst of that adversity changed that centurion's life forever.

Understand this, that sometimes we as individuals and as Christians face adversity for nothing other than to glorify the name of God Almighty.

And if immediately your mind goes to the place of, that is not fair, you need to go back to my first point of humility, because the only fair thing is that every man, woman, and child ever conceived would be burning in hell for eternity.

The fact that I, by the grace of God, have a destiny in heaven is not fair.

It's grace. You say, oh, but so many good people. There is not one

Romans 3. There is none who are righteous. There are none who seek God. Their mouths are open in empty graves.

They are liars. Guys, I'm a license -ordained pastor. And me and the street -walking whore on Jackson Avenue are same total depravity in the eyes of the holiness of God.

Never go to fairness to plead your case, yet humble yourself and submit to the direction of Almighty God and look to your adversity and the power of Christ and say, bring it on!

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.

The reality is some of our adversities are nothing more than to praise and glorify

God. I'm not going to keep going here. I just have one last thing. I want you to go back to Luke chapter 23, verse 40.

Let me look at that again. How should we respond to adversity?

Three things, and I'll be done. Stay focused. Some of your adversity today is just simply staying focused.

Okay? Guys, I know it's not a Joel Olsteen sermon. I'm not a great preacher.

Okay? I know that. But I'm delivering to you the word of God. It is not me.

This church can't save you. I can't save you. There's nothing powerful about me. I'm just one sinner showing another sinner where to find peace.

Some of you need to remove from your minds right now not only the pride but the stalled mind to wander.

Some of you need to refocus your heart and your mind right now. Listen to these last three, and I'm done. Listen. The other answer rebuking him, don't you even fear

God. It's not our world, Christians.

People say, well, the world doesn't fear God anymore. I tell you this, and I've been all over the world,

I'm telling you the truth, the house of God does not fear God anymore. It's amazing to me how we have cheaped out the name of Jesus.

We have sat and taken refuge in some sort of religious feeling rather than surrender to the

Lordship of Jesus Christ. Oh, there are people who are raising their hands, praising and worshiping

God on Sunday morning, and yet Sunday night, the fornication comes back to haunt them.

I tell you this, and I'm telling you the truth, if you want to understand how to overcome adversity, the first thing you need to do is humble yourself, and if you are struggling with humility, go back to you need to understand the fear of the holiness of Almighty God.

It's not going to punish sin. No, God is not going to punish sin.

He is going to destroy it and everything that it sustains. Listen to me today.

Proverbs tells us in chapter 1 verse 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and discipline. Now, I want you to know this,

Christian. If you are still afraid of losing your salvation, that is not the fear of God.

That is the fear of your guilt, and you need to repent with that, with as just much veracity as you would repent of any other adulterous sin, because when you doubt

God's salvation, it is not you that is doubting you, it is you that is doubting the grace of Almighty God, and you cannot serve

God in any adversity if you continue upon that weak and infantile guilt trip instead of embracing the word of the living

God, and this is the will of God that all which he has come to me, I will in no wise cast out.

Jesus said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. Now, either that is a truth, or your fear is a truth.

I choose this day to live in the truth of the word of God, and I shun and absolutely despise the fear of my own guilty soul.

Maybe you today need to face that adversity. Maybe you need to do it publicly as a form of accountability.

I rebuke and reject doubt, but let me tell you this as well, I promise you this, embrace that doubt, because you cannot have faith without doubts.

There is never a time when faith is stronger than when you doubt the provision of God's grace, yet it is at those times, whenever you don't feel, when you don't see, when you don't hear the provision in full understanding, you still choose to walk by faith and not by sight.

It is in those moments that you grow. It is in those moments that you begin to understand the power of the

Holy Spirit. It is in those moments that you repent. It is in those moments that you grow. It is in those moments that you leave the boyhood of Christianity and come into a man and warrior of God.

Those are the moments that you look for. It is not the feelings during praise and worship.

It is the moments in those seconds and sometimes milliseconds when you want to fold and quit, when you want to give in to that temptation, when you want to go back to the flesh that you come and you submit to Almighty God and the fear and the admonition of the

Lord and you obey in faith, no matter what you feel. Second thing is that very word, faith.

If you read verse 42, then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Guys, do you know how much faith I have? Someone buy some screws and put them in this deck because I'm about to take my gun and shoot holes all in this thing.

Guys, listen to me. Listen. Listen. I have faith, but I falter and fail miserably.

And I look at my faith and my failings and I say, what a pitiful wretched soul you are.

But even on my best days, even on my strongest moments where I have been brought a demonically possessed person and I was not afraid, where I had no place for my pregnant wife and two children 1400 miles away from home, and yet the very next day

I had a home without any money put down. I still, to be honest with you, falter to the faith of this man.

You see, I've seen what Jesus Christ can do after the resurrection.

This uneducated, unchurched heathen was hanging on a cross beside the man he just put faith in who was dying right next to him.

To me, that's a stronger faith than when Thomas saw

Jesus resurrected and said my Lord and my God. For this man exhibited a faith in adversity, not just in believing something greater, but believing in something greater in the person that was dying beside him.

Lastly this, and I'll close with this. Guys, you know how you come over adversity?

I'm going to be honest with you. Sometimes you just got to fight. And I know this is not a popular topic in most churches today because we have demasculated the men of God and superimposed a fake religion over the people of God.

To where if we're moral and simply don't have tattoos, cuss, smoke or drink, we are somehow in the center of God's will.

I tell you it is a damnable doctrine to believe that your moral beliefs and upholdings can somehow deliver you into the kingdom of God.

Listen to me, Christians. Some of you are going to have to fight. And I'm telling you when

I say fight, I mean fight. Now, in my day, I enjoyed fighting.

I don't want to go into this a whole lot, but I got perverted pleasure out of fights.

Leave that alone. That ain't the fight I'm talking about. Any punk can swing fists.

The hardest fight happens in here and here connecting.

That's a fight. Guys, look at this scripture in Luke 24, the next chapter over, verses 44 through 48.

Just two phrases that I'll talk to you about. Verses 44 through 48 of Luke 24.

If you will note verse 46. It says this. He also said to them, this is what is written.

The Messiah would suffer and rise. Today when you leave this room,

I want you to remember those simple four words. Would suffer and rise.

I don't care what is coming against you in your life. And I don't mean that to dismiss it as unimportant.

Oh, some of you truly are struggling. There is no doubt about it. Brother Lee, I'm praying for him right now.

Brother Scott, I'm praying for him right now. Sister Amanda, I'm praying for her right now.

My soul is lifting them up to the throne of God. But I'm telling you this, no matter what you're facing and there is no rheostat to judge the severity of it, it does not matter in the sense that no matter what, as the child of God, you will suffer, but you will rise again.

That no matter what takes your life on this earth, that if I drop dead right now before I finish this sentence, there is no doubt in my heart and in my mind that I will wake up facing my

King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Do you have that hope? Do you have that faith?

Do you sit and look at the adversity even though it be in the trapments of your mind? Do you still look at it and know that no matter what comes before you,

I will suffer. Bring that suffering on, but by the power of Almighty God, I will rise.

Do you have that hope? Or is this just another religious Sunday? Are you just looking for another emotional high to get you through the week that never works?

Try this instead. Embrace the adversity with the power and the obedience to God's Word rather than the emotions of your heart and fight.

And it is a fight, guys. It is a fight. And this last thing that says right here, verse 48, you are my witnesses of these things.

Will you do me a favor this week? Forget that. Will you do yourself a favor this week?

Will you not do this? I'm tired. How are you, the child of God, tired all the time?

You know what that is? That is a fake thing in your mind.

The Word of God asks the children of God, have you yet suffered unto blood?

Brother Jeff, you don't understand. No. You don't understand. You need to plug into the power of the

Holy Spirit and stop relying on the physical manifestation of power. And you will find a reserve tank that you did not know existed.

Some of you have not yet reached your potential in Christian maturity because you run from the adversity.

You rebel in the sin. And instead of embracing that adversity and enlarging your fuel tank, strengthening your spirit, you recall and say,

I'm tired. Some of you are afraid to profess

Christ because you are afraid of the fears and the mockings of this world. I'm telling you there is no peace greater and there is no soul that sleeps more quieter at night than those who look to the world and say,

I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Do your worst. For this day

I will still stand right here and I will proclaim and preach the name of Jesus though it mean my life, though it mean the lives of everything that I hold dear.

I will choose to learn from my past mistakes and I will not repeat them again.

You know how you know that? It's when adversity comes back around again but yet this time you knock it out.

And that not the Romans road, not your stupid church attendance, not how well you praise and worship

God but how you suffer and serve the least of this world, that is how you glorify and witness to the power of Jesus Christ in your life.

I'm going to ask the music people to come up and the pastors to come up. And I want you to ask, listen to me.

Quit looking around. Listen. Today, if you were to die right now would you go spend eternity in heaven and hell?

And if you base your affirmation of heaven on a stupid prayer that you prayed into your heart,

I give you warning today that that prayer is found nowhere in Scripture. Do you know for a fact that you would go to heaven?

Brother Jeff I'm not sure. Why have you not sought help from that from God's word? I don't know where to look. God invented these people to help you.

Come forward today. Well I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed. I'm nervous. That's the adversity first you need to overcome in your infancy.

Surrender. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Number two, some of you don't want accountability in your life.

With pride and folded arms and the arrogance smirk upon your face, you will decide and be the captain of your own destiny.

I tell you that destiny has but one stop and it is at the gates of hell. Some of you need the accountability of your brothers and sisters in Christ but you don't like nobody telling you what to do.

Then continue to live in your weakness, continue to live in your abysmal sin and continue to be a horrible witness for Christ or confess your faults one to another that you may be healed.