Sanctify Yourself- for Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders — Carter Conlon

It's good to be home. Thank God. I was sharing with the choir this morning after an extended vacation this summer with my wife Teresa. It's awesome to come here on Sunday and all my mountains are molehills and I'm totally at rest in my mind and I told the choir I'm going to enjoy it for the three days that it's going to last.

Thank God for his presence and his peace. Thank God for what he's about to do in our midst. Next Sunday we're going to be starting a three-day fast and we're praying for our city and we're praying for our nation.

God heal our land is the cry that will come from our hearts. We'll be here all day Sunday. The services will be regular as they are on Sunday but you're welcome to stay throughout the day. You can stay and pray between the services.

There might be somebody leading periodically from a microphone assisting you with that or perhaps we'll just read scripture together but all day Sunday, although child care will be the same as usual, drop off and pick up your children at the same times, there will be here all day Sunday.

We'll be meeting Monday night at seven o 'clock to pray together and again on Tuesday evening at seven o 'clock for a prayer time. We're also going to pray about this upcoming meeting on Wednesday with various churches throughout the city.

We as a church body have set aside 1 .5 million dollars in this coming year to help to underwrite existing and start up feeding programs in particularly inner city churches. That'll be a primary focus but it will extend beyond that eventually and we see this has the potential to bring the church to a higher reputation in the city to meet human need.

It's going to be a lot of need with 44 million people as I understand on food stamps of some sort in America today and of course the bigger cities being hit the hardest and we want to help to encourage especially inner city churches to start feeding people.

We're going to be holding monthly seminars on nutrition. We'll be teaching or helping all of us as a larger block to be able to get involved with some of the opportunities to obtain food stuffs to be able to give out to the population.

There's a lot of organizations that are out there and willing to help if you know how to access them and I think most importantly of all we're going to meet and pray together every month. Pastors and leaders of these churches and who knows but that this might be the spark of something in the city and that's what I'm believing God for.

Caring for the Needy Through Prayer and Practical Ministry

Isaiah 58 says if you see human need and don't hide yourself from it then you call out to God and he says I will answer you and there's incredible promises in that passage of scripture for those who will not withdraw their hands unto themselves in times of difficulty but will begin to reach out.

You and I have got to believe that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever that what he has done he will do and who he is he will always be. The mercy of the Lord endures forever. His kindness is beyond your understanding and beyond mine.

I thank God that in my heart there's a spark of life. I see something in the future. I hope you're beginning to see it as well. Yes times are difficult and most likely they might get more difficult than they are today but in spite of that it is the mercy of God that pulls out the carpet of complacency from underneath the people that we may consider our ways again and get back into the house of God.

I believe the Lord with all my heart for a sweeping move of his spirit in this nation and in this season in which we're living not to save a financial system or such like but it's about saving people.

It's about families. It's about moms and dads and kids coming to Christ. I thank God for that with all of my heart and I trust that you'll be here to pray and to fast with us about these things. I want you to direct your attention to Joshua chapter 3 this morning if you will.

Sanctify Yourselves Before God Does Wonders

Joshua chapter 3 it's the longest message title I've ever had I think in my lifetime but it goes this way. Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. Now father I just I have rarely felt carried by the spirit into the pulpit as I do this morning.

I know your hand is on me. I know you have spoken to my heart. God almighty. That's who you are. God almighty. All merciful. All powerful. All glorious. Lord Jesus Christ in spite of our frailties. Lord in spite of our best efforts which fall short of the glory of God.

We call out to you one more time to come in mercy. One more time to let there be an expression in this church and in this city and in this nation of who you are. In spite of the fact that people spit in your face yet still you remain merciful and your arms remain open and you send rain on the just and the unjust.

Help us Lord Jesus Christ to lay hold of your heart. I pray that you touch this frail body in a new way. Touch this frail mind with the wisdom of heaven. I yield my body to you Lord that you may speak through me and live in me.

I ask only one thing that your name be glorified and that men women and children be saved. Jesus son of God speak to us today to every heart. Lord your voice can go a lot deeper than mine. I can only speak one thought at one time but you can speak a thousand ways to different hearts.

For you know the needs in this room. You know the struggles the trials the thoughts. You've walked with each one of us through our days and you've stood with us Lord when we're not even aware that you're there.

No God speak today that's all I ask speak to us and give us the power of the Holy Spirit that we may be a people set apart for you in this final hour. Father I thank you for this in Jesus name. Joshua chapter 3 beginning at verse 1 to verse 5.

And Joshua rose early in the morning and they removed from Shittim and came to Jordan. He and all the children of Israel and lodged there before they passed over. And it came to pass after three days that the officers went through the host and they commanded the people saying when you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God and the priest the Levites bearing it then you shall remove from your place and go after it.

Yet there shall be a space between you and it about two thousand cubits by measure come not near unto it that you may know the way by which you must go for you have not passed this way heretofore. And Joshua said unto the people sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

Learning From Israel’s Wilderness Failure

It had been a long journey in the wilderness. Forty years or so before another generation had come to these same borders of what was once promised to them. Yet they had made a wrong choice in their hearts they felt to go ahead in the plan of God that would bring glory to his name and make them as was promised to Abraham a blessing in the earth was too difficult.

And they felt that they would make leaders and go back to what they had left behind. They thought that there might be something in the ways of Egypt that would satisfy only to find themselves living in a desert place for and dying there for over 40 years.

How tragic it must have been for the people walking through that wilderness they would have the recollection of the promises that were given to them that they were going to go into a land that would flow with milk and honey.

In other words it would be such rich pasture that there would be plenty of clover for the bees and there would be plenty of pasture for the cows and it would it would literally be a place of divine nourishment only to look down and all that was around them was dust and if they picked it up in their hands it would just fall through their fingers.

And that's the type of a spiritual life and journey that people end up on when we see the plan of God and choose an alternate path for our lives. Now another generation has come to this place and if you have the ears to hear this morning we've arrived at an incredible season in the testimony of the church of Jesus Christ in our time.

We've arrived at a season where there's an awareness that God is willing to do something far beyond the normative standard church attendance. He's willing to do the miraculous to set people free to give sight to put meaning and purpose in our hearts and to release to us as it is the promised land which is Jesus Christ.

The life that God promises through his son no longer just a text written on pages of scripture but can become a living reality and for some of us in an unprecedented way. My only prayer lately that I've been praying is God almighty fill me with your Holy Spirit again.

I need to be carried by the Holy Spirit. I need to be enabled by the Holy Spirit. I need the power of the Holy Spirit to live a righteous life. I need the power of God to see the scriptures and understand it.

I need the mind of God to know how to go forward because without the mind of God all I can do is diminish the testimony of Christ in my own life and in the church that he's called me to pastor. And as they came to the borders again which I believe that we are at at this 25th anniversary time of Times Square Church and the season that we're living in they took three days and just camped there.

Most likely it was a time of reflection. The people would be looking across the Jordan at all that God had promised would be theirs. They would be thinking I suppose about the volumes of people before them who looked at the same places maybe stood in somewhat in the same vicinity looking across at the promises and yet not being able to form a right heart not being able to go in succumbing to fear succumbing to an inner desire that says well we know a better way than the way of God and we want to be called the people of God but we don't want to pay the price to walk with him.

There had to be an awareness in their hearts that the victory would not come but through personal cost and obedience. There would be casualties and they would be aware of that. There would be people who'd pay a price.

We're living in a generation where we would be wise to consider that to walk with God in the fullness of what he has for us there will be some who pay a price. Some will go through and their whole journey and testimony will be about provision will be about victory be about songs of joy and thank God for that but some will have to go first and their testimony will be as the early church.

It will be about scorning and ridicule and mockery and even imprisonments and difficulties. They had to pay a price and they were aware of this and we would be wise to be aware of this today. We're living in a generation that is not for Christ and I think that's becoming more evident as time is going on we're at a very real crossroads in this country right now.

Very real. Very real. We're on the very edge and we're either going to go with God or we're going to go into abject godlessness. It's not going to go both ways for much longer. There has to be a revival.

There there has to be prayer again. We've got to get in the scriptures and walk seriously with God. There has to be a testimony. Joshua knew that their reliance had to be totally on the leading of God and not on human intellect.

The officers after three days went through the host and they commanded the people and said when you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord when you when you see that which represented the presence and the power of God and you see the priest the Levites bearing it when you see the leadership that God has placed over you beginning to move in a certain direction he said get up from where you are and go with it.

Go after it. If you see the leadership moving in a certain direction don't the time of sitting and reflecting is over. The time for action has come. The time to stop studying about who is your neighbor and the time to go to your neighbor has come.

This is where we're living today. No longer an option just to study and use that as a mask for inaction. Like the lawyer came to Jesus who is my neighbor? What a ridiculous question for somebody that's supposed to be teaching the people.

He said there shall be a space between you and it about 2 ,000 cubits by measure come not near to it that you may know the way by which you must go for you have not passed this way before. In other words don't in the excitement of with what God is about to do be careful that you don't run ahead of God.

Many revivals are brought into confusion and even reproach because the people they get excited because we've been waiting for so long for the Lord to do something on a grander scale than we've known and when he starts to there's this tendency to want to run with it to want to in a sense leave behind the leading of God and make something happen.

And it leads the work of God into confusion because you and I realistically don't have anything to add to the kingdom of God except obedience and hearts that love the Lord Jesus Christ. He said keep a distance and be aware that if you run ahead of God you're going to make some tragic mistakes.

Holiness and the Meaning of Sanctification

Now listen to the caution the Lord's given me this morning. And Joshua said to the people sanctify yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you and the word in the original text here's what it means to be made clean to be regarded as holy to be set aside for the worship of God to be withheld from ordinary use and treated with special care as something which belongs to God.

In other words be set apart walk cleanly be a living testimony of the fact that Christ has risen from the dead be set aside for the worship of God. Even if people don't worship God live in such a manner that when they see you they're forced to consider the reality of God.

Don't live an ordinary life realize that you are a high priesthood a holy people you are peculiar people you're called to show forth the life of he who has called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

Joshua was keenly aware that even Moses were forbidden entrance into the supernatural place of promise because he had failed to sanctify the Lord before the people. That would have been a truth that was so deeply embedded in his heart.

In Numbers 27 let me just read it to you verses 12 to 14. The Lord said to Moses get thee up into this Mount Abiram and see the land which I've given unto the children of Israel and when you've seen it you'll be gathered to your people as Aaron your brother was gathered for you rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin in the strife of the congregation to sanctify me at the water before their eyes.

Joshua was aware even Moses. Now think about this could see it but couldn't go into it because he failed to sanctify what means he failed to set God apart as other than men are. Moses representing God took the staff and struck twice the rock when God was wanting to be merciful he portrayed him as angry.

You know many preachers don't go in to the life that Christ offers because they portray God as an angry God when in his heart he desires to be merciful. There is a day of justice and retribution and judgment coming rightly deserved by all of humanity but till that day God remains a merciful God.

Honest Prayer and the Refusal to Make Peace With Sin

We begin to pray and fast for three days for next week for the the promise of spiritual healing for our city and for our nation but listen to what the psalmist says and I'll read it to you again in Psalm 66 verses 17 to 20.

I cried unto him with my mouth and he was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me but verily God has heard me and has attended to the voice of my prayer blessed be God which has not turned away my prayer nor his mercy from me.

Wouldn't it be awesome for you and I to be able to say that at the end of three days blessed be God he heard me and he didn't turn away from me and he didn't withhold his mercy from me. I came to him honestly.

I didn't come to him in pretense. I didn't come to him proudfully. I didn't come to him boasting of my own righteousness or faithfulness because none of us are righteous or faithful in ourselves. But I came to him honestly and I stood before God and I said Lord.

I want to be set aside for you. I want to live righteously. I want to be a man or woman of God who makes a difference in my generation. I want your glory to come into my home and touch my children my grandchildren and my nieces and nephews and my brothers and my sisters.

I want your glory in my house. I want you to be the Christ of my life. I want the divine resource of heaven that's promised to those who belong to God to be mine. I'm tired of mediocrity. I'm tired of of talking about something I should be walking.

I'm tired about reading in history what you did through somebody else at some other time. And just like the people at that border they had to be considering this one more time and saying God Almighty.

If it cost me my life then let it cost me my life. But I'm going to go in and I want what is mine. If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me. Now here's what it means if I regard iniquity in my heart to regard means to see something intellectually.

It means to experience something to understand something and to enjoy something that's regarding. And iniquity means sin first and foremost. That means to to see that what I'm doing is sin. To intellectually understand it to experience it and to enjoy it is regarding iniquity.

It also means falsehood. That means I know that what I'm doing is wrong. I'm experiencing something that I know is wrong. I understand that what I'm doing is wrong but I enjoy what I'm doing even though it's wrong.

It means emptiness. It means the planning and expression of deception. If I know that what I'm doing is deceptive yet I continue to do it. It means being bent crooked like an arrow missing the mark. It means to deal deceitfully as under a cloak.

It means to live two ways one way in public and another way in private. If I regard if I if I it doesn't mean that Christian people don't struggle. We all struggle. But there's a difference between being in a place where you're having to trust God for the victory or being in a place where you don't want the victory.

You've made peace with your sin. You've opened the door you've invited it in you've sat it down and you're feeding it and nurturing it and you're enjoying it. And it gets to the point where you're able to call evil good and call good evil.

Folks I've seen this deception in people. It's a it's a terrifying thing. That's why Jesus said if the light that is in you be darkness how great is that darkness. A person who knows truth but lives in sin for a long time eventually will succumb to the the fallen sin nature in us that wants to be as God.

Remember that that was the that was the temptation of Satan in the Garden of Eden. You will be as God and you will be able to say or know what is good and what is evil. And eventually when you play with sin for too long something gets into the mind something gets into the spirit and wrong becomes right.

And somehow this twisted spiritual thinking comes into a person's mind where they're doing something abjectly wrong. They once knew it was but now they believe it's righteous or somehow God understands it.

And even though the scripture says they walk in the imagination of their heart they somehow believe that all will be well when it won't be well. If I'm aware of a false practice in my life and I make no effort to move away from it that's regarding iniquity.

I make no effort. I know it's wrong but I don't move away from it. Listen to what Paul says how he describes this. I'm going to read it to you again. Just listen to me please. First Corinthians 6 verses 9 to 11.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Now it's it's not just a future inheritance. It's a present inheritance. Remember Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you. The the full the that which is the promised land is Christ.

It's the word of God it's the redemption of God. It's the power of God. It's the new life that is promised to us through Jesus Christ. Do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit this kingdom. We will read about it but never know it.

Don't be deceived. Neither fornicators. That means people who are engaged in sexual activity outside of marriage. Nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate means male prostitutes nor abusers of themselves with mankind.

It means people who are practicing homosexuality. Nor thieves nor covetous that means greedy people nor drunkards nor revilers. That means people who live and slander other people without conscience nor extortioners.

That means people who cheat in all of its various forms shall inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived. Now you and I can can sit at the borders of the land of promise and study and know it. But Paul says it don't deceive yourself if if you live in these things and are not moving away from them.

I'm not saying that people don't struggle with this don't misunderstand me. But the child of God is not willing to make peace with sin. The true child of God moves away from it and begins to say Lord.

You said that if anyone is in Christ he's a new creation. The old things are passed away and all things have become new. You said the spirit of God is upon me because he sent me to open the prison doors to those that are bound.

Give sight to the spiritually blind to heal those that have been bruised in heart to set free the captives. That's what you said Jesus. So therefore I'm not making peace with this. I'm not going to live this way.

I'm not going to deceive myself. I'm getting up and I'm walking out of here by the power of Christ within me. And Paul says such were some of you. And I like that when he writes to the Corinthian church he says some of you were these things.

But you're washed. You're sanctified. You're justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. You came to Calvary for your cleansing. You trusted God that his word is true and his Holy Spirit is adequate to make that word a living reality in your life.

You knew that the blood of Jesus brought you into a place of acceptance with Almighty God not by works of righteousness but by his mercy. You knew that you sit in Christ at the right hand of God but you are not willing to do despite to this spirit of grace.

You're not willing to take this position that God sets you in and somehow make it an unclean thing. No you have a genuine conversion in your heart and so by the spirit of Almighty God. You said Lord I'm up and I'm out and I'm going to live the life that God has provided for me in Christ Jesus.

Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. If I truly see the calling of God on my life now God called me as he called Abraham. He called you as he called Abraham. He said I'm going to multiply you which is what he will do.

I'll make you more than you are. I'll give you more than you have. I'll take you to more places than you can ever go in your own strength and I'm going to bless you and through you. He said all the people of the world are going to be blessed.

This is the calling of God. This is the calling of God on my life. This is the calling of God on your life now it takes various forms. I'm called to walk a certain path and you're called to walk another.

But every one of our callings are for the specific purpose of bringing glory to Jesus Christ and bringing men to Christ on the earth. If I see the calling of God and I hold it lightly or like Esau I consider it of little value.

If I see what I'm called to be and I choose a lesser pathway then heaven may one day be my home. But like those who chose the wilderness the fullness of that which Jesus would have been in and through my life will fall like sand through my hands.

If I choose a lesser path and everyone has that choice you and I must be aware of this today in order for us to see what I believe God wants to do. It is not going to be Christianity like usual there's going to be a measure of obedience that perhaps many of us have not had to face in this degree before.

Isaiah’s Fast: Mercy, Justice, and Restoration

I want one more time just to read to you and I've read it so many times in this church but I have to read it again because I know this is what God is speaking to my heart and it's what he's speaking to this church.

Is not this the fast that I've chosen to loose the bands of wickedness undo the heavy burdens that you let the oppressed go free and break every yoke. Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry. And you bring the poor that are cast out to your house.

When you see the naked you cover him and that you do not hide from your own flesh or that other translation just say from human need or humankind. If you do these things now here's the promised land then your light will break forth as the morning.

Your health will spring forth speedily. Your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your protection or your reward. Then you will call and the Lord will answer and you will cry and he will say here I am.

If you take away from the midst of you the yoke. In other words make a concerted effort to help people. The putting forth of the finger that means blame and speaking vanity empty talk. And if you draw out your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul then your light will rise in obscurity and your darkness will be as the noon day.

And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul and drought and make fat your bones. And you will be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail. Not. This is a promise of God not just to Israel to Isaiah but to those of us who are grafted into this promise through Jesus Christ has adopted children into these promises of God.

They they belong to us. The Lord will guide you. The Lord will satisfy your soul even when there's no water around. He will make fat your bones and you'll be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters don't fail.

Didn't Jesus say that whoever believes in me out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. And those that be of you will build the old waste places and you will raise up the foundations of many generations.

And you will be called the repairer of the breach and the restorer of paths to dwell in the one who the ones who patched up the wall where the enemy was able to get in and walk among the people of the testimony of God seemingly without any hindrance.

You'll be the one who repairs this breach and restores the past to dwell in. If you and I are willing to take seriously the call of God that is placed on each of our lives. The question we must ask ourselves today is simply do we care enough about other people to live in a manner that allows God's power and testimony to flow through us to them.

Do we care enough that we really fully understood why we are part of the church of Jesus Christ. Do we really understand why the church is in the world. What is the purpose and point of the church. It's not just an exclamation point to the cross.

The church is the continued work bringing men and women to the understanding of what the cross was all about by being an example to them of the Christ who gave his all that people might come to know him.

Reaching the Poor and Marginalized With the Gospel

You know technically speaking the first one saved when they went into the promised land was a harlot and her family. You know these things don't happen by accident. This is a prostitute and her family.

This was the first people. Now when I say saved I'm not talking about necessarily redeemed. I'm talking about a although there's a discussion we could have about that at some other time. But what I'm talking about is physically saved was a harlot a prostitute.

It it's a type of you and I going to those that don't have anybody that cares about them. They they don't have a lot to add to the big program. They are not the upper middle and upper class. How tragic in our generation that we've had churches that have actually built their growth strategy on pushing away the poor and reaching out to the upper class.

And I'm not against this people who live there. Thank God for that. But what a tragedy. How how you have so vacated the scriptures to even think like that how people have walked away from truth to to even allow that kind of absurd thinking into the church of Jesus Christ.

It proves that it's become a carnal kingdom and not a spiritual kingdom. Give us the poor the addicted the marginalized these become these folks become some of the greatest evangelists the church has ever known there.

You don't have to give them a course of how to talk about Jesus. They'll talk about Jesus the moment they get saved. Do we believe that God is willing to do wonders among us again. I do. I do with all my heart.

Believing God for Miracles and Revival

I do. I'm simply unwilling to live in a realm of humanly trying to reason the kingdom of God when God's power is available to us. I believe that Jesus Christ opens prison doors. I believe he gives sight to the blind.

I believe that he heals the wounded in heart. I believe that he opens the treasure of heaven to those that know they're poor. I believe this with all my heart. I believe that he heals releases sets free.

I believe that he empowers. I believe that he makes new creations. I believe it with everything in me. I believe he does it so powerfully and so profoundly that the only testimony you and I have is Jesus the name of Jesus there's no other testimony.

I believe that he breaks the power of tormenting thought that the devil has planted in people's minds. I believe that he erases the imprints of all of the evil of this world that has tried to gravitate and hold on to people's spirits.

I believe he gives hope where there is no hope. He gives strength where there is no strength. He gives ability where there is no ability. I believe it with all my heart. I believe that he heals marriages.

He takes hopeless powerless situations and puts love back where there is no love. I believe that with all my heart. I believe that he heals the sick. I believe he can raise the dead. I believe. I believe.

I believe. I believe. I believe with all my heart. I believe that he can sweep away the refuge of lies in New York City and for a season in a moment give every man woman and child an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

I believe he can touch our generation again. I believe he can give courage to the members of government in the senate and congress who are Christians to finally stand up and declare who they are in Christ.

I believe it because he's the same yesterday today and forever. He doesn't change. I believe that the wonders of God begin in his church. I believe the Salvation Army churches can be filled again with the presence of God and with people seeking him and Methodist Lutheran Baptist even the Catholic Church God can fill.

I believe it and I stand and stake my life on it. I give my life to this city and to this cause of God in our generation. I believe it with everything in me. Enough apologizing enough shying away enough cowering enough trying to explain away the power of God.

I believe that I can cross Jordan and go from death to life. I believe it with all my heart. I believe I can have the promises of God. I can inherit the life that is mine in Christ. I believe it with everything in my heart.

I believe that every Jericho in my life must come down when Jesus is at the center of my heart. I don't care how thick the walls are. I don't care how long it's been there. I don't care how much it mocks God.