SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's so good to be back.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad Daniel's not mad at me anymore and has actually invited me back after so many years.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what kind of things are going on in his soul, but maybe some counselors could get with him to forgive whatever I did.
SPEAKER_00: Let me start this morning by telling you what kind of idiot that I can be.
SPEAKER_00: Is that okay?
SPEAKER_00: Is that can I start that way?
SPEAKER_00: Do I have to be too slick?
SPEAKER_00: In the last, as you're gonna see in just a few moments, I'm about to do a sermon where it matters where East and West is here in mid-cities.
SPEAKER_00: So I very dramatically in the last service went this way with East.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, all the leaders in the front rows let me do it.
SPEAKER_00: Did anyone stand up and say, My brother, we love you dearly, we're so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Please put your hands in.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: However, your pastor has given me a guide to bring up in the.
SPEAKER_00: It says, I don't know if the cameras can catch this, it says, open.
SPEAKER_00: And then in the side, it's got a compass for the pulpit at Mid-Cities, which only increases the hurt in my heart about not having been here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm having fun.
SPEAKER_00: Some of it, probably some visitors going, what kind of church is this?
SPEAKER_00: These crazy guest speakers.
SPEAKER_00: It is so good to be here.
SPEAKER_00: I love you guys.
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful to be back.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so let's get to it.
SPEAKER_00: It is Palm Sunday, and I love Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I like the years, uh, I like rituals, good, healthy rituals, not dead rituals.
SPEAKER_00: I like rituals that we have where we honor Christmas Eve and Easter and Palm Sunday and those things in our Christian calendar.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you may be from backgrounds where they even had more.
SPEAKER_00: And I think I think uh almost all of it is very, very healthy and wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I I I love Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of you, and I and I I love this, you you have a spiritual background that's not like mine.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't become a believer until some decades into my life.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but some of you have been celebrating Palm Sunday since you were just, you know, little tykes, right?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have just grew up in the church?
SPEAKER_00: And Palm Sunday has been part of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Look at these hands.
SPEAKER_00: Put them up high so people in the rest of the room can see them.
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for that.
SPEAKER_00: And then some of you backslidden pagans that didn't get saved until much, much later, like me.
SPEAKER_00: It took longer for the gospel to work, and uh, and so I became a believer in, you know, my basically late teens, twenties kind of thing, and some of you were later, and that that's great.
SPEAKER_00: It's all great.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever the Lord draws you, obviously, is uh working out his plan.
SPEAKER_00: But uh what I want to say is that uh isn't it great that we have these moments that we can ponder certain times uh in in Christian and biblical history and the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So let me restate what Palm Sunday is from a Christian perspective and bring some things out of Scripture that will help you.
SPEAKER_00: And then I want to add uh uh a historical truth that often is not talked about uh in when we're talking about Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: So so you know, if this is Jerusalem, where you are sitting, where all of you are sitting, is Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Just imagine this is the city of Jerusalem in the first century when Jesus was walking.
SPEAKER_00: This way is the east.
SPEAKER_00: Take a lot of abuse to work with Daniel, that's all I gotta say.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm having fun.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is east.
SPEAKER_00: And up on the east side of Jerusalem to this day, and of course in the time of Jesus, is a mountain called the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: You can see it from almost everywhere in Jerusalem unless the buildings block the view.
SPEAKER_00: At the bottom of that, by the way, is the Garden of Gethsemane.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Jesus planned and scripted Palm Sunday very specifically.
SPEAKER_00: He had spent the night before in a city called Bethany, that's at the top of the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: He had told his disciples to go and find a donkey, a little young donkey for him.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason was that all of the ancient kings of Israel uh symbolized that they were kings coming into the city, according to the words in Zechariah 9 9.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read them to you.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Rejoice greatly, daughters I am.
SPEAKER_00: Rejoice, daughter Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: That's Zechariah 9:9.
SPEAKER_00: And so when Jesus told his disciples to get a donkey for him to ride in on, one that had never been ridden before, and he was going to come down this mountain, uh, he was absolutely symbolizing something for all of Israel, that he was the king coming to his city.
SPEAKER_00: Now you need, I want to get, I want you to get the picture.
SPEAKER_00: It's Passover that week.
SPEAKER_00: That this is the beginning of the week at the time of Jesus when Passover is about to happen in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: What you need to know about that is that Jerusalem normally was about 25,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: But scholars now say that during Passover, where the Jews were actually commanded to come to Jerusalem to to observe Passover, uh, it would balloon up ten times or more.
SPEAKER_00: It would be it would go from 25,000 up to 200,000 or 250,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the houses weren't gigantic, you couldn't house all those people, you didn't have Hilton's and Marriott's.
SPEAKER_00: So people are sleeping in the streets.
SPEAKER_00: And all around the city on the hills, there are tents just everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands and thousands and thousands of people who have made pilgrimage from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, and now they're up all around.
SPEAKER_00: Well, so when Jesus comes down on the afternoon of the first day of the week, that week of Passover, sometime around 30 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: approximately, scholars debate the exact year, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he begins to come down and the people go crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They realize what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: They've heard about the miracles, they've heard about the raising of Lazarus from the dead, they've seen people who have been healed, and they know, uh, at least for that moment, uh, they know that he is the king.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's coming down this way, guys.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming down uh the Mount of Olives, he's on the donkey.
SPEAKER_00: People are throwing their cloaks and their robes, and of course, at a tent city, you're gonna have lots of tarps and blankets and bedding and so on.
SPEAKER_00: They're throwing all that in the path so that his even his donkey's feet don't touch the dirt.
SPEAKER_00: And he's coming down.
SPEAKER_00: He comes halfway down the mountain, and there's a little ledge, even to this day, uh, there on the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: He pauses, he weeps, he prophesies over Jerusalem, he knows what's gonna happen in 70 AD, that Roman armies are gonna surround the city and uh and destroy it.
SPEAKER_00: He sees that already, he's speaking prophetically, and then he continues on down the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: The people are shouting, the Pharisees are upset and saying, Tell them to stop.
SPEAKER_00: He says, No, I won't do it.
SPEAKER_00: And people are just shouting and celebrating and weeping and throwing things in the air and waving palm branches and so on.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally he comes into the city and he goes to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why we celebrate Palm Sunday, because Jesus the King is coming to his city and he has made the biggest statement of his kingship in his entire earthly life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you have been celebrating that uh for years, and that's powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Many times churches hand out palm fronds.
SPEAKER_00: I've been in churches where there are live donkeys.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's dangerous, but whatever, live donkeys in the room.
SPEAKER_00: Um I when I used to pastor a church of size in Nashville, and only mention the size because of what I'm about to say, um the we would almost always after church go to a Kurdish restaurant in Nashville called Mezgeens.
SPEAKER_00: It's not there anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and when I on Palm Sunday took a couple of families with us, my my two kids took a couple of families with us to Mezgeens, and and the the Kurdish owner, it named Mezgeen, saw uh all these people coming in with these palm fronds, right?
SPEAKER_00: So now I've got like three dozen, well, a dozen kids, and they've all got and they've been collecting palm fronds from other people who didn't want to take them home.
SPEAKER_00: So there are 5,000 palm fronds walking in the road door of this restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: The Kurdish guy walks up to me and goes, Stephen, I tell you, I don't know how to cook these things.
SPEAKER_00: How do I do it?
SPEAKER_00: That's he thought we were bringing food we wanted him to prepare.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of Kurdish thinking.
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, Mesgeen.
SPEAKER_00: That's and I was able to tell him the story from that, but he was freaked out for a moment because he thought he was gonna have to cook palm fronds in some way to make these Christians happy.
SPEAKER_00: It was very, it was a real moment.
SPEAKER_00: There's another thing that that Jesus was symbolizing, and we often don't mention it, it's fine.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little historical detail before I get to the big historical detail I want to bring, and that is that on the first day of the week is when the sacrifice lamb for Passover was chosen.
SPEAKER_00: It was traditionally and ritually done on the first day of the week.
SPEAKER_00: So at the same time that Jesus is coming down uh the Mount of Olives on a donkey and declaring himself king, he's also presenting himself as the sacrifice lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody got that imagery.
SPEAKER_00: He was coming to the city.
SPEAKER_00: Some people wouldn't catch it until he was actually sacrificed on the following uh at the end of the week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but there's no question, in retrospect, we know this every Jew knew that's the day on which the sacrifice lamb for Passover is chosen.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus entered the city to great fanfare.
SPEAKER_00: So those are the two things that we've we've talked about when it comes to Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I would like to bring another historical detail and apply it to our lives and our town, our town, our times.
SPEAKER_00: I'll apply it to your town too if you want, but I'm mainly going after the times.
SPEAKER_00: And that is that while on this side of the city, Jesus was coming in, declaring himself king and the lamb to be sacrificed, uh, which many people didn't understand until after the fact, there was another procession on the other side of the city.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a procession of Roman soldiers.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that these Roman soldiers were coming were to reinforce, fortify the city because the Romans feared Passover.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans feared Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Think about what Passover actually meant to the Romans who were power-oriented.
SPEAKER_00: What's Passover?
SPEAKER_00: Passover is a remembrance of that when the Jews lived in Egypt, 400 years of slavery and captivity.
SPEAKER_00: God's going to deliver them.
SPEAKER_00: He raises up Moses, he sends the ten plagues to convince Pharaoh, and these people are liberated from an empire.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Romans aren't stupid.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly Jerusalem grows from 25,000 to 250,000.
SPEAKER_00: There are far, far, far more Jews in Jerusalem now than there are soldiers as a regular matter of just normal defense.
SPEAKER_00: And so what the Romans would do would be to establish dominance.
SPEAKER_00: They would send a clear signal.
SPEAKER_00: You're not getting liberated, no riots, we are an empire, we know what Passover is about.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to show dominance.
SPEAKER_00: So hundreds and hundreds of soldiers would come marching in with great fanfare and drums, and some marching on the ground, some on horses, dramatic clothing and so on of the time, the standards of their uh of their units and so on.
SPEAKER_00: And they would come from the other side of the city, from the west, and they would march into the city very dramatically.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if many of you have been around the military, you've seen marches where hundreds of soldiers are marching uh down a street.
SPEAKER_00: It's very powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Armed soldiers fully decked out, marching in cadence.
SPEAKER_00: It just makes an impression.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what was going on from the other side of the city.
SPEAKER_00: That happened late in the afternoon because they had to come some hours away from Caesarea Philippi, which was a fort on the coast of the Mediterranean, they would march for some hours.
SPEAKER_00: They would arrive on the afternoon of the first day of the week.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly when Jesus is coming down the other way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to suggest to you, and by the way, this is the way Christians have interpreted this all through history.
SPEAKER_00: That in addition to Jesus declaring himself king, in addition to Jesus presenting himself as the sacrifice lamb of Passover, he scheduled, he put this in his coming into the city at a time when the procession of the Romans is happening on the other side of the city.
SPEAKER_00: It was a counter-demonstration.
SPEAKER_00: He was demonstrating something.
SPEAKER_00: And what he was saying, in essence, is the kingdom of God has come.
SPEAKER_00: The true king is here.
SPEAKER_00: And in order for you to understand the power of this, let me just give you a little bit again.
SPEAKER_00: Every so often I like to take off, you know, move my preacher's robe a little to the side and go historian for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just remind you of how evil the Roman Empire was.
SPEAKER_00: The Roman Empire existed for 800 years by this time.
SPEAKER_00: And uh when the Romans conquered a people, they absorbed their gods.
SPEAKER_00: So there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gods that are that are worshipped.
SPEAKER_00: It's a demonized place, very evil, very occult, uh, you know, sacrifices going on, altars all over the streets and the parks and everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And you couldn't really do anything without having to satisfy some God with an offering.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to have a baby, you were supposed to sacrifice to a certain God.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to plant a field, you were supposed to sacrifice to a certain God.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to build a home or whatever you were doing, there was some God to make happy with some sacrifice at some altar along the streets.
SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, they weren't watching the NFL on Sunday afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: They were watching people murder each other in the Colosseum.
SPEAKER_00: Bloody, bloody, bloody.
SPEAKER_00: Uh babies were that were unwanted were exposed on the city walls.
SPEAKER_00: The elderly were expected to kill themselves and not be a burden on society.
SPEAKER_00: It was a bloody, violent, occult, demonic culture.
SPEAKER_00: And it covered one quarter of the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's how big the Roman Empire was.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't have another empire that large until the British Empire in the 1800s, almost two centuries later.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I'll stop being historian.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to understand that even though we don't have it in the pages of scripture, we know for sure historically that while Jesus is coming in from the east down to uh the city from the west at the same time march the forces of this evil antichrist demonic idolatrous empire where the emperor is worshipped as a God.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say to you that I believe it's important that we know this because from now on I'm hoping that when you celebrate Palm Sunday, yes, celebrate that Jesus is king, yes, celebrate that he's the sacrifice lamb of God, but also see it as a day in which Jesus chose to demonstrate very obviously that the kid the true kingdom has arrived, and the false kingdoms and the false kings are gonna have to fall.
SPEAKER_00: Now he would be killed with that message on his lips by the end of that week and raised from the dead, and that's when everything would be would be energized by the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: But what you need to hear is that that time is when Jesus chose to declare in a big demonstration what he had been demonstrating all throughout his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when he first started preaching the gospel, the Bible says, and Jesus went about preaching the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: While he was walking around preaching, uh he would he would say things like, If I'm doing signs and wonders, then the pink kingdom of God is among you.
SPEAKER_00: And almost all of his parables are the kingdom of God is like this, the kingdom of God is like that, the kingdom of God is like a piece of grain, the kingdom of God is like a bird, the kingdom of God is you understand, the kingdom of God's like a man goes out and plants a field.
SPEAKER_00: It's all about the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And at the very end, on the last day, the last uh day uh the first day of that week and the last week of his life, he gave a massive demonstration.
SPEAKER_00: I've been talking about the kingdom of God, and now it's come.
SPEAKER_00: Now, finally, all these minutes into this sermon, we can get to our scripture for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's how long it's taking me to get here.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at Galatians 4-4, because I want to make a point that's relevant to us.
SPEAKER_00: In Galatians 4 4, Paul says something extremely important that I think will show you and be a parallel with our own times.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 4 4, it says, But when the fullness of time had come, here it is, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
SPEAKER_00: I want to focus on the first sentence, basically, the first portion of that sentence.
SPEAKER_00: But when the fullness of time had come, there's a very powerful word used there.
SPEAKER_00: The word fullness is the Greek word pluroma, just spelled just like it sounds, P-L-E-R-O-M-A.
SPEAKER_00: And it means pregnant.
SPEAKER_00: It means pregnant.
SPEAKER_00: I remember my uh Southern grandmother from South Georgia used to say of a woman who was about to give birth, Ma, she is in her fullness.
SPEAKER_00: That's how she talked.
SPEAKER_00: And and uh that that was that was a that comes directly from this kind of language, a woman being in her fullness, a woman being pregnant, a woman about to give birth, they spoke the same way in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so uh what this scripture is saying is that despite the fact the times are evil at the time of Jesus, despite the fact you have this empire that is uh just demonic and evil and bloody and violent and and atrocious and idolatrous, despite the fact uh that even the church will go through great persecution, in God's way of thinking, this is a time pregnant for his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: This is a time, he was saying, that was pregnant for his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you that this should shape the way we think today.
SPEAKER_00: Because most Christians today, I have to say, not to be negative, most Christians today basically think like this uh the world is evil, I was part of it, Jesus saved me, uh now I'll try to stay pure until Jesus takes us out of here.
SPEAKER_00: That's how most Christians think.
SPEAKER_00: And it's getting that that attitude is actually growing in our generation as Christians all over the world see the difficulties in the news, see the upheaval, see the problems, see the hassles, and go, man, these are dark times.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, take me out of here.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to suggest to you that the Lord wants a people.
SPEAKER_00: He's calling a people, in fact, he's calling all of his people, but for those who will hear, he's calling a people to realize that when times are dark, when they are evil, when demons are raging, when people are upset, that's not a time in which God is apart from human history.
SPEAKER_00: That is a time in which human history is pregnant for the purposes of God and a great breaking out of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this that's what Palm Sunday ought to mean to us.
SPEAKER_00: And having said all of this and taken all this time, I now have seven points for you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Three-point sermons are for wimps.
SPEAKER_00: I just have to say, if one of your pastors, Chris, if you're preaching a three-point sermon, brother, repent.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying, repent.
SPEAKER_00: Seven, baby, seven point sermons.
SPEAKER_00: But to do that, at this point in the sermon, you gotta talk as fast like a Yankee as I do, okay?
SPEAKER_00: My Southern cousins say Stephen talks fast like a Yankee on drugs.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh, I may be on drugs this morning, I'm not gonna disclose, but I am gonna move fast and finish these seven points.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: I even though we're talking about heavy things, I love joking around and relaxing a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to be relaxed in sure.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is this.
SPEAKER_00: We are living at a time, certainly in American history, and I think global history, that is very much like the time of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: We we we may not have the overt violence and an arena and so on, but let me tell you, uh, I I every so often I want to bring maybe to you a little bit of what's happening in universities and what's happening in intellectual areas.
SPEAKER_00: There are actual academic conferences happening in some of the big universities in this country where they are debating, are we Rome?
SPEAKER_00: Have we become Rome?
SPEAKER_00: These are these are not religious people, these are people uh who are studying history and say we look like Rome.
SPEAKER_00: There's a major book that I've read in the last 18 months that's called Are We Rome?
SPEAKER_00: It's written by a major scholar, and he draws the conclusion basically that we're Rome-ish and we can continue becoming like Rome if we head that way.
SPEAKER_00: We may not be exposing babies on the city walls, but there are actually more babies being aborted every day than there were before Roe v.
SPEAKER_00: Way was overturned by the Supreme Court.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know there's actually more?
SPEAKER_00: Uh we may not be uh asking our elderly to go in the back room and and and off themselves, but we definitely are are figuring out ways for them to get into pods and die in their old age and how to how to kill off the elderly.
SPEAKER_00: You know that you know these trends in science and in culture.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I could go on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00: We are living in times that are very much like Rome, which I think ought to be good news.
SPEAKER_00: Not because of the pain and the evil and the suffering and the blood, but because if we won in that environment one time in history by the Spirit of God, we can definitely do it again.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what God intends.
SPEAKER_00: I think you ought to be encouraged by Galatians 4 4, which basically says this horribly evil time was pregnant for God's purposes.
SPEAKER_00: Your times that are horribly evil and demonic are also pregnant for God's purposes.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that with my whole heart.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to just hold in your ideas.
SPEAKER_00: I go through the rest of these points that we're living in times, if you want to be silly, call it Rome-ish, but are very, very much like Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And there are whole doctoral dissertations and major books being done on that topic now.
SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: It's something to watch happening in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: These are not things generated by Christians, these are things generated by non-Christian scholars.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, here's why this is good news.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's exactly during times like these that God, all through history, has poured out his spirit most powerfully.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: One of my academic subfields is studying the history of revivals.
SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you that almost every time that I could take you back in history and teach about a certain revival or outpouring over the Holy Spirit, just before that revival, we remember the revival and get all excited.
SPEAKER_00: Just before, times were evil and harsh, children were abused, prostitution rained, violence was horrible, people were murdered on the streets.
SPEAKER_00: I could go on and on and on and on with what it was like at that time.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Spirit of God was poured out and changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: For example, right now, what is one of the worst places to live on this planet?
SPEAKER_00: If we were doing a survey, I would have to say that living in Iran right now is one of the worst places you could possibly live, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, not only because of the oppression of the government and the darkness of all of that, but then you got bombs, western bombs falling and all that.
SPEAKER_00: We aren't going to discuss all that right now.
SPEAKER_00: But the main thing is about the last place you want to be living is Tehran.
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you a question.
SPEAKER_00: In what country of the world is the gospel progressing the most rapidly?
SPEAKER_00: Iran.
SPEAKER_00: No question, statistically, the country where the gospel is progressing most rapidly is the country that none of us would want to be living in right now.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's how God works.
SPEAKER_00: He pours out his spirit in the midst of the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, kind of a cute thing.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how the uh church in Iran is working?
SPEAKER_00: They're doing cell churches in cars.
SPEAKER_00: They can't sit in apartments and sing in worship.
SPEAKER_00: So they developed a style of getting in cars and driving around with the with the satellite record recorded preaching and songs in Arabic, and as they drive drove around, they couldn't be found.
SPEAKER_00: So we actually know from military reports, I hate to laugh because it's people are dying.
SPEAKER_00: But we actually know that these uh the leaders of these churches, we're talking about thousands and thousands of cars.
SPEAKER_00: They'll they'll they'll go, okay, the bombs aren't falling.
SPEAKER_00: Get in the car real quick.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll get in and they'll drive just anywhere, like around on a survey, just anywhere, and they'll worship and they'll pray and they'll hear you know uh farci uh preaching and so on, and then when they hear the sirens, they'll put the car back in the garage and go get in the shelters.
SPEAKER_00: And the gospel right this minute is progressing more rapidly in Iran than at any time in history since the first century when the gospel first went there.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's who your God is.
SPEAKER_00: That's who your God is.
SPEAKER_00: The darker it is, don't curse the times, don't hate the times, be prophetic Christians who understand that in the darkness is when God begins to move.
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the places that's got the largest churches in the world, if we were if I was asking it just as a survey matter, what country has the largest churches in the world?
SPEAKER_00: China.
SPEAKER_00: No question.
SPEAKER_00: I was asked about two years ago if I would if I could do a seminar, it ended up because of some persecution not happening.
SPEAKER_00: I was asked to do a seminar.
SPEAKER_00: Would you do it online for the Chinese Underground Church?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, no question.
SPEAKER_00: I'd be happy to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Began to get ready.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they said, now we just explained to you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this will be 25 to 30 million people who'll be watching.
SPEAKER_00: 25 to 30 million.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've spoken to maybe a football stadium full of men for a promise keepers event.
SPEAKER_00: 25 to 30 million.
SPEAKER_00: I've never in my whole, I never dreamed I would speak to that, and I still haven't, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to one day.
SPEAKER_00: But that would that was just that was not even an entire church.
SPEAKER_00: That was part of a Chinese church, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking to your pastor to confirm so you don't think I'm crazy.
SPEAKER_00: The same guy who deceived me about directions, but whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the the do you do you see the power of this?
SPEAKER_00: Where do you not want to live?
SPEAKER_00: China, where do you not want to live?
SPEAKER_00: Russia, where do you not want to live?
SPEAKER_00: Iran, the gospel's moving more powerfully there than it is in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's how God works.
SPEAKER_00: He looks for where the darkness is heaviest and he pours out his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why, and this is the next thing I want you to uh just grab hold of for your times, that's why if you look with compassion and discernment, this is number three, about our times, you'll see that people are longing for the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: I know that, I know that people are uh are, you know, you can be disgusted with the world, you get upset at the sexuality, you can get upset at doctrines, you can get upset at music and so on.
SPEAKER_00: But but but maybe, and and I understand that I'm not saying we should back off on holding up moral stance, but if we'll just take a step back a little bit, sometimes look at what they're longing for.
SPEAKER_00: What are they hungering for?
SPEAKER_00: What's the human heart surging for?
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes 3 says that God has put eternity in in the hearts of all people.
SPEAKER_00: So their hearts surge for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: They want the kingdom, they want connection with God, they may not even know it.
SPEAKER_00: They think the solutions found in drugs or pleasure or sex or or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the fact of the matter is that that before they try to find those false solutions because they they're somewhat blinded, the Bible says, uh, that they're longing for the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: You're living at a time when people are longing for the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Why is it in almost, I mean, I don't want to go too far with this, but why is it in almost every great revival, it's the drug dealers and the prostitutes and the murderers who get most radically saved and are kind of like tokens of God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: It's because these people were doing crazy stuff, trying to answer their soul's need for what ultimately was the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Hear that, hear that.
SPEAKER_00: I can get disgusted with modern music and what have you, but then when I look at the lyrics and I consider what they're maybe talking about in the nastiest possible terms, they're asking for the kingdom, they're asking to be loved, they're asking to be whole, they're asking for a father who loves them, they're asking for belonging, they're asking for connection, they're asking not to wander the earth lonely and lost.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have our words for it, but that's what they're asking.
SPEAKER_00: Because these times are pregnant with the purposes of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings me to my fourth point that I want to say very quickly, and that is please hear me on this, and hear me talking to you as a friend.
SPEAKER_00: Stop resenting the times in which you live.
SPEAKER_00: What was said of a Jewish princess centuries ago is true of you.
SPEAKER_00: You have been brought to the kingdom for such a time as this.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody in here is accidentally stumbled into the wrong century.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody in here, you know, God, oh, I'm sorry, I just dropped Chris over there in Midland.
SPEAKER_00: I meant to put him in the 1800s, but okay, no, it ain't that way.
SPEAKER_00: You are where you, you are who you are with your gifts and personalities and look.
SPEAKER_00: You are where you are because a sovereign God puts you here now.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to stop looking at the news and going, Lord Jesus, why did I have to live in these times?
SPEAKER_00: Why couldn't I live in some other times?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell you, having a little bit of background in mental health and and done some things in graduate school that were kind of dramatic in terms of where we had to study, um, that people who want to live in another time and act like it are considered mentally insane in the mental health world.
SPEAKER_00: I I I would like to, if I had to choose where I'd most like to have lived, I would like to have been a general in the American Revolution.
SPEAKER_00: Now, suppose I walked around dressing and talking like I was a general in the American Revolution.
SPEAKER_00: I, the reason I mentioned my experience in graduate school is I we we were doing some mental health things and psychological studies and so on, and we went to a mental institution and had to intern there in Tulsa, and one of the guys I met thought he was Napoleon.
SPEAKER_00: Spoke French, had the manner.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he had really, I mean, he had studied it out, thought he was Napoleon.
SPEAKER_00: What was he?
SPEAKER_00: Nuts! He was nuts.
SPEAKER_00: I say that with love.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get mad at me.
SPEAKER_00: He was nuts.
SPEAKER_00: I would walk up and his name was George.
SPEAKER_00: I'd say hi, George.
SPEAKER_00: And he would set back an offense.
SPEAKER_00: He would let me know in a heavy French accent, with just a slight Louisiana twang.
SPEAKER_00: He would let me know in a heavy French accent that I had not honored the Emperor.
SPEAKER_00: So, in order to get any kind of conversation with him, I said, Emperor, it's I would it's awesome to see you today.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the here's my that point of my sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be stinking nuts.
SPEAKER_00: Don't want to live at another time.
SPEAKER_00: Embrace the fact that you are sovereignly placed for where you are right now.
SPEAKER_00: A few more points.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll do that, people will see the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Kingdom's not gonna come hovering over Midland Odessa and glowing in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom comes, as you guys do, exactly what I just saw in those videos: putting out food, taking care of the kids, taking care of the elderly, meeting the needs of the city, loving on people, encouraging politicians, all the things that you do, be the kingdom of God in this city.
SPEAKER_00: But it's got to come through you.
SPEAKER_00: It's got to come through you.
SPEAKER_00: My next point, very quickly, is that what this means is that we've got to expand our understanding of the anointing and the empowering of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we are the kingdom we're meant to be, it's not just gonna be people on stage here who are anointed, it's not just guys like Daniel or Chris or Andrew or what have you.
SPEAKER_00: We need people with anointings for every possible venture.
SPEAKER_00: I I work in the Muslim world extensively, I work in countries where they're recovering from war.
SPEAKER_00: I've been sitting there, I've been sitting there where, and I don't mean to be insulting, I would have traded every Christian teacher I know to have one anointed nurse, to have one anointed accountant who could explain this ridiculously complex budget in this country and tell me how we can squeeze out some money to take care of the poor and tell the government how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell them how to do it, you've got to tell me what the numbers are.
SPEAKER_00: I'd give anything to have one accountant.
SPEAKER_00: I'd give anything to have one pilot.
SPEAKER_00: Just give me one guy who can fly a plane over this mountain and we can take that tribe on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: You follow what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: There are anointings for flying, there are anointings for fixing engines, there are anointings for running restaurants, there are anointings for law firms, there are empowerings from the Holy Spirit for every kind of venture.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the kingdom of God looks like.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just look like anointed people on stage at a church, it looks like people anointed for every kind of venture and others seeing it and saying, What's different?
SPEAKER_00: How do you make a better bagel?
SPEAKER_00: For those of you not in New York, a bagel is a little round thing uh with a hole in them, anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so how do you do it better?
SPEAKER_00: How do you do it with devotion?
SPEAKER_00: How do you change lives with your gift?
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna be part of the kingdom, whatever gifts God has given you, don't despise them because they aren't stage things.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
SPEAKER_00: Get involved in asking Jesus to empower you for what you're meant to do right there on the scene.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, this all of this was empowered when Jesus came out of the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: All of this was empowered when Jesus was crucified, hung on the cross for six hours, and then that same spirit that raised Christ Jesus from the dead began to dwell in other human beings.
SPEAKER_00: My friends, if we will own it, if we'll stop resenting the times in which we live, if we'll stop being upset about the fact that things aren't comfortable enough for us, and I don't mean any rebuke, we may be living in the age of the greatest outpouring of the Spirit since Jesus came out of the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's unbelievable what's happening worldwide.
SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, as a guy who speaks a lot and travels a lot and watches it on different locations, that the main thing working against it is the attitude of the believers themselves, who can be mad about the times in which they live, who cannot understand what the kingdom of God is, they can be just like I described earlier, one foot outside, one always a hatch open, always trying to escape.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need people who escape.
SPEAKER_00: What God needs is people who plant themselves where they are, own where God has put them, and bear the fruit of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Let me close with this.
SPEAKER_00: Look up here, let's not bow our heads.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord Jesus fill your heart with a passion for the King of Kings.
SPEAKER_00: May you love his kingdom and begin to play your role in it like you never have before, rooting yourself in your place and your city and with the people God has put you with.
SPEAKER_00: May you understand the times are pregnant, and may you help give birth to God's sovereign will for this age.
SPEAKER_00: And may the Spirit of God empower you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Love you.