Eagle Heights Cathedral

Bishop James E. Collins: If it wasn't for your love, and it wasn't for your grace, I don't know where I'd be without you. Well, Church, it is so good to see you this crisp winter morning. I don't complain, but I'll be glad when winter's over. That's all I've got to say. Too much snow, too fast. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 7. I'm going to read again the scripture that we are standing on. I'll read it from the Easy-to-Read Version, but you should be able to follow me.

Matthew 7, beginning at verse 13. We are reading the words of Jesus. Go in through the narrow gate to get true life with God. There is a wide gate that is easy to go through. The wide path is easy to travel on. Many people find that wide gate, but it is the way that goes to God's final punishment. It is difficult to go through the small gate, and it is difficult to walk on the narrow road. But when you do go that way, you will get true life. Not many people find the narrow gate.

Some people say that they are prophets from God, but their words are false. They seem to be like sheep that are not dangerous, but they are really like hungry wild dogs. What they teach will hurt you. You will know these people by the way they live. The things that they do are like their fruit. Grapes do not grow on thornbushes. Figs do not grow on weeds. Good fruit grows on a tree that is good. Bad fruit grows on a tree that is not good. A good tree cannot make bad fruit. A bad tree cannot make good fruit.

A farmer will cut down any tree that does not make good fruit. He will burn it on the fire. In the same way, look at the way people live. Then you will know what they are really like. Some people say to me, "Master, Master, Lord, Lord," but not all of them will come into the kingdom of heaven. Only the people who obey God, my Father in heaven, will come in. They do what He wants them to do. On the day when God judges people, many of them will say, "Master, Master, we used your authority and we spoke a message from you. We used your authority and we sent bad spirits out of people. We used your authority to do many powerful things."

But I will say to these people, "I never knew you. You are wicked people who do not obey God, so go away from me." Father, I thank you for the reading of your word. I thank you that your word has already spoken. But then, Lord, take what you have given me that I might speak it according to your word. And Father, may we all receive it according to your Holy Spirit. Give us ears that hear, eyes that see, hearts and a desire to draw near my God to thee. This I pray and believe for by faith in Jesus' name. Amen and amen.

You may be seated in the presence of the Lord. I read the story about a man who lived in a foreign country, and he became a citizen of the United States. In the country where he was raised and grew up, there was a curfew that was overseen by the military. Beyond a certain time, the streets had to be cleared and everyone had to be in their homes. When he immigrated to the United States, he began immediately sightseeing to see part of the country that he was now becoming a part of. However, when he saw darkness set in, he looked at his watch.

He saw that he was about to pass his curfew time. Seeing a man getting in his car, he said, "Sir, would you please rush me back to my hotel so I won't overstay my curfew and get in trouble?" Now, the gentleman in the car couldn't figure out what in the world this man was talking about until it dawned on him that he was a foreigner and that he was a little mixed up about his new life in America. He explained and he assured the man that in the United States, the law that had been used to apply to his life no longer applied to this life.

He explained that he was no longer under the jurisdiction of the country he came from. He said to him, "You are in a new country now." And that meant that he was free to stay up and stay out. Then he explained that the restrictions of the old homeland no longer applied. You see, this man was in the United States but had not yet cast off the bondage of the old country. I parallel that today to say to us that many of us Christians, we've not yet learned how to cast off the old bondage of the old Adam.

We sing about freedom, we talk about freedom, and yet so many still feel the pressure of the curfew and the bondage of the oppression of the old law system under which we operated. Far too many Christians are in chains because they have spent so much time in the old country. I submit to you this day that there are many Christians who are still bound by chains to the old country in which they lived before Jesus set them free. The reason is that so many of us do not know that even though you have been made free, it is just not free, but our freedom runs deep.

Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." I hope that you see the ramifications of this good gospel news for you. This Bible says that every person under the sound of my voice, you are God's masterwork. You are His design, His craftsmanship, which means that your life and your destiny has already been prearranged by God. This means something that we often miss because we are so engaged in the struggle of trying to make our own way.

Please listen to the Holy Spirit. God has already gone ahead of you to make the way clear. Please don't miss this. He has not left you alone to figure out life. He has already settled it. This means that even in the moments when you feel like you have lost your way, you have not lost your way. You've just disconnected from the reality that God has your life in His hand. This is why we are learning this year how to live with a kingdom mindset. But listen, church, you have an enemy of your soul who is doing everything he can to keep you from walking in the freedom that Jesus came to deliver you to.

Remember this all the days of your life, that God never delivers you from something that He does not intend to deliver you to something. The enemy's greatest tactic is to interrupt the course that God has designed for you. His attacks are distractions. They are designed to pull you away from the divine route that God has already set. And hear this: most of the devil's attacks are not overt; they are covert. There are two major ways that the covert ways of the evil one keep us from walking in complete freedom that Jesus died to redeem us from.

Somewhere on your outline, write this down. The first way he keeps you from walking in freedom is that he keeps us bound in ignorance. Hosea 4:6 says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." The word "knowledge" refers to ignorance. Ignorance does not mean that we're stupid, but rather we are uneducated, we are unaware, and we are uninformed. In January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was declared. This single legal document said that all slaves were now free. But in the great state of Texas, someone kept it a secret.

They didn't tell the slaves in Texas that they were free. And so for a couple of years after the Emancipation Proclamation, they were still in bondage. They were still acting like slaves because no one told them they were free. And when someone finally told them, they made that a holiday. African Americans celebrate what was named Juneteenth every year. They were remaining slaves, though they had been set free, because of ignorance. Thank God somebody told them. And if no one had told them the good news, they would have remained in slavery much longer.

I've come this morning to tell and remind some of you of the good news. The good news is that we have a Savior who 2,000-plus years ago signed our emancipation proclamation, not with ink but with His precious blood. He declared that we are free. And He said in John 8:36, "So if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed." Without a doubt, without equivocation, it cannot be stopped. He declared that we are free. And I have more good gospel news for you. The devil tried to keep that a secret from you, but listen very carefully.

Now that you are born again, you are a Christian. It's too late for that. So watch this, because he couldn't keep that knowledge from you, he will do whatever it takes to keep you from actualizing the truth in your life that you are not tied down anymore. From realizing that you don't need to be bound by the things that kept you once and held you in demonic bondage before you gave your life to Christ. He doesn't want you to know that, as they would say in the slavery days, you don't have to say "yes, sir" no more.

You don't have to put up with his control. It is as it were, but in the spirit realm, you can put down the plow and move up north. I'm talking about what Paul says in Ephesians 2:6, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ." Let me just try and explain this a little bit because we're going to get into it more in this series.

But listen to what it says. You need to understand that you have been seated in heavenly places. To be seated in heavenly places is not just a someday thing. It is more than a fancy figure of speech. It is a spiritual reality for the children of God, which means that we possess some things. Romans 8:16-17 says, "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ." A joint-heir. What is a joint-heir?

A joint-heir is one who is equally and legally entitled to everything that every other child of a rich man is entitled to. What that means is that we reap the benefits of the kingdom because of our connection to Jesus and His position of divine authority. The Bible says in Matthew 16:18, because we are joint-heirs with Jesus, the gates of Hades shall not prevail against His church. Because we are joint-heirs with Jesus, Romans 8:37 says we have been made more than conquerors through Christ Jesus.

And I love 1 Corinthians 15:57. It says because we are joint-heirs with Him, thanks be to God, who always gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been given the royal privilege of being enthroned with the Son, and we'll partake of the fullness one day in glory. But you need to hear the Holy Spirit today. Before that glorious day in the future, our seating in the heavenly places means that something is our right right now. Everybody say "access."

Watch now. Because we are seated in heavenly places, we have access through Jesus Christ to all of heaven's privileges and spiritual blessings. Because we have been seated in the heavenly places, we have access to divine healing. Because we are seated in heavenly places, we have access to the healing of our emotions. Because we are seated in heavenly places, we are enabled to overcome habits and addictions. Because we are seated in heavenly places, we don't have to put up with the devil's stuff. But listen now. To be seated in the high places biblically is not the same as in practicality.

And we're going to learn that this is why kingdom mentality is of the greatest import. Proverbs 23:7 says, "As a man thinks or a woman thinks in the heart, so is he or she." What that literally means is this: as a person thinks, as a person believes in his or her heart, it is that that will determine their position in life. It is that that will determine their position in the spirit realm. So watch this. Just being seated in the realms of the heavenly realms is not enough. It is of no effect unless we change our mindset to a kingdom mindset.

Now, if indeed we are seated in the heavenly places and are joint-heirs with Christ, then we ought to be operating like Christ. Now let me say that again. If we are indeed seated in heavenly places and we are joint-heirs with Christ, we should be operating like Christ. Now grab what I said. I didn't say *as* Christ, but *like* Christ. Matthew 28:18, Jesus said to His disciples, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me." Then over in Mark 16:15-18, He tells us the level that we should be operating in His authority.

He says, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe." Do you believe? These signs will accompany those who believe. What will happen? In His name, Jesus' name, the one with whom we are joint-heirs with, they will drive out demons. They will speak in new tongues. They will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hands on the sick people, and they will get well.

Let me say this because this is very important. We are not God. We are not little gods. We are joint-heirs with Jesus. But don't forget this. We are also not Jesus. But our authority flows from Him to us. This is why we find that Philippians 2:9 says, "Wherefore God has given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of the things in heaven and the things of earth." So watch now. After Jesus tells us our authority, right after telling them that, the Bible says Jesus is taken up into heaven.

Listen now. When He gets into heaven, what happens? He sits down at the right hand of God. Where is He seated? At the right hand of God. Where are we seated? In heavenly places with Christ Jesus, with whom we are heirs. You've got to get a picture of what we're talking about in the spirit realm right now. Jesus is sitting on the right hand of God, and you're sitting on His right hand. Now stay with me on this. We have not only been set free, but we have been given divine authority to rule and to reign through the power of Jesus Christ on this earth right here, right now.

We've got to stop singing "And we shall reign with him throughout eternity." You better learn how to reign right now so you know how to behave in eternity. Watch now. We've been set free, but yet so many of us don't live free. We've got kids bound by drugs, addictions, depression, oppression, suppression, obsession, you name it. But listen, Church. I've been praying hard and I've been trying to listen to the Holy Spirit. And what we have done is we have let the culture of the modern-day church talk us out of eternal truths.

We need to get back to the place once again wherein indeed we believe that whom the Son sets free can be free indeed. We need to get back to the place once again where we believe once again that chains can try to wrap around us, but we can shake off those heavy bands. We need to get back to the place once again where we believe that if God is able to heal, He will do it again. He will do it again. We need to get back to the place where we believe that even though a weapon forms against us, it will not prosper.

And so we have revelation coming. The second way that the enemy works to keep us bound is this: through lies and deception. Jesus said of him these words about the liar in John 8:44: "He was a murderer from the beginning and abides not in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it." One translation says he speaks his native language. In other words, the devil can't help himself. He knows no other language but that of a liar.

This is why this subject of cultural Christianity is so important. You see, we are living in a time where people believe they can be cultural Christians. Christians who have no desire or intention of living under Christ's kingdom rule and authority, and yet one day they will march up to the throne of God and hear Jesus say, "Well done, thy good and faithful servant." Now let's go back to Hosea 4:6. My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. If you study the book of Hosea, the whole issue in this book was that people were operating out of ignorance due to receiving and believing lies that were being fed to them by way of the mouths of lying priests.

The evil one has not changed since the Garden of Eden, Church. He lied to Adam and Eve in the garden. He continued to lie through the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Jesus says his modus operandi has not changed. The question that we want to settle today is what does that have to do with this part of the series, cultural Christianity? Before we move on, let me tell you what it has to do with this. We are great quoters of Scripture. The body of Christ is great at sounding spiritual. But I want to tell you today that there is a life that God has already prepared for you.

A Jeremiah 29:11 life. "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to give you a hope and a future." And the evil one will do anything to keep you from walking into that life. And one of the popular ways he is doing it is that the body of Christ is buying the lie of cultural Christianity. What really is cultural Christianity? It is not a title; it's a lifestyle. It is the belief that there's no need to be so serious about being a Christian. It is the belief that Christians shouldn't make such a big deal about holiness.

Here is the grave danger of believing the lie of cultural Christianity. There was a great preacher from a previous generation. He pastored the great Westminster Chapel in London named Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He was preaching one evening about what it means to be a true Christian. And he said something that stings in the ear. He said there are many people in the world today who are not Christians very largely because they *think* they are Christians. This church is the very core mindset of those who subscribe to Christianity that is cultural in their mindset.

They have no idea that they are not really Christians according to biblical standards. Now let me stop and say that. We try to judge Christianity by our standards. I want to say something. The Bible is still the rule, it is still the guideline for what it means to truly be a Christian. Watch now. And the reason people live that way is that many of them, they do not even know what it really means to walk as a Christian. So now let's look at some more of the characteristics of cultural Christianity.

And let me say it again. We need to be careful that because we don't think that we are a cultural Christian, that we're careful to look at our own lives and realize that I may be living some of the fruit of a cultural Christian. Number three, one of the characteristics of cultural Christianity is denial or denigration of Jesus's claim as the only way to God. Down through history, there have always been those who have believed this lie. But listen to what I'm about to say. It got a nuclear boost when Oprah Winfrey went on her national TV show and she declared there couldn't possibly be just one way to God.

"There are many paths to what you call God." Now stay with me. John 3:15-18, Jesus is explaining the way of salvation to Nicodemus. He tells him that one day there will be a people that will come along, they will crucify Him, they will nail Him to an old rugged cross. And as a result, everyone who believes in Him, their lives will be able to be changed forever so they can be with God. Listen to verse 16. I know that most of us know it by heart, but I want you to listen to it as it's going to lead into something else.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world because He wanted to punish people. He sent His Son to save people in the world from punishment. God will not punish anyone who believes in His Son. But if people refuse to believe in the Son, God has already decided that He must punish them. They have not believed in God's one and only Son. Now, there are few people who have a problem with that.

Here is where the problem comes in. John 14:6-7, Jesus answered, "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. Nobody comes to the Father except by me. If you really know me, you will also know the Father. From now on, you do know him because you have seen me." I was reading a message from a guy, a pastor named Bill Bright. He said this: it may surprise you to know what many Americans consider to be the most serious sin. No, it's not murder, because even murder can have mitigating factors.

According to an article by Daniel Taylor in "Christianity Today," many consider the worst sin to be intolerance. Guess who the worst sinners are, at least in the mind of most Americans? Evangelical Christians. One writer said Christians are seen as the pit bulls of culture wars: small brains, big teeth, strong jaws, and no interest in compromise. A guest on National Public Radio shocked even his liberal host when he objected to the Southern Baptist belief that a lot of people are going to hell. Well, since he shocked them, let me shock back.

Let me add my two cents. What the Southern Baptist believe is true. We read where Jesus says that the road that leads to heaven is narrow and very few people find it, while the road that leads to hell is wide and many there are that find it. Listen to Isaiah 5:14. This Bible says in Isaiah 5:14, "Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth shall descend into it." Now listen to me very closely.

I want you to hear me. This is not condemnation. This is an eye-opener. This is a breaker in my heart, that hell has enlarged itself because it's got to make room because most people are on their way to hell. And that ought to shake us in the church and say "not on my watch." Then the guest on National Public Radio made this hateful comment: the evaporation of four million Baptists who believe that garbage would leave the world a better place. Well, let me talk to you. Isn't it very interesting that people think that everybody ought to be tolerant with everything everyone believes except what Christians believe about the word of God and about life?

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, popularly known as Dr. Laura, speaks of the mounds of hate mail she receives for believing in moral absolutes. Those who attack her tell her she needs to be more tolerant of others' views. And yet because of their intolerance, they attack her with a vengeance. I want you to see just how messed up and twisted this world is. Bill Bright says this: in America, we believe in religious toleration. You can even be a Satan worshipper and have your religious expression protected. But along with our tolerance has come the dangerous idea that no religion should make exclusive claims to truth.

R.C. Sproul said this: making exclusive claims in America is like attacking baseball, hot dogs, motherhood, and apple pie, not to mention Chevrolet. Church, I want you to listen to me. We are living in a time, take this to the bank, where the liberal driving force and goal is to make everybody become politically correct. That includes what we believe about what the Bible says. I remind you that Jesus said in John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here."

And then he walked into Pilate, and he informed him. He says, "I want you to understand that I got another kingdom that I come from. The Kingdom of God. And that kingdom I come from, it operates on principles that transcend the physical and the political systems of this world." Jesus, let me tell you something, Church. You know what I love about Jesus? He made some of the most unbelievable politically incorrect statements. Someone said Jesus is the only preacher who made his congregation smaller with his sermons.

He'd have big crowds following him, and then he'd come up with some line like this: "Unless you deny your mother and father, yea, your own life, you cannot be my disciple." The Bible says that after he said that and a few other things, they left him. Why? Because he never let the crowd control the truth. He didn't seek to be politically correct. In fact, Jesus was quite politically incorrect. His most shockingly politically incorrect statement is John 14:6: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Now notice how Jesus operates. He gives an all-inclusive yet exclusive statement. Everyone, inclusive, has the opportunity to come to God because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That is all-inclusive. Everyone has the opportunity to come and get right with God. But here's the exclusive part. You cannot be included if you don't understand the exclusive part. And that is the only way to position yourself to be restored to the Father, to have everlasting life and not perish: you must come through Jesus.

Now, Peter said in Acts 4:12, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given unto men by which we must be saved." Let me talk to us, Church. I will always respect other people and not mock their religious beliefs. I have stood on platforms with Mormons, with Muslims, with Catholic priests. But let me tell you what I did not compromise on. When I close my prayer, I will never back down on this eternal truth, because too many Christians have bought into this lie.

I will never back down that Jesus is the only way, the truth, and the life. Here is our problem. The church has agreed with the culture of the world. And our agreement is this: it doesn't really matter what someone believes as long as they believe in God. Let me quote Bright again. But isn't it strange that they apply this logic to faith but not to any other area of their lives? They want the pilot flying their commercial flight to be right, not just sincere. They want the accountant who does their taxes to be right, not just sincere.

They want the pharmacist who prepares their prescription to be right, not just sincere. I thought about that and I said, God knows I bet a whole lot of people were like I was when that doctor opened up my chest and he put inside of me a pacemaker. I didn't want my doctor to be sincere. I wanted him to be right. Now watch. Then would somebody please tell me why in the world, when it comes to the single most important area of people's lives—their relationship with God—why would so many be willing to settle for sincerity over accuracy?

It made no sense to me until I looked again and understood Paul when he said in 2 Corinthians 4:4, "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." That's why Jesus said, "You are the light of the world," because they can't see. Let me tell you what breaks my heart. It is when people are so blinded by the evil one that they would see Jesus's statement as being arrogant rather than what it is: it is really a voice of compassion.

Let me show us something now. Let me show you the truth of the blinders the enemy places over people's eyes. Matthew 22:1, Jesus tells the parable of a king whose son was getting married. There is no doubt that that king went all out and he rented a nice banquet hall in a ballroom at a hotel that resembled the Taj Mahal. Now in first-century Palestine, you need to understand that most of the people were poor. But even with the poor, a wedding called for a week-long party.

It was the one occasion in life where even the poor strained and they splurged, even if they had to borrow to do so. It was going to be, watch now. So if the king, with all his resources, was throwing a party, it is pretty safe to say that it was going to be a Middle Eastern version of a presidential ball or the Mardi Gras. And the other given is this: everybody would want to attend that party. Well, read the story when you get a chance. Not everybody wanted to attend the party.

Read the story and you will see that many specially invited guests refused to come in. Now watch this. Jesus is telling this story because he is referring to the Jewish people who had been invited to be God's chosen people. They were to be His doorway for the Messiah. They were to be a chosen race of people, a royal priesthood designed to bless the whole world. But instead, they persecuted the prophets sent by God and tragically, they rejected the Messiah when He came.

Now, Matthew 22:8-10 tells us that the king extended the invite to everybody. He invited the Jews, he invited the Gentiles, the good, the bad, the poor, the rich. Now see this connection. It is the glorious truth, Church, that Jesus speaks of in John 3:16. Every person is so loved by God that every person is invited into the kingdom of God. Every person receives an invitation as it were to the king's party. It is so true that Jesus says come just as you are.

It is so true that Jesus and God accept us as we are, but He loves us too much to let us remain the way we are. So watch this. Verses 10-14 are the greatest and the saddest revelation of Jesus's story. The king finds out there's a man at the party who was not wearing the appropriate attire and he kicked him out. Now you would say, well if the king is so tolerant, why would he get so bent out of shape by what somebody is wearing? Well, Saint Augustine sheds some light here. At that party, watch Church, in those days, the king's invitation was always given to people along with the proper attire to wear to come to the party.

The king was aware that poor people would not have the proper clothing for the occasion. Not wanting anyone to feel inferior, the king provided standard clothing for all the guests to wear. Don't miss this now. But this man in verse 11, he carried the heart of a rebel and he disregarded the generosity of the king, and he decided, "I'm going to the party but I'm going on my own terms." He decided that he would come dressed the way *he* wanted to be dressed. And that he alone decided that even though he was not throwing the party, he would make the rules and the guidelines for the party.

Watch this. This is what Saint Augustine is picturing for us. Trusting Jesus Christ as your Savior and your Lord is what constitutes putting on the proper party garments. Here's where the rubber hits the road. If a person is not humble enough to admit that they're in need of salvation He offers, if a person is not grateful enough to accept it, you cannot come to the party. See, herein lies the truth: the only person who cannot receive God's forgiveness and His gift of eternal life and will miss out on heaven is the one who thinks he or she doesn't need the gift of forgiveness.

The one who thinks that he can come to God on his or her own terms. Dressed in the garment of their choosing rather than being wrapped in the robes of righteousness provided by the King of Glory. There was a barbershop that had a sign in it that said "In God we trust, all others pay cash." In other words, the barber only accepted cash payment. You couldn't write a check, you couldn't use a credit card. Cash was the only payment the barber would accept.

Here's what I want you to understand when I leave this point. We need to understand that the death of Jesus Christ is the only payment God will accept. And I'm going to say it again, I will never ridicule others for what they believe, but I will not back down on what I know to be truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And let me tell you how this works. This is so powerful that when I was standing on that platform and I was standing next to the priest and standing next to the Muslim and standing next to all these people, as Lady Brenda and I are leaving, there's a car, it's driving off and it's loaded down with females in it.

And they stop me and they start talking. And listen to me, Lady Brenda didn't have to worry, they weren't hitting on me. You know what they said? "We just want you to know that every day, we turn on the radio and listen to you." And you could see in their eyes, they knew there's something there that their religion does not possess. Let's talk about one more characteristic quickly. The characteristic of the cultural mindset is denial of the inspiration of scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

All scripture is God-breathed. The Greek word for God-breathed means that God inspired it due to the inspiration of God, which means the power of the breath of God. It is the same breath that was breathed into man when God picked up a lump of dirt and He created man and He breathed into him. This same breath is the breath that God breathed on men when He sat them down and said, "Write the Bible." Now watch this. Who was 2 Timothy 3:16-17 written to?

An up-and-coming preacher named Timothy, and to all present-day preachers as well as all up-and-coming preachers. Now watch this. In the book "Reforming Fundamentalism" by George Marsden, we are informed that 85% of the students in one of America's largest seminaries stated they do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. Now let me say something. What are you doing in Bible college if you don't believe in the Bible? Now watch this. Beyond that, a poll of 10,000 USA clergymen of whom 74% replied by sociologist Jeffrey Hadden in 1987 clearly reveals the effects of this significant change of belief through the passage of time.

When asked if they believe that the scriptures are inspired and inerrant word of God in faith, history, and secular matters, 95% of Episcopalians said no. 87% of Methodists said no. 82% of Presbyterians said no. 77% of American Lutherans said no. 67% of American Baptists said no. That was from Gideon, January 1994. And Church, listen to me. We have only gone from bad to worse with the passage of time. Today, 80% of the population does not believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of God.

Among all Protestants, 30% today say the Bible is literally true compared to 15% of Catholics. Now let me make some statements here. Why would anybody believe the Bible is the literal word of God when the people who preach from it don't believe it? Which brings up another question. Why would anybody use something to teach from which they do not believe and trust in themselves? Now let me say something and I'm not trying to be funny, I mean this.

That is either ignorance or stupidity on steroids. There is a quote: "The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." 1 Peter 1:21, prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Church, let me make this plain.

The Bible didn't come into existence because a bunch of guys went to Bible college, decided they had nothing else to do, so they thought they'd just sit down and doodle and make up a book that if men really paid attention to it, it would make the world a better place. It was written by men who were consumed and possessed by the Holy Spirit. Then we have another problem. There are those who believe the Bible is inerrant word of God, but they also believe that they can pick the parts that they will or will not live by.

Mitchell Dylan says this: they approach the word of God like they would a salad bar. They pick and choose what they like and disregard the rest. The problem with this approach is that God doesn't give us a choice of what to believe, but whether to believe or not to believe. He said we must be careful not to confuse these two things. And there are people that argue about things that won't save their soul in eternity. There are people who take issue with such things as whether or not God created everything in just six 24-hour days, or whether there was a literal Adam and Eve, or whether Noah preserved all land animals during the worldwide flood, or whether Jesus is the only way to heaven.

These things are questioned by some Christians, even though they are presented forthrightly in the text of Scripture. Nevertheless, many feel free to amend what God has said and still call it faith. I submit to you this morning, Church, a person can believe whatever they want to believe. But when we choose to contradict what God has communicated in His word, we have gone over to doubt and chosen it over faith. Now, everybody listen to this. We need to understand that the Bible is a book of faith.

It is also a book, watch, that holds mysteries that we will never understand until we see Jesus. The word "mystery" is used no less than 36 times in the Bible, 27 times in the New Testament. Colossians 2:2-3, the apostle Paul said, "My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Notice what he said. He says there's a lot of mysteries out there, but my goal is not to inform them of all that stuff out there.

I want them to understand one mystery: why God so loved the world. There are some things that God does not intend for us to fully understand on earth. I want to alert us to something. Revelation 22:4 tells us that one day we will see God's face-to-face and then we'll truly know Him. 2 Corinthians 4:18 tells us that in that day, we will at last see with eternal realities and hear and see the things that were invisible. Stay with me now. Under the curse, church, because of sin, we see myopically.

We are nearsighted. And no matter how spiritual you are and how well you think you can see, you and I are still nearsighted. In eternity, in our resurrected body, our vision will be corrected. We will be able to see the big picture. Notice what I said. We will be able to see things once we get to heaven that we never saw and understood on earth. Even in heaven though, Church, grab this. We will continue to learn. We will only then begin to know and understand some of the things we did not understand while on earth.

See it now. God sees comprehensively, and in heaven, we will see more clearly, but we will never see comprehensively. And people strain and they will miss heaven if they are not careful because they cannot understand everything in the Bible. And what they miss is that when we stand before God, He's going to point His finger and say, "While you were arguing over whether there was a real Adam and Eve, here's the question: What did you do with my son? What did you call my son?"

Now, Super Bowl halftime entertainment was performed by, was it Bad Bunny? Now I want to say something. I didn't watch it, and it wasn't because it was him. I treat the Super Bowl kind of like I do the dropping of the ball in New York on New Year's Eve. I sleep through it. Then I wake up and have my family explain to me the next day what happened. Now let me tell you something. I think I've seen the ball drop in 27 years in New York City on New Year's Eve one time, and that was with one eye open.

Because my family shook me and said, "It's coming down," and I went, "Oh," and then I went right back to sleep. Well, here's what I want to tell you. What I found very interesting was that the next day, an article came out raising the question: is Bad Bunny a Christian? And it went into the reality that he was raised Catholic and how he has turned away from the truth and he's gone into some stuff that's really demonic and evil, supposedly. But what stuck out to me was that he made the statement, "I find it hard to believe in something I don't understand."

Church, listen to me. Romans 10:9 tells us if you declare with your mouth "Jesus is Lord" and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe, not understand, and you are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess faith and are saved. Watch now. What people need to understand is that God has not given us the choice of what to believe but rather that we do believe by faith. Now, 2 Peter 3:15-16, "Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom God gave him.

He writes the same way in all of his letters, speaking in them these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant people distort as they do other scriptures to their own destruction." Let's go deeper. 2 Peter 1:21, "For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets through human will spoke from God as they were carried along by the Spirit." I believe a major reason that people do not want to accept the Bible as infallible and inerrant is found in this statement that I found from an unknown source.

Someone said, "Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them." Now, I don't have time to read them all. Let me just give you some scriptures now and I'm going to finish this. 2 Peter 2:1-3, it speaks of false prophets. Those are the people that twist the scriptures. But I want to show you how this thing happens. Watch now, these people are dangerous because they raise their thoughts above God's. Let me go back to Oprah Winfrey.

In her Lifetime Achievement Award speech in 2018, Oprah Winfrey said, "What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool you have." Listen up now. *Your* truth. Someone made this observation concerning the remark: those words are so entrenched in our lexicon today that we hardly recognize them for the incoherent nightmare that they are. Among other things, the philosophy of truth, *your* truth, destroys families when a dad suddenly decides his truth is calling him to a new lover or maybe even a new gender.

Its philosophy that can destroy entire societies because invariably one person's truth will go to battle with another person's truth, and devoid of reason, only power decides the victor. Your truth also puts you at an incredible self-justifying burden of an individual. If we are all self-made projects whose destinies are holy ours to discover and implement, life becomes a rat race of performative individuality. Live your truth. Autonomy is as exhausting as it is incoherent. Depression is the inevitable result and the inexorable counterpart of the human being who is his or her own sovereign.

Now, here's what I'm going to tell you. Deep, deep, deep in my family, Oprah Winfrey and I are related. And I used to love her show, believe me when I tell you this. I don't know her personally, but I want to tell you as I close how she went from being a girl raised in a Baptist church to becoming a false teacher of heresy. I was watching her show one day where she was debating Christians concerning our belief that Jesus is the only way to God. She turns to one of the ladies and she said, "There couldn't be just one way to God.

There are many paths to what you call God. Your path may be something else, and when you get there, you may call it the light. But her loving and her kindness and her generosity, if it brings her to the same point that it brings you to, it doesn't matter if she calls it God along the way or not." Someone stood up in the audience and said, "What about Jesus?" I saw Oprah respond with arrogance I'd never seen before. She said, "What about Jesus?" Now, how does a girl go from being raised believing in the Bible and what it says about Jesus and go from believing that He is the way, the truth, and the life to being arrogantly responding, "What about Jesus?"

Remember Hosea 4:6? My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. You are about to hear how dangerous it is when we are ignorant of what God's word says. On one particular show, there was this man named Eckhart. Eckhart was supposed to be a spiritual guru and she had him do a breathing exercise with the audience. Now, he has them shut their eyes and he says to them, "Simply become aware that you are breathing. As you feel yourself breathing, air flows in and out of your body."

I said, "Are you joking me? Tell me something I don't already know." I told Lady Brenda, "I'll tell you one thing for sure, if they stop breathing, they'll be the first one to know it." Now, someone zooms in and she is a borderline Christian and she asks Oprah, "How did you reconcile your spirituality with what you now feel about God?" Oprah says, "How was I able to reconcile my faith about the absolute hugeness of that which we call God? I took God out of the box.

I grew up in the Baptist church. There were rules, you know, belief systems." Let me interject something here. If we are going to live as those who are of the kingdom and not just in the kingdom, we have got to understand there is a king of the kingdom, and the kingdom has rules that come from the king. It's the only way you can live in the blessing of the power that comes from being joint-heirs with Christ. Church, rules are good things. They're only binding to the rebellious.

Tyrone McCreary says this: everyone wants to claim the kingdom but not everyone wants to live by its rules. Oprah goes on to say it had doctrine, and I happened to be sitting in church in my late 20s. And I was going to this church where you had to get there at 8:00 in the morning and you couldn't get a seat. And a very charismatic preacher, and everybody was just into the sermon, and this great minister was preaching about how great God was, omniscient and omnipresent, and God is everything. Now, so far so good.

But it's about to change. Remember, God says my people they are perishing for lack of knowledge. Church, listen to me. Satan thrives on ignorance. Listen to what she said. "Then he said the Lord your God is a jealous God, and I was caught in the rapture of that moment until he said jealous, and something struck me. I was 27 or 28 years ago and I was thinking God is all God, and God is omnipresent, and God is also jealous? God is jealous of me?"

Now stop and listen to what I just said. The Bible never said that God is jealous of us. The preacher never said that God is jealous of us. Proverbs 4:7 says, "Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom." Watch now. "And with all thy getting, get understanding." Believe me when I tell you this, Church, listen to me, listen to me. When the word of God is going forth, you are not the only one listening to the message. The devil is listening too. And he will prop himself up on your shoulder.

He'll begin to whisper in your ear the negativity concerning what the preacher is saying. You'll get mad about what he's saying or in a state of confusion, and you will misinterpret what the Holy Spirit is trying to convey. And she said something about that didn't sit right in my spirit because I believe that God is love and that God is all things. Now let me pause and say this right here. What she heard, she was not hearing with her spirit. She was hearing with her soul.

Sometimes truth, Church, get this. When truth is going forth, it has to go past your soul man to be received in your spirit. So what that means is that sometimes what the preacher is saying initially, you may not like it. But if you will pray and you will meditate on it, it will bypass your soul and get into your spirit and it'll say, "Ah, now I get it." Let me take it a step further. You need to understand that it is very easy to confuse your soul man with your spirit man.

And so Church, listen. It is imperative that when we hear a message, that we understand that a hard word or a soft word, they both must be discerned by the Holy Spirit. So let's go on. She said and so that then the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me. And I love the quote by Eckhart has. This is one of my favorite quotes in Chapter 1 where it says, "Man made God in his own image." The eternal innate, unamiable, was reduced to a mental idol that you had to believe and worship as my God or our God.

Eckhart pipes in, "Jesus said you are the light of the world." Now listen to this, listen to this. I get so mad when people mess with the Bible. Twist. Everybody say "pretzel." He twisted this thing and people were in their amenning. He said, "Jesus said you are the light of the world. You are the consciousness in which the world appears." Now I don't know about you, but I'm thinking it's a whole lot easier to believe the inerrant word of God than it is to believe all of this gibberish and nonsense this dude is putting out, because I can believe the Bible by faith.

But to believe that stuff, I have to reject common sense. Forget faith. So she goes on, here's her final response. "So you believe what happens to us when the body dies? You don't have that belief?" He said, "I don't give that any thought." Finally, Oprah said, "God is the essence of all consciousness is in something to believe. God is, yes, God is. And God is a feeling experience, not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience, God for you is still about belief, then it is not truly God."

Now Church, and I'm going to finish talking about this next week, but I want you to hear this. With that one decision in that Sunday service, she not only altered her spiritual destiny, she stepped over into the realms of cultural Christianity. And of equal and greater import, she became responsible for leading millions down a path of rejecting Jesus as Lord and Savior down the wide road that leads to destruction and God's judgment. That is because she believed the lie of our day.

The Bible is not the inerrant and inspired word of God. I'm going to say it one more time. Cultural preachers produce cultural Christians. Desmond Tutu passed away on December 26, 2021. He was an African bishop who received the Nobel Prize of Peace for standing in opposition to apartheid in South Africa, which were policies of racial segregation that dictated where South Africans on the basis of race could live and work, the type of education they could receive, and whether they could vote.

Listen to what he said about the Bible. "There is no thing more radical, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible. If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible." Because he understood that the healing of the nations, the healing for racism and socialism and all those things, we must do our part. But at the end of the day, it is the word of God. And that's why Paul said, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel in the form God gave it, for it is the power of God that brings salvation."

The word of God is the power of God. The word of God is the power of God. The word of God is the power of God. Y'all just looking at me like this is no big deal. Let me tell you something. There was a Russian woman, they broke her hands, they beat her with sledgehammers because she wouldn't let go of her Bible. She says, "He is all that I have, and nobody is going to rip him away from my breast." Somebody ought to get up and give God some glory. Thank God for the living word. He is the living word. Hallelujah.

I want to thank you for joining us today and for watching this message on our stream. We are flowing now from the worship of hearing and receiving God's word into the worship aspect of giving into the Kingdom of God. And as God has spoken to your heart, I pray that you're able to join us in giving and bringing Him His tithe and our offering. I want to share a little piece that's very interesting that you might even find interesting.

People were asked how much money would it take for us to have enough money. Remarkably, every person said if I could have a 10% increase, it would be enough for me to live and have a comfortable lifestyle. I share that with you because it's interesting that God says, "But if you will give me 10%," in Malachi 3:8 through verse 11, He talks about if you give me that 10%, He says you will have more than enough. There will be an overflow.

So why is that number significant in your giving today? The number is significant in that in your desire to live and have a healthy life, you want 10%. God says if you give me 10%, I'll make your 10% multiply in your life. And so as God leads your heart today, I ask you to first be obedient to the Lord and bring that 10%, that tithe. And then let the Holy Spirit speak to your heart as you give an offering above that.

That will open the windows of heaven. I thank you in advance for your faithfulness in giving to the work of the kingdom so that we might expand God's kingdom. Let me pray for you now. Father, I thank you for these that have committed this day to be obedient to your word. Because, Lord, they understand that sometimes thanksgiving is merely an act of obedience. And since we are thankful people, we obey you this day to bring you your tithe and to give our offering.

We thank you in advance that you will open the windows of heaven, pour out blessings we will not have room to receive. We will be blessed spirit, soul, and body. And this we pray and believe for in Jesus' name. Amen. Just lift your hands where you are. Though you may not be in the sanctuary, you become aware that we have words on this wall that are not just words. They are the biblical words from the very throne room of heaven.

Let me speak them over your life. May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you His favor and give you His peace. God bless you as you receive it.