Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: We're going to learn how to cast this stuff down. I watch way too many believers be led around by their nose with every little wind of everything and I used to be like that. I had hair. I pulled it all out! And we think things that aren't even true. And we make things up that are make-believe for whatever reasons.

No, cast those things down. Cast down every thought that exalts itself against Christ and who Christ is in your life and what Christ did for you. Cast it down. Cast down hopelessness. Cast down despondency. Cast down rejection. Cast down failure, thinking you're a failure. Cast that stuff down. Don't listen to that stuff. It's a lie against truth.

And that's all he does is lies. He has no power, but he can lie. Just don't believe the lies. Believe the truth of the word of God. Not the lies of your experience. Believe me, the devil, his greatest tool he has is facts. He can say a lot of things about Tim Kelley that are true. They're facts. I lived them. I know them. I live inside this head. I know they're facts. That's true. Yeah, that's true. But it's not going to be my truth.

I'm going to live in something higher than that and teach myself to think higher than that. He's the liar, the author of confusion. Look at what else he did real quick. I just added this in before the service, so I don't have this up on the screen, but Hebrews 2:14 and 15, some of my favorite verses in the Bible right here.

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he might himself likewise partake of the same things, that through death," talking about Jesus Christ, we're partaking of his life, "that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those," that would be you and I, "who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery."

Isn't that cool? If the fear of death is gone and the sting of death is gone, really what else does he have over us? Nothing. If that's gone, there's nothing else he can do to us. To be absent in the body, present with the Lord. I'm going to move on quickly because I want to close in about seven minutes here. I have a whole another point that's about another half hour long, so here's the condensed version of it.

We have seen the cross as being the coup de grâce, the death stroke of the devil and his reign in the Christian life. And we reveal many times, we teach on this stuff a lot, that the world system, the cosmos, simply I use that term probably more than I should because it's just the term how my brain works. But the cosmos is simply the Greek word for world. When you read the word world in the New Testament, you're mostly likely, not always, but mostly likely it's going to be translated this Greek word cosmos.

It talks about a universal order, a world order. And we'll give you definitions for that. We have plenty of them. Second Corinthians 4:4, Ephesians 2:2, the cosmos. You destroy, when you destroy the head, the next thing to fall is his kingdom. I have in my office, here's a young man in our church who was part of the third infantry. He was in Operation Desert Storm. And he was one of the guys that went into one of the three palaces of Saddam Hussein and emptied and cleared the palace when we took over Baghdad or around Baghdad.

So he brought me home a Muslim prayer clock that someone stole out of my office. They stole it out of my office from my church. I don't know who did it, but if I find out, I'm sending you to Calvary Chapel and stuff like that. And then I also have a little watch. I showed somebody the other day, I think I showed you guys in the office. I have my little watch, it's a little pocket watch, and he gave it to me. "Hey, you want this, Pastor Kelley?" He gives it to me.

You pop open the pocket watch, and it's a picture of Saddam Hussein in the pocket. That was something he was just carrying around. They had a 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid walking around the streets after curfew. He came up to an American checkpoint and the kid, they could have brought the kid in to detention and made the parents come get him. And the kid said, "I'll give you my watch if you let me go home." They said, "Okay." And they take the watch. It's mean of them to do, but anyway, the watch is in my desk.

And it's a little picture of Saddam Hussein. Saddam is dead. I think we saw that on TV a few years back. He's no longer the head of his kingdom. Like we don't know who's running it now, but he's no longer the head of his kingdom. The head was cut off in a sense. I don't mean that how he died, even though I guess that sort of happened. But it was, when you take the head out, the kingdom falls.

What we knew as Iraq prior to Saddam is no longer Iraq, isn't it? So just as the cross was a death stroke to the devil, it was also a death stroke to his kingdom. It's a violent overthrow of an existing government. I think they call that a coup d'état. That's how they call that. First Corinthians 7:31 says, "they that use the world, not as abusing it, for the fashion of this world passes away."

First John 2:17, "And the world passes away, and the cosmos passes away, and the lust thereof," the world system and all that it is, "but he that does the will of God abides forever." The world system and its wares and its goods have lost their authority. The believers don't need them, yet still exercise sometimes a lot of authority in people's lives.

The New Testament concept of the world is that it is opposed to God. I believe this is Kenneth Wuest. The cosmos represents an anti-God character. The darkness of the cosmos is implied when Christ says, "I am come as a light in the world," because there was nothing but darkness. The spirit was to reprove the world. And in this world, you will have tribulation, but fear not, I love this verse, I have overcome the world.

The word cosmos used to refer to the world system, wicked and alienated from God, yet cultured, educated, powerful, outwardly moral at times. The system of which Satan is the head, the fallen angels and the demons are his servants, and all mankind other than the saved are his subjects. This includes those people, pursuits, pleasures, purposes, and places where God is not wanted.

It refers also to the human race, fallen and totally depraved. Kenneth Wuest was a Greek scholar at Moody Bible. These are not crazy theologians, these are linguists, people that know the original language. That's what the word means. I have other good quotes on it. So Jesus and his cross overthrew also, my friends, quickly, the kingdom of self.

In other words, there's a verse in Matthew chapter 11 that says "the kingdom cometh with violence." Interesting verse, can be translated different ways. I always translate it this way. When Jesus Christ comes into my life, he radically changes me. I became radically different when Christ came into my life. Something took over me. Things I used to do, I didn't do them anymore shortly thereafter.

Practices came into my life that I never thought I would ever practice. Things that I was doing regularly growing up in a non-Christian home, I stopped doing them. The focus and direction of my life dramatically changed. There was an overthrow in my soul. There was an overthrow, the old Tim sort of just kicked out and this new guy moved in.

And this new guy's been walking ever since for 30 plus years later, and he's still a work in progress, believe me. But something changed in my life the day I met Christ. My values changed, my priorities changed, my focus changed, the direction of my life changed. How I treated people, how I loved people, how I responded to conflict. And it's been an ongoing journey, but it all changed.

And it started at a specific day, the day I met Jesus Christ. That decisive blow of the cross overthrew the kingdom of self in me. I became different. It couldn't have happened before because there would have been no power to do it before. I used to be insecure, I'm not insecure. I used to be self-conscious, I'm not self-conscious anymore. I used to be fearful, I'm not fearful anymore. I used to fear death, I don't fear death anymore.

I used to not like myself. I still don't, but I get along with myself. We get along just fine. I used to talk to myself, I still do. I find myself remotely interesting. At least I understand myself most of the time. And you see what I'm saying? I'm not the same guy. And this is my hope that 10 years from now I can look back, I'm not the same guy I was 10 years ago.

You throw pain, you throw loss, you throw lessons, you throw bad decisions, you throw all that stuff into the blender and it comes out and you've changed. He overthrows the kingdom of self. He overthrows the reign of sin and death. And that's sort of the same thing really when you look at it. The reign of sin and death means simply the law of sin and death, the government of sin and death. Who we were before we met Christ.

He overthrows that kingdom. I'm not subject now to my old nature, I'm not subject to my sin nature, I'm not subject to my old Adamic nature, I'm not subject to those things. He overthrew them. He overthrew the law, Colossians 2:10 through 15. The reign of the law, the legal relationship we have with God. The thou shalts and the thou shalt nots. If you're going to please God, you better do this, better do that. That's religion.

Performance. Perform well, you get in. Perform bad, you get out. I tell folks a lot in memorial services and when I try to explain Christianity to an unchurched group, I say most of us or many of us have a concept that when we get to heaven, God's going to bring up our computer sheet, "Kelley, get over here, Tim Kelley, okay." And it's going to print out a sheet: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And how do I know I get into heaven or not? Well, depends what list is biggest. If the bad and the ugly are long and outweighs the good, then sorry. Sorry. And so God looks at that and said, "Well, Tim, your bad and your ugly are still printing. Good's been done for half hour. I'm in trouble." That's how I saw religion. And that's sort of what religion is. Or we pat ourselves on the back.

I used to sell roofs before I went into full-time ministry. I walked into this one man's door and I got witnessing to him when I was in there and I tried to tell him how we're sinners, we need Christ. He looked at me very, he goes, "I haven't sinned in 20 years." Way he told me. "I haven't sinned in 20 years." I said, "I need to worship you, man, because I sinned about five minutes. I'm sinning now judging you."

But that's religion. "I haven't sinned in 20 years." He didn't know what sin was. You see, he's overthrown that. The reign of the law has been broken. The law, the dictator, he's been dethroned. Says this, watch this, my friends, and I'll close with this. First Corinthians 6:15, "which in his times shall show, who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and the Lord of lords." That's who we serve.

It's his cross that's my cross. It's only my cross because it was his cross first. He gave it to me. He says, "You want to come under the umbrella of my cross?" "Yes, Lord." Then I am. So this is where we're left. The devil's been dethroned. We won. We won 2,000 years ago when Jesus Christ said it is finished. We will win permanently when we finally leave the shackles of flesh and blood and we enter eternal air.

We win permanently then, but the battle's won. You don't have to lose anymore. The closer you spend to Jesus Christ and the more you live underneath the umbrella and the covering of his wisdom, the covering of his word, walking in the spirit, being led of the spirit, the more liberty, the more freedom. You don't have to fear death, you don't have to fear the moment of death.

Whatever it is that you're battling on the inside, that part of sin and death, you can overcome it. And when you fail, there's grace to rebound to get right back up again. It is a flawless gospel that cannot be defeated in the Christian's life.