The Prevailing Word

Praise God.

Well, let's get our Bibles out and lift them up and wave them around and make Jesus glad, the devil mad, and let's say this together say, heavenly Father, what a privilege it is to be able to receive your holy written Word.

I'm a Word person and I'm a Holy Ghost person, and the Word and the Spirit are working together in my life to bring me into a new level.

In Jesus' name, amen, praise God, the Word will do for you.

Now let's look at Acts, chapter 19 tonight, and we'll start reading with verse eight, and this pertains to Paul at Ephesus.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

This is sort of a partial history of the church at Ephesus, the early church, verse eight.

And he, paul, went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God.

But when diverse were hardened and believe not but spoke evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples disputing daily in the school of one, tiranus.

And this continued by the space of two years, so that all they which heard, which dwelt in Asia, heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks or Gentiles.

And God brought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought into the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases departed from them and the evil spirits went out of them.

Then certain of the vagabond Jews exorcists, took upon them to call over them, which had evil spirits, the name of the Lord Jesus, saying we adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preached it, and there were seven sons of one, sceva, a Jew and chief of the priests that did so.

And the evil spirit answered and said Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are you and the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them and overcame them and prevailed against them.

So they fled out of that house naked and wounded, and this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus, and fear fell on all of them and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified and many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds.

Many of them also, which used curious arts, brought their books together and burned them before all men, and they counted the price of them and found it 50,000 pieces of silver.

So mightily grew the Word of God and prevailed.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled the prevailing Word.

The prevailing Word.

Here we see that God's Word has the ability to supernaturally grow and not just to prevail but to mightily prevail.

I like the word prevail.

It's used in two senses here.

She used in the sense of the young man in whom the demons were prevailing over the seven sons of Sceva and beating them senseless and sending them on their way.

He prevailed against them, but then it talks about them.

The word grew and mildly prevailed in that whole area.

I'll tell you, jesus is alive and so is his word.

His word is alive, it's a living thing and the word starts out small in comparison to the circumstances surroundings.

You know, here we see that Paul, he was there for three months and then after that, you know, he went for two years and he kept on preaching, teaching and demonstrating, despite all the opposition, beside all the naysayers.

You see, the word of God is designed to prevail and the word prevail there means to exercise force, to do much work, to have strength to overcome, praise God.

You know, some folks get excited about the spectaculars.

Thank God for miracles they get.

They get excited about instant results.

But we ought to be equally thrilled with the word growing and mildly prevailing.

I mean the word will do a whole lot of work, if you'll give it a chance.

So just a simple message tonight to remind you of things that you mostly know, but we need to remind ourselves because of the pressures that we face every day, living in this, in these end times.

So I've got three areas where the word of God prevails.

The word of God prevails over number one the naysayers, the doubters and the debaters of this world.

In other words, you know here in that in verses eight and nine, he started off there for two months and they, uh, the group he was preaching to they.

It says that he was disputing and persuading.

The word disputing, really, it doesn't mean arguing, it means making a case.

It means, uh, it does mean teaching and preaching, uh.

So I don't want you to get the idea that that he was arguing or anything like that.

The word dispute is not an exact translation.

But notice, they were hardened.

There were a group of them hardened, uh, that word means stubborn or obstinate.

And so what did he do?

Well, after two months he identified the stubborn and obstinate ones and he separated the believers out of the midst of that and moved them over to one school of Tarenas.

He had to have another venue had to have another place big enough to hold the believers.

And so there he kept on doing what he had been doing for two months Only.

He did it for two more years and uh, and so it says then in verse 10, after two years, everybody in the whole region, both the Jews and the Gentiles, heard the word in Asia, mine, that's Asia, mine are present day Turkey.

Just think about present day Turkey is Islamic.

Erdogan has just been evidently reelected as the president of that country.

He's been the leader 10 years.

He's a terrible man, he's a ghastly leader, horrible person.

And they had somebody running against him and I guess he probably, you know, didn't have enough money to have election security.

You know, because they did get him to run off and the guy finally won, barely won, and of course they're all griping that it wasn't legal.

My guess is he's got enough arms behind him.

You know they have gun control in Turkey and the gun control means that all the Islamic forces have guns and nobody else.

It's gun control for you.

But here in Ephesus, at that time the Word of God grew and mildly prevailed and everyone heard it.

Now it doesn't say everyone accepted it.

You know, that's not really our job is not to be accountable for the people that don't accept it.

Our job is to make sure about everybody hears.

And they, everybody heard, everyone heard in Asia Minor.

So they can never stand before God.

You know, the Bible and book of Revelation talks about the great white throne judgment.

Everybody's gonna stand.

That's a resurrection of the damned.

Essentially it's what that is.

It's a different resurrection, that our resurrection is gonna come later and everyone's gonna stand before God and in that group, all of them are condemned.

All of them are gonna be weighed and they're gonna be found wanting and they'll be thrown into the lake of fire.

They'll be taken out of hell, gehenna, and they'll be thrown into the lake of fire.

We call it the great white throne judgment.

We'll be there, jesus will be there, and it'll be an awesome day, a horrible day, and these people won't be able to tell God.

Nobody told me or Robby's taught me that he had a fear I won't say a fear, but a concern that anyone would escape without hearing the gospel.

He had it ingrained in him that everyone should hear the good news.

Whether they accept it, that's between them and God.

But everyone see, that's our job is to make sure everyone hears and when God is satisfied that everyone is heard, jesus said he's coming back.

Then we will have completed our course.

So until everybody hears, we still have people, groups on the earth that have not heard the name of Jesus.

So we've got to keep on pressing.

But here everyone in Asia Minor heard the word of the Lord.

They heard the name of Jesus, both Jews and the Greeks, and the word of the Lord prevailed over all the naysayers.

I mean, they persecuted Paul, they argued against him.

We've got a lot of persecution, got a lot of arguing, got a lot of name-calling going on right now.

Listen, we just got to let all that roll off of us.

Keep on preaching the good news.

Back in December of 03, god told me there's a dearth of the word.

I said how can there be a dearth?

How can there be a famine of the word?

I said there's more churches than ever.

He said your children don't know what you know.

And that's been 20 years ago.

Now coming up this December It'll be 20 years ago that word, just as we were about to move in this building and, thank God, we have seen that word really more reality.

Now it's obvious that so many people don't know God, they don't know His word.

They don't know even people that call themselves Christians.

They don't even know what the word says about very much of anything.

We've dumbed down our education system.

We've dumbed down the churches, have dumbed down their discipleship.

They've dumbed down the gospel.

They've dumbed down the word I mean to where people don't have it.

And it's beginning to change.

Amen, it's beginning to change.

And thank God we found some hungry people like you that would watch us on Wednesday night and soak up what we're saying.

And I'm telling you, eventually, all of Houston, all of this region, every place that we have responsibility, will hear the word of God and it will prevail.

Amen, all right.

So the second thing we see here in these group of verses in verse 12, the word of God grows and mildly prevails over demons and disease.

I mean faith is involved.

Faith is involved.

That's why we preach on signs and wonders.

We just got through preaching on signs and wonders Sunday.

Notice the special miracles there was.

God brought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that Hankartius or aprons were laid on people, sick people and demons went out of them and diseases left them.

But that doesn't mean that normal miracles didn't happen.

He had normal miracles.

You know, god always confirms His Word, whether they're special miracles or extraordinary.

One verse says, one version says extraordinary miracles.

You know, all miracles are amazing but not all of them are instant.

And evidently these were instant, these special miracles, they were sent.

And when were they sent?

Well, they weren't sent until after two years of daily preaching and teaching and persuading with these people the Word of God.

It didn't come until everyone had heard.

And so now, then, god granted these special miracles and I believe he did it just to show up dead religion.

We're going to get to that in the next point.

But plus, he has compassion on sick people.

He loves to heal the sick, he wants people healed.

So you know, god always confirms His Word.

I think about I've been carrying prayer cloths since we started the church.

I've always we've had a tradition in our, you know, at Lakewood we had prayer cloths.

Odie would lay her hands, brother Osteen lay his hands on prayer cloths.

We just did it as a.

You know, it's just something we did all the time and I've seen it work.

I've seen God grant miracles.

You know, whether something happens instantly or over time, it's still a miracle when people get healed.

So he, the Word of God, prevails over the nice sayers, the doubters and debaters of this world, over demons and disease and over, lastly, religion and religious thinking, or we could say, traditions, the traditions of men, especially religious traditions.

See, before Paul came on the scene here in Ephesus, the traditions of men had rendered the Word of God in an effect.

I mean the 12th that he met there when he first got to town.

You know they were disciples.

And he said well, you know, have you received the Holy Ghost?

Since you believe your believers, have you received the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost?

We've never believed it, we've never believed, we never heard of the Holy Ghost.

Who's the Holy Ghost?

Talk about some dead religion.

And he said well, what were you baptized?

How were you baptized?

Well, in John's baptism.

He said well, john was making the way for Jesus.

Let me tell you about Jesus.

And they heard the gospel, they all got saved and then they all got filled with the Holy Ghost.

That was the start of the church in Ephesus.

Those 12 disciples of John became 12 disciples of Jesus and got baptized, not only in water but in the Holy Ghost.

Now, it was how it started.

And so in Mark seven, 13,.

Jesus said the traditions of men, the religious, especially religious traditions, render the word of God to none effect.

So what's the what's, what's the remedy?

Well, teaching and preaching the word of God, you just say, consistent on the truth, the truth, the truth, and it.

It had to go on.

It had to go on for three months, for in the first venue.

Then he separated the naysayers from the disciples and then he preached another two years and finally, the word of God, see, is beginning to produce the way it talks about in Isaiah 55.

Hold your place and let's turn back to Isaiah 55.

See, this is a perfect example of how the word grows and modally prevails in Isaiah 55, verse 10.

Isaiah 55:10

For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returneth, not thither but water at the earth and make it that bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth.

It will not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.

It will prosper in the thing where to I sent it.

See, it takes time.

It takes seed time and harvest for any kind of a harvest to happen.

It takes germination time.

The seed has got to germinate and then it's got to have seed time, the time between it coming up out of the ground until it bears fruit.

And in this case it took about two years of preaching to believers.

And so here the word of God is producing and the religious crowd is jealous.

They want the same results as Paul had with demon powers, without a personal relationship with Christ, and they go out there and they try to reproduce them, the miracles of deliverance that Paul was having.

And of course they got shown up as frauds, they got shown up as bankrupt and the utter failure of religion.

The knowledge of that spread through the whole place and it says the fear of the Lord was multiplied, the name of Jesus was magnified and there was deep repentance.

Those people that heard it, they said, oh, we better stay away, we better confess our secrets, we better confess our sins.

And those that were practicing was as curious arts.

That's the occult.

That's the occult.

There's a rise in the practice of the occult right now.

Why?

Because the church has been so vacant in society.

We haven't spoken up, we haven't said anything.

I put something on my Facebook page rebuking the Los Angeles Dodgers and Major League Baseball for that nasty display of what they called entertainment at a baseball game in Los Angeles here Two weeks ago.

It was a horrible display of blasphemy and mocking the cross of Jesus Christ.

I mean it takes more than just Catholics to get offended about a bunch of nuns with beards dressed, you know, a bunch of men dressed up like nuns and cavorting around and doing nasty things.

I mean that's just indecent and ungodly.

I rebuke them.

And I found out of the ESPN this afternoon.

I read a piece where ESPN.

I have an ESPN account because I watched some sports on there and they're owned by Disney and I've been thinking about getting rid of it.

And so now they're going to fly from their headquarters in Cincinnati a pride flag that upholds transgender.

It's a, it's a different pride flag than they've had before and it includes the T.

So I just cancel my account.

I took them off my computer and we have to make them hurt.

We have to make, we have to.

You know we have to make them hurt.

Like target targets lost nine billion dollars in stock valuation In two weeks.

Anheuser-busch is on the on the edge.

I mean they're giving their beer away.

Their sales have plent, not just for Miller but light, but all of their brands.

A bars are taking Bud out of their bars.

I mean they are just, they are crumbling, and so you know, christians are not used to doing much.

Christians kind of complain they don't do.

Listen, folks, we live in the days when we have to speak.

The fear of the Lord is to hate, evil, pride, arrogance and every evil work.

So let's, let's get out in front and confront and not be part of dead religion.

Let's preach the word of God, let's preach that Jesus is alive, amen.

And they, I just believe we're going to, we're going to see book burnings across this, this town.

I believe people are going to get to the place where they're going to repent and they're going to take their, their occult books and their wickedness and everything, and they're going to burn it all up their DVDs, their movies, their, everything else that they have.

That's ungodly.

They're going to burn it up and I'll have to have the EPA come to Houston.

Oh, you're burning all these.

This fire is toxic.

I look forward to the day when, when the word of God grows and modally prevails over Houston.

We've been at it 29 years.

You know full time and and I'm excited about what I know the word is doing in Houston and this whole region, and the word of God is growing and modally prevailing.

Amen, lift your hands and receive tonight Praise.

God is mildly prevailing in your, in your, in your life and in your world.

If you keep speaking the word, it mildly prevails, it grows and multiplies and dominates, hallelujah.