The Love Standard

I want to minister God's word to you.

I've got a message for you tonight.

The title of this is the Flood Standard and I'm going to read to you out of Isaiah, chapter 59.

Isaiah 59 · chapter mention

I'm not going to do it in my Bible, which is the New King James that's that's my favorite Bible right there but I'm going to read it out of the message because it's very clear and in today's language and I think it'll relate more to you.

So, beginning in chapter 59, isaiah 59, verse 1, it reads this Look, listen.

Isaiah 59:1

God's arm is not amputated.

He can still save.

His ears are not stopped up.

He can still hear.

There's nothing wrong with God.

The wrong is in you.

Your wrong-headed lives cause the split between you and God.

Your sins got in the way so that you don't hear.

So tonight, as you listen to these words, you can relate and apply them in your own life personally.

But as these words are read and as as the prophet Isaiah spoke them, he spoke them to the nation of Israel, so I would like you to listen for our nation as you hear these words tonight.

You know America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles that came out of God's word.

They're all through our founding documents and letters that our founders wrote.

They're just intertwined and inseparable with God's word.

Our nation was founded on God's word, and so I'm going to take you back, go all the way back to the constitutional convention.

When our founders were debating what would go in our constitution, they kind of came to a stalemate and they couldn't agree on things and it just looked like the whole thing was going to be a failure.

Benjamin Franklin got up and he addressed George Washington, who was the convention president and he was moderating this debate and he just took time.

So remember, benjamin Franklin, of all of our founders, is probably considered to be the most or the least the least Christian.

You know they called him a deist and he was very worldly in his behaviors.

But this is what he said to President George Washington and I'm going to paraphrase the first parts here.

But it was after four or five weeks of continual arguing and really getting nowhere.

They hadn't gotten anywhere on this.

They're arguing over pretty much every point of the constitution and they had as many yeses as they did no on things.

And he said I don't think as much brain power as we have in the room here, he said I don't think we are smart enough or capable to accomplish what we set out to do.

And they had gone back and reviewed models of other governments in history and they looked at the European models of government.

And he said we've looked at all of this stuff and there is no constitution that is suitable for our circumstances.

And so he said, in this situation of this assembly groping, as it were, in the dark to find political truth and scarce able to distinguish it from when presented to us, how has it happened, sir he's speaking to George Washington that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Light to illuminate our understandings?

In other words, we've gone all this way and we've run into a brick wall here and we're trying to do the impossible.

And we forgot to pray.

And so he said.

A little bit later, he said I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth that God governs the affairs of men.

And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God noticing it, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?

We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that accept the Lord, build the labor in vain, that build it unless God is part of your building, your laboring in vain, he said.

I firmly believe this and I have also believed.

Without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building, no better than the builders of battle.

If we don't call on God right here tonight, it is going to be a failure.

So that came from Benjamin Franklin.

And they did pray and they made it their practice going forward to continue in prayer daily.

And so this nation was founded by our founders with the wisdom of God.

And it came because men got on their knees to pray, and it was almost a failure when they didn't pray.

And so let's go back to Scripture as we're reading here again, listen to the words that Isaiah spoke and listen with an ear for America.

Today, again, I'm reading in the message translation.

It says your hands are drenched in blood, your fingers dripping with guilt, your lips smeared with lies, your tongue swollen from muttering obscenities, no one speaks up for right and no one deals fairly.

They trust in illusion, they tell lies, they get pregnant with mischief and have sin babies.

They hatch snake eggs and weave spider webs.

Eat an egg and die, break an egg and get a snake.

The spider webs are no good for shirts or shawls.

No one can wear these weavings.

They weave wickedness and hatch violence.

They compete in the race to do evil and run to be the first to murder.

They plan and plot evil and think and breathe evil and leave a trail of wrecked lives behind them.

They know nothing about peace and less than nothing about justice.

They make torturous, twisted roads.

No peace for the wretched who walk down those roads, which means that we're a far cry from fair dealing and we're not even close to living right.

We long for light and sink into the darkness, long for brightness and stumble through the night like a blind person.

We inch along the wall, groping eyeless in the dark.

We shuffle our way in the broad daylight like dead, but somehow walking.

We're no better off than bears groaning and no worse off than doves moaning.

We look for justice.

Not a sign of it, for salvation, no such hint.

Our wrongdoings pile up before you, god.

Our sins stand up and accuse us.

Our wrongdoings stare us down and we know in detail what we've done mocking and denying God, not following our God, muddling.

False rumors whipped up, revolt pregnant with lies, muttering malice.

Justice is beaten back, righteousness is banished to the sidelines, truth staggers down the street.

Honesty is nowhere to be found, good is missing in action, and everyone renouncing evil is beaten and robbed.

Does any of that sound remotely familiar with what you see today?

Hands drenched in blood?

How about abortion?

You know there are over 3,000 abortions performed daily in this nation.

There's been over 63 million since Roe v Wade the normalizing of things that are perverse and evil.

Somehow it's okay to send your kids to a transvestite story hour at the library and then to tell them that that's a normal thing.

And then it's okay to chemically castrate them when they feel dysphoria about who they are and God called them to be.

And you said something opposite, or not you, but the parents of these kids?

There's perpetual racial division and it's fueled by Marxist Democrats.

The only way to fix the increasing numbers of incarcerations in this country, they say, is to close prisons and defund police, the judges.

They're letting violent criminals repeat offenders back onto the streets with low cost and no cost bonds.

And then look what we've done to Israel.

We force Israel time and time again to go and negotiate with their enemies and give up God's land for peace.

That right, there is a recipe for disaster.

Oh, the limitless lives.

There was no voter fraud.

They said Peaceful protest is called an insurrection and violent in the streets and burning cars and throwing rocks and bottles and bricks and setting buildings on fire and looting.

That's peaceful protests?

They say what about this?

That COVID-19 came from bats and if you say it was the Wuhan flu, you're racist.

Don't wear a mask.

It doesn't do anything.

Wear a mask, but do it to protect others.

The vaccine is completely safe, but you should still wear a mask because it works.

Doesn't make sense.

Okay, so it may have come from a virology lab and perhaps it was in China, but we're still digging into that and you can't spread that because right now that's just rumor.

The lies, the lies are endless.

You know, if you accept the lie of today and you repeat it, it will become the perceived truth of tomorrow, and so you can have more of those if we accept those lies.

The drug cartels that were formerly just bringing drugs across our border, now they're bringing people across our border, thousands and thousands of people coming across our border illegally, and the drug cartels are now making upwards of 25 million a week in human trafficking.

And so there's a sex trade, there's a human trafficking trade.

They get over here and then they have their lives threatened and have to buy their way out of that, or perhaps their families' lives are being threatened until they can pay off that debt.

It's evil.

People from more than 100 countries are coming across our southern border Now they're not that many countries to our south, but yet that's the easy way into this nation and they're coming in that way and drugs are pouring in with these illegal immigrants.

The crime in Harris County you know, I looked at statistics on this and from 2019 to 2020, it was more than a 40% increase in crime over that year period from the previous year period.

And now we're in 2021, and it's gone up significantly.

More than that.

We're pushing 70, 80% increase over the last two to three years in violent crimes in Harris County.

Do you think we might be in trouble as a nation?

Let's go back to Scripture, and again I'm reading in the message translation.

So in Isaiah 59, verse 15, god looked and saw evil looming on the horizon, so much evil and no sign of justice.

Isaiah 59:15

You know, god sees into time and he sees into the future and there really is no difference between past, present and future for him, because he is endless and he sees the beginning from the end.

But he looked from this point where Isaiah the prophet was speaking this and God, it says God looked and saw evil looming on the horizon and so much evil and no sign of justice.

And I believe he was looking at today and thinking about today when these words were spoken.

He couldn't believe what he saw.

Not a soul around to correct this awful situation.

There doesn't seem to be a soul around to correct.

We did have Donald Trump, who made a lot of good corrections, but so quickly those things have been undone by evil in office.

And so I believe God was looking at today.

In the King James Version, in verse 16, it says and he saw there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor.

In other words, there was no one qualified to go between or to be a mediator between God and man.

And so God saw that problem.

There was no one righteous enough to say hey, god, we've got a problem here on earth and I need to come to you and present you with this problem.

There was no one to do that in that time and so he said to himself, god said to himself, he did this himself and he took the work of salvation fueled by his own righteousness.

It says he dressed in righteousness and put it on like a suit of armor and salvation on his head like a helmet.

He put judgment on like an overcoat and threw a cloak of passion over his shoulders.

Now I want you to know that this is still the Old Testament here.

And so God was doing this in this time, and we have a new covenant, that is, in our New Testament and through Jesus Christ.

But what we're seeing here is a picture of what God was doing in the future.

He's doing it right here in the Old Testament.

He put on this.

He came up with a solution.

He says I know what I'm gonna do.

And he rolled up his sleeves and he got to work and he did it.

And he did it in that time.

But Jesus came later.

And so this is Old Testament here he says he'll make everyone pay for what he does fury for his foes.

Just desserts for his enemies.

Don't you want some?

Just desserts for your enemies?

You know the kind of desserts that just really causes them pain and suffering.

Well, this is Old Testament here.

And in Jeremiah 51, it talks about the Lord is the God of recompense and he will surely repay.

And so the Old Testament understanding was that God did everything.

If something bad happened, god did it, and if something good happened, god is a just God and a righteous God and he did that.

That's an Old Testament understanding.

But what we know from our New Testament and our New Covenant understanding is that we have the laws of sowing and reaping, and those span through time and they work for the believer and the unbeliever.

And so if you sow to this, if you sow to evil, you reap evil.

There are choices in life, and one choice might lead to blessing and life, and the other one is gonna lead to cursing and death.

And God challenged everyone to choose life.

I give you this day.

I'm setting this choice in front of you Choose life.

He wants you to choose life, but if you make the wrong choice, you have the other, and so God gets blamed for it in the Old Testament.

But really people bring it on themselves.

Even the far off islands will get paid off in full.

In the West they'll fear the name of God and in the East they'll fear the glory of God.

Isaiah 59-19,.

I'm gonna read this in the New King James here, right in the middle.

There it says when the enemy comes in, like a flood.

You know, we know some things in Harris County about floods.

We've had some floods recently and so that word flood could mean rushing water like a river flood, or it could be like an ocean or a sea, a rising flood, and so here, when the rain comes down, we can experience some inconveniences.

Around here we end up with some street ponding, water ponding on our streets, inconveniences, minor street flooding.

You might have to wait a few hours for the water to run off before you can get to work.

But when there's nowhere else for the water to go and the by-users are full and the ground is saturated and the rain continues to come down, you can have some serious flooding here and we can handle the measure of inconveniences.

But we can also get into real trouble.

If it keeps going unchecked, if there's no solution to the problem and we just have more problem, more problem, more problem.

It can get pretty bad.

You know water can cost billions and billions in property damages and has in Harris County.

Two inches of water in your house can render it unlivable.

Imagine feet of water in your house.

Many of the people in Houston have experienced that.

But I want you to know that there's an answer for our trouble, whether it's personal trouble in your life or the flood of trouble that we see in the nation today.

There is an answer for this.

And so in Isaiah 59-19, it says when the enemy comes in like a flood, that is, there's evil happening and evil happening and evil happening, and it's continuous and there's no outlet for it and there's no ceasing to it and there's no drying out.

There's no where else for trouble to go, and so it just builds up like a flood.

And so that's the picture of what I see in America today is we have a flood of evil and there's no outlet for it.

There is no stop to this.

As long as people continue to do it.

There is no outlet and no stop and no respite from it or the trouble that comes with this evil.

But the solution is this when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will raise a standard against him.

The spirit of the Lord will raise a standard against him Verse 20,.

The Redeemer will come to Zion and to those who turn from transgression.

And Jacob says to the Lord verse 21,.

As for me, says the Lord this is my covenant with them my spirit, who is upon you?

And you know the Old Testament days.

The spirit was upon the priest, the prophet and the king.

Now that we've been a receiver of the Holy Spirit, jesus died.

He became the mediator between God and man.

He ripped that veil that separated man from God into and we became the temple.

Our bodies are the temple, the living temple of the Holy Spirit, and so his spirit is inside of us and the Old Testament was upon.

So my spirit is upon them, but it's in us, and my words, which I have put in your mouth, my words which I've put in your mouth, remember that shall not depart from your mouth, nor from your mouth of your descendants or the mouths of your descendants.

In other words, it's gonna carry on for generations to come, and forever, from this time, forevermore.

It says so.

I wanna go back to that word standard.

In the Hebrew it says the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

In the Hebrew, that word standard means to be displayed and to put to flight.

It means both of those things to display something and to put to flight, and so a military banner is what this is referring to.

There was a banner raised up.

That was a display of the force that was behind it, and so it was a symbol of all the force of that army.

And when you recognize that banner and whose kingly name was on that banner and what army you were coming against, it struck fear in the hearts of the enemies.

And so when you raise up God's banner and recognize that God's army is behind that banner and the power of God is behind that banner, the enemy is put to flight.

And so when the enemy comes in like a flood, we have got to raise up God's banner and put our enemy to flight.

Now I'd like to bring this over into the New Testament.

In Romans 10, paul's writing here, and he's speaking about Israel's need for the gospel and how they keep getting hung up on the law and verse three it says for they being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness by works, having not submitted to the righteousness of God.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Christ fulfilled the law, for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law.

The man who does those things shall live by them.

But the righteousness of faith speaks this way.

It says do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven?

That is to bring Christ down from above or who will descend into the abyss.

That is to bring Christ up from the dead.

We don't bring Christ down from heaven and we don't have to raise him up from the dead again.

All that's been done.

But what does it say?

It says the word is near you, it's in your mouth and it's in your heart.

And so remember, they're covenant with God.

The Spirit is, the Lord was upon them and he's put his word in their mouth.

Well, god's word has been put in our mouth by our covenant with him.

He cut the covenant with us and he put his word in our mouth.

So this is the word of faith with which we preach that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, you gotta use your mouth.

You gotta confess the mouth of Lord Jesus.

What do we confess?

That he was raised up, that he took our place, that he paid our debt in full and that we are fully identified with him.

And so we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and we believe in our heart that God has raised him from the dead.

God raised him up.

God raised him up as a banner.

The blood of Jesus is on that banner.

Jesus was raised up for all to see.

It was raised up for the devil to see.

The devil was slowly becoming aware of this plan of righteousness and salvation for all of mankind and he could not stop it, though he tried multiple times to stop it.

It must have struck fear in his hearts when Jesus was put on that tree and fulfilling all these prophecies before, and Satan finally thought you know, I've got him, I've killed him.

And Jesus went down into hell and paid that price for all of mankind.

And then he rose up again and he took the keys of hell and death and he prevailed against that and he put his enemy to flight.

That's what's raised up against our enemy.

So we confess with our mouth and we believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead.

If you can do that, you'll be saved.

That is the word of faith that was preached, that Paul preached.

That's what we preach, that is the simple word of faith, for with the heart one believes into righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

So that word confession is not whatever it is you want to say.

It's not.

You know, I'm confessing whatever is in my brain.

That word confession means covenant acknowledgement.

And so you know, if you've got a problem in your life, you can't even begin to fix something If you don't at first acknowledge you have a problem.

And so you're acknowledging I have a covenant.

You can't partake of that covenant, you can't get any benefit out of that covenant If you don't first acknowledge that you have one and what it is and what it means and so for.

With the heart one believes unto righteousness.

I believe Jesus did this.

I believe he paid for my sins.

I've been made righteous.

But with the heart I'm not righteous.

But with the mouth I'm acknowledging our covenant, I'm speaking our covenant.

So you can't just confess anything.

You want to confess the covenant and then you can have the full benefit of the covenant.

And then it says for the scripture says whoever believes on him will not be put to shame.

We don't have to worry about any shame in this life.

We will not be put to shame because we believe the truth.

We have the truth on the inside of us and when we open our mouth the truth comes out.

People can be ashamed of the truth, but not us.

We are not put to shame.

So Isaiah 59, 16.

I'm going back to that scripture where he said and he saw there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor.

God wondered, he saw, he said there's a problem.

I need somebody to rise up and take care of this.

And there was no one to do that.

And so God looked all the way forward.

He rolled up his sleeves, he put on that armor, that helmet of salvation, he put on his own righteousness and God lifted up a standard on the cross, a display that would drive evil away throughout eternity.

Now God's looking around at the flood of evil in this nation.

I believe I said it before.

I believe that God looked in advance and he saw that that evil was today.

It says God looked and saw evil looming on the horizon.

Well, that horizon is today.

He saw the flood of evil that is today in this nation and perhaps in your life.

Perhaps there's things rising up in your life and we can have what we allow, and I don't mean to cast blame on anybody about allowing that sort of thing, but God's not looking for perfection, but he's looking for improvement.

And so when you recognize that we don't have to allow trouble in our lives and we don't have to allow trouble in our nation.

When we recognize trouble, god's looking.

He's looking around.

Is there somebody?

Is there somebody righteous who will raise up a standard against this evil?

That's what God's looking for.

He's provided a standard to be displayed.

It's that battle flag that we're supposed to follow in the battle.

It's the blood of Jesus that paid for our salvation, that paid for our righteousness, that paid for us to be members of His family, part of His team, part of His army.

We are to put on His righteousness, not our own.

There's no work, there's no way that we can pay for this.

We just simply put on His righteousness because he gave it to us, and we put on the full armor of God.

God demonstrated that back then.

He talked about the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness.

He put on a cloak of passion.

It says we need to have that kind of passion, but it's in Ephesians 6, it talks about the full armor of God.

And we're to put that on why?

So that we can stand against the wiles and the trickeries and the military strategies of the devil.

There are wiles and trickeries and military strategies and psyops against people in this nation today, and they all come from the devil.

And we have a solution.

You've got to get behind the flag, that standard, that flag of righteousness, that flag stained with the blood of Jesus that was raised up, that standard Jesus was raised up against evil.

We need to get behind that and go to work and so doing so, we put on our armor, we get geared up for this and we can withstand against these wiles and trickeries and evils of the devil.

In Ephesians 6, verse 10, it says Finally my brother and be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Ephesians 6:10

We can't do this in our own might, we are incapable of doing this on our own, but we don't have to.

We can put on his righteousness, we can put on his armor, we can put on his power and we can do things in the power of his might, and so not in our ability, but in his ability.

So I go back to that story about Benjamin Franklin, where he reminded the delegates of the obvious they were trying to do the impossible.

They were trying to create a nation that had never existed before, a form of government that had never existed before.

They looked all across the world, they looked back through history and they saw a form after government over here and one over there, and different places in history and different failures all the way through, and none of those would work for this nation.

And they looked at Europe and they saw the examples of what Europeans had done European nations.

They said, no, we ran away from that.

We have no place in that anymore.

There isn't a constitution over there that is fitting for us here.

Our freedom comes from God.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and government didn't give us that freedom.

And government can't take it away unless we give it away.

And I'm unwilling to do that.

I hope you're unwilling to give that away.

And so we're looking at the evil.

In this present time, the thing that was good is now considered bad and we're on the persecution side.

We are the ones that so much of the evil considers evil.

The evil calls themselves good and they call us evil.

They call us Christian terrorists, if there can be such a thing.

We're not that.

They're the terrorists.

The Democrat Marxists are the terrorists of this nation.

They are a clear and present danger to this nation and they are whom we raise up the standard against those that serve the devil, those that work to take God out of our nation.

And so we've got to get back to the basics.

And that's what Benjamin Franklin did.

He said we've been struggling and it's a futile effort to try to build this.

Unless God built this, they labor in vain that build it.

We're trying to do this without God.

We forgot to pray, he said, and so they got back to basics.

They got back to the basics and we've got to do the same thing.

We're members of the body of Christ, and that means we are to raise up the standard against the enemy and to keep that on display and put the enemy to flight.

Everywhere we go, we're to gather up members that have been separated out.

We're to look for the lost sheep, those that have been separated out of the body of Christ, that are off on their own, that are easily picked off.

We're to gather them up and bring them back into position of righteousness, the righteousness that we have in Christ.

We're to drive out evil.

God has called us in this time to occupy, until he comes, the great commission.

Jesus said all authority in heaven, on earth, has been given to me.

And then he said go therefore.

In other words, I have all authority and I'm delegating my authority to you.

I am charging you as members of my body to go into all the world, and that doesn't mean that we're to be missionaries to every third world nation out there.

It includes that we are to be ministers and missionaries to all parts of the world, but it means every facet of life.

That means the taboo side of getting involved in politics.

We're to get involved, we're to carry light into dark places.

We put on the whole armor of God.

And then it says that we have one offensive weapon which is the word of God, the sword of the spirit, and it's not some long broadsword, it's a short dagger.

It's meant for hand to hand combat.

That means we can't lob long range missiles to destroy our enemy.

It means we have to go into territory that is occupied by our enemy and we have to cut him up and take it back.

That's what the word of God is for.

People are not our enemy, but the devil is our enemy, and when people are serving the devil, we have got to come against the devil that they serve.

So don't mess up my words here and say that we're Christian terrorists coming after people.

We're not that.

God loves people.

In fact, he loves people so much that he gave his only son so that all could be part of his family.

And not everyone will, but that's their choice.

We've got choices in this world, and so at the end of Isaiah 59, now we roll over into Isaiah 60.

We've raised up a standard against the enemy, and here it says arise and shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the people, but the Lord will arise over you and his glory will be seen on you.

It's time for the church to rise up.

It's time for the church to raise up that standard against this flood of evil that's come into our nation and our lives.

This is a charge from God.

It's not an option, it's not a suggestion, it is a command.

After having read all of 59, we get into 60 and it says arise and shine.

When do we do that?

Right now.

Your light has come.

It is time for the church to get out of its weak position of having church just inside the church building.

We were told that we couldn't have church inside the building because we were non-essential.

The church is essential and we will open and we will not be shut.

And we will not be shut up because the glory of the Lord has come upon us, and so it is time for people in church to get out of church and to go and occupy every facet of life, to occupy positions in government, to occupy positions in school, to occupy positions in every legitimate industry in this nation, and to be that light and to shine God's righteousness in his truth.

That is what we are called to do and shamefully, the church has not done that.

But I say to the church wake up or get out of the way.

God will do more with the few who will obey him than the many who will just do the religious things, who will just check the boxes.

There's a lot of churches out there just checking boxes.

This is not one of them.

If you wanna do something, you're looking for a church that does something.

I challenge you to come here and try this place out, because we do stuff, we're not just talking about it.

And so faith has a corresponding action and we've gotta be caught.

We speak the word, we speak faith and we put action behind it.

Our action goes with our words, and when we do that, the enemy takes flight.

We've got a standard against our enemy, and so I hope that's an encouragement tonight.

We have got to encourage others around us to go to work.

The time is now.