The Case For Miracles 1

Pick your Bibles up, please.

I want to share a message I think that will help you Lift your Bibles up, wave them around live stream audience.

Get your Bibles out, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's say this together say Heavenly Father, I'm glad to be here today.

I'm at the right place at the right time, with the right people here in the right thing.

I have a divine appointment to hear what I'm going to hear today and I have ears to hear, and I will not just be a hearer of it, but I'll be a doer of the Word in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look in the book of Acts, please.

Chapter six, acts, chapter six.

I just finished reading recently, my normal reading, and I want to start with verse eight, acts six eight.

It says in Stephen, full of faith and power, stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders, mega wonders.

Great means mega in the Greek, mega wonders.

What could they have been?

Well, we don't know.

It doesn't tell us exactly, but he did mega wonders and miracles among the people.

And then in Acts eight, a couple of pages over, this is after Stephen, for his trouble, got stoned.

He wasn't well received, except in heaven.

He was received by Jesus.

Jesus stood to receive him.

In Acts, chapter eight, verse five.

Then Philip, first Stephen, then Philip.

Philip went down to the city of Samaria and he preached his denominational understanding under them, he preached Christ under them, and the people, with one accord, gave heed under those things which Philip spoke.

Hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.

Isn't that interesting.

They heard a miracle and then it explains it.

In this case Didn't explain about Stephen, but Philip.

It explains what happened.

They heard and saw the miracles which he did because unclean spirits crying with a loud voice came out of many that were possessed with them and many taken with palsies.

Palsy was a death sentence.

Palsy meant paralysis, like cerebral palsy.

You didn't recover, you died.

You quit breathing.

Your lungs, your diaphragm would finally be paralyzed, you'd just suffocate.

It's a horrible death.

Many taken with palsies and that were lame were healed, and so I wanted to share a message this week and next week entitled the case for miracles.

The case for miracles.

We heard a few about miracles this morning.

The case why are miracles so important?

In fact, why are miracles not optional?

I think I could take it a little further.

Miracles are not optional and some might say well, I don't need a miracle to know that he's here.

I believe in God regardless and I respect that.

For maybe a single church service, maybe sometimes we have church services where we don't see or hear a miracle.

We just get together and we have a good day in the Word, we have a wonderful worship service and we can't put our finger on anything that happened that was spectacular, like lame people walking, blind eyes, open, deaf ears and all of that kind of thing.

We don't see that.

We didn't experience anything necessarily that we could say oh, that was a miracle.

We had a good day in the Word, we had a good time to remind them.

No matter what goes on in the service, we're here for the long haul, but if you come to this church long enough and often enough, you're gonna see some miracles.

I said you're gonna see some miracles, you're gonna hear about some miracles, and so it's an admirable attitude.

But yet the Bible is filled with miracles.

The early church thrived on miracles and what I read today from Steven and Phillip they were not apostles.

I've heard this probably all of my life, because I was in the Catholic church all my life until 33.

I didn't get saved.

I wasn't born again until 33.

And so but I've heard this even before I got saved and miracles passed away when the last apostle died.

Well, that's a lie.

You can't find that anywhere in the Bible.

Now, of course, catholics, we're still believing miracles.

That's the thing about Catholics they believe in miracles.

It's just that they all happened 150 years ago at Fatima or some place like Lourdes or something like that.

It's miracles are way back there.

But no, these two were not apostles.

In fact they were ushers.

In Acts, chapter six, the apostle said look, we don't have time to wait on tables.

We got to give ourselves continuity to the ministry of God in prayer.

Look you out among you, seven men of honest report, full of faith in the Holy Ghost, to a point over this business.

So they were the first deacons, they were the first ushers.

They were serving tables, but they had the believers ministry.

Stephen was in the believers ministry.

He did mega wonders and miracles among the people and they could not.

They were so mad.

The Jews were mad because he put their finger on their unbelief and they didn't like it and they stoned him.

And, of course, philip went down to Samaria, where the Bible says that because of the persecution there were.

Persecution arose because of the stoning of Stephen and what he stirred up.

They came against the church.

They came against the church, and so the church was scattered.

All the believers were scattered, except for the apostles.

They stayed in Jerusalem, and so then you had the story of Philip going down to Samaria and he preached, and he's not.

Later on he became evangelist, but he's not an evangelist at this point.

So he's a believer.

You know, believers have to rise up.

We've got to have believers across this nation Stand up and be counted.

Part of my job is to stir you up and empower you to do your job.

Not all about me, it's about you.

So here you had two believers, and isn't it true that miracles should be a major part of the church of Jesus Christ?

Amen, I heard a few, amen, amen.

A miracle.

I have this definition.

This is a good one.

A miracle is an event contrary to the established constitution and course of things.

It's a deviation from the known laws of nature.

It's a supernatural event.

What we're into in this country right now with this fear and this unreasoned amount of obedience to people who don't know what they're talking about?

They are not the right experts.

I've listened to the right experts, the people that are on the front lines that are treating this disease.

It's very treatable, it's very curable.

It's got a very small percentage of death rate that attach to it.

You wouldn't know that by listening to anything on television or reading anything in the news.

You wouldn't know that.

But I'm telling you right now, I'm informing your thinking right now, because I've done a lot of research and the numbers don't support the fear.

They don't.

So why do we need miracles?

So I wanted to preach that, a case for miracles.

Why do we need them?

I answer the question why?

And so I've got three things.

The first one, the first reason, is that miracles testify that Jesus is alive and that he's the same yesterday, today and forever.

Hebrews 13A.

Without a miracle, all you've got is a debate, and I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the debate, I'm tired of arguing, I'm tired of blam, blam, blam, blam.

Let's just have some miracles and let you argue with the miracle.

Let's do the miracle.

We're out of here.

Let's do the glory here.

You know, that's what Peter and John, they went up to the temple at the hour of prayer I mean they just and then they saw this leper I mean a leper, this guy that was paralyzed for 40 years.

He's paralyzed, never had walk.

He's sitting there and he's certified as a beggar.

He had to be registered with the temple in order for Jews to be able to give him help and that would satisfy their obligation for almsgiving.

He was qualified to receive alms.

They couldn't just give alms to anybody like their brother-in-law or something like that.

They had to give alms to people that were registered, that had absolutely a need for it, and he certainly had a need.

And so they said silver and gold, we don't have silver and gold for you.

We're not here to help you with alms, but such as we have give.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

And he grabbed him by the Peter, grabbed him by the arm and jerked him up and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength and he went walking and leaping and praising God into the temple.

And there was a big old crowd of Jews that saw it, the same Jews that said crucify him, those same ones.

And 3,000 of them got saved.

You think that that made the Sanhedrin happy?

No, they got angry and they said well, what are we gonna do, boys?

Man, we're in trouble.

Now he's preaching and teaching in that name.

I thought we got rid of Jesus.

He's preaching and teaching.

They got this guy that a notable miracle has occurred.

It cannot be denied.

See, it was in public.

Everybody knew this man.

He couldn't deny the miracle that happened.

See, we need more notable miracles like that.

I mean very public.

Everybody knows what the before was and now the after.

That notable miracle became a lot of pressure on the church.

I mean, the more miracles we have, we're gonna sign ourselves up for some persecution.

Bring it on, bring it on.

I tell you what we're gonna stack our miracles up against your unbelief all day long, amen.

And so in Acts 433, we see that after that they went back to their own company.

We talked about this last week and they had a prayer meeting where the whole place shook.

Remember.

And they said oh God, grant that with all boldness we may speak thy word by stretching forth your hands to heal, and that signs and wonders be done in the name of your holy child, jesus.

They asked God for help to give them credibility with that crowd out there.

These are the same people that crucified Jesus.

They're the same people.

They didn't wanna hear anything about him, but there was a confrontation between dead religion and a living Jesus, and that same confrontation is going on right now.

Are you with me now?

Why do we need miracles?

Well, we need miracles because they testify that Jesus is alive and he's the same Hebrews 13, eight.

He's the same yesterday, today and forever.

He's doing the same things through his body as he did when he was here, or he should be, he should be, and so I mean we love and serve a risen savior.

He's alive, praise God.

I mean, every other so-called religious leader is dead and, in their bodies, decayed in the grave, but Jesus rose from the dead.

He's alive and seated at the right end of the fall.

You wouldn't know it, though.

The door's closed in a church.

It's just belize.

I mean, it's just amazing.

Even though God told me to wake up the church, I didn't realize how asleep they were.

They were asleep.

If now's not the time to be open, when will be the time?

I guess if we ever have a nuclear war, it'd be time to really close.

Then.

Oh, let's really, let's go down in the, let's get us a missile silo and get in the bottom of it, close the door behind us.

No, bless God, we're gonna give Jesus a chance to witness that he's alive, amen, aren't?

The second reason that we need miracles is that miracles testify that the church, that is, believers, represent Jesus and the Father God on the earth.

Miracles give credibility to the church so that unbelievers will be confronted with the truth.

It's not about having a debate on Facebook.

It's about bringing forth a miracle which cannot be denied, and all of us that have received miracles I mean we ought to talk about the miracle that we've received.

People can you know, they can argue, and they, well you know it's too late to argue with me, because I'm the one that got healed, I'm the one that got delivered, I'm the one you know, amen.

I'm the one that the angels saved from death.

I mean, we have miracles in this church and I'm the one that got delivered.

Miracles expose the bankruptcy of dead religion.

Islam doesn't have miracles.

Hinduism doesn't have miracles.

Buddhism doesn't have miracles.

The church of Jesus Christ has miracles, tells Jesus Christ is not dead, he's alive.

Are you with me?

Now let's look at Mark 16.

My backup for these statements that I'm making.

They're all in the Bible, mark 16, you know these verses.

This is the Great Commission.

Mark had a little different take on the same point In verse 14,.

After what he, jesus, appeared under the 11th.

They sat at, meet and upbraided them.

He chewed them out for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believed, not them which had seen him after he was risen.

And he said unto them Go unto all the world, preach the good news, the gospel, to every creature.

He that believeth in his baptized shall be saved.

He that believeth not shall be damned, condemned.

And these signs shall follow the apostles only in the first century AD.

After that, these signs were gonna go away because you won't need them anymore.

Yeah, we have people that preach that.

Oh, that which is, you know when we were children, that which we had, the childish thing, but now that which is perfect has come.

We don't need miracles anymore.

They talk about the Bible.

See the Bible.

They didn't have a Bible back then.

We've got the Bible.

Therefore, we don't need miracles.

Listen, you're a goofball, doesn't say that anywhere here.

As a matter of fact, I can make the case.

We need miracles more now than they did then, because there's lots of people alive when Jesus had just been crucified and they saw these miracles.

And I'm telling you right now, it was a huge cry across the region of all of Israel and it went all over the world.

Oh, we live in an age where people are so unbelieving and crass and skeptical of everything.

Let them look at a full-fledged miracle and stay the same.

They're gonna try to figure out a way to deny it, but they can't deny it.

See, there's gonna come notable miracles.

We're gonna see more and more of them.

And these signs verse 17, these signs shall follow them that believe Everybody say that's me, I have signs following me.

What are those signs?

In my name, in the name of Jesus, shall they cast out demons?

I'm not talking about puking in a bag.

I'm not talking about some exorcism, necessarily.

I'm talking about getting rid of the demon powers that are in our way.

Now there are demonic entities that try to oppress believers.

You mean Christians can have a demon.

Depends on what you mean by have.

I mean demon powers can oppress you.

They can tempt you.

They can speak to you.

They can't read your mind, but they can throw thoughts and wonder and they can tell by your reaction if you accepted that thought or not.

They can go from oppress you to obsess you and finally, the last one is possessed.

Well, I've never met anybody possessed.

I've seen some real, real obsessions.

I mean, I was in India with Brother Osteen in 1995, I guess it was 1994.

October of 94, we were in and he was preaching this great crusade and we saw miracles.

We saw a man healed.

He was lame, he was a Sikh, he had a turban on.

Our symbol is cross, their symbol is cross swords.

They're a violent Hindu sect and he was a fierce looking guy but he was lame and he walked with a stick and he had kind of it was a weird way he walked.

He kind of twisted and kind of got around on this stick because his leg was drawn up and bent.

And so I saw him the first night and I saw him leave because he had to get there early to be within my distance of seating, because this stadium, everybody was on the ground sitting cross legged on the infield and halfway up in the stands.

So the first night was about 60,000 people, according to the stadium Nehru Stadium in New Delhi.

The next night was about 80,000, the third night 90,000.

The last night was over 100,000 people.

So it disappeared into the smog.

It's a huge crowd, it's amazing.

And then on the second night, this man when Brother Osteen prayed for the Sikh he just prayed a prayer, had him lay their hand on whatever part of body that they needed healing in and I mean he said now, if you're healed, come on up here and let testify.

I saw the man get up and throw his stick down and walk up the platform and get up on the platform and I mean that crowd came alive.

That Sikh man became a Christian.

He became walking and just normal.

His leg straightened out and he was able to.

Oh, I'm telling you, we need miracles.

I said we need miracles but during that time we were up on the platform.

I was sitting next to the archbishop, the Catholic archbishop of New Delhi, and he was saying oh, we just love this, we're so glad your pastor is here.

I was shocked.

He didn't feel being in competition.

Most of the time when I'm around Catholic priests and stuff.

I had the nuns protest me when I was in Elo Elo city in the Philippines.

They were out trying to turn people away from the meeting.

They were protesting me, but here he was glad he was.

Oh, I'm so glad he's here.

This is so wonderful for our nation.

And in the middle of him and I talking.

There was a big ruckus and I looked around and someone had pitched this little four year old child up on the platform.

They threw her up on the platform and she hit the ground, spitting and twirling and snarling, and I mean she was filled with demons and they cast a devil out of her.

Now I realized some of you are going yeah, till till, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But see, there's a lady, there's a lady who was on TV, you know, there's a doctor from Paccati.

She happens to be from the Cameroon, she happens to have gotten a medical degree from Nigeria.

She's kind of you know, she's kind of demon conscious.

She's peaches on demons a lot, and so they've tried to turn that and make her feel like she's a complete idiot.

Let me tell you something.

She knows a few things about demons that America just doesn't know.

Right right, right, africa and India have the first team.

We have the scrub demons.

We have the demons that can't make it over there.

They come here, but we do have them.

Well, it's not demon conscious, you know, if you preach the words, if you've got demons that are messing with you, they melt off of you.

You believe the Word of God, you don't?

It's not about me casting a devil out of you.

This is about getting rid of demonic opposition.

In fact, most of these signs are that these signs shall follow that belief In my name.

They shall cast out devil.

They shall speak with new tongues.

They're speaking in tongues right there.

Oh, that's just cleaning up your language.

No, it's speaking in tongues.

It should be.

Every believer should be.

You don't have to be to go to heaven, but you should be filled with all the ghost, with evidence of speaking in tongues.

We're gonna help you to receive the baptism.

If it's new to you.

We wanna help you understand why you should have it, why you need it.

You need it for service, you need it to be able to help other people.

All right, and then it says they shall take up serpents.

Well, does it mean we're snake handlers?

No, it means to throw them aside.

Don't blow your mind again.

I don't know why I'm going this direction, but I feel like I need to.

I have a good friend that was evangelist.

He preached mostly in Africa.

He loved to go places nobody else would go and he just wanted to preach the gospel and he would go back in the bush.

I forgot what African nation he was in, but he went like eight hours by Land Rover and he pulled a trailer with his sound equipment in it and he'd set up this kind of a platform.

He had his sound and he had some.

He would sing himself and preach.

I think his wife was with him too.

I think she had a part to play, and this is out in the natives.

This is where the people are in the bush.

They're not in a city, they're in the bush, you know.

And he sets up and he starts to sing and he starts to gather a crowd and people come out of their huts and they want to see what's going on.

This is around in the early 1990s.

This isn't back in pioneer days, this is just not very long ago.

And he was telling me about it when he got back.

And so he started preaching and more and more people came out and they were listening very intently and suddenly the part, the people were starting screaming way in the distance, there was probably a thousand people gathered outdoors listening to him in the middle of nowhere and he's hot, and they started parting and people were screaming and running and parting and out of the midst of that crowd came this gigantic black snake, this big a ring, big around, almost a foot thick, and of course Africa's got all kinds of pythons and all kinds of poisonous snakes you know that you can think of.

And I mean the people were terrified, they were screaming and he didn't do.

He picked up in the spirit.

That's a demonic spirit, that's not real.

And into the microphone he said I rebuke you in the name of Jesus, get out of here.

Poof, it disappeared.

I know y'all are going for it too.

This pastor has lost his mind.

Well, you need to expand your thinking about what you have inside of you.

You've got the power of the Holy Ghost.

The greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

And what's in the world of those kinds of spirits?

They're behind our political stuff that's going on in this country.

They're behind these people that are trying to overthrow the government.

They're out here burning courthouses and killing people.

This is the kind of demon, barren.

I mean you don't see the snake, but it's on the inside of some of these people.

The Bible calls the devil that old serpent.

So these are real signs that follow believers.

They shall take up circumcision.

They drink any deadly thing.

It shall not hurt them.

That's kind of self-evident, because if you travel and you go to certain parts of the nations, you've got to believe for health.

They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.

Notice, it says the sick.

It doesn't say the Christian sick, it doesn't say all the sick except the atheist sick, it doesn't bother praying for eight, no, the sick that takes in a lot of territory.

Lay hands on them.

That's what I just told you about.

This morning, with Gladys and my mother, Hands were laid in the name of Jesus, in fact the literal Greek, on this sign that follows every believer.

Everybody say that sign follows me.

So get busy laying hands on people.

Hands, they shall lay, healed, they shall be.

Now sometimes we get disappointed because healing doesn't happen instantly.

It says recover.

I always make it a practice that when I lay my hands on somebody, no matter what the issue is, whether it's cancer, whether it's skin disease, diabetes, you just name whatever disease you want to when I lay my hands on them.

I believe that, regardless of any feeling I have sometimes I feel something like this morning I felt electricity in some of you.

But even if I didn't feel electricity, something tangible came into you.

Whether you felt it or not.

It's there, so believe that.

But in Ebra some of the greatest miracles I've ever seen I felt nothing.

In fact, no matter if I went by feelings, I would have you pray for me instead of me pray for you.

It's not about feelings, it's about the word.

And so people recovers.

I've always said they got it, that's it.

There's a point of see.

Laying on of hands is a point of contact.

It's a time when you say I got it, I believe I receive it and I shall have it.

Are y'all with me now?

Yes, we need miracles, because those miracles have to show up.

Jesus spent 40 days after the resurrection and he showed himself alive by many infallible proofs to his own disciples.

If they needed infallible proofs to prove that he was alive, how much more do we need that in this day and time?

Isn't it self-evident that we have to have miracles?

Amen, all right.

And then the third one is miracles give hope.

I love this.

The miracles give hope to those people on whom this world has given up.

There are people that have gotten the sentence of death, and when I think about that, I think about Dodie.

Dodie Osteen, because just a few months after we landed at Lakewood, it was announced that she had metastatic cancer delivered.

Except that she never missed a service she never.

She didn't stay home.

She came to church 89 pounds.

She looked like death, warmed over.

If I went by what she looked like, she looked terrible and she didn't care.

Her faith was I'm coming to church.

Her faith.

She knew that nobody could get this healing for her.

God spoke to her.

He said you're not gonna get healed just because so-and-so lays hands on you.

You're not gonna get healed just because your husband's a pastor.

You're gonna have to take my word and defeat the enemy.

The doctor after she had lost weight and was so weak, brother Osteen took her to the doctor.

They found out she had metastatic cancer, the liver.

The doctor said I wish I had better news for you, but she's gonna be if there's really nothing we can do.

And she's gonna be dead in a few weeks.

There's nothing we can do.

And he said well, doctor, we believe in miracles.

He said you're gonna need one.

He said we're gonna get one.

And that was their attitude Unrelenting.

And she wrote a book and really we were there when they announced you know what she's got a clean bill of health.

She's completely well and whole.

She gained weight back and what it did was it gave her such a compassion for six people that she would pray for people.

She would lay her hands on people who had the sentence of death.

They had stage five.

If there was a stage five, she didn't care, she wanted to see people healed.

It gave her a fearlessness that she didn't know, that she didn't have before.

Oh, I'm telling you right now, miracles are there to give people hope.

That medical science.

You know, medical science is great.

I'm glad for doctors.

I thank God for what they can do, but they're limited to the natural.

But God works in the supernatural.

That's what believers have to do.

Believers, I wanna empower you to take your place in the supernatural.

Amen, come on, let's lift our hands, praise God Woo.

And of course, you know you've got many of Bible examples.

My favorite was a woman with an issue of blood.

You know, remember her.

She had spent all her living on doctors for 12 years, spent all of her living, all her money, and was nothing better but rather grew worse.

But when she heard of Jesus, what must she have heard?

She must have heard about a healing Jesus.

She must have heard about a Jesus that heals them all.

And she continually said if I can just touch the hem of his garment, I shall behold.

The only if is whether she had strength enough to get to where he was, because she had been had to be anemic, bleeding, hemorrhaging for 12 years, and back then what they did to fix you was bleed you.

They cut you and bleed more blood.

It's amazing that she was even able to live through the doctors, the brutal techniques that they had, ignorance that they had way back then, and yet healing was part of her coven.

She's a Jew, and yet healing had disappeared.

Like much of the church, healing has disappeared from the church, like it did in Jesus' day.

That's why Jesus came to seek and to save those that were lost.

Are you with me now, man?

When she got to Jesus, she touched the hem of his garment and she had to tell him who touched me.

Somebody touched me.

I felt power go out of me.

Who touched me?

And then she confessed it was me.

Woman, go your way.

Your faith your faith, not my goodness, not my power.

Your faith has made you whole Miracles.

Give hope to those people that are on their last legs.

I've had people go to heaven, but I've had people say I've had people healed.

As long as we have hope, you know, we can put people in a place to trust God for their healing.

People need miracles.

Raymond T Richie, he was a great pastor here in the city.

He was pastor of the Vangelistic Temple for many years, great Assembly of God Church at the Heights.

It's gone now but he was the pastor and he had a healing ministry that a lot of people said Brother Osteen looked a lot like Raymond T Richie and that his ministry was very similar.

A lot of people didn't know Brother Osteen had healing in his hands.

His hands would burn, he would lay his hands on people and I mean that was a separate gift.

It wasn't just the laying on of hands, it was a gifts of healies.

And then he kind of stepped back and let Doty take that.

When Doty was healed he stepped back, but for years, I mean he'd lay hands on people and if the manifestation was there, people get healed instantly.

And so anyway, raymond T Richie said this about healing.

He said Healing is God's dinner bell.

You know the chuck wagon when the cook rang the triangle ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, man, those cowboys came from everywhere.

You know why?

It's dinner time, it's time to sit down.

See healing signals to people.

Hey, they come from all over.

People are desperate.

They don't care what your doctrine is, they don't care what kind of church you have.

If they can get healed, that's the main thing.

Well, when they show up, they ought to get healed, shouldn't they?

So people need miracles.

Miracles are not optional.

We have to have them.

It's not just about us, it's about this great revival that God wants to bring.

So two more things real quick, and I'll let you get going here the two more questions I want to answer.

I answered the three questions of why do we need miracles?

Why are they necessary?

Why are miracles so hard to find in the church?

And I think you look across this country and miracles are kind of rare and I have two things that are out of the Bible.

The first one is little teaching or understanding of the Word.

When I say the Word, I mean the Word concerning all of the things that we have to offer, the full gospel.

Jesus preached the full gospel.

He didn't just preach the gospel of getting saved, he preached the full gospel.

He preached to the broke, the brokenhearted, the blind, the bound, the bruised.

Luke 4, 18.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel to five groups of people, the full gospel.

Jesus' death on the cross paid for everything, not just going to heaven.

That's the greatest miracle is the new birth.

The greatest miracle is going to heaven.

But we're not in heaven.

We need help now, and Jesus died to provide us safety, soundness, deliverance, healing.

Are you with me now?

This is called the full gospel.

This is a full gospel church and yet there are lots of full gospel churches where there's no miracles.

Why?

I think there's a couple of answers Little teaching or understanding of the Word.

For instance, acts 6-8, stephen, full of faith and power.

Where did he get that faith and power?

He sat under the ministry of God.

He was under the ministry of the apostles Peter and James and John.

I mean, he sat Sunday after Sunday, service after service, until he was so faithful that they said okay, you're so faithful, we're going to let you be a deacon, you're going to serve the.

You're going to be a dutcher.

But he knew who he was in Christ, what he had in Christ, what he could do through Christ, and he did it.

Are you with me now.

You can't teach what you don't know any more than you can come back from where you ain't been.

That's another brotherosteanism.

You can't teach what you don't know any more than you can come back from where you ain't been.

You know, in his denomination, his seminary did not teach healing.

They teach that miracles passed away.

Exactly what I said earlier.

He had a whole library full of books of unbelief.

But when Lisa, his daughter, was born with something like cerebral palsy, she had no sucking reflexes.

And when we give this testimony back in the early days when we started going to Lakewood, he'd have the ladies, the ladies that used to keep her in the nursery at Hibbert Memorial Baptist Church is where he pastored when Lisa was born.

And Lisa was born and she had no sucking reflexes, she couldn't cry, she could just squeak.

And when she got old enough to crawl, she couldn't crawl, she could just scoot.

And he would always say, ladies, am I telling the truth?

And they all lifted their hand.

They all said, yeah, that's exactly right.

We used to keep Lisa.

That's how she was.

And of course she got healed.

She got normal.

He searched the Bible.

He found a healing Jesus.

He found a Jesus different than the seminary he taught him about.

Oh, praise God, that's the gospel we preach and it's not being preached and taught.

It's just that simple and that's why we want to teach you.

Teaching is the cure for unbelief.

Teaching is the cure for ignorance.

And Pastor has no knowledge.

He's been taught that this is the case and he repeats that.

I won't name names, but I'm gonna hurt it with my own ears.

How is it that an educated man could be that dumb?

Can't you just read the Bible?

Do you believe it's God's Word?

It's filled with healing.

Every book, genesis to Revelation, is healing, every one of them, not just the Bospels, not just the Epistles.

So little teaching or understanding of the Word.

You're gonna get that here.

And then, number two little place for the Holy Spirit to move.

There's two things that happen, and I'm gonna read what Paul said in 1 Corinthians, chapter two.

Are you getting anything out of this?

Oh, I wanna encourage you today, especially our new members.

I mean, I know you've come from all kind of different backgrounds.

I'm not here to bash anybody.

I'm not here to tell you the difference and why this is different.

1 Corinthians, chapter two.

Excuse me, yeah, verse four, and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

So Paul believed in preaching with demonstration of the Spirit.

What does that mean?

Demonstration means showing off of the Holy Ghost.

When he preached, the Spirit of God showed up and miracles occurred in his ministry.

And so when you don't have, when you've got a fancy Dan that's always preaching the best of hominutics and homiletics and he's got a well-crafted, you know, full of alliteration and full of fancy words and full of the, the idea that he's highly educated and he's got a DD or a do-do.

No, it's a DD, doctor of divinity.

There I go again.

All right.

So See, it's just not, it's not, it's not.

There's no life in it.

The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveeth life.

And so there's two, two things.

First of all, the Holy Spirit in many places is either quenched what does it mean to be quenched?

There's no fire, there's no zeal, not in the congregation, not in the preaching.

There's just a impressive.

Everything's impressive.

Everything is geared for the entertainment of the guests.

We've got to have entertainment, we've got to have this, we've got to have that and really there's no place, there's no reverence for God, there's no fire, there's no zeal, and so you're quenching the Spirit.

First of all, as long as 519.

Quenched, not the Spirit.

What do you do with something quenched?

Well, you take a hot piece of steel and you quench it, you plunge it down in oil and that's part of heat treating.

You know, you just quench it.

What is quench to it means it cools it off.

You see, if people come to church they're desperate, they want something and they're just people lined up, including the preacher, to throw cold water on them.

Just throw cold water on their faith, cold water on their trouble that they're having.

No, we want to encourage everybody, we want to get people in, we want to have the fire and the zeal of God here.

So it's either quenched or he's grieved.

The spirit of God can be grieved, ephesians 4.30,.

Grieve, not the Holy Spirit of God.

Grieve means to sadden.

What saddens the Holy Ghost?

The lack of holiness, the lack of integrity, the lack of honor.

Jesus in his own hometown could there do no mighty work because of their lack of honor.

It says unbelief.

But lack of honor is part of unbelief.

In other words, they said who does he think he is?

We know him, we grew up with him.

We know his brothers and sisters.

We know his daddy.

He's a carpenter.

This is not the carpenter's son.

Where do all these glorious words come from?

Who does he think he is?

They admitted that he had miracles, but they didn't get any.

That group grieved the spirit so that Jesus could not, not, would not.

He was obviously.

He wanted to.

He was there.

He was there to make a difference in his hometown.

He wanted to heal them, just like everybody else, but he couldn't do it.

Why?

Because the spirit was grieved.

The spirit is like a dove.

He came on Jesus like a dove.

Not, he's not a dove, he's the second, he's the third person that God did.

But he's easily discouraged and quenched and grieved.

He will withdraw himself if the atmosphere is not right.

If the atmosphere is filled with criticism and doubt and backbiting, lack of honor, lack of the fear of God, then the lack of zeal is quenching.

So you can see quenching and grieving go together and if that happens then you're not going to get very much happening.

Not very many people get saved, not very many people get healed.

Amen, are you with me now.

So we need miracles and the last two places, you know, let's stir ourselves up to believe God and provide the atmosphere of faith, fire and love.

I mean that's on your side and my side, both.

If we come to church excited, thinking, oh, praise God, this is a special day and you know that's part of it.

Right there, God gave me this little formula years ago love plus unity equal miracles.

Everybody say love plus unity equals miracles.

Praise God, the case for miracles.

Come on, lift your hands and receive today Hallelujah.