The Necessity Of The Local Church

Let's pick our Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

That's not hard to do.

He stays mad, kind of like the Democrats.

Anyway, praise God, say this together, say, heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be here.

I count myself courageous.

I thank you for your holy written word and for your holy spirit that dwells on the inside of me and in the midst of us.

I'm not here by accident.

I'm at the right place at the right time, with the right people here, in the right thing to accomplish my purpose on the earth.

In Jesus' name, amen, amen, amen.

So glad to have you with us today.

Live stream audience.

Get your Bibles out and let's turn in our Bibles to Hebrews, chapter 10, in verse 19.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

Paul is writing there and he says having therefore brethren, this is for Christians, this is for believers.

Say believers Say, this is written to believers.

So this is one of the great, great epistles that you ought to be very familiar with because it's written to us.

It's timeless.

Having therefore brethren, weakness, shame, condemnation, no boldness to enter into the holiest by what?

The blood of Jesus.

Or, in my margin, it says freedom or liberty.

Having liberty to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

I want to remind you, in the Old Testament only the high priests could go in behind the veil.

It was thick, it was like 12 inches thick.

It was curtains and that was the curtain.

It was ripped in two.

On the day that Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the temple was ripped in two, 12 inches thick, and it took some power to rip that.

And that's the presence of God, leaving the temple made with hands.

And now we have the Holy Spirit coming into the temple, not made with hands, each of us, and also corporately.

He dwells in this church and because of that blood we can have freedom, we can have liberty to enter right into the, the holiest of all, the throne room.

Everybody say the throne room.

That's where we are right now, thanks to what we sang this morning.

We just ascended, ascended and ascended and we came into the throne room.

How?

By the blood.

This is what this is talking about.

We have this boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he had consecrated or has newly made for us, through the veil, that is to say his flesh.

Jesus is now the curtain.

We're in him so we can come right into the throne room, right?

The high priest could only do that once a year, and if he didn't look just right, if he had sweat on him, he'd die.

If he had a pimple on the end of his nose, he would die.

He had to be flawless, he had to be perfect.

They tied a rope around his waist and had little bells sewn at the hem of his, of his gown.

And when they quit hearing the bells ring, they knew he had dropped dead and pulled him out of there.

Send him to the next one.

How would you like to be the next one?

It came in after that one.

Oh, we've lost the fear of God, we've lost his holiness, we've lost what we have.

The privilege is not because of us, it's because of Jesus.

He's made a way for us and that's where we're at right now.

We're there right now.

That's why you feel the way you feel and sense what you sense, perceive what you perceive, if you really know what the Bible says.

And so he's made a place or a way for us In verse 21,.

And having a high priest over the house of God.

Who is that?

Jesus?

He's the apostle and high priest of our profession or our confession.

He's the high priest, unchangeable priesthood, forever and ever.

There's not gonna be another one.

We have a high priest over the house of God, the house of God.

What's this talking about?

It's talking about the local church.

That's what I'm talking about today.

Last week I talked about value of spiritual covering.

Today I'm talking about the necessity of the local church.

All of these verses I'm gonna read are dealing with what happens in the local church.

It's so absolutely it's not optional for you to understand this.

Most people don't have any understanding of a local church and so after today, I believe this after today and then last week, the value of spiritual covering.

You put those two together.

We have a lot of new prospects.

People are investigating whether to join this church.

Really, it's not joining.

It's whether you belong here.

You can join the Rotary Club, you can join the Country Club.

If you have enough money, they'll take you.

They'll take you, but no, this is not joining.

This is belong.

Where do you belong?

So it says here, having a high priest over the house of God, let us.

And if you look at verse 22, 23 and 24, the term let us is there.

There's three things that are really important concerning the local church.

First, let us is this Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having heart, heart sprinkled from an evil or a guilty conscience.

You know, guilt and shame will keep you out of the throne room.

Guilt and shame will keep you out of the local church and not be.

I mean, people that have trouble in their lives should come to the local church and so that they can be washed in the blood and they can be taught how to maintain victory in their personal lives, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our heart sprinkled from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Second, let us and let us and see.

There's another thing.

And let us consider one another.

To provoke unto love and to good works, that's another thing that happens in church.

And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, that's another thing that happens in church.

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as a manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching.

So we see here the necessity of the local church and last week the value of spiritual covering.

Now, wednesday night I preached a message on faith and miracles.

That's very vital.

It dovetails in with this message today, the message last week, and the Facebook took our message off illegally, wrongly.

They said that we had violated copyright laws with the song.

We had this little countdown that plays a little music and have you noticed, like when you turn on Facebook and you're a little early and you wanna be and we count down here in the sanctuary in the live stream, it's counting down on the clock and it has this little music.

You know it's a nothing burger, it's not a special thing, it's nothing burger.

It's not a spiritual song, it's just a countdown song.

Sony owns the rights.

We have the right to play that song.

We pay the privilege of all the music that we have on our website that we have.

We pay a fee every year, so the artists that compose it get a royalty off of it.

And Facebook they'd never done this before.

They took that message down, but it's on YouTube.

So I'm telling you you need to go to YouTube as soon as possible and especially if you're of the group of discovery class, I want you to hear that message because it's vital for you to hear it.

I talk about the different kinds of churches that are in the earth today and what kind of church this is.

And so you need that message.

Okay, get back to the necessity of the local church.

So we have these, let us, you know, let us three times as purposes.

There's three broad purposes of the local church that we need to talk about today, and they are these gather, to gather, to grow or to and to govern.

Those three things are done in the local church.

Everybody say gather, grow or mature, see mature and then govern.

Everybody say govern.

So let's talk about each of these three, and all of these are in the context of the local church, the house of God.

Jesus is the high priest over the house of God.

He cares about what's going on in the local church.

In the book of Revelation, he told John tell the five churches in Asia Minor.

They were local churches, and those five churches or, excuse me, seven churches, five out of the seven, had something vitally wrong with them.

Five out of the seven, jesus said repent, or else I don't ever want to know what else is.

If God says repent, it better be, I better find out what it is.

I need to change, amen.

So five out of the seven churches had to repent or else Only two of those churches were doing things correctly and in acceptably with God.

We get the idea that Jesus, you know, once saved, always saved, jesus did it all.

We don't have any parts to play.

No, you've got a very important part to play and the local church is vitally important, not just kind of a.

You know, I was raised a Catholic and I just thought, well, you know, go to Mass on Sunday, that way I don't go to hell.

Well, that was kind of stupid, right, there's a lot of people go to church every Sunday that are gonna go to hell.

I mean, they're sitting in church, lost.

You have to be born again.

He didn't say go to church, he said get saved, be born again.

But I just checked off the box.

See, a lot of people go to church.

Just check the box.

Sunday church, check the box.

No, it's gotten much more important than that, much more important than that.

So let's look at these three things Gather, grow and govern.

We'll start with gather.

Let's look at verse 25.

Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together.

One version says assemble yourself together as puzzle pieces.

When we gather together, this is an assembly.

It paints a picture of Christ.

Have you ever worked one of these thousand piece puzzles?

You know, a lot of times on the holidays the kids will dump out a puzzle upstairs.

They'll get up and we've got a coffee table and they'll spread all thousand pieces out and they'll start trying to put and you know, invariably one of the grandkids will flush some of the pieces down the toilet or they get lost.

And isn't it frustrating?

You've got 898 pieces and about 100 pieces are missing.

Where are they?

It's kinda hard to paint a good picture.

It's got big holes all in it.

You know, pretty hard to work the puzzle without all the puzzle pieces.

It's the same way.

I mean.

He said assemble.

You said let us consider one another, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is.

Some don't have this custom or this habit.

Some people call themselves Christian and they don't go to church.

Well, I just don't go to church.

I get more out of nature.

I can contact God better.

Out on the lake with a rod in reel oh, there's a big one.

Yeah, god is really moving.

Praise God, you're really accomplishing a whole lot.

No, that's completely ridiculous.

No, don't be like that.

He says don't forsake.

That word forsake, see, it's not like you're just missing, it's like you're AWOL.

Forsake means you leave someone, like in your marriage.

I mean, bubba didn't come home tonight.

It's not that he just stayed at the bar too long, he foresook his wife and kids and left, see, that's one level of forsaking.

See, forsaking it means literally in the Greek New Testament, linguistic key to the Greek New Testament See, I'm not a Greek scholar but I've got a book that is written by Greek scholars so I look it up in there.

About forsaking it means to leave in a lurch.

You leave somebody in a lurch.

In other words, it's highly inconvenient for the people that you left.

See, this is what it means to come to a church service.

You're needed to complete the picture.

If you're not here, it leaves us in a lurch.

Now, I know I'm making you feel kind of guilty, because not everybody comes all the time.

I do understand that there are things that come up, but I'm talking about consistently.

Your manner of life ought to be church, church, church.

You're going to church every time you can.

It's got to be something really serious for you to miss.

I've known people.

I've been in this a long time now 33 years in the ministry, 40 years saved.

I've seen a lot of people that call themselves Christians that are way, way, way woefully under-dedicated to their local church.

And it takes dedication, it takes faith to overcome the obstacles for you coming to church.

So it says don't be like the ones that don't come, don't leave us in a lurch.

We have a high priest over the house of God.

That's the high priest over this church.

He's watching this church.

He's listening to what I'm preaching.

He's looking at you to see if you are responding correctly.

If you do not respond correctly, it's this Wednesday night message you need to get that.

I mean, go get on YouTube and get that Wednesday night message.

It talks about what your responsibility is as a see.

The whole atmosphere is up to you.

I said the whole atmosphere.

You have to have an atmosphere for miracles.

Does anybody need a miracle today?

Anybody in here need a miracle?

You're in the right place, but listen, miracles don't just occur just any place.

There has to be an atmosphere.

Jesus preached in his own hometown no miracles.

And it's Jesus speaking.

He got no results like he did other places.

Why?

Because they didn't honor him.

They didn't believe him.

Who does he think he is.

We know who he is.

We know his mama and his brother and sister, blah blah, blah blah.

They didn't receive him.

And so, getting to that, jesus is watching this thing.

He's watching your response.

He's watching what I'm saying and what I'm preaching.

Have I prepared myself?

Have I done my homework?

Am I preaching under the unction and the anointing of the Holy Ghost?

That's another thing.

I talk about Wednesday night, and so this church is like that.

So you, if you're coming on board with us, there's some things that you're gonna have to pay an attention to.

Amen.

I think about.

You know, the house of God like a company like in the like.

Brother Pete was his retired military in the army and he's been all over the world.

His last assignment that he went overseas was Bagram Air Force.

You talk about dangerous place.

He never went without the Holy Ghost.

He always had Psalm 91 and his wife praying over him.

I mean, you know they got all Bagram Air Force, huge Air Force base, one of the largest I can't think the largest one in the world.

I think it's so huge an area they can't even hardly protect it.

It's a full time job just to protect that thing or with all the enemy around it.

Sometimes they get inside, they blow themselves up.

It's dangerous just to be on that Air Force base.

But he didn't ever go to the colonel and say you know, colonel, I just don't feel like being part of this company.

I really think that I would do better over here in company E2.

I mean, you know, they stay home most of the time.

No, he doesn't get to choose where he's sent, he has to go where he's sent.

And the idea we can pick and choose a church and a pastor just over some, well, I just only want to go to a church close to my home.

Well, what if there isn't any that's worth two cents close to your home?

See, that's kind of a silly requirement on your part.

Well, that's why this people come from all over.

We've got a couple who came from Sealy today.

They come almost every if they're in town.

They're here on Sunday Sometimes they travel.

So we have people coming from all over.

They passed how many hundred churches back, maybe more than that, on the way here.

Why?

Because they were sent here, they were assigned here.

It never occurred to them once God gave them a sign.

But to say I think I need to be assigned in Sealy Kind of makes sense to save a lot of gas, say, wearing tear on a car.

You can have all these.

No, no, you're assigned.

So you know, in Acts 4.23 of the disciples, they were preaching, teaching the name of Jesus.

You know Peter and John, the man at the gate, beautiful, notable miracle.

He would never walked in 40 years lame, and he was raised up, went walking and leaping and praising God into the temple.

And everybody knew him, everybody knew it was a miracle, it was a notable miracle, no one could deny it.

And the Sanhedrin came against.

The disciples said no, you quit preaching and teaching in that name.

We warn you right now, things are gonna get rough if you keep doing that.

You're trying to bring this man's blood upon us.

You stop preaching and teaching.

He said well, I can't help it.

A teaching, preaching the name of Jesus.

If it's against the law, you look into that.

But we're gonna be open here for business on Palm Sunday.

If it's against the law, you check that out.

We can't help but be here in the midst of this church.

It takes being an assembly to be a church service.

You can't have an assembly online because you can't see each other online and then just like Facebook?

What if we were depending on that and then Facebook decides, no, we're not gonna let you be on today?

That was a perfect example right there.

That was an unjust thing.

And we have to go through this rigmarole assignment a bunch of paperwork to fill out, talk to people brain dead.

You know Facebook doesn't want us on there.

You know YouTube doesn't want us on there.

It won't be a matter of time before they're gonna figure out a way to stop the church from being on there.

We'll find another way.

I don't care, we're gonna be here, all right.

So they went to their own company.

Acts 4.23 said they all went back to their own company in their own local church.

The disciples Peter and John had a local church they were associated with.

Some of you like to watch other ministries on YouTube and different ones.

That's fine.

In some cases it's fine.

In some cases it's not fine.

I mean, you know some of these people.

You don't even know who they are.

You don't even know what they believe.

You don't know their lifestyle.

You don't know whether they're living for God.

As far as you know, they're just on YouTube.

You never heard of them.

They have no track record.

We've been here.

We have a track record, we have a history.

Glad it's not been married 52 years.

Our children are all in the ministry and they're spouses.

Our grandkids are all here.

We have a track record you can look at.

Why would you want to discount that and go see some guy on or a gal on YouTube or Facebook that you never heard of and put a bunch of weight on what they're saying?

I'm saying be careful.

There's a lot of deception, a lot of false prophets and false teachers that will lead you astray.

I talked about that last week, but it's still real.

I mean, they went to their own company and later on, in Acts chapter four, they had a prayer meeting to address the threatens these.

Lord behold, they're threatening and get granted with all boldness that we may speak thy word, hallelujah.

They weren't about to obey the authorities and not use the name of Jesus, just like we're not about to obey any kind of a law that says that we can't gather in this church.

I don't care what they say.

They can't take that right away from me, because they didn't give it to me and they didn't give it to you.

God gave it to us and, while I'm at it, the Supreme Court, I mean John Roberts.

Yet again he ruled against the church that had had a deal where they were told that they couldn't have like 10 people and all this kind of stuff.

They used a different standard than they did the liquor stores and the grocery stores.

They put a very restrictive standard on the church and I believe it was California and they lost the Supreme Court.

He sided with the liberal justices again.

Yet again, I call for the resignation of Chief Justice John Roberts.

You're a false prophet.

You're a liar.

You ran and got appointed, confirmed by the Senate, and everything you said to them was a lie.

You're 50-50 at best.

See, that's not a conservative, that's not somebody that's looking at the con.

Can you imagine that he told the church that they couldn't worship?

They've got a thin out 10 people in a big old sanctuary.

There's churches in California.

Several of them are just.

They're going against Garcetti and going against the governor.

I wish there were more.

It's like rare as Hinn's tea.

There's still churches that are closed.

They're going to answer to God one of these days.

All right, well, praise God.

So they came back to their own company.

They had a prayer meeting and the place shook.

Now that manifestation hadn't happened here.

But I'm going to tell you something there's been shaking in the heavenlies when we pray.

This church has got a lot of authority We'll get more of that later in the govern side but we're together and we worship corporately.

It says enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

That's the throne room, and that's what we did, and we sang those beautiful blood songs to remind everybody today of how we're able to go in there.

We're going in there through the blood.

Oh, the blood is enough.

It's enough for us.

None of us are perfect, none of us have the perfect behavior, but we've got the blood to cleanse us and to wash our conscience and get guilt and shame out of our conscience.

You know, a lot of people don't enter in because they're ashamed.

Oh God, that's the whole thing about righteousness.

It takes the shame away.

You need to go to a church that will teach you that Amen.

And so then you have this vertical need.

We all have a need to worship God.

We're created to worship and fellowship with God, and so there's a vertical component that between us and God goes right up to the throne room, and that's a need that we have.

We haven't, because we were created with that God shaped hole inside of us, a God shaped vacuum, that we have a need to fellowship with the most high God.

We're all potentially the children of God, but we don't become that until we're born again.

But every human being, regardless of their Buddhist or Muslim or whatever they are, they've got a need inside of them for God.

They don't know how to fill that need.

That's why we need to preach the gospel, all right.

So gather is real important.

The vertical component of our need to worship is supplied.

Now.

The second one is grow or mature.

We all have to mature.

We all start off as babies and we go through the toddler stage and the child stage and the adolescent stage, but nobody ever grows so much that they graduate.

No, everyone needs to mature and develop as a Christian, and the problem with our nation is that there are millions of people and I do believe they're born again, but they're in the babyhood stage.

They never grew past babyhood.

Can you imagine Are there any pacifiers on the battlefield?

Are there any nursing mothers out there in the foxhole nursing a baby?

No, there's a place for that and it's way away from the battle.

So we've got a whole bunch of people that are not equipped for the battlefield.

We're in a war.

Well, I thought Jesus won.

Yeah, he won the war, but we've got to keep the devil under our feet.

More about that in a while.

We'll talk about govern in a minute.

But we have to grow, we have to mature.

Notice here where it says in verse 25, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a manner, some is but exhorting one another.

The word exhort means to admonish, to warn, to urge, to encourage.

Again, pretty hard to do that on live stream.

You can comment out there on Facebook, but little old comment, that's not enough.

I mean we need to see each other face to face.

If I know that somebody's going through something, then I can get up next to them and I can put my arm around them and say I just want you to know I'm standing with you, I'm believing with you, You're a winner, you're an overcomer.

I mean we need each other and not all.

I can't do that for everybody on a personal basis.

Well, that's why that's called a believer's ministry.

Did you know I'm here this morning because of the believer's ministry?

Believers told me about Jesus.

Believers led me to the place where I could, where Jesus could find me.

I was lost and he found me.

But if it hadn't been for the believer's ministry, it wouldn't pastor Osteen, I didn't even know him.

I'd already gotten saved before I even heard of him.

It wasn't sitting in his church.

It got me saved.

I'd already gotten saved before that.

Why?

Because the believer's ministry, all the believer's ministry, is vital.

That's what's lacking in America.

It's lacking.

We need to grab ahold of this.

So exhort one another, it says, and so much more.

As you see, the day approaching, Jesus is coming.

I don't have a date for you, but he's coming.

The signs are all around us, and what we do, we're going to have to do effectively and quickly.

You know, in another scripture Hebrews 3.13, it says exhort one another daily while it's called today.

And that tells me that there ought to be an extension of your friendships from church to everyday life.

Your best friends ought to be people you go to church with.

Now, that is one of the challenges of this church.

I'll talk about a regional center in a minute.

It is regional and our people are scattered over the entire region.

So sometimes if you live in Myreland and someone else that you really like lives in League City, it's a little hard to get together, right, and that's kind of the way it is here.

But you know there are plenty of people that live close to you, that go to this church.

You can start to reach out and that way you can kind of stay connected.

Besides just church yes, church is just the beginning place for the network of people that you need to have victory.

And so it says here in verse 24, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.

So you have to get close to each other for that to happen.

To provoke Now listen to this one.

Provoke means in the Greek it means to irritate, and I know that I'm really good at that.

I have the gift of irritation.

I can irritate Gladys so much that she will grit her teeth and stomp her foot, and then I know to leave the room, move on out in a different place, get out of range.

To irritate, to incite You've heard of inciting to riot.

We should incite people, we should irritate people, we should stimulate people to do what?

To love and to good works.

To love and to good works, to stimulate to love and to good works.

I just think about discipling and I think about when I was a baby Christian, just you know, I started going to Lakewood and it's a huge church 5,000 people there on Sunday morning, 3,000, 4,000 people on Sunday night in the old building and I mean you know that's huge.

But yet, you know, I got to know people, got to know people, got to be friends with people and they started exhorting me and admonishing me and warning me and urging me and encouraging me.

And one of the guys still remember, brother Jim Scalise.

Anybody remember Jim Scalise from Lakewood?

A lot of you do know him.

But Jim Scalise was an ex-con.

You know, in his previous life, before he got saved, he sold drugs to all the sports figures and used them all.

He used to know all of them.

Oh, I know him.

He used to sell him drugs and he was a rounder, big, tall, big guy.

We'd go out to eat.

He'd order a baked potato.

He'd tell the waiter he says Now I want extra butter, extra butter, I mean that big old butter that you bring, bring twice as much, bring twice as much sire cream for my baked.

But he'd have a baked potato that's five pounds, and then he'd have a tub of butter and a tub, an entire eight ounces of sire cream and he'd fit on.

He was quite a guy but I got to where.

I'd travel with him.

He'd give his testimony at full gospel businessmen meetings and I'd sing and we got to know each other.

But before that I just had known him a little while, though he found out I could sing.

So she had me sing on a Sunday night and I was so nervous and I sang a track by Kenneth Copeland.

Only the redeem shall hear his voice on that day.

Anybody remember that old song?

That was my first track that I was able to actually sing without the radio or without the stereo.

It's one thing to sing along with the radio, it's another one to sing all by yourself, especially in front of 5,000 people.

And so my knees were having fellowship one with another and I would sing the first little bar of words.

And then I couldn't remember what came next.

I'm panicking up there, I'm thinking, oh, what's next word Wasn't it?

Finally, right before I'm time to sing, I'd get it and I'd sing.

So I went through the whole song like that.

Every little part of the song I had to just sweat out.

And by the time I got off the platform I didn't know how I did.

I mean I was so glad for it to be over and so everybody clapped and they were real nice and all that.

So I saw Jim after the service.

Jim said, brother, that's good to sing, you did real good.

You don't clap me on the back.

I said, oh, jim, I don't know.

No, no, I'm telling you you did really good, it was really good, and I just didn't accept it.

He said look, brother, grab me by both shoulders and looking down at me because I had to look up at him.

And he said you know, when I give you a compliment, just receive it.

It's not you anyway, it's the Lord working in you to learn how to receive somebody's encouragement and don't throw it away.

I mean, they went to the effort to tell you you did good, accept it, say thank you and then later on you can thank the Lord for helping you get through it.

See, he told me the truth.

It didn't hurt my feelings.

See, develop a thick skin and a tender heart, not a thin skin and a thick heart.

See, that's the opposite of what you need and that's what church is about to help you develop and grow.

Are you mature?

Everybody say mature.

In verse 23, it says hold fast our confession or our profession of faith without wavering.

Well, how do you develop that?

Well, by all those other things, by being exhorted and by being provoked.

You have to be provoked under love.

You know, I tell you, we'd have testimonies there in those days, and people would get up and I would see what kind of effort that they would make to help other people, and I would be provoked under love, I would be stirred, see, I would be incited to love people.

I'd be incited, it'd be an example.

See, that's what it's talking about.

That only happens in a church service, it can only happen in an assembly.

It can't really happen on live stream.

And so bottom line is we need each other.

Let's look at Ephesians, chapter four, real quickly.

Are you getting anything out of this today?

These are very vital and we're going a little longer than we typically do, but I don't have a time limit.

If you don't, I mean, did you have a time limit?

How long you're willing to give me?

Well, I'll give pastor 20 minutes.

Click Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

Well, 15 minutes have gone by and he's still talking about the first thing he was talking about.

Okay, welcome to the Holy Ghost.

All right.

So in Ephesians, chapter four, verse eight, wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he let captivity captive and gave gifts or domas or presents unto men.

And verse 11, he gave some apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.

And what are the reasons for those gifts of the Spirit?

See, last week I talked about needing to receive me as your pastor.

I'm a gift to you.

God wrapped a present and gave it to you.

You have to receive me that way.

It's not enough that you knew me before.

I did a lot of people here that knew me at Lakewood.

Well, I'm not the same as I was at Lakewood, I'm different.

I've grown and I've got an office now, and then I've been faithful over that office and so God has added some other things to me.

So don't relate to me like you think I used to be, but relate to me where I am now.

I'm a gift.

And what is the purpose of the gift in your life?

For the perfecting or maturing or the growing of the saints.

And what is the purpose of that?

For the work of the minister, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

So that's what you're to grow enough to where you can edify other people.

Well, if you're going to edify our strength in other people, you also have to be strengthened.

Strength has to come into you so that you can be strong for someone else.

Right, it's a two way street, coming in and going out.

Verse 14,.

That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and cared about with every wind of doctrine, sleight of men.

See, this is why so many people are deceived about this virus and afraid of it and wearing masks and sheltering in places if they've got the bubonic plague, this is the flu folks.

There's a few people dying, but they're mostly.

We know who they are.

They try to find one out of a million and make you have fear.

I saw somebody where they said their baby died.

Well, you know, there could be a baby that died.

Did they really die of COVID or was something else?

See, everybody dies of COVID right now.

Why?

Because there's money.

The government gives them money.

If they can put it on the death certificate, they get a check.

So I don't trust anything that's coming out of the government.

You know who I trust.

I trust him.

I trust this word right here.

Oh, we need each other, so, anyway.

So we henceforth be.

No more children toss to and fro and believe everything that some non-elected bureaucrat tells you.

That's what we could put there and wouldn't be wrong.

I don't believe the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control.

First of all, they've never controlled a disease, never.

They don't know anything about it and they couldn't even.

They didn't even invent the models that they used.

Remember the model that said we were going to have a half a million or million to two million people die?

Those models were paid for by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It went through the University of Washington.

They can't even generate their own models.

That's how dumb they are.

I don't listen to dumb people.

I'm sorry, I don't listen to Plenty of smart people to listen to besides those guys.

They've never worked in a hospital.

They've never.

They've messed up our entire healthcare program by taking away all the other procedures and concentrating on something that's really not that horrible, and they had to lay off doctors and nurses to do it.

Now I just read an article this morning.

Oh, there's a crisis.

We don't have enough healthcare workers.

Well, why don't you call the one you laid off in April?

You laid a bunch of people off in April.

Tire them back.

Don't get me started, folks.

This is all about being babies and children and you're not grown up enough to know what God is saying to you.

Henceforth, be no more children.

Grow up.

Grow up, but speaking the truth in love verse 15, grow up into Him in all things.

In all things.

Being a good citizen of America, I mean we ought to be mature Christians.

We should not be told what we can do and can't do, have our rights stolen, and then we say, well, we don't think we ought to open these schools.

We think we ought we.

How's that working?

It's going to be a disaster if we don't open the schools up.

Okay, now look at verse 16, from whom the whole body?

That's, from Jesus.

Jesus is the head, and from the head the whole body.

Everybody said that's me fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies.

So, in other words, look to the person on your right.

See, that person has a supply for you.

Look to the person to the left, that person has a supply for you.

And also you have a supply for each of the people that you looked at, and you could go around the room.

We all have a supply for each other and we all have a supply coming from each other.

That's the body.

I mean, does your little finger occasionally just leave you and go to the store?

Yeah Well, what happened to your little finger?

Well, it's at the store.

I know it sounds stupid, but look, this is the body.

Every part is necessary, every part is vital, every part.

The fingernail, I mean the toenail on the little toe, is very vital.

Have you ever lost it?

It hurts like the Dickens, I mean, really does.

So we, we fitly joined together, compacted by that which every joint supplies according to the effect.

You're working in the measure of some of the parts, every part.

That means you're important, which means you're relevant, it means you're necessary, amen, and make it increase of the body under the edifying of itself in love.

So that's the body, the body ministry.

We're joined together, fit together, held together, and we receive and give supply.

And so in that way, the horizontal, you don't worship each other, but you worship the God that is in each other.

You reverence the God that lives in each other and then that means that you love them, even when they're going through a slick spot.

Maybe they're rude, maybe they, maybe you don't quite connect with them on a personality basis.

We'll give it a little time.

I mean, let's love them until they grow and get a little.

You know we talk about IQ, intelligence quotient.

Well, one of the things that has to happen here is your EQ has to grow, your emotional quotient.

People have to mature in the way they think, the way they're self-awareness, how they talk to each other, how they look at each other.

I mean, that's not a snap, that's not snap your fingers and it's instant.

It takes time.

You've got to have enough EQ in you to bear along with people that are still coming along.

Maybe they're babies.

You know what babies do?

They demand attention, they demand their way.

Have you ever had a child that throws a tantrum?

If you ever let a child win by throwing a tantrum, you're in for a lot of trouble.

You've got to teach that child, the first time he lays on the ground and kicks and screams, that that is the way to be by yourself in a room and without whatever it is that you're trying to get Amen.

So that's, you know, we have to teach people how to operate.

So the horizontal there's a worship component.

I mean, you know, yeah, some people just want to worship like this and not get involved with anybody else, they're incomplete.

You've got to have the horizontal component of worship, which love and concern for each other.

All right, the last one is on this govern.

Everybody say govern.

So in Ephesians, chapter one, the great prayer of Ephesians.

You see Ephesians, chapter one and two.

It starts with verse 14.

I won't read the whole prayer.

It goes all the way down to Ephesians, chapter two, verse 10, one big, long prayer.

But let me just read some of it.

And verse 22,.

And God has put all things under his feet, talking about Jesus, and gave him to be the head over all things, to the church, which is his body.

That's all about Jesus, the fullness of him, that filleth, all in all.

So all things are under the feet of Jesus.

Jesus is the head.

Where are the feet?

The feet are in the body.

Jesus is the head.

Where is he?

He's at the right hand of the Father.

He's in heaven.

Where is the church?

The church is on earth.

So everything has been put under our feet.

All everybody say all things.

All things are put under our feet.

So they have to be.

All things are put under our feet.

All things are put under our feet.

We have to tread upon circumstance.

We have to tread upon demons and powers of darkness.

They're the ones that are trying to oppose us on the earth.

We've been given authority.

I said we've been given authority, all right, isaiah nine very important.

You know, the Old Testament is a type and shadow, and so Isaiah got a glimpse of what the church was gonna have when he prophesied about the birth of our Savior, verse six Isaiah nine six, for unto us, a child is born, under us, a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder.

Where is the shoulder?

It's in the body, the same place that the feet are.

The government shall be on the shoulder.

See, the head is one thing, the shoulder is the body.

Where is the government?

It's on the body.

Where is the body?

It's on the earth.

We've been given government power over government here by God.

That's his design, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace.

There's five elements characteristics of government, and the government in this country is not the state, it's not the unelected bureaucrats.

Most of them are basically appointees of a particular political party and most of them are Democrats.

Have you ever been to Washington DC?

Yes, it's massive.

I was there in January of 2009.

We were at a meeting of the division of the IRS that has to do with nonprofits and we were there with our attorney, james and Jay were with me and our attorney, david Epstein, at the time, and they were bringing their, they were opening the discussion about some rules that they had in mind and the lawyer for the Catholic Church of USA, big lady, about six foot tall, she come walking in the room.

My attorney says that's the attorney for the Catholics.

Right there, this lady up here, she was running the meeting.

She knew she was in trouble.

She glanced up and saw that lawyer for the Catholics and so we, you know, I went up and raked her over the coals pretty good, because she was trying to take a lot of our rights away from us, trying to make it harder for us to function as a church and all that.

And they pulled back.

That's the Obama.

Obama was not a friend of the church.

He's a friend of mosques, he's a friend of Islam, but not the church, and so, but anyway, that place is massive.

There was a crane on every building.

I mean, as soon as Obama took over, they started rebuilding the entire city and it's populated by left wing radicals.

They're the ones that are in the government.

Listen, we have got to rule over those people.

A lot of them ought to be fired, a lot of those.

I kind of think about just how good it'd be to just abandon Washington, turn into condos and just move the capital to somewhere like maybe Amarillo, lube, kind of the middle of it.

Let it be in Texas, but be in the middle of the country.

Get it away from that mess Governing.

And so the characteristics.

Notice the characteristics.

Now I'm spending some time.

We're not going to get out just right at 1130 today.

This is worth it.

We've got to make an investment in our future.

It says the government should be on Pony's shoulder and his name shall be called wonderful counselor.

Mighty God, everlasting father, the prince of peace.

That comes from the people, that comes from the church.

Separation of church and state is a lie.

It never was in the constitution.

It's not anything to do with what it should be.

The government of our nation is of the people, by the people, for the people, and the people should be Christian.

The people should be the way it was formed, and what we've done, especially in the last 60 years or so, is we've imported every false religion from all over the country and we stopped all the Christian people from coming.

So we've got Islam, we've got Hindus, we've got all these different places that don't believe like we believe and they don't have the American spirit.

They don't have the American culture with them.

You wanna dare and call that white supremacy.

You wanna dare and call that white privilege.

You wanna call that systemic racism.

You're a fool.

You're a fool and you're devoid of what this Bible says right.

It has nothing to do with race.

It has nothing to do with race.

It has to do with God, it has to do with Jesus Christ.

That's why our efforts to export democracy have failed A rock.

I mean, they voted in.

What difference did it make?

Remember the purple fingers?

They dip, oh, they dip the oh.

I voted.

There's my purple finger.

Total waste of time.

Why?

Because they don't have the culture.

They don't have what we have.

They don't have gospel light.

They destroyed all the Christian churches, ran them out of there.

Are you with me now?

So this influence of the five, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace, that needs to be inside our government, because the government is of the people, by the people, for the people.

Let me ask you is that going on right now?

No, it's not.

In the Supreme Court, except with two members.

Thomas and Alito are the only two that are consistent in their rulings.

The rest of them are not Need to get rid of them.

How are we gonna do it?

They vote Amen, all right.

And then?

So in our government, according to the Constitution, we have co-equal branches of our government which are not co-equal anymore.

They've drifted.

How are they gonna change?

The church has got to rise up and begin to speak against what we're experiencing and we need to put some teeth behind it.

You know, when the early church prayed, things happened.

Acts, chapter 12, herod dared to kill Philip and then was gonna kill Peter.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

After Easter, and the church, oh, acts chapter 12, read it for yourself.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

The church, without ceasing, made prayer under God for him and angels came and broke.

An angel came and broke Peter out of jail.

And then, a few weeks later, herod got to making an oration and they said, oh, it's the voice of a God and not of man, and he was so proud of himself.

He gave not God the glory and an angel standing by.

Why was the angel right there?

Because they had been praying and the angel was watching this leader and he did not give God the glory and he's smoting.

He hid him.

I don't know if he thumped him.

I don't know what he did.

All I know is he was eating with worms and died.

Can you imagine how long that took?

You know it wasn't instant.

So he had days to repent.

He didn't repent.

That I know of.

Oh, I'm sick.

I must have I did something wrong.

See Herod.

He had knowledge of Christianity.

He knew he was part Jewish.

You know that, yeah.

So where did that come from?

Church prayed, do you mean they prayed for that?

No, they didn't pray for it in their understanding, but they did pray in the Holy Ghost.

We need to pray more for our nation and expect God to begin to move on behalf of what we're praying.

We have a great amount of power to govern.

So we have three co-equal branches of government the executive, which is the president or the governor.

The legislative, which is the House of Representatives and the Senate, and that's the legislative.

And then the judicial, which is our Supreme Court or all the other federal courts, and in Texas we have a state Supreme Court.

It's weak, it's populated with weak people.

We've got one.

John Devine's an excellent guy.

The rest of them are mushy, kind of like our governor.

How's it gonna change, pastor?

Well, number one we have to pray.

Number two we have to vote.

We have to vote correctly and we all need to vote, not half of us.

People did not vote in 2018, which is why the state turned mostly blue.

That's why Houston is blue, harris County is blue for the first time and out on the hell on, because people didn't vote.

We're gonna all vote.

Every one of us in this room is gonna vote and we're gonna vote correctly.

Yes, are you with me now?

Yes, I'm not.

Listen.

I believe that prophecy that God gave us this morning.

I believe God's got a plan and it includes the local church.

So in June of 1996, we were outgrowing our first building my our landlord at the time.

We were in the where the super target is now, right across 1960.

On the south side of 1960 and cutting road there, and that was our first building and we were outgrowing.

We didn't have parking, didn't have enough room, and so he offered to build us a 5,000, a 15 to 20,000 square foot metal building on five acres and keep the rent or the lease the same as we were paying.

We were paying 5,000, I'm not 60,000 a year for that space.

It had 9,000 square feet and hardly any parking.

I mean we just didn't have any good parking spaces.

And one time we got out and put some stabilized concrete down and it was a failure.

I mean people were afraid to park on it because it looked like he'd get stuck.

They wouldn't get stuck, but they wouldn't park their Mercedes out there on that overflow parking lot.

And so anyway, we so the Holy Ghost wouldn't let me sign the deal.

I thought it was a great deal Five year lease, same money, have a whole lot more space, double the space that we had now, and have five acres of nice parking lot concrete.

Okay, god wouldn't let me, he wouldn't give me a release.

So I said well, I can't take you up on that offer.

If you got any land, I'd like to look at your land.

So he gave me a list of properties and I went over here and on a road and I looked at a five acres on a little streets, real narrow, and while I was looking at it, suddenly I saw something in the sky and it was a big circle with a star in the middle of it and it reminded me as soon as I saw it up there.

It reminded me of Matt Dillon, marshall Dillon, gun smoking, marshall Dillon.

And that thing came and it lit and it was as big as the center section, right here on that property, in the middle of that five acre property, and I'm trying to figure out what am I seeing, what am I experiencing?

And then all of a sudden, it was like I was lifted way up until the star got to be so small that it reminded me of when you're looking at a map and the star is over Austin, capital of Texas, or over Washington DC.

They marked the capital of a state or country with a circle and a star.

And that's what I thought about when I saw that.

And so then I asked the Lord.

I said, lord, what are you saying?

You want to make us a capital?

What?

What does this mean?

And he spoke two words regional center.

Well, I'd never heard of a regional center.

I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it had something to do with government.

Because he showed me a capital.

And as I prayed and began to meditate on what he showed me, number one, I had faith for a bigger piece of property, because a regional center is something that's drawing not just from the neighborhood.

Most local churches draw from the neighborhood that they're in and they might be three to five miles max around the local church.

I mean, you're not going to have any reach beyond that.

It's a small local church, but a regional center was more like what Lakewood was.

When I went to Lakewood I drove 28 miles each way four times a week for 15 years.

So you know I knew something about regional centers.

I realized that's where I came out of.

I understood it.

It's a church where people and we already were that way.

It was a brand new church, a year and a half old.

Our members came from different parts of town, not just out here.

Most were out here, but a lot of them were distant.

So, and then I began to meditate on this idea of government executive, legislative and judicial and back then I had very little revelation, very little understanding of what it meant.

But after 25 years we've got a little bit more highly developed idea of what it means, because the government is on his shoulder.

We're here to govern, we're here to legislate, we're here to adjudicate, we're here to enforce the laws that we pass.

Pastor, you're going off the deep end.

Well, I'm just going by the Bible.

I get so tired.

In my inbox I get emails from all different kind of ministries across the country and almost all of them say oh, we need to pray for our nation.

If my people Second Chronicles, chronicles 714.

Take my people that are called by my name so humble themselves and pray, I will hear from heaven and I will teal their land.

Blah, blah, blah.

Well, that is a baby prayer.

It's not even for the church, it's for Israel.

When they were disobedient and they left the protection of the law and they started worshiping false gods and they got scattered, then God would hear from heaven whenever they were anywhere.

God had a covenant with them.

If you do depart from my covenant, I will hear you, if you'll repent, in other words.

But that's not the prayer.

We ought to be praying.

We ought to be praying in Ephesians 1.

We ought to be praying.

We ought to be governing this stuff.

God's not going to do anything more.

He's already sent Jesus and Jesus is our head and he's giving us marching orders.

We have feet and we need to tread under these things.

We need to tread in Black Lives Matter.

Put it under our feet.

It's a communist organization.

It is not a movement for black people.

It is not that.

That's why I'm insulted to see it out there in the public in the sports area.

I'm not.

You can do what you want.

I'm not saying that you should do this, but I'm through with football, basketball and baseball this year until they learn a lesson, because they politicized and ruined sports.

That ought to be a refuge for everybody.

Well, it'll be entertainment.

I heard this one guy say well, I'm using it as a platform.

I'm using my platform.

You don't have a platform, dumb butt.

You don't have a platform.

You don't have a platform.

The platform is paid for right here.

I paid for your platform.

It's called tax money.

Sorry, I cussed.

You'll get over it later.

I'm real.

Sometimes I use a CRAP word.

I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

Sometimes the old man pops up.

Did I offend anybody?

I'm sorry.

Well, I'm offended.

I'm offended by these people that have politicized and they're lying to our young people.

That's the most.

That's the tragic thing, because Black Lives Matter, as an organization, cares nothing about Black Lives.

It cares about perpetrating communism on this country, and they say so on their website.

Please look at the website, I'm not just making this up.

Therefore, the dissolution of the family they want to get rid of mothers and fathers and children and all that.

They want the state to take the place of everything.

So just look at communist China If you want to know what they look like.

They look like communist China, the Chinese Communist Party.

You know they shut them down right here in Houston, texas, this week, and I believe it's because we've prayed for years.

Everything hidden comes to the light.

They arrested this one lady that was hiding in the San Francisco consulate.

She has been looking, they've been looking for her for years and she has tried to go and be a spy.

She lied in order to get into this country and they have finally arrested her this week.

I mean the covers are coming off of the communists.

I mean our president, our secretary of state, are doing a full court press on the Communist Chinese Party.

So at least we don't have to give place to the BLM and the Antifa and all these people that are absolutely against us.

As a nation, we're a regional center and so we have authority over these areas and, as we've been faithful in a little, god has made us ruler over much.

He has increased our place, he's increased our footprint, he's enlarged our footprint.

Anybody ever heard that saying?

God has enlarged the footprint of this church?

And I'll just say this.

We have a lot of people that were involved in the Republican Party Convention last week.

It was very difficult because it was online for the first time ever and it was done because Democrats interfered with with, with godly and right laws.

They don't care about the law.

They're lawless.

They're the party of lawlessness.

They're the party of murder.

They're the party.

You just name it.

They're the party of all the bad stuff.

There's nothing to pray about.

Well, I'm trying to pray.

No, you don't need to pray.

There's nothing.

If you vote for them, you're voting against God.

There's nothing about them.

That's for God.

They booed God in 2016.

I mean that ought to tell you something.

And they're not any better now than they were then.

So this, this, this church, is making a mark in governing, and you know?

Hebrews 10 13,.

You know God.

Let's look at that real quick.

It's really good Hebrews 10 13.

I meant to give you that one earlier, verse 12, but this man talking about Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his foot stew.

Let me ask you something Did Jesus defeat the devil?

Did he defeat the demon powers?

Did he defeat the principalities, powers and rulers of darkness of this world?

He completely demoralized and defeated him, didn't he?

Well, this Bible, this word, says that he's expecting something from the church.

What's he expecting till his enemies be made his footstool?

A footstool is something that you rest your foot on.

We ought to be making sure and enforcing the total defeat of these demonic powers and I'm sorry, the church has failed in its job up to now.

We've allowed prayer to be removed from the schools.

I mean, it used to be that the Bible was read in schools.

We've allowed that to happen.

We allowed abortion rulings from the Supreme Court.

We should have marched, we should have screamed, we should have hollered, we should have put pressure on our elected officials.

We didn't.

We tried to stay out of the line of fire, we tried to stay silent.

Ooh, it might cost us some members.

You go, because some of our members are pro-choice and we, we want to be really inclusive.

We want everyone to be welcome here.

Bologna feathers that's not God, jesus.

Jesus didn't do that.

I mean sinners.

He ate with sinners, but they all repented.

Every one of them repented.

He didn't put a stamp of approval on sin, and so you know, we just have not made his enemies his footstool, and that's one of the mandates of glorious way church and it's combative, and sometimes you hear me say things that I say and maybe they're a little heart-like.

This morning, again, I'm sorry that I said what I said, but in another way it's true.

Anyhow, that's kind of the area of their body.

I would aim my foot if I had a chance, about his platform.

You know that's so arrogant.

They don't have a platform.

They really don't own it.

It doesn't give them the right to say anything about society.

This is just a see.

This is the.

This is the problem with Facebook and social media.

It's giving people an unrealistic vision of their own importance.

The only importance we have is in Christ.

When you remove in Christ from it, you really are a zero.

You're a nothing burger, you're $49 worth of chemicals and you're on your way to hell.

That's without Christ.

But in Christ, oh, in Christ is a different matter.

My job is to let you know who you are in Christ and to empower you to stand up.

And so in June of 98, I was watching just news and I won't go into the whole thing, but it was the arraignment of a man who was crazy and had somehow broken into the capital and gotten past all of the metal detectors and took a gun inside the capital offices and killed the head of security for Congressman Tom Delay, who was from the Houston area.

He was also Speaker of the House.

They call him the hammer.

I really love Tom Delay.

I love him.

And he got.

He got drilled out of there.

Liberal liberals in Austin made up of charge and, and you know, blacklisted him and threw dirt at him and by the time he wanted he had to leave office.

And it was wrong, it was unjust.

This is what we do.

This never happens to Democrats, it only happens to Republicans.

They'll find something, they'll make a story up, they'll get some judge to go along with them and they just tarred and feathered him until it took years for him to get his, to get his name back, and I don't think he ever did.

You know, once they lie about you, it's hard to ever get your name back.

And so he, his head of security, was killed, and another man.

So this man shot and killed two people in the capital, can you imagine?

And so they're arraigning this person to stand trial for this crime.

And the Holy Ghost out loud.

I mean I thought everybody in the house heard it.

I said, see, you can't protect yourselves and see, there's getting back to the covering.

Now you know, this country has a covering.

You have a covering in this church.

It's a canopy, it's a protection.

This nation has a hoop, a canopy over it.

We've shot holes in it through lack of putting the devil under our feet, making his enemies his footstool.

We have not done that.

We've allowed demon powers to rule in our government.

We haven't voted correctly.

Millions upon millions of Christians voted for Obama.

See, that's I don't care if you did it innocently, you did it.

You was a sin.

You should not have done it.

If I voted for somebody like that, I would be repenting.

If you haven't repented, repent, well, I didn't know when.

Now you know.

So go back and repent.

At least acknowledge you made a mistake.

That president did us more harm than you can imagine.

It's because of him, who had a LGBTQ, and because of him, that we had so many, so much trouble with our friend.

The only friends we have is Israel.

He was horrible with that, so you can't protect yourself.

In other words, it takes God to hold his hand over us, and so that went.

When, in 2001, the Twin Towers fell, I remembered this word that God told me it wasn't God allowing it, it's that God couldn't prevent it because we had taken ourselves out from under his covering or another way.

We had shot holes in it.

And we still got holes, and this church can plug some of them up.

Maybe not all of them, we can plug some of them up.

That's part of why we're here.

So we're here to to gather, to grow and mature and to govern, and the more we cooperate with God's plan for the local church, the more we will do just that the necessity of the local church.

Come on, lift your hand and receive.

Thank you for it, father, thank God for glorious way.

Church, thank you that you brought us for such a time as this, that we're gathered together this morning.

We're in the right place at the right time, listen to the right word with the right people and, father, we thank you for that anointing that you've granted us in Jesus' name.