Redeemed To Overcome 2

Pick your Bible up, wave it around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad and say this together say, heavenly Father, I've gathered in church by way of live stream, the little unfamiliar, but the anointing is here.

The Word of God is anointing, it's life, it's power, it's light, and I receive it today.

I thank you that my faith is being renewed and refreshed and I will never be the same.

In Jesus' name, amen.

In Revelation, chapter 12, verse nine, this is John on the Isle of Potmos, and he had that great visitation from God where he saw the end days.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

And I really sincerely believe we're living in the beginning of the end end days.

And it says in verse nine the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.

He was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him, and I heard a loud voice saying in heaven now is come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ.

For the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God, day and night, and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.

Who was it that overcame the devil?

Those who've been accused.

In other words, believers, believers, overcame the devil by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they love not their lives unto the death.

Therefore, rejoice ye heavens and ye that dwell in them.

Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the devil has come down unto you having great wrath, because he kneweth that he hath but a short time, and so I wanted to continue a message that I began on Wednesday night, entitled Redeemed to Overcome.

I tell you redeemed.

We're all redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

We've been redeemed by the blood.

That's good news, and it's something we need to bring to the forefront in times like this.

We've been bought.

We've been purchased and ransom has been paid.

You know, we were, as it were, kidnapped by the devil.

When we were born into this world, we were the subject of Satan.

We were subject to his kingdom, subject to his will.

But when we received Jesus, the price, the ransom, was paid and we found out about it.

See, it was paid before we ever knew about it, but when we found out about it, we walked out of there free.

We were no longer under Satan's dominion and we're overcomers and we have a testimony.

Just think about that.

A testimony, you have a testimony.

You have another way of saying it.

You have a confession.

Confession means to say the same thing, and so we need to agree with God.

It's so powerful right now if we would just agree with God instead of agreeing with the world.

And the greater one lives in us.

Let's not forget that the greater one, the Holy Spirit, lives on the inside.

There's no room on the inside of us for panic and depression and fear and all of those you know.

Sometimes, when we go through things like this and we're not able to have our normal schedule, many of us have our work jobs or jobs are interrupted.

Some of us have been laid off, some of us have been cut back on hours.

Some of us have received cuts and pay.

Some of us don't have any pay.

We're gonna have to file for unemployment.

There's all kinds of some of us that own businesses are shut down.

It's kind of you know, for lack of a better word depressing.

But listen, we have the Word of God and we're still redeemed by the precious blood, amen.

And so, wednesday night I gave my testimony, and it's been almost 40 years now of when it happened, that I got saved and that was when I actually received what Jesus had already bought and paid for 2,000 years ago.

You see, when you see what the Word of God says about it, every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, no matter where they live, no matter what false God they may worship or not worship, they've everything has already been done for them to go to heaven.

Well, why then don't they?

Why doesn't salvation just fall on them?

Because they have to receive it.

You know, if it just fell on us willy nilly, you know well, that person just suddenly got saved, that person just suddenly got saved, that part.

No, then they don't participate, they're just robots.

No, it's when we begin to have the truth presented to us in the form of the gospel, the good news, and we accept it and receive it, and we change, we willingly change our lives.

I had to give God the permission.

If you'll go back and listen to my testimony, I just prayed this prayer one night.

I said God, I give you my life, make me the kind of person you want me to be.

I'm through living that kind of life.

You're gonna have to remake me, and that was my version of repent.

Turn around to 180 degree, I'm headed one way to hell, and then I simply turn around and head toward him and toward heaven.

And so that's what it means.

In other words, we are invested in our salvation by the fact that we receive it, and so, legally this is the part I wanna talk about this morning about redemption there's two sides to redemption.

There's the legal side and there is the vital side.

What do you mean vital side?

Well, vital, in the Latin that means in Vichier, which means according to life.

I like to say it this way there's the legal side and then there is the functional side of redemption.

Legally, I was redeemed before I ever got saved, but the devil held sway over me.

Why?

Because I didn't know it.

But once I knew it, once I turned, once I began to learn who I was in Christ, then functionally, that redemption started to take hold in my life.

It took hold in my life spiritually.

My habits changed, my finances changed, my home changed, I mean my marriage changed, everything changed for the good.

And so, functionally, I began to enjoy the blessings of redemption.

And so the legal versus vital side, and so the functional side of redemption is what we have actually appropriated through faith in the blood of Christ what we've actually appropriated.

And so, as I was mentioning earlier, there's many Christians that have appropriated the blood of Christ concerning their salvation.

They're on their way to heaven, but they have not appropriated by faith in the blood they're healing.

So they walk through life sick, they walk through life fearful of a global pandemic.

They walk through life fearful of the groceries running out at the grocery store, fearful for what is coming upon them on their jobs and in their businesses, and they're depressed or they're fearful or panic stricken.

You know, that's the part where we need to wake up and start to appropriate by faith in the blood.

All of those circumstances don't change what Jesus did at the cross.

He did everything necessary for us or aren't you glad for that?

And so we overcome Satan and his works and everything that he's released.

I'm telling you he's released hell upon the earth.

And why does the Bible say he's done it?

Well, one reason is he knows his time is short, he knows that he has about this long left and he's pulling out all the stops.

And we've been preaching about this for years and years, and years, and I believe that Gloria Swate Church has been well prepared over its 25 year history, and even before that.

I mean, I used to talk about these things when I used to teach in Family Life Institute at Lakewood Church and God began to get my attention.

I didn't get saved till I was 33 years old.

I had a lot to catch up on and so I started catching up, and so a verse that I want you to look at this with me this morning everybody say out loud I'm an overcomer by the blood of the Lamb and by my confession see the word of your testimony is your confession.

Look at Hebrews 11, 23.

And it says here let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful who promised Let us hold fast.

You think about a tug-of-war?

Did anybody ever have tug-of-war?

When I was a kid, you know we'd get together A lot of times.

We'd have a big family gathering and you know we didn't have computers, we didn't have iPhones, we didn't have, you know, game consoles and all of that.

We just had to have old fashioned games to play, like horseshoes, washers, and one of them was tug-of-war.

You know big old, long rope and everybody'd get on each end of it.

You'd see who could tug each other into the mud hole.

And you know, finally, you know, there's so much power in the tug-of-war that the rope starts to slip through your hands.

You know if the other team is stronger than you, are your team.

And all of a sudden, that rope.

So try to.

What we've tried to do is we had an anchor on either end, and the anchor was usually the biggest guy, you know, or gal in some cases, and sorry about that, royce was waving his hand.

He was always the anchor.

He was.

We'll call him stout back then.

He's still pretty stout.

And so, anyway, they wrapped the rope around their waist and tied off.

It's kind of cheating, really, because now it's no longer how much you can hold the rope, but whether you can have the traction, you know, or lean the other direction.

But I mean you know the loser.

I mean they let it slip, didn't they?

And we don't want to let our confession slip away.

In these times we need to hold fast to what we are saying Day in and day out.

In consistency lies the power.

I'm gonna say that again In consistency lies the power.

So if one moment we're afraid to go out, you know, and afraid to do anything, well, you know, I'm afraid.

If there's one reason not to have service we're not having, we're not skipping service because we're afraid we're skipping service and having it on live stream to be cooperating with our president.

That's all we're doing.

And also not to offend those whose faith is weaker than ours and have them have a stumbling block and have them get over into.

You know, criticizing us needlessly.

So we have to hold fast Hebrews 11, 23,.

Hold fast without wavering, for he's faithful.

Who promised, for instance you know we've been preaching this in the month of February Matthew 817, himself, jesus himself, bear our sicknesses and took our infirmities, except for a worldwide pandemic.

Is there any?

Is there any such exception in the Bible?

Well, no, there's no exception.

Well, you know, he bears our sicknesses and takes our infirmities, except when we forget to be socially distant from our neighbor.

You know, I went to the store the other day too, selena.

I went to HEB and I got there I was already.

I got my hands washed and there's a guy outside and he was talking.

I didn't know what he was talking about.

I couldn't hear him, frankly, because there was so much noise and there was a PA system going on over him.

You could not hear him, what he was saying and I was standing right in front of him and I was not socially distant from anybody.

It was all packed in in the front doors.

They were obviously not letting people in.

So I washed my hands in the little you know germicidal and got my cart and I asked the guy next to me what's he saying.

He said they're letting 50 out and 25 in.

And he said they just started letting the 50 out and they were just trickling out one at a time.

You know I could tell it was gonna take 30 minutes or more.

And here we are, packed into the front porch of HEB.

Well, what good is any of this?

And once you get in there and you're up, crammed up, you know, with everybody in each aisle, and what about disinfecting all of the goods?

Disinfecting all of the goods, the canned goods that were stocked by somebody.

Somebody stocked them, somebody unloaded the truck, somebody put them on the shelf, somebody looked at the can and put it back when they saw the price.

I mean this is foolishness.

If you're trusting in this kind of stuff, it's a slippery slope.

No, we trust in what God said about it, whether we do it or not, oh yeah, if Matthew 817 works, you know, except when we don't self quarantine we have to self quarantine now and all of this business except when we forget to wash our hands.

You know, I don't know how many Sundays we could probably add up how many Sunday services I've preached since we started the church 25 years times three.

You know, 52 weeks a year, times three services a week.

I mean that's a lot of services and I have to tell you, about 95% of the time I shake lots of hands, I lay hands on people and I have a lot of contact and I never even think about washing my hands.

A lot of times I don't wash my hands.

I go to lunch and I eat the whole meal and I might, about three o'clock in the afternoon, and say I forgot to wash my hands this morning.

Oh well, see my fate, I guess.

Well, to wash our hands would be nice and all that, but my faith is not in the soap, my faith is in the blood.

I said my faith is in the blood and another area that we need to trust God in is finances.

Jesus 2 Corinthians, 8, 9,.

Jesus was made poor that we might be rich.

He was our substitute.

He became poor so we could have rich, we could be rich.

Rich means having abundant supply.

Oh, except when there's a stock market crash.

In those times, then you know we're going to have lack.

Oh, unless we're laid off from our job during a global pandemic.

In that case we're just.

We're just doomed.

No, we're not doomed.

We have a supply and Jesus blood has paid for it.

It's time that we rise up, if we haven't already, and we begin to speak differently about the sickness that's attacking our civilization and this economic downturn.

And let me just give you a little clue Not everybody's going broke in this downturn, for everybody that's going broke and everybody that's suffered a huge decrease in their portfolios value.

There are people that are getting rich.

There are people that are betting on the slide down and there all that money is going into their account.

There's, you know, I just believe there's a God wants to bring a transfer of wealth back the other direction.

Let's not, let's, let's not just give it all away yet and let's hold on hold fast to our profession of faith without wavering, for he is faithful.

I said he's faithful.

Who promised?

You know, looking at this global pandemic and this economic shaking, look at it as an opportunity.

You know I've told my testimony about.

You know, I didn't have a job.

Nobody would hire me when I came back from Corpus Christi.

I was a home builder by profession and I had my own business for years, and so I didn't fit the profile of most corporations.

They didn't want to hire somebody like me because I'd been self employed and they they used the word you're over qualified, which meant that they just didn't want to waste time with me.

They knew, as soon as times got better, I'd hit the door and start my own business again, and they were right.

But at any rate, I went to work for a man who started a remodeling business and he asked me to hired me to run it.

So I did for a couple of years and it finally just he needed to close the doors.

It was losing money.

It was not a not my fault, it wasn't his fault.

It just wasn't a good time.

And when I left his home he felt bad.

He had to lay me off.

It gave me one week's pay, you know, as a parting gift Boy.

One week, woo.

One week pay, wow, woo.

I can buy a box of toilet paper, that is, they still have some.

And so I got in my car in his driveway.

I sat there for a moment.

I knew I was gonna have to go home and tell Gladys this news.

And you know, things were tight financially.

We had hardly any money in the bank.

And now I've lost my job.

And I talked out loud and said, lord, I can just.

I can look at this like the devil just stole my job, or I can look at this as a promotion.

This is an opportunity.

I choose to the latter.

And by the time I got home I was on cloud nine.

I mean I had talked myself into a hallelujah fit.

I mean I was praising God, I come bound into the house.

Honey, I've got good news, we've been promoted.

Oh, what, what, what, what?

Well, you know we've been laid off but we've been promoted.

And of course, gladys didn't see it like I did there just immediately.

But you know that in a month later I was building houses.

A month later I had my own business.

And I'm telling you this is an opportunity right now that God has for the body of Christ, don't you know?

James, chapter five, verse three, says the world has heaped up treasure together for the last days, and I believe that's part of what we're into right now, and so people need our testimony, people need our leadership, people need to see that we're not crumbling under pressure, that we're not falling down and just weeping and crying and all of that kind of thing.

People need to see and hear our testimony and our firm confession.

And you know, every disease, bacteria and virus that touches our body dies immediately upon contact.

Let's just keep saying that Do we wash our hands?

Well, yeah, do we try not to just get right in somebody's face?

Well, that would be better, I guess.

At least it'd be better for them, they wouldn't feel bad.

Listen, you know you're healed, you know that these things are true.

And I was at HEB a few days before, while I could still get in there, and I was in the vegetable department, was looking at vegetables and there was a young couple right in front of me and they were in each other's embrace.

You know, just a boy and a girl.

I wasn't two boys, thank you, it was a boy and a girl and they were in each other's embrace and they, I guess, very much in love and they were gazing into each other's eyes and their lips were about a half an inch apart but they both had masks on and I mean, I got so tickled over there by the pole beans I was right by the pole beans when I saw them with their masks on just this far apart, gazing into each other's eyes or eyes, as all they could see Everything else was covered by surgical masks and I just began to laugh out loud, ha ha ha.

And I almost joked to them and I thought, well, I better not say anything.

They might not think it's as funny as I do, but as if that's gonna help.

All right, so you know, if they're gonna start swapping spit, they're gonna have to just go with their, whatever their faith is.

Whatever their faith is, ha ha ha.

You know I wanted to let you know about John Alexander Dowie.

You know he was a preacher back before the turn of the century during the great bubonic plague outbreak where I don't know if not millions, hundreds of thousands of people died all over the world.

I think he was in Australia at the time and his church suffered 47 people who died of the bubonic plague, can you imagine?

And churches back then they didn't have 500 people in them.

I mean now, 500 people in a church was a huge church.

There were no such thing as mega churches.

The churches were small, so he didn't say how big his church was, but 47 people died in your church you barely have a church left.

And he began to weep over those who were sick and those families that lost loved ones.

It just seemed like there was no treatment for it.

I mean, if you got it, you died.

That was it.

There was no treatment.

And so he wept before the Lord and prayed.

He said, god, are you gonna take all of my members?

Are we gonna all die?

Are we gonna all?

What have we done?

Is there something we can do?

What have we done to deserve this horrible punishment?

He was searching and to him came Acts 1038, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with a Holy Ghost and power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him.

And in an instant of time, this preacher realized that the sickness and this global pandemic didn't come from God, it came from Satan.

And then, suddenly, healing scriptures came flooding into him, Scriptures that he had spiritualized and had minimized, probably because of the cemetery, I mean the seminary that he went to, I mean, you know, people have not, you know, believed correctly concerning healing for a good part of church history.

And suddenly he heard Matthew 817, jesus himself boy our sicknesses and took our infirmities.

And then he began to say they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.

So he went down to where people were dying in these places.

They had tents set up outside of town.

Because it was so contagious they had to get people out of their homes.

They couldn't let people die at home because the contagion was just horrible.

It would wipe out entire families and households.

And so he would go in the tent and he would pray for people.

Some would get healed, not everyone.

And so some doctors came along after that.

They had flown in from another country to study this horrible plague, much like they're doing now for this global pandemic, this COVID-19.

And so they said how is it, you know, pastor, how is it that you're not affected by this disease, you're in contact with this contagion?

How can you, how can you possibly be in this, in this atmosphere, and not get sick?

And he said I'll tell you quite simply.

The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

Romans 8, 1 and 2.

And so he said I'll prove it to you.

He said get your microscope out.

And they he gave them a few minutes and then he went over to someone who had just died and they had this foam on the edges of their mouth because this contagion would attack your lungs, much like COVID-19 does, and it interrupts your breathing and fibrosis gets into your lungs and you can't breathe, can't.

You can't get oxygen, your body can't get oxygen and you have this horrible spittle and foam it comes out of your mouth and death, coughing and trying to gasp for air.

It's a horrible death.

And he just put some of that on his finger and smeared it on his palm of his hand and they held it under the microscope and they watched the bacteria die upon contact.

See, that's what faith in the blood will do.

Oh, come on, let's lift our hands.

I tell you right now, I just believe the anointing is going out right now and you're being refreshed.

These things are not new to you, but you know we all need refreshing in the things of God.

Every disease, bacteria and virus that touches my body dies immediately upon contact.

So then, my faith doesn't rest in hand washing or masks or all of that.

Should we not do those things?

Well, I'm not saying we don't do them, but we do them in faith and not in fear.

We don't rely on that.

It's the only thing that that faves us.

It's the blood of Jesus and our testimony, what we're saying about it, our continual testimony, what we're saying about it.

Another one is Philippians four nine but my God shall supply all your need, according to his riches and glory, by Christ Jesus.

Well, if he is he going to supply all our need only when times are good, only when the stock market is is at the top, only when it's close to 30,000, or is he going to supply all our need when it's below 19,000?

Is he going to only supply our need when all is at $60 a barrel, or is he going to supply our need when all is at $20 a barrel?

See, god is not limited by this world's economy.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness there of the world and they that dwell therein.

And we need to hold on, hold fast to our profession of faith without wavering.

That is our testimony.

And our testimony is we have total faith in the blood of Jesus that what Jesus did on the cross back then is active right now.

Yes, it's legal, but it's also functional.

It's functioning in our life.

Redemption is a functional power in our life right now.

It's functioning on our behalf.

It's functioning on behalf of those that have gotten pink slips on the job.

It's functioning on those that whose wages have been cut.

It's functioning for those business owners who've had to close their doors temporarily.

I'm telling you, god's, the blood of Jesus has not been wasted.

It's not been wasted.

Hallelujah, come on, let's lift our hands and receive the Word of God today.

Hallelujah, lord, we are motivated and thrilled with the Word of God, motivated by the Word, and know, we know, what the blood of Jesus has purchased for us.

It's not something that has to be done.

There's nothing left, father, for you to do that you haven't already done.

All this left is for us to hold fast our profession of faith without wavering.

Thank you, lord, thank you that, as we speak it forth, it comes to pass, and we speak to every mountain.

We speak to every mountain of insufficiency.

We say be removed and be cast into the sea.

And we dispatch angels to go forth to the north, the south, the east and the west and bring our provision in from every direction.

Bring our, bring us favor in the sight of God and man and I, father, I thank you for a transfer of wealth.

Lord, the wealth of the wicked has been laid up for the just, and this is an opportunity, lord.

You showed us a months ago where many of us would be have a triple promotion, that we would go up three times more than normal, and I believe that we're in that day, church.

I believe we're in that day that God told us it's going to be our greatest year yet.

You know, with man it would be impossible, but not with God.

Or with God, all things are possible.

So be encouraged, be strong in the faith, amen.