Obey the Lord, Overcome the Lion

Amen.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

So good to see all of you in God's house today.

Welcome to all of our locations that are tuning in, our online television, and social media audience.

We're glad that you are all here to hear a word from God.

If you need a Bible, please raise your hand.

If you have your Bible, please take it out.

I want to give a big shout out to Pastor Joey, Pastor Brianna, and the whole youth team for the amazing youth conference that we just had.

Heat wave was incredible, incredible.

You heard the testimonies.

There's nothing like seeing a group of students and young adults going after God with everything that is in them.

And I pray that it's not just Gen Z that is ignited for Jesus, but it is everybody that gets ignited for Jesus.

Amen.

There's a lot of work to be done, and the harvest is ripe, the Bible said, but the laborers are few.

Go ye into the harvest and bring them into the house of God.

Compel them, the Bible says, to come into the house of God.

And so we hope that your fire for Jesus is stoking you to invite people out to God's house and encounter the only one who can change their life.

Can you say amen?

If you have your Bible, would you take it out?

If you need a Bible, raise your hand.

The ushers will get them to you.

Hold it up nice and high.

And let's make this declaration of our faith all together ready.

Go.

This is my Bible.

It is my primary source of spiritual nourishment.

I will read it every day and become all that God wants me to be.

My mind will be renewed.

My life will be transformed.

I will become fully surrendered to Christ.

Therefore, I will hide his word in my heart so I can be all God has destined me to be.

Amen.

If you would kindly remain standing in honor of the Word of God, I'm super excited about today's message.

I'm going to preach a story from the Bible that I believe, and maybe I'm wrong, and it'd be great if I was wrong, that 90% of you probably don't even know is in the Bible.

It's one of those stories that up until very recently I had completely forgotten about, so I didn't know it was in the Bible.

First Kings chapter number 13, as we continue our series, Lions and Giants and Bears.

But God.

So it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God who cried out against the altar in Bethel, that he stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, Arrest him.

And then his hand, which he stretched out toward him, withered, so that he could not pull it back to himself.

The altar also was split apart, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.

Then the king answered and said to the man of God, Please entreat the favor of the Lord your God and pray for me that my hand may be restored to me.

So the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as before.

Then the king said to the man of God, Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.

But the man of God said to the king, If you were to give me half your house, I would not go in with you, nor would I eat, nor drink water in this place.

For it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return by the same way you came.

So he went another way and did not return by the way he came to Bethel.

Now an old prophet dwelt in Bethel.

He said to him, I too am a prophet as you are.

And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.

He was lying to him.

So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water.

Verse 24 says, When he was gone, a lion met him on the road and killed him.

And his corpse was thrown on the road, and the donkey stood by it.

The lion also stood by the corpse.

Today I want to minister to you from the subject from this text.

Obey the Lord and overcome the lion.

Not don't face the lion, not live a life without any attacks or any problems or anything like that.

But obey the Lord.

And I want you to know you can overcome any attack that comes your way.

Obey the Lord, overcome the lion.

Let's pray.

Father, in the mighty name of Jesus, speak to every heart like only you can.

We surrender and submit ourselves to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Let us hear him, let us be transformed in Jesus' name.

And everybody said, You may be seated.

Now, to understand this story, you've got to understand the moment.

The kingdom of Israel has been divided into two halves, the south and the north.

And this all dates back to Solomon.

Solomon obviously was David's son.

God promised David that he would perpetually keep somebody on the throne, and from the tribe of Judah there would arise Jesus.

And so the kingdom has been split.

And the reason why it was split is because Solomon, who started off so well, he started off as the most blessed man on the earth, the wisest man on the earth, started off great with the blessing of God.

He built the temple of God.

He was following the edicts of God.

But as he got older, he didn't finish well.

How many of you know you have to not only start well, but you have to finish well?

Some people say, well, it doesn't matter how you start, it just matters how you finish.

That's a lie.

Why would you want to start bad?

Oh, yeah, go get head start.

You know, you're in a race and you're like, yeah, go ahead, get the first, and I'm just gonna try to catch up.

No, I want to start strong, but how many of you know I also want to finish strong in the Lord?

And Solomon he started strong, but he didn't finish strong.

And the reason why he didn't finish strong is because he eventually married foreign wives.

And when he married foreign wives, he allowed their religious practices to affect his heart.

And so what he started to do is he started to build shrines.

The man who built the temple for Almighty God started to build shrines to all of these idols and pagan gods.

And because he had done this, the Lord appeared to him and he said, I'm taking the kingdom from you.

How many of you know God can give you a promise?

But if you do not obey the word of the Lord, you can lose that promise.

And so he said, I'm taking the kingdom from you.

He says, Nevertheless, for the sake of your father David, I will cause one tribe, one kingdom to remain with you.

Is actually two, it was Judah and the small tribe of Benjamin, all actually kind of described in some places of scripture as just Judah.

And he said, I'll give Judah to one of your children.

One of your children will be Rehboam.

And Rehobam and Jeroboam.

And Jeroboam would be the one that's in the story right now.

And says, I'm gonna give, I'm sorry, Rehoboam would be the one that you give give the kingdom to, and then there will come another person.

And this other person was Jeroboam, and Jeroboam would get the second half of the kingdom, or the other ten tribes that were left.

And so Israel was divided into a northern kingdom that was Judah and Benjamin under Rehoboam, which was Solomon's son, and that was for the sake of David, so that there would forever in the midst of this judgment, there was mercy, forever be somebody on the throne, just like God promised David from David's loins.

And that's where Jesus would come from, from the tribe of Judah.

But the other part of the kingdom would be given to Jeroboam, ten tribes, and this was the northern part.

And Jeroboam, Jeroboam didn't ask for it, he didn't politic for it.

God gave it to him.

And God's only condition, there was one condition, and that was you need to obey me.

And if you will obey me, here's what'll happen.

Just like I did for David, there will always be somebody from your lineage that will be on the throne.

But right from the very beginning, Jeroboam disobeyed God.

And the reason why he disobeyed God is because he was afraid.

He was afraid that since Jerusalem was in the southern kingdom, every time there was a holiday, a high holy day that the law said needed to be observed, that his people from the north would have to travel all the way to the south to worship.

And while they traveled, he was afraid their heart was gonna get attached to the king that was in the south and they would forsake him and kill him.

And so you know what he did?

He made up a religion.

And he decided to build golden calves in two different places.

He decided to create his own holidays, he decided to anoint his own priests who weren't the ones that God said should be in the uh office of the royal priesthood.

And so every holiday, instead of the people going back to Jerusalem, they would sacrifice on these wicked altars in this fake religion, this made-up religion, so that they wouldn't lose their affinity for him.

And a lot of times you and I can look at somebody like Jeroboam, we can be like, I can't believe he would make up a religion.

But can I be honest with you?

There are many of you here today.

There are many of you, under the sound of my voice, you've made up your own religion.

You've made up your own version of Christianity.

You've made up your own rules, your own this, your own that.

You think when God tells you something, it's a suggestion.

You don't understand that what it means for Jesus to be the Lord of your life is for you to obey him in everything.

And so we look at Jeroboam, we think, how could somebody do that?

But we do it in our lives all of the time.

And here's what I want you to see.

And because he did this, because he did this, all of a sudden, God sends a prophet, an unnamed prophet, that's in our story, to go and to confront this king for what he's done.

And he prophesies against him, and he says to him, This altar is gonna split, and then he gives this prophecy.

He says, There will come a child, names him Josiah, who will come and he's gonna restore Israel back to God.

And what he's gonna do is he's gonna take all of these fake priests and all of these fake sacrifices and all of these fake prophets and all of your religion that you've made up, and he's gonna sacrifice their bones on this altar.

This altar is gonna split in half.

He's gonna clean house, he's gonna restore Israel back to you again.

And when he hears this, the King Jeroboam he reaches out his hand to arrest him, and his hand withers.

How many of you know if you obey the Lord, there's nothing, nothing, nothing that can ever touch you?

No weapon formed against you can prosper, but yet weapons formed against us prosper all the time.

And here's the reason why: because obedience is the key to seeing the promises of God come to pass in your life.

And so he does this, and then in the middle of that, because he's walking with God, what does he do?

He entreats him, he said, Can you pray for the Lord to restore my hand?

And when you're walking with God, when you're obeying God, you can be good to even your enemies.

How many of you know that?

The Bible says, Be good to your enemies and bless those who persecute you.

And so he prays for him and he restores him, and everything seems to be going great, everything seems to be going terrific.

But along comes another prophet, an older prophet, and he tells him something different than what God says.

And this man who had obeyed to the T trades the voice of God and the word that God spoke to him for another voice, and as a result of that, he gets eaten by a lion.

What's the message for today?

What do I want to show you?

That if you don't obey, you're susceptible.

That if you don't build your life on obeying the word of God, you can get eaten by a lion.

But if you will build your foundation on the rock, if you will build your foundation on the living, abiding, lasting word of God, there's no lion that can ever come against you that can devour you.

And so, what I want to teach you today is how do I build my life upon the rock?

How do I build my life around the word of God?

You remember what Jesus said about that?

He said there were two men.

He said, One built his life on the rock, my sayings, obedience to my word.

The other built it on the sand.

And then he said this, and the storm came.

Because how many of you know life doesn't exempt you from storms?

Storms come to everybody, so you might as well be storm ready.

How do you get storm ready?

You get storm ready by building your life on the rock.

And here's what I think about that particular passage of scripture where Jesus says that.

I believe that both the man who built his life on the rock and the man who built his life on the sand both encountered the same unstable ground.

But one of them chose to do the hard work of digging down deep until he found the foundation.

Digging, how many of you know sometimes you have to dig?

Sometimes you have to dig down deep in order to build your life on the word of God.

The other guy, he just wanted to see quick results.

And sometimes when you're building your life on the word of God, you're watching people who haven't built their life on the word of God, and they're building.

And it seems like they're going up quick and they're making progress.

And it's like, wow, look at them.

They're so far ahead of me.

But you know what you're doing?

You're building your foundation.

And if you will build your foundation, it is just a matter of time before God will raise you up higher and greater than anybody that doesn't build their life upon the rock.

How do we build our life upon the rock?

Number one, the power of obedience.

The Bible says, if you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.

This is the first thing I want you to see: the power of sheer obedience.

God's promise is simple.

Not only if you're obedient, not only if you're willing, but if you're willing and obedient.

In other words, we need both.

We have to have a good attitude and we have to have a surrendered spirit.

Both of those things.

And you know this is true because if you tell your child to do something and they do it, that's not really all that matters.

What matters is how they do it.

Go clean your room, and they're like, oh, can't believe you.

Oh my god, I just want to go out with my friends.

You know, I just want to go do this.

And here you always tell them, bother me.

If your child does that, you know what your child needs?

A smack across the face.

I know that's not popular these days.

I know people like, you know, oh, you can't do that these days.

Don't do it in front of nobody, but when nobody's looking, whack.

Because it matters how.

It matters if their heart is in that thing, right?

And God wants our heart to be in it.

God doesn't want us to just obey because we have to.

God wants us to obey because we want to.

God wants us to obey because we love Jesus.

God wants us to obey because he is the Lord of our lives.

If you're willing and obedient.

And every time somebody was obedient when it was hard in the Bible, God blessed them in immense ways.

Remember Abraham?

Hey, sacrifice your only son.

And along comes Abraham.

And Abraham knew God because he said to his servant, He said, You know what, don't worry, me and the lad, we're coming back.

Meanwhile, God said, Sacrifice your son.

He said, Me and the lad, we're coming back.

And if you read the New Testament, here's what he says: He says, He reasoned that God was able to raise the dead if he needed to.

How many of you know that you need to reason in your mind that God can do the impossible even when it's hard to obey?

And he did that, and God provided a sacrifice in the stead of Isaac.

And he said, Now I know that you fear me because you have obeyed me and not withholding your one and only son.

And he says this, and he calls him Jehovah Jirah, the God who sees in advance and provides.

God saw the difficulty in advance.

But if you will obey God, guess what?

God will do, God will provide for you every time.

And this man who obeyed when it was difficult became the father of our faith and the one through whom Jesus came.

How about Esther?

Esther walks into the king's chambers unannounced, knowing that she could die.

You know what she says?

If I die, I die.

Here's what I just heard the Holy Spirit say.

It is better for you to die being obedient than to live being disobedient.

Somebody didn't hear that.

It's better for you to die being obedient than for you to live being disobedient.

Now, I don't believe you will die if you're obedient.

I believe if you obey the Lord, you will overcome the lion.

But if you had so see, some of you are just so protective of all your things and all your stuff and all your this and all your that.

And you think that when God asks you to do something that's difficult, that you're gonna lose it all because you don't understand the character and the nature of God.

You don't understand that God never asks you for anything because He wants to take something from you, He always asks you for things because He wants to release something into your life.

And Esther said, And if I die, I die.

And she walked into it hard to obey.

You know what she walked out with?

Favor up to half the kingdom.

She walked out with a sentence over her life to save all of Israel.

Because when you obey God, even when it's difficult, God will do great things in your life.

Remember the widow woman from Zarephath.

She's down to her last bit of oil and meal.

She's got nothing left, it's a famine in the land.

She's got a kid who's hungry, and she's hungry, and the man of God comes in.

Here's what the man of God says He said, Before you feed yourself, give me something to eat first.

Imagine that.

Today's news.

Man of God trying to work widow out of her last bit of finances.

As if God needs to use a widow, as if God needs the little puny that you and I possess.

God is never looking to take anything from you, He's looking to position you.

And the reason why He sent the man of God is because He saw the need of the woman, but she had to obey if she was going to eat the good of the land.

She had to obey God when it was hard, and she did what the Lord said.

And God multiplied the oil and God multiplied the meal, and it lasted the whole entire.

We can go through Bible example after Bible example.

You need to build your life on the power of obedience.

And that's exactly what we see at first in this man of God.

As he obeys, the presence and the power of God shows up.

He prophesies 300 years later, it's exactly what happened.

Josiah did it.

He prophesied, the altar splits.

He prophesies the man's hand is withered.

He prophesied he was obedient to God and he was able to restore the man's hand.

Anytime you obey, the power of God begins to flow in your life.

Why?

Because obedience pays.

Obedience, I want to get this in your heart.

I want to get this in your spirit.

Obedience pays.

Obedience pays.

Say it loud with me.

Obedience pays.

Say it again.

Obedience pays.

Say it again.

Obedience pays.

And now listen to me.

Disobedience costs.

Obedience pays.

Disobedience costs.

And here's the real understanding of this first point.

The lion is never the problem.

The lion wasn't the guy's problem.

He said, Yeah, but that's how he died, but that wasn't his problem.

Because there is no lion big enough.

There is no giant strong enough.

There is no struggle great enough that is more powerful than the anointing of God and the presence of God on your life.

Your problem is never the struggle.

Your problem is never what you are going through.

Your problem is never what the enemy throws against your life.

Your problem is, are you going to obey or disobey?

Because if you will obey, there will come an anointing on your life that can defeat any giant, any lion, any bear that comes into your life.

And so the king says to the man of God, he said, Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I'll give you a reward.

But the man of God said to the king, If you were to give me half your house, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread nor drink water in this place.

For it was so commanded me by the word of the Lord, you shall not eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the same way.

So he went another way and did not return by the way he came to Bethel.

In other words, I'm not disobeying you no matter how good it looks.

I'm not giving up the word of God and the plan of God for all the money in the world.

I'm not giving up the word of God and the plan of God for all the pleasures of sin, even if it is looks good.

I'm not giving up what God has for me.

And here's the reason why I'm not giving it up.

Because I know my father.

I know my father's got so much better for me.

Why would I give it up for that?

Don't disobey, no matter how much better it looks.

Obedience, by the way, is not God limiting your life, it is God protecting your life.

Like Samson, he was given three do nots, right?

This man is given three do nots.

And it seems restrictive.

It almost seems like a cage, doesn't it?

But it's not a cage.

You know what it is?

It's a fence.

I know there's a difference between a cage and a fence.

A cage is where you're imprisoned, a fence is where the predators are kept out.

How many have a fence around your property?

Anybody have a fence around your property?

Fence around your property?

Nobody has a fence around their property.

What is this like to Not understanding crowd, do you have a fence underneath around your property?

And sometimes we put fences around our property.

Why?

It's not because we can't get out, it's because we want to keep bad things in.

And so whenever God gives you instructions, whenever God gives you a word, God is trying to protect your life.

Number two, how do we build our life on the word?

The danger of the wrong voices.

Be careful of it.

The man of God is headed home.

Mission accomplished.

He stops to rest underneath an oak tree.

He's tired, he's hungry, he's a long way from home.

And then what happens?

An old prophet who lives in Bethel hears what has happened at the altar.

And he comes and he finds the man of God resting underneath the tree.

And he says, Come home with me and eat some bread.

And give the man of God credit because the first time he says to this, he says, I can't, I can't, I can't.

The Lord told me not to eat bread, not to drink water, not to return another way.

I can't go with you.

But this other prophet says something that changes his mind.

Listen to what he says.

First Kings 13, verse 18.

1 Kings 13:18

He said to him, I too am a prophet as you are.

Watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, watch, watch.

And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you to your home that he may eat and drink water.

And then parenthetically, he was lying to him.

Catch those four words.

The old prophet made it up.

There was no angel, there was no new word.

He invented a more convenient revelation, and the man of God believed it, turned around, went back, and ate.

And here's the tragedy: the tragedy wasn't that he heard another voice.

We all hear other voices.

The tragedy was that he trusted another voice more than the voice that God had already gave him.

The Bible says, My sheep know my voice.

And another voice, a stranger's voice, they will not follow.

You need to get so attuned to the voice of God that when you hear something else, you're like, nah, that ain't God.

Some of you have no idea what's God and not God.

And the reason why you have no idea is because the only word you ever get, and I mean this gets you further than most because this church has got a good word.

The only word you ever get is the word you get on Sunday.

But you need to get the word in your heart.

You need to get it in your mind.

You need to get it in your spirit.

David said, I have hid your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

You need to get it on the inside of you.

He hears another voice and he trades the voice of God for another opinion.

The written word of God does not need a second opinion.

When God has told you something, why do we go hunting for another voice?

Why do we go hunting for the friend who will tell us our disobedience is okay?

Why do we go hunting on our TikTok theology for somebody who has no business even sharing the word of God who says something just so we can be justified in what we are doing?

Notice who the wrong voice was, though.

It wasn't Jeroboam, it wasn't an atheist, it wasn't a pagan priest, it wasn't an enemy, it was a fellow prophet, a religious insider, and he name dropped an angel.

The most dangerous wrong voice in your life is almost never the obvious easy evil one.

It's always the one that sounds like it came straight from heaven.

And God told me.

Counsel with me.

And some people lead like this.

Pastor God told me.

What do you want me to say?

You're leading with the God told me.

You're leading with God said this to you.

If God said this to you, what do you want me to tell you?

Why are you here?

Now, if you think God said something to you and you're not sure, and you want somebody to help you measure it against the word of God, and you come in and you say that, then we can have a conversation.

But if God told you to do something, why in the world are you seeking a second opinion about the situation?

Some of you need to seek a second opinion, though, because what God told you, God told me I don't need to be in church.

God told me it's just time for Him and me to spend time together every Sunday for the last two years.

God told you that?

God told me I don't have to tithe, I just need to give my time.

God told you?

Did God really tell you that?

God told me that I don't have to marry somebody that's born again and saved.

God told you that?

It's amazing.

Everything you're telling me, God told you, I can give you scripture and verse where God said exactly the opposite.

And so all you're trying to do is find something to help you to disobey in your life.

That's not the religion that we are called.

That's why the apostle Paul, here's what he said.

But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.

Do you know every major false religion today?

You know how they got started?

An angel told them.

An angel told them the exact opposite of what the scripture says.

The Mormons, Joseph Smith was spoken to by an angel, the Islamic people, Muhammad was spoken to by an angel, the Jehovah's Witness people, Jesus is the reincarnation of Michael the archangel.

Every single false religion bases their theology on what an angel said that is different than what the word of God has to say.

And Paul said, if an angel or any other person preach a gospel that is different to you, let them be accursed.

We need to understand the word of God needs no second opinion.

There is no improvement on the word of God.

The word of God will last and live forever.

Obey the Word of God.

Never trade the Word of God.

Wrong voices rarely push you, they permit you.

Wrong voices rarely push you, they permit you.

How do you know it's not God's voice?

Are you getting a green light to do something that you know in your heart is wrong?

Or are you being pushed to obey God over the difficulty in your life?

That's how you can discern whether something is the will of God.

Obviously, you got to match it up to the Word of God.

So let me say it plainly: not every spiritual voice is God's voice, not every preacher is God's voice, not every prophet is God's voice, not every podcast is God's voice, not every influencer is God's voice, not every friend is God's voice.

You don't need a second opinion when God has already spoken.

Don't go shopping for second opinions.

Number three, how do I live a life built on the Word of God?

I realize that one meal can cost you everything.

One meal, oh, it's just a little disobedience.

And and I can handle it.

Remember what I taught you last week?

Let the strong, let the strong beware lest they fall.

Not let the weak, let the strong beware lest they fall.

Because we fall into these a little compromise.

It's just a little bit.

I love the story about the mom who's a teenager came home and said, uh, Mom, I want to go see this radar movie.

All my friends are going.

And and the mom said, uh, well, you know, um, let me let me think about that.

Goes upstairs and she decides she's gonna break bake some brownies.

And I mean, he's he's smelling them brownies throughout the whole house.

And he's about ready to go out.

And she says, Sit down, son, before you go.

I just want I want to give you a little brownie.

I made them for your favorite.

Here's some milk here for you.

Here's a brownies.

And he starts eating them brownies.

And she said, You like them brownies?

And he says, Yeah, Ma, these are my favorite.

She says, Don't worry, there's just a little poop in them.

Went out into the backyard, got a little dog poop, just a little, just a little bit, not really that much.

Just mix it into the brownies for you, right here.

You enjoying them, brownies?

What she was saying is, listen, there's a lie out there that a little bit of poop in our life is not gonna mess with our life.

A little bit of poop in your life can destroy your life for one meal.

This prophet lost everything.

Now it happened as they sat at the table that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back, and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, Behold, because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the commandment which the Lord God commanded you, but you came back, you ate, and you drank water in the place which the Lord said to you, Eat no bread, drink no water.

Your corpse shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.

And so it was after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk that he saddled the donkey for him, the prophet whom he had brought back, and when he was gone, a lion met him on the road and killed him.

It was a meal.

One meal, one compromise, one exception, one rationalization.

He didn't renounce God, he didn't burn the Bible, he just made one little exception to what God plainly said, and it cost him his life.

And this is not the first time in scripture it happened.

Esau traded his birthright for a bowl.

The bowl was more powerful than the blessing.

Adam traded paradise for a single bite of fruit.

Judas traded the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver, and this prophet traded his assignment and his very life for a meal he was told not to eat.

And here's what I've learned the devil has no power to take your inheritance from you.

He has to trade you for it.

You didn't get that?

The devil has no power to take your inheritance from you.

He has to trade you for it.

And so what he comes along is he comes along offering you trades that seem real good on the outside, right?

They're car salesman trades.

They're clickbait trades.

They are trades that that until you get into the fine print, you don't you don't realize they're bad trades.

And so he comes along and he says, you know what, if you'll do this, but it's not really a trade, it's a trick disguised as a trade.

It is momentary pleasure for long-term pain.

It is a bowl instead of a blessing, it is a meal instead of the mission, it's the enemy overcharging you and underdelivering in your life.

It's a bad trade.

Anytime you have to compromise what God says, it's a horrible, no good trade that is gonna end in something less than what God has for you.

Now, here's the part of the story everybody should stop at and listen to.

If you read the story, the man who lied lived.

And the man who listened to the lie died.

Kind of some of those things that make you go, hmm.

Some of those things you say, God, God, but but but that's not fair.

I don't understand.

Why would that happen?

Here's the spiritual takeaway.

Listen to me carefully.

You are responsible for your obedience or disobedience.

You can't be looking at other people going, yeah, but God, what about them?

And yeah, God, well, the reason why is because look at what they did.

And God, how come that ain't happening to them?

And somehow we think that other people's disobedience justifies our own disobedience.

Well, everybody, well, you know, the new theology is somehow, somehow we think that if more people disobey God, then it's okay for us to disobey God.

But someday you will stand before your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and you stand on your own match.

Of course, in Christ, I understand that.

But you don't stand going, well, God, the reason why, and God the reason why, and God the reason why.

And notice what Paul said.

He said, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

You remember what Jesus said?

He said, Don't look at the speck in your brother's eye.

Look at the two by four in your own eye.

Too many people, you're too good at picking up on everybody else's problems.

And you know what that means?

That means your life is a mess.

Anytime you see people build their ministries, listen to me carefully, on criticizing other people in the ministry, their life, guarantee, take it to the bank, is a spiritual mess.

Because they're busy worrying about everybody else's salvation, worrying about whether everybody else is obeying, worrying about whether everybody else, but they're not worried about how they're serving God.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

And this can be hard sometimes.

Even Peter had a problem with it.

God restores Peter, Jesus restores him.

Remember that?

He's like, Pete, um, you're gonna you're gonna preach the gospel again.

He said, But remember how you said you were willing to lay down your life for me?

You're you're actually gonna have to do that.

And Peter is kind of wrestling with how he's gonna end his life, and John is there, and and and listening to the whole thing.

And here's what Peter says to Jesus.

Well, what about him?

And know what Jesus says, it's none of your business.

So, what business is yours of how him and I see, he's on a mission, you're on a mission.

You don't get judged based on how you fulfill his mission, you get judged based on how you fulfill your mission.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Number four, number four.

The prophet dies, the lion comes, the story looks like it ends tragically, but that's not the end of the chapter because while the prophet failed, what's this?

What's this?

What's this?

The word of God never did.

See, y'all missed that.

While the prophet failed, the word of God never did.

He's turning, he's going in the opposite direction.

He disobeys God.

The prophet fails, the prophecy didn't.

The messenger failed, the message didn't.

The man failed, the word of God lived on.

The proof is right inside of the chapter.

Watch what happens after the man of God is eaten by the lion for disobeying the word of God.

First Kings chapter 13, verse 29.

1 Kings 13:29

And the prophet took up the corpse of the man of God, he laid it on the donkey and brought it back.

So the old prophet came to the city to mourn and to bury him.

And then he laid the corpse in his own tomb, and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother, so it was after he had buried him that he spoke to his son, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried, lay my bones beside his bones, for the same which he cried out by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel and against the shrines on the high places which are in the cities of Samaria will surely become the pass.

The deceiver himself, the older lying prophet, testifies that the word which the prophet spoke was unstoppable.

The man who lived believed the word of God would stand forever.

Even the liar knew you can resist the messenger, but you cannot stop, and you cannot resist the word of God because 300 years after he spoke this word, a child, eight years old, Josiah was born.

And you know what that eight-year-old child king did?

He did exactly what the prophet who is unnamed said he would 300 years earlier.

He took all of the high priests that weren't really high priests, he took all of the prophets, he took all of the religious garbage and he sacrificed it on the altar and he brought Israel back to Almighty God.

Look at what he did.

2 Kings 23.

Moreover, the altar that was out Bethel, he broke down, he burned the high priest's places, crushed it to powder.

And as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs that were there on the mountain, and he sent and he took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar, just like the prophet said he would.

And he defiled it according to the word of the Lord, which the man of God proclaimed.

Josiah now tears down on the exact altar everything that Jeroboam had put up and raised up in Israel.

And then 2 Kings chapter 23, verse 17.

2 Kings 23:17

He says, Is this the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things which you have done against the altar of Bethel?

And he said, Let him alone, let no one move his bones.

Can you feel the weight of that scripture?

The messenger failed.

The message stood the test of time.

Can I tell you something, everybody?

Look at me right now.

I'm a man.

Tomorrow I could get up and I could fall.

I pray by the grace of God and the strength of God that I never do.

I pray that by the grace of God and the strength of God that I live faithfully for Jesus Christ all the days of my life.

And that's what you ought to be praying over my life every single day.

But I could wake up tomorrow and I could fall.

And you know what should happen to your faith?

Nothing.

Zero.

Because your faith should never be put in a fallible man like me.

I'm just the messenger, but it is the word of God that comes from my mouth that is power.

The word of God that comes from my mouth where the anointing is.

The word of God that comes from my mouth that sets people free.

Don't put your faith in a man, put it in the word which lives forever.

The messenger was buried, but the message kept marching on.

And this is the story of the Bible in every generation.

Kings have tried to destroy it, governments have tried to destroy it.

Emperors and critics and skeptics have tried to destroy it.

They burned it, they banned it, they mocked it, they ridiculed it.

It keeps on living, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

There was a famous French philosopher by the name of Voltaire.

He held a Bible in his hand.

And he said, A hundred years from now, this book will be forgotten and remembered no more.

Do you know what happened to his house?

It was turned into a distribution center for the very Bible that he said would come to an end.

You cannot destroy the word of God.

It is eternal, it lives forever.

It is God breathed, it has God's power in it.

You can't destroy it.

And the word not only stands up to the test of time, it stands up to the test of evidence.

It's not blind faith.

The book that never fails is also the book that stands up to every historical test.

The manuscript evidence.

25,000 copies.

25,000 copies or partial copies of the entire Bible in existence today.

25,000.

How many of you know who Plato is?

Please be more intelligent than the first service.

Do you know who Plato is?

Anyway.

How many believe that Plato lived?

Can I see your hand?

Come on, this is not a hard test right now.

This is not uh this is participate a little bit.

You know how many copies of Plato we have?

Seven.

Seven.

Do you know when the closest one is?

1,300 years after he lived.

But we believe it wholeheartedly.

How about this one?

Anybody ever heard of Homer's Iliad?

Come on, the rest of you not smart, unintelligent, never went to school.

Homer's Iliad, right?

Do you know how many copies of Homer's Iliad we have?

643.

The closest one written 400 years from the events that it describes.

And yet we do not doubt it one bit.

But you have 25,000 manuscripts and partial manuscripts of the entire Bible.

About 16, uh, 7,000 or so, depends upon what scholars you listen to, of the New Testament alone, and the and and and and and the writings of the gospels alone.

And yet, these are written close, so close to the events within a lifespan, some within 30 to 40 years of the events that they describe, and yet we doubt them in every single way.

We hold the Bible to a standard, we hold all Noah the book too.

And here's what happened: 1947.

Kid was throwing some rocks near a cave by the Dead Sea, stumbled onto these clay jars full of ancient scrolls, opened them up, and in one of the scrolls was the ancient text of Isaiah.

Scholars took it, matched it up against the Bible that you can go buy in Walmart.

And do you know what they found?

99.9% accurate to the same Bible, a thousand years younger than any copy we ever had before.

And yet, people will say the Bible has been corrupted.

Who told you the Bible has been corrupted?

It is the living, abiding word of Almighty God.

It never changes.

God said he's exalted his word, even above his name.

I told the first service, and I say this with humility to set people free.

There's one of the second fastest growing religion in the world right now is Islam.

Here's what they state: the Bible has been corrupted.

Because a dude by the name of Muhammad said an angel told me.

Watch out whenever an angel tells you anything different than the written word of Almighty God.

It is a trap.

But there is still one religion that belongs to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

There is one religion where Jesus rose from the grave.

He there's an empty tomb.

You can't find them there anymore.

That is the true religion.

And some of you, listen to me, some of you are afraid to call false false because of your political persuasion.

Look how quiet it got right here.

Some of you are afraid to call false, false because of your political persuasion.

Because you love politics more than you love Jesus.

And you're afraid to side with I don't care what politician, I don't care if he's Republican, I don't care if he's Democrat, I don't care who he is.

I stand on the living, abiding word of Almighty God.

And some of you need to trade your political affiliation for kingdom affiliation.

This man failed.

But it doesn't because it teaches us what the Bible says and what Jesus says.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away.

What's he telling you?

Build your life on the word of God.

Build your marriage on the word of God.

Build your family on the word of God.

Build your finances on the word of God.

Build your career on the word of God.

Build your business on the word of God.

Build your health on the word of God.

Build your holiness on the word of God.

Build your lifestyle on the word of God.

Build it on the word of God.

It doesn't matter what culture says.

It doesn't matter if culture and Christianity are clashing.

It's going to clash.

There are two worlds coming together.

There's a head-on collision.

When your religion mixes with the world, I'm telling you, you are backslidden.

We need to understand that God has called us to live and build our life on the Word of God.

And the greatest proof that the Word of God never fails.

It's not an altar.

It's not a withered hand.

It's not a tomb in Bethel.

It's a man.

A different kind of man.

A God man.

Because everything in this chapter, every flawed, failing, lion stalked piece of it, is pointing to God becoming a man.

And being a man who never fails.

Number five, you build your life on the word of God when you realize that Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, is the greater man.

The whole chapter is a story of a man who has led off his God-given path and turned toward his death by a voice that lied to him.

Every Bible story in the Old Testament is meant to point you to Jesus Christ.

The whole book.

From cover to cover.

And there are so many obviously applications to our life.

There are so many things that God is teaching us on how to live, but the whole book is really pointing you to one man.

And every story you find Jesus.

And here in this story, we see a flawed man who went to his death by another voice.

But when we come to the New Testament, we see the God man Jesus who rejected every voice that tried to pull him off of his destiny.

Peter said, Far be it from you to go to the cross.

He said, Get thee behind me, Satan.

His adversary said, If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross.

And there he hung.

Why?

Not because he couldn't come down, but because he had a mission to accomplish for you and I.

And then in the wilderness, the devil tried to trick him with a trait.

He said, Turn these stones into bread.

Jesus said, Man shall not live.

It is written, it is written, it is written.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And then the devil took him up to the top of uh of the mountain.

He said, Throw yourself down, he'll give his angels charge over you.

I'll give you for for a miracle.

I'll give if you give me this, I'll give you a miracle.

If you give me this, I'll give you something to eat.

Jesus said, Don't put the Lord your God.

It is written, do not put the Lord your God to a foolish test.

And then he said, This if you bow down and worship me, I'll give you all the kingdoms in the world.

Jesus said, It is written, you shall worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shall you serve.

What was he saying?

He's saying, I'm not trading the assignment of God, I'm not trading the plan of God, not for anything that this world could ever give me.

Can I tell you he's more to be desired than silver and gold?

He's better than anything that this world can ever give you.

And when you follow Jesus, he said, if you'll seek him, he'll give you everything.

Every voice he said no to, and he went to that cross.

But the reason why he went to that cross is because he had a mission, and the mission was to save your soul and mine.

And I don't care what anybody tells you, but if there is ever a prophet or a god or this or that that remained in the grave, they are not God, and the only one who is ever defeated death, hell, and the grave is our risen Savior, and his name is Jesus Christ.

The word made flesh who dwelt among us.