Voice of the Nazarene 5-31-26

From North Central, Ohio, we share with you the Voice of the Mazarine.

A week-by-week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the New Stars Ohio Church of the Mazarine.

We join our pastor, Rebecca, and the Voice of the Mazarine.

Paul Anderson was known as the world's strongest man maybe ever.

And on June the 12th, 1957, he lifted 6,270 pounds.

And as a young guy, just a young guy, America sent him to Russia to weightlift against some of their great lifters.

And when he went in just for warm-up, he lifted more than any man there had ever lifted.

Back during the 1950s, he was an Olympic gold medalist, world champion, a two-time National Olympic weightlifting champion.

He found his significance in carrying this title.

And he would travel the states because of this title, giving him this significance.

He's able to raise money and continued that through the later years of his life.

Became an acquaintance of mine.

He was the chief of police in a little town in West Virginia.

He attended the Oak Hill Church of the Nazarene.

At one time he got into boxing.

He didn't have a promoter, didn't have any finances.

And he self-trained running the back hills and mountains of West Virginia.

He fought a chap by the name of Cassius Clay from Louisville, Kentucky.

Is that the way you say the capital, Louisville or Louisville?

I thought it was Frankfurt.

And uh Cassius Clay knocked down every opponent he'd ever faced.

He never knocked Tunney off his feet.

And I said to Tunney, I said, was he was he quick?

Was he fast?

He said it was so fast you never saw it coming.

Mohammed Ali promoted himself as the greatest fighter of all time.

Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, hand so fast the eyes can't see.

And he spent his life, and his significance was in the title.

The greatest fighter of all time.

If you didn't believe it, ask him.

Where do you find your significance?

Turn with me to Matthew 6, which is commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer.

Jesus Himself never said that we were to recite this prayer.

I think it's a great prayer to memorize.

But he didn't say that we're to use these words.

In verse 9, he said, just after this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father, which art in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Watch the run-up here and lead us not into temptation.

And if you want to underscore any words, underscore these next words and deliver us from evil.

Deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power, the glory forever.

Amen.

Deliver us from evil.

The entire prayer is all about you, Lord.

It's your name, your kingdom, your power, your glory.

Because all of a sudden, for significance in our lives, we start thinking it's about us.

And you're thinking it's about you.

And so God says, I want to deliver us from that kind of an evil.

You're getting too big for your britches.

You think it's about you now.

The biggest package in the world is a man wrapped up in himself.

And we get too big for God.

The Bible says there is a sin that started a war in heaven.

That was the sin of pride.

One of the three archangels, one by the name of Lucifer, got to thinking he was pretty big.

And it's recorded there in Isaiah 14, beginning in about the 12th verse.

He got to saying, I will.

Fact of the matter, he said it five times, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.

I will ascend above the heights.

I will set up my throne.

I'll be like the most high.

Sin of pride.

And that sin has come all the way down to earth and infiltrated the hearts of humanity.

And this pride that every one of us have to battle is what gives most people their significance.

If I say so myself, I'm pretty proud of my career.

I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished.

I'm proud of my toys.

I'm proud of myself.

I'm proud of what I own.

Proud of my body and proud of my image.

Proud of all of my degrees.

I'm proud of my legacy.

I'm proud.

And suddenly that sin that started a war in the heaven has grafted its way into the human heart.

Born with that sin of pride.

When Jesus enumerated the seven deadly sins, and he particularly despised, pride made the list.

It's found there in Proverbs 6, 16.

And actually, pride heads the list.

These six things does the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him a proud look.

Lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies.

And he that soweth discord among the brethren.

The one that has the list is pride.

There in Genesis chapter 3, verse 6, Eve observed that forbidden tree.

Genesis 3:6

Its allurement led to the fall of mankind.

She looked at it and it was good to the eyes.

It was pleasant to the eyes, good for food.

And the Bible said, on a tree desired to make one wise.

To make you wise.

To know it all.

Somebody said knowledge is power.

People like to get a little knowledge so when they get in a boardroom, they can outmaneuver everybody else with their knowledge and keep you befuddled.

The Holy Ghost lumps all the sins of this world into three categories.

He calls it the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life.

It's not of the Father, but is of the world.

And when pride gets into our life, it gives us the significance.

And that's why God says, deliver us from this evil.

This thing about my kingdom and my name and my glory and about me.

It's not about my power, it's about your power.

Not about my name, it's about your name.

It's not about my little kingdom, but it's about his kingdom.

Not about any of our glory.

Everybody run around to get a little shine of glory.

It's about your glory.

Now there's another prayer listed in the Bible.

Luke 22, 42 records it.

The sun was setting, and while the evening shadows lengthened, while moonbeams played in sparkling splendor against the canyon walls and against the rippling waters of the brook of Kedron.

While those disciples slumbered and slept, Jesus, with tears like diamonds glistening on his cheeks, raised his face to heaven, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but thine.

Be done.

And while Lucifer repeating five times, I will, Jesus was praying, Thy will.

What are you saying?

My will or thy will?

Mine or thine?

God's not wanting you to get your significance with pride and sin in your life.

He's saying, I want you to get your significance delivered from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Can I remind you that when David sinned with Bathsheba, four people died?

But when he got lifted up in pride and began to think about his strength with his armies, and he numbered the people, more than 70,000 died.

Can I talk to you about the seriousness of this sin?

As God's laid it on my heart.

If you wonder if God takes pride seriously, he really does.

And if you're going to hear only one thing, I want you to hear this scripture in which God says, I resist the proud.

God said, To humanity.

I God resist the proud, the arrogance.

He says that in James chapter 4, verse 6.

James 4:6

He says it again in 1 Peter verse 5.

Out of chapter 5.

Do you understand that if you have pride in your life, God is against you?

No one in their right mind would want to leave the building, I would think, this morning, to have God against you because of arrogance or pride in your life.

When King Saul no longer wanted to obey God and became arrogant, Samuel the prophet said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel.

God said he resists the proud.

King Saul at one time got his messages from the upper world, but resorted to getting them now from the underworld, from a rich witch of Endor.

Why?

Because Saul said, I played the fool, and I've erred so exceedingly.

And he went on to say, God is departed from me and answereth me no more.

You see, God is against pride.

God resists the proud.

That's why it says, deliver us from this evil, it's thinking about us, not about him.

Now, join me in the book of James, chapter four.

If you're going to resist pride, and if you don't fear pride, let me tell you, you're in serious trouble.

You say, Well, Pastor, I don't think I'm proud.

That's a proud statement.

Every one of us has a little bit of a battle with pride, some with a whole lot more.

Somehow life seems to be about me and about my goals and about my dreams and about my agendas and about me being recognized and me being noticed and me being mentioned and what I want and the way I think things ought to go.

And God says, deliver us, for thine is the kingdom.

And I want you to look at James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

And do you remember who James happens to be?

You remember he's the half-brother of Jesus Christ.

This man grew up in the very same house as a child.

With his older half-brother Jesus Christ.

I can't even imagine what it'd be like to grow up in a home with a perfect brother.

And have mom say, I wish you were like your brother.

The seriousness of pride.

But you know there's a solution for this sin?

James chapter 4, verse 4.

James 4:4

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, remind you, written to Christians.

That's scary, isn't it?

Know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?

Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God.

Do you think that the scripture saith in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth the envy?

But he giveth more grace.

Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

And the only way to defeat pride is through humility.

If you can't exalt humility in your life, then that pride is going to slip in and fill that empty vacuum in your life.

Four things I want you to write down if you'd like.

Notice it says that God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

Grace comes from God.

It's God that does it.

You may be sitting here right now and saying, Well, Pastor, how do I get real pride in my life?

Well, it's humanly impossible.

That's what worries me.

It can't be done on our own.

Paul said, without him, you can do nothing.

And God said, I want to help you.

Well, it starts with grace.

It says, submit yourselves, therefore, to God.

That means surrender.

That means, God, I turn over these faculties of mine.

I yield my thought life to you.

I turn over the members of my body to you that are out of control.

I just, I yield to you.

I turn it loose.

I turn it over to you.

And if you're going to do that, then you need to do the second thing.

It takes his grace, submitting to God.

Second thing is to resist evil.

Resist evil.

Did I mention you need to resist the devil?

Did I mention that?

The guy thought, I've got to get off of donuts.

But when I go by the donut shop, if the parking space is empty right in front of it, it's an indication I ought to stop.

And he had to drive around the block 15 times before it was empty.

That's not resisting.

He said, resist the devil, verse 7.

Submit yourselves therefore to God and resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Now the way to get rid of pride is by humility.

But if I don't humble myself, then pride is unstoppable.

You've got to resist the devil.

Got to deal with him.

Got to get rid of him in your life.

That's why temptation leads to this thing where we have got to be delivered from the evil.

You got to watch out for temptation.

It's flooding us on every side.

My wife said to me a year ago, she said, I was sitting there on a bucket, five-gallon bucket, and said I was pulling weeds and I looked, and there's a snake with his head up looking right at me, and said, It's right in front of me on the sidewalk.

I said, I hope you took care of it.

She said, I froze and it just crawled off.

Well, somebody let their dogs out.

Who let their dogs out?

That's what I want to know.

I don't know whose dogs, two big, big dogs.

Twice now in the living where I live, those two big dogs have shown up.

When they do, I stay in there with Jan.

I mean they're big and they are tearing the property up.

They're just all over the place.

And uh I heard the one barking and the other was getting a little bit out of the way, and I heard gravel flying, and I finally went out after they left, and they had the one dog had dug underneath.

I'd I've got a generator that'll kick on and give me electricity when the power company runs out.

And uh they had dug under my generator until it was starting to tip.

Took me a little while to figure out it had run across that snake and it had gone into a little hole and gone under the generator.

Now I don't like surprises, and before you get upset at me, any worse than you are, I don't like coons in my attic.

And I don't like groundhogs getting under my house, and I will deal with them.

Now maybe you wouldn't, but I will.

And I don't like being surprised by a snake outside either.

And I begin to hunt that old boy down.

You say I wouldn't do it, it wasn't your house.

My house.

I don't like surprises.

I don't like snakes, dead or alive.

What kind of snake?

It didn't matter what kind of snake, I don't like snakes.

Don't like mice either, but I like snakes less.

And sure enough, they're in the weeds.

Hidden.

Lurking, motionless, waiting, and he got the end of a hole.

And I carried him and I put him on the farmer's field.

He needed fertilize.

If you don't get rid of the pride that's lurking in the weeds in your life, waiting any moment you don't know where and when, whether it's dangerous or not dangerous, but it's there.

Then you can get to the place you live comfortably with it.

You can either live with it or you get rid of it.

And it's so difficult to get rid of it that we get comfortable with it.

You know, I know I shouldn't feel this way, Pastor, but I don't think I have more pride than most.

You missed it.

God says, I want you to do this.

You need to humble yourself, resist the devil, get rid of it.

And look at what it says to do next.

Draw nigh to God.

Submit yourselves, therefore, to God, verse 7, resist the devil, he'll flee from thee.

Verse 8, draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.

All of this for pride.

All of these things you need to do if you're going to deal with the pride in your life.

And you've got to understand this is a very egregious sin.

This sin sets God against you.

And here it is in the book of James, it's in the book of 1 Peter, and God said, I will resist the proud.

God says, I want you through humility to vanquish this sin.

But you've got to resist the devil.

You've got to draw nigh to God.

I got booked into Monticella, Kentucky for revival.

Been a number of years ago.

Everything's been a number of years ago.

Nothing's happened recently.

Beautiful church.

It's at way back off of the road.

Down a long, long row, road, a gravel drive, set kind of up on a rise.

It was down there where moonshine.

Where deputies don't last long and they start trying to clean the hills out.

I'm not joking with you.

And when I got there and I went up to the parsonage, they said you're going to stay with us in the parsonage.

Okay.

A lot of thoughts going through my brain.

The pastor's wife was not a bit happy about being there.

They'd been there a year and she would not let him unload their furniture.

The room that I stayed in had boxes all around the walls unpacked.

I slept on a mattress on the floor.

You talk about a beautiful parsonage.

It was a beautiful parsonage.

And she was not happy.

She wasn't happy at the supper table, and she wasn't happy when we walked over to the church.

And he was on eggshells and thin ice.

Meeting started up that first night.

I preached about everything I knew and a few things I didn't.

They just looked at me.

I thought maybe I was one of those deputies that's going to disappear real quick.

I preached the next night and sat there at the table with her up tight and him on eggshells.

And I'm the outside evangelist, and that was one of the tightest meetings I ever endured in my life.

It probably was one of the tightest they ever endured, too.

Nothing happened.

Nobody would move.

We came down to Sunday morning, and I'm about half asleep.

I'm kind of in one of my days moments.

Setting there on the platform and the building was full.

And it was a beautiful church.

And the pastor was turning the service over to me, and I heard him say to, This is our evangelist.

Some of you haven't been here during the week, and I want you to meet him.

He's from up in Indiana.

And I started to move, and about that time in the back, I heard a voice, and I looked in the back, and on the back seat, great big man stood up, had on bib overhauls.

And uh he said, Evangelists, if you don't mind, I need to say something.

Fine with me.

I'm not doing so well.

Nothing I have to offer.

I don't have a sermon yet that's cracked this, not open.

He said, God kept me awake all night.

And God said to me, You're too proud.

It's time you humble yourself.

I thought, Bib overhauls, and he's proud.

Need to humble himself.

What's the rest of us going to do?

And when he said that he was proud, and God told him he needed to humble himself, and he said, I don't know what the rest of you are going to do, but I'm going up front.

I'm not too proud to use an altar.

But God said I was proud, and so I'm going to use that altar.

I'm going to humble myself.

We need revival around this place.

And if it doesn't need to be in anybody else's heart, this old farmer needs revival in his soul.

And when he started down the aisle, that thing broke.

Folk began to hurry.

It wasn't long, there were several that even ran their way down the aisle to get to an altar.

Pride makes us think that we can do it on our own, that we've got the ability.

Sometimes you find out you can't do anything unless God breaks in.

Just one person humbling themselves gives God a break.

Gives God a chance to overcome some situations.

You know, if I just had a little bit of help, Lord, I we we could really do a lot together.

God said, Stop it.

Not about you, it's about me.

Resist that attitude, it's about you.

Resist the devil.

Draw nigh to me.

And then you notice the fourth thing.

He said, humble yourselves in the sight of God in verse 10.

And there's a promise with that, and he shall lift you up.

Not maybe.

God says, you humble yourselves.

I promise you.

I'll lift you up.

When big men get little enough to be big in order to be little so they can be big.

You want to see what God can do, or do you want to see what you can do?

Notice it said, humble yourselves in the sight of God.

And if we're not careful, we want to play this little game.

I'll humble myself in the sight of others.

The problem with that, you can fool others, but nobody fools God.

Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom of power, the glory.

Draw nigh to God, and he shall lift thee up.

And I'm afraid there's been a lot of times in my own life when I gave it my best shot.

I worked hard.

I was diligent.

But it was just me.

What would happen if we were to say, I don't want to see what I could do.

I want to see what God can do.

I'm just going to resist the devil in this whole thing.

And I'm going to draw nigh to God.

He promised that if I do that, he'll draw nigh to me.

For it's by his grace when I submit myself, I humble myself in God's sight.

And the God I serve without exception will lift you up.

Choice is yours.

Submit to God.

If you'd like to see God do something through you, resist the devil, draw nigh to God, and humble yourself.

And that verse, humble yourself, that little phrase, is written in continuum.

It's not something you do once, but you got to keep doing it.

It's not about you, it's not about me.

I think one of the saddest things to ever see is somebody you know and somebody you love, and you see them beginning to get arrogant.

They struck when they sit.

And you know the hand of God's gonna lift off of them.

And you're gonna have to deal with that problem for a while until they see where they're at.

If anything, we need to be careful when people are throwing out compliments.

People can be so kind, so gracious, but they can say something nice, and if we're not careful, we begin to think it's true about us.

We get lifted up.

Without him, we can do nothing.

I was at a place called IHC down in Huntington, West Virginia, some years back.

Guy by the name of Hermino called my name out and asked me to come and lead in prayer, and I made my way up onto the platform and endeavored to pray, and I came back and I sat down next to a friend of mine, Dave Gorduk was his name.

He served as best man at my wedding.

I sat down by him and I said, uh, I didn't do so good, did I, when I prayed?

And he was horrified.

He looked over at me and said, Who were you praying to?

Were you talking to God or were you talking to the people?

I never asked anybody since then what do they think of the sermon?

What do they think of my prayer?

It didn't matter.

I'm not in it for them.

I'm in it for him.

So now I challenge you, if you'll humble yourself, by God said, He will lift you up in due time.

That's my message, Father.

Thanks for being a part of the Voice of the Nazarene.

Visit us every Sunday at 9 a.m.

with BNT's pastor Ray Lastyle.

For more information regarding BNC, visit EusyrusNazarine.org.