Division Part 2: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 So, where’s the power of God and the preaching of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, and the cross? And folks, that’s what saved me. He convicted me. He died for me. If he died for me to forgive me, then I owe him something. I have a debt to show my appreciation by what? Living for him. And if I fall, I get back up, admit it, and keep going. The Jews require a sign, and the Gentiles [unclear] intellect, and the Jews see Jesus as a stumbling block because they want a sign, and he didn’t give them any sign but the death and burial and resurrection. So Jesus is a stumbling block to the Jews who have their own opinion on how this is going to work out. And the Gentiles, it’s foolishness because they’re looking for total intellect, just total human reasoning, not spiritual reasoning, not scriptural reasoning, human reasoning. And so they go, oh, this is nonsense. How can anybody be born of a virgin? How can anybody, you know, be raised from the dead?

▶ 1:15 This is foolishness. So you’ve got to have scriptural reasoning, spiritual reasoning. And then Paul says, Jesus is our wisdom, our righteousness, sanctification, our power, our redemption, and our glory, our honor. Do we agree with that? Yeah. So what does Paul have to do with it? What does Apollos and Priscilla and Peter, what do they have to do with it? Nothing but messengers, get out of the way, give me Jesus. And what is the American church looking to? The people, they’re looking to ministers. They’re looking to a church group. Instead of Christ and the power of the gospel, we’re looking to somebody. Even people will say, we need a leader to be raised up. We need Jesus to arise in our lives.

▶ 2:12 And people go to the church where they’re comfortable, where their toes aren’t stepped on, and, you know, they got the music and whatever. And, you know, they go and they leave the same way that they came. And that’s because that’s what Christians choose to do. You know, you can go to a lousy church and look for Jesus and find him and be changed because he will meet you no matter where you’re at. And you can wind up being a force in that church.

▶ 2:52 Okay. I’m going to have to stop in the middle of this message because I don’t want to wear you out. We’re in a conference and we’ve got to have a break. Conferences have breaks. We can pick up this message next week. But unity, number four statement he makes, unity is in the power of God and the spirit, not the excellent intellectual speaking. It doesn’t matter if I went to college and learned how to speak intellectually and excellently. It doesn’t matter if I graduated from Toastmasters with the greatest honor and I can really speak. See, Apollos could speak. He had the Toastmasters ability to speak, but he lacked the fullness of the message till Priscilla and Aquila came along and enlarged his ability to speak the truth. He was limited in the truth he spoke.

▶ 3:53 “I declared not God’s mystery with excellent speech, but in weakness, in fear and much trembling. In demonstration of the spirit and power.” So far, the only demonstration of the spirit and power we’ve seen is salvation and changed lives. These people were holy. They were pursuing moral blamelessness. They were fellowshipping with Jesus. These people were very powerful. And so the demonstration of the power is what these Corinthians’ changed lives, from homosexuality, adultery, prostitution, slavery, slave masters, all this debauchery that was going on. The power he’s talking about is the changed life.

▶ 4:49 When I was young, they convinced me that we’re going to reach the world. We need miracles. And we need the [unclear]. My group had convinced me till God changed my thinking that we needed the gifts operating. But here in this church, we see the power of the spoken word, don’t we? And Christ backing up his word. Hallelujah.

▶ 5:25 And that’s what changed me, folks. I went to that altar and I really experienced salvation. It was real. These people weren’t lying to me. Two weeks later or one week later, I got baptized in water and the presence of God came on me and it scared me to death. I had never felt anything like that before. My goodness, I did [unclear] because I was resisting.

▶ 5:50 What in the world is going on? One week after that or two weeks after [unclear], I was filled with the Holy Ghost with speaking in tongues because that’s what they emphasize. And, you know, when you experience these things, it’s real. The power of God is real. He backs up what he says. And I remember leaving the church that night in love with everybody. I didn’t have any enemies. That Holy Spirit just made me fall in love with Jesus and the church and everybody. A changed person. And we keep changing. When we keep pursuing, we keep what? Changing.

▶ 6:36 Number four is repeated again in this verse. Your faith is not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. What the Holy Spirit teaches. What what teaches? The Holy Spirit. So it’s not what Schuller [unclear] says. It’s not what [unclear] or Robert[unclear] says or Billy Graham says. It’s what they say and the Spirit ignites it in me and makes it real to me. That’s when I hear. That Holy Spirit is important. I keep telling you, I highly recommend the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I highly recommend the Spirit filled churches in spite of our problems and our extremism and all the rest. I highly recommend them because on a consistent basis, they’re looking for the presence of Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit, which can change you if you let it, or it can just be an emotional experience that, you know, you don’t, you don’t change.

▶ 7:42 I told you before, I met a priest that said he was, in fact, I invited him to speak in the church. He said he was filled with the Holy Ghost and preached a good message. After the service, I was talking to him, he used profanity, he lit up a cigarette, and I go, sir, do you know the first name of the Spirit? He looks at me. What? The first name of the Spirit, first name of the Ghost. What is it? Holy. I go, yeah. How can you talk like that? How can you do these things? I said, tell me exactly how you got filled with the Holy Ghost. He said, well, I went down to the Anaheim Convention Center and there’s 10,000 Catholics in there. You know, there’s charismatic Catholics, you know, worshiping God and the presence of God was there. I go, yes, that’s exactly it. You experienced the presence of God. The Holy Ghost comes within you and pours out of you. There’s a big difference. Can I hear an amen?

▶ 8:44 I said, you haven’t been filled with the Holy Ghost. And he’s looking at me, but he knew I was right. He experienced the presence of the Spirit, but we need to be what? Filled with it, controlled by it, influenced by it. From within, it needs to come out from within. It’s powerful, church. I tell you, that’s where you get power to think right, and act right and get up from your stupid actions and repent, really, and get in control of your life. That Holy Ghost drives you to be like Jesus and empowers you to do it. And so Paul is telling us what? Unity should be around the power, whether it’s Christ, whether it’s his gospel, whether it’s his death, burial and resurrection. It should be in the power, not in intellectual thinking and opinions. If the power is not working in my life, I’m missing it.

▶ 9:52 And see, when I have the power, I don’t have to disfellowship people. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. They can talk about me. They can belittle me. They can be in a total different camp than I am at, and it doesn’t affect me. Why? Because I have power. I know who I am. I know who Christ is. And I know I was where they were at at one time. Are you there? I was just like them at one time. And Christ kept changing me.

▶ 10:39 The Holy Spirit, the Bible says is what opens the Scriptures to you. And when you read it and study it, you need to lean on that Holy Spirit, not your mental intellect. The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit, but he that is spiritual, judges, determines, examines all things. See, Dave Kincer has to make a transition from his natural mind to the mind of the Spirit, from his natural person to the person of the Spirit, Jesus. You can’t separate the Holy Ghost from Jesus. They’re separated in the Bible so that we understand more and all that. And the Trinity really explains it.

▶ 11:29 But just knowing the word Trinity doesn’t work. See, Jesus is a separate work in your life. And the Holy Spirit is a separate work in your life. And yet they’re all the same. You say, how can that be? He is God. He’s supernatural.

▶ 11:53 And so we’ve got eight more points that Paul is going to bring out. And I’m purposely stopping because we need to get this stuff. And we can continue next week. But this is the Apostle Paul talking. This is a guy that got saved five years after Christ died on the cross and ascended.

▶ 12:20 This is a guy that wrote these epistles just less than 20 years after Christ ascended. This is the guy that mingled with Paul, I mean with Peter and John and Luke and these guys that were with Christ. And I submit to you, he’s got more credibility than any of these book authors. He’s got more credibility than any of these church growth seminars you can go to. That’s why I said we’re at a church growth seminar conference. How to start a church, how to develop a church and how to govern a church. Because we need to get this stuff in us.

▶ 13:02 And he used nothing but the scriptures and reasoning to get this done. And then Christ came in and backed it up. And he’s trying to get them to focus on the power, not people, not ministers, not a group.

▶ 13:19 The problem in America is if my granddad was a Baptist and my dad was a Baptist and I’m a Baptist, don’t bug me. If my granddad was a Catholic and my dad was a Catholic and I’m a Catholic, don’t bug me. No, you don’t focus. Catholics can’t save you, Baptists can’t save you, Pentecostals can’t save you, Jews can’t save you, they can’t change you, Jesus Christ can. You need to get your confidence out of that group and onto Jesus and the gospel and that’s a good place for an amen. You need to get your confidence in these ministers, [unclear], Jakes and [unclear] and [unclear] and all these people and get your confidence on who? Jesus Christ. You need to be seekers, not of ministers and a church group, you need to be seekers of who? Jesus and his gospel and that cross.

▶ 14:19 Everywhere I go I tell people you cannot undermine the power of the cross, the death of Christ. There’s no sin, it can’t forgive. There’s no Christian that backslid that he can’t restore. There’s such power in the cross that I never got saved again. I kept getting changed. I kept getting corrected but I never answered another salvation altar call. Hallelujah.

▶ 14:49 And ministers can be wrong. And if I’m trying to please a minister or I’m trying to please my dad or my mom, how many of you know God does not have grandchildren.

▶ 15:09 He does not have stepchildren. He has children. In other words, you got to get born again by him. You got to have that initial first contact with him. I can’t use my parents for an excuse on judgment day. I can’t use my church or the minister on judgment day because I’m accountable to find him and serve him and follow him. Amen. And so Paul is hitting division. Is division a big problem in America? Yes. Are we losing the battle and one of the main reasons is the church is so divided? Yes. We’re preaching our own opinions. We’re acting the way we want.

▶ 16:02 And then we want God. 9/11 came and the churches were filled with people praying. See, that’s how quickly God can change things. But did it last? No. 60 days. Churches were empty again. Why? They think God is only good for an immediate necessity. And that God will be there at the snap of their finger. And they are totally wrong. We need him every day of our life. You see.

▶ 16:44 I had a tragic come in my life and somebody says, man, you know, do you pray and what do you do? I said, I just do what I always do. I just live my life. I’ve already put in my prayer time for this emergency. I don’t need to call no 24 heartline. I don’t need to get frustrated. I don’t need to get depressed. I have done what I’m supposed to do. And all I got to do is just keep doing it. When I was dying in that hospital, they’d ask me these things. And I go, you know, I don’t need a healer to come in here. I need the healer. Jesus.

▶ 17:29 I’m not panicked. Why, I’ve done what I was supposed to do. And I’m in his hands. He makes the decisions. I don’t have to get holy water or some magical formula. You know, people tried to get me to get into this magical formula for healing. I said, ain’t no magical formula for healing. He either heals you, or he doesn’t. He’s the healer. You ask him, he responds, or you die. We all got to die. Well, aren’t you depressed? Aren’t you worried? What am I going to [unclear]? Either I die today or would have died 20 years from now. I’ve got to die. I’ve got to face it today or I’ve got to face it later. And what’s the problem?

▶ 18:21 But see, that’s what the Holy Ghost and the Word will do for you. And I’m sharing that with you. That’s the power. When you need it, it’s there. It’s there because you’ve been there. Now, how many could use a little holiness in your life? A little sainthood in your life where you are striving for moral blamelessness? A little fellowship with Jesus daily? Yeah. A little summoning Christ. Quit calling on him. But saying, hey, bud, you said you would come. I’m summoning you. I’m serving you papers. Get here. We need you. Without you, we’re nothing.

▶ 19:05 And not settle for a service that doesn’t have him. Or a prayer time when you go in your closet at home. Don’t settle for him not coming. Say, hey, boy, you said if I drew nigh to you, you’d draw nigh to me. You said if I come to church and assembled, you would be there. We summon you. And he’s what? More than glad to respond to the summons. But when you just go, Jesus, would you please come? Jesus, we love you. Jesus, help me. You know, we don’t expect him to come. We don’t demand him to come. He doesn’t come except in his sovereign times.

▶ 19:49 Hallelujah. But when you’re summoned, you never miss it, do you? You know the penalty of not answering a summons. Well, maybe you haven’t been summoned. I’ve been summoned. Let me tell you, it’s not fun getting that paper. I know I got to put it in my schedule. And how many of you know he’s summoning you to assemble together? And you got to put it in your schedule. Wow, that’s hot stuff. He’s summoning you for a prayer time. And you got to put it in your schedule. He’s summoning you to seek his word. And you got to put it into your schedule. If you want him to respond when you want him to respond, then you ought to back it up by what? You’re responding when he wants you to respond. Now that’s good stuff.

▶ 20:37 Hallelujah. How many of us need to be speaking the same thing? And no division. Making right judgments. See, how many of us need to possess the power? And not just lean on, well, I’ve heard Moses’ tabernacle. I’ve heard David’s tabernacle. I’ve heard the cross message. And we just go through the motions when we need the power.

▶ 21:18 And you’re not going to get the power watching TV. And I watch TV. But I tell you, don’t give me the power. I have to shut that thing off and find time for God. See, sports don’t give me the power. Recreation doesn’t give me the power. I need recreation, and the Bible emphasizes recreation. But I’m not going to find my power there. I’m going to find my power, spending time with the sources of power. I was telling my daughter yesterday, love is not only spelled L-O-V-E, it’s spelled T-I-M-E.

▶ 21:58 If I say I love something, I will spend time with it. Am I correct? If I say I love my children, I’ll spend time with them. If I say I love God, I’ll spend time with him. And love is also, I cannot separate love for Christ from love for his people. And love is also,