God's Correction Tactics Part 2: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:03 And then you got the church. But we know from the newspapers and the Bible that preachers and churches aren’t always good. Churches have been caught molesting children, taking the money, preaching bad doctrines, both in the Bible and in our everyday newspapers. So, finding a good moral church is important, isn’t it? A church that stands for morality. You may not like to hear the preaching, but let me tell you, that’s the church that is going to have an effect for good on the homes and the community and in the world. Could that be true?

▶ 0:56 Amen. A church that flatters you and lets you live the way you want is not a good church. And so when the ministers goes a muck, what does a person do? Well, then they go to the Bible. You can’t... the Bible stands strong. It’s our standard. And if you don’t twist it and turn it to your own convenience, that word will always keep you sound. Hallelujah. It will always be correcting you. It will always keep making you wiser. And do you realize that only 15%, 15% of Christians read their word? And that is the foundation of correction. You can’t always trust your friend.

▶ 1:48 You can’t always trust your spouse. You can’t always trust the church leaders. You can’t always trust a parent. But you can always trust the Bible. Hallelujah. It doesn’t change. And it is sad when we do not read that seriously and objectively every day. How many of you read your Bible through last year? You see what I mean? And we’re in a church that pushes reading the word all the time, and we can’t find time to read the word. And we can find time to watch TV, go to movies, and do all kinds of things, but we can’t find time to read the book that is a sound source for us to be corrected by God.

▶ 2:44 Hallelujah. How do you know preachers are preaching the right thing if you don’t get to the book and find out? And that’s what the Bible said. The acts of God were also used to correct, and punishment. Correction by punishment in Ezekiel 14:21 sums it up. When I send my painful judgments upon Jerusalem, war, famine, beast, and epidemic diseases, if Noah, Daniel, and Job were there, they would only save themselves by their what? You notice the word faith is not there. You will notice the word grace is not there. Hello, are you out there?

▶ 3:38 Do you notice the word miracles are not there? We got miracles in our church. You can have miracles and not be righteous. Hallelujah. Worship is not there. Some people, that’s all they want to do is just focus in on worship. That’s just one aspect. The word prayer is not there. Are you getting the message? Daniel was a prayer. Daniel had miracles. Daniel had visions. But it wasn’t his prayers, his visions, and his miracles that would save him. What was it? What was it? His righteousness. Noah built a boat.

▶ 4:30 My goodness, what a feat he did. He had a huge building. Miraculous. Oh man, how awesome. But it wasn’t the ark that saved him. Are you there, church? It wasn’t his faith that saved him. It was his righteousness. Hallelujah. Job was wealthy, prosperous. So was Daniel. But it wasn’t their prosperity that saved him. It was their righteousness. Do you get it? Correction by punishment. God can bring a war. And I don’t care how great we are right now in, in the world, in our arms.

▶ 5:23 If God decides this nation’s going down, folks, we’re going down. See, the Bible says, “Some trust in chariots, some in horses, armaments, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.” Now, we got to have arms, but let me tell you, we got to have God. And this HIV thing is obviously a visitation from God. We didn’t have it before, before. It came from a source of sin. It’s obvious God is trying to adjust. All these new sexually transmitted diseases that we never heard of before, 30-some new ones, are God saying sexual revolution is not the way to go.

▶ 6:15 And America just keeps pumping medicine into them and hanging on to these ideas and not recognizing, even mocking when somebody, and I heard ministers get on TV at these news, uh, talk shows and say that’s God’s judgment, and they were laughed at and mocked at. And one was a woman pastor that did an excellent job, and they just ridiculed her. And that was on Fox News. Did one of the best jobs I ever heard. Acts of God are flood, fire from heaven, and hell. In Isaiah 29:6 it says, “You shall be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder and earthquake and a great noise, and a storm and a temp, tempest, and a flame of devouring fire.” Why?

▶ 7:10 To get you to correct yourself. Colossian, 1 Corinthians 11:30, for this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many asleep. He’s talking to the church. Some of you believers are weak, weak in your mind, weak in your emotion, weak in your spirit. Some of you are sick and some of you are dead before your time because you did not discern the Lord’s body. You are the body of Christ. His body died for our sins. We are the body of Christ. And so God corrects by punishment. What’s the goal of correction? Hebrews 12:9, our fathers of our flesh corrected us and we gave them respect.

▶ 8:04 Shall we not much rather be in submission unto the father of spirits and live? In other words, if natural fathers correct us and we respected them, we responded. Isn’t it just common sense that God our father will correct us? For fathers of the flesh, for a few days corrected us after their own pleasure. But God for our profit, that we might be partakers of what? His holiness, his righteousness. See, God has a goal. No chastening, no correction for the present seems to be joyous, but it’s grievious.

▶ 8:59 Now, we understand that in the natural, when I’d go to discipline my kids, you know, they’d put a book behind their bottom and, you know, pad whatever. It wasn’t a, it wasn’t an enjoyable time. They weren’t going, “Oh, great. Dad’s going to spank us. Hallelujah. Man, I can’t wait.” And neither do adults in the church. We don’t like it, and we try to ignore it and say it isn’t God. Like I read at the beginning, they say it’s not God, but afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised, trained thereby.

▶ 9:51 Hallelujah. You see, correction is part of the training, part of the exercise to make you a righteous person. Wouldn’t it be foolish for me? My kid gets an airplane model and he puts this airplane model together with glue. And in doing that, building this airplane model, he gets the smell of that and he gets a, a rise from it, a high from it. And so instead of building the airplane model, he just sniffs the glue. Now, wouldn’t it, wouldn’t I be a bad father if I neglect it to teach this boy and do what’s necessary physically to get him not to do that?

▶ 10:51 Absolutely. See, he’s the child. I’m the adult. I’m the one that’s supposed to know better. I’m the one that’s supposed to be protecting. I’m the one that’s supposed to be guiding. And yes, in that issue, we all go, “Yeah, it’s a bad day. Yeah, he needs to correct it.” Well, church people are using profanity. Parents are using profanity. Church people lie. Church people lose their temper. They verbally abuse people. They slander people.

▶ 11:44 Now, is God a good God when he just say, “Oh, I love you. You just keep sniffing the glue.” You know, it’s really not the best way for you, but I love you. You know, you just keep sniffing the glue. What happens if the kid keeps sniffing the glue? The mind burns out. Yes. What happens if we as Christians just keep doing these things that are wrong? We destroy our life and we destroy those around us. Hallelujah. Parents drop their kids off to babysit at church and go home.

▶ 12:35 Shouldn’t God correct that? Shouldn’t a parent come as an example to the child? Church is not just good for you, it’s good for the whole family. Isn’t that right? So God’s got to come and deal with this stuff. Once you say you’re a believer and you accept Christ, God’s going to spank your fanny, and you’re going to have troubles. Your own kids will come against you. That’s one of his ways. He’ll turn your kids right against you. And he doesn’t have to do it directly. He does it because of your neglect. And you’re asking them to do one thing and you are doing another. And then we go to psychologists and psychiatry and we spend 50 bucks for a half hour to try to straighten out our home, when we just need to go to the Bible and get our life straightened out and our home would get straightened out.

▶ 13:38 And that’s an amen. Hallelujah. But the correction, I got to let God correct me. If I want my children corrected, I got to let God correct me. If the church is going to have an effect on the homes in America, we got to get our home together. Is that true? If we’re going to have an effect on the lives of people in America for good, we got to get our life together. And the purpose of correction is what? The peaceable fruit of righteousness. Peaceable, lack of war, lack of opposition.

▶ 14:31 Righteousness produces that peaceable fruit of righteousness. Hallelujah. We are becoming a weak nation because America will not listen to God’s corre... corrective word. And when God decides to deal seriously with America, and not these little things that he’s bringing, like an e... economical downturns and plagues such as AIDS and the STD diseases, when he really gets serious, this nation is going to be in anguish. Ultimatum. Now this is powerful. Ezra is in captivity for the sins of Israel.

▶ 15:32 Several thousand went into captivity. In that captivity, God blessed them. They live for God and they serve God. And they came out of that captivity very wealthy. They had to leave homes behind to go back to Israel, their promised land. And so Ezra is talking to the king of Persia. And the king of Persia is offering him a military escort and everything else to go back. But Ezra says this, “I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of soldiers to help us against the enemy in the journey. I was ashamed to go for government for help.

▶ 16:27 Is that getting into your cranial vacuum? I was embarrassed to go to government and ask for help for protection, food, clothing, so forth. Because we had told the king, ‘The hand of our God is upon all for good that seek him.’” Did you hear that? He had went to the king and said, “Listen, the hand of God, he had been preaching the gospel, is for good on all that seek him.” Is protection good? Is having a job good? Yeah. Having clothes good?

▶ 17:19 Having a place to live good? Yes. Having children under control, is that good? Yeah. Having a day for recreation to watch the Super Bowl, is that good? Yes. That’s good. But his power and wrath is against all that forsake him, all that turn their back on him, renounce him. You know, they don’t verbally do it always. They can just neglect God’s word, neglect God, neglect prayer. Are you there? Neglect the house of God. They turn their back. And some can denounce and say, “Oh, you know, I don’t have to do this.” And they can verbally say that, but most of us just turn our back.

▶ 18:15 See, his power and wrath is against those. Now, folks, this is two ultimatums. Are you listening to me? An ultimatum is a proclamation that something, there’s a penalty if something isn’t done. There’s a punishment if something isn’t done. And Ezra has given an ultimatum to the king. Are you there? He’s telling, “King, you’re going to lose your nation if you don’t turn to God.” And he did. The Persian Empire went down. Because when you forsake God, in the end, God’s going to come and deal with you. Amen.

▶ 19:07 But listen to this. Watch this. He’s also making an ultimate proclamation to God himself. And what he’s saying is, God, we’re seekers of you. We’re followers of you. And you must do us good. Are you there? Now this is faith exercised. God, you promised to protect my home. You promised to give me a job and, and provisions for my home. You promised to give me health and a strong mind and all. God, you’ve got to produce. This king of Persia needs to see you are God.

▶ 20:00 These people in Persia needs to see you are God. And we need to see you are God. Hallelujah. Now, isn’t that powerful? He didn’t go up there wimpy. Well, you know, uh, no. He made an ultimatum, an ultimate proclamation. We have set our lives apart to follow you, to seek you, to serve you, and you’ve got to back up your word and bless us with God. Wow. Didn’t God say he would give us the nations for our inheritance? Didn’t Jesus say, “Look on the harvest. They are ripe for the harvest.

▶ 20:51 The fields are ripe for the harvest.” God, we are going to [unclear] with the word. You got to show you are God and back up your word by pricking their hearts and changing their thinkings and saving them and, and, and changing these families. Could that be an amen? See, of the works of my hand command you me. Not that we can go, God, do a miracle here and, you know, snap. No, this is the attitude of that. I gave you promises. Demand that I keep them. But you first got to what? Give yourself to righteousness. You got to accept correction. You’re not going to have much authority in this statement if you don’t let God deal with you and correct you.

▶ 21:52 Come on, God. Correct me. Bring it on. But you go to God without an attitude of righteousness and correction and pray that, and he’s just going to go, “Who are you?” But when you say, “God, I’ll accept your correction. I’ll accept your discipline. I’ll accept your verbal correction. I’ll accept God. Just bless my life with good.” And that’s the attitude. Then he starts blessing. And it isn’t popcorn where it’s overnight. It’s progressive. Hallelujah. And then you see a change in you. Or no, you don’t see it at first. People do. And then you see a pe... a change in the people that are around you, because they saw a change in you and liked it and so they copied it, or they get mad at you and start just lambasting you up and down.

▶ 22:47 Either way, you’re great. If they’re changing, you’re great. If they hate you for being righteous, you’re still great according to the sermon on the mount. Ain’t that right? Recognize that God corrects us out of love because he loves us. And that first correction is verbal. You just got it this morning. How many will raise your hand to Jesus and said, “Lord, I got some things in my life I need correcting.” Yes. And that’s all he’s looking for is a good, honest heart. The verbal correction is the way to go. And then the third is punishment. Proverbs 13:24, “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves his child disciplines him promptly.” Now, switching that back to God, will God want to correct us promptly, or does he want to do it three years from now?

▶ 23:52 No, he wants to do it now. Why? Because he wants to bless your life now. Proverbs 19:18, “Correct your son while there is hope, and let not your soul spare for his crying.” They look at you with those beautiful eyes, and mommy, don’t give in.