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  HAVE YOU HAD A TRUE REVELATION OF JESUS？
  by Steve Gallagher
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Summary: This sermon delves into the importance of a genuine confession
of faith in Jesus Christ, emphasizing the need for a revelation from God
to truly understand and follow Him. It highlights the significance of
this confession leading to a legitimate knowledge of God, a great
revelation from the Father, and a transformed life marked by godly
living. The message underscores the power of surrender to God for true
freedom from sin and the necessity of allowing God to work in one's
heart for genuine change.

Topics: "Genuine Confession", "Transformation through Surrender"
Scripture References: Matthew 16:15, Ephesians 1:17, Galatians 5:22, James 1:22, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Romans 12:2, 1 John 1:9, John 8:36, 2 Corinthians 3:17

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon delves into the importance of a genuine confession of faith
in Jesus Christ, emphasizing the need for a revelation from God to truly
understand and follow Him. It highlights the significance of this
confession leading to a legitimate knowledge of God, a great revelation
from the Father, and a transformed life marked by godly living. The
message underscores the power of surrender to God for true freedom from
sin and the necessity of allowing God to work in one's heart for genuine
change.

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CONTENT
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All right, so we're going to get back on track with our series of
messages through the life of Christ and if you remember the ministry of
Jesus of Nazareth has taken a turn and the people of Israel didn't
really know what to do with this guy. They just didn't know because on
the one hand the things that he did and the things that he said left
them breathless. I mean they were amazed at his teaching and even more
so at the miracles, no doubt.

But then you had like coming in on this other side this hateful attacks
on Jesus by the Pharisees and people were just in a lot of confusion.
They're pretty much out of it anyway and didn't know what to do and it
all kind of came to a head at the feeding of the 5,000. Those of you who
were here a few weeks ago when I spoke on that incident, you remember
that actually it was 5,000 men so it was probably, I don't know, it
could have been as many as 20,000 people and all these people, this
multitude of people and people had heard about healings, you know, but
if you're not there and you don't know the person, let's say you knew
the person all his life, he'd been blind all his life and you saw him
healed, that would be powerful, really powerful.

But it's someone that you don't know, there's just a lingering doubt in
the back of your mind, well maybe he faked it or maybe he wasn't really
blind, they set all this up, you know, there's always that kind of
doubt. But there was no doubt about this. I mean and I said this, you
guys remember that we're here, there's Jesus sitting up on this hillside
and to feed 10,000, 20,000 people, bread and fish, it had to have taken
hours for him to keep pulling that out of that basket, right? I mean
they're watching this man and it's like there's a bottomless pit
underneath that basket, you know, and this fish and loaves are coming up
and he just keeps handing it out, handing it out, what an amazing thing.

The people were so impacted by what they witnessed with their own eyes
that they were ready to take him by force and make him king of Israel. I
mean what a tremendous opportunity this was for Jesus to really
establish the church, really an awesome opportunity, but he did
everything wrong from that point on. You know, he starts talking about,
well you're going to have to eat my flesh and drink my blood, you
couldn't think of anything more bizarre to say to people, really.

But you know what, even though this kind of story drives seeker-
sensitive preachers and their mega churches crazy, Jesus was concerned
not about quantity but about quality. He was looking for sincere people
who were willing to battle their way through things they don't
understand, when things don't go the way they think they should go. He
wanted a people who would fight their way through those kinds of
discouragements and confusion and all of that.

So what started out so hopeful, by now it seemed as though everything's
falling apart. So Jesus heads north again with his disciples to get away
from the scowling Pharisees and the intrusive crowds that were always
pushing in on him, wanting something from him. He decides, you know,
I've got to get away with my disciples.

The reality was he knew the disciples were out of it too pretty much,
but Jesus understood that momentous events were heading their way and
these disciples needed to be prepared to face what was coming. And the
way that was going to happen is he was going to have to sit with them
and spend quality time with them, instructing them and showing them what
it was and what it meant to really be in relationship with Yahweh. So
they're walking along up there by Caesarea Philippi, which is, I don't
know, some miles north of Bethsaida and the lake and all that.

So they're walking along and Jesus asks a question. Now when Jesus asks
a question, he's not looking for information, okay? He's got a direct
tie-in with all the information in the world and it's not Google, okay?
When he asks a question, he's always looking to lead the conversation
where he wants it to go. So he asked them, who do people say the Son of
Man is? And he knew what people were thinking, their idle guesses and
all of that.

It must have grieved him to know what people were thinking, but he's
leading his disciples. He's not worried about what people think. He
doesn't care about popular opinion.

He's concerned about building truth into his disciples. And so they
start, you know, kind of sharing the things that they've heard out there
amongst the people. Some say you're John the Baptist.

Well, that came from Herod Antipas, of course. And that's a crazy
thought anyway, because Jesus and John's ministries ran concurrently for
a time. How could he be John? That's crazy.

Others say Elijah. Now this came from Malachi's prophecy that Elijah
would appear before that great and terrible day of the Lord. And so
that's, you know, where that came from.

And then others say Jeremiah, and that comes from this Jewish fable
legend that Jeremiah was going to show up before the Messiah came, and
he had hidden the Ark of the Covenant away somewhere, and he was going
to bring it out, and yeah, bunch of nonsense. And then they just said,
or one of the prophets, which was kind of a catch-all phrase that, you
know, if it isn't one of these, then it's one of the prophets is Jesus,
some kind of reincarnation theology or something. What they didn't say,
and they could have said, and Jesus certainly knew, was that many of
them had already bought into what the Pharisees were saying, that the
power that he was exerting to heal people and do the miracles that he
did came from the devil.

Jesus understood that. And I don't know if the disciples were just
trying to spare his feelings or whatever, but you know that that kind of
talk was out there. And it's really not much different nowadays.

You know, people have all kinds of ideas about Jesus. Until you really
give yourself to living the life that he has laid out, you don't really
know. You're going to be in a lot of confusion.

He says that. You will know when you start obeying these teachings,
whether I'm telling you the truth or not. We want to know first, but
that isn't the way it works.

J.C. Ryle said this. It's kind of lengthy, but it's worth hearing. He
said, let it never surprise us to find the same variety of opinions
about Christ and his gospel in our own times.

Now, in his times, he's talking, this is like 1860s, okay? So this is a
long time ago. God's truth disturbs the spiritual laziness of men. It
obliges them to think.

It makes them begin to talk and reason and speculate and invent theories
to account for its spread in some corners and its rejection in others.
Thousands in every age of the church spend their lives in this way and
never come to the point of drawing near to God. They satisfy themselves
with a miserable round of gossip about this creature's sermons or that
writer's opinions.

They cannot quite make up their own minds what is true and what is
right. Year after year rolls on and finds them in the same state,
talking, criticizing, fault-finding, speculating, but never getting any
further, hovering like the moth around religion, but never settling down
like the bee to feed on its treasures. They never boldly lay hold of
Christ.

They never set themselves heartily to the great business of serving God.
They never take up the cross and become thorough Christians. And at
last, after all their talking, they die in their sins unprepared to meet
God.

Don't let that be you, dear ones. Don't let that be you. Someone who
just—I think Nate said it, I think—someone whose heart is impenetrable.

You're satisfied to just talk about religion and be around it and so on,
like the moth, but you never plunge in for yourself. You know, the
bottom line is, if you won't believe, the time will come when you can't
believe. And that's a frightening thought here in this place, because
you are bombarded with truth in this place week after week, and yet
there are people—I'm telling you because I've been doing this for 37
years—there are people who sit in these meetings, powerful meetings like
this, and ward off every attempt of the Holy Spirit to reach their
hearts.

And when you do that, you finally get to the place where it becomes God
Himself who hardens your heart. That should terrify you guys. You've got
a very bad track record before you came here.

Something better change, right? Something better change while you have
this opportunity. All right, so anyway, Jesus gets to where he is headed
with his disciples. But who do you say that I am? Now, in one sense,
this conviction that Jesus is the Son of God has been growing in the
disciples' hearts since the beginning.

You know, when he was baptized, a voice came out of heaven saying, you
are my beloved Son, and you I am well pleased. Man, wow, what a powerful
thing. Then John the Baptist called him the Lamb of God that takes away
the sin of the world.

And he said, I saw and bore witness that this is the Son of God. Andrew
came running to Peter and said, we have found the Messiah. Then
Nathanael said, Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of
Israel.

Then after he quieted the storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples
exclaimed, you are certainly God's Son. And more recently, right after
that incident with the 5,000 who were fed, Peter said, we believe and we
know that you're the Holy One of God. So this has been a mounting
awareness that the disciples have had.

You know, it's been one revelation after another, each one adding to
what they've already been hearing. But none of these were the great
confession. We don't call any of those, this is the great confession.

This one is special. It's different. Something is different about this
time.

Because at this point, the entire culture has now turned against Jesus.
And now to make that, you know, it's one thing when all the crowds were
following after him. I remember, you know, they've got this revival
going on down in Asbury, praise God for it.

Kathy and I lived down in Pensacola for seven months, the revival going
on at Brownsville back then. And we would see, I mean, thousands of
people coming through there every week, you know, clamoring to be around
the exciting things that were going on, wanting to be touched by one of
the pastors and wanting to get some touch from God and all this. But
then you wonder what happened to them? Where are all these people?
Where's the excitement now? You know, when everything's going the way
where people are clamoring to be around Jesus, now it's easy to say,
yeah, you're the son of God.

But now that the whole culture has rejected him and turned against him,
for Peter to make this statement now truly was a great confession. Let's
look here at these verses, what Jesus said after Peter made this
confession. Verse 17, blessed are you.

This is the first beatitude, maybe the only one, I can't remember, but
maybe this is the only personal beatitude in the Bible, I don't know.
But anyway, it's definitely the first one in Matthew. Blessed are you,
Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but
my Father who is in heaven.

I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been
loosed in heaven. This business about binding and loosing, don't get too
upset about this.

I know that some of these crazy charismatics get out there and they
start binding the forces of evil over cities and loosing the power of
God. How come nothing ever happens if that was really going on? So just
a bunch of nonsense. What he's talking about here is he was going to use
Peter to open the door of faith to the entire Jewish realm on the day of
Pentecost, and then later at Cornelius's house he's going to open the
door of faith to the Gentiles.

That's really mostly what he's talking about. He's giving Peter and the
disciples authority to speak on his behalf so that people would continue
to come into the faith in the days ahead. That's what it's all about.

And then he says, or it says here, then he warned the disciples that
they should tell no one that he was the Christ. The reality was these
disciples were not yet ready. They need to go through some stuff before
they are ready to represent Almighty God to an unbelieving culture and
so on.

Let me read what Dean Farrar says. When their own faith was confirmed
beyond all wavering by the mighty fact of his resurrection, when their
hearts had been filled with the new Shekinah of God's Holy Spirit, and
their brows with final consecration had been mitered with Pentecostal
flame, then, but not till then, would the hour have come for them to go
forth and teach all nations that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Son of
the living God. You know, America is full of people who confess that
Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, is the Son of God.

There's millions of people in this nation who confess that. And you
know, if you agree that the Bible is telling the truth about Jesus, then
you are a confessing Christian yourself. But there's, how do I say it,
just because you confess that Jesus is who he claims to be does not mean
that you necessarily have saving faith.

And that's what I want to get at here. What does it mean, really, to
have that kind of, to make that kind of a confession? We call it the
great confession. And I want to just touch on three things about this,
because we have to have a three-point message, right? Isn't that
required? This confession will only prove to be great in your life if it
leads you into a legitimate knowledge of God.

Do I need to repeat that? This confession will only prove to be great in
your life if it leads you into a legitimate knowledge of God. Now,
preachers, you know, they love to say after, when they preach through
this portion of Scripture, this is the most important question you will
ever face. And I'm not disputing that.

There's truth to that. But like I said, it's not enough to just profess.
It's not enough to just make this confession that Jesus is the Messiah.

That's the beginning. But so many want to leave it there. And there's so
much more that should follow that.

And if it's not following it, something's wrong. Now, in our culture,
where reality is anything you think it to be, the answer would be more
like, Jesus is who you want him to be. You know, so our culture wants
Jesus to be woke.

So therefore, that's the Jesus they follow. And legalistic Christians
want him to be a hard taskmaster. So therefore, that's the Jesus they
follow.

And lawless Christians want him to be a soft, squishy, grace-covers-
everything God. And so that's the Jesus they follow. You know, you can
make Jesus into whatever you want him to be.

But you're just in a delusion if it's not reality, right? I'm going to
read a couple of portions out of this book. This is my last book, and I
will never write another book again, unless the Lord tells me to. I have
to do what I'm told, but I can't imagine.

Anyway, this is what it says in regards to this. Our culture is
increasingly favoring the more tolerant philosophy of humanistic
relativism. People think everyone's opinions and ideas should be
considered relative to differences in perception and consideration.

There is no universal objective truth according to relativism. Rather,
each point of view has its own truth. You know, the problem with this is
everyone can't be right.

Everyone can't be right. That's crazy, because Josh has one reality, and
Chad. I wanted to call you Todd, and I knew that wasn't right.

He has a different reality, you know, and not really. These guys both
love the Lord, but you know what I mean. Out there in culture, one
person believes one thing, someone else... You can't say that everyone's
own personal reality is truth.

It's not truth. There is truth. Truth is reality, and you know, how can
it be truth if people's ideas of it are contradicting each other? It
really is what C.S. Lewis said.

Jesus is either a liar, a downright fabricator, deceiver, whipping out
mendacious whoppers. My wife loves that. That came out of my book,
mendacious whoppers.

Or he's a lunatic. I think, didn't he say something like, thinks he's a
hard-boiled egg or something? Something like that, Lewis said. Or he's
who he claims to be.

Now, if you believe he was who he claims to be, that should have a
radical, complete overthrowing of your life. Jesus is headed for the
cross, and he knows that the day is coming that he's going to have to
hand over to his disciples this movement. He understands that, and so
it's just absolutely vital that they get the truth inside them.

You know, people make that profession, and I've actually heard preachers
say, just say it, and you are saved. Yeah, yikes is right. Just say it.

Just say Jesus is Lord, and you're saved. You'll be with the Lord in
heaven forever. No, that's not true.

That is a lie. When you make that confession, it should be leading you
into a real knowledge of God. All right, number two, this confession
will only prove to be great in your life if it is preceded by a great
revelation.

Verse 17, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did
not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven. I don't know if
you noticed when you were reading through this passage, the word
confession is not even in here. Did you notice that? How many of you
noticed that? What? This is the great confession.

How many of you knew this was the great confession? You guys need to
read your Bibles. Well, the word confess is not even in here, but the
word that is in here is reveal, and reveal is usually translated as
revelation. Revelation is the word apocalyptic, which literally means to
take a cover off of something.

There's something there that's been there all along, but it's been
covered, and apocalyptic means you take the cover off of it. That's what
it means. So here's what happens.

Jesus and the Father are of one mind, right? So Jesus asks a question,
and the Father supplies the answer to Peter. That day really was a very
powerful spiritual experience up there in Caesarea Philippi. You know, I
was thinking about it when we were singing, and man, God bless you guys.

You were totally entered in, and it's powerful worship, right? Powerful
worship, and I was thinking of the Holy Spirit, how He comes sometimes
so powerfully like that. I don't know if you've ever experienced Him
come into you and powerfully affect you inside like that with some
revelation truth. There is nothing like it, and that's what happened to
these disciples that day.

Peter said it, but it came powerfully upon them. This is the Son of the
Living God, and it changed their lives, and they would never be the same
again. If you've seen Jesus of Nazareth, there's this one part in the
movie where Matthew, and I think it's Peter talking, and Peter said
something about going back to his wife, and Matthew said, no, you'll
never go back.

We will never be the same again, and neither will the whole world.
That's not a biblical statement, but man, that's right on. I mean, that
is exactly what happened.

Jesus told him, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. In other
words, what Peter learned about the Lord did not come through sitting in
Sunday school, you know, in whatever little village, I guess Bethsaida
is where he grew up. It didn't come through listening to sermons from
some Pharisee there, you know, on Sabbaths, and it certainly didn't come
through one of the rabbinical schools.

He didn't go to one of the rabbinical schools. He was just a dumb
regular guy fisherman, but even at this point, you know, at this early
stage of his spiritual life, he was light years ahead of the Pharisees
because he was humble enough to receive. The Pharisees packed full of a
bunch of head knowledge that half of it was wrong, but so full of
themselves and full of pride and unteachable, couldn't be told anything.

They will get nothing from Jesus because they won't receive from Jesus.
It's all got to line up with their boxed religion that they got all
figured out, and I'm telling you that is very true today in the church.
We got our own version of boxed religion, and when the Lord wants to do
something special and something new, Pharisees can't handle it.

I just had a saw a text about, I won't name the man, I'll just say that
he's just a mocker under the guise of religion, who's basically said
that the worship leaders at this revival down in Asbury are all queers,
his words. They're all, the worship is led by a bunch of queers, that's
what he said. But every time God is doing something, this same man who
wants to be the Bible Answer Man or something, he's just a hard-hearted
Pharisee.

What does that got to do with what I'm talking about? I don't know. You
know, let me just talk about the church system for a minute, and before
I do, before I go on this rant, let me just preface it by saying there
are many, many godly people in America. There are many godly pastors in
America, but there is a system, and the system has been established
through seminaries, because that is where you go if you want to be a
preacher, you go to seminary or to a Bible college.

And the problem is, for the most part, I'm not saying always, but for
the most part, what has happened is the seminaries and Bible colleges
have built this training for their students all around academic
learning, academic knowledge, book learning, and they treat the Bible
like it's a textbook. This is a textbook to them, and the whole idea is
you learn all as much as you can about, you know, the Greek grammar, the
Hebrew grammar, all about biblical times and all that. Listen, I want
the Bible school and I want the Bible college both, and I love that kind
of information.

I love to just dig deep into the Word of God, but let me tell you
something. Those kids that are going into these schools, what they need
is a powerful encounter with Jesus Christ. They don't need a bunch of
book learning so much as they need to know how and learn how to walk
with God, and how to love the people who God sends to them, and how to
hear His voice, how to walk with Him and obey Him.

That's what they need. They should be coming out of Bible college or
seminary on fire for God, walking in humility and love. That is what a
graduate from a seminary should be like, but I'm sorry to say that 99%
of the time, and I'm probably not exaggerating, they come out packed
full with a bunch of knowledge, head knowledge.

Our seminaries by and large are led by unspiritual men who probably
don't even know the Lord. Now, I do have good news for you, and I
arranged this before this Asbury thing broke out. This is really
interesting.

There is a professor there at Asbury. His name is John Oswald. I can't
pronounce his name.

Oswald. He's a professor of Old Testament theology, and our next special
meetings, which will be held in July, he is going to be our speaker.
Yay! And he is a godly man.

He really is a godly man, and you're going to be blessed, those of you
who are still here then. You're going to be blessed by this man because
he walks with the Lord, and yet he operates in a seminary in that
academic setting, but he does it in the right way, and he's not the only
one. There have been others.

Grant Osborne is another man. He just recently passed, but there have
been other seminarians like that who really do walk with the Lord, so
I'm just trying to balance it out a little bit, okay? They're not all a
bunch of frauds, just most of them. Listen, I've been to Bible school.

I thank God for it because I learned a lot of things. It broadened my
understanding, all that stuff, but what I learned about overcoming
habitual sexual sin came through revelation from God, and what I learned
about Jesus Christ came through revelation of God, and what I learned
about having a life in God came through revelation. It didn't come
through not Bible school.

It didn't come from all the years I've been studying and stuff. It came
through the Lord. Now, you can learn good things from sermons and books,
and listen, here I've got to balance things out a little bit because we
use books, right? What makes us different? I don't know.

See if I can't win you over here. I would like to think that, well, I
can tell you for a fact that the books that I've written came from
revelation, knowledge. I think most of you probably know this.

Do they know the story about sexual idolatry? Is that in any of our
stuff? I can't remember. Do you know about that? Sexual idolatry? Let's
see if I can say it real quick. 1987, we're in California.

That's where we're from, and I went up to a cabin on the coast and
fasted and prayed for five days, seeking the Lord, and when I came back
home, I was going to work on this book that I felt the Lord was laying
it on my heart to write, At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, and I was
writing things that were way beyond my spiritual understanding at that
time. Trust me, I didn't know what I was talking about, but I'm telling
you, I was typing, and it literally was like automatic handwriting. It
really was.

It was like a flood, and I could hardly type fast enough to keep up with
what was coming at me. Now, you guys who have read this book, does it
seem like there's some truth in there? And I can't tell you how many men
have told me through the years, it's like you followed me around, and
you were reading my mind, and you... Well, part of it is because I did
live it myself, you know, and I did come out of it myself, but it came
to me through revelation, knowledge from the Lord. So, you know, you
want a book, and there are many books out there that other books, not by
me, I'm just saying other books out there that have come that way, and
there's many godly pastors out there preaching out of revelation, you
know, they're just there, it's the Lord anointing on them, but you still
have to, the Lord has to speak to your heart, or what, if it doesn't
come that way, if it isn't, doesn't come into your heart, it just ends
up being stuck up here in your head, and it makes you, you know, more
knowledgeable, and that's all it makes you, head knowledge.

The Apostle Paul prayed that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in
the knowledge of him, and that is my prayer for you guys, that is my
prayer, that is what you need in this place, arguably more than anything
else, because that will precede repentance. It's when you come into a
revelation of Jesus Christ, when you see what he's really like, and that
becomes real to you, don't worry, you will repent of your sin. Preachers
make a big deal about, you know, confessing, but you guys did that
before you came here, right? You were confessing Jesus Christ before you
came to this place, and it wasn't enough to keep you out of sin.

Something was missing. You needed a confession that was from revelation,
from the Lord. All right, number three.

This confession will only prove to be great in your life if it leads to
godly living. I guess that is how you can tell if there's any reality to
it, any um, yeah, strength to it. There's a false belief system in
America that much learning makes you godly, that like, learn, learn,
learn, learn, you know, listen to Christian radio all the time, and read
a bunch of books, and the more you you read and understand, the godlier
you somehow become.

But that just isn't true. All that knowledge, all that does is make you
more culpable. That's what it does, it makes you more culpable.

Knowledge of spiritual things without a life in God behind it is
meaningless. You just become an empty soup. There's no substance inside.

You know, to the New Testament believers, to learn about spiritual
things meant nothing if it didn't translate into a greater intimacy with
the Lord, a very real consecration of one's life, a deeper love for God
and others. To confess Christ must mean that we are sincerely and
earnestly seeking to emulate his life. He said, you will know them by
their fruit, right? You'll know them by what's coming out of them, what
their life looks like.

Now, I have long believed that most of the men who come into this
residential program came into Christianity through osmosis. I'm not
saying everybody, okay? Maybe you didn't, but I'm saying it's my
opinion, for what it's worth, that most did. Osmosis is a subtle, often
unconscious assimilation of information.

That's what the word means. And in this book, you gotta buy it sometime,
I talk about this whole subject, and I began by talking about immersion
learning, which is how you learn a language or learn a culture. All
right, so let me just read a little passage here.

In other words, the best way to understand the Chinese people would be
to live in China for an extended period of time. A person will learn far
more about the country that way than simply by reading books about it.
This principle also holds true when entering the Christian community.

A newcomer to Christianity quickly learns the ins and outs of acceptable
and unacceptable behavior. This comes about by being immersed in the
Christian culture. While there are some definite benefits to this
natural learning process, there are also inherent dangers when it comes
to the things of God.

I fear that multitudes have joined the American church, have become
thoroughly acquainted with her ways, but have never really been
converted to Christ. This is especially true of children raised in
Christian homes. Are you guys understanding what I'm saying there? You
aren't a Christian just because you've learned how to obey the unwritten
list of do's and don'ts in the evangelical community.

That doesn't mean you're really a Christian. You're a Christian if the
Holy Spirit has revealed Jesus Christ to you, and you have submitted to
his lordship. All right, I'm going to wrap things up, only because
you've been such a poor audience today.

Jesus said, upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of
Hades will not overpower it. The rock, of course, is this revelation of
who Jesus is. Upon this revelation that must come to every single
person.

Not just that Peter had it, or the disciples had it, but it must come to
every single person. Now, if you would have been a bystander, and you
heard this whole conversation happen with Jesus, you might have thought
that he was in some kind of grandiose delusion, you know. He has been
thoroughly discredited and treated with disdain by the religious experts
of his day.

The crowds who had followed him have now turned away in disgust at some
of the things he has said. All he has to show for all his efforts is
this ragtag little group of manual laborers, and even one of them is
going to soon prove to be a traitor. He has faced nothing but rejection
in his past, and all he has to look forward to is a horrible death on a
Roman cross.

Yet, the Lord, that day, as he was there with his disciples, he could
look off into the future, the decades, the centuries, on down into the
future before his return, and he could see millions of people from every
nation, every tribe, every people group on this earth. Millions of
people over the centuries would come into the faith, and all of this
would happen in the midst of a world that lies in the power of the evil
one. It would be done in the face of hell's forces, and it would be done
in spite of the lack of interest by the multitudes.

Jesus could look and see that this little band of men would be the
formation, the beginning of something that would grow and become a
mighty force on this earth over time. Yeah, it didn't look like much,
but that day the church was founded. That was the day the church, the
ecclesia, the called out ones, that was the day it was founded, really.

And there was nothing hell could do to stop God's mighty plan of
redemption from unfolding. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.

And Lord, I just want to close in prayer by acknowledging that Skip, why
don't you guys come on back up? I think we should sing one more song to
finish up. We're finishing a little bit early. Lord, we can teach, we
can preach here, we can do our best to share the things that you have
revealed to us, but it is totally dependent upon you, Holy Spirit, to
come into hearts and open those hearts and reveal Jesus Christ for who
He actually is to people.

You must do it, Lord, and you do do it in this place. We heard it the
other night, all these men confessing you and what you had done in their
lives, and this is only the beginning for them. They have many years
ahead.

They have many trials and struggles in the Christian life and many
wonderful times and many difficult times ahead, and it will all be used
by you, Lord, to mold them into something more and more like yourself.
Lord, I just want to say before all of these folks here today that you
are who you claim to be. I know that without a doubt, 50 some years
since I first came to know you, and I know without a doubt more today
than ever before, that everything you say is true.

All these years of studying with an open mind, and I've never seen
anything to dispute the truth of that statement that you are the Son of
the Living God. I've never found anything to dispute the truth of it,
Lord. In fact, everything I have experienced and everything I have
witnessed and everything I have read and studied over the years has only
confirmed that, and I just pray, Lord, that if there are any in here who
have wavered or unsure, maybe they're new to the program.

Maybe they haven't had their Gethsemane moment. Maybe they haven't had
their breakthrough yet. I pray, Lord, that you will do that for them
even now.

Even now, Lord, you could do it even now. Make Jesus Christ real to all
of us. Amen.

The issue isn't what you do on Sunday morning. The issue is the way you
live your life from Monday to Saturday. The issue is who has your heart.

What you cherish in your heart is what you are becoming like. My friends
and I are walking down the street, bam, Playboy magazine totally rocked
my world. This lifestyle that I was living just got out of control.

In a very short time, my life spiraled completely out of control. The
whole time I've been looking at pornography, the longer I looked at it,
it began to get progressively worse. I couldn't really explain what it
was, but I was instantly addicted.

You cannot take steps down a path and avoid arriving at the destination.
God wants your heart. Satan wants your heart.

Whoever has your heart will control you. Every time you sin, your desire
for the things of God dies a little bit. Your faith dies a little bit.

Your desire to be free dies a little bit. And with it, the hope to get
free. So how do we win this war and emerge with the victory that Christ
has earned for us? What's missing is God's power to transform a person.

For God to come in and do a work to set us free up of something that has
taken hold in our lives, that we have allowed in there, requires
surrender. The Lord was able to show me that, yes, I can set you free
from this. And hope for me was actually within reach.

That was something I'd never felt before. I don't care what kind of
sexual sin you're involved in. I don't care how bound up you are.

If you will sincerely apply the principles that are in that book, God
will absolutely set you free.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/Mx2C5mq0YVg.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/steve-gallagher/have-you-had-a-true-revelation-of-jesus/
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