Becoming Rooted in Faith, Truth and Love

Let's pray Lord. Thank you for today. This is a day you've made We choose to rejoice and be glad in it in Jesus name.

Amen The scripture says in this world you will have trouble But he didn't leave it there. He said rejoice. I have overcome the world So if he's overcome the world then we can overcome the world The world and all that's in the world the lusts of the flesh the lusts of our eyes the boastful pride of life It's a weakness for us, especially in our culture to go more by what we see than to go by faith To trust more in what the world has to offer and how we can kind of do something for God with what we have rather than God working From our weakness or out of our lack When I first got born again, I thought man, you know, I used to build apartment and townhouses and homes and you know I could really make an impact in the kingdom with all those talents, but the Lord had to not just take me down a notch or two he had to bring me to a place where I was a ankle deep in muck and shoveling and trying to straighten out mess and you know with blisters on the hands and Make me to realize that This life is not going to be the same as it was the Christian life It's not going to be Jesus and everything else We could attain to in our own strength.

It's a total different way of living and The natural man doesn't understand the way of the Spirit It's difficult for us to understand So we can become delusioned and discouraged on the journey Because we Don't know his ways as brother Alene shared. We only know so much about his ways But as we begin to learn his ways We need to also walk in his ways It says that we as ambassadors of Christ we need to walk worthy of the calling of God Not everyone in the church is walking worthy of the calling of God The revelation speaks of seven different churches all in different places in this spiritual journey and A lot of it is because of the direction of leadership You know, we started as nothing and then the Lord Works with us and all of a sudden we find ourselves following Christ and others are following us And next thing, you know, we're leading people But where are we leading them to our children? What are we leading them to become? The people in our fellowship are we pointing them to Jesus or we just pointing them To Jesus plus other things. This is where it becomes important That we become rooted and grounded in our faith We become rooted and grounded in truth We become established in love Because if your kids don't think you love them doesn't matter how much money you give them I used to give my wife all kinds of things But she never felt love Because my heart was divided But I was blind to these things and we as believers we think we love the Lord, but we're our hearts are divided we love other things and You say well, no, no the Lord comes first, but we put all of our attention energy Devotion to other things We all our kids not to church to prayer groups to Bible studies the way we used to we haul them to games and to Concerts and to all kinds of other activities because those are reading book clubs or whatever.

Those are the priorities Because they have to provide for their families and all that and when we begin to go that direction We begin to limit God's ability and what he can do in our lives because we kind of block him from having his own way And it's something that we have to guard against and when he spoke to the seven churches in Revelation he spoke about these things I Don't want to read all of them, but I do want to key in on a couple of points in Revelation in chapter 2 he talks about The church Who had left their first love? We can come to a place where we are no longer Zealous and passionate for the things of Jesus We're not really zealous and passionate about much But not zealous and passionate about the things of Jesus the way you once were when I first Started dating my wife. I don't know about you and my married brothers, but all's I wanted to do was be with her zealous and passionate about that But in the process of life that kind of wears thin because you have responsibilities you have work to do You have children's and there's all and everything's divided, but that relationship cannot break down when the husband-wife relationship breaks down the family breaks down and If that relationship becomes neglected spiritually speaking Then everything falls apart around Because two people cannot walk together if they're not in agreement If a husband's not seeking the Lord with all his heart and the wife isn't loving Jesus with all her heart Then you're gonna have disorder disunity and destruction and this church here in Revelation 2 They'd left their first love, but they were doing all the right things You can do all the right things. I remember used to tell my wife before I was Walking with the Lord born again I'd see what do you want from me? I gave you a new car.

I gave you a nice house I gave you nice things jewelry furniture. You know I go on vacations with you like what do you want from me? She could sense my heart was divided. I Love my career.

I love my identity with my friends I had other things that I love you know which Christ was not a part of any of those things we we went to church But Christ was not central or the main point of any of those things and what I once Had with her Became something totally different as the years went on and Many of us who have had the born-again experience a love for Jesus Where's all we wanted to do is sit and read our Bible or pray or just go out and tell people about Jesus Our love can begin to wax cold. You know the further the wax gets from the flame it begins to wax cold and So we want to guard against these things You've left there's first love We don't want to leave our first love we want to repent and ask the Lord to give us our first love back To remain in that place where we love the Lord Nothing, we wouldn't do for the Lord Nothing, we wouldn't surrender or give up for him Because he is our source of life, and we know that he loves us. We've experienced the love of God which surpasses knowledge But the church had some good things Verse 6 it says, but you have that But but this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans which I also hate He who has an ear let him hear We can have good doctrines.

We can hold to good teaching. We can have sound teaching But we can lose our love for the Lord What is this doctrine the Nicolaitans? It doesn't specifically say what it is, but I believe it's a gospel of mixture We mix Jesus With the world you mix godly wisdom, which is rooted in the fear of God with worldly wisdom we mix the love for God and for Jesus Christ with a love for For the human brain or a love for other gods Greek gods or some mythological Gods and the wisdom that comes through those types of things and this church was very careful That they did not want mixture in their life Even though they had left their first love they were careful about the the teachings of the Nicolaitans But not so much with with the the church that we began to read about at Pergamos And he says that these things says him verse 12 who has the two-edged sword. I know your works You know, it's interesting.

He doesn't say I know your faith genuine faith Results in works. I don't care. You can say it's legalism.

You can say it's bondage. I'm just reading the scripture to you genuine faith results in action and If the action is is a is not lining up with genuine faith, then you have a problem with your faith You're you put your faith in something that is not true you have mixture and So he says I know your works and where you dwell where Satan's throne is Now this church did some good things. They held fast to Jesus name And you know and if you would have asked me in those days when I was I got married as a Christian I got married in a Christian Church my wife and I taught Sunday school, but Jesus was in none of my thoughts But if you would challenge my faith and say, you know, you're not a Christian I would not deny Jesus name But does that make you a Christian when you're when your works are are devilish when you have a mixture That's that's a deception and this is really where the church is going today We hold to Jesus name, but we live like the world We have mixture and the Holy Spirit want us to purge ourselves of the mixture that we might become a pure spotless bride Ready to meet the bridegroom when he comes so He says that you have some who have not denied my faith Even in the days of Antipas my faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells where his throne is But I have a few things against you isn't it something, you know, we call ourselves the righteousness of God we say, you know we claim promises we say that Positionally in him, you know, we're in a good way, you know, and yeah, he's working on us, but nothing can separate us Why is why is the spirit addressing things that he has against the church here? Because He sees areas that can destroy us That can take us down that can bring us back to a place where we are worse off than we were before we started to follow Christ and This is where he began to give an exhortation and he uses Old-testament story an actual event of what happened to the people of God to speak to the New Testament people of What they were practicing and the things that they were getting involved with He says because I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold the teaching or the doctrine of Balaam Some people don't like that word doctrine that word doctrine means teaching If if you have someone who is your teacher who has mixture and you respect them and you receive So like rat poison 97 or 98 percent food.

Very good But two or three percent poison will thin your blood and you will bleed out one day if you keep eating it very bad so the purity is Very important to Jesus. No, I don't know anyone who would feed their children rat poison You know and say well, you know children there's 97% food That's better than most of the stuff where they put fillers in at Costco or some other place No, it's a deception and you know what the people of God can be deceived because Jesus warned his disciples Many many times see to it. You're not to see And so this is a fundamental thing that we need to understand that doctrine and teaching is important Because it's like building a house with a bad foundation.

It's like building a house with no foundation It's like building a house with a crooked foundation The higher you go if you're building a high-rise on a crooked foundation that leaning Tower of Pisa one day is going to come down It's just a matter of time It's not going to be eternally crooked and and and last and to you eternity It'll begin to collapse The higher you go the more you're susceptible to fall because you are not Walking straight before the Lord the doctrine of Balaam. What was the doctrine of Balaam? It doesn't really speak of it. They're in Numbers 25 We'll talk a little bit about it.

So Balak who was the king of Moab he came to the people of God he came to to Balaam who was a prophet of God and he said listen the people of God the Israelites have come over and We Want you to put curses on them? Because you know, there's power in curses, right? There's power in the tongue Right with it. We can bless God and with it we can curse men. And so we're not to curse people we're to bless people as believers and So Balaam said well, I'll ask the Lord and the Lord told him don't go with this man you have nothing to do with cursing the people of God because I've blessed them and He said, you know God said no and so what happened is Balak went and sweetened his offer You know, sometimes someone comes and they want to buy your car, you know, and they offer you so much You say well, you know, I know I don't think so But all of a sudden they come and they offer you more than what it's worth and you think wow Maybe I should ask the Lord about this You know all of a sudden we're asking the Lord but really our hearts already made up.

We know what we're gonna do It's a no-brainer You know when the gift gets big enough and the money gets big enough it becomes a no-brainer But we need to seek the Lord on every decision and so here Balaam goes with Balak in Numbers 25 and he goes and he says I can only speak what God's gonna tell me and the Lord releases him to go Because you ask the Lord for something He says no, and then you keep asking him and all of a sudden he says yes And you just you're so excited because it's gonna work out good for you But the problem was God had sent an angel there to kill Balaam Because he did not obey what God said and so you keep asking you'll get the answer you want to hear He'll grant you your request, but he'll send leanness into your soul That's what happened to them in the wilderness He granted them the request because they begged for it, but he sent leanness into their soul You might have begged for something You know you want to have your business expand or to to have a bigger house or to have You know a nicer car and and you just beg beg beg beg beg just like the little children beg for stuff when they go to the dollar store Eventually we would break down and give it to him and then we realize they're fighting over it and the thing broke anyways And it's just total chaos and then you're in the garbage it goes This is how we are We want what we don't have Whatever we have we try to can You know for the hard times rather than trusting in the Lord That's the point of what I'm trying to say so Balaam goes and the angel Lord is there with a sword and the donkey sees The angel but Balaam can't see him because he's deceived You know when you become deceived he came that those who see might be blinded and That those who are blind might see the donkey saw the angel He was he was not blinded, but Balaam had become blinded by his greed By his pride and then when the Lord finally after he beat that donkey he opened his eyes and showed him He was fighting against the Lord and the donkey was seeking to save his life You know he was ready to turn back Because the Lord had a purpose that at that time that he wanted to bless the people of God through Balaam And so wherever he went whatever wherever Balaam took him he went and he blessed the people of God But then after that when we get into chapter 25. It says that the daughters of Moab went in and mingled and mixed With the with the children of Israel there was a mixture that happened there. It doesn't say how that happened But what it does say here in this chapter To it says how that happened, and that's what we want to read.

This is how that mixture happened and So we begin to see here That it says that Balaam the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel He he taught the king of Moab how to get at The sons of God how to get at the people of God To get them to sin through compromise and through mixture That's how you can get the people of God under a curse You can't curse the people of God But they can go into rebellion against against the Word of God and come under the curse That's what it talks about in Deuteronomy and those chapters there Where it talks about the curse of disobedience And so we get into this doctrine He says he taught them to eat things sacrificed to idols one of the things the Lord hates is worshipping other gods and Feeding on what those other gods can do for you being fed by that Many of us it says the love of money is idolatry right, we love the Lord, but we love money and what can happen is we get our joy and we get our we get fed by The the things that the world can do for us that what money can do for us. It brings us power It brings us makes us gives us status It gives us freedom You know, we can do more things We can satisfy the desires of our flesh more easily less suffering more comfort. These are the things that the flesh enjoys and So they began to eat things sacrificed to idols.

They joined themselves. It says to bail pure there in the wilderness and They also he taught them to commit sexual immorality So he taught them to worship Bale and he said you get them to worship Bale you bring your your gods there and you eat and Drink and worship their gods and they'll join in with you and also it's the sexual sin You get them involved in the sexual sin and God will come against them. Their God will turn on them This is the doctrine of Balaam This is what he taught Balaam to do and thus you also have the doctrine of the Nicolaitans Which thing I hate now the other church They they saw this mixture with these Nicolaitans this idolatry that was there in the city I think it was Pergamos.

They they saw the mixture there and they Separated themselves from that but this church the many of them joined themselves Jesus and other gods Jesus and Bale pure Jesus in human wisdom Jesus in sociology Jesus in psychology Jesus in philosophy Jesus and also What you call it there the twelve steps Jesus and also worldly counseling Jesus and also some other gods This is this is a deception. These are the things the Lord hates Because you can never have a solid foundation you can never have a straight life a pure life a great walk with the Lord When you have this kind of a blended thing It's not possible If we go and we look at the at the last part of the story numbers 25 the last verse of 24 says so Balaam arose and departed and returned to his place and Balak also went his way. It doesn't say there that he taught him how to put a stumbling block But it does say in Revelation 2 that it was Balaam who taught him how to get at the people of God Now Israel remained in the Acacia Grove and the people began to commit Sexual immorality with the women of Moab.

This is where it starts to go off the rails It says friendship with the world is hatred toward God and what he says there is you adulterers and adulteresses Friendship with the world is hatred toward God anyone who wants to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God But we somehow feel that we can serve Jesus and we can also Serve a measure of the world because we're in the world We're not of it, but we get our joy and all of our identity we find in the worldliness We have to be careful, it's I'm susceptible to it. We are susceptible to it We have to keep ourselves set apart for the Lord Jesus to love him with all the heart So what happened was the the women of Moab the people of Moab invited the people of God to the sacrifices of their gods When you invite people to the sacrifices of other gods and you go and you figure why I got this You know, we're gonna go and witness there and everything and pretty soon you realize you're participating in with their activities that's how it can happen and The people there ate and they bowed down to their gods You see how the people of God all of a sudden because there was This environment that they became a part of when they should have come out from among them and be separate should never have gone To mingle with them. They figured that this was a good thing.

They went and they ate and they drank with these people So what happened is all of a sudden they're worshipping their gods They're worshipping their Baal prosperity God They're worshipping money. They're worshipping the God that represents Success if you spend time with people Who are successful and you think that it's not going to affect you it will affect you When I spend time with people and they talk about how their 401ks are doing so well I start thinking I should get in on this because I'm missing out when I start hearing about people how they've invested in this property and that Investment in this thing and they're making so much return I start to become envious and I start to think you know what I've got some extra maybe I should go in with them and Pretty soon. I start to connect with them on a level.

That's not Christ and I have a compromise Rather than being led by the Spirit of God and doing what Christ says we need to hear from the Holy Spirit When we start to listen to how prosperous these guys are and how things are going so well for them And we think Christ is with them. Don't be deceived by it Balaam is the one who taught Balak how to do this and we as the people of God are Susceptible to this kind of mixture because it's in our hearts We brought it with us when we came out of Egypt and we have to be careful that we don't go back into it So Israel joined to Baal of Peor and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel there So when the people in a fellowship start joining themselves with Baal Peor and they start loving the world whose fault is it? Well, we would say it's the people's fault Let's read on Then the Lord said to Moses Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the Lord out in the sun That the fierce anger the Lord may be turned away from Israel Whose fault is it? the leaders fault Was the leaders fault because they didn't warn the people You know today we have countless leaders who are not warning the people about the mixture there's no cross and There's no Pentecost You can't have a Pentecost you just have a bunch of dancing around with gold flakes and and goose feathers that fall from from the sky There's no genuine Pentecost that felon acts because there's not a cross that is preached There's no weeping and a wailing and an intercession between the porch and the altar saying spare thy people. Oh God There's no exhortation of sin.

That's that's coming from the pulpits the way that it once was When the moves of God happened and why is that because the leaders are looking to to Pad their pockets. They don't want to lose nickels They don't want to lose their noses that are sitting in their pews and they don't want to lose the numbers And so they themselves are trying to build a name for themselves They themselves are trying to do something for God and all the while there's they think they're doing it for God But they're doing it for their own careers and many of them as soon as they get another offer Right, they they're like Micah who will jump ship for ten shekels in a shirt Because there's a better opportunity that the Lord brought them instead of being a pastor making 50,000 a year they get an offer because they've done such wonderful success. They've increased the numbers They brought they built up the church The programs are doing great and all of a sudden they're getting an offer for 80 grand and the Holy Spirit is like, hmm I think the Holy Spirit's leading me to go to this other church, you know, because I can you know Take care of my family a little better.

I mean, it's a no-brainer This is a deception You know what? God says that those who preach the gospel they can eat from the things That God supplies through those things, but you know, it has become dangerous Paul said even though I have that opportunity I myself will not take that money Because there's an opportunity to compromise the message When you have someone who's sitting in the pulpit, especially a church boss Who's there and he and he has his hand on the checkbook. And if you preach too much Conviction and you preach too much truth and you preach the cross You are going to it's going to affect your wallet. You may lose your job I've been part of something where pastors have lost their jobs when they preach the cross Because they don't want the cross They hate him who reproves in the gate and they despise him especially the church boss who speaks with integrity We don't need church bosses We need elders and deacons who love the people and we need pastors who will not lie to the people We have leaders here who are held responsible by God who they hang up in the Sun for all to see that they drop the ball They never warned the people They should have restrained their people and said listen Don't you go in and start sleeping with other women and other men's wives rather they go and they marry them They say well, you know, I understand your husband was verbally abusive or this or that.

I understand there's cases of abuse I'm not talking about that But you know you make easy Easy ways of escape and you just pack your house full of a bunch of divorced people who are all sleeping with each other's wives The Pharisees were like that We have to be careful that this mixture doesn't take us down We just finding loopholes all over the place so we can live like devils God said I'll have none of it You tie him up to a rope and you hang him from a tree so everyone can see it's the leaders who never restrain the people and a plague broke out among them and the people all 24,000 or more it says here at the end. It may be 26,000 fell It says that there was a plague and the plague was stopped when Phineas took a sword and he thrust it through when he caught a man and a woman doing things that are unimaginable and it says that those who died in the Plague were 24,000 and the Lord spoke to Moses saying Phineas has stood there and because of his zeal He said I did not consume the children of Israel in my zeal Behold, I give him my covenant of peace It is good to hold up the Word of God and to thrust it through those who are sinning That is what we do in the New Covenant we hold up the Word of God and we allow the Lord the Word of God to pierce our hearts and Convict us of our sin That we might not go wild and enter into false covenants with other gods It's the love of God when preachers stand up and preach repentance Towards the people of God to restrain them from the madness and we as leaders have a responsibility not to fill our own pockets But to preach the truth in love that we might impart grace to the ears to spare a generation where black is is white and white is black and people are being thrown into prison and they're being Persecuted because they stand for righteousness rather than being all-inclusive. This is not from God This is not the will of the Spirit and we need to take a stand for what is right and preach the truth That people might come to know the truth.

His name is Jesus and that truth might set us free in Jesus name