Now is the Day of Salvation 1984

I'd like to read from 2 Corinthians 6, verses 1 and 2 to start. Working together with him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, At the acceptable time I have listened to you and helped you on the day of salvation.

Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. The word we're hearing from committed believers everywhere is that there is an awakening of the spirit, a spiritual awakening going on all over the earth at this hour, which may well be the last one this world will see.

The judgment has already begun at the house of God. The spirit is calling forth and raising up a new kind of church and a new kind of people. I don't mean a church or a people different from anything we see in the New Testament, but certainly a church and a people radically different from what we seem to consider normal here in Detroit in 1984.

Now, when we hear about a spiritual awakening sweeping over the earth, the thought of it sounds exciting. Until someone walks up to us and points his finger or her finger at us and says, Okay, it's time for you to enter into this thing with all you have. God is calling for things from you that you haven't given.

God is offering you a power and a grace and a vision in his spirit such as you haven't tasted. When people start to talk to us like that, we always get nervous. And we say to ourselves inwardly, maybe they're right.

Maybe that's true. Maybe I only have one foot in and one foot out. But I'm not going to jump in with both feet until I'm absolutely sure.

I want to see this spiritual awakening with my own eyes first. It's like being invited to a banquet and you're not quite sure whether it's worth going to. And so you wait to see who else goes.

If the right people go, if enough people go, if the band starts to play, then we'll go too. Meanwhile, I've married a wife and I cannot come. I bought five yoke of oxen.

I'm going to test them out. I got some land. I got to look at it.

And that's exactly how it was in Noah's day. Here's Noah building this giant boat miles away from any water. And people come and watch.

And they listen to Noah as he preaches righteousness. He stands up on the bow of this great big boat that's being built and cries out to people. Judgment is on its way.

Repent. Give your lives to God. Turn around.

And people say to themselves, yes, he's probably right. But I think I'll wait a while until I see who else goes. I want to see more evidence of this revival he's talking about.

I want to see something and nothing happens. Nothing spectacular happens until the day that Noah stands again on the bow of his great big boat, which is now filled with animals and his family. And he cries to the people and begs them, repent.

Don't just stand there taking pictures of my boat. Repent. People kind of smile, turn, walk away, go to McDonald's for lunch.

Noah turns, goes in his boat. God shuts the door. And a thunderstorm starts.

Nothing unusual, just a thunderstorm, except that this one won't quit until Noah's boat is bobbing around in the water all by itself. Lot used to sit in the gate of the city of Sodom and talk to the elders there about the kingdom of God. Sometimes he even passed out tracts.

And he would call them to repentance and talk about God's righteousness. And people would say that Lot, he's crazy. But he's probably right.

There probably is going to be judgment. And maybe I should make some changes in my life, but I'm not going to do it yet until I really see something. One evening, two strangers come to the gate of the city of Lot, of Sodom, where Lot is.

And the only one who recognizes them is Lot. He falls on his face before them, welcomes them to come and stay the night at his house. Pretty soon there's a riot around Lot's house.

It's mobbed with people who say, Hey, send those guys out to us. Who do you have in there, Lot? We want to have a little fun with them. Send them out.

And Lot says, go away, go away. You don't know what you're saying. You don't know what you're doing.

Go on home. Go on home. In the morning, the two strangers drag Lot and his family out of the city of Sodom.

And by the time they're out, a rain of meteors falls down on the city and it's destroyed. That's exactly how it was with Jesus. He has a handful of followers.

Everybody else stands at a distance and listens and watches. Maybe he's right. We've never heard anybody talk like this.

We've never seen things like he's doing. But we want to see this kingdom of God. And actually they're looking right at it and they don't know it.

Jesus is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is Jesus calling them to repentance, offering them new life. Now when the kingdom of God is being offered as a gift to us in sheer mercy, no matter who we are or what we've done, and we turn our backs and walk away, what's left? Judgment.

The door closes. And then once the door has closed, even if we come back and pound on the door and say, hey, Lord, Lord, open to us. Don't you remember us? We ate at your table.

We took communion. You taught in our streets. And the answers depart from me.

I never knew you. You workers of iniquity. Reading from Luke chapter 17, starting at verse 20.

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, lo, here it is or lo there. For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. There's not going to be a bandwagon, no fire trucks to ride.

It's here now. Now's the time to get into it. That's all there's going to be.

And he said to his disciples, the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the son of man and will not see it. And they will say to you, lo here or lo there. Do not go.

Do not follow. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the son of man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the son of man. They ate, they drank, they married. They were given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Likewise, as it was in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built. But on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will be on the day when the son of man is revealed.

On that day, let him who was on the housetop with his goods down in his house, not come down to take them away. Likewise, let him who was in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife.

Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed. One will be taken and the other left.

There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left. And they said to him, Where, Lord? And he said to them, Where the body is, there the vultures will be gathered together.

Everywhere. The kingdom of God, the spiritual awakening, is already here. Now is the acceptable time.

Now is the day of salvation. The evidence, the proof, the bandwagon that everybody is waiting for will not appear until the door closes on the ark and the rain starts to fall. The absolute evidence that the gospel that Jesus gives us is true will be here on that day when judgment is clear to every eye and the knees of even the devils have to go down.

But the time to enter the kingdom is now. And, you know, many of, most of us, all of us think of ourselves as already being in the kingdom and that's good, that's right. But yet, if we're honest, we are aware of the fact that in a sense, you know, we got one foot in, we got another one out.

You know, that there is something more that we're being called to. And, you know, all too often we're like the, the ladies who met the fire chief at the tea and they gathered around him. He had his uniform on and he looked so handsome and everybody was drinking tea and they're having a lovely time together until the alarm goes off and the old fire chief takes off.

Just across the street, this hotel is burning down. And so, you know, pretty soon they bring all the fire trucks in there putting this thing out. Here come all the ladies who were so taken up that they didn't want to help.

Says, get out of here! And that's what's going to happen to us. You know, most of our church life is like the tea parlor. You know, we're just playing our own little games here and we're called to something much, much more.

And the time to get into that for all of us is now. So how do you get in the kingdom of God? Chapter 13 of Luke is the kingdom chapter as is chapter 13 of Matthew. But we're going to look at Luke 13.

Why? First of all, we enter the kingdom by repentance. There were present at that very time some who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered thus? I tell you no, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.

Or those 18 upon the upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you no, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. The first step into the kingdom of God and into this spiritual awakening that's covering the earth right now is repentance.

And repentance is very simple. Our heart, our spiritual heart is like our hand. The hand has a hard side and a tender side.

I mean, you don't pick up a baby with your fist like this. You pick up the baby with the tender side of your hand like this. You know, if you want to hit somebody in the stomach you don't tap him.

You punch him. So the hard side ever since the fall of man of our heart has been aimed toward God and the tender side toward ourselves. To repent is to turn it the other way.

So the tender side is up toward God. The hard side is down toward us. This is exactly what Jesus means when he says, unless you repent, turn, and become as children you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And the call to us, the thing that hinders us from seeing and hearing what God is doing on the earth at this hour is because we have the hard side out.

Repentance means we turn. We become like children. Because we know so much.

And all this cynicism and this self-righteousness and we become as children. And now we begin to hear the voice of God. Next step into the kingdom, obviously, is the step of faith in Jesus.

Not just faith in some theological premise but in the person of Jesus himself. Reading again in Luke 13, verse 10. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.

And there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.

And he laid his hands upon her and immediately she was made straight and she prayed God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the day on which work ought to be done, come on those days and be healed, not on the Sabbath day. Then Jesus answered him, You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie, loosen his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it away to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? The woman represents all of us.

Here she is. She's bound, can't even straighten out. The only way she can see is to look up like this.

Jesus says, You're free from your infirmity. Places his hands on her and her heart responds. She trusts him.

And slowly, her body comes up straight for the first time in 18 years. Her hands go up and she begins to praise God. It's the spirit of Jesus.

And he says to us, to those chains that have bound us for so long, You're free. You're free from that bondage. You don't have to be hooked on that anymore.

And there are specific things that we brought with us today. We know what they are. We don't have to be thinking about somebody else's bondage.

We can think about our own. And he says, You're free. You're loose.

You don't have to be in that. All we have to do is believe. And the minute we open our hearts and trust him, in rushes the life of God and brings us out of those chains and into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

Thirdly, we enter and remain in the kingdom of God by bearing kingdom fruit. See, and, you know, after we have repented we don't just sit around and sing songs and stay out of trouble and comfort each other in the midst of this big bad world. We go outside those walls and we bear fruit.

Any church that is not bearing fruit is under the judgment of God. As we read in Luke 13 again, verse 6, and he told this parable, a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. He said to the vinedresser, Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this tree and I find none.

Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, Let it alone, sir, this year also till I dig about it and put on manure. If it bears fruit next year, well and good.

But if not, you can cut it down. What kind of fruit? He's talking obviously about living souls. We're not talking now about the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace.

We're talking about results, not numbers, but living souls brought from darkness to light and then by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and because we love not our lives even unto death. And he requires this of us. He gives us the Spirit for no other reason than that we bear fruit, all of us, without exceptions, no exceptions.

And so the fruit-bearing chapter, John 15, is just full of this. If it does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

You did not choose me. I chose you and ordained you that you should go and I ordained you that we stay in the kingdom by allowing the kingdom to have our entire life, everything. Reading once again from Luke 13, verse 18, he said, therefore, what is the kingdom of God like? To what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden and it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leaven.

So we have this little tiny seed. Pretty soon, here comes this tree that fills the garden. We have a bit of yeast, some kind of leaven.

Put in that lump and pretty soon the whole thing is leaven. And what we have all tried to do has been to prevent that from happening. We like to have our lives compartmentalized.

You know, this little pile here we got Sunday for God and Monday through Saturday for me. And we work it out like this. But he has said, I want it all.

I want everything. I want you to open all the doors wide so that I can come in and absolutely take possession of your thought life, your bodily life, all your possessions, all your relationships, your memory, your future, your hopes, your dreams, and identify it and make it good. There is a spiritual awakening covering the earth at this hour everywhere, including Detroit.

Judgment has already begun at the house of God. And the Spirit of the Lord is indeed calling forth and raising up a new kind of church and a new kind of people. And we are being called now to be part of that.

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, there were no signs to be observed. Nor will they say, lo, here it is, or there, for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. No bandwagon, no fire trucks.

It's already here. And the time to enter it is now. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.

They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah they bought, they sold, they planted, they built. But on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

The hour is short. God alone knows how short, but it's short. And the time for us is now to repent, turn our hearts open to Him the Spirit of Jesus, we're going to bear fruit and we're going to let Him have everything.

And if we will do that, we will see such changes in our lives and in our corporate life that a year from now we won't believe it's the same place or we're the same people. Let's just take some time in silence, and then I'm going to ask