======================================================================== JESUS PROMISED YOU WOULD STAND IN THE STORM by Carter Conlon ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of having a biblical worldview and building our lives on the solid foundation of God's Word. It warns against crafting our own version of Jesus and highlights the need to trust in God's promises to stand firm in the midst of the storms and challenges of life. The speaker encourages a return to the truth of Scripture, a reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit, and a commitment to living out the teachings of Jesus. Topics: "Biblical Worldview", "Trust in God's Promises" Scripture References: Matthew 7:24, Psalms 18:4, 2 Timothy 1:7, Romans 7:15, Matthew 26:75, Psalms 130:1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon emphasizes the importance of having a biblical worldview and building our lives on the solid foundation of God's Word. It warns against crafting our own version of Jesus and highlights the need to trust in God's promises to stand firm in the midst of the storms and challenges of life. The speaker encourages a return to the truth of Scripture, a reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit, and a commitment to living out the teachings of Jesus. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'm going to preface what I say, preach tonight with a statement, if ever, ever you have listened to me, if I've ever been worth listening to over the years, listen tonight. I've got something on my heart which is from the Lord. I've got something that needs to be said in this season that we're now living in because we're going into a season of incredible hardship. It's going to be worldwide. I know it in my heart. It's going to be difficult. You don't even have to be a prophet. You can just, I'm not a prophet, but you can go into any news channel. You see it now. The financial hardship, the social confusion, the nation rising against nation, the possibility of new diseases, famines all over the world. We're going into a storm, folks. There's no way around that. And the good news is that Jesus promised you would stand in the storm. That's the title of what God's given me to speak on tonight. Jesus promised you would stand in the storm. So, Father, I thank you, God, for giving me this word. I thank you for the word that you've given to Pastor Tim Delina in New York City. I thank you, God, that your hand has come upon him in a special way for this season, God, to lead so many into the saving knowledge of who you are. Thank you also, Lord, for Pastor Brad Geis and his wife Lisa in North Jersey. Thank you for Pastor Pavel and Haley here at the Summit, TSC Summit Campus, and all the associate pastors in these campus churches, God, and in New York City. Father, we pray that strength from heaven would come upon each, that you would keep every one of our hearts alive in you, God, that you would, Lord, not let us love you any less at the end of our journey than we did at the beginning. You would not have told the church of Ephesus to come back to their first love if it wasn't possible to come home. So, God, keep us. Keep us in this sanctuary tonight. Those that are online, keep us, Lord, God Almighty. Let us love you enough to love your truth. Let us love you enough to love your ways. God, help us to love you enough to love your will for the future, God. Build our houses on something solid so that we may stand in the days that are about to overtake this whole world. Jesus, Son of God, I know this has been your word that's been spoken all week, and I know you've given me the capstone tonight for this four-day fast and everything that's been spoken in it. Oh, Jesus, thank you for all who have come to pray. Thank you, God, because it is written that your house should be called a house of prayer. Thank you for the prayers that have been prayed in New York City, the prayers that have been prayed in North Jersey, here at Summit International School of Ministry, and those that have been prayed in homes all over the world, God, in so many countries where people are tuning in and listening, even tonight. God, we want our voices to count. Give us the grace to lift our voices in spirit and in truth. God, we can't be a people of spirit without truth, so give us the grace to do both. For you yourself said, the Father seeks such to worship him in spirit and in truth. God, help me tonight. Help us to hear, and we thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's start with Matthew 7, verse 24, where Jesus makes an incredible statement. He says, therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock. Now, when he's talking about his sayings, at least in the Gospel of Matthew, he's been almost three chapters plus teaching about his ways, giving his word, talking about fasting, talking about prayer, talking about worry, talking about all of the things that loving our enemies, talking about issues like marriage and home and divorce, and all of these things in these teachings. Now, this is only a small part, in a sense, of the word of God, but he puts a capstone on it. In verse 24, he said, whoever hears these sayings of mine, the words that I speak, if you hear them and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. And great was its fall. He's speaking of almost like a total collapse of any house that is building its supposed relationship with God outside of truth, outside of the word of God, building it on human emotion or human opinion as it is. And so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings that the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. In other words, people would have walked out of that particular session, that teaching saying, his voice doesn't sound anything like the powerless religious talk that we've become used to in our time. Oh yes, they went to the temple, they went to the synagogue, no doubt about that. They heard words that weren't necessarily untrue. Scriptures were read, but there was a powerlessness in it. And yet they heard the voice of the Son of God. He said, he doesn't speak like the scribes speak. He speaks with authority. He speaks as if he has the power, the final say, may I put it that way, and the power to do what he says. And he said, if you keep these sayings of mine when the rains come and the winds beat on your house, it will not fall, for it is founded on the rock. I want to give a warning tonight. I want to give a warning to every church leader that's listening to me online around the world. I give a warning to every person who professes to be a Christian. If you hold lightly the words that God speaks to you and to me, especially in the New Testament part of the Bible, your house is going to fall in the days ahead. You will not stand when the storms that are coming on this world begin to abound. You're going to find that your homemade Jesus is not going to be able to stand. Your homemade theology is going to fail you. The rock you thought you were built on is not a rock at all. I want you to listen to the pitiful words of Solomon. Now, Solomon was a king. Of course, the Scripture says he was the most wise man that ever lived. It's a shame that he didn't have the courage to follow his own wisdom. He was used of God to write things in the Old Testament that he himself didn't follow. It's incredible. In order to be king in those days, you had to hand right out the law. It was part of, in a sense, the qualification of being king. So he would have written, and God would have given him these words in various... I don't have time to go into all of this, but he had to write, Do not accumulate horses. For God did not want any king of Israel to trust in any other strength but the strength of God. Do not accumulate wives, which were military treaties that were sealed by making you part of the family as it is, giving you a wife from that particular nation to say, We will be there to protect you, and you'll be there to protect us. And Solomon was told, and he knew, don't bring all these allegiances. Trust in God. Trust in the strength of God. Don't start leaning on your own strength. And he also had to write out, Don't accumulate silver. In other words, God saying, I don't want you starting to trust in any other resource but me. I will be your resource. I'll be your guide. I'll be your guard. I'll be your protector. I'll be the one to fight for you. Don't start leaning on other things that are going to take away your trust from God. And so here's Solomon knowing these things and actually writing some profound words in the Old Testament. At the end of his days, his pitiful condition is really spoken about in Proverbs chapter 5 and verse 7 is the first verse. He says, Therefore, hear me now, my children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Then we go down to verse 11. And you mourn at the last, when your flesh and body are consumed, and say, How I have hated instruction! And my heart despised correction. I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ear to those who instructed me. I was on the verge of total ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation. Now that's Solomon's life encapsulated at the end of his days. I was there. I had access to the Word of God. I had people who actually stood up and taught me things from the Word of God. But I had chosen my own reasonings over the Word of God. And because of it, I was sitting in the congregation, but I was not aware that I was in almost total ruin because I had handcrafted my own theology and put away the words of God. Remember, Jesus said, If you hear my words and do them, I'll liken you to a man who built his house upon a rock. And when the winds come and when the waters stand against it, and when the waves begin to beat on that house, it's going to stand and it's not going to fall. You think about, I want to read to you some things that I was looking at online. It's an article by a man called Ken Ham, who does a commentary on the recent Barna survey that was done about Christianity in America. This is just very recently this was done. And George Barna and his organization have a high rating of credibility when it comes to these surveys. I want you to listen carefully to this. This is who America has become today. Seven out of 10 U.S. adults call themselves Christians. And yet only 6 in 100, 6% actually have a biblical worldview. So what does the rest of Americans believe? Well, according to research from the Cultural Research Center, there are seven major worldviews that Americans are mostly influenced by. Biblical theism, Eastern mysticism, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, postmodernism, and secular humanism. During a recent address of the Family Research Council, pollster George Barna shared that most Americans blend their beliefs to create a customized worldview. In other words, the dominant worldview in America and really much of the West today is syncretism. A little of this and a little of that blended into a worldview that's custom made by each person. With such a worldview, there's no ultimate authority. Truth is determined by whatever seems right to each person. Another ministry recently released their biennial state of theology survey, and the results are a mess. They found that evangelicals, now evangelicals are defined as people who have said, I have prayed to receive Christ as my Savior. I have trusted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Now they found that evangelicals hold to a host of beliefs that are far from Scripture. Listen to these statistics. Fifty-six percent of evangelicals believe that God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Nearly half, these are evangelicals folks, believe that God learns and adapts to different circumstances. In other words, God changes. Though the Scripture says, I am the Lord, I change not. They believe that God learns and adapts. Seventy percent strongly agree that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. Jesus is not created by God. He is eternally existent as God, the third person of God. God did not create Jesus. It is a heresy that's been long condemned by the Christian church for centuries. Thirty-eight percent of evangelicals see Jesus Christ as a great teacher, but not God. Sixty percent of evangelical Christians say that the Holy Spirit is a force, but not a person. Twenty-seven percent of evangelicals think the Holy Spirit can tell me to do something which is forbidden in the Bible. Fifty-seven percent believe that everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. Thirty-seven percent agree that religious belief is a matter of personal opinion. It is no longer about objective truths. In other words, I am free now to form my own God. I can, I might put it this way, I can deconstruct the original Jesus and create my own Jesus. And somehow when the storms come, my house is going to stand. Not so. There are some biblical teachings accepted by the majority as real. However, the same people who accept some of the traditional teachings on marriage, sin, abortion, Christ as Savior, eternal salvation, etc., etc., also affirm the statement that God accepts the worship of other religions. Ninety-nine percent of the evangelical survey respondents said the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe, but based on their answers they either really don't believe it or they don't know what that means or they don't have a clue what the Bible really says, which I believe is probably the closest thing to reality. The survey reveals that what Christians believe is a mess. They hold to contradictory beliefs about a variety of things from God, from who God is and what His nature is to how they should view the Bible and how people are saved. It's a mixture of Christianity and the thinking of our culture. Barna says, why does all this matter? Well, he says your worldview is the filter that you use to see and understand and experience and respond to the world around you. Because your worldview enables you to make sense of the world, you need a worldview just to get through every day. In fact, every single decision that you make, and you make hundreds of them if not thousands of decisions every single day, every one of those flows through your worldview. The choices that you make are a result of what you believe as described by your worldview. The conclusion is how you see the world has consequences for what you do, for what you value, and what you pass along to the next generation. I want to look tonight at Peter, the apostle, as a type of a person who in his initial encounter with Jesus Christ thought that his own worldview could make his house to stand. I want to just look at him as a type of many people today who, in my opinion, are making the same mistake. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, verses 21 and 22, now here's the Word of God and Peter's interpretation. From that time, Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised the third day. So there's nothing hidden. He's telling these gentlemen clearly what's about to come in the next short season. Verse 22, then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord. This shall not happen to you. In other words, Peter's worldview, in spite of what the Word of God, now it doesn't get any more pure than coming out of the mouth of Jesus. Do you understand? He is the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh, and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So Jesus is speaking, but Peter chooses, instead of listening, he chooses his own interpretation. And his interpretation is that suffering and rejection and the cross are not part of his redemptive theology. I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like some Christianity in America today. We don't sing about the cross anymore. The cross is violent. Nobody wants violence in the house of God. We don't sing about the blood, lest somebody should be offended coming into our worship sessions. We don't sing about suffering. We don't talk about suffering as being a potential part of the Christian experience. In America today, it's all about me, myself, and I. It's about all the horses, the silver, and all of the relationships I can get, how I can be enhanced in every area of my life. The thought of yielding to the purposes of God, the thought of dying, in a sense, or losing our freedom so someone else can have theirs is no longer in our theology. And that's the error that Peter made. The Word was there, but he was not listening to the Word. I can't tell you how many people that describes most likely in our generation who are, they have access to the Word of God, but they're not listening to the Word of God, and they're forming their own redemptive theology. Again, as we go ahead to Matthew chapter 26, you'll see it on the screen behind me, verses 31 to 33. Now, Jesus said to them, all of you will be made to stumble because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee. So this is the Word of God. Now, Peter, again, answered and said to him, even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. His estimation of himself is that he could stand in his own strength and his own self-determination when the Word of God was telling him he couldn't. How many people does that describe today who are holding on to this image of self, holding on to their own grit and determination, even to walk in the kingdom of God, believing that they have this ability that we don't have? Paul the Apostle in Romans 7 makes it really clear, and I'll paraphrase it, but he says in essence, in Romans 7, he says, I know what to do. I know what truth is, and I even delight after it in the inner man, but there's something, there's another law at work inside of me of sin and death that is constantly dragging me down with such force and power that I can't rise above my condition. He calls it a body of death. He says, I know what to do, but I can't do it. And who will deliver me from this body of death? And he concludes by saying, thank God through Jesus Christ, my Lord. See, Peter didn't believe at this point that he needed to be delivered. He believed that he could do all these things in his own strength, even though the Word of God told him he couldn't. Matthew chapter 26, verse 34 and 35, Jesus again, here's the Word of God coming again. I'm just giving this as examples. Assuredly, I say to you this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter said to him, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said all the disciples. God help us. When we come to conclusions that are not in line with the Word of God, the Word of God is speaking. And in every instance, they're choosing their own thought above the Word of God. What a dilemma that is. Somehow thinking that this house has the power to stand. So when the floods came, well, later on in verse 40, they go into the garden of Gethsemane and he asks his disciples and he says, pray with me, pray with me. This is an hour when I need you. And he came to his disciples in verse 40 and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, he didn't say it to the other disciples, according to the gospel of Matthew. He said it to Peter. He said, what could you not watch with me one hour? Now, that's not about prayer. A lot of people take that about prayer, that prayer should be an hour, et cetera, et cetera. It's not even about prayer. He's actually saying to Peter, didn't you just boast of your strength? Didn't you just boast of your ability? Didn't you just tell me about your loyalty? Didn't you just set your own thoughts above the Word of God? I was telling you, you didn't have the strength, but you claimed you did have the strength to go all the way and even to die with me. But here you are, you can't even pray for one hour. Do you see yet, Peter, do you understand that your house won't stand? If you're not basing your thought, if you don't have a biblical worldview, your house is not going to stand. And so the Scripture tells us, as we read in our opening Scripture, when the floods came and when the wind started to blow, Psalm 18, verse 4, David the king said, the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. We're living in a day when ungodliness is coming in like a flood, is it not? It's happening so fast. Everybody just keeps saying it. I can't believe how fast ungodliness is coming into our nation and other nations. I can't believe the things that people are thinking. I can't believe the sexual confusion that's going on in our societies. I find it hard that the incivility that's coming against the people of God, the floods are coming against the houses of the people of God. The floods are coming against the churches of Jesus Christ in this generation. And hear me on this, especially online, it's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. It's going to get harder, not easier. The floods are going to rise. The waters are going to rise. They're going to beat against your life and against your home and your family and your house of God. But if you are building your life on the word of God, if the word of God is your value system, if the word of God is the pillar under your house, you will stand. That's the promise of Jesus. You will not fail. So the winds of the floods of the ungodly suddenly come into the garden of Gethsemane. What a shock it must have been. And then suddenly, not only the ungodly, but the winds of adverse thinking. Peter's suddenly confused because he had a viewpoint of God that's not manifesting. And he's thinking, is this the Messiah? Was I wrong? Did I make a mistake? It's not working out the way I thought it was supposed to work. He was told this was going to happen. He was told there was going to be suffering. He was told there was going to be fleeing. It was clearly revealed by the mouth of the Son of God. But he set his own opinions above the word of God. Now he's in a tailspin. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know where to fight or flee. He's confused. You know, when he says, I don't know this man, I think he's telling the truth. I think he's just saying the man I thought was the Messiah is not this man. I knew he had the power to raise the dead. I knew he could walk on water. I knew he could multiply bread. So I formed in my mind what my relationship with him was going to look like. And it doesn't look like this. Even though he was clearly told, he pushed it away and set his judgment above the word of God. And now in chapter 26 and verse 75, at the end of this whole story, it says that Peter remembered the word of Jesus who had said to him, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So he went out and wept bitterly. So the point of this whole thing is that Peter's house fell. The storms beat on it. The winds blew against it. And even though he was probably the strongest of all the disciples, physically speaking, even though he had been a man who had charted his own course, remember he was told when you were young, you girded yourself and you went where you wanted to go. But as you're growing older, you're going to stretch out your hands. You're going to be led into places you don't want to go. Even though he had all of these things, suddenly they all failed him. And he suddenly, when he remembered the words of God, that's where the hope comes in. When he remembered, God, what have I, you told us. He must've just taken that time when he went out and wept bitterly, his house fell. And he must've gone and said, God, you told me. You told me I was going to deny you. You told me. But you also said that you were going to go before us into Galilee. And Psalm 130 verses one to five, the psalmist says these words, and I believe this is in line with most likely some of what Peter prayed anyway. Out of the depths, I've cried to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there's forgiveness with you that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul waits. And in his word do I hope. I believe that it will be this way for the last day's church. The church of Jesus Christ is going to come back to the word of God. The true church of Jesus Christ, as the ship starts to go down, as the house starts to get beat on by the wind, some houses will fall. But even though they do fall, there'll be people who start crying out to God again and say, God, have mercy on me. Have mercy, Lord. I've only done that which others before me have done. But there's forgiveness with you that you may be feared. The word feared is more, I think, easily said, God, that you should be brought into more awe, that we would understand your love and kindness. God, there's forgiveness with you. I'm waiting for you, God, to raise me up. My soul waits. And I'm putting my hope now in your word. I'm not trusting in my own power. I'm not trusting in my own might. I'm not trusting in my own thoughts. I'm not trusting in my own directions. But oh God, I hope in your word now. I'm going to build my life on this book. I'm not going to add to it. I'm not going to take away from it. What God says is what I believe. This book is going to be my biblical worldview. Praise be to God. If God says it, that's the way it is. If God doesn't say it, that's not the way it is. I'm not substituting my thoughts because my house is going to stand in the last days. My children are going to stand. My grandchildren are going to stand. The church of Jesus Christ is going to stand. I'm not going down in the storm. I'm not going to be overthrown by the waves because I am determined in my heart to walk with the real Jesus. I'm determined to let his value system become mine. If he says, love your enemies, I will love my enemies. If he says, forgive those that have cursed you, I'll forgive those that have cursed you. I will not set my judgment above the word of God. He promises that when the winds beat on my house, when the rains come and the floods come, my house will stand because it's built upon a rock. Paul says in 2 Timothy 1, 7, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, not horses. The power that comes from God. You think of Peter, he cowers before a little girl holding the door. Think about that. With all his bravado, all I'm going to do, all I'm going to be, others may run, I won't. I don't care what they do. I'll go with you to Jerusalem. I'll die with you. I will stand with you. And then a little girl, a little girl that holds the door and says, are you one of them? No, I don't know the man. But that same Peter, after coming into the upper room and being touched by the power of God, you see now he's got a biblical worldview. He comes out of the upper room, not with his own opinions about God, but with God's opinion about the world as it exists. And he speaks one of the most powerful sermons in the New Testament. And 3,000 people bend their knee to God on that day. What a contrast between caving to a little girl and standing before at least 5,000 people that could have killed him. And he knew it. He knew it. Now he was able to go to Jerusalem with Jesus, but in the power of the spirit. Not in his own strength. It's hard for strong men to put away their strength. But by the grace of God, we do. By the grace of God, we begin to realize it's not by might. It's not by power. It's by my spirit, says the Lord God. It's not by my youth. It's not by my experience. It's not by my ability. It's by the presence of God in the third person of God, the Holy Spirit within my life, opening my mind to the scriptures, making the scriptures a reality, giving me gifts and abilities that can only come from him, the power to speak in his name, the power. And the scripture says he gives us not only power, but love. It's not a program now. We become compelled by love to bring the gospel to the lost because we begin to love them the way that God does in a sound mind, which is standing on the unshakable foundation of truth. That's where the sound mind comes in. Sound. We've studied the scriptures. We believe what it says. You don't have to be a scholar. Just believe it. Just believe it. You don't need to know the Greek and the Hebrew. Just read it and believe it, that what he says is what he means. And you begin to walk in that. And suddenly you have not only the power of God, not only the love of God flowing, but you have a sound mind. You have a sound theology that Christ promised will put your house on a solid foundation. As a matter of fact, he promises you won't be overthrown. No matter what this world throws at us, no matter how the floods of the ungodly increase, no matter if, as David once said in one of the Psalms, if the mountains are shaken and fall into the sea and the seas overflow their borders and calamities start appearing on every side, David says, my heart is fixed. I choose to trust in God. I choose to believe his word. I choose to walk in the way that God says. Pastor Tim Delina is going to be doing very shortly a 26 week course called Biblical Worldview from A to Z. So every letter of the alphabet, every week is going to be a different letter. And it's the biblical worldview that this present church age needs to have it. It's going to be put into a book eventually. It's going to have a workbook. It's going to have a video series. It's going to be made available to connect groups and churches and homes all over the world. I do believe that this is potentially the most powerful tool that will be placed in the hands of many of God's people in this last generation. Pray for Pastor Tim. Fast and pray for him. Take time. Don't have to brag about it. Don't have to tell anybody about it, but take a day here and there. Just pray. Say, God, please keep this man of God. Because we know that hell is going to come against this. You ask me how I know, because the devil's been around long enough to know what happened on the day of Pentecost. When 120 people stepped out of that upper room and they were now gripped with a biblical worldview. They were now speaking what God speaks. That's what the scripture really tells us. They were speaking with abilities given by God about the wonderful things that God has done, is doing and will do. And when they did that, the rest is history and the devil knows it. And he will do everything in his power to keep the people of God in this and every other country holding to this aberrant, I may call it as the survey said, worldview, because he knows that church is powerless. He knows that when he sends the winds against it and sends the waves against it, it's going to fall. And he will save it just for the right moment. There's going to be a great falling away, the scripture says in the last days. Yes, there will be a great turning to God, but there'll also be a falling away. I believe there'll be simultaneous. Many people who thought they stood are going to find out that they don't stand at all. The Christ that they formed is not the Christ of the Bible. I was speaking at a conference one time and in a stadium and when another person was speaking, I went and sat in the, I went and sat in the, just with the people that were there and this gentleman next to me says, when you preach, I have to leave. I said, really? You know, my first inclination was to get up and walk away from him, but I thought I'd ask a deeper question. I said, well, why do you have to leave when I speak? He said, well, because my God doesn't raise his voice. I said to him, you know, when Jesus went into the temple and he made a scourge of cords and he threw over the tables and kicked out the money chain, you think he might've raised his voice? When he shouted out, it's written, my house shall be called a house of prayer. You've made it a den of thieves. Do you think he might've raised his voice in the temple at that particular moment? And then I stopped and the Holy Spirit gave me a word and I said to this young man, I said, did your father yell at you? He stopped for a moment. He says, he yelled at me every day of my life. And I said, so you're trying to craft a Jesus that's not like your father. And I said, in that you will err. You'll go astray. You have to be willing to accept the Christ to the Bible. You can't craft your own Jesus and think somehow that you're going to stand in the days ahead. And that's the word that God's given me for you. That's why God has moved upon Pastor Tim Delina to do this series of messages, have it published into a book and made available to the church. I think worldwide, whoever wants it on a biblical worldview, A to Z. Pastor Tim's going to let God use him to build 26 pillars under your house. And every one of those pillars you disagree with, you're taking a sledgehammer to it, smashing it and weakening your own house. I encourage you, pray for our pastor and thank God that he has given us a man to lead us with a vision. Thank God. I would so prefer to have a pastor that believes that we can get the gospel out and reach up to a billion souls with this great message of salvation than some guy that just ministers to the house, just to the back door. Thank God. I'm going on the side of faith. I don't care if 10 spies come back and say it can't be done. I'm going to join Joshua and Caleb and I'm going into the promised land. I'm going into where God says to go and believe God for the victory he's going to give us. We're living in one of the finest hours in all of Christian history. Do you understand that? Next to the time that Jesus Christ himself walked on the earth and went to the cross. This is one of the finest hours. This world is falling apart. What an opportunity for you and I to stand and to become those people that the apostle Peter says, be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you for a reason of the hope that is still in you. You know, the scripture says in Acts 27 when the ship was going down and Paul was on it. And the scripture says, when all hope that we would be saved was finally gone, suddenly, everyone on that ship, 275 people are crying out to the concept of God and it's doing no good. But there's one man on the ship that has a real relationship with the real God. He knows that suffering is part of the call of the cross. He knows his life is not his own. He knows the strength he needs to have doesn't come from any amount of human resource. It comes from the presence of God's Holy Spirit and God speaking to his own heart. And with one man who has a biblical worldview, even though the ship goes down, the people are given a chance to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. A lot of ships are gonna go down in the future. A lot of things that people have trusted and are going to fail. But yet God never fails. You know, I love that song tonight. He won't, he won't. He hasn't failed me now ever and he's never gonna fail me. He won't fail me. I'm gonna ask the musicians if you'd come please at this point. We're gonna go to communion together and after we have communion and in communion we're going to, we're going to celebrate the Christ of the Bible. May I put it that way. We're going to celebrate the real Jesus who really gave his life for us that we can be forgiven through his atoning sacrifice and promised to walk in covenant with us if we would walk in truth with him. That's really what we're asked to do. And he promised that our houses no matter what happens will never fall. You know, it's, I'm having a moment of my life of living this. I know that all hell's gonna break out of the earth but I'm not concerned about it. My house is built on a rock and I see it as an opportunity to get the gospel to the lost because they'll actually listen. The 275 had no inclination to listen to Paul until the ship was going down. Then suddenly somebody said, where's that man that said he heard from God? Where's that man who just seemed to have something in his step in his voice that we don't have. Where's that man? And suddenly as I wrote in a book years ago that he goes from, in five minutes he goes from captive to captain. He's giving all the instructions on the ship. He's telling them what to do, how to get to safety because he has a word from God and he trusts the words of God. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/ogECOvWlADs.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/carter-conlon/jesus-promised-you-would-stand-in-the-storm/ ========================================================================