The Passion (Compilation) - Part 1

I want to tell you something. We are going to go into Scripture, and I want you to look at it as it really is. He says that they may know Thee, the only true God.

He didn't come to rescue you from hell. He didn't come to change your rotten habits. He didn't come to make bad men good.

He came to make dead men live. And if you live in Him, you reach for Him, you love Him more. There's nothing He can ask of you.

Love is extravagant. Love is unreasonable. Love is beyond comprehension.

God sold the world. Someone had to pay that price. Someone had to die.

Lord, I think at the moment when He said it is finished, I think every demon in hell must have been afraid. I believe every angel in heaven went into ecstasy because He put an end to the old sacrificial system, and He abolished the priest clubs and made us a kingdom of priests under God. And so all men were took in and fled.

And by every standard of our generation or any generation, our Lord was a single failure. The question comes then to this, what is the standard of success? And by what are we going to judge our lives and our ministries? Is God working in my life? Am I growing in holiness? Have I truly been born again? Listen to me, if everyone in this town believes themselves saved, and we know that's not true by Scripture because the Bible says that few will enter in, how do you know that you're saved? How do you truly know that you are saved? If the only reason you repented, dear friend, was to keep out of hell, all you are is just a Levite serving for ten shekels and a shirt. That's all.

There are more decisions for Christ these days than ever in history, but never of fewer disciples. It's an instant thing. It's a quick rush to the alternate.

Conversion is not like a flu shot. His feet are bleeding, his ankles are all... Day after day he's scarred, his garments torn. He's no sign of being a royal person.

But he's enduring. Maybe every day he had a vision, seeing him who is invisible. Dear God, do you do that? Our religion began meeting in caves and upper rooms.

What are we making of the Christian Church? And this is an awesome day that we live in because the Church of Jesus Christ has been invaded by technicians. Not men of God, not men of prayer, not men of the Scriptures, but clever people, people who are better with computers than the Word of God and on their knees. And they have brought in a revisionist theology that has now revised what the Church is.

And I want to remind all of you today, nobody has a right to change the Church of Jesus Christ. So what has happened, ladies and gentlemen, is that we have this pathetic situation where pastors tell me they can't let the meeting run past an hour because everyone's looking at the clock. They'll walk out even while you're serving communion to go home and watch an NFL game that's going to go on for three hours.

Or an NBA game that's going to go on for three hours. And doesn't somebody think this is not what God intended when he started the Church? You see, you have to account for your time. So here you've got three.

You live 24 hours a day. You work eight hours a day. You sleep eight hours a day.

What do you do with the other eight? Put that into years. You live 60 years. You sleep 20 years.

You work 20 years. What do you do with the other 20? You know as well as I do, there are youth here right now who are practicing immorality and yet worshiping God in the same breath. And you have to decide very early in your Christian life whether you're viewing God as an end or a mean.

Let me take it a little further. Let's imagine that I show up late and I run up here on the platform. And all the leaders are angry with me.

They said, Brother Paul, don't you appreciate the fact you're giving the opportunity to speak here and you come late? And I said, Brothers, you have to forgive me. Well, why? Well, I was out here on the highway and I was driving and I had a flat tire and I got out to change the tire and when I was changing the tire, the lug nut fell off and I wasn't paying attention that I was on the highway and I ran out and I grabbed the lug nut. As soon as I picked it up in the middle of the highway, I stood up and there was a 30 ton logging truck going 120 miles an hour, about 10 yards in front of me, and it ran me over and that's why I'm late.

Now, there would only be two logic. I know no one studies logic anymore, but there would only be two logical conclusions. One, I'm a liar.

Or two, I'm a mad man. You would say, Brother Paul, it's absolutely absurd. It is impossible, Brother Paul, to have an encounter with something as large as a logging truck and not be changed.

And then my question would be to you, what is larger, a logging truck or God? How is it that so many people today profess to have had an encounter with Jesus Christ and yet they are not permanently changed? Do you see the difference? Do you see the difference? The difference is here is somebody trembling because he's going to be hurt in hell, and he has no sense of the enormity of his guilt, and no sense of the enormity of his crime, and no sense of his insult against me and me. He's only trembling because his skin is about to be stained. You know, watching and doing things that are not appropriate for a Christian, and yet they're coming to the youth group, believe themselves satisfied, believe themselves safe, and no one is saying anything except this.

They're carnal Christians.