The Church Triumphant

Turn to Revelation, the 12th chapter, in the 11th verse. It says, they overcame him, referring to the devil, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. And then jump over to the 17th verse.

Then the devil was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring, those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And so we're going to look at the church triumphant, what the church triumphant is, how the church is triumphant and what defeats the church. The first thing I do want to look at is the 17th verse there, where it refers to a battle.

Very recently, I talked to an individual that, in their discussion, they gave the mentality that, well, hard times must mean that something's not right, that something's spiritually wrong. And I thank God that the early church didn't have that view or we wouldn't be in existence today. Because if the early church would have the view that hard times must mean that God isn't blessing, they would have ceased to evangelize and reach out to a perishing world.

They would have ceased because they had all kinds of trouble. We have to realize that God has called us to war. Why do we think that there should be peace? You see, we have a mentality in America that we're called to peace.

We're not called to peace. We're called to war. Why are we shocked when there's battles? Why are we shocked when there's tribulation and trouble? Why are we shocked when there's spiritual warfare that goes on? Why should we be shocked in our life when things are falling apart? What happens so many times, we go to God when hard times are hitting us and we say, God, why me? Rather than understanding, He says, you are a fallen person living in a fallen world.

Not just that, is you have angered the evil one because you've changed sides. You've been a traitor against him now. So he's not going to be happy with you and he's going to come against you.

And as him being a hater of God, he hates all that God has and owns and all that God is. And he's going to attack all of that, everything that he can. So why should we be shocked? An author is named Stephen Lawhead.

He says, how do you appease an enemy who will not be appeased by anything less than your death? How do you appease the devil who will not be appeased by anything less than your destruction? It becomes so ludicrous, so ridiculous for the church to think that somehow we can compromise the gospel. Somehow we can compromise Christianity and not have it be that bad. But how do we compromise with the evil one who wants nothing but our destruction? His goal is not just to make the church weak and powerless.

His goal is ultimately to do away with it. But the promise of God stands against him and the grace of God stands against him. So we have to see that the church has still remained, even through the time where it has been horrendously ugly.

How much more is he not going to be able to do it now? But we have to see that we've been called to war. Why should we be shocked? Because there's war. We have to change our way of thinking.

We have to understand this is war. Now, the reason why we have some problems is because we always live our lifestyle as in peace. We expect that we're going to go home from work and have a nice time.

Everything's going to be great. Everything's nice and easy. But when was the last time you heard of war happened like that? When a nation is really at war, everybody's affected.

I mean, as if all of a sudden Russia started bombing us. I guarantee you people wouldn't be sitting down in front of their televisions the way that they used to. I guarantee you things would be different.

All of a sudden we would refit all of our country, all of our factories for wartime productions. Everything would be dealt with and accepted as far as rationing and all the other things because of war. How much more is it that we shouldn't have that mentality for the greatest battle that we face? God has called us to just the opposite of what so often we think.

We think that we're to be in peace and we're to be in comfort. God has called us to be the total opposite, not just at war, but to be the aggressors in the war. So often we wait for the devil to be the aggressor.

So often we're always responding to his attacks. When is the church going to come to a point where it is so sick and tired of what the devil has done to our world that we get on the aggressive, we get on the offensive rather than staying in the defensive? You see, we're not taking ground from the devil because all we're trying to do is hold our ground. And if all we're trying to do is hold our ground, we might get mighty weary of trying to hold the same ground.

We've been fighting year after year after year after year after year. Think of an army, these nations at war. And think of this one army that for years, all they've been doing is trying to defend this one hill.

One hill. I mean, these men that are on that hill trying to defend that one hill, they're going to get so tired, so weary. And they're going to say, what's the use of this one hill? I mean, we can start wanting to give in and cave in because all we've been doing is trying to occupy.

But God does not want us to occupy. He wants an aggressive church, an aggressive Christianity that says enough. Devil, I'm coming after you.

I'm tired of you coming after me. I'm coming after you now. You're on my hit list rather than it being the other way around.

You want to come at me? That's all right. But I'm going to attack you first. I'm going to come after you with everything I got.

Game's over. The church has become determined and it has to see the purpose. It has to have a determination in their heart that they're not going to sit anymore in apathy, but that they're going to become aggressive in their Christianity.

Turn to Hebrews 11, and I want to look just for a couple of minutes at. A triumphant church or the triumphant churches, as Scripture relates it. Hebrews 11, verse 32, and what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Japheth, David, Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice and gained what was promised.

Who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released so that they might gain a better resurrection.

Some were some faced jeers and floggings while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned. They were sawn in two.

They were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated. I want you to listen to this 38th verse.

The world was not worthy of them. The world was not worthy of them. I want you to think about this church here for a minute, this body of believers.

Now, this is relating to the Old Testament saints, but nonetheless, it was God's church at that time. What does he relate as victorious? You have a few of them in here that were armies or kings that were conquering, but so much of it was those who were faithful in the midst of battle. And so much of it was those who were faithful in the midst of battles as being saints of God.

You have the testimony here that's brought out or the tradition that Jeremiah was sawed in two. You have other prophets that were thrown in pits. Jeremiah was also thrown in a pit.

They were persecuted. They were rejected. They went around in nakedness and peril and sort.

And you have these these people that live such a life. And then God says the world wasn't even worthy of these people because of the faith that they had and the trust that they had and their willingness to stand and be triumphant even in light of the worst tribulations. We can read the Bible and we can be used to the Bible and read it over again and over again and not really be moved a whole lot by it.

But then once in a while, God does these wonderful little things and just for whatever reason, opens the scripture to our understanding. Well, God did this with a simple verse, one that's really common, one I quoted and I know Christians quote time again because it's a one of those Christian cliche verses. It's Romans 8, 37 says, knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors to him who loved us.

How many times have we taken that verse when people suffer and we go to them, says, oh, Jesus will make you more than a conqueror. I mean, how many times have we done it becomes a cliche, a word, some words we say, because that's what we think is apropos in a time of suffering. But I was reading this one day and it just came to the point to me, the reality of saying, I win.

I win, devil, I win, period, I win. You will never, ever beat me, never, no matter what you do, no matter if you touch my body, if you touch my family, if you give me a job experience, if I remain true, you will never, ever, ever, ever win. Never, no matter what you do, you are defeated.

You see, it's so simple. It's so simple, but sometimes we just have a hard time understanding. We will win, period.

We will be triumphant if we remain true to the faith. The devil will never be able to do it. Now he wants to lie to us and make us think that he'll win or that we're losing or whatever.

But we have to see no matter what, devil, I don't care what you do. I will never, ever bow my knee to you, devil. In the worst tribulation, I'll bow my knee only to Christ, no matter what you do.

If it be that I'm thrown to the lion's den, I will never bow my knee to you. All those saints were triumphant that went to the lions. All those saints were triumphant that were drowned or persecuted or had their tongues ripped out.

They were all victorious. They did not lose. And you know why the devil did that? Because he knew that he was losing.

And he, in such wrath and such anger, if I can't make you deny me, then I'm going to mutilate you. And yet you have people like, like Hus that's being burned at the stake. And before they put the torch to John Hus, he ends up making the statement.

He says, what I preach with my lips, I now see with my blood. And as they put him in the flame, they heard him singing joyfully unto his God. The devil doesn't win.

You see, the issue is not whether we can be triumphant, it's whether are we being triumphant because we're walking in that place of victory or have we been defeated? The early church, their testimony was a testimony of triumph. You know, and I'm not going to take the time to go through it, but but you read the second chapter and you read 41 on and you find a church that's triumphant. The Lord added 3000 to the church.

And then it says later that he added daily to the church and that they walked in unity and harmony and signs and wonders followed. It speaks of a triumphant, victorious church. That is an example of triumph.

That is an example of victory. That's an example of the church being aggressive in its Christianity and overcoming, taking ground rather than just trying to defend ground. It's interesting when you get into the Chinese church and the persecution that goes on there.

And the majority of times when the Chinese become Christians, they know they will be persecuted one way or the other, whether it's the taking of their possessions or whether they're thrown in jail or whether it's death. They know there's a price. The chance of persecution for them is tremendous.

So you want to know a song they sing. And I wonder if we put it on our Sunday morning list of songs and if it become one of our most popular ones, says I want to be a martyr for Jesus. I mean, how many of us would joyfully sing such a song unto the Lord? I want to die for Jesus.

I want to be a martyr for Jesus. Our mentality in America has been so. Comfort oriented that we're against suffering.

But yet we're told in Philippians that we are to. Walk in the fellowship of the sharing in the sufferings of Christ. But that's not good Pentecostal theology.

It's good Bible theology. But Pentecostal theology is is God wants to prosper us and make everything happy and fun. And it's not necessarily reality.

He wants to make us triumphant. This church in the South Seas built a church of a thousand and put a cornerstone in that church that had an inscription on it. And I want you to hear this inscription.

He says, when John Getty landed here in 1848, there were no Christians here. When he left in 1872, there were no heathen. That's a triumphant church, that's a victorious church.

Now, that's not the the way that it always goes. I mean, you can go to Adoniram Judson. Adoniram Judson, he goes to Burma and his wife dies, his children die.

You know, he's he's imprisoned. And and the things that he goes through is seven years until he gets his first convert. Seven years, but as a result of a man who would not be defeated to the worst trials that we could even imagine, now there's over a million souls that have been saved as a result of Adoniram Judson.

A million people were saved because the man paved the way even for other missionaries to come, because he would not cave in, he would not bow his knee to to the devil, nor would he turn tail and run and give up. Many times we we yield to the devil by just giving up, by just stopping. I'm tired of the fight.

I'm tired of trials. I don't want it anymore. But that's defeat.

What defeats the church, Ezekiel 37, probably a set of scriptures familiar with some of you, at least it's the vision that God gave Ezekiel of the Valley of Dry Bones. Now, what would a Valley of Dry Bones speak about? What would a Valley of Dry Bones actually be? It's death. We have to see that it was a battle that went on.

It was two armies that came against each other and the bones that are left in that valley are the defeated army. What would end up happening, the conquering army would go through after the after the battle was over and they would remove their dead and bury them properly. They would go then and strip all the dead warriors out there of their valuables and they would leave their bodies out there to rot and be pecked by the birds and tore apart by the animals.

They would leave it out there to be a testimony of their defeat, the shame of the people. This was a symbol of Israel defeated. It becomes a present testimony of the church in America, I believe.

I believe predominantly the church in America is a defeated church. It is no more an aggressive church. It is no more a church going after the land.

It is a church that has succumbed to the culture and just given in to become seeker-centered, to go after what is easy rather than being an aggressive church, seeking the loss and saying, I'm tired of what the devil has done. I'm taking back the land. And so God sends the prophet and the prophet prophesies by the word of the Lord and all sudden bone comes to bone and flesh comes upon the bones and all sudden you have an army of corpses.

No life. What good is a church of a thousand if they're all dead corpses? You could have a church of 10 that's dead corpses and a church of a thousand of dead corpses, you know, the only difference is the one a thousand smells worse. God's not glorified in numbers itself.

Now, God wants to save multitudes, that's the reality of it, but it's not numbers of itself. It's not the aspect that we just try and get them for the sake of of putting notches on our belt. In essence, the church could only become an army when the breath of God is breathed in it.

Only when the breath of God was breathed into that army of corpses become of any value. Try and get an army of corpses to do anything. You see, they don't do anything.

They feel pused. They don't do anything. They do not do anything.

Corpses do not do anything. And you know what? Corpses cannot produce babies. They cannot produce babies.

Only living, breathing people can produce children. So you have a church of a thousand dead corpses. They are not going to produce children of faith.

If people come into the church, it's either transfer growth or it's the aspect they're producing dead babies just like they are not living babies. Dead people cannot produce living children. Only living, breathing churches, living, breathing individuals will begin to birth living children.

What good are we if we're just a corpse? God told Ezekiel to prophesy again, and when he prophesied, he prophesied to the four breaths of God in the four corners of the world to breathe and life came in to the people. And then they became a living, breathing army. Then they could hear their commander and respond only then.

But you see, there's a difficulty when we look at it in the New Testament light to have the breath of God. We have to do something. There's a journey we have to go through.

And the journey we have to go through to have the breath of God is we got to go through Calvary to get the Pentecost. We got to go through Calvary. Jesus died, rose again, stayed with the apostles and the disciples for 40 days.

Then he told him, he says, go and carry in Jerusalem till you get the power of God to be a witness. Only when they had the power of God, only when the breath of God came amongst them, did they become a breathing, living army to become aggressive and take the land until the breath of God was truly breathed on them. They were a cowering group of people unable to do anything.

It was not until the breath of God breathed in them. But what was the means by which God told him to do it? He says, you get away on your face and you tarry to the power of God come. You know why the church in America does not have the power of God, because it does not tarry.

Does not tarry to get the Pentecost. I believe in it. I believe in the baptism, the Holy Ghost, the church needs to be Pentecostal.

I used to think that it was good, that we're all part of the evangelical church. I've come to the conclusion that the Pentecostal church is not to be evangelical. But I believe that the church is to be Pentecostal.

It is to be New Testament Christianity, that God has done a work in bringing about the true church once again in Pentecost, that it could have power to be a witness and that he does not want the church to compromise the Pentecostal power just to be accepted by the world, accepted by the by the community of churches, but that we are to be true to the New Testament pattern of faith, to be true in the power of God to change the world. The people thought bad about Azusa Street. So what? But from that revival, the world was changed.

And one of the greatest revivals that ever happened swept the world. The greatest missionary effort that has ever happened in history swept the world as a result of that. God wants his church to be triumphant.

But the church has become a valley of dry bones. Or maybe he's called us back and we've come to a point to be corpses. What we have to do is we have to look at what slays the church.

What is the thing that that brought that army to the point of defeat, that it was laying out there as a as a valley of dry bones? What defeated the church? For the sake of time, I'm only going to touch on a couple of things because I want to get into the means of victory. But the first thing is, we've got to come to the reality of the state of the church. If we remain ignorant of our own death, how will we ever come to life? If we can try to convince ourselves, yes, we're alive, but we're really not.

And the fruit's not there. Then how are we going to ever get the life that God really wants? First, we've got to see where we're really at. And I want to put a little microscope upon us that we might look and examine ourselves in one simple area.

I want to look at and I'm going to touch some other things that defeats the church, but one particular area. And that is the loss of the power of God. The loss of the power of God means one thing.

That the Holy Spirit has not been powerfully present in this church, I'm not going to say he's been absent, but I will say he's not been powerfully present. That his arm, his right arm has not been laid bare to say that his right arm has not been laid bare to deliver, to heal. That his arms not been bared to fill with the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Every time that you see the power of God manifested, people are safe, people are filled, people are healed, signs and wonders happen whenever God is not powerfully present with his people, the signs and the wonder and the power of God is absent from the church. We have to see that that becomes one of the signs of sickness within the church that we have to look at the power of God missing. And so what do we do? What do churches do across this country? The whole idea of seeker sensitive is just it's trying to take the place of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is gone.

He left. So since he's not around, how else can we do the work? So we come up with human inventions, human plants, human ideas. But the real issue is that the Holy Spirit is left rather than dealing with the tree of issue saying we have no power, God, because we've not gone through our Calvary to really get to our Pentecost and we've not carried to the power of God's come.

But you see, we've got to go the only path that he told us, the power of God, and that's coming to our Calvary. And coming to the point of tearing for the power of God to be birthed in us again. What I mean by Calvary is that we come to a point to understand our wickedness.

We have become many times Pentecostal Pharisees, but, you know, there's a health and I'm going to deal with this in a couple of minutes. There is a health and understanding who we are and our wickedness. There's a health in that when it's used correctly.

Stanley Jones made this interesting statement, he says, we inoculate the world with a mild form of Christianity so that it will be immune to the real thing. But no matter what the world thinks is God's calling, his church wants his church to be the real thing and to settle for nothing less than to be triumphant and victorious. And so I want to look at a couple of issues here that slays the church and I want to deal with what I see as the core issue.

The core issue. If you if you really want to get down to it, everything in your life that is contrary to what God would want, everything is a hard issue. It's a hard issue.

God constantly went to the children of Israel and called them a hard unrepentant, stubborn people, constantly did that. I want to take you to a situation here again for time's sake. You can just jot down the chapter.

This is a very interesting chapter. It's Exodus 33. And I'm just going to relate to you the story.

God goes to Moses and tells Moses, says, OK, Moses, what I want you to do is pack up all the people and go over to Jordan and go into the promised land. What I'm going to do is I'm going to send a couple of angels before you and they're going to kick out the people and you can go in and take the land. That means you go into houses that are full of the furniture and all the things that you need, the crops are all ready to harvest.

Just go on and take the land because I'll drive the people out and I'll bless you in the land. But Moses, I won't go with you because if I go with you, I'll destroy you because you are stubborn, stiff necked people. I want to ask you a question here.

What would you do if God went to you now and he says, I'll tell you what. I'm going to give you the best house you ever want. I'm going to give you all the cars you want, whatever kind you want, yours, I'm going to give you a bank account you wish you had.

Everything I'll set you up, I'll bless you till the day you die. But I won't go with. How many Christians would sit down and say.

Pretty good deal there, Lord, you know, man, that sounds you know, that's just what I've been looking for. You know, I'm tired of battling with the bills and that's why don't we go for that one, Lord? I mean, how many of us would would really pick. To go into that promised land and leave God back there.

OK, God, I got your blessing, I got your possession, I got all kinds of stuff. It's fine. Everything is going to be good.

Well, we'll take care of the worship later. It was a hard issue. God went to Moses and asked Moses, he didn't ask the children of Israel this.

He asked Moses this because he knew if he asked the children of Israel, the children of Israel would choose to go in the promised land and leave God behind. Yes, Moses, because Moses had a living relationship with the Lord and Moses says, if you don't go with us, I don't want to go. I'd rather dwell in the desert and be in poverty and have you.

Then to have all the wealth of the land and be poverty struck spiritually and not. And it was right after that that Moses ended up asking the thing that should be the cry of a heart, Lord, show me your glory. Show me your glory.

Which reveals the heart of Moses, he was a man who longed and desired the move of God, but the stubbornness of the children of Israel was always the issue that made God leave one way or the other, their stubbornness in the heart problem that they had one way or the other, got them into various sins, various areas of compromise that brought upon them the plagues and all the problems that they suffer under themselves. And so we find in Joshua the situation of a man who was a warrior and he disobeyed God, his name was Achan, and God told the people to go in and take the land, but don't take of this one city of its spoil. But he went in and took of the spoil.

The next time Israel took a small army against a small city called Ai and they were severely defeated. And Joshua gets on his face and says, God, what has gone on that we have been defeated like this? And God says that there's sin in the camp. One man's sin brought the entire community of Israel to their knees.

I want you to hear what Joshua twenty to twenty has to say about it, says Achan acted unfaithfully regarding the devoted things, did not wrath come upon the whole community of Israel. He was not the only one who died for his sins. The lesson that's really taught here is that there's no such thing as private sin.

It does not exist when I sin, I just don't hurt my life, I hurt my family's life, I hurt my church's life. There is no such thing as secret sin does not happen. I cannot have a secret pornography habit and not have it affect my entire family and every person that I come in contact with, even the loss, because it'll be the absence of the presence of God will be one of the greatest thing that God will be absent from me because of my sin that has made him flee.

And the 1950 Belgian Congo revival. They didn't have at that time the Old Testament translated in their native tongue, just the New Testament. But the thing that was astounding about this revival is that many of the natives had visions and the visions they had was the Old Testament being enacted before their eyes.

There's this one account of this native woman and she's in the middle of a Bible school. Everybody's looking at her, she's weeping and she's staring up at the sky. And she she starts describing the book of Ezekiel, seeing a wheel within a wheel and the glory of God and seeing it hoovering right there in the presence of God.

And she's weeping. And all of a sudden she starts watching and everybody's watching her. She's as she alone is seeing the glory of God and she's watching it.

She says it's leaving, it's going out of the building, it's leaving out into the hall, it's going. And as she watched it go into into the jungle and she fell to her knees and she says, the glory of God, it's leaving, it's leaving. And it's because of our sin that it is left.

The glory of God leaves when sin is in the camp. If you don't see that your sin can affect every person in this room. Then that secret sin is no big deal or bitterness or hatred or whatever.

There's there's another story that I can give you real quick. Jonathan Goforth, he was a missionary to Korea and China and he saw the he was a part of the the Korean revival of 1905. Before revival came, he started reading Charles Finney's lectures on revival and from reading those lectures, he was convicted in his own heart and he says, God, whatever these promises of revival are, I want to fulfill them all that your power would be revealed.

The problem is, is God showed him something he didn't want to deal with. He showed him longtime bitterness he had against another brother, another fellow missionary that had wronged him, and God dealt with him. And finally, he went and got right with that brother.

After he got right with that brother, the revival fire started to fall in the nation because Jonathan Goforth himself was being the obstacle. There's no such thing as secret sin, it does not happen, but just the opposite. Robert Murray McSheehan made the statement, he says, according to your holiness, so shall be your success.

A holy man is an awesome weapon in the hands of God. A holy man is an awesome weapon in the hands of God. When we truly become holy, not by popular standards, but by the standards of the word of God, not just what we we don't do, but also by what we do do.

I can be not pleasing to God and not smoke, not drink and all the other things, but I can fail to keep the promise and the commandments of go into all the world and preach the gospel. You see, I can be guilty before God of sinning against him in that way because I won't open my mouth. So when I become holy and all that I do in my lifestyle, what I'm supposed to do and what I'm not supposed to do, and that becomes my lifestyle, we become powerful weapons in the hands of God.

There's two more things I want to deal with before I move on. The next thing that I see that slays at army. Is apathy.

We just don't care. We just don't care. We care enough to come to church to a certain extent.

But when a heart grows cold and we grow full of apathy, well, we don't have time anymore. It doesn't work in my schedule. I mean, what it is is you should look at the writing on the wall, see what it's saying.

Apathy is a slayer to the church because what it does, it makes the church self-centered. It makes the church look only at its self-preservation rather than the propagation of the gospel. Whenever the church becomes consumed with its own self-preservation, it dies because you know what happens? It actually starts to eat itself up.

Paul referred to it as biting and devouring one another. It starts to self-destruct the way the church is healthiest every single time. You can look at every single time in history when the church is healthy.

It's because it's reaching out. It is dynamic in taking the land that reaching out gets our eyes off of us, our own needs. And we start seeing what real pain is.

We stop the whining. We stop the complaining because we start seeing people who are eating their lives away by drugs and they have nothing left. We start seeing people that have so much hurt and pain from relationship after relationship after relationship that their lives are just a wreck.

And we start seeing agony like we haven't even remembered because it's been so many years since we were in it. We start seeing the reality of what's in the world and we start caring once again. I really don't believe that the church believes in hell.

I believe the church believes in hell here, but I don't believe it's gotten here. Because if we really, really, really believed in hell, we would live like we believed in hell. We would live like it.

I don't want to take more time than that. I could take a lot of time in the aspect of apathy, but I want you to see that. And some of you need to examine yourself.

Has apathy gotten a hold of you? Do you really care? When was the last time you wept? You wept over the loss in the workplace. When was the last time you were on your knees and you saw you realize this man, this man I work with, I work with day in, day out, year after year, he's going to hell. Dear God, I've been so blind to it.

Jesus, break into this man's life. When was the last time we were so broken if we understood the reality of an eternal damnation that we were motivated in our prayer life like that? When was the last time that it brought us to our knees in a place of passion? That's where he wants us to be. Charles Finney says whenever we come to point and we begin to weep, we begin to care so much for the loss that we're on our knees and intercession and prayer for the perishing.

Whenever we do that, he says, you know, that revival. Is near. Because that is the state of the heart that God starts to respond to when the church becomes so broken, so broken over the loss that they can't stay off their knees, that they're on their knees as much as possible because their hearts are breaking for the bruised and broken world.

Paul Smith made the statement, he says, the unsaved will be reached for Christ in any community. Only in proportion to the burden that the Christians of that community have for the lost. He's saying if you have little burden for the loss, you will see few saved.

You have a great burden for the loss. You'll see many saved. It's according to the desire and the passion that you have.

If you don't have much, you won't see much. You've got to see the reality, if you don't, it'll never change. It'll never change.

But this plague of apathy is rooted in one last thing that I want to deal with. It's a plague of self. It's a worldly spirit, it's a worldly ambition, it's the world that has permeated the church and motivated the ambitions of our own lives, that what we want is our own self to be advanced, our own wants and cares more than anything else.

In Malachi, you have God reprove the people for building their own paneled houses and forgetting about God. You know, we can be so consumed with those things that we forget. Yet.

A plague of apathy, I want you to hear this one quote by a missionary named Jim Elliott, it came from his diary, and this is a little prayer that he wrote down. He says, Father, let me be weak that I might lose the clutch on everything temporal. My life, my reputation, my possession.

Lord, let me lose the tension of the grasping hand. Even father, would I lose the love of fondling? How often I've released the grasp only to retain what I prize by harmless longing, the fondling touch. Rather, open my hand to receive the nail of Calvary as Christ was open that I releasing all might be released, unleashed from all that binds me now.

For a man to come to a point in his life to yield himself to the way that he did. To yield himself to that point, it had to come to the point of letting go his worldly ambitions, his worldly wants, his worldly desires, everything that was world and coming to the point of such surrender, saying, God, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what I own.

Doesn't matter what I don't own. I don't care anymore. It just doesn't matter because when I see him and I see the beauty of his face, the world begins to be meaningless as far as material thing.

What becomes important is the will of God and the perishing souls of people that are dying in sin. Now, what is the means of victory? Revelation gives three things that gives us the means of victory by which we overcome the first, he says, that we overcome by the blood of the lamb. We overcome the devil by the blood of the lamb.

And first, John, it says that Jesus Christ was manifest to destroy the works of the devil. That's why the Lord came to destroy his works and to set the captives free. The father sent the son because he loves sinners and he wanted to save sinners.

That's why the father sent the son. The whole purpose in Christ's coming was to rescue a perishing world. The very idea of the blood of the lamb, that we overcome that is not just the aspect that we believe in the cross and that we believe in Calvary, but that we cling to it with our entire life, understanding that it's only that font that flows from his very veins that brings life to us.

We forget so often of the cross. And what I mean by that is we forget of the wonder of the price that purchased my sin. Why don't you think about this for a minute? What it took to redeem you, the father didn't send a man.

To save you, he didn't send an angel. He sent the most precious, valuable thing. Because sin was so exceedingly wicked, there was only one thing in the entire universe that was powerful enough to cleanse the depth of wickedness and sin.

And that was his only son. And we've got to see the moment that the father rejected the son on the cross, the father was not rejecting the son as a son. He was rejecting the son as us.

When we begin to understand the price that had to be paid for our sin, we begin to understand that that little white lie is not a little white lie anymore, that it is a massive wickedness before God. A massive wickedness, not something little, but it's so bad that it says that it says bruise and sores on our bodies that we can't get rid of, that only the only thing that can bleach out the stain of sin is the blood of Christ, because sin has so permeated us so, so filled us completely that only the blood of Christ is powerful enough to do it. And as Christians, that we come to point to become so thankful.

Dear God, you love me enough to purchase me. You did not leave me in my sin. We become grumblers and the plainers because we stop looking at the wonder of the cross.

We forget. But when I remember my wretchedness and the wretchedness I have, even now, I'll tell you what, if you don't understand how much sins in your life, then you don't take the time to look. You don't take the time.

I see it constantly in my life. I mean, I see the mistakes. I see the things that I do, the sin that's there, the attitudes and everything else.

And I want to be so quick at a drop of a hat to repent of it, because the other thing that the the blood of the lamb refers to is a term that I use often. It's what I call a lifestyle of repentance. And what I mean by a lifestyle of repentance is that repentance is not to be a one time act that we do at an altar.

It is to be a lifestyle that we live. It is to be a heart that the moment I do one thing that separates my God, not out of bondage, not of legalism here, but out of relationship that I find that that relationship severed with the slightest sin that I'm crying out to him, forgive me, whether it's in the workplace or on the street or whatever it is that I long for intimacy so much that I will let nothing, nothing separate. Man named William MacDonald made the statement.

He says a broken man is quick to repent. He does not try to sweep sin under the carpet. He does not try to forget it with the excuse time heals all things.

He rushes into the presence of God and cries, I have sinned. That's a broken man. That's a broken woman.

They understand their need. They have become so dependent upon Christ. The moment that relationship is broken, they're fleeing to his feet.

To get it right, fleeing to his feet, not waiting till later, not waiting. I mean, they're they're not proud people. They don't.

They'll run to an altar because they long more to get right with God than to keep their foolish pride. They become desperate for the presence of God. In this idea, in this this lifestyle of repentance comes something that is very, very wonderful.

And Paul referred to it in a different way. He referred to it as entering into the rest of God, entering into our rest. Ceasing from our own works, how often is it that we're trying to please God by good works? How often is it we figure if we pray more, we'll please God.

If we if we read more, if we do this more, if we do that more, we'll make him happy somewhere. God, I'll make you happy enough that you that you really show yourself. Someday I'll be good enough.

But a true knowledge of the cross brings us to a point says, God, I'm not saved by work. I'm saved by your sacrifice. And all I can do is rest in that sacrifice and walk in that sacrifice and walk in a place of intimacy and relationship with you as a result of it, that I don't have to earn his love anymore because his love is perfect and complete.

It cannot be earned. It will never change. It's just a matter of whether I come to a point to accept it or reject one of the point I want to deal with before I move on to the next issue here.

As you see, the cross speaks of something very important. Jesus didn't die on the cross 50 percent. Not 90 percent, he died on the cross, 100 percent, it was 100 percent abandonment for our salvation.

And then he tells us to do the same. The cross demand. Of the believer, 100 percent abandonment to God.

One hundred percent, not a halfway Christianity, not a 95 percent Christianity, a 100 percent Christianity, nothing less, total abandonment. That's what he desires, and that is what he's able to help us produce when we come to the point of yielding. Then he tells us that we overcame the devil by the word of our testimony.

What is the word of our testimony? Being across this country and in all kinds of churches. I see and hear a lot of different stuff. And sometimes our testimony time will come up and and often I cringe because the person will stand up and says, I just want to thank the Lord that 30 years ago I got saved.

And I'm going, oh. Isn't God doing anything today? Isn't he alive now? Can't anybody in the church stand up and speak of a God that is present now? The early church had a testimony of a living Jesus that was alive now and present in their midst, not of a Jesus of years ago and of the power of God of the past, but of a power of God present now. They would gather and the building would shake because they pray and they would they go out and signs and wonders would happen and things would happen because it was a living Jesus in the midst of the people of God.

That's what the world's aching for. That's what they want out of the church. They don't want us to speaking of a dead Jesus that we knew some years ago and isn't anything important.

They want to know about a Jesus that we get on our knees and we can speak of a communication with a living God that we go to church and we can run back home and we can tell Francis God was in church today. Man, you've got to come. You've got to come.

When people have a living Jesus, they have a living testimony and the church becomes triumphant when their testimony is living. The church was excited. They went out and told people because it burned in their hearts.

That's what God wants. The church isn't triumphant today because so often their testimony is of the past. It's of a Jesus that did things once and isn't doing them today.

He wants us to have the testimony both personally and our own personal life and also corporately as a body of believers. So we can speak of a Jesus in our own life, in our own family, but also a Jesus that is alive and well in our church and we can run out the doors. I'll tell you, excited people.

Tell people. When we're not excited, you're not going to tell people. G. Campbell Morgan.

He was a theologian of the late 1800s, early 1900s. He went to the 1904 Welch Revival. And one thing that he made a statement of about the 1904 Welch Revival, he says, what I have seen that has made this revival successful is that every churchman has become an evangelist and every repentant sinner a mission.

That's why the revival spread within four months, a hundred thousand people were saved. Within four months, not because it was a great evangelist, but because people had the fire of God in their hearts and they went out and proclaimed the gospel where before they were silent. Now they spoke.

The church triumphant, the church victorious. Paul Smith says when the Christian people are wholly yielded to God, the result inevitably seems to be that God gives them a passion to win lost men and women to Christ. When people are wholly yielded to God.

You have a passion to win lost men and women to Christ. Does it burn in your heart? The last point I want to deal with is that it says they overcame the devil because they love not their lives unto death. The idea of this is very simple, goes back to the greatest commandment.

What is the greatest commandment that Jesus gave us? Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength. That is 100 percent abandonment to Christ. It is not part abandonment.

It's not part Christianity. It is giving up every single thing we have, laying it at his feet and saying, you give me only what you want, what you don't want me to have. I won't take.

I yield to you as my sovereign king. I swear my fealty, my loyalty to you 100 percent. Demand command of me and I will do it speaks of total abandonment.

So here was the church who came to the point of total abandonment. Send me where you will do it with me. What you will.

I'll go preach. I'll stay and preach. I'll do whatever.

Because that's what you've asked. They were abandoned, that's why the church grew, that's why they could spread, because the church was willing to do whatever it took because they believe the gospel to be true, that there was a hell, that there was a heaven and that it was worth it for us to live this temporal life for the purpose of eternity. They became desperate for the manifest presence of God and they would do whatever, whether it was pray all night or whatever it would take.

Paul says that that he had watchings many times where he'd stay up and he'd pray all night to see the glory of God. The price of the move of God is not cheap. It's not cheap.

It costs us something. Salvation is free. The move of God causes something.

It causes a desire, a passion, a hungering for intimacy and the setting of ourselves aside to see the glory of God. The last thing I want to look at, if I come to the point that love the Lord, my God, with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength, there'll be another commandment that I'm told to follow, which is to love my neighbor as myself and to love the church. Guaranteed, if I don't lay my life down to Christ, I won't lay it down for the saints.

If I'm bitter and critical against the saints, it's because I've not yielded to Christ. When I am properly yielded to him, I will love the body of Christ. I will cease from being critical and I'm not going to take the time to go into it.

But but when you go into the Moravian revival, the Moravian revival brought about the conversion of John Wesley. John Wesley brought about the transformation of all of England through the revival of the Methodist revival that spread to all of England as a result of John Wesley. John Wesley was discipled by the Moravians.

He was saved in a Moravian prayer meeting. He went back to Hernhut, Germany, on the lands of Count Zinzendorf to where the revival began and where the revival was was still going on. And he went there and he says, never have I been so close to heaven than when I've been with those saints in Hernhut.

Because God had brought the people to such a flaming fire that there was no more contention in strife. They loved one another and they laid their lives down. That one church in 20 years did more than the entire evangelical church did in 200 years in missions and evangelism.

One church, it is phenomenal when you look at that one church, Hernhut, Germany, because of Count Zinzendorf and the move of God that flowed through that man to those people that changed all of Europe as a result. I just want to take a minute and close with a couple of statistics. I want to show you examples of the church triumphant because I believe God wants to do it.

I believe God wants to do it. I just want to touch on some of these. These are our major moves.

Pastor and I were talking about the move that took place in this church some 30 years almost ago now. That was a local revival. God wants to do great things, but he's looking for people to do it through.

The Great Awakening, which began in the 1730s. America at that time had three hundred and forty thousand people in it. From the records they have today, they can say that there was roughly a hundred thousand alcoholics in the land by all the beer and the wine and hard liquor that was shipped over from Europe.

The revival swept the land and fifty thousand were saved. You know what the equivalent would be if a revival of the same magnitude hit America today? About 40 million. He did it once.

Why not again? The camp meeting here, which began in 1800, brought an increase to the church of members, not just the salvations of members alone of over three hundred percent. Between 1825 and 1832, part of the core of the of the Second Great Awakening, two hundred thousand were added to the church in America. Charles Finney himself won five hundred thousand in his lifetime.

The 1857 58 prayer meeting revival won over a million people. Fifty thousand alone in the city of New York. The 1859 revivals in the United Kingdom won over a million people, a hundred thousand in Ireland, a hundred thousand in Wales, three hundred thousand in Scotland.

The testimony in Scotland was that God saved by individuals in other places, but in Scotland he saved by the cities. Britain had five hundred thousand saved at that time. Sam Jones, the equivalent of Finney in the South, he saw five hundred thousand conversions.

Dio Moody saw seven hundred and fifty thousand. R.A. Torrey, a hundred thousand. Billy Sunday, six hundred thousand.

Evan Roberts got the hundred thousand that he wanted for the for the 1904 Welch revival. Two hundred thousand were saved in the 1965 Indonesian revival in Timor. The 1960 Latin American revivals saw forty seven thousand churches form.

Thirty five thousand prayer cells organized. A hundred and sixty thousand Christians were trained as laborers for the kingdom of heaven. They visited a million and a half homes and had a hundred and forty thousand conversions.

Church triumph.