Bishop Noel Jones - PRAYER FOR UNDERSTANDING - October 13, 2024
Category
📚
ÉducationTranscription
00:00:30In Ephesians chapter 1, I would like you to do a little Bible class with me today.
00:00:45I've been working very hard on Paul's prayers and in Ephesians chapter 1, he says in verse
00:00:5715, Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all
00:01:05the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that
00:01:11the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of
00:01:17wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being
00:01:25enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, one, two, the riches
00:01:32of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and three, what is the exceeding greatness
00:01:42of his power to us what who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he
00:01:49wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, set him at his own right hand in
00:01:56the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every
00:02:03name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath
00:02:11put all things under his feet, gave him to be the head over all the things, all things
00:02:18to the church, which is his body, the fullness of them that fitteth all in all, can you say
00:02:25amen? I want you to put on the board and leave on the board, well, maybe you can't put all
00:02:33of it, but as I go through it exegetically, I'd like you to put the scripture on the board.
00:02:43I should sometime when I'm teaching, put my notes up too, so that you might see the
00:02:51correlation between the scripture, the notes, because that would help to enhance one's study
00:03:03habits. Amen. How many read the Bible every day? Amen. Every other day? Amen. Every three
00:03:14days. I'm teasing now. The prayers of Paul, and I have noticed except in Corinthians where
00:03:33he deals with the issue of the richer churches in Macedonia, the richer churches, the Greek
00:03:46churches, I might just put it that way. The only time he makes any real solicitation for
00:03:56money is when he speaks to the richer churches to send help to the churches in Jerusalem.
00:04:09It's a critical thing because if you look through the Bible carefully, here's what you
00:04:15will find, that God has always placed a responsibility on those who have for those who have not.
00:04:29It is very, very important to understand that God has always expected those who have to
00:04:40be conscious of those who don't have. Now, the question then is why? Why would God be
00:04:50so interested in those who have to help those who don't have? The answer is simply that
00:05:00God is the blesser and God is the one who takes the responsibility for having blessed
00:05:12you with what you have. What he's saying is, based on the fact that I am the one who does
00:05:21the blessing, I am the one who really has control over what you do with what I gave you.
00:05:33Can you understand that? They're going to put next week two more speakers, one here,
00:05:40one there, for those who are in front of those speakers. All right, so we're going to fix
00:05:46that problem. It is an interesting dynamic because what distinguishes God from you and I
00:05:58is that he blesses so greatly that he has to take command of who he blesses to distinguish
00:06:14himself from those who he blesses. Notice, and I'm going all the way back to, and I hate to sit,
00:06:25they tell me I shouldn't sweat. It's going to get in my eyes, but anyway. He gives Adam every tree
00:06:35of the garden and he gives him every single tree of the garden and he tells him that you have all
00:06:45that is in this garden except one. When he tells him the one that he didn't want him to touch,
00:06:56want to eat, what that does, it distinguishes him from his creature. In other words,
00:07:07it shows the authority that he has over what he gives to human beings. He says,
00:07:19I want you, of course, to be fruitful. I want you to multiply. I want you to replenish. I
00:07:26want you to subdue. I want you to have dominion over what I have given. But remember in having
00:07:36your dominion that I am the one who is the provider. I am the Jehovah-Jireh. I am the
00:07:45Jehovah-Nissi. I am the Jehovah-Shalom, Jehovah-Maccadish, Jehovah-Siccadoo. I am the one
00:07:53who is in charge. Now when you understand that, then you grasp the fact that every prayer that
00:08:05is made except for the blessing of the poor, every prayer that Paul makes is for the relationship
00:08:16of the child of God to have with God. Let me go over that again. Every single prayer that he makes
00:08:27in Ephesians, in Colossians, in Galatians, the prayers that he makes is that each one of us has
00:08:38a greater and closer relationship with God. Notice what he says, I cease not to give thanks for you,
00:08:49making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory.
00:08:57Now very quickly in verse 17, what he does is he extols the virtues of the humanity of Jesus
00:09:08Christ. Because anytime he mentions the Father of Glory, the definite article that appears in the
00:09:15Greek is he is the Father of Glory in the sense that he is the Father to whom glory belongs. And
00:09:24when he says that, he is saying the humanity of Jesus is of such that he gives glory to the
00:09:35Father because every human being must give praise and glory to the Creator, the Father who gives and
00:09:47provides everything for them. We teach our kids something very, very important and I can't live
00:09:56down here. We teach our kids something that's very important and that is that even though, if I had a
00:10:07higher chair I'd be alright, raise that up. We teach our kids something that is abstract and that is even
00:10:17though we are the ones that's working and we're the ones that putting food on the table, even though
00:10:24we're the ones who by the sweat of our brow we eat bread, we are the ones who get up early in the
00:10:33morning and somebody told me once that even if you don't have a job, get up in the morning, put some
00:10:41clothes on, leave the house to give the impression to the kids that somebody has to work for a living.
00:10:52But even though we do all of that, we do something that says to our children there is a greater power and that's
00:11:04when we sit around the table and everybody hold hands and we give God thanks for the food and we pray for the
00:11:14blessings that come from having a table full of food and we send a message to our kids that we have a greater
00:11:27power who is actually the provider of what you see on this tape. The prayer then is significant because when he
00:11:39talks about the glory of the Father and he deals with Jesus from the point of view as the God of our Lord Jesus
00:11:50Christ, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ is only seen in his humanity. That means he is pointing out to us that if
00:12:03Jesus in his humanity who is God himself, can I work that out for you? Now notice there is the Godhead and the
00:12:17Trinitarians say there are three persons in the Godhead. The Apostolic says there are three manifestations in the
00:12:27Godhead. One group says persons, the other group says manifestations. But both groups will agree that there is one God.
00:12:41Now I don't say persons or manifestations. I say three revelatory expressions. Are you with me? A revelatory expression, one God in
00:13:01essence, but that one God in essence is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And these revelatory expressions because he expresses
00:13:18himself as Father, he expresses himself as Son, he expresses himself as Holy Spirit, and it's all functional. Are you with me?
00:13:33Let me put it another way. I happen to be a husband, but I also happen to be a son, and I also happen to be a father, but my name is
00:13:48Noel Jones. When we baptize people in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we represent the three functions in the Godhead, but at the same time we establish the fact that there is one God.
00:14:14Now it is interesting that when he deals with Jesus Christ as the Son of God, he is establishing the fact that the Son in his humanity, because there is no humanity in the Father, there is no humanity in the Holy Spirit.
00:14:40The only humanity is in the Son, Jesus Christ. That's why I have odds with the use of the word person, because the only person in the Godhead is Jesus. I wish you'd get it. Amen.
00:15:00For instance, for instance, the Holy Ghost as a person, it's better if you told me the Holy Ghost as a personality, because a person has to have flesh. Well, there's absolutely no way for two objects to exist in the same space.
00:15:25In other words, I can't step into you as a person, but as a spirit, I can get into your person.
00:15:39See, when he distinguishes, because you have to ask yourself the question, if Jesus, since Jesus is God, how is it that he can say that the glory, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:15:58You have to ask yourself, what is he suggesting? What is he saying? He is saying that since Jesus has to give God the glory, and Jesus is God, Jesus is giving glory to the Father of whom he has the same essence.
00:16:21But he's giving him glory out of his humanity. If Jesus is giving glory to God out of his humanity, and he has the same essence because he is a part of the Godhead, then you and I must give glory to God because you and I aren't a part of the Godhead.
00:16:47If Jesus can worship the Father, then you and I ought to be quick to give worship to God and to give praise for what he has done.
00:17:00It's very significant. Let me talk about worship for a minute. I did a piece, by the grace of God, on leave the women alone.
00:17:14And I didn't know that Kamala was going to run for president, but nevertheless, we have this misogynistic disposition, and it seems as if even in America in the 21st century, we still have problems with women leadership.
00:17:33Amen. I should send you a picture of my house when I was single, and send you a picture of my house now.
00:17:49I never wore these many colors in all of my life. Just give me something black and I'm gone.
00:18:11It's significant to understand that when it comes to dealing with the issue of women in a spiritual matrix, and I emphasize in a spiritual matrix, I dealt with leave the women alone.
00:18:38And it came to the issue of should women prophesy, should women preach, should they pastor, should women be in a role of leadership?
00:18:55Well, first of all, in our culture, and as a black man, and with black men all around here, we have to attest to the fact from a social and an ethnic point of view that our world is maternally driven.
00:19:23I got to come see the white of your eyes now because you got real quiet. It's maternally driven because most of us don't know where our fathers are.
00:19:40Don't get too quiet now. And most of us, or many of us, have been raised in single family homes. And the person who was most evident and most influential and most caring and most protecting was our mother.
00:20:06Yes or no? It is hard for me to grasp then when I look at men and I say to them, where was your father in your formative years?
00:20:33And a majority of them say, if it wasn't for my mother. When I look on the television and I view some of the greatest stars who have ever walked the earth, I very seldom hear, very seldom.
00:20:54I hear occasionally, but I very seldom hear anybody giving praise to their daddy. Every time I look around, it is always somebody giving praise and accolades to his mother.
00:21:16I look in the scriptures and I notice that there are some extremely powerful women in the Bible. Extraordinarily so. And great influences in the scriptures.
00:21:37Yes, yes, yes. And one of the things that really struck me, and I do have a message and maybe I should preach it again, and this message is why bring on the ladies?
00:21:54And I looked in the Jewish genealogical systems and I found that women aren't mentioned in Jewish genealogical presentations, except in the book of Matthew.
00:22:17And what Matthew does is he presents four women in Jesus' genealogy. And the four women were not women who were distinguished by their purity.
00:22:47Maybe my eyes, maybe I ran a fool with my eyes. They mention Rahab, and Rahab ran a brothel. Was that Rahab? Amen. Yes, yes, yes. Rahab ran a brothel.
00:23:13But before Rahab, there was Tamar. And Tamar played a harlot. What are they doing?
00:23:30And then there was Ruth, the Moabitess. And the Bible says that anybody who is associated or has any sort of genealogy or any sort of DNA connection to a Moabitess
00:23:54could not enter into the temple until the 13th generation. And yet still David said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.
00:24:09And nobody really understands why he's glad. He's glad because Boaz begot Obed, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David.
00:24:26Obed, Boaz begot Obed, Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David. But who was Boaz married to?
00:24:49Boaz was married to Ruth. But if you have a Moabitess in your genealogy, you shouldn't enter the temple until the 13th generation.
00:25:14But Boaz begot Obed, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David, and David entered into the temple. But he was not the 13th generation. He was number four on the list.
00:25:36So I was glad when they said unto me, I ain't got to wait, but I can enter right now into the house of the Lord.
00:25:50And then Matthew gives us a fourth lady, and he wouldn't even call her name. If you look carefully, you will see her who was the wife of Uriah.
00:26:12Come on, Matthew. I'm in the 21st century, Matthew, and I know the woman's name. Come on, Matthew, you can call the woman's name. He didn't even want to call her name because of the situation, how she got into the genealogy.
00:26:36He names four women, and he doesn't name Rebecca. He doesn't name Sarah. He doesn't name Deborah. He doesn't name the women we would want to put in the genealogy.
00:26:49Because what he wanted to prove is the humanity of Jesus. He didn't only come for sinners, but he came from sinners.
00:26:57Women. So now they tell me that women aren't to be preachers.
00:27:16Women aren't to be leaders of men, and they take scriptures that are descriptive, but not prescriptive.
00:27:32Let me just work with that. They take scriptures that deal with particular situations, descriptive, but they don't take, and they can't take those scriptures and make them prescriptive.
00:27:55All right, let's go into it. In one place, he says that the women ought to keep silence in the church.
00:28:07In another place, he says, if the woman is going to prophesy, which means to speak forth, let her be covered.
00:28:23If she's going to prophesy or pray, let her be covered.
00:28:32And so now, why does she have to be covered?
00:28:37And you see where I'm tying it in, I'm going, the word is circumlocute, going around, but I get to the point.
00:28:52The man doesn't have to be covered in the worship service, but they say the woman must be covered.
00:29:02And the question now becomes not whether she can prophesy or not, but the question is how?
00:29:12Because 1 Corinthians, he says, and I should throw it up on the board.
00:29:191 Corinthians, he says that if she's going to prophesy, then she must prophesy covered.
00:29:30The house of God, it does not hinder the focus on God because man is his glory.
00:29:43Man is the glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man.
00:29:53I want you to see, you see, when God made the man, he made him out of the dust of the ground.
00:30:01Then he says it's not good for man to be alone, so he made woman out of the side of the man.
00:30:08The woman becomes the more refined product of the soil.
00:30:15Why? Because she's one step removed from the soil.
00:30:19God, man, woman.
00:30:24From a chronological point of view, as Paul puts it later, the man was made first and the woman was made for the man.
00:30:36I love it.
00:30:39But the woman was not made for the man as an inferior product.
00:30:48Because the woman is supposed to be his help mate, which from the Greek, from the Hebrew is the word Ezer, E-Z-E-R, which means crown.
00:31:09I wonder, do you get it?
00:31:13The woman is then made to be the crown of the man, or the woman is made to be the support of the man.
00:31:25The woman is therefore a help mate, somebody that's suitable, somebody on his level.
00:31:34You've got to understand this.
00:31:37God said it's not good for man to be alone. Well, how can I be alone if you were there?
00:31:44You told me all I needed was God.
00:31:50And God told me you need more than me.
00:31:56Can I go over that again?
00:31:59I come up in church and you told me all I need is God.
00:32:02But when I heard God talking, he said it's not good for man to be alone. Well, Lord, how can I be alone if you're here?
00:32:12What the Lord is saying is, I relate to you spiritually.
00:32:21You need somebody to relate to you socially.
00:32:26And in order to get somebody to relate to you socially, I need somebody on your level.
00:32:35Let me put it another way.
00:32:38The animals are below you. I am above you. You need somebody on your level.
00:32:47Let me put it another way.
00:32:49Look at your neighbor and say, neighbor, a pet just won't do.
00:33:09You can buy all the dogs you want to. I've got three of them.
00:33:12I've got three of them.
00:33:17I need somebody on your level.
00:33:22So when God made the woman, he's the only one I know who gives gifts that threaten your relationship with him.
00:33:37God is the only one I know who will bless you so well, you'll almost forget about him because of the blessing that he gave.
00:33:51God is the only one I know who will bless you to the point that your blessing threatens your relationship with him.
00:34:05So the woman then becomes the glory of the man.
00:34:13So God says now when she opens her mouth in church to prophesy, to preach or to pray, cover her.
00:34:23Why should you cover her?
00:34:27You cover her because she is not the glory of God.
00:34:34She is the glory of the man.
00:34:37And since we're in church glorifying God, then we need to cover the glory of the man because we don't need the man to focus on his glory when he needs to focus on God himself.
00:34:56It ain't a matter of whether she should prophesy or not.
00:35:00It's a matter of how she should do it.
00:35:04She should do it with the modesty of the woman.
00:35:07She don't have to act like a man.
00:35:10She don't have to preach like a man or pray like a man.
00:35:14She don't have to give any kind of indication that she's trying to be a man or to take the place of a man because she is the glory of the man.
00:35:35Leave them women alone.
00:35:42Amen.
00:35:44When he deals then with the humanity, he becomes very critical now because if he is going to say in the text,
00:35:50the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, then he's making a distinction between how you operate in a spiritual matrix contingent upon your human existence.
00:36:08That sounds verbose.
00:36:10We're working out our spiritual walk with God, but we still have to deal with human and social protocol.
00:36:30That's all it is.
00:36:32It's just a protocol where the woman is a glory of the man.
00:36:36She was made for the man and God made man in order to worship and glorify him.
00:36:45But he noticed that it wasn't good for the man to be alone, so he gave him somebody on his level.
00:36:51If you got a woman with you and she ain't on your level, man, you still alone.
00:37:01Woman, if you with a man and he ain't on your level, you still alone.
00:37:11You don't talk to somebody on your level like you're talking to somebody below you.
00:37:19Amen.
00:37:21Let's go again. Let me talk again.
00:37:23When you're dealing in the church, you're dealing in a spiritual matrix.
00:37:35And here's what the Lord said in the church.
00:37:39He says, in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female.
00:37:48What does that mean? I'm looking at a bunch of women in here.
00:37:54He's saying, in Christ, which is a spiritual abode, a spiritual place.
00:38:05So when a woman is moved by God, anointed by God, and God has anointed her for the purpose of building his body,
00:38:19it's not a physical function.
00:38:23It's a spiritual function.
00:38:27And spirits have no genders.
00:38:38You want to question me? It's okay.
00:38:43Look at the gifts of the Spirit and show me which one of the gifts of the Spirit is gender-driven.
00:38:58Look at the fruit of the Spirit and show me which one is gender-driven.
00:39:07There is no fruit of the Spirit that is only for a man.
00:39:13There is no gift of the Spirit that is only for a man.
00:39:17Because when you step into the Spirit, you step out of the flesh, you step out of gender, you step out of male and female, and you move into the Spirit of God.
00:39:37Amen.
00:39:46This misogynistic, Caucasian disposition,
00:39:54this control does not belong in church.
00:40:09He does some marvelous things. He says, there's neither male nor female, that's gender.
00:40:17There's neither bond nor free, that's riches.
00:40:24There's neither Jew nor Greek, that's racial.
00:40:29God is so much one that when you get into God, he eliminates gender, he eliminates financial position, and he eliminates race.
00:40:43Everything becomes one in Christ Jesus.
00:40:48He'll anoint a woman, he'll anoint a man. He'll anoint a child, he'll anoint a grown-up.
00:40:55He'll use whoever he chooses because he's eliminated human attitude.
00:41:01Amen.
00:41:12Jesus is casting out devils.
00:41:29And the prejudice is so overt in the Pharisees, Sadducees, because any time the Spirit of God is moving in a world that's sensual, there's intimidation.
00:41:55You get on your job sometimes and all of a sudden people looking at you funny and seem to want to despise you and dislike you.
00:42:07And you say, oh man, they just dislike me, they don't even know me. Hey, it ain't they dislike you.
00:42:15It's deeper than that.
00:42:18They don't know you well enough to dislike you.
00:42:22But when you walk in that room with the power of the Holy Spirit all over you, and every demon in that house is trying to avoid you because it's spirit to spirit.
00:42:45It's their spirit to your spirit and it's something about your spirit that sets them on edge.
00:42:53Have you come to torment us before our time?
00:42:59It's something about the Holy Ghost sets everything on edge.
00:43:10They don't like you. It's intimidation.
00:43:16You're trying to show them the love of God and they're backing up because it's something about the Holy Spirit.
00:43:24When he shows up, every demon begins to tremble.
00:43:29Every demon begins to look for an excuse.
00:43:32Every demon tries to look for an escape.
00:43:34And that's why a child of God has got to walk according to the Spirit of God.
00:43:40Because the demon is looking for an excuse to put you down.
00:43:45Looking for an excuse to be comfortable with you.
00:43:52Ain't no devil in the world can be comfortable with anointing.
00:43:56When you're anointed and the Spirit of God is in your life and moving and leading and guiding and directing.
00:44:04Can the devil be comfortable?
00:44:12The humanity, the glory belongs to God.
00:44:17His prayer then is a spiritual one.
00:44:22That the eyes of your understanding be enlightened.
00:44:32I've got to transfer the knowledge that's in your spirit to your mind.
00:44:46See, the mind is the place that changes one's life.
00:44:56You can't change your life until you change your mind.
00:45:15And whoever controls your mind, controls you.
00:45:26I've said this before, I remember some years ago.
00:45:33I remember some years ago.
00:45:37There was a sister, one of our sisters who worked so diligently in the first service.
00:45:45Then we had four services over on Hoover.
00:45:49Four services, Lord knows I don't know how I managed.
00:45:51Four services, seven, nine, eleven and six.
00:45:57And the place was small though.
00:46:02We act like it was big, but it was small.
00:46:05Bishop McMurray, every time Bishop Brazier built something, Bethany somehow gained four or five hundred more seats.
00:46:16But the place only seated thirteen hundred people.
00:46:20And she was so diligent in the first service.
00:46:26And all of a sudden, I saw her coming to the second service and she was not functioning anymore.
00:46:32Because she was in the usher board or the choir.
00:46:36She was working so hard in the first service.
00:46:38And then I didn't see her working anymore.
00:46:41She came to the second service.
00:46:43I said, why aren't you functioning in the first service?
00:46:45She said, well, Brother Pastor, I've changed.
00:46:48I'm coming to the second service.
00:46:50I said, why are you coming to the second service?
00:46:52She said, because my ex-husband is now coming to the first service.
00:46:59I said, my darling, how long have you been divorced?
00:47:09She said, fifteen years.
00:47:11Fifteen years?
00:47:17Fifteen years?
00:47:21I said, sweetheart, after fifteen years, you ought to sit right beside him and give God the glory while he's sitting right there.
00:47:34She couldn't do it.
00:47:35She couldn't do it.
00:47:37Because after fifteen years, he still controlled her mind.
00:47:46Whoever controls your mind controls you.
00:47:52This is why his prayer is not a sensual prayer.
00:48:00Now, let me distinguish sensual from spiritual.
00:48:07I'm going to keep you all day.
00:48:15See, when God came to visit man, this is why the prayers of Paul
00:48:21is to bring us back to that original place of being spiritual.
00:48:30See, we look at the outward appearance.
00:48:33That's why we still messed up with gender.
00:48:37Because we're looking at outward appearance and not looking at the heart.
00:48:42And the heart in the Hebrew is the leb, the immaterial personal function.
00:48:51It's immaterial.
00:48:53When you start dealing with God, you're going immaterial.
00:48:56The problem we have is we preach material for a relationship with God.
00:49:03But when you're dealing with God, it ain't got nothing to do with clothes.
00:49:06It ain't got nothing to do with food.
00:49:08It ain't got nothing to do with what you drive.
00:49:10It ain't got nothing to do with where you live.
00:49:12It ain't got nothing to do with your status.
00:49:14It's immaterial.
00:49:16You don't walk in this race by sight.
00:49:19You walk in this race by faith.
00:49:22And faith is what connects you to God.
00:49:24When God breathed into man the breath of life, created him out of the dust of the ground.
00:49:36When he created him out of the dust of the ground, he breathed into him.
00:49:40Now, the ground was created.
00:49:43If it's created, it has a starting date.
00:49:49If it has a starting date, it has a termination date.
00:49:54Anything that starts can finish.
00:49:59The reason God can't finish is because he didn't start.
00:50:05So, the soul is caught between what started and can't finish and what didn't start and can't finish.
00:50:28So, the soul that is sensual or carnally minded can finish because it's focused on what can finish.
00:50:44The soul that is spiritually minded can't finish because it's focused on something that never started and can't finish.
00:50:57The carnal minded shall die.
00:51:00The spiritual minded shall live.
00:51:03Because a part of me is earthly, but a part of me is heavenly.
00:51:10Because when God breathed into me the breath of life, he breathed into me a part of himself.
00:51:18And if I live for what he breathed into me, I'll live with him forever.
00:51:25So now, when Adam sinned, his spirit died, he was disconnected to God.
00:51:38So, now he goes by his senses.
00:51:44His senses connects him to the outside, which is his world.
00:51:51His faith connects him to God who he can't see with his eyes.
00:51:58Can't smell, can't taste, can't touch, and can't hear audibly.
00:52:07When God speaks to you, he don't speak to you no loud speaker.
00:52:09He don't speak to you no loud speaker.
00:52:11Noel!
00:52:14It's a still, small voice.
00:52:20What is a still, small voice?
00:52:26No sound at all.
00:52:29I hear people, Lord spoke to me.
00:52:32Did he holler at you or did he whisper?
00:52:35He speaks in your spirit.
00:52:39And then let your spirit talk to your mind.
00:52:45The prayer is not a prayer of sensual.
00:52:52Let me give you another example.
00:52:55He says, all that is in the world.
00:52:58Now if I were to ask you, what all that is in the world?
00:53:03You'd start with cars, yachts, houses, clothes.
00:53:08He says, all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
00:53:16That's all internal.
00:53:19Everything about your life is how you look at it.
00:53:25Let me talk to you a minute.
00:53:28See, Satan got us believing and we brought it to church.
00:53:32He got us believing that a relationship with God is Gucci.
00:53:42The one I can't pronounce.
00:53:46Balenciaga. I got it now.
00:53:50He's got us believing it's Rolls Royces, it's houses, it's big yachts.
00:53:55Can you imagine now, I got this little church over here and I decided I want a 250 foot yacht with two helicopters.
00:54:05I want a 500 million dollar boat.
00:54:09To feel good about myself.
00:54:13Now who do I have to trick?
00:54:18And mess the Bible up, lying to the scriptures.
00:54:22To fool a bunch of people into getting me a 500 million dollar boat.
00:54:31My reverend, go get you a dinghy and get you some paddles and pedal down in the marina and enjoy yourself.
00:54:42You see, it's how you look at it.
00:54:46It's the influence, and here's what we've done.
00:54:50When we preach materialism as a relationship with God, we increased envy.
00:55:02Can I talk to you a minute? I'm about to close.
00:55:07It's better when I preach flat out.
00:55:11Because I get tired and I have to quit.
00:55:16When I'm talking like this, I can talk all day.
00:55:21Because I ain't gonna get tired.
00:55:27We have switched the relationship with God from spiritual heavenly things to earthly things.
00:55:39We switched the focus of faith.
00:55:44Neo-Pentecostalism, when Neo-Pentecostalism came about, no, traditional Pentecostalism said come out from among them and be separate.
00:55:58Heaven was our focus.
00:56:02Then came Neo-Pentecostalism and faith began to take a shift.
00:56:07And that is big churches, big places of worship.
00:56:13And we even switched to try to make the ambience of a relationship with God the physical structure of the building.
00:56:24It's got to be fixed a certain way. It's got to look a certain way.
00:56:27And what we did was we took out of the whole focus the fact that your temple, your body is the temple.
00:56:46We eliminated that. We put God in a building instead of in our bodies.
00:56:54Amen.
00:56:57So, we looked spiritual, but we were simply religious.
00:57:05Because you can be religious and not be spiritual.
00:57:11Real religious.
00:57:15Yes, yes, yes, yes. The Pharisees were really religious and they crucified the one who was spiritual.
00:57:28Then came Neo-Pentecostalism. Then came the Charismatics.
00:57:37And the Charismatics were all outward show.
00:57:42And then from Charismatics came the Evangelicals and out of Evangelicals came Word of Faith.
00:57:50When we got to Word of Faith, it was all health, wealth, and prosperity.
00:57:59So, now we have come from the internalizing of a relationship with God to a visible show of a relationship with God.
00:58:14So, if you didn't have the car, you didn't have the house, you didn't have the boat, you didn't have the plane, you weren't blessed.
00:58:24Amen.
00:58:27I preached in a place with 350,000 people and the rain fell until the water was this high in the tent where I was waiting to go out.
00:58:43And nobody left.
00:58:46They took the chairs and put over their head while the rain was falling.
00:58:54Waiting for over 300,000 people over their heads.
00:59:03You let a drop of rain fall up on your $700 weave.
00:59:19It will be an exodus out of this.
00:59:33What we did was we preached Americanism for gospel.
00:59:41And we made people feel as if they don't drive a certain thing, live a certain way, live in a certain place, as if God only deals with people in certain area codes.
00:59:57I wish you'd get it. I wish you'd get it.
01:00:00Your money don't mean nothing to God.
01:00:03Where you live don't mean nothing to God.
01:00:06You can't impress God with what you wear and where you live.
01:00:11When he says, a cattle on a thousand hill belong to me.
01:00:15The world is mine, the earth is the Lord, the fullness thereof, the world and day that dwell therein.
01:00:23Who are you trying to impress?
01:00:26I wish somebody'd get it, give somebody a high five and say, I'm just as good as anybody because God saved me.
01:00:41I don't need your house to be happy.
01:00:46I don't need your car to give God the glory.
01:00:49I don't need your money to give God the glory.
01:00:52I don't need the glory.
01:00:54I've given glory while I'm broke.
01:00:56Glory if I'm homeless.
01:00:58Glory if I don't have anything.
01:01:00Glory belongs to God.
01:01:13I feel like shouting in here.
01:01:18Stop measuring yourself.
01:01:23In the eyes of your understanding, be enlightened.
01:01:29Stop measuring yourself by what people wear and what you wear.
01:01:33Where they live and where you live and make your life miserable.
01:01:40Peace which passeth all understanding.
01:01:45As I close, one of the things that move me as I go around the world and I see how people live.
01:02:01And I notice something that I think is, that caught my attention.
01:02:08I don't know how you feel about it.
01:02:11But I see children playing around drug paraphernalia.
01:02:23I see children playing around the dirty waters of the rivers in certain parts of the world.
01:02:32I see children having fun with absolutely nothing.
01:02:40Barely got food on the table for the day.
01:02:44And yet still I see children acting like they're rotten rich.
01:02:52And they would live that way the rest of their lives with that kind of joy that is not attached to anything.
01:03:01If grown folk wouldn't mess them up.
01:03:05Black kids would play with white kids and never see anything different until grown folk mess them up.
01:03:15And Jesus said accept you become.
01:03:19He didn't say be childish.
01:03:22He said be childlike.
01:03:25To understand they're having fun and it ain't about the size of the car.
01:03:31Let them get to be five years old and drive them down the street and play this game.
01:03:38Which car is mine?
01:03:41They five years old in your car.
01:03:44And you're driving them down the street.
01:03:46Say now we're going to play a game kids.
01:03:48You all look out there and say which car is mine?
01:03:51And if you say that little old broken down car is one.
01:03:55Say that's yours Eric.
01:03:57He'll start crying like a baby.
01:03:58That ain't mine.
01:04:00That ain't mine.
01:04:06The eyes of your understanding being enlightened.
01:04:11You brought nothing in this world.
01:04:14And it's certain you're going to take nothing out.
01:04:19Anytime you start arguing that gain is godliness.
01:04:24He says from such withdraw thyself.
01:04:28We ended up preaching greed instead of contentment.
01:04:34And as one of my brothers I think it's Keith Clark said to me the other day.
01:04:39He asked me the question he said he said Bishop is complacency and contentment the same.
01:04:46And the category it's a categorical no.
01:04:49You can be content in your purpose.
01:04:53You can't be complacent with purpose.
01:04:57But you can be content with purpose.
01:05:01Somebody asked me the other day last night.
01:05:04I was asked.
01:05:08Did I want to be the best preacher in the world?
01:05:11I said no.
01:05:13I just wanted to be the best that I could be.
01:05:18Amen.
01:05:20Amen.
01:05:22And to be the best.
01:05:24See I don't have to have competition to function.
01:05:29Amen.
01:05:30I don't have to go after what anybody else has or to outdo anybody else.
01:05:35All I want to do is be the best me that I can be.
01:05:39And if you're the best you that you can be that pleases God.
01:05:44You ain't got to have anybody pat you on the back.
01:05:46If God says well done.
01:05:51God's calling somebody today.
01:05:55God's calling somebody.
01:05:58He's saying come unto me all ye
01:06:02with labor and a heavy laden.
01:06:05And I will give you rest.
01:06:09Take my yoke upon you.
01:06:11Learn of me.
01:06:13For my yoke is easy.
01:06:16And my burdens are light all over the world.
01:06:18We're calling you.
01:06:20We're saying come, come, come, come.
01:06:46Amen.