Point 1Only God can truly change a heart
It is one thing to say you trust the Lord, and it is another thing to trust the Lord.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 0:00
It is one thing to profess it with your mouth, and it's another thing to believe it with your heart. I have met a lot of people in my life who will say a thing and not mean a thing. Let me break this down for you in a way that maybe this will hit you more personally. I've had and met a lot of people in my life, and I've been one of them, who have made
An apology but didn't really mean it, because an apology is more than just soothing a situation; rather, it is a commitment to change a way of life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 0:26
And we apologize much and change little. How many of you have ever been guilty of apologizing for something at least 50 times and continue to apologize the next time you do it? Because our profession does not line up with our heart and our actions, and only God can do that in the heart of an individual. Only God can take somebody going this way, pick them up, turn them around and cause them to direct their life in a completely different direction. Only God can do that. We have learned just through messing up and apologizing and doing it again, messing up and apologizing and doing it again, that by our will and strength alone we are lacking. We have been weighed and measured and found wanting. There is something in us that just can't do it on our own. We need God. And so really much of our life needs to move away from striving to do something to calling out on God to do what only he can do in the life of an individual. Prayer should be something that's natural in a fellowship of believers.
Prayer should be a natural outflow of the realization of our lack.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:55
The reason we have an unpraying church today is we have a church that believes they have been weighed and measured and not found wanting, that they are sufficient in and of themselves. So no amount of conferences and training seminars and classes to teach you how to labor in prayer is going to get you there, right? That's just trying to give people steps to do.
See, prayer is birthed out of need.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 2:21
How many of you know that it's really easy to pray when all hell is breaking loose? The reason why it's easy to pray when all hell is breaking loose, and in case you didn't know, it's always breaking loose, it's just a matter of you noticing it or not, right? So, but the reason why it is easy to pray when all hell is breaking loose is because you know that your only hope comes from God. Even people who are God deniers will pray. Atheists will pray when it's something that they need. They know, even atheists who deny God know that their hope comes from him. They will pray. You want to get access into a conversation with a non-believer? Just ask him what you can pray for them. That opens a door, because even non-believers know their hope comes from God. But I'm afraid today we have an unpraying church because we have a church that thinks they don't need God. Now, we would never say that in Sunday school class; you would get booed out of there. But we feel it, and our prayer life is marked by it. It's marked by it. God help us, right? Amen. God help us. So understanding that our help comes from the Lord is important, and the only way you can do that is if you believe that God is in control, not you. And so this issue of God's sovereignty becomes then a very important thing in the life of the church, because some of the things we want to see in the life of the church are only manifest in our theological position regarding God's sovereignty. If you're sovereign, then you trust in you. Then why do you need to pray to God to help you? You just go do it. You just go fix it. You just go change it. You just go eliminate the problem. But the reality is we have to shift our mindset and understand that God is in control of more than we would like to admit, and it is in the reality of that it begins to shape the culture of our church, where prayer becomes a natural outflow because of our theological position regarding the things of God. All right, now I'm going to get off that. I'm going to talk about something else, and everybody said, "Praise the Lord,"
Right? I actually had somebody email me this week, a very nice email, and I had several emails, so it's probably not about you, even though you emailed me. I had several emails. I fielded them through the week, and I love doing so. But somebody said, "When are we going to get off this subject of God's sovereignty?" Never. Never. It's what the whole Bible's about. You'll never get off of it. We'll never get off of it. So my goal is not to run you out of the church now after my response to the email, but if what you're doing is you're trying to determine whether or not you want to be a part of this church, and whether or not being a part of this church will be determined by whether or not we get off God's sovereignty, well, you'll be miserable here, because that is the message of the Bible.
How can God get glory if he's not sovereign?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 5:45
See, it's a convolution of terms. If you want God to receive the glory, and this is the whole thing, the whole Bible is about God getting glory, and sovereignty is a part of that.
Now, so my assignment today is Exodus 7:8–14. I will read it, and then I have three points, really simple. I'll tell them to you; we'll go through them. And I think that you may wonder where I'm going with this, but I think this is really important, what I feel like the Lord has impressed on my heart to draw out of this text. It says, Exodus 7:8–14: "Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 'When Pharaoh says to you, "Prove yourselves by working a miracle,"'" Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "When Pharaoh says to you, 'Prove yourselves by working a miracle,' then you shall say to aaron, 'Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh.'" So here God is speaking to Moses, telling him what to say to Aaron. He's not speaking to Aaron; he's speaking to Moses, telling Moses to tell Aaron what to do when the time comes. Let me just interject here. How many of us are guilty of saying things at the wrong time? It would be wise for us to understand that there is a time for everything under the sun, right? A season. And sometimes, although we have knowledge of God's word, it may not be the right time to impose that on a brother or sister, whether of Christ or not of Christ. There is a time and a season.
There is a time and a season. I just think that's really interesting. So Moses doesn't run to Aaron, right, and be like, "By the way, here's what's going to happen when we go down there, and when Pharaoh asks us to do a miracle to prove ourselves, here's what you're going to do, and this is what's going to happen." That's not what happens. Because we get a word from God, we get a word from God from the word of God, and we go and try to tell everybody about it. That's not what happens. "Well, I've got to tell you, I've got to tell everybody about it so they can see how much I really know and what my relationship with God's like and how much insight I have in God's word, and be impressed." That's not what happens.
Okay: "Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent." So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. How many of you have ever seen a magic show, right? It's amazing, right? How many of you now notice on Facebook them showing a magic trick and then showing how they did it? That's depressing, because I was so amazed and then I wasn't amazed. It's amazing how the amazement wanes when you realize that it's an illusion. Okay. The magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. "For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. Still Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said. Then the LORD said to Moses, 'pharaoh's heart is hardened.'" Duh. You told me that he was going to be hardened, and matter of fact, you told me you were going to harden him.
"He refuses to let the people go." We actually went fishing this week. I caught a whopper. It was that big. You know how I caught a fish this big? I had a rod, and I threw the lure into the water. It was literally probably up to my ankles, and I was sitting on a rock, and it was just kind of floating there, and I was trying to attach a bobber maybe four feet up the line, so when I throw it out the bobber floats, but the bait just kind of dangles in front of the trout's face, and they just look at it. By the way, hundreds of trout, hundreds and thousands of trout looking at you. "Eat it." This was a vacation: three days of "Just eat the lure," you know what I mean? I caught two fish. Caught two. My dad caught 45. My mom caught 30. Everybody caught stuff except for me. But I caught a whopper, a little bait fish, a little sucker fish. When I got the bobber on and I picked it up and started reeling it, there was a little bitty sucker fish. Literally, the lure was this big, and the fish was that big. And I snapped a picture; you can go on Facebook and see it. I held it up, and actually what I did when I saw it on there is I started reeling, "Whoa, I got a big one!" And my dad looked over and saw the little sucker fish dangling on, and he belly laughed. He thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I thought he was going to fall in the river. It was funny. I caught a big one. But every catch is a good catch. Even if it's a little catch, it's still a catch. So I celebrated it and posted it and told everybody about it and made sure everyone knew that day I caught one. It wasn't big, but it was still good. We were actually at dinner one night, and we were reflecting, I'm going somewhere with this, we were reflecting a little bit about some different things. My youngest son loves to hear the stories of me. I got released from a job as a youth pastor. Couldn't find another job as a youth pastor. I think it was just part of God's plan. We could ask why all day long. I still to this day don't know why. I could, by conjecture, I could sit and consider all of the things, and we could meander, and we could talk about the reasons why maybe this happened. We could pontificate and think about those things, but the reality is none of us really know. We just trust the Lord with our lives, and it's not always easy to do that. I remember going to work. I had to get a job. My dad actually got me a job working for a construction crew that did work inside of a Nissan plant. I didn't work for Nissan; I worked for a construction crew. The specific guy that I got hired by was a human gorilla, like literally. He was huge, and his arms, he was just built different. I remember him coming to the gate when I went to the interview, coming to the gate. His head was two times bigger than mine. He was like 6'9", and he could scratch the bottom of his kneecaps without bending over. I tell you no lie. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. He was built weird. He was a weird dude. It scared me. I remember I didn't know anything about anything. Like, literally, I didn't even know how to use a tool, a ratchet or a wrench or whatever. I had no clue. I had just been in ministry; that's all I had ever done. And so I had made puppets for a living, and then I went to go work at a construction crew because Brian knew my dad, yada. I got the job not because I was anybody but because my dad was somebody, and they just wanted to throw me a bone to help me out. I remember going in, them showing me different tools and asking me what it was, and he said, "You're the first person that's ever come in here that didn't know what one tool was." We showed them what it was, and I was like, "Yeah, I'm pretty much an idiot, but I'm a hard worker, and I can learn quick." And I got the job. And I remember Brian sitting across the table, kind of a scary man, telling me, "Here's the thing, preacher. I'm going to hire you, but everyone I hire on our crew came out of prison, and they're rough, and we're trying to give them a second chance." And I remember thinking, "Cool. I don't have a problem with that." And then I started working with them. It was wild. I mean, it was not abnormal to get locked up in a man lift way up in the air during every break. It was not abnormal for them to ask for a tool, and then me not know what it was, and then they'd throw other tools at me, and I would dodge behind toolboxes. It was not abnormal to be chased around the shop with a sledgehammer, with him swinging it at me trying to kill me. It was wild in there. I tell you no lie, it was wild. I had this little, I call it GI Joe, but it's camouflage, I had this little GI Joe Bible. It was really small, probably as big as the palm of my hand, and I would take it in to break, and typically I would do break by myself. I would go over to the picnic tables outside. I would sit there, and I was angry at the Lord about where I was at. I could not get another job in ministry. I interviewed and interviewed. I could not get a job as a pastor again, and I had just kind of got to the point where I was frustrated with the Lord, opening my Bible every night trying to figure out what was going on. And I remember sitting there reading. I was reading about Saul chasing David. I just kept reading that over and over again, and I just felt like that in the season of my life, like hiding in caves and just trying to survive and people coming after you, kind of thing. I remember that really encouraged the heart of my wife and I. And I just kept reading the story over and over again, the different times where David could have struck Saul, and him not know, but didn't do it. I just remember that, and then just trying to be shaped by that Scripture in that season of my life. And I remember after just kind of like weeks and months, because we worked 12-hour shifts, sometimes 14-hour shifts, seven days a week, right, and we never got a day off, and I was there for almost a year, but probably about three months in, there was a man, his nickname was Slaughter, super friendly guy, a really big guy, kind of like Brian, and he began to make his way over to the table where I sat with my GI Joe Bible, camouflage Bible. And the first night he came over, I was eating and kind of reading, and I closed my Bible up and stuck it in my box or bag and then just started to have a conversation with him. And I kind of did that, and he began to every night make his way over, and he would sit during break, and as he came over I would close up my GI Joe camouflage Bible, and I would put it in the bag. And one night, after several nights of that, he asked me, "What is that you're reading?" And I said, "Well, it's the Bible." He began to tell me about his father-in-law. His father-in-law was a pastor. Now, Slaughter was an interesting individual. Slaughter had gone to prison because at Thanksgiving his brother and him started to get into a tussle over the last Coke in the refrigerator, and he beat his brother so that his eyeball actually dislodged out of his head, and he ended up going to prison, not only for that but for other things he had done. Slaughter was nuts. He was crazy. He was violent. He was all of those things. And he went to prison for several years, and he came out, and here he was trying to get to a place where he could reenter society, yada. There were lots of people we worked with. One's name was Mumbles. Mumbles had gone to prison because a drug deal went bad. He got mad; he got a bulldog to chew on another guy's face. They were really kind of crazy. Mumbles had been shived lots in prison, because he thought it was best to be in solitary confinement, so every time he would get out and go into the mess hall, he would grab a tray and beat the biggest, baddest guy he could so he could go back into solitary confinement, so he could survive in prison. They didn't like him. He made enemies. He got hurt a lot in prison, and on go the stories. But everybody was scared of Slaughter, and he came over every single night, and we began to have conversations about the Bible. He began to talk to me about what he knew about the Bible. He had heard it. He could quote it. He could speak about it. He could speak intelligently, in fact, about the Bible. When he was in prison, it's all he read, and from the beginning to the end he could tell me the story. But the story had yet to impact his life, because
God must soften a heart and open ears where you can hear.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 19:24
Are you with me? God still is involved.
Knowledge alone puffs up, but there is something that God does in the heart of an individual.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 19:39
And I remember thinking, in all of my kind of pain and moaning and groaning about life and how hard it was, how much I wished I could be back in ministry, here God had trusted me with an individual and an opportunity for the greatest ministry a man could hope for, especially a man who was called to minister to those far from Christ. Yet I was too busy moaning about me and whining about me that I kept missing the opportunity sitting across the bench from me. Are you with me? How many of you are guilty of missing the opportunity because you're moaning about your pains? Yet sometimes, I know this is crazy because we think God only gives us jobs but doesn't take away, but the Bible says God gives and God takes away. And maybe it wasn't the devil who took it away, but maybe it was God, because maybe God was moving. Maybe, this is conjecture, I'm not sure, we don't all know the why, but maybe God was moving me to a place where I could minister, or maybe God was moving me to a place where I could be ministered to. Interesting, right? The minister becomes ministered to. And you have this idea of what ministry looks like in the world. You say, "well, God can only use me if I'm in this situation. God can only use me if I have a stage. God can only use me if i'm a male. God can only use me if I'm a female. God can only use me if I look this way. God can only use me if I look that way. God can only use me if I have money. God can only..." Are you with me? But God can use people in all walks of life, in all stages of life, in all ways, regardless, even if you want him to use you that way or not. Because if I were to vote on whether or not I would go to Yates and work with a bunch of ex-inmates, I would have voted no, please. But I didn't get a vote. I remember talking to him, him saying, "Why would you serve a God," because he knew my story, we talked, "why would you serve a God who would allow you to lose your job, allow you to work with a bunch of inmates? Why would you serve a God who would not stand up for you and protect you? And that's why I want to have nothing to do with God." I remember Slaughter saying, "I want to have nothing... But I want to know, why would you continue to serve a God when you're angry at him, when you're frustrated, when you have questions? Why would you serve him?" And I remember my response vividly: it was the price that Jesus paid to save my life, with his blood and his life, his death on the cross.
If I don't have anything else, if God gives me nothing else, that price he paid is worth everything.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 22:35
Now, I'm not saying I like it. I would like him to pay that price plus make sure that I never get fired from a job, or pay that price plus heal me, or pay that price plus... Are you with me? And sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't. But you have to answer the question at the end of the day, and this is where salvation comes from: if that's all you get from him, is that enough? Because that's the salvation we're talking about here. Just to be mindful of the Scripture, in case you're wondering if I forgot what we read here: he frees the Israelites, and everybody that's freed in that generation dies in the desert and never gets to the land, but they were saved. Are you with me? Because what's promised here is not the same as what's promised eternally. He paid a price that I could not pay, and that's worthy of his praise regardless of what else he does. Now let's just kind of move on. At the end of the day you have to answer the question. Each of us has to answer the question: is that enough? And the reality is we navigate to find churches that will promise us joy here, the type of wants we have here. "Preach to me. Preach me happy today, but don't point to what will come." Ladies and gentlemen, that's what the gospel is: what he did for us that we might have eternal life. Notice you don't have a new body today. Notice you will have a new body. Okay? And so the reality is we have a church that's trying to, with what we call pragmatism, it is trying to frame the gospel in a way that makes it appealing and pragmatic to your today. Ten steps to a happy life. Seven steps to a happy marriage. Pragmatism. And it isn't that we don't want to have those things today, but it is that sometimes it pleases the body, and it is not necessarily the truth they need. Okay? And the church is guilty of making decisions based not on Scripture but on how they think they can successfully engage a culture and convince them to come to Christ. So then what we end up doing is we end up manipulating the gospel to make it palatable to men, to the degree that it is no longer the gospel. It is a version of a gospel that does not save. And we fill churches by the droves with people who profess Christ with their mouth, but, as it says in Matthew, will stand before him, and he'll deny them.
Jesus will deny that same person before God. It's a problem today in the church, and they only care about the success, what looks successful in american culture. And in their unwillingness to offend the culture, and the truth offends the culture, in case you didn't know, even church culture, and in their unwillingness to offend the culture, they indoctrinate people in a belief system that no longer saves. The first breach comes when people feel they have to give in to the culture in order to reach people for Christ. There's a lot that I could have said to Terry, I mean to Slaughter, to convince him, but the reality is I was not going to promise him he would have all the things he hoped for today if he would come to Christ, but tell him that if I have nothing, he's enough. That's crazy to the culture. That's crazy. That makes no sense. That leads us to point number one. Finally, I'm going somewhere. That was a big introduction. I promise we're going to talk about the Scripture. I ain't crazy. I care about the Scripture. I know it seems like I'm not preaching about the Scripture. Here we go. Are you
Point 2The proof of being sent is obedience
Ready to talk about the Scripture? Notice in Exodus 7:8–9, notice what the proof of being sent was. Track with me here. Notice what the proof of being sent was: "Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 'When Pharaoh says to you, "Prove yourselves by working a miracle," then you shall say to Aaron, "Take your staff and cast it down."'" When shall you say it to Aaron? When Pharaoh says, "Prove yourself." Not before. "Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent." So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded.
It's not bad to do stuff. It's bad to do stuff the Lord didn't command,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:05
and it's definitely bad to do stuff that you want to do and not do what the Lord has commanded, because we have created a substitution for God's commands so that we can look like we're doing stuff but actually not do what the Lord commanded. "I'm going to look godly. I'm going to look active. I'm going to determine what I'm going to do over here, and I'm not going to do anything he commanded, but I'm going to do a lot of stuff that looks godly, and people, when they look at me, they'll think I'm godly." But I am refusing to do the one thing God told me to do.
Sound familiar? Sound familiar in the church today? It is fascinating, because proof of being a sent one is in obeying the commandments, not unhitching yourself from them. It's important, and that's a hot topic today. That's a hot topic. "So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent." I'm going to break this down into three things real quick. Here they are. These are sub-points, or you would say point one, and then these are A, B and C, if you want to do it on your notes in a semi-appropriate fashion. Notice here how Moses proves himself. He proves himself by his obedience to God. He follows closely the instructions given to him. Notice it's not just doing his version of it. It's not hitting close to the mark; it's hitting the bullseye, meaning timing is involved, the process and the steps. He does everything exactly as the Lord commands. Notice that Satan wants Eve to do everything almost as the Lord commanded. Notice that Satan won't even get you by trying to get you to do the opposite of what the Lord commands. He will try to make it seem like you're doing what the Lord commands, but just perverts it a degree so that it's off. You have to do it exactly as he commanded, or it's not as he commanded. Are you with me? It's important. So for the sake of today, and here's the title of my sermon, okay: Discerning spirits. Right? We have a problem in the church discerning spirits, discerning what is true and what is not true. We have a problem innately in the church with discernment. We can't discern what is right and what is wrong. We have a problem. That should then let us know today that when Satan comes to us to lure us away from the things of God, he does not do so in an extreme fashion. He actually makes it... He's an imitator. He makes it look like it's godly. That's why we have a hard time discerning it. And the reality is I've seen a lot of people who love the Lord, whose hearts have been softened, but yet are led astray, and they drift because they don't have discernment. It is a problem. It's a problem. This is why we need to know the word. Why? So you know what he commanded. And if you don't know the word, then you don't know what he commanded, and it's easy for Satan to lure you away by what sounds good and sounds godly but actually overtly is not. Number two, or B: he instructs Aaron only when absolutely necessary. Some of you need to know that when you learn something from Scripture, it might be for you for now and not for everyone else for now. Husbands and wives, I want you to share everything with each other, but sometimes what you learn from Scripture is for you now, not for everyone in your family now. Okay? That's really important, because sometimes you can frustrate your spouse, because the reality is in a marriage you are not on the same page at the same part of the path all the time. Sometimes you have a man that is really up here on the path while you're back here on the path, and sometimes the woman's up here on the path while you're falling back on the path, because life situations will suck the life out of you. So it almost puts you in a state where you pause, and your wife will advance in places. And if the wife is constantly sharing all the things she's learning, you will just get frustrated in your walk with the Lord.
Sometimes we burden people with truth that was meant for us and not them.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 33:23
Okay? And the reality is a lot of times we want to vocalize things before it's time so that we can get the glory, not God. I just think it's amazing that Moses only talked to Aaron about what Aaron should do when the time arose, because God told him to do it that way. He told him when to talk to him. There is a season for everything under the sun. There's a time for mourning; there's a time for laughing. How dare you laugh when somebody else is mourning? Why would you laugh to their face in their mourning season? Oh, there's a time. Be sensitive to the time, not only the time that you're in but the time your brother and sister is in. It says mourn with those who mourn. "Well, this is laughing season. That's what time it is for me. It's laughing season. It's proclamation season. It's happy season." Yeah, but their time is mourning. Notice there's a time. There's a time to speak to Aaron. There's a time to direct. There's a time to disciple. There's a time to command. There's a time to tell them what to do. Parents, just track with me. We desperately want our kids to be perfect little soldiers, to be godly little children who are raised up in the image of the Lord. And we know what that image looks like, although we fail to live it perfectly, and we want to fashion an individual beyond the realm of what we're currently living, and we frustrate them because they see a disconnect between our life and our words.
Sometimes it's best to hold your tongue and let your feet do the talking.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:21
Oh, your mouth still has to talk.
I'm saying there is a time to talk, but there also is a time to walk. And sometimes we would rather talk about what our children should be instead of walking in front of them, because walking is harder, because it requires change of our lives.
Sometimes the greatest message you will ever preach is by the walk of your life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:42
That does not then mean that you never tell them about Jesus or talk to them about the word, but there is a time to talk, and there's a time to walk. Discern the difference. Notice that proof that Moses was actually sent by God is that he actually knew the time, because God told him the time. He knew the time, and he was under God's authority and believed that it was actually God himself, enough that he knew if he did something out of time, God wouldn't be happy with him. Number three, or C: they both did as the Lord commanded. I already talked about that; I got ahead of myself. They did; they both did as the Lord commanded. Notice here, I love this, because the evidence that God has sent... How will people believe if they do not know the Lord? And how would they know if they do not have somebody... How will they know if no one is sent? And how will they hear if there's no one to preach? Are you with me? How do we know that they're sent?
Because those who are sent to make disciples, not converts.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:58
They both did what the Lord commanded. Notice in the church today we have a problem with two things, and if you've been in media any amount of time, you'll see the disconnect. Sometimes you have a preacher who looks like he's obeying the commandments, looks like he's obeying God's commands, when actually people are getting saved in the congregation, because salvation is not dependent on the salvation of the pastor. Did you know there are pastors who aren't saved? They preach, and people are getting saved in their ministry, and they're obeying the commandments, and then we later find out that the pastor has been sleeping with women that are underage and putting them in apartments, and there's multiple of them. How is it that in the fellowship you can have people in the fellowship obeying commandments of the Lord while the pastor isn't? That's one way. Another way is you can see pastors who are obeying commandments, but no one in the fellowship is obeying the commands of the Lord, because we're preaching a gospel that doesn't save but just draws people in and makes them feel good about themselves. How do you know? What's the proof that you were sent? That both obey God. Track with me; this is important. This is important. That's what it says. That's important. His worthiness is not measured by his ability. Notice Moses did nothing. His worthiness is measured by the ability of the one he's discipled. He speaks to him on behalf of God, by his direct ability, I would say, to disciple, to direct, to instruct another. That's not taught today in Bible college. What's taught is how to grow a church. We're not taught how to make disciples in Bible college; we're taught
Point 3Beware of false signs and wonders
How to grow a church. I've been there. Now, number two: false signs and wonders. Oh, this is so ever present in our culture. This is so ever present in our evangelical culture around the world, because a lot of the Western world has shaped the rest of the world. Exodus 7:11–12 says, "Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts." Now, commentators will argue about this. Probably about 80% of the commentators, the writers, will say that they believed it was an illusion, was not actual demonic stuff. The other 20% will say that it was actually some occultic, cultish thing where Satan actually gave them the power to do things that look similar. But both was an illusion; it was not the same. So whether it was some spiritual force of the devil, it still was not... It was an imitation of God. Let me talk to you about some imitations that are happening in the church today. Oh dear Lord. Oh Lord, help me. Help me here. Okay, please hear me on this: God still does miracles.
He still performs miracles. Are you with me so far? I think it is the responsibility and the duty of all believers to validate those miracles. You don't have to agree with me on that. I think you'd be wrong in your position to not validate them but just take them by faith. I think there is a responsibility, because we don't want to attribute to God what is not God. But there is a preaching and a teaching today that any kind of questions that come about a miracle that supposedly happened, any question that goes that direction, if you question, you have a questioning spirit and you don't have faith. So what? So do you believe we live in a world where false signs and wonders don't happen? Are you with me? Because the Bible speaks plainly about that.
The reality is the only way you can initiate discernment is through questioning things.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:49
The only way you can actually use discernment is by questioning things. The magicians did the same thing. The magicians of Egypt, according to verse 11, did the same thing. That's the first reference to that. The assumption is it was some kind of trickery, some kind of shenanigan that allowed them to do what appeared to be turning a stick into a serpent, a serpent into a stick. Pharaoh hardened his heart, and that led to the most incredible barrage of miracles in the Old Testament, all acts of God directed at false deities who were in Egypt. There was a pastor who was asked this question: "What are some of the greatest dangers facing the church today?" Here was his response: "If I were to use an analogy, if the question were to say, 'What is the greatest danger facing the human body?' I would say it was a deficiency of the immune system." Right? Because then you could die of a hundred or a thousand diseases, and the immune system is most impacted by what we eat. Now track with me. You could die of a hundred to a thousand diseases. He goes on to say one of them could even be the common cold. But if your immune system's compromised, you can die from the common cold. "Well, that's a little issue in the church. That's not a big issue. If you get that wrong, that doesn't matter." If your immune system is compromised, even the smallest thing can kill and can wreck your walk. If the greatest danger, he goes on to say, if the greatest danger in the human body is the collapse of the human immune system, then wouldn't we want to protect that? I would say in the church it is the same thing. It is a deficient immune system. It's the inability to discern truth from error. It's the inability to recognize deception when it's happening, particularly in the life of the church. It's being led astray by things like psychology, pragmatism, sentimentalism, liberalism, can I get an amen, etc. Anything that's not true has potential to do severe damage to the church, because the church is the pillar and the ground of truth, which means the leadership of the church has to be discerning. They have to have a fully functioning immune system that bites off every heresy. There are hundreds or thousands of heresies that can kill a church. Paul says it this way: every lofty idea raised up against the knowledge of God. Paul goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 10 it is like a fortress that has to be smashed. What is a fortress that has to be smashed? Ideas raised up against the knowledge of God are like a fortress that needs to be smashed. You know what the word "fortress" there, just for kicks, you know what the word "fortress" there is actually translated? Tomb.
False ideas become the very tomb you're buried in.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:20
It's a big deal. Why do we vet miracles and not just believe it? Why? If we don't have proof that it's a true miracle, why do we use discernment? Why do we ask questions? Why do we use discernment to discern what is true and what is not, what is false signs versus what is true signs? How do we discern it? Should we discern it? Should we ask questions? Why should we do that? Because we become entombed by lies. Those fortresses become their tombs. So many people today are being entombed in error right inside the church.
Satan is a liar. His ministers are deceivers and imitators.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 46:16
Satan is not running brothels today; human depravity is doing that. He's running churches. That'll get an email, guarantee it. Guarantee it. But just track with me here. That's a fact, folks. That's a fact. It's a fact. That's his business. It's been his business since the beginning. I mean, there are some churches where gold dust is falling during worship. Seems amazing, but God doesn't do things artificially. And if you can't scoop that up off your page and make a wedding ring for your wife, it ain't real. It ain't God, because he does real gold. He don't do glitter. You with me? Is that offensive? Are you with me today? So if you go to a worship service and gold dust falls onto your Bible, and you scoop it up and you go to a jeweler and they convert that to a ring, and they're like, "What? 14- karat gold!" You're like, "Whoa, God showed up," because he doesn't show up as an artificial thing. Oh, and it was really crazy when somebody came to the service and actually collected the gold dust and had it diagnosed and realized it was just common glitter. And you know what happened when that happened? A barrage of people from all kinds of churches all around the Western world began to attack that individual for questioning God. Why are we not attacking the church for creating false signs and wonders and putting them on notice? I'll tell you why: because we're deceived. I'll tell you a double why: because we love it. We love being deceived. We love it. Remember the "show me the toes" movement that happened recently? I've got lots for you today. They proved that wasn't true because they pulled documents from the doctor of this individual, which the husband supplied. Are you with me today? And at the end of the day, I'm all for God doing miracles. I have seen God do miracles. I've talked to doctors when my...
When I was going in to see my wife, and she was dying, and she was on a liver transplant donor list because her liver was exploding to the point where she was unconscious, and she was in the ICU, and I could only visit her every three hours. I would go in there; she was unconscious. I walked in one night overhearing the nurses saying, "She won't make it through the next three hours. The doctor said she's going to die. We won't have a liver in time." That's what I overheard. I was mortified. The next morning Brook was sitting up and eating cereal, and when sister is eating, sister is better. I went to the nurses, and I said, "What's going on? I overheard you last night saying she wouldn't make it." The nurse said, "This is a miracle. She should not be alive. This cannot happen. It's not possible." I talked to the doctor: "This cannot happen. We don't know what happened." That's a miracle. Do you know God does miracles today? But he doesn't send glitter down. And he shows the toes. Are you with me? He shows them because they're regrown. We want to show what God has done. We don't want to hide it. We don't want to put it under a bushel and hide it. We want to expose it for the whole world. And let me tell you something: we should want to celebrate the true moves of God. But I'm afraid today in the church we can't even celebrate true moves of God, because we can't discern what is true and what is not, because if we have questions about it and we try to justify whether it truly is God, then we're exposed as a hater and people who don't have faith. And true believers are cowards who sit by in the shadows, and because they don't want to be called a bad name, they won't stand up for the Lord and seek what is true. It's a problem. "Yeah, we don't want to offend." How dare we offend? The gospel of faith offends, right? It offends the culture who so desperately wants to be deceived. It's a problem. I'm not saying let us not pray for miracles. Pray till you turn blue in the face, and God will do what he wills. Jesus prayed that this cup would pass. Guess what God said? "Ain't my will." God didn't rebuke Jesus for praying the prayer, but he sure didn't give him what he asked for. I have people now, because everybody thinks that I believe you should never pray for God to do anything good for you, because of kind of where I've landed. Some people have actually said that to me, and so now they're going, "Well, I didn't pray that God would do anything good, because I don't even know if God wants to do anything good anymore." And i'm going, "No, pray. But at the end of your prayer you might want to put what Jesus put: 'Thy will be done.'" Because who can know the will of God, right? Who can know his will? I mean, Jesus, good, because he... It's unfair. I mean, he was God. But listen to this: Matthew 24:24.
Discernment. Why do we need discernment? Why do we need to question what is true signs and what is fake signs? Because there's going to be fake signs. How do we know there's going to be fake signs? There's fake signs all the way back in the second book of the Bible. They're doing fake signs. Well, what's real? Who's really from God? Who really is God? Is God the God of Moses, or is God Pharaoh? Who's God? Who's the real God? If signs are the only way we can discern who God is, both of them had signs. What are we to do? Matthew 24:24 says, "For false christs and false prophets," not every word is a word from God, "will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." 2 Thessalonians 2:9: "The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders." That can happen in the church. Where do you think false signs and wonders happen first? 1 John 4:1: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit." So what are we supposed to do? Discern it. "Don't believe? You of little faith, how dare you question?" Well, we're commanded: don't believe every spirit. That's ungodly. Don't believe it, "but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." Let me tell you where they're coming through: the pulpit. They're in the pulpit. They're in pulpits. Matthew 7:15: "Beware of false prophets," these are supposed to be sent from God, but they're
Point 4A hardened heart affects hearing
Not, "who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves." Matthew 24:11: "And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray." Point number three, and my final point: a hardened heart affects hearing. Exodus 7:13–14: "Still Pharaoh's heart was hardened." Notice here that a sign, whether true or false, he saw both, didn't make him hear the word. In churches today we think if we conjure up a sign, people will believe that God is real. That's not what it says here. It says that he saw the real sign, and he saw fake signs, and he saw what was the true sign, and he didn't believe. "God, give me a sign." He's like, "It won't help you, because what softens hearts is me. Signs don't do it." Matter of fact, the way that I soften hearts is through the word, but not the word alone, because there's a lot of atheists who know the word better than some of you. "By a strong hand I soften." Actually, you know what "strong hand" means when it says in Exodus 6:1, "by a strong hand"? Some translations read it this way, and actually both of them are right, because it says in the Scripture we read yesterday that God strengthened his heart in the condition, strengthened it to continue being hardened. "By a strong hand": that is God's strengthening hand that does something. It either keeps a heart hardened or it softens it. It's by his strong hand. Another translation, actually, and probably a more exact translation, is "by coercion." By coercion God does a thing. By coercion God made Pharaoh not release them, and by coercion God made them release them when he wanted to. By coercion God did it. God did it. "Still Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen." Notice the connection here. This is crazy. And then I ran into something bonkers, and then I'm going to close. "Still Pharaoh's heart was hardened." Everybody say "hardened." A hardened heart caused him... And, comma, "he would not listen to them." Notice that the listening is dependent on the hardening. It says that God softens a heart, and when he softens a heart, notice that the ears are attached to that opening. Notice that you can't listen when your heart's hardened, but when your heart's softened you can hear. Notice the connection. If you want to see something really crazy, I looked up a medical article, because I accidentally, I don't even know, I accidentally just thought, "I wonder if there's some medical connection between a messed-up heart and hearing." Come to find out there is, physically. Crazy. In a medical journal, I don't even know how I accidentally got to this, it was bonkers. I read it, and I stood up downstairs in my office and went, "That's crazy." It's crazy. Here's what it says in the medical journal. Here was the title of the article: "Heart Health Conditions That Affect Hearing." Tinnitus is one of them, or just losing your hearing. And the whole article was saying if your hearing goes, it may not be an issue with your ears; it might most certainly be an issue with your heart. Fix your heart, fix your ears. Fantastic. Here's the quote I pulled out. It's a small quote; the whole article is good. If you want it, I'll post it on Facebook, and you can read it. It's fantastic. "Cardiovascular disease: this condition hardens the arteries in the body." Did you hear that? Did you hear it? A messed-up heart, cardiovascular disease of the heart, hardens all the arteries in your body, "which affects circulation through your whole body," specifically causing hearing loss. Fantastic. I couldn't believe it. So what happens when our heart is healed? Actually, the article goes on and says if you get your heart blood pressure medicine and you begin to eat better and your heart begins to get healed, your hearing will return. Fascinating, isn't it?
Good news: God softens hearts and opens ears, and sometimes there is a connection between the two.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:00:01
I would propose today there is always a connection between the two. Those that have ears to hear will hear what the Spirit is saying to the church. It depends on your heart. Romans 10:17: "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." So how does God soften our heart? Through the word of Christ, through the word of Christ. Romans 10:14–15, I love this: "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how
Point 5The price Christ paid is enough
Are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?" So night after night I kept having conversations with slaughter. I kept telling him, "Listen, if God does nothing more for me, the price that Christ has paid on calvary is enough." That was our conversation. I would go at the beginning, when we got to work, we had to clock in. They do the first initial meeting. They line out everybody for their jobs for the night. And the typical thing for the first three or four months, actually six months, you go through a hazing period when you're in construction. You really go through a hazing period when you're with construction workers who come out of prison. They just try to run you out. They try to see if you're tough enough to survive. I made it, and then you become their friends. Thank goodness. It's much better to be an inmate's friend than their enemy, but it is wonderful even more so when you don't have to compromise who you are to get there. And I would constantly be berated by Slaughter, by Mumbles, by Terryberry the Fairy, by all these guys. I would be berated. They would make fun of Christ. They would make fun of my belief.
They would make fun of my life. They would make fun of the price he paid. One person got a tattoo of a toilet bowl just to tell me they put Jesus in there and flushed him. That's extreme commitment to insulting God. It was an interesting environment. Slaughter led the ring. He was the ringleader of belittling God. His father-in-law was a pastor and had been asking him, because this was about the time The Passion of the Christ was coming out, and had been asking him to go see The Passion of the Christ. Him and I were having conversations with my GI Joe Bible, and he kept asking me, "Why would you serve a God who won't serve you today? Why would you serve a God who doesn't serve you today? Why would you serve a God who doesn't serve you today?"
Because he paid a price that's worthy enough. If he serves me no other time, that service was enough service. His father-in-law kept asking him to go. His wife kept asking him to go. His father-in-law kept asking him to go. Finally, just to get his father-in-law off his back, he decided he would go see The Passion of the Christ. The guys would see the newspaper clippings of The Passion of the Christ. They would belittle God, belittle Christ, belittle the movie. And Slaughter very privately goes to see the movie. We come in the next day. I didn't know he was going to see the movie. We come in the next day, and I'm in the break room. They're about to send us out for the night, and all of them are talking about The Passion of the Christ. It's a hot topic there. They're trying to figure out jokes to make fun of Christ, to insult him, all kinds of inappropriate things I would rather not talk about today. It was bad. Slaughter comes walking up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders, and I was like, "Oh great, now he's going to get in on it." And he just said, "Leave the preacher alone." I thought to myself, "Who's your daddy?" I'm not saying it's appropriate; that's what I thought, though. I thought, "Slaughter's got my back. Slaughter's got my back." And then he begins to tell the story of going to see The Passion of the Christ. It was crazy. He said, "Gentlemen, enough of making fun of the preacher's God and my Savior." I thought, "Say what? What is going on in here?" And he tells a story of going, and he says, "I went. I didn't want to go, and I kept thinking, 'What in the world? Am I going to go see the stupid movie?'" He goes, "I'm waiting in line and waiting in line and waiting in line." To keep a long story short, he says, "I get up to the line, and the lady checking me out... I pull out my wallet to pay, and she says, 'Your way has been paid.' And I thought, 'Who would pay for this stupid movie? Who'd pay for somebody else to see this stupid movie?' Because I went in, saw the movie, saw all the things that were happening, things I'd read about as a child, things I'd read about in prison. I saw the story unfold visually out before me. These are things I know. And I get to the end, and all I can think, as Jesus is praying in the garden, is hearing the words of the lady at the ticket counter say, 'Your way has been paid.' Jesus was being beaten, and I just heard, 'Your way has been paid.' Her words echoed over and over again through the whole movie." He's telling the story to the break room. Brian walks out about this time. We're supposed to be going to work. Brian fired people if they were late. He fired people if they stood there. Brian stood against the wall and let Slaughter finish his story. He said, "A man stood up at the very end and very briefly said words that I had heard the preacher say at break time with his, he calls it, GI Joe Bible: 'If God never serves me in this life, he served me enough by the price he paid on Calvary.' And I heard the words, 'Your way has been paid,' and I gave my life to Christ in the movie theater. If you make fun of the preacher again, if you make fun of my Savior again in this workplace, I will kill you."
Okay, that's an interesting way to share the gospel, but I'm in. "I will kill you." Oh boy, it changed. Oh boy, it changed. Mumbles covered up his toilet bowl and asked my wife to watch his kids. It was interesting to see things shift in the place. It was interesting. But you know who softened Slaughter's heart? God did. And the things he had heard when his heart was hardened had no impact on him, because he didn't hear what the Spirit was saying. But when God softened his heart, he could hear. He could hear. I pray that we are not hardened, and I pray that those who are hardened will be softened, that they might be able to hear. And I'll say this today: if you're looking for God to do a miracle, and that's all you care about, you're not looking for God.
Because what if the only way he serves you is by what he did on Calvary, and he does nothing else for you here on earth?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:08:14
If that's not enough, it could be that the Savior you profess is not a savior at all.
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