Voice of the Nazarene 5-24-26

Transcript

Welcome And Scripture Reading

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From North Church, Ohio, we share with you the Voice of the Mazarine. A week-by-week venture into the Word of God sponsored by the News Archives, Ohio Church of the Mazarine. We join our pastor, Rebecca Ray List now, and the Voice of the Mazarine.

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I want to take you into Matthew 21, and I want to begin with the 12th verse. Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, overthrew the tables of the money changers, the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer. You've made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. And when the chief priest and scribe saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the son of David, they were uh sore, displeased. And said unto him, Hearst thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea, have ye never read out of the mouth of babes and sucklings that was perfected. Praise. Now I'll branch out on several different scriptures, I'm sure. But this is the uh this is the little realm in which I'd like to share a message for a few minutes.

God’s Pattern Of Blessing

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I'd love to talk to you about the life that God wants to bless. He wants to bless our lives. I'm convinced of that. I'm convinced that uh having God's supernatural power in our lives is one of the greatest blessings that we could ever have. My prayer today is for God's blessing on our graduates. Leaving the high school realm and moving on into college, those that may be graduating college and moving into the workforce, that they might find God's divine will for their life. Blessings to them. Let's pray, blessings on them. We're blessed by those who we have just seen in some of their pictures, and they lived their lives and left behind a legacy. We're different because we crisscross trails with some of them and we're bettered by them, and they have blessed our lives. But I'm saying that God wants to bless all of that. You say, well, Pastor, where do you get that? Well, when God created Adam and Eve back there in Genesis 1.27, he created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them, and God blessed them. When God created the first human beings, he he blessed them. Now Jesus spent 33 years on earth and then ascended to heaven. And the last thing that Jesus did before he ascended to heaven, Luke 24, 50, he led his disciples out as far as Bethany and He lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. The last thing Jesus did while on earth was to bless his disciples. Isn't that interesting? The first thing that God did was to bless humanity, whom he had created. And the last thing Jesus Christ on earth did was to bless his disciples. Apparently, God wants to bless us. Zig Ziegler said, you've been designed for an accomplishment. You were engineered for success. You've been endowed with seeds of greatness because God wants to bless

A Story About Expecting Blessing

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us. I heard the story some time ago about two fishermen, two buddies, and they hunted together, and one of them had come over to the other guy's house, and they're sitting out in the backyard, and across the field, and behind some trees, he had a pond. He got to talking, and the old dog was there, and he said, That's the most unusual dog, he said, I've ever seen. The other guy said, What's unusual about him? He said, I can send him out to the pond and ask him how many ducks are there, and he'll come back and he'll tell me. He said, I don't believe you. So he told the dog, go out and check the pond. And a little while he returned back and said, How many ducks? And he barked once. The guy said, That's not true. He said, Follow me. They went out in the woods where the pond was, and there was one duck. By the time they got back, the guy said, I still don't believe you. He told the dog, go back and check the pond again. He returned, and how many ducks? And it barked five times. Guy said, Come on, let's check it. And sure enough, there were five ducks. Came back and sat, and he was suspicious about it. And he said, Send that dog one more time. And he sent him, and when he returned, he had a stick in his mouth and it couldn't bark. He said, What does that mean? He said, There's so many ducks you couldn't even shake a stick at him. And I'm convinced that God is wanting to bless us so much you can't even shake a stick at it. God wants to bless our life. Here's what the Bible says in Deuteronomy 28, verse 1: if you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commandments that I'm giving to you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. Wonderful to be a blessed nation, wouldn't it? And you will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God. Your towns and your fields will be blessed. I'll take it. Your children and your crops will be blessed. I'll take that too. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed, your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will be blessed. The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. I'll line up for that one. And they will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven. The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouse with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he's given you. 330 times in the Old Testament, you'll find the word blessing. Are you telling me that God doesn't want to bless people? You think God is out to curse us? No, I believe he's out to bless us. But in order for God to bless us, we've got to get into a blessable condition. Does that make any sense? You say, Well, Pastor, what do I need to do? I want to be blessed. What do I need to do to be blessed

Purity Starts With Temple Cleansing

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of God? Well, four simple things. The first word that comes to my mind is purity. Let's go back to our little passage that we've read. Verse 12 Jesus comes to the temple and he cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves. Now, the temple surrounded with an outer court. And in this outer court is where they'd set up these tables, and money changers would set there, and and uh you would get a ticket, and you would the reason they were there, they're selling doves and they're selling lambs, because you needed an offering that would be slain, and uh it was for your sins. And so they would purchase a dove if they were poor, and if they had more money, they would purchase a lamb. They would get their ticket and take it and get their animal and we would take it into the priest and would be offered. Now here was the problem. The reason they sold these animals there is because people were traveling hundreds of miles. Very difficult to transport lambs and doves and to feed them along the way and try to drive them along the way. And so they would arrive and they would buy an animal already pre-approved without blemish by the priest themselves. They knew the priests had already settled on it. The problem was these money changers, these people selling these lambs and doves, begin to make a business out of it. They exchanged prayer for commercialism and what money could do, and they were charging exorbitants, astronomical prices, more than the value. And so Jesus comes on the scene. He sees poor people that can't afford all this junk that's going on, and he's very upset and literally comes on the scene, he begins to turn tables over, and he takes a whip, and he drives these money changers out of the house. This shouldn't be going on. You say, Pastor, what did he do? He cleansed the temple. You got that in your mind? Purity. He cleanses the temple. And so he begins to remove some things so that he can restore things to back to what they ought to be. And uh they here's what happens in our lives. Let's just bring it home. We want to add Christ to our life, but we don't want to subtract sin from our life. We like having a lot of religion, but sometimes we don't want a real relationship. This is what's going on. You can't change in belief without a change in behavior. So if you add Christ to your life, you'll be subtracting sin from your life. And here's what 1 John 1 9 says if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So he's not only faithful to forgive and just to forgive, but he wants to purge those things out of our life, cleanse those things out of our life that ought to be there. So you can't add Christ to your life and not subtract sin from your life. Oswald Chambers. He said we must never confuse our desire for people to accept the gospel with creating a gospel that's acceptable to the people. Never confuse the desire for people to accept the gospel with creating a gospel that's acceptable to people. So here's where we're at. Many times we accept Christ, but we don't want to change our lifestyle. People hate churches sometimes because they won't agree to the lifestyle that people are living. And pat it on the back. But it doesn't work. Here's why Proverbs 28, 13 says, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Now, here's what I know: you can't add Christ to your life and stay in a sinful lifestyle. You can't add Christ to your life and continue to commit adultery and continue to fornicate and to continue to steal and continue to lie and continue to gossip, and you can add some other things in there and keep me out of trouble. But when you add Christ to your life, you're subtracting things from your life. You say, Well, Pastor, do we immediately clean up? No, perhaps not, but I want you to know that God's working on our hearts along the way. And God will do some cleansing in your life, and he wants to cleanse the junk out of your under out of your life. Now I understand we're talking about a temple here. But anytime you're talking about the old temple, he's talking about this temple. Getting this temple cleansed. Here's what he says in 1 Corinthians 3.16 know ye not that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. Now, what does God want to do? Here's what God wants to do. God wants to do some cleansing. And he wants to do some purging, and he wants to do some extraction, and he wants to do some cleansing of our life. And you say, Well, what is it? What's the junk in my life, Pastor? You already know the Holy Spirit's pinpointing it. I believe that when God sends a preacher and he stands him up and anoints him a little bit at all, the Holy Spirit begins to do the rest of the preaching. It begins to pinpoint things in your life, in your mind, in your heart while the preacher's preaching. God is saying, I could really bless you. But I can't bless you until you get the junk out of your life. As long as you're going to hold on to stuff. You're wanting to add Christ, but you don't want to subtract sin. And you're wondering why doesn't God bless our home? Why doesn't God bless our life? He can't bless you until you let stuff go. Now, this account of Jesus cleansing the temple, you'll find in every gospel, it mentions this. But there are three in which is the same account. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all giving the same account how Jesus comes and how he goes in the temple and he cleanses the temple. He rides into this on a donkey into Jerusalem, cleansing. And I was reading and I noticed something I had not noticed before. I read those three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke writing about the cleansing. But I noticed in John chapter 2 that John wrote about it also, but it was at a different time. How do you know it's a different time? Because those three times, Jesus was on his way to the cross when he rode into Jerusalem. You remember that? And they really welcomed him when he came in. It was triumphal entry. And then when he didn't do what they wanted, they took him and crucified him. But he wanted his temple cleansed. But this is three years apart because this is right after Jesus had performed his first miracle at a wedding at Cana of Galilee and turned water into wine. And I know what somebody's thinking, and we see it do it again. So what's happening here? It's three years later. What happens? Well, junk began to creep back in. Stuff began to get back in, begin to pile back in, and needed cleansed again. And folk, that's what happens in this temple. This is what happens in our life. We get junk in our life, and if we're not careful, we let it back in and begins to build up. And you say, well, Pastor, when a person messes up, what happens? Well, it's suddenly, and it's gradually. We say, all of a sudden, somebody fell. Somebody blew it all of a sudden. No, it wasn't all of a sudden, it was gradually. It gradually built up, but they experienced the suddenly when they realized they'd gone too far and they'd messed up. But it's a gradual process. So you say, Well, Pastor, what do I do about junk? There's only one thing you can do, and that's to repent. That's the only thing you can do. Jesus Christ was the greatest preacher ever on earth. And in his sermon, the first sermon he ever preached is in Matthew 4.17. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. First sermon he ever preached. And the last time he preached is in Revelation 3.19. And it's this final message: As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore, and repent. Repent, repent, repent. When there's things in our life that's not right, it doesn't really matter what the denomination is, the Bible says you need to repent. And what I'm trying to say, God wants to bless your life, but you've got to get blessable. It means we get the junk out of our life because you can't add Christ and not subtract the junk. We can't have hatred. We can't have malice. We can't have racism. We can't have lust in our heart. We can't have porn in her eyes. We can't have gossip on our lips, and we can't have uh filth in her ears and expect God to be blessing our lives. It simply don't work that way. So the first word is purity.

Prayer Restores The House Of God

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But then as I read further, I saw the word prayer, verse 13. After Jesus purifies things, verse 17, he says, My house shall be called a house of what? Prayer. And prayer will keep you from sin, and sin will keep you from prayer. But when we get the junk out of our life, you begin to notice that you want to pray and you want to talk to God, it just kind of works that way. Because some folk will say, well, if I go to church, it makes me feel uncomfortable. And many times the reason we're feeling uncomfortable is because we got junk in this temple. And it needs cleanse, and we need a purging, and uh the temple needs to be made clean. And once the temple is cleansed, then we find we're enjoying church. Church for years has preached. Uh I've been around the holiness movement for about all of my life, all that I've lived so far. And uh we have preached what I call heart perfection. Have you ever heard of that term, heart perfection? And after these many years, I see so few people reaching that destiny that I've about pulled my hair out. It don't look like it, but it used to be darker. Till I'm at the point where I'm now hollering about heart perfection. I'd like to talk to you about heart direction. Begin to get your life directed into letting your heart be made into all that God wants. I believe that God not only deals with us in an instantaneous moment, but I believe there's time after time and over time God begins to make us more into his image. You say, Pastor, have you always been the perfect husband? Probably not. Don't ask. The others party. But I want to be. Have you always been the perfect parent? I certainly tell you I haven't been. But I wished I had. Have you always been kind? Probably not. I can look back and could have been kinder. So we get into trouble though when we say it doesn't matter anymore. I don't care. If you don't like it, lump it. That's when we begin to get in trouble, and we're not trying to go in the right direction. Purity. It's when we get the purity right, then prayers are in

Power Follows Purity And Prayer

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our life. And the next thing I noticed was the power. They get the temple cleansed, prayer started happening, and then look at what happened, verse 14. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. Folk, when you get the purity right and prayer starts happening, then powerful things begin to happen around the church. Things begin to change. Marriages get better, situations get better. Miracles start happening. Why? Because power in your life, because power comes from after purity and after prayer. And this is just a side note, okay, if I throw something in? It's okay, thank you. I noticed something. In the Old Testament, they prayed at 9 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock. Those were the prayer times. I don't know why they said them as such. Here in the New Testament, we just try to get people to pray anytime, even over their food, even when they go to sleep, like some of you doing right now. You need to pray before you go to bed here. So 9 o'clock, 12 o'clock, and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Part of the old covenant. Then I realized something. In 1 Kings 18, 36, Elijah prayed at 3, and guess what? The fire fell. And in Daniel 9, 21, at 3 p.m., Daniel prayed, and an angel came to him. Then in Acts 2, 15, at 9 in the morning the Holy Spirit came. Acts 3, 1, at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, the lame man was healed. It was prayer time. And in Acts 10, 3, Cornelius prayed at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and he had a vision, and literally from him the Gentile church was born. What are you saying, preacher? I'm saying that when we pray, purity and power comes into our life. And when you pray with purity, power comes in. Now wait, we've got to get blessable. Purity, prayer,

Perfect Praise In Hard Times

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power. I'll give you the last one. Perfect praise. Look at what the scripture says. Verse 16, Jesus saith unto them, Yea, have you never read out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, thou hast perfected praise. What is perfected praise, Pastor? Well, keep in mind Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. He's on his way to a cross. Now here's what perfect praise is. Perfect praise is when you praise God in spite of your circumstances, it's when you offer up sacrifices. A praise. It's when you say, Lord, I'm going to praise you despite the circumstances. I'm going to praise you whether things turn out good or whether they turn out bad, I'm going to praise the Lord. It's three Hebrew boys when the king said, If you don't bow down and worship me and the image, I'm going to throw you into a fiery furnace. And their answer, the God we serve is able to deliver us, even if we don't deliver us, though, we will not bow down. But even if not, there's your secret. It doesn't matter either way. We're still going to worship him. It's Paul and Silas at midnight when they'd been beaten beyond measure. It said they'd laid many stripes upon them. They cast him into prison, charging the jailer to keep him safely, who, having received such a charge, thrust them into an inner prison and made their feet fast in the stalks. And at midnight, Paul and Silas praised or prayed and sang praises unto God. Spite of the beatings, spite of the circumstances, praise God. Perfect praise is when we say, Lord, my marriage, my spouse has left me. But I'm going to praise you if they come back. But if they don't come back, I'm still going to praise you. Perfect praise is when cancer comes or whatever. And you say, God, I'm going to praise you whether you heal me or you don't heal me. Sometimes God takes away the cancer. Sometimes He takes away the person. But it's saying, Either way, I'm going to praise the Lord. And I read this little verse, I was amazed to find it's an Old Testament quote. Out of Psalm 9, 2, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies that thou mightest steal the enemy and the avenger. That means when you're going through a tough time, God may see your praises and may tell the enemy that's as far as you can come. You've attacked him, but this is as far as I'm going to allow you to come. I've in my life experienced times when I thought I can't take a minute more, and I just say, God, I'm not going to quit. Now I'm not going to turn my back on you, and I'm not mad at you, and there's no blame. God, I love you anyway. And somehow it just seemed like God put up a roadblock and stopped the enemy in his tracks. Things didn't get any better for a while, but the enemy couldn't come any closer. And that's what he's saying here. It may be that God sees parents, their kids are tearing their hearts out, but he sees them praising God anyhow. God says, that's enough. I'm going to stop you in your tracks. It's Job who says, though he slay me, yet will I serve him. If the bank gets it all, if I bury every last love for one I've got, if my wife won't serve God and makes it difficult and tells me to curse God and die. If I wind up in the hospital with this health issue and it doesn't seem to get any better, the Lord giveth, he said. And the Lord can take away and bless it be the name of the Lord. Now I don't care what channel you flip to and whatever they tell you on that channel, this is what the Bible says. And every one of those guys saying all that stuff are gonna die too of something. I had a singer, one of the big name singers, that came to our church a few years ago when we were in the old event center and we worshiped there. And I said, uh, how's things going? He said, I just came from so-and-so crusade. Biggest crusade in the world. They had several million there in the turnout. And uh I said, sir, can I just say this to you? I'd rather you not bring it up at the service and create some tension. But I'd like to ask you a question. You just work with the greatest faith healer, the biggest name faith healer in the world. And I said, I believe in faith healing. But when it becomes a commercialization, you know, the Bible said over there, and I think it's Matthew, that there were many lepers, but he only came to Naaman. He didn't set up a healing campaign, but he did heal one. God's will be done is what I'm saying. Don't ever say healing is in the redemptive will of God. It's not, it's in the sovereign will of God. Why God would choose to let a baby die and somebody else become an old drunk, I don't know. But it's the sovereign will of God, and I leave it there. But I said, I want to ask you one question. He said, What is it? I said, You were there, how long? He said, Two weeks. He said, as far as you could see was humanity, and then they put up big screens and you'd walk another mile, and then just faces by the thousands, and they were watching on the big screens. I said, Out of all the healings, how many healings did you see with your own naked eye? I'm not talking about somebody having the sniffles or somebody having a backache. I'm talking about seeing a miracle that you could see with your own eye. How many? He said, Well, let me think a while. Finally said, I'll tell you what, it was this many. Now I'm not downplaying healing. Don't you get me wrong? But I'm downplaying the commercialization and the money changes and the tables that need to be flipped over. And to get down to the reality, we're gonna praise God any way this thing goes. We're gonna praise him anyway. If things don't change, if things don't go my way, God, I'm still going to serve you. You say, have you been there? I've been there. Some of you have been around this church long enough to know that I've lived through some of the most difficult times that a pastor's ever lived through. But I made up my mind, I'm not gonna cry about it in the pulpit. I'll hide my sorrow and I'll take care of it in the back bedroom when nobody's watching. But God, I'll never quit serving you, and the devil's a liar. And whether it's this way or that way, I'm on your way. And that's the only way to live.

Final Charge And Invitation

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Father.

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