23 September 2012

Topic: The Gospel of Christ

Video highlights of the recent Israel trip is shown. The witness of the Founder of TBN, Dr Paul Crouch imparting TBN over to his son, Matthew Crouch. Pastor Prince prayed for the impartation of Dr Paul's ministry to the next generation after 39 years. The 40th year is a representation of a new generation in God's system.
It was an amazing video highlight throughout. The congregation stood up in praise to welcome Pastor Prince!

Pastor shared about the Southern Steps where they stood during the trip. It is now 2000 years old and definitely it was where our Lord Jesus once stood. That was also where Peter preached and 3000 were baptised. It was awesome that Pastor Prince had the honour to stand at the same spot to spread the gospel. It is truly by grace that our church is part of this revolution. Even the caretaker of the Southern Steps remarked that this was the largest group in history that ever was here. The last biggest turnout dated back to probably the time of Peter in the bible.

Only God can give you influence and honour. God wants Jesus his son to be the center. When 2 or 3 are gathered, Jesus is in the midst. Many pastors in the world are impacted by the grace message. It has to be God to cause the church to be of such impact, especially so when we are just a small dot on the map.

So are you ready for the message today?

Gospel means good news. It does not mean new rules as some preachers are saying. These are warped teachings.

Acts 20:24
Verse 24: The gospel is the "gospel of the grace of God". The gospel is the Christians' health, armour, prosperity, health, etc. When the gospel is preached, nations are turned around, lack becomes prosperity! The fruits of this gospel are love, joy, peace, self-control and humility. Grace is not a message. It is the grace of God. Grace means unmerited favor.
Angels follow us, demons flee because we have His righteousness. God treated Jesus like the worst sinner on the cross 2000 years ago. Likewise, today we are the most favored person by God!

Galatians 1:6-10
Verse 6: Removed from the grace of Christ to another means to take grace out from the gospel.
Verse 7: There are new gospels all over the world and there are people who pervert the gospel of Christ. As usual, man always wants to be a part of the work.
Verse 8: Although we (he includes himself), preach another gospel, let him be a curse. Paul says this to address those who twist the good news.
Verse 9: Anyone who doesn't preach the gospel of grace shall be a curse - Notice curse is repeated again. It becomes a double curse; double negative.

Pastor then asked the Lord why was there a double curse to anyone who does not preach the grace message.
Jesus revealed that if there was no curse was in place, their mixture of these evil ones will spread. This curse will stop them from their influence. Since then, Pastor decided to preach the grace message radically knowing that the blessings will surely be double since theoretically, the curse can be double too.
Verse 10: Paul is saying if you don't preach grace, you are being a pleaser to man. However, grace makes nothing of man.

Romans 1:16-17
Verse 16: Salvation means if you are sick, Jesus is your healing. If you are poor, Jesus is your prosperity.
The greatest thing you can do is to preach the gospel to your parents, your family, anyone.Come back to abundance, peace and love. Jesus is not angry with you.

Where there is much sin, grace superabound. Paul must have preached radically to receive accusations. If you preach like Paul, you will have the same results as Paul. Something is wrong if you preach the message and no one misunderstands and accuses you.

Romans 5:17
Verse 17: It talks about those who receive the gift of righteousness. See clearly that it is a gift, not a gift through works. If there is a lack in your life, you will reign! This is what Paul preached.
Imagine you are the devil, you will definitely be attacking the 2 gifts of God - gift of righteousness and gift of abundance.

Righteousness by faith (not by works) is being robbed today. Everyone can see your faults. Righteousness by faith means God sees you blameless even if you make mistakes. You are forever perfect in God's eyes. It is God's eyes that matters, not how man's eyes matter. We can be righteous by faith.

The gospel gives you moral excellence. You don't have to try. If you see the gospel angry, you become angry too. Jesus did not say to beat His sheep.

2 Chronicles 12:9-11
Verse 9: Solomon's gold shields got stolen by Shishak (in Hebrews it means greedy of fine linen)
Verse 10: These gold shields were replaced with bronze. Bronze shield looks like gold when polished.
So what does it signify? Everything is significant when mentioned in the bible.
Shield signifies the shield of faith according to Ephesians 6.
Gold signifies divine righteousness by faith.
Today, the enemy is trying to rob the church of righteousness of faith.

Truth revealed:
Your child needs to know if they are still loved if they do wrong. Your love empowers them to do right. The woman must feel insecure before she can give herself to another man. Your good child can purposely do wrong to see if you truly practice grace.

Back to the 2 Chronicles, Bronze is a representation of judgement. That is what's happening today. The gold shield is lost and replaced with bronze. Bronze is totally of different substance. Don't make the pulpit to be a place of discipline just because you want to target someone who made you unhappy.

Jude 1-4
Verse 1: Jude and James are actually physical brothers of Jesus.
Verse 4: There were certain men who crept in unnoticed. "turn the grace of our God in lewdness".
"turn" means metatithemi:
1. To transfer
2. To change
3. To transfer one's self or suffer one's self to be transferred.
It means if grace is removed from the gospel, Jesus is removed from the gospel.

Galatians 1:6-10
Verse 6: The word "removed" is metatithemi, same as the verse in Jude.
Transpose means to change place and interchange.
Webster's Translation of transpose means to substitute.

There are sermons where Jesus is not in the picture.
Jude 11
Verse 11: "In the way of Cain" - Cain murdered Abel and a representation of performance. Cain brought his own fruits to God thinking it is through works.
This is a story of someone believing he is righteous killing someone who believes he is righteous by faith.
"The error of Balaam". Balaam is a prophet. He was hired because he is able to curse someone successfully. He attempted to curse God's people but instead words of blessing came forth his mouth.
God will never allow any wizards, witches to cast a spell and bring you under the curse. No one is able to curse what God has blessed. Balaam agreed to do so because he was paid - "for profit". Pastor reminds that no one should counsel for money. Same goes for healing. No one can come to you to ask for money in order to receive healing. One can never purchase God's blessings.

You are not under a generation of curses.
A survey showed that children learn to fear from parents. It has shown that children are born with 2 fears - falling and loud sounds. The rest are learnt from parents. Pastor Gabriel shared that his son looked at his parents when he falls before deciding to cry. Imagine your reaction made your child feel that it was serious, your child will interpret it as that way.

In closing,
Why are they so many people who are burnt out? They have not listen to the high priest. We in New Creation Church learn that as He is, so are we in this world.

If you exalt God's son, God will exalt you. If you honour Him, He will honour you. Let's us spread the gospel to the world.