Resurrection Sunday _ Pastor Jeff Miller

Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Christ is coming again. Oh, I've got my cable. There we go. Praise God. Well, hello church family. Good to see you. I know you can see me, but I can't see you. I'm watching you. No. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Father. I know we've got others watching as well. Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, we thank you. Thank you for your goodness in our lives. Thank you for your provision. Thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for health and healing. Lord, we thank you for sending Jesus because we were sinners on our way to hell. On our way to hell, Lord, and with no hope of heaven except through Jesus. And we thank you so much for causing us to hear the gospel, causing us to be in a position where we would surrender so we could have eternal life, so we could begin to live. And Lord, I thank you for this service. I thank you for the remaining part that you anoint me to speak the word, speak the truth in love, but without compromise. And we thank you that your will is being done, that you are touching the lives of not only our people, but others that are watching in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen. This is a unique Easter in the sense, or in the regard that I don't know, and I can't prove this, but I haven't been able to find any other time in the history of our country, not just from when we became a country, but even in colonial America. Some of the first buildings they built here were churches. And I don't think there has ever been a time in America or colonial America where we Christians that wanted to get together corporately and worship have not been able to. So it is a very interesting time that we are living in. Jesus, today we celebrate the resurrection, really for Christians we celebrate the resurrection every single day. You know, in any religion you have those that are serious followers and then you have a lot of people that are, whether they be Christians, whether they be Muslims, whether they are Buddhists as an example, you have a lot of people that are cultural Buddhists. Like I was on a mission trip with Dr. T.L. Osborne in 2003 to Thailand. And Thailand is, I don't remember the percentage, but a high 90% Buddhist nation, but the majority of those people are cultural Buddhists. You know, Islam, same thing. You have many people that are devout followers of the Quran, but you have a whole lot of people, which I think is good that you have a whole lot, that are just cultural Muslims, you know. You don't have to be too concerned about the cultural Muslims, it's the other ones you got to be concerned about. But the same is true for Christianity. There are in our country and in the West and really not as much in the rest of the world, but especially our country and the West, you have a lot of cultural Christians. If you said, are you a Christian? You know, they would say, you know, yeah, I'm a Christian. A lot of cultural Christians are not biblical Christians. Now, what do I mean by that? You can believe in Christianity, it's kind of, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm not a Buddhist, I'm not a Muslim, I'm not this or that. You can believe in Christianity and yet never really have accepted Jesus as your Savior. And see, when you accept Jesus, your life is changed. Now, I know not everyone has the same exact experience, but I've noticed this in 45 years of being a Christian, especially the last 35 to 40 years being involved in ministry. When God truly comes into someone's life, and it's not like God invades their life, God's trying to get into our lives, but a lot of times we're just trying to keep him away, we're holding him back. And God's not going to force his way in. God's not a bully. But I found out that when we come to a point, whether we have to hit rock bottom, sometimes that seems to be the case, we all have to come to a point where we freely, not under coercion, where we freely give our lives to Him. And when we do that, our life will change and others will see it. And I'm not saying that, you know, in one day you will have no problems, that you will all of a sudden be healthy, that you will all of a sudden have all of your bills paid, that everything changes instantly. But the spiritual part of us when we surrender changes instantly. I mean, it is instant, and even if we're rough around the edges, it begins to work its way out and people notice a difference. And if some of this, if it sounds foreign to you, if you're listening to this and this has not been your experience, then I want to ask you a question. Do you really know that you're on your way to heaven? Do you really know? I mean, not just I hope so, you know, a lot of people are very concerned about their retirement. And there are a lot of people that maybe aren't concerned about it enough. But the people that are super concerned about their retirement, socking money away, making sure we have enough, oh, can't spend too much. Are you making any preparations for eternity? No, and I'm not against making preparations for retirement. I mean, that's a wise thing to do. You should do it. But it's foolish to make preparations for everything else, have a will, have everything all set up for when you pass on, have everything set for when you, if you stop working and you retire, where you're able to function and go ahead. That's all wonderful. But don't be so thorough in that area of your life and you have no retirement plan for eternity. See, a lot of Americans, we have bought the lie that, well, I'm, you know, you're going to heaven? Well, I hope so. Say, why do you think you're going to heaven? Well, I'm, you know, I'm a good person. I mean, I'm not perfect, but I haven't killed anybody. So I'm just, you know, I'm an American. I'm going to heaven. Let me give you some truth. Without Jesus, you're going to hell. I should smile when I say that. But it's not a smiling matter. All of us, the Bible says, have sinned. We have all sinned and sinned. We have a, we judge based on our own standards. And our standards and God's standards usually are not the same. Now, today is going to be probably the most unique Easter message I've ever preached. A lot of times over the years, I will preach, you know, on the resurrection. I will preach a message, Lord, liar, lunatic. I will talk about the empty tomb. I'll talk about all different facts and statistics. Well, hey, you can read Evidence That Demands a Verdict. You can get More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. You can get other books that have that information. And that's important information. But I'm going to deal with, now, the last couple of weeks, I've been dealing with provision. And I really haven't said a whole lot about what's going on in our world right now. The things that we have never seen in our lifetimes. My mother's 90 years old. Things that my mother has never experienced in our lifetime. And really, probably, today, that America has never experienced, there is a reason, and I want to tell you the reason today. I want to tell you the reason. Now, I try to stay up on the news. I mean, I don't try to feed too much on it. But I try to stay aware of what is going on in the world. And I try to stay aware of what's going on in the body of Christ. And there are so many things out there about the coronavirus, or the, I like to call it the Chinese virus. Came from China. Of course, it's tagged COVID-19. I don't know what the 19 is. Probably, maybe, I don't know what it is. But anyway, there's all of this information out there in the body of Christ about, well, is this the judgment of God? There's all these conspiracy theories. And there is not enough time to investigate all of these things. There's probably a lot of merit in it, but here is, now, my wife started preaching this, but this is good because she's saying things, she didn't know what I'm gonna talk about. She asked me beforehand, well, what are you gonna talk about? Because I don't wanna be saying anything you're gonna say. I said, just go up there and say what you have in your heart to say. And so she was saying some of the same things the Lord has put in my heart. This is not the judgment of God. Hey, this would pale in comparison to the judgment of God. This would be like a walk in the park to the judgment of God. I believe, and I know not all Christians believe this, I believe the Bible says God has not appointed us to wrath. So as a believer in Jesus Christ, I didn't say we won't have any troubles, we won't have any persecution, but God has not appointed us to wrath. If we are a child of God, the wrath of God will not be poured out on his children. But when the church is out of here, the wrath of God is gonna be poured out on this earth. And if we're not ready when the rapture comes, if we haven't really surrendered to Jesus, we are going to be stuck here and you are not gonna wanna be here. Now, the Bible, Jesus said, he talked about the last days and he said the coming of the Son of Man would be like the days of Noah. He said it would be like the days of Lot. And I was gonna maybe read this, it's in various places, but Luke's account I was reading this week. And in the days of Noah, all the way up to the day that they went into the ark. Now, here's a contrast from the days of Noah, the days of Lot, and today. And today is actually different than the days of Noah and the days of Lot. I'll explain that in a minute. The days of Noah, people were marrying, being given in marriage, buying and selling, life was going on. I mean, everything seemed, I mean, right up to the very day they went in the ark. And once that door was closed, then the judgment began on a wicked world that rejected Moses' preach, probably for 100 years to people. He was called the preacher of righteousness and the civilization was so wicked. They had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. There was a day coming when God shut the door. There's no more opportunity. It's over. And, but life was just going normal. You might think that, oh, right at the very end, it's gonna be totally different. In the days of Noah, it was just the same old everyday thing, business, transactions, marrying, people dying, people being born, life went on. And yet they were right on the edge of judgment. The same thing happened as the days of Lot. The coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Lot. Now, Lot was the nephew of Abraham and he was living in Sodom. Some say he was the mayor of Sodom. He had some sort of position and some sort of authority. He sat at the city gate. And because of Abraham, God sent angels to Lot to rescue him. Of course, Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah and there obviously were not 10 righteous people in the entire area. And so God sent angels to get Lot out. But the same scenario with Sodom and Gomorrah, life was going on. People were buying and selling and trading and investing and marrying and getting married and having kids and just living life. But the day that Lot left and the angels had to virtually drag him out of town, once he was out, judgment fell. Now, what's happening, I do not believe, what's happening in our country and in the world, I don't believe it's the judgment of God. And I believe the judgment of God. I believe it's the work of the enemy, but Satan, I mean, it's the work of Satan, but God has allowed it. And there's a reason why God has allowed it. Now, I wanna read a verse that I actually opened up with last week. We went to 2 Chronicles. Again, this is a different, not my normal resurrection message. I mean, I've talked about, I remember one message I preached was 10 reasons Jesus came. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Jesus came to save sinners. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Many reasons why he came to die as our substitute. He came so that we could be forgiven, so we could be made whole, so we could be the children of God. So many reasons why he came. But we're gonna deal with, we're gonna talk a little bit about that, but we're gonna deal with what's going on now because I really haven't said a lot. My wife has been making videos. She's really anointed to do that. And so church family especially, we are going to great lengths buying some equipment, I mean, to temporarily get through until we get our regular TV equipment and trying to learn how to do things and editing. And people are spending hours and hours and hours of time to produce these little videos that we're doing besides our live streaming. So I really encourage you to watch those, to share those. We're doing that not to just stay busy. We're doing that to feed you and to help you so you're gonna stay full and stay built up. Amen? And I know you appreciate it, but I'd like to see more people viewing those videos because it's a lot of effort involved to do that and you want as many people to be blessed by that. But last week I read 2 Chronicles 7, 14 and we're gonna read it again, but I want us to back up to verse 12. 2 Chronicles 7, we'll start at verse 12. Then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night. Did you know the Lord still appears to people? My wife said that, but I'll say it again. The Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said to him, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. Now, verse 13 says, when I shut up heaven and there is no rain or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among my people. Now, I wanna stop right there. My wife, I think in some of her messages recently, if you haven't watched them, then you wouldn't have heard this. She mentioned, and it's true, that in the Old Testament that was written predominantly in Hebrew, a very small portion in Aramaic, but predominantly in Hebrew, the tenses are in the causative sense instead of the permissive sense. So scriptures like this, you get just reading it not knowing the original languages, you get the idea that God is sending plagues and pestilence on his people. And that is not, that's not the case. Another verse where it's, well, several verses, quite a few actually, but another verse where if you don't know the original languages, you're not going to, you're gonna get the wrong understanding is in Exodus 15, 26. It says, if you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases on you, which I have brought on the Egyptians. Now again, this has been translated in the causative, but it should be in the permissive sense. God does not put diseases on the world or on the church. That's the devil, he's the thief. He comes to kill, steal and destroy. But now here's the interesting thing in this verse. It says, and again, we'll change the tense and make it correct. I will allow none of the diseases on you, which I have allowed on the Egyptians. That is more the accurate translation. Well, the same thing is true in 2 Chronicles 7. So he says, if the heavens are shut up and there's no rain, or the locusts are devouring the land, or I've allowed pestilence among my people, here's the answer. If my people, that's you and me, if we're believers. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves. It's not enough to be called by his name. It's not enough to say, well, I'm a believer. We have to humble ourselves. It says then we need to pray. It's not just like, Lord, bless me, help me, bless my family, thank you for the food, thank you for helping me get through this difficult time. Amen. You know what, if that's all you pray, now if you just got saved, then maybe that's great. But if you've been saved for a few years, five years, 10 years, 20 years, and that's all you pray every day, you're backslidden. You're just backslidden. You are far away from God. You might be a child of God, but you're like a wayward child that's disobedient. This, what's been going on in our society is a wake-up call. It is a wake-up call for the world. It's a wake-up call for the church. So there's a pandemic in our country and in the world. God didn't send it, but he allowed it. Why did he allow it? Well, we allowed it by doing things that opened up the door to the devil. Say, well, what do you mean opened up the door to the devil? Have you ever heard of abortion? We've got, I don't know if I wrote it down here. It seemed like I wrote it down, I was studying it. I don't, I must've wrote it on a different piece of paper. But I think there have been some 20,000 and something deaths through supposedly through the coronavirus in the U.S., 20,000 plus. And the amount of abortions per year, per year, I mean, it's like 800,000 or something like that a year, every year. And we can just think, well, you know, I'm pro-choice and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have got innocent blood being shed every single day in America. And there is a judgment of God. This is not, what we're experiencing is not the judgment of God. It's a work of the enemy, but it's not the judgment of God. Judgment of God is gonna be far worse. And say, well, that just doesn't seem like a loving God, a good God would judge people. God gives people multiple opportunities to surrender. To repent. And so it says, this verse says, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, that's called repentance. Repentance is you're going the wrong direction and you realize it and you stop and you make a conscious decision to turn around and go the right way. Say, it's not just because I feel sorry, but I'm gonna just keep doing it anyway, but I really feel, I do feel bad. That's not repentance. Repentance is when you make a change. Now, I'm not saying becoming a good person or becoming a better person is how you get saved. You get saved by surrendering, but when you surrender and God comes into your life, then things that you wanted to do, you don't wanna do anymore. They begin to drop off of your life. Now, I'm not just saying it happens all instantly. It's a process, but there's a lot of things that I used to do earlier in my life and maybe when I was first a new Christian, I mean, I was tempted to do those things and I'm tempted to go back to that or do this, but the time came where now if God said, hey, you can do all of this stuff, it's like, you know what? I don't wanna do it anymore. I don't need to do it. I don't need it. Before I needed it, but then as you get God in your life, you don't need all this other stuff. I'm telling you what, God's a good God. He is a good God. So we are to humble ourselves, pray, seek his face, turn from our wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land. Hallelujah. Thank you, Father. Now, I've gotta find my, what do I do? There they are. Find my other notes. I wanna read something to you from a man of God. Now, I've seen a lot of stuff out there in the body of Christ and there's some good things out there and there's just some off the wall things and out of everything that I have seen, I'm not saying I've seen everything that's out there, but of everything that I have read or viewed, what I'm gonna read to you today is it just bore witness with me the strongest that this is the most right on thing that I have heard, that I have come across and I believe the Lord wants me to share it with you. Now, I found where I wrote this down. As of when I looked it up this morning, 677 people have died in Illinois, 20,601, and I'm sure maybe that's gone up since then, in the US, abortion in 2017, 862,000 people. Here's something that Billy Graham's, who's in heaven, late wife, Ruth Graham said, if God does not judge America, he's gonna have to apologize to Solomon Gamora and say, well, you know what? I've never had an abortion. I don't believe in abortion. Well, do you vote for people that support abortion? You gotta ask yourself that question. Have I voted for people that support abortion? See, we're not taking it serious, guys. Would we be okay if we were living in Nazi Germany? And if we knew, a lot of people didn't know, but if we knew something is going on where the Jews and others, gypsies, Christians, are being murdered in the gas chambers, would we think, well, none of my business. I don't really know, I've heard about it, but I don't know if it's true or not. It's just, I don't really agree with that, but I'm not in control. Those people were guilty of not doing the right thing, even if it cost them their life. Friends, we are guilty of not praying to the degree we should, and too many Christians are continuing to vote for ungodly principles, and then we think everything's gonna just be swimming along fine and dandy. We've opened the door to the devil. Now, let me read to you from Reverend Randall Greer. There are prophets, I've never seen Jesus myself. I've never had a vision where I've never went to heaven and saw Jesus, never had Jesus come and appear to me and talk to me, but I know many people, some in our church, but I know many people, predominantly ministers, many, many people that I know, I know their character, I know they're not some flaky person. I know many people that have seen the Lord, that the Lord has shown them things, and I mean that they've had visitations from God. Kenneth Hagin was one of those men who had visitations from God. Well, I mean, throughout the New Testament, you've got people like Paul. He wasn't even one of the original 12. He had visitations from God. Even Ananias, a disciple, wasn't even a minister. He had a visitation. Kenneth Hagin had visitations from God. My spiritual father is now in heaven. Dr. Ed Dufresne, he had visitations from God. Randall Greer was mentored. He's a prophet, he's a recognized prophet in the body of Christ. Brother Randy, if you're watching, God bless you, we love you. I don't know if he is, but if he is, praise the Lord. He's a man of God, and he had a visitation from the Lord, and I haven't talked to him about it, but he mentioned that he didn't go into great detail about the specifics of the visitation because that is not important. But when I read this, it bore witness to me. Now, I'm not gonna read everything he posted because he posted a story of Kenneth Hagin as an example, and then what the Lord showed him. So I wanna read this to you. He said, Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, has permitted or allowed this shaking in the natural and spiritual world. He permitted it to get the world's and church's attention because he is coming soon, and the world is not ready to meet him. And very many in the church are not ready to meet him. The world in our era has never experienced something like this. It's a warning and a wake-up call to the world to get saved and for the church to turn to the Lord and get into his perfect will. How do I know this? He came to me and told me so. You may not believe it, but one day you will find out that what I've said is the absolute truth from heaven. We've got ourselves into this mess. In other words, we, the church, are to blame. And I'm not talking about just our church. I'm talking about the body of Christ for not doing the right thing, not exercising our authority, allowing the devil into the degree we have in our country to continue on with all this ungodliness, abortion being just one issue, but being a huge issue because of all the innocent blood that's shed. He said, we can blame the secret society, Bill Gates, the deep state, and others that conspire for world domination. And there is truth in all those things, but we must hear Jesus. Jesus Christ permitted or allowed it, even though he is not the author of stealing, killing, and destroying. The natural financial world has been shaken to its core and totters on the edge of disaster, forcing us to turn to God for his help. He has allowed us to be thrown out of the church because many churches have become entertainment centers, social clubs, restaurants and cafes, and motivational centers filled with psychological theory and supposition. Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, or the move of God, was thrown out and the world was invited in. The auditorium of many churches has the atmosphere of a worldly nightclub. I mean, you got flashing lights and smoke machines. It's more, it's, well, I'm gonna just keep reading. And the Lord does not like any of those things that I have mentioned among others. Reverence, respect, and the fear of God has all been but lost. Obeying the Bible and not living in sin is not preached from the pulpit. We got a lot of Christians shacking up. We got Christians getting abortions. We got Christians drinking. We got Christians doing drugs. We got Christians not going to church, not serving God, not being faithful, and I'm a Christian. Now, I added that. He didn't say that. That was what I said. So reverence, respect, and fear of God has all but been lost. Obeying the Bible, not living in sin is not preached from the pulpit, not very many. Many of those called to preach the gospel wouldn't know the Holy Ghost if he came walking down the aisle wearing a purple cape with a red hat on. People have been rocked to sleep by their sin and many in the clergy are not ready to meet the Lord at his appearing. Let me just tell you something. If you've ever wondered why Christians die early, if you ever wondered why preachers don't live their full life out, I'm not saying they were a bad person. I'm not saying they were a big sinner. When you get out of the plan of God, you open yourself up to the devil. It's not like God's coming to get you. God's not using the devil to be the hit man. God's not saying, well, I'm a good guy, so I won't do it, but I'm gonna have the devil go and he's gonna come knocking on your door to collect. The Bible says resist the devil and he will flee from you. But if you don't resist the devil, if you yield to the devil, then he will come in and take advantage of you. The Bible says neither give place to the devil, written to believers. We're not supposed to give place. It's the Greek word topos. We get the word topography. Don't give him any space. Don't give him any ground. Don't give him any territory. Don't give him an inch. But see, by our sin and disobedience, and we can say, well, you know, pastor, you know, we're busy. Something has changed since I became a Christian. We used to go to church. We'd go to Sunday school. We would go to church. We would go to Sunday night. We go to Wednesday night. We might have a youth meeting. We might have a get-together on Friday. There would be choir practice. I mean, people were in church two, three, four times a week all the time. And now the average Christian goes two or three times a week. I mean, two or three times a month. And some Christians, some of you watching me, you don't go at all. You think, well, you know, God knows. You know what? You need to repent. You can't be a good Christian and not go into church. You need a church somewhere. You don't have to come here. You have to have a church. Where are you going to pay your tithes? Where are you going to serve? Who are you going to be in fellowship with? The church in America is backslidden because we got a bunch of wimpy preachers that are not preaching the truth. They're preaching a feel-good message only. I mean, hey, I don't mind feeling good. I like feeling good. But we've got to put God first. We got to seek first the kingdom of God, not seek first what we want to do. I'm tired of hearing excuses from Christians, even some in our own church. We don't have time. Don't get a job if you got to work on Sundays all the time or you got to work on, you know, and miss church all the time. You know, if you were, if your kids are in sports, it's amazing how parents, parents will put their kids in sports to take them away from church. They're traveling. They're doing all these things. And then they wonder when their kid turns away from God when they go to college. They say, I don't understand. You know, we went to church. You put all your emphasis on education and sports and the way you lived your life is your kids saw it and they don't want anything to do with it. It doesn't mean you're not even a real Christian. It maybe means you're a baxter and you're living a carnal halfway, half in, half out life. Boy, this is a happy Christmas, happy Easter message here. Let me see if I can finish reading this. People have been rocked to sleep in their sin by many in the clergy and are not ready to meet the Lord at his appearing. Now, I'm not saying that every Christian or minister is in disobedience, but most are out of the perfect will of God. And you know what? I've said that for years. I believe it that most Christians and most or many preachers are out of the perfect will of God. You can be living a good life going to church and still be out of perfect will of God. How do you mean? How do I know? You have to spend time with God praying and asking God for his plan for your life. And then you have to follow that plan. If you don't ever spend time praying, you won't hear the specific plan and you will be by default out of the perfect will of God open to the attacks of the enemy. Now, some of it is because some people don't want to be in the plan of God because they don't want to give up their life. So most are out of the perfect will of God and the Lord has allowed this to come upon us to get our attention. When is it going to end? Now, he doesn't say this, but you know, maybe until we get the message, maybe it won't end for a while. I'm wanting to end right away. I think I don't want to say it's much to do about nothing. It's a real scenario, but I think it's been overblown, but I believe that God has allowed it to wake us up to not just continue on. Many people have more time than you've ever had before, but I seriously doubt that people are reading their Bibles more and praying more and spending more time with God with all that extra time. They might be cleaning their house more, organizing their house more, doing other things, relaxing more, watching more movies. And then we think, well, how could this happen? How could a good God let this happen? That is a pompous attitude. Pride is one of the worst sins. If the world and especially the church fails to spiritually discern and interpret what is going on, we will not learn from this. We will return to the church when we are allowed with smugness and defiance, yelling that the government will never throw us out again. And if we do, we will have never truly discerned what is going on right now. It is a natural and spiritual correction permitted by the Lord Jesus Christ. I will stake my life and ministry on it. So what do we do? It's a good question. Press the reset button in our lives. Return to the Lord and he will return to you. Return to what many called old-fashioned and outdated and get down on your knees with weeping, repenting, and fasting. Ask him what he wants you to do and the changes he wants you to make. And I guarantee those changes he wants all of us to make. I don't think you're perfect. I'm sure there's something in your life that you need to repent of and get right. It says, then do what he tells you. Get the social clubs, the human reasoning out of the church and preach, thus saith the Lord. Make a decision not to do anything unless the Holy Ghost says to. Yield to him and let him lead the church, not man. If the church fails to repent and turn to God, remember the scripture we read, 2nd Chronicles? If my people who are called by my name, we don't just say, well, Lord, please take it away. No, we got to seek God. We've got to pray. We've got to humble ourselves. We've got to turn from our wicked ways. But if the church fails to repent and turn to God, and this time you haven't seen anything like is headed our way from the devil. It says, now I'm not going to go under. Now church, let me let me. I don't want to take the pressure off, but let me give you some good news. He says, I'm not going under and I'm not afraid because me and mine will serve the Lord and will prosper while all this is going on. If you are following God. We are we are forgiven. We're the healed. We have authority over sickness and disease. God is our provider. I don't care if you're out of work or not. If you've been faithful to God and you're a believer, God wants to take care of us and he's taking care of us. One of the things that my wife and my wife and I believe and we're declaring is that our family and I pray for my, you know, my sisters, my mother and other relatives, but then our immediate family as well and our church family, even those who only come once a month. I don't have any faith for someone who doesn't come once a month. I'm sorry. You have to have your own faith, but I'm believing that anyone who is a part of this church that you are not going to get the coronavirus that you are not going to die that you are not going to go under that you're going to actually not just do okay, but you're going to do well supernaturally during all this, but I'm not I'm not speaking this to everyone watching because you may not be in that boat. You don't have to be a part of this church. If you're not part of a church somewhere, you're out of the will of God and say well, you know, well now now you have a good excuse because you can't go but I mean going to church will not make you a Christian but Christians need a pastor. Christians need to go to church. And if you don't go to church, you are just lazy. You don't want to go to church because when you want something you do it. If you want to go get food, you go out and get food. If you want some item and you have the money for it, you go and buy it. You know what? When you really want to get to church, you will get there. We got some people that now obviously they can't come now, but they come an hour an hour and a half now to come to church and they get here an hour early to serve and then other people live 15 minutes from a church and they can't even once or once a week, let alone several times a week or not even once a month get there and thinking well, you know, I really love God. Don't kid yourself. If you love God repent. The church fails to repent. It's going to get a lot worse, but we're not going under. We're going to prosper while all this is going on, but you will. It says you will to if you trust him in faith and it's what will make it you do not have to be afraid, but you need to repent. If you need to repent then do so. I've he said I goes on to say I've known this for some time and was not going to share it. But Jesus came and told me I had to and I felt when I read I'm thinking you know what this is not a friendly happy. Oh great message pastor kind of Easter message, but it needs to be shared. So God is with us. He's merciful and he's gracious to those who will call upon him. Now. Let me read to you a couple of verses from from the gospel of Luke. Let's go to Luke chapter 14 Luke 14. I hope you're getting something out of this. Now the one thing with with live streaming is people can turn you off fall asleep go. Oh brother roll their eyes and I can't see it. Hey I can see I can see that don't do that. Luke 14 said pastor, you know, this is kind of a hard message telling people they're backslidden if they don't go to church if they don't not reading their Bible and praying they're not really walking with God. I'm going to read to you something Jesus said and I want you to be brutally honest with yourself say does this describe my life? Here's what Jesus said in Luke chapter 14 beginning at verse. Well, we'll begin at verse 25. It says now great multitudes went with him and he turned and said to them now he wasn't turning and saying this just to the 12 what I'm about to read in verse 26. He said to the multitudes. So this is the this is the thing. I want you to listen to what I'm about to read what Jesus said and I want you to ask yourself the question does this describe my life if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother wife and children brothers and sisters. Yes in his own life. Also, he cannot be my disciple now. I've just lost some people because I think of what family first families everything got to take care of your own. That's a half-truth. What is Jesus Jesus is making a contrast here saying that if you're let me let me word it a little different way. If you are love your father your mother your wife your children your brothers your sisters and your own life more than you love me and advancing the kingdom you can't be my disciple and then it says in whoever not just the 12 not just ministers believers disciples disciplined students as a disciple, you know, if we gave tests like this like high school and college does most Christians would flunk we'd have to give an F or an incomplete says whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple say. Well, this is this is a serious thing. This is a commitment. It's not just saying Jesus forgive me my sins. Oh, I'm going to go out and get drunk. I'm going to go out and party. I'm going to go out and sleep around. I'm going to get involved with pornography. I'm going to just not give anything to the church. I'm not really going to go to church. I'm not going to serve in church, but I'm a good person. You're a sinner. You need to repent you need to you need to realize the severity of this and I can't I can't I can't make you only the Holy Spirit can open your heart to see that without Jesus all of us are in big trouble, but if we have given our lives to him surrender to him then even when we pick it back up again, and we will have always have opportunities even when you surrender at any point in time you can take it back and then you meet sometimes we all do that. We take it back and we say oh sorry Lord and now I got to give my life back to the Lord. I mean fully because I want to take control of my life and I don't want to do that or I don't want to do this. So I don't want someone telling me what to do. You can't be a good Christian without someone telling you what to do first off God tells you things to do and then God sends pastors not everyone. Thank God. You're not a pastor. God has pastors tell people things that they're supposed to do because the word says it say well, I'm going to just change the channel. Well, you're still out of the will of God. So verse 33 says so likewise whoever you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple. So are you a disciple of Jesus if people look at your life do they see you as a disciple of Jesus or are you just someone who I'm a Christian? Well, do you vote for Christian principles or do you vote for candidates that don't have Christian principles? See guys. This is why all this garbage is coming in our country. We've opened the door to the devil and the church now not all churches have to be on board and all believers will be on board, but we have to make a decision for us. I can't I can't make a decision for you only you can make a decision for you. Hallelujah. Now, let me read another verse here. I want to read something from the Gospel of John some very familiar passage here as we're getting ready to close John chapter 3 verse will start at verse 14 as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness when the when the plague when the serpents were biting people in the wilderness because they open the door to the devil. Moses went to the Lord and prayer and the Lord said this is what you do to stop the plague put a serpent on a pole and you lift it up and when the people look and focus on that they will be healed. So it says as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up that was on the cross that whoever believes in him. I think the Amplified says trust in it. Here's to relies upon not just like I believe in Jesus. That's called easy believism. Just like well, I prayed to pray Jesus forgive me my life, but I'm going to just do everything I want to do. I'm going to be uncommitted the church because I don't want anyone telling me what to do and I don't believe in organized religion. I just believe I can worship God by myself. Well, you obviously haven't read the Bible. Why and why would God give pastors and churches if you could if you didn't need anyone else. We all need other people. I need other people. We need my wife and I we go to meetings. We have a pastor we go and other people services. Why we need to besides feeding ourselves. We need to go and be fed. We need to sit under someone else's teaching. We need to be accountable to somebody else someone else speaking into our life. Everyone needs that all ministers need that. So whoever believes in him in Jesus should not perish but have eternal life for 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world. I know it might seem like that but that the world through him might be saved verse 18 says he who believes in him is not condemned. So you're saying you're perfect. Nope. I'm just forgiven he who believes in him is not condemned but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God and this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And I want to read one more scripture Mark Mark's Gospel Chapter 16 Mark 16. Can I get an amen Church Mark 16 verse 15 Jesus said to his disciples go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes in his baptized will be saved but he who does not believe will be condemned. King James Version says he who does not believe will be damned. There is a heaven to gain and a hell to shut and say why would God send somebody to hell? That's a good question. God does not send some people to hell people reject the free gift of salvation and choose hell when they reject Jesus hell was not prepared for man. It was prepared for the devil and his angels are rebelled against God, but anyone who follows Satan and yields to Satan will end up in hell regardless of their were the citizen of the year if they were the most philanthropic person, you know of giving away 80 or 90 percent of their goods for humanitarian causes without Jesus you will be in hell. Jesus is he God sent Jesus to suffer and die for us and he loved us so much. Imagine he had the power to call on angels to deliver him. He had to not only suffer the scourging but he had to willingly die as a substitute on the cross. It was so brutal so agonizing. He did it for us. So we don't have to go to hell. He paid the price. He we put him on that cross because of our sin and disobedience, but God loved us so much. He sent Jesus to be the sacrifice so that if we surrender and accept what he is offering. Is it a free gift in one sense? It's a free gift in another sense. It's going to cost us everything. But when you surrender to God, that's when you begin to live. It's like if you try to find your life you lose it. But when you lose your life, that's when you find it and I know it's just it's a scary thought for a lot of people to surrender to God because like oh God's going to ruin my life. You know what that the devil's putting that thought in your mind that your life begins when you surrender to Jesus say and God will put people in your life that you've seen their life and it's never too late. I don't care if you're away from God for 20 years. I don't care if you've been a really rotten Christian and the devil will try to tell you you can't you know, you can't be like those people. You know, you could never be like that. You just couldn't do it. You can't live that life. That's a lie from the pit of hell. Anyone can live the correct Christian life. Anyone can live the Christian life. Why because it's not in our strength. It's in his strength. We have to just we just have to make a decision to surrender. That's where the guys that's where the issue is. The issue is getting to a point where we realize we're in trouble without God and where we actually willingly surrender to his love to his grace. That's when things that's when things get good. That's when things begin. So that is a good ending place today is we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. He is alive. He is well. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church sickness and disease will not prevail against the church. I don't know about other churches. Some positive things may happen because of this any church that's not a legitimate Church might might not make it. They may not there. There's a lot of churches are already hurting financially. Well, you know if it's not a legitimate Church, we don't need it. We don't we want the real we don't want the phony, you know, but as Christians were serving God. We're following God mark my words. We're we're doing fine and we're going to do fine. I don't care how long it lasts. I'm not believing it's going to last a long time, but it doesn't matter how long things go on the way they been we come out on top because we are the victorious Church. We're not trying to be victorious. This is the victory that overcomes the world even our faith. We are overcomers. We're not unaware of what's out there, but we are we are above it. We are above it. So let's pray father in Jesus name Lord. I pray for everybody watching. I know many of the people watching our part of this church, but I know there are others relatives friends others maybe that are tuning in watching this or maybe even after the fact. They'll watch it father. I pray that not one person watching me will go to hell. I pray that not one person watching me today will miss the rapture and go through the tribulation. Lord, I pray that today would be a day of decision that today would be a day of salvation today would be a day of surrender today would be a day of not just self-examination but of repentance from our selfishness and from dead works and we that we would turn to the true and living God. So father I pray for everyone watching right now. I speak blessing over them and I want to lead you in a simple prayer. We pray this often if you are ready if you believe that Jesus died that God sent Jesus to die for your sins that God the father raised him from the dead that he is alive and he is the Savior of the world and that forgiveness only comes through him and through his shed blood and you are ready to surrender not just a prayer prayer. You are ready to give your life to Jesus and say Jesus forgive me of my sin forgive me of my wickedness forgive me of my selfishness forgive me of my lame excuses. I surrender today's pray that first day Jesus I surrender today. I give you my life. I give you my heart take my life make something out of it. Forgive me cleanse me. Give me a new start. I repent of my wickedness. I repent of my sins and I receive your love. I receive your forgiveness. I receive your cleansing. I receive your life. Thank you so much father. Thank you Jesus. Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your forgiveness. I will serve you all the days of my life. If you prayed that prayer, please let us know text us. Email us call the church office. There's all these different ways. You can get a hold of us. Let us know you need to let people when you give your life to Jesus. Don't just keep it a secret. You didn't tell people say call your best friend up say hey guess what? I gave my life to Jesus today. Oh, I thought you were a Christian. Well, I really wasn't I gave my life to Jesus. Well, I was I was backslidden. I gave my life to tell people about it. It'll help you live for God. The more you tell people the more than more of an overcome you'll be see you're afraid to tell people you're already defeated. Amen where we love you. Anything else we need to say we love you all. We look forward to seeing you again. We are endeavoring. I guess we could have done it today. The weather is so unpredictable. We are going to endeavor next week to do a drive-in service. I know the weather is saying rain. We may will will get you the word out. We may wait till early Sunday morning to call it because it's so unpredictable, but we want to have a drive-in service. But if we do it will be come as you are but stay in your car. So anyway, we'll talk to you more about that later. We'll get some word out. Thank you for watching. We love you all. God bless you.