Slideshow image

Week One: KINGDOM OF GOD


I know that today is Fourth of July weekend. Happy Fourth!!! I was hesitant to even start this series today because I didn’t know how many of our people would be here because of vacations and those who are at Fat Daddies because we look for reasons to miss church. The reason I talk about that is not because I’m the “pastor”, well to be honest it has a part of it but not what you think. 
The size of the church has nothing to do with my success as a pastor. It may be my leadership or lack thereof.  It took me a long time to get here but it’s the truth. My success is based upon whether or not I’m leading you to Christ. That you are growing in your relationship with Him. 
So I speak about church attendance because I know that there is a direct connection to OUR relationship with Christ to our church attendance. I would say that those that have been faithful have grown. Would anyone like to stand up and testify? Not to how good I am but how good God is? 
More like a teaching than a preaching…
Why this subject? 
Here's where I'll start. If you've ever gone in to have an eye exam, they show you the chart on the wall and then they drop lenses in front of your eyes. And they ask this question, can you see? And the answer is no, no, no, until the right prescription drops before your eyes. And then you're suddenly overjoyed. Now I can finally see clearly. 
2 Corinthians 3:17-18 Passion Translation
Now, the “Lord” I’m referring to is the Holy Spirit, and wherever he is Lord, there is freedom.18 We can all draw close to him with the veil removed from our faces. And with no veil we all become like mirrors who brightly reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus. We are being transfigured into his very image as we move from one brighter level of glory to another. And this glorious transfiguration comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 
John 8:32 NKJV
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 
Passion Translation
For if you embrace the truth, it will release true freedom into your lives. 
I want you to be able to interpret current cultural realities and see behind them, the spiritual forces that are at work. Let me start by saying that we live in a day that is very much like the days of Elijah.  
But his day, like our day, was war on every front. 
Political war, sexual war, gender war, spiritual wars, parental wars, culture wars, educational wars. We live in an insane day. We're arguing over birthing people, pregnant people, people who can menstruate, gender pronouns. We've got males in female sports.  
All of a sudden mental health is a civil right. 
In addition, we're not allowed to have our children go to the bathroom without guarantee that there won't be some predator there who has gender dysphoria and confusion. We have drag shows for kids all the way down to babies.
Anytime a child is in a sexualized environment it's not entertainment, it's grooming. In addition, if you say anything about it, there is cancel culture where they come to de-platform you and crucify you. It comes under the umbrella of social justice, equity, systematic racism, patriarchy, and victimhood. 
Victims of nothing, I would add. In addition, they would say that since there is no visible leader, this is not a genuine movement, and since there is no visible teacher, there is no legitimate movement. And I would say there is clearly a leader, it's just not someone who is physical. Behind it all there is something powerfully at work in the spiritual realm of the unseen. That's why we call it being woke. 
Today's topic is New Days, Old Demons. 
The Bible doesn't just tell us what happened but what always happens and not what's just going on in the world that we see but going on behind that world in the world we don't see. The Apostle Paul says it this way in 
Ephesians 6:12 NKJV 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places
We are fighting. We're fighting for freedom. We're fighting for faith. We're fighting for family. We're fighting for future. 
We are not fighting against flesh and blood. It's not people that we hate. It's the principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places that are deceiving and using and enslaving and destroying those people. 
What is referred to as being woke is a demonic counterfeit of being born again. 
Jesus said this: 
John 3:3 New King James Version
3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
That means awakened by the spirit of God to our own sin. Being woke is the counterfeit of that. It's being awakened by demonic spirits so that you will understand that you are a good person and not a sinner and you don't need Jesus. You're your own savior. 
Let's begin as we set the stage for the story of Elijah. 
This is the backdrop for the days of Elijah. We'll start in I Kings 11. 
1 Kings 11:1-11 New King James Version
11 But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites— 2 from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, “You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. 3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not fully follow the Lord, as did his father David. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. 8 And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
9 So the Lord became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the Lordhad commanded. 11 Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. 


Solomon worshiped Ashtoreth and Molech.
 Ashtoreth was a female deity, Molech was a male. It was said that they had this horrific, lustful, disgusting relationship And they would encourage people to gather together at these quote-unquote churches that Solomon built.
 In our day if you had a strip club and a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic you put them together and would have called it “that church”. You worship and then you sacrifice the child because when you worship sex you murder children. 
That's exactly what Solomon did. God was so angry with him. 
And what God told him was, do not do this or there will be a tearing of the kingdom. And there was a tearing of the kingdom into the northern and southern kingdoms. Israel in the north, Judah in the south. They were torn north and south.
ON the surface it looks like Republican verses Democrat, Conservative vs. Liberal. It’s not left-right. It’s actually NORTH-SOUTH.
Are we going to invite heaven down or pull hell up? Because when it’s all said and done, there are only two cultures that matter, every other culture lives between those two. 
Matthew 6:10 New King James Version
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
So this is not about left and right, it is about good and evil. Mutilation of children is not a left-right issue, it’s a good vs evil issue. 
Truth vs lies….
Church opened or closed
Church free to worship or under gov’t restrictions…
Most Christians need to get out of the election paradigm and get into Kingdom mindset.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
Our culture is fractured, our politics are broken. People do not regard one another as human beings. We live in a day much like the days of Elijah. That sets the political, cultural, social, moral, spiritual backdrop. 
SO let’s begin…
Here is a principle for Elijah that is true for everything in the Bible, 
God Creates Satan Counterfeits.
Genesis 1:1 New King James Version
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Thessalonians 2:9-10 New Living Translation
9 This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. 10 He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them.
God creates Satan counterfeits. 
What you're gonna see in the storyline of Elijah, start reading 1 Kings 17. It could actually start at the end of 16, go all the way to 2 Kings 2. 
You're gonna see: 
•    the Holy Spirit versus the unholy spirits. 
•    truth versus lies. 
•    worship versus idolatry. 
•    God's kingdom versus Ahab's kingdom. 
•    prophet named Elijah against the 850 false prophets of Baal and Asherah. 
•    God versus government. 
There is always a conflict between God and government because God declares and decrees that He is the highest authority and that the only authority that government has is derivative from God. 
So it says in Romans 13, government gets its authority from God. What government wants to do is be the highest authority, remove and replace God. So what the government does in the story of Elijah, hear me in this, closes all the churches. And it sends forth false prophets to keep the churches closed. 
We talk about fake news and the biblical language for that would be false prophecy. 
A false prophet is one who says something will happen, causes a spirit of fear to come among a people, so that they give up their liberties and stop worshipping God, and what they are told is a lie and it doesn't come to pass. 
A few years ago, our government hired a bunch of false prophets to tell us that the end of the world was coming, unless we stopped going to church and stopped going to school and stopped going to work, unless we all surrendered our liberties and rights. A spirit of fear gripped planet earth. For the first time in the history of the world, the church of Jesus Christ was closed. 
Same things happening in the days of Elijah. All the churches were closed. 
And COVID-19 was a series of false prophecies that were promulgated by the government. If you're older, you have comorbidities, you're in a high-risk category, be safe. For the rest of us, we don't need cratered mental health, devastated churches, and historic death that we hand to our children and grandchildren, and increased government dependence. 
We need dependence on God, not government.
But what government tried to do through the false prophets was replace God with the authority of government. This is not political, this is Biblical, and what happens is the Bible steamrolls everything, because God has authority over all. 
The kingdom of God is the reign of God. 
The word for kingdom is taken from basileia, the word for king, and simply means "the reign of the king." It means all of the territory of His realm.
The king is God; His territory includes the whole cosmos. But the question of the ages is this: 
Is your life part of the territory of the reign of this King?
In Jesus, the plan of God is disclosed to us personally. In Jesus, our King has come. He is here.
Jesus came healing and teaching. When He cast out demons, He said, "But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Matthew 12:28). 
Every person healed, every demon cast out, every word spoken to sinners was an advancement of the kingdom of God in the world. On the cross, Jesus, the Son of God, shed His blood for His people — all of those who would ever trust in Him — and on the morning of the first day of the week, Jesus arose and the King inaugurated a resurrection that would extend to all of His people. At the ascension, our King ascended, and we are told that He ever lives to intercede for us.
If you pray "Your kingdom come," you are inviting the King, Jesus Christ, to move into your life and the lives of others and breathe His Holy Spirit into you and them.
You are praying for new life and eternal life. This is how this prayer is changing the world.