March 12, 2011
-
Enemies of Faith and Victory through faith part 1 by Pastor Don Moore
Notes from Pastor Don Moore’s sermon preached 2/29/2010
This is the transcript used on TBN presentation, I slightly edited it for readability. What is in [brackets] is what the congregation responded to Pastor Don.
SAY AMEN
SHOW 144
Enemies of Faith & Victory Through Faith Part 1
2/29/2010Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. We’re so glad to see your smiling faces today in the house of the Lord. And we just want to greet you and we want to greet the people in TV Land and Radio Land. And our God is still on the throne and He’s working great miracles. Today’s Bible study is for my wife, who grilled me with questions yesterday and the day before. And, I decided, well, if she wants the answer to these, it would probably benefit you as well. So you are permitted to listen to my wife’s Bible study as we look at the Enemies of Faith and the Victory Through Faith.
There are many things that present obstacles to faith and if we’re going to fight the good fight of faith, if we’re going to live the life of faith, these enemies and obstacles must be understood in order to be overcome. And what better place to go to understand than the Bible? In the Bible, we have people’s testimonies of faith, but more importantly, we have the Lord God, Himself, responding when their faith failed. And responding when their faith was successful, telling them exactly what they did that made it work or telling them why it didn’t work. [amen]
So what I have done is I’ve gone through the scriptures, I’ve pulled out all of the examples of miracles, signs, and wonders, that the Lord did in his time on earth. This may end up being a two-parter, but I’m going to get through this Bible Study. I want you to take notes, I want you to know that today this study was especially for you. It is especially for you and for those of you that are listening and watching, I’m going to make it as clear as I can, cause we tend to think that things are deep and complicated. No, it’s just that we are human and we don’t have all the answers. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not that smart. But I know Who does [amen] have all the answers. So, will you walk with me through the scriptures as we look at the enemies of faith, but also the victory of faith?
The first thing that is required to have your faith work is humility. Can you say, “Humility?” [humility] You must have humility. You are not God. Therefore, if it doesn’t work, if God says, “Faith works.” And you are in a situation where your faith doesn’t work, be humble enough to be teachable, because God did not make a mistake. If you prayed for it, thought you were in faith, asked for it, and it didn’t happen, it is required that you be humble in order that God can teach you. Prideful people are not teachable people. Arrogant people are not teachable. But the humble person can receive correction and thereby improve.
And that’s why we take, that’s why when I’m in the pulpit, I say, “I don’t have all the answers. I’m only human. I make mistakes.” I say all of that so that you can receive this information from me. For if I stood up here in total arrogance, even you know, and there’s a difference between arrogance and confidence isn’t there? [yes] And so we must remain humble of heart, that if what we think should work, the way we think it works, maybe we should open the glove compartment and look at the operator’s manual. [amen] And we’ve all been in that situation.
All of us have gotten a car, we don’t familiar with, and we thought the radio worked one way, and we messed around with it and couldn’t get the station we wanted, then out of desperation, we finally open the glove compartment box and pulled out the operator’s manual and read in the table of contents, “radio”, went there, and then figured out, oh, this is one of those pre-set jobbies, where I have to pre-set the stations or I’m not going to get radio. Anybody had that experience? I have it every time I get a new car. I get it every time I put in something for my wife, a new microwave, or refrigerator, or something. You have to know what makes it work. Now, we’re going to take the first enemy of faith.
The first enemy of faith. We’re going to go to the book of Luke, Chapter 12. Book of Luke, Chapter, what? [12] The Book of Luke Chapter 12… I just love days like this because I sincerely believe it is the will of the Lord for some people. God told some people, “Get to church today,” and they didn’t go. Told other people turn on the TV, and they didn’t do it. And that means that it wasn’t for them. They will remain in their ignorance, while you are the intelligent ones who will get the food. You’ll stay humble and get the food. In Luke, Chapter 12. Luke Chapter 12, hallelujah. In verse 22, it gives us the first enemy for your faith. DO NOT WORRY… Jesus said to who? [His disciples] ”…His Disciples….”
How many of you want to be a disciple? To be a disciple means a follower of Christ, a student of the Word. ”….I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat;…” Nor what you will wear for your body, what you will put it on. Life is more than food, your body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, and He goes on and on. Then He gets over to verse 29. Verse 29. Are you ready? [yes] ”And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink...” Let’s read it together. ”nor have an anxious mind.“… Do not have an anxious mind… That means a mind that is bouncing off the walls, looking for something to worry and be concerned about. Don’t be anxious. Don’t anticipate with negativity. Anxious is to anticipate with negativity. Well, what do I do if… What will I do when? What? An anxious mind. So write it down. An enemy of faith is an anxious mind. Everybody got that?
Now, we want to go to Matthew, Chapter 6. We want to study the Bible. Matthew, Chapter 6… Matthew 6, verse 30. Watch the way He expresses it. ”Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”… You of little faith.
Now many of you have been here when I have taught you that mustard seed faith is very specific. A mustard seed cannot be cross germinated with any other plant. A mustard seed, though it is very small, grows to be a very large bush. And in that bush, it says that the birds come and they can find shelter and so forth. Your faith is not, now watch me carefully. Your faith is not quantitative, this way. Your faith is qualitative.
You may have faith for one thing, and not have faith for another. So, having little faith means, let me get right down to it. Having little faith means you have faith for salvation, that you are born again. But you can’t seem to believe anything else…. You can believe that God could save you, get you to Heaven, but you can’t believe that God can save you on the earth. You’ll believe that when you die, you’ll go to Heaven, but you don’t believe that God can keep you from dying, from the disease that is in your body. O ye of little faith. You can believe God for a job, but you can’t believe God for a car… O ye of little faith doesn’t mean you need big faith. It means you need faith specific to the circumstance you are facing at that time. Do you have faith to believe “X”. Do you have enough faith to believe that your daughter is going to be ok?… Do you have enough faith to believe that she’s going to be ok, that you raised her properly, there’s some good right and wrong in her, you have faith for that. Specific to the circumstance.
So, being anxious prevents us or stops us from following through and what does He say here? Verse 32. ”For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” Come on, let’s read it together. ”But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Then He says, “Therefore, do not worry…”
The problem is, that when we think of that verse, here’s the problem. Many people will read that verse and not have faith to believe that God said it and therefore it’s so. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything will follow. And they go, “I don’t believe that.” … And we go, “Did God say seek you first?” If I go after the Kingdom of God, did He say, He’s going to take care of me? Did He say that all the pieces of my puzzle are going to come together? Do I believe that or not believe that?… Enemies of faith. Worry and being anxious. But to receive the benefit of faith, you must believe God… You have to believe God. And you can’t believe just the parts you like… [come on now] You’ve got to believe all of Sovereign God’s Word.
He said, seek first the Kingdom and everything else’ll come. He didn’t say, come to me and ask for anything you want, and you’ve got it… Some people don’t get healed because they won’t be a good testimony… They will not seek first the Kingdom of God, so God says, “If I heal you, who’s going to get the credit?” … And He says He will not share the glory with anybody else. So you may have to get a medical healing, rather than a spiritual healing… I told you, today’s going to be good for you. [yeah, laughter] Moving right along.
Enemies of faith. Let’s look at another one. Luke Chapter, what are we in now? We’re in Matthew. Right? Let’s do Matthew 16. Matthew 16. Just remind me to go back to Luke, OK. Matthew 16… You there yet? [yes] In Matthew, Chapter 16, the Lord is having a verbal reasoning battle with the Pharisees and Scribes. The Pharisees and Scribes are the teachers of the Law and the Sadducees kind of keep the written scripture going… But they have theological differences. The Sadducees tend not to believe in anything really supernatural, they don’t believe in angels. They don’t believe in ghosts. They don’t believe in the supernatural aspect. And the Pharisees are more literalists. They believe kinda what the Bible says. But they have their own twist to it because they reason in their minds. So, let’s see what happens here.
So, Jesus says then, in Verse 3. “…It will be foul weather today, for the sky is read and threatening. Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern...” Look at this. ”…the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah…” In this case He’s talking about the sign that will be given will be three days he’ll be in the grave, and then he’ll rise again from the dead. Then we go on, and we say, well what is the problem that Jesus has with these Pharisees and all? In verse 5, He says, “Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven...” Now remember, leaven is a yeast agent that gets, it’s in the air, but it’s particularly in yeast. And when you leaven the bread, put the yeast in it, it cause it to rise. Everybody got that?
So, He’s saying, there is something that the Pharisees and Scribes do that causes sin, doubt and bad faith, in other words, unbelief, to rise in them. It is an enemy that kills faith. Everybody say, “It’s an enemy that kills faith.” [it's an enemy that kills faith.] Would you like to now what it is? [yes] The first one was, what? [worry] Worry. The first one was worry, having an anxious mind. The second one here, watch this. This is very powerful. And Jesus says, “And they reasoned among themselves,…” Circle reasoned. [right] Put an underline on it. ”…saying, “It is because we have taken no bread.” But, Jesus, being aware of it…” Meaning, being aware that they’re reasoning and reasoning wrong, He says, “…O you of little faith,…” What has killed their faith? He says, “…why do you reason…” Underline it again. ”…among yourselves because you have brought no bread?” Then He hits them again. ”Do you not yet understand,…” And look at verse 11, He says, “How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? –but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees ….” Verse 12. Look it, He tells it again. And, “...they understood...” They finally got something. ”...He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees…” and scribes.
So, what is this other enemy? This other enemy is your own carnal reasoning and your own personal doctrine… Stay humble now. Stay humble. A lot of the things that you think are true are false. A lot of the things you had reasoned in your head as to how you think God works are phony reasoning, bad, bad theology. Bad doctrine. But, because it’s yours, you think it’s good. [amen] And so you reason through your life. You reason through solving things.
You ever walk into a room and decide somebody didn’t like you? Only to find out that they don’t even know you. And they don’t even care about liking you or not liking you. Cause they don’t even know you. But you put together a reasoning plot between your ears. And so Jesus is saying, the Pharisees and Scribes have reasoned through all of these processes as to how they think God should work. How God should operate. How God should heal. But the reality of the situation was, they have established doctrine based on their intellect and it’s all wrong… They’ve reasoned wrong.
And Jesus says, it is a leavening agent that will rise up and kill your faith… Can I give you a brainstorm? [yes] Can I? [yes] If you can figure out God, why ain’t you God? [that's right] … You ain’t God.
You can’t even figure out what screw goes in what unless you look at the instructions. [laughter] I remember buying an aluminum shed and I’m going to put this aluminum shed together. And I got all the parts, laid them on the ground and said, “I can do this.” So I’m just screwing things together, I was just putting them together, and then at the end, I got the frame up, I got the outside up, and it’s all together. And then it said, if you want it to hold together, you must first, before you do anything, put in this center support beam. Now, my shed looked pretty good without the center support beam. [laughter] But the way it was designed if you don’t put those screws in first, there is no way to finish the rest of the structure…[well] I reasoned in my mind. I’m trying to help you all.
You cannot get to a problem, medical, physical, financial, and reason your way through it when you need supernatural help from God. [amen] I’m sitting there with the banker. The banker came to my house, a Christian man, and I was so, we were so far in debt and he said, “This will never fly.” He said, “We cannot refinance your house, there’s no way we can do this. I can’t help you get out of debt. No way.” The banker said to me, “Why don’t we pray.” … [amen] The banker… said, “Don, why don’t we pray.” I said, “I’m good with that. Let’s pray.” You know, God, in two days later, gave me a God idea that I never would have thought of, that the way to get out of debt was to build my wife a new and bigger and better house…. I never would, I never would have come up with that. I couldn’t afford the house we were in, and God gave me a God idea to build a bigger and better house. I called the banker back, and he says, “You won’t believe this.” He said that $35,000 you owe on that bulldozer, didn’t show up on your credit report, and the bank will write you a loan. But your, watch this, but the loan amount you’re asking for is too small… I said, “How about a big and new house?” He said, “That’ll work.” [wow]
But we reason and we eliminate faith. We take God out of the mix. Jesus is saying, that the enemy and we just have to be humble. Come on, say, “I’m humble.” [I'm humble] The reasoning of your mind is an enemy to faith. Okay? [yep]
Let’s move on to another one. Now in this one, in Matthew, in Matthew 16, I want you to notice that He says that they’re looking for a sign… Now this is just a little side journey but it will help somebody. When you’re looking for a sign, and your attitude is God owes me a sign, [hmmmm] I will believe You, God, if You da da da dah. God if you will da da da dah, then I’ll serve You. I’ll believe You. I’ll know that You’re in this. I know You’ll rescue me if You give me a sign. Well, here’s what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying, “Wait a minute, if you’re looking for a sign, God’s not going to give you a sign. But what you need to do is look at all the signs around you. Look at all the things that He has done. Look at all the signs that He has provided already. If you will look at what He has already done, you don’t need a personal sign, for a personal sign is a demonstration of your lack of faith. [that's right] … Don’t pray with people, “I’m going to pray and God’s going to do a sign for you.” [laughter] It says, God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek diligently seek Him… He’s going to reward those who are after Him. Not those who are after a sign…
You know, I had somebody say, pray for a healing, and she kept saying to me, “But the,” you know, “but the, the mark on my skin is still there.” And I said, “Well, wait a minute now. Didn’t we pray against the disease?” ”Yeah. But, you know, I can’t believe I’m healed as long as I have this thing here.” And I said, “Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Healing is a process. If you can believe that you’re healed of it, what’s going to happen to that?” ”Well it should go away now.” … “No. No. The manifestation is that you’re healed from the disease, and then all of the signs or the leftover manifestations will eventually, in time, come.” … [right] You’re struggling with that.
See, we’re so busy waiting for the manifestation that we forget that the manifestation is there as a result of something that is greater than what is being manifest. [yes] What is being manifest is not the greater thing, the thing that caused the manifestation is the greater thing. Therefore, our faith removes the cause, and then, guess what, we don’t care that that’s there. We go on and live our life and do what we have to do, knowing full well that’s inconsequential and that it’ll be gone. And if we do it that way, guess what? We look down there a couple of days later and totally gone. [amen, yep]… [laughter] …
But as long as you are sight controlled, let’s look at that. I got one in here, go to Mark, Chapter 9…. Sight control. Ok, so your reasoning is an enemy of faith. Your worrying and being anxious of mind is an enemy of faith. But watch this one. Your seeing can become an enemy of faith. You can see things through a positive or you can see it through a negative. If you will see things in the negative, guess what? You have an enemy of faith. [correct] Alright? Now, let’s see, in Mark Chapter 9 what’s going on here? What’s going on here? In the 14th verse. He’s with the disciples, the great multitude, and “Immediately, when they saw Him, all the people were greatly amazed...”They ran to greet Him and so forth. And Jesus asked, “What’s going on? What are they talking about?” One of the crowd said, “…Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” …
Well, is that the truth? [no] No, that’s not the truth… Something happened. What does this demon do when he takes power over this boy? [he puts on a show] He puts on a show. He throws him down, foams at the mouth, and whatever, whatever… What did the disciples do when they saw it? When they saw it, they says, “Ah, we couldn’t do it.” We go, “It didn’t work. We couldn’t do it.” They saw it through a negative eye of failure. In other words, we see a manifestation here, we see something in operation. That means it didn’t work… Was that what Jesus does?
Let’s see what Jesus does. You all ready? [yes] Can you handle this? [yes] I can handle it. I can handle it. Let’s see what Jesus does. In verse 19, Jesus says, watch this. ”…O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me. Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him,…” Meaning, when the spirit saw Jesus, “…immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.” Let me ask you a question. Is Jesus upset that the demon is demonstrating? Well obviously not. Cause he goes on and has a conversation with the father. So He stood there while the boy is wallowing and foaming at the mouth, doing his thing on the floor.
Jesus in verse 21 says, “Oh guess what, how long has he been like that?” [laughter] He says, “I see a show going on here, how long has he been like that?” And the father says, “He’s been like that since childhood.” But the father’s probably doing this. The boy’s laying over here and Jesus is here. And Jesus says, “Oh, how long he’s been like that?” And the father’s going, “He’s been like that since childhood.” And what are the apostles doing? They’re going, “Oh, it didn’t work, it didn’t work again, Oh! It didn’t work, it didn’t work.” Looking with negative eyes. [that's right]
Had somebody this week tell me, “But Pastor Don, I still have the symptoms.” And I said, “So what.” [that's right] ”By faith we’re believing you don’t have the sickness, who cares if you still have the symptoms? What does that have to do with anything?” The boy is wallowing on the ground, and Jesus is going, “Yeah, he’s been like that since childhood.” Now, you say, Jesus is God, how didn’t He know? Well no, Jesus is the Son of Man and also He is also operating as a man and at that point in time He has to rely on information from the Holy Spirit or information from the father so that he knows what type of demon He’s dealing with. And the type of demon He’s dealing with here is this epileptic type of demon, which is one of the harder ones to get out, and Jesus knows it’s one of the harder ones to get out. Because why? He got the information from the father. But what else does He know? He knows that this is a bully spirit. [that's right] The sucker’s a bully. And it’s taken advantage of the child, watch me carefully. Taken advantage of the child cause he’s young but also taking advantage of the parents because they are ignorant. [that's right] They saw a symptom and panicked and said, “Oh, our kid is possessed forever. Our kid has got this disease forever. we’re lost.” They did not know, that the demon was in there going, “Can I stay?”
*****
I hope this sermon blesses you. Sometimes I think it is good to do a faith check, to find out what is challenging our faith in God.
Have a blessed day.
Heather
