"Galatians Round-Up" By Brother Parrish Lee October 27th,
2013
Wow,
wow, wow! If I have
earned one thing during
this time of sanctification, it is that it ain’t about me. I have been trying to
sanctify myself, and
God has just opened up the doors to say, “This is what it’s about. This is what
sanctification is all
about. It’s
including other
people.” It’s
giving the bread that He
gives unto us to others. I
just had to
say that.
Giving honor to God, who is the Head
of my life, our Maker, our Creator, our Owner, our Savior, our Rock,
our Sword,
our Shied, our High Tower, our Way when there is no way, our Bridge
over
troubled waters, our Sun when it’s dark out, our Lord, and our Redeemer. Giving honor to that God. Giving honor to all those
in this ministry
who have gone before myself: Our
founding
pastor and his family, our bishop and his family, Pastor Wilson,
Brother
Kenneth, giving honor to all of those who have paved the way, and
giving honor
to all of you who are here in attendance today.
It’s not going to be a long message
today, because everybody used up all the time.
But, it would behoove us to be diligent about what
the Lord has brought
us. Galatians
5:1 Stand
fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us
free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
If you could just
bow your heads for a moment: Lord,
look
at what great things You have done for our people.
God, You inhabit praises; You answer
requests, and when we bring our needs before You, You are an
everlasting help
in a time of need. So,
therefore, we ask
unto You, our great God, that You would look upon us; that you would
grant all
the petitions that we have asked, and, Lord, when Your will is
different from
what we desire, please give us the understanding and the faith and the
strength
to walk in Your ways. To
know that You
are our provider, that You know so much better than we do ourselves. That Your ways are so far
above ours as the
Heavens are above the Earth itself.
God,
we just want to love You and to praise You, to be in Your presence, to
be in
Your will. On that
day when Your trumpet
sounds, we want to be in Your glory.
We
pray, and submit all this in Jesus’ name, and everyone said, amen.
It’s not going to
be a long message today, because, truly, the message has already been
preached. It’s been
preached in the last
two month, and in all the testimonies.
Brother
Kirk, talking about
So, as we know,
as a congregation, we have had the privilege of going through the Book
of Galatians. I
pray that it has been a wonderful time,
this time of sanctification. Setting
things
aide, taking things apart, and just being focused for a little while. You know, when you do it
as a congregation,
every time it’s different. It
becomes
new; it becomes, “We should have done this, and we should have done
that. Well, we
could have done this, and we could
have done that. We
would have done this
and we would have done that.” The
fact
of the matter is, we present ourselves to Almighty God; turn it over to
Him! When he drives
the car, when He
drives the bus, you just don’t know—you think it has wheels, when it
actually
has wings. You
think you’re going forward,
when you’re actually going up, being able to trust Him with that.
In this time of sanctification,
going over the Book of Galatians, our earnest prayer is that we have
benefitted
from this; that we all have had an opportunity to grow, and have all
been strengthened
by this time. As we
look, we see that so
many things are there for us.
You know, Apostle Paul, when he went
through Galatia, in what is modern-day Turkey, he encountered many
things with
this new body of believers—first
generation Christians, and, yeah, some of them were getting to be
second-generation Christians, but it was very new, this Christianity,
this
living for Christ. The
Jewish Gospel,
that had been taught to them, it was beautiful, but it did not bring
them into
salvation—it brought them unto, not
into Christ.
So, when this Gospel of the Lord had come and
brought them into Christ, there
were
many new things, and Paul had to share with them; he had to help
because they
had to be taught. We
saw, in chapter
one, right off the bat, he said, “I marvel that you are so soon removed…
Which is not another;
but there be some that…
would
pervert the Gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1:6-7) And,
you know, that didn’t have to have a date
on that, because the fact of the matter is, the Gospel that we believe,
that we
live for every day, there are things all around us that desire to puck
it out,
pull it out, water it down, to move it to some other place. Let’s not make it number
1, let’s make it
number 2, and, if we can make it number 2, then I know we can make it
number
10, and, if we can make it number 10, then I know that we can put it on
a shelf
and not have you worry about it. That
Gospel, he said, “I marvel that you could be so soon removed from it.” He went on and he talked
about—in the first
part, he wanted to give thanks for those that were with him (Galatians
1:2). He was
emphasizing that he doesn’t do this
alone. He’s not the
big Apostle Paul
over everyone and he lords down upon them, no.
“I work with people; they encourage me and I
encourage them. I
want to thank them for being men and
women…” Yes, men
and women travelled
with him, and nobody was looking to be the big cheese.
Nobody was looking for their own glory and to
have their own wings shine a little brighter than everybody else’s;
they were
concerned about the Gospel. That’s
the
message that we want to present; that’s what we want everybody to
receive—I
know for a fact that I’ve learned that intensely.
I pray that I can live before the Lord that
way; that I can live before the Lord in a way of humility.
We see, in
another place, that there are times when a brother or a sister might be
overtaken in a fault, and he gave us directive on that.
He said, “Ye which are spiritual, restore
such a one in the spirit of meekness…lest thou also be tempted.”
(Galatians
6:1) If you want to
put a little mark by
that one, you could say, today it was them, but tomorrow, it could be
you, it
could be us. I’ll
be honest, because I’m
not perfect, and I’m going to want my brothers and sisters sharing with
me in a
spirit of meekness. I
don’t want them
coming to me with one of those slap-paddles, whacking me, saying, “Man,
I been
waiting a long time for this!” I
want
the presence to come to me in such a way that I can receive it and I
can turn
around and I can thank my brothers and sisters and I can go before the
Lord and
I can say, “Lord, I am sorry.”
We also see where
Apostle Paul said that having culture is good.
There is nothing wrong with having culture, but your
culture is not what
you put your faith in. Your
faith is
what you put before God to come and to be saved; your faith in His Word
and in
his Spirit.
We also saw, in
the end of chapter 2, that we are crucified with Christ, and,
nevertheless, we
live. Yet, not I,
but the Lord Jesus
lives in us (Galatians 2:20). How
awesome that is, that the Lord Jesus Christ lives in us. He lives in us. Do you know that? Do you know that the
Lord—you can see Him—He
lives in you.
Isn’t that awesome?
Say that with me.
The Lord lives in me.
Ooh. Isn’t that marvelous?
One more time. The Lord lives in me. Galatians
2:20
I
am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live
by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Amen, amen. So
we have learned that, yeah, I am crucified
with the Lord, and that’s not a life of drudgery and misery and things
are just
breaking down and being dressed all in white staying in a room the
while rest
of your life—no, it’s a whole life in God!
Nevertheless, I live.. Christ lives in me.
We have learned, as Brother Joe
shared, to stand fast in the liberty, in the liberty wherein Christ has
made us
free (Galatians 5:1). I
want to thank
Brother Tom Hanson, Brother Bob Heirtzler, and Brother Christ Ulrich
who have
led the charge and have been preaching these messages that we might be
reinvigorated,
that we might come unto a greater understanding of things that we’ve
known
already, that they might be rehearsed in us, that we could be stronger
in the
faith. Holding to
our theme for the
month, “And
Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for to
morrow the LORD
will do wonders among you.” (Joshua 3:5)
He will do wonders among you.
So, we learned to
stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and not to
be
entangled again in the yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1).
Standing fast means that when you get
delivered, stay delivered. We’ve
learned
that, no matter what has been put upon us in this life, no matter what
the
curse has been, before we were born, where we born, whatever the cure
might
have been yesterday, that our Lord and savior gathered all of
them—everything! Everything
that
somebody wants to put on you; everything that the devil has against
you, even
being in the nature of the flesh—our Lord went and took every single
one of
them, He took them up on the cross where they nailed them—they thought
they
were nailing His arms, but, in fact, He was stretching them wide in the
biggest
hug—as we know—that the world has ever known.
We call that a PDA.
I had the
chance to work the base with Brother Rod yesterday.
It was good for me.
Amen.
Getting around all those young people and feeling
that age gap, and
asking, “How can I be the man of God that God would have me to be to
invite and
to share and to be godly about it?
I
need to know!” Anyway,
we were on base,
and we
went to several different places, and one of the places that we went
was the
USO. When I was in
the service, you went
to the USO, and they had a room probably a quarter of this size, and
they had
one little tube TV and a bunch of chairs that weren’t soft, and they
might have
had a vending machine with a bag of potato chips in it.
When I was in the service, that’s what the
USO was. I went to
this place, and they
had lounge chairs, flat-screen TV’s, they had game consoles (X-boxes
and
Playstations), and they had several—most of them were sailors, I think
some of
them might have been Army, because they have several different uniforms
that
they wear now—We were up there, and we were walking from room to room,
and they
had the lighthouse room, and they had pool, and they had all kinds of
different
things—they even had a full-blown kitchen.
A full-blown kitchen!
Not a
vending machine, a kitchen! Good
gracious alive! We
went by one room, and
it was kind of dark, and they had the TV in there, and the lady that
was taking
us around looked in there, and she said, “Hey!
No PDA!” I
was like, is that a
personal digital assistant? I
said,
“What’s a PDA?” She
said, “Public
Display of Affection.” I
thought,
“Wow! No PDA!” That was there at the USO,
but the biggest
PDA that the world—not just the world, but life has ever known—was
outpoured
when he opened His arms wide and it went around the world, and it
didn’t just
stretch present-day around the world, it stretched all the way back to
Adam and
Eve, and all the way forward to the very last one who will say, “I give
my
heart, soul, and life to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
They will be saved also.
That’s how a PDA really goes.
A Public Display of affection, and it’s all
about Him.
We went through chapter 5, where it
talks about the works of the flesh, and the fruits of the Spirit. What kind of path, what
kind of thing, what
kind of reward it does for our soul; those works of the flesh, what
kind of
reward can we expect after them. The
fruits of the spirit, what you should see when you’re walking in the
Spirit of
the Lord.
Lastly, we saw, in chapter 6,
saints, we saw not to be weary in
well-doing. Not to
get to the place
where something will come along and say, “I’m tired.
I’m weary of a person, I’m weary of a situation,
I’m weary of a circumstance, I’m weary, I’m weary, I’m weary, I’m
weary.” Galatians
6:9 And
let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall
reap, if we faint not.
You may say, “Brother Parrish, we went
through six chapters, four different people up there talking about it. That’s a whole lot to
condense. You
didn’t even go over every single
verse. That’s a
whole lot to
condense. That’s a
whole lot to take
with me every place I go. What
are you
trying to say? It
can’t be done!” Amen.
The brother says, “Absolutely.”
The Lord said that He would send unto us the Holy
Ghost, Who would bring
all things to our remembrance (John 14:26).
We used to have hard drives for computers and stuff. If you wanted to store
your information—they’ve
got the portable ones, you know—but, it would get to the place where
they would
get filled up. You
put pictures, and
videos, and stuff on there, those hard drives would start to get filled
up. So they’ve got
something that they
call ‘the cloud.’ “Store
it in the
cloud.” No matter
how much room you
need, you’ve got plenty of room in the cloud.
Well, our brain is like a hard drive; it can store
only so much. The
Holy Ghost is better than any cloud, or
any thing that you want to bring up, because you don’t have to search
through
the Holy Ghost—He brings what you need to remembrance.
That’s probably where they got the model
from. Somebody must
have been saved and
thought that up. 2
Timothy 3:14-17
But
continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast
been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures,
which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is
in
Christ Jesus. All scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
in
righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished
unto all
good works.
You might think,
“When I was a baby, I didn’t know all this stuff.”
It’s not talking about being a child in the
flesh; it’s talking about being a child when we received the Holy Ghost
into
our lives when we took Him on and received the name of Jesus.
So we see here,
God wants us to be wise unto salvation.
He doesn’t want this salvation thing to be hit or
miss. He wants us
to be wise about our salvation. He
wants us to profit in His doctrine
He doesn’t just want that Word to just sit
out there; He wants it to be beneficial.
He wants us to gain in our spiritual life—in our
life, period. He
wants that we should be thoroughly
furnished unto all good works. You
know,
if you walk into a house, and, if it’s bare, you look in there, and you
can
say, “Well, it has potential, but there’s not a lot I can do, because
it’s not
furnished very well.” Well,
God looks at
out houses, and He says, “I’ll fill it up.
I’ll fill it up with My Spirit, My presence; I’ll
fill it up with My
Word. I’ll fill it
up with My love. This
man, this woman, wherever they go they
will be thoroughly furnished unto all good works, and they will have
Me.” That is God.
That’s our
sermon, that’s our message for today from the Book of Galatians. Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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