Hallelujah! Ah, Hallelujah!
If you would, if it's appropriate and agreeable, we do this often around here. If you could join hands with the person beside you, lay your hand upon their shoulder. We're going to join together as one, one body, and go boldly before the throne of grace and truth in prayer right now.
Come on, would you just begin to lift your voice and let the sound of prayer and fellowship with God fill this room right now? Hallelujah!
I'm praying right now that the Holy Ghost move upon you and touch you to the deepest part of your soul tonight. I pray that tonight every weight that you have come in here with would be released off of your life by the power of the name of Jesus and the authority in His name and in His blood.
I thank you, Lord Jesus, for the power of the Holy Ghost that is at work and moving in this room right now. Yeah, come on, that's good, that's good!
We're entreating the Lord; we're going before the King, the King of the universe. That's who we're going before tonight. We're laying ourselves at the feet of a King tonight, saying, "God, whatever you have for me, I want that. God, whatever you have in store for this city, we want that. God, whatever you have in store for this church, God, we want that."
So let your kingdom come and let your will be done on Earth as it is in Heavenly places. Jesus, bring to reality the realities in the throne room of God. Bring to the reality of men and women in this room the reality in Heavenly places over their life.
God, if there is healing that needs to take place tonight, we declare it be in their body as it is in Heavenly places. If there is deliverance tonight, it be in their life, their mind, their soul as it is in Heavenly places tonight.
Oh yes, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Mighty God! Mighty! [Applause]
God, if you're wondering what's going on in the room, we're just people who are radical for the Lord Jesus Christ. If you've never been in an environment like this, you probably would never second guess walking into a football stadium and then being loud.
Matter of fact, it would be weird if everybody was quiet. Just like that, where people celebrate what the team does on the field or on the court, our worship unto Jesus is not predicated upon what He does. It's not performance-based; it's predicated on what He did. It's predicated on who He is.
Before He ever heals my body, He's a Healer. He's already done it! Hey, He's a Savior of the soul! We praise Him if He never does another thing for us. We praise Him for the work that He did on the cross. That is more than enough for me to give Him praise, thanksgiving, and worship.
He's done more for me than SMU football. He's done more for me than the Dallas Cowboys. He's done more for me than the Dallas Mavericks. He's done more for me than the Dallas Stars. My Savior saved my soul!
And so, if I'm not going to let the rocks cry out for me, I'm not going to let fanatics—of which I am one of them—I'm never going to celebrate what's happening in natural elements more than I am celebrating and adoring the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Savior of my soul, the one who redeemed me from the darkness and sin.
He has changed me! And so, if you see me running around, jumping, twirling, I'm not putting on a show for you. I am simply giving glory to God because I was lost, and without Him, I was dead in my sins. I was sick, and He healed me. I was depressed, but He lifted my head, so I praised [Applause] Him.
You know, one day we're going to be around His throne forever, and we're going to be doing that, crying, "Holy!" joining with Heavenly hosts. You know, I don't want to wait until I get there to do that because the Bible says, "Let the redeemed hallelujah!"
If you know what that is—those who have been blood-bought, covered by His name, filled with His Spirit, born again—let the redeemed! Everybody say, "That's me!" Let the redeemed of the Lord say so! Just tell about it, just talk about it, just praise about it. Just go ahead and let Him know!
You may have thanked Him 50 times already. "God, I'm so thankful for what you've done in my life. I'm thankful that you've saved my soul. I'm thankful, God, that you picked me up from the miry clay. I'm thankful, God, that you redeemed me and you put me, God, on a path where I'm walking in righteousness and holiness and hope and truth.
I was lost, but I'm found. I was dead, now I live, and the only reason is because of you! It's because of you! It's because of you!
So if you want to come to a radical church, welcome home! We believe in what Jesus did, and we are not over it. I know what Jesus did in my life, and I am not over it yet! I know that He saved my soul; I haven't quite gotten over it yet!
Hallelujah! Could you just lift your hands one more time into heaven and pray this with me? God, let your will be done tonight. Come on, let’s pray this prayer together: God, your will be done in me.
There's a mind—the mind of the flesh—that works against the mind of the Spirit. Come on, yield that unto God right now. And the best way to do that is just to say, "God, not my will, but yours. Your will be done in me tonight."
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Your will, your will be done! Your will be done!
Settling in this room of the great peace of God, in the name of Jesus, you can be seated.
Tonight, we are not moving from worship to the word of the Lord; we are moving in worship into the preaching of the word of the Lord. How many of us love the word of God in this church? We love God's word!
Hallelujah! Oh, come on, do we love God's word? Thank you, Jesus, for your word! You know, if we never had another song but we just had His word, God would still build His church. You know that, right?
Church is built on music; it don't last. But church is built on the word—that's a firm foundation. And so we're thankful for the word of God, the truth of the living God that we are allowed to hear. We have the opportunity tonight to hear preached unto us.
We are very honored to have with us a guest. He is not a stranger to a lot of you; some of you, he might be. He is a tremendous man of God and has impacted my life deeply through many things that he has done for the kingdom of God.
Many of you have maybe read books that he's written, watched some YouTube videos that have helped you understand more about the kingdom, and we are tremendously honored that he would come and minister to this body tonight and help us commemorate this one year of what God has done.
He is a tremendous teacher of the word of God, pastored for many years, and built a powerful church that could go beyond him. He is the superintendent of a ministry organization called the United Pentecostal Church, and we are honored to have him here with us tonight.
He oversees ministry globally at a global level, so we are honored to have him. And as he comes, would you just lift your hands to heaven and say, "God, I want to hear what you want me to hear tonight. I want to receive what you have for me to receive tonight."
Can we just direct our attention unto God as he comes right now, in Jesus' name?
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Aren't you glad for the wonderful presence of the Lord that's here tonight? Amen!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! It's such an honor to be here to celebrate your first anniversary, Apostolic Church of Dallas. The Michaels, we appreciate the work that they're doing and that you're doing. It's exciting to see what the Lord is doing.
And I want to just say a few words. As he mentioned, your church is part of this fellowship, United Pentecostal Church International. We don't believe that we are the entire body of Christ, but we do believe we're a significant part.
Our mission is the whole gospel to the whole world by the whole church. Now, there are 210 nations identified by the Population Reference Bureau. We actually have churches, or at least some kind of presence, Bible study contact working in 199 of the 210. Praise God!
Right around 44,000 churches worldwide, including daughter churches, preaching points, and so God is doing great things, and it's exciting to see the church is growing.
We're planting churches just like this one. In this past year reporting year, we planted 242 churches in one year. And so that's in the U.S. and Canada, our home—that's not around the world.
And so this is a great day in which to serve God. Our world is increasingly secular, postmodern, post-truth, post-Christian, but actually, we have the word and the Spirit. It takes both.
The word is absolute truth; it's our solid foundation. If we just had an experience of emotion without the word, then we would easily get off track. But then if we just had the word, which a lot of fundamentalist churches do, but if you don't have the Spirit, then there's no power of God to implement it.
So to be a balanced church, you need the word and the Spirit. We have the teaching of God's word, but we have an experience that matches what's in God's word. So it's not just subjective; it's not just a personal opinion. That's not, "Well, this church teaches that; that's their doctrine."
No, you can have a definite experience that matches what Jesus promised and His apostles experienced, preached, and taught 2,000 years ago. You can identify with that today. Amen!
I'm going to read from the word of the Lord in Romans chapter 1. I'm going to read from the New King James Version, Romans 1:15 through 17 as a text today.
Romans 1:15, the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Rome said, "So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek."
That's Romans 1:15-16. I want to preach to you today for a little while, "Confident in the Gospel."
Now, the Apostle Paul, at the writing of this letter, he had never been to Rome. Yet he was called by God to be the Apostle to the Gentiles—that is, the nations, the non-Jewish people. He took the lead in the early church of breaking beyond the original Jewish context to reach other nations and ethnicities with the gospel.
But you have to think about it. Paul lived in the Roman Empire. Rome was the capital of Paul's world. The most powerful people in the world lived in Rome. The richest people lived in Rome. The elite lived in Rome.
And so it could be a little intimidating to think about going to Rome to preach the gospel and to preach about Jesus Christ. Jesus, of course, was a Jew in an obscure part of the Roman Empire who had been crucified by Roman soldiers. He had been found guilty, at least of something, and he had been crucified as an insurrectionist by the Roman soldiers.
So it'd be kind of audacious to go to Rome and say, "The man you crucified, the man you judged and condemned, the man your soldiers had power over, actually you need to be praying to him." That didn't make a whole lot of sense, seemingly, because the Romans worshiped many gods. They thought their gods were superior to all other gods, which is why they conquered all these other nations.
So it'd be pretty audacious to go to Rome and expect to win people. And so you might understand it. The Apostle Paul, he was writing in the letter; he was saying, "I hope to eventually get to Rome and preach to you, but I haven't been able to get there yet because there have been other places closer to the original home base that needed the gospel."
So you could imagine if he would say to the Romans, "Well, I hope to get there one day. I've gone into Asia; I've gone into Greece, and we've had some success there. And when I go to Rome, I'll do my best. I know it's challenging; I know it's difficult; I know it's a pagan environment; I know everybody worships idols; it's an immoral life. But I know we're a small oppressed minority, looked down upon, ridiculed, but when I come, I'll do my very best, and we'll just see what happens."
It would be understandable if he would take that approach, but he didn't do that. He said, "As much as is in me, I am eager. I'm ready. I can't wait to get there because," he says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel."
A little bit of understatement there: "I am in no way ashamed of the gospel. In fact, I'm very confident in the gospel that it will work even in Rome. It will work especially in Rome."
Why? Because it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes. The gospel still works; it has power!
Now, years ago, I went to law school, University of Texas, graduated, passed the bar. I was going to be a lawyer; I became a lawyer, but I was going to go full-time with a legal career. God changed my trajectory, so here I am as a preacher.
So I do appreciate what lawyers do. You know, everybody has these lawyer jokes; it's really not fair. It's only the 99% of lawyers that give them a bad name. But anyway, you know, nobody likes lawyers until they need one. If you get sued or if you get arrested, you definitely want a lawyer.
So there are good lawyers that do good deeds, but even the best lawyer at some point is going to have to shake their head and say, "You know, I just can't help you anymore. You lost the case; you lost the appeal; there's nothing more I can do. The facts are against you; the contract is ironclad; I can't help you anymore."
So if I was coming here as a lawyer, you know, I might have to be embarrassed or ashamed or not so confident because some situations are beyond my control.
We appreciate what doctors and nurses do, but every once in a while, the doctor has to look somebody in the eye and say, "I'm sorry, there's no more treatment; there's nothing else we can do. You got six months to live."
Counselors help many people, but sometimes counselors say, "I don't think we can salvage this marriage. I don't know what else to do with this person; there's really no solution here."
So all human beings at some point or the other, they have to give up; they're limited. We can only do so much.
But I'm here as a preacher of the gospel, and I can say with Paul, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. I don't care who you are, where you come from, what your race or ethnicity might be, what your sins, addictions, or habits or lifestyles might be. I'm quite confident that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to your needs; it's the solution to your problems. God still heals; God still delivers; God still saves.
I'm not ashamed to come to Dallas and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. It still works today! Amen!
In Acts 26, Paul was on trial before the Roman governor and King Agrippa. He would eventually be sent to Caesar, and according to tradition, after the end of the Bible story, he was executed under the emperor Nero.
But in Acts 26, he was on trial before King Agrippa, and he gave a very passionate defense of the gospel, so much so that the king said, "You almost persuade me to be a Christian."
And Paul said, "I wish you were not only almost like me, but altogether like me, yes, except for these chains."
Now think about that. Paul was on trial ultimately for his life, and he was bold enough to say, "Oh King, you think you're powerful? Yeah, but you need to be like me. I wish you knew what I knew; I wish you had what I had; I wish you understood the power that I have."
He was not ashamed; in fact, he was quite confident in the gospel that he preached. Why? Because he said, "It is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes."
Now, salvation means deliverance from all the power and effects of sin. Our world is broken because we humans sinned, and all have sinned, the Bible says, and come short of the glory of God. There is no one who is righteous, no, not one.
So our world is full of brokenness and pain and shame, heartache, and that's the human dilemma. But salvation means deliverance from all the power and effects of sin. Everything that sin causes, the Lord reverses, and He gives us something even greater than what we would have had before.
Right? So salvation is not just merely one dimension, but it's deliverance from all the power and effects of sin. It covers the past, the present, the future.
You know, we human beings can't do anything about our past. All of us have sinned, and all of us have regrets. But the thing about it is you can't go and undo what you did. If you wounded somebody, you can't undo that wound. You can't unsay the horrible words. You can't—you kill somebody; you can't bring them back to life.
And in many other ways, the sins that we've committed are just there, like the little saying, "No use crying over spilled milk." You can't pick that milk up off the ground and put it back in the container; it's too late.
But the gospel is so powerful that it can change your past. So when God looks at you, when the Lord forgives you, when the Lord washes your sins away, you have a new identity.
And no longer do you say, "I'm a liar," or "I am an immoral person," or "I am a drunkard," or "I am a prejudiced person." But you can say, "That was my past, but I'm a new person. I'm different."
The Lord—the gospel is so powerful it can change your past. So when the Lord looks at you, He does not treat you as a sinner any longer, but He treats you according to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And that same power starts in the past, but it comes in the present. Some people say, "Well, you give your life to Jesus, but you're still going to sin every day."
Wait just a minute! Yes, we have a sinful nature that tempts us; yes, we're susceptible to failure. But with the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live a new life!
You can get up every morning and say, "Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight today. I will live for you."
And you can resist temptation. If you do sin, you can immediately repent and ask God to forgive you. He will forgive you, and you can start the day anew.
But the point is you can have a victorious life; you can live a holy life; you can have a blessed life. The same power that delivered you from sin in the past gives you power to break the chains of sin in the present to live a new life.
You don't have to be subject to addictions and habits and things other people did to you and things you did to yourself, but you can have a new identity in Christ Jesus as a holy woman or a holy man of God because the gospel is so powerful; it changes our present!
Yes, sir! And then it goes into the future!
Yes, sir! Have you ever thought, "Can I really make it? Can I really live for God till the end? Can I really be saved? Well, such a great tragedy happened to me, like happened to somebody else. I don't think I could take it if great temptation that others failed in, if that came to me, I don't think I could survive."
Wait a minute! You may not have the power—in fact, we don't have the power—but God's grace will give you whatever you need to face whatever you go through.
The same gospel that saved you from your past, the same gospel that works in your present, that same gospel will take you all the way to the time that the Lord calls you home.
You can have confidence in the future because the same faith that's brought you to this point, that same faith will take you the rest of the way.
The gospel is so powerful; it can secure your future. The gospel is for the whole person: body, soul, and spirit!
Yes, sir! We understand there's forgiveness; there's healing. But you know there's physical healing! Yes, we actually believe if you're sick in your body, we can pray!
Yes, sir! And God can heal you! Sometimes He heals instantly. I have many testimonies of miracles.
I remember one time when I was pastoring in Austin, and let me digress. In 1992, my wife and I started a church in our home in Austin, Texas. And then after a month, we were able to get a rented building, another church building that we used for four years. Then we built our first building, then our second building, then our third building.
Of course, I'm not the pastor anymore, but if you go to Austin, there on Mopac, the north side of town, you'll see a big building on the freeway that will seat 3,000 people with room to add up to 2,500 people, 500 parking spaces—New Life. You'll see that!
And out of that church, we started 16 other churches while I was pastor. And since then, they've started more, and then they've sent some of the ministers that we trained to other small churches.
So there are about 23 churches that came out of that original church in our home. So that represents about a thousand people at the main church, plus maybe a thousand people in all the other churches. So maybe a couple thousand people, give or take.
And so I can give you testimony after testimony of people from all walks of life. Some were agnostic or atheist; some were Buddhist; some were Muslim. I personally baptized Muslims in the name of Jesus Christ, bring them up out of the waters of baptism, lay hands on them.
I've seen them speak in tongues, speak miraculously in a language they never learned as God filled them with the Holy Ghost. I've seen people from backgrounds—Catholic, Protestant. I've even seen people that were raised Pentecostal get saved in the church!
It can happen even with Pentecostals and charismatics, and of course, many different nationalities, many races. I could go on and on—all walks of life, rich, poor, educated, uneducated.
So I have a whole host of testimonies, but I remember one in particular. It was a man in his 40s. He had throat cancer, and so they did radiation, chemotherapy; they did too much, and it wiped out his immune system.
He got some kind of illness, and in the process of that, he had a stroke. He went into a coma; he was at the point of death. In fact, while he was lying there in the hospital, he had a heart attack, and they had to jump-start him, shock him back into life.
But he was still in the coma, and so the doctor told the family, "Look, you know, we don't know if he's going to—" In fact, the doctor said, "He has a 10% chance of surviving the night. If he survives, he might not ever come out of the coma. If he comes out of the coma, he might be brain damaged, so it's very unlikely there's any good outcome."
So they said, "He's probably going to keep having heart attacks, so we advise you just sign the papers, do not resuscitate, and just let him go peacefully. The next time he has the heart attack, he'll pass away."
So the family agreed; that was the best advice. And I think the doctors were trying to do their best; they knew what was best. But there was something about that when I visited, when I talked to the doctor, and we prayed for this man.
Something in my spirit said, "Okay, only a 10% chance he's going to make it tonight." It was our midweek service; we had a service on Wednesday night.
And so when I brought this to the church, I said, "You know, here's our brother in his 40s, and you know we understand the will of God. Sometimes there's an individual time for all of us to pass away, and we never know when that is. But it's not our job just to say whatever."
Actually, the Book of James says if people are sick, you're supposed to pray for them. Now, sometimes they're healed; sometimes they're not. So we accept whatever the end result is according to God because whatever healing they don't get now, they will get up there.
So God's word will come to pass, and sometimes an instant healing, sometimes it's a gradual healing. But our job is to pray, yes, and let the will of the Lord be done.
It's not to guess God's will; our job is to pray the prayer of faith, pray for healing, pray for deliverance, believe in the power of the gospel.
But I said, "You know, that's interesting. The doctor said there's only a 10% chance of survival. What if we pray? What if God raises him up? Then I could tell the doctor, 'Well, it's a 90% chance it was a miracle,' right? Because there would only be a 10% chance it just happened. So that means the other 90% had to be God."
So we prayed like that, and sure enough, he never had another heart attack. Sure enough, he quickly came out of the coma. Then he came out of the hospital; then he went back to work.
That was over 20 years ago; he's still in church today! He's worshiping God! Sometimes he runs around the building; people think he's crazy. But hey, if God raised you from a coma, you have a right to run! You have a right to shout! You have a right to praise God because God is a deliverer!
I'm not ashamed of the gospel; in fact, I'm quite confident! If someone's in a coma, pray for him! Let God do the work! Praise God! 90% chance it was a miracle!
We had another man in his 40s die of a heart attack. And I say that he died, and the EMS rushed there and found him where he was, and they were able to get him started again. They said he was clinically dead, but they kept working him, working him; they got him back to life, brought him to the hospital.
By the time I got there, the diagnosis was very grim. The doctor said, "I don't know how they figure this out, but he said, 'You know, when somebody's been like that that long, I give him only a 4% chance that he'll make it.'"
But we prayed! Yeah! God brought him back up, and he's still here 20 years later! And I know God is a healer! I know God is a deliverer!
So there's healing for the body, but not only the body. Many times there are wounds that we cannot see. Yes, sir! In our society, many people have been wounded.
There's horrific examples, and even in a crowd this size, there are people who have been abused as children. There are people who have been abused by a spouse or some significant other. There are people maybe that made bad choices for themselves, but there's also people that they didn't make bad choices, but evil people did bad things to them.
And it can be severe; it can affect you, and I don't minimize that. But I will tell you, you don't have to be a victim the rest of your life! Yes, sir! You don't have to be bound the rest of your life! You don't have to be wounded or crippled the rest of your life!
But God can heal you! God can bring you out! God can bring you a new beginning! Whatever happened, whether it was somebody else's fault or whether it's your own bad choices, you don't have to be bound to the past!
But just like the Lord can heal you physically, the Lord can heal you emotionally and mentally and give you a new life and a new beginning!
I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation! It really works! The gospel is the answer for the whole person—healing for the body, healing for the emotions, new life in the spirit!
Yes! And notice it comes to everyone who believes! Yes, sir! Not just one point in time, but someone who continues to believe.
If you continue reading on in verse 17, Romans 17, it goes on to say that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written—and here it quotes from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk—the just shall live by faith.
It's a new way of life; it's not just a moment in time, but it's a new—it's a relationship; it's a way of life. The Greek present tense is continuous; it means as you are believing, you go from one faith experience to another. You continue to believe; you live by faith.
The power of God will work in your life as you continue to believe. And I will say this: we briefly discussed it in the lesson before the service, but biblical faith—saving faith—always includes obedience!
Yes, sir! You can't separate from obedience. In fact, Romans 6:17 says, "But God be thanked that you were the servants of sin, but you obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine to which you were delivered."
You obeyed from the heart! Saving faith includes obedience! You know, if I were to shout here, "The building is on fire! Run! Flee! Get out immediately!" If you really believe that—I mean, we're going to take it for granted; nobody wants to burn to death, okay? We'll assume that.
If you really believe that, what would you do? You'd run! The proper response of faith is not to sit there saying, "Thank you so much, Brother Bernard. I appreciate that; that's good. You know, I believe that; I accept that. In fact, I think that's highly likely to be true."
It's highly probable that you are correct; that would be the wrong response! That would mean you didn't believe me; you're just playing around!
The only proper response when your life is at stake is you obey! You run! You flee! Faith requires an immediate response! Faith requires obedience to the command!
So if you run out and you're saved, and a reporter comes up and says, "Were you in that fire?" "Yes." "Were you saved?" "Yes." "How are you saved?"
You could say, "Brother Bernard saved me." Or you could say, "I believe Brother Bernard's word; that's why I'm saved." Or you could say, "I obeyed Brother Bernard's word; that's why I'm saved."
It's all different ways of saying the same thing! In other words, we say God saved us; we can say the word of God saved us; we could say my faith in God's word saved me; we could say I obeyed the word of God; that's why I'm saved.
It's all different ways of saying if you really believe, you will respond to God! You can't say, "Well, I believe you, God; I just don't believe your word." That doesn't even make sense!
And you can't say, "Well, I believe your word, but I have no intention of following it." If you have no intention of following it, you don't really believe it!
Right? In other words, faith involves a response, trust, reliance, obedience, putting your life in the hands of the Lord.
It's like a story I think it's a true story told years ago about Niagara Falls. They used to—before they put regulations in place, there used to be some circus performance. They would put a tightrope over the top of the falls, and they would walk across.
Of course, this attracted crowds of people. It's amazing because if they slip, they're going to drown and die. And so the story is told one of those brought a wheelbarrow, and he said, "I propose to walk on the tightrope, and I'll push the wheelbarrow in front of me. How many people think I can do that?"
Of course, everybody said yes! How many people want to see it? Yes! How many people really believe I can do it? Yes! He pointed to one guy close by and said, "Okay, you get in the wheelbarrow, and I'll push you along."
What a great story for your kids! But he had no takers! They believed, but they didn't really believe! They didn't want to trust their life to what they believed!
So when the Bible says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved," believe the gospel! Yes! Does it mean stand on the sideline and say, "Go, Jesus! You can do it!"? Or does it mean putting your life in His hands?
It means putting your life in His hands! "Here I am, Lord! I am yours! I repent of my sins! I will take on your name! I will be filled with your Spirit! I will walk with you every day! No, I'm not perfect, but I will walk with you! I will pursue your will! If I sin, I'll repent, and I'll ask you to forgive me, but I'm yours! I'm sold out! I'm walking with you! I'm living by faith!"
And when you have that kind of faith, then you will overcome! We talked about it a little bit, but saving faith includes obedience!
If you believe the gospel, you must obey the gospel! That's right! Well, what is the gospel? It's the good news!
So first, I have to tell you the bad news, right? The bad news is all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death. We're all sinners; we're all destined for death.
But the good news is Jesus died for our sins! It's in 1 Corinthians 15. He was buried in the tomb; He rose again the third day. He won victory over death, hell, the grave, sin, and He will share that victory with us if we believe on Him and if we obey His gospel, apply it to our lives.
So we must believe that good news, and we must obey that good news! Yes, sir! How do we do that?
On the birthday of the Christian Church, Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit fell. The crowds gathered to see this amazing event. The Apostle Peter stood up with all the other apostles. Here you have all 12 apostles preaching the same message.
And they ask, "What's going on?" They saw these people speaking in tongues, speaking in various languages, and they said, "How is this possible? Some understood the language. They said, 'Wait a minute! How can a Galilean fisherman be speaking Arabic, and the guy next to him is speaking Latin, and the guy next to him is speaking Greek, and the language of our home countries? How's that possible?'"
Other people didn't understand; they're saying, "Oh, they're crazy! They're just babbling! They're drunk!"
So some were marveling at the miracle; some who didn't understand the miracle were mocking. But they're asking, "What is this?"
And the Apostle Peter stood up and said, "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. In the last days, says God, I will pour my Spirit upon all flesh."
When you see these people speaking in tongues, speaking these languages, that means they received the Holy Spirit, right?
And now we still say the same thing today, by the way. But he didn't want to preach about tongues because that wasn't the important thing. He kept quoting from Joel till he got to this point: "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
When you study the Old Testament prophet Joel, the Lord is Yahweh, but Peter applied that to Jesus. Jesus is Lord!
So without going into a long study, what are you saying? The one true God of the Old Testament has come in the flesh to be our Savior as the Lord Jesus Christ.
So if you want to be saved today, you need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; you need to call on His name.
So then he explained how you call on His name. How do you believe on this Lord? How do you believe on Jesus? How do you call on His name?
He said, "Well, you crucified the Lord. Instead of believing on Him, you killed Him, and you thought that was the end." Of course, I'm paraphrasing, but you can read it all in Acts 2.
He said, "You thought that was the end. You put His body in the grave; you thought He was going to decay, and that's going to be the end. But there's a prophecy in the Psalms where God said, 'I will not let my Holy One see corruption.' God had a plan!
So the Spirit of God came back in that dead body on the third day, raised Him from the dead. The same Jesus that you crucified and you buried in the tomb, He is risen! He is the Lord! He is your Savior! He's the Messiah!
Well, notice what he preached: death, burial, resurrection of Jesus—the gospel, the simple good news!
So when he preached that, the crowd of people—there were thousands gathered from many nations. They were there to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem, so there were Jewish people from 15 nations listed there, thousands gathered.
And they began to be convicted of their sins. Some of those people, a few weeks earlier, had been part of the crowd that called for the crucifixion of Jesus: "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
If you think about it, that's pretty bold of Peter to look at those people and say, "You're a bunch of murderers!" What's going to prevent them from saying, "Crucify Him!"?
But there was power in the gospel! When the word went forth, it began to convict them. It cut them to the heart. They realized, "We're sinners! We're blasphemers! We're murderers! We didn't believe that Jesus came! God sent the Messiah, and we didn't believe on Him!"
So they cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do? How can we be forgiven of our sin of rejecting the Messiah, crucifying the Lord?"
The Apostle Peter said in Acts 2:38, "Repent!" That's a death to sin! Yes, sir! That's being crucified with Christ!
"And be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." That's being buried with Christ in water baptism!
"And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." That's resurrection life with Christ!
"For the promise is unto you and to your children and to all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."
That covers everyone far off in space, but also far off in time! Yeah! Because the gospel didn't get to the whole world in the first century. It didn't come to the Americas until much later.
But it extends all down through history. No matter how far off we are from that original time, when we hear God calling us, when we feel the Spirit of God drawing us, that means the same promise is still for us today!
So if you follow my train of thought, if you want the power of God to work in your life for healing, salvation, deliverance, number one, you have to believe the gospel!
That's right! But to believe the gospel means to respond, to obey! It doesn't mean just to sit there and say, "Well, that's a nice story; sounds pretty good. I kind of like that sermon."
Hey, I really like the music even more than the sermon! That's not good enough! It's not just saying you believe it, saying you like it. You got to act! You got to respond! You got to call out! You got to run out of the house; it's on fire!
Yes, sir! So you must obey the gospel! And how do you do that?
Well, if the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, for you to personally obey the gospel means you die to sin in repentance. You're buried with Christ in water baptism; you rise to new life by receiving His Holy Spirit!
It's really that simple! Yes, sir! You can receive that same experience!
I was preaching in Bernard, Texas, a while back. A young man came up to me. I say young; you know, I'm 67, so you know all of you guys are young probably, but he would say late 30s, so that's still kind of young, right?
So he comes up; he says, "Brother Bernard, I want to share my testimony." I said, "Great! Tell me!"
He said he was a young Hispanic man. He said, "Well, I was raised by my grandmother; she was a witch, so I learned witchcraft. I knew nothing about Christianity. My dad was a drug dealer, so my dad introduced me to drugs. I started doing drugs, and as a teenager, I started selling drugs. And then I got arrested; then I got put in prison."
In prison, he said, "Somebody preached the gospel in prison. I repented of my sins; they baptized me in Jesus' name; I received the Holy Spirit in prison."
And he said, "God just made a way; they released me early. I got out; I began living for the Lord, going to church, got married, I have some kids, I'm called to preach, I'm starting my ministry."
What an amazing story! You would say a guy like that, raised as a—his grandmother was a witch, his dad's a drug dealer—what chance does he have?
But I'm confident in the gospel! Not just for generic middle-class people, but anybody and everybody! The gospel will work!
So then he said, "But I want to tell you my recent testimony."
A month ago, he said, "My body was attacked." He didn't give me the medical diagnosis; it sounded like diabetes and insulin shock or whatever it was. He said, "Suddenly I was attacked in my body; my organs started shutting down. I went into a coma; they rushed me to the hospital. I was at the point of death."
He said, "I can remember in my semi-conscious state they were saying, 'You're not going to survive tonight. What do you want to do? Who do you want us to contact?'"
What do you—he said, "I can remember them talking about how I was going to die tonight."
But he had a family in a church who prayed! Yes! So while he was in a coma, the church was praying!
The next day, he woke up. The doctor said, "You're a very lucky man! We thought you were going to die last night, but you made it!"
But the doctor said, "Look, it's going to be a long process of rehabilitation. Your body is just wrecked. We're going to have to do—once we get you out of the critical danger, get you out of the hospital, then we'll send you to a rehab hospital, and it's going to be months of recovery."
But the church continued to pray! Yes! By the weekend, they released him from the hospital! But he improved so much they said, "You know what? You don't have to go to rehab; just go home and recover. Come back in a month."
So he came back in a month, and he went into the doctor's office. I guess it must have been a different doctor.
And so the doctor shuffled around the paper, started giving an exam, and said, "Wait a minute! Something's wrong here! I got the wrong paperwork! I got to go get the right paperwork!"
He said, "What are you talking about?"
He says, "Well, obviously, this is not your paperwork!"
He said, "What name is on there?"
So the doctor read off, "It's his name."
He said, "Yeah, it's me!"
"Are you sure?"
He said, "That can't be! The person in the paperwork is seriously ill and is going to take months to recover, but you are 100% normal! There's nothing wrong with you! I can't tell what happened to you!"
I’m confident in the gospel of Jesus Christ! I don't care what the medical diagnosis is! I don't care what the sin diagnosis is! The gospel still works! It still saves! It still transforms! It still delivers!
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes! It still works today! Yes, it does!
I could give you testimony after testimony. In my early ministry, communism was still intact, and I took trips behind the Iron Curtain. We had to secretly come in there, and we had to meet in homes. We couldn't let the police know what we were doing.
And I brought in some of my books that were translated—this was in Bulgarian. And so the manuscripts are translated in Bulgarian; we had to slip those in.
I can tell you story after story about how God protected, how God delivered, how God brought revival in adverse circumstances.
I remember when I spoke in a city in Bulgaria, and they never really heard of the teaching of baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, the power of the name of Jesus.
And so I left; I taught them and left information with them, returned back to the U.S. But then I got a note, and my interpreter was able to send word. She said, "The pastor decided to start baptizing in Jesus' name!"
Praise God! They went out to the river for the baptism; he baptized the woman in Jesus' name, and she jumped up, started rejoicing and splashing and shouting, and just a very big demonstration!
When they finally calmed her down, they said, "What's going on?"
She said, "When I got baptized, I saw two men in white standing on the river saying, 'This is the way; walk in it!'"
God confirmed the word! Whatever your circumstance, whatever your situation, the gospel still works!
And I'm telling you this for two reasons. Number one, there are people right here. If you have never repented of your sins, you need to do that today!
If you've never been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, you need to talk to the pastor right now and say, "How can I get this done?"
If you've never received the Holy Spirit, maybe you love the Lord; maybe you live by faith, but you never actually receive the Holy Spirit miraculously, speaking a language you never learned as a sign. God wants to give you that gift today!
It is a promise, and it's also a command! And in a few minutes, we come, we start praying. Just make sure you fully repented, fully surrendered to God, and then you start worshiping, start believing!
It's by faith! Yes, sir! And you start worshiping, praising God; it will happen to you! Yes, sir!
If you're sick in your body, believe God will heal you right now! Or if you're struggling with some kind of addiction or habit or something that has got you bound, you can ask God to deliver you today!
I say that for a second reason: every one of us knows people who have those kinds of needs, right? And sometimes we're a little intimidated.
But I think we obviously need wisdom and kindness and love, but we don't need to be intimidated! Yes, sir! Because the gospel will work!
We need to be confident! We look at somebody and say, "You know, they're so deep into their sinful lifestyle; they never want what I'm talking about." Or, "They're in a traditional religion," or "They're in some Eastern religion," or "They're wealthy, and they're high in society; they'll never want to give up all of what they've got."
Don't prejudge! Or, "They're so deep in their sinful addiction; don't prejudge!" Because the gospel will work for the up-and-outer or the down-and-outer, the religious person or the irreligious person!
The gospel will actually work! You share your testimony; you bear the fruit of the Spirit; you offer to pray!
You don't have to wait till you come to church, but you're talking to a friend; they express a need. It's fine to say, "Well, come to the church; let the pastor pray for you." That's okay!
But you know what you could do? You could say, "Could I pray for you right now?" Right? Yes, sir! Or you're on the phone; you could say, "Can we pray over the phone right now?"
Because the gospel will work! I'm trying to tell you, be confident in the gospel! It's designed to work in Dallas, Texas! It's designed to work for every person who lives in this city!
I challenge you to rise up in faith and believe and share the good news with your friends, your neighbors, your family, your coworkers!
Be confident in the gospel of Jesus Christ! I'm not ashamed of the gospel! It is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes!
Let's stand together right now! Thank you, Jesus!
I've just shared a simple thought. Would you close your eyes with me?
So I have these two goals: number one, somebody here today needs to receive, and number two, those of you who have received, you need to get confidence and confirmation to share this good news with somebody else.
And I want you to think about that—who God will lay on your heart. And if you don't think of anybody right now, pray for God to lead you this week to the right person where you can start sharing your testimony or teach a Bible study or invite them to the neighborhood meeting.
Be confident in the gospel of Jesus Christ!
So as we're in a spirit of prayer, are there some here today? We're getting ready to just transition into prayer and worship, but if you'd like to step out by faith and say, "Yes, I have a definite need," maybe you'd like to kneel here at the front.
Maybe you'd like to stand. Well, maybe you'd like to invite someone with you. Say, "Look, I want to come up and pray; would you come with me?"
Why don't two or three people come—maybe friends or loved ones—just come together and say, "Look, we want to pray together. We need healing; we need deliverance. I want to receive the Holy Spirit; I need the forgiveness of my sins."
Whatever the case may be, I need a personal renewing in the Holy Spirit; I need boldness to witness. Whatever your need is, I'm challenging you immediately as I turn this to Pastor Justin and the music team, whatever they want to do.
But I'm challenging you, everybody in the building, let's find a place to pray and call on the Lord together right now!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise!
on Jan 22, 2024
