Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. Excellent.
Just over the last couple of weeks, even again, preparing for
this morning. And it was even actually a word
that was spoken over Hilary and I like years ago when we're at
Kingdom life, just about, you know, this collective call of
let my people go. And I've really been stirred in
that again, you know, in the last couple of weeks, just let
my people go. And it's, it's not just for
people that don't know him to be set free and to come to him.
That's a huge one. That's one that we're pushing
into as a local church. We want to see people set free.
But even just for us as followers of Christ, we want to
be free. The, the church is bound in many
things. The church is the church as a
whole. I mean, is we are distracted in
a lot of things and we need to be set free so that we can just
get on with the, the stuff that he's called us to do.
And so that's the, that's the sense that I'm getting.
And I think that flows on into the Philippines, the, the church
that's there. I think it's all over the world.
I think that there's, I feel like God's wanting to wake up
his church and let us see clearly where we've been LED
Australia, where we've where we've been just taken over by
the things that are less important and, and all these
sort of things. So, you know, I spoke about last
week, just about we spoke about God and being set apart and
being holy and being, you know, so much beyond ourselves and,
and these sort of things, this sort of language.
And you'll remember that I spoke about being holy as, as in being
set apart. And you know, this being being
set apart and being holy is being, making ourselves
available to be used by him. So I can choose to be holy to
the Lord. I can choose to be set apart for
the plans and purposes of God. And so holiness in that sense is
is what I'm going to be continuing to talk about this
morning. You know, we're not talking
about being absolutely perfect and, you know, being morally
perfect and getting everything right, perfect holy in that
sense, it's like, but being set apart for the plans and purposes
of God. So to to choose to be holy for
him, choose to set apart the things that are distracting, set
apart the things that are getting in the way and focus on
the good things, on the things that the Lord has for us.
So holiness set apart. I'm just going to read this
scripture again from Isaiah 55, eight.
It says, my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways
your ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts. So He is so far above us in His
thinking, in His ways. And we are wanting to turn from
our ways and look to Him and take on His ways and take on His
way of thinking. And you know, because He is so
far above us in all things, in His thinking, in His ways.
That means that people, humanity are living at a lower standard
under his ways. And that means that the default
that we live by, you know, the Bible says that it talks about
the the ways that seem right to a man, the ways that we think
are good are below what what is actually good.
And so the default pattern that we can live by, like if you just
live in a default pattern, just going about your life and just
doing what seems right to you, we are living that's not set
apart, living to the Lord. That's like a default pattern.
Our world lives in this default pattern of what we think is
right and and good and just. But it's not the the the higher
core, It's not the above core. It takes effort to live set
apart from the Lord. Is this making sense?
You know, if unless we're diligent in seeking the Lord,
His ways and applying His ways to our lives, where there's
every chance that we're just living aimlessly, there's every
chance that we're being LED astray at worse.
Like we're either just off doing our own thing just aimlessly
because we're not seeking his ways and we're not in in putting
into practice his ways. So we're just wondering or at
the very or, or the worst case scenario for that is that
there's an enemy out there that's wanting to pull you
further and further away from the ways of God.
So This is why we have to be diligent in knowing His ways,
seeking His ways, and applying His ways.
I thought about I forgot to bring, I was going to bring a
balloon and I was going to blow it up and I was going to hit it
up in the air. And the default pattern of this
balloon is just to come down again.
And so if I want to keep that balloon up off of the ground,
I'm going to have to I'm going to have to keep inputting.
And this is the picture of us following the Lord.
It's going to take continuous input to keep you from falling
back down into the default pattern.
You know, this balloon, if this balloon is you left to itself,
this balloon doesn't want to forgive, doesn't want to
forgive, doesn't want to
forgive, right. But if I'm, I want to forgive, I
want to forgive. I choose to forgive, I will
forgive. Do you see?
Like there's a we have to continuously be pushed and
prompted in the right direction. And that's the the job of the
Holy Spirit in and through us. He wants to prompt us.
He wants to lead us. He wants to guide us.
And God puts people in your lives to speak his word, to
speak truth. The whole structure of
leadership in the church is to lead people, is to bring the
word of God, bring truth, bring the ways of the Lord.
And so we have to be diligent in listening and hearing and
inputting, sorry, putting those things into practice in our
lives. Otherwise we're just floating
downwards, downwards, downwards. We're just by default, we're
just falling further and further away from the ways of the Lord.
So because we live in a fallen world, this is the thing that's
pulling it all down. You see, like this, this default
pattern, we live in a fallen world that isn't the Kingdom of
the Lord. There's another Kingdom at play
here, and it's not his Kingdom. And so simply to define the
Kingdom of God would be to say that anything which is under the
rule and the reign of King Jesus, that's the Kingdom of
heaven, that's the Kingdom of God.
Anything that is under the authority and the reign of
Christ is the Kingdom because Jesus is the king.
The word Kingdom and king are used interchangeably in the
Scripture. You can't have a Kingdom without
a king. The Kingdom of God is not here
unless the king is here. And the king lives in you and I
through the Holy Spirit. And so think about that.
If the things of our lives, if they're not under the authority
of the king, it's not the Kingdom, it's something else.
And so this world system that we live in is not under the
authority of the king. And so when I say world system,
I mean that that which is ruling and leading and influencing
people. There is a world system that we
live in that brings influence and it's leading us in a
direction. You know, this is the balloon
coming down. This is the influence, This is
the direction of this world system that we live in.
This world system has a ruler, right?
We know who that is, right? Satan is the Prince of this
world. When Satan comes and tempts
Jesus, he says to Jesus, I will give all the all the authority
of these kingdoms belongs to me, and I'll give it to you if you
worship me. So for Satan to say that to
Jesus means that Satan has this authority.
Satan is leading the kingdoms of this world.
He is the Prince of this world. One John 519 says, We know that
we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the
wicked. 1 The whole world is being influenced by the wicked
one. And you and I are in this world.
But see Ron, but not of this world.
Do you see? We are in this world which is
led by the Prince of this world, but we have given ourselves over
to the King. We have said, Lord, I will serve
you, I will follow you and then so I'm operating under another
Kingdom in in this world system. And so our governmental system
is not under the authority of Christ, right.
It's not like it's even if you know, even if you know, we have
leaders that are Christians that are believers, it doesn't mean
that now we can follow that because that's the Kingdom.
Do you see? It's not the Kingdom.
We we have to live and trust our God and our God alone.
And so. You know, our like we have to be
the word says that we have to be under the authority of our
government. You know that we're called to
pray for our leaders and pray for our government.
So in a sense, we have to respect the authority of our
government because God puts the government's in place.
This is what the word says. But when our government tries to
force us to do things contrary to the word of God, we can't
yield to those things. There's a, there's a line that
is drawn that when we are commanded to do things that the
Lord forbids us from doing, we don't step into those things.
We have the right to say, no, no, I am under the authority of
the king. That thing I will not do.
And so, you know, we see this in the time of Nebuchadnezzar with
the fire and Daniel and these guys, they were not doing that.
And so, you know, it cost them their lives or it would have
cost them their lives had God not have been with them.
But we are coming into a time where our governments are going
further and further away from that wish is of the Kingdom of
God. And we're coming into a time
when our governments are going to be forcing people to do
things that we just can't do. And so just be mindful of that.
We don't serve our governments, we serve the king.
And just because the government says that something's OK,
doesn't mean that it's OK for you and I, there's a lot of
things that the, our government would say that thing's OK to do.
And we would say, as a son of the king, I could never do that
thing. And so this is being set apart
from the from the ways of this world.
We got to set we, we, we, our standard is Christ, our, our, we
are being led by him, his ways. And so anything that's not under
the authority of the King, we don't do those things.
You see, we have to be careful. Times are coming, guys.
And now where our world's being LED astray really fast.
Our world's getting dark. Things that are really wicked
are becoming normal and being put in as legislation, as OK to
do in our world today. We're not going to go into all
these things. We have to be mindful.
We have to have wisdom, understanding of the times and
seasons that we're living in. What about the world monetary
system that we live under? This is not a Kingdom system.
This is one of debt, of owing, of being enslaved.
Our monetary system that's in operation in our world is not a
Kingdom system. And so just because the bank
says you can have as much money as you want, I will loan you as
much as you want. These are not the principles of
the Kingdom of God. There is a way that we are
instructed to handle our finances and our money, and it
is not what the world says is OK.
This is another one of these things that we're going to have
to separate ourselves from the things of this world, from the
things that the world says is OK.
And the Scripture must be our standard for living.
God has given us very clear instructions for money, but
again, we're not getting into these things specifically, but
God shows us the way to live. He shows us what is right and
just and good and we can go on and on in our education, the
system and education system and health organisations and all of
this stuff. There's all this stuff that we
get. There's all these areas of the
world system that, you know, seems to be the way that seems
right to a man, but it's not. And we are being LED away from
those things. We have to distance ourselves
from a lot of these things. All right.
What about culture? What about the Australian
culture that we live in? There's a lot of good things
about the Australian culture. Look, I love being Australian,
an Australian. It's great.
We were talking on on just the other day about coffee culture
in Australia. I love coffee culture in
Australia. I love coffee, but it's more
than that. I love the, you know, that we
would go out for coffee. I love that we would sit and
drink coffee together and talk about each other's lives and get
to know people over coffee, this sort of thing.
And so we can embrace that as a church.
And so we've been talking about getting a decent coffee machine
to make decent coffee because we like coffee.
And so I'm just slipping this in here.
This is just like we feel to do that as as a as a team.
And so if that's something that you know, you want to, you think
that is good, you can contribute to that.
I'm just putting that out there. We're going to we're going to
buy a coffee machine, we're going to buy a grinder.
If you like coffee, let's own this together.
Let's carry this together. We don't want to charge for
coffee, but there is an expense for coffee for making coffee.
So we're going to have to carry this together.
We don't want people that are coming in to get charged for
coffee and all this sort of thing.
We want to be a generous church, but in order for us to be a
generous church, we have to be a generous church.
So anyway, I'm going to leave that.
I'm going to leave that alone there.
But, you know, and I know other things about Australian culture
are not good. You know, we were talking on
Friday night about this culture of just, you know, giving each
other a hard time and, and laughing at each other and, you
know, these sort of things. That's not a good thing.
You know, this is not the, the sort of thing that, you know, we
would find Jesus doing, making people feel silly.
Do you see what I'm saying? Like, so there's, there's an
area here in our culture that we have to be mindful about and be
set apart from, take a hold of the good things, set apart those
things that are not in line with the with the Kingdom of heaven.
And so we want to be a loving church.
We want people to be safe here. We want people to come into this
space and feel welcome and not feel like they're getting a hard
time for the clothes they wear or for their background or any
of these things or for the fact that they can't grow hair on
their head, like whatever it is. Do you know what I'm saying?
Like, we're so harsh sometimes and it's OK because we're good
friends with these people and stuff like that.
Like, you know, we would give our friends a really hard time
sometimes from the front here. But for people that are coming
into this space that don't know our connections and don't know
our friendships, this is not a good thing for us.
OK, so let's just be mindful of those things.
All right, One other thing that I would love to highlight just
about this world system that we live in is it's it's screen
time, especially phones. I've I've put my phone over
here. Phones.
Oh my goodness, phones are taking over our world.
I mean, they have already, but into all of the countries of the
world, all of the nation's phone.
This thing lives with you. This thing, this, this phone of
of mine here, this thing is closer to me than my wife most
of the time, right? This thing, this is like I've
got this default pattern now of just picking it up and opening
things by default. Like I'm not even trying.
This thing's dangerous, guys. And not just this thing like
movies and TV screens. Our kids are growing up in a
world of screens and they want this so bad it's dangerous.
We have to. We are the church.
We are called to be set apart. We need to be mindful of the
dangers that we live with every day.
This thing will rob you of your time.
You know, we will say things like, I don't really have enough
time to spend time with the Lord, to pray.
I don't really have an hour to put aside to be on my knees
before the Lord. I've got an hour to be on social
media and to look for things to buy on Marketplace.
Do you see what I'm saying? Like this, this thing, this
thing is taking over people's lives.
They say that, you know, I was Googling.
You know, because I'm preparing to speak while I'm away in the
Philippines, I was like, I wonder what the culture's like
over there with phones. 60% of young people living in the
Philippines have a mobile phone addiction.
These things are out of control, right?
And so, gosh, we need to be mindful of these things.
You know that AI, now that people are becoming best friends
with AI, people that are lonely now who their best friend is an
AI program. Do you see what is happening
here? You know, social media promised
to connect us with each other. Social media promised for us to
be a greater community of people.
And the only thing that it's done is isolated us from each
other. We are less connected with each
other now than we were before social media.
That is a problem, church. That is a problem for a body of
people that's called to be together, to be connected with
one another, to live our lives, you know, in close proximity to
one another, that we'd be living disconnected from one another.
This is one of those things in our world that we have to set
apart from. I'm not saying turn your phone
off. I'm, I'm not saying, you know,
we're not going to be on the Internet or any of these things.
You know, when, when the Lord got a hold of me, I wanted to
throw our TV in the bin. And I wish that I did before I
had kids. But anyway, so it's not about
like just getting out of the world because this is a part of
our world system. You know you're going to have a
hard time even banking without the Internet in, in times to
come, right? All of the branches are closing.
You're not going to be able to even live without these things.
But we have to be careful that they don't take over our lives,
that we use them in a necessary way, but we don't get taken over
by these things. And so this distraction, this is
the enemy's plan, isn't it? But you could look at the
technology and, and the way that things are going and just see if
your eyes are open, you can look at it and go, this thing has
been created to take people away from the Lord, to take people
away from each other and away from the Lord.
And so let's not be distracted. We've got to wake up church and
one of the push backs that I hear about this when I talk to
people about screen time and movies and social media and this
is I would say things like, yeah, but I only watch this to
listen to preaching to watch movies about the Lord and you
know, social media to reach all my friends.
I I use it for the good. It's all I do.
And it's an interesting thing because I was reminded this
week, you know, when, you know, when we first started following
the Lord, I, I watched so many sermons and it was good because
it like I, I grew so fast. I was just like, I couldn't get
enough of the word of God. I couldn't get enough of, of,
you know, this one guy in particular just talking about
how I could have this real relationship with the Lord.
And I was just, I was loving it. But I realized after a period of
time that it's like I'm just spending all my time listening
to someone talk about how to have a relationship with God,
and it's taking over my time of having a relationship with God.
Do you see what I'm saying? So you could listen to so many
sermons and so much preaching and so many Christian movies and
so much stuff, and it could just get in the way of your own
personal relationship with the Lord.
It could get in your way of, of your own relationship with his
body. Does that make sense?
Be wise, be careful. It's like going to, you know, I
heard someone quote years ago, it was just like, don't go to
Bible college at the expense of going to your Bible.
Do you see what I'm saying? Like don't just like don't just
stop reading your Bible and just go let go sit under someone and
let him teach you about the Bible.
Read the Bible, learn about the Bible and Bible college is fine
and all of those things, but read your Bible.
Let the Lord teach you the Holy Spirit God Jesus said I'll send
my Holy Spirit and he will teach you.
So that's a personal relationship with the Lord in
his word. This is the the what God wants
for us. So if the life that you and I
live is no different to any other person on the face of this
earth right now in terms of what we're doing with our time and
and you know, the things that we've given over to, if my life
looks the same as a non believer, some I've missed it,
something's wrong here. You know, if I spend just as
much time in front of a screen as my neighbor and, you know,
tie on a bit of bit of pray, bit of prayer and a bit of worship
or whatever on the side sort of thing.
This is not the calling of the Lord.
We are called to seek the Lord. And whatever other time you've
got outside of those most important things, you have time
to do whatever, whatever you want or whatever.
Does this make sense? We're going to seek the Lord for
real. So what does it actually mean
then to be set apart for the Lord?
How am I to live a life that's set apart for Him?
I would say that a real connection with God is what
separates me from anyone else in the world that doesn't know Him.
Like a real connection with the Lord.
That I spend time with him. That I speak to him but that He
speaks to me. That I give Him space to talk to
me. That I'm attentive to His words.
That I have a desire to be with Him.
The other thing that I would say is real connection with, with
people, with his bride. That's what separates us from
the world. That's what separates us from
the world system. We have a a body of believers
that we're connected to, that we do life together.
We have something very special here in Christ that needs to be
a huge importance to us. It means to be like, it's like
God said, you know, love God with all your heart, with all
your mind, love your neighbor as yourself.
It's like these two things. It's like I love the Lord with
everything and I love his people.
I love people. That's the thing that separates
us from the world. We love the Lord, we love each
other and we have a heart for the loss.
We want to see other people come into this thing.
We have a desire to see people saved, all of those people out
there that don't know him. We want them to come and
experience something that is real here.
So there's a, a, a sense of having a heart for the lost.
And when you have a heart for the lost, you know what you do,
you speak, you seek the Lord for the lost.
You think about the lost a lot. I wonder, I wonder if we're
honest, you know, because we can, we can sit here and we can
say I've got a heart for the lost.
How often do you even think about them through your daily
life? How often does it come up?
How often do you pray for people?
How often do you meet someone and think, oh gosh, I wish that
person knew the Lord. Do you see what I'm saying?
Like a, a set apart believer seeks the Lord, seeks his
people, seeks the lost to come into, you know, the Lord's
presence also. And so it looks like something
practically, doesn't it? Because if you look at your
daily life, like let's take yesterday for example, think
about your day yesterday for a moment.
Did you seek the Lord? Did you seek out his people?
Did you pray for any? Was there any lost person that
you were like, oh gosh, Lord, come on Lord, come on Lord, let
this people go free. You know that cry set my people
free. The cry of the Lord should be
the cry of our heart. Set these people free.
Lord, do you see what I'm saying?
No pressure. Don't look back on yesterday and
go, oh, I'm blowing it. Today is a new day.
Tomorrow is a new day.
We are we are listening to what the Lord's saying.
We want to be a set apart believe group of believers and
we can and we should and we and we and we should have that
desire to do that. Do you see how this ties in with
hospitality? Do you see how all of this being
set apart for the Lord just lends itself to being hospitable
to to seeking the needs of others, to opening up your home
to people to be getting in into other people's homes
hospitality. All right, I'm bringing this to
a close. We spoke about I think I
mentioned it this morning, but this question that's that's in
our hearts for this season as a local church.
It's what are you wanting to do in and through this people?
Lord, this is the question that we want to ask the Lord
together. Lord, what do you want to do in
and through us as a people? God's got an answer for this
question. There is something that the Lord
wants to do in US and through us.
If we would listen, if we would set ourselves apart to be used
by Him. You know that setting apart,
it's to be used for His purpose. So that's the question that
we're going to continue to ask over and over.
Can I say that when when we're gathering together, when we're
going to be together, ask this question of yourself, say, Lord,
what are you wanting to do in and through your people today?
And we'll come together and we'll hear what it is that the
Lord's wanting to do in and through his people.
And we'll get on. We'll get on with it.
We'll get on with whatever the call is.
We'll get on walking down the road that he has for us as a
people. I believe that the answer to
this question for us in the right now is the Lord wants us
to be set apart from the things of this world.
The Lord wants us to be diligent in what we're giving ourselves
to because we're either giving ourselves over to this world and
the the systems of this world in default, we're giving ourselves
over to the ruler of this world, or we're giving ourselves over
to the king to be effective, to be used by him.
And so the, the question for you and I, as we, as we go about our
lives, as we leave this place is, Lord, what are the things
that I need to be setting apart from what do you want from me,
Lord? It's a good question, isn't it?
You know, I spoke when I started speaking, I said that we want to
hear what the Lord says and we want to put it into practice.
The putting it into practice is the hardest fit.
Hearing from the Lord is easy. I hear some people go, I don't
hear from the Lord. You got a whole book that talks
about the Lord is speaking to you, right?
So you can hear from the Lord. Now it's time to put it into
practice. I'm going to close here with
Matthew 2128. This is Jesus speaking and he
says, but what do you think? That's a good way for Jesus to
start, isn't it? Listen up guys.
What do you guys think? Listen to this Jesus is saying,
what do you think? A man had two sons and he came
to the 1st and he said, son, go walk today in my vineyard.
And he answered and said, I will not.
But afterward he regretted it and he went.
Then he came to a second, a second son and said likewise.
He said, go into my vineyard. And he answered and said, I will
go, Sir. But he did not go.
Which of these two did? The will of the father?
We say a lot of amens. I'm guilty of this.
I know that we are of, of saying, Yep, Yep, OK, Lord, Yep,
I'm listening to you, Lord. All right, God, Yep.
I know what you're saying. And then you never go into the
field. Which of these sons did the will
of the Father? We don't want to just hear.
We don't want to just hear what the Lords is saying.
We want to do what the Lord is doing.
It'd be better for us to go. I'm not doing that.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Lord, not doing that, not doing
that, Lord, be better to say no now and then walk out of here
and just go, oh, gosh, I'm going to have to do that.
I know the Lord do you say what? Do you see what I'm saying?
Better to say no and then just to do it anyway than to say yes
and do nothing with it. So anyway, we're all in the same
boat together. I like, I have to hear all these
same words that I just spoke and I have to do something with it.
And the doing something with it is the hard part.
But let's do this together. Let's trust that the Holy Spirit
will lead us, guide us, shape us, grow us, empower us to see
this thing through. Amen.
Thank you for joining us for today's message.
For more information about The Way Church, please visit
ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot AU.
Have a blessed day.