This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
Consumerism, right? That's the idolatry of our age.
We're not worshipping a statue anymore like they did back here.
Artemis was there, God of, you know, birth and some kind of
like a God of nature that they worship in this city of Sardis.
But we are worshippers of consumerism.
And what happens is whenever your mind gets latched onto
something you really want, whether it's a car or some
gadget in the house or whatever, isn't it funny how that's all
you think about? There's always something better,
flashier, more useful, more exciting to purchase.
Whether it's tools, home decor, cars, computers, or any other
number of things, our current culture is consumed by the idea
of owning the latest and greatest.
I know I'm tempted many times to look at buying a new tool to
make my work or my leisure more convenient, but God has more for
us. Pastor Clark reminds us that our
joy is not found in consumerism, in owning new cool stuff, but is
found solely in him. Now here's Pastor Clark in First
Peter Chapter 2 with today's edition of Living Waters of
Grace. Many of us, for whatever reason,
we get sidetracked so often and we see these other work.
So I'm going to go do these. And God said, well, I didn't
create you for that. I created you for this.
But I really want to do this. And the Lord said, no, no, come
over. This is, this is what I'll
empower you with. This is how I'll bless you.
This is how I'll use you. No, no, I want this.
I want to do this. And so we go do this.
And it's not perfect, it's weak, it's dead, it's stride, it wears
on us, it makes us breakdown. And eventually we say, I can't
do this anymore. And the Lord says, well, I never
asked you to do it. You're doing your works instead
of my works. He says my yoke is easy and my
burden is light. So if we're wearing a yoke and a
burden and we're trying to serve God and it's burning us out and
wearing us down, God's saying this is not the yoke I have for
you. Come back over here and humble
yourself and do these things. Well, Lord, that's doesn't seem
real important. Well, to me it's critically
important because if you do what I made you to do, people will
see me in your life. But if you do what you want to
do, they're going to see you in your life.
Big difference, isn't there. Go to Matthew chapter 5 for a
minute. Matthew 5 verse 14 Jesus is
speaking here says you are the light of the world.
A city that is set on the hill cannot be hidden, nor do they
light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand and
it gives light to all who are in the house.
This is to you and me. Let your light so shine before
men. Why?
So that they could think you're great.
You're you're an awesome Christian.
That you're this and you're that boy.
I wish I could be like her. I wish I could be like him.
No, that they may see your good works and glorify who?
Your Father in heaven. When people are glorifying the
church and glorifying the pastures.
The work is the flesh. The purpose of the works is that
people would see that would point them to the greatness of
our God. Turn to First Peter chapter 2.
First Peter chapter 2, verse 11 and 12.
Beloved, I beg you, as sojourners and pilgrims, God
sees you and me. If we're really his.
Hey, we're passing through this place.
This world isn't our home, is it?
As much as you like your house, it's temporal.
Someday someone else is going to be living in there.
I guarantee for most of us, 50 years from now to for the little
ones here, someone else going to be in that house.
We're just passing through. Don't get too attached to this
world. Cindy and I went to the home
show. If you guys ever get on the home
show in Pittsburgh, no one gave us free tickets.
That place is amazing down there and you get down there and you
want like everything. If I had this in my house, this
would be great. If I had this in my house, boy,
that refrigerator I have really isn't that good.
And this stove, Cindy's looking at this 36 inch stove.
There's no like no way. The one we have is plenty good
enough. She knows that.
But she was just like sort of lusting after it a little bit.
You know, I was lusting out of one of these ladders.
Like, I'm not mechanically inclined.
You ever seen those ladders that can shift into different
positions? You can make them all kind of
things, right? And I thought, I need something
like that. And I'm thinking, well, why?
I like, I don't go up in the ladder, but I've been wanting
one of these ladders for years. And I yeah, here's my credit
card, man, at $459. Get the ladder and all that, all
these extra parts to it. So I'm walking around and I'm
getting convicted, I'm getting buyer's remorse.
Well, I emailed the company, said cancel that order and I'm
calling the American Express company later today and
canceling that order takes 6 to 8 weeks to get it.
So I'm still in the clear. But you know, as I was walking
around, you know, after while I'm not getting overwhelmed,
people want you to buy this, buy that.
You get these certain mops that do these, they, they really make
them look good. They really work good when
you're there and then you take them home and it doesn't do the
same thing. It must be like a trick mop or
something. And then we laid in this bed.
It was so comfortable, man. And this guy from Southern
California, they just had that way about him.
They're just so like laid back and just like know how to get
into your head. And they're just like, man, just
like, you know, and Cindy's like, wow, this thing's so
comfortable. And, you know, we're talking.
And he says, well, the price of the mattress the, the bed is
normally 8500, but we have it for 5600.
And I'm like, I'm trying to act cool that that price doesn't
bother me, right? So he can tell looking at my
eyes, I'm still not buying. Then he says, we're going to
sell it to you guys at a special promotion today for 46.
Then it was 4500. Then he called me over in the
corner and he said, look, I need some leads here.
Now you got to promise me this one thing.
If I give you this really good price, you're going to tell
everybody else and I'm going to get a lot of customers, right?
I mean, it's like a con. I'm a salesman.
So I, I, I, I should pick up on that.
But they say salespeople the easiest people to sell, you
know, So then he says $4000. And I just looked at him and I
said, well, we're going to talk about it.
I got, I got away from that place.
But you know, as I was leaving and Cindy and I were just
talking, we got out of there for under 100 bucks, which is pretty
good, you know, you know, and it was cash, it was no charge.
I don't believe in going into debt for consumables anymore.
But I was driving home and I thought, how we're impacted by
consumerism, right? That's the idolatry of our age.
We're not worshipping a statue anymore like they did back here.
Artemis was there, God of, you know, birth and some kind of
like a God of nature that they worshipped in this city of
Sardis. But we are worshippers of
consumerism. And what happens is whenever
your mind gets latched onto something you really want,
whether it's a car or some gadget in the house or whatever,
isn't it funny how that's all you think about?
You're doing investigation. You're on the Internet.
You're checking the pros and the cons.
You're like spending hours and hours and hours, you know, and
God and God's like, hey, what about me?
I'm over here. Well, yeah, Lord, but this is
fun right now because I can forget about everything and I
can get lost in, in, in this harmless consumer product here.
And, and God's speaking out with this.
This is an idol and it can get you in debt and it's taking your
focus off of me. You're just, you're, you're out
of balance. You know, you're like way, way
over here. And this is all you're thinking
about. The new car, the new this or the
new that or the, you know, and of course you might need
something and then you can be way over here to where you're
trying to be so spiritual. You're not being practical and
you're not thinking about the basic thing that if I don't get
new tires for my wife's car, the tires are going to blow and it's
going to be unsafe. And then she's going to be
calling me up to. But a balance here being
directed by the spirit that when is it appropriate to buy?
When is it appropriate to not buy all those kind of things?
But we're sojourners though, we're just passing through, so
we shouldn't get hooked into anything too deeply.
It says abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul.
A fleshly lust is an over abundance of my thought life
being interested in my consumer product, right?
It's a fleshly lust. We all struggle with it, don't
we? It isn't many times the adultery
and the fornication I'm talking to you people about, but it's
the other stuff that seems somewhat harmless, but it's also
warring against your soul. It says have your conduct
honorable among the Gentiles that when they speak against you
as evil doers, and this is the point I want to get to, that
they may, may by your good works, which they observe,
glorify God in the day of visitation.
In other words, again, the purpose of the good works is
that they would what? Glorify God?
The purpose of the church is not to magnify the organization, the
programs, the facilities, the ministries, the teachers, the
pastors, but the purpose of the church is to magnify and exalt
Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus says if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.
You know why the church in America is so weak and why so
many people seem disinterested in the message of the gospel is
that men have been lifting themselves up.
Jesus says if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.
May this church be a church that only lifts up Jesus Christ.
Guys, when you tell people about the church, don't tell them
about how great the worship band is.
Don't tell them how the pastor does this or does that.
Tell them that when you come to the church, you recognize that
Christ is present in the church, that Jesus Christ has lifted up,
that all eyes are on him, and that all flesh is but thus
right. Jesus is in the days leading up
to his crucifixion in John 12 says there were certain Greeks
among those who came up to worship at the feast.
It's Passover and they're all being drawn to Jerusalem to
celebrate Passover. Little did they know that the
true Passover lamb that was planned before the foundation of
the earth was going to make atonement for sin once and for
all. It says they came to Philip.
Philip's one of the apostles who weighed by from Bethesda,
Galilee. They asked him saying, Sir, we
wish to see Jesus. They're coming up to the temple.
They're coming up to celebrate Passover, and it's all
traditional and cultural. They do that every year.
But their real intention for coming up there was that we
would see Jesus. And that's what we pray when we
come to the church here. If I don't see Jesus here, I
don't know about you guys. I had a bad day if I didn't
sense the presence of Christ here in your life.
And then all we're doing, I'm not filled, I'm not fed.
May the people that come to this church have only one desire, and
that's the desire to see Jesus. If our works aren't perfect.
In other words, if, if I'm preaching in the flesh in my own
ability, if the worship team is doing their worship in their own
strength. If the Sunday school teachers
are teaching the lessons in their own ability, if the
women's study or the men's study downstairs before we start is
being led by human instrumentality and not the
spirit of the living God, they're not going to see Jesus
here, are they? The guests, the visitors, the
people that come to check us out, the people who are
starving. I believe in these days so many
don't go to church anymore and so many are in church, just
going to church because it's something you do.
It's a formality. People have lost the heart and
the vision for wanting to come to church to see Jesus.
And if we come here together and we see Jesus, we're blessed.
Why should we want the people to see Jesus here?
Because he's the head of the church.
It's not me. It's not anybody else here.
Christ is the head of the church.
Only Jesus can save his people from their sins.
We can't. Jesus is the Messiah.
There's no other deliverer. There's no other savior.
Jesus is the living bread. Jesus alone is from above God in
the flesh, the incarnation Jesus is eternal Jesus is the light of
the world, Jesus is the son of God, Jesus is a resurrection and
the life Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
Why in the world would anybody want to come to church for any
other reason but Jesus? Acts 413 says Now when they saw
the boldness of Peter and John, Peter and John filled with the
Holy Spirit, they perceive that they were uneducated and
untrained men. They marveled and they realized
that they had been with Jesus. All of us here, from the
youngest child to the oldest person, I don't care how much
you think you know or you don't know.
That's not the point. The point is when people meet
you and when they come in contact with you and when they
have a conversation with you, are they realizing you've been
hanging out with Jesus by the way you act, by the way you
talk, by the way you live, man. May that be the case for all of
us. And we gather here and we're
hanging out with each other. That I know, man, just being
around whoever that they're hanging out with Jesus, there's
a fragrance that's coming off of them.
There's a love, there's a, a power, there's a, a sensitivity
that doesn't come off a normal human being.
This church, Sardis, Jesus said, is ready to die.
I'll tell you guys, I have been here for 14 years and so many
times I have felt like this church is ready to die.
His word to this church, to the remnant.
Strengthen what is still whole. Don't focus on what isn't going
right in the church. Focus on what is going right.
I don't want to bother anybody here that is not interested in
following the Lord. I can't make you follow them
anyway. But I want to hang out with you
guys and pour my life into you guys that are hungry and thirsty
for God. I'll do whatever I can, spend as
much time as I can with you to help you fulfill the calling
that God has for you. But if you're not interested, I
I've learned a long time ago not to call people up that I haven't
seen for a month or two months. It doesn't do it never does
anything. And if they come back because I
called them and God didn't call them, what's the point, right?
It's not that I don't care. I pray for the people that how
long ago gone from this church. I can still pray, but we have to
focus on what's strong here and they had to focus on what was
strong there. Go back to the beginning of when
you first met Christ. I think of how the Holy Spirit
has brought new people to this church over the last six months.
And I, and this is not a put down for some of you guys who
have been here a long time, but I find that the hungriest people
are the people that just arrived here.
They're the ones that are there on Wednesday night.
They're the ones that are stepping up to serve.
They got they got energy. Are they any better than you
know? But for some reason, God sent
him here because the church was on the verge of dying.
And it doesn't matter how many people in the church, You can
have 500 people in the church and it's on the verge of dying
and the 500 people keep showing up year in and year out, day in
and day out, week in and week out.
But the church is dead, right? But the church, it's alive is
exciting to be in and exciting to be around.
There's a really cool picture. We're going to get it.
Cindy's getting ready. We had a dog guy come yesterday
to teach. We're getting ready to get rid
of this dog. I've had it and Cindy's like so
connected to it. This is like her baby.
It sits on her lap when she's watching TV at night and he's
just like real calm and just like he's like a demon dog
whenever I'm around him. My son-in-law daughter, get rid
of him. So she said, hey honey, I got
good news. I said, what's the good news?
I thought she found someone that wants a dog.
She says I got this dog trainer. This guy's done it his whole
life. He's going to come over, blah,
blah, blah. I'm like, Oh no, I love her.
What am I going to say? OK, honey, we'll have them come
over. So we're at the home show and
one of the last styles are walking down.
I see this guy, Mr. O, He trains dogs, $600 a day.
He promises your dog will be changed.
I'm desperate. I'm tempted, but I'm not going
to So I see him and there's like 8 dogs there and they're all
calm that that Cindy thought they were drugged.
They're just Bulldogs sitting there a golden all these
different types of dogs and they were just like sitting there
like like chilling out, not jumping on you, not biting, not
barking. It was amazing.
This guy's a Christian. He's been doing this for years
and he he was telling me how he does it.
And so I said, well, you know, OK, well, this guy, this not
that guy, but this other guy comes over who's 30 bucks an
hour's better than $600.00 per day.
He comes over and he makes it clear to us that he needs to
train us, not the dog. The dog's not the problem.
We're the idiots. It was humbling.
He said, no, don't, don't be offended when I tell you this.
But, you know, and I felt like I was first grade, you know, just
learning basic, you know, dog relation skills.
Well, what happened was we ended up learning some things that the
dog isn't in charge anymore and he doesn't know what to do.
He's like he knows we're in charge.
I mean, our lives have changed in one day with this dog.
Where am I going with that? I know there was an there was an
illustration there, maybe. What's that?
Oh, yeah, the picture. Thank you.
Getting back to prayer. So I'm in there praying today
and God bless this little dog. The dog is changing.
Even the last couple days before the guy came over, I said,
honey, are you praying for this dog?
And she says, yeah. And I said to Jeff and
everything by prayer and supplication.
There's no small things for God, is there?
We think the person who's lost, it's closest to hell.
Lord, Yeah, don't bother God with the trivial prayer for a
dog. But God is so loving and so
connected with everything. There's nothing insignificant
with God. So I'm on my knees praying, you
know, and all of a sudden I feel the dog and it's laying on the
back of my calves while I'm praying.
I'll tell you, I said soon, you got to get that picture and send
it around the world. You know, this church is ready
to die. I don't believe this church is
ready to die right now because I believe.
You are repenting, you are turning to God.
You are overcomers, you're interested in overcoming.
You want to do his will and you're not afraid of confessing
his name publicly. Many of you came forward last
week to pray. You weren't concerned what
people were thinking about why you up there praying?
Is that person messed up or no, No, Hey guys, I, I pray for this
church that as easy as it is for you to greet someone and give
them a hug and and say hi, it will be, this is easy for you to
come up here and pray collectively when the Lord leads
you. My heart as a pastor, I want
everybody up here to pray because then I think everybody
repented. But that's sort of foolish
because you could have everybody up here and maybe only 10 people
are repenting, right? You can't go by what's happening
on the outside, but there's something about praying in the
church. God says his church is to be a
House of prayer. And so when we close the service
and I ask you if you're so inclined to come on down and
just get on your face before the Lord at the altar up here, don't
be intimidated about it. This seat is something normal,
natural. Don't think, oh, it's weird.
If I go up there, you know, I want it to be free flowing.
And I, you know, I don't want to be trying to be a cheerleader up
here, you know, trying to get you to do something you don't
want to do. But at the same time, I want to
compel you to pray because what will happen at the end of the
service many times is that you're convicted, you're
challenged. God spoke to you, you know it,
But you got to seal the deal, so to speak, because if you just
leave and don't interact with the Lord from what he spoke to
you about in the message, you won't really probably change
that week. You sit at the enemy take takes
a seed out as long as soon as it's planted many times right,
and it doesn't produce a fruit. But if you come up and you just
say, Lord, you drilled me today. You brought something to my
attention and my heart. I want my life to change.
You're confessing God in a way before people and he won't be
ashamed to confess you before the Father.
He says he has an ear to hear. Let him repent.
The last thing I want to touch on is it talks about this idea
of he says he who overcomes I should be clothed in white
garments. I will not blot out his name
from the book of life. I want to tell you that this is
not a comment that's being made like there's a potential for
this to happen. I believe in the perseverance of
the Saints, the idea of once saved, always saved, can you
lose your salvation? People argue about this stuff
all the time. It drives me crazy.
The key is that if you really know Christ, Jesus says my sheep
know me, they hear my voice and what?
They follow me. Now, if you think you're his
sheep and you aren't hearing his voice and you're not following
him, it's obvious that you aren't a sheep yet.
You're still a goat, You're still lost.
But the true believer is one that will have problems in life,
as we all do, stumble, make mistakes, but they don't stay
down. They get back up.
They repent, they're pressing in, they're persevering, They're
going to endure to the end. A true believer endures to the
end, right? So the comment isn't being made
that there's a potential to wipe some people out of the names,
out of the book of life. What's interesting is our names
are written in that book before we were even created.
The elect, and that's the mystery.
Who's the elect? Who isn't?
Why is there elect? Why is there some?
You know, it's God is God. His ways are not our ways.
His thoughts are not our thoughts.
The beauty is, though, that he's not willing that any should
perish, that there all should come the repentance.
This has been Living Waters of Grace with Pastor Clark.
We're going through the challenging and also intriguing
Book of Revelation. Whether you're a fan of reading
ahead in books of fiction, there's such a benefit to
reading ahead in the Bible to read about how it all ends.
But in an interesting turn of events, the Book of Revelation
is not really the end, but rather the beginning.
It's the end of life as we know it here on earth.
But there's so much to look forward to for what comes after
all the judgement of the earth and those who reject God.
There's a lot to work through, and it can be heartbreaking to
read through the intense judgements and wrath that will
come on those who hate God with all their might.
The thing is, God has given chance upon chance to these
people and they don't want it. So the outcome is that there are
judgments and consequences for those who've rejected the good
news and the gift of salvation that's offered through Jesus's
death and resurrection. Are you one who has heard about
these things but doesn't really want it because you want to live
life on your terms? Trust me, living for Jesus is so
much better. That doesn't mean it will be
easy. As you listen and read through
Revelation with us, you'll come to a stark realization that you
don't want to be on Earth when the apocalypse happens.
So check out Calvary Chapel online.com to learn how to come
to a saving grace through faith that will allow you to be with
Jesus for eternity. We'd also love to meet you in
person at Calvary Chapel Westmoreland.
Come join us at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
Ste. 6B in Greensburg, PA 15601. This has been living waters of
Grace.