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.
We must pray according to God's will.
We don't make it up as we go along.
We don't pray according to our will, but we pray and we say,
Lord, not my will, but your will be done.
We make intercession for the Saints according to the will of
God. Who are the Saints?
You guys, me, all of us together and the Holy Spirit will show us
how to pray for one another. If you guys have the directory,
I, I trust you, do the people that attend the church.
It's really a good exercise daily to go through that
directory and allow the Lord to put the people in your heart.
I love talking with my friends, my family, even my Co workers.
I am quite intentional about taking time each day to build
relationships with the people in my life.
When it comes to God, though, I am days where I forget to speak
with Him. Prayer is one of the simplest,
hardest practices for most believers.
We know that we ought to talk with God daily, to pray without
ceasing, but many of us still struggle.
Pastor Clark takes time today to remind us of the critical nature
and life changing power of prayer.
Now here's Pastor Clark in Revelation Chapter 2 with
today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
Revelation chapter 2 verse 12. And the Angel of the church in
Pergamos write these things, says he who has the sharp 2
edged sword. I know your works and where you
dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast to my name.
It did not deny my faith even in the days in which Antipas was my
faithful martyr who was killed among you where Satan dwells.
But I have a few things against you, because you have there
those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put
a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat
things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.
Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans, which I which thing I hate, repent, or else I will
come to you quickly and will fight against them with the
sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches.
To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna to
eat, and I will give him a whitestone, and on the stone a
new name written, which no one knows except him who receives
it. This is the third church that
we're studying today. This for a short review.
I'd like to think about the other two churches briefly that
we've discussed so far so we can keep track of what these
churches were like and also think about what is our church
like today? What is Calvary Chapel
Westmoreland like? What kind of church are we
representing in these days that we live?
The first church we spoke of was Ephesus, and they were rebuked
for neglecting their first love, their first love for Christ.
And I wonder where we are today. The Bible says in the last days
the love of many will wax cold, meaning that there will be this
tendency for people to fall out of love with the Lord and fall
out of love with one another. And I see it happening.
I really do, not so much here, but I do see it happening in the
world today. I know that people are
struggling. I know that the Bible discusses
that before the return of Christ, there will be a great
falling away. And I just pray that that won't
be us. I pray that we will keep
ourselves in the love of God. As Jude 21 tells us, it's our
responsibility, guys, to keep ourselves in the love of God.
We're we're given commandment by the Lord to keep ourselves in
the love of God. And he also says the importance
in verse 20 in Jude. But you, beloved, build
yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy
Spirit. So we have this responsibility
as Christians to build ourselves up.
The Church is responsible to equip the Saints for the work in
the ministry. It's responsible to educate and
teach you the Word of God that you yourselves are responsible
to keep yourselves in the love of God.
You can't blame it on anybody else but yourself if you're not
staying in the love of God, you're to pray in the Holy
Spirit, building yourself up in your holy faith.
And what does it mean to pray in the Holy Spirit?
It means to pray in line with the accordance of the will of
God. God the Holy Spirit knows how to
pray. We don't many times.
Sometimes we just Babble and we just say things and our prayers
maybe go as far as the top of our head.
But if we really wait upon the Lord and ask the mind of the
Spirit what it is that we're to pray for and how we're to pray
and wait upon the Lord, I believe that the Holy Spirit
will teach us how to pray. And I believe that starts with
each of us each day being on our faces sometime during the day
with God. For me, it's best to be on my
face in the morning. I know what it's like whenever I
start my day in the morning on my face before the Lord being
silent, God will speak to me. It will work in my heart.
And that's the best time to ask the Lord to search me and know
my heart, to try me and know my thoughts and to see if there's
any wicked way in me, and then to lead me in the way
everlasting. Also, as David prayed, Lord
created me a clean heart, which after you is created in
righteousness and true holiness. Waiting on the Lord to do
something in my heart that I can't do myself.
Asking the Lord to put into my heart what He knows I need to
have placed in my heart for the day.
And so, as are in their faces before the Lord, we're showing
humility. We're waiting on the Lord.
We're allowing the Lord to search us and to try us and to
create in us a clean heart. That tells us in Romans chapter
8, verse 26 and 27, it says likewise, the Spirit also helps
us in our weaknesses. You guys realize you're weak.
We all are. We are very, very weak apart
from the power of God, and we're foolish to think that we can do
anything in our own strength and our own ability.
And yet, how often do we just get up and zoom out into the day
without spending time waiting upon the Holy Spirit?
It says for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought.
It's very clear that God knows that the way our minds are
fragmented at times and the way they're disconnected.
We're not entering into prayer in the heart opening that we
should because our minds are in a lot of different places.
And so it's important to depend on the Holy Spirit to pray in
and through US. For it says the Spirit himself
who dwells in US, makes intercessions for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered.
The Holy Spirit is able to communicate with the Father and
the Son in ways that we could never communicate with them.
But yet the Lord works in US as the Holy Spirit's in us, that we
begin to know the work of God's Spirit.
We begin to learn how the Holy Spirit works and how He directs
and how He leads and how He gods and how he speaks to the Father
in our behalf. He's a model for us to know and
to learn to pray. It says now he referring to the
Holy Spirit who searches the hearts and knows what the mind
of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the
Saints according to the will of God.
We must pray according to God's will.
We don't make it up as we go along.
We don't pray according to our will, but we pray and we say
Lord, not my will, but your will be done.
We make intercession for the Saints according to the will of
God. Who are the Saints?
You guys, me, all of us together and the Holy Spirit will show us
how to pray for one another. If you guys have the directory,
I trust you do the people that attend the church.
It's really a good exercise daily to go through that
directory and allow the Lord to put the people on your heart in
the church to pray for. You can't forget that you go
down line by line, person by person, family by family, and
some people the Lord at times will have you pause and pray
even more for. And why?
Because the Holy Spirit is giving you insight to pray and
make intercession for the Saints.
Paul's prayer for us in the book of Ephesians and Ephesus had the
problem of losing their first love.
Go to Ephesians chapter 3 for a minute and see how Paul prayed
for this church. And this prayer is also on
behalf of not only that church, but all churches.
It exists throughout time and even into this day and into the
future. And verse 14 of chapter 3, Paul
says, for this reason I bow my niece to the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. See, Paul was the type of man
who humbled himself before the throne of God.
Physical posture is very important.
I found in prayer. If you lay in bed and you try to
pray, you find you're sometimes falling asleep.
You ever do that? If you're driving and praying,
you get distracted because someone pulls out in front of
you or something, you know, but you need to have some quiet time
before the Lord. And Paul obviously had it.
He falls on his knees before the Lord, a good way to pray.
And he says from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is
named, that he would grant you according to the riches of His
glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the
inner man. Paul knows that we are weak.
He knows the church in Ephesus was struggling.
He prays for the church that God would grant them strength with
might through this Holy Spirit and the inner man that's in the
inner part of your conscience, that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith. That you being rooted and
grounded in love. The importance of having love
for one another rooted and grounded.
This not in doctrine, but rooted and grounded in love that you
may be able to comprehend with all the Saints what is the width
and length and depth and height. Know the love of Christ which
passes knowledge that you may be filled with the fullness of God.
So Paul's desire was that the church would be so blessed and
so overwhelmed with God. Your your love is extending
beyond what my mind can even surpass and fathom.
It's so far up and it's so far on the sides of me and below me
and all around me that I could never get to the end of the
greatness of your love, that God would just not put it in your
mind to understand that. But it would be in your heart.
And when it's in your heart, it changes your very life.
It's not about religion. It's about Jesus, a living
Savior. And He says that you might be
filled with the fullness of God. In other words, God doesn't
intend any of us to be empty or to be shallow or to be thirsty
and hungry. He wants us to be full of Him at
all times. And then Paul says in 20 now to
him was able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask
or think big prayer there that Paul made right.
You read that and say, man, how's that possible?
Paul says we pray to him who's able to do exceedingly
abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power
it works in us to him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ,
all generations, forever and ever, Amen.
So Ephesus was a wonderful church at one time, but Jesus
rebukes them in the first part of this church analysis
regarding themselves and losing their love for Christ.
Guys, if you're here today and you're losing your love for
Christ, stop where you are and to say, Lord, restore to me that
love. Don't try to do it yourself.
You can't ask God for favor and say, God, restore to me the joy
of my salvation. Put in me that love that you've
promised me to have, and I guarantee God will do that for
you. He's willing to do that for you.
The second church we looked at was Smyrna.
Amazing church, a persecuted body that had no compromise in
its life. As a church.
It stood against the tide of ungodliness and immorality.
They didn't care if they lost their ability to earn a living
because of the guilds that persecuted people who proclaim
Christ. They stood out and stood up for
Christ. They had no compromise.
There was no warning given to this church to repent.
Because you find in persecuted countries, people are on their
face crying out to God continually when they're in the
cell, knowing that tomorrow morning is their last day and
they're being taken to the guillotine or the fire.
They are already in the place of purity and humility, waiting
upon God. They're on fire.
They're ready for whatever it is that's going to come upon them.
So today we look at Pergamus, the third church.
Pergamus is known as a compromising church.
It was called the greatest city in Asia Minor.
They had over 200 volumes of literature.
They actually had printing, not printing presses, but papyrus
smells that made the parchment in order for them to write down
the things that people were interested in reading it.
Recur refers to this city as being the place of Satan's seat.
Why? This was where the first temple
was dedicated to Caesar, and Caesar was an ungodly roller.
It also was a place of the temple of Asuth Lapias, meaning
the God of healing. That God had a symbol that was a
staff with a serpent on the top. That's the symbol you see today
in modern medicine. You know, it was a, a Pagan
symbol and the serpent on the staff was representing again
this place of Satan's seat. And verse 13, this church
suffered many, many things because of what was happening in
the city at the time, very ungodly city.
And to be a Christian in these kind of places was very, very
difficult. Verse 13, it says I know your
works and where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold
fast to my name and did not deny my faith even in the days which
Antipas was my faithful martyr who was killed among you, where
Satan dwells, so much persecution, even death.
Some faithful followers of Christ suffered loss of life.
They refused to offer incense on the altar and say that Caesar is
Lord. They were made in that time to
worship Caesar. It'd be like today you saying
Obama is Lord and if you didn't say it, you'd be cast into the
prisons and be persecuted. Be a terrible, terrible time to
live. The Lord describes himself as a
sharp sword. The sword is also the symbol of
the Roman authority that if you didn't do what Rome said, you
would be taken out by the sword. And verse 16, it refers to the
sword of Christ that is more to be feared than the throne of
earthly kingdoms. And so often in our culture,
people compromise because they're concerned about what
others say or think or do, not realizing that one day we'll
have to give an account to the Lord for every word and every
idle deed that we've committed in this life.
The big problem with this church that Jesus points out in verse
14, he has a few things against them because they have there
those there's people in their fellowship who hold the doctrine
of Balaam. We taught Balak to put a
stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat
things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality.
This you also have those who hold the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans, which things I hate.
This is real important guys doctrine.
The church in the last days, it says will not endorse sound
doctrine. People will be gravitating and
drawn to places where there isn't really any doctrine being
taught where they can be humored and they can be have their ears
tickled and not sense any kind of conviction about anything.
The enemy deceives us by using false doctrines.
Paul speaks in Acts 20 verse 29. He says, for I know this, that
after my departure, savage wolves, and Jesus refers to
these people that come as in sheep's clothing will come in
among you, not sparing the flock also from among yourselves.
Men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the
disciples after themselves. So we see here in this church in
Revelation where people are not listening to the truth, they're
allowing false teachers to come in and deceive the people, and
as a result the people are falling away from the faith.
He says for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night
and day with tears. He did not cease torn everyone
night and day with tears. Sometimes you might get tired of
me telling you about false doctrine or false teachers.
That's a big part of being a pastor, to educate the people
and to let them know who out there is not to be trusted, who
out there is not to be listened to or believed.
The book she shouldn't be reading and shouldn't be buying.
Because they're rooted not in Apostolic teaching, but in the
doctrines and traditions of men. False doctrines, Jesus says in
Matthew 715. Beware of false prophets who
come to you in sheep's clothing. In other words, they look just
like the rest of us, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
2nd Corinthians Chapter 11 verse 1314 and 15 says, For such are
false prophets, deceitful workers, transforming themselves
into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself
themselves turn himself into an Angel of light.
Therefore, it is no great thing if His ministers also transfer
themselves into ministers of righteousness whose end will be
according to their works. When a church begins to
compromise, and I've been in them, you've been in them, you
know what it's like when it begins to compromise and
doctrine, it begins to no longer be a place of blessing, but a
place of judgement. God begins to judge the work of
those who teach false doctrine. Jesus uses strong words about
this in verse 15. He says the doctrine of the
Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. He hates false doctrine.
Some people think it's OK to be in churches that are teaching
things that aren't biblical or modern secular thoughts or
psychology or contemporary evangelist, televangelist.
So they'll talk about these people and lift them up like
there's some kind of great leaders or great heroes.
Jesus would say the same thing about what we experienced today
in regard to the Word of Faith or the prosperity movement.
He would say these things which I also hate.
We need to hate what the Lord hates and to love what the Lord
loves. It isn't wise to not speak out
about about the things that are false.
Paul was very clear about it. Peter was clear about it.
Timothy was clear about it. Jesus is absolutely crystal
clear about it. In Matthew 15 verse 8-9, it says
these people. Jesus was referring to the false
teachers. Draw near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips. You can be in a a huge church
where everybody's raising their hands and worshiping and and
praising God. But God, you know, he's not that
impressed about the outward appearance of the hands raised.
Nothing wrong with raising the hands, but if we raise our hands
and our hearts are defiled and sinful, that's an abomination to
God. It's like the incense that they
have in a Bayou offered to God. It's blasphemous.
And it says these people honor me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me, and in vain they worship me.
Teaching his doctrine the commandments of men.
Nowadays, the things that are being taught in evangelical
churches as doctrines are nothing more than the inventions
of some man who interpreted the scripture in a very unbiblical
way. Write some books, becomes very
famous because people like feels good in their ears.
They like how it tickles them, and they're persuaded, and they
begin to follow it, and then they begin to be deceived.
A false doctrine is the invention of man, his concepts,
his interpretations and heresies.
It's not rooted in the Apostolic teaching.
And Ephesians 414. Paul warns them about being
carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of man,
where they lie and cunning craftiness, thereby waiting and
lying, waiting to deceive. It's hard to conceive that
there's people out there that make their living under the
auspices of ministry and they're leading the flock down the path
of destruction in regard to the teaching.
And Paul warns the church there in Ephesus, don't be carried
about with all these winds of doctrines.
I get so tired of all these new moves out there today.
This book about this book, and then this book about that book
and this book about it's like, try this and try.
And then the pastors, they feel pressured.
They become schizophrenic. Well, we need to do this because
this is in now. And when that isn't in anymore,
then we'll do this. And then let's talk about this
book book and buy this guy's writings.
And then, you know, before, you know, people aren't in the word
anymore, they're into some book that some man's written.
First Timothy 110 says there are things that are contrary to
sound doctrine, warning them not to be around that stuff.
First Timothy 41, it says, give heed that people will give heed
to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons in the last
days. In chapter 4, verse 6.
If you instruct the brethren, I love this, it should be the life
verse of every pastor, every teacher.
If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good
minister of Jesus Christ. Nourish in the words of faith
and of God's doctrine which you have carefully followed.
Amen. That's what we're all to do.
Let me read that again. This is the responsibility of
anybody that teaches the Word. If you instruct the brethren in
these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ,
nourished in the words of faith and of God's doctrine, which you
have carefully followed. I'll tell you the day that we
stopped carefully following the doctrine of God.
Here is a day you bolt from this church.
Don't allow yourself to be sitting here ever under any
false teaching anywhere. If you have friends who are in
churches and they're in places of false doctrine and false
teaching, it behooves you to warn them and to tell them to
search the scriptures as the Bereans did daily to see whether
the things they were being taught or so.
There's too many Christians nowadays that attend the church
without their Bible, and you come and you listen to some man
rant and rave up front for 45 minutes and you figure, well,
he's a minister, he must know what he's talking about.
Don't ever take that for granted.
Your job is to study and to be in the Scriptures along with me
or anybody in this church that's teaching something that isn't in
the Word. You say very nicely.
Where did you come up with that? And you keep my fire to the
feet, too. It's important.
In the Book of Revelation, Pastor Clark is taking us
through all kinds of events and happenings that are predicted
for the future. But for those who believe and
follow Jesus, there's much to look forward to in heaven with
Jesus. However, for those who are here
on earth during the Tribulation, there's all kinds of chaos that
will unfold. The Bible talks about an
Antichrist, a false prophet, and of course that evil enemy Satan.
You see how there are such clever attempts for the enemy to
disguise himself as God and even the Trinity, the true Savior of
the world is God and how he comes to rescue through his
triune nature, God the Father, Jesus the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. Just like Satan tried to take
over for God in heaven and was cast out, Satan will try to
convince people on earth that he is the triune God to be
worshipped instead of the legitimate God in heaven.
It's an attempt, and although he will capture plenty in his
schemes, he will not win. The true God wins, and
Revelation unpacks how that will all happen in detail.
Be encouraged because there's a way out for all of this madness
that will ensue on this earth. But you don't want to wait
indefinitely to make that decision about Jesus.
We don't know when the church will be raptured, and you want
to be ready to be with Jesus. To learn more about this, head
over to calvarychapelonline.com. We're so glad you've been with
us today. And if you'd like to connect
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Be sure to join us for weekly services at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
Ste. 6B in Greensburg, PA 15601. This has been living waters of
grace.