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.
I'm here again at this place of brokenness and repentance.
Revive me again, Lord, give me hope, give me victory, give me
strength. Keep me from doing the things
that I did last week that were unpleasing in your sight, making
my life a drag for people that have been around me.
You know, the Christian life is a life of being positive,
excited, joyful, overcoming, and that comes by the word of God
and confession of our sins to God and to one another.
The church is designed to be a hospital for sinners because
while the life of a Christian is supposed to be positive and
joyful, we can also admit that it's a life of complete
brokenness. We fully depend on God's grace
and forgiveness to be able to live a life of hope, victory,
and strength. Today, Pastor Clark teaches us
that the life of joy we live as believers only comes through
confession and forgiveness of one another, forgiveness that's
brought through grace and understanding of God's love.
Now here's Pastor Clark in Revelation Chapter 21 with
today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
I trust the Holy Spirit is the one that's ministering to you
today through my life and that you're listening to the word of
God through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives and dwells
in you. But how often do we forget that
the Holy Spirit lives in us? We get up on Monday morning all
ready to go and we're thinking, oh man, I got to do this and do
that. And all this stuff's in front of
us and we're wondering how we're going to do it and how we're
going to make it. And somehow we get our weary
bodies up and chug a couple gallons of coffee down our
throat and we get in our car and we're starting to go and, and
man, you know, it's just not really working that well.
We don't feel real motivated and real excited and we're not
anticipating God doing anything because we think God's up there
somewhere. And the mystery is God is on his
throne. And it's the same time he's in
us. In him dwells the fullness of
the Godhead bodily. I love an ancient prayer.
It says, O heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of truth
are in all places, and fill us all things.
Treasury of good things and giver of life, come and dwell in
US and cleanse us from every stain and save our souls.
O gracious Lord, you know the Holy Spirit resides in the body
of Christ. He doesn't depart like he did in
the Old Testament when David cried out to the Father.
Please do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
If you're in Christ and you belong to Christ, the Holy
Spirit is in you until the day you're taken to be with Him in
glory. But let's be honest this
morning, do you ever forget that the Holy Spirit lives in you?
Raise your hands. It's about every one of us.
Now, if we go out to our car after church and we see the gas
gauge on empty, we realize we have to go get fuel, right?
We're not going to drive around and think that gas gauge is
lying. It's not real.
I have faith I'm going to keep driving because eventually the
car is going to sputter and it's not going to have the capacity
to go forward anymore. That's the way it is with us as
Christians. But the good news is God, the
Spirit doesn't diminish in US ever.
He's the fullness of the Father dwelled and manifests in us.
But we leak and the way we leak is sin, pride, self will,
independence. And so all of a sudden we have
this sense that we don't have any empowerment in our life.
And that's when we have to repent and we just say, Lord,
I've gotten off track somehow and I want to come back and get
things right. And the way we get things right
is humbling ourselves again and again and again and again and
repenting again and again and again and again, and be restored
to the Lord so he can restore to us the joy of our salvation.
And as we humble ourselves, as we yield, as we repent, the
Spirit of God begins to well up within us and begin to take
control and begin to cause our senses to be under his
leadership. And our mind begins to be
renewed. And our heart has a joy and a
strength and a stability in and all of a sudden we realize, like
Paul, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens
us. Amen.
That's the good news. Now we have to realize that the
Christian life has not been designed to live without the
Spirit of God. It's foolishness.
But we're told in the Scriptures that we quench the Spirit of
God, we grieve the Spirit of God.
And when we quench the Spirit of God, it's basically saying, I
don't need your help. I can do this myself, which is
pride and will fall. We can grieve the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit's saying, don't do that, I don't want you to act
that way. I don't want you to do this or
think that. And we're blowing them off and
we're just going to do what we want to do.
And it breaks his heart. We grieve him.
And so all of a sudden, the sense of his presence is not
alive. We don't sense his nearness.
We don't sense his leading, his guidance, his blessing, and how
foolish that is to, to live in a way that the Holy Spirit is not
dominating our lives. And the purpose of the church,
you know, isn't like Sunday, OK, got to go to church.
You know, it's the right thing to do.
And I, I show up, I come to church and I hope you come to
church to be corrected and redirected all the time.
My mind is brought back to the main focus of where it needs to
be, and I get filled up with the presence of God, the Spirit of
God. I have a stability in my life if
I'm faithful in my study of God's Word and doing what God
says to me to do in His Word when I want to be with
believers, when I want to pray with Christians, when I want to
be in the Word, when I want to gather.
That's why Paul said don't forsake the assembling of
yourselves. And so many think they can take
church or leave it. I know what happened to my life
when I started blowing church off.
I mean, it messed my life up. It messed my marriage up.
It messed my kids up. I mean, you got to be
disciplined. You got to be focused.
You got to be committed to the things that the Lord says he
wants you to be committed to. He says these things to keep us
protected. He says if you forsake the
assembling of yourselves as a man, or some do, he says a root
of bitterness will spring up among you and you'll start to
get hard in your heart and you'll begin to start judging
people and you'll think everybody's hypocrites.
Why would I want to go to that church?
They're a bunch of hypocrites. Well, we come to church because
we know we're hypocrites, right? We repent of our hypocrisy.
We ask God to change us and to break us and to cleanse us and
to fill us so that we become more like Christ.
We don't come to church because we're perfect, do we?
The church is designed to be a hospital for sinners, not a
museum for the Saints. The early church understood that
the church was a place of restoration to heal broken lives
that have been destroyed through sin and have been ruined through
sin. That's why we have an altar call
here every week. It's not a tradition.
It's a place we're coming down lame spiritually.
We're coming down hobbling to the front.
Maybe we don't look like that physically, but inwardly we are.
We're saying, Lord, I'm here again at this place of love,
brokenness and repentance. Revive me again, Lord, give me
hope, give me victory, give me strength, keep me from doing the
things that I did last week that were unpleasing in your sight,
making my life a drag for people that have been around me.
You know, the Christian life is a life of being positive,
excited, joyful, overcoming, and that comes by the Word of God
and confession of our sins to God and to one another.
But even though the Spirit of God dwells within us, which we
all know, we don't grasp this like we will one day when we see
the Holy Trinity before our very eyes in the throne room of
heaven. Everything today that I'm
speaking about to you and you're listening.
You have to receive it by faith. I can't prove anything to you
other than my own life hopefully being somewhat of an example and
yours to me. I can look in your lies and see
Christ alive. And the Bible says we're living
epistles known and read of men. It isn't hard to to know when
you meet a Christian, is it? And you just know by the way
they act, the way they talk, the smile on their face, their
gratitude, their gratefulness, their thankfulness, their
humility, it just dawns on you that this person is a believer.
And you know what it's like when you're with someone who doesn't
have the Spirit of God in them. Matter of fact, Paul says their
spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're the sons and
the daughters of God. You know, when someone comes to
the church here the first time, I've never seen them before.
I feel immediate connection when I know that the Spirit of God's
in him. It's like I've known in my whole
life, they're my brothers, They're my sisters.
And I might not know where they live or what their names are yet
or what their interests are or what their likes or dislikes
are. But there's this fellowship in
this community of oneness that occurs by the Spirit of God that
tells us his Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we
belong to Him. There's no division and the body
of Christ from God's perspective.
There's no caste system. It's all the oneness and the
fullness of God in Christ. Now Hebrews tells us, though,
that faith is a substance of things hoped for.
So today we're learning about what we're hoping for, what God
has promised to us. But it also tells us that faith
is the evidence of things not seen.
And as the apostle Paul said, I know whom I've believed in, and
I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day. Isn't that awesome?
The faith of that man in his example to us, where we too can
say, I know whom I've believed in, and I'm persuaded that he is
able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that
day. 2nd Corinthians 57 says we walk by faith, not sight.
If you turn over to 1st John chapter 2, first John chapter 2
verse 28 and now little children abide in him, that when he
appears we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him.
It is coming. What a warning.
If you're in a situation right now you shouldn't be in and
you're living in a way you know you shouldn't, don't do it
anymore. He doesn't want you to be taken
by surprise. He wants you to have confidence
and not be ashamed when he comes.
If you know that he is righteous, you know that
everyone who practices righteousness is born of him.
And I love that illustration. Practicing righteousness.
If you're an athlete here today, in order to be a good athlete,
you have to practice. You just can't say I want to be
a good basketball player and, and go to the coach and say,
well, just call me. Tell me what time the game is
and I'll be here and I'll show up and I'll play.
You'll get out there. You'll be a fool.
You won't know the plays you'll mess up.
You'll your shots will you won't go in the net.
You'll everything will be wrong. You got to practice to get good
or proficient, hard practice, discipline, sacrifice, and
that's what it is in the Christian life.
Righteousness is sacrifice. Practicing righteousness is
forcing yourself to do the things that God says you're to
do, whether you want to do them or not, because they're good for
you. When he says pray without
ceasing, I don't really feel like praying.
Pray anyway because God's going to give you strength and bless
you because you're doing what He tells you to do.
Love your enemies. Pray for those who despite for
Lord, I don't want to love my enemies.
Do it anyway. Use your will to do what God
says even though you don't feel like it.
As you begin to pray for your enemies, you'll begin to love
your enemies. You know, perfect love casts out
fear. We were talking about that a
little bit last night. When God's love is manifested in
us the way He designed it to be, there's nothing we fear.
There's nothing we worry about. There's nothing that we should
be struggling with because we know God is greater than
anything we have to face. And then He tells us in first
John chapter 3 verse one, behold what manner of love the Father
has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of
God. What a privilege.
Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know
Him. Beloved, now we are the children
of God. It has not yet been revealed
what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
One day we will see Him as He is, and it says in verse 3.
And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as
he is pure. It's like, man, guys, whenever
you were going to take your future bride out in your first
date, you didn't know you were going to marry that person at
the time. But boy, think about how
everything was perfect, right? The car was clean, the gas tank
was full. Unless you had ulterior motives,
right? You wanted to run out of gas and
then you had an excuse. So I guess we just got to talk
for a little while, right as you can move over to put get the
guts to put your arm around them.
But you know, our clothes were clean.
We made sure we had breath mints.
I mean, we had everything covered.
We made sure we had money in our wallet to go to the restaurant
or the movie. I mean, everything was thought
out before we had that date. Well, how much more we're the
bride of Christ, our our king is coming the opportunity we have
right now to purify ourself as he is pure take out of your
house what's in the house that shouldn't be there.
Go through the magazine rack and see if Jesus came today and he
saw these magazines, he would ask me what in the world of
these here? What's the get rid of them, the
books, the videos, anything in the house that isn't pleasing to
the Lord and more importantly, what's in your spiritual house,
whatever's in your heart, any sin, anything that's unclean,
allow the Lord to purify, but he's the one that purifies you.
You just submit to him and say, Lord, this has to go.
I want it to go. And each one of us should be
from week to week in this fellowship getting more holy and
more holy and more holy, right? More pure, more pure, more pure
by His grace, by the grace of God.
For now we see in a mirror. It says in First Corinthians 13
verse 12, dimly, but one day we will see face to face.
I love the song. It is well with my soul.
O Lord, haste today when my face shall be sight.
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll.
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend.
Even so, it is well with my soul as we begin to conclude in this
wonderful glorious chapter of Revelation.
We see in verse 6 where Jesus has the one who claims this
about himself. He says also in Revelation 18
the same thing He said to me. It is done.
I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
I will give of the fountains of the water of life freely to him
who thirsts. It says in verse 7, He who
overcome shall inherit all things, and I will be his God
and he shall be my Son. We studied about victory several
weeks ago. We're not going to lose as we
trust in Christ, because we overcome sin.
We overcome failings through the blood of the Lamb, as the
martyrs overcame, it says in Revelation.
They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our
testimony. When we stand before the Lord on
that glorious day, we stand not in our righteousness.
We stand because of his blood. Amen.
We stand because he has made us righteous.
Our righteous standing is because of Jesus Christ and him
alone. And what's the word of our
testimony? We won't be saying, well Lord, I
did this and I did that and I helped this and I did.
We won't need to say anything because all glory be to the
Lord, whatever privilege we had in this short life to live for
His purposes, our all because of his grace.
The unbeliever though will be the one that will be standing
there saying why I did this, I did that, I did this, and the
Bible says our righteousness, our good works are like filthy
rags. It tells us not by works of
righteousness, which we have done in Titus, but according to
his mercy, He has saved us. In verse 8, again, the reminder
of what happened in verse chapter 20, the eternal state of
the unbelieving reminding us this has already happened.
Of course, in the 20th chapter when it says in verse 15,
whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast in the
lake of fire. But these things are written
because we're still here and some of us have an opportunity
to still get saved. It says that cowardly, if you're
here today, unbelieving, abominable murders, sexually
immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, liars shall have their part in
the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the
second death. You all have an opportunity this
week wherever you go to bring to people in all walks of life the
ministry of reconciliation. And that's really the job of the
church in these last days is to call people to repentance.
The church is not a social organization.
It's a spiritual Organism designed by God to edify and
build us up in the strength and faith of the person of Jesus
Christ. And it's also instituted by
Christ to be the foundation and descending agency to send
believers like us out into the world to beg people to come to
Christ. And you might say, well,
begging, isn't that a little bit drastic?
If we could see the lake of fire before us today and see our
loved ones or our friends standing on the edge of it, we
would do everything in our power to pull them away from that.
Just like the firefighter when he hears the alarm and he goes
into the house and the burning building and the mother's
outside screaming, saying, my son's still in the house, My
son's still in the house. A firefighter doesn't have to
think, well, yeah, maybe I might risk my life or whatever he goes
in risking his life to find that child wherever he's hid and pull
him out to safety, risking his own life.
And that's what we should be like, risking our pride.
What if they think we're nuts? What if they think we're stupid?
What if they think we're overreacting?
Guys, we're not overreacting, are we?
Hell is real. It's forever.
And I got an e-mail from Gary and Kathy this morning.
We've been praying for them, their intercessors at Calvary
Chapel Chino Hills for our church.
We'll be moving out here soon. Her dad has been ill.
You've been reading about it, praying for her.
Not real sure of his salvation. They shared with him, prayed for
him and he passed away last night and they're broken hearted
that they just don't know. They don't have that assurance
that his soul was OK. My prayer is that somehow in the
times that they talked to him that they were used by the Lord
where Ray just said I believe and only eternity in heaven and
Christ will reveal that one day. But this is what Paul says in
conclusion as we begin to make our way to the altar and pray,
if you want to pray this morning, Second Corinthians
chapter 5 verse 17 says if anyone is in Christ, he's a new
creation. Old things are passed away.
Behold, all things have become new.
If you've been born again here today, you know this is true.
It's the greatest thing that could ever happen in a human
being's life. But now Paul begins to speak
about those who are still on the edge.
All things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through
Jesus Christ. He's given to us a ministry of
reconciliation. That's the good news of the
gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures. That he was buried the third day
He rose again from the dead and to send us into heaven and
sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself, not imputing or holding the human race accountable for
their trespasses, but has committed to us a word of
reconciliation. So we have to go out and tell
people, hey, I got good news for you.
You're a Sinner. What do you mean?
That's good news? How dare you call me a Sinner?
No, listen to me. It's a good news.
You're a Sinner. But Christ isn't going to hold
your sin against you. He took it for you.
What? Yeah, He took your sin for you.
Well, anybody knows. How can that be true?
Someone would take all my guilt and all the things I've done
wrong in my life and take them on themselves for for me.
Well, that's what Jesus has done.
He shed his blood and he died on the cross for all those who will
believe it's finished. He said his sacrifice is
perfect. His sacrifice is complete and
his whole, as he said, for God so loved this world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The Philippian jailer said to Paul, What must I do to be
saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Now then, we are ambassadors for
Christ as though God were pleading through US and pleading
his begging, imploring. Today is a day of salvation.
If you hear his voice, don't hold off.
Don't keep living in a life that's going to destroy you and
those you love. Come to Christ and say, Lord,
I've been kidding myself. I've been thinking I'm a
Christian, but I'm not. There's no way because my life
doesn't represent. I'm a follower of you.
I live as a follower of the devil.
Lord, give me grace and humility to admit that before you this
day. And we beg, as Paul said today,
we plead, be reconciled to God. We implore you on Christ's
behalf, be reconciled to God. Be made right with God, be
saved. For it says in verse 21, For he
made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become
the righteousness of God in him. What a deal.
What a deal that God has made. He has made it possible because
He's the one that's never sin, to become the bearer of sin for
you and me, that we might become as He is, the righteousness of
God. 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.
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, but 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.