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.
Your standard is the Holy One of Israel, the God of the universe,
the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't compare to him, right?
There's no way you can stand beside him and say, well, I'm
just like him. I'm just as good as him.
We all have fallen short of the glory of God, the Bible says.
And then when we begin to understand and see that, all the
sudden the light bulb goes on in our mind and we say, I need a
savior. I can't do this myself.
And so, by the grace of God, we begin to be convicted, and we
ask the Lord to come into our lives and to save us and have
mercy upon us. When food coloring is added to a
glass of water, it becomes nearly impossible to make the
water clear again. You have to pour all the water
out to make it new. Today, Pastor Clark says you
must remember that you'll never be anything without Jesus.
He took all your sins to the cross.
Without Him, you are condemned to death.
But with him, you're allowed to be with him for eternity.
Jesus took all the sin that made you dirty to the cross.
Trust and believe that he's Lord.
Let him guide your life. Now.
Here's Pastor Clark in Revelation chapter 12 with
today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
Verse 13 and 16 through 16 is discussing the issues of what's
going to happen in the last days, the last 3 1/2 years of
the Tribulation in regard to the nation of Israel.
And there's a lot of different views on Israel in these last
days in regard to God's plan and purpose for that nation.
We believe that God still has a purpose to fulfill with the
nation of Israel, and we believe that when Christ comes back and
the second coming, he'll establish his Kingdom for 1000
years, the millennial reign of Christ, and Christ will rule and
reign on the earth for those thousand years.
But there's a big attack it seems today toward the nation of
Israel, the Jews in particular, because of the anti-Semitic
tendencies of all the nations of the earth.
Israel is the most hated country in the world today.
More countries are focused on the destruction of Israel today
more so than ever before. And we know that the evil one
has worked since the beginning and the garden to try to stamp
out the seed that was to come of the Lord Jesus Christ and to
prevent him from fulfilling his his desire and his goal to come
and die on behalf of the human race, the sins of the world.
We also know that the Jews have been attacked throughout the
church history and in modern times as well with the abuses of
Adolf Hitler and what he did to that nation and to the people.
And the Antichrist is going to be even more hateful and
vindictive and destructive toward this nation.
And even Adolf Hitler, the dragon was enraged.
The dragon is the Antichrist with the woman.
The woman is the allegory, the picture of the nation of Israel.
And he went to make war with the rest of her offspring.
That's all the descendants, believing and unbelieving
descendants that are still alive during this time of the
tribulation. And he's going to keep who keep
the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
So primarily the remnant, all those who are going to come to
know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord during this tribulation.
There's going to be a lot of people who who get saved during
this time. And the devil hates Christ.
He hates people who follow Christ.
And so his whole goal and desire is to completely exterminate the
the nation of Israel. It can't happen because God is
watching over that nation. It's impossible for that nation
to be destroyed, but it will be suffering a lot of difficulty as
we move toward the final 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation.
Now, this plan that God has for the nation of Israel has been
centered in the person of Jesus Christ before the foundation of
the earth. The Bible tells us that Jesus is
a lamb that was slain before the foundation of the earth.
It's just incredible, the plan of God when you think about it.
God knew that when He created us, we would fall.
He knew that His Son would be the Redeemer and that he would
come and become one of us in the likeness of our flesh, being
fully God and fully human and taking upon himself the sins of
the world, dying on behalf of those who put their faith and
trust in Jesus Christ. So God has always worked with a
remnant since the beginning of time.
Today, if you're here and you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you
can be really excited that you're part of the remnant,
you're part of the plan of God before the foundation of the
earth. The Bible tells us that Paul the
apostle who abused Christians for a great many years in his
life before he had his Damascus Rd. experience.
It's interesting, the Bible said that this man was chosen before
the foundation of the world in his mother's womb to be
separated to be an apostle. But all those years he was this
vindictive and hateful toward, you know, anybody that would
proclaim the truth of the Messiah and Jesus Christ.
And so God has always worked through a remnant to accomplish
his purposes. Way back in the Old Testament,
he started with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all their
descendants. It said through this seed, the
seed that came through that race and that particular people
group, God said through them all the nations of the earth shall
be blessed. And so we want to look a little
bit about Israel today, just so we're on the same page, so to
speak, as to what we believe is a church.
And I'd like you to flip over to Romans Chapter 9, verse 27,
Romans Chapter 9, verse 27. And today we're going to
highlight God's plan for this, this small little part of the
world over there, this nation called Israel and God's
intentions for it in the days ahead.
This is Isaiah crying out concerning Israel.
Isaiah was an Old Testament prophet who was given the
anointing of God to speak forth to the nation regarding the
purposes of God in the last days.
And it says through the number of the children of Israel,
although they be as a sand of the sea, the remnant will be
saved. So all the millions upon
millions upon millions of people who have ever lived.
God has a specific number of people, the remnant in Israel
that will be saved for he will finish the work and cut it short
in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon
the earth. As Isaiah said before, unless
the Lord of the Sabbath had left us a seed, we would have become
like Sodom and we would have been made like Gomorrah.
So the the understanding that if God didn't do this by His mercy
for these people, every one of them would have been destroyed.
They admitted that they would have gone the way of Sodom and
Gomorrah, but the Lord in His mercy didn't leave them without
a seed. And what shall we say then?
That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained the
righteousness, even the righteousness of faith.
But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained
the law of righteousness. Why?
Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were by the
works of the law. For they stumbled at the
stumbling stone as it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion,
a stumbling stone, a rock of offense.
And whoever believes on him will not be put to shame.
So Jesus, when he came, remember, he said I've come to
my own and my own receive me, not they.
They didn't recognize him as a Messiah and God at that time
wasn't put off in the sense, well, forget Israel, you know,
I'll find another group of people.
I'll work with the Gentiles and basically Israel's going to be
destroyed. God just set them aside for a
period of time because of the hardness of their heart.
And if you study throughout the Old Testament, Israel has been
hard hearted and stiff necked throughout biblical history,
whenever God brought him through the flood with Moses and
delivered them from the bondage of Pharaoh in Egypt.
I mean, these people saw miracles, exciting things.
I mean they visibly saw the power of God and they get
through it and, and things begin to get a little bit difficult.
They don't like the way things are going and they complain and
they say they were better off before they were delivered.
They were better off back in Egypt and Moses having to deal
with these stiff necked people. This is as pastors have to deal
with stiff neck people, you guys stiff neck.
But it's just the way it is since the beginning of time.
And you can't look at Israel and say, boy, those people real
fools. And they were like, you know, we
all have a tendency at times to like have 4 heads of bronze.
We want it our way. And we're not going to listen to
God even though we know we should.
And we know he loves us and he blesses us.
And still at times we demand and want our own way.
So that that's not, that's not a healthy thing, obviously.
But God in his mercy began to work with the Gentiles, the
mercy of God, when Israel decided that they don't think
that Jesus is a Messiah. Jesus didn't stop his plan of
redemption just because the lack the nation of Israel turned
their back on Him. He opened this wonderful plan up
to every human being. There's no distinction between
Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female, bond or slave.
We've all been made to drink together the same spiritual
drink, which is Jesus Christ. So aren't you glad that God had
another plan? He just didn't finish it and
say, well, my own people don't want me.
So that's it. I'll just ZAP myself up to
heaven and destroy the earth. No, God had a heart and has a
heart for everybody, every race, every people group.
But he has a distinct plan for Israel.
Now Israel, if you, if you study in the Old Testament, they were
given the law, the law, the 10 commandments, the Torah, the
first five books of the Bible put down to show us the holiness
of God, that no man, no matter how much he tries, could ever
attain to perfection and being accepted by God by obeying the
law because we all have broken it, right.
We've all broken the law. But Jews have to this day,
especially those who are still practicing, think somehow they
can attain to their own righteousness by fulfilling all
those mandates of, of, of the Torah, the law.
And it's, it's very, very intense if you study all the
details of what's expected of them.
I mean, there's no way anybody could fulfill that.
And God knew that we couldn't, and that's why He sent his Son
to fulfill the law for us. He's the only one that lived a
perfect life that before the Father on our behalf could say
he never sinned. Of course, He's God in the
flesh, impossible to sin, and He took upon himself the sin that
you and I deserve, stood in our place as a perfect sacrifice, a
perfect Lamb of God. That's what John the Baptist
said when he saw and behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the
sins of the world. Up until that point, the Old
Testament sacrifices couldn't do it.
The high priest in the Day of Atonement could not do it.
It was all temporal picture of the picture of Christ the
Messiah who was to come. And so the Jews to this day
though the self righteousness of thinking somehow and even
Gentiles, a lot of people in the world today think that they can
be accepted by God because they live a good life.
I talk to people all the time about their souls and they'll
say, well, I'm pretty good. I'm not too bad.
Well, pretty good and not too bad.
According to who? According to me, if I'm your
standard, yeah, you're probably better than me.
But if your standard is the Holy one of Israel, the God of the
universe, the Lord Jesus Christ, you can't compare to him, right?
There's no way you can stand beside him and say, well, I'm
just like him. I'm just as good as him.
We all have fallen short of the glory of God, the Bible says.
And then when we begin to understand and see that, all of
a sudden the light bulb goes on in our mind and we say, I need a
Savior, I can't do this myself. And so by the grace of God, we
begin to be convicted and we ask the Lord to come into our lives
and to save us and have mercy upon us.
Now if you flip over to Galatians chapter 3, this is the
issue of the problem in regard to the idea that man can somehow
attain his own righteousness by fulfilling the works of the law.
This is Galatians chapter 3 verse one.
It says oh foolish Galatians and God could speak to us this
morning and say oh foolish Calvary Chapel people, who has
bewitched you or deceived you that you should not obey the
truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed
among you as crucified. This only I want to learn from
you. Did you receive the Spirit by
the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
Big question there. Did you receive the Spirit, the
Holy Spirit, by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?
Paul tells us faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word
of God. He tells us it's by grace.
We've been saved through faith, and this is not of ourselves.
It's a gift of God, right? Not of work.
So none of us can boast. So the answer to the question
obviously would be if we're really tracking with what Paul's
teaching here is it I received the Spirit of God.
I received salvation, I received the person of Jesus Christ by
the word of God and by hearing the word of God.
And faith was given to me by God by his grace and not by anything
that I could ever have done on my own.
He says, are you so foolish in verse 3, having begun in the
Spirit, you're now being made perfect by the flesh.
When you begin to see God's plan, it takes pressure off
because you're thinking, who am I to try to impress God in my
own ability or your ability? The only person that impresses
God is his Son. That's the only one that could
redeem us. Now we want to live in the
likeness of his Son, to hear well done, good and faithful
servant, which Paul says is the least we can do after all that
Christ has done for us. But it's all of Christ, right?
It's all of grace. It's all of what he's done, His
mercy. And so when I look at the
Christian life and I'm endeavoring to live a holy life
and to live pleasing before the Lord, I don't do this by my own
works of righteousness, my promises to God, or I'll try
better, or I'll do this because we all fail.
I live for God when I'm thinking clearly by the power of the Holy
Spirit. And you do too, Christ in you
the hope of glory, not by might, not by power, but by my spirit,
saith the Lord of hosts. And what happens to us in our
Christian lives? We get so weighed down at times
and we like all I'm just not passionate about the Lord
anymore and I don't want to read his word and, and I don't, you
know, I don't, I, I know I should be involved or plugged in
and serve and whatever, but I just don't have the energy and
I'm lukewarm and I'm backslidden.
And we, we make all these excuses of God and God's like,
but what's your problem? I mean, you know, what do you
expect? You think you're going to do
something? No, it's through the power of
the Spirit, by faith. And so we ask God to do for us,
in US, through us, what there's no way we could do ourselves.
That's why Paul said be filled with the Spirit, walk in the
Spirit. It's a command.
Be energized in your daily life by the Spirit, because what the
flesh profits nothing. Have you tried to prop up your
humanness, your your fleshly abilities to try to do something
for God? It doesn't work man.
And it's something we all have to fight against every day of
our life because it's just, it's just, it seems like it's endemic
in human nature to somehow want to justify itself by its
so-called self righteousness. You know when someone criticizes
you for something or they make a statement to you about
something, some failing in your life or weakness, are you
insulted? And your ire goes up and you
think, well, who are they to tell me about whatever self
righteousness because you're wanting to prove to someone else
that you're better than you really are, instead of just
saying, hey, you're, you're right.
I'm even worse than that. That's freeing, you know?
And then say, but pray for me so that God can work in me, so that
I can be what He's intended in me to be, not by my own
abilities, but by the work of the Holy Spirit in and through
my life. And so he says in verse 4, Have
you suffered so many things in vain?
If indeed it was vain, Therefore he who supplies a spirit to you
and works miracles among you, does he do it by the works of
the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Question again, just as Abraham believed God and it was
accounted to him for righteousness, therefore know
that only those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham.
So when you look at all the Jews who have ever lived throughout
the course of history, those who are part of the remnant in the
Old Testament and the New Testament, who have believed in
the Messiah to come by faith, are justified.
Abraham for sure never proved to you or me by his life that he
was perfect, nor did he ever make a statement that he was
accepted to God, accepted by God because of what he's done, but
because of what Christ has done. And he's noted in the book of
Hebrews as the father of faith. And so it says the Scripture
foretelling that God would justify the Gentiles by faith,
preach the gospel to Abraham beforehand, before Christ was
even born, saying in you all the nations shall be blessed.
So Abraham's out there that night, and God gives him a
vision, shows him the stars, and it says as as the stars in this
heaven, and as the grains of sand in the sea, so shall be my
descendants, those who believe in that Messiah.
This is Abraham has. And so the Scriptures for seeing
this would justify the Gentiles by faith.
Preach the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, in you all
the nation shall be blessed. So then those who are of faith
are blessed with believing Abraham, there's only one way to
get to heaven. And Jesus said you must be born
again If you flip over to John chapter 3.
For some of us, it seems somewhat elementary, but if
you're dragging around your human carcass trying to live the
Christian life, you need to be reminded, as I did, that you and
I, if we're Christians today, didn't get here by something we
worked up in ourselves. It was a miracle.
And if you remember back when the Holy Spirit came into you
and you were born again, wasn't life exciting the Christian
life? Wasn't it exhilarating, huh?
I mean, you just couldn't wait to tell people about what the
Lord's done for you. You were yakking and blabbing
and wanting to grab everybody and take him into heaven.
And then what happens so many months or years later?
You're. Oh, yeah, the good old days when
I was born again. I remember that I was really on
fire. And boy, I wish I could go back
to those days. Well, you can go back to those
days, get rid of trying to do it in the flesh and ask the Holy
Spirit to fill you again and control you and empower you.
And when the. Spirit empowers us.
Life gets thrilling again and exciting.
And I can talk about this by experience.
I got saved when I was 20 and long, long pilgrimage of ups and
downs and walking in my own humanness and my weakness and my
flesh. And I'm learning, as you know,
as I go on a little more every day, to really believe it when
the Lord says it's not by Mike Clark, not by your human
ability, it's not by your power, it's not by your intentions,
it's not by your obsessive compulsive behavior, it's not by
anything but by my spirit, saith the Lord.
And it takes the pressure off me guy, and you guys too.
I mean, if you're here today and you know, you know that it's
been a long time since you've drunk from that fountain of life
that brings living water to your soul.
It's here today. He's here, It's him, He's
available. And all you got to do is say,
Lord, I've been trying to do this myself again, and I'm
giving up. And the Lord's not going to say,
what do you mean you're giving up?
You can't give up. I'm depending on you.
I need you got the Lord's a good.
Now I can take over. Yeah, well, now we can begin to
get some things accomplished because I'm in charge, not you.
So Jesus says you must be born again.
He's speaking to this guy in verse one Pharisee name
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. And the man comes to Jesus by
night. And this is a Jewish leader.
He's A and he's a servant in the in the fair recidical movement.
And he addresses Jesus as rabbi teacher.
We know that you're a teacher coming from God, for no one can
do these things that you do unless God is with him.
And Jesus answered him and said, most assuredly, I say to you,
unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
He wasn't talking to him about obeying the law and fulfilling,
fulfilling the law. He was talking to him about
something he never heard in his life before.
He said, and Nicodemus says to him, how can a man be born when
he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother's wombs and womb and be born?
And Jesus answered most assuredly I say to you, unless
one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the
Kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is
flesh, and that which is born a spirit is spirit.
Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born again.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it,
but cannot tell where it comes from, where it goes.
So is everyone who is born of the spirit.
And Nicodemus answered and said, How can these things be?
And Jesus answered to him and said to him, are you the teacher
of Israel and you do not know these things?
Isn't that interesting? The blind leading the blind?
How many churches a day on a Sunday throughout the earth are
trying to tell the people they got to get better, they got to
work harder, they got to do this and they got to do that and
they're condemned and they're beaten down and they're walking
out, man, I got to do, I'm such a loss.
I just can't do it. And instead of the shepherds
taking the load off and Jesus said my yoke is easy and my
burden is light right coming learn to me all you that labour
and are heavy laden. I'm that isn't my guilt trip.
That isn't what I'm giving you. Learn of me, for my yoke is easy
and my burden is light. And Jesus is saying you're a
teacher of Israel and you don't know these things.
Most surely I say to you, we speak what we know and we
testify what we've seen, and you do not receive our witness.
And there's a struggle in society and Christian society
today of a group of people that believe in works righteousness
and a group of people that believe in grace.
And Paul couldn't have gone any clearer in Ephesians 289.
For by grace you've been saved right through faith, and this is
not of yourselves. It's what a gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast.
Thanks for being with us today here on Living Waters of Grace.
We are in the Book of Revelation and we find it fascinating how
influential and involved the angels are in this book.
They bring about whatever it is that God has instructed them to
do, but it's through their actions that much of the
judgements come on the earth. The angels are in submission to
God as their authority, but He utilizes them in unique ways
throughout this book. Like angels have a specific
purpose from God, you have a unique purpose and plan to.
God wants to use you in your life as a testimony to others
and to bring others who are currently lost into the fold of
God. God would love more than
anything for all who are willing to come to Him for salvation,
but He wants it to be their choice, not a forced situation.
This is the way God works, not forcing himself on anyone, but
giving each person free will. If you're interested in learning
about this choice that's free and that it's a gift, go to
calvarychapelonline.com and click on the About Us tab and
then find the link for what we believe.
We'd love to be a help and a resource for you as you walk
through what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
If you find the contact tab on our website, you can get in
touch with us or submit a prayer request.
We'd love to hear from you. That's all for today's edition
in Revelation, but there's much more that Pastor Clark plans to
share with us from this culminating book of the Bible.
Stay tuned for that and make sure to mention this radio
program to others. Invite them to tune in to Grace
FM 91.7 FM and they can stream worldwide at Grace Radio dot FM.
This has been living waters of Grace.