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.
The Holy Spirit lives in each of us today as believers, and He is
jealous for that relationship with you.
If there's anything in your life that's causing you to love
something else more than you love God, it breaks the heart of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But it says he gives more grace. Therefore, he says God resists
the proud and He gives grace to the humble.
I pray today that all of us are in a place of humility, because
if we're in a place of humility, we're going to receive what God
is telling us today. Can you imagine our mighty God
being jealous of anything? The same God who created the
heavens and the earth, who split the sea and makes mountains
move. That same God is jealous of your
love for anything that exceeds your love for Him.
God longs to be in a relationship with you.
Today, Pastor Clark teaches you that even through God's jealousy
and heartbreak, he remains merciful, waiting with
compassion and longing for you. Humble yourself and receive the
guidance that God has now. Here's Pastor Clark in
Revelation chapter 20 with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. Revelation chapter 20 verse one.
Then I saw an Angel coming down from heaven, having the key to
the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand.
He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is a devil.
And Satan bound him for 1000 years, and he cast him into the
bottomless pit, and shut him up and set a seal on him, so that
he should deceive the nation's no more till the 1000 years
we're finished. But after these things, he must
be released for a little while. What a glorious day that's going
to be when the devil is cast into the bottomless pit and
locked up not to be able to influence or hassle anybody or
the nation's any longer. I wish that was true for right
now, don't you? But it isn't.
The Devil is alive and well. As the old writer Hal Lindsay
said on Planet Earth, he's working every day to destroy our
lives. Now we can sit here today as
people of God and just be proud and tune this out.
And God help us if we do that because I believe this is
probably the most important message that the Lord has ever
put on my heart in 14 years of ministry.
I really do. Because I'm tired of seeing the
devil destroy homes. I'm tired of seeing the devil
destroy marriages and destroy kids and destroy nations.
A friend of mine lost some loved ones recently says I'm tired of
seeing people go to hell without hearing the gospel.
I'm tired of it. And the devil doesn't want any
of us to be tuned in to what his agenda is.
He wants us to be complacent and deceived so that we're this
blind. That I think you're my enemy and
you think I'm your enemy. That we think our wives are the
problems, or our husbands are the problems, or our kids are
the problems, or our job or our employer.
The Bible says we are not wrestling against flesh and
blood, but against principalities and powers, the
rulers of darkness of this present age.
There will be 1000 year reign. We studied last week and 19 of
the Lord through his power reigning at the end of the
tribulation at the second coming that he cast the Antichrist and
the false prophet into the Lake of fire.
The devil hasn't been cast there yet in this study, but he will
be at the end of time. But there will be this great
White Throne judgment that will occur at the end of time for all
those who do not know Jesus Christ, whoever's name is not
written in the Lamb's book of life will be cast into the lake
of fire forever and ever and ever.
Now think about this, guys. That's your relatives.
That's the people you work with. How about the how about the
person you sit next to in the desk at work?
Do you realize without Christ they're going to die and go to
hell? Your neighbor that you're
friends with, that maybe you hang out with, you watch the
Steelers game with you have dinner with, whatever.
If they don't know Jesus Christ, they're going to go to hell,
they're going to die and they're going to be forever and ever in
the lake of fire and torment, forever and ever and ever.
How can we be so remiss not to tell people, hey, you need to
know something about me and I need to tell you something about
you? I know Jesus Christ, He's my
Lord and my Savior. He saved me.
He died for me. He cleansed me of my sin.
And I want you to experience that same wonderful privilege.
But if you don't come to Christ, you're going to die and you're
going to go to hell. That's the bottom line.
But the devil doesn't want us to think like that, does he?
He wants us to hang out with people, and he wants us not to
bring this up, right? Because if we bring it up,
what's it cause? Conflict, right?
It causes judgement. It causes what?
Man, You're whacked, or you're a holy roller, or you're like,
weird, you know, I used to like you, but now that you're telling
me like what you're really about, I don't really want to
hang with you anymore. And that's the consequences of
the truth. It's like a sword.
It divides and it brings truth against error.
Satan's going to be in prison for 1000 years.
All the nations one day will be gathered under the authority of
Jesus Christ as He rules on the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem
for that thousand years. And there won't be any
wickedness taking control during that millennial reign.
People who were believers in the tribulation that came out of the
tribulation weren't destroyed will enter into this millennial
period, but they'll also have children and the children will
be born like we are as sinners. They'll have our original sin.
Some of those young people will grow up and want to follow the
King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and some of them will not want
to follow him. And during that thousand year
reign, there will be plenty of enemies that will be planning at
the end of that period to get together with the devil at that
final battle of Gog and Magog, to come against the authority of
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
But right now, during the millennial period, he's going to
be confined and unable to deceive anymore.
I love the idea of this great chain.
I have no idea the significance of this particular device, but
it's so powerful that the devil will not be able to do anything
as long as this chain is wrapped around him and he won't be able
to deceive the nations. He won't be able to ruin
people's lives like he's ruining them today.
It says about Jesus when he comes back and Zechariah 14
four, His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of
Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east.
Christ will descend in the second coming and land on the
Mount of Olives. The mountain will actually split
in two. Every eye, the Bible says, will
see him when he comes, and he'll roll and he'll reign, and I
can't wait for that day to occur.
What'll happen is that he'll be cast into this bottomless pit.
He'll be shut up, they'll set a seal upon him, and that he shall
deceive the nation's no more. There's two characteristics
during this time. Christ is going to rule the
nation's with a rod of iron. That means absolutely and
authoritatively. There will be no negotiation.
It'll be his way completely, and Satan no longer will have his
way. Now, as I said at the beginning
of the message, that is not true today, is it?
The devil is currently very much alive.
First, Peter 58 says be sober. That means don't be drunk, guys.
And if you're drinking and you're getting drunk, you're a
fool. The Bible says do not be drunk
with wine. Where is an excess?
And I know in any church across America today, we have people
that are still getting loaded on alcohol.
I did it for years in my life as a Christian and God have mercy
on my soul. It almost ruined my marriage.
It almost destroyed my children. The devil was deceiving me,
thinking it's OK to have a glass of wine occasionally.
What I did, it dulled my senses. I had a glass of wine.
I didn't want to read the word. I didn't want to pray.
I wanted to have an attitude. I wanted to have a judgment.
I wanted to have anger. I wanted to have bitterness.
I wanted to have all the things that go along with being drunk.
It says be sober. Why does he say be sober?
Because if you're not sober, you're not going to understand
what you're dealing with because your adversary, the devil, as a
roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.
Every one of us are facing the same thing, me included.
Job, chapter one, verse 7. The Lord says to Satan, where
have you been? Of course, God knows where we
all are at any given time. Satan answers the Lord and says
from going here and there in the earth and from walking up and
down in it. And today he's going through
this church. He's walking up and down the
aisles. He's trying to get your mind not
to think about what we're talking about today.
He's trying to avoid you from understanding the situation that
you're facing. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 27 and
28 says be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon
your wrath, neither give place to the devil.
How many of us in here as men of God have gone to sleep at night
angry at our wives? Raise your hand, we all have.
How many of our wives have gone to bed at night angry at their
husbands? More women have probably done
that to men. You know why?
Because the Bible says they harbor bitterness.
It's prone to be bitter. I have to have these
conversations with Cindy once in a while because she'll remember
something 20 years ago. She's still holding against me.
I've long gone, forgot about it and forgiven or whatever.
And, and she's saying, what do you remember?
You know, And I'm like, no, I don't.
And then she reminds me. And then I do.
And I say, well, we just got to let this stuff go because this
bitterness is is poison. Now, you know, I know when the
Holy Spirit is moving in our church.
And I hear this many times from the teachers because they'll
say, I can't believe it. What you started teaching on the
day is what we talked about in Sunday school.
And you know, here's Steve this morning and he's up here and
he's LED. And I didn't call him or tell
him, you know, where I was going to go with this today, but he
takes you to James Chapter 4, verse one.
Where do wars and fights come from among you?
Do they not come from your desires for pleasure, That war
in your members? The Evil 1 works with the lust
of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.
You lust and you do not have. You murder and you covet.
You can't obtain, you fight and war, yet you do not have because
you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive
because you ask amiss. You ask for the wrong reasons
that you may spend it on your pleasures.
And then God, you know he uses these graphic terms.
Probably one of the worst sins that a husband can experience
her wife is someone committing adultery against them.
But God says this is what we've done against him.
Adulterers and adulteresses. Do you not know that friendship
with this world is enmity with God?
Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the
Scripture says in vain? The Spirit who dwells in US
yearns jealously. So the Holy Spirit lives in each
of us today as believers, and he is jealous for that relationship
with you. If there's anything in your life
that's causing you to love something else more than you
love God, it breaks the heart of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. But it says he gives more grace.
Therefore, he says God resists the proud and he gives grace to
the humble. And I pray today that all of us
are in a place of humility. Because if we're in a place of
humility, we're going to receive what God is telling us today.
And God will give us much grace to understand.
He'll enlighten, He'll illumine our hearts.
And all of a sudden we'll say, now I know what's happening in
my life. Now I know why all this stuff's
going on. I've been deceived, I've been
tricked, I've been beguiled like Eve in the garden by the evil
one. It says, therefore submit to
God, resist the devil and he'll flee from you.
So the first thing I pray we do is we're in the study today.
Say God, I want to give you my heart.
I want to submit to you. And the good news is if you
submit to God today, the Bible says the devil is going to flee.
Draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.
You have to ask yourself today, are you really drawing near to
God? Are you really in every detail
of your life drawing near to God?
Are you only like when it's convenient?
Are you trying to draw near to God?
It says cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your heart.
You're double minded. And double mindedness is yeah.
I want God's will. I want to follow him.
I want to serve him. I want to be sold out for him.
I want to live my life for him. But yeah, I want to do all this
stuff too. I want to, I want to have a
little bit of fun in the world. I want to indulge my flesh.
I want to do what makes me feel good and what makes me feel
happy. I just want to, you know, and
we're spiritual schizophrenic. So Lord's wanting us to do this
and the devil's want us to do that.
And we're like, yeah, no, yeah, no.
We don't even know where we're at.
He calls us double minded. Humble yourselves.
Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to
mourning and let your joy to gloom.
Sometimes it's important to be broken.
Sometimes it's important to be contrite and devastated over the
consequences of where our lives have gotten to.
Have you ever looked at your Christian life?
And I know I did at times. Like I started here.
How did I get way down here? How did I get so far away from
God? God in my life?
Lament, mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to
mourning, your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight
of the Lord and He will lift you up.
Some of us are so broken because of the devil beating us up.
The devil has taken authority in some of our lives to the point
that it's absurd. And we've allowed it because
we've given the devil a foothold in our life.
We've given him some space through our behavior and our
attitude and our actions and our decisions and our compromises in
our lives. And as a result, we have all
this stuff happening in our lives.
Our, our marriages really aren't what they need to be.
There's a lack of intimacy, there's a lack of mutual
respect. There's a lack of honor and love
and cherishing and, and our kids, I mean, we put up with our
kids. We tolerate our kids instead of
discipling our children. Why?
Because we've become proud. But if we're so broken, and I
know some of you are very, very broken, at this point in your
life, you don't know how you're going to make it another second,
let alone another day, a week, a month, a year.
You're tired. You can come here with a smile
on your face and act like everything's OK.
But down deep inside, maybe some of us here today are thinking of
even taking our lives. Have you ever gotten to the
point in your life of being so distraught and so devastated and
so depressed that you just want out of here?
We all have it for honest and the devil wants to kill your
life. He wants to destroy it.
But it says if we humble ourselves in the sight of the
Lord, He'll lift us up. Oh, Lord, how we want you to
lift us up today. Father, do not speak evil of one
another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother
and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the
law. But if you judge the law, you
are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
There's only one lawgiver God, who is able to save and to
destroy. Who are you to judge another
person? So my job today isn't to judge
you and your job isn't to judge me.
We let the word judge us, right? The word of God, and we deal
with what the consequences of that word is.
First, John chapter 3 verse 8 says he that committeth sin is
of the devil. Now, whenever you make a
decision to commit willful sin, you never think you're making
this pact with the devil. But the Bible is real clear.
If you're committing sin, you're of the devil.
For the devil sent us from the beginning for this purpose.
The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works
of the devil. That's why Christ came, to
destroy the authority and the power of the devil.
That's why the gospel has power. The gospel is the power of God
to save. We preach Christ and Him
crucified. I don't care who it is who's
sharing the Word. When you share the Word, it has
authority to accomplish the purpose for which God sends it.
It's what breaks the lies, it's what manifests the truth.
It's what puts the darkness out. We overcome by the authority of
Jesus Christ and Him alone. Colossians chapter 2 verse 15
says having spoiled principalities and powers, He
made a show them openly triumphing over them in it.
Please pray for me as I teach this.
This is very, very difficult. I, I sense the energy, you know,
I'm saying the energy trying to shut me up, trying to just get
me mixed up and confused. When Christ died on the cross,
he displayed openly that the forces of hell in darkness have
no more authority over our lives as God's children.
When it says we wrestle against flesh and blood, yeah, we do.
But the principalities and powers don't have that same
power they had after Christ died and rose again.
Amen. So why do we walk under the
burden in the strongholds of the evil 1?
I believe it's because we don't understand fully what Christ has
come to do for us. It talks about the Wiles of the
devil. We don't wrestle against flesh
and blood as the Scriptures say, but against the principalities
and powers. Our defense is only the armor of
God, and the only way we can stand against the Wiles of the
devil is with the armor of God. In verse 11 of Ephesians 6 says,
put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand
against the Wiles of the devil. This is a definition of Wiles.
It's a trick. This is a noun, the trick, a
strategy meant to fold, to trap, to entice.
Art. 4 begaling behavior. The verb is to deceive, to
entice, to lure away from, into distracting you from the person
of Christ. How many of us are facing
distractions every day to move you away from being focused on
Jesus Christ? Every one of us.
It's a maneuver, a military strategy to trap us, to destroy
us, to ruin our lives. What the devil does?
He exaggerates the pleasures of sin while minimizing the true
nature and outcome of sin, right?
He makes sin look so alluring, so great, so attractive, but he
never tells us about the horror and the outcome of the
consequences of our sin. The devil sees an opening in our
lives through our emotions and moods.
The husband's upset, he's bummed out, he's complaining, he's, you
know this at his wit's end with everything and all of us guys,
we've been there and maybe are today.
And the devil sees the mood. He sees the emotions.
This is an opportunity for me to really 'cause some havoc here.
See, the devil can't read our hearts.
Only God knows our hearts. But the devil can see the
outcome of our attitudes, our actions.
He's able to distinguish our intentions as we move in our
attitudes. He uses other people to lead us
astray. That's why the Bible says have
no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather reprove them. Light and darkness can't walk
together. The Bible says don't.
Don't be unequally yoked. So if you're with an unbeliever
and you're a believer, that unbeliever is going to lead you
astray. The master marketing agent in
the world today is the devil. He packages sin and need
attractive bundles. He makes things look so good and
so exciting. It tells us in Second
Corinthians chapter 2, verse 11, lest Satan should get an
advantage of us. For we are not ignorant of his
devices, his devices, his plots, his schemes, or his clever ways.
Are you ignorant of Satan's devices?
Raise your hand. We all are.
We all are ignorant of his devices.
That's why we need the word to show us what the deal is.
If you're not in the word, you're going to be trapped,
you're going to be deceived, you're going to be taken out.
And you got to ask yourself today much time am I in the
Word? How much am I hungering for the
word? How much am I thirsting for
righteousness? How much of my time in my daily
life, Monday through Sunday am I before the Word saying God give
me wisdom, give me light so I don't get deceived by the
darkness of the enemy. Help me to understand so that I
can protect my wife and my children.
Help me to understand so I can help my brothers and sisters not
fall victim to the consequences of the lives of the devil we're
told to have on this armor of God in Ephesians 6.
And many of you are familiar with it.
We had to memorize that in Bible college years ago, that whole
book of Ephesians, and I memorize it, but I didn't have
the foggiest idea what it was talking about.
That's why, you know, understanding the Bible is just
part of it. The Bible says we're to do the
Word or we deceive ourselves. But when He tells us to have
this armor on it, just to break it out in terms that might make
more sense, we're supposed to have this belt that's girded
about the belt of truth, and that means that our life is to
be surrounded by the truth. That's why it's important to be
in church on Sundays, to be in the Word whether you want to or
not, whether you feel like it or not, you come because God's
going to speak to your heart. He's going to show you what you
need to know and He's going to get you back on track.
That's why we have Wednesday studies.
That's why we have intercession. You know, God bless Dave and
Janine. They're usually the only two
down there praying. And Steve, you wonder where he
goes. He's up there in the balcony
praying for me as I'm preaching. And Gary and Kathy out in
California at the time that I'm preaching.
They're interceding for this service that the word of God
would go forth because the flesh profits nothing only the spirit
gives life. But the more we pray and the
more we seek God, the more we're aware of the lies of the devil.
Charles Spurgeon people would come up a wonderful man preacher
of God and the Lord moves in that church in Metropolitan
Tabernacle and many, many people were saved and and their lives
were transformed and and they would come to Charles after the
service and ask, you know, what is the deal here in this place?
Where is the power coming from? How's all this stuff happening?
And Charles, come on, I'm going to take you down to the furnace
room. And they think a furnace room.
What's he talking about? The place where the heat and the
fire of God is took him down into the lower parts of the
church. And there was many, many people
on their knees praying for the Word of God as it went forth.
Thanks for being with us today here on Living Waters of Grace.
We're 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 too.
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
and 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.