Turning On the Lights! Friday June 28, 2024 God is sovereign over all!
Good morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to FRIDAY! It is a beautiful Summer’s morning and we have a lively talk about church, baby boomers, youth, and then JESUS – and the fact that He is God and is sovereign over all.
Why does He cast the demons into a herd of pigs? What does that teach us about Yahweh? What does it teach us about ourselves?
Let’s find out together!
It’s Friday for sure, but Sunday is coming! We will see you in church!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, June 18 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Friday, June 28, 2024. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Friday, June 28, 2024
Good morning, good morning, my brothers and my sisters. A little bit late this morning, but a little bit of excitement at my house. Very very positive, very wonderful, very fantastic. And oh my goodness, what an incredible morning it is. Have you been outside? You need to go outside. Not right now! Maybe you want to listen to Turning on the Lights. But it is absolutely amazing outside. The air is light. The temperature is perfectly normal for the first time in weeks. We had a little rain this week. Okay, we had like an entire summer’s worth of rain in five hours. But I just took my shoes off. Good morning! So there it is. We’ve got songs lined up. Look at this. We’ve got songs and guitars and fiddles and pianos and singers. Everything ready to go for our celebration Sunday. We’ve got some parables of Jesus lined up to go for our celebration Sunday. Gonna be talking about the Kingdom of God, shockingly enough. I know. We don’t talk much about Jesus or the Kingdom of God around here. Every once in a while we break it out, you know. Why would a church want to scare people away by talking about Jesus? I’m jesting, of course. But unfortunately that’s kind of a very modern mindset. Oh hey, go easy on, you know, displaying crosses. Go easy on talking about the blood, man. Go easy on talking about the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. What do you mean? This is my body given for you. That’s gross. Come on. Let’s not scare people away. What are you scaring them away from? Eternal life? Evidently, that’s what you… I don’t want to scare you away from eternal life. Please don’t believe anything that’s actually Christian. Come in. We need to fill this place up. What do you want to hear? That’s what happened. Like when we were just chatting about this the other day, and most of you are aware of this, I mean the baby boomers coming after World War II caused all kinds of social havoc in the United States. I mean there’s this gigantic blossoming of population that’s got gigantic bulge in the population moving through the history of the United States. Well that’s when you get all of the gigantic churches, right? In the 50s and the 60s and even the 70s, you get these gigantic churches. And at first, most of them were… Good morning, Mama Dee. Most of them were mainstream, mainline denominations. Huge Methodist churches, huge Baptist churches, huge Lutheran churches because of the baby boomers coming through and all the kids that the baby boomers made. This is when youth church became a thing. What do we do with all these people? What do we do with all these kids? And so now all of a sudden, and that’s why I say, youth church is not a biblical thing. It’s just not. And so, but it was a sort of a practical necessity. And so we follow through the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, the baby boomers who were kids themselves and then got all married and then had all kids, had these kids themselves and this gigantic blossom of American population. People are shocked right now because they’re like the population. The birth rate is down, the population growth is down. Well, of course, compared to the baby boomers as the baby boomers generation passes on, this is going to happen. It’s going to look scrawny in comparison. But back to what I was talking about, this affected churches dramatically and they got so gigantic and so big. They had to. Now what though? Now you can see the same in, you can see the same in politics, you can see the same in business, you can see the same in industry. You can see the same now in social services for older Americans, the baby boomers, social service services is exploding because you know, services for the aged and all of that stuff. Sorry if you’re a boomer, I’m a, I’m a late boomer. I’m on the very end of the boomer generation, 65, but it’s the truth. And so now, right after the main lines, denominations began to lose jettison people as the boomers moved on with their kids. So their kids and the boomers are raised in a mainline Methodist church, for example, Orthodox Methodist church back then. Now we have to specify, unfortunately, but you know, and now their kids are growing up and they’re like, eh, Methodism, eh. Well here comes evangelicalism and the E-free movement and the non-denominational movement in general. So through the eighties now we have this explosion, non-denominational churches. We’re going to cut ties with the denomination. We’re going to cut ties, which again, we can argue the merits of all of that. There are good things like having theological rudder and theological foundation and there are bad things like, okay, the church has been in this particular denomination is very churchy, very high church still uses Latin and people don’t understand that. So let’s, you know, so this whole non-denominational movement, the E-free movement, all of that, and that really is for the boomers children and the boomers children’s children. Children have been driving the church for a lot of years. From the time that I began to even look into those things, like I said, maybe we’ll do a whole episode and we can talk about the different things. But from the time I had begun to look into those things, the whole, what I was taught was go after the children. Not in a bad way. Hey, YouTube, Facebook, I didn’t mean it. It means try to attract the children to your church. If you can attract the children to your church, the parents will come and the parents can pay the bills, but you got to put on this great youth thing, like get the kids in, get them in wanting to come in as groups, like get the whole eighth grade of the local high school into your middle school youth group and the kids will come along. You know what I’m saying? And it’s that I was literally taught that in seminary. Okay. You want church growth? You’ve got to figure out. And I’m like, the children leading church growth, like leading, like something’s not right here. And again, I’m not reading anything in scripture about that. And there’s something distasteful sort of as a bait and switch or sort of like a marketing campaign. I’m not doing that. This is what, and I always say that I was, I’m very fortunate not to have been brought up in a church because all I know as I’ve, this, this calling has come upon me and I’ve been doing and you know, this vocation and all I know is scripture. And when we talk about church, all I know is scripture. Now we’re churches of God, general conference. And like you’re saying, Marlon, I enjoy and I respect and I’m okay. I like being a part of a denomination. We have books of doctrine over there. What do we believe? What we believe, where we stand on social issues. We have a theological rudder that grounds me and yes, we have issues. If I start up, if I am, if I’m a criminal, here comes the denomination to remove me from the pulpit. If I’m preaching heresy, here comes the denomination to remove me from the, I like that account ability as well. I remember in my, as I was doing my masters on, it’s actually in practical theology and church development so that it’s always been a fascination of mine. Oh, I would love that. It’s very nice here this morning. Very nice. Probably 70, 68, 70. Nice. And we went to visit small, we went to visit everything from like community churching in downtown Detroit and Toledo. Then that’s where the seminary was located to mega-churching in the suburbs. And I just remember the mega church in the suburbs that makes our evangelical free churches here. Even the large campus down here at West shore looked like, looked like a small church in a town. And the people, one, you know, they were all from marketing and they were all from, and they all felt like I want to follow Jesus and I want to talk about Jesus. And they were really good public speakers. And I asked the question, what keeps you theologically grounded? What where do you land on certain issues and how are you held accountable? They said, well, we hold each other accountable. Well, like you’re a Microsoft engineer and you’re a marketing consultant for Ford and you’re like, how’s that work exactly? None of them had any sort of formal education, but they all called themselves pastors, teaching pastor, executive pastor. It was like, eh, it worked. Thousands of people every weekend. I don’t know what they were being told. No, anyway, that’s how we started. Yeah. I mean, there is, there is merit. Well, we can talk about the whole children adult thing. Again, there’s, we have before in the past, we have such an opportunity here at church town to be multi-generational in the sanctuary. We can provide for everything from nursing mothers up through, you know, screaming toddlers. And we have a wonderful part of our basement week so we can provide for, but we prefer and we like, and we see in scripture, families, generations worshiping together. And so that is our foundation. And then we can provide for situations where the children are not cooperating, shall we say. But there is only one way for children how to know how to do church and be church. And that is to be in church with people who believe the same things, the greatest disconnect. And this is what I always compare it to. I taught alternative education for a lot of years in public education and a lot of my, the children, the youth that I served became disconnected from education, from middle school to high school, because all the way through elementary school, all the way through middle school, we have this whole cooperative model, pods, cooperative education. I do too. I hope to meet me sometime. But we have this whole cooperative model, all of that. And then you get into high school and it’s cutthroat competition. Public education loses a third of all students. And I don’t mean that all of them drop out or all of them end up misbehaving and being an alternative education. They just shut down and get a C and get a degree. And so we lose. And so we see that in church as well. It’s all youth, youth, youth, all come be with your friends, come be with your friends. Let’s play some Xbox and throw a little Jesus in there. And then boom, they graduate high school and they’re kicked out of youth church. They’ve never been to church. They’ve never been to the adult. They don’t know like Youth Sunday just doesn’t cut it. And then we bemoan all these children, these youth, they go off to college. They never come back to church. They quit the church. They leave Christianity. They never knew Christianity. They never knew the church. It’s our fault, not theirs. I mean, of course, we’re free moral agents. And even if we do all of this, a person can decide otherwise, certainly. But so there’s how we’re opening on a Friday. Father God, thank you so much for the opportunity to be together this morning. What a great, great day. What a great morning. What a great group. Lord, we thank you for the technology that gets your word out in Jesus name. We pray that hearts and minds will be changed today and every day, every day. As we know, as we know they are every day as Christians around the world go and be Christians. You know the old saying in Jesus name, amen. In the old saying, if two and a half billion Christians actually acted like two and a half billion Christians, imagine what the world would be like. And you can’t you I mean, we can think on that global scale. But again, maybe it’s the whole small church mentality, but we always ask the question, what can you do? You, you are an individual follower of Jesus Christ. What can you do? What who is your circle? What is your mission field? What are your giftings within the body? Are you utilizing your giftings within the body? What can you do? And then as a small church, we ask, what can we do? So we can sit around again and bemoan people leaving the church Christianity’s dwindling, blah, blah, blah. Okay. We turn the church into a beautiful bunker and just sit here and wait to die. And when we die, the doors close and another church closes. Or we can answer the question, what can we do? What can you do as an individual? What can you guys do as a family? What can we do as a congregation? What can, can, can we do not what’s all going wrong? What can we do right on? There’s your pep talk for today. Coach Warner at the helm. Good week today, baby was born from a congregational, a congregational baby. We have a new member of the Chamblee. Well, I guess we had the new member of the Chamblee now for nine months, but now the new member of the Chamblee is out of the womb and will be with us soon. We like that. She is absolutely adorable. I mean, absolutely amazing. So we talked about Jesus having dominion over the spiritual realm and dominion over the physical realm. Remember him calming the store storm. And this is sort of a go between parable because we see the physical in the storm. We see the spiritual when he wakes up and says, why do you have such little faith? So we have a little blending here of them both. Now the next parable, we have a little blending, well, a blending of them both as well, but we really see more spiritual than physical in this calming of the storm. It’s all a little bit more physical than spiritual, but you can’t have one without the other, right? We are spiritual beings in a physical body. The world is physical, but God is spirit. And so they’re there. And God created the world. So we’re, that’s the way it works. If you think that you are just a descendant from an ape and you, or you are just cosmically created by this random attraction of star dust, I honestly, first of all, I think it takes way more faith to think that and believe that than it does to believe in creator God. But if you’re believing that, then you are believing just in the physical and Satan has you just where he wants you. You’re not thinking of anything eternal. You’re like, I’m just an ape. I was born. I’m going to live. I’m going to die. That’s it. Satan says, don’t do a thing. Hey, don’t crack open a Bible. Hey, don’t have a decent conversation. Those Christians, they’re idiots. They’re terrorists. They’re awful hate them. So they hate Christians and Satan is telling them all the lies about Christians. So they never have an honest and good Christian conversation, physical and spiritual. So well, okay, let’s end the last parable. Jesus calms the storm. The disciples were terrified and amazed, terrified and amazed. I love would be too. Did you imagine being with Jesus being reviewed? Where’s your faith? Why do you have such little faith? Well, boom, rebukes the storm stop and it stops. Those two words pretty go go pretty well together. Terrified and amazed like, Oh my goodness. He is sovereign. He is who he says he is. Who is this man? They asked each other when he gives a command, even the wind and the waves obey him. So Jesus is making the point, physical and spiritual. So they arrived in the region of Gerasenes across the lake from Galilee. As Jesus was climbing out of the boat, a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet him. For a long time, he had been homeless and naked, living in a cemetery outside of town. As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked, fell down in front of him. Then he screamed, why are you interfering with me, Jesus, son of the most high God? Please, I beg you, don’t torture me. That’s powerful. We’re not talking about the physical man speaking here. We’re not talking about a man who believes he is a descendant of apes and just, I choose to go live in a cemetery naked. We’re talking about a man who is spiritually possessed, demonically possessed and without uttering a word. When he sees Jesus, the demons freak out. Why? Why would they freak out? Aren’t demons powerful? Isn’t Satan powerful? Don’t they have dominion over any? Nope. They’re wicked. God is sovereign over the spiritual, over the physical. They know it. They know that they’re wicked. They know that they’re evil. They know, of course, that they, as we would say, are demons. Don’t torture me. Why are you here? Why are you interfering? All we have done is possess this one man. They keep him on a chain in the cemetery. He’s naked. Like, what’s the big deal? Let us do our thing. They know right away who Jesus is because Jesus is Yahweh and they know right away that Jesus is sovereign over them and that is powerful statement and it is also a powerful statement to attest to the spiritual realm in which we live and exist. Exist and live, I guess would be a better order. Exist and live and interact as spiritual beings. I beg you don’t torture me for Jesus had already commanded the evil spirit to come out of him. The spirit had often taken control of the man, even when he was placed under guard and put in chains and shackles. He simply broke them, rushed out into the wilderness completely under the demons power. Jesus demanded, what is your name? Legion, he replied, for he was filled with many demons. Legion, he replied, for he’s filled with many demons. The demons kept begging Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit. Wait, there is no hell. There is no hell. There’s no hell that’s going to be opened up and Satan will be cast in. There is no hell for spirits that deny the existence of God and Jesus. There is no hell. Okay. I think this is the second reference alone and the Church Town Weekly. We talked about the reference. I mean, I’m not on TOL just in the past couple of weeks and then I thought of the Church Town Weekly. Yeah. Jesus is not referring to a cave somewhere or a place where they burned trash or whatever other such nonsense that can come up when people don’t want to believe in hell. Bottomless pit means bottomless pit. Lake of fire means lake of fire. Where Satan will ultimately be bound and cast is a place where Satan will be ultimately bound and cast. Separated from God. Yes, we hear that, but we also hear the words torment, torture. There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby and the demons begged him to let them enter into the pigs. So Jesus gave them permission permission because who’s sovereign over these demons? God Yahweh and we’ll talk about why he gave him permission to go into the pigs. Couple of reasons. But Jesus gave them permission. They begged him not to cast them buying them and cast them in hell. They begged him and he said, okay, go into these pigs. You have permission to go into these pigs. So why not just get rid of some of your enemies right there? Well, we’ll talk about that in a second and then we’ll finish up. Then the demons came out of the man entered the pigs and the entire herd plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned. When the herdsman saw it, they fled to nearby town and the surrounding countryside spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had happened. The crowd soon gathered around Jesus. They saw the man who had been freed from the demons. He was sitting at Jesus’s feet, fully clothed, perfectly sane, and they were all afraid. Then those who had seen what happened told the others how the demon possessed man had been healed. All the people of the region of the garrisons begged Jesus to go away and leave them alone. For a great wave of fear swept over them. Fear of what? First of all, let’s backtrack. So the demons begged Jesus. We’re obviously seeing a hierarchy here as the demons begged Jesus, who is sovereign, and Jesus grants permission because he is sovereign. They do nothing without his permission, consent, what have you. If he, if it was the time to bind them and cast them into hell, he would have, but it was not the time. The time is coming. So there’s reason number one, it was not the time. This whole idea of this, where we are in the world today, it’s going to play out until God decides it’s over. Human beings, as we build the kingdom of God, as we turn in repentance to Christ, all of those things will continue when we are filled by God’s Holy Spirit and the demons want to speak at us and come at us and all of that will continue until the time of ultimate judgment. When evil and the spirits that are evil will be bound and cast into hell. That’s not the time they were cast into pigs. It also reason number two, and there’s a lot of discussion over all of these things, but the big reason number two is again, the spiritual and the physical. Poor pigs, right? But Jesus is sovereign over the pigs. He’s sovereign over that he casts the spiritual into the physical. Why? Well, we know why, but also what does that show? It shows his sovereignty over both again, these parables are about God’s sovereignty, about the kingdom of God, about spiritual warfare, about such things as heaven and hell, about such things as eternal life. They’re all, it’s all in there. And then finally we see, well, how do I want to say this? Finally we see people and their sort of natural reaction to Jesus. Who are you? They’re terrified. It is amazing that witnesses, they bear witness to the spiritual healing of this man, perfectly sane, clothed. And they’re just like, they’re not concerned about that. Who is this who has sovereignty over all? Get out of here. We’re afraid of you. Now, we see that in the world today as God’s spirit moves through his disciples and we see the pushback in the reaction and around the world, the persecution. And in essence, it is Satan, the opposer of God’s will saying, get out of here. I’m afraid of you and trying to destroy God’s image bearers, all of that. But there’s also the reaction that those who choose to follow Jesus have to come to full terms with, full understanding of. He is sovereign. He is not created in your image. You are created in his image and he is sovereign over all physical and all spiritual. Even as a person who chooses and wants to, and reads the word and loves God, it is still something that every human being must continually monitor or shall I say, be intentional about. And that is our submission. And when things happen, our faith is challenged. Our faith in God’s sovereignty, faith, submission, true, honest, love and obedience, trust and obey. There’s no other way. Those words are true. And so again, outside when we see non-Christians behaving so poorly, we say, okay, we get it. The Satan is doing his work. But Christians, honest, I’m talking about within the church, not fake church, not progressive this or that, Orthodox Christians who love and follow Jesus must be very intentional to trust and obey and recognize God’s sovereignty and be perfectly okay with that. Father, we pray that your words will change the world today, maybe by just changing the heart of one person that changes the world in Jesus name. Amen. Brothers and sisters, it’s Friday. So, you know, I’m going to say, go to church. It’s important wherever you are, invest in your local church, invest wherever you’re going to church right now, invest, don’t just go, be the church, invest. You have been gifted by God’s Holy Spirit, invest. If you’ve got nowhere to go, we’ll see a church town on Sunday. It’s a celebration Sunday, lots of music, lots of celebration, lots of joy. Like we don’t have joy every Sunday. Church, dare I say it, is sort of like the physical and the spiritual, right? Church can be fun. We actually like each other. That’s pretty cool. So I’ll see you in church.
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