When people talk about, “What
must I do to be saved?” I don’t; I’m going to speak for this
church and I’m going to tell you this very simply put. God
expects that once you have an encounter with Christ through
His word, that you come to a place of faith, to a place of
amen where you say, “That happened. He is Lord,” not
robotically, to come to know Him in reality. Not some box I
check, but something that suddenly the word of God is no
longer a book with words.
It is alive and comes alive to me.
“What must I do to be saved?” Okay, the answer is to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, have faith in Him, trust in
Him, that He is the Messiah, that He is the Deliverer, that
He has the power to save because He did what He did at
the cross, that He’s coming back, that He’s promised you and
me eternal life.
♪ ♪
Now many years ago I delivered a message about the musts of
Christ, the use of the Lord’s words, “one must,” “he must,”
all right? It’s quite a significant word in the Greek,
the word die, and I’ve got my Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament in front of me, Erdmann’s, and they’re in so
many volumes, so I mentioned it, all right? But if you look under
the Greek word dei, it says, “The character of necessity or
compulsion in an event. In most cases, the word bears a weakened
sense derived from everyday processes. It thus denotes that
which is given, which in a given moment seems to be necessary or
inevitable to a man or to a group of men.” Then if you move
on, there was something that I found very interesting and that
is that there are 102 occurrences of the word either
dei, which translates to our English word “must,” or deon
esti, which would be the equivalent of “one must” or “you
must”; 41 of the 102 occurrences are found in Luke’s writing.
That’s pretty significant, significant in the way we
know how Luke used words.
So this is what I want to actually
focus on a little bit, a dining in of a word which I think is
very helpful for us a lot of times, not so much in the
technical, and linguistic, but in the actual applications and
examples. So let me give you examples to kind of set the
stage for the message. Let’s start with the boldest of the
musts of our Lord coming out of the mouth of a young boy,
possibly no older than 12 years old, and He says, “Wist ye not
that I must be about my Father’s business?” Now this statement is
made in conjunction with Him going into the temple,
His parents leaving and leaving Him behind.
Well, we’ll leave
that part alone for a bit. I don’t know how you’d leave your
kid behind, but whatever. Okay, so what’s interesting about what
He says, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s
business?” coming out of the mouth of a young person like
that is the fact that He didn’t, He didn’t say, “Don’t ye know
I’m just a kid and I should be able to play and do whatever I
want and get a trophy for showing up,” right? But at this
young age He says, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Now
here’s my thinking. How could a child be so focused
and say, “This is what I must do, and don’t you know that this
is what I must do?” Now, wouldn’t you be surprised, moms
and dads out there, if your kid turned around and said, “Hey, I
got business to take, I got the Father’s business to take care
of,” you know, you’d be kind of like, “Whoa, what happened
there?” But I think the big thing is to see there is no
harm.
And I will probably take a lot of flack for this, but I do
not care. There is no harm in teaching a child the Bible.
There is no harm in steeping and raising your child in the Lord’s
word. There is no harm in opening up the horizons
to be able to sit down and talk about, even if they are done in
more simplistic ways, what God does how He does it, and who
we are in Christ. So it’s interesting, this must be the
first one that kind of caught, my mind. Now, we have
another one of Christ’s musts. He says, “The Son of man must be
lifted,” and this passage directly tells us, this is now,
He’s much older, which tells us that He knew exactly what His mission
was. He was not confused. I wish that we would even just take; I
could make a whole message just out of these two verses.
I
wonder what would happen to the church if two things, if we all
took it seriously as in we all have something to do in the
Father’s realm, like Christ, said, “Don’t you know I must be
about my father’s business?” if we all took that as, we all have
a part in that, number one. And number two, the fact that when
Christ said He must be, He must be lifted, He must die, that
we also come to accept we have a mission too. I often feel like a
lot of Christians don’t see the vision and the value of what God
has placed in front of them. And that mission and that value, if
you will, is not just so that you can be infused and imbued
with information, but you also become a beacon of light for
other people. And I’ve said this before, I am not a proselytizer,
I don’t like people coming up to me and talking to me about, you
know, “Do you know God? Do you know who God is?” But I am a big
fan of conversation at any place, at any stage, if someone
is open to having the conversation.
And that makes
every one of us if you just took these two musts, that
makes every one of us kind of understand these musts,
they are for Christ, they are His work. But we also have a
part in it. If you remember last week I talked about fellowship.
This is almost directly tied into that in some way, shape, or
form. Before He says, “The Son of man must be lifted
,” He says, “The Son of man must suffer many things.” Now
who walks around telling other people, “This must,” out of
necessity, according to this dictionary, “This must come to
pass,” this “I must,” can you imagine walking around town
saying, “Yeah, I’ve got to suffer. I must suffer”? You’d
have people looking at you going, “Yeah, okay, all right.”
But if you understand in the context of what He was saying,
that this is inevitable, it must happen.
And I think as I
said, just looking at these, it actually kind of could make you
see how we are kind of, we’ll say, a little bit laxer when
it comes to the kind of digging in, seeing what His musts were. Now
He also gave musts to us, which I will get to later on in the
message. But back to when He said, “The Son of man must
suffer many things,” this was in direct connection to Him saying,
“The temple must be destroyed.” He made all these statements.
And what I love about this is, that it’s not just, “This is what
must happen.” You read the book and you realize that is exactly
what happened.
So His musts that He declared were, we’ll call
them, of necessity. Not “must” as in a mandate that may or may
not, but “must” as in there is no way, shape, or form that this
is not going to happen. So you get that emphasis, I think, is
pretty important. Now, why did it become a must, this is self-evident, for Christ to go to the cross, why not? We could have
just said, “You know, whatever happens, happens,” but there was
something else said. You remember repeatedly, “The
Scripture must needs be fulfilled.” I want you to think
about that. That’s another one of those mind-boggling things
that what was written afore time must come to pass. Now imagine
making these statements. We wouldn’t be standing here. We
wouldn’t be sitting here if the statements didn’t come to pass.
That’s, that’s the obvious one. Somebody says, “This must
happen. This inevitably must happen,” and it doesn’t come to
pass. Christ said He must die. He must suffer many things. He
must die, “Don’t you know I must be about My Father’s business?
These are the things I came to do.
The Scripture must needs be
fulfilled.” And then nothing happens. This is why when people
argue about the veracity of Christianity in Christ, I have
to say this is where faith kicks in. You either
read this book with confidence that the writers were
chronicling to leave us the information that we process,
that we take in, that we must somehow come to the faith in or
not. And so this is why I think it’s interesting. These words,
and I’m emphasizing the word “must” obviously, I think is
interesting because it keeps something in focus. Let me go
back and reread this, in case you think I am just trying
to kill something already dead. The emphasis on the
word “character of necessity or compulsion in an event, and in
most cases moments that seem to be necessary or inevitable to
man or a group of men,” inevitable: this must happen. So
this is why I stand here because I’ve come to the place.
You read
this and you kind of go, it, it happened. There’s no question
that it happened. So if you take all of this information, if it
didn’t happen, we’re just a bunch of fools gathered talking
about imaginary stuff, but it happened. So let’s get back into
the musts because these actually will lead us to first His musts
and then ours. He also says elsewhere, Christ says, “I must
work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.” And that
brings me to an interesting must for, even though this is a must
for Him. I want to make this a little license because
there are some things we can apply to us. When will people
stop putting off for God? I want you to think about that. So, you
know, we, we’ve often had the caricature of the evangelist,
“If you died today, do you know where you’re going?” and all
that good stuff, all right? But the fact of the matter is there
are so many people in the sound of my voice that procrastinate
and put off what, if you think about and take a page out
of Christ’s work, He says, “I must work the works of him that
sent me while it is the day,” while we still have the time.
This is
Why Paul said we are to redeem the time, the days are evil,
while you have the time; not when you’re on your deathbed,
not when you can barely see, but now, today, if you hear His
voice. So, you know, if you kind of start picking these apart, it
Actually may be a little bit of a conviction that we could get
so complacent in a lot of our understanding, even Scripture we
read regularly. There’s another interesting must of
Christ, which I’ve referred to in the last two or three weeks,
I’m sure.
That one is Christ referring to, He said, “Other
sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must
bring and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” Now
that’s a future time, but He said there are sheep that He
must bring in that are not of this flock. So again, things
that have come to pass or things that will come to pass, and this
specific one I know scholars are all over the map on this. I’m a
big believer in the fact that this was God’s way of putting in
the book, Think of this, people that do not view Christ as Lord,
future time, remember, we talked about this, will look on Him and
know He is Lord. There’ll be no confusion.
You know, right now
People can fight about which prophet or which deity, but when
You stand and you’re standing before God, I don’t
think you’re going to have too much more to argue about, but
That’s just my opinion. What do I know, right? Then you have, as
I said Jesus’ many statements that He makes that He must lay
down His life for the sheep. He says He must rise again from the
dead, of course, He did. Just if I was preaching on a
message about the Resurrection, this one-word
would be important. And the reason why? Because if He
said, “The Son of man must die, the Son of man came to suffer
many things, this is what must happen” and it didn’t, again,
we’d be reading, we’d be quoting Paul, but not for Christ, “Our
faith is vain,” right? Because Paul said, “If Christ has not
risen, our faith is vain.” So I want you to think that they must
are tethered essentially, all in all, to Christ’s death and
Resurrection, because of all the other stuff that was said, “I
must━don’t you know, I must be about My Father’s business,”
could have just been a statement if these other things didn’t
happen.
You’ve got to start with those musts, death and
Resurrection, then everything else becomes clear. So
I would say there are a lot of musts from Christ that we should
be cognizant of. Now there are other musts, and I’m going to
touch on this one real quickly, but I’m going to come back to
it, because, I want to finish the message with this for
another reason. If you remember in the passage in Luke, don’t
turn there, because we’ll turn there in a little bit. Christ,
upon seeing the tax collector Zacchaeus, and says, “Make
haste, and come down; today I must abide in thy house.” And I
was thinking about this must. See, Christ is still doing this,
but we don’t have these, you want to call them vignettes or
stories; Christ is still doing this. He’s not saying, you know,
“Hey, you up there come down and you must,” No, but He’s still
saying, “I must come and abide in your house,” this tabernacle.
He’s still saying that, and that’s what’s important when you
read this to recognize that these musts are still in force.
They’re still applicable, they’re still powerfully moving
if we are analyzing them right.
And of course, I, as I
said, we’ll come back to this, but Zacchaeus was going to be
saved. We have that crystal clear in that passage, and I
always think it’s thrilling because something about that man
who we know had to be ripping people off━he is a tax
collector. Come on. And Jesus focuses on him, calls his name,
and says, “I must abide with you.” And that tells me that, you
know, again, when people say, “Well, how does salvation occur?
How do these things happen? What is the process?” Let’s read
that. God finds you right where you are. Now granted, Zacchaeus
was curious, and he went to look. He wanted to see about
this Jesus.
But when Jesus said, “I must abide,” essentially in
his house, it wasn’t as though━how many houses were
around Jesus. He could have taken up anywhere, but it was
that one that He wanted. Again, I’m going to come back to this,
because this is the picture I want people to
understand. I’m tired of the whole idea somehow that we, we
play, we have a façade. If this isn’t where the rubber meets the
road, and if this isn’t helping you to live out your life as a
Christian, then as I said, maybe Christianity isn’t for you. And
you might say, “How could a pastor say that?” I did. I just
did. Do you want me to say it again? I mean what I say, and I
say what I mean. So the reason why this is important, as simple
as it is, is you can understand He had a focus, and He repeated
his focus, “I must.” And when you start looking at all of the
musts that He declared for Himself that He must do in His
brief ministry on earth, and then what He must do, be raised, obviously reappeared, and then ascended, and will return.
But this is all part of these musts.
And again, for somebody
who’s just starting, you might say, “Well, okay, He said all
this for Him.” Yes, and, we should learn of that, by the
way. Remember where I started. If we all took the position, “I
must be about my Father’s business,” it doesn’t mean that
you spend all day in the things of God and the things of the
church, but a commitment like that says, “I’m serious about
God.” Now I’m not suggesting we walk around and say, “I must be
about my Father’s business.” People are going to say, “Okay,
yeah.” But this is my commitment as a child of God.
I’m not just
in, I’ve not just been thrown into some little play universe.
God expects something of me. And whether that’s my simple faith
or whatever else He requires of every one of us as He
reveals His plan and His will for you in your life, some musts must be applied. So we’ll start with the first
one. It’s the one, and now we’re going to talk about us, not Him,
but us. So the top of my list, and I’ve preached this many,
many times, but I’m going to talk about this real quickly and
move through it, so the first one at the top of my list is
Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” And I love
to talk about this, and I cannot talk about this enough. I
want you to think about this. Nicodemus was a religious man.
He knew God. He at least knew the God of the Old Testament;
Let’s put you this way. There was no New Testament yet. So
it’s not as though he was godless.
Christ says, “You must
be born again.” That translation strictly word for word from the
Greek, “You must be born from above,” because the question is,
“Well, how can a man when he’s old go back into his mother’s
womb?” And what Christ was saying there, and I’ve preached
on this many times, “You cannot will yourself into the kingdom.
You cannot act yourself into the kingdom. You must be born again
from above.” And I don’t care how religious you think you are.
If that Spirit of God does not descend and take up residence in
you, you are not born from above. And I’ve said this
before. I used to listen to Dr. Scott’s comments,
I believe it was Jimmy Carter, and he used to
say, “I believe in the born-again experience.” No. I believe
everyone must be born again. Period. No experience. Period.
This is a must and a mandate of God.
It is a necessity. When you
put it that way, it becomes clear. It’s not an experience.
It’s not a choice. You either are receiving your salvation and
all the motivation that comes with it, that power to change,
that power to have faith, that power to understand, the desire
to learn from above or nothing at all, or you’re operating in
the flesh, which a lot of people do. They don’t understand this
passage and they think, “Okay.” So that’s number one.
So to be
clear, for those people who maybe don’t think, you know,
they think, “How, how spiritual, a very religious, self-righteous
Nicodemus,” when in fact Jesus said, “No. All that info that
you have is info in your brain, but you need something from
above.” And without that, you ain’t going to do any musting,
all right? All right. The next one is out of the book of Acts,
and there’s a statement there that says, “We ought to obey God
rather than men,” and this verse says, “We must obey God
rather than men,” if you read the translation aright.
So
What does that mean? It means you must be a follower of Christ
and a learner of Christ to be a Christian, and when we talk
about this, this is quite relevant today. You
can decide that you want to be in on the latest trends, and you
want to identify as a giraffe today, and that’s fine. Or you
understand you’re a child of God and you identify with the
heavenly Father and in that identification, I must come to
an understanding. God has a plan for my life which is revealed in
this book, which is why the great commission is “Go into
every corner and make learners, make disciples.” He didn’t say,
“Go make entertainment.” He didn’t say, “Go make fans that
are, “Whoo, Jesus, yay!” No; make learners.
Now how many of
you, I, I want to hear you on this because
I think a lot of people think the church is an entertainment
center. It’s to be taken lightly. It’s a game. How many
understand that learning takes effort and is
difficult? Do you know the worst part of learning? Learning
things you don’t want to learn and you’re not interested in.
Trust me, been there and done that. You don’t go through a Ph.D.
program without being subjected to having to read stuff. You’re
like, “Oh, I would rather watch paint dry than read this stuff””
okay? But it’s opening up your mind because if you’re going to
get an education, that’s how you get educated. You don’t just
educate yourself on, “I want to become a mechanical engineer so
I only learn about this dimension.” No, there are other
things that you would want to secondary or tertiary subjects
that will complement and give you a better understanding,
maybe beyond that even.
So when it says we must obey God rather
than man, even in the current climate of things.
Important for people to get this right, We are not
following the multitude and what the multitude does. Now, if you
want to do that, that’s your business. I’m not interested.
I’ve seen what the multitude is going for and I’m, I’m just not
there. I don’t want it, okay? So, but if I’m going to say this
right, I’m going to say what the book of Acts says that we
must obey God rather than man.
We must learn about God. We must
understand, process, and take it in and that requires effort. Don’t
come to a church, this church, or any other church and think, “Oh,
I’m going to learn. Oh, I’m going to learn like it’s going
to be a great hour-long massage and I’m going to walk out of
there and I’m just going to feel like a bag of marshmallows.” No,
learning is tiring.
It’s exhausting. It makes your
brain hurt. If you’re listening, I told you this
before, your heart rate goes up. You do not necessarily break out
of sweat, but your body temperature does get hotter.
There are different components in your body happening as you
really if you’re listening versus the people that
I’m just talking right now and they’re going, “Wah wah wah wah
wah wah,” right? Or she said, “Must. Oh, I must go to the
grocery store later.” That’s those, you know, undisciplined,
“I’m not here. I’m here but I’m not here” type
people. All right, so I’ll move on to the next one because I
think I killed that one. The question that is always asked in
the Bible is, “What must I do to be saved?” And the reason why I’m
going down there is I realize with so many new people, there
are so many people asking questions and coming in with all
kinds of weird ideas.
So I just figure, you know what, this is a
message that can cover a lot of the problems. It’s,
it’s pretty, it’s pretty simple. Let me ask you this. What would
you do if you were dropped on a desert island? You’re all alone.
You don’t have a Bible. You don’t have a Bible teacher. But
you suddenly decide, you cry out and you say, “I want to know You
and I want to be saved.” Now faith says, you know, God can
open up your mind and God can through the Spirit do stuff. But
I want you to think about this.
We are so distracted that when
people talk about, “What should I do to be saved?” they go down
a laundry list so that the person who thinks, “Well, if I
check all these boxes, I will have arrived.” If you watch any of
these religious programs, they will go through their shtick, and
at the close of the shtick, they will say, “Now, if you want to
be saved, you must repeat this prayer. And once you repeat this
prayer, you are saved.” I have a problem with that.
And the
The reason I have a problem with that is that no two people
are alike. Somebody watching that same person on TV may be in
a terrible crisis, in terrible torment, and they’ll latch onto
anything because they’re desperate. And you’ve got other
people who may just go through this kind of rote, “I’m a sinner
and I know I’m a sinner.” And there’ll be people who’ll say,
“Well, how could you even criticize that, because that’s
showing people who don’t know?” Well, here’s my problem with
that. There are a lot of people who don’t know who didn’t have
the auditorium or the front row experience or who come up and
say the sinner’s prayer. They were just saved by hearing the
word of God. No one coerced them. No one kicked their shins,
“You’re kicking my shins! You’re kicking my shins!” When
people talk about, “What must I do to be saved?” I don’t;
I’m going to speak for this church and I’m going to tell you
this very simply put. God expects that once you have an
encounter with Christ through His word, you come to a
place of faith, to a place of amen where you say, “That
happened.
He is Lord,” not robotically, to come to know Him
in reality. Not some box I check, but something that
suddenly the word of God is no longer a book with words. It is
alive and comes alive to me. “What must I do to be saved?”
Okay, the answer is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be
saved, have faith in Him, trust in Him, that He is the Messiah,
that He is the Deliverer, that He has the power to save
because He did what He did at the cross, that He’s coming
back, that He’s promised you and me eternal life.
Number four
on my list, “He that cometh to God must believe that he is
and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
Have you heard the word must again? You must believe that. You must believe that. It’s not enough to come
and say robotically, “I follow Christ.” No. I believe that not
only He is God, but He is also a Rewarder. Now, that shouldn’t
make you think, you know like you just pulled the jackpot in
Vegas or something. Don’t━it’s not like that. He is a Rewarder
of them who diligently seek Him. He rewards people who are
seeking Him out, and how does He reward them? Some, with some, in
favor, with others, it may be extra faith, and some are extra
blessed in other ways.
I can’t tell you, maybe it’s a spiritual
gift, but whoever comes must believe that He is and that He
is a Rewarder. You don’t just come and it’s like, “Oh, I just
showed up now.” No, I’m standing in line. God told me to come
here today and I’m standing in line until my number is
ultimately called and I’m, and I’m not only faith, trusting,
and believing all that He said, but He has also promised to reward
the ones seeking Him out. And whatever that might mean to
some, I can tell you what it means to me. You may say,
“Well, do you think that’s a reward?” Yeah, I do actually. My
reward is God’s given me extra faith.
He’s given me, the
surety that I’m not alone. He’s given me the surety of eternity.
I can keep building on these. They all come back to the same
place, very repetitive. All right, we’ll go to the next one
and I think this one is also an important must. “He must reign,
till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.” This is why
it’s important for the church of Jesus Christ right now to get
its groove back: “He must reign,” He must reign until
what? “He hath put all his enemies under his feet.” Now we
know that that last act is death. The last enemy is death.
And if you want to think about it, it’s not just death,
it’s also, if you read the last book or the last book of the
Bible, Revelation, you’ve got the devil. But for the
Christian, think of it this way. What are people talking about
when somebody who is not familiar with the book, somebody
dies and goes into a depression?
It goes into what’s,
what was and there’s no, there’s no hope, there’s no future. So
the last enemy being laid down, I love this one because it says
very clearly, that the enemies of the children of God and specifically
the last enemy, death, are vanquished. Now if this doesn’t
make you realize that all this other fretting stuff over here
wasn’t worth too much because He says, “This, this must happen.”
And this is why the church of Jesus Christ, no matter what’s
going on in the world, still must reign.
There still must be
a voice leading people and guiding people, not entertaining
all of this woke garbage and all of this stupidity of the world,
but rather focusing on our Lord and Savior, focus on what He said,
focus on what He said must happen. And guess what? You’re
going to find something incredible when you realize, you
know, sorry to say this, there are predictions from AI about
when World War III will start. It’s kind of very interesting.
If you look these things up, it’s kind of like, “Oh, okay,
that’s, that’s interesting.” And somebody said, “Well, don’t,
don’t you care?” Well, at the moment when I think about it, I
want to do all that I can for the kingdom, but if somebody’s
going to launch a bomb that’s going to blow up the world,
there’s not too much you can do about it, right? Except for the
Christian, because you understand God’s promises are.
Now everybody must make the trip.
I’ve said this before, but
He says that the last enemy’s death is vanquished. That means
for the believer, no matter what happens, we will be with Him. So
I like reading these musts. They are not only informative, but
they enforce something about our faith where it becomes clear.
You, if you are worried about all this stuff to the point of
having a meltdown, your focus is in the wrong place. Remember, I
taught out of Psalms 42 and 43 when people are depressed and
down, “Why art thou downcast, O my soul.” Why are you looking
there instead of looking up to Him? Why are you looking at the
problems? It’s not like you weren’t warned as a Christian.
I’m not saying that they’re effective now, but wars are the
rumors of wars, tribulation, the Great Tribulation. Somehow, and
then people act like, “Oh, I’m surprised. I didn’t know this
was going to happen.” Well, we’re not in it right now.
That’s number one.
And number two, expect it; that’s what we
are to expect. We’re to expect persecution. We are to expect
the world to hate us. There’s some, “Why do people hate us so
much?” Why did they hate Jesus so much? Okay, don’t answer the
question. It’s all good. So next must, here we go, that “God is a
Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit
and truth.” And I highlight this one because it is one of
these pieces of information that people just gloss over.
He must
be worshiped in spirit and in truth, which brings me back to
what He said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again from above.”
That’s your connection, to be able to worship in spirit. And
if you think about it, Jesus said, “I am the truth.” So this
whole idea of how we worship, and I just want you to think
about this, and don’t take offense. Anybody listening to
me, we all have different ideas on worship. Now somebody could
be listening during a music service, and they’re stirred in
their soul by what they’re hearing, the words of the song,
and they are worshiping in spirit and for their
understanding and truth.
And I don’t condemn that,
and I don’t look upon that and say, “Oh, that’s a freak show.
That’s weird.” But I don’t like the idea somehow that if you go
into a church and everybody’s not all doing this because one
person does it, we all must do it now. Now this is called the
chorus line. This is not called worship. This is, “Oh, God, I’ve
got to put my hands up now,” right? And this is what
happens━trust me; I know these things, okay? This is what
people do. I’m like, “Oh, God, I’ve got to put my hands up. Aw,
I don’t want to clap anymore. When’s the song going to be
over?” Okay? What I’m saying to you is that you could be just
standing there enjoying the music and be just as much
worshiping in spirit and truth as the person who is
praising God with their hands.
Remember I said I was going to
come back to this? The idea somehow is that godliness and
worship must look a certain way. That’s, I’m sorry, that’s the
error right there. I, I can tell you, I think I’ve told you this
story before, and I’m sure that folks there probably don’t like
me telling this story, but I was at a Full Gospel Fellowship
meeting and I told you they were playing all kinds of 7/11 music
and everybody’s standing up and praising God. And someone’s son
who I knew quite well got up and played “How Great Thou Art,” at
the piano. I was the only person standing in the room and it
ministered to me. I was standing up and I was praising the Lord.
I didn’t care. I thought all the people in there were probably
saying, “Why is she standing?” Or “She’s the only one
standing.” I didn’t care.
It wasn’t about anybody in the
room. It was about my moment with God and that’s worship. So
whatever that looks like, I mean, within reason, I’m not
expecting people to━there are some churches where I was
watching a video of one woman, she was, they had a dance team, and all of a sudden her dance went into breakdancing. Okay, so
I’m not talking about that, okay? All right, next one;
better to move on here. These are the words of John the
Baptist, but if you think about it, they apply to
every one of us, “He must increase, I must decrease.” And
this is a big one. See, even if you think you’ve heard all this
before, these are good reminders. Sometimes, we take
up a lot of space and if you were to weigh out the space that
we perceive to take up versus the space we allot to God, it’s
kind of skewed. So this is a wonderful place to camp
out, meditate, and pray because He must increase.
He must take
up the better part of my thoughts or my life or whatever
it is, and I must decrease. It doesn’t mean I cease being. It
just means that if I call myself a child of God and I’m tethered
to Him by faith, then my mindset is, and my thoughts are about
Him more than anything else. Now, how easy is that or how
hard is that? I’m going to tell you something. When people make
the statement, “Well you’ve got to think of the Lord all day long,”
I’m sorry. You’re human. I’m human. That doesn’t happen.” I
think about being hungry. I think about being tired. I think
about how much work I have to do. I think about all the
million things, but I also think about God. See, I’m human. I
don’t play at church. I’m not wanting you to play at church.
The important part of this reflecting on, “He must increase
and I must decrease” is to remind us of proper perspective.
I’ll say it this way, In an age of self-absorbedness,
of in an age of ego-driven, egomaniac, selfie,
whatever you want to call it, “He must increase, I must
decrease” will keep a person treading on the right
path.
I mentioned this one before, “That the Scriptures
must need be fulfilled,” and this is important for the
Christian because there are Scriptures that have already
been fulfilled that build our faith, and then there are
Scriptures that are yet to be fulfilled. But He says the
Scriptures must, it is inevitable. So when somebody
goes and they read the, we’ll call them books on eschatology,
specifically Revelation coupled with the pepperings of some of
the prophets, the Scriptures and it is inevitable, they must be
fulfilled. So when somebody says, “Well, why are you so
committed and so,” because I understand something, this all
must come to pass. The next one is that “we all
must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” I’m
touching on every part of everything, we’ll call it a dimension of our
faith.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and
the Christian does not stand there to receive punishment. You
read Romans 8, and Romans 8 says, “There is therefore now no
ultimate punishment to those who are in Christ Jesus.” And people
get this confused. This is much different. The throne of, the
judgment seat of Christ is different than the great white
judgment seat; two different and distinct moments.
One is for
those who have trusted Christ and those who have not.
Which door would you like to pick? Never mind. It’s a very
bad place to make humor, but I figured a little levity might
help the situation. Okay. Number 10, “this corruptible must put
on incorruptible.” This one I love; you know why? Because it’s
not saying this might happen.
It says this is inevitable, and
I’m, I’m okay with that. Are you okay with that? This
corruptible, this thing that’s rotting every single day and
rotting every day that goes on inside and out must put
on incorruptible, must put on immortality, must be clothed in
that by God, must, this must happen. You start kind of
thinking about what it means to be a Christian now when you line
up all these musts. You’re not looking at game playing or
entertainment. You’re recognizing these are hardcore
to the point of what’s expected. All right, from the book of Acts
we have another one that says, “The multitudes must needs come
together.” And I want to say this happens at every age.
You’ll have the banding together of people and then it’s just
this kind of movement that happens over time.
This one reads a little bit differently in your
Bible, but if you were reading it in Greek, it would be
translated as “must” and this is out of Romans 8 where it says,
“We know not what we should pray for as we ought.” And that word
“ought” actually would be a “must.” We don’t know how we
must pray, okay? And there couldn’t be a more truer
statement.
So I’ll go back and kind of put this in proper
perspective. Developing a relationship with somebody takes
time to learn, you know, in a relationship you have to learn
the language of the other person, how they think, how they
speak, and until that’s figured out, it can be on rocky ground
because you don’t know where the person’s coming from.
But if you’re reading this book and you’re talking to God,
you’re talking it out with God. You know, prayer is kind of
weird. You start off thinking, you know, “Should I, should I
say, ‘Dear God,’ or should I,” you know, think about sometimes
how silly we are, right? I’m trying to think about how I’m
going to pray or what I’m going to say versus I’m just going to
sit down here and I’m going to think about God and my issues
and what God’s done. And as soon as I kind of feel that
everything’s congealed together, I’m going to start talking to
God. And I don’t; I can’t tell you that it’s, it’s something
that’s planned out.
Sometimes I start talking and something else
comes out of my mouth. And I didn’t, I was thinking, “I’m
going to talk about, I’m going to talk to God about this,” and
I’m talking to God about that. Don’t ask me because I can
interrupt myself. It doesn’t matter. But what I am saying to
you and what is important is if we don’t know how we must pray,
then think about how ineffective a lot of our prayers are. Now
I’m not saying that there’s a method to prayer like, you know,
“Step one, you do this and step two,” What I’m saying though is
in sincerity and genuineness. When you relate to somebody,
when you’re having a relationship with somebody, you talk to them.
You don’t try, and no, sometimes we’re talking to other people
which I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m going to be
very diplomatic and I’m, I’m going to say this in a way. You
want to talk to God in sincerity and with openness of heart. And
you might say, “Well, what if that sounds offensive?” Do you
think that God doesn’t already know the thoughts that you’ve
thought? So speaking it out to Him or meditatingly, however you
want to convey your thoughts, He already knows about them.
So
It’s like, I’m already confirming what God already
knows because He knows my thoughts and when I open my
mouth and talk to Him, those thoughts and my words connect
before Him. So when people try to make this like, “Well, I’m
going to think about this now,” have you ever sat down, and
somebody says, “Will, you pray for the food?” And instead of
━again, think about this, instead of
thinking about why we’re praying to receive food and, and, or the
concept of why we would even pray in receiving it. You’ll
hear people take the opportunity like, “I’d like to thank the
governor and,” You know, their prayer, their prayer is
everything, right? “And the silverware, whoever polished the
silverware today, they did a very good job.” You’re praying
for the food! Now, I know I’m being ludicrous, but I’m trying
to make a point that it, it has to be something that comes from
here and flows out of you and that genuineness, whatever that
is, that is what connects with God; nothing more, nothing less.
Anybody gives you a formula, tell them to━yeah, that’s what I
said.
All right, the next one, which I’m sure you’ll all like,
says, “The servant of the Lord must not strive,” and that is a
Greek word, machethestai, or machthesthai, “to fight.” That
doesn’t mean that a pastor is milquetoast or wimpish, but one
who can discern between righteous indignation and
blatant, we’ll call it, you know, you can distinguish
Between these things, someone who’s angry because something
has been done against God or the church or God’s people versus
something that affects me personally. Now that personal
thing could be righteous indignation if it’s about the
things of God, but typically we don’t see it like that. So this
daily struggle, if you want to call it this, of what the
servant of the Lord must not strive, and I’m saying this
because there are people, again, who get critical and they say;
Sometimes I’ll say something, “Well, that was kind of brutal””
or “That was kind of harsh.” How about that was kind of honest?
And how about, I’d rather tell you to speak the truth in love? And
It may be brutal to try to give you some syrupy stuff that
doesn’t help you with anything, doesn’t even make you face
reality.
So when we talk about not striving we’re not talking
about someone, I’m not a brawler, and I’m not out there
looking for fights, but someone capable of being firm,
and leading. That doesn’t mean, as I said, imagine the shepherd, If
all the shepherd does all day is take his staff and beat the
sheep all day long, okay, you get the point. So I must
not beat the sheep, all right. All right, I’m almost done here.
For the believer, I will, I ought, or I must, you’re getting
the gist of this now. So what the Revelation given to John in
that book, says that the Scripture related to what John
wrote “must shortly come to pass.” And I want to address
this one because what does “shortly come to pass” mean if
it’s been all this time? Now, and I want to answer this
because I think there are a lot of people that say, “Well, you
know, you talk about a lot of stuff, and all the stuff you talk
about that’s past and present I can deal with, but the future
stuff; how do we know it’s even going to happen because it’s
been so long?” Well, again, this is the thing.
The Lord talks
about a day as a thousand years or a day as a thousand
years. People start to go with, “Well, what is, how does that
translate, and how should we think about time?” The Scripture
says that all the things written must come to pass could
mean another thousand years have to happen. It could mean that
there are events; not could mean, it does mean that there
are events that must happen that are prophetically
revealed in some of the prophets that tell us when these events
start to happen, other events will start to happen, which
will cascade into the final events. So when it says these
things must come to pass or shortly come to pass, if
somebody’s reading that and saying, “Well, but all this time
has passed?” Yes, but in between, many, we’ll call them
things that must happen, have happened.
And there are; there
is an order in God’s book. So what happens, let’s just say in
the middle of the week or in the middle of the tribulation, there
are events leading up to that before that must take place that
If those don’t happen, these other events can’t happen. So
Think of it this way for people who say, “Well, I’m still not
convinced because all this time has elapsed.” If you are so
inclined to, you’d do yourself a really good service to read
about, especially out of Daniel and some of those other books
that talk about prophecies of kingdoms that didn’t yet exist
In Daniel’s time, for example, that was the future that came to
pass. And then you start recognizing that this whole book
has enough, we’ll call them markers, street signs, neon
signs to tell us these are events that have unfolded, these
are yet to happen, and when this happens, trust me, you’ll know
it.
So when he says that the Scripture must shortly come to
pass, I don’t want anybody in the sound of my voice thinking,
“Well, because it hasn’t happened, it won’t happen.” No,
these events will unfortunately happen on earth, ushering in, as
I’ve talked about in the last week or two, the Millennial
Kingdom. Obviously, for some of us who believe in this,
I think it is super important to understand when it says, “This
must pass. It must come to pass.” That means it will. And
this is why when people don’t take their commitments and their
faith and their learning about God in the now seriously, how do
you expect to take it seriously when we don’t even really know
the timeline of things to come? You start now.
That’s all I can
tell you. You start now. So here’s what we’ve learned in all
of these. There were musts that Christ spoke of Himself. And if
you go back and reread those musts, He fulfilled them. He
fulfilled every single one of these musts when He said, “This
is what I must be about my Father’s business. I must
suffer. The Son of man must be lifted.” Everything that He
said came to pass. Now the things that were said in
direction to us, what must be, how we must be born again, how
we must be saved, I want you to think of all this because the
reality is when you take all of this information in, you realize
that there’s a lot more, there’s a lot more substance in
analyzing these words, what must happen. I said I would take you
to the passage in Luke 19 to
close out, and that’s what we’re going to do because I do want to
show you something here. It’s a passage we’ve read before,
Luke 19, the conversion of
Zacchaeus. But I want you to look at this as we bring, this
message to a close for a purpose, and here is the
purpose.
As you know, “Jesus entered and passed through
Jericho. Behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was the
chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to
see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press,” the crowd,
and “because he was a man of little stature,” he was short.
“And he ran before, climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him:
for he was to pass that way. And Jesus came to the place, he
looked up, saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste,
come down; for today I must abide at thy house.” Now, I want
you to stop right there. Anybody reading this, there’s your must.
He wasn’t saying it like, “Hey, I’ve got to come in because I’ve
got to use your bathroom,” or “I need a cup of coffee.” “I must
abide at thy house,” it was Christ’s way of saying, I must;
Forgive me, it’s a really weird way to explain this. Like the
Spirit coming into a person, “I must come and live in your; in
this abode.” And the only way that could happen, is because the
Spirit was not yet given, was for Christ, whatever was said
inside that house, whatever was done inside that house, who
knows, except when everything was said and done, “Zacchaeus
stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my
goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any
man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.
And Jesus
said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house,
forasmuch as he also is the son of Abraham. The Son of man has
come to seek and to save that which was lost.” I want the
takeaway for this to be, that it is a must for Christ to take up
residence in a person. This is why you must be born from above.
But I also want you to take a look at something. If you looked
at Zacchaeus standing or hanging in the tree, you’d say, “That’s
not godliness. That’s not a picture of godliness.” Well,
because all you see is a man who’s collected taxes, who’s
rich, who’s probably hated by people, and probably had a
hateful appearance even. But godliness looks like this, that
same man said, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to
the poor; if I have taken anything from any man by false
accusation, I restore him fourfold.” That’s what godliness
looks like.
Don’t make the mistake of succumbing to the
stupidity of the vast majority of people who think somehow this
is what spirituality looks like and anything else is not. Don’t
make the mistake of thinking that a message like this in its
simplicity cannot show you the bullet points; we’ll call them
the mandatory sign points of the Christian. This is not law, this
is not some mandate by God, but if you’re going to be a
Christian, you be one, which means you read the words and you
understand at some point, I hate to say this, but something has
to happen with the words. You can take the words in, you can
masticate them, and then you can forget about them, you can
reflect on them, you can pray about it, or you can ask
yourself, how, what, what does this mean for me? That’s the
starting point in my opinion asking, “How does this apply to
me and how am I to apply this?” Because once you start asking
those questions, it reveals something about where you are.
I sat and asked myself these questions in
preparing for this message and it was kind of a revelation to
me.
I could do a lot better, a lot better, and that’s not
work. That’s talking about pressing in and pressing close
and doing all the things that I just chronicled to you today
about the musts of God. So don’t think this is just an exercise
in futility. For my new listeners, welcome to a church
that does not; I don’t judge you, do not judge me. Welcome to
a church where people come from, We’ve got Jewish people, Muslim
people, we’ve got Christian people, we’ve got people who are
not sure. That’s all fine because God has to sort that out
for you, not me. And last but not least, we’ve got, as I said,
a body of people who come together, we’re like-minded and
these reinforcements for those who have been here for a long
time are good because they show us sometimes, “I might be
getting a little bit complacent here.
I need to step up my game
or step up my faith,” however you choose to say that. So I
hope that this is a message that people will listen to again. And
it’s not that I haven’t preached on the musts of Christ before,
but this is a good staple to say, if somebody’s confused
about what Christianity looks like, I just laid it out for you
today. These are the words of Christ or the words of Paul or
any other writer of the New Testament telling us what is
important, and why it matters. And as I said, just a little bit of
reflecting on these musts can carry a big weight on our
understanding of where we’re at. It’s called a spiritual
inventory. It’s good to do every once in a while just to see that
you are still in the faith. That’s my message.
You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from
Glendale, California at Faith Center.
If you would like to
attend the service with us, on Sunday at 11 am, simply
Call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more
teaching and you would like to go straight to our website,
The address is
www.PastorMelissaScott.com.
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