Hey guys, this is the New Heights Church podcast, and we just want to welcome you and thank you for joining us today. We hope this message inspires and encourages you. Here at New Heights, we exist to love people and point them to Christ. Enjoy today's service.
Amen. Come on, let's pray. Father, I'm asking in Jesus' name that your people would hear your voice today and not mine. Let your word shape us, change us, and mold us like only you can.
In Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. Please be seated if you can. Stand if you cannot. I'll be standing.
Open your Bible to Matthew chapter number 7. Matthew chapter number 7. Everybody say deeper. I believe 2022 is going to be a year of deeper.
A deeper relationship with God. Deeper encounters with God. I also believe it's going to be one with deeper convictions. Things that you might not used to have been sensitive to, now you're going to be sensitive to in your life.
Where all of a sudden, what you used to could walk away from, now you can't walk away. You've got to do something because God has changed you and you've got to give somebody the opportunity to change themselves, to have themselves changed. A year of deeper. I also believe very strongly that 2022 is going to be a year of division.
I don't mean God dividing us from him, but I do believe it's going to be a lot clearer the difference between a sheep and a goat. I believe that the Lord is looking for a group of people that are not ashamed of his son's name. That are not ashamed of his spirit. And I believe God's ready to pour himself out again like he's done so many times in history.
But it's going to happen with people that are willing to have their lives set apart for a purpose. The Bible says to come out from among them. The reason you're not comfortable with everything going on around you is because God's constantly calling you to come out from among them. Be separate.
Now, separate doesn't mean that we get on a high horse and we look down at anybody. That's not it at all. But it does mean, hey, my life is not my own. My life has been purchased.
Jesus Christ paid my debt. Therefore, I am eternally indebted to him. My life is what he asks me for. And the Bible says it's a reasonable service to offer your body as a living sacrifice, yourself as a living sacrifice.
Thank you, Jamie. As a living sacrifice. I want to talk a little bit about that today. About what it means to go deeper in the things of God.
Because, first off, if you're going to go deeper, you have to understand God has never changed. Matter of fact, people have been trying to change God since the beginning of time. But God has never changed. So if God says something, that settles it on that particular topic.
So for God himself, who doesn't change, the one thing that you can do that blesses him the most and verifies that his power overrides the world's power is for you to actually change. God, who does not change, is looking to see some change in us. Because some change in us verifies that his spirit, the Holy Spirit, is more powerful than the prince of the power of the air, which is Satan. Matter of fact, I don't know if you know this just doctrinally.
Let me straighten this out. The devil right now is not cast down into hell and in torment. The devil is actually somehow on planet earth or in the realm that we are in right now. Matter of fact, when you're tempted to do a thing, that's not God.
That's the enemy or one of his little minions trying to get you in a direction that you should not go. Because he might not know your full future, but he knows if he can get you off track just a little bit, he can skew when you're going to arrive at what God has called your destination. The enemy never stops. He never changes his intention, but he will change his tactic constantly.
He will constantly throw a different thing in front of you. Maybe as simple as an idea. Or it may be this. You know, the Bible says all things in moderation.
It could be something that's totally okay, but when you take it too far, now it's not. When your political stance outruns your relationship with Jesus Christ, that is too far. When you can't have a conversation with somebody who disagrees with you on a topic, that is too far. Does this make sense?
The enemy never stops trying to give you just a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. So the year 2022, it's going to be a year of division. You're going to have to make some decisions about who you're going to give. The Bible says this.
It says, don't throw your pearls to pigs. Don't give your pearls to pigs. And if you think about that, it can be a little bit challenging to understand. But what he's saying is the things that are valuable to you, you don't need to just go throwing them in front of somebody who doesn't understand their value.
See, in those days, you wouldn't have gotten a pearl from Kay's Jewelers. You wouldn't have gotten a pearl from Zales. You would have either gone to some dingy market to get it or possibly, if you were one going and getting the pearl, you would have had to jump in shark-infested water, open your eyes in a salt-filled environment, swim down while holding your breath. They didn't have scuba tanks back then.
They didn't have snorkels and masks back then. Swim down into the depths, pry off an oyster from a clump of other oysters and bring it to the surface, all in the hopes that nothing is going to bite your leg off on the way up. As well as when you get to the surface, it's not like the pearl just spits itself out. On the contrary, you're going to have to take a knife or a blade or something and stick it into that oyster and open it up.
And what happens is, I don't know how often it happens, but even the greatest of oyster shuckers have scars all over their hands from the times when the knife slips. And then you're going to open it up and sometimes they have pearls and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're in good quality, sometimes they're not. So in other words, the pearl that's hanging around your neck cost you literally, or could have cost you your entire life back then because of what it would have taken to go get it.
So don't go taking something that cost you your life to get it and throwing it to something that doesn't value that which is holy. Don't take those special places of your heart and be casting them to people that, a lot of times, some of our pain is brought on ourselves, not because it's us saying the thing or ignoring the thing, but it's because the person who you're talking to has no capacity to understand what you're actually saying because until somebody has ears to hear and eyes to see, they are literally blind and deaf to the things of God. And don't blame me about this. This is what Jesus said, almost verbatim.
He said they don't have ears to hear the same things that we read about today. He was teaching and they killed him for it. They didn't have ears to hear. It takes a new birth.
It takes a reborn spirit. It takes the blood of Jesus washing you white as snow for you to be able to even interpret some of these things, most of the things that come from the Scripture. So when you have those precious things to you, don't go casting your pearls in front of something that's just going to slop on it because pigs don't value pearls. Pigs value mud and slop.
This is me trying to decide if I'm going to go there, Jake. Okay. If all your friends want to do is eat slop and roll in the mud, you need a new set of friends. If every time you get around them, it's like, here comes the drama train because wrestling with a pig, what you find out is you get dirty and the pig enjoyed it.
There has to be a new you that decides, hey, he told me to come out from among them. The Bible says the prodigal son, he was far from his father and he'd spent all that he had on riots, living a sinful lifestyle until sin does exactly what sin does. It left him with nothing and he was having to feed a man's pigs and he was staring at the food that the pigs ate. He goes, man, even that looks good to me right now.
The servants in my daddy's house, the slaves in my daddy's house, they eat better than I'm eating right now. I'm going to go back and I'm going to be a slave in my father's house. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get out of this miry clay.
I'm going to pick my feet up out of this mud that I've been tromping through. I'm going to stop rolling around with these pigs. And even if it just means I'm going to be a doorman in the house of my father, I'm not going to be a mud roller with these pigs. And the Bible says he came to himself.
My God, I love the Bible. The reason it feels like you being you when you answer the call of God and you follow after the call of God is because before he formed you in your mother's womb, he knew you. He orchestrated the plans for you. So when you get just a little bit in congruence, in line with one of those plans, in line with one of those thoughts that God had, that's when you're going to feel more like yourself than you ever could rolling in the mud with the pigs.
Separate life, holy life, not because one act of righteousness can make you more righteous, because if that were the case, the blood of Jesus would have been shed in vain to life like you and I did in a different way, he entered life exactly the same way that you and I came in. In other words, he came through the door that humans come through to actually get their time on planet Earth. He's not just the Son of God, He's the Son of Man. He had to be the Son of Man because in Genesis chapter number one and Genesis chapter two, God gave man humanity, man and woman, mankind, God gave humanity dominion and authority right here on planet Earth.
He's not just the Son of God, He's the Son of Man. He couldn't just be the Son of God, which is powerful, but He had to be the Son of Man for authority's sake. He's the lion of the tribe of Judah, in direct contrast to the one who goes about like a roaring lion seeking who he can destroy. He's the rose of Sharon.
He's the lily among thorns. This was prophetically spoken in Song of Solomon, but it paints a beautiful picture of when Jesus Himself would be suspended on a sinner's cross with a crown of thorns piercing His scalp. He is still precious even when surrounded with thorns. It's not the first time that we see a form and type of shadow of Christ being surrounded by thorns.
When Abraham took his son Isaac up the mountain, the Bible says that he was about to sacrifice his son and all of a sudden he looked over and God stayed his hand so the sacrifice wouldn't take place, and looked over to the side and the Bible says that there was a ram with his head or his horns caught in the thicket. I see a lily among thorns with Abraham. I see a lily among thorns in the Song of Solomon. I see a lily among thorns in our Messiah, the Christ Jesus.
The Bible says that He is the lily among thorns. He's also the creator of all things. The Bible says in John chapter number 1 that everything that was made was made by Him. This is Jesus, this is the one who you grab the namesake thereof when you say I am a Christian.
You are saying I am a Christ one. I am one of Christ. I belong to Him. I am not my own anymore.
My life has been purchased. The one who made me now has illegal rights to me because I have relinquished my right over to Him. He's a teacher. He's a healer.
He's a miracle worker. That's how we hope against hope is when nobody has hope because they don't know there's a reasonable or rational way that it can work out. You and I still have hope because we don't just know somebody who can give us a good prescription. We know one who can change literally the laws of medicine to make it happen instantaneously.
He's a miracle working God. He's our crucified redeemer. He's our resurrected Savior. He's the bringer of multiplication and prosperity.
Everywhere He went, prosperity showed up. When He met Peter for the first time, He asked Peter if he could use his boat to preach out of. Peter agreed. He preached a great message and then He filled his boat up so much with fish that it began to sink and Peter was a commercial fisherman.
If you're a commercial fisherman, fish is money to you. The Bible says that he took a little boy's lunch, some bread and some fish, and he fed 5,000 men and arguably closer to 10,000 total people there. And after it was over, there was 12 baskets full left over. That'd be like you going to lunch with your family of five and ordering enough food for 500.
Everywhere He goes, prosperity shows up. Everywhere He goes, multiplication shows up. Our God, our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's the Prince of Peace.
Thank you for that, Lord. He's the Prince of Peace. If you need a healthy dose of peace, just right now, close your eyes and lift your hands. Father, you're the Prince of Peace.
Your Son, Jesus, is the Prince of Peace. You're the great I am. You're the overwhelming one. Let your peace flow right now through your people, Lord God.
You said you'd give us peace that surpasses our understanding. I'm asking right now in the name of Jesus for your word to manifest itself through in this moment. Peace. Some of the wealthiest people I know are the most miserable because they have no peace.
Some of the poorest, from a worldly, monetary standpoint, are the happiest because they just have peace. When you understand the value of peace, you understand why He is the Prince of Peace. Now, the translators translated that word Prince, but it's the same word that they use for royalty in different places. So we very easily could have called Him King of Peace, but I think they liked alliteration.
I think that's why they used Prince. But He's not just the Prince of Peace. Listen to this. He's the King of Kings.
You don't just go walking up to a king. You better be right when you come to a king. He's the King of Kings. I'll never forget a few years ago, I had the thought, who are the kings He's king of?
Then I read in the book of Revelation, it says you and me are kings and priests unto our God. We are a part of a royal bloodline. That's why you don't feel... That's why when you see something happening and you know it's unjust, it turns in you because royalty has a different responsibility than peasant.
The only responsibility a peasant has is don't die. But when you have royal blood running through your veins, you look at your neighborhood and you say, I don't like what I'm seeing happening here. I need it to change because you have royal responsibility flowing through your veins. He is the King of Kings.
You were a sinner. Now you're the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. He said the righteous may fall seven times, but they get back up. It doesn't say the righteous may fall seven times and they revert back and they have lost their eternal soul.
It says they fall and get back up. The righteous, that's you and me. We get back up. We don't get knocked...
We may get knocked down, but we get back up. And the reason we get back up is I got royal blood flowing through my veins. I can't stay down. I have too much to do.
When you get this revelation, you realize it'd be easier for you to sit on the couch all day, but you can't because the royalty that flows through your veins calls on you. Your King calls on you to make a difference with the one life that you have. It calls on you. The blood of Jesus, the Bible says the blood of Jesus is crying out.
It calls on me. It calls me to do things I don't wanna do half the time. And as soon as I know I change, I say I do wanna do that and I change my want to and I shift in that direction. But I don't just go to the store.
I'm going to the store just like I'm just going to get some milk and eggs. I'm not going to have a prayer meeting. But that blood that's on the inside of you, that royal blood that's flowing and you're walking around with a bleeding, hurting, dying society all around you, and you just know immediately, ah, they need that Jesus that's on the inside of me. I got to do something.
I got to say something. Who would you be if you leave them like that? What if somebody would have left you? Where would you be?
He's the King of Kings. He's the mediator between God and man. He's the high priest. He's the light of heaven.
And he is the name that is above every name that can be named. He is the name whereby every knee will bow and confess that he is Lord. He is the name that sends quivers up the back of every demonically inspired person and brings victory to captives. He is the name that changes a sickness from having access to you to being barred from your body.
He is the name that brings healing into a marriage. He's the name that brings peace in the middle of the night. He's the name that changes nightmares into dreams. He's the name that shifts things.
This is who he is. So you got to know who he is. Now in society, we know a lot of people. We know a lot of people because of particularly the media or because they've been famous in some regard or otherwise.
Matter of fact, it wasn't too long ago. It was last year, I believe or maybe the year before last. There was a huge concert taking place at Lakewood church. Lakewood church is down in Houston.
And my dad and Pastor Reggie and I, we were going down to this big concert. We were going to have a great time. And we got down there. It was a guy named Kanye West.
Now I'll just say, I've never been to a Kanye West concert. I didn't know what to expect. All I know is the guy's professing Jesus and I'm down with it. I heard some of his music on the way down.
I was like, man, that sounds awesome. But a friend of mine said, you should go. So Pastor Reggie was in town. I said, hey man, you want to go see Kanye West?
He was like, man of God, that sounds good to me. I was like, all right, so we'll go down there. I made one call. I said, hey, can you give me some seats?
You get some seats? We get down there and on the way down there, they call us and say, I need you to park like right here. I'm like, okay, no problem. So we park and we're driving up.
And the line to get in the door is 8 to 10 people wide. God is my witness. This is my best guess. 300 or 400 yards long at every door.
Lakewood church is where You don't have to tell me twice. I said, this way guys, come on. Come on. Be happy.
Ha ha. Roller's coming through. Excuse me. Right here.
Let's go. We're walking by and like, I'm getting a mix of emotions from the people that are walking by. Some of them are like, what is happening? And then all of a sudden we get up to the front where the metal detector is and they said, excuse me, sir.
They were letting some, listen, can you wait right here? And they looked at us because they'd clearly been there for a while and they're like, who are you? And I started to go empty my pockets and everything. They said, Oh no, no pastor.
You don't have to do that. I go through and it's like beep. I was like, all right. I said, you got us some seats.
Yeah, I got you some seats. And a friend of mine comes and says, man, I got you some seats right here. Takes us down. There's this group kind of up.
Walk right past them. There's another group kind of halfway and walk right past them. Get all the way down about four or five rows from the front. Sit us down.
There's celebrities in front of us. There's celebrities beside us. Celebrities behind us. And I'm sitting there going, huh.
All of a sudden, my phone starts blowing up with texts with pictures of us from the top. So people are taking pictures that I know that are there or taking pictures. How'd you get those seats? Question mark, question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
I just sent them back. I was like, Kanye. We get done with the concert, which was amazing. Amazing.
The best way I could try to describe it. That was, I don't know, two, 300 seemed like people in the choir. And it felt like the most appropriate attempt. It felt like the most appropriate attempt to honor God that I've maybe ever seen because no, it appeared that no expense had been spared.
It looked like the best of everything available in today's society was being used to magnify God. Now I'm not saying we don't try to do our best. I'm just telling you, there are speakers that are more expensive than that speaker right there. And it did.
It looked like everything that no expense had been spared, but everything was pointing to God. It was so impacted. We were all weeping. Everybody was just weeping in the presence of God.
And it gets over and we're all like, whoa, man, that was awesome. And I'm sitting there thinking, I was like, man, there was like 8,000 gazillion people trying to get in here. There's gonna be 8 billion people getting out of here. We'll probably get home at like five o'clock in the morning.
That's what I'm thinking. And all of a sudden I hear, hey, hey, hey, right here. I look and it's my friend right in front of the church. Come here, come here, come here, come here.
I said, what? He said, Pastor Joel was having a little get-together in the back. He'd like you guys to come back. Show me the way.
We walk back there and this is true. Other pastors that I was friends with had come down from the top and I was sitting there having a conversation. And I had to leave them. Went back there, had words, met with some other friends of ours we hadn't seen in a while.
My point is this. Everybody in the front row, the back row, and the top, everybody in the line, 8 to 10 people wide, 400 yards long at every door, knew Joel Osteen. But Joel Osteen didn't necessarily know them. It was the fact that I was known that gave me access.
Not the fact that I knew who he was. There are people there who know more about Kanye than I do. Matter of fact, I would venture to say everybody in the room probably knew more about Kanye West than I know. So it's not about you knowing about somebody.
Because I just told you all about our King. The question is, does our King know you? The question is, does our King know you? Because the Bible says, we'll turn there real quickly, even though we're almost out of time.
Matthew chapter 7, verse 21. Matthew chapter 7, verse 21. Not everyone that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that does the will of my Father, which is in heaven.
Many will say in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Have we not cast out devils in your name? And in your name, we did many wonderful works. 23 says this, then I will say to them, I never knew you.
Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. You knew me, but I didn't know you. Now, you can't just read the Bible. You've got to read the Bible.
That word know doesn't mean just to be, in Spanish, there's at least two words for know. There's one saber and conocer. And one of them indicates to actually be familiar with somebody. And the context is this, you can know who Kanye is, but not know Kanye.
I don't know Kanye. He couldn't pick me out of a crowd. But I know him. It's the same thing with the Lord in a different context.
You can know everything I said. He's the son of God, the son of man, the lamb of God, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the rose of Sharon, lily among thorns, creator, fourth man in the fire, born of a virgin, teacher, healer, miracle worker, crucified redeemer, resurrection savior, prince of peace, king of kings, lord of lords, mediator, high priest, light of heaven, and the name above every name. You can know everything about him. And if he doesn't know you, depart from me.
That word know is not just to be aware of. That word know when he says, I never knew you, it's a very intimate word. It means we were never engaged. We were not intimate.
We were never intimate. I never knew you. You knew about me. Who doesn't know about me?
He was front page of the Jerusalem Times on a regular basis. Who didn't know about him? The question is, is there an intimacy there that when the line is 400 miles long and everybody's going, hey, no, I know about you. Does your phone ring?
Say, make sure mine, get up here. Because to know him is one thing. But to be known by him, that's deeper. That puts you in a place of division from the world.
My life is not my own. To you, I belong. I give myself. I give myself away.
It's a very dividing thing. Not to say you know him. I can say I know anybody. Nobody cares.
But when you find out that you're their friend, when somebody finds out you're a friend of somebody they don't agree with, now all of a sudden, oh, very divisive. So I'll just ask this right here in 2022, the beginning of the year. I'll just say this. Where are you?
Have you fallen into a religious rhetoric? You know the right thing to say, but there's no intimacy. Have you never, have you never given your life to him? Or are you in a place where you gave your life to him, but somewhere along the way you decided, you know what, I don't wanna do that.
And you find yourself like the prodigal son, rolling in the mud with the pigs. Is that you today? Where are you? It's the oldest question in the Bible.
God looked down at Adam after Adam sinned and said, where are you? The question is, where are you? Not where is he. He doesn't change.
Do you know him? Congratulations. Satan knows him. Does he know you?
Is there an intimacy there that's worth your life? Is there an intimacy there that's worth your reputation? Is there an intimacy there that's worth what you call valuable to be laid at his feet? I hope you enjoyed the podcast today.
If you did, there are a couple of things that I'd love for you to do. Number one, subscribe to our show. That way, the most recent episodes will always be in your feed waiting for you, ready when you are. And secondly, follow us on social media.
That is the best way to stay up to date on everything happening at New Heights. We look forward to you joining us next time on the New Heights Podcast. And if you are ever in the Bryan College Station area, we invite you to come out to New Heights Church for a live service. I promise we'll make you feel right at home.