How Much Does It Take for You to Be Moved
by Clark Copeland
February 16, 2021 · The North State Pentecostals
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Matthew 11:15-24, Matthew 13:58, Ezekiel 26:2, Acts 2:38, Song of Solomon 5

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/clark-copeland--how-much-does-it-take-for-you-to-be-moved
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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anoint our hearts to receive what god has given him to preach to us tonight come on let's pray come on why don't you keep your hands lifted all over the house i love you jesus come on can you open up your mouth and say something i love you god i appreciate what i feel i appreciate your presence jesus hallelujah jesus everybody say praise the lord feels good to be in god's house tonight i'm so thankful for what i feel i want to say i'm so honored to be here tonight with your pastor and his family we had a lot of evangelists come through growing up at my local church hundreds come through and i don't know if there was one that had a bigger impact on my life than and your pastor and his family i appreciate them so much he's one of my favorite preachers in the world and i want to say you're a blessed people i believe that amen hallelujah

i do have something tonight that i want to preach about god's been dealing with me on this today and never preached it before but i'm doing my best to follow the holy ghost tonight if you could go to matthew chapter 11 and i'll be starting verse number 15. it's good to see brother sammy tonight haven't seen him in quite some time appreciate him matthew chapter 11 starting with verse number 15. he that hath ears to hear let him hear but whereunto shall i liken this generation it is like unto children sitting in the markets and calling unto their fellows and saying we have piped unto you and ye have not danced we have mourned unto you and ye have not lamented for john came neither eating nor drinking and they say he hath the devil the son of man came eating and drinking and they say behold a man gluttonous and a wine bibber a friend of publicans and sinners but wisdom is justified of her children verse 20 says then began he to upgrade the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done why because they repented not woe unto thee to raise and where woe unto thee bethsaida for if the mighty works which were done and you had been done in tara and said on they would have repented long ago and sackcloth and ashes but i say unto you it shall be more tolerable for tyra and sidon at the day of the judgment than for you and thou capernium which art exalted unto the heavens shalt be brought down to hell for if the mighty works which have been done in thee would have been done in sodom sodom would have remained unto this day but i say unto you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of sodom and the day of judgment than for thee one more verse matthew 13 and verse number 58 matthew 13 verse number 58 and he this is he being jesus did not many works there because of their unbelief he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief

i'm going to be preaching for a few minutes on this subject how much does it take for you to be moved how much does it take for you to be moved let's lift our hands all over the house and pray i love you jesus god i need the anointing of the holy ghost to help me tonight god anoint every ear of every listener anoint the heart let us receive the word anoint my lips as i preach the word that you have given me in the name of jesus christ come on if you're thankful for what you feel why don't you clap your hands all over the house in the name of jesus i love you jesus hallelujah jesus and you may be seated thank you for praying

jesus came to israel with a revelation he came with the greatest truths that had ever been revealed to mankind and we know that he was the god of the old testament and we know that he came to bethlehem as a baby boy and he became something he had never been before but yet he did not cease to be all that he had ever been before and we know that he came to earth as a man and he came to earth as flesh and blood but let me tell you he was still the alpha and the omega and he was still the beginning and the ending and he may have been wrapped up in flesh but he was still he which is and which was and which is to come and he was still the almighty but the people had been waiting for thousands of years for the messiah to come to the earth and the prophecies that were given all throughout the old testament speaking about the son of god that would come to the earth they finally came to pass but the religious people of the day were so wrapped up in religion they were so wrapped up in what they were doing at church and their rituals and the things that they did that they failed to recognize who it was that was in their presence and we know if you read you will see that they felt that they were okay in their religion and they did not need improvements and they felt that they were okay with their father abraham and they were satisfied and they were complacent with where they were at and you will see that they laughed at others who were less fortunate than them and certainly they felt that their salvation was a sure thing and they felt that they had a monopoly on god and they had their own rules and their own regulations and they learned to major on minor things and they minored on major things and we read about a pharisee in the temple who said thank god that i'm not as this other publican and thank god that i'm able to pray all the time and he talked about how much he fasted and it was because religion had taken the place of god rituals and what everybody else thought about you and your appearance to the people that were around you that took the place of god and even when they fasted and even when they prayed they made sure that they prayed on the street corners and they told everybody about how many days they were fasting so this is who jesus met when he came to save a lost and dying world and this is the people that he was met with and after he had been around them for some time and he saw the way that they operated he likened them unto children that were playing in a marketplace and you see they played games with sacred things and jesus said you know what we've tried all these things but you have not responded and he said we've piped unto you but you have not danced and he said we mourn but you have not lamented and we have put forth effort to try and stir your heart and we try to move you out of complacency but nothing we do seems to work in your life hallelujah

but what jesus told the jews it made them angry and he's talking to the top religious people of that time and he said you know what all your religious activities it's really nothing more than child's play and you see what made them really mad was when he compared the jews to their gentile nations that they so despised and it was the nations that the jews so looked down upon and jesus said guess what it's going to be better for those people in the judgment than it will be for you and because if they had seen all the things that you've seen and if they would have felt what you have failed and if they would have seen the miracles that you have seen they would have repented with sackcloth and ashes hallelujah you may be seated

we know that he uprated the cities that he had preached so much in and these were the people of god these were the ones who god came specifically to save at that time and they had seen wonders and they had seen miracles and they had been in direct contact with jesus himself but when jesus would show them different revelations in the word of god it seems it just went in one ear and right out the other and they failed to recognize the responsibility that comes with being in the presence of jesus and right here tonight i know where i am and i'm preaching to people who know the truth and i'm preaching to people who know who jesus is and i'm preaching to people who know why jesus came to this earth and we have been given so much and god has revealed so many revelations to us but let me tell you that unto whom much has given much is required much is required hallelujah

i'm a young man but i have been around pentecost my whole life and i have had the holy ghost almost 15 years and we know that we've got the truth and the old song says that i've got the holy ghost and i can't explain it but i've got it let me tell you i'm thankful we got the holy ghost but we ought to be able to explain it we ought to be able to tell every person that's around us what the holy ghost can do in your life hallelujah hallelujah we've got a responsibility under who much is given much is required it is not the will of god for us just to come to church and enjoy and soak up the presence of god but not to share it with all those that are around us we have got a responsibility to share the gospel with every person that we come into contact with with the wise and the unwise with the rich and the poor we have been commanded gogy into all the world and preached the gospel to every creature clap your hands if you believe that

so jesus we see him comparing the jews with tyra and sidon and we see a prophecy in ezekiel chapter 26 verse 2 and this is against the city of tyra and god told the prophet to tell the people that because you have laughed at jerusalem i'm going to cause the armies to come against you and they're gonna come against you as the ways of the sea and he said by the time i'm done with you i'm gonna scrape you like a rock until there is nothing left of you and what jesus is saying is that look at the destruction that happened to these cities and look at what i did and look at the desolation but when the smoke clears and it's all said and done it's still going to be better for them at the judgment than it will be for you and he was saying you may be a jew and you may be my chosen people but it's still going to be better for this heathen nation then it will be for you he's saying john the baptist came and he tried to move you and he tried to persuade you but you complained about him and i came myself and you said that i had a devil and what jesus was saying was it takes too much to move you and he's saying it takes too much to get you to respond and john wasn't able to do it and it doesn't seem that i'm able to do it and i believe that when god sends men of god and he sends your pastor with a word to preach to you and we sit here service after service but it fails to produce the change in our lives that ought to occur i'm convinced it takes too much to move you and when we can sit and we're so unsteady and we are unmoved and we are unchanged regardless of what the preacher is preaching and you feel conviction but you don't do anything i'm convinced it takes too much to move you oh jesus jesus name

these cities that jesus rebuked they were cities that it seemed they no longer had the ability to be moved and it seemed that they had been so used to the presence of god and they had been so conditioned to the presence of god that they were unable to be stirred and be moved you see that miracles were nothing more than a sideshow to them you read where it was like their attitude was kind of like come on jesus just entertain us and just do a miracle and there are ancient writings that say that they brought clay pigeons to jesus and said hey won't you make these live and jesus knew that they were certainly those who only came for the miracles and there were certainly those that only came for the loaves and the fishes and you see that their intentions were proven by what they did and there was no interest in repenting and there was no interest in getting their heart right with god and there was no interest in real salvation and doctrine and what we really want is a sideshow and jesus we heard that you can walk on the water and we heard that you can turn stone to bread and we heard that you can do all these things and they came for a sideshow but let me tell you jesus never did a miracle just for entertainment and jesus never did a miracle just for fun but the reason jesus did miracles is that so we would believe so we would believe there's people in our day who want to turn church into nothing more than something to entertain them and they want it to be nothing more than a sideshow and people who just want the sensational and just the entertainment but can i tell you on a tuesday evening that that is not the will of god for our services and there's something a lot deeper than entertainment there's something a lot deeper than what people can get up to do to entertain you we have not to come to this place for entertainment but every time we step through those doors there ought to be a hunger for an outpouring of the holy ghost come on do you believe that tonight this sudden out to be a place for fun and show but we ought to be craving and desiring and now boy of the holy ghost hallelujah can i tell you this is not about entertainment and this is not about hype and we are not to have a man have to get up and push and prod and pull and beg us to worship but there ought to be something deep down inside that says god i just want to be in your presence come on i'm trying to stir somebody tonight we are not to have somebody brought us but there ought to be something that flows out of us that says i just want to be in the presence of god come on why don't you lift your hands all over the house i love you jesus come on why don't you lift your hands and open up your mouth just for a minute in the name of jesus

i believe god's got something a lot deeper than just being entertained at church and we ought not to be satisfied with just a little touch and just a little blessing here and there but we need an outpouring of the holy ghost if we are going to reach this city if you are going to reach the people that god wants us to reach there's got to be something miraculous that happens each and every time we come through these doors hallelujah believe we get ourselves in trouble when we do things in church and it's only for show there's a problem if somebody sings and the main motive is to try to impress people or there's a problem if what we are preaching is for nothing else but to impress people and we know that jesus desired oh he desired to show the people who he was but when israel recognized the miraculous and they saw that it failed to produce the effect that jesus was wanting it to produce in their lives and i think so many times we get the wrong idea about miracles we think miracles are to make us comfortable in our lives but the bible says that that really the main reason for miracles is to help us believe and the main reason miracles were recorded in the word of god is so that we will believe because the bible says that these are written he was referring to miracles and signs and wonders he said these are written that she might believe that jesus is the christ the son of god but everything that jesus did seemed to go just straight over their heads and it just went in one ear and it went right out the other and it seems that they missed the whole purpose of why jesus came and he would give them revelations and they would twist his words and they did not understand who jesus was and he said hey i and my father are one and they said hey where is your father and he said you know not me neither my father and you talk about a revelation and you talk about a truth but it seemed every time he would tell them it just went in one ear and out the other he would just pour things out and he said when you've seen me you've seen the father and he said i am emmanuel and i am god manifest in the flesh and he said if i do not the works of my father i don't believe me but he was doing the works of my father so he said you better believe me and when he told them different revelations there ought to have been a response that was produced and when he told them that i and my father are one there should have been enthusiasm and there ought to have been thankfulness and gratefulness that poured out of their heart but it produced no change in their lives and i tell you that when i go to churches pentecostal churches and i don't try to just say things to hype people up and i don't try to say things just to get people excited but when i say hear o israel the lord our god is one lord when i say that and it produces no response there's something inside of me that worries and when i say then peter said unto them you've got to repent and you've got to be baptized and you've got to receive the holy ghost and it produces no response there's something that worries on the inside of me and let me tell you i fear that we have become so conditioned to this message that it does not produce the change in our lives that it ought to do with and we hear preaching on the god head and we hear who jesus is and we sit there and we say well here we go again let me tell you the revelation that there is one god still ought to do something on the inside of you it still ought to stir you it's still out to shake you so many people we get the attitude that well heard this before pastor gets up on a tuesday night and he wants to preach about the godhead and he wants to preach that there's one god and his name is jesus and we get the attitude my god i've heard this one again and we hear it everywhere we go because we are pentecostal people but the fact that there is one god it is a revelation that is only given to us because god allowed us to have it and there's people all over this world who do not understand what we look at as a simple revelation and what we look at as old hat but it would change something in them but we hear it and we say here we go again i've heard this a million times i'm praying god will stir something in us tonight i'm praying god would give us a reverence for the fact that there is one god and his name is jesus hallelujah

we come to church and we say preacher give me something else and we say preacher give me something new and can i just tell you that as a young man in the year 2021 i want you to know i don't believe that we need a new message come on am i the only one that believes that i believe this message still works i believe this message still stays i'm not interested in finding new revelations when it comes to the plan of salvation i am not interested in finding new methods and new methodology we have the only saving message there is one god and his name is jesus hallelujah that right there i'm telling you it seems like it does with a lot of you but that ought to produce a response and you not something manufactured but something that comes out of the thankfulness of your heart god thank you for letting me understand who you are thank you for letting me understand that there is power in the name of jesus hallelujah

i'm hurrying it baffles my mind when you read the word of god and you see that jesus could go so far and he could reach so far for this one nation who it seemed that they did not any they did not want anything to do with him and it goes beyond my understanding how people could reject everything that they had seen and people today we can reject everything that we have felt and we choose a dead dry religion instead when it times jesus would turn to a gentile nation or maybe just a person who was not a jew it seemed it always produced such a positive result and it always seemed to produce such a success and it was a woman who was on the outskirts of israel who came and she asked for a miracle and jesus said it's not right for me to take bread from the children and give it to dogs if your pastor said that to you you probably wouldn't be back amen someone said that to us we would be so offended that oh we probably would not be able to speak but this woman looked at jesus and she said well that's true but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master's table and she more highly valued the crumbs than the jewish people valued the whole loaf and jesus said i have not found faith like this in all of israel

but you see tyra and sidon they did not have a bible and they did not have a prophet to walk the streets and say you've got to repent and tyra and sidon did not have a preacher to stand in a pulpit and say here oh tyra inside on the lord our god is one lord but you see israel from the time that they were children it was written on the door posted it was told to them over and over and when they were sleeping and when they got up and when they walked by the way and when they lied down and when they rose up don't forget israel hear o israel the lord our god is one lord but it just didn't do what it ought to have done in their lives because they were spiritually satisfied with where they were at they didn't want anything past what they had received from their father abraham and they did not desire more than the commandments that they received from moses and i just happened to wonder tonight could it be that god has been so kind to you people that i am preaching to tonight and could it be that we have been in so many pentecostal services and could it be that we have been in the presence of god so many times and we sing the good songs and we enjoy the blessings from the lord and could it be the church has become nothing more than entertainment to us and could it be that we are just not moved the way that we ought to be moved and could it be that we just come to see what kind of blessing we can get from god and we just come i want to hear what the preacher is going to say and i wonder if he's going to say anything that will impress me and i wonder if he will say anything that will move me have some of us gotten to the place where it's nothing more than entertainment in our life and well if they're not singing my favorite song then i'm not gonna worship it if it's not my favorite preacher preaching then i'm not gonna respond i was raised in a pastor's home you may be seated thank you and i've seen it before where churches can put their pastor on trial and you know they want to control what the preacher preaches and i've felt it before at churches where i've been where they don't want you to preach on certain things and they want you to hit certain things and i've also seen it where young people can go to a conference and it seems they are so on fire it doesn't matter what the preacher says they're going to be on their feet and they're going bananas but they come back to their local church and their pastor stands with the word from god and it does nothing for them they do not respond because they have to come to condition to the moving of the spirit let me tell you if you find yourself in that boat i believe it takes too much to move you it takes too much to move you hallelujah

i know how it is like i said i'm young but i've been in church my whole life but it's so easy to get conditioned to the presence of god and it's so easy to let certain things when it comes to church just to become familiar to us and it's easy to let our hearts become hard before god i believe we ought to be quick to respond to the presence of god i believe we ought to be tender to the spirit of god in solomon chapter 3 i'm almost done i'm sorry solomon chapter five song of solomon 5 and also in revelations 3 it's mentioned about a lover who knocked on the door and we know that the lover represented jesus christ and the woman on the inside represented the church and the woman on the inside she was so wrapped up in the things of life and he knocked and he said well would you let me in and she heard the voice and she heard the knock but there was not enough stuff that was stirred in her for her to rise and get the door and she was only moved to a small extent and finally she realized you know what i need to get up and i need to take care of some things and i need to get the door but because all those conditions that were going on the inside hindered her from doing that and the bible says he knocked and he knocked it and the bible says that the dew of heaven filled his locks and that gives us an idea of just how long he was standing there but he continued knocking and it seemed that he was just going to stay there but by the time she finally stirred herself enough and by the time she was finally moved enough for her to open the door the bible tells us that he was gone and she said i opened to my beloved but my beloved had withdrawn himself and he was gone and i sought him but i found him not and i called him but he gave me no answer let me tell you there comes a time when we sit service after service and god is knocking on the door of your heart the preacher is trying to move you when you continue to push of conviction in your life the lord will withdraw himself from you

i'm convinced tonight that everything you need is in this building that's not something that we say to excite you or to hype you up but everything that you need really is in this building tonight there's not a problem that's too big that our god cannot solve it i believe there's people tonight god has been knocking and knocking but you have not responded the way you ought to respond let me tell you tonight is the night you need to respond to the moving of the holy ghost the lord has been knocking it's time for you to reach out some of you have allowed the things of life to come in between you and god and you've been so wrapped up with the cares of life and you've allowed carnality and sin to keep you from getting right in your relationship with god can i tell you tonight with an urgency and my spirit it's time for you to respond to the moving of the holy ghost come on why don't you lift your hands all over the house come on why don't you lift your hands it's time for some of us to respond to the holy ghost he's not always going to be there knocking he's not always going to be pleading and begging with you to get your heart right oh jesus oh jesus hallelujah

i've been in pentecostal churches and i've seen people i just sit there and they're so dead and there's just no response and they are so dry that you would think they were at a funeral and you can do everything you can to try to get them to respond but there was just no response and i've heard my dad say that some of our worst advertisement at times is our own people we also heard him say that we'd probably have a lot more pentecostals if it wasn't for pentecostals and i've been to places in my life and i've thought whatever they've got i don't want it to get a hold of me and the people are so dead and so dry it's no wonder they are not having revival in their city and they will not move and it's so dull and dry that you would think that going and watching paint dry would be something more entertaining to them and they're never excited about anything and nothing can move them nothing can shake them and nothing can stir them can i tell you it's time for us to become more responsive to the moving of the holy ghost it's time for us to be a vessel that will flow with power and anointing and god in the year 2021 is still looking for people who will be sensitive to the spirit it is not to take much for us to lift our hands it up not to take much for you to lift your voice for you to shed a tear and cry because you feel the presence of god working on our hearts let me get some help on the music please you can go to churches and i've seen it many times in my life where someone who is not familiar with pentecost and the types of services that we have they can come in and they are so moved by the spirit and many times you will see that they have tears in their eyes and then you look at somebody who's maybe been in church for a long time and they'll sit back with their arms crossed and it does nothing to them because they are so familiar with the presence of god it's either gonna be a tsunami of the presence of god or it's got to be a stick of dynamite before you will lift your hands and do anything let me tell you we ought to be sensitive we ought to be tender to the presence of god we can sit and we can cast an eye at the denominator world and we can talk about how their services are so dead and they're so dull and they're so dry and we can talk about how they are twice dead and they're plucked up by the roots and i'm convinced that it is sickening to the very heart of god to see so many people that don't understand who he is and to see people that are wrapped up with their little routines and with the rituals but can i tell you there's something that i believe is even more sickening to the heart of god and that is when people just like us who have the plan of salvation and we understand who jesus is and we have the truth but yet we get to the place where we lose a desire to have a spiritual manifestation of the holy ghost each and every times we walk through the doors let's stand all over the house there's some people tonight it's been a long time since you had a holy ghost reign in your life it's been a long time since you've quaked underneath the power of the holy ghost and we ought to pray tonight that god will set a fire under each and every one of us and i believe that god wants to do it tonight and we need a renewing of the holy ghost and we need to be stirred tonight oh jesus

how long has it been how long has it been since you felt the presence of god so strong in your life that you fell between the pews and you were weeping and crying and how long has it been since you prayed until there was a clean channel and a direct communication line between you and god our church back home where i live in beaufort georgia brother cox knows it's right next to some train tracks and something you'll notice is that when a train will come through during church and it will blow the whistle and it's very loud it almost sounds like it's going to come through the church but the new people there they will always be startled they're always shaken and it's something that they are not used to but if you look around and you look at the saints in the church who have been there for quite some time and the people who are members there you will notice that it's like they don't even notice the noise and it does nothing to them and do they don't even realize that there was a train going by and why is that it is because they are conditioned to it and they hear the noise but it doesn't really do anything to them and that's how some of us get with the presence of god and we can get so familiar and we can feel his presence so strong so many times that it does not produce a change in our lives let me tell you we've got to get to the point where we are easily stirred where our hearts are tender before god oh jesus help me tonight i don't believe you'll be saved if you build up a wall of resist resistance to where nothing can touch you nothing can shake you there's some of you today it's been a long time since you've had a reign of the holy ghost it's been a long time since you felt conviction and it's been a long time since you yielded to the power of the holy ghost

let's lift our hands close our eyes all over the house god in the name of jesus help us deny god come on we got to get to the point where conviction does something to us and you see so many times we want people and we want sinners to feel conviction but we don't want to feel conviction and we want sinners to be moved by the holy ghost but we don't want to be moved and we don't want to be shaken let me tell you we've got to allow ourselves to be tender before god come on these altars are open why don't you come up and pray and why don't you seek the face of god would you give me a reference for your presence god would you stir something in me and would you break something to me come on church why don't we pray in the name of jesus god in the name of jesus come on church come on if it's been a while since you prayed in the holy ghost don't stop until you're speaking in tongues come on you ought to stir yourself tonight make sure you still know how to respond to conviction make sure it still does something on the inside of you come on church come on do we gotta play come on if we're gonna reach this city if you're going to reach the people that are in the city of red blood we've got to be sensitive to the holy ghost don't make the preacher beg you to respond don't make the worship leader beg you to move every time we come in our hands are to go up freely our mouths come to open freely and say i love you jesus thank you for what i feel thank you for the revelation come on church would you open up your mouth and help me pray come on church would you open up your mouth would you lift your hands i love you jesus give me a reverence for your presence god i don't want to become conditioned i don't want to become used to it but god break up the follow ground of my heart don't let my heart become callous praise come on church without you no not for one day oh young person would you pray come on would you stir yourself tonight come on let your prayer be god i know i haven't done everything right i know i've not been perfect but would you help me tonight god come on why don't you commit to doing better why don't you commit to daily prayer come on you can't go a day without prayer you've got to stir yourself you've got to shake yourself out of complacency oh god do something in me stir me god break me god oh jesus come on there's some soul winners in this place tonight if god's going to use you you've got to be sensitive to the holy ghost you've got to learn to pray in the spirit you've got to learn to walk in the spirit and walk in the holy ghost i need yours one day is jesus come on why don't you make a commitment tonight come on the preacher's not gonna have to tug on me and the preacher's not gonna have to beg me to lift my hands and he's not gonna have to beg me to open up my mouth but i'm gonna do it because i love jesus i'm gonna do it because he's been so good to me i'm gonna lift my hands i'm gonna lift my voice because he saved me from a burning hell come on are you thankful for the presence of god are you still thankful that you know the truth are you still thankful that you feel the holy ghost