The Creditor Has Come
by Doug Ellingsworth
May 28, 2023 · Centerpointe Apostolic Church (Murfreesboro, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: John 10:10, 2 Kings 4:1, Acts 17:28, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Acts 2:38, John 14:30, Romans 15:13, Colossians 2

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/doug-ellingsworth--the-creditor-has-come
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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I would like to take you in the word of the Lord to two places. One in — one is — is in the New Testament, one is in the old. And in John chapter 10, a verse that you probably can quote from memory from your Sunday school years, and a passage that that I love to read, and it says that the thief — everybody say "the thief" — cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. You know, the devil is not interested in just dragging you to hell. He wants to drag you out a miserable, broken, useless, mind-blown piece of humanity. The world, with all of its glitter and all of its enticements, never tell you what's behind the curtain. He wants to destroy. But Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and they might have it more abundantly."

Now, that that passage is interesting because John's recording here doesn't say that Jesus said so that you — he said for they, those that the devil wants to destroy and beat. Jesus came so that they — all of us, them folks that aren't even in this room — could have life. But just as the devil is not interested in you only going to hell, he wants to just defeat you as desperately as he can. You flip that to the opposite extreme, Jesus said, "I didn't come that they just have life, but they might have it more abundantly." In this small verse you find such opposites here of intent and purpose, and you find in it the glory and the wonder of God.

And then one verse from the Old Testament, in Second Kings chapter four. And I'm going to borrow this. This is the story of a lady who, her husband had passed away. They had quite a bit of debt, and so in order to satisfy that debt the creditor was coming to take her sons. They would become slaves until they could pay the debt. And so she describes that, as she pleased with the prophet here, she says, "Now there cried a certain woman of the prophet — I'm sorry, they're quite a certain moment of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead, and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord, but the creditor has come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen."

You and I live in a world that is basically a spiritual environment. We are spiritual creatures wrapped up in flesh and bone. That's one of the first lessons we read in the Bible, Book of Genesis, as you open it up and start reading through. You find Adam and Eve standing there staring at that tree that the Lord said don't eat of that, but as soon as they eat of it, their eyes are open, the Bible says, and there is a spiritual change in them. It didn't just affect the environment, and they didn't just enjoy the taste of whatever that fruit was, but everything about them changed. It was a spiritual change.

In the book of Acts chapter 17, the Apostle Paul is preaching to some folks in Athens, and as he looks around he realizes these people have no concept of the God I serve, but they're — they're worshiping every god they can think of, and their idols, and there are monuments that are inscribed to all these different gods, including the one that says, just in case we missed you, "to the unknown God." And as he's talking to them, he quotes what was once my favorite verse when I was a younger child, because I thought it applied just to me, that special spot. But he says to them about Jesus Christ — it's in him that we — we, you heathens, you folks that worship that god you've made a monument to there, and those of you who are so far out you don't even know who God is or what God might be, so you've made this monument just to whoever might be a god — all of us, we live inside him. In him we live and move and have our being.

I often hear people say, "I don't know how people make it without God in this life." Well, the truth is they don't. The truth is, even the most ardent atheist leans on the grace and the goodness of God in desperate moments, when their life is ripped apart and when they have no place to go. They remain in the hand and in the care of this God in whom we live and move and have our being.

Growing up in this culture of ours, we used to have the wonderful opportunity to worship God at every turn. Not only did we have the comfort of home and church, but even at school. And to some of you — I know I don't look real old; to the folks on the front, I — yeah, I probably do — but I remember going to school, and before lunch we would all stand up. There were 30 of us in the class, and each of us had a day, and Mrs. Ware would call our names: it's your day. And we would say something like, "Lord, we're grateful for the food. Thank you for the blessings you give us every day." And we would take our turns praying in school for our food. I remember in high school, on Wednesday nights, no homework, because that was church night. Everybody went to church on Wednesday nights.

We have — we've moved far from those times. Our culture does not sell — celebrate publicly as it once did. There are still folks — don't mistake me — there are still folks that are bedrock solid Bible believers, but our culture has overwhelmed us, that it has sucked us in to its belief system, and it has pulled us to a point to where we think that what we must do is chase progress and chase success, chase achievement, and chase all of the pleasures that we can heap to ourselves. And so we have become a nation that has turned our back on our commitments to the Lord, and instead we have pursued every dream that we can chase. We not only have a boat to go fishing in, but we have a boat to pull when we ski. We have a boat to party on. If that doesn't work, and if we'd rather, we got a couple of ski news we can spin those around the lake. We've got a truck that will take us to the woods. We got a four-wheeler that take us to the deer stand. We've got 18 rifles to choose from, and then we got another four-wheeler that will come out and pull the game out for us. We've got a car to drive to church, we got a car to drive to work, we got a car for the kids. We've got a house big enough for our neighbors to visit, backyard to have a part. We, we built and worked, enslaved, to find the things that we can achieve, and we've got them now. We have them. We, we've turned away from our commitments in school.

From educating — back in the early 1600s, there was what was called Ye Olde Deluder Law. It was when the colonists realized that their children growing up could not read. That meant they could not read the Bible, and Satan was the old deluder of the soul and spirit. And so some of the earliest laws passed governing public education were called the deluder law, so that children would be taught to read, so they could read the Bible, so that Satan could not delude their soul and their spirit. But now we, we teach to test, and we teach the success, and we have little plots and plans, and unfortunately our, our schools have become political test plots instead of educational sources.

We have done all that we can to pursue liberty for this human body of ours, where that nothing is off limits and we can enjoy anything. In marriage vows and all that, it really doesn't matter. You are just going to get one shot at life, and so we've jumped and glass — grasped. We have — what's the word? Crap — now we've got a hold of and hug to ourselves, clasp to ourselves. You can laugh, it's okay, thank you. Well, we have grabbed to ourselves that beer commercial that, you know, you just gotta make it happen and you gotta live life for yourself. And so we have built this world that has us locked away from the promises of God and has kept us away from the assurance of his grace. And so at night folks go to bed and they cannot sleep because of their troubled minds, so they lean to alcohol or some other way to medicate themselves and to put themselves temporarily out of their misery, when all around them they're surrounded with life's finest and life's best. But we have built this world that isolates God from us.

Nearly everything you look at is pornographic, from the advertisements to sometimes the way people dress at Walmart. You used to have to go chase those things down to see them, but anymore it's right in front of our children's eyes and faces. And sometimes I feel as if the world is threatening our future, and it seems as if — you can almost, like the little lady said to the prophet that day — we have given ourselves to the pursuit of all of this, and we spent all of our time and our energy and our resources chasing that, and we have it now, but we haven't really paid for it. And now the creditor has come. The creditor is marching up the steps of our house, and you can hear his heavy boots thumping on the stairs of the porch, and he now stands on the threshold of our house, and he's reminding us of how we now are helpless and hopeless, that he has taken from us everything that we had, so that we could enjoy all of the stuff that we have collected, that our minds have been so preoccupied with knowledge and education and trying to pursue and find and identify success, that we've spent little time taking care of the spiritual. And now he is at the door. The creditor has come.

We look around and we realize, in our world, the one study by UCLA says that at least 20 percent of high school students have seriously considered suicide, that the growing rate among young teens in suicide is growing at a fast-paced, especially in the last 10 to 15 years. Renee Brown, the great current researcher who studies shame, in particular with women, in her TED Talk that made her famous, she said that the current cohort of ladies living right now is the most medicated, the most in debt, and the most overweight that's ever existed. And all of those are symptoms of shame.

The creditor has come, and he's at the door. You can almost hear the glee in his voice as he approaches, knowing that he's got us trapped. We live paycheck to paycheck, and there's no hope, there's no way out. And you can almost see the evil in his eyes as he approaches the door and he knocks on the door. The creditor is here. "I've come for your future. You've invested everything in trying to find joy and happiness and contentment, and you have no resources left. You've tried everything that you thought might possibly bring you satisfaction and satisfy that cry deep in your soul, but to no avail." And you stand behind that door, and he knocks, and you can imagine the grin on his face as he hears the chain come and drop from its lock and slap quietly on the inside of that door. And you can even hear a bit of the, of the chuckle as he hears that deadbolt slide back. And then he takes a step back as he watches that doorknob start to turn, and with great anticipation of seeing the fear in your eye and the defeat on your face when you open that door, knowing that you have nothing left and he's come to collect.

But imagine the look on his face when that door is pulled back, and suddenly standing before him is the very God who kicked him out of heaven ages ago, who grabs him by the collar and says, "Don't you remember that when I died on that cross, I came down to hell where you were, and I left there with the keys to death, hell in the grave in my hand? And when I died on the cross, and when I came out of that tomb, I purchased the life of the ones that live in this house, and you have no claim on them. You have no promise of anything from their lives, but I own them." Not only did he say "I purchased them," but 50 days after he rose from that grave, as your pastor's already described it for you, he poured his Spirit out upon all flesh, and that flesh is still receiving the Spirit of the Lord today. And I've come on this Pentecost Sunday to tell you that the creditor has nothing against you. He has nothing left but an angry face, nothing left but a threat in his voice, because Jesus Christ has purchased you and has redeemed you forever.

The Apostle Paul described it in First Corinthians chapter 6, when he said, "What? Don't you know that you were bought with the price?" He says you belong to Jesus Christ. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are Gods. This declaration, on this Pentecost Sunday, to follow the instructions of the Apostle Peter when he preached that first message that day, when he said to repent of our sins and to be baptized in Jesus' name and to be filled with the Holy Ghost — he was giving us the prescription that would satisfy every eel and every problem and erase every sin from our lives. He was taking us fully out of the control of the creditor who has driven us to desperation.

I tell you today, it does not matter what road you took to get here. It doesn't matter if you came from the nicest family in the nicest neighborhood with the largest house and the huge bank account. Neither does it matter if you just drug yourself in here from the gutter, in the lowest place in town. We all stand at the place where the creditor has no claim on us, and Jesus Christ has put his arms around all of us, and we are sons and daughters in his presence. There is no power that the creditor has that will withstand the strength of the word of God.

Jesus talked about it. If you read somewhere around John 12 and you read all the way through John 17, you run across two times, at least two, where Jesus tells his disciples, "Now look, this is going to happen in the future, but I'm telling you now so that you know when it happens, and you won't be taken by shock and you won't be surprised." Two things. The first one he told them was: not everybody's going to make the trip with you. There are some people who just aren't going to go all the way. And I'm telling you that before you, you experience it, because some of your buddies aren't going to be willing to make the trip. And then he told them: there's going to be a time when the people you worship with, and the folks you grew up in church with, are going to think that they do God a great service by even killing you, because they're going to declare what you are preaching to be a outlandish lie against God. But then he said, the third thing that I'm going to tell you in advance so that you'll know when it comes — he said, "I'm going to come and I'm going to live inside of you in the power of the Holy Ghost. I won't be walking up and down these streets with you, but I will be in you, and the power of the Holy Ghost will keep you when nobody else wants to travel all the way with you, when folks don't understand you and they say that can't possibly be of God." He said, "I will be in you."

And I tell you today, there may be some who are satisfied to stay back and let this creditor dominate their life. There may be others that say this Pentecostal thing is just too goofy. But I am telling you that if you are tired of the creditor's demands, if you are tired of being driven by that voice and by that power and by that threat, today is your day, because the power of the Holy Ghost will set you free. God's grace and mercy and blood will cover your sin, and the creditor will be put in his place with no hold upon your life.

When Jesus got finished talking to those guys, he said, "Now come on, it's time for us to go." Then he said, "The prince of this world comes, but he has no hold on me." He was saying the creditor's coming with us, but he has no hold. And I tell you, if you have repented of your sins, if you've been baptized in Jesus' name, if you are seeking that power of God in your life through the Holy Ghost, I tell you that the creditor has no hold on you. And when he slips in in the darkness of night and he begins to read to you all the heirs of your past, you just sit up and remind him: you've got to take that up with Jesus Christ, because he bought me, and I am going to glorify him in my body and in my spirit. My past is not mine anymore. My future is God's. And therefore the creditor has no claim on me.

The Apostle Paul talked about that Holy Ghost. He says the kingdom of God is not meat or drink, but it's righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. We don't celebrate the Holy Ghost and talk about Pentecost just because it's a family tradition. The preachers on the platform aren't here celebrating it just because the church gives us a paycheck occasionally. But this is a personalized experience with God that every individual in this room can enjoy, despite what others may tell you. Yeah, there are imitations. Yes, there are misuses. But brothers and sisters, that has never stopped God from ministering to the one who said, "Lord, I'm tired of this creditor who keeps hounding me and driving me to desperation." And I assure you today that you will find God's promises are true for you. The righteousness and peace that you desire is in the Holy Ghost.

And finally, in Romans chapter 15, he talks about the hope. He said, "Now the God of hope, may he fill you with all joy and peace and believing, that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost." Through the power of the Holy Ghost. I don't know how to describe to you the abounding power of the Holy Ghost in the circumstances that you were living in. I've never lived there, so I don't know. All I can tell you is about my life, and I can tell you how that God is always in the midst of struggle and trouble, when it seemed that I had no answer, no direction, no guidance. There remained a hope through the power of the Holy Ghost, and that hope is never — has never let me down. It has never failed, because it has always brought me in connection with the Lord and his promises.

And I tell you today that the creditor has come. He wants to steal your future, but Jesus Christ has already paid the price for your sin and for your future. And if Satan, the creditor, is able to destroy you, it's because you ignore the fact that you've already been purchased by Jesus Christ. When he came out of the tomb victorious over death, hell in the grave, he could not have come out with that statement had he not also paid the price for your sin, had he not settled with the creditor for your problems, for your issues. He could not have stepped forward holding those keys, saying, "I have won this battle." But my friends, today I'm here to tell you that there are thousands of folks who will line up throughout this world, through this city, that will tell you about the saving power of Jesus Christ — how he has delivered from sin, how he has set free, how that their worlds have been transformed because they took advantage of the promises that God laid before them.

This afternoon, as you stand with me, I want to take you back to John chapter 10. This afternoon, you stand at a crossroads. There are a lot of folks in this room today, but he had every one of us stand here as individuals, because when Jesus died on the cross, he didn't die for just a collective group of humans, but he died for a bunch of individuals that will commit themselves to walk in his way and become his church. You have the opportunity, as well as the important choice, to decide whether you're going to let that creditor continue to hound you, or whether you're going to let the one who wants to take you in the opposite direction, just as far away from what the creditor has done to you as humanly possible. God doesn't just offer you salvation, but he offers you the opportunity to walk with him toward that abundant life.

If I can take just a moment and tell you that sometimes, because we Pentecostals believe in the miraculous power of God, we often adapt this idea that if God's at work in me, it's going to change me instantly. And sometimes God does that. Sometimes God will deliver people. My dad smoked cigarettes for a long time. He said the Lord forgave him just like that and took the desire weight in an altar. I've talked to drug addicts that God delivered immediately. I talked to a lady who had a prescription medication addiction that the Lord satisfied immediately. That I talked to a friend of mine, and he said, "I, I struggled with it every day, but the Lord helped me." I don't know what God's plan is for you, but can I tell you, the psalmist gave us a little hint when he said he sent his word and healed them. When you walk in the word of God, healing becomes a process in your life.

And I cannot stand here and tell you just what the picture of your future looks like — unless, unless you're going to sell yourself to the creditor. I can tell you what that looks like: more despair, more addiction, more debt, more discomfort. But if you flip that around, there is a Lord who said, "But I came that they might have life, and they might have it more abundantly." If you will give his word a chance to work, you can prove him today. You can find a place to bow your knee and say, "Lord, forgive me of my sins." If you've already done that, you can trust him in water baptism and say, "I want to be buried in the name of Jesus Christ," for that experience that SEC — that the book of Colossians chapter 2 says gives us our name. And you can trust him to fill you with the power of the Holy Ghost, which he calls the earnest of our inheritance, a little touch, little taste of heaven.

So wherever you are on this scale today — you might even be a parent that's been involved in church for a long time, but yet you feel like you're threatened by the world around you, that your children have very little future, that the world that's so unkind and unfriendly is, is drawing close around them. Can I tell you something? The Lord knew that your child was going to be born long before you were ever on this earth, and there will never be sufficient powers from hell that can lock your child away from the blessings and the promises of God.

I'm telling you today, it's time that we stand up and tell that creditor he can go back to where he came from, because Jesus Christ has paid the price for me. And it's time that we realize that the power comes through the Holy Ghost, through this experience that the Apostle Peter opened on Acts, on the day of Pentecost, in Acts chapter 2. And as they begin to sing and worship, I encourage you: come and find you a place around the front of this church. Make it your altar, your altar of sacrifice. If you've never asked God to forgive you of your sins, make it an altar, a promise. If you want to give your life completely to the Lord, make it an altar of agreement with God. If you've had some fears and some worries about your future — but I'm here to tell you that the creditor only can control you to the point that you give him power in room. So I tell you, lock him out today, lock him away, and let the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus Christ died to bring us, let it make you thrive in the spirit. And give God a chance to prove to you that he really will take you to that place of abundant life. As they sing, won't you come around the front of this building? Let's let God's spirit move in us here today, through the power of the Holy Ghost.