The Church is from the Future

I simply want to go thought by thought through 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and the first 10 verses specifically, and the first 11 verses, rather. And I want to just read for our text while you're standing, verse 11 alone. And then we'll go through the first 11 verses thought by thought. All these things happened unto them, that is Israel, for in samples or for an example to us, and they are written for our admonition, that is the church's admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Okay, key phrase being upon whom the ends of the world are come. All right, the Apostle Paul is speaking about the end of the age, the end of this present age. The church has not arrived at the end of the age. At the end of the age is when the rulers of this world and the forces that are at work in this world and reign and influence, the elk is coming to an end,

and then the new, the age to come begins. That's the reign of Jesus Christ through his church. All right, the Apostle Paul didn't say that the church has come to the end of the world, but rather the ends of the world have come to the church. Doesn't say that the end has come to the world. It says the ends of the world have come to the church. That's really important. And this Bible study is going to be on the subject of the church is from the future. The church is from the future. You can be seated. Thank you for standing. After the Apostle Paul has spent quite a bit of ink trying to teach the church, this somewhat worldly church, how to properly use its freedom in Christ, its liberty in Christ. We arrive at our present section of the letter. He's taken chapters eight and nine to rebut, to answer, to respond to a misconception amongst the Corinthian Christians, at least some

of them. Some powerful, influential members of the Corinthian church have a slogan and that slogan is, since Christ set us free, all things are permissible to me. In other words, I can have everything. I can partake of everything. I'm no longer under a cloud of superstition. I don't have to worry about the enemy under every rock. I don't have to worry about anything. Everything's permissible to me. Nothing can harm me. Nothing that I do can harm me. So all things are permissible to me. And it sounds pretty good. And there's a certain degree of truth in it. He that the Son has set free is free indeed. And more, the gospel has set us free from superstition, called us out of darkness, and put us in a marvelous light. We don't have to be afraid. However, where do you go with that? Where do you take it? And this Corinthian congregation, at least some of them took it in the direction of, it

doesn't really matter what we do. We can do things that flirt with the world. We can embrace worldliness, and it doesn't really matter, because everything's been made permissible to me. And so Paul addresses that in chapter 8, and then chapter 9 he uses as an example, using his own example to teach the church, here's what you do with liberty. When Christ sets you free, here's what you do with that freedom. You don't use that freedom, you don't explore the freedom to the point that it hurts other people, and causes other people to trip and fall, spiritually. And so he uses his own example and says, look, when I was amongst you, I had a right as an apostle to your giving. I'm an apostle. I have all kinds of rights. I have a right as an apostle to be married. Peter's married. This is what he says. I had a right to a portion of your giving as an apostle. The law demands

it. Moses demands this to be the case. I had the right, but in your unique specific case, I decided to forego those prerogatives. And I did, I took nothing from you, and I, as you know, I'm single and I have no wife. In other words, I have foregone a couple of freedoms that were, that were my prerogative. I didn't use the freedom. I laid it down for your sake. Of course, Paul was being supported by other churches, not by the Corinthian church. Okay, that's where he is. And so now chapter 10, by the way, I should, before I get to chapter 10, he closes this argument with a really beautiful image. And here's the idea. He says, there are, there's a need in the church for you to think about the conscience of other people. Don't just, don't just consider your own conscience, but consider also the conscience of others. Think about their spiritual well-being. Don't become a cause of stumbling in their

lives. Don't use your freedom to such an extent that you end up hurting somebody who's weaker in the faith than you. And he says, look, an athlete who runs in the Olympic sprint, he trains for years. He keeps his body under subjection to the goal of winning the Olympic race. For a moment of glory, he takes years out of his life to exercise rigorously. He has a diet that is highly regimented. He gets up at a certain time every morning. He goes to bed at a certain time every night. He forgoes all the pleasures that everyone else avails themselves of so that he can win in 90 seconds a race. In other words, he gives years to one 90 second moment. And guess what he gets? The Olympic winner received a crown, Stefanos. But what kind of crown? This might surprise you to know that the Olympic winner was signified by a crown made out of celery. He wore a celery crown. You

know what happens to celery tomorrow? It goes black. It withers. It's rotting. You can't wear it tomorrow. You can only wear it today. You can't even store the Olympic crown. You can't preserve it. You can't put it behind a frame and preserve it perfectly for everybody to see next year when they walk into your office. It's gone. For a crown that lasts one day, you will give years of your life and you understand the logic of that. But if we, who have been given a crown, we're going to be given a crown that lasts forever, it's incorruptible. What should we, what kind of lives should we live under subjection? We discipline our bodies. We regiment our days. We make sure that we never engage in something that could lose someone, someone's soul. All right. That's where he ends. Chapter nine. It's over, brethren. I would not that you should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed

through the sea. All were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea and did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink for they drank of what spiritual rock that followed them and that rock was Christ. Okay. Pardon. Pardon me if I slow down a little bit. Stay with me. The first thing that grabs my attention is in verse one, our fathers were under the cloud and passed through the sea, our fathers. Now he's speaking to a bunch, mostly Gentiles, but he's referring to the fathers as the children of Israel. So somehow the church is being understood as being within a different lineage now. Okay. The Greeks ancestors, the Greek Christians ancestors are not Achilles and Odysseus and the house of Atreus. None of these great Greek pagan figures. When you have, when you have partaken of the church, when you are a part of the church, you have your ancestors are now, you no

longer, your ancestors are not about your ethnicity. Oftentimes people think of themselves ethnicity first, Christian second. I'm a white Christian. No, you're not. You're a Christian American. Our ancestors are not biological ancestors. Our ancestors are the people of God going back to Abraham. That's who you have been grafted into. Now Jesus says that at the end, that at the end nation shall fight against nation, war against nation. That's a sign of the times. Now what do you, now underneath that word nation, now that sounds like America, Canada, Australia. No, no, no, no, the word nation underneath that is the Greek word ethnos, where we get the word ethnicity. What Jesus is saying is at the end, ethnicity shall war against ethnicity, race wars everywhere, but not the church, not the church. You're a Christian first. You're a Christian first. Your heritage has been changed. Your inheritance is completely different. Whatever your genetics were before you came to the Lord, you've got a new

set of DNAs. You're a new creature in Christ. I mean, what in the world? How much stronger do you, how much clearer can you make it in the Bible? You cannot enter into the kingdom of God unless you've been born again. I mean, how many variations of that particular phrase are used throughout the New Testament? Born again. You have a new birth. You're a new creation. Stop tapping into the old creature and using that as your identity. Your identity is now in Christ. You have become my brother. My brother, you're closer than my blood brothers. You're my family. Jesus help us. Jesus help the church not be like the world. Oh man, if, if ethnicity is going to war against ethnicity, let it be out there, but not in here. No, no, no, no, no, in Jesus name, in Jesus name. And I'm going to get to this in a few minutes, but, but Paul thought of this non race war within the

church. It's a complete anomaly in the ancient world. Every other ethnicity wars with every other ethnicity. The Jews and the Gentiles hate each other. At the time that Paul is speaking, they absolutely want nothing to do with each other. Rome is just the latest nation, empire that has utterly destroyed the Jewish people. Before them, it was the Greeks. Before them, it was the Persians. Before them, it was the Babylonians. Before them, it was the Assyrians. Before them, it was the Philistines. Before them, it was the Egyptians. The Gentiles hate the Jews. That's our human flesh. I'll tell you what, anti-Semitism, it's an old and ugly thing. It's a really old, demonic thing. It's real old. It goes way, way, way back, way back. Well, and in like manner, as you can read through Paul's letters, you find out that the Jews don't have particularly fond feelings for the Gentiles. Nation against nation, warring with each other. They hate each other, but then in

the church, you walk into the church and you see Jews and Gentiles sitting on the same row, worshiping the same God, loving each other, calling each other brother and sister. What in the world is this place? There's no other place like it in the whole, in the whole cosmos. You can't find this anywhere. You, not only, you know, everywhere else you have the rich stay with the rich, the middle class stays with the middle class, the lower classes stay with the lower classes, the slaves stay with the slaves. You don't integrate. You don't even wear each other's clothing. You have status symbols in your clothing. These are called sumptuary laws. You cannot wear the clothing of the rich. That'll get you in jail. You can't do that stuff. They're not supposed to mix. The word noble. You know what noble means? The word, the etymology of the word noble. Man, I didn't plan any of this stuff. The word noble. You never know

where these pieces of information are going to be useful. You just never, you learn all you can because at some, some day, somewhere in the future, 50 years from now, it'll come popping through in some unexpected place. Here it is. Here it is. The word noble. It, it, it means non vile blood. It's a, it's a, it's a contraction of a whole phrase. Non vile blood. Noble. Okay. What they meant by non vile blood was vile blood. It refers to the common man's blood. In other words, if you're born a slave, your slave for life, even if you're set free, you're still part of the slave class. There's no social mobility in the ancient world. You're not born in the lower classes and suddenly become part of the, of the richer classes. You might have as much wealth as they had, but they'll always look down on you and you'll always be an outsider, no matter how wealthy you are. You have, you

have the, you don't have no non vile blood. You don't have noble blood. It's something you're born with, you're born into a certain station in life and you don't leave it ever, ever, ever, ever. Okay. So you've got, in the ancient world, you have ethnicities against each other reinforced by language barriers. Okay. You speak another, you speak another tongue. All right. There's a sign you're not my family. You speak another dialect of my tongue. You're not my family. Okay. And then you, you're not only stratified by race and dialect, but you're also stratified in society by your birth into this world and you don't leave it ever. You're immediately recognized who you are, your class. And then you're also, you're also judged by your educational level and there are a couple of other, other status symbols. Tell you who you are and you know your place in the ancient world and you never leave it. You don't communicate. You don't have old people

with the young people talking to each other, loving each other. You don't have upper class mingling with the lower classes, sitting at the same table with them, eating bread with them. You don't have that. You don't have, you certainly, as I mentioned, you don't have Jews and Greeks sitting down at the same table. There is no way on earth you can get men like Peter before Christ to sit down at a table with a Gentile. The Jew would have a visceral reaction, like a vomit response. I'm not kidding you, a vomit response to sitting down at a table with a Gentile because in their, in deeply embedded in them, from their birth up, they have been taught they're unclean, they're unclean. They eat pigs. They don't wash their hands right. They're ugly, nasty human beings. You can't eat with them. You can talk to them, maybe, but don't eat with them. That's the ancient world. And then Luke says, Luke says in the

book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost when it was fully come, came astound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they began to speak with other tongues as the spirit gave utterance. And there were people from all parts of the world standing outside and they heard the Lord being glorified in their own language. What do you think is happening? This is Luke. This is Luke telling us something completely new has happened here in the history of the human race. It's never been seen before, not since Cain and Abel. Here it is. The church is going to go out and it's no longer obstructed by the barriers that have kept the human race divided since Babel. The old can instruct the young. The young can instruct the old. Then you've got ethnicities sitting down at the same table. There's no distinction between slave and free. You don't have a room for the women and

a room for the men to worship in. No, sir, in Christ, you have all been set free and you are all equal before Christ. You see what's happened? This took the world by storm. The world didn't know what in the world to do with this. This is absolutely insane. Never seen anything like it. People who had all these barriers, no more, for he had broken down the middle wall of partition, the enmity between peoples and have made of two one body. Man, that's what you're a part of, by the way. I've got a working theory and I believe this with all my heart. I believe this. America and Europe are experimenting with multiculturalism, trying politically to bring the ethnicities together, but it's not working out well. There's only one place in the world where multiculturalism works. It's under the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It's made possible only in the church. It's a dream. It's a dream. The world is trying to replicate

it and use its own secular, worldly ways of achieving it and it's not working, but the church has the Holy Ghost. The off track, our fathers. See, one word, hour, and there we go on a 10 minute rabbit trail. You have a whole new heritage. You have a whole new family and it goes all the way back to Abraham. It's what you're a part of. Okay, now here's what Paul wants to say. He's setting something up here. All passed through the sea. All were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All right, so here's what happened. You remember the story Exodus, but I'm narrating it in a very specific way because I think I want you to recognize something okay through the way I've narrated it. Okay, God's going to deliver the children of Israel who are in bondage in Egypt. There have been nine plagues and Pharaoh is still adamant. So the 10th plague is coming. It's going to

be the death of the firstborn, but God tells Israel, slay a lamb and take the blood and paint it on the door posts and then death will come by and any house that has that blood painted upon it, it's going to pass over it and while you're inside behind the blood of the lamb you're going to eat a meal, you're going to eat the lamb that you have slain and it's going to have to be a quick meal. So you're not going to allow, you're not going to have time to allow the bread to rise. It's going to have to be unleavened bread and you're going to eat it and then at a certain signal you're all going to meet with all of your belongings that you can take with you and we're going to head on out of here in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness while Pharaoh is still mourning the loss of his son and so

they did but they got out to a certain point and they started to feel the ground beneath them tremble and they saw smoke up on the distant horizon dust clouds and they knew Egypt had changed its mind and it was pursuing them but they heard another sound that was even worse. This sound was the sound of the Red Sea in front of them. Impossible, impossible. So what's Israel to do now? Well, Moses said, by the way, at this point Israel says, why'd you bring us out here to die? We had filet mignon back in Egypt. We had, you see, just a few chapters earlier they complained to Moses and said they don't give us anything to eat. We're starving. You see, short memories, when you face trouble out comes the negativity and the complaining and the doubting and the fear and Moses, he hears the Lord and he says, fear ye not? Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. He's going

to show it to you today. The Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will see them again no more forever and they're, the Lord, this is my favorite, the Lord is going to fight for you and here's what you're going to do. You're going to hold your peace. Oh, man, I want, when I get to glory, I'm going to ask the Lord, show me a movie. I want to see that moment. I don't want to see, I don't want to see Charlton Heston and his big beard. I don't want to see him. I want to see the real Moses. I want to see him say, fear not and stand still and watch the Lord fight for you and you're just going to be quiet. See, see, see they're getting, they're about to get baptized. They've been saved, delivered by the blood of the Lamb back there. Now they're about to be baptized through the Red Sea as this is what Paul is saying.

They're about to get baptized on the Moses. Man, oh, then all of a sudden I could just imagine the water has taken a certain shape and there are swirls of water. They're plummeting deep into the earth and water draining and water building up and all of a sudden there's dry land. I like that scene in the Prince of Egypt where there's a shark that swims right there near the edge of that wall of water like you're in an aquarium. Now I can imagine that there were some men and women there and children of Israel who looked at this and they trembled and they walked gingerly wondering how long was this wall going to stay up and there were others who must have walked through just like this. Let me tell you what, when they all crossed over then the Egyptian army was drowned. You see, they all made it through if they put one foot in front of the other. That's all they

had to do whether they had great faith or little faith. You see, it wasn't in the greatness of their faith. That's not what delivered them. What delivered them was the object of their faith and that was God. Stand still and behold the salvation of the Lord. So you have the blood of the Lamb and then you have baptism and then on the other side there's a cloud. It's the Holy Ghost that follows them around and guides them everywhere and this is what Paul is trying to show you. In other words, this is the gospel story. It was foreshadowed, the gospel that is preached in the New Testament. Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus for the remission of your sins. You shall be filled with the Holy Ghost and then once they're on the other side, then at Sinai they receive a law. Here's how you should live a holy life. You see, the gospel is all

right there in the book of Exodus and this was very apparent to the New Testament writers because they came back to it again and again, for instance, in the gospel of Luke on the Mount of Transfiguration, a story about Jesus being revealed for who he really is. He's up there with a couple of his disciples and the disciples see Jesus standing there in shining glory and Moses in Elijah, these figures representing the prophecy of the whole Testament standing up there. They're conversing with him and what does Luke say? Luke says that Moses in Elijah were speaking with Jesus about what? His departure. But underneath that word that's a little bit too literal of a translation. The actual Greek word that is used there is and they were talking to him about his Exodus. It's Exodus. In other words, in other words, the book of Exodus is in seed form, the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. The children of Israel are protected and delivered

by the blood of the Lamb and they're taken out by their deliverer and brought into the baptismal waters and they're brought through the baptismal waters and then they go into the wilderness where they receive the law of God which teaches them how to live a holy life and they have the tabernacle with them to give them comfort while they're in the wilderness and protection until the one day they arrive in the promised land. That's our story. We have been delivered by the blood of the Lamb. We were baptized unto Jesus and then we received the law, the Holy Ghost, teaching us how to be holy and a new people in Christ and then one day, one day we're going to reach the promised land but until then while we're in the wilderness we have the tabernacle with us. That is Jesus Christ. We have the Holy Ghost with us every day leading us, guiding us. It's the gospel. This is what Paul said

is true of the church. Okay, here's the problem though. They all drank from the same spiritual drink. They drank of the same spiritual rock that followed them. That rock was Christ. Whoa, wow, that rock was Christ. You see how blurred the lines are between the people of God in the New Testament and the people of God in the Old Testament? He's even putting Christ back there in the wilderness. Our fathers, that rock was Christ. Incredible. It's a blurring, it's a merging of the stories of the Jewish people, the Israelites, the people of God with the Gentiles who believe. But with many of them, God wasn't pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness. In other words, where they were meant to be only temporarily and protected and led by the Lord, God wasn't entirely pleased with them out in the wilderness. And then he says, these things were our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they

also lust it. In other words, we're in the wilderness just like they were in the wilderness. This world is the wilderness. This life after baptism, you're in the wilderness now. In the enemy, Egypt has been destroyed, but the same forces that were at work and in Egypt have crossed over the Red Sea and they're still pursuing, they're still tempting. You're not home yet. God is equipped with you with everything you need, but you're not home yet. Don't be idolaters, he says, as were some of them, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication as some of them committed and fell in one day three in 20,000. And then watch this, neither let us tempt Christ. That's one of my favorite phrases in all the New Testament. Here's why. Because I've spent a lot of years now in academia and biblical scholarship, particularly what you would call liberal theological scholarship.

Theologians of this particular ilk tend to say that the earliest church did not worship Jesus as God. They didn't regard him as God. They regarded him as a human messiah, a savior who had been anointed by the Lord and empowered by the Holy Ghost. In other words, he was the first Christian Jesus was. He's not God. It's just over time the legend grew and grew and grew until at last they were worshiping him as God. And then they'll point to statements that Jesus makes in Mark's Gospel. Why do you call me good? There is none good except God. Point to cherry pick a couple of verses like that and then say, see, there's our proof. But look at this. What do we have here? Neither let us tempt Christ. Who's he quoting here? He's actually, he's actually making an Old Testament illusion. He's citing Moses who told the children of Israel, do not tempt God. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

And now here he's put, Paul's talking about the same story, but he says, don't tempt Christ. Who do you think Paul thought Jesus was? The Lord thy God. Now don't murmur either, as some of them also murmured and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for example, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. It's fascinating right there. Now I've already said, church has not come to the end of the world, the world or the end of the world has come to the church. All right, so here's what I'm talking about. In the Old Testament, particularly in the prophets, there are promises. Here's what the coming age of the Holy Ghost is going to consist of. Here's what it's going to look like. When the Holy Ghost is the ruler of this world, when Christ is reigning here in his glory, all right, when tears have been wiped away, when

Satan has been bound, there's going to be peace upon the earth. There's going to be justice and peace as the waters cover the sea. Everywhere you look, the reign of Christ, the reign of God in his fullness. It won't be on earth as it is in heaven. The earth will be like heaven in that age to come. And the prophets foresaw this day, and they gave us a couple of images to remind us of what that day would look like. They used symbols, and here are the symbols. A couple of them are really famous. And the wolf shall lay down with the lamb. The wolf shall lay down with the lamb. Now, wolves and lambs, they have a very awkward relationship. One of them likes to eat the other, and the other one likes to run away from the other. They don't get along. You do not ever see a wolf laying down with a lamb, but the prophet is trying to say,

and he's speaking of, in the context of nations not warring against nations, ethnicities not warring against ethnicity. He's saying that people that naturally don't get along and they have a bad history. You see, it's our histories that really get in the way and cause us to conflict with each other. Look at what's happening in Israel right now. You can't, you try to dip a toe into that discussion. Immediately, you're immersed in each other's history, a barrage of history. Yeah, but look what he did. Yeah, but look what they did. This was just, what did this happen in the vacuum? Did they just do this unprovoked? No, here's what they did to provoke. You keep on going back, back, back, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, blaming each other, citing a previous story until you get all the way back to Cain and Abel. There's no undoing this mess. Our histories are hostile against us. They cause us to hate each

other, but when the age of the spirit is here, no more a new history starts. It's all brand new. The wolf and the lamb lie down together. Nation shall not rise up against nation. Ethnicity shall not rise up against ethnicity. They're going to take, in fact, it's going to be so peaceful. They're going to have these storehouses with these guns and with these bullets and with these swords and these military powerful machines. And they're going to say, look at all that metal, that nice metal. Got an idea. The earth is so fertile. They're so much harvest. The earth is no longer under any kind of drought. There's such plenty. We don't have enough farm equipment to harvest it all. In fact, in fact, the harvester's still out there trying to get it all up when it's already time to plant the new year's crops again. In other words, in other words, in other words, the harvester shall overtake the reaper. It's beautiful. And

we're going to take those machines and boil, melt them down. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to create farm equipment. That's what the prophets foresaw. You can see this very verse spelled out on the United Nations in New York City. Nation shall not lift up nation, sword against nation. It's a dream. And here's how good the future is going to be. It's going to be so good. People are going to be so innocent. People are going to be so good to their core that they don't need to elect strong leaders anymore. A child shall be able to lead them. A child. Just let's elect the baby. How many of you locked your homes before? Don't raise your hand because I don't want to see any hands down. Did you lock your door before you came here? Did you lock your car door? Do you have passwords on your checking accounts? Do you have passwords? I've got like 10,000 passwords. I

can't keep up with them. Passwords, keys, locks. Look what we're living with. What are we putting up with? Aren't you tired of this? We don't have to live this way. It's not going to be this way forever. Don't get used to this. It's not going to be forever. This is not the rule. It's not supposed to be this way. God's going to fix all of this. You better hold on to that hope. No more prisons. No more. No more police. We won't need any of it. A child shall lead them. That's the future. That's the future. And so what Paul is saying is that reality, the rule of the Holy Ghost, the power that creates peace upon earth and turns men's hearts towards the Lord, that power has come back in time from the end of the world, back into the present age, and it has rested upon one people and one people only, the church of the living God. In other words,

we have the power of the gifts of the Spirit. We have the Holy Ghost. That's the power of the future. That's like somebody getting in a time machine from 2,000 years from now and bringing back the technology from the future and giving it to us to use a scientific analogy. But something in truth has happened way better than that. The peace of the future, the goodness of the future, the long suffering of the future, the goodness. It's all come from the future and it hovers over the church the gifts of the Spirit. And when he ascended on high, he took captivity captive and he gave gifts unto men. And among those gifts he gave apostles and prophets and pastors, teachers, evangelists, I missed one. There it is. There are gifts that God has distributed. The scripture doesn't say, and when he ascended on high, he made captivity captive and he gave gifts unto men. To some he gave university professors, scientists, and to

some he gave CEOs, to some he gave an economics expert. No, not now. See, this wasn't given to the world. It wasn't distributed to the world. God gave the gifts through Christ to the church. So the church is from the future. Church is from the future. I know it sounds a little wild out there, but here it is. These things were written for our admonition. What things? The things from the past. Moses, the children of Israel in their example. For our admonition, they were written down. It's the past coming into the present and informing and teaching. But that's not all. The church is not only informed and equipped by the past. We're also equipped from the future. So from two directions on the timeline, the church is endowed with a power the world can't understand. Okay, that sounds pretty good, but I don't see a lot of that. I see a lot of trouble in the church. It doesn't really look like what

you're describing about the end of time. Well, what Paul was teaching is that reality, that peace and that goodness that comes from the future, is come back into the present, is coming to the church. And so the church should be exhibiting that kind of peace. There should be no prejudice. There should be no, there should be no taking advantage of each other. In fact, Paul taught, let each esteem others as better than himself. What would happen to your life, to your mind if you were able to walk around and believe that everyone around you was in some way maybe even better than you? No, you might say, that sounds like an inferiority complex. No, no, no. An inferiority complex is I'm there better, but somehow I'm being treated like they're inferior. No, no. If you have a true humility, remember when you were a child, you thought all the adults around you were great, wonderful. I remember that. Some were always great, but

I looked up to these people. I was surrounded by giants. Like I had nine foot angels all around me. I thought they had so much wisdom. You know why I had that perspective, that sunny disposition, that innocence? Because I had humility. I believed I was surrounded by people who knew more than I did. They were better than I was and they knew what they were doing. They were good people. And you know the best and most blessed part of my life that I look back upon is my childhood, precisely when I was that humble, humble like a child. The church is supposed to be like that. Now don't demand it of other people and not apply it to yourself. I should be treated a little better around here. Here's what I started to discover. If somebody treats me poorly, here's what I try to tell myself. I've learned this the hard way. If they knew me even better, they'd like me even less.

I'm lucky just to be treated like that. And I found a lot of peace in that knowledge. I don't get so offended by everything everybody says. I'm not looking around to see if you're addressing me in the right way, if you're giving me the right amount of attention. I can't live that way. I can't do that stuff. I'm done with it. No, the fruit of the Spirit, love and joy and peace and long suffering, gentleness and kindness and meekness and temperance for goodness sake. I want to live in that. That's what's available to me. That's from the future. It's going to be the rule of the whole world one day. And I can have it now. My goodness. What a great future we have in store. All right. So this is why Paul got so upset when one day Peter, the Jewish apostle, was sitting down with a table full of Gentiles and eating. He had crossed that barrier. He was fine with

it. But then a couple of people came from Jerusalem and they taught that the Gentiles and Jews should remain separate. And Peter saw them and he got scared. And he got up from the table and he walked away and sat down with the other Jews and refused thereafter to sit with the Gentiles, at least for a while. You know why Paul was so upset about that? It wasn't because he was a 21st century activist. He was, in fact, a strong believer in the teachings of the prophets. And it really troubled him that in the church, in the one place, in the whole cosmos, where there should be peace between people, where the wolf should lie down with the lamb, it's not just for the end. It's going to happen in the church too, because the future has come back to the past and helped the church. So we should be seeing that in the church. If indeed this is the true church, we

should be seeing that, that kind of peace. He got so upset about this kind of thing. And then there's a really telling instance. You remember in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, just a few chapters before our text, he talked about, he addressed the issue where there was a brother that was suing another brother in the church. Remember that? You notice what he didn't say? Why in the world are you taking this matter to a worldly court? Don't you know you're making us look bad in front of everybody and being a bad witness? Isn't that what he said? No, that's not what he said. Paul didn't even think, that was very secondary to him. Here was his first concern. Do you not know that you're going to judge angels? In other words, it's going to be the church's job to sit in judgment of the fallen angels. In the end, at the end of time, that's the church's job. That's the church's job. You're going

to sit in judgment of these awesome beings who are unbelievably powerful and beautiful beyond the imagination, and you're going to sit in judgment of them. Now, where do you suppose you're going to get the wisdom to be able to judge these angels? Where are you going to get the moral clarity and the moral leverage to sit in judgment of angels, even if they're fallen? Weren't you fallen? But you're going to judge angels. In other words, Paul is saying, hey, you're not living up to your future. If you can't even settle matters between yourselves and the church, but you're having to go to the world to judge you, you're so out of step with the future that has come to the church. This is Paul's thinking again and again and again, over and over and over again, are you living in the light of who you're going to be? Think about that church. Here is an angel the size of this building sitting on

trial and light emanating from him. He lifts his head and moves stars. Every strike of your gavel and entire eternity is going to be decided for that awesome creature in the image of God. And you're taking your dispute to the worldly judge. What in the world do you think you're doing? It's like the man who's going to be king hanging out in the bar when he's a kid, hanging around the ne'er-do-wells. It's unfitting. You have high and holy calling. Walk worthy of the vocation. Press towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He has made us to sit in heavenly places. So when you feel like you're overwhelmed, when you feel like you're weak, and you feel that anger and bitterness rising up within you, everyone else out there is hostage to that. But you have access to a power that's from the future. And when it is realized in its fullness one day, it's going to send peace

from mountain to sea. It's going to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea and you already have it. In other words, the church is the future. It's what the future is going to look like. The church is piloting the human race to the future. All right, all right, all right. I want to give you a couple for instances while we close this down. I see lots of problems in the church. It's hard for me to see some of this. I know that the church is made up of people and we still have that old nature with us. I'm telling you what, I see on a routine basis things in the church I could never see outside of it. And the influence that the church has had upon the world, any goodness that it has, has come from its teacher, the church over the last 2000 years. When I was, when I was younger, I remember when I had time to talk

to my grandmother, my dad's mom, she came to the Lord in the 1920s, 1930s. I remember having a conversation with Grandma once about her memories as a child. I asked her, what was the preaching like in the 1920s? And you know what she said? She said she, she lived, born and raised and lived in Illinois, White Hall, Illinois. I was sitting on her front porch. What was the church like? And she said, oh, the preacher, preacher, he was great, gave us dignity that we didn't have. We were poor and on the other side of the tracks, literally our church, nobody out there liked us. We spoke in tongues. They thought we were crazy. And our gatherings were pretty small in very humble buildings. Six days, we were tread upon by the world. But on Sunday, we walked with the angels. We heard sermons that picked us up from the ashes, cleaned us off. And we walked out of church with our head held

high and determined to fight the good fight to the end. And the preachers, they preached sometimes from the top of Mount Sinai, and the pulpit would rumble. But then we come back the next service. And the pulpit turned from Mount Sinai to Mount Calvary, to the weeping willows of Calvary, mercy. Oh, we love church. We sang and we sang and almost every song was about heaven. And I remember the first time I ever heard a preacher preach about holiness. He'd been preaching about holiness for a long time, but it's the first time I remember it. And I remember that that one particular day he was preaching about, you know, Jeremy, he was preaching about cigarettes. I said, really, cigarettes? What do you say about them? And grandma said, well, he's against them. And you know what? Why I remember that? She said, I remember that because I heard the preacher say that those things came straight from hell. They were a source and

sign of pride. And the Christian had no business whatsoever, ever smoking a cigarette. Now I said, wait, wait a minute, grandma. He didn't say that they were, they give you some kind of disease or something? No. He didn't know about a disease. Nobody knew about diseases. And then I thought, oh, yeah, that's right. Because when I was growing up, I used to listen to old time radio. And then on the Jack Benny program, there would be an interruption by the sponsor. And it was usually Lucky Strike, which was the old time, old timey cigarette. Take Lucky Strike today. Try Lucky Strike. Lucky Strike, Lucky Strike tastes clean and mentee. Nine out of 10 doctors highly recommend Lucky Strike. It will give you mental clarity for the day and refresh you. There's nothing like Lucky Strike. Now back to you, Jack, take it away. Commercials over. I was in, I was in, I was in Richmond, Virginia a few years ago, and I was

walking through a park and I sat up on a hill and I looked over, I could see over in the distance in Richmond, Virginia. Great big smoke, smoke stack, about 200 feet tall. And I said, in faded letters, Lucky Strike. If you're under 70, you haven't heard of Lucky Strike hardly unless you listen to the radio. I imagine it was probably not nine out of 10 doctors. They could say that. And the public was just fine with it. And they'd shrug their shoulders. Okay. See, nobody knew about the degradations of cigarettes. Nobody knew the science behind all of this. The graveyards weren't full of people who had died of lung cancer. Lucky Strike fell into, fell into ignominy and then Marlboro kind of took its place along with a few other brands. Marlboro started out as a, it was an appeal to women. It was trying to tap into the female market. So it, it, it showed all of these high class women

sitting in lounges with a cigarette, a long stem. Marlboro. And then it started to decline. It wasn't getting off the ground. So Marlboro decided it was going to change his advertising tactics. So it said, Oh, got an idea. We know what will get women to smoke cigarettes. This is, this is not me. This is what Marlboro found out. They can get women to smoke cigarettes if they can get the men to smoke the cigarettes first and show them real masculine manly sitting at a ranch, one arm leaning on a post, the other on a, on a, on a horse and one Marlboro sticking out between his teeth. Marlboro, man, Marlboro everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Everyone's smoking. Turn on a 1950s movie sometime. Turn on the Twilight Zone. Watch Casablanca. Try to find one scene that doesn't have smoke rising up from somebody. Everybody's doing this. Everybody's doing this. And you know what? You know what? There were, there were apostolics that were getting in

the pulpit and saying this stuff's from hell. Well, prove it to me, preacher. I'm just telling you, it's from hell. It's proud. It's arrogant. It's not good. Makes you stink, by the way. And then the, and then the world's going around. Stupid apostolics. They don't know what they're missing. It's such a social thing. Why do you got to make everything uncomfortable? Everyone else is smoking. You're not smoking. What's going on here? In fact, you're doing this. You know where I'm going with this. In the 1920s, they didn't know. How did the apostolics know? How did the preacher know? Because the Holy Ghost told him. It didn't explain all the science to him. It just moved upon him. And a conviction fell upon him. And he said, this shouldn't be. He didn't give all the reasons. He didn't, he didn't cross every T and dot every I. He didn't know how to do. All he knew was it's not right. Shouldn't be done. Tell

you how this happened. The church is from the future. It's a hundred years ahead of the world. By the, by the time the world picks up some moral cause, the church has already been pounding the pulpit for a hundred years. And it thinks the world comes along and says, well, I got this new thing. No, you've been ignoring us for a hundred years. You've been making fun of us for a hundred years, but we knew all the time because we're from the future. This is just one, this is just one example. I'm going to give you two quick more. This is in my childhood. I remember, I remember my pastor saying, you know, brothers and sisters, particularly you brothers, you shouldn't be telling sexual jokes off colored speech. That's off limits for apostolics. I was eight years old. I didn't understand everything. I didn't pick up on all the double entendres, but I knew a dirty joke when I heard one. I knew

what he was talking about. The eight year olds, you know, they might want to indulge in some of that themselves and their own versions and they would read passages from the epistles say and let no filthy conversation come forth from your mouth, no vulgar talk. That eliminates like half our words. And I know these jokes and makes people laugh, but they said your jokes should never be sexual. They shouldn't be offensive. They also told us, now men, you're married. You should never, ever come within a hundred miles of flirting with another woman besides your wife. You keep it real professional. There may be many reasons why I'm saying this right now. This is an important message. It's really important. It's still enforced today. You hold other women very much at arm's length. There's one woman you embrace. Everything else is professional. I'm just telling you, you know how much trouble you can avoid? You know what darkness you can avoid that way? I

mean, it's a pretty simple thing. It really, it really, really is. If you commit to it, you believe in what the church is preaching, it's going to bless you. It's going to bless your future. It's going to bless your family. Tell you what, the key, one of the great keys to the successful life, to being the old man surrounded by your family and a local legend. Tell you what, it's made out of a lot of nose. It's also made out of the ability and the willingness to resist temptation, but here's the underappreciated overlooked fact. The successful life is not just you as a man, constantly getting yourself in a position where you're having to resist temptation when it's at its strongest, but when you're able to resist temptation when it's at its weakest. And better still is to avoid the tempting situations altogether. And I'll tell you one way to do that. You keep it real professional. There are things you should never,

I mean, before you text in somebody, you ought to, you ought to read over that text and, and, and, and figure out the language there. You don't want to send any messages. You know what I mean? This is what the church has been teaching for a long time. And I'll, I'll tell you what, when I was a kid, when I went to school, I was made fun of for the stuff I didn't say. And, and then I remember watching a Johnny Carson show and I remember, I remember a reporter, famous reporter, as a guest on the Johnny Carson show. It's like the equivalent of Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon or whatever today, I suppose. But Johnny Carson, he's having this guest and this reporter says, he makes a joke about, about Bible believing Christians. And he says, I'll tell you what they are. And he tells a couple of foul jokes and everyone laughs. And, and Johnny says, well, are you sure you'd

be, should, should be saying that? He, you know, probably going to offend some people. He said, ah, these Bible thumpers. You know what they are? They're men and women who go to bed at night, afraid that someone somewhere might be having a good time. That was the joke on, on us. These jokes that we didn't tell, they told sexual jokes. If you go to sleep and you wake up six years ago and open up your new New York times and watch Harvey Weinstein being led away in cuffs. And you see hashtag me too. And then read the article, Weinstein, unwelcome jokes, sexual nature, flirtatious texts. Men are getting hauled before courts, being sent into prison. All of a sudden, the New York Times figured it out. A hundred years after we had already been preaching sermons about this stuff. Last one, now 120 years ago, at Azusa Street during Jim Crow, race against race, race, segregation, separate fountains, separate restaurants. But there was

a little place in California. It was called Azusa Street. And up there in a warehouse, if you walked in in the year of 1904, and you looked around, you'd see something you couldn't find anywhere else in America. Black man and the white man sitting together, worshiping and listening to the preaching of William Seymour, a black man blind in one eye with his head bowed down. Speaking, he had a great big wooden box that was a container for shoes. That's all he had for a pulpit. And he turned it up on its end. And the open box, he would put his head inside the box. And he would preach from there. Because he was afraid that someone might think that William Seymour was preaching instead of God. And the Holy Ghost fell. Different races came and stood up at the altar and spoke in tongues together. And they called each other brother. They baptized each other. And they ate together. They lived together. It's

the only place you could find it in America. You know, the San Francisco Chronicle. It's an old paper. You know what they did? They sent a reporter down there because they were hearing about these revivals that were breaking out. And it's strange. You know what they were really wanting to find out? How are these mixed races worshiping together? We got a report on this. It's not all together kosher. And so they wrote articles that made fun. Spoke tongue in cheek condescendingly about this man with his face inside the wooden box. Made derogatory statements about white people worshiping with black people. So pardon me, San Francisco Chronicle, if I don't really exactly listen to your sermons on race relations these days. Because you know where you are. You know where, you know when the church takes a stand on something? It's from the future probably. And it'll take a hundred years for the world to figure it out. And when they finally do, they're

going to act like they, they were the first ones to discover it. You know where the New York Times can be found? You know where these media outlets can be found? You know where they can all be found on the cutting edge with us? No. In the dead center of public opinion, they don't stick out their necks for anything until there's already a tidal wave going on created by the church. But let's turn this around. The church is out in front and the world, it has to catch up all creation groans for the appearance of the sons of God. These things were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world your preacher night might not be able to explain everything, but you might want to listen because the Holy Ghost is talking. The Holy Ghost is talking. The future is talking to you. The future that loves your children, that loves your future. There's a wisdom to the church. Lord,

there are so many other instances of the kind I've mentioned and to mine just now. Of the strange and peculiar wisdom that you've given the church. I pray that we in leadership in ministry would walk worthy of this vocation, be ministers true, true to the gospel, true and faithful in our duties. And I pray that your people eagerly for instruction from the church. There's an old saying, the wise man loves to be corrected. Give me wisdom, Lord. Bless this church. And I pray that there would be a spirit of humility amongst this people. Those who have been resisting following the teachings of the church, I pray that there would be a revival and a humility embrace before you go home tonight. Would you come and pray? Why don't we come and pray together as a church? Everybody, maybe it's not your habit to come. Would you come up and pray? Let's pray together. Everybody together. Jesus, your church is from the future. Jesus,

I pray that we would avail ourselves of this holy and sacred body. You gave gifts unto men, apostles and prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, until we all reach the perfection and unity of the faith. Jesus, I pray that there would be a prayer amongst this people, a prayer of humility, repentance for pride and arrogance. I pray that we would seek the good of the church. Lift up your church in prayer. Lift up the ministry in prayer. You need to hear from the Lord. And the Lord speaks, speaks from this pulpit. Pray for the ministry. Oh God, oh God, protect the man of God. Protect this body, this congregation. Let us hear from you clearly and truly. I pray, Lord, for the humility to listen. Jesus' name. Hallelujah. Let's just love the Lord together for a moment. Such a sweet presence of the Lord here tonight. Hallelujah. Would you just open up

your mouth, lift up your voice and let's just love the Lord. Let's thank Him for the church. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I just feel you ought to pause right now in your prayer and why don't you begin to thank the Lord for every preacher that's ever preached to you. Maybe a pastor you were raised under, every preacher that you've ever been led by, corrected by, admonished by. Lord, I thank you for the church, Lord. I thank you for every preacher, Lord. God, I thank you for every pastor. God, I thank you for every leader in my life, Lord, that has spoken to me, that has corrected me, that has admonished me, that has built me. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, Jesus. Hallelujah, Jesus. Hallelujah, Jesus. Oh, that's it. Let's just love the Lord together. His presence is here in such a special way right now, Lord. We love you. We thank you. Hallelujah. We worship you. We exalt you tonight. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah. You are so

good, oh, Lord. You are so good, Lord. Hallelujah. Praise God. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for the church. Thank you, Lord. Praise God. Praise God. I'm so thankful for the church.