Glorious Way Church
Glorious Way Church equips believers for the work of the ministry and stands for God’s truth in our culture. We serve as a regional center, where people from all backgrounds find refreshing worship and true communion of the saints.
Glorious Way Church
God's Orderly Arrangement
Have you ever wondered why everything seems to naturally deteriorate into disorder? Why your spotless kitchen eventually becomes cluttered, or why societies drift toward chaos without strong leadership? There's a natural law called entropy that drives all systems toward disorder—but God created us to work against this force.
Well, I've got a message for you tonight, and it's some revelation that was brand new to me when I got it, and so I'm excited to share it with you. But, if you don't mind, just agree with me in prayer, because I don't want to miss delivering what God has for you and I want everyone to have exactly what they need. And so, heavenly Father, I thank you for the revelation knowledge that you've shown me and, holy Spirit, I thank you for your words being in my mouth that whatever people need to know, need to see, need to experience, need to hear, need to feel that they're going to have precisely that, regardless of what I might say, holy Spirit, your word's in my mouth tonight that this revelation knowledge would help others, that they would be enlightened, that they would understand some new things and that they would walk in a truth that was not familiar to them before. And that they would walk in a truth that was not familiar to them before and that they would become even more fruitful, more successful, because of these things. In Jesus' name, I pray Amen. Well, I'm going to share with you a message, and I know it's Easter and I know maybe you had a long day and Claire was reminding me of that on the ride over Long day and we don't want to go too long and I don't want to go too long, but I do want to get out what God gave me here. So I'm going to share a message tonight titled God's Orderly Arrangement.
Speaker 1:God's Orderly Arrangement arrangement, god's orderly arrangement, and there's a natural law called entropy that states that any system, when left alone, will move from a state of order to disorder. Everything in the natural goes from an orderly condition into disorder. How many in here are parents of kids? Okay, so have you ever seen your kid's room? You've got it all nice and clean and put together and in order, and you let them in there for any length of time at all and go back and check on it and what does it look like? Looks like an ever-loving mess. And entropy is at work in your children's rooms, going from order to disorder. And that's true with everything, everything man-made, everything natural.
Speaker 1:You've got a car. You know you could have a new car, and if you don't ever drive that car, if you don't ever maintain that car, it's going to go from order to disorder. It requires maintenance, it requires use to keep it in good condition. You know we could give examples out of our nation today. You've got, you know, we've got the order of the forming of our nation and we've got distinct boundaries and borders, and then we let illegal immigrants flood across those borders and what do you have? You have chaos and disorder.
Speaker 1:Things fall apart in life when they're neglected, and so it's our job and our purpose to continually reign in disorder and contend against that and always bring order to situations and order to our life and order to things. And you know there's a cost to doing nothing. You know, just leaving it alone, whatever you have, whatever you allow, whatever you let will be, and chaos will quickly take over if we let it. But God didn't put us here to do that. He put us here to bring back order and restore.
Speaker 1:When God created the earth in the beginning, he established order. And so in Genesis, chapter 1, it says in. Then it says and the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the deep or face of the waters, and so that's when order began, is when the Holy Spirit came in and just started hovering above the disorder and the chaos there. In the Hebrew, there two words I'll draw your attention to. The earth was without form, so there's a Hebrew word for that tovu and void abahu, and you put those two together and you get tovu habahu and that means chaos. So it takes the two words, the two Hebrew words, to produce the one word that we know today of chaos. The English translation of chaos is a state of utter confusion and disorder, total lack of organization and any confusion. Confusion is also part of the definition of chaos. So in the beginning God brought order out of chaos.
Speaker 1:In the beginning God created man in his image, and so we'll just run down the list there. God said let there be light. And God saw the light, that it was good. He divided the light from the darkness, called the light day, and the darkness he called light night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. And so you run down the whole list there and he's just taking something that was without form and void. There was something there, and that kind of begs the question what was there? I don't know, but it was chaotic and it wasn't good. And God took what was chaotic and wasn't good and rolled it into something that was great, a beautiful creation.
Speaker 1:In Genesis 1.26, he said let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. You know, god's a three-part being, and so that's the our right there. That's the God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said let us make man in our image or our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, all of it. So verse 27,.
Speaker 1:God created man in his image and we've talked about this before in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them. There was no confusion about what sex they were. There was a man, there was a woman, and they were both created in the image of God, and I'll briefly touch on this again.
Speaker 1:But when God created Adam, it was humankind and it was one, and all the animals he created multiples or pairs of, and Adam was by himself. And God said it wasn't good for Adam to be alone. So it was the first thing that God created that wasn't good in that condition that Adam was alone, and so he put Adam to be alone. So it was the first thing that God created that wasn't good in that condition that Adam was alone, and so he put Adam to sleep and it said it took from Adam's side. It's translated in our Bible rib, but really it's the Hebrew word is side. So he took a part of Adam's side. Whether it was half or a little piece, it doesn't really matter to get the picture. God took Adam's side and he created woman from Adam's side and they were created in His image.
Speaker 1:And we know that God has masculine characteristics and feminine characteristics, and a man by himself doesn't really bear the entirety of the image of God, nor does a woman. But when they come together under the covenant of marriage, when they're joined back together under the covenant of marriage by the way, the first word of the Old Testament is bereshit Genesis, and it means covenant. And so covenant was incredibly important to God, that that was the first word written. And so God created the covenant of marriage. Man and a woman are joined together into the covenant of marriage. That's order, his divine order for the family, and from that they're able to procreate and reproduce the human life after the image of God. They're able to reproduce God's image in their kids, and so they procreate, they reproduce, and the devil has been so busy attacking the image of God and sometimes we get lost in the arguments of you know how people feel and what they think and the freedom of expression and all these things, and we get lost in the arguments of all of that.
Speaker 1:But really the devil's playing up here at a much higher level. There's a cosmic, spiritual warfare attacking the image of God and he does that by attacking the procreation. We've got abortion. He's constantly trying to kill the image of God as it's being reborn and replenishing the earth, killing the image of God. He got in there and defiled the marriage and tries to break up marriage and so he's breaking the covenant, so that you know you're separating the image of God into two parts that are no longer together.
Speaker 1:He's confused the image of God because now you've got a multiplegender isn't even really a thing. Do you know that? I mean you look at the word gender in language and it referred to whether a word was masculine or feminine in nature and how it's applied in the language. That's what gender referred to. If you, you know, 150, 200 years ago, if you asked somebody what gender they were, they would be confused because they only referred to words and the characteristic of that word, whether it was a masculine or feminine. So gender really referred to that, not sex. There's two sexes.
Speaker 1:And so the devil has introduced this confusion there and brought chaos out of God's order, out of his orderly arrangement, out of what he established. But God created man in his image and then he gave him a charge to be fruitful, multiply that. God created man in His image and then he gave him a charge to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over it. And so God created something in His image and then set Him in charge of all of creation and to be fruitful, multiply and fill it and subdue it and have dominion over it. And so subdue means to tread upon, to conquer, to bring it under subjection by force and dominion is to simply rule or reign over it. And so that was the order that God established for humankind in the very beginning. And you know that there was a fall of man that brought man out of the right order with God, fall of man that brought man out of the right order with God. And ultimately they were removed from the garden. They ate from the tree that violated God's command for them. And so the fall of man happens in chapter 3.
Speaker 1:The curse at the end of chapter 3, he describes all the curses that comes with being a man going forward from that point. In chapter 4, you had the first murder that occurred Cain killed Abel out of jealousy over an offering. In chapter 6, it gets a little weird in Genesis, because that's when demonic entities came down and had relations with the daughters of man and produced something giants in the land. They produced something that God didn't produce and it violated God's order once again. And so the whole world was going from orderly arrangement into defilement and chaos, and it was all because of sin. And so in Genesis, chapter 6, verse 5, the Lord saw the wickedness of man, that it was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. There was no redeeming that at that point. And so what did God do? He prepared to take the one family that had any righteousness in them at all that was Noah and destroy the earth with a flood after that. And so God preserved the righteousness, righteous Noah. He was a just man, perfect in his generation.
Speaker 1:It said that Noah walked with God and the earth was corrupt and was filled with Hamas. That's another interesting point. The earth was filled with Hamas. That's another interesting point. The earth was filled with Hamas. Where have you heard that? You know, one word is Arabic, hamas, but the Hebrew word means violence and it's also pronounced Hamas. The earth was filled with Hamas, and now we've got Hamas again in the earth. So then you have the great flood, chapter 7, and then God established some new rules here.
Speaker 1:And so I'm going to flip over to Genesis, chapter 9, and I want to read just a little bit of this. I want to just show you this is big picture stuff, and I want to show you the progression of God creating order and then going to disorder, and then God coming back in and bringing order to it, and then disorder. I want to just map that out for you a little bit. So Genesis, chapter 9. And in verse 1, it says so God blessed Noah and his sons. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.
Speaker 1:Where have you heard that? Well, we heard that in the beginning. So here he's charged until the earth has been destroyed, everything's wiped out. It's just Noah and his family, and they're charged to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. And in verse two it says and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth and all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. Pretty much gave him charge over all living things on the earth all over again. So he's hit a reset button, wiped out all the evil, re-established man at the top of that. Now this is still fallen man, this is not reborn man, but he still gave him dominion again over all of these things. And then he talks about how the earth will be. The herb is for food and the animals are for food. Gave him some specifics about you know, don't drink the blood. You're supposed to drain that out of the animal. So there were some other specifics there. Anyway, we'll move on from that. So God reestablished His order with Noah and gave Him charge and dominion over the earth all over again.
Speaker 1:And so fast forward a little bit more. We get into Genesis 11. This is man building a tower to the heavens, the Tower of Babel, and in verse 6, 11, 6, it said and the Lord said Indeed, the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they began to do. Now, nothing that they purpose to do will be withheld from them. And so you've got man operating with the authority that God gave them and nothing will be withheld from them, except that they were using their voice for the wrong thing. They were building something out of arrogance. They were building something that they wanted to equate themselves, build a tower all the way up to heaven and reach heaven and have that equalness. And so God confused the language, or allowed confusion to come in. He gave them different languages and scattered them across the earth. And so man's created with the ability whereby nothing will be held from withheld from them if they all speak with one voice. I kind of wanted y'all to sit together and I want y'all to have one voice and be one body and be unified. And we got to be unified around one thing and that's his purpose and his will, and if we do that, nothing will be withheld from us. That we purpose to do but let's make sure it's around His purpose and His will for our lives, and nothing will be withheld from you. We have that ability. God created us that way. Fast forward through.
Speaker 1:We're just going to do a Bible overview on some of this the promise given to Abraham that's in chapter 12. And so he would be a father to many nations. And yet he and his wife were barren. And so what did he do? Abraham tried. He took matters into his own hands. His wife had a maidservant, and Abraham went into his wife's servant and produced an Ishmael. And now we have Hamas today because of a disobedience back then. God didn't stop this from happening. He allows things, he allows things. He allows what we allow. He put him into a position of dominion and control, and so it really boils down to what are we going to allow on this earth? And so Abraham was an imperfect man. He's trying to fulfill on his side what God said he was supposed to do, but he didn't do it. God's way. There's an order to the steps that he got wrong. He tried to do the thing that God was going to provide for him, and so we can't be trying to do God's job or we're going to get into trouble. And so you know, now we've got more trouble on the earth.
Speaker 1:Abraham, at one point and this is in chapter 18, he's pleading with God over Sodom. God's ready to destroy Sodom. He's recognized the evil that's in that city. And so Abraham kind of steps in between and says, oh God, far be it from thee to slay the righteous with the wicked. And God's like what righteous? And Abraham's like okay, well, if there was 50, 45, if there's 40, would you please not slay the city the entirety of it? Okay, 30, 20, and he stopped at 10 and he couldn't find 10 righteous in the whole place, and so Lot and his family had to get out and abandon that cause. And what did God do? He destroyed that chaos, that thing that violated his system, his structure the homosexuality, the perversion. It was rampant in that place and there was no redeeming it at that point, and so he destroyed that. It was a violation of his system, his structure that he set in place. Fast forward, you got Abraham Isaac, jacob, joseph. He was a redeemer and a restorer that was set in place for God's perfect time and purpose in Egypt to save the Israelites.
Speaker 1:God had a way to bring his people out of trouble and into a safe place, and then, when the next Pharaoh came along, who wasn't familiar with Joseph? They fell into bondage, and so God brought a way out for them. There were ups and downs, people operating according to God's laws and doing right, and people falling away and bringing chaos and allowing chaos and disorder back into the system again and they fall away. And when you have chaos and disorder, they end up back in bondage. So then God provides another way. He brings Moses on the scene. Let my people go, and they did, and they got out of there and God gave them a way across the Red Sea. And when it seemed impossible, god had a way for them to escape. Then they started rebelling along the way and they ended up wandering out there. God didn't intend for them to wander for forty years. He intended to bring them out of bondage and into a promise. But they allowed chaos to come back in on the scene and it resulted in them meandering about and getting lost in the wilderness for 40-some-odd years. God had to establish order for them and bring them back into a position, so he gave them a law. He gave them some very strict standards and things to operate by.
Speaker 1:Deuteronomy, chapter 28,. That's a good one to read. It's full of the blessings and the cursings that go with God's order and His intended order. You know that God was a lobbyist. Did y'all know that he genuinely was? He put the option out in front of them and he pleaded with them. Today I set before you blessing and cursing life and death. And then he lobbied choose life, please, I'm begging you, choose life that you and your descendants may live. But God didn't demand that they choose life. He just pleaded with them to choose life. It was ultimately up to them to choose one thing or the other to allow or disallow, to follow God's rules for order or to allow chaos to come in. They didn't quite make it. There was a next generation that rose up.
Speaker 1:Moses violated God's word and didn't get to go into the promised land. He got to see it from a distance but he didn't get to bring him in. But then comes Joshua, and he was a man that brought the Israelites into the promises of God, into the promised land. All through the next books of the Bible you see sins and punishments and deliverers along the way. The book of Samuel is the beginning of having a king, and so a king is the result of man rejecting God and looking to others and saying you know, I know you had this system for us, I know you were going to be our king and we were going to have this one relationship here. But we see the other nations and we want what they have. And he said you're not going to like what they have, but I'm going to let you have it, because you want it, I'm going to give it to you. And so then they had kings, and then back there, they're back in bondage and they're having their ups and their downs all the way through. Again, the king, the priests and the prophets were there as mediaries between God and man. The population couldn't talk to God directly, they had to go between really the priests, but the prophet spoke for God and the king operated on God's behalf. They carried God's anointing that way.
Speaker 1:And so we've got all these ups and downs, all the attempts of God to set man up for success, and sin is still abundant on the earth and man just snatches defeat from the jaws of victory time and time again. But each time that God set him up for success it was an order or a system or an arrangement that was a little bit less than the previous one, a little bit less advantageous. So you got Adam. That started at the top of this thing, and then, when sin came in, you didn't quite ever get back to the top. You know, it was just a little bit less. So Moses is there and he's still got dominion and all of that, but he's got a finite life. Adam was set up to have an eternal life in the beginning, and now Moses is here and there's a little bit less, and the system that's in place is a whole lot harder to follow the law that was given, and so it's less and less and less and harder and harder and harder for man to function the way God originally intended. And so now we're through the entire Old Testament and we get into the Gospels and enter Jesus. Jesus is on the scene.
Speaker 1:This is our redemption story right here, and so the one verse I think that everybody could probably quote and be most familiar with that wraps this whole thing up is John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son. Y'all can quote it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Y'all can quote it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. Thank God, jesus showed up and brought us back into right standing.
Speaker 1:But I want to point out something. This is the revelation that just kind of opened a lot of this stuff up for me and I think it's going to open up your perspective on how you see the entirety of what I just described and where that takes us into the future. For so long I've quoted that and read that. For God so loved the world this morning I used it. For God so loved that he gave, and that's true. And he gave His only begotten son, and it was so generous. His son took the sins of the world on himself and stood in our place and did that. It was once and for all. He did that. He defeated death, hell and the grave. All of that is true.
Speaker 1:But now I got to ask the question for God so loved what? What did he love? He loved the world. What do you think about that? He loved the world. And we think about people when we hear the world. Right, you think about you know? Ethnos is a Greek word for people, groups or nations. He could have said you know nations or kingdoms or humanity, ethnos. He could have used any of those words there, but he used the word cosmos in the Greek. So now you look up cosmos in the Greek and what does it mean? It means orderly arrangement, his systems and structures the world, including all of its inhabitants. So it's not just people anymore.
Speaker 1:God loved his orderly arrangement from the very beginning. It wasn't just Adam and Eve, it wasn't just the population that they spawned throughout the history of everything that we went over, it's not just the people. He loved his orderly arrangement. He loved the entirety of all of his creation. And he loved the entirety of all of his creation so much that he gave his only son so that our right standing and our position of authority, our place in that orderly arrangement, could be reestablished back at the top, not a step down. So Adam started at the top and then we, kind of like, worked our way down this tier, all the way down, with harder and harder rules and less and less authority and standing in our position, until Jesus showed up and then he restored us in that orderly arrangement back at the top, where he originally intended us to be and live and operate from.
Speaker 1:So it's not for God so loved people. It's not for God so loved the people groups. It's not God so loved the nations. He loved the entirety of all of his creation and the order that he created, so much so that he gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever how many whosoevers do we have? That whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life? And that comes right back up to the level that Adam was created to be. And then that authority that Adam had in the very beginning he begins to give back to us, and it didn't come all at once.
Speaker 1:But Jesus came on the scene and there was revelation that people had to know who he was, why he was here, the prophecies that he fulfilled. He's the Messiah and what comes with that. So there's like this slow eye eye opening of everything that goes with that. For God so loved his orderly arrangement that he gave his son. So Matthew 28, 18,.
Speaker 1:And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, I'm sending you out. With that, I have all the authority, and now I'm delegating my authority to you to go out and to make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded. You Follow my rules for the orderly arrangement that I've established, and I'm with you always, to the ends of the age. Amen.
Speaker 1:And so he started by issuing his authority. Well, that's not the whole picture yet. Now we've got to have the Holy Spirit who comes on the scene. And so he had the promise of the Holy Spirit. He's telling his disciples I'm going to leave and there's a lot of stuff that I want to show you, but I can't tell you because you're not ready yet and I'm going to leave. But it's better for you that I leave, because when I leave, then God God part number two is going to come down. The Holy Spirit's going to come down and he's going to dwell on the inside of you and he'll be with you and he'll lead you and guide you and teach you and show you things to come. And along with that comes the dunamis power, the power of the Holy Spirit to back you up in all the things that I've given you authority to go and to do and to say. And so Acts, chapter 1, pastor, read out of this, and there's a lot of verses we could have read, but Acts, chapter 1, verse 4,.
Speaker 1:And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said you have heard of me, for John truly baptized in water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. You haven't arrived yet, but the next stage is coming and you were here and I've taken you to here and the Holy Ghost is going to take you to here. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him saying Lord, will you, at this time, restore the kingdom of Israel? And he said to them it's not for you to know the seasons of the times, but my father, who has put that in his own authority. But you shall receive power. So you don't get to know everything yet. There's more to come and my heavenly father knows some stuff and he'll reveal some things to you by the Holy Spirit. But you don't get to know that one. But you're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you should be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the entirety of the earth. You're going to be a witness to the whole earth that I'm back, that you're back, that I've reestablished my orderly arrangement and I put you back at the top and I've given you authority and I've given you power.
Speaker 1:So if we flip over to Ephesians, chapter 1, just take what you, what you. Has anybody heard this before? His orderly arrangement, god so loved his arrangement. The world is that. I don't see a hand around here, so that's new to you. It was new to me. It's hot off the press. I'm sharing with you what I learned, and my eyes just kind of popped open with that, because you know, when you have revelation about something and it's from God, it should work in other places of Scripture. It's not something that violates Scripture from one place to another. What it does is it enlightens you and gives you a greater understanding of other Scriptures that work with that, and so this is a little bit exciting. At least it was for me. Maybe I'm going to bore you to sleep tonight. It's only 740, and I've got a lot more to go, but I don't have to go all the way to the end. We'll just take what we learn and apply it and be excited about it.
Speaker 1:Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 17. So this is one of those Holy Ghost prayers that Pastor talks about. This is one of those Holy Ghost prayers that Pastor talks about. So verse 17 says that the God of our Lord Jesus and the Father of glory may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him. So you think about the revelation and the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling and what are the riches of the glory of the inheritance and the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of the power toward us who believe?
Speaker 1:The exceeding greatness of the power toward us? He applied some great power towards us who believe, and it was according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him. So Christ raised from the dead, the mighty. He raised him from the dead and seated him. So Christ raised from the dead. The mighty power raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also that which is to come. That's where he put Christ heavenly place, his right hand to God, far above listen to these words far above all principality, power, might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, not only in the ones you know now, but that one which is to come, and then he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him, who fills.
Speaker 1:All in all Are we members of his body. And you're seated together. We're kind of closer together. We have a supply horizontally and you got one vertically. You're representing part of the body and Christ is the head of that body, and where the head is, the body goes. Where the head is placed, the body is. He's not decapitated, and so that means, if he's seated together in heavenly places, that you're there too and you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sin, in which you once walked according to the curse of the world.
Speaker 1:So there's the fall of man, the curse of the world that brought us down according to the prince of the power of the air and the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience and chaos and disorder, who's violating his orderly arrangement, among whom we all once conducted ourselves. We used to be there and we operated according to lust of the flesh and fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were, by the nature, of the children of wrath. Just as others, we were part of the flesh and fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were, by the nature, of the children of wrath. Just as others, we were part of that disorder and that chaos. So he's brought us up out of that. But God, who is rich in mercy because of His great love, wherewith he loved us, because of His great love for the world, for the cosmos, for the entirety of His creation, he loved us too.
Speaker 1:But we're part of that. Because of his great love, with which he loved us when we were dead to trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up together and made us to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So we're seated. He sees us as being this is our position of authority seated together with him in heavenly places, at the right hand of the Father, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only this age, but that which is to come.
Speaker 1:So go back to the beginning. Adam had dominion Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over it. And he had dominion over all the things. Adam named all the things and he had dominion over all the things in this world. Now we've been elevated to be together with Christ, seated together with Him in heavenly places, far above not just the earthly things. So it went a step up beyond where we started from, far above all principality, all powers, all might, all dominions and every name that is named in this age and that which is to come. That's where he brought us into. He reestablished his orderly arrangement and gave us a promotion from where we started, in Christ.
Speaker 1:I don't know about you, but that just kind of lit me up and blew me away. When you start reading some of these other scriptures and applying that orderly arrangement to it, it's not just people, it's the entirety, it's the whole cosmos. All right, so let's look at Ephesians, chapter 5, since we're in Ephesians, so in Ephesians 5, we've got some instructions here, and all this is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is how we ought to operate within the cosmos. You know more instructions. There's more instructions beside this, but we ought to walk in love, be imitators of God, dear children. Walk in love, as Christ has also loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling aroma gives us a list of things that we ought not be engaged in. I'm not going to go through all the don't do's, but I want you to go through the don't do's and recognize the things that we ought not be engaged in.
Speaker 1:Verse 8, you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light, and then it gives you the, for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. And so there is all kinds of chaos in the world. Today. We have been elevated in Christ with a promotion another notch above where we started out in this orderly arrangement, and so in Christ we're even higher. But we still live in this cosmos that has a lot of disorder in it, and so we're charged to subdue and to have dominion. So if there's any chaos in the world, okay, I'll give you a pass from everything that happened before salvation. You get a pass on that, all right? Well, you're forgiven, you're set free. All of the chaos that's been introduced. We'll just start you out on square one again and we'll give you a promotion. And now it's up to you to take care of the chaos and the disorder in my cosmos and set things straight again. That's the charge. We're here to bring order back to the disorder. How are we going to do that?
Speaker 1:Remember, in the very beginning, god created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without Tovu Habahu and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Holy Spirit came in and hovered over that chaos and he began to set things in order. Aren't you the temple of the Holy Spirit? Are you the carrier of the Holy Spirit? Do you take him with you wherever you go? You were once in darkness, but now you're light. Do you shine light wherever you go? What did he do in the beginning? There was darkness and he said let there be light. And there was light and he put order to it. So now you're light and you ought to walk as children of light and go ahead and project light and you carry the Holy Spirit wherever you go, and so you can begin to start setting things in order wherever you go. That's what you're charged to do to bring order out of chaos. That's what he did in the very beginning. We're creative beings. We're creating his image.
Speaker 1:He gave us the authority, he gave us the power, and now he's cut us loose with a promotion and said okay, set my cosmos back in order Now. Are we going to get the whole thing back in perfect order before his return? No, what is going to get back into perfect order before his return is the church Wants us to walk in wisdom, not as fools, walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. It's dark out there, there's evil, so we can't be fools. We've got to be walking with this knowledge that he's given us. The Holy Spirit is helping us with knowledge. He's given us wisdom. He's showing us things to come not to be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Come not to be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
Speaker 1:God has a will and a purpose in everything that pertains to man. He's got a side and we got to help people get on his side. Does that sound familiar? You know he's not Democrat, he's not Republican. God has a side. Let's help people get on his side. That's part of our mission to wake people up to his order and set things back in order.
Speaker 1:God created government. He did, and he's our king and he's our lawgiver and he's our judge. He created the three branches of government. He created this nation because men sought him and sought his will, and they pleaded with God for help on what the rules and what the boundaries for government ought to be. And Benjamin Franklin recognized that without his aid, without his continual aid, we're going to have this political structure that's going to be no better than what the builders of Babel came up with. And so they sought God and they sought his will and his purpose and his structure for this nation, and he gave it to them.
Speaker 1:If you're missing some structure in your life, just ask. He's eager to give it. He wants to bring order to your life. He wants more importantly he wants you to bring order to your life. He wants you to bring his order to your life and to those around you. We're charged to bring order and he's not coming back until he's got a church that's ready for his return, that's going to be without spot and wrinkle and blemish. That doesn't mean that everybody is going to make heaven. Not everybody's going to get there.
Speaker 1:We're charged to bring people to a point of decision and they can reject just like they have through the entirety of the history of the world. They've had ups and downs. They've rejected God and they've pleaded with God and they've come. They tried to do it their way and they died in the wilderness and God raised up a Redeemer. So there's this constant cycle of humanity, up and down, left and right, forward, backward. But those who will can have the promises. Those who will can inherit the promised land, and so he's busy equipping us and perfecting us to do that. And we're not perfect beings yet, but we're carriers of the Holy Spirit and we have his authority and the way he sees us. We're seated together with him in heavenly places, far above all principalities and powers and dominions and names that are named now and anything in the future.
Speaker 1:And so you know, I'm just going to wrap this up here, but I just want you to think about the systems and structures in your life, the orderly arrangement in your life, your home, and structures in your life, the orderly arrangement in your life, your home, your marriage, your family, your kids. What does that look like? And so I'm not judging anybody here, but I'm asking you to look at where you're at and what is the product of what you've done, and you could get depressed and beat up and say, well, it's not what it should be, and throw up your hands and go, oh crud, I can't do this and I've made a mess. There was a mess in the beginning, without order, without form and void and darkness, and the Holy Spirit came in and brought order and light. That's available to you in your home at any point. You've got chaos in your cabinets. You can bring order to them at any moment in time. If there's chaos in your family, you can bring order to it. If there's chaos in your finances, you can set it in order. Once again, you can have the full benefit of bringing God's order back to every system, every structure that you have in your world. If there's chaos in your workplace, you can bring order back to your workplace. Holy Ghost will make you look like an expert. That's not even your business and you're just there setting things in order, pulling this person out of here because they don't belong, putting them over there because that's where they really belong, getting this one out the door because they don't belong in this company, bringing peace, bringing order back to things, and you'll pretty soon you'll be promoting up, promoting up, and that's just fine. God's already promoted you.
Speaker 1:Where do you have disorder in your life? Where is there chaos in your life? Be someone of light. Ask the Holy Ghost for help life. Be someone of light. Ask the Holy Ghost for help. Listen when you ask.
Speaker 1:Don't keep talking. Ask and then listen. Let him show you and notice that all of creation didn't happen in one day. It didn't happen all at one time. He took care of one thing at a time. And so what do you need in your life? You need a little light. Well, be somebody of light. Let the light of God's word shine in the dark places of your life and expose some things. And then once you, once you can see what's, what's out of order, what doesn't line up with this word. This isn't just rhetoric, right here, this is real stuff. This will change your life. Once you put light on it now you can see oh, that doesn't go there. This goes over here.
Speaker 1:According to God's word, he created man, he created woman. They're joined together under the covenant of marriage. They have children. The children don't get to choose their own sex. There's no such thing as gender, and children don't raise themselves. Train a child up in the way they should go. When they're old, they'll not depart from it.
Speaker 1:If you don't like what your kids are turning into because someone else is raising your kids, stop letting someone else raise your kids and you take on the role of the parent and raise your children in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. Let's raise up a next generation of people who fear God and who bring order out of chaos, and so I'm just going to call it quits right there, because we're out of time. We could keep going on this, but natural is order to chaos. Supernatural is from chaos into order. And you've been charged to bring order and you've been equipped and you've been empowered, and the Holy Ghost will help you. And you're not alone, for God so loved the entirety of the cosmos that he gave his Son so that you could be brought into right standing, so that you could be equipped and empowered to once again stand in your position and bring order to his creation.