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Men's Choir: Love you more [music]
than anything [music] Hallelujah
[music]
Bishop Noel Jones: Give God a praise for the Gentlemen of [music]
the City, amen [handclaps of praise, music]
St. Matthew's Gospel Chapter 13 [music]
and
I have discovered now that there is no limit to
the revelatory powers that God has given as it relates to his word
I can see now how the Russian preacher could
preach from one page of scripture for 39
years, and still maintain a church
Because the revelatory depth that surrounds
the word of God is in many cases unfathomable [yes, right]
No matter how genius you think you are
the word of God goes beyond your genius [yes]
and God can reveal things in a word
[amen] that you didn't know before
And this 13th Chapter of St. Matthew seems
to be a wealth of revelatory nuggets
No matter how you approach it, no matter how you meditate on it there is
something else that the Lord gives. Sometimes
as you preach the same message and its not the same
message. You just happen to take the title and
you read from the same text, but the presentation
is awfully different simply because God cannot be placed
in any human intellectual box [alright, handclaps of praise]
[handclaps of praise] He is wider and he is greater and its and interesting concept now
that I'm talking about it because
if he's by revelation then a
fool cannot err and the scripture says that
because its not about whether you're astute intellectually or you're not
it about whether God gives you the revelation of who he is [alright]
and as Paul Tillich says, "Revelation must be given and
it must be received or it is not revelation" [alright]
So if God is giving revelation, he supersedes the intellectual
capacity of the individual, and he gives revelation to the spirit [yes]
of the person to whom he's dealing and
one spirit is not more educated than another spirit
[amen, handclaps of praise] Amen, its just that one
spirit has received more revelation from God than the
other spirit because one person is closer to God
than the other. Closeness to God means revelation
[alright, alright now] because you can't get close if he does not
reveal [amen] So its not confined to your
intellectual capacity [yes] It ain't how smart you are [right]
Amen, now I've told you that before, and I brought two, the
example I brought was the two boys in separate mother's wombs
One's name was John, and the other is Jesus
Now in two separate mother's wombs, they're separated by two thin layers of
cutaneous tissue, and yet still when the mothers came
together, even though they were in two separate compartments
they tell me that when Mary went out to visit Elizabeth and
they came in proximity or closeness to each other, that the
unconscious John, because you're not conscious in your mother's womb
Amen, there is no Aristole, Aristotelian deduction
there is no syllogistic reasoning, there is no intellectual
energy, no cognitive ability jumping off when you're in your mother's
womb [right] Is there anybody here who remembers what the climate
was in their mother's womb? [laughter] Amen
So consequently you're totally unconscious. And
yet still when the two mothers came together, the scripture says that the child John
lept and he received
the Holy Spirit, and did not say, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
Jesus, Jesus" He didn't foam at the mouth at the altar
He didn't have somebody say, "Here it comes, here it comes" [laughter] Amen
[laughter] he received the Holy Spirit while he
was not cognitive, intellectual [right] Now
years later, the same John, asked
and sent message to Jesus and asked, "Are
you the one or should we look for another?"
The unconscious John without any
intellectual energy in his mother's womb
had a revelation of who Jesus is [that's right]
Amen [amen] And yet still the
conscious John had difficulty
figuring out [right] whether he was
the Messiah. The unconscious John in
his mother's womb, locked up in the prison of darkness
had a revelation of who Jesus is
Now notice, when John was he had a revelation
of who Jesus is [alright] See you can put was with John
but you can't put was with Jesus [alright now]
because he still is [ooo..., yes, handclaps of praise]
[handclaps of praise] Amen. And yet still the
intellectual John is trying to figure him
out. Your relationship with God is not intellectual [I know that's right]
If he does not give you revelation, when Peter said, "Thou art the
Christ, the son of the living God" he was told that flesh and blood
did not reveal this to you. You can't get this from the
University of Tarsus, you can't get it from the University of Jerusalem [handclaps of praise]
And I don't care whether you matriculate in Yale, Harvard all
of that is good for down here [yes] but when it comes
for the heavenly sphere [yes] you have to have it revealed [yes]
I said all of that to say that that's why this particular scripture
has so much to give us, and no one of us will ever go to the bottom of it
He says now in 13:1, "The same day went Jesus out of the
house, and sat by the sea side.
2 And great multitudes were gathered together" Now notice now
it wasn't a great multitude, great multitudes
And Sonja we prayed for your overseas people, amen
And for those that we all should be praying for, we prayed for
everybody that's running from a gun today [amen] "2 And great multitudes
were gathered together unto him, so that he went
into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; 4 And
when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, the fowls came
and devoured them up: 5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth:
and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because
they had no root, they withered away. 7 And some
fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:
8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some
an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. 9 Who hath ears to hear,
let him hear. 10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou
unto them in parables? 11 He answered and said unto them, Because
it is given unto you to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance:
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that
that he hath." uh, Isn't that something? [yes]
"I to them in parables: because they seeing see not;
and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."
Does the Lord has favorites?
[wow] He has favorites
Its given unto you to know
but to them its not given. I
wonder how he decides that? Amen
I preached in the convention and the next morning I went to the Bishop Board meeting
and I heard they had a horrific debate
as it relates to unconditional eternal security
So I asked, "Did I say something last night for you guys to be
in a frenzy over unconditional eternal security?"
I guess I talked a little bit about the human responsibility not
being the significant thing, but rather it is the sower of the seed
because there can be no growth if there is no seed [alright, go 'head]
Its an interesting thing, you wouldn't be here if God didn't sow
[that's right, amen] Its an interesting kind of thought
that he does have favorites. Its given to
you to know [amen] Look at somebody and say, "I'm listening
part two [I'm listening part two] Amen
Maybe it should be I'm listening for a second time, uh?
There's another approach that helps actually to
solidify and to make more concrete
the parables of Chapter 13
in our hearts. I emphasize in
in the heart because many of us have become astute
and students of being able to quote scripture
and to regurgitate what we have read
because some of us have photographic memories and
instantly (snapping fingers) we can catch something and remember
it, and we have the word in our
heads. But it seems to me that if the
word has to go on as it did in the wayside
hearer, and it went on and in
the stony-hearted hearer, it went on, in
and yes, down in
the thorny
hearer. And if it goes on, in
down and comes up in the good
soil hearer, then obviously the word
is not to stop in our heads, but it has to get to
our hearts. And so to solidify Chapter
13 is to take it not just to the head, but to
the heart [amen] Arnott
he groups the seven parables in a sort of logical
arrangement, a little bit differently than I did it
last week or week before. And he represents
the kingdom of God in different aspects
The first pair, he says, exhibits the relationship
of the kingdom to several classes
of intelligent creatures with which
as adversaries or subjects
it comes in contact with. And so what he does is he
takes the pair and says that the first two
are relational, and they have a
relationship with those who are subjected to
and for the kingdom, but they also have a
relationship with those who are adversarial or
antagonistic to the kingdom of God
There is absolutely no way that God can present
his kingdom and put it in the middle of
the kingdom of this world, and not stir up
adversarial responses as well as
find those who are his. If
you notice now, the kingdom is being setup in a kingdom that
has existed already. And God is
inserting his word as he searches to find
those people that are a part of the kingdom of
God. He didn't come into a neutral zone and begun
to perpetuate or promulgate rather the
kingdom of God, but he came into a world that had already has