Humility (As A Weapon of Warfare)
Transcript from the sermon Humility As a Weapon of Warfare.
So last weekend I had the opportunity to drive to Arkansas after service.
The Hellermans went with my family and we had an opportunity to join 150, maybe 200.
I'm really bad at numbers.
And so 150, maybe 200 people from all over in Springdale, Arkansas for the Rise Up Family Revival.
And it was really, really cool because I saw people I hadn't seen since 2007, 2008, when we were a part of a fellowship in Watertown.
I saw people who I had seen on the road in San Diego.
I saw people from all over the places, different points in times, different markers of life, and had the honor of sharing on Sunday afternoon.
Peter had asked me if I would share a little bit about kind of what had been going on in this church over the last seven, eight months, what had been going on in my life, in the spiritual walk, all those types of things.
And so it was very honored to be able to do that and preach on that.
And afterwards, after I talked, I had a couple of people come up to me.
There was a gentleman who I had met in San Diego.
Had to have been 2015-ish, which was right before the start of HFF, HFF's first service was the first Saturday in February of 2016.
We filed as a legal church in the state of Oklahoma in December of 2015.
That point in time, Ephraim and I were really having dialogue about what that looks like.
We had gotten permission locally, and then we brought on Daniel Mussen, sometime in January, had our first service in February.
So it had had been sometime in the 2015 range.
I had just moved here, been here about a year maybe, and ended up getting invited to go be a part of this conference in San Diego.
I had never been in California.
I thought it was a great opportunity, and I proceeded to road trip with Ephraim's mom and dad for what felt like an eternity to San Diego.
That's not even the point of the story.
The point of the story is as God comes up to me and he goes, got tears in his eyes and he goes, "Do you remember me?
" And I remembered his face.
Like I knew I had seen him before.
I knew this wasn't the first time that we had seen each other, but I'm bad with names.
I'm not even like, We're not even talking about like, oh, like I'm not exaggerating.
I'm horrible with names.
There's people I know.
And, and like in my mind, it's like Alyssa, Elisa, like those types of like, even now it's like, how do you pronounce those names?
I'm just bad with that.
And so I was like, yes, I know, I know I've seen you before.
And he goes, you were a jerk.
Am I lying?
I mean, even, even was walking by and it was loud enough that Ian wasn't a part the conversation and he was like, he's like chuckling.
The Wisconsin guy's like chuckling, he's like, oh, he's like, if I could just record this conversation.
And here's the thing, he was right.
He was right.
It wasn't offensive.
I mean, you might say like, oh man, that dude had some Cajones.
It's like, no, he was right.
I was a jerk.
It was a horrible conference.
There was some random speakers I won't mention by names who are entrenched in the Hebrew roots movement who had a lot of opinions on things, and I had just come out of a nasty relationship breakup with one of my partners on an organization, so I wasn't exactly in the greatest headspace either.
And so all that perfect storm, plus my already propensity to be an intellectual donkey, and he was right.
I was a jerk.
And after he said it, I kind of like looked at him, I didn't say much, And I think he was like, oh my gosh, is this dude gonna punch me?
Like, I mean, he wasn't, he was a decent sized guy, but he was like, and we ended up sitting there and talking for about 45 minutes.
It was a great conversation.
And so that led me to a week full of just looking inside myself and saying, all right, Lord, Brent's been teaching on discipleship, the dogma, the dogma.
We have a little bit of a break going into the fall feast.
So what is it that you want for us as a church to learn?
And we're in the midst of a lul for those real quick who don't know what a lul is.
A lul is basically the month where if you think everything can be chaotic, it is chaotic.
The Lord tests you, He tries you spiritually, mentally.
It's a tough month.
It's a month that is meant to be a month of repentance, a month of searching your soul, spirit getting ready for the fall feast.
The cool thing about the fall feast, we can talk about whether you're supposed to build a sukkah or how you're supposed to do it or all those.
And honestly, guys, for the most part, that's irrelevant.
It really is irrelevant because if you're looking for a checklist of things to do in the fall feast to somehow feel like you're righteous or you're holy, you will always screw up something.
There's somehow something will mess up.
But the fall feast or the coronation of a king.
Coronation of a king.
Now we know last year it was very, very popular to talk about in this community.
The king of England, king of Britain, whatever he is, I don't know, I don't pay a lot of attention to him, but the queen died and now we have a king.
And so all of a sudden this was a huge ordeal and there was this huge fanfare and some people made it more fanfare than it needed to be, but it was a coronation of a king.
And how much more of a coronation?
I mean, we're talking probably millions and millions and millions of dollars, that people are crying in the street over some really ugly old band.
And how much more beautiful if we're talking about our king, the king of heaven and earth is coming, and he's going to be coronated as the king of all creation, the book, the scroll, everything is locked up, sealed up, tossed away, how much more exciting is it when Jesus comes and is coronated as a king?
It should be way more exciting.
But that's the fall of feasts.
And so all the preparation that goes into the physical for the coronation of a king in a kingdom here, there's just as much, if not more, for the coronation of the king of all eternity.
And if there's not, then we're kind of just doing something wrong.
I'm not gonna say that you're a heathen, I'm not gonna say you're pagan, I'm not gonna say you're demon possessed, but you're doing something wrong because if the king is coming and that is what we're supposed to be looking for in a season, the book of Hebrews says that the blood of bull and goats wasn't sufficient, that it was the sacrifice and atonement of Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah, that is the blood for the mercy seat for us.
It's important because every year we all got together and we all came as a corporate body and we all brought an offering up in the middle of the feast.
Feast of trumpets, a day of shouting, a day of rejoicing, a day that a lot of people say that Jesus will come and the King will come.
The day of atonement will help pass judgment upon us if we're found to be under the blood of Messiah.
We'll all get to go to the wedding feast at the Lamb and we'll get to dwell together with Him.
been a part of a very large feast of tabernacles for many, many years and there was no wedding feast and the lamb was not allowed to be there most of the time.
So this season when we go into this season, when we go into it, we need to search our hearts and we need to look at how we can make ourself lowly and we can make the king high and lifted up.
Why?
Because the example of our king was that he came and he humbled himself when many wanted the lion of Judah, raised lions, that's what they wanted.
Come take care of Rome, come take care, hey look we want our own Caesar.
And no he came in humility and willingly gave himself as a sacrifice so that when he comes back he's coming back as a lion.
And this season as we continue to go forth, next week is the feast of trumpets, after that we have the day of atonement service, We need to understand that Jesus' blood was not the blood of bull and goats.
This wasn't something we willy-nilly say like, "Hey, every year we get to just bring our offering together "and hey Larry, it's great to see you.
"Haven't seen you all year.
" I think maybe I saw you at Pentecost.
I don't know, there's like a million of us walking around here bringing our offerings.
But yeah, let's go, let's bring it to the high priest.
No, if Jesus is your salvation, if he is your king and that blood has covered you, the book of Hebrews says this is not something that happens every single year.
You don't just willy-nilly go into your sin and into the season the same way.
And this is a continuation of praise as a weapon, prayer as a weapon.
If your life is not lived as if Jesus is your king, then you are your own king or you have allowed somebody else to be the king or the queen.
I also wanna point out, and we'll talk about this a little bit more next week for the Feast of Trumpets.
In this season, there is a lot of heightened talk about Armageddon, the end of the world, the regathering of Israel, a lot of prophetic eschatological thoughts.
My email is chris@hebraicfamily.
com.
If you can send me scripture verses that tell us that we are supposed to be dialed in and worrying about the antichrist.
Please send them to me.
I will repent publicly to you for being wrong.
But from what I see in the scripture is we're not supposed to research and fear the counterfeit.
We are supposed to research and fear the true thing.
And that is the Christ.
That is the Mashiach.
That is the king of Israel.
That is the redeemer of all people.
Dare I say it, heretic moment number 4,032, God in the flesh.
Stop studying the counterfeit.
We got enough counterfeit inside ourself.
We got enough counterfeit when we wrestle with humility, or we wrestle with praise, or we wrestle with prayer, or we wrestle with all these other things.
We don't need to go study the devil.
We just need to look inside of ourselves and see how different we are from the king and modify.
Because in the end, there's only one person in the scripture that tells us we can have a new spirit and a new heart.
And there's only one person in the scripture that says that can do that for us and then it's not us.
It's God.
God says he puts a new heart.
God says he puts a new spirit in us.
And if you've gone through the feasts and the festivals and the cycles for many, many years, a lot of times we're more worried about the regulation than we are the revelation.
Great, good, awesome.
You did everything right, but you never met with God at the feast.
Awesome, good job for you.
Kudos to you, fantastic.
I don't want that for me, for my wife, for my kids, and I don't want that for you anymore.
I've lived that.
I repent to you publicly for helping create it.
No longer.
We don't do the feasts and the festivals of the Lord so that we can look righteous.
We do the feasts and the festivals of the Lord so that we can get into the presence of the King who is supposed to inhabit us, who is supposed to be enthroned by our praise.
And if you're doing it for anything other than that, time to repent.
So as a plug for that, this is the last week you can sign up for the Feast of Tabernacles.
What is the Feast of Tabernacles for those who aren't aware?
We're not getting into prophetic, we're not getting into unsubstantiated claims in all this rhetoric and doctrine.
It is a time of in-gathering.
It's called the Festival of Boos at place.
People have called it Sukkoth.
They've called it Sukkoth.
There's been way where doctrines that have said that this is somehow the first step on the 42 journeys in the wilderness.
If you wanna learn about the 42 journeys in the wilderness, there's only one person in this area that you should talk to and he's sitting right there.
Only one person in the entire area who studied it and it's that person right there.
You wanna learn about it?
Talk to him.
Inside and outside, he knows it.
Anybody else in this area, it's all speculative.
We spend a lot of time in speculation.
Well, I'm not gonna speculate about what our feast of tabernacles is gonna be this year.
I'm gonna tell you exactly what it is.
It is a Jesus-centered, family-friendly camp out.
Everything else that comes out of that, that's the Lord's choice, the Lord's doing.
But we are going to come together.
We are going to grill out, we're gonna smoke meat, we're gonna play some cornhole.
Guess what?
There's a commandment in the Bible, if you haven't read this, about this thing called strong drink.
It is the 100% Welch's Grape Juice.
It is not this concentrate nonsense that's out there in the Grape Value brand.
It is 100%.
We're going to gather, we're going to pray, we're gonna worship, we're gonna hang out.
There's a baseball, softball feel for the kids to play.
The lake is actually clean.
There is no cows in that lake.
It is clean.
You can go swimming.
There's jet skis, there's pontoons, there's a lodge.
There's all kinds of stuff.
And guess what?
We're five minutes away from more than three restaurants.
So if you like to eat out, you can go eat out.
And you don't have to come and check in with me.
I'm not gonna come to your campfire at night and tell you where you need to be and how you need to be.
I want you to get with your family and get before the Lord and experience the presence of God, and you don't need a Catholic bishop, which means you don't need me to do the presence of God.
And so, it's just gonna be a great time.
Gonna walk, pray the grounds ahead of time.
We're just gonna go and have fun.
There's a little bit of a cost, basically the cost to the church, there's there, but we do have space available.
I think there's 260, 270 people already registered to come.
And there's a whole nother feast of tabernacles gathering there as well.
I think Dina and Michael Dai will be at that one.
Some people that we've tabernacles with will be there as well.
And so it's going to be an exciting time.
Even if you can only come down for a day, come down for a week and come join us.
We'd love to have you there.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.
We thank you for the Sabbath.
Lord, we thank you for literally every technical thing going wrong this morning.
We thank you for the ability to grow and to grow into patience and to grow in trusting you in those situations.
And Lord, we just thank you for the fact that you're still moving.
And even though sometimes you're moving and testing us and growing us, not just in the rewards that we want, Lord, we know you're moving and we thank you for that.
We submit ourself to your power and to your praise, Lord.
Help us to continue to be more humble.
to walk in an atmosphere and a lifestyle of praise and prayer and Lord really just change our hearts and change our minds for this next season that you would have for this community and this church.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Humility is to think less of yourself to put yourself lower than the average than other people that are there.
Well, this is not what I was taught.
At the age of 2021, I was working.
I had met my wife.
My wife was working in a luxurious apartment community.
I think at that time, she was an assistant manager.
I was a stoner front man for a Matchbox 20 meets Dave Matthews band for all the youth in here.
That's way above your head.
They don't do anything like that now, but they actually sang songs.
You could actually tell their lyrics and it wasn't like, "I remember when I first saw you.
" Sorry if there's any Swifties in the house, but like real music is, it's Matchbox 20 and Dave Matthews.
No amen, Ian, really?
He's like, "You didn't mention Green Day.
" It's true.
It's all dooky.
But at that point in time, I needed to get a job because 'cause my wife said, "Hey, look, this is great.
"You're really cool, like that's awesome, "but like I'm tired of paying the bills "of our apartment and everything, so get a job.
" And so I got a job and I was unloading car parts from Taiwan and those people in Taiwan, they are amazing.
I have never seen the ability to stack hoods and fenders and bumpers and radiator cores and all these things in a way where like you could put a feather and that's it in between them.
They came in at about a 52 to 53 foot box, and at six o'clock in the morning, I rolled in, rain, shine, sleet, snow, and your job was to unload as many of those as you possibly could by three to 330.
Second shift was like they were above us.
We were the grunts.
We were basically the toilet cleaners of that organization, which is awesome because you don't unload and clean the toilets, you don't unload the trailers, there's no car parts to ship.
but second group, they had all the cherry pickers and they were pulling all the parts that were sold and they were putting the parts on trucks to go to the 13 different locations so that that way all the orders could be met in the next day, two days, three days, whatever and we distributed car parts across pretty much the entire East Coast into South.
I think it was about four months.
I'm only making, I think I was making $10 an hour something like that, way too much hard work for $10 an hour.
So all those people complaining about minimum wage needing to be jacked.
You got no, no empathy, no sympathy for me.
I did hard work for $10 an hour.
And the goal was you get to second, you get to the second group.
You're the puller.
Cause if you get to be a puller and your success rate is you get a raise, your thought of hire, the truth is by the time I got the second shift and then was number one on second shift for pulling with accuracy and that truth is It wasn't any more glamorous than anything, but look, we had created it that way.
You don't have to do the grunt work.
You don't have to do this.
And there's all these preconceived notions that were there that if you get to this and you get to this and you get to this, not only make more money, you have more power, you do all these things, your family will be set.
In three years down the road, I was the corporate operational team leader who was over $16 to $20 million worth of inventory that distributed across 13 branches.
And the truth is, is that it wasn't any more glamorous.
Yeah, I made a little bit more money, but I think it was only 60, 65 at that point in time, which was a decent salary.
But the only person above me was the vice president and the CEO.
There was nobody else above me.
But somehow I had like early in my 20s, I felt like I arrived.
I'm the guy.
I'm the guy.
until I moved to Nashville, and I started helping them establish a Southern distribution place in Nashville.
Now, I get an opportunity to make money based upon the sales and the accolades of this branch.
So there's even more carrots, there's even more climbing of ladders, there's even more this, and I'm driving to Memphis, I'm meeting with Biggie and Snoop, everybody who's outside of Graceland look like they were Biggie and Snoop at their body shops, and I'm meeting with them, and then I'm going to Knoxville, and I'm meeting with all of the rich guys of Virginia and like we're just all over the place in the spectrum of people, but I walk in and it's like, I'm the guy who's got all your solutions.
I'm the guy.
Well, we wanna talk to the guy who could solve the problem that we ended up with a 1994 Chevrolet Tahoe bumper.
That's wrong.
I'm the guy.
You can talk to me.
I solve all your problems.
The truth is that I didn't solve anything.
I didn't end up at any real position because one day I'm going to what was the biggest meeting of my professional career and I get called to drive all the way back to the office and immediately I'm told, "Well, you've been extorting money from our largest client.
" And so now we want you to lower yourself again and we want you to join our sales force.
And I'm looking at it and I'm like, "It's not even feasible for me to extort and steal money from this client, they pay with check to the organization.
I don't even have access to the bank account.
I can't cash the money, it's not possible.
You guys are idiots.
And I fought and I fought and I fought and finally I got to a point where I just said, you know what, I wanna go talk to my wife.
They didn't fire me, they were wanting me to join the sales force.
The thief joined the sales force.
I go to my wife and I drive up and she knew something was going on 'cause it's the middle of the day and I had a six packet natty light in my hand.
I didn't drink it, I wasn't drinking and driving, that's illegal in Tennessee, but I had a six pack of Natty Light.
And it was Natty Light 'cause I was afraid I was gonna lose my job and I needed something that was like 20 cents a can of beer.
And she goes, "What's wrong?
" And I said, "I wanna quit my job.
" Okay.
So I drove back, handed 'em the keys to my company truck, handed 'em my shirts, got a taxi cab and went home.
I thought at that moment I had been wronged.
I hadn't been wronged.
I also hadn't been humbled.
Because what God was trying to teach me, and again, took me two to three more times of these situations.
It wasn't just this one, but you don't want to sit here all day and listen to my story.
I did not listen and learn the lesson God had for me.
It wasn't that I was wronged.
it was that I could not become humble.
I couldn't walk in humility.
Everything was about how great I could be, how much money I could have, how much power I could have.
And even in those circumstances, when all of that was taken away, I still didn't realize that ultimately I didn't control anything.
Until recently, and somebody shared a book with me, a good friend of mine, pastor of a church in Louisiana.
I started reading that book.
And it's a leadership book, read a lot of them.
And this leadership book was different.
Said, you know that old adage that dookie rolls downhill?
So if my boss calls me and comes down on me and whatever it is and then I take it out on my subordinates and then subordinates take it on, subordinates and then sooner or later it all just flows downhill.
And the whole premise of this book was You're not in leadership because it should flow downhill.
You're in leadership because it should stop with you.
And immediately, I felt the Holy Spirit come over me and say this is exactly what Jesus did.
So I went back and I read the crucifixion story.
And it's 100% the leadership style of Jesus.
Jesus was God in the flesh.
Jesus could have came in and said, "I'm only here 'cause y'all suck.
" But he didn't.
He came, he walked, he served.
And even when they mocked him, spit at him, called him names under the sun, he didn't justify himself, that's who you say I am.
And he allowed them to take and kill him.
Not just like some of the apostles who died for Christ and they did so willingly by the hand of the sword.
That's a pretty quick thing, the hand of the sword.
He was beaten, mocked, and hung on a stake, a tree, whatever rooters want to call it.
It was a cross of some sort.
And he died.
What did he do to deserve death?
Not a single thing.
Not a single thing.
But what he did as a leader was humble himself and took the stuff that flew downhill.
And he said, "Jacob, that moment that you misstepped, that moment that you willingly sinned, that moment that you unknowingly sinned and you repented and you confessed it, I'm going to take it.
this week when you were talking to me as you were driving and you were confessing to me the anger, I already knew you did, thank you son, and he put it on his back.
And he went through and he carried the burden for all of us who call upon his name and ask for his forgiveness.
There's a couple of key things today the day that I wanna look at on what it means to be in leadership and use humility and to be humble.
Now you can say, hey look that's great, I subscribed to Craig Grishel's podcast, I already got all the leadership training I need.
Yeah, I understand that there's some really great people out there, but you're the leader of your home.
You might be the leader of a workplace, you might be a leader of some other core group, maybe you all crochet.
Love me a good crocheting group.
Like maybe you're the head of a crochet group.
Maybe you are in a position of leadership in your church or something else.
We are leaders at all points in time and all points of areas.
You're either leading by example or you're leading by following.
You're being discipled in everything you do.
Sometimes it's positive and most of the time it's negative.
So to be better leaders of our marriages, of our homes, with our children, and our church, and our community, and our workplace, We have to say what type of leader do we wanna be.
Well, a lot of the leadership books will tell you what type of leader to be.
It is a type A leader.
Jesus was not a type A leader.
And so as Christians, as followers of Jesus, I think it might be time for us to try to put more of Jesus in our walk than some of the great, inspirational people, because at the end of the day, The art of the deal might win you a deal, but Jesus can win all.
He's the greatest ever.
Number one, walking in humility means that we make others king without clamoring to be the king ourself.
This is probably one of the most important thing.
You heard that term, king makers?
King makers, where you make people kings?
You are put on this earth to make other people kings and queens, Not to make yourself kings or queens.
Now if you become a king or queen, that's because God allows you to be that and other people sewed into you, but your job is to sew into other people.
Your job is not to step over top of people as you climb the ladder so that you can feel better about yourself.
Your job is to elevate people up in the kingdom.
This is why we don't have the Illuminati Triangle as our leadership structure.
We have the Reverse Illuminati Triangle as our leadership structure.
I am not the top of this church.
I am not at the top.
I am at the bottom of this church.
And as the church grows, it will not be me.
It will be who we empower, who we strengthen, and who we get to get into the presence of God to walk in the calling that they were given before they were born, Ephesians chapter two.
Build people up, help them fix their problems, help them grow in any way you can.
Jesus spent the majority of his ministry sewing into disciples.
We wanna see healings, we wanna see miracles, we wanna see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Sooner or later we have to become a community and become a family, where we're more worried about the good of the other people than we are about getting our own.
And as far as I can tell, for the many, many years I've been in the root space of Christianity.
Numero uno isn't Jesus.
It isn't the Torah, it is self.
And the Bible is very clear that you are to die to yourself, daily, daily.
It wasn't weekly, this wasn't three times a year when the men came daily.
Spent a lot of time talking about the three times a year in the feast and that, but yet every day you're supposed to die.
Humble yourself that God be elevated.
Humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you, James 4:10.
Number two, leading with humility begins with understanding you aren't the leader, you're actually just in position to submit to the real leader.
This was one of the hardest things for me to learn and I still wrestle with it, full transparency, I wrestle with it.
I've led this church for seven years, almost eight years, seven years.
But for six of those years, roughly, I thought I was the leader.
And I really didn't do much.
We didn't see no healings.
We didn't see people set free.
We had a really, really good drama cycle.
Created some trauma.
But at the end, people weren't being set free.
People weren't walking in the spiritual manifestation of the gifts of the Lord.
We weren't reaching anybody outside.
We weren't feeding the homeless.
We weren't clothing the homeless.
We weren't doing all these things.
We got maybe three people who show up to do that.
At Pentecost, everything was about doing something for somebody else.
We're slowly but surely transitioning into church where the real leader of this church is Jesus and we're in submission to Jesus.
Slowly but surely.
And I apologize again that it took us seven years to get there.
But this is important because Matthew 10, 24 says a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.
Well, I can promise you right now, I'm in one of the greatest student modes of my life.
So who's teaching me?
Well, it's not Donald Trump, it's not Francis Chan, it's not all these other people out there, it's God.
It's God, it's the word of God, it's the spirit of God, it's the presence of God, it's the power of God.
And when you know that it's God, you will know that it's God because you don't really wanna hear what he has to tell you because that means you actually have to be honest and transparent about who you are.
When you read all the fun books and you're like, "Hey, I'm gonna be a better leader," you're like, "Oh, that principle is great.
" When God talks to you, he's like, "Stop doing that.
"My word doesn't say that.
"You're arrogant.
"You have problems.
"When are you going to repent and humble yourself?
I still see you.
God doesn't say, he's like, "Oh, my new bestseller is out and I really just wanna speak to you in parables and precepts.
" When you're in your quiet time with the Lord and you're asking the Lord to make you a better leader, a better husband, a better wife, he doesn't come and sugarcoat it.
He's like, "Remember that time that you wanted the death of your friend, spiritually, mentally, whatever?
" Yeah, that was murder, dude.
Maybe my patio time a little interesting and a little bit less comfortable than what it used to be.
When you get into the presence of the Lord, if you're the student and you're the servant and he is the master, then you are not equal and you are not better.
Why is that important?
Because we come from a place and a time and a movement with doctrine that the word of God is equal to God, that if we understand the word, and somehow there's this works base, we can have salvation.
You can't do nothing.
That's my homeschool grammar.
You can't do anything to provide it.
You are the student, you are the servant.
He is the master.
Elevate him, humble yourself.
He will raise you in his time by his spirit, by his power.
I can promise that, 'cause I've seen it happen.
Whatever position of authority you have, a CEO, a husband, a wife, whatever, the more you become like the master of the universe, the better your marriage becomes, the better your jobs become, the better your church interaction becomes, because Jesus was all things to all people at all times.
He was perfection.
We are not.
The more we can become like Him, the better.
In 1 Peter chapter five, Peter is addressing the churches and the elders in the church.
And it's important to understand this because he's talking to people who have an elevated responsibility over people.
And in this passage he says, "To the elders among you I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ's suffering who also will share in the glory to be revealed.
" Not regulation, revelation.
Be shepherds of God's flock.
It's not your flock.
It's not my flock.
It's God's flock.
God is under your care.
God has given you and anybody else in a church to our care, which means it's a delegated authority.
It's His authority.
It's His power.
It's glory.
The moment you start taking it for yourself, guess what?
Lucifer did the same thing.
It's God's.
You are God's.
Everybody is God's.
Watching over them, not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be, not pursuing dishonest gain but eager to serve, not lording it over those who entrust you, but being examples to the flock.
And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.
I'm not the chief shepherd, Jesus is the chief shepherd.
If we want that glory, if we want that crown, if we want that kingship, there's only one person that Peter says can give it to us.
That's Jesus.
Why?
Because it's his.
It's his.
We got to humble up and realize it's only his to give.
I can't get there.
I can't level up.
I can't get a cheat code.
It's his and only his to give.
In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourself to your elders.
This is kind of hard.
It's really popular nowadays to deconstruct everything.
All the old people are just, oh, and all of us young people are the smartest people under the sun.
No, there's wisdom amongst the ages, and one of the tactics of the adversary is to get you as a younger person to look at people who are older than you and discredit them, disrespect them, and make you feel like you know more.
It's not new, it didn't just come, it didn't just happen in the last five to 10 years, it's been happening forever.
And somewhere around 40, somewhere around there, You wake up and you realize, my dad was not as dumb as I thought he was.
My mom was not as stupid as, don't you record this and play it back mom?
Was not as smart as she thought.
The moment for me to tell him myself, I was watching whatever that Will Smith movie was on concussions.
Ephraim, what was the name of that movie?
Do you remember?
Anybody remember that name?
Yes.
Okay.
So I'm watching that.
My mom would not let me play football on Pee Wee.
Look at me, guys.
Was I really worried about getting hit by a kid?
No.
I was probably going to do damage to somebody, probably concussion protocol.
But my mom wouldn't let me watch or play, excuse me, play football any time.
I started watching that movie about halfway through that movie.
I had to get up.
I had to walk out.
I had to call my mom.
I'm like crying.
I'm like, "I understand why you didn't let me play football.
Thank you for not making me into a mushroom head.
" And it's weird how some of those things happen in life, But sooner or later in life, you will wake up and you will realize that the people who are older than you aren't just put on this earth to piss you off.
They're not.
They're put here to help you even when you think they don't care.
That's important.
God opposes the proud but chose favor to the humble.
Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may lift you up in due time, cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.
Be alert and sober-minded.
Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion.
Okay, let's listen to this for a second.
We all remember, everybody for the most parts heard the, "Oh, humble yourself unto the mighty hand of God and He'll lift you up.
" Context.
Why does it matter if we need to humble ourselves?
Because you have to be alert and sober-minded, which means if you're not humbling yourself, The Bible says, are you really being alert and sober-minded?
If you're arrogant and prideful, I think a case could be made by this scripture that no, no, you're not alert and you're not sober-minded.
But I know who the Antichrist is, so we're good.
But you're not alert and you're not sober-minded.
Well, what happens then?
Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion.
There's that lion we want.
Oh man, lion of Judah.
What if it's the proring lion of the devil?
What if that's the prowling one that we're looking for that we think is Jesus?
What if it's the devil who's prowling around like a lion, looking for someone to devour?
Somebody people think that Lucifer's some sort of passive dude.
He's like laying on a couch and he's like, "Ah, no, my days are numbered, but hey, phew.
"Oh, I got you to be mad today.
" Phew, he's prowling around to devour you.
He understands what happened in the wilderness.
He's not out there fighting over what the Heblish is or the Aramaic or what the Kee-Jee Veer.
Hey, I got myself a complete Jewish Bible so I fully understand.
He knew what happened in the wilderness.
He knew that Yeshua was not tempted and didn't fall tempted to Him.
He knew when He went to the cross, His days were numbered, so He roars like a prowling lion because if He's going down, He wants you to go with Him.
That should wake you up to be alert, sober-minded, and humble under the mighty hand of God.
And God of all grace who called you to His eternal glory in Christ.
After you suffered a little while, not gonna be a punky dory.
We're not gonna praise dance up in here and all of a sudden the $3 million blessings.
Sometimes it's gonna hurt a little bit.
He will restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.
To him be the power for ever and ever, amen.
Submission through humility is where God restores you and makes you strong, firm and steadfast.
It's not for your glory, it's for his.
If it's for your glory, God's not in it.
If you're doing it for your glory, God isn't in it.
Plain and simple.
Number three, leading with humility means if Jesus got killed, you'll suffer too.
If everything is super easy in life, you have to ask yourself, what are you doing wrong?
On the other side of that, stop trauma cycling.
Stop acting like, oh, well the church hurt me in 1972.
So let's spend the next 45 years of life just moaning and moaning about the church or I had a spouse that did something or I had financial devastation.
Stop spiraling in your trauma drama because at the end of time, life isn't meant for you to make it hard.
If you're making it hard, you're taking the role of God.
Let God either test you and try you or deliver you.
If you start playing those roles, it's not real, it's impure, And what happens when you spiral?
Sooner or later you end up down the drain or the toilet.
And what goes down the drain?
Spit, what goes down the toilet?
Poop, you're not spit, you're not poop.
You were bought and prayed for with a price that is bigger than anything.
It wasn't free, your salvation wasn't free, your freedom isn't free, it comes with the cost, it is a high cost, and we should all be thankful for the cost of that.
Biblical suffering is not the same as modern day trauma drama.
It's just not.
Romans 12, 19, "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, "believe room for God's wrath for it is written.
"It's mine to avenge and I will repay.
" It's important for us to understand that we have to stay humble in our circumstances because we end up becoming vengeful.
We end up trying to circumvent the will of God.
We project on to people and they were like, I don't know what God's doing.
I can promise you, God's not doing anything.
He's sitting there watching you going, oh you had one thing to repent for, how many are we going up to?
This is like when the kids come in, tell me if you feel this, kid comes in, you gotta take your kid and you gotta say, hey I know you were wrong, you didn't do the right thing.
But then they argue with you that they didn't do it.
You got it on camera.
You got it backed up.
Like you got it there.
Like there's no, you don't even need a second witness.
Facial wreck tells you it's your child.
Like all of a sudden your child does this and they're like, what's it mean?
What's it mean?
It's like I need you to tell me the truth.
There's a penalty for lying.
And they're like, I'm telling you the truth.
I didn't do it.
It's like, hold on a second.
Is that you?
Yes.
Is that you doing that?
No.
You just said that's you.
Is that you doing that?
No, that's not okay.
You're grounded, you're no longer grounded today, you're grounded three days.
I didn't do it, I didn't do it, that's not real, you probably did it.
You're grounded four days.
You wanna keep going?
You wanna go for a full week?
I don't understand what you're doing.
Sooner or later, we have to understand we can't keep arguing with God who already knows what happened.
Stop justifying and just start repenting.
Make yourself flow.
There's no reason to die on those hills.
There's no reason.
Take it from a guy who died on a lot of hills over the last nine years.
I wish I would have just bulldozed those hills early on and just walked away.
God has been gracious to me in this season.
Don't take revenge.
Jesus suffered in silence when the Lord stopped his suffering.
I love the social media posts, our passive aggressiveness on social media when we come in it's like somebody teaches something and like oh woe is me, I've been come after here, woe is me, pray for me, I'm being persecuted.
If you're on Facebook, if you're on Instagram, you're not persecuted.
If you have an original iPhone or you're an Android user, you are persecuted.
That's not even in my notes.
I won't say it was Holy Spirit inspired 'cause that was 100% fleshly, but I'm still wrestling with it.
Number four, leading with humility means that you love the truth and not gossip.
There's always two sides to the story.
Guys, in this season, especially in the fall feast, Ephraim and I've been doing things together for many, many years.
Our families have been together.
We've seen some stuff, and I can promise you, one thing that always happens at the feast at Tabernacles is if you got junk and you come and you camp with other people for seven to eight days.
That junk stinks.
We're talking it's past the maggot stage.
They are producing flies.
They are producing all kinds of odor.
If you got issues, it's going to come out in the fall feast when you start fellowshiping with like-minded believers 'cause you can't fake it that well.
Guess what?
You're not supposed to fake it.
Don't love gossip.
Don't love fake, love truth.
Guess what?
I struggle in my marriage sometimes and sometimes we argue, oh God, I can't believe senior pastor fights with his wife.
Sometimes I cuss.
Sometimes I look at my kids and I'm like, I wanna spink them out of anger and maybe sometimes more.
I am human too, we all have problems, but we should love the truth and how to walk in that truth rather than the gospel.
Did you hear, did you hear?
There's a text message going around that they're trying to rebrand HFF to daddy's house and the senior global pastor.
Like all of its nonsense.
Love, truth, seek, truth, stop gossip.
Why?
'Cause that creates a drama culture.
God does not want the church to be a drama culture.
He wants it to be a place of healing.
How can you heal?
You can come confess to me.
If you confess to me what's happening and you need me to work through it, I can promise you, Trollen, I'm not gonna be shocked.
You'd be amazed the things I've heard.
You'd be amazed the things I've done.
Love the truth and not gossip.
John 832, worship team, you can come.
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
Gossip doesn't set you free.
Drama doesn't set you free.
It is worthless.
It does nothing good.
It destroys families.
And I promise you, it is one of the quickest ways that people inside the church and outside the church use the informal lines of communication to divide.
That's not humility in the Lord.
The Lord did not come to divide.
The interesting thing, I was on a call last night with other teachers for a conference for the Saturday church community.
And one of the interesting things, the question that came up is, how do you guys justify in the Torah where God says go in and wipe out everybody, kill Amalek?
And then all of a sudden God comes, Jesus, and he says, "Love your enemies," and he never picked up the sword.
It's interesting when you look at the progression of the story of the Bible, and we understand that the Bible was never about getting us back to Sinai.
It wasn't about getting us back to regulations.
It was getting us back to the intimacy of the revelation of God with men to co-air with him.
And if we get back to that place, if we get to the place where we can be in submission to him, we'll love the truth.
The truth will set us free.
I am the way, the truth, the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through me.
We should love the truth.
And sometimes the truth is not our truth, it's God's truth, and we messed it up.
And we have to be humble enough to say that we just screwed that up that time.
It's okay.
I've screwed up so many things.
John 17, 17, "Sanctify them in the truth "that your word is truth.
"People perish because they do not receive "the love of the truth as to be saved.
I need you to understand something.
Stop, please stop.
Stop taking the word truth in the Bible and putting Torah there.
That's not equal.
That's not what it means.
The truth of God is more than just the written word of God.
So let's stop doing that and let's start looking at the whole essence of who God is.
It's more than one part of God.
God is complete in all parts.
We have to love the truth of God, which means you have to love the word of God as the authoritative of God.
You have to love the Spirit of God as the power of God, and you have to love the sacrifice of God, the Father, and Jesus, and the fact that the only blood that covers the mercy seat that allows us to get into His presence is that, not the blood of a bull of goats.
What I, Jesus, tell you in the darkness, speak in the light, do not fear.
Do not fear.
We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus' Lord and ourself as the bond servants for Jesus' sake.
We have to understand we're not here to be leaders.
Not in the world sense of leaders.
We're here to be servants, a king, a kingdom.
You cannot become the king of that kingdom.
If you think you can, you will fail.
I love the words of Paul there and Corinthians.
The Pharisee of all Pharisees, the Jew of all Jews.
That dude was like, he was going to be the guy, the guy.
Nobody knew phariseical Judaism better than Paul.
Paul was like the guy.
He was in waiting to be the heir apparent to the rabbinical throne, so to speak.
And he had a revelation with the power in the presence of God, and he changed.
Why did he need to change?
Because they were preaching themselves and what they could do.
They were preaching that if you walk this way you are righteous and there is none righteous except for Christ.
And through Christ and the atoning sacrifice of Christ we can then be righteous and set free not out of anything we can do because we boast.
Says less we should boast.
But everybody in this room knows if you've been in the Roots base for a while we love to boast.
I do the feast you don't.
Did you know that Christmas is pegging?
Did you know that you read people who lied on their deathbed and quoted as scholars.
We're all sinners who have fallen short of the glory.
Why?
Because the glory is in ours, the glory is God's.
And sooner or later in our walk, guys, if I've done anything to help you as a spiritual leader of this flock, I'm going to teach you that the only thing you need to do is get rid of yourself and make room for God.
The Word of God, the presence of God, the Spirit of God, time with God.
rid of yourself.
Whatever you do, however hard that is, I still haven't figured it all out.
I'm not here telling you I'm writing my new book.
One way to Jesus.
That's right, Ty.
I see, Brett.
There's only one way.
It ain't through me.
There's only one way through Jesus.
And last but not least, there's no end, no office.
Paul in the book of Acts, Paul has this sick kind of weird twisted, our Western mind doesn't, he's like, you know what?
I want to go back to Jerusalem.
I want to go back and preach the gospel.
Yeah, I understand they're going to captive, I'm going to be putting captive and they're going to kill me.
I understand this, but he went back and when he went back knowing that, not only did he get to preach in Jerusalem, and yes, they all turned against him again.
Shocker, they did it to Jesus and they did it to Paul.
Then he's like, you know what, let's go to Rome.
Let's go to Rome.
And he goes to Rome so that he can stand in the middle, and you ever read Philippians, go read Philippians.
We're gonna get into that as we close with the last scripture, but he's standing there, he's like, guess what?
They're gonna kill me.
I know they're gonna kill me, but I'm standing in the center of the city on a box talking about Jesus.
Yes!
Dude's like on death row.
They're about to kill him.
And he's like, I came here to preach Jesus.
And some of us are worried about like, can we talk about Jesus when we're at the bar?
Can we talk about him when we're at work?
This dude went into the lion's den where they were gonna kill him so he could preach the gospel there.
That's crazy.
So if we're truly walking in humility to the Lord, that means in the obedience, you should do it until you die.
Now don't come and ask me to sign off on preaching Jesus while you bungee jump off a bridge without a parachute.
That's stupidity.
That's not like Paul, you're not a martyr, you're just stupid.
but you should not run away from the opportunity to preach the gospel to people in your life.
Philippians two, therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one in the spirit and have won in mind.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.
Rather in humility, value others above yourself.
Not looking for your own interests, but each of you to the interest of others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Jesus Christ.
Who being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be used as his advantage.
He didn't come and say, I got the player's only jacket signed by Adonai.
No, he didn't take advantage of his status or his calling or his anointing.
Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in the human likeness and being found in appearance as a man.
He humbled himself, being obedient to death, even the death on the cross.
Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that's above every name.
Case closed.
The name above every name in the highest place.
Stop telling me Jesus isn't deity.
Stop telling me Jesus isn't God.
It says He is.
You don't get to tell Him He's not.
And I don't get to tell Him He's not.
Give Him the name above every name.
The name of Jesus that every knee shall bow that includes your knees will bow in heaven and in earth and under the earth.
Every tongue will acknowledge that Yeshua is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Yeshua is Lord to the glory of the Father.
Not to the angst of the Father.
Not to the opposite of the Father.
It's to the glory of the Father that Yeshua is Lord.
'Cause it's God's glory that He delegated to His Son and made Him and raised Him to those places.
If you wanna win in life, if you wanna learn how to think, walk, imitate Christ.
If you wanna learn how to actually be a Christian, a messianic, a Hebrew roots, whatever you want to call yourself, a really good Baptist, a Pentecostal, whatever it is.
Learn how to imitate Christ's walk.
And that doesn't mean that you are awesome.
That means that you lower yourself to serve first.
And it matters how you pray.
It matters how you praise and it matters that you do so in humility.
It matters how you pray and it matters how you praise and it matters how you walk in humility.
Because sooner or later we have to be real with ourselves about every one of us have some place in our life that we need to make more room for God because we filled the room with us.
Guys next week it's a feast of trumpets.
It's a day of shouting, it's a day of blowing of horns, it's a day of rejoicing.
It is said that it would be possibly the day of the return of Jesus.
Now, I'm not going to get into eschatology.
I'm not going to get into the prophecy.
I don't believe next Saturday we're going to see Jesus come back.
But it also says that we're to prepare every day as if it was our last and to die to ourselves.
And so, this is the last Sabbath before the start of the fall feast, the Moa Deem, the the appointed times, what you do matters.
If you approach the same as the same, expect the same.
Good, you checked a box.
If you want to feel the power and the presence of God in your life, you actually have to do something to welcome him into those places.
Don't go into the feast and the festival's the same.
Not with the same heart posture, not with the same attitude, not with the same eschatology, not because we're looking for some nuclear deal or some random thing.
Know what we're looking for is for God to radically change this earth and sooner or later to have enough mercy on us, not that he wipes out the earth, but he comes back to save the earth.
And we have sat in a place for years where we come to the fall feast and we say, "I just want God to come back.
"I want him to come back "because I want to be in the new Jerusalem.
" And also, we don't publicize this as much, but it's said a lot.
We say, but I want him to wipe out all the evil people on the earth.
Guys, if you're gonna be saved, and they're the evil ones.
God says, love your enemies, pray for your enemies.
He says, he is the merciful, righteous one, we are not.
And when we're passing that type of justice onto people that's not righteous justice.
What happens if you just lay it down and say, you know what?
I don't know if it's Saturday or Sunday.
I don't know if it's the Hallel calendar or the New Moon calendar or the one that we made up in 1982.
I don't know, there's a hundred of them.
I don't know if your name is Yahweh or you who are Adonai or El Shaddai or, I don't know, but Lord, I just wanna be in your presence.
I just wanna sit at your feet.
I just wanna feel a move of your spirit inside of me.
Lord, I just want you to meet me face to face.
What if your heart posture is one of humility before Him rather than one that's demanding Him to show up at your table the way you want?
What would God do in that presence, in that time, that would be different from the expectation that's before?
I can tell you, I'm not going in this Fee Cycle the same.
I'm not going in with the same expectation.
I got no expectation.
I am literally going in and saying, "God, I'm coming.
I'm coming to see you.
I'm coming to feel your power.
Whatever you wanna do, do it.
However you wanna do it, do it.
Don't let me get in your way.
You control the way.
How many of us can say that in our lives?
I ask you humbly to look inside yourself, not for me, not because there's emotionalism, but because the power of God transforms lives.
And I can't give you the power of God.
I can just urge you to get in his presence and make room for him.
(gentle music)
