City Central Church Podcast
He Is Able
Chris Hippe
Last week, we talked about the goodness of God. We talked about how the glory of God is found and the goodness of God. Now tonight, I want to show the hand right now. I want to summarize what the Lord has placed upon my heart, which I believe in many ways will impact all of us. We'll impact our families, we'll impact our community, we'll impact our city, and we'll impact our nation and the world if we can grab hold of this revelation. I don't say that lightly. I say that as one that has been sitting before the Lord, saying, "God, I want the word that you want to come and breathe and speak." And it's summarized in this. Say this after me, say, "He is able." - He is able. - Open your Bibles tonight, and I want you to go to Romans chapter four. And we are going to see in Romans chapter four how able God really is. This is the understanding that we find with Abraham and Sarah. And last week we looked a little bit at Moses' life, but I want us to look tonight at what do Abraham and Sarah's lives have to do with you and me? And where directly you and I are at and where directly what God wants to bring and in essence who he is in this whole process. And so that's enough of a setup for the message tonight. Go to verse 18 of Romans chapter four. And we are going to start right into it. It says this, the second part of chapter 18, chapter 17 says this, "God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did, who contrary to hope and hope believed so that he became the father of many nations according to the word that was spoken. So shall your descendants be." What we see here is the understanding that Abraham had a promise over his life. Show me a hand if you have a promise over your life or you know a promise over your child's life or you know a promise over your school or you know a promise that God has spoken into your heart. I want to tell you right from the get-go that God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did is on your side. He's on your side. He is the God that looks at something dead and goes, "I'm gonna bring that back to life." He looks at your finances and he's able to look at that and go, "I'm gonna bring that back to life." In fact, he is so creative in his divine will and plan that he can look at something that doesn't even exist, bring it into existence to say, "Told you so." How big is the God that you and I love and serve? I was listening to a message this week and he said, "How big is the God that you know and did you create him in your image or are you serving the one, the God of the Bible?" And I said, "Oh God, that's good. I thank you for that." He's the one that gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did through his divine creative power. Verse 19 says this, "And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead since he was about a hundred years old." And the deadness of Sarah's womb. And so what we see is the promise which many of us know is the promise that you will have. You will have a son and that son will be the descendant that everyone else comes down through which we know is Isaac. And the promise is one that you must imagine here we find Abraham a hundred years old and you see Sarah a hundred years old. And what the Bible reveals to us very clearly is he was not weak in faith because he did not consider his own body. Now what does that have to do with you and I, you might say? You see, Abraham had the ability to look not to himself or his physical surroundings because everything he looked at was weak. Everything was weak, decrepit on its way out the door. And then not only does he look to his own life, his own abilities, his own strength. He looks at it and he says, "Can't do it. "I have no idea how I can tangently fulfill "the physical in the physical what God has promised. "It does not make any sense to me. "I look at my own weakness. "I look at everything that's wrong with me. "How can this be God? "You've got the wrong one." So he analyzes himself. How many of us analyze ourselves frequently? Can I really do this? Can I really do this? God proposes a promise. And he says, I'm quick to go, "How can I do this, butt, butt, butt?" And I look to myself. You see, Abraham did not even consider himself. It wasn't even a thought. It wasn't even passing glimpse. He was that locked in on the God that he served. He didn't even, he wasn't even interested in himself. It was a fleeting thought. And I go, Abraham was a man of great faith. And trust. And if that was not enough, he didn't look to himself. He didn't even consider himself, but also he didn't even consider his wife. You see, he didn't even consider other people. He did not even consider another person in their strength. And what they could do, he went from his self goes weak. He went to other people and he said weak. And then he kept going on in verse 20. And he says, he did not labor at the promise of God. Through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith. Everybody say strengthened in faith. Giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. You see what we see here is Abraham didn't even labor through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. And he was fully convinced because the message topic, he is able. He is able, he looked to the Lord. And there's something that he understood and something Sarah understood that was at the root of his faith. You see, Peggy Fry's definition of faith is what? For saking all, I trust him. Does somebody have a tissue? I was crying too much, obviously. Paul that, praise God. Thank you. I don't know, does anybody else know his run? When you worship? That's me too. Praise God. So, but was strengthened in faith? We'll try to keep going. It looks like a huge one. They come from me, bro. That was yours, too. I used it all up today. That's a cute little hankie right there for us. Thanks, Chad. I always count on you for fresh impartation. I'll let you hear. So, when we look at this, I'm much better now. I'm less distracted, I don't know about you. Okay. So, let's look at this. So, he did not wager and he strengthened in faith. He was fully convinced what he had. So, in faith, he found himself for saking all I trusted him. That's Peggy Fry's definition of faith. For saking everything I trusted him. Abraham so came across the line that he forsook everything and says, here I will stand and I will trust in him. I don't know how it's gonna work and it makes absolutely no sense. And quite frankly, my parents could call me right now and I can't explain it to them. The promise is because they are that impossible. Someone that does not have faith might go, huh? You're doing what? You're believing God for a, what? A move of who? And who's coming in that way? And where is it coming from? It makes absolutely no sense. But here we find Abraham and he says, here I am, I can do no other like Martin Luther. He says, we're saking all I will trust in him. You see, he believed the promise because he knew who the promise there was. You see, it all goes back to who is the promise there? All roads lead to him. All roads lead to your and my understanding of the God we serve. All roads, all roads go back to the God that we love and we serve. And if my problems are bigger than the God I serve, then I don't yet know him. If the problems that I see in my nation are too big for my God, then I made my God in my own image. And not his. All roads go back to who he is. And you wanna know who he is, that's why we go to the gospels. 'Cause you see Jesus and the Word of God says that everything was shown about who God is through Christ. You wanna know God, know Jesus. And so may we not be westernized, friends, may we not be westernized. To think that we are somehow, that we really know him. Because when I went to Hong Kong and I sat with those mainland Chinese and tried to look in their eyes and I go, you know him. You just know him. You know him so wanna be around you. I can't understand, you're so beyond this sophisticated world system of hierarchy and oh, get yourself a, you know, build up the ladder and money and all this stuff. I just want to be around you. Josh Reid comes up to me. Have you been over there on that side yet? I said, what side are you talking about? He said, the Chinese side, the mainland Chinese, he goes, oh, I cried. I was like, I'm going right now. (audience laughs) And he was right because they know him. Their God is the God of Abraham and he's our God. But we want to be a people that are continuing to know him and fall deeper in love with him and not allow him to be lessened because of my experience. But may I be one that hunts him? I want to find you. You say, seeking you will be found. And so here I come. You see, I want my life quest to know him and to say, I mean, I'm not telling you that I know him from my head. But all I'm telling is when I open the Word of God, it's like I get transported somewhere else. I don't know what happened. That's what I want. And so this is what Abraham knew. You see, when he understood, he understood the concept that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. You see, Abraham, this is for you and I, is we want more faith than to know him. We must be in this thing and hear this thing and continue to digest what it's saying to us because he is able to perform. I don't want us to now bring up our issue to the table. This is what Westernized thinking does. This is who God is and this is how to solve your problem. This is who he is and this is how it'll solve your financial woes and all this stuff. Why can't he just be him without me? Why can't he just be him and get all the glory like this? Can he, oh you, he would just be him. But my flesh comes up and says, it's me. I need this and I need this. So I can even draw unto him, which I find myself doing with my needs. But God is saying, come to me and know me and I'll give to you, but come just to know me. And that's the most pure way that you and I can live and breathe and have our being. And so what we say is when Abraham looked unto God and saw him, verse 22, it says, and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. You see, you want to live a righteous life and I want to live a righteous life, let's know him. And when we know him, then it'll be counted to us as righteousness because it will so impact us. We don't need a message to come and say, we need to set apart from the world. We can't be watching. We can't be watching all this trash on the TV. We can't be inundating ourselves. When I know him, I'm so far away from it. It's like that stuff is disgusting and I don't need someone legalistically coming and telling me, get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it. But I taste him and I know him and I see his holiness have done. I'm just like, I'm out. I'm out, so you're gonna go to one PG-13 movie. I'm not interested. You're gonna go one and you're gonna go hang out and entertain your flesh. I'm sorry, I can't. I just, I'm held to the knowledge that I understand of him. And then you see Abraham, that's the God that he served. And what we see then is to me, I start going, I start looking in verse 23. It says, now it was not written for his sake alone, but it was imputed to him, but also for us. You and me. This isn't some secret game of have and have nots. Abraham's life and the promise was so you and I in this day and age could learn from it, grab hold of it, and now seize it and know him. This is what he knew. And so it also says, for us, it shall be imputed to us who believe in him, who raised up Jesus, our Lord, from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification. There's the proof and the pudding. It's all about Jesus. Why was it ultimately happened is because of our offenses that Jesus was delivered up and you and I stand justified. Now here I go, well, what did Abraham and Isaac know about the Lord? What did they, what did, so it's one thing for me to say, "I know, I know God." But it seems like when you look at their lives, Abraham stood in faith because he knew God, yes, but there's something about who God is to them that they just had a, I understand, forsaking all, I trust him and I trust specifically this thing in him. Not that it's separate, but this is part of who he is 'cause God doesn't have separate entities, it's all one. I can have, I can be nice and angry at one time. That's an impossibility for God. He is always one, never changing, never will be. He is an essence one and not many things, but one. It's all together and you can't have one without the other. And so, but there's something in this pool that Abraham and Sarah got. Go to Hebrews 11 and then we'll bring it home as to what that has to do with you and I. Praise God, how many of you glad you're here tonight on this? (congregation cheering) Labor Day, praise God. Praise God for the history of Labor Day. So confusing. So anyway, get off my, I want you to go to Hebrews chapter, let me check my notes here. Hebrews chapter 11, okay, verse 19. And let's look at this together. (congregation cheering) So this is this. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise, offered up his only begotten son of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. Think about that, that God considered God able, hey, if my son dies, the one that's promised, even if he dies, he's able to raise him up. Think about how contrary that is to you in my thought. Now God, if I sink this knife into him, what's gonna happen is he's gonna bleed and he's gonna die, but Abraham had so much faith, he goes, hey, if that happens, he'll raise him from the dead. That's intense faith, amen? Now, flip back to verse 11. Flip back to verse eight of chapter 11, it says this, "By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out," everybody say, "called to go out." - Oh, how about? - There's something about setting apart, being set apart when God calls you out. When you understand who God is, you will be set apart. Called to go out to the place that which he would receive as an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going, praise God. Someone give me a name, amen? By faith, he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac, Jacob, and the heirs with him as the same promise, for he waited for the city which has foundations whose builder and nagors got. He had so much faith that he waited. He had so much faith in God's promise that he waited. Anybody have a hard time waiting? Me, I'm not trying to coax you, me, okay? There is this waiting that takes place when I know who God is. I'm able to wait upon God. There is a spiritual waiting, and even when I'm physically exerting, I can still be spiritually waiting. Saul did not wait for Samuel to come. A spirit of religion will come and will not wait. It will not wait upon God. It will not wait to see it come into existence. It will hurry itself through and Abraham waited, but he still went. How do you like that for a scriptural dichotomy? By faith, Sarah, okay? Now here's where Sarah comes to be in. How many of you know that a wife oftentimes gets it before the man? All the men are there, why is it okay? It's true, at least in my house. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive, seed, and she bore a child when she was past age because. Now here's the because, because she judged him as faithful, who had promised. You see, when you see Sarah's life, the special thing that she knew about God was that he was faithful. He was faithful because he's the one that brought it into existence, and he will be the one that brings it out in the end. He is the one that gave the word. He is the one that's gonna fulfill the word. Our job is now to fulfill what God has asked us to do. You see, a faithful, a faithful God is one that will not leave you behind and be behind. He is one that is always coming after us. He is faithful to the word over here in my life. He is faithful to what he wants to do in this city. He is faithful what he wants to do in a middle school and a high school. He is faithful what he wants to do in elementary school in a workplace. He's faithful to fulfill, and all it takes is a people that are faithful to him. And what you have is a dangerous combination that so transformed the entire world in Abraham and Sarah, that for seeking all, I will trust him, and I will trust in his faithfulness that he's gonna come through, that you and I really sit here as part of that promise that God gave Abraham and Sarah. So when we see God's faithfulness, A.W. Pink says this. He says, God has given us exceeding great precious promises, but are we really counting on his fulfillment of them? Are we really counting on his fulfillment of them? Are we actually expecting him to do for us all that he has said? Are we resting with implicit assurance that these words he is faithful has promised? You see, what happens is when we see God's faithfulness, it's impossible to be faithless if you're a believer. This is what happens when a person understands God's faithfulness, it will so provoke you and I to boldness, because when you and I understand our security founded Jesus Christ, which was the ultimate act of faithfulness, that Jesus, like in Isaac, was going to be, everything was dead, you and me, dead, dead, very dead, really dead, like no life, dead, like in fact, not just dead, but really stinky dead, bad dead. This is you and I, revelation, this is good to know. I am that dead, but if it weren't for Jesus who died on a cross to raise me up and be able to declare the promise over my life, that is the ultimate act of faithfulness. And then from that faithfulness, now I am so emboldened now to be who God called me to be. I'm emboldened to go after a generation, I'm emboldened to go next door to my neighbors, I'm emboldened to raise up my kids, I'm emboldened to live who I am because I know who he is, because you and I are firmly rooted to a faithful God. So we struggle with fear, how many of you struggle with fear? Think about now fear through the lens of God's faithfulness. And if I have a revelation of his faithfulness, I will tell you, I will be bold, I will declare, and I will move. The fear of the Western mindset is when if we say God is faithful, then it causes apathy. Oh, he's faithful, he's faithful. A person that understands he's faithful will not be inactive, it just, oh, God come one day. A person that understands how faithful he is into the extent that he gave himself to me and the extent that he's offering me to give now out to others, it's a different ball game. One is over here, and this is where God's calling us, is to understand and live in that faithfulness. And so for you and I, the call is this, is we live in an hour that we must call upon God's faithfulness. The reality of what I look at when I turn on the news or I walk around the streets, I don't see, with my physical eyes or my spiritual eyes, all this great news, no matter how dampered up it is. We are in a state that we must come back to God as a nation we must read now, focus. When we have looked away from Calgary and said, oh, we can do this on our own. And what happens is that it's all forms of pain come upon a nation, but if a remnant will arise and pray and set themselves apart and call upon God's faithfulness and his mercy, who knows? Who knows? My God is faithful and he hears our prayers. But if I grab hold of the urgency of the hour and I grab hold of the faithfulness of God, I will pray my guts out, 'cause it's a reality of exponential proportions. I look at my own life and look at situations in our city and I drive down streets and the burden is heavy. And so what happens is we as a people must come together and call out to God. We must be a people that recognize the urgency of the hour because it's urgent. Do you feel the urgency? Kind of sorta. There's an urgency in the air that God is calling us to partake in. You see, what I don't see, I see school, I see schools going away from God. I see business decisions going sideways. I see our nation in abortion and you see an exponential rates. And I can try to turn a blind eye, but if I turn a blind eye, then I see the faithfulness of God and then I'm trapped. And if I'm trapped, I can just become indifferent, which is not who we are, or I can do something about it. And what doing is is praying to see God's will come. Hearing from heaven, God, I call upon your faithfulness. Oh, how much you love our nation and how much you favor our nation and how much mercy you have to our nation. But God, I see the sin in our land. Come Lord Jesus. Come Lord Jesus. Don't wait, come. Don't wait, come. We don't have time to even consider the ramification. Something must happen. Now, do you feel it? So when I taste him, it'll cause me to move. It'll cause me to move into prayer. So this is what I want to apply this word to tonight, is for you and I. As a body, I believe, and the elders believe, and the staff believes, 'cause we're all putting this into effect in our personal lives, that the Lord is calling us to the opportunity to fast for 40 days. He's giving us the opportunity to come and fast and set ourselves apart. The elders are doing the staff we're doing in many different ways. Okay, many of your flesh goes up and goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." That's what I did too, okay? So it's all right, it's natural. But what's not natural is allowing to overtake God's will. You see what I'm saying? And so the staff and the elders have come together and many other people, and what we're saying is there is the joy of being able to recognize the times and to take the word of God and apply it to my life. And what happens through fasting is there's many different ways, many different things that happen. I wanna send to you a couple of handouts that I love, but what happens in the spiritual fast is we demonstrate humility before God and pray, seeking God's face and repenting of sin that God would bring revival to our city, our body, to the nation. There's a setting apart throughout scripture that fasting just, and what it does is it allows us to have the worldliness decreased and have the godliness increased. When we do it right, what it does is I become weak in my flesh and I realize how strong I am in Him. I might have a little bit of some physical drain, but the spiritual gain is so high. It's so incredible. And so we as a body, there's many different types of fast and many different reasons. But we wanna come together for our nation. We wanna be praying for our nation. We wanna see the nation turn back to the Lord. We wanna see the nation recognize Jesus to worship Him and to love Him and to really be the nation that is under God we trust and that we really mean it. And it's not a God, but it's the living God, the one that sent His Son on a cross. That's what we want to pray. But we wanna be a people that come together to see them. We wanna see what happens also is there's a personal benefit that comes from fasting. Many times what happens is you yourself will experience a personal type of revival. When you set yourself apart unto God, when you say God, I'm fasting from my strength today. So I'm giving up food for a lunch or a dinner or for many days in a row. Or God, I'm fasting from my money and I'm living in very, I'm living set apart and giving up financial security to bless another person, it's a type of fast. God, I'm fasting from my physical, from my time and I'm gonna bless another person with servitude. It's setting yourself apart unto the Lord that makes no sense to the world's system because you're that designated to God. There's a fast that God calls us to and He brings it into existence. How many of you have ever fasted before? Raise your hand, praise God. How many of you feel a little bit like it's time to start fasting? It's marked by an urgency. It's marked by, I just kind of become a little bit, I haven't been as sharp as I've been. Anybody feel that way? There's a wonderful impartation that comes when we designate ourselves on a fast. And so we're gonna send you a couple things this week on fasting, we'll send it to you tomorrow to understand different types of fasts. You can water fast, you know, you can juice fast, you can Daniel fast, you can media fast. There's anything that feeds the flesh. Take that thing out of your life. Number one, don't be surprised, your flesh will lurch. Okay, it'll happen. Expect that and expect a detoxing to happen of your person, your physical body, your mind, your spirit, there's a detoxing that takes place, but then also inspect to encounter God in unprecedented proportions. Because what God is doing is He's saying, I want to come into this nation, I want to come into this city, and we're saying God, here we are, we're setting ourselves apart to pray and cry out. Now it's one thing to take something out, but it's another thing to put something in. So if you take something out of your life, you want to be praying consistently. You want to be in the word of God. We want to be a people that are continuing to build. We got to be here on Thursday night to pray. I don't know if you were here this last Thursday night, but it was a wonderful experience. I mean, it was such an over, overjoyed time. Being here on Thursday night, we have training from six to seven, but be here, make sure you're here, that we could be a corporate community continuing to pray and to cry out that we could live set apart. Amen? - Amen. - So let's do this tonight. Daniel, as you guys come on back up here, now you're back in here, if you are. I just want to declare, I just want to see this. How many of us tonight, let's just go before the Lord. Father, right now, we don't want to do something because someone said we should. We want to hear from you. And so Father, we ask right now, because of your faithfulness over our lives. Father, are you calling? Why don't you just ask the Lord right now? Let's just say this, say this out loud to the Lord, say, Lord, are you calling me to fast? And here before Him, just say, Lord, are you calling me to fast? Are you calling me to fast and to engage in this? Are you calling me to fast, to live even more set apart and to know you more? Are you calling me fast, not to gain favor with you, but to literally see your will come? And then if He's saying yes to you, I want to encourage you, just ask Him, what are you calling me to? What are you calling me to? Like we said, it could be time and media, it could be food and you can go on, you can take certain things out of your diet called a Daniel fast and just live up with nuts and grubs and Jesus' name, you can do that. It's a fast because what's happening in your spirit is being strengthened by the Lord. So Father right now, I pray you speak to each one of us. Right now that you speak to each one of us in Jesus' name as to what you're calling me to do and calling to fast from in the urgency of this hour and the need to see your will come. And if the Lord is calling you to fast, I just want you to, as a sign of acknowledgement before the Lord, doesn't mean you're more spiritual than other people, I just couldn't encourage you more to join in on this because this is where people are gonna just gonna come alive, but more importantly, it's when we get to know Jesus more. So just by a sign of declaration under the Lord and one another, if you've been called to fast, will you just raise your hand, fast in some way, shape or form, just raise your hand under the Lord. I'm not even a bother as to who it is. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. So we wanna get educated on this. And so I'm gonna send you more material tomorrow. But let's be a people that literally engage in this underneath the banner of faithfulness. Let's give you a feed with me tonight. So Father, we thank you in Jesus' name for the faithfulness towards us, your faithfulness towards us. Thank you that we can trust you and we know you. And so every burden tonight that we have come in with and that we have seen it through our own physical eyes, that we have seen ourselves. We've looked to ourselves and we've looked to others to solve this burden. Father, we ask for forgiveness right now. For every way that we have held burdens on because we look through the physical eye, I'd like you to join me in my prayer tonight in Jesus' name. Let's pray and lay down the burdens that we have looked to ourselves and we have contemplated ourselves and we have forgotten God in the situation. I invite you to hand that right back to the Lord right now. Lord, we give you our finances. We give you our job situation, relational tensions. Father, we give them to you now in Jesus' name. Father, we give to you Lord all ministry situations. Lord, we give to you our burdens that we have looked to our own personal lives in Jesus' name. And so let's do this together 'cause corporate confession is good confession. Let's just get rid of our unbelief. Let's lay it down at the foot of the cross tonight and make a declaration of faithful forsaking all. I will trust him. Let's just do this together in Jesus' name. - Jesus' name. - Lord, I ask forgiveness. - Lord, ask forgiveness. I believe in trusting you. - In trusting you. - I lay that down now. - I lay that down now. - And I train it in Jesus' name. - I train it in Jesus' name. - For your faithfulness. - For your faithfulness. - You are faithful to me. - You are faithful to me. - And so Lord, right now. - Lord, right now. - I declare this situation under the blood of Jesus. - This situation under the blood of Jesus. I will see it through your faithfulness. - I will see it through faithfulness. - And it's Jesus' name. - And it's Jesus' name. - I rebuke. - I rebuke. - All unbelief. - All unbelief. - And heaviness. - And heaviness. - Also be now. - Oh, yeah. - Freedom to me. - Freedom to me. - Because I live and serve a loving God. (audience laughing)