Gateway Church's Podcast
The World's First Father's First Words
A Gateway Sermon
I want you to know that equality life is no accident. It is a collection of principles that God has laid down. If there is a part of your life that is not satisfactory, be it personal or be it in your home or your business, your money or any other venue in your life, if it isn't satisfactory, if you're experiencing frustration, it is because you've even neglected, disbelieved or simply a great principle has been obscured. Now I'm going to share a principle tonight that God awakened me two a number of years ago and I want you to get it and you don't get it by trying to understand it. You get it by doing what the principle entails. You just say, "I receive it." Now the pastor has gone out on a limb as far as that goes in having me. You don't know me. I have survived the church for 54, almost 60 years. I've been in the ministry a lot of that time and I've survived that too and so at least I am here. I am still extant. I am in existence. So I'll call upon you to just take the pastor's word. I could be believable and it might be wise for you to accept what I'm going to share. So I just want you to say, "I'm going to get it. I'm really going to get it." Okay, God help you to get it. Can your Bible please with me to the second chapter of the book of Genesis? I'll need to work toward the text to set you up for it and then work from the text with a story. And where did you tell me the clock was? Oh, there it is. It's later than I thought already, it's all right, no problem. Two of years ago I was writing one of my books, I think maybe the fourth one and I just hit the wall early and I always did that when I realized I didn't have enough sense to write a book and I said, "Lord, what am I doing?" And I said, "I was writing about the home. I felt like that I had become a custodian of some experiences that had changed my life's life. By the way, let me present my wife. Would you let me do that?" Jerry stand up. Can I? No, I know what you're thinking. You need to know that we have been married a year and a month and a half, it's about it, a year and a month and a half. I lost my wife two and a half years ago, she lost her husband six years ago and a couple of years ago, a little over that, God led us together. I never present her, but what it haunts me, what you're thinking. How did you get that? So I think you deserve an answer. I had come upon me a powerful, anointing, for romance. And I became to her absolutely irresistible. Just thought you needed to have that answer. Anyway, I was married to my wife for forty-seven and a half years, Barbara. She was married to her husband for thirty years. We have seventy-seven and a half years to recommend us to be able to make it in marriage, hallelujah. So I just heard myself say wife and realized she hadn't been presented. You're so pretty. What a smile. Anyway, I was going to write a book on the home. I've been married probably, oh, twenty-five years at the time. And we had recently turned the corner and I wanted to chronicle what I had learned that brought us to a new level of joy in marriage. And so I had a sneaking suspicion that the words that closed out, Genesis chapter two, were very, very important after all they were a part of almost every wedding ceremony I'd ever attended and every ceremony I'd ever had a part in. And suddenly I awakened the fact that it didn't have a clue what it meant. I went to the big thick books and realized they didn't either. I tried my Hebrew. I took Greek. I did well. It took me. I never, never got it. So that didn't help. Now I did something that to me has become a rule of permanence, whatever that is. I think it's a law of biblical understanding and interpretation. And there are some times when there are passages that are totally obscure to you. You just don't get them. And when I exhaust every possibility, I just stop and say, "Now Lord, do you remember what you meant when you said that?" And would you mind so much releasing what you remember to me because what I read in the King James or in the other versions, it just doesn't come through. So let me set it up. Adam was alone. God had created prior to His creation all the animals. I'm sure Adam had spoken before, but we have no record of it. What you're about to hear is the world's first husbands, first words. If you please, the world's first fathers, first words. Bound to be important. Monumental times call for monumental words. You don't land a man on the moon. And he descend the ladder and put his foot on the moon and say, "Oh, shucks." He goes down the steps and he says, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I will remember that, it'll be written in history books as long as time exists. Now, Adam's listening and God says, "You know, it's not good that man be alone. I will make a helper suitable for you." That's an interesting word I'm told in the Hebrew. It's a sort of a double, it's a suited helper, a helper helper. A good helper, a helping helper. Somebody that'll do you good all the time, I'm going to make one for you. I'm sure Adam was mystified, but the strange thing is that after God said that, instead of pursuing what he promised, he headed in another direction. He began to send all the animals by Adam and he said, "I want you to name them." Now, what did Adam have in his mind? A helper helper. And so here they came, large and small, of every kind and every size and every shape, who Adam didn't know whether to name them or claim them. I mean, you could understand down the road around the corner, came a hippopotamus. Maybe that was the original name, maybe Adam was saying a hippo, I hope that's not her. You know, it works like that. And he named all the animals. And the name stuck, so says the scripture, it says here, this is not my text, but the pretext. So he gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. And those names were what their names still are. And then, thoughtfully, the writer says, "But for Adam, there wasn't found a helper." And by now Adam is a little shaken up and a little hopeful and a little excited. And God puts him sweet. He takes one of his ribs out, closes the wound and evidently it rapidly heals. And with that rib, from next to his heart, he made a woman, her name meant, taken from man. What a moment. The rest of time on earth would center around what would happen in this union, a man and a woman. Every culture would rise or fall on the quality of the relationship between the two. And as I began to see that, dear Lord, I've got to know what it meant when he looked at her and responded. Now let me read to you what he said. So he wakes up and they're standing before him in all her unadorned splendor. He sees her and he says, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman before she was taken out of man." Now whether the rest of this is coverage or what he said, we do not know for this reason a man will leave father and mother and cleave him to her and his wife and they shall be one flesh. Now I wasn't satisfied with that translation. Sounds more to me like a laboratory report than the overflow of an aesthetic heart. And so I've revised it a bit. Wow. It's a good start. I don't think he looked at her and spoke in monotone. I think he looked at her and said, "Wow, this is it. The rest of me, part of my structure, mine to have and care for, taken from me, given to me, worth leaving all for and cleaving to forever and we're one, wow." Now I was writing the book and it began to roll. I don't know how many of you ever wrote a book, but if you've reached this time it's a writer's dream where something breaks, the damn breaks, and you begin to write. And I began to, I don't type very fast anyway, but I couldn't type fast. The ideas were rolling over me like a damn bursting and I began to, I began to write. It began to come. I never had a period that I remember in my life where more revelation came about a thing than what I'm going to share with you. In fact it was so, it was so overpowering that we were moving at the time, moving from one house to another house about two and a half miles away. I said to my wife, don't move, my study don't move me, move everything else, but I'm staying here. I'm on a roll. So I was writing, woke up in a couple of days and I was the only thing in my house. And I got lonely, it's not good that man be alone. So I said, well move me and we had moved to a wonderful estate and a nice study in the woods. And there I continued. But it was rolled on in my study and the book was taking shape and I just was giving myself time to write and I just dropped by to pick up my mail real early one morning and there was a woman there. I knew her, I knew her husband and she just was, she looked awful, her face was red and splotchy, her eyes were blood shot, her hair was disabled. She looked like she had been run over by a truck. She said, pastor, you've got to talk to me and my husband. We had a knockdown drag out last night and I thought to myself, now I'm writing a book on the home for goodness sake. I don't want to get caught up in counseling marriage and there was something inconsistent about my thoughts. I fell under sudden conviction and I said, well, will he talk? He said yes, but you need to know he never has told the truth to the counselor yet. I'm getting more excited about this counseling session. I said, okay, how about this afternoon at two o'clock? She said that would be fine. I was writing, the last thing I wanted to do was getting embroiled in a controversy between a husband and a wife. But here they came absolutely on time and I bring them into the house and I sat at George over here and vanily over here and I usually ask a wife, now what's the problem? She pours out a tale of whoa, like never heard on land nor sea. And then when she's through, I turn to him and he says, I didn't know there was a problem. Damn. Well, I thought I'd do a change for this one and I said, George, what's the problem? Now this is almost exactly what he says. I think I've brought the message in his presence and I said, yep, that's what I said. He said, I'll tell you preacher, she's overweight and sloppy, a terrible housekeeper. And to tell you the truth, I can't understand how anybody could be as dumb as she is after living with somebody as intelligent as I am for 22 years. I proceed right away that there was a problem in the match. Now he didn't stop there, he's the type fellow who's going to talk at the drop of the hat and drop it himself and then keep on talking. And he said, he just kept on vituperating, that's a wonderful word, I don't know what it means, but that's what, I'm sure that's what he was doing. And I was getting bored with it and so suddenly I stopped him. Now this is what's going on, rather slowly, but absolutely with a bursting revelation, God began to speak to me. This couple sitting in front of you, this is no accident, I'm teaching you a principle and this is the laboratory, thanks a lot Lord. If you listen to me, I'll bring your principle from a principle to a practice. I'm listening, and so God gave me a thought, I stopped him, deadness, tracks, speaking. I said, George, hold it just a minute. I said, were you married in church, let me back up, I just remember the question. I realized that what Adam was doing, there are five things, I won't share but one of them with you, I'll just go over them, what Adam was doing in the presence of God, in the presence of Eve, speaking to one or the other, in the hearing of the other, he was making a declaration of unconditional acceptance, he was receiving her, that's what you were asked to do at the wedding altar, receive her, receive him, he to love you, you to respond to his receiving love and receive him and this is what I began to see. Love is not in this wedding vow but it is absolutely throughout the vow, it involves receiving, love is acceptance, love is acceptance of a person as a gift from God and that acceptance liberates that person to be to you all that God made them to be and in response allows that person to receive you, that will allow you, empower you to be everything to that person that God made them to be so you have two people living together, total strangers in the depths of life, in the really soul understanding and all of a sudden they began to react to one another. Their receiving is partial, their rejection is overpowering, it's your different than I thought, you have quirks in your personality, I can't understand, we just can't do it but you see love is receiving, love is accepting and love or receiving empowers that which is received to be maximized in what it can mean in the life of the one receiving, well that's what crazy, I just, wow Lord this is wonderful, it's wonderful and I was about there in my study and there was George by two parading and I'd had enough of it, I didn't have time for any more and I just had a bright idea from the Lord, I said George stopped just meant when I asked a question, were you married in church, did you, did you hear the preacher say anything like do you take this woman, yeah, I said did you say I do, he said yeah, I said July I didn't, he said what do you mean, I said July I haven't taken her yet, you have not received her and I opened my mouth and began to share with him something of what I'm sharing with you and he was, I mean he didn't want to say anything, his eyes were wide, his mouth was open and his jaw was dropped and I thought well I've got this fellow maybe where he needs to be and I'll just, I'll just let her all out and God began to speak and I began to be impressed with what I heard and the more I heard the more I wanted to hear myself and so I just continued to share, George stopped me in a minute and he said preacher I never heard anything like this in all my life, I said I hadn't either, he said why hasn't somebody shared this with me before today, I said don't know, I didn't know it, I got to as quick as I could, so I continued, I continued to talk about the power of receiving love on the part of the husband who was commanded to love the wife unconditionally, without some evaluation, not saying I will love you a bit but I will withhold the rest until I straighten you out in my image, you see it's a terrible game we play in the marriage, I want you to change, I want you to change, if both of them change they have to start over again, how do I want you to change, I want you to like, become like me, how do I, how do she want me to change, I want, she wants me to become like her, both of us change, we look at each other and say whoa we need to start over, you understand? And I was, I saw it, I saw the power of receiving, you are sitting there a composite of what you have received and what you have rejected, you have a marvelous, you have a marvelous quality called the will, God put that in you and I am absolutely convinced that the will he has put in you is a part of his own sovereignty, you have the right to choose, you can choose against God or you can choose for God, when Jesus said I stand at the door and not wasn't standing before a door, he was standing before your will and you can say no, are not open the door and keep that door shut or you can open it, your life is on the quality that is commensurate with what you open your life to and what you shut the door to in your life. And if there is an area that is not victorious, not productive, not peace bringing, not joyful, it is because the principle has been neglected, willfully disbelieved or simply obscure to another way of it. And so you are becoming aware of it tonight, so I challenge you to begin to do it. Well, George and his wife were smitten, I said, George, you know, family is God's perfect gift to you. He said now, preacher, she ain't perfect. I said, well, maybe you've been looking through the wrong eyes. He said, well, I've just got two, are there others? I said, yeah, would you like to know how she looks in the eyes of God? I said, well, yes. I said, let me just remind you that she has been found acceptable in Christ and God has received her as his very own gift. And Jesus has received her as his dying, his reward for dying. And you know what, God has judged her, listen to this, whom God for you, he predestinated. Whom he predestinated, he called. Whom he called, he justified. Whom he justified, he glorified. George, I want to tell you the truth. You've been living with a foreknown predestinated, called justified, glorified woman for 22 years, and most of the time you've been driving about it. You don't say. Well, we got through. I looked at her and I said, Bentley, you know why you've rejected him? Because he's rejected you. It just goes like that. And George Nasky, you receive this woman? First time. He said, well, yeah. I said, Bentley, would you receive him? She said, yeah. We got a four sided altar four feet by four feet by four feet by four feet. We slipped over there and they put their hands on the little post in the middle. We had a little wedding ceremony with something like this. George, you do you take this woman whose hand you hold to be your wife? I do. You receive her unconditionally. Thereby releasing her to be to you all that a woman has made to be to a man. And you give yourself to her in such a manner that God can make you all to her that a man was made to be to a woman he said I'd do. Did the same thing with her. We had a prayer and all they went. I lost track of George and Bentley, but I'll tell you this from the time I knew them on until I lost track of them. They had a different marriage, not a perfect marriage. Now I had just a few minutes to launch from there into the broader sea, the broader river of that principle. Again, let me repeat it. You are sitting there. I am standing here, a composite result of what I have accepted and/or rejected. This is the book of information about what to reject and what to accept. If you accept what ought to be rejected and reject what ought to be accepted, you are in big trouble. The marriage truth is just the beginning. And what Adam was doing was saying this, "God," well, I'm not sure. He may have been talking to her in the presence of God or to God in her presence, regardless both of them God is. Lord, I unconditionally receive her. Secondly, it was an expression of grateful possession. This is bone of my bone as much mine as the very skeletal structure of my body. It was an issue of Lord, I thank you that she is mine. Thirdly, it was an acknowledgement of responsibility. I am as responsible for her as I am my own body. I own that right now. Fourthly, it was a commitment of permanent togetherness for this reason. Shall a man leave father and mother and flee under the wife? Finally, it was a celebration of unity. Now, let's leave the marriage for a moment. I want you to take that. And as I leave it, I'll ask your wife, husband, have you received your wife? Have you received her? I mean really received it. Well, I shouldn't be asking you anyway. I should be asking her. Do you feel received? Do you feel accepted? Or have you taken a stance husband of saying, you know, there are some things that will take me a while to iron out that I'll love you partially until then? And then I will be still on you all my love then when I have perfected you in my image? Big deal. How do you know when you've received something or somebody, when you have a grateful service of thanksgiving over it? God, I thank you, that when this one came into my life, she brought your presence and your will and your pleasure. And then a wife, it's rather easy for a wife. A wife is very difficult for a wife to receive her husband before she is received by her husband. But when two receive each other, the potential for blessing in each other's lives is maximized. Reception releases energy for fulfillment. Rejection locks it up. Now, I'll leave the marriage with this. If you are trying to force your wife into a form, into a mode by pressure, do you realize that that pressure itself is a form of rejection? And what you are intending to do, maybe with good purpose, is locking her up instead of releasing her. Let's go from there. Actually, this is a principle, it's absolutely universal. How am I saved? Listen to this. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. All that he did for us, he did for those. But his death and life and promises and grace prove useless to them because they refused to receive. They received him not. But to as many as received him, he gave the power to become the sons of God, the power to become the sons of God, transformed human beings, plus holy God. That happened to us. Why? Not because of something we did, but because we had the grace and God moved upon us. Giving us the gift of repentance, we willingly received repentance, exercised it, and received faith and were gloriously saved. No thanks to us for everything that we received, including the manner we received, came from him we just received. And if you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus, it's really not all that complicated. You're lost because you've never accepted, and you've never received one second of receiving. Receiving. He's at the door. You've been set up. He's here, and you're here. It's going to be very difficult for you to walk away because you face the truth. If I reject him, all that he did in my behalf is for not. I must receive him, and I do that tonight. And you don't have to wait another 10, 15 minutes to be finished. You don't have to be lost that long. Just get saved right now, Lord, I receive you. I accept you. Well, what about a believer? You know, I got saved in the country church about 59 years ago, and all I knew is how to let Jesus in. I just come in. That's all the instruction I got, except somebody told me to sit down. I didn't get any. They must have thought. I said, "Well, I gave my life to preach at 14, and I didn't know the first thing about what to do with him. I knew it was inside. I just didn't know how to treat him. I thought the best thing to do is to learn all the good about him and copy him, hate him. The first book I read is what would Jesus do. The problem with that book is, if we knew what he would do, we couldn't do it without him. That's the big thing, you see. And I tried to be like him for 18 years, until I had a hernia in my soul trying to be like him. And one day I said, "God, I give up. I can't. Everything I like is either illegal or moral or threatening. It ain't working. I can't do it. I quit." And I thought I'd just hear a moan and a groan from heaven, and God would say, "Oh, no." But instead I heard more like a whisper, "Yeah. I've known all along. You couldn't." And it's been a pain in my heart, seeing you try. And I heard somebody say it, really slam dunked it. "I can't, but you never said I could. You can. And you always said you would. Here's my life." What'd you do? You not only received him as Savior, you received him as Lord, but nobody told you about it. You didn't reject him as Lord. You just didn't know what he was. Being Lord, he knows how to run the life. From one side to the other, every issue he knows, you don't have to decide a lot of things. He's already decided, and all you need to do is say, "Whatever. Whatever. Be it unto me as you have said. Whatever. Okay, Lord. Yes, is the answer. What's the question?" I mean, it's a really complicated thing. Now, this issue of the Holy Spirit, and all that time I hadn't told him about the Spirit. So I had to learn it, and thus I mislearned it from a lot of folks that were just a little bit crazy. We talked about him. Noisiest, most reckless church in town. We said, "Do you think the Pentecostals will go to heaven?" They don't run past it. We made fun of him. We saw him do a lot of things we weren't interested in doing, and so we dropped the Holy Spirit bit. Do you understand? But I did the best it could. Again, knowing a little later that Jesus Christ lived in me. But I was afraid of the Spirit of God. That's a crazy thing, isn't it? The Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ here. But one day I saw it. When Jesus was speaking to his disciples, "Assign them the impossible task. Said to them, "As the Father sent me, so send I you. Same reason, same deal, same purpose, same end. And I'm leaving, boys." Now it's yours. Wow. Oh, by the way, did something else. He said, "Receive the Spirit." And all of a sudden they became the kind of believers that you and I had the privilege of being immediately upon believing. They had followed him, but they were not God inside minded men, not until them. But the Spirit came in. We know he did because what he spoke is translated in the Greek in a tense that makes it impossible for anything else to happen. "Receive the Spirit right now." And they received the Spirit, mystified about it, wondering about it. There were no signs, there were no angel's feet shuffling, there was no song. And they wondered, what was it that happened back there? But a few days later in an upper room, he having gone, came again in the Holy Spirit. A rushing mighty wind. There's was a breath. This was a mighty wind. That wind individualized, sat upon them in the form of a flame of fire. And they were all filled with the Spirit. Why? Because they had received the Spirit. Now look at me. I care not what you believe about the Holy Spirit, but what you better believe is this. When Jesus Christ came into your life, it was by a sovereign act of the Holy Spirit that you were regenerated and immediately became indwell to the Spirit. Therefore, you are born again, God living on your inside. You're a human being, plus Holy God. But how many of you weren't told the truth about the Holy Spirit? You learned the fear, the strange hieroglyph, the ghost, the woo woo one. We're comfortable with Jesus. We can read about him and he's not here. We're comfortable with the Father. We can read about him and he's not here. Not to be seen, one sitting on the throne, the other sitting by side, interceding for us. It's God here on earth that's always the problem. We have to be accountable to him. He gets interlaced into our lives. And so the Holy Spirit is here. My friend listened to me. I don't have a prescribed formula or experience for you, but I can tell you this. If you have not received the ministry and life and purpose of blessed Holy Spirit, you're living way short of your potential and your destiny. And I challenge you to lay aside everything you've heard, everything you've been taught. Just for the moment, you can pick it up later and say, Holy Spirit, it's not enough to study you. I receive you as the orchestrator of my life. Receive the Holy Spirit. And this could go off endlessly and my time is up. But listen, did you say 8.20 or 8.25? Four more minutes then, I'll take the letter. Oh, by the way, this is a principle that covers you, your attitude toward yourself. How do you feel about yourself? Well, I stink. No, that's what you smell like. I want to know what you think about yourself. Well, I don't like myself very well. Why? Well, I've not performed well. Okay. Can I tell you something? You are released by the grace of God, having been totally forgiven, completely justified, and on your way to being completely sanctified, you can wisely receive yourself your identity as a gift of God. You say, preacher, what do you say? I'm telling you that, first of all, the law summed up is this. You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor. Help me finish. As yourself, that is a command to love. There are three commands there. One, a two are open and the other silence. Two commanded, one assumed. If you could walk out tonight taking God's word for it, you are lovable to him. And let him love you, become a person of love, and let him love you, and let others love you. You will never be the same again. I accept myself. You say that you don't know what a mess I am. Don't tell me. You're not any bigger mess than I am. But I'm telling you, God loves me. It's the hardest thing I ever had to get over to myself. And it has nothing to do with performance. It has nothing to do with anything I've done or not done. God loves me as a sovereign act of his will, and he's real smart, and I'm not going to mess with his mind and tell him he's not wise loving me. You quit it too. It'll help you. Receive yourself. Some of you are in a frame of difficulty. You give anything in the world. If you get out of the tight, you're in. Can I tell you something? Why should God deliver you from what you're in? When so far you've not allowed him to do what he allowed to happen to you in the midst of it. Why don't you just back off and say, "God, you're sovereign. You have at least allowed this to happen if you haven't caused it." And so I receive it. I want to drain out every ounce of purpose from heaven. I want to say, "Thank you, not because I enjoy it, but because I trust your sovereign will. And where I cannot trace your hand, I will trust your heart. You have allowed this to happen. I receive it. How do you know you've received it when you say, "God, I thank you for it." Now, wisdom is the next step. Help me to have your wisdom. Receive yourself. Receive your circumstances. Receive your weird friends in your life. Have you ever thought, "God, if you'd just give me a couple of days and not record any of these sins, I would hire a couple of hit men and kill about 10 people and I'd have a happy life." That may be distracting it, but every one of you thought that in some seed form. Why don't you try this? Receive them. Why? Because they're in the world. Because God let them live. You are to love one another. You're to love the lost. You're to love the poor. You're to love those who cannot return anything to you. Love them. And if we did with devotion, with With passion, we would see our world change wherever it is.