Me and My House

2011-07-24

Andre Pelser

Joshua made definitive statements as leader that clearly indicated his position of faith in spite of the choice the nation would make.

1. He chose to serve the Lord

Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. KJV

2. He warned the people

Joshua 24:19-20:  But Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you, after He has done you good.” NKJV

3. He commanded the people

Joshua 24:23 “Now therefore,” he said, “put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel.” NKJV

4. He left a reminder for the people

Joshua 24:26-28: Then Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness to us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which He spoke to us. It shall therefore be a witness to you, lest you deny your God.”

5. He gave the people their inheritance

So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance. 

A sense of belonging 

by Apostle André Pelser

Preached Sunday 17th July 2011 at Harvester Reformational Church Cape Town

Mark 9:41: For whoever gives you a cup of cold water to drink in My Name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.

Four facts that will give you a sense of belonging to Christ:

1. It is a basic human need to belong somewhere
2. Your problems become His responsibility (Is 9:6)
3. Cast all your cares upon Him for He cares for you (I Pet 5:7)
4. Look forward to the prize (Phil 3:14)

I once dreamt how friends rejected me for not sharing their experience. They climbed down a steep hill and I didn’t. So they ignored me. I felt sad and dejected. Then one stepped forward and said, ‘Stay here, you belong here.’

Luke 24

I.                  The disciples’ need for belonging

1. He came to His own and they did not know Him. At birth and even in death, even after His resurrection His own people rejected Him. Satan tempted Him to doubt His own identity. Is 53 He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. We despised him.
2. Cleopas (‘of a renowned father’) and the other disciple missed the significance of history’s greatest moment even because they were too focussed on their own disappointments and problems. They had a ‘sad conversation’ about the events in Jerusalem.
3. They did not recognise Jesus because they did not look for Him. They walked away from fellowship into loneliness. When they left Jerusalem (‘possession of peace’) they went to Emmaus (‘hot springs’) to enjoy luxuries and pamper the flesh.
4. When people are pre-occupied with their dashed hopes and frustrated plans they cease to look for Christ Jesus and fail to recognise Him in the midst of their storm.
5. Their false expectations made Him a stranger. They expected a militant Messiah and they saw a gentle Saviour instead. They wanted a champion and instead saw a suffering Saviour. Humility and Meekness are never popular with the masses.

2.      Jesus’ sense of belonging

He opened the Scriptures concerning Himself and applied it to the situation. Jesus lived the Word. The Word was made flesh. He was the promised Seed in Genesis, the suffering Servant in Isaiah, the Pierced One in Zechariah, the Promised One in Malachi. The thread of the anointed one is woven throughout the prophetic Scriptures and holds it together. When He opened the Scriptures to them, their sad conversation turned into glad tidings! (v.34)

3.      Jesus’ willingness to belong

How easily they constrained Him to stay with them. Stay here with us! That’s all it took! (v.29). Jesus in us is the hope of glory. We need to share Him with others. Through understanding of the Opened Scriptures we abide in Him and His Word abides in us.

4       Making room for other people

We need to say to those who are looking for a place to belong, ‘Stay here with us!’ or ‘You belong here!’ until their eyes are opened and they can see Jesus Christ clearly among us. Then their hearts will burn with excitement! Christ accepted you; accept one another also (Philippians 1).

Blessings of belonging to a body of believers

1. Heaven’s resources are made available to all. It is at our disposal. The God who created the universe is at hand where two or three gather together in His Name!
2. The world was startled by the power of the atom bomb. We serve the God who created the atom! His power works mightily through us who believe! It is the same force that raised Jesus from the dead! (Eph 1:19-22)
3. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Monaco as well as Prince William caused a great stir in the world – but we have an invitation to the wedding of all ages: the wedding supper of the Lamb! Jesus and His bride invite you to attend His marriage!
4. When we are born again, we are adopted into God’s family! We have all the rights and privileges Jesus had! We are co-heirs and joint-heirs!
5. Some political prisoners are happy when they receive amnesty, but when you are born again, you are set free from all your guilt and condemnation. You can stand in the presence of a Holy God without any sense of inferiority as a child of God!
6. There was great rejoicing when WW II ended – but we can rejoice because Christ fought and won the battle over sin and the world for us! We share in His victory! He is the conqueror that displayed Satan as a defeated foe to all the universe – and we are more than conquerors just by following Him. We can now cast out demons in His Name and they have to obey us!
7. Jesus broke off sins handles and claimed that the devil has nothing in Him. He can get no grip on his life. He can’t control or manipulate Him. He gave the devil no place. He purges us from our old sins and makes us vessels of honour to Him.

Requirements to belong to a body

1.  Jesus gave the prescription to qualify as one of His followers: ‘deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me.’ Without self-denial the cross is simply an irritation. People who are not willing to deny themselves cannot fit into a body. If self is too important you cannot be part of a team.
2. Mutual submission is a key to an apostolic body of people. Mutual respect and acceptance helps to discover the gifts in one another in order to regard others higher than you.
3. Submission to spiritual oversight is a vital aspect of belonging to a body. There are those who have to give an account of you before God. You can ensure that they do not do it with a heavy heart, but with a joyful report. Correction is part of the job description of a leader. Rebuke comes when someone has not received correction or hardened their hearts against leadership. A rebuke received speeds up the spiritual growth of an individual, but a person who ignores and rejects a rebuke is foolish.
4. Carrying weight in a body is important to lighten the load of the others. To attend a church is a good habit, but it carries no weight. Every member has to do its share in a body of believers to cause growth (Eph 4:16)
5. Understanding the protocol in a church allows peaceful relationships. Protocol is often the unspoken modus operandi that you sometimes find out through trial and error.

Remember the Lord builds the church

The Lord adds those who are saved to a church because He knows the role they will eventually play in a church. If you build a church on a church growth system, the system has to be honoured and obeyed. All new converts do is to learn the system until they are able to teach it to others. This is not how Jesus builds a church. He builds the person and the person learns to obey the Spirit – first by obeying the leadership.

Shoot roots before you try to bear fruit

The Lord builds slowly. Anything that God plants, grows.

Reforming the way we think

by Apostle André Pelser

Preached Sunday 3rd July 2011 at Harvester Reformational Church Cape Town

As a man thinks in his heart so is he. If we want to change we need to change the way we think first. Then our words and our actions will follow suit. To redesign our mentality is not easy. We have to bombard our sensibilities with fresh truth in order to change position.

Apostolic preaching and teaching has the authority to reform. Apostles uncover the deeper meanings in Scripture as it is revealed to them. They are in tune with what God is saying to the church today. They can break the seals of the sealed mysteries of God and make it plain to the people. (Daniel 12:8-10) They decode the visions of God.

They preach the unsearchable riches of God to reveal the fellowship in the mystery of God. (Ephesians 3:8-10)

Paul says he was given a certain grace from a divine source to preach the mysteries of God. It was sovereignly given to him, and not asked for.

In order to live a proper Christian life we need to tap into this apostolic grace.

For instance, Stephen, the first Christian martyr had a mother. She had to listen to Paul and read his letters. She had to hear him say, ‘I have harmed no man’. She needed grace to accept the man that approved of her son’s stoning. Without grace it is impossible to forgive and forget. Grace takes you beyond your personal prejudices. It takes you beyond racial prejudice. It takes you beyond your hurts and failures. It takes you into a place where you are safe and secure.

I once asked the Lord for a picture of grace. Then I saw a man stooping down to pick up a little boy with outstretched arms. As he lifted him up I understood grace. It lifts you up where you belong: in the arms of your heavenly Father.

The preaching of the unsearchable riches is like uncovering the footprints of God. He left His footprints behind in the earth in His dealings with Abraham, Moses, David and other men and women of God. Jesus came to uncover those footprints for us.

Nola and I love to walk on Sunset Beach, where we live. You see your own footprints for a while and when you return the waves have washed them away. They have disappeared. You know they were there a moment ago, but now they are gone.  It is the same with the dealings of God with man. He showed us His ways, and then the waves of time washed those footprints away. Paul says, I can show you where those footprints are! He can show us the present emphasis of God.

The Bible is God’s treasure map to His rich deposits in the earth.

The wisdom of God’s Genius is revealed through the church. The New Testament Church is ascending beyond the comprehension of the world. We are a step ahead. We should not follow worldly trends in the church. The world should follow our lead! We pioneer new positions in the spirit realm and the world wonders where we get our wisdom.

We change the structure of things to contain new blessings. New wine requires new wineskins.

One church can bless nations! How is this possible? It is the Genius of God at work.

We have relocated centres of truth. We no longer look the earthly Jerusalem who represents the bond woman, Hagar, but we have shifted our focus to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Church of the First Born, and Mount Zion in the spirit realm, that refers to Sarah the woman of Promise.

We no longer measure success by what we see and are no longer moved with the outward impressiveness of things, because we have found an inner reality that operates by faith.

We reform stale ministries and introduce a new season of refreshing to them by the presence of the Lord. Principles of Reform are as real as the laws of Gravity.

When you come in touch with the apostolic ministry, it affects you, one way or another. It is like sticking your fingers into an electric socket: power is released!

Many pastors are tired, exhausted, worn out; they get heart attacks at an early age because the systems they serve have depleted their strength. Serving a system of church growth makes people slaves of a system. The Lord Jesus builds a church and His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He adds people to the church that will be a blessing not a burden.

The old way of doing things in churches have become obsolete. The Lord is doing a new thing. We have to change our thinking accordingly in order to enjoy the blessings.

When the burden gets too heavy discontent and frustration sets in. The joy of the Lord is no longer there.

When we have reached the limitation of the old systems we have to renew our minds to what God is doing today. We need to call the old obsolete in order to embrace the new.

21^st Century kids live outside the boundaries of their own lives. Churches have to offer something different in order to keep them interested. God loves them and cares for them, but they have to know that God is interested in their generation as well.

Moses was a great man, and yet his system came to an end. It had to go. It had to make way for something new.

The Latin chants in the Medieval Churches had to make way for Luther’s hymns. He often took worldly tunes and wrote Christian words for them.

Guttenberg printed Luther’s sermons and the Bible in German. All of a sudden people could read the Bible! Before that only the priests read the Bible in Latin and no one understood what he said!

John the Baptist came to prepare the way for the Lord. People who accepted his reforms were ready to receive Jesus

What Jesus Means To Me

by Apostle Andre Pelser

Preached at Harvester Reformational Church, Cape Town

Sunday 3rd July 2011

On the 27^th of November 2001 I preached myself awake. I preached about the wonderful Name of Jesus! This is what I wrote down when I got up at 4 am that morning. I preached this sermon on 3^rd of July 2011, just as I wrote it down in 2001. Many people asked me for these notes. So here they are.

In my sorrow He’s my comfort

He opens doors that no one can shut

Whom He sets free is free indeed

When He feeds the crowd, there is enough left over

What He loosens cannot be bound

He is the beautiful rose of Sharon, not the thorn bush in the desert

He is the lily of the valley, not the weed in the marsh

He is the bright morning star, not the lost galaxy in space

When He speaks demons listen

When He moves angels stand to attention

What He announces shall come to pass

What He decides shall come about

The touch of heaven is in his hand

The rush of a mighty wind in his breath

His voice is like the sound of a great waterfall

His eyes burn like fire

His feet glisten like gold

Clouds are like the dust of his feet

What He uproots cannot be planted again

What He plants cannot be uprooted

When He brings peace the wares must cease

When He leads the battle no one can hide

When He is the counsellor there is no confusion

When He confuses the enemy, they cannot think straight

Whom He sanctifies is made holy

Whom He dignifies must be respected

Whom He vindicates will be cleared

Whom He justifies can never be accused again

Whom He glorifies will shine like the sun

He is the one who transforms a mind

He regulates the heartbeat of every human being

He is the breath of life, not the kiss of death

He is the altogether lovely One, not the ugly duckling

He is the way of escape not the dead end street

He is the truth not the lie

He is the life and has conquered death

Those who believe in Him will never die

He reigns on high over all powers below

He is reality and not a virtual reality show

He is the Redeemer and the Saviour of all men

He saves, He keeps, He satisfies

This wonderful friend of mine

Someday I’ll meet Him in the sky

This wonderful friend of mine

His faithfulness reaches the clouds

His mercy touches heaven

His grace surrounds us like the mountains

His favour is over us like the clear blue sky

Who can be compared with Him?

He is the friend of the friendless

The hope of the hopeless

The help of the helpless

The father of the fatherless

The husband of the widow

The provider of those who lack provision

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Audio Sermon for play or download

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