Dr. Michael Youssef: It is my prayer that you are being
blessed and encouraged and motivated by this series
of messages.
God has an answer to every problem.
There is not a single problem that's in your life that Jesus
has not experienced, and that is why the Word of God is so
relevant, and that is why God's speaking to us today
through the Psalms written 3,000 years ago.
[music].
Dr. Youssef: Immediately prior to a coming judgment,
you find a huge increase in the perversion, in the corruption,
in hostility toward the Lord and his followers.
All these things tend to reach a fever pitch immediately prior
to a coming judgment.
You're going to find this in the Scripture, the case it was
just immediately prior to Noah's flood.
This is the case immediately prior to the burning of Sodom
and Gomorrah.
You find that this was the case immediately before the judgment
on Pharaoh.
And you find that this is the case immediately prior to
the Babylonian exile in Israel.
There are some that are saying that we're already actually
under judgment now, that the judgment has already begun
and nothing can be done to stop it or delay it.
They say, "Look at the evidence."
There is a global hatred toward Christ and his followers.
There is a rampant corruption and perversion in many historic
Christian denominations.
There are practice of sexual perversion even among people
who occupy pulpits.
There are abortionists who actually sit on church boards,
children abuse and children abusers appear to get off
scot free.
Courts are legalizing child pornography and call it
"free speech."
Greed and covetousness is now sanctified as something that we
must demand from God, and they call it, "Faith."
Millions of church goers believe that there are many ways to God.
The pure gospel of Jesus Christ has been replaced by the gospel
of tolerance and the gospel of accepting of all religions
as equal to the Christian faith.
Entertainment has now replaced true genuine devotion
and worship in many a church.
I began a series of select psalms, and they are selected
to help equip us for today's battle, to understand the mind
of God and the folly of man.
And so I want you to turn with me, please, to Psalm 14.
When the Word of God says something once,
it demands our attention.
Anything that God says twice in his Word, it demands our
most attention.
Anything God says three times in his Word, as in Psalm 14 is,
then it demands our absolute application to our lives
and live by it.
Psalm 14 is repeated several times.
As a matter of fact, Psalm 53 is almost a replica, with
the exception of two verses.
Both Romans chapter 1 and Romans chapter 3
are really an expounding, an explanation of Psalm 14.
And so, the Word of God is, in this psalm, has been repeated
many, many times, and therefore, we need to stop and take
notice of it.
Here, the psalmist has been inspired by the Holy Spirit of
God not only to write these words, but he was given
the privilege of peering into the proceedings in
the heavenly courts.
This psalmist gets a glimpse of the inner sanctum of
God's courts in heaven.
And then he turns around and he gives us three things of
the proceedings of the courts of heaven.
First of all, he gives us the summons.
He tells us what the summons is, verses 1 to 3.
And secondly, he tells us the court's summation, verse 4.
Thirdly, he tells us the court's sentencing, verses 5 and 6.
Easy to remember: summons, summation, and sentence.
Then, at the end of the message, there's a surprise,
a big surprise.
And so I want you to stay tuned.
Focus with me until we get to the very end of the psalm, and
then I'm gonna explain something that the average reader, when
you read through it so quickly, you miss it.
First, he gives us the court's summons.
I want you to visualize this.
It's a court.
The judge is sitting on the bench.
And there at the dock, being accused, is the human race,
all of humanity.
And the accusation is, they are accused of depravity.
The height of depravity is the denial of the one and only
true God.
The height of that depravity is a human race that wanting to
create variety of gods of whom they approve or they want to
think of as god.
Hear me right on this.
The deepest desire on the part of those who do not know the one
true God is this.
The deepest desire is that he doesn't exist.
Are you with me?
And that desire is so strong in them, it's so strong that it
becomes their religion.
You know people like that, and that's why the Bible said,
"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no one true God.'"
Romans, which, as I told you, in reality is a commentary
on Psalm 14, puts it this way: "The one who
does not want to believe and worship the only one
true God is a fool."
"The one who does not want to believe and worship that only
one true God is foolish."
Why?
Because he knows or she knows that there is only one true God.
They really do.
Deep down, they do, and yet they choose to live in denial of that
true God.
You say, "How come?" Well, Paul said, "The very
Creation itself proves that one true God, not only that he
exists, but demonstrates his power in his Creation."
But sadly, they choose to ignore him or deny him.
You cannot understand who the fool is without
understanding who God is.
Because the psalmist deliberately here does not use
the term "Yahweh," or translated into English, "Jehovah," but he
uses the word "El," E-L, from which we get, "Immanuel,"
and "Bethel."
You say, "Well, why is that a big deal?"
Why is it a big deal that he uses "Yahweh" or "El"?
It is a big deal.
Trust me when I explain it to you.
Because the name "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" communicates
a different side of God's character than the word "El."
The name of God, "Yahweh" or "Jehovah", communicates
the covenant-making God, the provider God, the giver God,
the sustainer God, the gracious and generous God.
But "El" speaks of the God who revealed himself in
the Word of God.
It speaks of the God with moral absolutes.
It speaks of the God who has clear moral standards, speaks of
the God who demands something from us.
And therefore, therefore, understanding why the psalmist
uses "El" and not "Yahweh" makes anyone, anyone, anyone who
rejects that one true God to be a fool.
This includes the practical atheists.
It includes the agnostic.
And I hope there are some practical atheists and agnostics
here today because you are gonna move, like so many of us,
from being fools to being wise.
But it also includes those who worship a god of their
own creation.
They want a god whom they wanna imagine what they want for
a god.
Beloved, this is the god of many professing Christians today,
a god who does not change them, a god
who does not challenge them, a god who does not challenge
their assumptions, a god who does not demand righteousness,
a god who does not demand moral absolutes, a god who does not
judge their immorality or their lifestyle, a god who does not
condemn their corruption, a god who does not demand exclusive
allegiance.
All of these folks, according to Psalm 14, are foolish.
And we are were fools at once, right?
I was a fool.
Trust me, I shook my fist at God.
Not proud of it, but it gives me sympathy with those who are
still in the foolish stage and have not come to the light of
Jesus Christ, amen?
And we need to be very patient with them.
And we need to be thoughtful, and we need to be compassionate.
Instead of being mad at them, we need to be very compassionate
because Paul keeps saying, "We once were."
Now, I come to something very important, which is the Hebrew
word for "fool" that is mentioned here in this passage,
in this particular psalm.
The Hebrew word for fool here is the word "nabal," which does not
mean, listen very carefully.
Listen very carefully.
It does not mean "intellectual weakness."
It does not mean that at all.
And if you think so, please don't.
But it means "moral perversion."
No one can ever accuse some of the non-believers particularly
as being dumb or stupid.
No, no, no, no, no, no, don't fall for that.
Many of them are intellectually brilliant.
Many of them are intellectually intelligent, but when it comes
to the most important thing in life, they are foolish.
But there's something else here I don't want you to miss
in this psalm.
In the earthly court, all of you lawyers know this, all of you
judges know this, in the earthly court, they judge a person on
the basis of what he or she did.
Did you do it, or didn't you do it?
That's all the evidence.
It has to be proven.
Did he do this, or did he no?
But in the courts of heaven, they judge on the basis
of thought.
Scary thought, isn't it?
The courts of heaven judge our thoughts, and that's why it's so
clear here.
Beloved, listen to me.
God does not grade on the curve.
We would like him to, don't you?
But he doesn't.
And that is why none and no one will make it to heaven other
than by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen?
Verse 2: "For by nature no one seeks after God.
God looks down from heaven and he sees no one seeking
after him."
Even all of us who came to believe in Jesus, the Bible said
that "we were dead in our trespasses."
Dead people do not seek after anything that is good,
they're dead.
We were dead in our trespasses.
Until he came and breathed life in us, we did not even know how
to come to God.
Thus, the accusation sticks.
The summons has been vindicated.
The witnesses are impeccable.
And the evidences are overwhelming.
Those who have depraved minds, have depraved minds because they
wanna have depraved minds.
In fact, Paul answers this questions in
Romans chapters 1 and 3.
That the evidence of God is everywhere present in Creation,
but a man refuses to believe that evidence, let alone obey
and worship God alone.
The first thing that you see here is the summons.
Secondly, the summation.
Now, don't miss this.
Don't miss this, please.
The judge's grief here is unmistakably.
The judge's sorrow is very evident here.
The judge's broken heart cannot be missed.
"Have all of the workers of iniquity have no knowledge?"
You feel the bleeding of his heart.
And the word "iniquity" here is the same word that was used many
times in the Old Testament to describe Israel when they kept
running after other gods, when they kept worshiping Yahweh,
when they kept on worshiping idols, and when they worshiped
Yahweh on Saturday, and then for the rest of the week,
they're worshiping Baal.
That's the word "iniquity."
Hear me right.
God's summation against the apostate church is
abundantly clear.
God has been exercised over the fact that so many professing
churches use the name of his Son, but also deny the claim
of his Son as the only way to heaven.
So many professing churches have Bibles in the pews, but they
also have sayings of Confucius and Mohammad and Krishna in
those same pews.
So many who name the name of Jesus also name other religions.
Recently, in an opening of an Episcopal school,
an Episcopal bishop prayed from the Quran and he prayed from
the New Testament.
Beloved, the summation of the courts of heaven is given.
Could the judgment be far behind?
Could my friends be right?
And this is the prejudgment time.
The summons, the summation, thirdly, the sentence.
Verse 5, what is that sentence here?
"Fear and dread is going to be their life's companion,"
their life's companion.
How come?
Since no one can save themselves, since no one has an
excuse, since no one can placate themselves from God's judgment,
and since no one can stand in another's defense, therefore,
the verdict and the sentence is a life of restlessness, a life
of fear, a life of terror.
Now, I come to that big surprise that in store for us here.
And you see it in verse 7.
Beloved, you know the Bible is always clear.
The Bible always calls sin, "Sin."
Now, we modify it, but that doesn't matter.
What we do is really immaterial.
The Bible always calls a sinner, "A sinner."
The Bible speaks the truth.
The Bible always confronts us.
And the Bible then invites us and says, "There's hope once
you're convicted of sin."
That's why this cheap repentance of, you know, take Jesus along
the way with your journey without repentance, without
acknowledging the fact that you have sinned and offended a holy
God, that's a cheap gospel.
It's cheap grace.
The Bible immediately goes in to offer us hope, always gonna give
us good news, always gives us a way out, always gives us an
answer to the dilemma that we're facing, always, always, always.
And the good news comes in the middle of this hopeless
situation.
After the courts of heaven have been adjourned, after the
sentence have been pronounced, after the verdicts have been
given, after the accused has been escorted out of the court,
all of a sudden, all of a sudden,
in verse 7, the court reconvenes, reconvenes.
Why?
New evidence came to light.
New facts have been injected into the trial.
New hope to overturn the sentence is found.
"Oh, that salvation would come from Zion!"
Amen, where did our Jesus come from?
Zion, and he's our salvation.
Without him, it's hopeless.
Without him, it's dark.
But with him, there is hope.
There is life.
There's eternal life.
"Oh, that salvation might come from Zion!"
Instead, he offers us this hope.
He comes from Zion.
What's going on here?
Oh, the judge, he suspended the sentence for a time.
Why?
Because the judge wanted to see if any of the accused would
avail themselves to the newfound hope.
The judge wanted to give the accused one more opportunity
for a reprieve.
The judge, for a time, ordered a stay of execution.
The judge will wait and see if anyone would accept his pardon,
amen.
Beloved, most of you know, and I'm gonna tell you, in the day
of judgment, whether it be near or far, it doesn't matter,
really makes no difference.
In the day of judgment, open-mindedness will not save.
Tolerance will not save.
Indifference to the truth will not save.
Ambiguity, which is the gospel of the emerging church,
ambiguity toward Christ will not save.
Denominational church membership will not save.
None will save but Jesus, amen.
There is only one who can speak for you and for me, and he
offers an opportunity for everyone, whether you're
watching around the world, whether you're here in this
sanctuary.
He offers the opportunity for everyone for pardon.
For only Jesus can defend us.
Only Jesus can pardon us.
Only Jesus can pronounce us guiltless.
Only Jesus can lift up the sentence, and he did that
on the cross, amen.
Give him praise. Give him praise.
[applauding]
For without him, not only that I could not stand here, I would be
totally unworthy to stand here.
He and he alone, and he's got his arms wide open,
"Come unto me.
Come unto me.
Come unto me."
For his Word already said, "Therefore, there is no
condemnation upon those who are," what?
"In Christ Jesus."
No condemnation, the sentence is reversed.
Now, if there's someone here who's never availed themselves
upon this incredible opportunity to confess and receive his
pardon, today you can do that.
But there's something I want to say to the vast majority of you
who have already received the pardon from the hand of God,
those of you who know Jesus, those of you who even
love Jesus.
I wanna have a challenge for you.
What are you doing with this good news?
Are you sitting on it?
Are you doing nothing with it?
Or are you sharing it with others?
You've seen the summons, the summation,
and the sentence, but you and you and you and you
and me have the opportunity to tell people that they can be
set free.
[music].
Dr. Youssef: As you're listening to the Word of God,
you know that David, who wrote most of the Psalms, learned how
to live a victorious life.
He experienced defeat, and he talks about it in the Psalms.
But he also experienced the glorious height of victory
over Satan and sin.
This book is gonna encourage you to know how to,
this is a how-to book, conquer the enemy of your soul
and live victoriously for Christ.
Get it soon.
David Nicholas: Satan knows he's losing the war,
but the battle is still raging.
Rich Carver: And you truly have to guard your heart
and your household daily.
Jennifer Carver: The helmet of salvation, the breastplate
of righteousness, the belt of truth,
and the sword of the Spirit.
Put it on every day because it works.
David: While we're here on earth, we're called to fight
in the battle.
<i>announcer: Experience</i> <i>the victory that is yours in</i>
<i>Christ with "Conquer,"</i> <i>the book by Dr. Michael Youssef.</i>
Eleanor White: For me, "Conquer" was a battle plan,
and we are God's army.
So we need to know how to fight.
David: The same way a soldier needs to have that guidebook
there with them that can explain to them who they're fighting,
who the enemy is, what the landscape is like.
That's what this book is.
<i>announcer: Right now, you can</i> <i>receive your own copy of</i>
<i>"Conquer" when you give a gift</i> <i>of any amount to</i>
<i>"Leading the Way."</i>
<i>Visit us online at ltw.org</i> <i>to request your copy today.</i>
Dr. Youssef: I want you to celebrate with me and with us
at "Leading the Way" this milestone,
30 years of faithful ministry.
We brought the gospel to many a living room and to many cars
and radio, television around the world and here in
the United States.
It is my privilege and my honor and great joy to know that we
have been ministering to you faithfully.
As you know, I receive no compensation from
"Leading the Way."
It has been for 30 years my labor of love.
So I want you to join with me as we celebrate this great
milestone in the life of this ministry.
Tony Delicati: My name is Tony Delicati.
I was born in northeastern Pennsylvania, as was my wife,
Mari.
We relocated to Orlando, Florida in 1996 upon being married.
Always very loving towards one another, had a wonderful
marriage.
Suddenly, in March, my wife was very sick, flu-like symptoms,
which wasn't very uncommon.
Became very progressive until about three weeks later, she was
diagnosed with acute leukemia.
For the next 16 months, she endured quite horrific, invasive
treatments until, eventually, dying from acute leukemia
in my arms.
She never complained.
She always smiled.
I never understood where she had her strength.
And then after she passed away, I started reading through some
of the things she was reading through, and I spoke with our
mutual friend Jeff.
He suggested that I listen to Michael Youssef's
"Leading the Way" online, and it's been my source of
daily nourishment from the Lord.
And it's five days a week, Monday through Friday, and I'm
grateful for Dr. Youssef, who has introduced me to
the Lord Jesus and continues to share the message
rather than focus on himself.
I've learned firsthand that Christ is everything.
He is an absolute blessing that could shape your life,
shape your family relationships, and lead your family through
the most difficult of times that you could ever imagine.
In seeking opportunities to be a good steward of what he provides
to us, I considered multiple ministries, and selected
"Leading the Way" based upon its uncompromised truth, based upon
the passion that Dr. Youssef has to share the gospel.
Dr. Youssef and "Leading the Way"
make Christ available to the far regions of the world
through both handheld devices, kingdom satellite television
networks, and that is an absolute blessing and gift.
That is the ministry, "Leading the Way,"
that the Lord has led me to be a part of.
<i>announcer: After the death of</i> <i>his wife, Tony was broken, but</i>
<i>God entered in and now he is</i> <i>living a transformed life</i>
<i>for Christ.</i>
<i>Through satellite, the Internet,</i> <i>mobile apps, and more,</i>
<i>"Leading the Way"</i> <i>is reaching the lost</i>
<i>and unchurched, like Tony, on</i> <i>the digital mission field.</i>
<i>But we can't do it without your</i> <i>partnership.</i>
<i>Will you consider a generous</i> <i>gift today to this crucial</i>
<i>ministry?</i>
<i>Call or visit us online at</i> <i>ltw.org.</i>
<i>announcer: Passionately</i> <i>proclaiming</i>
<i>uncompromising truth,</i> <i>"Leading the Way</i>
<i>with Dr. Michael Youssef"</i> <i>thanks you for your faithful</i>
<i>support through your continued</i> <i>prayers and gifts.</i>
Dr. Youssef: If you're ever in Atlanta on a Sunday, it would
be a great opportunity for you to come and worship with us.
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