Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned of the peril that would come to a society led by the “soft-minded.” Jesus confronted the religious leaders, “Have you not read …” Reading the Word, hearing it preached, these things renew our minds and make us firm in conviction, for believers are sheep following the Shepherd. Otherwise, we live a wolves on the hunt for whatever we can devour. (Romans 12:2-16; Matthew 12:3)

Speaker(s): Pastor Thomas Schaller, Pastor Eugene Davis
Sermon 12026
11:00 AM on 1/17/2021

P. Schaller –

Praise God! Praise the Lord. Praise God. I’m so glad that we have assembled together in the name of Christ. I was
glad when they said to me, let us go up unto the house of God. Amen! Yes, thank you, Lord. We
have a couple things this week. We have prayer this week. We have designated times morning,
afternoon and evening through the week as we pray for missions and our coming semester in
Bible college. How many of you are going to go to Bible college this semester? Raise your hand.
Yes, very good. Moving up. You moved up from North Carolina or somewhere? Tom and Tanya.
It’s amazing. Wow. You are just exactly what we are going to preach about today. You’re Exhibit
A. You’re awesome! Tonight we have prayer and praise. We have in one week from tomorrow
we have Bible college beginning and I’m so encouraged by what the Spirit is saying and doing in
the church. It’s so important to hear what the Spirit says to the church. How many of you feel
that God is speaking to you in the church?

Keep the hands up! We got the security cameras going through the crowd! Okay. We had a great play Thursday night, Friday and Saturday afternoon. Wasn’t it excellent? Very good. Very good. Very good. I’d like the AV to put up on
the screen this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. and use this for what we want to say in our
service today. “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft minded men purchases its
own spiritual death on the installment plan.” Let’s put in there “soft minded men and women!”
Soft minded people. Soft minded men and women and it says continues to produce. So it was
already going on in the 1960s when he said that I’m sure during his Civil Rights Movement.
“…purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” The nation is purchasing its own
spiritual death. How? Small minded men. The question is what is a small minded man and what
is the opposite of a small minded person? The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the great gift of God. God
gave his Son so that through his Son we would have a new life, eternal life. That eternal life
would start now the moment you believe.

That life affects the mind. You are not soft minded. You are enlightened. God is at work in your heart and mind to think and believe according to what the Bible says. This is the key to our lives on a personal level, family level, community
level, state level, national level and even beyond. Why did we become missionaries? Why did
some of us go to the mission field? Why did we do it? Not because we are small minded. Why
did we go to the market place and preach the Gospel in the market place? Why did we start a
telephone hot line? Why did we start a pro-life clinic for pregnant teenagers? Why did we start
a Bible college? Why did we start a Christian day school? Why did we do all of this? Because we
were small minded? No. Why do you say I forgive you? Why does someone have a bitter spirit
and also have a lot of desires that are carnal. They want a million dollars. They want a nice
house. They want a new house. They want a new car. They want a good job and all of these
things. They’re small minded. If you want a million dollars and that’s all you want in your life,
then you are small minded.

You don’t even know what you are talking about. You don’t need a
million dollars. You need God in your life. You need God in your life. You need Jesus Christ to
give you a new mind. I’m going to end there. I want you to turn to your neighbor and say what
does it mean to be small minded? I think you know a lot about it. What is it to be small minded?
What is that?

P. Eugene –

I love that, and we were just thinking – a couple thoughts here – small mindedness.
You think of two things. I love what P. John Sabo said. I’m unable to think outside of myself. I’m
selfish. I’m consumed with myself and the only way I allow you into my life is if you are
consumed with me. small minded. The play, we saw that. We saw how people can just be
conscious of themselves, but I love what Christ came. Luke 2:15, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon
me for he has anointed me to preach.” One of the things is the captives would be set free. You
equate that word “small minded.” God expanding our ability to think with God, Isaiah 55:8-9.
It’s awesome. 1 Corinthians 2:16, we have the mind of Christ. What that does in a person’s life is they
are able to handle situations and circumstances that are out of their control because they are
able to think with God precisely, moment by moment, line upon line, precept upon precept.
Isaiah 28:10-13, whom shall he teach knowledge?

He weans us from the small mindedness. He draws us away from that because it’s death. When we are thinking in a small mind, it is death because God has called us to something bigger in our lives, in our families, in our marriages, as
a single person, as a teenager. I am called to something bigger. I am part of the solution and not
part of the problem. Why? Because of thinking with God. I love this verse in Acts 14. It says long
time they were preaching the word of grace. Imagine how the word of grace has delivered us
from the small mind mentality. We become saved by grace in Ephesians 2:5-8. We are growing in
grace in 2 Peters 3:18. We are established in grace in Hebrews 13:9. There is a throne of grace, Hebrews
4:16 that we come boldly, and we say Lord, I’m small minded and I need help. God says you are
in the right place. This is what is beautiful about us and we say to others, Psalm 1:22, “I was
glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.”

Yes, I have a small mind but I’m going into the house of the Lord, and in the house of the Lord I will receive his mind. In the house of the Lord I will be with the Body of Christ. In the house of the Lord I will begin to grow.
In the house of the Lord, I will get a vision for my life and a vision for others. I get delivered
from a small mind and my heart becomes enlarged, an enlarged heart for the world, for my
neighbors, even for my family. That’s a group of people that sometimes we are not conscious
of. Lord, give me a heart for others but don’t give me a heart for my family. God says, no, it
starts with your family. We start loving our families and encouraging our families. The most
amazing thing happens. Jesus Christ begins to be manifested in our families. Our nation like
never before, our nation needs the Word of God, the people of God. I don’t care what the
media says because in John 8:44 the father of lies, he promotes a lie, but we are the solution.
We are God’s plan. Look at yourself in the mirror and say I am God’s plan for the nation.

To think with God and to go forward and stand and speak the words of this life. It is amazing. We
are excited to be here. We are excited to be in the house of the Lord. We are excited to hear
the Word of God because God is going to deliver us from a small mind, self-conscious, self-
occupied, self-absorbed. I love what Pastor said. Jeremiah 17:9, it says the heart is deceitful and
desperately wicked. Self-analysis versus God is. Small minded, I’m self-analyzing myself, but I
can’t come to a solution of what is wrong with me. When I come to Christ and to God, he is able
to tell me exactly what the issue is and what the solution is which is the cross. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “if any man be in Christ, they are a new creation. Old things are passed away; behold, all things
become new.” We are excited this morning because God is speaking to us as a local assembly.

P. Schaller – Praise the Lord! What a good song. Precious, sweet. Wasn’t that sweet? It was
awesome. Would you like to change your position and greet your neighbor for a moment and
then we’ll start the message. Nu. 16, small mindedness. Was it soft minded? Soft minded. You
want to put that up again? The quotation from Martin Luther King and about what is already
happening. “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft minded men”- that’s our
beginning thought, and we want to ask God to help us understand. In our Bible, so many times
you see people that have a small or soft mind, natural mind. In the play, and they did a great
job in the play. There was a woman who had a serpent around her neck, a stuffed, toy serpent
that represented and she could talk with her hand. The serpent is talking to her. I think in the
book it was a lizard. There is a lizard on her shoulder and the spirit which represents God’s mind
tells her to kill the lizard. She says I can’t because if I do, it will kill me.

The lizard will kill me, but that’s not true. But it represents a mindset of fear. No courage. A lie can control my life. Don’t
stop drinking. If you stop drinking, it will kill you. Really? I should check with my doctor or go to
God. That’s even higher. If I’m not selfish, if I’m not selfish, then I won’t get anything. Really? In
a way, this story, and this is just one illustration here, chapter 16:1-2. Look at verse 2. That’s a
more important verse of the two we read. There’s a lot of people, 250 princes. They’re famous.
Who are they rising up against? Moses. What are they saying to Moses? You misled us. You
think you are the only one? Don’t you know there are other men in this congregation that we
really know what is going on. We really know. You don’t know what is going on. It’s written in
the Bible because all of us need help in understanding how to live. Sometimes we are soft
minded. We are led by the herd. We are led by the group. Some of you may know this. I have to
do a little research on it. I talked about it the other day. Somebody mentioned it in the sauna
where we were having sauna together.

Four people, three actors, one doesn’t know that the actors are like believing, they are believing and representing a lie. Because the lie is so obviously a lie, the three of them are actors saying this is the way it is. It’s true. Oh, I see that. I
understand that. And the fourth that doesn’t understand what’s going on, can’t disagree with
them. He has to like go well, you know. The fourth one, the genuine one so to speak, he has a
very hard time saying no. It’s not like that. No. That’s not true. But he goes with the other three.
It’s a psychological study. It’s proven. That a lot of people will just go with the group even
though they know it’s not right. Interesting. Martin Luther King said soft minded men. How will
the civilization survive if we don’t have anything to believe beyond ourselves. The lizard that is
talking to me or the group as we see in this Scripture. Vs. 3. What’s interesting is it’s already
clear to us from Numbers 11 that Moses was happy that 70 of the people were prophesying.
And when two loyalists to Moses said, they ran to Moses to report, and Moses said, and they
said stop them and Moses said, no. I wish the whole nation would prophesy.

Moses was not the only leader. He wasn’t like in that way. He was the leader anointed of God, but he was also not
like they say. There are other holy ones here. I know there are. They were prophesying. By the
way, when 12 spies went in, two of them came out and said in chapter 13 we can take the land. I know there are other men of God like Caleb and Joshua and the 70 that prophesied. That’s not
the point of the story. The point of the story is small mindedness or soft mindedness and what
does it mean. I drew a little picture about it to illustrate it. I think it’s so simple, but it helps us
to concentrate on the subject. The small minded person sees only so far and it’s generally in the
context of himself. Himself. How can I get beyond myself? Can I kill the lizard? In the play, she
did kill the lizard and she lived. She didn’t die but she lived. Let’s go to another portion. I think
you got the – we finished vs. 3. Vs. 4. Did Moses speak back to them?

No. Did he contend with them? Did he argue with them? Was he emotionally angry and upset in such a degree that he
started to fight with them and argue with them? No, he just went up on his face. His calling
wasn’t to represent himself. His calling was bigger. We could draw it this way. Somehow you
and I because of our new birth we are able to see life in a bigger context. Our country is in
trouble, but it’s in trouble because maybe there are too many people that are soft minded. Too
many people are interested in themselves. Too many of us, it happens to all of us and we are
learning about it. So much of our life is about me, so when we read the Bible we learn about
something incredible and that’s the key to life. It’s incredible. This bigger picture is incredible
ministry of God to us. This grace of God. Nicholas Wyman was one of the actors in the play and
I could hear him, and I talked to him after and I said I really feel like those lines are not just
lines, but you really believe them.

It was very sophisticated argument for the reality of what it is that we believe. I feel that a lot of people don’t believe because maybe it’s not popular. They don’t believe because maybe they are more interested in what it will do for me. It’s about me. My life is about me. I have a lizard on my shoulder and that’s how I live and what’s wrong with
that? That’s how I live. This is my world. This is my life. The problem with it is – actually, there
are a few things. There is a lot of fear when you live for yourself. The fear of man. The fear of
rejection. I want to know what the polls are saying. What are the polls saying will determine
what I say. What is popular. What do people want to hear? What they want to hear is what I
want to tell them. It’s a small world. It’s me pleasing people. The herd instinct is strong. There is
a lot of talking rooted in myself and in my interest. You know how you become rich, not by
money, but by your character. You know how you become – it says a name is better than gold.
Prov. 22:1, a name. A good name.

What does the word “name” mean? Our nature. Our nature is better than gold. There are plenty of people with money and yet they are children. They are very selfish and also another thing here is hypocrisy is a big problem with soft minded people. Turn with me to Gospel of Matthew and we’ll point this out. Mt. 12, small mindedness. Get rid
of the lizard. I can’t. Who said so? God. God said so. How do I know that? Christ. He rose from
the dead. He is the answer. But I like my life. Okay. You like your life and that’s the way you
want it but when problems happen in your family, you don’t have what it takes to survive for
the family to survive your anger, the family to survive your self-life, yourself love. Your family to
survive your – evil happens in your family and you return the evil for evil because you can’t
think bigger than just you heart me, and I hurt you back in a family. In a family, I return evil for
evil. At work. There is evil at work. Slander. I may lose my job. I return evil for evil. I slander
back. I slander back because that’s how I do it. That’s how I will survive.

Remember the story about me and Russia and the taxi driver picked me up in St. Petersburg and we talked through a
translator. I said, how are you doing? The taxi driver said I have to live like a wolf. I said what do
you mean? You have to be aggressive? You have to fight? You have to kill in order to survive?
Yeah, that’s what I mean. He said, how are you doing? I said I’m a sheep. I’m a sheep. What do
you mean? I’m a sheep. I can’t fight. I can’t fight. How do you survive? I have a shepherd. I have
a shepherd. How do you survive? I have a shepherd. What do you have? You are a wolf. That’s
how you live. By the way, there are many Christians that believe the way to live is to be like a
wolf. Because they got hurt by a wolf and when you get hurt, a wolf hurts you, you just put on
your wolf nature and you fight back. You are soft minded. What does it mean? You don’t
understand what you are part of. You don’t know – you do – I’m talking to you rhetorically not
just specifically but in principle.

That person doesn’t know what we are called to. They don’t know who God is. They are afraid in life. When you are afraid of life, you start defending yourself. You are afraid. You defend by your words. You defend by your groups. You defend by your ways. You are not to live like in the world. You and I are different. We look at Jesus talking
to a group of these people in Matthewt. 12:3. These are a group that are watching his disciples eat
unlawfully on the Sabbath day, right? They were rubbing the corn. They plucked down the corn
on the corners of the field. They are eating. That’s how poor they were. They are eating the
corn and they said it’s not lawful. I’m saying in the context of our message, they are soft
minded people. Why are they soft minded? Because they can’t see. They can’t see. They can’t
see that God gave the corn. They can’t see that these men are sincere. They can’t see that Jesus
is here and I may not know who he is, but I can at least be humble enough to listen to him. But
instead, they are judging. They are quick to judge. Here comes the big thing.

The change from soft mindedness to a larger context is in vs. 3. “Have you not read” – about what? About David.
He’s saying haven’t you read the Bible? Have you read the Bible? Have you read the Bible
where David did something that shouldn’t have been done but God gave him a pass? He ate the
holy bread. It would be like the communion. We’re starving. We go to the Catholic church and
we ask them if they have any wafers. We’re hungry for wafers. The priest says all I have are
these wafers that are taken in communion. And we say that is good enough. We gobbled those
down. That’s similar to what David did. Haven’t you read the story Jesus said? Vs. 5. Jesus is
always challenging soft mindedness. You don’t know what you believe. You don’t have
anything going on inside in a spiritual way. Maybe you are a strong personality but that’s not
what it is. This is not strong personality or leadership. This is deeper.

This is understanding deep in your heart what you believe and being able to stand with it because you believe it. That’s the theme. The greatest example of this – everybody in the Bible who, everybody in the Bible that
wrote the Bible all had this understanding that was deeper than and beyond the reaction of the
moment. The reaction. It’s not reactionary. It’s bigger than reaction. It’s guidance. It’s leading.
When the prophets like Jeremiah when he was weeping and he knew what was going to
happen in the future, he was talking 70 years later this is what will happen. It’s not reaction. It’s
sadness. Truth. It’s the nature of God in the heart of a person. When Moses goes down on his
face, it’s not reaction. It’s understanding, it’s seeing and understanding. It’s not about Moses.

It’s about God and his will and his plan. This is what Jesus said in Matthew 16 when he said to
the disciples who does the world say that I am. Who am I? They said Jeremiah, Elijah, some
prophet. Who do you say that I am? Here comes that revelation that Martin Luther King Junior,
his life at varied periods – I believe he had different times in his life, but his great grandfather
was a pastor and he understood through his life and knew. There were times like the letter
from a Birmingham jail where you could see his primary motivation was God. God was
energizing him. God was motivating him. He had a message of like a big, like it’s timeless.
Things that he said, certain things that he said that’s what he is fighting for. Our country is like
now in groups, isn’t it? Groups. Breaking up into smaller groups and getting the groups to fight
with each other. That’s small mindedness and it happens when I am small minded or soft
minded.

Maybe I don’t have any conviction about something beyond myself. Haven’t you read,
Jesus said. Haven’t you read? Three times. Haven’t you read? Haven’t you read? How is it you
don’t know? Maybe the education isn’t there. Maybe the hatred and the hurt is so strong, and
it feeds. We’re saying put the brakes on. Stop it. think about it. Just don’t say what everybody
else is saying but seek and you shall find. Knock and it will be open unto you. Kill the lizard. God
said it. the world won’t say kill the lizard, but God says kill the lizard. But it will kill me. Obey
me. Do what I say. If you die, you die but kill the lizard. That’s the idea. Can you? Can you give it
up? Last thing turn to Romans 12. Romans 12 is a great chapter for mind renewal and this new
way of living and thinking that God has given us. Somebody in the first, in our earlier service
talked to me about an addiction that they have. I know that God is bigger than any addiction
because we read here about the renewed mind.

The mind changed. Vs. 2. P. Serraji preached on it the other day about the form, conforming, the mold, the plastic mold and put in there whatever you want but it comes out with the same form. Let’s say it’s plastic. You pour in there
plastic and spray paint it gold and the form. It looks gold but the form is the shape that I have in
the mold and I can make it look like what it isn’t, but it conforms to the world. But it’s not
anything. It’s nothing. It’s just plastic. Nothing. It has no value. Words are like that. We say the
right words and then we get the applause of the crowd and just conforming. The world is – we
are molding to, conforming to the crowd instead of standing for truth and knowing it deep in
our hearts what is true. The Greek word here for the renewed mind is a changed mind, deeply
changed. Caterpillar, butterfly, real transformation. Sinner/saint. Lost/found. Wolf/lamb. A real
change. Hatred/love.

The Great Divorce, the play these last couple days showed there is no way
to reconcile hell and heaven. They don’t agree. They are different. They cannot be reconciled.
They are divorced. Reality is like that. You might say like Christian Scientists say that pain is an
illusion until you hit one over the head with a 2 X 4 and ask them, is that an illusion? Yes, based
on our teaching it’s an illusion. Fine. There are many lies and deceptions today and that’s why
we need a good diet of our Bible that the Bible would speak to us by the Spirit of God and lead
us in a deeper life so we can deny our self by a changed mind. I’m not going to do this, read
through this chapter because of its length but I give it to you as a Sunday afternoon reading.
Romans 12, if you read through it a number of times and make notes it goes from my mind to my
church life where I receive gifts and ministry in the church, and I recognize in you Christ in you.

I recognize the Spirit in the church. I see the gifts operating in the church and the Spirit of God in
the church. This is discernible. It’s not the soft mindedness. It’s the enlightened mind and
therefore we recognize God in our assembly. This goes from vs. 3 through vs. 9. We’ll start at
vs. 9. Learn to check yourself. Do you have hypocrisy in your life? Yes, I do. I love him but not
him. I love him but not love him. Wasn’t it Augustine that said, if there is anyone that I don’t
love, then I love nobody. If there is one man that I do not love, then I do not love anybody as 1
Cor. 13 teaches. I may have love for my friends and family but that’s not God’s love. God’s love
is agape love. God’s love. There is hypocrisy in me. How do I process that? I say in our sketch
here I have this world here and I say to God, God show me. Teach me. Help me. Love as I ought
to love. Help me. Lead me. Teach me to think about life in the bigger sense. I pulled on the
beltway. We’re merging.

The other guy gets angry at me. I see it by his body language in the
window of the car and he’s angry and so on and he’s just pulling on the beltway. Where was his
anger? His anger was near his throat, in his heart. It was ready to come out. Maybe the first
thing of the day was me on the beltway being bad to him. Maybe. I don’t know that I was but
apparently I was. His anger should have been in the cellar. That’s where anger should be in the
cellar, because it says be slow to anger. If you put it in the cellar, you have to go get it. It takes
some time. Or back in the shed. Put your anger back out in the shed so when it’s time to get the
anger, you can think about it when you go back there to get it and when you get it, you have to
bring it back. You think about it and then you are angry. Soft minded people carry their
problems right in their heart and throat and speak what they shouldn’t say. They do things out
of anger. The angry man does not bring the righteousness of God. Where is the anger happen?
In the three areas: at work, in the church and at home.

Look at the verse with me and we will explain it. vs. 14. Isn’t that amazing that we would bless people that hate us and don’t understand us. They don’t understand us. They may hate us. They may persecute us. Wouldn’t
that be amazing to be able to do that? I can’t do that. But this is what it is saying. We must be
able to do it if God is telling us this. We have to bless them. We pray for them. Because the
small life can’t. But when you have read, when you have been taught the Bible, when God has
spoken to you heart and you start to believe what Jesus said, what Jesus did, who Jesus is, and
you start to live beyond yourself and you say forgive them. I pray for them. Isn’t it interesting,
you know, some years ago when we had a presidential election and somebody becomes
president that I wouldn’t prefer or wouldn’t vote for, what did I do? I prayed for them. Why?
Because 1 Timothy 2. Have you not read that you pray for you leaders? Have you not read? Yeah,
but I don’t like him. Yeah, but he isn’t the person that I–. Okay. We understand that. But isn’t
life something more than you and me? Isn’t God talking to us about things that we know so
little about? I know so little about life. What do I know about this life?

Romans says, let’s go to it. it’s late. I want to get to the part and finish it. vs. 15-16. This is all awesome material here.
Vs. 17. That’s the part I want to say in closing. Evil for evil. At work. Evil so I return evil for evil.
No, you can’t do that. Yeah, but that’s what I feel like doing. I know you do but you can’t do it.
It’s beneath you. You don’t understand what you are doing. You don’t know what God is doing.
You don’t know the way of God, the mind of God. You don’t understand. When evil happens and you return evil for evil, that’s not God. You can’t do that. The wolf and the wolf. No, you can’t do that. It’s the wolf and the sheep. You get it? it’s the wolf and the sheep. Why? Because he doesn’t have God. I got God. He’s my shepherd and he told me not to return evil for evil. Okay. At work. 2) in the church. You might say in the church there isn’t evil. Yes, there is. How
do you know that? Because at the Last Supper, there was an evil man at the Last Supper. How
can the church be any different from those twelve men at the Last Supper, and that somebody
from the devil is in the group and when that evil person in the church does evil to you, what do
you do about it? Do you return evil to evil or have you not read?

Look up at our screen. Have you not read that you do not return evil for evil. What do you do? You leave the church. That’s a great solution. I leave the church. There’s evil people in that church. Are there? How many are
there? Do you know? Are there evil people? Are there one or two or how many and what are
they saying? Who is the pastor and what is he teaching and what is God doing? Some people
think I will never go to a church where the devil is there. I’ll never go to a church when the
leadership is the devil. When the content of the message is the devil. But I will go to the church
when there is a man of God and a Bible that is from God and the Spirit of God that is talking to
us and building us up in the faith. You know a tree by its fruit. There are churches that are not,
that represent – they don’t read the Bible. But have you not read? That’s important. How does
a hypocrite get corrected? By reading. How does a phony person get exposed? By the teaching
of the Bible. That’s how. Hebrews 4:13, “neither is there any creature that is not naked and open
unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”

Awesome, isn’t it? What are you going to do when an evil man or person is in the church? How do you relate to them? Okay. Pray. Thank you. We pray. We love. We minister and we hope that that evil will not have an influence, but
that evil could have, Galatians 2:4. We read about it in Titus 1:9, “whose mouths must be stopped. It’s
2 Corinthians 11, there are false apostles, angels of light. They have the appearance of righteousness,
but they are empty and phony people. They are empty and phony. They don’t have the reality.
You see the issue is are you a wolf or a sheep? If we are sheep, we are following another voice.
Lastly, evil in our family. You might say there is evil in my family. How do you deal with it?
Return evil for evil? No. You cannot. You are not called to return evil for evil. You and I are
called to something deeper, spiritual, true and wise. There are new believers that come into the
faith, but they don’t get rooted and grounded, Colossians 2:8-9. I got to get rooted and grounded. I go
through trials. I read good things that help me in the faith.

I learn Apologetics or if that is not my forte, I learn history. If it’s not history, and all of this I learn my theology and I learn my Bible and a personal devotional walk with God where I fear God. I get rooted and grounded. I have
my history. I have my Bible. I have my prayer life. I have the Body of Christ. I have the Body of
Christ. And brother and sister, I’m not moving. I got something going on in my heart all the time
that’s encouraging me and feeding me and building me up. We are different people but that’s
the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. We are different from the world. We don’t
live like the world. We are changed. We have the nature of Christ in our heart and in our life.
We have an open Bible. We are learning. We are growing and one day we are going to meet
Jesus Christ personally. That will be an amazing day, won’t it? I always think of going to heaven

like this. I go to heaven and I go, I smelled this before. It’s going to be a lot different that this
that I’m describing! But I’m saying, I’ll see you and go, I know you. I knew you on the earth. I
know you. It will be like this whole – we are here for a period of time not to be this soft minded
people, but we are here to have a real influence here. It’s beautiful and that’s what a church is.
A church is built on a rock and that Rock is Christ and the gates of hell cannot handle this big
mindedness, this love that doesn’t stop, this grace that gives forgiveness that is powerful. The
church is an incredible manifestation of God in the world.

Amen.

Please enjoy these sermon notes from the messages preached at Greater Grace Church in Baltimore. These notes are provided to aid in your study and understanding of the Word. Note that these notes do not represent complete, word-for-word transcriptions. Also, they may contain omissions as well as some errors in spelling and structure, etc., as we attempt to provide them as soon as possible. Our hope is that these notes serve as a way to help you search and connect with messages on related subjects and passages. Thank you for your interest in the ministry of Greater Grace.