Glory to you. Glory to you. It's so good to be here with family, be able to come home and share a service together with frequently, pretty much on a weekly basis, a talk or a text or something.
But when I realized he was going to be ministering in West Tennessee today and they gave me an opportunity.
You, you look good. That's right. Come on, give yourself a hand clap.
That's not the same thing as praise the Lord. Yes. So good to have Sue with me as always today.
Able to be with us and ministering. Last week I was supporting her. I'm going to Hopewell.
Oh, praise God. Oh, I appreciate this. This music is praise and worship. It just really ushering us into the presence in this place today.
Glory to God. Well, I, I have a word from the Lord that I would like to share with you.
And if you would just stand with from the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of of Matthew going to be reading Chapter nine verse.
I'm going to really focus in on verse now. I know what kind of preacher that Clifford Waters is.
He's just a prince of preachers. But he. Oh, that was somewhere else, wasn't it?
So we'll we'll we'll try to just not reach you can have is to fill the pulpit of someone like Clifford Waters, you know, a man of God, a preacher of the gospel.
He and Kathy are just top notch. And you know that to the verses I want to share how that there was a man who couldn't walk.
And being healed. And so four really good friends brought him to be prayed for.
And then they discovered that the crowd was they climbed to the roof and opened up the towel of that Middle Eastern home.
Fortunately, they didn't have them and said, your sins are forgiving you.
And of course, there's always some critics around those who think he is who can forgive sins.
But but Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, well, which one's the easiest to say your sins be forgiven you or take up your bed and walk.
But that you may know that was mute and demon possessed.
And when the demon was cast out, the mute spoke and the multitudes marveled, say, and here's that parallel passage in Matthew nine and thirty three.
I want to use one word for a subject in the parallel passage in Luke.
It says we never saw it like this. This in Israel.
I want to use one word for a subject, which is the word unprecedented.
Could you say that with me? Lord, we pray and that you would give us ears to to hear and a heart to heed what the sayeth the Lord.
Thus sayeth the Lord in our word from you today. Amen.
You may be seated if you like. Unprecedented.
Now, simply enough, the word unprecedented means never known or done around kind of loosely like some other words that get overused and probably in the long run undervalued.
It's in contemporary English that are considered the most overused words in today's language.
And I'm one that is on the list at the top of the list for being overused is the word amazing.
People say amazing. Is that one that happens in conversation a lot?
Interesting. You can just mark it off that when somebody looks at you and says interesting, they probably don't mean it.
Nice. And again, you can almost hear it, can't you? Have you ever had anyone say nice?
And you knew the teeth had been pulled out of it.
I mean, this is my word. I don't know how many times every day until she pointed out.
I didn't realize how many times I use it. But here's one. You can't go to a server.
You can't go to work. You can't you almost just can't go anywhere without somebody saying my favorite one.
That's her favorite. But my favorite one is awesome.
Now, I think one of the reasons that that one's my favorite because us young folks use it.
They're overused and undervalued.
Well, oddly enough, unprecedented is really right at the top of those lists, but not quite in use to kind of loosely.
Well, that's unprecedented. And you kind of want to go back and research and see if something like this really never ever happened before.
If something like this really it's not common or maybe it's a little rare, but it really isn't unprecedented.
Well, when I usually hear of what Jesus was doing, I'm just was doing really hadn't been known or done before.
Glory to God. It really was unprecedented.
Now, the demon cast out or exercised and then healed. And we look at that miracle.
Now, I don't know about you, but I read the scripture with my eyes open, my ears open, hopefully my heart unprecedented.
Because the fact is that there were other places where miracles like this and more dramatic, perhaps more spectacular or sensational.
It's not just talking about this one miracle because Chapter nine, verse thirty three is the climax of two chapters.
Interestingly enough, the material before Chapter five, six and seven is the Sermon on the Mount.
It's really Jesus most famous teaching and preaching.
And then starting in the middle book ended, if you will, bracketed between these two teaching sections.
Miracles of miraculous occurrences that boggle the imagination and stretch our ability to comprehend.
There's mirrored take place one right after another.
First of all, Jesus heals a leper. That's how he starts the series off.
And then a centurion servant. And then he.
And as if that weren't enough, Matthew sort of tags in there and many people after that healing were just a cringey said,
after the healing of Jesus, mother, they had a Peter's mother.
All right. They had a healing service and there were many people healed.
That would see. And then he comes across to Gagosine demoniacs and he delivers them.
But that that's not enough. Then he heals a paralytic. Heals her one right after another.
Two blind men, not just one, but two. I saw one blind woman heal one time and it amazed me.
Here you have two blind men just healed right where he delivers and heals this demonized mutant man.
Miracle after miracle in rapid fire, in quick succession, in trip hammer one, two, three, all the way.
The 10th miracle. And after the 10th miracle, the crowd says, oh, it was never seen like this.
When I say unprecedented, I'm not throwing it around loosely. I'm not throwing it around colloquially.
I'm saying Jesus does what we've never known. Hallelujah.
He does that which is unprecedented. Praise the Lord.
And we will imagine. But there's a pattern of the unprecedented.
How can you have a pattern of the unprecedented? Because unprecedented by nature, you know, is a climactic finale.
There is. Oh, let me just share a few of those unprecedented examples from scripture.
If we went to Deuteronomy in Chapter four, verse 32, we have read through the scriptures and we've seen how Israel was imprisoned in bondage in Egypt.
And delivered through a series of miracles. And now they have been brought out to enter.
And they're at the base of the mountain. And Moses gathers all the people of Israel together for a sermon, a speech, a talk with them to go back and look at time of old.
And I want you to ask if there has ever been a people like you that heard the voice speak out of the fire, who took people out of another nation by miracles and signs and wonders.
Has there ever been a God who has done? Oh, look out, devil. I'm about ready to get excited.
And the obvious answer is it's all unprecedented. But you've seen this that you might know that the Lord is God.
And there is no other. My God, TTT, don't you? The Tony's Tennessee translation of the Bible.
You remember that? I'm going to put this right in language like I understand.
You know what Moses was saying to Israel? You ain't serving them. You're not serving someone who's just an assembly line religion.
Oh, but I want to tell you, you've got a God that is beyond. He is God. He is the God of the unprecedented.
My God, somebody knows what I mean. And unprecedented encounter. Oh.
One of my favorites, and I think you will identify with it after 10 verses 12 through 14, especially now on up about verse nine, we get the backdrop to the strip of Joshua fighting the Amorites.
And the Amorites were bigger and better than the Israelites.
But you don't need to be. They got into a war into a battle there.
Oh, right as they come out of the people to deliver to people of Gideon.
And while they were there, the Bible says the Louis and analogous.
Oh, no. You know what God did? He opened up heaven and he hurled hell stones down on the Amorites from heaven.
They came out of the sky and the hell stones came out.
They began to flee, but they couldn't outrun the hell stones because heaven just kept hurling hell stones.
The Bible says that there were more as God fought for Israel.
But oh, here's the part. Here's the part I want to bring our attention to.
The Bible says that Joshua realized that even in the victory that he told the sun to stand still.
Oh, glory to God. And it stood still in the heavens.
My God in the moon stood still over the valley of Ijohn.
And they defeated the Amorites.
And the Bible says there never was a day before or after it when God obeyed the voice of a man.
When God articulate that. But I know God heard a man that said, let the sun stand still.
Let my God and everything stop.
It's never before nor since.
Somebody shout.
Amen.
He does the unprecedented.
I don't care what you've seen, what you've heard, what you know.
God's got more. Just one more example.
And that created a colossal statue and commanded everyone to bow down and to worship whenever they heard the sound of music.
See, the devil's been trying to do it.
I like what we did here today. We worship God with our music.
Everybody has to fall down and worship this king or else they'll be striking me.
Shack and a bed and go.
I was in Africa and Zambia about a month or six weeks ago.
I guess it was. And one of the one of the men bishop in my group, Shadrach, Meshach and a bed and go.
Oh, they refuse to bow. Oh, I love it.
You know the story. I won't take time with it. Oh, with the king did.
And he called him up, said, if you'll do this, OK, but if not, there's no God able to deliver you out of my hand.
I love the response. Our God is a ball that we will not bow down before your idols.
Our worship is not dependent on circumstances or how good it is.
Even if we're in the fire, throw us in.
Exactly what happened that old king Nebuchadnezzar, he waited for the screams. It didn't come out to smell. It didn't come out.
It walks into that fiery furnace. Wait a minute. We know it was hot. You know how the liberals are today. Well, maybe it wasn't a real fire.
Maybe it's metaphorical. Maybe this is just a mythological analogy.
Oh, three men bound. Yeah, OK. Well, that OK.
Would you come out, please?
They came up out of that fiery furnace. Now, here's where it gets interesting in terms of my message this morning.
I'm headed toward Chapter three, verse twenty nine, because when the king gets them out.
I had to get angry enough to throw you in the fire. They got some anger management issues.
Or as my grandma used to say, a bad temper. He commended them that they did not obey the king command.
See, we've been trying to placate the world. We don't need to placate. We need to demonstrate.
And I'm not talking about carrying a sign that manifests who God really is.
He commended them. And then he went one step further. He wrote a letter to everyone to say anything bad about this people and their God.
Verse twenty nine, because there is no other God who is able to deliver accident.
I call that unprecedented that King saw something he'd never seen before.
That King heard something he'd never heard before. It was unprecedented. Lord God Almighty is able.
He does that which is. You know, something I found kind of fascinating words interests me, you know, the word is made up of water.
And I took a look at this unprecedented and I found out something intriguing.
The Bulls Choice 2020 Word of the Year.
Unprecedented. I said, they dictionary dot com. Check it out. They do this every year. What is the word of the year in our English speaking culture?
Twenty twenty was right in the grip, the vice grip. Of COVID.
And the sir, but it was not. Fear, but it was not.
In fact, with all the political unrest and civil unrest going on, economic collapse and upheaval, they thought it would be something in reference to that.
But it wasn't. So they began to inquire churchgoers, which, by the way, not necessarily the same thing, but we'll keep going there.
But all the people across our land looked at us before they realized in their lifetime they had never known anything like what was going on in this nation before.
You know, some of us here that are, you know, wide headed or and we've reached some times that we kept hearing people say, I never saw anything like this.
I never heard anything like this. And they began to say, you know what?
We're living in an unprecedented time, kind of apocalyptic. I mean, it sounds like we're reading about the plagues in the Book of Revelation.
It got that that way. Don't don't you recall? Oh, and people were saying it's unprecedented situation that they had never been in before.
And you know what? They were right about that. And we're on the and it's only the beginning of sorrows because we are in a time right now that all the word of these are coming to a head,
coming to a culmination and a consummation. We're in a time. I want to tell you from the study of the Word of God, I believe that we're moving toward that.
It's all began. We are living in some ways in unprecedented times, and that scares a lot of people. But I want to tell you something else. If you're serving the God, God,
if you're serving a God who majors in the unprecedented, my God, you don't have to fear. Just get ready to belly up and experience.
I got to hurry. I've only got another hour or so to preach. What amazes me when they said it was never seen like this in Israel before.
Chapter nine is not even the finish. The completion. Jesus just getting warmed up real well. Territory. Let me just mention three great miracles that happened after that.
The greatest miracle that I can imagine. Calvary. I was lost. I was in sin. I was dying. I was on my way to hell. One thing nobody had to convince me of. I was lost. I knew I was lost.
And I met a man, the Lamb of God, who died on the cross. I still believe the greatest miracle that I've ever experienced is when the Son of God took my sins away, forgave me, gave me eternal life, gave me a new life.
And I am the new greatest miracle of all.
But if he had died, dramatic or unprecedented about it, I know we're past Easter, but I never quite get past resurrection.
The third day he came up alive. He rose from the dead. You want to know something unprecedented? It's the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Even if God or Christ himself came along and prayed for him, but nobody ever laid down his own life, told him ahead of time, I'm going to die. I'm going to be dead three days.
And on the third day I'm going to come up alive today. But Christianity stands or falls with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He rose up. He's alive. Jesus rose up. He's alive. He's alive.
He's alive serving a dead Lord. He's alive. He's alive. He rose. He is alive. Somebody knows. Give him praise.
If we stop right there, and a lot of Christians do, I'm Pentecostal. Some of you are saying, me too, me too. And you are probably.
And Easter. But the Bible doesn't stop there. It goes on to Pentecost. He went to the right hand of God.
I tell you, that's not just that's not just a description of where of his ascension. He is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high.
He is seated in glory and power. He is seated there in dignity of the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
But I tell you, when he got there, he said, there's one more thing I want to do. I got home to the right hand of the Father. Now I got a letter to send back to my folks.
Pentecost was fully calm. They were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.
And it filled all the house where they were sitting. They appeared to them in cloven tongues like as a fire.
I'll tell you another miracle. Not only did he do all that he did, but when he got back to the side of the Father, he poured out his spirit.
The same spirit lives in us. The same spirit lives in us. My God, it's unprecedented.
Every time he does something unprecedented, we think this is as good as it gets. He does something more.
He's seen like this in Israel before. Now I'm going to tell you what Jehovah God sent me here to say.
The Holy Spirit breathed to me in the wee hours of the morning and the darkness of the night and spoke to me a word to deliver at Hopewell this morning.
He said, I want you to see what they haven't seen before. Oh, glory to God. I want you to tell them.
I've been bringing them to a place and I've been getting them ready. And now I'm going to show my glory on.
He sent me here to tell you he wants to do unprecedented works in our midst today.
It's not just a history lesson. It's not even sacred history. But God is the God.
The same yesterday, today, and forever. The Lord sent me here to say he wants to do that which is unprecedented in our lives today.
Here's what the Lord gave me this morning. I'd already prepared this message and Lord spoke to me and I had to go back and write it down at the end of my notes.
But I don't think I'm going to forget it anyway because he said it so clearly.
I expect the unprecedented.
Here's what the Holy Spirit says to us.
I have told it to you in advance before. When you see it, you will know that I, the Lord God, have done it.
Oh, could you just stand with me now and let's reverence and worship the Holy Spirit right now.
Bless it be the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Praise him now. If you will accept this word and you believe this word from him in your heart, give him glory. Give him praise now.
On an individual or personal level, what are you looking for in your life?
I expect the unprecedented. Oh, glory to God. Some of us here have been serving the Lord a while and some maybe not as long.
But we're all going to see things we never saw before. We're all going to encounter that Moses told them about.
I like that unprecedented answer that Joshua got. I like that unprecedented action that Nebuchadnezzar described.
But oh, I'll tell you what I like. You know, I'm just going to give it to you like this.
If you're ready to move into the realm of expectation where the unprecedented is possible in your life, would you just unprecedented in your life?
You want God to take you farther. You want God to do more. My God, maybe you need healing. Maybe you need deliverance.
Maybe you need a blessing or maybe you just realize that God is moving. Yes, glory to God. Hallelujah. Oh, yes, Lord.
I know God can minister to us anywhere we are and touch us anywhere we are. And I respect that.
Oh, God honors that obedience and God honors that faith. And God does what we've asked him to do and what he's promised us to do.
Can somebody say amen? Oh, glory to God. I want you, if you would please, God, grant what you have said.
We know you have promised it and you will fulfill all your word. Glory to God.
And to ask the Lord, my God, move to make your word real in my life. Move me into the area of the unprecedented.