We Found Fruit

2 Kings 7

Good morning! If you’re here this morning, and you don’t have a Bible with you, slip up your hand. We want to put a Bible in your hand. It may take a moment or so to get with you, but you want one of those Bibles, and you want one of those handout sheets because on that handout sheet, is just a ton of references that I’m actually not even going to have time to cover this morning. I want you to have it in your hand.

Also, I don’t know if we have people in the foyer, but I’m looking around and I see some empty seats, which… Are there people in the foyer who want to get in? Let’s let them in. Does anybody out there want to sit inside? Now if you like sitting out there, that’s cool. I actually sometimes enjoy it myself because there is coffee. If you have seats next to you, slip up your hand. We’ll find a place. Oh, look at all these seats! Anybody want seats? Come on in. We’ll find you seats. Just keep your hand up. Some have their hand up…peace to you, too, brother. That’s Trinity. Okay, come on in. There are some on the stadium back there.

When you get that Bible, open it up to 2 Kings, chapter 7. A couple of things while you’re turning there, I know some of you want information on the building. Amen? Oh, thank you for wanting information. We have none. We have nothing. That’s what we have. We have nothing, and it’s killing me. So pray for me. We won’t know anything probably until the 15th of the month, so just pray. Things look good, but we really won’t know anything… Then if everything goes like normal, then we won’t know anything for two or three more days then, too. The 15th is when we’re supposed to know some more details, so keep praying. Keep praying. It looks good.

Now the other thing is this is a little bit of an embarrassing announcement. How many of you do Facebook? Oh look at all you techies. Good heavens! I have to say this because I’m speaking at this conference this week, this kind of a techie kind of conference. They said that I needed friends. So I have a Facebook account. I, every once in a while, post stuff on it. I’ve opened… I can’t say, “I’ve opened.” Somebody opened a public account for me, and if you would be so kind to friend me, then they said I will look like I have a lot of friends. Now if you want to friend me and then defriend me after Friday, you can do that. It’s like you go on my Facebook, whatever it is, and you go, “Like,” I think. Okay? You don’t really have to like me, but I need… Otherwise I’m going to be like a Buddy with no buddies. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? So I need some friends. They don’t have to be close. You don’t even have to check on it. Anyway… So check that out.

How many of you get Buddy Mail? How many of you get Buddy Mail? Okay, you do know I don’t do that, don’t you? I actually write it, but then they grammatically correct it, and then Bo Hooper does the graphics on it. Doesn’t he do an amazing job? Yeah, so if you see Bo, he’s like this quiet guy, wanders around, but man, he never gets Buddy Mail until like midnight Thursday night. That’s my deadline, and he never bugs me about it or anything. Then he turns that… This is part of it. That’s amazing to me what a team can do. He turns the whole thing around by like Friday at noon. Boom…it’s out there. I’m just doggone impressed with.

Second Kings, chapter 7, we’ve been talking about fruit and fruitfulness. Two weeks ago, I did this overview of the fact that God desires us, created us. His heart’s hunger for us is to be fruitful. The very first words that God said to Adam and Eve was, “Be fruitful…be fruitful.” The promise God made to Abraham was, “You’re going to be fruitful.” The promise God made to Jacob and Isaac and Joseph and Moses and the nation of Israel, it was all about fruitfulness.

When Jesus talks to the disciples, I mean His last night physically on earth, pre-crucifixion, those are important words. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around somebody where they knew they were going to die, and they looked around at people who meant something to them, and started saying things that really meant something of gravity. Everything Jesus said meant something, but there is something about those words just before somebody dies that just gives it even greater gravity.

He says to the disciples, “I want you to be fruitful. I want you to bear a lot of fruit. I want it to be lasting.” In Galatians, Jon Stallsmith preached last week. Didn’t he do a good job? Yeah! He talked about what fruit really is, and this issue of the fruit of the Spirit. You may be in one of those situations where you think it’s almost impossible for you to be a fruitful person, and your condition may be so spiritually dehydrated, you feel like… You maybe even take a pride in living in that desert wasteland, and you think that really is normal. Here’s what I want to say to you: God really wants us to be fruitful. He does. He wants us to be relationally fruitful. He wants us to have friends. See? Facebook me.

He wants us to be fruitful in our lives financially. He wants us to be fruitful in our lives spiritually, in reproducing. He wants our marriages to be fruitful. Now listen carefully to what I am not saying, so hear this also. I am not saying this health and wealth gospel that if you’re ever in a situation where you’re not bearing fruit, somehow you’re just not right with God. Don’t hear me say that because I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that as a norm, God really wants us to be fruitful. God desires that for us. It’s not like, “Wow, this is a really unusual situation.” It should be really, really, really normal.

My granddad, his name was Fred, every year he planted a garden. Man, it was a fruitful garden. It was amazing. He would grow this huge, tall corn. Lived on Main Street in Lilburn…right behind his little frame house. All the old men in Lilburn would come, and they would look at each other’s corn and the tomatoes. They would make all these elaborate structures to grow these massive, huge tomatoes. You would go down there and these old guys in Lilburn would be arguing about who had the really tall corn. They took delight. I remember the first time I ever went into one of those Chinese restaurants and they had those little, bitty corns. I’m thinking, Somebody is embarrassed!

God desires us to be fruitful. God doesn’t want us to live in a famine. Look at chapter 7, verse 1. Elisha, you remember who Elisha is. Elisha is the fellow who followed Elijah, and Elijah was one of the most amazing prophets in the Scripture, and Elisha was described as the one who poured water on the hands of the prophet. He followed Elijah around, and his prayer was this, “God, I want to have a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. That’s what I want. I want twice what Elijah had.” Wow, that’s a bold prayer! You would think that it would be a bold prayer to even just say, “If I could just be half the man Elijah was,” that would be bold. “No, I want to be twice the prophet. I want what You pour out on me to be twice what You gave to Elijah.”

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if the kids growing up in this church looked back one day and go, “My parents, they just didn’t think big enough? That Grace Fellowship…the problem with Grace Fellowship is they had 1,000 middle schoolers, we’re going to have 2,000.” Amen. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Do you think God would look at them and go, “Well, you greedy people, we’re not giving that to you?” No, no! God gives that to Elisha. Actually, there are exactly twice as many miracles recorded in the Scriptures about Elisha then there was about Elijah. So Elisha is there, and he says, “Listen to the message of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: By this time tomorrow in the markets of Samaria…”

Now that was the center of Israel at the time. It wasn’t Jerusalem. The capital of the northern section was up in Samaria. “‘Five quarts of choice flour will cost only one piece of silver, and ten quarts of barley grain will cost only one piece of silver.’ The officer assisting the king said to the man of God, ‘That couldn’t happen even if the Lord opened the windows of heaven!’” Now that sounds like a statement of…Wow, that would be amazing. Wouldn’t that be great if God would do that? He’s not. He’s actually mocking because actually God had, in Israel’s history, opened the windows of heaven. When they were going through the wilderness, the way they were fed was manna. God opened the windows of heaven.

When I was a kid, we used to sing the song, “The windows of heaven are open. The blessings are falling tonight. There is joy, joy, joy in my heart since…” Anybody remember that song? Never mind. What was going on here? Back up to chapter 6 for a minute. Look at verse 8. “When the king of Aram was at war with Israel, he would confer with his officers and say, ‘We will mobilize our forces at such and such a place.’ But immediately Elisha, the man of God, would warn the king of Israel, ‘Do not go near that place, for the Arameans…’” I have the hardest time pronouncing this word. I’ve pronounced it like 50 different ways…Arameans is correct, but for some reason I want to say… Never mind. Arameans…if you’re familiar with the Aramaic, this is where this comes from. They weren’t one of the big forces. They weren’t like the Hittites, or the Egyptians or the Persians, but they were a force to be reckoned with.

“‘The Arameans are planning to mobilize their troops there.’ So the king of Israel would send word to the place indicated by the man of God. Time and again Elisha warned the king, so that they would be on the alert there. The king of Aram became very upset over this. He called his officers together and demanded, ‘Which of you is the traitor? Who has been informing the king of Israel of my plans?’ ‘It’s not us, my lord the king,’ one of the officers replied. ‘Elisha, the prophet in Israel, tells the king of Israel even the words you speak in the privacy of your bedroom!’ ‘Go and find out where he is,’ the king commanded, ‘so I can send troops to seize him.’”

That’s called hubris. That’s crazy. “And the report came back: ‘Elisha is at Dothan.’ So one night the king of Aram sent a great army with many chariots and horses to surround the city. When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. ‘Oh, sir, what will we do now?’ the young man cried to Elisha.” Now you see what’s going on. The man who is actually going to be the next Elisha in line, he comes back and says, “We’re surrounded. What are we going to do?”

Verse 16, “‘Don’t be afraid!’ Elisha told him. ‘For there are more on our side than on theirs!’ Then Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!’ The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.” Do you believe that? Yeah, I believe it. Do you believe there are angels here today? Yes, they are. They are. I can tell you that for sure. They are. I can tell you that based upon the Word of God. It says, “The Lord sends His angels to encamp about those who fear Him.” So I guarantee you, there are. I don’t want to get into this this morning, but there are literally angels in this room all over the place. Our eyes, most of our eyes can’t see them, but Elisha was aware of it.

He says, “For a moment, would You just open this man’s eyes so he can see what is going on?” “As the Aramean army advanced toward him, Elisha prayed…” Now what he reveals here is he reverses the prayer, “Oh Lord, please make them blind!” So one prayer is to open the eyes, the other is, “Make them blind…this is the Aramean army.” “So the Lord struck them with blindness as Elisha had asked. Then Elisha went out and told them, ‘You have come the wrong way!’” This is kind of funny. “This isn’t the right city! Follow me, and I will take you to the man you are looking for.”

Now he doesn’t directly lie, but he misleads them a bit. “And he led them to the city of Samaria. As soon as they had entered Samaria, Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, now open their eyes and let them see.’ So the Lord opened their eyes, and they discovered that they were in the middle of Samaria.” Now wouldn’t that shake you up? Say, “Yes.” Now you think you have them surrounded; now you’re surrounded. All of a sudden you’re blind, and now you’re surrounded.

“When the king of Israel saw them, he shouted to Elisha, ‘My father, should I kill them? Should I kill them?’ ‘Of course not!’ Elisha replied. ‘Do we kill prisoners of war? Give them food and drink and send them home again to their master.’” That’s an interesting statement, isn’t it? So what do we do with prisoners of war? Do we kill them? He says, “We’re not them. Don’t misunderstand this. We are not them.” What do you want me to do with them? “Feed them! They’re just soldiers. Feed them. Have a party, and then tell them to go home.” Well that could get you in big trouble, couldn’t it? Well, that’s what Elisha said to do.

“So the king made a great feast for them and then sent them home to their master. After that, the Aramean raiders stayed away from the land of Israel.” I’m not going back there. Are you crazy? They have this guy over there who can make you go blind. “Some time later, however, King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and besieged Samaria. As a result, there was a great famine in the city. The siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a cup of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver.” I wish I had time to dig into that, but things were so desperate, they were eating unclean things.

“One day as the king of Israel was walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him, ‘Please help me, my lord the king!’ He answered, ‘If the Lord doesn’t help you, what can I do? I have neither food from the threshing floor nor wine from the press to give you.’ But then the king asked, ‘What is the matter?’ She replied, ‘This woman said to me: ‘Come on, let’s eat your son today, then we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,’ but she has hidden her son.’ When the king heard this, he tore his clothes in despair.” That’s what’s going on here.

Back to verse 2 of chapter 7, here’s what Elisha says. God is going to end this now. The person giving counsel to the king is a naturalist. He goes, “That couldn’t happen. It’s not going to happen. That doesn’t happen. Even if God opened the windows of heaven, that can’t happen.” Now let me just tell you something that you need to be very careful about…telling God what He can and can’t do because God can do more in a second than a man can do in a century. God can do more in a moment…boom…than a people can do in a millennium. Do you understand God can change everything like that? He can change your heart. He can change economies. He can change everything.

Now some of you have a hard time believing that, but this is what the Bible teaches. Here’s what Elisha says, “But Elisha replied, ‘You will see it happen with your own eyes, but you won’t be able to eat any of it!’ There were four men with leprosy.” I love this story. “…sitting at the entrance of the city gates.” I love this statement, “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” I think that’s where a lot of churches are, by the way. They’re dead. The certificate just hasn’t been written yet. “‘Why should we sit here waiting to die?’ they asked each other. ‘We will starve [there is a series of four if's here] if we stay here, but with the famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have died anyway.’”

Have you ever been in one of those situations where there are no good choices? You just look and go, “Isn’t there like…okay, one, two, three, four, none of…is there a five? None of the above? No, this is not going to work.” Verse 5, “So at twilight…” This is at sunset, not in the clarity of the morning, but as night falls. “They set out for the camp of the Arameans. But when they came to the edge of the camp, no one was there! For the Lord had caused the Aramean army to hear the clatter of speeding chariots and the galloping of horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. ‘The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians.’” Now I don’t have even time to tell you how impossible that statement is. The king doesn’t even have food. He can’t hire them. The Hittites hated the Egyptians. The Egyptians hated the Hittites. They’re not going to work together. They’re so afraid, they’re sure the impossible has happened.

“They cried to one another. So they panicked and ran into the night, abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else, as they fled for their lives. When the lepers arrived at the edge of the camp, they went into one tent after another, eating and drinking wine; and they carried off silver and gold and clothing [and I think this is funny] and hid it.” They just went in and gorged themselves. They hid it.

“Finally, they said to each other, ‘This is not right. This is a day of good news, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone! If we wait until morning, some calamity will certainly fall upon us. Come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace.’ So they went back to the city and told the gatekeepers what had happened. ‘We went out to the Aramean camp,’ they said, ‘and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there wasn’t a single person around!’ Then the gatekeepers shouted the news to the people in the palace.

The king got out of bed in the middle of the night and told his officers, ‘I know what has happened. The Arameans know we are starving, so they have left their camp and have hidden in the fields. They are expecting us to leave the city, and then they will take us alive and capture the city.’ One of his officers replied, ‘We had better send out scouts to check into this. Let them take five of the remaining horses. If something happens to them, it will be no worse than if they stay here and die with the rest of us.’

So two chariots with horses were prepared, and the king sent scouts to see what had happened to the Aramean army. They went all the way to the Jordan River, following a trail of clothing and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their mad rush to escape. The scouts returned and told the king about it. Then the people of Samaria rushed out and plundered the Aramean camp. So it was true that five quarts of choice flour were sold that day for one piece of silver, and ten quarts of barley grain were sold for one piece of silver, just as the Lord had promised. The king appointed his officer to control the traffic at the gate, but he was knocked down and trampled to death as the people rushed out. So everything happened exactly as the man of God had predicted when the king came to his house.”

This handout that I gave you is about Jesus, and Jesus’ fruit. I have seven points that are not on that sheet, that I want you to jot down.

1. We are the leapers. When you look at that story, and you think about…Do I fit in this story anywhere? We are the leapers.

2. Like the leapers, we wandered out into the twilight, not into clarity, but just into the twilight almost out of desperation…really out of desperation.

3. We have found fruit. We really have found fruit.

Now I don’t know if you are aware how desperate situations are across the board. If you’re at Grace, it may just seem this is the way church is and the church is normal, but it’s not. Most churches do not have the kinds of kids that we do. Amen? That just doesn’t happen. We didn’t, at one time. I remember when I looked at our youth group, and quite frankly the entire high school department was full of criminals. They were. They were criminals. I asked myself, “Are we like attracting criminals? Because if we’re attracting criminals, that’s okay because maybe we can help them. Or are we creating criminals?” I actually came to the conclusion that we may not be creating criminals, but we were cultivating them.

I looked at our middle school group, and there were like 20 kids in the middle school group, and they were just there because their parents made them go. We started going, “Lord, what would You have us do?” We did not know what we were doing. We wandered out into the twilight. Five years ago, we looked downtown. I don’t know if you realize how… In 1970, inside the perimeter, there were 169 Southern Baptist churches. Now I just am mentioning the Southern Baptist because they’re the best counters. If you’ve ever been Southern Baptist, you know this is true. They are better at counting. They actually sometimes exaggerate a little bit, but 169. Do you know how many there are today? Thirty-four. Downtown, exactly right in the downtown portion, there are five or six. None of them run over 100.

Now five years ago, we got involved in this church replant downtown. That church today, they’ll have 700 or 800 people there. Amen? Now I’m going to tell you something. We have stumbled into fruit, lots of fruit, amazing fruit. Right after 9/11, we started trying to figure out…How in the world do we do this Muslim thing? We did it really badly. Honestly, we did. We went around and we asked people how to do it. We went over to London and asked some people how to do it. Mostly they said… I call it our Jerry Springer stage of Muslim evangelism. They don’t understand you, just yell louder. We took that evangelism strategy on the road, ended up getting arrested in Iraq. I mean you don’t want to get arrested in Iraq. I’m telling you right now. Justice moves really fast there…or injustice, as the case may be. They were going to cut our heads off. That’s a whole different story.

Let me just tell you something. God has done something absolutely miraculous. I am actually getting you ready for something that I am going to show you next week that’s going to make some of you a little uncomfortable. Do you remember when the spies went over into the land and they brought back fruit? People go, “I’ve never seen fruit like that before.” Next week, and this is not going to be on the internet, we’re going to have some fruit for you. I just want to get you ready. So here are the points. One…we’re the lepers. Two…we wandered out into the twilight. Three…we found the fruit.

4. We have been feasting on the fruit, really feasting, gorging ourselves.

5. We have recognized our responsibility to share the Good News. We recognize our responsibility. We came to this place where we recognize we have this responsibility.

6. Not everybody is convinced. What I’m about to share with you in a minute…not everybody is convinced.

7. We’re not going to shut up about it. We’re not. We’re not going to shut about it, even if it makes people mad. We’re not. I’m not asking you to clap. You don’t need to because you may not like it either. It may solve our parking problems.

This is the kingdom of God. How does somebody get into the kingdom of God? I gave you a cheat sheet. You don’t have to guess. It’s on your sheet right here. How does somebody get into the kingdom of God? You can pick any one of those verses. You grew up with this verse. “For God so loved…” Who? “…the world so much He gave His one and only Son so that…” Who? “Everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.”

John 8:24, “Unless you believe that I AM who I claim to be, you will die in your sins.”

John 6:68, “Peter replied, ‘Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know You are the Holy One of God.’”

John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

How do you get into the kingdom of God? How do you get into the kingdom of God? It’s going to be a long sermon. Thank you. Now let me ask you something. How many of you grew up Baptist? Wow, a lot of you Baptist out there. That’s their problem. I grew up Baptist. I remember when we started Grace and when we decided Grace wasn’t going to be a Baptist church. Our family has been Baptist since Peachtree was dirt. I remember the conversation. They had an intervention.

My granddaddy had five brothers who were all pastors…Baptist pastors. They called me in, and they had this big conversation with me. “We’re Baptists.” I said, “I know, it is okay. I’m still Baptist. We’re just not going to talk about it.” He goes, “No we’re Baptists, Buddy, you don’t understand. We’re Baptists because Jesus is Baptist.” I said, “Jesus is Baptist?” He goes, “Yes, if you were sprinkled by a Presbyterian, what would you be?” I said, “Presbyterian.” He said, “If you were poured on by a Methodist, what would you be?” I said, “Methodist.” He said, “If you were confirmed by a Catholic, what would you be?” “Catholic.” “Who baptized Jesus?” I said, “You got me there.”

Does anybody here think that every Baptist is in the kingdom of God? How many of you know a Baptist you’re sure isn’t in the kingdom of God? Okay, let me ask you a question. What is a Baptist? Is a Baptist Jerry Falwell, or is a Baptist Jimmy Carter? How many would agree those are two very different people? Yeah, okay.

Anybody here grow up Presbyterian? Presbyterian? It was appointed, sovereignly appointed by God that you are to be here today. Okay? You know I would ask you if you know any Presbyterians who aren’t in the kingdom, but they have to be. What about Methodists? Any of you grow up Methodist? Okay…Methodist people, all right! Now, you know our Baptist friends have problems with you. They are so happy you raised your hand because they’re going to get you under the water before the day is over.

You know the word Baptist means to immerse. Go do a word study on this Baptist stuff. What about Catholics? Any of you grow up Catholic? Look at all you good Catholics. All right…Catholic. How many think that a Catholic can be born again? All the Catholics! The Methodists want to talk to you. They’re not quite sure a Catholic can really be born again.

My next-door neighbor, his name is Matt; he’s as good a neighbor as you could ever hope to have. He is Catholic as Catholic as Catholic gets. We’ve sat out on the deck, talked about dogma, everything you can possibly imagine. Here’s what I’m absolutely, I believe from the foundations of my heart. I believe Matt is a born-again believer. I really do. I believe he is a fully devoted follower of Jesus. We don’t agree on everything, but I know that what Matt really is trusting in to take him to heaven is what Jesus Christ did for him on the Cross. I’m absolutely sure of that.

Now I know some of you are going, “Well haven’t you heard of the Reformation? Don’t you know about the Council of Trent? Don’t you know what the mass means?” You can kind of argue about that as long as you want to argue about that. Here’s the problem that we have. I know some Catholics who speak in tongues, for goodness sake. They’re like charismatic Catholics. They’re praying for me. We could go around and round and round on this, but let me throw one at you here that may mess you up a little bit. What about Muslims? How does a Baptist get into the kingdom of God? Come back to your sheet. How does a Baptist get into the kingdom of God? Jesus.

What if a Baptist joins the church, gets baptized, serves on the board, teaches Sunday school, tithes, gives to the corporative program, but doesn’t know Jesus? He’s lost. He is lost. He is completely lost. This is all the way around this circle. I remember a lady who came to Grace a number of years ago. She had come to faith when she was a teenager. She recognized that some of the things she had been taught were not what the Bible teaches, but she loved her daddy so much. She was Irish-Catholic. She loved her daddy. Her daddy was a good man, but her daddy did not know Jesus. He was religious, but he didn’t know Jesus. She came to Grace, and she came for about a year. She says to me, “I love this church, but I’ve never joined a church in my life because if I cease to be Catholic, if I tell my father I’m not Catholic, I will never get a chance to lead him to Jesus. He will not listen to anything else I have to say.”

She says, “So every year at Christmas, we go to the mass, and I talk to him about the gospel. I see him moving closer and closer and closer to understanding who Jesus is.” Then she says to me, “Can I join this church and still be Catholic?” I said, “I don’t care.” She says, “Okay, I’m joining.” You know what? She called me a while back, ten minutes after her daddy died. Her dad died in her arms, and she said, “Thanks for not making me tell my dad I wasn’t Catholic. He came to faith.” I don’t have time to get into this, but 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, there is something called Paul’s Rule. Paul, three times in that passage, says, “I have a rule for all the churches. I have a rule for all the churches. This rule is whatever circumstance you are in, whether it’s religious, whether it’s family, or whether it is profession, stay there. Don’t rip up your cultural roots.”

In Acts, chapter 15, there is a question about… Let me ask you. Can a Jewish person come into the kingdom of God? How does a Jewish person come into the kingdom of God? Jesus. It’s easy. You know what was going on then? What was going on then was that there was a group out there called the Gentiles, and up in Antioch, they started coming to faith. The Jewish people said, “Whoa, wait a minute. You can’t go like straight into the kingdom of God. If you’re going to come into the kingdom of God, you have to come over here and be Jewish.”

Now there was a problem with that because in order to be Jewish, I don’t want to be crude here, you had to get circumcised. Not everybody here wanted to do it. These people over here said, “Well, if you really love God, you would. Abraham did. They said, “We really love God, and we really love Jesus, but we really don’t want to do that.” They said, “Well, then you can’t come into the kingdom of God unless you come over here and become Jewish first.” Do you know what? They had this council. Look over there to Acts, chapter 15. I want to show you a verse. This is the conclusion they came to in Acts, chapter 15. Look at verse 11, notice what it says, “We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.”

You mean you’re going to let them get in without having to go through what we went through? Yes, not because of you, but because of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that the way we come into the kingdom of God is purely, solely, only through…what? Jesus. I want to come back to my big points, and I’m going to repeat them. We are the lepers. We wandered out in twilight, and we found fruit. We’ve been feasting on the fruit. We have recognized our responsibility to share the Good News of where the fruit is. Not everybody is convinced, but we’re not going to be silent about it.

When we first found this out, when I first heard this, my wife was in Lebanon. I called her up, and I said, “Baby, I found something out tonight that sounds like it’s really too good to be true.” She said, “What?” I said, “I can’t talk to you about it on a cell phone in Lebanon. When you get home from Beirut, man, I have some interesting news.” I called Mike Williams. He’s chairman of our board, and I sat down. I said, “Mike, I found this out, and it’s really, really interesting. It makes all the sense to me in the world.” He said, “Well, you really better try it out. Where do you want to go?” I said, “I’m thinking Iran.” He goes, “You just really want to die, don’t you?” I said, “No, if we’re going to lead our congregation in something, we need to make sure we know what we’re doing.”

So we flew into Iran. I asked for a meeting with the director of the Islamic College of Khum. There are 100,000 theological students there. We went in, and we started sitting down and started talking. He wanted to talk about nuclear reactors. I said, “I don’t know anything about nuclear reactors.” He said, “What do you want to talk about?” I said, “I just want to talk about Jesus.” Do you know what? Two hours later, we’re still talking. He goes, “You’ve read our book, haven’t you?” I said, “Yeah, it says that Jesus is the Messiah. I want to know what you mean by that, but I want to stay on the subject of Jesus. No, I don’t want to talk about Muhammad. I want to talk about Jesus. I don’t want to talk about Bush; I want to talk about Jesus. I don’t want to talk about America; I want to talk about Jesus.”

Do you know what? At the end of two hours, do you know what he said to me? He said, “You need to come back and spend a couple of months with me because I really like what you’re saying.” Do you know what the Bible says? “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself.” You might be sitting there going, That can’t happen. Here’s what I’m going to tell you. We found fruit, lots, and lots, and lots of insane fruit. It’s Jesus’ fruit.

I’ll show you this video. Be back next week.

[Video]

Miriam: I was born in a very small village in Iran, and I was born with my left kidney infected and handicapped from birth. They pretty much put the death sentence on my life and said that I wouldn’t live past my teenage years, basically. We would go to hospitals and hire doctors from outside of Iran, and get them to come in and try to treat me and everything, and nothing would work, absolutely nothing would work. I remember sometimes at night I’d get rushed to the hospital with a really high temperature, and my life would just be in danger.

Eventually, when it came down to it, the doctors told my mother that there is nothing we can do, we have to take her kidney out or she will die. It will affect the other one, and she will die. So my mom sort of…she was really, really anxious about it. She disagreed. She said, “No, no, no. Leave it. We’re going to move. I’m going to move to England, and we’re going to try and seek more medical treatment.” Between that time, my grandmother who was a quite religious Muslim, had suggested we go up to this prophet’s resting place up north of Iran and to get more prayer.

When we went up there, I remember going into this resting place, and everybody was so sad. There was a lot of wailing and a lot of really bitterness. We sat there inside that place pretty much all day. I eventually fell asleep on my mom’s lap, and I had a dream. I dreamt that I was walking down a path with a crowd of people, and we entered this place. It’s like everybody just knows where they belong; they’re like scattering around the garden, if you like. It was that sort of setting.

Next scene I see is I’m walking with a man. I can’t hear him and I can’t see him at all, but he is pointing to different places. We’re walking together, and as we get to the end of the path, he points up. As I look up, there is a cross on a hill. Instantly, I wake up. I wake up, and my mother realizes something is not right. She’s like, “Are you okay?” I was like, “No, it’s fine. It’s fine.” I was too scared. I was kind of puzzled. So I didn’t say anything until much later on. So that scenario finished, and we went back, and still nothing. I was still very sick.

We moved to England. My dad had already relocated. He’d met some missionary Iranians when he had arrived in England, and had given his life to God. So eventually when we moved, and my mother found out that my dad had given his life to God, she was furious, absolutely furious that he’d done that. But still the preacher’s wife would come, and take me to the hospital and help us with translation and everything, and really, really kind to us. Eventually, we went for more tests in the hospital. It was hospitals that were especially for kids. A few weeks after the final results, the preacher’s wife actually invited us to church for an event that was going on at church, and said, “Look, there is nothing, no obligation, but would you like to come?” So out of obligation, my mother was like, “Okay, they’ve done so much for us. Let’s just go. No harm in it. Let’s just go. It will be fine.”

So we all decided to go, and so did my sisters as well. We went, and there was a guest speaker, and Billy Graham also happened to be broadcast over satellite. After the service, my mom felt really touched. Afterwards she explained to me that she was just crying so much, and we couldn’t understand why. Everybody was crying. She took me out, and she said, “Look, if your God is real then pray that He heals her because I’ve tried everything. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried everything that I can, and this is my last hope.” So I remember just sitting down the front row and these preachers just surrounded me, and they laid their hands on me and began to pray.

I remember just sort of not knowing what was going on. It was really unfamiliar territory for me. So that night finished, and we went home. A few weeks later, I went for the final results to determine when to have my kidney out, basically. So we went with the preacher’s wife again. As we waited in the waiting room, first they called the preacher’s wife in. My mom just broke down in tears. She was like, “That’s it. What am I going to do? You’re going to die. I don’t know what else to do.” So I began to cry as well. So it was just really dramatic. It was a horrible moment.

Eventually, we get called into the doctor’s office, and he comes in with my thick medical file of eight or nine years of this disease I’ve had and being treated for, and he’s furious. He slams it down on the table and it’s just like, “What kind of doctors do you have? There is nothing wrong with this girl. Her kidney is healthier than mine. Why have they put her through this? Take these files. They don’t mean anything to me. I don’t even want this on her records. Go, I never want to see you here again.”

That was it. I was healed, and my mom just sat there and just kept saying, “Thank You, Jesus! Thank You, Jesus!” As a result, my whole family gave their lives to God. To be honest, in Iran people see Jesus move in such a supernatural way that we just don’t see it in the West, which is such a shame. I’ve heard so many stories where people would actually come to the church begging…begging the preachers, and going, “Please tell me who this Jesus is. He appears to me in dreams, and I don’t understand, I don’t understand who this Jesus is. I need to know who it is.” So they’ll set up. They’ll go because they don’t know if there is security or anything, so they’ll arrange to meet on mountaintops and the middle of the country in the desert so they can have prayer meetings, they can have Bible study meetings. The underground churches are in prisons as well.

My brother is still in Iran, and he still questions exactly what happened to me. He always asks us, “Miriam, what really happened? Tell me the truth, what really happened?” I tell him, “My God healed me.” I always pray, and the best that I can over the phone explain to him, and tell him and say, “There is no other joy, no other peace that you will ever experience like the peace and the joy you can have in Jesus. There is no life like the life you can have in Jesus. Regardless of where you live, regardless of the persecution you’re under, regardless of anything, He will always meet your need.”

Male: Jesus, You are our healer, Father. You are our God. You are our provider. You are everything, Father. As we continue to come to You this morning, as we continue to lift high Your name and worship You because of your greatness God, we know You are the Living Stone, Father God. You are the One who was chosen and precious in the sight of God. You are the sinless Savior, Father God. You have paid our debt in full so that we can come to know the fullness of who You are. God, we know You are a God who does tear down walls and makes the impossible possible, and makes it happen, God. So God as we jump into this new song we’re going to learn, Father God, we do that. We declare that You are our God. You are the sinless Savior, Father. All glory and all praise and all honor be unto Your name.