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My brothers and sisters, my presence here has very little to do with me and everything to do with God. I was a reluctant convert. I was minding my own business on the 10th of February 1982 when I was in a movie house—I loved karate movies. There was a triple bill on at the High Gate Theater, so I took my mother's money as a 17-year-old to attend, though she wanted me to go to a church service instead.
When I went into that movie house, God came down and arrested me. He did something to me that night that I cannot explain. I ran from that place to Fraser Hood Drive in Highgate and went into a church—the High Gate New Testament Church of God. I went up to the altar, knelt down, and cried out, "God, if this is you, I come." I didn't understand what was happening, but I surrendered myself to Him.
On my way home, I was disgruntled because I saw one of the persons I wanted to kill, and I knew I couldn't kill him anymore because I was now saved. I was grieved. But as time goes by, I learned that this is the best thing that happened to me. I should have been dead, but I am here standing before you. My presence here has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God.
As his redeemed servant, I have one responsibility: to honor God with my life—simple, not complicated. My responsibility is to seek to understand His heart and mind and to fulfill what responsibilities they require of me.
Today I share with you from the gospel of Mark. The message is a call to repentance. I am not my master, and I can only do as I'm commanded. Even with tears in my eyes and pain in my heart, I must do what I'm directed by Him to do.
His word has come to us: "Repent and believe in the gospel." This is the word of the Lord.
It is remarkable that Jesus initiates His preaching ministry with a call to repentance in the context where His Forerunner, John the Baptist, preached an identical message with unwavering zeal. Before Jesus's manifestation as God's anointed servant, John the Baptist called the nation of Israel to engage in the process of repentance.
This process required a change in mindset towards God and His interest in Israel and the other nations of the world. The repentance of all who came from Jerusalem and the surrounding regions to be baptized by John in the River Jordan was attested by the fruits of righteousness that marked their religious and socioeconomic engagements.
Central to John's call were the promised entrance of the Lord's Messiah and the ministry of baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. John called the people of God from their state of wandering, from their confusion, from their oppression and oppressing practices. He called them from a place of self-indulgence and exploitation of each other, from cultural prejudice, from demonic engagement, from political alliances with ungodly personalities—so that they would return to the Sovereign God with a heart made ready for the reception of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
John the Baptist's message was sufficient for the transformation required, so that the heart of the people of God would be in a place of reception of God's Messiah. But despite the fact that all Jerusalem came out to him and were baptized in the Jordan, it would have appeared that they only wetted themselves in the river because their hearts were still at the same place.
Their hearts were still for worldliness. Their hearts were still engulfed with prejudice. Their hearts were still surrounded with carnal passion and wicked intentions. Although they were called by God to be His servants, to be a community of priests, they were found serving themselves instead of serving whom God had established them to serve.
Even their service to God was mere ritualistic. They were happy to dress in the regalia required by the priesthood, but their hearts were far from God. They were happy to perform the rituals of offering sacrifices, but the condition of their own sacrifice offered to God was a telltale sign that they did not regard God Almighty at all.
When the services were closed and they returned to their own places, they would continue to oppress their brothers and sisters. They would continue to close their hearts towards the presence of God. They would continue to malign God's integrity and character by misrepresenting God in their dealings with each other. They were crafty and conniving—wolves in sheep's clothing.
Because their hearts were not for God, Israel's repentance was a sham. They repeated the words that John the Baptist spoke, but their hearts were closed to God.
We know from Scripture that Israel's hearts were closed to God. The Apostle John states in chapter 1, verse 11 of his account:
"He came to his own, and his own did not receive him."
This statement offers us critical clarity concerning Israel's response to the preaching of John the Baptist. The conviction that the Jewish leaders experienced as they came to be baptized in the River Jordan by Jesus's Forerunner evaporated and produced no lasting transformational effect in their lives.
They returned to their practice of hypocrisy—dictating how persons were to operate but failing to provide any example of conformity to the rules they constructed. They took delight in performances, attiring themselves in expensive outfits, demanding the best seats in organized festivities and worship services, and requiring others to address them with sacred and revered titles.
They love the applause of the masses, and whatsoever they do, they do it to attract people's appraisal. But they were not interested in God's commendation. They construct titles for themselves and insist they are addressed in certain ways.
I pause here to correct something that must stop. My wife is not the "first lady" of this church. This church has no first lady. The body of Jesus Christ has not instituted any such title—it is a political title from America that we have adopted in our church, and we need to discontinue it. Her name is Maxine. You can call her sister Max. But she is not first lady.
We look around at what is going on and what is popular, we adopt it to ourselves, and we make it laws and rituals. We take on a form that is not godly. We want to associate ourselves with the culture in which we find ourselves, and we fail to recognize that we are called to change culture, not conform to it.
God Almighty has called us to impose ourselves in the power of the Holy Ghost upon the nations, upon the people that we live amongst. God Almighty expects us to be change agencies, not to become conformed to the world in which we find ourselves.
I am interested in God's commendation. I'm calling Brixton to come alongside me so that we will seek God's approval in everything that we say and do. When God Almighty is happy with what we are doing, there is no telling what God will do. When God is happy with our walking, when God is happy with our singing, when God is happy with our living, then God's burning fire will fall upon us.
We will not lack power. We will not lack wisdom. We will not lack the Holy Ghost. We will not lack that which is required to turn over to God Almighty the plans and all designs of the wicked one. God Almighty wants to give us His commendation, but we must measure up.
When Jesus Christ stepped out to be baptized by John the Baptist, God opened the windows of heaven and spoke:
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
God took the vial of the spirit and poured it out without measure upon Him. Everywhere He went, He was doing good because the power of God was upon Him. God Almighty confirmed Him every step of the way.
Israel's repentance was a sham. They came out to John the Baptist, were baptized in the River Jordan, got back up, went home, changed their wet clothes, and put on dry clothes. But their hearts were still the same. Their thinking was still the same. Their behavior was still the same. Their conduct was still the same.
But God Almighty wants to revolutionize our lives. The repentance that God requires from us brings about a change within the heart. When the heart is changed toward God and when the mind is changed toward God, then our behavior and our conduct will change toward each other.
Then the words we speak will not be for the purpose of oppressing and pushing down, but to uplift, to empower, to console. Our strength will not be used to trample upon others, but to get beneath the weak and to lift them up until they can stand in the might and power of the Sovereign God.
Israel returned to the business of exploiting widows through constructing and implementing unscrupulous rules that diverted needful resources from children to the treasury over which they exercised monopoly. They tried to cover such sinister behavior by making long prayers and services.
They reverted to winning converts to themselves instead of pointing them to God who alone saves the souls of the repentant. They mentored them to become revilings twice as wicked as themselves. They went back to the devious ploy of constructing and promoting spurious doctrines. They delighted in paying tithes of the minutest stuff produced but neglected the mightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith.
They returned to the artistry of pretending to be frugal and self-controlled by washing the utensils they use, but those implements were filled with extortions and carnal indulgences.
As Jesus said, "They wash the outside, but the inside is full of extortion."
They returned to a life of duplicity, announcing themselves as servants of God while they served themselves. They did everything they could do to exploit the poor, to manipulate the impressionable, to extract from them to benefit themselves.
They demanded the best seat in the house and turned up late so they could get the catwalk because they were on parade. They wanted to be seen, to be applauded, to be glorified, to be celebrated. But their conduct should have been clothed in humility, providing an example to the young ones—showing them how to touch God, how to please God, how to walk with God, how to serve God, how to hear God, and how to honor God.
Matthew chapter 23 records where Jesus declared about twelve to thirteen woes against them: You dress yourself, but your heart is not fully for God.
God Almighty causes us today to change. The service is not about you and I. When it becomes about you and I, then we become manipulative. When what we are called to do focuses His attention on us, it distracts people from God. Then we become the measurement of faith in our weakness, and it distracts from the glory of God.
But God Almighty is calling us today to a place of change. God is not just interested in giving us lovely houses in which to live. God Almighty has a greater interest in us than how we look in our garments.
God wants the whole heart. God wants the entire mind. God wants the full personality. God wants all of us—our bodies, our minds. God wants to possess us. He wants to fill us with His presence. He wants to become our life breath. He wants us to be able to move whenever he breathes. God wants us to think what He is thinking.
He calls us into friendship with Himself to share His heart with us. God wants all of us—not just part of us. He wants our time. He wants our money. He wants our energy. He wants our intellectual capabilities. God wants all of us.
He wants to baptize us afresh with the Holy Ghost. He wants to renew us in our conviction. God Almighty wants to do a new thing—not just in this house, but in the surrounding communities. God Almighty wants to bring change to the nation, and He wants all of us.
In addition to John 1:11, this verse establishes the basis for the preaching Jesus delivered to the people. Their hearts were still closed to God and the wondrous intimacy He wanted to share with the people He created and redeemed for Himself.
The critical partnership He wanted to share with His Sanctified Community was to accomplish the universal missional objectives determined by His counsel. Genesis 3:15 and Genesis 12:3 speak to the redemption of the lost paradise—a world free from demons and sin, over which human communities are intended to exercise dominance through the power of His Spirit.
This is the mission to which God has called us. This therefore serves as a premise upon which Jesus Christ stood and declared this message:
"The time has come. The house must repent."
Those nourishing expectations of a radical uprise and the mobilization of forces against the oppression of Rome, hoping for self-government and national restoration, must have gnashed their teeth in anger to hear the supposed deliverer of Israel announce a call to repentance.
Because they had sat for years languishing in bondage under Roman oppression, they had a hope that the Messiah would come to deliver them from Rome's hand. So when Jesus turned up as the supposed Messiah and opened His mouth to call them to repentance, they frowned on Him.
"We weren't expecting this. We wanted somebody who would come and tear down Rome and restore Israel's power of self-government." But this Man from Nazareth, the Carpenter's boy, came to them telling them to repent. They rejected Him because they were still blinded. Their sin had locked up their minds and covered their eyes.
When the prophet Isaiah said:
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, saying, prepare a highway for our God in the midst of the desert,"
he wasn't talking about land. He was talking about the heart of the people. The heart of the people were like desert land—dry and parched. In desert land, you do not plant seed and see them germinate. In desert land, you find scorpions, you find snakes. In desert places, you find death and destruction.
God Almighty sent His son Jesus Christ to preach this message to Israel. Israel thought that they were it, but God said, "You are not, because your heart is not yet yielded to me. I do not have all of you. I do not own all of you."
God wants all of you. God wants the lame. God wants the maimed. God wants the broken. God wants the sad. God wants the lonely. God wants the deprived. God wants the oppressed. God wants the old. God wants the young. God wants the middle-aged. God wants the retired. God wants those on board.
That is why we sting sometimes when we talk. We speak with serpent tongue at times. We talk, but our talk kills instead of giving life because we speak with the bite of a serpent. But God wants to transform us. He wants to give us power so that we speak truth that undergoes, that opposes, that nourishes, that strengthens, that brings deliverance.
God Almighty wants all of us. God wants our voices. God wants our bodies. God wants our intellectual capabilities. He wants our sexuality—to sanctify it. God wants all of us.
God wants us to look to Him and Him only. God wants us to see Him as He is—the uncreated one, the Almighty. God wants us to see Him as our provider, our El Shaddai. God wants us to see Him as our deliverer from the powers of sin and darkness. God wants us to see Him as our weapon of war and our battle-locks. God wants us to see Him as the one who supplies all our needs according to His riches in glory by Jesus Christ our Lord.
God wants us to see Him as high and lifted up. He wants us to see Him as without rival.
Israel was so myopic in their mindset. They were so small-minded, so closed-minded. Anything that was not contingent or consistent with their cultural perspective, they pushed away because it was not Jamaican. But I promise you something: God is not building a Jamaican church here.
If you have that mentality, dish it. God is building His church. I love rice and peas. I love cot. I love stew peas. I love mannish water—glory to God. But drinking it will not get me to Heaven. It is the blood of Jesus Christ, washing and sanctifying and cleansing, that will get me there.
God is not in business with your curry goat. God wants your heart and your mind. He wants to build a people for Himself. God Almighty wants all people to be saved.
Israel misperceived the importance of their presence in God's mission. They treated other nations like dirt, ignored them, wouldn't even walk across their land because they thought they would contaminate themselves. They looked upon other people with scorn because they never understood their calling.
If we are not careful, we find ourselves at the same place where we believe, "If it is not NTCG, then it is not church." We fail to understand that God Almighty told His friend—the man He called from idolatry, sanctified, changed his name, and made him the father of faith—that God gave him a word in Genesis 12:3:
"In his seed, all the families of the Earth shall be blessed."
If we do not understand God's Mission, we can become myopic in our mindset and resistant to the work and power of the spirit of God.
I have been out with persons witnessing, and they only talked to black people. It was so painful yet comical at the same time. My brother went to speak to a person and said, "Hey, I want to tell you about Jesus." Well, I didn't know the language, but then I realized this person was from French Africa and spoke in response with a beautiful accent—but not Jamaican.
Oh, I thought you were from Jamaica because some of us believe that all black people come from Jamaica. So when the identity of the person was established, the weakness cut him. He couldn't witness anymore. Upon review, I said, "What happened?" He said, "Oh, I thought he was Jamaican."
I said, "What does that have to do with the gospel?"
We have to reach out to and overcome our cultural myopia, our small-mindedness. We cage ourselves by our own cultural trappings. We tie ourselves down and we fail to see the glory of God in manifestation because we come to the service of God not with the intention to be informed by God, but to inform God's service with our own cultural trappings.
"This is how we used to do it. This is how I'm accustomed to delivering this area of the ministry. And if it is not this way, then it is a highway." But I have news for you: when you walk in the Spirit, when you live by the power of the Spirit, you don't have traditions. The Spirit can take you where the Spirit wants to take you.
The Spirit of God does not need a committee to approve the plans that He has come to fulfill in the body of Christ. God Almighty does not have a godmother or a godfather that instructs Him and tells Him what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. He is Sovereign Lord and God, and we must honor the Spirit of God in this house. We must give absolute regard to God's Holy Spirit.
Culture cannot run the Church. It takes the Spirit of God. Culture cannot cast out demons. It takes the power—the power of God Almighty, which is in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Culture will never heal your sick body. It takes the power of the Spirit of God to surge through us and to raise us up so that we are able to walk with joy and power. Culture doesn't change the circumstance in the midnight hour. It takes the power of the Spirit of God to bring change and transformation.
When the trial rises upon you in the midnight hour, culture has no power to intervene. But the Spirit of God—the Spirit of God—doesn't matter where you find yourself. He will find access to you. Whether you're in a prison, He will find access to you. If you find yourselves in a dungeon, He will find access to you. Even if you're in a cave and a big stone is placed across the doorway, He will find access to you.
Paul and Silas were in prison, beaten down, locked down, ready to die. But they prayed and sang praises, and God Almighty—He's a jailbuster. God intervened and broke their bonds and released them from their captivity.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was in that grave. But God Almighty, in His mighty power, ripped up that grave, released Him, and now He is seated at the right hand of the sovereign Father as our Intercessor. No grave can keep the Spirit of God away from us.
The very people that John the Baptist preached to—Jesus came to them and He said to them:
"Repent. Your heart needs to change. Your mindset needs to change toward God, toward yourself, toward the nations around you—toward even those whom you know to be your adversaries."
God wants our mindset to be like His. He wants to reproduce Himself in us. He wants to reproduce His heart in us. He wants the contents of His mind to become the contents of our minds. He wants the works of righteousness that He performs to become our standard way of operating.
God is calling us today, Brixton. He's calling us. He's calling us to that place of change. And even now, by the power of His Spirit, He's allowing us to discern sin acutely.
Those things that we thought we were okay with—those thoughts that we have nurtured, those statements we have used to introduce ourselves to others to let them know "this is how we are and we believe it's okay"—when we impose ourselves on others because we are resisting the Spirit to be shaped and molded in the image of Jesus Christ, we become content with the notoriety that is associated with our presence, and we think it's a thing of beauty.
But it is ugly. God said, "I want to strip you of that garment. I want to take away that character disposition from you. God says, 'I want you to be like me.'"'
So He invites us to His pottery house. He invites us to His workshop today so that He might wrought a work of righteousness upon us.
