Well, the Scripture says it's not good for man to be alone; amen? And that doesn't have an age limit on it. Praise God. Neither does living in order and following the same rules. I remember when I got engaged not too far back, my chaperones would get worn out into the evening as we were chaperoned on all of our time together. And the fact that you might be "mature" does not make you not flesh. So we realize that there's a safety and a way to walk out these betrothals and everything done to the glory of God; amen? We're excited about that.
We're going to be switching gears and actually moving into a study called the "Holy Home." We're going to take a little while and go back and look at the divine order in the home so that we can be prepared for the coming of the Lord, because a holy church is made up of holy homes. The church can't be holy if the home isn't holy. We realize that the tactics of the enemy are to come and bring schism and division, and the way that's done is for there to be strife and conflict and disorder in our homes. And to think, then, that we can have disorder in the home and come together in one accord, doesn't work.
So it's very important that we see that it goes way beyond our own personal gain and good to have things in order. It is for the glory of God. It is for the edification and purification of the kingdom of God; amen? And so it's beyond us. We don't live for ourselves. We live for God's glory and for God's honor. As we talk a little bit tonight about the husbands and their role in the home, their responsibility to love their wives as Jesus loved the church and the willingness, readiness, delight, to die to ourselves and to lay our lives down on behalf of our spouses, on behalf of our wives, is so important. For you, as the head of the house, men, to set this house in order is God's number one will for your life. If you're praying about, you know, what God's will is and "Is it God's will if I take this job?" and "Is it God's will for us to buy this home?" and all of those other things, they all shrink in comparison to the fact that it is God's will for you to bring divine order to your homes and for you to properly oversee and be the head that Christ ordained you to be from before the foundations of the world. How vital that is...
Holy Home, Part 2
August 13, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Let's turn to Ephesians this morning. We'll continue on with our study on the holy home. It's quite a feat that we have ahead of us to have holy homes in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. We're living in a world that, the Scripture tells us, is reeling like a drunk man under the effects of sin. People talk about the climate and things, which is just symptomatic of the fact that everything is winding down. The reality is that Jesus' coming is sooner than when we first believed; amen? Our doctrine says that we believe in the imminent return of the Lord. Are our lives emulating that? We've asked the question before. We'll even give ourselves a little more time. If you knew you had 72 hours and then Jesus was coming back, what in your life, priority-wise, would change? How would you conduct your life? How would you prioritize your day? If we're not living that way, then we don't believe it, because it's by our fruit that we're known. We can have great intentions, we can have great doctrine, but we are what we do. We are, the Scripture says, the servants to whom we yield our members, whether of the system of the world, the pursuits of the world, or whatever it might be.
So we've been spending quite a bit of time trying to define what worldliness is and contrasting the kingdom of darkness with the kingdom of light. The Lord has been putting His finger on some very sensitive areas in many of our lives. Now, as we transition this over into the home, we're going to see the same thing. That many of our homes have begun to function contrary to what we say we believe. At best we're Pharisees and at worst hypocrites, if we're not doers of the Word. Tragically, if we're hearers of the Word and not doers of the Word then we have done what? We've deceived ourselves. What a great, great danger that is...
Holy Home, Part 3
August 16, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Hallelujah! Father, we do come tonight and we just rest in Your great love for us, hallelujah! We thank You, Lord, for all Your goodness and all Your tender mercies toward us, Father. We thank You that You do have a great plan for our lives and it's to be conformed to Your image, hallelujah! You are going to cause us, Lord, to finish this course, and we praise You for that. We've come, Lord, and given ourselves over to You that You might be glorified in our life, and in the midst of these, Your people. So, our heart tonight, Father, is to hear what You're saying to Your church. Our heart tonight, Lord, is to be full of Your Spirit so that we can lift up Your name in praise and worship and thanksgiving, and declare the majesty of our God. Lord, our desire is to see You tonight, Lord, and to have a visitation of Your Spirit. Father, we need to clearly hear what the Spirit is saying to the church, that we might say, "amen" and be about Your business. For that, Father, we will give You all the praise and all the glory in Jesus' name; amen. Amen.
Just as we were singing that last chorus, of course, I've shared it several times, but how quickly you can just go back 50 years and a young man had just barely turned 20. I still remember so clearly, standing in a service, a CA (Christ's Ambassadors) convention, at a sectional CA meeting and singing that chorus and making that pledge. Little did I know what God had before me that day as a 20-year-old. I had no idea the world was as big as it was and the kingdom so much greater. How vast the kingdom of God is, and how much needed to be done in this life that had just been committed to Him! But the declaration was made regardless of what life brought; amen? You make a vow to God and you keep it. That's how it works. Over all the years, at times just going back and remembering that. There've been times when it's been a tough journey. There have been times when others didn't go on. There've been times when we tried to be seduced. There've been times when we tried to be bought off. There've been times when we just got tired and wanted to quit. No turning back; amen?...
Holy Home, Part 4
August 20, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Ephesians. We've been looking at the passage here in Ephesians concerning this preparation. He tells us in Ephesians 5, verse 21, that we're to submit ourselves "…one to another in the fear of God." This attitude of submission is so important in this hour. Remember, we're talking about the preparation of the bride for the coming of the Lord. This holy home that we're talking about is a corporate ministry that just replicates the individual ministry that the Holy Spirit is doing in each and every one of our lives, the preparation of the bride of Christ. He's coming for a church that is holy (amen?), without spot or wrinkle. Beloved, the holy home, "without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Amen? Not good works, not I was faithful at church, I paid my tithes, I lived a moral life. "Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord." Now, we know what holiness means. We took time to talk about that, but it means to be set aside exclusively for God's use. You were not created for this world; amen? We are not a part of this world. Everything you do for the world is vanity. It is worthless. So many of us that take so much pleasure and pride in our jobs, let me tell you something. Your job is worthless. It has no value of any means whatsoever. Everything you do, everything you take so much pride I, is going to burn up. It will be, at best, wood, hay and stubble. Yet we so engage ourselves in our work. We draw so much worth out of it. Oh, beloved, that we would begin to, in this last day, realize we are a people called and separated unto God exclusively. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9). It's all vanity. All of that effort is worthless. Everything that the world wants you to be, God despises. Everything in the world that you do and derive pleasure from, that causes you to be raised up on the job and win the contest and get the certificates and get the name plate and whatever else it might be, all that is, is a projection of self. It's haughtiness. It's ambition and it is exactly the opposite of what the Holy Spirit is trying to get us to be in our hearts. It's so vital that we begin to see that...
Holy Home, Part 5
September 6, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Chapter 5 of Ephesians. We left off in our last session dealing with the responsibility of the husbands to make sure that they were fulfilling the call of God on their lives, fulfilling the mandate of them to wash their wives with the water of the Word of God. We saw what that entailed. In our last session we dealt with the fact that it was men's responsibility for making sure that our wives don't lose their first love; amen? We'll go into it in detail, but then we talked about the fact that our responsibility, men, is to help our wives achieve that role of the Proverbs 31 virtuous woman. We were talking about this just the other day. Of course, the way you don't do that is by on a daily basis sitting down with your wife and pulling out each chapter and saying, "And you're not doing this and you're not doing that." That is surely not the way that we deal with that issue. In this chapter that we're looking at in Ephesians 5, we see that the thing that is behind all of this ministry of care is the love of God. We are to love our wives as Christ loved the church; amen? So in every way that we deal with our wives it's to be done in First Corinthians 13 love. We'll be talking about that a little bit later, but we should say it at this point. In every way we approach our wives, it's to be done in love, it's to be done with kindness, it's to be done with gentleness; amen? It's to be done not promoting or vaunting ourselves or our will or our way, because, man, we're not looking to accomplish our will, we're looking to accomplish God's will. Aren't we? So when we understand that, we see and we receive that ministry from the Lord. As we've been loved we then are responsible to love.
Ephesians goes on and speaks to us, saying in verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it." Now this giving of ourselves is a very interesting aspect. We've been talking about that and man has an innate selfishness and love of himself. Very clearly we see that's why Adam sinned. Ultimately, it was a love of self. He didn't want to lose his helpmeet that he had just been given. He had been in a place of fellowshipping with God but somehow that wasn't sufficient...
Holy Home, Part 6
September 13, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Let's turn back to Ephesians, and we're going to continue along on the holy home for a few more sessions here. And when we're talking about the holy home, of course, we're talking about the holy church, because the church is being comprised of all of our family units coming together in community and acknowledging the mutual headship; amen? So, what Jesus is in the home is what He's going to be here in the church. And we can't expect Him to do more in the church than He's already doing in each of our lives individually before we come and commune and gather together. Here in Ephesians, Chapter 5, of course, we see this great example of the husband's role, Jesus as the Husband of the church; we're His bride and the expression of His love for us and His desire to be one with us. We talked about that a little bit last session, last Wednesday I believe it was, we talked about getting to know our wives and have that time we spend with them in intimacy. The emotional intimacy where words are exchanged, where we get into one another's hearts to where we truly look deep into one another's eyes, into one another's very souls. And that same type of an intimacy as it would be in the physical aspect of our oneness also, a true love affair. A true husband who is ravished, the Scripture says, with his wife's love. That's what Jesus expects of us; amen? And as Jesus speaks to us He wants that time with us. He says, "Abide in me, and let my words abide in you," and then you can delight in it and ask anything that you want and it will be provided to you. You know, it's the same thing in our marriages, ladies, if you will abide in your husband and allow his words to abide in you, you become one with him, you take on his vision, you take on his heart. I want you to know something, you'll be able to ask whatever you want and he'll climb the highest mountain, and they'll make songs about it, and he'll swim the deepest seas, or whatever; amen? Relationship, oneness, love, genuine love, taking the delight in one another. I'm my beloved's and my beloved is mine, His banner over us is love; amen?...
Holy Home, Part 7
September 17, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Amen. We truly need Him to speak to us this morning. Amen? We want to continue on the lines of the "Holy Home" and just see what Father has to say to us. As we have spent time in the holy home, we want to-we're just about to wind down-spend time and go back just a little bit and remember what we're talking about. First of all, we're talking about the preparation of the bride for the coming of the Lord Jesus; amen? His church. We see that the Lord draws the comparison between Jesus' union as head of the church, as the husband of the bride of Christ, the church, and parallels it with the home and with our natural union of husband and wife. He draws the parallels in Ephesians and says that we're to love our wives, men, as Jesus loved the church and gave Himself for it. One of the things we see about men is that tendency of selfishness, of pre-eminence of the self. Part of that comes from the fallen nature of man. We know that the Scripture says that the man was not made for the woman, but the woman was made for the man. That's very obvious in the Scriptures. Today, with all the gender lines being erased and the movement of feminism over these last decades blurring the fact of the roles of husband and wife, of men and women, and we're not talking primarily about society, we're talking about the home. We're talking about the church. We're not saying that men are superior to women; we're saying that husbands are in authority over their wives. This is what the Scripture teaches.
We know from the beginning that man was created and there wasn't found for him a helpmeet anywhere. There was no companion and all of the rest of God's creation had companions. As hard as it is for us to understand, at one time God paraded all of creation before Adam and nothing was found there to satisfy him. So God, then, as we know the Scriptures, God put Adam to sleep and reached into his side, (King James says rib) but the Hebrew makes it very clear that it was the whole negative-neged is the word-of man. God reached into a man and pulled out of him a woman. The Hebrew word "negative." We all know what a negative is. It's just the exact opposite exposure, right? We know what that is. So God pulled out of that man, this woman. The opposite...
Holy Home, Part 8
September 20, 2017 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Let's turn to Ephesians… Ephesians, Chapter 5. Father, we do come to You tonight, and we ask for Your wisdom and Your great grace and mercy to manifest itself here in our midst. Father, as we've been studying Your Word in preparation for Your soon coming, we do cry out, Father, from the depths of our heart tonight. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. We stand in such need of Your visitation, Lord, in the church today-[in] the corruption within the church today. The warfare that we have as individuals with our own fleshly appetites and the battle against the age-the spirit of this age that we contend with, Lord. You've spoken toward and You've said if the days were not shortened, even the very elect would not stand. Father, let us have faith tonight, but not overconfidence. Let us trust in You tonight and not in our own wisdom and not in our past accomplishments and not in our knowledge of Scripture, but let us trust in our relationship with You and believe that You love us, Father, and You've given us grace to love You.
We can't love You, Lord, of our own. It's not in us. There's nothing natural in us that seeks God. No man seeks God, Your Word says, and yet that child-position of child and son and heir that that has now taken place in our lives through redemption. We cry, "Abba, Father." We do delight in You. We long for You to be here tonight and to know You better. So, with that the cry of our heart, we ask that You would speak to us again as we go to Your Word tonight concerning this subject of the holy home. A people who are a royal priesthood, a holy nation who have been called to show forth Your praises. You Who have called us out of darkness into Your marvelous light. Father, You're coming for a church without spot or wrinkle. There's still too many things lacking in our lives...
