But he gets to us through sin, which is the practice of error in our lives. This matter of self-worth is very important to me because I was not raised in a Christian home. My mother and father were farmers. I was raised on a little dairy farm in the state of Washington, about 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean, Grace Harbor County. And my mother and father were just good people, good, moral, honest farmers. I had three older sisters. I was the last one born in the family, the only boy in the family. My mother and father, as young people, were angry and bitter at life. These two angry and bitter people married, and it wasn't long until these two angry and bitter people were angry and bitter with one another. You know how life goes. I was born into that kind of a family. My father always treated me as though I were a failure. He always treated me as though I were I were Inferior and couldn't do anything good and of course I worked with my dad on the farm all the time and I could never please him and He he always had to prove every day that he was a better kind of a person a better man than I was and So I grew up believing a lot of error about myself. I remember as a very young teenager, I told myself one day very sternly, you're getting to the age where most fellows start to go with girls and you better be very careful about this because you don't have the smarts to be married and support a family. And so I remember just taking myself aside and saying, Now you know what's going to happen to you. So now don't get involved where you would hurt somebody by not being able to support them. Well, happily about that time, the Lord came into my life and things started to get a little better. I started, I couldn't really figure out why my father always treated me as an inferior person until I was about 35 years old. And then I discovered my father couldn't read and write. He had a real high IQ, and he was a highly gifted man, but he was very angry and bitter because he had not had the opportunity of going to school. My mother, as fine and moral as she was, she had polio when she was a young girl, and she walked with a limp, and it was painful, and she was embarrassed about it, being a woman. the doctor that treated her as a young teenager sexually molested her and shows he grew up being angry and bitter about life and about this doctor and about all men and so she didn't like my Father and she didn't like me and so that's you can understand my background. So this matter of self-worth has been very very important. It's taken the Lord a long time for him to teach me and what it meant to really believe that I was worth something. When I was a very young child, I went through some emotional experiences of reaching out to my mother and father and not having any response. They were not emotionally available to me. And because they were non-Christians, they weren't spiritually available. And so what happened, I started to build a wall around myself because we could never express our emotions in the home. I didn't ever have the right to say how things were on the inside if anytime I was upset my dad would say well look you have clothes on your back shoes on your Feet and you have a bed to sleep in and a lot of good food and what more could you ever want? well, then that was his world and a life view and So you can understand why this is a very important subject to me if there is any area outside of the occult and that is very strong in my ancestral lines. If there's any area where the enemy has been able to work in me, it has been through the lack of self-worth. And so I want to talk with you about that today. I wonder if you would take your Bible and turn with me to the gospel of Luke in chapter four, the fourth chapter, please, of the gospel of Luke. And before we read the Bible, I wonder if you would do something with me. It is the Holy Spirit now that has inspired the book. So what do you say that we ask that he would come and teach us the book that he has inspired. Let's bow together now to pray. Blessed Holy Spirit we invite you to come and to minister to us deep within our spirit. We invite you into this session and all of these sessions. And I pray for all of these dear folk here now that as you enable me to give out your word, that you would bless and make things clear. We trust you now in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Notice in the gospel Luke in chapter four, we have the Lord Jesus after his baptism and after the temptation of going back now to Nazareth, He tells them the reason why he came into the world notice the 18th verse Luke 4 18 The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted to preach deliverance to the captives recovering of sight to the blind to set at Liberty them that are bruised This is a very important passage. As you know, I'm reading out of the Good News to Modern 17th Century Man, the King James Version. The word captive here is very, very important. This is the term that was used for war captives, not political captives, war captives. And in his book entitled A New Look at Luke, David Gooding makes an important point there. These are war captives. It may be of interest to you to know that the last word in the King James here, the word bruised, is the Greek word throughout which means divided or fragmented due to trauma. And that's kind of interesting because today we are running into a lot of people who are multiple personality, have the multiple personality disorder. And so if we would ever expect the Lord Jesus to talk about it, it would be in a moment like this. Why did he come into the world? He came into the world to bring liberty or healing to the people who have been divided by trauma. Now, isn't that interesting, right? In this very important passage. As we read verses like this, we have to always remind ourselves that when we are in a conference like this, that while we're doing a lot of talking about the enemy, we need to remind ourselves that the key to it all is the person of the Lord Jesus, and he's to be right at the very center of all of our life. And I realize I'm standing in front of the screen here, so I need to move around a little bit so you can see this. This is God's will for our lives, and this is what the enemy always is trying to contest. The enemy wants a very large place in our life. He wants central place. The reason he became the enemy, of course, is that back somewhere in time, what he wanted was the place of Jesus Christ. He wanted to be the rival to the Lord Jesus. He wanted to be equal with the Lord Jesus. And so what he's after in your life and mine is a central place. And it is the will of God for you and for me that all of life would revolve around the person of the Lord Jesus, that he'd be the source of all of our values. Think of what that ought to mean. I'd like to spend an hour or two talking with you about this overhead. And it would be a good Bible conference for us to develop this in many areas of life. The Lord Jesus should be the center of our authority for what we believe and how we live and all that we do. He should be the one who establishes the goals in our daily life. And this is how God created us originally. And this is how we were recreated in the person of the Lord Jesus. And so when we talk about self-worth, we're talking basically about the place of the Lord Jesus in our life and then learning how to live in a very consistent way in relationship to that. In order to give the Lord Jesus the rightful place, we have to understand that he is the truth. as well as the bread of life, as well as the great I am, as well as the resurrection and the life. And so in order to understand our self-worth, we have to realize what he tells us about ourselves. This is a basic problem, more basic than we can realize. I have lived through this and I continue to live through it. And that is whether I'm accepting his viewpoint of me. or whether I'm accepting my own. And I want to touch base with you on this and talk to you deep in your spirit now in these few moments that I have about you. I want you just to talk to you, not so much to your brain or your emotions or your social relationships. I just want to talk to you deep down where God created you in his image and in his likeness. And that is that it's important that you accept what Jesus Christ has said about you. Because we have all given allegiance to him and we recognize him as the truth, now we have to be very, very practical about that. I wonder if you turn in your Bible to a very important passage that tells us the truth about ourselves. It's right here in the first page of our Bible in the book of Genesis in chapter 1. And notice what the Lord Jesus states about this. While all of the Bible has been inspired by the Holy Spirit, The Lord Jesus of course is the content of it all and he is the basic message of it all. So notice here in the book of Genesis chapter 1 and verse 26 we have what he says about this. Genesis 1 26 and God said let us make man in our image and after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over all of the earth. And over everything that creepeth upon the earth, so God created man in his own image. And the image of God created he him, male and female, created he them. Because we're fallen people, we have a great deal of difficulty with this. A great deal of difficulty of thinking about what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God. And because of our fallenness, we have established all kinds of false standards to try to find our worth. It's very common today for people to try to find their worth in what I would call work. And we've already been introduced to that. This is very common. For years now, I have been a workaholic, and I've had to be a workaholic in order to sort of get where I am. And many of you have had to be like that. The trouble with, for me at least, being a workaholic is that was one way that I established my work. That started extremely early in my life working on the farm. My father, while he never approved of me in a positive way, he didn't criticize me as much if I just did a lot of work. So while he, therefore, it wouldn't be so hard on me if I would do a lot of work. Of course, living on a dairy farm, you help milk the cows morning and evening, and cleaned out the barn, and cut up the cow beets for the cows, and you threw down the hay, and well, you know how it would go. There's no end to the work. So by working hard, what I did was to escape his criticism. My father never said, good, that's a good job, until I was about 45 years old. And then one time he came to visit us and I didn't know what else to do with him. So I took him with me one time when I had to speak at an ordination. He never heard me preach, but he heard me speak for a few moments at an ordination. I think he was very tender at that time, thinking that maybe I wouldn't do a good job and it would embarrass him. So, well, I did a pretty good job. So he came up and said, well, that was pretty good. I was about 45 years old. The first time my dad ever said, you know, good. I thought he's getting real mellow. He was about 80 years old then. And I thought, well, you know, he's slowing down. Maybe he's a lot of mental deterioration or something. He said, good. And well, because I started very early this matter of earning my merit by working. No, that's just not the way it works. You are not more valuable because you work hard. Our value grows out of the fact that we have been created in the image and likeness of God. I can't tell you how important that is. So it's not our work. A few years ago, we had one of our seminary students that needed an operation and he went to the hospital. And so I went to visit him and there was another man in the room with him. My friend from the seminary was in a bed and so I stood by him and he'd had his operation and everything was fine. So we read the Bible together and talked about the school and what he was going to do and the kind of work he was getting prepared for and we prayed together. And the other man heard all of it. So on the way out, I wanted to talk to him about his soul. And he had his street clothes on and he was sitting in a chair looking out the window. So on the way out, I said, are you just coming in or are you leaving? And he said, well, I'm just leaving. I've had my operation and everything is fine. And then I said something I guess I shouldn't have said. I said to him, well, you don't look very happy about it. And he said, you don't understand. And then he told me from the little town that he was from, he said, I have been the head of all electric power in our town for most of my working years. Nobody did a thing but what I had to pass on it. But he said, two years ago, I retired, and now I'm nothing. See, that's what I'm talking about. And I'm talking to many of you here today. Many of you realize that you have been created in the image and likeness of God, but you're allowing your viewpoint of life about work to dilute that. And that's like an error. What happens when you go on vacation? Do you start feeling uncomfortable about your self-worth because you're not producing something? Is that the way it is? Many, many people are like that. It used to bother me a great deal. I used to prefer not to go on vacation because after the third day I was really in trouble. I felt so inferior that I didn't have anything to point to every day. So I had to, what I would do is I'd plan to build something. I'd take something along and I'd build it or else I would do some studying, you know. All of that simply gave away the error that I believed. that my self-worth grew out of my work. Secondarily, our possessions. How easy it is for us to think of a person who has a lot of possessions or a lot of money as being worth something. I'm not going to be able to spend a lot of time on this now, so let me just hurry through it. Our possessions. Another one is our physique. Oh, how popular that is today. You know, we're living in the day of the spa. We're living in the time now when if you don't jog in some communities, you're nothing. You know what I mean? And people wear their jogging shoes to church. It's their insignia. It's their designation of self-worth. I jog. And these people come up to you and they say, well, how many miles did you jog today? And if you can't, you're not worth anything unless you've jogged a couple miles. It's like the people in school when they ask you, what did you get on the exam? You always know they got an A or they wouldn't ask you, you know that? So the physique is so important today on the basis of our our self-worth and of course our relationships in life. I'm sorry I'm going to have to hurry with this now. Another one our position in life. Another one is our education and another one of course is our ability and the list goes on and on. These are artificial foundations for self-worth. None of them work. All of them are an open door to the enemy. We need to think about each one. We need to put our finger on each one and many more and then to pray about it and to pray about how that relates to the image of God. It's really a very serious thing. When we look into the Bible and ask about who we are, if I can build now upon what Dr. Warner and Dr. Bubek has mentioned this morning, I would like to talk with you about who you are in the Bible. And the very amazing thing is that the Bible reminds us that we are a person. And that's what he means by being created in the image and likeness of God. That God is a person. Now that's a very inadequate word to use for God, but it's the best that we have. I've taught systematic theology in the seminary for many, many years. And I never liked these human words that we use for God, but the human words are the only words we have. So to call God a person is in harmony with how he has revealed himself to us. God is a person. God has feelings. God cares. God has a will. God makes decisions. God can be grieved and he can be hurt. He can be resisted. The Holy Spirit can be quenched. God is a person. God has rights and privileges. God has the right to be sovereign because he's God. God has the right to tell us what to do and not explain why. I don't know how it is with you, but he asked me to do that every once in a while. He doesn't have to tell me why. He just has to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing. And it's important to understand that. God has the right to be respected, to be worshipped. He has the right to be loved and cared for, ministered unto. He's sovereign in every way, but God is a person. And I want you to know that when God created you, that he made you as a person. He made you like himself. Now we're never going to be God. That's new age. No matter what happens to us in heaven, we're never going to be God. God is infinite as person and we're finite as person. God is eternal and we're temporal. And it's very important for us to understand that God is infinitely great in all of his perfections and attributes. And we're finite. That is created by God. We're entirely dependent upon him. There's nothing about us that's self-sufficient. We're entirely dependent upon God, even for our existence. And if God didn't continue to support us, we just wouldn't be. It's important to understand that. But we are a person like God. It's tremendous when we start to think about it. And because we're a person, as we see it in the Bible, we have certain rights and privileges. Now, maybe you were raised in the home like I was, where you were never given any rights and privileges. But do you understand that you have the right to be heard when you speak? Now, counselors sometimes tell us that we don't have any rights, but we do. None of us have rights now that we can demand. And none of us have rights that we can use in a self-centered way. All of that is a sinful approach to life. But all of us have the rights that relate to what it means to be a person. We have the right to be heard when we speak. We have the right to have an opinion different from other people. And God doesn't annihilate us just because we don't believe 100% all that he does. You ever think about that? We have the right to have an opinion different from even from God. If we're honest about it and working on it. You have the right to have feelings. You have the right to have needs. You have the right to express your needs. You have the right to be cared for. You have the right to be cared for on the inside, not just clothing and shoes and food and a bed and work. You have the right to express your hurts. Now, God gives us all of these rights. It's important that we understand that, and that's a part of what it means, as you're seeing it here on the screen, that we're a person. We have those rights. We have the right to receive help. We have the right to make choices. We have the right to develop our potential. We have the right to be honored because we're a person. The Lord Jesus, when he was here upon earth and the Sermon on the Mount, he reminded us that we may not even speak the word fool to another person. Why? We're in the image of God. And he makes a very strong statement. If you say, you're a fool, that person who says that is in danger of hellfire. That's a very strong statement. Why? Because we are in his image and we have rights. Now I'm wondering as I'm saying this as to whether you have accepted that. Do you really believe the truth? Do you believe it now or have you allowed the enemy to dilute the truth and to take away from you what it means to be person? Simply because you don't look like a fashion model that you see on television? Kind of feel sorry for those girls, you know, they turn sideways and disappear. Do you feel cheated now? Do you feel that you're not worth anything because you're not like those girls? Do you feel that you're cheated because you don't have a doctor's degree? I want to tell you, it doesn't help. Inferiority. I've got one. It doesn't help. Are you willing to accept this? that God has made you in his image, that every one of us here in this room, we all have exactly the same value. Every man, woman, boy and girl, we all have the same value. Our value is not based on how we look, on what we do. It's not based on our name. It's not based on our money. It's not based on our possessions. It's not based on anything but the fact that we are a person created by God. Now this is something that we're going to have to learn how to practice in the church. This is very important. And you need now to understand this or else it'll open the door to the enemy in your life. You have the right. You have your Bible open there and Genesis. Would you follow along for a moment? And let me talk with you about some of the rights and privileges that Adam and Eve had. The verse 27 that we've just read Adam and Eve had the right to know that they were created by God. Have you ever thought about that? Have you realized that you were not created by some kind of a blind evolutionary biological force? Do you realize that God chose to create you as a person in conjunction with your parents? If God didn't want you, you wouldn't be here today. God chose, as a person now, God made a choice. to create you. And Adam and Eve had the right to know that they were created by God. Verse 28, they had the right to be fruitful and to have dominion over the creation. In verses 29 and 30, they had the right to have needs and to have their needs met. In verse 31 of chapter 1, they had the right to know that they were created good. In chapter 2 verse 15, they had the right to be alive and to know that they were an entity separate from anything else. In that same 15th verse, they had the right to work, to choose, and to be responsible. In verse 16, they had the right to hear God and to choose to obey Him. In verse 17, they had the right to choose to obey or disobey God. Think about that. Verse 18, they had the right to companionship and acceptance and equality. In verse 19 and 20, they had the right to cooperate with God and to assume responsibility. In verse 21 through 24, they had the right to love and to be loved. and to enjoy intimacy. Verse 25, they had the right to be unashamed and enjoy dignity. In chapter 3 verse 8, they had the right to have fellowship with God. In chapter 3 verse 9 and 10, they had the right to be heard when they spoke. And verses 15 and 21, they had the right to receive redemption from God. Now let me ask you a question. Which one of these rights do you not have? You've got them all. Just think about that. You've got every one of them. It's important that we understand that. We do have rights. Never to demand them. And never to use them in a self-centered way. But because we're a person, God respects us. And God holds us responsible because we're a person. The second thought I want to bring out here, although I'd like to spend a good deal more time talking about what it means to be a person, is to raise the question in your mind as to what kind of a person we are. And this is the kind of a person we are. Mark has already talked about that. We're basically a spiritual person. Basically spiritual. This means that we're not basically body. We're not basically mind. We're not basically emotions, we're not basically will, we're not basically a social creature. We are basically spirit. Now it's hard to find a good English word here. I would rather use the word spiritual. But when I use the word spiritual, I'm not referring to how we live. I'm referring to the quality of our personhood. I'm referring to the kind of a person we are. Now think about it for a moment. The kind of a person you are is that you're basically spiritual. You're basically spirit, created by God in his image and in his likeness. And that's the basis of it. Now this opens up all kinds of avenues of thought for us when we realize that if we're not basically body or mind or will or emotions or not basically a social creature, if we are basically spirit, now that tells us a great deal about who we are and about our relationship with God. It means that our greatest potential is in the area of our spirit. Now when God made you, he made you now to be a person that would enjoy him. He made us into a living, vertical relationship with himself. Not basically horizontal in relationship to life and one another. That's not our basic relationship. It's vertical in relationship with God. That's why Isaiah in chapter 40, verse 21 said, where the Holy Spirit said through Isaiah, This people have I made for myself. And that verse means that God made us so that only he can bring satisfaction to us. Only in our relationship with God as a person, we're a person, only in relationship with God as a person are we going to find ultimate fulfillment and development of what it means to be spirit. That's why we can have all that we would ever need. bodily and it doesn't satisfy. And I meet a lot of people like that. I do a lot of counseling and it's not unusual for a man to park his prestige car at the end of my driveway and go into my private entrance, into my office that I have in the home. And I've known the man for years. He has a beautiful wife, lovely children. He's the head of this manufacturing firm. He has more money than he could ever spend and he's got a good education. He's a handsome man. He's a pillar in his church. He has all kinds of clout in the community. People look up to him. And he sits there in that green chair in my office and he cries because life doesn't mean anything to him. Why? Because no one discipled him and reminded him that he's basically spirit. And no amount of money, not having even a beautiful wife is going to bring to him ultimate fulfillment. That since God made him in his image and in his likeness, it's only in his relationship with God. and having the joy of the Lord, and being filled with the Holy Spirit, and having the gifts of the Spirit operating in his life, will he be a person that's fulfilled. Now that ought to tell us a good deal about ourselves today. Do you think that you're cheated in life because you don't have a lot of money? Might be worse if you did have money. Many of us are here, we think about how wonderful it would be if we'd only win the lotto. Or maybe the Reader's Digest. That doesn't sound quite so bad. Do you have it spent already? It wouldn't make much difference about our inferiority. Wouldn't make much difference. We're basically spirit. Let me show you some verses now that would illustrate this. Notice the Book of Exodus, if you would please. Book of Exodus in chapter 19, verse 5 and 6. Now here's an amazing two verses in the Bible. The background of these verses now tell us about our image. The book of Exodus chapter 19. I want to read these two verses and then go to the New Testament. Exodus 19 verse 5. Now therefore if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me. You see that's Isaiah 40 verse 21. This people have I made for myself. You'll be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all of the earth is mine, and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Well, that's the potential that we have. Now, how can we ever be that kind of a person? It's because we've been created in the image and likeness of God. Do you have within yourself that potential? Yes, you do. Right. Notice in the book of 1st Peter in chapter 2. 1st Peter in the 2nd chapter. Notice verse 5 and 9. 1st Peter chapter 2 in the 5th verse. 1st Peter 2 verse 5. You also as living stones are built of a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Verse nine, but you are a chosen generation and a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people that you should show forth the praises of him who had called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now these verses tell us something to tell us about our spiritual potential that we can be this kind of a person. Now there are many of you here and you think what you're doing right now is that you're eroding away the meaning of these verses because for many many years you have accepted error and the error is that you're an inferior kind of a person and along with that acceptance of error you've opened the door to the enemy and the enemies talk to you about this and The enemy now has been talking to you about the fact that you're a failure, that you're not worth anything, that if you ever try anything, you're going to fail. If you just try something, then what will happen is that people will understand what kind of a worthless, inferior kind of a person you are. The enemy enjoys doing this, and the reason for it, the enemy enjoys our pain. The enemy enjoys working on us with error because when we practice that, then what we're doing is sinning. We're sinning against God. So I want you to know that when God created you, that he created you as a spirit person, a spiritual person. This is our basic structure. This is the kind of a person you are. Now we put so much emphasis on our body, on our mind, on our emotions, on our will, our social relationships, our work. Now we need to understand that our spirit should have a much higher priority in our daily lives. And that's where God wants to work with us. The next thought that I want to bring out, and I'm just going to have to touch upon this very briefly, is what happened to you in the new birth. that as a person God made you as a holy person in the new birth. Mark again has talked about this and I want to build on that foundation for a moment. It's very hard for us to realize that through the new birth that God gave us all of that power and all of the spiritual equipment of the crucifixion and the resurrection and the ascension the day of Pentecost. It was all imputed to us legally. Now that has to be developed as a part of our experience, but that was given to us in the new birth. That's why Paul said in Ephesians 1 3 that we've been blessed with all spiritual blessings. Think about that now. For a long time as a young Christian, because I wasn't discipled and I had no background in in church or the Bible, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to live the Christian life like I said in the Bible. I'd read the Bible and I was reading it a great deal. I hungered for God as a young Christian. And as I read the Bible, I realized that I was very different from the people in the Bible. They were strong and I was weak. They were successful and I was not successful and the list went on and on and on. It was a very negative thing in my life. And I kept wondering why I couldn't be like that, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many chapters I read, no matter how much I prayed, no matter how I worked against temptation, I couldn't be like that. One day I figured it out. I figured that God gave a lot of his grace to some people and other people he didn't give much grace to. And I was one of the others. And then I read Ephesians 1.3. Paul said that God had blessed us. That's all believers with all spiritual blessings Peter said the same thing 2nd Peter 1 3 Now do you realize that you have all spiritual blessings legally? Are you are you willing to accept that? Now many of us are pleading with God to give us something he's already given it to us and Many of us by pleading with God to give us something we're blaming him for our failures We're saying to God, you know, I wouldn't fail if I if you would have given me now what I really need Now we're gonna have to stop blaming God All of us here have been blessed with all spiritual blessings and we're gonna have to take that look that lie away from the enemy what we really need now is to pray together and work together in the Bible so that we can understand what we have and then how to make it a part of our powerful experience of life and then how to communicate it to other people. That's what we need. We have all spiritual blessings. And so when we look into the Word of God, it's a comfort to us to see that one of these is that we're holy people. Maybe I could ask you to turn to the book of Hebrews and let me just work on one passage here. Book of Hebrews in chapter 10. Notice how he makes this very clear. The book of Hebrews in the 10th chapter and verse 10. He's talking about the choice the Lord Jesus made when he came into the world. Hebrews 10 and verse 10 by the which will that is Explained in verse 9 by the which will we are sanctified or made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all notice that and another verse here verse 14 For by one offering he hath perfected or made holy. That's the Greek word made holy forever them that are sanctified or holy or being made holy, talking about experience. So I don't know how you look upon yourself today, but legally because of the new birth, you're a holy person. What an amazing thing happened in that new birth. Before that happened, you were owned by the devil. John 8, 44. Afterward, you were owned by the Lord Jesus. Think about that. Before you were in the kingdom of darkness and now after the new birth you're in the kingdom of light Before you were unrighteous and now you're justified or righteous before you were guilty and now you're forgiven and before you were defiled and unholy and now You're a holy person in that spirit relationship to God Legally holy that means that we have the right to enter heaven Now what a terrible thing it is when we make a choice of life to live out of harmony, not only with who God is, but to live out of harmony with what we are basically on the inside, a holy person. Now many of us don't want to accept that responsibility, but that's exactly who we are. Now I'd like to talk another hour or two about this, but let me just show you the rest of the diagram. We're a gifted person. We're valuable to God, and we are loved by God, and we're graced by God. That's not a very good English word, but a very good Greek word. We're graced by God. We have all of the grace of God in our lives, legally, not experientially, legally. So this is a very beautiful picture that we have in the New Testament. And now I want to go to an area of making some application of this in our daily lives. And that is one reason for this conference. One reason why the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world is to bring deliverance and healing from the tyranny of our error and the tyranny of our self-centeredness. The way the enemy gets to us is by error and by sin or through the ancestral line. through other people and we're going to be talking about that now in these days together. But the Lord Jesus said he came into the world to set the captives free and that's deliverance and he's come into the world now to bring healing to us and the healing is from the tyranny and it's a good word the tyranny of error. I'm sure you realize the power of error as well as the power of truth. Now truth is always weak until it's practiced, then it's powerful. An error is always powerful until it's brought out into the open and examined on the basis of an open Bible and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Then the error becomes very weak. As long as we accept the error as truth, then it always, the word tyranny, It always will reign over us and there are many of us here now and that's the agony that we live with day by day. The error is ruining our daily life. Many of you are here along with me fighting about this matter of inferiority. We need to accept what the Bible states and stop listening to what the enemy tells us. And then of course what happens If we accept error, it makes us a self-centered person because we go around through life always thinking about ourselves. We go around through life always wondering, who am I going to meet now that's going to satisfy my needs? We become a very self-centered person. Now we have all kinds of rights, but we don't have the right to be a self-centered person. Are you a self-centered person? Nobody's going to accept that just ask your husband and wife Are you a self-centered person? Are you able now as a parent? Are you able to be? emotionally and spiritually available to your children Or are you so self-centered and trying to live the Christian life accepting all kinds of error? That you're right at the very center of life itself in the family I know a good deal about that because that's the way I lived for years. I knew something was wrong on the inside. I went to a Bible Institute in Seattle, Washington under the Christian Missionary Alliance. They had a three-year pastor's course like Moody Bible Institute and so I enrolled just as a very young Christian. I realized that that I was hurting a great deal on the inside. I just didn't know what to do with myself and when we would have a opportunity to talk to one of the teachers or a special Bible conference man or woman that would come to the schools and I would try to make an appointment with them and talk to them and ask them how I could solve how I felt on the inside. The questions are almost always the same. Do you read the Bible? Well, yes, I do. Do you pray? Sure, I do. Do you give your tithe? Yes. Do you go to church? Yes, I do. Are you worldly? No. Well, then everything's okay. So I thought, well, if that's the way to do it, I'll read more. I'll pray more. I'll go to church more. I'll give more. I'll be less worldly. So that went on for years. And what happened is that I became a legalist and a Pharisee of the first water. And that's when my children were growing up and I was not spiritually and emotionally available to my children. It's a long story, I love to tell you, but it was just a wonderful way in which God started to open my life up to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And the time came when I realized that I was on this side of the wall and my wife was on the other side, my children were on the other side, everybody else was on the other side. And what really hurt is that God was on the other side. And so the day came when I asked him to come and find me. I knew that there was no way that I could solve the problem or even approach to it. And I was very afraid. I thought if God came and looked at me that he would just turn away in disgust. I knew rationally he wouldn't, but emotionally I was sure he would. But he did. And he just picked me up like a little child and held me close and cried with me. That's what he did. And we started to tear down the wall together. I want to tell you I never will build another wall. I can't tell you how wonderful it is. It's very important to know now that we've been created in the image and likeness of God and we need to be now emotionally and spiritually available to God and to one another. Are you available to your children like that? You need to be. It tells the story. So whether you're available to God It's not what you think about it. It's not what you say with your mouth It's what dr. Warner said this morning. It's what you believe about yourself. Are you really available? We can sing about it But if you don't believe you're worth something at the sight of God, let me tell you you're not available Here are some of the things that he wants to deliver us from. I don't measure up. Does that strike a chord in your life? Have you been told most of your life you didn't measure up? Do you have an older brother or sister that always got better grades than you and your parents always said, why don't you do it like Johnny or Sally, right? I don't measure up. Have you been saying that to yourself? Have you allowed the enemy to say that? What's another one? I don't look like. That hits most of us. We'd all like to look like somebody else, and they're probably thinking they'd like to look like you. That's the way we are. I don't look like. Another one? I don't have. Oh, so you're in real bad shape here today. You don't have a Mercedes, right? You just drive a Volkswagen or maybe a Plymouth. So you don't have something. You can't do, right? That's the tyranny of all of this. I can't be like. That's another one. Do you realize you were looking at the list the Lord Jesus had in mind when he came into the world to deliver you? And the last one, I'm no good. These are the lies of the enemy. This is the way the enemy works on us. You know what this develops into in your life and mine? And I'm going to have to hurry with this now. My time is almost gone. This is what happens. It creates a barrier. No wonder the truth of God and the grace of God doesn't flow into our life. It's because we've created a barrier. You know what the barrier is? Many times, most of the time, it's a lie. It's a lie that we believe. And the particular lie I want to put my finger on is the fact that we're not worth anything. When we accept error, this is what happens in our lives. I'm going to have to stop now. It produces sin. When we accept error and we practice error, that's what the Bible means by sin. Many people contest that. But let me ask, what are you practicing when you sin? Are you practicing truth? Of course not, you're practicing error. This is why, you're looking at the reason why in the lives of many Christians why 1 John 1.9 doesn't work. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and then to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Many people sit in my office and say, it doesn't work. I've confessed it, and I don't feel forgiven, and God hasn't cleansed me from my unrighteousness. Why? You know why? They've only been confessing the right-hand column, the practice. They haven't been confessing the error that they're practicing, which is sin. So maybe you need to think the next time you're tempted to sin stop and think what error Am I tempted to practice? You need to think about that Now this diagram should is worthy of a couple hours of good discussion, but my time is gone here So I'm going to have to stop Do you realize that we have been created in the image and likeness of God and that's the basis? for our self-worth God has made every provision for us in our original creation and in our relationship with the Lord Jesus. The devil has no right to lie to us. He has no right. And we're going to have to stop that. Let's bow together to pray. Dear Father, we're thankful for the wonderful way that you have brought us into existence. the wonderful way that you saved us. We owe everything to you. We pray that you would now come and minister to us and deliver us so that we might live in such a way that glory and honor and praise and majesty would come to yourself. Come and rescue us. We pray it for the sake of the Lord Jesus. Amen.