The Fragrance of Messiah: Bold Faith in Modern Times

SPEAKER 01 : 0:06

Greetings friends and new listeners. Welcome to this program of the R.G. Hardy Ministries. I’m Sharon Knotts and I’m so happy you’ve joined us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message is The Fragrance of Messiah. I know this title has a pleasing sound, but I assure you there is a soul-stirring, eye-opening alarm of the Holy Spirit contained in this anointed package. As real Christians, we are both fragrant and foul-smelling because our gospel is a gospel of life and death, as you will understand in The Fragrance of Messiah. You have got to get bold. Like I said last week, you better get a spiritual backbone. Amen? Because some of these things are going to become illegal. You say, well, that’s the military. That doesn’t apply to me. Well, let me read this to you. Let me read you this other little story, and then we’ll move into our message. This is what now is illegal. The Supreme Court has ruled that kindergarten children can no longer verbalize the prayer of thanksgiving as they partake of their morning snack. The specific words that the Supreme Court ruled contraband is this. We thank you for the flowers so sweet. We thank you for the food we eat. We thank you for the birds that sing. We thank you, God, for everything. It is now illegal. It’s illegal for children to say this prayer. Amen? So I’m telling you that why would the forces of hell pick on kindergartners? I’ll tell you why. It’s powerful. It has an effect. It’s saying to their little minds and their little moldable hearts, it’s giving them the understanding you didn’t come from scum. You didn’t come from a monkey. God gave you everything. It’s not some great theological lesson, but it’s saying thank God for everything. He made the birds. Amen. He made the food you’re eating. He made everything. It’s planting in their little moldable hearts the seed that can start growing. That’s why the devil picks on kindergartners and doesn’t want them to pray. And he’s made an illegal activity. Amen. Let me tell you something. You and I are going to have to get bold and we’re going to have to have a backbone. Amen. And we’re going to have to stand up for the truth. Amen. So how do we respond when we’re treated like this, when we’re reviled and we’re persecuted and we’re defamed and we’re treated like filth and scum? Well, the scripture we read says we bless, we suffer it, we put up with it, we entreat. Let me tell you a good way to translate we entreat. We stay sweet. I said we stay sweet. Amen? Look at somebody and say, entreat. Stay sweet. In other words, we do what Ephesians 4.15 says. We speak the truth in love. We do not apologize for the truth. We don’t back down from the truth. We speak it boldly, but we speak it in love. Amen? Now some people and many people today are accusing Christians of not having love. And it’s all because we speak the truth. The moment that you call sin, sin, you don’t have love. when you say adultery is sin when you say fornication is sin get ready get ready when you say homosexuality is sin you don’t have love you don’t have love amen but the scripture in ephesians 4 15 does not say to speak the truth or have love it says speak the truth in love Amen? Speaking the truth is loving the sinner. Speaking the truth is telling them that you have got to be saved, that you have got to know Jesus, that your life is sin, but oh, there’s good news. There is a Savior who will forgive you, who will receive you, who will cleanse you, who will wash you. Amen? That is speaking the truth in love. As long as we’re not doing it in a hateful, condemning way. Amen? As long as we are hating the sin, but loving the sinner. That’s the key, saints. You’re not going to change the homosexual being all nasty, hateful, and calling them everything but a human being. You think that’s going to win them to Christ? It’s not. You’ve got to show them love. You do not fudge on the truth. You show them the scriptures. You tell them what God’s word says. You take them back to the creation, how God created them. And you tell them, you take them to 1 Corinthians, the sixth chapter, where it says, and such were some of you, but now you’re washed, you’re sanctified. Amen? So we’ve got to have wisdom and understanding. And let me tell you, for example, let’s take homosexuals today in our generation who have, unlike us, have never been in church their whole lives. that no one took them to church as kids. They’d never been to Sunday school. They’d never been to church. They have never read the Bible. They don’t have the faintest clue of what’s in the Bible. All they know is what they hear somebody else who twisted and turns it all upside down says. But they don’t know for themselves. They’ve never heard of the Bible. And they have all their life been given the line, you can’t help it, God made you that way. They’ve been given the line because God is love. He loves you just the way you are. Only the inference being and he doesn’t want you to change. Yes, he loves them as they are, but let’s qualify that. He loves all sinners, but he’s not going to leave them in their sin because he couldn’t love them and leave them in their sin or they’re going to split hell wide open. Amen. But they don’t know that. They’ve been given the line, God is love, so he loves you. Amen? And so they have no idea how much God hates that sin. They don’t know that. So we’ve got to learn to deal with them accordingly. But now let me say this. It’s not the same case for those who were raised in church. it’s not the same for those that were raised in the truth and know what the scripture said and then go into homosexuality you handle them differently amen because they know and you gotta give them the word in the scriptures that they already know because the ones that don’t know there’s a bunch of people out there especially all over the internet all they do is they go get the old testament and they bring out Old Testament scriptures, and they say, well, in the Old Testament, you could be stoned for adultery. Well, in the Old Testament, it was a sin when a woman had her monthly. I mean, they dig up all this kind of stuff, and they make it look like, and we all know that’s crazy and off the wall. They don’t put it in its context. They don’t put it in its setting. They don’t have the whole picture of the law. They don’t know that the reason why God said that is because he knew the fact then they didn’t know about germs and spreading diseases. So they bring all that up and they make us Christians look like we are weird as we can be. But do you ever hear them quote from the New Testament? No. No. You won’t hear them quote New Testament. They only go back to Old Testament. And that’s all they get on. And, of course, they like to bring out, and they put homosexuals in with bestiality. And we know that’s weird. In the Bible days, bestiality was common. That’s one of the reasons, along with homosexuality, that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. They were also into bestiality. Does that mean all homosexuals are into bestiality? Of course not. But they paint it that we are inferring that. And you never hear them go into the New Testament. But those people that have been raised in the truth and raised in church know better than that. They know better than that when they get on the Internet and all they do is take the Old Testament and throw it out there, and they don’t ever bother to go to Romans 1, but we will. Let’s go to Romans 1. Chapter 1 of Romans, verse 21 and following. Because that when they knew God, talking about people that know God, They glorified him not as God, and neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations. Vain is foolish, utter foolishness, and no profit. And their foolish heart was darkened. And darkness is always a lie. Darkness refers to a lie just like light refers to truth. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. And to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness. And this always refers to sexual lust. Through the lust of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. who changed the truth of God into a lie. It’s the only way that you can support homosexuality is change the truth of God into a lie. And worshiped and served the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections. For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, or the word is indecent, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meat. And like it or not, there are specific judgments on homosexuality. And you just read it right here. I’m not going to say what they are or what they are not. I’m just saying the Bible says that they’re going to receive a recompense, a commensurate judgment for the sin. Amen? And they will receive a recompense of their error, which is the right one, which is suitable, which is proper. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient. That word convenient is way too weak. It means those things that are improperly Amen? So we see that for Christians and people that know the Bible and know the New Testament to then go into homosexuality, the only way they can do it is to change the truth of God into a lie and twist the scriptures. Amen? Otherwise, they can’t do it. Their conscience wouldn’t let them. Amen? But once they decide to go that way, they cannot tolerate Christians because then we remind them of their sin. And to them, we smell like a rotting corpse because we are reminding them of their eternal damnation, and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. Amen? They don’t want nothing to do with it. And they’re not able to say… and I’ll say all homosexuals, whether they were ever raised in church or not, today we see they’re not willing to say, well, to Christians, well, that’s your opinion, and just like me, you have a right in America, in America now, we’re not talking religious now, in America, you have a right to your opinion. But they’re not tolerant of our opinion. Okay, forget that it’s the Bible. They’re not tolerant for us to have our opinion. Amen. They insist that their belief has got to become our belief. Therefore, they insist that they control what you watch or don’t watch on television. That they control what you can and cannot do in the military. They insist it’s okay now to be openly gay in the military, but do not be openly Christian. You see, there’s no going back, saints. You’re not going to go back and change everything that’s been done. No one’s going to revert back and say, okay, we changed our mind about the military. Now you can’t be gay. Okay? The barn door’s open and the horse is out. You’re not going to change it. We can change it. We’re not going to change all these things that have happened. You’re not going to change the same-sex marriage law in all these states that are adopting it. And every year, more of the… It’s no going back. It’s not going to change. What we’ve got to now, we let all this happen. It’s done. It’s history. Now we’ve got to really scramble so that instead of worrying about changing that stuff, that they don’t steal our right. That now we don’t lose our right. Amen. to speak what we speak. Do you understand the point? It’s too late to change these things. You say with God all things are possible. Yes, but God gives people the desire of their heart. He gave Israel a king when he didn’t want them to have a king. And he told Samuel, they didn’t reject you, Samuel. They rejected me. It’s not that they don’t think you’re a good prophet. They even told Samuel, you’re a great prophet and you have served God all your life and we love you, but you’re going to die soon. And when you die, what are we going to do? Your sons are evil. So give us a king. And God said, he gave them a king. He gave them the desire of their heart and sent leanness to their soul. And so do you think because, see, some people have this really wrong conception that if it happened, it was God’s will. If this law happened, it’s God’s will. If this person ran for office and got in and they turned out to be a horrible governor, mayor, president, senator, whatever, and voted all the wrong ways, it must be God’s will. Are you going to put stuff like that on God? No. Are you going to really say it’s God’s will for everything to go in the way that the enemy wants it? I mean, how can that be God’s will? Well, he didn’t stop it and he didn’t let them get in. He gave you the desire of your heart. If enough Christians would stand up and vote the right way, then it wouldn’t happen. Amen. amen so God is not going to intervene and he’s going to let you have what you want what you want amen so we’ve got to realize that we’ve got to fight to be able to voice our opinion and here’s the thing they want to silence the message and in order to silence the message they’re trying to silence the messengers They’re trying to silence those who preach and teach the scriptures and call them as we saw monsters. Amen? And in some cases I’ve seen where they have referred to people like they’re Nazis. My God, help us all. They’re looking for some kind of fault that they can latch on to to discredit us. So if we speak, if we get so riled up that we begin to speak hatefully, we speak words of hatred and retaliation, we’re giving them something to work with. We’re giving them something that they can point to us and say, I told you they’re haters, because that’s what they call us, haters. Amen? So we have got to be so careful, and it’s not just homosexuality, okay? It’s all the things we deal with. The pornography, the garbage on television, all the stuff that we deal with. Okay, I’m not just, that has been very front and center in the news. So I feel that the Holy Spirit had me bring this out. But now let’s just get more generic and say they are after us on everything. Amen? Amen? I mean, if a woman wears a cross necklace on her job, she can be called in for that and said, you can’t wear that. I mean, what? What is so offensive about a cross necklace? Well, it’s offensive because it reminds them of Jesus. Jesus reminds them of Jesus’ word and reminds them that he died on the cross and they need to get saved. Amen? So we’ve got to learn how to speak the truth But like Jesus did and like Stephen did when they were, he was the first martyr of the church. And the Bible says he spoke with such wisdom that he spoke a word they could not gainsay. They got so angry, they not only stoned him, and that was legal to stone him. According to their law, they said he blasphemed. So let’s just go in the context of their law. But they had to gnash on him with their teeth. I don’t see anything in the law about biting people. Amen. and gnashing on them with their teeth. That was pure rage. That was pure hatred. They could stand there in their holier-than-thou robes and throw stones and say, you blasphemed the law and we’re stoning you. But when they ran up to the guy and began to chomp on him, that was pure demonic rage. That was hatred. And we’ve got to find a way that in the face of that kind of hatred, our human instinct is to rise up and give them back the same thing. But when we do, we’ve fallen into the snare of the enemy. We have let the enemy trick us. We’ve done exactly what he wants us to do. the Bible’s not going to go away. So he’s going to try to silence us or discredit us. Amen? You know, you heard about the break-ins and all with the thief and all, and we had put out posters with his picture on it and all, and you heard about how they were able to nab him thirsty and arrest him. And you know, Friday night, Brother Lonnie stood up to say something about it, and I tell you, what he said really touched my heart. Because He said, he was talking about the testimony, about how that it wasn’t just him or Dwayne or anybody else that was involved, but he took the spotlight off himself and put it on the church. He said it was because the church and the believers in Christ prayed. It was because of the prayers of the saints that this guy was caught. Amen. And I thought, now there, that’s the right attitude. That’s the attitude. He took the spotlight right off of himself, and he began to share it with all of those who were praying that this man would be caught. He said it was because the saints prayed that he was caught. Amen? And then he went on to say that he’s praying that this guy gets saved. Amen. He didn’t say, I hope… He falls down, breaks his neck, and goes to hell. He didn’t say, I hope that somebody shoots him. He said, I hope that he shows up in my class at the city jail. I hope he turns up in my class so that I can share Jesus with him. Amen? And he quoted, because Jesus said, we are to pray for our enemies. Amen. Amen. I trust you are being supernaturally stirred by our message, the fragrance of Messiah. I know for myself it was a true eye-opener when I realized that not only does the gospel of Christ that we live and preach have the power of life to those who accept it and death to those who reject it, but we as Christians are both fragrant and foul-smelling. This is not a contradiction in terms. Apostle Paul said that we are both. To those who are seeking truth, we are as a beautiful fragrance that draws them to Christ. But to those who harden their hearts to the message of the gospel, we are as the stench of death. We smell like a rotting corpse. They don’t want to be in our presence because we remind them of their sin and their damnation. Make no mistake, Jesus Christ will have an eternal impact on everyone who comes into contact with the gospel. those who reject him will seek to silence his message and this means silencing us his messengers they are looking for any fault to discredit us and this is why we must respond by speaking the truth in love now this does not mean to excuse sin god said i am god and i change not what he said is sin in his word is still sin today god hates the sin but he loves sinners and so should we There are those who are real seekers of truth, and to them we are the sweet perfume of life because we have the treasure of the anointing in our earthen vessels. So knowing this gospel is unto death or life, what manner of Christians should we be? You may order The Fragrance of Messiah on CD for a love gift of $10 or more. Request offer SK-167. Mail to R.G. Hardy Ministries, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or order online at rghardy.org. That’s RGHardy.org. Again, send a minimum love gift of $10 to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Request offer SK167 for the fragrance of Messiah. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.