Beyond the Walls Radio

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (see 2 Corinthians 4) and used the sporting terms of their Isthmian Games called "the Agones" (from where we derive the English word "agonies") to illustrate the struggle of the Christian life and how we must fight evil and win. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the "Isthmian Games, in ancient Greece, [was] a festival of athletic and musical competitions in honour of the sea god Poseidon, held in the spring of the second and fourth years of each Olympiad at his sanctuary on the Isthmus of Corinth." Paul's Corinthian church family were as familiar with this cultural phenomenon as they were opposed to its cavalier disregard for human life. By learning from the wrestling terminology the apostle used to denote the spiritual battle they faced, Paul, ironically, provided the Corinthian church with the very principles they would employ to eventually defeat the existence of Isthmian Games themselves. The celebration of this demonic festival died out when Christianity finally became dominant in the 4th century AD. These lessons given to the ancient Corinthian church remain as valid today as they were when Paul first taught them. If you live on planet Earth, you, too, are in a struggle for eternity. Learn from Pastor Gordon as he expounds on the teachings of the Chief Apostle, and learn how to win your family's wrestling match against evil!

In Genesis, we learn that dominion was (and remains to be) very important to God. God created mankind to take dominion of the earth, on His divine terms, through the power of His grace. Things went very wrong at the moment that Adam and Eve decided to take dominion of the earth on their own terms, outside the boundaries that God had given them. We correctly refer to that moment of disobedience as "a fall from grace." So here we are many thousands of years later, and we are all reaping the consequences of their decision in Eden to do things their own way. However, we have little moral authority to complain about what they did to the world if we are principally doing the same thing ourselves - living in what Pastor Gordon describes as "dysfunctional dominion." It is true enough to say that it is Adam and Eve's fault that every property owner who wishes to maintain green grass beneath a pine tree will be forced to rake the needles and pick up the pine cones, but our trouble goes far beyond the annoyances posed by routine yard work. The struggle is that every element reaches toward man to kill him. The sun would burn us. The water would drown us. The winter would freeze us. The plants would poison us. The animals would bite us. The wind would drive us. The lightning would electrocute us. The germs would infect us. We struggle across our lifespan (originally created to live forever) just to stay alive on a peaceful planet turned hostile. The incipient death doesn't go away after we accept Christ either. Faith does not eliminate the struggles but serves as a tool to help us overcome them all. Find out how to navigate incipient death and all the struggles that earth dishes out in this excellent sermon on the human condition and its corresponding salvation solution.

We say "carry your own weight" to those who do not accept responsibility for their own obligations in life. The picture of a lazy man wishing to be carted around like a Japanese prince on a koshi throne (with poles affixed to the chair and men at their stations acting as human wheels) comes to mind. Since life is too short for free loaders to demand you carry them around on a cushion, life should also be too short for you to demand that others man their stations on your own koshi throne.

Carry your own weight!

Do your own duty!

Man your own station!

Now, put all these ideas right into the middle of church life, and you'll be a better man or woman for it! You must never treat the local church as though it is your koshi throne. Adam and Even should not have treated Eden like one either. Since Eden, the world has been filled with two kinds of people: takers and givers. Most people are just takers. Greed takes and takes and takes.

In order to ensure that the world is filled with twice-born righteous children (as opposed to once-born children of the Devil), Christ instituted His holy church. The twice-born experience is God's solution for the dilemma of sin Adam and Eve bequeathed to their own children after they fell from grace. Modern Christians err when they fail to see that original sin was about more than just biting into some delicious-looking fruit. Original sin was about failing to recognize when property did not belong to them. Specifically, original sin was about failing to recognize when something belonged exclusively to God and had been rightfully reserved for Him alone, with no connected moral obligation to share it until and unless He determined so.

Eve was a taker. She should have seen the tree as an opportunity to GIVE respect to her Master, Maker and Father. Said another way, when she should have "paid respect" she "took a bite."

God was a giver, but He had already given more than enough. The modern church still struggles with this problem when it comes to - you guessed it - the subjects of property and finance. Are you living in dysfunctional dominion like your failed father Adam? Are you just another taker? Or are you obediently walking in divine dominion as your Heavenly Father still instructs?

Carry your own weight! Give tithes and offerings to the Lord's work in the local church where you are taught the high truths of God's holy Word. Pay your respects! Crucify your flesh and resist that "taker-spirit" you inherited from your Edenic parents.

The church must come to understand the continuing premise aback the New Testament Great Commission, which is first mentioned in Genesis 1:26 as “taking dominion” and “subduing the earth.” Too many in our times have twisted the truths of Jesus into such mystical, otherworldly nonsense that they have failed to obey the most obvious and essential components of church life. For example, a church that does not teach on the physical purposes of sex, pregnancy, and the gift of the natural family has little intellectual credibility to justify getting anyone born spiritually, a second time (born-again), chatting of spiritual family and calling everyone “Brother and Sister so and so” in the congregation, as if spiritual families were not first born physically. 

Similarly situated, a church that does not seek to possess and properly steward PHYSICAL, LOCAL LAND for worshiping God on the Lord’s Day has little intellectual strength to talk of a triumphant, SPIRITUAL, UNIVERSAL church with HEAVENLY mansions awaiting them afar off. One spiritual truth must never be taught at the expense of the corresponding physical reality. There is a very reasonable and practical call for Christians around the world to continue taking ground (as-in real, physical property) for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom, and that call is every bit as reasonable as married couples seeking to “get pregnant” with physical children in front of the idea of later getting them “born-again.” 

The One True God is not some eastern shaman who feels the need to speak in riddles to flaunt His inexplicable and unreachable wisdom. Father God is not insecure. He requires no riddles to showcase His mental superiority. Jesus, the Son of God, was quite the opposite of an eastern shaman. He declared Himself to be a perfect reflection of the character of His Father, our Creator. He prayed for real-world impact down here on terra firma: “…Thy will be done ON EARTH as it is in Heaven.” Noah did not argue against the command to build a PHYSICAL ark, made of gopher wood (Gen. 6:14), while simultaneously magnifying that the knowledge and design of the ark had been granted to him by God’s SPIRITUAL grace. 

Modern preachers routinely demean the value of owning property and are ironically quick to adopt the Western materialistic idea of the small family. But why do modern churchmen do and say such silly, mystical things that abandon God’s natural laws? 

We must stop posing the self-defeating arguments against collectively taking dominion as local churches through real-world financial synergy and property ownership, in the name of a fake grace that upends solid doctrine on tithes and offerings. Of course, folks prefer to keep their money and talk only of other more ethereal commands like “lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven”, but shouldn’t that give us pause for thought? If what we argue pets the flesh, greed, and envy of the depraved, shouldn’t it be just a tish alarming to us as potential error? 

Just imagine Noah responding to God from a modern cheap-grace paradigm:

“I am saved ONLY by SPIRITUAL grace, not by PHYSICAL works. So as much as I appreciate the gift of grace you have handed me (the instructions by which I am being commanded to physically build a wooden ark in lieu of a world-wide flood), I am not going to fall into the trap of ‘works-based salvation.’ I am politely and lovingly refusing to obey you, and decline the building of THIS WOODEN ARK, Lord. After all, I know that the body of believers could never be confined to just one physical man-made wooden structure anyway! You are too great for such a limiting wooden box. You do not live in boats made with hands! Instead, You made us a universal ark that is a spiritual boat!” 

No, Noah declared no such gnostic foolishness. He understood that obedience to God was evidence of grace, not opposition against it. What’s lost on so many poor souls today is that Noah was not the only preacher called to build something practical and physical to house and protect repentant people. We, too, are called to possess and build a PHYSICAL place of SPIRITUAL worship! Yes, the church is universal and quite supernatural, but we can only connect to the universal church by joining it in the confines of one congregation we personally serve, in an actual location, on actual property. Individual Christians are not omnipresent, nor are we body-less beings hovering about like a Saturday morning cartoon Casper. Therefore, we worship God in one actual place on the Lord’s Day. We connect to the UNIVERSAL, SPIRITUAL church of the world through ONE, LOCAL, PHYSICAL congregation — a church gathering hopefully conducted under a nice and effective roof, sitting upon land we steward by the grace of God. Perhaps some walls, windows, and insulation may be reached by the congregation’s faith? 

These physical structures — places of worship — were what God already clearly said He desired when He handed Moses the blueprints for the physical construction of an eventual Temple. The less-than-ideal but suitably excellent tabernacle spaces needed on the journey toward the ideal stone Temple were also to be stewarded in the same spirit of excellence. 

This is still true today! 

Every worship space should honor the Lord with the same spirit commanded by Him to Moses when they built the portable tabernacle. The whole world is now journeying toward the return of a victorious King! We have no right to cheapen grace as some mystical excuse to neglect our continuing mission to erect honorable chapels/synagogues/church facilities across the world. In this radio broadcast, Pastor Gordon explains the often-misunderstood difference between taking dominion as obedient members of the Body of Christ and giving generously toward one another. Get ready to learn something and put it in action in your life! Joy comes through obedience to God’s Word! Grace flows when we take and when we give, if the acts of both taking and giving are done through faith.

America is in the midst of an undeniable and ongoing moral decline before our very eyes. But we are not only unraveling as a nation, the average church is unraveling right along with western culture. What is an American pastor to do about it? On one particular morning, Pastor Gordon shares the story of how he was carrying a heavy load in his heart bearing the recent news that a dear friend and fellow minister had been wrongfully fired for acting in obedience to his own conscience and preaching truth from the Scriptures. While driving up the lane toward his church building on the east side of Sioux City, Iowa, he explains how God moved upon him in response to that heart-break, not only for the specific church that had done wrong to their leader, but even more so, for the modern church's sordid state of affairs across the globe. It was as if God entered the car and breathed grace upon him and instantly lifted his burden. What God impressed upon him was both simple and profound: "Be very concerned! Be very prepared! Do not be afraid!"

If Adam returned from the grave and took your place in life right now, where you live, with your job, your home, sleeping in your bed, and driving your car, it is pretty likely that he would be a better business man than you, have a higher IQ than you, have a better physique than you, and accomplish more than you ever will. Based on what we know of him, it is very possible that he could take what little you have right now in life and use only what you left him to turn himself into a millionaire in less than 30 days...but then, he'd still die and go right back to Hell where he came from without repentance, and we have no record that he ever repented for his sins. So what does this hypothetical scenario I just described have to do with you? Well, he was kicked out of the Garden, and you were born outside of it. You have to get back in, and he never will.

In the midst of two books and a combined fifty-five chapters of sacred literature written long, long ago, lies a message of extreme importance to Christians living right now! Bible commentator Walter Brueggemann once wrote: "The story of David and Nathan [2 Samuel 7] discussing the future transition from the Tabernacle of God to a permanent Temple of God, is the dramatic and theological center of the entire Samuel corpus; one of the most crucial texts in the Old Testament for modern evangelical faith." In this sermon, Pastor Gordon juxtaposes 2 Samuel chapter 7, with the direct command of the Lord Jesus Christ, given in Matthew 6:33. Why is David's epiphany and Nathan's witness of it so critical to understand? By the end of this you will know why and never forget it. It is time for you to have the same epiphany as King David!

Without theology man can not explain the existence of life. Men, animals, flora and fauna, from the thin-aired skies to the depths of the oceans, the things we say are "alive" surround us. But what is life? Is it red or green? Is it liquid or solid? Is it matter or energy? No microscope has ever found a substance they could definitively say, "THIS is life! See it?" They never will, either. Because life is both spiritual and natural. Pastor Gordon traces the mysterious substance man can't find from God's breath in the Garden of Eden when Adam became a living being, to a married man and woman whom the Apostle Peter declared "inherit the grace of life together." We don't know everything, but we do know this: whatever happened in that first moment when Adam's lungs were inflated with the breath of God...it has been passed through Adam's progeny and now abides inside of you and me. You are sitting there, reading this, and preparing to listen to a sermon, because the breath of God passed from Adam, long ago, across tens of thousands of his progeny, to you, in this moment. The Apostle Peter explains to us that life is the most basic form of supernatural grace. In 1 Peter 3:7 he calls it the "grace of life." Further, Peter explains that married couples take that mysterious power and create new life every time a woman conceives in her womb. A fresh discovery of this life-grace awaits! The 18th century scholar, Charles John Ellicot, described Peter's doctrine this way: "This 'grace,' this mysterious and divine gift—not apart from one another, but conjointly—they are privileged by the Creator’s primeval benediction (Genesis 1:28) to transmit. They have the power (no Archangel has the like) to bring human beings into existence. And in consideration that such is the dignity and the intention of marriage, a man may well be called upon to revere his partner in the great prerogative." Pastor Gordon declares, "Everything is alive, because He said so. You are alive because He breathed. Whatever it is about Him when He exhaled, something came out of His divine lungs. You are never going to find it, until you stand in front of Him and hear His voice. In that moment, you will hear the sound of life coming out of His lungs. The whole world was made with His words."

Isn't it a tragedy when the church stops confronting sin and calling sinners to authentic repentance? Did you know that when you have TRULY repented, you are the first one to shout "AMEN!" when your past sins are preached against by a man of God? Often times, for fear of offending the unrepentant, who become angry when their past sins are called-out, modern Bible preachers fail to warn the next generation of the sins they should avoid ever committing in their futures. Young people need to be taught how to live, and that requires them to be shown how NOT to live (even if it makes the older and more sinfully experienced crowd upset because they never truly repented and remain self-focused). The age old question every Christian must answer since Adam and Eve is this: Am I taking dominion for my own purposes, or am I taking dominion for the King of Heaven and His kingdom? In this sermon, Pastor Gordon continues unpacking the rich truths of the Bible concerning the difference between the passions of the flesh and the passions of the reborn human spirit. Imagine a world where Christians are driven to bring forth twice-born children of the kingdom as much as they are driven to have sex (the act designed to create once-born children). "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the church." - Ephesians 5:31-32

Pastor Gordon expounds upon the Bible and crushes the rebooted Marcionite heresies of our times that have shrunken down the otherwise "Great Commission" into a not-so-great mission of getting people ready to die. Rediscover the "GREAT" Commission for what the early church always knew it was! Learn how you can fulfill it by equipping people to live in the power of the Kingdom of God! Learn why it is impossible to understand the New Testament Great Commission without viewing it through the original version first delivered to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Rather than incorrectly viewing the New Testament as Jesus arriving to end God's old campaign and start something fresh and different, embrace the freedom in knowing that the New Testament is actually an expansion of what God was already doing in the earth before Christ arrived. See Jesus as the Divine Catalyst - God in flesh - who came to redirect a wayward, rebellious people back toward redemption through forgiveness of sins. Learn the ongoing tremendous privilege of creating "once-born" lives through the grace of life given to a husband and wife in marriage (a picture of Christ's church), leading to the triumph of the church, which is given the grace of life to produce "twice-born" sons and daughters of God through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ!