World Challenge Sermons

Evan Wilkerson closes out Ephesians 1, wrestling with how God can be sovereign over all things without causing evil. He shows through Joseph's story and a mechanic shop conversation that being sealed in Christ means true belonging. God's goodness holds even when life feels shattered.

Main Points:

1. God works all things according to the counsel of his will, but that doesn't mean he causes all things to happen. Joseph's brothers chose to sell him into slavery out of their own jealousy, yet God wove even their evil into a plan that saved many lives.
2. Malcolm Muggeridge, a wealthy, famous, successful agnostic writer, said after coming to Christ that multiplying all his earthly triumphs by a million still amounted to nothing measured against one drink of the living water Jesus offers.
3. We are called Christians three times in Scripture but described as "in Christ" over two hundred times. That's not a minor detail. It's the truest thing about our identity, more foundational than any label the world gives us.
4. Being sealed with the Holy Spirit works like a king's signet ring pressed into wax: it marks the document as authentically his. God has pressed his own mark on every believer, meaning we belong to someone, radically and permanently, in a world constantly searching for exactly that.
5. A conversation at an auto repair shop turned from rising oil prices to the manager saying "the world is ending," which opened the door for Evan to talk about the living hope only found in Christ.
6. Sharing the gospel is rarely comfortable, but the goal isn't a perfect delivery; it's opening your mouth. Even a stumbled conversation that gets shut down is never wasted, because every attempt is practice for the next one, and God is watching for willing hearts.
7. The Spirit inside every believer is a down payment, a guarantee of an inheritance too glorious to fully imagine yet. Whatever feels broken right now—relationships, finances, mental health—God is the God of shalom who restores what seems too far gone to fix.

https://wcmin.us/WS260819c

David Wilkerson takes the call of Abraham, a man told to leave everything and go to a land he didn't know, and shows that God is asking every believer for the same total surrender of tomorrow. Through Paul's chains and his own granddaughter's death, he reveals that suffering isn't the question; our reaction to it is.

Preached: April 2, 2006

Main Points:

• Abraham had no map, no timeline, no idea how he'd be financed, only a command to leave his country and kindred. God is asking the same total dependence of every believer today: give me your tomorrows, not just your past.

• Two little words disturb us more than anything else: what if. What if the economy fails, what if I get sick, what if my insurance runs out? Jesus turns us from our anxiety with a simple redirection: your Father knows what you need.

• Paul sat chained between two hardened Roman guards, watching his own protégés like Apollos and Timothy thrive in ministry while his own hands were tied. He had every reason to spiral into why me, but chose instead to ask a different question: How will I react?

• An elderly woman told David Wilkerson her husband spent his final years bitter that his stroke had robbed him of his future, never once considering that she too had lost her future as his full-time caretaker. Suffering steals from everyone in the room, not just the one visibly afflicted.

• Two weeks before his granddaughter Tiffany died of cancer, the Holy Spirit told David Wilkerson to put her in his hands and trust that nothing he does is contrary to his will. His wife and daughters still wear a small chain with her picture, and it opens gospel conversations in stores everywhere they go.

• Paul wrote from prison that his chains had actually furthered the gospel, because the guards chained to him for hours at a time went home and told their families about this strange preacher who wouldn't stop praising God. Paul made his affliction a defense of Christ's faithfulness.

• The real question every believer faces isn't, "Why did this happen to me?" but, "Is Christ being preached through my reaction?" Wilkerson pointed to an elder named Sam who has years of raging, sleepless pain yet quietly prays for the pastors backstage, never once preaching a sermon but preaching Christ with his life.

https://wcmin.us/SS260816c

David Wilkerson stands at the foot of Mount Sinai and asks why a people who just heard the audible voice of God begged to never hear it again, revealing that hidden idols cannot survive the presence of a holy God. That same voice is still speaking today through his Son, shaking everything that refuses to let go.

Preached: August 8, 1999

Main Points:

• Fire consumed the mountain, thunder split the earth, and the audible voice of God spoke to Israel, yet within hours the elders begged Moses for a softer message delivered only through a man. David Wilkerson points out the strange logic: they said they knew hearing God's voice meant death, even though they had just heard it and lived.

• The reason they couldn't handle God's presence wasn't awe; it was guilt. Many had just come from their tents where they secretly bowed to golden idols brought out of Egypt. It wasn't the fire they feared. It was what the voice commanded: no other gods, no graven images.

• They had all the right religious vocabulary, spoke well, sounded humble, yet God said through Isaiah that they drew near with their lips while their hearts stayed far from him. David Wilkerson compares this to modern believers who know all the Christian lingo but keep a secret sin nobody else sees.

• Anyone hiding secret sin does not want to sit under convicting preaching. They will find soft, flattering prophets instead. God answered Israel's request for a human mediator by promising a prophet like Moses, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, a man of flesh and bone seated at the right hand of the Father who can still be touched, kissed, and embraced, in touch with the feelings of our weaknesses.

• Hebrews 12 warns that the voice speaking from heaven now demands even greater accountability than the voice at Sinai, because this time God has promised one final shaking of nations, courts, economies, and especially his own church, so that only what cannot be shaken will remain.

• David Wilkerson confesses his own conviction about murmuring and complaining despite God's abundant blessings, revealing that the same voice that shook Sinai is still speaking directly into individual hearts today, asking backsliders and those clinging to hidden sin: why have you not listened to my voice?

https://wcmin.us/SS260809c

Evan Wilkerson continues his Ephesians series by tracing what redemption actually costs, showing through John Bunyan's imprisonment, C.S. Lewis's Edmund, and a haunting World War II story, that Christ has already won the war against sin, death, and the devil. The only question left is whether we're proclaiming the news that the war over.

Main Points:

• Redemption means a price paid for someone's freedom, the way a kinsman could buy back a captured relative or a master could purchase a slave's liberty. Jesus didn't pay with gold or silver, which could never be enough, but with his own blood, because the wages of sin is death and life is in the blood.

• Edmund in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" shows the trajectory of sin: it starts as teasing, grows through temptation, and ends in betrayal for a plate of Turkish delight. When the witch ties him up to kill him, Aslan takes his place, and Edmund walks away permanently changed, humble, wise, and grateful.

• Grace is not given in careful portions. God didn't hold anything back. He lavishly poured out his grace. God's ultimate plan is not just personal salvation but cosmic reunification: everything in heaven and earth united under Christ. We don't see that fully yet, and that's not a contradiction; it's a gap between victory declared and victory fully realized.

• A Japanese lieutenant kept fighting a war on a remote Pacific island for 29 years after Japan formally surrendered, refusing to believe the leaflets dropped from planes telling him the war was over. Christ defeated sin, death, and the devil at the cross. The war is over. Yet many refuse to submit to the rightful King.

• Being a bond servant of Christ is not a part-time arrangement where you hand over Sunday mornings and 10% of your income while keeping the rest for yourself. It's handing over everything, not because everything has to look outwardly spiritual, but because nothing is held back as off-limits to him.

• If you've accepted Jesus, live boldly as someone already free, and carry that same news to everyone still in rebellion, that Christ's gracious pardon is available, offering eternal life.

https://wcmin.us/WS260805c

David Wilkerson uses Peter's rooftop vision in Acts 10 to expose how even the godliest believers can unknowingly circumscribe Christ into a small circle, calling other denominations, other nations, and even their own unsaved children common or unclean, when God has already declared them cleansed and worthy of fellowship.

Preached: December 15, 2002

Main Points:

• Peter had raised the dead, healed the sick with his shadow, and shaken prisons by his presence, yet in one area of his life he was misrepresenting Christ. Every believer is a definition of Christ to a world that reads us instead of the Bible.

• On the rooftop, God let down a sheet filled with unclean animals three times and said, "Kill and eat," meaning have fellowship. Peter protested on solid scriptural ground, and God answered, "What God has cleansed you must not call common." The Greek word for common means unworthy of fellowship.

• When Peter finally ate with Cornelius's household and the Holy Ghost fell on uncircumcised Gentiles, the circumcision party in Jerusalem contended with him because he went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them. Their theology said God couldn't work outside their circle. It happened anyway.

• David Wilkerson watched a Pentecostal bishop walk out of his own conference calling a young charismatic worship team an abomination because they clapped and waved flags, even as the Holy Ghost was visibly moving in the room. The man's imprint of Christ was too small to contain what God was doing.

• Celeste Horvath was the most notorious madam in New York City history, condemned by her own brother as beyond redemption, while she secretly played "Amazing Grace" on an organ between clients and cried out to God every night. Ten years of hidden work by the Holy Ghost preceded the moment she finally broke.

• When God is doing his greatest work, you will often see the least evidence.

• Letters were pouring in from Muslim countries reached by Times Square Church radio broadcasts, testifying that Islam gave them no peace but Christ did instantly. God is not looking to raise up another star evangelist. He is looking for ordinary believers willing to stop drawing circles and call no one common or unclean.

https://wcmin.us/SS260802c

David Wilkerson reveals that the godliest people, those who pray, fast, and pursue God with everything in them, can still be seized by sin they never chose and never wanted, and shows through Psalm 116 that the way out is not gritted-teeth willpower but lifting up the cup of every promise God has already sworn to keep.

Preached: November 18, 2001

Main Points:

• A praying, fasting, God-seeking man cries out that the sorrows of death compassed him, that the snares of hell seized his heart without warning. This is not a description of a backslidden person. It is the honest confession of someone who never went looking for sin and got trapped anyway.

• David Wilkerson names it directly: godly husbands, godly pastors, godly wives are being ensnared by pornography, by bitterness, by adultery they never intended, and it is happening all over the world, in mailbags from thousands of ministers who all say the same thing, "I don't know how this got hold of me."

• The word translated "simple" in Psalm 116:6 comes from a Hebrew root meaning seducible. The man isn't claiming innocence of desire; he's confessing he was drawn away by his own lust or the enemy or both, and it brings him nothing but tears, yet God did not cast him away.

• Multitudes in the church today are exactly here: not God-hating, not running to bars, just utterly unable to break free despite fasting, praying, pleading, and hearing tape after tape from one evangelist after another. Their real problem isn't lust. It's unbelief, a loss of confidence that God's Word actually works.

• Old Covenant religion demands gritted teeth, willpower, and a list of do's and don'ts, and it cannot free anyone. When it fails, people conclude in their haste that all men are liars, that the gospel doesn't work for them specifically, when the real issue is that they were never taught the New Covenant secret in the first place.

• The bronze serpent in Numbers 21 asked nothing of the dying Israelites but to look and believe. That serpent represented the sin and venom itself, and Jesus drank the same cup at Gethsemane, not fearing physical pain but absorbing the full wrath against every sin ever committed. That first drop of blood cleansed and refilled the cup with pure promise.

• The godly man in Psalm 116 finds the secret: not one more day of trying harder, but lifting the cup of salvation and drinking every "I will" promise God has sworn—I will put my fear in your heart, I will take away your heart of stone, I will cause you to walk in my ways—until the sorrow breaks and he walks again in the land of the living.

https://wcmin.us/SS260726c

Evan Wilkerson continues this Ephesians series by tracing the wealth every believer already owns in Christ, showing through Horatio Stafford's shipwreck, the prodigal son's return, and the picture of an orphan adopted into royalty that spiritual blessing runs so much deeper than anything money or circumstance could ever provide.

Main Points:

• Horatio Stafford lost all four of his daughters in a shipwreck, and while sailing over the very spot where they drowned, he wrote It Is Well with My Soul. That kind of peace is only possible when Jesus Christ remains your greatest treasure even after every earthly treasure is gone.
• Blessing God means more than saying nice words about him. It means becoming a living embodiment of praise, worshiping him with your behavior because he is worth it, not because you're trying to earn something from him.
• God blesses everyone through common grace, sun and rain on the just and unjust alike, but the spiritual blessings found only in Christ are infinitely richer. A new heart is better than a new car. To feed on Christ is better than the best earthly food. These blessings can never perish.
• Being chosen in Christ means being set apart to become holy and blameless, not overnight, but the way a plant grows. You won't see change by staring at it today, but keep feeding on Jesus, and years from now, people will ask what's different about you.
• Adoption as sons in the first century meant receiving the firstborn's full rights, resources, and inheritance. Picture an orphan on a trash heap in India, suddenly brought into a wealthy father's home, loved, fed, listened to, celebrated. That is what it means to be adopted by God, not made rich in earthly terms but loved to the very core of your identity.
• In the prodigal son story, the father doesn't wait for an apology or make the son grovel. He sees him a long way off, runs to him, and lavishes him with the best robe, a ring, and a feast. That is God's heart for anyone still far from him right now.
• Grace is different from mercy. Mercy means not receiving the wrath sinners deserve. Grace means receiving the blessings sinners could never earn. This wealth cost the Son everything on the cross and cost the Father his most beloved possession, and because it was purchased with that blood, it can never be taken away.

https://wcmin.us/WS260722c

Gary Wilkerson introduces a version of Jesus most believers have never met, the joyful Jesus, showing that the same God who is a man of sorrows is also the most joyous being who ever walked the earth, and that his full, unspeakable, unstealable joy has already been placed inside every believer, waiting to be uncovered.

Preached: July 7, 2026

Main Points:

• Most Christians, if asked to list the top five attributes of Jesus, would never think to include joy. We picture him militant, sorrowful, or perpetually disappointed in us, like an eyebrow forever raised, but Hebrews says God anointed Jesus with joy and gladness above his companions.

• Jesus created joy itself, along with laughter, humor, and delight. Picture him at 20-something with a group of rowdy young disciples, some still teenagers, swimming, racing, cooking fish together. Being a Christian was never meant to mean you're not allowed to have fun.

• First Peter calls this joy unspeakable and full of glory, and the Hebrew and Greek words for glory mean thickness and weightiness. This isn't a thin, occasional joy. It's a thick cloud of glory resident inside every believer, whether or not they feel it in the moment.

• Gary's own life proves the joy isn't circumstantial: 14 grandchildren, the most joyful season of his life, yet also traveling to war-torn countries that aren't safe. Joseph had joy in the pit and the prison. Abraham had joy while wandering into an unknown land and fighting battles on his nephew's behalf.

• The secret to this joy isn't positive thinking or a good mental attitude. Jesus repeats one word throughout this passage: abide. As you abide in him, spending time with him, being his friend, his joy becomes yours, not manufactured but resident and full.

• No person, no subway shove, no unfair ticket, no gossiping church member can take this joy away, because it was never dependent on circumstances to begin with. It was given, it's full, and it's permanent.

• Gary invites all believers to become the most joyful people, so that a world drowning in anger, despair, and loneliness would look at us and wonder how we could have this much joy, and find their way to the joyful Jesus behind it.

https://wcmin.us/SS260719c

David Wilkerson uses the story of Pharaoh's cruelest command as a mirror, showing every exhausted believer still trying to make bricks without straw that God is not Pharaoh. Jesus has already made full provision, and the only thing left to do is stop struggling and let the Holy Ghost do what flesh never could.

Preached: December 11, 1994

Main Points:

• Pharaoh is a type of Satan, and Egypt is a type of every bondage that holds God's people, whether smoking, drinking, pornography, temper, unbelief, or covetousness. His first device is always the same: get back to your works, more works, impossible works, and do it without any of the tools you need.

• Just as the message of freedom swept through the camps of Israel and Pharaoh doubled the quota the very same day, the devil will hear you responding to a message of deliverance and immediately increase the pressure to make you believe it will never happen for you.

• The law was never meant to set you free. It was a schoolmaster to bring you to Christ, a mirror held up to show you how wide the gap is between your wickedness and God's holiness, and how impossible it is to bridge that gap by anything your flesh can do.

• The servant who buried his talent and said, "You reap where you have not sown," was looking at God as Pharaoh, accusing him of demanding results without providing tools. That is exactly how many Christians feel, and it is a lie from the same enemy who invented the bricks without straw command.

• God has made no spiritual demand on you without making full provision for you to fulfill it through the Holy Ghost. He is not sitting up in heaven twiddling his thumbs while you struggle. He abides in you, he is greater than the one in the world, and when you call on him, he will exert his power.

• Some people never get free because they want to be plucked out, but won't obey God's voice. The Holy Spirit warns lovingly, whispers "don't do it," and if you override him, he speaks louder and louder, because he is so faithful, he will do whatever it takes to get your attention.

• God has made an ironclad "I will" promise seven times over: I will bring you out, I will rid you of bondage, I will redeem you, I will take you to me, I will be God to you, I will bring you into the land, I will give you a heritage. The only response left is to lift your hands and surrender what you could never carry yourself.

https://wcmin.us/SS260712c

Evan Wilkerson opens his Ephesians series by tracing the stories of John Newton, the apostle Paul, and the dark city of Ephesus to show that the word "saint" has nothing to do with moral achievement and everything to do with the grace that finds wretches, turns them around, and sets them on an entirely new trajectory.

Main Points:

1. John Newton called himself capable of anything, with not the least fear of God and no sensibility of conscience. It was in a violent storm at sea that he cried, "Lord, have mercy," for the first time in years, and out of that encounter eventually came the famous hymn Amazing Grace. This is the story of all who are in Christ.
2. Paul was not a passive sinner. He was actively hunting Christians, arresting them, punishing them in synagogues, convinced he was doing God a favor. Then Jesus knocked him to the ground on the Damascus road, and everything, every single thing, was completely changed.
3. Ephesus was among the largest cities of the ancient world, filled with idol worship, demon worship, and magic arts. Opposition and darkness are not signs that God is absent. Often, it is in the darkest places where Christ's light shines brightest, and the Ephesians proved it by burning their magic books in public.
4. Paul calls these former witchcraft practitioners saints, not because of what they had done but because of what had been done for them. No man is a believer who is not also a saint, and no man is a saint who is not a believer. The title comes with faith, not with performance.
5. Many of us get this backwards. We know intellectually that grace is a free gift, but we behave as though our works will make us righteous, stuck on a treadmill of performance. You became righteous the moment you put your faith in Jesus and his finished work. That is your position. Sanctification flows from it, not toward it.
6. When you sin, don't hide from him. Running away from Jesus when you fail only makes the sin worse. Run to him. He is the only one who will ever be able to set you free entirely.
7. Paul combined the Greek greeting and the Jewish greeting into one: grace and peace. Grace always comes first, and as it fills our lives through the Holy Spirit, it produces shalom, wholeness, restored relationships, reconciled work, and a peace even in the middle of suffering that the world cannot explain.

https://wcmin.us/WS260708c