John Hagee - Knowing God
Consider the portrait of God in the Bible. He’s the Creator of heaven and earth. In the Genesis of time, God spoke saying, «Let there be light,» and the darkness disappeared. He sprinkled the stars against the velvet of the night, and he calls them by name. For centuries, God Almighty did not allow his name to be known. Then God revealed himself as the Most High God. The God who dwells in the third heaven. There are three heavens. The heavens you see with your natural eyes is heaven number one. The heaven where satan and his fallen angels reside is the second heaven.
The third heaven is where God has his throne, where Jesus Christ stands at his right hand with the righteous angels. That’s why we say glory to God in the highest. He’s higher than the highest. He’s greater than the greatest. He’s wiser than the wisest. His angels sang on that first Christmas morning, «Glory to God in the highest. Good will toward men on earth». Then God revealed himself as God Almighty. God will never put you in a battle that you cannot win, or your enemy can’t be defeated. With God’s help, you can do anything. You just have to believe it.
Then God revealed himself as Jehovah Jireh, the God who will provide all of your needs according to his riches in glory. This is the Lord that gives you the power to get wealth. Don’t be pushed by your problems, be led by your dreams. Nothing is impossible if you put your trust in God. Then God revealed himself as the Lord, our healer. Israel left Egypt, and God promised them when they went through the Jordan that he would be their healer, and no one would be sick. No one in a crowd of at least a million people, for 40 years was either sick or feeble. If someone in your family desperately ill, I want to say the healer is in the house. The healer is in the house. Nothing is impossible. The healer is in the house.
Next, the Lord is presented in scripture as the Lord, our righteousness. The Bible says, «Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people». King David writes, «I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor their seed begging for bread. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them from them all. Let the righteous rejoice and be glad». When the church of Jesus Christ gets together, let the shout of victory be heard loud and clear. «Our God reigns. He is Almighty. He is all powerful. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God».
God is next presented in the scripture as the mighty conqueror. He is the conqueror of death, hell, and the grave. Demons tremble at the mention of his name. That’s in the Bible. You mention the name of Jesus and demons tremble. He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of lords. He is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the fairest of ten thousand. He is the rock of ages. He is the hope of glory. He is the Rose of Sharon. He is the Lily of the Valley. He is grace and truth. He is the Savior of the world. Give him praise in the house.
Next, God is presented as the Prince of Peace. John 14:27 states, «Peace I leave with you and my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, but such as I have give I it unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid». America has spent itself into bankruptcy trying to buy peace with weapons of war. We will never have peace until we surrender to the Prince of Peace. He is the shepherd, we’re the sheep. If you really know anything about sheep, they’re just about halfway stupid. Sheep do not tell the shepherd where to go, the shepherd tells the sheep where to go. He is the potter, we’re the clay. Again, the potter determines the destiny of the clay pot.
God next is presented as Jehovah Shammah, the God who is there. God promises, «I will never leave you nor forsake you, even to the ends of the earth». He is there in the time of trouble. He is there in the midnight of your loneliness. He is there when your burden seems impossible to carry. He walks in when everyone else walks out.
And next in the Bible, God is presented as the God of love. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The love of God in that song, «How rich, how pure, how measureless, how strong. It shall forevermore endure the saints and angels' song». He is the God of all hope. I’m gonna be talking about that next Sunday. And finally, he’s the God of wrath. There are twice as many verses in the Bible describing the wrath of God as there are verses that describe the love of God. What I’ve just gone through are 12 manifestations of God. And in this sermon series, we’ll cover all of them. Now, let’s consider knowing God versus knowing about God.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, «Let a man examine himself to see if he be of the faith». God calls for you to examine yourself. You know you better than anybody else. Do you really know God, or have you confused ritual with righteousness, ceremony with conversion, hype with holiness? America as a whole does not know God because the church has rejected the supernatural God. Ritual is not righteousness. Ceremony is not conversion. The God of the Bible saves, he heals, he delivers. He answers prayers by fire. He sends his angels to go before you and behind you. Every Bible believer has the right to believe that there are angels guarding you. The Bible says, «He will give his angels charge over you to protect you in all of your ways».
Then the Bible says radical things like, «The soul that sinneth shall surely die. The wages of sin is death». On Judgment Day, if your name is not found in the lamb’s book of life, you will be cast into an eternal hell. That’s not my fault, that’s not mine, this is God’s word. That’s the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not a doting grandfather looking at you and all of your misbehavior and overlooking it. He’s not a cosmic bellhop. God is not your butler. He is Almighty God, he is all knowing. He’s the judge of all the earth. He is sovereign, he is holy, he is eternal, and we will give an account to him for every word, and every thought, and every deed of our lives. That’s in the Bible. You’re gonna have that interview with God someday.
The Bible says, «Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father». Jeremiah had a solution for America in chapter 6:16. He says, «Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the old path. Ask where the good way is, and walk in it that you will find rest for your souls». The message to America is go back to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Go back to the Bible. Return to righteousness. Go back to the Ten Commandments. Go back to individual responsibility. Go back to morality, and traditional family values. Go back to the founding fathers who were writing the constitution, who got on their knees and prayed and asked Almighty God for guidance. Go back to that and America will be great again.
I’ve heard people say, «I joined the church». I had a man show me his ring, «I joined the church». I said, «Is your other hand saved»? Church membership will not save you, my friend. «I was baptized». You can go down a dry sinner and come up a wet sinner. You can go under the water and not under the blood. Did you change? 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes, «If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and behold all things have become new». Think about that. Jesus gave us a parable. It’s the parable of the wheat and the tares to demonstrate how the saved and the unsaved coexist in the same field. Call it the same church. The unsaved church members Jesus called tares. They look like wheat, they talk like wheat, they associate with wheat but they’re not. They’re religious and lost. They’re counterfeit Christians.
How do you tell the tares from the wheat, the counterfeit from the consecrated, and the artificial from the actual? Not by appearance. If you’ve ever walked through a wheat field, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between wheat and tares. They look alike. What is the difference between satan, what he believes, and some church members believe? Church members believe the Bible is true, the devil does too. Remember, when he was with Jesus in the wilderness, he was quoting the scripture to Jesus. Think about it. Satan knows Jesus is the Son of God. Satan knows there’s a heaven and a hell. Satan knows that when Jesus comes back to Jerusalem, he’s going to be in the lake of fire. Satan has never confessed Christ. That’s the difference. Have you? If you haven’t, you’re in real trouble with God. The world view of those who truly know God, listen to saint Paul’s world view.
Saint Paul writes in Philippians 3:8-10, «Ye doubtless I count all things loss for the excellency and the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things». Now, that’s not just hyperbole. If you know the life of Paul, he lost it all serving the Lord. «He suffered the loss of all things and do not count them but dung, that I might win Christ, and that I might know him». Point, Paul, the most brilliant mind of the New Testament counted the world as a dung heap that he might know Christ and inherit eternal life. What normal person spends his or her time nostalgically dreaming over a pile of… Yeah. Come on. Schlep. Is this you? Do you love the world? Does it attract you? Does it control you? Does it affect your church attendance? It certainly prevents you from tithing, I’m sure. It’s destroying your marriage, it will destroy your children, and it will eventually destroy your soul.
Paul shouts, «This world is a dung heap compared to what you’re going to get in heaven if you follow Jesus Christ». The Book of Revelation is very clear. Everything in this world is going to be burned when we leave and go to heaven, so that when we come back, it will be newly created and be like the Garden of Eden, but everything that you put together, one day is going to be a pile of trash. Feast on that for a while, and then focus on the living God because he is the answer, he is the way. Evidences that you know God, those who know God stand firm and take action.
Daniel 11:32 says, «The people who know God stand firm and take action». I’ll say that again. The people who know God stand firm, they stand their ground, and then they take action. In 1978, when I was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and I felt the Lord say to me, «It’s time for Christians to express their love and appreciation to the Jewish people for their contributions to Christianity». What exactly have the Jewish people given to us? Every word of this book written by Jewish hands. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jewish. Not a Baptist in the bunch. Prophets, Jewish. The first family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Jesus said in the Bible, «Salvation is of the Jews». It was time to stand firm and take action.
When I had called for this assembly in 1978, when I returned home, I bought a one-page ad in the newspaper announcing what we were going to do. «An important message to all Christians», that was the title. The result, the antisemites drove by my house and shot out the windows to my car in the driveway. They phoned the church and made death threats. Nothing could’ve encouraged me any more. Nothing. We had the event, and it was standing room only in that auditorium. When we got to the end of the program, the security came to me and said, «Pastor, we have a bomb threat on this building. It’s supposed to blow up in five minutes».
I went to the podium, and I said, «I hate to end this night on a negative note, but we have a bomb threat here, it’s supposed to go off in five minutes». The Christians vaporized. It was the rapture on earth. They were gone. My Jewish friends looked at me and just said, if I had said, «Kosher hot dogs are available in the lobby for those of you that would like to stay». They were used to this. Christians had never had that done before. When we were walking off the platform, I said to Diana, «We’re going to do this every year until these thugs get used to it».
I can tell you now, by the goodness and grace of God that cufi, Christians united for Israel, has 11 million plus people in America who stand with Israel through thick and thin right now. You must say no to sin before you can say yes to God. You will embarrass sin or sin will embarrass you. The second evidence is consider the three Hebrew children who were invited to bow to the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar. They took a stand. They stood firm. They said, «No. We will not serve the Gods of this king». They said, «We’re gonna throw you in the fire». They didn’t bend, they didn’t bow, and they didn’t burn. They were thrown into the fiery furnace, but God was there when they got there.
Listen to this. When you get in trouble for standing for righteousness, God doesn’t send someone, he shows up himself. Those who do not use their freedom to defend their freedom will lose their freedom. What kind of stand have you taken based on your Bible conviction? If you take no stand on the tough moral and spiritual crisis in America, you don’t know God because God’s people are not afraid of a fight. The Bible says Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah. Have you ever heard a lion roar? Boy, it’ll make your hair stand on your head. Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah. It’s time for Christians to act like it. «The righteous are as bold as a lion,» that’s what the Bible says. The righteous are as bold as a lion.
The ministerial alliance met to discuss Daniel. He’s radical, he’s right wing, he’s extreme, he’s out of touch with the mainstream. Nebuchadnezzar is the president and you must submit to the will of the president. Wrong. Can you disobey the government with God’s blessing? And the answer is yes. When the government condones what God condemns. Let me give you two illustrations. The midwives in Egypt were told to drown Jewish male babies when they were born because in one generation, Pharaoh would’ve wiped out the Jewish people because when the Jewish girls got eligible to marry, there was no one left to marry but Egyptians. Therefore, God’s plan for all of the prophets and so forth would’ve been stopped. But God blessed the midwives of Egypt because they disobeyed Pharaoh, and God blessed them for that.
Go to the three wise men. Herod, they went to Herod and said, «We come to worship the child that has been found». Herod said, «You go find the child, and when you find him come back with a word where he is so I can serve him». He wanted to kill him, talking about Jesus. They went, they found Jesus, and the Bible says they went another way. They disobeyed Herod so that Jesus Christ could live. Those who know God stand up, they speak up, they stand firm, and they take action. Compromise with the world is treason in the courts of heaven. The church in America is not developing her recruits into disciplined soldiers of the cross.
When COVID came to America and our national leader said, «Shut the churches down». Our response here, «Absolutely not». The Bible says, «Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. Let’s have church». And we did. Ephesians 6 said, «We are to be the church triumphant, fight the good fight, endure to the end. Love not your life unto the death. The victory is ours through Christ the Lord». Because we love the brethren, this is our commission. When we know God, you serve him with passion. Jeremiah said it is like a fire that’s shut in your bones. Jesus said, «You shall serve the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and body». That’s passion.
Let me say this in closing. A true story. A fabulously wealthy, multimillionaire man died. He had no heirs, he left no will with his attorney. His wife had died, and his only son had lived until a teenager as a cripple. That son had been nursed by a house maid all of his life. His attorney summoned the family for a reading of the will. The room was packed and eager to hear what the rich man had passed along. The house maid also attended. Sitting on a table was the picture of the millionaire’s only son.
The house maid asked the lawyer, «May I have this»? And the lawyer asked the relatives, «Do any of you want the picture of this man’s son»? There was no, no, and no. The maid took the picture. The next day, she discovered a bulge in the back of that picture. She opened it. It was the will of the millionaire. It simply said, «To the one who loves my son enough to take this picture goes all of my wealth». God, the father, who owns heaven and earth is saying to everyone, to those listening in America and to the nations of the world, «The one who will love my son, Jesus Christ, I will give you all that I own».