The Undervalued Truth About Deliverance – Sunday August 11, 2019

On Sunday August 11th, Pastor Eric shared a message titled: “Undervalued Truth About Deliverance”.

The three points that were addressed:

1. To develop a great appreciation;

2. We need to experience new freedom from current struggles;

3. God calls the church to be an agent of deliverance.

Point to ponder: God rescues His people from peril. (2 Peter 2:9)

Watch message here:

Video transcript

(please take note that we use a smart audio transcript tool for those who prefer reading the messages but mistakes can still be present.)

Let’s open up our time in just a moment of prayer and let’s pray. And wherever you are. Let’s close our eyes and lift up our hands if you’re comfortable with that.  Lord, I don’t want to just come and hear a message.  I want to hear your word. I want your word to feed my soul, my spirit, my mind, my life, so that there could be a “before and after” today. And Lord, your word, says that your people are destroyed, not by guns or swords, but they’re destroyed by the lack of knowledge.

And so today, Lord, I pray for clarity. Today I pray for understanding. Today, I pray for revelation. Today I pray for our minds and our hearts to be open to what you have to say to us and to what the scriptures say to us, Lord. And so I pray to equip us today. And we thank you for what you’re going to do, in Jesus name. You may be seated.

When something so important and vital for our lives gets rarely mentioned, when something that is so valuable gets put on a shelf, usually that is considered something invaluable. Today, I want to talk about the undervalued truth about deliverance.

Deliverance today rarely makes it in the sermon titles of many pulpits of our churches. And if it does, it usually gets limited or applied only to some form of exorcism, deliverance of demon spirits. And although that is a very, very important aspect of it, and I think we need to talk about that, you will see today that the truth about deliverance is much more than just that.

And so there’s three reasons why we need to look at this.

Number one is that it’s for us to develop a greater appreciation for the deliverance we’ve already received from the Lord. There are many definitions for the word deliverance, the Bible carries different meanings to that word deliverance. And one of those is a New Testament Greek word means rescue. How many of you, when you look at your past before Christ, you realize that Christ rescued you from your life in the past?

How many are grateful for the rescue of God? I look at my life before Christ and I tell you I’m so grateful because not only are my sins forgiven, which is huge, but if Christ did not rescue me, I would not be here today. I would probably not be alive.

And so I’m grateful for God’s rescue, God’s deliverance in my life.

There are some of you, you had an accident and the kind of accident that you’re not supposed to come back from. And you saw the Lord’s hand upon your life and you saw how he rescued you. There are people you have testimonies of how God rescued you, so let’s just take a moment and give him 10 seconds of praise.

Let’s give God praise for the deliverance and the rescuing he has done in our life. He is worthy of all our praise because he’s on a rescue mission. Amen!

I came to talk to you today about a God who’s passionate and able to rescue his people.

The second reason we’re looking at this undervalued truth more in-depth is because some of us we need to experience new freedom from current struggles. Some of you may be struggling with something you’ve tried maybe a few months or even years. It’s kind of a cycle, it repeats itself. You’ve tried groups. You’ve tried programs. You sought professional help. You went for therapy, did the 12 step programs. You read books about it. And you may even have someone that keeps you accountable and you still haven’t experienced freedom.

Maybe its an addiction or a habit. You’re probably on the verge of giving up and just accepting it and tolerating it because you can’t seem to have victory over that thing in your life.

And I came to tell you today that maybe your problem is not another program or another book. Maybe the solution to your problem is just to receive deliverance. And please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m all for 12 step programs, I’m all for therapy and seeking professional help and accountability and having other people pray with you. I’m all for that. But if you’ve tried all these things over the years and it’s not working, maybe what you need today is God to deliver you. And let me tell you something. I want to encourage you to believe and expect that God not only wants to, he can deliver you from whatever it is that you’re struggling with. 

Matt. 19:26 says that: All things are possible. Let me say that again:  with God all things are possible. You know what “all” means in Greek? It actually means all. So all things are possible with God.  So whatever you’re dealing, whatever your problem, your trial, whatever your struggle, your habit, your addiction, your chain, whatever it is, all things are possible with God.

I want you to believe that whatever your situation, whatever the issue, whatever problem is that God can break and deliver you from whatever it is. And I want to encourage you because I know people that after a few months of failure, of falling, they give up. They start believing that they’re not going to have victory, they start believing that there’s no way out. They start believing that this is gonna be their crutch for the rest of their life. But I want to encourage you to start hoping again, start believing again, start trusting God again for deliverance. Because our God can and wants to deliver us because he is the deliverer.

God wants and God can deliver us because he the deliver. Because if the Son makes you free, you are free. Indeed, where the spirit of the Lord  is, there is freedom. Because no weapon formed against God’s people shall prosper.  Whatever the enemy has planned for evil and destruction in your life, God can turn it around for good.

You’ve been trying different methods to get deliverance and freedom.

But it starts with God, it’s God who’s going to give you deliverance, God will use therapy, God will use programs, God will use people because he often uses people to set people free. God is that deliverer, we are the delivered.

Third reason why we need to talk about this is because God calls the church or one of the callings God places on the church is to be an agent of deliverance. We’re on a rescue mission. We’ve been sent on a mission to rescue those who are oppressed.

Those who are still in bondage. Those who are not delivered .

What is Deliverance? Deliverance is defined as a rescue from bondage or danger, deliverance, and the Bible is the acts of God whereby he rescues his people from peril.

As we said earlier, deliverance has different kind of meaning in the Bible and the Old Testament, God’s deliverance is almost always from temporal dangers. He rescues his people from their enemies, from the hand of the wicked. That’s how the Bible defines it.

He preserved them from famine, from death and from the grave. And the most striking deliverance we see in the Old Testament is the exodus where God sets people free from 400 years of slavery. And when he does it, he does it with signs and wonders to deliver them to the hand of Moses. He used Moses to lead them out, to lead him out from the hand of pharaoh in the New Testament.

We also see the word deliverance. It’s also used to show that God delivers his people. In case you thought Deliverance was only for the exodus, while in the New Testament, we also see the word deliverance where God delivers his people. Listen to some of the testimony. Don’t listen to me. Listen to some of the testimonies of some of God’s servants we see in the Bible who share their personal stories of how God delivered them.

End of transcript.