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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh

The Joy of the Lord

Good to be with you all here on this God's Holy Sabbath day.

I'm going to try and figure this thing out here.

All right, I'm on a spiritual high this weekend.

We have had a wonderful time in the Lord already this weekend.

Last night we had a pastor come in from Texas who has begun a ministry of working against hip hop music.

Now I look around the room and maybe you all aren't struggling with hip hop music.

So this gentleman has come in and, of course, in our churches, we leave Loma Linda.

We like to call the neighborhoods and we go down into those areas and work.

God has called us to go into these areas.

If you don't go into some of these areas, we cease to be the salt of the earth.

And in working in these areas, you realize that there are strong homes that are built up on families, on individuals, and that the devil has created many inroads into homes.

Now, of course, inner city poor families and poor homes are not the only places that this happened.

I think unfortunately many other parts of the United States, many other neighborhoods are in denial of the devil's influence on their homes.

I'm a youth pastor at the Mount Rubidoux Church, and when we deal with our young people, we see in many of our young men especially a strong spirit of rebellion.

Young men who are disobedient to their parents, who don't want to go to school, who don't want to wear clothes that fits.

I mean seriously, they are in a spirit of rebellion And as you begin to minister to them, 1 thing that we have begin to find, especially in some of the harder hit homes where the father's not present and where the family structure has been damaged, they're not very responsive to God's Word.

They're not very responsive at times even when we show love to these individuals and to these young people, these young men and young women, and we have been trying to work to break down these strongholds in their lives and in their homes.

And 1 of the things that we found as we began to look at this is that, of course, we have been studying secular music and some of the effects that it has, but we've been looking at what has been popularized through specifically hip-hop music.

It actually started with heavy metal music.

And so this gentleman has come in and has presented some powerful information.

His presentations are called The Truth Behind Hip Hop and has really been showing the young people how the devil has been piping his messages into their heads.

We have been wrestling now with demon possession, wrestling with addiction, pornography addictions are strong, masturbation problems, molestation, and By bringing this in and dealing with it, I'll give you an example.

1 of the things we discussed last night is from 1 of the rap groups that's actually releasing a new album, is a group called Bone Thugs in Harmony.

On the back of 1 of their albums is a page with a demonic sun and a demonic moon and 2 demons at the bottom of the page.

And written backwards so that you can't read it just looking at it is a thing called a mista Ouija and what you're supposed to do is take this thing up to a mirror so that you can read it and so the young person would take this thing up to the mirror, hold it up to the mirror, and be able to read this thing in the mirror.

Now what this what what Pastor Lewis revealed is that when you did he did the research is that the witches in Salem all the way back to ancient Egypt would often write spells and incantations backwards so that when and then put them in an envelope and mail them to people.

If you want to put a curse on someone you'd mail it to them and when they would have to read it get this letter in the mail and couldn't read it they'd hold it up to a mirror and when they held it up to the mirror and read it they would pronounce the curse on themselves.

Now this was on the back of a rap album that sold over 10 million copies.

How many young people got that album, stood up in a mirror, and read an incantation on themselves?

Turns out it's an ancient Egyptian sexual curse.

And he said that after 1 of his meetings, after he did 1 of these presentations, that a young man came up to him and said that he had been delivered and he said, what have you been delivered from?

He said, I did that, I bought that album 3 years ago, read that curse to myself in the mirror and he says for the last 3 years I have been uncontrollably molesting my younger sister.

Young people are being exposed to things that passive society looks at passively.

It's just black culture, some of them tell me.

But what we don't understand is that when you become a part of the body of Jesus Christ, when you join up with Jesus, you cease to be subject to the earthly culture.

You become a part of the body of Jesus Christ.

When you join up with Jesus, you cease to be subject to the earthly culture.

You become a part of the body of God, a part of the family of God, a part of the body of Jesus Christ, and all of these things ought to either become subservient to that or if they are in contradiction to that they need to be removed from your life.

But I want to praise God that last night after that brother's presentation, hundreds of young people.

I mean, that church was full to capacity, 1, 200 some odd people capacity church, overflow room, choir loft, all full, balcony, and hundreds of young people came down and gave their lives to Jesus.

So I'm still on a spiritual high and I'm just praising God that he is still in the liberation business.

We serve a God, I don't care what you've been messed up in, our God can free you from it.

Our talk this morning is entitled, The Joy of the Lord.

We thank you, Father, for bringing us together into this place.

We thank you for your word and for your truth.

We thank you for the power to break strongholds, for liberation from the diseases and the afflictions of this world.

Father God, there's someone in here who needs deliverance.

Today, Father God, let the words that are spoken, let the Spirit of God as it falls, let the angels that have been given charge over this place all work together for deliverance today.

Father God let us not leave this place the same way that we came.

We're gonna start in the book of 1st John chapter 1.

1st John chapter 1 and let's begin at verse 4.

1st John chapter 1 and we're gonna begin at verse 4.

I hope you don't mind me taking off my jacket.

You know in our church we kind of get a little bit sweaty so we the preacher often Turks don't take off his jacket early to preserve it.

All right, 1st John chapter 1 in verse 4, reading from the King James Version, the Bible says, John speaking to us, and these things write I unto you, write we unto you that your joy may be full.

What John is about to present in this book, and we won't go through the whole book today, just a few verses, but what John is about to present in this book is information that will fill you with joy.

Now when I talk to our young people at church, and our young people love to have fun.

We took them to 6 Flags a few weekends ago.

Wasn't my idea, but I said, okay, we'll go, because they had participated in some things and in our week of prayer and many of them had gone up front and done things.

But I explained to them after the trip that the difference between joy and fun is this.

Fun is standing in line for 2 and a half hours.

Sweaty, smelly, rain falling on you, bugs messing with you.

You get all the way to the front of the line of this roller coaster, you get on the roller coaster, they strap you in and give you a warning that your life is in jeopardy.

If you have certain conditions, don't sit down, make sure you stay fastened, you know, they give you all of these warnings.

So the young people, they think that's fun.

Obviously, if they're warning me of my life being in danger, is something enjoyable.

They sit down in this thing, strap themselves in, and for all of 30 to 45 seconds, they're whipped and twirled around, G-forces pull at them, and because of the effects of the G-forces, they scream, holler, a few of them puked, they get off on the other side of the ride and what do they say?

Only to go join another 2 and a half hour long line and do it all over again.

Joy is when all things in life seem to be collapsing around you.

Joy is when everything seems to be going dark, when your mother has been diagnosed with cancer as mine has, as you as you're struggling with illness and death, when you're struggling with financial collapse, when you're dealing with all of these things, when life seems like a bitter enemy, joy says in the midst of the storm you're still happy.

In the midst of the storm, you are confident.

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The Joy of the Lord

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