Hey this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those who are. that you share it with.

God bless you.

Good, all the time.

Amen.

You can take your seat for a moment.

It's good to see you.

Like we said earlier, if this is your first time at PNEUMA, and we we welcome you.

We we consider you family This is a good church.

This is good.

We've got good people in here.

Not perfect, and I don't think any any church is perfect, but I do believe that we are godly, godly people.

Amen.

And um I just I have a couple announcements before we get into the word.

First of all, I want to I want to uh ask you how many of you pray?

All right, all right, good, good, good.

So we got prayer this Saturday.

Um it's uh it's a first the first Saturday of every month we have prayer, corporate prayer at seven in the morning.

I know it's early But we come together and we pray, and the way that it looks is you pray about 45 to 50 minutes on your own.

You find a spot and and you just you just talk to God.

And then we come together and we lift up each other's prayer requests and petitions.

They could be yours.

They could be on behalf of a family member.

We just bring them here and we pray together.

And that's it.

That's it.

It's a time of prayer.

And so everybody's welcome.

We'll be here at 7 a. m. this this Saturday.

Amen.

And then we are we're already in March.

It's March today.

So we are we're about a month away uh from from Easter Sunday, about a month and a half or so.

And um, you know, we we do that that whole weekend big, we we have a a good uh good friday night of worship so we'll we'll be doing that.

Uh we have our Easter Saturday event which is something for the whole the whole family.

I don't know if we've got a slide up there um but it's it's it's something for the whole family.

We would love for you to register because we want to We want to know if you're coming.

Amen.

And then Resurrection Sunday is a big Sunday.

And we've been, yeah.

Amen.

Some of y'all excited.

We've been we've been talking about how we're gonna how we're gonna do that.

Um if if you notice uh we uh we were able to clear some some of this tree line over here. um behind our parking lot and so there's a grass area there.

We're gonna start parking some cars there to make it a little bit easier for for y'all.

So y'all don't be ha having to walk half a mile, you know, to uh to to the sanctuary.

Now I will say this.

It's not our property.

Uh But we've been looking for the owners, man.

We've been we've been trying to find them to talk to them and they just they uh they're not available.

So we're just gonna, you know Kind of Abraham it a little bit.

We're just gonna step on that land and and claim it um until they tell us something.

So and that Sunday, just put it on your calendars now, is gonna be eleven thirty English service.

Eleven thirty, okay, eleven thirty on that Eastern Sunday.

Amen.

I'm beginning a series today called Look at Jesus.

Look at Jesus.

It's going to be a six-week series that's going to take us all the way to Resurrection Sunday.

Resurrection Sunday is a day where the whole world is reminded to look at Jesus as our Savior.

And for many of those people, you know, Resurrection Sunday is just a day they go to church and they know what to expect.

They expect to hear some variation. of the story of Jesus and his sacrifice, the power of his resurrection.

But you know, Jesus is so much more than just our Savior.

There's more to Jesus than Jesus just going to the cross and coming back to life, which would have been enough, by the way.

That would have been more than enough.

But there's still so much more to this Jesus that we worship and that we sing about.

Scripture talks about Jesus as fulfilling the role of prophet, priest, and king.

He is the word at the beginning, he's the son of God, the son of man, the son of David.

He's the Messiah.

He's the anointed one.

He's the Alpha and the Omega.

He's a friend to sinners.

He is the perfect Lamb of God who was worthy enough to open up the scroll that nobody else was worthy enough to open.

Not everybody knows that Jesus.

And I would never want a believer in the savior Savior Jesus to not know all of who Jesus is.

And there's a lot to who Jesus is.

We're not going to go through every name.

We can't go through every manifestation, but there is some that I want to highlight as we look at Jesus with this this series.

And so there's two portions of scripture that I'm going to take you to today.

The first one is Luke.

Chapter 4, if you would stand with me.

Luke chapter 4.

We're going to read 31 through 37.

Amen.

And if you have it, say I have it.

Amen.

Here we go, Luke 4, 31 through 37.

It says, and he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath.

And they were astonished at his teaching, for this word possessed authority.

And in the synagogue, there was a man who had a the spirit of an unclean demon.

And he cried out with a loud voice, Ha!

What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be silent and come out of him.

And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm.

And they were all amazed and said to one another, What is this word?

For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.

And reports about him went out in every place into the surrounding regions.

Don't sit down yet.

I I want to start this series with a message that I've entitled, What is This Word?

And the second portion of scripture is found in the opening verse of the Gospel of John.

You don't have to turn there.

You probably know it.

It says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

And verse 14 says, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Now you can take your seat.

John's Gospel.

John's Gospel was the last gospel to be written.

It was one of the last books of the Bible to be written.

And if you compare John to the three other gospels, the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you'll notice that John's Gospel is a lot more It's it's it's more different.

It's much more theological than the other gospels.

And by this time, you know, Jesus had gone and ascended to heaven.

It's been about sixty years at the point where John is writing this gospel.

And by this time, a formal Christology had been formed.

Christology is the branch of theology that studies Jesus.

We can say uh it was a formal doctrine.

Surrounding the person and the deity of Jesus.

It's already been developed by the time that John is writing this gospel.

And John is writing this gospel to both a Jewish and a Greek audience.

Now, the Jews had one God, the God of Moses, the God of Jacob, the Father.

To many Jews, Jesus was not only a heretic, he was a blasphemer Because he kept equating himself with the Father.

He kept saying that I and the Father are one.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, and nobody comes to the Father except through me.

He was kind of acting as the gatekeeper. to the father and and this is why he was prosecuted by by the Jews.

The Greeks had many gods And this is why, at least for a little while, the Greeks weren't really bothered by this belief that Jesus was a God, because there was there was room for another deity in the pantheon of Greek gods, right?

A polytheism was very normal in the Greco-Roman world.

That's really hard for me to say, Greco-Roman world.

But it was normal.

And so the Greeks had all of these gods, and it wasn't much of an offense to say that Jesus was also a God.

It wasn't until the message of exclusivity.

Became prominent among Christians.

Christians were saying, no, he's not just another God, he's the only God.

And I don't know why I think of ancient Greeks as like these hippies Like, hey man, you know, coexist.

You know, there's room for all of us here.

Jesus is cool, Zeus is cool, inclusion, right?

And Christians were like, no, no, no, no.

Jesus is the only way.

He's the way, he's the truth and the life.

That's it.

He alone is God.

And Jews were like, Jesus isn't even God, he's just a man.

And all of this is happening behind the scenes of John's gospel.

And so John is speaking to these two audiences, the Jews and the Greeks, and he uses a word that means something different to the Jews and to the Greeks. the Greeks he uses the word word he says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God And the Greek term is logos.

And many of you, I'm I'm preaching to the choir.

You've already heard this teaching before.

But that's that's what the word that Jesus used was.

It was logos.

And to the Jews, logos represented the word of God.

In the Old Testament.

The word that Yahweh spoke through the prophets, through stories, through history.

Logos represented the same authority.

And power that God possessed in his voice when he used those words, let there be light.

And there was light.

So the logos was a pretty big deal to the Jewish people because it meant God.

To the Greeks, the Logos represented a cosmic authority.

It was more of abstract because their beliefs were abstract.

But to the Greek The logos also meant power.

It meant sovereignty and it meant authority.

And so John is taking this word that both Jews and Greeks understand in their own ways.

To mean something divine and powerful and authoritative.

And he's saying all of these things that are true.

And maybe even the Greeks and the Jews believe it.

Like the logos was in.

The beginning.

Yeah, that that makes sense.

I can understand that.

The Logos is eternal.

And then he says, the Logos was with God.

Okay, that's a little bit different, but I guess I can see what you're saying.

And then he says, the Logos is God.

And this probably just blows everybody's minds on a philosophical level because how can you say the Logos is God?

Like how do you even Unpack that.

And then in verse 14, he makes this crazy claim that is just as crazy as all the claims that Jesus made of himself.

And he says, and the logos became flesh, and he walked among us, and we've already seen his glory, the glory as the son of the father, full of grace and full of truth.

But the point one of the points that John is making to his audience is this many of you have already missed this glory.

You missed this glory because you rejected him.

You rejected the word that came among us to walk in its flesh.

He even says in verse 11: He came to his own, but his own did not receive him.

You missed the glory from the Father because you rejected the word that was the Son sent from the Father.

Now, how many of us in here believe in Jesus?

We believe that Jesus is everything that he said he was.

You don't know.

We believe that he's the Son of God.

We believe that He is the Savior to the world.

We believe that He is the one true King and He possesses all power in His name.

We believe in the Holy Scriptures.

But if God is still speaking today, if there is still a word for you today, for this generation, for this people, for this time.

What glory might we be missing because we fail to recognize the very word that lives in us?

I'm gonna preach a little bit today.

You with me?

I gave you a little history lesson of context.

I hope that didn't bore you But what I'm talking about this morning is very specific.

I'm not I'm not talking about I'm not talking about promises.

I'm not talking about calling.

I'm not talking about people who Who come into church sometimes and they think they carry a prophetic voice and they speak into your emotions.

I'm not suggesting that every single word that you receive in a spiritual context is a word from God.

We have to be understanding of that.

We've got to be discerning because people in the church will use the atmosphere of spirituality against you.

And they'll be prophesying things into your life to mess up your life.

Quit your job and you quit your job and now you're broken.

God never even said to quit your job.

But you're like, oh, but God said no.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about the things you know in your heart are absolutely true.

You know God spoke it, you know the Spirit is in it, and yet you're living in denial of what God has revealed to you.

Can I tell somebody today, listen, you are not your sin.

You're not your addiction.

You're not your pornography addiction.

You're not your pride.

You're not your homosexuality.

You are not your mistakes.

You are not your past.

You are exactly who Jesus says you are.

Because there is power and authority in his word.

See the problem, listen, the problem with not knowing Jesus as the word is that the enemy makes us believe lives even after we we've received him as savior.

So we believe that he's saved us, but we're unsure of what he's declared about us.

That's crazy.

That's crazy to me.

You know why?

Because even an evil spirit that might be taunting you, an evil spirit that you believe is attached itself to you, that you believe is a part of you, that you believe is a part of your identity, even that spirit recognizes that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

Verse 34, he says it.

He says it.

What what have you to do with this, Jesus?

Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are.

You are the holy one of God.

Don't be fooled by a lying devil who lies about who you are, but cannot lie about who Jesus is.

He can't do it.

He can't he can't look at Jesus in the face and and pretend like Jesus is something that he isn't.

Every time in the gospel that we see a confrontation between Jesus and an evil spirit That spirit all of a sudden starts spinning facts.

He says, You are the Holy One of God.

And Luke 4, the demons cried out, You are the Christ.

In Luke 8, the demon name Legion declares, You are the Son of the Most High God.

Can I tell somebody today that even if you walked in here with demons, your demons know who Jesus is.

That tells you that their power is fake.

Their power only comes from lies.

That's the only trick that the enemy has got is to lie to you.

And that's where his power comes from because he's a pretty good liar But real power comes from the truth.

This is why John says it in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The truth trumps lies every time.

The light trumps the darkness.

And so so when the devil starts telling you who he thinks you are, start calling out that fool.

Tell him!

Tell him you're a liar, man!

Why do we walk around as sons and daughters of God?

And an identity that has not been assigned to us by our Father.

When you're praying for deliverance, as we often do This this is the formula.

You confess Jesus as Lord, you repent, and then you start speaking truth over your life I am free.

I am delivered.

I am a child of God.

I am loved.

I am holy.

I am no longer a slave.

I'm no longer empty.

I am filled with the power of the Holy Ghost that the Lord gave to me.

Because you'll never be delivered if you deny the authoritative words spoken over your life.

Never.

Never.

Somebody say it.

Never.

If you deny who Jesus is, if you deny the identity that he has given you, you can maybe fix the problem for a moment.

But the demons are going to come back in.

The spirits are going to come back in, starting to lie to you again because you never solve the problem with filling yourself with the word.

You notice that Jesus throughout his ministry he he cast out thousands upon thousands of demons, but I don't really read much about him casting out demons from Pharisees.

And you know they had them.

Why?

Because they rejected the word that became flesh.

Jesus like, what am I gonna do with that?

What am I doing with that?

that.

Why what why why clean you if the cleaning is not a real cleaning?

It's not a real cleansing.

You look good.

You look you look nice for a moment.

You look cleaned up you look polished up.

But there's still something in you.

If you've received Jesus as Lord and Savior, you have to receive Him as well. as the logos so that all that he speaks over you you start to believe still with me And the Lord ministered this word to me, man.

What is this word?

What is this word?

In Luke chapter 4, that when we were talking about the start of Jesus' ministry, no one's really heard of Jesus yet.

Word of his miracles haven't reached too far yet.

No one's really experienced the power like this before.

And this man is walking in rooms and he's speaking with such power and authority.

And he makes people ask, what what is this word?

What is this logos?

And then John I think catches wind of that when he's writing his gospel.

And he says it's the same word that was the word in the beginning.

It's the same word that was with God.

And you know what?

It is the word that is God.

Church, can I tell you that you carry the word of God in your heart and in your mind?

And and most of the times the devil is gonna do his absolute best to obscure that word in you, to darken that light in you.

Because when we believe something is true, we start to walk in it.

And so, man, I hear this all the time from many Christians.

Jesus has saved your soul, but you often ask him, why haven't you saved me from this addiction?

You saved my soul.

Why why am I still dealing with lust?

Why why do I why do I repent and I'm I'm good for a week or two and then I come I come back?

Why Why why am I still afflicted by all of this anger in me?

And I'm good for a moment and I'm good when I come out of church.

And I hear a good word and I say amen and I take good notes.

But then when something provokes me, I go right back to it.

How is it that you saved my soul, but you haven't saved me from all my pain?

that I'm experiencing every single day.

Save me from this darkness.

Save me from this doubt.

Save me from this depression.

Save me from this anxiety.

How many of us have said that before?

But the enemy doesn't want you to know that when you have received Jesus, you've also received the Holy Spirit And the Holy Spirit is sharpening you, He's convicting you, He is strengthening you, He's making you look more like Jesus every single day.

You don't need a deliverance ministry to give you authority to rebuke.

Don't let don't let anybody lie to you.

Always uh I'm a licensed deliverer.

That there's no such thing.

The authority comes from Jesus who possesses power in his word.

And bro, I got I gotta rebuke myself sometimes.

Sometimes I gotta look at myself in the mirror and I gotta say I rebuke you.

I do because I'm feeling I'm I'm feeling a certain way that day.

There's pride trying to creep up.

There's ego that I'm trying to protect.

I'm like, man, shut up, ego.

Bow before the feet of Jesus, man.

I gotta say it out loud, who I am and where this authority comes from. comes from the word of my Savior.

Now whenever we're dealing with some heavier spirits, whenever we're dealing with oppression or strongholds or even possession, listen, I want you to understand this.

How you know Jesus matters.

And this is really why I wanted to bring this series because I want us to know Jesus for all that Jesus is, all that he's revealed of himself.

I want us to know to know that Jesus beyond just appreciating him and think and saying thank you and I'm grateful for what you did for me on the cross and Jesus you're my hero and Jesus you're my home.

Boy, I want us to have a an extreme zeal for who Jesus is.

I want us to be filled with a genuine love and Passion for our Lord that exudes every time we come into this place and and the first song drops.

We can't help but fall to our knees in worship.

That's that's how badly I want us to know Jesus.

And sometimes when you only know Jesus in one way, you may miss the glory that's available in another way.

And this is what I mean.

In Acts chapter 19, check this out.

It says, and God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul.

So that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had been touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

That's crazy.

But you think about it, Paul was a man who knew Jesus through and through.

Not only Jesus as his savior, but Jesus as his Lord.

Jesus as his master.

Jesus as his deliverer.

Jesus as his hope.

Jesus as his joy.

Now I'm also not saying that if you know Jesus in this way that you can just hand somebody your handkerchief.

And they're gonna be f free of cancer.

Now I'm not I'm not saying I'm not saying that.

Maybe, maybe, who knows?

But my point is that Paul had been given authority by Jesus.

Because Paul was known by Jesus.

And because Jesus was known by Paul.

And so that authority was able to be entrusted to Paul.

But look at the next part.

This one's crazy Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to evoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.

But the evil spirits answered them, Jesus I know, Paul I recognize, but who are you?

And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.

How we know Jesus matters.

The exorcist understood one thing.

There's power in the name of Jesus, but they didn't know Jesus.

They didn't know him as Lord.

They weren't full of faith in who he was.

They didn't accept him as Savior.

They didn't know him as a good comforting shepherd.

They didn't know him as a friend.

They didn't know him as the Alpha and the Omega.

All they did was recognize his power and his authority without even realizing that they were totally disconnected from him.

How you know Jesus matters.

But you, church, let me get your attention.

Let me get your attention.

You, I want to speak into your life.

If you know Jesus.

If you've committed yourself to Jesus.

And look, maybe you're still a work in progress.

How many of us are just a work in progress?

You got a long way to go.

And every single day, every single day you feel like there's more of yourself that you're having to find out to let go of.

Every single day you realize that you're carrying too much baggage and you've got a long ways to go.

Even you, I want you to know that the word of God is in you and the devil knows it.

Every week when we close up in prayer, the prayer of salvation, I close with the declaration.

I say, from this day forward, I am a child of God.

Good job, guys.

And the reason I want to say I want us to say that together is because I want you to believe in.

Because the devil is gonna try so hard the moment you walk out of these doors to lie to you and tell you you think that little prayer changed you?

You still look the same.

You still smell the same.

You still talking the same You're still giving this person attitude.

You're still the same person.

Nothing is different about you, but there is something different about you.

There is someone in your heart who wasn't in there before The devil doesn't want you to know that the power of the living God is dwelling in your midst.

Because if you really know If you really knew that, if you really walked in the confidence that the word that became flesh is living in your heart, you would lift up your voice.

You would tell him to go.

You would rebuke him.

You would tell temptation to shut up and shut down.

Because even though Jesus came to his own and his own did not receive him, to all who did receive him.

Come on, raise your hand if you've received them.

To all who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood or of will of man, but of God.

What is this word?

What is this word?

you ask his name is Jesus and he commands every storm to be still in me he commands every giant that goes against his will to fall he commands every devil in the room to flee every temptation to go every fear he tells to bow Every tear he wipes away.

Every broken thing in me, he tells to be restored.

The word is in you, man of God.

The word is in you, woman of God.

Don't silence the word of power.

You've been given authority in the name of Jesus.

And it's a word not just for preachers.

Go ahead and stand with me.

I'm almost done.

It's a word not just for those who carry a mic.

It's not a word just for deliverance ministers or pastors.

It is a word the Bible declares it for all those who He gave a right to be, children of God.

You're a child of God, walk in it.

Walk in that identity.

Listen, I'm gonna call us to the altar in a moment.

And if you need prayer We're going to be ready to pray with you.

If you want to just come and worship, you can do that.

If you want to come and you want to start declaring things over your life, I want you to do that.

But listen, listen.

I'm almost done This has to go beyond an altar call.

This has to go beyond an altar call, man.

I don't want to be doing the same thing all the time and having powerful services, but we Christians.

This has got to go beyond an altar call.

This is a place of sacrifice.

This is where you lay things down.

But it's easy to declare the word of God in you when you're at church.

Let's acknowledge that.

Let let's let's be real.

There's a little bit of emotion in this room.

That's okay.

We're emotional people.

That's fine.

And so it makes it much easier to declare things that are true when everybody else in the room is doing the same thing.

Everybody's speaking holy.

Everybody's singing Jesus.

You're in a small moment where you're doing exactly what you were designed to do.

Worship.

But when you wake up tomorrow and when you go through this week and you're really struggling to let some things go, I pray that the Holy Spirit would remind you.

That you have the power to declare who you belong to.

Listen, spirits are all around us, man.

They're all around us.

All around.

And I don't say this to sound super spiritual.

I say it because it's a reality.

You may step into a spirit of lust.

You may step into a spirit of rebellion.

You may step into a spirit of apathy.

A spirit of laziness, a spirit of competition, a spirit of jealousy, a spirit of negativity.

Those aren't just feelings, they're tied to some spirits.

And I'll remind you of verse 36, for with authority and power, he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.

You're not Jesus, I'm not Jesus, but we have the power and the authority of a God of the Word dwelling in us.

These altars are open.

I want us just to have a just to have a moment with God.

Whatever that means to you.

If you need prayer, if you need to make some uh some declarations, if you need to walk in a new identity, the altars are open.

We're gonna sing the name Jesus.

Yes, Lord.

Come on.

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church.

Visit us on our website at mypneumachurch. org.

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Thanks again and God bless.