08/22/2026
Invincible Church Sermon Notes
8/16/2026
The Spiritual Pattern of Man Pt. 2- Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
God has a ‘perfect plan’! So, as a true follower of Jesus, we should be faithfully following His instructions and working hard to elevate our spiritual ‘awareness and wisdom,’ always keeping a ‘positive attitude’ with ‘continual gratitude,’ so we develop a high level of spiritual servanthood!
If we do, then we’ll be a part of ‘exponentially advancing’ God’s Kingdom, which brings ‘honor and glory’ to His name! It’s God’s plan and His strategy. It hasn’t ever changed, and it’ll never need to change, so we need to be content in it! We started last week in:
Ecclesiastes 1:4–11 NIV –4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. 7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. 8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. 9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
So, there’s nothing new under the sun. And just one of the countless examples of how the ‘spiritual pattern’ of man ‘transcends time’ in a constant ‘ebb and flow’ happened in Greece, NY, in 2014, where a Supreme Court case about the legality of opening a court meeting with prayer in the name of Jesus took place. The landmark case was the ‘Town of Greece vs. Galloway’!
The Court ruled 5–4 that the local town board could legally continue to open public meetings with prayer and didn’t violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The ACLU sued to stop them, but Justice Anthony Kennedy cited the precedent that, “Even our Continental Congress opened with prayer in the name of Jesus.”
The ‘Continental Congress’ was the first government of the ‘American Colonies’ and the new U.S. from 1774 to 1789! They’d meet in Philadelphia with delegates from 13 colonies to protest the harsh, unreasonable, and oppressive acts passed by Great Britain.
Eventually, the ‘right determination’ was made in both cases that praying in the name of Jesus is ‘allowed and legal’ in public places! This is just one of many incredible ‘true stories’ where, in our country’s history, all kinds of ‘circumstances and situations’ seemed ‘bleak and hopeless.’
Then faithful, obedient, and courageous leaders would answer the call, ‘rise up,’ and ‘take action’ with prayer, fasting, and discernment. And all of a sudden, rivers would rise, fog would roll in, and ‘sleet and snow’ storms would rage from out of nowhere!
There were also many other ‘well-documented miraculous events’ with individuals, like at the Battle of Monongahela, where every mounted commander was killed except George Washington! During the battle, he had two horses shot out from under him! Then, after the battle, he found four bullet holes through his coat, but he was never hit! A Native warrior who witnessed it said:
“Washington had a charmed life and could not be hit by rifle fire.”
But it had nothing to do with a ‘charmed life’! It was because of their belief in God, faith in Jesus, trust in the Holy Spirit, and obedience to the Bible! Every ‘colony’ was started, and...
Every ‘state constitution’ was documented by a different ‘Christian denomination’! Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was Puritan, Rhode Island was Baptist, Maryland was Catholic, and Pennsylvania was Quaker! Now, they didn’t always agree on everything!
But after the Revolution against the tyrannical ‘British king,’ they started working together more through all kinds of proclamations, prayer, and fasting, which were mostly initiated by presidents! There are all kinds of ‘powerful prayers’ from presidents recorded in official ‘transcripts and documents’!
Also, almost every ‘speech or address’ by every president had references to God, Christianity, and religion! Even Woodrow Wilson [probably one of the ‘spiritually weakest’ presidents ever] called for a day of fasting in 1918 during WWI! Franklin Roosevelt ‘gave out’ Gideon Bibles.
And on January 25, 1941, he wrote an ‘official foreword’ that was included in the millions of pocket-sized New Testaments that were given to American soldiers heading into WWII! His message as Commander-in-Chief commended soldiers for reading the Bible as their ‘fountain of strength’!
There’s a saying that, ‘Coincidence doesn’t happen by chance; it’s God’s way of staying anonymous.’ One example is in the War of 1812, when the British almost ended America before it ever got started good! They attacked Washington, D.C., and were going to burn down the White House!
But there was a sudden ‘thunderstorm and tornado’ that basically stopped it! Just a few days before all this, President James Madison had called for a day of prayer. Then, about 4,500 British troops marched right into the capital and started setting things on fire!
The First Lady, Dolley Madison, saw all this and grabbed the famous painting of George Washington that was done while he ‘actually stood’ for the artist to paint it! So, she’s got the painting and is riding ‘out of town’ in a carriage! [The Importance of Preserving History]
At the same time, the British admiral, George Cockburn, is riding up to the capital. He gets off his horse, goes into the White House first, sees that the table was set with food, sits down, eats the food, and then he sets the White House on fire! Then:
Cockburn and his men go to the Capitol Building, and they sit in the empty chairs. The British admiral goes to the podium and says, ‘All in favor of burning down the American Capitol Building say aye,’ and they all say, ‘Aye.’ They start setting our Capitol Building on fire!
And then they attack the ‘Navy Yard,’ ‘Library of Congress,’ and ‘Treasury Building’! But all of a sudden, dark clouds roll in, high winds and violent thunder roar, horses and riders are knocked to the ground, and a tornado ‘spins up’ and scatters British cannons like toothpicks!
While all this is happening, the British admiral sees a random local lady struggling to make her way to safety and yells, ‘Great God, madam! Is this the kind of storm you’re accustomed to in this infernal country?’ And she yelled back, ‘No, sir! This is a divine intervention of Providence from God to drive our enemies away from our city!’ So, the torrential rains ‘put out’ the fires!
And the British retreat to their boats, where some had blown ashore, and the rest of them had damaged ‘sails and rigging’! A British historian wrote that more British soldiers were killed by this ‘force of nature’ [which we know was the hand of God] than by all the fi****ms that the ‘American troops’ had mustered in the ‘feeble defense’ of their capital grounds!
So, think about it. President James Madison declares a day of ‘fasting and prayer,’ and then all this happens! Which led any American with a high level of ‘spiritual awareness’ to realize that God’s ‘hand of favor’ had been on them through all this! And there are story after story of ‘only God/Red Sea’ type miracles that led to the ‘founding and sustaining’ of our nation!
A lot of people ask, if God’s ‘all-powerful,’ why doesn’t He just stop the bad guys? The answer is because the ‘driving force’ of God’s plan is ‘true love relationship’! Any relationship requires two people, and for a relationship to be ‘authentic and true,’ there has to be sacrificial action taken on both sides!
The Bible tells us that it’s impossible to please God without faith, and demonstrating faith is impossible without taking some kind of sacrificial action! And Jesus said that He’ll reward His followers for every ‘good deed’ we’ve done. ‘Good deeds’ are ‘obedient/sacrificial’ actions that advance God’s Kingdom and most always benefit our relationships! So:
The depravity of some people in our nation doesn’t ‘change or diminish’ the ‘faith and obedience’ that the Founding Fathers had and demonstrated to God! And it doesn’t ‘change or diminish’ the obedience that a ‘faithful remnant’ of the Church ‘lives out’ for Jesus today!
‘Circumstances and situations’ for true followers of Jesus have been ‘overwhelming and bleak’ before! Jesus said it’d be this way! And I don’t believe that God’s going to allow a country that is ‘founded and established’ in His name by faithful followers of Jesus to be ‘wiped out’ by a bunch of pagan heathens!
So, we keep working hard to develop spiritual ‘awareness and wisdom’! We always keep a ‘positive attitude’ with ‘continual gratitude,’ and make sure we’re always operating at a high level of servanthood for Jesus. And we certainly don’t quit! So:
It doesn’t matter how much gas, food, cars, houses, and hobbies cost! Jesus is our King. He’s still on the throne, and He’s coming back one day! And I don’t want Him finding me complaining about the ‘high cost’ of living! The ‘battle plan’ for His true followers is in:
Matthew 16:24–28 NIV –24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. 28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
[The Transfiguration: Peter, James, John]
This is a command from Jesus for us to humble ourselves, get our mind right, and make whatever self-sacrifice is necessary to get His work done! We’ve got to be willing to die to ourselves in order to follow Jesus! Whether it’s dying a physical death or dying to our worldly selfishness, it’s an absolute surrender to God!
So, the main point of this message is: There’s ‘nothing new under the sun.’ There are just new people who haven’t experienced things yet. And the enemy, Satan, uses the same strategy that he always has, over and over again! He just reloads it with every new generation!
It’s always deceived a lot of people in every new generation because, again, there’s ‘nothing new under the sun.’ Foolish people just don’t pay attention to history, so they haven’t ‘heard or learned’ things from before! We know Satan counterfeits everything God ‘creates and designs’!
Even the form of ‘earthly leadership’! God never intended for His people to be led by kings! But the Israelites ‘whined’ for a king, and look where it got them! It’s easy to see that, in every century of human history, the most common form of government is kings, or:
Some equivalent form of an ‘imperial leader’! Now, most archaeologists say writing was invented around 3300 BC, or about 5,000 years ago, and the first agricultural invention was the plow! Cain was a tiller of the soil! So:
Writing started as an ‘accounting method’ to keep track of grain! It was done on clay tablets called Sumerian cuneiform. Then it expanded into written languages! Chinese characters were invented around 2600 BC, about the same time Egypt developed hieroglyphics!
And writing is how we’re able to know that the most common form of government is kings, and most of the early writings are kings’ ‘court records’! Historian Bill Federer describes a king as basically a glorified ‘gang leader,’ because when we look at human forms of government that are established:
Outside of God’s design for government, their ‘default functions’ basically start operating like a criminal gang! The ‘logic and progression’ of events in society that also lead to this conclusion start kind of like this: If you get rid of all police:
People will eventually start robbing stores, and the stores will close. Then criminals start robbing houses! So, neighborhoods have to organize for protection! Then each neighborhood group finds somebody who has a little leadership experience and elects him as their captain!
So, he becomes the ‘good king’! The defense efforts make it more difficult for the bad guys to break into houses, so the gangs organize and elect a ‘bad king’ or ‘gang leader,’ because he’s the one who’s really good at breaking into houses! Now, the ‘bad chief/bad king’:
Is going to demand loyalty. He says, “If I’m going to lead you, defend you, and provide for you, I don’t want you snitching behind my back!” So, the bad king starts recruiting and says, “I’ll give you part of the ‘loot’ if you loyally serve in the gang.” And it multiplies from there! So:
The first record of a ‘bad king/gang leader’ is Ni**od, who was the great-grandson of Noah through the line of ‘Ham and Cush’! The world population is centered around the mountain of Ararat, where Noah’s ark landed. Ni**od is defiant against God and oppressive over man, and he wants to control the world. So, he was the first globalist. He was the first one-world government king!
Genesis 10:8–10 NIV –8 Cush was the father of Ni**od, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, “Like Ni**od, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” 10 The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar.
Ni**od’s leadership style was control through ‘fear’! A Jewish historian named Josephus also recorded that Ni**od was very arrogant and wanted to build a tower so high that if God destroyed the world with a flood again, he could survive on top!
It’s called the Tower of Babel! So, he made everybody bake the bricks and start building it, or he’d kill them! But God intervenes, confuses the languages, and the people scatter into ‘language groups’ that turn into nations!
So, nations are God’s plan to postpone a one-world government! He took the population of the world and divided it into subgroups called nations! Then, because of the deceit, influence, oppression, and possession of people by a supernatural evil enemy named Satan [who God has given temporary rule of the earth], a lot of nations ‘take over’ other nations, and they start canceling each other out!
It’s the spiritual pattern of man! Every generation has another Ni**od, Gilgamesh, Sargon of Akkad, Pharaoh, evil kings of Babylon and Assyria, Alexander the Great, bad kings of England, Hi**er, and with advancements in technology:
These ‘kings or evil leaders’ start conquering larger areas. And if they don’t get ‘defeated or die,’ any one of them would’ve tried their best to conquer the world, just like the Muslim country of Iran! The good news is, they do get defeated or die:
And so, the devil has to start from scratch with the next generation! But the people he deceives, influences, oppresses, or possesses have the latest ‘military and technological’ advancements to work with! So, instead of Cain killing Abel with a rock:
David killed Goliath by propelling a stone from a sling. Later on, people could kill each other with the bronze weapons that the Greeks had, or a scimitar sword that the Muslims had, or gunpowder that the Chinese invented. And the weapons just keep improving!
But the spiritual pattern of man is still from the original ‘fallen/sinful’ nature of man, as when Cain killed Abel! Also, with technological advancements, kings can track people! In 2 B.C., Augustus Caesar started a widespread tracking system called the census!
It was the very earliest version of today’s 5G, cell phones, and facial recognition software! History progresses to Attila the Hun, Islam and the Muslims, the Vikings and Genghis Khan, and empires that either kept getting:
Bigger, conquering, or collapsing until the King of England had the biggest empire of all! The sun never set on the British Empire! The King of England was also a globalist! He was a one-world government king! But there was a group of true followers of Jesus who:
Believed in God, had faith in Jesus, trusted in the power of the Holy Spirit, and were determined to live by the principles given to us by God in His Holy Word, the Bible! They broke away from the tyrannical king and later founded the U.S.A.!
They wanted a nation that followed God’s plan, where Jesus is King, the people follow Jesus, and they elect government leaders who are supposed to follow the Constitution, which is based on ‘God’s Word,’ the Bible! And so, America becomes ‘one nation under God,’ blessed with ‘authority and power’ from Him!
Instead of being ruled by a king through fear, it’s ruled by God, with a government ‘set up’ that works for God’s people according to His design! The government isn’t supposed to rule, control, or provide for the people! ‘God’s design for government’ is to protect the people, keep order in society, and be His agent of wrath—to administer punishment according to His justice when necessary!
It’s part of God’s plan, and God doesn’t change, and His plan doesn’t change! But the people, places, and names change! And because His creation is very dynamic, we do see advancements in military, engineering, and technology!
But every generation just sort of repeats the same spiritual patterns of man that have gone on since sin was introduced into the Garden of Eden! It’s like circles in a pond. We discern the opportunity from God, then take action and ‘drop the stone,’ no matter where we’re at. Then trust the transforming wave of the Holy Spirit to flow out from there!
The Jewish people of Israel were who God chose to ‘reveal’ Himself to the world! Then Jesus comes, and in the New Testament, the Church, made up of all true followers of Jesus, is the ‘chosen priesthood’ who God uses to ‘reconcile’ people to Himself! So, in the Old Testament, God’s covenant people are a ‘chosen people,’ and in the New Testament, God’s covenant people are a ‘chosen priesthood’!
And the reason we’re set aside by God as a chosen people (Old Testament), or a chosen priesthood (New Testament), is for the same goal: to be a light shining in the ‘dark/depraved’ world! We’re called to be living sacrifices so that the knowledge, truth, and love of God Almighty can be heard, pursued, and discovered by all those who don’t ‘know Jesus’ [lost people]!
In the case of the nation of Old Testament Israel, they’re trying to reach the other nations around them! And in the case of true followers of Jesus in the New Testament Church, we’re trying to reach anybody around us who’s lost! It’s God’s plan, and He’s blessed all true followers of Jesus to be a part of it!
So, let’s ‘go to work’ and avoid backsliding into the fallen spiritual patterns of man!
