Displacing the orphan heart part 1
Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin?
| Speaker: | Andy Moyle, |
| Series: | God's Multicoloured Wisdom |
| Date: | 11th Oct, 2026 |
| Download: | Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin? |
| Plays: | 0 |
| Views: | 12 |
| Sermon notes: | Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin?Pendulum Swing We have been looking at God’s multicoloured wisdom - where God shows off his amazing diverse multicoloured wisdom to the angels and demons through what he is doing through the church. Your life has meaning and purpose – you are part of a cosmic plan that God has! Started with creation – in all its diversity created by God who personifies diversity in unity – Father, Son and Spirit Then we looked at the Fall – where Adam and Eve disobeyed God and experienced shame, guilt and fear. God made a sacrifice to clothe them with the first leather outfits! Then we began to see God’s rescue plan for the whole of humanity start through God call one person – Abraham to be blessed so that through his offspring every family would get the chance to be blessed. God often chooses one to be bless many. He has chosen you too! Now we jump forward hundreds of years – the Old Testament people of God, Israel are being formed. They have escaped slavery in Egypt and they are about to receive the ten commandments – and the rest of the Law. But before that God tells them these amazing words. Exodus 19:5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” Condition – Obey God fully and keep my covenant.They are about to get the law – not just 10 commandments. Jewish scholars counted 613 separate commands. They are there to show how holy God is and how much we need Jesus to save us. King Solomon tells us in Eccl 7:20 Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. Paul will teach the purpose of the law was to bring us to Christ – Gal 3:24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith They had been saved by grace from slavery but still the Old Covenant was conditional on obedience first. Ex 19:5 again IF you obey me… then out all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Treasured PossessionIf your house was to catch fire and everyone was safe and you could grab one thing, what would it be? That’s your treasured possession. The Hebrew word is sagula which means shut up treasure – the kind of treasure that is highly prized and kept safe. That’s who the people of God are to the Lord. Then from that identity as God’s treasured possession, they are called to be a Kingdom of Priests Kingdom of PriestsA priest is someone who mediates people to the Lord. Their job as a blessed people was to show that blessing to all the families of the earth – to carry on Abraham’s call. Mal 2:7 says for the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord almighty and the people seek instruction from his mouth. Holy NationGod is Holy and commands his people to be holy. The command “Be holy, for I am holy” is all over the Bible! Lev 11:45 I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy. Two sides of a coin – the edge says treasured possession. That is their identity. One side is be a kingdom of priests. Make a difference in the nations, influence them and bless them so that they follow god. The other side is Holy nation – be holy. Don’t compromise with sin. They were meant to hold it in tension – be in the world but not of it. But OT Israel and actually anyone without Jesus just cannot do it. It ends up being a pendulum swing of making a mess Instead of kingdom of priests – influencing the nations. End up with anything goes, doing the awful things the unbelievers were doing. Then they’d swing the other way again missing the point. Holy nation – despising the other nations and being completely nationalistic. Or separating themselves. Even today – you can see religion in general and “religious” people making a mess of the pendulum swing. In the world and doing what they do – anything goes, chaotic lifestyles, liberalism – making Christianity wishy washy but palatable. Swinging the other way – Christian ghetto, avoiding the world, holy huddle, leagalism. Paul warns against that in 1 Cor 5:10 “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” That’s a great example of two sided coin – be in the world, but don’t be like the world. The call to live out being a treasured possession by being a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation is impossible in our own strength. The law was mean to point us to Jesus. Christianity has a new covenant, a new deal – a better deal. 1 Peter 2 lays out the ideas of what treasure possession, kingdom of priests and a holy nation look like with Jesus But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but not you have received mercy. If you have become a Christian, Peter declares like Jesus you are born again – a new creation and we have been give a precious identity – chosen people, royal priesthood, holy nation, God’s special possession. God has done it- he has made us the people of God and has given us with mercy. Our destiny is not the pendulum swing of messing it up – we can live as the double sided coin – treasured possession round the edge – kingdom of priests and holy nation as the two sides, We can do it. You may be thinking, no I can’t I swing from one extreme to the other! What’s the secret sauce? A few verses before Peter shows us As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Living StonesPeter is writing to people who were mostly Jewish background before fining Christ, so they would have had Old Testament understanding of what that means. Centuries before Jesus came Ezekiel was prophecying to a wayward pendulum swinging Israel and he says this “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” God showed Ezekiel that without Jesus people are stony – cold and hard and unable to follow and obey Jesus. The promise he prophecied is that God would remove peoples dead stony hearts and give them a new heart. In Ezek 36 he repeats it – “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Peter picks up the imagery of that and shows that Christians are now living stones – we have the Spirit in us, making us so alive. Spiritual houseThen he talks about us being built together into a “spiritual house” to be a holy priesthood. A spiritual house is literally a house of the spirit. Together we are the house where the Spirit of God dwells. We need each other – you can’t go it alone in Christian faith – the devil will pick you off straight away. The secret sauce that makes the two-sided coin doable – is the power of the Spirit available to all of us and the church being the place where we are built together. New Covenant is incredible. The law of 613 commandments is impossible, nobody apart from Jesus has completely obeyed. So, Jesus came to bring us close to God Eph 2:14-15 “For he himself is our peace who has made the two groups on and has destroyed the barrier the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations” The Law was just a schoolmaster or guardian to shows us we need Christ. Now grace has fully come and we find that we can be more holy than the law demanded by enjoying God’s grace and walking in the power of the Spirit. The law said don’t commit adultery – grace says don’t even think adulterous thoughts. Titus 2:13 tells us “grace teaches us to say no to unrighteousness” It is walking in the Spirit that enables us to be holy and make a difference. Gal 5:16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It is the Spirit that gives us power to be witnesses Act 1:8 It is the Spirit who grows the fruit of holiness in us Gal 5:22 It is our experience of being living stones – filled with the Spirit and built together as God’s church that means we finally get to enjoy living our new identity But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. If your life feels like a chaotic pendulum swing – God wants to turn you into a two-sided coin! Come to Jesus Be filled with the Spirit Be built together |
Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin?
Andy Moyle,11th Oct, 2026 3:04 pm
The Call of Abraham
David Taylor27th Sep, 2026 9:11 am
The Fall
Omadachi Oganyi,20th Sep, 2026 3:10 pm
The Trinity and Creation
Swapnil Pardeshi13th Sep, 2026 5:59 pm
God's multicoloured wisdom
Andy Moyle6th Sep, 2026 7:36 pm
What would your life be like if you had no fear?
No fear of man? No fear of what others think about you because you are secure in the Father’s love. No fear of opening your heart to truly experience the enormity of His love and give it away to the next person you meet?
What would your marriage be like?
Your family like?
Your other relationships like?
What would the Gateway be like if there was no fear? If everyone here was set free from the fear of trusting, the fear of rejection and abandonment and the fear of opening hearts to love and intimacy.
Fear disables us.
Do you get up every day feeling like a son or daughter confident in your Father’s live and living to give it to others? Or do you get up more like a slave, struggling constantly with fear of failure and rejection, struggling to trust and wondering what you have to do to appease the master today.
Moving from spiritual slavery to son or daughtership is a matter of reaching the place where we are so loved and accepted in our Father’s heart so that it is overflowing wherever we go.
To do that we have to deal with the matter of the orphan heart.
We are all born with an orphan heart that rejects parental and other authority and seeks to be independent doing everything our way. The only people born without an orphan heart were Adam and Eve. They had a spirit of sonship from the beginning but swapped it for an orphan heart when they chose to go their own way apart from God. That fall has meant the orphan heart gets passed down to every succeeding generation – so it’s our common heritage. Going to be talking about sonship a lot – I mean both. If being a daughter has left you being slighted, that’s okay because for all eternity the believing men in your life will called the BRIDE of Christ too! It will all balance out!!!!
Our quest is not to regain our sonship with the Father, because we never had it. We are talking about receiving a heart of sonship that displaces our orphan heart.
The truth of the Gospel is that To all who receive Jesus, who believe in Him, Jesus gives us the right to become children of God – that’s John 1:12. The moment you put your faith in Jesus death and resurrection, you are adopted, no longer an orphan without a heavenly Father. It’s legal true of you -it’s your born-again right, as opposed to birthright. But you may not feel like it is true or believe it because your mind needs renewing. Spiritual sonship is a battle for the mind issue.
Bit like the lady who used all her savings a ticket for a ferry to New York for England. Carried on some food, trying to make it eek out, looking longingly each day at all the passengers enjoying the food in the dining hall. About half way through she asks a steward how much are the meals. They are included madam.
Not yet a believer – you can become one and receive sonship
Believer – you are a son, start living like one!
Backtrack…
Our orphan hearts started in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were deceived by Lucifer the first spiritual orphan.
Satan or Lucifer was an angel
Ezekiel 28:13-15
Isa 14:12-15 wanted more, lost everything
Separated from his original home, he is resentful of anyone enjoying intimacy with the Father (John 10:10)
No longer walking in the Father’s love – competing for recognition, position and power
Jealousy drove Satan to deceive Adam & Eve
Conning people to think like him, homeless and cut off from God’s love
Adam & Eve were living in innocence, joy and open loving fellowship with Gather God
Satan in his bitterness and hatred was envious of their love and intimacy.
People with an orphan heart are envious of anyone who enjoys true love and intimacy – so Lucifer determines to destroy it.
Quickest way to shut down intimacy and trust is by sowing doubt – did God really say?
You can be like Him – forgetting they already are!
Orphan thinking starts to doubt Father God’s love, kindness and generosity
Eve was deceived, and Adam sinned deliberately (1 Tim 2:4)
Orphan heart is like a short cut spirit – trying to find short cuts to maturity.
Dissolves into a blame game – they get banned from the garden, because there is a very real danger they will eat from the tree of life and live for ever in their alienated orphan hearted state.
The orphan heart is the source of our fears, anxieties and torment
Good news is Jesus said I will not leave you as orphans – John 14:18.
Malachi 4:5-6 amazing promise
Elijah overthrew Jezebel spirit – that matriarchal demonic spirit that emasculates godly leadership and encourages immorality. Elijah represents a godly fathering anointing that will be released on the earth in the end times.
Lovely Alpha testimony on the latest version – young man, struggled as a teenager, got in trouble. Comes home, can't face parents, barricades himself in room. Dad knocks. Son come out – I love you and just want to hug you right now.
John 14:2-3 father’s house has many rooms. God is preparing a home for us – that place where we are safe
John 10:10 abundant life
Favoured sons get disciplined Heb 12:7-8 If not disciplined then actually a bastard. How you receive admonishment is a big indicator of how much of an orphan heart you have.
How do we receive discipline? If not well, acting like an orphan. Sons know it is part of maturation and nurture. Verse 9 we are subject to Father of spirits. Dependent, underneath. Paraphrase be subject to the Fathers mission and live. The opposite is subject to self.
Fathers mission is to experience His love and pass it on to the next person. In right order! Great commandment and great commission.
Great commandment is a call to intimacy The great commission is a call to fruitfulness
Some of you had horrific fathering experiences, growing and some of you had amazing dads. Either way, because of Adam and Eve, we can have orphan heart in stable home or dysfunctional e.g. prodigal son Luke 15.
Some of you may be thinking – I live completely as a son, I’m completely free of orphan heartedness. You’re living in Lala land. We are all in the process of renewing our minds and part of that is allowing God’s perfect love to drive out fear.
Let's do some final diagnosis, before we can begin to look at the cure.
Handout!
So here’s 20 different ways we can be living like a slave or a son
(Handout from Jack Frost’s book Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship)
Orphan or Son
1 Image of God
Orphan Master who must be appeased constantly – got to pray more, read the Bible more, or work harder to earn God's notice and favour.
Son- loving father who accepts them unconditionally. God's love not based on performance, but on who us giving it.
2) Dependency
Orphan – independent and self-reliant – they are convinced they cannot rely on anyone else. You may have the mantra if anything is going to get done right, I'll need to do it myself.
Son – interdependent, need the community of love that God and the body of Christ offer. This interdependency allows them to be open for Father's love to flow through them to others.
3) Theology
Orphans – love the law, just like the Pharisees they related to God on the basis of adherence to laws, principles, rules and regulations.
Sons – live by the law of love. Value truth knowing the greatest truth is to receive the Father’s love
4) Security
Orphans are insecure, but try to cover it. Not a lot of inward peace and rest. Life for an orphan is filled with uncertainty, fear of trusting, abandonment and intimacy.
Sons are at peace and rest in the Father’s embrace
5) Need for approval
We all need approval!
Orphans – addicted to it and strive for praise, approval and the acceptance of man – those are counterfeit affections that don't satisfy. and lead to the fear of failure and rejection.
Sons – not so infuenced by this turmoil, because they know that they are accepted by the Father. They know they are totally accepted u God's love and grace.
6 ) Motive for service
Orphans – sense of need for personal achievement, seeking to impress God and others. They can become so weary doing good, they give up!
Sons – joyfully serve out of motivation of gratitude and acceptance
7 Motive behind Christian disciplines
Orphans – some apathetic, others do the disciplines out of duty
Sons – a delight and pleasure rather than duty
8) Motive for purity
Orphans – must be holy to be accepted by God
Sons – want to be holy out of love for the Father, be just like dad
9) Self Image
Orphans – low self image, attitude of self rejection
Sons – positive and affirmed, because they know how valuable they are to Father
10) Source of Comfort
Orphans – counterfeit affections – addictions, compulsions, escapism busyness, hyper-religious activity – the busier the happier.
Sons – quietness and solitude, resting in the Father’s love
11) Peer relationships
Orphans – competition, rivalry, jealousy. Fighting and scrambling for every advantage
Sons – humility and honour
12) Handling others faults
Conflict is unavoidable and everyday part of life
Orphans – accusation, exposure, while trying to look God.
Sons relationship oriente – in love dealing with faults. Covering not coverng up – ie protecting from humiliation and destructive exposure until its resolved.
13) View of authority
Orphans – have experienced it badly and are now suspicious of any other authority other than their own and resent and fear it
Sons – respect and honour legitimate authority. Teachable.
14) View of admonition
Orphans – don’t receive it well, because don't like admitting they are wrong. Admonition is rejection! They will blame others, trying to justify themselves.
Sons – receive it as a blessing and needed to grow to maturity. It might cause our fur to bristle, but we recognised valuable correction and tehgrowth opportunity.
15) Expression of love
Orphans – guarded and conditional
Sons – open, transparent and affectionate
16) Sense of God’s presence
Orphans – distant and conditional – on a good day, after a good quiet time!
Sons – enjoy intimate presence, not dependent on their behaviour
17) Condition
Orphans – bondage, slave to fear, mistrust, independence and self reliance
Sons – condition of liberty, free from fear, shame and constant need to prove themselves.
18) Position
Orphans – living as if they don’t have a home, like a servant or slaves
Sons – at rest and peace in Father’s love in every circumstance
19) Vision
Orphans – fired by spiritual ambition. seen and counted as successful and mature
Sons – no proving or striving
20) Future
Orphans – uncertain. So fight for everything you can get!
Sons – willing to wait for inheritance, because they know their future is bright and certain.
How are you doing?
Quite eye opening isn't it. For some of you there will be one or two areas of low score, others there might be lot.
Facing up to where you are at realistically is so important. God loves you just as you are, but he doesn't want to leave you that way! His perfect love drives out the spirit of fear. His Spirit makes you realise you have been adopted as a son, the very second you put your faith in Jesus Christ.
Next week I'm going to show us how God will displace the sons of orphan heartedness, so you can experience more fully what is already true of you – You are Son and a Saint whatever they say!
1 John 4:18 tells us There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
In a moment I am going to invite you forward to receive God's love to begin to displace some of those areas of orphan thinking. Some of you are thinking I'm fine I don't need to come forward. I don't want people to see me vulnerable or in need in anyway. What you will be shouting louder than you realise is that you are an orphan!
Highly recommend Jack Frost’s – Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship where I got the 20 symptoms from.
