World Challenge Sermons

Gary Wilkerson introduces a version of Jesus most believers have never met, the joyful Jesus, showing that the same God who is a man of sorrows is also the most joyous being who ever walked the earth, and that his full, unspeakable, unstealable joy has already been placed inside every believer, waiting to be uncovered.
Preached: July 7, 2026
Main Points:
• Most Christians, if asked to list the top five attributes of Jesus, would never think to include joy. We picture him militant, sorrowful, or perpetually disappointed in us, like an eyebrow forever raised, but Hebrews says God anointed Jesus with joy and gladness above his companions.
• Jesus created joy itself, along with laughter, humor, and delight. Picture him at 20-something with a group of rowdy young disciples, some still teenagers, swimming, racing, cooking fish together. Being a Christian was never meant to mean you're not allowed to have fun.
• First Peter calls this joy unspeakable and full of glory, and the Hebrew and Greek words for glory mean thickness and weightiness. This isn't a thin, occasional joy. It's a thick cloud of glory resident inside every believer, whether or not they feel it in the moment.
• Gary's own life proves the joy isn't circumstantial: 14 grandchildren, the most joyful season of his life, yet also traveling to war-torn countries that aren't safe. Joseph had joy in the pit and the prison. Abraham had joy while wandering into an unknown land and fighting battles on his nephew's behalf.
• The secret to this joy isn't positive thinking or a good mental attitude. Jesus repeats one word throughout this passage: abide. As you abide in him, spending time with him, being his friend, his joy becomes yours, not manufactured but resident and full.
• No person, no subway shove, no unfair ticket, no gossiping church member can take this joy away, because it was never dependent on circumstances to begin with. It was given, it's full, and it's permanent.
• Gary invites all believers to become the most joyful people, so that a world drowning in anger, despair, and loneliness would look at us and wonder how we could have this much joy, and find their way to the joyful Jesus behind it.
https://wcmin.us/SS260719c

David Wilkerson uses the story of Pharaoh's cruelest command as a mirror, showing every exhausted believer still trying to make bricks without straw that God is not Pharaoh. Jesus has already made full provision, and the only thing left to do is stop struggling and let the Holy Ghost do what flesh never could.
Preached: December 11, 1994
Main Points:
• Pharaoh is a type of Satan, and Egypt is a type of every bondage that holds God's people, whether smoking, drinking, pornography, temper, unbelief, or covetousness. His first device is always the same: get back to your works, more works, impossible works, and do it without any of the tools you need.
• Just as the message of freedom swept through the camps of Israel and Pharaoh doubled the quota the very same day, the devil will hear you responding to a message of deliverance and immediately increase the pressure to make you believe it will never happen for you.
• The law was never meant to set you free. It was a schoolmaster to bring you to Christ, a mirror held up to show you how wide the gap is between your wickedness and God's holiness, and how impossible it is to bridge that gap by anything your flesh can do.
• The servant who buried his talent and said, "You reap where you have not sown," was looking at God as Pharaoh, accusing him of demanding results without providing tools. That is exactly how many Christians feel, and it is a lie from the same enemy who invented the bricks without straw command.
• God has made no spiritual demand on you without making full provision for you to fulfill it through the Holy Ghost. He is not sitting up in heaven twiddling his thumbs while you struggle. He abides in you, he is greater than the one in the world, and when you call on him, he will exert his power.
• Some people never get free because they want to be plucked out, but won't obey God's voice. The Holy Spirit warns lovingly, whispers "don't do it," and if you override him, he speaks louder and louder, because he is so faithful, he will do whatever it takes to get your attention.
• God has made an ironclad "I will" promise seven times over: I will bring you out, I will rid you of bondage, I will redeem you, I will take you to me, I will be God to you, I will bring you into the land, I will give you a heritage. The only response left is to lift your hands and surrender what you could never carry yourself.
https://wcmin.us/SS260712c

Evan Wilkerson opens his Ephesians series by tracing the stories of John Newton, the apostle Paul, and the dark city of Ephesus to show that the word "saint" has nothing to do with moral achievement and everything to do with the grace that finds wretches, turns them around, and sets them on an entirely new trajectory.
Main Points:
John Newton called himself capable of anything, with not the least fear of God and no sensibility of conscience. It was in a violent storm at sea that he cried, "Lord, have mercy," for the first time in years, and out of that encounter eventually came the famous hymn Amazing Grace. This is the story of all who are in Christ.
Paul was not a passive sinner. He was actively hunting Christians, arresting them, punishing them in synagogues, convinced he was doing God a favor. Then Jesus knocked him to the ground on the Damascus road, and everything, every single thing, was completely changed.
Ephesus was among the largest cities of the ancient world, filled with idol worship, demon worship, and magic arts. Opposition and darkness are not signs that God is absent. Often, it is in the darkest places where Christ's light shines brightest, and the Ephesians proved it by burning their magic books in public.
Paul calls these former witchcraft practitioners saints, not because of what they had done but because of what had been done for them. No man is a believer who is not also a saint, and no man is a saint who is not a believer. The title comes with faith, not with performance.
Many of us get this backwards. We know intellectually that grace is a free gift, but we behave as though our works will make us righteous, stuck on a treadmill of performance. You became righteous the moment you put your faith in Jesus and his finished work. That is your position. Sanctification flows from it, not toward it.
When you sin, don't hide from him. Running away from Jesus when you fail only makes the sin worse. Run to him. He is the only one who will ever be able to set you free entirely.
Paul combined the Greek greeting and the Jewish greeting into one: grace and peace. Grace always comes first, and as it fills our lives through the Holy Spirit, it produces shalom, wholeness, restored relationships, reconciled work, and a peace even in the middle of suffering that the world cannot explain.

https://wcmin.us/WS260708c

David Wilkerson stands before his congregation, physically trembling over Ezekiel 3, warning every pastor, teacher, and believer that they will one day stand before God and answer for every soul they failed to warn, then reveals that the only way to fulfill that terrifying responsibility is not human zeal but the secret place alone with God.
Preached: September 29, 1996
Main Points:
• David Wilkerson said this scripture caused him to tremble physically, spiritually, and emotionally every time he read it. God told Ezekiel plainly: if you don't warn the wicked and they die in their sin, their blood is on your hands. That warning does not expire in the day of grace.
• Peter, after Pentecost, pointed his finger at the crowd and said, "You crucified both the Lord and the Christ." Stephen called the religious leaders stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, knowing it would cost him his life. Paul confronted incest in the Corinthian church publicly. None of them were willing to stand before God with blood on their hands.
• How many pastors will answer on judgment day for the Laodicean condition in their churches, for telling people they're alive when they're dead, for feeding congregations on pop psychology and flattery instead of warning them about sin? Better to run out of church angry and convicted than to be flattered gently into hell.
• God's answer to the weight of this responsibility was not to send Ezekiel immediately into the streets. He took him aside first, showed him his glory, and struck him speechless, because a man who goes out in his own human zeal will do more damage than good.
• Every word that comes from a true pulpit must first come from the secret closet of prayer. David Wilkerson went to prayer like a disciple with an empty basket, saying, "Lord, I have nothing," and Jesus breaks the bread and fills it. If you haven't been shut in with God weeping over the lost, you're babbling.
• The greatest wickedness in the congregation that day was not drugs or alcohol or sexual sin. It was Christians who had heard warning after warning and still held grudges, still carried bitterness, still hardened their hearts. They were almost beyond help.
• David Wilkerson called the whole church to a 30-day round-the-clock prayer chain, not to be busy or religious, but because God will only give the right word at the right time to those who have first been alone with him long enough to fall on their face.
https://wcmin.us/SS260705c

Gary Wilkerson takes us through Romans 8, showing that the exhausting in-and-out, up-and-down Christian life is not what God intended, revealing that the moment Christ came in, he changed not just our behavior but our entire operating system, and the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is the same power now living in us.
Preached: May 21, 2026
Main Points:
• The word condemnation is "con" plus "damnation," and before you met Jesus, that was exactly your destination.
• There are two laws at war, and the law of the Spirit of life is to the law of sin and death what the First Amendment is to a university policy. One simply outweighs the other, and no policy Satan tries to enforce can stand against the higher law.
• The flesh cannot keep the law, and the law actually makes sin worse because telling someone not to touch the cookie jar is practically an invitation. God is not asking you to try harder in your own strength because he already declared in Romans 8:3 that it cannot be done.
• Prayer groups, Bible reading, fasting, and accountability partners are good for growth, but they are not what sets you free. Trying to do in your flesh what only the Spirit can do is the shortest road to burning out and failing again.
• The most important word in Romans 8 may be "however" in verse 9. After all the in-and-out battle of chapter 7, God steps in and says: You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. That is not a goal to reach. It is a declaration of what is already true.
• Jesus changes your operating system. A PC does PC things, and a Mac does Mac things, not because of effort but because of what's built into the software. When Christ came in, he didn't just change your behavior; he changed your cravings. Now you crave righteousness, holiness, and the presence of God.
• The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. The solution to up-and-down living is not found in self-effort but in understanding and resting in that reality until the life he promises flows naturally from the inside out.
https://wcmin.us/SS260629c