World Challenge Sermons

Evan Wilkerson continues his Ephesians series by tracing what redemption actually cost, showing through John Bunyan's imprisonment, C.S. Lewis's Edmund, and a haunting World War II parable that Christ has already won the war against sin, death, and the devil. The only question left is whether we're still fighting a battle that's already over.
Main Points:
Redemption means a price paid for someone's freedom, the way a kinsman could buy back a captured relative or a master could purchase a slave's liberty. Jesus didn't pay with gold or silver, which could never be enough, but with his own blood, because the wages of sin is death and life is in the blood.
Edmund in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" shows the trajectory of sin: it starts as teasing, grows through temptation, and ends in betrayal for a plate of Turkish delight. When the witch ties him up to kill him, Aslan takes his place, and Edmund walks away permanently changed, humble, wise, and grateful.
Grace is not given in careful portions. God didn't hold anything back. He lavishly poured out his grace.
God's ultimate plan is not just personal salvation but cosmic reunification: everything in heaven and earth united under Christ. We don't see that fully yet, and that's not a contradiction; it's a gap between victory declared and victory fully realized.
A Japanese lieutenant kept fighting a war on a remote Pacific island for 29 years after Japan formally surrendered, refusing to believe the leaflets dropped from planes telling him the war was over. Christ defeated sin, death, and the devil at the cross. The war is over. The question is whether we're still fighting like that lieutenant.
Being a bond servant of Christ is not a part-time arrangement where you hand over Sunday mornings and 10% of your income while keeping the rest for yourself. It's handing over everything, not because everything has to look outwardly spiritual, but because nothing is held back as off-limits to him.
If you've accepted Jesus, don't keep fighting a war that's already been won. Live boldly as someone already free, and carry that same news to everyone still fighting battles that ended the moment Christ rose from the grave.

https://wcmin.us/WS260805c

David Wilkerson uses Peter's rooftop vision in Acts 10 to expose how even the godliest believers can unknowingly circumscribe Christ into a small circle, calling other denominations, other nations, and even their own unsaved children common or unclean, when God has already declared them cleansed and worthy of fellowship.
Preached: December 15, 2002
Main Points:
• Peter had raised the dead, healed the sick with his shadow, and shaken prisons by his presence, yet in one area of his life he was misrepresenting Christ. Every believer is a definition of Christ to a world that reads us instead of the Bible.
• On the rooftop, God let down a sheet filled with unclean animals three times and said, "Kill and eat," meaning have fellowship. Peter protested on solid scriptural ground, and God answered, "What God has cleansed you must not call common." The Greek word for common means unworthy of fellowship.
• When Peter finally ate with Cornelius's household and the Holy Ghost fell on uncircumcised Gentiles, the circumcision party in Jerusalem contended with him because he went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them. Their theology said God couldn't work outside their circle. It happened anyway.
• David Wilkerson watched a Pentecostal bishop walk out of his own conference calling a young charismatic worship team an abomination because they clapped and waved flags, even as the Holy Ghost was visibly moving in the room. The man's imprint of Christ was too small to contain what God was doing.
• Celeste Horvath was the most notorious madam in New York City history, condemned by her own brother as beyond redemption, while she secretly played "Amazing Grace" on an organ between clients and cried out to God every night. Ten years of hidden work by the Holy Ghost preceded the moment she finally broke.
• When God is doing his greatest work, you will often see the least evidence.
• Letters were pouring in from Muslim countries reached by Times Square Church radio broadcasts, testifying that Islam gave them no peace but Christ did instantly. God is not looking to raise up another star evangelist. He is looking for ordinary believers willing to stop drawing circles and call no one common or unclean.
https://wcmin.us/SS260802c

David Wilkerson reveals that the godliest people, those who pray, fast, and pursue God with everything in them, can still be seized by sin they never chose and never wanted, and shows through Psalm 116 that the way out is not gritted-teeth willpower but lifting up the cup of every promise God has already sworn to keep.
Preached: November 18, 2001
Main Points:
• A praying, fasting, God-seeking man cries out that the sorrows of death compassed him, that the snares of hell seized his heart without warning. This is not a description of a backslidden person. It is the honest confession of someone who never went looking for sin and got trapped anyway.
• David Wilkerson names it directly: godly husbands, godly pastors, godly wives are being ensnared by pornography, by bitterness, by adultery they never intended, and it is happening all over the world, in mailbags from thousands of ministers who all say the same thing, "I don't know how this got hold of me."
• The word translated "simple" in Psalm 116:6 comes from a Hebrew root meaning seducible. The man isn't claiming innocence of desire; he's confessing he was drawn away by his own lust or the enemy or both, and it brings him nothing but tears, yet God did not cast him away.
• Multitudes in the church today are exactly here: not God-hating, not running to bars, just utterly unable to break free despite fasting, praying, pleading, and hearing tape after tape from one evangelist after another. Their real problem isn't lust. It's unbelief, a loss of confidence that God's Word actually works.
• Old Covenant religion demands gritted teeth, willpower, and a list of do's and don'ts, and it cannot free anyone. When it fails, people conclude in their haste that all men are liars, that the gospel doesn't work for them specifically, when the real issue is that they were never taught the New Covenant secret in the first place.
• The bronze serpent in Numbers 21 asked nothing of the dying Israelites but to look and believe. That serpent represented the sin and venom itself, and Jesus drank the same cup at Gethsemane, not fearing physical pain but absorbing the full wrath against every sin ever committed. That first drop of blood cleansed and refilled the cup with pure promise.
• The godly man in Psalm 116 finds the secret: not one more day of trying harder, but lifting the cup of salvation and drinking every "I will" promise God has sworn—I will put my fear in your heart, I will take away your heart of stone, I will cause you to walk in my ways—until the sorrow breaks and he walks again in the land of the living.
https://wcmin.us/SS260726c

Evan Wilkerson continues this Ephesians series by tracing the wealth every believer already owns in Christ, showing through Horatio Stafford's shipwreck, the prodigal son's return, and the picture of an orphan adopted into royalty that spiritual blessing runs so much deeper than anything money or circumstance could ever provide.
Main Points:
Horatio Stafford lost all four of his daughters in a shipwreck, and while sailing over the very spot where they drowned, he wrote It Is Well with My Soul. That kind of peace is only possible when Jesus Christ remains your greatest treasure even after every earthly treasure is gone.
Blessing God means more than saying nice words about him. It means becoming a living embodiment of praise, worshiping him with your behavior because he is worth it, not because you're trying to earn something from him.
God blesses everyone through common grace, sun and rain on the just and unjust alike, but the spiritual blessings found only in Christ are infinitely richer. A new heart is better than a new car. To feed on Christ is better than the best earthly food. These blessings can never perish.
Being chosen in Christ means being set apart to become holy and blameless, not overnight, but the way a plant grows. You won't see change by staring at it today, but keep feeding on Jesus, and years from now, people will ask what's different about you.
Adoption as sons in the first century meant receiving the firstborn's full rights, resources, and inheritance. Picture an orphan on a trash heap in India, suddenly brought into a wealthy father's home, loved, fed, listened to, celebrated. That is what it means to be adopted by God, not made rich in earthly terms but loved to the very core of your identity.
In the prodigal son story, the father doesn't wait for an apology or make the son grovel. He sees him a long way off, runs to him, and lavishes him with the best robe, a ring, and a feast. That is God's heart for anyone still far from him right now.
Grace is different from mercy. Mercy means not receiving the wrath sinners deserve. Grace means receiving the blessings sinners could never earn. This wealth cost the Son everything on the cross and cost the Father his most beloved possession, and because it was purchased with that blood, it can never be taken away.

https://wcmin.us/WS260722c

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