Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning. 9:45.
[00:00:07] Good morning. If I have not had the joy to meet you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the village church. And if you have a Bible, would you open to The Book of Second Corinthians, Chapter 4?
[00:00:21] In case you're one of the few people that are not fluent in international law, I'd love to share with you a term that is used in this context. It's a convention. And this is not necessarily referring to a gathering of people, but a convention in international law refers to a formal agreement between states or nations. So for example, in 1949, 64 countries gathered together in response to the atrocities of World War II, and they formed what was called the Geneva Conventions. And so here are just some of the agreements from the Geneva Conventions. Countries must protect wounded and sick soldiers on land during war.
[00:01:11] They must protect wounded, sick and shipwrecked soldiers at sea. They must protect civilians in war zones.
[00:01:19] And they must protect, they must provide protections for victims in international conflicts. Now you would hope that these would be like some common sense things, but here's what we know. In the aftermath of World War II, kind of any sense of honoring the dignity and the humanity of people, per particularly those not in the middle of warfare, was ignored. 1972 there was the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of biological and toxic weapons or toxin weapons. 1980 was the convention on what's called Certain Conventional Weapons. In other words, it banned landmines, booby traps, incendiary weapons, blinding laser weapons. Yes, that's a thing. And more. 1993 was the convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons bans the development, production, stockpiling and the use of chemical weapons. So here's the problem with conventions.
[00:02:13] Evil people don't care about them at all.
[00:02:18] I mean, you think about like, oh, just cherry pick Hitler, Mao, Stalin, some of the most evil people on the planet. Do you think if they had the Geneva Conventions when they were in leadership, they would have been like, oh no, the Geneva Conventions say we can't, we're going to be prosecuted in an international court. No, like, evil people are not stopped by laws, conventions or rules. And when it comes to spiritual warfare, the kingdom of darkness, they don't have rules or conventions like you and I do.
[00:02:49] They fight dirty and they fight nasty. The objective of the kingdom of darkness is called threefold, particularly when it applies to Christians in the church. Number one, it is to destroy God's true people in the church. Number two, it is to prevent non Christians from even seeing or hearing about Jesus. And number three, ultimately, the kingdom of darkness has an objective to close down the Corinthian church, which is the context we're looking at today. But let's just be honest. Any local church anywhere in the world that's gonna be faithful to the word of God, the gospel and shepherd semi wealth, I mean, the devil hates that with a passion. And his objective will be to shut those places down. And I just need you to hear this. There is no tactic they will not use because for them, the ends they justify the means. In fact, the only restriction on demonic tactics are gonna be the ones where Jesus says, you can go this far, but you can't do that. Remember Job? God's like, you can do whatever you want to Job, but you can't take his life. And so there are gonna be rules and laws in the spiritual realm set by Jesus. And here's what we see. Like, as long as they're playing within Jesus playbook, they don't have any conventions except for the ones mandated to them by Jesus. All right, so with all this in mind, 2 Corinthians 4. 1. And here's what the Apostle Paul says. He says, therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God. Okay, so this ministry, it refers to the New Covenant ministry that we taught on last week. The vast majority of you, if you weren't here, you're not gonna go back and listen. So I'm gonna give you a 12 second overview. You guys ready?
[00:04:35] New Covenant ministry is one where every person who is a believer in Jesus is empowered by the Holy Spirit. Where every person who trusts in Jesus is given the indwelling Holy Spirit that you can never get rid of for the rest of your life. And this Holy Spirit transforms people more and more to the image of Jesus. Okay, 12 seconds. Did I do it? Some of you counted and you're like 13 and a half. Okay, so sorry.
[00:04:59] He goes on though, and he's talking about this ministry where us empowered by the Holy Spirit are bringing the gospel to people and they are believing and receiving the Holy Spirit when they believe and they're being transformed. And he says, therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
[00:05:18] Okay, so if New Covenant ministry is so powerful and newcover ministry is so transformative, then why would anybody lose heart?
[00:05:33] Well, because the Holy Spirit isn't the only Spirit working to change people's lives.
[00:05:44] If it was just the Holy Spirit, there would be no battle, no war, no dirty, nasty tactics. If it was just the Holy Spirit, I mean, we'd be living in a very different world. But it's not just the Holy Spirit. There's another spirit. There's the demonic realm under the leadership of Satan. And so these kingdoms, these spiritual kingdoms, they are at war. And we know this. We've already said this. The enemy fights nasty and dirty. We know the enemy has demons at its disposal, duped people at its disposal, worldly people at its disposal, possessed people at its disposal to do, for the most part, as he will.
[00:06:22] And little do all of these precious people know that they have been duped for the kingdom of darkness. Little do these precious people know that they are on the losing side. And the only people on the planet who have the good news of who the real victor is are you and me who proclaim the name of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:42] The kingdom of Jesus, on the other hand, actually does have conventions and we actually do have rules so that as we embark in this battle, as we bring the gospel to people who may have never heard of Jesus, like there are rules that we play by. And so here's what he says in verse two, he says, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. So Paul wants the Corinthian Church to be crystal clear on the enemy's warfare tactics so that when believers see these tactics, we know immediately the kingdom of darkness is at play, not the kingdom of Jesus.
[00:07:30] We know when we see certain tactics that it's not the Holy Spirit, because there are things the Holy Spirit does not do because they're sin. And there are things that the Holy Spirit will never tell you to do because they are sin, and he will not tell you to sin. Verse 2 goes on to give the two most common examples of disgraceful and underhanded tactics. Verse 2, he says, we refuse to practice number one, cunning or two, number two, tamper with God's word, cunning and tampering.
[00:08:06] When you see either of these at work, almost certainly what you know is that it is not the kingdom of Jesus motivated by the Holy Spirit that is at work, but it is actually a darker kingdom with a darker agenda at work. Because the Holy Spirit will never tamper with God's word and will never practice cunning. I want to explore these two words. First, cunning.
[00:08:31] This is seeking to win through crafty or deceptive tactics.
[00:08:40] Cunning people almost always know that they're cunning.
[00:08:46] Even when they get caught, they will do whatever they can to cover it up. But deep down inside, a cunning person always knows their cunning. Now, some of you might be wondering oh no, am I a cunning person? And if you don't know if you're a cunning person, the answer, by the way, is probably no. You might be wrong, you might have done things that caused some damage, you might be unwell. But that's different than cunning. Cunning requires awareness, which is what makes it so dark and ugly.
[00:09:17] Here are some modern examples of cunning. Number one, redefining words so that things that are truly evil feel either neutral or even possibly good. So, for example, murdering old people is cunningly rebranded as euthanasia.
[00:09:39] Killing terminally ill patients now becomes mercy killing or death with dignity. Isn't that a funny twist of words?
[00:09:48] A baby is now a fetus.
[00:09:51] Murdering a child is now reproductive healthcare and spouses who they want to be unfaithful.
[00:09:57] It's not committing adultery. But we're in an, quote, open relationship.
[00:10:03] Pornography is now, quote, unquote, adult entertainment. And here's what's interesting is we are watching America buy hook, line and sinker into these cunning rebrands because it allows them to do the things they've always wanted to do and not feel bad about it. But as the people of God, we go, wait a minute, that's cunning. That's not being truthful and honest about what's really going on. As the people of God, we step back and we go. That, I'm pretty sure is the kingdom of darkness at work. Another example of cunning is number two, embellishment. This is adding things to stories that simply aren't true. Typically to make yourself look better and in some weird circumstances to make yourself look worse. I mean, the most obvious way people do this is on social media. Like, there's no world where everything that you post on social media is absolutely true. The amount of exaggeration, I mean, there's a whole industry called influencers who are embellishing what is real and true in their entire life. And now this is the most sought after job for young people in the world to go online, create a fake Persona, lie about how awesome your life is, sell products like, this is cunning and embellishment. What they're presenting isn't real or true. Sometimes cunning is, number three, omission.
[00:11:22] Leaving out factual information that makes you look bad or is just inconvenient. There's this really funny study that recently came out, you may have seen it, and it said that the people who post online about how great their marriages and relationships are statistically have the worst marriages in relationships. Isn't that funny? So, okay, listen, if you just posted something awesome about your Husband or wife, you're fine. We're not gonna judge you. The whole point of it, though, is the people who do it repeatedly, over and over and over. The question is, what are you overcompensating for? And as they dug deeply, they found actually that some of these marriages were the most broken, statistically.
[00:12:02] This is cunning. It's seeking to win. I want everybody to think we're awesome through crafty or deceptive tactics.
[00:12:09] So, not surprising, cunning. This word comes up again a little bit later in 2 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 3. I want to show you this. And it's used to describe the way Satan tricks Eve in the garden of Eden, 2 Corinthians 11:3. But Paul says, I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, that your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And so, for even the apostle Paul, he's looking at the Corinthian church, and he's like, it's not just unbelievers who fall for this cunning trickery. Believers are falling for it.
[00:12:50] Not surprising, Satan also uses the second tactic to trick Eve. This is tampering with God's word. Tampering means altering truth to intentionally mislead.
[00:13:02] I want you to go back with me to Genesis, chapter three, verse one, and I want you to just read this story through the lens of cunning and tampering with God's word.
[00:13:11] Now, the serpent was more crafty cunning than any of the beasts of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Okay, there's so much here. I'm gonna identify a few crafts. By the way, number one, notice that Satan didn't talk to the person who was in charge, but to the woman. And what you learn right away is that Satan will bypass authority and family structures to cun, to dupe, to mislead. But number two, notice the subtle doubt planted about God's character through the word. Actually, that word, I love it and I hate it at the same time. Actually, like, when you hear that word, it is like the whole intent is to create doubt in this context. Number three, notice the twisting. This is the tampering. Notice the twisting of the actual words.
[00:14:06] You shall not eat of any tree. Now, is that what God said? No. In fact, he said, you can eat from anything you want. There's one tree. Don't touch that one. No, touch it, don't eat it.
[00:14:19] And so Eve had never. I Mean never experienced cunning or tampering ever in her entire life. I mean, she's so profoundly vulnerable to this experience. And I mean, Satan just knows. I have got her. Look at verse two. It's striking because in verse one, Satan tampers with God's word. But then something weird happens. In verse two, Eve herself starts tampering with God's word. The woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. And then here's the tampering. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. Is that what God said? God didn't say a word about touching anything. And the question stands for me, did the woman add this on accident or did she add this on purpose because she was trying to win the serpent's approval? Either way, it doesn't matter because the cunning trickery of the serpent won. He has this woman now wrapped around his finger. In verse four, he literally goes out of his way to explicitly say God is wrong. He says this. The serpent says to the woman, you will not surely die. Tampering is altering truth to intentionally mislead. Here are some modern examples of tampering. Number one, scripture twisting. Quoting a scripture out of context to win or to make yourself look better. We talked about this last week, but one of the most common for non Christians who are trying to maybe discredit the Bible is, oh, so you eat bacon and pork? Well, the Bible says you can't, you're a hypocrite. Therefore, you pick and choose and now you're fully equipped. If you were here last week, your response is, that was the old covenant. That's been retired. We now live under the new covenant and you can eat all the bacon and pork you want in Jesus name. Amen. With that being said, people love to twist or to take out of context scriptures to make a point. Particularly, you're going to find this with more like groups of quote unquote Christians who don't really believe a pure gospel anymore. As long as they can use scripture to make a point, context is often irrelevant. Another example of tampering is minimizing.
[00:16:39] This is lessening the weight of some commands so that you can break them and you don't have to feel too bad about it. I mean, Satan just did it. You, you will not die.
[00:16:53] It's not that big of a deal.
[00:16:57] You'll be fine. Or the two most nefarious words in the world of minimizing it's just sex.
[00:17:09] It's just one time. It's just one drink. It's just business.
[00:17:20] Another example of tampering is number three, legalism. This is increasing the weight of certain commands, making them bigger than they're supposed to be so that you can wield them like a sword and condemn other people with them. So here's legalistic Christians. Somehow they manage to take good or neutral things and make them the worst of sins. It's mind numbing to me. So a couple examples. Pardon if this is too close to home for some of you.
[00:17:47] If you preach from the King James Bible, you are leading people straight to the pits of hell. What? What is this?
[00:17:58] If you have one drink, even if you're not an alcoholic, you have one drink. How could you dare call yourself a follower of Jesus? Well, he did. Huh? Okay. If you aren't dressed up in a suit with a tie on Sunday morning, you are a disgrace to our Savior. I'm sorry, who made that rule? Like, what is going on right now? And sometimes people take neutral or good things and they weigh them up extra heavy so they can just throw them at you and condemn you with them. It's very weird. Last thing, number four, tampering could look like heresy. Heresy is adding or subtracting anything from the Gospel. You cannot take away anything from a pure gospel message. The moment you do, it is no longer the gospel. You are not saved by being good. You are saved by grace through faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. You don't get to look at somebody and say, I get it. The resurrection's hard. You believe that Jesus died. He was a great example of dying for sins. And you don't believe he rose from the dead. You don't need to believe that Jesus rose from the dead to be saved. I'm sorry, yes, you do. According to the scriptures, you cannot deny a physical, literal resurrection and still call yourself a Christian. It is a requirement to be a Christian. You don't have to like it. That is not the point of this. The point of this is to establish that God has told us the Gospel is believing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And so, like, these are ways that the kingdom of darkness tampers with the word of God and the gospel. In verse 2, Paul identifies that those who are building the kingdom of Jesus, we actually do have conventions and we play by the rules. And so verse two, he says this, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God, we do two things as believers. When we're thinking about talking to non Christian family members or friends about the gospel, when it comes to the people that we're caring for or shepherding, when it comes to maybe younger Christians who are trying to get answers to what's going on in the word of God, we do two things. Number one, we tell the truth openly and plainly.
[00:20:20] We have no desire for you to be caught off guard.
[00:20:24] We don't hide things, we don't exaggerate things.
[00:20:29] When we get things wrong, we own them.
[00:20:33] There are typically two kinds of people, massive generalizations here, but for the most part, it's accurate. Two kinds of people who are going to ask you a question about Jesus, the Gospel, the Bible, Christianity, etc. The first kind of person is what I would call a gotcha person. They're not humble, they're not actually interested. They don't really want to learn. They don't really want to understand the Bible. They're more just angry and they're reactive and they're more trying to catch you in some kind of hypocrisy. And what they love more than anything is asking you a question that you don't know an answer to. So they can turn around and maybe even look at you and say, you call yourself a Christian and you don't even know the answer to just like basic questions. I don't even engage with goucha people. Okay, you will know a gotcha person. Your spiritual spidey sense will go off and you'll be like, something is not right about this person.
[00:21:21] Then there is the truly curious, humble person. I will talk with curious, humble people any day of the week. And there are easy questions to answer, and there are hard questions to answer. So here's some easy ones. So do you mean like if I personally trust in Jesus, like all my sins are forgiven, like past, present and future? Yeah, if you're sincere. Like if you come to him and say, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? I believe in life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Yeah. That's amazing. So you're saying that no matter how bad I am, the Holy Spirit is not gonna be like, whew, like we over invested in this guy. We need to get out now, you know, like, no, he doesn't do that. He will be with you forever. You're stuck with him. He will never leave you, forsake you, or abandon you. These are the fun ones, by the way. But then there are the hard questions.
[00:22:14] So does the Bible really say that anybody who Rejects Jesus goes to hell and they'll hum and haw. I mean, you gotta. And what I have just found is that if somebody's really curious, they're really seeking answers. By the way, 98% of people already know the answer to this. They just need to hear someone say it. The answer is, yeah, like, this is what the scriptures teach. Explicitly, yes. I would love if it was a different way, but the scriptures are clear.
[00:22:41] Does the Bible really say. Does it really say that living an LGBTQ lifestyle is sin?
[00:22:49] Yeah. I mean, I can't get around that. Like, yeah, it does. I would love it if it didn't, but it does. Yes. That's what the scriptures teach. Does the Bible really say that doing sexual things with somebody that I'm not married to is actually sin? I mean, come on. Like, who cares? Yeah, it does, actually. Our God is holy. It doesn't matter if you're heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual. It doesn't matter. Like, at this point, like, God has this standard of holiness that is upheld in his Word, and so we reserve sexual things for our husband or our wife. That's what we do. This is the standard of scripture. I'd love to get around that. I would. I'd love to make it easier. I'd love to clear your conscience. I'd love for you to be able to do whatever you want so that you don't have to feel bad about it. But I am bound by the simple, clear teachings of scripture. Do you want to talk about that now? The people who are gotcha people. I'm not even answering the questions.
[00:23:39] I'm answering the questions to humble, curious people. And then I look at them and say, let's go deeper. Let's study. And if I'm wrong, then I'll change. But, like, I stand on the authority of God's word.
[00:23:53] But number two, we trust people to make their own decisions. He says we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience. In other words, we don't rely on dark tactics like manipulation or control or threats. In fact, we want to rely on tactics of transparency and truth and honesty. And we have to trust you to make a decision for your life. I have a preference on the decision you make, and this is a lesson every parent has to learn. I would like to control all my children's decisions. I would like them to be made more and more into the image of Michael. But that is not my job.
[00:24:37] My job is to give them what they need, and I have to entrust them to make a decision with their own soul. And I can't threaten them or manipulate them. I want it to be meaningful. And I have to step back and just trust them and just say, lord, you've got this. Because if they don't make the decision for themselves, then it's not real. The whole point of truth and trust, I mean, it's, yes, winning, but it's winning the right people with integrity.
[00:25:04] So Paul identifies in verse three, there are just going to be some people you can't win.
[00:25:10] And the only way to see their life changed at this point, they've got everything they need. The only way is if they come to God and say, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? Will you give me the Holy Spirit so that I can be transformed? So, like, there's gonna be a handful of people. I mean, you've done everything you can. And the only thing, only thing left is for them to trust in Christ. He says this in verse three.
[00:25:32] He says, even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing.
[00:25:40] So there's a spiritual veil. And somehow this spiritual veil just prevents some people from thinking, from seeing. You get into a conversation about Jesus and you're just like, they are not understanding what I'm saying. And it doesn't matter how logical you are. It's just like I can't even get through. There's just something blocking the conversation.
[00:26:03] And I appreciate this. Paul understands with clarity how the spiritual realm and the mind work together. Look at verse four.
[00:26:14] He says, in their case, the ones who are veiled, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers. So the God of this world is referencing Satan for sure.
[00:26:28] And so what Paul communicates is that the God of this world, Satan, controls the minds of the masses through culture. Now, I would like to make this point. I'm gonna ask a handful of questions. These are rhetorical, which means do not answer. Are we on the same page? So here we go.
[00:26:48] Which spirit is in control of the secular music industry?
[00:26:55] Which spirit is in control of mainstream media?
[00:27:00] Which spirit is in control of legacy news media?
[00:27:04] Which spirit is in control of the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, Communism and socialism in general? Interesting. Which spirit is pushing globally for a one world government? Not the spirit of Jesus. Which spirit is pushing LGBTQ initiatives in education and everywhere else you can imagine? Which spirit is seeking to divide through critical race theory everywhere it can, particularly in higher education, where it is completely pervaded. Which spirit seeks to make churches more theologically inclusive? Which spirit is at work in young Christians all over the west. For them to not deconstruct Christianity, but to deconstruct the gospel itself.
[00:27:44] Which spirit is at work creating and ramming cultural mantras down our throat? All religions worship the same God. Good people go to heaven, death by dignity, etc.
[00:27:55] Which spirit is in control of the porn industry? Now, why do I add this last one? I want you to see this. Here's some challenging global data points.
[00:28:03] Retail, e commerce globally gets about 2 to 3 billion monthly visits.
[00:28:09] Search engines, 3 to 4 billion monthly visits.
[00:28:13] Social media, 4 to 6 billion monthly visits. Pornography, 5 to 7 billion monthly visits.
[00:28:22] Ephesians 2:2. Paul calls Satan the prince of the power of the air who determines the course of the world.
[00:28:33] So look at verse four again.
[00:28:35] In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers.
[00:28:43] Okay, so how does the God of this world blind the minds of unbelievers?
[00:28:49] Through a total onslaught of the mind of every human alive. To degrade your conscience, your logic, your discernment and your humanity so that we all conform to the anti gospel.
[00:29:05] It is hard to communicate the level of propaganda onslaught through every medium that we participate in daily. And so as followers of Jesus, you can't escape it. But we can make sure that our foundation is not built on the propaganda, but on the word of God, so that as the propaganda comes in, we can filter out the evil and we can receive what is good, right and true.
[00:29:35] But what Paul identifies, and this is so striking, is that even Christians have the ability to be profoundly impacted by the cunning tactics in our minds of the evil one. And then we end up experiencing what we call spiritual fog. Here's spiritual fog, the inability to see blatant deceptions right in front of your eyes.
[00:30:01] So how does spiritual fog happen? How do you otherwise, like Christians filled with the Holy Spirit, how can we not discern sometimes what is so obviously dark right in front of our face? Well, when we are formed more by the onslaught of propaganda media from the world than we are the Word, then we begin to get this haze set in this spiritual fog. So 2 Corinthians 11:3. We already read this, but I want you to see it again. He says, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning.
[00:30:35] Your thoughts, where's this battle starting?
[00:30:38] Your mind, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ or Colossians 2, 8.
[00:30:51] See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit. Where's that in the mind, the playing field is mental according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world. And by the way, elemental spirits of the world are demonic spirits, the low level, deep demonic spirits that are seeking to corrupt the world and not according to Christ.
[00:31:19] Spiritual fog makes Christians unknowingly susceptible to terrible ideas, demonic influence and evil behavior. This is why every one of us, we are capable of falling into a season of spiritual fog. Myself and you and everyone in between.
[00:31:35] And so here's. This is like a super sacred moment when a friend, a godly friend or a godly family member or a pastor sits down with you and just says, this part of your life. I know you probably don't realize it, but this is not what God's word says you should be doing. And we go, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. We minimize, right? Cause it's fine.
[00:31:58] But if somebody looks at you and they have, I mean, that's a big deal, we realize this right? When somebody actually has to confront you and identify a specific behavior and tell you that it's not in line with God's word, it is possible that we're in a spiritual fog and we just didn't even realize that it happened. And so we pull back in these moments. We take things really, really seriously when we find ourselves on the receiving end of confrontation from godly people.
[00:32:21] In verse four, Paul identifies Satan's primary motivation in creating the most pervasive propaganda machine in all of human and we'll call it angel history. He says in verse four, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. Okay, why?
[00:32:42] To keep them, the unbelievers, from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
[00:32:52] And so here's what he's teaching. The kingdom of darkness is trying to prevent non Christians from three things so that they never turn to Jesus. Number one, he's trying to prevent them from even hearing the gospel in the first place. I mean, getting somebody into a place where you can speak freely about the gospel is getting harder and harder and harder, let alone to have a rational conversation about it. But if by chance we have this privilege to be in a conversation with somebody about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of darkness is trying to prevent them from even understanding the Gospel. The propaganda machine that is aimed at all of humanity and onslaughting all of our brains is lying about what the true gospel is, spreading rumors about the Bible and the Gospel, creating large influential Cults, just to increase confusion, and they slap the name Christian on themselves, even though they are essentially not Christian.
[00:33:55] But if somebody does get the opportunity to hear the gospel and they are humble and curious enough that they are willing to have a rational conversation and understand kind of the nuances, the kingdom of darkness is trying to prevent them from thinking honestly about the gospel.
[00:34:12] Because if you really do, like, if you're going to come to Christ, the kingdom of darkness would love for you to fully understand the social cost.
[00:34:22] You might lose some friends. You know, they don't tolerate that religion.
[00:34:27] Or they want you to be afraid of the possible financial cost. Your boss might let you go if you choose to follow Jesus or to make it overwhelmingly clear that the gospel following Jesus, it's a threat to your current lifestyle. Like, if you do this, some of the things that you love, you're not going to be able to do anymore. Are you sure you want to do that? And these are my favorite. They trivialize people who believe in Jesus as ignorant and uneducated. You don't want people to think you're ignorant and uneducated, do you?
[00:35:02] Or even better, you demonize the people who do it. They're the worst of all the people. Judgmental, hypocritical, controlling bigots.
[00:35:13] Do you really want to come to Christ? And so you can see all the tactics? And let me just tell you, there is great, great desire in the kingdom of darkness to make as many obstacles between every person alive and hearing, processing and considering rationally the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[00:35:36] Now this is one of those texts that is just heavy, right? But what do we want to do? We want to increase our discernment in terms of which when we see tactics, are those kingdom of darkness tactics or the Kingdom of Jesus tactics? And so we want to raise our discernment on these things. There are three. So what's for you, number one, Realize that you are the target.
[00:36:01] The kingdom of darkness is spending an obscene amount of resources on you and me.
[00:36:09] So I love this. When a person trusts in Christ. I feel like we're going to beat this horse dead here. When a person trusts in Christ, they receive the Holy Spirit.
[00:36:18] And one of the things the Holy Spirit does, Ephesians tells us that the Holy Spirit seals you.
[00:36:24] In fact, it's like the Holy Spirit is saying territory lost their mind forever and nobody can undo the seal.
[00:36:34] Colossians 1:13. I love the way it says it. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Okay, so the Moment you trust in Jesus, if you get the privilege to watch someone come to Christ, there is a transference of kingdoms and territory has been boys and men. I want you to just consider for a moment your value to the kingdom of darkness.
[00:37:08] One man given over to sin can destroy generations of young people and young women.
[00:37:18] I want you to think about the man who has multiple children, leaves his wife, abandons his kids before he does, exposes them to vile things. You're talking somebody who's creating generational wounds.
[00:37:31] And then I want you to think about the fact that every single father is creating the initial God concept of his children. Think about the absolute privilege it is for the demonic realm to destroy a man so that he destroys the God concept and every one of the kids, making it that much harder for them to see the real God when they hear the gospel of Jesus. Men, you're a high value target.
[00:37:58] Girls and women, I want you to consider your value to the kingdom of darkness.
[00:38:03] You represent an entire aspect of the image and the character of God that no man can.
[00:38:12] You were created to be feminine, to live out. I can't say the word femininity in a way that brings God glory and manifests an aspect of his nature and character in the image of God that none of the men can do and the evil one hates. When women show forth the beauty of the character and the nature of God and their femininity, it drives the kingdom of darkness insane. They want you sexualized, stupid and slaves to pop culture. Because if you move a whole bunch of women, you move the culture and this is where they want you. Lemmings and clones regurgitate the machine. But we are not gonna do that because we are not people of the kingdom of darkness. We are the people of Jesus. Ladies, you're a high value target. And so you take your femininity and you submit it to the authority of scripture, say God. What does this say? Men, you take your masculinity and we get to show forth and shame the evil one by showing forth who God is. So at number two, discern the spirit at work in and around you by their tactics.
[00:39:20] There are gonna be a whole bunch of things that happen in life and you're like, I don't know why, it's what. But the moment you see these tactics go back a level and you can say, when I see cunning and tampering, I know that I'm probably watching the kingdom of darkness try to explain, expand its territory.
[00:39:37] And when I watch open non manipulative gospel word based things, I'M probably watching the Holy Spirit seeking to expand his kingdom. And so we step back and we just say we're going to use our discernment so that when we see these kinds of behaviors, we just really quickly know. I know the origin. This is dark spirits or it's the Holy Spirit. And finally, number three, proclaim Jesus life, death and resurrection wisely. And clearly the demonic realm knows this. The gospel is a threat to their territory. You and I wield the gospel, the good news of salvation, and they're going to do whatever they can to make sure that people can't hear it, understand it, rationally talk about it, or really, really won't receive Christ.
[00:40:27] And thankfully, we can't make them do that. We can't manipulate somebody or scare them to heaven. But what we can do is pray, as Paul does, for open doors for the gospel, because this gospel message is the only way. Believing it is the only way someone's ever going to get transferred from darkness to light.
[00:40:44] And you might be here and you're like, you know what? I don't know why. For some reason I think a veil has been over my eyes and you might be even here and you're like, like spiritually, I actually do need to believe in Jesus. And so I just want to encourage you. If you're here and you know that Jesus is God and you know that you're a sinner and you know that you have fallen short of his standards and you are ready to ask him for forgiveness. I just have great news. You can tell him you're sorry. Tell him that you believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and that you want to be forgiven and receive. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And great news. I don't care how terrible you've been. I don't care the evil you have done. The blood of Christ for anybody who asks for forgiveness will be applied to you once for all and forever. And if that is a decision that you want to make, come talk to one of us. Oh, man, we'd just love to encourage you, champion you, resource you in any way we can as you learn. What does it mean to follow Jesus and to be a minister of the gospel? Let's pray together.
[00:41:42] Father, we love you. We're thankful. Thankful for your word. Thankful for eavesdropping into this correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians.
[00:41:54] Thankful for Jesus and your Holy Spirit.
[00:41:57] Thankful that the blood of Christ covers us and the Holy Spirit empowers us.
[00:42:03] Lord, if there's anyone here who is. Who's wrestling with whether or not to trust you. May you help them get what they need in order to trust you. Lord, if there are lies that we've believed, would you, Holy Spirit, convict us and show us some of those things?
[00:42:18] We want to be more like Jesus. We don't want to fall to the trickery and cunning of the evil one. Help us to this, and these are huge prayers. But God, with your Holy Spirit in us, we are asking, make us more like Jesus. With the mind of Christ and the heart of Christ and the life of Christ, we pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
