2nd Thessalonians chapter 3.
I'm going to read verses 1, 2, and 3, and then we'll go to work. Finally, brethren, pray for us
that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified
even as it is with you, and that we may be delivered from unreasonable
and wicked men, for all men have not faith. But the Lord is faithful
who shall establish you, or the word is really established, and
keep you from evil. This is where we'll stop. And
the Lord is faithful who will establish you and keep you from
evil. Now we've been talking for several
weeks about the objective that Paul says for which he wants
the Thessalonians to pray for them and that is the that the
Word of the Lord may have free course that's line one and two
in verse one finally brethren pray for us that the Word of
the Lord may have free course and be glorified even as it is
with you and what we've learned over the last couple of weeks
is when it comes to God's That's the first line in verse one,
the liberation of the gospel's agenda through prayer, liberating
the gospel's agenda through prayer. We are obliged to hear God call
you and I to a responsibility to pray for the success of the
gospel. We are responsible to hear God
call us to a responsibility to pray for the success of the gospel. You and I don't have the liberty
or freedom to simply say, well, God will just do it. That's the
thing that verse one does to us if we pay attention to verse
one. See, you and I really are frequently pagan in our thinking. And when I say pagan in our thinking,
in this category, We often think of God as way up there doing
his own thing so far above and beyond us that the normative
disposition is to just do life, just do your thing. You know,
God's in control. Isn't that the big phrase, Christian
Jews, especially Christians that have a big God. We love to say,
well, God's in control. And we mean by God is in control
that we can take our hands off the wheel and we can just let
let the ship steer wherever it's going to go. But when you read
your Bible more carefully, what you come to understand is while
God is in control, he created man in his image and in his likeness,
and he gave him certain responsibilities of which outside of those responsibilities,
there are consequences. If I don't hear God saying to
me, Jesse, you must pray for the success of the gospel, then
I'm going to suffer the consequences of neglecting to hear God. And as I had to do it last week,
I'll do it now so we can move forward. How will God show me
that I have been neglectful to pray for the success of the gospel? Well, In my own family life,
I will see a retardation on the part of my children and my wife
when it comes to a knowledge of God. On the part of my family,
I will see a delay in God's mercies to save my children and bring
them into a knowledge of Christ. And I will see that in my extended
family. And I will see that in the church.
And I will wake up one day and realize that God said, pray. Have you been there? You know,
a simple passage will come to you. Men ought to always pray
and faint not. Right? With everything, let us
pray with thanksgiving, making our requests and our supplications
known unto God. So the Bible will tell us to
pray, and yet we will act as if, well, we really don't have
to pray. Am I telling the truth? We really don't have to pray,
but we really do have to pray. And when God calls you to that
partnership, that communion of prayer, you might as well start
asking the question, so what is this prayer thing all about?
You might as well, because prayer is not natural to the unsaved
man, but it really is natural to a true believer. Do you know
when a true believer is born again, right then and there at
their new birth, they start praying. Upon conversion, you pray. Now
prayers are, they have a spectrum in terms of their complexity
and their simplicity. Prayer is not a flat line just
talking to God. There are several dimensions
to prayer, several aspects to prayer, of which prayer becomes
a doctrine as well. We have to pray supplicatory
prayers. We have to pray imprecatory prayers. We have to pray doxological prayers.
We have to pray several kinds of prayers that constitutes a
relationship with God based on who he is, who we are, and what
the situation is. We have to pray several kinds
of prayers based on who God is, who we are, and what the situation
is. So prayer is something that you
and I must be exercised in terms of doctrine as well. You don't
just naturally pray. Not pray successfully. So what
happens with most Christians and I know this is true with
American Christians so you can say amen to this even before
I say it. One of the things you come to discover is over a few
years in your Christian walk is that you are not really good
at praying. Am I telling the truth? That
prayer is something that is counterintuitive when it comes to biblical kinds
of prayers, biblical kind of praying, where you are to be
praying for specific issues relative to the glory of God. And what
it ultimately means is this, you and I are by nature selfish. And as selfish people, we are
really only concerned about our own issues. And I'll tell you
when we pray, we pray when ours is threatened. But what God is
calling us to pray for is when that which is His is threatened.
Wow. Wow. You got that? And so, you know, this is the
privilege and the responsibility and the net effect of doing it
or not doing it for you to be able to look out and see what
you and I have sown if we are not praying. What happens if
a believer takes prayer seriously? You know what'll happen? You'll
come to know God better, you'll come to know yourself better,
and you'll come to know the will of God a whole lot more. And
you'll become more sensitive to the things that please God
and don't. If you become much more fervent, much more serious
at real, I'm talking about authentic prayer, you will learn what the
good and acceptable and perfect will of God is. Well, I say that
just to permeate your thoughts with the importance of what verse
1 says. You guys can't back up to verse
1 up there all that talking? Can you guys get back to verse
1? That's cuz that's where we are back at verse 1 David and
Rick verse 1. Can you go back to verse 1? Thank
you So when the Apostle is saying
to the church at Thessalonica pray for us that's no small matter
We saw it in Acts chapter 13. We looked at several other verses
and What we are praying for is the success of the gospel. Are
we not and We're praying that the word of the Lord might be
glorified. And we learned last week that
the word of the Lord being glorified is when the gospel actually plants
itself in the hearts of men and women and they become saved.
Nothing is greater on our part than the salvation of sinners. And more particularly, is it
not the people we love and care for? Now, come on now, when we
get to 1 John, the Spirit of God is gonna beat us up real
bad on this too. Now, you can't really be loving somebody for
whom you don't pray. Ooh. Come on now, that's so true,
isn't it so true? See, so what prayer does is it
actually exposes my heart for being selfish and narrow. I look up in a year's time, I
haven't prayed for a particular loved one, I have been loveless.
What am I supposed to think that somehow out of a nebulous providence
their life is going to line up? And if it should line up, you
know what happened? Somebody else prayed for them
and God manifested his glory in their life. And when they
come to me, daddy, guess what? The Lord revealed his glory to
me. I'll go hallelujah. But down in my heart, I'll have
to say I ain't had nothing to do with it. Oh, isn't that powerful? And so what prayer calls us to
is the question of, do we believe? Because at the heart of prayer
is simple faith. Nothing is simpler in the expression
of faith than saying, Abba, Father. Nothing is simpler. So Paul says,
pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course
and be glorified Even as it is with you we saw that it was glorified
in them first Thessalonians 2 13 They believe the gospel it bore
fruit in their life. Now. Here's another reason why
we're at verse 2 now Here's another reason why at verse 2 the reason
why we are to pray is because in that we may be what what's
that? Next line delivered from unreasonable and wicked men So
Paul says not only that we are to pray that the gospel may have
free course, that it might be successful if we pray success
through prayer, but we are to pray for success by a deliverance,
a deliverance from, and this is what we saw last week, obstacles. Now you guys can go back to where
you were up there on the screen. Obstacles. Pray for deliverance
from obstacles. That's verse five, we wanna go
back to verse three, verse two. And that we may be delivered
from unreasonable and wicked men for all men have not faith. So in your outline, after we
got past glorified, we go to obstacles and we talked about
what those obstacles are. Back to verse three, you're on
verse four. We wanna go back to verse three, those obstacles,
sorry, verse two. Those obstacles are false religion,
false prophets, sin, and carnality. There we go. Those obstacles
are false religion, false prophets, sin, and carnality. I want you
to stay there for a moment. So here's what happens. When
God saves you and calls you out of darkness into his marvelous
light, you're all happy because you're saved, right? Remember
that day? And then about, you know, a month or two later into
your conversion or salvation, you realize that you were in
a warfare. I was a shock to you, wasn't it? Because you thought,
you know, it was all downhill from this point. I'm saved now.
I'm good to go now. I'm saved. But all of a sudden
the fiery darts started coming, the temptations, the battles.
And then actually you guys were entered into, you were allowed
to enter into the portal of the real worldview. You actually
went through the door of truth and began to see the world for
what it really is. a very sinful world, very wicked
world, filled with snares, traps, djinns, obstacles, hindrances. Is this true? And in the Pilgrim's
Progress, it talks about the slew of despond, the pit of despair,
the dungeon of hopelessness, these different metaphors for
how easy it is for the Christian life to become challenging. And
one of the questions you start raising within your first year
of a Christian is this, is it supposed to be this hard? Can
I get a witness? Is this supposed to be this hard?
And the answer is yes, because the Christian is called upon
to grow. And in order to grow, God has
to put weight on you. He has to put resistance on you
in order to strengthen your faith. God has to try you. That's what he does. And that
process is very difficult for Christians early on because we're
asking the question, is God in our life? And yet what we see
from Paul's statement in verse one and two is really a request
of maturity. Paul's been a believer for a
long time now, and he understands when you become a believer publicly,
you become marked out by the world and marked out by the devil.
You become his target. And so because you are now the
target of your adversary, the devil, which is God's adversary,
now you have to learn how to live in this world strategically. You have to live in this world
deliberately, intentionally. You have to live in this world
wisely. You have to live in this world with a sense of resolve
or else it will naturally occur for you to retreat and hide and
circle the wagons and put yourself in a safe place where you don't
have to fight any battles. Only when you go into your cave,
you know what? You'll be looking up and you'll
see a shadow on the wall and you'll get scared of it because
the devil is in that little cave you're in now. Whoa, how did
he get here? Am I making some sense? So when
the apostle says, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may
have free course. He's saying, we're asking you to pray for
the positive results of the objective of God in the agenda of the gospel
and the salvation of sinners. Hallelujah. But while you pray,
here's what you've got to pray in order for that to happen.
You've got to pray that we may be delivered from wicked and
ungodly men who will seek to stop that process. You guys got that? So while we're
praying for the ministers of the gospel and the word of the
lord running swiftly to and fro throughout the world by the mechanism
of the church by technology by the efforts of believers in ministry
by cds being made and mb3s being made and labels being made and
purchasing and selling and all the whole physical exertion that's
required to get the gospel. We also have to pray that on
the other end where the male company is concerned, we don't
have wicked and ungodly men who want to take our box of CDs and
throw them away before they reach Uganda or reach Kenya or reach
Africa or reach Jamaica or reach the Middle East or reach Mexico
or wherever we are sending them. Am I making some sense? Because
God expects you to know that that will happen. you don't pray. See it? Because there are a gazillion
micro managing factors in relationship to one
thing accomplishing another. There are a gazillion itty bitty
little particles connected to God's whole providential scheme
all around the world that operate in concordance with his will
to accomplish a thing. And those independent entities
have to, on some occasions, be targeted for prayer, be targeted
to be released, be targeted to be hindered, be targeted to be
stopped. They must not be assumed upon.
And so I'll just use your family as an example, because I know
it doesn't come home to us unless we do that. And so as we are,
many of us are experienced with raising kids, what we find ourselves
doing when we get married in the joy of marital unity is we
propagate. We have children happy as a lot. We have the children, but by
the time they turn three, four, five years old, we are, we are
keenly aware that all we did was bring another eternity bound
soul. into the warfare, didn't we? And now you're really struggling
with, boy does it make any sense at all to bring children into
this wicked, vile, fiery furnace. Yes! How come? God said so, right? Multiply, replenish the earth,
so do it. And so, well, God, if this world
is filled with all the kinds of troubles that it is, what
am I to do with my children? Raise them up in the fear and
the nurture of the Lord. Pray for them. Pray for their
school teachers. Pray for their peers. Pray for
their little friends that they hang around. Pray that God keeps
them innocent in terms of them being exposed to so much potential
vanity that can harm their thinking and harm their psyche and harm
their spirit. You're praying for them. That's
a full-time job in itself, isn't it? praying for your children,
praying for your sons, praying for your daughters, praying for
your grandchildren, praying for your great-grandchildren. Full-time
job. Don't tell me if you are a true believer and have a scintilla
of biblical knowledge that you don't have something to do. You
do! If you were simply assigned to prayer for the rest of your
life, you would be preoccupied all day long, every day. Right? So I just want to make sure I
impressed it upon you. Certainly God will get his work
done, but he means to do it through his people's prayer. What does
Paul mean when he says, uh, unreasonable and ungodly man, uh, has, as
we have here in, um, in our outline? Well, some of the things that
will hinder us as we saw before is false religion. And that's
up there. That's point number one, false
religion. Um, We were talking about this in our women's theology
class just a little bit last night. One of the things also
that surprises you after a period of time in the word or in the
Christian faith or in the Christian way is that you come across so
much conflict and so much opposition and so much difference, variance
in just the Christian circle that you find yourself now asking
the question, Am I in the right church? Am I in the right place? Am I even in the right religion?
It seems like everybody has a doctrine, everybody has a tongue, everybody
has a dream, everybody has a revelation, everybody has a vision. This
one person thinking that, that person thinking this, the other
person thinking the other thing. What am I to do, right? Well, I'll tell you what happened
according to Matthew chapter 13, while men slept, and enemies
sowed tares among the wheat and those tares became doctrinal
strongholds that entered into the church and became for us
challenges that we have to overcome. So here we are 2100 years into
the gospel age, you and I. And it wasn't like they didn't
have it in the first century, but we certainly have it here in
the 21st century, don't we? I mean, a massive array of false
teachings everywhere of which the Christian now has to be discerning. He has to ask himself, is this
the truth when we're listening to that person? And so one of
the things that the Bible tells us that we must do is we must
be able to prove all things and to hold fast to that which is
good. First Thessalonians chapter five, right? The Bible also tells
us to test the spirits whether they be of God or not. 1 John
chapter 4. Every spirit that says he knows
the Lord doesn't necessarily know the Lord. We have to test
the spirit. We have to be able to discern
right from wrong, truth from error. And that means now we
have to really be serious about the Bible. Ah, here we go. Here's another point of critical
concern that plays a role into what the apostle is saying. You
are not going to be as sincere in your prayers for me that I
am delivered from ungodly men. If you are not aware that your
Bible teaches that broad is the road that leads to destruction,
many there be that go on it, narrow is the way and few there
be that find it. You are not going to sincerely
pray for the ministers of the gospel if you don't believe that
they are outnumbered by one to 400. You're not going to pray for
them and you're not going to see the the miraculous mercy
of God to any people group who have the truth and are exposed
to the truth and are growing in the truth as a consequence
of God protecting them and providing a platform for them to actually
engage in biblical truth without being hindered by some false
religious organization. If you are not sensitive to those
dynamics, you won't pray for it. This is why you ought to
always pray for the freedom to hear the word, the freedom to
study the word, the freedom to believe and express your conviction
in that belief here in this present country. Because believe you
me, there are brothers and sisters around the world who suffer tremendously
for the faith of the gospel by false religion, false forms of
Christianity, false forms of non-Christian religions, pagan
religions. They are assaulted by false prophets
in the church. One of the things that we have
observed with our Ladies' Beauty for Ashes series, if you've been
listening to them, is there's a running theme that goes through
the messages, and that is very many of them were assaulted in
a spiritual way either emotionally or psychologically or even physically
in the churches that they were a part of because of false prophets
who prey upon weak and undiscerning souls. Is that true? Very many
of our sisters can talk to you about pastors who made passes
on them or abused them in certain ways as a child or as a young
adult because they were naive to the false prophet who was
praying P-R-E-Y-I-N-G upon the souls of men because of our naivety
and our ignorance. This is prolifically seen in
the Catholic church with pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse,
but it is just as prevalent in the evangelical church. It's
just not as overt. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? And one of the other major obstacles in the evangelical
church under false prophets will be sort of this superiority complex
when you have a false model of church governmental construct.
I've talked to you guys about this before. The monarchial system,
this monarch system where the pastor is king and the wife is
first lady and the children are first family and the rest of
the church is kind of the subordinate laity that serves at the beckoning
call of the anointed in his family. That false monarchial model is
an abusive system because it allows the hierarchy of the leadership
to dominate psychologically and in other ways the downline. It's an unbiblical model. That
monarchial model is an unbiblical model. But these unbiblical models
exist where people who profess to be Christians are ignorant
of the book. When you don't hear the Lord
Jesus say, call no man on earth your father, call no man on earth
your master, you are all brethren. Now that's an egalitarian principle
that keeps the hierarchy element out of it, of which even the
disciples were falling prey. Lord, can we sit on your right?
And can we sit on your left? And he said, that's not for me
to give. I'll tell you what, don't you get caught up in the
fact that you were closest to me. When people come to you,
you better demonstrate that you were closest to me by being servant
of all. You better be ready to wipe people's
feet and give them your jacket. take the lower seat and demonstrate
an authentic Christ-like predisposition. Don't you sit on your high hearts
and let them call you bishop. Are you hearing me? And these
are obstacles to faith. They are obstacles to the word
of God. the people that are on the outside of the church looking
in loving to see these inordinate dysfunctional paradigms as it
were hindering the church from prospering in the right way they
look forward to the fall because they can anticipate it then they
got their cameras on it wide lens cameras close shot pimples
and all see They don't know what they're talking about. Am I making
some sense? So you got false religion, your larger denominational
sectors, and you can tie false prophets into it. Those are challenges. Those are difficulties. Those
are obstacles to the glorification of the word of God. It's termination
and it's the ability to save men and women. And so you've
got that. Then you've also got the real problem of sin. Do you
see that? your outline false religion false
prophets and sin what do I mean by that we're talking about that
enemy in me that if I don't take most seriously that one will
send me to hell right that's the one that'll send you to hell
the false prophets not gonna send you to hell the false church
is not gonna send you to him you can talk about them you can
expose them that's what the Bible says do reprove and expose the
unfruitful works of darkness everywhere whatsoever is made
manifest as light. So we have to expose false prophets,
false teachers. You do that for people who are
serious about the way. Now, people who are not serious
about the way they don't want you exposing false prophets because
to expose the false prophet is to expose them. But when you
are exposing false prophets and false systems and false churches,
you are clearing out the way so that we can now get to the
business that is much more serious than the false prophet and the
false church. And that is the sin that's within.
See, the ultimate thing that's going to send you and me to hell
is not the false prophet or the false church. It's your sin,
my sin. You guys got that? That's the
battle that we have to waste. Those are the obstacles So when
we're praying for the glorification of of the word its ability to
terminate and bring about a conversion in our life We are asking god
to actually do a work of grace to help us now fight against
this battle of sin That wages war in our own heart galatians
chapter 5 go to galatians 5 i'm going to show you a couple of
verses now before we move forward the apostle paul And this is
actually getting ready to move us into our next category of
thinking when we get to verse six. In every New Testament epistle,
you may as well mark this, chapter five. And I think I said it last
week. The epistles are regulatory documents. What they did was to regulate
aberrations and departures from biblical truth that was laid
down by the apostles to the church. Every epistle, the Roman, the
epistle to the Romans, the epistle to the Corinthians, the Galatian
epistles, Ephesians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Philippi, and
particularly Ephesians, Corinthians, Colossians, Philippi, and Thessalonians,
these are all corrective epistles. 1 John is a corrective epistle. And what that means, and I want
you to get this, what that means is first you hear the truth,
And then you receive that truth in the joy of your heart. But
then immediately after that truth comes a lie that seeks to undo
that truth incrementally in your life, in part or in whole, and
nullify the truth that you heard. This is the battle that Jesus
made very clear to the disciples in John chapter 14. At the end
of the verse of John chapter 14, Jesus says, He says, Satan
is coming after me and he has no part with me hereafter. I will not speak with you much,
but Satan is coming and he'll be doing a lot of talking and
he'll deceive a lot of people. If you don't pay attention to
what I've already said, he let his disciples know that his disciples
are now going to be tested with this fact that what we are called
to do as Christians is to remember what the Lord said. because the
person that's coming now is gonna tell you what the Lord is saying. Yeah, and that's the difference
between the written word and this so-called prophetic word
that goes on in the Christian churches where people are exposed
to and made vulnerable to the Lord told me to tell you. You
know, the Lord told me to tell you. And so these are the battles
that we're fighting. And in every one of the churches, the Gentile
churches particularly, when Paul established that church on the
gospel of the person and work of Christ, somewhere in their
body politic, they had a weakness. Like the church at Corinth had
a weakness for wisdom. And they had a weakness for the
pride of accomplished men. They had a weakness for Greek
sophistry, the kinds of satirical and sophistry of wise words. And so they were open to and
susceptible to men coming in who were learned, lettered, and
capable of, as it were, mesmerizing them through their ability to
speak. These were eloquent orators,
and they were mesmerizers in terms of their capacity to spellbound
the people with stories. Unlike the simple proclamation
of the gospel that came through the apostle Paul, who told them
in 1 Corinthians 2, now listen, I could talk like these fellas,
but if I do, the gospel would be of non effect. I was determined
when I came to you to speak in such simple, straightforward
speech that all you heard was the person and work of Christ.
Now you have a choice to embrace the simplicity of the gospel,
which exalts the person and work of Christ. or go away and get
caught up in having your ears tickled by some fella that's
using psychology and different manipulative methods by which
he would tickle your ears and make you feel good. Am I making
some sense? It's funny how... people who
are predisposed to the rah-rah preaching and the hoopla preaching
and the emotional preaching and the sensual preaching and the
empty rhetoric preaching will come in and listen to my exposition. And the first thing they will
say is, you are a great teacher. Implication is, but I haven't
heard you preach yet. And you won't. Not if you mean by that, I've
got a word from the Lord for you. None of you mean you want me
to actually help deconstruct your cognitive thinking capacities
and cause you to just go into an emotional zone so that you
can be feeling oriented instead of thinking oriented. And if
you're asking me to do that, you're asking me to aid and abet
in your deception. And I'm not going to do that.
When you come into a Christian church, the lights are to be
cut on, not cut off. You may not like what you see
when the lights get cut off. But when you come into a Christian
church, the lights are getting cut off. but you can go straight
to sleep under that emotional preaching. That's right preacher. Do you know how many people go
into hell for a green with a lime preacher? Here's what Paul said. This is
a fundamental principle to watch it here. And I'm going to read
in Galatians chapter five, uh, verse, um, seven through nine. And this here has to do with
them running the people, the people of God running. We're
talking about the word of God running. We also talked about
the prophet running, but we also say the christian has now been
called to run a race. Isn't that right? The word of
god runs the prophet runs with the word the christian that receives
that word now He's running. Listen what paul said you did
run well verse 5 verse 7. Do you see it? Who? Did what hinder you? That you should obey that you
should not obey the truth. So look at what verse 7 says
look verse 7 says They had received the baton of the gospel. They
heard the whistle say, go. They started running and somewhere
on the track, an obstacle was put in their way. And the baton
was about to be taken from their hand. And if the apostle Paul
didn't run alongside him and say, listen, you're about to
stop, you're going to be disqualified if you don't keep running. Something's
hindering you. Something's hindering you. Watch
this. Something's hindering you that you should not obey the
truth. This persuasion does not come of him that calleth you
and here's the warning This is why it's so important for us
to pray verse 9 a little leaven does what leavens the whole lump? Now paul is talking to the whole
church at galatia Let's say that we were the galatian church.
Certainly the galatian church was uh, a lot larger than uh
than grace because they were the galatian was a region and
so you had lots of little fellowships all over the whole city But let's
say we had a Galatian church and one or two guys came into
the church teaching salvation by grace plus works. And let's say they were extremely
persuasive. They knew how to handle the Bible
and take scriptures out of context, build constructs and show you,
see, you got to do something to save yourself. And that starts
permeating the church. If someone doesn't arrest that
leaven, If someone doesn't arrest that cancer, the whole church
will become leavened. Are you guys following me? Because
it's the nature of collective bodies to actually assimilate
into erroneous practices if someone doesn't stand up and say, this
is wrong. Listen to me, let me say this
again. It is the nature of body politics, groups of people to
follow the pattern that's taking place in the church. This is
why you see churches go off the traditional path of biblical
teaching onto a more contemporary mode where it's feel good, seeker
sensitive, and really catering to the new fads and models that
are allegedly successful. And you wonder why is it proliferating?
Why is it growing? Because no one has stood up in
those churches and said, hey, this is wrong. They allowed it
to happen because they were now, their target now is no longer
biblical truth being clearly taught and explained. Their target
now is making people feel good and having the ambience of a
growing gregarious atmosphere. So you got thousands of people
sitting in these assemblies going kumbaya in a Christian sense
while the truth is not penetrating their hearts. And that's what
was happening here in the Galatian church. And so Paul said in verse
9, which is what we have to be careful of a little leaven leavens
the whole lump now. I've just shared with you what
happens in the congregation, in the larger congregational
sense. I said that the four things that can get us is false religion,
false prophets, sin in general, but then also carnality. Now,
you might think that they are synonyms, but I'm going to show
you the difference. Go with me to Galatians chapter five. I
want you to see this. And if you follow the model of
the epistles, here's how the epistles work. And this will
affirm what I'm saying. The epistles work like this.
Virtually all your epistles open up with Paul laying down the
doctrines of the gospel in the first several chapters. He reaffirms
the message of redemption, the objective work of Christ, the
testimony of Jesus to let that people know that he and he alone
is the basis of their salvation. Then he goes into the practical
exhortation and warning of them not to abandon that gospel and
embrace false teaching. And then he goes into the specific
categories of the problems that are going on in that church,
of which he tells them, you must stop this now because you've
got people inside the church now that are falling apart. They
are engaging in sin and they're going to corrupt the body politic
if you don't stop it. And then he closes with a warning.
This is a very apostolic warning. If you don't, we'll have to come
in. And when we come, going to be serious reprimands and consequences
if you don't deal with the problem in your church. This is true
of the book of Galatia as well. So in Galatians chapter 5 I want
you to hear what we've had read to us many many times before
and in your own reading I want you to hear how the Apostle Paul
is warning the church at Galatia. And mind you now the church at
Galatia was only dealing with this one little leaven. Jesus
plus it seemed so innocent jesus plus and yet paul said this will
utterly destroy the church and he'll show us why watch i'm going
to show you the difference between sin and carnality he says over
in chapter six uh chapter five after verse nine we're going
to move over now to um verse 16 are you there i'm sorry let
me start back at uh verse 13 and I want to go through verse
25 and I want you to see this for brethren You have been called
unto what? Now that Liberty is the Liberty
that we have in Christ based upon his finished work But now
he warns only use not Liberty For an occasion to the what that's
what I mean by carnality see that up there now watch this
here's here's the 21st century American North American San Francisco
Bay Area problem a knowledge of the fundamentals of the gospel
only with the objective of using it as an excuse to live carnal
lives in the name of Jesus a knowledge of the fundamental doctrines
of the gospel only to use it as a door for them to continue
in their carnal ways. Did that make some sense? So,
oh, we know what grace is. Grace is freedom for us to continue
doing what we do because Jesus put away our sins. That sounds
so good, doesn't it? But it's extremely heretical. Liberty It's not designed for
you to continue doing what you do. Liberty is designed for you
to leave where you were to go where he is. Does that make some
sense? Freedom from prison means leave
the prison house. And when you leave the prison
house, you get on the track or course and you go to Jesus. And
so liberation by the justifying work of Christ puts you on a
course now of a process by which you and I grow in grace in the
knowledge of the Lord. And we move into greater conformity
to Christ as we head towards Christ. So we are growing in
grace. We are growing in knowledge.
We are growing in faith. We are growing in understanding.
And as we are growing, we are growing away from the things
that had us trapped and bound and going to hell. Am I making
some sense? otherwise we're not born again
we are claiming liberty but we are not free so here's what Paul
says now watch how this works he says over in verse 13 only
use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh but by what serve
one another for all the law is fulfilled in one word even this
you shall love your neighbor as yourself So the premise upon
which faith is given to the believer is that they would live now lives
not of selfishness but of service because love is expressed by
serving. That's the premise. Faith works
by what? Love. And so love now energizing
faith expresses itself in service towards others. You've got to
be taught how to serve, but that's going to be the ultimate objective
of your life. If you and I don't see that you've been liberated
from prison in order to serve the true and the living God,
that's first Thessalonians 110, you're going to find yourself
extremely halted in your Christian walk. Nothing is more miserable
than to be standing around free doing nothing. Nothing is more miserable than
to be standing around free doing nothing. And the point is to
be idle is not what God created you for. He didn't create you
to stand around, but standing in that idle realm means that
you have failed to understand the purpose for which God liberated
you. Am I making some sense? And while you are idle, you know
what you are? You are vulnerable to attack. You are set up to fall. You will
sin if you are idle. Is that true? You will sin if
you are idle. Now watch Paul. Here's what I
mean by carnality. We got to deal with this. So
then all the laws fulfilled in one word, love your neighbor
as yourself. That's a basic compendium for the life of the Christian
after he's converted. But if you bite and devour one another,
take heed that you be not consumed one of another. Look at verse
15. What has taken place in verse 15? A particular symptom has
occurred in the body politic of the church that has embraced
legalism. A particular symptom has occurred
in the body politic of the church that is embraced legalism. See,
when you embrace legalism, what you have done is stop looking
to Christ and started looking to yourself. Now watch this. When you have a Christ-centered,
Bible-based, God-exalting ministry, Christ is so large in the ministry
that it's virtually impossible to look at someone else. because
the ministry is so objective and so Christ-exalting that your
mind is constantly exercised on the objective testimony of
the person and work of Jesus. Where Jesus begins to shrink
and minimize and become small and just become a part of the
teaching. Now all of a sudden you've got
room to look around. Now you're in trouble because
you're starting to look around and the next thing you know is
You don't particularly care for the kind of dress your sister
has on. Or you're getting envious because of the kind of shoes
your brother got on. Or you now, rather than thinking
God's thoughts after him, trying to train your ears to meditate
on his precepts and understand the gospel better, you are now
stuck on something your brother said between services that's
now creating a jealousy or an envy or an hostility in you towards
them. Now the church is going around
in a realm of carnality biting and devouring one another because
now we are moving into little clicks And we are whispering
and we are gossiping Am I making some sense whispering and gossiping? Calling ourselves christians
and are as carnal as the devil Am I telling the truth yeah,
and so and and and once a church has been uh Contaminated by that
kind of spirit. It is no longer a christian church
It's no longer a christian church. It's just a gossip sinner. That's
all it is And now sin is going to abound watch how paul warns
about this He says you bite and devour one another and then you
will consume one another see it's not you start off by biting
Then you devour then you consume There is no there is no cessation
of it you you go from bad to worse this I say then here's
the solution Are you ready walk in the spirit and you will not
fulfill the lust of the what? For the flesh lusted against
the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary
one to the other So that you cannot do the things that you
would but if you be led by the spirit You are not under the
law now the words of the flesh are manifest. It's time to hear
them Are you ready? How do I know I'm walking in
the flesh? I have an obstacle, a living
obstacle in me that's hindering the word of the Lord from being
glorified in my life. Are you ready? This is how I
know that I don't have to blame the church. I don't have to blame
the preacher. I don't have to blame the denomination.
Right now, this is the sin that I can look at that's stopping
me from running. Right here. Right here. Here it is. They're manifested. God's already wrote them down.
Here's the first one. Adultery. See it? Here's the second one. You ready? Fornication. Do you
see it? See the third one? Uncleanness.
You get a full development of that on Sunday. Here's the fourth
one. Lasciviousness. Now, what the
King James Bible does, which is brilliant, is to break up
these different manifestations of the flesh into categories. This first section is adultery,
fornication, uncleanness, and lasciviousness. Do you guys see
that? They are worth studying in themselves because Paul is
the one that gives us this list in Galatia, in Colossae, in Ephesus. But I want you to stay on this
first category for a moment with me. When we talk about carnality,
we're talking about our fallen nature that primarily Yields
itself to the gratification and fulfillment of our physical passions. Are you guys with me so far?
So I mean, this is what I meant by so 21st century contemporary,
but it's first century Rome as well. But when you are bound
by the principle of carnality, you know what you are driven
by? The need for your physical body to be gratified. You are
dominated by your flesh. Your flesh dictates to you what
you do. It is Lord in your life. And until it actually terminates
in the fulfillment of its gratification, you are miserable. Am I helping
you? And it manifests itself in that
first line all over the world, adultery. You know you're jacked
up when you are married. you have a spouse and you need
to climb the fence and go find another human being to go to
hell with to gratify your flesh. You know you're messed up. Now
watch this. This is powerful. This is the
thing that got me just, I'm just amazed right now in the 21st
century. And then you come to church and tell me you're a Christian.
No you're not! You are not a Christian. Did
you hear what I just said? You are not a Christian. You
might be pretending to be a Christian. You might be wanting to be a
Christian. You're not saved. You're just as lost as a goose
in a snowstorm. Pastor, don't say that. I must
say that. Because the whole world is telling
you it's all right for you to commit adultery. The whole world. The only place that's not going
to give you that right is the book. am I making some sense
I've got to tell you that one particular transgression against
God's law will send you to hell and it ought to it ought to second
one fornication do you see that fornication is twofold more rapid
than adultery and the world has told our children from five years
old on up to as old as you can do it you know you got Rockabye
babies. And you got rock and roll centers.
Then you got your rocking chair centers. We talked about those
three categories. Your little knucklehead centers
at four and five years old. I was listening to, not Dr. James Johnson, I was listening
to Dennis Rainey and them the other day talking about a purity
process with young men that fathers and sons engage in And it was
a testimony of a little 11 year old boy who took this purity
process with his dad. And he came home and the next
day or so, the kids in the neighborhood came to him, older girls, 11,
12, I mean, 13, 14, 15 years, tempting him to have sex, coming
and walking up and rubbing against him, creating sensual desires
to cause that 11 year old boy to fall. If that's not carnality,
I don't know what is. And that kind of testimony is
far more prolific and pervasive than you and I are willing to
admit. It's all in our public schools. It's all in our public
schools. And they are fed this garbage
through the media, through the music, through the mediums by
which these young teenagers are constantly being, as it were,
excited in their flesh. When we get into the gospel versus
sexuality, which is I'm going to teach over the summer, one
of the things we have to understand is, It is utterly destructive
to sexualize our children at five years old. It's destructive
because that component of your human makeup, if it becomes prodigious
and has the dominating attribute in your life, it will never know
how to be faithful in covenant bonds. If in the different, in the human
makeup is of several components. We are spirit, we are soul, we
are body, and we have several components to the human makeup.
We are not just one thing. But what our world tells us,
using a Freudian-Keynesian philosophy, is that we are essentially sexual
creatures. So what emerges to become your
identity is your sexual passion. And if you don't get an opportunity
to terminate that, then whoever's hindering you from terminating
that is said to be wrong or said to be bad or said to be evil
or said to be repressive. And ultimately, you know who
that is? The church. The church that teaches the truth
is said to be the obstacle to human freedom in this context. So as the world continues to
build its secular sexual church, What it's doing with this propaganda
through every form it possibly can is seeking to disannul the
biblical prohibition of sex until what? Marriage. Am I making some
sense to you? It's seeking to disannul the
biblical prohibition of sexual marriage, telling you, you are
ultimately what you feel and you are not. You are not what
you feel. Feelings are merely an aspect
of who you are. They are not the lording primary
component that causes you to have your existence. And yet
this is going to be the battle that we fight here in America
and in Europe over the next decade. Because in our third world countries,
they are now just coming into this cesspool. Our third world
countries are fighting for poverty. They are fighting for economics. They are fighting for education.
And once they reach those goals in our third world countries,
the next thing they will be wanting to now is have personal liberties. And those personal liberties
will come with already prepackaged ideas as to what constitutes
your freedoms. And if biblical truth doesn't
get inserted in there to teach them integrity and character,
personal freedom will simply mean do whatever makes you feel
good, which is what has been the experience of America and
Europe. for the last 50 years. Since the middle 60s up to the
present time, what has dominated our culture is an experience
of sexualization that has utterly destroyed everything. Again,
I'm going to be preaching two messages this Sunday. I'm going
to be preaching on the deliverance of the demoniac, part one, and
then next week, part two. And I'm going to open up the
demoniac's portfolio and show you how that demoniac represents
our present world culture. how that our culture as a whole
is under the same demonic bondage and spell that is in slavery
and in bondage and give it over to this poor Naya that dominates
our world. You know what's sad about what
I'm talking about is this is so prevalent in the church too.
And it's almost a foregone conclusion that, you know, objective truth
used to be something that was important to people. but no longer
is objective truth important. What's important is affirming
how I feel. That is the authoritative expression
today. So to sit around like what you
guys are doing, listening to a man talk to you about objective
truth from a source book that goes back 3,500 years is archaic
and antiquated. In the 21st century postmodern
pluralistic society, This is called foolishness, what I'm
doing. And this is what dominates our colleges. And our children
are given degrees, B.A.' 's, B.S.' 's, Ph.D.' 's and other
forms of accomplishments telling them that they are smart when
all they are are educated fools. They are utterly foolish. And they are given a degree so
they can go out and take strategic places of political power and
social and economic power in order to continue to permeate
the body politic with the same vice and folly. And I was thinking
about it the other day. Isn't it a shame? I said this
years ago. Isn't it a shame that every time you put the word adult
on the front of anything, it's called nasty? Did you guys get that? No, let
me say this again. Anytime you take the word adult
and put it before anything as an hyphen It's nasty. You're being warned. Oh, wait.
Whoa. Oh That got adult on it If you
open that door boy, you're allowed to get in trouble. I don't drink
adult books adult movies adult. Oh, oh I thought adults were
to be the more commendable representatives of all that's virtuous and right. No, adult now means you're getting
ready to go into the deep end of the vile cesspool of the darkest
passions of human depravity. Adults. Now, come on now, help
me saints. If an adult means that we grow
up to be vile, God cannot be dominating that culture. Am I
making some sense? If to be an adult doesn't mean
you have the ability to restrain yourself, to discipline yourself,
to contain yourself, to govern yourself, to be able to function
in nobility and respect. and in a sense of discipline
in a way that shows virtue and prosperity in a general universal
sense. If to be an adult is not that,
our world is lost. See what I'm getting at? It's
very important then to understand why we pray. We're not only praying
against false religion, false prophets, but we're praying against
the sin that continues to nurture the carnality that is pervasive
in the church. And the first categories are
adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and lasciviousness. Uncleanness
is the way God talks to us when we fail to see that adultery
and fornication is simply the symptom of a spiritual filthiness. Uncleanness is the term that
God uses. It's a ubiquitous term. I'll
develop it on Sunday. And it simply means that you
are unclaimed, unowned by God. He has left you alone. Did you
guys hear what I just said? To be unclean in God's sight
is to be left alone. to be left alone, to be unclaimed,
to be untendered, to be unkept. An unclean person is a person
who has no relationship with God. God is holy. Holy. God is holy. God's holy. Did you guys hear
that? God is holy. God doesn't dwell
with the unclean. And so if you're comfortable
with your uncleanness, you don't know God at all. That's the phrase, that's the
terminology, because you know what people are doing every day right
now? They're walking around butt naked. We're going to develop that over the next
two weeks. I'm scared to death. I'm absolutely horrified at what
I see. I'm horrified at what I see.
And we ought to be, as believers, absolutely petrified at what
we see. The next category is idolatry.
Do you see that? Which one of you young people
can tell me who won American Idol? Who won? Come on, tell the truth. Tell the truth. Who won? Phil Phillips won. God bless
your heart. Honest person ain't going to
hell, darling. The rest of you folks pretended they weren't
watching. But here, watch this now. I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you something
that's very important. This is how the devil works. All the
devil wants you and I to do is change definitions of terms. See, it used to be idolatry was
something everybody saw as a taboo. Today, idolatry is a very common
and generic term for your own individual expression. That's
all idolatry is. Are you guys hearing me? Idolatry
is just another term for who you are. And as soon as you can
get four or five people to follow you, you are an idol. I want
it to stick. See, I'm getting ready to open
the floor for questions, but I want my young people to get
this. What our young people don't know is that this world system
is grooming them to be idols Either they are original idols
to be worshipped by other people Pastor, how do I know that I'm
an idol? Are you ready when somebody wants
to be just like you? Based on your negative demerits
and negative characteristics based on your appearance Based
on your gifting like if you can sing or if you can play sports,
or if you've got long, beautiful hair, or if you can get the guys
or the girls, you now are an idol that's being emulated by
other idols. Am I making some sense? Or you
are an idolater in that some young person now becomes the
thing you emulate. You think about that person all
the time. For men, that is boys, women
are idols. For our boys, women are idols. Our boys can't live without the
women. Am I making, am I telling the
truth? They're idols. And the girls feel the power
of their fleshly allurement over the boys. And they placate them
by showing their body parts to entice them. This is the whole
sphere in which we're in. This is the whole spheres, which
is what Paul is doing. And guess what? It's all in the
church. It's all in the church. It's
all in the church. That's why when they're 16 years
old, they're pregnant. Listen to it, idolatry, witchcraft,
hatred, variance. The word emulations there is
to mimic, that's the term to follow, wrath, strife, sedition,
heresies. Do you see that? Now watch the
next line. Envies and murders. Do you see
that? So here I'm going to make a psychological tie here, then
I'm going to stop. We'll come back next week. Am
I boring you? OK, I'll make a psychological
tie here. And this is important. This is why it is important to
understand some fundamentals of psychology. Watch this. I want to show you something,
Saints. There's a thin line. There's a thin line. Between. Sexual. orgasm and hatred and
anger. There's a thin line be sexual
orgasm and hatred and anger. Are you hearing me? There's a
thin line between the two and they both play on each other.
Are you hearing me? Listen, you meet an angry person. Are you meet a sexualized person?
You're meeting two angry people. and the angry person may take
it out on a much nonviolent level by engaging in sexual illicit
practice, or the sexually promiscuous person may manifest itself in
the nonviolent way of sex, but they're both driven by certain
forms of inordinate anger. That's part of what goes on in
the brain. It's an anger sexualization that drives us to seek self-gratification
terminating in ourselves. There's a strange conflict. It's
a strange conflict. This is why you have the girls
ready to give up the butt and the boys ready to beat up people.
This is why you got your gangs and your whores your gangs your
whores and they play off each other because the psychological
construct has been set years ago. This is part of war that's
been going on since the beginning of time. Wars proliferate in
ordinate sexual drives. This is why we have jumped the
fence in terms of our heterosexuality into homosexuality. We are still
operating in these same very thin line categories of anger
and hostility manifesting itself in sexual expression. Are you
guys hearing what I'm saying? So if you want to look at yourself
and say, why am I driven to be an adulterer or a fornicator?
Deep down inside, there are some hostility issues that you have
to work out. You're angry somewhere. You're
angry somewhere. Am I making some sense? This
is critically important. And without the grace of God
and the kingdom of God dominating our soul with righteousness,
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, we cannot walk in a contained
way. We're going to walk in this fleshly
way. Notice how it says it starts with adultery and it ends up
with murder and drunkenness, right? Look at it. Envy murders
drunkenness and Paul closes up revelings and things like that.
Revelings. Revelings. Well, what is reveling? Well, that's the party. It's
the living for the weekend. It's the being able to throw
off the reins, man, and have a good time. And we'll worry
about the consequences later. And the sister wakes up pregnant.
Right? Am I telling the truth? And see,
this is what Paul said. Now, what's remarkable about
this is what Paul said is, this is what will happen to the church.
If the church leaves the power of the gospel for legalism and
works religion, which is only a fig leaf, never able to really
solve the real problem. All right, the floor is open
for questions for 10 minutes.