Colossians 1:13 - Delivered From the Power of Darkness, Pt. 2

Well, we actually already got started. That was good, Matt. Yeah, I was guessing, Jonathan Edwards, when you said it was in the

United States. Wow, what a great man. Interesting, so he lived to be 55, and Spurgeon lived to be about 55 -ish, 55, 56.

Seemed awfully young by our standards, and how did they get so much done with that short of a time period?

Changed the world even till today. So that was pretty cool, Matt, thank you. And good to see all of you.

We must be the survivors of the sickness going around, or else we haven't got it yet, right? I think

Charlotte and I have already had it. I hope everybody else has, because if not, it will be shared with you most likely.

But I'm glad you guys all made it here today. And we're missing our internet crowd today, though.

I think you guys must have had a pretty bad storm here in Corsicana. We could feel it in Mahea, but not as bad as it looked like on the radar.

But it knocked out Northland Cable, I think. So anyway, it was just us today, and that's fine.

And I wanted to thank Rodney and Jane for coming to visit with us. They're tradeway folks, and we're always happy to have you guys here.

This church kind of sees itself as the backbone or the foundation for that bigger ministry out there to the whole country.

Thanks for coming, and I think you'll be able to stay for lunch, right? That's good. We always have plenty for everybody, so we look forward to having you.

All right, well, let's turn to the book of Colossians chapter one. Boy, we had some weird tech issues today and all kinds of interesting things going on, so why don't we have a word of prayer and ask the

Lord to calm things down so we can study the word together for a few more minutes.

Sunday school was great. Now we need another hour. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

We ask you to bless it as you always do today. May we not get in the way of it, but may we all participate in your teaching today,

Lord, and we just ask you to bind Satan and remove him from this place so your

Holy Spirit be in complete control and control our hearts and our minds and teach us this book that he wrote.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, we started out here in verse one, made our way all the way down to verse nine, and verse nine talked about, if you remember, the two wills of God, his revealed will, which is the word of God, and his secret will, which is his sovereign will, that we all walk in, and we talked about that a little while back.

That brought us down to verses 10 through 12, where in verse 10, prior to verse 10,

Paul had been praying for this church, and this church was in a house. It was a house church, so it wasn't a large church, probably about the size of this church, maybe a little smaller, but Paul was the father.

He considered himself the spiritual father of these Christians, and so he told them that he always prayed for them without ceasing, and verse 10 tells what the prayer was.

I pray that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God.

In verses 11 and 12 talk about other things that he prays for, and there were about 12 of them, if you really look at the list, but mainly to walk worthy of the

Lord, to please the Lord, to be fruitful in every good work, and to increase in knowledge of God as you grow.

That was the main prayer, and that brought us down to verse 13, where we are now, and we're really on verse 13a.

I don't know if we'll get to the second part of the verse today yet. Second part of the verse is, to me, the most amazing part.

I don't think I'll get to it today, though, but we will eventually, so let's read verse 13 together.

It says, who has delivered us, well, wait a minute. Let's go up to verse 12.

Giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us fit, meet means fit, has made us fit, to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

You really need to remember verse 12 as we go on down through quite a number of verses, because we're gonna get to an interesting word, not today, not next

Sunday, not the Sunday after that, but when we get to it, down several verses below this, you're gonna see the little word if.

I want you to remember that. You might read ahead when you get home tonight, and you see that word, that's gonna be a very important word to study in this particular chapter, but you're gonna go all the way back to verse 12 to help interpret what that word if means, and if it even is a good translation of the

Greek word or not. I don't think it's the best translation. I mean, it's good. Everything in the King James is good, but I think if we look in the

Greek, we're gonna get a little bit better light on what that word means. But verse, one way you interpret

Scripture, one of the great rules of Bible interpretation is let the Bible interpret the Bible.

You remember that rule? So verse 12 is gonna help you interpret the word if when we get to it.

We're not gonna get to it today, but I'm just kind of setting the groundwork, because notice what verse 12 says.

Give thanks to the Father. So the Father is the one that made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints of light.

It's God the Father who made us fit to be Christians. It's God the Father who made us fit to be saved.

It's God the Father who saved us, ordained us to be saved, and knew us before the foundation of the world.

And it's God the Father that Jesus said that no man would come to him unless the Father grew him.

And Jesus said, of them I will lose nothing. You gotta keep all of that Bible in mind when you get to that word if that we'll get to a little bit later on.

It bothers some people, and our friends over at the Church of Christ love that verse that starts with if. But the problem is they like to read it by itself and not take into consideration even verse 12, let alone the verses between 12 and down there or any of the rest of the

Bible. And you can't do that, that's cheating. You gotta keep the 10 rules of Bible interpretation or you'll get it wrong.

And if you just care about winning an argument, then you'll never learn the truth. You gotta let loose everything your denomination taught you that was wrong and admit it was wrong and say, okay, that's fine, but keep the good stuff.

Let the bad stuff go, and let this be the highest authority that there is right there.

The Word of God is the authority. What the Church says it's not, what the denomination fathers think or the seminaries teach, it's not the authority.

And you get to be my age, you will find many, many, many hundreds of things that you were taught that are not even in this book, or at least not in this book if interpreted properly, according to the rules, right?

So you gotta keep the rules. Part of the rules we're gonna need are in verse 12 when we get down there, and I'll remind you that when we get to it.

It is the Father who made us fit to be saved, who fitted us to be saved.

Why did he do it? Because he knew us before the foundation of the world as his own. And the

Bible says we're the elect or the chosen. I love what Brother Otis used to say. He said it was a choice that never had to be made because God already knew us.

He didn't really have to choose us. He knew who were his, right? And he's going to save 100 % of his own.

And that's what the Bible teaches through and through. It can't change anywhere, and it won't. It will all fit that truth.

So he made us fit. So now we know verse 12 is talking about the Father, God the

Father. And so verse 13 begins with the word who, so it's a reference to God the Father, isn't it?

All right, God the Father who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear

Son. So we're at the front part of that, who has delivered us from the power of darkness.

So we touch on this idea of free will when we're talking about verse 13 and 14 and 15 and so forth, this idea of free will because it's a philosophical thing that's been argued for centuries.

It's interesting that Matt referenced one of the great preachers slash philosophers of our time in the early history of the

United States even before we were a nation. But there's always been this philosophical debate about, okay, is

God sovereign or does man have free will or is it both? Is there such a thing as free will and so forth?

It's not new for 2 ,000 years people have talked about it. So the interesting thing that I find about it, if you actually look at the words, which is one of the rules of Bible interpretation as well, is you gotta look at the definition of the words and you gotta look at the context that it's found in and all of that.

But when you look at the words, even if you look them up in English in a good expanded

Webster's Dictionary, the big one, where you can really study the history of the word and everything, the word free, literally if it comes down to it,

I mean, I've got notes on this this much written about it, but you sum it all up, the word free means sovereign.

So the only person who has free will in all of everything that is, is

God the Father. He's the only one. Because we do have a will, but it's not free.

And the reason it's not is because it's influenced. Free will means you make decisions not influenced by anything.

Now, if people understood the proper definition, they wouldn't debate it, but they don't. So they get into semantics and just argue about words.

But if you really know what the word means, you don't have free will, you do have a will, you do make choices, and they are of ultimate importance, especially when you're young.

When God, I don't know why, there's a lot of questions we'll have for the

Lord when we meet him, we'll have forever to ask him, but why did he make it so when you're a teenager, you make some of the most important decisions of your whole life that will affect your whole life and you ain't ready to make them yet?

Why? Well, maybe part of the answer is he gave you parents. And he said, honor your mother and father so that your life, you may live long on the earth.

So there's part of the answer. You have parents and grandparents, hopefully, too. It's nice if you can have grandparents, too.

But that helps. But the thing is, the choices we make are tremendously important, but none of them are free.

And you will find that is true of both lost people and saved people. So today, this part's gonna talk about lost people as before you got saved and how it is with the vast majority of humans on the face of this earth today who are lost, because we know that few there be that enter into heaven and wide is the gate to hell.

Most people walking around you are not saved and will never be saved. And God made it that way for his purposes, but that's just how it is.

And the truth is they don't choose to be saved, do they? They've got the choice. They hear the gospel.

The gospel's gone out to the whole world, and they reject it. And all that God's got to ask the father at the great white throne judgment is what'd you do with my son?

And if they say, I rejected him, then they're lost. It's that simple, really. So, but let's look at this.

God, who has delivered us from the power of darkness. So number one, there is a power of darkness.

And he has a name. His name was originally Lucifer, which means son of the morning. And that's why he's so apt at faking people out, because he was actually the highest angel in heaven, the closest proximity to God before he fell.

And he protected God's holiness was his job. He was created with musical instruments in his hand.

The day God created him, he came into being, and there he was. He had a lute, which is like a guitar.

He had a pipe, which is like an organ. And he had like a tambourine thing, kind of like a drum.

And he was a musician. And he was the angel of light, and he protected God's holiness until the day that he fell.

So if you don't think he can come to you or to anyone else and fake you out and make you think he's God, you're wrong.

He did that to Eve, didn't he? He came to Eve and made Eve think, well, you'll do

God's will if you eat that fruit. You're deceived. God didn't mean don't eat it. He meant you need to eat it, right?

So that is how Satan is, and that is how the darkness is.

And so the Bible says that God the Father has delivered us from Satan and from the powers of darkness.

Now, it's interesting. Like I said, one of the rules of Bible interpretation is you got to look at the words and you've got to understand the grammar.

And you've got to understand the context, which is like the paragraph it's in and the whole, most of it's written as letters.

So what is the letter about? Who's it written to? Does it apply to me primarily or only secondarily or at all?

You got to ask all those questions everywhere you are in the Bible, you'll get it wrong. All right, but if you ask those questions and you do look at the grammar, and particularly

Greek is like math. So a lot of times if you can look at the Greek and understand it, it solves any arguments that you might have with your family at Christmas or whatever.

So this one's interesting, where it says God has delivered us. The word delivered is in the aorist passive indicative.

And the word passive means someone bigger and greater than you did this to you. So you did not deliver yourself.

Remember how verse 12 said that God is the one who made us fit to be saved.

You did not deliver yourselves from Satan. You stand delivered because God delivered you.

That's what passive means is you didn't do it. It's not in the active. If it was in the active, it meant you did it.

This is passive. So God delivered us. We talked about that a little bit last time. We talked about the fact that the power that we are protected from here is power that God gave

Satan. And it's a different word for power than the word that you use when it talks about us having power.

Because we have God's power and that's called dunamis in the Greek. Satan has a different power.

It's exousia and it means he just has the right and the privilege and the freedom to do what he does because God has ordained him to do it.

What he does, I'm talking about Satan. All right, so that's not as powerful as dunamis but it's power because God granted it to him because Satan is an instrument of God to do

God's will. Everything is, every person is. Hitler was, everybody serves

God. It's just that the great majority of them don't like the fact and wouldn't agree with you if you told them, but they do because God is sovereign.

So Satan serves him as well. Now, what we see here though is that Satan has a purpose but God has freed us from him.

He also freed us from ourselves because if you study from Genesis through Revelation, you find this great doctrine that was taught by Jonathan Edwards, by the way,

Matt, as much as anybody. He's the one who preached the sermon in the hands of an angry

God. And I missed the first part of it. What is it? Sinners, yes, sinners in the hand of an angry

God. He preached that. And so he of all people understood this power that Satan had but he also understood the power that God has is stronger.

And, but the main thing he would preach so often is this doctrine called the depravity of man.

And when he preached this sermon, sinners in the hands of an angry God, he was preaching to a congregation of saved people but it was mixed.

There were also lost people in the room because they brought friends and family. There were, you know,

I like to think of it as two kinds of lost people, goats and lost sheep. You had both in the room and you had saved sheep.

You had three kinds of people in that room when he preached that sermon. When he preached that sermon, the power of God was on him so strongly that it is said that people would grab hold of the pillars that held the roof up back in those days lest they slide into hell while he was preaching.

That's how powerful the message was. But the depravity of man is another topic that he preached on quite often.

And it's a topic you don't hear anymore today, hardly anywhere in any church, especially in America.

But the problem with that is, is that if you don't understand that doctrine, you cannot understand

John 3 .16. You can't understand salvation if you don't understand the depravity of man and his inability and lack of desire to even seek

God. The Bible says, there's none that seeketh God, not one. Right, it says it in Isaiah, it says it in Romans.

There's none that seeks God, not one. So if you're lost and depraved and the spirit

God put in you is dead, it's like crusty and dead, and you're walking around deaf and blind, how are you gonna get saved?

Well, you're certainly not gonna save yourself. And that's why verse 12 says, God made you fit. God is the one who gave the power and woke you up, so to speak.

He awakened us. Now here in verse 13, in the passive, which means he did it to us, he delivered us from the power of darkness.

So God broke through our depravity when he sent his Holy Spirit into your room or wherever you were the day you got saved.

It was a car with me, I'm driving down the road from Waco to Bahia. And the Holy Spirit came in that car and he quickened me.

He brought me from death to life. My spirit was brought to life. My eyes were open. My ears were open.

And he just showed me Jesus and he was irresistible at that point. I had resisted him very easily the day before and the day before that and every day of my life until that day.

And so God has to do the awakening. God has to do the delivering, but he says in verse 13 that he does deliver us.

Now you have to ask who us is. And you can always figure that out by going to the very first verse of the epistles of Paul and he'll tell you who he wrote it to.

He's gonna say, I'm writing this to the elect, the saints, or some phrase like that.

So it's written to people that are born again. So he delivered us, he delivered the church, he delivered saved people from the power of darkness or they wouldn't have been saved.

Isn't that something? So we saw some of that last time and then we looked in 2

Timothy chapter two. I think, I don't know which part is

Timothy, Matthew, that Jonathan Edwards was looking at, one of the Timothys, but really, okay.

Well, we looked at 2 Timothy chapter two last time and this interesting part,

I'm not gonna read the whole thing again, but verse 26 talks about lost people and it says that when we get in an argument with them, we shouldn't argue, we should just instruct them, which means just give them the word, whether you think they believe the

Bible or not, you just give them the word. You don't have to win the argument. You just give them the word of God and its correct meaning and you can tell them what it means if you want to.

But you do that in meekness, it says, but then verse 26 says, and that they may recover,

I'm sorry, let's look at verse 25. So in meekness, you talk with them, their own argument will be circular, it'll oppose itself and then it says, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.

So even that lost person you're talking to, you can't save him. You can tell him the gospel, but you cannot save him because God, if he peradventure, that means if God chooses to save him, then he can be saved, if God chooses not to, he won't be.

So who's got the choice there? Now, I know what everybody teaches. I grew up under it too here in Texas, Southern Baptists and everything else,

Independent Baptists. They all teach that the choice is yours. Well, the truth is you will make the choice, but you wouldn't make it if the

Holy Spirit didn't call you first and regenerate you first. And so your choice was an effect, not the cause of your salvation.

Nobody knows that anymore today, not very many people, but if you read Jonathan Edwards, if you read Charles Spurgeon, if you read any preacher over 150 years ago, they knew it and they preached it all the time.

But we know it just from scripture, right? We don't, if you never heard of Jonathan Edwards or Charles Spurgeon, you could get this right if you just read your

Bible and you read it fairly and you keep the rules of Bible interpretation correctly. So if God peradventure will give them repentance, if God chooses to bring them to repentance, then they can, but look at verse 26.

There's still something they have to do even after that, and that they may recover themselves.

That's in the active, not passive. So they have to receive

Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Nobody will be in heaven that doesn't do that, at least on this side of the Pentecost, right?

So that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, but here's the important part for today's lesson, who are taken captive by him at his will.

Who's him in that verse? Satan. And these people who are not saved yet, who might be saved if God opens their eyes, right?

But they're not saved yet. It says that they are taken captive by Satan at Satan's will.

So that's who's in control of them. So you say, okay, do lost people have free will? No, they are totally deluded.

They are totally blind. Let's go to another one. We talked about that a little last time. Go to 2 Corinthians chapter four.

I'll give you a second to get there because I want you to see it in the Bible. It's not me making it up.

It's God talking to you when you read the scripture. 2

Corinthians 4, three. But if our gospel be hid, now what's the gospel?

It is the real way that you tell people how God's plan of salvation works.

It's actually that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of his people. Basically, he took their sins on his body on the cross, died for their sins and because of their sins, and he died as a substitute to pay their sin debt.

Then he was buried, and then he rose again, and he's alive today, and he can save you.

That's the gospel. That's our job to get that message right there out to the world. Not to tell them how to pray this little prayer after me.

All of that stuff, you don't see Jesus witnessing to people that way in the Bible, or Paul, or any of them. They would just tell them the truth and let them think about it.

Go study the woman at the well if you want a great example of how Jesus would lead people to himself.

All right, but anyway, but look at this. So you gotta have the gospel, but he says, if our gospel is hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost.

Well, now how many people is that? That's everyone except the born -again people right now on the planet.

Now, if Jesus said, broad is the way, broad is the gate, and broad is the way to hell, and many there be that go therein, and narrow is the gate, and few there be that go into heaven, then are there more lost people or saved people around us?

There's more lost people. Almost everybody is lost. You can say it that way and be right about it if you include

China, India, all the Islamic nations, all the Buddhist nations, all the people, you know. You say, well, they never heard of Christ.

I doubt that's true with the internet. I'm sure they've all heard of Christ. They just rejected him like I did up until I was 24, right?

And I'd still be rejecting him if the Holy Spirit hadn't come in my car and called me and opened my eyes and let me see him because look what it says.

If our gospel be hid, listen, I had heard the gospel my whole life. My mother was a

Christian, my grandmother was a Christian, my dad was a Christian, my grandpa, not so much, but I heard it from those three people all my life.

But it was hid to me in the sense that I did not know how to access it.

I didn't want it. I didn't want the one it spoke of, which is Jesus. I didn't want him.

I wanted me. I was God until I was 24. And you see, it was hid to me.

It's that way to every single lost person around you today in the whole world without exception. The gospel is hid from them that are lost.

Now look at verse four. In whom the God of this world with a little G, do you know who that is?

That's Satan. The God of this world has blinded their minds, not just their eyes, but it means the eyes of understanding.

They cannot understand what that gospel means even when they hear it. It's still our job to tell it to them, at least the ones the

Holy Spirit leads us to tell it to. You don't tell it to everybody, lest you cast your pearls before the swine and they turn and render you.

You go by the leading of the Holy Spirit where you go. And you speak to who he, here's how

I do it. If I can't not speak to him, I'll witness to him. Like if I can,

I will not. But if I can't not, that's the Holy Spirit making me have to talk to this person.

That's who I will talk to. I mean, more often than not, that's how I look at it. And I'm still alive today.

If you go witnessing to everybody because some preacher tells you, oh, on Thursday night, we're just gonna go witness to everybody, you might show up dead the next week, the

Bible says that. So you witness to who the Holy Spirit leads you, guess what that means? Oh, now you gotta walk with the

Lord. You can't just go by a set of rules your church gives you. We're gonna go to a soul wedding on Thursday night.

No, you gotta walk with him every day. He might want you to witness on Monday morning or Tuesday afternoon.

So that's how it's done. Now, the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which don't believe yet.

Now, let me ask you this. Who is not in control of any of this? It's a funny way to ask the question, but I wanna ask you,

I'll let you think a minute. Who is not in control of any of this? The humans.

The lost humans don't control it. The saved humans don't control it because if you didn't have verse 12, where God comes and opens your eyes and so forth, you wouldn't have them open.

And if you're lost, you're blinded. By who? Someone bigger and stronger than you, Satan. You don't have free will.

You make choices based on the influence of Satan in the world and your flesh. And you walk around with the world, the flesh, and the devil controlling everything you're thinking.

Now, you may have some good stuff in your computer up there if your mom and your grandmom like me put the gospel in there and talk about Jesus and like don't hurt people, be kind to people.

They can teach you those things in school even. Not nowadays, but well, in this school they do. All the time you teach character, good character trait.

So kids, lost kids can learn good character traits. But on the inside where their heart is, they can't have good character because they're blinded.

And they're walking, their biggest yearnings go toward the world system and what it's selling and their own flesh and what it desires and Satan and what he whispers.

And so they're under that control so they don't have free will. They have influenced will. Now, the

God of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not. Listen to this.

Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them.

Why does it word that that way? You go back and check one place in the gospels where they ask

Jesus, why do you teach in parables? And you look at his answer, it will surprise you. Because basically what he says is

I teach this way because if I didn't, then everyone that heard it would believe and I'd have to save them.

But his point is I only save the ones the Father sent me to save, which are the elect, the children of God that God's always known from before the foundation of the world.

So Jesus spoke in a way that the goats would not understand it, the tares couldn't understand it, could never figure it out.

And the lost sheep, once the Holy Spirit turned their ears on where they could hear with understanding.

How many times did Jesus say, let he that has ears let him hear. That's what he's talking about.

Let the Holy Spirit open your ears right now. And then as he spoke, it made sense to them. And this says the same thing.

Look at this, this word lest. Lest the light of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, would shine through even to the lost people, but it won't because Satan blinds them.

So Satan is doing something God has ordained him to do and that is to keep people blinded who ain't supposed to get saved.

Like I can say this with hindsight. See, we can't look at people now and know who that is necessarily, can we?

That's why we're supposed to give the gospel to people and let the Holy Spirit do his work or not do it.

But if he doesn't do it, they will continue to be blinded until the day they die, just like Hitler was.

Now, would you, how many moms in here would like Hitler to be in heaven with your kids someday? You see, so Satan had a job to do.

His job was to keep that man blinded so he could never hear the gospel, so he wouldn't end up in heaven because he ain't God's child.

Satan keeps these people blind. Otherwise, they would hear the gospel and get saved.

So not everybody is supposed to hear the gospel and get saved. That's the only conclusion you could come to if you read these passages in the context they're found in.

Now look at verse six. For God, who has commended the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, and this will have to do with the second half of the verse we're studying today that we probably won't get to today, but it talks about how we get translated, and what that means is interesting.

We get translated out of darkness into light. But this kind of talks about it here in 2

Corinthians, kind of a parallel passage. For God, who commended the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts.

Now let me ask you this. The first part of that verse, God made the light to shine out of darkness, what is that talking about?

Let's say you hadn't read the rest of the verse yet. You just read that part. What's that talking about? When did

God make the light shine out of the darkness? Where in the Bible?

Genesis chapter one. So this is talking about the creation of everything that is.

Creation of the known universe. The creation of the third heaven, which is in time, by the way.

It's part of, it's in time. It's not outside of time where the Father is. It's in time. But the creation of all that is when this happened.

So when God commended or commanded the light to shine out of darkness, God is using that as an allegory to teach how salvation works.

I want you to think about that a minute. You know what an allegory is. It's a figure of speech, right? It's a way of talking about something that people understand well to teach them something they don't understand very well and say, well, it's like this over here.

You understand this, it's like that. This is like that. I got the wrong direction there. This over here is like that.

So what God's about to talk about is like the creation story. So go back and read it.

And God spoke it into existence. And we know from the book of Colossians, which we're studying for the next several months, that the actual part of the

Godhead who did that was Jesus Christ. He wasn't called Jesus yet, but he was the everlasting Son.

He is the one who spoke it into existence, not the Father. So when

Jesus commanded the light to shine, out of darkness, God the

Father did it through his Son, Jesus. Jesus is all the fullness of the Godhead in a body, right?

And so when God commanded the light to shine out of darkness, he created everything by speaking it into existence.

Let me ask you this. Did the earth and the sun and the stars have the ability in and of themselves to create themselves?

All right, so if God is going to use this event as an allegory to teach us how salvation works, why do so many

Americans think they save themselves by doing something? They're gonna speak themselves into salvation by doing something, or by someone human doing it to them.

That's what the Catholic church is all about that. Let the church save you, you know? It can't save you. Any more than it could speak the universe into existence out of nothing, out of darkness and nothing.

So look at it. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts.

This equals this. This is an allegory. The creation of the universe out of nothingness, the darkness of nothingness, into resplendent light of all the stars of heaven, that happened just like this happened, which is the day you got saved.

It's the same way. You were spoken into existence. Your new man was birthed by God.

He was the parent who had everything to do with it, and you were the baby that had nothing to do with it. You just showed up. Your new man just showed up one day.

Nothing you did had anything to do with it. Nothing you can do can ever undo it. You can't kill the new man.

That's why people that think you're gonna lose your salvation are nuts. They were taught that by their parents and by some seminary. They didn't get that from the

Bible. You show me five places, which is about all you can show me that make you doubt that once you're saved, you're saved forever, and I'll show you 200 that'll make you not doubt it.

I'm not being facetious. I will do that. I've seen people saved by showing them those 200 verses.

People from church, Pentecostal people that think you can lose it, or Church of Christ. I have shown them those 200 verses in their house, and they got saved, not even showing them the

Romans road, but showing them eternal security, and once they saw that, they said, well, you know what, I'm not saved yet, because I didn't know that.

I didn't know it was God that does this, but anyway, it's a beautiful thing. So God, just like God created the universe, he also saved us the same way.

He shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Kind of beautiful. Verse seven, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

I love this. This became one of my favorite verses when I really understood it. Maybe not two years ago. You know, we worry about the fact that we have failures a lot.

I know I do. I did yesterday, didn't I, Charlotte? Or was it the day before? It was yesterday.

Might have been the day before and yesterday, but anyway, we start thinking about things we've done wrong, or where we fell and didn't get it like we should have gotten it, and we call that a mistake, and blah, blah, blah, and all of that stuff.

It's always really healthy to remember that the way you exist as a human being in a body of flesh that cannot please

God, and a new man that he put in there that cannot not please God, so you're a schizophrenic.

And the thing about it is that, look at this, but we have this treasure, that's the new man, in earthen vessels, earthly, carnal bodies that can sin and will go against God, because it wants to, and look what it says, so that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us, which means

God did it this way on purpose, which we should have known that, but we've heard so much bad preaching, we don't know that. God made us this way on purpose.

What do you think it means when Paul said he prayed three times and asked God to remove whatever this thing was in his life that he thought was a hindrance, and God refused to remove it?

Why did God say he won't remove it? He said, because in your weakness, I'll show my power. And if you didn't have that, you'd be so prideful, you'd be worthless to me.

God draws in the humble, but he pushes away the proud, and Paul needed some humbling, and God left that in there.

He left him imperfect, where his flesh was doing something that he himself didn't even want to do, whatever it was.

And it didn't have to do with blindness and all that stuff. Just think about it. He had a problem in his flesh, because it said

God sent an angel of, an angel of, how do you word it? Well, anyway, a demon to Paul, and God wouldn't remove it.

So this demon was doing something with Paul's flesh, and Paul didn't like it, and God would not remove it.

So Paul had to battle that the rest of his life. Everybody in this room has something that you brought from your youth, most likely, and it's a sin habit you had trouble with, all right?

So here, we see that we're in these earthen vessels on purpose.

Now, does that give us an excuse to sin? I think the apostle Paul would say, never, never be, never let that be, because how can we who have been set free from sin live any longer in it, he would say.

So we're supposed to strive to move away from those sin habits and not do them anymore.

We're supposed to work as hard as we can, but not in our own power, where we have dunamis, that is the power of God in us.

Now, see where it says this treasure is in earthen vessels? Don't forget, you're not just an earthen vessel. You've got a new man or woman, in that case, in you that first John says will never sin and cannot sin and won't sin.

So all you gotta do is make decisions moment by moment every day to be in control of yourself, because really, you're the new man.

The real you is the new man now, it's not the old man. So just stay in control of your mind. Think about what you're thinking about all the time, guard it, and you'll be fine.

So this is just how God made it. Now, if you go into Matthew chapter 13, verse 19, where are we?

Oh, wow, I'm talking so fast today, got some time left. Either that or my watch is wrong.

Let's see what this thing says. Everything is acting weird today.

Phones are acting weird. Oh, no, I put it in turn off, where's it been?

I thought it was my phone. I probably turned it off.

It's supposed to be recording. Oh, it's working now? Okay, so, where was

I? Okay, Matthew chapter 13, verse 19. I was trying to check the time.

What time is it, five after, six after? Okay, good. When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not.

Now, let me give you the context of this because I knew we wouldn't have time to read the whole thing, but this is the parable of the sower.

You'll remember the story. The farmer goes out and sows seed. Some, it's kind of like a corn field, so it had rows, you know, where the people could walk to pick the corn later.

The rows where they walked was a hardened path. It was dirt, but it had been walked on so much it was almost like concrete.

You can picture that, especially in Texas. The dirt can get like that. Okay, so some of the seeds would fall there when they just threw the seeds out in the old -fashioned way, just throw the seeds out.

Some of them would fall on good soil, wouldn't they? Some would fall on top of a rock that had a little bit of soil on it, and some would fall over there at the edge where the briars were.

And those are the four kinds of soils that the seed, and the seed represents the gospel.

All right, so today we're just talking about the one that falls on that hard path. And the apostles and disciples came to Jesus later and said, we do not understand that story.

Explain it to us. So here's the explanation of that, where the seed falls on the hard path.

Verse 19, when anyone hears the word, see, the gospel was sown out into the world.

That's called the general calling. Everyone gets to hear the gospel, all right? Not everyone has what we call the effectual calling because everyone that has that gets saved because that's where he opened your eyes and so forth.

But the calling of the word of God goes out to the whole world. That's the seed being sown. The problem is a lot of it falls on this hard path right here, all right?

So what is this? So this is when a person hears the word of the kingdom, but he doesn't understand it.

And then comes the wicked one. Who is that? That's Satan. And he catches away the seed.

Picture a black bird because black crows picture Satan and demons. So the black bird sees that seed hit that hard path and it doesn't go down in the dirt.

What does he do? He goes and pecks at them, grabs those seeds and eats them, right? Jesus is using an allegory to teach how this works.

And so the wicked one comes and catches away that seed that was sown into that person's heart.

And this is he which receives a seed on the wayside of the hard path. Now, some of the other, like in Matthew, Mark and Luke, you see this story in more than one place.

Some of the other places it said that he catches that seed before it can move into the heart and create understanding and Satan removes it.

All right, so we see now several places where Satan comes and keeps the lost person lost.

He does it by blinding him. He does it by making him, when he hears the word, he can't understand it.

And he does it by when he hears the word and can't understand it, he just removes it from his mind. He doesn't think about it anymore.

You see that? It kind of gives you goosebumps when you think about that. This is happening all the time with people all around you.

So the Bible talks about this power of darkness, the leader of this power of darkness that the

Bible said so clearly that God had saved us from, who had made us fit to be pulled out of it, who had pulled us out of this with power.

He's known as the tempter in Matthew 4 .3. He's known as the ruler of the demons, the demonic world in Matthew 12 .24.

He's known as the God of this world that we just read in that 2 Corinthians passage in chapter 4.

He's known as the evil one in 1 John 5 .18. He's known as a roaring lion in 1

Peter 5 .8, seeking whom he may devour. He's known as Abaddon, which means destruction.

He's known as the accuser of the brethren. He's known as the adversary. He's known as Apollyon, which means the destroyer.

He's known as the deceiver. He's known as the devil was Diabolos, which literally means traducer or slanderer.

So he comes to God and he slanders you and me. That's what it means by he's the accuser of the brethren. He'll come in your own mind and slander you and say, you can't be saved, look what you just did.

And he doesn't want you to remember that God put the new man in earthen vessels on purpose. So you get up, 1

John 1 .9, he removes it, and you keep going. He's already removed it, but he removes it from your conscience and you keep going.

You get up and you go again. That's God's will. And guess who gets the glory when you get to heaven that way? God does, because he got you across the finish line.

You didn't do it. You did it with him. You did it together with him and he was the main power.

So he is the deceiver, the enemy. He's the father of lies. He is the lawless one.

He is Lucifer, which means son of the morning. I've already told you that, which means he can appear as an angel of light and make you think he's good.

And so can his ministers, which means preachers, they usually look better than me because they got a tie. That's why

I don't wear one. So they got to tie a suit and they look great. Some of those are Satan's messengers and they look like angels of light.

What's that dude in Houston? I never remember his name because I never watched him, but man, he looks good up there.

And he talks so good. God just wants you to be happy. God just wants you to be successful.

He ends going up every time. He wants you to be beautiful. He wants you to feel beautiful.

In the whole sermon, 20 minutes, it's over. And how many thousands of people go and watch that man?

It's because their wives drag them there because he's a woman preacher. He preaches to women and they drag their husbands in there.

All right, so anyway, if you want to see some real manly preachers, go out on YouTube and watch, what's it called?

Bad preacher clips. They're really manly. No, I'm kidding. Don't do it. I mean, it is funny if you want a funny laugh.

Brother Paul, you should do it. You'll see some of your old pastors in there. And mine. I mean, try it.

What's it called again? Bad preacher clips. Check it out. You'll love it. I can see it now.

Glenda's going to go, hmm, there's our pastor. There's our old pastor. He's called the murderer from the beginning.

Wow, that's a long time ago to be a murderer. He's called the power of darkness. He's called the prince of the power of the air.

He's called the serpent of old. The son of perdition.

That means hell. The fallen star, the thief. He is the thief.

He is the wicked one. That is the power of darkness that Jesus saved us from.

And he did it just like he created the entire universe. He spoke light into your heart and mine at the moment he saved us.

That was the cause of the salvation. The Holy Spirit regenerated us just like God spoke light into darkness.

And at that moment, everything you did from then is an effect and you do it because you're already saved. And yet all the churches that you go to tell you, those are the things you've got to do to get saved.

And that's why they're all split up and don't agree because they all pick a different set of stuff, a different group of effects that are important to them and say, this is how you get saved.

And so they can't go to church together because they don't agree on how you get saved. They could all go to church together if they understood none of those are causes.

They're just effects, but they don't understand. But you can, if you have one of these, all you need is one of these and you need to have the

Lord speak light into your heart. And if you haven't had that happen yet, but you're concerned about it, goats don't get concerned, only lost sheep do.

So when you feel him, just respond to him. That's how salvation works.

All right, let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you for how clear it really is when we take it in context and read it as you wrote it.

And we let it speak to us instead of us telling it what it has to say. Lord, go with us into our time of fellowship now.

Bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus name, amen. You are dismissed. We'll have lunch ready in about 10 minutes.