Sunday, October 3, 2021 PM

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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim Witchcraft in the Bible

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All right, well, we're coming back to our study on witchcraft, which again is the demonic appropriation of alternate authority, the demonic appropriation of alternate authority.
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And this is why rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, which is what Samuel told Saul as he decided to change the meaning of the terms and insist that he had done
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God's will concerning the Amalekites and was trying to paint everything that he did in a holy and righteous picture as if everything was good.
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So he was in the process of calling evil good and good evil, you know. Well, if we had followed your instructions and destroyed all the
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Amalekites and everything they had, well, then we would have nothing left for sacrifice, you know.
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And we didn't do what God told us to do. We did something that God told us not to do, but we did it for a good reason.
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And so this is why rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. We've gone through the various prohibitions against witchcraft in the
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Bible, especially the Old Testament. There was a great many passages in the
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Old Testament, especially Deuteronomy, which prohibit witchcraft.
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There's a list of those terms back there on the back table, if you've misplaced yours.
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But just like the sin of adultery begins in the heart, the sin of witchcraft begins in the heart.
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It begins, things start happening long before, long before you get to the actual practice of witchcraft.
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The heart of witchcraft was in Saul. Samuel identified it in his rebellion about the
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Amalekites and King Agag long before he visited the witch at Endor. Okay, it began somewhere way in his heart before it ever manifested outwardly.
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So that's what we're going to continue on if we, again, all the prohibitions against witchcraft in the scripture has relevance today.
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When people make up new terms that did not exist before because they're trying to cover up the old terms, like we don't want to talk about sodomy anymore, so we're going to talk about alternative lifestyles.
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That's class, you can call that magic as a form of witchcraft. If you're going to change the definition, let's change the definition of what love is to something else other than what it used to mean.
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That's called enchantment. This is just the practice of witchcraft all around us.
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We've tried to understand the prohibitions in the scriptures saying no to witchcraft and let's abandon that.
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And now we're going to talk about the manifestations of witchcraft, and I want to start with the scriptures, where it shows up in the manner in which we've been talking about.
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So again, scripture gives us the light to see the world around us for what's really going on.
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Okay, so Isaiah 520, and this is, you've heard this before, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, right?
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Isaiah 520. We're going to be reading this passage on Sunday morning at some point in the near future.
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Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Do you see that anywhere in our world today?
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Who put darkness for light and light for darkness? Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter?
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That little exchange, that's witchcraft. Witchcraft is the demonic appropriation of alternative authority.
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We're going to change up definitions. I'm going to appeal to a different authority other than God. I'm going to appeal to alternative authorities to define things as right and wrong, true and false, so on and so forth.
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If you're not getting your definitions of right and wrong, true and false from God, then who are you getting them from? Jesus says there's one other alternative, and he told the religious leaders of his day that they were the spawn of Satan, because they were getting their way of looking at the world from the deceiver.
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Proverbs 1715 is similar to Isaiah 520. Proverbs 1715 says, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the
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Lord. I start in our Bibles to Galatians 3 verse 1,
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Galatians chapter 3 and verse 1, this is a great line.
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Oh foolish Galatians, Galatians 3, 1, oh foolish
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Galatians, who has bewitched you? You see that word? Does somebody have something else a little bit more tame and not as obvious?
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Something a little bit more up -to -date and suave? I've got bewitched, what do you have?
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Does anybody have anything different? Yeah. Who has bewitched you?
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Who's been working witchcraft on your thinking that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes
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Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucifying? The Greek word for bewitched has the idea of to malign in a fascinating way, to malign in a fascinating way.
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And it is a word that is emphasized and prolonged from another word that simply means to assert, to affirm, to profess, to say.
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So it's making false or malignant claims and then fascinating someone with all of these claims.
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And in this case, the Galatians were being bewitched by claims of false teachers that the person and work of Jesus Christ was not sufficient for their salvation.
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They had to do something else. They had to put in a little extra. And so we see that Paul was concerned about witchcraft being worked in the life of the
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Galatian church. Let's turn our Bibles over to Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 8, verses 9 through 11.
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And of course, we have looked at this passage already about Simon the magician who was enslaving people, putting people in bondage in Samaria, verses 9 through 11.
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But there was a certain man called Simon who previously practiced sorcery in the city and this word astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great to whom they all gave heed from the least of the greatest saying, this man is the great power of God.
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And they heeded him because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time.
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So he amazed them and impressed them and provided them with spiritual experiences that they believed in and it impacted them.
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It was so much that they would be beside themselves in wonder and amazement. And so because he was able to to work his sorceries and and amaze them that the people would listen to what he had to say, like, oh, well, you know, you know, you have something important to say.
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I mean, we'll believe what you have to say because of the experiences that we have with you. That's another manifestation of witchcraft in the
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Bible. There's another one in the second Corinthians and second
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Corinthians chapter 11, as they say, across the pond to Corinthians chapter 11 to Corinthians 11.
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One through four, Paul says, oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly.
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And indeed, you do bear with me, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I have betrothed you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
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But I fear less somehow as the serpent, now watch this, as the serpent deceived
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Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
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Remember how we looked at the Genesis account, how witchcraft is going on in Genesis three and the devil didn't go after Adam, he went after Adam's bride.
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OK, you see that? And the devil today is going after the second
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Adam's bride to deceive her. OK, just as he said,
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Paul says, just as it happened in the garden, so we have another situation shaping up right here. And he says,
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I, the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness. And he's concerned about the minds, the way of thinking in the life of the church being corrupted from the simplicity.
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Which is in Christ, in verse four, he says, for if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit, which you have not received or a different gospel, which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it.
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It's fashionable today to say nothing contrary or negative about anything anybody else believes.
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Paul didn't have that problem. He had another, he had a pastoral problem.
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He was concerned for the purity of the church. And so he, now this word corrupted, now he says,
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I don't want your minds corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. This word for corrupted means to shrivel up and wither.
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Shrivel up and wither, like we transplanted a, transplanted a garden plant and put it in awful soil.
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And he didn't water it and just watch it shrivel up and turn, turn to black.
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He doesn't want them corrupted, defiled, or destroyed. He's concerned about someone claiming a different Jesus, someone preaching a different gospel, appealing to authority.
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There's an alternative authority to the word of God. And so what alternative authority is there to the word of God and the truth of God?
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If you're not getting it from God, where are you getting it from? Well, that's demonic authority. And then later on in the same chapter, in chapter 11, verses 13 through 15,
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Paul clarifies his concern about the people that are there doing the wrong things.
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Verse 13 says, For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.
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And no wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
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So the argument of, well, look how sincere they are and look how much good they do, holds zero water.
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If they preach another Jesus, if they preach a false gospel, it doesn't matter. Satan transforms himself into an angel of light.
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Satan is a master deceiver. He knows better than to show up in hooves and a pointy tail and horns with a pitchfork.
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He's not stupid. He shows up as an angel of light and employs ministers of apparent righteousness.
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That's how he works. This word for transforms himself into an angel of light.
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It's too long for me to even pronounce. But as the idea of disguising, it's the two
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Greek words, the first part of the Greek word it means with, and the second part of the Greek word is something you'll probably recognize.
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Schematizo, scheme, with a scheme. He shows up with a scheme. Okay. He's a con artist.
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It's not going to be obvious. He's trying to, he's trying to take you for all you are. Paul's concerned about this.
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Very quickly, I'll just read Ephesians 4 .14. He desires that the church be no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.
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People are cunning and deceitful and they plot. They try to, people try to lead the church astray.
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Well, the scripture tells us about these things and the apostles are concerned about these things. Christ is concerned about these things and the shepherding of his church.
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Let's all turn over to second Peter chapter two, second
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Peter chapter two. This will be our last chapter to read briefly through.
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I just want you to see the manifestation of witchcraft in the life of the New Testament church, things that were going on and needed to be opposed.
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As much as the believers in the old covenant were called to oppose enchantments and wizards and magicians and to put out necromancers and so on and so forth, all those instructions we have in the
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Old Testament. So in this, in the same way, there is a great concern about the false teaching that would penetrate the church.
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Second Peter chapter one, chapter two, verses one through three. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies.
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I'll just tell you the false prophets among the people. He's pointing back to the old covenant, just as there were false prophets among the people.
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So there are false teachers among you. You go back and you read about these false prophets among the people and how did they bring their message?
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We've already read several passages in the Old Testament that connected the false prophets to witchcraft. Okay, so he, so Peter's making a connection here.
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So even as there'll be false teachers among you who will secretly, they're not going to be obvious about it, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the
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Lord who bought them and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.
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By covetousness, they will exploit you with deceptive words. For a long time, their judgment has not been idle and their destruction does not slumber.
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So when it says heresies, Greek word almost is where we get the pronunciation of heresy from.
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It's almost exactly the same. And it is built upon a root word that properly signifies a choice.
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A choice that breaks you off from something, has the idea of disunion.
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And so in some fashion, they're teaching things that separate themselves from Christ. They're teaching things in a way that breaks them off from the church.
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It has the idea of taking it for oneself, for one's own purpose.
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It's a word picture of going to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and taking the fruit for one's own purpose.
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Now, I will define good and evil. Now, I will define truth and falsehood. I'm the determiner of all of that.
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Nobody else can tell me what true and false is and what right or wrong. Nobody else has lived the life that I've lived.
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We live in a pagan culture full of Gnosticism where everybody has their own special secret knowledge and nobody can tell anybody anything else because nobody's experienced what
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I've experienced. The God who made you knows everything about you and is so perfect in his communication and in his love and in his truth that he says exactly who you are and what's going on.
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And he defines good and evil no matter what your experiences are. So at the end of 2
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Peter 2 verses 17 through 19, speaking of these false prophets, these are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
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For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lust of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error.
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While they promise them liberty, and watch this, while they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.
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One of the plays of witchcraft is to so confuse matters that one cannot conceive about caring about the things that God cares about without imbibing from the deceptions.
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Categories and words become so laced with false assumptions that to even talk about certain subjects is to actually invite all manner of misunderstanding due to the witchcraft that has permeated our vocabularies.
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Example, God cares about systems of oppression. You better believe he does.
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Read the Old Testament. Read the New Testament. For that matter, God cares about systems of oppression. But as soon as you say that in our culture, in our world today, people immediately begin to think in Marxist categories and the lies of Marxism.
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Oh yes, oppression has to do with people groups. When you have this group over here and this group over here, and we're going to split everybody up based on their skin color and their physical appearance.
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The most shallow prejudicial racial thing you can possibly do in the name of stopping racism and stopping sexism and stopping prejudice.
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So it's hard to say God cares about systems of oppression without invoking the
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Marxism which fills up the popular sentiments today. But we're not at all interested in giving it any credence.
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This is a way that Satan works. He doesn't want us to be able to clearly deal with the things that God cares about without having it so muddled up with the deceptions.
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With things that turn us aside from actually doing what God wants us to do. Another example, God wants us to take special care of his creation.
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You know what they say about the environmental movement. It's green on the outside and it's red on the inside like a watermelon.
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We want to steward the creation responsibly. Yes, we are called to do that as part of being made in the image of God.
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To take responsibility for the earth and exercise dominion over it. Not be wasteful, not to abuse the land and so on.
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Not to abuse resources and animals and so on. We don't want to be as the wicked. The mercies of the wicked are cruel.
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We don't want to be as the wicked. But how can we speak to those matters without immediately slipping into the cult of environmentalism?
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We have to define things according to the word of God. God cares about those things. And we should too.
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But in the categories and the terminology, the words of God.
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Not in the shorthand slang of the world. Another manifestation of witchcraft is that our most common words are unremitting lies.
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Some of the most common words we use are unremitting lies. Romans 5 tells us that because Adam sinned, sin spread to all men, all men sinned.
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Death came to all men because all men sinned. Through Adam we have the fall of the human race.
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But through Christ, all who are in Christ will be saved and will have his righteousness and be restored in him.
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And reflecting about that all the sin, corruption, and death flows out of Adam's sin.
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And you go back and read Genesis 3. Genesis 3 is the fountainhead of understanding all sin.
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All sin can be found there. It's where it began. It is incredibly illuminating.
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So let's think about this. Any movement towards more sin, more types of sin, deeper sin.
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Any advancement, any movement towards sin, towards rebellion, towards the distrust of God's word.
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To the questioning of God's goodness and abilities. That is not progressive.
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That is regressive. Okay? People use the term of progressivism to talk about those who are running headlong into more and more forms of sin.
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That's a lie. That's a lie. That's not progress. That's regression.
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Transgression is always regression, not progression. Okay? That's running headlong back into as much sin as we can possibly do.
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You think, Solomon says there's nothing new under the sun. Okay? All the horrid immorality that we can see around us in our world today.
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Oh, it's already been here ten times over. Okay? That's not progress. That's regression back into the sin.
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That's going the wrong direction. Self -proclaimed liberals.
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Think about that word liberal. We just read about this in 2 Peter. Self -proclaimed liberal.
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Think about the word liberal. It's supposed to be a wonderful word to describe the grace of God. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God without doubting, who gives to all liberally, freely, graciously.
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Self -proclaimed liberals are all about tyranny and slavery. They say liberal, but they actually bring tyranny, and they actually bring slavery, and it's been proven time and again.
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Self -proclaimed progressives are about regression towards the rebellion of the garden. There's nothing freeing or forward about them.
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And conservatives are not successful at retaining any good or returning to any helpful standard.
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They wallow unrepentantly towards more sin as well, though doing so at a slower rate, savoring the journey,
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I guess. So progressive and conservative terms assume a standard of some kind, but it's a fluid standard, and it's subject to the redefinition of the enchanters at all times.
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These are unremitting lies. The very categories that have been given to us to talk about the main issues of our day are themselves lies.
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So how are we going to get anywhere? I mean, how are we going to get anywhere? The past was the first Adam.
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The future is the second Adam. The past is
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Eden. The future is the new Jerusalem. That's what the Bible tells us.
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So whatever good we see, and there's some good, whatever good we see in the Declaration of Independence and the
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Constitution, it can only be in what materials and measures there were that will move a people forward into what?
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Fearing the Lord. Fearing the Lord. That's the future.
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Progress, according to the Scripture, is measured by adherence to the Great Commission.
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Go, therefore, based on the fact that Jesus has all authority, go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. That's progress.
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That's progress. And it's happening around the world today. The church in China are making disciples.
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The church in Indonesia is making disciples. The church in Korea is making disciples. We were just watching some of the frontline missions, and there are missionaries from, was it
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Peru? Missionaries from Peru going to the Middle East to witness to Muslims.
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Okay? So that's progress. That's progress.
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Someone caught them handing out Bibles out on the beach, and the radio station was warning about dangerous
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Peruvians handing out terrorist literature. Now, that's progress, okay, as the church is making disciples of the nations.
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Progressive is about sanctification. It's about righteousness and the growing desire for the knowledge of the glory of God to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.
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And what's conservation? What's conservatism? Conservation, according to the Scripture, is measured by retaining the advances we have made, ensuring the success of the next generation to advance the cause of Christ.
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We ought to be progressive in the fear of the Lord, progressive in the proclaiming of the gospel. Let's advance, and we also should be conservative in holding on to the gains that we have made, so that the foundation remains steady and strong for what comes next.
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We should be both, according to the Scripture. We are instructed to stand by the old paths, to be humble and hold fast against the assaults of the enemy, so that having held the gains, having done all that we can to stand, we can then make more progress as Christ gives us opportunity.
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I think one of the devil's most successful lies in the last century or more is that progress belongs to him.
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The devil has convinced us that progress belongs to him. He's convinced us that the future belongs to him.
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He's convinced us that what is to come is his. What a big, fat lie.
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What does the Scripture say? What does the Scripture say? He wants us to believe the lie that Christ can only hold on or decrease and the devil must increase.
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It is not a small matter to abandon the idea of progress to the enemy.
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So, I think that is some of the clear manifestations of witchcraft in our world, and we are not to believe it.
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We are not to believe it. We are to get our definitions from the Word of God. A couple of cultural expressions of manifestation of witchcraft.
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Now, I thought I would share this with you. This one is just for fun, from the
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CDC. Prior to 2015, vaccination meant the injection of a killed or weakened infectious organism in order to prevent a disease.
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And then, prior to 2021, vaccination got changed to this. The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.
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We are going to go from preventing the disease to getting immunity for a disease. And then, post -September 2021, vaccination now means the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.
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The definitions keep changing, by the way. I don't know if you know this. They have to come out with new definitions of dictionaries, because the definitions have to keep changing to keep up with what we want the word to now mean.
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That's a manifestation of enchantment. We're going to change the definitions, use the same word, but now it means something different.
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And that's just a practical thing that impacts people today. Why change the meaning of the terms?
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Several years ago, in Canada, all sorts of policies were adopted, and people were getting confused about how to talk about people.
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So all sorts of instructions were offered up to doulas, women who are helping other women have babies.
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But you can't say women anymore. So you have to use the word birthing person instead of mom or woman.
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Example, it's important to respect the birthing person's wishes during labor. Use the term laboring person, or a person in labor, rather than mom or woman.
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We have to change the term. Magic, magic, we're going to come up with new terms, because talking about moms and women having birth is just awful.
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Example, the laboring person typically doesn't appreciate loud noises or bright lights during labor. Say parent or co -parent instead of mother or father, wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend.
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Example, Sherry, Kale, and Megan will be co -parenting their child Ray. Co -parenting is the new term.
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Family doesn't mean anything anymore. When trying to deal with families, they say families are self -defined, meaning anything.
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This word in and of itself doesn't mean anything other than a group of people that operate as a unit and take care of each other and or dependents.
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There's all these instructions about how to handle gender neutral language.
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This was back in 2017 in Canada. Anyway, we see this in our world today.
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It's not new. It's not new. There's just loud insistence that we change the words we use and change the meanings of the words that we use.
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That we engage in fog and cloudiness at all times.
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Uncertainty about what anything means. These are all manifestations of witchcraft. It's not new.
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It's not new. There's plenty of it going on when the New Testament was being written.
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Witchcraft was going on when the Old Testament was being written. And God has a remedy time and time again.
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And his remedy every single time is to the word and to the testimony. If they do not speak according to this word, they have no dawn.
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He says in Isaiah 8. So the definitions that we need to understand the world around us.
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Well, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. He's the light coming into the world who illuminates every man, who illumines every man.
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So everybody has the gracious opportunity here if you are given the word of God to reveal the light of the world.
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You can take this by the grace of God and look at your life and the world around you and understand what it is.
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What it means. We don't have to be in doubt. We don't have to be confused. We don't have to tie ourselves to the ever changing definitions and terms that keep moving.
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We don't have to imbibe those things. And we don't have to engage in those things. We can use the tried and true tested word of God to describe what we see and what's going on in the world today.
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And to define ourselves in the light of God and humble ourselves before God.
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Questions or thoughts and we'll close our lesson. Our last section of the study is going to be about how to biblically oppose witchcraft as we encounter it.
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So someone is using a bunch of new terms and redefined terms and are saying all sorts of strange things.
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How do you interact with that? How do you biblically address that?
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How do you help this person see their need to repent from using all of these deceptions and turn to Christ?
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How do we help people do that? What does the Bible tell us to do? So there's plenty of instructions to help us with that.
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And that'll be our final point or chapter in this study.