Well, it really is a joy and a
privilege to be here, meet some people whom
I met previously, sometime after the Second World
War.
I didn't say how long after the Second
World War, but it really is good to
be here.
You know, years ago I was invited to
the Blue Ridge Conference and I accepted, but
before I ever got there it was canceled.
And this year I was invited to this
conference and I accepted.
It was reduced from two to one.
I wonder if the Lord tried to say
something to Dick Andrews.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Would you turn in your Bible please to
Colossians chapter 1 and just read one or
two verses there.
Colossians chapter 1, verse 9.
For this reason we also, since the day
we heard it, do not cease to pray
for you and to ask that you may
be filled with the knowledge of this will
in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you
may have a walk worthy of the Lord,
fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good
work and increasing in the knowledge of God,
strengthened with all might according to his glorious
power, for all patience and long-suffering with
joy, giving thanks to the Father who has
qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in the light.
And here's the golden text.
He has delivered us from the power of
darkness and translated us into the kingdom of
the Son of his love, to whom we
have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins.
In our studies together we want to be
taking up the story of two kingdoms.
The story of two kingdoms.
And you have those two kingdoms in the
verse that we read.
The kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of
the Son of God's love.
We call it the world and the kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We want to think about these two kingdoms
together, and I'd like to contrast them.
Not compare them, but contrast them, because the
only way in which they can be compared
is if they're both kingdoms.
That's the only comparison.
Otherwise, it's strictly a matter of contrast.
When you think of the world in the
sense that it's used in the Bible, what
do you think of?
Well, certainly it's not the world of creation,
is it?
It's really a marvel of creation that God
has made, and the creation is not evil.
The heavens declare the glory of God and
the firmament show us his handiwork.
So when we think of the world, we're
not speaking of the world of God's handiwork
at all.
That causes us to worship him.
And we're certainly not thinking of unsaved men,
because God loved the world and gave his
only begotten Son to whom whoever believeth in
him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
God loves mankind.
When we speak of the world, we're speaking
of the society that man has built up
to make himself happy without God.
It's human civilization with its base motive, its
base desires, and its egotism.
When I think of the world, I think
of any sphere where the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ is not welcomed.
That's the world.
Any sphere where the name of the Lord
Jesus is not welcomed.
I've often said that if you want to
see the world in color, all you have
to do is turn on the television.
That's the world.
What you see on television is the world.
But what does the world have?
Violence, sex, filth, corruption, profanity,
but nothing about the living, loving Savior.
That's TV.
I used to say that, but you know,
this last week has come to me.
If you really want to see the world
and what the world is like, go to
Calvary.
Go, first of all, to the wretched trial
that preceded Calvary.
The justice of the world.
Isn't that justice?
The way the world treated God incarnate, and
I think we want to remember, if we
never remember anything else from tonight's theater, the
hands of the world are stained with the
blood of Jesus Christ.
And to love the world is to hate
God.
It really is.
To love the world is to hate God.
Because the hands of the world are stained
with the blood of the Lord Jesus.
Worldliness is essentially the love of passing things.
And to me, this is one of the
tragedies of living.
To see people, and they're spending their lives
for things that are of no eternal consequence.
That worldliness, the love of passing, that the
world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but
he that doeth the will of God abideth
forever.
And the will of God is that there
should be a tremendous contrast between the world,
and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ,
and the church.
But you know, sad to say today, that
difference is blurred.
You look at a lot of Christian TV
programs, I tell you it looks an awful
lot like the world, doesn't it?
I don't see much difference between some of
the women that you might see on TV,
and some of the Hollywood harlots who parade
across the screen.
The distinction between the world and the church
has been blurred.
Somebody said, I looked for the church, and
found it in the world.
I looked for the world, and found it
in the church.
What a condemnation, huh?
I looked for the church, and found it
in the world.
I looked for the world, and found it
in the church.
But I'd like to say tonight, the world
is empty.
The world is false.
The world is a facade, that's what it
is.
It's nothing to us.
It makes me think of years ago, I
was out at a Bible school in Southern
California, and right across the street from the
Bible school was a movie lot.
MGM, I think it was.
And I looked through the fence of this
movie lot, and there was a western village
there.
There was the bar room, and there was
the shop, and all these other things along
the street.
But you know, I walked down the street
a little, and there was nothing but the
front of the building there.
There was no building.
It was just the front.
That's the world.
It's all front.
And you know that's true.
The world is a fantasy.
If you want reality, you've got to come
to the Lord Jesus, and to the Word
of God, and to the Kingdom of God's
dear Son.
What is worldliness?
What is worldly today?
When I was growing up, and I wanted
to do things, my mother would tell me,
look, that's worldly.
And I suppose it formed an impression in
my mind.
And some of the ideas that were then
cited as worldly, well, they're kind of ridiculed
today.
Like, people used to say, well, card playing
is worldly.
Dancing is worldly.
Smoking, drinking.
Those things are worldly.
Today, they ridicule that.
Because that's not what's worldly.
It's the thoughts, and the intents, and the
attitudes that we are.
That's what's worldly.
They ridicule the other ones.
They say, I don't drink, and I don't
chew, and I don't go with girls and
dudes, and stuff like that.
I want to tell you, they're all worldly.
They're all worldly.
It isn't a matter of choosing some and
rejecting the other.
They're all worldly.
As worldly as can be.
But you know, this is hard for young
people.
I'm so sympathetic to young people, because the
world looks so attractive to them, doesn't it?
The world of Marlborough country, where everyone has
a convertible and leans against the front fender,
you know.
And everybody's good looking.
It's a fact that the world is attractive,
and has tremendous appeal for young people.
It's so hard to tell them it isn't
the world of reality.
The world that you see on television doesn't
exist.
It's not the way life is, at all.
It's so easy for young people to think
of some older Christians who are not with
it, at all.
But I want to tell you, those older
Christians can see more on their knees than
the world can see on its tiptoes.
So often, you read in the magazines or
in the newspaper, somebody who has reached the
apex of the world.
There's a young entertainer.
And I guess one of the top things
in the world is to be invited to
the White House to perform there.
And he's had all of that.
And then, one day, he's sitting with a
friend there in his living room.
And he reaches down beyond the cushion on
the sofa.
And he picks up a gun.
And he says, is that all there is?
He puts it to his head and ends
it all.
That's the world.
I mean, these are people who have reached
the very top as far as the world
is concerned.
And then they say, is this all there
is?
And they end it all.
Pathetic, isn't it?
But the world is empty, as I hope
to show as we go along.
It's wonderful, isn't it, that a whole book
in the Bible is written about this.
By the richest and wisest man who ever
lived, Solomon.
The book of Ecclesiastes.
And the purpose of the book of Ecclesiastes
is to show that all the world is
not sufficient to fill the human heart.
But it's true, isn't it?
All the world is not sufficient to fill
the human heart.
He tries education.
He tries pleasure.
He tries sex.
He tries materialism.
What shall he do that cometh after the
king?
You know, if Solomon, with all his money
and all his riches, couldn't find satisfaction in
the world, what chance do you and I
have?
And what did he say?
He said, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
He said, just like chasing wind.
That's true.
You know, life under the sun.
Remember, that expression, under the sun, is found
29 times in the book of Ecclesiastes.
It's the key to the book.
If you miss that, you miss the whole
thing.
Under the sun, found 29 times in the
book of Ecclesiastes.
And what Solomon is saying, look, if you
never can get above the sun, life isn't
worth living.
That's true.
But when you do get above the sun,
to the Lord Jesus Christ, you find life
that is life indeed.
I think it's interesting that the book of
Ecclesiastes is followed by the Song of Solomon.
Ecclesiastes says that the whole world isn't big
enough to fill the human heart.
The Song of Solomon says the human heart
isn't big enough to contain the love of
our eternal lover.
Jesus, I'm sick of love.
Don't give me any more!
I'll burst!
It's really what he's saying.
The love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pascal was right when he said that the
God shapes vacuum in the human heart.
God has constructed the human heart in such
a way that nothing and no one but
the Lord Jesus Christ is ever able to
fill it.
So we want to think about the world,
and we want to think about the other
kingdoms as well.
The kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Not the same as the church, I know,
but for all practical purposes in this study,
we're going to think of them this way.
Okay, the ruler of the world, and the
ruler of the other kingdoms.
The ruler of the world, Satan.
We want to think about him for a
while.
And look up some of these verses, because
he's called the ruler of the world.
John chapter 12 and verse 31.
John 12, 31.
Now is the judgment of this world.
Now the ruler of this world will be
cast out.
There's a very real sense in which Satan
is the ruler of the world at the
present time.
His doom is sealed, and he knows that.
And I think as we approach the end
of the age, he's becoming more and more
desperate.
But in the meantime, he is indeed the
ruler of the world, soon to be cast
out.
John 14, 30.
I will no longer talk much with you,
for the ruler of this world is coming,
and he has nothing in me.
I think that's beautiful.
Satan, coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, and
he couldn't find anything in the Lord Jesus
to respond to his evil solicitation.
Isn't that wonderful?
Don't tell me Jesus could have been.
He could be tempted.
He could be tempted from without.
There's a difference between the Lord Jesus and
you and me.
The Lord Jesus could be tempted from without,
but he couldn't be tempted from within.
I can be tempted most.
That's what sets him apart from me.
And that's what the Lord is saying here
in this verse.
The ruler of this world is coming, and
he finds nothing in me.
There was nothing in Jesus to respond to
the evil temptation of the devil.
John chapter 16, verse 11.
I'll go back to verse 8.
When he, the Spirit of truth, the Holy
Spirit is come, he will convict the world
of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
Of sin, because they do not believe in
me.
Of righteousness, because I go to my Father
and you see me no more.
Of judgment, because the ruler of this world
is judged.
That's an interesting passage of Scripture.
Just let me pause over it for a
moment.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the
world today convicts the world of sin.
When we use this verse, we think of
the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit in
the life of an unbeliever, don't we?
We say he comes and convicts us of
sin, and then we repent and we're saved.
Well, that's true.
But that's not exactly what the verse is
saying.
The verse is saying that the very presence
of the Holy Spirit in the world today
condemns the world.
Why?
Because he shouldn't be here.
Why?
Because the Lord should be here on the
throne.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the
world today is a witness to a rejected
Savior.
It's after he went back to heaven that
it was glorified that the Holy Spirit was
given.
And in that sense, he condemns the world
because of sin.
Of righteousness, because I go to the Father
and you see me no more.
It was a righteous act of God to
raise the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead
and take him home to heaven.
Do you know what it proves?
It proves Christ was right and the world
was wrong.
That's what it proves.
Righteousness.
The Lord Jesus was right, and God showed
his righteousness in bringing him back to heaven.
Of judgment, because the prince of this world,
the very presence of the Holy Spirit in
the world today pronounces the doom of the
ruler of this world.
The ruler of this world is judged, the
scripture says.
2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 4.
I'll go back to verse 3.
But even if our gospel is veiled, it
veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds,
get this, whose minds the God of this
age, here he is, the God of this
age has blinded, who do not believe that
the light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ, who is the image of God,
should shine unto them.
And then finally in 1 John chapter 5
and verse 19.
1 John chapter 5 and verse 19.
We know that we are of God, and
the whole world lies under the sway of
the wicked one.
There it is.
The whole world lies under the sway of
the wicked one.
Now, in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse
11 we read that we are not ignorant
of the devices of the devil.
And I think it will be profitable for
us just to think for a little tonight,
before we go any further, about the devices
of the devil.
The many ways in which he acts in
the world.
The Bible says we're not ignorant of his
devices, but it's easy to be ignorant of
his devices.
First, one of his first devices is deceit.
Deceit.
John chapter 8 verse 49.
Do you know what that says?
It says he's a father of lies.
He's been a liar from the beginning.
And he is way back in the garden
of Eden.
He began his lying career on earth, and
he's been at it ever since.
One of his devices is deceit.
And he's still at it, even in the
pulpit of our land.
Slander.
Revelation chapter 12 and verse 10.
It says he's the accuser of the brethren.
It says more than that.
It says he stands before God day and
night, accusing the brethren.
That's a wonderful thing, isn't it?
To think that I have an advocate in
heaven who's there for me day and night,
while Satan is there accusing me.
He never slumbers or sleeps, but he shows
the nail prints in his hand as a
satisfaction for those sins of which Satan is
accusing me.
Another device of the devil is imitation.
And you see this in the world about
us today.
Imitation.
2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 8.
Imitation.
Satan has a counterfeit for everything that serves
God.
He has a counterfeit trinity.
He has a counterfeit gospel.
He's very, very successful.
Did you know that Satan is never more
satanic than when he has a Bible in
his hand?
That's true.
He's never more satanic than when he has
a Bible in his hand, when he comes
knocking at your door.
Purveying some false cult.
Casting doubts on the word of God and
imitating what is of God.
You had it back in the time of
Moses, didn't you?
When Jannes and Jambres imitated the miracles of
Moses.
And you know, I believe that as we
approach to the end of the age, that
we've got to be awfully careful about it.
Tremendous emphasis on miracles today, isn't it?
Signs and wonders.
A lot of people, even in the assemblies,
are being infatuated with this whole signs and
wonders movement.
Makes me wonder.
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a
sign, Jesus says.
For there shall no sign be given it
but the sign of the prophets, and what
bets the resurrection of Christ?
If they won't believe that, they won't believe
it.
Jesus himself said that.
But, Satan is a great imitator.
Don't be deceived by him.
Discouragement!
2 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 7-11.
This had to do with the restoration of
a man who had been put out of
fellowship in the assembly in Corinth.
And Paul is saying, look, receive him back.
Let Satan get an advantage over him, and
he becomes discouraged.
I wonder if some have come to the
conference, and that's where you are.
You're discouraged.
Easy.
Easy to be discouraged.
Plenty of things to make you discouraged nowadays.
Something that has helped me.
I have to fight it.
Something that's helped me is something that Dwight
L.
Moody said.
He said, I've never known God to use
a discouraged person.
Wow!
That wakes me up.
I do want the Lord to use me.
And so I fight discouragement as one of
the devices of the devil.
Another device of the devil is division.
Sowing division among the people of God.
Now, here's the strange thing.
I have no verse of Scripture for this.
I have no verse of Scripture that says,
that links Satan with division.
Now, some person is going to come up
to me after the meeting, no doubt, with
that verse.
But I've been to a lot of other
meetings.
I mean, people come to me with verses
about division.
And they come to me with verses about
Satan.
Nobody has come to me yet with a
verse that says that Satan causes division.
And I believe he does, don't you?
He certainly doesn't produce unity.
That would be tearing down his own kingdom,
wouldn't it?
And then persecution.
This is one of the devices of the
devil.
Persecution.
1 Peter 5.8. Your adversary was a
roaring lion.
Goeth about seeking whom he may devour.
That was in the context of persecution.
I've heard it said that there probably have
been more martyrs of the Christian faith in
our time than in any of the previous
times in the history of the Christian church.
He's not sleeping.
He's at it all the time.
And then destruction.
Another device of the devil.
Destruction.
John 10.
Verse 10.
Remember the Lord Jesus said, The thief cometh
not but to steal and to kill and
to destroy.
I am come that they might have life
and have it more abundantly.
I believe that in our day today, especially
because of the drug culture and all the
rest, that we are seeing an increase in
demonism in the world.
I think it accounts for a lot of
the mindless crimes that you read about in
the papers and the magazines.
People being killed with no motive for the
killing.
It's just a mindless killing.
What is it?
The activity of demons.
Destruction.
There is no exception to this rule.
The purpose of the demons is always to
destroy.
Always to destroy.
Either to destroy the person or to destroy
some other person.
The thief cometh not but to steal and
to kill and to destroy.
I am come that they might have it.
Life that they might have it more abundantly.
Another device of the devil is incomplete commitment.
We see it in Peter in Matthew 8.
Verses 31 through 33.
And I think we also see it in
Ananias and Sapphira, don't we?
Where they profess to give everything but held
that apart.
If Satan can't prevent us from making total
commitment to the Lord, he'll try to get
us to make an incomplete commitment.
But in one of the versions of the
Bible, it says in the psalm, God hates
the man who is half and half.
He's not talking a dairy product either.
God hates the man who is half and
half.
God wants people who are all of him.
If he's not worth everything, he's not worth
anything.
Isn't that true?
So E.T. said, he said, If Jesus
Christ is God and died for me, then
no sacrifice can be too great for me
to make for him.
Do you know that sentence changed the whole
direction of my life?
I read that when I was out in
the Navy in the Second World War.
And I got down on my knees that
night and I did something I had never
done before.
I turned my life over to the Lord
for service.
Just in the face of that single sentence,
If Jesus Christ be God and died for
me, then no sacrifice can be too great
for me to make for him.
It blew me.
I couldn't answer the logic of it.
I would like to have.
I would like to have found an escape
route, but I couldn't.
It was so true.
And I bowed to the truth.
And then another device of the devil is
procrastination.
You see that in Felix in Acts chapter
24 and verse 25.
You know, go your way, some more conveniences
and I'll call on you.
And you know, you think of how that's
been repeated in gospel meetings down through the
years.
Not only in gospel meetings, but in personal
encounters with people over their souls.
Yes, I plan to do it someday, but
not now.
Who's sitting on a person's shoulder when he
says that?
The devil?
Sure.
Almost persuaded now to believe.
Almost persuaded Christ to receive.
Seems now some soul to say, Go spirit,
go thy way.
Some more convenience day.
Indeed, I'll call.
Pride is one of the devices of the
devil, isn't it?
Pride.
We read that in 1 Timothy chapter 3,
where it speaks about the qualifications of elders.
And it said, he must not be a
novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he
fall into the condemnation of the devil.
Pride is a pair of sin, isn't it?
First sin took place in heaven, not on
earth.
The place of Satan.
Aspiring to be God.
Take the place of God, to get God
off the throne.
And he's been doing that through his underlings
ever since.
Moral failure.
How sad that we have to talk about
this.
1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 5.
Where we read that Satan tempts because of
man's lack of self-control.
1 Corinthians 7, 5.
What a year this has been for the
evangelical church.
What shame has been brought on the lovely
name of Jesus.
So that now when you even speak to
somebody, some stranger about the Lord, wouldn't they
say, what about Jimmy Swaggerton?
What about Jimmy Baker?
And this is what they throw in your
face.
What is it?
The devil.
It's the devil getting in.
And I don't know how you feel about
it, but I believe that a lot of
it goes back to the subject of Christ
and to the lust for publicity.
I believe that publicity is generally bad in
the face of God.
I love it to read in the Gospels
about my Savior and how he never craved
publicity.
In fact, he would perform a miracle and
what would he say?
Tell no man.
Tell.
Why did he say that?
He knew the people and he knew that
they wanted a Messiah to deliver them from
the oppression of Rome.
And he knew how fickle they were.
One day they would lionize him and the
next day they would donkey-ize him.
That's the world.
One day they would cry Hosanna and the
next day they would cry crucify him.
He knew the people.
You know, one of the first rules of
evangelicalism today is try to get on a
talk show on television, isn't it?
Men get on a talk show with some
man who's an enemy of the Gospel and
he makes a monkey out of them and
a sham out of the Gospel.
They crave that type of publicity.
God won't tolerate it.
God is against it.
God is not going to share his glory
with somebody else.
He's not going to do it.
And I believe that this lust for publicity
is one of the causes for so much
of the damage that has been done.
You know, the best work for God is
the work that goes on behind the scenes.
I think I could prove that to you
over and over again.
The best work that goes on isn't the
work that's publicized, isn't the work that you're
hearing about all the time.
It's the work that's done quietly in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, you could say a lot about moral
failure.
We don't say it in any pride either
because we know ourselves.
We know how prone we are to fall.
And I really believe this, that in the
day in which we live we should be
praying for one another more.
I really do.
We should really be praying for one another.
I remember years ago when a dear young
missionary had to come back from the mission
field.
And one of my colleagues said to me,
shamefacedly, he said, you know, I never prayed
for him.
I never felt he needed it.
He seemed so strong.
It would never happen to him.
Listen, we're all made of the same stuff,
aren't we?
And we all need prayer.
We need the prayers of God's people.
Somebody said, I measure my effectiveness by the
number of people I pray for and the
number of people who pray for me.
That's good, isn't it?
I measure my effectiveness by the number of
people I pray for and the number of
people who pray for me.
False doctrine.
Listen, if the devil can't trip you up
in the moral area, he'll try to do
it in the doctrinal area.
I believe those are the two areas where
he's been most successful.
Sex and doctrine really do.
And it's absolutely incredible, absolutely incredible how men
have gone on faithfully for the Lord down
through the years and then they drift off
into some weird doctrine, some weird, sad, or
fancy.
I could give you many illustrations of it.
False doctrine.
Genesis chapter 3, verse 5.
You shall be as God.
That's what the devil says.
You shall be as God.
And you know, I don't know if any
of you have read the books of David
Hunt.
The Seduction of Christianity, Beyond Seduction, America the
Sorcerer's Apprentice.
And in these books he shows you how
that very thing is becoming popularized even in
some evangelical circles today.
The God principle in you that he's to
be awakened.
You shall be as God.
Incredible going on today.
The whole drift today is humanism, isn't it?
The sufficiency of man in himself rather than
his insufficiency and the sufficiency of God.
Physical affliction.
I don't know if you'll agree with me,
but I believe that no sickness, suffering, tragedy
comes from God.
God allows them, but they don't come from
him.
He could not originate anything like that.
2 Corinthians 12, 7 E.
Paul speaks of the thorn in the flesh.
It was physical.
What did he call it?
The messenger of Satan to Buffet.
What's this?
The messenger of Satan to Buffet.
God allowed it, and that's what I see.
These are the principles I see in the
world today how God allows Satan to have
a certain amount of leash to do certain
things.
Then God says, okay, I'm going to have
the last word.
I will overrule this for the person's good,
for my glory, and for the blessing of
others.
This is what's going on in the world
today.
Don't tell me that sickness and sorrow and
tragedy and death come from God.
They don't.
Now, I should just add quickly there that
sometimes in the Bible, God is said to
do what he only permits to be done.
Job said, the Lord has given, as the
Lord has taken away, let it be the
name of the Lord.
Did the Lord take away?
No, the Lord didn't take away.
Satan took away, didn't he?
But God permitted it, and in the Bible,
God is often said to do what he
only permits to be done.
We do that all the time, agency, the
principle of agency.
But many, many cases in the Bible you'll
find that physical affliction are caused by Satan,
but God has the last word, and God
brings good out of it, blessing, glory to
himself.
I'll never forget a dear mother in Illinois
years ago, and she had a child who
was born impaired, seriously impaired.
And when the child was ten years of
age, she said to me, Phil, if I
could live these ten years over, I'd love
them just the way the Lord has planned
them.
That's it.
She was glorifying God in it, and she
didn't blame God for it.
Matthew 13, 19, the wicked one comes and
snatches away the seed.
And isn't he an expert at that?
The wicked one comes and snatches away the
seed.
And then finally, and with this we'll close,
trial, 15.
Jesus said to Peter, Satan has desired to
have thee that he may sift thee as
wheat.
Luke 22, 31, Luke 22, 31, Satan has
desired to have thee that he may sift
thee as wheat.
But I have prayed for thee, and when
thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
So it's good for us to know the
ruler of this world, to know about him,
to know what his devices are, and then
we'll move on to a happier theme, the
Lord Jesus Christ, and what he offers to
those who enter into his kingdom.
Shall we look to the Lord in prayer?
Father, we can really say with the poet,
the world is too much with us.
Giving and spending, we lay waste our powers.
We think of the tremendous grip that the
world system has upon men and women today.
We think of the majority of mankind living
for the passing things of time, caring more
for the body than for the soul, living
for time instead of eternity.
Father, as we go through these studies, we
pray that the false system of the world
might be thoroughly exposed, that we might thoroughly
hate it because of the way it has
treated our Savior.
We ask in his word, he names Jesus.