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by Dr. Ed Johnson, Jr. Preached Sunday morning, March 1, 1998.
Sermon text: I Corinthians 2:9-13 Remind yourself here that Paul is writing to Christians. He is writing to saints at Corinth. He says this in verse number 9.
(I Corinthians 2:9) But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him.
Notice please that that is a capital "S". That is important. Let me stop here for just a moment and ask you a question. Where is the Holy Spirit today? Where is He? He is abiding in the body of the believer or the Christian. Regardless of how old you are, if you are a child who has accepted Christ, or if you are a teenager, a man, a woman, a mom, a dad, a grandmother, a grandfather, a great grandmother, a great grandfather, and you are saved (a child of God), the Holy Spirit is indwelling you today. Notice that that is important. Now look at verse number 11. (I Corinthians 2:11) For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now is that a capital "S" or a small "s". That is a small "s". That is talking about the natural man.
(I Corinthians 2:12) Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but
the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely
given to us of God.
This morning I want us to look at this passage of Scripture and I want us to think, for a few minutes, about the message I've entitled "Spiritual Ethics." Notice verse 11 again is morning. (I Corinthians 2:11) For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. If you really look at that verse of Scripture, you see the Scripture is showing us that Satan, the devil, is a master at playing tricks, if you will, on the people of this world. As the children sing in our beginner department,
The devil is a sly old fox, We think about how cute that song is and isn't it sweet to see these young people sing these little choruses, but the bottom line is this, it is a true statement. The devil is a sly old fox. If you will turn with me to II Corinthians 11:14, you will notice that the Bible says in that one verse of Scripture that it is Satan who has the power to appear as an angel of light. (II Corinthians 11:14) And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. We must stop and realize the Scripture also says in I Peter 5:8, that we need to be sober, we need to be vigilant because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. I challenge you to find in Scripture a greater contrast than an angel of light and a roaring lion. We simply see the Word of God teaching us and instructing us that the one who fell from heaven, Lucifer, took one third of the angels with him that were in heaven and has immense power that you and I are not equipped to deal with in our own flesh or in our own spirit, heart, and life where we live as an individual. We must have the Holy Spirit of God indwelling in us and empowering us. I'm sure many of you here today could think of someone who has enjoyed trying to destroy the faith of others in Jesus Christ, just as the Mormons do, just has the Jehovah's Witnesses do, and just as so many of the cults do. This is one of the devil's great tricks. Just by virtue of the fact that you can see so many people who are blinded to spiritual truth by tactics that are used by so many of the cults that are in existence today, ought to show you and me that there is this incredible force of evil that does exist in the world. This force of evil does prevail in our world to a great degree, whether it might be through intellectualism, through rationalism, through socialism, or through communism. Let me say this if I may, that I'm a little weary of people thinking today that communism is dead. Communism, beloved, is not dead. The largest country in the world, the greatest populated nation in the world, China, is a communistic nation. There are one billion people living in that nation and that nation is under communistic rule. Communism is not dead. Understand that! Don't get lulled to sleep by so many of those in our liberal press who would like to con you into thinking that we have no more fear in our world because communism is dead. It is not dead. We need to remind ourselves of what the Scripture says. We need to see what the Word of God says, such as in I Timothy 2:5, John 14:6, and Revelation 3:20 where the Bible says:
(I Timothy 2:5) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus;
We need to see that there is one God, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, as I Timothy 2:5 says. We need to see that Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me." When you have a nation that takes God and tries to put Him on the sideline and says that we don't need this God and we don't need this teaching that comes from His Word, what we have is a nation that is going to be impacted by a lack of spiritual ethics. When a nation is impacted by a lack of spiritual ethics even the nation's ministry will be impacted; for example, Jimmy Swaggert, Jimmy Baker, and on and on you can go. So recognize a truth this morning that spiritual ethics are absolutely essential to a country that is going to have God's smile, God's blessing, and God's direction operating in its midst. Now if the nation doesn't want God's smile, God's blessing, and God's direction as to how they need to operate, then true, that nation need not worry about spiritual ethics. But as you look at history you'll find that those nations that chose that direction or that route are no longer in existence today. I don't know how many of you have read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. But if you have not read that book you may want to take time from your TV, read a little bit, and see what happened in that nation which was said to be, at that particular time in our world's history, the strongest nation in the world. Study the great Greek nation that existed at one time and see what happened in that world. They forgot God! When you forget God you then abandon God's ethic which is spiritual. When a man is left to himself, he will eventually destroy himself, when God is not in the picture or involved in his life. What I want us to do for a few minutes this morning is look at a couple of thoughts in relation to this matter of being deceived. I'm fearful that is what is happening to so many people in the United States of America today. They are being deceived. They are being lulled to sleep by a spiritual enemy who the Scripture says has the power to become an angel of light. Yet the Scripture says he goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Let's look at this matter of world deception for a few moments. Satanic forces of the world are trying to deceive men and have been trying to deceive men since Lucifer fell from heaven and Adam and Eve were created on this earth. I think if we would be honest and observant, we have to look around us and say that the success of Satan is all around us. We live in a pleasure mad world today. We live in a world that is totally enveloped by a mindset or philosophy of pleasure. It is amazing to see how man will give his time, his life, and his money to produce pleasure. We are seeing that on every hand. Now again, I am not intimating that it is wrong to enjoy life or that which life affords us. But, whenever man begins to commit himself or give himself to pleasure, and simply begins to throw God a few scraps, that is when man is in trouble. That is when man is in big trouble. God forbid that, at First Baptist Church of Rosemount or in this ministry, there would be anyone guilty of giving God the leftovers. When we look at the world and society in which we are living, I'm fearful that is exactly what we see. 25-30 years ago we started a Christian school movement in the United States of America. Our school started in 1971. We are in our 27th year this year. I've illustrated this fact before. When we started our Christian school 27 years ago we had a mindset that in twenty-five years we would have hundreds or thousands of young people who would be surrendering their lives to the Lord and God's work. They would be going off as missionaries and preachers all over the world. We were literally going to immerse this world with the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Christian school ministry. I serve on the board of Baptist Mid-Missions and I'm completing my 20th year this year. Baptist Mid-Missions is the largest independent Baptist mission agency in this country. Baptist Mid-Missions has more missionaries on the field than any independent mission agency in the country. We have fewer missionaries today than 20 years ago when I started to serve on that board. Our demographics tell us that in the next five years because of retirements and the age of our missionaries who are still serving the Lord, we are going to lose 15 percent of our missionaries to retirement and probably some to death. With that number of people you will naturally have some who will die while serving the Lord. We are going to see that happen in the largest mission agency in the United States of America. I do not know what is happening in the other mission agencies in the United States of America, but I cannot hardly help but believe that if that is happening in the largest mission agency then the others are having some difficulty also. What happened to all these plans of grandeur twenty-five years ago? I will tell you what's happened. Pleasure has absolutely unindated this society in which we are living. The young people today who we were planning on to go off and serve God on the mission field, in pastorates, and in Christian schools have been caught up in pleasure. They have begun to like the pleasure. Your flesh and my flesh likes pleasure. So, consequently we are not interested in going to the mission field, going into the pastorate, or going into the Lord's work. We are interested in making money and enjoying pleasure. That has come about through the deception of Satan. We will throw God a few scraps. But wait a minute, wait a minute. Does not the Bible teach that He owns us? And that we have been bought with a price? Does not the Bible still teach that? My Bible teaches that. What has happened? We have been deceived. This is true even when it comes to giving by God's people in the church. I get calls many many weeks out of the year from young pastors all over this country asking, "Dr. Johnson, how am I going to motivate my people to give like God wants them to give and like God says they should give?" The tithe belongs to the Lord. These young pastors hear about our properties and buildings. If I'm preaching a conference somewhere around the country and make the statement that "Thank God our ministry is now debt free", I will have five or ten young preachers sitting at that conference listening to me and they will beat a path to me asking, "How did you do that?" Well, I will guarantee you that one of the things we had was a people here at First Baptist Church of Rosemount who believed in giving God the first fruits. Amen. They did not give God the leftovers. They did not give God the scraps. The first fruits went to God. That is one of the reasons why God blesses this place. People, you always want to remember that God doesn't want the scraps, God doesn't want the leftovers, but God wants the first fruits. That is what He has taught us in His Book. You and I will always be wise if we will remember to give God the first fruits. Now Satan will come along and he will try to deceive us. There is a cliche today, "Eat, drink, and be merry." Incidentally, let me give you an answer to that. Take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 12. This will take us on a little rabbit trail because this just jumped into my mind.
(16) And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich
man brought forth plentifully:
Satan comes along and tries to deceive. He tries to blind your eyes. He tries to get you to think contrary to the Scripture. But always go back to what the Word of God says and you will never be sorry. The devil, today, is the master of world deception. That is very evident in the world in which we are living today. Watch out for that deception that the devil is so capable of bringing into each one of our lives if we are not filled with the Spirit of God or if we are looking at life through our carnal fleshly spirit and not the filling of the Spirit of God. That is so critical in the day and age in which we live. Let me give you the second thought very very quickly because our time is getting away from us. Let's look for a moment at world need. We need Christians with convictions. The reason spiritual ethics are in trouble today is because of a lack of convictions in the Christian world. There is a direct tie between convictions and ethics. Convictions will build the right kind of ethics. The wrong kind of convictions will build the wrong kind of ethics. You do not have to be too smart to figure that out. Therefore, if you have a Christian community or society that is sort of limping back and forth between two positions or opinions and trying to keep everyone happy, they really have no sense of direction where they are going. They are sort of like the boy with five balls in the air at one time. If ever there is a people who need to know what they believe, it is God's people! Know what you believe! Get some convictions! It used to be in the church years ago that the church had strong convictions. For instance, the church had strong convictions on alcohol, on booz, or call it what you want. They had strong convictions on that. When I was a kid preacher attending Tennessee Temple University back some years ago, I pastored a little country church in Dayton, Tennessee. It was Maple Springs Baptist Church, seven miles out of the town of Dayton and about one-half mile from the Tennessee River. That's where I baptized my first converts. One Saturday I was witnessing to one of the bar owners in Dayton, Tennessee. They had a number of bars in town. Do you know what that man said to me? He said, "This gospel stuff is a bunch of hooey. You would absolutely be bombed out if you knew the number of Christians from that big First Baptist Church there in Dayton, that big Southern Baptist church right in downtown Dayton, who sneak in the back door of my bar and get their booz and take it home with them." That is a good testimony, isn't it? That's what that man told me. And do you want to know something? The blood of that man, if he never gets saved, will be on the hands of every one of those people because of the sorry testimony they lived before that lost hell-bound sinner. There used to be a time when the church had convictions about that! Amen. And blessed God, this one still does! And as long as this preacher stays here, we will always have those convictions, by the grace of God! I would rather stand for something, than fall for nothing! Convictions, people, are absolutely essential. It is not wrong to have convictions. You ought to have convictions. Have convictions on what you believe. Have convictions on styles. Have convictions on apparel. Have convictions on immorality. That which is going on in our nation's capital is an absolute travesty. Did you see the latest yesterday? I know some of you do not like me to preach on this. If more preachers did, we would have less of it. Now yesterday, another trial balloon went up. Yesterday, the attorneys said, "Well, he had a platonic relationship with this 21-year-old intern. It was platonic. And they did a lot of kissing." Oh, it has risen to kissing now? Before, he said, "I had nothing to do with this gal." But now, they did a little kissing and so forth, but there was no sex involved in it. That's just another trial balloon floating. God in heaven help the United States of America! God in heaven help this nation! I pray for you dear young people. My grandson sitting over here is 16 years of age. Oh, I tell you, I pray for that boy. I pray for my oldest grandson who is sitting there in the back. I think about what kind of America they are going to live in. If God lets that young man live to be his granddaddy's age, what kind of a country is he going to have? Not much, if we do not see a spiritual awakening in this nation! And you do not have to be a preacher to understand that. If you know what is going on in your country, you can see the wisdom of that statement. Spiritual ethics is absolutely essential for a country if the country is going to be civilized and know the blessing and power of God on its people. God help us to see this matter of world need in the day and age in which we are living. Then I want to cover another thought with you very quickly. I want you to look at world hope. When I look at the Scripture I read to you this morning in I Corinthians chapter 2, I see hope in what the Bible is saying there. I see hope! I do not see a nation which has no hope. I see a nation which does have hope if we get a hold of what God is saying, if we will see here what the Bible is teaching us. You might sit there this morning and ask, "Well Preacher, is there any hope?" Some of you young people sitting here this morning may be asking, "Is there any hope?" And the answer is, "Yes, there is hope." Always remember this folks, that there is always hope in Christ. There is always hope in the Son of God. We cannot lose sight of that. We cannot forget that, because Christ is the answer. It is Jesus who said this. It is not the preacher who said this. It is not the seminary professor who said this. It is not the Pope. It is not the rector, nor the priest. It is Jesus who said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It is Jesus who said, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." It is Jesus who said that. Not the preacher. It is God's only begotten Son who made that statement. When we ask, "Is there any hope?" Yes, there is hope. Thank God there is hope. That is what keeps me going. That is why I am not considering retirement. You all can celebrate my 80th birthday if you want. It really does not make any difference to me. I am not considering, "Take me out to pasture now and put me out there in a rocking chair. I have done my duty and have done my time." No, because there is hope. But the hope is in Christ. We have a responsibility to bring this country to an awareness of hope in Jesus Christ. And it is not going to be the ungodly crowd who does it. It is going to have to be the godly crowd. I hope that includes some of you who are here this morning. Many years ago one of the great preachers of the day preached a sermon. At the close of the sermon he told the story of a dream that he had. He said he dreamed a dream and in the dream he saw the gates of heaven. As he looked at the gates of heaven with all of their splendor, there was an angel there standing by the gate. He said he watched in his dream as the angel stood there guarding the gate to heaven. And he said as he watched he saw the spirit of a rich man come and the rich man's spirit tried to get admission to heaven. But the angel that was guarding the gate pointed to the rich man's gold and he said, "We have streets that are paved with that stuff. You cannot come into God's heaven because you have a lot of gold." The preacher said he continued dreaming and saw that angel still standing at the gates of heaven. He saw another man come and approach the gate and he was a moral man. The moral man came and told the angel who he was. He talked about his morality and talked about his good life and all that he had done. But the angel took a Book, opened the book, and he read a verse of Scripture out of the Book. The verse he read was, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." So he looked at the moral man and said, "You cannot come in, because it is not by works of righteousness which you have done." The preacher said as he dreamed on he saw another man come and approach the angel who was standing there by the gates of heaven. This man started to tell him about his good name, the responsibilities he had, and how he had been honored here on earth by various institutions and even a college that had given him a doctor's degree. The angel got that same Book and opened it up again and read to the man, "Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among man by which we must be saved." And he looked at the man and said, "You cannot come in." Then the preacher said he went on his dream and the spirit of another man came and approached the angel and said, "Nothing in my hands I bring, but simply to His cross I cling." And the angel said, "Open the gate! Open the gates of heaven!" And the preacher said as the gate began to open, "I saw the jeweled hinges." He said as the gates opened the angel cried out, "Unto you is given abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ." The preacher went on to say as the gates of heaven rolled back, he saw armies of redeemed drunkards and numberless legions who had been redeemed from the vilest rags of sin. He said as he looked he saw a host of those who trusted at one time in their morality and in their good works to get them to heaven, but they were there in heaven because they came to a place in their life where they realized that it was not their righteousness that was going to get them to heaven but it was the righteousness of God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ that was going to get them to heaven. The preacher said, "As I looked I saw something on their heads, and I looked carefully and it was crowns. I looked and I saw something in their hands and it was palms." Then there was One who came and entered into where that mass of people was located. He ascended onto a throne and it was unmistakable who it was. He was the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. He said those who stood there in that mass of humanity took their crowns off their heads and cast them at the feet of the Son of God. They began to cry out Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the Prince of Peace, as Isaiah 9:6 says. (Isaiah 9:6) ... and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Then he said, "A great choir broke out in song, singing":
All hail the power of Jesus name, Today, people are asking, "Is there any hope? Is there any hope for Washington?" I had another say to me this morning, "Why are you going to Washington again? It isn't doing any good. You are going to get up early tomorrow morning and come to your staff meeting. You're going to race to an airport and then you are going to meetings tomorrow until 10:00 at night. You will lay your head on a pillow for about six hours and you'll be back up tomorrow morning at 6:00. Then you are going to go to meetings and race to an airport and fly back here." Oh, wait a minute. As long as there is breath in this body, there is hope because there is still the Son of God, beloved. There is still Jesus. There is still the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is still One who is seated at the right hand of God, the Heavenly Father. And He is making intercession for every one of us. That is why I invite you who are here today and you are not saved, you are not a Christian, and you are not a child of God. That's why I invite you to come and accept Christ because there is hope in Him. There is hope in Jesus. I don't care what anybody says. I don't care what any preacher says. I don't care what any church says. Jesus Christ has the power to save any man, any woman, any teenager, any boy, or any girl who will come and confess Him as Lord of Lords and King of Kings. He has the power to save. That's why the songwriter says:
Come every soul by sin oppressed there's mercy with the Lord. If you are not saved today, I invite you to come and accept Jesus Christ, the One who will give hope to not only you and to not only me, but to this country we live in. For you who are here this morning who are saved and you know Christ as Saviour, you need to get a hold of a vision that God gave an old preacher over 100 years ago of that celestial city. You need to see, beloved, that which we are looking forward to one day is waiting for you and me when our time comes to go into the presence of our Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the Lord Jesus. While He leaves us here we can't forget that there is hope. There is hope. Every one of us has a responsibility as a child of God to remember that. In the realm of spiritual ethics, that is where the battle really is. We cannot surrender our ethics, folks. We cannot surrender that which God has taught us and given us in His Word.
Follow this link for a presentation of the Plan of Salvation.
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