Good to be back with you again tonight. We'll turn to God's Word this evening, 1 John chapter 2. We'll begin the reading from verse 1, read through down to verse 17. Let's all hear the Lord's Word. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar. and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected. Hereby know we that we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk, even as he walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes. I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his namesake. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome. the wicked one. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Amen. God will bless the reading from His Word for His own namesake. Now, would you please bow your head with me just for a moment. Ask the Lord just to still our hearts, our thoughts, and make a way for His truth. And to us all, let's all pray. Our loving Father in heaven, we come again to Thee in Jesus' name before we commence the preaching and hearing of the Holy Word of God. We are keenly aware, our God, that apart from the gracious work of the Spirit of God, this will just be a sermon. The people will hear words, but they won't hear the message of the Lord. Thy servant won't preach the message of the Lord. So in that mighty name that prevails with thee, we ask that thou wilt give unction to thy servant, thou wilt anoint him with fresh oil, and thou wilt give all tonight whom thou hast brought in ears to hear, that they will understand afresh, perhaps in a way they never have before, that thou hast brought them here to hear this word for this hour. May they know what it is tonight to feel themselves sitting not at the feet of a man, but at the feet of Christ. for their Maker, their Savior. Let us know tonight, Lord, something of that spiritual power that Thou dost give and Thou hast promised to give to those who seek for it in Jesus' name. We ask it all for His glory alone. Amen and amen. In developing our conference theme of Sinning Saints, I have emphasized the gospel truth that it is the Spirit of Christ who is the primary agent in transforming Christians into the likeness of the Son of God. As we have seen from Paul's well-known statement in II Corinthians chapter 3, it is by the Spirit of the Lord that we are transformed, that we are changed into that image of His Son. That means the Holy Ghost in many ways exerts His power to gradually change us from glory to glory into the likeness of God's Son. He exerts His power to enable us to be clearer and clearer in our reflections of our Lord. And this is part and parcel to the message of the gospel. The gospel is not only that Christ Jesus is the one who saves His people from the condemnation of sin. It's not just the message that He saves them from the guilt of sin, but the gospel is also the message that He saves His people, every last one of them, from the grip that sin had on their lives. He delivers them from its power, its governance, its reign. We all can sing with that old chorus if you know it. There's been a great change since I've been born again. That's true. Old things pass away, behold all things become new. But we can also sing with the psalmist, the sweet psalmist of Israel. He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. That's where the good shepherd leads his sheep. In paths of righteousness, which means he leads them more and more farther and farther away from paths of sin and unrighteousness. So intent is he on doing that, The psalmist says, just before that, He restoreth my soul. That means literally, He brings my soul back. Because like sheep, we're all prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love. But we have a very gracious shepherd, a very patient shepherd, a shepherd who is determined that by His Spirit's work, we're going to look like Him. And so He restores our souls when they need restoring. Perhaps it's been our prayer that if you're one of those that have wandered away and you've lost that fellowship, you've gotten far away from the shepherd, that this will be a week where He restores your soul. This will be a week when He brings you back to Himself, back to the place of nearness. He's determined you're going to be holy. After considering just how the Holy Spirit carries out His ongoing work of transformation, we turned last night to consider what obligations that God has laid upon us in all of this. And to the degree that we take these obligations seriously is the degree to which we either hinder the Spirit in this work or help Him. To the degree that we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling to the degree that we lay aside the weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and to the degree that we fight and keep our body under is the degree that we will look like Jesus. Be like Him. Talk like Him. Think like Him. The obligation is there. I quoted several times last evening John Owen. There was one little part I missed. I'll set it before you now. He said, Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness, who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in his way takes no steps towards his journey's end. As we continue to consider the ways in which we through, I have to keep emphasizing this, lest we lose sight of this and become discouraged and frustrated, that we through the power of the Holy Spirit actually help him. When we think about what it means to walk over the belly of our lusts, we come face to face with the one outside of our own sinful flesh who is a master at making use of those lusts to move us to act more like Him than we do Christ. I refer, of course, to the devil, Satan, the one whom the Holy Ghost calls the tempter. When the devil came to entice Christ in the wilderness to disobey the written Word of God, Matthew says, the tempter came to him. Not a tempter, But the tempter, why is he calling the devil the tempter? Well, obviously, number one, because it was the tempter who was there in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time to tempt Eve, seduce her, subtly, to tempt her to turn her back upon God. But also he's called the tempter because the chief work that he engages in is more than anything else the work of tempting men to disobey the law of God, to run counter to the will of God. He is forever seeking to prevent us from acting, living, talking, thinking according to the Lord's will, to get us to act so unchrist-like, which dishonors God and ruins our enjoyment of Him. You see, he knows that our chief end in life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Guess what his great aim is? To get us to dishonor God that we might not enjoy Him at all. Remember, please, we're not really who He's after. It's God. That's the one He's after. That's where His hatred, His malevolence is aiming for. And He uses us to get at God, He thinks. For this reason, Paul says in Ephesians 6, put on the whole armor of God that You may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. He has so many wiles, so many tricks, so many snares, so many traps that he uses to appeal to the lusts of our flesh. Those lusts that Paul was describing in Romans 7, The sin that dwells within every one of us. He knows it's there and He seeks continually to appeal to it. And it is for this very reason that the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle James, says to us all tonight, resist the devil. and He will flee from you. That is as good a promise of God as any other promise you want to read in Scripture. It's just as good a promise, if you call upon Me, I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Was this the devil's attempts to give in to the lusts of your flesh? And he will be forced to flee. That's the idea behind the word. He will be compelled to flee. Just as he was compelled to flee from Christ. What I want to begin to look at this evening as we continue to think on how we aid that Spirit's work of this magnificent transformation, this metamorphosis where we are transformed into the likeness of the Lord's Son, and this business of mortifying the deeds of the body, is the one area above all others where Satan must be resisted. And if he's not being resisted in your life and in mine in this area, it is something we need to be brought back to. Because if not, he's been having a heyday with us. And I believe because of it, he's been having a heyday with the church. I think it's safe to say that the one temptation he uses more effectively than any other is the temptation that comes to God's people through the world. The world. In the second chapter of his first epistle, the Apostle John writes, we read it tonight, my little children, these things write I unto you, that ye say not That's a big statement. There's a depth of truth. That ye sin not. That's what we're after, is it not? I get it. You've heard me say it. Till the day we die, the flesh is going to fight us. Sin will dwell in us because you're not going to repair the flesh. You're not going to fix it. It is irreparable. It will fight. But still, it's not the goal. It's not the goal each day to sin not. These things I write unto you, little children, that ye sin not. And then a little down the chapter he writes this, verse 15, "...love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." And the world passeth away in the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Transformation into the image of Jesus Christ means that we must resist the devil and we must resist him especially when he comes to us with the lusts of the world. From these few verses I want to speak a few evenings on the magnificent transformation of sinning saints. Tonight's subtitle would be Transformed by Overcoming the World. Transformed by Overcoming the World. I want to say right at the start, before even dealing with the first point, as we sang tonight, God has made all His power available for us to live soberly and righteously in this present evil world. He has already, through Christ, given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And we must approach the temptation of Satan. Yes, on earth is not his equal, but it's also true that within us greater is he than he that's within the world. And we can overcome. We can resist Him. Because I just feel I'm talking to someone here tonight that you have felt, I can't beat Him. I have tried and I have tried and I've tried. There is some sin I keep struggling with. And I don't seem to be able to get any victory over it. I want to tell you now, you can overcome the world. That's why I want you to have that just fixed in your mind as we go through this first message which in many ways is simply introductory. My first and only thought is this, defining our terms. Defining our terms. John summarizes the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life under one expression in verse 17. He says, "...the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." After mentioning the lust of the flesh, and the eyes, and the pride of life. "...the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." So all those three things he's summarizing as the lust of the world. What Satan uses more than any other to tempt the child of God to sin is the lust of the world, all that is in the world. And no surprise, because three times, three times in John's Gospel, the Savior calls Satan the prince of the world. And if you and I are going to effectively resist the devil so that he flees from us, and mortify the deeds of the body so that we don't quench the work of the Spirit of God, that we don't grieve Him, but we actually help. That's the term I'm using. And this transformation process then I'm convinced that what we need is a clear understanding of what the Word of God means when in this context it speaks of the world, the world. And we certainly won't understand what the terms being worldly or worldliness means unless we understand what the Holy Ghost means when He speaks of the world. We need to define our terms. I mean John's statement is really very simple. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. But for all of its simplicity, it is certainly one of the most misunderstood, misinterpreted verses in Scripture. The end result is that when you have Christians labeling things, I think almost glibly, as worldly, and I have to do a little confession here. I've had my own share of doing that. Just glibly saying, well, that's worldly. That's the world. And frankly, I didn't know what I was talking about. If we don't understand what the world is, we're not going to be able to discern what real worldliness is. You'll have Christians labeling things that are worldly when they're not worldly in the slightest. Nothing worldly about them. On the flip side, you will have Christians who refuse to recognize something as worldly when everything in God's Word says that it is. To illustrate the confusion on both sides of the issue, you now have professing Christians asking questions like, is it worldly if I download the latest Christian rap music to my iPod? How much violence or foul language in a movie makes it off limits? How much? How many times do they have to take God's name in vain? Use foul language before it's switched off. Is it okay to watch a movie that has an R rating as long as I fast forward past the nude scenes? Is it being worldly for a Christian to make lots of money and drive a Jag, a Mercedes? Is that worldly? A woman says, am I being worldly if I wear trousers? If I wear makeup? If I paint my fingernails and my toes? Or is it just if I paint my toes I'm worldly, I can paint my fingernails? Is it worldly for men to have a beard? Is it worldly for men not to have a beard? I've heard it both ways. You start hearing questions like that and you say there's a whole lot of confusion about what worldly means. Some would like to have a very hard and fast list of do's and don'ts. They want the preacher to provide it for them. You just tell me what I can and can't do, and I'll abide by that list. Don't trouble me with making me wrestle through these things. Just tell me. At that point in time, you never come to a personal conviction yourself if something is worldly or not. You just hear something repeated. I'm not saying you don't trust your minister, but folks, when it comes to times when you've got to make your own stand on something, and that stand is a price to pay to make that stand, because you won't go down that worldly road, you better know why you believe it's worldly and grieving to God, because it's going to hurt. You need to find out for yourself. You need to know from Scripture. You need to come to your own convictions and then have the courage of your convictions, whatever they are. This is what I believe the Scriptures teach about something being worldly or not worldly, whatever the case might be. It's thrown about so loosely. You don't like something? Particularly if it's something that's different from your day and your generation, it's worldly. Right? Because it's done differently, it's worldly. Well, because something is done differently doesn't make it worldly any more than because you do it the same old, same old that it makes it spiritual. It's all because we're not defining our terms. from Scripture. Whenever that happens, and of course, it's missed the whole point of the text. Whenever that happens, the church, as we're seeing today, loses her distinctiveness from the world. When she doesn't even recognize what worldliness is and what sanctity is, Guess what? You lose your real distinctiveness, your separateness from the world. I got to think, you know folks, the world must be confused as they look at Christians. Satan has done a masterful job through lies, deception, false teaching, and we've lost our sensitivity to and understanding of the very real danger in presence of worldliness in the church. And that's why it has come in like a flood. It's not even recognized. It's not persecution that's devastating the church in Ulster or North America. That will come. I said maybe the first part of this year, in light of the rapidity with which my own country has, five years ago I would have never thought that we are where we are right now in my country, morally. But we're there at such a pace it blows my mind. I said, just give us five years and they'll be throwing ministers who take their stand against same-sex marriage and homosexuality, they'll be in jail. It's not five years now, folks. Not five years. But it's not persecution right now that's really the plague upon the church. It's that the tempter has made tremendous inroads in seducing the world or seducing the church by the world. Seduction. James Hunter wrote a book in 1987 called Evangelicalism, The Coming Generation. Thirty years ago, he wrote about the blurring of the lines distinction between the church and the world. I want you to listen to this quote, what he said 30 years ago. Evangelicals still adhere to prohibitions against premarital, extramarital, and homosexual relations. But even here, the attitude toward those prohibitions has noticeably softened. Many of the distinctions separating Christian conduct from worldly conduct have been challenged, if not altogether undermined. Even the words worldly and worldliness have, within a generation, lost most of their traditional meaning. Thirty years ago, Thirty years down the road, you now have those who are professing evangelicals that are all jumping on the bandwagon and saying, there's absolutely nothing wrong with same-sex marriage. There's nothing absolutely wrong with homosexuality. Not saying one word. I know them, ministers in their church, and they've got more than one couple that are living together, not married, and dare not say one word about it and never deal with it. And you come down to my part of the world, and you'll find they will profess gladly that they're Christians. Give you a scripture reference and everything about it, and they're living with somebody. You see then, thirty years ago, the attitude toward it had noticeably softened. And here's where we are now. What do you think the attitude, forget about the liberals, what do you think the attitude now in the church is toward these things? If it had softened then, what's it like now? That means that the attitude toward worldliness has softened. It's not viewed as such an enemy. It's not so bad after all. We can indulge this and indulge that and it's alright. And all the while we wonder why, we wonder why we don't look more like Christ, we don't act more like Him, we don't talk more like Him. And there's no need to wonder why. If we're acting like the world, how in the world are we going to act like Christ? One preacher describes the church as letting down her guard against worldliness in these words, I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church. That was spoken by C. H. Spurgeon in the sermon he preached in the late 1800s. In 1867, in another message he declared, put your finger on any prosperous age in the church's history and I will find a little marginal note reading thus. In this age man could readily see where the church began and where the world ended. Never were there good times where the church and the world were joined in marriage with one another. The more the church is distinct from the world in her acts and in her maxims, the more true is her testimony for Christ and the more potent is her witness against sin. The more she is distinct from the world, the more potent she is in her testimony for Christ. And the world doesn't look on and laugh and say, you're just like me. D.L. Moody, I think, put it succinctly when he said this, a line should be drawn between the church and the world and every Christian should get both feet out of the world. Every Christian should get both feet out of the world. Let me stop here. Am I talking to a Christian tonight that's trying to walk with one foot in the world and one foot in the church? Perhaps you might not even be aware of that and think, well, that couldn't at all be true of me. It could be if you haven't come to a scriptural definition of the term worldliness, couldn't it? You see, when you haven't defined your terms by scripture, you will countenance that which the Word of God does not countenance. And you won't even realize, to any great degree, that I'm trying to live both lives. The problem we face today is defining the world and worldliness. Before we can begin to look at how the devil as the tempter attacks the people of God with those temptations of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, which we will do in the will of God tomorrow evening, we need to find out what the Holy Spirit means by the word world. So what does John mean when he speaks about the world in those verses we read? We must begin with this premise. Whatever the Spirit of God meant by using this term, world, its meaning is constant in any age. Its meaning is constant in any age. In other words, if the Apostle John and I could somehow sit down tonight in the same room and have a discussion about loving the world, we would see eye to eye on what the word world and the phrase love not the world is all about. The difference would be the application of it to his day, what it looked like then, how it worked itself out in the church, and what it looks like today in my age. But still, whatever the differences are in application and context, it's the same meaning in any generation, the world. Let me say what these terms, first off, are not about. Not about. When John says, love not the world, the things that are in the world, he is not advocating that you and I to do that so that we can be more like Christ is to enter a monastery or a nunnery. You might grin at that. But I'll tell you what, there are more Christians than you dare think. That that's their mentality. Just let me get away from, out away from this world. Just let me stay in my home and just let me go to church and just let me live and work and move among Christians. And then, then I'll be safe and sound. How in the world are you going to be a light in the world? How in the world are you going to be salt of the earth if you're not actually out there in the world? You don't go into a nunnery. You don't withdraw yourself. That's not the answer. Never has been the answer. John is using this term world to refer to the organized system of fallen humanity that is ruled by Satan, the prince of this world. The organized system of fallen humanity ruled by Satan. Christ said in Luke 11, if Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? His kingdom, it's not just the minions of hell he's talking about. He's the prince of the world. The devil's kingdom. The place where Satan exerts his power. It's this present evil world. There is anything and everything in this world that's opposed to Christ and to Christ's people. Anything that's opposed to your being changed into the likeness of Christ. Anything and everything that will stand in the way of that transformation. Anything coming to mind right now. that perhaps you haven't looked upon as, that's the world. Satan is using that, Satan is using that to keep me back, to keep my progress from going forward in the likeness to Christ. Now, John 15, 19. If ye were of the world, Christ said, the world would love his own. But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." You're not of the world. Here in 1 John 5.19, the apostle writes, "...and we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." Literal rendering, the whole world lieth under the control of the wicked one. The world. So the world is that which is positively hostile to God and is at enmity with God. It hates God, it hates His ways, it hates His laws, it hates His people, it hates holiness, you just name it. That's the world. That's why we are forbidden to love this world. That's why we are bidden to resist the devil and the lusts of the world. If we try to conform to it, be not conformed to this world, if we try to conform to it, it will contaminate us. I don't mean to embarrass Mr. Cairns, but he said something to me several years ago about a sermon he wanted to preach. I wish he preached it somewhere. I'd like to find out where it is. But from Romans Chapter 12, Verses 1 and 2, Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed. His sermon title would be The Curse of Being Cool. And it would be preached toward particularly young people. The Curse of Being Cool. Isn't that what's driving conformity to the world? I need to dress like them. I need to have all the things that they have. I need to learn their lingo. I need to be like them because I don't want to be a reject. I don't want them to make fun of me. That world made fun of your Lord, you professed to own. Are you better than him? You want to be cool. You want to conform. It will contaminate you. There is no way you're going to try for conformity, to be cool, to be like the world, and it not affect your own walk with God, your progression, your transformation. I'm old, but I'm not that old to remember what it was like to want to be cool. Whatever the jargon, whatever the word is today, it doesn't really make any difference. You get what I mean. It's the devil. It's the devil. It's the devil. Name it. Don't deny it. Don't put some other name upon it. You can call anyone who brings it out an old fuddy-duddy if you want to, but I have been there and done that. It's the world, and you want to be like the world. We're living in a day like never before where the world is in our face, up front and close. Through the electronic media, it enters our homes, our workplace, our car. We walk around with smartphones, continually bombarded, whether we want it or not. Do you not think for a moment that Satan is using that in every chance he gets to introduce the world into our hearts? To set those lusts of the world before our eyes? Surely. The world's corrupt value system bombards the church through television, movies, the internet, music, magazines, iPhones, iPods, iPads, Android. While some of these things are not evil in and of themselves, we're not Gnostics here. We don't believe that evil is inherent in matter. Yet Satan uses them to tempt us to go after the world. He uses those means to paint a beautiful picture of the world as he did with Christ. This is love. You want this. And our problem is, unlike Christ, there is sin that dwells within us and that sin wants it. That's why you fell. That's why you listened to him. He seduced you. There's not a day that goes by when Satan's world doesn't try to tempt us to make choices between love for the world and love for Christ. It's not about seclusion, monastery. What worldliness is all about? It's all about this word love. Love not the world. Worldliness is about loving the things of this fallen, evil world, loving the values and the pursuits of this world that are in direct opposition to God. Worldliness, acting like the world, is putting our opinions above God's Word. It desires the sinful things of this world over the commandments of the Lord. What is it that characterizes your life the most? What is it that dominates your thought life? You find yourself thinking more about growing prosperous in the world than you do growing prosperous in your Christian life. Because if that is so, if you think more about growing prosperous in the world than you do your Christian life, I know where you will spend your best time, your best energy. It will be in prospering in the world. And you will let your spiritual life go to shambles. You will ignore the scripture. You will ignore the place of prayer. You will ignore the house of God because you're too busy making yourself prosperous in the world. That's worldliness. You may be a church member. You may come faithfully to the house of God. You may have the right dress, modest, the right haircut, but you sit there worldly because you're pursuing the things of the world. It's got your best thoughts, your best time. You don't really give much thought to My walk with God, where am I? My being transformed. And it always spells disaster because it's just one thing. It's like a domino effect, you know? You just start making that your object, that worldliness, and your whole life just starts breaking down. First off, because your relationship with the Lord is breaking down. And when that happens, your relationship with others breaks down, with your spouse, with other believers. There's no way, there's no way you're going to just walk willy-nilly in the world and pursue all that and think that everything's going to be fine at home or at church or anywhere else. If you're a child of God, it's not going to be because, as we've been saying all along, the Holy Ghost is determined that His people are going to be holy. And you ought to thank God that you're actually miserable in the worldly pursuit. I'm well aware that just mentioning the term worldliness to Christians, you'll get a fight on your hands. Wouldn't it be interesting if, well, it's Tuesday night, we can't do it, but wouldn't it be interesting if we could just sit down after our service and what do you think worldliness is? Talk about what's really worldly. I will guarantee you that we'll get some people hopping mad. Some Christians think of worldliness only in terms of the external, having a certain set of standards, and if you don't meet up to those standards that they have set, then you are viewed as worldly. Other Christians who have no patience at all for such a legalistic mentality believe that you shouldn't even try to define worldliness. But both are wrong. To focus merely on the externals, on a list that's been drawn up, doesn't matter who it's been drawn up by, is to miss the whole point of John. You see, this is about loving the world. This is about a matter of the heart. It's what we love. What really has our interest is love. Something internal. You can be ever so careful about your dress being proper and your language being modest and the media that you listen to or the media that you watch not being worldly and yet still be very worldly. The essence of worldliness is not our outward behavior, though it's true that what's on the inside is going to manifest itself on the outside, but John is talking about the lust of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. That's all the heart. Your loves. Worldliness is a reaction on the inside of what's happening in the world that's on the outside. And it's this that craves and that longs, that wants. And so what the devil does, and what he has done very well for quite a lengthy time now in the church, He comes to us knowing right well that the principle of sin still lies within the Lord's people. He comes to us, sets before us our flesh, something that the flesh naturally craves, but what it craves is forbidden by God. He comes and suggests that there's nothing wrong. We can indulge it. It's not worldliness at all, and there's a whole generation that has come out of the church that what our fathers would have said, that is sin, that is worldly, and rightfully so. It is now being sanctioned by evangelicals. Sanctioned. I mean there are words, there are words, I shouldn't say we, there are words that a whole lot of Christians would never think about using. They'd say that's a curse, that's filthy, don't talk like that. But I've heard Christians Christian universities mount an argument using Scripture to defend the use of such foul language. The things that are talked about, the vocabulary that's used, See, Satan has come, and he's tempted. And the church is at a point where there's so much world, you'd wonder, how, how is it going to be turned around? How? It's become a way of life with us. I'll get more into it. And I know, I know, I know I will be labeled as a old, fuddy-duddy legalist. But I know for a fact that one time in this country, I know for a fact because that's what the historian says, one time in this country, it wasn't very common for Christians to have televisions, was it? Now I dare say it's hard to find a Christian who doesn't have one. If it's just the commercials, you know, the commercials alone, and it's just not that, but that's just been wearing and wearing and wearing us down. You begin to become insensitive to something that would have caused you to raise your eyebrows and be aghast. Now it's just normal. But I want to tell you, it is not normal with God. His definition of sin has not changed. His definition of what is worldly and what is grieving to the spirit of God has not changed, but it has had this impact upon the Lord's people because the devil has come and he hasn't been resisted. You don't, of course, you don't need a television today. You have the internet. Just click it all. We are bombarded and it has hurt the church. You see, and God willing we'll go into this tomorrow evening, what the devil has done is to convince us that the world is our friend and not our enemy. The world is our friend. You don't throw a friend out, do you? If you thanked your friend, you wouldn't throw him out. Ah, it's a friend. Can't throw him out. It's a friend. Can't get rid of this friend. This friend's a way of life with me. It's part of my life. It's part of my habit. That's why I'm talking about the world so entrenched. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. You can deny yourself all those things and be worldly, still be worldly. But I will tell you this, in no way you can set those things before your eyes, in no way, in no way and not, not be contaminated. The foul language alone should be enough. God's name. And brothers and sisters, I do not want to stand before you tonight and have you think for one moment that I am someone on an ivory pedestal who doesn't know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what I'm talking about from experience. You hear the Lord's name taken in vain. How many times in a movie, in a show? Foul language. And you wince, but you just keep watching. And the children who are watching with you keep on watching. Many a case the first time our little children heard curse words was from the television and we were the ones that introduced them to foul language. Christians are watching things. They wouldn't allow, I mean, if there was a couple that came into the living room and began to do what they're watching on the television, they would stop it immediately. What are you doing? Get out of here. So tell me, what makes it different when it's up on the screen? How is that acceptable? I don't know, folks. I don't live here. I'm a visitor. But I've got to think that you've got the same problems here in your country as I have in mine. These ways that Satan comes in. We talked about last night, killing it, killing it, killing it. Not putting it out of the bed, not putting it in the closet for a little bit. Not just wounding it so it can come out again, but killing it. Putting it to death. And if you know that that has had that effect on you, then your obligation is under God to put it to death. That'll be hard in a lot of places, but no one ever said it was going to be easy. We want revival. We need a move of God's Spirit and we don't want to quench Him. We don't want to grieve Him. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. So resist the devil and he will flee from you. Let the Lord write that word on our hearts for his namesake. We bow our heads in prayer. Let's all pray. Our gracious God and Father in heaven, we ask again that the Holy Ghost would preach on. We don't want, Lord, to do that which grieves Thee. We want to live in the reality that Christ is with us everywhere we are, whatever we're doing. We want to walk with the Lord that we might walk on and be more like Him. We pray that as we continue to look at these wiles of the devil that we will be made wise and wherever there is the need For convictions to be born, Lord, birth those convictions. Where there is the need for the courage of convictions, we pray Thou wilt grant the courage of our convictions. May our God this be for all of us a watershed week, a turning point. We know, Lord, that Satan is going to kick back. We expect it. But Lord we thank Thee that Christ will defend us and empower us to do whatever He calls us to do. In His name we pray, Amen and Amen.