From Greenville, South Carolina, we present, Let the Bible Speak. Let the Bible Speak is the radio ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, preaching Christ in all His fullness. Thank you for joining us today. This is Alan Kern saying hello to you. Welcome once more to Let the Bible Speak. Today we continue our study of the completeness and the consequences of Christ's triumph over Satan during his temptation in the wilderness. A triumph that has tremendous consequences and implications in the life of every believer. so stay with us as we turn in a few minutes time to the word of god before that we'd be having our hot topic or commentary for today subject of that will be a holy healer or a horrible hypocrite we'll be looking at that in just a few minutes but we're going to start off with our church congregation here singing a grand old hymn of testimony lord jesus i love thee I know thou art mine. Jesus, I love You, my Lord, my God. My God and my Lord, my surely God. My Savior, my Redeemer, my Lord and my God. Our God, we love, love, and worship thee, and worship thee. I love Thee, O Mary, the Lord of my proud. Without Thou, my darling, I cannot live now. And shelter us, then, through our brothers and foes. Thou shalt give thy likeness with flesh on my brow. Darlene Bishop is a co-pastor of a 4,000 member church in Monroe, Ohio and the star of the televangelist circuit. She has written a book describing how she was cured from breast cancer and how her brother a big-time country and western music writer, was cured of throat cancer, all by miracle, not medicine. What she never revealed to her readers or hearers, but what is evident in court depositions, is that she was never diagnosed with cancer. She believed that she had it, and then she believed she was cured. Another little detail she never revealed to her readers or hearers is that the brother who was cured of throat cancer died of the disease a year and a half ago. Darlene Bishop is facing a court battle with the family of her dead brother who blame her for keeping him from obtaining medical attention that could have saved his life. They have other accusations to make concerning her use or abuse of his money. We'll not pursue these, at least for now, nor will we do more than notice that the healing business seems to pay her well, for she owns a 2.6 million dollar horse farm. Not bad for a poor preacher. What interests me is the wanton deception practiced on vulnerable people who desperately want to believe that people like Darlene Bishop have a word of healing from God for them. The simple truth is that they don't, but that doesn't stop unscrupulous or self-deceived, and you can take your pick, faith healers making out that they do. When Morris Cerullo visited London some time ago, making extravagant claims of the wonderful healings that were occurring, a team of Bible-believing medical doctors thought they would investigate. With a lot of difficulty, they obtained a handful of names from Cerullo's organization of miraculous cures. There were supposed to be hundreds, but all the doctors were given were a handful of names. And when they looked into them, they found that not a single one showed evidence of a miracle at all. Desperate people are easily manipulated. So are the people who hear the trumped up testimonies of miraculous healings and they pay big money to the claimed healers, many of whom desperately needed to finance their lavish lifestyle. Now don't get me wrong, I believe that God has the power to grant healing to a person in answer to prayer. I've seen it happen, though I would never think of using such experiences to set up as a faith healer. No, I'm not against you praying to God to grant you His healing touch according to His will. What I'm against is a bunch of charlatans masquerading as men of God, telling you that it's always God's will to heal, and declaring you healed, often in the teeth of solid medical evidence to the contrary. They even have the audacity to call ignoring the medical evidence faith, and if the poor victim dies, the healer washes his hands in disgraceful self-righteousness by saying that the dying man or woman just wouldn't really believe, didn't have enough faith. Con men abound. These are some of the worst. Holy healers? Never. Horrible hypocrites would be a better description. May Jesus Christ be praised! To thee, my God above, I cry with glowing love, May Jesus Christ be praised! The perfect grace is displayed In hearts that ever sing, May Jesus Christ be praised! When sleep upon me dies, my silent spirit flies, may Jesus Christ be praised. When evil falls for your helps, we'll lift my shield by prayers, may Jesus Christ be praised. The night becomes a day, when from the heart we say, May Jesus Christ be praised! The hearts of darkness fear, when this rich hope they near, May Jesus Christ be praised! He lives, my life is mine, I thank Him all the night, May Jesus Christ be praised! He lives, eternal Son, To all the ages on, May Jesus Christ be praised! Many of you have already asked for our quarterly magazine, and have, I trust, been enjoying reading it. If you haven't yet joined our readership, I encourage you to do so. It's easy. All you have to do is call or write, either by conventional mail or by email, and we'll ship the magazine off to you. There's no cost to you at all, and no strings attached. We know that almost any time you order anything from most Christian ministries, you're likely to receive endless streams of begging letters. That will not happen when you write or call Let The Bible Speak. So make sure you get in our mailing list for the Let The Bible Speak quarterly magazine. Our mailing address is LetTheBibleSpeak.com. 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, SC 29615 Our email address is ltbs at freepres, that is f-r-e-e-p-r-e-s, ltbs at freepres.org. Our toll-free telephone number is 1-866-877-LTBS, 1-866-877-5827. We look forward to hearing from you and being able to send you our Let the Bible Speak quarterly magazine. Life at best is very brief, like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a sheep in time. The waiting days are telling fast, and the die will soon be cast. And the fatal line be passed, be in time! Be in time! Be in time! Be in time! Be in time! While the voice of Jesus calls you, be in time! Be in time! If in sin you longer wait, do they find no open gates? and your cry be just too late, be in time. Sinner heed the warning voice, make the Lord your final choice, then in heaven we'll rejoice, be in time. Come from darkness into light, come and save us, make it right. Come and start for heaven tonight, be in time. Be in time, be in time, be in time, while the voice of Jesus calls you, be in time, be in time. If in sin you longer wait, you may find a woven gift. And now let's return to God's word as we consider something further on the subject of the completeness and consequences of Christ's triumph over Satan during his temptation in the wilderness. We start at the point where we see the Lord Jesus starting out upon His ministry, encountering great wickedness, the powers of darkness, and how He overcame and delivered the prey from the hand of the mighty. As He set out upon His ministry, He encountered iniquity. He encountered impenitence. He encountered deep ignorance. And as I've already referred to, he encountered demon possession and demon activity on an unprecedented scale. And over against all these things, what did the Lord Jesus Christ set? His Word. Read the Gospels. Now and again, there was His touch, and that's for a very good reason. I'm not going to go into this morning. Another time we'll consider the touch of the Master's hand, when and why He touched. But even with His touch, there was always His Word. Against all the iniquity and ignorance and impenitence and demonism that He encountered, He issued His own incisive Word. argued with the devil. He never held a dialogue with the devil. He commanded. His incisive word, it was always an imperative word, come out of him. You remember he said that to the legion of devils in the demoniac of Gadara? Just with one command, come out of him. When he came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, there was a distraught father. And he says, I brought my demon-possessed son to your disciples and they couldn't help him. I must say that that text always bothers me. I brought them to your disciples, but they had no power to do anything." How often that's true of ourselves. How often it's true of the church. People bring the needy loved ones, and we don't have power with God, and we don't have power with man. We have so little spiritual dynamite. that they're none the better. Jesus said, bring them to Me. Just bring them to Me. With one word, an imperative word, He set them free. Against all this power of sin and darkness and hell, the Lord Jesus Christ simply opposed His Word. And through that Word, He let loose His mighty power. In the power of the Spirit, He set forth into Galilee, and then the rest of the story is history. He commanded the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the dead to rise. He commanded the woman who had been bound by an evil spirit physically bound because she was spiritually bound. She was bowed right over. She could in no way raise herself up. He commanded her to be free. He commanded the possessed to be at rest. You've got that beautiful description in Mark 5 of the demoniac of Gadara. Now sitting and clothed and in his right mind, he commanded the guilty to be pardoned and to be reconciled to God. By the Word of His power, he loosed this mighty, divine virtue and energy. And you know, when he went to the cross, it was to complete Satan's route forever. What does Colossians 2.15 tell us? It says that having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them, openly triumphing over them in it that is in His cross. What was He doing at Calvary? At Calvary, Christ was consummating what He had so powerfully accomplished in the wilderness of temptation. You follow him with the apostles into the book of the Acts, and he continued through them to devastate Satan. In Acts chapter 8 and in verse 7, we read the words about Samaria, that unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them. At the end of Mark chapter 16 he gives the promise. That is not as some snake handlers would have you believe a promise to every Christian that must be fulfilled in every case in every era of time. But it is what overall marked the New Testament church. And it was power against the powers of hell. He continued through the book of the Acts against Satan. And he continues the same thing today. Remember what Hebrews 7.25 says, He is able to see it to the uttermost. Some of you with good memories will remember this, but a number of years ago, I linked two texts of scripture. One concerning the woman who was bent over double. She was bound by Satan. And it says that she could in no wise lift herself up. The Greek text simply says, she was unable to the uttermost. You have the very parallel statement in Hebrews chapter 7, He is able to the uttermost. You have the inability of man and you have the power of God. Now, that's still the situation today. Men and women are unable to the uttermost by the depravity of sin, by the corruption of evil, by the power of Satan, by the temptation that the flesh gives into. They are unable to the uttermost to set themselves free. They are unable to the uttermost to save themselves. They are unable to the uttermost to be holy and upright and godly. They are unable to the uttermost to escape. the wrath of God. But He is able to the uttermost to save them that believe. He's able to save them that come unto God by Him. And when He saves them, He is able, Jude 24 says, to keep you from falling. Now understand that. That's not pie in the sky. That's not some overblown, overstated hopeful promise. That's a statement of absolute fact. If that's not true, then you can take the whole Bible and throw it out, because if that can't be depended on, how could you believe that God is, and God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him? How could you believe, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life? This is just a statement that's of absolute simplicity, Factuality. He is able to keep you from falling. Now, understand the context. Some people want to divorce this from its context, and if you're not living sinlessly perfect, then they want to wrap you up in the bondage of guilt and tell you that somehow you're not seeing this fulfilled. Jude is writing against the background of apostasy. And the fall that he's talking of is a falling away from Christ. He's talking about such a fall as he describes in the earlier verses of his little epistle. And he's saying, listen, when God saves you, He keeps you. Christ didn't shed His blood for you to forget about you. He didn't redeem you to abandon you. He is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. That's what He's able to do. And I want to tell you, that's what He's going to do in every case. But He's able to keep you. Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. Satan wants to get at every Christian. Never forget that we are wrestling against spiritual wickedness in high places. We are wrestling, and the wrestling is hand-to-hand combat. It's not war with the devil using smart missiles. It's hand-to-hand combat. It's two-to-two between the Christian and the powers of hell. We wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. But He's able. He's able. He has given us a full armor from head to toe. He's got us covered. You've been listening to Let the Bible Speak, the radio ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America. I hope that you found today's broadcasting a blessing to your heart. If you'd like to email us, our email address is ltbs at freepres.org. Or if you'd prefer, you may write us at LetTheBibleSpeak 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, South Carolina 29615. We would love to hear from you. If you'd like to know how to be saved and how to be sure you're saved, we'd like to send you my booklet, A New Beginning, and I think that you'll find it very helpful. Each quarter we publish a free full-color magazine, Let the Bible Speak Quarterly, with a good variety of Bible teaching and testimony. It's available to all who request it. If you'd like to receive more information about the Free Presbyterian Church of North America and its ministry, we'd like to send you our booklet, Separated Unto the Gospel. Or if you'd like to have tape or CD copies of the messages here in Let the Bible Speak, you may have them by contacting us. Or you may visit us on the web at letthebiblespeakradio.com. Now that's a lot of information to digest all at once, but you can find it all on our website, LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com. There you'll be able to listen to and download our programs, visit our online bookstore, and read a text version of each day's commentary. So visit us today at LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com. This is Alan Kern saying, thank you for listening. I trust that you'll join us each day at this time, Monday through Friday, as we let the Bible speak.