This is the Scripture-Driven Church broadcast brought to you by Teaching the Word Ministries. The Church of Jesus Christ must be the Scripture-Driven Church, relying on God's inspired and inerrant Word as our sole authority and our infallible critic in every area of life and ministry. And now, here's author, Bible teacher, and Teaching the Word president, Dr. Paul Elliott, to introduce today's program. Have you ever been troubled by this question? If I'm truly saved, if God the Holy Spirit really lives within me, why do I still have such struggles with sin? If you are a Christian, you need to recognize that this question contains an implied lie of Satan. The lie is that if you still have such struggles with sin, it means you're not really a Christian. Well today I want to show you God's answer to that lie from scripture. We're concluding a two-part message titled, Satan's If vs. God's Amen. Heavenly Father, I pray that you will encourage us from your word today so that we will not be defeated by the lies of the enemy and so that we will seek to live a sanctified life in Christ Jesus. I pray in his name, Amen. Let me direct your attention first of all to Matthew 4, beginning at verse 1. This, of course, is the familiar account of Satan's temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew 4, beginning at verse 1. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, He said, if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he, Jesus, answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him up into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, it is written again, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Notice Satan's implied lie. If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Jesus, Satan is saying, you are not who John the Baptist says you are. Jesus, you are not who you say you are. And this is Satan's pattern in all of church history. Undermining the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ. Getting people to buy into the idea that Jesus is only a great moral example. Getting people to buy into the idea that Jesus was merely a martyr for a lost cause. Getting theologians to go out on a quest for the historical Jesus, not in recorded history as we have it in the Word of God, but in the philosophies of fallen men who do not bow the knee to Jesus. And secondly, let me direct your attention to Matthew chapter 27, beginning at verse 39. And here Jesus has been crucified, and the Jews take up the implied lie that Satan had put forth as he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew chapter 27, beginning at verse 39. And those who passed by blasphemed him, blasphemed Jesus on the cross. wagging their heads and saying, you who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise, the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others, Himself He cannot save, if He is the King of Israel. Let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God. Let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him. For He said, I am the Son of God. The implied lie once again. If you are the Son of God, if you are the King of Israel, come down from the cross. Let God deliver him now, if he will have him, for he said, I am the Son of God. Jesus, you are not really who you say you are. And so the Apostle John, who was an eyewitness of these events, writes this in 1 John 2, verse 22. Who is a liar? but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son, literally, he who agrees with God the Father that Jesus is the Son, has the Father also. And thirdly, we have the implied lie of the devil in Genesis chapter 3. The implied if of Satan's question. Has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And here is the implied lie. Eve, what if God is not telling you the whole truth? What if God is withholding something good from you? What if you really know better than God? What if you can become like God? Here we see once again what Paul in Ephesians 6 calls the wiles of the devil, literally the methods of the devil. pages of Scripture tell us exactly how Satan operates. The leading characteristic of the devil's method is that he seeks to sow the seeds of doubt, and the seeds of doubt spring up into confusion, and confusion leads you away from steadfastness in Christ. And so we see this most clever of Satan's devices, the implied lie, in the pages of Scripture. And let's put this back into the context of the passage where we began in Psalm 119. Satan wants us to doubt that we have an all-sufficient God. Satan wants us to doubt that God has given a forever settled word. Satan wants us to doubt that Jesus is the all-sufficient Savior. Much of the evangelical church is buying into that deception today, and that is why it is important, secondly, for us to recognize that Satan's same pattern of deception and man's same tendency to fall prey to the implied lie of the devil exists in the church. Let me briefly mention two examples of this. The first one goes right along with the matter that we considered a moment ago. According to reliable surveys, nearly half of the adults in evangelical churches today believe that Jesus Christ probably or definitely committed sin while he was on earth. And here is the devil's if, the implied lie, that you find in so many so-called evangelical churches today. It goes like this. Well, if Jesus committed sin, then at least he was just a regular kind of person like I am. And that's the kind of person I want for a friend. Not some holier-than-thou person, just a regular guy. I have heard people who claim to be evangelical Christians more than once say that their idea of Jesus is someone they could go to the bar and have a drink with on Saturday night. That is the kind of thinking we find in much of the evangelical church today. That is the kind of teaching you will actually find in many so-called evangelical pulpits today. Well, dear friends, let me turn that lie of the devil around. If you do not believe in a sinless Christ, you have not believed the one true gospel. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. The gospel begins with the deity of Christ. The gospel begins with the sinless perfection of Christ. That is why Satan wants to undermine and destroy those beliefs. If you do not believe in a sinless Christ, you have not believed the one true gospel. You are simply not saved. And if you believe in a Christ who could have sinned, let me frankly say that I likewise fear for you. Even if you believe in a Christ who could have sinned, but you will say, did not sin, I fear for you, because the Word of God clearly teaches the impeccability of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that His temptation in all points, like as we are, yet without sin, was the proof of His perfection. Now, there is a second if of the devil, a second implied lie of the devil, that we find in the evangelical church today, and it also has to do with the heart of the gospel. Joel Osteen, the pastor of the largest evangelical church in the United States, is often asked this question. What about people who don't believe on Jesus Christ? Will they go to heaven? Now, I'm mentioning Joel Osteen by name because he is such a well-known figure. But you will find the same kind of answer to this question coming out of the mouths of many other men who call themselves evangelicals. Joel Osteen's answer goes like this. He says, well, I've spent a lot of time in India. And those millions of Hindus are very sincere people, and they love God, and I don't see how God can reject them. Here once again is the devil's if, the implied lie, and it goes like this. If these people are so sincere, how can God reject them? The answer according to Scripture is that you can be very sincere, but sincerely wrong. And the lie also goes like this, if these people love God, how can he reject them? The answer is that they cannot love a God who they do not even know. And finally, the lie goes like this, and this is what we might call the Oprah version of the lie, since she is one of today's leading promoters of it. It goes like this, if you have your truth and I have my truth, won't we all just get there somehow? The answer is that there is only one truth. Jesus is the truth. God's Word, forever settled in heaven, is the truth. And so we've seen Satan's implied lie, Satan's if, in the pages of Scripture, and we have seen it in the life of the church today. Thirdly, we find Satan's implied lie, Satan's if, often creeping into our own hearts, into our own thinking. This takes a great many different forms. I know of one preacher who spent almost a year in a series of Sunday morning sermons just dealing with various aspects of this one issue. But let me mention just one thing, one implied lie of the devil that creeps into our hearts as Christians, and it goes like this. If I'm truly saved, if I'm really a Christian, if God the Holy Spirit really lives within me, why do I still have such struggles with sin? And of course Satan's implied lie is that if you still have such struggles with sin, It means you're not really a Christian. Have you ever been troubled by that lie of the devil? No doubt many of us have. Well, let me take a moment to give you God's answer to that implied lie of Satan. When you were converted, you were once and forever, fully and completely justified in Christ before God. Isaiah chapter 61 verse 10 tells us that you were at that moment clothed with the robe of Christ's righteousness. The Holy Spirit took up residence within you, but you are still a sinner. You are still in the flesh. Martin Luther was a man who used earthy illustrations. And to bring out this particular point, he used the illustration of the farmers' manure piles in the fields of Germany. In the wintertime, the snow completely covered the manure piles. But underneath the beautiful white snow, they were still manure piles. And so it is with each of us. We wear the robe of Christ's perfect righteousness. so that we are really, perfectly, positionally righteous in the sight of God. Our sin problem has been dealt with once for all, but underneath that garment, until we go to be with the Lord, we are still sinners in bodies of flesh, and we're still living in a world that is under the curse. But because the Holy Spirit has taken up residence within us, there is an inevitable and irreconcilable warfare between our flesh and God's Spirit. We might compare it to the body trying to reject a heart transplant. The transplanted organ is beneficial and life-saving to the body, but the body's natural defenses go to work to try to reject it as a foreign body. the same way the Spirit is a foreign body to the flesh, and the flesh constantly tries to reject this foreign body. As the Apostle Paul writes in Galatians chapter 5, the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. And this association of sin with the flesh is so complete that Paul in Colossians calls the sins of fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness. He calls those things our members which are upon the earth. Colossians chapter 3 verse 5. And in Romans chapter 7, Paul tells us, out of his own experience, he says, I do the very things that I now hate because of the presence of the Spirit within me. And yet the Word of God makes it clear that you can take great comfort in this irreconcilable warfare within you because it is a sign of two things. First, it is a sign of the fact that the Holy Spirit, in fact, does live within you. as the guarantee or down payment against the day of your ultimate redemption from this body of sin, as we're told in Ephesians chapter 2. And secondly, the presence of this warfare in our lives demonstrates that the Holy Spirit is indeed not only present, but is at work conforming us more and more to the image of Christ, as we read in Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, and in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18. And through this grace of sanctification, the Holy Spirit will have the ultimate victory over the flesh. Those whom God justifies, he inexorably sanctifies and ultimately glorifies. The golden chain that Paul sets forth for us in Romans 8, verse 30, of those three things That chain cannot and will not be broken. Our sanctification is not complete in this life, but we have the assurance that God will, as Paul tells us in Romans 7, deliver us from the body of this death through Jesus Christ our Lord. So the next time Satan tries to get you to doubt your salvation because of your struggles with sin, the next time Satan springs that implied lie on you, Here is your answer from God's forever settled Word. And the answer is this, because God always keeps his promises. People are going to ask you, how do you know that Jesus Christ is the one and only way, the one and only truth, the one and only life? How can you be so sure? The answer is the same, because God always keeps his promises. People are going to ask you, why are you living the way you live? Why is it different? And I trust that they notice that your life is different. The answer is the same once again. I am endeavoring by the grace of God to live a life that pleases God, because God always keeps his promises. In 2 Peter 1, verse 19, Peter says this, we have also a more sure word of prophecy. In the original language it actually reads like this, we also have the prophetic word made more sure. What exactly does Peter mean by this? Peter's point is that the word of prophecy that was given to Israel in ancient times has become more sure in the light of what has subsequently taken place. We have the word of prophecy itself made more sure. And how has it been made more sure? By its fulfillment. It has been established. It has been substantiated, proven, demonstrated, confirmed, verified. God always keeps His promises. and he keeps his promises in and through and because of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the prophetic word made more sure. Jesus Christ himself is the prophetic word substantiated and proven. In 2 Corinthians 1 verse 20 Paul puts it this way, All the promises of God in Christ are yes, and in him, amen. There in the Old Testament are the promises concerning Christ. There is the yes, God's affirmative, this is what I am going to do. and in the actual person and work of Jesus Christ, we have the answer, the amen, the substantiation and the fulfillment of everything God promised through His Old Testament prophets. God keeps His promises, every one, in every detail, without exception, nothing left out, no loose ends. God has proved that His promises are true. Everything that God has ever promised is being fulfilled. The first coming of Jesus Christ is a great declaration of the immutability of the counsel of God. God's Word is fixed and absolute and eternal. And there is more to come. God is not slack concerning His promise, Peter says. The day of the Lord is coming, just as surely as God kept every promise about the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, he will keep every promise about the second coming of the Lord. And so Peter says, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. The golden chain of Romans 8.30 brought to its completion in our ultimate glorification. So dear friends, keep looking up. Jesus is coming again. The fulfilled promises of God in Jesus Christ are the proof that God's Word is the one thing you can always trust. There are great and precious promises exceeding great and precious promises in the Word. There are promises to you when you are sick. There are promises to you when you suffer the loss of a loved one. There are promises to the widow. There are promises to the fatherless and the orphan. There are promises to you when you are in every kind of physical and material and spiritual need. There are promises to you when you go through the deep waters and the fiery trials. of temptations and testings. There are promises to you when you are in such anguish of soul that you don't know what to do or which way to turn. Every conceivable condition, every conceivable situation in which you can ever be, is covered by the sure promises of God. And so I urge you, whenever Satan comes at you with his doubts, with his implied lies, lean on God's promises. Take them to heart. Make them yours. Prove in your own life, by walking with Christ in the Spirit, that God always keeps His promises. And I know that many of you listening can testify to that fact in marvelous ways. God has given His Word, and you can take Him at His Word. God is all-sufficient. God's total sufficiency rescues us from our total insufficiency. That is the picture of life in Christ. Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. Thanks be unto God for the One in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen, without any shadow of a doubt. Here once again is Dr. Paul Elliott with some closing comments. We live in a time when so many churches are being driven in so many wrong directions by so many things other than the Word of God. The purpose-driven church movement, the emergent church movement, Sonship theology, and so many other things are leading the church away from the firm foundation of the faith. What's the answer? Well, right now we're offering a free CD that I hope everyone will request. The CD contains a series of 10 messages called, What Does It Mean to Be a Scripture-Driven Church? This series not only describes the problem, it also presents the biblical solution, what God can do and does do in and through a church that has the Bible as its authority and nothing else. Here's how to request your free copy. Just go to our website, teachingtheword.org, and click the Free Resources link on our homepage, and then click the link to request your free copy of the CD, What Does It Mean to Be a Scripture-Driven Church? Once again, go to our website, teachingtheword.org, and click the free resources link on our homepage, and then click the link to request your free copy of the CD, What Does It Mean to Be a Scripture-Driven Church?, and we'll mail it out to you right away. If you're in the United States, you can also make your request by calling us toll-free at 888-804-9655. Once again, our toll-free number is 888-804-9655. Or, if you prefer, you can write to us at Teaching the Word Ministries, Box 2533, Westminster, 21158 USA. Once again, our mailing address is Teaching the Word Ministries, Box 2533, Westminster, Maryland, 21158 USA. And don't forget to request your free copy of the Ten Message CD, What Does It Mean to Be a Scripture-Driven Church? Thanks for listening today and until next time, may God richly bless your personal study of His inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word. This weekly program, the Scripture Driven Church is brought to you by the faithful friends and supporters of Teaching the Word Ministries.