All right, if you have your Bibles, I'd like you to turn with me to the book of Ephesians chapter 6 again tonight, please. Ephesians chapter number 6 and verse number 10. The apostle addresses the church at Ephesus. Ephesians chapter number 6 and verse 10. Folks, 2,000 years ago, this was a living, breathing church. Amen. This is not a letter in abstract written to some non-entity. These are people alive then dealing with the same issues that we do today. Ephesians 6.10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, taking to you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness, your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of faith. wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Father, bless your holy word now. In Jesus' sweet name I pray, amen. You can be seated. This morning I preached you a message from verse number 17 about the sword of the spirit. Tonight we're still on the same subject of the spirit of the living God. But tonight we focus what it says in verse number 11 where it says put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. The word translated wilds is the Greek word methodea. Now what do you suppose you could find in English? Methods, exactly. That's another case in the English language where it takes straight from a foreign language like Greek and we accommodate it into our tongue. In the book of Ephesians, chapter number 6 and verse number 11, the methods of the devil, the wiles of Satan. Satan, the name, his name Satan means adversary. And he is certainly our adversary. The work of the Holy Spirit of God is conviction, not condemnation. The work of the Holy Spirit of God is awareness, not accusations. The work of the Holy Spirit is freedom. not fetters. So therefore they put Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in a burning fiery furnace. They locked them up, but it did them no good. All it did was improve their lot and their stand with the Lord. So it is with every trial and temptation that you'll go through in this world. If you go through it in faith, it'll make you better, make you stronger, draw you closer to the Lord God. They put Daniel in a den of lions because of his testimony for the Lord. The lions had to go hungry for a while. They put Paul and Silas in prison for their testimony and their preaching of the Word of God. And at midnight, the Bible said, they sang praises unto God. Satan likes to bind you up. He is a master at binding up. He's a master at enslaving and heaping bondage upon the human soul. He's good at it, folks. His methods are very tried and very proven to be workable in the heart of a human being. He's had a lot of experience working with mankind in binding you up. But the Bible said if the Son make you free, you're free indeed. A free man needs no laws. The laws are for lawbreakers. Therefore, the law was given. All the Lord hath said, we will do, they declared, but they broke the law, because they did not have what it took to keep the law. Only one that ever walked this earth was, by friend, incapable of breaking it and perfect above it. A bondage rises from within, not from without. It's not circumstances that bring you into bondage. It's what goes on inside the human soul. A slave is still a slave if you put him at the king's table and set a feast before him. He's still a slave. Something must change. A free man is still even a free man, even if he is bound in chains and fetters. For at midnight when Paul and Silas sang praises to God, they were more free than the jailkeeper. What binds a man is what goes on in his soul. What goes on in your soul is first brought into you by your mind. Remind once again, remind you, it's not your brain. Your mind is the thinking faculties of your soul. What produces a human mind is a lot of varied elements. from a lot of different places. Human experience, what you've been taught, what you've experienced, who you've met, the experiences of life, the words you've heard, false doctrine, good doctrine, all these things make up the complex nature that presents the human mind. Therefore, the human mind is not an easy thing. to delve into. A man calls himself a psychologist, another says he's a psychiatrist. Both of these words, psuche, come from the Greek word which means soul. So a psychologist, a man who says that he's able to read your soul. A psychiatrist is a man who says he can speak into your soul and find out what it takes to heal what's wrong with you. Let me say tonight what the problem is. Your problem is not your environment. Your problem is not your upbringing. All these may contribute, but to the real problem is sin. And the only thing that can take care of sin is the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And you'll never hear a psychologist or a psychiatrist ever appeal to the blood to one of his patients that's paying him 100, 200, $300 an hour to listen to his educated opinion about what he needs. What you need tonight is not self-introspection. What you need tonight is not going back to your babyhood or your boyhood or your girlhood. What you need tonight is not to go back and try to rearrange all the bad things that happened to you in your life before you showed up tonight. What you need tonight is to apply the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ at the cross at Calvary, what He did for every last one of us of Adam's race. For what He did, He did it not only for me, but He did it for you. And He did it to bring us out of the bondage of sin. Satan is a master at bondage. He's a master liar. He's a master deceiver. And make no mistake about it, tonight, his playing house, his playhouse is your mind. So the Word of God has a lot to say about the human mind. Satan hides the truth. He doesn't want you to know who you are. He wants you to think you are who you think you are. Let that settle in for a moment. Let that settle in. He wants you to think you are who you think you are. But the truth of the matter is you cannot depend upon your mind. Like I preached to you this morning, I don't trust my mind. Do you trust yours? I don't trust myself. Do you trust yourself? I trust Him. I believe in Him. I know Him. I know one higher than me. I know one greater than me. I know one who is truth personified. I know one that is impossible for Him to lie. I know the truth, and the truth will make me free. And He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no man cometh unto the Father but by Me. I want to know the Father. How do I know the Father? I know Him through the truth. I want to know about heaven. How do I know about heaven? Through the truth. I want to know about sin. How do I know about sin? through the truth. I want to know about the fall of man, and I want to know what the remedy of sin is. I want to know where I'm going. I want to know how I'm kept. I want to know how my sins are forgiven. How do you know that, preacher? The truth. And the truth will make you free. Sanctify them through that truth. Thy word is truth. The Lord Jesus Christ is the truth of God, manifested to mankind. Anything else said in opposition to that is a lie. And Satan is the father of lies. He doesn't want you to think who you are, who you think you are. Satan confuses the mind to confuse the identity. The reason he confuses the mind to confuse the identity is because once you ever find out Once you ever realize what you are in Christ, what He's done for you, your standing in God, then everything changes about your life. Your standing in God is not dependent upon what you think about yourself. Your standing in God is not dependent upon your present experience or this present life. or your present victory. Your standing in God is absolutely and entirely built upon the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I either have Him as my Savior or I don't. Amen. It's one of the two. There's no middle ground. There's no shaded gray areas. I either belong to Him and He belongs to me or I have nothing to do with Him and He has nothing to do with me. And so Satan is a master at deception. He confuses the mind. to confuse the identity. His tactics, his methods, we know all about. One of them, for example, is fear. Satan will fill your heart full of fear. I wonder what's going to happen tomorrow. I wonder what will happen next week. I wonder what's going to happen a week after that. What if the economy falls? What if I get sick? What if this one happens? What if this, this, this, this, this? First thing you know, You become a slave to fear because you are fearing the unknown. Let me tell you something, folks. It's not God's business tonight to tell us the unknown. All he cares that you know is the one who knows the unknown. Amen. And you put your trust and your faith in Him. Fear is a tactic of Satan. He'll use it on you. Make no mistake about it. Depression is another spirit, is another tactic of Satan. It's called in the Bible the spirit of heaviness. I've watched God's people sink into depression. I felt depression. I understand what it feels like. I know a little about depression. I've been through some of it. But thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. For He can lift that burden from your soul. And He can exchange the spirit of heaviness for a garment of praise. Amen. Yes! Hallelujah to God! You can praise Him for who He is. You can praise Him for what He's done. And you can praise Him for the future that He's laid out for you. Don't put any hope in this world. Don't put any hope in men. But put on that garment of praise tonight and glorify the Lord God Almighty. He's a good God. He deserves our praise. and glory, amen. Then there is the affliction that he puts upon you. In Luke chapter number 13, verse 16, there was a daughter of Israel who had been afflicted for 18 years, 18 long years, this Bible said, and she had the spirit of infirmity. It says plainly, she had the spirit of infirmity. Sometimes a physical condition can be directly attributed to a spirit. Now I'm not up here tonight to try to get off into a big long thing with you, but I want you to understand, are not necessarily biological. Sometimes they can be brought on by a spiritual issue. And if it is a spirit that's associated with it, then you have to deal with it on spiritual grounds. Medication won't do the job. And I'm all for medication, folks. I take it every day. But I know who my doctor is. And I know who administers it to me. But let me tell you something, when you deal with a spirit being, you're dealing with an intelligent being. You better be ready to deal with a spirit being. You better be able to come against it armed with this armor of Ephesians 6. And you better know the Word of the Living God. or it'll shift you like wheat. Then there is the problem of error, the spirit of error, heresy. That is one of the great tactics of Satan. He'll get you to fall into that, especially religious bondage. Let me show you how religious bondage manifests itself. It's either through a system, or through a church, or through a man. They always become the focus of the individual's life. Their life is being lived day by day to either satisfy a system, or a church, or a man. They become men-followers. They worship men. You'll notice over there in 1 Corinthians, even though they were saved Christians, The Bible said that they had elevated men to a much higher plane than they should have. Some said, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of this, I'm of that. I'm of Christ, friend. I've been saved. I've been washed in the blood. It's not a man that saved me or keeps me. That's what you should be saying tonight. Thank God for his messengers. Thank God for his servants. But I am, my friend, cut from the rock. The rock, my friend, that is higher than I. I drink from a fountain, my friend, that is not of this earth. I eat manna that does not show up here, but comes down from above. And it's only good for you when you're hungry. You can't store it up. God's got manna for you today, if you're willing to eat it. Are you hungry? Let me show you one of the characteristics of religious bondage. In Matthew chapter number 23 and verse number 4, the Lord Jesus Christ said that they bind heavy burdens, grievous to be born. Let me tell you how that you can fall into religious bondage. Say once again, you can be saved and fall into religious bondage. Your religion continues to put fetters about you, tighten you up and drive you down. And the reason it does is because they want to make a slave out of you to their system, their do's or their don'ts or their man or their church. If a church ever gets up in front of you and waves some kind of a thing across you and tells you that unless you belong to their church or their denomination that you can't go to heaven, you're listening to a devil and you're listening to a bondage that is produced by Satan. What church do I need to belong to, preacher? The Body of Christ! How do I get in there, preacher? The Blood of Christ! When does that happen, preacher? At the moment of the new birth. Man can't keep you out. Thanks be unto God. Does your religion bow you under or make you free? Freedom is refreshing, life-giving. Freedom leads to righteousness, cleanness, goodness. I'm not talking about a liberty and a license to sin. I'm talking about freedom that sets the soul free. And in that freedom they realize in the Lord God that their sins can be cleansed, that their guilt can be removed, and that that burden can be taken from them. And they rise up and say, thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. I am what I am, Paul said, by the grace of God. Remember that tonight. Remember that tonight. I am what I am, by the grace of God. Paul said, of the sinners I am chief. Paul said, I persecuted the church of God. But he still said, I am what I am. By the grace of God, Paul began to get a hold of the balance that is necessary to live the Christian life. You take the side of a legalist. He'll condemn you, drive you down. You will never be free under the preaching of a legalist. He will heap upon you more don'ts, more dos, until you can't bear them. And then that one who takes the grace of God and turns it into lasciviousness. He says, do anything you please and you're going to go to heaven anyway. Sit down on your blessed assurance. Everything's going to be just fine. But folks, they're both error. It is the man that walks in the light as he is in the light that has fellowship one with another. I have prayed unto God this day. God, cleanse me in the precious blood of Christ. Cleanse my conscience. Cleanse my soul. Give me victory over sin. I want fellowship with you. I want to love you. I want to serve you. I want to live for you. And that doesn't come from here. That comes from Him. I receive a prayer like that from above and not from this earth. The natural man doesn't pray like that. A man that wants to walk in fellowship with the Lord prays like that. And so, when you walk in bondage, it leads to guilt, bitterness, mistrust, and fear. Have you ever been in a church where people are afraid to look at each other? They look out of the corner of their eyes? Have you ever been around people who choose their words so carefully because they are judging each other with a fine-tooth comb? And folks, that is misery. And there's no power of God to be found. Forgiveness of sin, fellowship, joy, and victory are the things that God wants for you. But the only way you'll ever have them is to receive them. You cannot produce it yourself. It does not come from this earth. Do you understand what I'm saying? You cannot make yourself righteous. You cannot make yourself free. You cannot make yourself victory. You cannot create these things for yourself. They're the gift of God. Ask Him to give them to you. Then ask Him to open your heart and teach you the great truths of victory over sin. Sin will never be with you. You'll never dwell with it, but you can walk in victory over it. Don't let it enslave you or the master of your life. And so, here are some of the facts, and these are true. For America, half of our marriages are ending in divorce. That includes marriages that are made in the church house. Over half of them are ending in divorce. That screams to high heaven, we've got a problem. Amen? That screams to high heaven, we've got a problem. The number one cause of death among teenagers. What is it? Suicide. They're killing themselves. Our kids, with all the cell phones, technology, all the gifts that you can pile at their feet, everything that you could ever want, are killing themselves. Why, folks? It sounds to me like something is missing. Over half of the medical bills spent in this country And this is over half of the medical bills spent in this country are spent on psychologists and psychiatrists. Think about that for a moment. The field of psychology and psychiatry is constantly in flux. In the last 30 years, they have added so many disorders to their list. of what your children, the medications they medicate them with, the diagnoses that they make. All of this stuff is in constant flux. It's being changed. It's progressing. It's evolving. And every single diagnosis they make and some new disorder they add to the list, my friend, inevitably will take away your part as a parent and give it to the state. through a process of gradual, slow erosion. They're taking parenthood away, and as Hillary said, it takes a village to raise your children. Well, I'm going to tell you right now, a village didn't raise me, and a village didn't raise you. Let me tell you who raised you. As Paul said, Timothy, from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation. Timothy was raised right, and it wasn't by a village. The government can't run anything right. They can't do anything right. If they come out with an estimate of $10 billion, it'll be $100 billion. Whatever thing they start, somebody's got to pick it up and make it work. What makes you think they can raise your kids? Amen. That's the truth. They can't do anything right. And yet they have the arrogance and audacity to come along and tell you that they know how to raise your children. If you're a Christian, you want to raise them in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. Now we're good Baptists in here tonight, we're good Baptists. But I go into churches, I've been in churches where they're Mennonites. And I've been in churches where they're the old order Amish. The old order Amish came out of them, the old order Mennonites. I've been in churches in South Carolina, in the church of, I forget now what it was called, Huguenots. I've been in a church, I've been everywhere. And I'm gonna tell you something. The Church of the Living God is made up of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why I am so far apart from a Baptist Brider as the North Pole is from the South Pole. You couldn't be further from a Baptist Brider than I am. A Baptist Brider has the arrogance and audacity to stand up and tell you that his Baptist Church of faith, like, and order is the only body of Christ on this earth. You're wrong, son. Dead wrong. The church of God is made up of believers, everyone that is born again into the family of God. I pastored this church a long time and preached Holy Spirit theology 101. I pastored this church and preached about the Holy Spirit, preaching from a doctrinal book, from the Bible. I was born again. I knew what the Holy Spirit was. I have the Holy Spirit. I know that in my mind that my life changed. I was a child of hell and I became a child of God. I was a sinner. I was low down. I was sorry. I was stinking. I was a piece of garbage. But in 1973, when I was 27 years old, I got saved. Brethren, I didn't know anything about the power of the Holy Ghost until a few years ago when I came back from the Holy Land. Now, the last night I spent in the Holy Land was across the Brook Kidron. That night I wrestled all night long with an evil spirit. That evil spirit tried to kill me, and that night I wrestled with that thing, and I cried out to God, and God gave me the victory, but he gave me the experience to relay it to you. There's a lot of men that are dressed in nice suits, double-breasted, and all the rest of it, the pins and the ties, and how they look good, smell good, talk good, and act good. But they know absolutely nothing about the power of the Holy Spirit of God. That night, I wrestled all night long with Satan, just like Jacob did at Panaio. I wrestled with him. And then we got on a plane the next day, and we came back to the United States with Brother Bob Bevington. Our plane stopped at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Our flight was canceled, and I spent the whole night at LaGuardia sitting there, alone, waiting for a flight out the next morning. I don't know if you've ever slept with one eye open and one eye shut before, but I'm going to tell you how it's done. All night I sat at LaGuardia. Next morning I got on a flight. I think we made connections in Cincinnati. I flew into Knoxville. I arrived here worn out. I got here I think at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, went home, went to bed, because I hadn't slept. So I laid down. But early the next morning, I got up early that next morning, and I went out on the back porch, made myself a cup of coffee, sat down on the swing. There in the darkness and the quietness and the coolness of the night, had no idea what was about to happen to me. But there out of nowhere, I felt the Spirit of God come down upon me. He came down upon me in such force that He literally drove me down to my knees. I'm out there by myself. There's nobody around to see it. There's nobody to impress. I'm alone with God. And I'm on that back porch at about three or four o'clock in the morning on my knees. And wave after wave after wave of the glory of God started being poured out upon my soul. I can't explain what that felt like other than to say it was kind of like warm oil coming down upon you. Kind of like an anointing when power rushes through your soul. There on that back porch, God Almighty was pouring himself out upon this preacher. I got up off the porch, went and sat down on the swing, and the moment I sat down on that swing, flooding into my soul spiritual truths like I'd never seen them before in my life. They were so clear and so plain, like I'm talking to you right now. These truths flooded in, and I received them. I drank from that fountain. I received what God had to say to this preacher. And I received it and received it and received it. And then I went back down on my knees. Back down on my knees on that porch again. For wave after wave after wave of glory came across me. I remember the dual natures on that back porch. I remember the old man saying, what a fool you are. What are you doing down here at 4 o'clock in the morning on this back porch? Out here bawling and crying, shaking and trembling with all this happening to you. But then there was a voice saying to you, you're getting something, son, you've never had before. A voice was speaking to me, it was like two voices opposing each other. There was the old man saying to me, you're a fool man, get up from here. What do you think you're doing? This is fanatical, this is crazy. But another voice was saying to me, receive what's happening. You're receiving the power of the Holy Ghost of God. This is the anointing, the promise of the Holy Spirit. Pour it out, pour it out, pour it out. And I stayed on my knees. And I received that. I received it from God. I got up off that back porch, came down to this church, and I told the people here at Temple Baptist Church what had happened to me and how it had changed my life. And make no mistake about it, it changed my life. It changed my preaching. It changed my Bible study. It changed my ministry. It changed my outlook. Everything changed when the power of the Holy Spirit of God came upon this preacher. I've heard some of the local pastors say, well, he got saved on the back porch. You know why they say that? They say that because they have to justify their doctrine. They have to put me in a box. They have to open me up and explain what happened. And they don't even know me. They have no clue what went on. But it's sad because the men that are saying that are trying to teach people and pastor local churches, and they don't have a clue. They say, well, we know what he's doing in secret. We know this. You don't know anything. You know nothing. But I know what happened to my soul when he poured out that spirit upon me. He said, when he, the spirit of truth, has come, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. Now I say to you tonight, I say to you tonight, I went to the Holy Land. I went from one end of that country to the next. I went to the places I'd been to before. I've been there six times, I think, if I count correctly. Five with Brother Bevington. One trip I took over there and led my own tour. To the Holy Land. To the Sea of Galilee. To Capernaum. To Jerusalem. Underneath the Temple Mount. I've been there. I've seen it. And I went there for the purpose of drawing nigh to God. I knew there was something empty in me. I knew there was something I needed. I knew there was something from above. There was more that I needed. And I didn't have it. I didn't have it in my preaching. I didn't have it in my life. And so God knew why I was there. He waited till I got back and he waited till I was sitting on the porch He waited till I had that coffee cup in my hand And then he chose the time and he chose the place to come upon me and do what he did So what's it done for you preacher? It put an element in my life. I didn't have it glorified God through what he did and And then he let me get low. He let my heart just about quit beating. He let me have heart failure. He let me have what's called congestive heart failure. I came to the very doors of death. I know what it's like. I know what it feels like. I know what it looks like. But there at that very place where you could get as low as you can get, I felt the hand of God on my soul. I felt Him begin to speak to me. He had a reason for it. He has a ministry in it. He had a purpose about a whole thing. I didn't choose it. God chose it. We don't choose these paths. Nobody would choose to go down that path, but God Almighty's hand was on it. for weeks and months after this happened to me. You know, I didn't have enough strength to even raise my voice. And I started saying, Lord, why am I here? Why did you save me? Why did you keep my life on this earth? Lord, I'm a preacher. What am I here for? If I'm not here to preach, what am I here for? Why do I need to be here? And a voice sweetly and gently spoke to my soul. You'll preach, son. You'll preach. You'll preach. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance. You'll preach. And just a few weeks ago, he gave me my preach back. That's why I'm here. He gave it back. He gave it back. I didn't know if I'd ever preach again like I preached before. I didn't know. But now I know. He can raise you up, brother. He can raise you up. So what's it about? Preachers about giving him glory. If I drop over here and I'm to say another word, He's already answered my prayer. He's done enough for me. He brought me back. He gave me back my calling. He gave me back my ministry. He has blessed me unspeakably. And He'll do the same for you. Don't quit on him. Don't give up on him. Don't throw your hands up and listen to the lie of the devil. You're not who you think you are. You're who God says you are. And who does God say you are? A son of the living God. Satan, hast thou considered my servant Job? Satan said, you got a hedge built around him. Turn him over to me and he'll cut you to your face. The Lord said, you will find out, Satan. There. Some of you are there right now where he has turned you over and allowed the messenger of Satan to buffet you. And you're about ready to throw your hands up and quit and wonder if there's ever a reason for you to be here at all. And I want to tell you tonight, tonight can be the beginning of a whole new brand new spiritual life for you. It can be the start of the future with your walking and living for the Lord in a way that you've never known him before. Amen. This is a Baptist preacher that believes in the anointing and the unction and the power of the Holy Ghost. I believe in that. If somebody got a Bible, you show me in that Bible where I'm wrong, and I'll adhere to the book. I will accept the book. But folks, you can't do it, because I've read the same Bible you got, and I've read it many times. You can't do it. Be not drunk with wine, where is an excess? Be filled. Be filled. Would you like to do that tonight? Would you like to gather around down here somewhere tonight? Would you like to pray? Would you like to say, Lord God, now that preacher's right. I know I'm saved and I know I'm going to heaven and I know I love you. But I need something in my life right now. I need something. I need something. Would you do it? Would you like to come down and pray? I'll pray with every one of you that come down here. We'll get together over here now and we'll get down on our knees and we'll pray. And I'll pray for the Holy Ghost to fall upon you. I'll pray for Him to come down in unction and power upon your soul. Why should we attempt anything for the Lord if we don't do it in the power of the Holy Spirit? That's arrogance and pride. We can't do anything in the arm of the flesh. Remember, I couldn't preach until He gave it to me. He called me, then He gave it back to me. He gave it back to me. Let's pray.