Resist the Devil, and He Will Flee from You:

The Role of Judgment in Christian Life

Dan Chase

Midland SDA Church

July 2, 2016

Prayer before Sermon:

As the mud puddle reflects the clear blue sky, dear Heavenly Father, may my words reflect Your truth in the light of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

The other day I was lamenting the state of affairs in our country and the world as a whole, wondering what brought us to this pass where evil is in ascendency.

I thought, “Well, why aren’t people just resisting evil? Why aren’t they simply following James 4: 7 ‘Resist the devil and he will flee from you’?” Then I realized the problem—the majority of people simply cannot recognize the devil or his work. It doesn’t help either when a great number of people don’t believe the devil exists, while another group of people, if not actively supporting Satan, at least have sympathy for him, often blaming God for Satan’s work.

I used to be among the number that blamed God for the evil in the world, not believing the corruption in the world was the work of Satan and his minions.

If we ignore those who don’t believe in Satan and leave them for another sermon, that still leaves a huge number of people, many of whom are ostensibly Christians. Certainly they can recognize the adversary when they see him? Evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

First of all, unfortunately for us, the devil and his demons don’t walk the earth wearing horns, batwings, pointy tails, etc., and secondly, the gift of discernment of spirits is not something we can ask for—the Holy Spirit gives it to those He chooses to give it to. Furthermore, there are many humans who willingly participate in the devil’s schemes, so recognizing evil spirits is only half the problem. We must be able to recognize Satan’s willing human sons and daughters.

I think a major reason why people are not resisting the devil, or fighting against evil is that many people, especially Christians, have accepted the idea that it is wrong to judge. How often do you hear people refer to scriptures like Mat. 7:1, where Jesus says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”

I read a commentary on the Internet on GotQuestions.org that addressed the issue of judgment with the following:

Jesus’ command not to judge others could be the most widely quoted of His sayings, even though it is almost invariably quoted in complete disregard of its context. Taken in isolation, Jesus’ command “Do not judge” does indeed seem to preclude all negative assessments. However, there is much more to the passage than those three words.

The Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean we cannot show discernment. Immediately after Jesus says, “Do not judge,” He says, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs” (Matthew 7:6). A little later in the same sermon, He says, “Watch out for false prophets. . . . By their fruit you will recognize them” (verses 15–16). How are we to discern who are the “dogs” and “pigs” and “false prophets” unless we have the ability to make a judgment call on doctrines and deeds? Jesus is giving us permission to tell right from wrong. [Emphasis added.]

Also, the Bible’s command that we not judge others does not mean all actions are equally moral or that truth is relative. The Bible clearly teaches that truth is objective, eternal, and inseparable from God’s character. Anything that contradicts the truth is a lie—but, of course, to call something a “lie” is to pass judgment. To call adultery or murder a sin is likewise to pass judgment—but it’s also to agree with God. When Jesus said not to judge others, He did not mean that no one can identify sin for what it is, based on God’s definition of sin.

Furthermore, in 1 Cor. 6:3-4 Paul says, “Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! ⁴ Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church?”

People also seem to think they need to shun worldly things such as politics—but as a well-known parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

So, we do need to judge, especially in these times. The important thing to remember is that unlike God, we cannot see into another person’s heart.

Let’s turn to John 8:37. [Read from verse 37 through half of verse 44].  Jesus noted to the Pharisees when he said they were murderers that they were displaying the character of their father (and he didn’t mean Abraham).  Furthermore, as the Internet commentary from GotQuestions.org mentioned, Jesus points out that a person’s works give evidence of his or her character when Jesus  says in Matthew 7:17, “Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.”

Since we cannot see into people hearts, we have two extremely useful indicators for discerning good or evil people—First, are they sons and daughters of Jesus, exhibiting the character of Jesus? Or would their father more likely be Satan?

Secondly, are they bearing good fruit, or are they bearing bad fruit?

Never one to be overly cautious, I am going to stick my fingers in the fan here and say something that may offend some of you (I am going to say this now, before the government forbids it (and then I will probably still say it))—there is a religion out there right now that claims to be of God (in other words, it claims to be a good tree).

Its fruit consists of honor killings, rape of women, stoning women who have been raped; kidnapping, rape & selling into slavery women of other religions; marriage of pre-pubescent girls to older men; beating of wives, torture, maiming, murder of apostates, stoning of homosexuals, and lying & other forms of obfuscation for the promotion of the religion, just to name a few.

Its prophet practiced these things and he, in its holy book, promotes these things. Is this a good tree? I’ll let you decide—maybe you can find some factors that outweigh those I’ve presented. Maybe those I’ve presented fall under good fruit in your mind.

We can use the good or bad fruit test on people, and we can also use it on things—religions, social structures, political programs, and so on. With things like systems or programs, it seems like accepting evil comes down to a major problem that can be traced to one fault—lack of judgment, or the inability to discern the truth. I look at what the public as a whole is accepting these days and it just seems to show that the majority of citizens out there have poor judgment, if they have any at all. They don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between good and evil. Sometimes they seem to be afflicted with willing blindness.

While I was thinking about this problem of lack of judgment, and even willing blindness in the United States, I looked through my library and saw a book that almost leapt into my arms. It is titled, When a Nation Forgets God; Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany by Dr. Erwin Lutzer.  It is from this book that I got the term, “willing blindness.”

This book contains several lessons that apply to what is going on in the United States today.

Early in the book, Lutzer tells how holidays were changed in Nazi Germany to remove any reference to Christianity or Christian meanings behind them. The role of the church was minimalized by privatizing faith and instituting laws about what could or could not be said from a pulpit. Ministers were imprisoned for what we today would call “hate speech.”

Lutzer says we can be thankful that the media in the US has often played a positive role in being a watchdog in our culture, but, “in the end they will betray us for ratings, for their own survival, and to avoid offending those groups that have the power to damage or even destroy them”.

We are already seeing this happen. News used to consist of unbiased reporting with an occasional editorial contained within well-defined boundaries, where the reporter said that the following was an editorial and then proceeded to give his subjective opinion on some topic in the news. But nowadays there is no distinction between objective, supposedly unbiased reporting of events and the reporters’ (or the network’s) opinion about what they want the audience to believe.

In other areas, lines are blurred between fact and fiction, between science and wishful thinking. Those of you who know anything about today’s “Common Core” can appreciate a question like this, asked in a math class in Nazi Germany: “If the construction of a lunatic asylum costs 6 million RM, how many houses at 15,000 RM each could have been built for that amount?” Do you see the implied assumption that houses are good and asylums are bad that is built into this math problem?

In the USA today, we have schools where kindergarteners explore their sexuality and gender issues, to see whether boys may really be girls and girls boys or some combination of those. We have bathrooms and locker rooms where boys may use the girls’ rooms if they feel that they may be a girl inside. If a school balks at this, it stands in danger of losing all federal funding.

Along similar lines, teachers in North Carolina were told these were the values to instill in their children:

· There’s no right or wrong, only conditioned responses

· The collective good is more important than the individual

· Consensus is more important than principle

· Flexibility is more important than accomplishment

· Nothing is permanent, except change

· All ethics are situational; there is no moral absolute

· There are no perpetrators, only victims

Albert Einstein said when the societal keepers of the truth failed in Nazi Germany, “The Church was the only thing that stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth.”

Lutzer talks a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German cleric who opposed Hitler and was hanged for it. He says, “Bonhoeffer saw clearly what we in America have not yet grasped: For us as Christians it is really a struggle for the survival of the message of the cross in an increasingly hostile culture. If ever Christians need to be sharing the message of the Gospel ‘which is the power of God unto salvation,’ it is now.”

“The Christian church has suffered throughout the centuries, and now it appears as if it is our turn.”

Lutzer adds, “In an effort to be ‘relevant,’ we now face the temptation of being diverted from our mission and becoming involved in doing what is good while bypassing what is best.” That bears repeating. [repeat bold]  We often find ourselves running to and fro, mindlessly doing good, when if we stopped to notice what the Holy Spirit has placed before us, we could stop tripping over the best and instead, make use of it.

Lutzer’s main point is this, “Christ died to save sinners, to reveal the love of God, and to conquer evil”. He says that there is a danger that we become so overburdened with social/political agendas that our message is lost amid our many cultural skirmishes. Lutzer warns further that while in the past, non-believers ignored or even mocked the message of the Gospel, what is different today is that the message of the cross is being ignored even by those who claim to be saved by its message. Other messages not central to the cross are being substituted—and “The cross has become an ornament hung around the neck, not an instrument that changes the heart.” [repeat bold]

In other words, we must not get waylaid by the social and political issues of our day while we are on our way to making important judgments about such issues. These issues must be seen from the point of view of the cross and must be judged in light of the cross. We must find a balance between totally ignoring social/political issues as being irrelevant to the church, versus getting so caught up in such issues that we become more concerned with the things of the world than the things of heaven. [repeat bold]

In conclusion, as Lutzer says, “At last we come to the heart of the matter: the cross reminds us that the battle is not so much between church and state as it is within our own hearts,” and as Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6: 12, “...the battle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the powers of the dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

I would like to take this opportunity to invite any of you who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, to do so by asking Him into your heart to be your Savior and the Lord of your life. Then you can see me or any of the deacons or elders about the steps you need to take to be baptized. If we are not actually in the end times, they are fast approaching. In any case, none of us know how much time we have, as we just saw with Bob who was baptized on one day and passed away the next. There is no time to waste, amen?