Matthew 12:43-45 The Unclean Spirit Is Gone Out Of A Man And Finds No Place And Returns To Find It Empty, So The Last State Of That Man Is Worse Than The First.

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

Matthew 12:43-45 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

An empty heart is not a clean heart. We need the constant mighty flow of the Holy Spiri.

For those who desire deliverance from the punishment of sin but who don't want Jesus or don't want the Holy Spirit, they are a wicked generation. They don't want to walk in submission and obedience to Jesus or the Father or the Holy Spirit. They will experience the same problem. They can try to live their lives as religious people without the relationship with Christ, but they will find that they come to a state that is worse than before they were delivered. That relationship with Christ is a very specific relationship. First, it is a relationship of submission and obedience to Christ. It is a relationship where we are humble enough to know that we have not yet attained--that way we can be led. It is a relationship that goes from glory to glory, never static, ever growing into Christ. It is a relationship that understands and discerns Who Christ is. Christ is Jesus, the Head, in Heaven and living in the heart of every believer. Also, "As the body is one and has many members... so also is Christ." Those who fail to discern the body of Christ are in deep spiritual trouble. Christ is a Head and Christ is a Body. The Body is in submission to the Head. The word, Christ, means the same as the Messiah. Both of these mean the Anointing. The anointing oil is a type of the Holy Spirit. So the spirit of man has been joined in unity to the Spirit of God through new birth when any person receives Jesus as Lord and Savior from sin and Savior to God's righteousness. From that day forward, God is able to do His righteousness in that person but will not force Himself on that person. When we yield to the Holy Spirit, we are set free from the power of Satan and every evil spirit. If, instead of believing the voice of God as He leads us, we believe the voice of our own flesh (which is still in bondage to Satan), then we repeat the sin of Adam and Eve. Whoever you yield yourself as servant to obey, that's whose servant you are. So we find that we have slipped somewhat, but by turning our mind back to God and confessing our fault to Him, we find that He forgives us and brings us back into the relationship of obedience and ever moving away from the sin nature and toward the Christ nature. The whole New Testament deals with this process of believing into Christ Jesus until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, into [literally] a perfect into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Matthew 12:43-45 The Unclean Spirit Is Gone Out Of A Man And Finds No Place And Returns To Find It Empty, So The Last State Of That Man Is Worse Than The First.

How can we know anything about anything

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