Other Things as Well: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 In 2 Peter 1:3-4: “As Jesus the divine power has given us all things,” “whereby by these things are given us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature.” Okay, participators of the divine nature. We’re not a fan sitting in the stand watching the Super Bowl game; we are out there on the field playing the game. We’re participants. Okay, now American Christians have a tendency to look for the second coming, a prosperity, purpose, positive confessions, focusing on the poor instead of the divine nature, or phenomenal--

▶ 1:01 Miracles and so forth. We have a tendency to look for gifts and all that, and a lot of groups focus on different areas, uh, some on soul-winning and so forth, but God very strongly puts in His Word that there are promises that we can be participators in the divine nature, God’s nature, and so that needs to be a high priority in our life. Could that be true? Okay, now we have to ask ourself, what are these promises that I through them can become a participator of God’s divine--

▶ 1:56 Nature? You have to ask yourself some questions when you read the Bible, not just read it to say, “I read it through for the year.” You have to--you have to inquire of God and ask Him questions, and/or let the Holy Spirit ask you questions. The first promise we find in order in the Bible is back in Genesis, and the first promise was to declare war on Satan and Satan’s seed. Okay, we find that in Genesis 3:15, the Lord said to Satan--okay, God’s talking to Satan himself. Satan is a created being by God, the Bible says that the, uh, he was created to--

▶ 2:50 Destroy. And, uh, He says to Satan, “I’m going to put war, enmity, opposition, but between you and the woman.” Now, He didn’t say Eve, but He’s talking about Eve, but He said “woman.” Okay, that woman has a name, but there’s a reason, I think, why it says “woman.” Okay, “between your seed and her seed.” Now, this next word is a third-person word, all right, can be used as “it,” can be used as “he,” can be used as “she,” according to the subject of the sentence or the paragraph. All right, third-person singular word, so we’ll use the word--

▶ 3:51 “It.” “I will put war between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. It, her seed, shall bruise your head,” your chief part, your authority, “and you, Satan, shall bruise its heel.” That’s the woman’s seed’s heel, the lowest, farthest part of the body or the rear of an army. Heel means the, the rear part, the rear of an army, the, the farthest part back. Now let’s read it with the masculine singular word: “Between your seed and her seed, He,” Jesus, “shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” “His” is put in there to give us clarity, because the people that put this book together realized that it was Jesus that bruised Satan’s heel, so they use the word “He,” but it can be either one of these third-person singular words. Now let’s read it: “Between your seed and her seed,”

▶ 5:13 “She.” Where does “she” come in? The church, the bride of Christ, always referred to in the Bible as feminine. Okay, “she,” the church, “shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise her”--the church’s--heel, the rear part of the army. Okay, now God promised that, and God can’t lie, He has to fulfill things. So in Genesis 49:17, we have a verse here that shines some light on “bruise the heel,” the rear of the army, the heel itself. Genesis 49:17: “Dan shall be a serpent by the way,” by the pathway, the way traveled, “an adder in the path that bites the horse’s heels.” And what is the result of biting the horse’s heels? So that his rider will fall backwards. And see, Satan is always out trying to get you to go backwards.

▶ 6:30 To get you to backslide, you see, and the only thing he can’t touch you, so he touches the direction you’re going, get you distracted. In this case the horse reared up and you fell off, and so forth. So this helps us understand “bruising the heel.” In Deuteronomy 25:18, remember Amalek? Amalek is the, the tribe of people that came while Israel was in the wilderness and attacked the rear part of Israel. Okay, “Remember Amalek, how he met you by the way and smote the rear most of you.” You see, the heel, the rear most. And what people make up the rear most? “All that were feeble behind--

▶ 7:27 You,” “and when you was--was faint and weary,” he came and smote the feeble ones, the weary ones, the weak ones that were behind. Now, how do we become weak? Well, you become weak in the natural if you don’t eat. Try not eating for 30 days and see how good you can travel. Try not eating for seven days and just see how good you can travel. You’re back there dragging your feet. Try not drinking for seven days and see how you travel. You’re going to be crawling. And see, the Word of God is our food, the Bible says, and when we don’t feed on the Word of God, we get what? Weak. The Holy Spirit is the water. The Word is the water too, but--and when we don’t get into His presence, we get weak and we drag behind.

▶ 8:30 Everybody’s four miles ahead and here we are, “Oh, I will bless the Lord at all times.” Oh yeah. Why? Because we haven’t fed ourselves, we haven’t taken care of ourselves. Another way you get weak is no exercise. You sit on the couch all day, your joints don’t move right, things get weak, the muscles don’t work right. And so we have to exercise the Bible, we have to feed on the Bible, and we got to drink. Could that be an amen? And the stragglers are the ones that don’t nourish themselves, and Satan comes and gets them, fights with them. Okay, he bruises the weak.

▶ 9:22 Christian, it’s imperative that newborn Christians not stay weak, but grow quickly to the young man’s stage. Remember, in the last session we showed you the five areas of growing in God. The young man stage not only keeps the Word, but the Word abides in him, the Scripture abides in him, and he overcomes the evil one and overcomes evil. So we need to grow to that stage so we’re not stragglers and Satan can come and bruise us and crush us. Are you with me? Did God keep His promise? These are questions I ask God: “God, did You back this up? Did You really do--

▶ 10:17 This?” Hebrews 2:14: “Through death He,” here is that third-person singular, “He,” Jesus, “may destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil.” So Jesus on the cross destroyed--He rendered Satan powerless over people who believe in that cross and believe in Him and accept Him. And when I grew up in church, the devil was chasing everybody. In fact, the minister would get up and cast demons out of the church, literally. “Well, we want to get the devil out of here. The devil, in the name of Jesus--“ There’s no Bible for that. Satan is rendered--

▶ 11:10 Powerless when we come to Christ. He is rendered powerless to the cross. Amen. See, now I don’t have Satan hindering me from being a partaker of His divine nature. Allelujah. And too many churches are given too much credit to Satan. Jesus’s cross has rendered him powerless over Christians. He can tempt you, he can suggest things, but he has no power over Christians. Jesus fulfilled that Word. Amen. Now, 1 John 3:8: “He that commits sin is of the devil, for the devil sinned from the beginning.” He was a murderer from the beginning, he was a liar from the beginning, and he doesn’t know how to tell the truth, the Bible says. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifest, that He might destroy the works of Satan,” the devil. So the purpose of Jesus coming, God in the--

▶ 12:27 Flesh, was to destroy the works of the devil, which is sin. See, he wants you to sin, he wants you to violate God’s Word, he wants you to commit sexual immorality, he wants you to get drunk, he wants you to lose your temper and be a violent person, he wants you to break God’s Word, and Jesus on the cross destroyed the works of the devil, which was sin. Okay, to make it more clear, Romans 8:3: “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” “God sending His own Son for sin, condemns sin in the flesh.” See, He put to death sin in the--

▶ 13:25 Flesh. So you see, it is fulfilled. The seed not only bruised Satan, but he [unclear] bruised the works of Satan, which is sin. Jesus didn’t come to condemn people, He come to condemn Satan and sin. Hallelujah. So now I can become a partaker of the divine nature. Satan doesn’t have any control over me, and sin doesn’t have any control over me, according to Romans chapter 6, Romans 16:20: “The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” Oh, now who’s your--

▶ 14:20 Here, the feminine, the church, “she,” the church. He’s talking to the church. Not just Jesus destroyed Satan now, but His church. Uses the same word, “bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” See, and when you are stepping on Satan, the serpent, the only place he can attack you is your heel. The very thing that he can attack is the very thing you crush him with. Isn’t that something? Are you guys out there this morning? Hallelujah. Luke 10:17: “I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Nothing--

▶ 15:24 Means nothing. See, we don’t pick up serpents, we don’t pick up scorpions, we step on Satan and his demonic powers with the weakest part of our body, our heel. Hallelujah. See, you say, “Well, that was to the apostles.” Well, God is no respecter of persons. He’s going to give that to the apostles, and He’s not going to give that to His church? Come on. You see, so it’s a very powerful thing, and see, the church needs to understand that Satan has been rendered powerless. The church out there has given way too much credit to Satan, way too much. Now, don’t get me wrong, even in the Old Testament, Satan, you know, he came and he took Job’s wealth, he took his health and killed his kids and so forth, but he had to get permission from God to do it. You see, everybody thinks Satan is just a loose goose out here doing what he want. He can’t do anything, and never could, without his Creator saying, “Okay,” and the Creator always has a what? Purpose in letting Satan do what he can--

▶ 16:49 Do. And in the New Testament it’s the same way. See, when Paul said, “We wanted to go to another city, but Satan hinders us,” okay, and, and if you really study and read it, it wasn’t really Satan, it was the people there hindering them going over there. And so, yes, he can come and suggest you do wrong and all that. He can roar, basically he can roar, but he’s a lion that has no teeth and no claws, and that makes him a kitten. When a lion doesn’t have any teeth and no claws, they’re just a kitten. Okay, and they can roar like a lion, but it has no authority over you. Do you understand that? Because God destroyed it.

▶ 17:45 And that you become a partaker of His divine nature. So God’s promise then is to--to destroy sin and Satan, not destroy you. We need to get off this mentality that, you know, every time we do something bad, you know, God’s going to, or Satan’s going to come and bring horrible things on us. You know, we’re going to lose our job, we’re going to get sick, and if something happens, we get in the car wreck, “Oh, it’s because I, you know, tell a little white lie, or I had a bad attitude last week.” Come on, church. He’s not out to condemn you and destroy you. He’s out, and His promise was, to do Satan and sin in your life and make you a partaker of the divine nature. Do we got it? Now, let’s look at the seed, her seed, his seed. Okay, the good seed, the bad seed. I got this from Burpee and Gerber seed, showing the difference between a good seed and a bad seed. All right, in the natural, this bad seed, as you notice, the bottom part is not full like this seed of--

▶ 19:06 Wheat. Okay, and Gerber says these seeds will not produce fruit, they will not grow, and they only give you growing seed, so they get rid of the bad seed. Why is it bad? According to science, it has not been pollinated, so what we call the sperm has not come in contact with the feminine side of the plant so that a seed is formed, embryo can be produced. It hasn’t happened, or it hasn’t reached maturity. It may be fertilized, it may be pollinated, but it hasn’t--the seed itself has not grown into an embryo seed yet where it can get sunlight and water and grow. So these seeds, you can give water all you want and you can put sunlight out there and everything else and nothing’s going to come up, because it does not have the potential to germ-- to germinate, I should say, and bear fruit. So that’s the--

▶ 20:24 Natural. Now, here we have a picture. On the left side here of wheat, this is wheat, and on the right side, darnel wheat, or tare, is what we call weeds. A picture, see how they look alike? Now, as a young minister I would always use that as the hypocritical Christians versus the real ones, but becoming more enlightened, as we’re supposed to, it’s got nothing to do with that. It can be Christians, it can be believers, but it doesn’t have to be, and we’ll see why. Hallelujah. So I attacked the poor Christians back there as a young--

▶ 21:16 Minister, and left the children of Satan out of the whole picture, but they’re not left out of this picture. Okay, the tares, for one thing, grow taller than the wheat. So when you look out on the wheat field, and the, and the tares grow faster, and isn’t that true in the spiritual? Wicked people just get wicked quick. I mean, even at a young age. Yeah, and they’re noticeable. The tares are noticeable. You know, you look out over the wheat field and there’s the tare about this much higher than the wheat, and it keeps going like that until it’s like this above the wheat, and so you can see the tares. They’re obvious. How--me, you know, wicked people are like that. You can just tell, there’s nothing hidden there at all. Yeah, they may look like us, they may resemble us, but their lifestyle sets them apart. You notice them very quickly.

▶ 22:25 Also, these weeds, the root grows quickly also and entangles itself with the root of the wheat, so if you try to pull up the weed, you pull up what? Some of the wheat with it. That’s why Jesus said, “Let them both grow together,” because they wanted to pull up the weeds out of the field, and He said, “Don’t do that.” He doesn’t want you pulled up, because you have to live in association with the wicked people, people of this world. Okay, they might have had an impact on you for a while down inside, and He don’t want you being rooted up before you have a chance to produce fruit. Hallelujah. Ain’t that good? Yes.

▶ 23:20 Now, if a human being eats the darnel wheat, they can give it to animals in portions, but for human consumption this is the result you will get: drowsy, you want to sleep. Isn’t that the way a lot of Christians are? They’re just asleep in the Kingdom. Oh, you get into hypnotic episodes, that means you get temporarily under the control of someone else. Isn’t that the way young believers are, and young people, period? They have the herding instinct: whatever the other young people are doing, they want to do it. They wear the certain clothes, I wear the certain clothes; they have the certain hairstyle, I want the certain hairstyle; you know, they’re smoking marijuana, I want to smoke--

▶ 24:20 Marijuana. See, convulsions and trembling, drunkenness and intoxication that leads to the inability to walk, and what’s the “walk” referred to in the Bible? Our what? Behavior. You see, it affects their walk and it affects their talk. Why? Because the source of that seed is Satan, so you take on the nature of the source. Now we go to Matthew 13:38, in this famous Sunday school lesson in the Bible: “The field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom,

▶ 25:17 But the tares are the children of the wicked one.” So we have her seed, and his, and Satan’s seed, right here. Don’t we? Okay, so the tares were sold as a seed and the wheat was sold as a seed, and as it begins to grow it’s referred to as the children of God, and the tares are the children of Satan, the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is the devil. Okay, we let him come into our life, have an effect on our life, and that effect comes out in our behavior, our talk, and our walk. The harvest, when things are reaped, is at the end of the world, because Jesus is going to let them both grow together. “The reapers are the--

▶ 26:11 Angels. As the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the end of the world.” You see, the Jewish weed, with this effect it had on human beings, was just burned so it wouldn’t have a chance to seed and grow back. They tried to get rid of it. Matthew 13:30: “Let both grow together.” Oh man, the first time I read that, I go, “God, why does this have to be? If I didn’t have all these wicked people around me tempting me and testing me and pushing me and abusing me and, and, uh, persecuting me and making fun of me, and boy, life would be a lot easier. And here You’re telling me I got to put up with them the rest of my life? I got to grow with

▶ 27:06 Them until the harvest.” When’s the harvest? At the end of the age, the end of the time. “Then I’ll say to the reapers, gather together first”--now, for those of you who are really into pre-tribulation rapture, you got a problem here. And you can explain it away all you want, but you got a serious problem. “Gather first the” what? Tares, not the saints. Just throw that out of your mind. You know, we just believe things we hear on the radio, we read in books, without even researching them out to see if they’re true. So who’s gathered first when Christ comes? The bad seed.

▶ 27:59 Yeah, the tares, “and bind them in bundles to burn them.” Is that what’s going to happen at the end day? They’re going to be gathered together and they’re going to go to the lake of fire, isn’t that right? All right, “but gather the wheat, the good seed, into My barn.” See, why does God want us to go together? Because a lot of these tares can be converted and change their nature and become wheat. So if you pull out the tare, you’re not only in danger of pulling out a fellow believer because the roots entangled, but you may be pulling out someone that can be converted and changed into a wheat

▶ 29:01 And take on the nature of God. And I was once one of those tares. How many were once a tare? Yeah. Aren’t you glad God didn’t pull you out? But the church has the tendency to overlook this, and we can come down hard on sin and sinners without the compassion to realize that many of these can be converted like you were converted, because conversion means you were changed from one thing to another. So once, whether you raised your hand or not, you were a tare. Now, the good and bad seed are at war by their behavior. Remember, He said there’s going to be war

▶ 29:56 Between Satan’s seed and the woman’s seed, the church, and Satan’s seed and Satan’s children, God’s children and Satan’s children. It’s going to be war. Okay, I want to show you that we are at war by our behavior. Proverbs 28:4: “They that forsake the law praise” who? The wicked. You see, when we don’t follow God’s righteous word, we’re giving honor to the atheist, to the humanist, and all these people that oppose the righteous Word of God, but when we keep the Word, we contend with the wicked. We’re at war with the wicked. Just our lifestyle drives them crazy. You see, they don’t like Christmas

▶ 30:52 Because it refers to Christ. They don’t like Easter because it refers to Christ, His death and His birth and His resurrection, so they bring in the Easter bunny to distract. Here comes Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail, you know, they make it all nice and, and warm and fuzzy. Ah, man. But we celebrate Easter because of His resurrection, which He put Satan under His feet then, and we celebrate His birth because He come in for the purpose to destroy Satan and sin and bring us to the nature of God. Amen. Hallelujah. So yes, they hate

▶ 31:51 It. And when you keep the Word and you keep the holidays that we have and you keep everything that points to Christ, you’re at war with them. When they get drunk and you don’t, you’re at war with them. When they commit sexual immorality and you stay faithful to your marriage, you’re at war with them, and they don’t like it. It bugs them. See, it exposes them. When you do right, you shine like a light. That’s what the Bible says: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.” You see, your, your, your behavior is just as powerful as you speaking the Word. In fact, it’s more powerful when you speak and you obey the Word than it is when you speak and disobey the Word. That’s right, because you neutralize exactly what you’re trying to tell

▶ 32:53 People. Ain’t that beautiful? See, you just choosing to do right, and we’re at war in America right now. We’ve been at war for 40 years, right and wrong. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a battle of morality, that’s exactly what it is. It’s not a cultural war at all. I disagree with [unclear] about the cultural war. It’s a right and wrong war. It’s got nothing to do with blacks and whites and Mexicans and Chinese and homosexuals and, and pedophiles and all the rest. It’s right and wrong. There is nothing wrong with being born with any skin color in the Bible, but there is something wrong with your behavior. Yes, amen. Hallelujah. And I don’t want to leave out the men and women war. You know, women are trying to make themselves to be something they weren’t created to be because they want to be equal with men. You’ll never be equal with a man. You ever look at us both naked?

▶ 33:58 There’s a big difference. There. Except who you are. Could that be an amen? Yeah. Jeez. So we want to give you, in closing, positive identification of the good seed and the bad seed. Now here from good old Gerber, I have the weed seed. Okay, and here is the weed seed, and unless you were trained, you wouldn’t know beans about what’s what. You just see seed, but the truth is this seed has been impregnated with evil,

▶ 34:51 Harmful, and it’s going to produce harmful fruit. This seed has been impregnated with good nourishment, and it will produce nourishing fruit. Okay, John 8:44: “You are of your father the devil.” You see, “he does not stand in the truth.” That is positive identification. When people don’t stand up for truth, they are the seed of who? Satan. It’s not saying, “I’m a Christian, I got a baptismal certificate.” When you stand up for truth, that shows you’re God’s seed, and when you don’t stand up for

▶ 35:46 Truth, it shows that you’re of Satan. Is that positive identification? Yeah, okay. Let’s go again. Acts 13:10: “You are a child of the devil.” Paul is talking to the sorcerer, and he says, “You’re a child of the devil,” okay, a seed of the devil, “an enemy of everything that is right.” You see, now, wicked people aren’t always against everything that is right, they’re just against the source of all that is right: God, the Bible. And when you embrace all of it, you expose them in maybe five areas that they don’t see anything wrong with. Okay, “You are full of all kinds of deceit.” Deceit

▶ 36:42 Is, is, uh, sly lying. You don’t actually lie, you just don’t tell the truth. You see, I come home, my wife asked me where I’m at. “Oh, I was just out.” Well, that didn’t tell her where I was at. “Well, where were you out?” “Oh, I just stopped by the gas station to put gas in the car.” I didn’t tell her where I was before I stopped at the gas station to put gas in the car. “Well, what did you do before you put gas?” “I was talking to someone that I met.” Well, that didn’t tell you who you were talking to. You see, it’s just--it’s deceit. We like to cover our bad actions with deceit, indirect

▶ 37:41 Lying and trickery. “You will never stop perverting the right ways of God.” They pervert, they distort, they make evil of the ways of God, you see. And here’s the real kicker, John 3:10. This is how we know who the children of God are. It just plain says it. This is how we know, positive identification, who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are, and it’s got nothing to do with your baptismal certificate, it’s got nothing to do with your time at the altar getting saved, it’s got nothing to do with you say the sinner’s prayer, it’s got nothing to do with you being raised a Baptist or a Catholic all your life, got nothing to do with

▶ 38:41 It. “All anyone who doesn’t do what is right is not a child of God.” See, when I habitually, habitually--see, we sin and we get up, we make mistakes and we get up--but when habitually, when I consistently sin, I am not a God. I may say I am, and that’s the way the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes were. They believed in God, they could quote Scriptures, they could teach Scriptures, but they didn’t live Scripture, and that’s why Jesus said, “You are of the seed of your father the devil,” because their behavior. Amen. So, see, we

▶ 39:33 Know what the good seed is and the bad seed. Now we know Jesus destroyed Satan through his death on the cross, he has no control over us. We ourselves put Satan under our feet, and now we can become a partaker, a participant, of the divine nature. God is righteous, God is holy, God is wise, God is knowledgeable, God is good, all these attributes of God we can have, and shine like a light in this darkened world and hopefully bring many tares to be converted to Christ. Amen.