PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 134: ATTITUDES TOWARD EVIL, Continued
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 133: ATTITUDES TOWARD EVIL, Continued
Today we conclude the attitudes God wants us to have toward evil. We need courage to confute and reprove evil. Also, although God wants us to be a loving and fellowshipping people, He tells us about some people we must not fellowship with. Who are they?
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Good morning to you again, dear ladies, whatever time of the day it is that you are listening! Now this is No. 4 in our series of What Do We Do About Evil? And we're going to look at the last points of our 18 points of what God wants us to do about evil and the attitudes He wants us to have.
I didn't plan to do this in four sessions. In fact, when I did the third session the first time, I did it in one podcast, but when I had to do it again, I only got halfway through! My! I got talking too much. So anyway, we'll finish it off this time.
So now today I believe you will get this on the 6th of January. This is a very, very important day in our nation. I'm actually talking to you now on the last day of the year, so I don't know what's happening on the day that you're going to be listening.
Of course, it is the day when this election is coming before the Senate. I am praying that there will be courageous and brave senators who will stand up against this fraudulent election. I am hoping to be in DC for the rally. Up there to also stand against a fraudulent election, which would end America as we know it today if we allow this nation to go ahead. So I don't know what's going to happen. We'll wait and see.
OK, back to our points. We are up to. . .
No. 14. FLEE FROM EVIL
Or run away from it. When evil is around, we don't hang around it. We run from it.
1 Corinthians 6:18: “Flee fornication.” The Greek word is pheugo. It means “to run away, to shun, to escape.”
We also read this word in John 10:4-5: “The sheep follow him: for they know His voice. And a stranger they will not follow, but will flee from him (or will run away from him) for they know not the voice of strangers.”
Now dear mothers, we teach our children, don't we, to never go with a stranger. Never to get in a car with a stranger. That's something we drum into our children.
But are we also teaching our children never to listen to the strange voices of deception and humanism, that they hear all around them? These things that so easily come to their minds because the whole of the atmosphere is infiltrated with them.
We have to teach our children the difference between hearing God's Voice and just hearing the voice of all the humanistic values all around them. That's not an easy thing, but it's one of the big things that we must teach our children. We have to teach them that these voices of deception, and humanism, and feminism, and all these other “isms” that we have today, socialism and progressivism, and on and on it goes, that they are the voices of strangers.
GOD’S WORD IS THE ANTI-DOTE TO DECEPTION!
How are they going to learn the difference of the Voice of Jesus and the voice of strangers? How are we going to know the difference? I believe the only way that we can really know the difference is by being filled with the Word of God. The Word of God is the antidote to deception. If we don't know the Word, we will have nothing in us that exposes the deception and the voice of strangers.
So precious mothers, we've got to get filled with the Word ourselves. That's why it's so important to gather our families together and have Bible reading and prayer together every morning and every evening. We do this in our home, and they are the most important times of my day.
Yes, I have my own personal time in the Word, but we make time as a family, and whoever is living in our home at the time, that we gather morning and evening to open the Word. How I value those times! Just to sit, and listen, and hear the voice of God to my spirit, and filling my heart, so that I will know the difference between His voice and the voice of the stranger! Because the voices of these other things will be so strange when I am filled with His voice, which is the voice of Truth.
We have such a responsibility, dear mothers, to impart this intuition, this understanding, this wonderful, what could I call it? Attribute? I don't know what to call it. But there's something that discerns, it's a spirit of discernment that only comes through knowing the Word so that we discern, and we teach our children to discern between the clean and the unclean, between the good and the evil, between the voice of God and the voice of the stranger.
So when we hear this voice of the stranger, and we have the Word in us, we're, “Oh wow, that doesn't add up to God's Word! That's different.” And so, we run from it! We don't embrace it, we run from it! We teach our children to run from it.
If we don't do that, our children will grow up and the voices of the world around them will be bigger than the voice of God in them. And they will begin to live by the voice of deception, the voice of the stranger. The voice of the stranger will become normal to them and they won't know it's a stranger!
You see, we have to know that these voices of deception are the voices of the stranger. And the Word of God says that we are to flee from the voice of the stranger. Do you think you can do that? One of the most powerful things that you can do as a mother.
1 Corinthians 10:14 says: “Flee from idolatry.” Run from it.
1 Timothy 6:11 tells us to run from the love of money and run “after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.” You see, in the Word, we talked last week about “putting off “and “putting on.” Now we're learning about “running from” and “running after.” We go two different directions. We run from the evil and we run after righteousness.
All right, next one.
No. 15. DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN EVIL
Ephesians 5:11 says: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” Have no fellowship. If you're fellowshipping with someone, you're hanging out with them. You're friends with them. You love to talk with them.
But we don't do that with the unfruitful works of darkness, sin and evil. Instead, we reprove them. 1
Corinthians 5, in the passage between 9-11, it says: “Do not keep company with fornicators.”
1 Corinthians 10:20-21: “You cannot be partakers of the Lord's Table, and the table of devils.”
2 Corinthians 6:14-18: “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? . . . Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive thee, and I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters says the Lord Almighty.”
2 Thessalonians 3: 6 and 14: “Withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly . . . and have no company with them.” Whoo! Now that's a big one, ladies. We're talking about having no fellowship with sin and evil.
Now, of course, God loves fellowship. Oh, over and over again . . . In fact, I have found 38 “one anothers” in the Bible where God wants us to have fellowship with one another, and love one another, and have hospitality with one another, and be kind to one another, and on and on they go. The lifestyle of the Kingdom of God.
But in His Word, He also tells us about people we must not have fellowship with. Now, most people skip over those in the Bible, but as you know, I am one who seeks to search what God is saying, and not to leave out anything. And so I found 13 different kinds of people that God says we are NOT to fellowship with.
Wow. Do you want to hear them? Let me give them to you. I won't give you all the references because I know you're not going to remember them as you're just listening to them. But once again, we do transcripts. When the transcript comes out for this podcast, Number 134 I think we are on, I will have all the Scriptures for you.
1. Those who are talebearers. (Proverbs 20:19).
2. Those who cause division among you (Romans 16;17 and Titus 3:10, 11).
3. Those who are sexually immoral. Perhaps I'd better read this one. 1 Corinthians 5:9-13: “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet, I certainly didn't mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or the coveters, or extortioners, or idolaters, since you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is a fornicator, not even to eat with such a person.”
Now, did you get that? It's saying, OK, of course, you're going to mingle with people in the world, if you go about, who may be living in sexual immorality. Half the time you don't know whether they are, or whether they are not. You'd have to go out of the world because there are so many who are living in the lifestyle,
But it says, if anyone is named a brother, if he confesses that he is a believer in Christ, then if he is living in sexual immorality, you must not even keep company with him. You're not to have fellowship with him. In fact, it goes on to say, you are not even to eat with that person.
Does anybody take any notice of this Scripture today? What a grievous thing, that there are so many in the Body of Christ who are living in sexual immorality. They come to church, and people hang out with them, and fellowship with them, and don't even take a stand against it. Where have we come to? This is the Word of God!
Why does God say that? Because of His love. Because He knows that when others do not fellowship, and hang out, and eat with that person, or that couple, that they will be brought to repentance. They cannot be brought to repentance when people say, “Oh, what's wrong with that? Oh yeah, we don't care. You can do what you like.”
No. The Bible says, “Don't even eat with them.”
4. Those who are covetous (1 Corinthians 5:11).
5. Those who are idolaters (1 Corinthians 11-13 (JBP). And it says of them also, “Do not even eat with them.”
6. Those who are abusive (1 Corinthians 5:11).
7. Those who are drunkards (1 Corinthians 5;11).
8. Those who are swindlers (1 Corinthians 5;11).
9. Those who are contentious, controversial, and stir up arguments (Proverbs 22:10 and Timothy 6:3-5).
10. Those who think religion is a way to make money (1 Timothy 6:5).
11. Those who have a form of godliness but deny God's power (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
12. Those who are undisciplined, lazy, and who will not work for their living. I think I'll read you this one, too. 2 Thessalonians 3:6-14. And The Living Bible says: “Stay away from any Christian who spends his days in laziness, and does not follow the idea of hard work we set up for you. For you will know that you ought to follow our example. You never saw us loafing. We never accepted food from anyone without buying it. We worked hard, day and night, for the money we needed to live on, in order that we would not be a burden to any of you. Notice who he is, and stay away from him, that he may be ashamed of himself.”
13. Those who seduce, deceive, and falsely lead God's people (2 John 1:5-11).
These different ones, the Bible tells us, we're not to fellowship with. So, OK, are we lining up with the Word of God, or are we doing our own thing?
All right, let's go to the next one.
No. 16. WE ARE TO REPROVE EVIL
Now Ephesians 5: 11 again: “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Now what is this word “reprove”? In the Greek, it's the word elegcho, and it means “to confute, to convince, to convict.” Now, what does “confute” mean? “Confute” means “to prove to be false, wrong, in error, to overthrow by evidence or stronger arguments”.
And so this is what we have to do with sin and evil. We reprove it. We confute it. Many times, I know all of us, we hate evil. Yes, I hope we're kind of getting all these verbs into us. We hate it, and we abhor it, and we will destroy it, and we will cast if off, and we will get rid of it, and so on.
Now it says we will confute it. That means we do something about it. When someone is in sin, we just, oh, we don't like to say anything. Well, they might not, they won't like us if we say anything to them.
But the Bible says that we are to confute evil, and even to confute deception. When people are believing a lie, we are to confute that lie. We're to show them where it is false, and we're to give them evidence, Biblical evidence, to show them.
So we read this word. It comes in quite a few Scriptures in the Word of God. It's translated “convince,” in Titus 1:9, and it's speaking to elders and pastors here. It says that elders and pastors must know how “to convince,” or “confute” or “convict” the gainsayers.
When Paul was writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:20, he says: “They that sin rebuke before all.” “Rebuke” is used this time, and that's interesting. We don't see that happening in churches today, do we? But that's what God told Timothy to do. Those that sin, rebuke, not hiding away so nobody will know about it, but “rebuke before ALL.”
In Titus 2:15 Paul says: “These things SPEAK, and EXHORT, and REBUKE WITH ALL AUTHORITY.” Yes, that's when Paul was writing to Titus. That chapter in Titus starts off, let me read it for you here. Titus 2, here we go.
It starts off: “But speak thou the things that become sound doctrine.” And then the last verse in the chapter says: “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all authority.” And so it's all these things that are sound doctrine.
So if people are not walking in them, we are to show them that this is the way they are to walk, and to . . . well, help! We don't like to do this, do we? But it says here to rebuke so that they will come into these things.
This whole chapter is writing to everybody. It starts out with the older men. Then it goes to the sound doctrine for the older women, who are to teach the younger women how to be keepers at home, and to love their husbands, and to love their children, and to be submissive to their husbands, and all these things, which the Bible calls “sound doctrine.”
Then it goes on to the young men, and how they are meant to live. Then to the servants, and how they are meant to live. And then it ends. “OK, all these things, Titus, you've got to speak, and exhort, and rebuke, or confute, and convince, with all authority, to make sure that the people of God are walking in these ways of sound doctrine.”
Often, ladies, we are a little fearful to rebuke evil, or to expose evil, or to reprove evil. But I believe we need courage because this is what God says we're to do. Because people have not exposed evil, and have not reproved it, we have so much evil and sin lurking in the church.
The church of God today, on the whole, is not a church of God's holy set-apart people, walking in righteousness, but it's filled with sin and tolerance of sin. Why? Because evil has not been rebuked. Sin has not been confuted. And so we have to rise up.
I've been thinking lately about that Scripture in Revelation 21: 8: It's a very, very challenging Scripture. Let me go to it. Revelation 21:8 and it talks about, it gives a list of those who will have their part in the lake of fire, which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. So who are these people?
It says: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and the murderers, and the whoremongers, and the sorcerers, and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” That's scary.
But what's even more scary, help! . . . is that at the top of the list is the fearful. Most translations translate the word “the coward.” Oh, help! Does that get to you? “The coward?” Do you mean to say, cowards are just as sinful as murderers? Well, that's what the Scripture says.
In fact the Amplified (AMPC) says: “But as for the cowards, and the ignoble, and the contemptible, and the cravenly lacking in courage, and the cowardly submissive.” Dear ladies, it seems that the church of God has come to that fate today. Not only the people of the world, but the people in the church have cowardly submitted to tyranny without even one little question.
They have listened to the fake media. They have listened to the voice of the stranger, and they have said, “Yes Sir! We will lock down. We will wear masks. We will socially distance. We will do everything that the elite will tell us to do.”
They have listened to the voice of the stranger. They have been cowardly submissive. They have not stood up for what God says in His Word, and the way God created us to live, because this way of life is totally antithesis to the Word of God. It is absolutely opposite to how God created us to live as families, and as extended families, and as people in our communities. And in our nation, IT IS THE OPPOSITE!
We have to rise up. We must begin to be brave. We must begin to be courageous. And I'm thinking of that Scripture in 2 Peter. It's in that passage of the letter of virtue. Do you remember that in 2 Peter, chapter 1:5-8?
It starts off: “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge” and so on. We go up the ladder. You can read it later. We stop at virtue. Now virtue, virtue we think, “Oh that sounds a glorious, wonderful word!”
IT’S TIME FOR COURAGE!
But what does it really mean? Well, in the Greek, the word is arete and it means “excellent, God's excellence, but also excellence in man.” But it also means, it means (and this is where it's so great to go back to the full understanding of the Greek, to know what it's talking about), it means “courage, fortitude, resolution, manliness, valor.”
Now, it's interesting. Men . . . of course, although this word is for all of us, it's for us ladies, it's for children, it's for every person. But the meaning of it is “courage, manliness.” Now it's an interesting thing that men, instinctively, are meant to have courage.
In the Knox Translation of the Bible, everywhere in the King James where it says: “Be of good courage,” and wherever it talks about having courage, the Knox Translation translates it “Play the man.” It's quite a great translation. “Play the man.” In fact, one time in the King James, it also says, “Play the man.”
So we're going out to the war and they say: “Let us play the man, for our people,” and what they're meaning is, “Let's have courage!” So courage is a very manly thing. That's what makes me sad, when I see so many big strapping men, and they wear masks. They've cowardly submitted to tyranny! Help! These are men who should be having courage to stand for their freedom.
Well this word, virtue, arete, is the same word that's used back in the story in the Maccabees. Now the Maccabees is not part of the Canon of Scripture. It is part of the Apocrypha. Now the Apocrypha were books that were not chosen to go into the Canon of Scripture, but they are also good reading, and give us wonderful history, especially Maccabees 1 and 2. It gives the history of the Maccabees, which is a powerful thing to read.
We've just been celebrating Hanukkah, which is the story of how the Maccabees regained the nation of Israel, and reclaimed the Temple, and dedicated it back to God. Even Jesus Himself, He celebrated the Feast of Hanukkah in Jerusalem when He was on this earth.
But just, can I just tell you this little story? Wow, hope I can fit it in. It's found in 2 Maccabees, chapter 6, and it's a time when Antiochus Epiphanes, he sent his senator to force the Jews to abandon the laws of their ancestors. They filled the Temple with debauchery and prostitutes, and oh, anyone who would not give up their Jewish ways was put to death.
It was, they were trying to totally annihilate the Jewish nation. In fact, this is terrible. It talks about two women who were arrested for circumcising their babies. And they publicly paraded them around the city with their babies dangling from their breasts, and then they threw them down from the top of the city wall. Oh, such atrocities!
And then it talks about Eleazar. Eleazar was a scribe, and he was an older man of God. He was apparently about 90 years of age. And they forced him to eat pork. Well, some people eat pork today, but back then the Jews, of course, they would not eat pork. To them, that was a terrible thing to do.
So many of these Jews, they were assimilating to this Greek way of life, just to, just to hang onto their lives. They cowardly submitted! But Eleazar wouldn't. And these people, they were his friends. And they said, “Hey, Eleazar, look, go and get some of your meat that you're allowed, and we'll let you do that. And you can eat that, and pretend you're eating the pork, so they won't kill you. Because we don't want you to be killed.”
But Eleazar, he was a MAN OF COURAGE. This is what he, can I read it to you? I'll read it to you straight from the Maccabees. “But Eleazar made a decision worthy of his gray hair and advanced age. All his life, he had lived in perfect obedience to God's holy laws. So he replied, 'Kill me here and now. Such deception is not worthy of a man of my years. Many young people would think that I had denied my faith after I was 90 years old. If I pretended to eat this meat just to live a little while longer, it will bring shame and disgrace on me and lead many young people astray. For the present, I might be able to escape what you can do to me, but whether I live or die, I cannot escape almighty God. If I die bravely now, it will show that I deserved my long life. It will also show a good example of the way young people shall be willing and glad to die for our sacred laws'. And as soon as he said those things, he went off to be tortured.”
And then it says, when they had beaten him almost to the point of death, he groaned and said: “The Lord possesses all holy knowledge. He knows I could have escaped these terrible sufferings and death. Yet He also knows that I gladly suffer these things because I fear Him. So Eleazar died. But his courageous (and there's that word, arete) his courageous death was remembered as a glorious example, not only by young people, but by the entire nation as well.”
You see, this was taken obviously from the Septuagint, which is the version of the Bible translated from Hebrew into Greek. So this Greek word is here used, “virtue,” but meaning “courage.” And here it talks about his courageous death. Courage. It's time for us, isn't it, to rise up in courage and begin to reprove evil!
I'm thinking today, the 6th of January, that you will listen to this, most probably. We know already of one, Josh Hawley, Senator Josh Hawley, who is going to stand up against this fraudulent election. I pray that he'll have courage today, and many others will stand with him to reprove evil. To reprove evil. We cannot accept a stolen election.
All right, dear ladies. Oh goodness me, what am I going to do? We're running out of time, and I see here that I've been telling you I have 18 points. But you know what? I've actually got 20! I think I found two more and added them. So now we have 20! So will I have time to get through them?
No. 17. DO NO LOOK AT EVIL
David said in Psalm 101:3: “I will refuse to look at anything vile or vulgar.” That's the New Living Translation. King James says: “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes.”
No. 18. RESIST EVIL
James 4:7: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
No. 19. CLEANSE YOURSELF FROM ALL EVIL
2 Corinthians 7:1: “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Number 20, yes, the last one!
No. 20. RID THE NATION OF EVIL
Let me take you to Psalm 144, as we close. Psalm 144, and here David is praying. He's praying for the nation. Let's read his prayer. Psalm 144: 7 and verse 11. He prays this prayer two times in this Psalm. “Send thy hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children.”
Again in verse 11: “Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children.” Once again, we're talking about the voice of strangers. That which is foreign to God's Holy Word, that which is foreign to His Heart, that which is foreign to our Holy God, “whose mouth speak vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood.”
And so David is praying, “Lord, God, deliver me! Deliver this nation from evil!” This is the prayer that we should be praying.
This is another attitude that not only will we be delivered personally, not only will our children and our families be delivered personally, but the nation will be delivered from evil and from the voice of the stranger! Why? Why? Because of this powerful vision that David had, and it comes right back to us, dear mothers.
It comes back to the home. Back to the family, and what does it say? “That our sons may be as plants growing up their youth; that our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace.” David cried out for the nation to be delivered of the deception, and the evil, and the voice of the strange doctrine so that we could grow up a people, young people, our children. That our sons will grow up and become mature, even in their youth. That our daughters will be pure and holy like princesses in a palace, living lives that are worthy of royalty because they belong to the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords.
Sons and daughters who are not walking in sin but walking in holiness.
Sons and daughters who know how to combat the evil one.
Sons and daughters who know the voice of God and will run from the voice of the stranger.
Yes. Make that your prayer, dear precious mother.
Dear Father, we thank You , Lord God, for showing us Your attitude toward evil. Help us, help us to have Your same attitude. We pray, Lord, that we will walk in deliverance, even in our homes and our families, from all deception, and all the voices of the stranger, and that which is foreign to Your plan for our lives.
And Lord, that we will raise young men, mature in their youth, who will be set apart for You, Lord, God. And who will, Lord, stand against all evil. And that our daughters will be pure and holy, and set apart unto You.
Oh, God, we ask, Lord, that we will live in the fullness of all that you have planned in this time for us. I pray Your blessing upon every mother and child and family who are represented by those listening today. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
Transcribed by Darlene Norris