Standing still = inner man blackout

Carnality doesn’t start in what you do; it starts in the inner man. “I try to say to you about the Christian life, it might LOOK like a good work and be produced by the energy of the flesh,” says Jordan. “It might LOOK like just the right thing. It might LOOK one way; the issue is where does it come from? That’s THE issue.

“A carnal believer has been saved long enough to know some things but he’s just chosen not to know them. He’s going on human viewpoint. Maybe the religious system has come along and sucked him in. Whatever it is, he’s not grown.

“You see, you can’t stand still. The warning in Hebrews 5:12 is, [12] For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.

“Faith is simply being positive toward the sound doctrine. When you quit being positive toward the truth of God’s Word, you become indifferent, or indolent. You just reject it. Your mind goes ‘Sluhherp’ because it leaves a big sucking sound between your ears.

*****

“Paul tells the Corinthians that he wanted the eyes of their understanding to be enlightened. He writes in I Corinthians 1, [18] The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
[19] And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power.

“That’s what the Word of God does! If you’re positive toward sound doctrine, lights come on. If you’re negative toward it, it’s lights out. There’s a saved man living in the darkness internally in his soul just like a lost man was.

“That’s what the Bible’s describing over there when it talks about the ‘carnal man.’ He’s trying to do it; he’s striving, he’s got all the outward stuff. He’s got the outward performance and all the religion. The reason he’s got all the outward stuff is because he’s living under that vanity of reactionary legalism.

"He’s back there in Genesis 3 trying to sew the fig leaf to make britches to wear to try to get through a performance system, based on false doctrine, to give him a standing before God.

“It’s not grace; it’s law. Now it can be scriptural, because the law is scriptural, and bless your little pea-picking heart, you don’t just have to have things that aren’t scriptural. It's if they’re not dispensational; not rightly divided.

*****

“I’ve told you about one of the most asinine things I ever saw in my life once just looking in a bookstore. A guy wrote a book on the Ten Commandments and entitled it, ‘The Freedom of the Law.’

“That’s like taking a bird meant to fly and soar in the heavens . . . You go out to Brother Ralph’s and let him show you those martin bird houses that he tends to. Martins will swoop down towards the water and when they drink, they just skim the water. They don’t go down and gurgle it.

"You never see a martin below the tree tops when they’re out flying. I kept my eye on just one martin and she’d go off and go up so high you couldn’t see here, and she’d be up there and up there and I’d lose sight and, in a minute, she’d swoop back down on the nest and feed her little babes. Then, in a minute, she’d be gone again.

“You take that martin and put her in a bird cage and say, ‘Bless your heart, I’m going to protect you. You’re going to be safe.’ You put her in there and say, ‘See, NOW she’s okay!’

“ ‘The Freedom of the Law’?! Balderdash. That’s bad doctrine. The problem with that is Paul says we’re not under the law; we’re under grace. God changed the program.

"You see, God slipped that Bible teacher, that writer, a Mickey Finn. He messed him up, is what He did. He messed up his book because the man was messing up God’s Book. The guy got it wrong. You say, ‘How do people do that?!’ Just being negative toward His truth.

*****

“You can’t go into apostasy unless you depart from the gospel of the grace of God given to you through the Apostle Paul, the Word of God rightly divided.

"The ONLY way to go into error, doctrinally or personally, is to depart from Pauline doctrine. And everybody that goes into it has departed from Paul, and everybody that departs from Paul goes into it.

“Paul writes in Ephesians 4:18, [18] Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.’

“This guy’s cut off; God’s life isn’t working through him anymore. That darkness comes because of a blindness. There’s this cataract; this callus that’s developed on the soul and it gets bigger, and the bigger it gets, the darker it gets down in his soul.

“It doesn’t start out just, ‘Poof! All gone!’ It starts out with just a little dim shadow over things. The clarity, the crispness, isn’t there. Somebody will say something and you let it pass.

*****

"As Paul warns in Galatians 1, ‘[8] But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.’

“There’s two things there. One is if somebody preaches it to you, and the other is if you receive it. The danger is not just that somebody comes and preaches a false gospel to you. The other danger is that you start receiving it and not objecting.

“You say, ‘Well, he’s a good guy.’ ‘Well, I knew his folks.’ ‘Well, you know he represents the church.’ ‘Well, he’s talking about Christ.’ ‘You ought to see the crowds they have down at church.’

“Do you see I said everything but, ‘What is he preaching?’ You focus on everything else. ‘Well, we have a good time.’ ‘Well, they’re doing some good.’ ‘Well, they’re getting things done.’ ‘Well, they’re fighting this; they’re fighting that. They’re standing for the faith.’

“What’s he preaching?! What’s the message?! And see you, sitting there, you get used to letting what they’re preaching go by and not be the thing you’re responding to and you know what happens? You wind up here (in blindness).

*****

"This thing gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger ’til pretty soon you’re just like a blind bat flying backwards in a dark cave. 'Can’t see a thing.' 'I don’t see it.’ Well, that’s the way you were before you got saved!

“The result of that is in Ephesians 4: [19] Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
[20] But ye have not so learned Christ.’

“That panic feeling, where you’re past feeling and given over to lasciviousness, starts that vacuum in your spirit. In comes the false teaching, in comes the emphasis on the details of life ('Me-me-me-itis'), and the fallout of that is a blackout to the soul and alienation from the provisions God has for you in Christ to live in time for His glory.

“You can’t see it and you begin to be disoriented to the plan of God, disoriented to your understanding down here—actually, you FORGET about it!

“You don’t know how many times I’ve sat down with people and they come to their senses and they begin to ‘recover themselves,’ like Paul talks about, and it’s just like, ‘Oh, man, I just forgot about . . .’

“You just get disoriented to who you are and, you see, ‘God will fill you with joy and peace in believing,’ but when you scratch off the believing, there isn’t any joy and peace down in here, so in order to find happiness and in order to get the emotions in line . . .

*****

“The functions of your emotions begin to reign and your will is no longer on the throne. That is, the whole purpose of all of (this reversionism) is to put you into emotional revolt so that your will is no longer in control; your emotions are running your life and you live under the tyranny of them.

“You are literally afraid to look at your emotions in the eye and deny them anything because their cravings scare you to death and you get where you can’t stop. The result is that you get off into this frantic search for happiness that just builds that callus more and more.

“Notice how Paul describes these people and their recovery process in II Timothy 2. In verse 25 he says, ‘[25] In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;

“I love that definition. What are they doing? They’re literally OPPOSING themselves. They are living opposite of who they really are! This guy here is trying to live one way when God made him another way.

“Verse 26 says, [26] And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.' That’s it! You know what you need to do? Sober up.

*****

“Go back up in the chapter and look at the procedure for restoration. When you find anybody in this condition spiritually, and this is the condition the Corinthians were in, this is the condition of carnality.

“Remember back when you got saved? I see it happen around here all the time. Somebody gets saved and they’re just so excited; they’re going to ‘set the woods on fire.’ You remember the old Hank Williams song?

"They’re going to ‘win the world for Christ’ and go out and live for God and you just have to say to yourself, ‘Bless ’em, Lord, and enjoy it while it lasts.’

“Because they’ll just go out and run 90 miles per hour for about six months and then, boom, smack into a brick wall. You know what they run into? Romans 7. You don’t have to know anything about the Book of Romans but you’re going to hit Romans 7 in your experience. I don’t care what happens, it just comes.

"You get battered and bloodied and all of a sudden you’re defeated and it’s, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’

“I tell them that the first thing they need to do is learn by heart and memorize the first 11 verses of Romans 5. It will make all the difference in the world. You learn how to handle your problems on the basis of who you are in Christ and on the basis of understanding the reality of what’s going on.

“Once you learn the first six chapters of Romans, you’re ready to deal with the Romans 7 experience, but NOT before. You understand you’re free from your need to perform on your own, and you’re ready for it just to be Christ living in you and not about you doing it. That’s the whole issue in Romans 7.

“You get to chapter 8 and he reminds you, ‘Hey, when you walk in your wisdom it doesn’t work, but if you walk in the wisdom of God it will.’

*****

“The mind is a function of your spirit. Your heart is a description of the mentality of your soul. Your brain is in your body, but you know there’s a difference between the physical brain and the thinking process that goes on in your mindset.

“So, the unsaved man’s mind is vanity. Emptiness. Ephesians 4:17 says, ‘This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.’

“You ever heard anybody talk about being an ‘airhead’? That’s sort of what that verse is talking about. Vanity is an empty place. If you have absolute emptiness, what do you have? You’d have a perfect vacuum. There’s less atmospheric pressure on the inside than there is on the outside. That means it sucks IN air.

“The unsaved man walks around with a mind like a vacuum cleaner. It’s just constantly sucking up things. The mentality of the spirit is to pull in. You know what it’s pulling in? Every goofy idea that comes down the pike.

“Have you ever wondered why Oprah Winfrey is always one of the most successful business women in America? I mean, what is it of any tangible value that she’s producing? Nothing like GM or IBM. She’s producing stuff that people’s minds just suck in.

“The satanic system Paul talks about where he says the man is ‘tossed to and fro,’ the mind of that man sucks in human viewpoint. It’s reactionary legalism (Genesis 3), mental-attitude sins and the emphasis of the details of life and total self-preoccupation. One of those things leads to the next.

“He says, ‘Having their understanding darkened.’ The man’s spirit is dead but his soul is dark. In your soul is where your will functions. What you literally have in an unsaved man is this spirit that sucks in all these ideas and a soul that’s in a state of continuous blackout.

“Darkness, no knowledge. No ability to turn on the light and properly evaluate what the mind keeps sending down there to it. The mind says, ‘Hey, here’s an idea,’ and it’s gone. ‘Ffft!’ You say, ‘I can’t see it.’ The mind says, ‘Well, here’s an idea,' but, ‘Ffft!’ it’s gone. You say, ‘I don’t get it.’ It’s just blank. So the will is not really given any help. You remember Paul says, ‘But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.’

“The psalm says, ‘The entrance of thy Word giveth light.’ Paul warns, ‘Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.’ The light shines in with the Word of God and all of a sudden there’s this blazing light in the man’s soul and his will then can say, ‘Hey, man, what I need to do is trust Christ.’ ”