Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, October 18th. Do you know someone who is hostile towards the gospel message? It seems the more they hear about God's love, the harder they push away. Today's podcast looks at this condition and reveals God's cure for spiritual blindness. What kind of strategy would Satan use if he wants to blind the minds of men?
Don't you forget this. First of all, Satan always launches his attack against the Word of God. First of all, he launches his attack as to its origin. That is, that it is not God-breathed, although the Spirit of God didn't breathe through some men. How could the Spirit of God breathe through somebody? Once a person begins to doubt the origin, that is, the supernatural origin of the Word of God, the next thing they begin to doubt is the authenticity of it. Well, you know, I know that more than likely men wrote it.
Therefore, probably it has many mistakes in it. And therefore, they begin to doubt the authenticity of the Word of God and so they begin to pick and choose. They pick what they want to believe and they choose what they do not believe. The next thing that happens is they doubt the authority of the Word of God. Well, after all, it was written by men and after all, it's full of errors and after all, if that is true, how can it be an authority in my life?
Do you see the subtleness of Satan as he begins his slow but subtle approach to blind the minds of men? He gets them doubting the authenticity of it. Then he gets them to doubt the very fact that the Word of God is authority. And then, of course, lastly, he begins to work to make them doubt the power of the Word of God. My friend, when you doubt the supernatural origin of the Word of God, you begin to doubt the authenticity of every word of this book. You begin to doubt the authority of the Word of God.
You are in a dangerous condition. A person who doubts the Word of God naturally begins to move in the direction in which Satan himself moved in. If the Word of God is not an authority, if it is really not all true, then who becomes the center of my world? I become the center of my world. I decide which lifestyle it is because after all, you see, now I have become my own authority. Spiritual blindness is a dangerous condition. I make my own decisions.
No one tells me what to do. It is deifying self. Self-centeredness and self-serving has become deified. If there is no divine authority, what is the authority? Whenever you have a society in which this book is no longer looked at as the final authority, you have all kinds of things going on and well defended because Satan has blinded their eyes.
They are spiritually blind and whether an individual, a family, a group, or a nation is spiritually blind, that is a dangerous condition to be in. So what does Satan do? He counterfeits every good thing that God brings along. Now I want to say a word and I'm sure that some pastors would probably disagree and it's your right to disagree, but I want to tell you something. And if you'll be honest and open enough to think down 10, 20 years down the road, if you stand in your pulpit and you say to your people, this book was not divinely inspired, though it has some divine things in it. This book has many errors in it.
It is an authority in some areas, but not all areas. And there's no particular power in this book. I want to tell you, my friend, you're going to create a group of people, not a group of people who are living by faith, but who are saturated with doubt, who are frustrated, who do not know which part of this book to believe and which part not to believe. And so they face one problem in their life and they come to this passage and they say, but did my pastor say that was inspired and not inspired? Is this one of the erroneous parts or is this the true part? I want to tell you, my friend, you cooperate with Satan by teaching them that the Bible is full of errors because you build doubt and skepticism into their life.
And so what happens? Here's what the teenager sitting in the pew says. Well, if it's full of errors, how could it be an authority? If it's not an authority, where's the authority? I'm 18 years of age. I'm leaving home next year. Who's going to be the authority in my life?
Whoopee! I am now going to be the final authority in my life. And they begin to live in sin and the very foundation of their faith crumble beneath those who were untrue to the full counsel of the living God. That's a little tough for some folks to accept, but it is the living truth. Satan has attempted to blind the minds of the unbeliever and he's succeeding at it. Satan is brilliant when it comes to blinding the minds of unbelievers.
He has succeeded down through the centuries. And you and I know many people whom we love, who are our friends, who are our neighbors, people with whom you work who are spiritually blind. They think they're walking in the right direction. Some of them really believe that what we believe is all foolishness and it'll pass away. We'll grow out of it because they have been blinded by Satan. Listen, when Satan is so blatant to make his objective known. And when Paul, the apostle expounds it so clearly that Satan's objective is to blind the minds of the unbeliever, lest they believe in the glory of Christ, who is the very image of God himself. Spiritual blindness.
But it's interesting how all that takes place. Notice, if you will, in the verse before, verse three. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Now, he uses the phrase here of veiling. And he also uses it in the 16th verse of the third chapter, when he's talking about an incident with Moses going up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments and coming back in the veil over his face. He mentions the veil there. But what is he referring to when he says, even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. When we talk about being blinded to the truth.
Now, think about this. What is it within a person that would cause them to respond in this fashion? Doubting the Word of God. They become the final authority in their life. And they become involved and engaged in all kinds of sins and activities that are against God.
Why do they do it? How does it happen to them? What's going on inside of a person that would cause them to be spiritually blind? Let me give you a list of words that you can think about. One of them is rebellion. I believe wherever you find spiritual blindness, there is rebellion against something, against God in some fashion, even though they do not even understand that that is true.
Rebellion against the Word of God, rebellion against God, rebellion against what he requires, who he is and what he teaches. Oftentimes, and more than not, there is the sin of immorality. Immorality has a way of contributing to the blindness of a person. Because they get caught up in what they want, what they feel like they need, what they feel like they must have. It so influences their actions.
Pride. I want to make my own decisions. I want to do my own thing. I don't want somebody else telling me how to live. I don't want anybody telling me what is right and wrong.
I make my own decisions. An unteachable spirit. A person has an unteachable spirit, which is sort of an offshoot of pride. Unwilling to hear the truth. Isn't it interesting that some people do not want to hear the truth?
They want to defend their ungodly living and the last thing they want to do is hear the truth because, you see, that's Satan's approach to blind the minds of people to the truth. Don't tell me the truth. I don't want to hear that. I walk away from that. I'm not interested in that.
Why? You mean not interested in the only perspective that can bring you eternal life? No, because, you see, now I've become my own authority. I'm my own little god. I've got my own little world. I make my own decisions. I have my own religion.
I believe everybody is going to heaven. I have my own way. Spiritual blindness is a dangerous condition for someone to be in. It may start out very small, but it's interesting how those attitudes contribute to, become a part of.
You find a person who is spiritually blind and if they will begin to be honest with you about their thinking, you will discover some of these attitudes. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a person. I happened to be seated on a plane beside them. We began to talk and this person saw my Bible and one of their first responses was, Well, I want you to know right up front that I'm an atheist. I said, Well, that's fine.
No problem. And so we began to talk and immediately the response was, I don't believe the Bible. And went on through unbelief, skepticism, atheism and all the rest.
And when I said, Would you tell me why you don't believe the Bible? Then she began to tell me how she grew up in a particular church and how she had to do certain things every morning, day after day after day. My first little clue was rebellion. And she decided when she was a little girl what she was going to do when she was able to get out from under that. So there was rebellion.
And now in a position to be seen by many, many people. Pride. Unbelief.
You could just go right down the line. And I talked all the way from one city up to the gate in Atlanta and still unbelief. But I kept saying to this person, But what are you going to do about Jesus Christ? And after I asked her that so many times, she finally said, I know what you're doing. You're trying to ask me this question so much that I won't forget it. I said, That's exactly right. And the last thing I said to her before I got off the plane is, What are you going to do about Jesus? Because I want to tell you, my friend, you have to answer that.
Let me ask you a question. Can you say that the sun is not shining because your eyes are taped up? That is exactly the way some people respond. They tape up their eyes and they say the sun's not shining. They become spiritually blind and they say there's no truth in that. They refuse the truth. Deliberately, willfully refuse the truth of the Word of God. When you begin to analyze the process and see that Satan's very objective is blinding their minds. That's his objective.
He has all kinds of ways of accomplishing that task very, very successfully. Now, what is the outcome of all of that? Well, he tells us. Listen, verse three. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are what?
To those who are perishing. What is the ultimate outcome of spiritual blindness? The ultimate outcome of spiritual blindness is to be eternally separated from Almighty God. I'm talking about the only true God, Jehovah God, Yahweh, Elohim. I'm talking about the God who gave to us, the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son. The ultimate outcome of spiritual blindness is to die and go to a Christless grave and to go and spend eternity where Satan is going to spend eternity, which is in a hell where he says, the flame dieth not and the smoke forever rises.
That's the ultimate outcome. But listen to what he says in this passage. I want you to look over, if you will, in verse 16. He says, but whenever a man turns to the Lord, what happens? He says the veil is taken away when he turns to the Lord. But what is the outcome of all of this?
When he turns to the Lord, something happens. But what is the outcome of this spiritual blindness? First of all, denial of the truth.
You know, now I'm not too sure I believe that in the law. Deception takes such a hold in that person's life. Before long, they are, listen, defying the truth and are living in darkness. And the Scripture says living in darkness, they are of the darkness.
The ultimate outcome of spiritual blindness is to walk in darkness, to die in darkness, and to exist for eternity in darkness. Does not Jesus say he that has the Son has life? He that does not have the Son of God does not have life, but the wrath of God abides upon him. Jesus said, I am the way, whether you believe it or not. I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me, no matter how you may reason. There is only one way, and that way is the way of repentance.
Now let me say two things at this point. There is a blindness that is extremely dangerous, as all blindness is. But when a person is so deceived and they so determined to live in sin, disobedience and rebellion toward God, and they give themselves over to, that is, I mean, they throw to the wind all restraints, what they in essence do is to bow down to Satan and say to him, in exchange for all that I want now, I give you myself for eternity. What a foolish commitment, but that is exactly what they say. Jesus, through the apostle Paul, described this in the first chapter of Romans when he said that he gives some people over to a certain lifestyle, or particular lifestyles, whatever it may be. When he gives them over to it, here's what that means. God withdraws all restraints.
And what he is saying is this. Because of your vile and wicked choices, I now choose to allow you the full rewards of the consequences of your willful chosen disobedience. Now you think you can get saved just any old time you please?
No, you can't. I didn't say God wouldn't save you. But I set apart from the wooing of the Holy Spirit. How do these people who are spiritually blinded come to know Christ as their Savior? Paul gives us that clue right here in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Look in verse 16. He says, but whenever, but whenever a man or a woman turns to the Lord, now here's what he's saying. Here's a person who is spiritually blind to the truth. Absolutely no desire for anything in the spiritual world that you and I know.
Nothing of church, nothing of God, nothing of Christ. All hell breaks loose in their life, so to speak. And they hit rock bottom. And they get desperate. And everything that Satan has fed them and offered them and promised them up to this point, all of a sudden it just doesn't work.
And out of utter desperation they cry out, God if you are there, God if you are there, help me. But I want to tell you my friend, when that spiritual darkness gets so dark and it becomes so strong and you turn yourself over to that lifestyle, you're going to have to get absolutely desperately desperate before you will turn because your pride will keep you from it. I want to tell you, spiritual blindness is dangerous business. And we think God just winks at our sin. God has never winked at anything. Spiritual blindness is of the devil.
Its primary objective is to blind the minds of the unbelievers so that they will miss eternity having missed the Lord Jesus Christ. And the outcome of that is to walk in darkness, to live in darkness, to die in darkness, and to exist for eternity in darkness. Would you not agree it is a foolish man or woman, listen, who will even take the chance, even take the chance that what you've just heard may be right.
Now think about it. Just suppose the chances are one in a thousand that what you've heard is correct. My friend, do you want to take the chance of living in darkness, walking in darkness, dying in darkness, and existing for eternity in a Christless, godless, painful, punishing darkness for what Satan has offered you, which is all a big lie. Thank you for listening to part two of Spiritual Blindness. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
