This message is for those who find that the old ways of thinking sweep through once in a while to wipe them out. It is for those who have moments in which they “blow” it or fear that they will. Although they know God can forgive them, they are very uneasy about what the consequences will be. There are a thousand old ruts that people can slip into.
The fourth chapter of Ephesians begins by telling about the Lord’s ascension to the right hand of the Father and of the great ministry gifts that He gave to the Church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers ( the four-fold ministry). They were to accomplish in the Christians the perfecting or equipping of the saints unto the work of ministry, to bring them into a maturity, measuring up to the full stature of the fullness of Christ.
With the unique revelation that he had, Paul took something so awe-inspiring and made it very practical. One of the key phrases he uses in Ephesians is “in the heavenly places”; we are blessed with Christ in the heavenly places.
The word heavenly places can be a little misleading; it is not just talking about Heaven: it is talking about whole of the spirit realm, Heaven, Hell and all that is in between.
Ephesians 2: 6 And hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Made us to sit together (synkathizo) in heaven places in Christ Jesus, is talking about our co-inclusion in Christ, about the authority we have in the realm of the spirit when we have a walk with God.
In the realm of the spirit we have authority over ALL devils, in (intimate union) in the name (authority) of Jesus Christ. Fallen angels are different than demons. And the churches in your city have to come together in unity if you want to displace the fallen angle over your city and see a mighty revival.
There are exceptions to this of course, I came to San Antonio to study under a man named Alan Vincent and He and His wife went to Bombay India, and through spiritual warfare displaced the angel over that city, and a thousand churches came out of that move of God, and also the Argentina revival.
If we do not have a walk with God, demons will take one look at you in the realm of the spirit, and say you don’t look or smell right, and we will not obey you.
You have to be in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ then you can cast them out, and make them leave your property line.
All that demons are is a supernatural power of false suggestion. They talk to Christians all the time, that is why you have to offer your body to the Lord Jesus Christ as a living sacrifice, and then you can get your soul (mind, emotions, conscience, and will) renewed by the Word of God so that they have no access to you. Otherwise they will come and sit in your soul and put thoughts in your mind.
One of the key words Paul uses in this book is “walk.” He wants you to have your head right up there in heaven, but your feet solidly on the ground, walking with the Lord the way you are supposed to.
He deals with the sum total of our experiences, from our warfare against principalities and powers right down to our daily circumstances.
No book with six chapters ever covered so many truths. A person could study it for his entire lifetime and never exhaust it.
After Paul writes of the wonderful way that these ministries are to perfect the saints to the work of ministry, he leads us to our text, Ephesians 4:17–5:1–6. This I say therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit.
Note that the former manner of life is to be laid aside with the old self. Remember the phrase, “lusts of deceit.” All lust is very deceitful. If it were not for deceit, the devil’s world would fall apart. All lust is based on deceit. People who are affected by the lusts of deceit have first been absolutely deceived. I am not so much concerned about establishing the evil of people who fall into lust, as I am about establishing that deception is on them when they do fall into it. They can be as morally good as anyone else. What makes them fall? Deception enters into it.
And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. It keeps building up toward being righteous and holy. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. This is not speaking of factual truths. It does not mean that I have to tell everything I know to another person. We are to speak truth. The world is under the lusts of deceit. The Body functions by speaking truth. You must not be carried away in the lusts of deceit. Paul speaks about ignorance, a darkened understanding, ignorance that comes because of hardness of heart and the lusts of deceit. This is the way of the world, and it is the way of the carnal Christian, of the Christian who fails and falls into the trap. We speak truth, each one of us with our neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. That covers more than you may realize. Do not give the devil an opportunity or a place. Let me speak plainly. There is an old saying about a girl fighting for her honor in some man’s bedroom. It is very difficult to maintain righteousness when you allow yourself to be in a compromising situation. Most of the Christians in the world are carnal; they are constantly exposing themselves to the deceit of lust. If you follow that course, exposing yourself to that opportunity, that is where your desire will be. If you follow after the Lord, you will delight in righteousness. In the services we speak truth to one another, we bless one another to seek after the true righteousness and holiness of God, thus avoiding that which is carnal and evil.
Stand for the thing that is right. Our young people who want to date will have to follow the Scriptures more carefully than ever. You cannot be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. If a girl finds her heart drawn to some boy, but she knows that he will not come to the Lord in order to date her, then she had better not date him, or else find some way that another Christian is with her when she is with that boy. If he develops a sufficient interest in her, then she can draw him to the house of the Lord. We have seen enough sorrow in situations where Christians are unequally yoked together with unbelievers. When there is just a measure of acceptance of Christ, afterwards they will follow in that deceitfulness of lust. They are deceptive and draw others into the way of wickedness.
Let him who steals steal no longer; but rather let him labor, performing with his own hands what is good, in order that he may have something to share with him who has need. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
In his epistles, Paul does not speak this bluntly about the way of the flesh just to be harping on it. Here he goes on to explain the spiritual effect of entering into the deceit of lust, of following the way of the old man and not putting away the old self to walk with God.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ in God (this is what I am concerned about: this inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ in God). Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
No one is to be fooled. Let no one deceive you, or you will not be an heir, nor will you receive any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ in God.
Do you remember the promise in Revelation 21:7: “He that overcomes shall inherit all things.” I am concerned about the full inheritance of what Christ offers. I am not worried about your being saved and being a Christian who comes to church and receives blessing.
We will hang onto you; we will not let you slide into hell if we can help it, and when you have a need we will pray for you.
I am concerned about something else. Our walk is dedicated to what God has reserved for this hour, an inheritance for the saints. I want you to come into that inheritance, but you do not receive it without overcoming.
The overcomer is the one who inherits all things. You may think that this refers to the future, but it is speaking about right now. If you want to walk with God, if you want the blessing of the Lord now, you will receive it as you put aside the things of the old self and overcome them.
There are two references to “inheritance” in the first and the third chapters of Colossians. Notice also the phraseology in Acts 20:32 where Paul is speaking to the elders of Ephesus: And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
Do not be afraid of the word “sanctified.” To be sanctified is to be purified, made holy, set apart for God. God calls many people. He has promises and prophecies resting over them, a divine purpose for their lives.
But every time you go out and mess up your life, you are nullifying and putting aside that divine purpose. No immoral or impure person, or covetous man, who is an idolator, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ in God.
How are you going to have what God wants for you? First of all, you must be an overcomer. The inheritance is for those who are sanctified.
Don’t be afraid to seek the holiness of the Lord. Seek it. Ask the Lord to sanctify you wholly. Paul said, “I pray God that your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord.” Why? Because “faithful is He who called you, who also will do it” (I Thessalonians 5:23, 24).
As the Lord brings His righteousness to pass in your life, you can walk into all the things He has planned for your life. Hunger after it. They will be blessed who hunger and thirst after righteousness—not blessings. They will be filled (Matthew 5:6). This marvelous inheritance belongs to the overcomer. That is the whole purpose of our walk—to make us overcomers.
Another pertinent passage is found in I Corinthians 6:9–11. Again Paul is very blunt. Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators (a person who has sexual activity apart from marriage), nor idolators (anyone who allows anything to be put ahead of God) nor adulterers (those who are unfaithful to the marriage vows), nor effeminate (the margin reads “effeminate by perversion”), nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. We can forfeit this inheritance of the Kingdom that God has set aside for us. When we become Christians, the whole bundle of blessings is all ours to reach into, though not because we are worthy in ourselves. This great host that is going to be used of God is comprised of those who have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. They love not their lives unto death. They set out to walk with God and the old flesh has to be crucified, the former manner of life has to go.
Ephesians 4:23 tells us, …be renewed in the spirit of your mind. You will not receive any inheritance in the Kingdom, either now or in the future, if you walk in the former things. No matter what has been prophesied for the end time, you will not have it until you have this overcoming walk. You may be looking for the Lord to appear. I John 3:3 tells us, “Every man that hath this hope of His appearing, purifies himself, even as He is pure.” Without that holiness shall no man see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). This inheritance of glory is based upon pure grace—grace that leads us into the pure sanctification of spirit, soul, and body, that we be holy before God. The overcomer then inherits everything.
The man who “blows” it forfeits his inheritance completely, and must start right down at the bottom of the ladder and work his way up again. Every time you give way to the self-life in any of these things we have read about, you give strength to the flesh.
Then you have to seek God’s face all over again, until the blood of Jesus Christ brings forgiveness and your repentance is sufficient that God cleanses you again from all unrighteousness. You cannot keep validating that former manner of life that Paul writes about in Ephesians 4. You cannot keep renewing it and giving it a shot to quicken it again. If you do, each time you are forfeiting to a great extent what you had gained before.
In a sense, I am overstating it. We realize that we all fail, but it is another thing to give way deliberately, or even to be caught in the lusts of deceit.
The lusts of deceit always spring a trap on someone who has positioned himself so it could happen to him. He always opened the door to it. Unconsciously he wanted it, or it would not have happened to him. The seed of deceit was in his heart. Afterwards he may comment, “Oh, I didn’t want that to happen.” But he did want it to happen. Flee away from the thing that would destroy your inheritance with God. Flee from it. Flee youthful lusts. Away with anything that would keep you unholy or unclean before God. You may feel that we are living in a day of great tolerance, but do not be deceived. The unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom we preach will come to people who are prepared. That does not mean you can do it in yourself. That attitude is a self-righteousness that God would have to cleanse you of too. We must actually seek God until the old self is put away and crucified.
Neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. That is the difference—made clean, made holy.
Galatians 5:19–21 contains some of the same phraseology concerning those who will have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and things like these, of which I forewarn you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Let me emphasize again that this inheritance is now as well as future. Even now the Spirit brings the earnest of our inheritance. But if we do the things mentioned here, we are eliminating ourselves from anything that God would let us inherit.
Could one act, such as those described here, be sufficient to nullify promises, blessings and prophecies over an individual? Absolutely. One such act would be adequate because this is what God’s Word tells us. However, I thank God that most of the time it does not happen. But anyone who deliberately goes into sin will have a great deal of difficulty getting the renewal of those promises over his life again. When people have gone out and really messed themselves up, they find that when they come back to church, they must struggle and struggle to get back into the flow of things. It seems as if we struggle to bring them into anything new. They had flubbed it so badly, and God could not move because there was confusion. We could not relate in our minds the fact that God had wiped them out, and neither could they. They may have thought, “Ho-hum, I fell into a little problem.” They could not be more wrong; they had wiped themselves completely out of the picture. They could not come back thinking, “Oh, but I have this wonderful promise over me.” They had to come back the way they were supposed to, repenting and seeking God with all their hearts. Do not ever come back with presumption. Do not carry anything in your heart that is an automatic wipe-out of every inheritance you could have in God. Repent of it and get rid of it completely. Then the times of refreshing will come from the Lord. Then there will be a renewal in the spirit of your mind (Ephesians 4:23). God will help you to pick up and walk into something glorious in the sight of the Lord.
I think sometimes we instinctively realize this, whether we know it consciously or not. When we repent, we come before the Lord and say, “Oh God, I have sinned. Forgive me.” And it is almost as if we have to hear the Lord repeat the promises He has given us through the years. Why is this? Because the human spirit is aware of how total can be the wipe-outs from certain actions in your life. It does not mean these things cannot be overcome, but many times they are not overcome because the people will not face the fact that they have lost out and have forfeited their inheritance.
In the story of the prodigal son, a young man had a certain inheritance coming to him. He decided to take his share of the inheritance and go out and squander it. He fell into evil ways, and soon all his money was gone. What could He do? He went back home to his family and said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.” The father fell on his neck and kissed him, put a new robe on him and killed the fattened calf for a feast (Luke 15:11–24). God loves you. But if you “blow” it and lose your inheritance, come to the Lord and say, “Oh God, I’m not worthy of anything now.” He will meet you on that basis every time. In the honesty of your heart, you are not speaking deceit or following the lusts of deceit, but you are walking in honesty before God in your repentance. God will not only forgive, but He will remove the sin from you and help you to put it away completely and to move into the grace of God. If it were not for that, all of us would have lost out many times and never could have recovered.
We must be careful. Some young people were rather deep in sin before they came into a walk with God. They dare not get the idea that they can be cocky, thinking that it will not make much difference if they make a little trip back into that old life once in a while, that God will smile on them and look the other way, that they can come back into the service the next Sunday and start worshiping the Lord again and everything will be all right.
If you find that you have a problem, work at it by faith before the face of God until you have put away the flesh with its lusts.
It is only your own self-deception that could wipe you out. No one is going to point the finger at you, but you had better point the finger at yourself and not be presumptuous where this matter of sin is concerned.
Because sin is such a serious matter, and especially the sins of sex, you can put yourself in a place where you wipe yourself out of the picture, and still be presumptuous, and then wonder what is wrong. Do not be like the sow going back to her wallow, or the dog to his vomit.
In Old Testament times, when someone had an illness, he was quarantined for a certain number of days. After he was well, he washed and cleansed himself, and only then could he present himself in the tabernacle to worship.
We should never be presumptuous when we come to minister. Search your heart and be sure things are right. When they are right before God and you have repented and sought the face of the Lord, then you can say, “Lord, by faith I reach again into the promises that belong to the Body of Christ.”
If you have forfeited your promises, God will give you a new set, but until He does, you can borrow the promises resting over the Body as a whole. Because of the anointing upon the Body, the strong can carry the weak ones. You have promises galore to walk in, if only you repent and seek God. Put away the old self with its ways.
I am not talking about your salvation so much, or about any idea of “eternal security.” There will be many carnal Christians in heaven, for that is just about all God has. What I am emphasizing is your inheritance in the Kingdom of God, that which God is giving a remnant of people to walk in and to inherit. This means being an overcomer.
Do you want to walk in the victories and promises of God? Do you want to walk in the Kingdom of God? Do you want to walk in the freedom and gifts of the Spirit? Then repent first. Let God work the deep searching of your heart, the sanctification of your spirit and see how things begin to change. I find myself repenting a great deal because I see that I need it. And the more I repent, the more authority I move in, the greater is the revelation of the Word that comes flowing through me, the more God almost automatically gives me the inheritance of His Kingdom, the more the compassion and love of Christ comes through me. The Kingdom of God is coming to you because we are seeking Him and repenting.
We esteem purity very highly—not human purity or human self-righteousness, but being pure in heart before God, seeking first the Kingdom and His righteousness. God links together the Kingdom and His righteousness. They belong together.
We need to repent of being tolerant of sin. Our souls should be vexed at the unrighteousness in God’s people. When we see what sin does, we become horrified by it. The Word says, If I regard (the Hebrew word is “look with favor upon”) iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Psalm 66:18. If you abhor the sin and say, “God, forgive me and cleanse me; I hate this sin,” He will bless you. But if you love the wickedness in your heart, He will not hear you.
Let us hate sin with a perfect hatred, but not the sinners. Ask God to give you a perfect love for them. You cannot go your own selfish ways and fail to help someone who is slipping away and getting a bad spirit. If someone does not speak to him and help him straighten things out, in a moment of desolation and discouragement, he will “blow” it all. Help one another. Pray for one another. Bear one another’s burdens.
We are not condemning anyone who has sinned, nor are we seeking to produce self-condemnation by this word. We are only pointing out that you will not receive the inheritance until things are changed. You cannot be deceived. We are not making unbelievers out of you, but by the grace of God, we want to produce in you that which is necessary to become overcomers. We do not want to spend the next five or ten critical years (if we have that much time) going through the motions, and then realize we have missed everything that is taking place in the earth and find we are not walking in it, because we missed the inheritance.
Let the Spirit of the Lord lay upon you the true spirit of repentance, not a phony attitude, based upon shallow emotion, but that which is founded upon the true intent and purpose of the heart to yearn and thirst after the Lord, to stand before Him and worship Him, to be the people He wants you to be.