Evil Is NOT Just An Idea Or A Concept

As people watch the recent shootings in Texas where 19 young kids and 2 teachers were killed by an 18 year-old boy, it should be a stark reminder of how violence is the outcome of a heart devoid of God. Seeing such sights reminds us of what demons did, and still do, in and through people devoid of the spirit of God. Throughout the gospels Jesus was constantly casting out demons that torment people. These demonic spirits are more active today as we get near to the return of Jesus and the final judgement of Satan and his demons.

Evil doesn’t make sense to a normal heart and mind, especially when violence seems so random. Evil does make sense, however, to the person captivated by evil. The apostle Paul stated very clearly that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood but against Satan and his evil workers. We are in a cosmic conflict between the spiritual and the natural in our world, and innocent children and adults seem to suffer the worst from it. As we witness the wholesale slaughter of innocent people in Ukraine the spread of evil is even more evident.

Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

When are people going to realize that the problem is not the TOOL in the hands of people doing wicked acts. It is wickedness in their hearts that twists people up so much that they become filled with evil darkness? That is the real problem. When we think guns are the problem and we ban guns, people with evil intent in their souls will find a rock, or a car or a baseball bat with which to harm others. Will we then ban rocks, and cars and baseball bats hoping to stop the violence in our society? I don’t think so. We would just be putting another Band-Aid on our problem.

Take the case of the first sons of Adam and Eve when Cain closed his heart to God and opened his heart to Satan. Cain, now filled with anger over God’s favoring of Abel, used a rock to kill his brother. Rocks can be used to build a house or kill a person. The problem is not the rock but the HUMAN HEART that is uncontrolled when God is shut out.

Genesis 4:6-7

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

We have bred a generation of young people unfamiliar with God and his ways, and all too familiar with self-centeredness and selfishness moved by Satan and his ways of greed and violence. Generations past had a moral compass to guide them, but this generation seems to have no compass at all and we are quickly turning into a land that is just like the time of the Judges in the Old Testament when “each man did what was right in his own eyes.”

We are at such a crossroads in America, if not in the whole world, in which people are now reaping the whirlwind of the fruit that comes from abandoning a belief in God and a relationship with his Word.

In America, we took prayer out of schools on June 25, 1962, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared school-sponsored prayer unconstitutional in the landmark case Engel v. Vitale. Because a few liberals didn’t like prayer, we foolishly stopped putting prayer before kids and our morality declined rapidly.

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in favor of “Roe v Wade” in which abortion became a wholesale “Right” for women to kill their own children. Once this was allowed, the government couldn’t stop the wholesale killing of babies before they are born. Mothers who were designed by God to nurture children are now killing their own babies for convenience and economic advantage in order to buy a new car or a new house. Millions of babies sacrificed for greater gain says to children, you can be replaced if I find something better to buy.

Cities and towns all across America chose to abandon God’s principles because Liberals have sued to get the Ten Commandments removed from our courthouses, public squares and schools. Leaders caved because God’s 10 Commandments made some people feel uncomfortable. People wonder why evil seems to be on a warpath throughout the Nation. The handwriting is on the wall, my friend. We are experiencing what a culture without God develops into – Lawlessness, Anarchy and Violence.

Moses, at the end of his life, gave Israel the option of living with BLESSINGS OR CURSES. In that warning, Moses was prophesying what kind of future they were going to have because they were claiming they were children of God, but they were rejecting God’s ways. Israel’s only hope was to turn back to the Lord so that BLESSING might once again come.

Deuteronomy 30:1-3

So it shall be when all these things happen to you—the blessings and the curses I have listed—and you meditate on them as you are living among the nations to which the LORD your God has exiled you. If at that time you return to the LORD your God, and you and your children begin wholeheartedly to obey all the commands I have given you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. 

God always puts before us blessing or cursing – blessings when we are close to God and curses when we are not. Our culture will continue to spiral out of control until we address the key problem of rampant evil , like we have witnessed lately. The answer is letting God back into our lives. Writing more laws to curb evil is indeed just putting a natural bandaid on a spiritual problem.

We can once again put a bandaid on the problem or we can take the cure. It’s up to us.

Questions:

1) Do we care enough to remove the evil that might be lurking in our own hearts, or put a bandaid on our problem with evil? The first step to rejecting evil is to acknowledge it’s there and secondly turning to God in repentance (1 John 1:9)

2) Are we upset and angry about the evil that is in our land? Will we do the things necessary to spiritually address the evil? God gave us the answer and it’s in an individual and nationwide response. ( 2 Chronicles 7:14)

Praying for a spiritual awakening in our hearts, our churches and our nation,

Pastor Dale