Sleeping With The Enemy

Sleeping With The Enemy - Part I

Archived on December 10th, 2000

Part I
As I was debating what to call the message this week, I thought of the title above and then passed it up the first time around. Then as I began to think more and more, I realized that it is the most appropriate title one could come up with on this topic.

In this first part of our message, I will lay down the foundation of what we will be talking about here for the next few weeks. I am sure this message will have several parts, so dig in and get ready for some meat.

What do I mean by sleeping with the enemy?
Did you know that we are in a war? Not a war of flesh and blood, but of the spiritual, a REAL war.

Ephesians 6:12, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

This war is like a regular physical war, except that the outcome means either your true death or true life. I'm talking about eternity here. In any given war there is an enemy. In the spiritual war, our enemy can only be the one who has been giving us spiritual trouble since the dawn of time; The Dragon, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan(Revelation 12:7). Yes, satan is our enemy, and the battle is raging with him 24/7. Every hour of every day, he is plotting and conniving, trying to win souls that will go to destruction with him. Like a terrorist bomber, he knows he is going to die, so he is going to take as many with him as he can.

So satan is our enemy, and there are those in the church even today who "sleep" with him spiritually. To be straight forward, this message is about Idolatry in the Church today. Idolatry is really spirtual adultery, because if you partake of things that are used in worship to false gods after you have already been betrothed to the true God, through salvation, then you have committed adultery, your husband being Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:2-3, "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

Paul wrote here of marrying people to Christ through his teaching and the Gospel, and his fears that we would be seduced by the influences of some other teachings.

So if we commit adultery, idolatry, what is the penalty?
In the Old Covenant, God laid down the law concerning adultery:
Leviticus 20:10, "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." If one committed adultery back then, they were to be killed. Yet now, since Christ came, even this can be forgiven. Adultery is definitely not, the unforgivable sin. If it were, do you think God would have given a bill of divorcement to his children?

Jeremiah 3:8-9, "And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks."

During the reign of Solomon, Father divded the kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms: Israel and Judah, because Solomon allowed idols and other things to be in the Temple of God, that were not part of the Worship that God had instructed them to do. Father divorced them because of this.

Proverbs 6:32, "But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul."

This is true for spiritual adultery as well. If you commit idolatry, your are destroying your own soul, because through it, you deny God and that is a grave mistake.
This idolatry goes on in the churches even today. There are things that are being taught in the Church today, that are only things brought in by tradition. Things that are not scripturally sound. Are you committing adultery against God? I pray not, we will discuss these things in depth next week. until Then.......

Love and Peace, Carl Towns

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Part I